What do you think about the VQ vamps freespawns ?

[Eressil3]

Is there a limit to their number ?
Do you how much do you get in let's tell 30 turns ?
Do you think they worth it since they're immortal free flying units ?

[quantum_mechani]

There is no limit.

The amount you get is totally based on the amount of dominion you have (in the province the VQ is currenty in), but even at max dominion you won't get very many.

They are 'worth it' in the sense they are free, in terms of impact on the game they have almost none.

[ologm]

Think it was 5% chance to get a vampire per dominions level.

[RamsHead]

I wish vampires would be cool again.

[quantum_mechani]

RamsHead said:
I wish vampires would be cool again.

I want a vampire slayer hero for some nation.

[Foodstamp]

RamsHead said:
I wish vampires would be cool again.

I do too. I think we should petition to have the Vampire Queen and Vampires regain some of their former uberness.

Wasn't one of the nerfs a result of some guy cheating? He was using her with LA Ermor and squashing people in MP. She got restricted from Ermor then a few months later it was found out that the guy had been using a 3rd party program to give himself tons of gems each turn and his winning didn't really have anything to do with the LA Ermor/Castle/Vampire Queen combo.

Is my history off on that situation?

[RamsHead]

I can't say for sure that that was the reason, but that is mainly because I try to forget about the cheater Norfleet.

They need to be re-etherealized.

[PvK]

Well, Mistform and Glamour are sort of weaker defenses than Etherealness that might be considered more appropriate. The problem is the SC potential because you have so many abilities on one chassis: Pretender, Immortal, Flying, Regeneration, Immunities, Life Drain Attack, ZERO encumbrance, all of which most units need magic items to get, plus she has full slots so she can add more on top. Most units need to use a cloak to get etherealness (or try to coordinate with an astral mage, which isn't actually that hard, though makes it a little trickier to coordinate other buff-assistants), but with built-in etherealness, you can add say, full black steel plate, too, which not only combines very well with etherealness, but also very well with zero encumbrance, and with Flying (which together negate two of the three disadvantages of full black steel plate armor). Also since she's an immortal pretender, she can have magic paths and not generally be afraid of losing magic when/if she gets defeated. Death and Blood give her stronger abilities for late-game such as Soul Vortex and Blood Vengeance.

I dunno. I sympathise more with the wimpier vampire forms, who used to have etherealness to give them good defenses, but now are not very formidable... except that they are immortals who fly, so they can add to a flying component (which benefits from critical mass, especially when it's cost-free and almost risk-free due to immortality).

[PvK]

Oh, and for an example for those who may not have seen even a Dom 3 VQ in action, I have seen a fairly large army of mine destroyed early in a multi-player game by accidentally encountering a VQ who was conquering indies by herself. Admittedly, the VQ had I think extra investment in air and fire magic, so she cast Fire Shield, Mirror Image, Mistform, but after seeing her wipe out a whole army of good troops just falling into the Fire Shield, I wasn't left with the impression she really needed ALSO to be able to wipe out four times as many troops on average for also being ethereal, AND not really risking much since she's immortal.

[Eressil3]

May be she's even better with one lvl of astral instead of air for personal luck, body etheral and astral shield ?

Edit : tested. not worth it.