Age 54 Potential Changes Rev II

[Palem]

A typical kingdom would have their "big" Faeries around 25-50% of the average province size. There are going to be 2-4 of them per kingdom. The amount of effort it requires to chain down 4 non attackers is not worth the trade off of being wrecked by the other 21-23 provinces in the enemy kingdom.

It is, simply put, not a viable winning strategy to chain T/Ms. It may hurt them in the long run, but in war it does just 2 things:
1- Increases their WPA/TPA (Chained A/Ms can LL ~50 of their size back anyways)
2- Leaves the real threat (attackers) unharmed.

T/Ms don't win real wars Palem, sorry.

If that's the case, then why does ANYONE use TMs?
TMs win long wars. Even worse this age, TMs act as a nw reserve to ensure that you don't fall below the 50% mark and auto-lose.

Kill the TMs, win the war. Simple as that really.

[Evillone]

Natsu when you say "a race is fine as is" I'm not sure if your talking about with bishops proposed changes or with mine as you quoted my list of changes as a preface. Either way you say for avains that "7/3 leet is fine and will put them on par with dwarfs" which if you don't change dwarfs, or just bump up their BE mod, is true the problem still being that the hybrid combos are still out matched by faerys+atackers combo and thiers no point in balancing avain with dwarfs when both would be underpowered. To top it off you improved faerys which further opens the gap between T/M's and hybrids.

Pillz u are wrong about not hitting faerys and the power they can hold in war... SPGC just finished waring Liam and we opened the war by hitting down 2 of their faerys, depriving them of the damage they would have done with ops and the econ the could have generated and guess what? we WON! in resounding fashion no less!

[Palar]

Regarding the WW specialist credits they'll probably be used up before the following war anyway so shouldn't be an issue. This is due to all the ops that happen in the war. Usually pure attackers have to train 2k ~ 3k elites easy to replenish their forces. Don't see anything wrong here.

Exactly, you don't even get a choice to not use the credits, so the only people who will be able to hoard credits are those who don't have anything to train.

[Natsu]

Natsu when you say "a race is fine as is" I'm not sure if your talking about with bishops proposed changes or with mine as you quoted my list of changes as a preface. Either way you say for avains that "7/3 leet is fine and will put them on par with dwarfs" which if you don't change dwarfs, or just bump up their BE mod, is true the problem still being that the hybrid combos are still out matched by faerys+atackers combo and thiers no point in balancing avain with dwarfs when both would be underpowered. To top it off you improved faerys which further opens the gap between T/M's and hybrids.

Basically the Age 54 Potential Changes Rev II overall is fine but need minor tweaks. Avian, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human races shouldn't be able to break Faery provinces without the help of Orc/Undeads. Orcs/Undeads shouldn't be able to do any thievery (except intel) or magic on enemy provinces. Faery race shouldn't be able to attack anyone. Elves, Halflings, and Faeries should have issues when it comes to doing ops on each other.

You should need an Orc or Undead to break down a Faery province. In the other aspect you can use all other races to break down the Orcs/Undeads except the Faery, Elf, and Halfling races will do a better job at it. If you allow every race to break the Faery race then might aswell remove said race but I do agree that the Avian does need either a 7/3 elite or 0/6 on their defense spec. Other than those suggestions I made I feel the races are overall on the right path.

[Wrekx]

I was refering to the part you need more acres allocated to Guilds for it to be effective. That's unless you want to end up having to cast it up to 6 times before you either run out of runes or it finally succesfully casts. This is what I was getting at.

I disagree that RM has to be cast on the entire kingdom to be effective. I would consider just having it on 4-5 provinces as effective if it was able to reflect MS to eat away at a t/ms at home turtled defense.

Plus I just don't like defensive spells on Orcs.

[Natsu]

I disagree that RM has to be cast on the entire kingdom to be effective. I would consider just having it on 4-5 provinces as effective if it was able to reflect MS to eat away at a t/ms at home turtled defense.

Plus I just don't like defensive spells on Orcs.

I wasn't saying anything about it being on the whole kingdom. What I was referring to is that it has a lower success rate than alot of other spells thus you have to compensate by pulling acres from other buildings to place in Guilds if you plan on utilizing Reflect Magic for the province. Reflect Magic is a spell I probably won't be using next age anyway since I don't like running upwards of 15% Guilds. My runes are put to better use for spells like IA, Patriotism (when trying to draft), Builders Boon (when I have key buildings to build), L&P, MP, and NB (some people don't like this one but I use it).

