Armored Princess Unit Analysis Part 9: Lizardmen

The new race introduced by Armored Princess. Yes, they do in fact have access to a mono-species Morale bonus, which is a pleasant surprise. 

Racial relations-wise...

-1 Morale for Undead presence in allies.

... Lizardmen are pretty chill on the face of it.

But wait!

-1 Morale for Dragon presence in allies.

Yeah, Lizardmen have this odd distinction that they hate Dragons. Not even that much hate, but still. It's sort of an interesting idea, as Lizardmen include a number of units that were probably imagined to be quite powerful, but using Lizardmen discourages you from using some of the more ultimate Neutrals around. Especially since swapping in some Dragons means you're not only getting the Morale penalty but actually losing the Lizardmen mono-racial Morale bonus, relative to pure Lizardmen.

The dislike is mutual, too. Dragons suffer -1 Morale for having Lizardmen in the army. So no cheesing it by boosting Lizardmen Morale. You'll need to boost the Dragon Morale too, if you want to use them together.

(There's no double-hate with Bone Dragons, though)

I don't think it works out so well in practice, as the game's framework doesn't really work like that. In something like a collectible trading card game, trying to introduce a powerful faction that is forbidden from using widely-effective cards (Or somehow punished for doing so) is a way to encourage alternative playstyles and reduce the degree to which the meta is defined by these powerful and widely-effective cards, which otherwise will tend to inevitably make their way into any deck and so functionally close off certain kinds of risk/reward dichotomies. If your card game has an easy time resurrecting 'dead' cards, then a style of play that's meant to be balanced around having a difficult time resurrecting 'dead' cards is not viable without somehow making it so that the cards that make such resurrections trivial don't work or are actively undesirable with the set of cards meant to have this particular style of play.

There's some parallels in the King's Bounty game design, certainly. You could very loosely compare the five unit slots to a collectible card game's deck, in terms of defining what you can do and how you can go about it through what goes into a limited set of slots you cannot change within a match/battle... but in the King's Bounty games you don't have enough slots to, say, have three units you always bring into every battle while still having tremendous flexibility because you've got another twelve unit slots to customize for different situations. In a given run of a given game it's not unusual for me to have a unit that I end up using for more than 50% of the game, such as Royal Snakes or Assassins, but the three dragons are never in that list. Even once they show up as purchasable, they're always hampered by having comparatively poor damage output and only intermittent safe damage effects: when I use them, it's mostly for the utility of their good Initiative and tremendous battlefield mobility, with the latter mostly being used to place adjacency-based effects and/or grab chests. They're exploitable, but in 'real' play the dragons just aren't that great... and their exploitable elements aren't really hurt by their mutually hostile relationship with Lizardmen. One of the most serious exploits back in The Legend centered around using a single stack of Emerald Green Dragons and nothing else!

So even though I find the thought interesting in a general sense, the reasons I find it interesting don't really apply to the King's Bounty games/their dragons in particular.

The oddest part of it is that there doesn't seem to be any actual lore aspect to Lizardmen disliking Dragons and vice-versa. It never crops up in this game or either of the later ones: you don't have any Quests where you hunt down and kill an ancient Black Dragon for the crime of existing and being a dragon because some Lizardmen asked you to. Or a Quest where a dragon asks you to exterminate some of these lowly snake-people for daring to exist on the dragon's island. I'm not sure if there's intended to be a lore thought process that just never quite made it into the game or if it's meant purely as a gameplay concept with no lore basis, or what.

Anyway, the units themselves.


Gorgul

Level: 3

Hiring Cost: 180

Leadership: 70

Attack/Defense: 20 / 16

Initiative/Speed: 7 / 3

Health: 70

Damage: 5-7 Physical

Resistances: 10% Physical, 20% Poison, -10% Fire

Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points), Bloody Madness (Charge: 1. Attacks all adjacent units, friend and foe alike, for 6-8 Physical damage, and inflicts Bleeding. Cannot be activated until at least half the stack has been lost)

Abilities: Spear (Melee attack strikes through to the unit behind the initial target. This has no friendly-fire risk), Rugged Scales (Non-magical ranged attacks do half damage), Horde (+1 Attack and Defense for every 30 members of the stack, to a max of doubling base Attack and Defense. So to a max of +20/+16 in this case), Bloodlust (When finishing a stack, 50% chance to get an additional full turn)

Note that Rugged Scales' protection isn't based on damage types per se. It's mostly accurate to assume that Magic and Astral ranged attacks aren't halved and similarly to assume Physical ones are, but eg some Fire and Poison ranged attacks are 'magical' and others 'non-magical' for this purpose. (eg the Imp and Scoffer Imp Fireballs do full damage while the Engineer's basic attack and Fire damage Talent get halved) It really just depends on if the unit is internally classed as a 'mage' unit or not.

