Is Cracks Call too powerful?

[mxb2001]

I've never felt that after I got CC I was on easy street and I could just coast to victory. It's just another tool. Useful at times, not at others.

Likewise I've never given up and surrendered because the AI got CC and used it on me. I'd just adapt and find another way.

So you are totally OK with losing a unit cost 2000 to research, 700 mana to cast and 15 to upkeep (Behemoth), by a spell costing 20 mana, without a resistance roll or chance to resurrect in any way?

Nope. I fume and rant and rave about it. : ) Then I save the game and leave it for a few weeks until I've calmed down. All part of the fun.

[rgp151]

Personally no, mainly because Nature struggles anyway. If Nature were a dominant school then yeah, but Nature needs all the help it can get. If CC were weaker Nature would really have problems.

[rgp151]

Well I don't know, now I'm maybe changing my mind on this. I've been playing at Extreme and Impossible on 1.5 and Cracks Call pretty much breaks those games, because the enemy AIs just make so many stacks and so many units and they just keep bombarding you with waves of attacks, adn it doesn't even matter what they send at you, all they have to do is engage in combat and then cast CC a couple of times, and they can just eventually eliminate any stacks you have with CC alone.

I think that in the hands of a player CC seems pretty fine and if it were a multiplayer game playing player vs player it would be one thing, but when the AI gets basically unlimited resources your only hope is to try and build up a few powerful units that can withstand their hoards, and CC just makes that impossible. You can't possibly out produce the AI on higher levels, so you have to rely on heroes and stuff like having a powerful unit in each garrison that you can rely on, like maybe a Paladin you can put Invulnerability on or something so that when they send in stack after stack of Stag Beetles you have some kind of chance. But when they AI can just hit you with stack after stack every single turn and they can cast CC 5 or 6 times per battle, even if you have a garrison full of Paladins, they will wear it down with CC along pretty fast, even if you can defeat every unit they have.

So yeah, I think that on reasonable levels of play, when CC is something the AI can cast 1 or 2 times per battle and you only have to face it a few times, then its one thing, but in some games it basically makes the game unplayable because they have so many stacks they can just keep engaging and keep casting CC over and over and eventually they will wipe everything out with it, even if they are just throwing spearmen at you.

At the very least it shouldn't prevent Raise Dead and Resurrection.

[rgp151]

I think a better way to do it would be to have Cracks Call be something like a 50% chance to totally immobilize a unit such that it does not counter attack, but it still gets its defensive rolls. It still would have no resistance roll and would still be quite powerful, allowing you to full attack down a unit with impunity, but it wouldn't just be total and instant death to anything. And the opposing side would still be capable of potentially rescuing the unit by winning the battle. It still need to be 50% so you can't just easily immobilize a moderate stack by casting it over and over.

[rgp151]

Yeah, the game I'm playing now has essentially become unplayable due to Cracks Call. The main problem I guess is that higher difficulty levels essentially force you into a situation where you will have to rely on a smaller number of powerful units vs the opponent's larger hordes of weaker units. You have to be able to efficiently produce a force that is capable of standing up to waves of battles. You aren't going to be able to out-produce the AI on higher levels. But Cracks Call really disrupts the ability to combat large number of units with a smaller number of more powerful units.

This ultimately ends up making it so Sorcery, and to a lesser extent Death, are just about the only schools that can be reliably used on Extreme and Impossible simply because of Cracks Call alone. Without Wraithform or Invisibility/Counter Magic you just can't withstand the endless castings of Cracks Call that wizards are capable of on higher levels.

In my current game, Sss'Ra has a single Nature book, along with Chaos and Life. He's Klackon. I took out two wizards relatively early, including the Myrran wizard, who broke through close to my capital. It's still pretty early in the game. I captured a poor High Men town very early in the game and made a Settler with it after producing a Forrester's Guild. I put the Settler on a place with Mithril, Iron and 2 Wild Game. So its growing quickly, but I just now completed a Parthenon with it, and that with a lot of rush buying to get there quickly. So the game is by no means at an advanced stage. I'm still researching Uncommon spells. But Sss'Ra has many large Klackon cities pumping out Stag Beetles and his territory is covered in stacks of units. I got to his capital with a stack of 4 powerful heroes, but they have no chance against him purely due to Crack's Call. His capital has 3 caster heroes with Heroism on them, and he also is Warlord. He's got the Witch, the Wind Mage, and the Chaos wizard. So on turn one of teh attack he always casts Crack's Call 4 times. Then he's able to cast Crack's Call 4 times per turn forth next 4 turns. Oh, also my heroes are Shuri, Serena, and 2 melee heroes. So I can't snipe them with a bow either.

