CHAOS Realm

[rgp151]

Yeah, Armageddon is often not worth casting. First of all, as said, it produces a LOT of ore. This is often quite bad as you're giving your enemy lots of lasting bonuses. Secondly, it is not uncommon to be against someone who can at least cast Change Terrain if not also Gaia's Blessing. In such cases Armageddon is not at all worth it as they will just transformer the volcanoes into hills and reap the added ore.

I play Chaos a lot, both MoM and CoM, and I rarely cast Armageddon. I will most often do it when I have both Armageddon and Great Wasting/Doomsday. Both of those together works pretty well, but IMO I don't like using either one by themselves. Because typically, either I'm going to try and take cities, in which case I don't want to use those spells, or just blow it all up, in which case those spells are great. If I'm taking that strategy then I want to pour it all on as much as possible, so the best scenario is Armageddon + Doomsday + Meteor Storm. I've only actually pulled that off once out of dozens of high end Chaos games though.

But even that Combo doesn't work well against Life or Nature magic, and it is easily dispelled against Sorcery. So mostly this strat only works against Death or Chaos or sometimes weak mixed book wizards with just a little of Life, Nature, etc.

I could see maybe using Armageddon with a mixed Chaos/Nature book, but you can't really plan for it because you can't guarantee that you'll get both Armageddon and Change Terrain/Gaia's Blessing. But if you did you could use Armageddon and when you take over cities just terraform them and reap the ore benefits.

I think if volcanoes didn't produce ore it would be a much more attractive spell. But it seriously produces a lot of ore. In my experience it almost always gets dispelled and in the mean time, you've generated a bunch of ore for your opponents.

[Nelphine]

Fair enough. I'm glad to hear experience from people who play chaos far more than I do.

I'm still concerned about the myrran AI who casts it before towers are cracked though.

In that sceneraio it really feels like SoM without the excessive research cost.

[rgp151]

Fair enough. I'm glad to hear experience from people who play chaos far more than I do.

I'm still concerned about the myrran AI who casts it before towers are cracked though.

In that sceneraio it really feels like SoM without the excessive research cost.

Well, it's not as bad as Suppress Magic or Time Stop, though in CoM Time Stop is more under control, though I've never really liked it as a spell.

Anyway, while it does give a fair amount of power, it's negative effects aren't really that bad.

[Nelphine]

Right, I'm specifically thinking with the power production bonus of an AI, even on expert; and if the human doesn't/can't cast disjunction (since it's before the towers are cracked, it's likely to be the very first very rare the myrran AI got, so it's possible the human won't have disjunction yet, or they're just busy with wars on arcanus), then the AI will have a massive power income boost - in my experience, power production is the closest thing to a predictor of who will win a game, so if this goes too far, the AI will generally win - as well as wrecking a large chunk of arcanus.

All while unassailable by the human.


However, I do think both yours and seravys arguments are convincing, and nothing more should be done at this time.

[rgp151]

IMO the biggest thing I don't like about Chaos in CoM is the move of Doom Bat to Rare. IMO early Doom Bat was a signature aspect of Chaos, so that change really altered the school a lot. The fast speed and Immolation damage made it perfect for when it came out. If you got it early there were still a lot of multi-figure units and you could quickly run around the clean up with a small group of them.

In MoM there were no good Rare summons for Chaos, but it was more like Doom Bat was the uncommon and Chimera was the Rare. That's how I treated them and usually moved on to Chimera a little later due to its cost and slowness. So for me I would have just eliminated Gargoyles and left Doom Bat alone or moved Chimera to Rare and kept Doom Bat where it was with the Immolation. Chimera are a good unit to combo with Chaos Surge, along with Hyrda, which is also why I see it as more of a Rare spell, because I would build those up as I was prepping to cast Chaos Surge.

I would also buff Chaos Spawn by giving it Magic Immunity and going with the 2 movement speed. At speed 2 its still slow in CoM, but its usable.

For my play style in MoM I like going for an early Basilisk with Water Walking and Pathfinding or Doom Bat as a way to really take advantage of research, and being able to get those units and move them quickly around is often the whole key, so I'm a little bummed about the change to Doom Bat in CoM.

[Nelphine]

Hmm. Well as it is, chimera tend to simply get slaughtered while doom bats are a threat. One of the most important features of doombats is overland speed 6, allowing the AI to attack from anywhere.

No other realm gets more than speed 3 (unless it's stuck to ground movement) at uncommon, while several others get speed 5 at rare - so it seems like a good fit for doom bat at rare.

