I just tested this for you... the unit will DROWN (tested with leviation).
Even if you have a harbor.
Great. Looking for ships to be more useful in multiplayer
I just tested this for you... the unit will DROWN (tested with leviation).
Even if you have a harbor.
Why? Such spells help to move the game towards its end- Levitating Temple Units ARE hard to beat if you don't have comparable forces. Even more so if they are Vamped. But why is that a bad thing?
In most games, for a player to have levitation and a temple unit, a fair bit of research must have occurred. Isn't the point of the game to build a powerful force? In MP, human players should be making intelligent research choices- like dispel and counterspell. Frankly, I will be very surprised if Agile Mind gets cast in MP more than rarely. That means that the "big spells," like Flame, Vamp, and Levi will take more than one turn to cast. Krolm worship (with his cheap divine counterspell) and Dauros worship will probably be more common as players react.
In the meantime, players who opt for low-tier zerg style will have viable strategies to try out- isolating the capital means no credible danger. There are tools already in the game to minimize/prevent flying temple units of doom. If a player can pull them off, why shouldn't they win?
tl;dr A flying Vamp Adept of Lunord is like a nuke in Civ- first player to get has a huge advantage. But the other players have only themselves to blame for the player getting that far, outside of truly unusual map positions.
Maybe then that spell is overpowererd and out of place, not water walking/flying?just choose dauros and it is undispelled forever.
Also doubt Agile Mind will be rare. If it means certain key spells become un-counterspellable, surely it's very powerful. Just hard to research it yourself, since enemies obviously want to countercast it too if they notice.
Has anyone ever tried using global dispell on other great mages? Would be kinda nifty if you could dispell things like agile mind. I'd try it myself, but I've only had the game last long enough for me to get global dispell a grand total of once. Which really makes me mad, seeing as everyone you go to war with likes to throw in mana leech etc.
They are not redundant. One allows travel over water, doesn't allow attacking air units, and cost less. The other one allows free travel over all terrain, attacking of air units, prevents of non-air melee units from attacking, and cost more upkeep. If all you want to do is cross an ocean then yes they seem the same.Levitation and water walk make unit type redundant, why would you get a flyer if you can get a temple unit fly by using levitation or why you want a battleship to protect your territory against enemy transport if they will just water walk his unit and kill all your battleships, don't tell me that it can be dispelled, just choose dauros and it is undispelled forever.
:blink:By allowing player to change unit role at will, this game gives too much freedom, a game that give too much freedom is a bad game.
This is the problem with the static amount global spells, they do not properly scale with the game and ultimately become useless spells. They also don't balance well against uneven players. For example if one player is a lot larger then another the odds are a static amount penalty will have a much larger impact on the smaller player then it would on the larger player. Meaning it's not going to be worth the smaller player's time to use it while it would be more useful to the larger player to hinder the already stunted growth of his opponent.Heh. I've ended a few games where Mana Leech has been on me for 20+ turns. Depending on your spells, it often isn't worth it to dispell it. Probably a different scenario on the small maps, though.
:blink:
Wow this has to be a first. I've never heard anyone say that too much player freedom creates a bad game. That's probably because it's not true and the vast majority of gamers want MORE freedom not less in their games. Poorly implemented freedom, balance issues between choices, and etc. lead to bad games. Not the fact that there are 10 choices instead of only 3. If in either case 1 of those choices is clearly better then it doesn't matter if you have 3 or 10 as it's not the level of freedom making things bad it's the mechanic balance.
Also the problem is not with flying Temple units. The problem is Naval ships SUCK and other Air units SUCK. If they were on par with temple units, which they should be, then there would be a good alternative to using the temple units with levitation/waterwalk to cover all areas of the map.
I have said it in previous page, that there are 2 solution, either nerf levitation and water walk or buff naval and air units, i prefer the latter.
While "less freedom" does tend to sell better (*cough* Call of Duty *cough* wheter it makes better games is very questionable. After all, how good is Deus Ex? How much freedom does it give the player? There's your counterpoint, no big article needed...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html
"There is a famous jam study (famous, at least, among those who research choice), that is often used to bolster this point. Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University and the author of “The Art of Choosing,” (Twelve) to be published next month, conducted the study in 1995.
In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.
Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.
That study “raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,” Professor Iyengar said last year, “but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.” "
Freedom means less sales and less people enjoying the game.
I prefer games where there are clear roles and benefits to each unit and ability. You're not forced to spend a few hours fiddling around to find the best choice. I like my games to be simple, not a chore of mathematics and choice.
Mr. Scheibehenne recently co-wrote an analysis, to be published in October in The Journal of Consumer Research, examining dozens of studies about choices. One problem, he said, is separating the concept of choice overload from information overload.
In other words, he said, how much are people affected by the number of choices and “how much from the lack of information or any prior understanding of the options?”
I had not read this specific article but the topic and various similar studies were covered in my Design classes back in College. How it pertains to games and game design is that too much freedom is not bad. Pointless freedom/choices are however bad. What I mean by this is say someone decided they have improved Rock, Paper, Scissors with a new game called Rock, Paper, Scissors, Brick, Cloth, Knife. Now in this new game Brick acts exactly like Rock, Cloth is exactly like Paper, and Knife is exactly like Scissors. This doesn't end up changing the game in any way shape or forth since these new choices are the same as the old ones. It only makes things more confusing to the player as they have the illusion of more choices but in reality there is still only 3 options. This is what is referred to as the "Illusion of choice" and is actually very common in games with lots of supposed choices and bad balancing, where one choice ends up being clearly better then all the others.Yes, that article, i forgot about it, but that article is the article that taught me about too much freedom=bad game.