Spells that arguably break the game

[RadicalTurnip]

I agree that BoT is slightly powerful, but the reason it is so powerful is that it hurts everyone. It just hurts some nations more because they have old mages. Rings of regen is a good counter to disease, btw.

But no, I don't want them taking any of that out. That "4 gem ritual" usually has to be spammed, making it...what, a 20-gem ritual? Plus 5 mage-turns that have at least 3 astral, plus hopefully some +pen items (or more astral). I love the "sit-back and wait for people to attack me so I can teach them the folly of doing so" tactic.

And yes, your capital should be nearly unassailable, I usually have Dome of Flaming Death (or the ice one) and at least one other dome up. That means that anyone that tries to hit it usually gets hit themselves.

You can always script your mages with returning...1S gem for complete assassination protection seems more overpowered than all your assassinate spells.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Amadamus

Look for sure it can be countered - but look at the micro involved to have to do that.

Manuvere a sneeky thug into a prime spot attack the province - win - mind hunt - dead. It is not always possible to have an astral unit on hand - especially Tir who dont have astral.

If you are a non astral nation up against an astral one, then you will be mind hunted to hell. And besides mind hunt, what about Earth Attack? Not very easy to counter that one - devastating spell.

These spells just seem like an intrusion upon the game whereby the finese of the strategy gives way to uninspired heavy handed drugery. Being forced to counter said effects (and indeed some times it cant be countered), introduces extra micro that doesnt enhance the experience at all.

Your sneaky thug ignores Earth Attack. He also ignores teleporting other thugs/mage teams on top of him. And maneuvering him into place usually involves casting Cloud Trapeze, at least for Tir/Vanheim. Fighting someone with with stealthy, teleporting, recruitable thugs is really hard if you don't have the same. You can raid with your own thugs, but if they aren't stealthy they're vulnerable to teleporting attack squads, which means you're losing yours faster than he is.
Mind Hunt is one of the few actual counters that works on hiding commanders. It requires spamming to be effective, assuming thugs have decent mr, which means many high S mages, probably using boosters and/or penetration items. And the risk of teleporting a S mage in to feeblemind the hunters.

It's a raiding counter. That's all mind hunt is really for. By mid game it's not really hard for even non-Astral nations to have an astral mage or 2 (or domes) in every research center/castle and send them out with major armies.
If you get it early and spam it on an unprepared enemy, you can do serious damage, but that's true of many things.

[Gandalf Parker]

The "arguably" was well placed in the subject.
I have seen complaints that the late game is decided more by magic than by armies, but I think that is on purpose. There are plenty of games available which are decided by armies. So I wouldnt want to see the game changed that way for everyone.

However, Im not against it as an option (which it is). I can see the idea that it would be fun to see a Dom3 game settled by armies. There have been some dom3 games which did that. There is a setting to make research difficult. And various mods for cutting out spells. In fact, the developers did create two mods. One limits all research to level 6, and another limits all research to level 4. Id be willing to host such a game on Dom3Minions.com if you wanted (for a direct connect game) or you can host it on LLamaserver.net (for a pbem game).

[rdonj]

Gandalf: I tested one of those mods recently, and it seemed to be broken So any such game would need a fixed mod to work.


Back when I was a newer player, I would have agreed with some of your proposed spell removals. But having played a decent number of games now, I just can't agree with things like removing mind hunts, etc. For one thing mind hunt really IS a pretty easy spell to defend against. And those tir thugs that were being talked of earlier can easily have 20+ MR, which drastically ups the number of mind hunts required to kill them. And is really one of only a very few ways they can be killed. Most of these sorts of spells are almost necessary in the late game to allow you to actually kill the other surviving players, who may have well over a hundred mages and a significant gem income that would make a normal sort of war between the two of you go on forever.

The best way to handle spells you don't want in a game is just to agree beforehand that they are banned. Plenty of games do that and that's fine. But you'll never get the community to agree to remove most of those spells. And I think you are overestimating (or overstating) the effectiveness of some of them by a fair margin.

[thejeff]

And if you want to ban them for a particular game, it's easy to make a mod that removes them, which is usually better than just agreeing to ban them.

[LDiCesare]

Burden of Time is only really useful for a few nations, and they'll wait to have enough death gems so it can't be dispelled easily before casting it. If you hoard your D gems instead of, say, summoning tartarians, you certainly deserve the result.

