The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Stupid_Dragon]

Sigh.

Not quite sure about your proposed solutions, but when it comes to describing current state of the game I agree with you Cody. You're really wasting your time here though. AoW4 community is super conservative and protective of the game, both here and on reddit.

 

[Blanch Warren]

Not quite sure about your proposed solutions, but when it comes to describing current state of the game I agree with you Cody. You're really wasting your time here though. AoW4 community is super conservative and protective of the game, both here and on reddit.

I don't have the experience to comment. Trying to do some kind of mono-build has never been my approach in the first place.
Maybe I'll end up trying it some day.

 

[Stupid_Dragon]

I don't have the experience to comment.

You say that, but so far your comment about this being "some shit about multiplayer or turn 150 games" is the most condescending one in this thread if we don't count my own.

Trying to do some kind of mono-build has never been my approach in the first place. Maybe I'll end up trying it some day.

It largely depends on how one plays. If you manual combat everything then a lot of issues are masked because you're just better at it than AI. The issue is more apparent if one plays multiplayer like Cody or mostly autocombats in singleplayer like me. I perfectly understand that intuitively having balanced army comp might seem benefical even if units are less buffstacked on average, but in practice what I'm seeing is a sufficiently stacked T3/T4 racial army optimized for one unit type can just autocombat through AI's "balanced" ragtag armies with minimal losses.

 

[Jolly Joker]

I have Zeal > Alchemy > Winds > Revelry > Amplification > Cycles > Stormborne > Crucible > Paradise and was about to start researching Goddess of Nature.
As for the Mana income, I am playing Primal Crow and Wizard King. My cities are maxed out regarding their Knowledge/Gold/Mana structures as well.

Enchantments also cost Gold, as do high tier units. I've even increased their Imperium upkeep from 3/7 to 5/10, which is quite noticeable honestly.
But do you know how we avoid the penalties? Cast the cheapest enchantments and keep the final 3 in your spell slots until you do battle with someone.

This is why I propose a 3 enchantment limit with a 1 turn CD to swap them out, just like Planetfall's mod system. To counter this kind of gameplay.
I would like it to be PER UNIT but I will also accept it being per unit class, that would already be a massive improvement over the current system.
The catch here is that we need more interesting/counter strategy enchantments in that world, no 99% duplicates should exist in any of the tomes.

I don't think introducing an Imperium cost would work because that resource is used by Cities, Heroes, Perks and unit upkeep. It's stretched thin already.
Planetfall's Cosmite (iirc) was only used for founding Cities, applying mods and purchasing high tier/flying units. The system doesn't translate very well.

Keeping the final enchantments in the spells slots until needed is a working tactic only, if you can afford it (which means that you don't need them in any other situation). The question I would ask is what general setting this was played on. Which realm, how many human and AI players, which difficulty level for the AI players, threat level, starting forces, infestations and so on - in other words, how difficult is the general play? Because, if general play is too easy, you have a free reign...

 

[Lebkuchenhausmeister]

Here's an example of a multiplayer game, I played the army on the left.

The unit damage you see is without Strengthened, Fortune, Wet or Storm Crow being active.
AND this is a nerfed version of Stormbringer in my mod, 1 turn CD on Trident and a 2-hex line.

Meanwhile the opponent's Tyrant Knight did like ~50 damage on a full Charge attack (+90% in the mod).
These units have 155/160 HP... That's without Gaia's Chosen. Tell me how you're going to kill them.

Disrupting Blades wouldn't even be able to touch me, as his entire army was affected by Slowed.
I also had Lava Burst ready just to slow him again if needed. Severing Golems are very bad units sadly.

Disruption Wave is the only counter to this, but then I can just retreat and cleanse it from my units.
Or you could do the big brain play and also go for Disruption Wave, countering the counter.


Shock units scale very poorly, as they don't have great supporting enchantments and cannot access their targets.
Battle Mages are also horrible beyond T3. Chaos Eater and Transmuter aren't units, but they also have no range.

So where my Zephyr Archer deals 32 damage per shot from 6 range, a Battle Mage has 4 and deals less damage.
On top of this Zephyr Shot is dealing 49 damage at 7 range, whilst a Battle Mage AoE deals around 22 at 6 range.
All of this is without High culture giving them another +1 bonus range, which is incredibly insane in my opinion.

If you don't allow me to stack 3 billion enchantments, then this problem suddenly becomes far less extreme.

Was this battle resolved with auto combat or manually?

 

[Codyksp]

Keeping the final enchantments in the spells slots until needed is a working tactic only, if you can afford it (which means that you don't need them in any other situation). The question I would ask is what general setting this was played on. Which realm, how many human and AI players, which difficulty level for the AI players, threat level, starting forces, infestations and so on - in other words, how difficult is the general play? Because, if general play is too easy, you have a free reign...

