I just don't see much of a difference here. Black/Blue Dragons are usually placed as 4 allies. Which means they don't appear very often. They meet even less frequently. And finally, the black dragon must hit to cause blue to not react.

[quote="KGB" post=3878]Hannibal Rex wrote:


The Summoner has 4 units, Necromancer 5, and the Alchemist and Priest 1 each. My main thought was to give the Necromancer summons that don't overlap (as much) with Necromancy, but I'll have to limit or shelve that. I understand now why his summons and necromancy units are the same. I also wanted to add Nightmares to the Summoner, to cover all non-Elemental demon units.

But it's not a bad thing that you can't go overboard with custom summoning spells.

For the Blue Dragon, I like that it allows you to experiment with a Disease & Life Steal army set, that can (at least hypothetically) reduce a lot of units to one hp and instant-kill them with lightning. I'll leave it at 1750 gold for now, but might reduce that further to 1650. It's still a powerful ability, but its drawbacks should be reflected in the cost.

For the Silver Dragon, for now I'll file it under 'balanced, but non-competitive'.

I like some of your more radical ideas, but I'll be more willing to be experimental, such as implementing abilities that only heroes have in vanilla on units, once I get to tweaking the Stormheim units.

Here's a thought: How would your assessment change if Silver Dragons gave +2 Fortify instead of +3 Morale? There'd be some unique synergy with heroes that can cheaply upgrade Morale themselves, and/or have a Fortify spell.

I'm not so comfortable with more radical changes, but this keeps it as a stack bonus unit, but now its ability is unique instead of being matched by cheaper units.

There is Frost Dragon (+2 fortify). I'm not sure an it's maybe Stormheim unit.

Anomander Rake wrote:


Yes, the Frost Dragon has the same ability and would need to be changed. It's also very expensive, 2000, for some reason. So I suppose the question is, are there balance concerns that warrant this high price?

The obvious is that the value of Fortify depends on how easy or difficult access to high Siege is, similar to our previous discussion about Fear and Chaos.

KGB has pointed out that I haven't included a fast Siege unit, which could make the Thief mandatory for everyone. A good and affordable Fortify unit would exacerbate that. I've sketched out that Alchemists and Wizards will get a Siege spell, and SH has some faster Siege units, so there's that.

Frost Dragon is IMHO usable. I don't use it very often but I do use it.
I am in general a supporter of increasing the prices of dragons. So that it often pays off to use cheaper substitutes. Or even it was necessary.
Wizard. I would suggest replacing useless Banishment with a siege trait (2ap) and lower the Leadership to 3ap. I get that he's a spell dude but let him have some utility besides mana.

The Frost Dragon costs 2000 because he allows your stack to reach +5 Fortify in a L3 city and the only counter to that is a Thief with +5 siege. If the Silver gets +2 Fortify it means you'll have to do something with the Frost Dragon (back to the +1/+2 Group Warding idea again). That cost is reasonable given it stacks with city walls / spells / items.

It also means you definitely make the Thief a 'must have' because with no decent +4 Siege unit (unless your Worms get 4 hits with their 20 move) for a reasonable cost (1000 or less) the Silver at +2 will be incredibly strong in a city with +5 vs +3 Siege or even with heroes that have a Fortify spell it will be possible to be +4 Fortify outside a city.

If you want to give the Wizard a siege spell that's OK, but make sure it doesn't invalidate the Shaman's Jihad spell which is one of the main reasons to take the Shaman because he can get you to +5 siege with a siege unit. So it would have to cost something like 2 AP with cost 4 mana without the group move so it's inferior. I agree with Anomander that the Wizard Leadership cost can go back to 3 AP.

KGB

Leadership for 4ap is weird. This is probably because there would be nothing to train a lvl 9-10 wizard. So another Wiz ability to train is necessary.

Good spell but Shaman has some good spells and abilities, so there are more of these causes.

KGB wrote:


Then the last hypothetical I want to indulge in in this regard is what the usefulness of +1 Fortify Silver Dragons would be. That ability already exists on the Iceguard, but they don't quite have the stats and movement for a hero stack.

The effect would be: Frost Dragon sometimes, Silver Dragons never.
Possibly deathslaying would be interesting.