Concerns with life & death magic » Forum Post by StoweMobile

psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

MOM wasn't balanced are you saying it was silly? lol Shows what a fool you are if you are saying that.

You ever play the Impossible difficulty in MOM as the Gnolls or Klakons? Difficulty settings made the unbalanced game even more fun and challenging.

You ever play against someone else as the Gnolls or Klakons?

Oh, right, it doesn't even have multiplayer...

With the utterly horrific balance, Master of Magic is indeed a silly game, as soon as it gets upgraded to multiplayer support.

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You ever play against someone else as the Gnolls or Klakons?

Oh, right, it doesn't even have multiplayer...

With the utterly horrific balance, Master of Magic is indeed a silly game, as soon as it gets upgraded to multiplayer support.

Sure, it was badly balanced. Fixing it would not have been possible without multiplayer, IMO.

Starcraft, the game everyone holds up as the king of balance, took a decade of "testing" by millions of Korean cyberathletes to achieve its perfect balance and it has a small fraction of the number of races, units and abilities that MoM has.

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Quoting psychoak,

reply 1

MOM wasn't balanced are you saying it was silly? lol Shows what a fool you are if you are saying that.

You ever play the Impossible difficulty in MOM as the Gnolls or Klakons? Difficulty settings made the unbalanced game even more fun and challenging.

You ever play against someone else as the Gnolls or Klakons?

Oh, right, it doesn't even have multiplayer...

With the utterly horrific balance, Master of Magic is indeed a silly game, as soon as it gets upgraded to multiplayer support.

It was never meant to be multiplayer and I'm glad. Multiplayer is for geeks who need to get their epeen off cheating other players online. Cheat or no though it's still about epeen. That's another reason MOM is the greatest no multiplayer geeks with epeen to ruin it with their crying boo hooing waaaahing for balance. ;0)

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It was never meant to be multiplayer and I'm glad. Multiplayer is for geeks who need to get their epeen off cheating other players online. Cheat or no though it's still about epeen. That's another reason MOM is the greatest no multiplayer geeks with epeen to ruin it with their crying boo hooing waaaahing for balance. ;0)

Hey, no need to be insulting!

There is a perfectly valid reason to want multiplayer in a game: human opponents are far more skilled, unpredictable and entertaining to play against than AIs. This will likely remain the case for the forseeable future.

As far as the balance discussion goes, I think there is a misconception that games need to be bland and mirrored in order to be balanced. Sure, this was the case in early games like Warcraft 1, however, that was more due to developer laziness than anything else. Achieving perfect balance with completely different races/factions is a long and laborious task as exemplified by Starcraft.

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Quoting Scoutdog,

reply 9

9 unit limit. That's right, you can have no more than 9 units occupying a single map square. This means "stacks of doom" a la Civilization series are impossible to achieve. Therefore, your ability to "barrel through" the enemy's territory is severely limited by the damage and losses you accumulate.Bagh. What mechanic stops you from just making a two, three, or four-square army?

The mechanic of UPKEEP it's very hard to keep four powerful stacks up in MOM

Defender moves first! This means that when an attacker moves his stack of 9 units into the defender's city (with 9 units defending), the defender gets to cast a spell of his own and move all 9 of his units (casting spells with each of them, if they are able to do so) before the attacker gets to do anything. With a powerful enough defense, the defender might even be able to wipe out the attacker before he can do anything at all.Considering what I just said, that's a pretty big caveat. Nine defenders versus potentially 144 attackers (that's assuming a 4-by-4 square, which is about the biggest thing you would probably get in a single turn, considering movement points).\

Considering the defender gets to move first and cast spells it is very easy to thwart ever single one of your stacks if you don't have the proper makeup to take out the castle no matter what is cast. Very hard to keep flying on four stacks when the defender can easily cast the spell that makes his castle fly in the air and then put 40 points into counter magic before you even get to TRY to cast one single spell.

Nodes, the analog for EWoM's "shards", have an extremely powerful dispelling effect. This makes it almost impossible to cast off-colour spells in that node, unless your wizard is a Node Master, which happens to be the most expensive special ability to take (requires at least 1 spell book in each of nature, chaos and sorcery magic as well as 1 point for the pick itself, totalling 4 points out of 11).And, HOW big are these nodes again? If it's a huge field of energy, I could see this being of value, but other than that.....

The nodes aren't that big one square, but, protected by the proper type of units and magic very hard to take them as some nodes prevent you from casting magic regardless of what you have or who you have in your army thus kind of like in The Mummy II where the gods took away the mummys magical powers

Spell of Return. Even if you manage to destroy the enemy's fortress city, if he has other cities left and mana in reserve, he can begin casting the Spell of Return which will summon a new fortress in his largest available city and reincarnate him within it. Also keep in mind that he maintains full control of his economy and all of his units during this process, though he is unable to cast spells.Methinks thou hast missed the point of "heartripping". You don't always have to go for the channeler: you take out powerful cities like econ or research centers, and cripple some stat or the other.

