ackillez

The effect is the same as the mantle of fire spell that the player can cast. Deals small amounts of fire damage in retaliation when the unit is hit.

Horemheb makes a decent point about a cast/dispel exploit. Taking that into account, maybe the better solution is to increase the one-off costs of putting up the buffs strategically to 2x the base cost for the tactical equivalents.

There are a number of abilities and items that will decrease the cost of tactical spells, but none I can think of that do the same with strategic. It's decently balanced as is, imo, but if it was up to me I'd consider upping the maintenance of some of the character buffs from 1 to 2 mana/turn. The reason for this is that using the spells strategically instead of tactically gives you an edge on the battle map as you enter the fray pre-buffed and can use the turns on something productiv

Want to see OP spell? Try Dirge of Ceresa, or even simple Contagion, playing as Resoln. I annihilated 30+ full 6-unit armies with just my sovereign in a few turns using just Dirge of Ceresa and the occasional drain life to keep HP up from the archer unit pinpricks during channeling.

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="36" id="2744090"]I'm not disagreing the AI is bad and that's a huge problem with respect to the kinds of things players and their units can do. Thing is, I'm not just assuming the AI is going to magically get better in a short period of time, and know that VMs just need to die immediately. I'm assuming the AI getting better is going to be a slow, iterative process. So rather than just rationalizing that the AI will be fixed at some p

[quote who="Nenjin" reply="33" id="2744029"] That's pretty much the problem. Warfare creates extremely powerful units fairly quickly if you focus on it, which is why Vigilant Minion armies aren't invincible, they simply can't take on powerful units. Vigilant Minions are viable as a rush strategy, not in the long-term. Perhaps I should say, Vigilant Minions can't take on powerful units but they'll always butcher the AI. If this was a MP thread, or if MP was even relev

Anyone who thinks vigilant minions are anywhere close to being the biggest balance issue in this game- lol. It would be a pretty easy strategy to counter in MP- at any point in time, a player should be easily able to make units with 20+ times as much hitpoints as the number of VMs you can get into play. VMs are definitely very useful against both critters and casters and they might be due a nerf, sure, but it certainly isn't the I-Win button some people are making it out to be.