Test games played

[Nelphine]

I'm not sure. I know if dispelling wave isn't on the table, that Lionheart + some common buffs on an orc horde is a bigger jump in your strategic army strength than an entire sky drake. (Kind of like heroism on haldling swordsmen is a bigger jump to army strength than summoning a pack of ghouls.)

For me it depends on my opponent. If they can kill the sky drake, they can probably kill whatever else I might have supporting the sky drake. There's almost nothing that kills a sky drake that ISN'T effective against your next unit.

On the other hand, my uber buffed orc hordes, if they fight magicians, will win. The magicians can dispel the buffs OR throw fireballs that hurt the horde.. But not both. So the magicians either can't hurt the horde due to the buffs, or they can dispel the buffs and end up too weak to hurt the horde.

Similarly, against many enemies, they simply can't dispel the buffs - so the horde is far stronger than the sky drake.

What it comes down to is that the enemy has a much harder time dealing with the buffs than just dealing with strong creatures.

But dispelling wave IS a thing, and 2 out of 3 games have enemies with dispelling wave.

You could probably reduce the prices, although I'd probably start in the 25 mama range and see how it works instead of jumping straight to 50ish.

[Seravy]

Lionheart + some common buffs on an orc horde is a bigger jump in your strategic army strength than an entire sky drake.

That's one of them. (We don't need to change the cost on everything the same way)
Also, while you say "some common buffs", if you add the price together, that's the price of the entire Sky Drake - LH 200, Heroism 75, Endurance 70, Holy Armor 35, Bless 35, already 380 out of the 500 cost of the Sky Drake, but chances are the AI will also throw flight or holy weapon or spell lock or whatever in the mix, raising it above - even without adding any other rare buff.

Meanwhile Magic Immunity, Regeneration, and Invulnerability contribute zero strategic power (and aside from MI, the others contribute zero to the survivability of the unit against resistance based spells in normal as well - yes the unit probably also has bless or resist magic on it but that is easy to dispel and offers marginal protection.)

The only part where things go a bit questionable is Divine Order. With 3 of those, the cost is less than half the usual while summons are 30% more. So I think the above example of LH+commons is fairly priced (better than summons with some DO, worse without)...but the other rare buffs that don't offer strategic (or any combat) stats, idk. Even if the AI pays half price for it, they still pay almost 500 total for an Invulnerable, Flying, Invisible, Regenerating Magic Immune creature...and while that sounds intimidating, it's hardly stronger than without any buffs if it has to melee something like an army of a stag beetles. Ultimately all of these spells are situational - if the enemy can use single figure brute force damage to kill it (like their Sky Drake), they barely do anything.

btw, how about adding a "Spell Lock" AI category, that casts Spell Lock as an on-demand spell for each unit that has 5 or more buffs on them?

[Nelphine]

I'd do it for 4 or more personally. And its provably a good idea, but shouldn't be crazy high priority (not like disjunction against high priority globals or anything).

[Seravy]

Continued here : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8831

[zhantul]

My uber buffed orc hordes, if they fight magicians, will win. The magicians can dispel the buffs OR throw fireballs that hurt the horde.. But not both. So the magicians either can't hurt the horde due to the buffs, or they can dispel the buffs and end up too weak to hurt the horde.

Similarly, against many enemies, they simply can't dispel the buffs - so the horde is far stronger than the sky drake.

What it comes down to is that the enemy has a much harder time dealing with the buffs than just dealing with strong creatures.

Actually, I feel like the AI wins the battle against your hordes. Not by killing, but by profit vs cost.

Let's say magicians casting dispel against uber buffed hordes: LH 200, Heroism 75, Endurance 70, Holy Armor 35, Bless 35, = 380 cost in mana. Even losing only one third of the buffs on each means you lose. The enemy only loses 120 cost for each magician. Not even going to count if they can kill one or two of your hordes.

Leaving lionheart out. That still is a buff cost of 180 each. That means 2/3 buffs gone is the break even point. With the AI advantages, that means you lose. If you are fighting for a city, that would be acceptable losses, but for a regular battle... Not so much.

I'll choose the two sky drakes at the old cost vs a stack of nine fully buffed hordes.

[Nelphine]

Right but if I'm attacking, I choose the battles. It will be for a city.

