|
Speaking of sieges, I find that it's kind of boring that 95% of player vs. AI combat is offensive sieges. There's a lot of fun combat environments in the game, but you only ever see them against the same few groups of independents. I wish there was a way to make AI encounters happen elsewhere. Even a way to lure out the enemy hero stacks and have a siege where I'm the defender with my own hero stacks occasionally would be fun, but ideally, there'd be a way to have a big epic battle on a bridge or a structure with environmental effects or even over/in lava. Other posters seem to have had more active AI, but I still have never seen two AI fight each other, even when someone is at war with two or three other AI at once. They'll trespass as freely on each other as they do on your land, and they will steal structures that are unguarded, but I've never seen them actually battle each other, even when you ally some of them, which means you'll get a message every time they fight a battle. When I declare war on an AI, it immediately retreats all its non-flying stacks to it's throne city and cities with stone walls, and just sits there while sending small packs of flying units to try to snipe any cities with a small or no garrison. I play with a mix of Lord and Knight AI, since some goons said that'd make them fight, but I haven't seen any infighting. EDIT: Also, does anyone else wish the terraforming spells and that one druid spell gave more varied terrain? I was a bit disappointed when my blight druid would could only conjure those weedy-looking forests in blight and underground, when the starting Dense Vegetation is a nice mix of that and mushroom forests and dead trees and cool poo poo. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Apr 29, 2014 |
# ? Apr 29, 2014 16:06 |
|
|
# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:56 |
|
I dunno how to feel about assassins losing pass wall. On the one hand, they were ludcriously OP with trail running. You could run around with 6 stacks of assassins and autocombat through most midgame armies with minimal losses. On the other hand, they were so cool to play with. Attacking a city, and just running over the walls to kill half the defenders in round 1 was great fun. Another reason for the change was that a lot of the changes we'd made made it harder for other classes to get to tier 3. Assassins were so good that most other classes needed their T3s to compete, and the new research and building requirements created a big window where Rogue assassin rushes were pretty much uncontested.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 16:32 |
|
I actually saw one Emperor AI murder another Emperor AI over the weekend. It's the second time I've seen AI-on-AI player elimination though, which really isn't that often.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 16:39 |
|
Maybe just give the various rogue charms a resistance debuff on fail, so the next charm has a better chance of landing? That would play up their trickery and class specific flavor (charm) without giving them the same options as other races. That, or maybe look into their strategic spells like bandits and revolt, make them a bit more of a threat? Perhaps they could increase in threat over time (within limits), giving the person it was cast on a clear choice to deal with this or have a bigger problem on your hands. Have the bandits spawned by the spell not be hostile to the person that cast it? The whole tricky feel of the rogue is cool and unique, simply giving them units that feel similar to other classes would be pretty lame. It would be ok to have mostly tricky/support units in your army and lack tanks if their abilities made up for it.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 16:43 |
|
Kajeesus posted:Other posters seem to have had more active AI, but I still have never seen two AI fight each other, even when someone is at war with two or three other AI at once. I've had the AI eliminate another AI who was essentially just a roving army - they had no cities. I guess the AI does a lot of random combats with each other but isn't willing to attack cities, because AI stacks tend to generally be weaker than the gigantic pile of poo poo every AI has in their capital. I've also seen them kill AI who are a lower difficulty level and that happened pretty quickly.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 16:44 |
|
Carnalfex posted:Maybe just give the various rogue charms a resistance debuff on fail, so the next charm has a better chance of landing? That would play up their trickery and class specific flavor (charm) without giving them the same options as other races. That, or maybe look into their strategic spells like bandits and revolt, make them a bit more of a threat? Perhaps they could increase in threat over time (within limits), giving the person it was cast on a clear choice to deal with this or have a bigger problem on your hands. Have the bandits spawned by the spell not be hostile to the person that cast it? I like the tricky feel too, I think it just comes down to Assassins and later Shadow Stalkers being the only Rogue units that actually, like, kill things. Crows, Bards, Scoundrels and Succubus are all great scouting/support units, but they're basically unable to win fights by themselves except with Charm/Sabotage. You have to fill out your army with something. quote:Another reason for the change was that a lot of the changes we'd made made it harder for other classes to get to tier 3. Assassins were so good that most other classes needed their T3s to compete, and the new research and building requirements created a big window where Rogue assassin rushes were pretty much uncontested. Maybe create a new tech to give Assassins back Passwall in the late game? Being able to slip through not just walls, but terrain obstacles in open battles made Assassins feel so slick and deadly. I'd hate to lose that feeling entirely. madmac fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Apr 29, 2014 |
