Imo, the Last Stand ability of the Foragers should be removed. This ability makes sense for heroes, but not for them. It allows for much too gamey tactics (not possible with heroes). Their kamikaze use is just terrible for gameplay (and in that case, it doesn't matter whether they have 1 or 30hp). It's a cheap unit that, allied with an hero, can deal massive damage to the other, and not die. Even the kamikaze destroyers of ES died.

The forager has 1 more defense, the ability to use shields, 1 more initiative, and 35 less health. Accounting for the defense lets be INCREDIBLY lenient and say the Necrodrone is only 1.5 as survivable (though it's likely more like 1.75x-1.9x more survivable.) The Necrodrone is 25% more expensive, has 5 more damage, 1 more crit, 2 more map move speed, and has disease.



This gives the Necrodrone several advantages:



More durable. More likely to stay on the field and do damage. More likely to actually reach a ranged opponent.

More damage.... more damage.

More map move speed. A battle beetle herd can resupply you 50% faster on the offensive.

Disease. Whatever the hell that does.

Fewer Necrodrones means you have more power on the battlefield at any time.



Now I'm not asking for much, I'm merely saying that maybe giving the Forager 5 more health to close the gap between the two will make it more of a choice. As it is I can build 1.25 Foragers for every 1.00 Necrodrones, and yet Necrodrones easily have 1.5-2.0x more combat efficiency. Last stand IS potent, yes, but so is staying on the battle so you can actually win the battle itself.



Last stand is a win-more ability that maybe shouldn't even be on Foragers to begin with considering how difficult it will be to balance it acceptably, AND considering how it will be easy to exploit.

Fair do's I suppose.



Never been much of a math junkie my self.





But yeah, how do you feel about the foragers when backed up by a commander, like as a mandatory addition? I feel it can make them very effective (Im not a fan of using necro heroes in citys)?



Although I feel you could say the same about the necrodrone, but it can make a bit of a difference to their effectiveness.

It's not that the Forager is completely unplayably weak, it's juuuuuuust weak enough though that the Necrodrone/Forager choice becomes Necrodrone sided.



Now maybe the Necrodrone is just OP? Maybe. But I think even if we chopped 5 HP off the Necrodrone I'd still have to go with him over the Forager. (And then we'de get in to the argument of "But you have to research the Necrodrone!" "But it comes pre-researched." "That doesn't matter it still counts as a research." "But that doesn't give it a right to be OP" etc. etc.) Stalwarts might be a little weak, Warlocks seem about on par Necrodrone, but that Disease ability once working properly could be a real thing..



The ideal setup would be using Necrodrones as flanking units and Foragers as main units, so maybe the solution is to up the cost of the Necrodrone up 10% but give him 3 movement speed instead of 2. That'd lower his combat efficiency but increase his flanking power.

It's all cool.

Igncom1 wrote:
Your premise isn't wrong, but the reason we have different unit types is to counter different situations and different enemy unit types.



Otherwise we might as well have one unit for each side.



Comparing a SC marine to a siege tank is a bad comparison, because they are designed for different situations, if they were only designed for one purpose, then you wouldn't have a reason to actually have the two.

The reason we have different units is not to "counter" different situations, but to create them. A siege tank's incredible range and damage are supposed to be balanced out by its cost, immobility, and slow rate of fire. If you build siege tanks, you have committed yourself to dealing with immobility in order to exploit range and damage. If you build marines, you are mobile, but lacking in range and AOE damage. Guess which army wins in a fight? Both, depending on tactics, terrain, and how well each plays to his strength. The tank player has to back them up with vikings to keep the marine player from dropping marines right on top of the tanks with medivacs. The tank player has to time his attacks well to avoid having medivac drops wreck his bases while he's away from home.



In a battle, Foragers and Necrodrones serve the same purpose. They are melee attackers with the same amount of movement. The only major difference is stats and the last stand ability. The last stand ability makes Foragers expendable, so you can take losses without caring, which is nice when the battle is going to be won any way you slice it, but sucks when whether you are going to win is in question and you want every ounce of firepower you can scrounge in order to tip the scale in your favor.



As an aside, there is no such thing as a "counter" in the game, much like in Starcraft. You build enough of any unit, you win because a mountain of corpses doesn't stop a landslide that just won't end. It doesn't matter if you have Banshees if I have enough Zerglings to overrun your base. The only question is how many units are required.

