Advise on protecting a Stack from Assassins?

[zup]

Yeps, your version is no good for us unless you publish it.

 

[rocklikeafool]

How long has it been since he's said he was workin on a new version? Back in 0.31? Or was it before that? Publish your damn version or quit talkin bout it. Even a beta or alpha would be better than hearin you go, "In my version...". Quit blowin wind, Magister. PUBLISH ALREADY!

And after that, keep your comments on how yours is better in your own forum.

 

[deadliver]

@ rock

The low level scout idea is sick. Nothing much punier than those dudes.

 

[feydras]

I generally use the skeleton approach coupled with Fire II mages w/ Mobility I and another adept or mage with Body I for haste. I am far, far too impatient to drag along move 1 cats or cannons when i can get 3 move fireball welding mages eventually w/ 4 range.

I can confirm that Guardian does now protect vs. assassins in h. Glad to see that fixed. It is a nice alternative.

Oh, and lay off Magister eh? What's the point of being nasty?

 

[Verdian]

Oh, and lay off Magister eh? What's the point of being nasty?

Agreed, he was just making suggestions. They just... happen to also be in his unreleased mod.

I must admit that I am still a bit unhappy with the Guardsman promotion, even now that it works. I would much rather it just block the marksman promotion and maybe give a % bonus to defense. As it is now, since the promotion increases the chance of the unit blocking (even when it is almost dead and there are plenty of other healthy units in the stack), it usually ends up killing the unit. I stupidly gave guardsman to an adventure once, one that I built up with promotions to make it a great defender. He died the first turn my stack was attacked by a bunch of weak units.

Birds and workers were removed as marksman targets because it was considered cheap to use them as blockers. With the current Guardsman promotion, the most effective way to use it is to give it to weak units, like scouts and warriors. This effectively turns them into said birds and workers. In my opinion, this does not fix the problem, but only mimics a previously removed mechanic. Considering all of the other ways mentioned in this thread to deal with assassins, when Guardsman is supposed to be the best way, I think this promotion needs to be looked at by the Team again.

edit: For clarification, the reason I think warriors and scouts with the Guardsman promotion are similar to the old bird/worker trick is they are both cheap throw-away units whose only purpose is to die defending a caster.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Oh, and lay off Magister eh? What's the point of being nasty?

The point is that I've been hearin bout this modmod of Magister's for bout 1 year. And he really needs to stop tellin us bout his modmod and release it so we can experience it. Capiece?

Agreed, he was just making suggestions. They just...happen to also be in his unreleased mod.

That bold part is the key phrase.

@Magister

Can you plz release your damn mod and give my eyes a rest? PLEASE!!!


I apologize to everyone if I'm whinin and/or b*tchin. But I'm gettin quite sick of this. I mean, come on, we even made fun of this guys in "Clues You Play Too Much FfH" thread. I'd say that was a pretty big hint, wouldn't you. Ok...I'm done.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

don't be nasty to MC. sure, he mentions his modmod in pretty much every post he makes, but so what? it's not like he dropped a steamy poo on your pillow, right? now THAT would be something to be b*tchin' about!

 

[deadliver]

don't be nasty to MC. sure, he mentions his modmod in pretty much every post he makes, but so what? it's not like he dropped a steamy poo on your pillow, right? now THAT would be something to be b*tchin' about!

That'll probably be another feature in his mod (which I am looking forward to playing btw all aside.)

 

[MiKa523]

Couldn't agree more, rock, and no need to apologize, imho

 

[Humakty]

True MC talking about his phantom mod stopped being funny a while ago. it's like this old man at the pub, who can't stop bothering you with all the mates he has had, all the while poisoning you with his alcoholic breath. Funny at the beginning, then you start hoping he'll stop one day.

But on the other hand, he's made plenty of suggestions that are indeed very interesting, and I'm often pleased to read his posts, when he doesn't speak about what we all know.

I also think that, if he releases one day, his modmod will be an awfull mess, 'cause he really plans to add tons of stuff. Speak about balance...

 

[deadliver]

So how bout them assassins...

 

[Humakty]

Well, answers to assassins are quite varied, depending on who you play. Aggressive leaders will have some ease obtaining guardsman promotion, raiders can outmaneuver assassins with theirs during their usual blitz, Embers have so many adepts that they don't really bother, amurites have their chanter, great for working behind ennemy lines.

And their are surely other ways, I don't know how to play many factions.
Guardsman surely seems has the less tedious solution, but stacking low strength units works great, if you can afford it.

 

[zup]

Could guardsman not increase the chance to defend but just take care of marksman? Well if it's only one guardsman then he would die because all assassins take him on. One thing to note is that if you give more than one unit in a stack the guardsman at the same time (save some xp), the healthier guardsmen protect the injured.

 

[Sarisin]

Sarisin, your knowledge on birds is a bit outdated.
Since a hell load of versions birds could only be rebased in cities, but this has been changed back to anywhere in the last version (0.34).
Since a hell load of versions (actually, from the beginning), assassins would target birds first, but not in the last version. They will ignore 0 Strength units.

Oops, my apologies, I haven't had the chance to try re-basing birds in .34. That is good news though - thanks for the info!

 

[Sarisin]

I don't think anyone on this forum has better suggestions for the game/mod than Magister Cultuum.

I must admit in the past I was a little perplexed by his constant references to his modmod which never seems to come about - because of his other commitments, I suppose.

However, now I just ignore those references to his modmod and focus on his suggestions/comments and find his are always on target and interesting.

If he ever does get his modmod on deck, you can bet billions and billions of us forum members will want to play it!

 

[onedreamer]

As it is now, since the promotion increases the chance of the unit blocking (even when it is almost dead and there are plenty of other healthy units in the stack), it usually ends up killing the unit.

