PoD vs. VQ vs. Liches (was: Blood Arco mod)

[Blitz]

That's usually the case when a knee-jerk reaction occurs as a result of a public outcry of whining. This is why I feel that whenever somebody calls for a nerfing of anything, that somebody should generally be ignored. Now the VQ is a more or less completely unusable chassis by any nation that doesn't have a huge number of points to burn...and isn't available to the most noteworthy, and perhaps appropriate, of them: Ermor. Meanwhile, other options are no more attractive than they were before. Instead of more and better options, we have less. To top that off, the new patch didn't really give us anything new, contentwise. Bleh.

She's still very good for races who have some "free" heat/cold picks. For example, with Jotunheim I like her because she can summon ice devils without needing Water 4 or construction 6.

You can have Order 2, Sloth 1, Cold 2, Misfortune 1 with AA WWW EEE DDD BBB and dominion 5 on a Vampire Queen. For that I get an immortal, flying, erthreal, regenerating, poison and cold resistant pretender who can realisticly summon her first ice devil on turn 15-20. So she's not the hands down champ anymore? So what. There's at least 20-25 pretenders that are worse. Now she's more of a niche choice rather than a default selection. Good on the developers.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
That's usually the case when a knee-jerk reaction occurs as a result of a public outcry of whining. This is why I feel that whenever somebody calls for a nerfing of anything, that somebody should generally be ignored. Now the VQ is a more or less completely unusable chassis by any nation that doesn't have a huge number of points to burn...and isn't available to the most noteworthy, and perhaps appropriate, of them: Ermor. Meanwhile, other options are no more attractive than they were before. Instead of more and better options, we have less. To top that off, the new patch didn't really give us anything new, contentwise. Bleh.

The intention was to price the VQ so that she would be as (un)viable as the liches. If you compared their costs before the VQ was a better choice than the standard- or Saurolich in almost every conceivable situation. Perhaps Liches are not very popular but they have been priced this way since dom 1 days and the VQ was added for dom 2, so our feeling was that the VQ was the pretender that was priced wrong rather than the liches. It was not a knee jerk reaction, especially since the VQ complaints emerged well before the previous patch, it was a measured response, and we didn't start fiddling with the VQ until we one day compared the lich with the VQ point by point, that was the reason for the change not the whining. We are not pavlov dogs. The removal of the VQ from Ermor is the sole instance where I might concede some part of your point, but even there it was mainly done for thematic reasons.

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Is there any reason why we shouldn't read that an overstatement from the perspective of a narrow selection process? She's still a good immortal fighting chassis with a huge list of build-in abilities. Looks good to me.

Well, the way I see it, the best comparison is with the Prince of Death. The base differences between the two post-patch is:

1) 100 points in favor of the Prince of Death.
2) 2 base Dominion in favor of the Prince of Death.
3) DDD (PoD) as opposed to DBB (VQ). If you are talking about an SC build for them, this is a point in favor of the PoD. I've never heard of an SC using Blood magic in combat.
4) The PoD has about a 2-3 pt. edge in every fighting statistic over a VQ. He also enjoys twice the base HPs of a VQ.

Now, balanced against this, you have the VQs Etherealness, Immortality, and Regeneration (there's also the Life Drain attack). If you think that's balanced, that's fine. I, personally, do not, especially since everything but the Immortality that the VQ possesses, the PoD can attain through items or spells.

As a test, I took a VQ and a PoD, and bought them up to the same level. The amount of points that took for each was:

VQ: 195
PoD: 116

Also, any further increase to Dominion (which is currently a 3) or to Death magic will favor the PoD, while an increase in Blood magic (which, for an SC, is suboptimal) favors the VQ.

Good point about Broken Empire, but they'd have to change the god selection UI to eliminate it only from the Ashen and SG themes. Seems to me there are good thematic and logical reasons from taking from them, and the perhaps unnecessary hit to Broken Empire doesn't seem to me like a big deal.

Personally, I'd rather have an unclear reason for an omitted pretender choice, than a couple of pretender choices that don't make a lot of sense (vampire queen with murderous dominion exterminating her blood sources).

