DEATH Realm

[Nelphine]

Further, while this is aimed at life, life summons have such high resistance it won't affect them. On the other hand, this will actually be devestatijg against both chaos and nature summons. Is that intended?

[Ryzel]

Why doesn't chaos get this spell instead? I haven't really decided on an answer for any of your questions, including whether I think anything is needed at all, but IF death needs it, doesn't chaos also need it?

Good question, here are my answers after thinking about it...

- Chaos is much less reliant on summons early game, and the ones that it does have are less figures (meaning stronger stats) to help overpower the buff from Bless.  For example, Zombies/Skeletons get wrecked by Bless due to each figure attacking into that +5 defense, whereas Fire Elemental is much less screwed because it has all its damage strength into one figure making it much more likely to bypass defense (not to mention Weapon Immunity).  Hell Hounds and Ghouls are pretty much equally screwed though.  Also, Death relies on generating undead armies with Ghouls, meaning Death has a LOT more units that get screwed by Bless early/mid-game in comparison to Chaos.
- Warp Creature and Weakness are similar spells in this situation, but Warp Creature has a much stronger effect against buffed units (although only -5 resist vs. -7 means Weakness is applied more frequently, but still).
- While Fire Bolt is hampered by Bless, it can still have a strong effect due to its direct damage component (unlike Death's combat spells).

In short, Chaos can handle it better.

Further, while this is aimed at life, life summons have such high resistance it won't affect them. On the other hand, this will actually be devestatijg against both chaos and nature summons. Is that intended?

While the spell is meant to help deal with the Life buff-stacking strategy, it's not meant to help deal with Life summons.  The -3 to resistance was meant to be a way to help the spell be useful in a variety of situations against strong units, but if Death is getting attacked by an Angel/Archangel with Lionheart/Invulnerability then I'm OK with that being a very painful situation for Death to deal with...I think because by the time that happens, Death will be further along in the tech tree to have some other way to try and fight it off.

Against nature/chaos summons the only effect it would have would be the -3 resistance.  While it is quite strong in certain situations (1st turn Black Prayer, 2nd turn Desecrate a Great Wyrm/Hydra/Chaos Spawn and an army of Magicians/Demons spam Black Sleep or some other spell), it does have counterplay via Dispel Magic and requires other spells to be useful.  I'll defer to your experience though if you feel like that effect would be gamebreaking for Death balance vs. Chaos/Nature.

[Nelphine]

That's at the common level, before your spell even comes into play Bless is amazing at all levels, and every tier past common, chaos tend to have lots of figures or lots of effects that are far more hampered by bless (fireball, chimera, hydra!!, Disintegrate, warp lightning, etc)

[Nelphine]

For the other realms I'm specifically thinking of its combination with annihilate. One shot kills are VERY difficult to balance with a spell like desecrate.

[zitro1987]

Bloodlust is a good counter to non-summons ... life!

possession is in same tier, pretty spectacular for same reason (unless 'bless' is in effect)

[Ryzel]

That's at the common level, before your spell even comes into play Bless is amazing at all levels, and every tier past common, chaos tend to have lots of figures or lots of effects that are far more hampered by bless (fireball, chimera, hydra!!, Disintegrate, warp lightning, etc.)

Desecrate does not help too much against Bless specifically on rare/very rare tier because it only impacts one unit at a time, and by then Life should have the casting skill to Bless multiple units a turn on overland should they so chose.  I agree that all the multi-figure effects in uncommon Chaos are weakened by Bless, but Fireball and Fire Storm is still strength 7 and Immolation is still strength 5, meaning they should still be having some impact.  Gargoyles are probably trivialized though, and Chimeras are not nearly as strong (but should still be OKish).  For comparison, Night Stalkers are somewhat trivialized (Death Gaze isn't nearly as effective), Shadow Demons are trivialized, Werewolves are weakened, Possession is weakened, and Syphon Life is weakened.  Reaper Slash and Lightning Bolt are about even IMO.

I guess I'd say they are about even on the uncommon tier in having their spells hampered, but then again Chaos has Mystic Surge to get its own super buffed unit.  Blood Lusted Werewolves could be helpful against melee units, but Desecrate could be used in a wider variety of situations. 

