Stasis ! Better for you than for Illians !

[Rod]

This topic is to discuss the world spell of the Illians.

This spell is halting production, commerce, research, culture growth and city growth for all Non-Illian Civilizations. (basically everybody is in permanent anarchy for a fixed number of turns (except the Illians))

Which means that this spell is just awesome for you when you are non-Illian.

See, what it does it that it restricts everything but unit movement (and diplomacy).

This is broken. It means that when the Illians cast this spell it will not help them much, because they are underdeveloped most of the time anyway.

However as you dont have to worry about city happiness and counter strikes then you just take your entire army and declare war on your next neighbour.

You can also switch civics as per your convenience and dont worry about city unrest and maintenance cost as there is none You conquer city by city and you make so much money that as soon as the stasis ends your empire has double size , your coffins are full and best of all there is not a single city in rebellion because during the long stasis there was enough time to count down the civil unrest after conquest.

As I said .. it is just the biggest gift Mulcarn can ever provide you and he is not even doing it for you

 

[Demus]

sounds nice, with a few flaws:

none of your opponents have restricted movement eighter, so you can easily be stabbed in the back while rolling over an opponent
the illians still have unit production, and, unless played in a totally rediculous way, will probably be ahead in army size at the end of stasis
At the end of stasis, you'll have twice the empire (if done correctly in your manner), but still the same early-game army, making you rather vulnerable to an attacker (like the illians, who have been the only ones building troops)

So it's feasible, but risky

 

[Rod]

I must correct you on the last point. As you get tons of gold, you can update your entire army. Also you still can trade during stasis, hence you might even advance during this time

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

sounds as a good tactic, although as Demus said it's very risky.

aside from that, the spell needs a tech prereq cuz it spells doom if it comes very early.

 

[Demus]

upgrading your army is nice, but you need the techs to do so (hunting, horsebackriding or bronze working). And, you need to know the illians are ingame, so you can prepare for stasis (building scouts instead of hunters, just to be able to upgrade them). As said before: nice, but quite the gamble.

 

[onedreamer]

you'll suffer all the penalties all together later, which is all but good. The only good thing with stasis is that you can grow your cottages without bothering of production/food.

 

[Imuratep]

I used this strategy too especially if you play the Doviello iwith Mahala and slavery it's incredibly powerful. But of course if Stasis is used it as intended - for Ilians own wars it would be quite different. My brother and I had a game where we lead war against each other in the late game. Me as the Khazad had about 500 in my capital for the production of military units and my other cities (I owned the half of our continent) all had quite a good production. He played the Ilians and kept the spell till we fought against each other and was preparing Birthright regained. If I didn't have a giant army anyway he would have conquered my whole empire (about 25 cities) and with the Worldspell he was a really serious threat. So what you say is right for the PC as he uses it in the wrong moment, but of course not for a human player.

 

[onedreamer]

I don't agree that the AI uses it in such a wrong way. It can be used for various goals, one of which early or late war (actually, the earlier it is, the BETTER it is). I find the AI uses it in the colonization age, which gives them an edge over its neighbors because it will actively try to grab all land during Stasis, and its neighbors can do little to prevent it. Plus, this is a moment in the game where having 20 turns of "free" research can really change the rest of your game's teching.

 

[das]

I agree that it's nice for changing civics, and if you are in the position of advantage vis-a-vis the other civilisations prior to the Stasis then it is also very useful for warmongering and such. Ofcourse, if you are catching up then it is frustrating to say the last. I think that might be the point - Mulcarn is the god of status quo, and this spell reinforces it for everyone but the Illians, and those willing and able to find a way around it.

As I said .. it is just the biggest gift Mulcarn can ever gift you and he is not ven doing it for you

That reminds me of the Santa Claus connection brought up in another thread.

 

[Rod]

See, in general Stasis is supposed to provide the Illians an edge over THEIR neighbours. My entire post was about the fact that it actually provides the human player an edge over HIS AI-neighbours as well.

Hence my idea was not to suggest a new "killer tactic", but it was too mention an exploit that has to be dealt with by the design team.

I would like to present you the situation that I had in last game.

I actually played on the Knight-Erebus-Map as Bannor.

(and I had no idea about Stasis before)

So it happened that I had a nicely growing empire and we were already up to turn 160, when the Clan DoW on me. Hence I produced tons of warriors because that was the fastest way to produce masses in order to keep his masses in check.

I also switched to war economy that means I produced gold, gold , gold.

But as we were already quite deep in the game I already had Ironworking (this tech with lumbermills and Champions).

