Blood Red FIGHT ON!)

[Jarkko]

Who ever came up with the idea of having regenerating high-prot soldiers, supported by immortal mages and un-breaking trampling health-mosters should consider perhaps to rethink something

Once those scorpions start rolling, there is no way to stop them fast enough to actually get your hands on those immortal mages guarded by regenerating guardians (the regeneration is enough to make banishment useless against them; excellent way to basically them immune to destruction, because lets say Eriu mages will automatically revert to Banishment when fighting them, but they will never be able to Banish the guardians to death).

Suggestions for Nehekara:

Remove the regeneration from the guardians. Regeneration is just silly and stupid and make them in effect immune to Banish which the AI attempts to use against them.

The price on the Bone Scorpions have to be made *much* higher (like tenfold), because there is absolutely no way to stop them fast (unbreakable, massive HP, excellent resistances, trample), and it sucks to get swamped by them.

Immortal mages are by definition a bad thing. If immortal, they should be priced somewhere between silly and insane, not as basic affordable commanders.



Cheers to Baalz for the victory! You truly did show just how unbalanced Nehekara is in the hands of somebody who knows what to do with them

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

The price on the Bone Scorpions have to be made *much* higher (like tenfold), because there is absolutely no way to stop them fast (unbreakable, massive HP, excellent resistances, trample), and it sucks to get swamped by them.

Immortal mages are by definition a bad thing. If immortal, they should be priced somewhere between silly and insane, not as basic affordable commanders.



Cheers to Baalz for the victory! You truly did show just how unbalanced Nehekara is in the hands of somebody who knows what to do with them

Bone scorpions are already 18d per scorpion... increasing the cost tenfold would make them more expensive than seraphs! That might be a bit much. Sounds like you got hit by a bunch at once, so either baalz has a construction site somewhere or he hit you with a crazily expensive army. Also you forgot to mention they have fear :P

Also the immortal mages are 500 gold and cap only, so it's not like they go for pennies.

[Gregstrom]

My take on their troops:

High MR gives near-immunity to Banish and a host of other low-level spells that can inconvenience normal infantry.
Morale 30 means they're immune to fear and awe, and as a bonus they don't dissolve in an autorout either. Oh, and as an extra bonus mind-affecting spells won't redirect to leaders any more either.
Infantry tower shield gives high defence (so they're very tough in melee) and effective immunity to arrows and most low-level damage spells.
No fatigue, so no chance of lucky crits on anything with good armour (and those big shields).

Scorpions are worse, because they have huge prot rather than just average prot. So the lack of a shield doesn't make them vulnerable to arrows, and the lower defence doesn't make them more vulnerable in melee. For tramplers, they seem rather lacking in vulnerabilities.


Jarkko: I thought the regen was a national spell?

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Bone scorpions are already 18d per scorpion... increasing the cost tenfold would make them more expensive than seraphs! That might be a bit much. Sounds like you got hit by a bunch at once, so either baalz has a construction site somewhere or he hit you with a crazily expensive army. Also you forgot to mention they have fear :P

We are talking here about summons that are in the league of tartarians. Except they don't need Conjuration 9. If the bone-scorpions required Conjuration 9, there would be no problem, because by then you would perhaps have *something* able to stop them. But no, when the first contact with Nehekara, starting as their neighbour, is to be overrun by two bone-scorpions (I actullay was able to kill those two in the next few battles, but then Baalz dragged in a few more plus the immortal mages...), then you know something is *wrong*. Either the bone-scoprions indeed need a silly price tag such as 180 gems *or* they require a hefty research (Conjuration 8 or Enchantment 8).

Also the immortal mages are 500 gold and cap only, so it's not like they go for pennies.

Immortal mages with the abilities the Nehekaran ones have should not exist. Similar capabilities can be found on 500 gold mages, true, but the others are not immortal. The thing with the immortals are that they sort of don't die. 500 gold *is* peanuts for the immortal mages Nehekara has, it would be pure idiocy to not buy one every single turn.

The immortal mages need to be summons. If in doubt at how much such should cost, take a look at the immortal mages available in the game; the other immortals require about 40 death gems and lots and lots and lots of research.

With an endless horde of immortal mages and bone-scoprions nobody has absolutely anything to stop Nehekara after about turn 3. And it is rather hard to kill out an opponent in two turns

[rdonj]

Tomb kings ARE strong... but in their immortal form they have magicboost -1, and can become fairly useless. Here's an example tomb king from an old test game I made when baalz was talking about his intended strategy for this game on IRC: 2f 2a 1e 1s d3. That one got all the randoms it has any decent chance to get... and if it dies it becomes 1f 1a d2. That's the reverse of a basic buried sorcerer. Not all of them are like that, but it is not atypical for many to be similar or even worse.

I don't think it's quite fair to compare bone scorpions to tartarians. They do nothing for your magic diversity/strength, have more vulnerabilities (for one thing they're very vulnerable to smashers, which are only construction level 2) and can't wear items (and only two misc slot items if GoRed). They don't have the versatility, or the logistic flexibility of tartarians either. Not to say that perhaps some changes aren't in order, but I think what you've suggested would be going slightly beyond the bounds of reason :P. Giving them higher research wouldn't necessarily be bad, although I wouldn't really suggest high ench or conj since nehekara really badly wants to go to 8 in both anyway. Construction 7, perhaps....