# ? Apr 29, 2014 17:06 |
|
quote:Change Log: Couple of bug fixes in there.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 18:09 |
|
Those being the v1.10 notes. Patch is up on GoG now too.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 19:18 |
|
Hey Gerblyn, is the loot bug still present? I know there was some issue where monster lairs weren't dropping the full range of loot. I didn't see anything about it in the patch notes and it was mentioned awhile ago, wasn't sure if it was fixed yet or not - I'm still getting a lot of the same mounts from lairs in my current games
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 19:24 |
|
victrix posted:Hey Gerblyn, is the loot bug still present? I know there was some issue where monster lairs weren't dropping the full range of loot. Sorry, we were looking at it today so I assume it will be in the next patch. We were testing it and I saw a bunch of items that I'd never seen before, there's an item that gives a hero a Swarm Darter's ranged attack, for example. I believe we have about 150 items defined, and at a guess only 30 or 40 or so were actually dropping.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 20:32 |
|
Assassins seem pretty terrible now. They're just expensive T2 Infantry-equivalents with Assassin's Strike and Backstab, which hardly seems worth the price. Losing Pass Wall hurts quite a bit, since Wall Climbing is not very effective on a glass cannon unit like Assassins. Even Firstborn take significant damage if you attack them while they're climbing a wall, Assassins in that situation melt. As for Sprint, maybe just revert the buff instead of removing it altogether? Or make Assassins Infantry instead of Irregulars so Trail Running does not apply to them.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 21:28 |
|
Gerblyn posted:Sorry, we were looking at it today so I assume it will be in the next patch. We were testing it and I saw a bunch of items that I'd never seen before, there's an item that gives a hero a Swarm Darter's ranged attack, for example. I believe we have about 150 items defined, and at a guess only 30 or 40 or so were actually dropping. Funny, I just got that item in-game. It was a quest reward from an Archon Dwelling for fighting a stack of six Fey units. It was a dear-bought mosquito pipe.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 21:54 |
|
madmac posted:I like the tricky feel too, I think it just comes down to Assassins and later Shadow Stalkers being the only Rogue units that actually, like, kill things. Crows, Bards, Scoundrels and Succubus are all great scouting/support units, but they're basically unable to win fights by themselves except with Charm/Sabotage. You have to fill out your army with something. That's just it though. Every class has a bit of a gimmick with their specialty units and generally doesn't want to fill a whole army with just them. Sorc units make decent tanks but you still need archers/priests/cavalry. Warlord untis tend to be melee powerhouses but again, you still want support/range units. Etc, etc. Rogue just don't have "core" army units, they specialize in support. If you can make an army of all one unit and win reliably then it is pretty OP. If rogues feel underpowered in combat, shouldn't their support and bags of tricks be improved instead of simply making their units better at every role? How much more dangerous would a succubus be if a failed charm would still stun the unit, for example? Still a support unit but suddenly much more dangerous without losing the tricky feel, and still vulnerable to getting mashed by overwhelming force if not properly used.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 21:59 |
|
Yuck no, Charm is already really drat powerful, giving it a guaranteed disable if it fails to steal a unit would be insane. I suppose it comes down to if, at any given stage in the game, will you take Rogue units in your 6 stacks, yes or no? If no, why? And then look at the issue from that perspective, not 'can I fill a full army of rogue units and kill everything' (unless most of the other classes can I suppose )
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 22:33 |
|
Ojetor posted:Assassins seem pretty terrible now. They're just expensive T2 Infantry-equivalents with Assassin's Strike and Backstab, which hardly seems worth the price. Losing Pass Wall hurts quite a bit, since Wall Climbing is not very effective on a glass cannon unit like Assassins. Even Firstborn take significant damage if you attack them while they're climbing a wall, Assassins in that situation melt. To be fair, Assassins only seem terrible now because of how good they were before. In terms of stats and abilities, they're still arguably the best tier 2 unit in the game. In non-siege situations, assassins are just as powerful as they ever were. An assassin isn't even really a glass cannon, it has nice enough defense and 50 hit points, after all.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 22:44 |
|
Yeah I had a fair number of my units wrecked by enemy assassins in whatever map the orc sorcerer campaign level is. They hit really drat hard, and that no retaliation strike is a bitch. Tier 1 units get killed fast. Gerblyn, I've been accumulating feedback/bugs/ui stuff in a google doc, should I make a big post here or on the official forums, or several smaller posts - what's easiest to parse for you guys?