True, but beware of where that path leads you. Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

Then there's the question of why it was removed from ONLY Ermor. If it had been restricted farther, I'd actually have less of a problem with it. But the 'only Ermor' removal smacks of silver bulleting, which is generally not a good way to enhance game balance.

Oh? What about the chorus of whines that everyone was copying Norfleet's strategy?

As Yossar said, I've not seen a single report of anyone but Norfleet able to win with the strategy Norfleet used.

Cool - looking forward to it!

Mm. Be careful of what you wish for.

Scott

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
Well, the way I see it, the best comparison is with the Prince of Death. The base differences between the two post-patch is:

1) 100 points in favor of the Prince of Death.
2) 2 base Dominion in favor of the Prince of Death.
3) DDD (PoD) as opposed to DBB (VQ). If you are talking about an SC build for them, this is a point in favor of the PoD. I've never heard of an SC using Blood magic in combat.
4) The PoD has about a 2-3 pt. edge in every fighting statistic over a VQ. He also enjoys twice the base HPs of a VQ.

Now, balanced against this, you have the VQs Etherealness, Immortality, and Regeneration (there's also the Life Drain attack). If you think that's balanced, that's fine. I, personally, do not, especially since everything but the Immortality that the VQ possesses, the PoD can attain through items or spells.

As a test, I took a VQ and a PoD, and bought them up to the same level. The amount of points that took for each was:

VQ: 195
PoD: 116

Also, any further increase to Dominion (which is currently a 3) or to Death magic will favor the PoD, while an increase in Blood magic (which, for an SC, is suboptimal) favors the VQ.

She was altered to be be on par with the lich, a comparable immortal.

True, but beware of where that path leads you. Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

Then there's the question of why it was removed from ONLY Ermor. If it had been restricted farther, I'd actually have less of a problem with it. But the 'only Ermor' removal smacks of silver bulleting, which is generally not a good way to enhance game balance.

...
Scott

It might smack of silver bullet or whatever. Fact of the matter is Kristoffer had thought it unthematic for AE and SG for a while and decided to restrict it, and JK agreed so it was implemented.

There is an annoying tendency amongst some posters to assume that illwinter is blown about like helpless leaves by the winds of whine.

I also wish to categorically deny that illwinter is wire tapping Norfleets phone.

[PvK]

Interesting comparison of VQ and PoD. Thanks Scott. It still seems to me that VQ and PoD are apple and orange choices and so one doesn't out-do the other except for a player who is already decided on one play style. PoD is a phenomenal fighter, but is not immortal. So I compare VQ to Liches, and see more combined abilities for more points. PoD is a superiority SC you try to keep alive, and may send breifly on strikes out of dominion. While VQ is a living-army-consuming defensive immortal SC, or just a middleweight but immortal SC for in-dominion defensive strikes, perhaps capitalizing on her immortality by letting her fight to the death repeatedly. Immortality and combo of strong built-in abilities is a very different thing from non-immortal but a great fighter. So again, they both look good to me, but in different ways.

Also the nature of the immortality effect (instant return with little loss on death, and recuperation effect) is very strong in itself and essentially a multiplier, which is why is gets extremely strong when combined with other abilities. I think for this consideration it makes sense for VQ to cost more and perhaps be unavailable to Ashen and SG, since they have scads of points to dump into the VQ.

Minor items:
* Built-in Ethereal for the VQ means she can wear body armor. The PoD, unless I'm missing a trick, needs to choose between body armor and no ethereal, body armor and self-cast ethereal meaning he needs to have Astral power (with its risk or cost), or wear an astral cloak which offers no protection (and requires someone else to forge it). So it doesn't seem to me like it's just something that can easily be got by the PoD with no disadvantage compared to the VQ.
* Seems to me Blood magic does have a good trick or two (or more?) for SC's, even if not commonly used.

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
... Why should Jotunheim get non-giant pretenders? Sure, there's Utgard, but that's only one theme. Same for C'tis and non-lizards. Etc.

