Armored Princess Unit Analysis Part 4: Orcs on the March


This is where I repeat in bold that I'm going by Orcs on the March here. Orcs were radically overhauled by Orcs on the March, to the point that they're practically a brand-new race shunting aside classic Orcs. This is by no means a bad thing, as Orcs in The Legend and base Armored Princess were overly similar to Dwarves as a faction, and boring in general. Orcs on the March makes them distinctive and interesting, as well as actually good.

First things first: general Adrenaline mechanics, since it's essential to the overhaul.

At base, an Orc starts a battle with 0 Adrenaline. (AI forces start with increasingly higher base Adrenaline as you get later in the game) Also at base, the maximum Adrenaline they can achieve is 20. (Again, AI Orc forces have this limit go up as you get further into the game) Various Hero Skills affect these values, as can gear and unit Abilities.

An Orc stack generates 4-7 Adrenaline for attacking or counter-attacking. (Objects don't count for any Adrenaline gain-related purposes, and Gremlins and Bosses are considered to be Objects!) Note that Talents that inflict damage on enemy units will generate Adrenaline, meaning many Adrenaline-draining Talents are more sustainable than you might think. Additionally, if any Orc finishes off an enemy stack, all Orcs on its team gain 12 Adrenaline. (This includes the Orc itself, and stacks on top of whatever Adrenaline they would've gotten for the attack, too) Notice how this latter point encourages all-inning on Orcs. It does this much better than the Morale bonus for mono-race does, in fact, and it's nice to see the series trying to find new ways to reward playing along with the racial/factional divides.

At Adrenaline 10, a unit unlocks Level 1 Adrenaline. So too for Adrenaline 20 unlocking Level 2 and 30 Adrenaline unlocking Level 3. (All values past 30 are still only Level 3, however) These Adrenaline Levels unlock Talents, activate Abilities, and provide passive stat bonuses, all of which can be looked at in-game by hovering your cursor over a given unit's Adrenaline Ability. This is the primary point of the Adrenaline mechanic: Orc units getting into fights and especially winning fights pick up momentum, getting more useful as the fight wears on, instead of the usual dynamic of getting less useful as Charge-based Talents are expended and casualties are suffered.

Additionally, however, most Orc Talents will reduce Adrenaline when used, making Adrenaline a resource you expend as well as hoard. This leads to hard choices as to whether you should use a Talent now for its benefits or hold off until later so you can hold onto your current bonuses, or get the opportunity to build to later bonuses. (Though a few Talents instead generate Adrenaline!)

Adrenaline is such a huge mechanic that for this post I'm modifying the formatting on unit tables to cover Adrenaline as its own thing. Talents and Abilities that don't relate to Adrenaline (such as Running) will be placed in the usual slots, while those unlocked/activated by Adrenaline levels will go under their respective Adrenaline Level section instead. (I'm also not going to bother explicitly stating that 'Adrenaline' is an Ability on every single Orc unit. They all have it. No exceptions. Listing it adds nothing to this post)

Odd mechanical aside: some units gain additional charges at higher Adrenaline Levels on specific Talents. In such cases, the access to the charge is genuinely dependent on being at that Adrenaline Level. Say you have a 1-charge Talent that gains a second charge at Adrenaline Level 2. If you reach Adrenaline Level 2, you now have 2 charges. If you then use the Talent without dropping below Adrenaline Level 2, you have 1 charge, naturally. If you then drop below Adrenaline Level 2 without using the remaining charge, you'll lose the charge. If you then get back to Adrenaline Level 2, the charge will come back. If you actually use the charge, it'll never come back outside of shenanigans like Turn Back Time.

By a similar token, even though the game will, during combat, not display unavailable Talents (To the point that if no Talents are currently available it will actually claim the unit has 'none'), the Talents are still existent and behaving normally otherwise. Reloading Talents can advance their reload even if you're below the Adrenaline Level necessary for them to be displayed, and Oblivion can outright eat all the charges -even the ones granted by higher Adrenaline Levels- and force reloading Talents to reload, even if the Talents aren't being displayed.

I'm also not going to be consistently making comparisons to The Legend like I do with other factions' units. It's true, for instance, that Furious Goblins have had their Leadership cost go up by 5, their Health by 2, their max Damage went down by 1 point, etc, but these baseline differences are overshadowed in practice by the Adrenaline mechanics. I'll generally only note a change explicitly if it's either a major one (eg Initiative doubling) or if it's a new Talent or Ability that has nothing to do with Adrenaline.

A final note: a mechanic that's easy to overlook is 'anticipating trophies'.


The icon when Anticipating Trophies has kicked in.

'Anticipating trophies' kicks in when a unit that has the invisible trait finishes off an enemy stack, and what it does is provide +10 to Morale for the rest of the battle. Morale still provides no additional benefits beyond +3, just like in The Legend, but +10 Morale ensures that no realistic amount of Morale penalties will put them below the maximum Morale benefits. As such, it's particularly useful for Orcs to land the finishing blow on enemy summons and the like, because it spikes their damage output and survivability a decent amount, especially as you go forward through the game and your Attack and Defense stats climb, while making them essentially proof against Morale penalties caused by negative status effects, Curse, etc.

Thankfully, later games make this an explicit Ability, rather than an invisible trait you have to work out on your own.

On to the Orcs themselves!

---------------------------



Racial relations-wise...

-1 Morale for Demonic presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Undead presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Lizardmen presence in allies.

... Orcs have had their intolerance for Undead spike, not only through the direct increase in the Morale tier penalty, but also by Armored Princess having harsher penalties for negative Morale. Orcs in The Legend were a pretty chill species. Orcs in Armored Princess have some actual racial unpleasantness.

They're still pretty chill, mind, but now Humans are overall ahead of them in that regard.


Furious Goblin
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 60
Leadership: 45
Attack/Defense: 14 / 14
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 40
Damage: 3-7 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Giant Killer (+30% damage against Level 5 units)

Level 1

Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Irascible (Anytime the Furious Goblin takes damage from spells, Talents, or even from a regular attack that involves an Ability, the stack gains +Speed*Adrenaline Level for 2 turns, to a limit of +3 Speed total)

Level 2

Stat changes: +5 Health
Talents: Goblin Trickery (-20 Reload: 2. The Furious Goblin moves over to melee attack a target enemy for 3-10 Physical damage, and then returns to where they were before using Goblin Trickery. The target doesn't get to retaliate)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +2 Initiative
Talents: Goblin Greed (-10 Charges: 2. Destroys a corpse the Furious Goblins are standing on, generating some amount of Gold if owned by the player. Doesn't end the Furious Goblin's turn)
Abilities:

Notably, Furious Goblins have actually lost 2 Initiative base. They don't really miss it, and they get it back at high Adrenaline, but it does make them less useful for getting out spells fast.

As with Marauder's Gold-from-corpses Talent, Goblin Greed scales its gold production based on the hidden 'location difficulty' stat of a region; basically, you'll get more gold for rummaging around in the dead of later islands than earlier islands. It's a lot harder to justify actually using Goblin Greed than the Marauder Talent due to its Adrenaline cost, especially before you've gotten Adrenaline max above 30, since using it eats their Initiative advantage.


Irascible's exact mechanics are a pain to test and make sense of. The summary I've given is my best attempt to parse it's in-game behavior, and I'm pretty sure it's not actually fully accurate. The Speed boost itself also doesn't actually work the way you'd expect from the in-game description: as far as I can tell, Irascible boosts can't stack, nor will Irascible overrule itself with a larger bonus. (ie if a Furious Goblin gets hit, gains +1 Speed, then gains enough Adrenaline to be able to gain +3 Speed, it needs to run out on the +1 bonus before it can get the +3 bonus)

Regardless, Furious Goblins are now an amazing unit at getting stuck in, and can even contribute damage without having to take damage. Kinda. Due to the need for Adrenaline to fuel Goblin Trickery, in practice yes they do need to take damage, or be backed by wasteful shenanigans, but still, it's at least nice they can make the free hit at all. Giant Killer, it should be noted, boosts the damage on Goblin Trickery, not just their base attack.

Ultimately, the main flaw with Furious Goblins in player hands is that Orcs-the-unit are actually really good. No, really.

As enemies, they're a bit more notable, though it's an important question in a given battle how much Adrenaline they start with. If a given Furious Goblin stack has little Adrenaline to start with, they're actually overall less problematic than in The Legend, full stop. With more Adrenaline though, they can be startlingly difficult to avoid getting right in your forces' face nearly instantly, especially if you're careless with splash attacks.

It's worth commentary that I've never seen the AI use Goblin Greed, just like the similar Talent on Marauders. Similarly, the AI is quite fond of using Goblin Trickery, but not very intelligently. Often, they'll miss an opportunity to lock down ranged units because they see an opportunity to Goblin Trickery from their current position and they don't think to get up close and then use Goblin Trickery.


Orc
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 190
Leadership: 80
Attack/Defense: 15 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 70
Damage: 7-10 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical
Talents: Running
Abilities: None

Level 1

Stat changes: +2 Damage
Talents:
Abilities: Violent (Always crits on counterattacks)

Level 2

Stat changes: +10% crit chance
Talents: Commander (-5 Reload: 2. Grants a second move to goblins [any kind] whose Leadership is 300 or less per Orc in the commanding stack. Does not end the Orc's turn or use AP)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +10 Attack
Talents: Onslaught (-10 Reload: 3. Runs in a straight line an infinite distance to attack a single target for 10-14 Physical damage, shoving the target back one tile if possible. The target doesn't get to retaliate, but the attack requires at least one open tile between the Orc and its target. Can also be used to travel without attacking a target)
Abilities:

Orcs have actually more than doubled in hiring price, note, while their Leadership cost has gone up by 33%. They've also lost some Attack and Defense, and only gotten a bit of Health in exchange. As such, they've gone from being a somewhat generic (If bulky) 2-Speed Running melee unit, to being overpriced garbage if you're not properly supporting them with Adrenaline. What they do get out of Adrenaline is quite good, though!

Onslaught is basically Ice Ball physics as a Talent. It can even be used to just travel really far without actually hitting anything, though there's rarely a good reason to do so.

Commander says in-game that it's 240 Leadership per head, but it's actually 300 Leadership per head, whoops. Either way that's pretty generous, but hey.

On a graphical note, Orcs-the-unit have actually basically switched with Orc Veterans when it comes to their shield: in The Legend, Orcs-the-unit had a shield depicting the Orc racial symbol, whereas in Armored Princess that's true of the Veteran Orc's shield instead, aside from exact coloration.

Overall, Orcs are set up to use an initial Adrenaline amount to zip into melee, and then just sit in the midst of the enemy dishing out brutal counterattacks and tossing extra turns at goblins in the meantime. That's a bit inconvenient from a player perspective, particularly with Grand Strategy strongly pushing the player away from taking casualties through the early-to-midgame, but later in the game a Paladin can have a lot of fun with them, or even a Warrior or Mage once you've gotten a hold of the Resurrection Spell, and the synergy with goblins is decent since Goblin Shaman are ridiculously good, though it's a bit limiting since Orcs tend to be outperformed by eg Veteran Orcs if you're not using goblins alongside the Orcs.

In AI hands, Orcs perform surprisingly poorly. As with most such Talents, they only understand using Onslaught if the position they start their turn in has them lined up with one of your troops, and it's surprising how rarely they use Commander, in spite of the fact that only Goblin Catapults aren't ahead of them in Initiative and/or Speed. Vengeance also suffers from the fact that the player is heavily disinclined to provoke counterattacks anyway, and their stat bonuses from higher Adrenaline aren't terribly important. As such, AI Orcs-the-unit tend to be essentially just a generic 2-Speed Running melee unit, with the only caveat being having to keep in mind Onslaught 'firing lines'.


Veteran Orc
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 380
Leadership: 140
Attack/Defense: 26 / 26
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 130
Damage: 13-16 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical
Talents: None
Abilities: Counterattack (If counterattacked, the Veteran Orc makes a second attack on the target. Won't trigger on 'passive counterattacks' like Brontor Spikes)

Level 1

Stat changes: +5 to Attack and Defense
Talents: Potion of Rage (-10 Charge: 1. Cancels Slow if the Veteran Orc stack is currently afflicted with it, as well as granting an immediate 2 Action Points, and granting 5 Rage to the Hero if under player control)
Abilities: Veteran Mastery (Chance to evade enemy attacks. The chance is 5+5 times Adrenaline level, meaning 10-20%)

Level 2

Stat changes: +20 to Health
Talents: Scold (Reduces Adrenaline to 0. Charges: 2. Splits Veteran Orc's current Adrenaline among all other allied Orcs, and doubles the damage of the Veteran Orcs for 1 turn. Does not end the Veteran Orc's turn), +1 charge to Potion of Rage
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +1 to Speed
Talents: Savage Attack (-20 . Reload: 3. Does 13-16 Physical damage to the target and to enemies to the side), +1 charge to Potion of Rage
Abilities: Cunning (When attacking a stack whose Speed is lower than the Veteran Orc's, the target cannot counterattack)

They've actually lost base damage (2 minimum, 4 maximum) as well as Running, but they've picked up 1 each in Attack and Defense, picked up 20 Health, and then of course there's a whole suite of powerful Adrenaline-based effects to boot. (With Potion of Rage basically replacing Running, and being far superior)

I've struck-through the Adrenaline cost on Savage Attack because the value in question is what the game lists, but as far as I can tell it doesn't drain any Adrenaline when used, and indeed will generate Adrenaline just like any other attacking Talent.

I have mixed feelings about Cunning in particular, since it actually undermines their basic Counterattack ability. Though as an aside, the Ice Ball already had me suspect 2 Speed is the default value when undefined on a unit, but Cunning is the thing that cements my certainty, as my consistent experience is that a Cunning-activated Veteran will avoid retaliation from Bosses so long as their Speed is at least 3, implying the Speed on Bosses is 2, when they don't make use of a Speed stat outside of turn order stuff. Also note that Cunning does apply to Fury Attack, which can be exploited to get damage on units that are actually faster than the Veteran Orc without retaliation by simply targeting an adjacent unit that isn't faster.

