"tanking" = cannon fodder.



Love it.

MANoob wrote:
Unsteady debuff brings proliferators target to its own attack level so to speak, even then not quite and only at higher weapon tiers. Given that it's also melee and other creatures can have useful weapon abilities as well, I would much rather have a necrodrone in my army for a difficult battle. I'm not saying that proliferators are horrible in combat, but for me they are hard to justify based on combat ability alone.

Clearly, Proliferators are sexy for their ranged parasitism abilities. They do decent damages, but that's not their strong side. Necrodrones are here for that, deal heavy damages anywhere on the battle map. They are vulnerables, but Foragers are here to cover them with their high initiative and decent tanking abilities.

Ok, finally going to write some thoughts on Cultists. They were the last ones for a reason, because I think their mechanics are a game balancer's nightmare. I've played some games with them, but I still can't tell whether Conversion is OP or UP and whether its worth 40 points. It's quite hard to reason about from purely mathematical perspective as well.



Traits:

• Language square(10 pts) - An obvious starting tech choice for Cultists since Preachers aren't going to pacify anything by force
• Military science(10 pts) - A not so obvious choice. For sure it's better to keep your city safe but it wouldn't be among the first improvements I'd build
• Walls of Faith(20 pts) - Now that's pretty much only worth considering if you're going to have only a single city. Even then 20 points is too high IMO.
• Weapons of the Enemy(20 pts) - That's a weird one. Cultist affinity actually does not restrict them to having a single city, its the combination of the affinity and this ability. The stockpiles it gives are 25 industry and do not seem to scale at all. Overall it seems like a horrible ability if not for one thing - razing a city immediately means you do not take a happiness hit and enemy does not get a chance to get it back. This is the only reason to even consider it, since stockpiles it gives are so bad they barely cost anything. How much this ability is worth is a big question though since it's both a blessing and a curse so to say.
• Conversion(40 pts) - The defining ability of the Cultists I would say, yet anyone is free to pick it. I would even say it's going to work better for someone capable of taking regions and protecting territory. It definitely can be pretty potent but so far its difficult for me to access how much its worth.
  
  

Affinity - High seat of the Queen (0 pts) - This is actually the cheapest affinity and it doesn't fully restrict you from expanding. You just can't produce any settlers. It's the combination of it and Weapons of the Enemy that makes Cultists a single city faction. +1 district level would work much better with cellulose mutation which Cultists don't have. Although it seems that everything would work better with cellulose mutation. So custom Cultists actually can have more than 1 region, but they have to conquer for it.



Overall I don't feel that default Cultists will ever be balanced until wide vs tall empires will be more balanced (since for competing with wide empires they need "crutches" that bring even more balance problems).



My suggestions so far:

• Swap military science for mercenary market (at least you'll be able to sell unwanted units from conversion right away).
• Reduce cost on Walls of Faith to 10 pts at least.
• Weapons of the enemy's stockpiles can use some scaling for sure. 25 Industry is just laughable. They should either scale based on cost of razed city improvements, its population (non lineary, just like pop costs) or your tech level (stockpile tech?)
• Conversion - villages should grant a bigger vision radius (currently its also bugged and sometimes they do not grant it at all) and definitely can use some sort of "militia" of their own. Maybe along with movable units the villages should have some immobile units protecting it (just like normal villages do)? That would make wiping them out at least as hard as killing neutral villages. As of now, they completely lack defense and I feel like any competent player will clear them easily.
  
  

Hero - starting with health boost 2 and influence boost 2 is quite good, and influence is exactly what Cultists need. His skill tree is ridiculously OP however, both as governor and as general. It would be OK if only Cultists could buy these, righ't now they are available to everyone though. There are other threads about this, I'll just leave my summary here. Suggested solutions so far are:

[LIST=1]

Nerf the hero to normal level of power and grant eco bonuses to the affinity itself

Nerf the hero to normal level of power and make a unique immovable hero to govern the capital (The Queen)

Nerf the hero to normal level of power and allow 2 heroes to govern Cultist capital simultaneously

Make cultist heroes exclusive to Cultists

[/LIST]



I'm obviously biased towards 3) since I suggested it , but 2) is the suggestion of the author of this race.



