DEATH Realm

[Seravy]

i think what i'd really like to see from a Rare death magic spell is a combat/overland unit enchantment that grants life steal. that would help both the survivability issue as well as the attrition issue, as you'd be able to create replacement units for your stack on the fly.

Sadly this isn't doable at all, and honestly if it was, it would break the game. Life steal with 4 figures on Wraith is overpowered enough, imagine 8 figures doing it with ranged attacks, like slingers. It's not doable because there is only one "save modifier" for a unit. So if you cast this on something that already has any ability that has such modifier, either that attack would use this spells modifier or vice versa. also we don't have an empty unit enchantment slot that can be easily reused right now.

4, I don't agree with this one. Death is the only realm that can literally make armies out of nothing at all, thanks to the amazing Zombie Mastery. Maybe zombies aren't enough to attack cities for you (sometimes they are though) but they sure work well as garrison while the rest of your armies advance...and said zombies will even create better undead units for you.

I hope buffing wraiths can help filling the gap at rare spells, and I also hope the new spell will achieve that. So far Death had absolutely nothing that could deal high damage to strong units, not even situationally. It also had no way to deal irrecoverable damage until Annihilate - it only had undead creating damage which does prevent regeneration, but not healing and raise dead. Also while the spell sounds situational at first glance (you need fewer enemies for it to work well), it is not. It's usually easy to reduce enemy numbers through other spells or attacking them : not all 9 units will have both high armor and resistance. If the enemy attacks using 9 very rare tier units, a rare spell should not be enough to win in the first place.
Punishing a smaller number of units is also a very powerful combination with denial of resources, and killing weaker units. If anything, I'm worried this new spell might be far too overpowered.

[Nelphine]

I agree that its powerful but the reason I'm suggesting doom damage is specifically because of bless and resist magic. Death already has loads of problems with resistance targets, so why give them another one? I would rather see it be a normal attack vs rather than another resistance based attack.

If you were to do that I would drop it to something like 50 damage split between all targets, and always treat the enemy as having 2 more units than actual. Better than doom bolt against one target (17 damage) but relatively poor against 9 (4 damage) especially compared to flame strike. But unlike other death direct damage, the enemy doesn't get better at resisting except with magic/frost immunity. So its still effective against very rates and heroes - which are the very things death has a problem with! Death doesn't need a new spell for hurting things with low resistance. They need one for things with high resistance.

[GermanJoey]

Nelphine: Sending a lone Demon Lord out sounds insane to me, as it's just a dispel + web away from death, not even considering various nukes and such. It's way too expensive to treat so lightly. Isn't it the single most expensive spell in the entire game? (outside of SoM)

Seravy: too bad if there's not a unit enchantment available. I had been thinking it would be a melee-only enchantment, maybe even melee+normal only. Could be balanced around the resistance chance; for example, a save at -1 or even +0 doesn't seem too strong on e.g. a Paladin or Elven Lord. It's like the Vampiric item property - not as super awesome as it appears at first glance, but still beneficial.

If Wraiths are buffed I think that would help a lot though.

Zombie Mastery is not bad if you have some strong nukes to pair with it (and lots of mana and/or channeler), as you can attrition down strong stacks (and mana reserves) with repeated battles, but the zombies aren't gonna do much for you against anything really strong. The combat summon is pretty good because you can wait until their melee units are on your side of the map, and then summon it right next to an enemy. OTOH, the overland zombies are mostly gonna die to nukes and ranged attacks before they ever make melee contact.

Zombie Mastery also tends to lose you a lot of fame, when the AI jumps on and clobbers your pure zombie stacks. ;(

[Seravy]

It's like the Vampiric item property - not as super awesome as it appears at first glance, but still beneficial.

Except...it's not super awesome because the hero is a single figure so it deals 1x the damage. Your halberdier would work as though it used a vampiric item on each of the figures, dealing 6 times the damage (and healing) of the hero.

if you have some strong nukes to pair with it

Which is what the new spell coincidentally happens to be
(another thing I'm worried about, Chaos can't have single zombies all around the map for casting a Flame Strike...but Death can do that with the new nuke. No one will commit a stack of 9 just to attack a single zombie...and the spell utterly destroys only 2-3 attackers.)

[Nelphine]

Make it do damage to every enemy unit equal to 50/(# of enemy units +4). 10 against a single, 4 against 9. Make it cist more than doom bolt, and now its not more effective than doom bolt. You can still use zombies to to spam it but it'll be too expensive to sustain.

