The Vine Ogre
 

I think that there is overwhelming consensus that the Vine Ogre (VO) kicks too much butt for its cost compared to all other units/summons.

Here are some suggestions, any combination of which could be implemented in the next patch to reduce its cost effectiveness:

- VO only has 50% Pois. Res. (In fact, I think this makes sense; cannot a tree, like a well from which it drinks, be poisoned?)
- VO only have 43 HP
- VO only have 17 Strength

What do you think?

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Well the 3N skill still limits them a bit, but they are truly a bit more useful than your average summons. More likely other summons' gem prices should be lowered, so there would be even some use of them.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I agree, besides the mage time issue, they have an achilles heel in the form of magic resistance. They seem like one of the better balanced summons.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Theres no easy way to exploit the low magic res, really. They are quite powerful for being so massively inexpensive...

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Oh, I don't know - a Charm Squad of Druids with Thistle Maces is always fun (or an Enslave squad of Astral-3 mages or ...).

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I don't think there's "overwhelming consensus" that the Vine Ogre is too strong.

Besides the points already mentioned,

- it has poor attack rating and can only serve as a meat(?) shield, but seldomly does any damage against 'real' troops

- it is suspectible to fire ..

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Vine Ogres are fine as they are. Building a VO army of a decent size requires lots of mage turns. Compare that to the same number of mages casting Pale Riders. VO are fodder, albeit fodder with quite a few hit points. One SC will slice up any number of VO and give the SC a ton of life drain HP. So there goes your investment (in time as well as gems).

Nerfing the VO gives an even greater edge to death and blood nations. Of the three major summoning paths, nature is definitely not the strongest and arguably the weakest.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Vine ogres are pretty strong, IMO. They would be fine EXCEPT that there are various ways to summon lots more than 1 per gem, and Nature's thistle mace, the avalibility of druids, and the fact that vine beings are one of the few mindless units that don't require magical or indead leadership combine to make them far better than any other low-level summon.

Not that this solves the problem, but I don't think anyone could have a real complaint against raising their price to 2 gems. 2 gems for (generally) 2 vine ogres... still a bargain, isn't it?

As for poison immunity, vine creatures are certainly not immune to poison. They're just immune to blood poisons that affect animals and humanoids with hearts and organs, since they are plants. Nobody said they were immune to herbicides... =)

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I thought I just read in another thread that you can't mind enslave them... but maybe you can still charm them. I dunno though, cause they are mindless.

Actually with 2 attacks with decently high strength they can do well against most national troops. Unless by 'normal' you mean other summons...

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

For reference... here are the relative simbat powers of a few meat shields.

Deathmatch Power Ratings for 100 rounds:

100*Heavy Inf Scale --------- Wins: 46.2% Power: 890 Overall: 1000
179*Light Inf --------------- Wins: 52.1% Power: 1064 Overall: 990
354*Militia ----------------- Wins: 53.8% Power: 1121 Overall: 1006
275*Vine Man ---------------- Wins: 50.5% Power: 1014 Overall: 992
81*Vine Ogre ---------------- Wins: 46.6% Power: 903 Overall: 999
345*Corpse Construct -------- Wins: 50.8% Power: 1025 Overall: 1007

Average --------------------- Wins: 50.0% Power: 1003 Overall: 998
Median ---------------------- Wins: 50.8% Power: 1025 Overall: 1000
Overall RMS: 999
Overall RMH: 999

Vinemen are big, cheap, upkeep-free, need-not-eat, poison proof, and mindless, which are huge advantages. But they are not super-powerful in combat. Far better than soulless or corpse constructs, though.

P.S. And I think all mindless are immune to mind-altering or soul-slaying spells, like charm.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Are you sure about those numbers? Why are militia stronger than heavy inf? And what does the 'scale' after heavy inf mean?

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Heavy Inf Scale means heavy infantry wearing scale mail I gather.

The numbers are, I think, supposed to make all groups roughly equally powerful. So 354 militia would be the equivalent of 100 Heavy Infantry, or 81 Vine Ogre. This does not include morale however (I believe), so some of the groups will break in an actual battle, while others will stick to the death.