Also, yes, the regen is a national spell, gives 1hp/turn to most nehekaran units.

Edit: Anyway, I should stop arguing about this in your thread, at least until victory is declared for certain.

[Gregstrom]

F1A1D2 is good enough for heavy thug duty with a couple of gems (Mistform, Soul Vortex, wahey!). The immortality puts them (IMHO) way ahead of the vanilla units costing ~500 gold, because it's so hard to lose the investment and that's the normal drawback to the expensive cap-only units. Even outside dominion, a lucky Soul Slay doesn't kill them if they're in their mortal form.

I wouldn't put Bone Scorpions in the same field as Tarts either, but they seemed to be too readily available in this game. The regen buff is very annoying on them, as high prot plus 9 hp of regen makes them seriously hard to kill and also very hard to afflict, which might otherwise be a viable way of trying to stop them. Higher cost and/or research would make a difference, I guess.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by rdonj

for one thing they're very vulnerable to smashers, which are only construction level 2

Unless you have plenty size 5+ thugs available, the crushers will do absolutely *nothing*. Do you know what a bone scorpion does to thugs who are smaller? It tramples them down. Good luck, you just wasted quite the gems and gold on the thug for nothing.

If using mage-priests, the combat AI reverts to casting Banish after their script is over. Banish against Nehekarans has absolutely no effect because of the (excuse me) retarded stats the Nehekarans have

[Baalz]

Nehekara is a strong nation, but I don't think they're overpowered compared to other strong nations. I had some good luck, and played a good game while honestly you guys were struggling to leverage the really effective counters available - and remember, I never fought against anybody who wasn't much smaller than I was so most nations would feel overpowering in that scenario. Bone scorpions are not very scary at all if you deploy a counter to them, and counters are easier and cheaper than the bone scorpions. Remember, those guys are expensive, unless I'm already winning losing a couple of them could easily be a drastic blow to what I've invested in my army. I don't think at any point there were more than 2 (maybe 3?) deployed against any player, so it's a bit of a stretch to say that anybody was swamped in them. Here's a couple ideas of what I would do vs bone scorps.

Crushers are size 6, poison and fear immune.
They lack fire immunity, so a couple fire elementals would pass them out very quickly while being ethereal and size 6.
Tangling vines, prison of fire, even slime. You don't need to tie them up terribly long because...

then

Lightning is awesome at any small number of tough guys. (rough luck your guys default to banishment Eriu)

forged bows: just man's cross, piercer, vision's foe, ethereal xbow, thunder bow are all 5 gems and a few of any of them would ruin this shieldless guy's day.

Undead/construct counters: dust to dust will tear them apart and is trivial to field for anyone with D1 mages. A couple herald lances will ruin their day (or solar rays). Holy scourges/flambeauxs or smashers on any light thug will disintegrate them.

Their MR is fairly low on the thug scale, a couple guys with penetration boosters spamming control the dead could have fairly easily snatched them.
Or any of the other nasty MR-resist spells, of course.

There protection/hps aren't *that* great. They would have been torn up pretty fast in melee if I had used them much against the ogres or dwarves.

Keep in mind, the bone scorpions are very similar to Behemoths buffed with iron warriors - only three times as expensive. The regen, admittedly is quite nice, but then again more than 3 times the hps will go a long way as well (if you were using behemoths).

Tomb kings are not functionally immortal. Their second form is drastically weaker, so you most certainly do not use them as a "I don't care if they die" unit which is the strength of immortals. Their second form is also weak enough to make thugging tricky. They also have pretty low hps so are only mediocre thugs even in their first form. Sure, they're effective for raiding PD...but that's a low bar for a 500 gold unit with a bunch of equipment and alt research.

I'll write up an AAR/guide and share my thoughts in more detail.

[Jarkko]

My Eriu actually killed a few Bone Scorpions (don't know how the others managed) with lighnting and Thunder Bow. But as said, the Eriu mages defaulted to Banish when script ended, and that proved to be totally useless (and I had what, 20 priest-mages in the main battle?). Nehekara had at first two Bone Scorpions, they were killed after a few battle, then three more Bone Scorpions arrived together with 12 of the mages (so much about 500 gold a piece being any sort of a problem) and hordes of the other udnead. And that while Nehekara was also overruning three other nations, I hate to think what Eriu would have faced if I had been the sole enemy of Nehekara

[Gregstrom]

Nehekhara is strong, yes. Maybe not Ashdod strong, but I reckon they'd stand up well against any of the big EA nations.

I stood up relatively well against your initial armies, but your size (and my costs) meant I couldn't replenish my losses effectively - some of that was due to size difference, of course, but I also think that Nehekharan infantry are more effective than their cost justifies.

Most of the ranged counters you refer to weren't that effective for me, possibly because I didn't employ them in enough numbers. The various bows and D2D castings seemed very unlikely to hit the right square, and the herald lances I used on Tomb Kings didn't deal enough to the Scorpions to kill them before my troops were squished. Cursing them seemed a good plan, as then afflictions could mount up and maybe disable them. And ofc I couldn't use lightning or crushers thanks to my path (and gem, somewhat) access issues.