Scold's in-game description sounds like it doubles the damage of the other Orcs, but it only affects the Veteran Orcs themselves, making it a bit of an odd trade-off Talent. I'm honestly not sure what the intended usage is: maybe you're expected to use it to land a finishing blow? In any event, I've never seen the AI use Scold.

Orc Veterans are honestly just plain amazing so long as you're either okay with suffering attrition or have a way of preventing their casualties from sticking. They do shocking amounts of damage, are so fast they can usually hit whatever target you consider ideal, have a nice habit of dodging periodically, and can even bolster your Rage generation. They're a great unit pretty much no matter what you're doing, and are one of the better Orcs to consider 'splashing' into your army so they can benefit from Adrenaline-the-Skill consistently, and within an Orc army they're one of the more useful units for bolstering the Adrenaline of your army efficiently thanks to Fury Attack being not only free but a way to land a finishing blow while still dealing damage to more important target.

As enemies, Orc Veterans don't impress as much. Like AI Sea Dogs, they have a habit of wasting Fury Attack on single targets, they don't use Scold, they do use Potion of Rage but never more than once per turn and I've never really identified a coherent pattern to when they use Potion of Rage... all they've really got is impressive baseline Speed as their base Adrenaline rises and a habit of randomly dodging attacks. Which is annoying, but unreliable.


Ogre
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3000
Leadership: 1000
Attack/Defense: 37 / 47
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 680
Damage: 50-60 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 10% Poison, 10% Fire
Talents: Drain (Charge: 1. Picks an enemy anywhere on the battlefield and takes all their Action Points, which the Ogre can then immediately use for itself, as Drain does not end its turn or consume AP. Spell immune units cannot be targeted)
Abilities: Orc's Commander (+1 Morale to orcs-the-subspecies)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Rage of the Ogre (Reload: 3. +1 Action Points, and Attack is doubled for 2 turns. Also clears Weakness from the Ogre)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +1 Speed
Talents:
Abilities: Heavy Mace (Melee attacks do 50% more damage against flying enemies, and reduce their AP to 2 if it was above 2. This Speed penalty lasts 2 turns)

Level 3

Stat changes: +15 Attack and Defense
Talents: Strike (-10 Reload: 3. Targets an arbitrary enemy, inflicting 70-90 Physical damage, Stunning it for one turn, and dropping it in a random tile within 3 tiles of its original location), Drain gains another charge
Abilities:

A shiny new graphic! Well. Some more color, anyway. Close enough. Almost all their base stats have gone up a noticeable amount as well, though this includes Leadership climbing. Only max damage is worse.

Ogres are kind of weird in Orcs on the March, in that the Adrenaline mechanic and some other new mechanics (eg Recruiter on Orc Chieftains and Goblin Shaman) don't really end up encouraging them to fight alongside other Orcs, outside of the part where kills landed by allies only give the Ogre Adrenaline if the killer was an Orc unit itself. It's generally going to be more desirable to slip them into a non-Orc-dominated army while having enough ranks in Adrenaline-the-Skill and/or Onslaught that they begin the battle with 30 or more Adrenaline outright. (Among other points, Onslaught's Adrenaline distribution is randomized, but only among valid units: if the Ogre stack is the only Orc-type stack in your army, it'll get all the Adrenaline Onslaught provides)

They do have Orc's Commander, and it's more relevant than it was in The Legend, but on the other hand Orc Chieftains are also a high-Leadership, durable, hard-hitting stack with useful Talents that have a better version of Orc's Commander, so Orc's Commander isn't much of an incentive to consider adding Ogres to an Orc-focused army. Meanwhile, the fact that they aren't considered to be an Orc-the-subspecies, nor a Goblin-the-subspecies, nor a shaman (Relevant to one of the Orc Chieftain's Talents), means that they'll actually tend to be less of an increase to other unit's effectiveness than some other Orc unit. (eg Orcs-the-unit can give goblins another turn, so adding in a goblin if you're using Orcs-the-unit and have no goblins is a notable synergy)

Still, Drain is insanely good, can be stacked with Rage of the Ogre to give them truly astonishing movement range, and Strike gives them a way to contribute damage without having to risk a retaliation. They also show up earlier as buyable than in The Legend, generally speaking, which makes their status as the 'smallest' Level 5 unit less of a flaw: you might actually get access early enough to appreciate their relatively low Leadership and relatively high per-head durability.

As enemies, Ogres are extremely obnoxious and if at all possible you should never Wait when Ogres are in the enemy army, as they will always Drain something if they can. They're particularly punishing to units with low-ish Initiative but decent or high Speed, such as Cyclops, but their Initiative is high enough that it's not that likely that your entire army goes before them, and then they'll zip right up and start bashing your units. They're actually one of the most problematic Level 5 units to deal with, weirdly enough, unlike in The Legend where they were basically a joke. Being Level 5 closes off most of your Spell options for locking them down, such as Magic Shackles, Sheep, Blind, etc, so it's very difficult to prevent their Drain shenanigans, especially since the only protection against Drain is immunity to magic, meaning only Black Dragons are safe. Ogres usually won't do a lot of damage to your army, but they'll make a mess of your battle plans and cause casualties you might've thought you could avoid. As such, they should generally be a priority target in most formations.


Shaman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 600
Leadership: 200
Attack/Defense: 24 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 180
Damage: 15-18 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Dancing Axes (-8. Reload: 2. Targets a single enemy anywhere on the field to do 20-25 Magic damage per Shaman in the stack, with 80% of the damage done healing allied organic units)
Abilities: Fighting Spirit (When Adrenaline reaches maximum, Adrenaline drops by half, all Talents are reloaded, and Attack and Defense are raised by +4 each for the rest of the battle), Thirst for Glory (+1 Adrenaline anytime an ally gains an Adrenaline Level), Enraged (Begins battle with 10-15 Adrenaline)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Totem of Life (+3. Reload: 3. Sets a Totem in an empty tile anywhere on the field, which in a 2-tile radius around it bolsters the Defense of allies by 20% and once per turn heals organic allies in that radius, starting from the turn after it was set. Level 5 units don't benefit from either effect. The Totem has 7 health per Shaman at casting, and similarly heals 7 Health per Shaman at casting)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: Dancing Axes does 25% more damage, +50 Health
Talents: Totem of Death (+3 Reload: 3. Sets a Totem in an empty tile anywhere on the field, which in a 2-tile radius around it lowers enemy Speed by 1 and once per turn attacks all enemies in its radius for 5-8 Physical damage per Shaman at casting, starting from the turn after it was set. Level 5 enemies aren't susceptible to either effect. The Totem has 10 health per Shaman at casting)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: Totems are 25% more effective
Talents:
Abilities:

It's not super-obvious, but Shaman have a new skin.

Note that the game says Fighting Spirit triggers at Adrenaline Level 3, but this is misleading, as it won't trigger until the Shaman reaches their personal maximum on Adrenaline; raising the maximum Adrenaline on your Orcs thus makes it take longer to reach that first Fighting Spirit trigger. (Though it is accurate inasmuch as if your Orcs can't rise above 20 Adrenaline yet, then your Shaman can't have Fighting Spirit trigger) I'd say the same about AI Shaman, but enemy battlegroups raise their starting Adrenaline in later fights so it's not really a consistent thing. It also means that getting maximum Adrenaline to 60 ensures they'll still be at Adrenaline Level 3 even after Fighting Spirit triggers. Also note that Fighting Spirit has, as far as I can tell, no limit on the number of times it can trigger per battle, and it doesn't care whether any Talents are actually on cooldown; ideally you'll have your Shaman spam their Talents so as to maximize the benefits of Fighting Spirit triggering.

Similarly, the Health boost actually kicks in at Adrenaline Level 2, not at Adrenaline Level 3 the way the game claims.

Do note that their Totems actually increase their Adrenaline when used. Not by much, but it is an increase rather than a decrease. Also notice that they always start a battle at least Adrenaline Level 1, thanks to Enraged, so they can always start a battle with the ability to toss down a Totem of Life. Further note that Thirst For Glory means Shaman are strongly incentivized to be used alongside a team of all Orcs: it's not that hard to get to Adrenaline Level 2 so they get boosted Dancing Axes (And Health!) if fielded alongside Orcs galore.

The overall result is that Shaman usage actually hasn't changed that much compared to The Legend. The main notable difference is that in The Legend it was usually smart to drop a Totem of Death on turn 1 or 2, and in Armored Princess you won't necessarily have access to it that quickly. Enemy Shaman are even less changed in implementation, since the AI's base Adrenaline rises the later in the game a fight is meant to be, and so enemy Shaman will frequently be able to use Totem of Death right away. Shaman get to spam their Talents more freely thanks to Fighting Spirit, but Shaman already spammed their Talents; in shorter battles they play nearly identically, albeit being overall a bit more effective.


Goblin
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 16 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 26
Damage: 2-4 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: None
Abilities: Giant Killer (+30% damage against Level 5 units), Archer (Range: 4), No Melee Penalty

Level 1

Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Zeroing In (+5 Attack for the rest of the battle each time a ranged attack is performed), Unstoppable (When attacking, the Goblin has a 5*Adrenaline Level% chance of getting an additional turn, ie 5-15%)

Level 2

Stat changes: +1 Damage
Talents:
Abilities: Poison Axes (20% chance to Poison enemies with attacks)

Level 3

Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Goblin Rage (-15. Reload: 1. A ranged attack with unlimited effective range which does 3-6 Physical damage and pushes the target back 1 tile if there's space to be pushed into)

Compared to The Legend, Goblins are no longer a generic short-ranged ranged attacker that kind of sucked. Now they... well, now they have Adrenaline. It... mostly makes them a bit more random through Unstoppable and Poison Axes. Goblin Rage is a nice little Talent, the knockback is genuinely nice for slowing enemies down, but honestly you're probably better off using Goblin Catapults instead of Goblins if you want an Orcish ranged unit. Or Goblin Shaman. Or use Blood Shaman as functionally close enough.

Honestly, Goblins are probably the single most disappointing Orcs on the March unit. They can be annoying in AI hands thanks to Unstoppable and Poison Axes meaning they'll periodically get lucky and do a bunch of damage to your units for no real reason (Exacerbated by Zeroing In rapidly raising their attack if they get a chain of Unstoppable triggers), but they're still fundamentally a bad ranged unit with no tactically interesting dynamics changing how you use them. Their primary recommendation is that Adrenaline doesn't build when just taking damage, and so just being a ranged unit at all goes well with Adrenaline... but then they don't really leverage it in a useful or interesting way.

Alas.

At least the other Orc units are cool.

On the plus side, just like Furious Goblins, Giant Killer applies to their Talents, not just their base attacks.


Catapult
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 300
Leadership: 130
Attack/Defense: 23 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 80
Damage (Ranged): 6-11 Physical
Damage (Siege Gun): 12-22 Physical 
Damage (Melee): 7 Physical
Resistances: -50% Fire
Talents: Detonation (Reload: 2. A selected powder keg or bomb explodes on command)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 5), Siege Gun (Calls the Siege Gun attack against most Objects, including Gremlins. Effective range is 6 for such targets), Susceptible to Fire (50% more damage from Fire)

Level 1

Stat changes:
Talents: Fire Missile (Reload: 2. Ranged attack with infinite effective range against an enemy, which does 8-13 Fire damage to the target and 50% that to adjacent units, with each unit having a 50% chance to be Burned as well)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: 2 Fire Damage added to all attacks
Talents: Explosives (-15 Reload: 3. Sets an explosive object on a chosen empty tile 2-3 tiles out from the Catapult)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +30% chance to crit, +30% Fire resistance
Talents:
Abilities:

Catapults are slightly more Leadership-intensive, but their base damage has been improved (As has Fire Missile's damage) and they've got Adrenaline in general. The fact that they have to wait for Fire Missile is a bit annoying, though, and Detonation is basically useless. Usually you can detonate a bomb/powder keg by just attacking it, after all, and with Fire Missile you'd be able to stack on additional damage to adjacent enemies on top of the explosive being detonated. Still, while the Catapult is one of the more low-key Orc units in its changes, overall it's gone from being a solid if flawed unit to being... basically the same thing, but a bit better. And just intrinsically more interesting from its Orcness. And as previously covered, Cannoneers are much weaker competition as Gremlin-killers, so you're a lot more likely to field Catapults than in The Legend just on that basis. 

Though it's also worth noting that an easily overlooked big point in their favor is Burn being made percentile, as it means that Fire Missile isn't simply splash Fire damage but is also a way to inflict shocking amounts of ongoing damage against stacks. Cannoneers have nothing equivalent to this, which is another point shifting things in favor of Catapults.

Also note that Detonation does not burn Adrenaline. This... doesn't actually do anything to bring it into relevancy, but it's true regardless. Amusingly, behind the scenes it's actually coded as a regular Fire damage attack, except this attack doesn't matter because other code jumps in and causes it to do 150% of the HP of the target.

Explosives is a situational Talent, primarily due to its horribly limited range. It can occasionally be great for blocking a chokepoint, especially since the AI will generally try to destroy the explosive if it can't reach one of your units instead and thus burn a unit turn or two on inflicting damage on itself, but most of the time the Catapult won't be in position to really pull this off. Thanks to the short range, fairly fast units like Horsemen will often just go around and hit the Catapults or one of your other units if you're not using it to outright block off a chokepoint, further limiting its utility. And of course it eats Adrenaline, potentially costing you Fire damage on your base attack, crit chance, Fire resistance, or even access to Fire Missile.

Still, it does have uses. Unlike Detonation.

