Casting first in defence + endgame spells

[Renojustin]

Domes are currently not working as intended, if I've read the shortlist correctly.

[Zeldor]

Domes of the same type stack.

End-game though is really broken in dominions. It would probably need a huge rework as a whole. With many spells, summons and mechanics.

[IndyPendant]

Heh. I was the attacker in question, and I'm still rather annoyed about the whole thing. (Not at Twan, note. At this particular mechanic.) I basically wasted untold hours of complicated end-game turns, because evicting Twan was so incredibly, unbelievably unlikely that I might as well have gone AI shortly after he took the island. Even destroying the rest of his territories would have taken so long that by the time I was done he would have had his nigh-impenetrable defenses up on the central island...

It all came down to the defender casting first.

To answer some of the points brought up: spells cannot get past domes. Assassins and disease-spreaders cannot get past patrollers. Multiple attackers do not work against a castle. There was essentially no reasonable method, at all, of evicting him. Period.

[VedalkenBear]

Mm. I'm curious about several points, the primary of which is why the defender should have an advantage in battles. From a military perpective, the defender is generally seen to have a tactical advantage but an operational disadvantage. My concern is to how well this RL 'norm' translates into Dominions. If it is indeed true that the operational-level advantage normally held by the attacker is the case with Dominions, then retaining the defender tactical advantage sounds reasonable.

However, if the operational-level advantage is not realized, then I think that the defender's advantage should be mitigated. Note that I do not refer here to a specific situation (like the above points to). I refer to more general issues with the game.

One way to 'fix' this would be to implement an initiative system. Each 'unit' (commander or block of soldiers) gets a move. How hard would this be to implement?

[Renojustin]

Domes are not working as intended, because they're not supposed to make an impenetrable wall of magic defense. They're not supposed to stack.

[Twan]

Domes of different types are supposed to stack, the bug was being able to stack several domes of the same kind (what I've not done in this game, but my province was anyway protected by up to 4 different domes).

[Ironhawk]

4 domes is not effective cover in the endgame tho, when your opponent can amass an array of gem-poor spells to toss at them until they fail. If its really true that domes of the same type can stack tho, thats a pretty huge bug. You should *definitely* not be able to do that - its way too big of an advantage.

As for the defenders advantage - I dont see it as a problem. I mean you guys are listing a way, way endgame case for the failure of a mechanic. But the truth is that it works fine for the other 90% of the game. I think that if the dome issue were resolved that the defender issue would cease to be a problem since you could pound any stationary force to dust with artillery and assassination spells.

[Zeldor]

Voice of Apsu as dome breaker is bug too.

[Micah]

Huh, I love me some rain of stones, and it's one of the few ways to keep astral magic on the battlefield from being even more absurd in the late game (Astral mages tend to be fairly squishy...astrologers and the like). Having 30 mages spamming soul slay and enslave mind with a light of the northern star up is pretty absurd to have to deal with if they're all lucky, misted and army of whatever'd, especially if you don't have any national astral (magic duel anyone?). I really really really like that the attacker has to be careful with their squishies.

As has been previously pointed out in this thread, if you're assaulting someone at their strongest point you're DOING SOMETHING WRONG. Force them to come out of their hole. If you're playing a VP game recognize that sometimes the game is effectively over before the last VP is capped. If you're running a race and someone's 5 feet from the goal and you're a mile back you don't get to complain that it's nearly impossible to catch him, even though the race isn't technically over yet.

I love elegant solutions to problems though, and I'm not really one for the "stack my army til it's bigger than his army and let them pound each other" school of thought. I'd much prefer to lure in an enemy, decimate their mages and then have my way with their ground forces. That's strategy, not just having a bigger stick. This might be why I hate games once they get past the phase of having all the research done...armies get too big and the solution devolves into having one that's even bigger. Not my style.

[Twan]

As for the defenders advantage - I dont see it as a problem. I mean you guys are listing a way, way endgame case for the failure of a mechanic.

I list a problematic category of spells. My view is battlefield instant offensive spells are only good for the game if the opponent can eventually counter them (be him attacker or not), and it's illogical that he can't use the counters if his mages have access to them (if my mages can cast army of gold, I see no reason for them to wait to cast it... after all ennemy rain of stones).

The problem is "endgame" mostly because most of these spells and counters are rather high level, but the rare cases where a nation can pull a round one casting destructive script in midgame (ie : chained earthquakes to kill your mages with body ethearal to protect his own) are as problematic IMO.

ps : I'm not saying mages shouldn't be able to destroy entire armies. Simply if the opponent know what you will use and have mages able to cast the counter spells, a good script should allow him to survive, and it's not the case actually.