The necrodrone is a flying unit, a Calvary/archer counter If I remember correctly, the forager is a meat-shield, designed to die to more important units don't.



The necrodrone is a better unit on the battlefield, the forager enhanced the usefulness of the necrodrone, so it's battlefield usability can afford to suffer, as it isn't supposed to be straight up better.

They have knightslayer. That does not make them a counter to anything, only raise their damage against cavalry. They make much better meat shields than foragers for the simple expedient that they die slower.



Six Necrodrones beats six foragers or three foragers and three necrodrones. The Foragers do not enhance the usefulness of the necrodrone.

They can regenerate their HP, take citys and the foragers have the last stand ability ot come back with 1 HP.



They all have off battlefield capability's, hell they can even explore ruins.

This is not unique to foragers, necrodrones, or even settlers. Anything possessed by all units can be ignored when comparing value.

So I don't agree on your assessment on the strategic value of a unit, as even that can change based on circumstance, such as a lost settler unit can dramatically change the way a entire game plays, making the intersection of such a unit a massive strategic objective, rather then the tactical side of actually killing the unit.

A settler is not a military unit. It dies in one hit from just about anything, moves slowly, and deals paltry damage. Its only utility lies in its strategic, off-battlefield value.

The strategic value of the last strand ability allows a unit to focus their industry elsewhere rather then replacing what would have been lost units.

Only if the Foragers are sufficiently strong that they can hold off the depredations of other empires and win battles. Otherwise, they wish they had built necrodrones before they die. Heck, Necrodrones don't take much more to build than Foragers.

I would defiantly argue about the damage potential of a forager, as they are defiantly glass cannons, able to produce massive amounts of damage, especially for a meat shield unit.

Glass cannons are not meat shields.

Kyeudo wrote:
The reason we have different units is not to "counter" different situations, but to create them. A siege tank's incredible range and damage are supposed to be balanced out by its cost, immobility, and slow rate of fire. If you build siege tanks, you have committed yourself to dealing with immobility in order to exploit range and damage. If you build marines, you are mobile, but lacking in range and AOE damage. Guess which army wins in a fight? Both, depending on tactics, terrain, and how well each plays to his strength. The tank player has to back them up with vikings to keep the marine player from dropping marines right on top of the tanks with medivacs. The tank player has to time his attacks well to avoid having medivac drops wreck his bases while he's away from home.

So you are going to discuss your knowledge of starcraft to prove your point in EL?



Yeah, no Im not going to bother discussing starcraft here.

In a battle, Foragers and Necrodrones serve the same purpose. They are melee attackers with the same amount of movement. The only major difference is stats and the last stand ability. The last stand ability makes Foragers expendable, so you can take losses without caring, which is nice when the battle is going to be won any way you slice it, but sucks when whether you are going to win is in question and you want every ounce of firepower you can scrounge in order to tip the scale in your favor.

In that case then you shouldn't be using foragers, foragers are for when you outnumber the enemy.

As an aside, there is no such thing as a "counter" in the game, much like in Starcraft. You build enough of any unit, you win because a mountain of corpses doesn't stop a landslide that just won't end. It doesn't matter if you have Banshees if I have enough Zerglings to overrun your base. The only question is how many units are required.

The objective in a battle of starcraft if to destroy your enemy's buildings, as the game has no strategic over-world, and causes a total defeat in the campaign if you lose.



But there are counters, as it doesn't matter how many zerglings or whatever a player has, if you have the counter to them, because the counter is more cost efficient.



Infantry are countered, traditionally by archers who can attack before they can, and archers are traditionally countered by cavalry, who can move fast enough to prevent a ranged units advantage.



Simply having numbers only matters so long as your enemy has what you have, because if you have a counter, then your force can beat many times greater number of enemys for the same cost.

They have knightslayer. That does not make them a counter to anything, only raise their damage against cavalry. They make much better meat shields than foragers for the simple expedient that they die slower.

That makes them a counter to cavalry, as they can punch above their normal strength against cavalry, making them worth more for cost against them.



