FfH Paring Questions

[Tasunke]

Thoughts for Lanun Boarding Party.

5 strength

50% vs Naval units (or more)

amphibious

+20% city attack (or even city raider 1)

[DaveV]

Particularly undead slayer is never used, since the only undead numerous enough to use it against are all melee units.

It was a very specific situation, but I actually used Undead Slaying quite a bit in FFHVII when I was fighting against a lot of Diseased Corpses. If my spectres survived the first round, they could usually take two promotions. Adding shock and undead slaying, plus the natural combat I, gave them +100% against the corpses.

[Selrahc]

Could we make Mokka's cauldron equipment, so it can be moved between cities? I've seen that done in a few Modmods, and I think it makes the wonder much more useful. And really, it's a very fun little wonder so I'd love to see it becoming a bit more viable for play.

[Bobchillingworth]

Interesting fact which I learned from a SP game (and then a little subsequent testing):


Mokka's Cauldron can give you Veil units, even if you don't follow the religion. Lose a Stonewarden? He's back, as a Ritualist. Lightbringer died? Savant now. The AI I was fighting was getting Diseased Corpses too, although I don't remember what I was killing to get them to appear- maybe Paramanders.



It's actually a really cool wonder, and while making it mobile would certainly make it much more useful, it would also make it potentially very powerful, and a lot easier to exploit for free Veil units while avoiding the Corruption line entirely (provided you find someone interested in killing your units for you).

[Selrahc]

Mokka's Cauldron can give you Veil units, even if you don't follow the religion. Lose a Stonewarden? He's back, as a Ritualist. Lightbringer died? Savant now. The AI I was fighting was getting Diseased Corpses too, although I don't remember what I was killing to get them to appear- maybe Paramanders.

I actually did a quick investigation into exactly what units are obtained from the cauldron.

Each unitclass seems to have one option for each tier.
T1 Melee->Skeleton(with the Demon race, as with all other creatures from the cauldron, even if you'd expect undead)
T1 Recon->Scout

T2 Melee->Diseased Corpse(!)
T2 Disciple->Savant
T2 Recon->Hellhound
T2 Arcane->Imp
T2 Cavalry->Horseman
T2 Archery->Archer
T2 Beast->Hellhound

T3 Melee->Champion
T3 Recon->Assassin
T3 Disciple->Ritualist
T3 Cavalry->Chariot
T3 Arcane->Mage
T3 Archery->Longbow

T4 Melee->Balor
T4 Archery->Crossbowman
T4 Recon->Beastmaster (The demonic sprite for beastmaster looks awesome by the way.)
T4 Arcane->Lich
T4 Disciple->Eidolon
T4 Cavalry->Death Knight
T4 Beast(Including Dragons, Margalard, Gurid)->Beast of Agares

Hero->Nothing (Although I only tested Corlindale and Chalid)

All units start without XP and on half health.

(provided you find someone interested in killing your units for you).

I don't think the issue of "finding someone willing to kill your units for you is a realistic one. That's already something that could be done with the wonder in its base state, so making it equipable doesn't change the reward ratio much.

Unless you're talking about someone willing to kill your units in a battle. In which case, yeah. You do have more chance of getting some nice things out of the wonder.

Of course to use it, you need to bring it into the frontline of battle, to cities that will be attacked. That's a high risk activity. Sounds fun as well...

[Bobchillingworth]

I was thinking of a scenario where say you & I are (informal) allies in a PBEM. I decide that my army could really use some ritualists, but I don't want to have to research Corruption on the Spirit (pretend this is a parallel universe or something ). You want to get a bunch of experience on your units grabbing easy kills. So I build the Cauldron in my best production city and move it and a bunch of unpromoted T2 or 3 priests to a frontlines city and let you go wild killing them.



Sure, you could do this with the regular immobile Cauldron, but that would have a few disadvantages- your border cities might not have good production, the most convenient location for the wonder for unit conversions might not be good on a tactical level, and a Cauldron you can't capture means that I can't loan it to you should you wish to produce some ritualists or whatever.


I don't think making it mobile is a terrible idea, but I can envision a scenario where it suddenly jumps from being a curiosity to one of the best wonders in the game.

[DaveV]

I looked at the python code, and don't see any check for exceeding the limit on T4 units. So you could get infinite numbers of, e.g., death knights. Lots of room for abuse.

The code is based on unitcombat, so this wonder would be terrible for the Luchuirp.

@Selrahc: T3 archery unit is Longbow; Arquebus is T4.

[Mardoc]

I was thinking of a scenario where say you & I are (informal) allies in a PBEM. I decide that my army could really use some ritualists, but I don't want to have to research Corruption on the Spirit (pretend this is a parallel universe or something ). You want to get a bunch of experience on your units grabbing easy kills. So I build the Cauldron in my best production city and move it and a bunch of unpromoted T2 or 3 priests to a frontlines city and let you go wild killing them.

While true...I think this is better dealt with by other means than keeping it immobile. Either game-specific bans on this tactic, or else changing the results so that it's either as per table, or nothing, depending on whether you have the right tech. Heroes already don't come back. It seems reasonable to say that, for example, T3 Divine stays dead unless you've researched AV.

I'm much less concerned about you using the Cauldron to convert your existing Stonewardens into Ritualists after you've researched Ashen Veil and could just build Ritualists - the XP loss seems enough of a penalty to keep this a rare event.

I looked at the python code, and don't see any check for exceeding the limit on T4 units. So you could get infinite numbers of, e.g., death knights. Lots of room for abuse.

That should probably be fixed, yes. Although I have trouble imagining the situation where it's easy for a friend to kill all your T4 units in the first place and yet the game isn't over .

[Tasunke]

Although I have trouble imagining the situation where it's easy for a friend to kill all your T4 units in the first place and yet the game isn't over .

If he has Chalid and some assassins?

[NobleHelium]

You can't delete your own units to trigger the effect?