Drakken op?

[Drahcir0]

First of: this is no QQ or hate thread, I just want to discuss it, cuz they are OP in my opinion. I apologize for every grammatical mistake, I´m not a native speaker.

Early game: They know the starting location of every other player, which gives them a huge advantage, cause they know, if random, what races they are, and if they are close/near, and they have ALWAYS eyes on the capital, so they can also guess the threat. They also start with 2 drakklings and a hero with life enhance, which, if upgraded, gives them 2 300 life infantry slayer units with a ton of defence, and 1 400 life ranged healer, what makes them almost invincible. The only races that can keep up with them are the roving clans, because of their stun ability, but then the drakklings just adapt with spears, or broken lords, because of their better infantry slayer and dust care ability, even tho they got less life.

Mid game:Every drakken unit has the "quick learner" (or something like that) ability, what gives them the opportunity to have lvl 5 units in tech era 2. They also should have got the wyverns and ancients now. The wyverns can do a ton of damage, but are kinda easy to kill, but this gets negated because of their Quick learner ability. They are arguably (together with the necrodrones, and demons) one of the best flying units. The ancients aren´t that great, they are slow, do little damage, have low health, and can´t support their own army, just weaken the enemys. Tho they got the "sharing wisdom" ability, what makes them really valueable together with some ranged units, defended by 2-3 draklings. The drakken focus around influence, and can use it to force truce, peace or alliance, which makes them virtually invicible, beacuse they can just force a truce, if they are attacked, the only race, that is able to counter this are the cultists, but declaring war out of truce cost as much as forcing truce again, and the cultists will run out of influence eventually.

Late game: The units of the drakken scale really strong, so it is likely that they have about 2-4 1000 life draklings, 1-3 600 life wyverns, that deal about 250-750 damage each hit, and whatever support/ranged minor faction they chose standing back and raining death over the enemys. The only faction that could maybe keep up with them at this point is another drakken, or necrophages, because of their diseases, that do % damage.

/discuss

[Jiks]

Drakkenlings do have a ton of HPs but their damage is dreadful. I do fear those Wyverns though, definately their best unit.

The general high hit points of their units is best countered by healing IMO, other than disease as you say. They find it very hard to kill anything in a Broken Lord army backed by a couple of Dust Bishops, for example. Simply grind them down while not losing anyone, while killing any hero or wyverns as priority.

The thing with their diplomacy ability is that while they can force an unwanted diplomatic state there is nothing to stop the other side breaking the peace/alliance/whatever very soon afterwards ... and each extra force status change costs exponentially more than the previous one.

One of the reasons they come accross as very strong is that they are a simple faction for the AI to play, easier than say the Ardent Mages who require a lot of fine balancing and tricky decisions.

In short, not OP IMO but certainly strong opponents who have caused me a lot of grief so far. Which is a good thing.

[Matthew]

Their damage may be lower, but they are perfect for my "Endless Space" strategy, which was mass defense and regen. High level drakkenlings just do not die. Ever.

Though I find the best part about them is actually their bonus influence points on ruins. It seems so minor, yet getting that +3 instantly adds up quickly, which means more 20-turn plans.

The egg hatchery buildings are nice, too.

Probably my favorite faction in EL.

[Matthew]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=321610025

Screenshot I took a while back. Of course every faction can wipe out huge numbers of minor faction units later in the game, but Drakkenlings are guaranteed not to die. A unit like the Ardent Mage's front-line warlock dudes can still take quite a bit of damage in the late game.

[Drahcir0]

BTW. does anybody know what ancients are used for? (except inspiring ranged units). Their Unit description is: The enemy knows, there will many dead. But they are actually the worst Drakken unit.

[Matthew]

Most caster units are weak and underwhelming. The Ancient gives bonus morale to surrounding units, which I believe is just a percent modifier to attack and defense. So essentially a greater chance to crit and a greater chance to avoid getting crit.

It is a ranged unit though, and its bonus is passive. While not the best damage, it can be useful to keep one with you in the middle of your army since the other two default units are melee.

[Drahcir0]

Originally posted by Matthew:

Most caster units are weak and underwhelming. The Ancient gives bonus morale to surrounding units, which I believe is just a percent modifier to attack and defense. So essentially a greater chance to crit and a greater chance to avoid getting crit.

It is a ranged unit though, and its bonus is passive. While not the best damage, it can be useful to keep one with you in the middle of your army since the other two default units are melee.

Mage Heroes and dust bishops are "supports" too, but they got to their really good support abilitys also decent damage

[Matthew]

Yeah Bishops are one of the better casters. I don't really care for the Cultists or Wild Walkers casters.

Ancients are okay. I actually gave the idea that the morale bonus should be reversed, that the Ancient gets a bonus for each adjacent unit. You'd still only want like 1 per army, but it would turn it into a single, powerful ranged unit. Which I find fitting for an Ancient Dragon err, I mean Drakken unit.

