I hope it stays like that. The whole conversion/controlling stuff from 3 was incredible powerful and the snowballing potential was insane.
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Seduce can't convert units anymore?
- Thread starter Leyrann
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Well one is a level 5 spell that pretty much only works once a combat is almost over the other one is a skill on a T2/3 unit (don't know which units get it) that you can use at the start of the battle and has no costs once you get the initial unit.
Yesterday i went into golden landmark against two Horned Gods with an army, that contained Nymph. At first i tried automatic battle, when seeing positive result, i watched replay. At turn 2 Nymph seduced one of Horned Gods and turned it against other one, making battle trivial. You want seduce to be permanent? There would really be no other strategies, except taking Tome of Fertility as soon as possible and sending Nymphs to golden landmarks. So no, let's keep permanent mind control limited to Final Ultimatum.
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Exactly. If secude is too strong, everyone needs seduce to be effective.
And if people really want it, they can mod it. Should not be to hard to copy whatever settings are used for Final Ultimatum to whatever unit you want to have a seduce ability.
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Actually that is the same reason combat healing is now Temp HP.
Regeneration was such a game change in Planetfall - allowing you to outlast enemies and massively upgrading your ability to take fights in sequence - everyone needed it on higher difficulties.
Before this game came out I was revisiting Shadow Magic. I was doing the Meandor missions earlier this week.
The mind control in earlier games was charming, but also kind of broken. It contributed to them being a chaotic mess. But after slogging through the mission where you have to seduce as many knights as you could before your enemy builds chapels and makes them all willpower-enabled... yeah, I'm willing to pour one out for the old feature and march on forward.
The mind control in earlier games was charming, but also kind of broken. It contributed to them being a chaotic mess. But after slogging through the mission where you have to seduce as many knights as you could before your enemy builds chapels and makes them all willpower-enabled... yeah, I'm willing to pour one out for the old feature and march on forward.
There's a solution to make seduce permanent, without it being too overpowered! limit the number of seduced units to 3 / game... so the nymph's entourage will consist of mostly an orcish brute, an elven ranger and one dwarf knight! if the nymph is tired with the dwarf knight she'll disband it and allocate that spot to seduce a 3rd one.
Maybe at legendary status the nymph will have a 4th spot for seduced beings, being able to handle more seduced beings under her influence/control!
Another thing would be... 'if not keeping nymph and seduced being in the same stack at the end of the turn, seduced being revolts and self-disbands'...
And maybe the nymph wouldn't be able to seduce above her tier, so seduce isn't too op!
This mechanic could work for seduce, charm, trap, dominate, control animal etc.
Maybe at legendary status the nymph will have a 4th spot for seduced beings, being able to handle more seduced beings under her influence/control!
Another thing would be... 'if not keeping nymph and seduced being in the same stack at the end of the turn, seduced being revolts and self-disbands'...
And maybe the nymph wouldn't be able to seduce above her tier, so seduce isn't too op!
This mechanic could work for seduce, charm, trap, dominate, control animal etc.
The Nymph is a T3 Unit from T2 Tome.There's a solution to make seduce permanent, without it being too overpowered! limit the number of seduced units to 3 / game... so the nymph's entourage will consist of mostly an orcish brute, an elven ranger and one dwarf knight! if the nymph is tired with the dwarf knight she'll disband it and allocate that spot to seduce a 3rd one.
3/Nmyph is way to many.
And 3/player would be way more coding work then it could ever be worth.
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It absolutely won't be half the enemy army.
That 60% chance assumes no resistance. In practice, it's likely to be below 40%, possibly as low as 20%, thanks to Defense Mode (which you'll usually be in if the mind control unit wants to take it's chance, as you focus them down first) and the Warding ability of supports. On top of that, there are abilities (including support abilities) that can remove debuffs like mind controlled (and if AoW 4 removed them, that's an AoW 4 problem, not a seduce problem). And last, you can focus down the units that did succeed with their 25-30% chances (which together thus grabbed maybe 4 or 5 units total) in order to get your units back immediately. 12 units can kill 4 nymphs if those nymphs have to be close range (which is why I'm not a fan of long-range seduction in the first place).
And last, everything you're currently describing is in the game right now. The only question is whether it's present after combat as well.
[off-topic moderated out]
I know the appeal of save-scumming myself, I also do it on occasion, but in the end, you are free to choose whichever option gives you the most enjoyment, and if you are unable to do so, you need to visit a therapist, not a game forum.
That's a failing of the AI to focus the mind controlled unit instead of the mind controlling unit. Not a failing of the concept of mind control.
Hey, feel free to put it on male units too. I don't mind.
Also, I'd like to point out that in early games 'charm' was a male-only counterpart, and in for example AoW 3, male heroes could make just as much use of the seduce-granting usable item as female heroes could.
This kind of SJW'ing isn't constructive in any way.
