Myrran retort

[Seravy]

Stacking buffs is ALWAYS a city troop thing

Well, yeah, since two of the buffs are normal unit only, as is adamant, and levels/warlord.

You can put Land Linking and Endurance on your summons at best. (and in late game, there are plenty of features to counter armor so it stops being a problem by the time rare spells come into play)

The added variance on city troops comes from

Being able to gain levels
Being affected by Holy Armor
Being able to gain adamant.

So that's 6 extra shields right there at the beginning of the game summons don't get. And even if we alter the whole system to get rid of 2 shields from that, they are still 4 shields ahead of summons which is a lot and then I'm ignoring the potentially higher base shields (The most durable bears start at  6, while golems are 9, beetles are 7)

But there is more, normal units can also have Chaos Channels (+3 DEF but uncommon), Flame Blade, and Holy Weapon! Oh, and they get a +1 Hit Bonus from having alchemy. So not only on defense but also on offense they get a lot of advantage, not to mention the extra hit points.

So yeah my point is, if we lose 2 DEF from that list, it can still be done. Remember I demonstrated with a Golem that had 2 less DEF than what it could have - only Mithril and Veteran level.

be seen as core

I look at it through a player's view. Is the bonus high enough to care? No? I play as though the mechanics didn't exist. Why build a city next to Mithril if it only gives 1 attack? Adamant maybe at +1/+1 but it's still disappointing and wouldn't really matter. Which then devalues transmute, corruption, raise volcano, alchemist guild with it.
Levels? Why care if they don't give me a big bonus? It's really hard to keep units alive, why care if it's not worth it?

I tried Civ 4 this week and it was so disappointing, like, anything I did felt worthless. 20 turns of building for +1 Food? 110 turns of research to be able to build a mine that gives me 2 gold on one particular tile of the map?  30 turns for a building that makes 0.5 gold? Ewww I don't care, actually I'll go back and play MoM again where things I build actually DO SOMETHING. (this wasn't the only thing that made me abandon the game but it was probably the greatest one. Everything I did felt completely unimpressive and not worth the effort of playing.)

3) It should absolutely keep Magic Immunity, as this is what makes it unique.

We tested this and the Golem still crushes the enemy fortress alone, even if it had no Endurance. Majority of damage comes from the lightning - common troops can't be expected to deal relevant damage to even a 9-12 armor unit.

2) Require both Armorer's Guild and Mechanician's Guild to build Golems.

Again I tested this and building the AG made no difference. I still finished both fortresses before turn 50 and did so despite playing poorly and having to search for it until the last moment.
And this idea was rejected 3 times already.

There are many simple ways to balance Golems, I don't see a big problem here.

I tested everything you suggest here already and it made no difference as stated in the posts above. I literally wasted 2000 gold value on currently unneeded buildings before producing the golem and still won years before the AI could have expected to stop it, even for Lunatic (tho the difficulty wasn't actually set at that level - the game should be balanced on Expert first, Lunatic afterwards).

I also tested using the Golem without Endunrance and with less armor. (tho not sure if I did the two at the same time, probably not but my golem was missing armor points anyway - no adamant and no max level)

...meanwhile I tested the stronger fortress lighting. It works fine against 1 golem, but 2 still wreck the city. So back to square one.

[Nelphine]

But that's my point. You can play summons, or you can play city troops who can be +5/+5 over their base values, without any spells in use at all. Spells can be countered - your own buffs or dispels, of magic completely unrelated to the buffs (like black sleep against holy armor).

The main problem right now, that golems are showing you, but is in fact exactly the same problem I've been using for my halberdiers since.. 2.8? is that you either balance spells and summons around level 0, and then city troops with that crazy +5/+5 card beat you. Or you balance spells and summons around some higher number, and AI who don't understand it, just die.

The difference should be lower, so that you can then balance around city troops, or, as you say, just accept that warlord/adamantium troops will win the game.

I'd much rather reduce mithril/adamantium, and add some more power production to each; make the unit bonus the icing, instead of the other way around.

Warlord still keeps a noticeable huge amount, your ores still are exciting to get, but for different reasons, and the AI who doesnt understand levels isn't simply destroyed by anyone who does.

[Seravy]

You failed to answer why you think removing 2 points of stats from a pile of 12 helps.

If you specifically want to remove the health bonus from the elite level, that I admit makes a difference. The rest, not so much.

The swordsmen I tested was mithril and without Tactician so it literally had the 2 lower DEF you are suggesting.

If you want to go this way you need to reduce holy armor to 1, remove endurance, reduce level effects drastically, reduce adamantium, remove tactician, and maybe even nerf chaos channels in case someone rushes it - draconians guarantee the +3 DEF effect with that. And then we have the ruins of a game that's utterly disappointing and full of features that suck and one I'd not bother to play, let alone mod.
More importantly we have an unplayable bottom tier Life realm.

(oh and even through all of that, the normal units would STILL have 3 extra DEF from buffs summons can't get. So we'd also need to cut everything down by a few points on top of it which then makes summons relatively better and then we are back to the "my enemy has 9 nagas and I can't stop it" thread.)