Bloody Madness is basically the Knight's Circle Attack, just with Bleeding attached and a problematic activation requirement. This includes that you pick a target to receive a retaliation from. Notice that Bloody Madness is only slightly stronger than a normal attack aside hitting multiple targets. Horde means that hitting 2 targets at exactly half stack size is liable to be worse damage than hitting one target at full stack size, and anyway the Gorgul has Spear and so can routinely hit two targets at once anyway. Bloody Madness is thus a pretty lackluster prize for allowing your Gorgul stack to be worn down. Bleeding isn't even a particularly great status effect at this point in the series.

To be completely clear on Bloodlust, when I say 'full turn' I mean they get all their Action Points and immediately act again. Gorguls are, if you're a bit lucky, exceptionally impressive at mopping up weak stacks. In conjunction with Spear letting them do damage to other stacks without provoking a retaliation from those stacks, Gorguls are especially effective against enemies that spawn other enemies and against battlegroups with extremely uneven stack sizes. Given that Bosses are prone to summoning minions and normally counterattack infinitely, this makes Gorguls particularly worth considering for Boss fights, since they can run around cleaning up the spawns and, if the spawn locations are cooperative, getting free damage in on the Boss to boot. Just having one stack able to handle most of the work of cleaning up spawned-in units can make a world of difference, though, even if the spawns don't let you get free damage on the Boss like that.

It's thus a bit unfortunate you have to wait as long as you do to get Gorguls: there's still Bosses left by the time you have access to them, but some of the Bosses they could've been most interesting against -such as the White Kraken- are going to be so understrength compared to you that Gorgul's being especially effective doesn't really matter.

Of course, this extends to basically any summon, not just Bosses and their minions. Gorguls are great at mopping up Thorns, Demon-summoned Demons, Druid-summoned bears, and so on, and this is important to keep in mind when fighting them. They're one of the few units in the game where Royal Thorns go from an amazing stalling/winning tool to potentially actively undermining your force, especially since Thorn Hunters and Royal Thorns fall under the banner of 'physical damage' for the purpose of Rugged Scales.

Gorguls are a nifty melee option for the Paladin and even for the other classes have some excellent matchups it can be worth breaking them out for, but if you're not the Paladin you'll probably find yourself drifting to other options in most fights. They're one of the better units for keeping in Reserves so you can conveniently swap them in, and can be quite fun to use, and the Mage in particular appreciates their unusually excellent turn order advantage.

Something worth pointing out is that the Gorgul's Horde bonus is, in real terms, basically infinitely scaling. At 30,000 Leadership, you'll have 14 bonus Attack and Defense, which is still 2 short of their upper limit on the Defense bonus. A Mage can expect to end the game with not much more than 20,000 Leadership, and while the Paladin and Warrior have 50% and 100% more Leadership from leveling this provides only a portion of your Leadership. A Warrior won't actually expect to have 40,000 Leadership, and even if they did they'd be just below or at the Horde bonus limit for Attack.

Also, to be completely clear, the Horde bonus does dynamically change within a battle. That is, every 30 members lost is a loss of 1 Attack and 1 Defense for the stack, and conversely if casualties are undone or the stack's size is increased by Sacrifice they'll get more Attack and Defense in the middle of the fight. Thus, wiping out half a Gorgul stack will lower its damage by more than half, unlike most unit types.

Gorguana

Level: 3

Hiring Cost: 350

Leadership: 120

Attack/Defense: 20 / 24

Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2

Health: 80

Damage (Ranged): 6-10 Magical

Damage (Melee): 5-8 Physical

Resistances: 20% Poison, 10% Magic, -10% Fire

Talents: Mark of Blood (Reload: 3. A single target enemy takes doubled damage from all sources for 2 turns), Blood Magic (Charge: 1. Does 9 Magic damage to a single arbitrary target, and if possible heals the Gorguana stack by the amount stolen. The Gorguana stack must drop to 50% or less of its starting numbers before Blood Magic will be available), Whisper of K'Tahu (Reload: 2. A target allied Gorgul stack immediately attacks all adjacent units, friend and foe alike, for 5-8 Physical damage per Gorguana and inflicting Bleeding. This costs the Gorgul target nothing)

Abilities: Magic Missile (Range: 6), Rugged Scales (Non-magical ranged attacks do half damage), Horde (+1 Attack and Defense for every 30 members of the stack, to a max of doubling base Attack and Defense. So to a max of +20/+24 in this case), Bloodlust (When finishing a stack, 50% chance to get an additional full turn)

