Myrran retort

[Nelphine]

I'd much much rather see economic penalties to dwarves before a resistance penalty, especially with a poison modifier being added. Ghouls already destroy most things (see: everything arnuz does) as do focus magic naga in the hands of the AI.

Miners guild: additive with dwarf bonus.
Taxes: +40%, and give dwarves access to banks and merchants guild. (We've had discussions before about how bizarre it is for dwarves to not have those.)

Minerals: only give +25% to +50% over normal races.


Dwarves, in every form of fiction and other game, are THE race for resisting poison. And most magics. They should be the highest resistance race. Even reducing them to 7 base, I would want to move nomads to 6.

[zitro1987]

Simple, life is supposed to play in the early game with cheap holy-weapon / holy-armor / cheap endurance combos in good units ... heroism probably as well, and bless at times. If we're depending mostly on just high armor, it's not very flexible is it?

An cheap move-only endurance will help a life wizard with 3-move ranged units, faster melee if unit has first strike or other strategies, or simply move faster in map.


Another thing that could be thrown in the table on this whole discussion:
*high difficulty AI start with dispel magic.

[Seravy]

Looking at my save file.
-I was receiving 13 hammers from terrain. Significant, maybe a bit too much?
-Having the mecha and miner's guild built added 7 hammers, not bad but not that huge.
-Had 32 from my crystal and mithril mining. 16 hammers of value and from a single ore.
-Omniscient gave me 6 gold and power, and 2 hammers. A total of 8 hammers value. Decent but not huge.
-Only 5 from population albeit without a settler and better terrain this could have been like 2 more workers, 11 total? 14 If I also build food buildings which I forgot this time - they probably earn back their cost in extra production.
-20 gold from taxes. Worth 10 hammers, again this could be more if I had that extra 1 pop for no settler or better terrain.

So I think omniscient is safe, taxes are so-so, terrain is more than expected, requiring a production boosting building is not too much of a problem but relevant, and ores are absolutely supermassive - while the AI gets the same bonus to theirs through difficulty modifiers, they won't be able to spend it on a tactic that counters golems (or hammerhands). They might get lucky and roll "armorer's guild" but chances are they won't and spend the money on things that don't help. Unfortunately, ores are what make Dwarves fun and unique, I'd hate to lose that bonus.

[Seravy]

in good units

Well this is the problem, you don't get good units in the early game, the AI even less so. In fact the AI is prohibited from getting them as they must produce settlers first.

[Seravy]

I'd much much rather see economic penalties to dwarves before a resistance penalty, especially with a poison modifier being added. Ghouls already destroy most things (see: everything arnuz does) as do focus magic naga in the hands of the AI.

As I previously said you don't need an economy to produce a single unit of swordsmen with 3 buffs.
Reducing economy is a solution to one problem but we have two on this race (swordsmen with more buffs and golems with fewer)

[Nelphine]

I'd much much rather see economic penalties to dwarves before a resistance penalty, especially with a poison modifier being added. Ghouls already destroy most things (see: everything arnuz does) as do focus magic naga in the hands of the AI.

As I previously said you don't need an economy to produce a single unit of swordsmen with 3 buffs.
Reducing economy is a solution to one problem but we have two on this race (swordsmen with more buffs and golems with fewer)

And I'd rather ignore the resistance problem than not have dwarves as the highest resistance race. The swordsmen problem is not worth losing that. If you only have one buffed swordsman, the second AI will fortress strike you.

[Seravy]

And I'd rather ignore the resistance problem than not have dwarves as the highest resistance race. The swordsmen problem is not worth losing that. If you only have one buffed swordsman, the second AI will fortress strike you.

Well, they might try but in my previous game the starting swordmen I get for outposts and the capital without overland buffs was enough to fight off multiple nagas thanks to the resistance. So the resistance matters too much even if not fortress spiking. Keep 3-4 unbuffed swordsmen at home and you won (might need to use a heroism in battle). (Would expect similar results against ghouls and hell hounds, probably not against bears but even bears are not that special compared to dwarven swordsmen and their bonus health.)
By the way the AI can't attack you until turn 40 and you can fortress spike both AI in fewer turns easily if using swordsmen - remember I won on turn 48 using golems and wasting lots resources and time meanwhile on other buildings. So no, attacks won't be coming unless the wizard you attack decides they want to return and can afford to maintain their armies despite having no capital, both quite unlikely.

Anyway, time to start working on this.

[Seravy]

An idea, Wraith Form can grant Cold Immunity instead of Poison Immunity to units. Protection from Fairy Dust and Ice Bolt is actually quite useful in the early game, without being a threat to game balance.

We might want to also consider changing the cost to somewhere in the 40-60 range instead of keeping it at 75? The spell definitely is worth the full 75 cost but if you only want to take advantage of one of the effects in the "package deal", it's certainly too expensive.

When was the last time you used WF in combat to provide weapon immunity to unit? To counter poison? To walk through walls? To overcome weapon immunity on an enemy unit? It can do all of these but 15 is kinda expensive for that sort of use in most cases.

Edit : nevermind, cold immunity is a stupid idea as that makes it an easy counter to Wave of Despair. I guess it shouldn't grant an immunity then and probably cost less?

[Nelphine]

Actually, I'd prefer to keep the cost of wraithform - access to early 'flying' ships is well worth it. As for in combat cost.. Honestly, its not the cost. Its the fact that you virtually never need any if those things. So the only time you use it in combat is to take a neutral with one unit, in which case 15 is super cheap for the benefit.

I'd leave it alone. (If anything the two main uses, flying ships, and taking neutrals with one unit, are both vastly underpriced.)


For dwarf resistance: make it 7 (that's still 20% against the new poison, if you use heroism), drop nomads to 6.

By the way, if you ever do get to looking at it, my narrowing suggestion also only includes a single +1 resistance (at level 3), and moves the second one to level 5. So I do agree with you that city unit resistance should not change as much (although I think it should increase by 1 based on the current balance of spells).

[Seravy]

Swordsmen and Halberdier resistance are not the same. So I need 6 on swordsmen to have 7 on the halberdier.
Fortunately everything else is a racial unit so we don't need to lower those - cannons are not suitable for the tactic and golems we need to special-case anyway, leaving hammerhands which if available are in the economic problem category.

Done everything else meanwhile leaving only the golem and the dwarf economy issue on the list.