And methinks you miss the point of how powerful wizards are in MOM except for when they have been put in stasis after losing a battle they can do the same things to you in ANY of their cities, research centers, nodes any place on the map there is no having to be in the area to cast spells in MOM. They can cast the same spells in any of those research centers, cities whatever and they could put one single unit flying an invisible and if you didn't have the proper counters you'd never take those cities, research centers or nodes and you can't make counters for everything at a whim in MOM

Awareness, Nature's Awareness, Oracles etc. These spells and buildings expand a wizard's radii of sight, allowing him to detect your forces before you reach his cities, allowing time to prepare an appropriate defense.Well, that would certainly help, but it would be mighty hard to eliminate the problem just with increases detection. You still have to send a significantly powerful defense force to whichever juicy target the other guy selects. If you guessed right and stationed your forces there ahead of time, then good for you. If not, then you're still in trouble.

If IF's and BUT's were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry christmas too. You really need to play MOM before you start THINKING you'd know how to play it. It's quite different from any other fantasy wargame out there.

Invisible units. If the defender is in possession of invisible units and the attacker lacks True Seeing (Life magic spell, some units and hero items have it as well), then it is nearly impossible to take the city because invisible units cannot be targeted or attacked at all unless you move a unit adjacent to it in battle. Invisible units for attacking aren't nearly as powerful because they must move adjacent to the enemy to attack, making them vulnerable.Flip side of the same coin, if the attacker has invisible units, you're in a boatload of trouble.

Resources (besides chaos, nature or sorcery nodes) are occupied by cities, so they cannot be "captured" without taking the city itself.Ok, you've got me there..... or do you: see the bolded bottom of the post.

Channeling. The further away from a wizard's fortress he attempts to cast a spell, the more expensive it is to cast. This operates at a straight multiplier ranging from 0.5x (only when defending your fortress) to 3.0x based on the range (casting on the opposite plane is always 3.0x as expensive). This means that the defender in his fortress may effectively have 6 times as much mana to use as the attacker. This, of course, is partially mitigated if the attacker has the Channeler ability, but that ability costs 2 picks (very expensive, in other words).Again, the flip side problem. You have to wait until the enemy is right on top of you to cast a spoell to get rid of him/her.

Overland vs. combat spellcasting. Most area-affecting spells can be cast both in combat and overland (out of combat). If cast overland, the spell costs 5x as much but becomes permanent in that city (with a small mana upkeep). If cast in combat, the spell is much cheaper and requires no upkeep. This gives the defender the flexibility to use the permanent overland version on high-value targets and the cheap combat version in less-well defended targets should the need arise. This allows a defender to protect a large number of different targets at low cost, while really beefing up the defenses of high-value targets at a low upkeep.Again, this worked, but:
We have NO assurances that EWOM will even remotely resemble MoM. All of these mechanics could appear in the game, or none of them could. Even if they did reappear, the differences in other areas like algorythms, mana generation, units, and general working of the game would likely distort the effect on gameplay.

One other thing I will note here the AI in MOM could see you coming a mile aways and toss powerful overland spells on you and your army before you even got to where you were going. I've had armies just totally devestated by overland spells playing on Hard and Impossible Difficulty. Of course like any other game MOM is easy on easy and normal difficulty and I allway recommend people start out playing on at least HARD to really get a feel of the challenge of it.

It was never meant to be multiplayer and I'm glad. Multiplayer is for geeks who need to get their epeen off cheating other players online. Cheat or no though it's still about epeen. That's another reason MOM is the greatest no multiplayer geeks with epeen to ruin it with their crying boo hooing waaaahing for balance. ;0)

Hey, no need to be insulting!

I wasn't being insulting I was being FACTUAL! There have been polls after polls after polls and SOLO play wins out every single time and over 80% would rather play SOLO than with some silly EPEENERS. One of the biggest reasons gamers don't like to play multiplayer is guess what? PEOPLE CHEAT! or are EPEEN azzhats one of the two but both are at the top of the ladder for disgust with multiplayer. Polls have also shown most of those soloers don't even care if there is a multiplayer element in the game. Look at GalCiv I & II neither one has multiplayer and have sold in the 100's of thousands of copies. I think that says it all about caring about multiplayer. I'm so glad Brad is not going to put any emphasis on multiplayer if it is going to change the solo player experience. I really wish he wouldn't include one at all though because I still can see the whinning, boo hooer cry babies screaming about balance when Elemental comes out. Beating their chest for change just like some mama's boy.

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Quoting ChongLi,

reply 25

That's a nice idea in theory, however I doubt it would work in practice. Buff spells, as an example, would throw the whole equation out of whack.

