DEATH Realm

[zitro1987]

I raised the concern about overpowered ghouls before, but that was back when ranged magic attacks activated poison 1 per unit. I still think they're among the best common units in the game but not to the point of wrecking game balance. I do however admit raising their upkeep to '2' for my own games to compensate for how amazingly resource-efficient a ranged 'create undead' unit can be, especially one with decent hp/armor.

[Seravy]

but that was back when ranged magic attacks activated poison 1 per unit

They still do, I haven't changed that yet.
I suppose he was probably fighting a lot of low resistance enemies that's why it worked well.

Ghouls are a gamble. If there is nothing with low resistance to fight with them, they are not worth the 80 mana. If there are many, they are awesome. But you can't know that when you spend your picks on them. I've fought against many ghouls in enemy armies and they are strong, but nothing too hard to deal with. Like all ranged units, they are easy to take out with fast melee units, as long as they do not have low resistance. Bless in life, phantom warriors in sorcery, several spells in death can deal with that. Hell Hounds are not bad against ghouls either considering they only cost half as much and can reach them easily. As far as I remember Fire Elementals are also immune. That leaves only nature with no direct answer to poison but it can counter the ranged damage part with resist elements instead.

Ghouls have 4 figures, 4 ammo and poison 1. That's 16 rolls for poison, assuming a reasonably low 5 resistance, that's 8 damage per ghoul in a combat. Not bad, but it's about 1 extra swordmen unit killed on top of the 1 it would normally kill. The only thing that makes this look good is the undead you get afterwards, a 80 mana creature killing two swordsmen is not outstanding, more like expected. Also getting 2 swordsmen for free, now that's quite a lot better. It's still not that outstanding in my opinion, a zombie can usually also kill and raise two swordsmen and it's available instantly in every combat.

Also, Death being strong at early game is intended.

[namad]

Actually I do not care at all about the poison. What matters is that for 320 mana I get 12-16 free swordsmen. Instead of losing half my investment like I might with something like nagas (the nagas even cost more). Sure the poison works maybe as well as 2 more magical attack die but the magical attack die also don't suffer to hit penalties like you'd get spamming bowmen. Yes the nagas are stronger but when you use them to conquer neutrals they take damage and you don't convert the enemy units. IIRC the best I ever did with ghouls was to earn 5 free swordsmen from one fight with an investment of roughly 3ghouls 1spearman 1swordsmen. Then a few turns later I got 7 more free swordsmen.

It's not really even close. If there are enough swordsmen nearby you can bum rush and kill an extreme ai opponent with only 4or5 ghouls plus the horde of free units they generated.

After you get your first set of 3-7 free swordsmen what you do is make sure to trade undead swordsmen blows with regular enemy swordsmen sufficient so that the ghouls ammo is used most efficiently. Then any undead swordsmen too low on hp can be used all game long for free unrest reduction.

At the same time if you are trying to bum rush an extreme ai fortress you can also end up sniping off free hellhounds pretty easily. Later in the game hellhounds warbears nagas are all entirely worthless but a lone ghoul with 8 stag beetles or magicians or longbowmen can end up sniping off fantastic creatures worth 300-600 mana. Sure they'll never heal, but you only paid 80mana and you got to keep the ghoul.

If they have to stay common and 80 mana and 1upkeep and create undead I'd suggest reducing attack die by 1 or removing poison or making poison melee only? Or maybe give them 2or3 ammo? so that they really are awful in combat (except for the creation)?
or make them uncommon 160 mana and give them 2poison 4 attack die or something?

Just play a few test games where you start with two death books (and ten whatevers) and try to bum rush the nearest extreme/impossible fortress on arcanus. Ghouls are easily twice as good as every other common summon imo, if you literally cast all the other common overland summons and the result was always 2 units appearing that might make it balanced.

