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TowerLord
Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
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posted April 25, 2007 03:58 PM |
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Yea you will come in 3rd week and kill few gargoyles and golems and escape just to come back in 5th week and meet rest of his army but this time equiped with mini artifats.
Its either you win early or its gg.
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So to sum it up... I would say Dungeon is not underpowered when fighting CounterSpell Academy. You have nice options to win if you rush, in lategame it becomes much harder, but it is still possible to win.
I would say differently. Unless your opponent is very unlucky, you are screawed. Now let me tell you something about rushing academy. Not that you i think you dont know how does it work but i bet others may dont know.
I had a fight on week 3 day 2 against academy i took all my 12 hydras with me since i wanted to do some damage and escape. Fight begun. He placed only gargoyles and golems. I split hydras in 2 stacks , 6 each.
His ballista went first. With its first shot he killed 5 of my hydras and 1 in second shot(there was no more lef). I said wooot? ive never seen anythin like this before. ok now my hero. what could i do.. let me see.. kill few gargoyles? i was some damage short to kill his balista but even if i did kill it it wouldnt change a single thing. His hero was next . He knew i will have to run and didnt even use counterspell and just kill couple more hydras with a spell. I was preety much done at this point. There was no way i could win this game. Maybe i should attack him in week 2? But wait with what? furies and assasins? and crappy minotaurs? Give me a break.
Now tell me did i do somethiong wrong or what ? because if i took all my army with me he would placed all his units and it wouldnt change a single thing because all hydras would be dead in 2 rounds and raiders wouldn't be able to much alone. I dont even consider furies and assasins since those units are a joke in battles vs human opponent. So you see , Towerlord , it's easy to say that i have nice options when i rush but its just empty talking. Rushing without magic is misunderstanding, and you can get counterspell in first week before any rushes are possible.
I know that you would wish this game to be balanced and from your posts on different issues i draw a conclusion that you actually think that everything is balanced, but it isnt true.
And my conclusion about this matchup is that academy is in advantage generally in this matchup and counterspell raises this advantage skyhigh.
Obviously, it's the flamming ballista winning the game, not CounterSpell... A simple ballista wouldn't do so much damage, it would only kill 3 hydras...
But flamming ballista is a very hard to obtain ability, 2% chance to get the skill and after that you still must get archery ! If you rush fast enough(week 3) 99,9% he won't have that ablitity. 12 hydras is week 4 + thing so I would say you were too slow.
Anyway you shouldn't shout CounterSpell imba, because he is lucky and gets super ballista and also he is lucky to get his ballista to act first!
Also I think you are too addicted to one way of playing Dungeon, casting Destructive spells and keeping your troops alive as much as possible, that you are blinded , and you don't see any other ways! You could try going for warmachines too, and you could try to empower your troops so you can win the duel even when CounterSpelled. You could even try Lethos, he is a very nice hero when he reaches a high level... If he decays 3-4 stacks at the begginging of the combat you can be sure that those stacks are gonners after a couple of turns... and I'm pretty sure you can take care of the other stacks by pure might, even with minis equiped!
If you were to lose 10 times against this strategy, trying something different every time I would agree that it is imba, but if you haven't tried everything than I cannot agree with you.
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feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted April 25, 2007 04:57 PM |
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Also I think you are too addicted to one way of playing Dungeon, casting Destructive spells and keeping your troops alive as much as possible, that you are blinded , and you don't see any other ways! You could try going for warmachines too, and you could try to empower your troops so you can win the duel even when CounterSpelled. You could even try Lethos, he is a very nice hero when he reaches a high level... If he decays 3-4 stacks at the begginging of the combat you can be sure that those stacks are gonners after a couple of turns... and I'm pretty sure you can take care of the other stacks by pure might, even with minis equiped!
I play the best way i can think of. IF you have better strategy please , share it with us. Ok you did say some of your ideas, let me comment them.
Taking war machines skill.. ok so i have a ballista too and this ballista is much weaker than academys and doesn't have flaming arrows. Oh wait, you said that its very hard to get them, ok but when you actually get it its a massacre , thats really seems to be balanced.
I dont even want to mention remote control thingy.
By empowering my troops you mean skills? Academy with counterspell can have them too so its not an argument. Moreover Academy has better lvl 1-3 creatures and that fact alone makes the early might fight one sided.
Taking Lethos hmm jummie, BTW he cant poison neither gargoyles nor golems , um ok i will poison gremlins yeah ! BTW he will cure them with his tent!
Do you have any more bright ideas? You know what , try to play with Warlock against good academy players , perhaps you need to find it the hard way.
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If you rush fast enough(week 3) 99,9% he won't have that ablitity
I guess it was this 0.1% because it was week 3 day 2 and he had it.
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12 hydras is week 4 + thing so I would say you were too slow.
