Dhraconus

Join Date 02/2010

Stone and Fire Giants now with 100% more overpower

Pre-1.08 the Stone and Fire Giants were my "go-to spells" for research. 1.08 made them stronger by far, to the point of being severely overpowered.

Rokoth's Promise, level 4 earth spell, 8 mana. The spell the stone giant has that costs all of 3 mana now does ~23 damage to everything in a 3x3 square. This pretty much wipes anything until mid-game at least and destroys sovereigns period unless they pump constitution WAY up.

Summon Fire Giant, level 3 fire spell, 16 mana. The fire giant has several spells, but I only ever use 1 now with has unlimited ranger and does 17 damage to anything. The fire giant also gets 1 mana back per round of combat. This is not quite as overpowered as the stone giant but it still wipes any single unit early in the game and can slaughter a sovereign.

I haven't played a long game yet because of other bugs (waiting on the slipstream patch today), but late game as kingdom if you put a Temple of Essence in a few of your cities it's not hard to get these two giants 6+ mana which means 2 casts each in the first turn. Get 3+ casters so you have 3 stone giants and 3 fire giants, attack first and you can do 102 damage with just the fire giants in 17 damage chunks to whatever you want, plus another 138 damage per unit you can catch in the stone giants' 3x3 blocks in 23 damage chunks.

I don't usually advocate nerfs, but something needs to be done about this because these are cheap easy to get spells that make everything else early game (possibly late game too) completely inferior.

Edit: Seems this only applied to 1.08 pre-hotfix. I haven't played more than a few turns after the hotfix yet, but others are reporting constant missing.... one extreme to the other, sigh..

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Das123

Join Date 05/2003

+82

Yes. This needs to be balanced.

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seconded.

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I am surprised and somewhat dismayed to hear that they have buffed Stone Giant and Fire Giant. Stone Giant in particular is very easy to get and cast and was already overpowered.

It worries me because it suggests that Stardock have no idea whatsoever how to balance things sensibly.

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Quoting Kadrium,

reply 4

Quoting Mistwraithe, reply 3It worries me because it suggests that Stardock have no idea whatsoever how to balance things sensibly.
Game balance is a difficult thing and there is a huge pile of game features that everyone is asking to have "balanced" immediately. Changing one thing has implications for others. You can't achieve balance in all aspects in a small handful of patches. We have to be patient.

Hear hear!!!! Finally someone with sense.

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I dunno ... blah blah, magical resistance on Sovereigns ... blah blah, lipservice, lipservice

Something like that, with some people having magic resistance ... yea. As to a Rock Giant Throwing Rocks (or whatever it is) ... I dunno.

I'd just kinda like more Counter Magic, Anti-Magic, Magic Barriers, Dispel Magic, Reflect Magic, Reflect Magic Barrier, etc.

I somehow think that they should have taken a Hippocrates Oath, only the MoM version. Instead of "and we shall do no harm" ... place "We shall not do worse than MoM"

MoM had a stat for magic resistance ... however it had even normal units use resistance (which is probably un-needed in this case).

As for Counter Magic and Dispel Magic ... etc ... MoM had a little bit of this, although I would like Elemental to have Defensive Magic in spades. As well as buff/debuff magic in spades.

After that, sure we can also have summons and direct damage magic ... although Buff/Debuff and Dispell/Counter can be really cool to use.

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Quoting Mistwraithe,

reply 3

I am surprised and somewhat dismayed to hear that they have buffed Stone Giant and Fire Giant. Stone Giant in particular is very easy to get and cast and was already overpowered.

It worries me because it suggests that Stardock have no idea whatsoever how to balance things sensibly.

I suspect this imbalance was a result of changing the way magic works. The intention of that of course being to make sovereigns and champions better, it just affected other units too, probably in a way that was not thought about. But I really know nothing about programming so I could be completely wrong.

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Quoting TheBirthdayParty,

reply 2

seconded.

Well, I just got attacked by some ridiculous monster that was obviously added to the Rothkar side for balance reasons (Dakulion or something: had over 1,120 hp, 24 attack, 23 defence, soaked up more than a dozen fireballs before I ran out of mana, and that only reduced its hp by about a third. Killed an observer group, stone giant, fire giant, and whatever that other smaller summons monster is). I know they're trying to balance the game but c'mon .. this is obviously meant to be a "magic soaker". With no means to regernerate mana more than 1/turn, that I know of, this is just seems kind of ridiculous (it struck me as very "artificial"). Turn 180 btw. Also it attacked one of my cities & one of my other channelers was in the city and did not show up for the battle. In fact, this was the third battle I've had with the 1.08 update where one of the AIs attacked my city by not all my defenders showed up to defend. There's obviously still something wrong, I don't recall having this problem with any earlier version.

There was a significant tactical battle speed increase, kudos for that.

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Honestly, Im rather happy to hear about a monster with over 1000 hp, (and nothing ridiculous like over 100 defense).

how did u end up killing it?

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Generally the "iniative rocket tag" of casters (and to a lesser extent, large numbers of archers) is a severe problem. I've been able to win just about every battle by picking off enemies at a distance. Monsters with 1000+ hit points will definitely make the magic nuke less of an end-all, but that doesn't solve the problem of armies of soldiers getting swept aside by this stuff, or sovereigns and heroes just dying in an instant.

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Quoting Tasunke,

reply 9

Honestly, Im rather happy to hear about a monster with over 1000 hp, (and nothing ridiculous like over 100 defense).

how did u end up killing it?

