Click Quickly and Win the Game!

[brainpan]

I won a hollow-feeling victory last night playing as Hyborem. To make a short story short, Malikim/Mercurians launched a "go-for-broke" rush on my capital city with a horde of mixed units.

We each committed a large number of high-level disciples to the battle, which was quickly decided in my favor because I was able to repeatedly run a single ritualist into the midst of his stacks and activate a wall of fire before he could react.

The dynamic here bothers me a lot because this is supposed to be a strategy game, not a real-time tactical "button game" that relies on quick keystrokes and no lag time.

I don't know if anyone else is bothered by this, or what could be done to fix it if a lot of people agree with me. But here is one idea--it still needs lots of work--that I've come up with so far: Defensive spells could be set to activate automatically when an enemy approaches...maybe on a 1-for-1 basis so your entire stack doesn't "blow its wad" on a warrior or worker unit.

I don't know if my "fix" could be implemented, and I understand that it would create a whole new set of problems to deal with. I'd rather not spend too much time critiquing my idea, because its downside is self-evident. Hopefully, a like-minded individual might have an alternative solution or could offer some brilliant insight into making mine work.

 

[brainpan]

PS- And when you're finished replying, see if you can say "click quickly" ten times fast.

 

[Kael]

I assume you were playing a multiplayer game with simotaneous turns? I think the curse of simotaneous turns is exactly as you say, it makes timing important which it shouldnt be in a strategy game.

Even if we implemented automatic casts (which we won't thats not a simple thing) you would still have a critical timing issue in simotaneous games.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

So that's what you did with my old Civ after I left.

 

[brainpan]

Dynablaster took over right after you left, and he did good with your Malakims too. That civ was just beautiful until I screwed it over with a few quick keystrokes. Sorry about that, but demons are as demons do. I couldn't help myself.

 

[brainpan]

I assume you were playing a multiplayer game with simultaneous turns?

Yes.

I think the curse of simultaneous turns is exactly as you say, it makes timing important which it shouldnt be in a strategy game.

Thank you.

Even if we implemented automatic casts (which we won't thats not a simple thing) you would still have a critical timing issue in simotaneous games.

Darn it. That pretty much shuts this discussion down. I guess I will concentrate on ways to counter the type of attack I used last night.

PS- Were you able to say "click quickly" ten times fast?

PPS- I am in awe of your creative abilities and technical know-how. I've cried many tears of pure joy while playing your mod. The people who were/are? lucky enough to play D&D with you must have experienced a very rare treat.

PPPS-Dont expect me to prostrate myself like this very often because it's really embarrassing.

 

[Blakmane]

I won a hollow-feeling victory last night playing as Hyborem. To make a short story short, Malikim/Mercurians launched a "go-for-broke" rush on my capital city with a horde of mixed units.

We each committed a large number of high-level disciples to the battle, which was quickly decided in my favor because I was able to repeatedly run a single ritualist into the midst of his stacks and activate a wall of fire before he could react.

The dynamic here bothers me a lot because this is supposed to be a strategy game, not a real-time tactical "button game" that relies on quick keystrokes and no lag time.

I don't know if anyone else is bothered by this, or what could be done to fix it if a lot of people agree with me. But here is one idea--it still needs lots of work--that I've come up with so far: Defensive spells could be set to activate automatically when an enemy approaches...maybe on a 1-for-1 basis so your entire stack doesn't "blow its wad" on a warrior or worker unit.

I don't know if my "fix" could be implemented, and I understand that it would create a whole new set of problems to deal with. I'd rather not spend too much time critiquing my idea, because its downside is self-evident. Hopefully, a like-minded individual might have an alternative solution or could offer some brilliant insight into making mine work.

Ring of Fire is being nerfed next version anyway, so this will be less of a problem.

 

[.SinClaire.]

Dynablaster took over right after you left, and he did good with your Malakims too. That civ was just beautiful until I screwed it over with a few quick keystrokes. Sorry about that, but demons are as demons do. I couldn't help myself.

what happened to my Elohim? I hope they prospered well...you didn't harm them did you?

 

[slowcar]

this isn't a problem to ffh2, its a problem with civ multiplayer and the main reason why i don't play league-games any more.
all you need is a big stack of catapults and the ability to fast-move

 

[Bringa]

The problem here is with simultaneous turns, as Kael pointed out. Without them, you don't have this problem, but games take a LOT longer without them. One solution (although I would say it's impossible to implement, at least for the team) would be to change the declare war mechanic in MP games such that you need to declare war one round before you can actually attack your enemy, and then, after you declare war, the game would switch from simultaneous to non-simultaneous rounds. As I said, probably impossible to implement. So your options are these: play w/ simultaneous rounds and suck it up (I hate it too--the quick clicking is really stupid) or play w/o them and allow for a game to take roughly x times as long (where x is the number of players).

