Super Stacks

[Gelvan]

Do not get us wrong, it is not we who have the ~100 unit stacks. We cant afford it as on higher levels you get additional inflation and such. We only fight them

Ah okay at last I see your point here So if it's more like a new challenge, well yes why not. then, it's just about the Style of Play that you prefer, and Noble is more for the casual "try out every possible idea that comes to mind" (including entangle, I had some use for it also with fewer units in AI stacks), while Immortal seems to be "how the heck do I use every little edge in this game, to survive".

So I am happy, I don't have to play on higher difficulty. That's the good thing of a single player game

Would be interesting to see how people play on MP - many stacks or more specialization. Or both? who wins?

That's what I love about this mod, I keep finding new strategies and tactics. Before I pretty much never used blind/entangle since it could be resisted and just focused on damage magic, but now I'm lovin' it.

that's true for me too. I like Noble because it feels fair. If I do something wrong (beeline Honor from the beginning (can work, but does not often), don't research Education early enough, build no axeman) I will loose - or at least have a hard time to win. If I give attention to my economy I can go the way I want (Magic, Warfare, Priests) and can there test all those nifty spells and abilities.

Well maybe one day I join the "lets get beaten"-Immortals but for the day being I like it that way.

I only hope the AI "thinks" the same way on lighter difficulty levels as it does on higher ones. Do you know something about that?

 

[xienwolf]

I play on Immortal level too and I often see rather big stacks (in the 100 units or so). Problem is that the AI can get stuck by an entangle and won't move any unit of the stack, even the ones who resisted. I call that a bug!

In future versions of Fall Further, the Immobilizing by spell will remove a unit fro the group it is in.

I don't know if the AI is smart enough to ditch the immobile units and press on, or if it will just group back up. So if anyone uses this tactic if Fall Further and it still stops the full stack, let us know.

 

[Marchwik]

In all games U need to control your army size in demography ,do eveything to be always on podium.Of course for player it is a little boring control everything and build units not buildings- but it is only way to survive sometimes.U need good economy for many huge army so produce units who gave u new free units or make collateral damages.U don't need big army when U have many that kind of units,because when someone try to attack U very fast Your army raising or enemy units after your collateral attack are not that good

Try to use units that give u possibility to attack of many enemy units like cataps and units with death spell or some summon to made skeletons or sth and u have it production for free -even for one turn.Mages- try to use AIR II spell "Maelstorm" it is a most powerful spell in this game.Try to rebase all units in whole empire in one place with huge and massive counterstrike power.Even if U lost one or two cities,choose place to attack enemy stack.When the battle begin change trait and try to use "slavery" to maximum- for produce that many units how is possible from population.And when enemy stack disappear- try counterattack with rest of your army and produce cataps (very important) asap to do it.Very useful is also this spell "Blind" ,AI is stupid and when U are used "Blind"- units who have a move just moving. AI huge stack is cutted for little parts and it is always a good moment to attack them

I always also waiting with Golden Age from first Great People for that kind enemy attack ,when I produce many units from slavery I use first Great People for Golden Age to avoid units "strike".The same situation is when I need to attack someone very fast with huge stack

 

[cyther]

The stacks really don't do much for me. The ai sits there if only one is hurt and if try for only about 5 turns you can pretty much wipeout the stack with collateral.

 

[orangelex44]

What I like is that the AI ALWAYS fights to the last man, even when it's a lost cause... I had a small, about 30 unit stack attack my 5 Gunpowder guys (whatever they're called) in a city, on a hill. By their last 2 units, I'd finally gone to my third guy for defense - and they KEPT COMING.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Sarisin, what game speed is that?

 

[psychoak]

With 30 some cities, that kinda seems like a reasonable army. He's . .. .. .. .in huge, only makes sense that his army is too. A little too large of course, but the ai is known to run low science rates and carry huge armies once it gets rolling. If his cities were any good, he was building 10-20 units a turn easy.

This is why I avoid huge games actually. I prefer standard, but even those tend to get too slow in the late game. Most of mine are played at tiny, keeps it more tactical and less waves of junk battles.

 

[Sarisin]

Sarisin, what game speed is that?

Epic.

I haven't tried Marathon yet with my new computer, but will the next game.

I have to say the computer made all the difference in the world for me because previously no way would I have considered a game on a Huge map with 18 civs.

As I said, despite losing (and the previous spate of CTDs) this has been the most enjoyable game I have played in quite some time!

I know the big stacks on a big map is not everyone's cup of tea, though.

 

[Sarisin]

Same game, different AI civ. This time the elves have a stack of 200+ units. That's four civs each with a huge army/stack that I have seen.

I took my 3 HN Shadows (1,700+ XP) to the right of the stack and tried to whittle it down a bit. However, that didn't work as the damn Priests of Leaves kept summoning more Tigers to replace the once I killed.

Still 150 turns to go and I have seen some massive armies in this game. Sadly, I might have to end it as the saved games are approaching 2mb, I'm getting memory allocation errors, and it is taking a little over 2 mins between turns. Even more sad is the fact that despite all the fun this game has given me, it will be chalked up in the loss column.

 

[Vorpal+5]

I'm not that bothered by AI stacks. Sometime it is even 'oh, more XP for my troops!'... Why? Because with entangle and a maelstrom or two, you can toast a 100+ stacks without problems. ONE UNIT entangled is sufficient to halt the WHOLE stack for 2 turns, and then with maelstrom doing up to 46% damage, you can kill and kill and kill units, turn after turn, then move back one square so the non entangled units don't reach you.

So ok, it is not a bug, but Kael and team should really consider toning down such abuses. As for myself, I'm starting to mod them out...

 

[Sarisin]

I only had to battle two of the super stacks. One (Doviello) I ran away from and the other (Elves), I'm not at war with - just doing HN damage.

The first stack was damaged by two Grigori Medics with Crown of Brilliance. I didn't use Entangle (never thought of it), but the Illians' stack made a suicide attack killing all their units that did not withdraw from battle.

The second stack was Infernal and I just fortified some very strong units (Adventurer Hero Beastmaster, Baron, captured Beasts of Agares, etc.) and, they do did a kamikazi run virtually wiping out the stack. My Hero picked up close to 100 XP during the battle and the other units were barely touched.

There are ways of dealing with the stacks to be sure. The reason I started this thread was that I had not seen stacks like this from the AI civs ever. I had seen a few from the barbs in past versions, but to get large stacks from four different civs in one game I thought was noteworthy. Again, this was only Monarch difficulty.

 

[westamastaflash]

I had an enemy stack on immortal. Hyborem had become quite powerful because I kept razing AV cities (I was OO Bannor). He had a bunch of eidelons, beasts, and more (at least 70 units). My poor stack of Donal, 4 Speakers, 4 Druids, 10 Mages, and a crapload of stygian guards never had a chance :-(. Memo to self - if you are having run razing coastal cities, don't assume that once you go inland that you will survive....