The Yithril are usually my first target if they're nearby. Juggernaughts are of course the reason why. Handling one or two Juggs is no problem at a time, but as more of them get trained, the lethality of the Yithril armies seems to grow exponentially. A Yithril sovereign + 4 Juggs is a BIG problem. I am curious to know what is the general consensus on the Juggs and what are your favorite anti Jugg strategies.
Xia is right. The point isn't to nerf Juggernauts. It's to make every faction have a significant distinction. Factions are certainly more distinct than they were early in beta, but even now running into most factions doesn't change HOW you play the game. Your strategy doesn't have to adapt based on who you meet.
Altar & Yithril, maybe Gilden? What factions actually cause you to rethink what you're doing when you meet them specifically based on WHICH faction you meet? Not many.
Yithril has that effect more than any other. Please don't change it. Instead, bring the rest of the factions up to Yithril's level in some way (and this doesn't necessarily have to be accomplished by giving everyone an overpowered unit).
Two games ago, the AI just kept on sending two Juggernaughts after I (barely) defeated the first one. I suspect if I had survived the second round, a third round would have follwed a turn or two after, and then a 4th and a 5th...
Juggernaughts are too powerful if the AI can continuously pump them out like it has a juggernaught factory
I'd also agree with Xia's assessments. Juggernauts are a threat, but I do like them as is as. They can be dealt with when you know they're coming.
Personally I would adjust a few things, first off giving EACH factions SOMETHING to run by, hopefully a few things. Yithril have high weight capacity berserkers and juggs.
And as Xia said, the others doesn't really have much, some have 1 or 2 items, most of them don't compare much, one the AI just doesn't know how to handle.
I still think juggernauts should have some slight wage and construction time increase, to make them more expensive, and therefore slightly more rare to see on the field of battle, so there also would be a point to not only constructing juggernauts when playing Yithril... a race supposed to be full of warriors
And add in some unit traits that help against the juggernauts, we really need a trained unit response, that is of the same tech level. (I know archers help, but you have to have really good bows).
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Maybe a good nerf to jugg would be to severely up their cost, so that it takes much longer to produce one. With my late game fort it only takes a handfull of turns more to produce one compared to my standard light armor warg chargers. For a unit which can maul to death in one round just any unit in the game it doesn't feel right. Or just allow basic weapons and forbid the rest, what a giant slave thing is doing with a magic item anyway.
Now, lets think about the Jug. An mid to endgame Jug has an attack of 84. This is an stereotypical mid to end game AI Jug. They have an 84 attack and do splash damage and have maul. Compare that to a dragon's attack? They have a 40. And Jugs don't tend to set themselves on fire, but that's another issue. My little nerf proposal would make their attack be 56, which is a little better than what a Jugg is currently right out of the gate. They do triple weapon damage, and I think they can still be scary, useful and all that, without being ridiculously more powerful than other game monsters and units if they did only double weapon damage.
Would I prefer that all nations have a powerful unit or ability to compensate, of course. But even then, I wan them to make sense. But right now, both the player and AI just become Jug factories.
Hmm.
Jug factories is ok ... but having Juggs more powerful than Dragons, not sure I like that. Maybe make Dragons stronger? (and Juggs more expensive rather than weaker? )
But I think there is definitely something to this ... at least as far as making each race relatively equal in strength.
Yithril and Altar are excellent races. (and AI Magnar seems to do well too)
Gilden seems like a good race, perhaps the Golems could be stronger ... but Armoror sov trait + Master Smiths nation trait have great Synergy
Add horse requirement to the juggernaut.. they need to eat something when training
But in seriousness, an increase in production for juggernaut is a better solution than weakening them. But I wouldn't really know since I don't play yithril too much and I really don't design new units (yet).
re: Lord Xia.
You seem to be confusing races and empires. they are quite different things. Most of the things you've pointed out are EMPIRE abilities, not race abilities. You specify "RACE" in allcaps as if you're trying to compare the racial blood abilities. Yet not only are you mixing empire and race abilities, you're also leaving out many empire abilities and judging empires based on only the (incomplete set of) things you mention.
The "Amarian" race is the primary race of the pariden empire. And on top of what you mention, they also have the ability to summon outposts anywhere for a mere 50 mana which gives them incredible landgrabbing power earlygame (which as we know, is the most critical time), the ability to cheaply buy spellbooks for their heroes (enabling your soverign to not bother taking spell disciples at creation, and thereby granting an extra 2-4 points) and the pretty decent sindarian staff, which allows very useful early melee troops who have decent dodge and damage, without any research into the military path.
That aside, i think the amarian blood ability is pretty darned good. especially when you're lucky enough to find tons of air mana. in a pariden game i played recently, i ended up with 7 air shards, and i won through having an entire army who got double turns, and heroes with triple turns thanks to ridiculously powerful haste spells. (which of course EVERYONE had thanks to yellow spellbooks)
Again with "wraith", you're thinking of the resoln empire. Again you've mentioned only a racial ability, yet compared them to other races' empire abilities. The resoln empire also has the ability to spawn tons of free units from mana shards, and a set of four fairly-good unique spells, the most notable of which is graveseal which makes wiping out dragons ridiculously easy. Their corrupt ability to convert mana nodes into death mana is pretty good too. it would be better if shadowbolt wasn't broken, but that will be fixed i'm sure.
As to the topic in question. I haven't played as yithril yet, but i've fought against them many times. juggernauts are very powerful creatures indeed. the power that they have is interesting in that it takes adaptation to fight against, however it's also adaptation that the AI doesn't seem capable of, and that's a bad thing.
