Spiderterror - Spiders need a nerf ?

In my recent game i managed to capture a spider early in the game and developed a guerilla tactic with it. During an early war with the duviello i trained it by have it attacking wounded units, resulting in an increasing number of spiders as each win spawns a new spider. With 2 large spiders, one level 9 and the other lvl 4 i moved close to the next bordertown of the doviello, and placed them on a hilltop. It was heavily guarded as seen on the screenshoot. One turn later the doviello moved in 12 of their units and attacked my spiders. They spiders slaughtered the whole stack in one round and spawned an equal number of spiders, they didnt loose a single fight





Okay a lvl 9 spider is certainly more than a match for a hunter or two, but this is kinda ridicoulos isnt it ? Probably the spawnrate should be reduced to like 33% of the win, because gaining so many although weak units in one round seems a little weird to me.

 

maybe spiders should have a decrease in spawn chance like werewolves.

 

I was able to use spiders almost unaided to secure my continent from four rivals because I had lucked out on how early I could capture one. The game was decided then more or less, but I still had to deal with Orthus and Acheron, and since I'm a perfectionist I'm still building but none of the other civs left in the world has the tiniest chance.

Combine the spawning with the high early strength and later the +1 happy per city (if you can keep finding small opponents) makes them a rather potent item.
Are they game-breakingly strong? I don't think so just yet, 'cause I had a serious stroke of good fortune in mastering one as early as I did.
I'd say the jury is still out.

 

I'm using spiders in my current game (which is marathon speed, by the way). Even deleting a significant portion of the baby spiders leaves me with enough spiders to feel like I'm exploiting something. With all the barbarians around, I could probably zero my research to support several dozen spiders and rush them at my rivals.

Reducing the spawn rate would seem wise. I also don't see why the babies are automatically subdued, either - they should be wild, but this may make the spawn functionality messy.

 

I've used the spider strategy in the past. It was fun building up a small army, keeping them Hidden Nation, and sending them inside the borders of lightly defended civs.

However, I'm finding it really depends on the game what you get. In my current game (huge fantasy map), I haven't seen a single spider. I didn't see any during exploration either. They were either killed (not likely) or simply did not spawn.

Wolves, Elephants, and Bears are very plentiful, however.

 

In marathon I have found that a single giant spider is often able to subdue several opponent's entire civilisations by itself, even if you delete all it's children.

The invis means you can easily pick off stragglers until it is strong enough that warriors have a snowball's chance in hell vs it, this is particularly ugly with them being able to learn city raider.

The odds of getting a single giant spider by subdual also aren't too horrible with a woodland scout on forest/hill, but this doesn't bother you once you have one as the spider gets defensive bonuses which puts the shoe entirely on the other foot in that situation ( also spider can level up much faster than scouts can given it's ability to easily eat warriors unpromoted).

 

I have only seen like 2 or 3 spiders ever!

 

Hm, maybe the answer is to exchange invisibility for forest stealth? (When that works again, anyway)

 

Makes sense, at least.

 

Although, scouts would be unable to see the spiders in that case... but since spiders are the only invisible animals, we could just change animal invisibility to only work in forests.

 

... and in jungles.

 

I don't see this as a problem, since it takes time for the Baby Spiders to mature and even then they are just level 1.

 

Does that adjust to game speed? According to the Wiki, it is 3% per turn. On marathon speed that's not very significant, but on quick speed that is huge. This should be adjusted for game speed, if not already.

 

once I "took over" a khazad city with the spiders, but later I forgot about them.. they remained there living with the warriors, eventually the city became the RoK holy city, but I *think* I missed the chance to kill a possible Great Prophet...

it was funny though...

 

It isn't. Most of the spawn rates (other than the Werewolf Spawn rate) are.

 

I was just re-reading what I said. What I meant by 'not very significant' was that waiting for that 3% on Marathon speed is not a big deal since you can sometimes spend a dozen turns just waiting for the next event. But that percentage on Quick is a big deal, I imagine (not that I would know). You would probably research 6 techs before a baby spider grew to adulthood.

 

yes, although after a lot of battles you have 30 baby spiders, so chances are that you'll have a new giant one every turn. meanwhile getting more from each time they attach.

quite powerful, although the upkeep is nasty, and could really slow you down, with pacifism i was paying 3gpt/spider

 

Mm, I only recently found out the joy of Giant Spiders myself. I was on an Islands map, got an early AH Scout who defended against a Spider in a Foreest-Hill. I won, and took it. A little healing and it just became the unstoppable force when the Orc and Goblin barbs came. Since it was an Island map, I couldn't take full advantage and invade, but I was seriously amused by my Spider Army (30+ if I recall correctly).

They do seem a little overpowered early on, but they're hard to get a hold of and hard to take advantage of IMO. I don't see them as a problem personally, they're a lot of giggles though

 

I would personally prefer them sharing a mechanic with werewolves, so that there is a modifier that reduces the chance of their spawning based on their numbers, and so that an HN Baron could still spread Lycanthropy.

 

spiders are just too easy to counter that they need no change

hunting comes fast and early, and hunters easily dominate spiders