Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta The giant blob of death

So I've been playing around with the Beta almost since it went open (beta).
After some time of getting used to it and a few patches I managed to do well enough in the game.

There's some thing I noticed since around patch 1.0.124 or so, though:
In an evenly matched game, it often happens that I hold some chokepoint, usually without much effort.
Since I'm not strong enough for a direct attack yet, I build up my army, defending against more or less constant but weak attacks from the enemy AI.
Then suddenly, the enemy attacks with a huge (really huge) blob of units (mostly light infantry).
The thing is, there doesn't seem to be anything I can do at that point.
AI produces faster, kills my troops faster and, most importantly, manages to keep a constant stream of units up - the map just shows a steady colored line from the AI base to the frontline. I might be able to defend for a while, as the enemy units are rather weak, but there is strength in numbers after all...

What I don't understand is how this can happen so suddenly and how the AI manages to sustain it. The AI has roughly the same amount of resources like I do.
It's as if a chaotic or meta-stable system suddenly tips over, i.e. all seems fine, then suddenly all hell breaks loose.

Any ideas?

I think it's pretty "ok" : enemy create a whole bunch of units pretty quickly as they are cheap and small, while you build centers etc... which cost recruits.

Furthermore, you have the Dragon, they don't. It may be a balancing stuff (and, burning troopers is awesome)

Well, they have to build the same buildings, otherwise they couldn't create any troops in the first place.
Plus, a computer is much better at microing large amounts of units than a human player, which counts as a advantage for the AI, I think.

The most recent beta adds much better control of units when in dragon form, and you no longer have to despawn to build more (Changelist for version 1.0.133.9727).

I mean, they DON'T have a dragon. they must compense with something ...

I agree, it's impossible for average players (like me) to win, the A.I. is too good to beat.
For sure there's hard core players who'll tell us what to do but I don't think that anyone should need advices to play a game on the lowest difficulty level.

Sure, I understand that they have to compensate for the missing dragon.

I just wonder exactly what's going wrong there and why it happens so fast.
I hold more ressource centers than the enemy and roughly the same amount of factories.
All seems ok. I build up my army for the attack on the enemies base.
Then suddenly the AI fields a huge blob of weak infantry units and through constant supply manages to overwhelm me quickly.

Where do they get the ressources for that, when I'm building almost constantly as well and don't manage to field as many units that quickly? (Medium AI by the way)

If the reason for me not keeping up is that the stronger units like hunters or tanks need more ressources and support, then maybe the costs and/or build times should be adjusted some more, since the AI can just overwhelm me with lots of weak units, i.e. they are more cost-efficient than stronger units?


Edit:
B4Marc, I wouldn't call myself a hardcore player and still manage to win often enough (not always though). The game has a certain learning curve and once you pick up some general ideas, it is possible to win, as long as you don't let your guard down too long.
However, the enemy can produce VERY fast, and this can tip the battel too fast sometimes, I think.

Infantry is relatively cheap, so if the AI has roughly the same income as you, they're just being bad at army composition.
You have at least 3 ways to deal with infantry spam: Warlock's rain of fire, devastators, zeppelin's mustard gas. In other words, splash damage. Infantry doesn't stand much of a chance against these, particularly in front of devastators.

Ok, but that still means that I have to have researched those techs fast.
Well, it might be that it won't be a problem in the Single Player campaign, as I guess that research will be handled a bit different there, and most importantly, the pacing.

Still it's strange that the AI being bad at unit composition leads to the AI using a tactic that is hard to counter - at least early on.

I will play some more and try to get more AoE abilities sooner, hoping that it will counter the blob of death.
Thanks for the tip!

Early in the game, hunters are your top anti-infantry unit. Facing a lot more grenadiers than troopers? Then troopers help too.

It's a learning curve, but I'm really not an hardcore player and can win...

Even if the first trial was just a mess for me.

Giant blob of death eats hunters for breakfast...

By the time that blob had time to grow as big as you suggest, I wager that the army facing said blob had the time to get some shamans with paralysis. Giant blob is starting to weep now.

Sweet!

Well, in campaign mode (what I usually play), I need to research it before. Once the RTS starts, I'm stuck with what I have (which is how it should be, imho).
But the paralyze ability has been moved up recently, making it a bit harder to acquire - and honestly, if I have to direct my whole research towards countering one specific quirk of the current RTS-AI, I still think it might be better to reduce the possibility of the AI to do something like that.

