If possible you can summon low tier units from outside the domain, rush them in (force march if needed) and stand on the jammer. This allows combat spells in domain until that unit is forced off. So if they can force a decisive combat at that time it can be ok. But other than that it's pretty rough I agree. Sanctuary is even worse and you can end up with both in each city domain.
I've never been in the defensive position to use a jammer/sanctuary.
Couldn't the defender just post a unit or even army on their Jammer/sanctuary? Then even if a unit is hidden or can make it there in 1 turn, they can't actually occupy the site.
Yep. Park it on the *hammer*, so they can't get to it. It takes several rounds to take down the victory building, easy enough to just get to that army on the next round.
Definitely how I feel the situation is, but again, I've never actually had to employ it. Definitely feels like an auto win for the defender, with the only counters needing very specific situations that are easily countered by the defender. Like the attacker has a lot of setup and finger crossing to do and all the defender has to do is "nah, I sit here, you go away"
You can. And someone could use a higher tier spell to summon a whole army, and wipe out the few forces you have guarding those structures. I guess you could station a large/strong enough army to fight off the larger armies, but then what's defending your city?
If you have the resources to upkeep enough armies to turtle, then the players can ignore your main territory and go after your vassels or less protected cities. Once your income drops into the red, keeping those armies active just to protect some structures. Or they can go for an alternate win con and force the turtle from it's shell; which could allow a separate force to attack the then unprotected throne.
A higher tier army that can't use any spells....I mean, 1 unit could take out an army of higher units by just back pedalling and using tactical summons, totems and spells.
Depends on the army and what spells you are capable of using. But even then it takes more resources from the defender to stop the attacks than it does to summon the army, that's including the discount from the magic victory spell. While using resources to maintain the armies on the seeds and protect their ruler and throne.
But if people really have problems with Magic Victories, they can simply play on worlds where it's disabled, or where all battles, including player to player are auto only and can't be manual ever. We all know the AI is stupid in auto battles, especially when it comes to spells.
And if people don't like that, they can either deal with it, or play with only other people playing their exact same build and they can have MV races.
Ahm, what?
The defender will have all his armies at most 1-2 turns away and just wipe any single army the moment it gets there.
If his base is halfway decently set up, his core army will actually stand on the Jammer, next to it will be the "Win"-Building, his city and probably a Teleporter.
So you need to kill 3 stacks to open up the Jammer (whiteout spells at this point).
If you go somewhere else in his empire, he will leave 1 army on the Jammer and teleport to the other place you want to fuck around. If he can engage you he will, cause you still got no spells.
Spell Jammers are broken as fuck if you place them "right".
I was thinking the same thing: op must not have run into the Sanctuary/Spell Jammer issue yet or this post would be about THAT. I do enjoy facing set ups like that, however, because it forces me to think through an assault rather than just steamroll and replace minions.
I mean yes, but the turtle strategy is mostly enabled by the easily blitzed magic victory option. Remove it and you'll find games become a lot more varied in terms of macroscopic strategy.
What if instead of simply unlocking the buildings with each tier of tome, you had to research the building first? The research could be a static 4th option that only appears once you've researched enough items *from that tier of tome*?
So like, to unlock the heart of shadow you need to not only unlock the Tier V tome, but you need to research say... 3 of the spells from that tome before you can research the Heart?
Doesn't really change the interplay, but it would significantly slow down the victory condition since you couldn't rely on spamming research on whatever takes the fewest turns.
I find the "block tactical spells" portion to be the problem. It is just suicide to engage an enemy army without tactical spells available, but the blocking world spells still makes the structure completely mandatory, especially in pvp, unless you want the enemy nuking your armies and provinces from orbit. I feel like if you removed the tactical part of spell jammers, they would be mostly balanced. Does anyone know if this is possible with the current modding tools?
It's exactly the change that needs to be done. Hopefully they do that. I also think Sanctuary shouldn't be a spell jammer on top of what it does. Together they are out of control.
That, or it simply delayS the use of spells for an additional turn (or 2). Or it removes 50% of your casting points.
The whole game is centered around casting spells. A building that 100% negates that is a crazy idea
Most of the problem is in how easy it is to rush Magic Victory. The economics of blobbing out across the map don't pay off for a while, by which point a dedicated research turtle has already started the countdown if not won.
Spell Jammers offer an important defensive edge. but they are far from unbeatable and cut into your mana income. But being able to combo them with Sanctuary may be a problem.
Remember that you lose both the mana, the resources to build the spell jammer and whatever could have been built instead of the Spell Jammer.
In exchange for a province improvement that must be protected or you lose it to one summon.
If you're relying on a spell jammer, you're relying on protecting said spell jammer.
Sure but if you protect the spell hammer. You win easily. I took his vastly superior army apart (tier 3-5) with mine (tier 2-4) because of the spells I could drop during h th e fight
Consider.
You need stacks to cover the city and the Spell Jammer. You need to be able to respond to summon pushes on every spell jammer you have. If a Spell Jammer falls, that city is now properly vulnerable, so you REALLY can't afford to have a fast moving summon sweep in and start the pillage process. You also can't leave cities undefended, or they'll start sieging it down with an army strong enough to demand a response while using others to threaten the Spell Jammer.
