lategame balance . are my concerns true ?

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

Actually, I think Wish was designed for SP games more than it was "designed" for R'lyeh and Atlantis.

The other thing about your strategy - it might work once against a given set of players, but the next time they play against you and see you taking one of the blood or astral nations, they're simply going to go out of their way to stomp you early, instead of going after independents.

players should play without having earlier games in mind .
nobody can win if several players ally earlygame against him .


since most ppl who play dominions are very mature and know that this would be childish making pregame alliances only to take revenge because they lost in an earlier game i hope it doesn't happen anyways .

edit :
p.s. i remember that in an older post i think either gandalf or johan said that clams were designed for atlantis especially .
so i think you can say wish was designed for them too cause wish is one of the best uses for your clam astral pearls

[Cainehill]

Boron said:

players should play without having earlier games in mind .
nobody can win if several players ally earlygame against him .

Why? If I know that a particular player always does the same thing, why on earth wouldn't I use that knowledge? I'm not saying pre-game alliances, I'm saying that I'd target that player differently from another. If someone continually backstabs and breaks alliances - I'm not going to make treaties with that player.

If someone constantly plays wild gambles and then quits the game in a sulk when the gamble fails, I'm going to remember that and be prepared to counter it.

And if someone continually uses a particular strategy, why should I be stupid enough to cooperate with them by not attempting to disrupt it?

since most ppl who play dominions are very mature and know that this would be childish making pregame alliances only to take revenge because they lost in an earlier game i hope it doesn't happen anyways .

How is it revenge? If I know that you are playing to hoard astral gems and build vampire hordes, why should I ignore that, leave you alone, and let you get to your "unbeatable" end game strategy?

If you want to play the same strategy over and over again, damn straight I'm going to try and counter it. It's an old military chestnut: Know your enemy. Know what a given commander is prone to do, and try to use that against him.

Sorry, but I'm not going to play dumb - I know certain players are untrustworthy, and I keep that in mind. I know certain players like to use "rush" tactics, and if they're near me, I'm going to change my strategy to repulse them. If I know a certain player is going to do the same things over and over, like running a lone Virtue pretender way ahead of his armies, I'm going to try to trap and kill Anya.

And if I suspect someone is going to clam hoard and vampire horde, I'm going to try and clean their clock before they get that working.

(And for those who say, "Well, some games I play completely trustworthy, and some games I play completely backstabbing" - you get jotted down as untrustworthy.)

p.s. i remember that in an older post i think either gandalf or johan said that clams were designed for atlantis especially .
so i think you can say wish was designed for them too cause wish is one of the best uses for your clam astral pearls

Feh. There is a _lot_ of good uses for astral pearls, clam produced or not. For example: with a mere 20 clams, you can produce an extra 10 gems of _any_ kind each turn. Only have 1 nature gem coming in each turn but want to GoR or GoH? No problem - convert those clam pearls into nature gems. Now you want a lich, but don't have any death income? No problem.

Wish is basically a cheesy spell in MP games. IMO.

[Boron]

i thought caine you meant you would simply berserk on me in every future game then and would be content if you had only killed me and are shortly after killed by someone else.


but as you describe you would act it is fine and not what i meant . i would do the same
of course i don't do only vampire hordes but different things too .
it is just whenever i can get some clams / vampires i hoard them knowing that they are good .


if i play e.g. abysia i plan on vampires or soul contracts and stock my blood . if i notice that someone wants to attack me early then of course i do summon devils e.g. and not wait until he kills me .

i just still think that vampires with all their special abilities and their cheapness are a bit too strong .

if someone masses storm demons you just counter by a few lighning immune summons / scs .
same with other examples .


but vampires come again and again which makes them the perfect defensive weapon and once you win the dominionwar or you get so many allysummons that they become disposible too they are even perfect offensive weapons .

so i can use 50% of my resources on vampires and 50% on other things for offense and send all offensive weapons knowing that the vampires are most probably enough to defeat anything which attacks me anyways at least after a couple of attempts .


if you can only beat a vampire horde by rushing the one trying to use it it is actually a proof that it really seems a bit overpowered . otherwise there would be no need to rush .
vampires are just the ultimative soldier in dominion . totally exposeable but strong enough to win many battles on their own already .



if you can name me one other unit which is an even better allrounder than the vampire and explain why then i will agree that i was wrong .
but otherwise this proofs that i am probably really right .