Explosives itself can create two possible bombs, with its chance split evenly between the two. Broadly speaking, it's accurate to think of them as 'the bad bomb' and 'the good bomb'; the bad bomb has 20 Health per Catapult and does 8-12 Fire damage when it explodes. (Again, per Catapult) The good bomb instead has 35 Health per Catapult, 50% Physical resistance, and does 12-15 Fire damage when it explodes. The bad bomb is thus actually weaker than just lobbing Fire Missile if you don't manage to catch multiple targets, while the good bomb is the Catapult's strongest attack, but is more of a nuisance to actually detonate... but also better at stalling enemies if placed well.

Catapults are one of the better Orc options for bolstering the Adrenaline of the army as a whole by picking off targets, both being a competent ranged unit in general and in particular Fire Missile having even greater utility than Fury Attack for finishing off nearly-dead stacks while still dealing serious damage to stacks that are large and thus dangerous. Since it is a ranged attack, there's no need to fiddle around with positioning to get such an opportunity, and the lack of an Adrenaline cost helps still further. Though speaking of this, another flaw with Detonation (As well as a bit of a flaw with Explosives) is that you only get Adrenaline for direct damage/kills: finishing off a stack by detonating a powder keg, even if it was generated by a Catapult and/or detonated via Detonation, gives zero Adrenaline.

In AI hands, Catapults are fairly straightforward. I've never seen the AI use Detonation or Explosives, making them a fairly basic ranged attacker that will intermittently use Fire Missile. Since the AI starts with increasingly high amounts of Adrenaline, guaranteed, AI Catapults can almost always immediately open with a Fire Missile. If you've got Tactics, it's worth avoiding clumping your troops to minimize the Burn rolls/resulting damage, especially since AI Catapults will often hold off on actually using Fire Missile if none of your troops are adjacent to each other. (But not always!) Their weakness to Fire is a bit less serious of a flaw in enemy hands than in The Legend as well, since the Mage doesn't start out knowing Fireball, Fireball is more expensive, Fire Rain is also more expensive and can't be double-cast anymore, and a blaster caster is probably focusing on stuff like Black Hole and Death Star anyway, rather than on the Fire damage Spells. As such, Catapults are overall a little harder to kill for the Mage, even aside the probability of them having enough Adrenaline to reduce the seriousness of their Fire weakness.


Orc Tracker
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 500
Leadership: 160
Attack/Defense: 20 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 150
Damage: 10-15 Physical
Resistances: 10% Poison
Talents:
Abilities: Tracker (+1 Speed to allied animals), Hunter (+50% damage against 'beasts'), Loner (+5 Attack and Defense if no ally is within 2 tiles)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Speed
Talents: Animal Companion Level 1 (-5 Charge: 1. Summons into an adjacent tile 70-90 Leadership per Tracker in the summoning stack, with the unit summoned being randomly chosen from Lake Dragonflies, Fire Dragonflies, Hyenas, and Swamp Snakes. So long as the summoned stack is on the field, half of the damage the summoning Tracker stack takes is redirected to the summoned stack)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +20% Physical and Poison resistance
Talents: Snare (-10 Reload: 2. A single adjacent enemy below Level 5 is unable to move or use Talents that involve moving for 2 turns), Animal Companion upgraded to Level 2 (As Level 1, except it will summon Snakes, Bears, or Wolves)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Healer (-20 Reload: 3. Heals/resurrects an adjacent stack of allied animals that is below Level 5, 44 Health per Tracker in the healing stack), Animal Companion upgraded to Level 3 (As Level 1 and 2, but it will now summon Royal Snakes, Griffins, or Ancient Bears)
Abilities:

Note that you only get one charge across all three levels of Animal Companion, meaning that if you want the biggest payoff you have to hold off until Adrenaline Level 3 before using Animal Companion.

Orc Trackers are fantastic to use in the extreme early game, as they passively boost the Snakes and Royal Snakes you're probably going to be fielding and are sufficiently beefy for the very low Leadership of the early game that they can get into melee combat without there being a high risk of them suffering casualties. Past the super-early game they shift to being more gimmicky, and really need serious Adrenaline support to be an effective unit that isn't costing you money. If you do have a lot of ranks in Onslaught and Adrenaline-the-Skill, being able to instantly toss out a disposable animal stack that of course benefits from their passive Speed boost for animals can be useful enough to justify dragging them in even if you never send them into combat. Glot's Armor can also theoretically be used to let them get into melee to build Adrenaline, though in practice it honestly just doesn't absorb enough damage for that to be practical.

In AI hands, Orc Trackers are almost never paired up with animals -they basically only ever show up in pure Orc armies- and are rare besides, like much of the Orcs on the March content. When they do show up, they never use Healer that I've seen, and are erratic as to whether they bother to summon an Animal Companion at all. When they do summon an Animal Companion, they simply summon it from wherever they start the turn at; they won't move closer to your forces and then summon. About the only thing they're kind of competent at is that they like to use Snare on your forces when they're close to death -much like Cave Spiders and Fire Spiders using Web when they're close to dying- which can genuinely inconvenience your forces at times. Even then, they don't really know what to target.

Still, they're usually more problematic to fight than Orcs-the-unit, as they'll often be operating on a passive 4 Speed, and killing them quickly is a nuisance when they bother to summon an Animal Companion.

On a mechanical note, the damage transference effect is a bit weird in how its handled. Splash damage and damage over time effects (ie Poisoning and Burning, primarily) will sometimes immediately transfer the damage appropriately, and sometimes will instead not trigger until after the current unit has completed its turn, which can lead to weird situations where you do a bunch of damage to a Tracker, none of it gets transferred, and then suddenly and for no obvious reason their Animal Companion keels over dead after a completely unrelated thing has happened. Or, more inconveniently when you're fighting them, maybe the Animal Companion gets to take a turn with its full stack size and then absorbs the damage, when it should've suffered casualties first and thus lost damage output.

A different mechanics note is that the game completely fails to mention that the Orc Tracker apparently really likes their animal companion, by which I mean that if a unit directly attacks their animal companion -including if they retaliate against it attacking them- the Orc Tracker does doubled damage to that unit until such time as a different unit attacks their animal companion. You're really encouraged to have the animal companion initiate combat on an enemy the Orc Tracker is going to attack, which is a neat little dynamic! It's frustrating this goes unmentioned, because it's easy to overlook in casual play and knowing about it notably changes how one wants to play with the Orc Tracker.


Orc Chieftain
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 4000
Leadership: 1200
Attack/Defense: 40 / 35
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 850
Damage: 50-70 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 10% Poison, 10% Fire
Talents:
Abilities: Smash (Melee attacks additionally hit enemy units behind the target. No friendly fire risk), Commander (Allied orcs and goblins gain +1 Morale), Thick Skin (+20% Physical resistance, and melee attackers have a chance of suffering an Attack penalty for 2 turns when attacking the Orc Chieftain. The lower their Level, the higher the chance, and the greater the Attack loss), Recruiter (After a battle, 1-2 Orcs-the-subspecies are added to a randomly chosen existing stack in the player's army)

Level 1

Stat changes: +10% Damage
Talents: Sneer (-5 Charge: 1. Provokes a target enemy of below Level 5 that lacks immunity to mental effects to attempt to attack the Orc Chieftain, with the targeted unit's resulting behavior being exactly as per Scoffer Imp's Sneer)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +20% Damage total, +1 Speed
Talents: Predator (-10 Charges: 3. An adjacent allied orc or goblin stack suffers casualties, but immediately maximizes its Adrenaline and gets another turn. The Orc Chieftain stack, meanwhile, is healed by 200-400 Health base [does not scale to Chieftain stack size] and continues its turn), +1 charge to Sneer
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +30% Damage total, +2 Speed total
Talents: Spirit Strike (-20 Reload: 3. Attacks all adjacent enemies, for 35-45 Physical damage per Orc Chieftain, and shoves all affected enemies away 1 tile. Level 5 units are immune to the shove. Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Goblin Shaman allied stacks act as a multiplier to the final damage), Predator's healing is doubled
Abilities:

An interesting point is that the Orc Chieftain's skin was actually used as the new skin for the Ogre in the base version of Armored Princess. I'm personally glad they switched back to a variation on the old Ogre graphic, because it was pretty strange to retcon Ogres as being the same skin color range as Orcs and Goblins while still emphasizing that they're fairly off to the side, societally and all.

Thick Skin is weirdly complicated. First of all, its 'weapon-breaking' effect can only trigger against...

Peasants, Robbers, Marauders, Swordsmen, Guardsmen, Knights, Paladins, Miners, Dwarves, Foremen, Giants, Werewolf Elves (In Elf form, specifically), Orcs-the-unit, Orc Trackers, Orc Veterans, basic Skeletons, Zombies, Decaying Zombies, Vampires, Ancient Vampires, Demons-the-unit, Executioners, Gorguls, Pirates, Sea Dogs, and Witch Hunters.

... which is a decent array of units, but it's still very easy to go several fights without this effect being able to trigger at all. Second, the chance of it triggering, and the strength of the Attack penalty, are the same number per-Level; Level 1 units will run into the effect 75% of the time and lose 75% of their Attack for the duration, Level 2 units run into it 37% of the time and lose 37% of their Attack for the duration, Level 3 units hit it 25% of the time and lose 25% of their Attack, Level 4 units hit it 19% of the time and lose 19% of their Attack, and lastly Level 5 units (Which is to say Giants in specific) have it trigger a mere 15% of the time and only lose 15% of their Attack for the duration.

I sort of like the part where its penalty is greater the lower the Level of the unit simply because higher-Level units tend to be hit pretty hard by even proportionately fairly small penalties to Attack or Defense because they have so much in the first place; a Giant losing 15% of its Attack is actually generally going to be higher impact than a Peasant losing 75% of its Attack. I'm not so fond of the trigger chance being rolled in there too, as it turns Thick Skin into a mechanic with a notable element of screaming "Come on big money!" at the game; after all, you can all but assume Peasants will break their pitchforks on your Orc Chieftain's skin, but you'll much more appreciate Knights having their swords crack in the attempt, when it's less than a 20% chance it'll happen on any given attack.

Recruiter is heavily biased toward using high-Leadership orc stacks to maximize its effect, as its value really is just 1-2 no matter what unit is being added to. Also note that it can and will take you over your current Leadership, so it's worth considering avoiding actually maxing out your relevant stacks, especially if you've got your Reserves slots tied up somehow. Also note that it doesn't apply to goblins or Ogres, nor (more intuitively) to the Orc Chieftain theirself. It's just Orcs, Orc Veterans, Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Orc Trackers.

Predator's casualty infliction is static (ie a bigger stack of Orc Chieftains doesn't eat more units), and defined per-unit, specifically being that Goblins and Furious Goblins lose 2 members, while everything else loses 1 member -well, everything that can be targeted. You can't use it on Ogres, other Orc Chieftains, regular Shaman, or Blood Shaman. While sort of an interesting idea, Predator unfortunately isn't a very good Skill. The healing amount is only useful if you luck into Orc Chieftains extremely early in the game, and the second turn effect is difficult to make reliable use of unless you're doing something like just planting the Orc Chieftain atop eg Catapults and not bothering to try to close with the enemy... which has the problem that they can't use Predator until Adrenaline Level 2, while demanding that you're fielding a minimum of two Orc units, making it impossible to reliably ensure they get enough Adrenaline from Skills to use Predator first turn. So it's difficult to consistently get real use out of Predator, above and beyond the dubiousness of deliberately inflicting casualties on your own units.


Spirit Strike is a bit finicky if you're running a mono-Orc army since Orcs are so weighted toward melee, though to its credit the fact that it's boosted by Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Goblin Shaman means that you're strongly encouraged to run 3/5ths of your army as not-really-melee if you want to maximize the Chieftain's damage on Spirit Strike. Probably the biggest flaw with Spirit Strike is actually Smash's presence; via Smash, a Chieftain can hit two targets with a base damage of 50-70, whereas Spirit Strike's base damage per target is a mere 35-45. Oftentimes a Smash will thus get you a base total damage of 100-140, which Spirit Strike requires at least three victims to be about on par with and of course requires more to consistently beat... oh, and Smash isn't using up Adrenaline, when one of the primary benefits of gaining Adrenaline on the Chieftain is that their damage goes up! Worse, the Adrenaline-based damage boosting does not apply to Spirit Strike, meaning that the comparison for Smash on two targets vs Spirit Strike is actually Smash having an effective base damage of roughly 130-182! Spirit Strike thus needs four targets to actually justify itself over Smash, which is quite a feat to arrange even with eg Teleport support.

Now of course there's that shaman-derived boost, but it's less great than one might hope. What the game does is look at how many shaman stacks your army contains, and then use that number as the multiplier, with a multiplier of 1 being used if you have no shaman present. So first of all this means that having only one shaman stack in your army provides no boost at all; you need at least two for their presence to help any. Second, by default you can only reach a multiplier of 3, as only Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Goblin Shaman count; while the game actually doesn't care about the size of the shaman stacks, it's not like splitting a stack to get Spirit Strike to a multiplier of 4 is a particularly sensible strategy. A multiplier of 3 does at least pull Spirit Strike ahead of Smash if we're assuming two targets apiece, let alone if Spirit Strike is catching three or more targets, but you're committing 4/5ths of your army to enabling this and it's not that great. As a bonus, Blood Shaman's Power of the Horde is better off with literally any other Orc unit in place of Orc Chieftains; this isn't a strongly synergistic set of four units overall.

A further problem is that Spirit Strike is has some pretty major coding errors that make adding shaman to your army straight-up disadvantageous to Spirit Strike itself. By default, Spirit Strike has no friendly fire (In spite of the game telling you it hurts 'friend and foe alike') and is guaranteed to shove enemies away; the second any shaman are boosting Spirit Strike's damage, suddenly it gains the friendly fire that the in-game description refers to. Worse, shaman presence also means the shove component is disabled! This appears to have been an attempt to code Spirit Strike to only shove enemies, but if so they botched it quite badly. So adding shaman to your army makes Spirit Strike less flexible in usage if you're trying to avoid hurting your forces, and can get you in trouble if you were planning around the shove and didn't know (Or forgot) about the shove being disabled when shaman are in your army. And note that this is all enabled by even one shaman stack being present; one shaman in the army actually makes Spirit Strike worse than having no shaman at all, since it doesn't even get a damage boost!