Now, units:

• Preacher - This is absolutely one of the worst units in the game. Stats are terrible and the buff is very weak. It makes sense for cultists to start with a support and use MF units as main force, but this is a terrible support. They are also completely incapable of defending themselves against roaming army, which further hinders their conversion duty. My suggestion would be to give them ability akin to drakken's hero "friendly banner" so that roaming armies will ignore them. The buff should also be improved, If kept as is I'd say it should be 30% to everything, so 3 times better than currently to justify preachers in the army. Their health should also go up, since with 36 health they can die from unexpected breeze.
• Fanatic - OK cavalry, but boring.
• Nameless guard - Quite good archer, but again boring.
  
  

I'd say last 2 units are OK as is although they definitely could've been more creative. I won't suggest any improvements here though as I don't quite get the overall cultist theme to suggest smth fitting.

I support either adding ZOC or equipping all melee tank units with some snare/damage redirection/whatever helps them tank ability. In case of ZOC I think it should be exclusive to "tank" units as well. Some kind of overwatch on ranged and aerial attacks on flyers would be nice as well.



This way:

• Infantry - ZOC, defense
• Ranged - Overwatch, range
• Cavalry - Charge, speed
• Flyer - aerial attacks, speed
• Support - buffs/debuffs, range
  
  

(With exceptions from each class of course)



I also think that all of the higher tier gear should be significantly nerfed, since right now a huge part of stats come from it, making base stats much less relevant and upsetting the lategame balance. With proper ZOC some ranged units probably could use a nerf as well. But I'd rather see all this done step by step as big changes at once can break more than they will fix.



Btw, I wonder how folks at Amplitude test combat balance? I would very much appreciate a "battle mode", where you can pick any units with any gear and fight against equally customizable army. That would really help testing unit and gear compositions.

Gameslayer989 wrote:
Zone control does not need to be a thing. Sure D&D and age of wonders use it, but heroes of might and magic and xcom got away without it. Battle liens can be established provided you pay attention to the terrain. the aggresor gets to choose where the battle takes place, so they should attempt to ensrue the terrain either favours a battle line or doesn't favour a battle line. What I mean by that is, when you hover over an enemy your about to attack it shows the grid where you'd be fighting on. By changing your angle of aproach you can control where your opponents deployment zones are, an incredibly advantage

The issue is that there's no way to prohibit movement other than literally blocking every single hex the enemy can walk through, which is often not possible. Xcom has Overwatch which accomplishes the same thing as ZOC does. So either we need overwatch, or we need zoc, and with melee units(something that x com mostly lacks), zoc often works much better.



As for "favoring battle lines" yeah, you could do that, and then have major issues taking cities with disadvantaged terrain or armies who just park in a spot where you can't fight them and win, or you could build an all ranged/cav army and not deal with it. That's really the whole issue. Adding ZOC would add a lot more depth to the game, and give tanky units much better utility, so i don't get why people are so against it.

Zone control does not need to be a thing. Sure D&D and age of wonders use it, but heroes of might and magic and xcom got away without it. Battle liens can be established provided you pay attention to the terrain. the aggresor gets to choose where the battle takes place, so they should attempt to ensrue the terrain either favours a battle line or doesn't favour a battle line. What I mean by that is, when you hover over an enemy your about to attack it shows the grid where you'd be fighting on. By changing your angle of aproach you can control where your opponents deployment zones are, an incredibly advantage

myrec wrote:
After few more games I see...

Support units are weak on their own, they die easy....

The biggest problem with EL combat system lies in the lack of Zone of Control. Thus, battle line cannot be established, enemy units run around your melee guys that do nothing. If ZOC is beyond the AIs capability to understand, at least attacks of opportunity should be in the game.

Maybe you could implement some sort of tech or building to give support units a buff? Just so that they could compete with other units, going into further eras.

Nasarog wrote:
MAnoob, what's your steam ID?

maddemiurg

obama2012 wrote:
I don't know about any other supports, but Dust bishops aren't bad at all. In fact they seem very powerful once they have some decent gear. I do suspect that other supports are bad though.



He's not saying he doesn't know how to play them though. Being able to do well against normal AI (such as in that video) means nothing. It doesn't mean that the faction is balanced. I only have experience from one match, but when AI played Cultists on impossible, they died within like 40 turns I think (didn't even spawn close to anyone like I did. He probably had one of the best positions in the match).



