Balance among Mage, Pally, Warrior difficulty.

[aaaaa]

I have finished playing all three classes in Normal difficulty. In my opinion, there is considerable difference in playing difficulty among these class: In order of Mage, Pally, Warrior, difficulty increase. Playing mage was too easy.

I think that some magics should be nuff'ed to encourage use of various less-effective magics. Sacrefice, Armageddon, Hypnosis, Resurrection and some chaos magic are too strong and should be nuffed. I can defeat the enemy troops of "match" strength with minimal loss of my troop with these spells. Not much need to refill my troop loss. Gold is hardly used. I got ridiculously enormous amount of gold. It must not be the way this game is designed to be.

Poor AI worsens this situation. AI is good at handling physical attack but poor at handling magical attack. So magic user has better advantage than warrior against AI.

Weaken Mage & few high level spells. Reduce amount of gold player get. mprove AI against magic user hero. Improve effectiveness of physical attack to help AI.

What do you think about balance among classes? Which spell should be weakened?

[Zhuangzi]

Having just beaten the game on Impossible with the Mage, I am inclined to agree. I had over 2,000,000 gold at the end too. I was able to beat enemies listed as Match or Slightly Stronger with no losses, and Overpowering and even Impossible with relative ease. For exampe, all of Haas' dragons were listed as Impossible, but some of them were defeated with VERY minimal losses.

Especially damaging spells include Fire Rain, Ice Snake and Armageddon. I found that by reaching Chaos 3 by level 9 I was able to clear out Freedom Isles with ease using Ice Snake. Fire Rain ends up being an insanely powerful spell. For me it was 4000 damage x 7 hexes (rarely hit all 7 though) x 2 per turn with Higher Magic for 3 turns. Say I hit on average 2-3 enemies per Fire Rain, we are looking at 60,000 hit points damage in 3 turns, for a cost of 120 mana. That's very appealing for the Mage. Armageddon is just ridiculous, especially for the final battle.

Others have had similar success with the Distortion and Order schools of magic, but I could have played virtually the entire game with only the Chaos spellbook.

This doesn't really apply to Normal skill, but the disparity between the classes gets worse at higher difficulties. If you look at what Impossible actually entails, it suits a Mage much more than a Warrior:

Enemy Strength - 170% - this has minimal impact on the strong Mage, but obviously makes things tough for a Warrior.
Money - 60% - not an issue for a Mage as losses are usually very low.
Rage progression - 75% - not an issue for the Mage. My highest rage level in my Impossible game was 15, not that it mattered.

All of this would seem to make things harder for the Warrior especially and perhaps the Paladin. Anyone completed the game on Impossible as a Warrior?

[jake21]

Well I don't disagree that mages are quite powerful but if you find them too powerful simply play another class... All classes can use all skills.

I'm finding the end game with my mage (late demon area) on hard to be some what difficult. Perhaps it is my technique. I found the late game (hass dragons) very easy with my warrior on hard.

You have 3 classes and 3 level of difficulties. If the game is too easy with one class at highest difficulty just switch to another class :)

btw not sure how you obtained 4000x7 damage. I'm seeing around 3500 but against fire resitant creatures (demon) it is much lower. My warrior on the other hand just went around casting soul drain. 10k to 20k every other turn at the start of combat is wicked. Phantom on large stacks is also pretty wicked esp since the ai likes to target the phantoms.

[Quikpik]

I found that by reaching Chaos 3 by level 9 I was able to clear out Freedom Isles with ease using Ice Snake.


That's the thing though, it's all kind of random how hard your game will be depending on when you get the critical spells. I was having a hard time on my mage because the best spell I had until level 20 was fireball. No Resurrect, Phantom, Fire Rain, Ice Snake, Hypnosis, Sacrifice.

On the other hand, my Paladin had most of those spells pretty early on and is breezing through the game with virtually no losses. A Paladin with Resurrect, Hypnosis, Phantom, Kamakaze, and Sacrifice = easy win. Whereas my mage, I was constantly running back and forth after a few battles to resupply because my troops would just get dwindled down.

[blueshrike]

I'm going to agree with those who want to leave the Mage alone. That some who are familiar with the intricacies of the mechanics are able to breeze through Impossible with a fine selection of skills as a Mage does not mean that for the average to above average person, the same will happen.

