Myrran retort

[Seravy]

Dwarf totally is the issue - if the figures have lower health, it results in more lost figures so less damage dealt overall - especially during retaliation -, so it takes longer to kill everything which makes the unit take even more damage. Ofc, other races can just use halberdiers instead of swordsmen, but Nomads actually don't get any and other races don't get anywhere near in resistance to be completely immune to poison damage.

Although a High Elf Halberdier with Resist Magic on it could achieve the same thing.

Well, there is one thing I could think of, making Endurance uncommon, as that defense and movement boost is essential in this tactic, but without Endurance Life would suck in the early game and we don't even have an uncommon that can be moved down to common either.

[Seravy]

...also researching an uncommon isn't that hard in the early game if one really wants to so that isn't all that helpful either.

[Arnuz]

Maybe you remember that we've already pushed for endurance to be movement only and lower cost, given that it seems to create issues everywhere.

2. Golem needs to lose Magic Immunity.
3. Golem probably needs to lose some armor and gain movement and first strike instead, but this one I'm a bit unsure about right now. If fortress lighting is stronger, it can't beat fortresses too easily, but can still wipe out everything else, and it's far too good at that. (and using more than one to beat fortresses anyway is still an option...)

At that point call it cavalry (or even paladins) and call it a day? I think you're trying to solve the wrong problem...

- leave golem as it is, reduce its ATTACK STRENGTH (yes, damage). Eventually add a building requirement, any advanced building is tbh fine.
- fix endurance: movement only, cheaper

The golem becomes a thing to deal easily with ranged magic but not much else. A specialised tool. Thanks to the lowered damage it doesn't defeat easily normal units, especially behind a city wall. This leaves dwarves with a clear disadvantage - no cavalry - and a clear advantage - strength vs. ranged magic.

[Seravy]

Not sure which one you are suggesting but here goes.

Original : Golem was taking 2 damage.
Test 1 : Golem with original stats and no Endurance.
Victory, Golem takes 12 total damage, no healing used
Test 2 : Same without Magic Immunity
Loss, Golem kills 7 units, 2 units survive, 3 healing used. 2 Golems would have won and I do have 2 Golems if needed.
Test 3 : Same, without Magic Immunity, but Elite Golem and Adamantium
Win, 3 Healing used, Golem takes 17 total damage
Test 4 : Golem with original stats and endurance but no Magic Immunity
Win, Golem takes 9 damage, no healing used.

So removal of Endurance and Magic Immunity both help quite a bit but even if the unit has neither, it STILL wins the battle with 9 base armor.

City Walls don't matter for a golem, as it has Wall Crusher.
Low damage, don't like that.
If the golem has enough armor to not take damage, it will work even if it kills things slowly.
If the golem doesn't have enough armor, and also deals low damage, it's not worth producing. Hammerhands deal lots of damage.

[Seravy]

Checked, Fortress Lightning already deals Arcane type damage so Bless shouldn't affect it. So the only problem is, the strength being too low, I guess. (Currently 10+Skill/8, but a max of 32. So in case of early attacks, 12-13. Which means 3.6-3.9 damage per turn, minus the armor effect. At 12 armor, that can block 1.8 damage, leaving 1.8-2.1 to go through. So if the battle ends in less than 10 turns, the 20 health unit won't die. With 3 heals, that can go up to 17 turns. )

[Nelphine]

And if you're not against ghouls/naga, you don't need poison resist and you're back to any race being able to do it. (You can CERTAINLY make twice as many swordsmen as golems, which gives the required HP).

So against 60% of AI, just rush buffed swordsmen.


Drop level 1 to +1 attack, level 2 to +1 armor, level 3 to +1 hp/resist, level 4 to +1 attack/armor, add +1 resist to level 5 (in addition to +1 HP and +1 to hit); drop mithtil to +1 attack, and adamantium to +1 attack and +1 armor.

Now variance between level 0 and level 4 adamantoum is +3 attack +3 armor instead of +5 attack +5 armor. Much easier to balance.

Increase all city troops in the whole game by +1 attack and armor, redo summons as appropriate (probably +1 attack or armor or both in most cases, maybe +2 attack for some of the higher ones.)

[Seravy]

Eh no if I have to wreck core game mechanics like that for balance, I rather not have balance at all. It's not worth that much, if people are bothered by winning too easily, they can just not play this tactic.

But let's look at numbers.

Adamant : 2 DEF
Holy Armor : 2 DEF
Heroism (or levels, but not both) : 2 DEF
Retorts : 2 DEF (Warlord and Tactician)
Endurance : 3-5 DEF worth of +1 To DEF

So, your suggestion removes 2 of that 13. Not much. (Same deal as defense stacking on late game heroes, there are too many sources)

The major problems I see here are :

1. Golems. Normal units you can build early shouldn't have 9 base defense and we've already proven dwarves can build even the most expensive building requirements on a not-so-good start early. The production bonus, the mineral bonus, the economic effect of retorts all add up, and not building settler(s) is a huge acceleration too. (especially considering Dwarf Settler costs more than normal)
2. Life magic has 3 common spells that buff armor and they all stack. That's too much. This category can contribute up to 7 DEF alone.
3. Warlord. No, not the defense. The extra health. This retort makes any race into dwarves. That extra health per figure is most definitely needed for this tactic.
4. The mechanic designed to counter this tactic, Fortress Lightning, is beaten by it.