This is very easy to answer, as we don't play with any fancy settings.

• 5 Human players, no AI with all difficulty settings left on "Normal/Default".
• Pangea, Large (edited to have 80/20 water instead of 50/50).
• Wondrous Past is used, but barely seems to make a difference.
• Simultaneous Turns, Long Turn Timer (world map only).
• Custom Rulers, Teams disabled, Ascension Traits disabled.
• Allied Victory disabled, Hero Resurgence disabled, Defeated Heroes to owner.
• Combat vs AI always auto, Combat vs Humans always ask.
• Observe Manual Combat always, Enable Combat Retry never.

The goal is not to fight the world for 100 turns, the goal is to fight other human players, it's FFA.
These matches already last upwards of 8 hours, generally 16-24 in total across 3-4 sessions.
Setting stuff like regeneration infestations or high world threat would only increase the time.

Though I will add I spawned in the centre of the map, with 7 infestations. 3 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze.
On top of this I had 2 Free Cities angry at me sending constant forces as well. It was not "smooth sailing".

Was this battle resolved with auto combat or manually?

It was manual combat between 2 humans.

 

[Jolly Joker]

While it's true that setting general higher map difficulty would increase time, beating infestations also give a lot of boni (not to mention XP), and picking Zeal as the first tome will give ypu pacification affinity skill early which should ame sure there are no really angry free cities - but anyway, that's - for me, at least - a current misconception in this MP setup. With 5 Human/no AI players you are somewhat tying your hands behind your back, because with halfyway equal skill there is no way you can wage war against another player without a massive disadvantage in relation to the other 3 players.
I mean, if you would win that encounter above with only one surviving stack - wouldn't that make you prone to be beaten by another player?

Then there is this "play against humans, not fight the world". Sure, that's the goal, but you still fight the world the whole time - infestations, wonders, quests, marauders, and they who are too slow or have too many (if any) losses in autocombat there will be at a disadvantage. Having a more unforgiving "world" to fight against, yes, will make the game last longer, but it will also be more rewarding to use what you have to maximum gain against the world and not keep enchatment spells in reserve until you can cast them before a battle against another human.

This is also true when considering "choices" in the game. If you start the game with weak forces, suddenly the society traits that give you an additional unit at start become more attractive - and/or immediately building more units; autocombat can produce rather awkward results.

A very interesting setting that is new with Wolf is this world where all your dead units come back with 1 HP in case of a victorious fight - but no healing except in your own territory. That's pretty cool for autocombat in hard worlds, because you can't lose units when you win, but you have to retreat into your own territory to get them up to strength again because low health units won't win you the next battle.

So at this point I have a problem to understand the nature of your grief with the game, since it works as intended: you outbuild opponent and win the decisive battle with minimal losses, if any, allowing you to battle on. If things were more, shall we say "balanced", wouldn't then the player win who entered last into general war?

 

[Nerdfish]

Here's an example of a multiplayer game, I played the army on the left.

The unit damage you see is without Strengthened, Fortune, Wet or Storm Crow being active.
AND this is a nerfed version of Stormbringer in my mod, 1 turn CD on Trident and a 2-hex line.

Meanwhile the opponent's Tyrant Knight did like ~50 damage on a full Charge attack (+90% in the mod).
These units have 155/160 HP... That's without Gaia's Chosen. Tell me how you're going to kill them.

Disrupting Blades wouldn't even be able to touch me, as his entire army was affected by Slowed.
I also had Lava Burst ready just to slow him again if needed. Severing Golems are very bad units sadly.

Disruption Wave is the only counter to this, but then I can just retreat and cleanse it from my units.
Or you could do the big brain play and also go for Disruption Wave, countering the counter.


Shock units scale very poorly, as they don't have great supporting enchantments and cannot access their targets.
Battle Mages are also horrible beyond T3. Chaos Eater and Transmuter aren't units, but they also have no range.

So where my Zephyr Archer deals 32 damage per shot from 6 range, a Battle Mage has 4 and deals less damage.
On top of this Zephyr Shot is dealing 49 damage at 7 range, whilst a Battle Mage AoE deals around 22 at 6 range.
All of this is without High culture giving them another +1 bonus range, which is incredibly insane in my opinion.

If you don't allow me to stack 3 billion enchantments, then this problem suddenly becomes far less extreme.

I don't know what turn that was but you had 210 CP and 4K mana, so I assume your opponent have similar resources.
They can keep casting disruption waves up for 4 turns, more if they have death magic.
That shock army should be able to finish the fight in 5 turns, while moving forward on turn one, one way or the other.
If not, disrupting blade should have kicked in by this point.
This is once again situation that really only occurs in MP.

 

[Kitschy]

Sigh.

Not quite sure about your proposed solutions, but when it comes to describing current state of the game I agree with you Cody. You're really wasting your time here though. AoW4 community is super conservative and protective of the game, both here and on reddit.