In MoM the number of buffs you could stack on one unit was pretty ridiculous. You could take some of the weakest units in the game and buff them up to the point where they would destroy the toughest units. Because of the figure system, different types of units would benefit more from the same buff.

A unit with 8 figures (such as spearmen or slingers) would get 8 times the benefit out of a +1 sword buff as a 1 figure unit (such as a great wyrm or great drake).

This gave you a huge amount of flexibility. You could choose to use very expensive and powerful units with limited buffability or use a cheap unit with huge buffability.

You could fix the buffs to get around that though. It's not in any way an insurmountable problem, especially given that we dont' know how buffs work yet.

But in Elemental most of the units are human. A human with 1 day of training and a normal sword is going to benefit from buffs in the same way that a human with a +5 magic flaming sword and elite level training is going to.

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I have to agree about the whole "don't stress about multi player" thing. It is one of the things I love about gal civ 2. I wouldn't want to be stuck as the Yor trying to fend off a Thalian rush in a medium sized map in gc2-t. Would I like there to be a multi player option? Absolutely. If I were playing against my 8 year old son, I'd just give him the Thalians, teach him their basic strat, and make a real challange of it

But if they had taken the time to "balance" that game it would have ruined the appeal that has placed it as my 3rd most played game. (mom being #2)

I do hope they don't try to balance this game in a power sense, but instead in an enjoyability sense much like they did with galciv2-twilight. The races play so differently it can be a lot of fun to experiment with each. There are races you simply would NOT want to use if you were trying to be competitive in a multi player evironment.

As far as master of magic goes:

The thing about master of magic, is that it was so unbalanced in so many ways. Halfling slingers were ultra bad.... unless you had missile immunity. then they were a laughing stock. Some people liked sky drakes, some people liked arch angels. The real key though, was not in any one individual unit or spell. Instead, much like magic the gathering (the inspriation for master of magic) the potency was in the combinations. No one combo was ultimate. As a rule though, the more powerful something was, the more vulnerable it was to it's achilies heel.

I agree with the idea of stack limitations. I do like the logistics mechanic from galciv, and hope that is something they impliment here in some way instead of an arbitrary number of units. How would that work with all the spells and such? exactly the same way it did in MoM. One big drake, or lots of small units. While I think your initial points about MoM Chong-Li were valid, I think you've gotten cought up in trying to explain the mechanics of that game to people that have never played it. And lets face it, that game is too complex. I think we can rest assured the devs are familiar with it, or they would not have taken the wild hair to make a successor.

I think it is also worth mentioning, you can duplicate the concept of something without duplicating the exact method / formula. Galciv's logistics solution although still imperfect, is a superior solution to a 9 unit stack limit. If you have not played it, It would be near impossible to explain why for the same reasons you are never going to be able to fully explain the dynamics of master of magic to those who have not played that game. Having played both though, Limiting an army by the base value of its components, before enchantments and magical gear, IMO would be ideal.

As far as master of magic being silly once you impliment multiplayer, I do not agree. The multi player shell allowed those of us that were hard core enough to play the game multi player, and we had quite a good time with it. There were an awful lot of halfling players. But then, missile immunity suddenly would make anothe race look much more appealing! The game was not balanced. The only way TO balance that game, would have been to vanilia-ize everything. Same thing you'd have to do for galciv2. Those of us that have been clamoring for a successor to mom, that is exactly what we want. A game that is NOT vanila. That the different races, spells, etc. mean not only something, but mean ALOT! Game altering differences, with every choice, and lots of them!

I suspect one thing they are doing differently with elemental, is moving alot of those choices to after the game has started. What kind of army will you build? you chose that as you go. What kind of book picks will you take? That's going to depend partly on your starting faction, and partly on what shards you pick up instead of picking books.

I'm sure there will be special abilities ala~ galciv 2. I hope hoever, that they are more "fun" type things as was stated above. +10% farming just isn't an exciting bonus. That is one thing I think MoM got 100% right. All of those choices even the ones that weren't very good made you go "ooooooo!".

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You could fix the buffs to get around that though. It's not in any way an insurmountable problem, especially given that we dont' know how buffs work yet.

But in Elemental most of the units are human. A human with 1 day of training and a normal sword is going to benefit from buffs in the same way that a human with a +5 magic flaming sword and elite level training is going to.

I think doing a point-value system rather than a fixed cap overcomplicates things without much benefit. I mean, what is the benefit exactly?

The big drawback of such a point value system is that it becomes far more difficult to balance and, in my opinion, damages your ability to assess units in a natural way and likely will lead to the creation of charts that rank "damage per point" or "health per point".

