So last night I finished my first game. I also found that if I had had several more flame wall scrolls, the entirety of the Sorcerer King's army would have been wiped in about 5 units moves.
Would it be possible to get more variety in the types of units (resistances, elemental units, etc) for the final battle? This would encourage more variety from the player while not allowing simple wipes of the final battle.
Yep. Very high on our list.
I have to say I just played and then replayed the final battle on normal (beta 4) and was pleased to see randomly chosen enemy creatures. The first battle (with wisdom selected) I faced a troll, juggernaut, darklings and trogs. The second (compassion) I faced a drake, umberdroth, urxen, darklings and trog archers. First battle only Tandis survived and was victorious second time Tandis and his trusty Bailey and some earlier hypnotized stalkers made it out with a replacement hypnotized drake to replace my dead one.
If the developers were mean, cruel and pitiless they would double the mana cost of spells in the final fight or reduce the number of sov casts or increase spell failure etc. but only if they were , well you know.....
If they did that, they could have quests to retrieve powerful artifacts to even the playing field for the final battle, rings of spell projection and such to pierce the dark veil across the SK's stronghold etc... (excuse this thought if the Keepers of the Flame people quest has this, I briefly met one emissary and then cheerfully went off the kill the BBEG
Thanks for an already fun game!
I'm a little concerned about the end game getting tedious. Most 4X games can end in a variety of ways, but this is always gear up for the big battle? Every time?
We shall see.
When it starts getting tedious (or even before), it's time to dust off Legendary Heroes for variety.
But the Tyrant has the option of casting the Spell of Making (or something like that).
Maybe the other sovereigns could have a similar victory condition:
- Tinker building an "atomic" bomb device from legendary materials, which can act like a neutron bomb vs. dark creatures e.g. slaying all "dark" creatures with the radiation including the SK. Unfortunately this requires 3 cities at least lvl 6 with the building Tower of Manhatten in order to generate the necessary DUCK power ;
- Priest calling upon the divine favors of the God(s) to slay the SK requiring extremely long praying/meditation (long casting time) and also requiring at least 5 towers of praying (5 cities at least lvl 5 with the Tower of Meditation;
- the Commander must rally ALL the minor factions into a single army to defeat the SK or maybe build a "UN HQ", or he must destroy the minor factions not agreeing with him;
- Guardian maybe something akin to a great nature/land spell aka the Earth engulf up the SK's Fortress and crushed it/ trap the SK forever in dimensional black hole / toss the SK into Draginol's lair/disturb his slumber - although the Guardian does not know that. He only knows that the SK is gone (for the time being) and that the land/nature can rest easy once again (at least until the next wizard rises to corrupt power again);
- Wizard - just casting the big CounterSPELL vs. SK's Spell of Making, alas this requires a large amount of mana, long casting time and the great sacrifice of many land e.g. harvest the land for the necessary power to stop the SK.
I am not sure increasing the mana would be a factor unless you aren't sure what factor the increase is going to be, otherwise, you will just wait until you have enough mana to cast the spells you want to cast. If you are ready to fight the SK he has already ceased to become a threat to the remaining cities/shards. In the last game I played I had 2813 mana before the last fight, and could have had a lot as I ended up doing a lot of tile renovations which weren't really necessary.
I've been playing with some of the more ridiculous combos, probably wont play them for a challenge but without crafting anything I can still win fairly easy on normal and small maps. I think larger maps and the hardest difficult might be challenging in that the distance required to cover and protecting the shards and cities might be problematic to establish a decent foothold.
I think generally SK is one of the easiest 4X games to complete, I am not sure just 3 difficulty levels are going to be enough to provide a good challenge, I pretty much don't craft or make potions or scrolls because it isn't necessary to win at present. I guess the balance phase will come in later where they look at all these factors.
After playing some more with the tinkerer sov and getting Dwarven rampage and Mana Shield combo with mana sucking items, I now routinely keep above 1k + mana, so I find myself agreeing with you, t_raft. So maybe just a randomly increased chance of spell fizzle, or a twist so a beneficial spell gets applied to the enemy or a negative spell to your own troops, would be a better way to go.
The Lieutenants could also be beefier with some scary autocasts at the beginning of the battle to give them an edge. Like a flaming battlefield that burns your troops or an icy battlefield that reduces your initiative.
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