I like the name 'lich' for ghouls, but not important for me. I think I'm more bothered by the name of gorgons, may need to be renamed to 'medusa'.
I like the point of having werewolves, but not so much the non-death feel to them, making their immunities very odd. I also wish they were simply stronger but without regeneration. Why do they regenerate? Why do we have 2 out of 3 regenerating uncommon summons?
Yeah but d&d changed gorgons to be flying bulls that breathed gas that turned you into stone (thus the original sprite in MoM for gorgons). Medusa became very distinct.
D&d makes no sense then. A gorgon and a medusa is the same thing. And it's neither flying nor a bull. At least now I know where the original sprites came from, I always found that really weird how two games - this and Heroes of MM had bulls as Gorgons. They didn't fly there, though.
Thank god they didn't redefine Vampires as "Turtles crawling underground and sucking the life force out of everyone standing above them on the surface". That would make about as much sense. (wait that would be an amazing creature, why haven't anyone made one of those yet!)
Back on topic of MoM, Nature is the "nonflying" realm - assuming they wanted to make it similiar to MtG, and from what I saw they definitely had that goal. Aside from their small, weak creatures, and a few rare dragons, Nature creatures generally can't fly. Instead, Nature can disable the flight of enemy units, using Web in Mom, various "destroy all flying creatures" type spells in MtG.
Not that this matters for a Gorgon - having a Gaze attack allows it to attack flying units already, and the other effects of flying do not really suit the realm.
btw, the Gorgon unit, aside from gameplay reasons, has 3 figures exactly because it's a reference to "Gorgons" being 3 sisters, Medusa being one of the three.
Yup I figured. Its why I've never brought up the name difference. When I saw your change I knew why but I also knew why the original was there. Although I'm SURE d&d took it from some story, I just don't know what.
(July 18th, 2017, 17:33)zitro1987 Wrote: I like the name 'lich' for ghouls, but not important for me.
Same. Pretty much anything would be ok with me, the name is not super important, although I agree that ranged attacks doesn't make a lot of sense on a "ghoul". Even just changing the name to a less established archetype, like "arisen" or "infected" or even "spewer" would be fine with me.
If you are concerned that the name "lich" implies a more powerful unit than a common, maybe you could call the ghouls "liches" but then have a more powerful unit (Wraith / DK) be replaced with a "demilich"?
(July 17th, 2017, 10:39)Catwalk Wrote: When I tried it, both Djinns cast Magic Immunity immediately. I agree that Ghouls + Focus Magic is potentially powerful, but I think it's slow to get going.
Arnuz, are you up for testing your strategy in mine and Nelphine's next comparison game?
I've done another match with ghouls and omniscient just to give it a go. The results are frankly spectacular.
Edit: argh, I just realised (starting a new game) that for some reason this was extreme, not impossible. Weird... Maybe I misclicked? I'll leave this here as it might still be relevant, and because on extreme I'd still expect the myrran AI to fare a lot better than this. But I'll get rid of the save games.
I consider the game a good test because the dungeons and the nodes around my starting location are quite ghoul-unfriendly. Nevertheless, I manage to be in a very strong position by 1409, when I crack the towers and discover a very weak myrran wizard. (which could be an issue by itself, btw)
Setup: alchemy, omni, conjurer, 2 nature (web), 2S (focus m), 3 D (ghouls, life drain), 1l; barbarian.
Game report, in a summary format, don't spoil if you want to try the game:
I start doing spearmen to scout: who needs earth lore with 3 movement path finders? Also, 1 earth lore=half a ghoul I find a number of dungeons but they're quite bad for ghouls: a few hydra, many spiders, storm giants, archangels, wraiths, shadowdemons. There's a node with many cockatrices and one with one hydra and some chaos spawn. A single lizardmen neutral city nearby, and a lair with elementals and chaos spawn and my neighbour is a chaotic expansionist S/L/N. I was going to call it a loss, but the neighbour offers alliance on turn one (lol), so I'll play along and see what happens. I crack the cockatrice node using barbarian archers and web - omni is priceless to get going fast, and I prefer archers to cavalry - which gives me some mana crystals and some income. I immediately start putting all I have in skill and a bit of research.
I muse what to do, nothing close is ghoul-friendly... Then a strategy comes to mind. I concentrate on a stack of ghouls with the plan to upgrade them with focus magic while moving. I crack the chaos spawn/elementals lair, in 2 or 3 turns, with the archers - I don't much care about chaos spawn as they prevent the ghouls' undead I then send the archers south to start working on the hydra/chaos spawn lair. The archers work on the chaos spawn while the ghouls come close, then they only need to work on the soon to be mine pet.
IIRC I need 8 focus-magic ghouls to nail the hydra (terribly slowed down - the poor beast - by the volcano's terrain, quite is weird as it is its lair), but it could have been some less helped by the archers (I remember counting the hits to be sure that the ghouls did most of the damage...) and perhaps finished the last 1/2 heads hand to hand. I now have an undead regenerating hydra, it's probably around year 3. I also find Zardon, wohoo! I cast on the hydra some of the random buffs I got from the initial books - bless, resist elements - and start clearing the otherwise impossible lairs: it does short work of shadow demons and earth elementals (more books!), with focus magic it does a ridiculous 81 breath attack, many storm giants, many shadow demons again (even more books!), a death knight (more spellcasting heroes!), a few death knights (more books lol), and so on. In short, with all the mana I grab from the lairs I never have to use alchemy or put power to mana till around 1407.
