Elemental Forums
I created cheap Slave in Unit Design:
Cheap Slave costs only 1 production. So I build one Slave per season in each city. No enemy AI can stand against Slave rush. I conqueir their cities and build one Slave per season in conquered cities. Imho overpowered.
[0.99] Slave scout for 12 production. Is it balanced?
But this is more a problem of poor city defense than overpowered slaves.
Problem is not only in city defence. Slaves defeat enemy sovereigns, champions and trained units. Slaves outnumber all of them.
What about Slaves? They are really overpowered. Strategy is simple: build 5-10 Slaves in first 5-10 seasons and defeat nearliest sovereigns.
No...the slaves are not overpowered. The AI is weak, maybe.
The zerg rush must exist.
The only fix I see is adding about 60 labor to each slave and reducing their penalty as a slave to make up the cost.
or maybe lower the slaves hitpoints as they are slaves & prolly malnutrienced, you might have alot of them but they would be droppin like flys
cheap slaves = yum yum delicious XP to enemy sov.
The issue here is not slaves overpowered, its that enemy AI didn't properly react.
What's this? Another overpowered faction trait? Perfect! Brad and Derek are chuckling. And just as a reminder:
Tarth's invisibility to monsters and extra movement points are overpowered.
Pariden's access to all spell books, arcane monoliths, and Procipinee crown are overpowered.
Altar's henchmen are overpowered.
Kraxis' fortify and wealth are overpowered.
Resoln's Dirge spell, spiders, and shard elementals are overpowered.
Gilden's Lord Markin is an unstoppable super melee hero. He is overpowered.
Verga's clan has too many hit points and no weaknesses. That is overpowered.
What am I missing?
GO BIG OR GO THE FREAK HOME (GBOGTFH)!
imo slaves should be cheap but NOT customizable...
you pay less and can produce a large number of them but you cant make them really strong
they are stupid peons after all
also like others said, this is mostly a weakness of ai/city defense not really a 100% slave problem
I've actually done this one myself. It a terrible start on a large map if you do it for too long, but it's perfectly fine for the first few turns before you research civics. Slaves should not cost one production each. Fifteen maybe, but one is indeed very exploitable.
By the time you research civics, you have 5 attack 12 (blunt) units. Two go with the sovereign, and because they have higher attack and lower hps, they can be used to lead AI astray. The other three go in the other three directions, and once they spot a victim AI, everyone converges and the AI goes down.
It's a great start. Too good, I'd say. A squad of slaves should be about half the price of scouts, and no less.
On a side note, my mod is tough in the beginning this strategy is pretty useless. If you don't start building immediately you will fall behind and since you need midgame techs to even think about capturing cities, there is no rush from slaves. But they do provide a nice meat shield for Lord Magnar, who starts with a fire throwing magical staff.
SeanW3 stop enticing me to try your mod before release! 
I know I will enjoy it, and I am looking forward to it. After all, even when we do not agree about balance, and we mostly do, at least I can always see your point.
But I really think that what we should be doing right now is yammering at the developers about the stuff that is really important. In my book, that's just one major problem, and two minor annoyances.
Once I start your mod, I doubt I'll be coming back to the vanilla until the extension pack. And there won't be an extension pack if the game fails. Nor will your mod see the audience it very likely deserves if the game fails.
So lets be good little beta testers... and get the Powers at Stardock to fix the monster/AI interaction.
The problem with the balance of each faction only having ONE/FEW overpowered things means that they are forced to focus only on that to the exclusion of other strategy. And it makes it more difficult for the AI.
Each faction should have multiple viable paths of growth
Okay, I'll start a poll to see how people feel about monster interaction. That should at least show if there is a problem in the eyes of testers.
Another excellant example of spamming one type of unit for an abusable win.
Actually, Procipinee's crown is a sov trait not a faction trait that is available to all custom sovs regardless of their faction.
I always get it for my sov.
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