Woo-Hoo - 3.10 available

Cheezeninja · #1 October 9th, 2007, 08:00 PM

Hydras seem incredibly powerful to me... I've been rolling over level 9 indeps easily with no bless or support with 10-15 of them and have only lost 1 ~30 turns into a SP game. Sure the 6 hp per head thing seems weak at first, but it means that the most damage a single hit can do is to kill 1 head! They laugh off heavy cavalry charges because of this.

They strike me as really good meat shields, what am I missing?

Taqwus · #2 October 9th, 2007, 08:48 PM

As if I haven't lost enough sleep to this game already.

Guess I won't be sleeping that much tonight...

Good to see that MA Mictlan got reworked -- they seemed a bit lost and confused, compared to EA/LA.

As for Hydras... heh, nine lives isn't only good for heavy cavalry charges, but also instant-death spells and the like.

Modding tweaks as well... hm. Out of demented curiosity, one might wonder whether the "monster autonomously wanders from province to province" behavior of the Unfettered Eater of the Dead is tied to number of base unit type, name of base unit type, or a property that theoretically could be applied to other monsters. If I were rather drunk, a 'Monster Island' map with numerous autonomous daikaiju might be entertaining. More seriously, wandering hordes of barbarians or undead would be very thematic for some maps, even if 'horde' has to be simulated via in-battle autosummons of some kind.

Valandil · #3 October 9th, 2007, 10:56 PM

Let me be the first to post that stonebeings with stone swords are wrking as inteded:
Stonesword Gargoyle

Huzurdaddi · #4 October 10th, 2007, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Cheezeninja said:
Hydras seem incredibly powerful to me...

Here are the changes, as I understand them:

Negative:
1) The total offensive power is lower as the lesser heads use weak poison.
2) As a fight goes on the new Hydra gets less and less offensive power (assuming that the fight is not going well )
3) their total HP were reduced from 72 to 64 (6*4 lesser heads +4 0 greater head) ... maybe the original Hydra has 64 HP? I don't recall but I think it was 72.
4) The protection on the 1st 24 hp was reduced from 13 to 8

Positive:
1) no one hit can kill them
2) lots of shape changes seems to keep afflictions for affecting them
3) the change very thematic

Cheezeninja · #5 October 10th, 2007, 01:30 AM

That mostly seems correct. Except no 4(!) hits can kill them, not just 1.

Sombre · #6 October 10th, 2007, 01:33 AM

You could simply say they take a minimum of 9 hits to kill. Against certain enemies and spells that makes them very effective.

Edi · #7 October 10th, 2007, 02:14 AM

Hydras have 6 hp per head, 100 regen for those heads. The main body has 40 hp and 30% (12 hp) regen. That's a total of 88 HP. That makes them immensely durable when used in groups. The weak poison from each hit stacks up every time it hits, so unless a hydra gets swarmed and annihilated immediately, its opponents are going to die of poison very quickly.

In one of my games, I have Fomorian giants with a N10 bless (20% regen = 13 hp per round) and my stack of 20 blessed Fomorians had their hands full dealing with a mere half dozen Sauromatian hydras and their support chaff. The reason being that they were taking nearly as much damage from poison every round as they were regenerating AND they were getting the damage from the blows as well.

The SC hydras, when fixed, are going to be begging for a F9W9 bless.

Oh, and Serpent Cult has a hydra special hero. In place of the Great Head weapon it has something called Immortal Head and the bugger is sacred. Draw your own conclusions...

Huzurdaddi · #8 October 10th, 2007, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Sombre said:
You could simply say they take a minimum of 9 hits to kill.

Quote:

Edi said:
That's a total of 88 HP.

I think that there are 4 lesser heads ( each with 2 attacks ) and 1 greater head. So that's 5 hits to kill, and 64 HP.

Edi · #9 October 10th, 2007, 03:26 AM

No. The way it works is

4x Lesser Heads, Great Head
3x Lesser Heads, Lesser Head, Great Head
3x Lesser Heads, Great Head
2x Lesser Heads, Lesser Head, Great Head
2x Lesser Heads, Great Head
1x Lesser Heads, Lesser Head, Great Head
1x Lesser Heads, Great Head
Lesser Head, Great Head
Great Head

That's 9 forms total, 8x 6 hp + 1x 40 hp = 88 total. I should know what I'm talking about, since the hydras are all updated into the DB already.

Chris_Byler · #10 October 10th, 2007, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Edi said:
Oh, and Serpent Cult has a hydra special hero. In place of the Great Head weapon it has something called Immortal Head and the bugger is sacred. Draw your own conclusions...

I don't think that's a hero, but rather their Conj 9 national summon, Daughter of Typhon... 30 nature gems, N5D2. Description implies uniqueness.

If you could get that for free it would be rather imbalancing.