I'm trying to now get a stack of normal units I can attack with, but Stag Beetles keep attacking my towns and Crack Calling the defenders into oblivion, so it seems to be a losing proposition, but its 100% just due to Cracks Call.

[Slingers]

I think a better way to do it would be to have Cracks Call be something like a 50% chance to totally immobilize a unit such that it does not counter attack, but it still gets its defensive rolls. It still would have no resistance roll and would still be quite powerful, allowing you to full attack down a unit with impunity, but it wouldn't just be total and instant death to anything. And the opposing side would still be capable of potentially rescuing the unit by winning the battle. It still need to be 50% so you can't just easily immobilize a moderate stack by casting it over and over.

This is the current solution in Caster of Magic for Windows:
"Any non-flying, corporeal creature standing over the newly created fissure has a 25% chance of falling inside, becoming irrecoverably destroyed unless their base type is a hero or fantastic unit in which case they take 21 irrecoverable damage instead. If there is a wall on the tile, it is destroyed.
Units affected by this spell become Buried for the rest of the combat: they are unable to move or attack, take irrecoverable damage from all attacks and are irrecoverably destroyed when their side does not win the battle."

And in the Warlord MOD:
"Cracks Call" now calculates damage and burying chance differently and gives additional penalties to buried units. It now calculates chance to bury unit at 4% * unit armor chance, capped at 75%. A unit that is buried suffers -20% to defend in this mod. Burying a high-armor unit, rather than chance at damage, is more reliable and helps with defensive stalling. Damage is less dangerous in this mod, dealing 4 rolls of 25% chance at dealing 4 points of damage each (if unit is buried, two additional rolls take place)"

[rgp151]

I guess the Warlord mod seems more appropriate. I like the idea better of Crack's Call not doing any damage itself, but rather it immobilizing the unit. This makes it a sort of precursor to Entangle. Again, doing unavoidable damage based on chance just makes it too tempting to reload. I favor making the spell more consistent, like 50/50, but not to do damage. Doom Bolt is a good example. It only does 10 damage, it costs more mana to cast and its Rare. But it always works and you can defend against it with Magic Immunity.

For Crack's Call to be simply Uncommon, you can't avoid it with Magic Immunity, and it does 100% damage that you cannot even resurrect from, is highly inconsistent. To try and make-up for this by the fact that Cracks Call doesn't work 10% of the time only makes matter worse because it just leads to more reloading. If it works 100% of the time then its simply legit and is what it is, but when you start a battle and your Super-Hero get's Cracks Called on turn 1 you immediately feel slighted because you think, "Hey it shouldn't have worked!" Or when you are casting it and you cast it 4 times and it never works you feel the same way. So I say, make the spell more consistent and less powerful.

As it is, its far more powerful than Doom Bolt, just less consistent. But again, that lower consistency is meaningless at higher levels of difficulty when the AI can cast it almost endlessly. The AI WILL eventually be able to eliminate all your units with it. The only real way to avoid it is stuff like Mass Invisibility, etc.

[rgp151]

BTW, I did finally defeat the game using a prescribed approach, it was just painful enduring the attacks on towns until I could get the appropriate stack to his capital. I did a few reloads, but allowed a few unit deletions to happen. I was Life + Nature, with Endurance and Pathfinding. I had also popped Alter of Battle from an encounter. I managed to get a stack of Ultra Elite Berserkers and Paladins to his capital which put an end to him and was able to keep harassing him after that. I just had to keep my heroes away from his units at all times so it wouldn't jump them and then CC them. Still, I think CC, given that its uncommon and so difficult to avoid, should just disable teh target, not kill it.

[mxb2001]

The problem with extreme difficulty levels is that they by their very nature distort and break the game. Since the AI can't play smarter it just gets unrealistic levels of production which totally warp the game. The problem at high difficulty with Cracks Call isn't the spell. It's the twisted nature of the diff. level.