LIFE Realm

[Seravy]

Well, picking a strong common for 2 books is a good strategy, and it's not exclusive to Endurance.
I'd say Blur is just as good, if not better, for reducing enemy damage, but picking Resist Magic, Web, Wraith Form among others can be very powerful for a different kind of effect.

Not having a separate magic defense stat is a bit unusual but at least it eliminates the "is this physical or magical fire" type of questions. It's often not trivial to know what's magical unless the game is kind enough to actually tell to the player directly through the description or attack icon or something like that. (Magic defense doubling up to both defend against magic damage and resist curses in most other games, isn't necessarily better, and then there are those spells that deal physical damage to get around it where available...)

(btw while Endurance is powerful, it's also very expensive to cast. I rarely use it on summons, it's just not worth an extra 75 and the risk of dispelling to put it on anything less than rare/very rare and a stack of those beat almost anything without the buff. As good as a move 3 shadow demon stack with higher damage reduction would be, even that's not worth the 50% extra cost. Maybe on great lizards or chimeras I would consider it, those benefit from the extra combat movement quite a lot, and reaching 4 movement overland is also a relevant threshold due to city distance.)

[Nelphine]

I fully buff my first stack of fighters guild units with endurance. I typically get that before dispelling age, often before dispel magic, and most of my fights with that first stack are against lairs anyway.

I then use it on ships and windwalkwrs, and if needed to do fortress strikes with later stacks.

[jhsidi]

Hm, I'd stand by saying that Endurance is just a straight up better Common than anything else across the board. Resist Magic is good but only applies to curses. Web is situational, Wraith Form is very situational and loses half its purpose -- weapon immunity -- very quickly. And I'd also stand by Endurance growing in value as the game goes on. It is high cost but as a non-Life player that just results in running into stacks of enemies buffed with Endurance that's much harder to dispel.

I do use it on entire stacks of units fairly early into the game, if I'm out treasure hunting or if it's before the point of dispelling wave / disenchant area.

[Nelphine]

Blur is in the same range as endurance.
Web is situational, but scales even better than endurance does (preventing enemies from acting, particularly when you can cast 4+ web per turn, is absurdly powerful against very rares).


Heroism is stronger early game than endurance, particularly on heroes, but doesn't scale as well.

Focus magic on very particular units is absurd, but is too situational.

Death and chaos have nothing that compares, except ghouls of course.

[zitro1987]

The main problem I see with life is that many of the common spells are more useful mid to late game than early game, resulting in a very unbalanced realm. The unit buffs on units prior to fighter's guild are less effective than most early summoning units. A cavalry unit with buffs costing as much as a gargoyle, werewolf, or giant spiders is comparable to a 5 or 6 move war bear strength-wise. A mid-tier unit like priest or halberdier with 200-mana worth of unit buffs may be pretty strong, but try fighting 4 war bears, 3 ghouls, or 2 werewolves with that single unit (comparable mana cost)

Life early on depends on rushing military buildings which cost you economically and/or research rushing summon hero if it even shows up in spellbook. It's hard to advance economically when all you have are low-tier military units with cost-prohibitive buffs for them.

These unit enchantments otherwise stack unusually well (with prayer) to most armorer guild units and 5-6 buffed heroes (I assume summon hero and/or famous can help). That's when life shines and I feel the balance is off because early spells help late game.

Because of that, life is overpowered with 5 or 6 books grouped with a realm that is strong early in game or a series of retorts that limit its early weakness.

[Seravy]

Some stats have increasing returns (defense, resistance), while others are multiplicative so the more buffs you already have the more each point in their pair is worth (Hit and attack, To Def and defense).
This means buffs always scale well because they stack, so even if they were not scaling well, adding them on top of other buffs makes them better anyway - and by the time scaling is an issue, you do have buffs to stack.

Which is a good thing - we generally don't want too many spells to get obsolete, 2-3 in each tier and realm is fine but any more isn't. Life is slightly better than average at this however as already discussed - it barely has any spells that get obsolete.

[Nelphine]

I dunno. Chaos has 1 common spells that I ever use past common tier (flame blade). Death has 3-5 (wraith form and ghouls, black sleep and mana leak are arguable. Oh summon zombie.). Nature has 4-5 (web, nature's eye, resist elements, water walking, and earth to mud I can't decide). Sorcery has 3-4 (resist magic, blur, focus magic plus confusion is arguable). Life has 8? (Star fires and bless are only ones I don't. But no, since I'm counting resist magic, I should count bless, so life has NINE.) Oh no it is 8, holy weapon eventually goes obsolete.

