A flaw with the Warlord retort

[Anskiy]

You know, I realize what's a big flaw about the Warlord retort. It mainly gives two benefits: first, all units start with one level higher than the base, and second, they have a higher max level than normal. Now, the latter benefit is far stronger than the former, but can only really be exploited by Life via the Heroism spell. When you do that, the retort is well worth its cost in picks. But if you don't, all you get is a mild early game benefit on your units that fades away quite quickly. This explains why it feels so underwhelming when picking it for non Life games.

What do you think? How should this be fixed? Or is it fine as it is?

[JustOneMoreTurn]

The first benefit is valuable if you use it aggressively early: build superior units and use them to seize lairs and cities that you couldn't win without the bonus. Your higher military rating might also make a difference between a rival declaring war or not. If you want late-game benefits, Crusade seems practically mandatory.

I dislike such obvious matchings, such as Warlord-Life (and Life-Spellcaster) and Nature-Conjurer, but it's hard to come up with alternatives that don't have some other obvious matching. If Warlord gave a bonus +4 (or whatever) health per unit in combat, it would still give a significant boost in early game, but not synergize quite as strongly with Life, so you might consider other realms.

I think part of the draw of MOM was the existence of super-strategies or other exploits. There was fun in finding them and giving them a try. The game might be improved if there were random variations in retorts, realms, spells, etc. If, for example, there were 6 different retorts for Warlord, you could have fun finding strategies/exploits for each one.

[zitro1987]

A lesser known advantage of Warlord is pairing it with Astrologer, building a war college, and recruiting elite caster units with the 5 mana experience bonus, resulting in spamming lightning bolts.

[Suppanut]

I think warlord problem could be fixed by give it economic bonus to make unit cheaper to train or give free access to city wall in new outpost/city. But both of these are impossible right now. I will request Seravy for new modding feature.

Alternatively warlord could make all unit train with barrack and war college stronger (get stat bonus or ability) but not apply to just altar of battle without barracks or war college.

[muxecoid2]

It is far from being the only retort that works with certain colors better, than other. It is so for most retorts. And white is by design the color for normal units. Conjurer is an example of a skill that barely works with life and is of limited utility for death.

Higher levels take more XP so it makes sense that higher give more. Warlord is not the only pick that works with some color better, than other.

I tried the war college it can work. If you are highly skilled perhaps even on the highest difficulty.

When you play on the highest difficulty it is all about cheesy overpowered combos clearing nodes and ruins early and taking no meaningful casualties when actually fighting other wizards. However on lower difficulty you can win through honest play and having a favourable casualty ratio without requiring lunatic ratio of 20:1.

In case of a honest fight the usability of a retort is measured in the ability to reduce casualties either by making them cheaper to replace or by suffering less loses.

Let's look again at the conjuration retort. If your entire army is summoned units the retort maybe boosts your power by 25%, by the time you summoned 4 units wizard without it only got 3. Warlord costs twice as many picks, but army of only normal units is more likely, than army of only summons... Can warlord boost the power of your army by 50? Yes. Does it happen every time? No.

TLDR: everything is working as designed. The balance is also fine.

[Anskiy]

Conjuror of limited use to Death? I don't agree, Death is one of two realms that relies heavily on summons, the other being Nature.

But otherwise, I see your point, it's just annoying that the retort takes up 2 picks for a rather lackluster benefit when not playing Life. Especially since CoM nerfed so many regular units so much.

[muxecoid2]

There is a way to play death with Lycanthropy and life drain being your summon.

All retorts are balanced around best case scenario. That's when you would pick them. Cult leader is balanced around high men who need all the unrest reduction you can get while tending to build religious buildings early. Pick it on Klackon and you spent 1 pick on a useless retort.

[Anskiy]

Flawed example, Cult Leader is useful for a whole host of races and playstyles, as long as you prioritize building religious structures early. It may grant its strongest effect with High Men, but it is useful even for an Orc or Halfling.

[muxecoid2]

Warlord is useful even without heroism if you play with many normal units.

You may have a hero centric build that prefers warlord over tactician for some reason.
You may play a race with high figure count normal units that make every XP level more impactful (halflings, crusaders, horde?)

Apprentices with war college and warlord start with 19 MP. This may be impactful with confusion costing 18. If you have focus magic the castable spell threshold moves to 34. Chaos channels that give your heroes access to all every chaos spell in combat may also help make every level count.

You may have a white build that is extremely mana hungry and rarely casts heroism outside of combat (some charismatic altar of peace shenanigans)

One option to extend the range of wizards that may benefit from warlord make armsmaster possible to get reliably. Perhaps warlord retort should say that the first hero that offers to join you is armsmaster.

This makes me wish to play famous charismatic warlord halfling with 8 chaos books. I wonder what is the highest difficulty this can work at.

[martinl_00]

[...]  the Warlord retort. It mainly gives two benefits: first, all units start with one level higher than the base, and second, they have a higher max level than normal. Now, the latter benefit is far stronger than the former, [...]
What do you think? 

Elite is +1 HP per figure, which is a big deal for most multi-figure units.

Without Life or WL, you need a *LOT* of xp to get this.

With WL, you just need a war college, which is available to many many races.