Foragers aren't better meat shields because they can survive more, but because you don't need to worry about casualty's, you can throw them into a grinder so long as that allows you to win a battle, allowing you to perform more aggressive attacks then your enemy's, due to the knowledge that they will be back once you win.



A skelington might not take more damage then a ogre, but if the skeleton can keep picking themselves up after a battle, the ogre cost more for less work.

Six Necrodrones beats six foragers or three foragers and three necrodrones. The Foragers do not enhance the usefulness of the necrodrone.

They do if it causes you enemy to focus on killing the forager first, and in the case of a mirror match, your enemy has the same weapons, so you wouldn't want a meat shield anyway.



The foragers are better against other armys, then other necro army's, as the necros don't have a anti-flying unit.

This is not unique to foragers, necrodrones, or even settlers. Anything possessed by all units can be ignored when comparing value.

Thus making the foragers last stand ability far superior in a strategic sense, not that the other units don't have one.



A units tactical power is not the only thing that matters in a 4X empire building game.

A settler is not a military unit. It dies in one hit from just about anything, moves slowly, and deals paltry damage. Its only utility lies in its strategic, off-battlefield value.

And that can change a game far more then any single military unit, making it a much more important unit that any in the game.



A settlers impact can literally make or brake games.

Only if the Foragers are sufficiently strong that they can hold off the depredations of other empires and win battles. Otherwise, they wish they had built necrodrones before they die. Heck, Necrodrones don't take much more to build than Foragers.

And Im still not suggesting that the forager replaces the necrodrone either.



But having to replace a necrodrone is still more expensive then not having to replace a forager.

Glass cannons are not meat shields.

They are if they cover for other units, by definition any unit can be a meat shield if assisting another.

Igncom1 wrote:
No they don't.



The point of the last stand ability to to allow any would be dead squads or commanders to come back to life if you win the battle, but with 1 hp.

Have you actually played the necros or are you jsut reading the abilities and applying imagination? The last stand ability is judged per squad. Period. It does not matter what the tool tip says or what the bestiary says. Play the actual game. I am 100% sure this is how it works and a couple of months ago one of the devs confirmed that this is working as intended.



Move onto another topic like claiming that the weakest unit is actually the best unit. Having an army of weak infantry most with very low HP after a victory gives you an army that you cannot commit to battle for several turns. Play the necros one game and then play the Forsaken Lords the game after. The difference is startling. This is not even going into what the factions with ranged units can do.



The experience gained by the foragers is not that great either. It is good enough that your troops in the field don't usually end up being behind newly recruited troops, but you are lucky if they are more than one level ahead of them.

Dalwin wrote:
Have you actually played the necros or are you jsut reading the abilities and applying imagination? The last stand ability is judged per squad. Period. It does not matter what the tool tip says or what the bestiary says. Play the actual game. I am 100% sure this is how it works and a couple of months ago one of the devs confirmed that this is working as intended.

I played the game today, but as it seemed, you are using the word "squad" when you should be using army.



Think about that when you insult people and make wild accusations.



Also read the thread.

Move onto another topic like claiming that the weakest unit is actually the best unit. Having an army of weak infantry most with very low HP after a victory gives you an army that you cannot commit to battle for several turns. Play the necros one game and then play the Forsaken Lords the game after. The difference is startling. This is not even going into what the factions with ranged units can do.

Read the thread.

The experience gained by the foragers is not that great either. It is good enough that your troops in the field don't usually end up being behind newly recruited troops, but you are lucky if they are more than one level ahead of them.

Yeah, that is a funny enough statement to begin with when playing the necros.



You won't be 1 level ahead of the age you are in, you will be 5 levels ahead, and that is on the troops that don't see that much combat.



As the necros you fight everyone at once, as it helps rake in the food stockpiles.

I read the thread. Have you? When I posted yesterday I used the word "Army". I switched to "squad" today because of this silly "yes it does/ no it doesn't argument" that filled a whole page.



So we are agreeing now then? If an entire stack of foragers gets wiped out in a battle they stay dead, even though you had other stacks there and won the overall battle.



That one is a fact and if we can't agree to it there is no discussion.



Best/worst is subjective and open to different interpretations.



I have never had a stack 5 levels ahead of the age. Not once. You can't fight that often with a stack of foragers or they will get wiped. They need to recover some HP between battles. For us to be saying such opposite things there means we are doing something very differently.