Unlike Bloody Madness, Whisper of K'Tahu doesn't provoke a retaliation. You just pick a Gorgul stack and BAM! Everything is hit. It also doesn't require the stack take egregious casualties first, and it's a reloading Talent to boot. If you're inclined to use Gorguls anyway, Gorguanas are a huge boost to their utility, and are useful units on their own. Their damage output is so-so, but Mark of Blood works on Rage and Spells in addition to unit attacks, even percentile effects. A heavily-upgraded Ball of Lightning can nearly wipe out almost anything if backed by Mark of Blood, and the ability to bolster even non-percentile Rage and Spell damage is huge, more than enough to justify using Gorguanas even if you're not using Gorguls.

Blood Magic is also a better prize than Bloody Madness, especially if you time things so you can Mark of Blood something and then Blood Magic it. Undoing some casualties when you definitely have casualties is nice, even if the damage is merely toward the upper end of the Gorguana's own base damage, when they're already not that good at damage and will fall further behind due to losing the Horde bonus.

As Gorguanas have higher Leadership and higher Defense than Gorguls, their Horde bonus is even more 'basically infinite scaling'. At 40,000 Leadership, they'll only have 11-12 extra Attack and Defense, which is in the vicinity of half the bonus they could possibly get!

Overall, Gorguanas are fairly reliably decent unit that's especially useful if you're intending to use Gorguls anyway, and themselves better justify using Gorguls in the first place. The one inconvenient thing is that Gorguls will go ahead of them in turn order, making it more convoluted to abuse Wait in conjunction with Whisper of K'Tahu to achieve no-danger hits, and that's not so bad, particularly since you're very probably past the stage of minding casualties much by the time you have access to the two. Gorguanas also tend to perform well in ranged-on-ranged combat, which can be really annoying when fighting them and occasionally really useful in your own hands.

Counter-intuitively, Whisper of K'Tahu scales its damage solely off the casting Gorguana stack's size rather than off the targeted Gorgul stack's size. This means you can cast it on Phantom Gorguls without any loss of damage, or let your real Gorguls get devastated and spin for full damage anyway, so long as the Gorguana stack hasn't taken a beating. It's a bit unfortunate how severely counterintuitive this is -probably most players stop trying to use Whisper of K'Tahu when they end up with a fresh Gurguana stack alongside a nearly-gone Gorgul stack in the expectation that having the Gorguana stack open fire will be far and away superior damage, but no, if you catch at least two targets and they aren't more Physical resistant than Magically resistant, Whisper of K'Tahu is in fact going to be better damage in that situation. If you know about this quirk, it's overall probably a more useful state than the intuitive scenario, as it's a lot easier to keep Gorguana casualties minimal than it is to do so with Gorguls while trying to have them otherwise contribute, but... still unfortunate how counterintuitive it is, given the game itself doesn't try to explain this oddness.

It also means that if you're worried about Whisper of K'Tahu from enemies, you should be endeavoring to pile damage onto the Gorguanas, not the Gorguls. Which, again, counterintuitive. Whoops!

Gobot

Level: 1

Hiring Cost: 15

Leadership: 15

Attack/Defense: 7 / 1

Initiative/Speed: 7 / 3

Health: 6

Damage: 1-2 Physical

Resistances: -10% Physical, 10% Poison, -10% Fire

Talents: Division (Charge: 1. Once the stack's numbers fall below half their original size, Division becomes available. When used, the Gobot stack doubles its numbers, emerging in a random new location)

Abilities: Burrow (Movement ignores all intervening terrain and units, and a ranged attack can be performed. Attack range: infinite), No Melee Penalty, Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Greasy Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

Yes, this is the series' first unit that is actively weak to Physical attacks. Ouch.

Also, bizarrely the Gobot's attack cannot miss if used in melee, aside the Ancient Vampire auto-dodging crits. This is not alluded to by the game, not intuitive, and not at all obvious in playing the game. It's also not very useful, but hey.

Aesthetically, the Gobot's ranged attack is a hit-and-run via burrow, but mechanically it's really just a ranged attack with an unusual animation. They won't become Burned from attacking a Fire Spider, for example, not unless they actually initiate the attack from adjacent to the Fire Spider. By a similar token their attack options can be closed off by getting units on top of them, just like any other ranged attacker. Annoyingly, chest-grabbing doesn't forewarn you of where they'll arrive at, instead marking the chest itself. If you want to avoid accidents, you'll need to move them adjacent to a chest and then grab it. The especially odd thing is that they can potentially arrive at a location that's not actually within their movement range if you target the chest without being already adjacent! (This is generally a flaw, but I suppose you could exploit it in... weird edge-case circumstances?)

