Conquest of Elysium 3

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:43 am

http://www.illwinter.com/coe3/index.html

Illwinter has released a new game which could accurately be described as "Dominions Lite". If you enjoy their brand of turn-based fantasy strategy, but would like something more focused on single player, CoE3 might appeal.

Currently, it is being sold through Desura. I and others felt apprehensive about this at first, but Korwin indicated that you can just copy the game folder to other computers, no need to install Desura software. So I bought the game last night, and it seems to check out. I registered with the website, using an email address similarly with how I'd register for another online store, and then I bought the game. After that, I downloaded the game installer, and wrote down the CD key they gave me. I don't seem to need the Desura client or anything, but I do have to re-enter the CD key when I copy the CoE3 folder generated by the installer to another computer.

I haven't tried multiplayer yet, and I suppose it is possible that I could run into some kind of Desura DRM then.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I've played a bit of CoE2, and this game definitely seems to be a substantial upgrade. Not much else to say at this point, but the game seems different enough that it might be better to discuss it separately from the Dominions thread.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:02 am

Let's talk about the Troll King:

Mister T
He is a big hard hitting regenerating monster. He can kill small armies. Not big ones.
Taking many small men and attacking one big one is a viable tactic.

He is not alone.

Goblin

And a look at the starting income of the Troll King:

Startgeld
To summarize, we have on big unit no income and some (10) tiny men goblins.

Lets do something:

attacking

We should be able to take this Town...

Battle Screen
Here is the battle screen. Should be no problem.

After a few combat turns.

BS detail
Where the 14 is, was an unit who got 14 damage.
The white 7 is the regeneration of the Troll King he gets 7 back every turn and heals all damage at the end of combat.

At this point I needed to restart the game because my only enemy killed himself...

The early game is pretty boring, you try to conquer as many money and iron sources as possible, until...

Message
Oh wrong message.

... until Mum takes over

message2

Mum:

mum

Mum can cast Rituals brew Fungi:

Mum rituals
Now you need sources of Fungi (ie. Forests and Swamps).
You can cast, Call of the Forest on an Forest or better on an Ancient Forest and from now on it generates units for you who wander around and kill your enemies.
The 1200 Ritual upgrades Mum into an Ancient Mum, who is a better caster.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:29 am

Been playing around with Bakemono and Warlock. Oni kings are unbelievably worth it.

Let's do a bit of comparison. I've seen two summon outcomes from the most expensive tier. One gives you a flying level 3 mage commander and a bunch of flying level 1 mage soldiers. Tengu can rain lightning and wind attacks down on their enemies and survive reasonably well in melee.

The other outcome is the Dai Oni. At first, it looks good, but not quite as nice. You get a giant warrior with ~90 hp and two spells a round. The first list is level 3, the second level 2. But then you remember this is an oni, so it gets a second life in every battle, where it comes back as a ghost. Then I decided to summon up a second one to fight (no sacrifice) and discovered that it forces a morale check on everyone in the front rank of enemies facing it.

I have successfully gotten one of these with a "small" sacrifice of 150. With the fear aura, they can solo most conventional armies. Even undead hordes can fall if the oni gets off one of the level 3 "attack everyone" spells. I have a hard time figuring out why I would ever give my Sorceror the tier 2 upgrade, since it costs as much to call up mages at least as impressive, with better combat potential.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:46 am

Some Freespawn

Freespawn Death Fungus

Freespawn Devil Fungus

Freespawn Carrion Beast

ancient
High End Summon

Gunlaug

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:47 pm

The freezing mechanic in Winter is interesting. I lost my first game when all of my commanders stayed on a frozen lake too long. Don't yet know what happens when a lake freezes with amphibious units inside.

Also, if you have a monster with swallow attacks target a regenerating unit, be prepared to fast-forward the battle.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 5:06 am

Wow. I actually played a Priest King past year 1, and it's more easymode than I expected. The ability to recruit infantry chaff at no cost but time is a pretty big deal.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 5:16 am

Yeah, Priest King is easy mode, Warlock is hard mode.

You lose a lot of bullshit melee troops taking basic resources and hunting deer. Factions are mostly good or bad by dint of how quickly and easily they recuperate those losses.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:18 am

I played until Major summons started getting deployed. Priest King may be easy, but having to manually slave hunt with each tribal king approaches Dom3 levels of micromanagement hell. And after you've got more than 300 or so tiny men in a stack, you can't see the commanders any more.

