Death Realm balance

[Nelphine]

Great wyrms are in neutral lairs. They are absolutely relevant. They also have very low defenses, for a very rare, so if it takes even an extra turn to kill something, that can be very relevant when treasure hunting.

[Seravy]

I guess I have to quote my post again...

You aren't going to fight any. Even if you do, use a shadow demon, flying works better, making poison immunity still irrelevant.

I see wasting a full stack of undead or lesser death creatures to do something shadow demons do without losses as nothing but bad play.

[Nelphine]

See: ghouls discussion. 2 death books means you aren't aiming for shadow demons. There is an entirely real chance you are clearing this lair with undead, in particular, undead hydra. (Note, new Regen rules may have fixed that. However, that still leaves undead great lizards, undead chimera, undead angels; all things where the extra poison damage is relevant.)

And even if that falls under ghouls and is decided to be seperate from general death balance, I can still summon 9 werewolves for less power than it takes to research shadow demons (let alone summon enough to kill a great wyrm - less figures, and less attack per figure, means it's very hard for shadow demons to actually kill a great wyrm when compared to a werewolf). That means werewolves vs great wyrms is entirely plausible, and due to regeneration (and attack strength), actually more efficient (and therefore much better play) than wasting time waiting for shadow demons.

[Seravy]

Undead lizards I can see happen. The others I wouldn't waste to kill a wyrm node, they are way better used to attack wizards.

That still doesn't really contribute to the "I can't cast any spell against Death wizards, they are immune to them all" problem.

Anyway, let's try to summarize what we can or cannot do, that's a bit more important.

Illusion Immunity - this has to stay in general with maybe a few, selected exceptions.
It specifically has to stay on Demons, Demon Lords and zombies. (ok, maybe not demon lords, but I think we nerfed those enough already, and the problem is early game specific)
Shadow Demons being able to attack through walls of shadows is very flavorful and should likely stay, although it does contribute to the death vs death problem a little.
Werewolves have very low resistance, reduced with the assumption they are immune to most early game spells except Exorcise, if they were vulnerable to confusion, they would be borderline unplayable. So we can't do that unless further testing shows they are still very OP after the 5.44 changes.
Night Stalkers, Wraiths, Death Knights and Skeletons I have no gameplay reason to be against removing the immunity, but these are all creatures without a body/brain so illusion affecting them would make no sense for flavor.
Overall I don't see much room in removing any Illusion Immunity.

Poison Immunity - Removing this is key as it contributes to immunity against all 3 affected realms.
Undead still have their original physical bodies, so I can imagine at least some forms of poison being able to affect them. It's less than ideal for flavor but acceptable.
Werewolves are living, so removing it from there is okay. However, is would be a major nerf to the unit so we can only do that if further testing shows they are still overpowered.
Skeletons, Shadow Demons, Death Knights and Wraiths have nothing to be affected by poison (bones or no physical body at all) so they'd need to keep it.
Zombies losing the ability is about as acceptable as other undead. Doing that would make the "zombie eats a whole stack of nagas and raises them all" completely broken play stop working. It might even make them outright weak against Nagas, due to the low resistance. Undead losing the ability means undead nagas will be an even match to living ones, instead of being vastly superior.
Night Stalkers are hardly relevant for this, as gaze strikes first - if used correctly, they won't be hit by much if any poison.
If we follow the "wraith form doesn't grant poison immunity" logic then the ghost type units could also lose poison immunity, but as they are all higher tier and flying, doing so is only relevant to Reaper Slash. (and ghouls, but ghouls can't raise an undead wraith anyway)

So overall the only possibility I see here is undead and zombies losing poison immunity, which is somewhat bad for flavor but should help vs Sorcery immensely, and as we can't do anything about illusion immunity, it seems the only solution.

Cold Immunity
This affects a very few spells and they are mostly in Nature which is the main realm we want Death to be good against. I see no reason to remove it in the first place.

Death Immunity
Removing this would make the units vulnerable to Life Stealing and Death attacks, both of which make no sense on undead or most of the Death creatures.
Werewolves are the exception but those would be unplayable due to their low resistance (see same for illusion immunity).
So I don't think we can remove Death Immunity, but we don't want to - we should instead have more spells in Death that bypass it.

Wrack : This seems a good candidate as it's underused and Death has very low resistances in general. It's also AOE which is essential when you have to deal with a large amount of death creatures in the same battle. So this could change into "Gate of Hades, all figures must resist at -1 each turn or take 1 irrecoverable damage. Death Immunity has no effect against this spell.", irrecoverable being semi-important as  the two primary victims to the spell regenerate. However I think I was against making this irrecoverable, I don't remember the reasons why. Does anyone still remember? The idea would still work even if not irrecoverable, but you'd need to finish off the regenerating units with attacks when they are on their last figure or two.

Reaper Slash : removal of Poison Immunity would make this work on undead and zombies.

Weakness : Although from the Death realm, it's not an effect that causes Death or even damage, so being unaffected by Death Immunity makes a bit of sense. Most of the Death units below rare are hit particularly badly by this as they never resist (below 7 resistance) and have low base attack power. Implementing this might be somewhat difficult but probably doable.

This still leaves Death being unable to use most of their spells, but at least gives enough options to be relevant (Terror, Black Prayer, Wrack, Reaper Slash on some, Weakness)

I don't have any other ideas and I'm unsure if these changes would be enough to address the problem, but they might. Removing Poison Immunity from more creatures could make them also vulnerable to Reaper Slash, or alternately, we can make it deal non-poison damage. I'm not overly a fan of that though, as Wraiths are fairly weak against damage spells and Reaper Slash is a quite powerful one.

