Demigod = Win

[TerranUp16]

There has been a ton of stuff flying around about broken MP and etc and this article clears all that up nicely.

So, the game itself. Let me start by saying that I am no fan of DotA. My biggest issue with DotA is, imo, the over-emphasis on PvP ganking, kill-stealing, killing your own creeps to deny xp to the enemy, etc... I'm more a fan of being a leader rather than a straight-on super-dude. Demigod accomplishes this. And, better yet, it does this not only for its "General" class but even "Assassins" have this effect as well.

As usual, for the "genre" anyway, you have troops and such that spawn and go to attack the enemy but they're generally rather evenly matched and they're not going to win the battle alone. In DotA, these are mostly fodder for XP... In Demigod, these are far more potent. Assassins are still effective at dealing with enemy troop spawns and left alone an Assassin Demigod can clear out the enemy's troops to pave the way for his/her own team's troops to move in and begin laying into the enemy defenses. Generals can have much the same impact but in a different manner. Generals have abilities that generally bolster the effectiveness of regular troops and can also summon their own troops to aid (these consist of special units for each General hero along with more effective versions of standard troops and these come in three varieties- melee specialist, ranged siege unit, and healer). So Generals, left alone, can overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers, tactics, and support.

But how to get "alone"? The game, inherently, is about two teams of Demigods facing off. So you're going to have to deal with enemies that are as powerful as yourself. So the main point of the game, for three of the four modes (the fourth is basically team death match but only counting Demigod kills), is to get enemies out of the way so that you and your forces can push forward. Assassins generally do this by directly dueling with enemy Demigods, utilizing attacks and abilities to whittle down their health. In DotA, the capstone of these assaults would likely be to gank the enemy hero with a special ability before they can retreat- but to do that, the player will have needed to hold that ability in reserve quite awhile. In Demigod, it's a very feasible tactic to use your "ganking move" early and to deal a lot of damage to an enemy Demigod but nowhere near enough to kill it. But enough to force it to retreat so that your forces can advance in the enemy's absence. Generals accomplish this by skillfully utilizing their abilities and support units to inflict such damage on the Assassins. Really, you're not going to get too many kills as a General- not too many enemy Demigods will die directly by your hand. But you will be the cause of hundreds of retreats and will be in a better position to capitalize on those retreats.

The minutiae of the above you can fill in yourself but it suffices to say that those minutiae are entertaining and relatively tactically-rich. The RTS element of Demigod shines through brightly. Perhaps even more so with its flags. Flags are capturable points that offer bonuses of some kind. Some flags increase your maximum health, others increase the rate at which your Demigod gains experience, and others are linked directly to neutral structures. For example, one map has a flag linked to a Crystal of Health. These are usually only found at a team's base and these are what you will retreat back to in order to replenish your health and mana. Capturing one of these near the middle of the map means that retreat is not nearly as far away and your opponents will need to focus more on outright killing your team's Demigods rather than just forcing them into retreat- and that's a tough proposition when you don't have to reciprocate that favor and can instead force them into retreat. Some other flags are often linked to Portals. Your troops spawn from Portals at set intervals, so capturing more of these will have more troops spawning for your team. It is even possible to capture enemy Portals and there is much to be said for utilizing this tactic to overwhelm the enemy with "minor troops". Thus, the outcome of battles for flags, which typically consist of dozens of intermittent skirmishes, is huge. And it's because of this, along with the two Demigod classes and complementary abilities that the co-op and tactical elements of Demigod really shine over those of DotA. In Demigod, managing to force an enemy Demigod into retreat and to then press forth and take an enemy Portal flag is a HUGE boon for your team and that is something that either an Assassin or a General can spearhead.

Thus, Demigod is all about the little battles but unlike DotA Demigod manages to attach additional significance to these little battles that allow for more than just an isometric arena experience and that justify the game's status as an "RTS/RPG". Above, I didn't even mention all the items or skill trees or army upgrades and such. Most of those are also present in DotA and while their execution in Demigod is good, they're not what makes Demigod stand out (though, once again, there is something to be said for investing in your troops and investing in bringing out new troops like the Catapultasari). Imo, it is a great game and is particularly fun for MP with friends (I played it with some friends at a LAN party yesterday and had an absolute blast).

[Death]

I haven't had a chance to purchase it yet, though after this review, i'm certainly considering it. Thanks for posting it.

[Dragonskull]

I'm just going to shoot in a quick line, seeing as I actually do play a lot of DotA, and this game interested me a lot. I have to disagree on your idea of what DotA is about. For instance, harassing the enemy is a key element in DotA as well, and just as effective as in Demigod (at least it seems so the way you presented the tactic). There are heroes that are particularly more effective for harass, in general you have the ranged heroes that always can throw in a couple attack on the enemy, and eventually he will be endangered enough to retreat (or stop by a rune, if it's there- they spawn every 2 minutes at one out of two spawn points, everyone knows this so naturally there will be more people heading for it- and refill his 'bottle' which he bought because he was going to face a lane where harass is likely to occur). There are the 'nukers' (intelligence-heroes that rely on static damage output abilities, naturally they wither and become less effective as the enemy levels up and gains more hit points) that as long as mana is not lacking, rely on harassing the enemy at all times to prevent it from becoming stronger (I don't know how this is emphasized in Demigod).

As for non-neutral creeps being XP fodder- that is not in it's entirety true. Denying is not mainly to prevent enemy XP (though it's a very useful bonus!), but in fact to keep your creeps close to your own frontline tower, thereby protecting yourself from enemy ambush, and exposing the enemy. Take the top lane for example, and let's say you're playing Sentinel- the first creep waves will hit somewhere near the 'corner', thus closer to the Scourge tower. While the creeps fight there, and you don't intervene and neither does your enemy heroes, they will stay there, because they are just as strong, and even though the random targeting makes sure that most of the time one or two units of one side survive, the fight will last about 30 seconds, and the next wave will clash at the same place. Now consider this; you deny your own creeps, thereby aiding the enemy creeps in pushing forward. This will make the enemy creep wave move forward towards your tower, and the fight will have ended much faster than the new wave could reach the battle- thus your creeps will encounter the remains of the enemy wave closer to your tower- aid them again and the next enemy wave will meet there, and as you keep denying the enemy waves and yours meet closer to your own tower, and for as long as you keep this process up the fights will reoccur near your own tower- though it's hard to keep the battles there when the tower joins in the fight and crushes the enemy wave a lot faster, you'll have to find a middle thing. This is a pretty easy task to do however, if your enemy heroes do not countermeasure it.
The other aspect of lasthitting is picking out the enemy low HPs without hurting them beforehand - this makes sure it can do the maximum damage to your troops, while you take it out in the end and gain the gold (as long as your enemy doesn't take it out before you to prevent you the gold- which is essential).

Now that I've outlined that, let's take the part where you actually do the strict opposite- later in the game (depending a bit on what heroes that are on the team- ie if you got mainly 'nukers' you have to start this process much earlier or they will be rendered useless) you don't want to keep growing fast by denying and lasthitting, but rather you want to approach the RTS element of the game, to actually start messing up the enemy base. The time has come for pushing, and this is where creeps become much more than feed. The creeps define where you should strike and where you need to aid. For instance, your midlane creeps together with the midlane hero has probably already killed the Lv1 tower of the enemy (and probably lost your own) already when 20 minutes is passed (this is the average time to when laning is unneeded and winning is the focus), and it's the shortest way to the Lv2 tower here, Lv1 towers top and bottom are easy targets and can be taken out by allied creeps while the enemies attention is your midlane push and/or by a hero that does not participate in the main push (bit risky), or just later in a quick-push. On the other hand, if the top enemy Lv1 tower is down and your creeps are past that point and headed for Lv2 tower you naturally assemble a push there because creeps are essential for a push, and when random or non-random occurrences has made your creeps push, you enforce the already prepared lane instead of building up a new force in some other lane. However, the bottom Lv2 tower is a lot more exposed to an enemy ambush, thus it's not a very good place to start a push unless you have the enemies attention elsewhere.

The creeps has a lot of impact on your teams desired course of action. If the enemy has made sure that none of your creeps are far out, you can't push properly, because by the time you can push a creep wave to a tower, the enemy has planned an ambush. Not to mention by doing to you expose your own base for enemy pushes (for them it can be a lot more effective to push down a Lv3 tower and possibly also the barracks, when your team has branched out or assembled a push- of course, decent players carry a scroll of teleportation or wear boots of travel, and thus reaching back for "ambush defence" is not an unlikely option).

Quote:In DotA, the capstone of these assaults would likely be to gank the enemy hero with a special ability before they can retreat- but to do that, the player will have needed to hold that ability in reserve quite awhile.

I'll need you to explain that one, cause I can't seem to find the link between that statement and DotA.

[TerranUp16]

While the above is all well and good, it presents an ideal that in my personal experience DotA never reaches in actuality. It devolves far too quickly into direct PvP and, worse, an emphasis on lasthitting even among teammates (allowing your ally to whittle your opponent's health down to just about nothing and to, just before your ally can get the final blow in, gank that opponent). DotA, in my experience, always manages to devolve down to the little, PvP and XP-building crap until near the endgame. Then it gets a little more interesting.

Demigod I find to not have the above issues and to, the whole way through, be almost wholly about teamwork.

