Sleep and zombies, or zombies in general

[zitro1987]

I like syphon life, but I wonder if it can be boosted to become a death staple spell of 35 mana cost just like possession? Your go-to undead-creation spell.

My thoughts are to have it as a 35 mana spell with -12 resist or a 35 mana spell

Idea #1 - just boost it to 35 mana with current research cost
Idea #1a - same but with 2 simultaneous -7 resist hits instead
Idea #2 - Swap with a low-tier rare spell, and have it 40 mana and slightly better resist penalty.


Why might this be beneficial to gameplay?
*A clear superiority to summon zombie (and possible superior to the black sleep combo), helping progression
*Easier to get high-tier fantastic creatures with a massive resist penalty. This can't happen with zombies, ghouls, or wraiths (high resist)
*Better synergy with summon demon, making such a unit the clear winner in undead creation (syphon-life spam)
*In short, a clear progress in undead creation

If focus magic allowing it to magicians is a concern, then mana cost 36.

Baghtru has interesting black sleep ideas in previous post.

[Seravy]

Well, sleeping units still defending against attacks makes even less sense than resisting create undead.
Making auto handle this well would be nice - if I could achieve that, it would solve problem 5.
I'll do the math on problem 8 when I properly wake up, day just started for me :D

[Seravy]

Ok, so let's see the numbers.
I'm going to assume we want 100% of the damage from life steal. While fewer might still convert the unit, it's only fair if we require both methods to also deal with killing the unit, otherwise Life Drain would require an external source of damage (other spells or units). 
For sleep, the turn cost will be the turns until the unit is disabled, as past that, there is no opportunity cost for casting the spells (enemy can't attack). Sleep does have one major downside though - it requires you to wait for the enemy to run out of mana so they can't kill the zombie. So while turn count is lower, there is a different, hidden opportunity cost : You can't end the battle early to prevent the enemy from using skill, even if you could. So for "early" creatures, there is no such hidden cost, but for later creatures it exists.

Target 1, Fire Giant. 7 Resist, 18 health (or Elite klackon Halberdier).

3.6 damage/Life Drain.
Takes exactly 5 Life Drains to kill, so the cost is 5 turns and 50 MP.
8.5 damage/Syphon Life.
Takes 2.12 uses, so the cost is ~ 2 turns and ~63 MP.
50% chance per sleep.
Takes 2 sleeps and zombie, the cost is 2 turns and 50 MP, No opportunity cost.

Sleep is the most turn and MP efficient, and likely has no hidden opportunity cost.

Target 2, Veteran Klackon Halberdiers, 6 resistance, 12 health

4.5 damage/Life Drain.
Takes 2.66 Life Drains to kill, so 2.66 turns and 27 MP
9.5 damage/Syphon Life
Takes 1.26 uses, so costs 1.26 turns and 38 MP
60% chance per sleep.
Takes 1.66 sleeps and a zombie so cost is 1.66 turns and 45 MP

Both Life Drain and Syphon Life are more efficient here.

Target 3, 2x Veteran Klackon Halberdiers, 6 resistance, 12 health

Life Drain : 2x the cost, so 5.4 turns and 54 MP
Syphon Life : 2.5 turns and 76 MP
Sleep : Only need zombie once, so 3.33 turns and 69.8 MP

Roughly even - drain takes longer but costs less, the others are faster but cost more.

Target 4, 3x Veteran Klackon Halberdiers, 6 resistance, 12 health

Life Drain : 3x the cost, so 8.1 turns and 84 MP
Syphon Life : 3.75 turns and 114 MP
Sleep : Only need zombie once, so 5 turns and 95 MP

Surprisingly, Life Drain still manages to come out ahead.

Target 5, 1x Gorgon, 9 resistance, 42 health

Life Drain deals 2.1 damage so needs 20 uses. That costs 200 MP and 20 turns.
Syphon Life is 6.5 damage, so needs 6.5 uses. That costs 195 MP and 6.5 turns.
Sleep has a 30% chance to work, so needs 3.333 uses. That costs 3.333 turns and 70 MP.

The advantage of sleep is tremendous here, but by the time gorgons are a thing, there is a chance the opportunity cost starts to be relevant - enemies might be able to cast spells for more turns in the battle than you could finish it, causing you more damage. Even then, the difference is so huge sleep clearly wins and the others are not really an option.

Target 6 1x Great Lizard, 7 resistance, 30 health plus regeneration 2.

