Myrran retort

[zitro1987]

A golem with 7 armor, lower health, and a bit less 1-2 melee would be more comparable to a fighter's guild unit and more difficult to beat an AI with sheer force. Magic Immunity is helpful, but if it's barely evenly matched with a beastman halberdier (or comparable to 2 halberdiers if buffed), you are less likely to do overpowered rush tactics with life magic.

Dwarves are powerful because a player should know to use alchemist. The lack of an amplifying tower kind of balances them.

[Seravy]

I could have had 2 more armor if the golems was elite with adamant, so losing 2 armor but keeping magic immunity won't solve the problem. To begin with, against armor beating wizards in the early game, we have two game mechanics. Fortress lightning, and spells (black sleep, fire bolt, etc). Golems are immune to all of these. There is no early game unit that can stop even an armor 10 unit with endurance effectively, and current golems go up to 15 if they have every common life spell and adamant.

[Arnuz]

I've done that by being a bit lucky in the desert around home - plenty of deposits and power crystals despite fair minerals - but also exploiting that mana to create a stack of focus magic ghouls, with which I've then conquered my neighbour, leaving nodes for later. I've started clearing the nodes towards the end of the first war.

Thanks to the super production I could force all the others in alliance, even the chaotic one, and basically risk nothing at all.

I didn't get lucky with nodes and lairs, but found a 2 hydras lair that helped with the fortress. That was basically the only non-easy lair cracked before 07.

Seravy, a golem with adamantium and all the buffs seems a bit of an edge case to me, to ensure that you need to be mostly life and also get lucky with the starting location. I haven't yet had adamantium in my starting city despite 3-4 myrran games. I wouldn't drop the golem so much as to make it easy to defeat by an equal number of halberdiers, but if you choose to do so then it should probably deal a bit more damage, or it'd be pretty useless.

[Seravy]

So, I tried the Golem with no magic immunity and less armor (went down to 5), and still won the battle or could have done so if I used 2 golems instead of 1. But there is a greater problem with that direction : if it doesn't have armor and magic immunity, what is the unit for?

We first need to look at the race and decide a role for the unit.
Hammehands cover melee well enough.
Cannons cover physical ranged.
The race won't get magical ranged.
High armor is what breaks balance so we can't have that.
High Resistance is not a new role, all units in the race have it, even if not to this extent.

Which leaves
-Speed (but golems are huge mechs, being fast feels kinda weird even if it makes sense from a technology viewpoint, if the engine is strong enough even big things can be fast, not to mention even if it's slow, when you're huge, movement still covers a large distance as each step you take is like 50 times the normal size)
-Specialized role like missile immunity? (Kinda useless especially on myrror? 2 of the 5 races don't even get bowmen)
-First Striking?
-Other special abilities?
-Thrown? (Weird for a golem, it's not a robot with rocket punch...)


So yeah I think if we want the Golem to have a role, it needs to fill the "cavalry" one. It needs to be fast and have first strike (Colossus also has first strike!). Unless anyone has a better suggestion?

Alternatively we can cut golem entirely (would be a sad thing to do) and have a different unit but then we are still constrained by the above list. One unit I could imagine, Dwarven Demolishers, a melee unit with wall crusher and thrown immolation, basically guys with bombs. We don't have a normal unit that has Immolation yet and dwarves do have trouble with attacking flying enemies.

[Nelphine]

I'd rather not lose the golem. How did the golem win without magic immunity or armor? That makes no sense to me, so I feel like I'm missing something.

[Seravy]

Well, 20 hp is a lot, and 5 base armor still means 10 effective armor...1 from level, 2 from holy armor, 1 from mithril and...ok, 9 then, that's still a lot against strength 4-5 attacks, and could be 2 more with heroism and adamantium. Oh and bless+poison immunity so ghouls can only damage with by melee. (I think I also had Large Shield on as an experiment but it makes no difference, Bless by itself adds 5 against ghouls.)

At this early, the fortress lighting is like, strength 10? 2 Damage a turn or less? So 10 turns to kill the golem, which is plenty to win. 15 if I use healing...25 if two golems.

This is specific to ghouls though. I'd expect bears to hurt the golem. Hounds, Nagas, Ghouls, Skeletons, Sprites etc can't though...either too low attack or poison...

[Nelphine]

So, you're saying that if I take warlord heroism dwarf swordsmen, I should get the same effect? That seems.. Not right. (Meaning: warlord heroism dwarf swordsmen have the same base capabilities you just described. Add holy armor and mithril and they'd have the same armor as your test golem.)

Which means, it is dwarf production due to rich + alchemy. (And also links to 'buffing city troops is op because they have so many sources'.)

[Nelphine]

So I'd reduce dwarf mineral bonus. First, make miners guild additive with dwarf bonus, instead of multiplicative. Then drop dwarf bonus - its double right now? Drop it to +25% +1%/4 turns, caping at +50% on turn 100.

[Seravy]

So, you're saying that if I take warlord heroism dwarf swordsmen, I should get the same effect? That seems.. Not right. (Meaning: warlord heroism dwarf swordsmen have the same base capabilities you just described. Add holy armor and mithril and they'd have the same armor as your test golem.)

Which means, it is dwarf production due to rich + alchemy. (And also links to 'buffing city troops is op because they have so many sources'.)

Well....you don't need rich or alchemy to produce swordsmen so I fail to understand that conclusion. You only need to build an alchemist guild and you're ready to go, the smithy is a starting building. Don't even need barracks if heroism. You could do this with any race pretty much, except, their swordsmen don't have the health and resistance to win the battle. Dwarves have both so they knock out anyone who relies on ghouls or nagas or hounds.


So, I replaced the golem with the swordsmen and added the level and warlord. I also made sure I can cast 3 heals in the battle which is realistic for a good start. (Had 42 skill, only 3 short and this was a bad start for a rich map).
The result :
   

So I have to conclude, Fortress Lightning is too weak. It can't beat a blessed holy armored, enduranced swordsmen.

So let's try to summarize :

1. We need a new formula for Fortress Lightning, that ensures it's stronger in the early game. If the fortress can't be taken easily with 1-2 units, the war drags out (you have to defend yourself from counterattacks and conquer many settlements) which buys enough time for other players to be able to reach uncommons. Alternately we can try to make it count as an Arcane spell so Bless doesn't affect it (which shaves off 2.5 armor from the unit)
2. Golem needs to lose Magic Immunity.
3. Golem probably needs to lose some armor and gain movement and first strike instead, but this one I'm a bit unsure about right now. If fortress lighting is stronger, it can't beat fortresses too easily, but can still wipe out everything else, and it's far too good at that. (and using more than one to beat fortresses anyway is still an option...)
4. The high health and resistance is a problem of its own. What can beat a 18 health 10+ resistance unit with decent other stats in the early game? Fairy Dust if multi-figure and many War Bears, that's it? Normally, resistance based spells and units would be the counter to the superbuffed swordsman tactic, or simply it doesn't have enough health to actually beat larger armies. But Dwarves have both.

[Nelphine]

I'd like to see someone try it with nomad swordsmen and orihilicon.

But I think dwarf isn't the issue here. Buffing city troops (without spells) is the issue. The variance between a level 0 unit and a level 4 unit with adamamtium is huge, which makes it extremely difficult to balance.