What I find more offensive is that it gives -10% AND +20 Knowledge.
Liquids and Plants really need to be rebalanced. Ores are actually fine.
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Liquids and Plants really need to be rebalanced. Ores are actually fine.
That is how I play, but I tend not to play completely randomly?
For example, if I'm playing an Underground race with Subturrean Society, I ensure there is an Underground, or if I'm playing my Silver Tongue Socity, I ensure there is still Free Cities around.
Don't get me wrong, the Unknown Map with Complex Traits is fun, but it can still completely screw you over so its best to not be 100% random.
I think I had a discussion like this before, where I made an argument that my issues with the game and my suggestions to improve it actually are in line with the overarching goals that Triumph have laid out. Never got a response to that post I think, which is kinda annoying.
I am very much aware that dark warriors and pursuers suck (and dark racial units in general), but I was wondering if that was because the AI don't know how to play with them properly. I have yet to play as a dark culture for myself, but it seems that you are supposed to use tome units to fill in the gaps in the roster, so you would go for tome of faith (for chaplain) and the tome of warding (for phantasm warriors). Use the chaplains to heal your dark warriors and the phantasm warriors to shield them and it sounds like the early game at least is yours.
The dark culture units seem built to do a lot of damage and then die (hence no healing support), so basically they are swarm units. The AI however, doesn't know how to swarm, which is part of why it is so easy to beat despite all its cheats. Instead of using its cheats to create huge stacks, fighting multiple losing battles in order to ultimately beat the enemy player in attrition, it instead uses its cheats to create doomstacks that the player then swarms to death.
Tiers don't matter much, they never have in the Age of Wonders series. It doesn't have anything to do with the AI being crap and part of what makes the AI crap is precisely that it reads too much into tiers and ends up creating sub-par armies as a result.
In the example you were are using, the higher-tier mostly died and it was the mid-tier mounted glade guards that survived the battle. The player lost because he played against a specialised wyvern-killing army, wyverns normally would own glade guards because they are fast enough to melee them but these glade guards are mounted so they can evade.
Stop treating multiplayer as the 'real game', when multiplayer is a deeply distorted game, dominated by unintentional exploits, human psychological biases and time-constraints and there are plenty other considerations involved in multiplayer, beyond merely 'what works'. Time being the main one, in multiplayer you *want* to decide everything in a single battle because that way somebody can clearly win the game and the players can then move on. There is also the psychological fact that winning by swarming is damn miserable and since we aren't normally forced to play that way, we don't.
There is a considerable psychological bias against swarm tactics, because the dopamine hit is rather lacking when you are told that your battle ended in defeat and you are forced to remind yourself of the 'bigger picture' (that the computer lies and the battle isn't over yet). But there is nothing theoretical about swarm tactics, it is responsible for one of my victories against the AI which I could not have defeated otherwise, because of the cheat-doomstacks. High-level AI order players seem to be unbeatable without swarm tactics, so I was forced to adopt swarm tactics in order to win (it very much wasn't my first choice, swarming is miserable).
An AI Decimus had spent the whole game stalemating the player, holding them in place by unintentionally using swarm tactics defensively : Toads would invade, the mole-person doomstack would kill them, that weakened doomstack would go on the offensive and then a second mob of toads would defeat it (repeat forever). If the AI knew how to intentionally swarm, then Whisp would probably have been eliminated by Decimus before I ever got involved.
First Use of Swarming.
Second Use of Swarming.
The key element of swarming is that you can do it knowingly, or accidentally; presently the AI does it a lot of swarming accidentally, a big factor behind its endless stalemates against itself. Another key element of swarming tactics is to mentally separate units into expendable and in-expendable units (heroes are the latter), in the earlier waves of the swarm and plan your retreat so that low-level units are sacrificed to ensure the successful retreat of high-level units.
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You do realize that in all 4 images your armies are a random assortment of units with 0 synergies, random tiers and no singular focus.
Those armies are literally what an AI would build, just lower in tier. You wouldn't need to send 3 waves if you made stronger armies.
I've had no trouble beating a "Brutal" game mode (so not just the AI itself) with 3 strong armies and some teleporters to move around.
I would usually aim to build up 6 armies so that I could send 3 to go murder someone and keep 3 near home to clear incoming threats.
