Patch 12.9 first impressions

The PROs:
- i like the new deployment system as in a way it keeps the game fresh

http://imgur.com/zt5rvxw
Fresh?

This was first map that i saw in new patch ;D

its one of two most terrible ideas ;P
this and middle of old king of the hill map

both are worse that ancient battlefield

Ppl forgot this is wargame,not chest.Why on earth you should alway be far far far away from your opponent ?

Ha i know,so you dont have to think during deployment,and adjust during 3 turns to find the best way to kill your opponent when he tries to get to you

Please don't start another flame war also in this thread! If you don't agree with what someone else said, just reply politely explaining in a logical way your points. E.g like.: "I partially agree with Lima that some deployments and too tiny maps can decide a battle before starting, however I think that those cases are rare, while on the other hand the new deployments allow more strategical thinking also before the starting of the battle and faster games. In the end My opinion is that they are a nice add-on that just need some minor fix but can considerably improve the game."

However, usually in all the strategic games you can deploy in the enemy zone only particular units (with the Scout ability), while at the moment I could deploy in that positions also a Flesh Golem or Worg if I want, that then can charge/engage in the first turn the enemy that can't do anything about it also if he correctly deployed his units.

Moreover, I agree with the idea of creating maps where a player is in a worst starting condition respect to his enemy, but this should be compensated with a bit more starting AP or an objective like "last 5 turns".

The PROs:

- i like the new deployment system as in a way it keeps the game fresh

http://imgur.com/zt5rvxw

Fresh?

well fresh as it is something new and there are "multiple" scenarios available. if you notice down below i stated the CONS of the new deployment system which are actually your same concerns. Other than that, i think it is a bit suicidal right now playing with 2 casters in the 400 AP bracket when wolven/assault units can go directly to you on the first turn. Also...i'm not familiar with that deployment but couldn't you have surrounded your mages with those 4 swordmen? It would have been quite easy then to handle the whole melee wolven as you can probably deal lot of damage in two turns before they break your swordmen line (i assume they have parry and/or taunt)

The PROs:

- i like the new deployment system as in a way it keeps the game fresh

http://imgur.com/zt5rvxw

Fresh?

well fresh as it is something new and there are "multiple" scenarios available. if you notice down below i stated the CONS of the new deployment system which are actually your same concerns. Other than that, i think it is a bit suicidal right now playing with 2 casters in the 400 AP bracket when wolven/assault units can go directly to you on the first turn. Also...i'm not familiar with that deployment but couldn't you have surrounded your mages with those 4 swordmen? It would have been quite easy then to handle the whole melee wolven as you can probably deal lot of damage in two turns before they break your swordmen line (i assume they have parry and/or taunt)

True, but seriously one of the reasons the patch dealt with mages was to avoid mage turtling tactics, at least thats what alot of ppl complained about here. So now you want me to turtle at deployment. Thats cool after that game I have another one on the same map and did exactly as you said. I won the game at turn 2. Thats not how I like to play but if thats how I have to in order to use my mage(s) I will.

@Almano : it took me 10 sec to know how he should have deploy his units to protect his mages,like Deep Blue suggest.I tried to explain him many time new deployment need more thinking but he will just post to complain about things before trying to adapt.So i wont waste my time trying to explain politely to this guy anymore.

- Insensitive on the flesh golem has to go. 50% chances are terrible and destroy any tactical aspect as it is unpredictable the outcome. For example i finally managed to kill all flesh golem's escort and my black paladin has to cast exausting touch in contact with the golem. It boils down to -> 50% chance to win or lose the game as the next turn my paladin will be obliterated. This of course can be applied to many other spells (celestial scourge, putrefaction etc...). The same can be applied to ring of the mist/ice. My suggestion -> remove insensitive from the golem + add a charge on ring of ice/mist that prevents 100% the damage of one arrow/spell (a reversed bad omen, kind of ). Obviously only one wolven can be affected at the time and the buffs disappears if the caster is dead.

