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Woah. I.. never knew that.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:28
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We never added anything about it, because it's not actually that useful to know. It only works on units which can still act, and normally when a unit acts, it will turn to face it's target anyways, or the unit will be guarding, in which case it doesn't matter which direction it's facing in. The only time it makes a difference is for heroes casting spells, or for when units use buff/heal abilities on themselves.
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Apr 10, 2015 12:37
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Necromancy 103 Interview with a Deathbringer Necromancer is, overall, a class that endures in the early game, and only becomes truly powerful in the mid-late game, almost entirely on the backs of it's powerful class units. One small note that I didn't cover earlier is that the biggest boon to the Necro clearing game is that Undead units are just immune to most of those annoying site effects. Choking Fumes? Mass Curse? Chant of Unlife? Pfft, whatever dude. Bone Collector 180 Gold 70 HP 32 MP 11 Def 11 Res 14 Melee Damage Wall Crushing Demolisher Projectile Resistance Tunneling Gains Fearsome at Elite. Bone Crabs look so awesome in action, they really do. That aside, Collectors are a very strange unit. In terms of base stats, frankly, they kinda blow chunks. An unfed Bone Collector is pretty much useless for what they cost. On the other hand, the scaling on Collect Bones is obscenely good, giving +20 HP, +2 Dam and +1 Res per corpse. Just eating three corpses makes the statline: 130 HP 32 MP 11 Def 14 Res 20 Melee Damage If Deathbringers snowball between fights, Bone Collectors are all about the in-battle snowballling. As such, they typically only really shine in siege battles, which are long and grindy enough for them to get absurd if they stay alive, and smashing through walls is what they're designed to do anyways. I would say overall that while they are the most skippable Necromancer class unit, they really are masters are what they do. It's well worth picking up a few Bone Collectors just to help your snowball smash it's way through cities that much faster. Also, Cadavers are a Bone Collectors best friend with the offering of bone ability. While hoovering up corpses is a free action, having all those delicious bones get up, walk over and feed themselves to you is even better, and bringing a few Cadavers into battle just so you can immediately buff up your Bone Collector is also a tried and true method when you can arrange it. DeathBringers 150 Gold 30 Mana 60 HP 28 MP 11 Def 11 Res Melee Dam 13/3 Physical Blight Infantry Tireless Total Awareness Inflict Ghoul Curse Shadow Step At Vet Inflict Brain Rot and Inflict Exhausting Fatigue At Elite Exploit Despair It is no exaggeration to say that Deathbringers are the Necromancer late game. Simultaneously your most elite fighters and most powerful recruiters, Deathbringers are the backbone of any late game Necromancer army and the primary method of snowball acceleration. Inflict Ghoul Curse is the main feature here, it works on Spirit Channel and has a fairly high inflict chance and works even on units immune to mind control. (Strong Will still blocks it.) One Deathbringer can in theory convert an entire stack of units just by touching each of them once. In theory. On the other hand, it only procs once per fight per unit. Any unit that successfully resists the effect is immune to Ghoul Curse for the rest of the battle, so it is in your interest to maximize your chances of landing it on powerful units. Inflict Despair is key because the stacking -20% spirit weakness can make the effect extremely hard to resist. Also, unlike other unit stealing abilities like Convert or Charm, Ghoul Curse does absolutely nothing for you in battle. It just rewards you with extra units after the battle, assuming you win. That said, with a solid core of Deathbringers you should be converting at least a couple of ghouls after every single battle, even high tier units. You are the class with the worst economy in the game, your entire strategy for clinching victory in the end is basically to snowball so hard you become unstoppable. Ghoul Curse aside, Deathbringers are one of your most valuable units just based on their awesome combat prowess. The Combination of Tireless/Total Awareness/Lifesteal and solid damage makes Deathbringers the most Stabs-Per-HP unit around. It is difficult for any melee unit to approach one of your badass Vampire Swordmasters without getting stabbed half a dozen times or more, especially at Vet with Exhausting Fatigue reducing Physical damage by -5 and hopefully Banshees and Reanimators tanking morale so their enemies are fumbling constantly. Shadow Step is also a key ability, it's a 3 Hex Phase that can be used from Red on a one turn cooldown, custom made for teleporting over walls and setting up chain backstabs. Deathbringers are aptly named. All of that said, they are also expensive as poo poo and strategically slow and pretty fragile for a late game T3 unit. You can't just Mass Deathbringers from either a tactical or logistics