Mirror image (and glamour) does not protect units

[Edi]

Actually, the change makes sense. Historically, the way archers were used in battle was that they fired in big, arching volleys (hence the term ARCHery) that targeted the mass of enemy troops. They did not aim for an individual target. So once the shaft is released at the target area, it does not seek to hit anything in particular, nor is it very much impressed by fancy illusions meant to distract the eye. A melee duel is different, of course.

[lch]

thejeff said:
Magic I can understand, but missiles seem odd.

Roleplaying-wise, I am on the same side. A spell should "know" where it has to strike and shouldn't be fooled by magical illusions if set out to hit a target. Mundane archers with bows, however, should be fooled over long distances just like melee fighters over short distances.

Balance-wise, this gives a very strong counter to the "overpowered" glamor, though, together with the added resources that those units will require. I hope they didn't make them even more gold-expensive aswell, though?

[MaxWilson]

I think it makse sense for both missiles and magic, and therefore I'm happy with it. Verisimilitude is at least as important as game balance, because game balance can be tweaked by adjusting costs. A good change.

It's certainly not crippling to Helheim. Helhirdlings have shields and good protection, and have access to spells like Legions of Steel that boost that protection further. This change will roughly double the amount of glamour that a given archer volley dispels, but Legions of Steel should roughly halve it again. (It's not as effective against longbows, but those are pretty rare EA.)

The change to Svartalfs is much more important IMO, because it limits Helheim's access to army buffs (Legions of Steel and Strength of Giants, Weapons of Sharpness) AND it slows down their research. Best recruitable-anywhere researcher is now the Vanjarl/Helkarl at 3/turn for an initial 160 gold, instead of the Svartalf at 7/turn for an initial 180 gold. The difference is fairly dramatic, and encourages taking positive Magic scales. (IIRC after ten turns of researching they'll gain 1 star and go up to 4/turn and 8/turn respectively, but it's still dramatic. Because the Varjarl is sacred, maintenance costs don't really suffer, but purchases cost more and you also need twice as many forts for maximum research.) This is offset by Helheim's death magic (helped along by the new site searching spell fix) which lets them get skull mentors, but in a long game Helheim now has real incentive to spend points on something besides a huge bless.

I haven't yet installed the patch, but I would expect the change to Sloth + increased resource cost for lightweight scale mail make Sloth-3 less attractive to Helheim, likewise giving Helheim less free points to throw into a bless.

In my SP games I think I'll mod Helheim back to Svartalfheim (220 gcost recruitable-anywhere Svartalfs) but leave the other changes intact.

-Max

[Micah]

It's good that glam got nerfed, although I'm not sure if doing it by using archery was the best plan, since archers are already one of the dominant strategies. I think making the images dissapear when they're hit might have been a more interesting solution.

Also, while Helheim certainly needed some nerfing I'm not sure if glamour weakening + the double resource hit from sloth/scale mail + (the big one) cap-only svartalfs all at the same time might not be going a bit too far. The Svartalf change especially pretty much cements them as a face-hugger nation, since their research potential just got cut in half. I know EA Vanheim has the same problem, but indy-based research does not a good nation make. 160 gold for a 3RP researcher is pretty suck-tastic. Maybe the intent was to force a triple magic scale to weaken the bless? I don't know, maybe having Hel/Van run around with a legion of tribal shaman for research is a good idea from a balance standpoint (I'm doing it as Abysia), but it seems a bit off to me.

[PvK]

I think overlapping scale mail is not necessarily what is meant by Dominions' Scale Mail (or - ick! - D&D). Maybe they just mean cloth or leather with some scales on it, not overlapping, which would (depending on how much space was between the scales, and how thick they were) likely be less protective than good chain mail against some kinds of attacks. Note that Dominions (like - yetch! - D&D) also has an armor type unhistorically called "Plate Mail" which is not the same as Plate, and maybe that is more like overlapping scale mail?

However, if Scale Mail does mean overlapping metal scales, in general I'd agree that it would tend to offer more protection than typical chainmail.

And, back on topic, I think the Light Weight Scale Mail referred to here is actually the same type you can forge as a magic item using Air gems... not mundane metal armor. And (as a semi-relevant aside) for cavalry like Vans, encumbrance isn't even counted...