I bought fleshy some times ago before last patch and I was not using it because the swarm tactic was much better and anyways if u use too much ap for a single unit everything else is going to get killed and if you risk winning the enemy team is going kiting till turn 14 mode.
I feel fleshy is a shitty unit against those who go rage kiting mode, and at the same time, is OP against decent players, those who fight and play the game to win or to lose and not to draw when they are losing.
It has pros and cons like everything but about intensive I agree it's too random many times my games were decided by ET or celestial or putrefaction rolls but the golem due to his impossible slowness needs some counter to magic, what you are suggesting (simply removing it if I understand correctly) would make any golem composition insta lose vs mage compositions... doing so would simply make all ram players return to swarm tactic and god only knows how much I dislike when a game has a fixed meta to win and some units you cant use because you lose if you do.
The conclusion is: change intensive to something else more deterministic like, who knows, some collateral back debuff when you cast a spell on him?

[Jigoku]

As always, thanks for all the feedback guys.

We were working on the maps this week (amongst other things, obviously). Next batch should make you happier.
Can't talk too much about it though, because one never knows, it could not go as planned.
But IF all goes well, we should be able to do something cool with the next setup.

Also, as I already wrote in another thread, no map on your server are actually asymetrical.
Which means, well, that if you can deploy behind the enemy lines (and you should be able to spot that), well, so do they.
So until the next patch, when you see massive elite wolfens going against you in a deployment situation where you can put your units behind the enemy lines, please keep in mind that maybe putting both your magicians on the back side could be a very bad idea

Though we clearly understand that not seeing the enemy zones can prove quite frustrating.
We are changing that too (it still needs testing though).

The conclusion is: change intensive to something else more deterministic like, who knows, some collateral back debuff when you cast a spell on him?

That's actually a very good idea
We will look into it. Thanks for sharing

The "Last until Turn 5" scenario idea in the thread is also very good. We discussed about a very similar idea months ago, and it kind of slipped out of our minds because we had so many other priorities at the time, but now is a good time to think about things like this.
So, well... thanks for that too !

Oh, one last note. As you must know, we are not super happy with the massive changes that each patch implied in the past weeks. You might not see the whole picture, but it really had to be done, so, if we had to it again, I think we would.
Hopefully, now balance will take a smaller pace. More bugfix, and less nerfing. There are some things here and there that might need a balance work occasionnally, but we hope that we will be able to reduce that pace for a bit.

as another of 12.9 feedback i can complain that current Gargoyle 2hits to many Alahan units
and thole alahan dont have efficient counter to skeletons with hard boiled - they may be close to ok but ACC/PAR is to marginal and when we add FEAR factor all fights Swordsman/Lion/Valkyrie Vs simple and cheap Skeleton - ends badly. Simply there is none efficient counter against skeletons right now not for lions nor Wolfens.

although Alahan on bowmans and lions can stand some Acheron bands for now. But not all bands and not on all maps.

I only played 1 unlevelled spark pre-patch, but I think the changes to sparks were overkill. Combine that with the seriously unnecessary valk change and you have removed effective healing from lion, sort of the theme of lion I thought. Sparks could have been made 21AP, and then a diff roll on heal, a cooldown or a max cast per game would have nerfed them sufficiently without ruining them.
For the Light swordsman skill is not bad but a little bit of a strange choice considering the possibilities. 10 AP to the cost of a swordsman for a skill that will most often not be very useful to you is not a great idea.
The KoTL is a bit cheaper now so I get to give him a go, I expect he will still prove too expensive for my tastes though.

Pre-patch I included 2 valks, mainly so they could heal each other if required. I had no healing sparks in the build. I loved valks, even then I did not consider them a great value unit. They added a bit of flavour,support and solidness to a build full of average units. The AP gap between Valks and Kotl is still huge, the special unit for lion is a sparkling. This is a real problem. I always thought lion could do with something stronger and more expensive than a Valk but not well over 100AP like the KoTL. Now the Valk is just a bad unit. Average melee combatant with a next to useless heal ability. Next stop a sparkling or a KoTL. It is just poor and very restrictive as far as effective compositions go.
I predicted Ram would be dominant in this patch and so far the rankings agree. Summoning and healing was as effective as the human pure healing equivalents. In time they will call this patch 'The Ram Edition'.