I only needed time to build the lumbermills and money to upgrade my army . Then suddenly the Illians called for Stasis ... 15 turns later I have 13 cities (from 6 before) , 6 free Champions (that are not required for city defense now that the unrest is setting in again), made peace with the Clan and left them their last city and DoW on the Kuriotates simply I didnt know what to do with my 6 Superpromoted-Champions ....

 

[Zifnab]

There seems to be a good synergy between Blood of the Phoenix, Armageddon, The Draw, and Stasis, built, triggered, and cast in that order. Especially if you have also built the Nexus or at least a bunch of obsidian gates.

 

[Imuratep]

See, in general Stasis is supposed to provide the Illians an edge over THEIR neighbours. My entire post was about the fact that it actually provides the human player an edge over HIS AI-neighbours as well.

Hence my idea was not to suggest a new "killer tactic", but it was too mention an exploit that has to be dealt with by the design team.

I would like to present you the situation that I had in last game.

I actually played on the Knight-Erebus-Map as Bannor.

(and I had no idea about Stasis before)

So it happened that I had a nicely growing empire and we were already up to turn 160, when the Clan DoW on me. Hence I produced tons of warriors because that was the fastest way to produce masses in order to keep his masses in check.

I also switched to war economy that means I produced gold, gold , gold.

But as we were already quite deep in the game I already had Ironworking (this tech with lumbermills and Champions).

I only needed time to build the lumbermills and money to upgrade my army . Then suddenly the Illians called for Stasis ... 15 turns later I have 13 cities (from 6 before) , 6 free Champions (that are not required for city defense now that the unrest is setting in again), made peace with the Clan and left them their last city and DoW on the Kuriotates simply I didnt know what to do with my 6 Superpromoted-Champions ....

Good what do you wanna do? Make all non-Ilian units immobile too? Something you still have to leave to the other civilizations. Either producing and researching or the units, which already there. Giving all produced and all already built units the slow promotion for 20 turns would probably - at least for an aggressively played Ilian - be more broken, though it's quite flavourful.

 

[Valerarren]

I suppose one could add some sort of movement reduction for all non-illian during stasis (maybe all reduced to one movement per turn when not within ones own borders?)

 

[Rod]

You could make units slower that is right(simply by assigning the Slow Promotion to all units as long as Stasis persists), AND/OR you could disable diplomacy, so no DoW possible ..

 

[BugReportage]

Except any smart AI or human who uses stasis does so EXTREMELY early in the game where it will have you overrun by barbs before you can even build your first warrior.

 

[TheJopa]

I must say I do not understand. You have advantage of not having to worry about unhappiness. It is only because you dont produce anything at all. Only reason to care about unhappy is because it hurts your research, economy and production, and during stasis it's like they are all unhappy. If you consider that good then you can simply never care about unhappiness and you are settled.

 

[orangelex44]

There seems to be a good synergy between Blood of the Phoenix, Armageddon, The Draw, and Stasis, built, triggered, and cast in that order. Especially if you have also built the Nexus or at least a bunch of obsidian gates.

Does anyone ever do this? How is this even possible? That's something like a milliard Hammers, a quadrillion burned cities and a quantity of luck that is improbable to the nth degree.

That being said, it does sound like a good strategy if it could be done.

 

[Psycho_Ivan]

Well, if you excluded Armageddon unless it was really a viable option, then the strategy still works out extremely well.

 

[Hoerks]

I must say I do not understand. You have advantage of not having to worry about unhappiness. It is only because you dont produce anything at all. Only reason to care about unhappy is because it hurts your research, economy and production, and during stasis it's like they are all unhappy. If you consider that good then you can simply never care about unhappiness and you are settled.

Exactly. If you can conquer your neighbour while under stasis than its an ai issue(or the enemy simply had an inferior military at that time) and you could as well have done this without stasis.

Also it takes a whole chunk of luck to:
having already sufficient units to overcome the city defense of all enemy cities,
not having another neighbour which backstabs you while your whole military is on the move(especially true for multiplayer),
having the illians to trigger their world spell when you like it.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

It really messed up my war with the Luchuirp. I was Sheiam and not well-prepared to deal with an early war against 6-strength wood golems. I was able to survive and defeat their offensive stack(though I did lose a city for a time). However, I was unable to press my advantage. It's hard to say which of us benefited most, but I'd hedge towards me because they had superior units. Soon after Stasis ran out, I founded Veil and they adopted it.
Of course, that didn't prevent me from punishing them, despite the damage done to the counter...