RTS Part - Am I too stupid ?

[Bleached Bones]

Hi there;

bought the game 3 days ago.

Yesterday I made the first two RTS missions (raid first elven camp / raid first orc camp).
I'm playing on hard - maybe that is my mistake.
But the AI is spamming units sooo fast...
The solution for me was to set a ralley point of my buildings to the enemy base and to also spam units as fast as possible.
Is that how it is supposed to be?
(I mean I won both missions, but thats some wired kind of RTS and it does not make much fun)

I wonder if this "tactic" works on later levels or if I have to reduce difficulty?
(Dont remeber doing it that way in Spellforce I or II)

Cheers

[Farlon]

I think the difficulty for the RTS part is glitched in the campaign, they just spam units most of the time though sometimes the AI can really use proper tactics like flanking, pincer attacks etc.

[raigend0519]

I played the most difficult mode... named mage council ?
All you need to do is pick any teammates whom hav building breaking skill.

Like:
Black magic : Call of the forsaken x 3
Elemental magic : Earth quake x 3

Rush your hero team to enemy's base from the game start and try to find their home building ASAP. Cast all breaking building magic on it then you win. Don't even try to collect any single resource , it is very hard to win.

[nomed74]

Originally posted by raigend0519:

I played the most difficult mode... named mage council ?
All you need to do is pick any teammates whom hav building breaking skill.

Like:
Black magic : Call of the forsaken x 3
Elemental magic : Earth quake x 3

Rush your hero team to enemy's base from the game start and try to find their home building ASAP. Cast all breaking building magic on it then you win. Don't even try to collect any single resource , it is very hard to win.

spellforce is not a "rush" game and was never - but nvm
i think the ai is really "cheating" - you cant have this much troops resource to beat em without those "rush to mainbase" - sad thing ( for me i went back to easy mode to enjoy the plot ;) )
edit : maybe i should say im old gamer and from turteling era

[Bleached Bones]

Originally posted by raigend0519:

I played the most difficult mode... named mage council ?
All you need to do is pick any teammates whom hav building breaking skill.

Like:
Black magic : Call of the forsaken x 3
Elemental magic : Earth quake x 3

Rush your hero team to enemy's base from the game start and try to find their home building ASAP. Cast all breaking building magic on it then you win. Don't even try to collect any single resource , it is very hard to win.

I red that tactic - but thats not RTS lol.
Thats a broken RTS.
For me you should have to build an army consiting of different unit types compensating each others weaknesses.
What happens here reminds me of Majesty 2 - I was also nearly impossible to do because the system did not work or was unbalanced as hell...

[Dexter]

Welp, RTS is broken in Spellforce 3. Enemy is spamming units, You can't build watchtowers and units(with gathering resources fast enough). So far one tactic worked for me, get your starting units and heroes and rush enemy base. It's stupid but it works.

Later there is mission(going without spoilers) where You need to take couple of enemy points and that way you get more units, nope, get only one, select anything that can fight and rush enemy base.

I don't really care if AI is bugged or something but RTS aspect is bad(for me), in Spellforce 1 You got your base and that's it, no territory limits, way more workers and characters where not so overpowered. In Sp3 I am at level 14 and I am pretty sure I can clear most of the maps with only 4 characters, no more units needed.

[Farlon]

Originally posted by dexter411:

Welp, RTS is broken in Spellforce 3. Enemy is spamming units, You can't build watchtowers and units(with gathering resources fast enough). So far one tactic worked for me, get your starting units and heroes and rush enemy base. It's stupid but it works.

Later there is mission(going without spoilers) where You need to take couple of enemy points and that way you get more units, nope, get only one, select anything that can fight and rush enemy base.

I don't really care if AI is bugged or something but RTS aspect is bad(for me), in Spellforce 1 You got your base and that's it, no territory limits, way more workers and characters where not so overpowered. In Sp3 I am at level 14 and I am pretty sure I can clear most of the maps with only 4 characters, no more units needed.

in SF1 the RTS aspect was also bad to be honest, you could clear ALL maps with your hero alone and the enemy AI basically didnt exist. That being said, I love sf1 and sf3 could use some fix for the AI in campaign.