Gobots are the Lizardman idea of a conventional, non-magical ranged attacker. Their actual damage tends to disappoint, but unlike most ranged units they can absorb a fair amount of punishment without it actually costing you much in real terms, since Division can potentially undo all the damage once in a battle. (Though this will almost never happen) It does eat their turn and you get no control over where they appear, so relying entirely on Division is a bit risky, but it in particular can give them a notable edge in ranged-on-ranged combat. They're also good at wearing down slower melee units, since they're a 3-Speed ranged attacker that can hop through obstacles and units. Terrain that includes a log, for example, can potentially allow them to just bounce back and forth while chipping away the Zombies or whoever that are chasing them.

They're astonishingly fragile, however, their Health only just above 1/3rd their Leadership. This makes them particularly susceptible to Spells and Rage attacks, even aside their minor negative resistances, but they're just plain fairly easy to kill off. In AI hands, they're primarily notable for how few units can go before them, as it's pretty easy to inflict horrific casualties on them. In player hands, their fragility isn't so big a deal, since the AI mostly lacks the tools to force damage on them, but it does mean you can't be careless with them, and getting a solid Division can be tricky to arrange too.

Overall Gobots are one of the cooler ideas on the Lizardmen, coupled with one of the more eeeeeh executions. It's a burrowing unit! But really it's basically just a teleporting ranged attacker with unusual animations. A really, really fragile teleporting ranged attacker. With no other interesting qualities. And insufficient Speed to really abuse the teleporting readily. It really feels like they should've ended up as something really cool, but they don't hit that note properly. In the end they're mostly interesting through their association with Chosha, and that doesn't require Gobots be a proper unit you can slot in.

Oh well.

Adult Gobot

Level: 2

Hiring Cost: Technically 25, but this won't matter to an unmodded game

Leadership: 15

Attack/Defense: 11 / 4

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3

Health: 8

Damage: 2-3 Physical damage

Resistances: -10% Physical, 10% Poison, -10% Fire

Talents: None.

Abilities: Burrow (Movement ignores all intervening terrain and units, and a ranged attack can be performed. Attack range: infinite), Venomous (30% chance to inflict poisoning for 3 turns on melee and ranged attacks), No Melee Penalty, Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Greasy Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

Normally only exists via a Chosha using Initiation to convert regular Gobots. Compared to a regular Gobot, it's 33% tougher, hits harder (Minimum damage is twice as high, maximum damage is 50% higher. On average this works out to about 2/3rds more damage), it throws in some Attack and Defense, and it has Venomous. It drops 1 Initiative in exchange, which is actually a pretty notable drop given how hotly-contested the 6-7 Initiative range is, but overall it's a pretty big boost.

Just like the basic Gobot, it doesn't leave behind a corpse. Unlike the basic Gobot, it doesn't have Division. This is arguably the biggest reason to not try to combine Gobots with Chosha, since Initiating your Gobots closes off their ability to undo casualties, and that's not actually that big of a deal.

Also just like the basic Gobot, their melee attack can't miss, for whatever reason.

There's not a lot to note here, beyond that when it comes to AI Gobot/Chosha groups you should endeavor to get in damage on the Gobots before the Chosha get a chance at Initiation.

Chosha

Level: 4

Hiring Cost: 1100

Leadership: 220

Attack/Defense: 28 / 32

Initiative/Speed: 4 / 1

Health: 190

Damage: 27-33 Physical

Resistances: -10% Physical, 10% Poison, -10% Fire

Talents: Breed Gobots (Reload: 1. Generates a stack of Gobots whose Leadership is 80 per spawning Chosha in an adjacent tile), Feed (Charge: 1. Attacks an adjacent enemy for 50 Physical damage, healing and resurrecting dead Chosha. Cannot be activated until the Chosha has lost at least 50% of its original numbers), Initiation (Reload: 1. All allied Gobots become Adult Gobots)

Abilities: Stationary (Action Points cannot be spent on movement, and 'push' and 'pull' effects don't work on Chosha. They can still be Teleported), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

Spawn Gobots, make them into adults. Repeat ad infinitum.

Like the Gobots, the Chosha doesn't leave behind a corpse. It also looks tremendously silly when hit with Geyser.