Sitting on top of a capital and trying to starve people does not work. You want to break in very fast. In 2 of the games I'm playing, someone's capital was besieged and the attacking army had to leave because of another nation intervening. also try to starve out MA C'tis while sitting on top of their capital. Your army will die in a few years while C'tis will just be unable to build more assassins. Those already inside the fort might have killed a few of your commanders in the meantime.

[militarist]

I think BoT is too early and too cheap. It should be lvl 8-9 spell and should be much more expensive. The argument that it is powerful not against all nations is not really strong, because it is always powerful WHEN you cast it. Because you cast it exactly when it's going to affect your closest neigbour(s). When your opponent have no weakness to this spell, you just don't cast at all. So it is either unused or it's a real nuke. And BoT is a really ballance-breaking spell. One nation casts it and all the map is divided on those who go down, and those who feel happy long lives.
As for dispell - the mechanics of dispel makes dispell very risky,and mostly benefits initial caster rather then dispeller.

[rdonj]

Dispel is risky when dealing with arcane nexus. With burden of time? Not so much. Say you get everyone in the game who wants burden down to pool 10-15 pearls. In a game of decent size this should easily be enough to bring down burden of time. Burden of time does most of its damage in the first 2-3 turns it's up anyway. Overcasting it much at all is generally not that useful.

[thejeff]

You don't cast Burden of Time to affect your closest neighbors. It's declaring war on the entire world. (Except for a few nations and those probably only if you've already allied and cleared it with them.)
It may cripple your neighbors, but if everyone else piles on with remote attacks, teleporters and pitches in to Dispel that's not going to help you much.

It may come to early, but only in the sense that you won't be ready to make use of it when you first research it.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Amadamus

My point is these spells propose a gamey element not that they can't be used or countered.

So you're saying there's no way, in world, a mage couldn't contact a powerful being and send it to kill an enemy commander? Or try to find his mind from afar and snuff it? Seriously, they make as much sense as anything else...

So what is the point of having the spell if every one will jsut band to gether to dispel it? Isnt that just a micromanagment issue? When the game is humming along nicely out comes BoT - great, now we have to organise a caster and gems etc... It doesn't add to the game experience it detracts from it and forces players to go through the hastle of getting rid off it. Mean time a player with a half decent start enjoying a competitive war gets crapped on and all that potential evaporates becasue of one spell.

Diplomacy. Diplomacy is the point of the spell. If you can't get the requisite gems together it means: (1) Your opponent is winning anyway and the spell lets him do it faster, this is good. (2) Your diplomacy failed. He has too many allies who'd rather have his spell stay up (possibly because you or someone else is scarier), and thus won't contribute to dispelling it. If neither of those is true, you should be able to bring it down. Its not micromanagement though, diplomacy is a critical aspect of the game, and you should be forced to conduct it to deal with sufficiently dangerous threats.

Removing the gem gens in CBM removes a few head aches and micro issues, but the real benefit of it is that to get more gems you have to conquer more lands. Globals just provide gems for nothing really. Sure you have to make a sacrifice to put it up, but they pay for themselves quickly so its not that big a risk.

Gems from globals are (1) not invisible and (2) are vulnerable to 'attack', either by being overcast or by killing the caster or by being dispelled. And if you put it up with more gems than minimal, the risk of not making back your investment is very real.

The issue of the games finishing quicker is moot if you adopt different ending conditions. I don't believe there needs to be full domination - 50 or 60% of capitals will suffice for victory. Pulling out big globals and remote spells is a crap way to finish a long strategic struggle.

So put them up first? If your opponent manages to distract you from the big picture by complicating the little picture, and then throws up a game changing global, whose fault is it that you weren't prepared to deal with it? Oh right, yours. You can pre-emptively occupy all the global slots to prevent people from throwing up globals, you know.

A big part of the fun in dominions is watching the battle replay - seeing if your tactics prevail - hoping your heros survive another battle, These spells ensure that the outcome of the game is determined by impersonal mechanics - I am struggling to see how their inclusion benefits the game.

Because a lot of these spells fill necessary niches. Stealth raiders would be pretty broken if not for mindhunt. Oh no, the horrors, it makes you forge AMAs for all those stealth raiders. Making raiding more costly over time is a good thing - your opponent should be able to fight back, after all!

Finally, a lot of these spells add a real strategic element to the game. Some of us enjoy the strategic aspect at least as much as the tactical aspect. Wars are not just fought with armies, they are fought with propaganda, information, morale, production, key leaders, etc... all of these things should be open to attack.