Drain Life
 

I know that Drain Life is being rehauled for dom3, and for good reason -- I just thought I'd ask this:

Do you think it would be a good idea if Drain Life, much like its description, "replentished" lost Health and Fatigue (and hopefully: to a much lesser extend with Fatigue), but did not give the caster / wielder *MORE* or additional health / fatigue than his/her maximum? I think it would be great if Drain Life didnt let the wielder "tank up" or "store up" additional HP over and beyond her maximum, but rather just replentish lost health; if she is already at full health, then drain life will add nothing.

Re: Drain Life
 

I don't think that's the most important thing, no.

Mainly it's way overpowered overall, and the main reasons are the amounts involved, allowing a tough SC to regain both damage and fatigue faster than even a mob can inflict them.

Next most important is the super-cheap cost for what it can do. Set the weapons with life drain to at least 80 gem cost each, and it's closer to the right price.

The ability to exceed base hit points is not nearly as important as the other stuff. It already maxes out at a point, and is kind of interesting to be able to go over a bit.

PvK

Re: Drain Life
 

At 80 gems, you'd basically relegate just every summonable commander to the "don't bother" pile.

Re: Drain Life
 

I think I'd still summon commanders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Although 80 gems is quite a lot...

Re: Drain Life
 

You are saying that without a life drain weapon summonable commanders are not worth the gems. That sounds like a problem.

Re: Drain Life
 

Ok, you do that. More uniques for me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

Rather than raising the cost of life-draining weapons, why not simply inhibit their life-draining properties by, say, 60%?

Re: Drain Life
 

You can do that in the combat sim... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Hey, you can also give armor-piercing weapons a "pierce percentage" and specify an exact, individual damage multiplier versus undead, demons, magical, and living unts (all on a single weapon), and give units percentage vulnerabilities and resistances versus every type of damage, including physical. Ahhhh!!! If only it were a game, I'd play it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

On the other hand elite troops can still kill lifedrain SCs . Even an AQ is in danger vs. Centaurs and Vans if not really well equipped . 30 Centaurs or Vans can kill a lot .

I lost a Jade Armor , Wraith sword , pendant of luck , ama , starshine skullcap AQ to about 40 centaurs last turn ( about turn 30 ) in my pythium game . I can't forge much better stuff on my own . AQs have anyways rather low protection so a few lucky centaur hits and they can die .
Without a way to combat undeads like charcoil shield undead spamming sauros can also kill many SCs . Same for Ghost riders .

So Lifedrain is maybe not that overpowered . At least the weapons do either few damage (blood thorn) or are 2 handed .

Re: Drain Life
 

I'm counting on blood thorn + astral weapon for Tuna's SC roundup http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif If a unit has high enough strength, and you throw in armor piercing or negating magic, the bloodthorn can be super effective. It's also great against billions of lightly armored (living) enemies.

It can be hard to kill life-drain-capable SCs without ready access to nonliving troops. And weapons aren't the only things that drain life...

As for 30 vans killing an SC, I should hope so. That costs 2100 gold, 480 resources, and 30 holy (plus unquantifiable cost of pretender blessing paths), compared to an SC that might cost 10 gems + 30 gems for equipment. 30 centaurs are more reasonable but have a much lower chance of success. Mictlan, Tien Chi, Ermor, Ulm, Machaka, Man, and other countries without strong elites or only highly resource-intensive elites can't fight mid-level SCs effectively with national troops. Some people say "That's good, that's the way it should be." But I don't like the game to degenerate to an SC race.

Re: Drain Life
 

Can a Lifeless SC using a bloodthorn heal himself if he hits living troops ?

Re: Drain Life
 

Sure can. Although I have to say that I'm not all that impressed with this sort of strategy. A pile of flagellants can and will occassionally kill Banelords in one round, making the presence of a Wraithsword largely meaningless.

In my current MP game I have yet to make any SC other than a good old Great Kraken.

Air Queens bursting with swag have fallen to Enslaves. Bane Lords bursting with swag have fallen to critical hits from fanatics. A SC with a life draining weapon is impressive, but it doesn't make you automatically win by any means. I'd rather have 600 hit points than 50 hit points and a life drain attack.

