[1.4 + Dead] Thread for suggestions on balancing/improving Dead

The Dead do start slow but they have some big advantages. Their units can get the undying curse trait, which increases their number by 1 for every enemy they kill. Their female units have 50% resistance vs. physical damage. Their terror ability allows them to lock down powerful creatures to be whittled down.

I think the key to playing the Dead is to focus more on troop production in the beginning. Get some cheap troops out fast so they can use their terror ability to help take down powerful monsters. You can easily take down monsters like Ogres, Harridans, and Slags by stunning them with the terror ability. Once you start making female units with the Undying Curse ability, pretty much no one can stand against you. Just send your armies out to find and capture as many death shards as you can and population growth shouldn't be a problem thanks to Morrigan's Call.

Unless you're playing a small map with low magic, monsters, and resources, the Dead will become really powerful when they build up some steam.

Also, if you make custom Dead factions, you can make them Kingdom, so you can cast Sovereign's Call on all your towns. Unfortunately, with a custom Empire Dead faction, you pretty much have to have Gravetouched, which only gives you one more trait if you also have a weakness.

Yes, I am playing them exactly as you suggest--I've probably played about 30 hours this week with the Dead as I've had some time off.  You *can* have some success with them if everything plays out well, but I find, especially on harder levels, the Dead unit advantage is not that great because the AI can put out better units faster so by mid-game your skeletal army crumbles to the better equipped units of the AI.  If you get really lucky and start with a town with several essences, a death shard, you can overwhelm early, but it is very much dependent on the map (too dependent, really). I generally play on Expert or higher, and the Dead are really difficult to get going--you need the perfect map.

A big problem is the difficulty/delay in getting Dead towns to level 2, even if you build every possible building that provides a growth bonus.  Getting the bonuses of the level 2 "cities" is very important.   Allowing for other "living" mobs to give population to the Dead would help early on when there are no enemy sovereigns around.  Also, perhaps the population gained from mob kills should be distributed evenly among the Dead cities?

I'd also suggest making pioneers more difficult to build across the board--I do think they are far too easy to spam with non-Dead factions.  Pioneer and city spam by the AI also makes life difficult for the Dead.

Finally, a big problem is the AI sucks at using the Dead faction.  On all the games I've played the AI has not been successful with the Dead at all.

Don't use skeletons. Use ghosts (the female version of their units), they have 50% physical resistance. Build them from a high essence Fortress with Aura of Might and they can take a ton of damage without any armor. With Undying Curse, you can get them up to groups of 6 by killing wandering monsters long before enemies can max out their army size. You can compensate for the inferior weapons with Heart of Fire.

Yeah, the female undead are solid.  No doubt.  Just wish we could somehow balance them out better.  The AI also doesn't really know how to use the Dead as is. 

The AI does not design units of its own and since the Dead don't have any preset melee units using ghosts, you'll have to design some yourself if you want computer opponents to use them.

As I said in another thread...

I think some more features for the visual look of male Dead characters need to be added. Maybe like a patch to cover one eye, glowing eye sockets, different skeletal body types. The females look really cool as is, but they could use a few extra looks as well. Thanks

You know, the male and female undead shouldn't be so unequal.  It's hard to see much of an advantage in the male units--yes, you get 3 trait slots compared to the 2 the female undead units get, but the female attribute that halves physical damage is so powerful you rarely care.  Maybe "Undying Curse" should be a male only attribute?

A few suggestions:

- The suggestion of spreading out new population to all cities is great, or even select a city

- All monster army/units that are undead should be able to be converted, not just 1 unit, but the whole army, or when the army enters sphere of influence.

- Any monster units that are humanoid should be able to join population once killed (ex wildlings or other twisted)

- Monster units should be able to be risen after the battle to add to the army or add production to a city maybe since they cant be population, could maybe be spells with the tech tree so later in the game you can raise better and better undead units from defeated units

- Maybe add some type of new unit that is a suicide unit, given they are undead they shouldn't be scared to die

- Obvious Unit Adds, Vampires, Zombies, Mummies etc. might be too cheesy just suggestions.. Could maybe be heros instead of units.