[Domon]

i'm totally with seravy into not berfing everything to boringness.

the beauty of mom/com it'exactly that everything is OP and still sort of works through rock/paper/scissor dynamics. we should embrace it and remembwr that as long as the struggle is significant, losing can be fun, too.

[Nelphine]

No, we don't need to do any of that. I don't want perfect equality - but a swing of 5 without spells is very large.

Spells are totally fine, as is tactician - they come with huge opportunity costs. But they're balanced around SOME base line of city troops.

Saying we're going to get that far because if a 2 point drop is ignoring the point. I'm trying to suggest a small change, in an area where there is room to make a change without much difference in the average case; and I'm specifically avoiding larger changes.


The point isn't to solve this problem. Its to make it so the actual solution you do go with doesn't have to be as large. Your lightning already isn't strong enough even with a boost - but on the other hand, lightning already annhilates low level troops. And, it destroys anything balanced to compete with low level troops - phantom warriors come to mind as very low stats. So if you increase it at all for this, everything that its currently balanced around (which is almost everything in the game), will take more damage.

Basically, right now, as far as I can tell, almost all spells/summons are balanced around level 0 or level 1 troops (including holy armor, chaos channels, and endurance, as well as things like fortress lightning and summons) Which means level 4 adamantium troops will always break the balance, which leads to most of the strongest strategies requiring warlord/rich minerals, and makes raise volcano an obvious source of ragequitting, because it actively attacks the strongest strategy without any counter. My suggestion effectively changes the game to balance around level 2 (or level 1 mithril).


Again, no this suggestion doesn't solve the currebt problems. But it makes any future changes, including the current dwarf rush topic, harder to balance without making something else worse.

Anyway, you're clearly against it. I understand why, and I believe that you're choosing to make things harder for balancing, but I do agree that enjoyment and fun are the best reasons to decide against something. I disagree that my suggestion hurts that noticeably, but I'm willing to be overruled on that.


So, I'll do another post more on topic with the possibilities you're willing to explore right now.

[Nelphine]

On topic of dwarf rush: 

I'd like to keep golems. I've already suggested a variation on complete magic immunity and heard no feedback. I also think dwarves should not have a fast unit, and would much rather drop golems to speed 2.

On dwarf swordsmen: if we aren't going to change the baseline variance, then I think we just accept that warlord + life wins. I don't like it, but I don't see how we can change any of the other bonuses, for exactly the reasons you've already outlined.

I've also suggested a way to drastically reduce dwarf income, which would at least slow golems a huge amount, with no feedback.

[Seravy]

(PS :  I haven't read the above two posts yet, will be doing it now.)
More brainstorming.

I think if at least 3 out of 5 realms can counter the superbuff tactic then the chance of beating all (2 or 3) wizards on your plane using it will be so unreliable and unlikely it's not worth going for it. With 3 out of 5 realms, the chance of each wizard not having either is below 20%, both not having it is less than 1 in 25 games, all three is pretty much never.

Resist Magic actually doesn't work against poison so there is no way to buff resistance at common aside from levels. (I always forget this!)

Dispel Magic is too expensive to be reliable in the early game on most difficulties and is a poor research pick for the AI in generic cases, so we should most likely not try to rely on that. It's also not fun to play against.

Let's see the realms.

Sorcery has Nagas, so it counters the buff tactic unless you are using units that have 7+ base resistance. It also might have Phantom Warriors or Psionic Blast but these are not top picks for the AI.
Death has Ghouls, while their poison is weaker, it's also ranged, allowing for much more attacks. Again, it counters the tactic unless the unit has 7+ base resistance.
Life has its own superbuffed units.
Chaos has no answer.
Nature has sprites who fly and bears which hit slightly harder and might be a threat to the buffed unit in larger numbers, plus web to buy time and call centaurs which are speed 4 so hard to catch. Meaning no direct answer but has decent indirect answers to stall/delay the tactic, overall so-so.

What does this mean? This means if we can somehow eliminate base resist 7+ units as potential buff targets, we are done with fixing the superbuff problem - buffing will still be overpowered but every wizard would have a 80%+ chance to be able to counter it at reasonable efficiency. (Do note the dwarf economy and golems specifically aren't fixed by this, I think that's a special case independent problem)

One thing first : Making True Sight common is definitely a bad move - as it actually prevents Sorcery from using two of their answers, even if not the primary one, but the ones most likely to be available everywhere unlike nagas which aren't combat summons.