standpoint. Deathbringers aren't so much the vanguard of your army as they are the elite clean-up crew. Let your more expendable units lead the way and soften up the enemy so the Deathbringers can come in and murder everything with as little resistance as possible. A Necro army that's bleeding Deathbringers is a melting snowball and you need to avoid that as much as possible. Range units in particular are a menace, Deathbringers can defend themselves fairly well against nearly all melee threats but with their low HPs and Def/Res they are pretty much naked to mass ranged fire, so be careful. Race Corner: Frostlings have Frost Weapons for 9/3/5 Physical/Blight/Frost Damage Goblins have Inflict Severely Poisoned Halflings have Backstab Humans have 13/3 Physical/Spirit Damage and Inflict Spirit Breaking instead of Exhausting Fatigue. (The Vampire Hunter Vampires?) Orcs have War Cry Tigrans have Bloodthirsty, and Athletics helps a ton with their slow move speed, not to mention the Tigran Military 5 bonus. Dread Reaper 66 HP 30 MP (Flying) 12 Def 13 Res Melee 8/4/8 Physical/Blight/Frost Invoke Death Incorporeal/Floating/Passwall Fearsome Energy Drain Life Drain Void Explosion Vet-Inflict Curse Expert-Exploit Despair Elite- Necromantic Aura, Path of Decay. Hoo boy, Reapers, where to even start? Reapers are a flying T4 Incorporeal unit that is pretty much invincible in melee against any other living melee unit that doesn't do massive amounts of fire or spirit damage. While they don't actually do that much damage per hit typically, the combination of Energy Drain and Life Drain (And Fearsome) on a powerful incorporeal unit means they just straight up gain health much faster then they lose it in melee combat in most situations. Invoke Death is also a scary as hell ability, It's an 11 Strength Spirit Channel effect that's instant death on a fail and -40 Max HP on a resist, which means it's win-win for the Reaper no matter what. (2 turn cooldown.) Void Explosion means they blow up for 5/5/5 Physical/Blight/Frost damage on death, and Necromantic Aura on Elite means that any undead units swinging at them in melee have a fairly high chance of coming under the Reapers control. Reapers are the quasi-physical representation of the inevitability of death, and they do it so very well. That said, the Reaper is also a T4 with amazingly swingy matchups with other T4 units. Don't even try to use them against Juggernaughts, and Shrines, well...ShadowStalkers also actually beat the poo poo out of them 1 v 1, mostly just because they have higher Frost Protection. The Reaper is an incredibly powerful unit, but not one you will be relying on in every match-up. Still, between Reapers and Deathbringers and Banshees there are not too many army configurations you can't deal with one way or another by end game. Winning tactical battles is not typically a huge concern for Necromancers. Losing momentum enough to be overwhelmed by superior numbers is what you need to worry about. It's quite a bit like playing Theocrats, except the edges are even more extreme. Next time, we'll take a look at spells. madmac fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 12:55
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Halfling Necromancer's sure going to be a thing. 
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Apr 10, 2015 13:59
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Oh hell, lets just end this. Necromancy 104 I've got 99 problems but a Lich ain't one. Combat Spells Death Ray 70 Knowledge 10 CP Basic Nuke, does 12 blight and 8 Frost damage to one target. I hope you don't like simple direct damage spells, because this is pretty much it. Stiffen Limbs 60 Knowledge 7 CP Non undead/machine units only, -12 move Points, -2 Def -2 Melee damage. No resist check. Forget about Deathray, this right here is the poo poo. Cast it on virtually any melee unit and then kite them to death, done. One of the best spells in the whole drat game. Corpus Furia 120 Knowledge 10 CP All corpses explode, doing 10 physical damage in a one hex radius. I have to be honest, I never use this spell. I mostly forget I even have it. Corpses are so valuable to a Necromancer... Desecration 100 Knowledge 20 CP Devout Units -3 Res, Undead Units +3 Res This on the other hand is probably my most used Necromancer spell. Aside from being an obvious way to screw over Theocrats, a fairly cheap army-wide +3 Res buff is amazing on it's own. Absolutely essential against Theocrats and Sorcerers in particular. Syphon Life 180 Knowledge 10 CP Hits a living unit for 8/8 Blight/Spirit Damage and then heals all adjacent undead units for 16 HPs. Requires a bit of setup to get the most use out of but this is a pretty amazing spell when you can make it work. Even just healing like two guys while nuking one for 10 CP is incredibly efficient. For clearing and melee heavy battles this spell rocks, and Necromancer is all about the melee heavy armies, so... Dark Gift 240 Knowledge 25 CP All of your units gain +2 Physical Damage and Inflict Curse. A rare Necromancer spell that actually buffs living units, it's a good pick-up for cross-class Necro heroes. Also just a really good spell in general. If I'm not planning to do anything fancy, I usually throw out Desecration+Dark Gift at the start of every large battle, they pay for themselves. Raise Dead 350 Knowledge 20 CP Instantly raise all corpses as Cadavers, the spell. I actually don't use this too often, by the time it comes out Cadavers aren't that big a thing, but it's always good to have options to flood the battlefield with cheap units I suppose. Especially if you're using Bone Collectors... Mark of Death 650 Knowledge 15 CP Marks a unit, whoever gets the killing blow on that unit is doomed to die after the battle ends. Can be dispelled. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....I don't think this spell is actually good at all. Or even useful. The pro-method of using it is to cast it on a weak unit (Even a cadaver will work) and then suicide it into a much stronger unit to make sure the unit you want to die gets marked. Probably is, even in that most optimal condition this spell still does absolutely nothing except give you a spite kill after the battle is over, assuming you lose and also assuming it doesn't get dispelled. It's honestly pretty useless in 90% of situations. You can break it out in doomed sieges and hope your opponent is dumb, I guess. Scourge of Undeath 1600 Knowledge 50 CP Summons a random Undead unit every round until you've run out of not summoned units or the end of battle. From doing some quick testing, it looks to reliably summon T2 or T3 Archon or Necromancer class units. In terms of raw summon strength and duration, this might be the most powerful battlefield summon spell. Obviously being able to cast it at all is endgame stuff, but it's definitely worth 50 CP. Undying Army 2400 Knowledge 50 CP The ultimate Necromancer combat spell simply gives all of your undead units Undying, like Lost Souls. (Units auto-rez once after 2 turns with 35% HP) Hope your opponent enjoys killing your entire army twice! Pair this up with Scourge of Undeath for maximum hilarity. Global Spells Whispers of the Fallen 60 Knowledge 60 CP 20 Upkeep See all battles within a massive 16 hexes around your cities and forts. It's kinda cool but also pretty useless. The intelligence you get from it is most useful early in the game when you can't front the upkeep anyway. Will probably get buffed in some way eventually. Animate Ruins 60 CP You get this as a freebie, and it's hands down one of the most useful things Necromancer has. Rebuild any city, anywhere, for a bit of mana and casting time. Combos especially well with Destruction Adept for Instant Plunder+Animate Ruins to quickly raise funds and ghoulify a captured city, all in one go. Also means that Necromancer is the one class that doesn't particularly give a poo poo if you raze his cities. Corrupt the Source 60 Knowledge 60 CP An exceedingly specific but kinda cool spell, just lets you turn ordinary Farms and Springs of Life into corrupted versions that actually benefit you. Dark Ritual 120 Knowlege, 40 CP For 150 Pop, cast it on a city and gain 3 Cadavers and turn 20% of the city domain to blighted terrain. It's uh, it's a spell. Being able to quickly amass Cadavers to use as Bone Collector fodder is nice I guess, (Still gotta walk them somewhere) but calling this spell niche is putting it mildly. Undead Plague 120 Knowledge 60 CP 20 Upkeep Target an enemy city you're at war with, They lose 200 Happiness and every turn the spell syphons off 400 population and deposits it in the closest undead city. Your city growth is the pits, so this spell can actually be pretty nifty. Often the best way to use it is to declare war on some hapless Indies you don't care about and then just use them as food to grow your empire. You can use it on players too of course, just don't expect to get more then a couple turns out of it that way. Rotten Wall 400 Knowledge 120 CP 15 Upkeep. It's a wall spell, you know how they work. This one's gimmick is 8 Blight Damage and Noxious Vulnerability. It's probably the weakest wall spell out of all them, but eh. You cast this when you need better defenses and it gets the job done. Unless you're fighting a Dreadnaught or another Necromancer, then don't even bother. Enemy of the Faith 400 Knowledge 80 CP 20 Upkeep All your units get Devout Slayer and Support Slayer. Necromancer vs Theocrat is an interesting match-up, because it's just a massive bloodbath with both sides being unbelievably lethal to the other. I think Theocrat still has the edge overall, but it's closer then you'd expect. Necromancer really hates supports in general raining down elemental damage on them, so this is a pretty good spell even if there aren't any Theocrats hanging around. Damnation 750 Knowledge 80 CP 25 Upkeep All Not-Undead, Not-Machine units in target city are Weakened. As in the Blight Doctor ability. Not even kidding. Ahahahaha. Now we're getting to the good stuff. Necromancer is just a late-blooming class in every respect, and even in the spells it shows. Chuck this at a city before you invade, destroy everything. Power Ritual 700 Knowledge 200 CP 40 Upkeep All Undead Units gain +2 Physical and +2 Blight Melee Damage It goes without saying that as soon as this spell becomes available you keep it running at all times. With this up, even your Cadavers are hitting for 8/5, and your Deathbringers and Reapers are brutal damage dealers. It's a really