Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Ready For Release?

Add turn time limit setting to the multiplayer campaign and you have a quick match on your hands.

Also my problem isnt with the fast pace, its with how shallow the multiplayer campaign is.

Well, it's almost a "digital board/table-top game". You don't have to like it for what it is but I wouldn't call it shallow. It's simplistic, yes, but shallow is misleading imo.

My apologies, let me rephraise that sentence and take it apart.

1, The main part of this game, is the single player, which makes this a 4x game (or a game with 4x elements), and not a table top/digital board game.

2, The multiplayer campaign part, is extremely dumbed down compared to the single player part, so much so, that there's ALMOST no strategy involved whatsoever. Since all you have to do is capture territory, and spam units towards you enemy to win.

3, Since there is no need to wait turns to make a lot of units, you can create over 15-20 units in a single turn if you have enough territory, not to mention, i always finish every one of my matches with 150+ unused cards(in one it was over 250 unused cards). Also, no wait time for research means, that you can also spam techs in the enemy's face, completely overwhelming them(with enough territory).

So please tell me, which part of this isn't shallow?
To surmise:
-all you need to win is spam units
-you don't need to use cards if you have enough units
-you can spam research if you have enough territory which can make you op
-ALMOST no strategy involved, all you need to do is send your huge army against the enemy.
-I myself don't even feel the need to take charge of the armies myself, since even with a 50-60% chance i usually win.(autocombat)
-So far, i've only felt the need to play cards before a battle 4-8 times during my 7 playthroughs (against normal, hard and insane ai).

With enough territories you:
-get gold way too fast
-get research points way too fast
-get cards way too fast(most of it doesn't even get to be used)

--If you own over 70% of the map the enemy cant do anything, because you get gold and everything else at a much higher rate than the enemy, allowing you to build a LOT more units than he can, which allows you to overwhelm him.

Note: The ai performance update helped the game but it's still too easy, i just spam armies in its face because i can.

Note 2: I know that pvp is harder, but still, the campaign map phase almost doesn't require any strategy at all, due to the fact that you can spam stuff, and there's no trade, diplomacy and politics involved which improves the inner workings of your empire. Also, no defensive buildings, that would help create a perimeter, blocking clear access to your territories. Also you can go around with transports, capture the enemy capital and get all their territories, and by the time they can react, they dont have enough units in the vincinity destroying them completely.

Note 3: before the patch:
-against normal ai it took me about 34 mins to win.
-against hard ai about 54 mins.
After ai performance patch:
-against normal ai about 43 mins
-against hard ai a bit more than an hour
-against insane ai about 1 hour 30 mins

PS: The game is/looks/plays very good on the whole (watched single player vids), but the mp campaign needs a lot of improvements.

Let's just say that there are good story reasons why there is no trade, diplomacy, and politics in the single-player. They probably decided to not add in those just for multiplayer. 4X elements, but not a 4x game.

There are very good arguments that territory can snowball into victory with the gold and research advantages that new territory brings. You're not supposed to be able to research everything, but in actuality, it's trivial to do that.

I'm not sure how to fix that though. Maybe overall cutting the research points in half would help. Cutting the territory's research points back to the original 1 for every country would probably be too much, though, at the current prices of 20 and 40 per higher tier upgrade.

I kinda think that well, territory should be useful to own.

If the AI was better at snekaing around and invading your territories with transports that had actual threatening numbers of troops, then you would have to spread your forces thinner and couldn't defend everywhere. Right now the AI usually only hits your front lines, so you can leave huge areas of territory empty or with a token trooper at best.

No, just NO. Cutting research points won't solve anything. We already had prices raised across the board and all it did was impede air and naval units acquisition so everyone builds only hunters and tanks now. Great.

Of course land advantage will result in economy advantage, that's how it SHOULD be.

Real problem here is that AI doesn't actively expand and doesn't fortify its provinces. This needs fixing. The other "fixes" will just further delay advanced units and cut away tactical variance.

Then again, in RTS mode you can turn into Dragon demigod and annihilate armies so trying to balance AI without removing that is a little futile in my eyes.

Problem is, i leave a single trooper in every province, and since i have over 150+ cards full of mercenary cards, it doesnt matter if he sneaks around, coz i can just spam mercenary cards for that 1 trooper. So even if the ai sneaks around, that wont fix the shallow nature of the mp campaign. Before you ask, yes 80% of my territories have a tavern that gives merc cards usually, since those are the most useful ones.

Good points Ikkou. I was just suggesting it because apparently it was not Larian's intent that we be able to research everything, but it's pretty easy to do that through normal play. It's certainly not a good idea to try that in the main game at this point. For example, in the Little Rivellon campaign

The suggestion was not to increase gold prices, but research point prices. yes, the initial research takes longer to get, but the gold cost will be the same. In just a few turns on Little Rivellon, I can have a stable 20 RP/turn income, just from capturing a single enemy territory even before expanding greatly across the map.

