5.03 and Dwarfs

[occasionalplayer]

Of course this is related to your starting location, but: 

If you pick Dwarfs - Spellweaver - 2 Sorc (Focus Magic) - rest Nature, 

and get 2 Crysx or 3-4 Quork Crystals, then the game appears easy - like 80 Power after buying miners guild on turn 5?

Which dwarf setting do you consider the strongest? 

You need transmute, I think; but how about:
Ominscient (accelerates your city growth, of which dwarfs are in desperate need - maybe pick 1 Chaos book instead of sorcery)?
Alchemy (because sometimes you have 3 diamonds and no ores)?

In any event, with a good starting location, games should be winnable, even on impossible:

Rush good nature summons research (Spiders and Focus magic eg or Lizards); earth lore everything and send task forces to the enemy (in the meantime, build new cities next to ores). Might not be fast enough on lunatic though, but in one game I defeated 2 enemies with 2 stacks of land linking spiders.

[Suriname]

Hi all

I used to play dwarves. Why are golems useless? They get pawned by sprites.

[Nelphine]

In the mod, golem stats are changed. Currently golems are magic immmune so sprites literally can't hurt them.

[Seravy]

I thought the non-magic immune golems are already released in 5.03?

[Suriname]

I'm using 5.03. I understand that magic attacks are much stronger? Shouldn't golems be almost immune to them?

[Seravy]

Not anymore, Golems no longer have Magic Immunity. They do have 7 armor though which should be enough against weaker attacks.

[Suriname]

That's worse than the original MoM golem, buffed sprites... It feels useless to build.

[Seravy]

For reference, the original Golem : http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Golem

2 less attack power, but 1 higher armor for 20 more production, and fewer immunities. That's almost the same, actually, but one can say it's worse due to less armor I guess.

Dwarves are a problem race, I have no good ideas how to make them balanced. The current Golem might be too weak but the old one was far too powerful.

[Nelphine]

Its why I wanted to give them inherent resist elements. I realize its probably not possible, but oh well.

[Seravy]

Well, giving them the effect is not that hard actually, tho not as an ability but hardcoded (if unit=golem or enchanted by resist elements, then resist elements effect) but making an icon appear with that...wait, what if...
what if we had a continuous stat changing effect that says "If the unit is a golem, it gains the Resist Elements Item Power flag"? Then it has the icon and the effect yet it's not an enchantment and won't cause dispel problems.

On the other hand, giving them that kinda defeats the purpose of the nerf - the problem was the AI having a strong preference of magical ranged units so anything strong vs magicians is bad.

...let me see that Golem thread again.

Well, Resist Elements does help but you still need an entire army and will usually have some losses (It's only +4 DEF so you take some damage and there are 9 of them. Also they have Caster 20 and might dispel it or hurt the units with spells.)

So basically I said resist elements is mostly fine. (albeit, if it can't be dispelled, it's much more powerful.)
Question is...how much armor should the Golem have? At that point of the discussion we haven't decided on it yet, and it might simply not be true with the current 7 armor (which goes up to 11 with RE - might be too hard to damage for 7 ranged magicians actually, especially if the golem has any sort of defense buff.).

Albeit...Resist Elements is a common spell. If having it on the unit is a problem, that means either the Golem itself, or Resist Elements is overpowered to begin with.

I think we should try this.

btw if we could somehow make Catapults playable, that could be used to diversify AI garrisons and move them away from the "all magical ranged everywhere" strategy they are currently doing.