Being AV means water mana is mandatory for expansion even if you haven't got any deserts in your lands. Without expansion, you can still be royally screwed if your opponent does something crazy like scorches important resources.
Being AV also means reagents are a win or die resource on the magic front, whereas other sides have two possible paths, one through reagents, and one through incense or gems. All or nothing, particularly as the sheaim.
Further compounding the issue is your melee unit causing disease. While yes, it's a good unit, it also means you can't use anything else without getting them diseased. Like it or not, trying to kill people with just undead and summoned units have some serious countermeasures. One of those countermeasures comes in the form of another undead unit, OO will rape you without reagents, bad. It's not a maybe that depends on what else you can go after. No reagents, no win, the drown hit cannibalize and turn into stygian guard, bone you in the ass, and eventually a few of them, maybe mutated for extra strength earlier, turn into eidolons. Your poor corpses are at a whopping -30% strength the whole time 30% down from 5 is a lot lower than 4.
You're down one mana type that you otherwise might not need, you gain strength bonuses from hell resources, everyone else hates you, your economy sucks, you have super powered religious units that require an often hard to find resource or nerf your usage of other units and have substantial drawbacks. Your heroes are great, but not really that great. So you've got runes beat, but mardero up against yvain or hemah? right...
AV is great for nuking the world, but it's not some super cheesy path. Super cheesy if you're trying to play leaves with dwarves and kill the sheaim using AV sure, but against another combination that goes well? You're knocking the others, but spiritual hammer paramanders are going to rip your diseased corpses a new . .. .. .. .. .. .. ., with or without any other help from purely dwarven units. You're going to need reagents just to stay alive with khazad running runes. When that production powerhouse running 100% research starts a war with you, it will be with enough units to take your summons on the chin and still bury your ass under more than you can support.
That's the weak religion in the list, order is keyed for boning AV, ljosalfar with leaves is invincible on defense regardless of what you're running and can and will eventually win just fine by sitting on their ass and using that far superior specialist production to whip you like a dog in ever way while they get an altar. Like it or not, the drown own diseased corpses too, you're boned bad without reagents there.
One final point since you're bashing it, slavery does not suck. Slavery is an awesome civic. As balseraphs with a freakshow, slavery is a godly civic, but it's an awesome civic for any side. Slaves are free production, lunatics on the fly, happiness and culture boosts for balseraphs. Did I mention free production? And what's not to like about capturing your entire workforce for free and never needing to build another worker after you get it regardless of what happens to yours? Workers are expensive, never knock free workers that can be sacrificed for production or turned into an army on the fly, even slow workers.
Being AV also means reagents are a win or die resource on the magic front, whereas other sides have two possible paths, one through reagents, and one through incense or gems. All or nothing, particularly as the sheaim.
Further compounding the issue is your melee unit causing disease. While yes, it's a good unit, it also means you can't use anything else without getting them diseased. Like it or not, trying to kill people with just undead and summoned units have some serious countermeasures. One of those countermeasures comes in the form of another undead unit, OO will rape you without reagents, bad. It's not a maybe that depends on what else you can go after. No reagents, no win, the drown hit cannibalize and turn into stygian guard, bone you in the ass, and eventually a few of them, maybe mutated for extra strength earlier, turn into eidolons. Your poor corpses are at a whopping -30% strength the whole time 30% down from 5 is a lot lower than 4.
You're down one mana type that you otherwise might not need, you gain strength bonuses from hell resources, everyone else hates you, your economy sucks, you have super powered religious units that require an often hard to find resource or nerf your usage of other units and have substantial drawbacks. Your heroes are great, but not really that great. So you've got runes beat, but mardero up against yvain or hemah? right...
AV is great for nuking the world, but it's not some super cheesy path. Super cheesy if you're trying to play leaves with dwarves and kill the sheaim using AV sure, but against another combination that goes well? You're knocking the others, but spiritual hammer paramanders are going to rip your diseased corpses a new . .. .. .. .. .. .. ., with or without any other help from purely dwarven units. You're going to need reagents just to stay alive with khazad running runes. When that production powerhouse running 100% research starts a war with you, it will be with enough units to take your summons on the chin and still bury your ass under more than you can support.
That's the weak religion in the list, order is keyed for boning AV, ljosalfar with leaves is invincible on defense regardless of what you're running and can and will eventually win just fine by sitting on their ass and using that far superior specialist production to whip you like a dog in ever way while they get an altar. Like it or not, the drown own diseased corpses too, you're boned bad without reagents there.
One final point since you're bashing it, slavery does not suck. Slavery is an awesome civic. As balseraphs with a freakshow, slavery is a godly civic, but it's an awesome civic for any side. Slaves are free production, lunatics on the fly, happiness and culture boosts for balseraphs. Did I mention free production? And what's not to like about capturing your entire workforce for free and never needing to build another worker after you get it regardless of what happens to yours? Workers are expensive, never knock free workers that can be sacrificed for production or turned into an army on the fly, even slow workers.
