Arch Angels & Demon Lords

[m59gar]

So I get the idea behind making these summons generate 20 power, but it's pretty much the destruction of the last phase of all of my games. I have slowly been working my way up the difficulties, and starting at Expert, I could never figure out how 1 or 2 AIs would continue to grow in power geometrically despite both planes being fully colonized. Then, I realized that there is a source of power in the game that does not require guarding a resource: Arch Angels and Demon Lords.

The thing is, these are the only resources that aren't tied to anything in particular. That means I can't really do anything about them. Their resistance is so high Mass Unsummoning doesn't work, and they're spread out throughout both planes. Furthermore, they lead to a runaway effect where the AI summons Arch Angels / Demon Lords constantly, which grows their casting skill and mana income, which leads to more and more Arch Angels and Demon Lords. I decided to post about this when I went to attack a stock Merlin wizard to stop his Spell of Mastery and he had doomstacks of Arch Angels all around his capitol. That's 180 power per stack... no wonder I literally cannot match his production. In 2 or 3 mobile squares, he has more power generation than my entire empire.

Can something be done about this ?

[Seravy]

I have been thinking the amount of power generated might need revision because we reduced summoning costs. It used to be 1200+ for a single Arch Angel or Demon Lord.
They still do cost roughly 20-30% more than other very rare summons, without being that much stronger than them though, so we probably need to keep the ability if the cost stays unchanged, but we should consider reducing the power to a smaller amount.

I'd like to hear opinions about this.

[Seravy]

By the way, the design goals for very rare summons of each realm :

Nature : Best creatures, high stats with a few, but good abilities.
Chaos : High stats like Nature but not as good overall due to lack of abilities.
Sorcery : Low stats, but abilities that make it hard to defend against, or damage the creatures.
Life and Death : The most epic creatures representing the ultimate fight between good and evil, so these need to be the most impressive, but without being the most powerful.

So Life got the support role - on top of the existing Holy Bonus, Wind Walking got added. Death got a bunch of battle immunities and a Doom Bolt spell, as "being impressive in combat" to go with the demon summoning, fear and life steal. And both got the ability to produce power. So it mainly started out as a "for flavor" addition, but might have grown to be too powerful over the time.

[Nelphine]

Yup, that's why I wanted to know what the power bonus was on lunatic for my game. I was going to make a suggestion for Demon Lords/Archangels. (As I realize that it's actually currently more cost effective to summon archangels/demon lords than to do ANY city economic buff except for Uranus' Blessing).

My gut is to reduce it to 10, but math could put it anywhere between 5 and 12 or so. (Actually if you include standard maintenance for a very rare, 5 is probably closer to the actual value it should be.)

[zitro1987]

My thought is to retain it for the archangel, but raise creature cost ... and eliminate it for the demon lord, and give it a crazy life steal (-7?), added melee and some added hp to compensate.

[namad]

By the way, the design goals for very rare summons of each realm :

Nature : Best creatures, high stats with a few, but good abilities.
Chaos : High stats like Nature but not as good overall due to lack of abilities.
Sorcery : Low stats, but abilities that make it hard to defend against, or damage the creatures.
Life and Death : The most epic creatures representing the ultimate fight between good and evil, so these need to be the most impressive, but without being the most powerful.

So Life got the support role - on top of the existing Holy Bonus, Wind Walking got added. Death got a bunch of battle immunities and a Doom Bolt spell, as "being impressive in combat" to go with the demon summoning, fear and life steal. And both got the ability to produce power. So it mainly started out as a "for flavor" addition, but might have grown to be too powerful over the time.

I don't really like your description and I think maybe you should go back to the MTG color pie to help think of ways to improve life and death creatures?

Nature has the best set of raw stats and the most total summons. Check.

Chaos has high stats, but I don't think it should lack abilities, nor do I think it does. Instead chaos has more attack and more offensive abilities whereas nature creatures run the gamut of all sorts. Specifically nature having a lot more useful defensive stats and abilities than Chaos. Also check. Despite me thinking you've described these colors wrong, you've implemented their spells masterfully.

Sorcery: Low stats? I don't necessarily agree here. I don't think they should have low stats, nor do I think they have low stats in the game right now. What they tend to have is very one dimensional stats (they're only usually good for one specific thing). Summons that can only attack (but not absorb any hits themselves are common for sorcery). Additional sorcery lacks any real "meat" or "bulk" not to their creature's stats but to their selection of choices as to what to summon. They also tend to have the BEST abilities. However these are one dimensional (like an air elemental gaining defense merely by being invisible). Again check mark, I think you nailed this.