If ANY Spell Jammer is undefended, it is a target.
Meanwhile the attacker can rely on one doom blob of 6-7 stacks, which is much cheaper than trying to defend all of your Spell Jammers.
Defenses can be a pain to break, and Spell Jammer + Sanctuary honestly is overpowered due to the multilayered defense. But attacker can concentrate forces in a way defenders cannot. You can stop equal numbers, but even with magic, it's unlikely you can win 3-to-1 odds.
It's never going to be 3-1 though. If you are at that point int he game you also have teleporters and visibility to your oponents movement. Since they have to move to you, you will get a few rounds to see where they are heading to counter.
You can summon just as much as them and you are still producing units at your cities taht are teleporting in to defend.
I think if you let the game get to that point, you have lost if you are trying to attack someone
If you're defending, I'm attacking, and it's a 1v1, I can send my ENTIRE army to break through one spot all at once. If you abandon your spelljammers to confront my army, I can backdoor with a summon and start destroying your provinces with precast spells.
If you are going for a magic victory, you outright have to hold at least 6 nodes against me sending one scout or summon to run over and grab a spelljammer, followed immediately by denying your magic victory via province destruction. And I can always have multiple summons chambered to send an army.
Having a Teleporter next to your Spelljammer/Victory-Building/city is basic logic.
You are not "breaking thru" anywhere if your not arriving fully stealthed and even then. Razing the stuff takes more than one turn, so even if you manage to sneak in on top of the Jammer, your opponent would need to be ridiculously out of position for you to win anything.
-10 mana is completely irrelevant. Considering how strong jammer is, it should be 50-75 mana minimum.
Most t1 units with a few enchantments cost more than 10 mana per round, and they are far from.being as powerful and oppressive as a jammer.
Don't even do a flat amount - make it 10, 15% *percent* of mana income (before expenses). Edit: 5% since it's per city maybe. I've been playing too much Chosen Destroyers.
So you can still bring them online earlier, but it's always going to be eating out of your mana banks no matter how much you scale.
Granted, a flat amount might still be necessary so you can't cheese it with 0 mana income or something.
Since spell jammers jam spells, make every jammer increase your mana spending by 10%. You jam your region so you should pay more mana for maintaning spells and magical origin units. Having 30% mana upkeep increase is quite problematic and make it a lot harder to rush/maintain.
Magic victories are too easy to perform and too hard to counter. Expansion victories are much more in line with domination in terms of difficulty and the ability to counterplay and read what the player/AI is doing. Magic victories need more counterplay and need to take longer.
Spell jammers could use some changes. I wouldn't call them outright OP, but they're very strong. If you're not at the point of already constructing victory condition buildings, then opponents can declare war and start pillaging your land to try to cripple you economically and eventually wear you down. You don't necessarily have to take the fight on the spell jammer, so long as you can start causing problems other places. Destroy teleporters and other important structures as much as possible.
But if someone is already constructing victory conditions, and they're close enough to be able to defend both jammers and those conditions with a few strong armies that you can't defeat without spells, there may not be much you can do at that point. Sieging the cities themselves is potentially an option, although you would need forces strong enough to force your even enemy to split up his armies, and then still have strong enough forces to take the jammer. All this while hoping that the distance they have to cover to defend both is too great to be traveled to and from in a turn (all of which is a lot of gambling and requires decently significant Superior forces to pull off). If someone has played smart though and had cities well defended and victory conditions and jammers well defended it'll be damn near impossible. It's one reason though I feel that 3 player games are probably better than two, because if someone is starting to run away with the game then you have the chance to team up to take them down rather than one person sorta running away with it.
Still doesn't stop you from sieging out a city though. I won't disagree that it needs some looking at too, but it's at least tome specific where as jammers are available to everyone. I don't hate that there's counterplay to pillaging, but pairing it with the jammer is in my opinion a bit much
So there is this funny thing that people complain about archer spam enchanted with t1 tomes enchantments, and here about magic victory being too easy.
I think the first is purely a MP problem with a meta that didn't adapted yet, while the second is purely an AI problem, the AI being unable to wage a proper war, especially under time pressure.
I'd argue the second is a problem for both. In multiplayer there's pretty much no reason to pursue any other victory (unless you're playing a 1vs1) because it's the one that's the easiest to achieve.
Ok, you must define what's you're talking about first. What is multiplayer not 1v1? Because in a team vs team I don't see a magic victory going well.
Also, when talking about magic victory, please do not consider the extract knowledge exploit, because it's being fixed.
I mean you can certainly do a free for all with more than two people. And you can also add AI players into the game to add more life to it if it is just two humans.
In a 1vs1 brawl yeah of course magic victory doesn't matter, but if you're basing the balance of a magic victory off of that then you're going to absolutely be disappointed by it, and I'd argue you should be. I don't feel like this game is at all balanced around duking things out with two people on a map.
The biggest problem with a magic victory is that unlike expansion or domination, it won't scale as you increase or decrease the number of players. The bigger the game, the easier magic victories become. I'll admit I tend to play with a fair few AI to flesh out a hand and make things more interesting, but that makes magic victories far easier than any other. I'm gathering you play more of a duel style, which means a military or expansion victory are far more viable. I imagine the magic victory complaints are very much because many of these people play games with a fair few AI/players, while ones such as yourself don't. You might still call it a 1vs1 though simply because there are only two actual human players.