As it is now ? As it's always been, actually. I've been whining about Guardsman promotion being detrimental since before Magister Cultuum even thought to create a FFH2 modmod. The Guardsman promotion crappiness however is not to be confused with Assassins and the Marksman promotion. Honestly I think that no cheap unit like Assassins should be allowed such a powerful promotion for free, but then again it must be an american legend that if everything is out of control or unbalanced, it will balance itself off pretty well. We can see proofs of how well this theory works in our everyday life, when we read of random people slaughtering other people with fire weapons even a soldier should have a hard time to get a hold of, or when we read the reports of the Stock Exchanges accross the world.

 

[xienwolf]

I haven't tested it to be certain myself, but I advise that you all go out and test Guardsman in the latest version. The way that the code is written, having ANY unit with Guardsman in the stack COMPLETELY CANCELS MARKSMAN. The only thing making the guardsman unit rush out to defend is the <iBetterDefenderThanPercent> field in the XML. If you remove that line, then you only need 1 Guardsman in each stack and it is like Assassins do not exist anymore.


So if someone could play with that field value, and find a point where it balances decently then we would have an easy to implement, properly balanced feedback/suggestion for the team.

 

[rocklikeafool]

If he ever does get his modmod on deck, you can bet billions and billions of us forum members will want to play it!

The main part of my frustration with Magister is that I wanna play his mod. I guess I'm gettin sick of hearin bout a mod that I wish to play but can't.



Anyway, bout assassins...
I don't think all the assassins will jus keep attackin the weakest guardsmen. I could be wrong. Some1 correct me if I am.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Don't you basically need 4 promotions to get guardsman? 3 if you're aggressive. What a pain. Especially since those units are the ones dying fast and first.

 

[Blackmantle]

As it is now ? As it's always been, actually. I've been whining about Guardsman promotion being detrimental since before Magister Cultuum even thought to create a FFH2 modmod. The Guardsman promotion crappiness however is not to be confused with Assassins and the Marksman promotion. Honestly I think that no cheap unit like Assassins should be allowed such a powerful promotion for free, but then again it must be an american legend that if everything is out of control or unbalanced, it will balance itself off pretty well. We can see proofs of how well this theory works in our everyday life, when we read of random people slaughtering other people with fire weapons even a soldier should have a hard time to get a hold of, or when we read the reports of the Stock Exchanges accross the world.

Are you seriously implying that the FFH2 team has done a bad! job at balancing an inherently unbalanced game by default? (Its just not possible to balance 21 distinct factions in a flawless way. At least not in a sensible time-frame if it would be worth even a lot more than it most likely is.)

Perfect Balancing simply is not a huge priority here to begin with (It has been mentioned more than once that it isn't by the team. The focus is much more on replayability. And there is some! contradiction between those 2 goals, isn't it?). And it still works out in a good way imo (perhaps not all so much from a competitive multiplayer-perspective. Given. But one game has a hard time catering to every ones preferences. FFH2 already is nothing short of outstanding in that respect by most accounts. ).
Given that set of priorities in my view its hard to find a better approach to find some! sort of balancing that doesn't utterly destroy the premise (maybe I'm just uncreative to come up with one though... Feel free + encouraged to make any recommendation you come up with. Its likely to be better than what i could come up with. At worst a good one will very likely make it into a nice modmod, enhancing the game for many who would like more compareative balance for multiplayer / other reasons.).
For players who utterly dislike minor or moderate unbalances there are plenty of solid choices of games which are streamlined with that in mind to a large degree... (provided modding FFH2 / or finding someone to do it for you just isn't your cup of tea.)


Also assassins might! be really powerful but they are not the only thing and there are many other ways to solidly win a game even earlier. (you might not like that approach, but for me it works out fine. Even with the sidar which have a very powerful recon-line / assassin UU)
First and foremost simple warriors. Especially with copper weapons but even without them.
Assassins can't hope to compare in relative terms given the time both arrive in a given game (yet you likely hear a bit less complaints about warriors than about assassins from the balancing-crowd... At least in my perception. Which surely may be well off the mark.)


The point is not that its balanced as well as possible, but that balance doesn't auto-translates into a more fun game and thus sometimes has to take a back seat (and here it does rather often. Very luckily imo ).
Hyper-balance is horribly overvalued. As can be seen in Civ4:Col where taking pains to trying to balance and streamline everything (and include as many rubber-band mechanics as possible) + inadequate time to test and polish the game (which led to some serious oversights) has led to a broken and rather unfun game on release (it may still change a lot!/ have been changing to some degree already due to some excellent mods and patches but the initial release just strongly leaves that impression.).
I'm sure for multiplayer it plays out rather well in comparison (and seems to have been balanced with much emphasis on that aspect, costing quite more than a bit in terms of single-player experience.)
Still (even if it will work out in a good way) its an utterly different kind of game...

Also comparing a fun game to very serious incidents with grueling consequences in real life is just far-fetched and inadequate imo.
At worst here the game is not fun for some people because of it (and its not that its hard to modify the power of Assassins by one point for example... So not even that one is an un-changeable consequence from a players perspective).
So perhaps scale that kind of comparisons back, a bit?


So, no, FFH2 not all out balanced. Its still an outstanding game by most accounts in spite of that.
A better point to start might be to ask if the game is really made bad by assassins (as compared to the old meteor swarm spell in therms of balancing of overall spheres / spell chart) / impede on the experience in a serious way for most players. I for one can't see that.


Because you can bet, that a nerf would seriously piss off a lot of players (at least if its done to a degree as initially planned for the release of 0.34. Which was to make them national units with a limit of 4. That part even made it into the initial changelog. And thus nearly made it into the game... I'm sure some players might like it. I sure wouldn't. And strongly so.)