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Fledgling Gulps posted:As a fan of pretty cities, have to say this game has some. Not on my laptop it doesn't. 
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Nov 24, 2014 15:29
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madmac posted:Words on Druids. Thanks for this one, Druid was the class that never really clicked for me. That being said, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KICPv7mqlis
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Nov 24, 2014 16:48
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I was playing this yesterday and it just sorta felt like a slog. The systems and all that were fine, but I swear there needs to be more options to just make everything faster. I already skip movement animations, but being able to accelerate my own turn in combat would be fantastic. And set that as a default somewhere so I don't have to hit the fast forward button every combat (I was playing Theocrat and needed to do some converting, which is why I was manually controlling the combat). Likewise, managing units on the overworld becomes a chore since every time I hit End Turn, it asks whether or not I want to ACTUALLY end turn or go back and use up the movement points of all the units that had routes set. This is especially bad when I'm managing like a billion Cherubs to be my eyes over the entire (medium sized) map. I really want to like this game but god it feels tedious in a way that reminds me of the last like 20 turns in a Civ game. Am I missing something? Also I feel like I never cast spells in combat because my time is almost always better spent murdering something instead. Is this normal? This may just be because Theocrats don't actually get many good combat spells, though.
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Nov 24, 2014 17:55
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You know, before I read this I almost was convinced Druids weren't my cup of tea.
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Nov 24, 2014 18:17
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GrandpaPants posted:I was playing this yesterday and it just sorta felt like a slog. The systems and all that were fine, but I swear there needs to be more options to just make everything faster. I already skip movement animations, but being able to accelerate my own turn in combat would be fantastic. And set that as a default somewhere so I don't have to hit the fast forward button every combat (I was playing Theocrat and needed to do some converting, which is why I was manually controlling the combat). Depending on your difficulty level you might not have to cast spells in combat, but if you play on higher levels you'll notice the ened for using every tool teh game gives you. Don't play on medium, play on small and over-stuff the map with 4 or 5 CPU opponents.
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Nov 24, 2014 18:28
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GrandpaPants posted:I was playing this yesterday and it just sorta felt like a slog. The systems and all that were fine, but I swear there needs to be more options to just make everything faster. I already skip movement animations, but being able to accelerate my own turn in combat would be fantastic. And set that as a default somewhere so I don't have to hit the fast forward button every combat (I was playing Theocrat and needed to do some converting, which is why I was manually controlling the combat). Having an option for units to continue on paths you set unless they see an enemy would be really handy. Auto explore for scouts that moves them towards the nearest unrevealed (not fog) tile would be awesome too. For that matter, having an option for units told to camp out to wake up when an enemy comes near (stop camping, require player input before turn ends) would be great. Civ does all these things, and they are sorely missed here since they help speed up gameflow while giving the player more control at the same time. I would say they are even more important here than civ, since the game is more focused on combat and unit movement. Having an option for fast strategic movement like there is for tactical would be nice too (instead of having to right click again each time). All these movement options could be put into the unit movement options, where currently there is basically just "camp" and "move". "Guard", "explore", "travel" etc would be much appreciated additions. Other things could certainly help as well, like being able to drag-and-drop reorder build queues instead of manually cancelling and inputting the whole queue again. This becomes much more of an issue in multiplayer, since every input has a few seconds of delay. Every. Input. For the whole game. In single player at least you can input as fast as you can click. It may not sound like much but all these points combine to really hamper game speed. Certainly this is all more noticeable in multiplayer but such quality of life stuff would be nice even playing alone. Of course having tactical combat pause the whole game for everyone is probably the #1 thing that drags multiplayer down, but I've mentioned that before plenty of times. This isn't just to whine and bitch, I love the game. Just wanted to say GrandpaPants makes a valid point. You do notice the little things adding up if you play a game of civ and then switch to AoW in terms of gameflow.
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Nov 24, 2014 18:52
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Yeah, having to manually verify every "continue existing movement orders" command you have queued up makes the function effectively worthless since it takes longer to find the hotkey than it does just to cycle through them like any other idle army and double-click where you want them to go. Having that process remain automated, perhaps with the rider that seeing an enemy interrupts them and asks for manual attention, would make managing intra-empire movement much less tedious; right now it's a pain in the balls for no real reason.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:38
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There is no reason you shouldn't try researching your summon spells as quickly as possible as druid with empire spells. Cross your fingers and hope you get summon phoenix or feathered serpent who both count as monsters, they complement horned gods well but they can take cities by themselves in groups.
