test post. I think the forum just ate my reply. -.-

Ah. Makes sense.

Why only give it to the Humans, then? They're the baseline from which every other race varies.

Cavalry might be a little weak on the attack, but they're sturdier and faster than the T1 units.

Air Galleys are OP, and OP units don't need any compensation when hit with the nerf bat. :)

They fly, they have unlimited siege-grade ranged attacks, they can haul around support, they have a pile of hp, and they have the same amount of Defense as Warlords, Syrons, Cavaliers, and Basilisks. Only Leprechauns, Nature Elementals, Red Dragons, and Gold Dragons have more defense.

Giving Air Galleys more attack and damage makes them even more likely to win against their main predator: other air units.

The problem is their complete helplessness against anything that isn't a low resistance (walking?) male. They were already close to the trash heap, and this seals their fate.

A full group of modded Nymphs would fall to a single wolf, undead, spirit puppet, boar, Lady of Pain, Scorpion, etc.

As a challenge for you, come up with a semi-plausible scenario where a player would seriously build Nymphs.

Neither Nymphs nor Fairies were particularly good at punching people as it was. :)

I understand the thematic root for these changes, I'm just saying the changes render the units mechanically effectively useless. Charm and Seduce are simply too weak to carry a unit by themselves; when was the last time you seriously considered building a Satyr or Charlatan, both of whom have Charm and other abilities?

If you're aiming for theme, then these changes are fine. If you're aiming to encourage unit diversity, then these changes aren't meeting your goal. As an exercise, ask yourself "Under what circumstances would I want to use this unit? How often and in what ways are those circumstances likely to come up?"

Without Transport, they could swarm someone with seven of their cousins. With transport, they can only bring a single friend.

The mental image of a Wyvenr hauling around a Red Dragon is pretty amusing though. "Get 'em, Zippo!"

A few, yes. :)

First Born always felt like they got the short end of the stick, to me. They aren't burly enough to fulfill their role, especially when I could be making T3 dwarf units instead. Giants are nearly as strong, move faster, and can break walls. Moles tunnel and break walls. Balloons can get dudes to new places faster.

Give First Born +2 defense and maybe +1 attack, and they'll better fit in with their beef steak peers, the Warlord, Titan, and Karagh. You could give them Magic Strike instead of +1 attack; the former helps them better by-pass immunities while the latter lets them hit more often in general.

If Spirit Puppets had True Seeing and Turn Undead, then they might be fine without Strike. I'm not sure how it would work out in practice.

Paladins having Magic Strike is fine (or maybe Holy Strike would be more appropriate); they already had Turn Undead so they could already deal with Wraiths (more or less). I built a fair number of them in early and mid game in Broken Bow, but they tended to end up more as support units and healers than front-line material. Late game they were phased out in favor of more archers, but I was pretty firmly in control of the map and trying to deal with a melee-monster at that point.

The T3 Dark Elves have some interesting give and take. The Executioner is the unit of choice for raw combat, having Lifestealing and better combat stats. Trail of Darkness is also a PITA. Spider Queens sacrifice some combat stats for more utility, especially Wall Climbing and Web. Shadows are more of a stealth strike unit, using concealment to approach undefended targets and ignoring walls.

Shadows are probably the least useful of the three.

Remember how annoying Domain of Darkness is? This is like that, though a little easier to keep in check.

Part of my reaction to Trail of Darkness might simply be that I put a focus on removing Fog of War and uncovering the map, so having these little trails running around and blocking my vision really bothers me. Perhaps someone else can chime in on this?

I agree that Fire comes off as weakest of the spheres. Perhaps make cheaper direct damage a Fire thing; other magics might have direct damage, but Fire does it cheaper and more often.

When reducing casting cost of spells, keep in mind how often they can be cast in combat. As an example, should a hero be able to cast 10 Flaming Arrows in a single fight, even if they only have Spell Casting 1?

I seem to recall that Swarm reduces the hp of multiple targets by 1 each round, unblockably. This is too strong for a 1mp spell.

