Sprites are still overpowered

[Seravy]

The easiest way to balance out the early summon spam is rather game-changing and quite unpopular I think, but I have quite a bit of experience with it:

the idea of starting normal units with +1 to hit and magic weapons not granting the hit bonus. While it balances certain concepts (mainly alchemist retort and barbarians) and essentially solves the early summon spam from experience with tinkering with this, it can introduce other issues, though mostly taken care of with lots of unit statistics/cost tweaks.

How could that even help?
The relative strength of the units is the least of the problem.
The problem is you can cast summons on turn 1 and have 10-30 units of skill and mana to do so per turn, while your capital produces 3 hammers at this point but you can't even use that because you have to build a sawmill and/or settlers.


Yes, having to build the alchemist guild is delaying normal units even further (if you want it, that is) but just getting there to have a production comparable to the starting casting skill takes several dozen turns. A wizard starts with a casting skill of ~20 on average (yes I'm assuming 10 books), but 4 hammers in their capital.

All right, some actual numbers. Starting location 23 pop, +15% production, no ores (this is a good spot, albeit not very productive - perfect for this test). Gnolls (no unrest or other economic modifiers). Spellweaver,Alchemy, Conjurer, Specialist. Impossible. In all cases I converted all mana or gold into whichever resource I was actively spending.

Sawmill, Swordsmen route :
Turn 8 - Sawmill done.
Turn 12 - 3 Swordsmen done
Turn 15 - 6 Swordsmen done
Turn 19 - 9 Swordsmen done

War Bears route :
Turn 6 - 3 War Bears done - bug found, on turn 1 my casting didn't progress even though I had 25 mp. So this should have been 1 fewer turns. It seems players don't get casting skill for their first turn.
Turn 10 - 6 War Bears done
Turn 15 - 9 War Bears done

Skeletons route :
Turn 3 - 3 Skeletons
Turn 5 - 6 Skeletons
Turn 7 - 9 Skeletons

It's easy to see summoning is done a lot faster, and these were basic, no level, no magic weapon swordsmen - if the player wanted better units, something that actually matches the abilities of a skeleton (never mind War Bears who are halberdier+ tier), normal units would compare even worse. Note that the sawmill gets done anyway even if I summon albeit it takes longer - hammers cannot be used for summoning. On the other hand if I produce swordsmen, no summoning is done at all - all the mana is spent on rushing production with gold.

So this test proves stacking these retorts is a massive early advantage - there is no way to accelerate normal units by any significant amount through retorts. (there is inquisitor but gold can be spent on summoning too, so it isn't helping unit production directly)
Whether the problem persists without the retort is hard to judge - I'd say it does not - the first 3-4 summoned units will still be faster but afterwards normal units make up for the delay, and only 3-4 of them will not be enough against any strong targets.

[GermanJoey]

There is an adjacent Sorcery node with "many phantom beasts", if I wasn't aiming for the enemy wizard, I could have conquered it - for a test I sent the same 9 bears there instead of the wizard and they killed 5 beasts and 1 naga, leaving only 1 beast and 2 nagas. So about 12 bears can clear the entire node, which are easy to summon - They only take about 1 turn to summon each. (6 beasts with 3 nagas is the highest value Sorcery node sprites can attack, btw, so any sprite compatible Sorcery node is compatible with Bears. Not true for Nature though.)

btw Bears are more than enough to beat unicorns and guardian spirits. I feel you are severely underestimating them.

The difference is that you could have defeated that node with just a single sprite, far faster, and it wouldn't have died. You're not making much of a profit suiciding 12 bears for no reason.

There's also no reason to kill another wizard in 1401, and in fact trying to do so is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot. It's better to build them build up a bit first, as well as build up yourself, so that you're able to can kill all four wizards faster.

[Nelphine]

Yup early summons are crazy - and I've seen impossible AI with 4 good retorts do similar things.

[Catwalk]

I agree with Joey's comments, your perspective on this is flawed. With Sprites, I can take out early nodes and lairs WITH A PROFIT. Suiciding 12 bears into a node that I can take in a couple turns with Sprites (without casualties) is just crazy, and you hardly profit from it at all. Similarly, you don't particularly profit from taking out an enemy wizard early on. It was necessary in my game, Kali was expanding like crazy towards me and I wanted those spots for myself because of Cult Leader + Inquisitor + Spellweaver. You do have a point that I might consider including War Bears for early AI stomping (should it be necessary), but it's a side product of the main strategy.

