Test games played

[Bahgtru]

Except the proper city troop hurts even rares when life buffed, see your own hydra one-shot examples. So you have to compare with very rares, and the related maintenance cost.

[Nelphine]

Except that's with the full allotment of buffs, including lionheart, the bard, and warlord and alchemy.

Once you've spent 5+ picks on retorts, and you've got heroes, plus 6+ buffs, then you are spending a reasonable amount, even without maintenance on holy armor.

An ai who doesn't have a retort or a buffing hero or more than holy weapon and/or holy armor absolutely isn't in that same stage. Those two buffs still need to be relevant to that AI, and far more importantly, to a newish player playing on advanced or even expert who has the same lack of other buffs as that AI - but is much more hurt by any maintenance then the ai would be.

Holy armor isn't the source of the problem here. Stacking buffs on units is the problem. Usually, this is based on units with higher than standard stats, such as barbarians, in order to reduce the after-wizard-picks-cost.


In a similar vein to the suggestion to provide a universal global cap on overland movement (which I disagree with) what we may want to do is provide a cap on stats, such as no more than 2-4 higher than the original stats of the unit. The variance is the issue (buffed bezerkers win, unbuffed aren't worth spending 75 production to build them).

However, we have too many types of buffs (attack and to hit, armor and to defend and hit points) so I don't see that actually being feasible.

[Seravy]

Holy Armor clearly is the problem in the sense that it is more effective on higher defense units while the design goal for gladiators vs berserkers is the opposite (berserkers being more effective when buffed).

[teelaurila]

Endurance could be cheaper and not give the +armor? That also devalues holy armor a lot, due to lack of stacking. Holy armor could always give straight +2 armor, or perhaps even +3. The +todef is also unnecessarily good with heroes, and the difference is not huge anyway until we get to hero armor levels. There is prayer already for to-hit and to-def.

Endurance could maybe give swords (but not bows) instead of defense? That would make the unit stronger in combat, but not invulnerable by stacking. Also that would probably be better for AI.

[zitro1987]

I've always supported endurance being a cheaper +1move spell, as the added armor began a common-tier buff-stacking problem that was discussed on-and-off for years on this forum. This also created balance issues discussed on and off for heroes based on what realm they are associated with.

I never saw the problem of returning endurance to 'classic MoM'.

[Nelphine]

I'd be fine with endurance doing nothing but +1 move, and holy armor reverting to +2 armor.

And incidentally, with the level of buffs being discussed in this thread (warlord, all 4 life buffs, and 1-2 other buffs), bezerkers ARE better. Thats what I've been playing for years. But that's irrelevant because you're far beyond the minimum effective level, so gladiators are too strong as well. But if needed, gladiators at that level still couldn't go against very rares, whereas bezerkers wreck them.

So no, holy armor is NOT the problem. Stacking buffs is.

[Seravy]

Sapher never used Endurance in that video. Holy Armor and Heroism are better.
...I'm  kinda losing track of the discussion though. Let me refresh my memory...

1. So basically, stacking all the buffs is not a problem - doing it is expensive enough to not work as an overpowered strategy - and there is also the "you must also be able to garrison your cities" design holding this back. (Now with more monsters, this should actually be true. If not, we need to keep looking in the direction of fixing that. We'll never have a balanced game if some strategies can get away with not building and maintaining garrisons. It's just too big of an advantage in speed and economy.)

2. We haven't really established that gladiators are OP or better than Berserks with Life, at least I don't see that in my posts.

3. We agreed Runemaster should not be free Dispel Magic. Note this should not be a consideration for countering life - if that's why we added it, that was a big mistake, but I still think it was added because "Runemaster needs to do something in the early game". Dispel Magic isn't efficient if it targets only a few buffs, and stacking many is not an issue (1.). Furthermore, as Sapher demonstrated, free Dispel Magic goes way beyond "doing something in the early game" and makes the retort worth picking for rush, which is definitely not intended. So I'll add a note to myself to remove Dispel Magic for the next update.

4. We seem to agree Life is too powerful but seem to have a hard time to pinpoint where. That actually implies the realm is mostly well balanced and the problem lies elsewhere... (*looks towards the no garrisoning, Healing and Runemaster issues...)

5. Level bonuses are probably too high. I don't see room for reducing them, without making certain levels meaningless. Ideas are welcome though.