[ggsnake]

I'm playing on circle mage difficulty and it is perfectly doable. And I don't mean winning with that cheap "rush to their base, kill the main building with earthquake/shatter" strategy.

Yes, the AI is cheating very hard. Perfectly visible on skirmish. You cannot win the game by bleeding the AI of resources. The AI seems to have unlimited resources, which is very sad because it removes a lot of strategic aspects.

Anyways, as for winning, you absolutely have to expand REALLY fast. As soon as the RTS aspect starts, don't waste any time and send your heroes to all free sectors to capture them. It helps when you have cleared the map of creeps (spiders, undead etc.) first. Upgrade each sector and build resource buildings everywhere. You can defend with your heroes alone at the beginning.

Once you have enough sectors, you can pretty much build/spam units as well. The AI is not very smart in combat itself, will not move out of your AOE spells etc. You should at least have one hero who has a lot of AOE spells, preferably of elemental school. When you take over enemy sectors, don't bother to kill enemy buildings expect for towers or buildings that are annoying/in the way. As already said before, the AI has unlimited resources and does not care about losing resource buildings.

Also, that first orc mission is pretty horrible in terms of difficulty. In my opinion the later missions are a little bit easier.

Hope this helps :)

[jonoliveira12]

Spellforce games have always been bad RTS games, but goode RPG games. At the end of the campaign, I was just marching my OP heroes towards the enemy HQ in a B-line, and winning.

Same as in Spellforce 1 and 2.

[jerkyboy7256]

RTS part is ♥♥♥♥. Rush and obliterate enemy bases then start hoarding resources, building towers, hunting side quests and monsters. Common sense doesn't work. Here up is down and down is up.

[jerkyboy7256]

Originally posted by Farlon:

I think the difficulty for the RTS part is glitched in the campaign, they just spam units most of the time though sometimes the AI can really use proper tactics like flanking, pincer attacks etc.

Mister RTS has no tactics or strategies. It's all about micromanaging resources abilities and spamming units. If you want to play tactical games you should play total war series or company of heroes or world in conflict. This is why Starcraft players and tactical players can never reconcile.

[Chubzdoomer]

It seems to be all about playing very aggressively: Moving out, capturing outposts, recruiting troops (almost nonstop/as resources allow), and attacking/pressuring the AI often. You can't really sit back for a long time and build up like in some RTS games.

Also, ggsnake's post above gives excellent advice. Like he says, the AI has unlimited resources which only further emphasizes playing as aggressively as possible.

[GronkJuice]

Have to say I was disappointed in the RTS parts of this game as well.
Here is a few points
1) Towers use workers when they should use troops (allowing you to have to decide on if you want your army to all attack , or support [best game that did towers to date personally is Warlords Battlecry])
2) Difficulty is just HP,Atk,Resistance of non player controlled units. and hard is =. they have the same stats for same units as you. (hard to fix with an in game difficulty change, but maybe change skill useage, or if harder grant more probing and avenues of advance, like in normal have 2-3 paths the enemy chance of use, and hard +1-2 more)
3) They may have unlimited resources but they don't have unlimited troop caps, less territory means less enemies (Tech I think Difficulty should also effect this for both RPG and RTS, as in more neutral and enemies on the map when you enter on set difficulties [maybe link difficulty choice to when you enter the map rather then just anytime])
Worst part about 3 is that you can (example Baka Gor, or orc map) surround their base and use just towers and basic troops of about 10-20 to assist them using only 40-60 units and travel the map with the rest to assist in clearing/hard artifact battles.