From the screenshots I've seen, not all units will be human swordsman. Many will be large creatures like dragons and swamp beasts or whatever. It's pretty safe to say buffs will not affect all units equally and if that is the case, the units who benefit the most from buffs at the lowest point values will likely be dominant.

It turns things into way too much of an optimization game, I really don't like it.

I wasn't being insulting I was being FACTUAL! There have been polls after polls after polls and SOLO play wins out every single time and over 80% would rather play SOLO than with some silly EPEENERS. One of the biggest reasons gamers don't like to play multiplayer is guess what? PEOPLE CHEAT! or are EPEEN azzhats one of the two but both are at the top of the ladder for disgust with multiplayer. Polls have also shown most of those soloers don't even care if there is a multiplayer element in the game. Look at GalCiv I & II neither one has multiplayer and have sold in the 100's of thousands of copies. I think that says it all about caring about multiplayer. I'm so glad Brad is not going to put any emphasis on multiplayer if it is going to change the solo player experience.

I really wish he wouldn't include one at all though because I still can see the whinning, boo hooer cry babies screaming about balance when Elemental comes out. Beating their chest for change just like some mama's boy.

You don't get to be the judge of who you insult with your childish remarks, sorry. If your opinion of other human beings is so low that you prefer not to interact with them in a competitive game, that's your right. Please don't try to shove your beliefs down other people's throats.

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I mean, what is the benefit exactly?

Well, there's the fact that you won't screw up the rabble/elite balance. And that it makes more sense than an arbitrary limit.

in my opinion, damages your ability to assess units in a natural way and likely will lead to the creation of charts that rank "damage per point" or "health per point".

And is that such a bad thing? I for one enjoy both making charts and reading them, and judging by the proliferation of charts in GC2, a lot of other people do as well.

From the screenshots I've seen, not all units will be human swordsman. Many will be large creatures like dragons and swamp beasts or whatever. It's pretty safe to say buffs will not affect all units equally and if that is the case, the units who benefit the most from buffs at the lowest point values will likely be dominant.

Now there's where you're wrong. Although magical creatures will exist, they won't be treated like regular units, and they will be extremely rare. It's not a matter of saying to your conscriptoors "go round me up 200 dragons".

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Well, there's the fact that you won't screw up the rabble/elite balance. And that it makes more sense than an arbitrary limit.

Why does something have to make more sense to be preferable in this situation? This is a fantasy game after all, much of fantasy does not make sense.

I guess if you're used to table-top wargames or something you would prefer point values. I don't play them.

And is that such a bad thing? I for one enjoy both making charts and reading them, and judging by the proliferation of charts in GC2, a lot of other people do as well.

Yes, it is a bad thing, in my opinion anyway. It marginalizes the units and turns the entire game into a spreadsheet, sapping all of the flavour and nuance out of the game.

How do you assign point values to everything, anyway? How many points is invisibility or flying or poison or teleportation?

Now there's where you're wrong. Although magical creatures will exist, they won't be treated like regular units, and they will be extremely rare. It's not a matter of saying to your conscriptoors "go round me up 200 dragons".

I think you misinterpreted my use of the word "many". Most of the units in MoM were fantastic creatures, however, you couldn't train any of them, they had to be summoned with magic, often at a cost of huge amounts of mana.

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thats one of the points of elemental though, the same way it was in mom. Not all wizards buff equally. Some aren't going to be doing any buffs at all. What will be an optimal unit for you in one game, very well may not be in the next. If you don't have things that prompt charts to figure out what the best way to build a low cost ranged unit for your current build is, then you wind up with the problem that people are citing here.

To put it in MoM terms, stack of bowmen vs stack of slingers?

and secondly:

Your statement that units are not "tiered" in mom is not true. there are common, uncommon, rare, and ultra rare creature spells. each more powerful than the lower tier. For nearly every common creature, there is an ultra rare one that can do everything it can, but better.

For city created units, same thing. You start the game with spearmen, and you wind up with paladins. Is there any situation where you'd take a spearman, over a paladin?

Lastly, I suspect they are going a totally different route with unit creation in this game, Given what they've said about tailoring your units: I theorize we'll see troops made in more of a galciv ship creation venue. (master of orion 2 was similar)

I think that is a new thing for a fantasy game that I would have a TON of fun with and so I hope my guess is correct!

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Why does something have to make more sense to be preferable in this situation? This is a fantasy game after all, much of fantasy does not make sense.

True, but it muse be believable, explained, and internally consistent: Players will expect some sort of reason, be it scientific, magical, or practical, why only nine units can be stacked. A logistics or command point system goes a long way to providing that reason, in a way that the hard cap cannot.

Yes, it is a bad thing, in my opinion anyway. It marginalizes the units and turns the entire game into a spreadsheet, sapping all of the flavour and nuance out of the game.

In any case, it's irrelevant, since units will be custom built by each player. I honestly forgot that.

