Fimbulwinter Spam is Hell

[QuillianInkheart]

This is not the only God Power that is made worse by the inclusion of repeatable God Powers. Spider Lair, for instance, has gone from being a useful defensive power, to "If you use any non-mythic units, you lose." For some powers, repetition isn't horrible. The Hesperides Tree, for example, really benefits from multiple casts, as does Valor and Vision.

However, some abilities did NOT work with this shift in status quo. Fimbulwinter and Son of Osiris are the two that leaped out at me the most. Fimbulwinter means, over and over again, you'll be assaulted by wolves at all of your bases. These wolves are extremely powerful and able to crush out defensive towers with ease. I once played a game where the single Norse computer used this ability SIX TIMES, one after another, as soon as it became available. It's an untenable and unfair ability, with multiple castings. I have lost games without the enemies even so much as knocking on my door because they just spam Fimbulwinter and the wolves effortlessly destroy all my towers, town halls, and ultimately peasants. Defenses mean nothing if the wolves spawn inside your bases, and in the late game, where this power is acquired, a skilled player will have multiple town halls, making defense against this power neigh on impossible.

Son of Osiris is also problematic, but that one at least takes time to build up speed and can be defeated with perseverance. In the original game, you got ONE super-powered, over-the-top Demigod who was incredibly powerful but couldn't be healed by any methods. Now? I'll just slap ten of them into my army annnnnnd I'm now basically invincible. And the ability to basically have 20 Pharaohs kinda defeats the purpose of the unit's exclusivity... Originally, you were capped at 3, when running Osiris. Enemy armies attacking a position defended by Sons of Osiris is hell incarnate; they can and will wipe a force three times their size, and you'll be forced to recoup losses and strike again. You'll whittle away the Sons, but that doesn't justify a unit as powerful as them being handed out more than once.

Some of the God Powers were reworked for this new framework - Spider Lair may be OP when spammed, but it also places far fewer eggs per casting than before and allows for more precision. A healthy improvement, if you ask me. But other abilities should be more limited; 4th Era powers are extreme tide-shifters and were originally meant to be a huge boon ONCE. But because the core fundamental rules of the game were changed while the powers were not, we're left with an imbalance problem that is in dire need of fixing.

The easy solution? Much like a "Turn off Titans" option was added, give us a toggle option for "Reusable God Powers." Simple, easy, and effective.

[Prince of all Saiyans]

Noobs wouldn't get to wonder age anyway. Fimbulwinter has a very laugable counter. Whenever one of your enemies is playing norse, just park a handful of heroes in each town center. 1 for greek, a priest or 3 for egypt, a hersir and 2 godi for norse and 2 destroyers hero for atlantean. The fimbulwinter wolves are myth units and have next to no armor. heroes will defeat them in a matter of seconds.

[Heimdall313]

Origineel geplaatst door Prince of all Saiyans:

Noobs wouldn't get to wonder age anyway. Fimbulwinter has a very laugable counter. Whenever one of your enemies is playing norse, just park a handful of heroes in each town center. 1 for greek, a priest or 3 for egypt, a hersir and 2 godi for norse and 2 destroyers hero for atlantean. The fimbulwinter wolves are myth units and have next to no armor. heroes will defeat them in a matter of seconds.

Greeks are going to have more TCs than Heroes so that's already out the window. Norse, a Hersir and two Godi is 9 pop per TC which is an absolutely stupid investment.

[Shac]

Origineel geplaatst door RobAlca:

Origineel geplaatst door Shac:

Greek Hermes Ceasefire godpower counters Fimbulwinter hard and is much cheapear to cast. I had some enemies resign in teamgames for this, lol.

its a hard counter for sure but if u dont pick that greek minor god then its gg

of course im talking about ffa games or not ranked lobby with 5-6 teams
if the enemy gets wonder age in ranked that would be weird in the first place

anyway op solution is horrible and should be ignored

The problem is that general public are too keen on playing simcitys instead of being aggressive and ending the games before 4 age. People also complain about defensive structures being weak, while instead they should just make army to defend themselves, it's not that difficult. As soon as I hit age 2, I instantly pop military production buildings and start making armies whilst harrasing my enemies. If enemies get caught with their pants down.. Well.. that's on them, not on me. Hate the game, not the player.

