Test games played

[teelaurila]

Is thrown influenced by weapon +tohit (holy weapon, alchemy)? I thought it is like breath in that it attacks with 30% always?

[Seravy]

Thrown and Breath are affected by "to Ranged" and "To Hit". Holy Weapon and magic weapons grant the +1 bonus for Thrown but not for Breath (there is no weapon), but any other source of bonus applies normally.

[Seravy]

Part 5 : https://youtu.be/TrMsbPxnwoY

[Bahgtru]

I don't think we have much room for nerfing Gladiators. Less movement or defense means they stop being useful at what they are meant for. At the very least in my game they were fairly balanced, so if there is a problem then it's life buffs or stacking unit levels with warlord. Holy Armor costs 1/3 less per unit than Endurance for the same +1 To Def bonus, so this recent life "nerf" is more of a buff. Sure there is no movement, but that was just an extra.
Ofc, for units buffed by both spells it makes no difference, but it did make the "stingy" version of using only Holy Armor more powerful. And that's the one that can hope to compete with AI on Lunatic, full buffing is too expensive.

Cool we have the easy mode race, woooo.

These guys are fast, armored, can deal with flying... I'm quite sure they can fortress strike sprites garrisons without much trouble even when not playing life, and now they even get magic market!

Why don't you compare them with say, elven lords or paladins? Or myrran races AG units?

At least reduce the speed: that's not needed for part of their stated main purpose (defending) and it reduces the worthiness of berserkers.

[Seravy]

Ehh the intended purpose of Gladiators is to conquer. And they are meant to be an almost armorer's guild tier unit that comes earlier, the same way Berserkers already are. You pay for that by having the worst economy in the game, and having no magic weapons.
For the time being I reduced their Thrown by 1, as that isn't required to be so high for their intended purpose (beating magicians and similar common garrisons) but makes the unit more durable in general by taking less damage from retaliating enemies.

Not sure what to do about Holy Armor, it's clearly more powerful than old Holy Armor or Endurance, especially if you consider it applies to Large Shield. But that's a Life magic problem.

Edit : Maybe I'll watch Sapher's Gladiator game again, at least the first half. I don't remember them being too OP (compared to what he usually does, at least) but it was a while ago.

[Seravy]

So, watching it again. Here are my thoughts :

-omg, heroism with warlord is +3 defense.
-maybe Life doesn't need combat defense buffs for the early game. Heroism IS +2 or 3 defense and that should be plenty (though it's way too expensive if you only need defense). Out-of-combat you have an additional, expensive, +2 in Endurance too. So maybe, Holy Armor could be uncommon?
-But then we lose the ability to have the super buffed early unit which Life relies on and...actually fails winning by because it's too expensive to being with. Heroism+Holy Armor+Endurance+Bless sounds great in theory but costs over 200 to actually cast. Without that though, early Life AI falls back to bottom tier again.
-Do we even have an uncommon that could be swapped? I don't think so?
-Defense aside, heroism+Warlord is also +3 Thrown. That's a lot. Well, Warlord costs 2 picks for a reason...
-Confusion still counter early life buffing even on Gladiators. Poison on the other hand, yes from Ghouls (I had the honor to try fighting against them in my game, it was ugly), not so much from Nagas (thrown vs first strike the human is better at positioning. Reduction of Thrown can help here but remember a lot of it is coming from the buffs/warlord) but Spiders should be effective due to webs beating thrown.
-Maybe curses should have triple dispel resistance instead of double? The change clearly makes a difference but it still seems to be slightly too easy to dispel curses (but only with Runemaster so maybe that's fine? )
-Speaking of Runemaster, do we really need the free Dispel Magic? It clearly makes it a good pick for Rush which is not intended. This would be way different if he had to research it.
-Werewolves say weapon immunity is a thing. (I had trouble with Wraith Formed units in my game as well. No magic weapons can hurt, and buffing with Holy/Flame weapons is expensive and time consuming!) In fact, other than Death, Chaos also has Weapon Immunity in Fire elementals, and Sorcery in Water Elementals if game reaches that point. So I feel there is an adequate quantity of counters to this strategy in the game overall (weapon immunity, confusion, poison)?
-Move 4 or higher units can also be a problem at least until there is a second gladiator to corner them.
-The AI is vulnerable to having their transports attacked. That unfortunately can't be helped, fortunately intercontinental doomstacks are a thing. More rampaging monsters help here as well, if the enemy can't cross the sea, have some of them spawn already on the player's land.
-Pikemen's negate first strike isn't helping against thrown so they also get slaughtered by the gladiators without being able to deal much damage in return. Once again, if there is anything to change on Gladiators, that's the amount of Thrown.
-2 Gladiators beat 3 bears and 7 other units? Well, ok, actually, 2 heroism+2 holy armor costs more than 3 bears and gladiators cost more than swordsmen so that actually is fair.
-9 Naga stack gets beaten by thrown indeed, even through Blur.

