9 unit limit. That's right, you can have no more than 9 units occupying a single map square. This means "stacks of doom" a la Civilization series are impossible to achieve. Therefore, your ability to "barrel through" the enemy's territory is severely limited by the damage and losses you accumulate.Bagh. What mechanic stops you from just making a two, three, or four-square army?
The mechanic of UPKEEP it's very hard to keep four powerful stacks up in MOM
Defender moves first! This means that when an attacker moves his stack of 9 units into the defender's city (with 9 units defending), the defender gets to cast a spell of his own and move all 9 of his units (casting spells with each of them, if they are able to do so) before the attacker gets to do anything. With a powerful enough defense, the defender might even be able to wipe out the attacker before he can do anything at all.Considering what I just said, that's a pretty big caveat. Nine defenders versus potentially 144 attackers (that's assuming a 4-by-4 square, which is about the biggest thing you would probably get in a single turn, considering movement points).\
Considering the defender gets to move first and cast spells it is very easy to thwart ever single one of your stacks if you don't have the proper makeup to take out the castle no matter what is cast. Very hard to keep flying on four stacks when the defender can easily cast the spell that makes his castle fly in the air and then put 40 points into counter magic before you even get to TRY to cast one single spell.
Nodes, the analog for EWoM's "shards", have an extremely powerful dispelling effect. This makes it almost impossible to cast off-colour spells in that node, unless your wizard is a Node Master, which happens to be the most expensive special ability to take (requires at least 1 spell book in each of nature, chaos and sorcery magic as well as 1 point for the pick itself, totalling 4 points out of 11).And, HOW big are these nodes again? If it's a huge field of energy, I could see this being of value, but other than that.....
The nodes aren't that big one square, but, protected by the proper type of units and magic very hard to take them as some nodes prevent you from casting magic regardless of what you have or who you have in your army thus kind of like in The Mummy II where the gods took away the mummys magical powers
Spell of Return. Even if you manage to destroy the enemy's fortress city, if he has other cities left and mana in reserve, he can begin casting the Spell of Return which will summon a new fortress in his largest available city and reincarnate him within it. Also keep in mind that he maintains full control of his economy and all of his units during this process, though he is unable to cast spells.Methinks thou hast missed the point of "heartripping". You don't always have to go for the channeler: you take out powerful cities like econ or research centers, and cripple some stat or the other.
And methinks you miss the point of how powerful wizards are in MOM except for when they have been put in stasis after losing a battle they can do the same things to you in ANY of their cities, research centers, nodes any place on the map there is no having to be in the area to cast spells in MOM. They can cast the same spells in any of those research centers, cities whatever and they could put one single unit flying an invisible and if you didn't have the proper counters you'd never take those cities, research centers or nodes and you can't make counters for everything at a whim in MOM
Awareness, Nature's Awareness, Oracles etc. These spells and buildings expand a wizard's radii of sight, allowing him to detect your forces before you reach his cities, allowing time to prepare an appropriate defense.Well, that would certainly help, but it would be mighty hard to eliminate the problem just with increases detection. You still have to send a significantly powerful defense force to whichever juicy target the other guy selects. If you guessed right and stationed your forces there ahead of time, then good for you. If not, then you're still in trouble.
If IF's and BUT's were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry christmas too. You really need to play MOM before you start THINKING you'd know how to play it. It's quite different from any other fantasy wargame out there.
Invisible units. If the defender is in possession of invisible units and the attacker lacks True Seeing (Life magic spell, some units and hero items have it as well), then it is nearly impossible to take the city because invisible units cannot be targeted or attacked at all unless you move a unit adjacent to it in battle. Invisible units for attacking aren't nearly as powerful because they must move adjacent to the enemy to attack, making them vulnerable.Flip side of the same coin, if the attacker has invisible units, you're in a boatload of trouble.
Resources (besides chaos, nature or sorcery nodes) are occupied by cities, so they cannot be "captured" without taking the city itself.Ok, you've got me there..... or do you: see the bolded bottom of the post.
Channeling. The further away from a wizard's fortress he attempts to cast a spell, the more expensive it is to cast. This operates at a straight multiplier ranging from 0.5x (only when defending your fortress) to 3.0x based on the range (casting on the opposite plane is always 3.0x as expensive). This means that the defender in his fortress may effectively have 6 times as much mana to use as the attacker. This, of course, is partially mitigated if the attacker has the Channeler ability, but that ability costs 2 picks (very expensive, in other words).Again, the flip side problem. You have to wait until the enemy is right on top of you to cast a spoell to get rid of him/her.
Overland vs. combat spellcasting. Most area-affecting spells can be cast both in combat and overland (out of combat). If cast overland, the spell costs 5x as much but becomes permanent in that city (with a small mana upkeep). If cast in combat, the spell is much cheaper and requires no upkeep. This gives the defender the flexibility to use the permanent overland version on high-value targets and the cheap combat version in less-well defended targets should the need arise. This allows a defender to protect a large number of different targets at low cost, while really beefing up the defenses of high-value targets at a low upkeep.Again, this worked, but:
We have NO assurances that EWOM will even remotely resemble MoM. All of these mechanics could appear in the game, or none of them could. Even if they did reappear, the differences in other areas like algorythms, mana generation, units, and general working of the game would likely distort the effect on gameplay.
Elemental Forums
)
I really wish he wouldn't include one at all though because I still can see the whinning, boo hooer cry babies screaming about balance when Elemental comes out. Beating their chest for change just like some mama's boy.