Life creatures in MTG and also in master of magic are actually the opposite of chaos creatures, mathematically, not the opposite of death creatures. It is then mostly the white spells which sit in opposition to the death spells, not so much the creatures IMO. Long boring rant about this: (Yes a lot of white creatures get a special bonus against black creatures but in MTG if green get's a 3/3, red might get a similar 3/2 and white might get a similar 2/3. Meanwhile Blue might get a 2/2 flying and black might get a 4/4 that hurts yourself or a 2/2 that returns a dead creature to your hand.... extending along this analogy even more the green creature might get trample, the white one vigilance, and the red one haste.)  Rant over.

In MTG white opposes both red and black equally as enemy colors. So taking nature as the gold star. Chaos is like taking a sword from nature and setting it on fire. Life is therefore like taking a shield from nature and blessing it with support abilities. This actually sucks. This is why white creatures were pretty worthless in magic for a decade or two until mark rosewater thought up a fix to this problem. In addition to defensive themes and support abilities white would get "weenies" as in white would be able to compete with nature in terms of raw efficiency of it's cheapest and weakest units and how much of a bulk it could gain with them. Additionally they would work well together, emulating the concept of a phalanx. I don't know if you ever want to implement anything like this, nor am I sure if you should. I think it's possible you could just consider that spells like heroism fill this role.

Perhaps arch angels should not generate any power and should give any normal unit in their square heroism? a random common white buff spell? permanently? for one battle only? etc? Some sort of ability like this? which would simulate the ability to "summon" hordes of "weak weenies"? Perhaps even make it stack? although if you're giving out free stacking random permanent buffs I think that's too much. So maybe they should be permanent but only ever heroism, or just for that one battle only and stack so that an army of 3 arch angels and 6 normal units would end up getting 18 free random normal unit buffs cast? Maybe this would suck? 

Maybe they should grant SKILL instead of power? Since using power to summon something that generates power has an exponential growth but using power to gain skill is something blue can already do (Uranus blessing is limited to your number of cities but arch angels wouldn't be so maybe +5 skill each?), and it might fit with the theme of white to attach a skill bonus to a creature and maybe make the effect weaker? fixed +skill or +skill progress per turn either or I guess. Alternately make the arch angels much cheaper and just remove their power ability? What's with this ultimate life and death stuff? I'm not sure what lore or fiction that's derived from but I doubt it's MTG or MoM? It's somewhat clear that the author of master of magic intended white and black to have the weaker summons (although I'm 100% on board with your desire to fix this issue.)

EDIT: another maybe impossible idea, that would fit VERY well in theme for white... give arch angels armsmaster (the hero ability), if this is possible it solves all the theme problems arch angels have. You could combine this with any of my other suggestions (the simplest of which would be remove power and reduce cost). Both white and black in magic the gathering are somewhat known for their cost saving measures. Another solution, likely impossible to code, make 1 arch angel per city generate their power as long as they're in the city. Basically give the arch angels uranus blessing tossed in as long as they play defensively, probably impossible, but strong in theme. White/Life's only "ultimate" power is defense and peace IMO.

As to death, in MTG I'd say black creatures are just flat out the best, in every way. However at a horrific cost. They often have to die, or kill an ally to exist. This balances their absurd abilities and stats, because you end up losing card advantage in a card game that is only very loosely related to this game at all. This gives no real inspiration to me at all. So I'll just throw out some random ideas:
Do what I suggested for life? Swap the bonus to skill or reduce the cost?

Ideas for death that are in theme, at the start of every combat an arch demon kills all normal units on it's side of the battlefield and returns them back into play as zombies. If they survive the battle they're now zombified versions of themselves forever. In exchange gain some ridiculously cool power, like I dunno +10 caster per allied unit effected this way? (or a different number). Or give all the zombies some +defense +attack raw stats that lasts for that battle only (or forever, whichever is easier to code). Alternatively if any arch demon's survive a battle that you win, zombify (and add it to your army) one enemy fantastic unit that died per arch demon (or just one period no stacking). 

