Seems the Devs have neglected Pale Ones

[Rayder]

I think this faction is past due a rework.

Here are their glaring issues:

1. Their major Lvl 3 summon, the EMF (Earth Made Flesh), added in COE5, costs 480(!) emeralds for a Commander that is marked inferior to the markedly cheaper King of Earth which only costs 200 emeralds. What's worse is that you can have 3 Kings while you can only have one EMF.

The EMF has: 1 armor compared the King's 4, no regen, no monster spawn. Though it has level 2 in hydromancy, the King comes with an Orb of Geomancy which gives it Geomancy 4.

The EMF has local gold, gem and iron generation, but these only work at a mine, which HAS to be an oversight, since you would never park such a combat-oriented commander at a gem mine.

I personally think EMF should cost 180 emeralds instead of 480, with the local economy bonus either changed to a global one or removed completely. To get it you need to spend 240 emeralds to promote an Oracle anyway. This brings it more in line with other factions.

The Awaken Onyx Oracle is way too over-costed at 120 emeralds for a bunch of STATIONARY troops, and again the economic boost (+1 local gem mine production) is too meagre and expensive and conflicts with the purpose of this summon, which is extremely niche (one could argue that you would never cast it).

Marble Oracle and Awaken Guardian also suffer these problems. It's simply not a good idea to cast these spells 99% of the time over casting summons that can move with your army and do useful things. I personally think both the summoning rates and costs of these spells should be halved.

Agartha is much less rewarding to explore compared to Sky, mostly because of how long it takes to tunnel anywhere.
Scrying costs way too much for something that is more or less REQUIRED to not waste time in Agartha. It currently takes too long to tunnel anywhere blind without scrys, and you're much better off using those sapphires on summoning Olms to help you capture and hold onto stuff on the surface anyway.

[Goremand]

Tunneling in Agartha doesn't actually take that long if you use multiple commanders, in my experience it's richer than the sky and certainly worth exploring. It's better on larger maps because there is less flooding.

I agree the T3 summons don't seem worthwhile, I would rather just upgrade my oracles.

[Commisar Jon Fuklaw]

Something something workshop.
Something something shameless self promotion.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2588890684

[Rayder]

I like your mod, and I've subscribed to it. However, I'm not a big fan of diluting their uniqueness by essentially importing even more Warlock rituals.

It also doesn't address my core issues.

Earth made Flesh is broken. it is extremely over-costed, and the resulting commander has broken abilities that have no place being on a combat commander.

The stationary summons are both underwhelming and over-costed. Again there is the bad design decision of putting local gem mine generation on a 120 emerald, stationary summon.

Promoting Oracles, which are hard enough to get in the first place, is pretty over-costed at 240 emeralds.

I think the bigger problem is that not much thought has been given to make Pale Ones cool to play, so people don't play them and the devs overlook them.



I have in mind some cool ideas for late game rituals that make use of their uniqueness as a race, all to do with eyes, since they're a race characterized by having only one eye.

What if they had big, costly, mutually exclusive rituals that let them decide how to overcome their one-eyed weakness?

With rubies, they might decide to forge magical eyes made from gems, and place it in their large recruitable units, upgrading them into hulking warriors that shoot beams from their eyes.

With sapphires, perhaps they can make a pact with the deep ones to mutate their race into having many eyes. Maybe they can get new recruitables with Deep One-themed abilities.

With diamonds, perhaps they decide to get rid of their eyes all together, and become a race of necromantic, eye-less casters.

I am working on a mod as we speak.

[Bullet Tooth Tony]

Totally agree, Pale Ones and Dwarfs need more love ;)

[Primagen]

I think the mods available for pale ones are great but asking the devs to change a few things in vanilla is fine. They really do need something to spice them up. Everything is there really for it. They just need to balance cost and add some more things from dominions.

[geepope]

I think pale ones are more or less fine overall, their early/mid game strength is enough to carry them despite their high level rituals being so weak. But really, it's probably OK that the big rituals suck; oracles are quite strong and well worth spending gems to upgrade, so you have plenty of use for emeralds anyhow.

[Rayder]

Every faction is fine if you look at it from a certain perspective.

I had started playing Pale Ones again after trying out the new Cloud Lords faction, which is potent enough to win handily over two Emperor AIs on a Huge sized map because they had so many good tools.