[Dragonskull]

Right, your experience with DotA is based on public games; DotArank, DIV-League, SIG-League, Channel Allstars and/or simply BNet. Please excuse the term, but it would be what I consider noob-games. Sure there are some players that has potential in those games (heck, even I join a couple of them just to try out some new tactics). It would be like rating football (not sure what term is the more appropriate in America, maybe it's called Soccer) as a sport, based on how kids (5-15 years) play. It would do the professional players no justice. But I do see your point, and everyone has to start somewhere anyway.
I haven't tried Demigod so I am in no position to rate it, but I find it hard to believe they've solved such a problem- unless killing a demigod yields no benefit to the killer, which would be sort of a killjoy.

Oh, and :

Quote:It devolves far too quickly into direct PvP

20 minutes on average, even earlier with good players, it's important to get started on winning as soon as possible whilst not falling behind on income. That's not enough time? I personally prefer short matches (though a good long DotA match of 120 minutes with well-organized teams are exciting as well, that's where the true potential of teamwork comes in, by this time everyone has top level and full inventory), and my public games hardly last any longer than 25 minutes.

[TerranUp16]

Public and LAN. But I'm not really in a position apparently to argue about what level of quality the matches themselves were and ofc StarCraft players make the same argument that if you really want to play SC you need to use ICCUP and such. As far as it being like rating soccer or any other sport not by professionals, such sports as you have mentioned at their highest level are spectator sports for the most part- much like StarCraft. At lower levels, levels where the player is going to be partaking, the question certainly applies. I have been playing ice hockey since ~age four and have always been quite satisfied with it regardless of how the game is played at the pro level. Imo, it is all fine and good for a game to be very good at a pro-level but these are videogames/mods and first and foremost are meant to be able to sustain play for the average person who is interested in the game. If the game can then scale up to higher levels then that is excellent, but it has to cover its bases first.

In terms of Demigod's solution, there is no "true" solution to lasthitting but most of the abilities are either structured so that the mana cost is very high or the range is very low so lasthitting will often at a bare minimum leave you open. The other solution though is simply the greater potency of troops and teamwork. While leveling certainly helps, a lower-level Demigod (once again, in my experience) against a high-level Demigod is far more effective than such a match-up in DotA (good tactics in Demigod can allow the player to hold the line or perhaps even more despite his/her lower level and often the players that are leveling slowly are precisely the ones who manage to work factors other than direct PvP and etc in their favor). Also, gold comes from Gold Mines and is kinda a team fund- each player has their own pool of gold so teammates can't dip into each others' but the distribution of gold among team members is rather uniform. Finally, the focus on Generals and Assassins means that good teamwork will generally see both a General and an Assassin in a lane, and the General typically is not nearly as concerned with leveling as the Assassin is so the tendency of the Assassin to go for lasthitting more often is actually potentially beneficial in that set-up (duly noted that DotA effectively has its own assassins and generals but this once again goes back to the reality rather than the ideal and Demigod's set-up, partly because it does currently simplify the hero selection so, foments such team work- not unlike Team Fortress 2; consider the rigidity of TF2 classes and not that the design behind such is to prompt an actuality of teamwork rather than relying on vaguer class definitions and roles and hoping that some players will grasp the ideal).

[Dragonskull]

Sounds to me they've taken DotA and stripped it off all the good parts. Uniform income draws a direct link to DotA's EasyMode, but takes it a step further towards easy. All the elements of DotA that require skill is gone, and you're left with something that is played like an RTS, but without the key elements of an RTS, and looks like an RPG, but doesn't have the play style. Earlier I even had the feeling there was no fog and no disturbances in the line of sight- I've been told that's not the case, but screenshots still give me that feeling.
Seems like anyone can do good in this game, and that's what disappoints me.

[TerranUp16]

It's not Mario Kart by a long shot and it hasn't stripped out the "good parts" of DotA (imo anyway). It simply has reallocated depth and simultaneously reduced the entry barrier. Also, there is fog of war and it is actual fog, hence why you haven't really noticed it in the screenshots.

[Dragonskull]

Yeah I can see there's "fog" on the screenshot above, but it wouldn't realistically hide anything - not to mention things that are hid in the fog shouldn't light up like signal posts.
This is normal fog:


Anyhow, what else than pushing and capturing certain areas is Demigod about?

[Cokemonkey11]

Nono he's saying the fog in that game is like wc3 fog and makes units invisible that are in it.

[TerranUp16]

Not really about capturing unless you're playing Domination (which basically awards points for holding flags and both teams are vying to hit a point target before the other)- capturing and holding some flags can be strategic and useful and perhaps even necessary for your drive towards the enemy's Citadel or Fortresses (depending on which of those two modes you're playing). However, it's about ofc a conglomeration of things and what exactly the game is about for you depends on your hero and your style and your preference.

For a General, it's about using your abilities and units to shove forward and to constantly press the frontline. For a General, retreat is very rarely an option because when you retreat everything falls back- it's your job to hold then line when the Assassin is rejuvenating. Ofc, you also need to work out some kind of advantage against the enemy Demigods which is tough- and it's in all of this that the little tactics come in that make the game fun and where skill really comes into play. How to, as a General, leverage your Demigod, your abilities, and your minions to push forth into the enemy towers and forces while not getting slaughtered and minimizing the effectiveness of enemy Demigods against your forces.

For an Assassin, it's about using your abilities and combat prowess to force enemy Demigods into retreat or to kill them- to protect the General and to all-around reduce the effectiveness of enemy Demigods as much as possible. And to pile on damage to enemy structures whenever possible.

The above roles ofc aren't concrete- they're self-determined and each player varies their execution of the above but even following those base definitions, *I* find Demigod to foment more meaningful combat throughout. There is much talk about how Demigod games can be determined long before they are won and while it is quite true that there are huge bonuses for smashing through enemy towers and forts (and that the team that is doing a better job of that early on will likely continue to push and push and ultimately win) but I have played in matches where a team has managed to rally back from the very brink of destruction (literally,it was Fortress mode and they were down to their last Fort and we were pounding away at it with our Catapultasari but their Unclean Beast managed to make two key slaughters and the Rook forced myself (I was Regulus- an Assassin) and my other ally into retreat. They used that opportunity to slaughter our minions and then quickly moved-up with their own and took out one of our now unprotected Forts before we even knew what hit us and and then they managed to hold their advantage at our doorstep and just ultimately wore us down (their Generals and Unclean Beast managed to subdue the entirety of our Demigod team and we just could not get anything substantial against their Rook which was just mauling our structures).

[TerranUp16]

So... in other news... who else has Demigod? Looking for some more peepz to pwn with pretty much. My friend and I have been hitting the online rounds a ton lately to modest success and a crapload of fun so... the more the merrier.

[aja]

I've purchased a new much better graphics card for my new build. Hopefully, things will start completely working then. Once that happens, I'll look toward adding Demigod to my 'get' list.

[TerranUp16]

Awesome =) Pop me your Impulse Account Name as soon as you get Demigod and we can start some win =)

[Dragonskull]

Well, as Demigod has finally arrived in Scandinavia (I prefer buying retail) I might buy it when I get my next paycheck, I feel I should at least try it as it's partly based on my favourite ever competitive game.. I'll let you know as soon as I got it. Might be hard to play together due to the timezones though.

[Death]

Awesome game.

Terran gave me his 50% off coupon and i bought it right away. I never liked Dota, but I love Demigod.

Not really much to add about it, Terran pretty much covered it all. xD

[Dragonskull]

Well I'm hoping there are certain advantages by knowing how to play DotA, as that pretty much is the 'genre' which this is part of. Either that or completely different, and not something undefinable in between thing.

[TerranUp16]

Whiplash exemplifies some of the advantages of having played DotA for a good while- will definitely help in direct PvP combat and figuring out preferred builds quicker (particularly item builds- items are very important in Demigod but without prior DotA experience or etc so that you know that already, it takes some players a bit to figure out). It eases the transition, having played DotA, but there are marked differences you'll need to get used to.

[Dragonskull]

Well, we'll see. I plan on buying it tomorrow unless it keeps showering like fall outside.. I got no raincoat atm, forgot it somewhere last Friday =_=, and it's not really warm enough to walk around dripping (5-13 Celsius).

[TerranUp16]

Oh, sweet. Add TerranUp16 and YeahWhiplash to your Impulse friends list when you get it.

[~VanMavus]

Or you could all buy Prototype like I told you too.

[Dragonskull]

Demigod acquired for 350NOK, Dragonskull was taken so I had to go leet; Dr4gonskull (as for adding you guys, I can't seem to find any 'add' function on Impulse..)

Meh, the guy in the opening sequence had a weird accent (emphasis on the first syllable in every word) so I didn't get half of what he said, but I think it was something about a God. xD

[~VanMavus]

Any good DS?

[Dragonskull]

Oh, I like it. At first I didn't get what was happening at all really, I did a Single Player Match vs an AI just to get a hold of the controls- which are the same as in DotA except for the possibility to use WASD to move the camera - which helps a LOT concerning hotkeys- I've never appreciated 'edge-scrolling' with the mouse, so in DotA my left hand is pretty stuck on the arrow-keys. Now I'm in WASD and have access to a lot of keys without moving my hand.