That said, something of a saving grace for Spirit Strike is that it fully counts 'fake' shaman; you can give Spirit Strike a boost by using Phantom to create additional Shaman. If you're fond of, say, using Phantom on Goblin Shaman anyway, you can potentially get a good amount of damage out of Spirit Strike without so serious a commitment of army formation to it, or alternatively get it to notably more impressive height -a Mage fabbing up two Phantoms for two turns ahead of the Spirit Strike use, on top of three natural Shaman stacks, gives Spirit Strike a base damage of 245-315 per target per Orc Chieftain!

Unfortunately, Spirit Strike is further hampered by the fact that Smash is generally safer to take advantage of (In spite of the fact that it will provoke a retaliation) because it keeps the number of enemies in immediate striking range of the Orc Chieftain to a minimum, where Spirit Strike maximizes danger to the Orc Chieftain. Even considering it shoves enemies away (If you're not boosting its damage...) and that it won't necessarily have friendly fire: it still requires more dangerous play to optimize it than utilizing Smash. Especially since it costs Adrenaline, and so can take away the Orc Chieftain's high-Adrenaline Speed advantage, when high Speed is really useful for battlefield control.

The overall result is that the Orc Chieftain is primarily useful as a combination of mildly-to-moderately effective damage sponge, dishing out surprisingly decent damage in melee, and strategically Sneering with your two charges of it when it will have a profound effect or when you just don't want the Chieftain risking any more damage for the moment. With a secondary utility of slightly reducing your spending on recruiting additional Orcs, assuming you combine it with the units Recruiter works on.

As an enemy, the Orc Chieftain is surprisingly underwhelming. I've never seen the AI use Predator (Though I'm not sure if this is because they're not programmed to use it or if it's just an illustration of how rarely they're in a decent position to use it), they don't know how to use Sneer effectively (Further hampered by the fact that they'll never move before using it), and they have a bad habit of using Spirit Strike when there's literally only one unit in range, actively lowering their damage output twice-over. (It's not like the game tries particularly hard to team them up with lots of shaman stacks) And of course Recruiter doesn't even matter in AI hands.

The overall result is that you should generally treat enemy Orc Chieftains like most any 2-Speed generic melee; a slow-moving unit that should be a low priority compared to anything faster or with ranged attacks.


Blood Shaman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 900
Leadership: 270
Attack/Defense: 20 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 160
Damage: 15-22 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents:
Abilities: Enraged (Begins battle with 10-15 Adrenaline), Thirst For Glory (+1 Adrenaline anytime an ally gains an Adrenaline Level), Spirituality (No Morale penalty from allied Undead)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Spirit Rage (-5 Reload: 3. Inflicts 7-15 Astral damage on any one enemy troop. If the stack is killed by Spirit Rage, it leaves behind an Eviln instead of a corpse. This effect cannot trigger on Plants, Undead, or inorganic units. Alternatively, Spirit Rage can target an Eviln, in which case Spirit Rage will do half its normal damage, but to all units adjacent to the Eviln. The Eviln is destroyed in that case)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +20% melee damage
Talents: Goblin Blood (-10 Reload: 2. Every allied goblin loses 1 member of its stack, but gains 10 Adrenaline and 1 AP, which can grant it a second turn. Additionally, the Blood Shaman is healed to full health, and for each stack that sacrificed a goblin, a 'rage cluster' appears, which will provide 5-10 Rage when walked over), Spirit Rage hits twice
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes:
Talents: Power of the Horde (-15 Charges: 2. One enemy takes Magic damage equal to the number of Orcs-the-faction in the Blood Shaman's army, multiplied by the Level of the units involved [ie the Blood Shaman provide 4 damage per head], and additionally the target suffers -1 Initiative for one turn), Spirit Rage hits thrice
Abilities:

Notice that the Blood Shaman always starts a battle in at least Adrenaline Level 1. This means that in short battles and/or with decent Adrenalin-providing support from eg other Orcs landing kills, Blood Shaman can be treated as basically a ranged unit, especially if you can get their Adrenaline high enough for them to use Power of the Horde without exiting Adrenaline Level 3.

Speaking of Power of the Horde, for your convenience, here's what each Orc unit works out to for Leadership-to-damage:

Furious Goblins: Leadership is 45, Level is 2, so 1 damage for every 22.5 Leadership
Orcs: Leadership is 80, Level is 3, so 1 damage for every 26.6 Leadership
Veteran Orc: Leadership is 140, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 35 Leadership
Shaman: Leadership is 200, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 50 Leadership
Ogres: Leadership is 1000, Level is 5, so 1 damage for every 200 Leadership
Goblin: Leadership is 40, Level is 2, so 1 damage for every 20 Leadership
Catapult: Leadership is 130, Level is 3, so 1 damage for every 43.3 Leadership
Orc Tracker: Leadership is 160, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 40 Leadership
Orc Chieftain: Leadership is 1200, Level is 5, so 1 damage for every 240 Leadership
Blood Shaman: Leadership is 270, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 67.5 Leadership
Goblin Shaman: Leadership is 130, Level is 3, so 1 damage for every 43.3 Leadership

Notice that Power of the Horde is actually an argument for using Goblins, as they provide the biggest damage boost for the Leadership of any unit. The Blood Shaman is sadly the third-worst at boosting its own Talent, and somewhat disappointingly the Orc Chieftain is awful at boosting Power of the Horde, making their own desire to see Blood Shaman alongside them to boost Spirit Strike not very synergistic with the Blood Shaman's own priorities. The overall best possible team is Goblins/Orcs/Furious Goblins/Veteran Orcs plus of course the Blood Shaman. Using 10,000 Leadership as the benchmark, the Furious Goblins would provide roughly 444 damage, the Orcs would provide roughly 375 damage, the Veteran Orcs would provide roughly 285 damage, the Goblins would provide 500 damage, and the Blood Shaman would provide roughly 111 damage, for a total of approximately 1,715 damage.

Let's compare this against Spirit Rage. Spirit Rage's base damage is 7-15 per Blood Shaman, but it strikes three times anytime you could've used Power of the Horde instead, meaning the base value of Spirit Rage in this comparison is effectively 21-45 damage, or potentially more if you arrange to target an Eviln surrounded by multiple enemies. At 10,000 Leadership, you'd have 37 Blood Shaman, which means you'd do 777-1665 damage.

Notice that the absolute best-case scenario for Power of the Horde is actually not much higher than the high roll on Spirit Rage. This assumes your army is optimized to maximize Power of the Horde's damage, and also assumes you haven't taken any casualties, and that you're far enough into the game no magic number issues are cropping up with your Leadership. Now, the low roll on Spirit Rage is much lower, and the average damage is still low enough Power of the Horde isn't necessarily worthless or anything, but honestly Power of the Horde is a bit underwhelming and I wish the numbers on it had been stronger, especially since it has a fixed number of charges and it's not like Gift exists in Armored Princess. It's especially frustrating since maxing Power of the Horde's damage involves making your army heavily out of units that are all about getting into melee, where they start taking casualties and thus weakening Power of the Horde further. If you instead shift over to eg Catapults and Goblin Shaman over Orcs and Furious Goblins, you suddenly drop down to approximately 1360 damage on Power of the Horde in this 10,000 Leadership example, which is much more dubious when contrasted against Spirit Rage, and of course if you include Orc Chieftains or Ogres anywhere in the list they're contributing nearly nothing.

To be fair, Spirit Rage has a long reload and Power of the Horde has some potential utility through the Initiative reduction, but it's still fairly weird that the Blood Shaman's Ultimate Attack Talent is so underwhelming. The only really positive/interesting thing about Power of the Horde is that it barely loses any damage from the Blood Shaman themselves taking casualties; if you're playing a Paladin and interested in playing around with Orcs, having the Blood Shaman charge into melee and act as your damage sponge can work surprisingly well, and you can even save using Power of the Horde until their numbers are fairly low while retaining 90% of its effectiveness.

In enemy hands, Power of the Horde makes them a critical priority target (For disabling or killing outright, if you can) when facing particularly large Orc forces if you're not able to just rapidly nuke down the army itself. This doesn't happen too often, but it's something to keep in mind, and in particular requires a bit of a mental shift: usually a nearly-dead stack isn't contributing much directly anymore, but Blood Shaman can potentially inflict shocking casualties even when nearly gone if the rest of their team still outnumbers you significantly. Worse yet, AI Adrenaline scaling means that the kind of late-game Orc force that has a chance of being so much larger than your forces is likely to be able to Power of the Horde right on the first turn!

Weirdly, the AI usually prioritizes Spirit Rage first, even when the Blood Shaman stack is nearly wiped, making it less important than it really ought to be. The AI clearly doesn't look at the expected damage to determine which to use. Speaking of AI derp, I've never seen a Blood Shaman use Goblin Blood, even though in AI hands it would be an amazing Talent, where in player hands it's a neat idea hampered by the fact that the player should usually be avoiding casualties. Goblin Shaman having Recruiter and Instruction are inadequate to push the player away from 'casualties=bad', too, unless you're consistently expecting to avoid goblin casualties otherwise and also expecting to reasonably consistently use Instruction. (Which, among other points, requires Goblin Shaman get to 30+ Adrenaline)

Still, aside from potential Power of the Horde shenanigans, Blood Shaman in enemy hands are mostly like Shaman, except less threatening, bar specific matchup considerations like Black Dragons shrugging off Dancing Axes while taking full damage from Spirit Rage. Shaman actually use their utility Talents, even if they could be smarter about placement, and since Dancing Axes reloads quicker than Spirit Rage Shaman are generally putting more ranged pressure on your forces anyway.

As an aside, it doesn't really matter, but an element of how Power of the Horde is calculated results in a probably-unintentional oddity; that the final damage value will always be a clean multiple of the casting Blood Shaman stack's own headcount. That is, if you were to have 7 Blood Shaman cast Power of the Horde, the final damage number would be allowed to be 70, 77, 84, or any other multiple of 7, but not anything in between. The nature of this oddity is such that adding additional non-Blood Shaman to your army won't necessarily increase Power of the Horde's damage; raising your Leadership a little and adding another Goblin will likely have no effect, unless you happen to be near a breakpoint. As your Blood Shaman count rises, this effect becomes more pronounced, since of course the gap between valid numbers grows; at 540 Leadership, where you have a couple Blood Shaman, any even number is valid, which is easy. At 20,000 or so Leadership, where you're talking around 74 Blood Shaman, that's of course a quite wide gap in which the final number isn't getting to actually improve.

It's fortunately not terribly important, but it can be confusing, especially if you bother to calculate out numbers yourself before doing a battle, as you'll end up with damage either lower or higher than expected -the game actually rounds to the nearest valid multiple, not specifically down, so for example with 74 Blood Shaman you'd see no improvement rising up through around +36 damage, only to abruptly gain +74 damage at the +37 damage point. It's also sufficiently weird/obviously janky it's almost certainly not something that was intended, anticipated, or even recognized -most likely it was a side effect of a reasonable-at-a-glance under-the-hood calculation whose implications weren't fully considered.

On a different note, the Eviln produced by a lethal Spirit Rage will kill 20% of a stack, or heal 10% of an Undead stack. That's a decent bit of added damage if you manage to focus one stack down before really starting on other stacks, assuming you do manage to catch an enemy with the Eviln as well.


Goblin Shaman
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 250
Leadership: 130
Attack/Defense: 20 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 60
Damage (Ranged): 6-10 Astral
Damage (Melee): 6-10 Physical 
Resistances: Generic.
Talents:
Abilities: Goblin Commander (+1 to Morale for all goblins), Recruiter (Upon completing a battle with allied stacks of goblins-the-subspecies that aren't Goblin Shaman, a randomly chosen such stack is reinforced with 3-5 individuals), Ghost Axes (Range: 4. Ranged attack lowers all enemy Resistance by 2%. This effect lasts for the rest of the battle, and stacks), No Melee Penalty

Level 1

Stat changes: Ghost Axes now lower Resistances by 3%
Talents: Web of Life (-5 Charge: 1. Targets a stack of goblins, which for 3 turns redirects to itself 50% of the damage the casting stack would take)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +5 Defense, Ghost Axes now lower Resistances by 4%
Talents: Astral Attack (-10 Charges: 3. One member of the stack dies, and a 12-18 Astral damage attack is performed by the remainder of the stack against a single distant enemy. Does not end the Goblin Shaman's turn and ignores Attack/Defense modification)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +1 Initiative, Ghost Axes now lower Resistances by 5%
Talents: Instruction (-15 Charges: 3. An adjacent troop of goblins loses 5 members, and the Goblin Shaman stack gains 1 member)
Abilities:

Note the the game itself claims that the Defense boost kicks in at Adrenaline Level 1 and the Initiative boost at Adrenaline Level 2, but this is incorrect.

Recruiter works basically the same as it does on the Orc Chieftain, just with a larger number of reinforcements and being applied to Goblins, Furious Goblins, and Catapults. Same basic sentiments apply in terms of eg you might want to hover somewhat below max Leadership on your goblins if you have a Goblin Shaman along.

Bizarrely, Astral Attack is a Talent unique for entirely ignoring the target's Defense stat. (And, thankfully, the user's Attack stat) It's effectively like a spell, only scaled to a stack's size, and with almost-irresistible damage to boot. (Astral resistance is really rare, but not quite nonexistent) This makes it one of the most lethal Talents in the game. This is an unfortunate example of a thing that's much more frustrating in enemy hands than it is useful in player hands, since the player's Attack and Defense will rise over the course of the game, with enemy Goblin Shaman remaining just as lethal anyway while your own Goblin Shaman fail to rise in lethality with Astral Attack, increasingly being prone to being better off just hitting something with their Ghost Axes. That's not even touching on how it actually kills a member of the stack, which is nearly a non-cost for the AI where for the player it actually matters.

