The Vine Ogre

[quantum_mechani]

Azhur said:

Well the 3N skill still limits them a bit, but they are truly a bit more useful than your average summons. More likely other summons' gem prices should be lowered, so there would be even some use of them.

I agree, besides the mage time issue, they have an achilles heel in the form of magic resistance. They seem like one of the better balanced summons.

[The_Tauren13]

Theres no easy way to exploit the low magic res, really. They are quite powerful for being so massively inexpensive...

[Jack Simth]

Oh, I don't know - a Charm Squad of Druids with Thistle Maces is always fun (or an Enslave squad of Astral-3 mages or ...).

[Arralen]

I don't think there's "overwhelming consensus" that the Vine Ogre is too strong.

Besides the points already mentioned,

- it has poor attack rating and can only serve as a meat(?) shield, but seldomly does any damage against 'real' troops

- it is suspectible to fire ..

[sushiboat]

Vine Ogres are fine as they are. Building a VO army of a decent size requires lots of mage turns. Compare that to the same number of mages casting Pale Riders. VO are fodder, albeit fodder with quite a few hit points. One SC will slice up any number of VO and give the SC a ton of life drain HP. So there goes your investment (in time as well as gems).

Nerfing the VO gives an even greater edge to death and blood nations. Of the three major summoning paths, nature is definitely not the strongest and arguably the weakest.

[Saber Cherry]

Vine ogres are pretty strong, IMO. They would be fine EXCEPT that there are various ways to summon lots more than 1 per gem, and Nature's thistle mace, the avalibility of druids, and the fact that vine beings are one of the few mindless units that don't require magical or indead leadership combine to make them far better than any other low-level summon.

Not that this solves the problem, but I don't think anyone could have a real complaint against raising their price to 2 gems. 2 gems for (generally) 2 vine ogres... still a bargain, isn't it?

As for poison immunity, vine creatures are certainly not immune to poison. They're just immune to blood poisons that affect animals and humanoids with hearts and organs, since they are plants. Nobody said they were immune to herbicides... =)

[Saber Cherry]

For reference... here are the relative simbat powers of a few meat shields.

Deathmatch Power Ratings for 100 rounds:

100*Heavy Inf Scale --------- Wins: 46.2% Power: 890 Overall: 1000
179*Light Inf --------------- Wins: 52.1% Power: 1064 Overall: 990
354*Militia ----------------- Wins: 53.8% Power: 1121 Overall: 1006
275*Vine Man ---------------- Wins: 50.5% Power: 1014 Overall: 992
81*Vine Ogre ---------------- Wins: 46.6% Power: 903 Overall: 999
345*Corpse Construct -------- Wins: 50.8% Power: 1025 Overall: 1007

Average --------------------- Wins: 50.0% Power: 1003 Overall: 998
Median ---------------------- Wins: 50.8% Power: 1025 Overall: 1000
Overall RMS: 999
Overall RMH: 999

Vinemen are big, cheap, upkeep-free, need-not-eat, poison proof, and mindless, which are huge advantages. But they are not super-powerful in combat. Far better than soulless or corpse constructs, though.

P.S. And I think all mindless are immune to mind-altering or soul-slaying spells, like charm.

[The_Tauren13]

Jack Simth said:
Oh, I don't know - a Charm Squad of Druids with Thistle Maces is always fun (or an Enslave squad of Astral-3 mages or ...).

I thought I just read in another thread that you can't mind enslave them... but maybe you can still charm them. I dunno though, cause they are mindless.

Actually with 2 attacks with decently high strength they can do well against most national troops. Unless by 'normal' you mean other summons...

[PvK]

Yep, I agree, NT and Mark.

Vine Ogres are good, but not overpowered. It's the more powerful summons which tend to be much underpriced, and some of the lesser summons which cost so much that people usually wait for the bargain ultra-bad-*** summons to give bargain life drain weapons so they can be SCs. I'd much sooner multiply the cost of such units as Bane Lords.

Interesting analysis below on Vine Ogres. A couple of points to add:

* Vine Ogre size is a slight disadvantage against mobs of humanoid-sized units, because on a dense front, the smaller units get more attacks per unit since more fit in an adjacent square. That will result in a somewhat overstatement of their power on the simulation which assumes everyone can attack everyone else.

* Vine Ogres are mindless... so they never gain experience.

PvK

[Verjigorm]

Based purely on the summation of the values of the various units' statistics (Size, HP, Protection, Morale, Magic Resistance, Attack, Defense, Precision, Movement, and AP), the units come up like this:
Wyvern: 129 + Fly - Cold-blooded - Animal
Ice Drake: 140 + Cold-res(100) - Animal
Cave Drake: 153 + Survive (M) - Animal - Cold-blooded
Fire Drake: 137 + Fire-res(100) - Animal - Cold-blooded + Survive (W)
Vine Ogre: 163 + Poison-res(100) + Survive (F) + Need-not-eat + Mindless - 1 x extra paths required - extra conj level (3)

Clearly the vine ogre is worth more as a unit. If you were to change the costs of the above units, one could probably infer that their gem-cost should be 1 considering that you can get more than one vine ogres for a single gem while the 2nd level summons are extremely expensive. However, that fails to take into account the factors listed as +'s and -'s above, differing values of various attributes (1hp is clearly not equal to 1 attack skill in value), and it fails to take into account divergences in the costs of the various low-level summons. Under the current modding ability it is not possible to achieve a true "balance" between these summons. My suggestion, cludgy though it may be, is to reduce the gem-cost of the 4 elemental 2nd level summons to 1 and see what happens.

My prediction is that you'll see groups of them arising in non-nature nations while nature nations retain the vine ogre. Since they can't be hoarded as efficiently, however, they will tend to be phased out later on when better things come along.