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

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Zen:
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.

Right. I understand this, at least.

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.

True. I would say this combines into 'you have to be more careful with a PoD than a VQ', but I find this all well and to the good.

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.

Agreed. I guess, to the developers, Immortality is indeed that powerful?

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.

True enough. The Lich and the VQ are now on a much more even keel, comparatively. My only concern here is the one that IW themselves brought up; namely, that very few people play with Liches. It would seem to me that if you balance a Pretender against a Lich, they should be played at about equal frequency. Which means bad things for the VQ.

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.

With the removal, it's more of a question of timing. It certainly doesn't _look_ like it was done for thematic reasons. I trust IW, but other, less trusting people probably won't.

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.

Right. But it does reduce the power of your 'well you can just mod it' argument. Considering the various other improvements in 2.12, I certainly think you'd want to mod 2.12 rather than not patch and stay at 2.11.

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.

Oh I know. It was something of a facetious complaint, and it's not like I can't use a Ghost King instead to get Blood magic on my Pretender at a non-ridiculous price. It _would_ be nice to have Pretender selection on a theme basis, rather than a nation basis. I think that's a little beyond the scope of the current gamestate, though.

Anyway, the BE Blood idea is not a very good one. I just like the fact that BE Ermor has such easy access to undead patrollers. Jotunheim is almost as good, except theirs is all gem-based, and they need gems for undead commanders as well. Desert Tombs and Black Forest suffer from a death scale. BE Ermor's problem is, obviously, a lack of good Blood mages.

Ah well. Maybe I'll have to rectify that.

Scott

[Teraswaerto]

* 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

Reinvigoration can be used to remove fatigue incurred from casting spells before going into melee. Bloodletting and Leech do the same thing, as well as raising the caster's hitpoints over his normal maximum. And there is Blood Vengeance too.

True. I would say this combines into 'you have to be more careful with a PoD than a VQ', but I find this all well and to the good.

Yes, and that has it's cost in points. I think the real consideration is not being careful (but there is a distinct lack of being careful with certain people and their VQ's, I personally see this as a flaw in their playstyle) I think the real consideration is not being surprised

True enough. The Lich and the VQ are now on a much more even keel, comparatively. My only concern here is the one that IW themselves brought up; namely, that very few people play with Liches. It would seem to me that if you balance a Pretender against a Lich, they should be played at about equal frequency. Which means bad things for the VQ. Imagine it this way. Out of 100 Games, 50 people want to play with an Immortal. And out of those 50 People, 25 of them want to play with a Rainbow Mage or a Bless effect while having Immortality. The other 25 Want an Immortal SC. 25 of those people can now choose a Lich, the other 25 can choose a VQ. Previous to 2.12, all 50 chose the VQ because there was no advantage to choosing a Lich for being a Rainbow, the advantage was having a SC that could be a Rainbow.

I'm not saying that those are precise numbers of people who want Immortals, or Rainbows but based on those numbers, it seems that it wasn't the Lich's stats that were holding it back, but rather the VQ's obvious advantage. Along with Autosummoning.

With the removal, it's more of a question of timing. It certainly doesn't _look_ like it was done for thematic reasons. I trust IW, but other, less trusting people probably won't. The way IW works on things is they have a huge list of things to do, they pick the few that they can allot their time to then fix those things and everything they feel needs to be fixed with it, thematic or not. You can't fault them for doing a thorough job on the things that have their attention.

Right. But it does reduce the power of your 'well you can just mod it' argument. Considering the various other improvements in 2.12, I certainly think you'd want to mod 2.12 rather than not patch and stay at 2.11. Not really, you can just mod it if you choose to. Noone is stopping you except your desire to play with people who don't think the same way. One thing about some Dom2 players, what you'd think they would want and what they do can be totally different. Most I believe are crazy in some fashion.

[Blitz]

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'

I guess you don't play Marignion much. Even as a blood race, they were not allowed to use the VQ, obviously a thematic choice as Marignion ARE a blood race. Marignion cannot use any undead pretenders. I believe the Lich and Archlich are available to ALL races, even underwater ones... Except Marignion. They are the only race that could use neither the VQ or the GK... leaving them with second tier SC choices of which the best are the Virtue and the Lady of Fortune. Neither of these are comparable to a post-nerf VQ or GK. Don't feel bad for Ermor.

[alexti]

[quote]Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:

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.

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But a lot of people are winning using VQ with different strategies, which only confirms that VQ was overpowered. Now VQ seems to be a niche choice, either as immortal monster-SC (but very expensive) or as a decent (and immortal) SC capable of summoning Ice Devils and undead SCs. Both cases may work well for some nations in some circumstances, but it's not automatic choice for every nation anymore.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Blitz:

quote:

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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'

I guess you don't play Marignion much. Even as a blood race, they were not allowed to use the VQ, obviously a thematic choice as Marignion ARE a blood race. Marignion cannot use any undead pretenders. I believe the Lich and Archlich are available to ALL races, even underwater ones... Except Marignion. They are the only race that could use neither the VQ or the GK... leaving them with second tier SC choices of which the best are the Virtue and the Lady of Fortune. Neither of these are comparable to a post-nerf VQ or GK. Don't feel bad for Ermor.

