DEATH Realm

[Kaiku]

I prefer to do such a thing together with input from everyone, and it can only be done if others agree with me that Death could use a little help. Otherwise this'll just be an exercise on futility on my part, and I don't feel like that.

I also ask anyone interested to play a solo Death game (if you haven't done so recently, and preferably to late game) to see if you can identify and agree with these issues, and to think of possible solutions.

A new curse, though, would at the very least need to have a very high resist penalty so that it has a decent chance to land on a very rare. What it'll do is then up for discussion.

(Incidentally, is it possible to add a Wrack effect to a curse? Unit loses a hearth every turn?)

[Seravy]

Ghouls and zombies are the only two Create Undead creatures because anything stronger would be overpowered.
You're arguing Ghouls are too powerful to begin with, so putting the ability on anything else would just make things worse - you can replace "ghouls" with that unit and even remove the "and buff them" part.

To be honest I barely used ghouls in the old times. They're expensive and at least prior to poison buff, used to deal fairly unreliable damage to pretty much anything that wasn't a basic normal unit. I never managed to reproduce that buffed ghouls tactic reported either.

Meanwhile, Werewolves and Shadow Demons win games on their own, so wasting time on an inferior tactic sounds a bad idea. More importantly, I consider my picks a premise to the actual game. If I want to play Death then picking 2 Death books and 8 something else is not an option. Then I wouldn't be playing Death. I pick the wizard I want to play as, and adapt the difficulty level to that, picking the strongest possible wizard is not among my goals.

I admit I don't use Life Drain and Syphon Life much. I almost always use Summon Zombie instead because the enemy unit will eventually enter my side of the field and the zombie both does more damage and gives me presence in the battle so I won't suddenly lose because the AI kills the last standing unit. Zombies also benefit from whatever buffs I have in place - Darkness, Heavenly Light, Soul Linker, Guardian, Holy Bonus, whatever.
However against ranged enemy units, these spells are better while zombies would not be an option.

Wraiths and Death Knights are unfortunately less effective at making undead now that their melee attack is buffed. Still, 10 swords at +2 to hit is 5 damage only. At 4 resistance, Life Steal -4 also does this much damage. So on units with a resist of 5 or lower, using Black Prayer is enough to have a higher expected undead damage than melee. Note that melee is reduced by armor so in reality the number is more like at 7 instead (2 damage blocked by armor). For Death Knights it's somewhat worse, 1 more from Life Steam but 2.2 more from melee and even armor piercing. So vs these, the enemy probably needs a resistance score of ~4 to come back as undead.

I think I'm fine with Death Knights and Demon Lords not making much undead - by then Zombie Mastery already filled the map with them for me.

A new curse, though, would at the very least need to have a very high resist penalty so that it has a decent chance to land on a very rare. What it'll do is then up for discussion.

My worry is that we'll be unable to come up with one. I'm pretty sure we tried this albeit I couldn't find it in this thread. So maybe it's just accumulated experience on my part from previous ideas that all failed to be of use.
My other worry is that even if we do, we have nowhere to add a new spell.
I'm 100% not removing Massacre or Annihilate.

(Incidentally, is it possible to add a Wrack effect to a curse? Unit loses a hearth every turn?)

Suggested and rejected before, don't remember the exact details but it was along the lines of "same as killing the unit if you can stall for 25 turns so overpowered". The problem with this sort of thing is it needs the same save modifier as a spell that outright kills the unit because it's as powerful if you can find a way to stall for 25 turns, and you usually can. But once it has the same modifier it's just worse than killing the unit with an identical spell where you don't wait.

[Nelphine]

I think I failed to make my points clear. 2 things: wraiths and death knights - by the time you have these units, no units less than resistance 9 or so is relevant. Even if I can make a million resistance 3 units into undead, that literally does nothing. My wraiths/death knights will already defeat anything those undead units can hurt, and unless I've already won, my opponent doomstacks and serious garrisons will similarly destroy those low resistance units without noticing.



Further, my main point: if i'm playing death, NOTHING says 'death' like undead units. They are the most amazing part about the realm (for me!).

But I only need 2 books in death and I've already maxed my potential to get undead creation. Worse, taking books in other realms actually INCREASES my undead creation by further buffing my ghouls.

So... The most 'death' thing I can do.. And I can't actually increase it by getting more death books, but I CAN increase it by getting non death books?

Note, I'm not talking about increasing my ability to win the game. I'm talking about using abilities that feel the most 'death' like.

But more death books do nothing for that feel (and in fact, the higher spells actually LOSE that feeling). And I think that is wrong.

[Kaiku]

A couple of pages ago there was also someone saying he only played Death with Ghouls enchanted by other realms.