For the other realms I'm specifically thinking of its combination with annihilate. One shot kills are VERY difficult to balance with a spell like desecrate.

I didn't look too closely at that spell, but now that I have wowza is it strong.  You would still have to take 2 turns of spell casting to pull it off (unless you had a Demon), and even if you did have Demons you could only do that a number of times equal to the amount of Demons in your army (although a Demon Lord could make that happen...).  I agree that would be a problem...I guess I would either...
- Reduce the resistance penalty to -5/-3 on Annihilate
OR
- Amend to Desecrate to -2 penalty to resistance and 30 mana.

[Ryzel]

Bloodlust is a good counter to non-summons ... life!

possession is in same tier, pretty spectacular for same reason (unless 'bless' is in effect)

a small anti-life adjustment is making annihilate and/or massacre ignore resistance-based spells like resist magic and bless.

I'm not really interested in the late game Death vs. Life balance, I feel like by the late-game Death is fine due to all the nasty things they can do to the power base cities of Life.  I'm talking more about the early/mid-game before this strategy can come online.  Specifically, superbuffed (3-4 common) Life units steamrolling through Death wizards.  The main issue with this being that Bless counters (or hard counters!) a lot of Death's common/uncommon spells and summons.  Your last suggestion may be a good one but I can't comment on it really.


Blood Lust against Life (Bless) is not great for normal units who would otherwise be unaffected by Bless.  That leaves Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls, Werewolves, and created undead.  Skeletons get +3 attack, which is not significant compared to +5 defense.  Ghouls don't really use melee attacks, so that's out.  Zombies have the same issue as Skeletons (low initial melee).  That leaves Werewolves and any created undead with 4-5 or more melee attack rating.  Werewolves generally have little trouble shredding normal units early/mid-game anyway, so I'm basically only using this to help my Werewolves deal damage through Bless.  This does help, but it costs 50 mana to try and counteract the 30 mana Life spell.  I guess though that a Blood Lusted/Darknessed Werewolf could be a match for Bless/Holy Armor/Heroism/Endurance/Prayer Pikemen.

That being said, this doesn't help against buffed Bowmen/Longbowmen/Slingers/etc. as they can shred the Werewolves to pieces, whereas Desecrate can be useful in this situation as well as the previous one (as an aside, Chaos wouldn't have an issue in this situation due to Warp Wood).

[Seravy]

I'm not giving Death any spells that lower resistance further, period. That has super massive implications on game balance, way beyond the scope of the what you want to fix. (if we really need to go into this direction then removing Bless and Resist Magic at the same time from the game would yield better results, but we don't need to.)

Death vs Life is fine I think. Yes Life is strong against Death's spells. But Life is weak against Death's units. Life doesn't have much summons that actually can fight well. Death summons overwhelm and destroy most normal units, except a selected few the AI decided to mass-buff. Those you can either try to dispel, or use Blood Lust to make sure your summon still annihilates it despite the buffs.
There are a few things to watch out for (especially Holy Word if you are behind in spell tiers) but usually you have superiority in forces, at the expense of spells being not that effective.

I agree with Nelphine that Chaos has a way harder time to fight against Bless - fortunately they get armor piercing and doom damage spells so it's limited to the common tier.

A Life wizard can do absolutely nothing against a horde of werewolves with blood lust knocking on their doors in 1403. (albeit once they get Exorcise, you can have a few lost units per won battle. Not a problem unless the Life wizard is way more powerful than you.)

And while it's not that intuitive, Blood Lust on Shadow Demons can be great, too. Sure, you have to use up the ammo first, but then you have 10 melee, 4 figure, +2 to hit regenerating unstopable killing machines. That shift plane, and are immune to weapons, fly and cannot be webbed. I wouldn't really put Blood Lust on anything that does not regenerate, unless I absolutely have no other choice - but a Blood Lusted normal unit like Orc Horde hits like a truck due to high figure count, it should kill anything you need it to.

[muxecoid]

I feel wraith form may be too strong for a common. Weapon immunity and poison immunity and web immunity in one spell? Put it on half decent unit and it will eat giant spiders like nothing. Could be an uncommon for what it does.

[Seravy]

It doesn't grant Poison Immunity anymore.