Early Conquest is too easy

from Elemental Forums

I'm trying an experiment. I picked Yithril, gave my soverign a shortsword and gauntlets of grazna, and set out questing on turn 2. I set all the AIs on "Hard" difficulty

After a short while i got ahold of a warding kite shield, a champion to accompany me (i took her poison dagger),  unit of panca archers, and a sand golem. With this motley crew of 4 units, i went on a warpath, declaring war on everyone i met and invading them immediately.

It's now turn 41. I have five cities (none of which i built), and i've wiped out three empires. At last i've lost the poor little sand golem in battle, but my soverign (lv6) has 20 defense and kicks ass so i don't really need it. I've barely researched any military tech or bought any gear, i've barely even cast spells either, just a few uses of Slow.

 

it's the first time i've tried being so aggressive, and the results are a bit disconcerting. At this rate i might be able to win a conquest victory before turn 200. i don't even have juggernauts yet but i'm steamrolling through everyone

Does anyone else think this is a problem ? Defending oneself in the early game seems pretty impossible. In a hypothetical multiplayer scenario, i'm not sure of how you could defend against a rampaging soverign. The strength of the strategy comes in gathering gear and levels as you hunt for people to invade. The main reason it works so well against the AI is that they send their soverign and all their troops out in exploring parties, and leave their cities with a skeleton crew, allowing me to walk in and take it.

on the other hand, if they kept their soverign at home to defend themselves, she wouldn't get any xp or nice equipment, and would die horribly anyway.

I think the strategy is too strong, and too easy a method of grabbing quick power. I can cause the world to quickly empty out into a few superpowers, which would make for a pretty boring endgame

 

How could it be remedied? Perhaps the first problem is that city defending is so meagre. You get a couple of free units to help fight off invaders, number and types depending on the size of the city. but most of them are pretty sucky. the archers are half decent but you rarely get more than 1 or 2. the City militia have little or now armor, and aren't even worth using as cannon fodder. 

Aside from those free units, there doesn't seem to be any advantage given to the defender.. i can't think of any other reason why you'd want to position troops in a city defensively, rather than going out to meet the enemy. Perhaps this is a problem. I'd like to cite one of my favourite game series',  Sid Meier's civilisation, as an example.

 

Most of the civ games do have a bit of a defensive focus. Quite often a city will give inherent bonuses to units standing in the tile. Most units also have the Fortify ability, which gives them a gradually increasing bonus to their combat strength (up to 25% over 5 turns) the longer they remain in one place. And to help curb early conquests, the basic Warrior unit, the weakest of the troops, usually comes with some inherent bonus to city defense, making them stronger defensively, rather than offensively.

All these factors combine to make early warfare prohibitively dangerous.. usually. Most of the time people sit out the sticks-and-rocks era developing their economy, and you only get serious combat going on once you get to the midgame/medieval era, where you start getting siege weapons to counteract the powerful city defenses.

 

I find civ's approach to be quite positive. It means that factions generally get a chance to develop a bit and do their thing in safety, before their big scary neighbor comes knocking. it makes room for strategies beyond spamming early troops and conquering in a hurry. By contrast in FE, siege weapons come quite late in the game, and they aren't particularly needed or fill a useful niche.

 

Does anyone else agree with me? do you think the current pacing of the game is fine?

13,874 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Yes, I have been playing Beastlord lastly, and after taming some spiders, I found a close AI with 2 cities (I had 3)...I though in trying a quick attack, and the results was I won the first city. The AI sent me all it had, but I won again, so the last AI city fell next turn... one faction over...

A question apart is that I'm finding that Beastlord can break the game...I'm not picking it anymore...

Pacing in this game can very very difficult. If player gets a good start (good settle hero, and early loot troops) game can be easy, while the opposite with a bad start. On the other way, to get many units in the early game is very hard, because units are crappy. Many people (me included) ask for short swords (or daggers or whatever) and bows earlier in the tech tree.

In general, I think AI does not defend their cities with enough troops.

Some things that could be done to improve the defense of cities:

- More militia. If a city is attacked, many of the citizens would help in the defense. Instead of only 2 units (in basic cities), I would recommend (9-stationed troops) militias. And half of them might be archers. The quality of the militia should improve with the level of the city (and the fortress building) instead of the number as now. More level = more traits for the militia.

Any militia killed, should be sustracted from the population too.