First of all, pick a class. Pick Ranged/Battle Mage/Shock or Skirmisher as your "damage dealers". They will be your primary focus.
In the case of Shock and Skirmisher you quite literally want to mono stack them. Shield/Polearm/Support will not help them.
The only exception being if you're able to get these units mounted or are using Athletics so they can keep up for the most part.
Why? Because map movement dictates how fast you can farm for resources/XP and how fast you can reposition your armies.
Now. If you chose Ranged or Battle Mage, there is a benefit to combining them with Shield/Poleam/Support units as well.
Not random low tier trash. Units of either the same tier or one tier lower at most. Bring 1 per army maximum, no more.
You have your Shield and Support units purely for their auras and additional effects (if available), that's their only role.
Polearms are used as a frontline replacement for Shield units or to counter a potential Shock based composition.
The more enchantments you can stack for your chosen "damage dealer", the stronger you become. That's how the game works.
I'll give you 3 example builds that revolve around a specific core unit and aim to empower it as much as you possibly can.
You also always aim to pick Form/Society Traits, a Ruler and Tomes that cover your weaknesses while empowering your units.
For this build you focus everything on your mounted unit roster. Archer is a no-go, everything else can be played with.
You pick up purely melee based enchantments, focusing as much as possible on buffing your (Aspirant) Knights.
There is Staves of Grace if you bring some Champion/Legend rank Bannermen, as they are still decent late game.
Liege Guard also benefits from the chosen build, you generally want 1 per Hero, and they're mounted. So this is good.
In this build you are focused entirely around Spell Shield/Soother/Spellbreaker until you unlock Geomancers.
Everything you unlock focuses on buffing Battle Mage/Support and Shield units. Forget Iron Golem, it's shit.
You stick to your 40 movement racial units and try to keep Spellshields alive. Otherwise go full mono Geomancer.
If you want more frontline, you can use your Ruler and Heroes to fill the gap. A Ritualist replaces your Support.
You do not drag around T2 units unless they are Champion/Legend. And you don't bring garbage non-racials.
It would be great if Rock Giants and Golden Golems were good as a late game frontline, but they are sadly bad.
This one is a bit more out of the box. It's a super strict build that stretches affinities for maximum gains.
You are giga focused on research, unlocking Stormbringers as soon as you can possibly manage.
Enchantments/Transformations focus on helping your Stormbringers with only Tome of Faith as outlier.
Your early game consists purely of Protectors and Animists until you're able to summon Mistlings.
These units and your Heroes do the early lifting (with some enchantment support) until Stormborne.
You pretty much just stack as many Mistlings as you can to farm the map with 40 movement units.
And then you mix in Stormbringers, which also have 40 movement, for the final army composition.
If you are playing in a different way, it's not wrong. But it is undeniably suboptimal. Therefore it feels bad to play by comparison.
The moment something is suboptimal and doesn't feel good people will generally avoid playing it, this is just human nature.
Swarming tactics will never work against a human player and wouldn't work if the AI was even a little bit competent at playing.
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I personally play with swarming tactics in the early game. I even like that hated tome of evolution tome. WK-Mystic summoning, chosen destroyers+ mana channelers for some really fast and cheap units. Full 40 flying speed army in the early stages of the game. For racial picks I pick eagle mounts+1 vision range and something random for the last point. Early buildings are focused on workshop-library-shrine- anything that grants more mana. After 1 animal battle my units have 90HP 1 defence 1 resistance 12 damage fledgeling wyverns without ranks. Shepard ambition is really great. At level 4 my recruit fledling wyverns have 100 HP 2 defence 2 resistance 12 damage in my hero stacks.
Leveling up the army is also quite fast. it takes only 56 exsperience to level up. You can get +40% exsperience on leveling up your units quite early. After turn 21 that increases to +90%.
Late game such a build has some easy healing spells, +50% damage on the units and a ton of enchantments where each enchantment cost 1 mana each instead of 3 mana each. The whole idea of the build is to reach the lategame long before a standard builder can even hope to reach it. Also the build disables most enchantments of other players anyway.( some MP games has the spell banned).
Such games are usually decided before end game even becomes a reality.
Having +5 vision range instead of +2 vision range in the mid game really helps.
It is fine to play for lategame and all, but the early game matters.
