Dark Ritual Breaks the game

[Pai De Familia]

I mean, for real. It makes every other aspect of the game pretty much useless, just slap some dark ritual heroes in the battle and like a unholy flex seal it fixes pretty much everything. I would not mind if you could use it only once per battle but every 3 turns??? And not only that but you can reanimate zombies that already died. At this point the zombies are pretty much minced meat on the ground. It's a good game but I got a feel that it is still pretty much a beta that needs some balancing. So much that everyone that plays multiplayer has rules on what can and cannot be used because some stuff completely breaks the game. Anyways, this is just my 2 cents.

[GrandMajora]

If Necromancy wasn't so powerful, then we wouldn't have so many dark lords trying to conquer the world with it.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Note that the next DLC adds the tome of severing, the tome of severing allows you (among other things) to delete all corpses on the battlefield all at once.

Off course that only helps if you get said DLC, but i thought it was worth the mention at least.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

If Necromancy wasn't so powerful, then we wouldn't have so many dark lords trying to conquer the world with it.

tome of souls is a mediocre pick unless there is ruins nearby

[Terminal]

The Dark Ritual/Mass Reanimation powers are good for prolonging a fight and soaking up damage, but the real power comes from hard unit resurrection. Decaying Zombie Spam is good in the early and midgame but start to flag hard in the late game.

While Dark Ritual being accessible by level 4 on a Hero/Ruler is fairly powerful, consider the associated costs to using it.

1. It only works if there are dead bodies on the field, which means in the best case scenario you are reanimating only enemy bodies and none of your units are dead, in which case it's just a 'win more' button. If that's not the case and you have lost units down the line, Dark Ritual does nothing to help shore up the opportunity/economic cost of replacing that unit and Dark Ritual is little more than a consolation prize to help mitigate additional costs.

2. It takes three action points to cast, meaning your hero cannot do anything else on the turn they use Dark Ritual. If they have sprint, they can maybe move one space before casting, but that's it. Considering how powerful heroes can be - they can go toe to toe with most Tier V units by the time they are level 12 if you build and gear them correctly - having them spend a whole turn not waging a massacre against the enemy can be pretty costly, especially when all you might get from it are Decaying Zombies.

If you overuse Dark Ritual in the early game it might be a sign you are either falling behind because of the resources and time it will cost to replace all the units that wind up as reanimation fodder, or you are not being as efficient as you could be in manual battles. If you are already winning and piling up mounds of enemy bodies, there are better uses for a Hero's action points than Dark Ritual.

[DesertRose92]

It doesn't look very strong to be honest.
It deals little damage, need available corpses (smart opponents will stand on them or remove them) and takes 3 action points. And even if you manage to raise Decaying Zombies, with 50 HPs and 0 0 resistances they will most likely be one-shotted.

[Pai De Familia]

Well maybe late game it isn't so powerful late, but early to mid game it pretty much breaks it. You have the ability to raise up to 7 units that are immune to morale, that can soak some decent damage and that will cause your units NOT TO HEAL !!! With three heroes this can be done every single turn. This means the potential to over 70 units on a 10 turn spam, it's like a Golden Corral from hell, but instead of food you get cheesy tactics.
There is no winning, if you start to win, you give the enemy corpses, if you start to lose you give them corpses.

My main issue is not with the spell, I think if it was single use it would be balanced, my issue is that you can use every 3 turns and that you can revive bodies that are already zombies. I mean at that point it's all pretty much ghostly ground beef.

My solution it would be to change the use to once per battle, zombies do not produce corpses and corpses take damage like trees and such.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

tome of souls is a mediocre pick unless there is ruins nearby

Have you tried it out recently? Tome of Souls got much improved upon around the time Dragon's Dawn came out.

The souls required for its spells and soldiers were scaled down to half of what they were before, and it also became much easier to sustain their soul economy from its previous method.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

I would not mind if you could use it only once per battle but every 3 turns??? And not only that but you can reanimate zombies that already died.

You just feel that way, because the A.I. does not clear corpses proper.

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

At this point the zombies are pretty much minced meat on the ground.

True, but on the other side its a fantasy game with magic in it. And, have you ever tried to play any D&D game with the Ravenloft rules? The undead are very resilient there, think about the "Evil Dead" movies, even body parts are raising up again in both Ravenloft and Evil Dead and Dark Ritual was not even spammed...

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

It's a good game but I got a feel that it is still pretty much a beta that needs some balancing. So much that everyone that plays multiplayer has rules on what can and cannot be used because some stuff completely breaks the game.

Don't remember a single AoW release that was balanced and polished in under 1 year of its release.

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

So much that everyone that plays multiplayer has rules on what can and cannot be used because some stuff completely breaks the game.

In PvP, players do clear corpses.

