(July 5th, 2021, 21:07)Seravy Wrote: That text if from the old DOS manual though, much older than when Archangel was adjusted.
I also suspect it might be a bug but an ability doesn't randomly disappear from a unit, either I removed it or it wasn't there in the first place.
Wait, didn't we actually have a bug like Djinn not having windwalking because the ability wasn't converted from the DOS version?
I wonder... Air Ships have it though.
Edit : I looked at older backups and the ability was removed at the same time as the MP reduction happened.
It seems intentional.
I can't remember which thread it was in, but I remember reading/discussing the Primal Force reduction and do not recall the suggestion to remove Wind Walking. If it was intentional, were Demon Lords also nerfed some other way, besides Primal Force?
The demons summoned by Demon Lords don't cast spells anymore but that was necessary due to the 9 limit on combat summons being gone.
What I found in the spell balancing thread was that removal of wind walking was considered because the Phoenix was added. Both are support units meant to be used to buff an army and it would make no sense if one could carry the army on the map and the other could not.
If Arch Angels had Wind Walking it would make the Phoenix a much inferior support unit instead of a fair choice between two different but equally good units for the role. (Phoenix keeps your army alive while the archangel buffs your actual combat stats, also Phoenix is technically a stronger effect but is limited to normal units while the Archangel buff is not as powerful as free reviving and healing but also works on summoned units. But with Wind Walking in the mix you'd always want an Archangel even in your Phoenix based stacks to move faster.)
I just did a complete search on this subforum, it looks like I remembered wrong. There was no change to Primal Force.
Instead, you suggested MP reduction to 29, which one person responded to and agreed. Nobody commented on the suggestion for Wind Walking.
I actually missed that discussion entirely and haven't seen Archangels with the new 29 MP, but for the record, I'm opposed to both changes. While it's not clear to me how the newly buffed Wind Walking affects things--I think the old Wind Walking was very reasonable on Archangel, and I think it should retains some form of that ability. This is a major strategic problem for any Life play that doesn't have Sorcery, because Life has no other access to flying, or even the ability to attack Flying creatures. It means Life has no choice but to actually spam summons for front line combat, especially Arch Angels, at the end game, but that doesn't make sense for Life's theme as a realm.
As for the MP reduction, I also don't like this. A Very Rare creature being unable to cast Rare level spells makes it far worse than all the other Very Rare caster units. Demon Lords can now cast more than 3x the MP cost in a Very Rare combat summon, and as a first-turn Quick Cast. Behemoths have 1 more def than Archangel after Holy Bonus and has Regen 3 on top of 40 MP, and it gets to cast Iron Skin which is as good as invulnerability at lower cost (better with + Defend, worse against shield ignoring attacks), and it's a lot cheaper to summon.
At 29 MP, what useful spells can it even cast? Are you really going to cast common level spells in Very Rare combat (as if your units don't already have all those buffs)? There's nothing useful in Uncommon except True Sight. All it has is Heal left, and 5 HP is barely makes a difference at that level of combat.
40MP is exactly where it should be, and it's the only way to access Prayer, Invulnerability, Lionheart if you didn't get those in the spellbook. With the new spells added to Rare, it's even harder to access those buffs in a non-pure play. I think it doesn't make sense for Life to have no creature capable of accessing Rare+ spells, when every other Realm except Chaos (the Realm that focuses on combat casting) has them.
So both nerfs reduce the Arch Angel's ability to support other units, and make the wizard spam it more. If there's even a problem with the unit itself being overpowered (and it's not, IMO, I would pick any of Demon Lord, Behemoth, and Sky Drake over Arch Angel if I had the choice for direct combat purposes), these two nerfs aren't the right approach.
You should compare Arch Angel to Phoenix tho, it's rarely viable to pick between very rare creatures from different realms and those creatures are not designed to be support units unlike the Life creatures. They don't have Holy Bonus or Healing Aura but are better at fighting.
How often would you use a Phoenix to lead your normal unit stack instead of an Archangel, if the Archangel has Windwalking and 40 MP?
That way, Archangels already have a reasonable access to the perks of a Phoenix - they can each cast Raise Dead once or Mass Healing once which ofc isn't the same quantity of healing and revival but they are the same spells nonetheless - but they also buff your army and carry them faster on the map as well as produce power.
I would have no reason to ever summon a Phoenix instead, at best I would use one of each. But most likely not because I wouldn't research the Phoenix - I can use those resources as MP to cast more healing and raise dead myself which is in most cases good enough.
Basically, Archangels did everything and left no room for another creature to be viable. Which worked fine while it was the only very rare creature in the realm but not anymore.
pre-nerf Archangel :
Mass Heal, Revive Normal Units, Regenerate (with Supreme Light), Buff units, Produce Power, Move faster on map
Phoenix
Mass Heal Normal Units, Revive Normal Units, Regenerate
Post Nerf-Archangel
Regenerate (with Supreme Light), Buff units, Produce Power
I do see why a Wind Walking unit would be useful in Life though - moving a lot of normal units stacks can be inefficient.
But having a hard time bringing in reinforcements and protecting fresh conquests is actually an intentional weakness of the realm so I don't see that as a bad thing.