-Frank

Re: Drain Life
 

Life drain is overrated, SCs are overrated, everything is overrated. The
ultimate weapon in Dominions II is the specialist mage squad, and if it is
made out of Tartarian Titans, so much the better.

As extremely well equiped SC is only marginally better than a decently
equiped one. Sure, it kills chaffe a bit better, but no unsupported Sc
will win a battle of the opponents choosing.

In my current game, I just eliminated an enemy pretender loaded with life-drain,
the Aegis, and quite a few magic paths with two warlocks, a sage and a relief
spammer. The same squad would have taken three Lords of the Gates instead of
one, no problems.

The one trick that wins Dominions II is to always have a rock to the enemy's
scisors, which is why you will not see a good player whine about nerfing
'overpowered' stuff. There is no tactic without a counter. Fortunately, not
all races have all the tactics and counters... and unfortunately, some races
have too few counters, or none (Ulm)

Re: Drain Life
 

I'm curious. What, if anything, would you like to see changed in dom2 or dom3, Tuidjy? You seem to be firmly in the "don't touch a thing" crowd, but maybe you have your own pet ideas?

Re: Drain Life
 

I'm very nearly in the "don't touch a thing" camp. I'd mostly like to see:
[*] More Information available to the player (ex.: when I mind hunt a province, I want the message to say which province got hunted in addition to who did it and the name of the guy who got hit.
[*] Small balance changes. Cave Drakes are too expensive, Ghost Riders are too cheap. Not by a lot, but enough so it matters.
[*] More options. I want to be able to select from a menu when I build a castle. Sometimes I want to invest in a Fortified City or a Mountain Stronghold, and sometimes I don't. I should have that kind of option on a per-province basis.
[*] More stuff. I want to find provinces that are populated by Giants or Vaetti. I want to have multiple different versions of things show up at each research level - when I get Summoning 3 I should be able to make Vine Ogres or Vine Beasts, not just one.

In short, I want subtle tweaks that make the game more accessible and deeper, rather than an explosive nerf campaign against every strategy I don't use.

-Frank

Re: Drain Life
 

Of course I do. I will not go into details, but here are a few places where
I'd look for improvements.

1. All orders should be checked by the server, not by the client
2. Scripts should allow for 'hold', 'repeat last order', 'loop script'
3. Castles need to be balanced. Protecting sites should be an add-on per site
4. More counter-spells - to calm storms, to evaporate thunderclouds, de-buff...
5. More 'slayer' weapons - in addition to undead/deamon, magic, construct, etc..
6. Stiffer penalties for being outnumbered by _sentient_ troops
7. Higher bonus to precision against huge targets
8. Gem generators' chance of working should decline as more items are built
9. Items and spells that severely hinder spellcasting on the battlefiend
10. Globals that severely hinder spellcasting in friendly domain
11. Globals that protect or disable other globals until dispelled
12. Better low level summons
13. More, and better troop buffing spells
14. Ulm and T'ien Ch'i to be made half-way competitive. War engines for Ulm.
15. The ability to cap spell level from the game setup menu

Re: Drain Life
 

Maybe 7 Death gems. My biggest beef on this, though, is that GR, Well of Misery, and Tartarian Gate are all in Conj. They should be in seperate disciplines.

Re: Drain Life
 

Thanks. I like a lot of those, especially the first four.

Re: Drain Life
 

This is one of the 1st things I asked the dev's for when I started playing the game. While they agreed that the implementation would be trivial they said that the implications would be quite large and thus they were hesitant.

I'm a control freak so I'm all for it. However it is clear that it would swing the balance further towards mages.

And point #1 I personally think is 100% required for internet play. This is not a peer-to-peer game where enforcement is impossible, it's client server and you should never trust the client, ever.

Re: Drain Life
 

Well, Tuidjy, up until that last post of yours, I cant say Ive ever agreed with anything youve said. Where did all those great suggestions come from? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

I'm 100% behind Tuidjy's and the subsequent posts. I really hope the devs read this thread.