You prefer to call my statement "funny", whatever. Instead of implying that you are either lying or clueless, maybe we should take a more rational approach. Do you somehow manage to repetitively farm one or two wanderers to the point where you have the extra levels of which you speak? It might be possible to level up that high if that is all you are doing.



I don't farm strays with my main stack. They explore and run quests and take out villages etc. to help with expansion. Different playing styles I suppose. Levelling up the foragers (who will lose to a top notch army anyway) should be secondary to the necro cities. Cities are the strength of the necro faction. A mediocre army is a reasonable price to pay for their economic advantages.

Igncom1 wrote:
So you are going to discuss your knowledge of starcraft to prove your point in EL?



Yeah, no Im not going to bother discussing starcraft here.

I am using an example from a well-balanced game in order to demonstrate a point that you don't seem to be understanding.

In that case then you shouldn't be using foragers, foragers are for when you outnumber the enemy.

If you already outnumber the enemy, you've already won, so why bother building Foragers?

The objective in a battle of starcraft if to destroy your enemy's buildings, as the game has no strategic over-world, and causes a total defeat in the campaign if you lose.



But there are counters, as it doesn't matter how many zerglings or whatever a player has, if you have the counter to them, because the counter is more cost efficient.



Infantry are countered, traditionally by archers who can attack before they can, and archers are traditionally countered by cavalry, who can move fast enough to prevent a ranged units advantage.



Simply having numbers only matters so long as your enemy has what you have, because if you have a counter, then your force can beat many times greater number of enemys for the same cost.

You are still thinking in terms of counters in a game that does not have counters and that's where you are failing.



Here's another starcraft example: During the early Wings of Liberty days, the accepted "counter" to mass Marines for Zerg was Zergling/Baneling, because Banelings killed large numbers of marines with each explosion. Do you know what Terrans eventually found the "counter" to Zergling/Baneling was? More Marines. They found that they could just ramp up production further, spread out a bit to lessen baneling damage, and just keep doing what they were doing because they could keep throwing men into the meat grinder.



If you can kill three armies of my guys for every one army I kill, you still lose if I can build four armies in the time it takes for you to build one. And, here's the fun part, if we want to talk about a better unit to swarm with, we go with the Necrodrone because it doesn't cost significantly more than a Forager, yet yields almost twice the combat effectiveness. So Foragers double lose.



Traditionally, Infantry sucked and were only fielded because they were cheap. You really wanted archers or you wanted cavalry or whatever, but archers took forever to train and calvalry cost a ton to equip and so on. You gave an infantryman a pike so he could stop a cavalry charge and you threw him into the meatgrinder and didn't care if he lived or died.

That makes them a counter to cavalry, as they can punch above their normal strength against cavalry, making them worth more for cost against them.

Just because something does more damage to some unit type doesn't make it a counter. Corrupters do more damage to Void Rays than they do to Pheonix, but Void Rays murder Corrupters and Corrupters murder Pheonix in a straight fight. Reapers do more damage to light units but that doesn't stop Zerglings from murdering them in droves.

Foragers aren't better meat shields because they can survive more, but because you don't need to worry about casualty's, you can throw them into a grinder so long as that allows you to win a battle, allowing you to perform more aggressive attacks then your enemy's, due to the knowledge that they will be back once you win.



A skelington might not take more damage then a ogre, but if the skeleton can keep picking themselves up after a battle, the ogre cost more for less work.

Again, last stand only keys in if you win, so you can only count on your foragers coming back from an easy fight.

They do if it causes you enemy to focus on killing the forager first, and in the case of a mirror match, your enemy has the same weapons, so you wouldn't want a meat shield anyway.

A Forager dies twice as fast as a Necrodrone. That means that if I had had a Necrodrone as the meat shield, they'd have soaked up twice as much damage for the other Necrodrones as the Forager would have.

The foragers are better against other armys, then other necro army's, as the necros don't have a anti-flying unit.

Foragers suck vs other armies. I beat the AI with them, but only because the AI doesn't have much in the way of tactics or strategy. Foragers are for stomping on NPC villages. Real fights come down to the non-Forager units.

Thus making the foragers last stand ability far superior in a strategic sense, not that the other units don't have one.



A units tactical power is not the only thing that matters in a 4X empire building game.