Edit: actual game scenarios in which I used it: seemed VERY effective with nearby barbarians, good with nearby high elves, good with nearby gnolls, great with nearby lizardmen, good with nearby klackons. Average to poor against nomads (not so much because poison is resisted but because the nomads all have bows and as such damage the ghouls a lot right off the bat, then when you have the undead nomads they kind of stink because they're weak and unable to deal damage).

In your weakest wizard test game things worked similarly, although I haven't watched the rest of the videos to see how badly death suffers late game, of course with only 4 books your videos won't show that off fairly... but the thing is it doesn't really matter if death is weak late game because you can pick 8-10 books in your favorite late game realm then 2 books in death and be assured an amazing early game.

Yes I get it, death is supposed to be great early, the problem is ghouls are so powerful no one has to commit to death to be good early, they just need 2 books, then they have 10 free to max out the realm they actually wanted to play. The other common spells you end up with from the books even though random will usually be good, things like zombies or weakness are also good early. If ghouls were uncommon, or if it cost 3 books to start the game with ghouls, or if ghouls were weaker, this problem would go away.

What other realm can offer so much early game for only 2wizard picks?
Of course maybe you're just a better player than me, and you can micromanage nagas and hell hounds well enough to get similar effects.

[Seravy]

Actually I do not care at all about the poison. What matters is that for 320 mana I get 12-16 free swordsmen.

You could summon 12 skeletons for that, which is roughly equally good to 12 swordsmen. Ghouls are better though because they also kill 12 enemy units in the process.

What other realm can offer so much early game for only 2wizard picks?

Well for 2 picks I can get warlord which might not be as fast as ghouls but would still be a huge early advantage since all my units get an extra level.
Or I can get Alchemy (magical weapons) plus Tactician (+1 armor).
In books, 2 Life for Heroism, if a decent hero or two shows up, can do a lot.
2 Death books for Wraith Form gives me early weapon immune permanent units. 2 Chaos books for Fire Elemental gives a weapon immune combat summon.
Ghouls might be the best option but they are expensive to summon and you need at least 3-4 of them, so this is only a viable choice if you don't want to cast other overland spells in the early game.

Just play a few test games where you start with two death books (and ten whatevers) and try to bum rush the nearest extreme/impossible fortress on arcanus.

I'll do that.

[namad]

Actually I do not care at all about the poison. What matters is that for 320 mana I get 12-16 free swordsmen.

You could summon 12 skeletons for that, which is roughly equally good to 12 swordsmen. Ghouls are better though because they also kill 12 enemy units in the process.

What other realm can offer so much early game for only 2wizard picks?

Well for 2 picks I can get warlord which might not be as fast as ghouls but would still be a huge early advantage since all my units get an extra level.
Or I can get Alchemy (magical weapons) plus Tactician (+1 armor).
In books, 2 Life for Heroism, if a decent hero or two shows up, can do a lot.
2 Death books for Wraith Form gives me early weapon immune permanent units. 2 Chaos books for Fire Elemental gives a weapon immune combat summon.
Ghouls might be the best option but they are expensive to summon and you need at least 3-4 of them, so this is only a viable choice if you don't want to cast other overland spells in the early game.

Just play a few test games where you start with two death books (and ten whatevers) and try to bum rush the nearest extreme/impossible fortress on arcanus.

I'll do that.

I've found alchemy pairs quite well with 2death books and 9whateverIreallywantasmytheme. Paying gold for ghouls at 1:1 makes it easier to stomach them, wraith form and skeletons aren't really counter arguments because they're also death and can just work in tandem.

Heroism warlord barbarians is probably the best start I can think of, but it'll cost you more than 2picks and it won't let you play a race with weak early game military units. That's I guess where the ghouls shine best, at covering up a weakness in a strategy whereby your race selection has no particularity strong early military units to choose from.

If you're playing a race with great early game military units I absolutely agree that something that works with them will be best.

