Chasity OVERPOWERED

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Originally Posted by Palem

It's not 5% stealth. It's 5% of your remaining stealth, and that's outside of war.

That said, I would need to kidnap 133 pezzies an hour to make up that difference. That's easily done with a single op.

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No, we are using hourly stealth to make this calculations to be fair, how can you take into account overall/remaining stealth when you know in war, chastity isn't the only thing on your hands? Even as an attacker, I had no stealth majority of my wars. The MAXIMUM you can get from kidnap is 3.2% of the target's overall peasants. That is if you actually succeed! Sending that much thieves to do a kidnap op means if you failed, you are going to lose a hell lot more thieves. Not to mention you will be DRAFTING that small amount of peasants you kidnapped(unless you're telling me your army is immortal).

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Originally Posted by Palem

Not having an income means you can't pay your army, ever. It means you can't build, nor train, nor explore. That effect is far more instant than no birth rates. It doesn't even compare.

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I am only using this as an example to show that we should be tackling the functionality of the spell/op because that's the core of the problem. You are taking it a step too far.

Keep the same difficulty and effects, but increase rune cost, it is pretty damn cheap!

Dj,

My kingdom have been using Chastity two ages in a row. I don't have the numbers in my head what the duration was last age.
This age we are using Faery Sages.
At the start when all is equal (Your NW is close to your opponent), I have yet to see a chastity last 9 hours. Highest I have seen have so far been 8 hours, the most common are 6-7 hours, at war end it's reduced down to 4-5 hours due to gap difference.

I believe Mystics get additional +hours from Chastity, can someone confirm that?
If so the solution is quite easy, skip the +hours mystics get from chastity and cap it on 8 or 9 hours. Increase rune cost aswell by 25-30%.

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Originally Posted by DjTeddySpin

Lets say if riots were to stop all income, would you suggest stealing GCs or getting aid from KD mates as an effective counter-measure? The core of the problem still stands, if riot does that, its obviously OP and you fix the op, not suggest a weak solution.

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You cant MV riots whereas you can MV chastity. Also, for chastity to be really effective you must have already been taken down to low pop - its not very usefull casting it on a fully popped prov.

bugulu: http://wiki.utopia-game.com/index.ph...ity#The_Mystic - * +30% Spell Duration (For Duration Spells Only)

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Originally Posted by Bishop

You cant MV riots whereas you can MV chastity. Also, for chastity to be really effective you must have already been taken down to low pop - its not very usefull casting it on a fully popped prov.

bugulu: http://wiki.utopia-game.com/index.ph...ity#The_Mystic - * +30% Spell Duration (For Duration Spells Only)

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Like I have already explained Bishop, it is just to highlight that even if you have a weak solution to the problem it does not make the problem any less OP. You can invent a spell that stops all income for the sake of this argument but its still not about if it can be MVed or not.

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Originally Posted by bugulu

If so the solution is quite easy, skip the +hours mystics get from chastity and cap it on 8 or 9 hours. Increase rune cost aswell by 25-30%.

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That would be nice. But I am not sure how much rune increment would make the cut, as I do not have a sample to compare it's runes to acre ratio. Do you have any info you can post?

See, I personally don't feel chastity is op. It takes a fair bit of work before casting it is actually worthwhile, the duration is short and you do have some options to negate it if you really want to.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

You cant MV riots whereas you can MV chastity. Also, for chastity to be really effective you must have already been taken down to low pop - its not very usefull casting it on a fully popped prov.

bugulu: http://wiki.utopia-game.com/index.ph...ity#The_Mystic - * +30% Spell Duration (For Duration Spells Only)

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Thanks for the link, as usual, most answers for questions can be found in the manual hence the saying RTFM (Read The ****ing Manual!)

Sadly I have no numbers for you Dj, I was sitting one of our faeries for two weeks couple of weeks ago but I do not remember what the rune cost was exactly.
All I can say is that mana was more of a problem than runes.