[Zeno]

Origineel geplaatst door Shac:

Origineel geplaatst door RobAlca:

its a hard counter for sure but if u dont pick that greek minor god then its gg

of course im talking about ffa games or not ranked lobby with 5-6 teams
if the enemy gets wonder age in ranked that would be weird in the first place

anyway op solution is horrible and should be ignored

The problem is that general public are too keen on playing simcitys instead of being aggressive and ending the games before 4 age. People also complain about defensive structures being weak, while instead they should just make army to defend themselves, it's not that difficult. As soon as I hit age 2, I instantly pop military production buildings and start making armies whilst harrasing my enemies. If enemies get caught with their pants down.. Well.. that's on them, not on me. Hate the game, not the player.

I do it same as you, but at age 3, I usually start building towers and forts, sometimes walls, but only when I have spare ressources.

My conclusion is, that these buildings only delay your final " destruction " by a minute at best.
If they come with a decent force and you have no proper army, then all these defensive buildings won't do ♥♥♥♥.

Having a reactive defensive, such as hoplites or whatever in larger quantities, is always going to be the better choice as you say and can be used to attack.

Tbh, in this game " Attack is the best defense " (as we say in Germany).

[The Owlogram]

I've seen this matter pop a bunch of time and it seems pretty obvious fimbulwinter is an issue for big maps with many players so they could easily fix it by giving it a 3 TC cap, and make it unaffected/less buffed by wonder age.

[PurSpyk!!]

In Skirmish games against the AI, you get continually spammed by this god power, and Son of Osiris. Needs to be nerfed. These god powers were never designed to be spawned over and over again. I play 12 players, biggest version of the map possible, free for all, hard Ai difficulty.

[Stavrozium]

Origineel geplaatst door PurSpyk!!:

In Skirmish games against the AI, you get continually spammed by this god power, and Son of Osiris. Needs to be nerfed. These god powers were never designed to be spawned over and over again. I play 12 players, biggest version of the map possible, free for all, hard Ai difficulty.

Just like in multiplayer,
allowing an opponent to build a wonder means you are already losing.
When it is a big 6vs6 team game, the same principle applies; however,
it does indeed become a lot easier to build/maintain wonders in big team/FFA games.

The problem here is: all age 4 god powers are devastating once you get a wonder,
but the AI doesnt use the other age 4 god powers as efficiently as fimbulwinter.
Balance changes that are based on how the AI plays, is a really bad idea, imho..

The way i see it, the problem here doesnt lie with fimbulwinter, but rather with wonders.
(in 1vs1 they are simply not viable, while in team/FFA games, they tend to be OP..)

[Thanathos]

Origineel geplaatst door Angel:

Origineel geplaatst door QuillianInkheart:

Wrong. Recovery matters a lot, when the Norse NPCs are super aggro and never want for Favor. Like I said, I had one game where the NPC used Fimbulwinter six times in a row, spaced out evenly, so I can only assume it was recasting it at the precise end of the recovery time, every time. This probably would've continued, only after six swarms of wolves, coupled with attacks from only a single NPC, destroyed any attempts at defense I possibly could've mustered.

But all of that still misses the point. If the only counter you can think of to Fimbulwinter is Ceasefire, then that means if you aren't playing a God who gives you Ceasefire against any major Nord opponent, you run the risk of getting more wolfpiled than Marikplier at a furry convention.

And that was ONE Norse NPC. What do you think would happen if there was two, dropping Fimbulwinter back to back? No pause, just wolves. Even if they were hostile with each other, it hits every base, all at once.

So basically, what you're saying is, I cannot play a game vs. more than one Norse NPC, because I'd be at risk of getting Fimbulwinter spammed into oblivion. So no randomized God fights; gotta be sure those uppity NPCs on standard difficulty don't endlessly spam one ability to instantly win.

Fimbulwinter was never designed to be used more than once a game. It was a very powerful defense-softening and distraction tool. By making it recastable, now an even somewhat competent Norse player can steamroll the entire game, just by engaging in skirmishes to hoard favor, and then wolf spam until all villagers die and bases are eradicated. One cast of Fimbulwinter isn't enough to destroy your base. Two casts is, if you don't immediately stop everything to repair. This is also assuming you managed to ring the bell and keep your villagers from having their faces eaten. Now rinse, wash, and repeat that six times. I'm sorry, did you want to do anything but repair and hit the "Cower in Buildings" button? Too bad, have more wolves.

can we have more information on how you are playing? is it just against A.I.? or team games vs real players etc.? because none of this is an issue in 1v1, you did say NPC multiple times which leads me to believe A.I. if you didn't know already the higher difficulty level A.I. does actually cheat

I honestly play skirmish, legendary, 1 versus 12 with infinite resources and it can be annoying, when two or more units select fimbulwinter it can be stacked back to back.