The existence of one method of mind controlling a unit does not preclude the existence of another method of mind controlling a unit.
That's not a seduce issue. That's a balance issue.
There are tons of ways you can resolve this without making seduce a practically meaningless mechanic.
1. Give a flat 10%-per-tier penalty to seduce success chance. Tier 5 units are very likely to have more than 40% success chance in the first place, so they'd literally have negative success chance even if you only start counting at Tier 2 (unless maybe they've been severely status-resistance-debuffed or have their resistance lowered, but then, isn't that the entire 'make the player work for it' that everyone's talking about here?).
2. Put a limit on which tiers of units you can seduce, for higher tiers you instead inflict a Distracted (or similar) debuff.
3. Add a 'mind control resistance' ability to select (or even all, but that's lame) higher tier units that lowers or eliminates the chance for a successful seduction, again nerfing the effect to a Distracted debuff.
4. Add straight up mind control immunity to high-tier units.
5. One of the above, but with better success chances if a second mind control unit targets the already-Distracted unit.
6. Alternatively, reintroduce AoW 3's Shaken debuff and boost the success chance of a second attempt this way.
7. Only allow units to remain mind controlled after battle if your army stack contains a unit of equal or higher tier, with the narrative reason being that they need to be kept in check while the mind controlling unit establishes full control.
8. Apply one of the limits-per-mind-control-unit concepts from earlier in this thread, but have it depend on tier. A unit takes up as many slots as it's tier, to a cap of 4 total. So one T1 unit, or 4 T1 units, or 2 T2 units, you get the idea.
9. I'm out of ideas that come as quickly as I can write them down but I'm sure I'd be able to extend this list to 15-20 if I sat down for an hour. I'm going to assume that'd be no different for actual game designers.
Honestly, there is vastly more healing in 4 than there was in previous games. I get why it's a balance issue if the HP remains after combat, and I don't mind playing with it, but there's also the option of simply having far less healing available. In Age of Wonders III, there were plenty of race/class combinations (e.g. Elf Sorcerer) that didn't have any healing abilities available to them. Humans were okay at healing... because they had one ability on their support unit that could heal someone for 15 health once per battle.
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"There are tons of ways you can resolve this without making seduce a practically meaningless mechanic."
->Taking over a unit in combat is not meaningless. It's a strong ability.
"The existence of one method of mind controlling a unit does not preclude the existence of another method of mind controlling a unit."
->True, but I also never said anything like that. However, why would I use the complicated one if I can use the "easy" one?
->Taking over a unit in combat is not meaningless. It's a strong ability.
"The existence of one method of mind controlling a unit does not preclude the existence of another method of mind controlling a unit."
->True, but I also never said anything like that. However, why would I use the complicated one if I can use the "easy" one?
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Seduce and convert abilities are extremely powerful. Yeah, you don't get a permanent new unit. But going from six in a stack to 7 is absurdly powerful. And while a stack of all seducing units is a bit of a poor idea, having two or three in your stack will make many fights pointless.
If you want the monster of unfair advantage, look at the succubus for Rogues in AoW3. Strong tier 3 flying unit in their own right that could also seduce to rapidly balloon out their army. Mono stacks of succubi were vary dangerous to almost any enemy that included units that could be seduced, even excluding the fact the units stuck around after combat. It's the same reason that lifesteal mechanics can be extremely dangerous, as they're both increasing your strength and decreasing the enemy's strength at the same time.
I wouldn't advocate a total removal of seduction style creatures/mechanics, especially in settings focused on human mythos and fantasy. That's whitewashing history. Now I can see a call for using more male characters in such situations and having more female characters in other roles. Triumph did have the Roy bots alongside the Emma bots in Planetfall, which I think was the right direction to take.
Fair enough, but it is very fundamentally different from the old seduce ability, and has stripped away pretty much everything that made it so interesting. Now it's just a buffed Insanity debuff.
For a higher success chance, maybe? Depends. If it's properly balanced, then you'll sometimes want to use one ability, and sometimes the other.
I feel like this maybe isn't clear: I'm not saying that seduce should be identical to earlier games. I'm saying that I want there to be a way to permanently convert a unit with seduce (and other mind control mechanics - seduce is simply the most iconic one).
If the unit with seduce is properly balanced (see: AoW 3 Nymph), it's more like going from 5.5 in a stack to 6.5 in a stack. With, of course, the risk that you don't ever get that extra unit and instead have to fight with your 5.5 units. This is the exact reason why units with mind control abilities need to be weak in other aspects.
See above.
The stronger the ability, the more powerful the drawback needs to be. Succubi were too easily available and had too many tools outside of Seduce. Compare the Eldritch Horror, which had the even-stronger Dominate, but which was also a tier 4 unit that couldn't be built in cities.
Exactly.
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
Doesn't mater what drawbacks the ability has.
It either is so impactful everyone needs them.
