Balancing undead nations

[Ealb]

(This ramble mostly won't apply to ghouls, short or tall)

So I haven't managed to re-engage with this, but I was trying to think of ways to make cavern wight nations (and to a lesser but real degree, dust walker nations) better balanced. Scarcity is the main thing I'd want to emphasize. And the first thing that really feels like it would fit would be to make every last one of them cap-only. That feels less right for DWs than CWs, but it could still be applied. For Waning Pale Ones, I could see a reclimited militia-tier recruit anywhere, but tying the Nadir Pale Ones to their tombs seems like the most reasonable thing imaginable. Combine that with a per-pose reclimit of, say... 6 for normals, 3 for small sacreds, and 1 for large sacreds and you should have trouble fielding a force of them. A reduced number of poses would probably also help, both to cap how many troops could be recruited and to just make these nations less flexible. That would need to be coupled with a limit on secondary race recruits as well.

To sum up: my proposal to make Nadir not completely broken would be to cripple the nation (rather than the units) by making them low numbers and inflexible. 3-4 cap-only primary race troops including sacreds, and overall troops capped at 4-6. Between that, and a high recpoint cost, it seems like that would give you shock troops you'll never have spares of.

I'm also tempted to add a 10-15k base capital population cut, which would further choke undead output by crippling maximum possible recpoints that can be spent on them. If this was done harshly enough, I could see getting rid of some or all of the reclimits proposed above. This seems less appropriate for Dust Walkers in general, though it still seems reasonable for nations with an all-DW roster.

The final possible option I could see would be sharp gcost increases coupled with upkeep reduction and deathdominion recruitment bonuses to offset the increase. If you want to play an undead nation but have a growth dominion, it'll cost you dearly...

(Again, all of these are trying to nerf the nation rather than the troops. That really feels like how strong troop types are normally balanced in Dominions...)

[geepope]

Another possibility: a few patches ago mod commands were added to set the default starting point for each of a nation's scales. I think setting heavy undead nations to start at death 3 would be a more elegant solution than using deathrec bonuses.

[Ealb]

The biggest problem that springs to mind reading that is seeing these units as secondary races. That could either be remedied by disallowing certain themes and poses for secondaries, or by doing something convoluted where secondary races get high prices plus deathrecruit, but primary gets normal prices plus initial death scales...