Extra effects of drain scale

[Tortanick]

I was wandering weather and indeed should the drain scale affect magic units and magic items?

On the one hand it makes more sense but on the other hand it risks changing drain into an advantage, focus on non-magic troops and get an advantage against enermy magic troops.

anyway what are your views?

[Ighalli]

I think it'd be great! Giving an advantage to non-magical troops would make them a viable strategy, hopefully.

[Wick]

Since Vine Ogres, Bane Lords, Lamias and so on aren't magic (you may have meant "summoned") they're certainly viable now.

Having the magic/drain scale affect magic units might help Pangaea (Kithaironic Lion, Fairy Court) and Tien Ch'i (national summons) since they tend to use magic scales, and might be synergistic with golem cult. None of that is a balance problem -- but R'yleh would be.

Drain scale is, AFAIK, primarily used by Ulm and death nations that can forge skull mentors. They don't particularly use magic troops so it probably favors them a bit.

It's an interesting idea and probably wouldn't break anything if R'yleh was adjusted a bit.

[Truper]

You know, I have no idea what would make drain viable. As it stands in Dom2, I've never seen anyone but Ulm take less than magic 2. Death nations *can* get around drain with mentors, but there are two problems with the strategy. Just getting the research to make mentors takes a while if you have drain, and secondly, there are all sorts of great uses for death gems.

[Ighalli]

You're entirely right Wick; there are a lot of extremely useful magically summoned units that are not actually magical. I'd like to see normal troops become a lot more useful, but I'm sure whatever the devs decided on will work out great.

[Saber Cherry]

I took Drain 2 as AE Ermor in an MP game. I wanted to go against the conventional wisdom and use brute force of high MR undead, and use the extra points for dominion strength 10...

It was very successful! Until the late game, when I got attacked with Ice Devils and Mass Regeneration and Marble Warriors and Blade Wind and so forth, all pumped by Relief... and I had no spells to counter. All my mages were expensive summons, and even the most expensive ones didn't research worth squat...

So, I died. And I think AE Ermor is the only logical Drain choice other than Ulm, or maybe N9/E9 Machaka on a small map.

[Alneyan]

Mictlan sounds like a more natural choice for Drain to me, since they should have a easier time getting away with their Drain, and they can do something nice with the points.

In Entwined Destiny (6 teams of 2), the Ulm-Mictlan was victorious, both of them running Drain 3. Mictlan went with a blessing strategy and poor scales, with Ulm acting as the money-maker. Well, I guess it did work pretty well.

[Tortanick]

Just to clarify: only magic units are effected by drain scale. other summoned units would only be effected by higher summoning costs.