Ring of Flames

[Offenbarungsjoe]

This is when you look for Fire Immune units.

I guess the fire resistance promotion is a viable defense against confessors.
That is if you somehow find a way to build units with the 6 free levels it needs to get the promotion.

 

[Gamestation]

I guess the fire resistance promotion is a viable defense against confessors.
That is if you somehow find a way to build units with the 6 free levels it needs to get the promotion.

Or you could choose a leader with the magic resistant trait and just get one more level.

 

[Offenbarungsjoe]

Or you could choose a leader with the magic resistant trait and just get one more level.

Now that's another very good suggestion! Hey guys, let's just deal with a balancing problem of a spell by only taking leaders with a certain trait.
Wohoo.

Seriously, I don't know if you people have some weird kind of humor and all those answers are meant as joke, or if you somehow pledged to some strange religion which has a credo like "only use sense if you cannot avoid it".
I guess if your house burns you can solve that problem by sleeping on the streets from now on, but I'd rather call the fire department.

 

[BCalchet]

Now that's another very good suggestion! Hey guys, let's just deal with a balancing problem of a spell by only taking leaders with a certain trait.
Wohoo.

Seriously, I don't know if you people have some weird kind of humor and all those answers are meant as joke, or if you somehow pledged to some strange religion which has a credo like "only use sense if you cannot avoid it".
I guess if your house burns you can solve that problem by sleeping on the streets from now on, but I'd rather call the fire department.

Quick guide to replying:

1. Read previous post.
2. Think.
3. Type out reply.
4. Read your reply, taking extra care to check if it makes you look like a complete and utter moron.
5. Post.


You apparently forgot steps 1, 2 and 4. Please try to remember those in the future!

 

[Gamestation]

Seriously, I don't know if you people have some weird kind of humor and all those answers are meant as joke, or if you somehow pledged to some strange religion which has a credo like "only use sense if you cannot avoid it".
I guess if your house burns you can solve that problem by sleeping on the streets from now on, but I'd rather call the fire department.

We're bored and this is game forum. Some non-sensible answers will come up, all right? Yeah now I see that my answer did not really follow into the grand scheme of things.

Because you want something that makes a bit more sense: When ring of fire gets dealt with, ring of fire should still be devastating. Not everyone though should have a perfect defense against this, nor should it become entirely negligible at some point, otherwise something else would be thrown entirely off balance (in my post I made reference to the magic resistant trait which already has enough going against it). I have no problem with ring of fire being tough, just don't have it be able to kill everyone at once.

For now keep what I typed in red in mind.

 

[Mithrus]

Perhaps limit the number of targets to (channeling)+unit level/2 or unit level/3. This formula should probably be used for all the collateral spells.

It makes some sense also in the case of melee (non-spell) units that cause collateral damage (siege units would naturally get a bonus, I'd suggest 6+unit level/2). The collateral-specific promos would increase the base number as well.

 

[Offenbarungsjoe]

Quick guide to replying:

Rest assured that my post was perfectly well crafted with a lot of thought behind it. I simply find it impolite to spam a delicate topic like this with posts, which clearly violate your guide to replying and thus I have no problem with shooting out some sarcastic comments, which only serve as means to show people that they might invest a thought or two more when posting stuff.
Keep in mind that the creator of this thread explicitly stated that the topic should be about the mechanics and how to balance them, not what random_player_X thinks could be done against confessors.

 

[onedreamer]

Fireballs. Yeah. Right.
Let me explain that balance thing again: a certain amount of confessors (around 7 or so) can kill 23 million macemen in one turn. To phrase it like Doctor Cox: You reheheheheheeeeeeeally don't have to think long to detect the problems arising with that.

Sorry for the brutality, but this is total BS. First off, there are 24 millions ways to make so that 23 millions macemen attack and kill 7 confessors before they have a chance to cast the ring of flames. Second, like I said Fireballs will own Ring of Flames any day, since 5 Mages can cast Fireballs from 4 tiles away the 7 confessors, and be protected by 2 Melee units that will kill the confessors in case they dare to approach. Third, 23 millions macemen can have Protection from Fire. Fourth, you really have to think at least at one counter before saying ring of flames is totally uber. I for one think Pillar of Flames is incredibly more powerful, even though I seemed to notice that with the last versions RoF's power increased.

Feel free to question that the next time you play against someone abusing confessors. And then you burn in righteous flames.

The bottom line is, confessors are DEFINITELY not the only ones who can cast RoF.......... so much that pretty much anyone can abuse RoF.

 

[Bringa]

onedreamer, you absolutely misunderstood the mathematical problem behind this, but before this gets any more uncivil (and I apologize for inviting such heated discussion), I propose a very simple way of solving this: you play a game against Offenbarungsjoe on FFH021c; you can take Amurites and beeline for your mages, and Offenbarungsjoe will probably want to do Elohim and go straight for order. I really don't think you can appreciate the difference between these two types of magic until you've felt it expertly used against you.

I mean, I could go on arguing the mathematics behind this and show you again and again how there is simply no way you can counter more than 10 units with RoF with any amount of units you could build for the same amount of hammers, but logical argumentation becomes difficult when tempers run hot as they do here.

So what do you say to that little challenge? It will simply be about demonstrating to you how imbalanced rof is right now. You can PM me or Offenbarungsjoe directly to set up a match.