In the same game I'm also taking out 2 Great Wyrm nodes in the year 1404! And another 3 or so nodes are within reach, I just need to summon enough Sprites. I already have two full stacks roaming, and a casting skill of 57 or so. I've already burst through to Myrror and am considering banishing Horus (War Bears might come in handy there), but I want to focus on juicy lairs and nodes first.

Here is the turn 1 save and the current August 1404 save. I challenge you to come even close to my results without using Sprites. Also, everybody should feel free to try out the turn 1 save with Sprites and see how fast you can snowball your way to victory. This one is even more overpowering than my last game I posted, and I'll admit I'm having a lot of fun with it.

http://www.filedropper.com/save1001 (Turn 1)
http://www.filedropper.com/save2 (August 1404, don't peek if you want to play it through)

[Catwalk]

I agree that this is not a strong strategy with Myrran, but why is that a bad thing? That's like saying this is not a good hero strategy You need to base Myrror strategies around your race. Also, Sprites will have fewer targets available on Myrror.

It's actually fun with heroes, I'm picking up a bunch of items. And heroes are so much better balanced without Heroism.

As it turns out, this is an amazing hero strategy. I'm picking up heroes faster than I can sack them, and they come fully equipped courtesy of all the gear I'm finding here and there. Right now I have Shin Bo with Blademaster, Lucky, Thrown (from a weapon), +9 defense, +5 resistance, Resist Magic, Elemental Armour, Guardian Wind, True Sight. He has 11 swords and 16 shields, and he's only level 2. He can solo lairs very competently.

I'm strongly tempted to substitute 2x Nature for 2x Life and add Heroism (while it still works on heroes). Just having Sprites + Earth Lore + Web early on is sufficient. Adding Resist Elements, Nature's Eye or Call Centaurs is nice but not critical. I honestly don't see any way this setup can fail on Impossible. There are always lairs you can fight early for easy loot, and you can always find them quickly with Earth Lore. You have excellent mid-term strength with Giant Spiders or Giant Lizards, you have amazing economy with Inquisitor + Cult Leader + Spellweaver and you have enormous devastation potential from a horde of heroes with Heroism.

[Catwalk]

I want to emphasize that all this is possible because of Sprites. Without Sprites, you can't get early nodes and other loot. Without that, your economy and your magic skill never takes off. You end up being a mediocre Nature wizard with average development, you may be able to win but it will be tough and slow. Sprites are the catalyst that allows for an avalanche of opportunities.

I just had the perfect idea for remodelling Sprites without Flying: Give them Fairy Dust! This is such an obvious spell for them, and it would give them a special role to distinguish them from similar creatures.

New Sprites
Cost: 80 mana
Upkeep: 2 mana
3 melee
3 defense
Lucky
4 figures
2 hearts
Spell: Fairy Dust x3
3 moves (Forester)

You can still use them for early node hunting, but nowhere near as powerfully as you can now. Fairy Dust is great against normal units, not quite as potent against lairs. 3 melee, 3 defense, Lucky and 2 hearts makes them a viable fighting unit in a pinch, but they won't get you very far in nodes. As node and lair defenders they'll still be very decent, being even more dangerous against normal units than now. 3 moves with Forester (remove this from War Bears) makes them a great way to react to threats quickly.

Conjurer is definitely also part of the problem, although it's only a huge problem with Sprites. The problem, once again, is too much firepower too soon. This comes through a very decent -25% cost reduction (that can be added together with the Specialist bonus), and a massive -50% reduction on mana upkeep of creatures with an upkeep of 2 (and a reduction of 0% on mana upkeep of creatures with an upkeep of 1).

New Conjurer
+50% research on Summon spells
-15% casting cost on Summon spells
(upkeep reduction removed)
Summoned creatures have +1 resistance

This way Conjurer has a new role. It's not as strong early on (still decent, but not potent enough to start a snowball like it is now) but it lets you dig into strong creatures faster. It also helps you defend your creatures from annoying spells, making them a better long-term option.