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Originally Posted by bugulu

Sadly I have no numbers for you Dj, I was sitting one of our faeries for two weeks couple of weeks ago but I do not remember what the rune cost was exactly.
All I can say is that mana was more of a problem than runes.

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Until I ran into a KD of faeries + undeads(which can also cast chastity). The plague + chastity + ms + storms was insane. But that's exceptional. Well, with or without chastity, mana shortage isn't a new thing in the Maging department imo.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

You cant MV riots whereas you can MV chastity. Also, for chastity to be really effective you must have already been taken down to low pop - its not very usefull casting it on a fully popped prov.

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MV is only of academic importance, because in practice it's impossible to keep mv'ing provs that get chastity 4-5 times a day. It costs way too much in both mana and runes to be an option in the actual game.

Also, stopping someone's population from growing is ALWAYS a good thing, even if they aren't really that short on peasants at the moment. Chastity is just way too cheap and easy for what it does, especially when mv'ing it is a non-option for anyone with a working brain.

People pulling the MV card is getting really tiring right about now.

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Originally Posted by DjTeddySpin

Until I ran into a KD of faeries + undeads(which can also cast chastity). The plague + chastity + ms + storms was insane. But that's exceptional. Well, with or without chastity, mana shortage isn't a new thing in the Maging department imo.

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You know a kd setup like this will probably result in a chastity strategy. Those races also have significant weaknesses. There are effective strategies to counter these setups even as non-hybrid attacker. You just have to work with your kingdom as a team to hurt these hybrids / full t/m's where it hurts them the most.

* reduce the full t/m's nw so (s)he wont have enough spellduration due to nw difference.
* let hybrids get fat in war so they wont have enough wpa to succesfully cast spells.
* Rune control so they cant cast all of those mentioned spells
* NB to prevent storms to reduce the total impact of this strat.
* Sapphire dragon against a hybrid kd setup like this.

But again this is about a combination of spells / ops / attacks with chastity. Like Bishop said the spell needs work done before it's usefull. Again chastity is not the real killer, the lack to draft and generate income is caused by peasant reduction due to ops/spell/attacks. It's an illusion you can stay in shape during war (unleash you are beating up a kd much weaker or if you are being left alone.) warring is all about endurance. peasant control is one of the tools to limit the enemy his ability to rebuild during war. chastity is just a tool to maintain a certain number of peasants and still there are ways to regain peasants. (attacking(TM) / kn / release ).

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Originally Posted by Luc

MV is only of academic importance, because in practice it's impossible to keep mv'ing provs that get chastity 4-5 times a day. It costs way too much in both mana and runes to be an option in the actual game.

Also, stopping someone's population from growing is ALWAYS a good thing, even if they aren't really that short on peasants at the moment. Chastity is just way too cheap and easy for what it does, especially when mv'ing it is a non-option for anyone with a working brain.

People pulling the MV card is getting really tiring right about now.

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If removing chastity is so vital to your prov then getting it MVed is hardly academic. Rune cost is negligible, you dont ask someone with fail wpa to mv you unless you enjoy wasting runes and mana. You ask someone that is unlikely to fail and you supply them with the runes.

Stopping pop from growing when someone is 95% popped isn't as awesome as stopping someone you just FBed. You arent going to ask for an MV if you are popped with chastity on now are you?

The MV card trumps you.

I agree with Bishop for the most part, but must point out that MV is more costly than is portraited, cause targetted prov also has to recast selfspells and MV doesn't clear chastity in one go pers? even if you succeed.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

If removing chastity is so vital to your prov then getting it MVed is hardly academic. Rune cost is negligible, you dont ask someone with fail wpa to mv you unless you enjoy wasting runes and mana. You ask someone that is unlikely to fail and you supply them with the runes.

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Who says that someone who is unlikely to fail exists and is there exactly when I need him/her? And MV is still a hard spell that even such people fail with, not to mention that it's not guaranteed to ever remove chastity at all. There's also the alternative cost to consider, namely that the mana they're using on you can't be used on doing damage to your opponent instead.

