Drake vs Drake is boring and needs overhaul

[Lone_Isle]

This matchup basically boils down to 3 units, The clasher, augur and skirmisher. It makes more or less 0 sense to recruit burners and gliders, and fighters are typically only recruited if you started with a few of them in the beginning.

There needs to be some tweaks to make all units useful in race mirrors. I believe this is not the case for Drakes.

I don't really have any ideas outside of a drastic one like a new drake unit. One that has the opposite attributes of all drakes. Positive cold resist, very low fire resist, low impact resist... slow, undamaging... Something that makes burners and gliders useful again in this matchup.

Thoughts?

[Ardent]

Who would be using such a unit against drakes?

[leocrotta]

@Idle: Are you really serious here ?
I mean generally I'm a skeptic, Noy knows ^^, but I think the saurian res-changes should have enhanced this mirror too (Besides fixing the former Loy-issue).
Thus imho fighters are a brilliant daylight counter vs mass augurs (and 40%-skirms), burner can be used to burn down careless skirms (even at night).
Gliders really aren't the best counter unit but still, due to their high mp, can be easily used to finish saurians which have been attacked by
other units at day.
Summing up:
Chasing many saurians at day is a common tactics imho, which can hardly be played only by clashers
while relying only on saurians only for night-fighting or clashers for day enhances the rng-factor
what you generally don't want when playing against a "weaker" player e.g.

best regards

[Eskon]

We need to give the mage a secondary arcane attack so he becomes useful against drakes again!!

[silent]

It's horrible, but there's nothing you can do otherwise.

Similar things happen throughout other match-ups. Rebels mirrors have woses become god-like...until you realise there are still magi to deal with. Adepts in undead mirror are all killing until attacked by skeletons or against ghouls. The same thing occurs frequently throughout each faction in a mirror.

Basically, it comes down to who makes the first mistake in that sort of case

[Turuk]

So add a whole new drake unit that is the opposite of everything the drakes embody...

Have you given any thought to how this unit would affect matches versus other factions? You don't think it would throw a wrench in that balance at all?

[5dPZ]

In a drake-drake mirror (aka, saurian-saurian mirror), I will pick an augur over a burner any time - it costs less, hits better (vs saurian's 60% def) and has higher def than a 21g burner which gets killed easily by the BIG 3 in this mirror Idle mentioned.

[csarmi]

Burners have about twice the hp of augurs, however.

I don't think any units are useless in this matchup. For example, none of the units you mentioned can fly. What if there's water on the map? Having flyers (and generally, faster units) is a tactical advantage. Now I can understand it's not very often that a burner or a glider comes in handy, but what's wrong with the fighter? Besides, burners do great retal damage and gliders mobility, marksman and good impact attack is not to be underestimated.

Are you sure you know how to play these mirrors? I'm sure I don't know everything about these, since they tend to be very, very complex. That's because all that mobility, high damage, low defense comes to mass exchanging blows sometimes and it might be very hard to estimate the outcome properly.

[alpha1]

im not sure what you are arguing about guys
ofc a glider and 1-2 fighters are nice to have (to scout/get extra attack spot), but the majority of one's army should consist of clashers and augurs (and the majority of that majority should be probably augurs ). Skirms arent THAT good, due to augurs' pierce resist and magic attack and clashers' hp and melee.

now to the topic: the best way to deal with mirrors is to restart the game imho

[5dPZ]

IMHO, orc-orc, undead-undead, dwarf-dwarf, drake-drake mirrors all suffer.

orc-orc, there is almost no way to penetrate a well zocced orc-wall , with trolls in critical position => stall by 2 orc walls watch each other.

undead-undead, adept and WC spams, with occational skeleton and ghoul.

dwarf-dwarf, again, same as orc-orc, it's very hard to break a well zocced wall => 2 dwarf wall staring each other on two lines of terran.

drake-drake, just mentioned, augur and clasher will do about 95% dmg with occational skimisher or other units as side-kicks.

[Radament]

Drake vs Drake tends to turn into rock paper scissors, but i don't think it's boring, its blitzkrieg

[Tonepoet]

A couple gliders are handy, strictly for village collecting and Zone of Control purposes. I also think you're putting too much value into the Saurian Skirmisher. It's not completely worthless should you be forced to have it but gets devoured by the cold and blade damage of the Augur and Clasher. Pierce also won't get you any bonuses against augurs and clashers. I do agree that for the most part, clashers and augurs are your optimal units though, they both yield big damage and they're the only two that can really contend with opposing clashers.

I see nothing wrong with Drake vs. Drake though. It's almost the same as a Drake vs. Undead match in terms of basic strategy and pacing. There are some subtle differences but I'm sure you can see what I mean, with the augur being a high damage chaotic mage and the violent tendencies should one get too close to a territory. I do find that unlike Drake vs. Undead, Drake vs. Drake can be irrecoverable after the first attack but this requires meticulously careful setup to avoid the same happening to you, which can make a game all on its own.

[manored]

We need to give the mage a secondary arcane attack so he becomes useful against drakes again!!

He is already usefull against ever other faction, why screw up balance for just one more?

I think there is no way to save mirror matches of being boring, because no matter what you change, it will also be happening on the other side. The only hope is playing in non-mirrored maps, where each player will have a different starting situation... just because the game isnt exactly fair it doesnt means it cant be fun

[silent]

Just because 2 players have the same faction doesn't mean they will play the same way as each other or recruit the same units.

In theory, there should be a way around any "wall" of units. A player can't cover the entire map with a wall of units to prevent being attacked, there will be a gap or opening somewhere which can be taken advantage of, or a weak spot in the wall which can be taken advantage of (e.g walking corpses, goblins)

[Skrim]

We need to give the mage a secondary arcane attack so he becomes useful against drakes again!!

What the heck does the Mage have to do with a Drake-Drake mirror? It's completely unrelated to the topic.