[Tuidjy]

You are worrying for nothing. Hordes of vampires are available only in late
game, and there are plenty of strategies that are at least that good. I have
to admit that I have never faced vampire hordes, but I have messed up devil
hordes simply by teleporting three independant sorceresses on top of Cohen's
main spawn point, and casting wrathful skies and enough horrors to keep the
devils from sprinting to the casters, and then reteating. (I brought a SoS.)
Yes, vampires are immortal, and yes, they will be back, but they are nothing to
write home about. If anything, they will rout much more easily that the devils.

Furthermore, I have had three supercombatants (two arch devils and a heliophagus)
run into a small pack of vampires (30-40) and demolish them... I was surprised,
because my guys were not decked out for undead hunting. But if I had the
chance to properly outfit them (fire shield + fatigue regeneration) I would
bet on five SCs against 500 vampires. (Storm is a must, though) But frankly, by
the time you have hundreds of vampires, your enemy will have something else.

As for domain pushes, you do not need stealthy priests. You need to take
territory, and convert it.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
if you can name me one other unit which is an even better allrounder than the vampire and explain why then i will agree that i was wrong .

A devil is a better all around unit. It has better attack and defense stats, two attacks, more hitpoints, 15 armour, radiate heat, and have fire immunity. They can be produced by soul contracts in extremely large numbers, and these contracts provide an effective blood income of 7 slaves per turn, which is larger than the vampire lords effective income of 4.3 per turn.

No, they aren't immortal, but they are harder to kill. Blade wind won't have too much effect and fire spells do nothing. They are less vulnerable to air magic with their higher hitpoints, and are also less vulnerable to ice strike, which will decimate vampires.

[archaeolept]

also devils don't run like frightened chickens, which vamps have a definite tendency for.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

A devil is a better all around unit. It has better attack and defense stats, two attacks, more hitpoints, 15 armour, radiate heat, and have fire immunity. They can be produced by soul contracts in extremely large numbers, and these contracts provide an effective blood income of 7 slaves per turn, which is larger than the vampire lords effective income of 4.3 per turn.

No, they aren't immortal, but they are harder to kill. Blade wind won't have too much effect and fire spells do nothing. They are less vulnerable to air magic with their higher hitpoints, and are also less vulnerable to ice strike, which will decimate vampires.

devils have only 8 protection .
they are 50% susceptible to cold .
this means that your mentioned spell ice strikes works quite well against devils too .

staff of storm cancels both for vampires + devils flying .

a devil has 14 str + does 7 damage with his trident .

a vampire has 13 str + 0 ap damage .


on high protection units so the vampire does better damage than the devil .
a vampire has att 11 a devil att 18 .
but a vampire is size 2 while devil is size 3 .

so with swarming against scs the vampire hits about the same time too .
and the vampire does fatigue damage with his drain life . this reduces att + defense furthermore .


vampires suffer from fire spells true .
but from ice strike both suffer the same .
from lighning spells both suffer too .
a vampire takes normally 2 hits from e.g. wrathful skies lighting while a devil takes 3 to be killed .

vampires are undead so antiundead spells are evil too .


vampires should damage high protection scs a bit easier .
devils are though fire immune so immune to fireshield damage .


all in all the devil is really good too but you need a dwarfen hammer to forge a soul contract for 60 slaves .
the soul contract may be killed after a couple of turns by the horror attack too .

so the vampire lord summoning a vampire is overall normally about 10-30% cheaper .
add the fact that vampires are immortal and can be thrown at you repeatedly .


finally with murdering winter i could inflict probably huge casualities to your devil horde thnx to 50% cold suceptibility .


devils are really good too but especially when i am defending and you are only 2-3 provinces away from my capitol you will face the vampire horde each turn repeatedly .
+ of course other things too .

