Golden Era Discussion

Originally posted by Daynarr:
Well, the difference in protection is not so small (difference between light and medium infantry) so it justifies resource difference. They do get initial powerfull strike with lances which makes them much more devastating on their first attack comparing to Valkyries although Valkyries have glamour that gives them sort of 'mirror image' protection.
It's quite valid question and I'm not sure if they really should cost so much if you compare these units alone, but I think developers took into account overall unit strength for both nations.

I agree totally. Vanheim has +5 Berserking Units, Vans, Javalin Units, a decent HI unit, powerful Earth Mages, Powerful (but expensive) Air Mages, Stealth Option, Sailing, Minor Blood Ability, Regenerating Shapeshifter ... etc.

If you compare what Arco and Vanheim have at their disposal you will see that Arco has significant advantage in choices/power comparing to Vanheim in both magic and 'might' (most of them I already mentioned in initial post). It’s probably a global picture where Vanheim is given advantage of making more cheaper sacred units to make up for other disadvantages. I do believe that giving Wind Riders cost less then 100 gold would make it unbalancing - that protection and powerful first strike is significant factor and if Arco is allowed to build Riders in great numbers they could simply overwhelm large armies.

This is where I disagree. I don't think this particular theme of Arco (even losing their Elephants and getting the Chariots instead) is drastically overpowered to Base Vanheim (even if you adjust the Pegasi), I actually consider them on equal footing.

It has no hoplites, it has no hypsists, it has no elephants, it has no Astrologers (thus making less of a Astral killer and Gateway nation). The forced sloth creates a sort of imposed balance of production that Vanheim doesn't have. The Mystics are more versitile but I consider the magics between them to be fairly equal. Better research with this Arco in the Philosopher, neat ability in the Skeptic, and interesting potential with the Engineer.

I wouldn't say drop the price comparable to Valkyries, but not at 125 Gold. They already have a Dominion Requirement (High Dominion to create more per turn) and a high resource requirement (I doubt you'll run out of resources before money).

Even at 100 Gold it would make them 1/5 cheaper and still make them a significant investment. 125 is just too much even for making your own little shotgun squad.

You will not use Riders to attack that force so I assume your Riders will get attacked.
That requires that enemy gets both fire and air mages to attack them and bring a significant force of archers/crossbows with them. Like I said, not easy to do since they will rarely stay still in same province and as flyers they have lots of optional destinations.
Additionally, you can bring a wind mage of your own with them to cast Arrow Fend on your archers and solve the problem (if Riders are defending they get to do it first!).

I was trying to illustrate how fragile, especially in the early game, that your force of high priced superblessed Wind Riders could be easily killed by a bad choice or significant forces. You could easily buy 120 Archers for the same it would cost you 10 Wind Riders. I'd assume most know that there are no one tactic that will beat another because of the game ;P An easy enough way to kill Wind Riders would be to just use a Wrathful Skies combo on them, or teleport/trapeze a SC on top of them. But that doesn't mean they are useless, only that there are counters to everything.

[ February 17, 2004, 10:35: Message edited by: Zen ]