Yomi - Oni Kings analysis. Developers please read

[Corwin]

KissBlade said:

Haha are you serious? That's pretty cool. Oh yeah to balance out the Oni Kings, yomi troops suck (except from bandit archers which are serviceable with bakemono archers till you get indies that is) Oni's are poor researchers and also their magic isn't very versatile for early age.

About vanishing afflictions - it is correct. However the process is not 100% certain - some afflictions vanish, some not. I haven't looked into it in detailes, but it looked to me like about roughly 50% of afflictions are gone when unit switches to ghost form.

However I would call it a rather interesting feature that add flavor and not a bonus. There are several problems if someone would try to use it as a tactic.

First - it is pretty much impossible to take advantage of it with any type of certainty and without huge risks. You see, if opposition was strong enough to managed to reduce your mighy Dai Oni into the little zero protection ghost, it means your Dai Oni is almost finished. All chances are that at that point your Dai Oni will be gone for good during next round or two.

Second - while being reduced from 50 hp to zero, there is a very good chances that your Dai Oni will add new affliction or two to the collection he has already.

All and all, I would call it curious and interesting feature, but not something that makes demons stronger as a nation.

[KissBlade]

Oh I agree, I just found it a nice little flavor. =)

[Boron]

Corwin said:
I agree with you and Kristoffer Boron, price balance is indeed a possible solution. I mean - "There are many ways to skin the cat". Troops can be made better, or can be made cheaper, or both. Decreasing price of 30gp demons to 15gp, and 50-65gp to 25-30gp might do the trick. But I would still like to see ghost form made more durable, with same hitpoints as a normal form. This does not increase fighting power of Oni much, since ghost form are hopelessly weak due to only having illusionary weapons. But this would fit nicely into concept of "near immortality", alowing more demons to survive IF the battle is won.


I don't like the idea of oni ghost forms fleeing the battle, I would prefer them to stay and either fight or die. But giving them a bit more hitpoints and higher MR, so they would not be killed in mass with single banishment, would be good.



About Ku-Onis - as partly agree with you. Like yourself, I also like their swarm tactic, both from the tematic point of view and game-wise. But the problem is that their size one makes then the worst troops if you are facing priests, and in MP as an Oni player, you pretty much always do.

************************************************** *****
Here is some primitive math - up to 30 (6x5) Ku-Oni are affected by casting of lvl 1 banishment each turn. That's 2 times more units than size 2 Ao-Oni (25gp demon).

Now Ku-Oni MR of 13 vs 14 for AO-Oni. According to the probabilities table on page 5 of the manual, that makes them about 25% more vulnerable for banishments.

Now Ku-Oni have 9hp vs 14 hp for Ao-Oni. That's 55%+ more hitpoints for AO-Oni.

So here we have it. In terms of actually killing units (reducing their hitpoints) banishment is (2 times x 1.25 x 1.55) = 4.75 times more deadly for Ku -Oni than for Ao-Oni.

That's A LOT.

Considering that the the AO-Oni only cost 25 gp vs 12 gp for Ku-Oni, and considering that the banishment is the main weakness of Oni in MP, there is no point of buying Ku-Oni instead of Ao-Oni even with the current pricing.

That does not even include the fact that AO-Oni are much better fighters than Ku-Oni, that the AO-Oni have secondary weapons which Ku-Oni do not have, that they move much faster on the battlefield (10 instead of 7 movement), that they have morale 14 instead of morale 9, so they are much less likely to rout, while costing the same 1 res, and even have 1 slightly better protection.

Now considering all these facts, and considering the fact that the only thing Ku-Oni have over Ao-Oni is size 1 instead of size 2, (which, as i mentioned, also makes twice as vulnerable as Ao-Oni for banishment unit-wise), I don't see any reason why would somebody want to buy Ku-Oni instead of Ao-Oni, when facing human opponent.

************************************************** *******
The math may be slightly off, but not by much I think.


That is not to say that AO-Oni and better demons should be left as it is price-wise. My point is simply that none of the demons are price efficient at this point, including least epensive Ku-Oni. And that Ku-Oni IMHO are the worst cost/efficient demon unit when it comes to banishment in MP, as I tried to show in my calculations.



Anyway, as I said, IMHO serious price reduction, perhaps making all demonic units twice least expensive, may do the trick, together with better survivability of ghost form due to same HP as normal form and better MR for ghost form.

The banishment will still present huge problem for Oni players, but maybe it will be enough to make some demon troops worth building in MP games, as an opposite to using bakamoo archers and indeps.

Your calculation is informative . You have left out some important facts though:
Range of banishment!
20+

Your shortbows have 30 range.
So place your ko oni on the edge of the battlefield with hold and attack x orders.
Just before your archers to protect them from fast enemy troops.
Then their slow 7 movement is a further advantage.
For several turns they will stay out of banishment range!
The enemy priests will do nothing then if they are normal priests or if they are priest mages they will cast other spells and fatigue.

Then there are skelspamming Hanyas. The skellis have movement in the range of 6-9 movepoints iirc. For the first 2 turns the skellis will already move while the ku oni still stay idle.

So the skellis provide alternative targets for the enemy.

So imho banishment is not a too big issue for Yomo.

