Spells that arguably break the game

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Amadamus

Look for sure it can be countered - but look at the micro involved to have to do that.

Manuvere a sneeky thug into a prime spot attack the province - win - mind hunt - dead. It is not always possible to have an astral unit on hand - especially Tir who dont have astral.

If you are a non astral nation up against an astral one, then you will be mind hunted to hell. And besides mind hunt, what about Earth Attack? Not very easy to counter that one - devastating spell.

These spells just seem like an intrusion upon the game whereby the finese of the strategy gives way to uninspired heavy handed drugery. Being forced to counter said effects (and indeed some times it cant be countered), introduces extra micro that doesnt enhance the experience at all.

Your sneaky thug ignores Earth Attack. He also ignores teleporting other thugs/mage teams on top of him. And maneuvering him into place usually involves casting Cloud Trapeze, at least for Tir/Vanheim. Fighting someone with with stealthy, teleporting, recruitable thugs is really hard if you don't have the same. You can raid with your own thugs, but if they aren't stealthy they're vulnerable to teleporting attack squads, which means you're losing yours faster than he is.
Mind Hunt is one of the few actual counters that works on hiding commanders. It requires spamming to be effective, assuming thugs have decent mr, which means many high S mages, probably using boosters and/or penetration items. And the risk of teleporting a S mage in to feeblemind the hunters.

It's a raiding counter. That's all mind hunt is really for. By mid game it's not really hard for even non-Astral nations to have an astral mage or 2 (or domes) in every research center/castle and send them out with major armies.
If you get it early and spam it on an unprepared enemy, you can do serious damage, but that's true of many things.

[thejeff]

Even with victory conditions, endgame can be long and hard. 50-60% of capitals is not at all easy to achieve in a good size game. Remember how hard well-defended forts are to take in the late game. Defender advantage is enormous when he can buff his troops and dump army killing spells on you before you can cast anything.

SCs should be able to handle most assassin spells. And without Mind Hunt, how do you handle stealthy raiding SCs? Makes them invest in MR, at least.

[Amadamus]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Even with victory conditions, endgame can be long and hard. 50-60% of capitals is not at all easy to achieve in a good size game. Remember how hard well-defended forts are to take in the late game. Defender advantage is enormous when he can buff his troops and dump army killing spells on you before you can cast anything.

SCs should be able to handle most assassin spells. And without Mind Hunt, how do you handle stealthy raiding SCs? Makes them invest in MR, at least.

Hmmm... not that i can speak much about the end game, but it would seem that if you are atop someones capital its almost game over. Besides, why do you need to attack? Starve them out, or let them break the seige - then the advantage moves to the attacker.

On the point of stealthy raiders... wouldnt you hope that you were capable of raiding your opponent as well? Wouldnt it then be more of a game of cat and mouse limiting your opponents moves, defending what was important? I don't know, but surely reaching for the mind hunt is a bit well, unimaginative?

It just doesn't seem right - SC's mages and thugs should kill SC's mages and thugs on the battlefield not from a 5 gem ritual.

[Gandalf Parker]

The "arguably" was well placed in the subject.
I have seen complaints that the late game is decided more by magic than by armies, but I think that is on purpose. There are plenty of games available which are decided by armies. So I wouldnt want to see the game changed that way for everyone.

However, Im not against it as an option (which it is). I can see the idea that it would be fun to see a Dom3 game settled by armies. There have been some dom3 games which did that. There is a setting to make research difficult. And various mods for cutting out spells. In fact, the developers did create two mods. One limits all research to level 6, and another limits all research to level 4. Id be willing to host such a game on Dom3Minions.com if you wanted (for a direct connect game) or you can host it on LLamaserver.net (for a pbem game).

[rdonj]

Gandalf: I tested one of those mods recently, and it seemed to be broken So any such game would need a fixed mod to work.


Back when I was a newer player, I would have agreed with some of your proposed spell removals. But having played a decent number of games now, I just can't agree with things like removing mind hunts, etc. For one thing mind hunt really IS a pretty easy spell to defend against. And those tir thugs that were being talked of earlier can easily have 20+ MR, which drastically ups the number of mind hunts required to kill them. And is really one of only a very few ways they can be killed. Most of these sorts of spells are almost necessary in the late game to allow you to actually kill the other surviving players, who may have well over a hundred mages and a significant gem income that would make a normal sort of war between the two of you go on forever.

The best way to handle spells you don't want in a game is just to agree beforehand that they are banned. Plenty of games do that and that's fine. But you'll never get the community to agree to remove most of those spells. And I think you are overestimating (or overstating) the effectiveness of some of them by a fair margin.

[Lingchih]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

The "arguably" was well placed in the subject.
I have seen complaints that the late game is decided more by magic than by armies, but I think that is on purpose. There are plenty of games available which are decided by armies. So I wouldnt want to see the game changed that way for everyone.

However, Im not against it as an option (which it is). I can see the idea that it would be fun to see a Dom3 game settled by armies. There have been some dom3 games which did that. There is a setting to make research difficult. And various mods for cutting out spells. In fact, the developers did create two mods. One limits all research to level 6, and another limits all research to level 4. Id be willing to host such a game on Dom3Minions.com if you wanted (for a direct connect game) or you can host it on LLamaserver.net (for a pbem game).

Damn, those really seem like a cop-out to me Gandalf. Why in the world would anyone play such games?

[thejeff]

And if you want to ban them for a particular game, it's easy to make a mod that removes them, which is usually better than just agreeing to ban them.

[LDiCesare]

Burden of Time is only really useful for a few nations, and they'll wait to have enough death gems so it can't be dispelled easily before casting it. If you hoard your D gems instead of, say, summoning tartarians, you certainly deserve the result.

Sitting on top of a capital and trying to starve people does not work. You want to break in very fast. In 2 of the games I'm playing, someone's capital was besieged and the attacking army had to leave because of another nation intervening. also try to starve out MA C'tis while sitting on top of their capital. Your army will die in a few years while C'tis will just be unable to build more assassins. Those already inside the fort might have killed a few of your commanders in the meantime.

[militarist]

I think BoT is too early and too cheap. It should be lvl 8-9 spell and should be much more expensive. The argument that it is powerful not against all nations is not really strong, because it is always powerful WHEN you cast it. Because you cast it exactly when it's going to affect your closest neigbour(s). When your opponent have no weakness to this spell, you just don't cast at all. So it is either unused or it's a real nuke. And BoT is a really ballance-breaking spell. One nation casts it and all the map is divided on those who go down, and those who feel happy long lives.
As for dispell - the mechanics of dispel makes dispell very risky,and mostly benefits initial caster rather then dispeller.

[rdonj]

Dispel is risky when dealing with arcane nexus. With burden of time? Not so much. Say you get everyone in the game who wants burden down to pool 10-15 pearls. In a game of decent size this should easily be enough to bring down burden of time. Burden of time does most of its damage in the first 2-3 turns it's up anyway. Overcasting it much at all is generally not that useful.