FfH Paring Questions

[Bobchillingworth]

Two suggestions regarding buffing a couple of otherwise mediocre-at-best spells. The mod would be fine without implementing them, but I think they'd open up player options at least slightly, without unbalancing anything.


First, give Mistforms summoned via Shadow III the Marksman promotion (if possible make it so that barb ones do *not* spawn with it). There really isn't much of a point to them at the moment; as temporary summons with only two moves, it's hard to imagine a scenario where you can really exploit their HN and invisibility to wreak havoc without your opponent immediately determining that you are the culprit, spotting your Shadow III Archmage, and declaring war- at which point you probably would have been better off just sticking to Air Elementals for harassment. With marksman they'll fulfill a special niche that no other summon currently does, allowing you to pick off the weakest combatants in your enemy's stacks without the need to resort to expensive Assassins. Plus they give the Eloheim a way to get marksman units without having to tech all the way to the end of the tree or capture the city of someone who can.


Second, have Spirit III give all discipline units in the caster's stack the Homeland promotion. We all know that Spirit III is utterly useless at the moment, in both MP and SP. Since Discipline units right now are the only line which cannot benefit from an exclusive arcane boosting spell, I figure Spirit III can be amended to kill two birds with one stone. Granted, +10% strength within your own borders and +10% retreat isn't particularly impressive, but at least it gives them something. Maybe both the cultural defense and retreat odds boosts should be increased to 20% or something.

[Tasunke]

Personally I think Spirit III should make the caster immune to enrage ...

and allow the spell "soothe" which removes enraged and crazed from the stack ?? (or at least just remove enraged?)


on a similar note, I think some sort of high level OO/ Perpentach unit should be able to give crazed with combat (similar to "diseased" but much harder to get rid of)

[Bobchillingworth]

Is "enraged" really much of a problem? Really the only units I ever get enraged are maybe one scout or something per game who gets a moderately poor lair result. And Lunatics, but that's sort of their entire point. It's not a condition worth spending an entire spell on.

[Tasunke]

A) trust will still be in

B) it helps with the 90 AC world event

C) we could add stuff like units that give "crazed" through combat ... and it would have a cure (albeit a hard to get one)

[Mist]

Well, I think the current magic system is beyond salvage. It's bloated. Most of the spells are superfluous, very niche or completely redundant. And nobody ever uses over half of the spells on offer. Even in SP.

Tinkering around the edges will not help here, and if there ever was a thing to pair in the mod, it's this.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'm okay with their being niche spells, but there are a few almost totally useless ones.


Besides Shadow III and Spirit III, the ones which come to mind are-


* Fair Winds- since you can take a promotion which gets rid of one cargo to add a movement, sticking an adept on a boat to essentially accomplish the same thing seems mostly pointless, unless you needed to carry an adept on your boat anyway.

* Body III- Flesh Golems seem to only come into their own when paired with Overlords high priests for exploiting Kracken. Otherwise they're just a novelty & a wasted spell slot on an archmage. There's niche, and then there's absurd.

* Law I- Loyalty essentially doesn't do anything. When has anyone ever required protection against Command-line promotions?

* Nature I is a dubious case- it actually works fairly well at what it does, but the only real use seems to be for invading elves.


Which other spells do you think are superfluous, Mist (or anyone else) ?

[Mist]

In addition to those you mentioned -

Dance of Blades.
Summon Pit Beast.
Shadowwalk.
Treetop Defense.
Summon Air and Summon Earth Elementals.
Summon Djinn.
Wonder.
Summon Host of E.
Charm Person.
Summon Mistform.

[Bobchillingworth]

My thoughts on the spells you mentioned which I didn't comment on already-



I cast Dance of Blades all the time, although I have no idea if it has ever mattered since the benefit is so minor What if the boost was permanent? It's strange how it's so much worse than Enchanted Blade.


