PBEM 5H Vampires vs Ogres, Vampire spoiler thread

[Irgy]

Well, it's finished. I wrote an epic about the final battle in which Death Fort was captured, and evidently clicked "preview post" but not submit. I still have what I wrote on my mother in law's memory stick (long story), and I'm going to try and recover it before I go and have to write it all again. The short version though: Vampires won. Wiped out the Clan stack losing just a vampire and some summoned units. The two heroes (Rantine and Bambur) were eaten by Beasts of Agares. A long writeup of both the final battle and my thoughts on the game to come later.

[Irgy]

Here's an old update I wrote but never quite posted. It's old news now but interesting enough to be worth posting. The final battle update will come when I've recovered my write-up, in about 12 hours from now.


Blight is upon us! I wasn't actually expecting it quite yet, but I suppose I should have seen it coming. I adjusted the tiles worked in two cities to make the beasts come a turn sooner, and whipped out both Losha Velis and Mardero, so that they all completed on the same turn. All those AV units added a fair bit to the AC.

The blight itself isn't such a problem. The timing was actually pretty good, despite my lack of preparation, since I'd recently whipped for 8 and 9 pop to finish the Infernal Grimoire and Bazaar of Mammon, and then whipped 4 and 5 pop to finish Losha Velis and Mardero, so population was relatively low. The capital is "starving" from about 80/25 food to 75/25. I wonder whether it will still increase in population this turn? It ought to. Most cities will ride it out without losing any population at all.

In war news, Bob pillaged some roads and farms, then left the chariots on the hill. Unfortunately for him, because I happened to have slaves in place on the hill to road underneath my units, the one road he couldn't get to and pillage gave me enough movement to attack the chariots. Of course, he couldn't have seen it coming, because my units were invisible and I killed his hawk-carrying lizard last turn Rosier, a spectre and a great-general-moroi took out the two units he'd left, then three ritualists, two rusting adepts and five vampires (plus their spectres) wiped out the rest of his chariots. I discovered something fairly odd about Nox Noctis and fear - his chariots actually ran away in fear... straight onto the tile that the rest of my units were sitting on! Which in turn made it rather awkward to attack them, since I had to move off the tile and back on again. Good thing spectres have 2 movement really.

Bob called it a terrible waste of good chariots.

The bad news that I later discovered was that rushing out all the Beasts of Agares like that crashed the economy when my three best non-capital cities went into revolt for 3 turns. I barely stayed out of strike, and the attack was a little delayed by the fact that I literally couldn't afford to have a large stack of units outside my cultural borders.

[Irgy]

So, finally I've recovered my text. Here's how the final battle went. His defences can be seen below. Lead by a well promoted Rantine and Bambur, the core of it was his 13 axemen and 8 warriors, many of which were well promoted (including a lot of shock) from his earlier successful assault. The chariots made up a respectable counter-attack if my attack failed, but were just space filler on defence. The shamans were presumably built the previous turn and had no promotions. All this on an impressive +65% defence tile.


My stack was a core of vampires, supported by a lot of rust adepts and ring of flames ritualists, and lead by a six-pack of Losha Velis, Mardero, Rosier the Fallen, and three Beasts of Agares. It was also protected by two Royal Guards. The moroi were shock troops, capable of making two attacks at quite high strength if needed. On the whole, I couldn't be happier with its composition.

They can be seen here starting the turn three tiles away. That they could launch from that spot in the first place was half the victory. Having 3 movement, they could all move in and attack this turn. They were out of range of a sally from the warriors, axemen and most importantly catapults, even with the workers building extra roads - although in just one turn's time they'd have been able to haste themselves into range (not the catapults though of course). They'd had a buffer of spectres across two tiles protecting them from an attack by the chariots.


The attack started with ring of flames. Rantine alone held out until the 6th casting, at which point he took a 10% hit on his own to reach maximum damage.


This was followed by 4 lots of rust, which wiped out the iron weapons of everyone except one axeman who had the rusted promotion but still the weapons, and Bambur who resisted it completely.

The key to the battle after that was getting the beasts to hit the heroes. The heroes both had shock I&II, quite effective against more of my units but worthless against the beasts. With a natural strength of 16 on the beasts, and the 40% damage from ring of flames, the beasts were easily odds on to win - 93.1% against Rantine and 99.2% against a further damaged Bambur in the end. However, the heroes were not the first choice to defend the stack against the beasts. On top of that, the shock promotion moved them further up the list to defend against other attackers at what were quite favourable odds to the heros.

Rantine was too strong for his own good though. After one beast removed the axeman that still had his iron weapons, Rantine was far enough ahead of the rest of the pack to be picked as a defender, and fell to the second beast.


