Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?

[PvK]

[quote]Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

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Originally posted by Blitz:
[qb] ...

Where standard arco can boast edges in more efficient infantry and trampling, giants versus chariots and myrmidons is laughable to say the least.

Why are you sending chariots, which gain their advantage by trampling smaller troops, against giants? Myrmidons can hold their own against giants, since you can easily have three times their number with enough cheap castles producing them. If you can't produce enough Myrmidnos, then use your cheaper troops, since Jotuns are strong enough to kill just about any human in one hit.
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I wouldn't use Myrmidons, since the Myrm armor will do little good against giant-wielded weapons and hurled boulders. Practically the same effect can be had with Cardaces, who are 2/3 the cost and very low resources, so they are essentially disposable. The main thing is to have a lot of little worthless guys for them to busy themselves trying to squash with overkill weapons, while they get peppered with a combo of spears, javelins, arrows, and magic. Sending valuable (in gold or resources or gems) units against giants is more risky than is usually necessary.

And yes, the Philosopher and Skeptic are captiol-only. My mistake.

PvK

[Blitz]

Myrmidons can hold their own against giants, since you can easily have three times their number with enough cheap castles producing them.

I don't know which is more amusing, myrmidons "easily" holding their own against giants, or being able to mass produce them with any effectiveness. Obviously cheriots are bad against giants, that was the point.

Forging is certainly _not_ a wash. GE Arco has access to almost every elemental item, and most of the astral items as well.

On the surface, it might seem that arco has the edge, but when you consider that most players use elemental magic on their pretender (air/water/earth), and not as much sorcery, you will find that it's much easier to fill the forging gaps as Jotunheim. GE gets paths FAWES, while jotun get WSDNB. Their strengths are different, but there's no clear edge to Arco.

Philosophers give you a huge lead in your research ability, since they are both extremely cheap, and extremely efficient researchers.

I hear this a lot. That advantage completely vanishes if jotunheim finds sages. It's an advantage to be sure, but it's a capitol only troop that dosen't do anything BETTER than the seithkona... it does it cheaper. GE can only recruit one per turn. Since jotunheim can generally expand faster than GE, often this advantage in COST seems more important than it really is. By expanding quicker, jotunheim has a moderately good chance of finding sages, and even without finding them, they can often make up the gold difference between a seithkona and a philosopher.

I guess the best question to ask would be this... would you rather recruit philosophers or seithkona? One does one thing better than any other unit... and slightly better than a sage. The other was the winner of my "Best mage under 100 gold" poll. Comparing the two seems silly.

It is highly debatable whether the Norna is superior to the mystic, since that requires you to make a judgement on whether a mage that is limited entirely to sorcery is better than one that has access to both elemental magic and astral magic.

I'm surprised you want to debate this, but maybe I shouldn't be. The norna is a better astral mage, and has access to level 3 death as well. She costs 220 to 180, but has an extra magic path. I'm a huge fan of the mystic, but if given the choice I'd prefer the norna. I imagine that's a matter of taste, but I think you might concede there's certianly no huge advantage to arco in magery... especially when you consider the Jotun Skratti, Norna, and Seithkona are available to jotun, compared to GE's single mage.

This is especially true when you consider that Jotunheim will never have a dozen or so mages that can cast astral fires.

GE will never have a dozen mages able to cast relief, drain life, or raise skeletons. I'd rather have a norna, but it's not a massive edge either way.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Blitz:
I don't know which is more amusing, myrmidons "easily" holding their own against giants, or being able to mass produce them with any effectiveness. Obviously cheriots are bad against giants, that was the point.

Once you have 10 or so castles, then you certainly can produce myrmidons in fairly large numbers. They only need to hold for long enough for your mystics to kill the giants after all. Myrmidons are no worse at fighting giants than any of the other medium/heavy infantry that's available.

On the surface, it might seem that arco has the edge, but when you consider that most players use elemental magic on their pretender (air/water/earth), and not as much sorcery, you will find that it's much easier to fill the forging gaps as Jotunheim.

Your pretender can only do one thing at a time, and you will almost always need fewer death items than the elemental and astral ones.

I guess the best question to ask would be this... would you rather recruit philosophers or seithkona?

If given the choice between the two, then I would recruit philosophers until I had a need for Seithkona.

GE will never have a dozen mages able to cast relief, drain life, or raise skeletons. I'd rather have a norna, but it's not a massive edge either way.

Druids and jade sorceresses are quite common, which can easily provide all you'll need for relief. Raise skeletons is a nice spell, but then normal arco doesn't get that either. Drain life s another spell that's good, but not necessary when you have mages that can cast all four types of elemental spells. It's quite difficult to get immunity to all of the elements without also leaving yourself open to soulslay.

[ June 23, 2004, 05:22: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Blitz:
GE will never have a dozen mages able to cast relief, drain life, or raise skeletons. I'd rather have a norna, but it's not a massive edge either way.

Maybe not dozens of reliefers, but certainly Drain and Skeletons is simple enough: Mound Fiends with staffs. It doesn't help that death magic can expand exponentially as long as you fuel it properly, and all forms of Arco can Acash for all gem types easily enough, so you won't be lacking for death gems. One Mound Fiend can summon other Mound Fiends, and it just goes on.

[Leif_-]

On a more general note, I personally think that not every theme should be equally balanced. Sometimes people want a more challenging game, or particularly good players might want to level the playing-field somewhat when playing with friends.

Sure, you can always leave some points unused when you design your pretender, but the challenge you get from that is different than the challenge you get from an underpowered theme.

[Blitz]

Another point about the Golden Era research advantage... since the philosophers are capitol-only, and the seithkona is a superior researcher to the mystic, once a second fort (or sage site) is producing researchers, the arcoscephale research bonus is for the most part eliminated.

On a more general note, I personally think that not every theme should be equally balanced. Sometimes people want a more challenging game, or particularly good players might want to level the playing-field somewhat when playing with friends.

I'd have to disagree. Idealy the game should have perfect balance. It's never going to happen, in any game... but there are few advantages to having dominant themes and pretenders, as imbalances hurt diversity.

[Leif_-]

Originally posted by Blitz:
I'd have to disagree. Idealy the game should have perfect balance. It's never going to happen, in any game... but there are few advantages to having dominant themes and pretenders, as imbalances hurt diversity. [/QB]

I don't see why. A game with 17 default themes that are perfectly (or close enough to perfect for government work) balanced and then has 17 less well balanced themes, is still more diverse than a game that only has 17 default themes that are perfectly balanced - as long as none of the unbalanced themes are better than the default ones.

Not all play is knife-edge competitive play, so I don't see why all themes must be a real option for that kind of play. So what if you can't expect to win with a certain theme in an intense multi-player game? Winning isn't all there is to having fun, after all.