Werewolves

[Bahgtru]

Undead creation , at 100%, from any common spells, is a problem. Period.

I'd actually rather do something like, zombie mastery adds undead creation to your zombies, but zombies can't create any undead by default. Then do something like giving life drain at no resist modifier (or maybe even +1) to ghouls and dropping the undead creation and the poison.

Ha! I missed this one. Sounds good, but then let's also make all buffs rare or very rare! If we do these two things we surely reduce game breaking tactics...

[Nelphine]

+1 to hit on Commons isn't overpowered

100% chance to create undead leads to trying to abuse it, PARTICULARLY because all methods higher than common aren't 100%.

What I'd really like is to have ghouls create undead as often as wraiths currently do. That would be cool, flavorful, and not abuseable.

I'd also like demon lords to create more undead than any other unit. But it needs to do so in a way that doesn't result in simply getting tons of very rares.


What if create undead was just a percentage based thing based on rarity of target?

If you kill a unit, and you have create undead, and it's common, then 75% come back as undead. If it's uncommon, then 50%. Rare is 25%, very rare 10%.

City troops: spearmen 100%, smithy level 80%, fighters guild 60%, armorers guild/fabtastuc stable 40%.


Then we could give zombies, ghouls, wraiths, demon lords all create undead. Life drain would still work as now, in addition to create undead. So a wraith who did enough life steal would always be getting undead, but otherwise, it would have a chance on every unit that died.

(Ideally, you could make create undead a numbered buff like poison, and for each number in your stack, you add that percentage to your chance of raising things as undead. So for instance, demon lords might be 5, in which case a stack of 9 would add 45%. Ghouls and zombies would be 1, wraiths would be 3. Could lower baseline amounts to compensate.)

(Basically, make it work a lot more like strategic combat crate undead.)

[Seravy]

I'm not going to make Death into the gambling realm. This would be a poor game mechanic even in Chaos for a strategy game.

[Nelphine]

Right, but undead creation is overpowered as a reliable mechanic. We both agree on this, thus why nothing beyond common has it. 

But that makes it so that if you can find a way to abuse undead creation even by ghouls and zombies, it is overpowered. I firmly believe this.

Further, I don't think undead creation is the primary purpose of either zombies or ghouls. Instead I believe that undead creation by those units, and by wraiths and demon lords (which is certainly not reliable at ALL), is meant to be thematic.

Which means, we can simply make undead creation extra. And if it's designed to be extra, then it absolutely can be percent based. Don't let anyone plan on it - but give them some units as theme and flavor. But they can't plan on it, so they can't make outrageous plans to abuse it.

[Seravy]

Still, I don't like that. Undead Creation isn't extra - it's most likely the core function of the realm. (yes, it also has the theme of casting skill and curses but those are the extras. You don't use those themes every game, but you use undead. )

...anyway, at the moment, do we agree that werewolves are the main problem here and raising other units (with or without zombies) is a different, more generic threat to game balance independent of zombies and black sleep? If yes, we might want to consider simply adding "werewolves neutralize undead creation damage" to the description and make them impossible to raise without Death Immunity, or if that feels too forced, just give them back the Death Immunity (however then you'd no longer need Blood Lust to use them safely against a Death wizard, which...isn't really all that big of a deal I guess? It does take time to research but meanwhile you can simply beat other wizards instead. Or you can just, you know, use stacks of 3 or more wolves and avoid larger stacks of ghouls.) and roll back the black sleep change, then decide what to do with undead creation in general after a ghouls test....some time next year most likely.
(we might want to even take an extra step forward and call it "Undeath Immunity" and add it on units that end up being a major problem in the future - like maybe Chaos Spawn - if ghoul testing shows problems. Only if necessary though, I've seen AI with undead Chaos Spawn and they were a big deal to fight...oh wait, not anymore, Reaper Slash can hurt them now. Ok, doesn't matter if we lose those then.)

[Nelphine]

I consider raising werewolves the extra, and ghouls raising everything under the sun a far larger problem, but even that is a lesser problem than 'ghouls are better at creating undead than wraiths' which impacts game play far more than the actual balance implications.

If undead is meant to be the core theme, then my strategy of 2 death books is ACTUALLY the intended way of playing death. Because that gets the most undead created.

And having 2 books give you the best core theme if a realm is flawed.

So either undead creation cannot be the core theme you describe it as, or the realm is badly screwed up because 2 books is the best undead creation, and more death picks actually weakens your undead creating abilities.

