Nerf Demon Lords! Buff Death Knights?

[Seravy]

So, copied from my test game posts we have :

Ok so 9 Archangels vs 9 Demon Lords, I'm attacking.

Turn 1, each demon lord takes a step back, uses doom bolt and shoots at an archangel. 3 Archangels dead (of which two had lionheart, and all had Charm of Life).
Turn 2, the Archangels are still not in range (since we took a step back and killed the front row.), but no room to summon, so each demon lord moves 3 back (or whichever many they can) and shoots. This doesn't go so well, as High Prayer is now up and there is no doom bolt left. 1 archangel down to half health, 1 webbed. (it's over ocean so it's disabled for good.)
I lose 1 demon lord as some archangels manage to attack. I anime 1 dead archangel, which probably isn't as good as using web but we are trying to test Death magic so I should. It attacking, plus me moving and shooting, 1 more archangel dead. Now the board is my 9 units vs their 3+1 webbed (instead of webbing I could have cast terror but there was no room to animate).
Next turn another demon lord lost. However now I have Holy Bonus+2. I kill 1 archangel and stay out of range of the remaining ones. I don't expect to take damage from this point onward (aside from star fires) so I start reanimating lost demon lords.
I lose a third demon lord to star fires but reanimate all 3. Overall, I had no losses and 3 demon lords are ungraded to animated status. 9 Archangels died despite high prayer+supreme light+charm of life. I have one demon lord at red health, all others are still at max or green.

If this isn't enough proof Demon Lords are overpowered, nothing is... and it's specifically due to the doom bolts, otherwise it would have been a fair fight, slightly in my favor (due to animate dead and web) but this way it was a 9 vs 6 battle which would have been 9 vs 4 instead without charm and lionheart bonus.

By the way, at strength 20 but being magical ranged, so no ranged penalties, Demon Lord is about as powerful at range as a Colossus, but has double ammo, flies, is immune to a bunch of things, might gain health from attacks, has fear, summons 3 demons, which cast a lot of spells and cause instant death, on top of providing suppression in melee if needed, and having melee equal to the colossus itself, let's not forget 1 higher movement. It also generates power instead of having maintenance. All those extras for 30% more cost is already really OP and makes Colossus look like a toy, and THEN we also have an extra doom bolt on top of it. It's reasonable to expect first turn damage around 200 against a typical stack using 9 Demon Lords. That annihilates even most fortress garrisons in a turn.

and

btw Death Knights. I was thinking because they showed up in research before Demon Lords.
So Death Knights are bad against...
Life, high resistance mean no life stealing
Chaos, Flame strike spam
Sorcery, Banish, Creature Binding
Death, Annihilate

So they are strong against Nature...and dual realms that miss the listed spells. Kinda limited considering most other very rares are strong vs 90% of the possible enemies and only weak against 10%. (raising their resistance by 1 would not really help with that.) On top of that they are an upgraded version of Wraiths, so when they do work, you already used Wraiths to win. Not that I have any idea what to do, of if there is a need to do anything, just stating my observations.

I believe we are going to need to decide on a role for both units, and nerf/buff them accordingly to be good at that selected role. So what do you think each of them should be used for, and what should they be bad at/weak against?

[Nelphine]

As an extra note to this: I already think both stone giants and colossus should have long ranged. I also think both of them don't have enough ammo. So the particular comparison against those units, in my opinion, shows that the nature units have glaring flaws, not that he demon lords are overpowered.

Compare death knights to sky drakes and great drakes. The sky drake wins, hands down, out of all 3. This is an indication that death knights and great drakes are underpowered. Both units are fine on offense, once they actually get to attack, obviously. But along with great wyrms and hydra, at the very rare stage of the game, any melee unit is useless. Just like my discussiond of champions.

The only reason that behemoth and archangel are any good is because they have naturally high defenses, and spellcasting.

I'm actually surprised how your demon Lord vs archangel match went. However, I think one of the problems is that life can use overland buffs.. but the AI can't (effectively).

Flip the playing field, the human has 9 archangels, and is attacking 9 demon lords. The archangels would win, despite repeated animate Dead's - because the doom bolts would kill a few, and the first round of ranged would hurt - and after that the demon lords eouldnt kill any more. +2 to defend armor 20+ with 50+ health against the demon Lord ranged attacks? Oh I suppose supernatural minimums.. I hadn't considered that.