A unit that has only tactical utility is measured solely on tactical utility. I can't lose Foragers willy-nilly unless I keep winning, but if half-dead Foragers can kill my opponent's armies every time he's already beaten. If a unit is only good for winning fights that are already won, it sucks.

And that can change a game far more then any single military unit, making it a much more important unit that any in the game.



A settlers impact can literally make or brake games.

And again, settlers aren't combat units and so aren't relevant to a discussion on whether a unit is weak in combat or not. Talking about settlers is a red herring.

And Im still not suggesting that the forager replaces the necrodrone either.



But having to replace a necrodrone is still more expensive then not having to replace a forager.

But against a real opponent I am going to be replacing more Foragers than Necrodrones. Unless we are talking about disproportionate levels of production, my opponent is going to have armies with equivalent amounts of units, with equivalent amounts of experience. He is going to win battles and that means dead Foragers. Since I can have 4 Necrodrones for the production cost of 5 Foragers and the 4 Necrodrones is going to outperform the 5 Foragers, even against things that are anti-flyer, I will build the 4 Necrodrones.

They are if they cover for other units, by definition any unit can be a meat shield if assisting another.

What units are Foragers covering, exactly? Necrodrones? They both are rushing headlong into the same melee. Maybe some Vinesnakes? Wait, those want the Foragers out of the way so they can actually attack. Only if you have the one ranged neutral unit in the game do you have anything that Foragers can cover for. Maybe when the Proliferator is working we will see some synergy there, but until it does we have exactly what I said: Foragers that are only good for stomping on AI and NPCs.

Dalwin wrote:
I read the thread. Have you? When I posted yesterday I used the word "Army". I switched to "squad" today because of this silly "yes it does/ no it doesn't argument" that filled a whole page.



So we are agreeing now then? If an entire stack of foragers gets wiped out in a battle they stay dead, even though you had other stacks there and won the overall battle.



That one is a fact and if we can't agree to it there is no discussion.



Best/worst is subjective and open to different interpretations.



I have never had a stack 5 levels ahead of the age. Not once. You can't fight that often with a stack of foragers or they will get wiped. They need to recover some HP between battles. For us to be saying such opposite things there means we are doing something very differently.



You prefer to call my statement "funny", whatever. Instead of implying that you are either lying or clueless, maybe we should take a more rational approach. Do you somehow manage to repetitively farm one or two wanderers to the point where you have the extra levels of which you speak? It might be possible to level up that high if that is all you are doing.



I don't farm strays with my main stack. They explore and run quests and take out villages etc. to help with expansion. Different playing styles I suppose. Levelling up the foragers (who will lose to a top notch army anyway) should be secondary to the necro cities. Cities are the strength of the necro faction. A mediocre army is a reasonable price to pay for their economic advantages.

Why on earth would you switch because of that? All you dud was produce further discussion between the two terms, so that is....wired.



I find that foragers have very very good attack and initiative, especially with claws, so 9 times out of 10 they get to move first, so as you are aware getting the first hit in is really effective *shrugs*.



But more often then not, a commander lead army can beat almost any non hero lead army, so that might be a difference of experience.



But please try to keep in mind before you do imply that I am lying, clueless or any other kind of insult, it's more then likely that I have different game experiences to you, and so draw different conclusions, not that I am deliberately aggravating you.



And even if I was, then why bother getting so worked up about it? Why do you care what I think, why I might be wrong? What is it to you that I have a different opinion?



No need to get worked up over it, as me and that over guy got over it, we just disagreed, pure and simple. It happens.



If you think I'm trolling, then just ignore me, no need to cause more grief over a opinion that you believe to be incorrect.

Kyeudo wrote:
I am using an example from a well-balanced game in order to demonstrate a point that you don't seem to be understanding.

Starcraft battles have an objection other then to kill your enemy, but a battle in EL IS to kill your enemy, so you can't go for the objective.

You are still thinking in terms of counters in a game that does not have counters and that's where you are failing.

If the game didn't have counters, then it wouldn't have multiple unit types.



This is literally the most confusing argument yet, im not going to barter on the points here, you really belive the game doesn't have counters?



Like really?



Even in starcraft, most of the situations you described here like more marines countering the suicide units because the suicide units need to be in melee range to attack, and the marines can kite from range.