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Nov 24, 2014 20:44
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Voyager I posted:Yeah, having to manually verify every "continue existing movement orders" command you have queued up makes the function effectively worthless since it takes longer to find the hotkey than it does just to cycle through them like any other idle army and double-click where you want them to go. Having that process remain automated, perhaps with the rider that seeing an enemy interrupts them and asks for manual attention, would make managing intra-empire movement much less tedious; right now it's a pain in the balls for no real reason. You can turn the forced confirmation off in the options.
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Nov 24, 2014 21:40
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Kajeesus posted:You can turn the forced confirmation off in the options. Oh drat, and there's an option not to show movement animations too. Were those both always there? That is really helpful, thanks.
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Nov 24, 2014 22:51
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Carnalfex posted:Oh drat, and there's an option not to show movement animations too. Were those both always there? That is really helpful, thanks. You can also enable "force high speed tactical combat" in the game setup screen so you don't have to manually set every battle to max speed. Unfortunately I don't think you can do this for the campaign since the map settings/game setup isn't accessible.
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Nov 24, 2014 23:11
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Yeah, high speed tactical is in game setup options. I pretty much just play RMG games and multiplayer so that option is always there staring me in the face, just didn't know about the others. Autoexplore, guard, move-until-enemy-sighted would all still be nice quality of life improvements but those two options definitely help. The end of turn warning has an option right on it to turn it off, kind of surprised movement confirmation doesn't work that way.
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Nov 24, 2014 23:37
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Delacroix posted:There is no reason you shouldn't try researching your summon spells as quickly as possible as druid with empire spells. Cross your fingers and hope you get summon phoenix or feathered serpent who both count as monsters, they complement horned gods well but they can take cities by themselves in groups. I swear Summon Phoenix is a myth. I've never gotten any secret spell except like Summon Kobold and Summon Dire Penguin. I want to get the one that Summons infinite spiders. That's a hilarious spell. Feathered Serpents are so good, though. Tied to one of the rarest treasure sites, but man, I love those things.
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Nov 25, 2014 00:21
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GrandpaPants posted:I was playing this yesterday and it just sorta felt like a slog. The systems and all that were fine, but I swear there needs to be more options to just make everything faster. I already skip movement animations, but being able to accelerate my own turn in combat would be fantastic. And set that as a default somewhere so I don't have to hit the fast forward button every combat (I was playing Theocrat and needed to do some converting, which is why I was manually controlling the combat). Been my #1 complaint since the expansion came out. Why doesn't this game have the classic movement speed slider like the old games? I want to be able to set the overworld/combat movement speed to 150% or 200% or whatever permanently so I can stop double clicking EVERY time I want to do anything. They go through the effort to remove the move confirmation issue from AOW1/2 but then you end up still taking the same number of clicks because there's no way to make the default movement speed something reasonable. Of course the fact that this is my #1 complaint says a lot about how good the rest of the game is.
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Nov 25, 2014 03:16
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madmac posted:I swear Summon Phoenix is a myth. I've never gotten any secret spell except like Summon Kobold and Summon Dire Penguin. I want to get the one that Summons infinite spiders. That's a hilarious spell. Ugh, summon Kobold. What is the point of summon Kobold, really? Also, IMO secret spells from ruins should be castable by all your heroes. I mean if you're a sorceror you've got plenty of damage spells to cast so that shock missile isn't much use, but your druid hero could sure use a decent non-physical damage spell.
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Nov 25, 2014 03:46
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Been my #1 complaint since the expansion came out. Why doesn't this game have the classic movement speed slider like the old games? I want to be able to set the overworld/combat movement speed to 150% or 200% or whatever permanently so I can stop double clicking EVERY time I want to do anything. They go through the effort to remove the move confirmation issue from AOW1/2 but then you end up still taking the same number of clicks because there's no way to make the default movement speed something reasonable. Do you guys know about right clicking after setting an action to speed it up? Works on the world map and in combat.
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Nov 25, 2014 03:57
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Yeah, and I typically just play with the 'no movement animation' setting on instead because double clicking everywhere is tedious. It'd be nice to have a middle ground between basically no movement animation at all and the super duper slow default movement speed, is what I was trying to say.
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Nov 25, 2014 04:34
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Lobsterpillar posted:Ugh, summon Kobold. What is the point of summon Kobold, really? It's a super cheap summon spell that gives you a t1 melee unit that can do nasty dual-type damage and gets some big bonuses with experience.
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Nov 25, 2014 04:41
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It would be pretty cool if you could get lower end secret spells from something other than top end dungeons. It sucks balls to fight max difficulty dungeons and get a newbie spell, but getting one in the early game could be pretty cool. Are spec spells ever available as a reward? Having a chance at a rare spell that isn't your spec would be pretty cool too. Anything to make tough dungeon rewards more enticing is good, the high end rewards are just often not worth the trouble imo.