What difficulty AI are you thinking of, if I may ask?
Maybe I'm being too dismissive of something I have yet to have a problem with.
Also, when you say giant blob of (small) units, I think of mass troopers and grenadiers. Are you perchance thinking of something different?

I'm playing on medium since the latest patch, and "default_AI" before.
I don't fully understand what's happening myself, as it's not happening everytime.
Most RTS games I manage to do good enough to win without many problems.

But sometimes, while the initial match goes on as usual - me capturing some build points and building recruiting centers and production buildings and occupying choke-points - at some point the AI seems to be able to quite quickly muster a very large army of small units (mostly troopers, some shamans and bazookas, but also some hunters) and overwhelms me with it.
Now, in principle I should have the same or even more ressources, since I usually hold at least 50% of the map, but when it starts, I can't keep production up the same way as the AI does.
It might be that countering the blob of death is easy with the right tactics and abilities (which is also why I ask), but it seems that esp. in the early game you will likely not have the units/abilities to counter the blob so easily.

Now, I'm not saying that the AI is cheating or that there is some bug, but seeing that the AI seems to have NO problem constantly producing a ton of infantry, while I'm out of ressources fast, one could get the impression.
Hm, I will try to gather some more info...

Have you paid attention to whether the AI plays any cards before the battle, i.e., a card reducing the costs for units produced during RTS? If, for example, the grendariers production costs the AI 4 recruits less, then it would be able to produce much more units than you although you have the same number of recruits.

Hm, I didn't notice such cards. He did play a few cards that gave him a couple of free units, but that just affects the initial units, and one that reduced the movement of one of my unit types.
That certainly aggravated the problem, but it can't be the whole issue.
Of course, if such cards exist and I didn't notice them, it might be the case, yes.
Then I think they should be tweaked a bit, however.

Medium is around where I've located myself with the now mostly working AI too.

1 v 1'ing on some of these 2 v 2 maps can make map control quite the hassle, yes. In fact, it's too much of a hassle for me, and I don't 1 v 1 any more. So everything I've said does run into the wall of actually being able to position your army (or armies, due to map control requiring some splitting) in a spot that can take advantage of any abilities you own.

For instance, I've once demolished an enemy blob with the armor's shock wave, but it was the Dragon's Pass map, where the main armies naturally meet along the Z.

In theory, and in practice when you manage to outmaneuver your opponent, mass damage weapons are natural anti-blob measures. Juggernauts, Devastators, Shaman paralyze, Zeppelin mustard gas. These are, as you've noted, more late-game techniques. Early game, it kind of comes down to how you manage your armies and how you micromanage fights, as you struggle to achieve a high kill-to-loss ratio.
As you've noted, the AI builds as it fights, something only a really skilled human can do right. You've also got to survive at least one onslaught before you can even bring in your dragon, which requires its own research or cards to be useful.

omg I don't have to DESPAWN to build more?! I feel like they took my earlier suggestion back in 1.0.124 somewhere and said "YES, HERES WHAT ELSE WE CAN DO TOO!"
Soon as I have breakfast I must test this! ^,^
Two favorite companies now are Blizzard, and Larian :3

Ok, I had the GBOD happen two times more.
It seems to occur when population is starting to run out.
At that point the AI starts spamming units like crazy, moving from first mixed units (or whatever he still has, I guess) to bazookas to troopers, which he will keep on producing non-stop in all his factories until he finally runs out of ressources - then he capitulates, if you manage to survive.

Thanks to AOE effect from bazookas and the priest's paralyze ability, which I had researched asap, I was able to hold the AI off this time, although I had to fall back to my fortified base in the second match.

It's doable, but somehow the whole loss screen after the battle seems a bit pointless if you consider that about 10-20x as many units as originally on the campaign map (even taking conversion into account) have been thrown into the battle...

I guess I would still prefer less, more expensive units, but I guess I'm pretty alone there.

Less, more expensive units could be ok. In my opinion either way works. My personal preference is for the build pace to remain the same but have units on the campaign map represent more in the RTS map. As it is if you assault an area with 5 armors that is not a huge force, but it's decent sized. Yet when you enter the RTS map you have... 5 armors (which is not really that powerful of a force at all). By the time you reach the first capture point that the enemy is near the enemy could create a giant blob of grenadiers and stomp all over your starting units.

