Saw a suggestion, but lost it, that 15 mana for teleport is OK - you can get it when you first level up. Personally I think it is bad to make extra mana so attractive, tends to reduce your development choices. My thought is it should cost 10, so you can imbue or level up and still have access.
Ah well - back to the game.
Making an over-powered feature available to all does not 'fix' it. It still breaks the other features one would otherwise be using.
You need to compare 'within', not just 'between', to achieve balance
The nerf-word is as misused/overused as the whine-word... and bodes equally poorly for the quality of any resultant discussion.
It would certainly go a long way to "balance" things out if the AI used all elements/spells in its aresenal in the same way that the human did. The concept of which things are "over powered" is subjective in many cases.
I don't feel teleportation is overpowered because I use a totally different strategy that minimizes/eliminates teleportation need (masssive city spam & caravan road network with fast mounted archers and multiple "strong" stacks instead of one big "killer" stack). The AI never forces me to use teleportation, as I proactively level all AIs I encounter one at a time.
Ok, If the computer used the teleport in combination with other strategies as it "should" (i.e. as the human did), your empire would be threatened on one flank (say) from a massive "killer" stack from an AI you were at war with (of course, a smart AI would attack at a flank further from the player's own sovereign, unless it was partiucalarly weak). This would force a human "teleport" reaction to defend itself.
Now imagine the following: assume the AI was even one step smarter (as it should be) and coordinated its attack with another allied AI kingdom to launch an equally large strike at the city the human player's sovereign just "teleported" from on the previous turn, forcing the human player to teleport back to defend itself. Wow, a loss of 30 mana to move 0 squares in defense. Every player & their mama would be crying to lower that teleport back to 5 mana a shot
.. better yet, how bout's if the AI attacks mentioned above were really "feints" designed to draw out the human's "killer stack" to waste mana in teleportation while the attacks withdraw (or only attacks the city the human cannot cover).
Now wouldn't that be something !! Words wouldn't even describe my amazement if an AI would actually play that good.
As a human player, an AI like that would be a dream, and in reality probably impossible to program.
What costs?
Teleport as it was was so good that other strategies/tactics were rendered second-class. Elemental became more one-dimensional. It became more akin to a FPS than a TBS.
Having the AI ape the human players only makes that worse.
Balance isn't just amongst players, it has to exist within the game's systems. Having one facet so over-powering that other options are overshadowed is not balance and is not good game design, especially when said over-powered facet is the quick&easy no-brainer way to do things.
Obviously my arguments are lost on you, as yours are on me, so we'll have to agree to disagree.
Hmm - lots of interesting replies. First time I've started such an interesting debate
I'm kind of liking some of the suggestions regarding mana costs scaling with distance traveled and/or varying with the size of stack moved.
Ok, I agree that teleportation is powerful, but not "over-powered." Teleportation in-and-of-itself won't win the game for you, whether it cost 0 mana or 10,000 mana to use.
Tiger tanks could be destroyed, and so was the Yamato.
Imagine being able to instantly and cheaply move a tiger tank platoon anywhere in the world. Or the Yamato and 4 carriers + 7 other ships anywhere in the Pacific (or Atlantic or North Sea or...). That's the analogy that describes how the cheap teleport is over-powered.
Who needs an Operation Overlord if you can instantly teleport your army to Berlin and then back to Washington/London again to defend?
Ok, the analogy is close but not quite right since the teleport does in fact cost 15 now. A sovereign isn't going to get much beyond 15 mana early game unless he doesn't imbue, so the analogy is: "teleporting a bunch of tiger tanks minus their 88mm ammunition".
From another angle: it takes 15 turns to regnerate mana, you should easily be able to get your sovereign moving 4 or 5 with buffs (boots of travelling AT 10 bucks a pop is one easy way). 15 mana = 15 turns regenerating = 120 squares of movement on the board on caravan roads at 4mp or 150 with a 5mp soverign (this is how far I can move while simultaneously retaining my mana while you have to "regenerate" lost mana).
I play on large maps, ridiculous setting, I probably only average 4 or 5 teleports the entire game since they've nerfed mana at 15/pop. It's just not a game breaking spell to me. Like I said, I agree that it's a powerful spell, but it's definitely not "over" powerd. If the AI were programmed competantly, it would take advantage of an army that has just teleported to the border & crossed by moving a stronger army with archers to take advantage of the now "mana-low" attack force & target the spellcasters with archers. A second follow-up attack (assuming the first archer attack failed) that can now take complete advantage of the attacking force which should be lacking many if not all its spellcasters and can finish it off with spellcasters of its own would be wonderful & probably beyond the capability of AI programming (but that's what *should* happen).