Bambur however held out for quite a while. I had to alternate between picking off the top axemen with other units, and wearing Bambur down with spectres at times when he was picked against everything but the beast. Finally, about half way through the battle, he was undeniably the top defender and fell to the third beast.


The vampires took out the axemen, losing only one vampire at about 95% odds. Once they were clear, the spectres took out the chariots. On the whole, I lost pretty close to the right number of units for the odds of the battles I fought, but was a little lucky that of the four ~75% battles I had to fight it was Mardero's pit beast that lost rather than a vampire.

The end result was a complete wipeout and the city captured, a royal guard doing the honors (against a now 0.2 strength axeman who'd killed the vampire) as it had enough movement to get back to the rest of the stack.


I kept the dancing bear.


Here you can see the race-traitor (Bob's observation) Bambur sink to a new low in his next role. Also note the fairly healthy state of my stack. Still plenty of high strength defenders, and with regeneration a lot of what wounds there are will heal next turn.


Here's the combined battle log (with a few "raise skeleton"s skipped).



In the end I had a fair bit of spare capacity. I didn't need to use burning blood on the moroi, and had a fair few units left to attack with. I expect I could have taken down a significantly larger stack than what was there. Although not necessarily a significantly more promoted stack. If I'd wasted the beasts on axemen and had to fight my way through Rantine and Bambur with melee units I'd barely have managed a victory at all.

There were three big power increases I didn't wait for in the end. One was Iron Working, which would have taken quite a while to get but would have brought the vampires from base strength 6 to 7 as well as adding four Eidolons to top it out. Another was Sorcery, which aside from anything else would have given me shadow-walk, effectively removing the 65% city defence bonus. The big one though was the Tower of Necromancy, which would have moved the spectres from 4 strength to 6. Without blight, it might have been only a turn away, but as it is the city is still starving and it wouldn't have been ready until, I expect, 3 turns from now.


I'll write up my thoughts on the game overall and the balance issue it was ostensibly about in the next post.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hmm, I should probably post something here, shouldn't I?




Well, first off, Good Game! I was clearly outplayed here. To begin, my thoughts on the game itself:




As a disclaimer, while it's kind of a lame excuse, I must confess that this was my first game as the Clan. As in, ever. I once played maybe 30 turns as them in a "High-to-Low" SP game, but never anything substantial. So I was winging it throughout our entire match, which led to some admittedly pretty strange decision on my part.



Looking at the Clan at the very start of the match, I quickly realized that Wolf Riders were by far the best unit I'd get my hands on for quite a while, so my starting build que went something like worker -> goblin -> goblin -> goblin -> goblin. I got lucky with my starter goblin and defeated a wolf very early on- that was the unit who pillaged a few farms and went down after killing a couple bloodpets. I also was very fortunate with all of my other goblins, and each of them defeated a wolf within a dozen turns or so of leaving my borders- I made it through the match without a losing a single basic goblin unit. I ended up getting six free wolfriders in total. Alas I was really careless with my new Riders, and I lost no fewer than three of them to bears. One ended turn next to a bear and died, and two attacked bears at good odds to win (looking for a promo) but lost anyway. IIRC, all of these losses occurred before you had the Orthus Axe. If I hadn't been so careless with those units I think I could have won the game right there, instead of just minimally choking you for several turns. The sixth wolf rider I kept at home for defense, btw. It was the unit which killed your worker-stealing vampire, and later died during one of my failed raids.


I had terrible luck with huts. While you got an obscene 5 free techs or so, I got gold three times, a map or two, and two huts worth of "hostile villagers" who latter became useless "For the Horde" recruits. The Barbarian trait really held me back- not being able to explore lairs or fight barbs meant that I missed on out goodies and easy exp, and the -10% research penalty only compounded my severe economic woes.



Speaking of which, I didn't (and still for the most part don't) know much about how to build a sustainable Clan economy. I did intend to get the Runes from the start, for the gold, arete, and iron weapons, but that clearly wasn't sufficient alone to meet my empire's needs. I delayed building courthouses for too long- maintenance fees weren't too bad initially, but they became crippling very quickly once I started founding second and third ring sites. I had toyed with the idea of beelining the Veil early on, in order to prevent you from converting to it without handing me a religious victory. I dismissed the idea because I didn't have time to grab both the Runes and Veil and I wanted to get Arete's production bonus ASAP, but in retrospect stealing the Veil was exactly what I should have done. I would have gotten a lot of use out of the Veil beakers and the Grimoire. Might have even deployed some actual Ogres with it!


I have to confess that I never really saw getting Ogres as practical, and so I had no intention of actually doing so. Obviously you were going to get to vamps before I could build Ogres, unless something had gone dramatically wrong for you, in which case I was probably a shoo-in to win without them anyway. Chariots were always the default option, although I toyed with the idea of using Bless + the Order instead of Iron Weapons from the Mines. With 7 attack and 3 moves, Iron (or Blessed) Chariots seemed (and still seem) to me to be much more effective as a main offensive force for the Clan, at least until the late middle-to-end game. Although now that I think about it, Diseased Corpses would have made great vampire counters. Grr.


