Trample balance discussion

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Agema

No. It's the size stat that is there for a reason. The reason for the graphics is they make everything look prettier: you could do the battles with ASCII symbols representing everything (like Nethack) and get as much information out of it. Similarly WRT the sphinx, I know it's a statue in-game. My point is that the Egypt statue is not reflective of what sphinx has to be: there are statues and bas-reliefs of sphinxes from India to Europe, many (all?) of which are much smaller.

What I'm getting at is that I think people are applying too much logic and reality to it all. It's a game. It's about the interplay between various statistics, attributes and effects, where the designers put a lot of time and effort into making it work. Hence if elephants should be nerfed to size 5 you should make the case with whether they are unbalanced or not.

When you start basing arguments on the fact you can fit more than 3 humans into the area an elephant takes up, or that a mammoth was 20% larger than an elephant is in real life, guessing that Niefel giants were supposed to be 15, 20 or 30 feet tall according to Nordic myth, or that the in-game graphical dragon has 28% more pixels than the in-game graphical elephant, it's all missing the point.

No, I think it is you who is missing the point. For one, saying the graphics are just there to look pretty is ludicrous. They are a massive boon to play - you can at a glance tell what sort of unit it is, what weapons and armour it might have, even guess at resistances and other attributes. Of course you might want to know more, in which case you can look over the stats, but to have /just/ the stats would make the game virtually impenetrable.

Realism can serve a similar purpose. When you call a weapon a sword or a short bow or 'fire breath' people immediately have some idea of what it will do. They can still go and look at the stats (which are 'hidden' for a /reason/) if they want to know exactly how it works, but believe me people would enjoy the game far less if a unit called a 'knight' with a heavily armoured powerful looking graphic was actuall a hoburg with a pitchfork. According to your logic there wouldn't be a problem there - It would still be just as pretty, in terms of gameplay people would only need to look at the stats to know. Yet it's clearly absurd and counterintuitive.

You're also putting far too much emphasis on the design decisions of the devs. I'm willing to bet KO doesn't even remember why krakens are whatever size they are. He's said numerous times he isn't even very concerned about balance and he's often very surprised at how things actually work in terms of gameplay. I'm not criticising him here, it's just the way he is.

People have already, many, many times discussed the balance of elephants and tramplers more generally. When people talk about size and graphics and so on, they are considering the other effects a change in size has - besides graphics. Whether it will make the game less intuitive, or has a 'wrong' feeling about it. That's precisely the sort of thing KO thinks about, not so much balance and stats. He primarily wants an elephant to be an elephant (as he envisions), not unit X to do Y or Nation A to be stronger than nation B at point C in the game.

[K]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I think they're just not very fun to fight. Unless you can muster paralyze or something, you're basically stuffed. I've always found them to be quite unfun for that reason.

Really? I've always found them super fun to fight because once they break they take out the enemy army/mages.

I mean, regular elephants only need to be countered with archers of Fire Large Monster and chaff (like PD) to die for the cause, while super armored elephants need something more exotic to get them to flee.

Blessed troops will do, but I favor the Water bless for it's high defense and additional attacks.

I suppose most people default to magery, but it seems a waste for units that break spectacularly with minimal damage.

[Edratman]

How about a new defensive formation, the square? If could have all the historical strengths and weakness of squares: great at repelling, but very vulnerable to ranged fire.

[Agema]

Firstly, just because something is bigger doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be a size bigger. A mammoth may be bigger than an elephant, but what would make a size difference is whether the mammoth has the bulk to knock an elephant out of the way. I'd suggest possibly not - a 6 foot tall man cannot reliably just knock a 5 foot tall man out of his way.

Secondly, why shouldn't Elephants be bigger than Niefel Giants? I could suggest even if a Niefel Giant were taller, it still might not have even close to the same mass as they're much thinner. Generally, it's pretty pointless second-guessing the size of many mythological creatures. Although the Egyptians made a really big sphinx statue, the sphinx was a winged lion with a human head, from which we could assume a sphinx was, well, about lion-sized. Just because there's a 100+ foot-high statue of Jesus in Rio it doesn't mean we think Jesus was 100 feet tall. Similarly, dragons vary enormously in myths. Maybe in Dominions they really are about the size of an Elephant or mammoth.

[Adept]

My only beefs with Trample are the automatic 1 point of damage, and the fact that one target can be trampled several times in a single turn.

Without those, I'd be quite happy. I'd still like to see my Dagon actually use the ice swords I give him too, instead of just using them to parry and fight other siz 6 critters.

[Zeldor]

Xietor:

Yeah, and I play with LA Agartha. Some people try to play with Marverni or MA Agartha. They have no elephants. They sacreds are a joke. They have no cheap infantry to expand. Their crossbowmen have lame precision and need flaming arrows to be effective. And they all get owned by elephants.

[Xietor]

Bandar Log does not have good national troops?

Are you mad? Or have you just never played Bandar Log? Do you know what a Mandaha is? It is one of the best summons in the game. I have spent 100s gems wishing for them before. And they have many many other less expensive but very good national summons.

I would check out Baalz guide to Bandar Log as he touches on most of them.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Xietor

Are you mad? Or have you just never played Bandar Log? Do you know what a Mandaha is? It is one of the best summons in the game. I have spent 100s gems wishing for them before. And they have many many other less expensive but very good national summons.

I would check out Baalz guide to Bandar Log as he touches on most of them.

That's a national summon and a commander/mage/SC, not a troop by any definition. As for the troop summons, you even refer to them in the post I quote as national summons.

If you aren't claiming that BL's recruitable troops are strong then I'm not disagreeing with you. No need to act like an *******.

[Xietor]

Oh sorry then, we are talking 2 different things. They have very powerful national summons.

Their castle bought troops are good as well. their sacreds put heart companions to shame. And cost less gold and resources. And bandar log gets 80 free design points(2 heat).

My only point, perhaps poorly made, is a nerf to elephants would imo adversely affect arcos the most.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Xietor

There castle bought troops are good as well. their sacreds put heart companions to shame.

You've said a couple of times how bad they are.

But I remember you saying a while back that MA Arco was one of the better nations precisely because they have heart companions.

Have you just changed your mind, or am I misremembering?