Losing 15 mana a pop is huge. Teleport is limited to "controlled" areas as well, so you still have to build a strong enough army to do the job, which surprisingly easy in this game even if there were no teleport at all. You're not going to have the "world wide" coverage to teleport your entire strike force onto the Normandy beach which you alluded to, becacause you don't control anything on Normandy. You'll still have to fight for at least one town the old fashioned way. In this game, on a large map, to get the most out of teleport you'll still need to take cities on opposite ends of the map, you can't teleport in "uncontrolled" areas. I just use two different armies to do the same thing silmultaneously instead of moving only one "killer stack" to point A, conquering, teleporting to site C in between A & B (but as close as I can get to point and then moving off to attack B. It works out the same way in the end, but I conserve mana with my method.
In a multiplayer game, the guy that uses teleport a lot is going to be the guy that loses (assuming everything else is equal) because he will be out of mana all the time when he needs it (unless he "cheats" or "hacks" the code). The guy with multiple strong armies, a huge road network, and a fast "horse archer" reserve force that can quickly reinforce against any "teleport attack" will be the guy that wins because he'll conserve mana & use it when he really needs it, or better yet "bluff" or "feint" the other players into using up their mana via unecessary teleportation.
The way the game is now, there's an artificial cap to where mana is useful because you cannot regenerate fast enough. What does it matter if you have 300 mana wizard but currently only 30 essence? Are you going to sit around for 100 turns in an essence chapel (whatever the hell it's called) to regenerate 200 mana? I wouldn't. 15mana cost for teleportation, when you get nothing but movement in return, is not just worth it. You still have to fight for those cities. Teleport doesn't guarantee you'll get them or even win the ensuing battle. At least "firestorm" will help you win a battle and take that city, teleport is just a huge expensive spell that guarantees nothing in return; sure you'll be able to take the cities you plan on attacking, but not because teleport is "overpowered" rather because the AI is "too weak".
Honestly this is an area of specialisation I'm going to miss when 1.10 rolls out. Currently my usual strategy is to recruit two level 1 otherwise unimpressive champions, imbue them with magic, and then level them until they have about 30 mana, all other stats are irrelevant. They get given heavy armour, given to a high tier army and told to sit at the back and not get in trouble. In backstory they join a specialised caste of mages who give a kingdom tactical advantage by allowing their soldiers to react instantly to any threat. In practice they become a taxi service.
I can easily get my sov to significantly more than 15 mana fairly early in the game, so the analogy is "teleporting 11 fully functional tiger tanks plus a perhaps 2/3 power Yamato (the Sov, and since the stack is 12, 11 tigers)".
Being able to instantly move a super-stack anywhere you've seen is "...nothing but movement..."?!?! That's like saying flanking is nothing but movement, or hitting a foe where they're not is nothing but movement.
It's like saying a tiger tank is nothing but steel.
Your "...nothing but movement..." is only that if one is unskilled (I consider myself pretty unskilled at this stuff). To anyone with a modicum of skill it's a lot, and in a TBS game where skill is hopefully encouraged/rewarded, it's the difference between ok and great.
Obviously we have different concepts of what makes a TBS game great.
@CrazyHarlequin don't count out your strategy yet, as we won't know how a global mana pool will affect this.
@trcanberra "First time I've started such an interesting debate" -- thanks!
Like you said we'll have to agree to disagree. You feel it's overpowered, I don't.
It's powerful, sure, but not overpowered.
1.1 might change things quite a bit anyway as to mana & teleport, so it may be a moot point.
Nice reference & The Bismark along with them.
Apologize for off-topicness and resurrecting a dead topic, but those are interesting examples to choose in a discussion of mobility..
Most King Tiger losses were abandoned due to mechanical breakdown/lack of fuel (simply put, because the tank could not move) - the few actually disabled in combat had to be flanked and hit in the weaker side/rear armor (simply put, the other guy moved better than you). The original Tiger was similar; its frontal armor could not be penetrated by any allied gun when it first saw combat, it had to be outmaneuvered to be destroyed until the allies fielded bigger guns in response. And yet the Panther - a more vulnerable yet far more maneuverable tank - proved more successful than either Tiger variation, due to the problems both had with mobility.
Now, take the Bismarck - after shrugging off countless British shells, the ship was lost after a torpedo hit jammed the rudder, rendering it unable to maneuver. The British then bombarded the ship for hours at point blank range and were unable to penetrate the armor - the Germans themselves finally sank their own ship to prevent its capture. Another loss due to lack of movement.
Just to show that this isn't a uniquely German problem, the old Soviet KV-1 heavy tank was similarly invulnerable to German guns in the early war. Yet it was far less successful than the contemporary Soviet T-34, a much faster tank amazingly capable at moving over difficult terrain (but with significantly weaker armor, and a weaker gun until it was later upgraded). In fact, a later upgrade to the KV-1 actually reduced its armor to get more speed out of the tank, even though it was by then becoming increasingly vulnerable to upgraded German guns.
Not to diminish the importance of sheer armor and firepower, which Tigers, King Tigers, the Yamato, etc. had in spades, but clearly movement is of equal or even more importance in warfare - which is why teleport is overpowered! (hah, I made it on-topic after all).
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