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Nov 25, 2014 05:09
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madmac posted:I swear Summon Phoenix is a myth. I've never gotten any secret spell except like Summon Kobold and Summon Dire Penguin. I want to get the one that Summons infinite spiders. That's a hilarious spell. Sage can grant most if not all of the secret spells from wizard towers I believe. I haven't gotten both feathered serpent and phoenix at once from Sage before (would be a little overkill, really...) but I have received them individually and they changed my production priorities. Mass curse and bless should really have been master spells. More spells or adding passives to specialisations would always be good.
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Nov 25, 2014 05:27
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Feathered serpents is a secret spell? I thought the only way to get them was to capture an ancient temple and build from that city. I always thought that was weird, since it is one of the tougher dungeon fights by the time you can reasonably take it on you've already got your own tier 3, maybe 4 stuff going. They would still be amazing for druids though as madmac pointed out earlier. Anyone else.....meh. Still, you get regular rewards and nice city boosts for having it anyway, even if you don't need the unit.
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Nov 25, 2014 06:32
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Carnalfex posted:Feathered serpents is a secret spell? I thought the only way to get them was to capture an ancient temple and build from that city. I always thought that was weird, since it is one of the tougher dungeon fights by the time you can reasonably take it on you've already got your own tier 3, maybe 4 stuff going. They would still be amazing for druids though as madmac pointed out earlier. Anyone else.....meh. Still, you get regular rewards and nice city boosts for having it anyway, even if you don't need the unit. Yup, it's a secret spell too. CP wise it's on roughly par with gargantuan creastures or node serpents which means there is a decision on what your army composition should be later on. Your monsters can have their own monster healer though, so independent. 
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Nov 25, 2014 06:45
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Is there a good guide out there to general combat mechanics?
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Nov 25, 2014 08:04
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victrix posted:Is there a good guide out there to general combat mechanics? What did you want to know? If it's just stuff like how all the mechanics fit together, I should be able to answer any questions you have. Also, I'm also a bit frustrated with how secret spells are doled out. It's kind of just a bit of a weak design really, unlike other types of rewards, the system doesn't assign values to secret spells. When the system is calculating how much gold, units or items you get as a prize, it has a target value based on the difficulty of what you did, and it picks things to try and match that value. With secret spells, it just chooses one at random from a list, so you can get summon Dire Penguin after defeating 6 Manticore Riders. Also, keep it up Madmac, it's really interesting to see a semi-objective, veteran player's view on class balance and things. I've added Summon Beast Horde and Insect Plague to the list of spells that might need to be buffed.
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Nov 25, 2014 09:17
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Gerblyn posted:What did you want to know? If it's just stuff like how all the mechanics fit together, I should be able to answer any questions you have. Call Ancestral Spirits is such a lacklustre spell given the fluff, availability research wise and that you could be using that CP to summon stuff strategically. It's unlikely to match the damage of hornet swarm or buffing a T3/4 with savage rage so the opportunity cost is out of whack. It's in the same situation as the dreadnought's summon siege engines spell really.
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Nov 25, 2014 09:28
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Delacroix posted:Call Ancestral Spirits is such a lacklustre spell given the fluff, availability research wise and that you could be using that CP to summon stuff strategically. It's unlikely to match the damage of hornet swarm or buffing a T3/4 with savage rage so the opportunity cost is out of whack. It's in the same situation as the dreadnought's summon siege engines spell really. I've noted down that maybe we should just drop its Tier down to 4 and leave it at that. I guess another alternative would be promoting the Ancestral Spirit to tier 3, maybe balanced by increasing the casting cost or reducing the duration the thing stays in battle. The summon siege engine thing is a bit odd, if it belonged to any other class ti would be great, since you could get a siege engine in any fight without needing to transport it round the world map. The bigger issue is just that the Dread is very unlikely to ever have an army without siege engines, so why bother casting it? Once again, a tier level drop might be the simplest solution, so it comes out during the phase the dread is still using Musketeers and Golems. Maybe we could add a chance for the spell to summon a cannon as well...
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Nov 25, 2014 09:37
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Islands is a really fun map type! I don't know why I never tried it before. Each island is its own little ecosystem, and map mobility is a completely new game. Also there are things like pirate hangouts in the ocean I never knew about.
