5.58 Brainstorming thread

[Seravy]

Currently the cap only applies to the first strike ability - it has no effect if total health of the enemy figure exceeds the cap, which has been designed to ensure at least very rare creatures get to strike back at heroes so it's somewhere above 20 but below 30. Right click on a first strike unit it should say how much exactly.

1 is actually a big threat. On the defense means instead of spending one turn per killed unit, you get to kill everything at once. The AI's effectiveness largely depends on having turns to cast spells so this is very bad.
2 I'm fine with. It only works against a very limited amount of such units, if the AI has like, 8 hell hounds, you get to kill one or two this way but the rest will get to use their ability. And to begin with, ranged beating first strike melee makes sense, of course it's more effective this way than if you had to actually kill the unit entirely using ranged damage but the concept is the same. In fact this is desired - if we don't have this, we'd need a major nerf to things like grade drakes and hydras. It's not really the damage being "first" that is the problem for those - it's the fact they are dealing breath damage at all, versus not dealing any currently. Basically, they retaliate twice as hard as usual, making the tactic of swarming a lone great drake with 9 good melee units no longer possible - all of them will just die to the retaliation while in the current system only the first few dies, the suppression reduces the damage by enough to let them survive one counterattack. (and yes, I know Great Drakes are kinda not that good units, but the same applies to Sky Drakes where this is often the only working strategy.)

[Nelphine]

I disagree.

Why are we doing this change? What is the impetus to change at all?

The problem is that the AI sucks at using first strike and thrown, and almost as importantly, the human can be excellent at it.

When does this actually matter - no, when is this an actual problem?

This is a problem in two cases: the AI has first strike/thrown units that could make a significant difference AND it's it's casting ability is low enough NOT to make a difference AND it's ranged capability is low enough not to make a difference.


Or the human has first strike/thrown AND the AI casting ability is low enough not to make a difference AND the AI ranged is low enough not to make a difference.


In all other cases, AI spellcasting and ranges are strong enough that the first strike and thrown abilities are balanced even though the AI can't use them and the human is great at them.


Therefore, the situations that are actually a problem are basically two:

A, a hero is involved that negates the AI spellcasting and ranged. However, this is not so much a problem with with its first strike and thrown abilities, this is the absurdity of hero defenses. This is well documented and has largely been treated elsewhere. Therefore I do NOT think this is a case that matters for this discussion.

B. Early in the game, and NOT attacking an AI city. While not the only time this occurs, the most common scenario that this happens is against lairs/nodes/towers, where the AI has NO spellcasting or ranged.

Therefore, while you make valid points in your disagreement with the importance of the 2 abuses I described, I firmly believe that your points aren't actually relevant. They don't describe the scenarios where there is a problem.


Thus, my statement that number 2 is the more problematic abuse stands. Using 3 bezerkers, 6 spearmen, and 2 web spells to kill 3 drakes in a lair is a very real scenario. Or death knights (no use for web, but they have much lower HP than the drakes.)

[Seravy]

Thus, my statement that number 2 is the more problematic abuse stands. Using 3 bezerkers, 6 spearmen, and 2 web spells to kill 3 drakes in a lair is a very real scenario. Or death knights (no use for web, but they have much lower HP than the drakes.)

Yeah but why is that a problem? You lose 6 spearmen, that's not really different from usual.
I mean, with 6 spearmen, you could just fire bolt or star fires the great drake to death anyway.

This is a problem in two cases: the AI has first strike/thrown units that could make a significant difference AND it's it's casting ability is low enough NOT to make a difference AND it's ranged capability is low enough not to make a difference.


Or the human has first strike/thrown AND the AI casting ability is low enough not to make a difference AND the AI ranged is low enough not to make a difference.

Ignoring lairs for the moment because anything beats lairs - sending spearmen and spamming phantom warriors or fire bolts is a staple strategy still, it's just rarely used because you need a high casting skill yourself and Archmage isn't as OP as it used to be.