I definitely agree that the strategy map AI needs to be more aggressive and use transports and naval units better to move good numbers of troops around and actually stage invasions. It uses transports really poorly now, either to shift units between its own territories and back, or sending mostly-empty transports with one Trooper/Grenadier unit. Occasionally it does launch semi-coordinated moves of two transports which have tougher units, but only to plop units on island territories.

I agree with you, improving the strategy map AI should be tried before changing the research costs... but because RP are so easy to get, that ALSO lowers tactical variance because after a certain point, everyone will have the same upgrades anyway.


Zolee, how can you have taverns on all territories? Buildings pricing works like this:
New Building Cost = cost per building * (number of buildings owned + 1)

A tavern costs 10 gold, so the first one is 10 * (0 + 1) = 10, the second one is 10 * (1 + 1) = 20, the 8th one is 10 * (7 + 1) = 80. I'd think that they get rather expensive after a while. If you're spending that much on buildings, then you must be neglecting your army. Oh... I see. You are.

I suppose that's actually a reasonable alternate strategy: substitute mercenary cards for strategy map units. You can only play 5 mercenaries, so that might be a balance issue worth looking into.

Stabbey, could you elaborate on this? "In just a few turns" with rapid hunter expansion you can own almost half of LR which I believe yields 20 RP/turn or so. Unless there's some mechanic that I missed which allows you to generate RP without land I find your claim far out. Or we have different definitions of "expanding greatly".

The reason why I'm so opposed to research rate decrease is how limited unit roster becomes for skirmishes for over half a campaign. On Center Mass you have skirmishes from turn 2 and they ALL are Trooper-Hunter-Armour combo because any sane player would rather have Breaching Fire over barely functional Devastator. God forbid you actually see siege units before it's time to take the capital.

Concerning "shallow" claim, no, multiplayer isn't shallow. Cards win the game. Cards can turn the tides dramatically and it's not just "2 extra starting dudes". AI never pressures so you never feel the need to use them. It IS a different game with thinking opponent.

Turn 1: Buy Hunter, Transport, play card to increase revenue (make sure you have at least 20 gold for next turn. Send 1 Trooper each to capture the two countries to the east of the player 1 starting location. (NOT a Trooper to the west) Send all but 1 or 2 Troopers North.


Turn 2: Build Academy and Parliament* on the eastern countries. Send Hunter through two western countries, Trooper in Transport to get island. Spread the troops you sent north through the two northern countries.

(* Building the Parliament and Academy early lets you have 2 of each building for the cost of just 1. If you capture and try to build later, it will cost you twice as much.)


Turn 3: Invade West Enquetel, capture it and next turn you will have a steady income 20 research points with relatively little risk, if you capture W. Enquetel early enough before the enemy can build up forces.

(I like to wait at least one more turn myself, if I'm lucky the enemy will build a war factory there so I can capture it for free).

After that, you own 10 countries to NW AI's 9, NE's 9, and SE AI's 8, with 2 countries up for grabs still. Not really much more than anyone else, and you have 20 Research points a turn. If I had spent all my RP by turn 3, I can still buy Juggernauts on turn 5.

You can try rapid Hunter expansion on LR, but it's not likely to be faster, there will be a lot more battles, and you risk overextending yourself.

I think there should be a decent tech tree in the game.....some units should be researched from the beginning...

Only 80 gold? lol i usually end matches with 300+ unused gold or more due to the fact that you get the enemy's army if you capture their main territory and i dont have to build any more soldiers by that point, because my army is already so large, the ai cant do anything about it. As i've said. too much gold, too many research points, too many cards. And i'm not neglecting my army, as i've said i keep spamming units every turn and build a tavern or 2 as well if there is gold remaining. The amount of gold you get is insane. Especially when you own half the map. Also 80% isnt all of my territory. I do keep prebuilt buildings just cause im lazy, and i do build about 3 goldmines or so.

2 days to go!!

Agreed. I don't mind the snowball effect but if the AI is only putting up a token resistance then it's way too easy. I think rather than some "fix" the AI seems to just need a serious tweak to really build up and fortify areas. It might be just my imagination or me getting better but did the AI seem better in earlier betas? As of right now the MP campaign against AI's is way too easy regardless of difficulty.

As for Stabbeys comments about transport invasion I halfway agree. At least in my game in previous betas (not this one) the AI launched a fair bit of naval invasions. They were small but they served their purposes of making me spread thin with 2-4 units in every territory otherwise that 2 trooper + transport group could actually break through. The problem is they don't seem to exist anymore (2 full campaigns and aside from capturing the neutral islands there was no naval actions). I don't think every invasion needs to be like D-Day and I don't really like that idea as it would take too many units off the land fronts but some kind of invasions back would be nice. That said chapter 2 of the main campaign seems much more 'islandy' so hopefully the AI will be able to launch huge assaults then.



I disagree. The RTS AI is getting fairly good and can defeat a player with a dragon now. The player will still usually win but if you go in with stacked odds the dragon can't completely turn the tides. It does give the player an advantage, but not a huge one.

To prove my point, here is a picture:
Medium ai on default map with default settings.
spammed units since the start, i have loads of taverns, 300+ gold, and over 83 unused cards(for some reason it only shows 9.)