Ranged units counter melee units 9/10 unless the melee units have ability's or disproportionate stats to make up for it.

Just because something does more damage to some unit type doesn't make it a counter. Corrupters do more damage to Void Rays than they do to Pheonix, but Void Rays murder Corrupters and Corrupters murder Pheonix in a straight fight. Reapers do more damage to light units but that doesn't stop Zerglings from murdering them in droves.

It does however make them more cost effective against such units, which can make them a counter, and in tems of EL, it does.

Again, last stand only keys in if you win, so you can only count on your foragers coming back from an easy fight.

Foragers are really not that distant from necrodrones, especially with a assisting hero.



No need to blow this out of proportion.

A Forager dies twice as fast as a Necrodrone. That means that if I had had a Necrodrone as the meat shield, they'd have soaked up twice as much damage for the other Necrodrones as the Forager would have.

A necrodorne can do double in one battle, a forager brakes even after the second battle, where the necrodrone would die permanently.



After which, the forager becomes much, much better.



This is why I am an advocate for having larger more expendable armys in EL, so this one supposedly game wining battle can't take place.



Having a game end after one encounter is just bad design.

Foragers suck vs other armies. I beat the AI with them, but only because the AI doesn't have much in the way of tactics or strategy. Foragers are for stomping on NPC villages. Real fights come down to the non-Forager units.

If you think that, then great, Im not saying that you are wrong for making that choice.

A unit that has only tactical utility is measured solely on tactical utility. I can't lose Foragers willy-nilly unless I keep winning, but if half-dead Foragers can kill my opponent's armies every time he's already beaten. If a unit is only good for winning fights that are already won, it sucks.

Then don't fight battles you are guaranteed to lose?



The point of strategy is to tip things in your favor so you do win, and all units are very important on the strategic layer, not just the tactical layer.

And again, settlers aren't combat units and so aren't relevant to a discussion on whether a unit is weak in combat or not. Talking about settlers is a red herring.

Then you missed my point, the point is that a settler is the most important unit because of it's off battlefield capability, rather then it's on battlefield capability.



Much like the forager, it's off battlefield capability makes up for it's on battlefield performance.

But against a real opponent I am going to be replacing more Foragers than Necrodrones. Unless we are talking about disproportionate levels of production, my opponent is going to have armies with equivalent amounts of units, with equivalent amounts of experience. He is going to win battles and that means dead Foragers. Since I can have 4 Necrodrones for the production cost of 5 Foragers and the 4 Necrodrones is going to outperform the 5 Foragers, even against things that are anti-flyer, I will build the 4 Necrodrones.

And right you should, im not saying that forager should replace necrodrones when necrodrones are more useful.



How is this hard to understand, if the situation calls for necrodrones, then bloody build them.

What units are Foragers covering, exactly? Necrodrones? They both are rushing headlong into the same melee. Maybe some Vinesnakes? Wait, those want the Foragers out of the way so they can actually attack. Only if you have the one ranged neutral unit in the game do you have anything that Foragers can cover for. Maybe when the Proliferator is working we will see some synergy there, but until it does we have exactly what I said: Foragers that are only good for stomping on AI and NPCs.

The point is to use foragers to eat up damage and clear the way for the necrodrones to win the battle, with no necrodrone casualty's.

As to your last point, that is exactly right, have a mixed force of foragers and necrodrones and let the foragers get beaten up as long as that means you have a necrodrone standing at the end of it all so that the foragers come back. I am a firm believer in having one or two necrodrones with each stack of foragers (depending on your army limit) to allow for this. A leader can do the same thing for foragers.



However, a stack of 100% foragers with no leader is unlikely to get much use out of the last stand ability.



This entire dynamic is likely to change significantly once proliferators are working. Also, now that the AI will actually add leaders to its armies and now that MP is in, the frequency of foragers facing opponents with no leader should be much less than when the game was first released.

Igncom1 wrote:


Starcraft battles have an objection other then to kill your enemy, but a battle in EL IS to kill your enemy, so you can't go for the objective.

A particular battle doesn't have an objective, but the whole war does - there are cities to sack and cities to defend.

If the game didn't have counters, then it wouldn't have multiple unit types.