There are plenty of thematic and literary examples of mixed-race masters and minions. The difference with Ermor and Soul Gate combined with VQ's is that the effect of one is a disaster for the other. (Extinction of life means starvation for a vampire, and traditionally, vampires' main concern is a good blood supply, so it doesn't make much sense.) There is no such conflict of interest for Jotunheim with little wizard masters, unless the wizard were afraid of tall ceilings or of getting stepped on by accident. Same with standard C'tis.

However, death and especially extinction dominions for anyone do seem contradictory for vampires, so Desert Tombs and Carrion Woods also seem like they would make less sense with a VQ. There's no really good mechanic in the god-selection GUI to make that perfect, though.

I don't really see any of this as much of a problem, though. I think a simple mod could allow VQ back in Ermor, while at the same time taking out the themes. The only thing that seemed to me like a slight problem surrounding all this was the cheap cost of the VQ when taken to extremes.

PvK

The VQ is still perfectly servicable as a SC in every instance of the word. Now though, it does not have the potential to be a rainbow Immortal. That is left to the Liches.

The PoD vs VQ is not an accurate depiction. Since a PoD does not have Immortality. If you take the best Lich (Sauro or Queen, depending on your perspective) you'll see that they fill the niche just as easily as the VQ did previously.

Ermor is purely thematic in not having the Vampire, I would hope that having more pretenders restricted and other pretenders added would be a desire for players of Dom2. But if not, there is no reason you have to patch at all. Everyone can refuse to patch because something/anything was changed in a way they do not like. They can also make as many mods and play games with said mods to create whatever vision of balance they have.

Also, IW does not work at the speed of light, or the speed of other's desire. This game in it's current state, with the Battle Speed fixed, has had more support than a good portion of games out there, for less money and no cost of expansions. So personally I feel they have done enough for 'me'. Whatever they do now, is just icing on the cake.

Edit: With the exception of Bug Fixes, that crop and are patched usually as soon as Illwinterly possible.

[ June 11, 2004, 17:04: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
She was altered to be be on par with the lich, a comparable immortal.

Well, give me a few hours and I'll have this revised to compare her to a Lich, which IMO she'll stack up better against, but I think I'd rather have the Lich. Let me do the math, though.

It might smack of silver bullet or whatever. Fact of the matter is Kristoffer had thought it unthematic for AE and SG for a while and decided to restrict it, and JK agreed so it was implemented.

I don't have a problem with the reasons, unlike some others. I just have a question regarding the narrowness of the reasons. If you argue that the VQ is unthematic for AE and SG (which unfortunately hurts BE, but that's minor, since so few people seem to play BE), I feel that similar questions of 'theme' should be applied to others. Why does Pangaea, the nation of life, have access to Undead pretenders at all? And so forth. Personally, I'm all for having much more Unique pretenders, on a nation-by-nation basis.

And, if I may, I want to explain the 'silver bullet' term. To me, it means that a change was done to fix too narrow of a problem. The VQ changes, _in general_, were good and IMO necessary. It's just the 'only removed from Ermor' thing I have issues with.

There is an annoying tendency amongst some posters to assume that illwinter is blown about like helpless leaves by the winds of whine.

Er, I don't think anything of the sort. Norfleet may, but he sounds more like sour grapes over losing his VQ strategy than anything else. I hope I'm not getting lumped in with Norfleet in general attitude towards the patch...

I also wish to categorically deny that illwinter is wire tapping Norfleets phone.

Er, okay, but I didn't mean to imply anything of the sort... sorry if I offended anyone.

Scott

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
[QB] Interesting comparison of VQ and PoD. Thanks Scott.

You're welcome.

It still seems to me that VQ and PoD are apple and orange choices and so one doesn't out-do the other except for a player who is already decided on one play style. PoD is a phenomenal fighter, but is not immortal.

Having tried to follow the whole 'VQ-Castling' debate, immortality was seen as a crutch to avoid other issues, rather than something to count on. I can see how it allows suicide uses in-dominion.

So I compare VQ to Liches, and see more combined abilities for more points.

