Tireless March Must Not Stack

...again

from Elemental Forums

I know I'm a noob and this has already been mentioned several times... but not recently! Tireless March is a great spell (maybe up its mana upkeep to 2) but having multiple heroes with it in one army should not give cumulative move bonuses. This causes realm defense to degenerate into shuffling one multi-hero army back and forth, which is less "fun" both strategically (as you don't have to make real choices about having multiple armies) and tactically (as you fight essentially the same battle (i.e. with the same army) over and over again).

It's a rather unique spell, I guess, so I understand if it may actually take some monkeying around in the code (rather than XML) to accomplish this, but it really should be done. I understand this will almost certainly get put off until 1.1 (or later) but it still needs fixing.

Also, it shouldn't provide any bonus in tactical combat (thematically or balance-wise, IMO), but as the "moves" statistic is shared I can understand that it may be cleaner, code-wise, to not put in something to separate this out.

8,271 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

k1

Having Tireless March stack enables your heroes to group together and defend your entire empire, whatever the threat. Troops are no longer required, which gives you more per turn gold, which allows you to feed your super force.

It must stop.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


I have not seen Tireless March stacked before.  I have seen Burning Blade and Evade stacked on a Sovereign before.  Those two are awful.

Karavox had 10 Burning Blades stacked in one of my games.  I think his attack value for a level 5 or 6 was in the 100s.

I also played where Lady Irane had Evade stacked several times.  She was unhittable.

 

I have not seen that in the recent releases though.  Not sure if it is fixed or not.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

KingHobbit,

That is not the bug I was talking about. This one is that if you have three champions, each with Tireless March cast on her once, when you put them in the same army that army gets +3 moves. It's not a bug as much as a mechanics exploit, I would say.

I had a multiple-Burning-Blades-on-Karavox in my 981 game, but haven't seen anything like that on my current 983 game.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

KingHobbit, the OP is talking about a different issue. By stacking he means that a stack of four heroes has four tireless marches (one per hero) for a effective speed of 8 moves per turn.

I have not seen an enemy sovereign with multiple tireless marches since .913.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

gotcha, so the spell is not stacked more than once on one champion, but the effect is being duplicated on the unit stack by having it cast on multiple champions.

 

Quoting pomalley, reply 3
It's not a bug as much as a mechanics exploit, I would say.

Guess I have never really tried it.  I cast it once, usually on my Sovereign.  If i happen to get more than one army going, I cast it on my other "general".  Not sure if I ever noticed it being duplicated.  Course I am not sure if I ever brought those two back together again to even have a chance of noticing.

 

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I solved this by making it a unit only bonus. It sucks not to have it affect the whole army, but at least it wont stack.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 7
I solved this by making it a unit only bonus. It sucks not to have it affect the whole army, but at least it wont stack.

Even as a unit only bonus, the +1 to movement is huge on the battlefield. No one can deny this after all the 'horse gives +2' arguements presented.

 

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

It is amazing with henchmen; one hero with several henchmen, all with tireless march, is a speedy speedy force. Also, no xp reduction.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 7
I solved this by making it a unit only bonus. It sucks not to have it affect the whole army, but at least it wont stack.

I don't want to tell you how to play your game, but IMHO the thrust of the enchantment is to give +1 move speed on the strategic map, not the tactical map at all. I think there's definitely a place for both types of effects (+move on strat map and +move on tac map), but they should be different spells. I propose "Tireless March" and "Adrenaline Surge That Lasts for a Medium but not Long Amount of Time", respectively. ;-)

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Way ahead of you pomalley. I have several abilities like enrage, charging strike, etc. that do that. Tireless march though might be able to only affect the strategic I am still looking into that.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe Tireless march shouldn't be an enchantment but a strategic spell that can be cast for like 25 mana to give a unit an extra move each turn?

 

Or it should be removed from the game outright.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tuidjy, reply 5
I have not seen an enemy sovereign with multiple tireless marches since .913.

I ran into it in an 0.981 game when the Yithril sovereign had 9 move...

Edit: I originally wrote 0.983 game by mistake.

 

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 11
Way ahead of you pomalley. I have several abilities like enrage, charging strike, etc. that do that. Tireless march though might be able to only affect the strategic I am still looking into that.

My entirely uneducated guess is that you may run into trouble because it seems that the strategic and tactical moves both come from the same stat, but I wish you best of luck!

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 15
Ya, didn't work. 

Maybe you could have the enchantment cause the unit do one of those beginning-of-battle-things and take away 1 move from every unit in the army. Since that expires at the end of battle it should leave it untouched for the campaign map (I guess). It's pretty ugly and hackish, but there you have it.

Still doesn't solve the stacking issue, though.