Light the beacon.....yikes

[ppaladin123]

I did not expect 5 armies to magically appear next to my city without warning and destroy it. Even worse...if you try to take back the city, another several armies will immediaely respawn and destroy you again. I guess you need several stacks of tough untis to ride out the beacon lighting? Was deifbitely positioned to defeat the remaining enemy leaders through warfare well-before this even became possible.

[Sam Hotte]

There is a warning for this, though. (but I didn't head this warning neither in my first beacon game).

How mighty your defenders need to be, to defend the beacon, heavily depends on your class, race, spells and upgrades etc.
Having a stone wall and city's defence building along with global spells to a) hurt enemies in city's domain and b) bolster the walls (like thorns or dragon oil) helps alot.

During the siege defence, you could cast mass buffs, -debuffs and any battlefield enchantment that helps you since the attackers are independants thus unable to remove your combat spells.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

The neutral units attacking are a nasty surprise, but at least (being neutral) they don't get spellcasting support, nor do they get any empire upgrades.

I typically find that two decent (tier 2-3 units) stacks of defenders can hold them off without suffering casualties, although I might need to throw in some magic support. 3 stacks can hold the enemy off very comfortably.

Usually, the enemy only spawns in 3 stacks at a time. Sometimes, multiple waves can spawn in a row, but then you have time in between to launch a counterattack and destroy them peacemeal.

The really annoying bit is, in my opinion, that the AI never gets attacked this way. This makes the unity beacon victory condition less than fun: the AI (at high difficulties) will always quickly build beacons, ruining your morale, and not suffer the consequences.

The Seals victory condition doesn't come with this unequal treatment: the AI suffers the same attacks you do, and knows how to make sure to garrison the seals sufficiently to deal with them.

[ppaladin123]

It's odd. I expected the enemies to declare war on me and mad dash to the city in question....not invisible units magically spawning within my borders. And I didn't know about the imbalance between how the players and the AI are treated. I guess I won't be playing with that option again.

[martin.duchoslav]

This is one of my few gripes with the game. Enemies should not appear out of nowhere at my beacon city, they should at least have to travel a certain distance towards it. If the "Great Unifier" is intended to be a peaceful victory condition, enemies should not be able to attack instantly IMO. In fact, I would not mind if no enemies spawn – this would actually fulfil the purpose of a "peaceful victory". Too bad enemy AI's cannot handle this event, some enemy rush and dash toward my beacon cities would add a nice thrill to the end-game part.

[Sam Hotte]

Don't worry, the other players will declare war on you sooner or later, if and when you are ahead in winning conditions ... ;)

Actually, i disagree with Iguana here, i find this mode very much fun; makes you rethink your strategies and forces you to adopt to whom to fight now to prevent or destroy a beacon against you.
And the moral impact is not that heavy, if you manage to keep a beacon yourself.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

My problem is that "fighting to prevent a beacon against me" plays out exactly the same as "fighting to destroy the enemy."

In the end, playing with Beacon Victory ends up being more or less exactly the same as playing normally, except with morale penalties.

Seal victory, on the other hand, changes things up. Not only can I get new battlefields and neat magic items out of them, but they allow for different strategies. Play defensively and win on points, manipulate the seals to make the AI fight among themselves , or fight huge wars against everyone at once by rushing ahead in the early game.

It's a lot of fun, whilst beacons are not.

I do enjoy the neutral attacks on my beacon cities themselves, though. Siege defence makes for a fun change of pace.

[Sam Hotte]

Originally posted by Iguana-on-a-stick:

My problem is that "fighting to prevent a beacon against me" plays out exactly the same as "fighting to destroy the enemy."

In the end, playing with Beacon Victory ends up being more or less exactly the same as playing normally, except with morale penalties.

Not with my normal playstyle. In noprmal games, i maybe seek peace or even alliance with other (AI) players and expand by absorbing or vasaaling independants, for instance.

But i agree on the independant attack of your beacon, I enjoy this siege defence(s), too. :)

[ppaladin123]

If the same attack occured against the AI and the units spawned from camps and actually traveled to your city as opposed to simply appearing behind your lines I would be all in favor of this sort of thing. They shouldn't automatically bypass all the defsnive structures and towers I set up to prevent that sort of thing!

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

The funny thing about the neutral attacker: it shows how important a consistent world is to players.

The seals and the beacons have the exact same mechanic: stacks of neutral creatures appear from nowhere to attack you.

However, nobody complains about the beacons. Why? Because in-game they're described as being dimensional portals, and the creatures attacking them are magical elementals. It makes sense.

Behind the scenes, the mechanics are the same. But players accept the one with a solid explanation, and object to the one that makes no sense for the story the game is telling us.

[ppaladin123]

Good point. Yes.

[easytarget]

I'm not entirely buying this is just a case of presentation, I consider the game mechanic itself fatally flawed design. Even the name strikes me as absurd given what happens when you actually light these things up.

Units just showing up out of thin air is bad game design, full stop. It's as badly implemented here (and complained about nearly as much) as it is in all Total War games which regularly feature a couple high level stacks constantly appearing from nowwhere even when the one province they're supposedly coming from could never remotely produce the income needed to pay for them. Or better yet, take the dozen high level stacks that just magically appear out of thin air in Rome 2 with their exceptionally silly civil war game mechanic kicks in.

This is hardly something that requires much in they way of consideration, the players immediate reaction to it is the true impression, it sucks and feels fundamentally unfair.