Dark Side Unit Analysis Extra: Initiative Tiers and Damage Types
For the final time... Initiative tiers and damage type distribution.
Note that I haven't listed the Dark versions of Light units, nor the female Priest clone. There'd be no point, since in every case the versions are identical in these stats. As such, if you're wanting to, for example, know what a Wizard's position is, you need to look for where Archmages are.
Initiative: 8
Speed 9: Archdemons
Initiative: 7
Speed 5: Ancient Vampires (Bat form), Horsemen, Lake Fairies, Unicorns, Amazons
Speed 3: Devilfish, Ice Minions
Speed 2: Necromancers, Foremen, Sea Dogs, Metamorphs
Initiative: 6
Speed 8: Black Dragons
Speed 7: Bone Dragons, Red Dragons, Ice Dragons, Dragon Riders
Speed 6: Royal Griffins
Speed 5: Angelic Guard, Warrior Maidens
Speed 4: Cursed Ghosts, Vampires (Bat form), Lake Dragonflies
Speed 3: Veteran Orcs, Scoffer Imps, Fire Spiders, Royal Snakes, Guard Droids, Undead Spiders, Hyenas, Thorn Warriors, Assassins, Berserkers, Axe Throwers, Furious Goblins, Raging Barbarians
Speed 2: Ancient Vampires (Human form), Rangers, Demonesses, Marauders, Archmages, Demonologists, Blood Priestesses, Female Vampires
Initiative: 5
Speed 6: Emerald Green Dragons
Speed 5: Griffins
Speed 4: Forest Fairies, Werewolf Elves (Wolf form), Cerberi, Imps, Fauns
Speed 3: Shaman, Wolves, Pirates, Beholders, Witch Hunters, Vikings, Skald, Orc Scouts, Fire Dragonflies, Barbarians
Speed 2: Vampires (Human form), Inquisitors, Alchemists, Werewolf Elves (Elf form), Elves, Snakes, Knights, Engineers, Executioners, Black Knights, Soothsayers, Jotun, Flame Elementals
Speed 1: Giants
Initiative: 4
Speed 5: Repair Droids
Speed 4: Ghosts
Speed 3: Guardsmen, Dryads, Demons, Venomous Spiders, Pirate Ghosts, Evil Beholders, Jarls, Ice Spiders
Speed 2: Skeleton Archers, Robbers, Bowmen, Priests, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins With Catapults, Polar Bears, Swamp Snakes, Orc Chieftains, Trolls, Slingers, Ogres, Goblins, Spirit Talkers
Initiative: 3
Speed 3: Swordsmen, Spy (Little girl form)
Speed 2: Skeletons, Peasants, Miners, Ancient Bears, Paladins, Cannoneers, Spy (Normal form)
Initiative: 2
Speed 3: Cave Spiders, Thorn Hunters
Speed 2: Zombies, Ents, Druids, Bears
Initiative: 1
Speed 3: Cyclops
Speed 2: Decaying Zombies
Speed 1: Ancient Ents, Royal Thorns
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Overall, Dark Side doesn't affect Speed/Initiative tiers very much. It doesn't have very many non-clone units, and it mostly doesn't change the statlines of old units. This is essentially reasonable, as Armored Princess already did a lot to fine-tune Speed/Initiative tiers and Warriors of the North did a little more tuning; it doesn't need a ton of tuning.
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As with the previous games, I'll be covering units by primary damage type. Note that I'm not throwing in the Dark portrait of a Light unit where applicable, as it's just redundant and would massively increase the length of this for no benefit.
Physical
(86)
Poison
(8)
Fire
(7)
Ice
(8)
Astral
(0)
No unit can inflict Astral damage on a consistent basis in Dark Side. There are some that can inflict it at all, like Black Knights, but none that can do it turn after turn without significant support. Goblin Shaman are gone, for one, and even Blood Shaman as a pseudo-case are gone. Actually, most units capable of Astral damage previously are gone or no longer have access to Astral damage, and almost no new units have it to replace them.
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And... that's it! Truly, fully, finally done with Dark Side and the entire King's Bounty series.
I may be taking a bit of a break from posting while I work out what happens next and make preparations. Probably shouldn't be longer than two weeks, and may be much less than that. We'll see.
See you then.
Note that I haven't listed the Dark versions of Light units, nor the female Priest clone. There'd be no point, since in every case the versions are identical in these stats. As such, if you're wanting to, for example, know what a Wizard's position is, you need to look for where Archmages are.