[Seravy]

Ghoul testing

First game. (All games are extreme, default minerals and climate, fair land, 4 opponents)
-Found only one neutral city : nomads. Didn't attack it.
-Found an enemy wizard fortress on turn 28. At the same time that enemy takes the nomad city.
-Their fortress has 6 units of sprites in it already. Hopeless with my 4 ghouls and is about 15 turns of distance. They are playing lizardmen. They settled an outpost pretty close to my fortress, I could probably wait until it produces some swordsmen and take it but swordsmen would be no help against sprites.
I decide not to waste time and start another. Ghoul plan failed, I only found one enemy wizards and she uses sprites which totally annihilate walking units and ghouls. I also didn't find a lair with units I could convert with ghouls this game.

Second game.
-Found an orc city on turn 5. Time to start summoning ghouls. I wanted more scouts but can't complain about this I guess. The orc city has 2 swordsmen in it, I could send in my spirit and summon phantom warriors to take it right now, but I hold back for the ghoul strategy. This is actually slowing down my expansion.
-Turn 17 found an enemy capital on another continent, it's a wizard with life and sorcery books. I summoned 2 ghouls which are heading towards the orcs.
-My 2 ghouls kill the 5 swordsmen and I convert them.
-Turn 30, I now have 4 ghouls and 4 swordsmen loaded onto a floating island heading towards the enemy.
-On the way I met a lone Nagas belonging to the wizard, I attack and convert it.
-I arrive at the enemy capital. There are 9 nagas inside, and there is Heavenly Light on the city.
-The attack kills 5 nagas inside but I lose all my units. I saved because I was expecting this, instead I try to attack the city they build in hope of more units.
-I manage to get their 2 pop city, and convert 6 more units but lose about 3 swordsmen to phantom warrior summons.
-I Make contact with another wizard who declares war on me because I have the same army power.
-I convert 4 nagas. Now I have enough army to beat this wizard, who by the way was locked on this tiny continent enough to build 3 cities only. Or so I thought. Meanwhile they hired a Thief hero and buffed it, which I cannot kill using Ghouls and undead. I might be able to kill it with phantom warriors and psionic blast in theory but I do not have enough skill to do so and my armies are lost while trying.
At this point I would need to focus on defending my home continent if I want to avoid a random transport destroying my capital. The invasion has to be cancelled, it failed.

Third game
-I find a lair with war bears inside nearby. "many" of them to be more specific. I estimate at least 6 ghouls needed for this.
-I find another wizard's settler. They're a maniacal militarist warlord with 3 realms and a bunch of random retorts. They offer to trade skeletons for my ghouls, lol. I refuse.
-Ghouls are coming slowly as usual I convert all my gold into mana (no alchemy) and abandon trying to buy buildings or heroes, this test run isn't for that anyway.
-Found the wizard's capital. It's guarded by 6 skeletons. Only small problem it's about 20 turns away in distance to reach. The continent is rather long.
-Sprites from another wizard came scouting. They're peaceful so I can ignore this. I can't take a city that has sprites with ghouls anyway.
-I give up on the many bears, and send my 5 ghouls towards the enemy. I'm not sure if they'll make it in time but any further waiting is definitely making things worse.
-Another wizard's sprites show up next to my capital. They're a ruthless theurgist and have an alliance with the previous wizard who also has sprites. I have no forces to defend myself so if a war comes it's game over. My ghouls are on their way to the wizard I found first. I should turn them back for survival but then I would abandon testing ghouls. Instead I just summon more in my capital for defense.
-With only 7 ghouls I have an army rating nearly equal to the other 3 wizards. As soon as the first turn it's allowed for the AI comes, they'll start considering to declare war. The peaceful might not, but the other probably will unless he gets ahead in military meanwhile.
-My 5 ghouls on the way meet up with some forces of the target wizard. I engage a stack of 1 hell hound and 3 skeletons which are blocking my way, and ignore the other two stacks.
-I get the hell hound but one of my ghouls is now damaged. The enemy has Fire Elemental.
-The target wizard has two smaller cities on the way, I attack the first. I gain 4 klackon swordsmen and raze the city.
-There are scary armies in the way. 2 heroes, a werewolf, a bunch of skeletons. One of the other wizards also has stacks here, several sprites, nagas and 2 heroes. I don't risk attacking any of these and attack 2 skeletons instead, some swordsmen get damaged from the summoned fire elemental.
-I reach their second city. 3 swordsmen lost, 2 hell hounds gained. Razed it again because I can't afford leaving troops behind.
-Rampaging monsters attack my army. They're all death units so I gain nothing but manage to defeat them without any real damage taken.
-I reach their capital, only 2 hell hounds and 4 skeletons. Lucky for me, no city walls or wall of fire either.
Finally I manage to defeat a wizard. I find Lycanthropy which means ghouls are now obsolete. It's turn 46. Due to sprites, early victory against the other two wizards is unlikely. I do not know where they're coming from either, but seems to be another continent in the opposite direction.