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Nov 25, 2014 17:32
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Lots of water is basically a necessity for random maps for me, because there's basically no other real natural boundary tiles on the overworld that are used by the RMG. Mountains just aren't that big of a deal in general in this game because they more or less act like how Hills used to act in AOW1/2, and there's no equivalent to how Mountains used to work (ie impassable to everyone without Mountaineering).
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Nov 25, 2014 18:26
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One of my favorite things in SM was playing dwarf earth elementalist and raising an impenetrable mountain fortress around my domain.
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Nov 25, 2014 18:35
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Maybe I'll have to give Islands a look! I'm pretty disappointed that Continents doesn't really work with seals enabled.
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Nov 25, 2014 18:38
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Lots of water is basically a necessity for random maps for me, because there's basically no other real natural boundary tiles on the overworld that are used by the RMG. Mountains just aren't that big of a deal in general in this game because they more or less act like how Hills used to act in AOW1/2, and there's no equivalent to how Mountains used to work (ie impassable to everyone without Mountaineering). I didn't know it worked like this in older games (only dabbled in shadow magic a little, mostly played MoM for my my fantasy 4x fix). This sounds like it would be really fun and make mountaineering a much more interesting ability. Perhaps leave mountains as walkable without it, but cutting movement even more to 1 tile/turn? The impassable "mountain peaks" from the map editor could be added to the RMG as well, having a very small chance to appear with that chance increasing by for each surrounding tile that is a regular mountain. Hills movement penalty could be negated by mountaineering since you would end up with the same amount of tiles now split between mountains and hills. The dwarf happiness bonus could apply to hills too. Mountains would become more rare (the current rmg LOVES them) while also becoming more interesting/important features, with hills taking the role of current mountains. Net result: more buildable space (hills) and more significant strategic chokepoint (and Carthaginian sneak attack) potential. edit: and yeah, water isn't much of a boundary in the game. I think I saw someone on the official forum mention they were trying out the idea of lowering transport movement and sight range though, so that would certainly make water more significant to cross while also helping naval units have a point. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 18:57
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Carnalfex posted:I didn't know it worked like this in older games (only dabbled in shadow magic a little, mostly played MoM for my my fantasy 4x fix). This sounds like it would be really fun and make mountaineering a much more interesting ability. Perhaps leave mountains as walkable without it, but cutting movement even more to 1 tile/turn? The impassable "mountain peaks" from the map editor could be added to the RMG as well, having a very small chance to appear with that chance increasing by for each surrounding tile that is a regular mountain. Hills movement penalty could be negated by mountaineering since you would end up with the same amount of tiles now split between mountains and hills. The dwarf happiness bonus could apply to hills too. Trust me, it wasn't that exciting, mostly just made Dwarves even more overpowered then they already were and got everyone used to doing silly Mountain-based turtle strats. I don't miss the old mountains at all. Mountains and Flyers (and Water, to a lesser extent) were the very first things SM vets started howling about in this game because it took away all their precious cheesy turtling strats. Actually a lot of stuff in general in AoW 3 works the way it does because it was broken in SM. madmac fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 19:22
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Yeah I don't think the way AOW3 went with Mountains was the wrong choice. They still help create a map flow even if you always have the option of passing through them. Water works pretty similarly but it forces you to spend a turn to enter it, and you have different mechanics while in it (which adds some uniqueness to Humans), and also requires you to research the tech for it in the first place. So I think it's more interesting as a mechanic. Letting the RMG make use of Impassable Mountains might be interesting, but they'd probably have to add a whole new pathing pass to map generation to make sure nothing is getting cut off. Also they look kind of ugly.
