Illians World Spell

Seven05 said:

And that alone should make you wonder if it really is a possitive addition to the game. It's not a simple case here, normally you'll look at a feature and see it it adds something to the game when considering it, in this case you have to consider what it's taking away from the game. Moving your units around is but a small part of playing a game of Civ and that is all that every player except one can do when this is active.

If somebody was to suggest a new feature for the game that would remove roughly 2/3rds of what everybody else could do, what would your first reaction be?

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Actually, that tells me that it is a positive feature. World spells should be things that are hated by other civs, abilities which can change the course of the game if used correctly. Stasis does that perfectly.

And honestly, I'd far rather be on the receiving end of Stasis than one like World Break or the Lanun spell. Better to be unable to build new units than to lose your experienced ones, or worse, your buildings.

Seven05 said:

That's irrelevant really. There are plenty that are bad for different reasons and many that are decidedly worse than others but none that are as bad for general gameplay as Stasis.

The problem with Stasis has nothing to do with it's 'power' be it real or perceived, it has everything to do with taking away the ability for the player(s) to play the game. A world spell that you have to react to by doing something extra is a good addition to gameplay, a world spell that you reaction to is simply doing less is not. It is still a game after all, it's supposed to be something you enjoy, not something you endure

You can certainly leave it as is, I'll do what I have been ever since FfH added Stasis, I'll go into the xml and set the Illians as a non-playable civ. Since I'm obviously not alone in my dislike of the mechanics of Stasis you should keep in mind that any work you do in RiFE that is directly or indirectly dependant on the Illians is wasted on a number of players.

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Again, I'd honestly say that the Lanun spell is worse for gameplay than that of the Illians; Instant loss of your army is far more of a hit.

And hell, don't even need to modify the xml. There's a game option which allows you to set playability.


Also, as I think I've said there will be a tech requirement for it; It IS too much for the earlygame.

Valkrionn said:

Actually, that tells me that it is a positive feature. World spells should be things that are hated by other civs, abilities which can change the course of the game if used correctly. Stasis does that perfectly.

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You'll never convince me that anything that removes a player's ability to play a game is a good thing. No amount of 'lore' or 'flavor' will ever make up for it. Considering all of the cool things added by RiFE I'm kind of surprised that you haven't taken advantage of them. Imagine a world spell that took advantage of your nice climate code, you could achieve the same net effect without taking away our ability to play the game while also gaining a very cool visual effect at the same time.

Valkrionn said:

And honestly, I'd far rather be on the receiving end of Stasis than one like World Break or the Lanun spell. Better to be unable to build new units than to lose your experienced ones, or worse, your buildings.

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World break is never guaranteed to remove 20 turns worth of production let alone 20 turns of lost research or 20 turns of lost growth for your cities. In many cases you can all but ignore World Break unless you happen to be the person the Sheaim are attacking. The Lanun world spell doesn't effect everybody, in fact if they're in the game you can give yourself virtual immunity to their world spell by simply not placing any cities on the coast. Even if they hit every simgle one of your units and cities you can still do something other than the SOD shuffle for 20 turns.

Valkrionn said:

Again, I'd honestly say that the Lanun spell is worse for gameplay than that of the Illians; Instant loss of your army is far more of a hit.

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If it's so bad for gameplay then why do you have it in there? I disagree, obviously, but I'm curious why you would keep a feature in a game that you think has a negative impact on the game itself.

Valkrionn said:

And hell, don't even need to modify the xml. There's a game option which allows you to set playability.

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Changing a 1 to a 0 in a single xml file is much easier that picking which civs to exclude from every single game and it works in FfH, RiFE and Wild Mana

Valkrionn said:

Also, as I think I've said there will be a tech requirement for it; It IS too much for the earlygame.

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That will only prevent the relatively rare occurance of it being used (intnetionally by a player or accidentally by the AI) early enough to result in several civs possibly being eliminated by the initial barb rush. Or, to be cliche, you're fixing a symptom but not the problem. The problem is simply that it effectively stops the game, it's actually worse than that because you have to endure repeatedly passing your turn which can take a considerable amount of real time. In a sense, it's like those annoying intro movies that you can't skip only in this case it can last 30 minutes and you have to keep hitting enter at regular intervals.

Sorry for playing the Devil's advocate, if it's annoying then you can tell me to stop and I will. I already have my solution to the problem but if I can encourage you to look at things from a different angle I'll definately try

I don't see why all this stupid crying is about.
If you don't like Stasis don't play vs the Illians.

All the anti stasis posts here are written as if there was some special condition that forced you to play Illians in every game. The game has many other lorefull and fun civs to fight and you are free to pick and chose the ones you want. I for example newer play with the Shelam because of world break. But do you see me crying how it should be removed from the game?

Seven05 said:

You'll never convince me that anything that removes a player's ability to play a game is a good thing. No amount of 'lore' or 'flavor' will ever make up for it.

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I don't think it removes your ability to play, honestly. It removes your ability to research or produce new units temporarily; So what? Use what you have strategically. I've used Stasis to my advantage several times while not playing Illians, it's just far easier to leverage while playing them.