In the meanwhile I find a mainly life/some nature and sorc guardian legal neighbour of similar power to mine. This one can be dangerous! And indeed, he very soon declares war-no spells to trade - perhaps because I expanded too much getting the neutrals on his island. Well, let's put my ghouls to the test! I explore his area and... Well, here's where all the good for ghouls lairs are! His cities are defended by heavily buffed (heroism, holy armor, holy weapon, resistance, bless and... Spell-locked o_O' ) elven swordmen and halberdiers (no longbowmen at all, wtf?), impossible to enter, the ghouls wouldn't even scratch them. But who needs ghouls when his cities are surrounded by lairs with all these nice future undead hordes? I get to work and in short I have 2 stacks of random assorted stuff: warbears, a rain of nagas, fire elementals, and - woohooo - 3 chaos spawn! That's the lock to the key. After an initial assault on the capital with the assorted crap to get rid of 2 spell casters, the chaos spawn get to work - again with the cover of the over stuff as meatshields, to absorb fortress lightnings - and disintegrate all of those super pumped halberdiers without remorse. In a few turns I get him banished and then defeated, which however drops the relations with my chaotic ally to "neutral" as they had a wizards' pact.
However in the meanwhile the ally has gone to war with another chaotic expansionist mainly sorc wizard, so I join in and quickly restore the relations to friendly by bullying our enemy around, on an occasion I even get the money prize for beating the opponent's army in the field!! Woohoo! I grab all the cities - the ally complains about my growth but at the same time congratulates me for understanding how Lo Pan is a common threat.
It's time to see what's in Myrran. I go to work on the final hardest lairs/nodes and the towers. I nail 3 djinns with my ghouls - no one ever casts magic immunity?? - split the armies and start exploring. As I finally crack the towers I find a myrran that is... Devoid of almost all life, only my ally sent some settlers with astral gate? Where's the end boss?
I find the end boss after a while, and the power graph is... A let-down. A troll kali, should have been much better? Looking around I see that there's a dwarven city very close to her fortress, my best guess is that she's tried to conquer it losing some stacks at the all-important start? What a pity. When I find it it's neutral, but she has a single dwarven engineer building roads, so my guess is that she's conquered it with pain and blood just to get it lost to raiders soon after? Anyhow, I get bored and declare this a win. Seravy - this is a major problem to me: the myrran wizard should fare better, esp. with trolls... Want to investigate it? I can help, just tell me what to do.
Here's the power graph, sorry for not giving a more detailed report but I didn't think I would actually finish the game, so I've done it by memory.A final note - I think that this is a ghoul-unfriendly start, the one good undead possibility was the hydra but it was quite difficult and I had to wait till I had a purpose built stack, rather slow as a start. The speed with which the power accelerates after that - you can actually understand when I got the hydra from the graph, it should be the bump in mid 1402 IIRC, but it could be mid 1404 - should show how powerful the focus magic ghoul strategy is. The hydra is particularly powerful, but there's a variety of undead that could also work to accelerate you, the best one imho being a djinn: if it's a single one, with some phantom crap around, you can easily grab it in 2 gos at the lair/tower. Basilisks, a number of lizards, even earth elementals if there's other stuff nearby (so sloooow) are all nice finds too.
Considerations:
* I agree that lich isn't a good unit name. A powerful lich could be a wizard of similar power to the players, lore-wise.
* I still believe that ranged undead creation is way too handy, see the early hydra or djinn examples. But yeah anything else... During this last game I've grabbed earth elementals, chaos spawn, and in other games djinns, efreeti, even the odd fire giant sacrificing some.
* A compromise could be swapping the ranged attack for a thrown/gaze one. Without the ranged attack it could cost less, allowing the strategy to get going a bit quicker. And/or it could be a bit faster than the ghoul's 2, perhaps 3/pathfinding to make the strategy less reliant to barbarians to get the slow hordes moving a bit faster. Then, it would perhaps work finally well with dark elves, a race that is supposed to be often coupled with death (but in this game the combo is a failure)
* The unit name could be something like spectres, banshees, revenants, vampire spawn, wights. Some of these are ok with the same sprites. Or mummies - the undead creation could be the mythical curse. The sprite would just need to be white/grey where it's brown now, but mummies are usually slower in other games.
I find a number of dungeons but they're quite bad for ghouls: a few hydra, many spiders, storm giants, archangels, wraiths, shadowdemons. There's a node with many cockatrices and one with one hydra and some chaos spawn. A single lizardmen neutral city nearby, and a lair with elementals and chaos spawn and my neighbour is a chaotic expansionist S/L/N. I was going to call it a loss, but the neighbour offers alliance on turn one (lol), so I'll play along and see what happens. I crack the cockatrice node using barbarian archers and web - omni is priceless to get going fast, and I prefer archers to cavalry - which gives me some mana crystals and some income. I immediately start putting all I have in skill and a bit of research.
I then send the archers south to start working on the hydra/chaos spawn lair. The archers work on the chaos spawn while the ghouls come close, then they only need to work on the soon to be mine pet.![[Image: 8tlSx2D.png]](http://i.imgur.com/8tlSx2D.png)