I am certainly not sure if this goes for all the maps and game modes, but in the one I played it's flags all over the place - ie capture points or nodes if you prefer - which give certain bonuses. For instance there's one that unlocks an artefact shop in the middle- I didn't have time to check through those items 'cause my opponent was incredibly eager to capture my spawn-flags, and I had to take them back or it'd be sort of devastating. Some flags give damage bonus to your allied forces (I think? xD) and some boost gold-income, you can take over a gold mine, and I suppose that should increase your income.. was hard to tell 'cause I didn't find my gold anywhere.. must be a tiny number somewhere. And certainly there's more kinds of flags in various maps. You capture flags by standing within its.. aura.

Uhm, furthermore it seems to be a severe lack of heroes, or avatars/character, seeing as it's merely 8 - 4 assassins and 4 generals - and even though you can make pretty much differences with the ability-build from game to game, the essence is the same and I certainly hope they plan on expanding that.

I picked Unclean Beast for my first game, seemed like the easiest one to play out of the assassins- I fear Generals are too much micro-managing, so I'll leave that 'till I've learnt the basics of the game play. He's pretty much what I'd would describe to people who play DotA as a mix of N'aix, Pudge and Venomancer .. at least with the build I did. I fought Devere or something like that.. some archer-like guy, didn't quite get the hold of his abilities, but seems he got a long range shot which I'd directly relate to Kardel the Sniper's Assassinate from DotA. Additionally, he seemed to have an ability to survive with little to none hitpoints- not sure for how long, but he kept running away with a black HP-bar every now and then, and there was no way I could keep up with him. I'm guessing a mix of Windrunner's Windwalk and Dazzle's Shallow Grave, again a DotA reference. Nevertheless, it was annoying. Though I got him a few time using what I'll call Dismember until I learn what the name was (Pudge's ultimate "Ah! Fresh meat!" if you're still not with me) when he had only a few hit points left (like 400). And I did that after I learnt that he'd try to teleport when he got scared (well he started glowing and stuff for 2-3 seconds and then *poof* vanish, so I suppose it's a TP.. perhaps that Warpstone or what it was called somewhere in the item's shop) which as I expected worked just like in DotA- a stun cancels the channelling and he can't TP. The problem then was that Dismember had such a long CD (well 15 seconds is a damn short CD, but it was enough for Devere to run all the way across the map and to his beloved fountain).. I guess I just got lucky and he forgot to buy a new warpstone, or maybe it's a CD thing.. I honestly don't know. Uhm, in the end I won anyway. I realized after a while that I probably had earned some gold- not sure if there is any other way to earn gold than killing demigods besides the passive income- so I searched some more shops.. Devere had bought units so I thought there must be somewhere I can do that, and finally when I decided to try the Citadel (main building, at least in this game mode) there it was.. I was silly enough to increase XP gain, because I didn't realize then that Lv20 was actually max. And I bought all the units I could, I had seemingly unlimited cash, and all the upgrades too.. not that it mattered much for as long as Devere met the wave it was gone in a second to his massive splashy arrows - so was his to my knock-back madness- I simply attacked one creature in the middle and all the others seemed to just fly off the edges and well.. fall. Basically, i got the impression units are no good at all on their own, you need to distract the enemy demigod, so I did and they finally brought down the citadel- luckily you can't just attack an enemy creep and expect them all to chase after you, thereby saving the building under attack (which is actually both good and bad, depending on the view).

I didn't give much attention to items, I bought the most expensive armour, helmet and shoes. That was pretty much enough. Annoyed me a bit that you can see what your enemy wears to counter his ideas, but then again it didn't seem like items were all that much.. yes they gave you regeneration, damage bonuses, hit points and the likes, but it didn't seem like much more. For instance- orb effects? I miss that already, or maybe I didn't find them. I'm not even sure if it's necessary to stay in combat 'cause I seemed to get XP anywhere I went - i did set the setting to gain high amounts of XP though, for an easy feeling.

I think I'll have another match now. xD

*CD is short for cooldown, if anyone were wondering.

[Dragonskull]

Well, after some hours playing- I've stuck with Unclean Beast so far to figure him out more or less- I quite happy with the game, though there are certain elements from DotA that I think would have made it better- for instance broader lanes. Well, some of the maps offer pretty good space, but it seems most of them have pretty thin bridges that serves as lanes and if it hadn't been for the no-collide, you'd be stuck all the time. Furthermore I'm missing obstacles that can hide you briefly for an ambush or escape - this is done with trees and height in DotA, which is sort of unfitting in an atmosphere of rock and steel, but something for a quick hide other than outrunning your opponent would be neat. There's not really much room for mindgames, not the kind I'm used to at least. There's of course the spell usage and maybe some spells are AoE aimed- I have only played Unclean Beast and his are either targeted, passive or self-centred.

I've got a rather serious problem though, I doubt it's the game servers that are down, so it has to be my settings or my ISP- I can't connect to online games. I can see the custom games list, and I can attempt to join them - I can also sign up for a skirmish and I get listed as waiting for a game in the upper right corner - but I always get the message; Cannot connect to a NAT facilitator, please try again later; or something along those lines, I've got absolutely no idea what it means, but my first guess would be that in order to join an online game, the game needs UDP access to my computer, which my ISP doesn't allow- yes, very limited and hard to come by when playing online, but WC3 works for joining and other games that doesn't require the server to connect to me, only that I connect to it (TCP).

Oh and that chick with the lion or whatever animal it is (with powerful healing spells) is damn difficult to kill, 'cause she heals full all the time .. >_> sort of like Omniknight (DotA), only he doesn't have that insane mana regeneration and short cooldown.

__________________________________________________
Another thing which is sort of cheap, that I've noticed after several hours of playing, is that seemingly, Demigods become pretty much invincible (I mean all of them) in the end, with some items and Lv20. I mean, it's not a problem to win it, 'cause the buildings drop like flies - Unclean Beast 10000HP, 65% damage reduction, 650 damage (1300 dps) and 12% life-drain unless they stack, then it'd be some more. Somehow though, you sometimes die, this game it was to Oak.. everyone seemed to die randomly to Oak.. all the time the bars are full and then they speed back to fountain and there they are instantly full again and the fight goes on, but every now and then someone die- either me, or an enemy dies to Oak and I get the assists due to my splash damage and plague. But all in all, it's pretty lame that a Demigod can tank 5 fully equipped Demigods and seemingly not even drop hit points until suddenly it's like a permanent invulnerability fails for a moment and they just drop in a second. Do notice they had that animal riding healer on their team, which seems to be able to constantly heal, and then not like Shadow Shaman's Voodoo, 'cause she's just as difficult to kill herself if not worse.

__________________________________________________
And lastly, a little screen shot from the match I mentioned above- too bad it doesn't offer auto-storage of screen shots, I guess I'll have to get meself one of those tools. So it'll have to suffice with one:

[TerranUp16]

Oh, wow, your ISP doesn't allow UDP? That could be problematic. But the proxy servers should be allowing you to circumvent that issue. Go to the Technical Support section of the Demigod forums (which you can access by just opening Impulse and clicking on Demigod and in the right panel there will be a link to the forums for it) and make a post about that- they are currently trying to address any and all networking issues they encounter. Anyway, there is a lot of information about connection work-arounds and Stardock and GPG's progress on all of that in the Developer Journals section of the Demigod forums. Meanwhile, you can try GameRanger.

For gold, just look at your screenshot- gold is represented in the right part of the XP bar xD

For earning gold, there is a passive gold rate (Gold Mines supply this and you can increase this effect by purchasing Gold upgrades from your Citadel) and you do gain gold for killing non-Demigod enemies as well (you also gain XP from that but that's pretty much a given).

Every strategy/isometric game should at least have an option for WASD control =) (oh, and for those of you that remember I am the Lead Designer of Wartide).

The amount of flags on maps seems overwhelming at first but once you play them all a bit more it all becomes much more digestible and it's then that you realize on most maps there is something near a paucity of flags, lol. Also, playing MP rather than SP helps with that since in MP you'll mostly only be focusing on one or two flags at a time whereas in SP you can't rely on computers as much.

As for the small amount of Demigods, they are more like roles/classes in an FPS than supremely individual heroes like in DotA. Also, most heroes have at least three different "main" builds and then dozens of sub-builds from there. For example, the Torch Bearer has both fire and ice abilities. He also has two modes- fire mode and ice mode, and he can only cast fire abilities in fire mode and ice abilities in ice mode. You can spend all twenty of your skill points (assuming you reach level twenty but in competitive games and/or when playing Nightmare computers this rarely happens- you're only able to reach that level atm because you either aren't cranking the bot difficulty or simply are exploiting the computer players to get easy kills and xp that you generally don't get in a competitive MP match) on ice alone, or all twenty on fire alone. It's completely doable to not mix the two types of abilities and to just stay in one mode the whole time. So the Torch Bearer from that alone is already like two heroes in DotA. Add in that he can mix fire and ice abilities (my personal preference)...

But also, DotA has built-up its massive stable of heroes over years and years (six years about now?). I don't think Demigod will ever reach the amount of heroes that DotA has currently (but given the above paragraph, does that matter?), but Stardock and GPG do want to release a relatively steady stream of new Demigods and arenas (they're currently planning two new Demigods for the 1.1 patch). Currently they've been dealing with fixing-up Impulse Reactor (the online service) so that's been top priority but they are starting to shift towards content development now as well (they are also working on a bit of free DLC to be released later this summer entitled "Clan Wars").