The Power and Overall numbers mean... Well, something Saber Cherry explained, but nothing my limited grasp of maths could make sense of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Oh i see.. you used like 354 militia and 81 vine ogres...
so to get an accurate 1v1 value.. you could take the power and divide by the number of troops, right? how exactly was the 'power' caulculated, anyway?
so...

Heavy Inf ------- 8.90
Light Inf ------- 5.94
Militia --------- 3.17
Vine Man -------- 3.69
Vine Ogre ------ 11.15
Corpse Construct 2.97

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

But if this simulation doesnt take into account morale, then that makes vine ogres MUCH more effective...

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I guess power means "how this unit is able to slaughter weaklings" and overall means "how this unit fares when faced with the best troops". I do not think you can divide power by number of troops, but I may just not understand what power means. I simply compare the number of troops needed to do as well as the other squads, so one Vine Ogre would be nearly as good as four militia, but only somewhat better than Heavy infantry.

The numbers mean, on average, that 354 militia will fare as well as 81 vine ogres against all the other squads, but some specific units are better for some situations. And since there is no morale (no routing is allowed according to Saber Cherry), Vine Ogres should indeed be much stronger than shown here.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Fiends of Darkness or Devils are much stronger then Vineogres and are about as cheap also .
Especially the soul contract generated Devil is extremely cheap and does require less magetime also then vine ogres .

And vine ogres are only a meatshield and can be beaten by most national troops easy also . Vans , Knights and simliar would even roxxor them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

So i wonder too where that consensus that vine ogres are overpowered comes from http://www.si-games.com/forumshttp:/...ies/ditsch.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

The Relevant thread (warning - kinda big....)

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Sure, but thats comparing them to the best unit in the game for its cost (a devil), but I cant say I know much about fiends.


From the simple fact that most people I play against get them, and I get them every game I play.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I think more expensive vine ogres would negetively impact nature nations in the early game. A vine ogre isn't really worth 2 gems. Its probably not worth 1. It IS worth .2 gems though, but thats more like a lvl 7 spell, too.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Usually you do not get one Vine Ogre per casting, but two: the Ivy Crown replica gives you one more Vine Ogre per summoning, and you should have one of those items per Vine Ogre summoner if you are serious about it. Vine Ogres seem cheap enough at 0.5 gem the unit, if you have enough mages to summon quite a few of them.

Vine Ogres are especially appealing because Nature does not really shine for the unique summonings, unlike Air for the Air Queens, so you are more likely to spend your Nature gems early on rather than those air gems (if you are trying to snatch an Air Queen). That, and Corpse Constructs (the closest equivalent to Vine Ogres in spirit) require harder to get magic, while not really being on par with the Vine Ogres, and that's only if you find enough Air-1/Death-1 cheap mages... or even *one* source of cheap Air 1/Death 1 mages, Return of the Raptors excluded.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Does anyone really think the VO's for 1 or .5 gems are too strong?

Maybe we should be negotiating the price of Ivy Kings instead of Vine Ogres.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I should have been more clear. IF they cost 2 gems per casting then they would still cost 1 gem for nature summoning during the early game.

So, maybe an Ivy King should cost 30 gems. I think they'd still be worth it.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Hm i almost always ignore them and invest my nature gems in fever fetishes or GoH instead .
In lategame also in lots of Ivy Kings or Haunted Forest .

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Yeah, everything you said is true. Morale is included in the simulator, but it is only important for 2 things: 1) repel attempts, and 2) going berserk check. Units don't rout in the sim. As for what the numbers mean... um. Don't worry about them too much, but the far left number is the size of a group that makes it about equal in strength to the other groups. The only thing the other numbers matter for in this mode is that the simulator tries to make the far right number equal to 1000 by adjusting group size.

