Good day gents,
It's me again. I've got a couple of suggestions I would like to make about the veterans of Khazad-Dûm to accompany my post in the Dwarven Balance Discussion section.
I had intended to make this a long one, but I believe I said the most important things there. As such, I'll simply give some of my ideas to make facing those veterans less frustrating and more controllable for other factions.
However, first I will present some arguments:1. Lord of Mordor said that the biggest disadvantage with the veterans, unlike with the others, is the time spent to field them. It takes 9 minutes to field 3 battalions and thus 3 minutes per battalion.
2. Gnomi argued that not every mechanic a faction possesses can be balanced on all maps, and that some maps favour specific factions more than the others.
3. Draco1000 mentioned that the major problem with them is the fact that there is no limit on them and that those 3 minutes are less compared to all the time you have to spent to research the upgrades for the other factions to unlock their heroic unit.
My thoughts:1. While this sounds good on paper, it is very map-dependant, too map dependant even, in my opinion, but I'll say some more of that in thought #2.
Furthermore, following the logic presented by Lord of Mordor (Which is sound, don't worry), time being perhaps the most crucial resource of all, it means that, to make them worth the wait, they have to be extremely potent, otherwise you waste time. This can quite easily be observed: They are the tankiest of the heroic units so far, and their damage is on par with the other heroic units, if only slightly inferior to some. They have fantastic abilities to accompany their natural tankiness, with knockback and trample immunity at level 2.
2. As I have said in the first point and on Moddb, every strategy employed in the mod is map dependant, however this is not completely the case here. See, the majority of the maps in ET, even most of the competitive maps, possess at least 2 or 3 points very close to your base (which are called naturals), and these are much, much easier to defend than points far away from your base. If you build the Travel Camp on such a point, it will make it very hard for your opponent to harass that point since you can reinforce and defend the point much faster due to being so close to your own base. On some maps, they are even in range of base towers/turrets. And if he were to destroy it, it can be rebuild much quicker too.
3. I agree with this. Dwarves have the strongest late-game army among the Free Peoples and they can actually take all factions head on in medium to late game. This can actually be done without veterans. Their default 500 unit is already quite strong and can tango with other factions troops without too much hassle and the Dwarves actually have base units that can still perform quite well in the latest stage of game, compared to for instance Peasants or default orcs. Their leaders are pretty fantastic too, and can buff most of them to crazy proportions, especially Dain Ironfoot with his warcries. Currently however, it is very plausible and near impossible to defeat late game, when your opponent's entire army consists only of Khazad-Dûm veterans. It's not uncommon to see multiple Dwarves swarming around with at least 6 or 7 sometimes even 10 or 12 battalions, all with high levels, because they can take and deal so much damage.
My suggestions to the problem at hand:Note: As I have stated in the balance discussion, I am not sure if ET already has tweaks planned to accompany the new design they will receive for 4.3, so I will make these suggestions without that in mind.
1. The easiest and most obvious proposition would be to limit them like the other heroic units. I believe this should be a standard rule amongst all factions. No faction should be able to to have their heroic unit exceed 3 battalions, in my humble opinion. If needed, it could be made 4 for the sake of a compromise, but I would prefer not too.
2. I am assuming that with their new design in 4.3, they will now, by default, arrive with a specific weapon. If so, I would suggest tieing the other weapon unlocks to a price and the upgrade in the Dwarven Forge to create more time between them and the arrival of heroic units from other factions. Dwarves can have the strongest heroic unit in the game, out before any other faction, by quite some time, if rushed.
3. Finally, there could be some other options. Logically speaking, I have some hypotheses, but I'll only present one, because they seem less interesting to me. Anyway, what if the veterans can no longer reinforce models in the open, but instead have to go to the travel camp and in small radius around it, they can reinforce fallen models?
These are some arguments and suggestions I have presented. I look forward to your suggestions and thoughts as always!
Kind regards.