Lifespark and musings on defensive casting

[Chandrasekhar]

Yes, the issue of a lifespark acting under both roles seems like it might be more powerful than intended. We should playtest it before deciding to just fool the AI, though.

 

[BCalchet]

Spoiler :

I failed to communicate my point I think. I don't disagree with anything above.

What I was trying to say that if a player already controls a unit that can cast a tier-3 Life spell, it is very easy to replace a lifespark unit. I was making no comment on how easy or hard it was to obtain this Life 3 spellcasting capability. If one already owns the capability to cast one spell each turn, is it not an investment when one casts one spell each turn. That's whay I was trying to say.

Lifespark seems good enough as is to go under playtest. Lifespark acts only on the defense, so in the vast majority of cases the first units to risk death are the best units available. I'm thinking in practical use, players would be saying "Yay Lifespark!" most times. Maybe it wouldn't save the most experienced unit every time, but these things happen in war.

Also, since it acts only defensively, won't it grant its Medic bonus at the beginning of the turn? Right now units heal before they are subject to attack, or is my impression wrong? If so, a Lifespark will alsways serve its secondary mission before it risks serving its primary role.

Example: You have wounded units but cannot afford to retreat. There's no medic unit in the tile either. (So I guess you have a Life-3 Conjuror here, as a Life-3 Disciple unit would have the Medic skill themselves.) So the Conjuror castts Lifespark. Your turn ends and units get their heal-up credit. Then the AI turns run. The tile is attacked, and the Lifespark saves the first doomed unit. Whatever happens during the AI turn happens, and it comes around to your turn again. Your Summoner is ready to cast Lifespark again. Seems to me this provides constant mediacal assistance. Am I misunderstanding the sequence here?

One nation can have quite a few of these critters running around. There may be several Lifesparks in an important tile. I'm uncertain of the rules here. Could one nation in theory have 9 Lifesparks up at any one time? 3 from High Priests, 3 from Inquisitors, and 3 from Summoners? And perhaps more from certain Heroes?

Anyway, it occurs to me that a high-defense city tile with 8 Lifesparks in it is going to be, let us say, friggin' nigh impossible to take? That's means the attacker needs 8 more units nearby to attack 8 more times to kill the 0.01 STR units left alive.

Spoiler :

Don't kill 'em and boom Heal spell and the defending units are back to 100%. (If you can create 8 Lifesparks, you can cast Heal.)

Well, Plauge would make such a city sackable, with enough casters. But it will be interesting to see the effect of many Lifesparks in one tile.

The idea of cloning this function to a Martyr promotion is certainly full of flava. And amusing unitended consequences, perhaps? We wary of promoting that Order Acolyte (right name? my bad) that Acolyte all the way up to High Priest. He never 'forgot' that Martyr promotion, The guys in the ambushed 0 exp Warrior unit really appreceated his gesture, but the Army does miss their level 11 healing machine.

The idea to tie the Lifespark to a unit would avid those surprises ... but does it not smack of more bourgasie oppression of the masses? All units are martyr-worthy, but some units are more martyr-worth than others? We want our heroes flinging themselves upon every sputtering hand grenade! But it sounds right up the alley for those "the needs of the many" Law-abiding drones.

Actually, it's a fine mechanic. But I think there are times you'd want it to work as it is now, whenever needed. For spells that have to be cast every turn for many turns in a row, its nice if casting takes just one mouse click. If a targeting window opens every time but is rarely used, that could get annoying. Just picking at nits.

(SPOILERed out the stuff not relevant to my comment.)

While that was a nice enough rant, it clearly showed that you haven't even read the original post. Do so first next time, I say - skipping it reduces much of your post to meaningless blather.

This doesn't interrupt combat, the battle goes on.

This means lifespark does not guarantee survival.

Anyway - how will lifesparks stack? Will it be possible for several lifesparks to affect a single combat, making 3 sparks add +120% of maximum to the effective health of defenders?

 

[Teg_Navanis]

Yay! Too bad I don't see late game too often.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

(SPOILERed out the stuff not relevant to my comment.)

While that was a nice enough rant, it clearly showed that you haven't even read the original post. Do so first next time, I say - skipping it reduces much of your post to meaningless blather.


This means lifespark does not guarantee survival.

Anyway - how will lifesparks stack? Will it be possible for several lifesparks to affect a single combat, making 3 sparks add +120% of maximum to the effective health of defenders?

Point out the 'blather' chump. Sounds like you are the one who has not read deeply enough into th e thread.

To test the healing effects of 3 Lifesparks in one tile, build three adept units with +40% healing abilities, and enter combat. Whay are you wasting time with your blather, when you could be answering these questions for us?