Overall, the ghouls strategy worked once out of three and in the last case the wizard was neglecting garrisons in their fortress. If they had the werewolves and heroes inside, I couldn't have won. Which raises the question, should the AI prioritize defense even in the early game? Right now they don't and try to scout/settle/claim as much land as possible, switching to preferring to keep their best units inside their capital at turn 50 only. Launching an attack before then is quite unlikely, and at best one AI wizard can be reached. The advantage they get by clearing more lairs and capturing more neutrals seems to be worth it most of the time.

Based on these test results, I think Ghouls are perfectly balanced (and on the intended strong end of the spectrum for early game).

[zitro1987]

I experimented tweaking ghouls to be comparable in fighting capabilities but a bit more melee. It rewards risk and taking damage.

5 melee + poison (instead of 4) - comparable to best common melee units
2 ranged + poison (instead of 3) - relying on lower resistance or armor units, where attacks remain fairly damaging

weak units - can be sniped thanks to poison and low enemy armor
stronger units - wait until wraiths or attempt to melee them (5 melee plus poison)

[namad]

I should mention I usually play large (or sometimes huge, I don't like it when any of the 5 players starts off trapped on an island). I usually see more neutrals this way I guess. I didn't really think about how that setting would effect the strategy. Maybe a lot! A bit of water is a great way to slow down early aggression. In pretty much every game I played with ghouls I found 2or3 neutrals nearby, because of my increased landmass size.

I'm still not sure the ghoul strategy failed. Yes you failed to bumrush the nearest ai fairly often, however I only meant that the ghouls would give you approximately enough power to bumrush a nearby AI. If you can tell it's not going to be possible because of the random map layout you can still just use the ghouls for normal expanding.
Additionally 1out3 times doesn't sound that bad. I mean KO'ing the AI that early is probably two or three times as hard with another start? Before I managed to kill an extreme AI around turn 40-60 the other day I had thought it was just plain something you could not do because that early they just had twice as much as you.

Can you do equally well using the common summons of the other four realms? Or is the main sticking point that while ghouls ALMOST let you get out of control early they come just short and it draws you into a long game where the ghouls eventually end up being subpar?

Maybe I'm just bad, but when I try to get aggressive against the AI in the early game without ghouls I just get wrecked, instead of it being a close fight I can choose to engage in or avoid. If super duper cheaty AI's can get knocked out early with any of the five colors then yes, maybe their AI should be less aggressive. Weirdly in one of the test games I played (I didn't keep any notes) I didn't snowball very hard but randomly far away two mages I never met went to war and one ai killed the other ai around turn 40-50ish as well. IIRC tauron was the one who died (although I'm sure he was involved I forget which end of it he was on).

