Problems with Chaos and Death

[Anskiy]

What are these unnamed counters which simply destroy stacks of Shadow Demons? Inquiring minds want to know.

Cockatrices destroy them pretty easily. Life magicians can also spam exorcise to thin their numbers significantly. And Life itself can buff its city defenders so high Shadow Demons can struggle to take it. Case in point: 

Should be trivial for a 9 Shadow Demon army to take, right? Right? And yet in practice, they can barely scratch a halberdier. That's right, they struggle to hurt even the non hero targets.

[Intaka]

As I said, I don't disagree with your observations Anskiy. I just think, as an example, that Death's power is situational. 13 opponents definitely would make Death the underdog for my skill level.

[Intaka]

We're coming at the Shadow Demon perceptions from different ends, which is perfect for my elephant metaphor! I'm thinking about 9 SDs defending. Perhaps in a city with Cloud of Shadow. I just respect the power of 9 ranged or 9 spell casting units on defense I guess. Compared to melee anything.

[Intaka]

I started a new post to discuss dismantling 9 stacks. Sorry I ate your perfectly great thread about color balance with a side topic.

[Suppanut]

@suppanut same question as above. How do you see Chaos and Death stacking up against Life or Nature as far as which wizard you would kill all things being equal? We all know Sorcery is OP, so we'll just set that aside lol.

I play 13 wizards on maximal landmass. I would prefer to kill Chaos first if I isn't chaos wizard myself. Individual very rare spell of sorcery are more powerful and more annoying than chaos spell of the same tier but worst part of chaos power is how they are globally stacking, trimming chaos wizards to not more than 2 is a must and should do before either of them start to cast chaos surge or blazing eye (if there are more than 3 chaos wizards survive to very rare, guarantee doom for everyone else).

I consider Life realm to be one of the most powerful late game but they tend to not directly harm you as long as you not on collision course with them. But reason why you should consider get rid of them is due to their global enchantment on very rare level tend to make them hard to break (except by very rare chaos global enchantment) and Enlightenment global enchantment would make ai with substantial empire size rush toward spell of mastery quickly and prevent you from click "win" button. So decision to get rid of them or not depending on their empire size and possibility for them to have Enlightenment spell to cast or not. Another reason which you may want to get rid life wizards early is in case you want to use your summons as main tools as Divine Order would become trouble in your way.

Death itself is not big factor for you to get rid of any wizards, its global enchantments are annoying but not earth shattering or irreversible (that why I suggest Drought curse should have irreversible effect on terrain in the first place), and you could buy them off from curse your city diplomatically on lower difficulty level. Even with their stacking global enchantment Eternal Night, it still not much trouble except for nature, and sole surviving chaos wizards. Luckily, most of death wizards tend to not good at making friend, so they tend to end up in disadvantage side of coalition war mid-game and easy to get disqualified.

I don't see nature wizard as big threat unless you are in environment which chaos global curse stacking on one another and it tend to not being big threat to player as much as threat for ai mostly due to "harmless" spell like "Call the Wild" which would be spell which would turn world crisis into post-apocalyptic world full with ruins for you to loots. Reason why it tend to not big threat for player due to ai empire tend to collapse under stacking up of unrest from chaos global curse due to don't know how to manage game under crisis, different from player. If they survive to very late game, they tend take less impact from chaos global curse and tend to stay afloat after chaos destroy themselves. You may consider let's nature wizard casting Root of Genesis to be counter force against Armageddon if you don't worry about them growing too powerful but for some reason Root of Genesis get disjunct much more often than Armageddon.

[Seravy]

Let's see...

Werevoles are actually a spell you can research at common tier, if you picked it as your guarantee. It costs 420 RP. It absolultey destroys almost anything if used that early. The same applies to Gargyoles although they aren't that powerful, they are still pretty strong at common tier.