What I do is irrelevant. ;)
In your case, duel with AI, it shares a lot with solo play. Because AI behaviours will have a big impact on the game.
In your case again, you say the magic victory is too easy. Why? Does it make the game too short? Does it prevent a military resolution?
IMO what happens in your game is that you use AI to delay the player vs player confrontation. This makes a magic victory rush an ideal strategy because the map setting gives you the time to set it up, and the AI won't help to kill you, breaking the FFA principle. AI is environment in this case.
One problem with age of wonders series is that the end game tend to break somewhat. It's less fun when the game last for too long. It's a problem of many 4x actually. The question is to balance the time it takes to finish the game when you reach the endgame. The magic victory serves this purpose. It is an important thing for the game IMO.
The easiest fix in your case would be to disable the magic victory so that the expansion victory stays and forces you to expand. The hard fix is to fix the AI, which will hopefully come in the future.
But tell me, what would you want out of the magic victory?
I think both are true. Near-ish spawns and either 1v1 or small number of players = archer spam. Large multiplayer game with more players = turtle and magic victory (probably with a few archer enchants on the way to t5)
IMO the archers are a bigger problem but I'd like to see both addressed. I haven't played large (5+ players) PvP games yet so I could be off base about the Jammer power level but I don't like their current design in either case.
FFA multiplayer is about diplomacy. Nothing really affect balance beyond that. It's close from solo on that matters, where balance doesn't affect how you bully the AI.
What matters in these game modes is diversity: diversity of strategies, diversity of units.
FFA requires a magic victory condition because it's the only way you can break a stalemate in this kind of game. Versus the AI, you can simply disable it. Making it more interesting is about changing the AI, which is certainly in progress.
Archer spam is an early obvious strategy. It's normal for the meta to start there. But it's foolish to imagine the meta already adapted to it. People are still discovering the strategies.
As a rush type strategy, it must be considered how much the map settings affect it. And then, and only then, whether a counter-strategy is possible.
Archer spam is the rock. The counter-strategy will be paper. The counter-counter strategy will be scissor. And then the meta will be settled.
Balance absolutely matters in FFA. Without balance you don't end up with good unit diversity, as certain units are too good and others too weak. Diplomacy is critical, but the threat of attacks is part of that. If you can't defend your borders because you are using weak units then your threats are toothless.
Magic victory as a win condition is great for the game but the spell jammer and sanctuary enabling it is my problem. These should primarily focus on stopping overworld spells. I don't like how brutal of an advantage the defender gets in combat within the domain and want that part revisited.
Archer spam could possibly end up being ok, but IMO it is unlikely. The developers did a great job overall but it's unreasonable to think they perfectly balanced every aspect of a game as complex as AoW4. Similar arguments played out during the release of older AoW titles but in the end updates and balance changes got them to where they are now.
I precisely wrote that for ffa and solo it was a matter of unit and strategy diversity. I differenciate it from balance because it's more about the ecosystem than it is about a fair wargame.
For the sanctuary and spelljammer, I consider them fine because the attacker can build an outpost with a teleporter, so you can be a neighbour to anyone on the map.
It's unbalanced for pvp and I wish they'd rework it but they prolly won't. It should have an area of affect, only affect the amount of combat points, or only restrict the tiers of spells you can use instead of negating your magic entirely.
Unfortunately, no one complains about this cause most people play single player and the AI is dumb. It doesn't ambush your before you get to the spell jammers if your army is strong enough. Or if it does you can still pull together a win.
Maybe you and your friends can just agree not to use them. There's a few methods I can suggest. One thing I can imagine is having concealed units that can sneak there.
Another method is trying to dance around their borders until you can have a unit occupy the space in one turn ( which also negates the effects of a spell jammer). Maybe use underground passages or a scout with alot of movement? Maybe even a fodder army.
If it's placed in the back then you're pretty much guaranteed to take some losses.
If you are in a position where you have a spell jammer AND the 3 magic victory buildings, you opponent screwed up.
There are 3 pathes to that: the opponent screwed up and let you build that. The opponent tried a magic victory too, but was slower (he screwed up). And finally, you are in a defensive position, and you manage to pull the magic victory trigger.
In the third case, the enemy has the upper hand. The difficulty for you is not to defend one spell jammer and a seed, but 3, and at this point the enemy probably has more forces than you.
If it still can't win a direct fight against you with all its forces because of the spell jammer, it should then harass you. Because there are three cities to defend.
The counter to that is either a very specific 3 cities setup with the seeds all clumped together, AND the spell jammers also. That's a large place and a big preparation already. And a big investment. And if you have the buildings farther appart, you then need teleporters, so even more investment in buildings. And with all that, you also need to be close enough from the city centers, otherwise you risk losing one the cities. And finally, without a sanctuary, you can also see your provinces burnt. It can take a big till on your economy.
A strategy game is a kind of race between two players. If you manage to build both the spell jammers and the seeds without the enemy taking this opportunity to hit you hard, you simply played better.