Also, items are pretty huge. They're easy to ignore at first when you play Medium comps and even my first... well, quite a few games online and I barely used items. I chose my Favor Item and that was about it- I put my money into Citadel upgrades. However, you will eventually come to realize the importance of items and the items in Demigod are such that they can completely alter how you use your Demigod (for example, while Sedna is a general and her ability set revolves almost entirely around healing and support, with items that increase her speed you can leverage Pounce, Inner Grace, and Heal to allow her to basically become "Ninja Sedna" and a very effective assassin).

Regulus (the sniper you were talking about) doesn't have any ability to survive with almost no hit points nor does he have any abilities that increase his speed. Since the latest patch, computers have been upgraded to utilize items more often and more effectively so what you were witnessing was no doubt a result of that. He has abilities that allow him to Snipe (the long-range shot you observed), lay Mines, passively increase his range, passively decrease the movement speed of enemies he attacks, turn him into an angel of sorts where he does more damage but every shot eats mana, and I I'm forgetting at least one more.

The teleportation is the result of an item. There are two main teleportation items- one that allows you to teleport to any friendly structure (that is 99% the one you observed Regulus using when he was running- he was teleporting home) and one that allows you to teleport short distances (ala Blink in WC3).

As for buying units... only Generals can do that. They don't buy units but rather idols with which they can call in one of three types of minions (melee fighters- good at annoying and damaging enemy Demigods, ranged units- good at taking out towers, or healers- good at keeping minions and the player alive). They also each have their own summonable unit (Erebus- the Vampire Lord- has Nightcrawlers which spawn from dead enemies, the Oak has the Raise Dead Ward which convert all dead around the ward into spirits, the Queen of Thorns has Shamblers which she summons via using-up some of her mana and the Shamblers attack in a line of spikes like the Lurker in StarCraft, and Sedna has Yetis which she summons). So... guessing you were facing multiple enemy Demigods?

Minions are actually good. Alone, a single Demigod can typically fight them back until Priests come into play. Priests can really turn the tide of battle in an early game. Whereas without Priests, enemy minions don't last long enough to cause serious damage to your towers and thus you can allow enemies to seize portals and allow the enemies spawning from those to be taken care of by your towers, Priests allow those minions to live long enough to cause damage to your towers over time- noticeable damage. Enough so that you can't ignore them. This actually has a profound impact on the flow of battle as if you own all the neutral portals on the map and then gain Priests, you and your allies can capture lock one of the portals while pushing a serious offensive on the other side of the map with the minions from the other portal. If you can sustain this, your foes will have major issues as if you aren't making any progress with your push it's probably because they're meeting it with an equal number of their own Demigods- which means they aren't doing anything about the damage their defenses are taking on the other side of the map. To stop that, they have to probably give-up some ground to your push.

Anyway, after Priests are Angels which seem completely meh at first and in fact there have been plenty of posts on the Demigod forums about how useless they are. In reality, they are not. There are numerous very powerful items (chief among them Heart of Life) which will recharge mana, health, or other abilities as long as the Demigod using such an item does not take damage. Angels, thanks to their airborne nature and plain awkwardness, have a knack for dealing such damage, minimal as it may be. They also are good for chasing down enemy Demigods that don't have much health left and they also are good at drawing enemy firepower unwittingly (they have a surprising amount of hit points).

Catapultasari (aka Catapults) are often game-winners. When Demigods advance in levels and acquire more items and upgrade their base's defenses from the Citadel, Priests no longer quite cut it. But Catapults definitely do. If you are consistently pushing right up to your enemy's towers but not managing to push hard enough to bring them down, Catapults will change that. Giants are the strength of low-level Demigods and can dish out a fair amount of damage as well as take it- that becomes key as you try to push deeper into enemy territory and then have to contend not only with damage dealt by towers but damage dealt by Giants and Catapults and etc as well.

XP flags are actually huge in competitive MP games (buying XP from the Citadel isn't as huge as it's usually a better investment to increase the rate at which you receive gold so you can grab new items but it still has an impact) because, as I mentioned earlier, rarely do you ever get to level 20 (it's not really that games don't last long enough... it's just that XP is not gained so easily when facing intelligent foes because you don't get nearly as much from ganking because you do less of that and you have less time to focus on fodder because enemy Demigods are constantly up your ass), so getting a level or two ahead is huge (plus, when games do get to level 20, getting your Demigod to level 20 first is a huge advantage- level 20 in Demigod is like experimental units in Supreme Commander, "tie breakers" per se).

Oh, and your "knockback", that is from an ability of the Unclean Beast's. It's the ability that causes enemies to explode when killed by the Unclean Beast (I think the ability name is Post Mortem). Anyway, it makes it easier for the Unclean Beast to clear-out low-level minions quickly but of course spending XP points on that ability means sacrificing some ganking power.

You've barely brushed the surface of Demigod's items Even the costliest items in their categories aren't necessarily the best- it's all relative to your build. Also, Artifact Shop

Demigod tends to focus more on leveraging tactics through minions, timing of spells/mana usage, and overall strategy rather than LoS and movement blockage. I can't necessarily say that Demigod wouldn't benefit from some more terrain detail but at the moment I think the pathfinding needs to be improved a bit first- it's the kind of thing I think they may begin to work in over time. But there also is an emphasis in Demigod that in order to save yourself from enemy assault, you really do need to retreat, and it needs to be a retreat. If you have Heart of Life and your team has done fairly well, you can go just a bit beyond the frontlines and get out of enemy LoS (to prevent taking a Snipe from Regulus or a Fireball from the Torch Bearer) and regenerate and get back into the fight without losing much time. But the concept is more that every second you're not on the frontlines either pushing your own forces forward or stemming the tide of enemy foes, the enemy has the advantage so that is the design behind that and the narrow lanes and such (the lanes actually aren't that narrow though they are designed more around the concept that what lane you are in at all is a tactical and/or strategic choice).

Sedna doesn't have insane mana regeneration and Heal's cooldown isn't too short. Remember that certain flags can decrease cooldown time as can certain items (but if you're finding enemy cooldowns to be too short for your liking, consider prioritizing the capture of the cooldown flag they probably own). Anyway, to Heal like she did against you means that she is sacrificing the damage via not bringing forth as many Yetis or not Pouncing as much. Also, she's sacrificing not healing allies as well. Anyway, Sedna really lacks in the damage department unless you go with the "Ninja Sedna" build I mentioned above but there are sacrifices in that as to being able to heal constantly and etc.

Anyway, I don't feel level 20 Demigods are totally balanced at the moment (mostly thanks to some rather uber items that open up later in the game) but like I said before, rarely does it ever come down to that in competitive games.

Oh, and branch out from the Unclean Beast, heh. The UB is fun but one of the nice things about the so-called paucity of Demigods in the game in the moment is that you do have the chance to spend quite a bit of time with all of them and doing so really helps you understand them. Currently, it's very apparent that your views on certain Demigods at the moment are tainted based on what they're doing against you but you haven't yet used them yourself so you don't appreciate the relative difficulty of what they are doing nor do you recognize what is necessary for them to be able to do to you what they are.

Otherwise, if you have anymore questions... xD

[Dragonskull]

All right, lots to reply to. I'll just start with saying that I did indeed try out a few more Demigods last night - particularly the Oak and the Rook- but also that uhm.. ah, yes, Torch Bearer. I also found out about the items in the artifact store, which could sort of resemble DotA's secret shops, though only strictly powerful and expensive items.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Oh, wow, your ISP doesn't allow UDP? That could be problematic. But the proxy servers should be allowing you to circumvent that issue. Go to the Technical Support section of the Demigod forums (which you can access by just opening Impulse and clicking on Demigod and in the right panel there will be a link to the forums for it) and make a post about that- they are currently trying to address any and all networking issues they encounter. Anyway, there is a lot of information about connection work-arounds and Stardock and GPG's progress on all of that in the Developer Journals section of the Demigod forums. Meanwhile, you can try GameRanger.

I'll check it out. Yes, blocking UDP traffic is a big problem- but it's because I'm on the university's line, and it's actually all a LAN of sorts. They don't want viruses or other programs on my computer that can utilize UDP to access other parts of the network, and well.. it's a pretty much double-up security there.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  For gold, just look at your screenshot- gold is represented in the right part of the XP bar xD

For earning gold, there is a passive gold rate (Gold Mines supply this and you can increase this effect by purchasing Gold upgrades from your Citadel) and you do gain gold for killing non-Demigod enemies as well (you also gain XP from that but that's pretty much a given).

Aye, I figured out after a couple games, hehe. Anyhow, it's hard to notice that you gain any gold for killing minions- well honestly you never know when you actually get the last hit, but seeing as most minions usually dies in two-three hits from the melee Demigods, it would be likely you get a few. Then again, Demigod deals in so large sums of cash and the location of the gold on screen is pretty much somewhere you never look because it's terribly far from the action. Otherwise, yeah I've found both the passive gold income in Citadel (which needs rank 3 or so?) and the flags that unlocks goldmines for your team. That should increase income, but it seems to me the main source of income is by taking out enemy Demigods.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Every strategy/isometric game should at least have an option for WASD control =) (oh, and for those of you that remember I am the Lead Designer of Wartide).