Re: Drain Life
 

On the cost of Summonings angle:

Very basically the mark-up that people pay for distance summons that stay around is too high. That's why Call of the Wild and Arouse Hunger are too expensive. The cost break for summons that don't stay around is too high as well. Ghost Riders and Earth Attack are too cheap.

Very basically the mark-up that people pay for getting a spell at a low level of research is too high. Ice Drakes and Summon Animals are too expensive.

Very basically, the price hike for getting non-unique leaders out of your summons is usually too big. The Harbringer Angel is overcosted. The Archangel is even worse (partially because it is a distant summons that sticks around, and partially because it comes with a leader, it ends up simply costing about a millsion gazillion more gems than could possibly be justified).

-Frank

Re: Drain Life
 

Sounds like Graeme's problem. One of my favorite part of the game is using thugs, rather than SC's... which, yes, mainly means not using life drain weapons, because they seem so out of balance price to effect.

I like armies of mortal troops, too, and Ulm and TC, so I guess I like most of Graeme's "don't bother" pile. Of course, though I've been playing Dom and Dom II for a couple of years and really enjoying it, I haven't played a whole lot of really competetive big-map high-magic games, haven't done much clam hoarding or SC using and have never cast Wish even once.

PvK

Re: Drain Life
 

What is the counters to Ghost riders?

Re: Drain Life
 

Currently, the best counter to Ghost Riders is a fortification.

Re: Drain Life
 

There's still something to be said for an abomination, or for an adequately-equipped astral mage.

One doesn't <i>need</i> to spam watch towers to defend against Ghost Riders, its simply the most cost-effective option. By a pretty broad margin.
I mean, for the price of an abomination, one could just bring up a dome that provides 50% coverage against all malign magical influences for a good 15 turns. For the price of two abominations in raw dirt, one can instantaneously erect a wizard's tower. And both spells are at lower research levels, too.

Re: Drain Life
 

Spells that don't tend to target lifeless troops, such as drain life, work very well, as they will go for the wraiths leading the horsemen.

Re: Drain Life
 

LOL. A fort is the best counter? and there are people who think it isn't overpowered? That's comical.

No wonder everyone spams cheap forts. I begin to see the reason for never selecting the other forts.

Logically then, Phantasmal Attack should be just as powerful as GR...is it? or is that underpowered in comparison?

Re: Drain Life
 

Hmmm...so you need a large army in every province to protect a couple mages that can probably only deal with 1 or 2 GR's. Or am I missing something?

Re: Drain Life
 

We can examine the cost of various counters:

Assumption: 6 gems = 100gp
Abomination Cost: 25 pearls (Level 9 Conj)
Dome of Arcane Warding: 10+ (Level 6 Ench)
Watchtower: 200gp (12 "gems") (Equiv. Level 0 Spell)
Ghost Riders: 5 gems (Level 9 Conj)

First, the Abomination:

Abominations have 4 attacks: 3 Life Drain attacks and 1 Gaze of Death. All of these effects are, generally, useless against a Wraith Lord, so it comes down to basic statistics--the Abomination is simply a better unit. It regenerates 27hp per round as well... Unfortunately, the Wraith Lord gets a Bane Blade, so he still has a chance to kill your precious, exensive Abomination. We'll take Bummer's assumption that an Abom can deter 1.5 GR spells... 1.5 X GR = 10 1 x Abom = 25.

Abomination is not cost effective

Dome of Arcane Warding: 10 + duration
DOAW blocks 50% of all GR spells. If a GR spell gets through the dome, and the province is not well-defended, the dome is destroyed and the gems wasted. Assuming 1 cast per round, the dome will probably be useful only 1 time (assumption: the dome works the first time and fails the second). 10 gems for 1 block costs opponent an extra 5 gems. DOAW is (very shakily) equivalent in cost to GR.

Watchtower: equivalent of 12 gems, blocks all GR castings.
Clearly this method is quite effective.

Some others:

Dome of Solid Air: Breaks when penetrated, 80% protection, cost 20 gems. This one is much more effective against GR, but it can be brought down (usually by a barrage of cheap spells e.g. Seeking Arrow).

