Chronic Logic

Bombing Run isn't really likely since the ship moves anywhere within 3.  If it doesn't move in a straight line, then determining the squares crossed is less simple.  That's not to say the computer won't figure it out, it's still a simple calculation, but it's less apparent to the player.

Range 3-5 on a unit that's that freely mobile is completely overwhelming.  Nothing can withstand it.  The pirate spawn are unimportant, the captain is unimportant.  The ship would dominate every game except against AI (just because killing only 2 things a turn loses vs. AI.

Correction, if you have no commands, you can still move rallied units and attack with them, but any abilities activated by clicking on the ability cannot be used.

What about the command post?  I've always gone for the command post for when I've needed sudden bursts of commands in the game, but if you give that ability to tacticians, it will serve even less of a purpose than it does now.

If you have no commands left, rallied units cannot act, despite costing no commands to do so.

I disagree with some of your assessments of weak units that need a boost.

Tactician - Tacticians aren't really units to my eye... they're more a part of the system.  They don't have to be units with choices because the choice was to include them to make the army more sound or to include an offensive unit to make the army stronger.  I've never really thought "Hmm, I'd include a tactician, but X other 50 point unit is better."  I include tacs when I need them.  They're on a completely different scale from non-command units.

However, you're absolutely right about quartermaster+tac being almost entirely better than general.  The only way in which general has an advantage is on the first turn due to deployment spaces and that it's less commands to deploy a general than a quartermaster and a tac.  General could possibly use a little boost, I think.

Footman - This infuriating little unit is horrifying--HORRIFYING when used correctly.  Its ability to lock people into melee with itself is very powerful board control.  It's well worth the 50 points.  The only issue is that it doesn't usually agree with the general strategies of other decks.  Footman is a gem that needs to be considered when building the army, not as an afterthought.

I agree that pikeman and summoner really could use a boost.  Pikeman, I think +1 hp would do the trick.  Summoner needs a more meaningful change.

I actually think the Illusionist is pretty clever.  The specters being destructible on moving into or through their square is a great mechanic that forces an opponent to do something that he might not want to do to get rid of a significant threat.  I definitely think specters should be destroyed when they burst in a stun effect.  With a jumping 3 range, the specters are range 4, which means the illusionist is a range 5 stun burst (which requires 3 commands, mind you).  It doesn't seem so terribly broken to me, but definitely would require someone to change the way they approach the rest of that match.

I love dragon for the all-out offensive whirlwind that it is.  It's straightforward and *demolishes* an opponent quickly, if they don't have something that instakills at a pretty far range.

People seem to be going overboard on what they consider to be a Rocks-Paper-Scissor situation.  Saying that you *need* a shield bearer to beat the towers army is entirely inaccurate.  The thing is, the shield bearer is ideally-suited to fighting it.  Units having strengths is a GOOD thing!  Using other units and armies, it is still possible to fight forward towers, but you need to be able to weigh the pain of triggering them versus going around or destroying them, much like you do with all enemy armies.

You do not have a clear-cut directed graph of superiority, because the different units are useful in many different ways.  The various units capable of dealing easily with forward towers are all 2-armor units (especially knights and dragons, since they can easily destroy towers, and even better if you have someone who can heal that first step into range!), heretic (kills the geomancer and everything needed to actually take your castle), anything with greater range than the towers (such as warlocks, ballistae and catapults), shield bearers, acolytes, archangel, dodging units, and anything that creates chaff-units, like summoners, barracks, necromancer, druid, hydra, and mason.  Keep in mind that if you absorb the shots from the tower, the opponent cannot pick a specific target on his turn because the tower's out of actions.

When about half of all available units can be used to combat this strategy, it's not a question of "my army is paper to your scissors" but rather that your army has a huge gaping hole in that it cannot respond to ranged enemies, and/or has no power of attrition.

Honestly, the Aegis is quite enough protection.  It doesn't need to also have the ability to return from the dead.  If you took that away, then it would still be strong, but not ridiculous.

Actually, I think the scout thing is WAD (works as designed).

The archangel's aegis ability is broken by chieftains when a protected unit moves *anywhere*, even towards the chieftain.  What's worse, the chief's ability happens before guardian, making a guardian chieftain able to block the movement of a protected unit.

Hahahaha!

It was underpowered, but this is a bit much.  Archangel is CRAZY with negating all the enemy attacks, plus the ability stacks with two angels.

Actually, there IS an ability in the game with that effect, currently.  "Dies when control is lost"  from the doppelganger would provide an immunity to being possessed, converted, and turned into a demon.  However, I think immunity to spells at large is a fine addition that could bring the archangel up to its value.

Quote from: glunkr on May 05, 2009, 11:58:17 PM
(who ever heard of two archangels?)

"Archangels" would be members of the second choir of angels.  There are supposed to be more than one of them.

The archangel is a very intriguing unit, but for 550 points, I don't think it really makes the cut.