[zitro1987]

Weakness: I against suggest to take out the 'resist at' element to it and make it work for all units (or at least make it resist at -50 so it always works) and increase the cost to around 10-12. Much less situational. AI could be programmed to target high-resistance units.

Cloak of Fear: definitively not situational as it benefits most battles to some extent, though it works best when paired with black prayer.

Wraiths: Your proposal seems horribly overpowered, especially if you make them move fast. Their high damage output and healing potential (especially with black prayer) means they should have a weakness or two. I do approve of higher melee and maybe a bit more armor/resistance/hp.

Black Wind / Frozen Heart - I wouldn't cry if 'black wind' disappears, though I'm not sure another flame-strike like spell is a solution, especially if resistance-based as 'wrack' fits that purpose. The spell simply doesn't stand out. I might propose more interesting (if slightly situational alternatives):
*a global combat spell that removes 3-4 armor from all enemy units (I don't think there's any global spells that targets armor-based vulnerability on a global sense). This also is more effective against life's 'prayer' as losing armor with +to defend is more substantial/
*a spell that causes 2 automatic damage per figure ... granting guaranteed kills for certain units or at least deal more damage than doom bolt.
*Black Wind being tweaked. How about a guarantee kill of all units with 6-7 resistance or less in the overland tile? (disintegrate-like) It can combine well with 'eternal night'

[GermanJoey]

Which is what the new spell coincidentally happens to be
(another thing I'm worried about, Chaos can't have single zombies all around the map for casting a Flame Strike...but Death can do that with the new nuke. No one will commit a stack of 9 just to attack a single zombie...and the spell utterly destroys only 2-3 attackers.)

Well sure, and I guess it does fit into this specific niche of "send two 9-stacks of zombies into a city in order to cast 4 extra reaper slashes against a Great Drake", except situationally more efficient. But what if you don't have zombie mastery? This new spell doesn't do anything that Death's other spells (e.g. Wrack) don't already do, just do it more efficiently in some situations.

What does Death do against, say, a bunch of Sky Drakes? Or Colossi? Or even a bunch of Paladins under High Prayer? Etc. Death Knights and Demon Lord are about as good, but Death has a harder time getting to them (no self-city buffs) and a harder time keeping them alive.

Like, look at Chaos. It too has strong and expensive top-tier summons, devastating city enchantments, and very strong battle nukes, two of which also hit all units. But it also has a bunch more strong summons and some very strong unit buffs, including ones that you can cast both in-battle (Warp Reality) and out (Chaos Channels, Flame Blade on raged, Chaos Surge) that help keep units alive. Chaos nukes are much more reliable too, ironically enough.

What differentiates Death vs Chaos, other than Chaos being better at everything death does? Death has a much easier early game. And making undead I guess, but there's a gap in the mid-game where ghouls stop cutting the mustard but before Zombie Mastery and Wraiths come into play. But in general I'd always rather have a chaos book over a death book.

[Seravy]

Their high damage output and healing potential (especially with black prayer) means they should have a weakness or two

I would normally consider this a valid reasoning but the reason why Death is bad is exactly because it has nothing that is reliable in the "Rare" tier. A creature with a weakness is not a reasonable option when the realm has no other creature to summon at all.

How about a guarantee kill of all units with 6-7 resistance or less in the overland tile? (disintegrate-like) It can combine well with 'eternal night'

What 6-7 resistance units could be there that I cannot easily kill in combat when I already have rare spells and the capacity to use them? I can't think of any unit except Great Lizard which has so low resistance and is still a threat at this stage of the game.

Weakness: I against suggest to take out the 'resist at' element to it and make it work for all units (or at least make it resist at -50 so it always works) and increase the cost to around 10-12. Much less situational. AI could be programmed to target high-resistance units.

Reducing 3 attack on a Great Drake, Great Wyrm, Archangel, Demon Lord, giants, Colossai etc is a wasted turn. Increasing the cost would take away the last thing I use this for : When I have low skill and need to deal with a large number of medicore enemies that have more than 3-5 resistance (otherwise fear is better)

This spell is not situational because it is resisted. It's situational because
-If enemy resistance is too low, Cloak of Fear is better as it affects all enemy melee units, not one
-If enemy attack is too high, it doesn't do anything useful, -3 is worthless on units that have 15+
-If I have high casting skill or there are few enemies, bigger spells are better, like zombie or reaper slash
etc

This new spell doesn't do anything that Death's other spells (e.g. Wrack) don't already do, just do it more efficiently in some situations.

