Unity spell disgust

[2Coats]

Well, they did delete (not lock, but delete), thread where one guy made tool for unpacking their pack files, which made it possible to look at game resources. And quickly closed any other threads related to it.

Their reasoning was that this is somehow as bad as cracking the game, which is in my humble opinion a really bad stance for company on fan made modding. Many other games got modding tools in just exactly same way and companies never complained but embraced community interest in modding.

I'm kinda baffled but Paradox and Inno-Co reaction here.

Still, these are their forums and their rules. They can do what they want, and players should probably discuss any kind of "illegal" modding somewhere else.

You could have PMd me or an admin and I would have told you why.

In fact there was a thread started by the person who last posted in that thread before it was removed. I answered him perfectly clearly there. That second thread was locked and will be until a clarification on any legal modding is provided by the developer and/or Paradox.

I will remind everyone that discussion on Moderator/Admin actions are as much a no-no as discussing banned topics.
PM the moderator or admin, if you disagree or want an explanation of why something is so.

Lastly I remind everyone not to hijack threads. Especially to discuss banned topics.

Thank you.

[The Apprentice]

As to the difficulty of scouting (even on Huge Impossible Maps)- as long as you make scouting a priority, it shouldn't be a problem.

I already know that it's silly.

I don't know what you are trying to say here.

[metatoaster]

The player who casts unity should be revealed to all other players. this would instantly fix unity.

This is the only thing in this thread I agree with.

[LTK]

Thank you for your valuable opinion, and note that there is already exactly such a notification for the Unity spell.

[Bored Peon]

Thank you for your valuable opinion, and note that there is already exactly such a notification for the Unity spell.

I never got the notification because it went to my junk mail folder. So I did know two AI players casted the spell. Since I never knew they were being casted I did not come to this forum and create this thread.

Someone just lock this thread and put it out of its misery. The original topic was buried and forgotten days ago.

[Gazz2]

Well, there is a valid point in all that.

Since casting Unity makes everyone else lose the game, it should be considered a declaration of war.

If you begin to cast the spell, you automatically declare war on every other player.
Also, you cannot ask for or be offered peace while you are casting the spell.

Given that the AI doesn't do much about the state of war it's probably not going to make a great difference but it's a matter of principle...

[LTK]

I never got the notification because it went to my junk mail folder. So I did know two AI players casted the spell. Since I never knew they were being casted I did not come to this forum and create this thread.

I was replying to metatoaster, actually. And I think you've got some of your negatives mixed up in there.

Well, there is a valid point in all that.

Since casting Unity makes everyone else lose the game, it should be considered a declaration of war.

If you begin to cast the spell, you automatically declare war on every other player.
Also, you cannot ask for or be offered peace while you are casting the spell.

Given that the AI doesn't do much about the state of war it's probably not going to make a great difference but it's a matter of principle...

It may very well be considered a declaration of war, but it doesn't have to be the caster's initiative. You'd essentially be saying "I'm casting Unity. FIGHT ME!" which is a pretty dumb move if you're at peace with most of the other mages. A better approach is to say "I'm casting Unity. If you have a problem with it, feel free to declare war." Which is pretty much what any person would do. That, or wait until the twentieth turn to counterspell it.

[Leatherneck]

Well, there is a valid point in all that.

Since casting Unity makes everyone else lose the game, it should be considered a declaration of war.

If you begin to cast the spell, you automatically declare war on every other player.
Also, you cannot ask for or be offered peace while you are casting the spell.

Given that the AI doesn't do much about the state of war it's probably not going to make a great difference but it's a matter of principle...

^ This.

As it stands, you can make peace and sit pretty for a few turns. In all honesty, the first time I cast the spell, I surrounded my capital expecting an onslaught, only to find nothing happens. I stayed 100% at peace, no AI even noticed/cared as they were too busy trying to kill one another off. Although, I assume the warning of the spell being cast is the point where you are supposed to, well, do something. However, without forcing the AI to acknowledge it, I think the only Mage that currently recognizes the ramification of the Unity Spell is the human player.

[Bored Peon]

I have renewed disgust for the spell. It seems turn 160 is the magic turn number the AI learns the spell. AI learned the spell before counterspell even came up, screwed by random research once again. Killed the capital of the first AI that casted it. Learned counterspell in the process. Then I casted counter spell on the second AI, next turn same AI casted it again, counterspelled, next turn the same AI casted it a third time. I do not see how the AI had 15,000 mana to cast it three times. Of course the same time I have to chase the two AI casting unity spell I get swarmed by a dozen units form two other AI players, nice to see the AI has no priority versus unity spell casters.

I pushed on with the game to see how far the AI would go. So I traded the for mana with the AI (8 gold per mana) and casted three more counterspells making a total of six unity spells the AI casted in a row. That Ai finalyl stopped.

A third AI finally learned the unity spell a few turns later. Four more counterspells in a row. Then that AI finally stops.

Following turn the second AI is casting unity spell again. So the AI made 5,000 mana in four turns.