Lol, no he isn't. A good argument is a good argument and raises the awareness of such issues in the community.

 

[Lebkuchenhausmeister]

There could be more ways to tackle the enchantment problem, for example giving players options to counter heavily enchanted/transformed units. Such options are rather limited at the moment and take pretty long to come online. AoW3 had units that could steal enchantments, which was strange since enchantments were a minor factor there, but skills or spells like that could work wonders in AoW4.

 

[Nerdfish]

Sigh.

Not quite sure about your proposed solutions, but when it comes to describing current state of the game I agree with you Cody. You're really wasting your time here though. AoW4 community is super conservative and protective of the game, both here and on reddit.

This can be changed in any number of ways, for example bring back unit editor and make enchantment modules, or cause enchantments to be increasingly more expensive when stacked. However, the real question is if this will result in a better game for 90% of players.

 

[Mechalibur]

I agree that this is a problem, even in single player. I don't really feel encouraged to try out different unit types when most enchantments affect only certain subtypes of units. Like I could have one enchantment that boosts shield units and another that boosts archers... or I could have 2 enchantments that affects shield units and only produce those. The counterplay between unit types generally isn't strong enough that I feel disadvantaged for sticking to one unit type (unless that unit type is just inherently bad)

Not sure I agree with imposing a flat limitation on enchantments, though. You don't want players to feel like they wasted research on an early enchantment if they end up replacing it with a late-game enchantment down the road. Scaling enchantment upkeep costs might work, or perhaps increasing the draft cost of units based on how many enchantments they would have. Some enchantments could even be consolidated to affect more unit types, for example I'm not sure the elemental weapon enchantments really need to be split between melee and ranged versions. I'd also like to see spells/abilities that target all units of a certain type (like "Scan" from Planetfall Biomancers) to add a possible weakness for sticking to the same thing.

 

[The Mentat]

I'd also like to see spells/abilities that target all units of a certain type (like "Scan" from Planetfall Biomancers) to add a possible weakness for sticking to the same thing.

That’s a good point.

Not the most elegant solution but a room unlocked in the Wizard Tower could give access to a spell similar to Cardinal Culling in AoW 3



Instead of a hard limit for enchantments, you could also make it more difficult to collect all the tomes with enchantments for one specific unit type. Usually these tomes are spread over multiple affinities (EG for Ranged units: Crucible/Winds/Enchantment (Materium T4-T2), Cycles/Godess of Nature (Nature T3/T5), Scrying/Amplification (Astral T2/T3))

Imho you shouldn’t be able to get all these tomes but only the tomes from two of these affinities. Unfortunately, with reskilling singnature skills you can currently bypass most affinity restrictions.

 

[Blanch Warren]

There could be more ways to tackle the enchantment problem, for example giving players options to counter heavily enchanted/transformed units.

There's a de-enchantment under Tome of Enchantment.

I assume people have tried builds not based on mono-builds.

 

[Codyksp]

There's a de-enchantment under Tome of Enchantment.

I assume people have tried builds not based on mono-builds.

Purging Arrows does not remove enchantments, it merely removes positive buffs like Strengthened

Imho you shouldn’t be able to get all these tomes but only the tomes from two of these affinities. Unfortunately, with reskilling singnature skills you can currently bypass most affinity restrictions.

Yep, this is a problem. I most recently tried to remove Empire Affinity from those skills but it appears to be hard-coded.
So instead I removed the affinity entirely and buffed Governor income to compensate for the loss of 4 points per hero.
However, I combined this change with lowering tomes from 3/6/8 to 2/4/6. That's 1/2/2 less but, you lost 4 (or 8) from your ruler.

I don't know what turn that was but you had 210 CP and 4K mana, so I assume your opponent have similar resources.
They can keep casting disruption waves up for 4 turns, more if they have death magic.
That shock army should be able to finish the fight in 5 turns, while moving forward on turn one, one way or the other.
If not, disrupting blade should have kicked in by this point.
This is once again situation that really only occurs in MP.

In multiplayer we've currently restricted all T5 tome skills to 1 cast per combat, per player. This keeps it tactical.
Nobody wants to watch players spam double Tectonic Shatter or double Mass Rejuvenation (Heal + Revive).

I have 210 CP because WK grants 5 per level (like the old vanilla version) and doesn't have Overchannel anymore.
40 base + 75 from level 15 + 50 from 10 tomes unlocked = 165. The rest is from Resonance Fields and Items/Perks.

To be clear the WK change only provides me with 40 more CP than vanilla does. I'd still have 170 in vanilla (enough for 2x 80).