But then again RTS seems to be OP for adventuring even in circle mage difficulty and with the broken aspect of territories defenses are too under-powered to require siege weapons, which they should be OP vs anything else. You can get siege damage way too easy making them obsolete. I think the MP/Skirmish aspect of the game would be amazing if I either had to use an entire army to take down 1 territory with a few towers, or some well managed siege engines this could easily be fixed by lowering the troop availability/population cap, it raises WAY too fast, in order to make either towers more prevalent, or make buildings have massive (like 80+) defenses vs anything else then siege.

[GronkJuice]

Forgot to add another fix I thought of for difficulty outside stat changes, you could have the difficulty effect the calculations of importance.

Like if outposts are importance of 3,+1 per upgrade, other buildings give 1-3 based on tear, and towers give 0-x based on difficulty (universal of -1 point for distance per territory)
Base calculation could be check all connecting territories for importance, and have two calculations running, one for atk, one for expanding.
expanding calculation is just a wait timer based on difficulty, higher = less time till expand.
attacking is like what I mentioned, what territory arrives with highest point

This calculation would mean that the enemy would change what they attack simply based on how you play

if you have one territory that always keep getting attacked, you react by making towers since they are so OP, and man them.
Enemy changes target as that territory is no longer viable for attacks and now you think "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the AI is Learning!"

In the end you could even do a difficulty calculation on upgrading/troop types
it would be time/territory/difficulty based

Just use if calculations
Timer starts at 0, looking for a number for advancement+1, advancement could either start at 0 or X (based on difficulty)

Timer will increase by tick (everything uses this as it is always based on FPS to calculate tics to see the speed of the game for games that can change speeds)
if Ticks = set amount (lets say 6000, example of 1 tick/s) = Advancement +1
if Advancement = X start producing Building Y and Troop Z at %
Y and Z are based on X yet % could be based on difficulty (like 10%*(Difficulty))

Course this is EXTREMELY simplified

[Genitor]

The AI is cheating? Have u realized that you start of with 4 heroes who can wreck entire armies on their own in higher levels? YOU ARE CHEATING!

The AI only produces huge armies if you let it control a big junk of the map. Thus he is able to gather the ressources from all those sectors with a corresponding number of workers.
Spellforce is not a game where u grab like 3 sectors and then bunker. If you do that you get wrecked, vindicatedly. Also, if u play a very long game on a map (farming) you will realize that the AI at some point stops producing units that cost iron and at some point will only produce units that cost food (since food can be produced unlimited due to farms) which suggests that the AIs economy has something to do with the ressources. Sure the AI will have some factor on it but if it hadnt it wouldnt be fun fighting the AI.

Spellforce rewards offensive gameplay (i am not suggesting cheaply rushing for the main building). What you want is SECTORS and you want to get them fast because the ressources there are the main goal for conquering a sector and the longer an enemy holds that sector the less ressources will remain for you. reinforce only where u dont plan on expanding for a while (chokeholds where u can funnel the enemy troops for example) but dont stop expanding until you own enough sectors (what "enough" means depends on game difficulty, your heroes, army-development, etc).

In my opinion this is pretty "realistic" since economy and warfare are tied together pretty closely.

[GronkJuice]

"Realistic" economy/warfare joint also, as shown in history, can be linked to over extending. you could, unlike the whole instantly get x workers upon upgrade/outpost creation, have you start with 0 workers, allow for territories to have max worker count (based on outpost upgrades) and allow for trading to worker between outposts like resources but more active, then make it so that you can also buy/hire workers with food at only your main base.

Every RTS game to date (that I can think of) forces you to spend resources for new/replacement workers making protecting them more important then just using them for additional time/fodder to help build/move a defense force

Then again, Personally I think there should be some kind of equalizer for that hole hero thing in Campaign as like you mentioned it is a massive OP nature. But then again, if you granted stronger hero units to the Computer, or on every map, have a Massive sentinel unit at the main camp (kinda like a troll/ogre for Orcs) that only stayed in that territory would prevent all forms of main camp attacking. you could still have the main camp destroy elimination mechanic, leading you to being able to tank the Sentinel while destroying Base.