Grigori Archmages

[EvilBob22]

Noob interjection!: What's a collateral nine?

That threw me off for a while too... Strength 9 attackers that also cause collateral damage.

 

[nealhunt]

Deleted - EvilBob beat me to it.

 

[EverNoob]

That is where no rock-paper-scissors system. Yes, there are some civs and situations which maybe can protect from this threat but no general way.
OK what are specific ways to resist.
- Early war.
- Some world spells (Lanun in the sea, Ljosalfar, Sidar)
- Hippus may have enough strong and fast army to break the stack.
- CoE and shadows.
- Proposed manipultions with fire-immune summons.
... ? Did not find other ways. I think magic resistant leaders does not give enough protection.

In general I think this hole can be well-patched by no mobility to fireballs and meteors. That should be almost enough.

I agree that early Grigori archmages are unbalanced, I'm not sure nerfing them is the answer though. Archmages are the pinnacle of arcane achievement after all, so they are supposed to be powerful. And they do require reagents. It's not sure archmages are a problem in themselves, but it is how early you can get them.

Maybe pushing strength of will back could work. Either adding another required tech for strength of will, or preventing it from being lightbulbed as easily. That could give others more breathing room and time to come up with stronger units and counters. And fixing fire/magic immunity would be nice too...

 

[Silverkiss]

The problem in this is the Unrestricted Leaders option. Kael already said that this option is horribly unbalanced sometimes. Case ended, in my opinion.

 

[it-ogo]

BTW is range 5 too much inside your borders with all roads built? It is not a big problem to have mobility I for all of your units (alas, but catapults). A movement 1 unit + mobility I on the road with Engineering has ideally movement 6. Not enough? Have 1 adept per stack with Haste. Calabim, Sidar, Doviello and Amurites have body mana from the palace and need for Haste only Knowledge of the Ether.

One more exotic way to move your army fast. Amurites: need Govannon (Arcane lore) and dimensional mana. Teach everybody Escape, build palace in the first city on the way of Grigory. Wait until they approach the city then jump with all your army and attack in the same turn.

 

[it-ogo]

I agree that early Grigori archmages are unbalanced, I'm not sure nerfing them is the answer though. Archmages are the pinnacle of arcane achievement after all, so they are supposed to be powerful. And they do require reagents. It's not sure archmages are a problem in themselves, but it is how early you can get them.

There should not be only one way to achieve a late military victory. That is a problem. Khazad may be able to build a tremendous army but it appears to be not enough against 3 hero archmages.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I haven't finished the thread, but I want to point out that the drill line of promotions offers some protection from collateral damage now.

Personally I think meteor str could use being dropped 1 or 2, since you do get 3 of them with the spell.

 

[Ecofarm]

I tested with the natural leader, and he has no problem doing it either. You don't need the arcane trait. Adventurers have 26+ xp at turn ~100 no problem without it. And he's philo.

We did find something that owns grig-archs though. An advanced start Luchuirp. With cities being so cheap, you just build ~6 of them and cast world spell. Then move all golden hammers to the cap via scouts, delete the scouts, and put all 6 golden hammers in the cap as engineers. Granted, this is pretty exploity. Luchuirp + advanced start (default points) = pretty broke, even if you do not move the hammers . The problem is that cities are so cheap and Luchuirp's world spell is based on number of cities. Without advanced start, it seems to be fine. I guess I should post that in the "which world spells are too powerful thread", even though it is only broke on advanced start.

 

[Grey Fox]

I remember the game where Brainpan bombarded me from a Galleon with Grigori archmages. Man it was tough.

And yeah maybe going for the Drill promotions (now available to most unit classes) could help. Drill IV means 40% less collateral damage.

But I think collateral damage has to have the elemental type of the main damage, which I don't think it has. So resistance does no good atm (except for the defender of the stack).

