Having a mass sac doctor spell would, in essence, defeat the purpose of have to convert souls in the first place. Converting souls takes time. It takes that time because the opposing wizard should have a chance to reclaim his lost souls. He should have a better shot at it than you do.

There are no crystals, the is no gas, there is no wood, gold, stone, farms, to work or harvest. The economic unit is souls. This is a great way to implement them.

Resource collecting should not be automatic, that takes some strategy from the game. You have a decision to make when the enemies souls are scattered about the battlefield. Do you take the time to collect them, or do you go straight for his altar, and take him out while he is weak?

Is it any more boring than chopping wood, or planting farms, or mining crystals... granted that a lot of times these things happen automatically in rts games. You can, as one responder said, turn up the gib setting so there will be no red souls, then you can just run over the souls and pick them up without having to convert them. This is much faster, and hardly affects gameplay, because you are already right there where the souls are anyway.

In the end however, it really comes down to how you feel. If it is boring to you, then nothing anyone writes here will change your mind. I'm not really sure what you expect out of a response to collecting souls being boring, as any number of people here can say that it isn't boring to them, and post their reasons why, but that is not going to change the way you feel about the issue at hand.

If you wipe out a wizard, he has to run back to his altar or manalith to resurrect himself so to speak. During that time, if shiny implements what you are proposing, you could wipe out any chance he has of being able to come back. Basically it would turn into "Kill the Wizard", because if you did, then the game is over for him. The way it is now, if he is killed in battle, he probably still has a chance to resurrect himself and get back before all his souls have been collected.

Wow. Sorry for the long windedness. There ya have it though, if that doesn't do it for ya, then just play insta gib style.

Harvesting is a long process when there are several one-soul creatures dead around you Agreed. But it's your choice to take the time to do it or to launch an attack on the enemy. He is probably confronted to the same situation, and you may want to take the advantage by attacking him while he's harvesting his "crops". One smart way to deal with it is to start converting one soul, then go on for a skirmish/killing spree/construction somewhere else and come back when you feel like it's time to do so.

Waiting around your sac doctors is giving the enemy a large advantage if he keeps moving, exploring and building all over the place, while converting somewhere else.

It's all a matter of balance, really. YOU have the option of either waiting by your sac doctors because you think they might be in danger, or just let them deal with the soul unattended.

In conclusion, the time spent by your sac doctors is the time you won't be spending on exploring the area and finding blue souls, mana fountain, and so forth...If you play against an advanced player, you'll find that waiting around will bring you a huge disadvantage. http://www.veforums.com/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Sartan (edited 11-20-2000).]