[Catwalk]

I want to quickly add that the above suggestion is mainly to show the idea, the numbers may need tweaking. Sprites are probably overpowered in the above as well, 3x Fairy Dust is massive. It should be lowered to 2 shots, I think.

[MrBiscuits]

Probably a stupid suggestion, but might it be possible for ground troops to hit flyers with a much reduced change of hitting? Say each sword has a 10% change of hitting, then the total hits would count as a normal attack from that point. 

That way weak flyers can't be exploited to kill massively more powerful units like great wyrms with no danger to them whatsoever.

[Seravy]

Suiciding 12 bears into a node that I can take in a couple turns with Sprites (without casualties) is just crazy, and you hardly profit from it at all.

Assuming the node provides a modest 20 mana a turn, that in itself pays for the bears in ~15 turns and produces a profit afterwards. And then there is the treasure, which turns this profitable instantly - 600 mana from a node buys 20 bears! Don't forget we were talking about the hardest possible Sorcery node - if it was 3 beasts and 3 nagas, 9 bears could have cleared it without any of them dying. Sprites are of course better, I never said they are not - they should be because they are a lot less versatile.

Spell: Fairy Dust x3

We don't have free bits in unit ability flags. To add a new ability like this, 2 bits are necessary, plus extensive coding for both the human and AI side of using the ability, and displaying a new special ability icon.

The idea is good, but not doable without removing two existing unit abilities which I don't consider an option.

...I downloaded your save file.You didn't pick war bears so I have to edit my spells to play this.

[Catwalk]

Suiciding 12 bears into a node that I can take in a couple turns with Sprites (without casualties) is just crazy, and you hardly profit from it at all.

Assuming the node provides a modest 20 mana a turn, that in itself pays for the bears in ~15 turns and produces a profit afterwards. And then there is the treasure, which turns this profitable instantly - 600 mana from a node buys 20 bears! Don't forget we were talking about the hardest possible Sorcery node - if it was 3 beasts and 3 nagas, 9 bears could have cleared it without any of them dying. Sprites are of course better, I never said they are not - they should be because they are a lot less versatile.

I call humbug on your math Also keep in mind that you're comparing 12 bears with 2-3 sprites (which would have survived). That's a terrible comparison. I'd love to see you demonstrate getting anywhere near my results using War Bears, I would be extremely surprised. I also just took a nomad city defended by 9 pikemen using two sprites, you would have had heavy casualties using bears on that one too. And I'm about to take a gnoll city defended by 6 wolf riders and 3 halberdiers (also on another continent). Using War Bears you're effectively limited to your starting continent, it's nowhere near cost efficient to rely on Water Walking to send them elsewhere (and you'd need to spend a spell pick on it, passing up on other important starting spells). I'll go as far as to say that you simply cannot make this strategy work using War Bears. Not only will you fail, you'll lose the game because of all the wasted resources with minimal profits to show for it. Gauntlet thrown down! And yes, I'm not picking War Bears as I have limited starting spells available.

Spell: Fairy Dust x3

We don't have free bits in unit ability flags. To add a new ability like this, 2 bits are necessary, plus extensive coding for both the human and AI side of using the ability, and displaying a new special ability icon.

The idea is good, but not doable without removing two existing unit abilities which I don't consider an option.

Damnit, the code strikes back. I agree that's not an option then. New version:

Cost: 80
Upkeep: 2
Melee: 3
Ranged: 5 (3 ammo)
Defense: 3
Figures: 4
Hearts: 2
Moves: 3 Forester
Lucky

This is a potent early shooter which has several roles:
1) Rapid reaction defense
2) Better node defenders than now
3) Still useful for clearing out some nodes, if your race doesn't have a strong early ranged unit
4) Strong harassment unit which moves fast

The AI would be much better at using this unit, and it would be harder to take nodes guarded by Sprites than it is now. They no longer fall like flies once you poke them in the eye, and they hit a little harder. The ammo is a much bigger limitation to the human player than to the AI, as the human player is generally better at taking out dangerous shooters early in the battle.

This is a great unit worth using, and it would not allow for early game snowballing. For further flavour and utility, you could give them Purify. Fits in perfectly with Nature's concept, there should be a Nature unit with that ability.