Myrran retort

[Seravy]

One problem I see with that sort of change is, stats only come in increments of 1.
If we want to maintain the same relative strength of stats/units, we'd need to add the same amount of attack/defense, but the two don't scale the same way.

Assuming the average unit is +1 To Hit with Magic Weapons and +0 To Def, we'd need to add 1.33 DEF for each 1 ATK this way on each unit if we narrowed it down by exact 1 point. As that can't be done, the existing balance is distorted and the role of units shifts, either towards offense or defense depending on which way we round the stat.


This, and the large amount of work associated makes me dislike this option regardless of how it works or does not work.

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 assumed "balancing around level 2" means to make level 2 compare to spells and summons the same way as level 0 does currently.
In this case your suggestion literally does nothing for the current situation indeed - I did test using a level 2 mithril unit against enemy summoned units which is your baseline. So it'd be a hell of a lot of work to the extent of starting over from v0.1 on trying to set unit stats, and wouldn't even achieve anything at all.

Anyway, my conclusion is armor stacking can't be solved by reducing the amount of armor or increasing the attack strength of nonbuffed units as doing either will break game balance in other areas too much. Which means we need to fix it through means of hurting the unit either targeting resistance or by ignoring the armor.

For that, the following (available early enough) mechanics qualify :
Illusion (Phantom Warriors)
Poison (Nagas, Ghouls)
Armor Piercing (fortress lightning, pikemen)
Eldritch (currently not used on any common tier unit or spell. If we could somehow squeeze it into common tier Chaos it would help quite a bit)

No, I haven't tried the golems completely without Life magic but I did try without Endurance. I'd expect you need at least 3 golems to win if they are completely unbuffed and have 7 base defense, mithril and 2 levels based on that but I could have fielded those 3 golems if needed. Takes like 2 turns to produce one even if the cost is raised. Bu Golems are a special case because they are accelerated by dwarf economy and have higher than normal stats, we should think about them after fixing the generic problem of buffed swordsmen, warships, etc.

[Nelphine]

So, in that case, if we don't think non dwarves can do it effectively, and we can't realistically change the stats of things like swordsmen, what about reducing dwarf economy? They wouldn't be able to get enough buffs out then.

[Seravy]

See my post with the list of units I consider able to do it. It's not only dwarves but mostly so.
So far Dwarves and Warships I tested and proven to be able to do this, Dark Elf Halberdiers and Stag Beetles I have not but we should if we take the path of changing units individually. (Not a fan of low resistance ships though. Albeit it does add to Sorcery's ability to control seas - it has both Resist Magic and resistance based curses - so maybe it's fine?)
Still that means we need resistance 6 Dwarf swordsmen.

Oh and one more possible path is to eliminate resistance as a bonus from levelups entirely, but spells have been balanced with the assumption they do get some so that might not be a good idea.

[Seravy]

Test results :

Ultra Elite Stag Beetle with mithril and life buffs can do it. (didn't use adamant because it's unlikely on Arcanus.)
Adamant Dark Elf Halberdier also won, barely (but two of them would have been easy wins.)
Warship, Dwarf units already tested. Galley isn't but it's very similar to a warship so I assume it works.

So this is most likely the full list of units affected.

So we either need to drop these units all to 6 base resistance, or need to make Poison have an appropriate save modifier. (which means we probably need to also adjust other stats on poison units, arrrgh)
Somehow incorporating Eldritch into Chaos spells is also desired, that would make 4 realms have a counter instaed of 3. While Eldritch Weapon sucked for pretty much every purpose, in this case it feels missing.

[Seravy]

They wouldn't be able to get enough buffs out then.

I'd like to point out that "Enough buffs" in this case literally means 1x Endurance, 1x Heroism, 1x Holy Armor and 1xWraith Form (can be replaced by Water Walking actually) which is about 200 MP. You don't need an economy. If you really want to throw in Resist Magic or Bless, it still won't exceed the cost of 5 bears and you only need one of these. Two if you want to be extra cautious and win even if the enemy found dispel magic or somehow gets lucky.
Chances are finding the enemy capitals takes more time than buffing your unit. (and you only need one - you can send it to each fortress one at a time, it's not like it'll be still hurt by the time it arrives to the next, or you can engage a random enemy unit to heal it up.)
If you are paranoid and want to be safe at home just in case someone decides to not stay defeated, you need 1 more unit to defend your capital.

