1701

You don’t know what you’re talking about as far as setting up troops goes. Vegetius is probably the best source of information on this - lots of Dom2 army behavior seems to be Roman-era stuff anyway. One of his fundamental rules is that you never try to change the disposition of your army, regardless of what the enemy is doing, because you’ll just get things tangled up right when the enemy is ready to attack. This isn’t the 4th ID with GPS and a secure network connecting all the vehicles and perfect situational awareness 100% of the time. What you propose simply wasn’t possible given the command structures.

And it IS a tactical game. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have the option to script commanders. It’s not like I’m suggesting anything complicated either - just give them two script sequences, one for an army-combat situation, one for an assassination situation. You are practically guaranteed that either script will not be useful in the opposing situation, and it is perfectly reasonable to not force a commander to do something that entirely unrelated to his actual situation. Or, better yet: give him a set of scripted orders along with a situation in which to use them. If the situation doesn’t happen that turn then he does his own thing, which is still likelier to be better than the exactly wrong thing. Having cavalry on the wrong flank just isn’t anywhere near the same scale.

1702

I read your original definition of RYWILL to be an anti-SC SC. But the sentence above exactly describes what I meant by THUG, so clearly we don’t need the extra category. Yet.

No, it was Ashen Empire. Of course, one of the charms of Ashen Empire is being able to say “400 longdead retired? Oh well, plenty more where that came from…” The means used were a mixture of brute force (“80 longdead horsemen weren’t enough? Let’s try 160 then”), high-level spells (Disintegrate, Disintegrate, Disintegrate, Disintegrate, Disintegrate), and - occassionally - tactical finesse. If the SCs came on their own, then fast troops could swarm them before they were fully buffed. If they came with a meat shield, then concentrating on the meatshield forced the SCs to retreat to nowhere.

And by the way, it wasn’t one-sided. I lost plenty of troops and plenty of battles. My point was simply that armies of national troops and mages with minimal SC support have, in my experience, been able to hold their own in the endgame.

Yes, but this is the end-game isn’t it? You can nearly always fill in glaring gaps in your national abilities from independent recruits. E.g. Sages, Shamans, Jade Sorceresses, super-Sages and Magi all give you Astral (some more reliably than others) from which you can build a Communion to Paralyse that BALUT’s ass.

And even if your race doesn’t have immediate access to a technical counter to the SC, there are always operational counters. SCs are generally thin on the ground. Hide in castles. Be where they’re not. Split your armies into small low-value targets.

Completely agree. But I maintain that another viable way of being unpredictable would be to attack with armies of national troops and/or national mages too.

And I think my central point is that in my experience, the solo commander is dangerous but not game-dominating. He’s been just another tool in the toolbox, which when over-relied on seems to have failed as much as it’s succeeded.

1703

I’ve been hesitant to say it, but I agree with Mark. IMHO you guys are jumping to conclusions, rather along the lines of such past contentions as “Ermor is broken!” and “Vine Ogres are the best!”, which it seems to me as a group you have come to no longer believe.

Supercombatants and their counters are a major part of the game, but I’ve seen people who rely upon them and neglect their mundane troops (for raiding, etc.) get stomped, just the same as those who don’t appreciate the value of a tough thug.

It’s true that as the game goes along it becomes impossible to field large armies, but this is due to the potency of such spells as Murdering Winter or Wrathfull Skies and not Super Combatants. Even then mundane raiding parties are still cost effective.

1704

I still think Ermor is slightly broken, and I’m still a big fan of Vine Ogres. I don’t think casting this as a groupthink thing is fair either. There is no uniformity of opinion among the QT3 dom2 players, or we’d all be happily playing our own modded version of the game by now :D

I 100% agree. It even bears repeating. In Dom2 as it is now, “Supercombatants and their counters are a major part of the game.” Whether by design or accident, they are one of the key concepts one needs to fully grok in order to play competitively.

I don’t like that. I want to see fantasy armies clashing in huge epic battles. I think the game would be cooler if the design was altered so that individual mega-commanders were a little less a “major part of the game”.

Murdering Winter I don’t mind, and Wrathful Skies falls under the heading of a BACKOV sometimes. I don’t mind Wrathful Skies in a lot of cases, it only becomes a problem in the hands of air queens who can expect to rout huge enemy armies with it while not even needing a token bodyguard. I see that as an extension of the supercombatant.

