Retort balance, hopefully last time

[Seravy]

Does anyone actually conquer myrran wizards instead of just razing it all? I mean, in the majority of cases, because obviously sometimes it's more convenient or more effective to do so. It would ONLY help you defend against the Myrran wizard, while your doomstacks would still be effective against them without even casting a single spell. A net gain for you - overall this game mechanic would favor the use of doomstacks and the human does that better.

Making it harder for rush to win is the main benefit I see but my "it's redundant" argument covers that. If rush can afford paying the 2-3x range penalty on all defensive (or offensive if they opt for splitting up their forces and killing all the AI units while conquering them) battles, while investing into skill, producing troops, etc, then there is a much greater problem somewhere, Most likely the existence of an early unit that can win battles without casting spells even if there aren't many of them (you can't afford using large stacks of good units on every enemy swordsmen and halberdier).
If we take care of those, we are good. Werewolves in particular we've done already. Heroes...don't really work for me nowadays either, good items are too freaking rare in treasure. It requires the kind of absurd luck Sapher tends to have in his games (Invulnerability lair in 1402?  +8 defense armor? He had it all. But that's 1 in 20 games, not the average). Buffed units, we've just added AI research rules to prioritize buff counters early on, and nerfed Specialist plus the Tactician/Warlord pair at the same time. That should be enough to cover it. Are there any other potential such units? Trolls maybe? But they are fortunately down to regen 1 and against Myrran generic units, they aren't all that powerful. Adamantium? Also down to the 1 in 10 games, lucky win category - not a problem.

If all of the above still isn't enough to contain rush, and we have no better ideas, then we can consider this casting skill idea but I'm strongly against it.

[Nelphine]

I'm not even sure I'm actually for the idea. I just like the elegance, that it's not a direct link to rush games, so it's not the kind of obvious nerf that generally prohibits certain gameplay, and rather it's the kind of subtle thing that instead encourages certain gameplay.

I like encouragement rather than prohibition.

[Bahgtru]

Making it harder for rush to win is the main benefit I see but my "it's redundant" argument covers that. If rush can afford paying the 2-3x range penalty on all defensive (or offensive if they opt for splitting up their forces and killing all the AI units while conquering them) battles, while investing into skill, producing troops, etc, then there is a much greater problem somewhere, Most likely the existence of an early unit that can win battles without casting spells even if there aren't many of them (you can't afford using large stacks of good units on every enemy swordsmen and halberdier).

Not really. Rush has basically infinite mana. Skill is the limiting factor. The "issue" - but it's not an issue really - is that rush gets resources early thanks to lairs and conquest, alchemy, etc.

Other points:
[*]Trolls were terribad before getting nerfed... And now are worse. But I think you still need to try them?
[*]Werewolves are still OP thanks to death immunity plugging their only weakness vs death AIs, see my report. I've continued that game during the weekend and I'm beating a 2 life books death AI that got exorcism early :D
[*]Once you deal with the myrran you've won already anyway...

[Seravy]

Yeah trolls I still haven't tried yet.
I don't see how exchanging one immunity for another on werewolves makes a difference other than the thing they are strong or weak against being swapped. Eventually I'll play them again and see but not in the near future.

[Bahgtru]

It makes a difference in the case you're facing a death AI. In which case they have no weakness, and a human can exploit that much better than the AI: unbeatable concentration of force without any loss ever. See my report - I'll add the second part as soon as I can, ideally this evening.

[Seravy]

I still don't see what's the difference between you exploiting Death Immunity against a death wizard instead of exploiting Illusion Immunity against a Sorcery wizard. Why is beating Death instead of Sorcery better? The chance of the AI being either is equal and wouldn't the human want to kill the Sorcery AI first in most cases?

You need to prove having the Death Immunity against a Death wizard is of a higher value than having Illusion Immunity against a Sorcery wizard. As both use a "save at -2" spell and the Sorcery spell is more powerful (prevents regeneration), I don't see why that would be true.

[Nelphine]

I don't think he wants to give werewolves back the illusions immunity.

[Seravy]

I assumed he wants to roll back the swapping of them.

Doesn't matter either way, removing the Death Immunity is not an option.
Besides Weakness now affects the unit through Death Immunity and reduces their attack power to the level of a swordsmen. And the AI can use it twice instead of 1 Black Sleep, with a 100% rate of success.

So...looking at that post again.

obviously the human can focus forces better then an AI, and thanks to death immunity I've been able to just enter all of her cities and not lose anything, even managed to zombie an undead or two here and there. Had I had to deal with black sleep it'd have been very different

Wolves regenerate from sleep. The only way the AI can do any damage is if they kill the whole stack (or use Confusion). Sleep does disable 0.8 units per cast which is great but it'll never kill a stack. Not even Lunatic AI will have enough skill to use it more than 3-4 times a battle in the early game. (but 2-3 is more reasonable for the timeframe before Blood Lust is researched - past that you have Death Immunity anyway)
Meanwhile they can use weakness 6-8 times. That, if going against a strong AI stack (like the AI's own wolves+halberdiers), especially if the human uses a stack of fewer than 9 wolves, should be enough to win  for the AI.

So my question is, why do you think sleep would have helped the AI, and why did Weakness not help them when it should have been more effective when sleep and does work through the imunity?

[Bahgtru]

Ah I missed that the conversation moved here, my bad.

To answer what I didn't address in the other thread: sleep would have helped a LOT, because in the early game I've obtained several cities that I wouldn't have been able to without it. I'm not theorising. I've had to change the unit with the tweaker so I've tried it first. It makes a big difference. Each city means a triple resource boost and that early in the game, that means immediate snowball.

Edit. Weakness has too slow an effect in battles to matter, you've already penetrated the city. While the AI can cast double the weaknesses, the effect of sleep is more than double, so that cancels out: weakened units still absorb the same amount of damage (quite high, with all those HP) and still deliver damage. They are pretty much better than swordsmen... They're like swordsmen only until the first melee, then 4-5 swordsmen die, vs 1 werewolf.

[Seravy]

Certainly a werewolf with weakness is still better than a swordsmen due to more health but I would expect it to be inefficient against anything with at least halberdier tier armor - and no matter how much hit points you have if you aren't doing damage you lose.
The spell taking time to cast I understand being a problem when you are using large stacks of wolves, but those would still win even against black sleep - the AI only has enough skill to make 2-3 of them sleep while the rest can still win the battle easily. Against smaller stacks (1-5 units), Weakness should be more effective, if the defending units are decent, especially if they have walls for extra defense. A weakened wolf shouldn't be able to damage a halberdier behind walls at all.
I guess I will have to try in practice to see.