This is literally the most confusing argument yet, im not going to barter on the points here, you really belive the game doesn't have counters?



Like really?



Even in starcraft, most of the situations you described here like more marines countering the suicide units because the suicide units need to be in melee range to attack, and the marines can kite from range.



Ranged units counter melee units 9/10 unless the melee units have ability's or disproportionate stats to make up for it.

Are you intentionally being dense? My example of marines was of the banelings losing not because they weren't killing marines in droves, but because there were more marines than the banelings could kill.



Units in Endless Legend do not counter or have counters. They have strengths and weaknesses. When you play to a unit's strengths and use that to exploit another unit's weaknesses, you get disproportionate results. Yes, this means that archers do more damage against flying units. This does not mean that archers "counter" flying units.



A game with counters is Rock, Paper, Scissors. If you throw rock and your opponent throws two scissors, he doesn't win - you do. Rock always beats scissors, no exceptions. In Endless Legend, one unit of archers might beat one unit of necrodrones, but does two? three? six? Unless all of the above are true, you do not have a "counter" to flying units, only a unit with a particular strength.



Also, avoid hyperbole in debate. Nine out of ten times, "9/10" is a made up statistic.

Foragers are really not that distant from necrodrones, especially with a assisting hero.



No need to blow this out of proportion.

And if you have a hero, so does the other guy. We aren't debating "can this unit smash the AI?" because all units smash the AI. We are debating "Are these units good enough to use against an actually rational opponent?"

A necrodorne can do double in one battle, a forager brakes even after the second battle, where the necrodrone would die permanently.



After which, the forager becomes much, much better.



This is why I am an advocate for having larger more expendable armys in EL, so this one supposedly game wining battle can't take place.



Having a game end after one encounter is just bad design.

We aren't talking about needing to win one battle. We are talking about close battles, where you are against a real opponent who has access to equivalent resources to you (else he wouldn't be a threat) and so has put together a real army. You don't get to cherry-pick your battles against a real opponent. There's going to be battles where you don't have a guarantee you will win. If you lose, you always lose everything in the battle. Yes, Foragers will be back with 1 hp if you win, but when the result is in question you want something tougher to help tip the scales over. Necrodrones do twice as good as Foragers at the same role, so they will help you win the tough battles and so have survivors at all. Necrodrones are even more mobile on the world map than Foragers, allowing you to harass small convoys of troops much more easily.

Then don't fight battles you are guaranteed to lose?



The point of strategy is to tip things in your favor so you do win, and all units are very important on the strategic layer, not just the tactical layer.

You don't always get to pick when and where you fight. Not everyone is the AI or clueless.

Then you missed my point, the point is that a settler is the most important unit because of it's off battlefield capability, rather then it's on battlefield capability.



Much like the forager, it's off battlefield capability makes up for it's on battlefield performance.

Foragers' don't change how you wage war against a real enemy. Another human is not going to let you get away with suicide rushing Foragers at him all day. He's going to sweep your underhealed, overextended raiding force off the board in either the first fight or the second.



You might have an argument if you could show that well-abused Foragers will be much higher level than other troops and so perform better, but this does not seem to be borne out by the evidence. Well-used ranged troops level at the same pace and hold up better in a straight fight, as do most bruiser-style infantry.

How is this hard to understand, if the situation calls for necrodrones, then bloody build them.

The argument I am making is that the situation never calls for Foragers.



[/quote]

The point is to use foragers to eat up damage and clear the way for the necrodrones to win the battle, with no necrodrone casualty's.[/QUOTE]



What exactly prevents the enemy from using his ranged units to focus down the higher damage, higher health units before the low damage, almost dead Foragers? What mechanics throw the Forager in front of enemy spears and arrows?

Well we will have to agree to disagree.



Particularly as you are arguing many of the same points as me, but because you are saying them that makes you right and me wrong.



Which is humorous



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But yeah, new day, more time to process, thoughts and the like.





The way I see many of the ideas presented here, the foragers don't have that hook people were looking for to make them worth their time, that is cool, so what can we do about it?



Necordrones as flying units aren't actually that fast, and as a cavalry counter unit, they more act like tanks roving across the battlefield as they go, and that's fine.



But the necros are kinda missing out on that fast strike element that make the other army's so powerful, with no cavalry and archers, the necros are forces into a death march that other factions don't need to do.





