Dalwin wrote:
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.

Fair do's.

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.

Maybe we should change them to be exactly the same as some other faction's infantry. In the name of perfectly symmetrical play balance, why don't we make every faction have eactly the same units? One from each archetype and no specials that everyone else does not also have.



No thanks



Last stand sounds OP when you are only reading the description, but try actually playing with it and not just through the first 80 turns. Play an entire game against a human opponent who has ranged units or against a better AI once that becomes available. Last stand is a neat gimmick but it is far from OP in the long run.

Don't be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. He didn't say make them the same as other factions, he said last stand was incredibly game-y. Lemme give you an example: You can make squads with 5 foragers +1 other unit, then just hide that 1 other unit in the back and constantly draw out the battles to refresh your foragers for the next one.

hashinshin wrote:
Don't be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. He didn't say make them the same as other factions, he said last stand was incredibly game-y. Lemme give you an example: You can make squads with 5 foragers +1 other unit, then just hide that 1 other unit in the back and constantly draw out the battles to refresh your foragers for the next one.

And what I am saying is that the ability is not as powerful as people are saying. It is, however, one of the few things that make the necros interesting to play.



After winning one of your example battles, what is the necro player supposed to do next? Run and hide with that army for 8 turns? Once the foragers get to extremely low heath, which happens easily, they will lose any serious subsequent fight and be wiped out.



Contrast that with the broken lords who pay some dust and their army is back to full strength instantly. Or compare them to some faction with good ranged units who come out of a typical battle without taking a scratch.

You know I'm the one who made this thread calling Foragers bad, right? I said they were game-y, not good.

Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by gamey. If you mean the same thing I would if I said gimmicky, then I agree. I guess the difference is that I think this is a good thing. I think the gimmicks associated with Broken Lords are a good thing too. Dynamic imbalance, where the factions are more than just slightly different from each other makes for a more interesting game.



If there is a faction that a particular player does not like, he can easily not include them when setting up the game.

No it's not dynamic imbalance, it's game-y.



Right now if I was so inclined I could make 3-4 squads with 5 foragers 1 necrodrone, sit the necrodrones in the back and just stall every battle out till 6 turns went past and then I'd get all my foragers back. My opponent would have to expect it in order to counter it, and even then I could probably pull it off.

Dalwin wrote:
And what I am saying is that the ability is not as powerful as people are saying. It is, however, one of the few things that make the necros interesting to play.

I disagree. There could be far more interesting mechanics than this. Poison, 'necromancy' (though it seems to be what's intended for the proliferator, or something like that), 'true' kamikaze, etc. A kamikaze unit (it can't fulfill any other role, really) isn't really interesting when it relies on the use of gamey tactic. Also, you don't care about the health of a forager : it's flimsy enough at start, and certainly not worth the armor cost to prevent it from getting one-shotted. It'll inflict about the same damage if it starts the battle with 1 or 30hp currently.

Dalwin wrote:


Contrast that with the broken lords who pay some dust and their army is back to full strength instantly. Or compare them to some faction with good ranged units who come out of a typical battle without taking a scratch.

That's another problem : mainly, ranged being too strong. They shouldn't have stronger attacks, they can already attack from a distance.

hashinshin wrote:
No it's not dynamic imbalance, it's game-y.



Right now if I was so inclined I could make 3-4 squads with 5 foragers 1 necrodrone, sit the necrodrones in the back and just stall every battle out till 6 turns went past and then I'd get all my foragers back. My opponent would have to expect it in order to counter it, and even then I could probably pull it off.

If your opponent has ranged units, which a good player will always give high initiative, your injured foragers will get one shotted before they even make contact. Then the one necrodrone in the back has to survive 4 rounds against an entire ranged army. The AI may not be handling its ranged units effectively enough to pull this off in its current state, but any human player would.

What are you not understanding here?



If you bring multiple squads to a battle and you win the battle BUT one of your squads gets fully wiped out all the foragers in that squad die. HENCE Foragers late game fall off despite the last stand bonus since it's way easy to get full squad wipe out even in a winning battle.



The ONLY thing I havn't tried yet is doing 5 foragers + other squad sand simply spamming so many squads + hiding the 1 other unit back so that they can never get fully wiped out and simply attrition every battle to a draw (Where they still come back to life.)



Let me lay this out clearly: You bring 12 foragers. 6 in one squad, 6 in another squad. The original 6 all charge in and die, the following 6 charge in and win the battle. The original 6 stay dead.



I JUST got out of a game where I was experimenting with this late game forager spam build people keep talking about and ran in to this very issue. Unless I keep one unit back from every squad and eventually just sit with 2-3 units in the back (With my already way inferior Foragers) I will eventually just get full squads wiped out.

The last stand ability is what makes up for their inherent stat weaknesses.



In fact, Im inclined to say that foragers are the best unit in the game, and completely change how you play the game.





What you do is equip your foragers with proper equipment as you would with any other army, but then ensure that any battle you go into you also take your hero, your last stand hero.



