CHAOS Realm

[Seravy]

Sorry I edited my post at same time as you posted. My problem isn't the defense - they rule there. But people can kite them (the AI won't but the human will) which makes them very weak in the hands of the AI.

Attack, run so they can't attack (which I think means they don't get to use their breath), repeat. Their counterattack is simply too weak to fight anything that has a chance of doing enough damage to kill them. If the human can't kill them, they just run around in circles for the draw.

So on offense, they can't win due to their low speed, and on defense, if something risks attacking them in the first place (which means the human is attacking since AI vs AI is strategic) then presumably the human thinks they can win, and using kiting tactics, the hydra doesn't do any real damage.

A very rare that really only acts as a deterrent 'don't attack this unit until you have something that can do enough damage to kill it, but you never gave to worry about its damage output because it's super easy to negate' so never actually does anything on its own, seems .. not worthy of a very rare.

Kiting them doesn't do you much good if you are attacking, and if you are defending the AI now knows not to chase and wreck your city. Also there is a Chaos wizard behind them throwing plenty of direct damage at you.
The EXP and treasure value for it is pretty low as well.
The main problem I see is they're absolutely hopeless at dealing with anything that has armor.
*looks at stats
7 swords and 8 fire breath. And +1 to hit. That's literally the damage output of two hammerhands having magical weapons. I can't say they do bad damage, it's just that they stop doing any against units that have about 15 armor.
As the human player you have your spells (or doom bats) for such targets.
And for the AI, well...Hydras aren't ranked particularly high on the "defenders" list so an easy capital with only hydras in it is unlikely. It is rated 75 so the following units will all replace them : Chaos Warrior/Beastmater/Illusionist/Necromancer. About 8 more heroes if they are at least level 3. Efreets, Great Drakes in chaos. In other realms, Stone and Storm Giants, Behemoths, Archangels, Wyrms, Demon Lords, Sky Drakes, Colossus are all ranked higher. Djinn, Death Knights and Gorgons are equal, resulting in mixed stacks of defenders. The summoning priority is 32 which is the lowest among very rares and roughly equal to better rares. The best summons have a summoning priority of over 4 times more.
Which leaves nodes and lairs where they provide not-so-good exp and treasure so it's fine.

The only thing I see that could make this unit not be weak to armor is giving it armor piercing but then it would just be outright overpowered. I mean, it has the health of TWO behemoths or great wyrms, and it regenerates. If there is no way to tank the damage and keep fighting it, it's unkillable. And you can have a 9 of these in a stack like any other monster, that's 810 hit points!

[Nelphine]

Regeneration doesn't really help in combat. It takes ten turns to regenerate enough to gain one figure back.

But my concern is as a very rare even if heroes and other very Rares have more priority tHan it, if hydra is the only very rare summon an AI has, he's (usually) going to defend his capital with them.

If he gets 9 of them, that's great. It takes a LOT to do enough damage to kill 9 hydras.

But no matter what the human attacks with, whether he wins or not, the hydras aren't gong to do any real damage to the humans attacking unit. The AI wizard might be doing damage, but a very rare summon should do damage.

And with speed 2 and most of its damage from breath, the human player simply won't ever let the hydras attack. So the hydra itself does virtually no damage. This means for instance the hunan can stack with something the wizard can't kill, and spam spells that negate regeneration, or have a tiny chance of killing all the hydras, and aside from the mana cost, the hydras sent doing anything to dissuade the human from this tactic.

Why summon a very rare that doesn't actually threaten the human player?

[Nelphine]

So again, I think giving it +2 (or even +3) to hit and reducing the breath attack would be enough. Make the counterattack dangerous to anything without supreme armour.

[Seravy]

But no matter what the human attacks with, whether he wins or not, the hydras aren't gong to do any real damage to the humans attacking unit. The AI wizard might be doing damage, but a very rare summon should do damage.

This is -well was- true for every unit because they were just sitting behind the wall.

Why summon a very rare that doesn't actually threaten the human player?

