Wild Hunt & Ghost Ship Armada too weak?

[Meglobob]

Wild Hunt & Ghost Ship Armada both fun, amusing spells in SP play but a waste of time in MP play because by the time you can cast them, players armies are too powerful and it ends up being a waste of gems.

Has anyone got any good use out of them?

Given that Wild Hunt is conj 9 N6 spell to cast and Ghost Ship Armada is Ench 7 W4D3 to cast with 50N and 60W gem cost, shouldn't both those spells be given a serious power boost in a future patch?

Lets make both those spells desirable to cast.

[Migaaresno]

Make the "Ghost schip armada" have more and/or stronger skeletons. They dont even got armor. However on sea, nobody wears heavy armor. And the weapons they got are good. So i say we increase amount of skeletons.

[quantum_mechani]

Those are two of quite a number of globals that seem kind of fun but don't come near justifying their cost. Wrath of the Sea, Second Sun, Riches from Beneath, and a bunch of borderline ones whose use is extremely niche if any.

Unfortunately, the only moddable parts of these spells are the research, gem and path costs. This works for some spells like wild hunt, but for others you would have to make them so cheap and easy to cast it would be unthematic.

[jutetrea]

Agreed, although I think the changes wouldn't necessarily have to be to the spells but to their paths/costs.

By Conj 9 few care if they lose a priest here and there unless they've randomly Thug'd one. Also, by Conj 9 no one is going to waste a slot or extra gems to cast it when there are more appealing globals. Possibly drop down to Con 6, same cost?

Ghost ship isn't that bad really except the high gem cost. Its more of a way to annoy enemies than anything else. Possibly Ench 6 and 40 gems (think 30 is more reasonable for the benefit, but doubt it could go so low). Unless the spell was changed completely to either attack multiple sites per turn (a la Wild/Kindly) I wouldn't see it being that popular to begin with.

IMO there are the game winners
Utterdark
Bounty
Nexus
Burden(?)
Thetis (situational)

The very useful
forge
all the gem producers
GoH

So-So
Morgana
Wrath
Corruption
Riches
Haunted Forest


Fun, yet not really worth it unless situational
All the rest

[quantum_mechani]

jutetrea said:
Agreed, although I think the changes wouldn't necessarily have to be to the spells but to their paths/costs.

By Conj 9 few care if they lose a priest here and there unless they've randomly Thug'd one. Also, by Conj 9 no one is going to waste a slot or extra gems to cast it when there are more appealing globals. Possibly drop down to Con 6, same cost?

Ghost ship isn't that bad really except the high gem cost. Its more of a way to annoy enemies than anything else. Possibly Ench 6 and 40 gems (think 30 is more reasonable for the benefit, but doubt it could go so low). Unless the spell was changed completely to either attack multiple sites per turn (a la Wild/Kindly) I wouldn't see it being that popular to begin with.

IMO there are the game winners
Utterdark
Bounty
Nexus
Burden(?)
Thetis (situational)

The very useful
forge
all the gem producers
GoH

So-So
Morgana
Wrath
Corruption
Riches
Haunted Forest


Fun, yet not really worth it unless situational
All the rest

Tweaking the gem cost and pathcost like what you suggest is almost exactly what the CB mod does for ghost armada, and sad to say I still have yet to see anyone cast it.

I would categorize the globals more like this:

Game winners:
Forge of the Ancients
Arcane Nexus

Very Useful:
Gift of Health
Most of the gem producers
Haunted Forest
Nature's Bounty

The niche:
Fata Morgana
Mechanical Militia
Lure of the Deep
Wrath of God
Maelstrom
Stellar Focus

The very niche:
Guardians of the Deep
Thetis Blessing
Astral Corruption
Illwinter
Perpetual Storm
Utterdark
Burden of Time
Strands of Acrane Power
Enchanted Forest
Eyes of God

The near useless:
Wild Hunt
Ghost Armada
The Kindly Ones
Riches from Beneath
Second Sun
Wrath of the Sea
Dark Skies
Foul Air
The Looming Hell

And that's being pretty charitable with 'very niche' given half of them I have never seen cast at all, and the other half I have only ever seen succeed in annoying the other players enough to gang the caster.

[Shovah32]

I pretty much agree with QM but i would move a few. I would say astral corruption is atleast niche. If you have the best blood economy its great so it would be niche rather than very niche for me(although i do play blood alot so my opinion may be biased).

[Turin]

Doesn´t ghost ship armada have a couple of unique dudes, like the captain? You could improve their stats to make them a bit more fearsome.

[Sandman]

Foul air is a really nasty spell when the AI casts it. Every unit in the world which gets wounded gets diseased. The main problem is that nations which would benefit from it struggle to find the air magic to cast it.

Maybe Lanka...?

[Hadrian_II]

I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.

[quantum_mechani]

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.

That may be a piece of the problem, but it's far from the whole thing. Even with infinite slots I can't imagine casting wrath of the sea or many of the other globals low on the list.

[SelfishGene]

I'm suprised you rated Astral Corruption so low.

What good does a million astral pearls do if you can't cast anything with them without dying?