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 22:48 |
|
I don't really mind, you could just post a link and I'll go through it in the morning? Thanks
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 22:57 |
|
I'm playing my first (non-campaign) rogue game, and assassins are pretty drat solid. The only tier II unit that's better in my experience is the flame tank. I still have no idea how to counter flame tanks behind stone walls beyond brute forcing it and eating losses.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 23:00 |
|
Gerblyn posted:To be fair, Assassins only seem terrible now because of how good they were before. In terms of stats and abilities, they're still arguably the best tier 2 unit in the game. In non-siege situations, assassins are just as powerful as they ever were. An assassin isn't even really a glass cannon, it has nice enough defense and 50 hit points, after all. The problem is that nearly every engagement vs the AI is a siege battle, which exacerbates their new weaknesses. You're probably right that they are fairly sturdy for a T2, but as soon as you start facing melee T3s Assassins become glass cannons that blow their Assassin's Strike load and then get blown up themselves. Wall Climbing makes things significantly worse in that sense since you can no longer get the first hit against units inside cities.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 23:03 |
|
victrix posted:Yuck no, Charm is already really drat powerful, giving it a guaranteed disable if it fails to steal a unit would be insane. Yeah, that is essentially what I was trying to say. Charm was perhaps not the best example other than the whole idea of strengthening the unique thing about a unit rather than blanket stat buffs (unless that is the special thing the unit does if it is a bruiser I guess).
|
# ? Apr 29, 2014 23:35 |
|
victrix posted:Yuck no, Charm is already really drat powerful, giving it a guaranteed disable if it fails to steal a unit would be insane. Honestly, most classes can get away with minimal use of racial units fairly quickly. Dreadnaughts and Warlords have an entire tech-tree that covers nearly all the bases. (Warlords have awesome ranged units, they only really miss out on Elemental Damage.) Druids and Sorcers are mostly summon reliant with a smattering of ranged/support, which they also can get from their class. Theocrats are a bit thin at any given point but overall all their units are well suited to bulking up their armies. Rogues are...they have a good selection of units, and none of them are bad but there's also not a lot of reason to have a bunch of them for most of the game. Assassins are different, since they are really strong Tier 2 units overall and the reason they do tend to get massed. I just feel it dilutes their uniqueness if they have to lean too heavily on generic units to do heavy lifting. Exactly where that line should be drawn or where they stand currently, I'm not sure.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 00:24 |
|
Returned after a week of no internet and what do we have but a wonderful sounding patch. You spoil me Triumph.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 00:33 |
|
madmac posted:Honestly, most classes can get away with minimal use of racial units fairly quickly. Dreadnaughts and Warlords have an entire tech-tree that covers nearly all the bases. (Warlords have awesome ranged units, they only really miss out on Elemental Damage.) Druids and Sorcers are mostly summon reliant with a smattering of ranged/support, which they also can get from their class. Theocrats are a bit thin at any given point but overall all their units are well suited to bulking up their armies. Perhaps the real issue is that racial units are not interesting enough compared to class unit choices. Ideally any unit should be an attractive addition (if even only for efficiency vs cost) to an army. I know there has been some talk about making cities more specialized; a building that gives an additional racial benefit (or upkeep reduction?) to race units might make them more appealing?
