Quote:
Originally Posted by shatner
Really, I don't think anyone is arguing that giving the Zmey cold-blooded would make it's defeat likely in a cold province. I think the larger question is whether the Zmey having that weakness is too much.
The point is the Zmey is an extraordinary raiding unit which skirts the line between heavy thug and SC. It flies, has three lives, very high protection, does AoE fire damage on top of 4 high strength attacks (so one is likely to connect even when the foe is ethereal AND fire immune). The Zmey being a poor choice to invade a cold nation is fine. After all, you know not to rely on body ethereal to protect your SC against Caelum when even their PD has magical ice weaponry. That's the tactics of the game. And having the correct response to a Zmey be Wolven Winter combined with a remote attack spell sounds like a gem and research-appropriate counter.
Finally, fire gems suffer from fewer viable outlets than other gem-types. The main uses for fire gems are forging fire-spam items, lightless lanterns or used as an ingredient for non-fire gear (firebrands, gold shields, rune breakers, etc.). That makes saving up for an awesome summon like the Zmey a very easy decision to make. If the Zmey cost death gems or earth gems instead, I'd be more hesitant to weaken it, but not fire gems.
I think the change is both thematically appropriate and mechanically balanced.
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Its not just raiding cold-based nations. Wolven Winter means that Cold-3 can be applied to any province during the magic phase, say preceeding assault by a thug/SC with teleport or ct. At that point Zmey become so many wasted gems. Heat scales cannot be applied so easily, and Cold-3 can be generated predictably and on-demand with Wolven Winter.
Cold-blooded is not mechanically balanced. Nations who have cold-blooded mages are amongst the weakest nations in the game, and cold-blooded troops rarely get used as anything more than arrow stoppers if it can be helped. The idea of a thug or SC which is cold-blooded is laughable, and it will not be used, since a single naked zmey more than justifies the cost of a Wolven Winter, and chances are its carrying 15-25 gems worth of gear too. At that point the entire map should be treated as Cold-3, because wherever the zmey goes it *will* be cold-3 for the relevant follow-up combat.
This is totally ignoring that Cold-3 is the single most common temperature extreme in dom3. (In addition to nations with a cold preference, lots of people use X3 temperatures for the points because its one of the easiest places to get them, and C3 is favored by default for anyone without cold-blooded unless they have specific reason to prefer H3, since there are more summons with a cold aura than a heat aura (offensive benefit), and more units with firepower than cold power (defensive benefit as most of these are nationals - if you expect to see lots of enemy coldpower units you might choose otherwise)). The only people who choose H3 are people with a specific heat preference, people with a cold-blooded unit they plan on using regardless of heat preference, or people who specifically are planning to use firepower or fire aura units (generally B/F nations because Devils have a heat aura). Cold also has an advantage over Heat because the game starts in spring, which means you'll suffer less economy hit early because summer will knock that C3 down to C1-2 in the early turns, reducing the effect of the negative scales.
tl;dr Zmeys costing more than ~5f are useless if they're cold-blooded, because that's the break-even point in gem expenditure on both sides. Cold-blooded means instant 2x chest-wound-equivalents whenever your opponents wants - and a single chest-wound is enough to end the career of most thugs.