Myrran retort

[Nelphine]

Nah doom drakes are definitely not the same. But that unit isn't really important. (It would be more like a single figure cross between a paladin/elven lord and a minitaur in terms of stats, which isn't something the race needs because they do have doomdrakes.)

But you missed the point. Draconians don't do ranged. Their powerful units are in your face. Shaman, exactly as they are, are fine. And any unit such as you describe would have the same balance problem of being mass producable sprites affected by warlord. Exactly what we don't want from a balance view.

[Catwalk]

I think it'd function fine with just using shamans. Does anyone ever use bowmen or shamans with other races, btw? For almost every race you have better options available to you.

[Seravy]

Their powerful in its are in your face.

Ehhh. No way, dragons are supposed to be very intelligent, even more than humans. If I'm flying and can attack the enemy safely using ranged anything, I will do that. Only idiots go and melee an enemy that can't reach them. Let's leave that for trolls, shall we? They don't get bowmen and that's perfect.

[Seravy]

I often use bowmen in the early game if I want to produce garrison units in a nonmilitary city. I sometimes make them against phantom sorcery nodes, or other easy lairs as well. I almost never make shaman unless I need to clean the land - they are inferior to bowmen in combat and need an extra building. Healing sounds nice in theory but in practice, swordsmen/bowmen don't live long enough to really have use for healing, and if I have better units, I rather produce those than shaman.

...maybe Shaman are underpowered, I wonder? Healer and Purify are worth the cost on its own, but the combat effects, they are questionable. Unless you want to heal some big rare creature or hero. So yeah, Shaman are utility, not damage dealers and that's probably fine.

[zitro1987]

If bowmen are dropped, we could try a new kind of unit - a flying melee (fire-breathing) unit with caster 20 requiring buildings associated with wisdom (sage's guild?)

[Nelphine]

Right dragons are intelligent. Draconians are not dragons. That's why they worship dragons in most fiction. They want to be dragons, but they get blinded by the brute strength of dragons and try to mimic that. If anything, I'd go back to that solo figure armorer's guild unit, and give it casting capability on top of immense melee power - the most powerful draconians realize dragons are more than just brute strength, but not most draconians.

Edit: sages guild requirement would be fine too. If it was armorer's guild and sages guild, you could make it 1 figure, 25 caster, 15 melee, 4-5 fire breath, fly 2-3, 8-10 shields. 20 ish hp. Give it 2 spells by default (fire bolt and dispel magic?), +2 to hit. And then I'd give it battlemage 2 or 3 so it could continually recast spells.


But I don't really know that we need this new unit.

I'd probably beg for dwarf priests first.

[Seravy]

Well, I guess I have lots of time to think about this. I still want to play at least 2 more Dwarf games before moving to another race and I'm not removing units unless I played the race and found it overpowered myself. (sure, they are with warlord tactician but without? and with dwarf cities full of cannons? etc etc)
Melee caster is an interesting idea, I think I like that - if we absolutely need to remove the bowmen, it's a good option.

But I was hoping for some simple solution that can be done immediately so I can face the already "fixed" draconian opponents in my remaining dwarf games. Bowmen won't be relevant for that, it's still a human only tactic.

[Nelphine]

That's one of the reasons I'm OK with bowmen removal. Bowmen simply aren't relevant for the AI - they get halberdiers too quickly so never need to bother with bowmen. Therefore the only time they ever matter is if the human builds them en masse - which they only do if they chose warlord+ and planned for it.

A human not abusing them or the AI or neutrals might have scattered bowmen, but never in such quantities that their removal would change how a war player out. (The odd neutral will be weaker due to it, but with inherent flying, not a lot weaker. Neutral bowmen just don't pose much of a threat.)

[zitro1987]

Bowmen draconians are overpowered with other options:
*Mithril/Adamantium
*Alchemist
*warlord-alone, tactician not very important.
*low production and higher damage potential make it better than sprites - thus strategies that allow your town to build a few stacks.

[Seravy]

Speaking of Draconians being a melee race, there is a huge problem with that.
Dwarves, Beastmen and Trolls all have bonus health (and even attack power for some). Fire Breath won't deal nearly enough damage to remove that advantage. (Even with the extra armor, you still don't want to melee these!). Dark elves have all ranged units - they kill the draconians before they reach them.

So a melee draconian unit is literally useless unless you can get it to Arcanus. Draconians have to be a ranged race - being melee is already taken by 3 of the 5 other Myrran races and they are all better at it. But ranged is already taken as well, by dark elves. So they actually aren't that good in combat (unless buffed), they are all about flying and nothing else. And flying does almost nothing for you if you are melee (unless the enemy is sitting at one place letting you surround them to stack counterattack penalties, but the AI moves their ground units to prevent that, and they can't use the surround tactic themselves.)

(unless we raise the fire breath to epic levels where it can actually negate the extra health of a typical troll or dwarf unit - then they can compete in melee. But I thought we are nerfing them not buffing so that doesn't sound right...)