mobile domes?

[WraithLord]

NTJedi said:

I like the mobile domes suggestion because right now it's just not feasible to be moving large armies on big maps.

Thematically it also makes sense. As you would expect powerful mages to be able to confer some measure of protection to their armies.

And I think it would be a nice addition to the game, variety wise.

[FrankTrollman]

You run the risk of unstoppable armies dominating everything.

Right now a small army can be cut off with a mind hunt or earth attack. A medium army can be pounded into the dust with a pile of ghost riders. A large army can be caused unacceptable losses with a murdering winter. There is a counter available to every offensive strategy, and it's roughly structured in cost to the size of the incursion it is set up to jimmy-kick (except Ghost Riders, which are too cheap when used to kill medium-sized attacking armies).

So I'm left asking, what is the blinding necessity of allowing people to attack at will with an unkillable pile of badasses? Is there something I'm fundamentally missing that makes offsense impossible at high levels? That certainly hasn't been my experience so far.

-Frank

[NTJedi]

by FrankTrollman

You run the risk of unstoppable armies dominating everything.

No army or SC is unstoppable... the way the current game is setup no one in their right mind during mid or late game would be moving 100+ human types around, which have 14-hit-pts or less. Why? Because two casts of Murder Winter or Flames from the Sky would be devastating.
As a result archer-types, infantry types and even most mounted unit types are divided into many little groups... little groups which may merge with strong summoning types.

[FrankTrollman]

NT Jedi says:No army or SC is unstoppable... the way the current game is setup no one in their right mind during mid or late game would be moving 100+ human types around, which have 14-hit-pts or less. Why? Because two casts of Murder Winter or Flames from the Sky would be devastating.

What exactly is the problem there?

If you spend 1000+ gold on a pile of 100 soldiers, and some jerk comes out with 60 gems on Murdering Winter, you lose about half your troops and he spent 60 gems.

That's 500 gold on troops and at 9 gold/gem that's 540 gold worth of gems. Even the upkeep is instantaneously about equal, the upkeep on the 50 remaining soldiers is 33.3 gold, the upkeep on the 2 Sea Kings who cast 2 Murdering Winters is 36 gold.

The real problem here is that the troops cost significant upkeep while marching around towards their goal, and while the Sea Kings cost upkeep during that period they also were performing a real task like Research, Item Forging, Site Searching, or casting other spells. And that's a big problem. It means that troops aren't a good deal.

Not because magic-related space lasers are too effective at killing (except maybe for Ghost Riders), but because troops are costing upkeep while being mustered and useless, while mages are being paid upkeep while being mustered and useful, and Vine Ogres aren't being paid upkeep at all. The problem really isn't that a Murdering Winter is going to kill a lot of longbowmen if pointed at a large marching army of them. In fact, if Murdering Winter didn't do that, there would be a big damned problem the other way.

Defense has to mean something, and if you can shield your armies from space lasers then really nothing the defender can do makes any difference and reactive war becomes a sucker's game.

-Frank

[Oversway]

What if you wanted to play a game where there were a lot of battles with big armies on both sides? What would you change?

[FrankTrollman]

I think troops shouldn't cost upkeep on the turns they don't fight or participate in seige defense/attack. Possibly they shouldn't cost upkeep at all under any circumstances (other than food).

That way building up a decent pile of longbowmen or black plate infantry would be meaningful. What's holding troops back is the vast amount of money you have to pay them while standing/marching them around. If you can recruit them right into battle, even slingers are worth the price.

Also, I think that newly recruited troops should come into the game with slightly more experience over time. That way late in the game, a pile of black hunters is a little bit better than the black hunters would have been at the start of the game.

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

Oversway said:

What if you wanted to play a game where there were a lot of battles with big armies on both sides? What would you change?

Oversway, the level 4 magic limit mod, in conjuction with SaberCherry's Recruitable Rebalance mod, has produced a lot of really big troop battles in our current game with it.