Is magic balanced enough to beat an ultra tech and normal magic?
Normally, the CPU seems to enjoy crowding into one location which is a sort of super base, but in a recent battle of mine, I counted five bases (by base, I mean an area that is isolated with its own castle and resources). It was just a normal CPU ultra tech, in a three way battle which also had another magic faction which was whiped out very early. Playing as magic, it took me two and a half hours to defeat the monstous tech. Magic had a special feature to it though, for 100 gold, the energy source would produce 15 energy (by producing and invisible, spaceless unit). Early on, after the first magic faction fell, I infiltrated their base, surprised it was empty, so I set up another base of my own there, and made another mage tower. Then I started producing units in both bases, making a defence of battlemages, archmages, and golems in each base. However, when the ultra-tech attacked me, I ended up losing the first base, and moved all my units to the second base.
Then I sent some units to the center to claim the gold (this was the swamp of sorrow map, after all), but to my dismay, they were decimated by a large enemy attack force, which proceeded to attack me afterwards. Barely surviving that, I had to spend some time to rebuild. After spending a long time rebuilding and producing, I attacked the enemy with an army of 16 dragons and 8 archmages. I whiped out the central base losing only a few dragons, and proceeded onward north to the main base. Once there, I was faced with the challenge of a huge base that had two air ballistas, making my dragons weaker. Once I defeated the base, I noticed the foe walking away so I assumed there was yet another base. Following the dirrection in which the workers were moving in, I encountered another large base, which had quite a few air ballistas and defense towers. After attacking them for a few moments, I retreated to build up another force to take out the pesky air ballistas and defense towers.
Back at my base, I quickly turned 16 initiates, some which were idle and other which were gathering resources, into battlemages and quickly sent them to the base I was attacking. While I was attacking the air ballistas and defense towers that base, a swarm of horsemen and ornithopters (I'd say about 25+) attacked me, whiping out my entire attack force.
By this point, my entire base was out of gold. Having little resources and no attacking units other than a few golems, I moved all my remaining initiates to the center and built a mage tower. Since the center of Swamp of Sorrow has three big plumes of gold, I sent a large number of initiates to mine from each one. After I started to pile up the gold, I made another mage tower and had the two mage towers pump out initiates to a set spot. Once I had 16, I morphed them into battlemages, numbered them, and moved them aside. A little while later I morphed all 16 of those battlemages into archmages. Now I made another 16 initiates, which wasn't hard, since I had so much gold, and morphed them into battlemages. I also numbered them, and then sent both the battlemages and the archmages to attack the nearest base, which was still flooded with a large number of horsemen and ornithopter. I managed to kill the horsemen and ornithopter, as well as destroy most of the farms and defense towers before that force was wiped out by yet another wave of horsemen and ornithopters, as well as archers, battle machines, and catipults.
Now frustrated, I sent another wave of 16 battlemages at the now weakening foe, which destroyed that base. Advancing on, I destroyed the rest of the bases, aiming for the farms, though eventually those battlemages were killed too. Once all the farms were destroyed, and most of the animals with them, I managed to destroy the last castle, which stopped the enemies unit production. By the time I had another force of 16 battlemages, the foe was almost completely dead from hunger, and I easily attacked and destroyed the last few buildings without too much trouble. I never made as many units as the foe, nor did I harvest as many resources, but yet I won, and with magic too! Yes, this was a truely spectacular battle, and it is probably good proof that the AI is very difficult and cunning, as well as that magic can be balanced with just the upgrade of the ability to produce energy from the energy source and have the initiate harvest gold at the same amount as tech can. Those are the only changes that I had on my magic faction.
Although I wonder how I couldn't defeat the enemy with the first attack of 16 dragons and 8 archmages? Normally that would have crushed the foe, but in this case, it seemed to do little. Oh well, it was a very fun (and difficult) battle!
Here's the scoring:
[attachment=0:9itrbqac]magic-vs-tech(ultra).jpg[/attachment:9itrbqac]
I'm not sure how it adds up though. I looked at the source, and I know how the scoring works, but how did player 3 suffer 102 deaths when they only produced 88 units? And I thought I had killed pretty much every one of the ultra-tech's units, so why is the death count much lower than its units produced? Is deaths from hunger counted? Oh, and maybe the deaths should subtract something from the score, for I know they don't. Maybe we should have a high scores board as well. Would that work, since you can score tons of points if you were to keep playing after the game ended?
Anyone else have any spectacular battles like this?