Unless i'm misunderstood how AC works, don't you have to beat the horror in order for the spell to "go through" and be considered to have happened. IE, you can't cast dispel successfully unless you beat the horror that follows.

[Micah]

No, the spell is cast first, then the attack happens. Low-level horror attacks also don't pose much of a threat to a prepared mage. Astral mages can cast returning, naure mages can spam a couple of swarms, death mages can skel-spam and follow up with drain life, fire, water, and air all have direct attack spells that will kill a horror as long as it gets stuck on bodyguards for a few rounds. Blood has leech and life for a life. Earth lacks anything stellar to deal with them, but that's a pretty small segment of the mage population.

Every so often you'll get unlucky, or something really big and nasty will show up, but there are plenty of ways around it.

[SelfishGene]

If you forge an item, though, and the forging mage dies, the item dissapears.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Being allowed infinite globals would be interesting. I would like that on the wish list.

[Jazzepi]

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.



I think it would be a mistake to remove the cap. Perhaps it could be adjusted to scale with the number of players, or simply be an option that you can set during server setup.

In any case, having a limit creates game tension. Tension is what makes decisions hard. When decisions are hard, you have to be good to make the correct ones. This is what separates bad players from good players and makes intricate, complex games like Dominions 3, with lots of tension, good.

If you remove the limit, then you remove some of the tension about casting globals, and therefore some of the interesting decisions you have to make.

You don't have to worry about filling up slots anymore, and you can't randomly get your global dispelled by someone else's. You also don't have to worry about having to put enough gems into your global enchantment that'll dispel someone else's when all 5 slots are filled. By taking out these things, and having no cap Dominions 3 would be a more shallow game.

Jazzepi

[Ubercat]

Jazzepi said:

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.



I think it would be a mistake to remove the cap. Perhaps it could be adjusted to scale with the number of players, or simply be an option that you can set during server setup.

In any case, having a limit creates game tension. Tension is what makes decisions hard. When decisions are hard, you have to be good to make the correct ones. This is what separates bad players from good players and makes intricate, complex games like Dominions 3, with lots of tension, good.

If you remove the limit, then you remove some of the tension about casting globals, and therefore some of the interesting decisions you have to make.

You don't have to worry about filling up slots anymore, and you can't randomly get your global dispelled by someone else's. You also don't have to worry about having to put enough gems into your global enchantment that'll dispel someone else's when all 5 slots are filled. By taking out these things, and having no cap Dominions 3 would be a more shallow game.

Jazzepi



Then you're stuck with the problem of there being a ton of globals which no experienced player will waste their time casting, expecially in MP. Why not up the global cap to eight? or 1/2 the number of players, minimum 5?

[lch]

Ubercat said:
Then you're stuck with the problem of there being a ton of globals which no experienced player will waste their time casting, expecially in MP. Why not up the global cap to eight? or 1/2 the number of players, minimum 5?


How should any arbitrarily picked value be better than another? I think this should be configurable when you create a game just like the size of the HoF is, too.

[Loren]

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.



Actually, I'm thinking maybe somewhere in between.

No limit on the number of globals, it's just the more globals that are up the harder it is to cast (the gem cost is increased) any new one.

[Jazzepi]

Ubercat said:

Jazzepi said:

Hadrian_II said:
I think every global has some use, but the problem is more that there are only 5 slots. If every global would get his own slot someone might even care to caste Riches from Beneath.

I dont understand anyway why the globals are limited to 5.



I think it would be a mistake to remove the cap. Perhaps it could be adjusted to scale with the number of players, or simply be an option that you can set during server setup.

In any case, having a limit creates game tension. Tension is what makes decisions hard. When decisions are hard, you have to be good to make the correct ones. This is what separates bad players from good players and makes intricate, complex games like Dominions 3, with lots of tension, good.

If you remove the limit, then you remove some of the tension about casting globals, and therefore some of the interesting decisions you have to make.

You don't have to worry about filling up slots anymore, and you can't randomly get your global dispelled by someone else's. You also don't have to worry about having to put enough gems into your global enchantment that'll dispel someone else's when all 5 slots are filled. By taking out these things, and having no cap Dominions 3 would be a more shallow game.

Jazzepi



Then you're stuck with the problem of there being a ton of globals which no experienced player will waste their time casting, expecially in MP. Why not up the global cap to eight? or 1/2 the number of players, minimum 5?



The problem with the globals that nobody casts is that they simply are not good enough for their cost. Raising the cap isn't the solution. Making the globals worth casting, is. Even if you raise the cap to 8-15, nobody is ever going to cast wild hunt.

Jazzepi

[SelfishGene]

Eh, i disagree to some extent. Blood is easy to get; easier than Astral pearls. AC is level 6 research spell.

Yea, if you wait until the point in the game where everyone has fully decked out SCs with Sunslayers ect, i'm sure it's not quite as potent. But it certainly seems like a game winning spell the few times i've cast it. If it doesn't exactly end the game, it certainly creates a pretty mean bottleneck that other factions have to really work around, and that they may not. Saying a unequipped generalized 2N haruspex caster can always beat an attacking horror is a bit of a stretch imo.