The other religion I probably should have considered was the Overlords. I realized that I needed Tsunami to storm your from line cities toward the end of the game, but I didn't have nearly the tech power to get Cultists out in time, and I badly needed the Runes happiness. Stygian would have been great units for me, but I'm honestly not sure that I could have gotten them in a reasonable time frame, especially if I had beelined them without getting Runes gold or Veil beakers. There were a lot of great units that I *should* have been using but simply couldn't reach in time; I never was pulling in more than 200 beakers per turn.


Besides pumping goblins, my early strategy was to get a second city at a great production spot, and then have both it and the capital build warrens- that's why you saw me on two cities for so long, and then I rapidly blew past you in score and population. "Explosive growth" doesn't even begin to cover it. Sadly, many of my new cities couldn't pay for themselves for several turns, due to the lack of commerce resources for them to work and no rivers beyond the capital and first ring. I'm sure that I expanded too quickly, but I'm not convinced that it was too fast in general or just for this map in particular. Speaking of which, holy crap you could not have possibly chosen a better stating site for the vampires, especially Flauros. Nine floodplains or whatever... Christ. There were a lot of nice hammer locations for my Clan though, so I can't claim that the map was entirely biased in your favour.


In the mid-game, I mostly focused on expansion and consolidation. When I did attack you, I didn't plan out my assaults nearly well enough. I wasn't kidding when I said that I had wanted to attack you with 60 chariots in my first wave; I had about 40 in total at the time, and could have gotten another 20 within maybe 10 turns. But I was only breaking even at 100% gold when I attacked you with about 30 of them due to them costing so much in the field. I didn't have any units I could reasonably delete to support them, and so I never did get to fight you with the horde I wanted, and attacking piecemeal made my stacks bite-size for your vampire response crew. I should have exploited the mobility of chariots better- I thought about roading toward you through the south pole and driving into your core, but decided that it was too much work (and I didn't want to pay for the workers and chariots to make their way so far in neutral land). I think it might have worked, though... maybe in conjunction with a more conventional frontal assault. The turning point was my failed initial chariot raid, foiled by Fear. I thought that Fear wouldn't work against units which had 98% odds to win their fights, but I was obviously wrong. Looking through the manual later I realized that it works 50% of the time no matter what. I should have had spirit mana, but I have no idea how I could have gotten the tech and node necessary by the time I needed to make my assault. Like I told you in one of my email, Fear was the most crippling factor I faced all game; with it, you were untouchable.


I'll post more on Fear and what I think the game taught later. To wrap up the game summary, by the time you finally invaded my civ was crippled. I had lost too many units in wasteful attacks, and war weariness was crushing my blighted cities thanks to the game not being a true Always War. I was finally turning my tech to the Overlords, but it was clearly to late.


Oh, one last thing, about Hyborem- he never did anything. Spawned in far south beneath my capital, kept almost all of his units in his capital for the entire match. I would have loved to have gotten my hands on the Gela, but it would have taken more chariots then even I was willing to throw away to break through Hyborem himself + his longbowmen and two champions. Hell terrain never appeared on the map since he never controlled anything other than ice and tundra tiles.

[Irgy]

So, having your thoughts now to bounce of, I think I'll post my opinion on the game itself and what I learned from it first, and the balance implications second. One kind of leads into the other anyway.

First lesson, the power of a clan goblin-upgraded-wolfrider rush! Having 3 movement is huge. Just the two you sent were fairly crippling, if I'd seen all 6 wolfriders, or probably even just 3 at once, I'd have been toast. It sounds to me like you did pretty well to get 6 in the first place though. This was definately a point where the game could have gone your way. Some factors that came into play here (I've written the most about this because it's the point where the game was most likely to have gone the other way):

• Attacking bears at good odds may still have been the right choice on average even if it turned out badly this time - it was the huge number of promotions they had that was the biggest problem for me.
  
• Sending in a few together would have been better than one at a time. Obviously losing some was a problem, but I think you didn't need one for defence when I was on the back foot anyway. One at a time I eventually dealt with them, if even just the 3 survivors appeared together, even if a lot later than the original 1, I'd have likely been caught off guard.
  
• You were probably expecting more from the worldspell. The problem, other than of course the random absence of goblin forts, was that it was before any barbarian cities had been created. In FFHPBEMIV, having barbarian cities at the start of the game made For the Horde become epic a lot sooner than it ought to. I think this is a good bit of balance design on the whole.
  
