Universal Planar Conquest (by Shortbreak Studios)

Now now, now you are just making fun of me
Jokes aside: I'm just one middle-aged grumpy dude. The last I want is that anyone treats my ramblings as gospel just because they are *mine*.
It should always be the argument itself that convinces you (or not), never the person. And yes, I am very serious about that.
<steps off the soapbox>

 

Bought this game and learned how to play because of NZ

 

@doomtrader:
Mind sharing what the actual issue was you tried to solve with toning down various damage numbers?
(This just for starters; there's a lot of stuff in the logs, I didn't even have time to list them all down for my own use).

On Steam, I cannot find any changelogs going back further than 1.3.0a. I guess that's because 1.3.0 is the version you released there. Do you have the ones for 1.2.5+ as well?

 

Play Report: Myrodant Archmage - turn 25 summary

Not writing much now, just a quick summary:
- with the restrictions I imposed (listed here : http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3944561&postcount=1515): very difficult game so far, I really need to up my play a few notches. My rather lazy but effective steamroller approach with strong single units early on, and full stacks asap, doesn't cut it anymore.
With only 2 towns ~turn 25, my economy is tanking pretty hard. Have to come up with some good solutions - got some ideas about producing Settlers outside my Capital - so I'd appreciate any input, ideas, requests to try strategy X or spell combo Y, etc.

With a low economy, units are in short supply too. And not having any good in-between units pretty much forced me to go for higher tier Mirmidons right away -> another big dent into my economy. Next time I'll go for some townspam before I start gearing up for better units.

No longer out of spells to cast: I researched Mother's Resolve (+100% popgrowth), and wanted to bunker a few which should keep my mana drained for 10+ turns. But I cannot afford it - burning my gold reserves already, which is bad that early on - so I only cast 2 for my existing towns, and will stop casting to build up Mana again until something I really need comes around. That's a first for me, I always have a casting queue filled up for 100+ turns right from the start, and can afford the constant casting.

Before this gets even longer, I'll just say: looks like I'm back into writing guides still pressed for time, but I'll try to do at least summaries for every 25 turns. Someone asked about that a long while ago, and somehow I mostly forgot to include them in my play reports.

 

Not so good state of things?

I just saw this post from Leszek on Steam:
Answering the question "Just wondering if there are any more patches coming and maybe DLC?"
Leszek [developer] 4 hours ago
Patches for sure.
DLC probably not. Userscore and number of owners is too low for that ATM.

*sigh* I really hope sales pick up, don't want to see Wastelands having to abandon the only real Master of Magic successor already.
Fingers crossed for the XBox release...

@doomtrader & Leszek: Can you share anything about your plans for 2017 already? Do you think you can continue to work on PQ, or is it already foreseeable that you need to move on next year (would be perfectly understandable, mind you. You need to keep the lights on first and foremost)?

UPDATE: Ignore that last part, I forgot you posted about exactly that already.
Fingers crossed that things/sales work out to support that.

 

Play Report: Myrodant Archmage - turn 40 snapshot

Turn 38/39, I killed my starting units off by taking on a dungeon that was too much for them (didn't feel like just dismissing them) . One Slinger bug survived, and is now level 4.
The poor little thing got thrown at a whole town of Draconians with 15 units (Trackers, +2 hunters) garrison next, and actually made it out alive and winning helped along by casting Vacuum for all my combat Mana, admittedly. But still, I never expected that outcome. Got another Drac town not too far away, will see if he survives razing that one too.

Economy is slowly picking up, with 4 towns now (2 founded, 1 conquered) .
Except for my Capital, towns are on Trade Goods to keep my treasury from draining completely.
I got 2 each of Myrmidons, Stag and Bomb Beetle, with Quicksilver and Chaos Channels on all.
My garrisons still suck mightily, with only 2 Workers per town (4 in Capital). In serious play, I'd never leave towns that undefended, sure recipe for disaster. But playing for fun it's all good But nevertheless, I'll need to upgrade those next.

On a sidenote, razing that Drac town made my poor Lord weep: There goes the nice place that can make killer units But it's still an interesting challenge, not relying on the usual powerhouses.

 

Before I continue writing my play reports, is anyone actually still interested in reading them?
As much as I enjoy doing them, writing for no audience feels a bit pointless

 

And one for doomtrader / Wastelands:
It's been almost a week, and your only reply was something rather non-committal. Not even acknowledging concerns about the balance changes.

So, question 1:
If we put in effort to evaluate those changes, are you up to discussing them? Or are they set in stone already?

And question 2:
Can you add an option to play "Classic", ignoring all current - and possible future - balance adjustments?

 

It is not possible to implement "classic" version.

