Arch Angels & Demon Lords

[Seravy]

I was thinking about this some more.

This really had only one reason to be added :
Life and Death doesn't get nodes.

So archangels and demon lords are their "nodes", where the source of power originates for the realms.
This still holds true in a flavor sense, so the ability is justified for that reason.
However for gameplay, not so much. First of all, Chaos/Nature/Sorcery mastery is gone, so realms no longer benefit from having nodes of their own realm at all anymore. Second, realms are fairly evenly matched in producing late game power. Life gets Life Force, Sorcery gets Uranus' Blessing, Nature gets Seismic Mastery, Death gets Dark Rituals and Chaos has Armageddon as their primary power production spell. So there is no reason for Life and Death to have an additional one. But this is for the human. For the AI, the AI with Life is generally underpowered. Death, not so much, but it's still less of a threat than Chaos, Nature or Sorcery.
So...if we want to keep the ability for flavor, but on gameplay only provide some benefits for the AI, not really for the human, then the answer is, add maintenance to the units. With a maintenance of X, and below X power generated, the unit stops being a net power producer (although it still allows reallocating some MP into SP or RP) while the AI with the maintenance discount still gets to use the units as power sources.

So..I think a good solution is to make the units have a maintenance of 18 but keep the 12 power production. This makes the unit cost an effective 6 mana only.

[Bahgtru]

Sounds good!

[teelaurila]

Does that work the same across difficulties? Also, a bit wonky with channeler, conjurer? Which are prime picks for death I'd say.

[Seravy]

The AI gets more power out of the Primal Force ability and pays less maintenance as difficulty increases. For the human player, it's the same for all difficulties.
Conjurer and Chaneller reducing maintenance is normal, it having no effect before was the greater problem I think. Although Chaneller is capable of turning the creatures into a very small net positive, it's negligable compared to the thousands you save using it on combat spellcasting.

[Aeron]

The AI gets more power out of the Primal Force ability and pays less maintenance as difficulty increases. For the human player, it's the same for all difficulties.
Conjurer and Chaneller reducing maintenance is normal, it having no effect before was the greater problem I think. Although Chaneller is capable of turning the creatures into a very small net positive, it's negligable compared to the thousands you save using it on combat spellcasting.

Oy, Seravy mate, what do you think about making them cost no maintenance and have no mana generation, but giving them a slight percentage buff (5 - 20%) per unit to all mana generating buildings in the city they are in? That way they can't be abused as with generating 20 mana per turn where ever they are.

[Seravy]

That's a good idea but more difficult to implement than what the feature is worth...is what I wanted to say but giving it more thought there is one problem, the same one why we didn't implement any similar garrison encouraging benefits. A (doom)stack that's actively conquering cities from the enemy will spend roughly every second turn in a conquered city so it still produces power.

[Aeron]

What if the buff is made even smaller by making it something like 5% for the initial unit and then add like 1 or 2 or 2.5% for every additional unit? This would make the buff pretty small even with a full stack, but still helpful and not OP, even while AA-s and DM-s are taking cities. However, I understand that this would be even more difficult and rigorous to implement than my first suggestion so the main problem I guess is whether this is worth implementing or not.