Fire Giant

[Seravy]

See the Chaos/Sorcery discussion for more details.
I want to make Fire Giants a desirable summon for a Sorcery player by making it resist magical ranged attacks, the only attack type sorcery cannot counter effectively until much later in the game. (they have Guardian Wind for missiles and Flight against melee units)

By adding Resist Elements only, the giant goes from 5 to 9 defense against magic ranged attacks. A decent increase but far from omipotent, can probably beat 2-3 magicians effortlessly but any more and 1 such Fire Giant would be to few.
However if Large Shield is also added, the total defense become 12, which is high enough where even 1-2 Giants can effectively fight a large stack of 7-9 magicians.
As a side effect, the shield adds 3 defense against normal missile attacks too, which feels unneccesary - Using Guardian Wind and Animate Ammo should be the primary solutions to missile attacks, not Fire Giant's abilities.

SO...which do you think would be better, please vote

Fire Giant with Resist Elements only
Fire Giant with Resist Elements and Large Shield
Fire Giant with Elemental Armor (overkill for magic but nothing vs missiles)

[Anskiy]

Is Elemental Armor an innate ability for anything in the game? I don't think it shows up in that form for anyone but heroes wearing armor.

[Zypher]

Fire Giant is after all an uncommon spell. Both Resist Element and Large Shield I feel would turn it into a way to good unit for the price.
Even most rare summons have a hard time against a 7-9 stack of magicians if you attack with 1-2 of them so making an uncommon effectively be able to fight that kind of stack is a bit to much in my mind.

[Warped Wood]

First of all, I love the Caster of Magic remake, but I felt strongly enough about this potential change that I've subscribed to Realms Beyond specifically to comment. I would have liked to have seen an option for "Fire Giant with No Changes" in the poll, as I think adding just Resist Elements alone is way over powered.

See the Chaos/Sorcery discussion for more details.
I want to make Fire Giants a desirable summon for a Sorcery player by making it resist magical ranged attacks, the only attack type sorcery cannot counter effectively until much later in the game. (they have Guardian Wind for missiles and Flight against melee units)

How does Resist Elements on Fire Giants specifically synergise with Sorcery? Sorcery is a school that depends heavily on magical attacks (e.g. Focus Magic, Aether Sparks). Countering the new Fire Giant would be a massive headache for any school or race that depends on magical attacks. How would a Dark Elf Sorcery wizard deal with an early Fire Giant? As a Sorcery wizard I hate to see defenders with Resist Elements, but at least this can normally be dispelled.

I also think Resist Elements is thematically inconsistent with what Chaos is about. Resist Elements is about Nature and protection. Chaos is surely focused on uncompromising attack with less emphasis on defence. If a Sorcery wizard wants to counter magical attacks then they can combine Nature for their resistance spells. I think Chaos should be about enhancing Sorcery's offensive potential.

By adding Resist Elements only, the giant goes from 5 to 9 defense against magic ranged attacks. A decent increase but far from omipotent, can probably beat 2-3 magicians effortlessly but any more and 1 such Fire Giant would be to few.

Why should a cheap uncommon summon be capable of taking down three Magicians? Magicians are a very sizeable investment. Even a 9 stack of Shadow Demons could struggle against a 9 stack of Magicians when on the offensive. With an 8 book strategy a Fire Giant could be potentially researched VERY early.

Personally, I don't think the Fire Giant needs upgrading. It is a cheap, fairly tough, early summon that is especially effective against multi-figure units due to the ability to thin them out with Fire Balls and ranged attacks before finishing them off with melee. If I see nodes or lairs defended with Fire Giants I tend to avoid them until later, as they insta-wreck most early units.

IMHO, if there is one Chaos summon that is in need of an upgrade then it would have to be Chaos Spawn. I mean this thing is laughably bad. It has about 10 different ways to kill slow, low resistance, multi-figured melee units (i.e. easily killable units), but loses to virtually everything else. This thing looks really sad compared to the also rare, but extremely powerful and versatile Efreet.

I don't want to sound too negative, because I really like CoM, but I've always considered the Fire Giant to be an above average summon.

[zitro1987]

I also find Fire Giant to be above average already, but if the resist element buff is coupled with a small cost increase (+15?) I’m good

[Seravy]

How does Resist Elements on Fire Giants specifically synergise with Sorcery?