The game makes some reference to Astral Attack hitting a number of times scaled to Adrenaline Level, but that's simply wrong -you might think this is a botched translation of how it can be used so long as you have enough Adrenaline and charges, but no, even the original Russian incorrectly claims this!... because at some point in development it did work this way, which is a bit of a horrifying thought.

Also note that Ghost Axes lowering resistance even works on Bosses. This is one of the only lingering negative effects in the series that works on Bosses! By a similar token, it works on Gremlin Towers! It does not work in melee, but is otherwise universal.

Further note that Web of Life can actually be targeted on hostile goblin stacks. Interestingly, it can't be used on enemy Goblin Shaman, only Goblins, Furious Goblins, and Goblin Catapults. This is a bit of a niche thing -Goblin Shaman aren't exactly ideal tanks- but redirecting damage to the enemy is a lot more useful than redirecting it to your own units, so if you're using Goblin Shaman and happen to be fighting valid goblins it can be useful to keep in mind. Knowing about this quirk might let you overcome a particularly strong battlegroup.

Also, a weird, annoying point is that the Goblin Shaman's Initiative boost from Adrenaline is buggy. Their stated Initiative will rise appropriately when it's triggered, but their position in turn order will remain where it is as if their Initiative didn't go up -but if a new unit is then generated in the battle (Note that Ball Lightning counts for this purpose), the Goblin Shaman will have their position in turn order immediately shifted to where the Initiative increase should put them, with this correction to the turn order persisting for the entire battle. I suspect the game is, internally, doing something like calculating turn order and then in this one case adding Initiative without bothering to recalculate turn order, thus only accounting for the Initiative boost once something else forces turn order to be calculated. This usually isn't an issue, but it can really foul things up if you planned ahead and your Goblin Shaman isn't going ahead of units you were expecting it to go ahead of, be they enemy units or potentially your own, and it's one of the bugs that can really mess with your head if you notice it; I imagine there are players who were left sure they must be missing something and spent forever trying to hunt down the thing they weren't thinking of rather than realizing a really strange bug was at work.

Overall, the Goblin Shaman is themed around solving problems by drowning the enemy in Goblin blood. It's a really cool idea! It's too bad Grand Strategy means you'll ideally avoid using basically everything they do aside Ghost Axes for... a long, long time. And... Recruiter is so underwhelming that it's not actually practical to bury enemies in a tide of Goblin blood. Still, it's a cool idea...

... and anyway Goblin Shaman are so good they're worth using in spite of their flaws, just because Ghost axes is really useful. Note in particular that they effectively enhance the damage on Spells and Rage attacks, something few other units can assist with, making them particularly appealing for a Warrior or Mage. Admittedly not as appealing as a Gorguana outside of Boss and Keeper fights, but you only need a minor boost to Morale to make it practical to mix Lizardmen with Orcs so that's not some kind of deal-breaker.

As an aside, I've never seen an AI Goblin Shaman use Instruction or Web of Life. The former makes perfect sense -it would basically never be a good trade for the AI- but the latter is a bit surprising. Honestly, probably the biggest significance of this is that it means the AI is never going to interrupt its own Astral Attack spam; the AI will always use Astral Attack until it either runs out of charges or the Adrenaline costs bring the Goblin Shaman down below Adrenaline Level 2, and then lob a Ghost Axe to finish the turn. Due to the rising Adrenaline on AI forces point and the fact that Orcs are mostly placed as fairly late encounters in the game, quite often if you're fighting a Goblin Shaman at all this means all three Astral Attacks hitting you first turn. Since Astral Attack ignores your Defense, it's usually one of the most lethal things a battlegroup can do to you: Goblin Shaman should be a priority target, though thankfully they're low enough in Level it's not too hard to Blind them, Magic Shackles them, etc.

It's really a bit weird and a little disappointing how in both AI and player hands the Goblin Shaman ends up being a straightforward damage dealer, in spite of having more interesting qualities than that. Oh well. I do like getting to see goblin magic, at least.

-----------------------------

It's honestly difficult to convey how much fun Adrenaline adds into the game. Orcs are actually overall probably a bit too powerful in Orcs on the March, but Adrenaline is such an interesting mechanic I find myself forgiving them for it. It's enough fun I'm even willing to accept technically-unnecessary casualties once I've maxed out Grand Strategy, just to properly enjoy the full Orc experience.

Outside of Goblins and Goblin Shaman being pretty annoying as enemies, the closest thing to a negative thing I have to say about the Orcs on the March overhaul is that I kind of wish all the races got an equivalently interesting and distinctive core mechanic to their name. Alas, there's only one other case in the series that I feel manages to pull that off at all, and it's way off in Dark Side.

Anyway, next time, we cover Demons.

Comments

  1. Regarding Goblin's "Zeroing In" - they gain +5 attack each time they make an attack once they have zeroing in. So it's not just a +5 attack bonus with an ability name for some bizzare reason. Admittedly a bit confusing, but easy way to verify is let Goblins keep attacking and one will see their attack keep climbing and climbing and the attack stat will have the modified color.

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    1. Also think you forgot to specify the units that get summoned for level 3 animal companion of Orc Tracker, namely "royal snakes, ancient bears, and griffins" i believe.

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    2. Ah, yeah, actually writing down the level 3 animal summons kept slipping my mind.

      I'll (re)test Zeroing In later.

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    3. Yup yup. I can't remember though if the Goblins get the increasing attack from melee attacks eventhough i recently had them cornered. I'd lean on the side of no (and im nearly certain they don't get it from counterattacks), that they only keep getting the boosted attack from their ranged attacks, but that is something you to try to confirm from testing. Next time i fight them i guess i'll try to trap them in melee and see.

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    4. Tested: yeah, +5 per attack, melee attacks don't count. That makes their random free turns even more annoyingly swingy... at least it makes more sense to be an ability?

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  2. This comment i was writing in regards to your Patent Questions, but it discussed Orcs, so it's best posted here. Did a tiny bit of testing with them to assess their power level relative to DS:

    Oddly after I converted the patent to the defiled version, it didn't seem to gain trophies. I could see with more battles if it outright stops gaining regardless of enemy composition, but can't be bothered since training is irrelevant for me and I could use sacrifice if i wanted for say Ogre's sincei only have 3 of them in my game, and a pretty finite amount training material. Luckily sacrifice renders this all completely moot if I decide to transition to Moldok for the all Orc Army.

    I figured out that Shaman's Thirst for Glory is working properly, and i now fully understand that Fighting Spirit always procs when it reaches Max Adrenaline, not level 2 adrenaline like the game claims (one really really wants Rage Control at 3 for 50 maximum rage for them so that they dont get kicked down below adrenaline 3 by the -20 reduction, or bare minimum Rage control 2 so one maintains 20 adrenaline). Luckily bugs work in Shamans favor in CW, since it gets +50 max health at level 2 adrenaline despite the game claiming it's available at lvl 3 (this is easy to verify) and while they are not as good as they were in DS (for many reasons, including things like Totem of Life not healing tier 5 units, where in DS it did, and the most obvious thing being they can't spam any of their 3 abilities every turn. Also their phantoms don't gain any adrenaline from Enraged so start at 0, meanwhile shaman phantoms in DS were guaranteed to max adrenaline) and nowhere near as splashable, they are still solid, and they enjoy up to -25% ldr discount from Archmage.

    Blood Shaman is absolute trash. Not even worth wasting words on. An A.I only unit.

    Goblin Shaman is not as bad as I initially thought, albeit it's still a poor man's Spirit Talker, but sacrificing a Goblin Shaman (or 2 or 3) to use its relatively powerful astral nuke isn't that much of an downside The rest of their "talents" are meh, where Web of Life is a joke relative to Spirit Talkers "Thread of Life" empathy effect at 20% that could affect any of ur units (instead of just the Goblin Shaman) and be connected to any enemy. One tiny merit of web of life is that it can affect enemy goblins as well, despite the game claiming "allied" goblins, so worth updating that. Instruction is.. maybe slightly useful early game or to just not have to resurrect the sacrificed goblin shaman if they have 30 adrenaline to spare. Big issue is their terrible 4 range for full dmg, but they aren't quite as bad as I thought (but nowhere near as good as you assessed. If you think these things are good you should give Spirit Talkers a proper try in DS, they run circles around them).

    Veteran Orcs are jaw dropping, and they really love Moldoks speed and initiative and extra adrenaline. If there was a unit that could convince players to give melee a proper try, Orc Veteran properly boosted would be it.

    Ogre's are so good despite not having quite the prodigal resistances they have in DS, Drain + better initiative/speed and +15 atk/def from adrenaline help bridge the gap and maybe even overcome Ogre's from DS, somehow. Chieftains aren’t even worth mentioning in CW relative to DS, despite their great 20% physical resistance, they are not even a fraction of the behemoth they are in DS (Where even just their potentially near infinite Drain puts them in contention as the best unit in the game, on top of their many other merits). Goblins are much much stronger here than they are in DS. Quick Draw makes them even more enticing. Orc Trackers i already used extensively in the early game and they are great, but despite my love for Orc race it's a bit much to go to them in the late game after having just used them 75% of my DS playthrough.

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    1. The game explicitly warns you that corrupting your Officer's Patent stops it from gaining Trophies. I don't really get the point of this, but it's intentional.

      I'll double-check the Shaman and Web of Life mechanical details, but those sound right to me.

      Goblin Shaman stand out in Crossworlds because they're uniquely helpful in Boss fights, which Crossworlds has a ton of, and which tend to be some of its roughest fights, where 'unit performs well in Boss fights in particular' is a noteworthy quality. They're useful outside Boss fights, but it's mainly Boss fights where they have a big draw particular to them. Saying 'you should be impressed by Spirit Talkers too!' doesn't actually hold up, because the things that make Goblin Shaman appealing are not shared with Spirit Talkers, and even if they were it would still fail to hold up because Dark Side has exactly one Boss fight that's extremely easy.

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  3. "The game explicitly warns you that corrupting your Officer's Patent stops it from gaining Trophies” Oh dam didn't pay attention then (i really zone out with the trophies stuff). That's a perplexing design choice. Probably for the best though, since one really shouldnt be using it anymore if they are getting to Shterra in an honest way.

    "Goblin Shaman stand out in CW because they're uniquely helpful in Boss fights" Yeh i decided to switch up to an all Archmage leadership discount army (effectively a 33% increase in Ldrship, like transforming a Mage with my 22k leadership at level 48, into a Paladin who would normally have about the ~29k in leadership that my all mage army has), and went for Goblin Shaman over regular shaman (partially due to it ALSO getting boosted by Quick Draw which can't be ignored, imagine getting boosted by BOTH archmage AND quick draw.. even an overcosted 130 leadership when it becomes 98 and gets initiative and extra attack, suddenly becomes quite good). The key is they are much better as a SPLASH unit, so that they can hog all the adrenaline bonuses (i got Adrenaline skill to lvl 3 for +35 with Onslaught 1 for +10, so they start at 45). Then at the beginning of the battle, they can launch their three Astral nukes for some impressive dmg (especially when one factors in the huge lldrship discount allowing 33% more, and the fact that their relatively meh attack doesn't get factored since it's a "pure" nuke in the vein of Dancing Axes that doesnt get impacted by atk/def), including even to Keepers (albeit this doesn't gain them adrenaline so they'd drop from 45 to 15 if they go all in with the 3 charges). Normally after using their 3 nukes they should also still maintain 30 adrenaline for level 3, as long as they don't roll low on rng (i.e 4/4/5, 4/4/6 or 4/5/5, combinations that = less than 15), since they recoup 4-7 adrenaline per each "attack" to help alleviate the 10 cost. Rune Mage or Demonologist can then patch up the lost shamans. Only unfortunate thing is their abysmal 4 range and 2 move speed when not boosted by something like Moldok (i'm sticking with Elenhel), forcing them to get right up in the enemy face (ofcourse demonologist suffers from this pathetic range as well sadly, one of the things holding him back from the upper echelons). 1/5th of the time Adrenaline will hit it for extra 2 move speed making it easier, that or tactics 2 (only have tactics 1). Still I came back here to update my assessment of them. Initially weeks ago when i saw them i thought they were like a 20/100, an absolute disaster relative to how amazing they were as Spirit Talkers in DS (likely over 90/100 ). Then yesterday when i wrote my comment i had them closer to a 50/100, so serviceable but unimpressive. Now i have them at like a 70 as a splash and when boosted by Archmage, so pretty solid (they'd be worse in an all Orc army since they likely won't have the adrenaline turn 1 to go haywire with nukes, unless they got lucky to get hit by Adrenaline's up to +35 or one casts Balance of Power 3, or an Orc unit outspeeds them and gets a kill). Huge burst damage versus keepers (or as you mentioned Bosses) can't be ignored, and it helps them get closer to a spirit talkers damage output (atleast if the battle is 1-2 rounds. Any longer and Spirit Talker pulls ahead, easily).

    "Saying 'you should be impressed by Spirit Talkers too!' doesn't actually hold up” My initial comment was too long so i had to cut, but i wrote that my Spirit Talkers also brutalized the only boss in DS (a barely relevant point since the boss fight was a joke, much like DS sadly). The reason they are so good (there are many) is their Perfect Range and the fact that they get hidden boosted up to +40% damage from Ancestral Anger since their attacks scale beyond what the game claims is the limit of 20% at 50 adrenaline. I'll share a comment now in DS Orc entry from my notes that has screenshots and dmg calculations to prove this.

