Skaven plague needs a serious rework

[HONK]

Plagues in general just need a rework but the skaven plague is particularly the most "anti-fun". -50% income from buildings and a -30 growth for 5 turns, it can spread from city to city without any armies/characters in the region, and essentially is a game ender if the rng is bad enough (which should NEVER be the case). The fact that you just lose all your economy due to a single skaven mechanics is rediculous, especially considering that multiple settlements can be infected on the same turn meaning a settlement can get infected, and then over the endturn spread that infection to another settlement so you now have 2 settlements that are essentially useless to you for 5 turns. And if you happen to have an army there? Well the current strat is to just disband the army... Really? That's the way you deal with skaven plague is to just disband your entire army CA? You guys gotta figure this out because this is stuff that can be solved with half a brain. Allow every faction a way to CURE plague, heroes who can spread plague need to have their self-defence against other heroes nerfed so they can actually be assassinated without needing to dedicate a hero solely to looking for every hero that could spread a plague to you (there's a lot, too many for you to keep track of and some are invisible), and the time limit needs a drastic reduction and/or the debuffs needs a serious nerf. There's no reason skaven plague should reduce income by 50%. Especially when they don't have an undercity.

[KoboldUtopian]

It can be an annoyance, but it's hardly a "game ender" and what you describe is pretty much how real plagues work. It would be nice to have some way to remove plague (maybe encamp gives you a % chance or you can kill off a fixed amount of troops or population to end it early) but there are ways to reduce its effectiveness with buildings and skills. I've never felt the need to disband an army or abandon a city because they have plague. It only lasts a few turns and, yeah, makes things harder, but we can't go nerfing every little bit of difficulty out of the game.

[Tavio]

you think its current state is game ender?

how the skaven plague used to be before in warhammer 2, now THAT was game ender, would seriously damage city garrisons, drasticallly damage your armies and there was no way to mitigate its damage, you couldnt recover soldiers in your units in any way shape or form and usually by the time the plague was over, you had lost about 90% of all the troops in every unit you had.

now that's game ender

i once was doing a spearhead attack into skaven territory, saw i got the plague on my troops, thought "ah shi-- i need to carefully...wait" then noticed the plague was hardly doing any damage, and it only reduced economy in a city, inmediately went "A blessing from the lord!" and pushed forward.

while i agree there should be ways to deal/lessen/make it dissappear faster, theyre a far cry from deadly threat they used to be

[Enelith]

I agree plagues should be reworked, Nurgle's and Skaven's (specially Nurgle's).
It's not potent enough to be worthy of the name "Plagues"....

[Falaris]

Originally posted by Enelith:

I agree plagues should be reworked, Nurgle's and Skaven's (specially Nurgle's).
It's not potent enough to be worthy of the name "Plagues"....

Ku'gath's plagues are a buff to nurgle armies and cities as much as a penalty to others; that's why they feel less impactful. For Nurgle, when you get the big ones, they are game changers. The worst plague to be hit by, in my opinion, is Daniel's nurgle faction plague. Passively, constantly, spreading a heavy attrition plague is NASTY.

Caveat: Haven't checked up on Skrolk lately. I know you don't want his plague lab sitting under your city.... actually, time to play Skrolk. :)

[Enelith]

Originally posted by Falaris:

Originally posted by Enelith:

I agree plagues should be reworked, Nurgle's and Skaven's (specially Nurgle's).
It's not potent enough to be worthy of the name "Plagues"....

Ku'gath's plagues are a buff to nurgle armies and cities as much as a penalty to others; that's why they feel less impactful. For Nurgle, when you get the big ones, they are game changers. The worst plague to be hit by, in my opinion, is Daniel's nurgle faction plague. Passively, constantly, spreading a heavy attrition plague is NASTY.

Caveat: Haven't checked up on Skrolk lately. I know you don't want his plague lab sitting under your city.... actually, time to play Skrolk. :)

That's part of my issue actually.
Nurgle's should be the most impactful to play with (Pestilens aside ~ they definitely need something to be done to make them "special", but since they're a base game faction... ).
Even when Nurgle's best recipes unlock, I still feel something's missing (but they're good, that's not the point here).
I like Nurgle as he is, but if he were to be buffed / tweaked / reworked, I wouldn't mind.

Regardless, we'll see what CA will cook for us about it with ToD. Wait and see.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Enelith:

I like Nurgle as he is, but if he were to be buffed / tweaked / reworked, I wouldn't mind.

Nurgle is scheduled for a "update" in the next DLC (togheter with the Empire and Dwarfs). That said, don't get your hopes up to much, see the "updates" Tzeentch, Kislev and Cathay received with the last DLC for references to what scale of a update we can expect.

[Fryskar]

Besides vs Skrolks faction (clan pestilens), they have a high CD and can be prevented by killing off the hero that would trigger it.

I haven't ever disbanded an army that caught the plague. Re-recruiting a non-trashstack might be more expensive than to just use that army more defensive for a couple turns.

[art_loots]

OP there is an actual building tree for that =)
so there is actual counterplay

[Fryskar]

Originally posted by art_loots:

OP there is an actual building tree for that =)
so there is actual counterplay

And -attrition skills.

[Valthejean]

Originally posted by Falaris:

Ku'gath's plagues are a buff to nurgle armies and cities as much as a penalty to others; that's why they feel less impactful. For Nurgle, when you get the big ones, they are game changers. The worst plague to be hit by, in my opinion, is Daniel's nurgle faction plague. Passively, constantly, spreading a heavy attrition plague is NASTY.

Caveat: Haven't checked up on Skrolk lately. I know you don't want his plague lab sitting under your city.... actually, time to play Skrolk. :)

Didn't they remove attrition from Daniel's plagues like....ages ago?

[Chief Minister of Gaming]

I reckon plagues on the whole should get nastier, and linger, and be more like reality, once they take seat, with percentage chance small to get going, but once they do, do alot.

[Ashardalon]

problem with plagues is
they suck getting as the player
while the ai is inherently immune to most of their effects
economy? the ai doesnt use, attrition? the ai is immune
buffing the plgues will only hurt the player, while in player hands still do nothing

[KoboldUtopian]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

problem with plagues is
they suck getting as the player
while the ai is inherently immune to most of their effects
economy? the ai doesnt use, attrition? the ai is immune
buffing the plgues will only hurt the player, while in player hands still do nothing

I certainly want to see the AI lose their attrition immunity (there's a mod for that), but often just blocking their replenishment is plenty helpful.