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 00:44 |
|
Unless I'm missing something, Theocrats seem better off ignoring their class units until Crusaders. Nothing about Martyrs or Cherubs struck me as particularly compelling.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 00:48 |
|
Captain Oblivious posted:Unless I'm missing something, Theocrats seem better off ignoring their class units until Crusaders. Nothing about Martyrs or Cherubs struck me as particularly compelling. Cherubs make great scouts, almost all the initial summon class spells are designed to be cheap scouts to grab treasure and find out what is out there. Edit: but yeah theocrats have some support units just like rogues in martyrs and evangelists. They need to lean on some racial troops too.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 00:55 |
|
That's mostly because Theocrats and Rogues can Charm snowball. And with the way the independents work, especially now that monster lairs appear on the surface, you can get a ton of good Tier 3 units stupidly easily. Or steal the evolving things like Shock Serpents, or Baby Spiders and feed them a bit of XP to get more Tier 3 or 4 units. And if you're lucky enough to be anywhere near Giants you can laugh your way to the bank. If every single independent that spawns around you is Undead/Nightmares (why?)/Dragons/Berserkers/Manticores/Firstborn you're kinda screwed. But with how often I see Fey units/Ogres/Trolls/Yeti/Giants/Warbreed/Gryphon Riders/Fliers/Shocktroopers/Serpents/Sorcerer Summons I really never have an issue filling out my armies. Plus you get to play around with cool units that way. Protip: If you have units with charm park weak scouts over 'Strong' adventuring sites. The rewards are usually kind of crap, but you can get evolving Spiders and a guarenteed Ogre/Troll/Yeti if you sweep through them later. You can also keep monster dens alive to Tier 3 spider farm because the AI almost never goes after them. I really, really hope Befriend animal gets buffed to affect Monster units too at some point and Charm loses the ability to. Charm animal is almost totally useless since there really aren't any tier 3+ animals and Charm affects everything anyways. Being able to seduce spiders/snakes but not befriend them with the animal spell is weird as gently caress. Zore fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 01:23 |
|
Carnalfex posted:Perhaps the real issue is that racial units are not interesting enough compared to class unit choices. Ideally any unit should be an attractive addition (if even only for efficiency vs cost) to an army. I know there has been some talk about making cities more specialized; a building that gives an additional racial benefit (or upkeep reduction?) to race units might make them more appealing? Nah, I think Racial units are plenty interesting on their own merits.(Elves and Draconians for life!) But literally everyone gets racial units, class units are a huge part of what makes Classes feel unique and play differently from each other. I'm not saying racial units should be verboten, but if you're playing that class and mostly not using class units, that's a problem to me. quote:Unless I'm missing something, Theocrats seem better off ignoring their class units until Crusaders. Nothing about Martyrs or Cherubs struck me as particularly compelling. Cherubs are fine scouts, but yes Martyrs are pretty much useless roadbumps on the highway to getting Crusaders and Evangelists, which both own. Crusaders are just really cheap cost-effective infantry with the all the useful keywords (Devout, Holy Champion) baked in. Evangelists are the best (and only ranged) converters in the game, plus healing and Tier 3 stats on a support unit. Their one weakness is not having a ranged attack. I like the idea behind Martyrs, it's just in practice I'd rather devote an army slot to an actually good unit then a frail little damage absorber. I guess in theory you could use a mob of them to soak damage for a Hero or Shrine of Smiting, though. Theocrats do benefit a lot from using Racial Support and Cavalry units, overall. quote:That's mostly because Theocrats and Rogues can Charm snowball. And with the way the independents work, especially now that monster lairs appear on the surface, you can get a ton of good Tier 3 units stupidly easily. Or steal the evolving things like Shock Serpents, or Baby Spiders and feed them a bit of XP to get more Tier 3 or 4 units. And if you're lucky enough to be anywhere near Giants you can laugh your way to the bank. An all in conversion strategy is something I've not attempted and am really curious about. If you say it's viable, I'll believe you. madmac fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 01:28 |
