Poll of the Day > Month of the Ogre 13: My leg hurts (terrain effects in strategy games)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Did too many squats after being out of routine for too long.

Ever since I quit coffee I've been a LOT more productive. And by quit coffee I mean it was going to be just a temporary thing 'cuz was feeling bad, but now I might just save it for special occasions.

What's this gotta do with Ogre Battle? Well, walking up hills...

I had family in the very nice little town of Okotoks in southern Alberta... AMAZING town, definitely worth a visit. My grannies house was up on the hill there, with an EPIC staircase you could climb every day, next to a hill FILLED with saskatoons and bugs and critters and stuff.

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So you get some beastmen and maybe a griffon for high speed and go up the mountain and what do you find? Your unit sucks! Well, that's because the game doesn't tell you WTF the difference between terrain power and movement type are.

Ok, the "best" movement in your unit is your movement type. A Griffon can carry a non-flyer and still keep the high flying type, this lets you move high speed over any terrain... but here's the kicker, there's no "High Sky" terrain in the game... this means Griffons and other high-sky units DO NOT get terrain bonuses when fighting (which is why it seems like Griffons only are affected by their ALI).

If you have a slightly different unit, something mixed up of all sorts and your type happens to be Mountain. You will move fastest through the mountains like normal, but in battle your unit will only get the bonuses if their movement type matches the terrain you are fighting on.

This is another reason why the Octopus unit seems so weak, it has (IIRC) a movement type of Ocean (8). If you build an Octopus unit to blaze through the lakes and rivers you might find that while you ARE indeed moving fast, since "Ocean" can also move fast there... your Octopus will be kinda weak in battle despite its stats suggesting otherwise. This is because the coast and rivers are "shallow water" and are an entirely different type of movement! Octopus need to fight in the dark blue DEEP Ocean to get their amazing +8 damage rating. However, this is easy to overlook if you stick with Octopus long enough to get Krakens... Krakens can only use their Maelstrom backrow attack while in "ANY" water, so you might not notice that you need to be the the actual OCEAN to get the full effect.

EDIT:

Oh ya, I forgot to mention

Warhammer 40k 9th edition is coming soon and they're making big changes to how terrain works. Now all terrain will have keywords assigned to it for permitted actions: Things like scalable, breachable, defensible, obscuring, light cover, heavy cover, etc

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Meh. The octopuses units are viable only on a few maps and can still get their asses kicked if attacked by units with good magic attacks. If you're not diligent on keeping them leveled, they'll soon drop off.

Units with gryphons in them always sucked major balls unless that unit was ridiculously overleveled. Gryphons simply deal like no damage even if you use them in the back row to get their aoe attack.

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The_tall_midget posted...

Meh. The octopuses units are viable only on a few maps and can still get their asses kicked if attacked by units with good magic attacks. If you're not diligent on keeping them leveled, they'll soon drop off.

Units with gryphons in them always sucked major balls unless that unit was ridiculously overleveled. Gryphons simply deal like no damage even if you use them in the back row to get their aoe attack.

That's kinda what I was saying: The Octopus doesn't get their full power unless in DEEP ocean, and Gryphons get no terrain bonus/penalty at all because of their type, so they legitimately fight best in zones that are a penalty to all, like the Ocean/Rivers/Swamps... also if you have 100 ALI on your Gryphon then their attacks will only do like 2~5 damage at night, and around 35~50 at noon.

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Lokarin posted...

That's kinda what I was saying: The Octopus doesn't get their full power unless in DEEP ocean, and Gryphons get no terrain bonus/penalty at all because of their type, so they legitimately fight best in zones that are a penalty to all, like the Ocean/Rivers/Swamps... also if you have 100 ALI on your Gryphon then their attacks will only do like 2~5 damage at night, and around 35~50 at noon.

Honestly, I barely bothered to use large units in MotBQ. I used a few of them in PoLC since they weren't as garbo.

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The_tall_midget posted...

Honestly, I barely bothered to use large units in MotBQ. I used a few of them in PoLC since they weren't as garbo.

Using a pair of large units is definitely bad - but one large unit can change the movement style of the entire unit.

Also having fewer units means some modicum of AoE resistance.

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idk, it seems like flight would have its limits anyway so a griffin should be able to fly higher over low terrain than high terrain since the air is already thinner in high terrain. Regardless, any flight should bypass ground terrain.


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Zeus posted...

idk, it seems like flight would have its limits anyway so a griffin should be able to fly higher over low terrain than high terrain since the air is already thinner in high terrain. Regardless, any flight should bypass ground terrain.

They do bypass the terrain, but they also don't get a bonus for it - so their ideal fighting zone is getting people as they cross rivers, where the penalty affects them but not you

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