• My capital was in an awful spot in hindsight. Aside from the health problems, not settling on a hill, and putting all my good food tiles in one city that wouldn't even be able to work them all anyway until close to the end of the game, it was also an awkward spot with the river. Although the river protected the capital from direct attack, it also protected you from retaliation. I couldn't road out of the city to attack 2 tiles away until Construction. It was good though when Orthus attacked, as he was happy to attack straight across the river into a shock promoted, fortified warrior. Not sure what the odds were exactly but I think I had a good shot of winning that fight. If I'd lost though I'd have had to attack across the river myself to finish him off, might not have been pretty.
  
• My expansion was a great spot though. Although it was a little squashed against the edge of the map, it was a very rare case of being able to protect 2 cities from a 3 movement unit without having to actually split my forces significantly.
  
• Governer's Mansions really got me through the choke without actually dropping behind in production.
  
• Moroi got me out of the choke in a way that axemen could not have. One more strength wasn't enough, but 2 movement and the 40% bonus definately was. On the whole though if you were going to kill me you'd have done it before I got to moroi - especially with the time needed to build the training grounds.
  
• Leaving my best promoted warrior un-upgraded made him still the top defender, which in turn meant you didn't see the upgraded moroi coming, as it was still a warrior displayed on top of my city. You'd have had to have moused over the city garrison on the specific turn after I upgraded to know. This wasn't planned though, I actually just didn't want to lose my best promoted warrior to burning blood.
  
• Easily accessible copper would have made things easier for me. But I can't complain - it's not like it was that far away, I just couldn't safely get to it.
  
• Using my worldspell on T0 would have put me in a better position and got me out of the choke sooner.
  

Huts I definately got very lucky. That I had a scout popping huts rather than a goblin meant no hostile huts, which in turn means a higher chance of a tech, but even still I was lucky. I never got any use out of Cartography, but Crafting was an excellent boost at the time it came, and Festivals let me support the large number of warriors I needed during the choke. I can't say I got much out of being able to explore lairs, I got those two lizardmen (and some xp from the dwarves), but otherwise I mostly just popped a lot of vampire-killing scorpions. On the whole, huts definately helped but I don't think they distorted the result overall.

Half-price Governer's Mansions were a huge boost, and the first build in almost every new city. They kept me equal in production despite being behind in population and food the whole game.

How did the warrens + soldier of Kilmorph work out for you on the whole? It sounds to me (mostly from what you've said) like you should have been churning them out in the established cities to rush courthouses in the newer ones.

Flauros was definately what put me ahead in GNP for the whole game. Financial was good enough in BTS, but it's extra good in FFH because of the synergy with Aristocracy, which also just happens to already be the best economy to run nearly all the time. The constant GNP lead despite a choke gave me an ongoing overal tech lead and the usual snowball effects from that - mostly via wonders. The advantages of Military Strategy and Warfare for instance were mine alone, as you were always too busy to research them. Those were a huge boost, the two epics, Form of the Titan and command posts everywhere gave me even more boosted production and +4xp on all new units.

I was pretty happy with my tech order overall, though I made some mistakes. Construction and Sanitation should definately have come before Fuedalism. As it was I got Construction only just barely in time to scare off your attack, and Sanitation barely in time to recover the crashed economy. The lack of happiness resources on the map was a big factor that I should have appreciated sooner.

I did in fact keep a look out for an attack along the southern edge of the map, once I had hawks available. I was occasionally a little lax with checking all the way to the lowest row, but I'm pretty sure I'd have spotted something in time to react.

On the whole, it seems like the Clan have the early game, but if the Calabim survive they'll win. Something we probably knew already, but there you have it. I did discover that just Vampires isn't enough, there's a lot of stuff needed to support them. Out of the box they're 5 strength, 2 movement (with haste) and summon skeletons. With cities that support feast, the Tower of Necromancy to help the spectres, magic (mages or at least ritualists/cultists) to make use of the initiative that their mobility gives them, and metal weapons for their base strength they turn into a very powerful force. So as good as they are, rushing to them in a blind beeline isn't necessarily the best strategy. The Calabim though are well set up to support them.

[Irgy]

And finally, my thoughts on Calabim balance.

Did the Calabim win? Yes.

Was the game decided by civ/leader, player skill, settings, or random factors? Personally I'd still say civ/leader, but only barely. One reason I don't say player skill was that I thought it basically pretty similar during the game, we both made some mistakes but basically played a fairly solid game. Although Bob seems to suggest he didn't play as well as he'd like to have. It's certainly true that I was much more familiar with the Calabim and the specific strategy I employed than Bob was with the Clan, and that likely had some impact that's difficult to tease out. Random factors (huts in particular) were certainly good to me, but I don't think they were the biggest factor. The settings had an influence, but we kept them fairly standard and I don't think they were a big impact either.