 

[dynablaster]

I think the coming nerf to Ring of Ownage will help a bit. The whole game with its history of over 200 turns boiled down to a "the guy who RoF the other guys Ritualists first wins" showdown wich is kinda stupid. This is Fall from Heaven not freaking High Noon.

Even though i did some mistakes in microing my units there, RoF is just an anoyance right now because it easily turns games into stalemates where nobody dares to walk up to the opposing city full of ritualists / confessors.

I am not quite sure how you intend to nerf it exactly. The three ways i can think of would be:
1) add a damage cap, so a RoF can never deal more then xxx Hitpoints in damage. Downside would be you can still overcome this with pure spamming of ritualists.
2) deal percentage damage based on te actual Hitpoints, not the total HP. So a 100 hp unit at 50% getting hit for 32% with RoF will only recieve 16 HP damage
3) Add a hard cap, where units wont be hit by RoF or any AOE spells any more. Something like 50% for T2 Spells 25% for T3 spells and Units can not be lowered beyond this value. This will make the T3 AOE more worthy compared to the laughable easy to access RoF. It will also make sure you can not rely on the power of AOE solely but you will need something using an combat mechanik to kill te weakened units be it fireballs/meteors summons or some troops.

Untill we see a remake of RoF and AOE spells in general i can write a ( slightly exaggerated) "3 Step Guide to win in Multiplayer with any Civ"

Step1: Get the Veil or the Order religion.
Step2: Burn your enemy with a zerg of Ritualists/Confessors. Give them mobility promotion for bonus you-are-awesome-points.
Step3: Watch your humiliated enemy ragequit the game. Make sure you write "muhahaha noob PWND!!11" before he leaves.



@ Chand
Well taking your spot forced me to actually play the Malakim something I never did before because they just never seemed appealing to me.
You Did lose your first settler to that Lizzardman who was roaming around with Combat 4 when i took over, didn't you ?

@ Claire
They were showed the way into a better world, kind of.



By Ring of Fire be purged

dynablaster

 

[Grey Fox]

If you got a unit in a stack with resistance to fire (like 75% or so), would he take away 75% of the total damage to the stack, or just the one he gets? You know like conventional battle works.

 

[dynablaster]

If you got a unit in a stack with resistance to fire (like 75% or so), would he take away 75% of the total damage to the stack, or just the one he gets? You know like conventional battle works.

This is the problem with RoF and AOE spells in gerneral. You can not Tank it with resistant units like you could with fireballs. So your fireresistant unit will just watch his fellow comerades turning to ashes.

 

[much2much]

This game was very depressing for me. We spent 12 hours or so playing and I ended up being far ahead in terms of GNP and being able to research anything. I was Khazad with all Mithril Hammerfists (Str 9 out of the gate) and able to pump out Cannons no problem. But what can I do against Fireballs and Ring of Flames? Nothing that Dwarfs have access to can do anything about this. How do you crack an enemy city in this scenario? Even without simultaneous turns how can you do it?

There needs to be a way to protect stacks by having a unit that will become the collateral "soaker", even if available only to Combat V. Something like Guardsman?!

My feeling is that AoE with a free unit (which summons, Ring of Flames and Fireballs are) is ridiculous.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

In BtS I heard in a recent interview that there will be a new option for simulteaneous team turns. In other words, every player on a team goes at once, then the other team.

But that doesn't help for free for all.

Anyway, try v .22 when that comes out, if it is a big problem still, keep bugging us.

 

[brainpan]

In BtS I heard in a recent interview that there will be a new option for simulteaneous team turns. In other words, every player on a team goes at once, then the other team.

That is a great idea! .

 

[Chandrasekhar]

@ Chand
Well taking your spot forced me to actually play the Malakim something I never did before because they just never seemed appealing to me.
You Did lose your first settler to that Lizzardman who was roaming around with Combat 4 when i took over, didn't you ?

Nah, I hadn't built a settler yet for once.

 

[brainpan]

..............

 

[brainpan]

what happened to my Elohim? I hope they prospered well...you didn't harm them did you?

They did indeed prosper well for many happy years. When the end came for them, I made sure it came quickly (though painfully, of course. I am a demon after all!)

I hope this doesn't hurt future Elohim/Hell relations. Deep down the Devil just longs to be understood.

 

[Bad Player]

The clicking speed issue is also related to lag - when you are in Australia playing on a e.g. European server it takes noticibly longer to click something and by the time you do then the other person has already moved or attacked you.