Anyway, why do you believe that Shock army should win in 5 turns? They start the battle Slowed and debuffed with Wet as well.
Their maximum engagement range is 7 hexes (including attack). Stormbringers have 5 (40 MV) + 4 on the Trident + 3 line = 11 hexes.
Even if my opponent had Disruption Wave, he'd have to cast it before my turn begins to cleanse himself (thus wasting 1 turn already).
Then I'd retreat my units outside of his engagement range and next turn the debuff would be gone already. That won't help him.

If my opponent creeps up to me with Slowed, I will just engage him from 11 hexes and begin one-shotting his units from range.
By the time my turn was finished, he had lost half his army / taken casualties on his units. It's about the initial barrage of damage.
Having a higher engagement range than the Shock/Shield units and having absurd damage means I always win this "dance".

 

[Jolly Joker]

In multiplayer we've currently restricted all T5 tome skills to 1 cast per combat, per player. This keeps it tactical.
Nobody wants to watch players spam double Tectonic Shatter or double Mass Rejuvenation (Heal + Revive).

Now I understand your point even less than before - you already play a ton of house rules and mods and you want serious game change based on a 5-player MP game with pretty easy settings and house rules?
You could just make a house rule: no more than 3 enchantments and/or no more than 5 of a troop type and one hero per stack max or some such...

 

[NorthernDruid]

Yep, this is a problem. I most recently tried to remove Empire Affinity from those skills but it appears to be hard-coded.
So instead I removed the affinity entirely and buffed Governor income to compensate for the loss of 4 points per hero.
However, I combined this change with lowering tomes from 3/6/8 to 2/4/6. That's 1/2/2 less but, you lost 4 from your ruler.

I really like this change. In theory it might mess up empire tree progression, so at least the general tree might need a 2nd look. But I absolutely love the reduced requirement values (I wouldn't see a problem with 2/4/8 either) specifically because taking Tome of Cryomancy now qualifies me for Tome of the Cold Dark without requiring other affinities (same with Rock->Terramancy, Beasts->Vigor, Scrying->Teleportation, etc.)

In multiplayer we've currently restricted all T5 tome skills to 1 cast per combat, per player. This keeps it tactical.
Nobody wants to watch players spam double Tectonic Shatter or double Mass Rejuvenation (Heal + Revive).

This kind of change would be nice to have in the advanced realm settings alongside hero resurgence and such.

 

[Codyksp]

Now I understand your point even less than before - you already play a ton of house rules and mods and you want serious game change based on a 5-player MP game with pretty easy settings and house rules?
You could just make a house rule: no more than 3 enchantments and/or no more than 5 of a troop type and one hero per stack max or some such...

There is no way to moderate such a rule, people can secretly break it or go unnoticed in their violation.
On top of this, other people (whom play single player) also have issues with the enchantment stacking.

And no, I did not make this post based on a single game. I used that game as my most recent example.
I could show you plenty more screenshots of mono stacking enchanted units in various multiplayer matches.

Just because a specific player doesn't perform the strategy, doesn't mean the issue is magically gone.
Furthermore, if they don't bother doing it then they won't be impact by its potential absence either.

I really like this change. In theory it might mess up empire tree progression, so at least the general tree might need a 2nd look. But I absolutely love the reduced requirement values (I wouldn't see a problem with 2/4/8 either) specifically because taking Tome of Cryomancy now qualifies me for Tome of the Cold Dark without requiring other affinities (same with Rock->Terramancy, Beasts->Vigor, Scrying->Teleportation, etc.)

I actually very much like being able to pick more than 1 T5 tome, you are still hard locked to only opening one of them.

As for the empire progression, you are correct. I will be squishing it from 15-500 to 15-400 but in a very careful manner initially.
15/40/60/100/120/160/200/300/400/500 will become 15/40/60/80/120/160/200/240/300/400. General skips the first node of 15.
Imperium go from 100/125/150/175/200/250/300/350/400/500 to 100/125/150/175/200/225/250/300/350/400 (General unchanged).

Though we shouldn't go too deep into off-topic stuff .

 

[Jolly Joker]

The game was obviously built for multiple enchantments. That's the the whole point (or one main selling point) of the game concept. Since enchantments don't come for free it's a question of balancing costs.
And if you can afford to keep 3 enchantments in the spell slot to use only in battles against other humans, general difficulty is obviously too low (for the abilities of the players)

 

[Kitschy]

The game was obviously built for multiple enchantments. That's the the whole point (or one main selling point) of the game concept. Since enchantments don't come for free it's a question of balancing costs.
And if you can afford to keep 3 enchantments in the spell slot to use only in battles against other humans, general difficulty is obviously too low (for the abilities of the players)

Well, 3 is a multiple. Also just increasing the upkeep for multiple enchantments incentivizes smaller elite armies and this railroads game in to high tier homogenization more.
Imo some sort of limitation is indeed a good suggestion be it a flat max limit or what NorthenDruid suggested limit by type thing.