If I was playing a lategame build I would probably go for a - 70% spell cost build where I just attack 1 after another with a single support unit to soften up the enemies , so that before the big battle I would have done so much damage that any single battle afterwards would not even be nessesary. Attunement is great for that, but any mystic would do.
Leveling up the army is also quite fast. it takes only 56 exsperience to level up. You can get +40% exsperience on leveling up your units quite early. After turn 21 that increases to +90%.
Late game such a build has some easy healing spells, +50% damage on the units and a ton of enchantments where each enchantment cost 1 mana each instead of 3 mana each. The whole idea of the build is to reach the lategame long before a standard builder can even hope to reach it. Also the build disables most enchantments of other players anyway.( some MP games has the spell banned).
Such games are usually decided before end game even becomes a reality.
Having +5 vision range instead of +2 vision range in the mid game really helps.
It is fine to play for lategame and all, but the early game matters.
If I was playing a lategame build I would probably go for a - 70% spell cost build where I just attack 1 after another with a single support unit to soften up the enemies , so that before the big battle I would have done so much damage that any single battle afterwards would not even be nessesary. Attunement is great for that, but any mystic would do.
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Interesting, why is Tome of Souls there? (just for Soul Overflow spell or there is something else to it)
Pretty much just because I see no better option in both T1 and T2. The cleanse is great and Soulbinders is very strong now.
It applies to AoE and makes the next attack deal +20% damage as well as has a 30% chance to spawn Zombies on death.
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In my fantasy world (because I am losing hope at being taken seriously) it works like this:
You'd have multiple different units mixed together, which automatically changes the battles.
You'd be less penalized for swapping to a counter unit, making scouting and smart play matter.
Obviously Mythic units would need to be tuned down. (Ideally they don't even exist at all).
But this is the only way to make lower tiers relevant and make mixed compositions the best choice.
- Units can beat other units 1 tier above them, if they're a counter class.
- This will only work if both units are fully enchanted or unenchanted (see below).
- If the units are of the same tier, counters should always trump enchantments.
- Enchantments are limited to 3, but can be applied individually per unit class.
- 3 is chosen so that counter units can still overcome the power gap without being giga hard counters.
- Cultures receive at least a T4 unit. Preferably another T1/T2/T3 as well.
- The reason being that the unit roster from tomes is just too limited right now.
You'd have multiple different units mixed together, which automatically changes the battles.
You'd be less penalized for swapping to a counter unit, making scouting and smart play matter.
Obviously Mythic units would need to be tuned down. (Ideally they don't even exist at all).
But this is the only way to make lower tiers relevant and make mixed compositions the best choice.
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A reasonable expectation. What does your counter system look like?
Just 3 enchantments per unit would be drastically limiting and unfun. Factions going for more affinities than one need room to build their units. 11 possible max enchantments on units per unit role would be more flexible.
Agreed, we need more units per culture/subculture to implement more strategies. This 4x claims war is its main focus, but we have too few units to perform multiple basic tbs strategies. Tome units should be thematic to their affinities their tomes are based on, and culture units should be thematic to their cultures. It should be possible to create 3 different armies based on either tomes, cultures, or a mix of both.
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I think, I have a better iea, how to improve the unit situation. I still think, that Tomes could look different - but that won't happen.
So ... you know, how SOME tomes give an SPI to build as kind of a bonus, right? So at least part of the rest - where applicable - could give a unit instead of nothing, producable or to summon. Should be kept simple, but somewhat iconic for the Tome. I think that would solve the unit problem immediately.
So ... you know, how SOME tomes give an SPI to build as kind of a bonus, right? So at least part of the rest - where applicable - could give a unit instead of nothing, producable or to summon. Should be kept simple, but somewhat iconic for the Tome. I think that would solve the unit problem immediately.
The thing about having unlimited enchantments (and 11 is basically unlimited) is that you don't use that to make the units do interesting things, you use it to make them do more damage. Because that's what basically all the worthwhile enchatments do anyway.
Enchantnents are not a tool for building units into unique, interesting, and customised tools that work in different ways, they're a tool for gigaboosting damage.
I suspect even with a generic limit 3 they'd probably end up similar. You'd take the best two damage boosting enchants plus one of blessed or cursed armours which doesn't really leave any room for the twiddly enchants like Null Shield.