I said week 3 day 2, i built hydras in first week!, and citadel+castle in second , um are you really trying you imply this is slow?
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TowerLord
Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
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posted April 25, 2007 05:59 PM |
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No War Machines is not weaker, you have big attack and some knowledge, he has huge knowledge... I think the two ballistas are gonna be pretty balanced. Flaming arrow is too lucky to be relied on... Sylvan is the best in rushes with Triple Imbued Ballista, would you bet your money on getting that... the chances are the same !
Remote is not that great.. what if he gets your ammo cart ?! and I doubt he will choose the skill against Dungeon.
Yes I meant focusing more on your might, then on your magic... and that means skills( get attack/tactics , maybe defense/evasion too), artifacts(instead of buying +50% earth, air arti get + attack,initiative artis ), changing the town build ( so you get more troops, especially more offensive troops -> build dragons faster instead of more hydras, maybe ignore hydras since they have little to no offensive potential)
I was suggesting Lethos for late game, not as a rush solution, when he can poisson Titans, Djins,Raska, Mages, Gremlins, and he will do very nice damage over time due to the huge spell power !
Also the map might be very rich with some prebuilt stuff in town.. 12 hydras by week 3 seem pretty much, since that means you built them on week 1. And a very rich map requires some special strategies , maybe rushing wasn't the best thing to do ...
Anyway, what I am saying is there are solutions, you just have to search for them, not just stick to Super Destructive and big hydra stack!
And when you have exhausted everything thing, then you can trully say Dungeon is underpowered against Academy with War Machines + CounterSpell.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 25, 2007 06:04 PM |
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Feluniozbunio: Time to accept that some things simply ain't balanced now, bro  But cheer up, I bet the alternative upgrades will change something.
Ofc it's not certain that they will actually do any good for certain matchups, they may even break them more, since it's Nival 
I would just play haven if I were you and smash those overconfident wizards with trained quadruple paladins on antimagic, bwahaha 
Damn, if only haven wasn't so susceptible to rushes, that is 
And I partially agree with TowerLord. I mean, we all thought academy sucks big time, until guys like 86wyp invented the MMR strategy. And bam, it's imba without a single buff?
Perhaps we need to experiment a bit with dungeon too.
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feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted April 25, 2007 06:14 PM |
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Actually i have reached the bottom of my bag with ideas and that is why i am saying all this. Believe me i wouldn't whine if i knew i have some options i haven't tried or thought that might be worthwhile to test. Im not the kind of person who whines by every occasion.
I know there are imbalances .. what a hell i can even live with them. I can always switch to academy myself(that is what i usually do). I just don't like when somebody tries to prove there is no problem when there is one.
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And bam, it's imba without a single buff?
I havent said its imba.. its just this matchup
Its the same with matchup necro vs dungeon . Necro has even less chances. Its like in your topic. General balance seems to be quite alright, its just that some matchups are not alright , and this is my point.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted April 25, 2007 06:43 PM |
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Well I agree with that ofc.
I would suggest to continue our balance discussion here, cause we're doing HUUUUUUUUUGE offtopic..
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted April 25, 2007 06:47 PM |
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Quote:
And I partially agree with TowerLord. I mean, we all thought academy sucks big time, until guys like 86wyp invented the MMR strategy. And bam, it's imba without a single buff?
Perhaps we need to experiment a bit with dungeon too.
Yes, that's certainly a very good point. Sometimes we are too restricted by our habits from previous versions of the games to see the full potential at first glance. That being said, Nival has chosen the path of focusing many factions extremely narrow on one path, which inevitably will lead to trouble when they are facing the particular faction that has a strong counter against that particular approach.
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What will happen now?
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ChaosDragon
Famous Hero
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posted April 25, 2007 06:50 PM |
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@Towerlord: i'm still wondering how can dungeon balista match those of academy, and about lethos vs academy, i think felun is right.
Somethings are a little imba, as for haven, if somehow we can cut their economy, they're not that scary.
But, maybe you're right, it's just like what Doomforge said, we should experiment more about many factions or hoping for alt upg system, i have high hope for it, even it's nival, more alternatives means more experiment, then maybe all things will be almost balanced.
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feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted April 25, 2007 06:55 PM |
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Yes, that's certainly a very good point. Sometimes we are too restricted by our habits from previous versions of the games to see the full potential at first glance.
Hehe of course it may be true. Thats why we discuss those things on forums, if somebody knows the solution to this, there is a hope he will share it with us And if many players will agree that something is overpowered and none of them can find a solution there is always a possibility to ban it, even if Nival won't fix things.
