Quote:
Originally Posted by Shangrila00
It certainly doesn't make a damn bit of sense to nerf their spellcasting instead of their thuggability as CBM did.
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My point is that if you do buff their spell casting without any other penalty that is a bonus to the unit/nation. So then the question becomes whether Ashdod as a whole is a weak nation that needs a buff. If the nation doesn't need a buff and you'd prefer to see a change in emphasis from zamzummites as thugs to them being spellcasters (with a corresponding nerf to their thuggability), well that's llama's call and I don't have an opinion either way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shangrila00
In any case, I'm not really convinced their thuggability is even that big of an issue. Unless you are playing in some crazy rich setting or some ridiculously big map, the bottleneck will always be equipment, not thug chasis.
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But that logic applies to any thug chassis. I play a lot with Sidhe Lords, one of the best (maybe the best) thugs out-of-the-box. But even they need some gear if you want them to handle more than a few points of PD. So gems are always an issue.
And even out-of-the-box zamzummites have some nice crowd control capabilities - fire shield, invulnerability, soul vortex, BE and luck all being in their repertoire or easily castable on them by other national mages.
As far as spell casting goes, 1 in 4 can skelly spam with reasonable fatigue, another 1 in 4 can participate in communions and cast nether darts, the 1 in 4 E randoms act as army buffers, and the one in four F randoms can cast flaming arrows with a booster. Also worth noting is that they can all cast disintegrate which, quite usefully, is something the AI will actually cast off-script. So basically half of them are suited for evo. work and the other half are more suited for thug work. I don't think that's a bad mix.
Now if you implement kianduatha's suggestion of a 25% chance of an extra DE pick I don't think that would be unbalancing but personally I wouldn't go past that percentage.
It's been a while but IIRC zamzummites were a considerable part of the complaints about Ashdod. You've got some leeway with cap only units because they don't scale but I think with non-cap units extra caution is warranted. And again, Ashdod is hardly in dire straits.