The Dark Elves

Temuchin Khan · Post by **Temuchin Khan** » November 27th, 2005, 3:50 am

Having playtested the Dark Elves, I have to side with Doc Paterson. I like the project, but they are a bit overpowered. And lu_zero's arguments do not satisfy me.

lu_zero wrote:
Doc Paterson wrote: While I think that this is a good and fun project, I think there are two major flaws with the nature of the balancing. The first is the more obvious one: Some of the units, are comparitively speaking, overpowered in how they'd interact with the other factions. The fighter is pretty crazy. That much damage for so few gold is unheard of, and the HP is not so low that it would really offset this much. Consider also that there is a 2 in 5 chance of this unit getting even more crazy than it already is- The strong trait would be occurring almost half the time and would bump that up to 30 damage for only 15 gold.
the warriors will die on any terrain but cave... Not to mention that happens against a ranged unit.

On the contrary, I hardly ever used the Dark Elves in caves, and more often than not emerged victorious, except when facing other Elves.

lu_zero wrote:
Doc Paterson wrote: If you really want to keep that much damage, the cost should be, in my opinion, at least 22. The fact that it has no melee doesn't mean much of anything, outside of the fact that an ulf could wipe it out without being damaged. This faction as it is though would make ulfs practically unusable, so that issue is nearly irrelevant to the balancing of the wizard. Consider the human mage, whose melee is pretty insignificant, costs 20, has low HP, and does only 7-3. You can say that it seems balanced (monetarily) compared to the Dark Adept, but the Adept has a very specific role in a very different faction (this will connect to my second point.)
The adept advances to a melee and ranged unit, the mage not. That is an interesting malus since lots of lv1 units could take it down (nearly) w/out much hassle.

But a mage and a fighter combined are a deadly combination, which offsets the weaknesses either would suffer alone.

lu_zero wrote:
Doc Paterson wrote: The lizard Rider is just like a better Horseman. The standard melee option is actually a very strong and useful option, and levels out one of the weaknesses of the Horseman. Lizard-movement-type is also insanely powerful for this type of unit...zero penalty over hills (and the ability to move on mountains) is a really big deal for a "finishing" unit such as this. I'd recommend dropping its Charge attack to 8-2, at least. The lower HP is again, in my opinion, not signficant enough to counter this imbalance.
low hp and charge means win or die in much situations.

On the contrary, the Lizard Rider levels up into a Lizard Master before it dies, and consequently gains power, gets fully healed, and becomes more dangerous than ever. And have you ever played against the Dark Elves? Lizard Riders are a terror, and can eliminate most units very quickly!

lu_zero wrote:
Doc Paterson wrote: My second point is more of a conceptual issue: Suppose you had a faction that could recruit Horsemen, Assassins, Dark Adepts and some sort of generic, super-damaging Fighter. Do you see what the problem would be? Too many bases are being covered by allowing the Dark Elves such a span of powerful options; it seems that they would have a fairly easy and obvious counter for anything that could be sent their way. Can you imagine what Drake vs. Undead would be like if the Undead, in addition to the power of the Adept, also had the massive pierce damage and range of the Loyalist Horseman? Or what Undead vs. Loyalist would be like if the Undead had the supplement of ranged poison?
You forgot the fact that they sucks on anything but cave...
The main problem with DE is that they could be quite powerful but they will die soon if they come outside the cave...
If the drakes have low defense and high damage and somewhat high hp to cope, the DE have low def outside cave and low hp. That said would be great if they could get a 30% or 40% excursion between night and day.

In my experience, Dark Elves do just fine outside the caves. Doc Paterson is right, rebalancing is needed.

Assasin · Post by **Assasin** » November 27th, 2005, 4:35 am

yes, dark elves do fine outside, it wouldn't be a balanced faction if they didn't.

And have you ever played against the Dark Elves? Lizard Riders are a terror, and can eliminate most units very quickly!

omg i love this quote

the lizard rider was designed to be powerful, they are an elite unit of the Dark Elves. They serve as a scout and a fighting unit. After I make the changes to their movement they'll be great.

And about the wizard, I am making a separate mage/fighter line for it that does fire damage. Look back a few pages to see.

avv · Post by **avv** » November 27th, 2005, 11:00 am

Assasin wrote:the lizard rider was designed to be powerful, they are an elite unit of the Dark Elves. They serve as a scout and a fighting unit. After I make the changes to their movement they'll be great.