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Yes, the issue of a lifespark acting under both roles seems like it might be more powerful than intended. We should playtest it before deciding to just fool the AI, though.

I doubt this will be considered too powerful, as by the time tier-3 casters are available, +40% Heal medics are going to be pretty common. Most of the casters able to cast this spell will be Disciple units for faiths that allow access to Life magic. The only possible caster who would not know Medic themselves would be a Summoner, right? So adding a small amount of +40% heal to such a small number of units does not seem unbalancing, considering the relative "investments" to get there.

 

[DMN]

I doubt this will be considered too powerful, [...] considering the relative "investments" to get there.

I also think so. If there are eight lifespark-casters in the defending city, the attacker would have high-lvl casters as well. What about three archmages, three liches and two priests with Fire-III? Don't you think that 18 meteors and 2 pillars of flame might inflict more damage than 8 lifesparks could heal? 8*40% = 320% of one unit's health. In a city full of defenders the fire spells' collateral damage would be much higher than that.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Heh, I said "more powerful than they intended," quite different from saying that it will be overpowered. I get the feeling that Kael & co. said "Let's have a unit that can be sacrificed to heal, even in the middle of battle." The medic abilities were an afterthought. I don't think it should be too powerful, unless used en masse (27 possible with a summoner trait leader, I believe), but then you can say that about just about all spells. It's part of what I like about them.

Edit: Actually, it would only be 9 possible with a summoner if it requires summoning to cast. It does, right? I assume it won't be displacing other Life 3 spells.

 

[DMN]

Edit: Actually, it would only be 9 possible with a summoner if it requires summoning to cast. It does, right? I assume it won't be displacing other Life 3 spells.

You could get more if you created flesh golems out of any Life-III spellcaster and a normal conjurer or priest of the veil.

Ummm, are flesh golems national units at the moment?

 

[Chandrasekhar]

Actually, I'm pretty sure they aren't...

 

[Jono]

I may have missed this being asked, but will several Lifesparks sacrifice themselves automatically when a unit is on the verge of death in their stack?

 

[dreiche2]

I also think so. If there are eight lifespark-casters in the defending city, the attacker would have high-lvl casters as well. What about three archmages, three liches and two priests with Fire-III? Don't you think that 18 meteors and 2 pillars of flame might inflict more damage than 8 lifesparks could heal? 8*40% = 320% of one unit's health. In a city full of defenders the fire spells' collateral damage would be much higher than that.

The advantage of the life spark is that it strengenths your strongest defender, which might be better than having a mediocre defender instead of the caster. (think e.g. archeron with 8 life sparks...)

 

[Jono]

Will units with the marksman promotion "kill" lifesparks? Personally, I think killing lifesparks should either heal the unit which killed it or all the other units within it's tile devided equally (e.g. 8 units in a tile would be healed 5% each).

 

[BCalchet]

Point out the 'blather' chump

Oh, I did point out the blather: You're claiming lifesparks always save the defending unit, when it was clarified in the first post that combat keeps going, likely getting that 0.01-strength unit killed anyway.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I also think so. If there are eight lifespark-casters in the defending city, the attacker would have high-lvl casters as well. What about three archmages, three liches and two priests with Fire-III? Don't you think that 18 meteors and 2 pillars of flame might inflict more damage than 8 lifesparks could heal? 8*40% = 320% of one unit's health. In a city full of defenders the fire spells' collateral damage would be much higher than that.

Well, I've not used Pillars of Flame yet (I gotta up my difficulty settings to make games go longer) but for my money I'd use Plauge. You only need tier-2 costers for that. The Fireball's collateral damage will not drive a defender below 50% STR. But Plague's collateral damage will. So if I have Fire and Death casters, I make use to send in the Fireballs first.

The other advantage to Plague is it will damage the first, best defender. A swarm of Fireballs might damage the best defender, but often all that happens is the collateral damage. You still can't defeat that full strngth 5* 3xCity Defense HvCrosbow that leads teh defense, so all the collateral damage goes to waste. With Plague, that HvCrossbow wil be down to about 25%-50% STR and Diseased. The city falls.

(Heh, yet another edit. The other, other advantage to Plague is that hammering the victims with it does not earn the defender 1 exp point per casting, like a Fireball barrage does. (Do I think plague is overpowered? Before I answer, can you guess what Plague's other other other advantage is?))

You'd still need a lot of Plague casters though. Hammer the Plagues for all you're worth. Then start attacking units already badly wounded. The lifespark heals will probably not be strong enough to save its unit every time it triggers, because (presumablely) the attacking unit will still be near it's full STR at the time Lifespark triggers. With enough Plague casters, it should be possible to kill a couple-few defenders each turn. Will reinforcements arrive in time? Sounds like quite a battle, actually.

