LIFE Realm

[Nelphine]

I disagree that heroism is similar to mind control. Heroism simply makes you fight better - and undead in many media retain skills of their life. Heroism just magically imparts those skills. 

Obviously, in media, many undead do not retain those skills - that's what zombies and skeletons are for, instead of undead city troops.

[Seravy]

Keep in mind to change the targeting rules of one particular spell group, the code need to be modified in locations, and the human part is on difficult places. This is the reason why I didn't do it for Flame Blade/Holy Weapon, etc until this year.
Making new spell types/targeting groups (impossible) or exceptions (possible) is ever worse, I'm not going to do that unless there is a strong gameplay related reason for it.

With that in mind... Shatter is fine either way. Keeping it as is improves undead and Chaos Channels, changing it improves Shatter itself. Both need it. As the change is difficult to implement and the potential gain is minimal, I rather stay away from it. However making it a global rule would also mean Possession working against Chaos Chanelled units, which I'm very strongly against. (It wouldn't work on undead as they have Death Immunity)

Heroism I'm going to fix by forcing undead to refresh their levels at end of combat and pray it breaks nothing else. In theory they aren't gaining EXP so that should be fine. I'm going to do this after completing my current game because I don't want to end up with a broken save file and this is a somewhat risky change.

Weapon Immunity - I don't want Chaos Channeled units to became unable to attack weapon immunity. That's the only spell in Chaos that allows doing so. (actually, Mystic Surge too but that'd also get ruined by the change) So I'm against it because changing it to base type would be bad for Chaos, and not changing it would make it inconsistent with undead being the only exception. This is at least one thing that's consistent currently : Fantastic units always bypass WI regardless of what type they are (natural or created).

Undead losing experience - this is a horrible idea. "But you can buff them" is no excuse - most Death wizards won't have life books and to begin with the entire point of using undead is to have FREE units you get without paying any cost to produce them. Buffs aren't free and Death doesn't have any anyway.

[Nelphine]

Based on your response Seravy, I would suggest changing shatter. I think improving shatter is more important, as undead and chaos channels both get a variety of other improvements (primarily immunity to possession), plus shatter matching the other normal unit buffs for targetting would be intuitive.

Thank you for explaining some of the other background restrictions though.

[Seravy]

Changing Shatter but not changing Possession however would be very counterintuitive - both are "normal unit only" unit curses.
Either way I rather not change four (three? Maybe just three but that's still a lot) different targeting procedures for it. I would be surprised if there was space left for that, anyway, and checking for base unit does take more space than checking for current unit type.

[Bahgtru]

Actually changing shatter and not possession is not counter-intuitive, as shatter has to do with weapons (like holy/flame/...) while possession has to do with minds. Of all the possibilities barring the one I proposed - that is indeed more work - this seems the least bad.

What isn't intuitive is having experience - thus a mind - and yet being impervious to possession or confusion. But you seem to have decided, NBD. Nelphine - heroism just gives experience, let's not play with logic in fantasy.

On your note on balance: actually, chaos is the least affected by weapon immunity of the realms, because it's not unit based apart from the few flame blade strategies (which btw overcomes WI, did you forget?), it's rather summons or direct damage based. Having shatter work on undead would clearly be a boost to early chaos.

I find your approach risky, and it probably won't fix the exploit of cancelling heroism on undead units just created from the AI without losing their level. You also haven't answered teela's point on why would a wizard not cancel any buffs on a dead unit... Buffs are, in fact, actually currently free for what regards undead.

[Seravy]

few flame blade strategies (which btw overcomes WI, did you forget?

Yes, I did. I mean I forgot about the spell entirely, not it's ability to ignore weapon immunity.
I guess I have one less reason to be against it then. However it isn't indicated anywhere ingame and players are used to it working this way. If their units suddenly start to do much worse without explanation, that's not very good. Oh, and Doom Mastery. You can have Chaos Channels on every unit for free, not Flame Blade. It might matter, if for some reason you don't, or can't build alchemist guilds.

(it's also really hard to justify/explain why some zombies or skeletons can bypass weapon immunity if undead swordsmen cannot. I rather leave it at "all fantastic units" without exceptions. Undead aren't just some random normal units that are moved by magic, they are actual Death realm creatures - with all consequences of being such, including being buffed by Darkness, affected by Exorcise and bypassing Weapon Immunity.)

...one more thing. Undead are something you make from enemy units. You don't get a choice of producing them with or without magic weapons. So if the enemy produces them without, you're stuck with that. Punishing it through Weapon Immunity wouldn't be good for gameplay.

