You think a faction is overpowered? Come here!

[csarmi]

Not necessarily.

Imagine that your elves vs drakes, and form a good defensive line, which your opponent can't afford to attack. Despite that, he still does. You have a great counter, but for it to work, you need to kill a saurian on plains with two units. You attack with one, a little unlucky. Now your best shot is to attack it with your red mage leader and you need 2/4 for that. If you don't do that attack, your counter will be quite ineffective and the opponents counter (or retreat, whichever seems better for him) leaves you in a bad position. If you do that attack, and succeed, your enemy collapses, you can cover+slow and game is practically over. If you do that attack, and dont succeed, your leader might die next turn, if you have some more unluck (say 25% chance overall which you cant prevent).

So by doing that attack, you have a 80% chance to win the game right away, about 5% to get your leader assasinated and 13% to just get into a bad position. (2% you fail your attack, but your opponent tries the leader kill (because he is lucky on your remaining turn) and fails).

Not doing that attack you finish the cycle with 2 units down and some economy lost.

Will you, or will you NOT do that attack?

/* It actually happened to me, I did make the attack, failed it and my leader died next time. I had really bad luck and the results were catastrophic. Where was my mistake? */

[svek]

Sure, I should have put a "probably" in the second statement as well... Or said "reasonably bad luck".
From the way you describe it I'd certainly do it.
(But just for the sake of disagreeing: Having a defensive plan depend on a likely but not certain kill of a saurian (needing to kill it in the first place). Misjudging the fact that he could indeed afford to attack your defensive line. Risking a gameloss for a 80 ctk instead of taking the 50% a (strong?) fighter would give. Not being aware that you'd possibly want to use your leader there and giving it the more secure attacking position.)

[JW]

Along the lines of the current discussion, luck is one of the reasons I really like to play Drakes. On my attack I can use a 3 or 4 strike melee unit that, with any hit, will do great damage (or equally, a burner). At night I can just retreat and take minimal, if any, damage. I will gladly give you a village for 2 turns to avoid a massive beatdown. If, somehow, I am roped into a fight at night, I have another 4 strike melee unit and a magic user (that uses Cold - the least resisted damage type). Also as Drakes I already have low defense, so I am not relying on it to keep me alive. The exception is obviously the saurians, but I use them more as specialty units anyway and don't really expect them to survive very long if they engage in combat.

Either way, I'm not relying on a 2 strike unit as I am with Northerners, or a thunderer's shot (which I've grown to hate; I almost never recruit them anymore unless faced against Drakes or multiple horses or non-skele-archers). Anyway, I could continue to write, but I feel like that's enough on the topic for now.

[Thrawn]

Either way, I'm not relying on a 2 strike unit as I am with Northerners, or a thunderer's shot (which I've grown to hate; I almost never recruit them anymore unless faced against Drakes or multiple horses or non-skele-archers). Anyway, I could continue to write, but I feel like that's enough on the topic for now.

Which is why I laugh when people question my use of wolf-riders and gobbos. That extra attack makes them more useful in some situations.

[csarmi]

I knew you would say that, svek, and you might be right. But you were right already in your last post, just not correct. My only problem was that your statement was too general (and thus not true).

What I meant was that there are situations, where you need to take a calculated risk just because that's the best move and that might even include a catastrophic outcome with a small chance.

[Silverwood]

Hmm... So which would be better for a race : dependability, or strongly heightened chances going either way?

[JW]

Hmm... So which would be better for a race : dependability, or strongly heightened chances going either way?

Heh....now that is a luck question. Of course, like I was hinting at earlier, you could play Drakes and get the best of all worlds.

[TL]

Hmm... So which would be better for a race : dependability, or strongly heightened chances going either way?

Heh....now that is a luck question. Of course, like I was hinting at earlier, you could play Drakes and get the best of all worlds.

Only if you're playing Age of Heroes with plenty of cash so's you can buy slashers. More strikes isn't always better; drakes suffer for the lack of a good two-hitter.

Reliability is a nice perk for drakes (pssst... by the way, you forgot gliders! 8 mp + marksman? yes please!), but there are plenty of times where it kind of sucks having their damage always spread out over so many strikes. Not really the best of all worlds after all.

[JW]

Only if you're playing Age of Heroes with plenty of cash so's you can buy slashers. More strikes isn't always better; drakes suffer for the lack of a good two-hitter.

Reliability is a nice perk for drakes (pssst... by the way, you forgot gliders! 8 mp + marksman? yes please!), but there are plenty of times where it kind of sucks having their damage always spread out over so many strikes. Not really the best of all worlds after all.

Heavy damage on attack,with several strikes, plus the ability to avoid damage is what I meant (can avoid catastrophic defenses through avoidance).

And I didn't mention scouts because they have either: 2 strikes (melee) or small damage (ranged). They aren't bad though, I agree.

[TL]

And I didn't mention scouts because they have either: 2 strikes (melee) or small damage (ranged). They aren't bad though, I agree.

Since drakes lack any high damage two-hitters, being able to reliably whittle off small amounts of HP (yay marksman!) is hugely helpful to them for efficiently managing CTK. Plus they have low XP costs and an awesome advancement.

[multilis]

Drakes vs Undead...