 

[daladinn]

ok please try this against the grigori archmages

given druids and yvain i am gonna assume your an elf playing and went FoL.

you need to make sure that EVERY tile around you is forest (great forest). then you should have 3 druids , 3 beastmasters , and yvain. do not forget the beastmasters.

the druids and beastmasters should be stealthed and you shoudl have random rangers for defense.

all of these units needs to have forest def 2.

if your playing the elf that can pull off the +1 movement its even better. iirc you might need to juggle religions to get to nuetral though.

build citadels throughout your forest.

try and rely on invisibility and the double move in forests. if he enters or even gets within 1 square of your culture take him down. all of your units have double move in forest (bm can get up to 8 moves this way). and the druids can even summon after moving close. remember also that invisible units cannot be attacked (they just move). anything he sends in that can see invis will be at double move cost and go squish quickly.

gl and keep trying

 

[Nikis-Knight]

But I think collateral damage has to have the elemental type of the main damage, which I don't think it has. So resistance does no good atm (except for the defender of the stack).

It would be nice, but of course it means reworking the collateral code. Dunno how easy/hard that is.

 

[westamastaflash]

Meh the issue raised in this thread seems to be more of a non-issue, since it's really relegated to one very specific strategy, and even then only for multiplayer. I don't see why if you see a grigori, just kill his reagents and post a nice guard on them. It seems to me that with the way you set up play, you reach midgame incredibly freakin early.

 

[xienwolf]

I do hope you guys do not actually think any game mechanic will be changed for the convoluted rules of this multiplayer clan. Advanced start, unrestricted leaders, quick, refuse to attack till turn 100, no barbs...

You aren't really playing FfH. You are playing a CCG without shuffling your decks. The fact that you have it perfectly scripted out for precisely what you will do on each and every turn is ridiculous. TBS... It means TURN BASED STRATEGY. As in, you take turns, and use strategy. Also as in, you have to CHANGE your strategy EVERY TURN.

You want to counter Grigori Archmages easily? Play on Epic speed. Problem solved.


I do not mind seeing discussions about strategies for your wierd sect, but honestly... don't think the game will change to "balance" that aspect of the game. It works well as intended, they just happened to allow you to malform their creation drastically with some specific options.

 

[ZhugeTien]

Hear, hear! If you don't like the mechanics the way they work for your own peculiar options choices, then modmod the same way Sureshot has for MP games! Don't expect the team to design around your specific desires because you choose to limit your games to such strange option choices for "balance." The game is balanced for single, unoptioned play, and works quite well for single play even with certain options, so if you don't like the way it works in your very limited multi-player setting, change it! Kael has quite a nice forum regarding modding, and I'm sure you can find plenty of other resources that will enable you to make the changes you so desire to the mod so that you can play it how you like without feeling it is imbalanced in any way. That's the beauty of Civ IV. Mod away for your own purposes, just don't expect people who are doing their own particular mod (free of wages or donations, mind you...) to cater to your whims. Do it yourself.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Seems he was mostly just asking what other strategies are availible.
Factoring elemental resistance into collateral isn't a bad idea in any case, I just don't know if it is doable.

 

[Grey Fox]

Seems he was mostly just asking what other strategies are availible.
Factoring elemental resistance into collateral isn't a bad idea in any case, I just don't know if it is doable.

It's probably doable, the question is; Is it worth the effort?

 

[Basil II]

I do hope you guys do not actually think any game mechanic will be changed for the convoluted rules of this multiplayer clan. Advanced start, unrestricted leaders, quick, refuse to attack till turn 100, no barbs...

You aren't really playing FfH. You are playing a CCG without shuffling your decks. The fact that you have it perfectly scripted out for precisely what you will do on each and every turn is ridiculous. TBS... It means TURN BASED STRATEGY. As in, you take turns, and use strategy. Also as in, you have to CHANGE your strategy EVERY TURN.

You want to counter Grigori Archmages easily? Play on Epic speed. Problem solved.