awesome spell and I love the flavor of the Necromancer where their undead units start out weak and fragile and by end game with all your researches and spells and everything else you've hit a level where all of your undead units are magically charged killing machines that just won't die. Age of Death 2400 Knowledge 600 CP 80 Upkeep Age of Death is my new favorite Ultimate Spell. Not because it's the strongest, I mean it's good but it's not Age of Magic or Armageddon good, but because it's stupidly awesome. So basically, when this spell is active, every battle fought anywhere in the world has a 35% chance of the fallen units raising up as ghouls under your control. Note it doesn't check per unit, it actually appears to check per stack, so when this spell triggers, you can suddenly find yourself with two stacks of zombies on some far end of the map you've never even explored. It's also great because it's the ultimate expression of the Necromancers creeping horde of undeath approach. With this spell active, Death, all Death, anywhere, only makes you stronger with each battle fought. You have successfully turned the game into a zombie survival movie, and it's beautiful. (Just try not to go bankrupt from all the unpredictable spikes in upkeep.) madmac fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 14:41
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I'm still chafing for boilers stoked by the burning souls of the damned. It does seem like Necromancer has a few meh spells, what if one of those were replaced with Daemonic Engines, that lets you "rebuild" Machine units as Undead, with associated stats and healing.
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Apr 10, 2015 15:01
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Even Machines have Limbs combat spell. Resurrects a target machine unit, inflicting it with cadaver "decay". To the idea that the necromancer is reanimating it with raw force of will, but while the necromancer can see what the machine can do, they dont understand how to keep them running and the energies of the spell eventually fade or the mass of reanimated parts eventually grinds themselves into dust.
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Apr 10, 2015 15:12
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Looks like the necro has some vital use-me-all-the-time skills and some terrible good-luck-finding-a-scenario-where-I-am-worth-researching skills. Probably going to get some buffs and/or nerfs thrown around eventually. In the meantime, can't wait to see this in action. Four more days! Going to go back to f5ing the steam page now.
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Apr 10, 2015 15:23
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madmac posted:Mark of Death 650 Knowledge 15 CP
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Apr 10, 2015 15:28
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Mark of death sounds remarkably good with partisan.
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Apr 10, 2015 15:38
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I guess if you can pull it off and have 30 cp to spare and they find a scout with their leader and hero resurgence is off. Necro scouts aren't that fast though, so they'd pretty much have to leave the rest of the stack at the starting line and charge straight at you with just the hero for this to work. And not use an elemental nuke to just one shot the scout. Even in the ideal situation it seems really bad. I guess we'll find out on release. If someone can make it worth the research and casting points to really swing a game at a crucial point or find a way to make it a core ability you can base a strategy around like other abilities I would love to hear about it, since the flavor of the spell is really cool. Very thematic. It just doesn't seem efficient or effective. Carnalfex fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 15:40
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Finally, a use for the zephyr bird! On a different note, I have no idea why it's slated to be T2. If only its' model was smaller and it had mountain concealment...
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Apr 10, 2015 16:02
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I think they just wanted to make the Zephyr Bird distinct from the Crow, honestly. quote:Looks like the necro has some vital use-me-all-the-time skills and some terrible good-luck-finding-a-scenario-where-I-am-worth-researching skills. Probably going to get some buffs and/or nerfs thrown around eventually. In the meantime, can't wait to see this in action. Four more days! Going to go back to f5ing the steam page now. Yeah, par for the course, really. Necromancer was overpowered for a good chunk of the beta so buffing the slightly less useful stuff wasn't exactly a high priority for anyone. I fully expect any issues to get ironed out post-release.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:19
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Could just make mark of death an implied mini version of the reaper's skill. Killing the unit with the mark causes the slayer takes a X(8?) strength spirit check or suffers Y(20?) pure damage. Successfully pass for half damage.