Damage adding enchants being able to stack to the sky (and the base power gap from T3>4 being too wide) is the problem, not some specific number of enchants.
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Would people still research tome units if the cultural roster was expanded that much?
If they filled roles you wanted but didn't have, yeah.
If the different roles were all viable and useful in the late game your culture roster is only going to give you one and you'd probably want at least one other.
If the different roles were all viable and useful in the late game your culture roster is only going to give you one and you'd probably want at least one other.
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Some of the enchantments increase defense, resistance, hp, and status res as well. They're not all simple damage boosts either, some are damage modifiers that inflict status effects. The examples that come to mind, since i enjoy playing materium tomes, are adaptive armor and spellcrafted shields.
Units, and champions/heroes, should be granted a certain number of enchantments that allows a great variety of strategies dealing offense, defense, and a level of mixed combinations. Limiting the enchantments to just 3 limits mono affinity options as well as dual affinity useage of tomes to support the armies in play.
3 enchantments, and I guarantee this, removes the usefulness of at least 75% of enchants already in the game. There is extremely limited options and very little counterpicking that can be done to keep your favorite units, and unit roles that you want to use, relevant to the endgame.
There should be more enchantments available for t1-t3s, and less for t4/t5s since they are already innately powerful. Players should make more decisions and micro pick their enchantments to keep their t1 units alive, if they choose to maintain their early or weak units. Every affinity should have a pyramid buildup of their enchants that can keep their t1 units relevant if they pick those available enchants to do so.
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Speaking of making all the roles viable and useful late game, let's look at the types that need help:
Shield Units: Shielders are the sick man of the late game. The benefit for being a shield unit is +3 defence and only when you aren't flanked. Unfortunately for anyone with a shield as the game goes on more magic damage appears so the defence gets bypassed and more movespeed, flying, and other ways to get flanked also start appearing. Meanwhile the defence mode aura tends to be less valuable than it seems on paper because it is an action economy loss. You can't justifly having a unit that could punch someone not do that to go into defence mode. That basically means that shield units have a bonus that goes away later on, that can be countered at any point in the game anyway.
Shield units need to get some way to consistently enter defence mode to use their aura without sacrificing action economy and/or to scale their resistance better to remain durable.
Ranged: Ranged units generally underperform all game. They need protection because they can't handle anything standing in their personal space, and they get less value from enchantments than melee units whilst having less valuable starting damage types than battlemages (because most units are more vulnerable to magic than physical damage) and they generally don't get a cool trick like battlemanges. So it's harder to make them do their thing and it's not as good when they do get to do it. (You can say they don't provoke retaliations but shocks get to cancel retaliations on everything but polearm and ranged can't retaliate themselves so that's a wash).
Ranged units need to get more value out of their actions, to account for the ways those actions can miss or be denied.
And some that might need reining in:
Shock: Get to cancel retaliation on anything but polearm on every attack and their own retaliation is functionally a double strength hit.
Shocks should only get the cancel retaliation effect if they move 3 before the attack (the qualifier for their damage bonus).
Polearm: First strike retaliation and they get to counter charges and nothing can really take those things away from them, plus extra damage to large targets which most things in the late game are. So it's just all upsides for the pointy stick lads.
Polearms should only get Charge Resistance if they are not flanked.
Shield Units: Shielders are the sick man of the late game. The benefit for being a shield unit is +3 defence and only when you aren't flanked. Unfortunately for anyone with a shield as the game goes on more magic damage appears so the defence gets bypassed and more movespeed, flying, and other ways to get flanked also start appearing. Meanwhile the defence mode aura tends to be less valuable than it seems on paper because it is an action economy loss. You can't justifly having a unit that could punch someone not do that to go into defence mode. That basically means that shield units have a bonus that goes away later on, that can be countered at any point in the game anyway.
Shield units need to get some way to consistently enter defence mode to use their aura without sacrificing action economy and/or to scale their resistance better to remain durable.
Ranged: Ranged units generally underperform all game. They need protection because they can't handle anything standing in their personal space, and they get less value from enchantments than melee units whilst having less valuable starting damage types than battlemages (because most units are more vulnerable to magic than physical damage) and they generally don't get a cool trick like battlemanges. So it's harder to make them do their thing and it's not as good when they do get to do it. (You can say they don't provoke retaliations but shocks get to cancel retaliations on everything but polearm and ranged can't retaliate themselves so that's a wash).