Life Drain deals 3.6 damage but the lizard regenerates 2 so each use only deals 1.6 damage. 18.75 turns and 187 MP.
Syphon Life deals 8.5 damage which is reduced to 6.5, so 4.61 turns and 138 MP.
Sleep is 50% so 2 turns and 50 MP

This is a landslide win for sleep as well.

So what I see here is, the things I really want to convert, are always more efficient using sleep, while Life Drain only wins on weak units, and Syphon Life would only win on targets with very high resistance (10+, likely 12+ if Black Prayer is involved) but we didn't calculate any of those (other options would simply not work at all for them).

I think we should at least calculate two of these cases anyway, for Black Prayer.

Chaos Spawn - 12 resistance, 22 health

Life Drain - 0.6 damage/use, forget it.
Life Drain and Black Prayer - 1.5 damage/use, 15.66 turns, 181 MP
Syphon Life - 3.6 damage/use, 6.11 turns, 183 MP
Syphon Life and Black Prayer - 5.5 damage/use, 5 turns, 155 MP
Sleep - Not an option
Sleep+Black Prayer - 20% success rate, 5 uses + black Prayer+Zombie - 6 turns, 130 MP

Zombies work best for this which is sad. Even if the success rate is low, the per use cost of Sleep is just so much better than Syphon Life while it "deals" the full 22 damage on a single success.

Great Wyrm - 14 resistance 45 HP

Life Drain - forget it
Life Drain+Black Prayer - still only 0.6 damage/use, can't
Syphon Life - 2.1 damage/use, 21 uses, costs over 700 MP, impossible
Syphon Life+Black Prayer - 3.6 damage/use, 13.5 turns, 410 MP
Syphon Life+Black Prayer+Eternal Night - 4.5 damage/use, 11 turns, 335 MP
Sleep - not an option
Sleep+Black Prayer - still not an option
Sleep+Black Prayer+Eternal Night - This does provide a 10% chance so you can get it in about 200 MP and 12 turns, better than Syphon Life

We don't really want these to be converted unless a wizard is doing very well and has high overland skill, so the numbers for Syphon Life seem fair. Sleep however, manages to be superior even at this, although only if you can have Eternal Night.

So the problem I see here is, while Sleep is fairly balanced against Life Drain on weaker targets (similar costs, sleep sometimes better but drain generates some SP instead), it's actually superior to Syphon Life on the intended targets of that one, even though Syphon Life itself seems to be fairly balanced. Now, if we do at least some of the damage using units (on such a high end monster it's unlikely to overdamage it) Syphon Life looks better, so maybe it's fine as is?

[Nelphine]

I think that black sleep end up too powerful. You have to spend research time/power on higher tier spells - they should be distinctly better (this is actually the same problem I have with chaos having 5+ direct damage spells - even though each is slightly better at different things, that's still WAY too much research cost to ever be worth the marginally different niches each covers). Yes it's nice for the lower spells to matter, I want the lower spell to have a rare niche where it still matters, and the thing that you spend hundreds or thousands of research on to be your go to for 90% of the cases.

Without that, why would I ever waste time researching the better one? (Nature also has this problem with a large amount of its summons).

[Seravy]

Overall conclusion :

I think Sleep might be ok to allow working with zombies, if, and only if, we make auto stop the non-create undead units stop against a sleeping enemy army.
While I'm generally against letting auto play smart - and even in this case this would spoil this combo to players who didn't figure it out themselves - as the removal of a feature is our other option, I'm ok with improving auto.
So the remaining question here is, can I find enough unused space for such an advanced check for action choice. I see a reasonably good chance I can but can't guarantee it.

Syphon Life might work better with a -11 save modifier, but for that we need to do the math against Life Drain and Reaper Slash, as well as the expected cost of raising more advanced units.

Currently, Life Drain is more cost efficient on targets below 9 resistance. On 9 resistance, Life Drain deals 2.1, Syphon Life 6.5 damage, so for 30 MP you get 6.3 damage from Drain and 6.5 from Syphon. At 8 resistance however, it's 8.4 from Drain vs 7.5 from Syphon, making Drain better.

If we change the modifier, this cutoff moves to between 7 and 8 resistance. I think that's fine?

Reaper Slash does 10.2 damage on average against a 8 defense target. Syphon Life will do more than that if the resistance of the target is 6 or less, but fewer if it's 7 or more. That also seems about right. Currently this cutoff is between 5 and 6 resistance which seems too low.

So these seem to support raising the modifier. Gained SP is no longer a concern as we nerfed it. So the only remaining thing to calculate is how the new spell would work against high end targets.

