Yomi - Oni Kings analysis. Developers please read

[curtadams]

I have to disagree with leaving the demon army so vulnerable to exorcism both on thematic and game grounds. On game ground the decision is easy - when a half dozen cheap priests, available to anybody, can cripple any demon army you don't have a good game balance. There's a rough balance between Ermor and cheap priests - so if demon armies are to be playable they have to be almost as easy to produce as an undead horde, and that's far, far, from the case

Second, I think having a small band of village priests obliterate a demon army completely fails to capture the spirit of exorcism. Exorcism is almost always portrayed as a complex, extended one-on-one struggle between priest and demon. It's never simple or easy and often it's epic - both in Western and Eastern culture. You can make a whole movie about a single exorcism/possession - again, in both cultures. This contrasts with priestly powers over the dead which in almost every culture are portrayed as extensive and easy to use. A priest *is* supposed to be able to banish a graveyard of undead - actually, it's his main job in most cultures.

It completely fails to capture the horror and terror of monsters from hell when Pastor Bob can get up from dinner, send several packing to the nether plane with a few scripture citations, and be back before his roast beef gets cold.

[KissBlade]

The bandit archers are among the better archers since EA is all about battle of the archers and their better armor allows better durability. Also my strat with Yomi just tends to be using tons of indies and splurging most of my gold on mercs. I find Yomi's actual recruitables largely useless =). (I actually tend to bulk on bakemono archers in beginning simply to spam my opponent with them) Though they do have very nice magic IMO.

[Maltrease]

I haven't played with Ko-Oni so I can't comment on the "balance" side of things. However, I really liked Kristoffer's comment about making the Oni retreat when in ghost form and making them more difficult to banish in ghost form.

"We have driven the demons back today... but they will return soon."

So in a sense you have all these priest which are able to easily temporarly banish the demon army and drive them off the battle field but to actual "kill" them takes a lot more effort. That sounds really fun and full of flavor to me and invites specific strategies to actually kill the oni ghost instead of automatically having the priest do both jobs.

It also sounds interesting that in ghost form all the oni want to flee, since of course they don't want to be permantly killed and now they are are at their vulnerable stage.

[Boron]

curtadams said:
I have to disagree with leaving the demon army so vulnerable to exorcism both on thematic and game grounds. On game ground the decision is easy - when a half dozen cheap priests, available to anybody, can cripple any demon army you don't have a good game balance. There's a rough balance between Ermor and cheap priests - so if demon armies are to be playable they have to be almost as easy to produce as an undead horde, and that's far, far, from the case

Priests are not so easy to get in dom3 as in dom2!
500 gold per temple for indy priests.
So only if you have national priest mages like dryads or arco priestesses a nation will have many priests in early game at least because it takes time to build new castles.

If you build only temples you are vulnerable to raiding then. And the yomo player could also do skelspam, then those skellis will have to be banished as well.

And magic resistence is ok for the dai oni demons anyways imho. 13-15, that is not bad!

But all in all i am not a too big fan of most of the demons neither!

Corwin said:


You make some very good points Boron. I completely agree, Dai Oni are more flexable (and potentially more powerful) than Niefel Jarls. That's why I like them more, and as I said earlier, in the end game with good buffs and items they make better SCs than Jarls.

I haven't tried E9 bless with Oni. I suspect you are rigth, and it might work reasonably well. However I would expect your Dai Oni to suffer and collect afflictions quickly, if you use them butt naked from the very begining.

Still it maybe worth it because of faster expansion. It's hard to know for sure before you actually try it. An interesting idea in any case. Personally if I would be trying something along these lines, I would probably throw N4 into the mix, to make my Dai Oni last longer without becoming walking wreck due to injuries. And at the very least I would get them before sending them on their own or with only missile support against tough indeps.

Overall I think your and mine perception of Oni are not too far from each other. I agree than Dai Oni are great, and the archers are cheap and low resources. But all my suggestions, as you can see, were centered on Oni demon troops, which, as pretty much all people here seem to agree, including yourself, are very weak and need some boost, or there is not much point of using them at all in MP.

And playing Oni Kings nation while only using single demon king SC and bunch or human archers/infantry, without using any of 6 demon troops, just doesn't seems as a elegant solution to me from the design/balance point of view, if you know what I mean. I think Oni overall balance and diversity would increase a lot, if the actual demon troops would be made efficient in MP by few tweaks. My suggestions are an attempt to do just that.