I had thought that the Pale Ones would have been revamped to be as powerful in the Earth as the Cloud Lords were in the Sky.

Boy was I wrong. Not only do they not have any measure of their mobility, their end game pales in comparison.

You can summon an Air Queen with lvl 4 Storm Magic for 200 diamonds. That's potentially a caster that can double-cast Arcane Tempest. It also has flying and floating and spawns monsters.

Their level 2 summons can be extremely lackluster for the steep cost, especially compared to Warlock summons. Namely, they can't summon a commander with decent mobility.

It's insane that not only are the Oracles based on RNG AFTER you control temples, you have to spend the inordinate sum of 240 emeralds to upgrade them. I'm trying to test them on my usual go-to setting of duel against 1 emperor AI on a large map, and it's extremely frustrating and boring to camp the coast-lines recapping towns.

They have no real ability to field an attrition immune stack. So you can only slowly cap the sea nodes. Agartha is not viable to explore unless you spend hundreds off sapphires.

[Groggy]

They've definitely improved since COE4, but yeah, I agree.

It seems to me like Illwinter is focusing on bug fixes and modding right now, which I think is the right decision.

That said, I do hope they take a look at the suggestion thread when that's all wrapped up. I know there's a few ideas in there for pale ones (my own included).

Anyway, I agree with the points you brought up.

I mentioned this elsewhere in somewhat different wording, but I think they did a great job with the cloud lord as a faction dependent on a single gem type. I think they could steal the idea of creating citadels that provide gems from them. Pale One's currently have the ability to transform deep earth gem deposits into temples, but honestly, I think that should be scrapped and a new ritual should be added that creates a Temple Citadel anywhere in Agartha without requiring you to sacrifice an existing resource. It's fine to make it tier 3 even (nvm, forgot regular mage recruits only go to tier 2 haha), but I think that would make the class feel a lot more usable without really changing too much.

Aside from all that, I'd love to see the Pale Ones become more of a turtling build up nation than even Sky Lord. Give us rituals that turn cave fungus into spawn points for grubs and cave cows. Give us rituals for turning underground lakes into olm spawning ponds. Maybe underground adjacent tiles could be turned into spawn points for magma children. Etc Etc.

If we get nothing else, I'd at least like for Pale Ones to have a new ritual that shows the nearest unmapped open space in Agartha (that's not underwater).

Edit:

Starting up another pale one game now just to make sure things haven't changed and I'm speaking from an informed perspective.

Regular Pale Ones have Spear 1-4+1 and Thrown Rock 1-1+1.
Pale One Slingers have Dagger 1-3+1 and Sling 1-2.

Besides range, slingers are just worse regular pale ones...

Edit2:

Currently, starting the game without any guaranteed water gem income feels pretty restrictive. Pales Ones are fairly reliant on getting uncontested resources in Agartha, and if you can't scry, things get considerably more difficult.

Also, the the King of the Deep should probably get fast heal. It's worthless for more grabbing more than a few small settlements before afflictions make him worthless. That or make him a mage.

Edit:3:

Actually, forget giving King of the Deep Slow Heal... Have him start with a ring of regeneration and give the mages a ritual to create artifacts in exchange for iron.

Final Edit:

I tried replaying them for a few hours. I hate to say it, but yeah... they're definitely painful to play from my perspective. The gameplay is just really really slow, and I know there's not really any exciting end game that I can look forward to. Slow early game, and no end game. A really cool idea thematically, but I really hope they get adjusted when the developers have time. I'll hold off on revisiting them until I see something in the change log.

[Rayder]

I understand that the Devs try to give every faction different mechanics so that playing them is a unique experience.

However, Pale Ones seem to have drawn the short end of the stick and gotten some relatively boring mechanics. From what I can tell these are:

1. Having amphibious on all their units. So you can camp out on the lakes and coasts and sneakily cap stuff. This is kind of useful, until you realize that many other factions get flying/floating commanders that are MUCH better at pulling off this kind of stuff.

It also doesn't help that moving through water squares costs 2 movement uniformly(even for aquatic units). It would be helpful and thematic for some units to have a "swimming" movement type that reduces move cost through water. Notably, I think Olms should get this to make up for being slow.