So on the whole, I don't think civ/leader choice dominated the result, it was just the final factor. I definately don't think I'd have won with a weaker civ. But I could easily have lost with just slightly worse play in the wrong places as well. It's only that I don't think my play was any better than Bob's that I say one was the factor rather than the other.

Are the Calabim too good? I still think they are. Not as much as I previously thought.

Here's the thing. The Clan have a lot of advantages specific to 1vs1. The wolf rush, worldspell and barbarian trait all help a lot more in 1vs1 than in larger games. A 1vs1 can support a poor economy but strong production better in general too because you only need to take down one opponent, rather than having snowball through one onto many others. They have a lot of love, in the sense that they have a lot of unique features. So I'd say they're absolutely a top-tier 1vs1 civ, up there with Doviello and Illians for a powerful early rush. So, beating them, even if only by a little bit, makes Calabim ever so slightly too good. That the Calabim's advantages are, I think, stronger in a larger game amplifies it.

If they'd just barely beat a different civ like Balseraphs (who I see as flavoured, balanced, plenty of potential but not overpowered), or Amurites (who are a similar slow start but powerful late game civ), or someone else in a very tight game like this then I'd be saying something different. I guess on the whole this game has upped my opinion of the Clan rather than lowered my opinion of the Calabim.

So that's still my view. I'll admit this game has softened and reduced it somewhat, but it's still there. Personally I'd still just switch the mansions over to angry citizens (as reported by the interface anyway) rather than unhappy faces and move on though.

Bob will say something should be done about fear. I think he might be right, but for all that it was a big factor in this game I don't actually think it was a deciding one, and I don't think it's usually such a big issue. The counter to it (courage) is rock solid, and not that hard to access - it's if anything at an eariler tech level than spectres themselves. The problem in a way was just that the Clan had a tech lag and couldn't afford to research it. That tech lag was the issue more than fear. If it's countered so solidly, it really needs to be pretty good when it isn't. That said, I wouldn't particularly object to making the odds of it activating modify in both directions rather than always at least 50%. The way I read what the manual says that's what it should do anyway, but it certainly sounds like that wasn't the experience in-game?

[Bobchillingworth]

I should probably be asleep now, but... nah.



RE: My wolfriders- yeah, attacking with all six at once would have been ideal. Sadly, I got them in staggered waves. First wolfrider (starting goblin) beelined straight for you, pillaged a little, died. While he was already at or near your borders I got my next two within a couple turns of each other. One was the chocker, the other eaten by a bear on the defense. The next two goblins again found their mounts only a few turns apart, but sadly both perished trying to get to 5 or 10 exp (I forget which, but they had managed to pick up at least 2 exp each for CII from killing wolves / lions). The final wolf rider came much later, after I used my world spell and got a goblin from the fort on my side of the map who quickly tamed the last remaining wolf in the wild. At that point, it was probably too late (not to mention hazardous!) to try to run him through the bear-infested wilds to reach you.


Before getting into the meat of this post, I also wish to respond to the Irgy's assertion that the Clan's advantage disappears after the early game. I feel that this is incorrect. If the Clan are at tech parity, I believe that they continue to have substantial advantages throughout the game. Ogres, while difficult to reach due to inherently slow Clan teching ability, are incredibly dangerous units. Note how in Irgy's final assault, even a lowly axe, battered by waves of collateral and faced against a well-promoted vampire foe had at least 5% odds to win. An Ogre would have been four strength higher. When factoring in the double-unit production bonus from Warrens, the Clan benefit from both quantity and quality. The Clan's supply of power units doesn't end with the third melee tier either, as Stoneskin Ogres are some of the best defensive units around, and Ogre Chieftans put standard Immortals to shame. This is to say that neither the Calabim nor the Clan has a substantial advantage or drop-off in strength at any particular era; both have powerful units across the breadth of the tech tree, and excellent UB which remain useful throughout the game. It is instead their relative ability to reach the different unit tiers where a disparity develops- I'll get into why this distinction matters later on in my post.



Okay, so for my thoughts on game balance and what, if anything, the Sareln FFH "Paring" Mod should adjust




This game was ostensibly launched to determine the answer to the following query: are the Calabim overpowered? My answer remains unchanged- no, they are not. As a civilization the Calabim, while powerful, are not so strong as to unbalance the game. That said, there are some changes which I feel should be made, which I'll elaborate on shortly. First, to address each of the Calabim-specific advantages & why I feel that they are acceptable as-is.



Worldspell: River of Blood is one of the weakest worldspells in the game. It's not terrible, but it pales in comparison with game-changing master-strokes such as Sanctuary, Stasis, and Revelry. Best used to gain a useful but overall slight early-game advantage or to get a little more benefit from a drafting or whipping spree. The spell had little impact in our game.