Feed is one of the more sensible 'only available at low numbers' Lizardmen Talents, and can restore a surprising number of Chosha. Unfortunately, it would be pretty difficult to make use of if it wasn't locked behind that requirement, just because it's on a unit that literally can't move and it's restricted to point-blank assault. With the need to suffer egregious losses? It's extremely questionable to try to take advantage of, bar perhaps a Paladin who has maxed Resurrection and so doesn't care about casualties on a single stack. (Feed is noticeably harder hitting than a regular attack, for one) It's only major good point is that it can drain Health from units that normally can't be drained from, such as Plants. (Not Cyclops or Bosses, though)

That said, the Chosha itself is one of the more useful Lizardmen units from the player's perspective. Being able to spam disposable summons literally every other turn is pretty darn useful, and while Gobots don't generate more summons like Thorns do, they're consistently ranged attackers and their burrowing movement can be used to eg block off enemy ranged units in spite of intervening terrain/units. The Royal Thorn is overall better at stalling enemies with summon spam, but the Chosha's lack of major weaknesses can be appealing, and of course a mono-Lizardmen army would rather have Chosha just for the racial Morale bonus.

Chosha obviously gain particularly significant benefits from Tactics. It's a good thing they take so long to show up you've had plenty of opportunity to get a hold of at least the first rank.

Initiation is completely safe to use on regular Gobots, with the resulting Adult Gobots reverting to regular Gobots at the end of the battle. The loss of Initiative and the loss of Division are the only real strikes against it. Also note that, as usual with transformation effects, this will clear all buffs/debuffs on the affected Gobots; don't buff Gobots you're intending to Initiate if you can avoid it, and don't rely too heavily on debuffs against enemy Gobots if Chosha are around.

AI Chosha will always use Initiation if there's a friendly Gobot on the field and Initiation is available. This is particularly obvious when multiple Chosha stacks exist together, as instead of doing the smart thing of eg 3 of them Breed Gobots and then the last one Initiates them all, they'll alternate back and forth. In general AI Chosha are mildly annoying but not much of a threat, since you're probably fairly ranged-heavy anyway and the Gobot stacks they produce aren't that hard to kill quickly. Depending on your army makeup, you may even be doing silliness like having Orc Chieftains or Gorguls getting free damage on the Chosha literally through their summoned Gobots. The relatively high durability on Chosha does mean it takes a while to take them out, but you'll usually have higher priorities anyway.

The Chosha is one of the more obviously experimental units in Armored Princess, and it's one of the more successful experiments. A unit that literally can't move, but which doesn't produce endless battles because it can infinitely spam summons instead. I like it!

A weird aside: if you Sheep a Chosha, its Stationary Ability will remain displayed, its Speed will remain listed at 1 instead of shifting to 2, and it will in fact be unwilling to move. I'm not sure why you would want to Sheep them, aside to test this point yourself, but it's interesting that Stationary effectively overrules Sheep's modifications.

Brontor

Level: 4

Hiring Cost: 1300

Leadership: 230

Attack/Defense: 30 / 40 (20 / 50)

Initiative/Speed: 3 / 1 (3 / 2)

Health: 180

Damage: 15-18 Physical (12-14 Physical)

Resistances: -10% Fire (Generic)

Talents: Ram (Reload: 2. Runs directly in a straight line to hit a target with no chance for retaliation. Distance is infinite. Base damage is 15-18 Physical damage, but each tile traveled increases this by 20% of base. Unavailable when Burrowed), Burrow (Reload: 2. Brontor immobilizes itself, raising Defense and allowing it to performed ranged attacks. Not available when Burrowed, does not end the turn), Surface (Reload: 2. Brontor exits Burrowed state. Only available when Burrowed. Shares Reload timer with Burrow, does not end the turn)

Abilities: Triple-horned (Melee attacks strike enemies to the side of the target as well), Rugged Scales (Non-magical ranged attacks do half damage), Spikes (Automatically retaliates against melee attacks, infinitely. This does 5-10 Physical damage), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

Burrowed Abilities: Stationary (Can't move or be moved), Unresponsive (Can't perform standard retaliations), Rugged Scales (Non-magical ranged attacks do half damage), Spikes (Automatically retaliates against melee attacks, infinitely. This does 5-10 Physical damage), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

Note that Spikes is buggy, and is supposed to only activate in their Burrowed secondary state, but in actuality activates pretty much anytime a melee attack is performed on a Brontor that the Brontor could theoretically counterattack against but did not. This even includes bizarre cases like it activating in response to enemy retaliations (I suspect the Counterattack code is to blame) and retaliating against Fire Breath hitting a Brontor behind the actual target. My suspicion is the bug boils down to 'whoever coded Spikes assumed it would only be assigned to the Burrowed state, while whoever assigned Abilities assumed Spikes would only activate when Burrowed'.

