Werewolves

[Nelphine]

Agreed. I'm not sure I like the details of zitros ideas, but the biggest problem is that undead creation peaks at common. Yes zombie mastery exists, but you already can summon zombies the rest of the game so it doesn't add to your undead creation, it just makes it cost less.

[Seravy]

But they have 6 ranged attack (better than your shadow demons), they have 6 armor (better than shadow demons), they move 3 (better than shadow demons), their resistance is much higher, and they have poison (shadow demons don't) and their melee strength is as strong.

Yeah but they cost twice as much, and don't regenerate.
They are also corporeal, have 40% less hit points, and 1 less hit chance.
They don't fly and have only half the ammo.

The whole logic of zombie mastery being replaced by ghouls is weird for me. I either want to play an early strategy in which case I'm fine with going low books many retorts with ghouls - or I don't and then I can't do that, as I don't have enough picks to have a late game AND buffs and retorts for ghouls at the same time. These two don't compete with each other - they are entirely different playstyles. It's like, if I want to play Chaos I won't be playing Mono Nature instead just because it has a better early game and can also destroy buildings.

Anyway, I guess I have to play a ghoul game today, wasn't planning on playing CoM at all, especially not Death again, but whatever.

Agreed. I'm not sure I like the details of zitros ideas, but the biggest problem is that undead creation peaks at common.

And it has to. There is no way to make raising high rarity creatures balanced - your entire available combat skill would still not be comparable to the value they are actually worth. I thought we agreed on it.
Yes, it would be nice, but it's impossible without breaking the game.

[Nelphine]

No. I agree that nothing can be better than what common is now.

But if common is as strong as it is now, and if undead is a core theme of the realm, then common becomes the best tier for the realm, and goes DOWN for each further rarity you reach. 

So my request is that common undead creation be weakened, and what undead creation we can currently get at common be moved to rare.

(My suggestion for percents comes from looking at a dozen battles overall. If you fight a dozen battles with wraiths for example, you will get no undead from the really hard battles. On some of the weak battles, you might get a unit or two.

And if you can literally just spam syphon life and do nothing else the entire battle, you might get several.

So over those dozen battles you might get 10-15 undead. My percent suggestion is to try to replicate that. You won't know what battle you get it from, but you know if you keep fighting with wraiths, you will end up getting undead - without being forced to resort to doing nothing and spamming syphon life.)

[Nelphine]

As for ghouls and late game, you're right. That's where the treasure hunting abuse comes in. Once you realize ghouls are the best form of undead creation, you start looking for ways to actually win the late game after removing all high book counts from your strategy.

Then you get the rush builds where you kill all 4 AI with undead rare and very rare units.

But that's the result of wanting the best undead creation, and then figuring out how to make that work late game. (Or realizing that common undead creation can give you the power of the late game and just wanting to abuse that. Either way, the solution below is the same.)

That's why I want to move current undead creation from common to rare, so that the abuse part of it isn't there, and so if you want the best undead creation, you must go into the late game.

Edit:
Also that math is just the replace zombie mastery. That's only 8 picks. So you could add 4 more sorcery picks and have 7 sorcery. That's usually going to be plenty for late game.
Or 6 life or 6 death. Whatever you want.

Or you can up to 3 life, 2 nature and tactician and increase your ghouls more.

You have options.

[zitro1987]

I realized undead creation does not peak at common, though still suggest a 1 ranged reduction to ghouls for game balance and prevent advanced units from being raised undead (lower their cost if so). With darkness, 4 ranged is too high for undead creation.

To see a natural progression of undead creation would not mean starting with no proper ways to create undead. I disagree that it peaks with common - I think it peaks with uncommon (syphon life) and again with 'summon demon' overland. Now that I think about it, the progression is pretty solid with 'summon demon' being particularly good at it, especially with nodes and 'astrologer' or 'focus magic'.

We have darkness + ghouls (possibly with weakened ranged attacks after testing), we have zombies, and we have life drain. With low skill, low mana, few battle spells, and weak normal units, these bring limitations … ideally, these are your limitations and if ghoul ranged attack is reduced to 2, you won't have much of a chance to raise advanced units unless you spam focus magic (costs mana)

Once your skill and mana income are more significant, a player may be distracted by superior summons such as shadow demons. They get a superior undead creation spell called syphon life. When you get heroes, spamming this spell is arguably more reliable and powerful than an army of ghouls.

