Yomi - Oni Kings analysis. Developers please read

[Arralen]

Corvin said:

List of Oni Kings weaknesses:

1. Very low protection on ALL (!) demonic regular units. We are talking about protection 3, 4 and 6, with prot 6 for the best and most expensive 50gp and 65 gp troops. Combined with average defense, and low hps (9) for cheaper troops, and only 24hp for their best 50-65gp troops means that demons (in their normal form) are extremely fragile to both melee and archer attacks. (Which was clearly design and balancing decision, which I have no problem with for the most part)

Actually, this isn't low protection: It's Early Age, where armor is generally less strong - and quite some troops have to go without, even.

Note - there are no crossbows or longbows as well, therefore vulnerability to archers is limited.

2. (This is a huge deal breaker) Both spiritual and regular forms of demons can be banished relatively easily by cheap lvl 1 priests. .. Each unit has only 9hp or 5hp for ghost form, in addition to only slightly above average MR. (13MR). That makes attacking armies with more than few priests to be VERY cost ineffective for Oni, and if its more than several priests, its almost suicidal using demonic troops (which are main Oni troop type). Larger demons fare slightly better due to larger size, slightly higher MR and more hitpoints,... Also demons have no easy way to make their demonic armies less banishable.

You may have a point here, but lets compare that to the blood summons:
lowly Imps have MR13
Demon Knights have MR15
Devils, Frost Finds have MR17

3. No sacred regular troops at all. Only two sacred commanders, with only one of them being cost effective option - the most expensive capital only 500gp Oni King. Few summoned sacred low level demons, but nothing to write home about.

Not all nations are created equal.
Not every nation must have sacred troops to make a (plain) bless strategy viable. On the other hand, a simple N4 bless is tremendous useful with the Dai-Oni. Maybe add E4 to help with their encumbrance problem.

..before Oni Kings units have buffs they need to make them worth producing in significant numbers.

What are the buffs you think they need? A N4E4 bless and a fire shield will make them quite useful even in the early game IMHO, and isn't hard to get at all. And what do you mean by "producing in significant numbers" .. being captiol-only and costing 500g per units, you're not going to hire dozends of them anyway during the first 30 turns anyway.

4. No heavy infantry at all and very mediocre human medium infantry. No cavalry, no units with any type of shields to withstand missile fire. basically Oni armies are extremely weak against any type of archers.

There's no heavy infantry in the Early Age. At least, it shouldn't. I'm pretty sure the prot-15 indies do show up sometimes, but that's a bug I guess. According to the manual, EA 'heavy inf' is the prot-10 spearwielding type. Most troops are in the prot6-9 range. Considering this, the bandits and even the prot-6 Oni don't look that bad.

5. Quite average archers, worse than some of the common indep archers for the same price.

The indie tribe archers are just too good (better than any national archers) and hopefully will get nerfed or made more expensive in a future patch.
And Yomi has 2 types of archers: The bandits are quite ressource-intensive, but among the best archers in the EA.

9. No priest other than movement 1 lvl 1 priest, which is actually inferior to indep priest. (Most useless of Oni unit IMHO, in most situations -10 gp on its price is not worth having 1mp unit where almost all other Oni units are 2 mps)

Yomi starts in mountainious area anyway. No use for a move-2 human priest, at least without mountain survival. Then the Demon Priests are only 80% as expensive, have 1 lower enc and 1 more MR than indie priests. And they have a 10% chance to get 1 magic level and become ultra-cheap researchers/forgers. And if that's not enough incentive to buy them - buy indie priests.

10. Most of national summons are not very interesting, considering their price and also the amount of units they bring. Many summons, including the best ones, are impossible to cast not only by national mages, but even by mages summoned by national mages).

Kappa - castable (only by Nushi, but useless anyway)
Karasu T. - NOT castable (to mage-time intensive for pretender)
Konoha Ts. - castable (sorcerer)
Dai Tengu - castable (seldomly, 1:10 Dai-Oni, pretty expensive)

.. all tengu can fly during storms, AFAIK, .. so much for the archer problem ..

Ghost General - castable (Dai-Oni, surely worth it)
A.o.Tigers - castable (Nushi, animals...)
Nushi - .. needs pretender, but is worth it as it opens up 'nature' and 'water'.

And concerning the 'general summons' .. I think Yomi is not meant to have all those available, unless you spend the design points to make them available via your pretender. Which ones are you missing in particular - Air, Nature, Death, Earth and Water ARE accessible to Yomi (slim chance on Air, I must admit). If you want Fire, you'll have to use your pretender.

Now after reading this whole list you may come to conclusion that Oni Kings is a totally hopeless and weak nation. That would not be true. So to be totally fair, let me list their strengths as well, based upon my observations so far.

Mainly, I have come to the conclusion that you're looking at Yomi from a skewed MP perspective:
You seem to be looking through Yomis units list and comparing it to the list of 'basic strategies' - to find that a good part of them will not work (easily) with Yomi.
Be more creative - not all nations are created equal. Not every nation must have the full range of pretender-build options. Not every nation must work with the F9W9-nobrainer-bless.

