What do you think about the VQ vamps freespawns ?

Eressil3 · #1 May 12th, 2007, 12:00 PM

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 · #2 May 12th, 2007, 01:47 PM

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 · #3 May 12th, 2007, 04:51 PM

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

RamsHead · #4 May 12th, 2007, 05:07 PM

I wish vampires would be cool again.

quantum_mechani · #5 May 12th, 2007, 05:11 PM

Quote:

RamsHead said:
I wish vampires would be cool again.

I want a vampire slayer hero for some nation.

Foodstamp · #6 May 12th, 2007, 05:12 PM

Quote:

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 · #7 May 12th, 2007, 05:16 PM

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.

quantum_mechani · #8 May 12th, 2007, 05:30 PM

The original nerfs to the VQ were indeed in the era of Norfleet, who was well know for using them. However that set of nerfs was hardly overboard, the very original VQ was something like 75 points, 20 new path cost. She was at that point simply miles ahead of basically any other pretender choice.

She was pretty well balanced after that in Dom2 (50 path cost, reasonable base cost), but when Dom3 came along a second round of nerfs hit that made her the sorry excuse for a pretender she is right now.

I think removing ethereal from vampires was a good, thematic change. It never made much sense to me that they were ethereal- they aren't ghosts. The problem is just that the vampires were not given anything to make up for it, not even a price discount.

Ironhawk · #9 May 12th, 2007, 05:43 PM

She was fine in dom2 after the last round of balancing. She cost a fortune in design points but she was worth it. And the high price tag made it not a default choice - you had to consider all your options.

As for ethereal, that would definitely do the trick. But is there any other way to balance her back into power w/o using ethereal? IMO, I've never thought of vampires as ethereal anyway. Ghosts, Wraiths, sure. But not vampires.

PvK · #10 May 12th, 2007, 06:59 PM

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).