Death Mana... too useful for a mage civ?

[Cuteunit]

Frankly, whenever I play somebody like Amurite I feel like I'm cheating myself if I don't build a Death node. Death is simply so good for anyone planning to build a lot of magic units that it's downright required. Particularly true for amurites.

Raise Skeleton means you can actually use adepts in war, and with Govanon being able to Train it, you can have a whole army doubling it's size with renewable fodder every turn. Too good? Yes.

the death 2 spell is ok for city defense against a player.. but not great. I accept it because Death 1 is so good.

Death 3... prettymuch required and ONLY because it allows you to step around the 3 archmage arbitrary limit. It's not like Lichdom gives you much in the way of other benefits. In fact, I'll say lichdom is a downside on it's own for the new spell vulnerabilities alone.

Can't this mana be changed so it's not such a synergy to mage use? Death 1 in particular. It almost seems anyone who doesnt have govanon running about teaching Raise Skeleton to every unit they have is foolish.

 

[felwar]

Based on Govannon's pedia entry I have always thought it odd that he's teaching people to raise skeletons. He's still one of my favorite heroes in the game, and he'd remain incredibly good without it.

As for Lichdom, yeah, it pretty much feels like a requirement. The thing is, every civ has some route that plays most heavily to their specific advantages and any civ can actually take advantage of this one. The Amurites just happen to have an easier time of it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, this doesn't apply so much in my version, because I changed the Train spell and lichdom, plus added a new Death III sorcery spell (which isn't working quite right just yet)

My version of Train requires the "tutor" promotion instead of the Govannon unit (the promotions requires TECH_NEVER, and only Govannon starts with it). It has a version for every spell sphere, but only has a chance of working for each unit in the stack, requires the second level of each sphere (except dimensional), and won't train anything to animals, non-living units, disciples, or Arcane units (Govannon doesn't think that those already accepted into the Mage Guild really need his tutelage as much as common workers). If the unit has a high enough level, it has a smaller chance of being able to additionally teach a unit channeling II and Sorcery. Once the unit has these promoitons and a higher level requirement, it has a very small chance of teching the unit either channeling III (making it the equivalent of an Archmage) or Tutor (letting it train other units).

I let any arcane unit (or Vampire Lord) with channeling II cast lichdom only if theyr have either the Staff of Souls (Barbatos's equipment) or are in the Broken Sepulcher(his spawning place). I removed the Limit on how many liches you can have,and made them once again start with free combat and spell extension promotions.

(The Staff of Souls also allows arcane units with channeling III to cast "Necromastery," giving them control of all undead units except liches within 2 tiles.)

I added a new Death III sorcery spell "Curse the Ground" that created an "Accursed Ground" feature, similar to fallout but with a 60% attack and defense bonus for undead units. It is also supposed to raise any living unit killed there as a barbarian skeleton with the same strength and most of the same promotions (at 50% health and enraged), but that isn't really working right now.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Eh, what makes you think Govannon is too powerful? In SP Grigori archmages are faster, and in multiplayer Govannon skeleton push takes some physical dexterity to pull off in simultanous turns, as you can only summon a fixed number of skeletons per click, and you'd likely need 30 to take a human city. Plus who the hell has the patience to train every worker haste and USE IT EVERY TURN, except when you're playing deity?

Besides, Govannon IS the civ hero of the Amurites, and should definitely more magical in his own way than the other magic heroes. If all else fails, just kill him with an assassin or something. Not as easy to kill as Corlingdale (how the hell are you supposed to protect him anyway?), but still doable.

 

[rusty217]

Well I don't see anything wrong with death mana being good for a magic oriented civ like the Amurites. It is said that they do use all forms of magic, albeit with stricter rules for some, so death mana would be acceptable to them and if it allowed them to become greater at magic, or live forever as a lich, or defend their empire without losing their people then they should be more than happy to use it...

Death mana is supposed to help magic civs and the downside is the relations penalty, if it makes the good teams declare war on you more or not help in your wars then that is a bad effect. Well at least if you have the right difficulty level

 

[eerr]

mostly the spheres are not equally cool... none of them seem too unbalanced compared to normal units considering the cost required

 

[Caradoc]

Well, this doesn't apply so much in my version ...

So you say you are working on a modmod? I'd like to hear more about it, maybe in a new thread.