Era of Chaos v1.4.0 for Wesnoth 1.12 and 1.13

[Atreides]

Happy New Year! I could not wait and I've uploaded the port (easy, it was so well made) to 1.16 today. Enjoy this great and classic era again!
A few bugs fixed other than the ones I posted about earlier. The Bloodborn was ignoring global traits instead of race. Also a few bow anims had their timing changed so they now shoot smoothly.

[Atreides]

Well I put off updating the dreaded special notes but it's done now. Turned out to be finicky and picky since the custom notes needed preservation and were in a file of their own. Ugh. Along the way I unexpectedly found quite a few things that needed fixing up in the appearance department. Lots of typos etc. Also a lot of unused animation sprites! Due to the large number of improvements I decided to put it out as 1.6, so enjoy the even more beautiful EoC!

[RHH]

It appears to be a bug when "random non-eoc" faction set is selected. I played like tens of games and I have never seen default undead faction when this was selected. EoC undead faction have id "Undead" which might be the same as default undead's and thus removing both of them from generation pool.

Is any balance feedback relevant now? I played Chaos Empire faction extensively and noticed few things.
I think there are some issues with flying drone upgrades with assault drone being considerably better in almost every aspect than sentry drone: damage, resistances. Ironically enough this is clearly stated in sentry drone's description. Difference of +1 mp and marksman on claws attack can't compensate for -12 damage (8x4 vs 11x4(!)) on their ranged attack and a bunch of resistances (especially, 30% piercing).
Also, hounds of chaos seem a little bit too weak. Too fragile and too low damage to utilise their berserk. They may be useful against dark adepts but considering written above I haven't tried this.
Other than that CE is an excellent faction, one of my favourite.

[Atreides]

It appears to be a bug when "random non-eoc" faction set is selected. I played like tens of games and I have never seen default undead faction when this was selected. EoC undead faction have id "Undead" which might be the same as default undead's and thus removing both of them from generation pool.

Is any balance feedback relevant now? I played Chaos Empire faction extensively and noticed few things.
I think there are some issues with flying drone upgrades with assault drone being considerably better in almost every aspect than sentry drone: damage, resistances. Ironically enough this is clearly stated in sentry drone's description. Difference of +1 mp and marksman on claws attack can't compensate for -12 damage (8x4 vs 11x4(!)) on their ranged attack and a bunch of resistances (especially, 30% piercing).
Also, hounds of chaos seem a little bit too weak. Too fragile and too low damage to utilise their berserk. They may be useful against dark adepts but considering written above I haven't tried this.
Other than that CE is an excellent faction, one of my favourite.

Thanks for catching that bug! I can verify that it was indeed a problem. I set 7 sides to non eoc random with mirroring off and that should force all 7 to appear once but the undead did not for the very reason you mentioned. I've made all the EOC id's unique and it's fixed it. When I added the mainline factions and the randoms I didn't notice that the EOC had its undead with the same id as the core. Apologies for that oversight! Version 1.7.0 has just been uploaded with the fix.

As for balance I've not touched what the original authors did yet. I wasn't sure if one of them would want to reclaim it since I believe some of them are still sort of semi-active.
However it is looking more and more unlikely.
I looked at the drones and you're right that one branch is much better than the other. But as you say they seem to have designed it that way. One thought is that while a level up costs the same and makes one a better choice there is also the Age of Heroes faction to consider. The Sentry costs 2 less than the Assault. That's possibly the best place to make an adjustment since that's probably far to little a difference. Of course that still leaves the problem with the AI randomly choosing one of the 2 at level up time.
The hounds I've also noticed as being not very attractive. At 16 they're way too pricey. A pack of cheap ones could be more useful. Reading their description again I note they too were designed to be fragile!
So what do you think? Would lowering their costs be a good way to go? I have a cost formula I've used with some success that I could apply to them.

Yeah the CE is definitely the signature faction of the Era and I'm always glad when I get them randomly!

[RHH]

Thanks for catching that bug! I can verify that it was indeed a problem. I set 7 sides to non eoc random with mirroring off and that should force all 7 to appear once but the undead did not for the very reason you mentioned. I've made all the EOC id's unique and it's fixed it. When I added the mainline factions and the randoms I didn't notice that the EOC had its undead with the same id as the core. Apologies for that oversight! Version 1.7.0 has just been uploaded with the fix.

