ROTK 11
PostPosted:Mon Sep 04, 2006 4:19 am
I picked up ROTK 11 and it's actually pretty good. The first important thing is that they do away with city population so you no longer have five major cities in China controlling 80% of the game's economy/army base. Luoyang, the biggest city in the game, has 22 spaces available to development compared to 10 on the smallest cities, a huge change from when Luoyang has the population and economy of 5 cities (or more).
This means Cao Cao is actually beatable when controlled by a human player (but still unlikely). Liu Bei is ridiclously powerful in the imagine scenario where every rule gets one city and you've every person on that ever belonged to you with no age limitation (well the game ends in 100 years), but not if they fall under another ruler. So, Cao Cao do not get Zhang Liao because he's under Lu Bu.
Previous games did not make it obvious why Zhuge Liang was able to turn Liu Bei around since 100 intelligence actually don't have that much use. Well, in this game Zhuge Liang has by far the most powerful ability, the God of Strategy, which makes all strategy automatically successful (unless enemy has a skill that grants immunity, like Zhao Yun) on anyone with lower intelligence than him, and strategy have critical effect. If you use Incite the incited unit will attack multiple units. Fire do more damage. Confusion lasts longer, etc. Yes, this means his strategy works 100% of the time on anyone since no one else in the game has 100 intelligence.
All of Liu Bei's 5 tigers minus Zhao Yun have a God of XYZ ability that makes them do critical damage with their army type of choice whenever tactics succeedds (which is about 80-90% of the time since they all have S class expertise on the corresponding army types). In short, Liu Bei's characters are grossly overpowered.
Thankfully, there's a special ability roughly translates to Commandng Aura that's found on Zhang Liao, Gan Ning, and Yan Liang (the first two can be considerered as the best attacking generals in the game besides Lu Bu) which causes his target to lose 20 morale per hit. In ROTK 11, tactics and strategy both requires morale (though morale does not influence damage), and 120 is the max limit. This is pretty much the only way to stop Lu Bu, Zhuge Liang, and Cao Cao from doing an insane amount of damage with their specials.
Cao Cao has Paradox, which is same as God of Strategy but does not do critical damage. However if you consider Zhuge Liang doesn't appear until Cao Cao has about 10 more cities than anyone else, and that one of the Xun Y's have the ability 100 tricks which lower the morale cost of all strategy to 1 (as opposed to 10-20), it's a pretty big game breaker. Although Cao Cao only has an intelligence of 91, there certainly isn't enough 91+ int people you can field to prevent Paradox from utterly owning your people (incite only has to work on your dumbest guy), not to mention he usually gets the smartest guys too.
And Lu Bu? Well, he should have a 'boss' sign on him because how tough he is. Indeed the only way to beat him in a straight fight is either with Paradox/God of Strategy (just confuse him forever), or drain all his morale with Commanding Aura. His special ability, Flying General, does critical hits with all army type upon a successful strategy. He also ignores ZOC completely. The cavalry strategy can force a 1on1 and Lu Bu instant kills anyone under about 95 war ability, as in you don't even get a chance to watch the outcome (not that he'll lose to anyone). This means if you try to send any smart people his way he'll just make a beeline for them, charge them, do an insane amount of damage, and potentially one hit kill them too.
To make it worse, the game added a new character that is supposed to be Lu Bu's daughter, who has the ability to confuse any unit with lower war ability upon a successful cavalry tactics. I'm not sure if it uses her war ability or the group's war ability (which would mean it always works upon a successful charge if you put her with Lu Bu), but with a war ability of 89, you get pretty much a guaranteed chance to confuse unless someone put a top smart guy with a top fighting guy, which is very wasteful even for the powerhouses because morale is expanded for both strategy and tactics.
All in all, the characters in ROTK 11 are certainly the least strategy and plays more like a SRPG with the really strong characters. But this actually means the game overall can play like a strategy game because Cao Cao simply starts with overwhelming forces.
This means Cao Cao is actually beatable when controlled by a human player (but still unlikely). Liu Bei is ridiclously powerful in the imagine scenario where every rule gets one city and you've every person on that ever belonged to you with no age limitation (well the game ends in 100 years), but not if they fall under another ruler. So, Cao Cao do not get Zhang Liao because he's under Lu Bu.
Previous games did not make it obvious why Zhuge Liang was able to turn Liu Bei around since 100 intelligence actually don't have that much use. Well, in this game Zhuge Liang has by far the most powerful ability, the God of Strategy, which makes all strategy automatically successful (unless enemy has a skill that grants immunity, like Zhao Yun) on anyone with lower intelligence than him, and strategy have critical effect. If you use Incite the incited unit will attack multiple units. Fire do more damage. Confusion lasts longer, etc. Yes, this means his strategy works 100% of the time on anyone since no one else in the game has 100 intelligence.
All of Liu Bei's 5 tigers minus Zhao Yun have a God of XYZ ability that makes them do critical damage with their army type of choice whenever tactics succeedds (which is about 80-90% of the time since they all have S class expertise on the corresponding army types). In short, Liu Bei's characters are grossly overpowered.
Thankfully, there's a special ability roughly translates to Commandng Aura that's found on Zhang Liao, Gan Ning, and Yan Liang (the first two can be considerered as the best attacking generals in the game besides Lu Bu) which causes his target to lose 20 morale per hit. In ROTK 11, tactics and strategy both requires morale (though morale does not influence damage), and 120 is the max limit. This is pretty much the only way to stop Lu Bu, Zhuge Liang, and Cao Cao from doing an insane amount of damage with their specials.
Cao Cao has Paradox, which is same as God of Strategy but does not do critical damage. However if you consider Zhuge Liang doesn't appear until Cao Cao has about 10 more cities than anyone else, and that one of the Xun Y's have the ability 100 tricks which lower the morale cost of all strategy to 1 (as opposed to 10-20), it's a pretty big game breaker. Although Cao Cao only has an intelligence of 91, there certainly isn't enough 91+ int people you can field to prevent Paradox from utterly owning your people (incite only has to work on your dumbest guy), not to mention he usually gets the smartest guys too.
And Lu Bu? Well, he should have a 'boss' sign on him because how tough he is. Indeed the only way to beat him in a straight fight is either with Paradox/God of Strategy (just confuse him forever), or drain all his morale with Commanding Aura. His special ability, Flying General, does critical hits with all army type upon a successful strategy. He also ignores ZOC completely. The cavalry strategy can force a 1on1 and Lu Bu instant kills anyone under about 95 war ability, as in you don't even get a chance to watch the outcome (not that he'll lose to anyone). This means if you try to send any smart people his way he'll just make a beeline for them, charge them, do an insane amount of damage, and potentially one hit kill them too.
To make it worse, the game added a new character that is supposed to be Lu Bu's daughter, who has the ability to confuse any unit with lower war ability upon a successful cavalry tactics. I'm not sure if it uses her war ability or the group's war ability (which would mean it always works upon a successful charge if you put her with Lu Bu), but with a war ability of 89, you get pretty much a guaranteed chance to confuse unless someone put a top smart guy with a top fighting guy, which is very wasteful even for the powerhouses because morale is expanded for both strategy and tactics.
All in all, the characters in ROTK 11 are certainly the least strategy and plays more like a SRPG with the really strong characters. But this actually means the game overall can play like a strategy game because Cao Cao simply starts with overwhelming forces.