So let's see which units are base 7+ resistance and out of those which are potential candidates for this sort of abuse.
1. Heroes. We fixed this one, heroes can't be hired before turn 30, which paired with the random chance for one, and their opportunity cost of needing several hundred unspent gold, plus the need for equipment to be actually formidable is enough.
2. Galley and Warships, unfortunately these can enter cities with Wraith Form and aren't hard to produce early (ship buildings are generally cheap).  I just tested and a solo Warship replacing the Golem allowed to win.
3. Priests and Magicians - these don't have the melee damage output and hit points to be able to pull this off.
4. Nightmares - Dark Elves don't have the kind of production acceleration Dwarves do so a Fantastic Stable unit is not realistic for the early game here.
5. Air Ship - Not enough melee damage, flies so enemies can't attack it to speed up combat by counterattack damage - can beat sprites though!
6. Dwarves - everything, even swordsmen.
7. Elven Lords, Pegasai, Paladins, Dragon turtles, War mammoths - See Nightmares
8. Doom Drakes - Hadriex has actually proven this one works on Impossible, albeit the retorts needed to build up to it are no longer available so see "4."
9. Dark Elf Halberdier - barely. Exactly 7 resistance, and with Warlord and elite, enough hit points. Might still take too much damage from poison at 9 resistance which is the best you can get without Orihalcon.
10. Stag Beetle - Klackons have increased growth and production so I think this one can be reached.
11. Nomad Swordsmen, Pikemen, Horsebowmen. - Former lacks health, latter two lacks shields (2 base).  Other units require armorer's guild so too slow.
12. Various fantastic creatures - these can't be buffed in the first place so no problem.

So, that's 4 different things.
We have two possible paths to solve the problem :

1. Reduce the resistance of the units in bold by 1-2 points as needed OR
2. Make poison roll the save at -1 or -2 as needed.
either way we also need to do
3. Wraith Form should not grant Poison Immunity.
otherwise this whole approach does not work.

Not too happy but this seems the best solution we have come up with so far (however it does not fix golems, which have native immunity to both poison and magic and have high armor even without buffing so that will be a separate thing to fix)

[Seravy]

My suggestion effectively changes the game to balance around level 2

That can be done without nerfing the hell out of everything. Just subtract 1-2 from all stats on all normal units as needed and done.

Except, that's a mistake. Common summons will be unstoppable if we do that. (We already had a topic where we discussed them being too relevant and ended up with "yes they are but can't fix that without breaking things even more elsewhere")


Sure, if we also halve the impact of levels, we can reduce the harm done by this bad move but it's still a bad move in the first place.

I've already suggested a variation on complete magic immunity and heard no feedback.

Not sure which you mean. Was it the 7 armor golem? I just tested Warship which is a 5 armor unit, WITHOUT Magic Immunity and it still beats that wizard in that game (and I think I also did that with a 5 armor golem previously and posted the result?). So 7 with Magic Immunity is clearly not going to work. Or was there a different suggestion?
(I'm intentionally ignoring the movement speed. Makes no difference, once the ghouls are out of ammo, they come to me anyway, I don't even need to move at all.)

[Nelphine]

My suggestion effectively changes the game to balance around level 2

That can be done without nerfing the hell out of everything. Just subtract 1-2 from all stats on all normal units as needed and done.

Except, that's a mistake. Common summons will be unstoppable if we do that. (We already had a topic where we discussed them being too relevant and ended up with "yes they are but can't fix that without breaking things even more elsewhere")


Sure, if we also halve the impact of levels, we can reduce the harm done by this bad move but it's still a bad move in the first place.

Except my suggestion ADDS stats to the bottom tier city troops (weakening the problem of common summons) while leaving level 2 troops about the same as now, and then only top end troops, who also have minerals get reduced. Its a narrowing, not a decrease.

I've already suggested a variation on complete magic immunity and heard no feedback.

Not sure which you mean. Was it the 7 armor golem? I just tested Warship which is a 5 armor unit, WITHOUT Magic Immunity and it still beats that wizard in that game (and I think I also did that with a 5 armor golem previously and posted the result?). So 7 with Magic Immunity is clearly not going to work. Or was there a different suggestion?
(I'm intentionally ignoring the movement speed. Makes no difference, once the ghouls are out of ammo, they come to me anyway, I don't even need to move at all.)

There's 2 different problems. One: stacking armour on high stat units can crush early things (note my balancing suggestion makes the early city troops stronger, which might make some of the common summons stronger to compensate, probably by +1 attack, which will make the AI units have a better chance of hurting your buffed units)

And 2, magic immunity. My suggestion is IF you can solve the first problem, that you replace with magic immunity with every other immunity plus inherent resist elements, and call the golems vulnerable to lightning. They could still be hurt by certain magclic like doombolts, or ranged magic attacks, but in that case the golem simply isn't antimagic - it just counters most forms of magic (its a golem, no mind to use illusions on. Its not alive, no death magic. It went through crazy creation, immune to fire and cold. Its not living, no poison. It's fine craftsmanship makes basic magic ranges attacks harder to hurt it, represented by resist elements. But due to its creation process, lightning is still effective.)

But since I then went on to discuss that dwarf swordsmen aren't solvable without other changes (see my suggestion on dwarf income), then I meant to imply that the magic immunity change is for later on, not for the immediate problem of dwarf rushing before 1403.

[zitro1987]

Did you try the golem rush (say, with 7 armor) without life magic?