The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Kitschy]

He is mainly good because this is charge unit, in a tier where generally you don't have this. Early, disable retaliation and do full damage at reach is precious. Differences are small at this time. So extremely useful when you know what you're doing.
It is not a champion of defense.
It is not even the best T1, or one of the best, mainly because he has only 32 moves. (Deserves at least the optional cavalry IMO)

But it is a good and efficient unit if correctly used. Those than tell it is one of the worst don't really play the game with Dark culture. For sure, it tolerates few retaliations. Equal number or outnumber is preferable. Timing is extremely important with this unit. Mid and endgame, of course not at level, but like what ? it is a T1. There are far worses T1 units in this game, and better ones.

Play a shield unit is generally far more simple, 1 because they are in better position globally in this game, with better skills (stun etc / Cavalry optionnal). 2 because timing is generally more forgivable. One mistake with dark warrior, you lose a unit.

So yes, Dark is bad, but the poor dark warrior is not even the true culprit : p

Ok, what is the worst T1 culture unit then?
'cause I don't know, imo DW and Arcane Guard are in competition for the first place there.

Also why 32 movement is an important criteria when almost all T1 culture units with exception of two skirmishers have 32 movement. (don't get me wrong it could get 40 movement but it still won't make the unit good imo, would make it a bit better tho) Also how are you outnumbering anything in very early game, then there is a problem with outnumbering that it delays your hero progression 'cause you are getting less XP.

 

[Balthazar69]

The last place ? Yeah arcane guard should have a good place, and few others that I don't remember the name : p

Dark warrior lack of movement and a special ability IMO. More, I would not shocked to put it at 2 defense / 2 resistance when an arbalest of industrious is for example at 2 defense (At range...).

Like you said, movement don't do anything. With a bad timing, he is exposed and dead. He is used to going to the front. It is a bit an aborted honor blade.

 

[Codyksp]

He is mainly good because this is charge unit, in a tier where generally you don't have this. Early, disable retaliation and do full damage at reach is precious. Differences are small at this time. So extremely useful when you know what you're doing.

This is not good at all. Dark Warrior has 60 HP, 1 DEF, 1 RES, 32 MV and deals 18 DMG.
So, they will perform 1 Charge attack for 29 DMG, more than 1 is unlikely in most combats.
After that the unit only deals 18 DMG per round and is incredibly squishy defensively.
Being able to cancel Defense Mode/Retaliation is not going to tip the scales in their favour.

A T1 Shield unit generally has 70 HP, 5 DEF, 0 RES, 32 MV (optional Mount) and 10 DMG.
The chance of them being flanked is low. So they won't be losing their additional defense.
A single full repeating hit will deal 30 DMG and this can be done multiple times in a battle.
They have more HP, far higher DEF and only 1 less RES as well as the option to be mounted.
This is most commonly combined with Mount Masters for a very cheap movement boost.

But it is a good and efficient unit if correctly used. Those than tell it is one of the worst don't really play the game with Dark culture. For sure, it tolerates few retaliations. Equal number or outnumber is preferable. Timing is extremely important with this unit. Mid and endgame, of course not at level, but like what ? it is a T1. There are far worses T1 units in this game, and better ones.

I, and others in MP have played Dark culture many times. The unit sucks for early clearing. They die all the time.
We do so much testing, trust me when I say that any culture with a Shield unit is 10x better at clearing the map.
Even the Polearm units perform better, despite them being pretty bad as well. All ranged T1s are never played.

So yes, Dark is bad, but the poor dark warrior is not even the true culprit : p

They are though. Sure, the combat bonus is bad too. But the unit is definitely the biggest issue right now.

 

[Balthazar69]

Nobody tell dark warrior is better than shield units. That was not my initial demo. I just tell you that it is not catastrophic like you said. If you die often with this unit, it is that you don't use it in an optimal way. You can't play it easily, frankly. Timing must be perfect. Positionning is extremely important, if not, foes focus fire this unit and bye.

A lot of guys do deep tests and feedback. It is not an authority arguments. Sorry, but your opinion is only valid for yourself, nothing else, despite what you seem to think. Your are not an ambassador of anything. A good reminded.

How would you fast clean and all, with a unit with 32 moves ? Obviously you will find it is not appropriate... It is not done for that. It is done for mixed bag battle, if you know what youre doing. In this situation, it is a good unit. Not perfect (Like I said before and all upgrade possible), but a good one, better than a lot of hast IMO.

So no, this is not the biggest issue with dark. The two issues are known : a bad/weird ranged-melee synergy and an economical problem early. In this way, Reavers and Dark have similar issues and are, IMO, the worst cultures for theses reasons.