And to the mods: could you close this topic maybe? I think Kael perfectly understood my point, and the changes he's talked about will address the imbalance perfectly. I never meant for this to get so... angry

 

[onedreamer]

Bringa, I play FFH only multiplayer, so I do know what we are talking about and I'm not slightly interested in playing a game with someone who thinks they can own a human player with a few units. And can you please understand that I can go for Order even with Amurites and build as many confessors as Offenbarungsjoe ? Or I could go for the AV and build Ritualists which have even Summoning.

About your last comment: if you want to send a message to Kael there are several neat ways. Opening a discussion and closing it when you have no arguments other than "play against my uber confessors and I will own you" is really far from the netiquette of which you are so concerned about.

 

[Lord Buck]

I know in single player these adjacent tile collateral damage spells are way too strong. Its obvious that the damage percentages need to be tweaked. Druids casting Crush do the same thing. Two druids can destroy anything as long as they get a chance to cast.

This seems to unbalance the game, perhaps there's some counter, but who cares? Many greatly engineered aspects of FfH II just got negated due to the errors these spells-IMO.

 

[Lord Buck]

I hope it gets fixed.

 

[kenken244]

really the best counter for magic of any kind is to use magic yourself. if your mages are better than their mages, then they wont be able to win. if their mages are better than yours then you will lose.

 

[3141592]

onedreamer, Fireballs are not in any way better then ring of flames. They are only three strength, and, unless I'm missing something, two movement. You can naturally promote your confessors to be two movement. Fireballs are weak, and does not do as much collateral damage as a ring of flames does and cannot kill with collateral damage.

Here's an easy test: Open world builder and make a stack of 10 confessors with fire 2. Then make a stack of 10 mages with fire 2. You can even give your 10 mages an infinite amount of shield walls for protection if you like. Next, come back with the results. (the confessors will win, every time, no matter who starts first (assuming the shield walls don't attack))

 

[BCalchet]

Give the mages Spell Extension and a haste-caster, start them a few tiles apart... Depending on the terrain, the confessors may never get close enough.

 

[xanaqui42]

I for one think Pillar of Flames is incredibly more powerful, even though I seemed to notice that with the last versions RoF's power increased.

Well, that depends on if the unit casting is Meshabber of Dis. If so, I'd argue that Ring of Flames (doing 30-89 base fire, for a maximum of 55-114 fire damage before resistance is applied). I mean, a ring area of effect does have some value. Otherwise, yes, 15-44 + (up to 35) Fire + 15-44 + (up to 35) Holy means up to 100-158 (before resistance) from Pillar of Flames.

 

[3141592]

Give the mages Spell Extension and a haste-caster,

Ahh, yes, forgot about that.

The thing with pillar of flames is that is can only be casted by six people in your empire, as opposed to ring of flames. So, individually it might be better, overall ring of flames is more unbalancing.

 

[Offenbarungsjoe]

Give the mages Spell Extension and a haste-caster, start them a few tiles apart... Depending on the terrain, the confessors may never get close enough.

That's entirely not the problem. It's obvious that as soon as one unitclass with greater range can kite another unitclass they'll win. But you can't always chose where and how you want to fight stuff and in such cases (which happen most of the game) a spell like ring of fire is simply too strong. I do not see any reason why someone would dispute that. It's so totally beyond comprehension to see people telling that ring of fire is fine. Come close to a city with about 7 units of yours, click a button and the city is yours whatever the enemy used to defend it.

I'll phrase it again in a different wording: An ability which has the power to deal an infinite amount of damage is simply WRONG.
If you want to keep ring of fire's effect as it is now you'd need to assign a fixed damage value to it, so the damage is spread over all the affected units and not applied to every single one of them.
The problem is a matter of scaling. The power of a unit shouldn't additionally scale linear with the number of enemies it is facing. It is already scaling linear with the amounts of that unit you bring to combat. Any sort of double linear scaling like this results in imbalances regarding the combat value of such a unit.
Simply by analyzing this scaling you already see another possible solution for the problem: make it so that a unit can only be damaged once every x turns by ring of fire. Could be simply done by applying a promotion to an affected unit which makes it immune or reduces damage by 95% until the promotion vanishes or whatever.

 

[eerr]

of course, capping it like seige is an option,
but that still doesn't change the problem as described by
"It is already scaling linear with the amounts of that unit you bring to combat. Any sort of double linear scaling like this results in imbalances regarding the combat value of such a unit."
essentially, it would become the useful form of cannons/catapault-and retain most of its abuseablity(just adding a few support units)

if you make ring of flames into aura of flames-[all units in 9*9,including the casters tile]
but then-if he has high priests or some such with lots of direct healing, he can spam just enough to kill your units and heal his own.

the problem is that ring of flames is fundamentally broken
it needs to be switched with another spell such as

-firebolt, deal fire damage to target unit
that unit gains the burned promotion
(-10% or so regen, half health from the heal spell and shrine of saryona,)

 

[Offenbarungsjoe]

of course, capping it like seige is an option,
but that still doesn't change the problem as described by

Sure it does. If you cap it somewhere the scaling isn't linear anymore. If an ability scales linear with the number of affected units it means that if you use it on twice as many targets it will deal twice the damage. With a cap it won't do more damage if you increase the number of targets over the cap.