It was pretty hilarious throwing 400 guys at a low-end Enchanter army, though. more soldiers died to Fire Shields on wood golems and gargoyles than to actual attacks. I lost over a hundred soldiers and called it a net gain.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Warlock was my favorite side in CoE2, and in CoE3, my interest is tied between that and Necromancer. I really like how you have to adapt to the starting magic and resources you find playing them, and you have a bit more freedom to try different strategies than with most of the other factions I've played.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 8:56 pm

The dwarves are interesting because they're pretty robust and they don't have to scrape together 50gp to get cannon fodder, like almost every other darn nation. Plus, their dwarven commander has stats and armor sufficient to go scouting on his own and actually beat up most of the deer or scattered bandits that attack him, especially if you end his movement on defensible terrain.

Conquest of Elysium is actually pretty underwhelming. I was stoked at first but having soaked six or so evenings into it, I can say that it feels a little flat. The various factions are interesting and they really do play quite differently from one another, and trying them out has been the main thing that's been holding my interest so far. However, the game is incredibly unforgiving about going into combat without enough troops/support/mage power. That all-encompassing fact makes the early game quite slow and punishing and the mid game feel kinda the same regardless of faction.

The thing is, for almost all nations, troops are expensive and hard to come by (5 bottom of the barrel spearmen cost 50 gold and in the beginning you are generating 3-4gp/turn). You will lose 2-3 troops in a good battle and often times more than that if bad luck so much as glances at you. That means it takes a long time to build up your forces to critical mass so you can conquer without taking inordinate losses. Also, your two starting commanders are, for almost all nations, indispensable (the game is more-or-less about your head commander's rise to power and losing him is generally cause to call it quits), which is fine except that combat is always an all-or-nothing affair where both sides fight to the death and, unlike Dominions 3, there is no running away and regrouping later if you underestimated your opponent or had a run of bad luck. Therefore, the game heavily, heavily incentives conservative play which I find a little boring. Plus, it really doesn't feel like the AI knows how to play this game, so I'm often playing against indie-mobs and opponents who flail around more-or-less at random.

Since it lacks almost all commander scripting, all troop placement (and troop scripting) and nearly all research, I find combat to be mostly just getting enough dudes to overwhelm the enemy. If it had even half the tactical depth of Dom3 I could see myself enjoying it a lot more. Once the joy of discovery runs out, there doesn't seem to be much left to sustain the player's interest.

I don't know. Maybe I need to give it more time to grow on me... some games are like that. Or maybe it'll take Illwinter a few feedback cycles to get the game in it's proper form (Dom3 has certainly undergone extensive changes over it's lifespan). Regardless, I'm leaving it alone for now.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:20 am

I've been at it a while myself and...yuck.

I hate the 'game over' ending, hate the lack of any strategy in combate, hate there's no way to run, hate the miserably weak early game, hate the incredible myopia, hate the swarming deer/whatever that can casually take over vilages, and hate the half a dozen other things that really shouldn't be in a game nowadays.

Only one thing I hate might really be my incompetence, though: if you have 2 guard towers (or any other duplicate recruiting spot), is there *any* way to tell which one get the troops you're recruiting to? I feel like I have to take handwritten notes to get that information.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:41 am

Doom wrote: Only one thing I hate might really be my incompetence, though: if you have 2 guard towers (or any other duplicate recruiting spot), is there *any* way to tell which one get the troops you're recruiting to? I feel like I have to take handwritten notes to get that information.

right click on the recruitment point in the recruit screen, and it will center the screen on it. It can be hard to tell which one it is centered on for two that are very close, but if your right click on them alternately, you can tell left from right.

Still a bug, but you can work around. The game needs to be able to name recruitment points.

-Username17

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:11 am

Also if you do an long right click on the recruitment spot the recruitment list opens centered on the clickeded.

I myself am waiting a few update cycles and for custom maps with scripting to play more.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 7:57 pm

Having seen this thread, I had a 'shut up and take my money' moment, and proceeded to spend the last few days playing the game. That said... wow, faction imbalance. Should've expected it from Illwinter, but... yeah.

