Heroes 5.5 WarGame Edition - Tactical Edition.

Minor update: reduced the "Battle Zeal" ability from +10 to +8 attack. Previously, I thought the ability worked about 50% of the time, but it turns out the ratio is closer to 2:1 (it works much more often than it doesn't). Of the new, well-balanced armies (currently, these are the 3 tiers of Humans), the Knight-Paladin pair raises the most questions. The problems with this pair for the Paladin are as follows: 1) The Knight has a +4 attack advantage in physical attack, and the monks' prayer further widens the gap to +8 stats and +2 morale. This is a lot. The Knight's base attack is 7 + 2 attack from prayer = 9 base defense for the Paladin. On the other hand, the Paladin's base attack = 3 against 9 + 2 from prayer = 11 defense for the Knight = a difference of -8. This means that the Paladin's troops deal only 60% damage against the Knight's troops under prayer, and they also have +2 morale from it. It is clear that with such an overwhelming advantage, playing a straight-up exchange is equivalent to defeat - the Paladin simply cannot deal decent damage. 2) In addition, all of the Paladin's upgrades (without exception) are defensive, which means that the damage they deal is even lower (as is the case with the Knight's troops due to the Paladin's troops' good defense). Thus, it turns out that the Paladin's troops against the Knight not only cannot engage in a global exchange but also cannot deal enough damage even in those local exchanges where they have a numerical superiority. This creates a false impression that the Paladin's army is weak and cannot do anything. In reality, this means that the classic style of combat is not suitable for the Paladin; for effective play, the Paladin must use a clearly defensive style and defeat the Knight with magic. The defensive style implies: 1) The main priority is not dealing damage, but reducing the damage received. The key units here are: - Paladins: the healing ability allows canceling a significant amount of damage received (against Cherubs, Griffins, and Latticemen) without receiving any unnecessary counterattacks and without exposing themselves (unlike cavalry attacks). - Cherubs: the regeneration ability effectively makes the unit very damaging, but with a negative sign: using expectations, Cherubs can restore 60 HP out of 140 per round, which is more than 40% of the stack. In the right hands, Cherubs are virtually immortal. - Latticemen: modest damage with even infinite retaliation is not as important as the shelter aura (50% protection from ranged attacks) and especially - interception (100% retaliation). The Latticeman does not deal much damage, but his task is to sharply reduce the damage of enemy troops. Given the high survivability and heavy class, the incoming damage when using interception is halved, and if you also use defense and/or stone skin, the damage drops to 3-4 times. The most important task of the Latticemen is to occupy a key position and go into defense, thereby canceling out a huge part of the potential damage nearby. - Inquisitors: the role of buffs is huge. The Inquisitor can cast stone skin 3 times for +8, which effectively reduces the damage received to 60%. It is these buffs that bring the Knight's damage down to the Paladin's low values, which allows the Paladin to engage in exchanges (but only under buffs). 2) The only conditionally damaging unit of the Paladin is the Archers, who, thanks to the armor-piercing shot, can one-shot stacks (often, it is enough to successfully cast teleport once). Because of this, there may be a false impression that this is a key unit. But in fact, the Paladin can grind the Knight even without Archers, simply by not allowing the enemy troops to deal damage (using healing, regeneration, stone skin, the defense of the Latticemen, and resurrection). 3) An important point is that the Paladin can not only but also must outperform the Knight in magic. In fact, almost all of the Knight's magic is useless against the Paladin: berserk does not deal any damage, any debuffs except for weak rays are removed for free by the Paladins (due to low magic), and when the Knight runs out of mana, the Inquisitors also do it (they counter Curses with Blessings). The only strong cast is vampirism, but given the low damage to the Paladin's troops, the unit under vampirism will also be slowly resurrected, and vampirism has a huge downside - the prayer cannot be cast on a unit under such a buff, which means a loss of 2 attack, 2 defense, and 3 morale (1 base + 2 from prayer). The Knight's light magic is also quite weak: both useful spells - Haste and Stone Skin - give a weak bonus due to the Knight's low magic, and the short duration (only 3 rounds) further works against the Knight due to the low damage. At the same time, the Paladin's casts are more powerful and last longer, and in addition, in a long game, the Paladin simply has more mana. In addition to the standard stone skin, the Paladin can also effectively use weakness or slow in the endgame. The Knight can basically not cancel weakness, except for expensive antimagic (which is 10 times more expensive). And slow is dangerous in the endgame if the Knight does not have enough mana for haste. Although Darkness is not the Paladin's profile, however, both debuffs depend weakly on the skill and work for a достаточно long time (4 rounds), just like stone skin, and effectively multiply the remaining Knight troops by 0. In addition, the Paladin has powerful Resurrections, allowing him to raise about 70% of the unit at a time. It should be remembered that in the endgame, the same Cherubs are virtually invulnerable due to regeneration (and the resurrection raises 100% of the unit). Finally, the classic teleport + Archers combination allows one-shotting Knight units almost for free if the Knight is careless and does not protect against such a threat. At the same time, the Archers are very durable ranged units and can easily withstand a couple of hits "as punishment". 4) In the long run, the Knight can do almost nothing to the Paladin, as the damage under the aura of the Latticemen is very low, the number of ranged attacks is limited, and the Paladin's healing is infinite. In short, the Knight has a huge advantage in physical attack, but the Paladin has many ways to nullify all of his damage (in fact, there are answers to all the Knight's threats, and the opposite is not true - the Knight must be wary of both the teleport of the Archers and the immortal Cherubs in the endgame). P.S. The Paladin is the most durable class of all (only the Dwarves can argue with him, but they do not have such healing). This means that against the AI, the Paladin is an exceptional class that can win almost without losses (in one of the record battles, only 1 archer was lost, or about 0.6% of the army!). It is clear that against smart opponents, the picture will be different, but the question was how to defeat a "weak" Paladin with a powerful Knight controlled by the AI. Having mastered the Paladin's defensive tricks against the AI, you can understand how this class works in ideal conditions and how you can outplay live players. In this pair, the Paladin should be wary of the Knight's overwhelming power in direct exchanges, and the Knight should be wary of the Paladin's impenetrable defense and the nullification of a large part of the damage already dealt through strong abilities and spells. I think I'll try a new general mechanic for all types of Balrogs: namely, a mass attack, across the entire battlefield (i.e., on all enemies, if they can reach at least one target). The base damage will be reduced by 4 times. Question: will their unique abilities (deadly strike, cleaving blade, and killing blow) work correctly? They should only work on the first target of the attack. In this case, we can try such a mechanic.