[UtopiaKarateKid]

Rm is a unique spell which is only given to one particular race every new age if you notice. To choose not to use RM imo, is truely a great waste.

There is actually a difference between a successful landed spell, and a successful reflected spell

Take example for a duration spell, the MS

- provs that usually receive MS, are attackers
- attackers' mod Wpa is lower
- thus the MS can be Vortex out by their own kdmates
- so there is a counter strategy against the landed spell

- pros that usually cast MS, are t/ms
- t/ms mod Wpa is higher
- thus once the MS is been reflected, there is no one else can help him Vortex it, since no one can break his own Wpa
- so there is no counter strategy against reflected spells


RM works best for instant spells such as FB, and second on duration spells. Either way, it still offer your advantages.

For instant spell like FB
- instant spells means you are going to spam a lot, a lot of spells on a prov, repeatedly
- thus usually for experienced t/m, they would certainly go for Vortex your prov first before they do so
- because the more spells they intend to chain on you, the more spells per chance they are going to reflect it to themsevels
- thus they would always need to waste 1-2 hour worth of mana per each chain just to Vortex your prov, since Vortex produce random but not 100% effects
- and Vortex is a spell, that gives totally no damage to your prov


For duration spell like MS
- duration spell means you cast the spell one single time, success and you stop
- so the t/m can choose whether to Vortex, or not to Vortec your prov
- if they choose to Vortex, you have successfully wasted their mana
- if they not to Vortex, then there will be a chance the MS will be reflected back to them

PS: Averagely, the damage around an 8-hour MS is around the damage of a successful land hit can cause. For example if you suffer a hit and lost 500 def spec, an 8-hour duration MS on your prov would probably do the same kind of damage. A 24 hour MS strategy, is the same as causing the military casualty around 3x of land hits on a prov, per day.

So, by investing a few % of Guild and towers, and you may be able to enjoy a benefit such as saving up to one less attack unique that is required to be made on a t/m, or avoided the lost of several hundreds or thousands of your military units. How would that become so unbeneficial to your prov?

So RM imo, is more like a tanking spell, which basically its role is to waste up the opponent's mana pool but not a spell which can effectively defend your prov (unless, if the t/ms always choose not to Vortex your prov of course)

And eventually with more mana needed to be wasted on your prov, thus result in less damage in total they can cause to your entire kd. But usually, experience t/m will always Vortex you first most of the time.

[Crypticterror]

Well I think with orc as they are now with RM are a bit to good compared to some others.

But a well vortexing a province is not useless ass you will most lickley get rid of their MP, Mschield, IA, FL, PAT, L&P, NB, TW ( is nice if you gonna chain somebody and mv their TW+MP(GP) of so less offence needed to break than :)

But in the case of orc you just want to shell him out with mage ops ofcourse you wanne do an MV than to get rid of RM and possible getting rid of other usefull self spells like
IA <-- they won't get -15% military wages and -20% training time ( but troops are in training will still come out as fast so this one doesn't matter but him not having -15% wages than put greeds, riots on him with FB's can quickly cause him to get into negative income ) ofcourse if he loggs in he can just recast but probbaly he will have a few hours of non IA :)
Mschield <-- Increases your defensive magic efficiency by 20% is always nice to get rid of that before you tottaly for example fb him to 1K pezzies fast
FL <-- well starvation strategy never really works onley in noob kd's so doesn't really matter eccept that he will probbaly need to recast it so waste manna+runes
NB <--- getting rid of NB is nice so you can cast storms as with storms+MS = mostly negative pezzie growth per hour get some nice fb's in there or torna's
Pat <-- no +30% draft speed :) always nice to get rid of that on them

can go on but mostly if you MV a prov you will get cast away 2-4 self spells of him so MV is not wasted manna/runes BUT MVing an all orc kd just to MS them I dunno just let 1 mage MS them all and eat an MS himself reflected upon him it's worth it :)

[Landro]

Rm is a unique spell which is only given to one particular race every new age if you notice. To choose not to use RM imo, is truely a great waste.