I seem to recall that Fireball is AOE, so having it only cost 4 is a bit too good. 8-ish is probably more appropriate, depending on the spell's attack and damage.

All t2 cav got a minor buff like that - +1ATK, Concealment, +1 DEF, +1DAM etc

I could absolutely swear that 32 to 28 is an enormous nerf, but I will remove the extra marksmanship in the interest of concision.

We've forgotten to mention that I've given Nymphs Concealment. Actually, when I remembered that, I reverted the HP buff. Surely that makes them good, or even too good, even without Strike.

True Seeing+Concealment is a very nice combination for the fairies, but I think I'll give them more DEF, maybe even raising it from 5 to 7 (?) so that they can use Charm quite safely.

Oh yes, indeed, why not Holy Strike?

Isn't Web just as feeble as Charm? I mean, the Spider isn't especially durable, doesn't hit very hard, Magic bolts are nice but not amazing, Web ditto, etc. Then it has this great movement and Wallclimbing, but that's no better than the t3 flyers.

It's nothing like Domain of Darkness in my opinion - Domain of Darkness (and in AoW1, Water Mastery) halves vision. Vision versus not-Vision is way more important than Fog of War versus unexplored, imo. Especially since you can just take a screenshot (is that lame of me?)

I thought Flaming Arrows was 4 atk 2 dam, like Archery. I just checked and it's 8 atk 4 dam. Lol.
I've just changed my mod to implement about 70% of your criticisms, when I next do so I'll tone down the super-cheap spells and maybe give fairies 7 DEF, revert the marksmanship buff on air galleys, etc.

If it wasn't an Air Galley getting nerfed, I'd probably agree.

Yay! Now they can stare really hard at enemies while invisible! ;)

True Seeing, Concealment, Flying, 32 move, 7 def, and Charm. Now they are getting more interesting.

Holy Strike is a lot more thematic, but Holy Strike can provide a debuff while Magic Strike can't. That could be the cavalry buff for Paladins instead of adding +1 to a stat.

Yes and no. It has the same low attack value, but Web can lock a unit down for several turns (a la Entangle), and it works on air units. Charm/Seduce might steal a unit for a few turns (does it wear off in this one after 3 turns, or is that SM? I forget), but (unlike web) killing the seducer also breaks the Charm/Seduce.

Spider Queens offer a bunch of situational options on a chassis that is slightly better than standard cavalry. The Executioner is a brute while the Spider Queen gives utility.

Check spell attack, defense, and other effects when thinking about casting cost.

I don't remember most of the details, except that the AI almost always seems to hit when casting spells on me. -.-

I'm sure that's not how it works in SM and I don't think it has a timer in AoW1 either. Sounds more like the AoW3 approach (God I hate that game's habit of nerfing mechanics)

I still stand by my previous review of your mod, I really like the changes done in this and don't really thing anything done is way over the top for balance purposes. Just sorta opens up more possibilities.

~ DaemonVirus

I know there's a 3 turn timer on seduction in ONE of these games, and I know it isn't Wizard's Throne because it hasn't come up there when I've been playing the campaign. I just can't remember which one.

Okay, so I've read a few things throughout here and have played a bit so far with the mod in place. Taking into account previous conversations, here are some of the most important thoughts that come to my mind at this time:

1) The blanket buff / nerf to swordsmen / archers
The battles I've experiences so far have been incredibly bloody on both sides. There doesn't seem to be a clear advantage to producing either archers or swordsmen so everything just ends up being a bloody mess in tier 1 battles. I will note that the swordsmen did against archers in most of the tests that I did... but I have conflicting thoughts on that.

A - Archers vs Swordsmen = Swordsmen win a bit.
B - Archers vs Goblin Spears = Archers win... a lot
C - Swordsmen vs Goblin Spears = Spears win... by one unit with two health... only because it gained a level.