As a 550-pt unit, the archangel competes with the wyrms for utility.  The archangel is a basic attack unit whose presence does not fundamentally alter the course of how the game is played, though arguably it's one of those units that requires a non-lethal means of removal, like martyrs, heretics, possessed, berserkers sometimes, paladins sometimes, etc.  Currently, all the wyrms have specific roles:

Dracolich:  The dracolich is three things - a powerful attacker (but defensive because of low range without levitation), a force multiplier because of the risen, and a suppression unit due to the -1 command thing.  As a unit that gives yet more units, the dracolich fairs well with any unit that benefits from your creatures dying.  Since those new units tend to be among the enemies to begin with, dracoliches also benefit greatly from assassins to replace the new risen.  The best dracolich armies try to take advantage of multiple of the dracolich's roles.

Dragon:  The dragon has one specialty - rapid dominance.  Dragons don't heal, they are not able to enhance your army by special abilities, much less make it grow.  All dragons are are tough enough to take a bit of an initial punch and fast and strong enough to very quickly reach and destroy the enemy.  They're the most offensive unit in the entirety of Zatikon.  Dragons have two actions and they fly 3 spaces.  This gives them an effective range of 6 with fireball, or they can completely erase something within 4 of their position.  The best dragon armies move too fast to allow the opponent to set up a combo, which is good because the dragon army doesn't stand up to attrition.

Hydra:  The hydra is tough enough to get by, but its main advantages are that it's the cream of the crop for unit summoners and that it will DESTROY anything left within 3, and can hardly be blocked in this.  Serpents make your army bigger and make hydras difficult to assault except from extreme range.  The best hydra armies either enhance the somewhat lesser toughness of the unit or take advantage of the waves of chaff units it can create (or both--mourners).

Feathered Serpent:  Feathered Serpents are 550 points of army enhancement.  -1 to enemy damage makes even those armor 2 units tougher and healing everything at the end of your turn can combine with that to make opponents very frustrated.  Finally, on top of all THAT resilience, you turn the first loss every turn as a delay instead.  Army sustaining powers par excellance make this unit a major, MAJOR target for any enemy, and yet it can do all of its stuff from the back row and can fly to get away from enemies.

Now, getting back to the Archangel, it is fundamentally an attacking unit.  To be effective, it must reach the enemy and then attack in melee to be of use.  Two actions used for attacking at power 5 is pretty much how it works, since auto-killing murderers isn't quite so useful when you sunk more than half of your army into this one unit... any losses at all really hurt you.  The archangel is range 4, so it cannot rush an opponent fast enough to prevent them from deploying and just starting their combinations, like the dragon can.  Its big special ability is that it doesn't die.  Like ghosts, the archangel returns to the castle whenever it's killed.  Of course, with a deploy cost of 5, that's a serious delay for your army, even if it's not a permanent loss.  Add onto that the fact that it has inferior range to the other primarily-attacking unit at 550 points and killing an archangel results in the archangel army losing several turns with it.  Oh, and as a new unit each time, the archangel wasn't around to witness its own murder, so murderers on the board are cleared and the killing unit isn't susceptible as a murderer when the angel comes back for revenge.

Let's talk comparisons.  The archangel is range 4 and can lay out two power 5 hits.  Very good, just not worth 550 points.  For comparison, a flying werewolf is also range 4 and lays out two power 6 hits, and it has the same resilience (minus the not-dying ability).  You can have 6 of these in an army... I suppose my big point is that for an army's power to be so concentrated into one unit, that unit needs to be able to pressure the enemy.

The archangel's inherent defensiveness with significant time and effort before it returns means that it fails to pressure the enemy as much as a 550-point unit needs to.  Add on the fact that like many units, it can be completely lost to a non-lethal take-down, such as from a witch, geomancer, priest, love potion, summoner, possessed, druid, rogue, enchanter, or magus, and as a flying unit it's vulnerable to shamen and guardian units, and you have anything but assurance that the 550 points is being useful.

How about some possible solutions?  I have two possible solutions to think of.  First, if the unit really is intended to be the sort of slow and steady defensive advance unit that it seems to be portraying, then make sure that its able to come back... or at least increase those chances.  Make the archangel immune to spells (some sort of divine ward or something).  I don't like that option quite so much because just negating other units draws away from the tactical choices of the game, making army construction more valuable than smart decision-making.

The second option is to make the archangel slightly more aggressive and to give it some semblance of army-preservation.  Give the archangel the ability to move to an allied unit's current position and bounce that unit back to the castle.  This enhances the archangel's ability to get into the fight and gives it the notion of being a guardian angel for your troops.  Using this ability would preclude the ability to fly for the turn, as this is movement.  Alternatively, for more of a command cost, you could allow the archangel to deploy as an assassin, doing the same thing, but requiring that the enemy kill it before it can protect another unit (and if they don't kill it, then there's an archangel running wild among their troops).  The deploy cost of 5 would help to keep this one reasonable, though I'm not sure it's enough of a boost to make up for the angel's deficiencies.

I think the complexity of the game makes it rich.  Even though someone might not fully understand how something works immediately, everything is essentially internally-consistent.  If something isn't, it's typically a bug that will be fixed.  Chieftains, for example, prevent things from moving to be more 'distant' than they were.  The way chieftains measure distance is a little strange, but it's exactly the same way all distances are measured in zatikon (namely that the distance is the greatest number of steps required in a lateral direction to get to the chieftain's row or column, or it creates rings that are big boxes).  Quirky rules are fine if players can get used to them.  Learning how they're quirky is a process of discovery.  If people don't want that discovery, they can ask.  I'm sure someone would be happy to answer them.