Problems with Chaos and Death

[roarmalf]

As Seravy said, if you're going mono realm then you're likely bypassing most commons since much of the strength lies in those easily researchable uncommons. That said, Ghouls are quite powerful early, just make sure you are saving some of your weak dungeons for them so you get the undead units. If you kill the War Bears with basic units instead of Ghouls you just weakened your army.

With Chaos, I like to play Halfling and Sage. You get units that are amazing with flame blade early, and their research propels you to rare spells quickly. Elves for longbows is also quite good. As discussed during balancing discussions for CoM2 Chaos is great late game so their early game is weak. The issue is less with Chaos having a bad early game and more with Sorcery having a good early, mid, and late game (although playing against Death mages does create a challenge). If Sorcery had weaker commons, Chaos would look fine.

Also, don't underestimate Chaos Channels. Yes it's better when paired with out realms that buff fantastic creatures, but it's also great with a Soul Linker hero. If you're lucky enough to get the Beastmaster early, you turn all your units (especially heroes) into flaming hordes of destruction. It's also amazing with Draconians since their melee units will always get +3 defense. Halberdiers + Chaos channels and even just bowmen + firebolt can handle a lot of things.

Regarding a defensive/research playstyle for Chaos, Summon Volcano is a great spell for a defensive game, killing off minerals if you need to, turning your tundra into potential minerals (and eventually mountains) and gaining you power income. Taking the Archmage retort to boost casting skill helps here. Once you get your skill up to 50, being able to spam volcanoes can keep you competitive without actually conquering much.

Regarding Shadow Demons... I love hearing new perspectives. I've never considered Shadow Demons weak, but they have been nerfed considerably from the original game where they were quite overpowered. They still seem powerful on both defense and offense (mostly because of regenerate). Of course they get countered by something (high defense units and/or save spells/effects) as otherwise they would ruin the game. Darkness works well with them. Plus they die so slowly you have plenty of time to cast things like weakness on each enemy unit. It's possible at this point they're slightly over costed or their research cost is too high. I do use them less than I used to, but they rarely feel like a bad investment. Their low movement speed is the only thing that ever really ends up keeping them out of my armies.

Chaos being possibly too weak especially as a secondary realm in your picks was a topic I raised during beta testing but there wasn't much responses if I remember that correctly so the most I could do was the small buff to Warp Wood and Fate Mastery. There aren't really any Chaos spells that are outright underpowered and being above average on most spells isn't really necessary on a realm that should be a late bloomer. So I'm not sure which spell could be buffed, how, and if it's necessary or not.

I think between Fate Mastery + Warp Creature (for save spell/effect combos), Flame Blade + Chaos Channels (for buff strategies), Raise Volcano (Nature), Wall of Fire (Defense with no upkeep), Warp Wood (cheap hard counter to certain battles), and Fire Bolt (works with everything, but especially fliers) there's no need to buff.

If you wanted to buff something, giving Hell Hounds 4 movement and/or 5 fire breath would work I think. They would be more useful to attack with, but would still be easily countered by getting in the first hit or with range. As it stands I rarely bother to even research the spell as building cheap units + flame blade is usually a better option.

[Anskiy]

I actually played a short game today and I found that for mono Chaos, buffing the speed on their summons sufficed. So I think Suppanut's suggestion is the way to go there.

Regarding Death, the problem isn't that they have counters, it's that they are stymied by a lack of alternative approaches when running into them. Like, what good ways does Death have to deal with a 9 Focus Magicked Cockatrice stack? How about 9 uberbuffed berserkers with a Unicorn or Prayermaster hero? Sure Death is supposed to be a realm that relies on targeting resistance, but it doesn't have enough alternate tools when its main approach is shut off.

[jhsidi]

Soooo... you want to counter the counters. Assuming you could, were they really counters to begin with?

Snarkiness aside, yes, those stack examples are a pain in the butt. I see that as part and parcel of playing Death. It's the spikiest school of magic. Play your cards right, and you could be rolling around with a stack of undead efreet years before anyone else has access to rares. Or, get wiped out in early years by bad luck with your neighbors. "Balancing" the school to have some direct answer to everything would, to me, also require balancing it to lose the ability to pull off steamrolling maneuvers with raised undead.

As for what I'd do with those cockatrices -- first, best option is to rustle up some undead gargoyles. Failing that, try to pen them in with cheap undead (skeletons or your undead swordsmen or whatever) while building a reaction force of city troops. You're going to lose a bunch of them, tough luck. Meanwhile, run some ghouls around behind to take cities from that wizard. For the berserkers, just whittle them down the (extremely) hard way. Given those types of opponents, I'm going to just try to weaken the wizard enough to achieve peace and move on to a better target.

All that said, if you're playing on Phantasm difficulty and that's where the problem is coming from, then disregard everything I said, I have no idea how to manage that difficulty level. I play on Master and Death does fine at that level.

[Anskiy]

Play your cards right, and you could be rolling around with a stack of undead efreet years before anyone else has access to rares.

I have never seen that happen with mono Death, which was my focus. Now if you combine multiple schools with Ghouls, sure. Or do what Sapher does(combine Mind Storm, Warp Creature with Life Drain + spell saves) and you can get 2-3 undead archangels/hydras/behemoths and such. Of course, Sapher also plays multiple schools of magic.. coincidence?

Also incidentally I play with high lair budgets, where most nodes and lairs are stuff like 9 sky drakes or 8 efreets. So that probably also cuts into how useful Ghouls (and Death magic in general) is.

[prokolyo]

So moral of the story, let's not make general and categorical conclusions about this work and this doesn't, and this and that has to get fixed, and so on, given that that pertains to specific difficulty level, map size, custom adjustments and so on...

Specifically on shadow demons, in my recent games I don't remember any problems to speak of, using horsebowmen with flame blade and resist elements and/or holy weapon, and maybe some help from mithril/adamantium or an appropriate hero... Been playing with warlord nomads on expert/smaller maps/no tweaks recently.