Personally, I feel that ogres are much better than demons in many roles because they do not require special leadership. Raising an army of demons requires upkeep for the special leaders (especially with big groups) who have to be mages. Raising an army of vine ogres only requires a single 30g indy leader per 25 ogres.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Also, corpse constructs require undead leadership, are easily banished, and (essentially) require Earth magic for the lighting rods. They are so so so vastly inferior it is amazing. I'd rather summon (temporary) lesser air elementals with air gems than corpse constructs.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Unless these numbers take into account positioning, and multiple attacks on a single target they don't really mean too much.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

They ignore positioning; eveything is assumed to be in range of everything else. Multiple attacks are allowed (originating from or terminating on any unit). But I don't think positioning makes the numbers invalid in this case. The only times when positioning is really important are when projectiles, area effect weapons, heat/cold/poison auras, trample, or magic are involved... or when one group outnumbers another group by a factor of 24:1 or so (depending on the size). None of these play a role in this scenario, so I doubt the numbers differ from reality to a noticable degree, aside from the routing issue, which would make vine units and undeads relatively much more potent compared to humans, but not change their balance relative to each other.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Vine Ogres are ricoculously good, and Corpse Constructs are way too crappy. Both of these are true.

Personally, I'd just like Vine Ogres to eat. This would make them chew up 2 supplies each, and provide a good solid reason for Nature Mages to back up the Vine Ogres. As is, people are summoning armies of like 200+ Vine Ogres and sitting around on them waiting for wars to break out. That's the part that's not cool. It isn't that people are grabbing medium sized piles of Vine Ogres for use as early game meat shields - it's that you can put so very very many of them in a single pile that is so painful. They could need to eat and have forest survival. It would be great.

BTW, Terrain Survival should make you need half as many supplies while in that terrain, in addition to having a 50% chance of ignoring a starvation hit. That would encourage people to store Vine Ogres in the woods, where they are supposed to be...

---

On a different but related note, Corpse Constructs should be immune to banishment. They could still require undead leadership, just not actually be undead. That would give them a reason for existence that they currently don't have. Even with a Staff of Storms, it's pretty hard to justify spending a whole turn of spellcasting just to get 6 Corpse Men, the fact that it also costs an actual Air Gem is just icing on the cake.

And they should carry clubs. Or attack with both fists. Or know Kung Fu. Or something. Right now, they have such a bad skill set that the craptastic weapon line makes them too terrible.

-Frank

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

1. I am taking "overwhelming consensus" from the thread on Low Level Summons. There is a consensus that no-one ever spends gems on them except for Vine Ogres, which are a great bargain.
2. I do NOT mean by this that the VO is overpowered absolutely (compared to all other units) -- what a stupid thing to want to say!
3. I do NOT mean that the VO should be balanced compared to all the other chaff out there which no-one ever gets. There is just no way that the dev team will be able to balance all the summons out in an upcoming patch! I thought I would stick to the small things that people do use.
4. That a VO is inferior in every way to, say, a devil, or a FoD, etc. is making a point in my book: Devil Factories are no-brainers.
Maybe it is just a silly idea to want to balance any one unit out without changing the entire game. So... I'll retract the idea for now ... but would like to keep it in mind for future patches or dom3.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

If your enemy has giant groups of vine ogres, he probably also has a good sized group of Ivy Kings/Treelords, and your problem are likely a lot more significant than just a bunch of vine ogres.

(spelling corrected)

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I don't see how that follows at all. 200 Vine Ogres is just 10 Crones with hats working for 10 turns. Or 10 Daughters with Hats and Sticks for 10 turns. Or some combination thereof, subject to the relative availability of gems and money.

In any case, 200 VOs is a reality by turn 20, while a good sized group of Ivy Kings probably is not.

-Frank

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Your math is faulty.

Or you meant "200 VO per 10 turns", what might be true after turn 20.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

He's right, If you use all your gems to make ivy crown's, and find enough gems to make the balance of 10/rnd up you could have 200 VO's by rnd 20. I've never horded VO's in the early game, I try to get more impact by using them in mid to late game in huge groups created by 10 Ivy Kings (Like 40/rnd), and using the king's for local defense when necessary.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Air Queens and Ice Devils are also in play (or soon to be) by turn 20.

200 Vine Ogres are nothing to sneeze at. However, this hypothetical player is paying, in addition to 150 gems (for VOs plus crowns), a huge opportunity cost of 100 mage turns (10 mages X 10 turns). Think of how much research, forging, site searching, other summoning, combat support, etc. could be done with 100 mage turns. Even the 150 gems are a steep price to pay at that point in the game. It means this player won't be able to afford to cast more than a few other ritual spells.

