Endless AI rush?

[Taco Bob]

I haven't played an RTS since Red Alert 2 so I'm not well versed in these types of games. I've built up several areas/sectors with barracks all producing units, plenty of watchtowers and still can't keep up with the stream of units that the AI sends across the bridge. Am I missing something?

Also, if I lose one sector, all of my sectors blow up and I lose the game. Is that intended?

[Lightning]

I believe for a game like this you would want your heroes upfront most of the time soaking damage along with the melee units while in range of your towers and ranged units.

[Taco Bob]

I do keep them up there most of the time, but even they can only last so long. Doing that I spend most of my time at the bridge instead of exploring or moving forwards.

[Lightning]

Yeah i found out the problem is you need the villagers to man the towers in this one rather than the actual ranged units which threw me off for a bit

[Hooysse]

AI always attack from the same point, just build 2 towers in the zone u getting rushed at with 1 hero and couple of units and explore with your main army

[kagai_yami]

your never gonna be able to build enough units to take them out once they start building that massive army. found that out the hard way. even with the hero units. they respawn that large army like every 3 min. what ya gotta do is as soon as you get the first base. go get the other 3 or 4 to the east and the north. build an iron mine in whatever places have iron. and start building halberds and infintrymen as soon as you can. rush that army to max pop shouldnt take too long if you were efficiant. and then rush that army towards their base. if your lucky they havent started building up too much yet and you can take em out. thats what i did at least. seemed to work. not that i particularly enjoyed treating the game as though it was starcraft and im doing a zergling rush.

should still build up some watch towers in each of your outposts tho. gonna be some moderate groups of undead thatll spawn at each of em.

[M.Gamer]

Kagai seems to be right, the AI is always better teched than you are and seems to have endless resources as well. Rush is all you can do

[Serendras]

I'm really surprised people had problem with the AI and had to rush it. The aoe of the mage literally obliterated anything they threw at me. After how long does the AI attack with this army?

[Balthor]

I'm with Amaranthe here: at the beggining I was a tad overwhelmed because I hadn't expanded for ♥♥♥♥, but once you capture the whole eastern side of the map it's insultingly easy to build wave after wave of infantry, arbalists and some recruits to soak and you just go and cap every enemy camp. Once you're there and you've killed their army they have literally ZERO chances of surviving, you just gotta keep sending people in if they die and you're set. Of course, always have your heros near to cap the camp ASAP or else they'll rebuild.

[Shruiken]

I used balthazar with Healing and Resurrection. Found it quite easy to bust wave after wave of them...Also I didn't get any attack from them until I took the first sector from the AI.

[Taco Bob]

I've been trying out the heroes abilities, but I'm stuck in a loop of getting overrun. When I do manage to regroup and push forwards, they already have enough units to take me out when I rush in. I am getting better though. Just seems like a very steep learning curve.

(Not my best attempt, just loading up a save game to show - usually there are about twice as many units on my screen)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1206417049


Moments later..
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1206417090

I think I just have no idea what I'm doing.

[Overread]

I think one problem is that mages with area effect abilities are not only very powerful; but also much easier to actually control. A lot of the game is very small on-screen, which lets them squeeze in lots of high resolution visuals; but it also means that even just clicking on abilities isn't a fast click.

An area effect ability like a fireball not only does lots of damage, but its really easy to throw down into the middle of a fight or at the ranged units or to hit a unit blob before an attack. However on the flipside heroes with power hits and other single target powers are far harder to control; you can't as easily get them to use their ability since the battle moves so fast and even telling one unit from another isn't perfect (seriouly you have to zoom in quite a bit to even really tell that the non-humans are riding anything but a horse).

I think thsi results in warrior or archer heroes being seriously underpowered; whilst mages are very much overpowered in battle. I think single target abilities are a neat idea; but for a general battle would be better as a simple auto-attack abilities. That way your hero is still powerful agianst a single powerful character, but can also bring their abilities to use during the general madness of combat against multiple units.

[Hobo Elf]

Archer heroes aren't underpowered. They're really good at sniping specific units like enemy heroes, mages and ballista. Problematic targets that may be lagging somewhere behind enemy lines. They also seem to have a longer range than usual archers which will make them lethal against caster units.

Warriors seem to be a bit less useful in combat, but they are able to do lots of damage to buildings and repair / enhance your own buildings, which can be helpful.

This is all specualtion since we haven't seen the full skill trees.

[Overread]

Hobo the thing is with combats being so fast having to micro control 3 heroes at once means you're not able to micro your unit as effectivly. Plus like I said its not that the powers themselves are undwerpowered; but that using them in battle is far harder. One target abilities that activate automatically would be far easier. If your archer is already attacking a specific target its unlikely that you want the damage boosted abilities to hit anything but that target; having the player have to activate them manually isn't giving the player any additional help.

Instead far better that they activate on their own and the player is then given more free time to control units and area effect abilities. Plus it gives you a reason to take more direct damage heroes (archers/warriors) over area control mages.

[Hobo Elf]

Time slows down when you press Alt. I felt that it was fairly useful to use this to give my archer specific targets to snipe. I didn't feell ike I needed to micro my army much as long as I controlled the more devastating enemies (mages and ballista) with my archer and plop in some AoE on the enemy army. The army is supplementary to the hero units, which means that most armies will easily get demolished as soon as their leaders are disabled or killed.

One thing I agree about Warriors is that using their target specific skills is a bit hard in combat vs enemy armies, but remember, you're not only fighting against armies in Spellforce. There are going to be tough monsters that you have to fight and I think having a strong Warrior to soak up damage and interrupt their AoE attacks could be useful.

I think Warriors are going to be more geared toward support than just direct damage and looking at their skills, that seems to support my claim.

[Overread]

Aye but it leaves them seriously weak for general melee combat compared to other hero types.

As for pressing alt I'm of two minds about that - Spellforce just doesn't lend itself to the idea that the average gamer should have to slow down time during battle; and strongly suggest that battle speed itself is at fault.

I would hazard that the reasoning is that they want part of the MP pie and that generally lends itself toward faster and faster gameplay over smaller scale maps with more chokepoints - which is pretty much what they've given us.


The cart system; for example, is a really neat idea except that the style of maps means that raidin them is likely never to really be a thing because you're unlikely to move past outer settlements as they'll always be better to capture for their richer resources.

Cart system would have been better over maps more akin to say Warrior Kings Battles style maps where you had large open areas and thus far more potential to raid (although saying that WKB you tended to keep your farms close to your main town anyway so raiding never quite worked ideally there; except during a siege when it would shut you off from your farms and food supply).