I should also mention that sometimes I have to "siege" the enemy capital, the ai will often spam summons but have 9 stack in his capital and the summon gets pushed out. So you can kill it every turn. Then you can let settlers leak out, either killing them, or allowing them to found randomly placed hamlets for you to steal.
Even if you cannot overcome the bonus of the fortress+walls you can just sit 4-6ghouls and 9undead swordsmen outside their capital while you tech up for whatever your racial unit is to come finish them off. If you can avoid getting into another war you can start the siege around turn 40-50 and not bother actually killing off the opponent until turn 100. Once the AI realizes it's about to die it'll leave all it's sprites/hellhounds/slingers in it's capital where they can benefit from the defensive bonus of the walls. (I think I had a game where I literally went 20-30 turns killing a guardian spirit every 2 turns and a settler every 3 but then when I finally killed that guy my other two neighbors declared on me both at once.)
Something like that might've worked in the second game if you weren't trying to set a record on the kill-o-meter?
It does sound like sprites might hard counter ghouls, but I definitely found ghouls to be great against hell hounds and nagas and decent against warbears. (Heroism is a hard one to call, without warlord I think the ghouls can handle it).

One thing I don't understand though is "-I Make contact with another wizard who declares war on me because I have the same army power."
Are you saying wizards who have a much bigger army power than you are LESS likely to declare war? I'd always assumed it was the other way around and an aggressive or militarist AI would declare war anytime the player fell too far behind in army strength?

EDIT: Time for me to start testing out nature and sprites in the early game instead (if they counter ghouls so hard, I should rely on them instead!). In fact Nature/Death all seem to have a much better early game than I remember in vanilla MoM. Sorcery might be the ones lacking? Now that phantom warriors are not special at all (because of the huge buff to fire elemental and the existence of call centaurs and summon zombies)... Maybe what's really been happening is that my sorcery starts just cannot compare/keep up with my death starts, in the week or two I've had caster of magic mod installed. Time for me to stop fanboying over House Dimir.

EDIT2: Maybe I should stop playing on large/huge I always thought as a kid that large/huge would mean more neutral cities, more towers and dungeons and more nodes. If there's a fixed number of nodes though maybe I should play with more water. Make boats more useful and help prevent any early wars. So, is that how it works? More water just means more goodies crammed onto smaller landmass?

[Seravy]

I should mention I usually play large (or sometimes huge, I don't like it when any of the 5 players starts off trapped on an island). I usually see more neutrals this way I guess. I didn't really think about how that setting would effect the strategy. Maybe a lot! A bit of water is a great way to slow down early aggression.

I'm still not sure the ghoul strategy failed. Yes you failed to bumrush the nearest ai fairly often, however I only meant that the ghouls would give you approximately enough power to bumrush a nearby AI. If you can tell it's not going to be possible because of the random map layout you can still just use the ghouls for normal expanding.

Additionally 1out3 times doesn't sound that bad. I mean KO'ing the AI that early is probably two or three times as hard with another start? Before I managed to kill an extreme AI around turn 40-60 the other day I had thought it was just plain something you could not do because that early they just had twice as much as you.

Can you do equally well using the common summons of the other four realms? Or is the main sticking point that while ghouls ALMOST let you get out of control early they come just short and it draws you into a long game where the ghouls eventually end up being subpar?

Maybe I'm just bad, but when I try to get aggressive against the AI in the early game without ghouls I just get wrecked, instead of it being a close fight I can choose to engage in or avoid. If super duper cheaty AI's can get knocked out early with any of the five colors then yes, maybe their AI should be less aggressive. Weirdly in one of the test games I played (I didn't keep any notes) I didn't snowball very hard but randomly far away two mages I never met went to war and one ai killed the other ai around turn 40-50ish as well. IIRC tauron was the one who died (although I'm sure he was involved I forget which end of it he was on).