How do you assign point values to everything, anyway? How many points is invisibility or flying or poison or teleportation?

You look at the advantage that the ability confers, the amount of training needed teach it to a unit or the production/essence cost of an aritfact that adds it, and you come up with your best guess, which you then refine through beta and alpha testing until it satisfies people.

I think you misinterpreted my use of the word "many". Most of the units in MoM were fantastic creatures, however, you couldn't train any of them, they had to be summoned with magic, often at a cost of huge amounts of mana.

That may be true, but as people often seem to forget, we are not talking about MoM here. We are talking about Elemental, where beasts are rare and need to be recruited.

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You don't get to be the judge of who you insult

Lmfao I don't? hahaha Looks to me like I certainly do get to be the judge of who I "tell factual information to".

if your opinion of other human beings is so low that you prefer not to interact with them in a competitive game, that's your right.

Big difference in FACTS and OPINIONS perhaps you should look up the definitions. It's certainly no OPINION of how I perfer to interact with anyone it's FACT boy. How I feel about other human beings is FACT as well boy not an opinion. You really need to look up the definitions because now you don't even know what you are talking about.

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Wow there are so many points that I want to respond to in this thread that I'm just completely overwhelmed. I'm just not even going to try, instead I'll just ay what I want. Also, this thread has gone so far off topic that it is actually pretty funny.

Anyways, I am firmly against the "9 unit" stack limit thing. Now matter how much you argue, it did cause the same problem in MoM as it did in AoW. Once you are able to get ahold of the top tier units, you are simply not going to produce the crappy ones except in extreme circumstances. Now maybe it isn't as extreme in MoM as it was in AoW (where monocultures of the top tier units was effective against pretty much anything), but the problem was still there. By the end of the game, I sincerely doubt you'll be using the same types of units as you were using in the first turns. This doesn't translate directly to Elemental where there aren't really predesigned units, but it is still relevant. The goal in Elemental is to present the choice of whether to field a small army of elite troop, a huge rabble, or some mixture - and to have all of those be viable options. Doing this in MoM would result in a quick death. I know I haven't played it, but I've read enough comments from people who have played it to be as sure of this as if I had.

How maximum army size should be determined? I don't know. Maybe there shouldn't even be a maximum army size. In truth I think I do favor a 'soft cap' system where you can make your army as big as you want, but if you don't have the necessary skills or resources you might be better off splitting it up.

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True, but it muse be believable, explained, and internally consistent: Players will expect some sort ofreason, be it scientific, magical, or practical, why only nine units can be stacked. A logistics or command point system goes a long way to providing that reason, in a way that the hard cap cannot.

Very few games, if any, are internally consistent. It's really an anal criterion to have and it doesn't add anything to the gameplay.

The same thing goes for sports, take baseball for example. Foul balls count as strikes, except when it's strike 2, then they don't count at all, unless it was a bunt attempt, then it's a strikeout. A foul ball caught by a fielder is an out, except when it's a foul tip, unless it was strike 3.

Why are baseball rules not internally consistent and filled with exceptions? Because the game would suffer without those exceptions.

In any case, it's irrelevant, since units will be custom built by each player. I honestly forgot that.

Yeah, let's not forget. I am very skeptical of this feature. I fear it will lead to cookie-cutter unit designs, making the whole game vanilla and bland.

I really hope Stardock can prove me wrong on this one, though.

You look at the advantage that the ability confers, the amount of training needed teach it to a unit or the production/essence cost of an aritfact that adds it, and you come up with your best guess, which you then refine through beta and alpha testing until it satisfies people.

Yeah, but you have to come up with the production cost in the first place. Many abilities also tend to specialize units or interact with one another in such a way where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, adding invisibility to a ranged unit vs a melee unit is a big difference. The ranged unit benefits far more from it than the melee unit, to the point of being overpowering.

All of these factors come together in such a complicated way that varies based on how you use them. It's pretty much inevitable that there will be big holes in the point system to take advantage of this and lead to monotony.

That may be true, but as people often seem to forget, we are not talking about MoM here. We are talking about Elemental, where beasts are rare and need to be recruited.

Another strike against the game, but whatever.

Anyways, I am firmly against the "9 unit" stack limit thing. Now matter how much you argue, itdid cause the same problem in MoM as it did in AoW. Once you are able to get ahold of the top tier units, you are simply not going to produce the crappy ones except in extreme circumstances. Now maybe it isn't as extreme in MoM as it was in AoW (where monocultures of the top tier units was effective against pretty much anything), but the problem was still there. By the end of the game, I sincerely doubt you'll be using the same types of units as you were using in the first turns. This doesn't translate directly to Elemental where there aren't really predesigned units, but it is still relevant. The goal in Elemental is to present the choice of whether to field a small army of elite troop, a huge rabble, or some mixture - and to have all of those be viable options. Doing this in MoM would result in a quick death. I know I haven't played it, but I've read enough comments from people who have played it to be as sure of this as if I had.