Vine Ogres are nature's equivalent of undead. Most kinds of undead don't eat, don't rout, and don't require upkeep. Undead have fewer hit points and are vulnerable to priest gangs, but on the other hand, they won't feed a life drain attack. Also, you pay a fixed price for an unholy priest (e.g., 28 gems for a Mound Fiend) and then get a steady stream of undead for no additional gems. You can argue that the good undead spells are at a higher level, but then again, 100 mage turns means several hundred research points.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

To setup Devil Factories takes quite some time . You might be rushed to death meanwhile already by Pangenea or Vanheim .

And with blood there are so many other choices like IDs and ADs so a devil is not a no-brainer .
And vs. a Wrathful Squad devils suck bigtime also .

The only thing in Dominions where i would maybe use the word no-brainer is maybe Caelum . They are unfair , good troops and the best earlygame - midgame mages .

Really quickly caelum researches quickness + lightning bolt . That's already 2 dead troops per caelum mage per battleturn for most nations . Shortly after they can either rush to AQs or Alteration 6 for false horror spamming + ultraunfair raiding .

So caelum is my no-brainer number 1 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I think the problem with Vine Ogres is they're too easy to mass produce. An Ivy King can produce 4 (!) of them a turn for the cost of only 1 N. And Ivy Kings are cheap at 20 N each.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

200 vine ogres will be easily defeated by bane lords that are properly equipped. This will also be a fraction of the cost, both in gems and mage time.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

That's a huge number of both gems and mage time, for very little actual benefit. That's a total cost of 50 gems for the hats, 2300 gold for the crones, 767 gold in upkeep, and 100 nature gems for the spells.

Do you seriously have 150 nature gems to throw away that early in the game?

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

You mean with out getting any Ivy Kings http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

I think you could increase the Ivy King price to 30 nature gems, and decrease their summoning bonus to +2 and they would STILL be a good cast. Anyone disagree?

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Ivy Kings aren't exactly early game.

I do. To get any benefit out of an ivy king opposed to a vine crown on two mages, you'll have to have the ivy king cast for 15 turns.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Why not mod vine orges to cost more, and see if any one still uses them and/or if it makes the game more fun?

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Raising the price of vine-ogres could get some upset. It would be more friendly to drop the gem price of other cheap summons like the salamander, cave drake, wyvern, ice drake, etc... . I never summon these since they just are not worth the price.
Another idea would be making these disliked summons have more life and better stats.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Exactly NT Jedi!

Somewhere near the top of the thread it was suggested that Vine Ogres were clearly too cheap because everyone used them, and no-one uses the other early game summons.

So naturely the proposal is to nerf them, thus presumably ensuring that nobody uses Vine Ogres either.

If no-one tends to use any of the other early game summons - even those without easy access to Vine Ogres - then surely it's those other summons that are the problem. The answer doesn't have to be making them cheaper either - maybe better, or more interesting in some way.

And while VOs are a good deal, I haven't seen anyone dominate a game with them. They're still cannon-fodder.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Yep, I agree, NT and Mark.

Vine Ogres are good, but not overpowered. It's the more powerful summons which tend to be much underpriced, and some of the lesser summons which cost so much that people usually wait for the bargain ultra-bad-*** summons to give bargain life drain weapons so they can be SCs. I'd much sooner multiply the cost of such units as Bane Lords.

Interesting analysis below on Vine Ogres. A couple of points to add:

* Vine Ogre size is a slight disadvantage against mobs of humanoid-sized units, because on a dense front, the smaller units get more attacks per unit since more fit in an adjacent square. That will result in a somewhat overstatement of their power on the simulation which assumes everyone can attack everyone else.

* Vine Ogres are mindless... so they never gain experience.

