Nagas

[zitro1987]

I do feel nagas losing 1 poison and hell hounds gaining 1 move would balance the realms.

[Seravy]

Yeah, Hell Hounds are weak individually, but they are cheap and come in larger stacks. 9 of them is a pain to deal with when your army only has like 4 units.

For the price of a Naga you get almost two hounds. I have to admit now that nagas are this much stronger the hounds look too weak but it might be the problem that nagas are too strong.

[Catwalk]

Nagas are definitely not too strong.

Arnuz, if he had 84 hell hounds then he could have had 40 nagas instead. You were probably screwed either way, but I'd much rather take my chances with the Hell Hounds as they have far more counters. And Chaos is supposed to have a good aggressive game, whereas Sorcery is supposed to be so-so. Sorcery is so-so with Nagas now, Chaos is weak with Hell Hounds.

[Arnuz]

Not really. Quantity and quality. 40 nagas=4.5 stacks. 84 HHs= 9 stacks. 9 stacks cover a lot more territory than 4 or 5, especially when you consider that some of the units are kept in garrison, so with the nagas that goes down to 2 or 3 actual stacks. Then at least you're attacked once in a turn... With the hounds you get hammered twice, then there's nothing you can do.

[Nelphine]

Note importantly, more stacks let's them clear more lairs faster, if on the right continent. More lairs means huge rewards, means more summons even faster. That 84 hell hound guy is due to lairs, and so the naga guy would be more like 35.

HOWEVER nagas will clear a lot more lairs in the long run. So if 84 hell hounds was somehow a max, then a little while later naga guy would end up closer to 50 nagas due to lairs hell hounds can't crack.

[Catwalk]

If you want to argue that Hell Hounds are sufficiently threatening now, then fine by me. I'll just keep ignoring them They should not be used as an argument for weakening Nagas.

[Arnuz]

Yep. The argument is the poison buff ^_^

[Seravy]

Decided to compare bears with nagas. Bears are supposed to be much better - Nature is the top summoning realm while Sorcery should be medicore or worse. We do want Nagas to be decent, but not outright powerful.

So...movement, 3 on both, equal. Attack power, 2 lower on Nagas, Shields 1 lower, hearts 2 lower. And cost is 15 higher.
That would be much worse but...Nagas have First strike and Poison.
Let's assume the enemy has 4 shields and 6 crosses.
Nagas do 6 poison damage to that, plus 2.4 melee damage for a total of 8.4 damage.
Bears do 4.8 melee damage. I'm going to use these instead of the attack rating which doesn't consider poison strength at all.
Nagas have a defense rating of 445, bears have 727.
So for the totals, a unit of Nagas is 3738 vs a bear which is 3489.
Divided by cost to get cost effectiveness, nagas are 53, bears are 63. But we haven't included first strike in this so in reality nagas are equal, maybe even slightly above bears. Heck, a lot better as Nagas also walk on water.

That's clearly bad, as bears are supposed to be the most cost effective melee creature, nagas should be like, around 50-75% of that at best.

So I'm pretty sure Nagas need a nerf. Question is, which stats we want to reduce?

[zitro1987]

1 poison and 1 hp

[Kaiku]

As per the other discussion, I think that if a goal is to make city units more viable, I don't actually mind a bit of a blanket nerf to all commons, or at least the worst offenders (Nagas, Bears, Ghouls), as they're so much better than any unit a city can produce in early/mid game.

But about Bears vs Nagas... I do like their characteristics as it is. Nagas being a bit like fast, hard hitting assassins and Bears being more tanky. Maybe that can even be exaggerated? Like by giving Nagas 1 more speed but drastically reducing their survivability, through either shields or hearts? So that in the end they are somewhat worse in battle but still have an attractive role and purpose.