Chaos Spawn would now take 4.5 damage instead of 3.6 without and 6.5 instead of 5.5 with Black Prayer. This makes the costs 5 turns and 147 MP without and 4-5 turns for 136 MP with it. That's closes the gap between using or not using Black Prayer which is a good thing, and the cost only decreases about 10% when using it which is acceptable.

Great Wyrm will take 4.5, so 11 turns would convert it, for 335 MP without and at 5.5 damage, 9.2 turns, 280 MP with Eternal Night. While this sounds like a bargain (you only need MP, no overland skill!), the opportunity cost of having to deal with a rampaging wyrm for 10+ turns and enemy spellcasting for the same duration, makes it fairly balanced in my opinion.

So overall, raising the save modifier for Syphon Life seems reasonable. (and doesn't really need a cost increase as the cost difference between it and Reaper Slash is minimal.)

[Seravy]

I think that black sleep end up too powerful. You have to spend research time/power on higher tier spells - they should be distinctly better (this is actually the same problem I have with chaos having 5+ direct damage spells - even though each is slightly better at different things, that's still WAY too much research cost to ever be worth the marginally different niches each covers). Yes it's nice for the lower spells to matter, I want the lower spell to have a rare niche where it still matters, and the thing that you spend hundreds or thousands of research on to be your go to for 90% of the cases.

Actually that's a valid point. While I used a 12 resistance rare in the calculation, most rares are 9-11 resist. Sleep works better for them than Syphon Life and this far ahead in the game, it shouldn't.

So don't allow sleep then?

We can still increase the Syphon Life modifier regardless.

[Nelphine]

The increased syphon life mod sounds reasonable yes.

For black sleep. I dunno. I think part of the problem is that it, possession, and confusion, are all just save or die auto wins. They're very binary. I'd be tempted to increase all 3 rarity by a tier, except possession can't come in that late, due to city troops ending up meaningless.

What if we just make slept units only get created as undead half the time? Yes it's random, yes you hate that for death, but again, undead creation isn't the primary goal of black sleep. So describe it as ripping them up into pieces while sleeping to the point there isn't enough left to raise as undead, but 50% of the time, your units can hold back and not tear the enemy into shreds, allowing you to raise them.

[Bahgtru]

I don't like the syphon life idea - it is already extremely powerful for many cases where you want to end battles quickly.

Sleep: combine auto improvement and stopping to deal max damage.

It's a real issue. It works best against targets with high armor/HP. But zombies won't be able to damage them as much. So in the fantastic examples of - like 6 lizards, you end up having to cast many more zombies. I have the same problem when I manage to web steam cannons: the zombies end up failing to damage them quick enough! To win the battle I end up having to forgo some of them. So this would be a good fix of the problem. Chaos spawn for example will be painful even in the few cases that you can sleep them - keep in mind that that doesn't work in nodes, even with BP.

Edit: and it doesn't become a nuisance thanks to the improvement of auto.

[Seravy]

Yeah but Black Sleep doesn't need to lose the max damage otherwise and that would be a major nerf to it. Making that a worse option than just disabling the unwanted interaction of the two effects.
The random idea is probably the worst so far, making a tedious, unfun strategy also unreliable. Best way to make players furious and rage quit.

In this case, I'l pick "keep black sleep disabled", since we have to choose something, and this is both the safer option and the one that requires less work. It might be a borderline "maybe not too powerful" case right now, but who knows what changes in the future tip that balance over (like living werewolves could have been).

The combo still exists even then, but you have to use shatter, vertigo, warp creature, etc to disable the unit for your zombie instead - all of which don't make you deal max damage, and only prevent them from killing your zombie. (and they also can't do that to rares)

Edit :
Thinking it through what we lose by disabling it, I actually see no reason for this combo to exist in Death in the first place. Death already has its own, balanced means of creating undead (Life Drain, Ghouls and Syphon Life). Since they are balanced, anything stronger would be a problem, but anything weaker or equal would be unnecessary. So that only really leaves that "niche" window open to work against things where the existing methods fail but conversion would still be balanced to happen - but all the existing methods target resistance (even ghouls, due to poison being the larger part of damage!), the same stat as sleep, and are negated only by death immunity, also same as sleep, Sleep can't possibly fill that role either as it's functionally equivalent to those spells. So we are not losing anything at all my removing this combo.

[Bahgtru]

The inability to create undead is a much, much bigger nerf though, obviously. Make it just halve armor and we're good - keeping it over the power of web.

If black sleep was balanced, you've just made it much weaker than by say, making it halve armor.