|
Carnalfex posted:That's just it though. Every class has a bit of a gimmick with their specialty units and generally doesn't want to fill a whole army with just them. I think you're just wrong here. It's fine to have an army entirely of horned gods, an army entirely of Eldrich Horrors, of Manticore riders. In fact, it's preferred. I don't need archers or cavalry when I have them. Rogue units are support and having a whole army of them doesn't really work.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 02:18 |
I used charm snowballs as orc theocrat it was almost a joke. Drop the -2 res city global then drop curse and you can steal large chunks of things that dare attempt attack. I use martyrs quite a lot personally too. They die like flies but you can just have some minor city make an endless stream of them to replace the ones you lose. Martyrs allow a powerful and possibly buffed melee unit to charge and be healed (by healing their martyr) at long range. Only done it with orcs though and the hp bonus probably helps a lot.
|
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 02:18 |
|
Taear posted:I think you're just wrong here. It's fine to have an army entirely of horned gods, an army entirely of Eldrich Horrors, of Manticore riders. In fact, it's preferred. I don't need archers or cavalry when I have them. You're talking about top tier super units. Units that cost as much to upkeep as a whole army by themselves. You can't really compare that to anything else. Saying you don't need infantry when you have godzilla is a bit silly. If you can afford field a full army of them then the game has been over for a long, long time. Either that or you have it on an absurdly huge map with every resource turned up to max, in which case any sort of balance has already been kinda thrown out the window. Even in that scenario, though, you have to *get* to the point where you own a lot of real estate to be able to do that. Which means using early, cheap units for the majority of the game. It seems a bit silly to hand wave away everything that isn't top tech tier because it has lower stats as if it didn't matter. Edit: Even in a situation with an abundance of resources it could easily be preferable to have 2-3 armies of lower tier units for the same cost. I'm not saying top tier units aren't good, just that lower tier stuff is generally all you need. Even facing horrors and giant and dragons if you are fielding the same *cost* worth of units you can definitely hold your own against them. This is mostly because of the action points and flanking mechanics. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 02:25 |
|
Carnalfex posted:You're talking about top tier super units. Units that cost as much to upkeep as a whole army by themselves. You can't really compare that to anything else. Saying you don't need infantry when you have godzilla is a bit silly. If you can afford field a full army of them then the game has been over for a long, long time. I don't get this sort of response. So far most of my games end on turn 100 - 120. They're probably "over" by about 70. I play Medium maps, five AI, islands, with city spawning turned off. I also play Adventurer mode, which means not many cities and you don't start with a city. I never, ever build T1 units. Ever. Or T2. There's just no need. Aside from Elvish Longbowmen sometimes to guard cities. And swarm darters! Your starting army is fine for the stuff you need until you can build your racial T3s and head out into the world. I know this is different in the campaign but (pre-patch) you'd have to be playing some really small maps or expand really slowly in random maps to not be able to have 3 or 4 stacks of Racial and Class T4/3s by turn 40 or so.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 02:30 |
|
edit: ^^^ Of course there's no need for t1/t2 units when you start with T3 units Martyrs are really nice for early game city sieges - they essentially give you double strength shield units for pushing the gates/walls, and give you double power from defensive buffs (seriously, slap +8 def on a martyred shield unit and watch it sponge up all incoming fire as it breaks down the doors). And yeah, Cherubs and all other early cheapy fast flying units are purely for scouting and stealing all the resources and open cities on the map. I think city stealing is really lame personally, one of the reasons I want see city garrisons become A Thing.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 02:32 |
|