EDIT: Alternatively arch demon's apply Zombie Mastery  to any battle they're in, this would be a strong theme, but it might ruin the identical rare spell (which you could then remove, but I don't think this idea is very good). A similar idea, arch demon's each rescue one dead allied fantastic unit, if you win the battle, return it to your side, zombify it. This would be like zombie mastery but for fantastic creatures. It would be very strongly in theme with death's ability to surpass the grave. You'd probably have to make it not work on arch demons, probably also not work on any zombies.... probably impossible to code.

Sorry if this isn't useful, I'm not sure if you're a magic the gathering fan, but the color system in master of magic appears to clearly be based on the one in magic the gathering (although probably based on the first ever set of magic the gathering, which wasn't balanced at all and has been improved on and refined and written about at length on their official site in about 100 blog posts about making each color feel unique by mark rosewater.)

[Seravy]

"weenie" in Life means supporting normal units through common buffs because, unlike mtg, here you do get normal units. You don't summon knights and soldiers, you build them. However we were talking about very rare creatures specifically here.

I'd like if you kept ideas to already existing abilities. I'm not entirely sure what those ideas are meant to be for anyway - Arch Angels already have Holy Bonus 2 which is as good as granting heroism to all units. Plus they cast Prayer in battle if you don't happen to do it yourself. They already work very well for supporting hordes of normal units, wind walking also works for this well.

in MtG angels tend to hit hard like dragons but with more abilities, see Akroma. They almost never support troops - why play a 5-8 mana creature in a weenie deck? You have Crusade and Glorious Anthem for that. And Jihad. But in CoM they do it and do it well enough as is.

Both Life and Death in MoM and CoM has a theme of economy - Life had economy as more income from stuff, while death had cheaper upkeep on summoned creatures and dark ritual instead. I don't think a creature generating power feels out of place for either realm.

I prefer to keep changes to reducing the amount, not removing the ability entirely.

[namad]

"weenie" in Life means supporting normal units through common buffs because, unlike mtg, here you do get normal units. You don't summon knights and soldiers, you build them. However we were talking about very rare creatures specifically here.

I'd like if you kept ideas to already existing abilities. I'm not entirely sure what those ideas are meant to be for anyway - Arch Angels already have Holy Bonus 2 which is as good as granting heroism to all units. Plus they cast Prayer in battle if you don't happen to do it yourself. They already work very well for supporting hordes of normal units, wind walking also works for this well.

in MtG angels tend to hit hard like dragons but with more abilities, see Akroma. They almost never support troops - why play a 5-8 mana creature in a weenie deck? You have Crusade and Glorious Anthem for that. And Jihad. But in CoM they do it and do it well enough as is.

Both Life and Death in MoM and CoM has a theme of economy - Life had economy as more income from stuff, while death had cheaper upkeep on summoned creatures and dark ritual instead. I don't think a creature generating power feels out of place for either realm.

I prefer to keep changes to reducing the amount, not removing the ability entirely.

Yes, I'm aware heroism is the most boring spell to have named there, I liked the theme of it. Arch angels could infinitely apply free holy armor permanently though which would interestingly stack with their prayer but I guess that's impossible to code. Perhaps creatures cannot have hero abilities so you can't give them armsmaster or sage or noble. Akroma is a good counter point, Akroma is IMO a bit like a dragon but with even more abilities, modern era white angels are strong like dragons (or in MoM drakes) and have a large number of abilities, an insane number, none of them supporting allies. A prototypical Dragon might be a 7/7 the flies and has trample and one other offensive ability whereas the angel might be a 6/6 with flying vigilance first strike haste protection from black and maybe one other odd ability. That would be a fine way to go with it, but would likely mean buffing their stats and giving them things like throwing axes or armor piercing and removing their support role. Sorry if I was rambling a bit uselessly, you're perhaps even more familiar with magic the gathering than I am.

My simplest and most favorite idea is to just change their power into skill. It would let you spend your power on summoning archangels or archdemons instead of investing in skill. It would be very strong for your economy for the first dozen or two casts but it wouldn't get as far out of hand? Or maybe it would, and it's much worse, and the right answer is just turn 20 power into 10 power.

[Nelphine]

Archangels have holy power 2. Among other things this gives +2 armor to all units on its stack. So its literally already doing better Han infinite holy armor.

[namad]

Doesn't the buff stack with the ability though? in theory you could have both? except that the spell isn't possible and was a dumb idea.