Re-evaluating the Death Realm and the undead

[zitro1987]

The Death magic realm is generally considered the least favorite realm for many players due to unbalanced spells, over-reliance on city curses, unique mechanics of summoning units, among other unpopular elements.

How can the death realm become fun? Ideas could range from minor tweaks to existing spells (e.g. 'Warp Node' absorbing node mana and directing it to player, spell name changes) to major mechanic changes.

[Anthony]

How about making it so undead will heal in cities where there is a Dark Rituals active. That's a spell that, despite being common and something the AI likes to cast, is actually pretty marginal until mid to late game (it's not worth casting with a shrine, and is dubious with a temple; only at a parthenon or cathedral is it actually appealing), so giving it a secondary purpose wouldn't be a balance issue, and it sort of makes sense that sacrificing things will help repair your undead.

[kyrub]

First of all, Zitro, thanks for creating this extra thread!
Second, since I turned away from 1.31 Death magic, I almost entirely forgot how it functions.
A summary:

Undead units are
- all Death summons
- victims killed from >50% with damage
--- by units with Create Undead ability
--- or by life-stealing attacks (incl. Ravashak), artifacts with lifestealing ability
--- or by Life Drain [out in Zitro's mod]
- units transformed by Black Channels spell [out in Zitro's mod]
- units raised by Animate Dead spell
- zombies created by Zombie Mastery
- units transformed by Lycanthropy (Werewolves)

Strengths
- death summons share cold, poison, death and illusion immunities
- same goes for Zombies
- all but the basic summons (and Night Stalker) have weapon immunity
- rare and very rare summons have life-stealing attacks
- Shadow Demons and Werewolves have regeneration
- upkeep of magic creatures is generally lower
- ...

Weaknesses
- undead units do not heal
- undead units do not gain experience, unless they are grouped with an Armsmaster
- magic creatures raised from dead cost 150% upkeep in mana
- common and uncommon death summons are very slow
- undead units are easy target of white spells, esp. Dispel Evil and Holy Word
- Death has no combat summon [Demon in Zitro's mod]
- ...

(what is missing?)

-------------

Possible numeric/simple changes: (first look)
50% - units will rise from death from this threshold of life-stealing damage dealt
150% - amount of upkeep of fantastic creatures
weaken Dispel Evil / Holy Word
strength of life-stealing attacks
chill touch (former Life Drain) deals life-stealing damage
...

Possible changes to "slow units"
- make them normally moving
- more combat summons (demon, skeletons?)
- code Zombies, Skeletons, Ghouls (?) slower in combat only (overland mvt=2, combat mvt=1)
- "slow is bad only in combination with inability to heal", removing that will do
...

Possible approaches to "no healing"
- just let them heal
- very slow rate of healing (undead heals +1 every 3rd or 5th or 10th turn), no magic healing.
- healing with a spell in a city (Dark rituals, Cloud of Darkness), but AIs are not going to place their units in cities to heal.
- healing with an instant global spell.
- healing costs something, for instance mana is automatically substracted from income
- (a combination of the above)
...

Possible approaches to "no experience"
- we leave it as it is
- Death units gain experience only in battles (not on everyday basis)
- Death units gain only +1 experience for every killed unit (e.g. slow growth of experience)
...

Other, possibly foolish ideas
- make undead unit rise immediately in the battle?
- let some other spell create Zombies (let's say "Terror" makes random 1/2 of dead units rise as Zombies, instead of its current effect / or Chill touch does it on top its current effect)
- or move Zombie Mastery to uncommon
- remove Illusion immunity from undead (why do they have that?)
...

[Anthony]

Life drain is a problem because it's either godly or useless. Wraiths can kill basically infinite numbers of low tier units, and just die horribly once you're dealing with stuff with real resistance. It should probably scale less significantly with target resistance.

[zitro1987]

_Undead healing with dark rituals? Not a bad idea, but I'd go for it only if the healing is slow (5 to 10%) or +1 to +2hp per turn.

Reasons why I like it:
*Early game: common summons do not heal by any manner - dark rituals most effective on a military level. However, you'll pay a big economical price if you want to heal your units, especially through a conquered town with added unrest and slower pop growth. You won't reap the cathedral benefits yet.