Gargoyles (note the research cost!!) plus immolation is still very strong, plus as fast as pathfinding water walking great lizards - why is that so much worse?

And what kind of stats would you give chimera to make them relevant at rare?

[rgp151]

Yeah, I see the point about Immolation, since you can add that on your own but you can't add Doom attack, so that makes sense.

For Chimera at Rare I'd have to give them +1 Resist, +1 Shields and maybe Poison Touch - 6.

That fits with the 3 heads, though maybe it overlaps with Chaos Spawn a little, but still. It make sense.

Or maybe keep them at Uncommon and give them Poison Touch anyway.

[Nelphine]

While I can see where poison comes from, and totally agree, from a balance point of view, they already are very dominant offensively - the problem is surviving to attack. 

On poison, I'm not sure how it interacts with flame breath but I have a feeling it does get applied.

[rgp151]

Oh, that's also why I use Chimera more as a Rare Unit, because then you can have Warp Reality, which vastly helps them. I often don't use them until I get Warp Reality. In MoM you get Warp realty at Rare, and in Com at VR. BY moving Chimera up to Rare you again keep them closer to Warp Reality. In both games, IMO, Chimera + Chaos Surge + Warp Reality is a nice combination.

A thought on Chaos Spawn would be to give them Teleport. Seems that this would make then much more "Chaotic".

[Seravy]

Considering the very rare spell treasure time and the tower breaking time are set to the same turn, I don't think we should worry about AI casting Armageddon before towers, unless they already researched it. But considering our planned schedule for the first very rare is around 1416, it will probably only happen a few years before then if the difficulty is high and the AI is research heavy. Either way, I'd expect a human player to be able to break towers far before 1416, especially with 9 of them around, if they have a reason to do so. It's only the AI who isn't allowed to do it until then.

IMO the biggest thing I don't like about Chaos in CoM is the move of Doom Bat to Rare.

No matter how I look at it, having 4 creatures at uncommon is way too much - especially on a realm that neither specializes in summoning nor early game. It's almost impossible to have that many without at least one ending up never used.

Immolation itself is an uncommon, so it's not like you lost that effect. If anything, it works a lot better on the high defense Gargoyles, than the fast, but fragile Doom Bats. Immolation isn't a "first hitting" attack - while it's very good at eliminating the enemy, it won't prevent any of the counterattack damage. This wasn't a problem in the old MoM where you rarely had to fight something better than a swordsmen without magic weapons but here the bad pretty much died after eating the second or third halberdier.

Of course moving the Chimera higher could have been another possible choice, same for the Fire Giant but Doom Bat was the only one that had inbuilt redundancy with another, nonsummon uncommon spell. Basically as long as Immolation is uncommon, Doom Bat is pretty useless. (assuming its original uncommon stats and abilities)
Even if I were to ignore Immolation, the main advantage of Doom Bats is being able to attack on turn 1 in combat, as they are fast. So it's an Immolation that hits a target that's far away. Which is...exactly what the spell Fireball does, as well as Fire Giant's ability to throw one. So there are just too many Immolation type damage sources in Chaos uncommon for the Bat to serve a purpose.

(btw in original MoM, Immolation worked on ranged attackers until I fixed it. So it was strictly superior to a Doom Bat, as you could cast it on bowmen and enjoy the benefits without having to engage in melee.)

Aside from these reasons, the realm not having a "Doom" attack type creature despite crafting items containing it, Doom being a rare tier ability, and Doom Bat already having it in their name was pretty much asking for this change to happen, not to mention that a Doom attack type creature is AI friendly - it works against anything and counters the high defense immortal things the players often tend to use.

I don't think Chimeras would have worked very well as rares, but Fire Giant could have been ideal - other giants are also rares that do limited ranged attacks. Unfortunately its Fireball Spell ability, while amazing on an uncommon, is quite worthless on a rare, and unlike the other two Giants who had rare worthy specializations (+5 Armor on Stone, and Armor Piercing on Storm) the Fire Giant did not.

As someone who extensively uses Gargoyles, I have to say the realm would probably be almost unplayable on higher difficulties without them. At least I have no idea how I could defend my cities and conquer at the same time early enough without them. Hounds are decent but under those circumstances I can't afford using a fragile unit where I'm looking at having losses in every fight.

Teleporting Chaos Spawn would be good enough to be very rare, and among the better ones at that. It's not a bad idea considering the creature is quite worthless for the AI as is, but it's still something I rather not have in the game, it's just too powerful - also it would break treasure balance significantly, Chaos Spawn are among the easier targets to hunt and about the only such in Chaos lairs and nodes.