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Apr 10, 2015 16:43
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That would certainly make it more all-around useful if it was just straight damage and/or debuffs that matter during the fight itself. You could actually use it to help win a fight. Would also stop all the whining on the official forums about how MY PRECIOUS LEVEL 77 HERO-SAN MIGHT BE IN DANGER OF GETTING SCRATCHED. Any spell that only works if you lose a fight is going to be pretty hard to make useful without making it so extremely overpowered that it is absurd when it does work.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:24
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Fledgling Gulps posted:Holy cow I just realized you can pivot units without spending action points by right clicking and dragging ...what. Goddamnit, that would have been so nice to know.
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Apr 10, 2015 18:14
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Well, no Dev Journal today and game comes out on Tuesday, I guess I can crank out a dwelling guide this weekend. Stay tuned for my exciting review of: Little Mermaid, the Movie, The Game, The Dwelling (But not the TV show because it sucked.)
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Apr 10, 2015 19:31
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madmac posted:Well, no Dev Journal today and game comes out on Tuesday, I guess I can crank out a dwelling guide this weekend. Stay tuned for my exciting review of:  Oh man!
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Apr 10, 2015 19:33
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Hey so Mac, you mentioned whisper of the fallen being useless and the reasons for it. What if the upkeep of the spell started low, or even zero, and increased for each city it was affecting? That way when you want it most you can afford it, but it doesn't give much intel (only one city). As your empire grows and the amount of area the spell covers (and your economy to support it) the upkeep goes up.
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Apr 10, 2015 19:36
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Gerblyn posted:We never added anything about it, because it's not actually that useful to know. It only works on units which can still act, and normally when a unit acts, it will turn to face it's target anyways, or the unit will be guarding, in which case it doesn't matter which direction it's facing in. The only time it makes a difference is for heroes casting spells, or for when units use buff/heal abilities on themselves. Might be worth surfacing it more now that Guard Breaker shows up on the regular.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:29
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Carnalfex posted:Hey so Mac, you mentioned whisper of the fallen being useless and the reasons for it. What if the upkeep of the spell started low, or even zero, and increased for each city it was affecting? That way when you want it most you can afford it, but it doesn't give much intel (only one city). As your empire grows and the amount of area the spell covers (and your economy to support it) the upkeep goes up. I've seen some interesting proposals for that spell, but they're the kind of thing that will have to be done post launch.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:53
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  I've had this before, but i didn't take a screenshot. This has gotta be deliberate, i refuse to believe this is purely RNG. 
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Apr 10, 2015 23:52
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First thing getting changed when modding is opened up: Stiffen limbs gets renamed to rigor mortis. Memento mori should fit in there somewhere as well. Condemn killing or mark of death maybe, they are similar "be nice and don't kill this guy" spells, it kinda fits. Sort of. Latin names for spells are cool and these are my excuses for wanting them.
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Apr 11, 2015 00:26
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Secret teaser Preview of the full unit line-up for the Reef Dwelling: 1. Ursala the Sea Witch (Silly Ursala, still saying she's going to someday magik up enough power to sudddenly turn into a giant unstoppable tentacle monster thing again. whatever Ursala. Get stabbed by a boat prow and inexplicably die again, why don't you?) 2. Prince Erick (Some people say he's degenerated into some sort of grungy, mindwhacked Sea Hobo after the marriage, but that's nonsense! They still look great together! 3. Ariels sisters that no one remembers or cares about when they totally disappear from the movie like 10 minutes in. I mean, I'm sure they're fine ladies and all and very talented, but we all know who the main draw is around here. 4. Ariel. (Still got that voice, if you know what I mean.) 5. King Triton. (Been Working out like crazy. Still embarrassed about that whole being useless at the climax of the movie thing, I'm guessing.) Enjoy your visit at the Reef Colony, we've got dozens of whatzits and whosits a plenty, and don't forget to tip the crab! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI-lIy_bmnI Seriously, pay the nice crab conductor mon. madmac fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 00:34
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So a five unit dwelling with three new units (I'm assuming Mermaid and Siren from your hints). Can you still build Mermaids in Cities with the special upgrade or are they all dwelling locked now I wonder. also i was kinda hoping we'd get buildable shock sepents after we got reeds with the Naga.