With both the nuking potential of your hero, and your armys ability to never die so long as you win a battle (Be defensive for the beginning of any game, create a super hive of up to 12 districts in order to maximise your citys potential) and build a forager legion of undefeatable troops.



The foragers need to have worse stats then a necrodrone because of the last stand ability, its amazingly powerful to have highly experienced legions of infantry.





But remember, that even against enemy vine snakes you only need to have enough defence and HP to survive one attack, then you can easily kill any army.

And the support unit is suppose to bring friendly and enemy units back to life during battle to fight on your side if I understand it correctly from the description:

The great reproductive factory of the Necrophages, a Proliferator resurrects friend and foe by planting an egg that controls their minds.

So I'd suggest an army of Forgers, a hero, and a Proliferator (once it's working correctly). I see little to no use for Necrodrones, maybe as scouts if they travel faster on the map.



I haven't tried the Proliferator out in the new 0.5.3 build yet so I don't know if they are working as intended yet.

Also the Proliferator description never says it bring units back to life during battle that I know of, I just assume that, I'd also assume that you won't get to keep the units after the battle ends either.

Prolifers probbaly dosnt work yet. Just wait.



As for Forager/Necrodrone balance, there could be one.

Necrodone is flyer (not implemented) so it is more like vanguard, cavalry, flanker unit.

Forager last stand ability makes it great tank (recyclable).

If you make Forager Anvil and Drones hammer (and hero nail) it can work.

Igncom1 wrote:
The last stand ability is what makes up for their inherent stat weaknesses.



In fact, Im inclined to say that foragers are the best unit in the game, and completely change how you play the game.





.

To be fair I don't play online so it may be different, however the AI seems to be fairly spammy with them and as Wild Walkers if you use their basic ranged unit they go down before they get close.

Well damage in the game seems to be a bit overtuned. I wouldn't mind a good 25% damage reduction. The ranged ardent units for example are pretty notorious for me for the fact that 2 of them can AoE down entire armies. In that regard I think ranged units are currently at a severe advantage from the super high damage values.



Now maybe I'm wrong and at the later eras you start to full armor units, but in the games I've played full armored units are impractically expensive to produce, and cheap unarmored ranged units are both far easier to produce and more powerful.

Imho it is more the ranged units who need tuning down. They seem to do same dmg as melee, when risk is much higher on melee side.

Ranged can:

- focus fire

- ignore obstacles

- hit not being hit (all derp dps setup)

And this advantages will stay (are inherit to range fighting), so to introduce balance melee need to deal just more, especially 2h weapons.

Well we can assume that flying units will eventually be the bane of ranged. With battle beetles (necrodrones) being a flying 6 movement unit trying to go too much range spam will end with several giant beetles whooping your ass.



The only reaaaaaal weakness is that melee are forced to go shields since any melee without a shield gets obliterated.



Maybe ranged units could stand to lose 2-3 points of damage overall so infantry aren't at the lower end of the spectrum. This would also help ranged factions having an inarguable advantage early game (their 2 starting units can clear out like 3 or 4 battles before they even get hit.)

The advantage of ranged units, is range.



They really don't need to have as much damage.



Melee units only need shields if they need to survive contact, levelled up foragers with proper iron armor and claws are berserker's on the battlefield, and only need to get to their targets to win.



Haven't had much contact with ranged units, but in melee foragers are almost undefeatable over a long campaign.

Since it is mainly the Necros that I have been playing, I have tried a few different approaches with them.



I tried getting mileage from cheap foragers with little to no upgraded gear. This is not too bad early game if they have a strong hero with them but is not effective in the long run.



I tried having my whole army be foragers with best gear. This works better but still has a weekness. The damaged units heal slowly and they really aren't that effective in battle. They are immortal only until you lose one battle.



What seemed best was to use mainly foragers early on and for exploration but to have some stacks of necrodrones ready by the time you are involved in a real war. You don't want to keep the necrodrones and foragers as separate stacks once the heavy fighting starts because last stand is judged per army, not for the battle overall. You can win a battle but still have a stack wiped out. If you get to army size 8, 2 necrodrones and 6 foragers seems ideal.

Igncom1 wrote:
The last stand ability is what makes up for their inherent stat weaknesses.



In fact, Im inclined to say that foragers are the best unit in the game, and completely change how you play the game.





What you do is equip your foragers with proper equipment as you would with any other army, but then ensure that any battle you go into you also take your hero, your last stand hero.



With both the nuking potential of your hero, and your armys ability to never die so long as you win a battle (Be defensive for the beginning of any game, create a super hive of up to 12 districts in order to maximise your citys potential) and build a forager legion of undefeatable troops.



The foragers need to have worse stats then a necrodrone because of the last stand ability, its amazingly powerful to have highly experienced legions of infantry.





But remember, that even against enemy vine snakes you only need to have enough defence and HP to survive one attack, then you can easily kill any army.

So I'm spamming Foragers when I noticed... if a squad gets wiped out in a battle that you win the entire squad of foragers stays dead. This stops the whole late game forager strategy dead in its tracks.



So with that in mind I reiterate: Foragers are bad.