Good, good.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  The amount of flags on maps seems overwhelming at first but once you play them all a bit more it all becomes much more digestible and it's then that you realize on most maps there is something near a paucity of flags, lol. Also, playing MP rather than SP helps with that since in MP you'll mostly only be focusing on one or two flags at a time whereas in SP you can't rely on computers as much.

Aye, I suppose it all gets easier with human teammates- even though my first experience was that this Sniper Demigod was overly eager to capture flags (he was on easy) as I've progressed through it and figured hard is the least I need to have any competition in fights, these seem to care much less about flags.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  As for the small amount of Demigods, they are more like roles/classes in an FPS than supremely individual heroes like in DotA. Also, most heroes have at least three different "main" builds and then dozens of sub-builds from there. For example, the Torch Bearer has both fire and ice abilities. He also has two modes- fire mode and ice mode, and he can only cast fire abilities in fire mode and ice abilities in ice mode. You can spend all twenty of your skill points (assuming you reach level twenty but in competitive games and/or when playing Nightmare computers this rarely happens- you're only able to reach that level atm because you either aren't cranking the bot difficulty or simply are exploiting the computer players to get easy kills and xp that you generally don't get in a competitive MP match) on ice alone, or all twenty on fire alone. It's completely doable to not mix the two types of abilities and to just stay in one mode the whole time. So the Torch Bearer from that alone is already like two heroes in DotA. Add in that he can mix fire and ice abilities (my personal preference)...

I'm not sure how I can exploit them to get easy XP atm, because frankly I don't know what yields the most XP.. somehow I got the feeling the best way to earn XP is capturing flags.
As for Torch Bearer, yes I've played him as fire mage, and he does decent like that.. pretty useful creep wave-killer, and he can deliver some damage.. but the whole idea of a 'nuker' like in DotA is gone in Demigods, 'cause everyone has a crapload of hit points already early (don't think I've seen anyone start with less than 2k- which is what you have around level 20-25, as long as you're not a tank, in DotA- and nukes still have about the same damage outputs. Furthermore I can't help but think he's damn slow, and even if I spend cash on movement speed- it seems all of them are based on % which means he won't get much faster anyhow with that low base. That's my main problem with him- I see some damn fast AI players around, like a Rook running around like some rocket seemingly permanently- I so want to know what item that is!

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  But also, DotA has built-up its massive stable of heroes over years and years (six years about now?). I don't think Demigod will ever reach the amount of heroes that DotA has currently (but given the above paragraph, does that matter?), but Stardock and GPG do want to release a relatively steady stream of new Demigods and arenas (they're currently planning two new Demigods for the 1.1 patch). Currently they've been dealing with fixing-up Impulse Reactor (the online service) so that's been top priority but they are starting to shift towards content development now as well (they are also working on a bit of free DLC to be released later this summer entitled "Clan Wars").

That's true, and I didn't expect much more as a start, all I wanted to say is that I really hope they plan on expending it, because 8 heroes, even as adjustable as they are, is way to few. If you had 10 definitive, different modes for each, you'd be at DotA level (which features 93 heroes if I recall right, and soon more as 6.60 should be released in June/July - one which could be considered more versatile than any Demigod hero; the Invoker; with his pretty much large deposit of spells of different kinds- he certainly cover a lot of what Torch Bearer can, plus he can convert between all of it during a fight or through the game).
But if they plan on giving out more content and then more Demigods (it was obvious that they'd release more maps) that's great to know.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Also, items are pretty huge. They're easy to ignore at first when you play Medium comps and even my first... well, quite a few games online and I barely used items. I chose my Favor Item and that was about it- I put my money into Citadel upgrades. However, you will eventually come to realize the importance of items and the items in Demigod are such that they can completely alter how you use your Demigod (for example, while Sedna is a general and her ability set revolves almost entirely around healing and support, with items that increase her speed you can leverage Pounce, Inner Grace, and Heal to allow her to basically become "Ninja Sedna" and a very effective assassin).

Well I wouldn't say ignorable, you need movement speed and you need some regeneration.. you'll also need some armor if you're melee. Then again, I'm a DotA player.. my first impression though, is that they don't offer as much in terms of items as DotA, sure there's probably about the same amount in the end, but there's too many steps between, so many items that you will have to sell after a while to upgrade- just like an RPG. While in DotA you start building items that you'll need late already in the beginning. The problem of cash is solved by recipes.. and I had hoped it would be something similar in Demigods, but it quite frankly is not. It's plain items and you make a build early, then when you grow a bit stronger and earn some gold, you change it out bit by bit, until you eventually have the best (or the game ends).

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Regulus (the sniper you were talking about) doesn't have any ability to survive with almost no hit points nor does he have any abilities that increase his speed. Since the latest patch, computers have been upgraded to utilize items more often and more effectively so what you were witnessing was no doubt a result of that. He has abilities that allow him to Snipe (the long-range shot you observed), lay Mines, passively increase his range, passively decrease the movement speed of enemies he attacks, turn him into an angel of sorts where he does more damage but every shot eats mana, and I I'm forgetting at least one more.

I've noticed that almost everyone has this ability, so I guess it's a mechanic of Demigods that a fleeing hero has a lot more armour, yet I still deal (I'm guessing the floating numbers that I see are damage inflicted by and on me - and seeing as these vary I conclude they represent the actual damage) full damage. To explain, think of the HP bar [||||||||||] (green resembling HP as always, black being lost HP)

The fight begins with a full bar [||||||||||], and then by every attack it drops one line (this one has 10 lines in total, so unless the target heals or puts on a temporary shield/invulnerablility it will take ten attacks) .. then when there's only one strike left, the target Demigod runs, but Unclean Beast is usually really fast chasing- somehow, it says the ability slows the target down, but to me it would seem my speed is boosted and their remains the same- and I can throw in numerous hits- Oak is perhaps even faster because his attack animation doesn't involve stopping- yet, with a fully black HP bar they keep running and running and their speed increases while mine drops and there they go, after the 20th hit they vanish behind their towers, with a HP bar like this for 3 seconds or more [||||||||||]. That leads me to believe I'm not even dealing 10% damage any more when the HP bar reach 10%. Apparently though, this effect doesn't work with spells, so as long as you've got a nuke or stun left, the target will likely die.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  The teleportation is the result of an item. There are two main teleportation items- one that allows you to teleport to any friendly structure (that is 99% the one you observed Regulus using when he was running- he was teleporting home) and one that allows you to teleport short distances (ala Blink in WC3).

Aye, I'm guessing it's the warpstone, otherwise it's that favor item. The blink is ridiculous though, it moves you as far as you walk in a half-sec.. maybe it's possible to jump over some small gaps or dodge an attack, but hardly anything to escape with- this also partly because of the lacking hills and obstacles- where in DotA you can make an impressive escape by merely blinking up a hill to you're out of sight and hide behind a tree only to TP back to base without any interruption, this isn't doable at all in Demigods. The only way to get out of sight is by outrunning, includes stunning, the chaser.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  As for buying units... only Generals can do that. They don't buy units but rather idols with which they can call in one of three types of minions (melee fighters- good at annoying and damaging enemy Demigods, ranged units- good at taking out towers, or healers- good at keeping minions and the player alive). They also each have their own summonable unit (Erebus- the Vampire Lord- has Nightcrawlers which spawn from dead enemies, the Oak has the Raise Dead Ward which convert all dead around the ward into spirits, the Queen of Thorns has Shamblers which she summons via using-up some of her mana and the Shamblers attack in a line of spikes like the Lurker in StarCraft, and Sedna has Yetis which she summons). So... guessing you were facing multiple enemy Demigods?

That'd be Priests, Angels, Catapulsari(or something like that) and Giants. I only faced Regulus, I'm not arrogant enough to take on multiple enemies single-handedly for a first match.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Minions are actually good. Alone, a single Demigod can typically fight them back until Priests come into play. Priests can really turn the tide of battle in an early game. Whereas without Priests, enemy minions don't last long enough to cause serious damage to your towers and thus you can allow enemies to seize portals and allow the enemies spawning from those to be taken care of by your towers, Priests allow those minions to live long enough to cause damage to your towers over time- noticeable damage. Enough so that you can't ignore them. This actually has a profound impact on the flow of battle as if you own all the neutral portals on the map and then gain Priests, you and your allies can capture lock one of the portals while pushing a serious offensive on the other side of the map with the minions from the other portal. If you can sustain this, your foes will have major issues as if you aren't making any progress with your push it's probably because they're meeting it with an equal number of their own Demigods- which means they aren't doing anything about the damage their defenses are taking on the other side of the map. To stop that, they have to probably give-up some ground to your push.