So the first case implies very early game, otherwise the AI has enough casting skill to make a difference. (and unless difficulty is low or it's the 50th battle that turn, they will also have the mana crystals)
In the very early game, the relevant units we are talking about are draconians, barbarians and hell hounds. I think we can agree barbarians and draconians are already kinda on the powerful side and don't need to become stronger. In case of draconians this is true for the AI as well - flying is a pain to deal with. For barbarians, I guess they are not that good for the AI. So in the end the relevant cases are large stacks of hell hounds, or large stacks of random barbarian units. Neither of these are really powerful enough to make a difference when they appear in smaller quantities - in fact if it's only 1-2 of them you can easily deal with that using your own spells - so the stack has to have many of them.
As in both cases the stack has a large amount of thrown units, ranged/suppression disabling the ability on the target is not relevant. You can kill a few of the units that way but all the rest still get to use the ability. This much advantage for the human is actually desired - we need to leave at least SOME room for the player to play smarter than the AI, otherwise how can they possibly win, or more importantly, enjoy the game and feel superior?

The second case is literally the same thing, except, the human is the one with hell hounds/barbarians. The AI already knows to shoot before melee, and modifying the melee targeting to go for targets that are suppressed, instead of the old rule to go for targets that have thrown which will now be obsolete anyway should be trivial. Fortunately, due to ranged penalties, there even is a good chance the AI will shoot at units that are close enough to melee afterwards. Overall, while not as good as the human, the AI can still use the mechanic in their favor in this case - in fact, since your premise is AI ranged being weak, the feature actually makes those otherwise useless ranged attacks relevant which is a good thing.

As a more general statement, I'd say the battle always has to have a lot of thrown/breath units on one side for the ability and game mechanic to matter. If there are only a few, the enemy will almost always have the casting skill to disable/kill those particular units.

[Bahgtru]

The only thing I'd avoid is to swap order between thrown and gaze without a pressing reason, if any MoM player has spent time to learn this level of detail you don't want to change something that might alienate them. That's it...

Ah, another thing: it'd be useful to find some place in the help to describe the procedure.

[Seravy]

The only thing I'd avoid is to swap order between thrown and gaze without a pressing reason

Well, gaze was between thrown and first strike and we are merging thrown with first strike so "between" will no longer exist. Is that enough reason?
If we leave it were it is, we are effectively swapping the order of gaze and first strike which is equally bad (or I think even worse).
I'm planning to update the help text for all gaze/breath/thrown/first strike etc abilities to properly explain when they happen.

[Bahgtru]

Are you sure we'd be swapping that? I have this experience kind of feeling that in MoM first strike avoids gaze. The wiki might be wrong. Or I may be. Ah no, probably I'm thinking of touch.

Anyway, after thinking about this a bit I find it incredibly silly that pikes or halberds get to be used to stop axes from being hurled. I was thinking that I could live with breath but I realised an effect of this... Pikemen are already powerful enough as it is against ndoes, abusing the silly in-combat heroism that you insist on allowing which makes them basically goblin grenades. Now you make them also the key against both kinds of dragons. This change dumbs the game down frankly, and the benefit to the AI is marginal at best considering the reliance on and abundance of ranged magic.

Changes have unintended effects - see the super easy abuse of assured roaming monsters now making death OP...

[merlinp]

Anyway, after thinking about this a bit I find it incredibly silly that pikes or halberds get to be used to stop axes from being hurled.

They don't of course stop them from being hurled but pike/halberd wall could deflect thrown weapons. I remember reading such tactic being used by maybe romans.

[Seravy]

Eh what? Halberds against dragons? They have too much armor, that's not going to work.
No, the unit that actually works and I usually use against dragons is Stag Beetles. Multi-Figure is not going to work on 10-12 armor without major buffs, but major buffs are too expensive for units that are going to die...and yes they are going to die, at least the first few that are attacking. Even in the current system, without extra breath attacks.
... Ok, they negate the breath attack striking first, so instead of the first two units dying without getting to deal damage, they die but deal a little damage (or not, remember they are attack 5 units vs 10+ armor). Past the second unit, suppression kicks in and the dragon won't use breath either way so at that point it makes absolutely zero difference to have Negate First Strike.