[Seravy]

Or you overrate ghouls. We'll see that when it comes to testing them. Either way, out of things ALREADY TESTED (wolves, zombies, life drain etc, everything except ghouls pretty much), do we agree raising werewolves are the main problem?

The big late game undead making spell is Zombie Mastery, and it really doesn't get any better than getting a guaranteed zombie (or undead if killed by those zombies) out of every single enemy unit killed. (Yes, zombies aren't "undead" technically but they are in the theme - free units for enemies killed)
On wraiths or other life steal units specifically, undead creation is indeed extra - but with a global enchantment that already guarantees 100% undead creation on everything non fantastic - and we agree high tier fantastic units getting raised is overpowered if it happens too much, so that's the furthest we can go - it can't be anything else than that. Zombie Mastery by itself already maxes out th undead creation potential of the realm. I can't help it if you dislike that spell, it's one of the most OP things in the game. It turns the war of attrition to favor you as the AI will be spending resources on battles where you invested zero to have those zombies - and war of attrition is the primary way the AI wins. If you can beat the AI at their strongest strategy, you win the game.

[Nelphine]

And a stack of 9 ghouls does exactly what zombie mastery does, except it brings them back as undead not zombies, which is stronger than zombie mastery. 

And that's not even what makes ghouls overpowered. If all ghouls did was what zombie mastery does, I wouldn't talk about them.

But for the same power as casting researching and casting zombie mastery, I can have dozens of ghouls, which lets me defend my cities, kill almost all city units that attack me, and attack weakly defended AI cities while getting full garrisons to defend those cities.

I'm sorry. You can't talk about creating undead and using particular combos, and ignore the strongest undead creation source in the game.

So yes, I think zombie mastery is win more because by that point..  I can already summon actual doomstacks that can attack strong cities, and I can summon ghouls to create undead instead of zombies to win the attrition war that you so fondly think zombie mastery is good at.

[Nelphine]

Let's do some math. To be sure of zombie mastery, you need 8 death books.
My ghouls need 2 death books. That lets me pick 3 sorcery books, 2 life books, and conjuror.

So you eventually get zombie mastery, and let's say you're unlucky and don't have wraiths. But you probably have shadow demons.

By the time you research both zombie mastery and shadow demons, and summon 9 shadow demons, I can summon almost 16 stacks of ghouls.

But ghouls aren't that strong.

So I instead cast a few buffs - focus magic and endurance and resist magic on all my ghouls. So now I can only summon ~5 fully buffed stscks. (Note, I realize a lot of research sources can't be switched to power. But if you build a library, I could build a magic mart in an extra city, and since I don't have to research ANYTHING I can afford to put more into early expansion. You would also be putting a lot of stuff into your own summons, and combat spells like black sleep + zombie, or life drain, whereas in most cases, I can just dump it all into overland summoning, so I've actually got a lot more than 5 stacks, but I'm pretending that the rest balance out with whatever you would do.)

But they have 6 ranged attack (better than your shadow demons), they have 6 armor (better than shadow demons), they move 3 (better than shadow demons), their resistance is much higher, and they have poison (shadow demons don't) and their melee strength is as strong.

And they all create full undead, so while you can create lots of zombies, and only be in one place at one time, I can go on offense, and defend 4 areas as well; and I get full undead from every battle.

And that's just to compare to zombie mastery. I'm not even trying to abuse them and actually banish wizards or treasure hunt. I'm just using them to replace and invalidate zombie mastery.

[zitro1987]

I would like to see some progression within the realm on raising non-zombie undead, so that later in the game, if a player really wants a unit raised undead, they have some advanced spells at their disposal

Summon Demon (spell, and demon lord's summoned demons) to have undead creation. Sure, it's not much as their melee capabilities are mediocre, but they may fight better than zombies. Along with a 'syphon life' + 'life drain' usage per demon, they can also create via melee.

Zombie Mastery - it could have an added perk
1) you can create opponent unit to undead equivalent with only 1/3 damage, instead of 1/2 damage. (easier to create undead with syphon life and yes, ghouls)
or
2) Units you raise as undead (not zombies) have 0 maintenance, or some unit bonus.
or
3) Zombie mastery still raises zombies, but has a 5% chance of raising wraiths (or some undead uncommon unit from death)


Word of Death (whatever the spell that does resist-or-die across) - what if the resist penalty is just -1 but any killed unit is raised as undead? You won't get archangels, but you might get uncommon summons and armorer's guild units with ease if you have black prayer.