Quote:I dunno, Holy Bonus in general is underwhelming to me. Only affecting normal units in a game that's all about fantastic creatures? Meh.
Holy Bonus affects all units, including Fantastic Creatures. (Angel also has the ability and buffs itself)
Maybe the problem is not affecting ranged attack which does make it useless for ranged units. (they also don't need the defense as much if they stay away from the enemy)
However I'm worried if it affected ranged attack that would become too powerful.
Quote:The only Realm that has any + Hit buffs are in Life, and it also has strong +atk buffs in the form of Heroism and Lionheart. Nature with Adamantium, or Chaos with Flame Blade/Blazing March add attack power.
Chaos with Soul Linker adds + To Hit, and with the revamped item cost system, using a hero in Chaos should be viable. I can't think of anything else that adds + To Hit though right now, so I have to agree this does benefit using ELven Lords.
Quote:Also, the AI doesn't target Paladins? That's quite strange, I seem to recall it always being targeted first regardless what other units are on the battlefield.
The AI targets the thing it can deal the most damage to in general. Paladins have reasonably high defense (7) compared to most other units. Crusaders however have Large Shield so if the enemy uses ranged units, they will not target the crusaders.
Pikemen should work fine.
Overall, the problem is if I were to speak in RPG terms, the Elven Lord is a single-class unit - it's specialized at fighting in melee. The Paladin is dual-class - it's nearly as good at fighting as Elven Lords but is also does support. Obviously the latter is less cost-effective if you only need a fighter.
There are many different things we could do.
1. Make Holy Bonus affect ranged.
This makes sense but I'm worried it might be too powerful. Stacking buffs on ranged attack is very powerful. This decision isn't specific to Paladins and will also affect the Angel, Archangel and the Bard and Chosen heroes. However we did do the same thing to Heavenly Light in the past which worked fine, and ranged units are generally less good on the offense due to not getting the first turn.
2. If "ranged is always better" that might indicate the AI isn't efficient at using the spells that counter ranged attacks, in particular Guardian Wind, Elemental Armor, Resist Elements, and Invisibility. As all of these now work in automatic combat, it might be a good idea to teach the AI to use these spells more if they are fighting an enemy that has a lot of units with missile or magic ranged attacks. (that might even help them banish/defeat other AIs because it counters the most common garrisoning strategies)
Note : we can do this only for CoM II.
3. We can lower the price of Paladins (to 200?). This basically means the Holy Bonus is free and the "price" is just the fact you have to play High Men with all the disadvantages that brings (low resistance units, bad unrest tables).
4. We can make Paladins slightly stronger. Probably +1 defense is the most we can do without making the unit completely broken. This indirectly buffs the Call to Arms spell.
5. We can split the roles by adding a new unit. Paladins lose Holy Bonus and we add a new unit - Bishop maybe? - that has good defense, and hit points, has Holy Bonus, but very minimal attack strength(s). Basically an upgrade of Priests.