You didn't play MoM, how do you know what problems it did or did not have? I am firmly against unlimited stack size and I have played enough examples of both to know that unlimited stack size is the bane of tactical variety. It boils the whole thing down into a numbers game.

MoM's elite units were balanced against the rabble by virtue of the fact that it took an extremely long time (or a huge amount of mana) to get your units to elite. And when they died, you had to start over/spend more mana on new ones.

Every single unit in the game of MoM had at least one weakness which could be exploited to completely neuter that unit, making it impossible to use that unit exclusively against a smart opponent (the AI in MoM was dumb as stones, so it didn't count).

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Very few games, if any, are internally consistent. It's really an anal criterion to have and it doesn't add anything to the gameplay.

\From Wikipedia:

In statistics and research, internal consistency is a measure based on the correlations between different items on the same test (or the same subscale on a larger test). It measures whether several items that propose to measure the same general construct produce similar scores. For example, if a respondent expressed agreement with the statements "I like to ride bicycles" and "I've enjoyed riding bicycles in the past", and disagreement with the statement "I hate bicycles", this would be indicative of good internal consistency of the test.

Internal consistency is usually measured with Cronbach's alpha, a statistic calculated from the pairwise correlations between items. Internal consistency ranges between zero and one. A commonly-accepted rule of thumb is that an α of 0.6-0.7 indicates acceptable reliability, and 0.8 or higher indicates good reliability. High reliabilities (0.95 or higher) are not necessarily desirable, as this indicates that the items may be entirely redundant. The goal in designing a reliable instrument is for scores on similar items to be related (internally consistent), but for each to contribute some unique information as well.

In games and other creative endeavors, the "items" aren't the mechanics themselves, but the lore used to "justify" them:If a game's Dragons were weak against water magic and water in general on account of a fear of it described in their description, but lived in the ocean, that game would be internally consistent.

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Umm, we're talking about games here, not statistics and research.

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(the AI in MoM was dumb as stones, so it didn't count).

While the ai could be beat in MOM using human EXPLOITS it was far from dumb as stones compared to todays ai's. AOW doesn't even have an ai really. Try to diplomatically become an ally with one of the races in MOM and then try to go place full stacks next to its capital where the tower is, just try. MOM had at least a challenging ai if you didn't exploit the hell out of it. It also built counters for your castles in the sky or flying invisible units given the time. I played 100's of games of MOM and I certainly know its ai is better than "dumb as stones".

When I first read your posts ChongLi I thought you had some intelligence about MOM, but, the more and more I read I'm learning you really didn't play it very much at all. You played AROUND with it but you really didn't get deep into it. So, I take away my vote for you getting into Alpha you would probably ruin the game of Elemental. But, then again most I have read here would as well.

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Killer stacks were a problem in MoM. Yes, they took long to build, but then they cut through pretty much anything without losses (unless you fight other killer stacks of course which the AI rarely built).

Elemental definitely needs fundamental mechanics to counter the power that massive armies at one point give yet keep the balance between larger armies of weaker units vs. smaller armies of stronger units. Especially considering that heroes can become a massive power.

An infinite stack size with powerful AoE spells might work.

A limited stack size with a point system between larger/smaller and powerful/weaker units might work.

Other innovative approaches between a limited stack size and multi-field-battles might work.

But since it is rather fundamental, I guess Elemental has a plan for that already.

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I don't think you'll see cookie cutter builds at all. I think the idea is, you will not have the same resources from one game to the next. One game you may be able to outfit an army with steel swords, the next..... you just don't have that option. Bows perhaps for your real damage, and clubs for infantry to keep them off your archers long enough to do the deed?

That's not even adding magic into the mix. Since it doesn't look like you'll be making spell book picks ahead of the game, more you'll be dealing with the cards you are dealt in game (ala the shards) Perhaps red shards go better with swordsmen that are in leather to move fast, but the blue shard spells work better with the ones in full plate? Now what do you do for the troops you lack the steel to make full plate for? EEP! Now you have run afoul of an opponent who is decked with crossbows and has a couple heroes tossing around fire spells.... quite nasty for your full plated knights. Better come up with another combination to field against those armies. Or perhaps utilize a portion of your essence, and imbue your knights with some protection from fire using your blue shard?

If this is the route they are going with it, I see us using a ton of different combinations with the unit creator, with our avatar, and the value of various resources changing from game to game. If the game goes some unforseen route like this, I see it potentially being great and very different than master of magic.

Lastly, as far as tactical combat: I think there are two different arguments here going on, that are passing in the night.

