Werewolves

[Bahgtru]

Yeh after removing the immunities resistance can grow back, life drain is really not that great against normal targets, nerfing it would be harsh. Also they're not as abusable as trolls thanks to their higher speed.

[zitro1987]

I wouldn't nerf life drain. However, wolves at 4 resistance seem too low with the removed immunities. I'd keep things as they are but with wolves having 5 resistance.

[Seravy]

It's probably worth saying that nerfing life drain would mean the reduction of SP gained per point of damage (currently 3 or 4 I forgot, but still quite a lot). The damage and undead creation would be unaffected.
I'm starting to believe raising the SP amount was a mistake in the first place, this isn't an economy spell, so the economy effect shouldn't be on par with, or even surpass the other aspects.

[Nelphine]

That's what I thought, and I agree. If you make it only 1 or 2 SP, then it's low enough that you gain more skill by putting power into skill instead of putting power into mana and attacking a regenerating target, at which point, the incentive is gone.

[Bahgtru]

Ah I thought you spoke about the resistance modifier. I don't mind reducing the ratio either, especially if that removes a hack.

[zitro1987]

Reducing the ratio to 2SP per damage point should eliminate the hack, turning it into a minor marginal economy benefit. Please do not weaken the resistance modifier (at least for syphon life, which alongside wraiths is my late-game undead creator)

[Seravy]

A new thing I realized during the test game : I can black sleep enemy werewolves (not just neutrals) and then convert them with zombies. While this isn't too bad for the neutrals (they aren't all that easy to find or anything), it is quite bad for AI wizards. Not only do you get a superior, undead werewolf that counters their realm - same case as nagas - but it's more powerful than nagas and it regenerates. On top of that, this is the AI's strongest early tactic, pushing for werewolves.

I only see two routes we can take here :
1. Reconsider Death Immunity anyway (either remove Illusion Immunity instead, or neither)
2. Get rid of the "too OP anyway" zombie+sleep combo by adding the rule of "Sleeping creatures cannot be raised as undead".

(I've converted things like 5 Stone Giants in a single battle using a single zombie, so "too OP anyway" is a fact. I definitely like the combo, but it's simply way too effective. All it takes is an enemy who ran out of combat skill.)

[zitro1987]

I choose #2 - it is too powerful of a combo involving common spells. I should not have a chance in the earliest turns to black sleep something like a gorgon and convert it to me.

[Bahgtru]

But that doesn't make much sense. If you need to nerf sleep reduce the save modifier, raising sleeping foes is a staple tactic for death.
Don't forget that you also need to win the battle. How many lonely gorgons do you find zitro? It's not exactly something easy to use at the beginning.

[Seravy]

It's always easy to use assuming you have at least 30 casting skill.

Put one enemy (or more, as skill allows) to sleep, save enough for a zombie. Wait until enemy uses up all skill, meanwhile kill everything that's not sleeping. Summon the zombie, congratulations, you now have the sleeping units on your side.

Sleep is fine as is, because it operates on the assumption that it's a "save at -2 or die" spell.
Zombies are fine because they operate on the assumption that their attack isn't strong enough to convert very strong enemies and they can fight back and kill the zombies.

Combine the two and you get effectively a "save at -2 or I steal your unit permanently" effect. Something we deemed too overpowered to exist even in very rare - notice how Creature Binding and Animate Dead don't allow you to keep the creature after battle (the latter only if it was an enemy unit). There is a reason for that - permanent units cost large chunks of resources to make, in case of summons, including your overland casting skill, and reasonably playable combat costs will never be on par with that.

Being overpowered isn't the only problem with it though - it's also extremely unfun to do and encourages sloppy play. Not only you have to wait for the enemy to run out of MP, but then you have to manually move your move 1 zombie and kill the enemies. In battles you could easily win on auto. Unless the difficulty is maxed out, most of the time you prefer not to bother doing it, unless you can get multiple high end creatures.

As is, after you have the 30+ skill needed to use to combo, you could consistently steal a werewolf from an enemy wizard in every battle where they are used. (of course, you can also do the same to a cockatrice, great lizard, etc already, but at least those are a 50% chance not 80.)

Oh, and before you'd say "but stronger creatures have too high resistance", not really. If it's a battle with multiple of them, you can use Black Prayer and those resist 9 giants are still a 50% chance to convert per use of black sleep. No amount of save modifier change or cost increase will fix that without rendering Black Sleep unplayable.

(speaking of reasonably payable costs, one even less intuitive way to fix the problem would be to require an MP cost for raising undead, equal to their production cost in hammers. But that defeats the purpose of them being cheap, who'd want to pay 25 mana for an undead swordsmen, especially when it's not even optional?)

Note I agree it's fairly hard to find lairs when you can use the combo - but it's trivially easy to turn the units other wizards summon against them. Most AI cities will have 1-3 summoned creatures, which is the amount you can easily convert using zombies, and winning these battles isn't a problem (if it is, you're already losing the game.)

That said I'm not particularly happy with this nerf but I don't have a better idea.

As for how to make it more sense, we could say attacking a sleeping unit damages the body too much to be possible to raise it as undead, or that the sleep spell has a similar side effect (for example if it destroys nerves, the unit won't be able to move, even if magic tries to do so - assuming necromancy does use nerves to control the body, which I would this it should, I mean, otherwise you could just use the magic to move rocks or trees...)