This I have to argue with. Wrack will never damage a unit with over 10 resistance. The new spell can do high damage to those units as long as they are not in a large crowd. Single hero with 30 armor and resistance not even Reaper Slash can damage? No problem, this deals 13 damage to it with every casting! Lone Great Drake trying to eat your swordmen? Cast this three times and it is dead. Well, okay, Reaper Slash can do that one but you need 4 of those. Maybe we need to set the power a bit higher? Or maybe not. Irrecoverable is a big deal if that Great Drake has regeneration or the owner has Healing...Reaper Slash wil never work in that situation.

What does Death do against, say, a bunch of Sky Drakes? Or Colossi? Or even a bunch of Paladins under High Prayer?

These are all very rare spells. A rare spell is not supposed to solve these easily. It does work on Colossus pretty well as long as there is only one or two. Stack of 9 colossus or sky drake? You die, no matter which realm you play, that's why those spells are very rare. Same could be said about 9 Death Knights or Demon Lords.

[GermanJoey]

I don't mean a 9-Colossi death stack or even a lone wandering one. I just mean like, say a Colossi is there in a battle and you want to kill/stop it before it annihilates your best units. What does Death Magic do if an enemy wizard has a stack of, say: 1 Colossus (land linked), a pair of Gorgons (land linked), 2 heroes (high XP), 2 Magicians, and 2 Paladins? Either about to invade a key city of yours, or guarding their fortress, take your pick. Assume the wizard and the hero have some sort of high end Nature battle spells if you have similar Death spells.

edit: if you don't think this example stack is fair for whatever reason, you could come up with a similiarly-priced one that Death would do well against, I guess. But to me, when it comes to the end-game is pretty lousy.

[Seravy]

I don't mean a 9-Colossi death stack or even a lone wandering one. I just mean like, say a Colossi is there in a battle and you want to kill/stop it before it annihilates your best units. What does Death Magic do if an enemy wizard has a stack of, say: 1 Colossus (land linked), a pair of Gorgons (land linked), 2 heroes (high XP), 2 Magicians, and 2 Paladins? Either about to invade a key city of yours, or guarding their fortress, take your pick. Assume the wizard and the hero have some sort of high end Nature battle spells if you have similar Death spells.

edit: if you don't think this example stack is fair for whatever reason, you could come up with a similiarly-priced one that Death would do well against, I guess. But to me, when it comes to the end-game is pretty lousy.

That's a very rare tier doomstack. We are designing a rare spell here so I fail to see how this is relevant. Unless you are trying to say "Death needs a very rare spell, not a rare one".

To answer the question. If that attacks anything important, see below. If not, I use whatever I want to kill the 2 magicians, maybe paladins, or heroes is they're vulnerable to anything then lose my zombies and am happy about the outcome.
...so, assuming it is an important city, I probably have enough defenses to kill a gorgon (like, fire all 9 of my magicians at it and add a reaper slash or something). In worst case I have to put it to sleep first, which is also easy if I have magicians, but it is most likely not needed.
Then I animate the gorgon on turn two (we are assuming very rare spells are available) and use the magicians to kill the other. My gorgon goes after the colossus. With all the buffs from being animated, and 3 figures, the colossus is no match for a gorgon and gets killed. Then I animate the colossus and kill the heroes with it. This assumes the heroes aren't the unstoppable kind each worth 3 colossus of course. If they are, this battle was never meant to be winnable without having 5-6 very rare units of my own. It also assumes they'll be busy for a bit while killing my magicians, so the gorgon has time to catch the colossus.

(if it was anything other than Colossus, I could have started with killing and animating that, but Colossus has too much armor for even magicians to damage, and it is immune to reaper slash.)

Alternatively, my garrison of 9 magicians kill the two gorgons (with sleep and shots), and the two enemy magicians, probably even a paladin or two before they get killed. I hold back and not cast while I can afford. Then when there are only the 2 heroes and 1 colossus left, I use the new spell 4 times and that kills them all. I should have 220 casting skill in the endgame using a Death wizard...the risky part is, dragging the combat long enough without losing all the units. Works better if not everything are magicians but something faster or durable is also included.

High end nature spells...well, Magicians don't mind Entangle, and while they mind Call Lightning, they will be able to do their job before that kills them. Nature has no other combat spells in very rare that matter. Regeneration I can ignore since I win the battle, but the new spell does irrecoverable damage anyway, and reanimating the units stops them from regenerating as well. Entangle might prevent reaching the colossus with reanimated units unfortunately, so in that case it's better to try the new spell. Even if losing, the stack will be badly damaged and attacking it with a few nearby zombies should be enough to finish the off by casting the new spell again.