The measure of if something is overpowered is how much work it takes to do it compared to how much it takes to counter it. Are you saying that's it's as easy mv'ing chastity on 10 provs 4 times a day as it is to cast chastity on those same provs?

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Stopping pop from growing when someone is 95% popped isn't as awesome as stopping someone you just FBed. You arent going to ask for an MV if you are popped with chastity on now are you?

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I never ask for mv's to chastity, because they're a waste. MV is hard to cast, expensive, fails to remove the spell you're targetting fairly often, and also removes other spells that I will have to recast. It's unreasonable for it to be that hard to counter something that's extremely easy and cheap to cast.

Also, even if they're 95% pop'ed when I cast it, they'll only remain at that level if they don't grow at all. Casting chastity on someone you're letting grow is a great way of building land farms for yourself with very little cost.

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The MV card trumps you.

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The MV card is played only by people who don't war a lot, or who are warring people who don't use chastity. Their ideas about MV are 100% irrelevant, because they think it's somehow a good option, and so they're obviously living in a dream. MV is a terrible argument against chastity, anyone who has tried it knows that. That you haven't run into issues with chastity yourself doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

As you know, I'm a faery t/m this age, so i'm not actually the target of chastity, but I still think it's a ridiculous spell.



In short: Chastity is overpowered because the effort it takes to counter it's rather powerful effects are unreasonably high compared to the costs of casting it.

As you also know i ran a human and now run a faery, both sides ftw!

Lets look here though - "The measure of if something is overpowered is how much work it takes to do it compared to how much it takes to counter it. Are you saying that's it's as easy mv'ing chastity on 10 provs 4 times a day as it is to cast chastity on those same provs?"

If all you are doing is casting chastity then gz, you fail! Chastity needs to be combined with serious underpop for it to be a killer - which takes work. You may get some other spells mved, but if you are that underpopped only one spell counts - l+p.

"In short: Chastity is overpowered because the effort it takes to counter it's rather powerful effects are unreasonably high compared to the costs of casting it. "
Chastity may be too easily spammed but its hardly a spell that nails a prov by itself and as such is not as powerful in its own right.

It doesn't have to be the spell that ends all provs to be overpowered, it just needs to have an effect that isn't proportional to it's cost and difficulty. You don't have to seriously depop someone for chastity to hurt. It sucks to not have any peasant growth. Chastity is great for keeping people under control while you're waiting to free up resources to do depop, or simply chaining someone to hell. With no peasant growth you're not gonna do anything good with any land you might be gaining.

For the record, l&p for a properly depop'ed prov is like polishing a turd. Only way you get out of it without it taking weeks is if you get aid or if you can kidnap.

I disagree, you do need to depop a prov for chastity to hurt, otherwise a few simple kidnaps will keep you all popped up + gains from trads. You need, I feel, to look more at the effort required to take a prov to a situation where having chastity cast on it is the final nail in the coffin - its quite an expenditure of effort at that stage. I dont think i've said this earlier but i agree chastity needs a rune increase btw.

FYI, turds can be polished -http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html. If you are underpopped though you will have l+p cast and thats about it - even if it sucks.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

See, I personally don't feel chastity is op. It takes a fair bit of work before casting it is actually worthwhile, the duration is short and you do have some options to negate it if you really want to.

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I have to disagree with you there. I don't think it's function is OP, but it's rune cost is dirt cheap (for the record it's about .84 runes/acre. FB costs about 1.8 runes/acre). Even if you don't have a good wpa, don't worry about it, just spam it for 6 or 7 tries and it will go through eventually. You can't do that with the other powerhouse spells (or at least you shouldn't) and there's a reason for that.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

I dont think i've said this earlier but i agree chastity needs a rune increase btw.

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^^ post above yours

<-- ftw

Bishop, you know as well as anyone I don't actually read anything you post lol

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Originally Posted by Bishop

^^ post above yours

<-- ftw

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And earlier you also said that the rune cost for MV is negligible. So raising the rune cost for a spell that costs less than negligible matters how exactly?

