Yeah, I'm learning all the nuances now that I'm playing on Hard mode. It's really sink or swim, so I'm finding new ways to deal with problems.
But yes, like idol I'm absolutely loving the game. It's actually not all tactics, which is surprising. Like idol said already there are things you have to think about. Like in the game I just played, my team were at levels 16, 15, 14, and 13, and the enemy team were at 18, 19, and two 20s. But even though they utterly outleveled us, this was a "fortress" map variant, in which the objective is to destroy several fortresses scattered around the map while protecting your own. Even though by the end of it they were kicking our asses, we had 3 fortresses at nearly full health and they only had two at about half. We owned all the spawning platforms (which is why they leveled up so fast), so the tide of guys just wasn't enough for them to deal with despite being the superior force. We weighed them down under sheer numbers. I was playing as the Oak, who has an ability that lets him go apeshit for a couple seconds after being "killed", and I used this three times to deal massive damage to the foremost fortress. They couldn't do shit about it, and by then I threw my last bit of money into spawning giants, and the tide of the army was simply too much for them.
The game definitely has a focus on tactics in some ways, but it's not in a spammy RTS kind of way. You don't control each and every unit, so you have to think globally in some ways, and tactically in others. I was doing good on the strategy part and winning games regularly on Normal, but on Hard I realized quickly that superior tactics from the AI were making short work of me every time. I had to learn when to use abilities that would interrupt the other demigods, I had to learn how to make good use of teleport scrolls to get quickly around the map, and I had to learn how to balance speed boosts with health and mana boosts, and figure out how to manage an inventory of items like health and mana pots, etc. It sounds simple enough, but finding the right dynamic isn't necessarily so easy. You have to get a feel for the ebb and flow of the game and the way different demigods move and do damage. A little thing like 10% extra speed can be the difference between a guy getting away or you hammering him to death as he flees, giving you massive gold and XP. "Almost" never cuts it here.
The game is fantastic. I honestly don't feel the lack of maps at all now that I'm playing the other modes more. A game of fortress is *really* different from a game of domination, and those are both completely different from conquest. You have to know how to play each game type. They really don't play the same. Tactically, yes, your basic tactics will remain sound, but what you do, how you move, how you defend... these change drastically. And these modes change based on the map, too. A game of fortress on the medium-sized Exile map plays nothing at all like a game of fortress on the small Crucible map, and even the small Crucible map doesn't play like the small Prison map. These are good maps, so don't let the small numbers fool you.
You guys should totally pick this up. Idol and I used GameRanger to connect earlier and had good reliable speeds and no disconnects. Until Stardock gets the network issues sorted, it seems to be a perfect solution.