The biggest problem i can see with them, as people are describing, is that they don't have a role in an army. Rather, they ARE an army. There doesn't seem to be any reason not to just build nine of them, put them all in one stack, and annihilate everything with your iron fist. That's something that i think does need adressing
Personally the way i'd solve it, is to have them be treated as champions. In that, if you put more than one of them in an army, they'd drag each other's growth down. I'd also give them a relatively low base accuracy, but give them the discipline ability by default (more accuracy on levelling up) so that growth would be especially important for them, and you'd have some incentive to just put one in each army and nurture them like heroes.
Having just smacked three dragons (the dragon quest bosses) with 4 juggs, 1 heroe and some meatshields (decent troops in fact) makes me think Lord Xia might be on the right track. Taking away one + 100 % seems a good way to start with. I'm pretty sure now something serious needs to be done. Those juggs just had their basic axe, and they rofl stomped those dragons pretty quick, with just a fireshield buff.
You are wrong. What I mentioned are absolutely RACE abilities, not faction abilities. You are the ones to mix this up, honestly, you are totally wrong on this.
I'm going to take a moment to side with xia on this since I just loaded up the game to check (it was one of those cognitive dissonance moments).
I'll also agree that an increase in production times is probably the best way to nerf juggernauts, but other races need to be brought up to par.
Hah had to check your post again to make sure (somehow I felt you described the factions at first). I guess its because the race means so much when creating a faction that it just felt like it.
That said I still agree with everything you said back there, except I dont quite like the golems.
It seems you are right. wow. This does not make sense.
I went into the faction editor to check, and what you said checks out. The question is why. Given the huge checklist of strengths and weaknesses in there to choose from, i don't see how it makes sense for any "race" to have these extra abilities that aren't covered under the "<race> blood" ability. But there they are. i was making assumptions based on what made sense, and clearly this does not.
I must raise the question of whether or not the faction editor can be considered canon. It is buried two menus deep, and this aspect of it doesn't seem to behave logically. Considering that there ARE selectable abilities for things like training spiders. I would argue that the faction editor isn't well designed or balanced, and that most of these special units were intended to be an integral part of their respective factions. Doesn't it seem illogical that the trogs would always have chained, furious, monster slaves, regardless of whether their faction is good or evil? it's a fairly evil thing to have in your army
I don't create factions, period. I don't consider it very balanced or logical to somehow remix existing factions into a wierd hybrid. I create sovereigns, but generally only for existing empires (including umber and capitar, which exist in the game as premade factions, but have no premade leaders and are not normally selectable). I'm not sure if it's wise to base balance on an editor two layers deep. But i will say one thing.
This Game Is Unfinished. It needs lots of work yet.
I like the way they are. I like the fact it took me 5 turns to decide to try to take one down. On the other hand, I was very bummed when I had a studded collar and I could not tame one. What is up with the studded collar? There is no indication what the stud collars are good for. The description is unspecific. I thought this could have been a fun experience with having a jug. I realize this might have been a balance issue but it felt really lame risky life and limb to find out the collar doesn't work on them. If this does create a balance issue it would be nice to have the game mechanics to adjust for events like this so they can happen.
Very cool unit. Nice job.
Karavox's silver tongue does not work on them, either. I found out the exact same way
They are not heroes, and they are not beasts, and they are not men (as in sentient humanoids)
Actually, Trogs and Quendar have to be Empire, the only fallen that can be Kingdom are the Wraiths. (except maybe Ironeers, but that is a lore thing) So you can't be a good Kingdom and have slaves units, but I guess you could have the slave faction traits. But to be fair, Capitar was a kingdom that had owned slaves until recently (the Tarth were their slaves) But, I am kind of mixing lore and game mechanics, which is confusing. It is a bit unbalanced when you use the faction creator to create some pretty nifty factions. They need to add some things to the other races to balance it out.
Also, I do know the game pretty well. I will say straight up if anything I am saying is something I don't know 100%, but most of the time it is.
I believe that Juggs need a nerf or Yithril would completely suck. I'm not keen on berserk. I'm also not keen on axes. Which is why I stay the hell away from playing them. Amarians suck harder. I really WANT to like Pariden but damn. Now they are penalized. Anyways, the point I wanted to make was that others need to be lifted up while the others don't get nerfed or marginalized in their usefulness/coolness.
Yea, Yithril is a strange one because it has a great race, Trogs, and terrible faction abilities (terrible is overly strong, but they are nothing special). The axes suck, the 10% hit points isn't much, the +1 level for trained troops is alright, the starting warfare tech is meh, and the no ranged penalty is harsh. Yithril in it's entirety is balanced by having a powerful Trog race (although, I liked the +1 attack a lot more than berserk)
People talk about how the Jugs are balanced against the Resoln demons and spiders...except you can build a nation with both.
Studded collar are for beasts... when you look at the unit details it will say they are a beast, twisted, etc... so you can tame harridan, rock spiders, great wolfs and such...
Still think they should add horse to the production cost... they gotta eat...
That is the fault of the faction creator, I think each trait should be balanced, and I think juggernaut technology should be a pick instead of a racial, but that would have to make each pick worth it which right now they are not
they're not *terribly* overpowered to face in combat, but they're so cheap. Compare to the Ironeer golems, similar tech level except they aren't really scary, and those require a lot of iron and mana. A secondary effect of being so cheap is that the AI (or you) can crank a few of them out, quadruple their power rating, and therefore get whatever you want at diplomacy.
They're a dangerous foe, but can totally be planned for. They have no real armor and get burned down by archers. They're not really that fast, hit them with slow spells and beat them down with Melee. I could go for an increase in production cost, but I've not played as Yithril so not sure how that would work out.
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