So I guess the principle disagreement here is because in your opinion, it puts the game on hold; In mine, it does not.

Seven05 said:

Considering all of the cool things added by RiFE I'm kind of surprised that you haven't taken advantage of them. Imagine a world spell that took advantage of your nice climate code, you could achieve the same net effect without taking away our ability to play the game while also gaining a very cool visual effect at the same time.

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To be honest, in between my last post and reading this I thought about just that. Actually discussing something along those lines on #Erebus atm.

Seven05 said:

World break is never guaranteed to remove 20 turns worth of production let alone 20 turns of lost research or 20 turns of lost growth for your cities. In many cases you can all but ignore World Break unless you happen to be the person the Sheaim are attacking. The Lanun world spell doesn't effect everybody, in fact if they're in the game you can give yourself virtual immunity to their world spell by simply not placing any cities on the coast. Even if they hit every simgle one of your units and cities you can still do something other than the SOD shuffle for 20 turns.

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Sure you can do something else; You can tell your cities to build a new unit, and then hope to god you get enough built before you're crushed. Not a better situation IMO.

Seven05 said:

If it's so bad for gameplay then why do you have it in there? I disagree, obviously, but I'm curious why you would keep a feature in a game that you think has a negative impact on the game itself.

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It's only bad for non-Lanun. The worldspells I have issues with are the ones you don't see the need for even while playing that civ.

Seven05 said:

That will only prevent the relatively rare occurance of it being used (intnetionally by a player or accidentally by the AI) early enough to result in several civs possibly being eliminated by the initial barb rush. Or, to be cliche, you're fixing a symptom but not the problem. The problem is simply that it effectively stops the game, it's actually worse than that because you have to endure repeatedly passing your turn which can take a considerable amount of real time. In a sense, it's like those annoying intro movies that you can't skip only in this case it can last 30 minutes and you have to keep hitting enter at regular intervals.

Sorry for playing the Devil's advocate, if it's annoying then you can tell me to stop and I will. I already have my solution to the problem but if I can encourage you to look at things from a different angle I'll definately try

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Yes, it would only fix the symptom. Because I don't see it as a problem, personally.

One thing you could do (if you have Chipotle enabled): Hit ctrl-shift-z, input the number of stasis turns, and go away. Risky, as you're leaving the empire in the hands of the AI, but if they can't build or research anything the risk is minimized a bit.

Valkrionn said:

Sure you can do something else; You can tell your cities to build a new unit, and then hope to god you get enough built before you're crushed. Not a better situation IMO.

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See, to me that's exciting and part of what makes for a great game. Trying to recover from a disaster is infinately more interesting (and interractive) than sitting around watching a counter tick away for 20 turns.

Valkrionn said:

One thing you could do (if you have Chipotle enabled): Hit ctrl-shift-z, input the number of stasis turns, and go away. Risky, as you're leaving the empire in the hands of the AI, but if they can't build or research anything the risk is minimized a bit.

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Only if you kill off all your workers first

I'm not quite sure how you folks are managing to spend 10 minutes on 20-30 turns of Stasis in the beginning.. Just spam enter through it. That's what I do when those devious Illians cast Stasis, I'd say those turns go by in 2-3 minutes.

All in all, I quite like the Illian's world spell- It boosts the Illians (Perhaps a little something they need in the beginning when the map comes out to be Arid ) in the beginning, while slightly slowing everyone else down. The only mechanic I'd like to see improved with this world spell is the versatility of timing. It's an easy no-brainer to cast it within the first 7 turns or so. *Shrug* I like having options as to how I use my assets. Anyways, cheers.

-Joe

My main problem with Stasis is how long it takes to complete a turn. I usually play on huge maps, on marathon speed, and a few less than the standard number of civs. Depending on how late in the game the spell is used, it can be several hours of nothing, as it takes a minute or longer for the turn to end. I don't like not being able to "play" the game for several hours while being forced to "play" to continue the game. Once the turn length is fixed, I'll have no problems.

Perhaps an equivalent solution is to just make the Illians world spell give double production and research during that time, so to them everyone else is progressing in slow motion (but cannot tell). You could even go a step further and give all Illian units a bonus first strike chance and move. Still a powerful and flavorful world spell, but does not halt the game for everyone else. Duration may need to be increased though.

Just a random thought

I have little problem with Stasis in SP, as others have pointed out, you can cut out either the Illians or World Spells all together.
In MP, however, the problem arises. It's not really the mechanics of the spell, but that it's boring to wait for the Illian player to finish his turn for 30-ish turns.

that's the best argument of the whole discussion :

as for me (SP) not issues with the world spell...
I try to rush the illians... not for a preventive anti-Mulcarn strike, but a preventive anti-Stasis.

but even if I can't kill them : Stasis enhance your strategical gameplay :
-you have to play smart enough to take advantage of the fact your ennemies can' build : you can attack the neighbor as he wont be able to replace his lost units. and you can use your adept or mages... and eventually replace your skellies !!!
-if you are attacked by barbs, or if you fight with anybody, the way you fight becomes much more important as any unit lost cannot be replaced !