After that, there's zombie mastery, which I find overrated in this regard (good for attrition though, but zombies are not a particular threat otherwise and are bad at undead creation)

I think for rares, wraiths is the next step, if inconsistent, at undead creation. With black prayer, you can raise low to mid tier units with relative ease. Once you get eternal darkness, they get even better.

After wraiths, I think the only really worthwhile undead generation spell is summon demon and [to a lesser extent demon lord]. The reason is that you have units that can cast 1 syphon life and 1 life drain per unit. Once you spam a few stacks of demons, you can go to lairs (and if astrologer, nodes as well) and raise a ton of sweet units. If you have focus magic, these units get even more aggressive at undead creation with 2 syphon life each.

[Bahgtru]

So now that ghouls are discussed elsewhere, we can go back to speak about werewolves here...

1. I haven't seen anywhere why the resistance nerf can't be rediscussed after the immunities removal has doubled up on its intended purpose? I've gone through the thread again and I can't find it.

Higher resistance is not an option. Almost all existing intended counters to werewolves use resistance (Exorcise, Cockatrice, Holy Word, Petrify), we specifically lowered it for that purpose.

All of these still work very well even raising their resistance, thanks to the high save modifier. Actually, this gives me a new tweak: raise resistance by 2 but make WWs "count as undead for exorcise/holy word" purposes, then all the intended counters work exactly as before.
This basically fixes the black sleep/zombie thing: it makes the mana/skill needed to do this trick on par with any other way to create undead at uncommons point: >50.

2. How about removing illusion immunity and making it finally the real only living creature in the death realm?

If the reason is:

This makes them vulnerable to confusion. Similar to Black sleep except against Sorcery and you don't get your wolf back after battle, even if you win. Not really a fan, as that really defeats the purpose of using regeneration units. Illusion units doing more damage has minimal impact, as the wolf has low armor to being with.

I don't understand the point. Why should it NOT be susceptible to confusion exactly like all other regeneration units? (At least that prevents undead creation, lol) if this applies to werewolves then should say, lizards -  another regenerating uncommon - have illusion immunity too?
If it is to underscore the death>sorcery rule: I don't think it's necessary, as death has plenty other tools against sorcery. Make players use the brain and select the correct tool, not WW>all.
A slight raise to resistance would make it a lot less likely to happen with a single casting btw: 4->6 means doubling the chance to save, from 20% to 40%. And 5-6 are still lower than any uncommon and on par with commons, so as an uncommon spell it is still a lower score, and a clear weakness.

[Nelphine]

I agree with baghtru.

[Seravy]

All of these still work very well even raising their resistance, thanks to the high save modifier.

No they don't, that's why I had to raise it.
Exorcise in particular, has to at least kill 4 figures out of 6 otherwise the irrecoverable effect won't take priority, and has a -1 save modifier.

Making it count as an undead is... not a bad idea but really hard to justify on a unit that has no death immunity and might even have immunity to becoming undead.

However Cockatrices also care about resistance and their attack is figure based melee - we really want them to succeed on each and every roll because the retaliation damage they take from the wolves is significant. (and it still needs 4 successes for the unit to not regenerate)

Obviously, The spells we removed Black Sleep for in the first place and POISON also care about the resistance.

So no, I'm not going to raise it.

2. How about removing illusion immunity and making it finally the real only living creature in the death realm?

I can do that. I assume we've already shifted our priorities towards wanting to prevent regeneration meanwhile. This would be an especially good idea if we add "Undeath Immunity" to them in which case they'd still regenerate from ghoul damage.
Although making them weak to both Sorcery and Death might be overkill. (or not, they are still strong against Chaos and Life until they research their answers, and semi-strong against Nature. And everything else in the realm is strong against Sorcery and Death so...this might be a good idea actually, that forces players to adapt their strategies to the enemy realms - or at least get Blood Lust against Sorcery.)

So to summarize, I see the optimal solution as :
-Add "Undeath Immunity" - treats undead making damage as normal damage, and
-Remove Illusion Immunity (optional but I think it makes sense, might as well. Although wolves tend to use smell, not sight, to target things...but who says smell can't be an illusion.)

This would be independent of whatever we decide for Black Sleep, and grants us a new ability we could add to units (if needed for flavor, or gameplay), but solves the "too easy to make undead werewolf" problem once and for all, regardless of source of undead creation.