Ok, supernatural minimums actually really mess up archangels and behemoths. Given supernatural existence, doom bolt may be a problem. Otherwise, it would be the only way to hurt archangels and behemoths.

[Seravy]

Considering the Demon Lords attack at +3 To Hit and 21 ranged (yes, I'm including Darkness, you will have that, either from a demon or an eternal night), that is enough to damage a +1 To Def, 20 defense Archangel. (Prayer is only +1 To Def, and Archangels aren't lucky, nor can they cast Endurance on themselves as it's an overland only spell.)
Note that To Def is also capped at 15, so even if it was 20 vs 20 at +3 vs +3, the attack would still exceed the defense by 2 points of damage - but as is it exceeds by 4.6 points. I believe Supernatural only guarantees 2.8 damage for the same attacks, unless I remember the formula wrong : (damage-7)/2?

This is before Animate Dead - casting it adds another 0.6 damage due to the Holy Bonus you gain from the undead archangels.

Now, 4.6 damage isn't that great but it is enough to kill an archangel each turn and Animate Dead makes sure the unit count never really drops below 8 to keep it up. By turn 8 the archangels are all dead but the AI might not save the demon lords and might end up with raised archangels that disappear after battle, suffering greater losses overall).
Where the AI might break it is not moving the demon lords backwards due to quick casting ability, but I think that actually works properly. Also note the AI gets an extra turn because they will be defending, I was attacking in my battle. Which means on first turn, one more turn to reach them, and neither Supreme Light, nor High Prayer is up, resulting in Archangels that only have 14 defense at +1 To def, which means another +2.4 damage taken per shot. 

Oh and Archangels also lose 1 defense from Darkness and another from the inevitable Black Prayer so in reality, they'll be taking 5.4 damage instead of 4.6 on later turns. One advantage the human has is being able to use Archangels to heal themselves, saving their caster ability, or cast invulnerability to reduce damage by 2 each shot, using those they might win but it'll be a fairly even battle, unlike my case where it was a one sided slaughter. But also considering Animate Dead, I still think the human would lose, as the AI still gets to resupply an additional unit each turn, and even if their Demon Lords don't do much damage, the revived Archangels are +5 to hit with extra attack from Darkness, so they can deal significant damage.

I don't see what's your problem with Colossus, which most people consider the best summoned unit in the game (myself included, Wyrms are better but only if you aren't fighting flying units...).
Wyrms get to hit on their first move due to Merging so they are actually pretty amazing. (except against 9 flying units or anything noncorporeal flying. Then they suck.)
Hydras are spellcasting and combo enablers. They are not very good as units.

...and the title is "buff death knights?" for a reason so we agree on that one.

Final thought : yes, the AI is worse at overland buffing their stack - but they are better at keeping their globals in play. So overall they have similar amounts of buffing. Also buffing the stack makes it more expensive, so those losses hurt a lot more. If I invest 2 Archangels cost into one, then losing only 5 and winning the battle is not better than losing the battle with a double KO without buffing. It's only an improvement if I manage to do it without relevant losses.

[Nelphine]

Right but my point is every archangel I have ever used in combat, ever (except in previous patches when I learned archangel from treasure before lionheart), has always had endurance and lionheart cast overland. If it was being used as part of a doomstack, 90% have also had invulnerability cast on them. As a human, I can do that. The aim can't.

So, when I attack with 9 archangels, and assuming I play a mono life game since that's what we're trying to compare, I have charm of life (I'll make sure of that before attacking 9 demon lords),  my archangels start the combat with +1 to defend, 14(?) Armor (13 from turn 1 black prayer) and 56 health. So I lose 1 from the first 6 doombolts, and I lose a second to the rest of the doombolts plus ranged attacks (9 attacks, assuming minimal super natural is enough to kill it). A third might also be injured, but probably no more than 20 damage.

Then round one, I cast supreme light (my archangels are now 20 defense), 1 archangel casts prayer, so they're now +2 to defense. 0-4 other archangels cast heal on the injured archangel. So I have 7 uninjured archangels, 0-4 still able to cast a heal, and 0-6 still able to cast 2 heals.