And if you're going a buff strategy to this extent, you take specialist. Unless they're runmsdter, that means each magician dispel will average less than one spell dispelled. Call it 7 spells for all 9 dispels. 7 spells at an average cost of 60, and no lionhearts typically are dispelled, leavesy hordes enough HP that (unless fighting something like high elf, halfling, high men, or trolls) the magicians probably won't kill a single horde.

Now the cost is 420 mana for my 6 lost spells vs 1080 production for 9 magicians. If its one of the races mentioned, then I'll probably lose a whole unit (75 production and 250 more mana) or two (150 production and 500 mana) - worst case I still only lose 800 mana and 150 production in return for 1080 production and a city.

Edit: and if the magicians are 3 of the races that are likely to actually cause casualties, they're all more expensive than the base magician cost.

[Seravy]

Continuing the game, hoping to finish today - but it isn't going that way.

I was able to finish summoning a stack of 8 Gorgons - the blue wizard was busy creating an artifact. I sent those fully buffed (endurance, lank linking, iron skin) into her capital, after sending 3 other stacks to get rid of units - I managed to kill the 2 angels and 3 warlocks, leaving the city with the 4 heroes and 5 zombies (she stole Zombie Mastery from the Myrran wizard.).
Well, my gorgons failed to even damage the heroes, let alone kill any. By the time they got anywhere near to attacking, all of them already had Mind Storm on them, though I have doubts they would have worked better otherwise. Those heroes have 20+ armor, all life and sorcery buffs, spell lock, etc. I was really stupid to expect that sort of attack to work.
For now I have to go with the secondary plan. I'll ignore the blue wizard - if they offer peace, that's the best but even if they don't, I don't care. They have only 3 cities and an outpost left and all have Pestilence on them. In another 50 or so turns they'll go down to 1 population and lose all normal units. I still won't be able to kill the heroes, but a wizard with no power income (warp node+evil presence) and no normal units is as good as dead.

Unfortunately, while I spent a good 15 years of the game trying to beat this wizard, the others had too much time. Red still only has 5 cities so no problem there - she is my next target. Guardian will be difficult, but aside from the capital (no I'm not even going to try that), I can use bless+resist elements to handle the magicians. I'm worried about the slingers though. Still, those have low health so waves of despair should work if nothing else.

Problems start when looking at the Myrran wizard. Aside from Zombie Mastery which is a pain by itself, she has Life Force, Enlightenment and Crusade. So I don't have too much time, probably at best 10 years, to win or at least get a stack that can banish her. Fortunately, no sorcery so no unstoppable heroes in the capital expected. What I really don't like in this is, blue will steal those spells. Fortunately, Pestilence will be able to keep it under control - without that I'd be in big trouble.

   

[Seravy]

Decided to drop this game because blue stealing enchantments was a bug - she did not have Spell Binding to do it, and that Zombie Mastery definitely was relevant by countering my original plan of spearmen spam.

[Seravy]

Started a new game with similar parameters.

Decided to drop 2 Death books - guaranteed Dark Rituals is very powerful for this wizard but I'm not willing to start without Web again.
So now I have 2 Life, 4 Nature, 4 Death, Cult Leader, Astrologer (as I'm going to get nodes with sprites and longbowmen in the early game, and my late game is not strong enough with such a low amount of very rares), High Elf. This setup is probably weaker overall than the previous, but more stable and has a better very early game.

So far the game is surprisingly similar to the previous one.
The life/death and the sorcery/life wizards from the previous game are present (life/death is on arcanus now though). Instead of pure Life Guardian, there is a pure Death guardian (with 1 nature book). The last, Myrran wizard is unknown (no opening Just Cause of sorcery globals, so expecting nature/chaos/death.)
Overall, less Life and Sorcery than the last game - while enemy wizards are very similar, it will probably turn into a very different game (no mass divine order and spell blast spam expected).
Getting multiple nodes with sprites is also similar, but spells are different - haven't seen Lycantrophy yet, nor Shadow Demons, but I have War Bears and Astral Gate (I better start casting that soon).

...found the Myrran wizard using Earth Lore. I have no contact yet but based on their name, they are Chaos/Death, and they play Draconians. It might be a good idea to focus on eliminating them before bothering to fight Arcanus wizards. I did get Shadow Demons meanwhile, which should be a strong tactic against a chaos/death wizard.

[Seravy]

Myrran wizard contacted - as expected, Chaos+Death. Also has Guardian so 3 out of 4 AIs have it, ouch.