After what, if devs boost dark warrior, I take it. It can clearly be improved as it is far from the best T1.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Thats what enchantment upkeep is supposed to do, prevent limitless enchantment stacking. There's also more dimensions to this argument though. It would be impossible to get all enchants and minors in a multiplayer game, but single player can see it happening by drawing out the game.

Some players want to create factions with enchantments and transformations from two different affinities. A hard numbered restriction prevents that fantasy or strategy from working out. There should be a means to dissuade overstacking enchants and transformations. What should those means be if not hard capping by number of enchants?

Upkeep is too low for the effect, be it for the actual upkeep or for a missing additional upkeep for the stacking of ever more of them.

 

[Deus von Vult]

No kidding. In my recent game, I was pillaging a teleporter and got hit by a 3-stack by the AI, then in a few turns after, I hit a 2-stack, and then I went to siege the city, and like freaking magic, six stacks appeared out of thin freaking air!

Yeah, that´s the thing i would like to change. I have played a game on normal and beat the ai besieging my city. It were 3 stacks with their leader a giant. I have beaten the stack then immediately after beating the stacks another 3 stacks attacked my other city. I have beaten this stacks too. Then when i tried to counter attack the ai spawned another 3 stacks on their territory and after beating this stacks ANOTHER 3 stacks were spawned.

This is the reason i am so reluctant against nerfing certain mechanics in the game. Of course the devs can limit the player even more in terms of certain tactics or mechanics like stackins of enchantments. But then the devs have to tone down the constant spawning of enemy troops. Furthermore in this game the ai had a vassal city which were constantly sending troops to my third city too. At some point it simply gets boring and i am slowly loosing interest in the game. Because unless i am using cheese tactics i have to beat wave after wave after wave of enemies simply spawning out of thin air.

Maybe at some point i want to clear a gold wonder. But i can´t do that because the ai is spawning a neverending stream of 3 stacks. And there are some civ combinations which are really bad at autoresolve. I have a civ which relies on flanking and repositioning. You rarely can autoresolve with this civ. Same for mage civs.

 

[Deus von Vult]

Are you RPing a number cruncher and spamming enchantments by any chance? xD

But no seriously how long are your games and roughly how many tomes and how many enchantments/transformations do you end your games with?

It depends on the faction i am playing or if i am playing on a mid sized map or a big map. I often play materium and they rely a lot on enchantments. But yesterday i started a game with a nature themed civ with electric blade enchantments but as barbarians+ some magic. I think a lot of people playing in single player are not that concerned with enchantment stacking. And a lot of people want fun games without thinking hours and hours how to use a specific tome or unit.

We are only a very tiny minority writing in the forum here and most people are casual players. Age of Wonders 4 is allready a hard game to learn. There are a lot of mechanics to understand in the game. If the devs force people to sit in front of tomes and units and numbercrunch for hours this simply sucks the life out of the game. It is allready tedious enough that auto resolve kills half of your units all the time and that the ai can spawn waves of doom stacks out of thin air. The game doesn´t need to be even more tedious.

 

[Arcantos_the_Storyteller]

Wanna know the worst thing about the game?

It wasn't even the AI and their infinite armies. It was the Infestations. It was a Regeneration Infestation world and the AI did nothing about them. How the hell did the AI go to war with me, consistently sending full stacks against me or having guards up, when after I took their capitals I had to keep two armies there forever to keep fending off the relentless waves of Infestation invasions, and it took me like 10-15 turns just to clear our the Infestations already there so I could start repairing stuff?

 

[Codyksp]

Nobody tell dark warrior is better than shield units. That was not my initial demo. I just tell you that it is not catastrophic like you said. If you die often with this unit, it is that you don't use it in an optimal way. You can't play it easily, frankly. Timing must be perfect. Positionning is extremely important, if not, foes focus fire this unit and bye.

I am talking about auto combat. Not playing every fight in manual for 30 minutes.
In multiplayer we can't babysit units. It would waste everyone's time and cause 50 hour games.

How would you fast clean and all, with a unit with 32 moves ? Obviously you will find it is not appropriate... It is not done for that. It is done for mixed bag battle, if you know what youre doing. In this situation, it is a good unit. Not perfect (Like I said before and all upgrade possible), but a good one, better than a lot of hast IMO.

No. It isn't a good unit in any situation. Notice how no other culture has a T1 Shock unit, I wonder why.
Notice how Honor Blade, Sworn Guard and Mercenary are almost T2 units, just so they can be decent.