Initiative: 8
Speed 9: Archdemons
Initiative: 7
Speed 5: Ancient Vampires (Bat form), Horsemen, Lake Fairies, Unicorns, Amazons
Speed 3: Devilfish, Ice Minions
Speed 2: Necromancers, Foremen, Sea Dogs, Metamorphs
Initiative: 6
Speed 8: Black Dragons
Speed 7: Bone Dragons, Red Dragons, Ice Dragons, Dragon Riders
Speed 6: Royal Griffins
Speed 5: Angelic Guard, Warrior Maidens
Speed 4: Cursed Ghosts, Vampires (Bat form), Lake Dragonflies
Speed 3: Veteran Orcs, Scoffer Imps, Fire Spiders, Royal Snakes, Guard Droids, Undead Spiders, Hyenas, Thorn Warriors, Assassins, Berserkers, Axe Throwers, Furious Goblins, Raging Barbarians
Speed 2: Ancient Vampires (Human form), Rangers, Demonesses, Marauders, Archmages, Demonologists, Blood Priestesses, Female Vampires
Initiative: 5
Speed 6: Emerald Green Dragons
Speed 5: Griffins
Speed 4: Forest Fairies, Werewolf Elves (Wolf form), Cerberi, Imps, Fauns
Speed 3: Shaman, Wolves, Pirates, Beholders, Witch Hunters, Vikings, Skald, Orc Scouts, Fire Dragonflies, Barbarians
Speed 2: Vampires (Human form), Inquisitors, Alchemists, Werewolf Elves (Elf form), Elves, Snakes, Knights, Engineers, Executioners, Black Knights, Soothsayers, Jotun, Flame Elementals
Speed 1: Giants
Initiative: 4
Speed 5: Repair Droids
Speed 4: Ghosts
Speed 3: Guardsmen, Dryads, Demons, Venomous Spiders, Pirate Ghosts, Evil Beholders, Jarls, Ice Spiders
Speed 2: Skeleton Archers, Robbers, Bowmen, Priests, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins With Catapults, Polar Bears, Swamp Snakes, Orc Chieftains, Trolls, Slingers, Ogres, Goblins, Spirit Talkers
Initiative: 3
Speed 3: Swordsmen, Spy (Little girl form)
Speed 2: Skeletons, Peasants, Miners, Ancient Bears, Paladins, Cannoneers, Spy (Normal form)
Initiative: 2
Speed 3: Cave Spiders, Thorn Hunters
Speed 2: Zombies, Ents, Druids, Bears
Initiative: 1
Speed 3: Cyclops
Speed 2: Decaying Zombies
Speed 1: Ancient Ents, Royal Thorns
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Overall, Dark Side doesn't affect Speed/Initiative tiers very much. It doesn't have very many non-clone units, and it mostly doesn't change the statlines of old units. This is essentially reasonable, as Armored Princess already did a lot to fine-tune Speed/Initiative tiers and Warriors of the North did a little more tuning; it doesn't need a ton of tuning.
---------------------------
As with the previous games, I'll be covering units by primary damage type. Note that I'm not throwing in the Dark portrait of a Light unit where applicable, as it's just redundant and would massively increase the length of this for no benefit.
Physical
(86)
(14)
Poison
(8)
Fire
(7)
Ice
(8)
Astral
(0)No unit can inflict Astral damage on a consistent basis in Dark Side. There are some that can inflict it at all, like Black Knights, but none that can do it turn after turn without significant support. Goblin Shaman are gone, for one, and even Blood Shaman as a pseudo-case are gone. Actually, most units capable of Astral damage previously are gone or no longer have access to Astral damage, and almost no new units have it to replace them.
-----------------------------------------------
And... that's it! Truly, fully, finally done with Dark Side and the entire King's Bounty series.
I may be taking a bit of a break from posting while I work out what happens next and make preparations. Probably shouldn't be longer than two weeks, and may be much less than that. We'll see.
See you then.
...The end? Indeed it is! It was interesting for sure.
ReplyDeleteI greatly enjoyed your analysis and intention behind it. Going through the code and fixing bugs was pretty interesting too, even if irritating at times (DS Devastation...).
Our off-topic discussions were quite interesting as well.
I'll keep lurking around but in general my work is done.
Best of luck.
I remember doing code fixing back then too... man, we tried to work hard to make these games playeable, even when the developers weren't.
DeleteMan, I tried Dark Side but gave up early. Same as the viking expansion, units were broken, spells and maps too were often completely terrible, and bugs that Crossworlds fixed were back again as if the developing team was replaced (which as I found out, was exactly what has happened). By this time, most people on the Katauri forums gave up. I am so mad 1C let the team completely waste away on a now defunct MMO instead, and then we got KB2 which was terrible and unlike at all like the first games.
ReplyDeleteMinor typos: The first comma in "No unit can inflict Astral damage on a consistent basis in Dark Side, There are some that can inflict it at all, like Black Knights, but not turn after turn without significant support, if at all." could be changed to a period(dot?). And the same sentence contains two "at all"s, which might have been unplanned?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, after the part about "at all"s I already feel I am reaching out a bit too far; but could the images of droids (which are no longer Dwarf due to DS shenanigans) be moved to somewhere alongside the Neutrals? As if I didn't just write down a nitpick, I also want to say that I think members of the same race following each other is great for coherence. I like the aesthetics of these lists.
Producing the gridded visuals is annoyingly difficult to smoothly modify on my end. I'd have swapped the Droids into Neutral in the first place if it wasn't such a huge nuisance!
DeleteReworded the sentence to remove the repetitive 'at all' and also to get across more clearly that the point is that no Dark Side unit can do Astral damage on the regular as a straightforward act.
Ah, I didn't expect that. Do you use whatever method(app?) you used for these lists in other posts as well, or is this gridding a special case? My experience with modifying images starts and ends with Snipping Tool + Paint.
DeleteIt might have been lost in the jumble I wrote, but I think a period(dot?) could be put in place of the comma after "Dark Side" in that sentence.
Oh, yeah, fixed the comma/period error.
DeleteI have the impression you're imagining something a bit more of a nuisance than the reality. It's more 'it would be tedious and the mild payoff in aesthetic pleasure would not be worth it'. It'd probably take 20-30 minutes to actually do the thing.
I didn't have a concrete thought about how much of an effort it would take and what you say seems reasonable to me. Plus, I believe that someone checking here for any unit's racial allegiance, instead of the post *dedicated* to that particular race, isn't a plausible scenario so it's all fine.
Delete