End game fun

[ivanbin]

Is it just me, or does anyone else find end game boring?
Im still rather new at this, but by the time I get to what I consider the end game, all the fancy race specific units become too weak to do anything.
And by anything, I mean dislodging high lvl cavalry from their city.

Last game (that took me about 30 hours), I got bored and decided to save another 10-15 hours by just using world editor to see what I can do... I was playing against Ulrik (i think that's the name, the northern guy), and attacking him in his ice land-domain. I spawned a bunch of those red dragons, and sued them to wipe his cities, for the lulz. The dragons have 25 strength, and yet a few still died from full health, by attacking some of their garrisoned units. How are some race specific units are supposed to handle that (those weak spiders, ghosts and the such).

So, how do you deal with end game becoming slow, and you needing to bring 3x the units to destroy a garrisoned city? And lets not forget that while you are killing one civilization, the others are growing and gearing up...

 

[Paganini]

The situation you described seemed quite fun to me. I love it when you have to struggle even in the endgame, and your victory is never certain. I only get bored (like in the last 150 turns of my first playthrough), when I know that victory is just a matter of time and I only have to drag my super-stack around the map, exterminating everyone.. Now that's kinda boring. Even your race specific units lose their flavor. What's the importance of Drifa the Dragon, when I've already conquered 65% of the map and I'm just massacring the survivors?

 

[ivanbin]

Actually, here it WAS something like that... If i went by score I was 700 ahead of 2nd place guy, and had 2x the points of the 3rd place person.
Its just takes forever to dislodge the damn fortified bastard out of each of his 10 cities...

 

[TheLazyHase]

Actually, here it WAS something like that... If i went by score I was 700 ahead of 2nd place guy, and had 2x the points of the 3rd place person.
Its just takes forever to dislodge the damn fortified bastard out of each of his 10 cities...

It's strategic problem more than anything else. I never, ever have problem to kill units ; the main problem is more when I let the AI build 800 or 1000 unit, but usually it's offensive army and cities themselves crumble quite easily. If anything, I would say that conquest victory is so easy it's boring, apart from the odd uber army that you have to track and destroy.

 

[ivanbin]

I see... Perhaps im just bad at this ;-)
Made a thread asking for someone to play with me, so hopefully soon, i will stop having this problem

 

[Goodwill]

I never pay attention to score - I find it a very poor indicator, at least for players, but it does let you measure ai strengths.

You can be two thousand points ahead and not have a balanced strategy. Many times Im in last place by the time midgame starts, but I'm playing to win. Depends on difficulty too I think. To me the score is just a number based on what you own or have done, but not what you are prepared to do next.

 

[ivanbin]

It still measures your overall power. Research gives most points I think...
Having a low score, usually DOES mean you are weaker. You can catch up, but you are weaker at the moment

 

[Tasunke]

I like certain parts of the end game, especially if I've geared up certain toys to play with.

For me, FFH is only partly about making a good strategy and taking over ... playing with cool toys is the more fun part of it

 

[the343danny]

Go down the immortals tech tree and send endless waves of super soldiers to slaughter anything that dare cross his path! Or if I remember correctly some of the mod mods (or maybe even base FFH) lets you purchase equipment for your soldiers and give them awesome bonuses. There is little more fun than sending your level fifteen hero immortals that you've spent thousands on without the stress and fear of having them killed.

 

[Tasunke]

Go down the immortals tech tree and send endless waves of super soldiers to slaughter anything that dare cross his path! Or if I remember correctly some of the mod mods (or maybe even base FFH) lets you purchase equipment for your soldiers and give them awesome bonuses. There is little more fun than sending your level fifteen hero immortals that you've spent thousands on without the stress and fear of having them killed.

true that

 

[Lone Wolf]

and you needing to bring 3x the units to destroy a garrisoned city?

Fireballs to destroy cultural defence and collateral. Sometimes, Catapults or Cannons. They are slow, though.
Summoner leaders can summon quite a lot of disposable Elementals to go pound on cities.
Highly-promoted Heroes are usually quite strong. Promotions count for a lot in FFH.
After powerful defenders are weakened with collateral and Elementals, requiring them to hide behind less strong defenders, you can destroy them with Assassins.

FFH actually favours offence compared to vanilla BTS. My FFH losses are usually due to large offensive AI stacks attacking at bad moments (see my Ljosalfar and Svartalfar AAR's, if you go for that sort of thing). Admittedly, I use a different AI.