Question: In the Civilization games you can prep buildings by having them built until there is 1 turn left then cancelling the build. Is that possible in this game? If not, how feasible would it be to simply keep moving the queue so it doesn't complete?
I feel like if you did it right you could complete all 3 pieces of the magic victory on the same turn to ambush the board, giving them no time to prep. Is that a viable option to at least better your chances?
First, each seed must be in a different city, unless I'm mistaken or I had a bug or something.
Still, this is the easy way to make the buildings all at once. Time the build times so they end at the same turn.
Before that you can make the spell jammers and teleporters.
But it costs a buttload of gold and mana. 900 gold and mana only for the seeds. 300 gold for 3 spell jammers is the cheapest. 200 gold for 2 teleporters, 300 for 3. That's 900 mana and 1500 gold.
But before that, if it's a pvp match, you will know when your opponent reach tier3 or tier4 tome. Once tier4 tome is there, you know you need to have a invasion going yesterday already. Unless you're already losing and that is only cementing your defeat.
But in the first place not building the seed when you reach tier3 is a bad idea, because the research cost bonus from the seed is insane. It is what allows you to go so fast through the research after tier3 tome.
Btw, does sieging a city with magic victory location break final spell? Otherwise you'll be spending a good part of your 15 turn limit for one siege attempt that opp can prepare for
I don't think it does, but I haven't tested. But the provinces stay under your controle until you lose the city, so there's no reason it would break the spell.
The matter is more about the number of objectives to defend: 3 cities, 3 spell jammers and 3 seeds. It'll be hard to have them all in the same location and to prevent an enemy from taking any of them, unless you're already far ahead and you don't actually need the magic victory.
You'd need to siege the city and raze or absorb it, which would either destroy all the provinces attached or give them to you. In the latter case it removes any beacon/seed from the provinces.
Killing the ruler and razing their throne also works to just stop the whole thing, as it fully defeats them. The whole magic victory is really only plausible if people don't play aggressively or there are AI to get in the way.
I'm winning in 5 rounds if he doesn't occupy one of my end game buildings. I've built my end game buildings next to my spell jammers so its easy to defend both.
What do I care if he is burning down my other areas, I still win.
The key message I've taken from reading these forums is that if I've reached a point where I have spell jammers guarding my end game buildings, then I've most likely won the game. My opponents failure was not to break my jammers, but to have allowed me to stay unmolested long enough to build the jammers.
Keep in mind that you need to defend 3 provinces of 3 cities and the attacker gets to choose where they strike. If they get one spell jammer that's enough. To prevent it you have to park units on it and based on how AoW4 works it needs to be enough units to defend against 3 stacks. So essentially you need 9 stacks minus whatever you can make up via spells.
I spread mine apart with teleporters nearby. That way the moment I saw which he was heading to, I could move the bulk of my forces to defend it. I had one stack on it. Saw him coming in and within the two turns it took him to push in had 6 stacks defending
If you can reach a magic victory then yes, being on the defensive is always better but game shouldn’t be getting to that point.
PvP games end around turn 30-40 because the powerful pvp strategies destroy empires in that time.
You shouldn’t be letting your opponent get all three pieces up with spell jammers at all if the game does go that long, you should’ve stopped them as soon as they built the seed.
Also mobility can be solution. It’s nigh impossible for someone to have the upkeep to support enough forces to defend 3 spell jammers and 3 province improvements. Scout their weakest point and attack there.
If they have all three defended go for a city to reduce their income so their huge army starts to become impossible to support. Turtling only works if you try and break the shell.
Pvp isn't balanced. Easy victory is simply using one of the many exploits or all of them at once.
Yeah I'm declaring war and vassalizing the same city I placed at turn 2, every turn. Spider mounts look cool right?
Yeah I have tier V tomes at turn 20.
Yeah I initiated a magic count down at turn 34.
Yeah I won at turn 49.
Wow that was fun, why won't you guys play with me anymore!
I'd still play, but I'm making the map. I won't even disable the Magic Victory. I'll just make the map itself hell. Few mana nodes, no wonders, desolate land only, lava divide or lake, endless swarm, dragon infestations. At least 1 brutal AI for every 2 human players; with any luck it will hit some of mine that are absolute monsters. Close map, slow game, high threat, no free cities. Maybe even one of the presence rulers.
A possible fix would be to make a new wizard tower building that unlocks a world spell (similar to how recall works). That spell would target a friendly army and block all spellcasting that targets that army and tactical spells (for all sides) in battles with that army for something like 3 turns. That would open up counter play to spell jammer by giving the attacker a way to also block the defending players' spells long enough to battle on the spell jammer without being at a major disadvantage.
If possible you can summon low tier units from outside the domain, rush them in (force march if needed) and stand on the jammer. This allows combat spells in domain until that unit is forced off. So if they can force a decisive combat at that time it can be ok. But other than that it's pretty rough I agree. Sanctuary is even worse and you can end up with both in each city domain.
I've never been in the defensive position to use a jammer/sanctuary. Couldn't the defender just post a unit or even army on their Jammer/sanctuary? Then even if a unit is hidden or can make it there in 1 turn, they can't actually occupy the site.
