EXP per unit killed

[Nelphine]

I'm definitely ok dropping sky Drake's to 20. Demon lords don't create enough undead yet. By the time an AI gets them, there's no neutrals left, and probably only one AI if even that. So all the undead they get us from humans anyway where it doesn't matter. For those occasional times they fight another AI, it should be awesome. But with sky drake at 20 it doesn't need to change. If sky drake goes to 20, death knights, great drakes, colossus and great wyrms can all stay in one group also 20.

Earth's elemental isn't worth 3/4 of a hydra. It's not equal remotely to a single chaos spawn. If hydra stays at 10 how can you justify earth elemental any higher than 4? And with chaos spawn at 8, that too points to a 4 for earth elemental.

And air elementals: how do you respond to my point that they're either super easy (and should be less XP) or impossible to kill (so XP value doesn't matter)?

Having fought a lot of wraith angel groups (wraiths reliably turn other AI angels into undead), you definitely want those two grouped. It's a nightmare facing speed 5 groups of 8 wraiths and an undead angel. Throw focus magic in to that and *shudder*. I'd say that combination (a death wizard and a seperate life wizard OR a life/death wizard) is far more common and therefore more important than great lizard angel combination (given that requires a nature life wizard, that also still summons a fair number of lizards and NOT a lot of rare nature summons).

I think you vastly overestimate how important regeneration is for ai offensive. Overland speed allows for far more attacks, even if regeneration allows for more attacks by the same stack. But facing 2 fast moving stacks is far far more dangerous than two regenerating slow stacks.

[Seravy]

I think you vastly overestimate how important regeneration is for ai offensive. Overland speed allows for far more attacks, even if regeneration allows for more attacks by the same stack. But facing 2 fast moving stacks is far far more dangerous than two regenerating slow stacks.

I prioritized the fast stack (12) above the regenerating one (8/10) so not sure where this comes from.
I didn't bother reacting to combat summons because I already explained my reasons and we obviously disagree. (btw Earth Elementals are harder to fight for my melee heroes then a Hydra. For ranged units it just doesn't matter, both are easy. Same for Chaos Spawn, it only deals 4 damage to my hero while the elemental with the 25 attack strength might do 10 - all I need is acceptable resistance.)

Good point about undead angels - I'll let them stay with Wraiths then.

I forgot to include Demons in the previous list, no idea what's a good position for them. They are quite weak and even slow so they'd be quite bad to include in almost any type of stack - but they deserve a high EXP value for being a combat summon that flies, probably at least 5-6 EXP.

[Suriname]

Oh, I knew there is one more use of these cost numbers but forgot what. Now I remember.
It also equals the amount the AI can raise using Life Steal or Create Undead.
So raising/lowering the value of Demon Lords, Death Knights, Wraiths, and Ghouls directly affects how many undead creatures the AI gets. This likely mostly matters on Ghouls - A stack of 9 Wraiths has enough total value to raise even the strongest creatures as undead I believe (don't remember what the multiplier is, 1 raised cost for 1 cost of create undead or less.) - but it's also quite relevant for zombies. Unless we are unhappy with the current state of the game, we should avoid changing these two.

IDGI. Does this mean that life steal undead creation is independent of target resistance in strategic combat and only works with a random roll based on the cost of the life stealing unit?

[Nelphine]

Resistance doesn't exist in strategic combat.

Seravy, heroes are less common than any other unit. Basing earth elemental cost around heroes... Actually this is for experience and heroes are the only ones who really care about experience. Ok I accept basing experience on heroes. 

Personally I think this makes air elementals much easier due to prolific true sight items. I also think you need to use more melee heroes that can heal themselves so that earth elemental damage doesn't matter but I accept your reasoning about earth elementals.

[Nelphine]

Re speed 2: talking about Shadow demons with the other uncommon summons. Yes I understand wanting to group shadow demons and lizards but I think shadow demons and chaos spawn are better.

Re: demons. I'd put them at 8 XP (the spells are actually really nasty, and I personally find them far more dangerous than earth elementals) and put them with the chimera group.


Edit: I think a lot of our disagreements come from what you want to level. I want to level bezerkers (and paladins and trolls and halberdiers); you want to level heroes.

Since I already consider a level 4 hero able to singlehandedly wipe out many AI and refuse to touch them as offensive units for that reason, this is probably where a lot of our differences are. With heroes, resistance based units don't matter, so they seem like they're worth less XP. With city units, especially the majority of the ones I use, they do, whereas brute force units like earth elementals (and hydras and even great drakes for that matter) don't matter.

However, for city units you just don't need that much XP to reach elite (ignoring warlord/crusade since they don't change the XP requirements). Heroes do need a lot of XP, but it's largely irrelevant. The difference between a level 4 and a level 10 hero is meaningless compared to the items they wear. (For ai this isn't true, they really want high level soul linkers. But we've already agreed we can't base XP around ai anyway!) So I guess it doesn't really matter overall what we do with XP. Fun thought experiment though.

[Seravy]

The thing about Air Elementals is that they pierce armor. (also they are fast, flying and invisible, hard to kill even for a hero until they have the proper counter equipment)

With heroes, resistance based units don't matter, so they seem like they're worth less XP. With city units, especially the majority of the ones I use, they do,

Until you have resist magic, or have the type of immunity for their ability (stoning, or death) which is usually not hard to have.

City units...get used up in battle anyway, I don't care about their experience, unless I'm playing life in which case I produced them at already max level so...they don't need it. (well, some of the less important ones do but not the main stack(s))

Will update previous post with 8 exp demons then (I don't think they are anywhere near as threatening or hard to kill as an Earth or Air elemental, but if they stack up with chaos spawn, that's an amazing thing. They cast Black Prayer!

IDGI. Does this mean that life steal undead creation is independent of target resistance in strategic combat and only works with a random roll based on the cost of the life stealing unit?

Unit abilities don't work in strategic combat (unless they are nonconditional stat boosting abilities, like Holy Bonus). Instead at end of combat, a Death wizard, or a wizard owning life steal or create undead units, gets to keep X value of total cost worth of dead enemy units as undead, where X depends on their death books, casting skill, and the total cost of the create undead/life steal units, otherwise Death would be massively disadvantaged at strategic combat.

[Seravy]

By the way, what do you think about giving the AI a difficulty based EXP multiplier? (for combat EXP only, not other sources)

[Nelphine]

Um. I don't think it matters too much. They already clear more nodes/lairs than the human, so I don't think they need an advantage there. Against the human it's the same. So the only time it matters is against other ai, and only to match combat summons. I don't think that's something you could easily match via a percent increase. However, I'd be interested in giving ai heroes bonus per turn XP (+1 at expert or advanced, +2 at master or lunatic).

[Seravy]

Yea I mostly think I'd like that for the AI's heroes. It would be nice if AI heroes could reach above level 5 even without Enlightenment by fighting other AI (or the player losing a few major stacks to them). Per turn experience is okay, but it doesn't really make a difference - even at double or triple the here still wouldn't go past level 6. But get triple for killing the player's (or other AI's) behemoth stack or something, and suddenly they are maxed out.

[Nelphine]

Right but even human heroes won't get much beyond 5 or 6 unless you risk them like crazy. Due to the way ai strategic combat works, there's virtually no risk for AI heroes when attacking other AI; if they're in a doomstack going after humans anyway, they'll already get enough XP. I don't think they should get much more than the human player when they simply aren't at risk the way a human hero is.