- City spells like plague, or block out the sun or something where an enemy city sends growth to one or all of the champions citys..

- Feel free to msg me for any discussion or other suggestions on this or other new factions

Thanks

Yes, I would like to see "real" undead champions; maybe you could just use skeletons, ghosts or revised Resoln people who are very vampire-like...

I also like the idea of having more fantasy cliché creatures such as zombies or werewolves but this would apply to other races too 

I played the Dead once (on hard), and I really enjoyed it. They started slow, but their advantages let me steadily advance my race until it was the most powerful.

I played on a small map, and I didn't build a single town--all fortresses and conclaves. I had plenty of money and obviously didn't need food, so I simply didn't need any towns. So, I agree that I will never build the Bazaar as the Dead, but frankly I don't care. I was able to build the wonders that I did want.

I'm not surprised the computer plays the Dead poorly. The computer would need a whole new Dead-specific AI to be effective.

Yep, I just won a game with the dead and that can happen, especially if you design some early game female undead (spirit) units for the half-physical-damage trait.  [Although I kind of think the female units are a bit unbalanced compared to the male units--the half-damage trait is somewhat overpowered.]  The problem is that they are underpowered when it comes to recovering from a less than ideal map situation, so something to get their "cities" to the second level early on would be helpful.

Gallowman.  The Archivist.

I have yet to find him, is there a quest to complete, just like Mausolos or the other "special" heroes?

I think the other ghost female hero (Corinne the Archivist?) is just awesome!

Gallowman and Corinne, the Archivist are just Champions you may get when you qualify for a new champion.  No special quest required.

Also, you may want to try Hellions' "Champion Bonanza" mod, which adds some additional undead heroes.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/445026/page/1/#3381357

If you want more fantasy races in general (including an alternative take on an undead faction) you should try Heavenfall's "Children of Storm" mod (which also has a number of undead champions, though they're based on the undead faction in the game vs. "stock" ones.)

https://forums.elementalgame.com/443960/page/16/#3419668

What Stardock really needs to do is figure out if they can get the AI to manage the Dead properly.  Although it was initially an accident, I think they were CORRECT in not having the Dead be an AI controllable faction.  They basically end up sitting at around 15 power by mid-game at best, and are usually eliminated.  It's made it so I can no longer play against random sovereigns for fear that the Dead will be selected and unbalance the game.

This doesn't make any difference at all, unfortunately.  Even after I've made some great "spirit" units for the beginning through end of the game, the AI still can't do squat.  It just doesn't know how to increase population at all and it doesn't appear to war early or focus strategically on population improving city buildings.

N/A

The problem with the Dead and the AI is that the only way to successfully play them is very hard for the AI.

1. It depends on getting a good start, and the AI can't reroll the world.

2. You need to rely on population from combat, and unlike humans the AI can't rely on superior tactical skills to inflict lots of kills but not lose too much itself.

3. You need to use alternate growth methods like spells which in turn require unique city locations.

The last one is possible but would require them to write a Dead specific AI. However the rest are just outside of what the AI can do. To play as the undead you have to be on a roll. If you start losing then it is almost impossible to come back as you have to kill to increase your population. Humans can do that AIs can't.

If the growth of the cities is the problem for the dead AI, then might as well add the cheat for the AI undead units by giving the AI undead cities growth abilities. If it is the case that they cannot settle other cities, then remove the population requirement on the pioneer (which is really easy to do)

In fact, you can create a special AI only pioneer that the player will not see that will not remove any population. Since the AI creates undead soldiers and they sit around in their cities, one could add some special AI only units that just increase growth for every city they are stationed in...

These are band-aid fixes until a direct AI can be written, but if you want a quick solution, a mod like this would suffice.

I'd like to see a simple check box that disables the dead from being used by the AI.

I enjoyed playing them, but I'm regretting my purchase since I typically play Kingdoms against all Empires.