I very much agree with all the things said, particularly the cultists. I don't think it's even enough though. On large maps, cultists are just outright screwed due to having limited mobility/presence. Cultists should have some sort of method of teleporting units to converted villages(a power that priests could have maybe). It could cost dust depending on the number of units and each unit's cost or level, and maybe take 2 turns or something. Even if it's only 1-way teleporting only from the main city that could be OK.



I also don't see why cultist villages can't have some added fortification on them, although I don't know the specifics on how that would be implemented (maybe like 40 fort per era)

Another thing is retrofiting... No way to retrofit without travelling all the way back. As I said, I think base Cultist design brings waaay too many problems.

myrec wrote:
After few more games I see...

Support units are weak on their own, they die easy (really easy even melee ones), their buffs are weak or situational, they get attacked and cannot buff/heal/debuff anything, compared to attack or tank units they are not worth the slot in an army. I tried really hard to make use of them. And best I get was with Vaulters, Drider was stunning and healling most dmg Titan and Titan's feedback ability made it worth. But that's SOOOOO situational. If they at least were 80 % of normal ranged units or something... but they are less useful than 50 % of normal unit.

There are a few useful supports like dust bishop, proliferator and drider (btw your unit doesn't lose its turn if it goes before the drider, so drider should be ironically geared to have as little ini as possible... this makes them succeptable to being locked by melee though), but overall I agree. Palladium necklace that gives +attack can buff up some supports with "low damage" to good stat level (since it applies to base attack, so lvl 3 necklace counteracts the "low damage" trait completely - effectively +150% attack), but that's quite a high level tech and I'd say it's bad design if the unit is only viable with it.

Obama I am not saying normal is a benchmark. I ment that there where tricks in that video that apply to other games as well. Obviously.

If cultist AI die by turn 40 that could also just mean AI is terrible at cultist. Not that cultist is terrible in the hands of a good player. From what I see so far cultist crumble if someone attack them smartly (villages not city.) But even then they stand a fairly good chance if they also defend smartly as well.

I don't know about any other supports, but Dust bishops aren't bad at all. In fact they seem very powerful once they have some decent gear. I do suspect that other supports are bad though.

Eysteinh wrote:
This game where the community together plays cultists might show you some ideas on how to play them well:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTety8oVtYsSH4GuDAy0P687XYucsZBBU

He's not saying he doesn't know how to play them though. Being able to do well against normal AI (such as in that video) means nothing. It doesn't mean that the faction is balanced. I only have experience from one match, but when AI played Cultists on impossible, they died within like 40 turns I think (didn't even spawn close to anyone like I did. He probably had one of the best positions in the match).

MANoob wrote:
.

I very much agree with all the things said, particularly the cultists. I don't think it's even enough though. On large maps, cultists are just outright screwed due to having limited mobility/presence. Cultists should have some sort of method of teleporting units to converted villages(a power that priests could have maybe). It could cost dust depending on the number of units and each unit's cost or level, and maybe take 2 turns or something. Even if it's only 1-way teleporting only from the main city that could be OK.



I also don't see why cultist villages can't have some added fortification on them, although I don't know the specifics on how that would be implemented (maybe like 40 fort per era)

After few more games I see...

Support units are weak on their own, they die easy (really easy even melee ones), their buffs are weak or situational, they get attacked and cannot buff/heal/debuff anything, compared to attack or tank units they are not worth the slot in an army. I tried really hard to make use of them. And best I get was with Vaulters, Drider was stunning and healling most dmg Titan and Titan's feedback ability made it worth. But that's SOOOOO situational. If they at least were 80 % of normal ranged units or something... but they are less useful than 50 % of normal unit.

MAnoob, what's your steam ID?

Honestly for the moment it is difficult to evaluate the Necrophages as one of their key features, Demanding Gods, is slightly bugged (one turn duration sometime).



Concerning their units it looks quite ok for me, each of them have a good purpose in battle. That being said, Proliferators are a key in overall Necrophages development, as once unlocked they give a lot of cash dust (by selling extra foragers from battle) and thus allow diverse dust strategies.



I would also say that their food stockpile mechanism is really great once the 'battle engine' is started. But as great it is, it is not enough powerfull to center an entire strategy around it, from my experience at least.