The first argument is quite simply: Stack limits prohibit the usage of lesser units. At this stage, I am not convinced there will be such a thing as "lesser units" being utilized in this game, so I do not think that will be an issue. Why would you arbitrarily give your unit a copper sword, when you have an abundant supply of enchanted steel? I just don't think Elemental will have the same sort of unit progression we are used to in the CIV style games.

The second argument: No stack limit removes the challange from the tactical map, and we might as well have auto playing tactical like galciv. It becomes all about who builds the bigger army ahead of time. I could easily see units having a "leadership point value" and your wizard having a leadership attribute. you could make a stack of units as big as your leadership attribute allowed you to. (like logistics in galciv). Heroes could boost that value. Deciding how much essence to devote into devloping your leadership, would be just one more choice you could get to make!

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Quoting ChongLi,

reply 8

I think doing a point-value system rather than a fixed cap overcomplicates things without much benefit. I mean, what is the benefit exactly?

The big drawback of such a point value system is that it becomes far more difficult to balance and, in my opinion, damages your ability to assess units in a natural way and likely will lead to the creation of charts that rank "damage per point" or "health per point".

From the screenshots I've seen, not all units will be human swordsman. Many will be large creatures like dragons and swamp beasts or whatever. It's pretty safe to say buffs will not affect all units equally and if that is the case, the units who benefit the most from buffs at the lowest point values will likely be dominant.

It turns things into way too much of an optimization game, I really don't like it.

Galciv 2 uses a similar logistics system (ship size is what determines the value, nothing else) and it worked reasonably well.

What you gain from it is that an Elder Dragon and a farmer with a pitchfork don't have the same value, and shouldn't take up the same resources in an army. We want the "rabble horde vs elite units" thing to be doable here, which means a straight unit cap is functionally impossible to make work. 9 Peasants will never, ever defeat 9 Paladins. 50 Peasants might, and given how much cheaper it is to field Peasants then Paladins (no armor, no mounts, no training), that's not an unfair fight in terms of resource cost to field the army.

Units in Galciv can still more or less travel together, but can't fight together unless they're in a fleet, which requires logistics. If they're not in a fleet, they fight one at a time (like Civ 4) and are much easier to take out. Initially you get medium level ships before you have the logistics to make a fleet for them, so the earlier small ships (which can form a fleet) still have a chance against their bigger cousins due to numbers.

It wasn't perfect, but it worked pretty well and wasn't very complicated.

You don't get to be the judge of who you insult with your childish remarks, sorry. If your opinion of other human beings is so low that you prefer not to interact with them in a competitive game, that's your right. Please don't try to shove your beliefs down other people's throats.

Well said.

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While the ai could be beat in MOM using human EXPLOITS it was far from dumb as stones compared to todays ai's. AOW doesn't even have an ai really. Try to diplomatically become an ally with one of the races in MOM and then try to go place full stacks next to its capital where the tower is, just try. MOM had at least a challenging ai if you didn't exploit the hell out of it. It also built counters for your castles in the sky or flying invisible units given the time. I played 100's of games of MOM and I certainly know its ai is better than "dumb as stones".

When I first read your posts ChongLi I thought you had some intelligence about MOM, but, the more and more I read I'm learning you really didn't play it very much at all. You played AROUND with it but you really didn't get deep into it. So, I take away my vote for you getting into Alpha you would probably ruin the game of Elemental. But, then again most I have read here would as well.

I've already established that you're a troll, I am done talking to you, kindly buzz off.

Killer stacks were a problem in MoM. Yes, they took long to build, but then they cut through pretty much anything without losses (unless you fight other killer stacks of course which the AI rarely built).

Elemental definitely needs fundamental mechanics to counter the power that massive armies at one point give yet keep the balance between larger armies of weaker units vs. smaller armies of stronger units. Especially considering that heroes can become a massive power.

An infinite stack size with powerful AoE spells might work.

A limited stack size with a point system between larger/smaller and powerful/weaker units might work.

Other innovative approaches between a limited stack size and multi-field-battles might work.

But since it is rather fundamental, I guess Elemental has a plan for that already.

Pretty much any killer stack somebody used in MoM has a counter that doesn't require blatant out-spending to defeat. The problem was that the AI was too dumb to do it.

In fact, the AI was so dumb it'd make the mistake of attacking your city with its engineers because it had an out-dated "build road to city X" order. The AI never used its heroes effectively at all (most stayed at low level and almost never had items because they never explored the lairs).

The only thing that made the AI any challenge at all was the fact that it's exempt from most of the rules (the AI doesn't pay any upkeep on any units) and gets huge bonuses to its rates of production, research, food and gold.