But you are nontheless correct i think. The size of the Ku-Oni is more often a problem than an advantage because of other spells.

Mainly Bladewind and Magma eruption devastate the poor Ku-Oni really well.

And if we check early era this is extremely problematic because many early era nations can do bladewind and/or magma eruption:

-Arco:
Not guaranteed, but with randoms every 4th mage engineer gets earth 2 and some mystics should also get lucky with randoms and be able to cast blade wind or magma eruption.

-Maverni:
Every Druid can bladewind (and most can eagle eye, and every Druid can GfH)

-Ulm:
Almost every of their mages can bladewind.

-Pan:
Every 2nd Pan can bladewind.

-Argatha:
Every Oracle can bladewind, the oracle of subterran fires can do magma eruption too.
Every 4th earth reader can bladewind too.

-Vanheim:
Every dwarfen smith can bladewind, every 4th magma eruption.

-Helheim:
Every swartalf can bladewind, every 4th magma eruption.

-Kailasa:
Yaksha can bladewind (and eagle eye).

(-Yomi:
Dai Oni can bladewind/magma eruption too.)

-Atlantis:
Basalt kings can bladewind/magma eruption too, and rarely a mage of the deep too.


So 9 other early era nations can easily bladewind/magma eruption. These spells are ultimate doom for all of Yomis small size 1/2 troops.


But vs. most of the above listed nations Yomo can counter with Dai Oni casting earthquake or rain of stones.
And they also can counter reasonable well vs. bladewind with end of weakness.

But the earthquake/rain of stones counter is hard to pull of imho. And it is somewhat in vain vs. nations with cheap non-capitol only mages which are uber like helheim/vanheim svartalfs/dwarfes.

[Corwin]

I've sent you a message about your proposed anti-banishment battle tactic and positioning, I see potential problem with it. But let's continue this discussion in PM.

For here let me just say that even if it will be relatively effective, what prevents your opponent from countering it by simply scripting his priests to "attack/attack/banishments/banishment/banishment/cast spells", while positioning them behind his advancing melee troops of course? This way your are back at the same tight spot, with additional disadvantage that now your whole army is compressed not far away from edge of the map, so stray arrows/spell can hurt your mages and commanders, including those that you normally leave as far from melee as possible, and if your lose the battle the enemy may kill a lot of your fatiqued mages, because they are right in front of them.


As for other spells that you have mentioned such as bladewind and magma eruption - I agree with your reasoning and your observations.



In any case, we can discuss battle tactic in PMs.

[PDF]

Well, I don't agree to most of the "buff Yomi demons" wishlist...
A nation should not have all units made equally worthwhile, it should have strong, good units, and worse ones.
Yomi has great big units, it does not seem unlogical that their "small" units be subpar. Personnally I've got Yomi as enemies in 2 pbem games, with me playing Kaisala in one game and Marveni in the second, each time they blew me up !
Granted it was true because I didn't develop effective Banishment strategies soon enough, but Yomi does not seem hopeless at all...
OTOH if there is a nation that really should be strengthened, it's Maverni, not Yomi ...

[Boron]

PDF said:
OTOH if there is a nation that really should be strengthened, it's Maverni, not Yomi ...

What is wrong with maverni?

Imho maverni is balanced, they have very good mages with the druid, good researchers with the gutuater, a potential communion mage with the stargazer.
The canute and ambibate noble warriors are awesome, eponi knights are rather useful too.
In short, imho they are a well balanced and fun to play early era nation .

[Nerfix]

Marverni is brutal with Communion + Summon Earthpower + Bladewind. Later on they get Gifts from Heavens. And if your enemy is sending those DIEEEEEEE!!!!-Onis or other big monsters, why don't you just send some Stargazers with Astral pearls to meet them and spam Horror Mark? Thaum 1 is one of my first goals as Marverni to get a communion chugging.

Their units are also very solid.

[PDF]

Maverni has great mages, but the only worthwhile troops are Eponi Knights and Carnute Nobles (the ones that get berserk).
The sacred warriors aren't worth a bless strategy and are awfully expensve (35 gp!!) for their stats.

At start you can't expand without significant losses before you can use Protection and BE. Then problem is that before you reach magic level 4 in several path you are clearly outclassed by nearly any other EA nations, particularly the non-human ones with big nasty troops such as Yomi, Agartha, Abysia or Niefelheim.

Compare costs and stats of a Boar Warrior vs a Agarthan Seal Guard : a SG costs roughly 2 BW (gold and res), it's laughable.

And you don't even get cool national summons !

Edit : and no sneaky troops neither !

[Unwise]

If you have time, be sure to put this up on the Wiki:

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening

[B0rsuk]

Here's a hint from inexperienced Dominions player: you can mix various units in same squad. So you can mix both BIG and little units in same squad. This should more less average the size of your units, making them indirectly less vulnerable to area effect spells like Banish. Essentially, it should make your little units effectively occupy more space.

Not tested.

By the way: there should be a formation option allowing you to affect spacing/spread of units, so you can simply order little units to loose formation, sacrificing gang-up potential for improved AoE resistance. Would add yet another tactical layer to the game, I can't see how it could harm the game.