How would having one hundred dragon riders be underpowered?
Because ALL of your units would have to be riding wyverns in order for you to get that advantage, and that makes them useless in certain situations (say, heavy forests, caves...) whereas magic is so versatile that a unit with magic bonus can be designed for free for each role you want them to have.
Notice the Beastmen have non-combat mounts so that's a pretty strange centaur.
Look at the unique beastmen unit description.
Netheryl is the polar opposite of magic. Halflings would become immune to the dark elves advantage, though it is fairly pricey.
Definitely not. Not only is it pricey as you say, but it's also not immunity. If I use magic to turn myself into an elite unit, I doubt the armor would prevent that. If the magic is used to summon rain and turn the battleground into a swamp the day before the battle, it being an indirect effect, the halflings will be bogged down by their armor while the dark elves won't... I could thinnk of tons of examples in which a shield or armor is useless against magic, because magic isn't applied directly against that armor. Plus if you have units that cost 8 gold face units that cost 24, the fact that the 24 gold units have armor that prevents the other units from using their magic power won't help much when they are still outnumbered 3 to 1.
High men gives you powerful infantry and cavalry. Notice all combat cavalry are discounted and heavy armour for all infantry, cavalry and even archers (think Gondor) is discounted. Heavy infantry hold the line while cavalry flank is a standard battle model used for hundreds of years, because it worked.
But their infantry donn't have a benefit while dark elf infantry have one. If their cavalry don't use spears but swords, then they are more expensive than the equivalent sark elf unit.
Dwarves are perfect for defending their mountain homes, were large weapons are impractical. Able to penetrate armour with ease, whilst being heavily armoured themselves.
And can't get any dsicount for armorless units, thus there are some roles where they don't have any bonus or they have holes in the roles they designed.
Dark elves is quite strong so one would have to rely on the dark elven players not metagaming but one hundred elves with magic would fall beneath ten thousand goblins with their 'crappy' equipment.
I think I said goblins were strong, since they can use their bonuses on almost every unit they design, which is my main gripe with the dark elves.
Also magic, unless done very creatively, is not necessarily the be all and end all. Finally all dark elven units cost 20 mana to recruit and 10 mana to maintain. That would add up to a huge sum of mana per turn to have a decent-sized army.
I edited my post since the mana cost has been added after I started writing it, and I still haven't read anything about whether the gold reduction also applies to mana or not. However, yes, it would change everything if the bonus turned something from free to half cost. And I do mean everything, not "a lot".
Barbarians are armour busters who would die instantly in a cavalry charge.
Swiss armorless pikemen tended to fare rather well vs. knights in the middle-age and renaissance. And realistically, armor is useless if you get trampled by a warhorse. A cavalry charge is first and foremost frightening. Armor is totally irrelevant in countering it. You must get the horse to die/stop/turn, which is done by fire or pointy sticks. Plus ,nothing prevents barbarians from riding horses too.
In short be more creative; play with the advantages you have. Trust other players and the mod to not metagame and prevent metagaming.
Dammit. Will you all stop telling me to be more creative? Look at Immac's FFHNESII, and see what I can do with ONE mage. I turned one CONTINENT into hell. And later on, I found some, say, issues, with wordings in some treaties to eventually provoke a war between former allies.
I would really appreciate it if people looked at my critics for what they are, namely critics to a system, and they stopped telling me how to behave. I am not trying to abuse the system myself. If I wanted to, I wouldn't be telling everyone where the system can be abused.
As I said in the first place, there's no reason to make lopsided rules and then trust people. Let's look for a moment. Arrors. 1000 per unit. So these are 10 times more numerous than a standard archer unit. For the same price. Sure, they'll be a pain to move etc, but with their price, they are worth 10 times the equivalent archery unit for the same price. I can agree that a single individual or a small commando has advantages over a big group or army, but when I see this and you tell me to trust people not to metagame, sorry, I can't. The first player to design a unit made it 10 times more powerful than its equivalent, for essentially the same price, and to fill the same role.