Now my sample set so far is rather low, but some consistencies I'm seeing are that wandering around with a full stack of archers isn't scary because even if you lose the fight, you're probably still killing a lot of the archers. Also, the reduced hit rates of the swordsmen mean that even if they're better at killing archers, they're still just as useless in the late game if not more so because they still only take one hit to die and now they have a worse chance to hit something of their own before dying.

This does need more testing, but as it stands right now, I cannot see a scenario in which a Goblin player can keep up with another player of any other race.


2) Nymphs / Fairies without strike
As a player who finds that Nymphs can be quite good at turning the tides of battle by potentially snatching many of the opposing force's throughout the course of the game, I think they're great for mixing a couple in your groups. I would never make a whole stack of them though. With that being said, I think a unit needs to have some sort ability to defend itself even if it's ability is not that great. Their seduction is already counterable by being able to kill them, but at least they would normally be able to fight back say against a swordsman or possibly even cavalry to some degree making them not completely useless if what you need is really to fight rather than seduce.

With the removal of their strike ability, I'm not sure why I would ever both to make a nymph unless my opponent is running around with groups of one, two, or maybe three units. But even then it seems like if my opponent were to see that I'm making nymphs, they would either group up their units (because Nymphs still get focused in combat), or they would make something that cannot be seduced.

My thoughts are the same for the Fairies... what good is something that can fly if it cannot attack? It doesn't matter to me how much it costs to produce, I need a good payoff for the upkeep it's costing me per turn. As it is right now in the base game, I'd much rather produce rangers than spend the same amount of time making fairies because rangers just have better stats and are still quite mobile.


3) Tier 2 Cavalry - Removal of Charge
I don't understand this change done to some of the tier 2 cavalry units such as the wolf riders. Charge is a clutch ability which make the cavalry worth producing. Without this ability the wolf riders are.... useless compared to their counterparts from other races. They already have weaker stats as it is and removing charge would make them completely invalid as a response to an opponent producing the same thing who actually has a cavalry unit with charge.


4) Goblin Big Beetle
While I appreciate the Physical Protection, with how easy it is to put Enchant Weapon on any number of units right before a big fight, considering how much defense the Big Beetle has, I'd much rather keep the higher health pool. It's hard enough to get to Tier 3 with Goblins as it is, this would effectively make the Big Beetle a level 2 cavalry with the ability to knock down walls. Even before this change, the only thing that keeps this unit alive and scary in those big fights is that it has enough health to take some beating before dying. At this point in the game, I would imagine an opponent should have access to clerics/priests/shamans anyways even if not able to use Enchant Weapon for some reason.

~ DaemonVirus
I can confirm it's not Age of Wonders 1. In this game, if you seduce / charm / dominate a unit, it lasts in battle until the units which initiated the seduce / charm / dominate dies. If you survive until the battle is complete, the unit is your's forever.

~ DaemonVirus

So is +2DEF, -1ATK actually not a strong enough Swordsman buff? As mentioned, I don't mind swords being worse against strong enemies, but they ought to be a bit better against weaker ones to compensate. Would a simple +1DEF be better, or maybe +1DEF +1 ATK, or +2 DEF, or even +3DEF -1 ATK?

With the Nymph and Fairy, the Beetle, and the Wolf riders, I guess it depends; is reworking these units to lose Strike, lose Charge, lose HP etc., in exchange for Physical Protection, Concealment, Charm etc., a good idea that just happens to need stronger compensatory buffs, or is it a bad/clunky idea?

What about this;
Nymph: Strike removed, Concealment, Physical Protection, Bard Skills at Gold
Fairy: DEF 5 to 7, Strike removed, Charm, Dispel Magic I/II/III, True Seeing

With the nymph and the Wolf Cavalry, I would have thought Concealment would be a big point more than compensating for the loss of Strike and Charge respectively.

Oh, and also, nerfing all archers by -1 HP is nastier for Goblins because the Darter starts at 4, not 5 HP. I'd thought them strong enough to cope, but maybe not. Plus, hearing from your tests, I suppose I can give Spearmen +1ATK

Also, didn't realise Spirit Puppets didn't have True Seeing. Oops.