Test games played

[Seravy]

Finally completed a game using the new research system on Expert. Seems to work well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llimv4MA...e=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2QrPW8C...e=youtu.be

[Seravy]

As a final test game before concluding High Men are now at the right place, I started a game with Life High Men.
In theory this combination has the most abuse potential - buffed cities with cheaper building costs, and buffed high men units.

Well, I can't say it's good or bad because I struggle surviving the early game. Yes, I can buff swordsmen and conquered 2 neutrals with a single one of them. That's not the hard part, it's the lack of gold - with the high unrest rates, taxes won't do much for that (at least until researching Just Cause, maybe I should have picked it as a starting spell? But then I'd miss one of the essential buffs for using the swordsmen. Or I'd miss Heavenly Light. So I can't really afford doing that.) and there is no treasure - high men swordsmen might be great against neutral cities, but they won't kill nagas, ghouls, phantom warriors etc so they won't find treasure. Without treasure, building up to a fighter's guild or wizard's guild is sluggish, and due to the racial unrest this race desperately needs to overextend with settlers as early as possible which is a contradicting goal getting higher tier units.
What's worse, if nearby enemy wizards play Death or Sorcery, you have nothing against Nagas and Ghouls - poison still goes through the buffs. So while these creatures do counter the swordsmen abuse in the early game, it also counters Life High men entirely - until Magicians, you can't expect to have any decent resistance units, even with buffs.
It might be a bit early for a conclusion after having played it for only 2 hours but I don't think we need to worry about Life High Men being overpowered - it's extremely difficult to play this combination and I haven't even considered the strategy being weak to flying creatures and resistance based Sorcery or Nature spells in general.

Overall the weak points of the race are still present and significant, the building cost reduction doesn't seems to be able to negate that, so I'm going to make High Men as a fairly balanced race and move on to playing the next race...Dark Elves I guess?

I might still finish this game first though, not sure.

[Nelphine]

Why do keep saying high men are weak to fliers? They have the best ranged unit in the game, although you really want focus magic to make them true monsters. And half the races have nothing significantly better than life buffed bowmen - so high men, espucally life, are fine before magicians as well.

Your fighters guild is even cheaper than normal, so you can get pikemen even faster than I get bezerkers. That gives you a massive massive melee unit. Sure you can't kill everything with them. But they're cheap, and its very difficult to kill them cost effectively (without confusion/black sleep/posession).

High men life are simply not weak. Sure, they aren't strong until you get magicians and focus magic and destroy everything, but they aren't weak.

[Seravy]

Let's be realistic, you will be buffing your pikemen, paladins etc, not your bowmen, priests, catapults, and magicians (Other races have better bowmen, and Magicians don't benefit from most Life buffs). And once your main army of buffed pikemen and paladins run into an enemy flying stack, you lose most of it because you can't fight back and get obliterated by spells or ranged attacks. (Or you simply realize they are useless because the enemy city garrison is made from sprites or pegasai)


The fighter's guild is cheap but if you aren't building settlers, you'll suffer from the racial unrest and won't benefit from cheaper building costs and better units on most of your cities. So doing it first is a painful choice. (You can use Stream of Life for the unrest, but ultimately you still want more high men cities, not more orcs, gnolls and barbarians...)

Anyway I'm not saying it's weak, I'm saying it's not overpowered. Which is what I was worried about.

[namad]

Let's be realistic, you will be buffing your pikemen, paladins etc, not your bowmen, priests, catapults, and magicians (Other races have better bowmen, and Magicians don't benefit from most Life buffs). And once your main army of buffed pikemen and paladins run into an enemy flying stack, you lose most of it because you can't fight back and get obliterated by spells or ranged attacks. (Or you simply realize they are useless because the enemy city garrison is made from sprites or pegasai)


The fighter's guild is cheap but if you aren't building settlers, you'll suffer from the racial unrest and won't benefit from cheaper building costs and better units on most of your cities. So doing it first is a painful choice. (You can use Stream of Life for the unrest, but ultimately you still want more high men cities, not more orcs, gnolls and barbarians...)

Anyway I'm not saying it's weak, I'm saying it's not overpowered. Which is what I was worried about.

I think life high men are not the best possible high men, because IMO life buffs are powerful earlier in the game, where bonuses from alchemist and warlord can overpower since they require 0 research, especially so after buffing research costs, life IMO goes best with I dunno things like barbarians/halflings/draconians because they all have a good early unit? even high elves and nomads probably have a better early game combat unit than high men, but high men magicians and paladins are better than these other races later game normal units. Personally though, I never pick to play as high men, they just don't seem that "fun" as a starter race, especially because high men neutral cities are so common that I can usually rely on having paladins later in the game anyways. Maybe high men need the dwarven treatment? of making all their neutral cities super high level with super garrisons? So the only way to be sure of getting paladins before 1408 or whenever is to start with high men?

Oh on top of that by the time you can build an armorer's guild or wizard's guild (for high men) you can usually also afford a war college, which drastically cuts into heroism's power, and imo heroism is one of the best turn1 spells in the game. Now maybe crusaders/knights are supposed to change all of this? I haven't really tested either yet. Maybe crusaders/knights need a rework if you want them to compete with rangers or singers or berserkers at all.

[Nelphine]

My current game had no high men. 1 high elf wizard (with a single lizardnan city and a single orc city and a single troll city), 1 lizardman wizard with no other races, 1 klackon wizard with no other races, 1 barbarian wizard with no other races, 1 dwarf wizard with 1 troll city and 1 beastman city.

Rather interesting. Lizardman still strongest. Followed by the klackon of all things.

[namad]

My current game had no high men. 1 high elf wizard (with a single lizardnan city and a single orc city and a single troll city), 1 lizardman wizard with no other races, 1 klackon wizard with no other races, 1 barbarian wizard with no other races, 1 dwarf wizard with 1 troll city and 1 beastman city.

Rather interesting. Lizardman still strongest. Followed by the klackon of all things.

Maybe all races settlers should be move 2? Or maybe growth should be normalized slightly? (reduce highest by 10 increased lowest by 10?) Alternatively I'll keep playing races I find fun and staying on a lower difficulty, because personally I don't like lizards.

[Nelphine]

I don't think lizardmen are ever noticeably stronger in 1415 anymore, and it can be as early as 1410 that late game races like high elves catch up. They just happen to be an early race. I don't think they need to be changed any further.

[namad]

I don't think lizardmen are ever noticeably stronger in 1415 anymore, and it can be as early as 1410 that late game races like high elves catch up. They just happen to be an early race. I don't think they need to be changed any further.

you frequently say that they're the only race that can compete at all on lunatic though, right?

[Nelphine]

Lisardmen? No. They're one of the races that can use strategic shenanigans, which is one of a few things that work on lunatic. 

Races that can use strategic shenanigans,: barbarian, beastmen, lizardmen/dwarf/draconian, troll.

There are others (gnolls, high men, orcs, dark elves, halflings), but I don't think anything else could work at lunatic. I'm not even sure trolls would work on lunatic, but I haven't used them in ages.



For a while lisardmen were crazy strong for AI, but that seems to have been balanced.