2. Having a lot of stationary summons. This is a poor mechanic gameplay wise. In any strategy game, having overly-strong static defenses slows down the pace of play and encourages turtling, but turtling doesn't even work in this game.

In Conquest of Elysium, static defenses suck a lot more compared to other games because defenses don't exert any Zone of Control, so enemies can just bypass your heavily fortified positions and back-cap you.

The way to win in this game is to have a lot of map presence via lots of Commanders, and have most of them be well-fielded enough to not get picked off. You don't get map control from having static defenses, much less the extremely costly ones that Pale Ones have.

In my opinion, one way for their stationary summons to work would be to majorly decrease their cost, especially in terms of emeralds, their most importance resource. The strength of the summons should probably also decrease to compensate, but the goal would be to make it a viable strategy for your casters to back-cap enemy resource nodes and plonk down some decently strong defenders on them so that when the enemy tries to recapture it, they take some decent attrition.

[lord_khaine]

Do agree on that a lot of the Agarthan magic is kinda disapointing.

[Goremand]

Although I disagree with most being said here, I do concur the statues have next to no use currently. Pale ones are not like dwarfs or kobolds, they don't have specific locations that are critical to defend.

Simply removing these rituals would be a buff to pale ones, as it would make it easier to get the actually useful summons.

[Underscorecow]

Pale ones do have chokepoints in the form of their pits to agarth which give an advantage in multiplayer since you can doomstack the bottom of the pit without anyone being able to scout your doomstack (they use pit and are instantly put in combat), unless someone breached somewhere else.

its a good candidate for placing immobiles since an enemy army running around in agarth could force you to lose out on your gem deposits and stuff.


I think giving pale ones a way to actually develop in agarth like making freespawn areas using certain tiles is the best idea for how to fix pale ones as a whole since it would also make their static defenses more useful as they control all of their chokepoints.

[geepope]

Originally posted by Jim of Trades:

I tried replaying them for a few hours. I hate to say it, but yeah... they're definitely painful to play from my perspective. The gameplay is just really really slow, and I know there's not really any exciting end game that I can look forward to. Slow early game, and no end game. A really cool idea thematically, but I really hope they get adjusted when the developers have time. I'll hold off on revisiting them until I see something in the change log.

I have a hard time seeing them as a slow early game, they've got one of the strongest starts of any faction IMO. If you get reckless and try to treat the King of the Deep as an independent expansion force then you may run into trouble but if you don't get too far from the starting army you can knock down 2 easy fights per turn and then team up to bulldoze tougher fights that many factions would have to bypass early on. Their troops are pretty solid so with the resources you can grab you can quickly churn out additional forces and just generally bully the hell out of most factions early on.

Their main weakness in my experience is that they are vulnerable to gem RNG, if you aren't able to get beyond your starting 1 emerald/turn it does get very painful as you need them both to explore Agartha for more gems and to promote your mages so that you can get your 2nd tier summons online for the mid game.

Originally posted by Goremand:

Although I disagree with most being said here, I do concur the statues have next to no use currently. Pale ones are not like dwarfs or kobolds, they don't have specific locations that are critical to defend.

Simply removing these rituals would be a buff to pale ones, as it would make it easier to get the actually useful summons.

Agreed 100%. Or at least make them automatic rituals that don't count against your random picks.

[Rayder]

Originally posted by Underscorecow:

Pale ones do have chokepoints in the form of their pits to agarth which give an advantage in multiplayer since you can doomstack the bottom of the pit without anyone being able to scout your doomstack (they use pit and are instantly put in combat), unless someone breached somewhere else.

its a good candidate for placing immobiles since an enemy army running around in agarth could force you to lose out on your gem deposits and stuff.


I think giving pale ones a way to actually develop in agarth like making freespawn areas using certain tiles is the best idea for how to fix pale ones as a whole since it would also make their static defenses more useful as they control all of their chokepoints.

I'm not sure if you're serious.

How is this a serious point?

Chokepoints only have meaning if they lead to somewhere of strategic value. There's very few things of strategic value in Agartha, unless you're turtling up in there to prolong the game. The strategic value is on resource nodes of the surface.

If you turtle in Agartha and let your opponent cap the surface then you lose in the end.