So what I wanna ask you MP people is would you rather see the forager become the hammer to the necrodrones sickle, or have the foragers act more like a infantry cavalry unit to sweep in for kills against weaker archers while the necrodrones do the proper fighting? Or possibly a better idea?



I mean, I really don't like the other factions and how they play (I being a horde, im not a very good emperor), so I really shouldn't be opposing a buff to my favourite faction now should I?

hashinshin wrote:
Reasonably it comes down to a few issues:



1. Is the Necrophage early game bad enough to make up for their good burough system? Will they be behind enough that having 2x sized cities won't be too big an advantage for them? Would a buff to Foragers push them over the edge where they wouldn't have a weak enough early game and could snowball through act 3 when their borough advantage starts to kick in?

2. Is it worth having the Forager be such a terrible unit to keep them having a bad early game? Could we reduce the strength of their boroughs to beef up the forager?

3. Is their -1 food per tile disadvantage too much of a disadvantage? Is it making the Forager look bad by making them too weak?

4. Would a stronger forager allow them to get kills early game faster thereby earning them more food stockpiles to bypass their food disadvantage?

5. Will the proliferator make up for the Forager disadvantage and make it a good thing to chain die?



Personally I havn't had multiplayer games go past age 3 (Since that tends to be when the Necrophage either win or lose) to really give you a good guess on whether or not their Borough advantage could make up for everything. We ALSO don't have age 5 + 6 to tell you whether or not the borough advantage becomes too much at those ages. What I CAN tell you is that the Necrodrone is blatantly the stronger unit and the Forager being so weak means that nobody is going to build it. Using the necrodrone, sisters of mercy to keep them healed or Jotun to kill everything before they take too much damage, and then lastly the Necrophage healing bonus is a FAR superior tactic to using the Forager. ADDITIONALLY the first few battles for the Necrophage typically end in disaster as you realize how hilariously out matched the Foragers are against other factions spammy T1 units.



Now the prolifterater could very well be the key to making Foragers good, we won't know. Nobody knows except the developers. All I can tell you is that as is I would rather have Necrodrones especially since they heal 2x as much from the Necrophage passive and will stay on the offensive longer so you can clear out more territories and do more quests.

Ehh, could go either way really.



But if you wanna buff my foragers, then I suppose I shouldn't really be denying you, it's not like they are overpowered in any case, so it could be at least fun to try.

So want to nerf them?



Huh....not even I wanted to nerf them.

Igncom1 wrote:
So want to nerf them?



Huh....not even I wanted to nerf them.

No. Change the Last Stand with something else, like hp. Make them a regular unit instead of some gamey unit that can or cannot beat every army it faces.

PanH wrote:
No. Change the Last Stand with something else, like hp. Make them a regular unit instead of some gamey unit that can or cannot beat every army it faces.

I love the gamy nature of the entire faction, it really makes the necros a nice change from the other empires.



Otherwise we have a game where every faction is just a different skin pack.

Igncom1 wrote:
Well we will have to agree to disagree.



Particularly as you are arguing many of the same points as me, but because you are saying them that makes you right and me wrong.



Which is humorous



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------



But yeah, new day, more time to process, thoughts and the like.





The way I see many of the ideas presented here, the foragers don't have that hook people were looking for to make them worth their time, that is cool, so what can we do about it?



Necordrones as flying units aren't actually that fast, and as a cavalry counter unit, they more act like tanks roving across the battlefield as they go, and that's fine.



But the necros are kinda missing out on that fast strike element that make the other army's so powerful, with no cavalry and archers, the necros are forces into a death march that other factions don't need to do.





So what I wanna ask you MP people is would you rather see the forager become the hammer to the necrodrones sickle, or have the foragers act more like a infantry cavalry unit to sweep in for kills against weaker archers while the necrodrones do the proper fighting? Or possibly a better idea?



I mean, I really don't like the other factions and how they play (I being a horde, im not a very good emperor), so I really shouldn't be opposing a buff to my favourite faction now should I?

Before I would look at changing anything like that, I want to see the necro support unit functional. It will change the equation. It seems, in my opinion, that the intent is to make the necro faction be mediocre overall but with very good survivability. The proliferator should be an important part of that.