Priest kings slave hunt needs a change

[KStolin]

There is simple and very effective tactic for priest king. You save all your money to buy tribal kings (stack them in your capitol for example), put them into repeated slave hunt and in mid-game you have 10-20 tribal kings creating huge stacks of 100+ slaves per turn.

You use casters + caster summons (like lvl 2 rain or sky rituals) as generals and have close to unstoppable tactic that always works and beats every other faction. In endgame it reaches to around 300 slaves per turn. You can guard every mine and every village with huge stack of slaves.


So what are my problems with this?

1) It makes recruiting those other priest king meatshield troops pointless. And kind of sucks the fun out of priest king.

2) Every other nation is resource/expansion dependant. Dwarves need to conrol mines and having dwalas in them to get their freespawn dwarves. They lose dwala mines, they lose amount of dwarves each turn. Necros must have corpses. Barons need to own their farms/hamlets+ to get their freespawn. Priest King does not need to control any of the map, he just keeps pushing out more and more slaves, even when losing territory.


My solution would be to give each village, town, city etc a max number and current number of available slaves. They could replenish their "stock" each turn depending on their size.

Examples how it should be, using blood sacrifices amount to replenish stock:
Village (8/8) - meaning village has currently 8 slaves alailable, and no more slaves will be added at moment.
Village (4/8) - 4 slaves currently available, 2 added each turn (equal to blood sacrifices amount)
City (10/16) - meaning city has currently 10 slaves available, and each turn 4 is added.

[Althaea]

Well, one big thing you've missed is that those slaves are absolutely awful. They compare poorly to your basic slingers and die in droves to almost any attack in the game - an army of pure slaves can't even reach melee combat with an army with a decent number of ranged troops. In sufficiently huge numbers they also block your own spellcasters from interacting with the battle. While they can theoretically be buffed with a powerful bless, the Priest King has a much more difficult time improving their bless than the Voice of El.

Also, a king that's sitting in a village recruiting slaves is a king that isn't out there taking or retaking territory.

The Priest King is absolutely territory dependant. They need summons or higher-tier troops to take on anything which can murder large numbers of worthless chaff. Try pitting a pure-slave army versus a Senator army with just one or two Heliodromus in it (or just a line of mid-tier demons) and you'll quickly discover that such a strategy just isn't workable. If you keep all your hunters in a single place you'll also have a hard time getting those slaves where you need them to be, not to mention that you could quickly run into problems should the enemy find this stack of hunters. If you want to see a truly frightening endless swarm of troops not dependant on territory control, try playing the Necromancer to the point of acquiring Liches. Slaves, past a certain point, just start getting in the way of your other units, and the opportunity costs of recruiting ten or twenty hunters and having them do nothing but collect slaves are not inconsiderable.

That being said, while I do not consider the slaves an unbalancing factor (no, the Priest King is strong due to their second-tier summons, blessed troops, and large number of mages; the slaves are just really a convenience), I do agree in principle that their supply should be limited in some fashion, simple because I consider it strange that infinite numbers of them can be extracted from any given location, albeit more quickly in cities than towns.

[Curious]

I can't see how the slaves are much of a problem, if any at all. By the game you get to the point were you have hundreds of slaves per turn, you're already going to be fighting against Liches, Dragons, invulnerable trolls, heavily blessed Voice of El armies and even more. Slaves protecting spell casters could easily be wiped out due to a battlefield spell as well. While it does get to a crazy point with how many slaves there are, it just doesn't seem to be a balancing issue, that or I just need to play more

[KStolin]

Originally posted by alguLoD:

Well, one big thing you've missed is that those slaves are absolutely awful.

Slaves are bad at taking fortifications without good caster support, But you will have endless droves of them and pretty early on, protecting your casters (endlessly).

Originally posted by barlth:

I can't see how the slaves are much of a problem, if any at all. By the game you get to the point were you have hundreds of slaves per turn, you're already going to be fighting against Liches, Dragons, invulnerable trolls, heavily blessed Voice of El armies and even more.

I really hoped I Voice of El could challenge priest king/slave tactics in any way. We ran 6 1vs1 tests on large map, I was trying really hard as Voice of El, but it was 6:0 for priest king. I managed to tech a bit (break first 2-3 seals) and get a small bless going, before my cardinals were crushed by scouting!! armies of priest king.

We tried every class actually we could think of... even Necro, who we had high hopes for.. We were thinking... just win 1 battle against those slaves (I managed to tech up to vampire) and rise them all as skellies, but it was win for priest king always. We also tried to rush priest king down with Troll King.. but priest king's casters always prevailed. The slave rush gives him really good map control early too..

Only thing we didnt test against was high priestess and it's anakite rush.. but as we think they are both OP factions so there was no point.


But I am tired of this bs. I waited for a year for anyone to pick up the tactics or complain about and now I have.

In final note, there are always people who like the things just as they are (in every game, no matter the feature).. and If you present a new idea or crtitisize part of the game, you will get droves of arguments.. but please.. people, do some testing, because I sure have done mine.

[berandro]

Uh, how can 6 1v1 games be called 'testing' for the purpose of this argument?

[Sooner535{UFIP}]

I must agree with the OP, I think just about every faction is balanced and enjoyable (except the dwarves...... WAY too much micro to be enjoyable) but the priest king and the high priestess are just relentless, they often end up with huge blobs of units I simply cannot match until late game as most factions, now I don't think I have ever lost to them as a necro though so idk about that (course I don't enjoy the necro much, not my playstyle personally) idk if putting a cap there would be helpful maybe nerfing the slaves as a troop a bit more? changing ritual costs around? Idk

[cranky corvid]

Given that the Necromancer has access to ghouls, which turn humans they kill into more ghouls, sending massed slaves against one sounds like an incredibly bad idea.