So I played through about 35 turns against Vanheim & Agartha on a no-indep Silent Seas using a POD pretender. I rolled Agartha over like nobody's business. Vanheim took a bit longer, but I decided to change tactics to mix things up a bit, build temples everywhere, and spit out plague chantors/priests. I then stealthpreached, and won by dom kill. Keep in mind this is concerning v0.2.
First thoughts: Graphically, I think everything looks quite nice. I like the variety and flavor of the troops.
Like KO, I found it difficult to pick what to recruit. I eventually tried 10-20 of everything. Though I didn't bother with the blood school of spells at all. Research also proved rather unnecessary, I didn't bother with much of anything past level 3. Shadow bolt, terror, and globadiers were the sought after spells here.
May be helpful: Commanders that I mostly used, were Packmasters, and Master Moulders. Units that I eventually stuck by, were the globadiers, rat ogres, giant rats, and most of all gutter runners.
More specific thoughts:
1. Rat Ogres and Giant rats are great flankers, with 17 ap. I imagine archer based armies would have a lot to contend with.
2. Skavenslaves are manacled, at least they appear to have both hands and feet, bound together. (They're also weak and malnourished). Yet they move at ap 15, like most every other skaven. Perhaps they should be a bit slower? (ap 12?)
3. Rat Ogres are great (Possibly too great). With plenty of health, multiple highly damaging attacks, and the berserker quality, your Skaven morale problems (along with a host of other problems) are solved in one unit. Is there a reason they have a special bite/claw weapon that does more damage than the standard bite and claw weapons?
Downtweak commentary:
Your v0.3 downtweak of one rat ogre per summon allies instead of two, seems like it will do the trick. Though perhaps getting rid of their special bite/claw weapons might be a good idea too.
4. Eshin Gutter Runners aren't just great (They seem incredibly overpowered). They start off with high attack/defense and high stealth as is to be expected of an elite stealth troop. Their powerful dual melee attacks are overshadowed by their shuriken. It seems somewhat strange that the shuriken are a strength based ranged weapon? So their 9 strength adds to the damage. That seems most odd? So it's quite deadly in itself (it can kill a lightly armoured man in one hit), then the strong (15!) points of poison tacked on is pretty incredible too. The fact that they get 2 attacks, and then another 2 exacerbates the issue. With giant rat chaff, and rat ogres for arrow absorbtion/dealing with high prot units, no enemy army stood a chance. On top of all that, they have siegebonus 3! So hiding from them in a fort does you no good. 15 gold seems a real pittance for what you get.
Suggested nerf:
Increase gold cost, and change the shuriken to dt_cap damage (so it only does 1 damage at most), this will make it realistic, a shuriken may strike you in the face/neck if you're unprotected, or may just bounce off a shield. Either way it won't do too much damage (1 hp) unless you lose an eye. The strong poison can then be left to do the real damage. As for the gutter blade, strong poison seems a bit much on a multiple use weapon. Unless it's a magical weapon (I'm not much up to date on warhammer lore), any weapon that hits creature after creature shouldn't deliver significant amounts of strong poison time after time, swing after swing.
5. Like KO mentioned, the plague ability. I noticed it quickly and was terrified of using the commander in combat. I imagined it would wipe out my own sizeable army. You seem to have fixed that in v0.3
6. I like the Assassin, though the spy ability seems almost extraneous for a 150 gold unit. It seems quite balanced and useful nonetheless.
7. It seems like after the first 3/4 turns I stopped using skaven slaves completely. Giants rats took over the chaff role effectively (despite their morale problems). This may not be what you want, though I think it's good that there are multiple chaff options.
Overall, it was a fun nation to try, possessing graphical and descriptive consistency. Though as is to be expected, it will need some balancing. I look forward to future versions.
Also, can't wait for dwarves and chaos.
Re: Skaven Nation. Warhammer based.
Hybrid Mode