And again, having no pop growth because of a simple ass spell is no fun. If you have to rely on kidnappings and peasant gains from tm's to grow your population, you've clearly been affected.

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Originally Posted by Luc

And earlier you also said that the rune cost for MV is negligible. So raising the rune cost for a spell that costs less than negligible matters how exactly?

And again, having no pop growth because of a simple ass spell is no fun. If you have to rely on kidnappings and peasant gains from tm's to grow your population, you've clearly been affected.

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Negligible cos you dont spam MV obviously - stop being obtuse Luc :p

"And again, having no pop growth because of a simple ass spell is no fun" <-- being "affected" isnt the same as it being overpowered, which is the point of this entire thread

Nothing changes. Not rune costs, nothing... or you will do the hardest ticks there is. No more protection from the mods. I'll pull you out of that one-kingdom Hilton and cast you down with the Absalomites. You'll think you've been chained by a train! And the forums? Gone... sealed off, thread-by-thread. We'll have us a little poster barbecue in the yard. They'll see the flames for thousands of acres. We'll dance around it like wild Injuns! You understand me? Catching my drift?... Or am I being obtuse?

Chastity is just a storms that can't be stopped by NB...

+1 for Shawshank references =]

With all due effing respects...

All the things you try to argue can be countered 2-3 pages back. I am so tired of repeating the same point to the same people who are supposed to be making things better for the game... Yes you know I am referring to you.

You had to bring the issue down to the point of fighting over vocabulary and phrasing methods when you know well it's contents and expressions, driving the focus away from the main argument that you lost. Repeatedly give ridiculous replies and suggestions that have been rebutted pages ago.

It makes me question what your purpose in the forums is? So you can make a point(for the sake of it), or to do your job?

Our job is to moderate the forums and make sure everyone is following the rules. You're getting other player's feedback, that's all.

Then you're not giving me player's feedbacks, you're constructing a merry-go-round.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

Negligible cos you dont spam MV obviously - stop being obtuse Luc :p

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Eh? Why would you have to spam chastity if you don't have to spam MV? Chastity is simple to cast, unlike MV. You can chastity half a kd with the runes you generally need to MV 1 or 2 players. MV is in the best case scenario like 5 times more expensive than Chastity, and in the worst case it doesn't work at all. Does that seem like a reasonable counter to you? In practice, chastity is as easily removed as riots, meaning not at all. At the same time, chastity can be a lot more powerful than riots, and is significantly cheaper and easier. How does that make sense?

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"And again, having no pop growth because of a simple ass spell is no fun" <-- being "affected" isnt the same as it being overpowered, which is the point of this entire thread

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The whole point is that chastity does too much damage for the cost and difficulty, something that's been repeated to you several times, and you have yet to respond to it. A minor adjustment to the rune cost will make 0 difference, because the whole point is that you don't really need to spam the spell at all. Completely stopping someone's population is powerful, and it shouldn't be almost as easy as getting a cb used to be (for any half decent a/m or t/m), it's ridiculous.

Again, overpowered is not about something giving you an auto-win for the age, it's about what you get for what it costs and how easy it is to counter.

Did someone just make a veiled "do your job" post at me? I was unaware I was not entitled to an opinion here - in fact I know I'm entitled to one just as I am entitled to instantly ban people that tell me to "do my job". Cool isn't it?

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Originally Posted by Luc

Eh? Why would you have to spam chastity if you don't have to spam MV?

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Idk, you were the one on about covering a kd in chastity, not me.

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Originally Posted by Luc

The whole point is that chastity does too much damage for the cost and difficulty, something that's been repeated to you several times, and you have yet to respond to it. A minor adjustment to the rune cost will make 0 difference, because the whole point is that you don't really need to spam the spell at all. Completely stopping someone's population is powerful, and it shouldn't be almost as easy as getting a cb used to be (for any half decent a/m or t/m), it's ridiculous.

