Rise of Legends

First of this is just me testing the afreet, mainly cos i went up against a vinci and he just built clockwork men with large city then upgraded them all, and then just got lockwork spiders and giacomo, i found my entire army wiped out including my hero with praticaly no damage to his what so ever.

simply desert walkers wiped out, heartseekers went down, juvnile salamanders well way more expensive so i never got them but against that army probally wouldn't have helped unless i have like 4 of them. only unit left which i had been told was useless is the afreet. so i am testing it.

Here are some results so far. these were done with passive units, to see which worked best. since i wanted a wealth solution, i compared heartseekers and afreets. these units are all non upgraded.

Afreet loses to a heartseeker in killing infantry.(imperial musketeers)
Afreet wins against a heartseeker in killing a clockworkman.

Stuff learnt:
Afreet does 5 damage to a single unit, then sets that unit on fire and adjacent units on fire. Burning does 1dps.
Total damage to an infantry unit of 9 units is:- 5 damage + all infantry units get burning for 1dps.(1 attack does 8 damage total for a single shot to whole infantry, squad 5 less than heartseeker)

Heartseeker:- 13 damage to single unit(13 health removed from infantry unit, shocking considering it only does 5 damage).

Second test: clockworkman as passive target.
single shot test
Afreet: 11 damage to clockworkman plus burning at 1dps.
heartseeker: 11 damage to clockworkman.

over time the extra 1dps burning allows the afreet to kill the clockworkman quicker than a heartseeker, but otherwise they do same damage. but the 1dps extra kills clockworkmen significantly faster than heartseekers, in a fight against clockworkmen i would want afreets since they die a 1/3 quicker than with heartseekers.

Unfortuantely burning does not stack so an extra afreet is as effective as adding a new heartseeker to assist the afreet in killing the clockworkman. so an afreet and heartseeker perform at the same lvl as 2 afreets in killing a clockworkman.
Whereas 2 heartseekers are superior to killing an infantry than an afreet and heartseeker, thats what it should be.

the anomaly is with infantry, the heartseeker and afreet should do same damage to infantry but for some reason the afreet does not. only difference is splash, but the splash only applies to all recieving the burn effect, not all recieving 5 damage.
I'm not certain but i think this burn splash effect is true also for salamanders, i don't think the do 34 to all in a cone, they just burn all in a cone, and do 34 to the target. unless someone has tests that contradict this. as far as i know anything that burns and has splash only does the burning in splash and the normal damage as a single target. glass golems i believe do true splash damage though not tested, sand dragons do true splash damage i believe.

Suspicion: does the heartseeker think infantry are flying units? therefore explaining why it is doing its air damage to infantry and not its ground damage, or am i just going paranoid over nothing?

This post has been edited by lorddrakanofmog: Jul 6 2006, 13:16 PM

Some very interesting results. Thanks for sharing your test results.

Afreets compare closer to Heartseekers in effectivity than I would have guessed, though they are nearly 50% more expensive before ramping they fly and fire on the move. I still wouldn't much consider building them in their current state, but it seems like they can be of some use in Tier 1.

I doubt their burn DoT stacks, so maybe there is a good argument for trying to keep around 1 or 2 just to keep enemies on fire, though 1dps isn't much to scream about.

One day I will play more with Afreets and their fire magic damage spells, but even their special ability DoT didn't seem very damaging. Maybe we'll see.

I am holding out hope that the upcoming balance patch will do something good for Mr. Afreet.

Heartseekers only do 5 dps, they have a firing rate that is rather slow, that's why it did 13 damage. Testing damage per hit won't get you anywhere because different units have different atack rates.

i mentioned the damage it does in one shot cos it seemed interesting.

also this. if heartseeker and the afreet both have 5 damage per second. why did the heartseeker kill it faster? doesn't make sense.


This post has been edited by lorddrakanofmog: Jul 6 2006, 18:26 PM

Afreets just require gosu micro or rather, don't, which gives them the advantage

afreets attack speed is about the same isn't it???????

well it doesn't matter FoTM and Flying make it good enough to make up for it IMO, then theres also the fact that the clockwork man can attack the heartseeker back where as against the Afreet its 5 damage to nil

see where i'm going with this? oh and just focus fire down they're hero then pursue with afreets if you start losing (obviously don't run the afreets through his army or do anything stupid) and if you start to lose afreets, fire gate them home nuff said IMO

Heartseekers might achieve a faster kill as a result of the RoF. Its also possible there's some kind of bug in the afreet's damage as a result of the burning attack(considering some of the results I've seen posted, this wouldnt surprise me).

No, fire on the move and flying in no way make up for terrible damage potential. To kill a group of infantry (sentinels) it takes an unupgraded pirata 39 seconds, an unupgraded quetzel 36 seconds, and an unupgraded afreet...59 seconds?

They all have the same damage modifyer and dps, so why the huge disperity. There has to be some bug with the afreet. Not only that, 5dps ground and air is pretty lame, especially against miners (who are resistant to it's splash damage).

Fix whatever's wrong with it, buff the overall damage to 6 or 7 perhaps, then it will be useful for raiding (it's still very slow and weak hp wise).