PvK

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Based purely on the summation of the values of the various units' statistics (Size, HP, Protection, Morale, Magic Resistance, Attack, Defense, Precision, Movement, and AP), the units come up like this:
Wyvern: 129 + Fly - Cold-blooded - Animal
Ice Drake: 140 + Cold-res(100) - Animal
Cave Drake: 153 + Survive (M) - Animal - Cold-blooded
Fire Drake: 137 + Fire-res(100) - Animal - Cold-blooded + Survive (W)
Vine Ogre: 163 + Poison-res(100) + Survive (F) + Need-not-eat + Mindless - 1 x extra paths required - extra conj level (3)

Clearly the vine ogre is worth more as a unit. If you were to change the costs of the above units, one could probably infer that their gem-cost should be 1 considering that you can get more than one vine ogres for a single gem while the 2nd level summons are extremely expensive. However, that fails to take into account the factors listed as +'s and -'s above, differing values of various attributes (1hp is clearly not equal to 1 attack skill in value), and it fails to take into account divergences in the costs of the various low-level summons. Under the current modding ability it is not possible to achieve a true "balance" between these summons. My suggestion, cludgy though it may be, is to reduce the gem-cost of the 4 elemental 2nd level summons to 1 and see what happens.

My prediction is that you'll see groups of them arising in non-nature nations while nature nations retain the vine ogre. Since they can't be hoarded as efficiently, however, they will tend to be phased out later on when better things come along.

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

That is quite possibly the most inane measurement of worth I have ever seen under any circumstances. By that rubric, we could have a size 1 flying creature with 2 AP, 30 strength, 20 attack, 0 precision, 0 defense, 1 hit point, 20 MR, and 37 protection and have it come out to only 110+fly.

Some stats are worth more than others. All stats are worth a lot more when you have a lot of them than when you don't.

I'd go for 2 or 3. 1 Air Gem Wyverns would be a thing of pure ugly. I don't want to see the Air nations with that kind of upgrade.

-Frank

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I mentioned that I did not take into account the values of various abilities http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I also mentioned that the values of individual attributes are not equivalent.

Your monster does not exist in practice. The values of attributes do not have a linear increase in value per point. They have a value (negative or positive) based on their statistical deviation from the mean values of their opponents'. This makes it difficult/impossible to determine a "cost" for a given point. If you take a look at the creatures I compared, they all fit into a relatively small variance with some outliers: The Wyvern has roughly 20 hp fewer than the others. The Cave Drake has 22 protection. The Vine Ogre has 50 morale. The Wyvern has the best combat skills with 13 Attack and 11 Defense--which since it is at or slightly above the values that the majority of national troops spawn with makes it much more valuable than the skills of all except the vine ogre who has 12 attack skill--allowing it to successfully attack units. It can't fly, but it doesn't eat either. Is Flying better than Doesn't-Eat? Probably, but it restrictys amassing hordes of Wyverns (like you'll see of Vine Ogres). This, combined with the morale of a wyvern (the lowest in the group) makes it less effective as the game progresses.

Would you buy a 3 gem Wyvern?

I'd save mine up for Draconians (which aren't quite as good, but the spell grows cheaper as your Draconian Chief summons more draconians) or Air Queens. You get one chief and 16 draconians for 45 gems--if you don't count the chief's value, since he's basically just a draconian producer, each Draconian cost 2.81 gems when you initially cast the spell. After 10 rounds of summoning, your draconians cost an average of 1.73 gems apiece. It goes down from there. Of course Draconians is a 6th level spell, but saving up for it is better than buying 3 gem wyverns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

2 gems might be ok--I'm not sure. I haven't done any actual testing.

If you don't like my evaluation, come up with your own rather than simply attacking mine with arguments I already foresaw http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

Another approach would be to keep a higher price but make the drakes/wyvern better. Zen's mod was more to this approach. I don't know if it was effective or not.

At low spell levels I'll usually want my mages researching instead of summoning. It is usually not much more research to get something that (at least appears) better. Maybe with very difficult research you might buy drakes?

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

My unit value calculation will probably be:
(HP/10)*(Morale/10)*(Protection/10)*(Strength/10)*(MR/10)*(Attack/10)*(Defence/10)*(Precision**/10)*(AP/10) = Unit Value.
If you want to include Encumberance just divide by it (but Encumberance isnt always important).

** Only if important to that unit, otherwise just ignore Precision

Re: The Vine Ogre
 

I wish I said that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Anyhow, I meant it.
Basically, this thread of mine only makes sense together with the "Low Level Summons" thread, where the general gist of things is to make high-powered summons less attractive and decrease the numbers of no-brainers.
VOs are still no-brainers for me in terms of low-level summons; the only ones I ever spend gems on.