As for balance I've not touched what the original authors did yet. I wasn't sure if one of them would want to reclaim it since I believe some of them are still sort of semi-active.
However it is looking more and more unlikely.
I looked at the drones and you're right that one branch is much better than the other. But as you say they seem to have designed it that way. One thought is that while a level up costs the same and makes one a better choice there is also the Age of Heroes faction to consider. The Sentry costs 2 less than the Assault. That's possibly the best place to make an adjustment since that's probably far to little a difference. Of course that still leaves the problem with the AI randomly choosing one of the 2 at level up time.
The hounds I've also noticed as being not very attractive. At 16 they're way too pricey. A pack of cheap ones could be more useful. Reading their description again I note they too were designed to be fragile!
So what do you think? Would lowering their costs be a good way to go? I have a cost formula I've used with some success that I could apply to them.

Yeah the CE is definitely the signature faction of the Era and I'm always glad when I get them randomly!

I see. As far as I'm concerned Age of Heroes era type is not meant to be that well balanced as regular one, so it does not really matter there. Thus, if changing stats/abilities is undesirable, let it be as it is.

Lowering cost of hounds would probably be sufficient to make them viable unit choice.

[Atreides]

I see. As far as I'm concerned Age of Heroes era type is not meant to be that well balanced as regular one, so it does not really matter there. Thus, if changing stats/abilities is undesirable, let it be as it is.

Lowering cost of hounds would probably be sufficient to make them viable unit choice.

Hehe, I think for the AoH no one has tried to balance them, not sure it is by design. But I am not averse to changing the stats for these old eras. I totally overhauled the Lonely Era to make it finely balanced so it is something I've got experience with. It did take hours of playtesting and tons of small edits though. : ) However as far as the sentry drone goes I have an idea that might bump it up a bit and still stay true to its lore: Steadfast. That's in keeping with its guard duty nature. No idea if it is enough (or too much). Can also bump up resistances I suppose.

I'll recalculate the hounds and enhance the drone and try 'em out before doing an update.

[RHH]

Hehe, I think for the AoH no one has tried to balance them, not sure it is by design. But I am not averse to changing the stats for these old eras. I totally overhauled the Lonely Era to make it finely balanced so it is something I've got experience with. It did take hours of playtesting and tons of small edits though. : ) However as far as the sentry drone goes I have an idea that might bump it up a bit and still stay true to its lore: Steadfast. That's in keeping with its guard duty nature. No idea if it is enough (or too much). Can also bump up resistances I suppose.

I'll recalculate the hounds and enhance the drone and try 'em out before doing an update.

Extra resistances definitely should be added then. Otherwise steadfast won't work as sentry drone resistances are all non-positive (unless with armored trait).
Also enforcer drone might need to inherit all these changes too.

[Atreides]

Hehe, I think for the AoH no one has tried to balance them, not sure it is by design. But I am not averse to changing the stats for these old eras. I totally overhauled the Lonely Era to make it finely balanced so it is something I've got experience with. It did take hours of playtesting and tons of small edits though. : ) However as far as the sentry drone goes I have an idea that might bump it up a bit and still stay true to its lore: Steadfast. That's in keeping with its guard duty nature. No idea if it is enough (or too much). Can also bump up resistances I suppose.

I'll recalculate the hounds and enhance the drone and try 'em out before doing an update.

Extra resistances definitely should be added then. Otherwise steadfast won't work as sentry drone resistances are all non-positive (unless with armored trait).
Also enforcer drone might need to inherit all these changes too.

I just re-read the desc. for sentry and the lore for it is weaker and light armoured. That contradicts steadfast and better resis. : ( So I'm gonna roll that back. I'm definitely getting the impression that the sentry branch is meant to be simply inferior! It does have 4 more hp and 1 more mp as well as 3 more fang damage and marksman on its claws on the other hand. Maybe that's where it could be boosted. OTOH the Assault could be nerfed although the obvious thing (that juicy 11x4 attack) seems to be set into the lore too.

Any suggestions would be very welcome!

P.S. Found a error in the L1 drone description, usual was meant to be unusual!

[RHH]

You're right, I considered that but didn't take time to recheck how steadfast worked.

I also noticed that oddly enough there is a Protector Drone which has steadfast but is not in the same line as the sentry. And yep the sentry level up should inherit the ability too.

I analysed the faction to get a feel for the various units and mostly they seem roughly on target except for one glaring exception: The level one drone. It's really cheap at 11 (I estimate 15 being it's real value) and has low xp requirements too. There is one unit that costs 20 and is rather overpriced which perhaps was to form a counterbalance to the cheap drone.

Level one drone might be underpriced a bit, but considering its fragility, by value not as much as 4 gold.
From my experience, chaos gunner never felt like a waste of money for what he offer, basically a more damaging chaos bowman, unlike hounds.