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  4. Speaking of Goblin Shaman, i had this odd, inexplicable bug happen with them. Basically i used their astral nuke 3 times and then i was planning on waiting since i didnt have a full damage shot (combat log doesnt say i waited) or i used a rage ability and it then forcibly skipped it's turn (reminscent of DS with an end of turn or after waiting bug that happened with Cupid). My archmages and demonologists then acted, and then somehow it was my goblin shamans turn again?? it's bizzare. Here is the combat log-

    i.imgur.com/ita8Ivz.png

    So you can see that the goblin shaman is back up before the enemy units have yet acted, and that its 3 astral nukes have been used up, and it has the 1 movement i left it with (Either before waiting or it getting its turn temporarily skipped by Ball Lightning taking it's turn). But no matter if i waited or not (that was the plan, but perhaps using ball lightning there "skipped" his turn and then he lost the 1 initiative from onslaught 1 somehow (it doesn't go away on turn 1 until the unit ends their turn) and the speed tie of archmage and demonologist then went before him, and then it came back to the Goblin Shaman turn. That's my best explanation? but it's so weird. I'll try pay attention if some oddity like this occurs again so i can narrow down what exactly is causing it.

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    1. Ok i sorta figured out why it happened. Basically once Ball of Lightning is summoned, it checks the initiative order and then goes "Back" to the unit, however if the initiative order changed since the start of the units turn (in my test i used a stone skin on goblin shaman so he would then lose a speed tie with demonologist). So here it is, this was just to generate 35 rage for ball of lightning for the test, and my goblin shaman was on 8/2 turn 1 so i applied stoneskin to bring it to 7/2 tie with demonologist-
      i.imgur.com/ZhPFRF5.png

      So now the question becomes why did my goblin shaman in the initial screenshot go after the 7-2 duo of archmage and demonologist, since no stoneskin was cast. The only answer i can think of is i hit the bad rng on adrenaline for my 3 astral attacks (one can see "5 and 4" displayed, not sure why it wont show the adrenaline gain from the first one but it was 5), so i was stuck at just 29 instead of 30 adrenaline (you can see the instruction talent isn't present in the 1st screenshot, but in the test battle my i cast stone skin just in case and then my rng was good (one can see 7 and 6, albeit again 1st astral attack gain isn't shown, but just a 7 alone means even if the other two were 4's , 30 adrenaline would be maintained). However the game claims that it gets +1 initiative at level 2, not at level 3, so i'm unsure why having dropped down to adrenaline level 2 would have mattered. So now i'll need to figure out if dropping to adrenaline level 2 is lowering initiative by 1 (there is precedent for the game being wrong about adrenaline stat gains, such as with Shaman getting +50 max hp even on level 2 of adrenaline despite the game claiming it needs to be adrenaline level 3), which would then fully explain the seemingly bizzare sequence from the first screenshot.

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    2. Yup my theory was correct... Getting bad rng and dropping to adrenaline level 2 reduces initiative by 1 (which means that it only gets extra initiative at adrenaline level 3, not 2 as the game claims). -
      i.imgur.com/2Mf7MWB.png
      now at 29 adrenaline and level 2, iniative went down by 1- i.imgur.com/7BxaGLg.png


      Just to be absolutely sure i loaded up an early save from level 21 where i had adrenaline 1 and onslaught 1 for 20 total adrenaline to start, and grabbed some goblin shamans, and lo and behold they aren't getting the 1 initiative they are supposed to be getting from level 2..... So it's good that i caught this really weird sequence and was able to trace it back to the likely culprit, not surprisingly once again, misinformation from the game... So you should update that level 2 adrenaline does not grant it +1's initiative, and that it needs to be level 3 to get the +1 initiative.

      So this is a small knock on goblin shamans strength (obviously doesn't affect mine much except if bad rng with adrenaline gain on three astral nukes knocking it to level 2 and then using ball lightning, which would then get an enemy unit to outspeed the now 1 less initiative goblin shaman. So the sequence is possible, but unlikely, and could be fully solved by getting onslaught level 2 to start at 50 and not having to worry about ever dropping below 30 since only way to reduce is via Web of Life. Which as an aside wasn't working when i tried it on an enemy goblin btw although its worked for me before trying it on enemy goblin catapult, so i'm not sure what the deal is with it either..). This will harm it more in all orc armies, since its unlikely to start at 30+ adrenaline, but getting to 20 early on is feasible, so suddenly not getting the +1 initiative it should be, is a real downside.

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    3. Keep in mind Wait turns operate in reverse-Initiative order. I've never properly documented the oddities, but you can get some really weird behavior in every game by mass-Waiting and then doing things that mess with turn order, whether changing Initiative or inserting new units into the turn queue. Dark Side has the most bizarre, frustrating turn queuing behavior, but the Wait command was clearly somewhat poorly playtested in general.

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    4. Yeh i know how wait initiative order works... My understanding of initiative (and all game mechanics) is as good as it gets. As you can see from the screenshot even if i had waited (that wasn't what happened) it wouldnt make sense that i'd get my turn again before enemies got to act or my 2 of my other units got to act.

      I solved the issue as i said above, it's related to Goblin Shaman losing 1 initiative when he sinks down to adrenaline level 2 (since the game is wrong about him getting +1 initiative at level 2 adrenaline and it's instead only at level 3) which happened to me after 3 astral nukes. Then casting ball of lightning and it getting it's "turn", the game recalculates the initiative order (which had changed in the interim), and my newly demoted Goblin Shaman lost the now 7-2 turn 1 speed tie to both my Archmage and Demonologist since they are tier 4. It's a very rare sequence of events (happened my 2nd battle with them), but NOTHING gets by me in terms of initiative, so i was able to figure out that there was a bug happening here, and that was actually in the game's description of goblic shaman adrenaline level benefits. The proof is above so you can see its initiative drop in real time during its turn by 1 after going from adrenaline level 3 to 2, alternatively you can get a goblin shaman to adrenaline level 2 and see that he isn't getting +1 initiative from it, and that he only gains it at level 3.

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    5. On a related tangent, I have had already multiple instances in which units with lower initiative by 1 have gone before my Goblin Shaman. I have 0 explanation for it. Shaman was at max adrenaline so there was no changing initiative stuff going on.

      Here are 2 separate occasions where you can see the lower initiative units going first
      Ancient Phoenix at 6/6 - i.imgur.com/MlLF3ne.png
      Goblin Shaman at 7/2- i.imgur.com/aGg4qcL.png

      A freaking Ancient Bear boosted by Addrenaline to 6/4. You know something really rotten is going on when Ancient Bear is going first..
      i.imgur.com/Rb2mr7d.png
      i.imgur.com/HgQffN2.png

      So yeh I am at a total loss. Nothing on opponent side has ever outsped my Goblin Shamans when they shouldn't have (that would be where it starts really becoming problematic), but there is clearly some type of bug going on with Goblin Shaman initiative, beyond simply the one i listed above where the game is wrong about it gaining +1 initiative at level 2 addrenaline, when instead its at level 3.

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    6. Yeah, I've been having bugginess in my current Mage run with my Goblin Shaman having higher Initiative than my Black Dragons but going much later in the turn (After multiple other units they should go before), with it jumping to my attention by virtue of Ball Lightning immediately recalculating turn order so the Goblin Shaman leap to being first. I think they may actually be getting +1 Initiative at Adrenaline Level 1, though I'm not fully confident in that.

      I'm still doing testing, but so far it seems like the Goblin Shaman turn position stays wrong until something happens that changes turn order, like Initiative being modified or a unit being summoned, where if nothing like that happens their turn position will remain wrong across rounds but will instantly correct itself permanently if turn order does get changed. My working theory is that basically things got coded so their Initiative gets added only after turn order is calculated and for some reason doesn't trigger a recalculation, though again I'm still doing testing. (Which is a pain with Adrenaline already randomizing turn order...)

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    7. Something is definitely amiss with Goblin Shaman initiative/turn order yeh. Your theory perhaps is right. As far as i know from my experience with it, it's only the ONE initiative that its supposed to have that gets bungled in the calculation. So like Goblin Shaman won't be acting slower than your own units with like 3 less initiative than it. So effectively the one initiative they gain/are supposed to gain from Adrenaline isn't full proof/reliable until things like Ball Lightning or summons etc force the recalculation as both you and I have discovered. It's not a cataclysmic issue for them, but it is a minor annoying bug.

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  5. Goblin Trickery has different name in Russian but I'm not sure how to translate it. Google suggests "impudence" or "insolense" but it doesn't feel exactly right.
    Basically, it's term for stuff like "X goes into someone's else home, eat something, sit of owner's bed and generally behave like it's his/her own and then berate house owner for not having X's favourite chips" or "X borrows something from a friend + own money to a lot of people and than asks for more, saying that he/she already 'forgave' them for wanting their stuff back". Basically a special sort of self-absorbed asshole-ness. Paints Goblins in a different light than "trickery" IMO.

    Fighting Spirit too have a hard to translate name in Russian, through Google Translate suggests "extasy" or "delirium". It bacically means a state of temporarily being so overloaded with emotion or passion that you lose control of yourself and/or awareness of world around you. Generally seen not a good thing (and can lead to some heavy crimes IRL), through sometimes is, like in case of a mortally wounded hero who continues to fight despite his wounds.

    Also, "the game claims Fighting Spirit triggers at Adrenaline Level 3, but it actually triggers at Adrenaline Level 3" - something is not right here.

    Orc Tracker is actually Orc Hunter in the original. The same thing with the ability.

    Chieftain's Predator is Devourer in the original. I like the original name better but it may be because in Russian "predator" have assotiation with hunting. It's propably different in English.
    Original name of Spirit Strike actually refers to err... "seance", I tnink? Like when people sit around the table and try to communicate with spirits.

    Blood Shaman is level 4, not 3.

    Web of Life is Thread of Life in Russian. Instruction is Teaching/Training.

    You know, while I found comparing English and Russian names to be pretty interesting, I never asked your general opinion on my notes about it. Should I continue? Or maybe mention only more interesting/weird things?

    Nice to see you liking the whole adrenaline/Orc rework thing. Atleast in Russia it's general reception was not nearly as warm. To this day Crossroads Orcs are seen as both overcomplicated and horribly overpowered, to a point of some people insist that playing them is akin to plain cheating. Goblin Shamans in particular are easily the most hated unit in the series.
    On the other hand, as you noticed, Orcs work against the No Casualities strategy, which to a lot of people is one of game's core principles. All together it lead to players feeling that reworked Orcs do not fit into the game.
    Now add here the whole story about their creation... Basically, idea of Orcs rework belonged to a single specific guy who is known for sometimes doing stuff without getting general agreement of other devs or even against it. He (correctly) believed that Orcs were pretty boring as race, but for a lot of people so were Elves (who "have a lot of stuff but barely anything fun"). His reworked Orcs being overtuned and OP, combined with the fact that Orcs already basically being behind everything in AP story + the new storyline of Crossworlds being about Orcs as well led to the idea of him using his position to make his very own Collective Sue super race. Meanwhile, fans of Dark Elves/a potential Slavic-inspired race/etc. still sadly sigh in a dark corner.
    For bonus points, Adrenaline is somewhat similar to the Bloodrage system of Orcs from HoMM5 despite Katauri saying that don't like that game. There was even a forum moment I remember that went like this:
    Fan: what can you tell about similarities berween your adrenalin and HoMM5 Bloodrage?
    Katauri guy (not THAT guy): I have no idea about this Bloodrage. I barely played it.
    Fan: 'explains how it works and how similar both systems are'
    Katauri guy: 'wordlessly leaves the thread'

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    1. Aaaah, that fits better to how NPC goblins tend to be written than 'goblin trickery'. I'm also not sure how you'd elegantly communicate it in English... if I described someone as bad/rude/ill-mannered of a guest, I imagine a lot of people would be ready to hear me complain about that kind of behavior, but I don't think it would get people thinking exactly that behavior on its own, and even if it did I'm not sure how you'd turn that into a Talent name. I can also see how it connects to the no-retaliation nature of the Talent, where presumably the attacked unit is so caught off guard by the sheer gall of the Furious Goblin's rude behavior that they're just staring in shock. It calls to mind something like the Furious Goblin hopping on some poor Swordsman's back, pulling out and eating their rations, and then running off while loudly complaining about how awful this food is, the Swordsman too caught on the rudeness to properly react.

      Hmmm. I'm not sure how you'd translate Fighting Spirit to have retained those connotations. There's overlap with the concept of berserking, I can compare what you're saying to the legal concept of a 'crime of passion' (Where people distinguish between 'someone walks in on their spouse and best friend in bed together and promptly shoots both dead' and 'someone constructs and later executes a plan to murder their spouse and best friend after learning they're sleeping with each other'), there's the comparatively little-known term of 'amygdala hijack' (Basically, info is routed through the emotional portion of your brain earlier than the 'rational' part, and if there's a strong enough emotional response a person can be acting on it before conscious thought has the opportunity to assess the situation), but I'm not sure English has anything adequately close. Probably a non-standard construction of some sort would work, if the right words were picked... I think 'drunk on battle' might adequately work? Slightly clunky for an Ability name, admittedly.

      Crap, I think the Fighting Spirit trigger commentary was supposed to be 'but it actually triggers when the Shaman hits their personal maximum Adrenaline'. I'll need to retest that to make sure I'm remembering that right.

      If you mean predator has association with hunting in the sense that you might call a human hunter a predator, than yeah that's not a connotation in English. Predator refers pretty firmly to carnivorous animals, particularly ones that actively and aggressively hunt prey. (As opposed to, say, a spider building a web and waiting for food to come to it)

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    2. A séance is one word for sitting around a table and calling up spirits, yeah. (I swear there's a better word, but it's not coming to me) So basically Goblin Shaman are supposed to be calling on the spirits of the dead to strike down their enemies? I can see how someone would arrive at Spirit Strike in an attempt to communicate that, but it's an unfortunately vague wording -I'd taken it as the Goblin Shaman doing magic to attack the target's soul, which is very different.

      Whoops, I think I got thrown by Warriors of the North on Blood Shaman Level. Correcting.

      I find the translation notes interesting -among other points, Warriors of the North changed a lot of names, and it's sounding like it largely provided more accurate/faithful translations. Feel free to continue with them.

