How about making them 9-figure units? I think that's the sprite limit. Then they'd have a special role, as they'd be good for buffing. Heavenly Light and Darkness combined would be fun with 9-figure Skeletons (but hardly overpowered).
|
DEATH Realm
|
|
If we keep removing spearmen from races I'll end up using skeletons for garrisons... If my income is low enough that I have to be careful not to cast too many spells with upkeep. Its a great filler spell when you're having income problems. Which is.. Pretty rare.
(November 26th, 2017, 08:10)Catwalk Wrote: How about making them 9-figure units? I think that's the sprite limit. Then they'd have a special role, as they'd be good for buffing. Heavenly Light and Darkness combined would be fun with 9-figure Skeletons (but hardly overpowered). 8 is the limit. I tried 9 when adding Jackal Riders but it's impossible.
November 26th, 2017, 12:12
(This post was last modified: November 26th, 2017, 12:12 by zitro1987.)
Skeletons are valuable the way they are ... giving you maintenance-free garrison units to lower your unrest and protect your towns while your town(s) is/are busy working towards marketplace/shrine/settler/library/university
If +5 cost and 7 figures, they might have slightly decent fighting potential.
Inevitable discussion:
*Skeletons to have 4 melee to keep them more desirable (slight cost adjustment may be needed for this major boost? 30?) *Ghouls to cost 90 (if unchanged nagas brought up to 90) *Zombies to have 2mv? (mainly for neutrals and zombie mastery purposes)
Zombies are fine as is.
Ghouls cost raise seems inevitable - they are stronger than before with the poison buff and were worth the price even before. Skeletons I'm unsure about. They aren't that great but they are an extremely AI unfriendly unit for two reasons : 1. Their strategic rating is too low to be of any use and the AI won't even have the spell at the time they could be good - there are only 5 starting spell picks. Yet even buffed they probably won't be good enough to replace an AI pick and summon them instead of ghouls (which, if winning, give the AI powerful undead from lairs and neutrals, snowballing into a great advantage.) 2. They hard counter three different things and the AI can't use them for either : They counter all bowmen type armies, they counter all poison armies (Nagas! At a cost of 25 each, losing a Skeleton or even two for a dead Naga is a great deal. Likewise Ghouls, I'd expect 2-3 skeletons to overwhelm and beat a ghoul if we buff them.), and finally they counter Sorcery and Death combat spells in general with their Illusion and Death Immunity. This is not just bad because the AI can't profit from using these things vs anyone intentionally (and they don't even work for strategic) but also because they rely on the things Skeletons counter massively (Nagas, Ghouls, Black Sleep, Psionic Blast are high priority AI starting picks). So in short, Skeletons are a strictly human player unit with or without buffs - improving it makes human players stronger and the AI weaker at the same time. My preference would be the additional figures, but I'm worried that would make the unit unbalanced due to the above reasons. Albeit, as is, they might be too weak to even beat a Ghoul or Naga 2 on one.
Quick Skeleton testing, 3 of them vs other common monsters they should be effective against.
vs Ghouls : Losses around 8-12 figures of Skeletons, so 1-2 units. Considering a Ghoul cost as much as 3 and a half Skeleton, this is a good enough result. vs Nagas : Losses of 5-12 figures. Overall even better than vs Ghouls. vs Phantom Beast : Losses of 7-16 figures. This being a combat summon, can't compare costs unfortunately, but I think 9 skeletons taking out 4 beasts is not a bad deal when hunting lairs. Note that all of these are without Darkness cast. Other creatures Skeletons aren't strong against through their immunities : Hell Hound : Losses similar to fighting nagas. However these are only 40/unit so not worth it. War Bear : The skeletons won once with heavy losses, failed to kill the bear but got it down to red in 4 others. However the bear is cheaper than the 3 skeletons so this is clearly in the bear user's favor, which is working as intended - bears with their high armor should counter large figure count weaker units like skeletons. Conclusion, Skeletons don't need a buff - they do what they are meant to already and with a Darkness in effect, they become on par with creatures 2-3 times their cost. (also tested and Nagas went down with a loss of 1 of fewer skeleton units) That said, the effects are a bit borderline : spending 50 value of specialized troops against something worth 90 is a good deal but a bit far from efficiently countering that unit. Especially considering the Skeletons stop being effective if the enemy unit has large numbers - you would need 20-25 skeletons in a single army to counter 9 ghouls or nagas in a single combat. So I think a minor buff (+1 figure) is acceptable, a big one (+1 melee or 2 figures) is not.
I think there's quite a bit wrong with Death, especially after having played realms like Nature and Sorcery, which are excellent, versatile and great fun. Here's a short summary of my thoughts.
Death has an abundance of resistance based spells, most of them in the form of nukes (Drain Life, Syphon Life, Black Sleep, Possession, Reaper Slash, Wave of Despair, Massacre, Final Wave, Annihilate). But units in late game have such high resistance they're (nearly) immune to them, even without buffs. Only with Black Prayer will they have a marginal chance of being successful, making it a required cast before you do anything. Even then, it's very unsatisfying to throw nukes which have a 10-30% chance or so, and you can't rely on them working, but they have hardly anything else to use in the average late game battle. Of course, giving them a higher chance would make these resist-or-die effects incredibly overpowered. But even if it was possible to balance these spells properly, since when has Death(/Black) been about nuking anyway? That's Chaos' thing, and they're far better at it than Death is. Death likes to whittle away enemies, turn them into empty, useless husks, before killing them and turning them to your side. There's far too little of that in the current Death. Death also doesn't synergize well with... anything. Why would you take a couple of Death books with any strategy? Wraith Form? Okay. What else? Not all is bad, of course, and Death has some great things that really fit the realm. Weakness, Mana Leak, Terror, Wrack, Pestilence/Famine/Evil Presence, Dark Ritual and Animate Dead are all good, or at least very 'Death-like.' But even some of those are resistance based (Terror, Wrack) and just flat out don't work in the later game. I'm not even sure that this makes Death underpowered, but that's not really the issue. They're still perfectly playable, and Death Knights solve any problem you may run across. It just feels like, compared to other realms, you only have half the amount of spells at your disposal, giving precious little options and choice. But even if the other half did work, they don't feel very 'Death-like.' My suggestions for the realm are quite extensive, and I won't cover them here as there's little point to it if people are happy with current Death. But suffice to say they'd try to make Death a bit less resistance based, less reliant on Black Prayer, with less nukes. More strong debuffs, with the means to apply them even to the strongest units, and more raising of the dead. |