The stats and resistances in parentheses are their Burrowed numbers. They lose some damage and Attack, but gain Defense, lose their slight weakness to Fire, and amusingly actually gain a point of Speed. (Which does matter, since it means they have better turn order priority when burrowed)

Curiously, like with Rune Mages, the burrowed Brontor form doesn't have an explicit Ability describing its ability to attack at range. Its effective range is a short 5, and the Brontor has the unique quality of being able to perform ranged attacks on whatever it feels like regardless of whether there's any units adjacent to it. I assume this is because the burrowed Brontor doesn't have a proper melee attack at all. The way the AI behaves, you might think otherwise, as AI Brontors will always unburrow as soon as they can if a hostile is adjacent to them, but they really can just target whatever. This ranged attack is also incapable of missing for whatever reason -it's too bad you're probably largely done fighting evasive enemies by the time you have access to Brontors.

Also note that in mechanical terms, burrowing and unburrowing is actually the Brontor changing forms like a werewolf or vampire transforming. Among other points, this means a Brontor purges status effects when burrowing or unburrowing, contrary to what you might intuitively expect. Don't cast buffs on a Brontor you intend to Burrow prior to Burrowing them.

Brontors are one of the more interesting Lizardmen units to me. Broadly speaking, it can be compared to the Cyclops in terms of being a unit that tends to function by harassing enemy melee with ranged attacks as they close and then actually being a pain to fight in melee once they arrive, but the Cyclops is really designed to hold a chokepoint effectively, where Brontors are more menacing when they can get in the thick of things, between Spikes punishing dogpiling and Triple-Horned letting them lay the hurt on clustered enemies on their own turn. Even though Brontors do have a ranged attack available to them, its damage is really underwhelming, especially when you consider that Brontors can catch multiple targets with their melee attack and not their ranged attack, plus accessing the ranged attack means limiting their mobility. It functions better as a tool for giving the Brontor something to do while waiting for enemy melee to close than as serious ranged fire support.

The bugginess of Spikes is pretty frustrating on AI Brontors, since it means Brontors put you in a nearly no-win scenario. Anything that attacks them in melee will always take damage, even if it has No Retaliation. Most ranged attackers will do pathetic damage, and most of the ranged attackers not affected by Rugged Scales have somewhat-poor ranged damage in the first place. You can try to tear them down with Rage and/or Spells, but their Leadership to Health ratio is actually surprisingly serviceable, so this will generally be slow-going. Ignoring them while you prioritize other things means they harass you with ranged fire while burrowed, and mobbing them to kill them quickly means they retaliate for an obnoxious amount of damage.

Percentile damage effects are basically the only thing they don't do something to punish or weaken, and in fact thankfully they're slightly weak to Fire damage and thus Burn damage when unburrowed. As such, Ball of Lightning, Burns, and Poisoning should be a priority to bring to bear against Brontors.

In player hands the Brontor remains a very solid unit, but not quite as spectacular as you might expect, primarily because stuff like Ancient Vampires that can face-tank without suffering casualties that stick tends to be more useful for the player. On the other hand, the AI is dumb enough to just dogpile onto a Brontor in melee, so eg Teleporting your Brontor amid the enemy is a pretty solid way of getting them to wear themselves down, and as I've covered many times a Paladin doesn't mind casualties at all so long as they're focused on one stack, so Brontors can be plenty fine and a nice way to change up your playstyle without actually suffering a huge loss in performance.

Hayterant

Level: 4

Hiring Cost: 260

Leadership: 150

Attack/Defense: 31 / 29

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 6

Health: 110

Damage: 7-13 Physical

Resistances: 20% Magic

Talents: Lay Egg (Charge: 1. Lays an egg that hatches the following turn, producing a Hayterant stack that's half the size, rounded down, of the egg-laying stack's size at the time the Talent was used. The resulting stack will have to wait another turn before it can act)

Abilities: Flight, Sharp Beak (If the Hayterant is flying in a straight line for at least two tiles before attacking, the hit is a crit), Magic Resistance (20% Magic resistance)

Yes, the game's description of Sharp Beak just says you need to attack in a straight line. Sorry, no, if your Hayterant was, say, exactly two tiles away, and so it just walks awkwardly over? Not actually a guaranteed crit. (Though conversely it will become a guaranteed crit if terrain forces them into flight) They also can't be turning before attacking the target: no looping to one side, flying, and stabbing getting a guaranteed crit, as the animation involves them landing and turning.

Overall though, the Hayterant is a pretty generic flying bruiser unit, aside the distinction that Lay Egg can produce a fairly lengthy chain of disposable summons. Since each one is half the size of the previous it takes no time at all for the resulting Hayterant stacks to be essentially irrelevant in a fight as far as damage output and so on goes, but the stalling potential is pretty decent, and unlike Royal Thorns the Hayterant is very mobile.