If Priest King is easymode for getting you free useless chaff, Demonologist is all the way up at crazy awesome; once you've gotten three or so Succubi, you can start summoning Major Demons for free, since you'll probably charm-assassinate any new summons. Demon Lords are icing on top; you hardly care about them, once you're throwing around stacks of Heliophagii.

On the other hand, you've got factions like the Baron, which basically stays at 'no magic' forever, in exchange for getting a few decent freespawn Knights on a yearly basis.

Or the Burgmeister, which starts at 'useless hobbits', progresses quickly to replacing the hobbits with hedge-druidy summons and disposable mecha, can immediately hit 'oh hey, there's a Manticore; I'll kill him and take his stuff' once you find an Ancient Forest and pop an Ent... but doesn't actually have real end-game summons like the other factions do, just a few tough melee types. I mean, Ents are okay, but they don't really do much in the way of damage; they're just walls that stand around taking damage. And they can't do that for long enough to tank an endgame army, not to mention endgame magics. If you actually bother saving up enough gems to pop one of their Dragons, you'll wish you'd spent the gems on more disposable mecha, since a single unhealing guy that sits in the front rank and does petty melee damage is not worth that level of investment... especially not when you've already got Ents doing the same thing but better, since they actually heal.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 8:37 pm

Endovior wrote:If Priest King is easymode for getting you free useless chaff, Demonologist is all the way up at crazy awesome; once you've gotten three or so Succubi, you can start summoning Major Demons for free, since you'll probably charm-assassinate any new summons.

I haven't played the previous CoE games so I don't know if it was this way before, but the real puppet-masters are enchanters. They can convert humanoid bodies into a weird snake-things which have a hypnotize ranged attack. While it is an "easy resist" attack, the giant ants, moose and deer that clog up the map have crap for MR anyway, so two or more of these necro-whatsits will build you an army of chaff VERY quickly. And once you get a half dozen necro-snakes, you'll be dominating trolls, giants and enemy wizards over the course of battles, while they try futilely to cut through your army of golems and hypnotized elk.

It's fun but not the direction I was expecting for that faction.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:29 pm

Necrotods are ridiculously great if you find elephants or Swamp Beasts. I haven't played enchanter much, but you can do some pretty incredible stuff in mid and late game.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:51 am

I played one enchanter game....those snakes are pretty awesome, but crystal golems are the bomb.

When crystal golems kill things, they turn into crystals---free defensive forces scattered all over the map. Granted they aren't that great, but its annoy to capture a village, and have to run back three turns later because some stupid moose walked into it, driving it neutral.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 6:51 am

Endovior wrote: Or the Burgmeister, which starts at 'useless hobbits', progresses quickly to replacing the hobbits with hedge-druidy summons and disposable mecha, can immediately hit 'oh hey, there's a Manticore; I'll kill him and take his stuff' once you find an Ancient Forest and pop an Ent... but doesn't actually have real end-game summons like the other factions do, just a few tough melee types. I mean, Ents are okay, but they don't really do much in the way of damage; they're just walls that stand around taking damage. And they can't do that for long enough to tank an endgame army, not to mention endgame magics. If you actually bother saving up enough gems to pop one of their Dragons, you'll wish you'd spent the gems on more disposable mecha, since a single unhealing guy that sits in the front rank and does petty melee damage is not worth that level of investment... especially not when you've already got Ents doing the same thing but better, since they actually heal.

Disagree on your assessment of Iron Dragons.

The Hoburg advantage is that you get ricockulous amounts of offensive push for your buck. The hoburg disadvantage is that your troops are incredibly fragile and also slow. Basically you cause and take huge losses, having a "throw another squad in" mentality reminiscent of a Soviet Commissar. You will take losses fighting deer, so every single thing you do costs lives. Cheap lives, but lives nonetheless. Fortunately, capturing a hamlet is worth like a hobbit every two months, because as previously noted those lives are cheap.

The goal is to replace your front line with something survivable so that you can spend all your gold on hobbit crossbows. Because those hit as hard as real people crossbows, but you buy them fifteen at a time. Yes, Iron Dragons will eventually wear out and die, but if they capture enough mines to pay themselves off, it doesn't matter. You can always make more iron dragons.