There is actually a difference between a successful landed spell, and a successful reflected spell

Take example for a duration spell, the MS

- provs that usually receive MS, are attackers
- attackers' mod Wpa is lower
- thus the MS can be Vortex out by their own kdmates
- so there is a counter strategy against the landed spell

- pros that usually cast MS, are t/ms
- t/ms mod Wpa is higher
- thus once the MS is been reflected, there is no one else can help him Vortex it, since no one can break his own Wpa
- so there is no counter strategy against reflected spells


RM works best for instant spells such as FB, and second on duration spells. Either way, it still offer your advantages.

For instant spell like FB
- instant spells means you are going to spam a lot, a lot of spells on a prov, repeatedly
- thus usually for experienced t/m, they would certainly go for Vortex your prov first before they do so
- because the more spells they intend to chain on you, the more spells per chance they are going to reflect it to themsevels
- thus they would always need to waste 1-2 hour worth of mana per each chain just to Vortex your prov, since Vortex produce random but not 100% effects
- and Vortex is a spell, that gives totally no damage to your prov


For duration spell like MS
- duration spell means you cast the spell one single time, success and you stop
- so the t/m can choose whether to Vortex, or not to Vortec your prov
- if they choose to Vortex, you have successfully wasted their mana
- if they not to Vortex, then there will be a chance the MS will be reflected back to them

PS: Averagely, the damage around an 8-hour MS is around the damage of a successful land hit can cause. For example if you suffer a hit and lost 500 def spec, an 8-hour duration MS on your prov would probably do the same kind of damage. A 24 hour MS strategy, is the same as causing the military casualty around 3x of land hits on a prov, per day.

So, by investing a few % of Guild and towers, and you may be able to enjoy a benefit such as saving up to one less attack unique that is required to be made on a t/m, or avoided the lost of several hundreds or thousands of your military units. How would that become so unbeneficial to your prov?

So RM imo, is more like a tanking spell, which basically its role is to waste up the opponent's mana pool but not a spell which can effectively defend your prov (unless, if the t/ms always choose not to Vortex your prov of course)

And eventually with more mana needed to be wasted on your prov, thus result in less damage in total they can cause to your entire kd. But usually, experience t/m will always Vortex you first most of the time.

If your mages try to vortex every MS then they're doing it wrong. It's a huge waste on mana and runes which should have been aimed at the enemy instead.
Mages can counter RM on a low wpa attacker quite easily by casting MV first which requires the same relations as MS. Even if you fail to get rid of the RM, it's good that T/Ms have something to fear since they're pretty much invulnerable to everything else.

[Evillone]

Natsu, then we disagree on basic philosophy of how the "niches" should interact. To simplify things a bit You basically want a paper, rock, scissors type interaction between the "niches" with t/m besting hybrid, hybrid beating attacker and attacker trumping t/m. This is pretty much the way the system works now with the caviot that if played properly within a good kingdom scheem faries are nearly invincible (I can elaborate on this if needed but most of the issues with faerys have been previously discussed in this thread). In this system faerys can op everyone (besides other faerys not acounting for the level of skill the faerys are played) but attack no one, hybrids can op attackers and some other hybrids and attack attackers and some other hybrids while attackers can attack everyone but op no one. What I'm saying is this paper, rock, scissors type approach severly detracts from the value of hybrids because a kingdom that chooses to run a mix of faerys and pure attackers can be assured of either being able op or attack (or both) almost enemy province they run across where as a kingdom running either a mix of faerys & hybrids or hybrids & attackers gains a small overall boost to either attack power or op power while sacrificing either the ability to attack some enemy provinces or the ability to op some enemy provinces. This in effect means that for any sensiable kingdom faerys and attackers are a requirement (while hybrids are just an extra option that can give your kingdom some extra benefits but also come with sertain sets of negatives as well. If you NEED 2 types of provinces in your kingdom but not the third the third will never be as valued as the other 2 and it dosnt make any sence at all to me to have 4 or 5 hybrid "niches" when none of them are going to be as valuable/usefull to a kingdom as faerys, orcs and/or undeads.

[American Badass]

T/Ms don't kill people, attackers do. Ask any developer and they'll tell you it's true!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ83KXUloP8

[Evillone]

On a side note about the RM discussion going on. In war their is something like a 75% auto fail rate on trying to cast spells on provinces outside the kingdom you are at war with, this includes your own kingdom. So this makes using MV to clear MS on your own provinces impractical because regardless of the casting and target provinces respective WPAs you will have a 75% chance to fail the spell.

[Bishop]

That doesn't happen.

[Bishop]

http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...?621943-Age-54

Changes posted, thanks for all the suggestions folks.