Any unit that isn't Shield is bad in T1. Skirmisher/Ranged/Battle Mage are OK as a 2nd unit alongside the Shields.
Because they all perform better with a frontline. Even the Sundered is shit when solo spammed, compared to Warrior.

So no, this is not the biggest issue with dark. The two issues are known : a bad/weird ranged-melee synergy and an economical problem early. In this way, Reavers and Dark have similar issues and are, IMO, the worst cultures for theses reasons.

After what, if devs boost dark warrior, I take it. It can clearly be improved as it is far from the best T1.

Yes. Their combat passive and lack of economy are the 2 biggest problems. But the unit remains bad.

 

[Balthazar69]

I am talking about auto combat. Not playing every fight in manual for 30 minutes.
In multiplayer we can't babysit units. It would waste everyone's time and cause 50 hour games.

1 An extreme majority of players play against AI. Again, MP is a tiny part of the game, with specifics behaviors. Not better, specific, dedicated. You just underline that I say : it is less dedicated to MP because timing is needed. More difficult to use does not mean "bad". Depend on your way to play. Same can be tell with mage and globally ranged units. AI doesn't know how to play them.

2 But even in MP, it is T1, so early game, and early you don't put 30 minutes for a fight. You are frequently in superior number against world. Battle are not 3x6 early. It is extremely fast. If you put 30 minutes in a fight, you are definitively not like others players. And perhaps not the better one to tell what is strong or not. More, even with shield units, AI do craps. I invite you to test that since you seems to like tests like me. You will see that you can do a far better job for keep health on units, and that at the same being quick to do these battles.

So no, auto-combat is only the choice of the player, and the platform he choose. He can do few fight, or none, or all, or only when there is loss. ETC ETC. But don't give a general value of a unit on biased/reduced experience, and a general truth revealed.

auto-combat is a very specific thing where a lot of things don't work and where you ALWAYS, lose more health. Always. Sorry, but the bias is 100 %, to justifie that.

Any unit that isn't Shield is bad in T1.

Nope it is false. There are few T1 non Shield that are extremely good.

 

[seperamos]

Each culture needs expansion on the units and battle roles for those units. We're arguing about shields and shocks when we need more diverse units created. You can get shock infantry and shock cavalry, but no shield cavalry. There's no seige units to compare with the awesome power of the ironclad. Units that can't evolve to better units have to be replaced with tome or wonder versions.

Players should be able to choose how their armies are composed, with either cultural mages, cultural archers, cultural cavalry, or cultural infantry units seperated by battle roles. Cultural infantry can be distinguished by abilities, tiers, and infantry specific roles: shields, shock, fighter, and even skirmisher.

 

[Codyksp]

1 An extreme majority of players play against AI. Again, MP is a tiny part of the game, with specifics behaviors. Not better, specific, dedicated. You just underline that I say : it is less dedicated to MP because timing is needed. More difficult to use does not mean "bad". Depend on your way to play. Same can be tell with mage and globally ranged units. AI doesn't know how to play them.

2 But even in MP, it is T1, so early game, and early you don't put 30 minutes for a fight. You are frequently in superior number against world. Battle are not 3x6 early. It is extremely fast. If you put 30 minutes in a fight, you are definitively not like others players. And perhaps not the better one to tell what is strong or not. More, even with shield units, AI do craps. I invite you to test that since you seems to like tests like me. You will see that you can do a far better job for keep health on units, and that at the same being quick to do these battles.

So no, auto-combat is only the choice of the player, and the platform he choose. He can do few fight, or none, or all, or only when there is loss. ETC ETC. But don't give a general value of a unit on biased/reduced experience, and a general truth revealed.

auto-combat is a very specific thing where a lot of things don't work and where you ALWAYS, lose more health. Always. Sorry, but the bias is 100 %, to justifie that.


Nope it is false. There are few T1 non Shield that are extremely good.

I will explain why you are wrong in one very simple way.

In auto combat it's AI vs AI. There is no human influence. The skill is equal on both sides.
In manual combat you (human) are playing to abuse the AI (dumb machine) every time.

Therefore manual combat vs AI is an inaccurate way to gauge the power of units.
The only accurate ways are auto combat and manual vs another human player.

And yes. Dark Warrior is still shit when played with human vs human combat.


We are playing auto combat because otherwise you have 5-10 minute battles EVERY TURN.
Multiply this by 4-6 players who are taking multiple battles per turn. Now add the time together.
This is probably more than 30 minutes per turn actually, if each player takes 5-10 minutes.