So basically this is the situation :

(assuming units with no buffs but possibly levels or adamantium. Buffed units are too expensive to use for battles where heavy losses are expected. Unless you're endgame Life wizard with lionheart and stuff. But then your heroes can cut those dragons down for free anyway... and no a heroism is not enough on a halberdier to severely damage a drake. )

Units attacking / Current system / New system

9 Stage Beetles / first few dies or seriously wounded in retaliation, rest kills dragon but takes damage from normal attacks / first two suffers retaliation breath attacks so they are even more guaranteed to die and might not get a chance to deal damage. Past that, no change.
9 Halberdiers / Same as stage beetles but damage dealt and survival rate are both worse (less hp and attack strength) / Same as old system - first two halberdiers negate first strike so get to deal damage, but die afterward anyway,
2-4 Bowmen 7 Stag Beetles / Suppression reduces drake retaliation damage, so beetles can kill it without losses but get hurt. Best strategy. / Exactly the same. Suppression disables the breath attack...

So no matter how I look at it, nothing will really change for this particular scenario, and that's actually the intention. Otherwise we'd need to nerf the drakes... (I admit, I don't use bowmen. Stag Beetles aren't that expensive, I can afford losing 2 extra and bowmen are slow and can only be produced in nonklackon cities...)

If you mean to imply the drakes are attacking you instead, yes then the negate first strike will make a "big" difference (if we pretend a halberdier can actually fight a drake and hurt it, which is at least questionable) but then you're doing it wrong. Without relying on suppression to reduce the damage from drakes by attacking the same drake many times in the same turn, your losses will be several times as big and the worst part is the drakes will get damaged evenly so they might even not die.

Dumbs down game? Depends. On one side, you can't use the strategy of positioning your units so that you always get to use your breath attack and the enemy can't. So we are losing that option. On the other side, instead of that fairly trivial strategy, you have to find something more elaborate to gain an advantage against the AI in the new system. For example you have to bring additional ranged units to be able to suppress their thrown on retaliation. I think as long as there are ways to play better, and those ways are less trivial to use, it's making the game "smarter" not dumber.

I'm unsure how much this change matters for the AI. Maybe you're right and it doesn't matter much. At the very least two wizard templates - the two which are currently the weakest at the beginning of the game, mono Chaos and Chaos+Life - rely on Hell Hounds which are trivially easy to kill and no threat in the current system. But yes, this question is worth exploring. Implementing this system is a lot of work, if it doesn't make a significant difference, it's better not to waste the time on it.

About the death thing Sapher posted, that was pretty much a bug. The cap for unit value didn't work. He's been getting hydras and djinns in the early game. It's not so hot as a strategy when you're only getting the commons and uncommons you can normally summon...well ok technically you're getting them for free but...even assuming you play on all settings maxed and get a full stack of monsters every 4 turns, and they are always units that can be raised (death units, phantoms, etc can't), you're still only getting at best 1 common and 1 uncommon unit per turn. That's great and all but the cost...you need to pick 2 death, 2 sorcery, guardian, I guess you can skip taking heavenly light but maybe not, and you need to summon a stack of ghouls with focus magic which is the price of 6-8 such creatures. But there is more : You need to have a FULL garrison in all your cities. Otherwise the monsters won't target the one with ghouls. But there is even more - you can't conquer cities from your enemies. If you do, those will need max garrisons as well, and for each continent it needs one ghoul city because most monsters spawning won't be intercontinental or the distance is simply too large. Actually if the continent isn't small enough, you might need multiple ghoul cities anyway. So yes, the unit gain is great but it requires a lot of things that slow you down significantly and basically forces you to play defensively instead of conquering and the cost of the strategy scales with the size of your empire making it even worse for quick expansion. I guess we'll know more if he updates to the fixed version and tries this strategy again but I doubt it'll be too overpowered.

[Nelphine]

Nah, you make roaming defense stack and hunt the wandering monsters actively. I can see sapher being flat correct on that.


Back to my point. Hell hounds don't matter. They die to ranged and spells, and they don't do enough in breath to one shot anything.

What scenarios do you actually see where the AI gets butchered by its inability to use first strike? (I'm going to combine first strike and thrown into this for the rest of my discussion. Yes there are differences between then currently, but for the problem I want to fix, they are the same).

The times I see them are this:

I'm playing bezerkers. I have enough strategic strength the AI won't declare war on me easily, so I'm free to treasure hunt. I'm playing a bezerkers centric strategy so I'm low on spell books, so I need to get all the spell books on the map in order to fight the enemy effectively without losing due to casting skill, so I need to clear all the lairs/nodes/towers (henceforth referred to as just lairs).