Mechanical Militia: 5 mechanical men adds significant power to PD, but is it enough to combat GR? I haven't tested it. This spell however is expensive and dispellable.

Haunted Forest/Enchanted Forest: HF with death scale can provide some Manikin, Enchanted Forest with growth provides an increasing number of Vinemen (neither of which will run from the WL). Can they handle GR? I'm thinking HF = no, EF = no (unless you have an ungodly amount of them). Of course both spells are very costly and can be dispelled and possibly defeated by the GR.

Wizard's Tower (the spell) costs 50 gems, a lot more than a simple watchtower (or even Castles, Hill Forts etc.)

Three red Seconds costs 120 blood slaves. Blood nations can often achieve a sufficient hunting rate to make 1 a round, but a standard fortress is MUCH cheaper (you can't convert blood slaves to gold...unless you trade them to another player.)

Re: Drain Life
 

A large army can deal with a dozen ghost riders, as dealing with them is no different than dealing with any Ermorian army.

If you aren't on the offensive, and you haven't set yourself up for a strong defense, then there isn't much you can do. You lost by allowing your opponent the luxury of not having to respond to your attacks.

Re: Drain Life
 

Sure it is. You can raid with ghost riders, then take the province with a scout. The size army you need to defend against this is a bit larger than most nations can afford for all their uncastled provinces. So, if you really wanted to try using the more expensive better def forts, your screwed.

Errr...define strong defense! 1 GR can eliminate +25 PD or more. Which is truly absurd IMO, for how expensive 25 PD costs (325 gold?). That far out weighs the what, 5 gem cost? Someone was equating 6 gems to be equal to 100 gold cost...

Let's not even talk about the costs associated with parking defense armies all over the place for the sole purpose of defending against this type of attack.

I am now firmly entrenched in the "Nerf the GR" camp. I could be talked over to the "Buff the other non-death distant summoning/attack" camp. After playing around with CoW/CoW, I'm not impressed. Even 2 castings will lose to a semi-high PD.

As it stands it looks like from now on I will always make sure I have access to death mages, and always select spamable castles types.

Re: Drain Life
 

I'm not talking about defense. I'm talking about offense. If you have many armies rampaging through your opponent's territory, then he has to use ghost riders on those armies, or else lose the territory. If he uses scouts to take your provinces, then you can just move any kind of random chaff into the province to take it back.

The 450 gold forts are not that much more expensive, and all others take too long to construct to be worthwhile even if no remote summoning spells were ever used.

Province defense increasing in cost as it does should be a clue that you shouldn't bother buying any more than 1 point to see what your opponent uses for armies, or 10 points if you want to keep scouts from getting too deep into your teritory. A strong defense means that you spend gold on putting castles in the provinces where you have temples and laboratories so that you actually have a chance of defending your territory.

Then _don't_ park your armies all over the place! Why do you have armies in the first place if you aren't using them against someone?

It's a level 9 spell, so it had better be powerful or what was the point of researching all the way to level 9?

Well, if you want to just grab a small amount of territory, and don't want to use diplomacy, then playing defensively will do nothing but delay your defeat to somebody with four or five times the resources you have. Many people complain that XX spell caused them to lose, when they actually lost because they didn't have a sufficiently strong strategic position. The spells just kept the game from turning into a war of attrition that lasts for hundreds of turns.

Re: Drain Life
 

Tartanians? Or is that of no use? :-) As I said in a previous post, GR should be moved to another disipline.

Re: Drain Life
 

I made a simple test. 2 groups consisting of 12 Royal Marignon Guard, and 1 admiral. One group gets attacked by 1 GR, the other by a Phantasmal Army. Can you guess the results?

GR group - Nearly wiped out (2 RMG left)
Phantasmal Army group - No losses

Cost of GR - 5 death gems
Cost of PA - 8 air gems

I can understand the perspective that you had to reach lvl 9 to cast this spell. Fine, don't nerf it, but the gem cost should be increased. After this test, I'd say at least 10 gems per casting would be more in line with reality. I say that with a grain of salt, as the comparison in this test turned out to be 650 gold in troops + maint vs 5 death gems + 1 mage turn.