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TowerLord
Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
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posted April 26, 2007 02:19 PM |
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last night I played a fun game with felunio for testing academy vs. dungeon ... with inversed roles , me dungeon , him academy. I wanted to take pictures from battle, but I got caried away and I forgot  , hope he did... Anyway the game is not over yet, but there are many interesting things about it...
Game setup :
felunio : Academy - Jhora
me : Dungeon - Yrwanna
I tried to go for a Might Dungeon, without neglecting magic...so I kept hero buildup the usual going the magic way ( neglecting some abilities though) ... maybe this could be changed in future games, by adding some important might secondaries like defense or attack. I didn't take attack because I had the +1 speed boot so I felt no need for tactics. I focused alot on getting my attack up, maybe too much even ...
My hero looked something like this : 24 4 24 14
I also tried to get as many offensive troops as possible ( Dragons and Raiders especially)... I built all dragons + castle in first town week 2, and I did the same for second town in week 3! What helped alot was finding an abandoned mine of sulfur, which proved to be really important. Unfortunately, I had enough resources to build double hydras and double witches too at the same time . This shouldn't normally be a bad thing, but I found myself having huge money problems in recruiting all that I built, even though I had 7500 / turn income ...
I broke to the middle in week 4 , day 1 , which I consider optimum , and I helped myself to many of the goodies around there. I only built mage guild lvl 2, relying on the mage vault to give me spells and I got Implosion out of them ... I played a really crappy battle against them though , and lost 21 Furys, at least 10 more than I could have if I played decent. The terrain was hostile and I placed my 9 speed furys stupidly ... It could have been done with minimal (or no) losses if I were a little more carefull... but I was getting tired and mistakes were starting to pop . Anyway after taking goodies from middle I retreated to town , and I built mage guild level 4 and got Meteor Shower ... but felunio suicided and we loaded, and strangely this time I got Chain Lightning , I didn't care much about that at the time because I wasn't relying on spells that much anyway.
Anyway I went back towards middle after this so I meet and fight cause I was getting really tired, it was 4 o'clock or something ... Now I started understanding the money problems I was facing, cause I simply couldn't recruit high level troops... I recruited all Raiders , Furys and Assasins, 14/22 Witches(I lose 2 furys @ devils or something) and 10/12 Dragons ... and I went to attack thinking I will recruit the remaining drags and witches and maybe some hydras and summon them. He broke now, and I wanted to steal a (+2 att/ +2 sp) artifact away from him, and I also underestimated him a little, since he didn't have many high level troops and much lower might stats than mine. I was expecting a Summoning, Light combo or something like that, but instead he went for Destructive + Dark combo ... Also he had the ring of speed, which was another very unpleasant surprise ... since this artifact is a little imba.
Armys :
90+ Assasins , 90+ Furys , 70+ Raiders , 14 Witches and 10 Dragons
35+ Master Genies, 160+ Master Gremlins , 150+ Golems , 200+ Gargoyles and 50-60+ Archmages Mages , 6 Raska Rani
I splitted the Witches in 3 stacks 10 - 2 - 2 and went for battle... The battle started pretty well for me, but I made some mistakes, I killed Rani with Furys, instead of taking out 80 gargoyles clearing path for raiders towards gargs... that shouldn't be very bad , but due to his ring of speed his gargs acted before my raider, and the raiders were left targetless so I moved them a little to the front... Also he blocked my dragons path to genies with gargies , so I had to attack them, killed many... when it was Jhora's turn, came the surprise of Puppet on Raiders which . I took out most of the mages and genies , some gargs too with Empowered Circle of Winter ... and the battle went on.
The Raiders had their initiative so much reduced that they were nowhere on the Atb , but another big mistake by me... sealed the battle . I checked to see the buffs on his troops and I didn't see Magic Mirror , so I thought he doesn't have it , and I imploded the gargs ... but it backfired on 2 witches and I wasted alot of damage
I didn't know Magic Mirror isn't shown on creatures unfortunately ... but its great that I found that out. Anyway after some implosions from him and some Circle of Winter / Chain Lightning from me ... the battle got to the point where I had left 10 Furys , 5 Drags , 10 Witches and 72 Puppeted Raiders, some assassins(dont know number) and he had 120+ Golems and don't know how many gargs , and it was the Raiders turn and they took out the dragons .
It was obvious I lost, but surrendering costed to much and I had to stay and lose some
In the end I left with 32 Raiders , some assassins and 2 Witches. And a lot of unrecruited troops in my town... And a lot of mistakes! , but with a lot of knowledge about this duel... The game is far from over and I think in the end I will win, because my double dragon production and big attack is a true power.