Drake fighter is one of best units as fast enough to run away and then strike quickly.

Whoever gets the nasty first strike likely wins, eg if you kill most of adepts, they can't kill you. So as others already have said, run like coward when you'll lose to the retaliation.

You have to vary your recruits based on enemy tactics, eg perhaps burners for ghoul/wc/ghost. (Guarding their flanks with meat shields when needed)

Don't forget suicide suprises, I've taken out ranged/fire drake leaders/kings by suiciding weak adepts at full day. (Only one spot to attack but first 2 adepts die after getting shot or 2 in)

(IMO either side can easily win in such a matchup. Isar's cross, I sometimes can launch suprise attack taking undead corner city turn 2 if full day.)

[TheMasterOfBattle]

hehe, isar's cross is not the best map to prove balancing issues, Isar's is known to be unbalanced.

As for either side being ablke to win the match-up, yes, it is actually a well balanced match-up when played correctly, considering that the two factions are polar opposites.

[Grand Marshal Aditya]

Wow...I came back to the forums and look at the topics that I see...

Yes Isar's cross is unbelievable imbalanced. That was the fact when I last left off. I am still downloading 1.6 so idk about this one.

As for matchups there is very little imbalance. There will always be a little. That is a given fact. However, this game has been around and has been repeatedly tested by many of us for years now so there is very little. I say that this game is as balanced as any commercial game out there.

If you have matchup you find difficult, there is almost certainly a solution out there in your army. Every unit serves a purpose and some are particularly there to deal with specific races.

Anyways, good to see a few familiar names still out here. I look forward to getting back into the loop of things.

[Thunderlord]

Any faction is powerful in the hands of an experienced player, therefore I say:

Experienced players are an unbalanced faction.

[nurgles_herald]

I know that people are quite convinced that drakes can do well against the undead in the hands of an experienced player, but the issue for me is that if both sides are in the hands of an experienced player, I find the undead consistently have the upper hand. Let's run the numbers.

During the day, das do 15-2 against most drakes, 11-2 against skirmishers. Because we're talking about magical attacks, that still gives 2 das a pretty solid chance (54.9% chance of at least 3 hits) of dishing out 45 damage to any drake, or 33 to any skirmisher. Not an assured kill, unlike at night, mind you, but it allows the undead to still pose a significant threat. This forces the drake player to play cautious aggro during the day, whereas the undead player can essentially go berserk at night, for reasons that I am sure all people here are well aware.

But it doesn't end there. Skirmishers, frequently cited by the uninformed as being an appropriate way to deal with das, are very poor at this role as well. If the undead player isn't a giant idiot, they can and will keep them in positions with high % defense. I think it is not absurd to assume an average defense % of 40 for das. 50 is probably more common, but that might strike some of you as being hyperbole. So, with 40% defense, doing 4 damage per strike with 4 attacks, you need two skirmishers to even do enough damage to kill a da. But, even then, you have an abysmal % chance to succeed (1.7% to do 32 damage).

The most obvious conclusion is that you really can only beat an undead player with drakes if he or she is a giant idiot, or you happen to be blessed with tremendous luck. Because this game should be at least partially based on strategy, I have issues with that.

There is a second glaring problem with drakes. Drakes versus knalgans. Yes, the common mantra is "thunderers, thunderers, thunderers." It's a mindless mantra. Thunderers do 18 piercing damage, which against most drake units translates into 20. But this is one attack, and so can be easily controlled by playing drakes defensively. On decent terrain, most drakes would have 40-50% defense, meaning that, in order for a knalgan player to have any good statistical chance of killing an enemy drake, they would need three thunderers. And even then, at 40% defense, it will only do at least 40 damage 64.8% of the time (and only 60 damage 21.6% of the time). 40 damage is enough to kill the weaker drake units, yes, but not enough to take down the heftier level 1's, especially not if they have resilient. In other words, thunderers are an inefficient way to defeat drakes. Another, less common counter, is to suggest massed fighters. However, because most drake units have resistance to blade and impact weapons, and because most drakes have ranged attacks, and because drake clashers are more than capable of handling fighters in melee, unless the fighter is on a mountain, this strategy is dependent upon the drake player not comprehending ZoC or the importance of hills/mountains to a Knalgan player. In other words, a knalgan player's best hope is for the drake player to be a noob, much as the drake's is for the undead player to be a noob. That is not a strategy. It's not even luck. It's just an obvious flaw in the game. Yes, some factions should be better against others, but it should not be a game of rock-paper-scissors with cooler graphics.

One, more complicated way to fix this would be to introduce a new unit to the drake faction. While this might work, it would require more labor than the more readily apparent fix. Just change drake weaknesses and resistances. I suggest setting drake cold weakness to -30%, and pierce weakness to -20%. This gives rebels and knalgans, the two factions that, in my experience and opinion have the most difficulty with drakes, a better shot against them, while simultaneously giving drakes a better chance against undead but keeping the faction balanced.

Comments? Yes. I took a statistics class. I recommend that, before you comment on how "balanced" things are, you run the numbers. It not only makes you look informed, it actually makes you informed, and an informed opinion is really the only thing that matters when it comes to suggestions for making a game balanced.