Earthquake

[Seravy]

When Earthquake kills a unit, the damage isn't irrecoverable but the unit cannot regenerate and dies anyway.
This is a weird inconsistency and considering the spell is similar to Crack's Call, maybe we should make it irrecoverable for consistency?
Also merging doesn't offer protection unlike against Crack's Call, probably should fix that, too?

[teelaurila]

The distinction of irrecoverable being relevant only with heroes with items and/or resurrection?

The proposal sounds good for consistency, cannot say about gameplay as haven't really ran into the special case of late-game nature versus another.

[Seravy]

Yes, only for heroes. Although damage that isn't irrecoverable isn't supposed to be able to kill a unit with regeneration...
The argument against the change would be that players can't protect their heroes from it by avoiding to send them into battle so if they have no access to merging. flying fortress, or wraithform then they have no way to protect the heroes - other than sending them outside cities. So then you can't have your heroes contribute casting skill in your fortress and you can't safely use the heroes against another enemy either (if they conquer a city they might get hit by earthquake the turn after).
Now, even as is the heroes might die and not every realm can resurrect them but it's simple to recruit a new hero and move the items onto it. With irrecoverable damage both of these options disappear.

[teelaurila]

It does seem quite a lot if you can lose a hero of any strength AND the items on a roll on the overland map. One can presume an AI at that stage of the game to spam an earthquake every second turn or so. Perhaps the AI aim isn't quite so good, but still.

Crack's call only affects up to a number of hp, and can be avoided, most easily by not engaging with vulnerable heroes.

[Slingers]

Earthquake (Rare) COM 150MP [MOM 200MP]
Garrison unit chance to die COM 4% [MOM 25%]
Building destruction minus replaced buildings COM 40% [MOM 15%]

From the description right now:
“This isn't like Crack's Call, where you have to participate in combat and risk losing units to be able to cast the spell at all.
At 4% the chance is low enough that a risk is introduced - you might need to sacrifice significant amounts of time and spellcasting and possibly still don't get the intended outcome.
Of course this would have made the spell unusable, so it had to be rebranded as a building destruction spell, giving Nature its only way to hurt enemy economy.”

As is the chance for a walking garrision unit to die by an earthquake is very low. Usually this spell is the rivet at the lottery booth.
Making it´s damage irrecoverable like Crack´s Call would add the rare event that a low-level hero on vacation including his mediocre items is irrecoverably lost.
Many earthquakes are first a thing in the very late game, when OP heroes and creatures fly around. Those are immune, otherwise they would not have made it in the first place. But still … things could happen !