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Apr 11, 2015 00:46
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Zore posted:So a five unit dwelling with three new units (I'm assuming Mermaid and Siren from your hints). 2 new units actually, the third unit is a little more of an obtuse hint, but there's a connection if you squint at it long enough. The MCU upgrade for mermaids hasn't changed, the Dwelling version is just way, waaaaaay more accessible. In fact, I don't think I've ever gone into an RNG map with a suspiciously large body of water and not found a Reef Dwelling somewhere. Unlike the other dwellings they give a certain instant strategic advantage, because pushing them out of the water requires considerable investment. You don't beat back the Water dwelling with a half-assed navy. Also, there's a lot of treasures under the sea, yo. Easiest the wealthiest dwelling, which is cool.
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Apr 11, 2015 01:26
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If there was something I'd like to see more of, it'd be battlefield weather effects. A little rain and lightning is nice but total darkness (monsters and evil units rejoice), daybreak and sweeping rays of light (a spot of holy purification), sweltering heat that sucks out the moisture in the air (everyone is mad as heck and flammable) or some plain old favourable winds that make one side (that is to say, your half) of the battlefield shootier than the other side.
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Apr 11, 2015 01:27
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I'd like to see some minor MP improvements, such as it being easier to add people to steam friends for rehosting after crashes, and there should be enough space for all of the settings to be visible to the players instead of half of them hidden at game creation, with a toggle to hide/show the settings if for some reason that bothers people.
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Apr 11, 2015 02:38
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All right, now that I've got all the Little Mermaid cracks out of my system, lets take a serious look at one of my favorite new dwellings, the Reef Colony. (Also aptly named the Merfolk Dwelling) A Mermaids Guide to Keeping it Real Down Where it's Wetter. As you might expect, the Merforlk Dwelling is unique in that it spawns exclusively on water. As a result of the new region system used by the map RNG you'll never find one in a pond or river, it'll always be placed in a sizeable area of water with a decent amount of stuff around to play with. While half the Merfolk units are aquatic only, the two new units are both amphibious and fully capable of launching nasty land raids before retreating to the safety of the sea. One of the biggest advantages of holding a Reef Dwelling is just how relatively secure it is. Aquatic units are as fast as Flyers on water and strong enough to wreck almost any embarked or swimming army without much trouble, which makes it it the exact opposite of every other dwelling in that it's much easier to hold then to seize. It's worth holding too, I'll go into buildings in a bit but I've never had a Reef Colony that wasn't pulling in some drat good income. Having a relatively easy way to clear a bunch of water sites for sweet loot doesn't hurt either. One major downside is that doing quests for Reef Colonies can be a bitch and a half. Until you've got a good water team put together be prepared to lose units to marauding pirates and crap for the sake of a little Hot Mermaid friendzone action. Getting down to specifics, you have a couple of branching building trees like every other dwelling. You have three options right off the bat. The Deep Sea Trench 50/25 Unlocks Baby Krakens (80 gp) and starts you down the unit unlock path. Baby Krakens haven't changed notably, except for two things. One, Adult Krakens are loving invincible now that they have swallow whole, and two, as your cheapest unit it's pretty easy to mass up a bunch of babies and hope you can can one to gold. It's not a bad plan anyways because Kraken babies are actually one of your better options for dealing with enemy ships early on. Whispering Rocks 100/100 is sort of a required side grade. It's expensive and just gives enemies -2 Resistance within the dwellings domain, (Obvious synergy with Mermaids/Sirens) but you need it to unlock all of your really good units. Meanwhile, the Pearl Mine 60/30 is it's own very lucrative economic branch. The Peal Mine gives you +20 Gold, and unlocks the Kelp Forest which gives you +20 Production and unlocks the Anemone Oasis (+20 Mana) which finally unlocks the Basin of Knowledge for +20 Research. Compared to any other dwelling the Reef Colony is fricken loaded, basically. Anyways, after you've unlocked Krakens, you can build the Mermaids Cove 25/50 to unlock your other basic unit. Once you have the Mermaids Cove, Whispering Rocks and the Deep Sea Trench, you're ready to start building your actually important units. The Sirens Rock 80/120 Unlocks