Unity Beacon or Tower Heart

[Anvos]

So after playing a map with the unifier victory while I was wondering why a giant expression of oppulance would compell such a large positive and negative response I zoomed in on one of them and realized the unity beacon looks suspicously like it could actually be the inner foundation of a wizard tower.

A. The generally shape is about right, an upward narrowing spiraling tower.

B. The flame is actually a large mana crystal that looks suspiciously like the magic relay crystals from AoW2.

C. People seem to get way too up in arms about building a beacon of harmony but if this was actually a sign of returning to the power of the wizard kings the response makes more sense.

There is also the conjecture arguement based around how the towers in the Overlord series all have an intense magical object as their core.

[sikbok]

What can I say. We, at Triumph, really like towers : )>

[MattStriker]

Freud might have had something to say about that.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by sikbok:

What can I say. We wizard kings of Triumph, really like towers : )>

Fixed :P

[smidlee]

I just learned the hard way what happens when I started to build the beacon. Everyone declared war on me the next turn. I was totally caught off guard and was attacked on all fronts.

[MattStriker]

Kinda reminds me of the old Spell of Mastery in Master of Magic.

[smidlee]

I see the beta patch fixes this so I guess it was a bug.

[Pippin123]

Originally posted by smidlee:

I just learned the hard way what happens when I started to build the beacon. Everyone declared war on me the next turn. I was totally caught off guard and was attacked on all fronts.

I expected the other AI to go to war, so my armies where guarding the borders.
What I DIDN'T expect, was 3 stacks of independents popping up directly on my capital via event, and razing the tower. after I tried to lit it.

For my second try, I turtled until I could put stacks of Gold Dragons on both towers :)

[smidlee]

The beta notes : "AI will no longer be attacked by indies when building beacons." so it seems the player will still be attacked by indies.

[Anvos]

Well it sort of makes sense as the battles are ridiculously hard to autobattle unless you massively over garrison a city, yet in practice a human can do it with only like 4 ranged, 2 guardians, and a spair stack of tier 2 or higher melee to stop flanking.

[Ninjara]

Originally posted by smidlee:

The beta notes : "AI will no longer be attacked by indies when building beacons." so it seems the player will still be attacked by indies.

That's the one single thing I disliked in the patch notes.

The "invisible enemies" aka independents no longer attack AIs constructing Beacons and from what I read earlier, other AIs will not go to war against them either, so it looks like AI is just allowed to build Beacons in perfect peace and that everyone and -thing is only opposed to the player doing so.

Personally I don't think I'll bother trying for a unification victory, when everyone in the (game) world very clearly prefers to be unified at the point of a sword.

[Sifer2]

Yeah it doesn't sound very fair to the player. It's a band aid fix for the problem of where the AI just immediately starts building beacons as soon as it can long before it's prepared to defend them.

[smidlee]

This is what wriiten in another forum:

Tomble wrote:

Mythabril wrote:

They should only build a beacon when they have enough units in the town to reliably defend against the expected assault. That should also include defensive structures and spells. It should dig in with three stacks of its finest units and every spell at its disposal applied. At least that would imitate player behaviour to a point.

I agree, unfortunately life isn’t that simple! Strategic AI changes are very hard to do, and if we were to wait for a change like this, then it would be broken for months before we could fix it. This way, at least you won’t see the constant “Bob is lighting his beacon!” “Bob lost his beacon” in half the games you play.

Before the patch the AI lighting their beacons worked in the player's favor.

I would rather have the unity victory make the game a little harder than making it a cakewalk.

[Anvos]

While this isn't really the topic of the thread I started, I sort of agree that a long term fix would be better such as teaching the AI to only light a beacon if it can defend the city.

As for the diplomatic penalty I sort of feel that if their doing the removal of that aspect for the AI they should also remove it for the player, or just make it so the diplo penalty against AI only kicks in when you only have 1 beacon left.

[sikbok]

Originally posted by Princess Celestia:

other AIs will not go to war against them either, so it looks like AI is just allowed to build Beacons in perfect peace and that everyone and -thing is only opposed to the player doing so.

That is incorrect. The AI will still declare war on both AI and Human players.

However, the AI will not declare war at a later time. Instead of doing so when beacons are being build, it now does so - or a two beacon victory - either when one beacon is being lid or two have been completed.

[smidlee]

I must be in a minority since I don't see the AI as a player and doesn't have any problem with the AI playing by different rules to provide a challenge. I like the idea that I'm the one that have to stop the AI from lighting the beacons instead of another AI.
I want it to be a little unfair as a player; kind of like AI WAR.