[Bahgtru]

I don't think that anyone likes the undeath immunity thing. I sure don't. It seems out of place, and it has redundancy with death immunity.

All of these still work very well even raising their resistance, thanks to the high save modifier.

No they don't, that's why I had to raise it.
Exorcise in particular, has to at least kill 4 figures out of 6 otherwise the irrecoverable effect won't take priority, and has a -1 save modifier.

Making it count as an undead is... not a bad idea but really hard to justify on a unit that has no death immunity and might even have immunity to becoming undead.

However Cockatrices also care about resistance and their attack is figure based melee - we really want them to succeed on each and every roll because the retaliation damage they take from the wolves is significant. (and it still needs 4 successes for the unit to not regenerate).

Why do cockas need to slaughter them though? They are both uncommon, WWs damage them but the other way round too, I don't understand this statement. With resistance 6, on average 3-4 will die on the first round, and if only 3 die, 2 cockatrices survive to get the last one for preventing regeneration, which gives you exactly what you want. I don't think you also have to make cockatrices immune to them.

If that's not enough anyhow, give them resistance 5. With no illusion immunity, and with the "counts as death" thing. Cockatrices will kill 80% of them, get some damage, the various spells above will work basically the same. Justification: they're a death tainted creature... Should be enough, and it can be put in their text.

AIs can protect them quite easily, any of these works: magic resistance, bless, making them undead - for most of the spells that I listed too. Sure, there might be windows of opportunity for players as you say in the other thread, but exploiting that is what distinguishes a good player from a mediocre one.

Obviously, The spells we removed Black Sleep for in the first place and POISON also care about the resistance.

Wait, that's... a reason to raise it though, the spells. OK, poison makes sense. Then resistance 5, that's a tiny difference vs poison but that still makes them save from black sleep 50% times more, decreasing significantly the average efficiency of the black sleep trick (and making it not automatic in the black player case, which for large numbers also counts).

You get an uncommon that is quite strong in melee but with several weaknesses, that players and AIs can however plug rather efficiently.

[Seravy]

Why do cockas need to slaughter them though? They are both uncommon, WWs damage them but the other way round too, I don't understand this statement.

Because they aren't the same uncommon. Wolves are an early uncommon while cockatrices are normal uncommons. The difference is like 50 turns on average (not necessarily in raw research time but in the turn they are typically researched by AI or humans, yes focus magic cockatrice playing humans can be an exception.)

And because we already determined Cockatrices are THE spell in nature to counter werewolves and shut them down if you are too slow and the AI reaches them and even taught the AI to do that, see previous discussions.

Almost everything we did so far to make wolves less overpowered (in the first such patch not the second, so I guess that means previous thread?) relies on resistance. Raising it now would be taking a step backwards.

thus, I AM NOT CHANGING RESISTANCE. PERIOD.

However, I'm not a fan of Undeath Immunity either and it would be a lot of work. It also looks like we won't need that ability for Ghoul balance. So then wolves get Death Immunity back as the only other possible option.

So we can start over the "how do we nerf werewolves" discussion, and cross out "remove death immunity" as it seems to be a dead end.

Let's see, these were the options :

Regeneration 0 Already done.

Less HP

Armor 2

No Poison Immunity - Already done

No Death Immunity - This failed

No Illusion Immunity - We can do this and might be our best move. I guess immunity to confusion and black sleep are interchangeable, in fact confusion is slightly harsher. (especially so because Sorcery is one of the two realms that doesn't get an uncommon that is good against wolves, making it the best target. They only get a good counter at rare in Banish, unless we count Flight.)
The risk I see here is an indirect buff to Sorcery, becoming strong against one of the AI's early tactics, but it's probably minimal. Confusion is expensive, a human player won't be able to use it more than once, at best twice a battle. So any AI stack with multiple wolves will still be effective.

No Mithril/Adamantium/Magic Weapons - Already done

Do nothing - this does open up as an option, since we actually already included a lot of nerfing. However considering the discussion is still ongoing I'm not sure if we consider it enough or not. In fact I'm so sidetracked by ghouls and sleep and zombies and whatnot, I don't even remember what our current stance on wolves are.

So...I guess I'm ok with removing Illusion Immunity and putting Death Immunity back then call it a day and only do anything else if later tests (which I'm not going to do now, I'm sick of playing wolves, but maybe someone else will) show it's necessary.