I'm willing to discuss any proposals for further balance changes.
What I'm planning to do in the future is to divide the game to regular people (from level 1 to 4), and for hardcore gamers on level 5.


However the upcoming update will bring the game to the state as it is on PC now, and we will move forward from that point.

 

Hey, that was fast! Thanks for popping in again

Ah, too bad.

Good to hear you are open for discussion. I'll hunker down over the next week or so, and try to get together some detailed feedback.

Isn't that the way it should have been right from day 1? (just teasing you )
Do you plan to have two (or more) tracks for adjustments then? E.g. one for Hardcore, and one for everything else. Otherwise any future changes will affect all difficulty levels.

Again, too bad. Will have to wait for the changelog, if the bugfixes outweigh the balance issues.

Do you have an answer you can share to my earlier question: "which actual problem(s) did you try to solve with those balance changes?"
Would be nice if I can take intentions behind them into account when I start to smartass about them provide valuable feedback I mean

 

I started putting the mathhammer to Flay, and run some tests.
@doomtrader: Can you tell me why exactly you changed it?

 

I am interested!

 

That makes two of us

 

Three!

 

Play report - Bugs Archmage, end at turn 50

Hey everyone, welcome back so back to writing it is...

I abandoned my first Myrodant Archmage game, and restarted from turn 1:
~turn 45, all enemy Lords came down on me hard, at least one of them even attacking with 2 small armies each turn.
While I survived the first wave, the second one almost did me in: almost out of units and out of Mana & Gold. Third wave and later would have cost all my towns except maybe my Capital. And while I *might* have recovered, I didn't consider it likely. And it would have been an incredible tedious slog, and I didn't feel like doing that

So, lessons learned:
- Bugs are most likely the worst race for early game, at least without serious Spell boosts: their units are just that weak.
- That's offset by them being able to produce Attendants, Myrmidons (not that good), and the two huge Bugs really fast.
- And *that* again is offset by their price: you need a solid economy to support more than a handful of those.
- Razing all enemy towns (not of your race) makes the game at least 2 notches harder. Would be a lot easier if I kept at least one good enemy town.
- Don't open a Plane Portal early, especially if you cannot park an army on top of it to keep curious folks out.

Biomancy alone - even with Tier 9 and Mastery - is not well-suited for early game:
- Quicksilver and Chaoschannels are useful, but your only 2 unit enchantments.
- Mother's Resolve is your only town enchant. But at least it goes well with high-growth races like the Bugs.
- Combat spells are so-so: Windblast is good, but gets resisted quite often. Vacuum is only good against Fliers, and gets resisted too often to reliably murder them.
- No Summons at all. I could live with that with any other race. But the starting Bug army is so weak, even a few Skeletons would help.

Restart, second try:
- This time, I built a second town really early.
- I already have plans for towns 3-5, but I need to be able to defend them first.
- Before turn 10, one of my Spirits found Klickwick (Bug Hero) in an Inn. I could barely afford him, and it was too good a coincidence to pass up a thematically fitting Hero. So I hired him, and changed my "No Heroes" rule to "only what fits". Might get refined further, e.g. "only 2 heroes, and only of your own race".
- I still won't craft items for him, that makes things too easy later. All I did was replace his starting Spear with a 2-handed Sword.
- My Spirit scouts all except one got killed by Neutrals/Lords already, and I'm less than 20 turns in.
- Attendants are pretty good, actually. Wish they'd move 4, so they can keep up with the big bugs. Chaoschanneling one to get Flying and adding Quicksilver might do the trick, need to check that.
- Now I build roads between my towns. But the AI just loves to kill lone Engineers

Even with the lessons learned from first try, I fully expect this will be my hardest game so far. And I don't expect to win, to be honest. Will see how it goes; next report either at turn 25 or turn 50, depending on if anything interesting happens.

 

@doomtrader - Hi. Any update on the update? I know you said last week you were hoping to push it to publisher this week, just wondering if that's happened? I'm keen to start playing properly but due to a number of little bugs I've experienced, I've held off in the hope the next update may be a little more stable - that and I don't like sinking my teeth in to something until the wrinkles have been ironed out, so (NullZone's comments and concerns aside - coming from a clearly more casual player ((ie. Me!)) I'm hopeful that catching up to PC version will make it a better experience for me.

And sorry NullZone, I'm one of those 'pansies' that doesn't have enough time in my life to dedicate to the dissection and understanding of military level strategy and the intricacies of RNG mechanics - I prefer a balanced challenge, erring on the side of fun rather than frustration! #

 

ZS77: I would never put you among the "pansies", my good sir.
I haven't seen enough of your gameplay, so I cannot judge your competence, if you will.
But from your comments I read I get the impression that you are very levelheaded person, and can judge pretty well how "good" or optimised you play.
And that you play for fun in the way that is fun for you: absolutely nothing wrong with that. Normally, I don't dive that deeply into mechanics either. But MoM has a special place in my heart and my (gaming) history. And so I'm trying to carry on the torch if you will, from the people who came before, and wrote extensive guides for other games, do (proto-)science in the backgound like Sirlin I mentioned earlier, and teach by example how to do all kinds of game-related things.
We are standing on the shoulders of giants.