I find your approach risky, and it probably won't fix the exploit of cancelling heroism on undead units just created from the AI without losing their level.

If you mean cancelling, yes, the units will retain their level for one battle, unless they get their level refreshed from a different source, but after that they'll lose it. I rather pay the 2 mana than attempt to gamble on the unit dying in their first fight anyway.
...albeit if necessary I can also change it to do the overland end-of-turn refresh, it seems easy.

You don't get the chance to cancel buffs when units die, nor when they change controller. Normally the unit doesn't stay alive so it's not relevant, but undead are an exception. The (unsaid) global rule is that the person owning the unit owns the (permanent, note that all curses are for one combat) enchantments on it, gets to cancel them,  and pays their upkeep. It would be odd if the enemy could cancel the enchantment yet I was the one paying for it and it's impossible to do it otherwise as whoever "owns" the enchantment is not stored in game data, it defaults to the owner of the unit.

Also, units don't lose enchantments when they die naturally - otherwise Regeneration would be useless as it works on dead units. So unless the effect that revives them specifically says "and loses all enchantments", keeping them is the default.

[Nelphine]

You can't say 'lets not play with logic in fantasy' AND say experience has more to do with the mind than with providing skills. Heroism gives experience, experience gives +attack or defense or resist or HP. That is no more the mind than it is a skill.

All I'm saying is we're using magic to give something boosted stats. That is obviously possible so the only problem comes from the descriptor of experience. If an undead can have experience without heroism, it ought to be able to have experience with heroism. Since 'boosting stats' isn't a good enough filter because that can happen both to fantastic units, and to city units, and it can happen without experience, then we go for description. Experience is the games way of showing a unit getting better over time - in the real world this is represented by gaining more skill over time. Therefore experience is gaining skills over time.

In media there are two very common tropes.
The first is Zombies or other undead who forget all of their living abilities. These are immune to mind control.  T is These  are represented through the spells Summon Zombie and Summon Skeleton.
The second is undead like Lord Soth, the original Death Knight.  He DID keep all of his skills from his living abilities. But he's still immune to all forms of mind control. 

This shows that in all common forms of media, all undead are immune to mind control. However, the abilities undead remember from their life vary. Therefore, mind control is not linked to their skills from real life. Therefore it's fine for Undead to retain skills, therefore retain experience, and it still matches common media tropes, without conflicting with immunity to mind control.

Therefore an undead can retain experience without heroism. Which means there's no reason for an undead city unit to not be affected by heroism.

[Nelphine]

On topic of shatter, Seravy, I would set that at the spell. 

Weapon immunity I think would be more intuitive if it worked off base unit type, but again, 99% of city units have magic weapons, so even if it makes sense, in practicality it simply doesn't matter, whether it 'hurts' chaos channeled units or not. So it's not worth doing regardless of intuitiveness because it simply won't actually happen.

[Nelphine]

On topic of undead keeping enchantments, aside from all the mechanical problems seravy describes, there are lots of media examples of living beings being raised as undead and the dark magic that twists them into undead also twists enchantments on them into dark magic. The current game mechanics of keeping the enchantments reflects this and explains why the original wizard can't cancel the enchantment.


From a gameplay point of view, it's FUN to try to hunt down enemy units with buffs, and try to raise them. Since the buffs often make it much harder to successfully raise them, you have to make the combat riskier to actually successfully do this. This adds an extra level to gameplay, which is generally a good thing (even if you disagree that you find it fun.)

[Bahgtru]

Nelphine, you're again mixing heroes with normal troops, your examples, like also vampires are clearly the hero type. Normal troops lack the will to keep their mind together and become brainless. Based on your examples, undead heroes should be able to gain XP... Vampires can learn stuff too in movies... Don't do logic with fantasy... I'm using the tropes because adopting them makes mechanics intuitive, that's it. And no, it's not fun, as it results in camping the last AI city once the AI is not a threat anymore to farm high level wartrolls. That's the opposite of fun. And camping is not some major breakthrough in strategy... Any kid who's played any MMORPG will do that first.

Anyway, major walls of text, minds are clearly set - I cba to go point by point. But the result is a difference between weapons on the same unit before and after becoming undead that makes no sense (W.immunity), a difference between possession and confusion that makes no sense, a difference between levels (normal and XP) that makes no sense and a difference between the differences (weapon can become holy but not shattered) that also makes no sense for me. Oh well...