...it's questionable how well the AI can protect itself when playing life if life stops being effective against Nagas and Ghouls though, but I'm betting they can due to numbers - buffed units alone might be weak against them but 4-5 buffed units will beat them and the AI can afford buffing more than the human.

[Nelphine]

Personally i think dropping dwarf resistance to 6 isn't a good idea. I think you're getting into 'to heck with balance' territory again. Resistance 7, maybe. I'd rather keep it at 8. I suppose if you start hearing about people doing this a lot...

On the other hand, dropping ships to 4-6 resistance I'm OK with.

[zitro1987]

The following mixture may in conjunction fix some of these concerns: golem with less armor more hp, endurance being common with just +1 move, and dwarf race non-military tweaks
*Golem being hp powerhouse but low-ish armor and cheaper. Armor reduced to 4-5. No missile/weapon immunity. HP increased to 25. Cost about 120-140. Yes, fortress strike won't hurt them, but that hp can be easily chipped away and endurance doesn't grant too much extra armo (but read below about endurance)
*I said it a million times, but endurance is a huge balance problem at common and even hard to comprehend the +1 to defend relating to speed. I simply don't understand the reasoning behind changing what could be a fun cheap buff of +1 movement. I'm not a huge fan of making it uncommon, but it really is a solution (you may say you can rush-research it, but you just lost mana or skill that way) Without an early heroism+holy armor+endurance combo, these early rush mega-unit strategies are not as good. Sure, you can say 'but I have warlord, adamantium, etc', but your mega-buff have gotten a bit weaker.
*Holy weapon cost reduced to 40 for balance. I want to see its cost based more on how it benefits city mid-tier units. In most ways, a cheap endurance without +1 to defend is a life realm boost as endurance is too expensive for most early units.
*Most of your arguments appears to be (I can buy this or that and still make it work). So what if we reduce the dwarf gold bonus from +100% to +50% but to not nerf the race, we allow amplifying tower and bank? Less gold at first, but it may catch up.

It's now more difficult to early-rush with high-armor units this way. Now the counter-arguments end up being good, even very good strategies like summon-based ones, but they're no longer instant 'I WIN!' strategies.

Notes:
Adamantium is probably not a problem as an alchemist (common with dwarf wizards) still needs alchemist guild to grant the benefit. That's 300 gold that could have been mana.
Losing so much gold with dwarves to rush to golems is a lot of potential research points, mana, and skill if playing alchemist (very likely if you play dwarves). But the point is, there's too much gold early on for dwarves!

[Seravy]

Most of your arguments appears to be (I can buy this or that and still make it work). So what if we reduce the dwarf gold bonus

Problem with Dwarf economy is that it has 3 different boosts that all lead to the same result. Double from Ores? More money. Double taxes? More Money. 3 hammers per worker? Yes, faster production = less money needed. Take one away and the race still does the same thing except with less unused gold remaining after you won.

Personally i think dropping dwarf resistance to 6 isn't a good idea. I think you're getting into 'to heck with balance' territory again. Resistance 7, maybe. I'd rather keep it at 8.

Well the thing is I just tested resist 7 base units and 7 is too much. With levels that goes up to 9 which means 0.4 damage taken per ghoul shot only. And we need to err on the opposite side because we also want the tactic to fail if the attacker brings more than one unit (but fewer than idk, 4-5 which actually is hard to buff up and means you lose a lot of value and can't do it again on another wizard)

So I have been thinking and I believe the best would be...

Ships down to 7 resist, so then everything has 7 resist that is problematic except dwarves.
Poison rolled at -1 save. That way units have 6 effective resistance against poison which is the goal, without losing much against spells.
Dwarf racial +4 down to +2 - the race has so many good things going on that +4 is a crazy overkill. At +2, they start at 6 on swordsmen, 7 on halberdiers which meets the goals.
Wraith Form loses Poison Immunity - if Poison is meant to be a common tier relevant strategy that regulates overpowered other tactics by diversifying damage sources, it shouldn't be that easy to gain complete immunity to it. Death will still have the immunity on all their fantastic units which is plenty - granting it to normal units isn't a tactic even considered before as zombies are more effective to counter nagas.