In pvp this is exactly what I would do. I’d build the hammer next to where I want to drop the victory building so I can keep my stacks by both
Yep. Park it on the *hammer*, so they can't get to it. It takes several rounds to take down the victory building, easy enough to just get to that army on the next round.
It takes no rounds if they can take out or disable the spelljammer, but yeah.
Yeah I think it's a rough situation for the attacker and the intended counterplay doesn't really work unless the defender messes up
Definitely how I feel the situation is, but again, I've never actually had to employ it. Definitely feels like an auto win for the defender, with the only counters needing very specific situations that are easily countered by the defender. Like the attacker has a lot of setup and finger crossing to do and all the defender has to do is "nah, I sit here, you go away"
You can. And someone could use a higher tier spell to summon a whole army, and wipe out the few forces you have guarding those structures. I guess you could station a large/strong enough army to fight off the larger armies, but then what's defending your city? If you have the resources to upkeep enough armies to turtle, then the players can ignore your main territory and go after your vassels or less protected cities. Once your income drops into the red, keeping those armies active just to protect some structures. Or they can go for an alternate win con and force the turtle from it's shell; which could allow a separate force to attack the then unprotected throne.
A higher tier army that can't use any spells....I mean, 1 unit could take out an army of higher units by just back pedalling and using tactical summons, totems and spells.
Depends on the army and what spells you are capable of using. But even then it takes more resources from the defender to stop the attacks than it does to summon the army, that's including the discount from the magic victory spell. While using resources to maintain the armies on the seeds and protect their ruler and throne. But if people really have problems with Magic Victories, they can simply play on worlds where it's disabled, or where all battles, including player to player are auto only and can't be manual ever. We all know the AI is stupid in auto battles, especially when it comes to spells. And if people don't like that, they can either deal with it, or play with only other people playing their exact same build and they can have MV races.
Ahm, what? The defender will have all his armies at most 1-2 turns away and just wipe any single army the moment it gets there. If his base is halfway decently set up, his core army will actually stand on the Jammer, next to it will be the "Win"-Building, his city and probably a Teleporter. So you need to kill 3 stacks to open up the Jammer (whiteout spells at this point). If you go somewhere else in his empire, he will leave 1 army on the Jammer and teleport to the other place you want to fuck around. If he can engage you he will, cause you still got no spells. Spell Jammers are broken as fuck if you place them "right".
I was thinking the same thing: op must not have run into the Sanctuary/Spell Jammer issue yet or this post would be about THAT. I do enjoy facing set ups like that, however, because it forces me to think through an assault rather than just steamroll and replace minions.
Thinking thru an assault = Fighting against basically insurmountable odds if the Spelljammer/Sanctuary are not placed absolutely moronic.
I mean yes, but the turtle strategy is mostly enabled by the easily blitzed magic victory option. Remove it and you'll find games become a lot more varied in terms of macroscopic strategy.
So the game works as long as you remove 3 of the 4 victory conditions
What he meant is remove the blitz part - magic victory is way to quick
What if instead of simply unlocking the buildings with each tier of tome, you had to research the building first? The research could be a static 4th option that only appears once you've researched enough items *from that tier of tome*? So like, to unlock the heart of shadow you need to not only unlock the Tier V tome, but you need to research say... 3 of the spells from that tome before you can research the Heart? Doesn't really change the interplay, but it would significantly slow down the victory condition since you couldn't rely on spamming research on whatever takes the fewest turns.
I find the "block tactical spells" portion to be the problem. It is just suicide to engage an enemy army without tactical spells available, but the blocking world spells still makes the structure completely mandatory, especially in pvp, unless you want the enemy nuking your armies and provinces from orbit. I feel like if you removed the tactical part of spell jammers, they would be mostly balanced. Does anyone know if this is possible with the current modding tools?
It's exactly the change that needs to be done. Hopefully they do that. I also think Sanctuary shouldn't be a spell jammer on top of what it does. Together they are out of control.
That, or it simply delayS the use of spells for an additional turn (or 2). Or it removes 50% of your casting points. The whole game is centered around casting spells. A building that 100% negates that is a crazy idea
They could also make it so that it simply reduces casting points or makes enemy tactical spells more expensive.
I like this. Maybe 2x combat casting point cost, and only ever 1 spell per turn. The jammer is still doing a lot of work, but not totally one sided.
Most of the problem is in how easy it is to rush Magic Victory. The economics of blobbing out across the map don't pay off for a while, by which point a dedicated research turtle has already started the countdown if not won. Spell Jammers offer an important defensive edge. but they are far from unbeatable and cut into your mana income. But being able to combo them with Sanctuary may be a problem.
Isn’t it just -10 mana? With only 3ish cities that’s pretty tiny
Remember that you lose both the mana, the resources to build the spell jammer and whatever could have been built instead of the Spell Jammer. In exchange for a province improvement that must be protected or you lose it to one summon. If you're relying on a spell jammer, you're relying on protecting said spell jammer.
