DGB246

Join Date 04/2006

[Feedback] Champions vs other strategies

OK I've been playing this beta pretty heavily over the past 4/5 days and I want to give the devs a big thumbs up for all the hard work they have done, this game is already much better than WoM and I really apreciate that they have let me have this game for no extra charge because I bought WoM as soon as it came out.

I have been playtesting it and have played through 3 games; one on normal, one on challenging, and one on hard and I feel that I can give some informed feedback now. I have many thoughts on this game but I think I will post them in separate threads rather than one big post.

So my first point on feedback is that currently the champions/channeler (either warrior or mage) are massively powerful to the point that they almost completely disregard the economic, research, resource gathering and army building sides of the game - in the hard game I won with just my channeler plus one backup champion and no other units except scouts - all the other units were unnecessary.

The AI built more units and was building cities and teching faster on hard in the early stages of the game but I knew this was irrelevant because my 2 champs were leveling up much faster than the AI counterparts and that they would singlehandedly slaughter anything the AI sent. To make the other tactics more viable I think some rebalancing is necessary and I will suggest some ways they could do this.

1) the tech tree is painfully slow and doesnt keep pace with the rate that champs develop (even on fast) - the tech tree progression needs to be much much faster to keep pace - I honestly think that tech costs should be 50% faster than fast as NORMAL setting.

2) cities don't generate anywhere near as much money as champions can from selling loot - this seems odd to me - I guess the gold represents the channelers personal funds as opposed to the GNP for an entire civ - however I feel towns should be able to generate more cash and selling items should generate less so developing the empire becomes a more necessary strategy.

3) champs seem to get big damage multiplier bonuses against groups of soldiers - I think the damage bonuses should be gainable traits (at uncommon and rare too) and they shouldnt gain any initial bonuses. Ordinary units get slaughtered by warrior champs at the moment so they don't need bonuses as standard IMO.

4) magic needs more counters because currently it dominates in a big way - I will post a separate thread on magic as it's such a big topic but some initial suggestions include:

a) spell resistance grants damage mitigation against spells (maybe each point of spell resistance gives 2% elemental resistance to all elements)

b ) allow cities to build magic defences in a similar way to buildings like hedge wall (e.g. druid stones perhaps?) which grant large spell resisance boosts to defenders c) spellcasters need to be able to grant protective enchantments that provide elemental resistance to their units - I know earth gets nature's cloak but I feel it's important enough that all channelers need access to something like this (nature's cloak could always be more mana efficient than a generic spell anyway) - the generic spells could be circle of protection (for cities) and spell ward (for units)

5) champions should have some chance of being killed if defeated and the injuries should be more debilitating too - life threatening deseases like pneumonia and gangrenous hand should be far more debilitating than they are - currently I feel there is no risk/fear in sending champs into combat as the worst that will happen is that they will pick up some trivial penalty - I realise this mechanism is more for the benefit of the AI as theyre champs get killed all the time but surely the difficulty settings could tweak the survival/death chances for champs if they are defeated. When a champ is defeated I think there should be 4 possible outcomes:

a) the hero escapes with no lasting injury

b ) the hero escapes with a minor injury (e.g. broken nose)

c)the hero escapes with a grievous injury (e.g. gangrenous hand) and gets major penalties

d) the hero doesnt escape and is killed

Anyway, this post is already pretty long so I will leave it at that for now and add more suggestions later.

What are other people's thoughts on champs? I'm pretty sure this is a common exerience, and I'm sure the devs are on the case but I thought I'd take th time to provide this feedback and suggestions anyway.

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I've seen people post suggestions on how to tame champions and discourage straight up champion stacks.

One suggestion was to make some champion abilities only apply to non-champion units. That might be an incentive not to use too many champions, but how do you encourage using more units?

Here's the kernel of another mechanic. Champions are supposed to be leaders. Gaining experience should therefore logically be tied to how many soldier units they lead. Modify the experience needed to level up to the higher champion levels, and then give a multiplier to the xp the champion gains based on how many non-champion units it leads into battle.

Then split that extra experience between the champions in the group. Now you have a motivation to not bunch your champions up too much. They'll climb to higher levels faster.

Now again bear in mind i'm just throwing ideas here off the cuff. But that first one - of not allowing champion abilities to stack on other champions? Well one could instigate an "ego" mechanic. Champions with greater abilities have a higher ego, and do not take bonuses from lower champions (they just don't take orders well). This could be another way of discouraging huge stacks of just champions roaming around.

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Interesting suggestions Dwolf, although I would prefer them to incentivise the other strategies rather than introducing ego penalties - bands of heroes are a fantasy staple after all. A big reason why I was able to level up the champ and channeler so fast was because they were going round the map as a duo so they didnt need to share the earned experience with any other units. I like the idea that each battle gives X experience shared between your units becuase it discourages the stack of doom approach - the leaders approach that you suggested would actually encourage it.

