Speel & wake inconsistency

[kem]

Sleep’s AOE does not take into account elevations, so it takes 1 spell to put Ulfred and Konrad to sleep.

“Wake” spell, on other hand, does take elevations into account, so it takes 2 spells & movement to cast a counterspell on Ulfred and Konrad.
That is 3v1 situation, where player is in disadvantage.

In this particular case 1 alp will destroy these 3 bros, as player can wake them 1 by one in sequence.
To solve this, player needs a situation of 5v1, wich is crazy odds.

This inconsistency creates multiplication of effort to counter the spell spam, in mountains this will lead to plain unsolvable odds, as player will need x3-x5 action points to negate effects of the sleep.
If player is in a situation vs 10 ALPs, he will need effective actions of 30-50 bros to counter it. Counter will fail, as well as retreat. That is campaign end, due to poor balance of actions and counteractions.

[hruza]

There is no “wake spell” or “counterspell”. There is an action to wake up adjacent character. Characters on 2 levels of height difference or above are not adjacent, even if they share seemingly adjacent tiles.

That said, I think for that very same reason sleep spell should not affect characters on 2 levels of height difference or above, it seems like a oversight on the part of developers.

As for your screenshot, your positioning is extremely poor and what ever damage you take, it’s well deserved. You shouldn’t place your characters next to each other in that fight. They should always end between 1-2 tiles apart. That way one enemy can put asleep only one of your characters, and your characters can always wake up one another. That way you are 100% safe as long as at last one of your characters is awake at the start of your turn.

Albs are quit easy once you understand how they operate. The critical part is to survive first turn when you are grouped together. Spreading during pre-positioning on the world map helps with that to some extend.

It also seems that high resolve can resist sleep spell, although I am not sure about it. In case it does, having a sergeant with high resolve should give you upper hand.

[kem]

Have you noticed, that terrain does not allow for proper spacing or step-wake-step action? So your input on poor positioning is mute. Pathfinder won’t fix 3+1 AP cost tiles.

If you don’t belive me, try figting 10+ alps in mountains/super dence forests, while you are forced to move in conga lines between multiple elevations, so you phisically cannot wake everybody nor fall back.

In this situation only the 100+ res bro may reliably spearhed the advance, or entire congo line being put to sleep and the tip is dying, while rear bros being waked and failing morale.

Btw, this fight ended with only 1 damage cast allowed, only bacause I rushed in 3 more bros to take care of this mess.

[hruza]

That terrain allows spacing perfectly well. With or without pathfinding. Pathfinding would just make it more trivial. It’s true that you made that more difficult by putting your mace guy where he is, which you shouldn’t to begin with. If you would have put him to his low left, you would have no problems there. But even that position would be doable, because you need just one guy awake. Leave spearman where he is and put swordman one tile apart from spearman. As long as swordman stays awake, he can wake up spearman who can wake up mace guy.

Of course you had spread your men all around the map, and since there are more Albs then one, they can sleep all of your guys with rest of your team unable to help. But that was mistake in my opinion. You shouldn’t spread in to groups small enough for Albs on map to put to a sleep.

I do agree with you that sleep spell should not affect characters which aren’t technically adjacent, like when they are on two height levels apart. It just doesn’t make logical sense. But it doesn’t lead to unsolvable odds you claim it does. In terrain with movement penalties, you simply will move more slowly and keep your guys 1 tile apart, not two -unless you have Pathfinding that is, that’s all. Plus you have to be more careful and planing more thoroughly at the choke points, if there are some. Btw, this issue affects only mountain terrain, forests and swamps are mostly flat anyway.

As for fighting 10 Albs, unless you have some high resolve guys, you shouldn’t fight at all. In no terrain. They will likely put your whole team to sleep before you get your move. If you have that resolve, then terrain does not matter. It will just take more time. This is not the game were you’re supposed to accept every fight. There are many situations where you can’t realistically win.

It’s really simple, without Pathfinder in difficult terrain you need to keep your guys 1 tile apart instead of 2. And consider your movements bit more carefully. Moreover as end of your battle demonstrates, it’s not that you aren’t allowed room for few mistakes as Alb nightmare attack is not an instant kill.

[uberseed]

Also a few other observations: being attacked does not wake up you – while it should. If a brother goes to sleep while being attacked by other things, he’s certainly dead.

Being attacked by alps in the forest is pretty much guaranteed loss since you can’t space people out. Sometimes RNG will make your team trapped in a forest cluster without exits.

[Author]

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