Worth pointing out is that the AI isn't remotely intelligent about Sharp Beak's implications, with the most obvious point being that if you maneuver Ancient Vampires into a position where an enemy Hayterant stack would have to charge in a straight line to melee it, that's exactly what they'll do and thus provoke a free retaliation 100% of the time. They're also not very smart about Lay Egg, with their default behavior being to use Lay Egg as their very first action without bothering to move.

Speaking of Lay Egg, the egg itself has its Health scaled to the Hayterant stack size. (30% of the creating stack's own Health, specifically) This makes Hayterants a unit that has a particularly dramatic/swingy threat-level: a stack on level with your troops will likely be short-circuited, with the egg destroyed pretty much instantly, making the entire process of placing the egg essentially a waste of a turn. A stack that's notably outside your army's ability to tear down easily will lay an egg that's impossible for you to destroy in time, which produces more Hayterants that lay another egg, potentially rapidly turning a tough-but-manageable fight into a losing proposition. Also, the egg has an Initiative of 1, though curiously it will still hatch when the Hayterant inside would get a turn.

Hayterants are probably the least interesting Lizardman unit, as there's already a decent pool of relatively generic fast melee fliers, such as Griffons. Griffins and Royal Griffins even have summons of their own, both of which start contributing faster, and both of them have their own Magic resistance. The only real reason to use the Hayterant is if you're trying to keep your army mono-Lizardmen for the racial Morale bonus.

Tirex

Level: 5

Hiring Cost: 13,000

Leadership: 2000

Attack/Defense: 65 / 55

Initiative/Speed: 6 / 4

Health: 1000

Damage: 80-120 Physical

Resistances: 15% Physical, -10% Fire

Talents: Primal Fear (Reload: 2. All enemies who are below the Tirex stack's Leadership and are not immune to mental effects take 10-40 damage per Tirex and also have their current Action Points halved), Ravenous (Reload: 2. Destroys an adjacent corpse, fully healing the 'top' Tirex and resetting the stack's Action Point total)

Abilities: Tyrant (-30% Defense to adjacent enemies), Rugged Scales (Non-magical ranged attacks do half damage), Giant Lizardman (+ Morale to all friendly Lizardmen), Terrible (50% for melee attacks against units below Level 5 to inflict Fear on the target. Victims will fail to retaliate on an attack that inflicts Fear), Predator (The Tirex automatically consumes the corpse of any stack it finishes off, healing the 'top' Tirex as if it had used Ravenous, but without affecting the actual Talent's reload state)

Note that Predator has its in-game description incorrectly provide the description for the Bone Dragon's Gobble Corpse, but has the behavior I lay out above. This is a result of a behind-the-scenes oopsie, in that the internal name for the Predator Ability and the Gobble Corpse Talent is actually the same and so the game ends up looking for the same description for both. This isn't a translation goof, note -the original Russian has exactly this issue.

Primal Fear is a cool-sounding Talent, and unfortunately is pretty useless in the player's hands. By the time you've got access to Tirexes, any battlegroup that can meaningfully challenge you is probably so large you can't really use Primal Fear on them in a timely manner. It mostly serves to make Tirexes obnoxious to fight if you're not quick to kill them or otherwise prevent them from acting. Much more useful is Terrible, which Tirexes can leverage far better than Devilfish, what with being a Level 5 unit and all, not to mention having a better chance of triggering the effect.

In general a bit of a flaw with the Tirex is how long it takes the game to give you access to them. They'd be an amazing meatshield/murdertrain in the 2000-8000 Leadership range, since any kill that left behind a corpse would fix them up for free, but in actuality even a Mage doesn't really expect to get access to them prior to somewhere past 10,000 Leadership. At that point battles will frequently inflict a casualty in a single hit, leaving you with an okay Level 5 unit with no substantial quirks to really set it apart in a positive way from the other Level 5 units. It's debatable whether it's even worth fielding them in a mono-Lizardmen army for the Giant Lizardman Morale bonus. It's really too bad Terrible wasn't handled as 'always inflicts Fear if possible, and any target it inflicts Fear on never gets a chance to retaliate'. A situational form of No Retaliation would've actually been both interesting in its own right and given them something over other Level 5 units, as well as letting them absolutely dominate in matchups against many lower-Level units. It might require a re-tuning of their stats or something, but it could've been really cool. As-is, eeeeh.

Tirexes aren't even that notable as an enemy. It's irritating being hit with Primal Fear, but it's irritating in the same way the Giant's Earthquake is, but with a longer reload, a more widespread caveat (There's more units with Persistence of Mind than with Flight or Soaring, and indeed an all-Undead army is immune outright), and weaker base damage on a unit with higher base Leadership to boot. The AP-slashing effect is the only notable part of it, and depending on your army makeup it might not matter in real terms. They're basically a very generic Level 5 unit as an enemy, surprisingly so.