[LTK]

Roughly the same thing happened in my most recent game. Tendral started casting unity, and I didn't have a single city dedicated to research. All of my mana came from one undead city. I saved my game at that point. I had no intention attacking Tendral's captial - the location of which I didn't even know - so instead I diverted all of my resources into research. Kicked all the universities back into action, and in the following 20 turns, started building every research-generating building I could. After three failures - that's three times 20 turns where I failed to research Counterspell in time, one of which had the spell completed in the same turn that his Unity was cast - I managed to research and cast Counterspell with about three of four turns to spare. At this point I stopped playing.

Once you have counterspell, it really doesn't matter any more. Your approach is extremely suboptimal. Counterspell costs a trivial amount of mana to cast and can be done in just one turn. Unity takes up all of your casting time, meaning that an enemy casting it can't do jack shit with his mana in the 20 turns before he wins. Obviously the mana cost for Unity is much lower (or even zero) for the AI, so it's pointless to counter it just after it's been cast. Let him sit on it for a while, and only cast Counterspell after 19 turns. Of course, you'll most likely forget to, just like I always do, and in that case there's a convenient autosave for two turns ago. Loading the previous turn's autosave results in a severe bug where the Unity spell seems to have already been cast, but you can keep on playing, so take the one from two turns earlier. Cast counterspell, and you have at least 19 turns before you have to do the same thing again, at least with the same mage.

[rash92]

Because you can only counterspell mages you have discovered and are not at peace with. That is actually a pretty hard thing to do (on immortal at least), since the map generator has the tendency to seal away one or more players behind hordes of NPCs, to the point that when the game ends noone (including the AI) has found the unity caster. the only workaround currently is playing on weaker difficulty settings, wich makes the rest of the game trivial.

This is the reason I stopped playing the game completely after the first 3 days.

The player who casts unity should be revealed to all other players. this would instantly fix unity.

i've been trying to get a map with spread out enemies for ages, had one map with 4 players, 3 right next to me, one far away. i wanted to go for avatar victory, but they kept declaring war so i had to wipe them all out. at least the last guy was far away and i got to have peace with him (but still didn't manage avatar, got holy grounds victory), after that i've kept trying to get far away AI players, but even with huge map and only 2 AIs, they seem to be right next to me >.>

strange though that in that first game i got to turn 200+ without AI casting unity, never had them try actually.

[Jute]

Once you have counterspell, it really doesn't matter any more. Your approach is extremely suboptimal. Counterspell costs a trivial amount of mana to cast and can be done in just one turn. Unity takes up all of your casting time, meaning that an enemy casting it can't do jack shit with his mana in the 20 turns before he wins. Obviously the mana cost for Unity is much lower (or even zero) for the AI, so it's pointless to counter it just after it's been cast. Let him sit on it for a while, and only cast Counterspell after 19 turns. Of course, you'll most likely forget to, just like I always do, and in that case there's a convenient autosave for two turns ago. Loading the previous turn's autosave results in a severe bug where the Unity spell seems to have already been cast, but you can keep on playing, so take the one from two turns earlier. Cast counterspell, and you have at least 19 turns before you have to do the same thing again, at least with the same mage.

QFT here, see frequent comments about casting counterspell each turn - sub-optimal was a very PC response.

Scouting should definitely be a priority - if for nothing else than to find unoccupied nests/caravans. Had a fun game where my scout got me a dracolich from an ogre nest all the way on the other side of the map. Was fun, but was early enough that the upkeep was somewhat crippling.

[Bored Peon]

When you have four or five AIs casting unity spells you do not have the luxury of waiting long periods of time between counterspells. Considering you are most likely at war with other AIs at the same time, you cast counterspell it if the opportunity presents itself. Four turns was the longest before a counterspelled AI casted unity again, this was after it casted it four turns in a row. You missed the point entirely which is the AI should not be able to cast that many unity spells in rapid succession. Either way you play it constant counterspelling or exploiting the long cast ruins the game.

In all honesty I find the fact you can counterspell the unity spell really lame. Simply because that is 5k mana gone and you have no chance of stopping them from casting counterspell. You invest ten to twenty turns to cast unity and 5k mana, yet it is stopped by spending 1 turn and 85 mana. If the other AI players were smart enough to actually counter unity spell then the spell it would never be completed. Which is probably why they do not counterspell it. Which is why unity spell should be an optional win when setting the game up.

As I stated before the game is not really worth playing anymore until the unity spell option is removed. Under the current game mechanics it basically says at turn 160-165 is when the ai players will cast unity to end your game. Most traditional turn based games turn 160 is way too quick. Since people like using Civ 5 as an example, turn 160 on a marathon setting is like a couple units, a couple buildings, six to ten techs, game over.

PC or not, rude and insulting is rude and insulting. Last I looked rude and insulting is the equivilent of flaming, which is a problem a moderator can solve very quickly.

[LTK]

Where in this thread do you see rude and insulting things?

[Spyre2000]

As I stated before the game is not really worth playing anymore until the unity spell option is removed. Under the current game mechanics it basically says at turn 160-165 is when the ai players will cast unity to end your game. Most traditional turn based games turn 160 is way too quick. Since people like using Civ 5 as an example, turn 160 on a marathon setting is like a couple units, a couple buildings, six to ten techs, game over.

