[Game-breaking Imbalance] Fleshbound Tomb + Decalon is Stupidly OP

Chaosti

Join Date 08/2009

[Game-breaking Imbalance] Fleshbound Tomb + Decalon is Stupidly OP

How to Win in 40-60 Turns on Insane with a Custom Faction.

Suggestions:

- Change Consume to only generate 30-40 mana

- Cull the weak should only be castable on faction units (so limit it to races like ironeers, men, mancers, etc.). Make sure the spell cannot be cast on elementals or undead!!!!

- The road building ability is too good. Have the trait become available when Economics is researched (mid-game), or even remove it entirely. Similarly, I would recommend that commander hero's need to be level 7-8 to learn Road Building, and not be able to learn it at level 3!!!! You can perform the exact same strategy with any level 3 commander hero on a horse (replacing the scouts).

Overview:

Flesh Bound Tome is just insanely overpowered, and if combined with Decalon, it becomes an 'I win' button.

Here are the issues:

- Consume destroys a Shard for 200 mana.

- Decalon's Arcane Monolith creates unlimited mana generation with Consume. Create a monolith, consume the shard, earn 150 mana. Rinse and repeat.

- With unlimited mana, beastmaster's tame skill can be used infinitely (or any other spells to demolish the enemy, but beastmaster is easiest).

- (Optional): Choose Empire, summon skeleton horde (45 mana cost), and consume skeletons (20 mana each) will generate a net gain of 135 mana if necessary.

- Mancer road building perk is plain OP as it allows your scouts to build roads for your army to use, basically giving a 2 movement army 5-8 movement.

So here's a custom faction using the above factors that just makes the game a complete joke:

Mancers Faction, Beastmaster Hero

- Flesh Bound Tome (destroy shards for 200 mana, can also cull the weak for 20 mana, especially with summon skeleton horde, which would generate 180 mana for a cost of 45 mana)
- The Decalon (2 points, can buy tomes for air/fire/earth/water magic, Arcane Monolith)

Optimized Hero Leveling Path:
Level 2:    Mage
Level 3:    Prodigy: +10 spell mastery (higher chance of taming success)
Level 4:    Prodigy II : +10 spell mastery (higher chance of taming success)
Level 5:    Prodigy III : +10 spell mastery (higher chance of taming success)

HowTo:

- First, you customize the scouts to have an additional ability: road building. You can build a scout in 2 turns. They have 3 movement, and you can use them to just keep scouting / building roads forward, to allow your hero and army to move rapidly.

- If you have a shrine in your settling zone, cast 'Consume' from Flesh Bound Tomb to have an instant 200 mana.

If you don't have a shrine, when you have 50 mana, Cast Arcane Monolith on a nearby Shrine, then consume it to earn an 150 additional mana. You can repeat this whenever you spot a shrine (aka. infinite mana).

- These roads will let your hero with his army reach enemies with beasts easily, which you will tame (taming an enemy unit gives you the full XP for winning the battle, and gives you a bigger army).

Here's a silly little screenshot of this in action.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/1118296799376403178/F90E102D75AF7B49DD955A3E7DAC6023010BC895/

Note this is merely turn 20, and everything is already completely set up (I actually didn't choose the optimal hero leveling here, and went for summon skeleton horde instead of magic skill, as I picked up a +10 spell mastery wand early on).

Nami, my leader, is level 5 with 4 captured web casting spiders (against armies with multiple beasts, just keep them webbed and capture the beasts 1 by 1). I have 851 mana on hand (with more shards to consume for mana if I want).

My secondary hero is just running around to capture lairs to speed things up. Each 'road-builder' (scouts with the road-building perk) has a mere 42 production cost, so it's very easy to get lots of them running around as required (depending on map size). This one, I only have 2, and am training 2 more.

There's that monolith trail setup so I can settle forward without the unrest penalty, buy equipment for heroes (i.e. warhorses). And also for consuming shards.

Not much else needed to win at this point. Just need to find some bears / umberdroths / big spiders to capture, find the enemy AIs, and kill them.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Tried this in conjunction with trying out the revamped necromancy.

Its OP.

I actually think consume is less OP than horde + cull. If you don't have roads, you actually don't find THAT many shards that you can easily settle. Using Arcane Monolith I found myself getting as many clay as I did shards - then when I consume the shards it was kind of sad.

I eventually found myself putting another hero in my primary party and just culling horde.

Then AM'ing all sorts of resources and taking advantage that way.

I had 3 scout parties just uncovering map - and when i met an AI i would decalon habitable areas (salt the earth will work later too). I'd drop an outpost on any shard, clay or habitable area I've come across. no roads, but 6 move on a mounted hero is still pretty good.

The whole scenario is pretty OP - I've got a ton of mana, I can hotkey cull and with 2 heros cull a whole horde in a combat, if I have roads i can go anywhere, if I have tons of mana I can drop outposts everywhere and jack my shard income and clay.

With that said, I'm not sure I'd actually change much.

2 definitive changes:

Should only be able to consume built shards - i.e. you have to build it before you can use it.

Should NOT be able to cull tactical summons

Maybe drop consume down to 100-150... but maybe not. When you consume you're making the conscious decision to remove a long term resource. Culling tactical summons is def wrong since it can be done infinitely.

Successfully updated karma reason!