[Sombre]

Saulot - Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure why you wouldn't bother with research, since the Skaven are actually quite good at it and can cast an array of excellent spells. Perhaps the allure of summon allies was too much for you, as it was for K O. Certainly I don't want people feeling research is pointless for the Skaven - when I played with them I didn't feel this way at all, but I wasn't trying to crank out a summoning system.

Were you using 0.2 or 0.3? In 0.3 the summoning of allies was nerfed quite a bit - only one rat ogre instead of two, increased upkeep costs, nor globadier or warpfire thrower allies etc.

Anyway, let me address the points you raised numerically.

1. Indeed they are. The Skaven army as a whole is fast and likes to lap around, which makes up for the fact that they tend to get torn to pieces by massed archers and nations like tienchi. Gian Rats, however, aren't the best fighters in the world. In fact they tend to take a few casualties then run away - as one might expect. Rat Ogres have much more staying power and like to berserk, but aren't supposed to be available in numbers unless you're going for a dedicated Moulder strat (which would work best with lots of blood, I reckon).

2. A fair point, but if I made them slower they would lose some utility as frontline/flank chaff. I'll think about it.

3. Originally they used the standard bite/claw, but in order to actually do damage to heavier infantry and properly represent their power in the Warhammer world (where 5 or so can tear up a unit) I wanted them to be better. I could have increased their strength and attack stats, but this would put them well out of line with my methods of stat conversion from WH to Dom3. Basically in WH they aren't penalised at all for not having weapons - their claws are as long and hard as shortswords after all. I felt the dom3 standard bite and claw attacks didn't really make sense as compared with random weapons, at least in the case of the Rat Ogres, so I upgraded them. In my tests Rat Ogres still get hacked to pieces by massed infantry, killing maybe 2 each before they go down. I might make them a bit weaker, but they are supposed to be a real handful for the enemy, so maybe changing their cost and availability makes more sense.

4. Gutter Runners are a unit I haven't changed since I stuck them in, so I'm not surprised they have balance issues. I agree with you in regards to the gutter blades, those will get weak poison instead of strong. Regarding the shuriken, the standard dom3 shuriken has these stats:

Damage - 1 (plus strength)
No. of attacks - 2
Range - strength
Prec - 0
Ammo - 4
Strong Poison

Pretty similar to the Eshin ones. More ammo, but no prec bonus. However this weapon is, as far as I know, only used by Jomonese Ninja, not something you'd be able to mass and not something that comes cheap. Because there's no 'medium poison' I'm going to give the Eshin shuriken 'weak poison' and I'm going to reduce the damage to -1, so they won't be too hot versus armoured troops. I could also push up the goldcost of the gutter runners, who as Eshin troops are supposed to cost a pretty penny, but this will already have made the significantly weaker (the strong poison was the real problem I think).

5. Plague Priest has no plague attack in 0.3. However you can now summon plague rats with a little blood magic, who look exactly like Moulder rats and can really ruin someone's day.

6. I dropped him to 130 gold in 0.3 (mostly by accident), but it's going back up in 0.4 and his