MANoob wrote:
Thanks . Would like to see your suggestions on units. I have only one faction to cover here (Cultists), which I'm going to do now. It's the hardest of the bunch though.







Well, If you read my previous suggestions they actually bring up the low point factions to 80+ points as well as buff weaker affinities. With that in mind factions like Vaulters may need some help too (for Vaulters it's their earlygame weakness). I think Alchemist's Furnace makes more sense for Vaulters both from mechanical and lore perspective. And being over 80 points doesn't automatically make a faction better than everyone else, since prices for traits are not really balanced and some of the traits default factions have do not work all that well together. I can make 80/80 custom Vaulters that would be stronger than the original.

Yeah i agree with bringing up the points of the under costed ones as you've proposed. I was more highlighting the vaulters as an example. I don't know if it makes thematic sense for them, but you could have a weak early game to balance out a stronger mid or late game, rather than bringing everyone to the same sort of quick progression from the early game(although i just dislike how required furnace seems to be for every race except maybe the broken lords).

Nasarog wrote:
I'm trying to stay off of the forums for a bit, to give me a little time to think and cool down a bit, but damn boi, you make it really hard. Your analysis of the weaknesses and solutions are top notch.





If I were to rate your contributions to this thread, I would easily give you 11/10!!!





Keep up the good work.



I could recommend a few abilities to improve the various units, but I want to see your final analysis before I suggest them.

Thanks . Would like to see your suggestions on units. I have only one faction to cover here (Cultists), which I'm going to do now. It's the hardest of the bunch though.

Eji1700 wrote:
A couple of thoughts-



1. I would really really really really really like it if the base factions could be balanced. Whatever happens with custom factions, it makes pickup online play a lot easier if the base set isn't messed up. Maybe lowering points on some, while boosting points on others(the undercosted just seems silly), would help a lot here.



2. With that in mind, and not that MANoob isn't doing an awesome job, I would be careful with what you do and don't remove. Things like open pit mining vs alch furnace for example seems odd. Yes furnace is objectively better, but do valuters need an objectively better start? And while i'm still learning, it does seem like sometimes open pit mine being a starting tech changes your expansion preferences, which adds more flavor than the extremely boring, but effective furnace(although honestly I feel like the tech tree could use work anyways).

Well, If you read my previous suggestions they actually bring up the low point factions to 80+ points as well as buff weaker affinities. With that in mind factions like Vaulters may need some help too (for Vaulters it's their earlygame weakness). I think Alchemist's Furnace makes more sense for Vaulters both from mechanical and lore perspective. And being over 80 points doesn't automatically make a faction better than everyone else, since prices for traits are not really balanced and some of the traits default factions have do not work all that well together. I can make 80/80 custom Vaulters that would be stronger than the original.

A couple of thoughts-



1. I would really really really really really like it if the base factions could be balanced. Whatever happens with custom factions, it makes pickup online play a lot easier if the base set isn't messed up. Maybe lowering points on some, while boosting points on others(the undercosted just seems silly), would help a lot here.



2. With that in mind, and not that MANoob isn't doing an awesome job, I would be careful with what you do and don't remove. Things like open pit mining vs alch furnace for example seems odd. Yes furnace is objectively better, but do valuters need an objectively better start? And while i'm still learning, it does seem like sometimes open pit mine being a starting tech changes your expansion preferences, which adds more flavor than the extremely boring, but effective furnace(although honestly I feel like the tech tree could use work anyways).

MANoob wrote:
Some thoughts

I'm trying to stay off of the forums for a bit, to give me a little time to think and cool down a bit, but damn boi, you make it really hard. Your analysis of the weaknesses and solutions are top notch.





If I were to rate your contributions to this thread, I would easily give you 11/10!!!





Keep up the good work.



I could recommend a few abilities to improve the various units, but I want to see your final analysis before I suggest them.

Some thoughts on the Vaulters.



There are a lot of posts about Vaulters being OP and I think its right in some regards, but mainly because their affinity actually works and is useful. They have some weak points as well though. Mostly its the earlygame, since it takes some time for Vaulters to get things going.





Default Vaulters are overcapped at 115/80 points, mainly because of the racial tech. I have a split feeling about this though (more on this later).