Magical ranged attacks is the only weak point of Sorcery early in the game. (later they get Magic Immunity and Invisibility)
For missile ranged attacks you can prevent all damage with Guardian Wind, and for melee attacks you prevent them with Flight (unless the enemy has their own flying units in large enough quantities which is unlikely, for spells that could counter Flight, like Web, you have Counter Magic), finally for resistance based curses and save or die effects, they have Resist Magic.
A unit with Sorcery buffs is pretty much invincible to everything except magical ranged attacks as long it well.

Countering the new Fire Giant would be a massive headache for any school or race that depends on magical attacks.

It still has low magic resistance and low armor. As long as it has no Sorcery buffs, there are plenty of counters in all realms :
Life - Exorcism or it's not even a threat, buffed multifigure melee units tear it apart and it doesn't have enough ammo to really hurt at range for a Life wizard
Nature - The low resistance makes it vulerable against Cockatrices, or even Spider poison. Spiders are also cheaper and can web the giants to disable ranged attacks until the army is in melee range. It also generally does not have high enough stats to fight evenly with Nature summons, a Lizard counters it well. You also have your own Resist Elements to even out the odds for the 3 turns while it has ammo.
Chaos - Resist Elements does very little against Chaos magic and the Fire Immunity hurts Chaos wizards way more than that. Lightning Bolts or even Warp Creatuer easily obliterates Fire Giants.
Death - Black Sleep and it's gone. Or you can use a single Night Stalker to kill an entire stack of 9.

As for races, the only significant magic ranged damage units that are affected negatively by Resist Elements are Magicians and Warlocks and similar, low HP units. Which are a losing strategy against Chaos magic anyway in my opinion, as they are rather expensive and die to a single Fireball, Fire Bolt, Lighting Bolt, and if things last long enough then an entire stack is wiped by Fire Storm or Flame Strike.
For Dark Elves specifically, if you fight Chaos, build Nightblades or Nightmares.

I think Chaos should be about enhancing Sorcery's offensive potential.

While this is something I can agree with, Sorcery has no offensive potential to enhance really, other than Phantom summons (the new spell buffs those) and Water Elemental (Inner Fire can buff them). While Sorcery also has a few direct damage spells, all of them are weaker and functionally identical to the Chaos damage spells, so it would be really hard to come up with anything to create synergy there that doesn't feel extremely artificial and weird. Everything else in Sorcery is a defensive spell pretty much.

Why should a cheap uncommon summon be capable of taking down three Magicians? Magicians are a very sizeable investment.

110 casting power to summon a creature is a massively larger investment than the 120 production cost of magicians as casting skill is hard to increase while city production grows much faster and exponentially as your empire grows. Only in the very early parts of the game is production a more valuable resource than casting power.

All of that said, I am on the fence about this change too. If anybody has a better idea how to make a redundant chaos or sorcery spell that would otherwise be worthless for this combination become good, I don't mind choosing that instead. I picked Fire Giant specifically because it was the least useful creature in this combination, as Water Elementals do almost the same job.

[Anskiy]

The solution imo is nerfing Water Elementals, Sorcery really doesn't need a "raw power" summon like it imo. We could try and give it some tricks to make up for the stat losses, while also playing more into the realm's theme.

[Seravy]

The solution imo is nerfing Water Elementals, Sorcery really doesn't need a "raw power" summon like it imo. We could try and give it some tricks to make up for the stat losses, while also playing more into the realm's theme.

How would nerfing a unit make Sorcery and Chaos stronger together?
Unless those "tricks" have synergy with Chaos, it just makes both the combined pair and individual Sorcery weaker, the latter being 100% unintended.

Even so I'm against this idea, Sorcery needs Water Elemental. I remember how much of a struggle it was to survive the midgame without a single generic purpose "raw stats" creature as Sorcery. All the buffs and tricks in Sorcery to protect units is meaningless if there are no units worth protecting.

[Warped Wood]

Magical ranged attacks is the only weak point of Sorcery early in the game. (later they get Magic Immunity and Invisibility)
For missile ranged attacks you can prevent all damage with Guardian Wind, and for melee attacks you prevent them with Flight (unless the enemy has their own flying units in large enough quantities which is unlikely, for spells that could counter Flight, like Web, you have Counter Magic), finally for resistance based curses and save or die effects, they have Resist Magic.
A unit with Sorcery buffs is pretty much invincible to everything except magical ranged attacks as long it well.

But surely this is an intended weakness of Sorcery. I mean no school is meant to be strong in every regard. I think Nature is the only realm that is specifically strong against magical ranged attacks in the early game. If a player wishes to try defensive overkill then they could go for a Sorcery+Nature combo. Baking a Nature spell into a Chaos summon would mostly benefit Chaos by giving a free ability that has no place in the realm.