It does. I mean, you aren't going to have a 15 armor unit in every city and node you own.
Also if the AI has any of the following, it becomes a threat even if you did kite/have armor :
-Lionheart (vs armor)
-Entangle (vs kiting)
-Haste (vs kiting)
-Blazing March (vs armor)
-Chaos Surge (vs armor)
-Warp Reality (well not a threat but it'll be almost impossible to kill even one of them)
-Guardian retort (bonus hit if defending)
-Necormancer or Beastmaster hero (bonus hit from Soul Linker)
-Mind Storm (-5 armor on your unit)
-Berserk (the AI will prioritize regenerating units with that, and hydra regenerates)

I wouldn't mind giving it 1 more movement (3 instead of 2) but that's about the only thing I can do and honestly units that matter are faster than that.

Edit : swapping melee with fire breath, or even making it 9+6 instead of 7+8 might help. Especially because the breath is blocked by Bless and Resist Elements/Elemental Armor.

[zitro1987]

I'd keep the 2 movement but swap the attack ratings to 9melee/6ranged

[Nelphine]

i'd be ok with trying 9/6. my gut says 10/6, but i'm ok with that.

[namad]

Great Drakes to attack with. Hydras to make sure a battle can never end early, ensuring they wreck your city, or use all their skillpoints on spells.

If you want the ai to be difficult, and so you're on something like extreme/impossible, and you do not have a great drake as an ai, but you do have a hydra, odds are you've got a lot of non-chaos spellbooks from which to draw buffs from (on impossible you might even have something like 7chaos7nonchaos3retorts).

Making them three movement might make sense, but I don't particularly think they need to hit harder do they? Sure they're not the best attacking unit in the game, but they are the best defensive unit in the game. Chaos basically has the unit with the highest attack in the great drake and the unit with the highest hp in the hydra, why does that combination need buffing?

That said hydras are kind of boring and great drakes kind of overshadow them entirely, maybe you should cut the hydras stats in half but give them caster 40? or 50? Kind of like a djinni or behemoth or whatnot? Or maybe just cut their attack stats in half and make them basically a behemoth that's just better at having hp and better at casting but worse at attacking/moving?

[Seravy]

Chaos basically has the unit with the highest attack in the great drake and the unit with the highest hp in the hydra, why does that combination need buffing?

One reason. Bless/Resist Elements/Elemental Armor. Those all reduce Fire Breath significantly, and the greater part of Hydra's damage is coming from that at the moment. So a blessed unit with, say 10 armor will barely take damage, as 7 goes vs 10 and 8 vs 15.
If we swap the numbers, that same unit will still take nothing from fire breath (6 vs 15), but the melee part will be damaging it more (9 vs 10). Overall the blessed unit will still need as much armor to be safe from all damage as if it was not blessed, which is not the case in the former situation where breath is the stronger part of the attack.
(and if the unit has lower armor, bless still helps it block fire breath damage in both cases)

[Nelphine]

And the case that made me notice this, the impossible AI had: channeler, astrologer, 5 chaos, 3 sorcery, 3 nature. Hydra was the only thing he had, and he had no offensive buffs to give it (he had iron skin, but no land linking).

I was taking out 3 or 4 at a time, without losing any units of my own. (Admittedly, I had all kinds of other advantages, but it still felt bizarre. No other very rare creature would have been that simple, except Archangel, which has its own host of flaws, but that's because its in life, so the summons aren't.. really the point.)

[Seravy]

I think there is a major flaw in Gargoyles.
They are too slow. The whole point of having high armor is to kill enemies that have low attack and can't deal damage effectively to them. The enemies won't be able to attack the Gargoyle due to flight, so you can avoid being attacked by too strong units, however the Gargoyle itself is far too slow to reach and attack a weaker enemy unit unless that unit stays close to the gargoyle on its own - which it has no reason to because it cannot attack it without flight or breath/thrown.
Maybe the unit could work better with 4 movement?