Demon Lords

[BigDisAwesome]

So here's a question.
Do the Slaves of Belphegor cost upkeep?
I think he's my favorite so far.

[vfb]

Yeah, they're like 10 gold units for upkeep purposes.

I like Belial because of the seduction. I haven't tried him out since 3.8, so I hope he can still seduce male commanders. It's seduction by money and power, not by, you know, showing a little leg or something. Anyway, hope it still works in 3.10.

[BigDisAwesome]

So how exactly does that work? Is it just like an assassination attempt?

[vfb]

Yes, you sneak into the province and choose 'Seduce'. There's an attempt at seduction which can fail, I have no idea what the parameters are. MR? Morale? If the seduction fails, it's an assassination attempt instead.

[Jazzepi]

vfb said:
Yes, you sneak into the province and choose 'Seduce'. There's an attempt at seduction which can fail, I have no idea what the parameters are. MR? Morale? If the seduction fails, it's an assassination attempt instead.

My understanding that it was both MR and morale.

Unfortunately, assassins/seducers seem fairly useless in competitive MP games. I wish they had an ability to "stalk" a particular unit, raising their stats during the eventual fight for each turn stalked, and keeping them attached to that unit indefinitely, following them around. Would make them more useful, I think.

Jazzepi

[DrPraetorious]

I disagree, they are not useless.

They are *hard to use*, but that's not the same as useless.

Furthermore, they are, generally speaking, not as good as the mages you would otherwise recruit out of your national forts.

Personally, I think the game would benefit from parallel recruitment - you can recruit one mage out of your lab, one priest out of your temple, and one non-mage non-priest out of your fortress. That way, people would actually use their national commanders, assassins, spies, etc. because they wouldn't be instead-of a mage.

[Endoperez]

I agree with Dr Praetorius there. I've thought about national spells that take a gem (or a couple) of the type the nation has income for, and summons a group of national commanders. I'm not sure if it should be one summon for e.g. 2 scouts, 3 melee commanders and a weak priest, or spesific spells for summoning e.g. 6 scouts or 5 assassins or 4 spies, and another for 6 non-mage commanders (one or two of the highest tier (e.g. Black Lords) and others of the lower tier (e.g. Commanders of Ulm).

This only works if #nextspell enables linking several spells together (casting the spell summons a Black Lord and activates a spell that: 1) summons another Black Lord and 2) activates a spell that... ... 1) summons the last commander and doesn't activate anything. Still, it seems like it could work. I'm not sure how much the spell should cost. 3 gems sounds about right. Coming up with good names will be another difficult one.

[Jazzepi]

DrPraetorious said:
I disagree, they are not useless.

They are *hard to use*, but that's not the same as useless.

Furthermore, they are, generally speaking, not as good as the mages you would otherwise recruit out of your national forts.

Personally, I think the game would benefit from parallel recruitment - you can recruit one mage out of your lab, one priest out of your temple, and one non-mage non-priest out of your fortress. That way, people would actually use their national commanders, assassins, spies, etc. because they wouldn't be instead-of a mage.

I would definitely quantify them as useless, or 98% of the time useless. You have to kite them out with some kind of gear, even if its minimal, and those gem resources end up being better spent on actual thugs and SCs, which have a greater impact on the game anyways.

Besides that, assassinating mages can be an exercise in getting owned, especially once the higher level spells are researched.

Jazzepi