Traits:

• Veins of Auriga(15 pts) - A no-brainer given the affinity, I would pick it every time with them and well worth the points (but not OP).
• Knack for knowledge(20 pts) - A decent trait which is to represent Vaulters scientific focus, however I think this is actually not what they do well
• Public Library(10 pts) - Again used to represent Vaulters scientific focus, this is hardly the first building you would build however
• Open Pit Mine(10 pts) - This makes very little sense given that it could've been Alchemist's Furnace
• Deep Generator(15 pts) - Now as I've already told I have a split feeling about this tech and racial techs for any race actually. I mean, it is quite powerful, but also quite costly, plus you have to research it which means you'll miss out on some other tech(which can be also quite powerful), plus you've spent 15 points to get it. Furthermore, it's not available from the start, you have to tech up to get it. I had much better luck at snowballing with custom Vaulters by picking traits that work right from the start. Would you rater pick this or veins of Auriga (both 15 pts)?
• Endless Recycling(15 pts) - Comes into play even later than Deep Generator and would be quite a good tech if paired with Cellulose Mutation, which Vaulters don't have. Generally same concern as with Deep Generator.
• Strength of the vault(5 pts) - Doesn't cost too much, but is relatively useless given that you can teleport reinforcements between cities
  
  

Affinity: Holy resource. Pretty great, -50% expansion disapproval is too much imo since you don't really feel constrained in terms of expansion as a Vaulter. Other bonuses are good and worth the points the affinity itself takes (25).



Now Vaulters are supposed to be the scientific victory guys, but they definitely do not feel that way to me. Maybe that's ok but then the description should change . Science bonuses they get are not that great. They feel much more geared towards expansion/supremacy/elimination victories imo. Expansion is obvious since you barely get any disapproval from it. Supremacy and Elimination come into play when you realize that you have tons of strategic resources and nothing to do with them as a peaceful empire. So mid-lategame you can produce a lot of well geared troops having much better gear than anyone else (technolover). Technolover seems to be bugged, but in a good way for Vaulters (unit stats don't change after you've made the design, even when you're not using this holy resource anymore). Personally I'm ok with this but I have a feeling that EL is missing a true science faction.



I don't think Vaulter's affinity needs a big nerf, I'd rather see other affinities be more useful (made suggestions for most of them in my previous posts).



My suggested changelist for Vaulters would be the following:

• Change expansion disapproval reduction to -25%
• Either just merge all racial tech into the affinity or significantly reduce costs (think this should be done for all racial tech, not just Vaulters)
• Swap Open Pit Mine to Alchemist's Furnace as a starting tech
  
  

I think Vaulter hero is pretty weak with defense boost 2 and science efficiency 2(both as governor and general) and is one of the things that makes their early game a bit weak. Defense boost is the last thing you want for a ranged army and science efficiency is not what you want for your starting hero. I'm not talking skill trees here, but if I had to pick the worst one it would be Vaulters. Maybe starting abilities can be swapped to army initiative 2 and science boost 2(so at least you won't need to use science workers to get the bonus).



In terms of units, most of them seem quite mediocre until Technolover kicks in and makes them statwise superior to anyone else. I feel like Vaulter army is quite weak earlygame but one of the strongest lategame purely due to raw power (which I think is ok and maybe plays as intended by design).

• Marines - Kind of an average shooter turning into powerhouse with good gear and technolover
• Dawn officer- Kind of bellow average cavalry, that again can be quite good with technolover. I feel like these guys could use a small buff however
• Titan - A good tank statwise with good ability, if only there was some incenitive to attack it and not your marines. This problem goes for most of the tanks in the game atm. Maybe an ability to redirect some damage from adjacent units to the Titan would help.
  
  

The Cultist post will be the last since I don't even know where to start...

Wild Walkers review:



Wild walkers are supposed to be defensive builder faction. Default Wild Walkers sit at 65 out of 80 points which means that any custom race you make based on their affinity will be better. Let's look at the traits:

• Living towns (25 pts) - +1 industry on forest on summer season. This is pretty bad for the points since industry efficient costs the same 25 pts, but works regardless of the season and on any terrain with industry, which seems to be more common than forests. My suggestion would be either a) drop the cost b) increase the bonus to +2 (will likely make it OP at the start of the game) c) make it live up to its name and also make city districts count as forest tiles (thus +1 on district if not already in forest + good combat bonuses for the defending army. Personally I would prefer c).
• Way of the woodlands (10 pts) - Would I rather take a technology that I need to research in some distant age that gives +25% defense only when in forest or a passive +20 defense everywhere? That 5% surely looks convincing. /sarcasm off. I really think this should be either granted as a bonus for the faction quest or tweaked into something more unique. Simply buffing it won't work imo, because being a situational ability it would quickly become (situaltionally) broken.
• Seed storage(10 pts) - Decent starting tech
• Sewer system(10 pts) - Decent as well
  