victrix posted:edit: ^^^ Of course there's no need for t1/t2 units when you start with T3 units You only get two at MAXIMUM. Even then the same applies to when you're not playing Adventurer. In unrelated news - is the "Seasoned" achievement bugged? I've definitely had tonnes of Elite units and I've not got it. All it says is "promote a unit to gold". Taear fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 02:42 |
|
Just wanted to say that I would pay money for more hats/clothes/faces/poses/everything to play hero dressup. Also the ability to see custom made heroes show up to be hireable units (they already show up as AI players which is great!) also: has anyone else noticed that the AI tends to ignore resource nodes around their cities? They don't seem to prioritize clearing the guards (so the city never benefits from the node) Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 03:28 |
|
Taear posted:You only get two at MAXIMUM. Even then the same applies to when you're not playing Adventurer. I got that achievement by having a unit promoted to gold through the place that upgrades the rank of your army when you walk through it
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 04:13 |
|
Carnalfex posted:Just wanted to say that I would pay money for more hats/clothes/faces/poses/everything to play hero dressup. Also the ability to see custom made heroes show up to be hireable units (they already show up as AI players which is great!) This! Also, totally inconsequential but the ability to write/view backstories for custom-made leaders would be cool too.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 06:33 |
|
Arrrthritis posted:This! Also, totally inconsequential but the ability to write/view backstories for custom-made leaders would be cool too. I'd be fine with this too.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 10:40 |
|
Gerblyn, as requested, here's the doc, cleaned up a bit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RJr_lHMl6nhuZisDoqhjwldFNnwQgbvV5bA8k776Pas/edit?usp=sharing I randomly mashed the bold key in the hopes that it would make the wall of text a little more readable, and numbered everything to make referring to specific items easier if needed. The first few are requests/features/suggestions, the rest is largely ui fiddliness, with some bugs and weirdness at the end. edit: One thing I didn't list on there. Right click/drag to set a units facing is really loving important, and I can't for the life of me remember if its noted/emphasized anywhere in the game in combat. I don't have any brilliant suggestions for this, but it's something that new players need to know. victrix fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 12:50 |
|
It looks like heroes who die and get resurrected via resurrect hero lose any leftover hero points they had. Also it seems mind controlling the independent heroes who spawn near cities gives you zero points to assign. I thought I'd steal a level 5 theocrat hero that just spawn on a AI's throne city to give a stack some army bonuses but he's useless.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2014 12:52 |
|
|
# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:56 |
|
To test the new beta patch, I've run through two full Lord AI games, 5 AI, large map, city founding off but everything else default. First game was Elf Theocrat and second game was Dwarf Sorcerer. Game 1 was actually pretty touch and go for a while. I was hemmed in on three sides by some very quickly snowballing AI that cut my expansion pretty hard and was seriously in danger of being simply overwhelmed. Only some desperate bribery to hook two of them into an alliance gave me the breathing room required to smash my way free through the third one, and eating his empire finally gave me enough resources to launch a huge offensive on the other two AI with minor support from my allies for the win. Of note was that I was so pressured for the whole game that I never managed to get around to Shrines of Smiting despite the game hitting turn 114 or so before the win. I won mostly on the back of a flood of exalted and various dwelling T3s. Game 2 was never in doubt at any point. I had a largely isolated start with all the room and neutral cities I could ever want, so I expanded kind of lazily and took my sweet time leveling up a doomstack of heroes. I already had four level 10+ heroes and node serpents almost done by the time I bumped into my first opponent, then Eldritch Horrors came online just in time for me to take it to the next one. It kind of snowballed from there; attacking a throne city with two full stacks of eldritch horrors, four level 15 heroes, and a stack and a half of miscellaneous apprentices and T3 units is quite a sight to see. Observations:
Kanos fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Apr 30, 2014 |
# ? Apr 30, 2014 13:53 |