Conclusions, ideas to discuss :
-Maybe Runemaster shouldn't give free Dispel Magic (leaning towards yes)
-Maybe unit curse dispel resistance should be triple instead of double (leaning towards no)
-Maybe Holy Armor should be uncommon (leaning towards no)
-Maybe Holy Armor should be overland only (unsure)
-Maybe Holy Armor should be more expensive to cast, or maintain (unsure)
-Maybe level up bonuses are still too good (leaning towards yes slightly)
-Maybe 2 reduction on thrown is necessary instead of 1 (no idea)

[Nelphine]

Why not make heroism overland only? It's absurdly powerful early game, so making it overland forces the cost to be used, particularly for those 1 unit garrisons I love so much.

(Also as a note, warlord is +1 attack and armor, heroism is +2 attack and armor. No need to conflate them by saying 3 at any point. Yes the combo is 3, but it's easier to tell the cost of each when you keep them separate.)

However, note that gladiators requires barracks. So heroism is only +1 attack and armor for gladiators.

Yes I'm firmly in the camp that level up bonuses are too high. However, warlord is in a good place. (So elite and ultra elite shouldn't change, although races without war college would probably not want warlord, but it's already pretty bad for them.)

Holy armor has never been the key to my life bezerkers. Making it uncommon wouldn't change much. Holy weapon is almost as important. Obviously that's not anything like the style that gladiators play. And of all Commons, the +1 movement is most important for my offensive stacks.

Runemaster was granted free dispel magic so that AI could fight life buffed early units. However, that's almost as binary as sorcery - if the AI has he retort, the life buff didn't work, but doesn't help any other ai. Therefore, I agree that runemaster should NOT start with dispel magic, and addressing the problem with non aether binding non runemaster AI is more important.

Thrown is incredible. Can we teach the AI to try to use first strike type abilities better? Charging forward constantly makes it so easy for the human to always get first strike. Even against faster units. Every time. Can negate first strike also apply towards breath and thrown?

In combat holy weapon says weapon immunity isn't much of a thing. Heck even just having 10+ attack can make it not matter, particularly for a unit with defense like the buffed gladiator.

In general I'd drop gladiator armor by 1 and thrown by 1.

[Sapher]

Part 5 : https://youtu.be/TrMsbPxnwoY

Link is not working

[Seravy]

Heroism? Why? I mean, sure, it's good, but Holy Armor gives +1 To Def (which is as good as 2-4 armor) for 8 while Heroism is 2 armor for 15 (yes it also adds other stats but armor is the important one). I'm not against it, I just don't understand why nerf the weaker of the two spells. (Especially after taking the time to fix the combat cast bugs)

Runemaster was granted free dispel magic so that AI could fight life buffed early units

Are you sure? I thought it was because the retort was too weak for the early game (same reasoning as Artificier having Enchant Item) but maybe not.

Thrown is incredible. Can we teach the AI to try to use first strike type abilities better? Charging forward constantly makes it so easy for the human to always get first strike. Even against faster units. Every time. Can negate first strike also apply towards breath and thrown?

Coding the feature is one difficulty but for starters, I can't even come up with a correct algorithm for solving this. For human players we know where to position because the AI's moves are predictable. Human moves are not predictable, and if we don't know where the enemy will be moving, there is no trivial "correct" strategy. It turns into a chess board, with many options, neither of which obviously superior. In worst case both parties stand and refuse to move because whoever takes the first step, loses. But even in these cases, whoever can take better advantage of their ranged force or spells, benefits.
So first, I'd like to see an algorithm with proper explanation on why you think that is more effective for the AI than the current one, covering all possible cases. Then we can think about whether it's possible to implement such a thing and how. (Keep in mind there might be multiple thrown units with different positions and movement speed on either side as well as units without the ability, and the algorithm has to be reasonably simple.)
To apply Negate First Strike to thrown, a copy of performing the thrown attack has to be implemented as if it was a normal melee attack, in theory doable, probably not trivial. Thrown and Breath are "ranged" attacks though, so the much shorter pikes stopping them makes no sense.

Certainly, holy weapon in combat can be done but I did have this one battle where I knew flame blade and lost anyway. There was neither turns nor casting skill to cast it enough times in a battle involving 6-9 gladiators and that many other units, half of them wraithformed. So it's still a fairly major disadvantage. (Not to mention if the AI summons the fire elemental or casts wraithform after you used up your casting skill on for example Heroism, you are in trouble.)

[Seravy]

Part 5 : https://youtu.be/TrMsbPxnwoY

Link is not working

Strange, it was set to private. Thought Public is the default, unusual... fixed.