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Bored Peon

First Lieutenant
53 Badges
Nov 21, 2009
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I know the option to remove it is coming. However it is not soon enough.

I throw a game up, large map six ai players. Something to have a nice long game. Does it happen? hell no. Turn 160 not one but two AI players both cast the unity spell. Game over because it is impossible to stop both and the AI players do nothing to stop it. I flew a beefed up Dracolich to try, it died within two turns after taking three turns to get there with a speed of eight.

I really see no point in playing until it is fixed because of the disappointment in seeing another game ruined with the unity spell. This was my third of fourth game to come to an abrupt end because of the spell.
 
You have 20 turns to counter spell it or research counter spell and use it if it is in your spell options.

Actually, I think it should be made non counterable to be a practical victory condition, at present you should almost never be beaten by this. Perhaps a counterspell should merely delay the spell another turn giving the player a bit longer to take out the great mage's capital.
 
You have 20 turns to counter spell it or research counter spell and use it if it is in your spell options.

Actually, I think it should be made non counterable to be a practical victory condition, at present you should almost never be beaten by this. Perhaps a counterspell should merely delay the spell another turn giving the player a bit longer to take out the great mage's capital.

I agree. Unity should not be counter-able. It sucks when I started to cast Unity, and the AI counterspelled it with very little mana cost. I think Counterspell only delay Unity by 2-3 turns per Counterspell is good idea.

On another note, make Agile Mind stackable with more visible effect. Make it discount 50% of previous casting cost, so with 1 Agile Mind, Unity = 10 turns. With 2 Agile Mind, Unity = 5 turns. With 3 Agile Mind, Unity = 3 turns, etc. Players (and AI) will be able to calculate, that if an opponent start to stack Agile Mind, it/he/she will cast Unity soonish.
 
The delay from counterspell has to be 1 turn (or less, 1/2 turn per counter is also reasonable) since it can be done repeatedly and by more than one player, assuming AIs at war counterspell each other's spells (I don't know if they do, but of course they should). Otherwise it would never finish :)
 
Making Unity uncounterable would make losing because of it even more frustrating. It's a cop-out victory, not worth going for unless the only thing you are good at is patience.
 
Making Unity uncounterable would make losing because of it even more frustrating. It's a cop-out victory, not worth going for unless the only thing you are good at is patience.

:huh: Or you enjoy those types of victory options- like the Space victory in the Civ games or Transcendence in Alpha Centauri. Players have fun in different ways- it doesn't necessarily relate to their "patience" level.
 
Actually multiple reasons.

1. Had not even found the second ai player. Not easy to go world exploring when you are at war with three ai players that border you. They kinda like killing any scouting unit.

2. No mana to cast. Being at war with multiple AI made it so I had mana leech on me constantly which drained all the mana I had. Considering I was undead I with five cities it should have been an easy drain to overcome, only no matter what I did I could not get a positive mana income unless I stopped researching. I finally got dispel for great mage and no longer had any mana to cast it. All the treasures in my area were gone and quests only rewarded gold. Cities I had were either too large to get enough growth to add more mana producing buildings. Mana spring never came up for research either.

3. Did not even think I have counterspell researched yet. I had seen it a few choices ago. AI finished its research way too quickly. I would have to guess I still had about twenty spells left to research, not including religious ones. So much for the research trait. Of course the impossible setting probably did not help either.
 
The delay from counterspell has to be 1 turn (or less, 1/2 turn per counter is also reasonable) since it can be done repeatedly and by more than one player, assuming AIs at war counterspell each other's spells (I don't know if they do, but of course they should). Otherwise it would never finish :)

AIs never counterspell each other. If the delay from counterspell is anything less than 2 turns, you could never win in a max player huge map vs AIs. After a certain point in the game, all of them are casting Unity. I've posted in another thread how much I hate this. I spend 3 turns in a row casting 2 counterspells a turn every 18 or so turns.
 
So you're upset because you got beaten on the impossible difficulty level?

Not because I lost. Well technically yes. If the Unity spell was not a win option I could have dragged the game out and won by holy grounds or avatar. Which what I was attempting to do. However every time I try either of those win options along comes Unity spell and ruins the game.
 
I have to agree with the O/P, once we have the option to choose the victory conditions I'll be back playing, the gameplay is good considering it is quite basic compared to other games of it's kind, but the lack of options to tailor the game to your own preference is non existent, and diplomacy is a shocker, you may as well remove it.
This game has a ton of potential, I just hope that they continue to improve it and not make us pay for it by dribbling DLC.
 
One lesson that the designers could take from GalCiv is to make victory conditions a choice.
All victory conditions.
(It's not a novel idea. It's post #16 in the wishlist thread =)

Personally, I don't play to win. I play to play. Victory is an annoying event that stops my enjoyment of the game.

So if I could disable all victory conditions including total military wipeout, that would be awesome.

There is no good or bad way to enjoy a single player game, no leet or noob way - none of that applies.
In my last game, for instance, I created a custom wizard with 30 perk pick points. Not because it's fair or a special challenge. Just because I wanted to. And it being a single player game, I didn't have to ask anyone if that was okay with them...
 
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Couple of things.

1.) I agree on being able to select the Victory Options. Sometimes you want to railroad the AI into trying to accomplish the same Victory as you, or to prevent a certain Victory type.
2.) Cast Unity and then make peace with EVERYONE = Win. You cannot counter a spell with a wizard you are not at war with, so pretty much as long as you can keep the peace, you can win once the spell is cast.
3.) AI and Unity is a pain in the rear. Of course, even if they sign a NAP, you can Break/War/Counter/Peace, and keep playing as normal. However, it is absurd how often this is their "preferred" method of victory.
4.) To the OP, for future reference, casting Invisible on a flying scout can help you find other rivals when you boxed in as you were, as the AI tends to not have many units with True Sight in my experience.
 
I'm still curious why he didn't counter-spell if this is the 3rd or 4th time he has lost this way.

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

I'm aware you need to meet the other mage to cast spells against them. I disagree about needing to play on weaker difficulty settings to avoid losing.

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. Green Bats are great for it, and so are serpents, if squishier. Cast Eagle Eye on them, and keep to the mountains or seas and they can generally last the whole game. Its not easy per se, but this is playing on Impossible, after all.