I think the representation of units on the campaign map should be around double or even triple in the RTS what they already are. That way you can counter enemy blobs by smart starting forces on the campaign map. Also that means that when you enter the map with a decent force you actually start out with an army instead of a small team of units. That could make it so that the loss screen isnt pointless as the battles will be quicker and more emphasis is placed on the starting units (using built units as reinforcements to your main starting force). Then when your opponent builds a GBOD you can just counter it with a larger starting force. That wont stop drag out fights when the sides are even (which should cause lots of casualties anyway) but then in early game you can start out with some blobs of your own.

The current build does favor GBOD in the game (at least until a fair bit of research is done) as since starting forces are usually so tiny that you can simply outproduce the enemy and easily turn fights around. There are some counters though. If you can field armors en masse short sharp stick makes a mess of trooper blobs. Bomber Balloons are also nasty! I found chemical warfare grenadiers couples with a dragon with acid breath can easily stomp most swarms. Really a good dragon with acid breath can devastate entire trooper blobs by himself in one pass. Grenadier blobs are much trickier though. Against those maybe counter with your own trooper blobs or devastators in siege mode.

If you are struggling in early game against blobs (before alot of that research is done) then you should just make your own blobs. Early game before much research is done is pretty blobby regardless. I imagine because blobs are easier to work with so new players can focus on learning the game without having to make smart army composition and knowing what counters what. That comes later once players get a grasp of the basic system. I like it that way personally. Much more friendly to new players then giving them a ton of counters and special abilities to deal with (which is still in my opinion too hard to effectively manage without autocast with more than one fight going at the same time, even after you've learned the system. I know some disagree with me but that's just my personal opinion).

I'm in favor of at least trying it in a patch and seeing what people think about it. Just raise recruit costs 30% across the board and see what happens. If people hate it just revert.

Sure, we could try that. The obvious effect would be to greatly emphasize the importance of starting units. The obvious potential issue is that would make it too easy to roll over your opponent if you have more units, meaning a lot more auto-resolves because no one wants to bother playing an RTS match they're basically guaranteed to lose.

Yeah, but would that be so bad? In fact I think it is how it should be.
If you attack with much greater numbers, you should win quite easily.
No problem there, we should still get enough "even" fights, so that you wouldn't be tempted just to use autoresolve all the time (which usually gives me better and more sensible results than playing myself, btw.)

Agreed. The player should play the even fights to tip the scales with the dragon while the rest of the fights should be determined by autoresolve. This encourages smart play in the campaign and prevents players from just using the dragon to win 1 fight a turn (that is your choice regardless of starting units).

The populations were dropped a couple betas ago, which effectively does make units more expensive.

It's kind of an odd thing the relationship between the campaign map units and the same units in RTS gameplay. They hold much greater significance in campaign mode but little in RTS mode considering how easily they die.

Part of the problem right now is the maps. Most conflicts are 1vs1 on a 4 player map. Not a problem on an individual basis but it prevents small scale conflicts. It seems silly when you move in 5 troopers against an enemies 3 grenadiers on the campaign map, that the battle could potentially turn in to a full on war with devastators, balloons, ironclads, and imps.

Obviously it's meant to be representative but I think the map should scale based on the size of the initial conflict to some degree. Excluding capitals or heavily fortified map locations.

So if you are attacking with that trooper vs grenadier example. Since that's a relatively small conflict that should bear out in the RTS mode just as it did the campaign mode. It should throw you on a smaller map with less resource points and building sites. If you bring the house or a truck load of card support then the game selects a larger map with more sites.

As the game goes on those larger battles will be more prevalent. Just tie it to the cost of the troops initiating conflict. 2-20 gold worth of units, very small map few points. 21-50, medium. 51+ large. Or something to that effect.

Just an idea anyway.



Only over the long haul if I understand how population works. It doesn't affect opportunity cost in terms of how quickly you build more advanced troops or how quickly you can get huge armies on the field.

In a sense, but even if you take a 2000 pop province and split it in half (1000 pop per side) that's still a ton of troops! I do really like the pop lowering though as it means shorter more focused game play (no 45 minute long slugfests like when you have huge pop provinces).

I'm not a fan of a global increase in production (it is beta so maybe larian can try it if they so desire, but I personally don't like it). I still think more troops per 'counter' in the TBS map is the way to go for cutting back on spam as it's harder to counter a big army that's already there with spam. I've expressed my points on the fine details of that topic plenty so I wont bore everyone by repeating them again.

Yes, I feel the same. It's an odd discrepancy, somehow.