Or so underwhelming, it is little more then another tool.
I prefer it being just another tool, like what Seduce is right now.
You are ignoring thinks that remove resistances and similar effects here. Also debuffs to increase the chances.
You are also ignoring the problem of snowballing. It used to be at least one unit every single fight when a unit had a seduce ability. That stuff added up to insane levels of units.
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That is either true of all abilities, or no abilities at all. Either you believe that an ability can have the right power level to be useful without being mandatory, or you don't believe that. But there is no reason why seduce would be different in that regard from anything else.
I'm sorry, which units in this nymph-only army have ways to remove resistances or add debuffs to increase the chance?
My point is precisely that a nymph-only army isn't going to work. You want to seduce units reliably? Best bring some other units to help the nymph out with the debuffs you mention... Oh and look, now we do have a balanced army composition!
I have addressed multiple times that mechanics like limiting the number of units a nymph can control in total are completely fine by me, and I've given about a dozen other ways to add additional balance levers to the mechanic. Just the post you quoted from already has eight suggestions in a nice, handy list.
Also, it's an incredibly generous, to the point of completely unrealistic, assumption that every fight gets you a seduced unit, even with the implementation from prior games.
Unless you save scum, of course. But as I pointed out before, it's a single-player game; you decide what is and is not acceptable, and if you dislike the game because you're save scumming, the only change you need to make is to stop save scumming. (and if you like it with the save scumming, then by all means, go ahead)
So lets stack just debuffs and seducing units in an army and woila we have an OP army again. Because we don't need a balanced army. We can just take units from the enemy. And they get stronger every fight.
And when permenant mind control was a think (in AoW3) geeting at least one unit was a thing. You can probably still look up some peoples videos on it.
You want Permanent Mind Control.
If you can not see how this is broken? There is nothing to discuss.
If you think they are foolish enough to go back to that? Sorry but the Devs have been down that road. And it was crap.
If you think you can do it and balance? Go ahead. Modding tools exist. Convince us with something that works.
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Sadly, yes. I also miss the old Charm Animal spells that let you get various wild animal units.
Not sure if the Lightbringer's Convert actually permanently converts the unit?
Routing is hard to do in the game, unless you play Shadow and have access to morale lowering skills and spells. Most of the time when the enemy routed, they only had 1-2 units left. I think you need to bring their morale down to -60. Given that they get -10 for each ally killed, you can see how this is not possible in most battles which are against 6 or less units, unless you use morale debuffs like Despair.
It especially made sense for the Rogue, who did not have very strong melee units themselves, but had the Bard and Succubus whom you could use to steal the enemy's strong units.
Planetfall was even better with the Es'teq where you had to work hard to get a Drained up to the right level to learn possession, and then add a mod and all that so you can essentially swap that unit for another higher tier one that compliments your play.
Killing the mind control unit also ends the control. Given how the Nymph and the Lightbringer are rather fragile in melee, you can usually focus on them and kill them in a round, getting your hero back. If an enemy hero is doing the mind control, of course... that is harder.
Yes, it seems to happen when you overpower the enemy army. However, it usually costs a lot more money that normal, and you can only hire the army leader.
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Absolutely flawless argumentation. Truly magnificent. I can't think of any way I could dispute what you said.
...Or maybe that's just because you didn't actually provide any support for your points other than 'I'm right and you're wrong'.
Please, if your only goal is to tell people they're wrong, go to Twitter. Forums are meant to discuss things instead.
Permanent mind control is broken? Explain why.
Prior iterations were crap? Explain why.
I'll even do you a favor and state my points in a clear and concise manner:
-I consider permanent mind control to be one of the most iconic mechanics in the Age of Wonders series, with seduce being the most iconic form of it. Therefore, I'm sad that it's gone.
-Units with permanent mind control abilities should have significant drawbacks to balance them. The most obvious would be for them to have low health and defenses, and to require them to get close (touch?) to perform their mind control. Example: Age of Wonders 3 Nymph. Stats of a tier 1 unit with poor damage, but tier 2 upkeep because of the touch-range seduce ability.
-I am open to restrictions that limit the number of units that can be mind controlled and ease of doing so, as long as the mechanic isn't completely eliminated. Examples include 1) only allowing a unit to mind control one opponent per X world turns, 2) granting high-tier units additional resistance to mind control, to the point of eliminating the possibility unless carefully set up, 3) giving mind control units a cap on the total amount of units they can have controlled, or potentially even requiring them to stay in the same stack. Several more concepts have been mentioned in this thread, both by others and by me, for ways in which this could be achieved.
-As a result of the above points, although this should be abundantly obvious, I am also open to (and probably in favor of, because contrary to what some people here seem to think I do care about game balance) adjustments to the mind control units currently in the game in exchange for the return of permanent mind control, such as the Nymph's Seduce ability once more becoming melee range.