[.915][Discussion] comparison of the OP of faction abilities

From my experience so far any abilities that require mana use are underpowered, specifically golems and resoln summoning. There are always lots of good uses for mana, this increases competition for that resource so these specials are only as good as the difference between them and the next best way to spend. Haveing played games with resoln and gilden in 0.915, golems and spiders aren't worth it.

I really didn't get golems, they are tough to kill but just can't dish out the damage you need them to to justify the mana spend.

Resoln is a joke for me atm, the lack of armour makes them very easy to tear apart. I love playing against them, battles are quick and easy. They can web you, but as long as you keep your army together you just let them come to you.

The Pariden outpost spell is definitely very useful but I don't consider it overpowered - it costs 30 mana, which is a big deal in the early game. Tarth's superscouts ability is balanced by the fact they don't get much else - also their over-reliance on bows can be shut down through air magic and carefully selecting traits and equipment for your troops.

I've played Magnar in the last beta and I really like the slaves - even if they are weak, you can spam them like crazy an they're really expendable because it's so easy to replace them too - in the early game they are amazing.

I've played Resoln too and I would actually put the shard converting higher than the bound spiders - as they also get extra death spells. Ceresa can single handedly win the game as long as she has lots of death shards. The spiders won't win the game by themselves (although they are nice t have )

Gilden's abilities kick in late game and the armour can be totally bypassed through mass curse so personally I'd drop these a few ranks.

I haven't played Yithril or Kraxis so I havent really got an opinion on these. The juggernauts are another late game bonus though so often the dye is set once you gte to this stage in the game. I did have a brief go with Altar however I quickly ditched them to play a new game with Pariden so I didnt get much chance to try em out.

Pariden and Tarth may be able to expand quickly but I don't think territory is the deciding factor really - the AI often expands quicker than me and trains more troops too but I know I can beat them as long as I've developed my sovereign well and he/she is backed up by some good troops. It's quite possible to keep up with the AI with just a couple of cities, the key thing is to develop a powerful sovereign with a highly levelled escort, this one force can then tear your neighbours a new one when you wish to expand.

Anyway just a few thoughts

As a way to balance Tarth, what if the "invisibility" to monsters was an enchantment you could put on units, stacks, and structures that required a small mana upkeep.  That might put it more in line with some of the other abilities?

@ Droghar

I don't think the AI is playing Resoln right, they are actually very powerful and the lack of armour is no big deal really (they should be developing down the civ and magic branches anyway).

That's how I played them, but i just didn't have the mana to create a big enough army. Maybe if you get very lucky with a lot of shards early, but still... I think mana is the most valuable resource in the game and it is already heavily utilised. With their armour penalty you have next to no use for all the metal you find, so you are wasting one available resource and overutilising another.

I had a big surplus of metal with Resoln, they don't have many ways to use this up unfortunately. I didnt train lots of spiders either (probably 14 throughout the entire game till it bugged on me) - I just looked on them as maintenance free garrisons that cost the price of a summon (in mana) - they werent central to my strategy (they work well with ranged troops though). I liked the Cyndrum demons if you could get them to 9 - but really I think the big strength of Resoln is their death magic

The reason I think territory is such a big thing, is that I spam spells something fierce.  The more teerritory I have, ergo the more shards I have, the more I can spam spells to win.  When I'm generating 40 mana per turn.... after copious enchantment maintenance costs..... I can do whatever I feel like because I have the mana to do so. 

You're right about paraiden's ability being hard to use early on....   I just save the mana enough to be able to grab every shard I see.  Then before early game section finishes, I have that much mana per turn, I can fill in the gaps of my territory.

Fast mages with enough mana are practically unbeatable.  See someone's example above of Ceresa with death shard spam

When comparing faction abilities, you have to take into account all the abilities of a faction. For example Resoln have shard-converting, bound elementals AND spiders. They can't have three abilities that are as good as Tarths single ability, then they would be *too* OP. I like the point of this thread, but I would choose to rank the factions in regards to all their abilities, instead of ranking the ablities alone. On the other hand, I suppose there's also a point in pointing out which single abilities are the best too, as long as you look at the whole picture when ranking the factions.

I don't get it, why is Altar's henchmen 11th (or 7th) again?

Submitted for your approval:

That's what happens when you get 7 path of defender henchmens in the same army. COMPLETELY UNTOUCHABLE. Sure, they take some time to raise, but once they get a couple of levels... watch out.