Using the Extended turn count option in other game is a BAD example. Even default setting on Civ5 is about 500 turns.

Civ5 Turn Count
Marathon = 1500 turns
Epic = 750 turns
Standard = 500 turns
Quick = 330 turns

You are right though this game is extremely quick. I think if your letting the AI cast Unity by turn 160 your doing it wrong. Even on Impossible with Huge map by turn 160 the other players only have a few cities left in my games. On smaller maps it is even easier to sweep across the map and conquer all. Plus if the AI starts casting Unity you don't need counter spell. Just wipe out their capital and remove them from the game. You have plenty of time during the casting to take out a capital. Uber Temple Unit + Meta-Teleport and crush.

All that said the Unity Mechanic is rather broken. I do agree with comments about it should be changed or removed, but not because it's annoying, instead because it's pointless. A decent player should have no problem counter spelling it when AI cast it. And the AI counter spells it when the player cast it. The only reason the player can successfully cast it is if they are at peace will all the AIs. And the only way the AI gets it off is if the player isn't paying attention or lacks counter spell.

[Snap Wilson]

Personally, I love it when the enemy starts casting Unity.

Yes, you need to actually make sure you have to actually encounter the wizard, but that doesn't bother me. It encourages me to get my scouts out into the world early. As for Counterspell, you can do it on Turn 1 or Turn 19, but the longer you wait, the more time there is that the wizard can't cast anything else. I usually do it somewhere after Turn 16 so that I don't get caught having to counterspell Unity at the expense of counterspelling something like Armageddon, but still, cancelling out 17-19 rounds of one wizard casting anything for 85 mana? I'll take it.

[Spyre2000]

Most traditional turn based games turn 160 is way too quick.

That's because most traditional TB games are very slow paced. I have been taking a break from Warlock most of the week and played some other 4x TB games, Civ5:G&K, Endless Space, and Fallen Enchantress. The thing I found that they all had in common was how much longer it takes to build stuff and how slow paced the game feels. In Civ5 it takes 10+ turns to make pretty much any unit starting out, Fallen Enchantress wasn't much different on build times, and Endless space was slightly less. Where as units and buildings in warlock take 2-4 turns to build.

The point is when you spent 2.5-5 times as long to do anything with your cities then having a game that takes 400-800 turns doesn't seem that short. Also I like how things have a much faster pace as it gives the enemy the chance to rebuild more quickly. In Civ5 when you crush the enemy army you know it's going to be quite a while before they can rebuild, and when they do it's usually a unit at a time that is easy to pick off. In warlock even after defeating the enemy forces you know they could have a decent force back up in only a few turns. 3-4 Cities building units and in about 4-8 turns you will have a sizable force, assuming you have the cash. So it's harder to press the advantage and it much more urgent to do so.

It wasn't until I started playing those other games again that I realized how much faster things were in Warlock. I'm stilling there in much of the early game just moving my 2-3 units around scouting while hitting turn button and waiting for something to finally get built.

[ginsengsamurai]

I know this has been said, but I was looking through the roughly 40-ish games I have installed on my computer and every night when I finally have a couple of hours of free time after a long day of work, I glance at the Warlock game and think about how great the game is and so fun and really want to start it up. However, after the first 3 to 4 days of installing and playing and having a great frustration with the Unity spell and not being able to find the mage that I haven't met yet, to declare war on to counter the damn spell, I just sigh and either play some other game or just end up watching Youtube videos until I go to bed.

I know Paradox does a great job in strategy games, but honestly, sometimes, I really wonder why developers do the things they do when history has told us time and again that X, Y and Z works and players love and want X, Y and Z. In this case, Victory Conditions. How many strategy games to this 'depth' do you know that does not have some sort of basic to advance Victory Conditions?

I've worked with three gaming studios, two of which are pretty famous and huge and never once had we even question adding Victory Conditions in our games. It's like a given.

Anyway, I'm sitting here at 5:02am, just got off work about an hour ago and I'm going to probably load Stronghold Kingdoms or King's Bounty Armored Princess for an hour before I go to bed. Those two are fun games, but I really wish I can play a very very very long game of Warlock instead.

Note that I had this game pre-ordered and downloaded and installed it the 2nd day it came out. So just imagine how long it has been sitting in my computer collecting digital dust.

[Naburimannu]

In this case, Victory Conditions. How many strategy games to this 'depth' do you know that does not have some sort of basic to advance Victory Conditions?

The patch allows turning off the Unity Spell, if you want to make the game easier.

[Bored Peon]

He said he was loading saved games. You can not change victory conditions to saved games. Since the games are from before patch 1.2 the option of unity spell was obviously on.

You cna now have long games, however be warned the game only allows 500 units total. So you may want to be careful not to allow the AI and other planes to accumilate so many units. Soon as the game hits 501 units it is game over, the AI won, and there is no going back and loading a previous turn to counterspell, so it is kinda worse than the Unity spell.

Oh yeah I thought for sure this thread would finally die with the new patch, lol.