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I see you, like Palem, don't read my posts either :(

Bishop: Making friends since July 2008 lol

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Originally Posted by Bishop

Did someone just make a veiled "do your job" post at me? I was unaware I was not entitled to an opinion here - in fact I know I'm entitled to one just as I am entitled to instantly ban people that tell me to "do my job". Cool isn't it?

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Oh of course you're entitled to opinions! Posting and contribution doesn't seem to come hand in hand though.

He doesn't have to do anything but moderate, so not sure what that "do your job" crap meant, lol.

Ho Ho Ho - i dont have a sense of humour - you wont get another warning from me.

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Originally Posted by DHaran

He doesn't have to do anything but moderate, so not sure what that "do your job" crap meant, lol.

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Correct me if I am wrong, he has contacts with the devs and most probably has a say in the changes? If he doesn't fine, I am not gonna waste my time on this either.

PS. i didn't tell him to 'do his job'. the sentence ended with a question mark and addressed to myself from the very start.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

Idk, you were the one on about covering a kd in chastity, not me.

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I see you, like Palem, don't read my posts either :(

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I've read all your posts in this thread, and they're all variations on the theme "You can MV it" and "It's only super awesome if you also depop". Responses to those arguments are "MV is only a theoretical counter, because in practice it's infeasible" and "The op doesn't have to give you a tripple crown to be overpowered, because OP is about benefit vs costs".

The MV argument is silly, because it's ridiculously costly and ineffective to the degree where it's not really a counter at all. Ergo the MV argument is useless.

Chastity is both easy to cast and low cost in runes. The casting difficulty is what matters, because an increase in rune cost will have little to no effect when you never fail with the spell anyway, at least not when it's a small rune cost to start with (unlike for MV). Unless you're planning to increase the cost by a lot (and judging by how you seem to think chastity is rather crappy, you're not) it's not a solution. Start playing in warring kingdoms again and you won't enjoy how easy it is for them to keep you at 2 peasants per acre, something that shouldn't be easy at all, because it really does serious damage.

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Originally Posted by DjTeddySpin

Correct me if I am wrong, he has contacts with the devs and most probably has a say in the changes? If he doesn't fine, I am not gonna waste my time on this either.

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Bishop has just as much say in the changes as you do.

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Originally Posted by Luc

The MV argument is silly, because it's ridiculously costly and ineffective to the degree where it's not really a counter at all. Ergo the MV argument is useless.

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Exactly. And repeated many times.

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Just MV.
Its like storms.
Just kidnap.
Runes are negligible
I don't feel chastity is op

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These are the kind of posts that we all see in this thread. It provides absolutely zero explanation or statistics to prove anything. So far only Palem and a few others responded with any kind of detailed calculations or actually try to prove something.

"OP is about benefit vs costs" - Luc, and others I think

What level? Does having to pick 1 of two races count as a cost? How much of a cost? Gnome used to have a built in cost because it was a fairly lame attacker, but you have to have some to be intel *****s - do you count that as a cost?

It sounds as though your argument is that there is a "right" choice about using chastity *if you can* (as in, if you can, use it). I'd counter the main cost is supposed to be offloaded into the choice of race that has access to it. I disagree with this method of balancing in general (in particular for large items like perfect intel or chastity), but some of it is necessary to give races their own flavor.


I'd also contend that the game benefits from greater strategic variety - hence the general good balance around NW gains, and sci curve works fairly well, and buildings are generally good. (If it takes a major in mathematics to get *approximations* of *some* building's relative strengths for *certain* provinces... I'd call that a pretty close call.) Whereas casting Fog, or MP, or Chastity, or PF if you can... is really just "duh". Even NS vs. prop vs. kidnap vs. steal has some interesting choices at times... but if you've got Fog, keep it up in war, and if you've got chastity, keep coverage in war, and always PF the chain target. Not a lot of interesting choices there.

I feel we can almost always rebalanced the races ok after fiddling with spells or other items like that - so get the other stuff, then (re)balance races as a last step.

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Originally Posted by Palem

Bishop has just as much say in the changes as you do.

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That very very assuring. Thanks.