But the problem is, by weakening Arch Angel's MP you are encouraging it to be used as a fighting summon, not a support summon. And that feels wrong for Life, Life SHOULD be reliant on regular units, even in the end game. But too often spamming Arch Angels with maybe a hero or two to support becomes the correct late game play, which is kind of nonsensical. Note that this was a problem in CoM 1 too, but it was somewhat mitigated by Wind Walking and 40 MP.
(July 6th, 2021, 13:49)Seravy Wrote: You should compare Arch Angel to Phoenix tho, it's rarely viable to pick between very rare creatures from different realms and those creatures are not designed to be support units unlike the Life creatures. They don't have Holy Bonus or Healing Aura but are better at fighting.
How often would you use a Phoenix to lead your normal unit stack instead of an Archangel, if the Archangel has Windwalking and 40 MP?
That way, Archangels already have a reasonable access to the perks of a Phoenix - they can each cast Raise Dead once or Mass Healing once which ofc isn't the same quantity of healing and revival but they are the same spells nonetheless - but they also buff your army and carry them faster on the map as well as produce power.
I would have no reason to ever summon a Phoenix instead, at best I would use one of each. But most likely not because I wouldn't research the Phoenix - I can use those resources as MP to cast more healing and raise dead myself which is in most cases good enough.
Basically, Archangels did everything and left no room for another creature to be viable. Which worked fine while it was the only very rare creature in the realm but not anymore.
pre-nerf Archangel :
Mass Heal, Revive Normal Units, Regenerate (with Supreme Light), Buff units, Produce Power, Move faster on map
Phoenix
Mass Heal Normal Units, Revive Normal Units, Regenerate
Post Nerf-Archangel
Regenerate (with Supreme Light), Buff units, Produce Power
I do see why a Wind Walking unit would be useful in Life though - moving a lot of normal units stacks can be inefficient.
But having a hard time bringing in reinforcements and protecting fresh conquests is actually an intentional weakness of the realm so I don't see that as a bad thing.
I thought Phoenix was Rare, and haven't seen the full spellbook as a player yet even though I've seen the summon in nodes. If it's Very Rare, that seems pretty underwhelming. I'm not sure I'd have reason to summon it even now.
I rarely get to use Archangels in my playthroughs because I don't play pure Life much, so I hope I'm proven wrong by others, but I still think the changes aren't going to help reducing Archangel spam, it'll only make other normal units worse to field and the Realm weaker as a whole.
The reason I compare Archangels to other Very Rares is because Archangels used to be Life's game-winning Very Rare, so I'm compare different Realms' game-winning potential. Other than Heroes, Life has nothing else good enough, and heroes are easily dispelled without Spell Lock, and other Realms have access to items too so it's not a real advantage at the end game. Phoenixes definitely aren't game-winning, and Destiny only works well for some races with the right units (I've not had a chance to test that yet either, so it might be more of a game-winner than I think).
EDIT: I propose this alternative:
Give Phoenix Caster 40 for the full support role, remove MP from Archangel entirely and give it some sort of special ability similar to Demon Lord. I suggested Summon paladinsx2 but on second thought doubling up on Holy Bonus is pointless and paladins just aren't even remotely close to how useful Demons are. Maybe Summon Unicorn and Summon Paladins?
If the issue on Archangel is being too good in combat to the point that it isn't used as support, the solution to that would be to reduce the combat stats. Remove 2 defense or remove 10% hit chance or some HP. Caster 40 does make Archangel stacks fight better because it makes them cast Prayer, Invulnerability and heal twice or even exaltation and mass healing, winning the battle with no damage taken. So less MP definitely reduces the unit's ability to fight, yes it does remove their ability to support as well, but it's a form of support that is applicable to the unit itself and improves its own fighting abiility, unlike the heals on Phoenix or the Holy Bonus 2 on Archangels. And life spells generally scale in power based on the target, a heal on an Archangel is worth much more than a heal on a Stag Beetle or Minotaur.
So I definitely think less MP is a move to the right direction but maybe keeping wind walking and reducing stats is better.
That still leaves the issue of not wanting to use Phoenix because Archangels do everything they can and also wind walk.
I don't really see much room to buff Phoenix either - the support abilities are already pushed to the limit (free infinite healing and 3 revives!) and the unit is a pretty decent fighter (speed 5, high regeneration, flying so hit-and-run and even suicide double KO are viable tactics and it can be used to build a 9 Phoenix regen stack of doom as well). So if Archangels are better than that, we definitely have a problem.
..oh and there is one more thing where Archangel clearly beats Phoenix and that's resistance. It's the most resistant unit in the entire game, not counting heroes of course, while Phoenix has low resistance like most units that have natural regeneration ability built in (not that Life cares, they can buff it).
The regen really doesn't matter... Phoenixes take lots of damage fighting.. basically anything. Even 9 Phoenixes can be killed trivially compared to 9 Archangels.
Also, if you want Regen to really be a selling point of a Life summon.. you need to rework Supreme Light. Supreme Light + Archangel beats Phoenixes by a wide margin. Supreme Light doesn't fix Phoenix much either.
One of my games is consistently crashing. It started when I'd see Sharee casting Corruption near, and then I'd get the boot from the game. I went back to the save file, and now the game just crashes during Sharee's turn without the spell effect playing out. It's almost like Corruption went above and beyond this time.