I do realize that a lot of people like the game just as it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great game, I just think it could be a better game with a little alteration :D

1705

WOW. That was some battle, eh? I can’t believe you flew ALL your goddamned troops past my walls and into the courtyard by round 3. If Furcas hadn’t turned the entire battlefield into [Dr.Evil]hot molten mag-ma[/Dr.Evil], I would have lost for sure. Honestly, though, I fucking hate the goddamned built-in glamour of Vanheim. That, plus flight, plus the general insanity that is Air Magic in Dom2, makes Vanheim my least favorite of all the factions in the game, Ermor included. Fucking Vanheim. Flying, Wrathful Skies chucking, False Horror-spamming, Lightning Bolt hurling, Glamour-wearing bastards. I hope you all die. DIE, VANHEIM, DIE!!!

You hear that, Stormy? . . . DIE.

PS. And don’t you complain about assassinations - you’re just as guilty of flinging your own assassins pell-mell across the world.

edit: changed Doom Horror-spamming to False Horror-spamming.

1706

Holy crap, I hope you mean false-horror spamming!

1707

Err, right, whatever those illusory horror looking bastards are. Luckily for Furcas the Arch-Devil, they literally couldn’t take the heat of a battlefield turned into hot molten mag-ma.

1708

They’re one hit point apiece, with no elemental resistances. Kind of a waste of spells in that situation.

I actually think I might’ve done better if I’d sent in fewer soulless. I think they got in the way and kept the Van from taking your infantry down faster so they could move on to the rear line that much sooner.

Must admit I’m also not sure why three hundred troops feel it necessary to cluster around one group of 20 or so when there’s other guys a few paces farther on that nobody is bothering at all. That also would’ve made the difference.

1709

Yeah, but y’see, it’s all right when I do it, because it’s me, and I’m supposed to win.

And also I use assassins for the simple, honest, honorable purpose of making people dead, and not to mesmerize enemy commanders into prematurely setting off the Doomsday Device thinking they’re on the field of Armageddon instead of inside the mess hall. Although maybe that’s a tactic I should be looking into.

1710

That’s clearly not an issue. You can load up a “normal leader” (e.g. an Ulmish Lord Guardian) with just about anything you want, and I highly doubt he’ll take out armies by himself. It’s the underlying SC chassis combined with the items that is the problem.[/quote]
It is clearly the case. Loading up normal leaders with expensive items is a waste of resources that you simply can’t afford in a competetive MP game. . . .[/quote]

I think we’re agreeing here, but I’m not 100% sure. I thought I said the same thing as you said later, but then you said, “It is clearly the case,” and now I’m confused. :?:[/quote]
[size=2]Warning. Only SlyFrog read on, every one else will be bored.[/size]

That topic’s a little bit outside what the other people here are discussing, so I apologize for the interruption.

So let me reconstruct what was going on here, SlyFrog. :) I dismantled my own proposition (disallowing to give leaders items) by stating it would disrupt the barby doll part of the game. You said it wouldn’t because it wouldn’t hurt to stuff normal leaders with items. I said it would because, yes, you probably could stuff ‘mere mortals’, but you never would, because it’d mean wasting lots of gem resources for basically not much gain. If I’m even understanding what we’re talking of here (:o[size=2] <-- drooling[/size]) we don’t agree.

Sorry, I know very well how tedious this post is, but I didn’t want to leave you unanswered.

1711

I left my game (Arco in Backov-Cradle) to a certain german guy while I was on vacation, and returned to find that one of my commanders had been renamed. Even worse, he was in the hall of fame:

That was a couple of months ago. So why am I posting this now?

Well, in late fall of the fourth year of the ascension wars, the Arcoscephalians stormed the fields of Port Palatuk.

They fought like AIs ignoring their scripted orders. They fought like Arcoscephalians. And got thoroughly spanked.

Oh wells.

Apologies to Christian. Rollory did it.

1712

That’s clearly not an issue. You can load up a “normal leader” (e.g. an Ulmish Lord Guardian) with just about anything you want, and I highly doubt he’ll take out armies by himself. It’s the underlying SC chassis combined with the items that is the problem.[/quote]
It is clearly the case. Loading up normal leaders with expensive items is a waste of resources that you simply can’t afford in a competetive MP game. . . .[/quote]

I think we’re agreeing here, but I’m not 100% sure. I thought I said the same thing as you said later, but then you said, “It is clearly the case,” and now I’m confused. :?:[/quote]
[size=2]Warning. Only SlyFrog read on, every one else will be bored.[/size]

That topic’s a little bit outside what the other people here are discussing, so I apologize for the interruption.

So let me reconstruct what was going on here, SlyFrog. :) I dismantled my own proposition (disallowing to give leaders items) by stating it would disrupt the barby doll part of the game. You said it wouldn’t because it wouldn’t hurt to stuff normal leaders with items. I said it would because, yes, you probably could stuff ‘mere mortals’, but you never would, because it’d mean wasting lots of gem resources for basically not much gain. If I’m even understanding what we’re talking of here (:o[size=2] <-- drooling[/size]) we don’t agree.