Round 2, darkness is cast, archangels are now armor 19, demon lords are 21 attack, +3 to hit. 9 attacks. Each unit does ~12 hits, and the archangel blocks ~9 hits, and the invulnerability is blocking 2 hits. That's actually triggering supernatural. So, all 9 attacks combined are only doing ~27 damage depending on supernatural rounding. Unless invulnerability comes after supernatural but I think we specifically made it come before? I'll assume before for now.

Round 2, high prayer is cast so now they have 22 armor (and +5 to hit, and 27 melee) so archangels either attack (at least 2, maybe up to 6 depending how many had to heal the first round). The demon lords are still doing ~3 damage from their counterattack, but the archangels are doing 20 hits - 3 blocks = 17 damage per hit. The remaining archangels heal the injured archangel so it still has at least 35 health (which should only need 2 heals) so even if all 9 demon lords survive and attack they still won't kill that archangel.

At this point, assuming demon lords use ranged, and archangels melee twice per round, each round the archangels should do 34 damage per unit, and the demon Lord should do 9. It won't be quite that high, as the archangels still have 6 heals left, but the life wizard is now using supreme light Regen and mass healing to heal all the archangels from the melee damage EVERY ROUND. Effectively, only the ranged attacks actually do damage. So 34 damage from each of 7 archangels per round vs 3 damage from 9 demon lords per round. 

238 damage from archangels vs 27 damage from demon lords. 

Even with a full 11 animate Dead's, the archangels win. Although admittedly, they will probably lose another 4 archangels in the process. If the death wizard can cast a full 15 animate Dead's, they will probably win.


(Oh. My numbers didn't assume eternal might. That REALLY doesn't change much. At all. Except maybe an extra heal or two on the first round.)

[Nelphine]

On another note: I think chaos and nature very rares are bleh. I'll take goegons over all 5.

[Seravy]

Round 2, high prayer is cast so now they have 22 armor (and +5 to hit, and 27 melee) so archangels either attack (at least 2, maybe up to 6 depending how many had to heal the first round). The demon lords are still doing ~3 damage from their counterattack, but the archangels are doing 20 hits - 3 blocks = 17 damage per hit.

If you are the attacker, the Archangels are not yet reaching the demon lords.
First turn they moved 3 tiles, now they can move another 4, that's a total of 7. Assuming the demon lords bothered to move backwards which they should have since they couldn't use the movement, they are further than 7 tiles away. (Initial distance of armies is 6 then there are another 4-5 tiles before things start to get cornered)

At this point, assuming demon lords use ranged, and archangels melee twice per round,

This is again wrong because the angels have to use 3 moves to stay in melee range while the demon lords are moving backwards. Sure, eventually there will be a corner but then the corner itself is blocking you from attacking efficiently due to crowding and limited amount of tiles.
So it's more reasonable to assume 1 melee attack each turn.

supreme light Regen

That's no longer a thing, it was nerfed months ago. You only regen at the end of combat.

Although admittedly, they will probably lose another 4 archangels in the process.

And this is kinda the point. 4 plus the initial 2, a total of 6, including buffs, costs more than the demon lord stack. So the human, even with the advantage of being human and playing better, having buffs, having spells in combat, while the Death wizard can't use anything (as life is strong against death magic in general) except one spell, still loses out on overall costs. If we assume all demon lords and archangels ever summoned build up to stacks of 9 and fight each other, the AI wins the game, even on normal difficulty with no AI bonuses, assuming everything else is equal.

But there is one more thing you didn't include in your calculation : Demon Lords summon demons. Yes, demons won't deal damage to the archangels, but they delay the battle. Assuming only half the demon lords manage to do so, that's still 13 demons summoned, which delays the end of the battle by 2 turns, assuming the archangels do 1 melee each a turn (and a few already died). So 2 more animate Deads which result in at least 1 extra dead archangel, if not more - as archangels dwindle in quantity, each still living AI unit buys more and more turns to use animate dead, so that extra 2 turns can snowball into the battle ending with all units getting animated. (oh yeah I forgot. The Demon Lords get animated as well, so they get a second chance to summon demons. So make that 27 demons = 4 turns delay anyway.

Really those are just details, the important part is you admit losing more then 9 demon lords worth of units in buffed archangels during the battle. That's a win to the AI, even if they didn't actually win the battle. It was a random battle on the field anyway, there is no other way how these units will actually meet - so the only thing that matters is, who lost more total spell value in it.
...now, if the AI messes it up and animates demon lords first, so all the archangels get to regenerate, that's a different story, but that has nothing to do with how good demon lords are.