However given my situation I always make it a priority to attack those who wield that power lolol. But i completely forgot the god powers were only used once, and the AI does indeed spam the hell out of it.

With that mentioned though, on legendary, the AI will already be in level 4 in less than 8 minutes and by minute 10, will already have a titan, so it makes me wonder how really fast they truly work.

[Virthuss (法國人在台灣)]

Fimbulwinter spam is how I usually win against 2 or 3 titan AI on my own. Indeed powerful but it can be quite easily countered:
- Any greek player with ceasefire will negate it for a lower favor cost
- Any human player who put his laborer away from his TC can avoid it

IMO it's no more broken than spamming Earthquakes for example. IMO the real deal is that some other powers are underpowered with the new repeatable meta ( ragnarok, thunderstorm )

[R for Reload]

I keep saying this
If they are getting a wonder.
you're doing something wrong.

[Duke H. Vytantis]

Origineel geplaatst door QuillianInkheart:

Origineel geplaatst door Angel:

you could also try a rush strategy to hamper them enough to give you a chance to take them out before they even get to mythic age

Very true, but there is are a few issues there

No no, one issue.

Get gud.

[K1tt3nM4ng0]

Origineel geplaatst door Stavrozium:

Origineel geplaatst door PurSpyk!!:

In Skirmish games against the AI, you get continually spammed by this god power, and Son of Osiris. Needs to be nerfed. These god powers were never designed to be spawned over and over again. I play 12 players, biggest version of the map possible, free for all, hard Ai difficulty.

The way i see it, the problem here doesnt lie with fimbulwinter, but rather with wonders.
(in 1vs1 they are simply not viable, while in team/FFA games, they tend to be OP..)

The point of the wonder is to be OP. According to the in-game tooltip, it provides you with 'game-ending powers'.

[Cryptic]

I always get enemies who use it and I have learned just to protect my villagers better, have units as defenders, and towers help a lot

[K1tt3nM4ng0]

Spamming Fimbulwinter with 12 players, a Wonder, and on Lightning mode on Fast speed I think made the game crash lol.

Edit: This was actually with the 'No Pop Limit' mod. Seems fine without it.

[Stavrozium]

Origineel geplaatst door K1tt3nM4ng0:

Origineel geplaatst door Stavrozium:

The way i see it, the problem here doesnt lie with fimbulwinter, but rather with wonders.
(in 1vs1 they are simply not viable, while in team/FFA games, they tend to be OP..)

The point of the wonder is to be OP. According to the in-game tooltip, it provides you with 'game-ending powers'.

The thing is, the "game-ending" role is too powerful, as it is now.
Wonders were always "game-ending", but in previous versions,
it was still relatively easy to still counter it, after it was built.
(big team/FFA games now often result in "who can build a wonder first",
rather than being about "who uses the wonder the most effectively"...)

At the same time, wonders are now extremely expensive,
up to the point where wonders are simply non-viable in 1vs1 and 2vs2 games;
so they are only really viable in very large team/FFA games.

Right now, some gods also have some major advantages with wonders,
that makes them so that they are practically unstoppable, once they have a wonder,
(like for example fimbulwinter; or Set's Vision + Meteor/Tornado)
while some other gods arent nearly as powerful, with a wonder..
The wonder age is not only OP, it is quite unbalanced...

Only the 75% reduction for GP cooldowns/favor costs,
along with the 1 favor/second income, is already "game ending" on its own.
Just 1 titan can already be game-ending, let alone multiple, that are twice as strong;
not to mention the fact that ALL myth units become 2x stronger, and can be spammed...
---------------------------------------------------------------
In short: it is more "game-ending" than it really should be. (i.e. it is *too* OP)
Making wonders a bit weaker, but also cheaper, makes them more viable in 1vs1,
while it would make them less OP in large team/FFA games;
and more balanced, since those strongest GPs are spammed less.
(so there would actually be a chance to counter them)

These changes would simply make wonders much more fun, in general. (imo)
While still fulfilling the exact same role, as the "game-ending power".
I do agree that it should fulfil this role, but it just needs some tweaks...

I could give a list here if you want me to,
of all the (relevant) changes i would make, in detail,
but its a pretty long list, and this comment is probably too long already..