I don't think Life needs any more counters to Crack's Call anyway. It has Resurrection if it dies after losing 21 HP (it should be revivable if Crack's Call didn't deal the killing blow, right?) and Incarnation.
Actually, thinking about Floating Island combos recently, if you cast Flight on Floating Island, can it provide a platform to allow units to survive Crack's Call while fighting on land?
@Seravy It is possible to focus so hard on making sure a solo hero is never useful... that heroes become useless in general. They already lag behind end game units in damage potential and survivability without lair item acquisition luck or an extreme investment. They are often first sniped by opposing ranged forces until end game items are equipped. IMO the caster heroes could all use 6 more hp (16 instead of 10, TEN!), and the melee heroes (especially the lowest level ones like brax and his ilk) could use another 4 hp (this puts most of them in the 17 hp range, but higher level melee heroes have a few more hp. This would put them at around 21) on their baseline so they can be used as part of an army during the period where they are useful. We're obviously talking balance with this entire Crack's Stasiscall discussion, instead of bugs, but there you have it. The heroes are a huge part of the flavor of the game, making each game unique. We should make sure they aren't useless as well as not overpowered.
Someone is inevitably is going to say, "But Roland with teleportation, flight, wraithform, haste, elemental armor, and +9 def can solo whole armies!". Yeah, well, so could a cavalry unit. Or most race's end game hitters, or any Very Rare summons really. Any great drake with all of that would have Roland eating with a spoon for the rest of his very short life.
Question about the settlers in the units.ini files. Default game stats for what must be Troll (regen) settlers have 40 hp. Lizardmen (swim, move 2) settlers have 20 hp. All others have 10 hp. Edits to these units (for example, only one settler has regerneration and therefore should be the troll settler) don't seem to show up in game.
Is it a part of the race (name added) change to settlers that the unit data for them was duplicated elsewhere and is overwriting units.ini data that was generated in the fresh units.dat?
For raider attacks, the city name cannot be seen in the combat. And even if you flee (or lose) the scroll which details the terrible damage to your city ALSO doesn't say what city just got ransacked. Is there any way to add the city name to either of these places?
A solo hero is almost always useful as is, with a few notable exceptions and even those exceptions only exist if you lack the appropriate artifact to counter it. You want to use solo heroes? Do you have a Wraithform item? Yes? Then go ahead. No? Then keep that hero away from Nature wizards. Every other type of wizard and all lairs are still safe.
Same applies to Death Wizards (You need Immolation for Cold Immunity), Sorcery (Illusion Immunity though it's not as important if you're careful), and Chaos (Insulation if they already have Lightning Bolt. If they have Doom Bolt or better, you stop using solo heroes against Chaos, period.), and you need absolutely nothing against Life.
Settlers are generated by code, they don't use the units.ini/units.dat data or to be more precise, all settlers use the same one (think it was unit $2E or something) then the race modifiers are applied when the unit is being created by the city.
For the city, click "Info" then "Map". It shows which tile the battle is on. The map doesn't show city names yet but it's a planned feature.
Allora uses magical arrows. Champions shouldn't be stopped by Warp Wood and Guardian Wind/Missile Immunity. It's an intentional feature that exists in CoM 1.
I haven't tested how floating islands work in land combat yet. It might work and while not intended, it might be worth keeping as a feature. Flight already semi-counters Crack's Call anyway because you can dispel Web with a reasonably high probability.
Can you take a look at the "disenchant area" magic? I tried 6 times with maximum power to remove the magic "Chaos Rift" from the city of "Sereia" and it didn't work.
@Intaka: Definitely agree. I mean, even with Artificer + Tactician, I only have enough mana to equip one hero with amazing gear, unless the game drags out for whatever reason. That's part of why I think overdoing hero nerfs would be detrimental overall, as such many new players think heroes are useless because they start out so pitifully weak and rely heavily on good equipment to become useful. And Very Rare summons eat even Super Heroes for breakfast in Caster of Magic, so you can't afford to wait TOO long either.
I am obliged to agree that the nerfs in the heroes/weapons made him secondary in a game "for real". You can't use them in a really efficient strategy. I continue to use them because I usually play on the easy, just for fun, and I delay the game on purpose to have useful magic artifacts.
Didn't the new artifact pricing system help? Good enough items to get things started should cost quite a bit less now although maxed items are of course still expensive but you don't really need those until the enemies start to throw very rare creatures at you.