Flame away...

Re: Drain Life
 

Plus several turns of resources in a castle (while many GRs can be sent from a single lab in a single turn).

Considering that they don't stick around, I think they're worth at least 15.


...any army big enough to defend against that sort of attack would be a great target for FFtS / MW, so using conventional armies defensively is moot at level 9 research, anyway, isn't it?

Re: Drain Life
 

According to the unit database, the Wraith Lord you get from Ghost Riders is the mounted one (#182) with Broad Sword, Lance, and Helmet. He has no magic and is not as good as the conjured, horseless one (181, whose death-3 gives him fear+3) and nowhere near as good as Emmitu (#183).

Emmitu with a horror helmet and other junk is quite awesome. I had one with heroic quickness +2XX% once, empowered him with water for Quickness, and he was killing scores of units every turn. I think he's the best national hero.

Re: Drain Life
 

<shrug> I dunno. I'm still new here. I still have faith that armies are good for something. Either way it's beside the point I may, or may not, be making. The point is that it is not balanced compared to those spells of the same power magnitude. In addition, having Well of Misery, Mound fiend, GR and Tartarian Gate in the same disipline seems a bit to much like a 1 stop shop.

From what I can determine, FFtS / MW are much more limiting since they cost many more gems and not all races can get unlimited, fairly cheap mages that can cast those 2 spells. In the 2 games I have played, I have seen about 4 castings total of FFtS / MW, and probably 40 GR castings. FFtS / MW only kills half of the army, GR usually gets all units... From my perspective, that means it's broke. Perhaps once I play 10 more games I'll agree with you, but not today. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Drain Life
 

I tend to agree with you, Duck. One of the 'issues' I have with Dominions II is the fact that everything seems to devolve to summoned commanders (especially Undead ones) doing stuff.

I could extend this to Sorcery in general, but Death in particular seems to have too many 'bennies'.

Re: Drain Life
 

yeah access to mass ghostriders and flames from the sky is the eqivalent of an atomic bomb. Once you have them noone can attack you without losing tons of troops to mass castings of ghostriders.

The only counter to them are high def thughs with etherealness, lifedrain and regeneration(wraithlords, airqueens) , or large vineogre/archer/priest armys. The latter gets easily detroyed by flames from the sky, so it´s really hard to take your castles if you have access to those two spells.

Re: Drain Life
 

I should think making Ghost Riders 'permanent' and raising its cost arbitrarily high would fix it.

Re: Drain Life
 

Some Devil Armies are also good . If you generate Devils from Soul Contracts they are anyways extremly cheap but also by normal summoning via lvl3/lvl9 blood spell you get Devils quite cheap . They are immune to Firemagic , so no Flames . And they are extremly good and tough troops also , so the Ghost Riders can't do much harm to them .

Another good counter would be mechanical men armies with good mages like Tartarians or a Wrather .
50 Mech Men + Wrathful Skies can most likely survive even 10 Ghost Rider castings at once .

Getting 10+ Ghost Rider casters takes a while also . Most nations have to use Demilichs for that , so you need probably enchantment 8 + Conjuration 9 for mass Ghost Riders . That probably takes until turn 40-50 and by that time you will have various counters vs. Ghost Riders already . If you are realy nasty you can charm/enslave mind the Ghost Rider commanders . Especially a Nation like Ryleh could do that rather cheap , just Starspawns with rune smasher + spell focus casting enslave mind . They have good chances to succeed then .

The only thing at which Ghost Riders is really good is taking out SCs .

In a current game my enemy did 3 Ghost Riders on my ID with 40 Fiends . He killed 11 Fiends before all Ghost Riders were destroyed .
11 Fiends cost 40 Blood , a loss of 40 Blood vs. 15 Deathgems on my enemies side , i think that's fair .

Also note that Zen did only change the requirements for Ghost Riders from Death 4 to Death 6 but he changed nothing with the costs . So Zen doesn't think also that Ghost Riders are that powerful . Banelords on the other hand got a cost increase of 50% e.g.