      Ah, yeah, I can see how the Orc overhaul could've been a bit of a public relations disaster; an overhaul so significant it might as well be a new faction, as opposed to any of the hypothetical new factions people were asking for! Some of the specific units are incredibly frustrating to fight (Goblin Shaman and Ogres, most particularly) and can feel unfair in your own hands! The events behind the scenes can be taken as one person having no respect for anyone else's opinions! Adrenaline leads to big walls of text that make it feel hugely complicated! "We hate this game, but we stole one of its ideas" vibe!

      That'd be a bit unfortunate, as I really do think it's a huge improvement. A bit rough around the edges, sure, but a huge improvement.

      I've even heard the Bloodrage story before... I'm not familiar with HoMM5 myself so I don't know how accurate that comparison is, but ouch.

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  6. Nice to see you instanlty getting what I'm trying to explain! And thanks for explaining unclear English stuff too (like fairies).

    A note about the second word (one that became Fighting Spirit) - in both my and your own examples we talk about battle or anger stuff (due to the game's context), but in real life this condition can be triggered by other emotions/passions as well, like religious fervor, hysterical fear (some people can be really dangerous and uncontallable when they panic) or, well, overwhelming carnal desire (murder is not the only heavy crime after all...). I write it just in case it wasn't clear. That said, religious fervor may be fit shaman too.

    About Predator - in means being carnivorius in Russian as well. What I meant is that in common language it have assotiation of hunting (and than eating) something. Orc Chieftain is a predator in dictionary meaning, but common language-wise eating his own troops is not exactly predator-y. So from Russian perspective Chieftain's talent have not very fitting name (like I said before, it's "Devourer" in the original) but for English it's propably perfectly fine.

    About HoMM5 Bloodrage - honestly, it is similar in a lot of ways. Main differences are:
    - numbers go in hundreds instead of tens
    - rage levels give only passive abilities and stat boosts. Talents analogues are independent from it
    - rage points are lost on taking damage, which is reduced on percent basis. Thus you can control an enemy stack Rage by constantly damaging it. On the other hand, a stakc wiht tons of rage can be very difficult to kill
    - there is special mini-school of support magic called Warcries. In addition to normal effects, your Orcs get some free Rage when you cast it's spells. There is one that's simply adds ab unch of Rage points to target stack (useless for not-Orcs). Also, it's only damage spell is called Horde's Anger and deals magic damage dependant on number of Orcs in your army. Goblin hordes can make it the most powerful damage spell in the game.

    I'll let you decide if there is some idea stealing or not.

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    1. Glad to be of service.

      And yeah I got the connotation that it's not just a violence thing. Just... English doesn't lend itself to talking in terms of extreme passion of any kind, not in the kind of sense we're talking about. Drunkenness is the main context in the US where 'I wasn't in control of myself' is readily accepted as a truthful statement; illness is the only other context I can think of, and it has to be really bad for people to take it seriously. (ie if you vomit on someone's shoes and then collapse on the ground, they'll probably wave off you being ill-mannered as you being sick... but if you're glassy-eyed, face red, clearly sick but functional enough, Rudeness Must Be Intentional Malice) Like, the trope of someone being 'madly in love' (Where the 'madly' is meant pretty literally) is something I'm familiar with through, say, the mythohistory of Troy, not through US pop culture continuing to use it; when US pop culture has characters claiming to be experiencing that kind of uncontrolled passion, it's pretty much always with an undertone that we're supposed to think they're lying, or at least exaggerating. Foreigner characters are sometimes allowed to be possibly genuine about such statements (Particularly Frenchmen), but that's about it, and it tends to be played very heavily as Foreigner Weirdness when it happens.

      Anger and violence are one of the few areas where US English/pop culture still recognizes the notion that one might genuinely be out of control with an emotional basis driving one's actions -someone striking family in the heat of the moment and immediately regretting it, for example. And even there I'm struggling to come up with anything that seems adequate for approximating what we're talking about.

      Predator-wise, I considered commenting that in English it can be used to describe humans, but almost always in a strongly negative way -you can call someone a 'sexual predator', for example, which has very strongly negative connotations. So Predator for eating one's troops is... maybe a bit clinical (I'm a little surprised it wasn't named something like 'Cannibal', honestly), but yes, it works well enough in English.

      Horde's Anger certainly leaps out to me in terms of the Blood Shaman having pretty much exactly that in Talent form... I wouldn't assume it's a conscious copying just off that, but yeah, I can see why people would be wondering. Even the Warcries bit has a some parallels, in terms of Orcs on the March adding some Adrenaline-focused Spells...

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  7. Adrenaline was 'skull trophies' originally. It's still referenced as 'trophies' internally amd often calles 'skulls' in devs' comments.
    Like I already said, Adrenaline is the most complicated unit mechanic code-wise. Rune Mage, for example, may look complicated in-game, but is fairly straightforward code-wise. Sometimes there is some unusual complicated code instead of simpler common-for-KB stuff. Sometimes parts of the code are just go in weird order i.e. you have part of details' code on something in the beginning, than general part, than continuation of details part. There are some unused parts occasionally.
    Interestingly (for me, maybe not for you), Adrenalin talents often have internal order being different from in-game. Things like 'Talent1>Adrenalin Level2', 'Talent2>Adrenalin Level1' and the like. Allows one to imagine how Adrenalin talents progression was changed during development. Alas, not all in-game descriptions was changed accordingly - occasionaly they skip important info or mention something that was changed.

    About base Adrenaline for AI Orcs - it's based on LocationDifficulty. In case you are interested in some useless info, base number without LocDif bonus is 3-5.

    I think we already established that neither Robbers nor Marauders have Anticipating Trophies. And no, Pirates and Sea Dogs do not have it either. In my game atleast.

    Giant Killer is a modifier and applied to all attacks of both Goblins, including talents. A reminder - bosses are level 5 too.
    Irascible* lasts for 2 turns.
    Goblin Greed just gives number of gold dependant of LocationDifficulty. Think of it as if it's just another skeleton/tree stump/etc. that can only give gold.
    The same is true for Marauders. It works the same way in all the games.
    One again, feel free to point out when I miss some unclear mechanic (like Marauder's) that you need info on.

    *Random note - I don't think I ever saw this word before reading your analysis.

    Orc's Commander actually uses 300 leadership per Orc, not 240. It looks like person who made it misunderstood how leadership parameter for Second Wind-like talents is supposed to be used. Through not nearly as much as whoever coded Goblin Catapult analogue in WotN :)

    Orc Veteran Cunning is Swiftness in Russian. Makes way more sense to me than English version.
    In Russian it's clear that Scold increases Veteran's own damage. Btw while now this talent is about Veteran being angry on other orcs, original idea (back when Adrenalin was about skulls) was that he is very generous and willingly shares his skull trophies with his comrades.
    Savage Attack doesn't spend Adrenalin because of redundant brackets in it's script.

    Ogre's Strike (what a bland name...) is Throw in the original.
    Heavy Mace reduces Ap by 2 points, not to 2. It reduces both current and maximum AP, but never below 1. For example, we have a unit that is waiting while have 4 AP out of 6. It is attacked by an Ogre - now it's AP is 2 out 4. Heavy Mace hit effect lasts for 2 turns.

    Shaman's Fighting Spirit requires both maximum Adrenaline count and Adrenaline level 3. Once it activates, current Adrenalin count is cut in half, not reduced by 20.
    Thirst for Glory adds Adrenaline only when allies get Adrenaline levels, not just some Adrenaline points.

    Also, remember how I told you about hard-to-translate Russian name of Fighting Spirit? Well, [the word] is actually Enraged original name. I always mixed up this 2 abilities for some reason. :(
    So the idea is that Shaman starts every battle already being so overwhelmed by emotions/passions that he always has some Adrenalin. I think it's propably religious fervor that is emotion/passion in question, not rage, considering that Shaman get his Adrenalin increased by Totems use. Or maybe it's mix of both.
    Fighting Spirit is just Morale [Surge] in the original.

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    1. Goblin's Unstoppable is more like Uncontrolable in the original. Hm, maybe not. To be more exact, it's word meaning (in this context) that one is so into something it's almost impossible to keep him in bounds once he starts doing his thing. To me 'unstoppable' sound more like someone so badass no one can stand on his way, which sounds quite funny when we speak about a Goblin. Or is my understanding wrong?
      In combination with stuff like Furious Goblin easily getting fits of anger when hit/greed once he have enough Adrenaline, Shaman's hard-to-translate ability and race-wide Anticipation with it's very strong effect, it creates overall theme of Orcs in general being very prone to being easily overwhelmed by strong emotions. To me it looks like English translation pretty much replaced it with more 'badass'-sounding names, and I don't like it, but maybe it gives different impression to a native English speaker?

      Siege Gun special attack now have damage of 12-22.
      Like I already said in my WotN comment, starting from AP Catapult has fixed melee damage of 7, so Weakness-affected Catapult is actually stronger in melee than at range, unless it attacks barrier-type objects. This will remain true in all later games.
      Detonation actually has it's own damage that is different from other attacks (10-15 Fire) but it's never used because upon attacking any bomb/barrel it's replaced by damage equal to 150% of said bomb hp, and you can't use Detonation against anything that is not a bomb/barrel.
      Explosives has equal chance to create either Goblin Bomb or Goblin Barrel.They both are objects but not barriers, so no Siege Gun. They both have defence of 2, 50% Poison resistance and 100% Fire weakness.
      Barrel has 20hp per Catapult and deals 8-12 fire damage per Catapult on explosion.
      Bomb has 35hp per Catapult and deals 12-15 fire damage per Catapult on explosion. It also has 50% physical resistance.
      More useless info time! Unlke normal shot or Siege Gun attack with their reduced far range damage penalty of 20%, Fire Missile has standart 50% damage penalty. It also has range of 50, so the penalty will never trigger. It was like that back in the Legend too. It's propably started with normal range (like 5) and got it increased later.

      Unlike Elven version that is special attack, Tracker's Hunter ability is a modifier.
      Tracker really likes his pet and will always deal doubled(!) damage to the last unit that attacked the animal. Unit must directly attack the pet - damage redirection from Tracker himself won't work. Tracker will continue to deal doubled damage until his pet will be attacked by someone else. Attack in this case includes counterattack*, so you can the pet to both absorb enemy stack's retaliation and give a massive damage boost to the Tracker that will attack said enemy afterwards. As far as I see, this mechacnic (called Pet Revenge internally) is not mentioned anywhere in game.

      *It's somewhat buggy and may occasionally ignore the retaliation attack and continue to consider the previous attacker as the last one. This bug is rare in my experience, but it can happen.

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    2. I never answered you on 'seance' thing for some reason, so I'll do it now - it looks like you misread me; it's Russian name of Spirit Strike - Chieftain's talent, not Goblin Shaman's. That's why various Shamans in your army boost it - they help Chieftain to get stronger response from the spirits. In particular, Spirit Strike damage is multiplied by the number of allied Goblin Shaman/Shaman/Blood Shaman stacks, through multilpier can't be lower than 1. So there is no difference between one Shaman allied stack and none at all. Unit count in the stack also makes no difference - two stacks of 5 Shamans each or of 100 Shamans each will give the same doubled damage. This Talent checks number of stacks, not types, so Shamans+Shamans will give the same result as, say, Shamans + Goblin Shamans. And yes, having Chieftains + 4 Shaman stacks will make Spirit Strike deal 4x damage. Finally, each Shaman type present (Goblin/normal Orc/Blood) adds specific animation to Spirit Strike. Said animation taken from other spells/talents but still, full set of various Shamans make Spirit Strike animation quite fancy.
      Not every Orc unit can be targeted by Predator talent; Chieftain can't devour other Chieftains, Ogres (too large?), Shamans and Blood Shamans. This is not considered to be an attack and thus, for example, won't awake a sleeping stack. Predator kills merely one unit if used in stack of Orcs/Trackers/Veterans/Goblin Catapults/Goblin Shamans and 2 if used on Goblins/Furious Goblins.No idea where did you got idea about 5. Predator can't be used to finish a stack off - a single Veteran or stack of exactly two Furious Goblins can't be targeted.
      Both chance and strength of Chieftain's Thick Skin attack debuff is the same number and is 75% for level 1 creatures, 37% for level 2, 25% for level 3, 19% for level 4 and 15% for level 5. This effect lasts for 2 turns. This debuff is themed around breaking weapon and thus can only be applied to weapon-using units.
      Here is the exact list: Peasant, Robber, Marauder, Swordsman, Guardsman, Knight, Paladin, Miner, Dwarf, Foreman, Giant, Elf!Werewolf, Orc, Orc Tracker, Orc Veteran, Skeleton, Zombie, Decaying Zombie, Vampire, Ancient Vampire, Demon, Executioner, Gorgul, Pirate, Sea Dog, Witch Hunter.

      Blood Shaman looks rather unusual, right? There is no official lore on them in game or outside of it, but devs' internal comment on them references Warcraft 3. It calls Blood Shaman Mannoroth's disciple/worshipper/adherent. Mannoroth, if you remember, was a demon lord whose blood Warcraft orcs drank to become more powerful.
      Goblin Blood costs 10 Adrenalin.
      Power of the Horde DOES count Ogres, as it's description (Russian atleast) tells. What description does not tell is that after damage of this talent is rounded to closest err... my English fails here again and can't get up, HELP!... well, to the closest number that is [number of Blood Shamans]*integer. LIke, if you have 10 Blood Shamans, Power of the Horde can deal only deal 40, 50, 60 etc. damage. 41-45 will be rounded down to 40 while 46-49 will be rounded up to 50. So, if your only Orcs stack is those 10 Blood Shamans, Power of the Horde will deal 40 damage. Add a stack of 2 Goblins - still 40 damage. Add one more Goblin - and now it's 50.