Breeding Pits: Nice buildings, but probably necessary for the Calabim for feeding to be reliable for the large cities the game encourages you to build. Getting the Granary / Smokehouse / Breeding Pit combo in every city isn't cheap either.


Governor's Manors: Very powerful buildings. Expensive on their own, although Organized helps you deal with that. Alexis is out of luck, though. I believe that I understand the rationale for while they work the way they currently do- production could be seriously lacking when working only farms, especially since Agrarianism removes the hammers from plains. Manors help ensure that the Calabim don't have to rely exclusively on slavery to build things (although Irgy made prudent use of it regardless), keeping them from having a fourth pseudo-mandatory civic. That said, I can also see the logic for adjusting their hammer bonus as Irgy suggests. This is probably the most borderline of the Calabim advantages in terms of balance.


Moroi: Excellent UU, but not overpowered thanks to the substantial downsides of Burning Blood. I believe that Sareln's changes already address the Moroi by leaving their cost at its present level while making base axemen / swordsmen slightly cheaper.


Vampires: The big one. Yes, they can summon specters. Yes, they can make stacks run fast and regenerate health through casting Regeneration or eating bloodpets. Yes, you can get a crapload of exp on them. But all of this is balanced out by some very substantial downsides. First, vampires are expensive. They cost 50% more than regular champions. Each vampire represents a substantial investment in hammers and population, and it is very difficult to produce them in large quantities compared with the main military forces for most other civs. That the best way to produce a vampire swarm relies on abusing slavery and/or drafting says more about the utility of those civic options than any imbalance regarding the unit itself. Second, vampires are weak. They have -1 strength compared with normal champions and lack the bonus vs. other melee units. They need lots of promotions and the ability to summon specters to retain any significant edge at all. Irgy boasted in the pre-game discussion that he would conjure up a "vampire hit-squad" to defeat me. This never materialized. All of the kills earned by vampires in this match were on weak defenders who were already decimated from collateral damage. The only time a vampire fought directly with one of my units in the field saw it get stomped by a base strength 4 goblin rider. Even the kills against my best defenders at Death Fort came not from super-vampires but the obscenely powerful strength 16 Beasts of Agares. This is not to take anything away from Irgy- he played brilliantly and used combined arms well. But this game demonstrated very little about the strength of vampires themselves compared to the power of the Veil and having a mobile military and good road network.



That leads me to my final points- what should be changed? As Irgy correctly presupposes, the first issue I have is with specters, particularly their Fear ability. In his analysis of Calabim game balance, Irgy posted the following:

That said, I wouldn't particularly object to making the odds of it activating modify in both directions rather than always at least 50%. The way I read what the manual says that's what it should do anyway, but it certainly sounds like that wasn't the experience in-game?

This is what I had assumed as well. Regrettably, there is always a 50% chance that a unit without Courage will be too frightened to attack. My suggestion is to change fear so that it does indeed work in both directions- a unit with 99.8% odds to win a fight will not cower away in fear from a strength 3 bogeyman. While Irgy is correct that Fear is typically easily countered, I dislike the notion that Courage must be a mandatory spell- what should players do who only have one node and don't wish to waste it on the otherwise useless Spirit sphere? Limiting player options is rarely a good thing, and this situation is no exception.



That said, Specters aren't my real concern. The constant theme in both Irgy and my post-mortem analysis is that the Calabim simply blew past the Clan in tech. And this is entirely true. But was it due to any inherent advantage of the Calabim civ? I argue that it was not. The Calabim are impaired in tech much as the Clan are, due to lacking a key early science building, their deficiency being Elder Councils and with them the ability to run cheap early scientists. So where did the great unbalance come from? The answer is clear- Flauros. Flauros is indeed broken- at least when paired with the Calabim. He has an absolute abundance of synergy with aristofarms. His Organized bonus with Manors makes their increased cost a laughable check on their power. He is clearly better than Alexis or Decius, except in very specific circumstances (moroi rush & being badass, respectively).


Thus my proposal: get rid of financial on Flauros. It's overwhelming good at present and isn't supported in any way by the lore. Instead I recommend Expansive, which still has great synergy with the Calabim without negating one of the main restraining bolts on the civ, that being their otherwise mediocre-at-best tech rate. With Expansive Flauros gains a welcome new niche as the Calabim's "growth" leader, and a unique combo. And that's really all that needs to be done to "fix" the Calabim.

[K]

Had written out a long post but decided just to summarize it. Vamps are very strong. Early game is there weakness but they can also be very strong rushers if played that way. There palace mana and governors make Moroi rushes very powerful. Since knowledge of the ether gives you access to loyalty and haste. Decius can basically get all the insane promotions on them asap. Commando for free, blitz from burning blood and march on there 4th promotion. Also conveniently makes them eligible for vampirism once you get Losha from Fanaticism. They just seem to require less to set up then vampires and not require so much support since they are so cheap.