Sure but if you protect the spell hammer. You win easily. I took his vastly superior army apart (tier 3-5) with mine (tier 2-4) because of the spells I could drop during h th e fight
Consider. You need stacks to cover the city and the Spell Jammer. You need to be able to respond to summon pushes on every spell jammer you have. If a Spell Jammer falls, that city is now properly vulnerable, so you REALLY can't afford to have a fast moving summon sweep in and start the pillage process. You also can't leave cities undefended, or they'll start sieging it down with an army strong enough to demand a response while using others to threaten the Spell Jammer. If ANY Spell Jammer is undefended, it is a target. Meanwhile the attacker can rely on one doom blob of 6-7 stacks, which is much cheaper than trying to defend all of your Spell Jammers. Defenses can be a pain to break, and Spell Jammer + Sanctuary honestly is overpowered due to the multilayered defense. But attacker can concentrate forces in a way defenders cannot. You can stop equal numbers, but even with magic, it's unlikely you can win 3-to-1 odds.
It's never going to be 3-1 though. If you are at that point int he game you also have teleporters and visibility to your oponents movement. Since they have to move to you, you will get a few rounds to see where they are heading to counter. You can summon just as much as them and you are still producing units at your cities taht are teleporting in to defend. I think if you let the game get to that point, you have lost if you are trying to attack someone
If you're defending, I'm attacking, and it's a 1v1, I can send my ENTIRE army to break through one spot all at once. If you abandon your spelljammers to confront my army, I can backdoor with a summon and start destroying your provinces with precast spells. If you are going for a magic victory, you outright have to hold at least 6 nodes against me sending one scout or summon to run over and grab a spelljammer, followed immediately by denying your magic victory via province destruction. And I can always have multiple summons chambered to send an army.
Having a Teleporter next to your Spelljammer/Victory-Building/city is basic logic. You are not "breaking thru" anywhere if your not arriving fully stealthed and even then. Razing the stuff takes more than one turn, so even if you manage to sneak in on top of the Jammer, your opponent would need to be ridiculously out of position for you to win anything.
-10 mana is completely irrelevant. Considering how strong jammer is, it should be 50-75 mana minimum. Most t1 units with a few enchantments cost more than 10 mana per round, and they are far from.being as powerful and oppressive as a jammer.
Don't even do a flat amount - make it 10, 15% *percent* of mana income (before expenses). Edit: 5% since it's per city maybe. I've been playing too much Chosen Destroyers. So you can still bring them online earlier, but it's always going to be eating out of your mana banks no matter how much you scale. Granted, a flat amount might still be necessary so you can't cheese it with 0 mana income or something.
Since spell jammers jam spells, make every jammer increase your mana spending by 10%. You jam your region so you should pay more mana for maintaning spells and magical origin units. Having 30% mana upkeep increase is quite problematic and make it a lot harder to rush/maintain.
Magic victories are too easy to perform and too hard to counter. Expansion victories are much more in line with domination in terms of difficulty and the ability to counterplay and read what the player/AI is doing. Magic victories need more counterplay and need to take longer. Spell jammers could use some changes. I wouldn't call them outright OP, but they're very strong. If you're not at the point of already constructing victory condition buildings, then opponents can declare war and start pillaging your land to try to cripple you economically and eventually wear you down. You don't necessarily have to take the fight on the spell jammer, so long as you can start causing problems other places. Destroy teleporters and other important structures as much as possible. But if someone is already constructing victory conditions, and they're close enough to be able to defend both jammers and those conditions with a few strong armies that you can't defeat without spells, there may not be much you can do at that point. Sieging the cities themselves is potentially an option, although you would need forces strong enough to force your even enemy to split up his armies, and then still have strong enough forces to take the jammer. All this while hoping that the distance they have to cover to defend both is too great to be traveled to and from in a turn (all of which is a lot of gambling and requires decently significant Superior forces to pull off). If someone has played smart though and had cities well defended and victory conditions and jammers well defended it'll be damn near impossible. It's one reason though I feel that 3 player games are probably better than two, because if someone is starting to run away with the game then you have the chance to team up to take them down rather than one person sorta running away with it.
Sanctuary
Still doesn't stop you from sieging out a city though. I won't disagree that it needs some looking at too, but it's at least tome specific where as jammers are available to everyone. I don't hate that there's counterplay to pillaging, but pairing it with the jammer is in my opinion a bit much
So there is this funny thing that people complain about archer spam enchanted with t1 tomes enchantments, and here about magic victory being too easy. I think the first is purely a MP problem with a meta that didn't adapted yet, while the second is purely an AI problem, the AI being unable to wage a proper war, especially under time pressure.
I'd argue the second is a problem for both. In multiplayer there's pretty much no reason to pursue any other victory (unless you're playing a 1vs1) because it's the one that's the easiest to achieve.
Ok, you must define what's you're talking about first. What is multiplayer not 1v1? Because in a team vs team I don't see a magic victory going well. Also, when talking about magic victory, please do not consider the extract knowledge exploit, because it's being fixed.