Yes, Death has very little synergy with itself too. And I can understand your point about city curses feeling weak. When you buff your own units/cities, you feel the effect every turn. But when you curse cities, it's the other wizards that 'feels' things. You just wasted a bunch of mana and time for seemingly nothing. I think that's inevitable, though, and something we'll have to deal with. When the AI curses my cities (Pestilence, Chaos Rift, whatnot), they certainly don't feel weak or anything. Final Wave is probably the same.

But all of this makes Death feel lackluster, lacking the cool and fun options that make you feel powerful, that other realms do have.

[Seravy]

Final Wave is actually good enough that you can see the drop in enemy power on the graphs. A pretty big one if they play lower resistance races, even.
City curses unfortunately are less obvious.

by the time you have these units, no units less than resistance 9 or so is relevant.

Every unit is relevant. You're a Death wizard with powerful combat spells. Those 9 zombies or whatnot allows you to cast Massacre or Wave of Despair or Annihilate on things. And unlike building spearmen, these undead are often durable enough to allow you to keep casting and actually win a battle against a major army.
Speaking of which Zombie Mastery is so insanely overpowered at making undead, nothing else in the realm can compare. I never lost a game when I had that spell.
Undead are a strategy based on quantity, not quality. They are units you're getting for free. They can't be good without ruining game balance.

[Nelphine]

I disagree with you on most of those points, but that doesn't really matter.

The only point in there that matters to me is this:

Wow I got super long. Feel free to ignore everything below this. TLDR: it sucks that qualitatively, undead creation peaks at common. It makes the rest of the rarities feel lackluster, like you have to choose between ability to win, and ability to create undead.



Ghouls let you create undead. This is amazing and (for me, and at least some others) feels more death like than anything else. Nothing to do with power, its seeing that little screen that says '3 units rise from the dead to serve you'. Its just awesome.

The units that ghouls convert into undead (ignoring arnuz amazing undead strategies) are relevant. If you turn a halberdier into an undead, that halberdier, on its own (as opposed to its ability to let you cast combat spells you may or may not have), is important.

Then, everyone learns uncommon spells. An undead halberdier is no longer as relevant, but it's still somewhat relevant. And you've got darkness and black prayer so you might get better units occasionally. But shadow demons and werewolves are noticeably better than ghouls, so you have to make a choice:
Do I use the better units, or do I continue to create undead a lot?

Then everyone learns rare spells. Your ghouls get no better, so now they're completely outclassed by rare summons. The undead you can create are.. The same as the ones you could create at the start of the game (even if zombie mastery allows you more, which I disagree with, but for the purpose of this argument, we'll go with Seravy view of the spell). The only way they can be relevant is if you happen to have good combat spells (at this point, if you don't have both reaper slash and wave of despair, your undead aren't relevant at all; and honestly if you want your undead to be relevant due to combat casting, take 2 death books, and then a huge pile of chaos books. Chaos is way better at that than death is.)

So you really are forced to ignore undead creation except as incidental, mostly made from zombies, and which still are no different quality wise than when you had commons.

Then you learn very rares. If you happen to get both annhilate and massacre, your combat casting is now strong enough to compete with chaos, but you're still not better at it than going 2 death books + chaos. Your summons are amazing (and in my opinion, very rare summons are the only thing that make taking more than 2 books in death feel good - demon lords are the best unit in the game, feeling wise.) But undead creation has not changed. You still create the same units you did at common.

My point is that undead creation barely changes, quality wise, from commons to very rares. Yes, you might get more of them, and I'm certainly not arguing that undead are useless. But the only time you get better undead is when you learn darkness and black prayer.

So its very easy to feel ghouls are the 'peak' of death, from the point of view of undead creation.

I'd like to see ghouls lose auto undead creation, because it makes the more powerful summons feel bad because they don't have it.

I hate having to choose between stronger summons and ghouls with undead creation.

Note, this is NOT about balance. Its about the feeling of playing death. The fact that you have option of create undead so early makes me expect it later, so when it doesn't happen later, it makes me sad and frustrated - why should the most awesome ability be at common? Why would I WANT to play deeper in death without qualitatively better undead?

After removing it from ghouls, I'd add it to something like night stalkers. Then, I'd magically find either a rare or a very rare ranged summon, and give create undead to that unit - but this magical nonexistent unit raw stats would be fairly weak for its rarity (still stronger than the previous rarity, kind of like djinn). And I'd give at least 2 very rare spells some ability to buff that magical non existent unit. For instance, I might give demon lords and death knights an 'unholy bonus'. Or I'd give massacre/annhilate a bonus that every unit they kill gives all death/undead units in the battle +1 attack and defense until the battle is over. Or I'd give more of the global spells a direct combat component.



None of which I'm saying we should do. All I'm saying is it sucks to peak qualitatively at common for undead creation, and I would grasp at all kinds of wild ideas to avoid that.

