Random questions

[Nelphine]

Summon hero and summon champion aren't affected by cnjuror on purpose. Ive brought it up with seravy, but it was intentional. While I agree it's not intuitive at all, balance wise it's probably fine.

I believe call to arms is atrocious (for both human and AI) and life is my favored realm. Seravy disagrees.

[MrBiscuits]

Summon hero and summon champion aren't affected by cnjuror on purpose. Ive brought it up with seravy, but it was intentional. While I agree it's not intuitive at all, balance wise it's probably fine.

I believe call to arms is atrocious (for both human and AI) and life is my favored realm. Seravy disagrees.

The trouble with summoning in general is that Divine Order gets cast a couple of times in the average game, so by the time you get around to summoning champions you can expect it to cost a lot more than 600, so maybe the reduction with conjurer would be balanced. On another note Divine Order makes combat spells too expensive as well. Buffing normal units seems the best strategy in general to me (I'm not a lunatic player though).

Yeah I agree about call to arms. If the main advantage is the holy bonus then High Prayer does that and so much more and also doesn't disappear when a level 0 paladin gets killed.

[Nelphine]

No, Seravy's view of Call to Arms is that life has no other combat summons, so has no way to extend combats. Thus, this is a very off-realm ability (and honestly, it is strong at that role - don't actually try to do damage with the paladins, just use them as a damage sponge). The problem is that Life has no real way to take advantage of this (except to cast healing a lot, but you can't cast call to arms on the same round as you cast healing); and honestly, raise dead is far far better anyway. So it's decent synergy, if you have say, chaos combat spells, but that's about it. And even then, you're much better off with nature spells, not call to arms, especially since either the nature spells are miles better (entangle), or come far earlier and don't 'waste' a very rare slot (every single nature summon, including call centaur, is far better for its cost, even when accounting for the fact that you can still only cast one spell per round, so combat skill cost isn't everything, but rather, combat time spent casting the combat summon is part of that cost. So if I could just cast call centaur and get the same benefit, for far less combat skill, and I only need 1 nature book to get it, then a very rare slot for call to arms, is just ugh.)

[Seravy]

Pretty much the above, it gives you combat presence. It allows you to win battles without units present. All other realms have no difficulty doing that - they either have very strong direct damage so those remaining 2 halberdiers and bowmen are enough to allow them to destroy the enemy stack and save your city at least until the next attack, or they can easily summon something and wear down the enemy through "damage over time".
But Life doesn't have this ability, and Call to Arms enables it.
Yes, that Paladin isn't that great on its own. But it moves 4 so it'll survive, and you can cast Invulnerability and Lionheart on it, backed by a Prayer and even Supreme Light, buffing it up to where it can defeat an entire 9 stack attacking your otherwise almost undefended cities. (obviously this might not work against every enemy - but it will usually work if they aren't Chaos. Death and Sorcery has a hard time to hurt Paladins due to the immunities on them, and Nature isn't that great in direct damage. Also, to begin with, the AI is not very likely to use direct damage at the timing when you start to summon and buff up you paladin, and even they they do, they are more likely to target your nonsummoned units.)

Also, while it might not be that great, even if not used for the above, it's still amazingly versatile. It can see invisible enemies, wipe out units with death effects or high armor, buff your army with Holy Bonus, and to be honest the likelihood of summoning one without buffs is near zero anyway. You are playing Life so you are supposed to have Prayer, High Prayer, Supreme Light, Heavenly Light, Crusade, Holy Arms, or Charm of Life, at least a few of those. Other realms usually don't get to have their summons come into play with several buffs already stacked on them for "free" from global effects you'd have anyway. (Chaos has a few but they don't get any better summon than Fire Elemental.)

I'm really surprised why people think this is a weak spell, I'd expect complaints about Summon Demon instead... (not that SD is bad but I consider the paladin way superior.)

[Nelphine]

Nah, summon demon is much much stronger than call to arms. The problem is that as life, my 1 remaining unit of elite halberdiers with holy armor and holy weapon and mithril, are just far far stronger than 2 units of paladins summoned by call to arms - and that costs 140 combat skill! So, summoning it simply does NOT add to my combat presence.

And at that stage of the game, every city will have that unit of elite halberdiers with true sight and bless as well, and the halberdier will be a race with +1 health (lizardman, dwarf, beastman) - note, not every city might have this unit, but if it doesn't, it will have something even better (like elite adamantium paladins :P). Prayer will be cast, and its far more efficient to give that unit lionheart than it is to cast call to arms. You'll be just as immune to all spells as the paladin you could summon (actually, your resist is so high, you're actually immune to far MORE than the paladin), you'll have better survivability to straight up damage than the paladin, and you'll be far more dangerous to your opponent.

[zitro1987]

I understand the reasoning behind call to arms, but the cost (goes up with divine order) is too excessive (many v rare combat spells cost less), and I can't comprehend why it cannot have magic weapons.

If the issue of the magic weapon is addressed, then the spell may 'ok', which is not good for very rare, but at least it has decent uses, including surprise summon, hit twice with armor piercing.

[Nelphine]

It counts as a fantastic unit so it still hurts creatures with weapon immunity. But the raw damage is simply too low without any bonuses to hit - and since it's a fantastic unit, holy arms doesn't apply to it.

[MrBiscuits]

I took 3 life spellbooks, so it was the only very rare that I got all game. I also think very rares should work well on their own, without needing other spells to make it work.

If it was ultra-elite and you got some free enchantments then maybe it might work ok. Or perhaps if it came earlier as a rare and cost less, so you could cast it when it would actually make a difference. But at the moment the battles I'm fighting have colossus and gorgons and they just get webbed and destroyed straight away. Same story against magicians or sky drakes, and they've yet to have a battle against something easy like a couple of halberdiers and bowmen. Any easy battles like that wouldn't need a spell to win anyway, I just kill them with normal buffed troops.

[rgp151]

I'm not a fan of Call to Arms anyway. Life shouldn't have a combat summon IMO, but given that it's there, it should remain mostly a niche thing that only makes sense to use on rare occasions, not a general purpose spell. Life should be about the Normal units IMO.

The way I see see I would have made each of the realms more distinct, but Seravy went the other way and made them more similar to one another, giving them all combat summons, all more comparable buffs and strategic summons, etc.

For example I would have made Djinn a combat summon so Sorcery had a combat summon at each level and just one strategic summon and I wouldn't have added the Water Elemental. I wouldn't have added any of the other combat summons either, leaving that as a Sorcery specialty. I'd have added a Lightning based spell like Flame Strike called Lightning Strike, which could be effective on single-figure units and left Flame Strike as a fireball type attack, etc., etc.

[MrBiscuits]

I have a few more questions.

Does giving a bow hero focus magic to turn it into a magic arrack reduce the potential damage output? Mine seems to do a lot less damage since I gave it to him.

Also does Chaos Channels remove normal unit enchantments like holy armour? 

Does the soul linker bonus work on fantastic units from a fantastic stable? If so that would be pretty cool.

Manticores seem a bit strange....they are quite weak and have two shots of an arrow that does one damage. Only three figures and movement too. I guess the arrows do poison damage? What is the best way to use them? They seem too fragile for melee later on even with a few buffs on them, especially for a military race.