Took 25 turns, i was already overwhelming it on turn 10 with my huge army. The match took a total of 31 mins(due to toilet break in the middle). Only used merc cards 100%, nothing else, and only in 4 instances. Once i used 1, than 3 than 2 and on the last battle i used 5. There is still at least 4 merc cards in my inventory (didn't check saw 4 might have been more), along with 79 other unused cards. What you can see on the map are 47 devastators in total, and some single units of troopers. in the last fight, for its main base, i lost a total of 7 armor and 1 devastator(this being the turn afterwards). The mp campaign is shallow. I even went completely around capturing every single territory to try and draw out the match. And it still only lasted 25 turns...

No strategies used whatsoever by the way, just throwing the soldiers out there.



ohh look i didn't even notice that i had 925 rps lol

I'm not disputing that the strategy map AI could stand improvement.

But clearly you need to bump the difficulty and number of enemies up. No point on playing on medium against 1 guy when you've got more skills, right?

In Little Rivellon with 2 insane AI against and 1 normal AI ally I can just build a transport, carry 5 grenadiers to the nearest capitol (while doing as little as possible to impede that enemy's progress) and take it with some support from cards. I take it on turn 4, I get the rest at the beginning of turn 6, and since the scattered forces turn to my side I have more units than I would have had without throwing my 5 grenadiers into battle.

Those campaigns tend to end in victory around turn 11 and I could always autoresolve all the way.

Now, autoresolve is more sensible, and it has become even easier, because the AI doesn't defend anything with significant (enough) force. Yeah, capitol has loads, but I attack with 6 units + mercs. It needs loads + loads. Or he needs to intercept that ship at sea. Use his mobility (especially when he acts before me) to stall and establish a stronger defense, maybe.

I wonder what would happen if the AI went at my throat with the same fervour.

I'd be perfectly happy with all conquered units and countries turning neutral, by the way. It would make the rest of the game less of a given. You'd actually have to take the time to seize control of territories, and the other enemy may be able to claim some of it, and salvage some forces. You still eliminated an enemy that could participate in battles.

Maybe that could be an option, at least, like the RTS recruit costs, so that you don't instantly double your empire on turn 6.

Yeah, having the remaining countries turn neutral would probably help. That would turn into a massive advantage for one country into more of a land grab, and would make a slow advance more appealing than a single surgical strike.

What im trying to demonstrate, is that it doesnt take anything else but mercenary cards, and spamming units to win(because you can, since u get a LOT of gold, cards, tech rp each turn, and because thats all the mp campaign is. Send units and thats all, no diplomacy, no politics, nothing. Just spam units and use merc cards.), which makes the whole mp campaign shallow. This isn't about how the ai reacts.

This is also the case in pvp. Against a large army, most cards become useless, except for merc cards. And all you have to do, is spam units and send it against your opponent.

Now if you gained gold a lot more slowly at first, and if you could forge alliances, use politics to improve the inner workings of your empire, like gold gain, etc., add turn time to research and units, that would make the whole mp campaign a whole lot better. Because than,you'd actually have to think which techs u want or which units to make or where to send them. As it is, it's nothing but a spamfest of unit making, building ,and card aquiring. The person who spams the larger army, has the more territory wins.

Because they removed these things from mp campaign, it made it really unbalanced.

I haven't really noticed a big difference in the different levels of the strat map AI. A Medium strat AI seems to fight the same as a hard AI. And while Insane might be better I can't go there as I'm not that good at the RTS (hard is my max there). If the AI does change something maybe they should uncouple the strat/RTS AI so you could try insane strat AI/Medium RTS AI.

You're playing a 4 player-sized strategy map with 2 players. That gives you a lot more freedom to expand wildly and get huge swathes of territory without opposition. Of course you're getting too much money and RP. If you play the 4-player map with 4 players, your income is a lot slower and it gets harder. Like I said, try playing the 4 player map with 4 players.


Look, please stop asking for alliances and trade. As much as you wish it, this game is not a 4X, it was not marketed as a 4X, and it was not designed to have a 4X depth of politics. Those were not removed from the multiplayer, they were never in single-player. *waves hand* This is not the 4X you are looking for. [/ jedi]


You are quite right that the multiplayer could have more depth. The Single-player has a "Custom Campaign" which has you pick a Dragon, Pick a Princess, and pick a campaign map, and dumps you in. It has basically all the politics and decisions of the single-player in it. It's not unreasonable to think that Larian could add a timer for the on-ship sections. That could be a way to adapt it for multiplayer. I am just talking out my butt here, I have no idea how feasible an idea it actually is, but on the surface it seems workable.


I don't agree that gold needs to be gained slower. Try the 4-player map with 4 players and see.

The game could be much different if time was added to research costs. Back in February, it was seen in those videos, but it seems like that was taken out as the beta was starting. That would definitely slow the pace of research if things took multiple turns. Whether that would be good or bad, I couldn't say.


... Of course the person with the largest army and most territory wins. Do you have another alternative in mind?