Halt Heretic - Opinions

[Kristoffer O]

They are not supposed to be elites, just armored.

[thejeff]

I understand that's the current state.
It was a justification for making them a little better, besides the armor. Along the lines of "Don't waste the good armor on the regular troops."

Can't wait to try out the new version.

Thanks

[CUnknown]

It sort of puts the black plates on an elite-ish level, for heavy inf, though.

I'd like to see the results of the heavy inf comparison tests with the new black plates. Black plates v an equal gold value of principes, for example. I bet black plates would do significantly better now.

[ComTrav]

It should be pointed out that Ulm now has a level-2 priest and can now actually cast Sermon of Courage, so the morale issue is much less of a problem.

I'm a little surprised Priest Smiths don't get any randoms, though. The sacred researcher and stronger Iron Darts/Blizzard are nice options to have, but to get the random picks for forging you need to build lots of Master Smiths. (From the description it also sounds like the Priest Smiths don't share the immunity to Drain.) It's nice, though, to have capital-only units worth getting.

Inevitable question: Black Lord vs. Lord Guardian for early game thug.(All this cheap forging needs to be put on SOMETHING, right, sinces its a big part of Ulm you'd prolly want to get them into action before powerful summons are available.)

[Sombre]

Ulm's level 2 priest is cap only and competes with their best researcher, who is actually drain immune, the Smith Priest. I don't see people actually building them and using them for sermons.

[B0rsuk]

Some thoughts:

Iron Darts/Blizzard are EH spells. If you make a prophet out of an earth mage, he or she will be able to cast Iron Darts and Blizzard. For example, you could prophetize a witch and have her cast Eagle Eyes for +5 Precision bonus. It should be nice for non-area spells.

Priest Smith has only 15 leadership instead of 45, and only 9 MR ! Not counting randoms, Priest Smith has the same paths as ordinary smith, and spellcasters tend to have very good MR. What's wrong here ?

Siege Engineer, Smith, Priest Smith have 10 HP, but all other Ulmish commanders have at least 12 HP. This includes black priests, who spend their time looking important instead of heavy physical work or warfare !!

Ghoul Guardians don't have castle defence bonus. Intended ? It may have been this way earlier.

[Edi]

Priest smiths are going to get some modifications in the next patch. Personally, I wish the master smith had a 15% or 20random instead of 10%.

The reason why the priest smith has no randoms is that they are basically washouts or failures who are trying to get more importance by latching on to the Order of the Iron Faith. That's the interpretation I make from the various descriptions anyway.

[Edi]

One question I'm wondering about is whether Bane of Heresy (the aoe effect from Black Halberds) should be "strength of wielder not added"? Because 15 AP damage without strength added is not going to cause a whole lot of fatigue to anything with even half decent armor. Upping the stun damage to 20 AP would make it more useful but still not overkill. Of course, since there are three guardians per square and if all three hit the same enemy square, it adds up fast.

Opinions?

[llamabeast]

I just did a test of 8 Black Halberds against 9 W9F9 jaguars. The halberds won easily. They seem pretty effective, some of the jaguars were knocked out almost immediately.

[johan osterman]

Edi said:
One question I'm wondering about is whether Bane of Heresy (the aoe effect from Black Halberds) should be "strength of wielder not added"? Because 15 AP damage without strength added is not going to cause a whole lot of fatigue to anything with even half decent armor. Upping the stun damage to 20 AP would make it more useful but still not overkill. Of course, since there are three guardians per square and if all three hit the same enemy square, it adds up fast.

Opinions?

As the fatigue increases the targets will lose attack and defense and will get the occasional armour piercing hit though. So the halberds will dish out considerable more normal damage vs sacreds than they did before, and take less themselves, as well as possibly eventually knock them unconscious.