But lemme see what you've found for your:

List of Oni Kings strengths:

1. The Oni King unit (of course!). It's a good commander, no doubts about that. That's IMO the main strength of this nation in MP. Basically its strategic role is quite similar to Niefel Jarls. It costs the same 500gp. It has about 30% less HPs than Niefel Jarl (Oni King only has 50hps).

Actually, most stats are slightly inferior to the Niefel, apart from Prot (at the price of higher enc) and Att (mostly from fire magic). Especially 'Prec 9' and the high encumbrance make Dai-Oni unsuitable as spellcasters unless you slap a lighter armor on them. Again, a 'possible' strength that is not easy to use - other than buying a Niefel Jarl and set him to 'attack nearest'. Maybe a price reduction would be in order?

It makes it significantly less powerful in the early game, especially considering the fact that high bless strategy is *much* more beneficial to Niefelheim than to Oni Kings, therefore Oni King player is much less likely to go with the high bless strategy then Niefel player, which indirectly makes Jarls even better comparable to Oni Kings.

As I said - is everyone obliged to go with a high bless strategy? Several low level blesses work way better on the Dai-Oni and have the added advantage to open up more magical possiblities for/with the pretender.

.. significantly reduces the value of Oni Kings in MP games during its later stages of the game, where Oni Kings finally have buffs they need to be really effective.

Again - how many buffs do you think they would need? Fire shield and some low-level blesses can do the trick quite nicely, later then add Soul Vortex and some (cheap) items and everything seems ok to me.

As you of course realize by now, I think Oni Kings really need some boost to make them stand up to other nations in MP.

And I think they perhaps simply need to be played slightly different to be competitive. Maybe by someone who's a stronger player than me, btw.

Suggestions:

1. Add 4 MR to all demon troops. Or if it's too much - consider Oni national demons as having +4MR when it comes to checks against banishment. After all, demons are supposed to be significantly more difficult to banish than undeads. But as it turns out, their current 13 MR, 14 MR and 15 MR is absolutely not enough.

Bloods summons have 13,15,17. Why not use that for that Oni as well? Or why not use 17 or 18 for all Oni, at least in ghost form? Why should a small demons ghost be easier to banish than a big ones?
On the other hand, +4 is way to much - Dai Oni only have 18, and some pretenders do not have more to start with.

2. Make the cheapest 12 gp demon troops (Ko-Oni) size 2 instead of their current size 1.

Big is beautiful? I would rather say: make them harder to banish, and give them higher Def, and maybe lower their price... .

3. Make ghost forms of oni have the same HPs as a normal form, instead of having 50% of HPs .

Agreed. Where's the fun in having a 2nd form, if you won't even see it because its gone on the next hit as well?

4. Raise protection on best oni troops (50gp and 65gp "Oni" and "Koni Oni") from prot 6 to prot 11-12 by giving them at least *some* armor. 65 gp mostly melee-oriented units should be able to last longer than 1-2 rounds in melee, or not to be killed by few arrows.

They don't use armors, says the 'background story', and they don't use shields as well.
But they have powerful, if short-ranged missile weapons as well - don't underestimate those. Sadly, they (as all Oni) have poor precision - I wonder why.
Considerung that they are 350 year old demons who do not much more than come to blows with each other, I would like to see their Att/Def/Prec stats rised significantly, and their resistances upped to full 100%.

Protection 11-12 and size 3 would still leave them very vulnerable to both missile fire and melee attacks, but it would make to survive slightly longer.

As shortbows have only DAM 10, Prot 11-12 would make them pretty much impervious to missile damage ..
Even with Prot-6 only, they do not take that much damage from shortbows anyway. And once they're ethereal, 75% of the arrows miss ...
I'm more concerned with the low melee stats, which make the get hit way to often ...

Make them more resource intensive to compensate for their better armor. Currently Sloth 3 is almost no brainer for Oni Kings player.

No need to do that - the game does that on its own if you slap armor on them. Armor would mean more encumbrance and less Def as well, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want that.

5. Make low level Oni national summons to summon multiply demons with appropriately increased costs, instead of summoning them one by one.

"Yomi, Oni Kings" does not summon any "Oni national summons", therefore I do not really know what you're talking about ... . If it's the different Tengu (no plural "s") - that spell already does summon 5 of them, the Dai Tengu even comes with 25 warriors. And Kappa and Karasu are useless or non-castable respectivly, anyway.

6. Make "End of Culture" and "End of Weakness" Oni's spells Thaumaturgy 4 and Alteration 4

Agreed. To research both pathes to level 6 takes to long, especially as you'll want Conjuration, Construction and Evocation, too ... .

7. Give Oni demon troops with ranged attack prec 11 instead of their terrible prec 9 .

Agreed.
I've modded all the less-than-10 prec weapons and troops to have at least 10 prec test-wise, and 'friendly fire incidences' dropped by 1 order of magnitude... .



All in all - I think some of your claims, remarks and suggestions are quite valid.
Other seem to stem from a tendency to 'use' Yomi like any other, more 'standard' nation, which clearly can't and IMHO isn't intended to work.

I think, Yomi like e.g. Early Pangaea needs some creative and out-of-beaten-pathes thinking to be played successfully in either SP or MP. What IMHO isn't a bad thing - there must be something in the game to keep the Gandalfs and QMs occupied