CHAOS Realm

[Nelphine]

I'm fine with raise dead units getting it as it's often confusing as to why a swordsmen can't get holy armor cast on it. Yes it's because raise dead makes it a life unit but that isn't really intuitive. And unlike undead there are no extra abilities from being a life unit to indicate something has changed.

Similarly, personally I'd be ok with making undead units a valid target (undead swordsmen still have weapons and armor so why not cast holy weapon?). I'd rather not though UNLESS making it work on any undead that was originally a city unit regardless of chaos channels, so I'd rather modify the second condition 'chaos channels and not undead'.

[teelaurila]

The only way to have chaos channels AND originally be a fantastic unit is via Mystic Surge. 

What about units made undead (create undead and bloodlust) and lycantrophy?

[teelaurila]

It would seem to be a lot more clear if going by the base unit. This would also remove screwy order-of-things differences (except with werewolves).

Most normal unit effects are about weapons/armor (flame blade, holy weapon/armor, shatter) which as mentioned intuitively shouldn't change if the wielder does. (though down that road is fire giant wielding a sword and naga a trident) The ability to put these buffs on an undead should be fine (except for undead trolls, undead are a really poor target anyway, except for situational in-combat buffing). And chaos channeled units getting these seems the intention anyway.

It gets a bit more complex with possession and heroism, which would for consistency then affect by base unit as well. Or at least I suppose so. Possession affecting chaos channeled sounds fair in exchange, and it wouldn't affect undead (death resistance)? Heroism for undead is a bit screwy, but again a poor choice - unless trolls.

Almost on the same topic, in my present game I'm facing heroism werewolves, which is screwy in its own right. Unit experience gets wiped when making the werewolf, but it seems not if through heroism. 2 such werewolves seems to have been responsible for an early tower crack.

[Nelphine]

Yeah adamamtium holy weapon heroism flame blade holy armor werewolves are rather disgusting.

[Nelphine]

It's too bad werewolves don't keep racial modifiers. Then they'd be super disgusting.

[zitro1987]

Heroism+werewolves seem like an unintended bug. I think it may cause more 'strategic' balance issues than 'tactical' however so it might be better not to code the AI to cast heroism for the purposes of lycanthropy (if accidental, that's ok).

Note: lycanthropy is one of the best uncommon summons in the game, because of its great synergies across realms (and even among death, you have bloodlust)
*I do worry about insane attack potential issues with its +2 to hit (well, it is +1, but who casts this spell without alchemist guild?) and whether having base unit at 0-tohit but +2 melee would lessen this concern (but then again, holy weapon would grant +25% instead of +20% so nevermind!).

[Nelphine]

I don't believe the AI purposefully uses heroism and then lycanthropy. The most common situations this occurs are very early in the game, where it's reasonable to assume heroism was cast on swordsmen, and then better units are built, and so the swordsmen becomes a likely target for lycanthropy despite the heroism.

[Seravy]

If necessary we can alter Lycanthropy to clear certain buffs from the unit when applied, but then we need to discuss which. Heroism makes sense to be removed as experience isn't supposed to be a thing fantastic units can have. Other buffs, idk, I do like the ability to have them if cast in the correct order, but I can see why a Flame Blade Holy Weapon Holy Armor Werewolf might be a major a problem. Losing the unit meaning a loss of high value if buffed simply does not apply if the unit can regenerate. On the other hand Blood Lust can already double the attack power, so it only really is a problem for Holy Armor and Heroism which give defense I guess? Unless you use them against other fantastic units where Blood Lust wouldn't apply.

I don't think putting "normal unit only" buffs on undead is a balance issue - undead normal units aren't any better than their non-undead counterpart - they have some extra immunities, but also extra weak points.
Putting (combat) buffs on raised dead or Mystic surged units doesn't sound like a problem either.

So if we redefine the rule as "target unit's BASE type must be normal", then we are good I guess?

Except we'll need to be extra cautious about all the special cases, like Chaos Channells itself. As is, the unit becoming fantastic might be what prevents it from being cast on the unit again.

[Nelphine]

Personally, buffed werewolves slaughter fantastic units (the ones were talking about are melee 13, +3 to hit, armor 7, health 6, 6 figures; that's way better than say, wraiths. And with regeneration that's almost as good as a death knight or hydra.) 

I think werewolves should clear all spells. It's kind of neat to allow alchemists guild and ores, but the other buffs get excessive.

For your final paragraph I actually don't understand what you mean. I thought that's what we were discussing.

[Seravy]

Well that was one option the other was "target units' current type is normal or it has chaos channels on". The two are different sets of units, albeit similar with a lot of overlap. The main difference is, this one is very counterintuitive but excludes undead or other special cases unless they are also chaos channeled. The other is easy to understand but enables the buffs in a lot of additional cases. But those cases are probably not an issue so I guess it's better.

Oh that paragraph. I meant that if we remove the current condition, we might end up allowing Chaos Channels to target a creature that already has Chaos Channels on if we aren't carefully double checking to make sure that is actually explicitly disabled (or is undead - we might want to allow that one though, but definitely not multiples of Chaos Channels...)