Sorry, I know very well how tedious this post is, but I didn’t want to leave you unanswered.[/quote]

No, then I think you misunderstood me. I think we do agree. I was merely saying that it is not the items (or at least items alone) that cause the SC problem, it is the underlying power of certain summons. I state this because you cannot make an SC that takes out an entire army by stuffing an Ulmish Lord Guardian (or similar national commander) with SC type items. It doesn’t work.

I agree with you that no one would do that, and that is the point. The way the game is presently set, it does not make sense to stick good items on “normal” melee commanders.

I think we agree, which is why your post confused me.

1713

[quote=“Nick_Walter”]

I still think Ermor is slightly broken, and I’m still a big fan of Vine Ogres. I don’t think casting this as a groupthink thing is fair either. There is no uniformity of opinion among the QT3 dom2 players, or we’d all be happily playing our own modded version of the game by now :D[/quote]
Well, groupthink is alot stronger term than I’d use, but IMHO there is an aspect of that. Perhaps this is a natural effect of the tight Qt3 gaming group.

IMHO you guys are overestimating their dominance. Although I also agree that lone raiding supercombatants are overly usefull and would prefer more epic battles, I don’t think this effect stems mostly the ability of a single SC to trump larger armies – this hasn’t been my experience at all.
If the armies are only comprised of mundane troops, then sure, but that isn’t necessary.

Murdering Winter single handely makes large armies of mages and mundane troops unusable – exactly the effect you decry! Moreover there is basically no (mobile) defense aside from innate Cold Resistance or Hitpoints. I’m confused, why doesn’t this bother you?

I don’t consider Wrathfull Skies a “Backov” problem because it can be used effectively by groups of mundane mages with just Air 2, and Air Queens don’t need it to kick ass. IMHO the problem is spells that target all units in a province, against which there is generally no defense.

I do realize that a lot of people like the game just as it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great game, I just think it could be a better game with a little alteration :D

I’m not defending the games status quo… I don’t like the mid to late game dominance of Raiding, or the fact that large armies have to hideout in Domed Castles. I just don’t see SCs dominating large armies as you guys describe, and I don’t think the fixes are as simple as you suggest.

1714

It bothers me, and that bothers me for two reasons: 1. it unbalances things in the same way as an SC slaughtering an entire army; and 2. I think it is usually a problem in a game when one spell of a particular level does, in 95% of the cases, far more damage than other spells of the same level.

It’s not just that Wrathful Skies does too much damage (which it does); it’s that it is such a superior spell versus other spells.

1715

Farewell, oh mighty Hasslbauer. You were the buttress of Arcoscephales magic power. A great family man, but an even greater magician and warrior. Without you, Arcoscephale would never have expanded beyond their poor backwater home province, and the Earh Mother would still root the ground along with the pigs in search of truffles.

In fact you may well be the very inventor of astral magic. Many astrologer see you as their father in spirit, and as the teacher of their teachers. Our, and their, grief will be eternal.

You were a powerful hero, a conqueror, a slayer of evil, a master of the art that no mage would be worth to kiss the very boots of. Hasslbauer, we weep for you.

1716

Hasslbauer, the misser of points. We will miss you.

1717

He’s talking about Murdering Winter, not Wrathful Skies. I’m so-so on this one. MW is a pretty high-level spell with a fairly significant gem cost and path requirement, and I don’t think it really kills entire armies (although I’ve only been on the sending end, not the receiving end). My understanding is that roughly half the army is completely immune to each casting, with the other half taking damage based on randomness and the coldness of the target province. To me, that is not nearly as bad as a SC who can eliminate 100% of any normal army with no risk, and has only a one-time startup cost (as opposed to MW, which has a high cost each time you use it).

For example, in JM Hardcore, I hit a Vanheim national army with something like four MWs, in a cold-1 (or 2?) province, and the combined effect, while nice, was far, far less than what he did with a single SC Allfather or a single WS caster, both of which were available earlier and cheaper than my MWs were. MW is a nice tool, but there are loads of spells that I would rather have. I don’t think it’s unbalanced for where it is.

1718

I was wondering what was up with that name. Hasslebauer is Ulm … but … Hasslebauer is Arco? Ergh. Two Hasslebauer? Uh … BRAINS!

(So were you controlling two nations at once in the same game? That seems, uh, dodgy, and is something to probably avoid, just to keep things safe)

1719

If he was controlling 2 factions at once in Backov cradle it didn’t result in any dodgy outcomes. Arco and Ulm have both warred vs Pangaea and not had any crushing victories. Ulm has warred vs me (Ermor) and not gotten any coordinated assistance from Arco. As a matter of fact, Arco has passed up opportunities to initiate open conflict with me.

1720

Yeah, I wasn’t saying anything untoward did happen. But it’s a situation that lends itself to problems.