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Viability of tech trees other than combat

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Viability of tech trees other than combat

from Elemental Forums

Two points:

1) Beelining to a technology doesn't seem to work.  That may be by design, but the increases in cost from one tier of techs within a tree and the next tier prohibit doing much in any tech tree without improving your research capability significantly, which requires that I go up the civ tree to get those bonuses.

2) Force multipliers based on multiple figures in a unit means that I'm all but obligated to go up the combat tree to get to squads and such.

Now, if I want to specialize in magic, I can either take a long time to research up to staves at 4 attack each, put together mages after getting up to squads in the combat tree, and then have them be decimated in combat from anyone who's focused on the combat tree and put together equivalent tiered units from there with axes and armor and such.  To make the other trees viable, equivalent combat power needs to be placed within the magic tree at roughly the same research tier as in the other trees.  Equivalently, there should be defense/dodge enhancement equivalents within the magic tree to armors in the combat tree.  Civs, to my mind, is the tree that makes it so you don't HAVE to have combat; you should be able to buy off armies that come into your borders with influence, making them flip, or to influence the monsters in your territory to go fight on your behalf, making sure your hands stay clean.  That may exist, but I've not been able to make it work; I always get told that I can't recruit the ogres/trolls/whomever in my ZOC.  Freeloading bastards.

Alternatively, and this might not be possible within the current game engine, but it might be nice to have research advancing equivalencies in each tree.  Civ gets civ research, which applies to the civ tree, combat gets combat training, which applies to the combat tree, and magic gets magical research, which applies to the magic tree.  That way, you encourage specialization to a specific tree, rather than make it so I have to jump around through different trees to put together a viable strategy.

11,718 views 29 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

There are a couple of suggestions here to reduce the mana obtained from shards in the early game and include abilities in the magic tech tree which increase mana gained.

I also think that this is a good idea.

It seems like the magic tree is best suited to research for people who want to make powerful heroes. Yes, there are some spells that help civilization building, too, and this is a nice element of the tree, but heroes are really helped by having good spells and enough mana to use them on a regular basis. And they're hurt when mana is scarce. As the game is right now, the only way to really increase mana production is through expansion. Even the meditation spell really doesn't provide a good mana kick until a player has several cities.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

The civilization tree is, perhaps, a little too essential for everything - it's necessary to get .. well, every single resource in the game except mana. Your population (growth+food) and therefore your research/gold is capped by how far you get in civilization, your production is multiplied by how many appropriate civ techs you have, even metal, influence, etc. all come from civilization techs. You can't do anything without this tree, it's a no brainer.

That being said, the civilization tree gives you next to nothing to actually win battles with, so you can't do anything with just this tree either, and that's where the other two come in. You have a choice of war or magic - trained units or champions, basically - and both ways work, I've tried.

The magic tree does need some work though; while it's viable to win games with nothing but magic+champions and few if any warfare techs, most of the magic tree isn't really necessary or practical to get - all you really need is the final champion recruiting tech (breon's letters? something like that) and then you can abandon the magic tree, which is good because you need tons of civilization techs to a.) get enough research to reach the final champion recruiting tech, and b.) get enough gold to recruit those champions.

So anyway, there are really only two paths: civilization+warfare or civilization+magic, with civ being far too essential for anyone but unable to stand alone. And the magic/champion path to victory is really a dedicated civilization path, except with a little bit of the magic tech tree thrown in to let you recruit champions and do quests. It's not that the rest of the magic tree is useless, it's that your champions and spells are fine without it, and you can't afford it without filling out the civ tree first, by which point the game is over. Warfare has a similar problem to a lesser extent - while the entire tree is useful, you just can't afford to research it, or to build the units it gives you, without filling out the civ tree for research/production/gold bonuses, and the game is probably over before you can do that and get back to finishing the warfare tree.

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Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Austinvn, reply 27
The civilization tree is, perhaps, a little too essential for everything - it's necessary to get .. well, every single resource in the game except mana.
End of Austinvn's quote

and crystal and mounts.

Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top

I'm just a noob and still barely understand some of the game concepts, but I'd like to see all 3 tech trees researched simultaneously.  Each faction should have inherent bonuses and penalties to research for each tree.  Then I would like to see many of the current research buildings be pure research bonuses while others are converted to varying or specific bonuses to trees, and maybe other structures be given small research bonuses to whatever field they pertain to (Barracks = +10% Combat research Tower of ___ = +25% Magic research; more buildings like the Oracle).  Obviously RP values would need to be increased across the board to keep pacing correct.

 

Quoting Andrew, reply 26
There are a couple of suggestions here to reduce the mana obtained from shards in the early game and include abilities in the magic tech tree which increase mana gained.
End of Andrew's quote

Maybe they should go the MoM route and require you to clear out the shards of elemental creatures before you can capture them?