Dud units / monsters / summons

[Sombre]

quantum_mechani said:
It's amounts to the same thing, just a matter of degree of disadvantage. If something is only a little worse than your other options (but very similar in function) it might as well be a lot worse.

And that aside, few of the thing mentioned here fall into the extreme 'bite me' catagory. Things like Wrath of the Sea, Light Cavalry without lances, Amulet of Vengeance, Call Lesser Horror, Bonds of Fire, Dragon Master, Iron Pigs, Serpent Cataphracts, Bell of Cleansing, The Sphinx, Son of the Sun & Co., etc.

Well if it's just about degrees of disadvantage, you might say that you should never use anything that isn't the hands down best unit or nation in the game. But people want to, both for variety and because the use of different units and nations changes depending on the situation you're in. I mean there are times when unit A, though generally worse than unit B, will be a better choice. What I want to 'fix' is unit C, which has a clear purpose (it's got AP weapons, good mapmove, fire resistance or some other ability which fits into rock paper scissors balance) but still sucks. While I'm at it I figure unit D, which is just a worse version of another unit, could do with either being given a new ability or at least made to be roughly average so it doesn't punish the AI which seems to build at random, or the player who wants to use it for flavour's sake.

The stuff you mention there is 'fixed' in the CB mod is it not? I personally think that if a unit is just bad, severely underpowered, it should be improved. Useless units add nothing to the game and are fairly easy to turn into units which provide more variety (gameplay, flavour, graphics) with a little stat tweak.

[quantum_mechani]

Sombre said:


Well if it's just about degrees of disadvantage, you might say that you should never use anything that isn't the hands down best unit or nation in the game. But people want to, both for variety and because the use of different units and nations changes depending on the situation you're in. I mean there are times when unit A, though generally worse than unit B, will be a better choice. What I want to 'fix' is unit C, which has a clear purpose (it's got AP weapons, good mapmove, fire resistance or some other ability which fits into rock paper scissors balance) but still sucks. While I'm at it I figure unit D, which is just a worse version of another unit, could do with either being given a new ability or at least made to be roughly average so it doesn't punish the AI which seems to build at random, or the player who wants to use it for flavour's sake.

That is pretty much the philosophy of CB. The problem is the rather extreme numbers of type Ds, especially among recruitable troops. It can be extremely difficult to find thematic, balanced, and different solutions for the legions of them.