[Seravy]

take 2 death books, and then a huge pile of chaos books.

That does work but you only have 10% chance for Zombie Mastery with 2 books. Ghouls can't create stacks of 9 undead consistently every turn on several locations on the map, especially without losing the ghouls. They're not in the same league. I rather get the 2 more Chaos books and use spearmen or hell hounds to have lots of weak units then. It's not worth losing 2 Chaos books for Ghouls.

Creating undead of anything strong ruins game balance. So it can't be allowed to happen easily. Anything that consistently does it through Life Steal or Create Undead is easy and reusable. An easy and reusable source of free strong units is gamebreaking. So it cannot exist. Which leaves quantity over quality.

Now, if the quantity of undead is insufficient, we can do things to raise it.
Requiring 33% of the damage to be undead instead of 50% would make undead creating spells better across the board. Life Drain, Syphon Life, Wraiths, etc could all work better...I'm afraid that would be overpowered but it's doable.

btw, Syphon Life can actually make undead of strong enemy units. At a -10 save modifier, this can reliably deal damage to even things like Efreets. Yes, it will take 5 shots to actually deal the required ~60% damage, but 5*30 mana and zero overland skill is still a low price for a 300 value unit. Undead creation is already overpowered, people just don't bother using it. It means you are getting something permanent out of combat spellcasting which is prohibited for every other realm for a very good reason - it means you can cheat the casting skill system and summon things without spending overland skill. It's extremely powerful.

So what I see is :
Common excels at making undead. Ghouls, zombies, and life drain are all pretty good against common tier things.
Uncommon is not that outstanding. You only have Syphon Life but it's the most potent at turning strong units to your side. You can even convert most of the rares with that (albeit it certainly isn't cheap to do so). Technically, Blood Lust also makes undead, but out of your own living units so that doesn't count.
At Rare you have two : Zombie Mastery which is a nearly gamebreaking, top tier spell even if you don't consider it one, and Wraiths which are also capable of making a lot of undead if you pay attention to cast your Black Prayer. Both of these spells are an entirely different level in quantity and cost effectiveness, albeit the quality of units converted is obviously not that high.
At Very Rare we have Demon Lord and Death Knight both of which do a very poor job at this, but it's not their main role. As Syphon Life pretty much exhausted how far undead can go up in quality, and the rares pushed quantity and cost effectiveness to the top, there isn't really much else to add for this tier. Obviously, the fair price of getting free very rares out of combat would be so high no one could afford the required combat skill to cast such a spell.
There is one thing here though : Eternal Night. It doesn't seem related, but that -1 penalty does make all your existing undead creation (except the zombies) better. And by quite a lot.

Whether this feels weak is a different, subjective matter, but I believe undead creation has already been mostly pushed to the limit. We can try minor changes to the required undead damage ratio but anything drastic would make the realm plain overpowered.

[Nelphine]

Right but my problem isn't that its weak. Its that common is the peak.

I want to make common worse at it, so that we can make the other rarities at it better in comparison. The issue is feeling like you've peaked with only 2 spell books. (And I'm sorry, but anything zombies can make are just not relevant. I already get the zombies from zombie mastery - the undead they make in addition simply don't matter. I'm not arguing the strength of zombie mastery, I'm arguing its importance for undead creation.)

Edit: and anything you can do with syphon life, you can do better with ghouls plus other realm buffs. Syphon life is crap.

[zitro1987]

I do not understand the effectiveness of 'Zombie Mastery'.

Zombies deal low melee damage, have low resistance, and with 1mv can't reach anything to create undead (if their melee can even damage enough to create undead). Their undead creation is very poor compared to focus-magic magicians mass-casting syphon life, focus-magic ghouls, and especially wraiths.

As garrison, zombies are fairly durable but will fail at defending a city, so best used for unimportant towns if they can reach the town overland at 1mv per turn.

Their sheer numbers worry me that they'll break the maximum unit limit in the game.

At best, they seem to be good cannon-fodder while you cast powerful v.rare spells by stacking 9 and attacking a random enemy stack or town or lair/node. With channeler, this strategy would be pretty good. However, your towns have so much production that they could just recruit 9 halberdiers (which move a bit more).

It would be nice is 'zombie mastery' gives them higher speed, and/or higher melee capabilities. Otherwise, I just don't know how to use these zombies.

[Nelphine]

Personally I've never seen zombie mastery make any difference in my games, whether I cast or the enemy. But I already slaughter all the enemy units my doomstack reaches, and their doomstack slaughters my garrison's (even if its 9 magicians) so .. I dunno.

I guess I could use zombie mastery to clean up the hordes of units on enemy home continents but I just ignore them and never fight them anyway. (I don't attack them, they don't attack me.) So the one thing zombie mastery is good for, isn't relevant

Its like ultimate 'win more' spell that doesn't actually do anything.