Poll: morale and routing

[The Panther]

Or even better yet, each time an immortal dies, it loses say 20 random points of strength/attack/defense/MR/HP/etc, thus making it weaker and weaker each time it spawns after death. Vampires themselves should also be subject to this weakening effect. By the time your VQ has died 5 times or so, it would thus become permanenty weak and die even faster, just like the mortal pretender who has lost all its magic and is covered with afflictions from too many battles. As for the vampires, when they drop to 0 hit points in the next spawn, they would be permanantly dead.

I agree that immortality is too strong, especially given the self healing of afflictions.

And I must say that I REALLY like the Moses Hansen idea that any commander automatically routes with no troops. This would be a piece of cake for the devs to implement also, by just simply removing the artifical construct where a lone commander is treated diferently than commanders with troops.

But immortality would be the exception to this auto-rout rule, just as it is now. Though this might make immortality even MORE stronger, which would be a very bad side effect.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I briefly considered the immortal problem. But since immortals CAN be fought effectively, since it is limited to positive dominions, I didn't find it too problematic. Also, the immortal looses all those items when they die, which also helps. If it is still a problem, make the immortal gain a few afflictions when they die. Yes, they will heal, but it takes time, and that is enough in my opinion --- If the SC have to sit around and wait for 5 or 10 turns before being usable again, plus having to pay 50+ gems in items, a price has been paid. If we're going to play REALLY tough immortals could use a magic path point or two, but I think this is going over the top. And more work to develop.

To Arryns comment I can only say: My idea is consistent with existing design, it makes sort of sense, and it will weaken those SC pretenders, so that we may actually see human pretenders again. I mean, when did you Last encounter one in MP? I have never seen one --- except in games where human pretenders were forced.

Plus, the idea is simple to implemented, right devs?

[Sheap]

This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Immortal pretenders pay, on average, roughly 70 points for the privilege. The fact that Abysia, Caelum and Ermor have more points to spend and can afford it is certainly not a coincidence. Immortal non-pretender units cost 50-100% more than comparable non-immortals. Not to mention that immortals that die still lose all their equipment (except for pretenders, this is often more valuable than the unit itself), can still get afflictions (whether they die or not), which don't heal right away, still lose the battle, and get sent back to the home province, which may or may not be conveniently located. And if you're not fighting in friendly dominion, immortality doesn't do anything except raise your price.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone. Instead of having strange routing behavior, we will have problems of "my SC should be able to fight this force by himself, but he can't because he hasn't brought his militia with him." And then anti-SC combat tactics, instead of revolving around defeating the SC, will instead revolve around killing his scrubs so he has to flee. This is not an improvement.

Edit: On the subject of human pretenders, the reason we don't see them in MP is because the Ghost King is too good. For a seven path rainbow mage, the GK costs you about 90-110 points over a human in chassis and path costs, has 2 points more dominion, and starts with death magic. The dominion and death magic alone nearly make up for this increased cost, and you've then basically got the GK's exceptional fighting skills for free, instead of legendary human wimpiness. From a pure power standpoint the only "human" that competes with the GK is the Skratti. For humans to be viable in MP, their "secondary skills" (gem generation, research bonus, whatever) need to be a LOT stronger, or they need to get significantly more starting magic (I'm talking 3-4 points in a single path here), or the GK needs to get worse, or some combination of these. Strong starting magic in particular paths could also help distinguish humans from each other.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.

[Huzurdaddi]

This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

That's not how I read it. I don't know how you could read it that way.

It's clearly a thread about nerfing SC's and the way some people want to do that is by changing the moral system slighty. The problem that follows is immortal units do not flee and so they may have to be special cased.

The people who want to nerf SC's via this method should also figure out what they are going to do about the beserk ability since the clear workaround to the SC retreating is to manufacture a suituation in which he goes beserk ASAP.

[Sheap]

Esben is not saying that I think, but Panther and Boron are, and I want to take a stand in favor of immortality being just fine the way it is before the anti-immortality bandwagon gets rolling

[The_Tauren13]

if it does start rolling ima jump on it in a new york minute

i think esben's suggestion rules:

ok so you have:
case 1: troops and commanders - all commanders die - troops rout
case 2: troops only - troops rout at start of battle
case 3: troops and commanders - all troops die - commanders rout
so why not case 4: commanders only - commanders rout at start of battle

[Arryn]

Huzurdaddi said:
The problem that follows is immortal units do not flee and so they may have to be special cased.

You left out "in friendly dominion", an important distinction. They can rout outside of it. Their morale might make it difficult, but it's not impossible.

But I'm quibbling. Your post was very good and raised an excellent point re: berserk, a trait that almost everyone discussing SCs has been ignoring. I keep mentioning the bloody Berserker Pelt and folks keep sidestepping the issue.

Thanks for bringing it back to the fore.

[Arryn]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me."