Why would a armored knight serve as scout? I thought that the hunter was supposed to be the scout guy?

Post by **turin** » November 27th, 2005, 3:52 pm

Assasin wrote:the lizard rider was designed to be powerful, they are an elite unit of the Dark Elves. They serve as a scout and a fighting unit. After I make the changes to their movement they'll be great.

Uh... you're going to make them really expensive to match, right? The way you are describing them, they need to cost at least 28.

Assasin · Post by **Assasin** » November 27th, 2005, 7:18 pm

avv wrote:
Assasin wrote:the lizard rider was designed to be powerful, they are an elite unit of the Dark Elves. They serve as a scout and a fighting unit. After I make the changes to their movement they'll be great.
Why would a armored knight serve as scout? I thought that the hunter was supposed to be the scout guy?

The hunter can serve as a scout, but the rider moves faster, and has almost no penalty over terrain. However, he has low defenses, and is very weak to pierce, cold, and fire. And he costs 23 gold.

Post by **turin** » November 27th, 2005, 7:50 pm

Assasin wrote:The hunter can serve as a scout, but the rider moves faster, and has almost no penalty over terrain. However, he has low defenses, and is very weak to pierce, cold, and fire. And he costs 23 gold.

Being weak to specific damage types is not very important for fast-moving units, because they can just avoid units with those damage types.

Come on. They should cost more than 23, even if they do have below-average defense.

Assasin · Post by **Assasin** » November 27th, 2005, 8:29 pm

he has eight movement though, and his defenses are pretty low on all the terrains. He isn't much different from a griffon ridder, and he costs more! If it costs anymore, it'll be to expensive.

Oreb · Post by **Oreb** » November 27th, 2005, 8:55 pm

I agree with assassin on the Lizard Rider

Also, the script says you need a Grand Dwarf Lord, do you mind if i did some searching around the forums and the post the result here because i saw a project like this being done 2 months ago

Assasin · Post by **Assasin** » November 27th, 2005, 10:08 pm

not at all, please do.

lu_zero · Post by **lu_zero** » November 27th, 2005, 11:39 pm

I did some cpu vs cpu and:

Rebels always destroy DE

KA destroys DE mostly when the griphon are used, otherways are pretty balanced

Loyalist may win using maulers and the proper units

Drakes sucks bigtime, but is commond since they have low defense, using saurians works a bit better

Undeads dominates.

Seems that:

Lizard Rider does too much damage to be balanced against drakes

The mages with resilient trait may be too much a boon.

the other units are ok

Temuchin Khan · Post by **Temuchin Khan** » November 28th, 2005, 1:44 am

lu_zero wrote:Rebels always destroy DE

Now that you mention it, I cannot deny that this is true.

Post by **Doc Paterson** » November 28th, 2005, 2:22 am

lu_zero wrote:I did some cpu vs cpu:

Why in the world would you do that?

No offense to the playstyle of the computer, but you'd get more meaningful 1v1 data from coin-flipping.

"Are the Dark Elves overpowered?"

"Coin says NO!"

Here's a better idea. We'll set up a time to play, and you can try to kill my Dark Elves using your Rebels.

Sound good?

lu_zero · Post by **lu_zero** » November 28th, 2005, 2:48 am

Well cpu vs cpu a number of times (2x2 since I switch sides) isn't really a statistic but should be more representative of the difference of strenght of the units.

Probably you are a better player than me and probably you'll lose of boredom once we reach the third match ^^;

Oreb · Post by **Oreb** » November 28th, 2005, 7:55 am

Finally after hours of searching here it is, i didn't find any attack stats or anything like that so you decide what they are like

there is a level 3 and 4 i am guessing (purple shield is the better)

Also, Casual User was the creator of these fine specimans of dwarves to be killed

JW · Post by JW » November 28th, 2005, 10:34 am

Doc, I love your logic. Your description of the imbalances were also very well put - things I kindof noticed, but couldn't put into words.

I would also like to mention that NO level 1 unit has 5 attacks other than the DE Fighter. If you want the DE Fighter to be a melee terror, you may want to change his damage to 8-3, or better yet, 10-2. Compared to any other similar fighting unit they would deal more damage, but the Strong trait would not overpower them as much. Also, they would be more luck prone and deal slightly less damage than they currently do. As of now their Maximum Damage Potential (MDP - my new acronym) is 25.