Re: Drain Life
 

Ghost Riders are overrated. In my current game, I am overruning C'tis, and he
most certainly has access to Ghost Riders. He used quite a few in the first
turns of the invasion, but what he got was three attacks on one man province
defenses, one or two attacks against SCs that slaughtered the riders, and a few
attacks against mage squads that wiped out the wraith lords, and then mopped up
the riders.

In that game I am using ONE army of troops. It is made out of more than
a hundred range units, and a mass of banes, wraiths and heavy Abysian infantry.
Their commander has the Gatestone, generates fire gems, and cast 'Flame arrows'
and his 'assistant' SC wears the boots of the planes. It is a great reaction
force, because it can jump around, and be gone even before ghost riders hit.
Not that it always does, of course. It has withstood up to five simultaneous
'ghost rides' with only a few casualties.

The problem many people seems to have is that it is insane to rely on vanilla
troops by turn 40. Anything put together with a ounce of thought will wipe out
melee troops. Get rid of Ghost Riders, Wrathful skies, False Horrors and
Super combatants, and I will still be wiping out your groundpounders every time
they are outside of a castle/dome.

Those who whine about a specific aspect of the game have simply not felt the
sting of other strategies. If they get their way and see their peeve du jour
castrated, they will get slapped with something else, and they will keep
whinning until Dominions II looks and plays like a turnbased Rome: Total War.

Re: Drain Life
 

Well, if I considered *doubling* the cost of mages that can cast GR fairly insignificant (Demilich vs Demilich + Skull Staff + Skull Face), I'd agree with that statement. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

It would certainly make it tougher to gear up so you can cast large numbers of that spell. However, once you get there, the problem still exists, you didn't actually solve the problem. I'd rather see the gem cost go up on the spell side, not the caster side.

Re: Drain Life
 

I am not concerned with 'whines du jour'. I am concerned with the fact that Dominions II is a deformed environment.

"The problem many people seems to have is that it is insane to rely on vanilla
troops by turn 40. "

There is absolutely no reason this must be true. It currently is, but to act as if this is an axiom, and not merely the current state of the game, is erroneous.

For me, national troops should not overpower summoned troops. Neither should summoned troops overpower national troops. Until this is true, Dominions will not be a very fun game, for me.

Re: Drain Life
 

That example...

...and that example...

...are both irrelevant. Are B-52s weak and ineffective because they didn't win the Vietnam War? No. Sniper rifles, because blind people can't use them? No. Example of devastating weapons used ineffectively do not indicate that they are ineffective or overrated. Perhaps your opponent should invest in scouts?

Yes, I do have a problem with that. It's a fundamental game flaw, IMO, and I'm trying to reduce it, so that the game can be less "Tech Race" like Age of Empires and more "Strategy and Tactics" like real history (prior to WW2). Good fantasy novels also have limits on power. How interesting would the Lord of the Rings be if Sauron skipped the "Build up an army of Orcs" part, since he had level 9 research (and thus, relying on them was insane), and just destroyed the world with long-range magical bombing?

If it only takes an ounce of thought to render half of the game irrelevant, even with the most overpowered and commonly-abused spells removed, that's not a good thing. That's a bad thing.

Sorry I like to whine, but I prefer it to insulting people. Your last... well, it's not really an argument, just a chance to denigrate people who disagree with you. If Ghost Riders was 1 gem and needed level 1 death magic, virtually everyone would agree that it was undercosted and overpowered... yet your last paragraph would still apply, and thus it is irrelevant. Of course, nerfing something that is so powerful that it dominates gameplay will cause people to start using other strategies. That's the whole point! It makes the game better and more interesting. If the late game is dominated by 5% of the units and spells since they are vastly superior to other uses of resources, and making those 5% expensive enough that they are similar in efficiency to next-best 10% of units and spells... you end up with an end-game where people can effectively use 15% of the units and spells without people like you calling them insane. That makes the end-game three times as rich and three times as good. And, just possibly, it could force people to use more than an ounce of thought to counter experienced elite national melee units. Would that really be such a bad thing?