Well, I wasn't thinking of ignoring them, the thing is- I'm used to DotA and in the early stages, a Hero can't handle more than two creeps attacking you without dying- and after you've killed those two creeps you'll need to heal up. It seems in Demigods anyone can walk straight into a wave and kill them all without dropping more than a few percent hit points- Torch Bearer for instance, only needs a Fire Circle and they all drop dead in a few seconds. The priest doesn't help that a lot, they seem to have a bit more hit points themselves though, so you need a hit or two on each, but still.. minor damage to you.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Anyway, after Priests are Angels which seem completely meh at first and in fact there have been plenty of posts on the Demigod forums about how useless they are. In reality, they are not. There are numerous very powerful items (chief among them Heart of Life) which will recharge mana, health, or other abilities as long as the Demigod using such an item does not take damage. Angels, thanks to their airborne nature and plain awkwardness, have a knack for dealing such damage, minimal as it may be. They also are good for chasing down enemy Demigods that don't have much health left and they also are good at drawing enemy firepower unwittingly (they have a surprising amount of hit points).

Catapultasari (aka Catapults) are often game-winners. When Demigods advance in levels and acquire more items and upgrade their base's defenses from the Citadel, Priests no longer quite cut it. But Catapults definitely do. If you are consistently pushing right up to your enemy's towers but not managing to push hard enough to bring them down, Catapults will change that. Giants are the strength of low-level Demigods and can dish out a fair amount of damage as well as take it- that becomes key as you try to push deeper into enemy territory and then have to contend not only with damage dealt by towers but damage dealt by Giants and Catapults and etc as well.

Even these are pretty useless unless you get them early, for instance the game I took a screen shot of above, all the minions dropped in a single blow (I had cleave and critical strike) if I got lucky, other wise 2-3 hits on the giants, they didn't have any impact on the game other than hiding Demigods with their models. xP

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  XP flags are actually huge in competitive MP games (buying XP from the Citadel isn't as huge as it's usually a better investment to increase the rate at which you receive gold so you can grab new items but it still has an impact) because, as I mentioned earlier, rarely do you ever get to level 20 (it's not really that games don't last long enough... it's just that XP is not gained so easily when facing intelligent foes because you don't get nearly as much from ganking because you do less of that and you have less time to focus on fodder because enemy Demigods are constantly up your ass), so getting a level or two ahead is huge (plus, when games do get to level 20, getting your Demigod to level 20 first is a huge advantage- level 20 in Demigod is like experimental units in Supreme Commander, "tie breakers" per se).

Yes, I absolutely see the benefit of XP flags, did I state otherwise? ^_^"
Anyhow, is it even possible to 'gank' in Demigods? You've got plenty of time to run away when you see them appear inside your LoS. Like I've said earlier, there's nothing that can hide you inside someone's LoS-circle and it's pretty large compared to movement speed. Getting a level or two ahead seemed practically inevitable in my games was hard AIs- usually there was a level spectre ranging from level 10 to level 20, but yeah.. those aren't human and they seem to do awkward, random things from time to time. Like ambushing the citadel alone? Go Rook!

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Oh, and your "knockback", that is from an ability of the Unclean Beast's. It's the ability that causes enemies to explode when killed by the Unclean Beast (I think the ability name is Post Mortem). Anyway, it makes it easier for the Unclean Beast to clear-out low-level minions quickly but of course spending XP points on that ability means sacrificing some ganking power.

Aye, I realized that later, in DotA it would have a beneficial effect on team fights too, but here it's pretty useless against Demigods and only serves to quickly get rid of minions. Basically, what you need for UB is the passives and the frenzy boosting your damage- that is unless you plan on a early defeat before people afford items- then the venom-thingy comes in handy with it's 1500 dot. The drain is merely useful as a temporary stun, 'cause 700hp +/- is nothing in Demigods, unless it's used against fleeing enemies.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  You've barely brushed the surface of Demigod's items Even the costliest items in their categories aren't necessarily the best- it's all relative to your build. Also, Artifact Shop

True, basically, you don't want to spend money on an armour if your focus is dps. Then you go buy some artefacts, which seems to be the best way of gaining attack speed and damage gain - the gloves are made for it, but they're too weak.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Demigod tends to focus more on leveraging tactics through minions, timing of spells/mana usage, and overall strategy rather than LoS and movement blockage. I can't necessarily say that Demigod wouldn't benefit from some more terrain detail but at the moment I think the pathfinding needs to be improved a bit first- it's the kind of thing I think they may begin to work in over time. But there also is an emphasis in Demigod that in order to save yourself from enemy assault, you really do need to retreat, and it needs to be a retreat. If you have Heart of Life and your team has done fairly well, you can go just a bit beyond the frontlines and get out of enemy LoS (to prevent taking a Snipe from Regulus or a Fireball from the Torch Bearer) and regenerate and get back into the fight without losing much time. But the concept is more that every second you're not on the frontlines either pushing your own forces forward or stemming the tide of enemy foes, the enemy has the advantage so that is the design behind that and the narrow lanes and such (the lanes actually aren't that narrow though they are designed more around the concept that what lane you are in at all is a tactical and/or strategic choice).

Aye, the pathing seem to be a problem, I continue to get stuck everywhere and I think it's a stun and then after some seconds and realize 'damn this is a long stun with no buff' and I try to move somewhere away from an edge or flag and I get out.

As for retreating, yeah.. and retreating takes up a damn lot of time too because you're so slow. If it hadn't been for the gold-gain of the enemy, it'd be just the same if you died.

The lanes are narrow- they put Rook in the game, and he's exceptionally large, but he mostly cover the full lane. If there was collision-size, he could block the lane with just being there. It doesn't offer much in terms of mobility and dodging AoE spells, when there's only back and forth in a lane.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Sedna doesn't have insane mana regeneration and Heal's cooldown isn't too short. Remember that certain flags can decrease cooldown time as can certain items (but if you're finding enemy cooldowns to be too short for your liking, consider prioritizing the capture of the cooldown flag they probably own). Anyway, to Heal like she did against you means that she is sacrificing the damage via not bringing forth as many Yetis or not Pouncing as much. Also, she's sacrificing not healing allies as well. Anyway, Sedna really lacks in the damage department unless you go with the "Ninja Sedna" build I mentioned above but there are sacrifices in that as to being able to heal constantly and etc.

We had all the flags (as you can see by the screenshot), yet she still remained invulnerable- this wind she channels around her- I suppose it increases regeneration and armour? Well, this fight she's too close to the fountain, so that would give the mana regeneration she needs. She seemed to be fairly decent at healing her allies though! She wasn't the only one no dying.

(06-05-2009 10:06 PM)TerranUp16 Wrote:  Anyway, I don't feel level 20 Demigods are totally balanced at the moment (mostly thanks to some rather uber items that open up later in the game) but like I said before, rarely does it ever come down to that in competitive games.

Oh, and branch out from the Unclean Beast, heh. The UB is fun but one of the nice things about the so-called paucity of Demigods in the game in the moment is that you do have the chance to spend quite a bit of time with all of them and doing so really helps you understand them. Currently, it's very apparent that your views on certain Demigods at the moment are tainted based on what they're doing against you but you haven't yet used them yourself so you don't appreciate the relative difficulty of what they are doing nor do you recognize what is necessary for them to be able to do to you what they are.

Otherwise, if you have anymore questions... xD

Aye, I've branched out, I found it pretty fun to mash down towers with Rook- just give him some attackspeed and he's pretty much like Tiny the Stone Giant in DotA. Though he still doesn't keep up with the damage of say Oak and UB. And they allow for even more attack speed and more importantly movement.

Oh, and yeah- I'm aware that abilities you don't know about appears more powerful when you don't know them. Another thing that doesn't help much is the lack of insight on others item-builds. Sometimes I see Demigods with immense movement speed and attack speed, but I have no idea what items they have so I can't try it myself without trying every possible combination of items.

---

Quote:Go to the Technical Support section of the Demigod forums (which you can access by just opening Impulse and clicking on Demigod and in the right panel there will be a link to the forums for it)

If it only were that easy.. where do I click on Demigod? Mine says 'Friends:' and on the top bar there's a forum, but that's for all of Impulse, and under Stardock Games there's no technical support.
In my games it's not possible to 'click' Demigod, and honestly I can't find a link anywhere to a Demigod forum. heh, there's even mention of one on the Stardock Games forums, but there's no link or explanation on how to get there only that it's 'one jump away' .. hurray for user-friendly GUI...

[TerranUp16]

I'll address the last bit first... Impulse's UI is very user-friendly. Just go to Games and select Impulse. From there, click Forums. If you're in list view, then you might need to right-click Demigod and then click Forums from the contextual list. Personally, I keep my games in Tile view which you can select by navigating to Games and then from the second black bar up top (the lower of the two) clicking on View->Tile-View.

War Rank, fyi, is gained by holding flags. Dunno if it's been mentioned for but it's not the most obvious of things and is very useful to know.

Anyway, you get a lot of income for taking out enemy Demigods at the moment but like I said, when you face more skilled opponents, that doesn't happen nearly as often so funding and XP from other sources becomes vital- flags grant a lot of XP to low-level Demigods but not so much to high-level Demigods. Enemy minions and gold mines are good sources of gold (and I think you get gold for more than just last-hitting minions- I think that works more like XP; that is, if you're near an ally who is killing minions, you get some XP for that just like you can assist on Demigod kills).

For XP, the "best" source depends. For most Assassins it's taking out enemy Demigods. For Generals, it's usually more a mix of supporting Assassins, capping/holding Flags, and killing enemy Demigods (you get XP pretty much just for being near the deaths of enemy minions).