We play live games, these are matches with all players online that are played in 1 single session.
We don't play offline turns. We don't save and continue the next day, or the next week.
Even if we did "save" the game. Using manual combat for all players would make 1 game take months.

And it isn't just my community. WinSlaya, Guthuk and Kaige all play auto combat vs AI as well. This is the standard.

You can get shock infantry and shock cavalry, but no shield cavalry.

So... Optional Mount doesn't exist? Spellshield is not a real unit? Okay.

 

[seperamos]

Autocombat takes the fun out of using custom rulers and preferred unit stacks. It's harder to take on multiple stacks by just giving AI control of your units and having them lost with poor ai management.

You're willing to lose units you dont have to, just to speed up the pace of your game? How do you recover your stacks from excessive casualties? Every unit lost means another must be summoned or drafted from towns farther way from the front. That attrition can take away most of the roles within any army you use to cross the map to your opponent.

 

[Balthazar69]

Therefore manual combat vs AI is an inaccurate way to gauge the power of units.

But nobody tell previously that manual combat player against AI was the only way to gauge the power of units. But the contrary is also true : based the power of unit only on MP pvp because you can't play 2 minutes in a manual battle is not more accurate (5-10 minutes early ? lol, except if you are a turtle...). There are just several ways to play.
This discussion turn around in circles. I'm leaving the ship.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Autocombat is NOT an accurate way to gauge anything important because once sides in AC are different there is no guarantee that the AI handles things equally bad. While, for example, the AI may handle all Skirmishers the same way, if you have a side with Skirmishers and a side without or a lot less, the AI may handle the Skirmishers wrong. For example use their ranged attack, no matter what (because it has one).

 

[Codyksp]

If auto combat isn't reliable and manual vs AI just a big old cheese fest.
Then the only remaining truth for unit power is PvP combat, in manual mode.

 

[Deus von Vult]

I am not sure if it is even possible to balance auto combat in a good way with all the traits in the game. Even Warhammer 3 Total war can't do it in a reliable way. Age of Wonders 4 is THE ultimative fantasy simulator, but i think autoresolve can't simulate glass cannon flanking tactics in the game. Same problem in Warhammer 3 Total war. If you want to play a glass cannon faction there you have to play every single battle yourself. (Slaanesh/Vampire counts).

In age of wonders 4 i have to play nearly every single battle myself when i go for cavalery heavy civs. Because the moment there is a single polearm unit in the enemies army, i loose half of my cavalery units. It seems autoresolve simply attacks the polearm with cavalery from the front, not using my supporting shield units to tank the enemy polearm units.

 

[Arcantos_the_Storyteller]

... To be fair, Manual vs AI is only a cheese fess if you actually know how to cheese the AI?

All I know is that they seem to hyper-focus on combat summons, and that's it.

 

[Deus von Vult]

... To be fair, Manual vs AI is only a cheese fess if you actually know how to cheese the AI?

All I know is that they seem to hyper-focus on combat summons, and that's it.

I don't know how the ai exactly works, but so far different ai rulers used different units. Not always summons. We all know ai cheats, so you will often see armies which would be way to expensive for a player if you would try to build them in mid game for example.

Like full T3 doomstacks which you as a player couldn't simply afford in terms of mana or gold cost.

Furthermore i think the ai tries to build or rather "spawn" armies which have some counter to your army composition. For example, you play cavalery heavy and the enemy is a dark culture with access to polearms, be prepared to meet a lot of polearm units in the enemy army.

But overall the ai likes to stack t3 units. Sometimes some T 5 mythics.

I had a free city vasall for example who had 3!!! mythical dragons, one in each army +plus a lot of t 3 units. His army outclassed mine by lightyears.

Of course i yoinked his army for the greater good of the empire

 

[Codyksp]

... To be fair, Manual vs AI is only a cheese fess if you actually know how to cheese the AI?

All I know is that they seem to hyper-focus on combat summons, and that's it.

The AI loses simply because they bring a random hodgepodge of units and don't stack enchantments.
Compared to a human player who has 6 enchantments and 3 minor transformations with 2 unit types.

This is aside from the fact that you can simply predict how the AI will move after a few combats.
It is extremely easy to bait them to move out of position or attack certain units for example.

Anyone who struggles with the AI either struggles with game fundamentals or is purely roleplaying.
Meaning that their choices aren't optimised in any way, but purely chosen based on a feeling.

The last time I played vs a Brutal set of AI (so the most difficult starting conditions, etc.), I had them dominated.
All I did was play High culture, use Shield + Ranged units and pick tomes that boosted their power optimally.
That's it. Nothing special. Just knowing what units to build, what tomes to pick and how to build my Heroes.