Drakes and death knights have massive treasures and regularly guard towers (which is key not only to kill a weak myrran AI, but also to getting all the treasure on myrror before the AI does and before declaring the first war). But they: charge forward to 1 or 2 squares away from my bezerkers. I then attack them, my thrown one shots them, I lose 0 bezerkers, and I get the treasure. Or if it's slightly earlier, and I haven't got enough buffs yet, bezerker a) attacks, doesn't quite kill the very rare unit, takes ~25 damage in return (which doesn't kill the bezerker) then bezerkers b) attacks and kills the very rare without taking any damage. There are never more than 3-4 very rares (except hydra, but they're so slow they literally never attack on their own turn so I can always spread the damage between all my bezerkers, so I still never lose a bezerkers), so I outnumber them 2-1. I've still lost 0 bezerkers.

Under the current rules, if the AI would try to use their superior movement, I would lose bezerkers. 
Under the proposed change, if those very rares could actually fight back I would always lose bezerkers.
If suppression kicks in after only 1 or 2 spearmen, we go right back to I still don't lose any bezerkers. Thus, I think it needs to be 3 suppression to fully reduce the cap, or this change will have no practical effect on my game.
"But spearmen can already spell lairs to death". No. Not against high speed (4+) first strike units. They wipe out your spearmen waay too fast for you to cast enough spells to matter.

Speed 3 and lower units don't matter. It's reasonable to argue that under the current system, the human could force a stalemate and prevent the AI from actually successfully using its first strike anyway. This change is about speed 4+ (speed 3 only qualifies against speed 2 and not halberdiers.. which is such a tiny subset of units that I believe my argument is justified in saying only speed 4+ matter).



So then I put to you: in what situations do you see the human abusing the requirement for 3 suppression, that they could NOT abuse with 2 suppression AND that doesn't already exist in the game.

[Seravy]

Nah, you make roaming defense stack and hunt the wandering monsters actively.

I don't think he would have played it with guardian on the defense if that worked. Ghouls actually aren't that strong, nor that fast. I can't see them catching the monsters in time unless they are actively steered towards a central city by garrison counts, and if you do, you might as well take advantage of that and fight inside.

What scenarios do you actually see where the AI gets butchered by its inability to use first strike?

Paladins, Nagas, Elven Lords, Hell Hounds, Chimeras, Griffons, Mammoths and Hydras come into my mind mostly. Great Drakes and Sky Drakes not so much - the new system won't make a difference if there are only a small number (1-2) of these, and they slaughter almost anything if there are more of them. There only so many you can kill on your first move, and the rest will eat the entire army up that dared to step close. Other than this, heroes, but heroes again come in small numbers so they don't matter. Hydras and Mammoths are simply too slow, even if the AI knew how to position them it wouldn't help. But in the new system that's not longer an issue. Out of this list, 4 are top tier military normal units of the better kind, and two are highly relevant early game summons that are both the only one in their realm.

Under the current rules, if the AI would try to use their superior movement, I would lose bezerkers.

Wait, what superior movement? Endurance Berserkers move 4, same as the drakes. It's not superior.

"But spearmen can already spell lairs to death". No. Not against high speed (4+) first strike units. They wipe out your spearmen waay too fast for you to cast enough spells to matter.

Spearmen are a metaphor for disposable cheap units. Use wolf riders, those move 5, the drakes won't catch them. Use a Nightblade. Use an invisible hero. Anything goes, really. Heck, you can use 1 spearmen, summon something in the battle, and use the summoning tactic to make the drakes go back and forth while you use your fire bolts (or in case of life, Star fires). It should be possible to do it by alternating between fire bolt and fire elemental every second turn.

in what situations do you see the human abusing the requirement for 3 suppression, that they could NOT abuse with 2 suppression AND that doesn't already exist in the game.

Don't really understand this question.
I understand you want your omnipotent berserkers to get hurt by drakes more but if I do that, any OTHER unit (without Life buffs) can't fight them at all. Then we nerf the drakes because obviously the other 4 realms need to be playable as well, and we're back to berserkers killing them anyway. Lairs are one thing but AI wizards will also be attacking people with drakes. And Sky Drakes in particular are easiest to kill in melee...
The breath hurting your first 2 berserkers PER DRAKE is still a very big improvement over the current situation and probably as far as we can take it without completely shifting game balance.