- More city defenses. Maybe buildings like the Town Hall, the Bell tower and the Monument could provide the militia I stated above, and/or some little bonus to defenders (armour, dodge, attack...). If each of these buildings provided +1 militia/ + 1archer, the defense of the town could scale with their buildings, so I find sense in this. Shrines could provide monks (healing unit). And conclaves buildings could provide some magicians. Fortress should provide better units (give the militia the HP, fury and iron skin +3 defense traits).

- Penalties to the attackers. In Master Of MAgic, you had to spend some turns breaking the fences, under the fire of archers and mages, and after that, the enemy was awaiting in the bottleneck. That made really hard to take a town with low level units or champs. You needed a moderate army, at least, before trying.

As there is no wall to break through, I suggest a penalty of 50% of the movement points for to attackers. This way, having a city defended by archers (stated above), will deal more damage untill attackers can reach them. I'm not sure if it is fair to give penalties to other stats of the attacker (due that fortress give good bonus to defence).

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

yeah, I find a quick early war is far easier than waiting to have 'real' armies.  The AI is usually messing around with outpost spam and scouting, so wandering right into a city seems very easy.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

This is a very well known problem (rushing is TOO effective), that's usually the only way to beat the game on harder difficulties. If you want to have a fun game, you have to let the AI built up a bit or it'll be a very quick game.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree, the AI is too vulnerable to early game rushes.  Would be nice if cities were tough to take in the early game, when nobody can afford to build defending units yet. Some tougher militia in early cities would help the AI.

 

 Although, one time, I planned on rushing my neighbor  but the dick had the Panca archers and the Krax brother spearman with a sand golem and found some rusty armor and a fucking greatsword and tore my asshole up.  I won the war, but took two assbeatings and lost a city for awhile before I came back.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

This is a problem in every strategy game. I would like city militia to be buffed with the 2nd tier weapons and armor, ie, not chain if that's the best you have, but leather.

In my latest game, just on challenging, I border two empires, one of them the second biggest, but despite having a large map with 8 total people on it, I have a massive empire with 14 built cities, 7 or 8 outposts and quite a few land areas to dig into (special locations). I have about 6 of those elite Arena's in my empire lol.

I haven't warred with anybody. It's a bit weird. Other than a bunch of high powered champs I have only built 3 or 4 defensive units.

So, maybe don't rush, give the AI a bit of time to get it's crap together. Handicap it. You can get mobbed and your cities disappear as well.

Play on a larger map, I guarantee you you won't have much fun when you run into a mid game enemy hero that casts despair.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Concur.  It's too easy to breed pioneers and have an 4 or 5 villages in a short time.  Build time on pioneers should be increased or phased in such a way as that one only becomes available each time a village gains a level.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe as a solution:

-All sovereigns start with recall scrolls, and ai will move to defend towns if they are threatened, using scroll if they can't move fast enough.

-Half movement speed when in a hostile area of control

-Auto garrison improves earlier.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I am wondering if the non AI bonuses that the sovereigns get have their logic reversed between easy and hard games?

I tried some easy games when I was learning the concepts and while the AI's building efforts were pointless, an enemy sovereign I met was level 5 within a few turns of the beginning of the game.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

One issue regarding conquest is that defending militia lack defense even into the late-game; I've seen city militia with 16-attack maces and almost no defense.  Among other things, this makes them incredibly vulnerable to ranged units and charging cavalry.  

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

the autogarrisons definitely need buffed, i think we can agree there.

I'd propose that all players' capital cities recieve some kind of inherent bonus too. A much stronger garrison, compared to normal cities.

 

and it would be nice to have free (or halved) mana and gold upkeep costs, for units which are stationed in a city (including champions with mana-costing auras)

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

I beat a strong earth elemental army with city militia and 4 of the default militia units, level 2 town OP ;). Not even defensive trait.

City Militia actually seem pretty strong to me, decent amount of health and damage, but they get run over pretty quickly. They get outdated in terms of technology and never catch up which is one of their biggest weaknesses. Guardian Statue seems pretty weak too. The AI doesn't put enough priority in defending early on, and focuses too much on leveling and expanding, leaving them vulnerable to rush. But then again if they built too much defense they wouldn't build up as much as the player. If the AI built up some basic units and used them defensively rather than for exploring/expanding/leveling, and changed its focus to unit production so it matches about where the aggressor is in terms of power or greater, they would stand a better chance.