Originally I had considered Decius by far the worst vamp leader. After trying him out at least in single player I find him the strongest. If you can settle for copper very little can stop you early game. Your needed techs put you in line for going Veil to get the Grimoire and/or Tower of Divination for early Malevolent Designs or Rage. Vampiric Eidolons or Brujah are just sickening and too easily replaceable by just promoting a veteran Moroi.

[K]

Fear is annoying. It really should take into account odds. Instead of treating units like elephants afraid of mice.

I felt like that is where the game truly ended. If Bob had razed that city, there was still hope. Though I feel he was already far behind he might have been able to keep things off balance and turn it into a war of attrition.

The clan just play awkward. They are strong 1 on 1 but even then there strengths are largely random. Getting early Wolf Riders can completely cripple people as can popping archers from the world spell. Outside of that it's just a struggle to slow others down and keep your military relevant. It's far too easy to crash the economy as the clan and just never recover. Ogres are ridiculous but I don't see too many people letting you get there outside of single player.

The barbarian trait just seems excessively weak on them. Losing out on libraries is just brutal as well. Warrens just feel too expensive. Though they pay back the hammers really quick. I just tend to find myself in a situation where I need units now not twice as many in 15 turns.

Anyways enough from me as I consider myself far from a good player at this point in time.

[Irgy]

RE: My wolfriders ...

It sounds like I might have had a slightly overinflated view of what you had then. When I read 6 wolfriders I quaked in fear, but when you point out they were spread over a long stretch of time the rush isn't quite as fast and vicious as it at first sounded. I think it has the potential to be, and certainly just not losing those battles against bears would have been a good start, but it sounds like it's probably a little more unreliable on the whole than I might have thought.

Before getting into the meat of this post, I also wish to respond to the Irgy's assertion that the Clan's advantage disappears after the early game ... It is instead their relative ability to reach the different unit tiers where a disparity develops

That's kind of what I meant in the first place. I completely agree that they still have useful units up the tree at least as much if not more than the Calabim. But for a given number of turns played, rather than a given tech level, they're behind purely because they're behind in tech.

Actually though thinking about this makes me realise one thing that helped me in this 1vs1 setup. Having a tech lead 1vs1 gives you your pick of the wonders. In a 6+ player game, there's probably other players with decent tech levels building your wonders. So the tech-snowball is more noticable in 1vs1. That was part of what happened here. The boost I got from being able to build the great library and bone palace at my leisure was significant.

Worldspell: River of Blood is one of the weakest worldspells in the game. It's not terrible, but it pales in comparison with game-changing master-strokes such as Sanctuary, Stasis, and Revelry. Best used to gain a useful but overall slight early-game advantage or to get a little more benefit from a drafting or whipping spree. The spell had little impact in our game.

I think we're agreed it's in the useful, about as good as it should be range. I agree it's not as good as those, but I think it's a darn sight better than the bad ones like Raging Seas, March of the Trees, Worldbreak and Veil of Night.

Breeding Pits: Nice buildings, but probably necessary for the Calabim for feeding to be reliable for the large cities the game encourages you to build. Getting the Granary / Smokehouse / Breeding Pit combo in every city isn't cheap either.

Not that hard to build all three with the whip. It's also noticably better than granary or smokehouse for new cities below the health cap. I don't think it's overpowered though. The way I look at it, these basically just cancel out the population loss of feeding, and feeding similarly cancels out the benefit of breeding pits.

Governor's Manors: Very powerful buildings. Expensive on their own, although Organized helps you deal with that. Alexis is out of luck, though. I believe that I understand the rationale for while they work the way they currently do- production could be seriously lacking when working only farms, especially since Agrarianism removes the hammers from plains. Manors help ensure that the Calabim don't have to rely exclusively on slavery to build things (although Irgy made prudent use of it regardless), keeping them from having a fourth pseudo-mandatory civic. That said, I can also see the logic for adjusting their hammer bonus as Irgy suggests. This is probably the most borderline of the Calabim advantages in terms of balance.

The thing is, it's not just the Calabim that are working a lot of farms. Because aristograrianism is so good, everyone wants to. The extra population the Calabim need to feed is already payed for by breeding pits. Everyone ends up with too much food and not enough production, and the Calabim get out of it for just the extra 20% maintenance.

Moroi: Excellent UU, but not overpowered thanks to the substantial downsides of Burning Blood. I believe that Sareln's changes already address the Moroi by leaving their cost at its present level while making base axemen / swordsmen slightly cheaper.

Agreed.

