Age of Strategy Forums

Comparing Skeletal drake to Skeletal knight,
Drake v Knight
140 v 124 hp
Same damage
6 v 8 ranged Armor
3 v 4 speed
No bonuses vs 50% bonus against the most common enemies


So far, drake seems far weaker. Now, it has two main abilities,
Bone gale: short range projectile. Decent damage, but hurts self.
Bone whirl: extremely short range (1), hits 4 enemies if you're completely surrounded. However, you provoke counter attacks (in addition to self damage from ability) leading to this being a death sentence for the drake against 2 or more enemies (ie the best scenario to use this).

Given the very low chance of summoning or encountering dragons and drakes, this seems very weak still.
Maybe a buff is in order?

Note: this does not apply to later upgrades of the dragon, as they have far higher hp than equivalent knights or simple undead.

Skeleton drake is fine.
Later it will become far easier to summon them and they (as well as flesh homunculus, golems, titans and skeleton dragons/wyrms/hydra) will be affected by specific spells to empower summons (but summoned skeleton drakes/dragons/wyrms/hydras will get vanishing for balancing — 7/8/9/10 turns).

Summoning cost for all 4 will be changed to 1/2/3/4 2+ turn cost units (2/4/6/8 turns in total), alas you will not be able to summon them with dogs, denezins and other 1 turn cost similar units.

Raised dragons alas will not be affected by those spells but instead they will be permanent.