This post has been edited by Bridger: Jul 8 2006, 16:14 PM

agreed --------^

there's more going on here than meets the eye...

it takes two (2) pirata ~50 seconds to kill a jag, and one of them dies... and two (2) afreets ~24 seconds, and they both live.

Testing flyers against infantry isn't really fair, because they're not desinged to vaccuum up infantry. Pirata and quetzel's are (maybe, Pirata probably the most) due to their high rate of fire, but Affreet are at otally different animal. They really do mess up medium units.

I think the idea behind affreet is to get a small group of them, and use them to focus fire medium units on the enemies flank, or pick off stragglers etc...

try it, kills jags dead, same to clockwork men.

and they do JUST fine against miners... only marginally worse than piratas, but much cheaper.

This post has been edited by mehoo462: Jul 8 2006, 23:00 PM

it's almost always cost effective to buy one of each type of unit, simply because of ramping cost. So 1 afreet will add value to a varied army simply because just 1 afreet is cheap and mid-late game you can almost always afford it..

afreets still suck tho

I continue to hold that they don't suck... they're just not Piarata flyers that's all.

The burn spell gets a huge radius at level 3, and they knock out medium units... sets a lot of units on fire for cheap cheap cheap!
Having 3 or 4 of them around will never hurt. And you can always use them to harass.

This post has been edited by mehoo462: Jul 9 2006, 01:02 AM

If nothing else, they draw fire...but yeah, I think their damage may be bugged. They really need to fix that and the proto rush in the next patch...

Again I think people are forgetting that the problem with afreet isn't only what they are (=very poor attack force for a high cost) but just as much what they aren't; ie. a highly mobile anti-air and raid force in one (like both the other races have).

If someone can pull out the statistical mechnism for whats going on with the afreet unit when in battle, kinda like the combat system, all those formulas BHG must have put into the game to calculate damage and stuff.

I have a feeling splash is calculated per unit. since 9 units in a infantry battalion i think it gets knocked down by a factor of 9 multiplied by something. possibly like a shockwave effect, less damage at teh end, more damage at centre of splash. It would be nice to know these details as to exactly how splash works.

as it is now, afreets are not infantry killers, that is the one early tier one unit we are missing. here are the nations and their purpose units at tier 1.

Vinci
musketeers - cannon fodder
clockworkman - infantry killer - or medium fodder
pirata - raider - light unit killer. air fodder

cuotl
sentinels - cannon fodder -light and medium
jaguars - infantry killer - medium fodder - light anti air support
quetzels - raider - light unit killer - air fodder

alin
desert walkers - cannon fodder
heartseekers - anti air role - light unit killer
juvinile salamander - infantry killer - medium fodder
afreet. - medium unit killer

We got one extra unit, interesting isn't it? we get one extra unit at tier 1. You have to think why do we have a 4th unit? because our anti air unit, is a ground unit. so to even it up they gave us the afreet. thats one possibility.

2nd possibility is, they had salamanders and realised we got juvinile, adult and elder salamanders, and they went, where do we put the juvi? he have to go in tier 1. thats another possible reason as to why we get 4 units.

Heres another posisble reason, pirata, clockworkmen both wealth units, afreet and heartseeker both wealth units. It is like someone has deliberately trying to balance things out. the jaguar as we all know is one hell of a beast, but it does cost energy and timonium, i think that originally got a buff to make up for it, that both vinci and alin can build 2 wealth units at the same time, effectively using wealth as their unit production income and their timonium as their expansion income. Cuotl can't do this. something else i reaslied when looking at strategies and stuff.

Actually i can post the strategy i use, i'll play against a tough computer and use the strategy i formed from these tests with alin. its nothing special, but its working so far. here it is.

P.S this was supposed to be a thread to find a use for the afreet, i think it does make an ok medium unit killer. just my thoughts heres the example in replay form. sorry its against comp, its hard to connect sometimes for me. its not whether i win, its just so u can see what i did, thats all really, then u can <removed>uate my strategy and not whether i won or not, cos thats not really important.

This post has been edited by lorddrakanofmog: Jul 9 2006, 17:23 PM

it makes no sense that an afreet would work better against medium units than against small units, unless the slow attack speed makes it less powerful against infantry in particular?

Bridger, if you overkill a single infantry man, i dont think the excess damage tacks onto other units in the squad. Look at the sun idol juggernaut comparison.

That is true. I tried using Carlini's Snipe ability in the campaign, same for the Prototype-unit CW Sniper. Carlini when upgrade to full level does 450 damage to one unit. So using it on infantries will be useless and a waste, because he only take out a man in the group, and the damage did not spread to other men. When I use him against a Glass Golem, he does tremendous damage to it.

Conclusion: Wasting a stronger attack to kill one man in the group will be a waste, because the damage doesn't spread.

well there you go well said IMO

me personally would much rather an early anti medium unit than another anti infantry... i mean we have so many DW why need more anti infantry well said old chum

+ we have juvi and HS for that as well (even though some ppl don't like HS)

if u micro ur affrets well they can outrange enemy muskets aside that they are good vs caravans... They are rather poor at raiding workers, but if u constantly harass with them u can keep the enemy units from ever healing

Overall they are pretty weak though, 2 is all u will ever need of them.