Hm yes that is indeed problematic.

The problem is that imho most of the demon troops cost too much.
The Ko-Oni is useful imho, 12 cost is much too but he is easy to amass with his 1 resource cost and he has imho more combat power than the bakemono sho.
Once you can cast end of weakness they should be even more useful.

The other 4 demon troops are all too expensive though imho. I would also suggest they need price balancing.

Yomo is complicated with troops, i would only use 3 troop types:
Bandit archers when i have money shortages, otherwise pump bakemono archers. And in special cases a horde of ku onis.

The ku onis have various advantages imho:
need not eat, still ok price, size 1, so ultraswarming, 2nd form, so they need to be killed twice and 1 resource cost.

If your enemy does not have either really good spammable battle magic (blade wind and magma eruption mainly) or has SCs with fireshield the ku onis are decent.
They can swarm and they have only 1 encumberance.
So once you have a horde of them they become a problem.
They still die en masse, but that is not the problem because you can replace them much faster than your enemy.
They are like lobo guards. Only an average unit, but because they are so mass produceable they overwhelm the enemy .

Maybe they should only cost 10 gold though. But the other Yomo demon troops cost way too much and the non-demon non-missile troops of dai oni are nearly useless as well.

Price balances should do the trick though .

[Corwin]

Boron said:

Priests are not so easy to get in dom3 as in dom2!
500 gold per temple for indy priests.
So only if you have national priest mages like dryads or arco priestesses a nation will have many priests in early game at least because it takes time to build new castles.

If you build only temples you are vulnerable to raiding then. And the yomo player could also do skelspam, then those skellis will have to be banished as well.

And magic resistence is ok for the dai oni demons anyways imho. 13-15, that is not bad!

But all in all i am not a too big fan of most of the demons neither!

Hm yes that is indeed problematic.

The problem is that imho most of the demon troops cost too much.
The Ko-Oni is useful imho, 12 cost is much too but he is easy to amass with his 1 resource cost and he has imho more combat power than the bakemono sho.
Once you can cast end of weakness they should be even more useful.

The other 4 demon troops are all too expensive though imho. I would also suggest they need price balancing.

Yomo is complicated with troops, i would only use 3 troop types:
Bandit archers when i have money shortages, otherwise pump bakemono archers. And in special cases a horde of ku onis.

The ku onis have various advantages imho:
need not eat, still ok price, size 1, so ultraswarming, 2nd form, so they need to be killed twice and 1 resource cost.

If your enemy does not have either really good spammable battle magic (blade wind and magma eruption mainly) or has SCs with fireshield the ku onis are decent.
They can swarm and they have only 1 encumberance.
So once you have a horde of them they become a problem.
They still die en masse, but that is not the problem because you can replace them much faster than your enemy.
They are like lobo guards. Only an average unit, but because they are so mass produceable they overwhelm the enemy .

Maybe they should only cost 10 gold though. But the other Yomo demon troops cost way too much and the non-demon non-missile troops of dai oni are nearly useless as well.

Price balances should do the trick though .

I agree with you and Kristoffer Boron, price balance is indeed a possible solution. I mean - "There are many ways to skin the cat". Troops can be made better, or can be made cheaper, or both. Decreasing price of 30gp demons to 15gp, and 50-65gp to 25-30gp might do the trick. But I would still like to see ghost form made more durable, with same hitpoints as a normal form. This does not increase fighting power of Oni much, since ghost form are hopelessly weak due to only having illusionary weapons. But this would fit nicely into concept of "near immortality", alowing more demons to survive IF the battle is won.


I don't like the idea of oni ghost forms fleeing the battle, I would prefer them to stay and either fight or die. But giving them a bit more hitpoints and higher MR, so they would not be killed in mass with single banishment, would be good.



About Ku-Onis - as partly agree with you. Like yourself, I also like their swarm tactic, both from the tematic point of view and game-wise. But the problem is that their size one makes then the worst troops if you are facing priests, and in MP as an Oni player, you pretty much always do.

************************************************** *****
Here is some primitive math - up to 30 (6x5) Ku-Oni are affected by casting of lvl 1 banishment each turn. That's 2 times more units than size 2 Ao-Oni (25gp demon).

Now Ku-Oni MR of 13 vs 14 for AO-Oni. According to the probabilities table on page 5 of the manual, that makes them about 25% more vulnerable for banishments.