Sirens while the Treacherous Cliffs 80/40 gives you the Lost Mariner. Once you have the Sirens Rock you can build the last building, Abyssal Ridge for 150/200 and unlock the T4 unit. Again, I'm not going over the units that have been technically in the game since Golden Realms, but I will call out Sirens as absolutely your MVPs out of your aquatic only unts. Rock Solid T3 units with good melee, Dominate, Water Concealment, and a brutal AOE damage attack. They are also obscenely fast over water and get backstab and taunt with medals. As far as naval superiority goes, you want Sirens, Sirens, some Krakens you can hopefully level up, and maybe a Lord of the Deep or two. Moving on to the new units. Lost Mariner 80 gold 50 HP 28 MP 10 Def 10 Res Melee 12 Dam, Pistol 18 Damage, 1 turn cooldown. Irregular Swimming Volunteer Hurl Net (Ranged throw net, like Cheetahs) Mind Control Immunity Gets Coup de Grace at vet and Hero/Support Slayer at gold. I won't post the flavor text for these guys, but I dig it. The volunteer and mind control immunity is there to represent the poor bastards being the willing mind slaves of the perhaps actually not so nice Mermaids and Sirens. Also, these guys are totally the Human Swashbuckler from the older games, so I guess this was their fate. Anyway, Lost Mariners are pretty rad. Very solid and versatile T2 irregulars that are equally good on land or at sea. For Rogues especially these guys are a total no-brainer to start pumping out. They're pretty poo poo at sieges since they can't even climb walls, but in open battles these guys more then hold their own, especially for how cheap they are. I mean, they basically have the production and upkeep costs of a T1 unit. With their stats it's definitely a thing. Lord of the Deep 250 Gold 50 Mana 80 HP 32 MP 12 Def 13 Res Melee 16/6 Physical/Shock Pikeman/Polearm/1st Strike/Pike Square Slip Away Thunderstorm Mind Control Immunity Projectile Reflection 40% Frost Weakness 80% Fire Protection Stunning Touch at Vet Total Awareness at Expert Static Shield at Elite If you look closely at these guys, you'll see they're actually made out of water encased in coral armor. King Triton has gotten pretty badass, I gotta say. Lords of the Deep are so good. Everything else aside, I'd still be grabbing Merfolk dwellings most games just for the Lords of the Deep, they are that fun to play with. While their Defense and HPs are obviously garbage tier for a T4 it is, as the illustrious Admiral Akbar might strenuously advise, a trap. Projectile Reflection for ranged attacks, First Strike and eventually Total Awareness and Static Shield for melee. With that combination of abilities Lords are pretty much just trolling units into trying to attack them. They also round out the total number of T4 units with polearms from zero to 4 in this expansion because geez. Somedays it just sucks to be a flyer. Of course Thunderstorm is the big selling point here. Lords are the only unit in the game that gets to cast a global spell as a unit ability. Thunderstorm is 40% Fire Resistance, -20% Frost and Shock Protection for three rounds. Combo that with Frostling or Sorcerers or Sorcerer Frostlings and things start to get fatal really quickly. It also chucks 1-3 Random Lightning bolts at the enemy every round for 12 Damage each. Well, 12 Dam+20% which is more like 14-15 Damage, but take it from me, it hurts. Since it's a Global you can't stack Thunderstorms, but you can have a stack of Lords chain cast it one after another, which is good for 18 turns of lightning strikes if they can't disjunct it and you just feel like being that much of a dick. It's only 10 CP to disjunct, but just forcing their leader to waste precious time and CP to attempt to disjunct a unit ability is putting you in the lead, so really it's win-win. And that's the mysterious, never elaborated on Merfolk Dwelling. It may seem limited at first but it's actually quite useful and a hell of a lot of fun. madmac fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 05:05
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Next expansion just needs to expand the merpeople into a full fledged aquatic race! Or maybe just the coral water people, a race of Lords of the Deep sounds super cool...
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Apr 11, 2015 05:21
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 edit: I'm not in-game right now, are Warbreeds considered Monsters and thus can be improved by Druid buffs? After this game I'm gonna do a Goblin Warlord and I'm curious about what heroes I should take. Business Gorillas fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 09:48
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I was just playing a halfling game and monster slayer from adventurers worked on them, so I'm pretty sure they do. Also holy poo poo I don't remember how to play against Emperor AI. Either my early expansion is too slow because I'm consolidating forces too much or my expansion leaves me wide rear end open without enough forces to push back on more than one or two fronts against aggression.