Early aggression against AI is highly situational. The strongest start I had was with Famous, Tactician and life+sorcery books.
I got the thief hero early, and with heroism plus holy armor it was close to unstoppable, wiping out lairs of 6+ common or even uncommon units alone, and ofc doing the same to AI stacks. Eventually the psionic blasts and phantom warriors became a problem (nearby opponent was 10 sorcery) but by then I had killed so much of their units I could just pick up my armies and take the capital after the hero was healed. I defeated all 4 other wizard around, idk turn 120-150. This isn't how my extreme games usually go but sometimes you get a lucky start. I also had wild game, gold and gems on my starting city so I could pump out stag beetles very early to provide defenses while my heroes rampage around.
Ghouls would not even come close, this game was won by having a pretty much invincible unit around turn 30 and a huge resource advantage.

I played another game with the same setup before the lucky one and I lost that. The heroes I got were not capable of getting rid of the units in wizard capitals, and they were the ones who got early stag beetles, not me. I also had no free 20 gold/turn.
Strategies that offer this sort of power in the early game are high risk, you have to overextend and the resources don't always support doing that.

In the ghouls game where I got rid of one wizard, while that is certainly a great thing, the two cities were so far away from each other, defending them would most likely be hard. I also sacrificed a lot to get there, I had to raze 2 smaller cities and convert all my gold, so I was way behind in developing my city (I didn't even build a settlers because I had no units to commit to protecting new cities). I think building a city next to the Orihalcon ore which was close to me, and producing Orihalcon Halfling shamans or magicians could have been a far more effective strategy, even if it would have taken a bit longer to KO a wizard, I could have had means to hold the territory I reached.

the other 4 realms, let's see...

Sorcery : Nagas kill anything as long as it's not high resistance. Unless the enemy has sprites, ghouls or skeletons, they can most likely take out a capital, and getting there should be easier through water tiles.
Chaos : If only normal units are in the way, sending in even spearmen to summon a Fire Elemental is effective for expansion. Hell Hounds with their fire breath can do reasonably well against almost everything in the early game, even sprites (unless the sprites outnumber the hounds).
Life : One or two swordsmen - or even better pikemen if you can afford a fighter's guild - with Heroism, Holy Armor, Endurance, Bless and casting healing on them in combat can beat most early stacks you face, and accumulating 4-5 such units can take down any enemy capital defended by normal units, bears, skeletons, hounds. Sprites are a problem because they fly, and depending on your race nagas and ghouls can be a problem due to poison (which bless does not help against). If you get a good hero, you can also work with that which is even better.
Nature : 9 war bears should have no problem tearing apart an enemy capital - again, as long as it's not defended by sprites.

The problem with any of these, including ghouls, is the high cost. You have to sacrifice a lot to press forward, and if unsuccessful which will still be like 2 out of 3 times, you're worse off than if you used those resources to get a node or build more cities.
If the targeted wizard starts casting Wall of Fire you're usually in big trouble. Sometimes even the construction of city walls can be a major obstacle.

If another AI wizard got a very good start, knocking out a weaker one might not help at all, since you're left weakened after the war and the eliminated wizard can no longer fight (of course this part is only bad for you if they were at war with the strong wizard)

[namad]

what is "Orihalcon"
I've never seen it in the game mechanics thread, nor in my games. Ever. do you have a new beta version of the mod with new features? or do you mean mithril?

Also yeah. In the game I laid siege to an enemy wizard for dozens of turns they had wall of fire+city walls and even though my 9stack was better than their 9stack I couldn't overcome that. So they just had 1city and 9units for dozens of turns. Speaking of which though, when the ai is besieged like that it's awful. It built nothing but settlers and summoned nothing but it's weakest common summon. Neither of which did anything at all. Sure they were screwed but there are definitely better options for a player who is besieged. I don't know anything about code though, so I cannot say if it's fixable.


Anyways, sorry for wasting your time with this ghouls are overpowered talk. I think what happened is that I had one or two lucky starts with ghouls out of the 5 games I played. I ignored all my bad games, and in fact didn't even finish playing them, so they didn't weigh heavy on my mind. I guess in theory ANY strategic can just be super lucky and feel overpowered In fact in the ghoul game I did the best with I was nomad alchemist with gems in my first outpost.