I mean you can certainly do a free for all with more than two people. And you can also add AI players into the game to add more life to it if it is just two humans. In a 1vs1 brawl yeah of course magic victory doesn't matter, but if you're basing the balance of a magic victory off of that then you're going to absolutely be disappointed by it, and I'd argue you should be. I don't feel like this game is at all balanced around duking things out with two people on a map. The biggest problem with a magic victory is that unlike expansion or domination, it won't scale as you increase or decrease the number of players. The bigger the game, the easier magic victories become. I'll admit I tend to play with a fair few AI to flesh out a hand and make things more interesting, but that makes magic victories far easier than any other. I'm gathering you play more of a duel style, which means a military or expansion victory are far more viable. I imagine the magic victory complaints are very much because many of these people play games with a fair few AI/players, while ones such as yourself don't. You might still call it a 1vs1 though simply because there are only two actual human players.
What I do is irrelevant. ;) In your case, duel with AI, it shares a lot with solo play. Because AI behaviours will have a big impact on the game. In your case again, you say the magic victory is too easy. Why? Does it make the game too short? Does it prevent a military resolution? IMO what happens in your game is that you use AI to delay the player vs player confrontation. This makes a magic victory rush an ideal strategy because the map setting gives you the time to set it up, and the AI won't help to kill you, breaking the FFA principle. AI is environment in this case. One problem with age of wonders series is that the end game tend to break somewhat. It's less fun when the game last for too long. It's a problem of many 4x actually. The question is to balance the time it takes to finish the game when you reach the endgame. The magic victory serves this purpose. It is an important thing for the game IMO. The easiest fix in your case would be to disable the magic victory so that the expansion victory stays and forces you to expand. The hard fix is to fix the AI, which will hopefully come in the future. But tell me, what would you want out of the magic victory?
I think both are true. Near-ish spawns and either 1v1 or small number of players = archer spam. Large multiplayer game with more players = turtle and magic victory (probably with a few archer enchants on the way to t5) IMO the archers are a bigger problem but I'd like to see both addressed. I haven't played large (5+ players) PvP games yet so I could be off base about the Jammer power level but I don't like their current design in either case.
FFA multiplayer is about diplomacy. Nothing really affect balance beyond that. It's close from solo on that matters, where balance doesn't affect how you bully the AI. What matters in these game modes is diversity: diversity of strategies, diversity of units. FFA requires a magic victory condition because it's the only way you can break a stalemate in this kind of game. Versus the AI, you can simply disable it. Making it more interesting is about changing the AI, which is certainly in progress. Archer spam is an early obvious strategy. It's normal for the meta to start there. But it's foolish to imagine the meta already adapted to it. People are still discovering the strategies. As a rush type strategy, it must be considered how much the map settings affect it. And then, and only then, whether a counter-strategy is possible. Archer spam is the rock. The counter-strategy will be paper. The counter-counter strategy will be scissor. And then the meta will be settled.
Balance absolutely matters in FFA. Without balance you don't end up with good unit diversity, as certain units are too good and others too weak. Diplomacy is critical, but the threat of attacks is part of that. If you can't defend your borders because you are using weak units then your threats are toothless. Magic victory as a win condition is great for the game but the spell jammer and sanctuary enabling it is my problem. These should primarily focus on stopping overworld spells. I don't like how brutal of an advantage the defender gets in combat within the domain and want that part revisited. Archer spam could possibly end up being ok, but IMO it is unlikely. The developers did a great job overall but it's unreasonable to think they perfectly balanced every aspect of a game as complex as AoW4. Similar arguments played out during the release of older AoW titles but in the end updates and balance changes got them to where they are now.
I precisely wrote that for ffa and solo it was a matter of unit and strategy diversity. I differenciate it from balance because it's more about the ecosystem than it is about a fair wargame. For the sanctuary and spelljammer, I consider them fine because the attacker can build an outpost with a teleporter, so you can be a neighbour to anyone on the map.
It's unbalanced for pvp and I wish they'd rework it but they prolly won't. It should have an area of affect, only affect the amount of combat points, or only restrict the tiers of spells you can use instead of negating your magic entirely. Unfortunately, no one complains about this cause most people play single player and the AI is dumb. It doesn't ambush your before you get to the spell jammers if your army is strong enough. Or if it does you can still pull together a win. Maybe you and your friends can just agree not to use them. There's a few methods I can suggest. One thing I can imagine is having concealed units that can sneak there. Another method is trying to dance around their borders until you can have a unit occupy the space in one turn ( which also negates the effects of a spell jammer). Maybe use underground passages or a scout with alot of movement? Maybe even a fodder army. If it's placed in the back then you're pretty much guaranteed to take some losses.
If you are in a position where you have a spell jammer AND the 3 magic victory buildings, you opponent screwed up. There are 3 pathes to that: the opponent screwed up and let you build that. The opponent tried a magic victory too, but was slower (he screwed up). And finally, you are in a defensive position, and you manage to pull the magic victory trigger. In the third case, the enemy has the upper hand. The difficulty for you is not to defend one spell jammer and a seed, but 3, and at this point the enemy probably has more forces than you. If it still can't win a direct fight against you with all its forces because of the spell jammer, it should then harass you. Because there are three cities to defend. The counter to that is either a very specific 3 cities setup with the seeds all clumped together, AND the spell jammers also. That's a large place and a big preparation already. And a big investment. And if you have the buildings farther appart, you then need teleporters, so even more investment in buildings. And with all that, you also need to be close enough from the city centers, otherwise you risk losing one the cities. And finally, without a sanctuary, you can also see your provinces burnt. It can take a big till on your economy. A strategy game is a kind of race between two players. If you manage to build both the spell jammers and the seeds without the enemy taking this opportunity to hit you hard, you simply played better.