Remind you of anything? Such as the anti-VQ threads of a few months ago? Kinda makes you wonder what folks will want nerfed next?

Oh, and your analysis of Esben's proposal is dead-on. Good work, and well-stated.

[Cheezeninja]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Immortal pretenders pay, on average, roughly 70 points for the privilege. The fact that Abysia, Caelum and Ermor have more points to spend and can afford it is certainly not a coincidence. Immortal non-pretender units cost 50-100% more than comparable non-immortals. Not to mention that immortals that die still lose all their equipment (except for pretenders, this is often more valuable than the unit itself), can still get afflictions (whether they die or not), which don't heal right away, still lose the battle, and get sent back to the home province, which may or may not be conveniently located. And if you're not fighting in friendly dominion, immortality doesn't do anything except raise your price.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone. Instead of having strange routing behavior, we will have problems of "my SC should be able to fight this force by himself, but he can't because he hasn't brought his militia with him." And then anti-SC combat tactics, instead of revolving around defeating the SC, will instead revolve around killing his scrubs so he has to flee. This is not an improvement.

Edit: On the subject of human pretenders, the reason we don't see them in MP is because the Ghost King is too good. For a seven path rainbow mage, the GK costs you about 90-110 points over a human in chassis and path costs, has 2 points more dominion, and starts with death magic. The dominion and death magic alone nearly make up for this increased cost, and you've then basically got the GK's exceptional fighting skills for free, instead of legendary human wimpiness. From a pure power standpoint the only "human" that competes with the GK is the Skratti. For humans to be viable in MP, their "secondary skills" (gem generation, research bonus, whatever) need to be a LOT stronger, or they need to get significantly more starting magic (I'm talking 3-4 points in a single path here), or the GK needs to get worse, or some combination of these. Strong starting magic in particular paths could also help distinguish humans from each other.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.

I'd have to agree with all of this. What Esben's suggestion would do is replace one strange and slightly irrational dynamic with another. Sure commander + group dynamics would make more sense now, but instead of attacking the SC everyones strategy would basically revolve entirely around getting rid of his chaff. This would give an ENOURMOUS advantage to the nations that can spit chaff (Caelum, Ermor, Ctis..) As they can simply spit chaff long enough to tie the SC up and kill or route his troops, then the SC splits too. With some creative cloud trapeezing or ghost riders he has nowhere to go too and you now have a dead SC, without ever actually having to deal with him. It would almost completly re-define the dynamic of the game and the balance therein, as major strategies like wrathing would now be almost useless.

The game IS balanced right now, and well. One little change like this will NOT bring the AI up to par because the AI's still going to be ignorant of so many other strategies (ghost riders, castling, vampire spam, clam hoarding).

I definetly dont think a major re-define of the game dynamic is justified because a few people dont like the way combat plays out, plenty of other people DO like the system and you'd be forcing this change on them. I'd be all for an optional mod that does this, but thats about as far as i'd want to go.

oh, and i second the motion of buffing up the human pretenders, i personally would like to see each one of them start with 2 in 2 seperate paths, making them double bless contenders which currently only fire and astral really have.


[edit] Nevermind the cloud trapez'ing part, as the proposed patch would all but eliminate its offensive capabilities.

[Cainehill]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Actually, it's more like, "I want immortality nerfed because I don't like the morale system we have now, and to break the morale system, we have to break immortality, and we have to add a _lot_ more rules and commands, and waa waa waa..."

That said - Jotunheim, Pangaea, the underwater nations can all support immortal pretenders and not infrequently do. Likewise Vanheim, except Vanheim has an uber-pretender that gives another awesome choice. (Actually, so does Pangaea.) I've seen a number of other nations with immortals, even post VQ nerf - Tien Chi VampQ'ueen, and others.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone.

Agreed.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.

The Nagas are also splendid ways to get versatility, and are also considerably better bang for the buck than humans. Problem is that almost all of the humans have abilities that ... rot. Or no ability at all, such as the Hag. Most of the abilities are ones that _might_ be useful in the early game, but are really a waste of a serious rainbow pretender's time. Turn 40 - my druid pretender will ... summon vine men! Right.

Ulm's Alchemist is one that doesn't totally rot - at least he can alchemize gems for gold without losing a turn. The Sorceress gets a free astral gem, the Frost Father won't get killed by murdering winter or the other cold spells.

The sage bonus is handy early in the game, but gets less and less worthwhile as the game goes on. Like - past turn 5. The Archmage - he _really_ ought to be a more impressive chassis. As is? Likewise the Freaklord, the Hag, etc.

But that's really a different thread.

And I just want to reiterate the insanity of the proposal that commanders rout if they don't have any troops. A grand red dragon, a bane lord, a GoR'ed Tarrasque - any and all of them turning and running, not from a Knight - but from a single stinking point of crappy PD.

What a hoot.