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Standard Marignon (and I believe also FotF, not sure about CotS) has an undead/demon-damaging capitol site, creating the potential to spectacularly shoot yourself in the foot if you take an undead pretender and *don't* take Diabolical Faith. Also it's inappropriate for *any* Marignon theme to take an undead pretender - even DF, the whole reason they made deals with the devils was to gain power to destroy the undead.

I think it would be nice if pretender availability could be restricted by theme instead of by nation, but currently it can't, so if a Vampire Queen shouldn't want to rule AE/SG Ermor (who would she eat?), BE Ermor can't take her either; and if CW Pangaea needs undead pretender options, normal/NE Pangaea get them too.

The VQ doesn't have the same thematic problem with Desert Tombs (which, like Broken Empire, has the living side by side with the dead), but arguably does with Carrion Woods. But Ermor is often AE/SG, while Pangaea is rarely CW, so until theme-by-theme restrictions are implemented (if ever), the current arrangement is the best available fit.

Also, in response to the original question, I think the blue dragon is available to every land nation except Abysia (but, IIRC, the red dragon is available to every land nation *including* Caelum). There's an obvious thematic reason why a blue dragon, with cold immunity, powerful water magic, and frost breath, is inappropriate for either theme of Abysia. (The red dragon is just as inappropriate for Caelum and Jotunheim, and the blue dragon possibly for Machaka as well, but those are probably oversights.)

The VQ's unavailability to Ermor is just more noticeable because there has been a lot of discussion on this board of specific VQ/Ermor strategies, while nobody would really want to take a blue dragon for Abysia (or indeed, a red or blue dragon for any nation of the opposite temperature preference).

[PvK]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
... 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) ...

"Comparing apples and oranges" means that they are different things, so they can't be compared directly, so as to say an example of one is simply better than an example of the other.

Immortality is very important and unique, especially for something that can make an impact by fighting to the death. The more of an impact it can make, the more important it is. The more abilities (like drain strength and etherealness and immunity to poison and cold) it has built-in (so no loss on (un)death), the more important immortality is. The VQ gets a lot of bang for its no-risk death, and it used to get even more, when buff-giving paths were also cheap.

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.

It's a great plus for the PoD, but the PoD still has to choose whether to use an Ethereal robe, or to stack even more protection on top of his natural skin.

People do not have to be crazy not to be using magical weapons against a VQ, because it's not easy to get magical weapons on troops, and the VQ may well be choosing the fights, anyway. What the VQ does well is wipe out most troops, especially living ones. You don't have to be crazy to use troops.

PvK

[ June 12, 2004, 05:03: Message edited by: PvK ]

[PvK]

Bah!

Since my comment about how easy it would be to give the VQ back to Broken Empire Ermor was overlooked, I went and whipped up a mod to do it, so I wouldn't have to keep hearing about it.

Sadly, it (#restrictedgod 8) doesn't work! It should be a very simple mod, but apparently Ermor is hard-coded not to allow the VQ.

Someone with enough interest to spend the time could of course duplicate the VQ for Emror stat by stat and rebuilding the sprites.

I have the patience to do the unit stats, but not to do the sprites.

I really wish there were a mod command to #borrowsprites (from unit number) - I would have done many more mods by now with that. The screenshot rebuilding technique is a discouraging amount of work just to get graphics that are already in there.

PvK

[ June 12, 2004, 16:36: Message edited by: PvK ]

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
... 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...

quote:

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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

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I wasn't offended, and the Norfleet comment was me trying to be funny, since I got the impression that Norfleet felt he exclusively was being targeted by illwinter. I also lumped you and Norfleet together since you were arguing the same point, more or less, and I was to lazy to separate you.

[Vicious Love]

This is a bit of a delayed response but, since no one else seems inclined to do so, I've gotta commend Illwinter on the changes made to the VQ. I positively love the new Version. She can still be made into a proper, nigh unvanquishable SC, but point costs are so prohibitive that both serial castling and dominion pushing are much, much less viable.
More importantly, relying on a VQ SC at the expense of your ability to muster or summon a proper army means there's very little you can do against a massive enemy stack marching towards your capitol, particularly if they are equipped with necromancers(Scripted to wither bones/dust to dust) or flyers(Particularly Caelians, elementals, angels, and others with magical/anti undead weapons)
Choose not to rely on a high-end SC strategy, though, and you've got a great pretender in the VQ. She still makes for a cost-effective, recuperating lower-end SC, she's still a spectacular raider, who gets to choose her own battles and achieves superb results even with relatively low path levels, she's still a better expendable defense mechanism than the Lich ever was(And she doesn't even have to teleport to get to the battlefield on time), and she's a superb addition to any army, even if she's no longer an army in her own right. I mean, a 0 encumbrance stealthy regenerating ethereal flying immortal with great combat stats and a life draining attack, how could you not find a use for that? She can fill a variety of roles, none of which really overlap those of any other SC, she has balanced strengths and weaknesses, and she gets the coolest titles.
Two thumbs up. They shoulda been up a few weeks ago, but I always assumed someone else would beat me to it.