6. AI thrown, implementing this would be way too difficult even for the bare minimal required to make the feature meaningful - as we discussed, a LOT of factors need to be considered, all enemy units, their positioning and paths, their expected damage outputs, and so on. It goes beyond reasonable, I don't see it happening. If we had source code,  I could do it in a few hours, as is, not happening. We at least already have additional priority if the thrown unit can attack immediately which is by far the most important component.

7. We might want to drop Gladiator armor by 1 in the future. (As Large Shield provides more than enough armor, and thrown more than enough counterattack elimination to allow the unit to function at their intended role) Likewise we might want to consider another point of thrown reduction for the same reason.

8. Negate First Strike working against Breath and Thrown might be a good idea to seriously consider.

[Nelphine]

I just had a thought.. large shield is +4 isn't it? I've always assumed it's +3. If it +4, you can probably reduce their armor by 2. Again it's the range that's an issue for bezerkers, who are armor 3. Large shield and armor 5 is still literally triple the armor against ranged attacks.

Number 5:
Level 1 gives +1 attack, level 2 gives +1 armor, level 3 gives +1 health and resist, level 4 gives +1 attack and armor, crusade (NOT level 5, because only warlord + crusade gets level 5 which is too rare particularly for ai) gives +1 health and resist and to hit except for Heroes it still gives +1 level.

[Seravy]

No, Large Shield is +3. Base game was 2.

For levels, let me see, what's different there.

Level 1 loses ranged and resistance. This is now worthless, would never build a Barracks for it. I mean, melee? without armor? That's a horrible deal, and 95% of the time the early units I build are ranged anyway. It's also a massive all around nerf to everyone not playing Life or Sorcery, the realms who actually care about the resistance. Overall I think this is a very bad change.
Level 2 loses melee and ranged. Well, armor is a big deal on its own so maybe this is acceptable? Except, this makes units weaker across the board. You STILL get the armor but your enemies won't have the extra attack strength to overcome it. Thus this indirectly makes Life and Chaos who can buff attack better, as well as this level better - it is now relevant even against enemies who also have it. Overall this feels the right change but the implications will be the opposite of expected.
Add the two together and normal units lose a significant amount of relevance against summoned (early) units - 2 less ranged means you'll be literally unable to ever kill a war bear with bows, even on longbowmen, and 1 less melee and resistance makes them less effective vs nagas and hell hounds and even ghouls.
Level 3 loses the +1 defense, I was considering this myself but then low figure count units get nothing as hp is worthless for them while defense is worth a lot. I can see losing resistance here though, as elite level is not common for units, AI or otherwise. However most normal units are already very weak to resistance effects and this again only helps Life and Sorcery.
Level 4 loses ranged again otherwise unchanged, did you forget to include ranged completely?

Either way this made me realize there is a huge contradiction here. If we reduce the stats, it actually buffs life because it does make everyone else weaker, and life can still use enough buffs to not care. On the other hand if we increase stats, as most of them are "increasing returns",  in other words, the same +1 is worth more the higher it already is, it again buffs life because they can stack it even higher. Which can mean only one conclusion - level up stats have no effect on Life magic whatsoever, as the two effects cancel each other out. Except, this isn't entirely true, actually lower stats benefit Life more. Yes, buffing the defense of that 9 armor unit by Holy Armor was a huge deal...but raising your defense from 1 to 3 when everyone else can only have 1 is greater.
So yeah I think we are misunderstanding the fundamentals in this, more level up stats = weaker life magic, not the opposite. (this ofc, assumes the enemy will bother to level up their units at a similar pace as the life player, or we are comparing our own options of playing, or not playing Life magic. Also this only applies to levels 1 and 2, as level 3 is ONLY available for Life players and Warlords in the early game.)

...So if we really want Life to matter less, we need a less powerful Elite level and a more powerful (or equally powerful) first two levels. That cuts down the advantage of using Heroism and Warlord compared to not using it. However, it's also bad for flavor if the hard to obtain levelup is not as good as the easy ones.

[Nelphine]

Incidentally, I meant attack to be both melee and ranged (and thrown or breath or whatever else is increased ), which is why I said attack, not melee.

And yes I agree that weaker levels makes life magic more important. But it doesn't make it weaker. Stacking is still the issue, particularly with armor. So weaker levels makes it easier to tell the difference between city units and summons. Life buffs makes city units more like summons, and that will stay the same. But less variance will still be the end result which makes it easier to balance summons against city units, which is the entire driving force of any such change.