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Nov 25, 2014 20:02
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Might as well try and finish the series... A Dreadnaughts Guide to Bringing Guns to a Sword Fight The Progress of Technology is as inevitable as it is glacial. Before you decide to play Dread, let me be clear about this. Dreadnaught is slow as poo poo. Like it is not physically possible within the limits of the game for Dread armies to be any slower than they already are. It is by far the most tedious and frustrating class a lot of the time. The entire Strategic Map loving hates you and wants you to die. Your cities are awesome. Your armies are beyond awesome. The vast Wilderness suuuuuucks for you so bad. You will never take opponents off-guard with your lightning fast advances. Your reinforcements will never arrive on time. You will eventually call up enemy leaders and schedule battles in advance to save valuable time for everyone. Fifteen minutes of playing Dread will make you a gibbering fanatic about building Roads everywhere you go. It's actually kinda awesome because just the design of the class makes you a tree-hating nutter wishing the entire world could just be urbanized already. Also, your healing is the pits. Every hit you take is clearly felt and will be remembered long after the battle. Attrition is a problem for machines most of all, but lets not pretend you opted for the premium Musketeer Health Care Package either. We know you didn't. Those are the downsides. On the upside, you are a fricken beast in tactical battles. There is really very little that a good Dreadnaught army can't deal with one way or another. Other Leaders are forced to adapt their tactics to you, not the other way around. You are the absolute master of Siegecraft on both offense and defense. Your economy ramps up quickly and your mana-fuel cells send your production capacity through the roof. Playing Dread is mostly a matter of playing the long-game. If you're not losing then you're probably winning, somehow. You have a ton of Empire Upgrades as Dread, and almost all of them are amazing. Steam Powered gives you +5 gold for every Farm and Gold Mine in your domain. These are two of the most common structures and adds up to a lot of money unless you're just really unlucky with map placement. Great Blacksmith and Solid Engineering Should be your next pickups, giving you -10% Gold cost on Armored units and +1 Def on both Armored and Machine Units. Any armored unit becomes a good deal for Dreadnaught, and naturally all of your class units are either armored or machines or both. Modern Warfare Training completes the circle, giving Archer and Machine units an extra rank. You are now able to mass produce Musketeers with +1 Def, -10% Cost and +2 Medals. (Because obviously you will build shooting grounds.) This makes your musketeers into insanely cost-effective troops and it's all available relatively early. Structural Insight Gives all irregular units Sabotage. You will basically never use this because your own Engineers are precious flowers to be held back and protected and it's not worth building otherwise useless irregulars just for this upgrade. Though Sabotage does murder the poo poo out of Golems so there's that. Side Arms Gives all Mounted Units Pistols, Heroes included. Naturally, if they're armored mounted units they also benefit from every other Empire Upgrade you have. This is such a fun upgrade. It's easy to neglect Cav with Dreadnaught because really you don't particularly need it, but it's actually a really powerful option. Fully upgraded Human Knights with Pistols are awesome. Finally Mana Fuel Factory extends your 10% cost savings to Machines as well and you are off the races. The net effect of all the Dread upgrades together is being able to spit out powerful troops very quickly and cheaply. It make take years for you to complete the advance on the enemy city but you have no excuse for showing up outnumbered. Moving right along to Class Units because I'm rushing this thing... Spy Drone A solid mid-tier Summon scout that doubles as a hilarious suicide bomber. Don't underestimate the death explosion. It actually makes the Spy Drone difficult to deal with in scout battles and can save your rear end even in larger battles. Or ruin you, depending. Introducing Spy Drones into the battlefield instantly becomes an intense game of hot-potato as everyone scrambles not to be the poor idiot caught next to the thing when it inevitably goes boom. Engineers Engineers are a bit awkward in that they are a vital Dreadnaught unit...eventually. When you first unlock them they're basically useless. It can sometimes be worth having one or two backing up your Musketeers purely to try and train them up for later. Engineers at gold medal unlock Repair Machine and instantly become the most valuable unit you have, and of course are hard to do without once you have Cannons and Juggs on the field. A cannon or Juggernaut+Engineer has the same DPS as two machines, making it a very good deal unless you've hit the point where you can just churn out endless High-level Machines. You can also use them with Musketeers but it's a less noticeable improvement. Getting them to gold is a long, harsh road. Engineers are both intensely squishy and favored AI targets and spamming Reload doesn't grant a lot of XP. Human Engineers have throw net, which can be a lifesaver when you really just need to get a guy off your precious reloaders, and Dwarf Engineers have Projectile Resistance, making them a little less squishy. Musketeers You can, no joke, just spam Musketeers all game and be a serious threat. Musketeers with all the Dread upgrades are one of the most spammable and cost-effective units in the entire game, and at close range their gun shots can rip apart even T4 units without much fuss. The best advice for using Musketeers is the classic Don't Fire Until