The Vine Ogre

[BigDaddy]

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.

[BigDaddy]

Alneyan said:
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.

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.

[Boron]

The_Tauren13 said:
From the simple fact that most people I play against get them, and I get them every game I play.

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 .

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said:
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.

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.

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said: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.

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.

[Graeme Dice]

Saber Cherry said:
For reference... here are the relative simbat powers of a few meat shields.

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

[Saber Cherry]

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

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.

[FrankTrollman]

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

[tinkthank]

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.

[BigDaddy]

FrankTrollman said:
... 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.

-Frank

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)