The Vine Ogre

[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]

Are you sure about those numbers? Why are militia stronger than heavy inf? And what does the 'scale' after heavy inf mean?

[Alneyan]

Heavy Inf Scale means heavy infantry wearing scale mail I gather.

The numbers are, I think, supposed to make all groups roughly equally powerful. So 354 militia would be the equivalent of 100 Heavy Infantry, or 81 Vine Ogre. This does not include morale however (I believe), so some of the groups will break in an actual battle, while others will stick to the death.

The Power and Overall numbers mean... Well, something Saber Cherry explained, but nothing my limited grasp of maths could make sense of.

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said:
Heavy Inf Scale means heavy infantry wearing scale mail I gather.

The numbers are, I think, supposed to make all groups roughly equally powerful. So 354 militia would be the equivalent of 100 Heavy Infantry, or 81 Vine Ogre. This does not include morale however (I believe), so some of the groups will break in an actual battle, while others will stick to the death.

The Power and Overall numbers mean... Well, something Saber Cherry explained, but nothing my limited grasp of maths could make sense of.

Yeah, everything you said is true. Morale is included in the simulator, but it is only important for 2 things: 1) repel attempts, and 2) going berserk check. Units don't rout in the sim. As for what the numbers mean... um. Don't worry about them too much, but the far left number is the size of a group that makes it about equal in strength to the other groups. The only thing the other numbers matter for in this mode is that the simulator tries to make the far right number equal to 1000 by adjusting group size.

Personally, I feel that ogres are much better than demons in many roles because they do not require special leadership. Raising an army of demons requires upkeep for the special leaders (especially with big groups) who have to be mages. Raising an army of vine ogres only requires a single 30g indy leader per 25 ogres.

[The_Tauren13]

Oh i see.. you used like 354 militia and 81 vine ogres...
so to get an accurate 1v1 value.. you could take the power and divide by the number of troops, right? how exactly was the 'power' caulculated, anyway?
so...

Heavy Inf ------- 8.90
Light Inf ------- 5.94
Militia --------- 3.17
Vine Man -------- 3.69
Vine Ogre ------ 11.15
Corpse Construct 2.97

[The_Tauren13]

But if this simulation doesnt take into account morale, then that makes vine ogres MUCH more effective...

[Alneyan]

SaberChery on power and overall:

Note that "Win %" and "Overall Score" don't seem to directly correlate... well, um, that's hard for me to explain, but basically, if a group has a high win% and low overall score, it does well against groups with a low win% and bad against groups a high win%, and vice versa.

I guess power means "how this unit is able to slaughter weaklings" and overall means "how this unit fares when faced with the best troops". I do not think you can divide power by number of troops, but I may just not understand what power means. I simply compare the number of troops needed to do as well as the other squads, so one Vine Ogre would be nearly as good as four militia, but only somewhat better than Heavy infantry.

The numbers mean, on average, that 354 militia will fare as well as 81 vine ogres against all the other squads, but some specific units are better for some situations. And since there is no morale (no routing is allowed according to Saber Cherry), Vine Ogres should indeed be much stronger than shown here.

[Jack Simth]

The Relevant thread (warning - kinda big....)

[Boron]

Fiends of Darkness or Devils are much stronger then Vineogres and are about as cheap also .
Especially the soul contract generated Devil is extremely cheap and does require less magetime also then vine ogres .

And vine ogres are only a meatshield and can be beaten by most national troops easy also . Vans , Knights and simliar would even roxxor them .

So i wonder too where that consensus that vine ogres are overpowered comes from