[Nelphine]

You forgot endurance also gives +1 move. And, I'm already assuming 11 animate Dead's. I'm expecting casting skill to stop that, not turns. The demons mean nothing. They literally do nothing.

And you don't think the fortress will have demon lords guarding it? I've literally played games with 9 very rares in the fortress.

[Seravy]

95% of the games the fortress will have 8 Demon Lords with a soul linker or 7 Demon Lords with a soul linker and another powerful hero. So those are much more difficult battles where the archangels have no chance to win.

Anyway, instead of this, I'd like to hear what we want Demon Lords and Death Knights to actually do.

[zitro1987]

I'd like the demon lord to lose doom bolt. It should still stay as a great unit regardless of losing that initial spell.

[Seravy]

I was hoping for more posts but I guess I have to try to come up with a solution then.
Probably the best idea is to keep the existing main roles for the units and make sure they perform well at those, and not at others. (as these roles actually suit the unit while others like ranged death knights, would not.)

Death Knights
These are the melee unit that has a fairly high damage output and life steal to be effective at surviving melee and even enemy spells by gaining health from life stealing.
Their secondary role is to make undead.

So overall they are basically just better wraiths. Not a fan of that but I don't think we can do any better. Death doesn't really have much unique unit abilities or traits that could make this special without overlapping with Demon Lords and Demons.

Death Knights also doesn't seem to have any unwanted roles currently, so we have no work to do on that.

So to make them better at their primary role, we can do one or more of these :

Higher Armor - this helps survive enemy ranged attacks, which is what makes them die too easily.
6 movement - this reduces the number of turns they need before they can start to attack and life steal. (unfortunately, only two tiles are in ranged during city battles)
Stronger Life Steal - this makes their undead creation more powerful and allows them to recover faster from damage once already at the enemy units.

Since resistance is given, we can't make them any better against Sorcery and Death wizards with high end spells, which leaves Life and Chaos.
A stronger Life Steal would be a significant improvement vs life wizards, as well as Chaos (if they drain enough life to recover the damage from Chaos spells, that's good enough unless they also have Apocalypse.) and ofc armor helps taking less damage.
Movement wouldn't be relevant against Life, and while it would be somewhat relevant against Chaos, I don't think I want 6 move Death Knights unless they have Endurance cast on them.

So higher armor and/or life steal. Question is how much - we don't want them to raise very rares as undead, but raising some rares might be acceptable. A figure of Death Knight does about 4.2 damage against such targets in melee, so average life steal damage should likely stay under 2 for very rares, but it's fine if it reaches 4 on rares.
Assuming rares have a usual resistance of 10, we are safe up to -8. Eternal Night and Black Prayer will likely be in play, so that leaves -5 life steal still acceptable.
Assuming very rares have a usual resistance of 13, we are also safe up to -8 (yay, same number).

So we can make them have -5 Life Steal instead of -4. Armor is currently 8, I think it's reasonable to raise it to 9, but not any more than that.

Demon Lord
With their ranged attack, high ammo and summoning, these have the role of being a long term participant in combat, that destroy enemies slowly at range.
To be a long term participant, the unit has to be fairly durable. I believe we need to reconsider the previous nerf and raise their Life Steal at least a little. Definitely not to the original -5, but -2 or -3 might still be ok. We seem to have agreed that player stacks killing average enemy stacks like city garrisons without serious losses is acceptable, so it's ok if Demon Lords are reasonably durable in this scenario. So we might also want to put their armor up to 9 although I have some doubts about that. Still, now that the AI has a reasonable chance to reach the human in the last war and fight back, we need to worry about unstoppable, no loss human stacks less than before. Although, this only really applies to large, 9 demon lord stacks. Realistically, a stack of only 1-3 demon lords should still get severely damaged  otherwise the human can split their forces up and conquer everything all at once. So I'm slightly unsure on how much armor and life steal they actually need. Considering the nerf was done to ensure some, but not significant losses, our best bet is likely to not change the armor, and only raise life steal somewhat (but not up to the original -5).

They obviously need to lose Doom Bolt as it front loads damage and directly contradicts their role of being a ranged unit with lots of resources for prolonged combat. (3 summons and 8 ammo, plus life steal, cloak of fear, almost full set of immunities.)