Besides, what you are proposing can easily be achieved by just flooding the underground tunnels. Any army that come down would drown, not that they would in the first place. I never go into pits because I know that they're wastes of time.

[Groggy]

Originally posted by geepope:

I have a hard time seeing them as a slow early game, they've got one of the strongest starts of any faction IMO. If you get reckless and try to treat the King of the Deep as an independent expansion force then you may run into trouble but if you don't get too far from the starting army you can knock down 2 easy fights per turn and then team up to bulldoze tougher fights that many factions would have to bypass early on. Their troops are pretty solid so with the resources you can grab you can quickly churn out additional forces and just generally bully the hell out of most factions early on.

Their main weakness in my experience is that they are vulnerable to gem RNG, if you aren't able to get beyond your starting 1 emerald/turn it does get very painful as you need them both to explore Agartha for more gems and to promote your mages so that you can get your 2nd tier summons online for the mid game.

Assuming there aren't any scary independents near my starting citadel, I do generally send out the king with all the starting troops minus 5 troops for defense.

Anyway, I'm happy to expand on the topic in case I'm wrong somewhere. I might have miscounted since I was rushing it, but see the following:

Pale Ones start with the king, a tier 1 caster, 5 Pale One Soldiers, 8 Pale Ones, and 2 Pale One Slingers.

Baron starts with 2 basic commanders, 5 Cavalry Men, 6 Spearmen, and 5 Longbowmen.

Cloud Lord starts with a Tier 2 caster, basic commander, 10 Airya Spearmen, and 5 Airya Archers

Priest King starts with a Tier 2 caster, a basic commander, 10 Jungle Warrios, and 10 Tribal Warrios,

Necromancer starts with a Tier 2 caster, a Tier 1 caster, 10 Spearmen, and 5 archers.

Demonologist starts with a Tier 2 caster, a Tier 1 caster, 8 Swordmen, and 5 Crossbowmen.

Looking at starting armies alone, I'd say Pale Ones are good, but nothing particularly special. All the troop numbers are relatively close, so I don't think that's really worth discussing.

The Pale One troops have the benefit of higher health than most other factions, with 10 health vs anywhere from 4-6 for most other factions. Still, that's only 4-6 extra health, and they also universally suffer from bad sight with a 20% accuracy reduction. Overall, I'd say it they're still better than most troops, but not significantly.

While the basic troops of the Pale Ones are arguably a bit better than that of other factions, their starting commanders are nothing particularly special. A Tier 1 mage isn't great, and I'd much prefer a Tier 2 mage over a tanky commander without regeneration. The tier 2 mage will last longer if protected, have way more of a effect on combat, and be upgrade-able to do even more damage.

Moving on from starting troops:

Baron will quickly pass up Pale Ones due to periodic freespawn and better recruitables, but that's fair since Baron is all about early game supremacy.

Cloud Lord is everything Pale Ones wish they could be. Early game, they can recruit ethereal floating units which have all the sea raiding advantages of Pale Ones, and probably win out in survive-ability due to having ethereal as well. They have flying units which can easily scout out and conquer weakly defended locations both in their home realm as well as Elysium. Late game, they have 2 rituals that generate the gem they are reliant on, in addition to the ritual to change other gems into their desired one. They also have the air related tier 3 warlock summoning rituals which can dominate late game. Cloud Lord wins both early game and late game.

Priest King early game you can pretty quickly snowball slaves to conquer any weakly defended provinces. Pale Ones might conquer the first few locations faster than Priest King, but overall for the early game, I still think Priest King wins out early game due to how quickly the slaves can build up, and that you can start supplementing your armies with demons way sooner than a Pale One can start supplementing armies with elemental summons. Priest King also has a great late game with rituals compared to Pale Ones.

Necromancer can raise dead, and with the nearby gallows, their starting troops technically include another 20 or so undead. They can also steamroll a few early settlements while simultaneously supplementing their army without going back for reinforcements. Granted, this only works until insanity puts a stop to it, but I still think necro early game is better. They also have a way better late game.

Demonologist completely loses early game, but that's fine. They're one of the strongest late game classes.

To me, it just doesn't really feel like their early game is anything to write home about considering their late game isn't great either.

I could be missing something though. To be fair, I'm not exhaustively comparing them to every other class.