Races, Units, Buildings

[zitro1987]

Crusaders are crazy overpowered, like a orc horde or berserker equivalent (bit less attack but 2 more resist) that casts healing and only costs 60. I made excellent progress by casting heroism and endurance on these.

I do think the original plan to have 6 figures (the earlier time I was playing this mod) was the balanced approach. Otherwise, if the unit is intended to stay as is, a cost of 80 would still put it at the top of mid-tier arcanus units.

[Seravy]

I'll play a High Men life test game next. If necessary, I'll prefer to nerf crusaders by reducing the attack power so the choice becomes Crusaders for durability or pikemen for damage as intended. Crusaders are mainly there to provide an option for realms that can't buff defense. Raising the cost is a possibility afterwards if still needed.

[teelaurila]

Crusaders are slow and cannot attack flyers. Also their mediocre attack won't penetrate higher armors (though buffing can of course make a huge difference). Instead of life, they might be best with chaos, which otherwise cannot heal. A few heroes / summons in a stack, padded with crusaders. Should work with immolation gargoyles as well as efreet. Flame blade is bonus. Chaos channels allows taking flyers.

Perhaps crusaders could be the way a 6 chaos 6 nature transumute+volcano+doom mastery+survival instinct game could go with...

If anything, it seems horde might be quite pointless because of the abysmal resistance for a later game unit. Or rather situational against those who cannot attack resistance well.

[MrBiscuits]

Crusaders are slow and cannot attack flyers. Also their mediocre attack won't penetrate higher armors (though buffing can of course make a huge difference). Instead of life, they might be best with chaos, which otherwise cannot heal. A few heroes / summons in a stack, padded with crusaders. Should work with immolation gargoyles as well as efreet. Flame blade is bonus. Chaos channels allows taking flyers.

Perhaps crusaders could be the way a 6 chaos 6 nature transumute+volcano+doom mastery+survival instinct game could go with...

Actually I tried adamantium crusaders with doom mastery and survival instinct and I was surprised that they were not as effective as I'd imagined. Their attack was still too low against better enemies and I just used them as support troops. The pikemen version were much more devastating.

The combination seemed to work a lot better for High Elves with longbowmen and elven lords.

[Seravy]

After a second look at the stats I see no problem with crusaders : armor piercing is as good as 3-5 attack so you're trading 2-4 attack for the shield, resistance and healing ability.  That's not a bad deal but I think it's fair.
Comparing Crusaders with Hordes is not a good idea : High Men are a race that have "better units" as a racial traits while Orcs have "medicore but low cost" as theirs.
Still Hordes might be a bit on the weak side, especially now that you can't build them early. They have 1 additional attack over halberdiers and 2 extra figures as well as large shields but lose 1 resistance and cost more. Fair for the same tier, but for a higher tier, idk. Then again orcs aren't really about having quality units. Maybe if it had 1 more defense? idk.

[Razumov]

The AI is still having problems building walls, and often doesn't build its food buildings. Maybe just give the AI a wall when the city is built?

[Seravy]

What difficulty is it?

[massone]

So it seems that when a normal unit is combat summoned, such as Paladins, it can be Exorcised as a fantastic creature, but it doesn't receive the bonuses of fantastic creatures from Survival Instinct or Soul Linker. Is this WAD? I don't recall normal units being summonable in the base game, so this seems to be a CoM specific thing.

EDIT: Paladins from Call to Arms also counts as a Life creature for Supreme Light apparently.

[Seravy]

Combat summoned creatures are fantastic creatures of the realm that summons them.
Looking at the code, Survival Instinct should affect them - it checks the "race" of the creature being one of the 5 realms which it is.
Soul Linker checks for the "is fantastic unit" flag instead which as far as I see isn't set by combat summoning, and might only get applied later or not at all.
Question is, do we want the Soul Linker ability to work with them? It will be quite powerful. If we do, I will add a line to set the flag.

[massone]

Combat summoned creatures are fantastic creatures of the realm that summons them.
Looking at the code, Survival Instinct should affect them - it checks the "race" of the creature being one of the 5 realms which it is.
Soul Linker checks for the "is fantastic unit" flag instead which as far as I see isn't set by combat summoning, and might only get applied later or not at all.
Question is, do we want the Soul Linker ability to work with them? It will be quite powerful. If we do, I will add a line to set the flag.

I haven't actually tested Survival Instinct, only Soul Linker, so that's probably right. To be consistent, I think it should suffer both the disadvantages and get the advantages. In practical terms though, it wouldn't matter to my own games, so someone who actually uses the spell would provide better commentary. My Beastmaster had a Pandora's Box item that cast the spell--I always leave it as the last to be researched and never actually use it even when I have it. It was just funny that the Chaos-Life AI successfully Exorcised the Paladins after a few turns. Could've killed it much easier with Warp Lightning.