It still has low magic resistance and low armor. As long as it has no Sorcery buffs, there are plenty of counters in all realms :
Life - Exorcism or it's not even a threat, buffed multifigure melee units tear it apart and it doesn't have enough ammo to really hurt at range for a Life wizard
Nature - The low resistance makes it vulerable against Cockatrices, or even Spider poison. Spiders are also cheaper and can web the giants to disable ranged attacks until the army is in melee range. It also generally does not have high enough stats to fight evenly with Nature summons, a Lizard counters it well. You also have your own Resist Elements to even out the odds for the 3 turns while it has ammo.
Chaos - Resist Elements does very little against Chaos magic and the Fire Immunity hurts Chaos wizards way more than that. Lightning Bolts or even Warp Creatuer easily obliterates Fire Giants.
Death - Black Sleep and it's gone. Or you can use a single Night Stalker to kill an entire stack of 9.

I think you misunderstood my point. I was saying that baking Resist Elements into summons is specifically a Sorcery nerf, as Sorcery obviously depends far more on magical attacks than other schools. This would be fine if it were your intention to nerf Sorcery, but my understanding is that you want to make Fire Giants more desirable to Sorcery wizards.

As for races, the only significant magic ranged damage units that are affected negatively by Resist Elements are Magicians and Warlocks and similar, low HP units. Which are a losing strategy against Chaos magic anyway in my opinion, as they are rather expensive and die to a single Fireball, Fire Bolt, Lighting Bolt, and if things last long enough then an entire stack is wiped by Fire Storm or Flame Strike.
For Dark Elves specifically, if you fight Chaos, build Nightblades or Nightmares.

Nightmares and Nightblades require ToK. I'm quite sure I've seen roaming Fire Giants significantly before ToK, as they are only uncommons. Good luck to the Apprentices (the Bowman replacement) with their 3 strength magical attack and Aether Sparks. :D

110 casting power to summon a creature is a massively larger investment than the 120 production cost of magicians as casting skill is hard to increase while city production grows much faster and exponentially as your empire grows. Only in the very early parts of the game is production a more valuable resource than casting power.

The main investment of Magicians is the vast amount of infrastructure and city development required to make them efficiently. If you are getting stacks of Magicians early through rush buying then that 120 production looks more like 200+ gold. Anyway, Magicians are mostly defensive units, and if they are expected to lose 3 for every 1 Fire Giant (a lowly uncommon summon) then I think they would be redundant. Fortunately, I think Magicians remain nicely balanced for now (so long as we don't give early cheap summons undispellable Resist Elements )

All of that said, I am on the fence about this change too. If anybody has a better idea how to make a redundant chaos or sorcery spell that would otherwise be worthless for this combination become good, I don't mind choosing that instead. I picked Fire Giant specifically because it was the least useful creature in this combination, as Water Elementals do almost the same job.

Personally I think the Fire Giants are second only to the Efreet in terms of useful Chaos summons. However, if you insist on making changes to further synergise with Sorcery then I have the following idea:

1. Remove the Fire Ball charge.
2. Add 10 casting skill and the knowledge of how to cast Fire Bolts (but with no charges).

This will allow Fire Giants to cast very cheap spells across any realms the wizard knows, but it will particularly synergise with Sorcery due to Focus Magic! Focus Magic will improve the ranged magical attack and give the Fire Giant a respectable 25 casting skill. This is enough to potentially cast Lightning Bolts, Mystic Surge, Blur or even a weak Dispelling Wave. I'm not sure whether this would be overpowered (the summoning cost could be revised), but I think it would at least make Fire Giants far more desirable to Sorcery wizards.

[Suppanut]

Personally I think the Fire Giants are second only to the Efreet in terms of useful Chaos summons. However, if you insist on making changes to further synergise with Sorcery then I have the following idea:

1. Remove the Fire Ball charge.
2. Add 10 casting skill and the knowledge of how to cast Fire Bolts (but with no charges).

This will allow Fire Giants to cast very cheap spells across any realms the wizard knows, but it will particularly synergise with Sorcery due to Focus Magic! Focus Magic will improve the ranged magical attack and give the Fire Giant a respectable 25 casting skill. This is enough to potentially cast Lightning Bolts, Mystic Surge, Blur or even a weak Dispelling Wave. I'm not sure whether this would be overpowered (the summoning cost could be revised), but I think it would at least make Fire Giants far more desirable to Sorcery wizards.

I don't think fantastic units casting spell from other realm is possible at this point, they lock to cast spell only to their own realm. So Dispeling Wave or Blur cast by Fire Giant is not possible.