Only issue is at the early beginning : no units, no armies, no neighbours ... but then, the inter-turn goes much quicker !

I have much more issues with the amurite WS.
As I use much more spells and mages for my army than the AI, the amurite's world spell affects me much more than it affects the AI. I can't do anything about that for 20 turns and thus I become as weak as the AI thinks I am !

Calavente said:

that's the best argument of the whole discussion :

as for me (SP) not issues with the world spell...
I try to rush the illians... not for a preventive anti-Mulcarn strike, but a preventive anti-Stasis.

but even if I can't kill them : Stasis enhance your strategical gameplay :
-you have to play smart enough to take advantage of the fact your ennemies can' build : you can attack the neighbor as he wont be able to replace his lost units. and you can use your adept or mages... and eventually replace your skellies !!!
-if you are attacked by barbs, or if you fight with anybody, the way you fight becomes much more important as any unit lost cannot be replaced !

Only issue is at the early beginning : no units, no armies, no neighbours ... but then, the inter-turn goes much quicker !

I have much more issues with the amurite WS.
As I use much more spells and mages for my army than the AI, the amurite's world spell affects me much more than it affects the AI. I can't do anything about that for 20 turns and thus I become as weak as the AI thinks I am !

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You seem to have hit on the core issue. The Amurite's WS affects only people who use alot of spell casters, whereas Stasis hits everyone hard.

The only issue I have with worldspells is with the ones that seem throwaway or very limited in use.
I'm thinking Kuriotates, Mazatl, Cualli (+4 production... really?) and Sidar. (Possibly the Svarts, but only in MP. In SP it's fine)

isthmus said:

The only issue I have with worldspells is with the ones that seem throwaway or very limited in use.
I'm thinking Kuriotates, Mazatl, Cualli (+4 production... really?) and Sidar. (Possibly the Svarts, but only in MP. In SP it's fine)

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Sidar will likely be better, Mazatl will be far better, not sure on the other two yet.

And yes, those are the spells I have issues with as well.

I always kind of had a problem with the Archos Worldspell.
Don't get me wrong, it' very flavorful, using a spell to call the big fat mother spider from its nest.
But if you look at it from a pure gameplay point, they don't really have a worldspell.
Other Civs get their Heroes (even big ones, like the dragons or goliath) and a Worldspell.
Archos have a Worldspell that creates their Civ Hero.
To be fair, the Hero being summoned by a spell means that you don't have to dedicate a cities production to build it.

Hero being summoned by a spell also means that it technically has a one-time use immortality, of sorts... Birthright Regained allows you to summon a new one.

I'm considering doing something else with them, tied to to the new spawn mechanic (not fully implemented, certain terrains will work different for them is all I'll say).

I don't think anything about the Archos can be effectively evaluated for the moment, since their spider mechanics can yield a 12 str hidden nationality spider swarm very early in the game (way before Orthus)so they mostly end up wiping out 2-3 civilizations quite fast (or those civilization become spider food for exp). I've had very few instances where I could research their world spell before getting a conquest victory (small or standard maps mostly).

Irenicus_Jon said:

I don't think anything about the Archos can be effectively evaluated for the moment, since their spider mechanics can yield a 12 str hidden nationality spider swarm very early in the game (way before Orthus)so they mostly end up wiping out 2-3 civilizations quite fast (or those civilization become spider food for exp). I've had very few instances where I could research their world spell before getting a conquest victory (small or standard maps mostly).

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That's already been fixed in the team version. Their spiders no longer upgrade from combat (no animals do), and are instead able to upgrade once the Nest has reached the correct size.

Size 16 for a Swarm, 24 for an Army.

What is this team version devilry and how do I play it?

(I'm a rookie with Civ)

The team version is the internal version that is only possessed by people like the most holy of all hamsters over there. (note that this is a title with full respect) Essentially it is the version that is used by the developers and contains all the small fixes that will eventually become a part of the next patch. Once they accumulate enough of the fixes and changes they release the next patch.

So yeah, we would all love to get it. And no, we can't.

Irenicus_Jon said:

What is this team version devilry and how do I play it?

(I'm a rookie with Civ)

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Team and Testers only, sorry.

PPQ_Purple said:

The team version is the internal version that is only possessed by people like the most holy of all hamsters over there. (note that this is a title with full respect) Essentially it is the version that is used by the developers and contains all the small fixes that will eventually become a part of the next patch. Once they accumulate enough of the fixes and changes they release the next patch.

So yeah, we would all love to get it. And no, we can't.

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Well, they aren't all small changes. Just all the changes that we have scheduled for the next version.

Some of the civs affected thus far:

• Archos
• Bannor
• Clan
• Doviello
• Frozen
• Grigori
• Legion
• Malakim
• Mazatl
• Mechanos
• Sheaim
• Sidar

So.... Lots of fun toys.