I suppose its current bonus is okay, too. Since as mentioned above, Drakken units tend to have lower damage, so boosting their attack rating helps counter that a bit.

[ChaosRizer]

Nope,Drakken is not OP.
It's a fairly balanced one(if I had to say so) although with those stuff (aka tactical knowledge of each player's startoff and also ability to force truce/peace).

Tactical Awareness(early game) =/= Win,but it sure does help alot(in the hands of a skilled player that is).

But still,having units with the highest HP pool have a big trade off:provided if you have more industrial power,don't expect em to churn em out pretty soon.Their support unit aka Ancient;ain't that impressive for a morale bonus which gives little bonus,but is best benefitted by rangers(or ranged heroes).Stick magewands on em for a debuff.I don't really use Wyvern much,but Wyvern sure is a flexible scout.Then comes the Drakkenling,which is their ground troop which can be easily retrofitted to overwhelm infantry or cavalry.

Thier only healer comes form their Archivist or Loremaster based hero,kill that off and you can stop the crazy march.

Force Truce/Peace cannot be used frequently,it's a massive drainage on the influence provided if the Drakken Player had massive stockpiles of income going for him.And that doesn't stop the opposing player to purposely break it off LOL.
Also,they gain that ability in fairly mid-tier game.(they do gain the minor faction expansion abiet earlier though)

[Diablowe]

I'm currently playing Drakkens on Serious difficulty, and I admit I find the diplomatic aspect fairly tricky to handle. Trying to amass diplomatic points while still retaining the lead against the AI is extremely difficult. Would be interresting to see how they'd have adapt to actual players though.

[Jiks]

Further to the Wyvern ... it's strength comes from it's counter attack.

So if it has higher initiative than your guys, it is nothing special. If you have the initiative, you can choose attacks that don't result in it hitting five units at once. Furthermore, as it is a flyer it is very vulnerable to long bow attacks and should not be a problem after the first round as it will be dead.

[screamingpalm]

Originally posted by raychaosdante:

Nope,Drakken is not OP.
It's a fairly balanced one(if I had to say so) although with those stuff (aka tactical knowledge of each player's startoff and also ability to force truce/peace).

Tactical Awareness(early game) =/= Win,but it sure does help alot(in the hands of a skilled player that is).

But still,having units with the highest HP pool have a big trade off:provided if you have more industrial power,don't expect em to churn em out pretty soon.Their support unit aka Ancient;ain't that impressive for a morale bonus which gives little bonus,but is best benefitted by rangers(or ranged heroes).Stick magewands on em for a debuff.I don't really use Wyvern much,but Wyvern sure is a flexible scout.Then comes the Drakkenling,which is their ground troop which can be easily retrofitted to overwhelm infantry or cavalry.

Thier only healer comes form their Archivist or Loremaster based hero,kill that off and you can stop the crazy march.

Force Truce/Peace cannot be used frequently,it's a massive drainage on the influence provided if the Drakken Player had massive stockpiles of income going for him.And that doesn't stop the opposing player to purposely break it off LOL.
Also,they gain that ability in fairly mid-tier game.(they do gain the minor faction expansion abiet earlier though)

This. Thank goodness someone gets it.

[Diablowe]

Friends with Brutal Felix aswell noice

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Drakken are the most underpowered race save in being able to save their own skins (going off of the base game, custom wise they also cannot take pitiless, and spent 25 points in being able to force people not to attack them.. making them based solely for players who are on the defensive, not offensive )

In the base game they lack pretty much anything useful, the ruins are a minor perk at best, as there are only 2 ruins per region,..

The wyvern is only marginally better, with the added bonus of extra experience compared to the Necrodrone (which has disease, and would destroy all of the drakken units with that ability), they also lack being able to wear certain items, like the necrodrone, given them just the abilities of the brute force really.

All of the other drakken units are basically useless in most fights beyond having a lot of health, so they can take a lot.. but they are still giant pin cushions to my wild walker archers.. who make sure they cannot be hit in their woods and cliffs.

[Zanteogo]

Wild Walkers are the most powerful faction by far. Drakken are alright.

The Drakken are most powerful though if not played as peaceful creatures as their lore suggests. They are great at war because you can force peace as soon as the war "needs to end".

The Drakken would be more powerful if diplomatic victory didn't involve spaming compliments every turn. (IMHO, the effect should just give a X amount of diplo points every turn until a war or insult occur)

[Diablowe]

Originally posted by Zanteogo:

Wild Walkers are the most powerful faction by far. Drakken are alright.

The Drakken are most powerful though if not played as peaceful creatures as their lore suggests. They are great at war because you can force peace as soon as the war "needs to end".

The Drakken would be more powerful if diplomatic victory didn't involve spaming complments every turn. (IMHO, the effect should just give a X amount of diplo points every turn until a war or insult occur)

I thought you only got bonus points from being in an alliance and killing enemies of said alliance?