      Contrary to in-game description, Goblin Shaman gets defense bonus on Adreanlin level 2 (not 1), and Initiative bonus at level 3 (not 2).
      Ghost Axes work on everything. Code for this ability literally does not have "doesn't work on X" string, so you can even lower resistance of a hive or a statue or whatever. That said, it DOES NOT work in melee - you are wrong here.
      Russian Astral Attack description is wrong about attacks and Adrenaline levels too. It had such mechanic but, thankfully, it's unused in the final game. This talent OP enough already.

      The end. Finally! This was kinda exhausting. But interesting. Still, if you were my real-life friend, I would thought about demanding a pryanik for my work. :)

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    3. Gotten to some of this and still need to get to other stuff (It's proving a huge pain to arrange test conditions for Spirit Strike), but a couple of questions; is the Catapult's bonus Fire damage 'global' (Applies to regular ranged, Siege Gun damage, and melee damage) or more specific? (eg only applies to the regular ranged attack) Also, is the Spirit Strike shaman stacking multiplier affected by Phantoms, or only 'real' units? (ie could a Mage Phantom up a couple Blood Shaman during the Orc Chieftain's turn to boost Spirit Strike's damage)

      As for some commentary bits...

      The vibe of Orcs is definitely wonky in the translated version, yes. NPC Goblins and Orcs tend to be comedy characters and be consistent with the 'very emotional' vibe of the Russian Ability/Talent names, like the one orc who's madly in love with a lady-orc, not shifted to feel 'badass', and I always found it mildly dissonant stuff like the basic Goblin having an Ability named 'Unstoppable'. (Especially since it doesn't even mesh well with what the Ability does) I hadn't explicitly wondered if a translation oopsie was occurring, but now that you're bringing it up it's totally unsurprising to me. This vibe is also really consistent with the obvious Warhammer/Warcraft inspiration, where Warhammer Orcs (Especially 40k Orks) include a lot of 'this unit type is just an orc/ork who's REALLY enthusiastic about something' and Warcraft Orcs have all the demonic bloodlust stuff with it being presented as a literally-mad passion. (To the point that the Burning Blade 'clan' in Warcraft II was literally just the Horde shoving its most out-of-control berserkers under one banner and then having Ogres metaphorically herd cats to get them pointed at the enemy instead of their fellow orcs)

      And it's an unfortunate oopsie, because stuff like a Goblin getting SO into tossing its axes it just tosses a million of them sometimes is much more striking and interesting than vaguely implying the Orc faction is a bunch of ambiguous badasses for no particular reason.

      And I'd run across Adrenaline getting called 'trophies' internally and been confused by that! This explains a lot and fits neatly to how aggressive the mechanic is by default, though I also totally understand dropping it. ("You did 300 damage to that Cyclops, inflicting zero casualties. Gain 4 skulls." Wait, where did my orc get the skulls from?) Even if it's a bit sad Scolding lost its connotation -I really like the morbid image of an Orc Veteran generously passing out all their hard-earned (gruesome) trophies to their buddies, and it also fits better to the mechanic of it providing a damage boost; presumably the Orc Veteran is trying REALLY hard to get replacements! Not to mention it fits better to the Veteran losing their own numbers; you'd think delivering a good scolding would raise the Veteran's blood pressure, not relax them.

      It's also interesting to get hard confirmation that Chaos Orcs are an inspiration -the Warcraft influence is obvious broadly, but I had often wondered if King's Bounty was just somewhat-cynically going 'well, the art style works for WoW, and it's absurdly successful' with only a relatively superficial familiarity with the Warcraft series, or if the familiarity was stronger than that. It also neatly explains Blood Shaman's unique and unexplained-in-game appearance.

      I'm also not surprised to hear that there's internal signs of major changes; there's plenty such signs just playing the game, like all the cases of a thing saying an effect kicks in at an Adrenaline Level different from where it actually kicks in.

      Anyway, not remotely done working through all this, but it really is quite a lot, much more so than I'd expected; you're right, Adrenbaline is complicated.

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    4. Take your time. I have a few busy days anyway, so I won't right 100500 new comments while you still busy with Orcs/Neutrals/Lizardmen :)

      The former. Catapult bonus damage works the same way as an item with +x damage. It's applied to all base attacks; in this case - ranged, melee and Siege.

      Yes, for Spirit Strike phantom Shamans are just as good as the real ones and will increase it's damage.
      You will also get some artsy points for postmodernistic scene of illusions holding a seance to contact spirits :)

      I remember finding amusing how we never encounter Burning Blade until the last mission of the Alliance campaign. As if not a single Orc Chieftain wanted to use them/fight alongside those psychos until the Horde was clearly screwed :)
      I'd say Orc talents/abilities name change is just an example of general trend of enforcing fantasy race stereothype, "badass [but dumb] warrior" in this case. It's widespread by itself + usually added/emphasized by adaptations/sequels-from-another-studio* but I don't see why can't a translation join too.

      * I still dislike Disciples 3 for that and almost hate Spellforce 3 (especially it's expansions). Well, for combination of that, idiotic retcons and wrong kind of story.

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    5. Alright gotten to basically everything, but need a point clarified; the Power of the Horde rounding thing. I think you mean that it always forces the final number to be a multiple of the Blood Shaman stack? So that for example 17 Blood Shaman could produce 170, or 187, but not any of the numbers in between? Or did I misunderstand what you were trying to convey there?

      My recollection is you actually first encounter the Burning Blade in the first Alliance mission where enemy Ogres are in play. I distinctly recall being pleased to realize the game was actually having that 'Ogres being used to ride herd on the Burning Blade' thing get some in-game representation.

      Part of what's insidious about stereotypes is people often end up seeing what they expect to see, not because it's really the best fit to what they're seeing but because it's vaguely functional and it's what they expect. So I wouldn't be surprised if the translators for Armored Princess approached Orcs as 'dumb but badass' because they saw it because they expected to see it -it does make me wonder what the context and history there is, though. I kind of took The Legend's Orcs broadly in this manner until I got to the end of the game where the Orcs have a fantasy spaceship to escape the apocalypse on and it made it really obvious that if the game ever intended the 'dumb badass' thing it was only in the sense of intending me to be fooled into incorrectly believing it; I'd think translators who worked on The Legend would know that's not really accurate to King's Bounty Orcs. So it makes me wonder if it was different translators or what.

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    6. Power of the Horde - yes, you got it right. This "multiple of the X" is a phrase that is built very differently from it's Russian analogue, so my brain kinda got stuck for the moment.
      In case you are interested in technical stuff, it's not a random "why?..."- inducing hidden calculation like with Totem of Adrenaline from WotN or Skald's Pangs of Concience resistance comparison. Instead, this is the unobvoius result of how the game calculates damage of Power of the Horde (base damage of 1 that is multiplied and rounded). I can actually imagine this talent's creator being surprised by the end result.

      Isn't the first mission with enemy Ogres is Grim Batol? It has rarely seen Bleeding Hollow clan and common Black Tooth Grin but no Burning Blade. Missions right before it have only Black Tooth Grin. Missions after are about Alterac, Stormreavers, Twilight Hammer...

      Is Heavy Mace another thing that works different benween me and you? Your post still describe it as "...reduce their AP to 2 if it was above 2".

      Fighting Spirit part still talks about demanding maximum Adreanline and game "wrongly" telling it needing Adrenaline level 3. If your max Adrenaline is 20, a Shaman will not get Fighting Spirit effect when he'll get those 20. Again, he must both have maximum adrenaline count AND it being at level 3. In other words, Shaman's current Adrenaline should be equal to maximum AND no less than 30.

      Spirit Strike DOES have friendly fire - description is not wrong here.

      "Note the the game itself claims that...the Initiative boost at Adrenaline Level 3, but this is incorrect." - Game wrongly claims it's on Adrenaline level 2.

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    7. Ah, yeah, not-fully-considered math stuff. I'm used to that from game creators, yeah/

      Looking it up online, I actually can't find the Burning Blade being in the Alliance campaign at all. So I'm not sure what I'm remembering here.

      I'd actually meant to explicitly comment that Heavy Mace is one of the few things left for me to dig into -I want to double-check it before updating the post appropriately.

      I just retested Spirit Strike and it had zero effect on friendly units; no damage, no shove.

      Corrected the Goblin Shaman error and reworked the Fighting Spirit thing to be clearer/more accurate. (The original description was in some sense accurate, but misleading in the opposite direction from the in-game description, which is very much not ideal)

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  8. I'm 100% sure that Burning Blade is present in the final mission. They may be here in the second last too. Not before through.

    Checked Spirit Stirke again - yes, there are couple of oversights in it's code that I missed. 'add my usual nagging about Crossworlds code'
    First, it's friendly fire only work when you have atleast one shaman stack of any kind. Yes, that means that in practice having only one shaman stack makes Spirit Strike 'worse' by enabling friednly fire without increasing damage.
    Second, shove will only trigger if Spirit Strike won't damage any ally. So without any shaman stacks it will always work. With shaman stacks(s) in your army shove will only happen if there are no allies near Chieftain.
    So, to summarise this:
    - no allied shamans: damages + shoves enemies, ignores allies
    - 1+ allied shaman stack, no allied stacks near Chieftain - damages + shoves
    - 1+ allied shaman stack, allied stack(s) near Chieftain - damages everyone around, no shove

    It looks like to me that person who coded Spirit Strike wanted to make shove enemy-only while damage always working on both allies and enemies but messed up.

    In compensation for me not noticing it earlier, have some random unrelated info that I don't know where to place - sleeping units can't evade. This is also true for units that are unable to move.

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    1. Oh wow, testing confirms all this does actually work this way. That is a pretty amazing mis-coding. Reworked that section of the post appropriately.

      And I'll add those bits about sleeping/immobile units to the Pirate section of the Neutral Sapients post -that's info that's good to know for reducing the frustration factor of broadly-evasive units.

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    2. One more thing - Orge's Drain doesn't work against Magic Immune creatures.

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    3. Finally arranged to test Heavy Cudgel, and it took a Red Dragon from 7 Speed to 2 Speed; it sets to 2, not subtracts 2.

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    4. ... I don't know what to say.
      Tested it - you are right. Both here and in WotN. This is a ridiculous mistake on my part :(

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    5. This kind of thing is why I prefer to test in-game if feasible; in seeing stuff like Let's Plays by people who code for a living and dig into the game's code, I've too often seen that they trust their read on the code enough to not check if the game's behavior lines up with it, sometimes to the point of missing their Let's Play disproving their belief.

      I absolutely appreciate the help, mind; a lot of this is stuff I'd never have discovered on my own. Just giving a bit of context on my tendency to test before implementing info.

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    6. Oh, I completely support your idea idea about testing stuff in game. And yes, I know that 'how it looks' and 'how it actually works' may have differences. And I have experience with game developers getting asked "why X work like this", checking it in-game and than asking each other the same question :)
      And you pointing at strange behavior (like with Chieftain's Spirit Strike from AP) helps to find some hard-to-notice mistakes in the code.

      Still, it's just a very stupid misreading on my part - and twice in row. >_<

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    7. To be fair, 'reduce to 2' is pretty weird mechanics -I like it for gameplay reasons, but I'm not sure how one would justify it from a realism standpoint.

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  9. ... So I decided to go through the unholy maze that is Adrenaline to check if I made other mistakes.
    And, well, I wrote before that Spirit Strike's shove triggers when there are no allies that the talent can affect. I was pretty sure of it and you confirmed through testing that it is indeed so. Well, I looked on it again, and due to how script is divided it looks like presense of any allied shamans will block shove. And considering that no Shamans means no friendly fire, it means that it's just 1) No Shamans - no friendly fire, yes to shove 2) There are allied Shamans - friendly fire is here, no shove. This contradicts my previous comment on it, one that you confirmed through testing. So there are 3 possibilities:
    1) My previous post on Spirit Strike is correct and there is something else in this mess that I noticed last time but for some reason can't see now.
    2) My previous post on Spirit Strike was wrong about shoving. You too somehow got wrong results during testing.
    3) Digging through Adrenaline code finally took it's toll and I'm going insane.

    Bonus note 1: you doesn't seem to be interested in Spirit Strike animation shenigans but still, have you noticed that there is a part of animation that is only played when no allied Shamans are present? This is actually THE animation associated with Spirit Strike, yet various Shaman-added ones replace it instead of adding to it.
    Bonus note 2: I have strong suspicion that Spirit Strike was originally 2 different talents that were crudely merged together. All the mess is the result of that.

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    1. Testing with this in mind... yes, shaman presence simply disables the shove. Wow. That is amazing. I'm not up to reworking the post this second, but I'll try to get to correcting it later today.

      And I had noticed the animation replacement oddity, yeah. I'd metaphorically shrugged because we've quite firmly established that Spirit Strike is a horrifying mess of a Talent so the animation mismanagement is just more of the same.

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    2. Shove also doesn't work on level 5 units.

      My current guess is that there was 'whirlwind' (internal name) - Chieftain's simple AoE talent, and 'spirit strike' - multi-shaman ritual attack (no idea what unit exactly had talent that triggered it). Than they were reworked into one thing. Possibly using nails and duct tape.

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    3. Alright got the post updated in regards to Spirit Strike (And also fixed a few other errors -I seriously referred to the Orc Chieftain as an Orc Commander in their first paragraph for years and didn't notice it?), including adding in the 'shove doesn't work on Level 5 units'. This new understanding is certainly easier to talk about... even if it does make Spirit Strike so much worse than I'd already thought it was, ouch.

      And I would totally buy the devs sloppily merged two different Talents together and Spirit Strike's jank is the unhappy result. Which is pretty unfortunate -'Whirlwind' was probably basically just Circle Attack with a shove attached, and that would've almost certainly been a lot better, even aside the bugginess.

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  10. An addition about Spirit Rage - Zlogn will only be created if killed unit was a living non-plant creature. If touched, Zlogn kills 20% of livng/ressurects 10% if Undead.

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  11. I'd say Orc enemies are op in Armored Princess, in the late game, Shamans and archers just pour millions of billions damage from nowhere toward my face in the first turn, I begin to abuse Emerald green dragon + invisibility. I hope orcs nerfed in the following series.

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