Shadow Demons are countered by Holy Word - but Holy Word is a higher tier spell so if you run into it you were probably late on building your shadow demon army. Most rares will counter Shadow Demons one way or another (Banish, petrify, Elemental Armor to name a few). Exorcise does counter them, except, losing one unit or even two after every conquered city is still a pretty good win, at least compared to how much units you'd lose otherwise. In my opinion the only thing that does counter Shadow Demons at its own tier is city garrisons with extreme defenses, such as Heavenly Light+Bless+Guardian, or Life garrisons in general with good ranged firepower - but there is no rule that says you have to attack the most fortified cities in the entire world with them so it's rarely a problem. Cockatrices don't counter them unless they have focus magic or come in stacks of 9 in which case you do have a bit of problem especially if they also have Resist Magic on them.

Chaos being possibly too weak especially as a secondary realm in your picks was a topic I raised during beta testing but there wasn't much responses if I remember that correctly so the most I could do was the small buff to Warp Wood and Fate Mastery. There aren't really any Chaos spells that are outright underpowered and being above average on most spells isn't really necessary on a realm that should be a late bloomer. So I'm not sure which spell could be buffed, how, and if it's necessary or not.

[Anskiy]

I mean, I think it's a bit limiting if Death has to rush researching Werewolves to make them effective. Same with Chaos rush researching Gargoyles to reliably survive the early game.

Shadow Demons are absolutely countered by Cockatrices and Exorcise, by the time I get to build a 9 Shadow Demon stack(which is necessary to make them truly effective) other wizards invariably get to their uncommons, which lets Life buff its troops like crazy and Nature to build a shitton of Cockatrices in my experience.

[Anskiy]

As for buffing spells, I think what needs to be done mainly is make Hell Hounds a bit more versatile. As they stand, they're honestly just cannon fodder that can only hope to fight with unbuffed low tier troops. Perhaps if they gained water walking they would be better? Or give them some more HP?

[jhsidi]

I'm a Death main. Can't really agree that it's underpowered in any way. Death is set up to do exactly what you're complaining about: be completely dominant in some situations, completely vulnerable in others.

Ghouls, for example, in the right conditions can snowball your military size by turning everything they encounter into undead. It's on you to generate the right conditions, and avoid the wrong ones. If you want summons that have strong average performance across the board (but not usually dominant) -- pick Nature.

The new Vampire spell is a perfect example of this. I was a bit irritated when it first came out and I saw it has 6 resistance. Like, seriously... 6!? On an expensive rare unit!? Seravy made the right choice there. In many, many situations, a single Vampire can tear through entire armies or lairs. Take it up against the wrong wizard or enemy and -- poof, gone. So... don't do that. You can't play Death by just bashing into things. (All that said, I do typically take 2 Sorcery books because Focus Magic + Resist Magic synergize incredibly well with Death summons... try Focus Magic on Wraiths, the life drain applies to ranged attacks and heals them).

One thing I'll agree on is that Death's city curses are often dead weight. I hate to see that I got Drought or Pestilence -- the game size is too large, there are too many opponents, they're far less effective than doing something active with snowballing returns like summoning another unit. Considering that the options for CoM now allow for vastly different games, I don't see any way to "fix" these spells to be equally valid in all games except, maybe, changing them to affect a wizard in general instead of a single city. But -- I may be remembering incorrectly -- I don't think Seravy wanted to mess with them, maybe having a different opinion on their utility.

[Suppanut]

As for buffing spells, I think what needs to be done mainly is make Hell Hounds a bit more versatile. As they stand, they're honestly just cannon fodder that can only hope to fight with unbuffed low tier troops. Perhaps if they gained water walking they would be better? Or give them some more HP?

Hell hound should be fast and manuveurable that could close distance quickly, hitting hard but fragile to counterattack and range attack. It would more fit with theme if hell hound gain more movement point and first strike (act like light cavalry, run faster and hit harder but lack of staying power, think about when large hound jump at its prey, or hound racing). But I don't think waterwalking would fit thematically with hellhound or chaos realm (non-corperal may fit with fire elemental, but clearly not hellhounds).