[Pai De Familia]

I know only two ways of doing that, either by standing on top or by eating. Eating is kinda of okay but it means you get a society trait to uncheese something that is broken, my point is still valid.

Second option is to stand on top of corpses, kinda of impossible when there is an explosive diarrhea of zombies coming your way every turn on top of the enemy's army.

But please let me know if I am missing something.

[сын мясника]

Originally posted by Pai De Familia:

But please let me know if I am missing something.

Most battles ends in 3-5 turns. So most of the players dont care about spells with 3 turn cd.

[TirAsleen]

Eating corpses is more powerful, than you think it is, if you invest into shadow tomes and match very well with "Tome of Oblivion" and its spell "Sleep of Oblivion" target unit dies without beeing able to resist it and you can just eat its corpse and it won't return. This could be really broken, if used by a wizard, who can cast this 2 times in 1 turn and some fast shock units like the humble dark culture knight with corpse eating and high MP(48) to reach the corpse without much problems in just 1 turn.

Just to meantion this, to ease your feelings about Dark Ritual beeing broken, because it really isn't or at least not in a competetive sense. Could as well say, some shock units with enchants in autocombat are broken, as they can clear anything vs the brutal A.I. even Gold Wonders in autocombat with just a few melee enchants and its not hard to pull that off quite early into the game.

"Sleep of Oblivion" is indeed too strong, but its a T4 Tome, not an early signature hero ability.

But lets talk the small issue of Dark Ritual, this hero ability requires corpses to raise zombies the counter to this is......just don't lose any units? There are many ways to make your units very resilient, regenerate a lot of hp each turn and have high def/res values, conserve your units and do not use kamikaze goblin tactics.(like the A.I.)

Another easy way, the way i prefere, is to kill anything on sight with really fast shock units and magic. Seems pretty easy now, with no proper siege battles anymore where necromancers could have hided behind solid walls, like in some previous games.(SM)
Now, walls are always breached.

You can use elemental units, they cannot be reanimated, at least this was the case in previous versions, cannot check right now. Elemental types have one of the strongest units in the game, too.

Machines/Siegecraft/Constructs same as elementals, cannot be raised as corpses, i think machines will be called constructs in the next DLC Empires & Ashes. The issue right now is, we do not have many of this unit type rn.

There will be a new combat spell to remove all corpses on the battlefield in this is availible in only 5 days.

So, there is plenty of counterplay to Dark Ritual - btw Dark Ritual is not the issue here, its early hero stacking, this should be hard capped, or else it will continue unbalance the game.

The only AoW game where heroes were not strong was AoW2, but in AoW1 and AoW4 they are too strong and in AoW4 too easy to get and mantain on top of that.

[Pai De Familia]

So, you have an incorrect assumption in this case. I did not lose any units in the first couple of turns, it was all my enemies units. And yes, you can revive elementals with dark ritual.

That is actually the strategy the dude used. Tons of snow spirits that easily died with to my pyromancers and kept getting revived. There is no counter to that in early - mid game and it's ridiculous since you are pretty much reviving a bunch of overgrown Frostys(!!??).

Also, there was no hero stacking, all you need is three and you can continuously release the torrent of unlimited cheesy death.

Also, another misconception we were at lvl 3 tomes at this point, but you can get dark ritual, if aggressive enough before you finish your second tome, so yeah, it is not comparable.

Now, the spell to remove corpses seems like a good solution, but just like having the cannibal trait seems waaay too much effort to counter something that should just be balanced. I mean look at the other spells where you summon units, they are one time use only! And the summoned units only last three turns!! How can you say this is balanced in any way shape or form??

Again, nothing against dark ritual as a single spell but really not a balanced spell if usable every 3 turns.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

tome of souls is a mediocre pick unless there is ruins nearby

Have you tried it out recently? Tome of Souls got much improved upon around the time Dragon's Dawn came out.

The souls required for its spells and soldiers were scaled down to half of what they were before, and it also became much easier to sustain their soul economy from its previous method.

They're trash units. I'm not saying never to to take it, I'm just saying don't take it first unless you plan on using the souls for a city or something. If you fill up your early main army with them your opponent will probably just break you.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

They're trash units. I'm not saying never to to take it, I'm just saying don't take it first unless you plan on using the souls for a city or something. If you fill up your early main army with them your opponent will probably just break you.

Well, of course they're trash units. The power of necromancy lies in 'quantity over quality'.

A single skeleton may not be much of a threat. But if you send out 3 stacks of them at the same time, that's going to cause the enemy some problems early on.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Well, of course they're trash units. The power of necromancy lies in 'quantity over quality'.

Any main army gets 3 stacks, and mana is rarer than gold. The main advantage of the skeleton is that it is mana cheap and production cheap, but mana is rarer than gold, and gold is rarer than production, and you're spending it to fill your 3 stack max with a unit that does nothing in particular.