[RHH]

I just re-read the desc. for sentry and the lore for it is weaker and light armoured. That contradicts steadfast and better resis. : ( So I'm gonna roll that back. I'm definitely getting the impression that the sentry branch is meant to be simply inferior! It does have 4 more hp and 1 more mp as well as 3 more fang damage and marksman on its claws on the other hand. Maybe that's where it could be boosted. OTOH the Assault could be nerfed although the obvious thing (that juicy 11x4 attack) seems to be set into the lore too.

Any suggestions would be very welcome!

P.S. Found a error in the L1 drone description, usual was meant to be unusual!

Ok. Then their light armor may be turned into their advantage - more agility, i.e. defence. Moreover, according to enforcer drone description, they are smarter, so sentry drones could require substantially less experience to level up.

[Atreides]

Thanks for the suggestions. I came up with an idea also but it's more complicated. Since the Sentry protects new drones and they're unusually cheap and easy to level I was thinking about a brand new ability for the sentry: Brood Protector. As long as one exists the price of drones is lower.

At first I was thinking of going nuts with the wml and making it dependent on a sentry being in or adjacent to the keep the leader is nearest to but that would be kinda annoying. Simple existence of a sentry could lower the recruit cost of drones (which would be recalculated to a more realistic higher xp/gold cost) to something like it is now.

I'll have a look first at trying your suggestion since it sounds pretty good and sure is simpler to do. : ) Perhaps I'll try both together!

[IPS]

Btw just letting know, somewhere in Ageless era files there are some juicy sprites that once a long ago a guy made for Elemental's ethereal orb , ethereal serpent and ethereal dragon for Ageless's EOC version. Even if it's not accesible as a playable faction right now in ageless, you can still take these sprites from there and use it to improve EOC ethereal orb sprites and to all its advancements.

Also one thing, demon shapeshifter is absolutely broken unit, even in Ageless I attempted to nerf it with lowered ressistances (-15% on all, literally) and still, it's quite abusable in many aspects (specially in RPG gameplay). I was about to lower its ranged accuracy to +Enchanted as unit really doesn't need any ranged to be god. You might be lucky to land heavy blows with wose / HI / thunderguard / lv3 necromancer and burst it with high damages so it can't heal before recovering half of damage taken ... physical endurance is absurdly strong special.

Only two things I have to say.

[RHH]

I saw Ageless Era has quite noticeable solution regarding chaos hounds: 5x3 attack on berserk and extra attack 8x2 or something like this without berserk. I suppose, the second one preserves hounds from using berserk while defending against stronger opponents, doesn't it?

[Atreides]

Btw just letting know, somewhere in Ageless era files there are some juicy sprites that once a long ago a guy made for Elemental's ethereal orb , ethereal serpent and ethereal dragon for Ageless's EOC version. Even if it's not accesible as a playable faction right now in ageless, you can still take these sprites from there and use it to improve EOC ethereal orb sprites and to all its advancements.

Also one thing, demon shapeshifter is absolutely broken unit, even in Ageless I attempted to nerf it with lowered ressistances (-15% on all, literally) and still, it's quite abusable in many aspects (specially in RPG gameplay). I was about to lower its ranged accuracy to +Enchanted as unit really doesn't need any ranged to be god. You might be lucky to land heavy blows with wose / HI / thunderguard / lv3 necromancer and burst it with high damages so it can't heal before recovering half of damage taken ... physical endurance is absurdly strong special.

Only two things I have to say.

Thanks! I've had a look and they are indeed problems that will be fixed. The Eth. Orb has same sprites for all 3 levels which is not ideal...
The shapeshifter I've not actually tested in combat but perusing the code shows that the physical endurance ability instantly regens half of all damage taken. That's effectively 50% resis to all. I'm unsure why it was made an ability instead of just giving it those resis. More investigation required! Offhand I'd guess lowering its HP would make it easier to kill.

[Atreides]

I saw Ageless Era has quite noticeable solution regarding chaos hounds: 5x3 attack on berserk and extra attack 8x2 or something like this without berserk. I suppose, the second one preserves hounds from using berserk while defending against stronger opponents, doesn't it?

Thanks for the pointer. I hadn't thought to look up the AE sol'n. It sound quite good to me too. Lorewise it would fit in fine, a vicious chaos hound, fragile and fast but no reason it should not have a brutal attack. When I saw the 5x2 I kinda blinked and thought, what the hell? I'll try and work out something similar. I'm leaning towards boosting the 5x2 to 7x2 or so. As for the non-berserk attack I'll re-read the desc. (and related ones) to see if that fits the lore. Giving it a reg. attack is a fairly big change!