You See the White of Their Eyes. If you aren't jamming your musket directly into some monsters nether regions before pulling the trigger, you aren't using Musketeers right. Short range for Muskets is like, two hexes, you got to reach out and touch someone. They have the armor and HPs to take a hit in the off-rounds, so don't be afraid to get in there. Wasting a shot at less then full damage is always worse then not taking a shot at all, don't even bother unless you're finishing a dude. In General, I like to use Musketeers to screen for my machines. Use IG tactics and order them to protect your valuable war machines with their worthless corpses while using their guns to clear out melee threats. Musketeers are great at taking down tough units, and surprisingly vulnerable to getting mobbed with weaker guys. Golems are a rather...intense unit, after being reworked. They are stupidly powerful for when they come out, able to just walk through archers and punch out almost anything T3 or down with very little trouble. With Defender+Tireless, sending a Golem in the middle of a group of units and hitting defend is intensely frustrating, and they can even knock down walls effectively if you're still at the Musketeers+Golem stage. On the other hand, as expensive melee units who can't heal, it's basically impossible to use them and not take a lot of damage. Even brief scraps with T1 units can end up dinging the things more then you can easily repair, especially as Master Guild Builders are probably still some time away. It's hard to get Golems out early and not end up using them mostly passively. Later in the game when repairing is a bit easier and instant Rez is an option Golems because crazy good again. There is just not a lot of units that are able to deal with Golems cost-effectively, and just one or two Golems can easily knock over a town protected by Archers. Pfft, arrows don't even hurt. Shock Sisters are always a boon, of course, and watch out for Scoundrels. Scoundrels are suddenly assholes when you are playing Dreadnaught. Also, don't overlook Force-Field, I'm pretty sure it makes Golems literally invincible if not dispelled. Cannons Cannons are a bit weird. Strictly speaking, they're actually kinda inferior to Trebuchets for sniping distant units or taking apart walls. To get the most out of Cannons you really want an Engineer on standby and be ready and willing to abuse their pass-through shots to the limit. The whole Gimmick with Cannons is that they can hit all enemy units in a line, out to maximum range. If you aren't using this, Cannons are pretty lame. If you're good at it, and/or your opponent is really bad at staggering units, Cannons can do a poo poo ton of damage in one turn. Unlike Trebs, Cannons can move and shoot, so they should be zooming all over the place trying to line up that perfect shot. (The AI is absurdly good at this, btw.) It's a skill that comes with experience, it can be a bit hard to visualize the firing lines unless you've done it a few times. (Turning on visual hexes probably helps.) The one tip I can give you is always aim your shot at the first target in line. If you shoot at the guy behind him the Cannon will actually arc the shot and hit just the one guy for minimal damage. Likewise, when attacking cities your target is always the wall in front the guy you are aiming at. Flame Tanks Oh Flame Tanks, I miss you so...Used to be really super borderline OP awesome. Now...hurting more then a little for the nerfs. Mostly just kicking them back to late-late game with all the Firstborn and T3 Flyers and crap largely negates their primary role of burning down Wooden Walls and mass slaughtering T2s with massive AoE damage. They also start on cooldown now, which means they're helpless the first turn and it can really bite you in large field battles, especially with them being your easiest Machine to smash. More then anything else, the fact that you get them when you are just a few turns away from rolling out Juggernauts aka that unit that fills the same role but better in every way kills a lot of the incentive to bring them out. I mean, Flame Tanks aren't useless. They're your cheapest Machine Unit and have a huge AOE and 25 fire damage every turn can hurt like you wouldn't believe and they have death explosion and all that stuff is pretty great. It's just so easy to completely skip over them now unless you're really hurting for Fire Damage late game for whatever reason. Ironclads So yeah, Dreads have a late game Ship unlock that is basically Unrivaled Naval Superiority in a box. Ironclads have the same Mortar attack as Juggernauts and other ships are weak to fire and yeah, it's carnage. Ship battles aren't frequently a thing and in all my time playing the game I've used them maybe once or twice, but mark my words Ironclads are monsters. Juggernaut The ultimate symbol of Dreadnaught supremacy is a Gigantic Landship/Tank that knocks over trees and sells them for petty cash, is bristling with sweet as hell guns and can soak unreal amounts of physical damage. Sounds about right. I'm reasonably certain that there is nothing in this game that can out-shoot Juggernauts at range. Not so much because because Mortars are an earth-shaking extreme range AOE dual channel wallcrushing attack from hell (They are though) but because they have over 100 HPs and like 15 Defense and Reinforced and you can just repair them back to life even if they break. The only way to reliably break a Juggernaught is to rush in and slowly melee it to death, and even then you have to watch out for it's one-shot massive radial AOE barrage for 25 physical damage. In the realm of artillery combat, the Juggernaught is supreme. Only Horned Gods can compete with them, and even then mostly just because Juggs are vulnerable to shock damage. That said, even The Death Star had it's vulnerabilities. Juggs can only fire every other round unless they've got Engineers babysitting them, and Engineers are easy targets. Their unassisted DPS is probably the lowest of any T4 unit. Also, half of Mortar Damage is Fire, so Fire Immune units (Like Firstborn) can shake the shots off pretty well. In close combat the Jugg won't fall quickly, but they're basically helpless. Ram does meh damage and wastes your turn, they don't retaliate, and barrage is one use. This is a very round-about way of saying Support Your Juggernauts! You don't need a full stack of the things, it's almost a liability. 