Have Paladins been over nerfed?

[jhsidi]

IMO they'd be a little too special if they had more than just Holy Bonus, and I say that as someone who primarily plays High Men. That's already a hero-tier skill that isn't featured on any other normal unit, and I believe Seravy just upgraded it to also buff ranged attacks, so there's a better reason now to tote some paladins with your magician gank squad.

The problem with the costs involved (cathedral + armorer's guild + 240 base) is, honestly, not that the unit isn't worth that much. It's that it's aggravating and unfun, because the payoff feels too small. That's because paladins are, as most of us agree, a support. Every other unit in the game that's unlocked by the armorer's guild can constitute a doomstack: gladiators, hordes, stag beetles, etc... Paladins cannot and should not ever be used as the base for a doomstack. That said, I don't have any amazing solutions here. Just pointing out that the complaints on cost have a good basis: the feeling of reward / empowerment is lacking compared to other units unlocked by the armorer's. Maybe that's just an acceptable loss for high men, since their military is already quite powerful.

Re: Call to Arms, I'm not much of a Life player but it's a fact that a recruit-level unit without magic weapons is not very useful for combat at the point in the game you get it. It's also a bit problematic because it provides a buff. It might as well be called "Minor Extra Prayer", because what you actually want to do is 1) cast High Prayer; 2) cast Call to Arms; then 3) hide that weakling paladin in a corner so you don't lose the buff to some rare or very rare-level summoned creature obliterating it in one hit. I think it would work better as a summon spell with some unit besides paladins, but maybe just because the idea of adding yet another buff to the school of magic that's overflowing with buffs seems boring and undesirable. (Then again, I find the buff-things-endlessly style of gameplay boring as a whole, so maybe I'm just not the audience for it...)

[roarmalf]

If holy bonus works on ranged units now, then it's probably fine as is or with a small cost reduction. I would have to play with it, but I would imagine it's worth it to have one in each doom stack and garrison, which is how I was already using them, but was generally disappointed before.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

(Then again, I find the buff-things-endlessly style of gameplay boring as a whole, so maybe I'm just not the audience for it...)

Me too.  The thought of super-buffed units taking out Very Rare monsters is impressive, but I hate something about the process, though I'm not sure whether it's the tedium or the lack of immediate reward.

"Minor Extra Prayer that also takes up a space that could be filled by a different unit"  It might be better if it was a ranged or spellcasting unit.  Maybe call up a temporary Bard (or other supportive ranged or spellcasting hero) with enough experience to do something?  A recruit unbuffed Paladin does sound a bit lame.  A Paladin that pops up again (maybe several times) after being killed would be more interesting, although maybe someone will see a way to abuse that into something too powerful.

[Anskiy]

I think the biggest problem with Call to Arms is that its benefit is way too weak for Very Rare tier. By the time you are facing down Great Drakes and Great Wyrms, a small +1 bonus to your stats do very little when you have things like Archangels, High Prayer, Supreme Light, and Lionheart + Invulnerability stacks. Even on a Life hybrid, you have much better tools to fight things by Very Rare tier. Others have also mentioned that it costs way too much to summon.

[Incanur]

In the late game with heavy Life magic, Call to Arms seems fine. It's been my go-to summoning spell and surprisingly dangerous to my heroes in the game I'm currently playing. It's definitely underwhelming without combat buffs like High Prayer, but Paladins get scary if sufficiently buffed.

As far as building Paladins goes, I believe they're a solid unit but I wouldn't mind a slight cost reduction or buff to the Holy Bonus. I have limited experience in building them so far. They've been fine when I did, but felt a touch pricey.

[massone]

It's definitely underwhelming without combat buffs like High Prayer, but Paladins get scary if sufficiently buffed.

But that is the problem. There shouldn't be any Very Rare spells that can't stand on their own merit, and the Call-to-Arms Paladins are Fantastic so they can't be given the common buffs. Not to mention you wouldn't want to do it anyways because each buff would cost a turn, and even if you used Lionheart that still takes up 2 turns to set up for a barely tolerable unit. Imagine getting Enlightenment, Life Force, Consecration as your 3 other VR spells in a 5-Life play.

Just compare Call to Arms to Demons. Demon costs 29 less to summon, provides a free 40 MP worth of spells, with even more immunities. It might lose in a 1v1, but then Paladins can't even hit the Demon unless the Demon attacks first, and both play more of a support role. Demons also win at that by casting an undispellable Black Prayer as opposed to Holy Bonus that you lose when the unit is dead, or a variety of other options, such as using Syphon Life to get free Undead every battle. Once you have Demons, you literally have no reason to ever cast the lower level spells yourself because you can summon demons to do it for you and get a free unit to fight.

[Incanur]

Sadly I haven't yet had the pleasure of playing with Summon Demon (apart from via Demon Lords).

Heroism has been working for me despite the Call to Arms Paladins being Fantastic. The buffing does take time, but against other Life (&/or Sorcery) wizards I've found I have it surprisingly frequently. The standard sequence is that we both cast High Prayer & then I cast Supreme Light. (One enemy wizard would cast Supreme Light too.) So global buffs would already be in effect, improving the Paladins considerably. It's a fringe late-game Life-vs.-Life scenario with extreme casting skill all around, but I've been surprised by how relevant Call to Arms is. High Prayer plus Crusade & Warlord make even random Swordsmen units kind of effective, which really shocked me. & any spell allowing resistance is mostly useless at this point because of all the bonus resistance Life buffs provide.

[Anskiy]

Demons unfortunately have a chance to summon a non Caster 40 version, which is considerably less useful(though still powerful because of its death touch). But I agree that it's a great in combat summon, possibly one of the best of its kind. In fact, I daresay most of the power of a Demon Lord comes from being able to quickcast these a bunch, on top of their pretty powerful ranged attack.

[Seravy]

Life is the realm which isn't supposed to have combat summoning available at all as part of the design. They get Call to Arms as an exception and the spell has to be weak enough to reflect that this is something the realm is normally unable to do at all. Without it, you literally have no way to fight in a battle where you had no relevant armies, while all other realms of magic have that ability using summoning or direct damage spells. So no matter how weak the unit is (which it really isn't, it's still the second strongest combat summoned unit in the game after Earth Elemental considering the fighting stats, and if we look at utility and versatility it's also decent, probably second or third best.), there is no reason to make it stronger. Call to Arms is good because there is nothing else in the realm that fills this role and it's an important one.

[Kellnaved]

Maybe one of the reasons why people seem to complain about the paladin battle summoning spell so much is that life kind of lacks these big "change the whole game" spells in the very rare era. I mean getting more research or power points is nice, buffing units with more hp and (non stacking with holy weapons) +1 HIt is nice but if you compare it to time stop or power link or mass invisibility or spell binding or all the big overland mass killing spells or chaos end of the world economy killers ... It just seems Life has its time up until the rare era and after that it just can´t really compete with the other realms power progression anymore.

So having this as a very rare spell, that given it´s opportunity cost probably will see only very limited use (and than for limited effect) and given Life´s lack of "game changers" is somewhat disappointing.