-Username17

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:26 am

My point was that gems are a lot rarer then herbs; so spending 50% more of a rarer resource should get you something with actual army-killing potential, instead of a glorified wall. Barring the non-magical factions, every other faction seems to get access to some means of wiping out entire armies with their endgame summons; usually a level-3 mage with a 'hits all enemies' type spell. Not only do the Hoburgs not have anything of the sort, they are also rather vulnerable to that sort of thing, since all those crossbowmen have minimal hitpoints.

Naturally, the Iron Dragon is, strictly speaking, a better wall then the Ent; it's got all kinds of health and armor and resistances and such that'll help it against the kind of stuff people are throwing around in the endgame... for a limited time only. That said, when an army of demons shows up on your doorstep, and most of them are dropping spells on your back ranks of hapless crossbow-hobbits, ignoring your Iron Dragon and it's mediocre bite altogether... you'll see that your endgame summons really don't match up.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:33 am

Shatner wrote:
Endovior wrote:If Priest King is easymode for getting you free useless chaff, Demonologist is all the way up at crazy awesome; once you've gotten three or so Succubi, you can start summoning Major Demons for free, since you'll probably charm-assassinate any new summons.
I haven't played the previous CoE games so I don't know if it was this way before, but the real puppet-masters are enchanters. They can convert humanoid bodies into a weird snake-things which have a hypnotize ranged attack. While it is an "easy resist" attack, the giant ants, moose and deer that clog up the map have crap for MR anyway, so two or more of these necro-whatsits will build you an army of chaff VERY quickly. And once you get a half dozen necro-snakes, you'll be dominating trolls, giants and enemy wizards over the course of battles, while they try futilely to cut through your army of golems and hypnotized elk.

It's fun but not the direction I was expecting for that faction.

Agree; Necrotods are way better at enslaving huge piles of chaff then Succubi; having an enslave that pops every round of combat will do that. That said, since Succubi charm as an assassination attempt (and since it's much harder to save against their charm), they are way better at enslaving specific high-value targets. Since, as a Demonologist, you've got a way of creating hostile high-value targets (summoning things without spending sacrifices), this is exactly what you want.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:49 pm

The latest patch adds quite a bit of modding capability. I'm looking forward to exploring my options once I take care of a few other projects. (also, charm-assassinating failed summons has been patched out of the game)

http://www.desura.com/games/conquest-of ... 6-released

http://www.desura.com/games/conquest-of ... ng-to-make

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:10 pm

The latest patch also nerfs Demonologists a lot, since you can't assassinate failed summons. This essentially means that there's no reason at all to summon things without a sacrifice.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:48 am

Endovior wrote:The latest patch also nerfs Demonologists a lot, since you can't assassinate failed summons. This essentially means that there's no reason at all to summon things without a sacrifice.

Gear. Also, Demonologists are completely okay even when they can't cheese their way into free army wrecking mages. They still have great summons, they still have good magic, and their troop options aren't even bad.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:17 am

Demonologists still have Hellbind Heart on the Infernal Magic list, and Major Demons still come with magic items that you can beat out of them, so conjuring things without a sacrifice is still something you can do for fun and profit. Bakemono can get Ubas who know Witch Magic, and that includes a bunch of Charm, so same thing really.

Still, I think the most important reason for the "no sacrifice" conjurations is so that you can save the game and check what the summoning options are right at the beginning of the game to get a feel for what the class is capable of.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri May 04, 2012 10:07 pm

Hey Frank, do you want any help making sprites for the new Count units?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 05, 2012 4:58 am

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Hey Frank, do you want any help making sprites for the new Count units?

It's basically on hold until the summoning system gets patched (or at least explained, right now it's so incoherent I can't tell if it works or not).

I've got icons stripped from Dominions 3, so I already have icons for:

Ghoul Guardian
Ranger
Ranger Captain
Initiate of the First Tier
Initiate of the Second Tier
Initiate of the Third Tier
Villain
Wolf Herd

That leaves just the Vampire Spawn, the Vampire Captain, and the Ghoul Captain. I think I'm honestly just going to use the Lord Guardian for the Ghoul Captain, and the Vampire Spawn could be the Dominions 3 "Vampire", but will probably actually just be some mage with their skin paled up to indicate that they are people in clothes who happen to be vampires. The Vampire Captain should be the Commander of Ulm with his skin lightened up.

So really, the sprite work on the Count is basically a slam dunk. It's just a matter of figuring out what the mod text is supposed to be to get the rituals to work.

-Username17