I wasn't able to kill it, it took my city which was a city I buit very far from my main homestaed because it had the water shard. I actually had the fire shard also in one of my other cities, so I was actually doing extra damage against it. It was definitely a new monser, as it was not in the hiermenon & I've never seen it before in any other game.

BTW: I just lost this game. I wasn't able to defeat that monster and all my summoned mosters were killed as well my mana completely drained. I ended up teleporting once my mana got back up to 5 and sat on my butt for 30 turns because I had no mana & no way to regenerate. In that 30 turns, two other AI declared war on me. I was at war with 5 of the 9 AIs, although one I destroyed early in the game, so it was really 4.

That 30 turn wait was simply too long, when I finally resumed attacking vs one of the other AIs they had catapult squads which had 800 hp, 100 attack, and 10 defense, even after two dozen firestorm (whatever that area fire spell is which costs 5 mana), I was only able to get the catapults down to about 50%, while killing everything else, including the sovereign. Anyway, the catapults had an enire battlefield range and they did 75 points of damage on each of my magic users, triple their hps. This is actually the first time I've fought catapults too, as I usually win before this tech ever gets unlocked.

I'm actually glad I lost this one, it's the first game I lost since my second game. But, the reason I lost was I waited too long to attack and the AI beefed themselves up with significant units in the interim (Catapult "squads" and deukalions). BTW, all settings were on ridiculous, large map, max number of opponents, everything enabled. I shouldn't have wasted time waiting for my stupid "mana" to regenerate, but I didn't really have enough other combat units to wage an effective war at that time (anyway, not anything that could've beat that monster or the catapults). I wiish there was some other way to raise mana, it would be nice if there was a mana raising potion you could buy, even if it was over priced it would be worth it.

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Quoting Darvin3,

reply 10

I agree, I usually use lots of archers as well. Longbows are one of my priorities. I had to change my strategy this game though, since I could not get the income from monster farming (since that was significantly changed). I decided to go for the civ advances up through economics (at start) so I could have the marketplace & afford the units. It does no good to have archers if you can't afford them.

Problem this game, I wasn't able to get my standard techs in time & beef up my army, since previously I'd used monster farming as the source of my income to outfit my armies. It's gonna take me a few games to re-evalute my entire strategy with the old economic scheme removed. I decided to wage my main attack with summoners, but I simply ran out of mana & could not regenerate as fast as I needed it. Magic was never my primary attack in my old strategy & I can see its weaknesses now very clearly (i.e. mana not regenerating fast enough).

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Quoting cpl_rk,

reply 11

I wiish there was some other way to raise mana, it would be nice if there was a mana raising potion you could buy, even if it was over priced it would be worth it.

There isn't a potion to buy, but there is a mana potion you can find in a goodie hut, IIRC.

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You guys are lucky. My Stone Giants miss every time now. I had 4 of them lined up for what I thought would be a massacre and nothing but miss, miss, miss. There was a massacre alright, mine.

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I don't see a problem with it.. plenty of counters to use against them. If only the AI was smart enough.

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Both my Fire and Stone Giants miss every time now with their ranged attacks -- so if they are 'overpowered', I'm just not seeing it. I have a feeling that both are bugged.

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ALl of the summons are waaaay overpowered for when you get them. Those AOE spells are crazy. The AI can get them early and there is that one imp guy I swear he can hit the entire battlefied and wipe every solider, champion, and my Sovereign out in one hit. I stopped using summons because of how cheesy they are. They are way better than any troop you can make especially early on.

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Added an edit to original post to reflect the seeming hotfix change, now they miss all the time apparently. Tomorrow I'll continue my post-hotfix game I started and get those two summons to confirm whether the hotfix changed it for me as well.

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Werewindlefr

Join Date 03/2007

+28

Quoting Haldur,

reply 16

Both my Fire and Stone Giants miss every time now with their ranged attacks -- so if they are 'overpowered', I'm just not seeing it. I have a feeling that both are bugged.

Well, the fire giant has ~20 attack and 20 defense when a lordhammer (a much much later game weapon) has 14. That's overpowered for me.

Summons and creatures (NPCs and recruitable alike) were forgotten in the balance pass and their attacks are not in line with the rest of the game.

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It's down to the magic working as it should. It's the combat system that needs adjusting I think rather than the summons.

Plus you do have a level 1 unit enchantment which makes them immune to hostile magic, now that's overpowered.

Quoting Werewindlefr,

reply 19

Well, the fire giant has ~20 attack and 20 defense when a lordhammer (a much much later game weapon) has 14. That's overpowered for me.

Two things -

1. The Lord Hammer modifies the unit's existing attack strength. Give it to a hero with fifteen strength and their attack will hit the 40's. On basic units it's not quite so powerful even once you start adding magical jewellery, but that's why you can train squads.

2. They're giants. It's possibly a lore thing, but I'm thinking a giant mound of walking rock should be capable of hitting somewhat harder than a peasant with a big hammer.

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I'm not really sure why they bothered with this because they are revamping the magic system somewhat. If your car window has a crack in it, do you wash it before you replace it?

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Stone Giant definitely has a late game spell ... even the graphics for the Stone Giants spell are late game watching it cover 33% of the battlefield. Until the stone giant is properly balanced it should be kicked into the level_9 spell learning. No reason to even summon any of the elementals when multiple Stone Giants can do more damage more quickly to the enemy while costing less mana.

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Well I thought they were over powered, but now the stone giant's ability misses every single time. Possibly the fire giant now too.

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Yeah its the same bug that is affecting archery right now there is a community made fix posted in support forums. Just cut and paste into the XML and it's fixed.

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