2 Juggs backed with Engineers and screened with Golems/Musketeers will allow you to grind down almost any force at range, and that's what counts. As long as your Juggs are pounding away at max range, you're winning. Don't get cocky. Spells! Dreads have all kinds of spells I never use, so this should be a learning experience for everyone, but mostly just me. Combat Spells Flash Bang It's a poor mans Blind, but what can you do? Aside from desperate Hail Marys I mostly use this to finish off units that have like 4 HPs left. Repair Fortification Pro-tip: don't accidentally rebuild other peoples walls. Probably this is a handy spell in desperate circumstances, (I mean hell, it's not Flash Bang) but siege battles are not a thing I struggle with, playing Dread. Not really at all. Force Field Deceptively Powerful! See, Machines are already immune to Spirit and Blight Damage and adding 80% resist to the other three types makes them all but immune to non-physical damage, period. Works especially well with Golems, who have to work the front lines and make easy targets for Support Types. Though if you cast this when you're in fisting range of a Priest-type unit, wouldn't they just dispel it? I mean, I would hope so. I'd feel kinda bad if they didn't even think to try it. Overload Ah, now this is a classic Dread spell. Works especially well with Golems and their resulting triple 30 Dam Melee Attacks of Doom. I'm noticing a trend here...While the risk of stunning yourself shouldn't be taken lightly, +10 damage is usually enough to blow away whatever you're trying to kill, and that more then balances out. I mean, unless you're fighting Penguins or something. Don't cast Overload to fight Penguins. Weapon Kit Gives the target unit all the incredible weapon capabilities of a fully upgraded Human Engineer. No, wait, come back...Take the Blunderbluss dammit, YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN IT MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE. Falls into the abyss of could maybe possibly be worth casting in some really bizarre and unique battle situation, but mostly no it's silly. Reassemble Wait, Machine Rez is a Tier 3 spell? HOLY poo poo. It's only 20 mana too, what the hell, man? This is by far the best Dread Combat spell. Bringing back a Golem or Juggernaut someone just finished grinding down is the dickest of all dick moves and goes a long ways towards counter-acting your attrition problem. You can do hilariously stupid things by attacking a town with just one Golem and this spell. Note that you can't reassemble machines with death explosions. Sorry Flame Tanks, gonna keep ignoring you. Summon Siege Engine Was brought up the other day, and uh yeah I've never used it. I don't even know what kind of Siege Weapons it can summon. I've toyed with the idea a few times of giving it to one of my Dread heroes playing Theocrat or whatever but I've never gotten around to actually doing it. Why would I ever cast this spell as the "Half my army is Siege Weapons" Class, especially when Reassemble is cheaper? Choking Fumes A really nasty battlefield-wide debuff that's easy to leverage with Dread since Machines totally ignore the effects. Another spell I should use more, but yknow, Reassemble. Dampening Field I like this spell, because it's the most Dread thing to just go "poo poo man, I've got like Weapon Kit and Flash Bang over here and didn't even bother grinding my CP over 40. Better just dump my 20 CP into making it totally annoying for you to cast your way better spells." (The joke is that Dreads suck at spellcasting.) Destabilized Mana Core Though then again, this spell is actually loving ridiculous. 60 Fire Damage to every unit on the battlefield, there is no spell in the game that comes close to that for raw carnage. Better yet it has a little timer counting down to nuke detonation and giving your opponent time to run away or hope they can disjunct. As over the top crazy as the spell is, I figure it mostly balances out just because it involves the class with the worst healing by far (and slowest reinforcements) blowing up his own army. Global Spells Dread has the fewest Global Spells of any class and most of them are extremely high-level, so you've got like 2-3 you'll ever even get to cast in a typical game. Mana Fuel Spells The only mana sink you'll ever need. Lose 20 Mana/turn, gain 20 production/turn. This is basically the Dread spell, and you should have it up on as many cities as you can manage. Suppress Nature Naturally Dreads have a spell that's just flipping Nature the bird. Completely negates morale penalties for terrain, which is good for boosting your city happiness a bit but absolutely amazing for Halflings. Dragon Oil This is easily the weakest Wall Enchantment, but it's no party, believe me. SpellJammer Spelljammers are kinda weird and I never use them much, but they are extremely powerful. Dreads are the weakest class in the magical realm, even more then Warlords, and shutting down enemy spellcasting is a vicious form of area control for them. For a class like Sorcerer Spelljammers are straight up a no-go zone. Of course, they take time to build and once constructed they've vulnerable to being taken and/or razed, but if you're in an entrenched position anyway, might as well break one out and give you opponent a headache. The Great Mobilization All Machines get +8 Move, +2 