Now Ku-Oni have 9hp vs 14 hp for Ao-Oni. That's 55%+ more hitpoints for AO-Oni.

So here we have it. In terms of actually killing units (reducing their hitpoints) banishment is (2 times x 1.25 x 1.55) = 4.75 times more deadly for Ku -Oni than for Ao-Oni.

That's A LOT.

Considering that the the AO-Oni only cost 25 gp vs 12 gp for Ku-Oni, and considering that the banishment is the main weakness of Oni in MP, there is no point of buying Ku-Oni instead of Ao-Oni even with the current pricing.

That does not even include the fact that AO-Oni are much better fighters than Ku-Oni, that the AO-Oni have secondary weapons which Ku-Oni do not have, that they move much faster on the battlefield (10 instead of 7 movement), that they have morale 14 instead of morale 9, so they are much less likely to rout, while costing the same 1 res, and even have 1 slightly better protection.

Now considering all these facts, and considering the fact that the only thing Ku-Oni have over Ao-Oni is size 1 instead of size 2, (which, as i mentioned, also makes twice as vulnerable as Ao-Oni for banishment unit-wise), I don't see any reason why would somebody want to buy Ku-Oni instead of Ao-Oni, when facing human opponent.

************************************************** *******
The math may be slightly off, but not by much I think.


That is not to say that AO-Oni and better demons should be left as it is price-wise. My point is simply that none of the demons are price efficient at this point, including least epensive Ku-Oni. And that Ku-Oni IMHO are the worst cost/efficient demon unit when it comes to banishment in MP, as I tried to show in my calculations.



Anyway, as I said, IMHO serious price reduction, perhaps making all demonic units twice least expensive, may do the trick, together with better survivability of ghost form due to same HP as normal form and better MR for ghost form.

The banishment will still present huge problem for Oni players, but maybe it will be enough to make some demon troops worth building in MP games, as an opposite to using bakamoo archers and indeps.

[KissBlade]

heh actually the idea of them fleeing does make sense thematically for oni's, I like it a lot =).

[Corwin]

KissBlade said:
heh actually the idea of them fleeing does make sense thematically for oni's, I like it a lot =).

Thematically - yes, I agree, it's nice. Cowardly demons, thinking of their own survival, hiding in the dark corners of the world before reforming into new bodies, et cetera...

But from the gameplay point of view, it will make Oni even weaker that they are, considering how easely their normal form are killed. At least now spirit form can distract opponents for a while, before it is killed. I would much rather lose banch of demons but increase my chances of wining the battle, than have demons flee once in ghost form, and lose the battle AND most of the army.


IMHO the last thing Oni need is a change to make their demonic troops weaker.

[PvK]

Just a few inputs:

* In the SP vs. AI games I've played as Yomi, I tended to do quite well. I don't remember ever actually losing an Oni King.

* I tended to use Oni Kings as thugs without really needing to cast spells, and seeming very effective with only a magic trinket or two, and/or casting a spell or two to help them out. I didn't try to use them as SC's, but instead would but one or two together and support them with some non-demon fodder. I felt nearly undefeatable against the AI.

* Another advantage of the ghost form is that it makes afflictions vanish! So not only was I never losing my Oni Kings, but they were never getting permanently crippled either.

* Using combined arms rather than all-demon armies seemed effective. I didn't try to make a huge army of smaller demons, but would have a few specialized squads of them.

* The Oni King seems to me like an extremely powerful unit to have recruitable from turn 1, even if it is capitol-only. Having them seems like it goes a long way to needing to have weaknesses in other areas.

PvK

[Graeme Dice]

PvK said:
* The Oni King seems to me like an extremely powerful unit to have recruitable from turn 1, even if it is capitol-only. Having them seems like it goes a long way to needing to have weaknesses in other areas.

The Oni King is powerful, but then so is the Niefel Jarl, the Basalt King, the Triton King, and Agarthan Oracles. The early age nations are full of powerful commanders that sit in the 400 to 500 gold range.

[KissBlade]

PvK said:
* Another advantage of the ghost form is that it makes afflictions vanish! So not only was I never losing my Oni Kings, but they were never getting permanently crippled either.

Haha are you serious? That's pretty cool. Oh yeah to balance out the Oni Kings, yomi troops suck (except from bandit archers which are serviceable with bakemono archers till you get indies that is) Oni's are poor researchers and also their magic isn't very versatile for early age.