Currently doing my own comparison.

PoD is a superiority SC you try to keep alive, and may send breifly on strikes out of dominion. While VQ is a living-army-consuming defensive immortal SC, or just a middleweight but immortal SC for in-dominion defensive strikes, perhaps capitalizing on her immortality by letting her fight to the death repeatedly. Immortality and combo of strong built-in abilities is a very different thing from non-immortal but a great fighter. So again, they both look good to me, but in different ways.

Perhaps. I see apple-and-orange as 'different but roughly equal'. I don't see much equal in PoD vs. VQ. Is Immortality THAT much more important, and hence costly? (honest question here)

abilities. I think for this consideration it makes sense for VQ to cost more and perhaps be unavailable to Ashen and SG, since they have scads of points to dump into the VQ.

While a good argument, it's not the reason why IW removed it from Ermor (and I believe their reasons).

Minor items:
* Built-in Ethereal for the VQ means she can wear body armor. The PoD, unless I'm missing a trick, needs to choose between body armor and no ethereal, body armor and self-cast ethereal meaning he needs to have Astral power (with its risk or cost), or wear an astral cloak which offers no protection (and requires someone else to forge it). So it doesn't seem to me like it's just something that can easily be got by the PoD with no disadvantage compared to the VQ.

While the PoD doesn't have Ethereal, he DOES have a base protection of 12 vs. the VQ's 0. This to me is a plus to the PoD, since in MP at least people have to be crazy not to be using magical weapons against the VQ.

And, really, with the difference in point costs, you could probably make a PoD with 'good enough' Astral magic for the same cost as a VQ without. In fact, if you look at standard 'Ermor' scales (Magic-3, Luck-3, -3 everywhere else, Dominion 10, Ermorian Castle), the VQ has 205 points left for magic. The PoD, OTOH, has 424. This allows a PoD to take Astral-6 and still have more points (234) than the VQ. Whether this is 'good enough' to prevent Magic Duel death is up to you, but I believe that's the general benchmark.

* Seems to me Blood magic does have a good trick or two (or more?) for SC's, even if not commonly used.

Would you mind enlightening me? I haven't tried to use Blood magic in combat yet.

Scott

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Zen:
The VQ is still perfectly servicable as a SC in every instance of the word. Now though, it does not have the potential to be a rainbow Immortal. That is left to the Liches.

Hrm. By Rainbow Immortal, what do you mean? A Rainbow mage with Immortality? A suicide mage-combatant? Not exactly sure here.

The PoD vs VQ is not an accurate depiction. Since a PoD does not have Immortality. If you take the best Lich (Sauro or Queen, depending on your perspective) you'll see that they fill the niche just as easily as the VQ did previously.

Well, you're looking at it from a question of form. By form, the closest thing to a VQ is a Lich. I'm looking more from the standpoint of function. What function does it serve? The PoD and the VQ share many more functions than a Lich and a VQ.

As for the second point, the Lich Queen and the Saurolich are both heavily restricted Pretenders (to Ermor and C'tis, respectively, IIRC). The VQ is not. If the VQ had been restricted to Ulm only (e.g.), I would take the comparison a little better. My comparison of VQ to Lichdom will be to the standard Lich.

Ermor is purely thematic in not having the Vampire, I would hope that having more pretenders restricted and other pretenders added would be a desire for players of Dom2.

It is for me. The VQ, however, is in no way 'restricted'. IIRC, it was available to every land race before 2.12, and in 2.12 is available to 14 of 15 land races. This to me is the core of my 'issue' with the VQ in 2.12. I can't think of a single other Pretender that is available to 14 of the land races, with the sole exception being on the grounds of 'theme'. Now, if this is the start of Pretender restrictions on a wider scale, I'll be happy for it. It's just a little disconcerting at present.

But if not, there is no reason you have to patch at all. Everyone can refuse to patch because something/anything was changed in a way they do not like. They can also make as many mods and play games with said mods to create whatever vision of balance they have.