As for Torch Bearer, if you start with the Swift Anklet favor item and grab Boots of Speed, you're generally fine in that department. In terms of nuking, the intent of Demigod is that no single hero is really supposed to be able to just destroy an enemy Demigod's HP with relatively little effort. You can do enough damage to force an enemy Demigod to retreat but never enough to kill just by being close enough by yourself. It's more about teamwork and higher-level tactics.

However, the Torch Bearer can bring quite a bit of damage into play. If you have the mana (get items), you can come in with a Fireball, follow-up with Fire Nova (those two together on a single Demigod can deal a LOT of damage) then swap to ice and unleash an Ice Nova if your target is trying to run (Ice Nova will stun them for a second or two) and then follow-up with an Ice Rain and then switch back to fire for Fireball and/or Fire Nova potentially for the kill. That's really as close as Demigod ever gets to allowing "nuking".

However, there is plenty of sniping. Besides from Regulus's Snipe ability, Torch Bearer's Fireball, Erebus's Bite, Sedna's Pounce, QoT's ability that shoots-out a wave of thorns, Unclean Beast's grab ability, and the Rook's Hammer Slam are all the most prominent examples but there are other "snipe" abilities and yet more that can be engineered to basically be "snipes".

As for speed items, like I said, the Swift Anklet favor item, Boots of Speed item, and Wand of Speed to start. then Journeyman Boots as soon as you can. All of those combined can give you a 65% increase in movement speed before considering Journeyman Boots' effect (and when you see stuff just absolutely rocketing around, that generally is the Journeyman Boots).

For items, I actually never sell an item. The reason is that items *cost so much* (higher level ones) that even late-game you just can't afford to go all high-end items. You have to draw the line somewhere. And that's where stuff like the Plaenor Battlecrown and Boots of Speed come in- the boosts they offer are relevant the whole game. Rarely will you ever be able to save for Artifacts- and definitely (I've learned the hard way), you cannot plan your item build around them, period.

As for the life bar thing, it's not a mechanic... I definitely don't have an issue killing enemies low on health, with abilities or otherwise... So you could be encountering some kind of a bug or might not be taking regeneration into account (if the enemy Demigod is running away there is a longer period between your current attack and your last one so basically you're not hitting the enemy as quickly and because of that the damage to regen ratio is not as good) but it's probably a bug or possibly some computer player trickery but I haven't had an issue with this against Nightmare comps (and they do actually kinda cheat in a few ways).

The Warp Stone can actually be extremely useful. You've no doubt observed the existence of lanes but what you're failing to account for is the significance of how long it takes to jump between lanes- if that is even doable at all. With a Warp Stone, you can often do that instantaneously (this can completely save you from melee attacks if you're of such a mind) albeit only to adjacent lanes. But that's sometimes all that's needed- it can alter your vector of attack on an enemy Demigod or position, allow you to quickly aid an ally Demigod, allow you to circumvent a veritable enemy stronghold (it's not uncommon for a Rook and a General or two to utilize the Rook's ability to summon towers and the Generals' troops and overall support powers to pretty much hold an area to maintain control of the map- being able to get around such roadblocks can be very useful indeed). Also, the Warp Stone is not at all bad for hopping "over" some enemy tower emplacements. Study the lay-out of Cataract carefully and note the locations of the spawn flags for both teams and their defenses. Ninja-capping (aka backdooring ala its DotA term) is a very effective tactic on that map and the Warp Stone makes that much easier and not nearly as risky.

To complement the above, Demigod doesn't have much in the way of terrain blocking movement, but it does have a lot of other stuff that basically blocks progress or retreat. For example, if you go and try to ninja-cap one of your enemy's Portals in Cataract without dealing with the enemy towers in that lane first, if you are forced to retreat, you will be retreating right into those towers and you are going to take a LOT of damage from that unless it is very, very late in the game. That could well be deadly damage and it's basically because you took the tactical risk of being boxed-in for the strategic benefit of putting severe pressure on your enemy.

As for creeps, it all depends on the situation. If you're just taking on enemy minions in the open with a hero that has good AoE attacks like the Torch Bearer then they're not a huge problem. If you're trying to attack enemy towers then Priests are going to turn the battle against you. But the bigger effect of Priests really is that if you, the player, leave a minion battle alone, the side with Priests will win decidedly and those creeps will stay alive long enough to damage your towers. Also, it will take you, the player, longer to deal with those creeps so even if you try to stop them your towers may still take more damage than you'd like.

Level 20 and practically infinite gold are a point at which minions become useless... sorta. The minions won't kill enemy Demigods but they will give hell to enemy structures if given the opportunity. And that late-game (so late that as I have said dozens of times before, it rarely comes up in truly competitive play), it's more about how the teams of Demigods are faring directly against each other and their plight will influence the minions' plight- but it often happens then that your entire team of Demigods will be fighting enemy Demigods and your Catapults and Giants will be finishing-off structures- you're basically just buying your minions the time they need to win. Also, I've noticed that as of 1.01 and the update to AI, the AI doesn't go for Citadel Upgrades as much and I've actually won the end-game award for "Citadel Upgrades" by buying one, 600 gold upgrade once... and this is because the AI focuses on items more now. So the minions in SP now often do not get properly upgraded so that really hurts them late-game.

Plenty of ways to gank. They're just not the same as in DotA. But one of my favorite non-traditional ways is to use the Rook and to create an arrangement of towers that seems largely benign. Draw multiple enemy Demigods into a fight with me because they will think- rightfully so- that even with my towers they outmatch me. However, a General like Sedna or the Queen of Thorns will be hanging around just out of sight range or in site range but far enough away "busy" to look like any danger. Then, once the enemy Demigods are fully within my towers, have Sedna or the Queen of Thorns come in, heal or Bramble Shield me, and then we both turn on one of the attackers. I Rock Roll one and that one gets either Pounced or thorned and all this time the towers are pounding away and it doesn't take long for that to turn into a nice kill. And then for thirty seconds you've got a power play basically (if you're familiar with ice hockey, xD). And this tactic is even orchestratable with AI (Nightmare at least- your towers can often get one of the enemies to half health and your allies will notice that and come to your aid while simultaneously seeking the kill).

Post Mortem is actually very, very useful- it's not much for damaging enemy Demigods directly, but it allows you to clear-out enemy minions to allow your own to actually support you and it also allows you to effectively deal with Generals' minion retinues which are very, very overlooked in their impact.

If you're still complaining about narrow lanes, seriously, boot-up Prison. No defined lanes and everything is open but Fog of War is still a huge factor.

Being near the Crystal of Life would be a very good reason why Sedna wasn't dying- it offers a massive rate of hp and mana regen- really, you should never be able to kill an enemy Demigod that is using one of those and when attacking enemy Citadels Crystals of Life are to be avoided by all means necessary. But yeah, Sedna is very effective at healing her allies but Heal's range is low so she can't just sit on the Crystal of Life and do it all day- not even when defending her Citadel.

The Rook is a rather interesting Assassin- in some builds, he is arguably a General. But basically, the Rook is good at holding ground as well as pushing. He doesn't push amazingly well against enemy Demigods without serious support, but if he can kill an enemy Demigod or another teammate can, the Rook can make serious pushes against enemy towers and can pave a path right to the enemy's Citadel. Also, his towers and passive weapon upgrades allow him to be a very serious presence even when he doesn't actively engage in combat (hell, once he's got his Trebuchet, the Rook can just summon a bunch of towers and stand barely beyond the range of your towers' attack range and he can very seriously threaten those).

Speaking of the importance of towers, those are your sources of retreat and safe haven since it generally is suicidal to rush into a heavily-towered area (until very, very late-game but even then, unless the enemy has not upgraded his/her towers at all, they can be a threat), and their very existence is a major part of the terrain and focus of combat. If you allow a lot of your frontline towers to fall, you'll notice that it becomes very tough to retreat and stay alive.

As for items, after you try a range of them out you begin to get a concrete concept of what the effects are via the descriptions (the descriptions themselves can often appear rather nebulous but once you've gotten your feet wet they begin to make much more sense).

[Dragonskull]

This is basically bits and pieces a little back and forth.. >_>

Quote:Plenty of ways to gank. They're just not the same as in DotA. But one of my favorite non-traditional ways is to use the Rook and to create an arrangement of towers that seems largely benign. Draw multiple enemy Demigods into a fight with me because they will think- rightfully so- that even with my towers they outmatch me. However, a General like Sedna or the Queen of Thorns will be hanging around just out of sight range or in site range but far enough away "busy" to look like any danger. Then, once the enemy Demigods are fully within my towers, have Sedna or the Queen of Thorns come in, heal or Bramble Shield me, and then we both turn on one of the attackers. I Rock Roll one and that one gets either Pounced or thorned and all this time the towers are pounding away and it doesn't take long for that to turn into a nice kill. And then for thirty seconds you've got a power play basically (if you're familiar with ice hockey, xD). And this tactic is even orchestratable with AI (Nightmare at least- your towers can often get one of the enemies to half health and your allies will notice that and come to your aid while simultaneously seeking the kill).

You'd never get a DotA player into that obvious trap, even if you'd yield him 2000 gold (which is a LOT in DotA, where a kill usually is 200 gold).. taking out an enemy is never worth your own death.