Which raises a question. Does Lifespark trigger only during a combat? Or, will it also trigger if a unit is about to die from a spellcast like Plague? (Plagues collateral damae will flat-out kill a badly wounded unit in the tile.)

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Oh, I did point out the blather: You're claiming lifesparks always save the defending unit, when it was clarified in the first post that combat keeps going, likely getting that 0.01-strength unit killed anyway.

Is that your definition of blatther? OK. try this on for size.

One nation can have quite a few of these critters running around. There may be several Lifesparks in an important tile. I'm uncertain of the rules here. Could one nation in theory have 9 Lifesparks up at any one time? 3 from High Priests, 3 from Inquisitors, and 3 from Summoners? And perhaps more from certain Heroes? Anyway, it occurs to me that a high-defense city tile with 8 Lifesparks in it is going to be, let us say, friggin' nigh impossible to take? That's means the attacker needs up to 8 more units nearby to attack up to 8 more times to kill the 0.01 STR units left alive. Don't kill 'em and boom Heal spell and the defending units are back to 100%. (If you can create 8 Lifesparks, you can cast Heal.)

Excuse me, oh Omnipotent One, for imprecise wording. Imagine that, the addition of the words "up to" take my post from pure blather, to far wiser than anything you'll ever write.

Not that that journey is a long one, mind you.

So, I take it it is your prediction that the presence of 8 Lifespark units in a heavily defended tile will have negligible impact on the ability of an attacker to capture that tile? If you feel my post is blather, that is what you are saying.

This is where things are traditionally settled via wager. Myself, I wouldn't mind someone else paying off my mortgage. You game?

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

Heh, I said "more powerful than they intended," quite different from saying that it will be overpowered. I get the feeling that Kael & co. said "Let's have a unit that can be sacrificed to heal, even in the middle of battle." The medic abilities were an afterthought. I don't think it should be too powerful, unless used en masse (27 possible with a summoner trait leader, I believe), but then you can say that about just about all spells. It's part of what I like about them.

Edit: Actually, it would only be 9 possible with a summoner if it requires summoning to cast. It does, right? I assume it won't be displacing other Life 3 spells.

Ahh, I see. Yes, I suspect you are right in that Kael & Ko. might very well have assumed the +40% medic would almost always go unused. In that sense it might be more powerful than intended,

I believe your comments on the Summoning this is correct. I think it would be a max of nine. Except for that Flesh Golem thing. The only flesh golem I built seemed like it just replaced two units with one of the same exact capabilities. That didn't seem too useful. Guess I shoulda experimented with more experienced, different units.

 

[BCalchet]

The addition of 'up to' takes your statement from blather to nonsense, which I suppose is an improvement of sorts.

Nine lifesparks add an effective 360% heal to dying units in the tile - no more, no less - three attackers, nine attackers, twelve attacker - it doesn't matter.

You don't need eight more attackers, you don't need up to eight more attackers, what you need is enough attackers to deal that much damage - this can be more than eight or less than eight, and the number of actual attacks doesn't matter.
(unless there is a limit to the number of lifesparks triggering in any one combat, of course.)

Using nine high-level summoners to turn one defender into what is effectively 4.6 (less if the defender is wounded) defenders of the same strength for a turn might be powerful, but nine regular third-tier summons should prove stronger unless that one defender is a very powerful unit. Further, if the tile is not attacked on that turn, eight of the summoners will have wasted their spells.


Now, I do apologize for calling much of your post meaningless blather - only that piece would qualify as such.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I think it might be worthwhile to point out that if the unit is the only one in its tile, then yes, it is effectively 4.6 times as effective as it would be normally. However, if there are other defenders of even marginal strength, and there are many attackers, it's likely that after some battle or another, the strong unit will be weakened, and the next opponent to attack will instead attack one of the other units (and the lifesparks will probably be used on that defender instead).

Edit: Though I do agree with you that other summons are probably more effective... if not quite so versatile.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I believe your comments on the Summoning this is correct. I think it would be a max of nine

You overlook summoner's twincast. max of 12
However, if you have a stack of 3 inq, 3 hp, and 3 summ, and your opponent doesn't have similar coming at you, you deserve to own. If he does have similar, you could be getting a bucket load of his own summons to eliminate the lifesparks before the knights et al come in.

 

[eerr]

even life spark alone is not usefull enough to defened against more than basic collateral.

how about a spell that heals units in the stack whenever a unit dies?
the bigger the unit the bigger the heal(based on shield to make*icombat)
you still wouldn't be invulnerable and it would be useless if the enemy could destroy your best unit without any trouble
or maybe when lifespark dies it heals all units in the same tile?(no medic promo)