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Apr 11, 2015 10:42
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Kinda need to hard rush emperor AI, the longer they live the more they can bring those crushing economic advantages to bear. Murder them and/or get them to surrender and whatever they built is yours! They are actually quite a bit more challenging now with the AI improvements. Gone are the days of needing 7 emperors allied against you to pose any sort of challenge. It is rather nice to be able to set up more traditional games where you can use the new diplomatic improvements and have wars and alliances break out organically among opponents that are more or less evenly matched. I'm sure it will be that much more interesting with the culture victory and stuff in the expansion too. On the flip side I don't think turning up the AI difficulty makes them have diplomatic penalties against human players unlike many other 4x games, so you might be able to get emperors to fight each other for you as well. Unless diplomatic effects are put in for being allied or at war with another player the person you are taking to is allied or at war with, I think it is quite possible to ally with most of the AI while also having them all squabbling amongst themselves, letting you pick them off one at a time. There also isn't any drawback in diplomacy to betraying an ally I believe, so you can just keep backstabbing them one at a time until you win and they'll be smiling the whole time.
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Apr 11, 2015 11:29
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The AI improvements are what's throwing me, I think. I haven't played a whole lot since a month or two after Golden Realms and I'm trying to get back into the groove with the beta patch before the expac, and a lot of old tricks that used to be good for flummoxing the AI simply don't work anymore(this is a good thing). I even knocked the game down to King and am still having significantly more difficulty than I ever used to. God drat you for making your game more challenging, Triumph. 
Kanos fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 11:51
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Is it the nerf to inns? Not being able to leverage early extra gold into a couple t3s to get a free win against whoever was unlucky enough to start next to you really hurts a rush strategy. The upkeep on summons too. This is for the best since fast and hard rush was the only viable strat, but it does indirectly make high end AI more difficult since you can't just knock one over right away and use his corpse to fuel your next conquest.
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Apr 11, 2015 12:47
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On the subject of alliances, is there a way to start a game with certain players allied with dynamic alliances on? And on the subject of starting games, is there any way to pick AI players from the game creation screen or do you have to go the customise players including AI route?
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Apr 11, 2015 13:39
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I don't get dreadnoughts. Do they just get going incredibly slowly? The only thing I've found that can let you play aggressively at all early on is Seeker Enchantment with Musketeers and a couple Engineers. What's the way to speed them up?
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Apr 11, 2015 13:59
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If you want to be aggressive and take an enemy city early going straight for a siege workshop and building trebs is still a pretty solid idea. Grab repair machine on your leader, use whatever racials and rewards you can scrape together to flesh out your armies. Most cities really can't handle 2-4 trebs showing up in the early to mid game even if the rest of your stuff is just tier 1 random junk you got as rewards. Just pull the trebs barely into firing range of their walls so they can only hit them at max range with their archers. Bonus if you can position them behind cover as well, and/or only have one archer able to fire at them. Grind down their range threats while your hero gets free exp running back and forth just out of range repairing your trebs. They have to either pull back and let you break down the walls without opposing you or lose all their range units and then you do that anyway. Then you leapfrog trebs forward and bring your troops to bear and it should be a fairly easy mop up operation. Having a secondary hero with heal or dispel can help this a lot as a smart enemy will try to nuke down your repair hero or blind the trebs. Even if that happens you can likely pull this off though, especially if you have been scouting so you know when to hit them when their main stack is out in the field. To be honest early trebs can carry you through a lot of neutral camps without much trouble as well, just watch out for things highly resistant to physical damage like wraiths and always keep some screening troops so the trebs don't get engaged in melee.
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Apr 11, 2015 14:20
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Goblin Dreadnaught is a solid choice for rushing. Get upto muskets and start cranking them out alongside engineers and the occasional oddball unit such as blight doctors. You'll die in droves but you'll also drown your foes in musket fire. This is pretty "All in." tho. Dreads arn't the class to commit to hyper aggressive early game. Theirs is the methodical "grind the enemy down." playstyle. As Madmac put it, if you're not loosing, you're winning as a Dread.
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Apr 11, 2015 14:39
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Early game is also boosted by going human or dwarf since most of your racial units get that armored synergy. And mana fuel cells costs 20 to cast and 20 upkeep, so feel free to micromanage the hell out of it between your starting cities. Your CP isn't doing too much more early on anyway. edit: love me armored cav as a Dread
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Apr 11, 2015 15:21
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