They come so close to a really interesting idea, but don't quite stick the landing.

A curious mechanical point you'll almost never see in action: if your Tirex finishes off an enemy stack with Primal Fear, and that stack happens to be next to the Tirex, Predator will trigger!

Also curious is that Predator won't trigger on Undead, Plants, or Cyclops, but Ravenous can still be freely used on the resulting bodies.

Related to this is that Predator won't trigger on Burrowed Brontors or any unit that's been hit by the Spell Sheep. There's a very good reason for this, which I'll be talking about when we get to Warriors of the North and this behavior changes.

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

Lizardmen are interesting to me in part because they seem to be the developers flexing their creativity and being more experimental. The majority of the units from The Legend were clearly drawing inspiration from King's Bounty Classic and/or the Heroes of Might and Magic games, albeit with more in the way of definition and often elements that could be compared to a 'balance patch'.

(eg Ghosts in King's Bounty Classic generated a ghost for every soldier that died, whereas Ghosts in the new series have to leech health total to their own. This creates more consistent, balanced behavior, where Ghosts aren't unstoppable killing machines against low-Leadership unit types while being borderline worthless against high-Leadership unit types)

Certainly, there were some unprecedented unit archetypes, but The Legend was fairly conservative with most of them, tending to avoid giving the player access to them when they'd have the most potential to be great/broken and also just keep them out of the spotlight in general. (eg Royal Thorns, which are rare to be encountered as enemies in The Legend and also take a while to get any real access to as player units) Their actual mechanics tended to help bound them as well (eg Thorns aside from Royal Thorns only have one charge on their troop generating Talent and require a corpse to activate it), and in the end they were usually not that far from other, similar units. (Necromancers can generate units from corpses, just like Thorns. There's no Royal Thorn equivalent on the topic, but 3 charges is honestly plenty in most fights)

Lizardmen take some of these one step further. The Hayterant can be compared to Thorn Warriors and Thorn Hunters, but just that little bit less bounded -where basic Thorns can recursively spawn more Thorns that can generate more Thorns, with this held back from being insane nonsense by the fact that the newly-spawned Thorn stacks are much smaller and also a corpse is needed in the first place, the Hayterant can just plop down a spawner at will and also actually has a more generous rate of generation in the first place. (Basic Thorns generate between 25-50% of their stack size. Hayterants just plain generate 50%) 

Other concepts don't really have a clear precedent at all. Gorguana and Chosha can 'issue an order' to another unit outright -leadership qualities in a unit type in The Legend was represented by passive bonuses (Usually, boosts to Morale), or more debateably via summoning of such units or by temporarily applied bonuses. There was no unit that could just make another unit do something in this way. Chosha being flat-out immobile is an even more extreme example, questioning basic assumptions of the game system.

Anyway, as an overall faction the most interesting thing to me is that Lizardmen are actually most natural a fit to a Paladin, with the casualty-prone approach to combat Lizardmen take.

One thing I have to wonder is if Lizardmen were in part an attempt to fight back against how dominant range-focused player armies are in The Legend. I've covered in a fair amount of detail how the player is heavily biased toward using ranged units and No Retaliation units to avoid burning Gold on unnecessary casualties, and Armored Princess actually pushes you even further in this direction for a while thanks to the Grand Strategy Medal... and on the flipside the Paladin can suffer 100% casualties on a stack and it doesn't cost them anything later in the game, while Lizardmen are harsh on ranged-heavy forces. Not only do many of their units take halved damage from most ranged units, but they have a good selection of units for crossing the battlefield and tying up your ranged units: Gorguls can cover 8 tiles in the first two turns and will generally go before all your ranged units, with even Necromancers being behind them in base Initiative/Speed tier, while Brontors can literally cross the entire field in one turn and then lay into your forces if you let them, while tending to win ranged-on-ranged wars thanks to Rugged Scales and their general bulk. Hayterants would potentially be a nightmare as well if it weren't for AI limitations, and Tirexes using their roar to cripple AP on your units makes it harder to simply walk out of reach and continue shooting without real hindrance.

It's possible it's just a weird coincidence, but it really does look to me like the devs were making a concerted effort to discourage running armies made solely of ranged and No Retaliation units. It seems like a bit of a weird way of going about it, if so, since Lizardmen are only really found in two sections of the world. Maybe if the game had been more focused on Lizardmen, in the way that Warriors of the North is heavy on Undead enemies throughout the game?

Next time, we cover Chaos Magic anew.