Poll: morale and routing

[Sheap]

Esben is not saying that I think, but Panther and Boron are, and I want to take a stand in favor of immortality being just fine the way it is before the anti-immortality bandwagon gets rolling

[The_Tauren13]

if it does start rolling ima jump on it in a new york minute

i think esben's suggestion rules:

ok so you have:
case 1: troops and commanders - all commanders die - troops rout
case 2: troops only - troops rout at start of battle
case 3: troops and commanders - all troops die - commanders rout
so why not case 4: commanders only - commanders rout at start of battle

[Arryn]

Huzurdaddi said:
The problem that follows is immortal units do not flee and so they may have to be special cased.

You left out "in friendly dominion", an important distinction. They can rout outside of it. Their morale might make it difficult, but it's not impossible.

But I'm quibbling. Your post was very good and raised an excellent point re: berserk, a trait that almost everyone discussing SCs has been ignoring. I keep mentioning the bloody Berserker Pelt and folks keep sidestepping the issue.

Thanks for bringing it back to the fore.

[Arryn]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me."

Remind you of anything? Such as the anti-VQ threads of a few months ago? Kinda makes you wonder what folks will want nerfed next?

Oh, and your analysis of Esben's proposal is dead-on. Good work, and well-stated.

[Boron]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
I briefly considered the immortal problem. But since immortals CAN be fought effectively, since it is limited to positive dominions, I didn't find it too problematic. Also, the immortal looses all those items when they die, which also helps. If it is still a problem, make the immortal gain a few afflictions when they die. Yes, they will heal, but it takes time, and that is enough in my opinion --- If the SC have to sit around and wait for 5 or 10 turns before being usable again, plus having to pay 50+ gems in items, a price has been paid. If we're going to play REALLY tough immortals could use a magic path point or two, but I think this is going over the top. And more work to develop.

To Arryns comment I can only say: My idea is consistent with existing design, it makes sort of sense, and it will weaken those SC pretenders, so that we may actually see human pretenders again. I mean, when did you Last encounter one in MP? I have never seen one --- except in games where human pretenders were forced.

Plus, the idea is simple to implemented, right devs?

mose i like your ideas

with immortals my main problem are not THE scs but VAMPIRES combined with unequipped immortal leaders !


one of my favourite strats is to take vq , bloodhunt , get lots of vampire lords which autosummon vampires .

then i can push dominion via blood sacrifice as abysia / vanheim / mictlan .

then i slowly push my dominion and when i have positive dominion i attack with some vampire lords , my vq + a horde of vampires .

all unequipped .
so when i lose i lose nothing just 1-3 turns to move to the front again .

defeating a vq which buffs , vampire lords which cast spells + a horde of vampires is really tough though when repeated several times .


you may not win with your first attacks but your enemy will always lose parts of his forces .

so in the long run you will probably always win .
on turn 100 of a game you have probably accumulated 50-100 vampire lords at least which means 50-100 vampires / turn for free through summon allies .

so from turn 100 - turn 110 you get about at least 500-1000 extra vampires for FREE .

if you make it to excess as e.g. abysia until turn 50 you have probably already about 300-500 vampires + 20-30 vampire lords .

if you play a wish nation wishing for blood and pushing hordes of vamps is good too .
caelum e.g. can then spread dominion via stealthpreach + use the vampire horde tactic in lategame too very well .




so i think at least the summon allies commando from the vampire lords should be taken away

[PvK]

Seems to me the least popular selection in this poll is the best, unless I'm not considering something.

Panther's suggestion of a morale check is flawed because there are really two different types of commanders for this question - ones which might want to stand alone against an enemy army, and everyone else, who wouldn't, as Arryn pointed out.

Sheap's suggestion would allow players to provide an exception to the general rule, and this would also solve the long-standing issues with super combattants routing when their minor allies rout.

PvK

[Sheap]

Well I can certainly understand the desire to leave the current system alone. But in reality no matter the situation you will have cases where your units either rout too soon or don't rout soon enough.

I really don't think Panther's idea is very good, though. Instead of having all your commanders rout because your troops died, instead half of them would rout, leaving the other half to die. So now instead of routing and losing the battle, you rout, lose the battle, and then a bunch of your mages die as well.

[The_Tauren13]

hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

[Cheezeninja]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Immortal pretenders pay, on average, roughly 70 points for the privilege. The fact that Abysia, Caelum and Ermor have more points to spend and can afford it is certainly not a coincidence. Immortal non-pretender units cost 50-100% more than comparable non-immortals. Not to mention that immortals that die still lose all their equipment (except for pretenders, this is often more valuable than the unit itself), can still get afflictions (whether they die or not), which don't heal right away, still lose the battle, and get sent back to the home province, which may or may not be conveniently located. And if you're not fighting in friendly dominion, immortality doesn't do anything except raise your price.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone. Instead of having strange routing behavior, we will have problems of "my SC should be able to fight this force by himself, but he can't because he hasn't brought his militia with him." And then anti-SC combat tactics, instead of revolving around defeating the SC, will instead revolve around killing his scrubs so he has to flee. This is not an improvement.

Edit: On the subject of human pretenders, the reason we don't see them in MP is because the Ghost King is too good. For a seven path rainbow mage, the GK costs you about 90-110 points over a human in chassis and path costs, has 2 points more dominion, and starts with death magic. The dominion and death magic alone nearly make up for this increased cost, and you've then basically got the GK's exceptional fighting skills for free, instead of legendary human wimpiness. From a pure power standpoint the only "human" that competes with the GK is the Skratti. For humans to be viable in MP, their "secondary skills" (gem generation, research bonus, whatever) need to be a LOT stronger, or they need to get significantly more starting magic (I'm talking 3-4 points in a single path here), or the GK needs to get worse, or some combination of these. Strong starting magic in particular paths could also help distinguish humans from each other.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.

I'd have to agree with all of this. What Esben's suggestion would do is replace one strange and slightly irrational dynamic with another. Sure commander + group dynamics would make more sense now, but instead of attacking the SC everyones strategy would basically revolve entirely around getting rid of his chaff. This would give an ENOURMOUS advantage to the nations that can spit chaff (Caelum, Ermor, Ctis..) As they can simply spit chaff long enough to tie the SC up and kill or route his troops, then the SC splits too. With some creative cloud trapeezing or ghost riders he has nowhere to go too and you now have a dead SC, without ever actually having to deal with him. It would almost completly re-define the dynamic of the game and the balance therein, as major strategies like wrathing would now be almost useless.

The game IS balanced right now, and well. One little change like this will NOT bring the AI up to par because the AI's still going to be ignorant of so many other strategies (ghost riders, castling, vampire spam, clam hoarding).

I definetly dont think a major re-define of the game dynamic is justified because a few people dont like the way combat plays out, plenty of other people DO like the system and you'd be forcing this change on them. I'd be all for an optional mod that does this, but thats about as far as i'd want to go.

oh, and i second the motion of buffing up the human pretenders, i personally would like to see each one of them start with 2 in 2 seperate paths, making them double bless contenders which currently only fire and astral really have.


[edit] Nevermind the cloud trapez'ing part, as the proposed patch would all but eliminate its offensive capabilities.

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.