Dud units / monsters / summons

[Dedas]

Yes, cheap as in you are stuck with an immobile rock or statue. Everything has its price.

[Edi]

HoneyBadger, I'd rather give the Basalt Guards a castle defense bonus instead of patrol bonus.

[quantum_mechani]

I agree with most of the things mentioned here, with three exceptions:

1. Flagellants, they are not the best sacreds out there, but for 10 gold, non-capital only, and two attacks, they really can be worthwhile. Admittedly the crossbows kind of overshadow them, but they overshadow almost any human troop.

2. Basalt Guards. They certainly pale to many other sacreds, and are not generally something to build a strategy around, but they are quite viable as a resource sink. There comes a point very quickly where you can't afford to use other troops to use up all your resources, and slowly building an elite corps of these is fairly cheap and useful to have given the vulnerability of all your other troops to arrows if you venture on land.

2. EA Ulm two weapon warriors. It's true, for the most part they suck compared to the women, but compared to human troops on average they are actually fine, if somewhat niche. I suppose a little extra attack skill wouldn't hurt, but with the CB nerf to the women warriors I can see using them in cases where you have low defense and high armor foes.

Now, as far as adding to the dud options list, that seems a rather ambitious task given that I would estimate at least 75% of pretenders/spells/units/etc. apply.

[Meglobob]

Dedas said:
Yes, cheap as in you are stuck with an immobile rock or statue. Everything has its price.

Look at it as a teleport anywhere master enslaver, until then it can mind hunt, cast globals, dispel globals, make astral magic items and if you add 2 earth, summon golems. To just name a few of its more obvious uses...

[Jazzepi]

Has anyone actually found a good use for patrol bonuses? It seems like castle defense/seige is far more useful.

Or pillaging bonuses, for that matter. I actually think it would be interesting if pillaging was a switch you could flip on and off. I don't see why an army can't pillage as it moves through a province. It could be more effective the longer you stay in one place, but I think it would be more realistic to have a huge army rampaging through the opponent's land pillaging as it goes.

Jazzepi

[HoneyBadger]

I'm at work now, so I can't check, but I believe Basalt Guards already *do* get a castle-defense bonus, Edi.

If I were redoing EA Ulm, I'd add a few male units that started out with melee armor-piercing weapons like Piercers, swords and axes of sharpness, etc. Maybe even have some male units like those sons of the smiths, in EA, with black steel armor, just to make the point that the nation is still a little bit wary of women on the battlefield, and men are still in charge of the business of war.

[Edi]

I checked the game, the Living Pillars do indeed have a castle defense bonus of 2.

Quantum, the most obvious solution to the EA Ulm units would be to either add 2 points of attack on the warriors or 1 point attack and 1 point more ambidexterity. Both options would result in a similar amount of improvement, with slightly different emphasis and the +1/+1 att/adex is probably slightly better than +2 att.

From the EA Ulm analysis thread:

Edi said:
The thing about the Ulmish warriors is that they have an attack of 10 for warrior and axe warrior and 11 for forest and mountain warrior. Axe and forest warriors have 2 axes and a throwing axe while warriors and mountain warriors have axe and broad sword.

Penalties, 2 axes:
-1 attack on axe, axe+axe = ambidex penalty of 2, making for a total penalty of 3. Subtract ambidex rating of 1 and final penalty is 2, for 2 attacks at 8. This means that the second attack can be treated as if it were attack 10 against the target's normal defense.

Penalties axe + broadsword
lengths 1+2=3, axe -1 and broadsword 0 and ambidex reduces penalty by 1, Final result is attack ratings axe 7, broadsword 8 for a unit with base attack 10. Meaning attack 7 + attack 10 against normal defense of target. Not exactly something that fills you with confidence.

Then take a look at Steel Maiden: Attack 12, 2x shortsword and ambidex 1. Length 1+1=2, reduced to 1 by ambidex, gives you two attacks at base 11. The steel maiden is more heavily armored than the basic warrior and has only 2 points less body prot than the forest and mountain warriors, much better attack and defense, has a strat move of 2 plus stealth, whereas neither forest nor mountain warrior is stealthy and both have strat move of 1.

Shield maidens swap one short sword for a shield, giving them one attack at 12 and a def of 15, 11 without shield. Shield maidens, steel maidens and warrior maidens (the armored archer) all cost 13 resources to the warrior/axe warrior's 10 or forest/mountain warrior's 16.

When you plug the new numbers in, it's either attack 2 points raw addition to the final numbers or 1 point less penalty plus 1 point raw addition, meaning that the sword/axe combo warriors benefit slightly more from the combination than the double axe wielders, but overall the numbers stay the same.

The +1/+1 boost would make the EA Ulm warriors a real contender without needing to nerf the maidens, because the twin weapon warriors are all really subpar, with a vengeance. You would still need to make choices in the survivability department due to the defense differences, but now there really is a viable choice between using the women and using the actual warriors. It should not unbalance the game either, because right now the imbalance is in the ridiculously low end attributes of the warriors.

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks for checking, Edi. One solution (along with helmets) to Living Pillars is to raise their castle defense bonus. If you want a random That would really help a lot to making them a really decent unit, and worth the price. It would also make their PD more interactive-which isn't a bad thing.

[Dedas]

Meglobob said:

Look at it as a teleport anywhere master enslaver, until then it can mind hunt, cast globals, dispel globals, make astral magic items and if you add 2 earth, summon golems. To just name a few of its more obvious uses...

Yes you're right. I just meant that it is nice to have a mobile pretender in the beginning to help with expanding and site searching.

[bananafish]

even if you don't have 'bless 9' attributes- even moderate blessing makes them decent expendible units. low maintenance and can be recruited in any of your castles w/ temples.

if u happen to have 'gift of health' helps w/ your old age mages dying off too... i usually have them run behind the cavalry.