There will always be those who are able to figure out exploits (Fallout 2 in 10 minutes anyone?) but that does not mean the entire fundamentals of the class needs to be somewhat reduced. That's catering to the very few against the likely fun of the average (notice I don't say masses...) player.

Instead here are options that could appeal to both:
An additional "Custom" difficulty where you have settings you can tweak and your score is dependent on the settings.

Adding gameplay options for the Warrior (and perhaps Paladin) class for slightly better control over lost creatures or crowd control.

I for one was in the boat of not finding Ice Snake/Hypotize/Fire Rain/Lightning until very late in the game and dealing with Fireball as my main offense.

[player1]

Important thing to realize is that if some fight is listed as overpowered for mage, it will prbably be listed as strong or maybe even slightly stronger when played with warrior of similar level. And that's beacause warrior will always have higher leadership then mage.

The thing is that mage is supposed to be better against "matched" armies since magic is the only thing that helps him to equalize higher leadership of warrios or paladins.

As someone who played mage and switched to warrior it was more them obvious that I found much higher amount of weak, slightly weaker and similar fights when playing as warrior, compared to my previous mage game.

.

Now, it's true, mages lose money much less often then other heroes, due to the way they are supposed to be played. Paladins have skills that mitigate that, and warriors (which need money the most, due the highest leadership) are left dry.

[wolfing]

I do see a problem with classes, like the mage-specific ability that lets them cast twice per round is a hell of a lot more powerful than the warrior's 10/20 extra rage or the paladin's rune trades.
But I think the real problem is not with the classes per-se, but with some spells. Clearly, a spell like sacrifice should be changed to make it a more powerful resurrect spell with the disadvantage of having to kill some other troop. So it should have the same restriction of not raising above the original # of troops, and also make it so you can't sacrifice enemy troops (hypnotized or not).
Another thing that should be changed is the enemies' AI so they don't give so much priority to phantoms and totems.

[Sherwood]

The problem in my opinion is that only 1 of the paladins and warriors unique skills are useful. The other 2 are pretty much garbage and way too situational.
Whereas, alchemy is a good skill and higher magic is amazing.

Also, it would be better if the might tree had more useful skills. I found as a paladin almost ALL skills in the magic tree were damn useful, but only 1/2 or 1/3 of the might skills were worth the runes.

The mind tree is better, but compared to the mind tree it still is quite weak, but has its at least.

[Archlord_James]

The warrior makes up for his lack of spells with much much much more rage inflow. By the end game my warrior could cast black hole for 1300 - 1700, next turn underground blades for 1000, next turn throw out a gizmo to heal my dragons, give them extra attacks, and do 1100 - 1900 damage, next turn make a poison cloud which did 240 damage to about 3 units 5 or 6 times per turn, then next turn soul drain a stack for anywhere from 4000 - 18,000 damage. and repeat. Granted i was spending close to 30 - 70 rage per turn but only the warrior is capable of doing that. A mage couldnt dream of using rage that much. I did get luck to find spear of rage in a chest on a battlefield though. i got about 14 rage everytime i attacked after i got that.

As for mage I enjoyed playing him too I finished with 36 intellect and had 2 amulets of fire and 2 archmage staffs. Crazy 5200, fire rains. and 4000 lightnings. But my rage use was limited and finished the game with most of them on level 20.

About money, u can never have too much money in this game, go to the castle where u get reaper from, and spend it on the machine. U can buy mind, might, or magic runes, or crystals. So how can u have "TOO MUCH" money?

In the end mage was more my style, but warrior can be pretty strong too. I had about 42 attack and 38 defense, and with those stats i went for a MULTI HIT build. Knights spin attack, sea dogs and cerebrus hit 3 cells, use them with spells teleport and gift, and u can hit up to 6 troops with over 10,000 damage every turn. NO SPELL CAN DO THAT MUCH DAMAGE LET ALONE to 6 troops. Best strategy is get knights, give them archmages magic shield ability, then teleport them into the enemies starting ranks where he can be surrounded. Cast target on him is a good idea sometimes too. Anyways let him get surrounded then let off your spin attack i was doing over 10k damage by end of game and my 38 defense kept the losses to a minimum. teleport in cerebrus and sea dogs also if u position them right u they can hit up to 3 troops. I would get over 20 rage from these attacks alone. For killing a stack i would get 40+ rage even.

Use multi hit, in combination with the warriors rage, he can actually be stronger than mage in pure damage.