I think the ranking depend a lot on your playstyle. I personally think that Altar henchment champs are a little broken too, but in the opposite direction (i put them first in an OP ranking, so much that I don't play with Altar in .915)

Is too easy to levelling them (quitted the game because it was so easy in fact, that I felt like cheating): in my only attempt I had 6 henchmen and in i took with them a mean of 1 and half level per battle...

I think the golems are very good! they can take a lot of punishment and survive the battle, I usually use them with the lighting hammer, and a couple of item to boost initiative.

Resoln is all about the death shard demons (they rock), forget the spiders. Combined with the death magic of their sov, its pretty unstoppable (as long as you play against an AI at least). 

The demons of the death shard get 400 hitpoints midgame.

The spiders are totally useless except to cast webs. Normal troops will destroy them.

If they got Hoarder Spiders that would not be the case.   Hoarder Spiders rule!  (Especially with the bug with splash damage. ;-))

I've yet to win a small world game with many AI opponents, as Pariden.  The outpost spell's advantages are negated under those circumstances, leaving Pariden with disadvantages--which only shows that there are too many variables in gameplay to lock abilities down as best or worst in a single list.

There are some really good points coming out of this.  It looks like a lot of the powers come into their own mid-late game, especially those that require nurturing.  AND that I was biased to towards easy outpost spell

Perhaps grouping the abilities into their strategic game effect would help determine their comparability of OPness? I've already aluded to Tarth and Parieden's abilities being linked to territory aquisition.  From the sentiments above, I'd say that Tarth probably have the upperhand here due to the overall usefulness of not getting attacked, compared to the mana cost of the outpost spell, which has diminishing returns for small maps.

Altar Henchemen, Resoln death demons I think are comparable in that they both need a great deal of nurturing to get them OP.  I'd say that the henchman probably have the upperhand here, due to being able to raise damage output, and defense.  500hp of squishy with a fist won't end up beating a tank or warrior henchman with upped deg, and a sword that belongs in a JRPG

Has anyone been using the special armours, or buying city traits?  Or the recruiting both factions' champions?  Or other thoughts on Juggs at the moment?

The question is not what unit or ability you can nurture into becoming OP, but how fast you can abuse that ability to be OP.  On this basis, I am finding the Tarth scouting ridiculously strong.  All you have to do is pioneer spam from the beginning and settle as many places as you can early on, then cast city improvement spells like meditation, inspiration and enchanted hammers to get your power base going.  Once you do that, no one declares war on you, which means you don't even need combat units so you can keep on expanding.

I tried such a mass expansion tactic and I had a power base that ended up being 8x stronger than the 2nd best sovereign in just 70 turns or so.  I could probably just declare war and demand surrender straight away on every sovereign and win that way.

That was on challenging, but I figure if it works that well for challenging, it should work on higher levels to.

Tarth's master scouts doesnt really help the AI though because the monsters ignore them and their buildings anyway. If a player takes Tarth then all it's really doing is levelling the playing field so that the monsters don't chase the human player either.

I think the trog abilities are pretty weak simply because they have to go halfway down the tech tree to access them - it takes ages to access those abilities and on the harder settings you can't afford to wait that long

Resoln demons need nurturing? Attack bandits (two+dog) and go up 3 levels in an easy fight. You can get super units immediately. The only thing that slows them is the building time of the first shard. I am winning a game on hard now with the demons, and doing no research in military.

Edit: By levels, I mean that the unit split three times and goes from a single unit to four units in one easy fight

For Pariden, outposts can be used for more than just territory grabbing.  You can also use it as a way to get under territory for a big fight, so you get the +25% territory bonus.  Expensive in mana early game, but it can help you win fights that you'd otherwise lose/be costly. 

Also, I've won a game on hard as every race but Altar and Yithril this patch, and I'd say Tarth have the most powerful abilities currently, for the standard settings, at least.  Every other race I fell behind in points, and had to fight a war vs the rest of the world, until I eventually ground them all down.  Tarth I stayed ahead the entire game, because of all their abilities geared towards the early game gave me a massive amount of cities, outposts, and easy creeping with my sovereign.  The only reason I went to war was that I was bored, and about to win by master quest, so I quickly crushed two races.

Most fun, however, is definitely Resoln.  I like being able to control which shards I have, so I don't end up with 7 air shards of 12 total shards, when I have no air mages.  Also, the most powerful tactical spell in the game, Dirge of Ceresa.

Fair call Jasoze.  I just tinkenred iin a game as Resoln, and yeah, you can definately get them going early on when they are the most powerful.