Hello all,



I've been thinking for some time now that Dust Bishops (the Broken Lords support unit) are perhaps a little too strong. Currently, the way the Bishops work is that on its attack, they are able to heal units (including themselves) as long as they are adjacent to the Bishop. Early on in the game, this is huge for the Broken Lords, who don't have natural regeneration and must use precious Dust to heal battle damage, so naturally another method to heal is very attractive. This is all fine and dandy, but the thing that has me wondering if the Bishop's power is unchecked is the amount that the Bishop is able to heal for on attack.



When I originally encountered the unit, I thought that Life Siphon would only heal for the amount that was taken from the enemy, and that was the reason that they also have the low damage capacity, but as I found out, the amount healed has nothing to do with that. Given just Tier 2 Iron equipment, they are able to heal for something like 20 to 30 HP per attack, which only increases as the Bishops level up and you research/find better equipment. What this essentially makes for are nigh-unkillable unit stacks, provided you set your units in formation with the Bishop and they are sturdy enough to take a few hits and not die, which isn't too difficult a state to achieve.



In fact, the only trouble I really ran into with this strategy was with large groups of Ended, who could decimate my army if they got a chance to attack thanks to Chain Lightning since my entire army would always be close together to maximize the efficiency of Bishops. However, this isn't too difficult to counter if you have stronger initiative then the Ended and took away their turns (same would be true for Silacs, the other AoE damage unit). As such, for the AI, it is very difficult to counter this kind of play, which makes battles pretty damn easy with proper positioning.



I'm curious what others think of this unit though, and how it fares in MP. I don't feel like there's an easy way to deal with someone fielding a Bishop, apart from maybe trying to focus it down with ranged units, but against an opponent that knows that's what you're trying to do, it probably won't be an easy task. But I theorycraft. How do others feel about it?

Okay, let's see:

Vaulters, WW and AM easily counter this tactic with their own rangers - just decimate Bishops from afar (Bishops have low atk and init, thus main force of BL is Stalwarts, i.e. close-range) and then rip and tear weakened Stalwarts. Close formation means BL cannot easy move his army and this causes his army being very weak against ranged units.

Necrophages - since their support unit doesn't work properly they have more problems with this tactic - what with Necrodrones being flying and Bishops being only AA-units in BL army.

BL vs BL will rely mostly on heroes and positioning, so it's a tie.

To sum it up:

3 fractions easily crush this slow turtling tactic, 1 have problems - due to lack of rangers at all. I'd say Bishops make BL at least slighty playable, considering their problems with population and expansion. Without them BL would simply became fast-food faction for Necrodrones.

I'm not sure the Dust Bishops themselves are what's powerful. I think it's the combination of the Dust Bishops, the stalwarts having their own life drain (currently broken) and the relatively early faction tech quest reward that lets them heal naturally in their own regions combined all together that's a problem.



Actually, after playing the Ardent Mages, I'm beginning to think that perhaps its the easy access to dust that needs to be nerfed. The mages use dust to fuel their magic and after a point, the cost becomes pretty much isn't a concern. There is never a situation where the mechanism of healing the Broken Lords feels like a weakness. Actually, it feels like another strength because it saves time and dust is in such easy supply.

gefp wrote:
Vaulters, WW and AM easily counter this tactic with their own rangers - just decimate Bishops from afar (Bishops have low atk and init, thus main force of BL is Stalwarts, i.e. close-range) and then rip and tear weakened Stalwarts. Close formation means BL cannot easy move his army and this causes his army being very weak against ranged units.

I don't feel like just range ends up countering Bishops that hard. There isn't much to stop a player from making their Bishops much more sturdy in the form of armor, especially if it is Glassteel (which also remedies low init). If they can draw fire from a number of ranged units, that means that whatever units are backing them up aren't taking any damage. Plus, you don't have to move them all in formation all the time, as though that's just 1 or 2 hexes of movement. All that needs to happen is that at least one melee unit catches another without killing it, and then having the Bishop attack it and heal.



@Larcent

I agree that the abundance of Dust, especially in the mid to late game, without really too much effort is definitely a problem, but I feel that's a separate issue to this one. Though the healing from Soul Leech and the passive regeneration from Penitent Chapel are good, they don't quite have the same magnitude as the Dust Bishops heal. I mean, I could have a battle with very close to death units and heal them to full HP within one game turn (as opposed to battle turn) using some minor faction army stack or something. So it's substantial healing at no cost at all to you which outclasses the other methods of healing in terms of speed, ease, and the amount healed. The only other method to gain such healing is to have many pacified Sisters of Mercy villages, which is much more rare.

>I don't feel like just range ends up countering Bishops that hard. There isn't much to stop a player from making their Bishops much more sturdy in the form of armor, especially if it is Glassteel (which also remedies low init).



For sake of comparison, we should use vanilla units - since both players can augment their units with more powerful weapons and armors, thus keeping status quo - i.e. WW, V and AM can equip their ragers with more powerful weapons. Of course, if you say "Dust Bishops in last tier armor with last tier weapon overpowered against Tier 1 infantry", then I won't argue, but that's silly statement and cannot be reason behind rebalancing, right?



Basically, strategy against Bishops is focusing fire on whoever is in minority - be it Stalwarts (thus severely diminishing atk of BL army) or Bishops itself (no heal - no problem). I don't see how it's complex or hard to implement.