  

Affinity - detect armies in your empire and adjacent regions. This can be situationally useful, but overall feels like a really weak ability. On the bright side, some of the quest rewards are quite good. Visions of Glory is a very good tech for wide empire builders and Growing Buildings is an excellent reward for someone pursuing wonder victory, which you probably are if you completed the faction quest.



I've tried making both peaceful and aggressive custom Wild Walkers:



Shapers:

• Living towns
• Industry Efficient
• Cellulose Mutation
  
  

Ended up to be one of the strongest custom factions I've played so far, due to great synergy between Cellulose Mutation (which probably should be nerfed, as it looks like a must have trait to me for most of the builds except for maybe very aggressive ones) and industry boosts. Living towns being worse than Industry efficient was still good since the total industry boost at start was really crazy. That's why I believe they should be mutually exclusive.



Hunters:

• Pitiless
• Big armies 2/2
• Industry efficient
• Cellulose mutation
• Offense first
  
  

I feel like Wild Walkers have great synergy with big armies since 4 range rangers are the best unit in terms of stacking. 6 man ranger army is pretty unstoppable earlygame (and still scary as hell at any time).



I think the following things can be done for the vanilla walkers:

• Living towns tweaked in one of the ways suggested above
• Way of the woodlands removed and turned into quest reward
• As suggested by many posters here a forestwalk trait (as a quest reward, or as part of the affinity) would work really well both lorewise and mechanically (since living towns make you favor forest regions)
• I think stockpile tech should be available for wild walkers at age 1
  
  

The Sharing base bonus could definitely improve. A combat bonus on friendly territory would work here and suit the playstyle pretty well. Another option would be to make it reveal the map in a big radius around a colonized city (will make decisions where to expand next easier).



Something a bit more tricky in terms of implementation can be done as well:



Each Wild Walker army can pick an animal totem. Totem bonuses only work on your territory and only on wild walker units. Activating a totem costs a small amount of dust, scaling with tech level. Units leaving the army lose the bonus.

Totems:

• Panther - gain Fast 1 in combat and +2 speed on the map
• Red Bear - +20% damage
• Ram - +10% initiative and melee units gain Charge 1
• Eagle Owl - +2 vision on the map and +1 range for ranged in combat
• Boar - Stun 2 in combat
  
  

etc, these are just possible examples



Something should be done with the remaining points as well. Out of the existing traits, big armies and cellulose mutation work best mechanically, however 1st one is too militaristic and the 2nd shouldn't be really taken by anyone other that Necrophages given the name.



One of the following new traits could work:

• A percentage based industry bonus
• A trait increasing max district level
• Combat bonus working only on friendly territory
• Hero XP bonus on construction
  
  

The starting hero with army boost 1 and industry efficiency 2 makes a good governor and a bad general, which makes sense. I would like to see his (and rangers) starting weapons changed to bows though, because they have bows even on the loading screen. Plus imo bows work much better earlygame because of higher damage. Right now extra dust is needed to retrofit them.



In terms of units:

• Rangers - Very good. 4 range and very high initiative make them one of the best ranged units. I think they are exactly as they should be now.
• Shaman - Downright horrible. The buff is actually not that bad if only Wild Walkers had someone to cast it on. Stats are terrible though. I thing the shaman should trade -60% attack for -25% damage (actually I think this should be made for most supports), get its health buffed to at least 50 and damage to at least 20 (so 15 with debuff). +1 range would also help and make slow a useful alternative to attack debuff.
• Walker - Base tanking stats are pretty good, however it lacks shield and helmet so does not scale too well with equipment. Some ability to keep melee away from rangers would be appreciated as well. Suggested buffs: Add regeneration 2 or 3 for tanking. Add "entangle" ability - reduces target's speed to 0 for 1 turn. Is cancelled if the Walker moves. Does not prevent the target from attacking.