Vampires: The big one. Yes, they can summon specters. Yes, they can make stacks run fast and regenerate health through casting Regeneration or eating bloodpets. Yes, you can get a crapload of exp on them. But all of this is balanced out by some very substantial downsides. First, vampires are expensive. They cost 50% more than regular champions. Each vampire represents a substantial investment in hammers and population, and it is very difficult to produce them in large quantities compared with the main military forces for most other civs. That the best way to produce a vampire swarm relies on abusing slavery and/or drafting says more about the utility of those civic options than any imbalance regarding the unit itself. Second, vampires are weak. They have -1 strength compared with normal champions and lack the bonus vs. other melee units. They need lots of promotions and the ability to summon specters to retain any significant edge at all. Irgy boasted in the pre-game discussion that he would conjure up a "vampire hit-squad" to defeat me. This never materialized. All of the kills earned by vampires in this match were on weak defenders who were already decimated from collateral damage. The only time a vampire fought directly with one of my units in the field saw it get stomped by a base strength 4 goblin rider. Even the kills against my best defenders at Death Fort came not from super-vampires but the obscenely powerful strength 16 Beasts of Agares. This is not to take anything away from Irgy- he played brilliantly and used combined arms well. But this game demonstrated very little about the strength of vampires themselves compared to the power of the Veil and having a mobile military and good road network.

I think all that's true, but the trouble is a lot of the downsides are not just cancelled out but overcompensatde by other things. Ok they're expensive, but you get double boosted production from manors to overcompensate. Their base strength is weak, but they're highly promoted to overcompensate. The vampires themselves did surprisingly little, but that was partly because I was quite protective of them and you hardly left your units exposed (and when you did leave some chariots in range the vamps definately got involved). Overall the spectres overcompensated for the lack of combat action from the vampires themselves.

I don't think they're overpowered, I just think they're good in a lot of ways and make up for all their weaknesses.

This is what I had assumed as well. Regrettably, there is always a 50% chance that a unit without Courage will be too frightened to attack. My suggestion is to change fear so that it does indeed work in both directions- a unit with 99.8% odds to win a fight will not cower away in fear from a strength 3 bogeyman. While Irgy is correct that Fear is typically easily countered, I dislike the notion that Courage must be a mandatory spell- what should players do who only have one node and don't wish to waste it on the otherwise useless Spirit sphere? Limiting player options is rarely a good thing, and this situation is no exception.

I think I basically agree with your plan here. I will say though that having only 2 mana nodes each on the map, and no other players to trade mana from skews the cost of a courage node quite a bit.

That said, Specters aren't my real concern. The constant theme in both Irgy and my post-mortem analysis is that the Calabim simply blew past the Clan in tech. And this is entirely true. But was it due to any inherent advantage of the Calabim civ? I argue that it was not. The Calabim are impaired in tech much as the Clan are, due to lacking a key early science building, their deficiency being Elder Councils and with them the ability to run cheap early scientists. So where did the great unbalance come from? The answer is clear- Flauros. Flauros is indeed broken- at least when paired with the Calabim. He has an absolute abundance of synergy with aristofarms. His Organized bonus with Manors makes their increased cost a laughable check on their power. He is clearly better than Alexis or Decius, except in very specific circumstances (moroi rush & being badass, respectively).

Thus my proposal: get rid of financial on Flauros. It's overwhelming good at present and isn't supported in any way by the lore. Instead I recommend Expansive, which still has great synergy with the Calabim without negating one of the main restraining bolts on the civ, that being their otherwise mediocre-at-best tech rate. With Expansive Flauros gains a welcome new niche as the Calabim's "growth" leader, and a unique combo. And that's really all that needs to be done to "fix" the Calabim.

My only problem with that is you're replacing one top notch trait with another. I'd actually be inclined to keep financial and kill organised. And give him something bad to replace it rather than the also quite good expansive. Financial-Arcane? That way you six different traits. Decius to abuse half price mansions but with no economic traits, Flauros to still have a decent economy but no more production boost from half-price mansions and command posts, and Alexis to, well, do whatever it is Alexis does already (she certainly has a good Moroi rush up her sleeve, and a combat 1 headstart on the vampires, but she's particularly hurt by the lack of Elder Councils).

I probably should have used a different leader to avoid the conclusion that Flauros is the problem though, because I still think mansions are the problem and he just exacerbates them.

I think on the whole we've actually just about converged, despite our disagreements. I can nearly conclude then:
* Vampires are good, but they should be good. They don't really need changing (this is definately a step back from my original opinion on the subject).
* Fear should work differently regardless. Although the effect will mostly just be to nerf vampires a little without having much other impact. It maybe nerfs death magic mages a little too, probably not a bad thing really either.
* I still think Governer's Mansion is overpowered, you still don't quite, but you're a little more on the fence about it.
* Flauros is too good for the Calabim. Financial and Organised are two awesome traits and have a stack of synergy for the Calabim. You think Financial->Expansive to ensure no Calabim leaders have good economic traits, I think Organised->(something bad).