That's a little more than a bit better.

I should do uncommon as well though. Past uncommon, nature uses transmute, change terrain, land linking, and construct catapult - so 4. Death uses possession and black prayer, so 2. Chaos has raised volcano, fire storm, mystic surge, lightning bolt, chaos channels. 5 - pretty good. Sorcery has counter magic, aura of majesty, aether binding, spell blast, spell lock, flight and dispelling wave, so 6. Life has true sight, raise dead, stream of life, prayer (and prayer by itself is better than many rares as mentioned elsewhere), altar of peace, resurrection and divine order. 

So of the first two tiers, life has 15 spells that never go obsolete. Sorcery has 9-10. Nature 8-9. Chaos has 6. Death has 5-7.

That's a pretty huge difference.

Rare tier: 
Life has incarnation, lionheart, altar of battle, invulnerability, prosperity, inspirations, mass healing, exaltation. That's 8. 23 that don't go obsolete.
Death has: wave of despair, zombie mastery, dark ritual. That's 3, so 8-10 that don't go obsolete.
Chaos has: doom mastery, flame strike, doom bolt, warp lightning, efreet, and arguably blazing March (but it's so bleh for a rare that it's often better to cast something else). 5-6 for a total of 11-12.
Nature has elemental armor, gorgons, survival instinct, iron skin, Gaia's blessing, 5 more for a total of 13-14.
Sorcery has Uranus' blessing, mind storm, air elemental, invisibility, magic immunity, wind walking, stasis, 7 (although 2 are arguably better than most very rares, so I wish I could count them higher) for a total of 16-17.

Life has twice as many as 2 of the other realms, and 50% more than the next realm.

It does make a big difference to have that many spells that never go obsolete, and therefore, effectively stack with each other.



Note, I didn't include city curses on my list. For the AI they absolutely should count, which helps death and chaos, but I have yet to see them act as a huge boon for the human, which is where the issue occurs in the first place. So, if the recent changes have made them work then death picks up 3 more and chaos gets 1 as well.
Nightstalker should also make the list, but I never find I have time to actually summon them later as death, so I haven't counted them. If others disagree, then add 1 more to death.
Purely defensive city buffs don't make the list for the human but you could add them I guess. I just can't ever imagine using them past the tier I get them unless I already had enough summons of the next tier and if I already have enough summons then I've already won, or I can't win, so I consider them obsoleted by the next tier of summons.

[Nelphine]

As silly as it is, just putting arbitrary stacking limits might help.

Fire bolt is obsoleted by lightning bolt, and great lizards are obsoleted by Gorgons. Buffs don't have that problem, and life has the most buffs. Putting arbitrary buff stack limits would help both the actual in unit stacking that can happen, but also the metagame problem where life just gets to do more things with the same number of books than anyone else.

[Bahgtru]

Blur is in the same range as endurance.

Don't forget that endurance lets speed 2 units go back faster, meaning that you avoid 1 entire turn of speed 3 units attacking you. That's huge - think of how many speed 3 strong units are there.

The main problem I see with life is that many of the common spells are more useful mid to late game than early game, resulting in a very unbalanced realm. The unit buffs on units prior to fighter's guild are less effective than most early summoning units. A cavalry unit with buffs costing as much as a gargoyle, werewolf, or giant spiders is comparable to a 5 or 6 move war bear strength-wise. A mid-tier unit like priest or halberdier with 200-mana worth of unit buffs may be pretty strong, but try fighting 4 war bears, 3 ghouls, or 2 werewolves with that single unit (comparable mana cost) [...]

It's even worse, because that's not an early game limit. You can build the fighter guild straight away in a handful of turns. Or you can use holy weapon on archers and go on a killing spree, and then buy your FG. And you can do that in battle, too - try to have the same effect with a fire elemental... Life is unbalanced from the very beginning.

[Bahgtru]

while Endurance is powerful, it's also very expensive to cast. I rarely use it on summons, it's just not worth an extra 75 and the risk of dispelling to put it on anything less than rare/very rare and a stack of those beat almost anything without the buff.

ghouls+endurance, bless and RE can go up against many giants and even efreeti...