Ranged units need to get more value out of their actions, to account for the ways those actions can miss or be denied.
And some that might need reining in:
Shock: Get to cancel retaliation on anything but polearm on every attack and their own retaliation is functionally a double strength hit.
Shocks should only get the cancel retaliation effect if they move 3 before the attack (the qualifier for their damage bonus).
Polearm: First strike retaliation and they get to counter charges and nothing can really take those things away from them, plus extra damage to large targets which most things in the late game are. So it's just all upsides for the pointy stick lads.
Polearms should only get Charge Resistance if they are not flanked.
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Yeah. Uhm. No. You are absolutely insane if you think 11 is a normal amount to have on one unit.
You get 1 per tome at best, if you choose the tomes that offer enchantments for you.
So when you hit T5 tomes, you could at best have 9 enchantments for one unit type.
Realistically you are more likely to have 6 of them in most builds. Sometimes 7 with T5.
First of all, this is extremely boring gameplay (where you choose enchantment only tomes).
This is precisely the type of thing we are trying to stop from happening because it ruins the game.
I want you to take tomes that offer 0 enchantments, but have good units or spells in them.
Second, this game wasn't built to (on average) have players go beyond T5 tomes.
The whole game is balanced around T5 being the cap of your power and ending it.
Any gameplay beyond this stage of the game is not a part of the baseline design.
This has nothing to do with "going for more affinities than one". You pick 9 tomes during a match.
If you are going beyond this amount, you are playing outside of what Triumph has designed around.
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I posted once before what this would look like in the UI. I think you're misunderstanding the system.
EDIT: To be clear, this is based on a build you can realistically achieve that has multiple T3 and T4 units.
Obviously trying to get all 8 unit classes is too extreme. But getting just 3-4 useful ones would be good.
That aside, of course a limit would change the game. Merely by the fact that stacking loses value.
Instead of taking 8 tomes with an enchantment for 1 unit you now look for spells and units instead.
There will be value in picking up other enchantments and units that can make use of them.
But there will also be more value in tomes that offer just transformations and spells too.
You can also have different classes play different roles, similar to individual units in Planetfall.
Remember that the slots can be changed, replaced with other enchantments on-the-fly.
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I understand the system as you imagine it, I just don't think it will lead to a great deal of variety in actual application because the best choice for a combination of 3 enchants on any given unit is more likely to be generic +damage or +defence than anything else.
I think a better choice would be to just make damage enchants specifically not stack and maybe make Blessed and Accursed Armours mutually exclusive. Then it just has a popup when you try to cast that says "This will replace X existing enchantments, do you want to proceed Y/N"
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The reason melee dominates is that there are just so many damage enchants that multiplicatively benefit eachother. Damage enchants can be divided in 3 tiers. The flat bonus, the crit bonus and finally the % bonus. The flat bonus is multiplied by all the % damage bonuses in 1 go and then multiplied by 50% if you crit.
The higher flat bonus + easier to get crit bonus and damage % bonus is why melee dominates. Also melee got most of there flat damage enchants in tier 1. Ranged got a lot of the good ones in tier 3 and tier 4.
The damage conversion from melee enchants combined with rather lackluster stats in tier 4 shield units really hurt that unit type. The massive amount of damage hurts support units.
The higher flat bonus + easier to get crit bonus and damage % bonus is why melee dominates. Also melee got most of there flat damage enchants in tier 1. Ranged got a lot of the good ones in tier 3 and tier 4.
The damage conversion from melee enchants combined with rather lackluster stats in tier 4 shield units really hurt that unit type. The massive amount of damage hurts support units.
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Why not? It makes you search out multiple unit classes, rather than tunnel visioning on only 1.
So tell me, can I stack Searing Blades with Artisan Enchantments? Am I still allowed to cast Force of Nature? What about Disrupting Blades?
What about Lightning Focus and Siege Magic? Or Supreme Magic? Do you see how your system of only limiting damage has problems?
If limiting enchantments makes everyone stack 3x damage, then you simply rebalance the enchantments afterwards.
I'd still rather fight against 3x damage enchantments than 6x damage + 2x defensive enchantments as we do right now.
Every change has to start somewhere and in this case it has to start with limits. This has to be the first step forwards.
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