Anyway , what I learned from this is :
1. I should have used Cloak of Sylana instead of -2 luck & morale... it would have been alot better
2. Meteor Shower was something to cry for ... It could really make a difference, the reason I chose to cast the Implosion was mainly the lack of a Area Spell which could hit 2 troops
3. Don't build double Witches , they are useless as attackers, only good for casting spells , and they cost alooot
4. Don't build hydras(especially not double hydras) , they are not very important in this match-up...
5. Pay attention to Puppet Master
Now ... the strategy towards victory against Academy :
Black Dragons + 2 Equal stacks of Raiders + 2 Equal stacks of Witches (not very big) + Furys + Assasins
You need to combine might with magic... and rely on both equally... take out Gargoyles and Golems more by might and the others more by magic !
Don't worry about CounterSpell... your troops can usually handle the challenge!
PS : I await felunios comments , and maybe some pictures
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feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted April 26, 2007 03:55 PM |
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From my point of view it looked pretty similar.
I had formidable army in terms of numbers but it wasn't enough. My unexperience in playing academy was very visible when it came to details. I didn't have good mini artifacts thats the main thing i screwed in that game. Preparing all neccesary resources for them in BFH is really difficult thing but i bet after some practice it isn't much of a problem. I got the same problem Towerlord had in my games as a Dungeon and i figured it out. Those things are a matter of practise only but when they are done incorrectly it affects the match horribly.
All in all despite very high initiative my units proved to be very weak. Im not sure whether not making titans was a mistake or not. In their place i bought tome of dark magic(which was crucial) , ring of speed and -2 luck ring.
Anyway, counterspell proved to be not needed because his might side was really impressing and unfortunately my might was not (i think its mainly due to my lack of experience with academy). Moreover he was more might than magic overall and his spells was doing less damage than my motwed imposion(beside 3 target circle but it was my mistake) so there was no point in using counterspell really.
And i forgot the pictures too. perhaps we can do some from later stages of the game.
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sq79
Famous Hero
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posted April 26, 2007 04:40 PM |
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Good choice for felunio to learn dark it seems 
Curse of netherworld will prevent any hit and run if dungeon tries to do it
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted April 26, 2007 04:54 PM |
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@TowerLord:
Quote:
Anyway after taking goodies from middle I retreated to town , and I built mage guild level 4 and got Meteor Shower ... but felunio suicided and we loaded, and strangely this time I got Chain Lightning
That's strangely indeed!
Don't get me wrong, but as far as I know, the spells are 'generated' at level startup -- no matter how much you load the same game, the same spells will be there, because they're fate is already choosen at the start.
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TowerLord
Promising
Supreme Hero
Hero of Good, Slayer of Evil
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posted April 26, 2007 05:10 PM |
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Don't get me wrong, but as far as I know, the spells are 'generated' at level startup -- no matter how much you load the same game, the same spells will be there, because they're fate is already choosen at the start.
That's what I thought also ... but it seems it isn't so. Felunio told me that things like those happened to him too.
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executor
Famous Hero
Otherworldly Ambassador
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posted April 26, 2007 05:12 PM |
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Indeed they are... as far as my expierience is considered...
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Understanding is a three-edged sword.
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted April 26, 2007 05:14 PM |
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I was trying to point out that maybe you confused it with another of your games.. it happened to me sometimes as well
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feluniozbunio
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted April 26, 2007 05:22 PM |
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I don't remember correctly whether that was this load or no but at some point i restarted a game, i think it might have caused it.
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted April 26, 2007 05:23 PM |
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Restarts recalculate the spells, yes, that could be it.
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ZombieLord
Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
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posted April 26, 2007 05:36 PM |
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I'm 100% sure that the spells are generated at the START of the game (at least in my version - 1.41)
I mean, when reloading... restarting is like starting a new game
Maybe you built the mage guild in another town?
Quote:
His ballista went first. With its first shot he killed 5 of my hydras
Some calculations:
Hydras have 80 HP, so 5 Hydras have 400.
The flaming arrow fire damage is 50, so we have 350 until now.
The flaming arrows ability also ignores defense, and with the ballista having an attack of 15, the damage is increased by 75%.
350/1.75 = 200
Since ballista's damage is 5 * (Att+Kn), 200 / 5 = 40 resulting that he had 40 Attack + Knowledge in the third week!!!
This is either impossible or you play very rich maps, which maybe are not really balanced
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted April 26, 2007 05:46 PM |
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An interesting match so far. I hadn't thought of getting elemental resistance arties due to magic mirror-though I never used 1-target spells against academy anyway! Painful memories! I'd think hydras would be good as tanks due to motw+destructive but I guess they are indeed superfluous in a might approach-not to mention what they'd do with a puppet master. Also no wonder feluniozbunio had a problem with realising the mini arties' potential as they are hard to figure out if you haven't used them.
Nevermind about the mistakes, 4 seems a bit late! Probably not their best factions either!
I would be interested in learning what Towerlord's skills were. They'd make me understand the battle more clearly.
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Map also hosted on Moddb
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