but the vampires are really a great unit worth being a central part in an caelum/abysian/mictlan strat especially .

oh finally soul contract is b5 . so you need to forge normally 2 items for your mages like a brazen vessel + a blood thorn for abysian warlocks e.g.
vampire lords can chainsummon themselves with a cheap skull staff only .

archaeolept said:
also devils don't run like frightened chickens, which vamps have a definite tendency for.

true but a banelord / vampire lord can lead 125 vampires .
so this prevents routing as long as they are reduced to 20-30 vampires normally anyways so it is not that severe

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
devils have only 8 protection .
they are 50% susceptible to cold .
this means that your mentioned spell ice strikes works quite well against devils too .

Not nearly as well as against vampires, where the 18 damage will have a good chance of killing them in a single hit. Devils can survive about 2 ice strikes.

a devil has 14 str + does 7 damage with his trident .
a vampire has 13 str + 0 ap damage .

The devil also has a tail that gives it a second attack.

vampires suffer from fire spells true .
but from ice strike both suffer the same .

Not at all. Vampires take the full 18 damage from ice strike. Devils reduce the damage by 8 by their armour, and it is then only increased to 15 damage. They can take twice as many hits as vampires.

from lighning spells both suffer too.

Except that the devils can survive 37% more damage.

all in all the devil is really good too but you need a dwarfen hammer to forge a soul contract for 60 slaves .
the soul contract may be killed after a couple of turns by the horror attack too .

You don't need to use dwarven hammers. For the 5500 blood slaves your 100 vampire lords cost, you can build 68 soul contracts without hammers, 91 with hammers.

add the fact that vampires are immortal and can be thrown at you repeatedly .

Throwing them at someone repeatedly doesn't matter that much when they can be defeated without any real losses.

finally with murdering winter i could inflict probably huge casualities to your devil horde thnx to 50% cold suceptibility.

Not that many will perish. Virtually none if they sit in a castle.

devils are really good too but especially when i am defending and you are only 2-3 provinces away from my capitol you will face the vampire horde each turn repeatedly.

But since they are mediocre summons, it's possible to defeat them without suffering too many losses.

oh finally soul contract is b5 . so you need to forge normally 2 items for your mages like a brazen vessel + a blood thorn for abysian warlocks e.g.
vampire lords can chainsummon themselves with a cheap skull staff only .

This really doesn't matter one bit. The one time costs to create the necessary items are washed out in the long term, and 40 blood slaves for two boosters is still cheaper than 10 death gems for a blood nation.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

The devil also has a tail that gives it a second attack.

yeah but it is -2 damage or something like that .


i would like to know though because it does paralyzing damage what this effect does ?




that the vampires are undead is probably their great weakness . but if it forces your opponent to consider some wither bone mage squads when you mix in then something different it is good too .


since the vampires + the devils are more or less generated for free they are special .
you can get no other quite good summon in this numbers so cheap .

they are both excellent fodder at least .
the devils are toughter true but the vampires on the other hand can luckily kill perhaps a few scs and quite reliable thugs .
if you enemy considers really casting lots of wither bones this is even greater because your other troops mixed in are then not targeted at all .

[archaeolept]

ehh, vampires are over-rated, IMO.

sure, its nice having a couple small hordes available for internal security, but otherwise they definitely seem to lack in punch. or as a takedown squad for a couple SC's, sure.

Devils are tougher, have far higher attack and defense, better MR, and vastly superior morale. Sure, vampires come back if they're fighting in your dominion, and they aren't taken over by undead mastery, but it seems to me a strategy that takes as it's premiss the fact that you are already winning by dominion push is, well, somewhat optimistic.

and the cold susceptibility, while potentially deadly, just doesn't seem to come into play so much; so many things are immune to cold that it is the least used of the battlefield attack magics.

the only time i've encountered vampire hordes I used undead mastery myself. Vamp's usually have a 14 MR or so, undead mastery is usually cast for a base 11, and easy to cast two times in a row. that will generally do a number on the invading horde, especially as it stops to fight amongst itself, all the while taking some sort of battlefield damage hopefully.

using vampire hordes against pythium is especially amusing.