Unfortunately it brings its own problems in that you are able to level up champs extremely quickly - much faster than what the AI can pull off - and by the time a champ has 20+ levels and some good item drops they can basically sleepwalk through battles. I actually think the ideal number of champs is 2 or 3 with one focused on magic and the other(s) as fighters.

To encourage other tactics I think armies need to develop faster - I seriously have never managed to research metal armour or enchanted items once in 3 games and this is because research is so slow - by the time I have the infrastructure to research these techs quickly, I have super champs and have basicly won and in that situation it makes much more sense to research something like Breon's letters, which will allow me to win the game. I'm going to disable the masterquest for my next game as it is currently too easy to achieve - I have some thoughts on this too but I'll save that for another post.

The AI needs options to defend against magic too and spell resistance currently doesnt do a good job at resisting spells - although the next public beta is coming out soon so it will be interesting to see how this side has developed - looking at the infopedia, there are a bunch of spells that are yet to be released and some are magical defences . 2 answers I think are to allow cities to build elemental defence boosts and for casters to place wards on armies and cities too.

The other thing is to make it harder for champs to pull off solo wins and to me that involves not giving champs damage bonuses against groups straight away but to make these available as level up traits and to give big monsters answers against speedy elusive champs.

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Personally I kinda like how champions are in 0.77

Its the coolest when its just 1 Sovereign + 1 or 2 backup champions ... once you add more than that it starts to feel a bit cheesy ...

although I dunno, maybe its just because on both my normal games, on normal settings (medium map), I've only met another nation once, (albeit I slaughtered him after about 20 turns), and I was fine with that.

Its really fun just having 1 or 2 champions + a few units go around doing quests. I know I've suggested that only champs should do quests, but honestly the units don't feel forced (maybe because its 4 soldiers instead of 40).

Early on EVERYTHING matters. Each spell matters as if life or death (because you don't want injuries on champs ... or at least I dont )

Get every ounce of help you can from Dog summons, Clay Guardians, etc (about the only thing I didn't use were the food items, but I certainly COULD have a time or two ... things got really close) -> I also never used the whistle, but honestly its better to use the food items/whistle early on because later, once your a powerhouse, saving those items don't really matter.

Champions are definitely NOT OP until you level them ... and until then, they are 'almost' as weak as they were in E:WoM

therefore you sacrifice your units, mana, everything in the early game in order to get them leveled. This feels about right to me.

Also, just from a 'coolness' perspective ... having more than 2 champions in an army starts to feel a little crowded-> other peeps crampin my combo-style I have going on.

Btw though ... WHY is there a 23 strength, 11 intelligence champion (great for melee) that has all skills focused on CASTING!?

Ultimately he helps with an extra haste or two, plus my only form of 'slow' ... but by late game I may as well just cast haste(self)+fireball ...

as im still learning the game though, I leveled him in water spells to see what is available.

WHY no earth tactical spells? Why is it all strategic? Why is freeze!!! (awesome water spell) NOT TACTICAL!?

I can understand Whirlwind being strategic only I guess ... but for the love of tactical, why not a temp. stoneskin for tactical and maybe another version of tremor? (only because they have no tactical, and it seems a bit silly to imbue a champion just so that they can raise and lower mountains.

Cloud Walk is AWESOME! (completely worth Air Archmage even if Titan's breath is a bit ... yea. Titan's breath would be a lot stronger if movement wasn't so fast, but knocking down is cool ... even if I could just, yanno, KILL them for the same amount of mana. It doesn't do damage why? not a lot of damage, just 1 or 2 damage to show it did something, other than delay the inevitable (one way or another)).

one cool story though ... Yoske was a crappy 3 strength merchant when I picked him up, and now he is an awesome hero with 20-30 strength or so. I know he is my strongest unit because I have him using the Maul I got from an Ogre(or wassit troll?). +100% strength bonus is really, really nice.

Bezerker's Axe would of been better if one of my champs had some extra source of accuracy (maybe I just need to wait a few levels), but for now its basically the same thing as Double strike. It will hit twice, then miss. One time, once, it hit 3 or more times.

If accuracy does go up with level though ... maybe it will eventually be awesome (and worth its value in gold).

I don't mind how fast the units go up in Stats ... and even WITH a max move Champion, sometimes the fireball wins first

So I'm not sure what the answer is. Maybe only limit movement (or remove charge at least) to regular units.

Or maybe just better Tactical AI (using counterspells I guess?) ... or maybe for the AI to be competitive their 'large scale view' is the thing that needs the most work.

Its easy to say one strategy is weaker/stronger than the other ... but it seems like Sky's the limit with all strategies, and that the early game is the most critical (for keeping champions alive, being able to complete quests, defending cities ... I guess defending cities could always be a bit of a struggle, as your mega-stack can only be one place at a time-> ignoring cloudwalk for the time being, that takes some serious investment to get to)

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