I do not mind seeing discussions about strategies for your wierd sect, but honestly... don't think the game will change to "balance" that aspect of the game. It works well as intended, they just happened to allow you to malform their creation drastically with some specific options.

Im in total agreement. If its such a big problem for their niche gaming, just dont allow people to play Grigori.

 

[it-ogo]

I am not a player of multi and even I am a builder mainly. But I still feel that fire magic is almost unavoidable for the mid- and late-game warfare in FFH. And with adventurers it becomes overpowered. Yes, we mainly play not for score but for building and roleplay and this is not vital for us. I can make adventurer a scout and have a pleasure from his adventures , but from the very beginning I know that it is not the most effective way to use him whatever I can do with this scout. That is not good.

In 023 I used mainly prince and monarch and that was enough for me to have some action. Now with Sidar-raging barbs-epic I play on deity and feel that it will not be too difficult to win. Even for RPG we need some suspense.

 

[Ecofarm]

Meh the issue raised in this thread seems to be more of a non-issue, since it's really relegated to one very specific strategy, and even then only for multiplayer. I don't see why if you see a grigori, just kill his reagents and post a nice guard on them. It seems to me that with the way you set up play, you reach midgame incredibly freakin early.

Mechanics and settings have nothing to do with the issue of this thread.

In single player, any difficulty less than immortal is not challenging with this strat (because resistance doesn't work probably, for the most part) - so it's not just an MP issue. It's a meteor issue in general, and Grigori in particular. For anyone who wants to play them.

I can get Grig_Archs turn ~120 on "play now" settings (quick speed). I play quickspeed even in my SP games because I like to finish in one sitting and prefer the disadvantage to warmongers (as I am one).

We do like to get to the midgame fast, as that's where all the cool units that are so different from vanila BTS start (spells, hidden, etc). Default advanced start points (341, tiny) does speed it up some. If anything, no_barbs slows down game progression by losing the easy xp.

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I do hope you guys do not actually think any game mechanic will be changed for the convoluted rules of this multiplayer clan. Advanced start, unrestricted leaders, quick, refuse to attack till turn 100, no barbs...

<snip>

You aren't really playing FfH.

<snip>

It works well as intended, they just happened to allow you to malform their creation drastically with some specific options.

My sect of cultists who don't actually play ffh, but malform the game with convoluted settings...



Have nothing to do with this thread. You can start a thread about us if the mods will let you; however, we would prefer if you would kindly shave your head, wear our robe, and drink the punch

TBS... It means TURN BASED STRATEGY. As in, you take turns, and use strategy. Also as in, you have to CHANGE your strategy EVERY TURN.

Strategy = long term plan. It's not something you change every turn. TBS means you employ a strategy and play in turns. It doesn't mean you change your strategy every turn. You should have to adjust it thoughout the game and even occasionally have drastic changes of plans, but deciding to research berzerkers, then archmages, then war chariots - on consecutive turns - would probably not be a good "strategy".

You want to counter Grigori Archmages easily? Play on Epic speed. Problem solved.

I like to finish an MP game in 1-3 hours. I think that's reasonable for 4-6 people getting together for a game. Even on blazing speed, an epic game would take many hours to complete. Problem solved (with malformed convoluted settings?), problem created.


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Xienwolf's predictions aside (of nothing getting changed), I think the collateral should definately be changed to the element of the spell. Isn't it simply logical?

As far as lowering the number of meteors, I'm not sure that's necessary after resistance gets fixed and collateral is made to coincide with the type of attacker (if that is deemed reasonable - I don't code so I have no idea how possible it is).

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Thanks to all the people who posted possible counters to the archmages. That is what I was looking for, and I expect when resistance is fixed that many of those suggestions will prove VERY useful.

 

[Arqane]

I think that elemental resistance/immunity should be fixed before the collateral damage type .

Fortunately, that was another bug found through reading this thread that does effect the normal game.