There has been a lot of discussion regarding whether or not Pit Beasts and Hosts are any good; I think they're situational like all summons, but actually fairly good in EitB, since you can no longer simply load up a bunch of specters with Death Mana. I've been using Pit Beasts in a SP game with Tebryn, and you can actually get a rather impressive number of them going at once provided their 5 strength is enough to consistently get kills on weakened targets. Which it often is.


Air and Earth Elementals are actually my two favorite types Earth Elementals are great stack defenders and hit like freight trains, Air Elementals have insane range and are one of the very few ways to deal with stuff like the flying Mercurian chariot UU or Manticores. Air Elementals should be fixed though so they actually spawn Lightening Elementals like their description says.


I haven't tried the new Dijinn in EitB yet, so no comment.


Wonder is probably useless, but also really fun =) Being able to occasionally spawn Hell Terrain moves it from "amusing but mostly pointless diversion" to "potentially really strong", giving you the ability to create Nightmares or Sheut Stones, provided that you are lucky and patient enough.


Charm Person is, like, a worse Blinding Light / Slow / Entangle, I guess? Yeah, it kind of sucks.

[Ellimist]

I mostly agree with Bob on these, but I'll toss in my 2c.

I cast Dance of Blades all the time, although I have no idea if it has ever mattered since the benefit is so minor What if the boost was permanent? It's strange how it's so much worse than Enchanted Blade.

Ditto. Making the effect permanent (like enchanted blade) will at least make it more worthwhile than it is now.

Wonder is probably useless, but also really fun Being able to occasionally spawn Hell Terrain moves it from "amusing but mostly pointless diversion" to "potentially really strong", giving you the ability to create Nightmares or Sheut Stones, provided that you are lucky and patient enough.

Removing some of the current results would help make it more viable. I know the chaos of the spell is the main theme of it, but it should be worthwhile enough to be an option for an archmage level unit.

The main one to drop is "escape." It shouldn't be a spell available for Wonder because it ruins the offensive utility of most of the other results if an archmage can suddenly disappear from where he's needed.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding whether or not Pit Beasts and Hosts are any good; I think they're situational like all summons, but actually fairly good in EitB, since you can no longer simply load up a bunch of specters with Death Mana. I've been using Pit Beasts in a SP game with Tebryn, and you can actually get a rather impressive number of them going at once provided their 5 strength is enough to consistently get kills on weakened targets. Which it often is.

I've also used pit beasts a lot in (FFH) single player and haven't been disappointed. They synergize well with collateral or spells that do damage to large stacks. Charismatic also helps because it's not hard to get to 4 exp and the promotions heal them.

I haven't used them with illusionists. Are they able to extend duration if they win but don't actually kill the other unit? If so, the auto-healing after combat could be powerful.


As far as Mistforms, what about making them a permanent summon?

[Selrahc]

* Body III- Flesh Golems seem to only come into their own when paired with Overlords high priests for exploiting Kracken. Otherwise they're just a novelty & a wasted spell slot on an archmage. There's niche, and then there's absurd.

Oh, Flesh Golems have some use beyond that.
Without including anything that requires heavily advanced technology, like merging in Krakens from OO Druids, experienced horsemen from Ride of the Nine, Shadows for Invis or Beastmasters, there are a lot of tricks you can play to get a pretty pimp Flesh Golem.

Firstly, merge in a unit with a higher base strength without any promos that buff it. A ranger will do nicely here. Golem is S7. Secondly, merge in a unit that has a higher base strength but does have promotions which buff it. A ranger with poison blades. The golem gets a strength increase from the higher strength, then adds the promo. Golem is S9. Now start throwing in Strength increases from other sources. Metal promotions, Flaming Arrows, Mutations, Nightmares, Sheut Stone. Do it from the cheapest units you can produce that have access. Warriors for mutation spamming, archers for flaming arrows etc.
This should leave your Golem with a rather juicy base strength, somewhere around 14. But with only the promotions available to low xp units, and no way to gain more due to lacking a unit class. That's where the next step comes in.

