[Scott Hebert]

Saber Cherry said:
Interesting. I was not considering a scout to be a commander, since they have zero leadership. The points I included above were just things I consider important in recruiting leaders that will be leading my troops.

*nods* Understood. However, I am trying for an 'across-the-board' approach to Leader design, and the Scout is the simplest in terms of number of variables free.

I know protection and shields are accounted for by resource cost, but shields are so critical that I would never recruit a commander with low protection and no shield at any resource cost unless it had special abilities (like magic paths) or was dirt cheap. Commanders without shields and armor die like flies when exposed to arrows... seeking arrows... blade winds... flying shards... well, anything, really.

Again, understood, and I'll look into it, but it's not something I'll be too concerned over. The hoped-for 'end result' of this analysis is to find out exactly where/why certain commanders have such high costs.

Undead leadership can probably be valued similarly to or a bit more than normal leadership, since normal undeads are much weaker than humans, and devils are much stronger than humans.

Magical leadership, OTOH, I think is far more valuable per unit than normal leadership, not just double.

*nods* However, inherent leadership of either type is rare enough that double sounds about right. I mean... I can recall the other day I was playing Broken Empire Ermor, and I Prophetized my original Centurion... and he got Undead General for his heroic ability. That felt like a hat trick.

However, it is very rare to have a gold cost for commanders with undead or magical leadership that is not already paid for with their magic paths, so these points may be moot.

Rather. OTOH, it's most relevant to R'lyeh.

HPs on commanders (the kind that sit at the back of the army in battles, and just lead troops) are much more important than other stats (except protection and maybe MR). HP protects them from seeking arrows, strategic province-blasting spells, projectiles, and damage from auras of friendly units... which are the leading causes of commander death, in my experience. The other stats are usually useless except versus assassination attempts, weak fliers set to "attack rear", and very powerful commanders that you actually use in combat.

Ah. So, commanders like Pans and Triton Kings (which I feel are rather overpriced) should be more expensive simply because they have lots of HPs when compared to 'human' mage commanders?

When evaluating commanders, it may be useful to have a scale for "pure commanders" in which stats (except hp,mr, and prot) are generally irrelevant, and a scale for "combat commanders" that are intended to actually fight, where all stats are valuable. After all... would anyone pay more for an indy commander that had +2 str, -1 enc, and +2 ap? I wouldn't... but if I had a choice between an indy commander with +5 HP or +5 str, I would certainly choose +5 HP. Precision is always worthless unless it is above 10 or on a leader that comes with a ranged weapon (or magic).

I understand that, but commanders don't seem to be 'optimized' for that. I'd rather not go into 'generic commander', 'mage', and 'fighting commander'. It's basically subjective as to what, exactly, those are. Take a Vanherse. Is that a generic commander? (If he commands nothing but stealthy troops, maybe!) Is that a mage? (If he's spamming Phantasmal troops/False Horrors, maybe!) Is that a combat commander? (If he's decked out appropriately, maybe!) It's a judgement call, and one I hope to obviate.

Also...

Code:

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0 - 0 points

10 - 10 points

25 - 20 points

50 - 30 points

75 - 40 points

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I seem to be more in favor of big armies than other people, but I find 50-leadership to be way better than 25-leadership, and 10-leadership to be virtually worthless. I'd probably scale it more like...

0 - 0 points
10 - 8 points
25 - 20 points
50 - 35 points
75 - 45 points

...but it depends on the way you like to design armies and what kind of units you use. Mictlan leadership isn't really as valuable as Jotun or Abysian leadership.

Well, that's the tweaking stage. Re: Mictlan vs. Jotun, though... I'm trying to avoid that kind of nation vs. nation idea. OTOH, Mictlan NEEDS their Leadership. Abysia and Jotunheim can sort of 'get away' with lower Leadership ratings (because of their pound-for-pound better troops), but Mictlan needs to be able to mass troops.

However, that tends to be a wash. Mictlan spends more money for their commanders (due to higher Leadership ratings), but their units are dirt-cheap, both in gold and resources. Conversely, Jotunheim spends less money for their commanders (due to lower Leadership ratings), but their units are more expensive. This is the sort of balancing that is beyond the current scope of my analysis.

As far as strat moves go, all commanders have a minimum of 2 strat moves as far as I know. More strat moves are almost never useful UNLESS they are combined with flight, terrain survival, AND access to units with flight, terrain survival, and high strat moves. Strat moves are useless underwater. In fact, strat moves may be worthless for normal commanders, and only important for Caelian and combat commanders.

*nods* I was expecting to simply ignore it. Strategic move on the units themselves are much more valuable at the 2+ level, so I've noticed.

Immunities: They're all very valuable, and more so as the game goes on. Poison is probably the least valuable. The value of immunities increases drastically with the power of the unit, so that inherent fire immunity on a supercombattant is way more valuable than inherent fire immunity on an Abysian commander. Maybe you should make immunities multiplicative rather than additive. For example, Frost immunity could be worth 1.5x, making a Neifel Jarl worth (300 points)*1.5 and a Caelian scout worth (20 points)*1.5 or something like that.

Mm, it's an idea, and I understand where you're coming from, but it does have its own uses. I mean, Abysian mages are completely immune to Fires from the Sky and similar spells, for example. I think I'll keep them all even, and see where it goes from there.

Well, anyway, these are just some random thoughts I tapped in as I was considering commanders, but feel free to ignore them and value units however you want

Heh. I ignore advice at my own peril, I think.