Certainly they can. SP games, at least. In MP, you have to find a group of people that believe as you do to play, and Dominions II is supposed to be a MP-centered game (as, indeed, it is). This leads to the 'official' Version of the game (as in, 'latest patch with no mods') the most likely Version of the game to be played. So while I agree with your statements, I do it with the reservation that I play exclusively SP, and don't have to deal with MP issues.

Also, IW does not work at the speed of light, or the speed of other's desire. This game in it's current state, with the Battle Speed fixed, has had more support than a good portion of games out there, for less money and no cost of expansions. So personally I feel they have done enough for 'me'. Whatever they do now, is just icing on the cake.

Edit: With the exception of Bug Fixes, that crop and are patched usually as soon as Illwinterly possible.

Certainly, Zen. I'm not trying to be 'in IW's face' to change anything. And, really, I think my track record is that I favor the approach IW takes.

Just chalk this up to my slight annoyance that my 'VQ Blood BE Ermor' l33t strategy has been totally demolished.

Scott

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
Hrm. By Rainbow Immortal, what do you mean? A Rainbow mage with Immortality? A suicide mage-combatant? Not exactly sure here.

That means a mage that is a rainbow (Has multiple paths) and Immortality. Previously to the patch any nations (meaning all) would not pick a Lich instead of a VQ because they had the exact same path costs and an additional path to boot. Now, the VQ can only pick 1, maybe 2 paths within any sort of reason to be built into a SC. So instead of VQ's with 2E, 3D, 1W, 3+A we will see one with just 2 of the 3 core paths of magic to do the exact same kind of damage that it did before.

Well, you're looking at it from a question of form. By form, the closest thing to a VQ is a Lich. I'm looking more from the standpoint of function. What function does it serve? The PoD and the VQ share many more functions than a Lich and a VQ.

I do not see it this way. A PoD is an Indy Killer first, support mage second. With the right equipment early enough, he can do very well, but he is still very prone to afflictions, very prone to death and only has 2 option of healing them. A VQ can fight within it's domain as a pure killing force that can stand to die and lose and if hurt can heal afflictions. The PoD is not so limited by Dominion only.

As for the second point, the Lich Queen and the Saurolich are both heavily restricted Pretenders (to Ermor and C'tis, respectively, IIRC). The VQ is not. If the VQ had been restricted to Ulm only (e.g.), I would take the comparison a little better. My comparison of VQ to Lichdom will be to the standard Lich.

They all share the same weaknesses, and those liches are more combat oriented than the normal lich. But compare whatever lich you want and you'll see their basic function is different and now the VQ can't fullfill both roles, only one.

It is for me. The VQ, however, is in no way 'restricted'. IIRC, it was available to every land race before 2.12, and in 2.12 is available to 14 of 15 land races. This to me is the core of my 'issue' with the VQ in 2.12. I can't think of a single other Pretender that is available to 14 of the land races, with the sole exception being on the grounds of 'theme'. Now, if this is the start of Pretender restrictions on a wider scale, I'll be happy for it. It's just a little disconcerting at present.

I don't find it to be so. It's not as if every patch that Pretenders have been removed from specific nations. What I would find disconcernting is that the Warlock and Skratti are gone and haven't made it back from sabbatical.

Certainly they can. SP games, at least. In MP, you have to find a group of people that believe as you do to play, and Dominions II is supposed to be a MP-centered game (as, indeed, it is). This leads to the 'official' Version of the game (as in, 'latest patch with no mods') the most likely Version of the game to be played. So while I agree with your statements, I do it with the reservation that I play exclusively SP, and don't have to deal with MP issues.

Then those that play MP that don't agree on a Mod will have to come to an agreement or accept the fact that the Dev's changed it for a reason they felt was appropriate to do so.

Just chalk this up to my slight annoyance that my 'VQ Blood BE Ermor' l33t strategy has been totally demolished.

Scott

Sorry that your BE, Blood Ermor was taken down. It certainly wasn't aimed at BE and if there was a way to change Pretenders based on theme, I'm sure you would have seen a different change. Unfortunately we have to work within the parameters of the game mechanics until such time as those mechanics change.