halmal242 halmal242

[Observations]

▼

[Observations]

from Elemental Forums

Alright some observations I have made in the past few weeks as I have taken a small step back from my overly ambitious armor mod.

1# Healing is far to weak in general.  Unless you get lucky you can heal very effectively more than one person at a time if that person is taking a lot of damage.  This is a problem with other spells but healing it is a direct problem if you want a healer unit.  Basically the spells just fail to scale.

2# Boss damage is far too low.  What I mean by bosses I mean Dragons/Elemental Lords/Quest Bosses/Dungeon Bosses.  These fights are supposed to be epic.  These units are supposed to be almost gods, shrink/blind should NEVER work on them.

3# Early on end bosses have far too few hp.  At turn 100 with a lucky set of archers from a quest I almost killed a whole wildlands with just my sov and another champ.  I would have finished it but torrax attacked me before I could save up a little more mana.  While their hp looks epic at turn 1 by the time you hit turn 200-300 they look only a little tough if you have any kind of high damage trained units.

4# Trained units damage is exponentially out of control at the end of game.  You can literally have a group of 7 Fully armored Kinghts running around with 30 Damage swords with buffs from training and spells hitting around damage 50.  While a single unit at damage 50 is tough a group of 7 means you get seven chances to hit at that point compared to one.

5# Items get too many discounts making the increased cost of production null and void by end game.  Those damage 30 swords previously mentioned cost next to nothing in training cost if you have a weaponsmith and the underforge at a level 5 fortress city.  This marginalizes your champions/heroes.

Recommendations

1# Scale the spells with level.  For each tier set a maximum amount they can scale.  So for tier 1 spells they increase every 5 levels.  Also have spell +% to damage stack onto healing effect spells.  Currently they do not.

2# I would recommend making all "Boss" units effectively magic immune except by someone while has a LOT of points into spell mastery and by a lot I mean like 150+ points.  While they can still take damage from elemental damage this removes exploitive crippling spells from removing the true challenge these units are supposed to be.

3# I would recommend doubling or tripling their hp totals to make the fights hard.  I know that when two dragons are fought together the fight is insane but a single dragon can be beaten fairly easy.  Make it that dragons have dragonlings with them since after all they are guarding a dragon roost, make them have young dragons with them to fight.

4# This will likely get me yelled at, lower across the board all trained units accessible damage weapons.  It is a simple numbers game when trained units have access to the same gear a sov/champ gets.  They have more strikes even if slightly weaker because of lack of traits.

5#  This will likely also get me yelled at, lower across the board all discount abilities for trained units.  If you want to deck out a trained unit in the final end game gear that's available to them that's great, but it should not take just as long to train them as spear weilding leather wearing units when you apply their armor/weapon/training discounts from improvements.

 

My 2 Copper

21,528 views 30 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

I think I agree with the general idea that a sovereign who is a mage should be able to cast a spell in most of units. Being a mage is precisely part of what a sovereign is, and what makes him unique. If he has power enough to renew a barren land, he should have power enough to blind a giant mountain-monster. Another thing is that blind should have a limit duration, but making boss enemies inmune to magic is no point. What should be (and I think already is) is that only very dedicated mages manage to use their magic effectively.

I don't know why is it more realistic that a mage can't shrink Thorax that having an army of warriors hitting him. I mean, he's a fucking mountain! If we're going for "realism", I find it more plausible that a mage casts a couple of spells to reduce his power before the warriors can even touch him. 

In regards to units vs champions, I don't see anything wrong with the way things are. Yes, units do more damage technically, but they do not have all the options that champions have, and it takes a lot of resources to make them. A high lvl sovereign can have armour, be untouchable with diamond skin and have an electric hammer (op as hell) banging arround. Even without the use of some tricks, the sovereign is as op as a bunch of warriors. Which also require materials. If you do not want such stacks, make a world with really sparse resources. If you manage to have as much as a single cavalry unit, you're a lucky guy...

 

And now, another thought: it seems to me that halmal tends to prefer this idea of not so-powerful magic because he likes better a world-setting without high fantasy and fireballs banging arround. So, I wonder, ¿why don't you:

a) Create a Sovereign with no magic school?

b) Mod your game so that magic is MUCH more expensive mana-wise?

With this options, magic should be way less present. With the second, it would be as powerful (op for your taste) but only usable on a handful ocasion. I am playing with a mod of magic (I think Rise of the Magi, not sure of the name) that makes non-mages really have a hard time casting spells. Now I really, really think about it before casting blindness on a ogre, because it costs 50 mana. Early game is soooo hard for a little mage :'(

The best thing about this game is that anyone can mod it to his liking, so... Just do it! :)

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Quite the contrary I actually prefer playing with magic centered characters, All I am saying is that a lower/mid level mage should have much more difficulty landing such a crippling spell on a boss monster.  The mechanic is simple for spell calculation, Spell Mastery - Spell Resistance = Chance for a spell to hit and not be resisted.  I am just saying unless someone specializes almost exclusively it should not be possible to land a non damage spell on a boss without a really high spell mastery, basically just increase spell resist higher is all.

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Potentially simple solution to the problems of scaling of "Bosses".  All monsters are currently limited to level 20 and then they stop, or at least as far as I can tell as I have never seen any above that level.  I propose that certain monsters have the ability to level to 30 as well as giving "Boss" monsters additional magic resist trait, the same as Ashwake dragons.  Waerlogo has three magic resist traits making him VERY difficult to have any spells on which is the way a boss should be.  However if a mage takes enlighenment this resistance becomes negligible.  I simply suggest bosses magic resist be raised about 20 to 30 points as a base for those that have MR already and those that don't have any raise it by 50.  By the way Torax had only 18 MR and my character had 90 SM so my resist chance was only 28% or said another way 72% chance that my spell was going to hit.  My mage was level 9 and the defender was 10.  No way I should have almost won that but Shrink, Slow, and Blind would make that fight pointless.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top


The best thing about this game is that anyone can mod it to his liking, so... Just do it! :)

End of quote

 

No, the best thing about this game is that the developers can do it so the gamers "don't have to". ;)

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting halmal242, reply 27
Quite the contrary I actually prefer playing with magic centered characters, All I am saying is that a lower/mid level mage should have much more difficulty landing such a crippling spell on a boss monster.  The mechanic is simple for spell calculation, Spell Mastery - Spell Resistance = Chance for a spell to hit and not be resisted.  I am just saying unless someone specializes almost exclusively it should not be possible to land a non damage spell on a boss without a really high spell mastery, basically just increase spell resist higher is all.
End of halmal242's quote

I agree 100% ;)