Quote:I'll address the last bit first... Impulse's UI is very user-friendly. Just go to Games and select Impulse. From there, click Forums. If you're in list view, then you might need to right-click Demigod and then click Forums from the contextual list. Personally, I keep my games in Tile view which you can select by navigating to Games and then from the second black bar up top (the lower of the two) clicking on View->Tile-View.

I still can't find any direct link to the Demigod forum, but I found it at last- Stardock Games, scroll down to the very bottom of the page for sub-forums, there's Demigod- takes some minutes to load, and then on the bottom for the sub forums of that again, the Technical Board.. whoever thought of putting sub-forums on the bottom? ._.

Quote:As for Torch Bearer, if you start with the Swift Anklet favor item and grab Boots of Speed, you're generally fine in that department. In terms of nuking, the intent of Demigod is that no single hero is really supposed to be able to just destroy an enemy Demigod's HP with relatively little effort. You can do enough damage to force an enemy Demigod to retreat but never enough to kill just by being close enough by yourself. It's more about teamwork and higher-level tactics.

Well, I have equipped more speed-boosting items than that, but I take it Journeyman and Boots of Speed doesn't stack, 'cause I'm still moving around like some juggernaut. Nuking someone to death isn't done in a swiff in DotA either, but in Demigod you really need to follow the nuke up fast if you're going for a kill, 'cause else they'll be back up on full HP again any moment. The purpose of nuke-harassing just isn't there, the main purpose of spells in Demigod is either to take out minions, or going for a straight kill.

Quote:If you're still complaining about narrow lanes, seriously, boot-up Prison. No defined lanes and everything is open but Fog of War is still a huge factor.

Yes, heh I have seen in, and played it. The problem with this one though is that you always have a perfect overview of everything. Good luck sneaking up on anyone. It's still my favourite though, because it gives me space to move in other directions than back and forth.

Quote:The Rook is a rather interesting Assassin- in some builds, he is arguably a General. But basically, the Rook is good at holding ground as well as pushing. He doesn't push amazingly well against enemy Demigods without serious support, but if he can kill an enemy Demigod or another teammate can, the Rook can make serious pushes against enemy towers and can pave a path right to the enemy's Citadel. Also, his towers and passive weapon upgrades allow him to be a very serious presence even when he doesn't actively engage in combat (hell, once he's got his Trebuchet, the Rook can just summon a bunch of towers and stand barely beyond the range of your towers' attack range and he can very seriously threaten those).

True, he's pretty devastating versus buildings and minions as long as he's not facing an enemy Demigod, but if you're first in range of one you're likely dead. He's supposed to be very endurable, but that's only if he has time to drain a building without getting interrupted, 'cause he drop really fast otherwise. He's my favourite source of fast gold right now, with any Demigod really (particularly fond of that healer now, as she's capable of delivering a heck of a lot of damage.

Quote:Being near the Crystal of Life would be a very good reason why Sedna wasn't dying- it offers a massive rate of hp and mana regen- really, you should never be able to kill an enemy Demigod that is using one of those and when attacking enemy Citadels Crystals of Life are to be avoided by all means necessary. But yeah, Sedna is very effective at healing her allies but Heal's range is low so she can't just sit on the Crystal of Life and do it all day- not even when defending her Citadel.

I have the impression Heal's range is one of the longest in the game- perhaps beaten by that Sniper thingy. The Crystals of Life doesn't really offer lot of regeneration, it's not enough to keep you alive in a fight anyhow. Well, in Lv20 it is, but otherwise it just doesn't cut it.

Quote:The Warp Stone can actually be extremely useful. You've no doubt observed the existence of lanes but what you're failing to account for is the significance of how long it takes to jump between lanes- if that is even doable at all. With a Warp Stone, you can often do that instantaneously (this can completely save you from melee attacks if you're of such a mind) albeit only to adjacent lanes. But that's sometimes all that's needed- it can alter your vector of attack on an enemy Demigod or position, allow you to quickly aid an ally Demigod, allow you to circumvent a veritable enemy stronghold (it's not uncommon for a Rook and a General or two to utilize the Rook's ability to summon towers and the Generals' troops and overall support powers to pretty much hold an area to maintain control of the map- being able to get around such roadblocks can be very useful indeed). Also, the Warp Stone is not at all bad for hopping "over" some enemy tower emplacements. Study the lay-out of Cataract carefully and note the locations of the spawn flags for both teams and their defenses. Ninja-capping (aka backdooring ala its DotA term) is a very effective tactic on that map and the Warp Stone makes that much easier and not nearly as risky.

Well, some of the gaps you can cross, but some are simply too wide for Warp's short range.
As for Cataract, yeah.. I suppose a warp stone comes in handy when leaving it, but it'd be strictly idiotic to warp into an area of no sight like that.

Quote:For items, I actually never sell an item. The reason is that items *cost so much* (higher level ones) that even late-game you just can't afford to go all high-end items. You have to draw the line somewhere. And that's where stuff like the Plaenor Battlecrown and Boots of Speed come in- the boosts they offer are relevant the whole game. Rarely will you ever be able to save for Artifacts- and definitely (I've learned the hard way), you cannot plan your item build around them, period.

Yes, they cost a lot, but there's a lack of open slots after a while, so you inevitably have to sell something to get spots for more powerful items.

---

Quote:As for the life bar thing, it's not a mechanic... I definitely don't have an issue killing enemies low on health, with abilities or otherwise... So you could be encountering some kind of a bug or might not be taking regeneration into account (if the enemy Demigod is running away there is a longer period between your current attack and your last one so basically you're not hitting the enemy as quickly and because of that the damage to regen ratio is not as good) but it's probably a bug or possibly some computer player trickery but I haven't had an issue with this against Nightmare comps (and they do actually kinda cheat in a few ways).

Well, I'm pretty sure they're not able to regenerate 400 hit points extra in between my attacks, and that would anyhow show up on the bar. What I'm noticing is enemy Demigods running off with less than 200 hit points and not dropping another point even though I deal 400 per hit. It's probably a bug with the HP bars.. there seems to be a lot of trouble with them anyhow, like getting them to show in the first place- sometimes they just won't pop up and sometimes they even show up with the model covering a lot of it making you unable to actually see how much is left (for instance Dark Towers or whatever you call them, tend to have their HP bar in the middle of the sphere, so you can see if it's full or near dead, but if it's in neither of those stages you really don't have a clue how much HP is left.

[TerranUp16]

The aforementioned trap isn't really obvious- you have to take *some* risks and the better ones worth pursuing are those with your fellow Demigods against a single enemy (you bemoan how open the LoS is but it really isn't that open, particularly in Prison).

Anyway, dunno why you can't find a direct link in Impulse... It's a fairly straightforward UI and program unless the distro of it is different or something in Norway...

Journeyman and Boots of Speed do stack.

As far as a nuke follow-up, blarg, you really need to get online, lol. Playing online is a very difference experience and you spend a LOT more time at the lower levels and with less gold floating around and thus far fewer super items. I mean, it is not at all uncommon to use Regulus's Snipe to force an enemy Demigod into retreat so your team can leverage the temporary advantage to grab some key flags and build up War Score.

Also, the Rook can stand-up to enemy Demigods- I just did against five Nightmare CPU's, xD And I didn't even use Hammer Slam. It's all about smart usage of towers and keeping enemies in range of your extra weapons (the archer tower, tower of light, trebuchet, etc...) to constantly drain their hp (not to mention the towers you've placed) while mostly keeping your own up (speed items can help you do this). A smartly-timed Boulder Roll can stun an enemy just long enough for you to swoop in and add your sizable attack damage to what the enemy is already sustaining.

And, of course, the Rook's ability to break through dozens of enemy towers on a single push to cap an enemy spawn flag and to then *hold it* via towers can turn the tide of many a battle. And, as well, if you go with a Boulder Roll/Hammer Slam/God Strength build and go with armor items, you can dish out some serious damage and take some too. Imo, the big thing, particularly in games with computers, is to position yourself well early. Even against Nightmare comps, I rarely get beyond level 12 myself but I NEVER let the enemy Demigods get to level 20 if I want to win. I push early and often and leverage tactical advantages to systematically destroy the enemy's defenses and to ensure that if the game gets to any kind of higher levels that they are brutally on their heels.

Crystals of Life work for me in battle unless I get nuked and have no hp left right when I get to it. Otherwise, I can force the enemy to back off because I'm not really taking much damage and he/she is.

Also, Warpstone doesn't need to be able to cross every gap- even just cutting corners can be huge. But anyway, I don't use it much as it doesn't generally fit my style too much (I prefer not to ninja cap on Cataract if I can help it as I'd rather take the towers down first) but that doesn't diminish the fact that it can have a significant impact (I felt that about fifteen minutes ago when I was pushing from the left onto the enemy Citadel and was working on like four towers at once when an enemy Queen of Thorns teleported right on top of me and cast two thorn-based spells rapidly to bring me down).

As for a finite amount of slots, blarg you are either getting a ton of gold somehow or letting your battles last way too long, xD Seems like most of your comments are about a stage of the game that I rarely reach/rarely allow to be reached.

Probably just a bug but could also be something else- dunno as I haven't encountered it yet.

But blarg, definitely make that tech support post 'cause we totally need to play some MP xD