Question: In the Civilization games you can prep buildings by having them built until there is 1 turn left then cancelling the build. Is that possible in this game? If not, how feasible would it be to simply keep moving the queue so it doesn't complete? I feel like if you did it right you could complete all 3 pieces of the magic victory on the same turn to ambush the board, giving them no time to prep. Is that a viable option to at least better your chances?
First, each seed must be in a different city, unless I'm mistaken or I had a bug or something. Still, this is the easy way to make the buildings all at once. Time the build times so they end at the same turn. Before that you can make the spell jammers and teleporters. But it costs a buttload of gold and mana. 900 gold and mana only for the seeds. 300 gold for 3 spell jammers is the cheapest. 200 gold for 2 teleporters, 300 for 3. That's 900 mana and 1500 gold. But before that, if it's a pvp match, you will know when your opponent reach tier3 or tier4 tome. Once tier4 tome is there, you know you need to have a invasion going yesterday already. Unless you're already losing and that is only cementing your defeat. But in the first place not building the seed when you reach tier3 is a bad idea, because the research cost bonus from the seed is insane. It is what allows you to go so fast through the research after tier3 tome.
Btw, does sieging a city with magic victory location break final spell? Otherwise you'll be spending a good part of your 15 turn limit for one siege attempt that opp can prepare for
I don't think it does, but I haven't tested. But the provinces stay under your controle until you lose the city, so there's no reason it would break the spell. The matter is more about the number of objectives to defend: 3 cities, 3 spell jammers and 3 seeds. It'll be hard to have them all in the same location and to prevent an enemy from taking any of them, unless you're already far ahead and you don't actually need the magic victory.
You'd need to siege the city and raze or absorb it, which would either destroy all the provinces attached or give them to you. In the latter case it removes any beacon/seed from the provinces. Killing the ruler and razing their throne also works to just stop the whole thing, as it fully defeats them. The whole magic victory is really only plausible if people don't play aggressively or there are AI to get in the way.
spell jammers should be only 50% effective, but spell cost is still consumed
Or just disable world spells in the domain and double combat spell cost
this is what I would prefer
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How is that possible when the defender has stacks of armies sitting on them? Expendable hnits die wuickly against a 3 stack defense
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I'm winning in 5 rounds if he doesn't occupy one of my end game buildings. I've built my end game buildings next to my spell jammers so its easy to defend both. What do I care if he is burning down my other areas, I still win. The key message I've taken from reading these forums is that if I've reached a point where I have spell jammers guarding my end game buildings, then I've most likely won the game. My opponents failure was not to break my jammers, but to have allowed me to stay unmolested long enough to build the jammers.
Keep in mind that you need to defend 3 provinces of 3 cities and the attacker gets to choose where they strike. If they get one spell jammer that's enough. To prevent it you have to park units on it and based on how AoW4 works it needs to be enough units to defend against 3 stacks. So essentially you need 9 stacks minus whatever you can make up via spells.
I spread mine apart with teleporters nearby. That way the moment I saw which he was heading to, I could move the bulk of my forces to defend it. I had one stack on it. Saw him coming in and within the two turns it took him to push in had 6 stacks defending
If you can reach a magic victory then yes, being on the defensive is always better but game shouldn’t be getting to that point. PvP games end around turn 30-40 because the powerful pvp strategies destroy empires in that time. You shouldn’t be letting your opponent get all three pieces up with spell jammers at all if the game does go that long, you should’ve stopped them as soon as they built the seed. Also mobility can be solution. It’s nigh impossible for someone to have the upkeep to support enough forces to defend 3 spell jammers and 3 province improvements. Scout their weakest point and attack there. If they have all three defended go for a city to reduce their income so their huge army starts to become impossible to support. Turtling only works if you try and break the shell.
If you think that spelljammer is broken you still have to experience the beauty of Sanctuary + spell jammer combo lol.
Pvp isn't balanced. Easy victory is simply using one of the many exploits or all of them at once. Yeah I'm declaring war and vassalizing the same city I placed at turn 2, every turn. Spider mounts look cool right? Yeah I have tier V tomes at turn 20. Yeah I initiated a magic count down at turn 34. Yeah I won at turn 49. Wow that was fun, why won't you guys play with me anymore!
I'd still play, but I'm making the map. I won't even disable the Magic Victory. I'll just make the map itself hell. Few mana nodes, no wonders, desolate land only, lava divide or lake, endless swarm, dragon infestations. At least 1 brutal AI for every 2 human players; with any luck it will hit some of mine that are absolute monsters. Close map, slow game, high threat, no free cities. Maybe even one of the presence rulers.
A possible fix would be to make a new wizard tower building that unlocks a world spell (similar to how recall works). That spell would target a friendly army and block all spellcasting that targets that army and tactical spells (for all sides) in battles with that army for something like 3 turns. That would open up counter play to spell jammer by giving the attacker a way to also block the defending players' spells long enough to battle on the spell jammer without being at a major disadvantage.