Re: Drain Life
 

well tuidjy those are convincing examples. Now everyone just has to build a gatestone for each army and you can simply teleport away. Great counter.
The other is even better: Convince your opponent to send no scouts to your provinces, that forces him to send those riders blindly and therefore they are easily countered.


Boron: Mech men with wrathful skies is a good counter, but that has more to do with wrathfuls awesomeness, than with ghostriders weakness.
Think about the second example with fiends: your army was worth 250+ blood(fiends +ice devil + equipment) + I guess at least 20 gems in equipment. Your opponent sends an army worth 15 gems against that and roughly breaks even(15 gems vs 40 blood) . Now imagine what would have happened to those fiends if he had sent 6 castings.
Devils are only costeffective when you play with unlimited soulcontracts, but having two vastly underpriced spells/items counter each other doesn´t mean that there is balance. If you use pure devil armys from the spells, you will lose if he sends appropriate numbers of ghostriders.

enslavers/charmers can work, but massproduced they are only available to a few nations. Another problem is that they are usually fragile, which means you have to protect them from wrathers, flames from the sky and leprosy.

It´s really not hard to get mass ghostriders.
bloodnations can use vampire lords with a staff(55 blood+7 death gems, everyone else can use demiliches(25 gems) or even moundfiends with staff(35 gems) if their research is limited. c´tis and ermor get mass ghostriders without effort.

Re: Drain Life
 

Brick: I love lamp.

Re: Drain Life
 

I'm aware of 4 uses of GR and the counter will depend on what your enemy is doing.

#1. Ghost Riders as raiders. Likely used together with scouts to take provinces. Against this probably the best counter is to move small el-cheapo groups (or even lone indy commanders) of nationals back and forth so that you won't be losing provinces. You'll lose some of those groups to ghost riders, but at 30-50 gold or 5 death gems it's a cheap price to pay. Meanwhile, you can use your gems to fuel offensive.
Another alternative is to use small groups of vampires. With those you won't suffer losses. This will better work for nations with cheap death mages, but with some careful scripting you can ensure that you rarely use the leading mage either.

Sub-use of #1 is carpet bombing (20-30 provinces in one turn). There is no real counter to it, but the opponent can't cast it very often due to gem cost and only few nations have sufficiently easy access to required death mages.

#2. Anti-SC squad. Used to eliminate careless SC. There's no counter except stealth and teleport-like spells. Generally, careless SC is bound to die, if not to GR then to something else.

#3. To inflict casualties to the armies. Set of several GR is cast on the enemy army. This one is the easiest to counter. Fire spells, priests, fire-shielded-SCs, variety of astral spells and many mass-damage spells - everything works. Generally, it that army is supposed to fight somebody it should be able to deal with undead, thus it should have little problem with GR. It's useful to summon a lot of weaklings in the beginning of the battle to absorb horsemen's lances.

#4. Gem drain. That's the most powerful use of GR. Just when your massive army is about to storm enemy's castle, he casts 5-6 dozen of GR and your mages can't resists and waste their gems to eliminate those GR. Of course, that means that they're likely to get slaughtered in the following real battle. There isn't any good counter to it AFAIK. Creative scripting helps a bit allowing to, at least, be able to cast cruicial spells in the main battle, but still it's a serious disadvantage for the attacker. Besides, you need to have a good variety of mages to implement such scripts. The problem is even more complicated, because your army is likely to be hit not only by GR, but also by FftS, MW and Wrathful-Skying squad. Other spells can be used instead of GR, but GR are the cheapest per unit (in most cases).

Overall, if you discount the #4 (which is rather a problem of game mechanics encouraging long and slow late games), GR don't look that impressive. However, considering how many good uses they have, I think they are underpriced. IMO 6-7 gems per casting, or maybe 6 gems and death 5 requirement would be appropriate.

Re: Drain Life
 

In dominions there is only one real investment: research. And research only benifits summons thus it makes sense that over time summons should beat out national troops.

Now the question in my mind is: how badly should summons beat national troops? Currently national troops get pretty spanked.

At least that is how I think of it.