*Mid-game: Once the economic benefits of dark ritual take shape, the military healing benefits are more situational and therefore not as useful - especially if you specialize in shadow demons, werewolves, or my non-undead night stalkers. Wraiths and whatever undead they create can still benefit.

*Late-game: Death Knights do not heal in my mod, but keeping your injured undead in a city doing nothing can make you impatient. Benefits are smaller if you specialize in stacks of wraiths or have the ability to use demon lords.

Things that can be unpopular:
*Hard to mod? Can healing rate be affected by anything else accidentally? It'd have to be constant at that established slow self-healing rate.
*AI would not understand the 'dark ritual' new game mechanic, though I don't think this problem is major - I don't recall encountering many injured undead units in my playing.


Undead naturally healing without being stationed to cities? Healing would have to be really slow (2%) or (+1hp per 3 turns). I like this idea as well.

The Good:
*Units can eventually heal, and given how fast game plays early on, your ghouls and skeletons will eventually heal.
*Less unfair to AI than 'dark ritual' idea.
*After several turns, your wraiths would gain a figure or 2, enough to have more life-steal power.
*The slow healing rate could really frustrate some gamers, but not as much as no healing at all.


Combination of both: Probably too complicated to mod, may non-intuitive to gamers.
* +1% to 2% in field, +5% with dark rituals

[kyrub]

undead healing is +1hp per 5 turns, but healing is tripled with dark rituals.

Interesting idea, this would probably fit well with AI. Units in stacks will heal slowly, defenders in cities quickly.
I could see:
- 1hp per 6 turns in the field (6 times slower than normal unit)
- 1hp per 2 turns in a city with Dark Rituals (2 times slower than natural healing in the field)

[zitro1987]

Kyrub, I don't think normal healing is +1hp per turn, healing is based on %.

[kyrub]

Thanks for correction. You are right, it's RNG based.
1) 5% means that unit with >20 HP will receive automatic 1hp healed
2) otherwise if d20 <= TotalHPofUnit THEN heal +1hp

It's easy to code it differently for undead, d20 may become d50 (2%) or d66 (1,5%).

[zitro1987]

More of my thoughts:

-- Let's try a basic self-healing at d50 (2%) first to see if it works.
*If things go well and it's not too hard to add the 'dark ritual' healing element - I propose d20 (5%) via 'dark rituals' - same as normal healing.

-- Undead non-death summons obtained via 'create undead' or lifesteal: allow slow healing of undead idea to apply to these
* they're not totally useless ... but sometimes not worth the 150% upkeep if you need them to wait too many turns to self-heal.
*Goal: They can't be too effective or we end up with an overpowered and unbalanced game mechanic.

-- Undead military units obtained via 'create undead' or lifesteal: allow slow healing of undead idea to apply to these. No experience, no upkeep.
*Adding experience would make 'create undead' too good, especially given lack of upkeep

-- Immunities : my current version removed a handful of them. Besides 'death immunity' there may be one or more additional ones that apply to a certain undead unit. Ghouls have death & poison immunity, Wraiths have death & illusion immunities, Demon Lords have death & cold immunities, etc.

-- Unit Movement: skeletons and ghouls both have 2mv points in my current version. I'm thinking of having ghouls as 3mv. Later units are not slow - all with at least 3mv.

--I didn't know Black Channels allowed creation of undead. Why would Aureus take it away, ending up with this 'spectral force'? It'd be nice if 'spectral force' allows creation of undead.

[Anthony]

Honestly, I'd give undead in a city with dark rituals normal city healing rate (what is it, 25%?).

I would like to see more focus on undead, actually, not less. Maybe remove either Terror or Cloak of Fear (both of which are IME fairly ineffective) with something that grants the Create Undead special. Also, maybe have the Vampirism enchantment grant Create Undead.

Incidentally, how difficult would it be to make it so Life Stealing only occurs once per attack, instead of once per counter per attack? Currently every special attack is either once per attacking counter or once per defending counter, so it might be tricky.