[Nelphine]

The only other unit that would be relevant to lose poison immunity would be nightstalkers. I could actually also see them losing illusions immunity. In particular while the human can avoid those spells without immunity, the ai has a harder time, and so this would open up more options for treasure hunting against nightstalkers, which I think would be beneficial to the game, since it's one of those units where strategic strength can easily be off, and so ai can treasure hunt those lairs much easier than the human.

I agree with not removing it from wraiths, death knights and shadow demons. Skeletons I think could lose illusions immunity - it sucks that they would take extra damage from illusions attacks (as I agree that doesn't make sense), but I think immunity to all the other illusions affects (in particular, blur and invisibility, but even things like vertigo and mind storm) don't make much sense. Having one skeleton in every garrison just to counter air elenentals/nightblades/invisible heroes is just too cost effective. (Yes better death units also do it, but that's nowhere near as cost effective than for spell targetting.) So overall I think losing immunity to illusion damage is a worthwhile flavor loss for avoiding the detect invisibility affect.

[Seravy]

I'd say putting an undead anything you raised (spearmen or whatever) into a city is even more cost-effective than skeletons, and those would still have the immunity.

[Nelphine]

That's only reliably consistent enough for all/most garrisons with ghouls. If you're making enough ghouls for that, you don't (need to) use anything else in death anyway, so the whole conversation is moot. 

Therefore the discussion of any non undead unit, such as werewolves or shadow demons, automatically implies undead units are the exception, not the norm. That means you'll have plenty of garrisons without undead, and skeletons matter again. Particularly if you only have a few books in death (say, you're playing mostly chaos but grabbed wraithform) and you happen to get skeletons as one of your other spells.

[Seravy]

...ghouls ghouls ghouls omg

No I have plenty of undead without ghouls unless I'm lazy and not making them. Summon Zombie, Life Drain and Syphon life make sure anything your enemy produces will be your undead unit. (and while that's not a common strategy, a hero with a weapon that has these spells in it even does it at no further mp cost/unit, although considering life drain refunds its cost in SP or more, it also costs nothing in the first place. Only zombies are really a relevant cost to making undead, other methods cost nothing.)
All it really takes is having the first enemy down to their capital and you're going to get 2-3 undead units out of it per turn - you have to clean up the things they build before they stack up anyway. Before then, you might or might not have the opportunity to convert things, but quite often you do - for example Life Drain is your only way to kill Sprites so you'll always get them as undead.)
Certainly, with werewoles you can turn on auto and win the battles like I did but the correct play is to convert the lowest resistance things with life drain first.

[Nelphine]

Ehhh gameplay differences. I still play shock wars, meaning, going through empires in a short period of time. I don't consider leaving the enemy with a city producing units so that I can turn them into undead anything other than minor abuse, and I don't think we should be balancing undead creation around that. In anactual war you're trying to win, ie, defeat the AI, you don't have time to create undead, particularly once rares have come into play - the AI does too much damage to you with combat spells, so you need to defeat him now, not after wasting time making sure not to hurt the low resistance one too much.

If you have time to idly kill them as you please, you've already won, and none of this discussion matters.

So the cost is not in mana or skill. The cost is in time. I win wars with one stack, though it may need replacements, and I don't go to war until I have that stack.

[Seravy]

I don't consider leaving the enemy with a city producing units so that I can turn them into undead anything other than minor abuse,

Eh, I'm leaving the fortresses because they are too hard to defeat, and then I have to deal with the units coming out. I consider blocking all 8 tiles so I never have to fight their units a bigger abuse (although in case of Death it is kinda the opposite, it really depends on what units are coming out. Not everything turns to undead conveniently.)

Undead creation happens before rares. Once you reach rares, you never need to bother again - Zombie Mastery provides you with infinite supplies of zombies and undead.

during common/uncommon phase the AI doesn't have that much casting skill and they'll run out before you can win the battle anyway, so unless you needed to cast a spell (9 werewolves vs 9 halberdiers you don't, 3 werewolves vs 1 halberdier even less), you have turns left to win and skill unusued. It has no opportunity cost to cast life drain on things and make SP/undead - it only has a convenience cost (you have to do it manually, and remember it each and every battle, no matter how insignificant that battle is). If the enemy army is small enough, it even helps you win it faster, and if the enemy units fly, your only common damage spell is life drain anyway, and wolves can't attack fliers.

The whole point of combat permanent unit creation is to do so without costing time - combats don't cost time. Either you are doing them anyway or your undead can initiate them, neither slows down your main army. All you need is MP available but that MP turns into SP in the process, and you'd need to make SP anyway, so in the end, they're free.

Yes, if you aren't playing werewolves and you're on Lunatic where the AI might have enough skill to use more than 2 spells in a battle, combat turns might matter. Even then it's unrealistic to win the battle before the AI runs out of skill in most cases. Maybe, somewhere between late uncommon and zombie mastery, for a short period of time.

Having one skeleton in every garrison just to counter air elenentals/nightblades/invisible heroes is just too cost effective.

Or you can cast your summon zombie in battle.

I don't mind removing it but it looks absolutely stupid when zombies and all other undead have it. Why are skeletons the exception? (also they don't have brains. Not even a rotten one like a zombie. Also no eyes. So how would they be affected by spells that manipulate vision (blur/invisibility) or the brain (vertigo/mind storm)? As tempting as it is to nerf a "human use only" unit, it makes zero sense, and it's not exactly a powerful unit, it kinda feels more like a newbie trap to me, i mean, sure skeleton garrisons are great for money but the opportunity cost of not summoning offensive creatures is there and if you don't upgrade those skeleton garrisons in time, it'll usually turn into razed cities when some real enemy force shows up. I rather have undead halberdiers, not only are they stronger, but at no overland or opportunity cost, they are cheaper too.