That's not even adding magic into the mix. Since it doesn't look like you'll be making spell book picks ahead of the game, more you'll be dealing with the cards you are dealt in game (ala the shards) Perhaps red shards go better with swordsmen that are in leather to move fast, but the blue shard spells work better with the ones in full plate? Now what do you do for the troops you lack the steel to make full plate for? EEP! Now you have run afoul of an opponent who is decked with crossbows and has a couple heroes tossing around fire spells.... quite nasty for your full plated knights. Better come up with another combination to field against those armies. Or perhaps utilize a portion of your essence, and imbue your knights with some protection from fire using your blue shard?

To me, this sounds too much like the game dictating your strategy to you rather than allowing you to formulate your own strategy. It's taking away many of the interesting choices for you to make, not a good thing IMO.

Galciv 2 uses a similar logistics system (ship size is what determines the value, nothing else) and it worked reasonably well.

What you gain from it is that an Elder Dragon and a farmer with a pitchfork don't have the same value, and shouldn't take up the same resources in an army. We want the "rabble horde vs elite units" thing to be doable here, which means a straight unit cap is functionally impossible to make work. 9 Peasants will never, ever defeat 9 Paladins. 50 Peasants might, and given how much cheaper it is to field Peasants then Paladins (no armor, no mounts, no training), that's not an unfair fight in terms of resource cost to field the army.

Units in Galciv can still more or less travel together, but can't fight together unless they're in a fleet, which requires logistics. If they're not in a fleet, they fight one at a time (like Civ 4) and are much easier to take out. Initially you get medium level ships before you have the logistics to make a fleet for them, so the earlier small ships (which can form a fleet) still have a chance against their bigger cousins due to numbers.

It wasn't perfect, but it worked pretty well and wasn't very complicated.

I think that's taking too simplistic a view. Of course 9 peasants should never be able to defeat 9 paladins. However, 9 pikemen should destroy 9 paladins. Proper balance is achieved by using a rock-paper-scissors system.

The problem with using a simple measure like ship size is that it does not translate well at all to a game like MoM. MoM's units were composed of individual figures which skew things. For example, a great drake unit had 1 great drake in it, whereas a spearmen unit had 8 spearmen in it. So technically you could have 9 great drakes or 72 spearmen.

The interesting part about this system is the effect it has on buffs. A buff that gives +2 attack to a unit (called swords in MoM) gives the great drake a straight +2 swords. However, when the same buff is cast on the spearmen it gives +2 swords per figure. With 8 figures, that is like getting +16 swords at the same cost.

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Quoting ChongLi,

reply 22

I think that's taking too simplistic a view. Of course 9 peasants should never be able to defeat 9 paladins. However, 9 pikemen should destroy 9 paladins. Proper balance is achieved by using a rock-paper-scissors system.

9 peasants can't. 50 probably can. Considering the relative cost of arming and training 50 peasants compared to 9 paladins, both should be options. The only case where it's not an option is if you put a 9 unit stack limit on.

The problem with using a simple measure like ship size is that it does not translate well at all to a game like MoM. MoM's units were composed of individual figures which skew things. For example, a great drake unit had 1 great drake in it, whereas a spearmen unit had 8 spearmen in it. So technically you could have 9 great drakes or 72 spearmen.

The interesting part about this system is the effect it has on buffs. A buff that gives +2 attack to a unit (called swords in MoM) gives the great drake a straight +2 swords. However, when the same buff is cast on the spearmen it gives +2 swords per figure. With 8 figures, that is like getting +16 swords at the same cost.

The closest analogy Elemental has to ship size is training level, so that'd be the easiest measure to use. Part of making troops is determining how much training you want to give them, and that makes them stronger.

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9 peasants can't. 50 probably can. Considering the relative cost of arming and training 50 peasants compared to 9 paladins, both should be options. The only case where it's not an option is if you put a 9 unit stack limit on.

The problem with this is that it becomes a simple matter to calculate the cost of 50 peasants vs 9 paladins. Once this calculation is done, there is no reason to use the less efficient unit. It boils the entire game down to an equation.

The closest analogy Elemental has to ship size is training level, so that'd be the easiest measure to use. Part of making troops is determining how much training you want to give them, and that makes them stronger.

So what is the point of training your troops if it reduces the number of them that you're allowed to field? Essentially, you're trading 50 peasants in for 9 paladins and if the equation is not equal, you'll always do one thing or the other.

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The problem with this is that it becomes a simple matter to calculate the cost of 50 peasants vs 9 paladins. Once this calculation is done, there is no reason to use the less efficient unit. It boils the entire game down to an equation.

Unless you don't have the more efficicent unit...... as emmagine said, not every game will have equal resources.

So what is the point of training your troops if it reduces the number of them that you're allowed to field?

Ummm...... maybe that it makes them stronger?

Umm, we're talking about games here, not statistics and research.

I know that the term was borrowed from statistics. However, when used in the context of a game, it means simply that the game must make some sort of sense: It can't contradict itself.

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