Nagas will deal 12*.2=2.4 damage per attack so if the nagas surround the unit, healing can't keep up with the damage. Even if it could, the nagas don't go down in a single counterattack, so we can reasonably expect each to deal this damage roughly 3 times in the battle (as the enemy units have low numbers) for a total of ~7 damage per naga, or 42 total, which is enough to kill a 18 hp unit with 3 heals by itself, and still have some extra left over, and that's without fortress lightning. So nagas are fine as is. It's worth saying they will do 1.2 extra damage per attack on average against any unit compared to before, so we might want to reduce them to 4 attack to compensate (albeit that makes them overly weak against death creatures which are immune to poison)

Ghouls however only deal a total of .8 each attack, so even assuming each ghouls gets to strike 6 times (4 ranged 2 melee), their total damage is 4.8, with 6 units, only ~30. That's a bit on the low end, inadequate if there are 2 attackers. Raising them to poison 2 would however be overkill, and would result in overpowered ghouls. (even the added -1 modifier might increase their power significantly, dealing 2.4 damage more in a typical combat, so they can beat roughly half a swordsmen more than before per unit of ghoul.)
Ghouls have a fairly high garrison priority, so we can hope the typical wizard owns more than 6 in their fortress, and the additional lightnings finish the units off. They also have a good chance to be enchanted by Focus Magic or Darkness, giving them a chance to deal at least a few points of damage despite the defenses on units.

To Summarize:
-Galley, War Ships to 7 resistance
-Poison gets -1 to save
-Consider Poison change effect on Wyvern, Wyrm, Manticore, possibly reduce poison amount as needed.
-Dwarf resistance down by 2 on swordsmen, halberdier
-Wraith Form stops granting Poison Immunity
-Maybe increase early fortress lightning strength (to be on the safe side)
-Retest ghouls later, if necessary raise their cost (need to test them anyway)
-Find a solution to the golem issue
-Investigate dwarf economy to see if reaching an armorer's guild unit this early is caused by the race itself, the terrain (mountains are suspicious, I had plenty and they add a ton of production), or my retorts (omniscient in particular)
-Consider adding another bonus to Wraith Form to replace poison immunity? Unsure if needed, the spell is good even without that.
-A new source to grant poison immunity at uncommon or rare? Also unsure if needed. All 11 resistance units are naturally immune to poison.
-A way for Chaos to grant Eldritch? No idea how to achieve that and honestly might be overkill. If there are too many answers to the buff tactic, we are back to "Life is unplayable". Albeit my assumption that Life beats this tactic isn't proven. It might not - if the AI has buffed units that still have too low attack power compared to what the player has (klackon halberdier with their high armor is a major candidate for this case) - and if Life isn't good at beating it, then Chaos needs to be.
-Guardian Spirit might need to lose Poison Immunity as it provides an extra resistance to your buffed unit, halving poison damage, while being immune to it by itself.

Do note that the tactic still works if the player decides to take a "reload until Orihalcon" route but I don't want to bother with that sort of abuse. Orihalcon is a very rare ore, so you can't rely on it under normal conditions.


If there are no objections, I can start implementing these changes starting tomorrow morning.

[zitro1987]

I think those seem reasonable ideas so far, with special emphasis on the golem issue and why dwarves have just so much gold/production potential.

Slight concern on wraithform being rather expensive without poison immunity. Maybe reduce upkeep to 1?

[Seravy]

About the Endurance granting +1 To Def...
Without that, how is Life AI supposed to play in the early game?
Heroism+Holy Armor costs a fortune and doesn't result in a unit powerful enough to actually beat things or survive unless backed by a retort stacking tactic and ores. Guardian Spirit is still not a military purpose summon that can expect to fight well. (and it probably shouldn't be, as its noncorporeal which is a huge deal)
We finally taught the AI how to use buffing tactics - if we remove Endurace we might as well throw that all out along with it because that is what makes buffing good at common/uncommon tier.

Slight concern on wraithform being rather expensive without poison immunity. Maybe reduce upkeep to 1?

That is an option. Or we can drop the cost by 5-10 MP. Did anyone even use that poison immunity? I always used zombies against poison enemies.
(also, isn't being noncoropreal which is effectively overland flight, plus having magic weapons and weapon immunity worth the 75? That's still a lot of good stuff!)