In campagin mode, every unit seems important and somewhat expensive, then you switch to RTS and suddenly you build 10 times or more of what you brought with you into the battle. Why is it so difficult to build them in the campaign then?
Unless you bring much much more units than the enemy, you have to build a base, build more units and only then you can attack.
Obviously, it's possible to explain it away, but it's a bit odd.

Of course, it might be that in the SP campaign we will see much more 1vs1 maps with less resources, with potentially smaller, slower battles as a result, making the initial units matter much more.
We will find out, I guess.

It's an easy enough thing to try out. The original reasoning behind the lower multipliers between campaign & RTS was that we wanted to give every player a chance of making a difference through skill-based play. The higher the multiplier, the more that goes away, but indeed, I can see the case for it.

I think we might be best off attaching a slider to this one though, because I'm sure not everybody will want to be chance less in battle, especially the players who are participating without any starting units in 4 player matches.

As far as pure skill based RTS gameplay, I agree with your original intent. It's better with lower multipliers if that is your goal.

Personally I find the strategy and campaign map side more interesting so that's why I prefer those decisions to have a greater impact.

In a purely PVP environment the lower multipliers makes sense. In single player campaign against AI's though I would prefer more significance on the campaign map and cards.

I just had a thought:

How about making units that are built on the campaign map elite versions of their base unit type for the purpose of RTS battles? By elite troops I mean higher stats overall for those starting units.

It was just a sudden thought, so I'm not sure how good an idea it is.

I can see you reason behind it.
Maybe a slider would - as long as it doesn't take to much time implementing and balancing it - be a good solution. Or even just a binary toggle between the current iteration of the RTS combat, and another one that favors the "campaign units" a bit more.
E.g. by increasing build times and cost across the board, increasing the multipliers that decide how many initial units you have and lowering the total number of ressource points a bit.
This should slow down the RTS somewhat, make initial troops much more important and decrease the discrepancy between campaign and map unit numbers.
The downside will be indeed that even with good skills it will be much harder to turn a very uneven battle (but again I might argue that this is how it should be).

A totally different approach (and this is just purely hypothetical) might be that you don't actually build new units in the RTS part.
The RTS part would consist of deploying your units and capturing building sites which can be used to build defensive structures (turrets) and repair/healing facilities, as well as buildings that provide a boost to your units.
Each unit on the map gets you a squad in the RTS part and recruits can be used to replace units in a squad - if the entire squad is gone then you lose that unit completely. The supply cap could either be removed or apply to defensive buildings instead.
Potential problem there: If you screw up an attack, without getting new units, you can't recover from it.
And further, if you don't bring certain units to the battle (say shamans), you can't use them and will have to rely on immobile structures to fill in the gaps (like healing).

Man, I don't envy you guys for having to make all these decisions.
It's impossible to please everyone...

I think that'd only make RTS battles more redundant as your better units would just roll over all the regular ones...
But I like the idea of a veterancy system. Perhaps the more battles your units on your campaign maps participate in, they gain increased veterancy and their stats are improved that way?

I also agree that the starting campaign-map units should have much more importance during the RTS battle and that spamming of units should be significantly reduced. Otherwise it is just pointless to bye units on the campaign map and to try to build an army there.

If you are facing a battle with a 90/10 percent chance against you, then it should not be easy to turn the tide. You should loose 9 battles out of 10 - and win just 1 battle only if you are very very good or if your opponent makes a blunder. I think this is quite fair. It is not like giant armies are built on the campaign map during one single turn. It usually takes more turns to create a well-balanced army and to invade a country. If you cannot anticipate what your enemy is planning on the campaign map and fail to reinforce your own army - well, then it's your own fault and you should not complain about consequences during the ensuing battle.

We're going to give you a chance to try this out over the weekend - we just need sort out a problem with the transporters but if that works, next beta should include a higher conversion of strategy map units to RTS units.

Looking forward to experimenting with the new version, with whatever slider set to "loads of extra new units".



I think that not being able to build new units in RTS mode would be too crippling to the gameplay to be worth adding, for the downsides you pointed out.

Yes, I'm also looking forward to testing it.

Regarding my GBOD problems, since my last game I wonder if maybe troopers should be nerfed a little bit.
They are very cheap, yet they can be quite deadly in large numbers (unless you have some units with strong AoE damage, devastators come in handy).
Probably reduce the damage they do to vehicles (hunters, tanks, etc.) a bit?
I had one tank, 3 bazookas and 1 priest lose against a group of ~6 troopers, somehow I'd expect them to be stronger against troopers (although the troopers might have had an advantage since the priest and one bazooka arrived a few seconds late)...