If in the late game, you have been following a religion like Order or Kilmorph, and have an experienced hero like Valin or Bambur sitting around, you can be tempted not to change to not lose an experienced hero. A flesh golem gives you the chance to dump all those powerful promotions into an even more powerful chassis, and give you more freedom in picking your religion to boot. But what if you don't want to part with your hero? What if you're happy with your religion. That's okay. If you took the simple step of preparing some priests earlier. Take 3 for preference. They should be sitting with around 20xp. Capable of reaching level 5. Promote them up different lines, then merge them. Your golem should now be highly elite. But Selrahc, you're saying, who can afford to keep 3 experienced priests sitting around doing nothing? I've been fighting wars. That's how I got to the late game in the first place! In that case find one of your more elite units and merge him in. This is definitely an upgrade.

For the last ingredient, train yourself up a hawk and merge him in. Your little Frankenstein can now fly! He's all grown up and ready to leave the nest.
Add Marksman promotion as preferred.


So what's the cost, what's the result?
Cost:
2 rangers (Strength, Strength+Poison weapon, Mobility 1+2, Sentry 1+2)
1 axe (Enchanted Blade, Iron Weapons, City raider 1+2)
1 archer (Flaming arrows, City defence 1+2)
4-5+ warriors (Mutations, anything up to 2 promos for melee)
1 obsolete religious hero (or) 3 priests with xp to spare (or) 1 elite unit
1 Hawk
Assuming all units are fresh built, going with 3 priests that is 905 hammers.
Potentially if you're dumping old obsolete units then the actual cost is much less.

Result(priest version):
S14, Move 5
C4, Drill 4, Blitz, Flying, Medic 2, March, Empower 5, Enchanted Blade, Poison Blade, Iron Weapons, Strong, Flaming Arrows, Mobility 2, City Raider 2, City Defender 2, Shock, Formation, Cover, Scourge, Light, Heavy, Sentry 2, Commando, Command 3, Cannibalize, (Resist Fire, Immune to Disease, Resist Cold, Resist Lightning, depending on mutations. These ones probably aren't worth making too much of an effort for while Blitz, Cannibalize, Light and Strong are all fantastic).

Is it worth the investment? I don't know to be honest. But you can make one hell of a superunit.

If you do happen to have OO druids, then the base strength of the unit rises to 22, while also dumping the 300 hammers of unit investment in rangers.

Summon Air Elemental.
Summon Earth Elementals.
Summon Djinn.
Summon Mistform.

The standard role for an Archmage is summoner.
The various L3 summoning spells all have a minor niche(although Mistforms are certainly the worst). But you need them all in, or to replace them all with a generic "Summon Elemental" spell. Without them, the role of the Archmage is changed drastically.

The niche of the various elemental spells at current:
Air-Fastest, flying. (Weak)
Earth-Strongest base strength. (Slow)
Water-Splits (Slow)
Fire-Collateral
Djinn-Universal mana affinity means it will be a good high strength summon as long as you have a good mana supply, even if you are using that mana for other things(like building the towers). With a base strength of 5 in EitB Djinn will almost always be your strongest summon unless you are actively trying to boost another, or are really short on mana. (3 palace mana takes it to strength 8. Higher than Air elementals, equal to water elementals, 1 point behind fire. An Air elemental or Water elemental is probably never going to have a higher base strength, a Fire elemental is only if every node in your empire is fire.)
Wraith-Fear, Withering strike. (Also comes at a spell that gives Lichdom)
Mistform-Invisible, Hidden Nationality.
Aurealis-High affinity. (Low base strength, slow)

The only one of them that has a serious problem is mistforms. At current the only reason to take mistforms would be if you are loading up on Shadow Mana, possibly to give Shadowriders affinity. Bob's suggestion of giving them Marksman would certainly open up a much more interesting niche for them.

Air Elementals should be fixed though so they actually spawn Lightening Elementals like their description says.

They do spawn lightning elementals, unless this is a barbed commentary on how utterly useless lightning elementals are. Because they're pretty useless, and shouldn't even really be considered in choosing a summon spell.