Melee/Def/Res. Objectively speaking, Rise of the Robots is by far the weakest Ultimate Spell. Wild Hunt is way better and it's not even a top 3 Ultimate. However for a Dreadnaught specifically this is an amazing spell. It waves away your greatest achilles heel and suddenly you have MV 36 Juggs and the world is a beautiful place again. Until it inevitably get's disjuncted by that rear end in a top hat who probably actually invested in spellcasting and then you're back down to slug speed. But still! For Races, Dreads only have two Class Units that even have Race Mods, but armored units, Cav, and especially armored Cav are very helpful in creating a more balanced army. Human and Dwarf are the obvious Dread Choices, with all armored unit lineups and boosted Engineers. Orcs and Elves are decent. Goblins give you dirt cheap Musketeers and fast city growth, leading to a rather unique aggressive playstyle. Halflings and Draconians are not amazing but they are good towns to draft fun gimmick (Fast Healing/Lucky) Musketeers from. For specializations you will probably want Expander. boosted City Growth, Faster Builders and Improved Roads are too good to pass up. and Anything else can be good, it's not like you'll be tripping over your incredible class spells no matter what you take. Oh, Air Adept for Seeker is super-helpful. You will probably want Seeker. Other then those two things just do whatever. And that's Dread. It's a fun, powerful, class with a great aesthetic I have the biggest love/hate relationship with out of all of them just because playing slow and steady isn't me, man. All y'all are stinking Turtles though so go nuts. madmac fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 03:18
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I actually really like halfling dreads for musketeer spam/rush, just because their morale gimmick is that much better since dread heroes have access to imperial authority (+400 morale). They also get that added ranged damage bonus, and are just all around great at being jerks with hairy feet that dodge and critical all day. Musket criticals are a beautiful thing. I also find that it is pretty easy to just ignore the higher end dread machines once you have muskets if you've got access to a spec summon spell. Something to tank for your pudgy muskets. It also helps with the usual drawbacks of the class, turning them into a builder/summoner sort of hybrid more like the druid, negating the whole no healing thing. If you can somehow go on long enough to get to level...8? 10? Somewhere up there fairly high, dread heroes can get ironheart as an ability. The human racial priest spell. Helps a bit more with attrition if you're using summons and muskets. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 03:35
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I prefer humans when I go Dreadnaught- it takes longer to get to what I consider the real meat of my push (Sidearm Knights) but hell, it's not like a Dread lacks for time. Just use Musketeers and Swordsmen in the interim to keep up the pressure, and things usually go well for me.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:38
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Yeah, again the Flame Tank feels out of place, I'd rather move it back to where it was but perhaps remove the explosive self-destruct? I don't know, but the swap has kind of hurt both units. E: I'd suggest reverting the Flame Tank to the SM equivalent where the flame attack is a stream rather than a cone, because it would open up the tank to attacks of opportunity while lining up the next shot around a group of infantry, but that feels like it's cutting into the Cannon's gimmick Triskelli fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 04:02
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The spells I use most often as dread are fireball or skin of oil besides reassemble, because I'm a boring person. If I use fire mastery, I leave my leader's belongings on a army stack and send them naked into a fortified city to nuke them with the fire halo buff up before attacking them with the bulk of my army, with a golf caddy hero to give them their gear back. The dreadnought doesn't beat around the bush with a puny 15 hp instant spell, they use destabilised mana core.  When I'm not doing a silly gimmick like being a dread waging thermonuclear war on everyone else, Water Adept is nice to deal with other dreads warmachines using Rot but more generally, freezing water. Produce ironclads takes a while to research too and you can't always build bridges, Freeze Water lets you take shortcuts through water, and in the lategame, pave way through areas that your ironclads haven't cleared. Also underground waterways full of monsters and kraken but those aren't that common. Generally I feel like you do not want to embark your machines on water if you can help it since it's easy to blow up boats. Being slow, producing everything from cities and losing a turn to embark on top of that sucks. Water is not forest or mountains so freezing patches of water for your machines to cross is definitely something to consider in many scenarios. If you spam longbowmen, musketeers and gryphon riders like I do, this might not hurt that much since you can traverse forest quite easily.
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Nov 26, 2014 06:25
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I didn't realize Humans like water until I played an islands map. 
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Nov 26, 2014 07:47
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Fledgling Gulps posted:I didn't realize Humans like water until I played an islands map. Normally playing on an islands map just makes someone realize they made a terrible decision.
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Nov 26, 2014 07:55
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