2009-01-22, 19:36:51
I'm going to have to disagree with the original poster and say that it isn't hard to seige bases, and is infact much easier now. Honestly, in all my games I've played of 8.56, I haven't really seen any problems. Just get some mortars (as well as 3 factories and armor upgrades) and it's quite easy to take out bases. The only times I've lost when I tried to seige was when my team were incompetant and didn't know how to seige (such as the simple task of buying seige packs) or left the game altogeather.
In the scenario you described, it more or less sounds to me like you just defended extremely well and they seiged extremely poorly and that you deserved the win.]
Though, i do think the poster does indicate some problems that need to be addressed. The first one being death magic. Right now, death magic is way overpowered (for reasons I described in the thread discussing weapon dps for hero only and creep only weapons). It should be weakened, while shorter range hero only weapons (such as bombs, aa-gun) should be enhanced.
A second problem that exists is that the bomb is way too easy to destroy. At this point, I've basically given up on using them and stick to using mortars, troops from factories and troop command, and lots of armor upgrades instead. Seems to work pretty well. The bomb from the troop command centre is atleast free, but the regular bomb is just a waste... except when bombing your own base
. Ways to make the bomb better include, making it invisible, increasing the range that you can place the bomb, increasing the bomb's health, increasing the bomb's health with armor and weapon upgrades (it is a weapon after all), or making the bomb do 1/3 damage when destroyed. Again, I made a thread on this problem.
A third problem is mines. It's nearly impossible to seige a base if the enemy team is massing mines in it, because face it, there is 0 counter to mines. With exploders, there is tp breaker, which is a great counter (btw, tp breaker should be buyable from factories so it's easier to obtain). However, with mines, all there is is the mine detonator. The most significant problem is that an enemy can have 3 mines each (4 if demolisher), while the defending player can only have 1 mine detonator. In addition to this, while the defending team can drop mines the moment the cooldown recovers, the attacking team can only use the mine detonator if in range of mines (and when attacking, half the time you are moving to and from your factory to heal). Combine this with the low AOE and low range of the detonator, as well as it's inability to combine with other items and you can see that it's pretty much useless as a counter. For the mine problem, I created a thread on mine detonators in the suggestions forum. In there I suggested things like, allow the mine detonator to be combined with other weapons, increase its casting range, increase it's AOE but maybe it would destroy all the mines in the AOE, give it a combat ability such as the ability to stun enemies, maybe make it upgradeable, limiting the number of mines a tank can use, etc. And if that doesn't work, just make the bomb destroy mines and it would be a great counter to mine-fields.
So yeah, those are 3 problems that I think should be addressed that might help the problem the original poster is describing. Other than that, I think seiging bases is fine, and that just giving the attacking team more gold isn't very smart. The only other thing I would like the comment on is factories. With the new version, factories got weaker (because they can either heal or spawn troops, but not both). This made it harder to seige bases. While I prefered the old factory that did both, I don't see exodus going in that direction, so how about instead give the factory and additional upgrade (say 500 gold) on top of the troop spawning factory upgrade that makes it both a troop spawning and healing factory at once?
In the scenario you described, it more or less sounds to me like you just defended extremely well and they seiged extremely poorly and that you deserved the win.]
Though, i do think the poster does indicate some problems that need to be addressed. The first one being death magic. Right now, death magic is way overpowered (for reasons I described in the thread discussing weapon dps for hero only and creep only weapons). It should be weakened, while shorter range hero only weapons (such as bombs, aa-gun) should be enhanced.
A second problem that exists is that the bomb is way too easy to destroy. At this point, I've basically given up on using them and stick to using mortars, troops from factories and troop command, and lots of armor upgrades instead. Seems to work pretty well. The bomb from the troop command centre is atleast free, but the regular bomb is just a waste... except when bombing your own base
. Ways to make the bomb better include, making it invisible, increasing the range that you can place the bomb, increasing the bomb's health, increasing the bomb's health with armor and weapon upgrades (it is a weapon after all), or making the bomb do 1/3 damage when destroyed. Again, I made a thread on this problem.A third problem is mines. It's nearly impossible to seige a base if the enemy team is massing mines in it, because face it, there is 0 counter to mines. With exploders, there is tp breaker, which is a great counter (btw, tp breaker should be buyable from factories so it's easier to obtain). However, with mines, all there is is the mine detonator. The most significant problem is that an enemy can have 3 mines each (4 if demolisher), while the defending player can only have 1 mine detonator. In addition to this, while the defending team can drop mines the moment the cooldown recovers, the attacking team can only use the mine detonator if in range of mines (and when attacking, half the time you are moving to and from your factory to heal). Combine this with the low AOE and low range of the detonator, as well as it's inability to combine with other items and you can see that it's pretty much useless as a counter. For the mine problem, I created a thread on mine detonators in the suggestions forum. In there I suggested things like, allow the mine detonator to be combined with other weapons, increase its casting range, increase it's AOE but maybe it would destroy all the mines in the AOE, give it a combat ability such as the ability to stun enemies, maybe make it upgradeable, limiting the number of mines a tank can use, etc. And if that doesn't work, just make the bomb destroy mines and it would be a great counter to mine-fields.
So yeah, those are 3 problems that I think should be addressed that might help the problem the original poster is describing. Other than that, I think seiging bases is fine, and that just giving the attacking team more gold isn't very smart. The only other thing I would like the comment on is factories. With the new version, factories got weaker (because they can either heal or spawn troops, but not both). This made it harder to seige bases. While I prefered the old factory that did both, I don't see exodus going in that direction, so how about instead give the factory and additional upgrade (say 500 gold) on top of the troop spawning factory upgrade that makes it both a troop spawning and healing factory at once?