In other games I always defer ultimate judgement to the true experts: e.g. I'd never suggest a balance change for Wesnoth, because I know only the beginners basics of that game, and none of its intricacies. Or Chess, for a more well-known example: I am not even Kasparov's toddler, I bet the rugrat could beat me blindfolded so of course I don't even think about potential changes to the game. The history of Go - or rather, what little I know of it, is strongly influenced - if not outright dictated - by only a handful of true master players. Over centuries, not years or months (the typical game beta test and post-release updatecycle), mind you.

With the introduction out of the way:
People who claim to play significantly better than they truly are able to, and then argue from a point of "expert high-level player knowledge" - which they clearly do not have - just really rub me the wrong way. And when they then cry uncle in situations a master player can win like that Go AI vs. little me, and ask to tone down X or Y. There's your pansies nice shorthand for a lot of background rambling noise. And I like King Julien, so there

Ah well, another seemingly unrelated rant from yours truly

Summary: ZS77 most assuredly is not among the "pansies" in my book

 

Highmen Cleric Murder Rampage

No gameplay report today, instead some fun stuff I discovered yesterday while testing:
Default Highmen Clerics are total murder against default Unhallowed.
Their Disrupt Undead is that strong, and each Cleric can cast 4 of it.
I never used them en masse before (I really don't like 2-move units), so it was a nice surprise to see how well they hold up.

Test setting:
Arena, Forest Brawl map, 16 vs 16. To make up for the AI, I always skipped the first turn unless noted otherwise. Also, I held back with spellcasting, typically only using Zeal and Prayer.

Results are in format unit vs unit, how many lost, notes:
- Arcane Wraith vs. Cleric: 8 - 16; 16 - 5 w/ 1 Holy Smite; 16 - 15 w/ Heal and Disrupt Undead. The last one was *very* close, the surviving Wraith was down to under 5HP too.
- Undead Lancer vs. Cleric: 16 - 10
- Deathguard vs. Cleric: 3 - 16; as expected, the DG fireballed the Clerics to Death. I was positively surprised I even managed to kill 3 of them. Here, I didn't skip turn 1.
- Deathguard vs. Paladin: 16 - 14 w/o DG fireballs; 0 - 16 w/ DG fireballs

The conclusions are interesting:
A cheap basic unit murders everything short of the Undeads' top-tier unit.

On top-tier, High Men have NO viable defense against Unhallowed that I know of:
Even if you go first (e.g. they attack your town) and have a full-stack of the Highmen top-tier unit Paladins, Deathguards will kill you.
Even a fully boosted Holy Word was not enough to kill even a single Deathguard. After that, the DGs butcher you with their Fireballs. And if the Undead player does not want to take any risks, he can just cast Death (kills all Living units).

I started to look through the spell lists what is there to counter that, since I only tested with casting Life spells, my typical setup for Highmen:
- Benediction gives +5 Spell Resistance
- Bloodlust & Command can (maybe) take out one Deathguard per turn
- Boost units with Elemental Armor and other spells like Resist Elements, Resist Magic, Searing Aura before combat
- Fiery Retribution deals 50% of damage back as fire damage (casts Searing Aura on all your units)
- Globe of Invulnerability (immune to all spells) as unit enchantment
- Ice Sphere reduces all damage from spells by 25%
- If you survive round 1, Restore Life brings all your dead units back.
- Slow Time makes enemy units skip a turn. Sounds like the best bet to me, but again you need to survive round one if the Unhallowed go first.
- Wind's Agility lets you pass all Reflex Saves (Fireball saves Reflex for half damage).
- Overland high-damage spells might be your best bet: take out the enemy Deathguard stack before they can attack you.
- Leveled-up Paladins (e.g. from Altar of Battle) might be able to survive round 1. But then the Unhallowed insurance policy in the form of the Death spell comes into play.

Temporary conclusion:
Before getting Deathguards, Clerics make the Undead roll over.
With Deathguards, it's game over for the Highmen.
While the Unhallowed don't have to do anything special for a really good chance to win against Highmen with their top-tier unit, possible counter strategies are very specific and need preparation, forethought, and even correct picking of spell schools. I predict hard times for the High Men

I copied this post into the Guides thread as well.

Sidenote to @Wastelands: Do not tone down the Deathguards and/or Clerics based on the above. Big no-no, firmly written into the "Things Not Allowed" book