To achieve anything, we most likely need to deal with all 4 of these individually.

1. Lose Magic Immunity and armor. But then it becomes strictly inferior to hammerhand. So it needs to gain something instead. Only obvious one I can think of is speed+first strike, and no I don't like that solution much.
2. This is unsolvable. We've discussed it for months. If Life can't stack defense buffs, it has nothing for the early game and becomes unplayable, especially for the AI but also the human.
3. Don't want to remove Warlord from the game, and it's perfectly balanced for most of the game...but breaks everything in the first 50 turns, so no idea.
4. This is easy, raise the base 10 in the lighting to 12, or 15 or however much needed.

Since we can't find good solutions to most of these, we should also ask, do we really need to change all 4?
What happens if we only do "4" which is easy?
Well, the wizard won't get defeated. You can kill their troops, cities, etc, but not their fortress. So their troops will get their chance to attack you, so you need defenders and in general, much more troops to actually win the war - you literally have to wipe everything they have from the map except the capital. This gives enough time for other wizards to grow, so if you want to do the same to them as well, you're in a much worse position : they now have hordes of units and better spells.
...actually, isn't that good enough? I don't think we can do better without losing something important...
But this implies the lightning and uncommon level troops and spells are effective against golems. So Golems need to lose the magic immunity - they can probably keep the armor.
Do note that this means the strategy still wins the game up to medium levels of difficulty, where the AI can't build up enough and spam enough units to matter, but that's acceptable. It also means it's slightly (ok, a lot) more powerful for Myrran players who only need to fight two players this way instead of one.

The only real problem I see with this logic is, if you can field 9 of the mentioned unit instead of one, lightning won't be fast enough to stop you....but if you have 9 obviously superior units against an enemy, you are supposed to win in the first place anyway, and 9 fully buffed units isn't that trivial to produce even if swordsmen - these buffs are expensive. The cost exceeds that of a 9 Werewolf army which also wins and is meant to win this kinda of battle.

As a side thought, moving Dispel Magic up or down on the AI research priority can regulate how much of a counter they have against life buffing. Currently it's about the last common spell they research because we want common buffs to be reliable for at least the very early game. (Not necessary for Life wizards, but Guardian Wind, Focus Magic, etc are a thing too, as well as Wraith Form, Cloak of Fear...)
Likewise, making Phantom Warriors or Psionic blast higher or lower priority/cost can regulate how much answer Sorcery has to the problem.

[Nelphine]

I disagree. The strength of tactician, holy armor (and all other spell buffs), summons, fortress lightning, spells, are all based on something.

I've asked in the past what the 'baseline' city troop is for balancing. You've indicated it is on the low end of the scale. That means ANYTHING balancrd around level 0 units, including life common buffs, or fortress lightning, become unbalanced when applied to level 4 adamantium units.

My suggestion isn't meant to fix this problem by itself - its meant to get at an underlying problem that crops up throughout the game. Stacking buffs is ALWAYS a city troop thing - no one ever talks about megabuffing summons, even if hydra are hands down the best thing to do so.

But by reducing the variance in city troops, your own question can be answered easier - balancing fortress lightning becomes easier when the range of units it has to stop is reduced. Warlord becomes less powerful, early and late. Difference between rich and poor games is reduced. Difference between that ONE enemy city with adanantium, compared to the entire other empire, is reduced. The stark difference between raging against a chaos opponent, or crushing all your enemies with adamtium, is reduced.

[Nelphine]

You'll still probably want to modify things such as fortress lightning and endurance - but I don't see how a +1/+1 difference over 4 levels, and a +1/+1 difference on adamantoum can be seen as core, in a game where you've out so much effort into balancing summons, and prioritizing summons. (Especially when a key part of my suggestion is to give all city units +1/+1, thus making them equivalent to current barracks baseline, meaning the max difference is only -1/-1 overall.)

[Catwalk]

I wouldn't mind seeing all units rebalanced like Nelphine proposes, but I think it'd be too much work for Seravy.

Golem fix:
1) Push Endurance to Uncommon, it's a crazy Common spell. Bump True Sight to Common, it's too weak for Uncommon.
2) Require both Armorer's Guild and Mechanician's Guild to build Golems. The fact that dwarves have good economy doesn't mean this nerf is irrelevant, or impotent. It'll slow your first golem by a significant number of turns.
3) It should absolutely keep Magic Immunity, as this is what makes it unique.
4) Lower armor to 8. That's still formidable for a normal unit.
5) Lower speed to 2, both for lore and balance reasons.
6) Increase cost to 240. This matters less late game, matters heavily early on. Golems are not unbalanced mid-game and on.

Golems shouldn't be a primary unit, it should be a special unit that's useful whenever you're facing heavy spellcasting.
There are many simple ways to balance Golems, I don't see a big problem here.