[0.915 Suggestion] Monster Armies

I like how you try to find "Low memory budget" solutions, always nice .

You are probably right, my "annoyance" is there are no "Counters" or rather counter strategies against things, with the old dodge system you had to have a shield before engaging a bear, now you will just face tons of mauls where shields help very very little. Those kinds of things
(like Shields helps against bears, spears helps against some big bad demon monsters, dont remember a counter against overpower either)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Those damn bears!  Yeah good point about the counters to.  They are there but are so weak as to be called counters.  From the top of my head:

Curse or Elemental Attack/Spells vs High Armor

Doge or Blind vs Maul or low accuracy hard hitters

Single Unit vs Overpower

Spear vs Counterattack or High Armor

Haste/Slow vs high initiative

Elemental Attack vs Low Elemental resistances

Anything vs Ranged (definitely need a buff)

Fireball or Splash vs Groups

Regeneration + High Armor vs soft hitters

Maybe 1 or 2 of those can be considered a true rock, paper, scissors counter.  The rest are meh, which means you can just build a generic super unit to take on everything (boring).

I think monsters should generally be harder but the lower end to have some fundamental massive weakness(s) to force you to adapt to your surroundings.  There is very little adaptation at the moment.  And then have large rewards for building certain unit / researching certain spell for killing the monsters.  

This feature is what Master of Magic used to have--very tough battles with high level monsters that you can win early on with the right counter (which is not immediately available) with a reward which makes the beeline for the tech/unit worth it in the end.  I think this is the only way to increase re-playability on this front as you cannot just use any generic strategy to win (which you can at the moment).

Anyone remember the phantom warrior spam vs those pesky Earth Elementals, etc?

I like the counters as is, it's well balanced. You can tailor your army / method against a certain monster / army to be more effective, but you can't use it to destroy something much more powerful. I think that's about perfect. True rock / paper / scissors would be terrible.

In terms of monster party size, agree, more variety using existing models would be good. More custom parties that combine different types would be cool too.

Each to his own I guess.  I personally like rock, paper, scissors as I think it adds more strategy and punishes crap strategy but it's personal preference.

Sample suggestions for variety (using Hoarder Spider as example):

Giant Hoarder Spider (+50% hp)

Fast Hoarder Spider (+5 initiative)

Venomous Hoarder Spider (extra poison damage/turn)

You can be very creative on this front and don't need new models.  You can even just colour the old models like the current shrills. :/

Lightning Hoarder Spider? (okay, this is going a bit far).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I am not impressed when I see this list, mostly due to the inability to correctly acheive half of the items unless you are the correct faction. Blind and Curse are both Empire specific. and Single unit vs overpower begs me to have very overpowered heroes or ignore the creature, I cannot produce proper "single units" to use which I think is a bad way to counter something.

Spear vs counter attack... How often do you see counterattack in the wild? dogs and wolves they are so squishy it doesnt matter.

There are a couple of ways to deal with high armor, tht is nice, though elemental attacks are rather weak IMO and I usually ignore them unless I get the elemental damage in some package of good stuffs on a weapon.

As with the other counters, there are these soft counters that are more like "incase you have fireball, press the fireball button now" rather than I would tailor my army for my opponents weaknesses, I cannot possible retrain my trained troops to use different weapons or give them any of these abilities, besides shields and spears. (Depending on faction again).

I know heroes can counter most of the things you meet in the game, so meaby the game is less centric about trained units than what I would like, just my feelings anyways.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I fully agree Kongdej.  I think evolutionary adaptive strategy is always preferable to predefined "master plan" strategies.  But I guess I come from a high level RTS background and the majority might prefer otherwise.

That said, Civ IV, for example, was always about adapting to your environment, which made it one of the most phenomenal 4x of all time.

Ah, Civ IV, we shall not see your like again..

That said, I agree with Kongdej and MiamiBigAl, Fallen Enchantress doesn't allow trained units to shine against monsters, or even against AI troops at higher difficulties (hard to counteract x3 HP on the enemy)

My solution would be more traits, including some that would be absolutely overpowered if they were available without research.  There could be traits that simply negate 'overpower' for example, or that have dodge bonuses against 'circle attack'

Or high level traits negating Maul.

I honestly dont like all the "negating" going on, id rather have traits that defend against maul, and defend against overpower.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Fending Blade is an excellent counter for Maul.

and pretty high-tech compared to bears

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

My thoughts exactly.

I despise true Rock-Paper-Scissor systems, as they artificially enhance instability in strategies.

I would much rather see more Traits that help offset advantages (as Kongdej indicated) such as:

1. A trait which doubles any accuracy penalty in targeting the unit (such as Maul after the first attack, or spells which make you harder to hit) called "Squirrely". 
2. A trait which offsets magic damage by 10%, and several more which ablate specific-typed magic damage by 25%. 
3. A trait which improves the Shield bonus against ranged attacks.
4. A trait called "Parry" which gives a small bonus to dodge against bladed weapons.

So. Many. Options. None of the above are clear "If you take this trait, you can't lose against horses", but they help allow you to create units which are better against the types of combat conditions you are seeing in a relatively nimble way.

These could easily be peppered throughout the Warfare tree to add a great deal of value to each of the levels, and give us a far greater degree of control in HOW we choose to play the game without adding a significant number of balance issues.

Malsqueek -

Those are some great ideas. Another possible addition:

5) A trait where you get a bonus against enemies with higher initiative than you (an opposite finesse trait - call it stalwart or something)

CM

There is no such thing as "naturally" enhanced instability in strategies.  We're talking about a computer generated world.  Everything is artificial.  

You either have watered-down counters, or you have strong counters.  It is all rock-paper-scissors when it comes down to it; it's just a question of how absolute a counter you want.  The stronger the counters, the more you have to think about what unit/trait/spell you want to build/attach/research.

Imo, which is obviously in a lot of contention here, is that there should be quite a strong rock-paper-scissors element.  This always leads to the most exciting and innovative strategies, mind games, etc.

That said, resources should also be much more valuable than they are, and possibly more of them.  Your strategies should be influenced by what resources are available to you, but currently I don't give a damn about the resources near me and I often don't use them anyway.

I dealt with maul last night using standard trained units.

A wandering juggernaut approached one of my best towns when I had no heroes or trained troops around. I had 2 militia plus one archer, and 2 turns to prepare.

I designed a unit with warhammer, round shield, and the 2 +10 dodge traits. I rushed 2 in those 2 turns, and cast evade on them both (3 air shards). I didn't bother investing in defence as it wasn't worth it, so just wanted my most damaging weapon and as much dodge as I could muster (I think it was about 35 in the end).

It did the job, I lost 2 militia and one trained unit but killed him. I dodged enough times to outlast him.

Good job!

But how much did you spend on those rushed units?  I shudder to think :/

80 mana points for two casts of "Call to Arms"?