We now move away from the "natural" elements and into the realm of divine and deathly duality. We're first covering the more lawful/"divine" side of it, the school of Life.
LIFE
Life is the realm of the divine. It expresses its themes through spells that "bless" their targets and either directly make them stronger, or protect them from deathly effects, usually from the Chaos and Death realms. It also has spells to similarly "bless" cities and either make them more defensible, or improve their economy. And, to top it all off, it has a bevy of appropriately "divine" summons. But its clearest focus is on its buffs, and as such, most of this list is made up of them. Thus, it is much more dependant on regular units than other realms, and picking the right race matters far more while playing this school.Common Tier
1. Bless:
Cost: 7(in combat)/35 MP
Effect: Grants 5 defense and 5 resistance against Chaos and Death spells, fire/lightning breath, death touch and death gaze.
Analysis: It's a pretty niche effect, but the boosts are fairly formidable, especially against curses. The defense boost could stand to be a bit stronger, but Life counters Chaos pretty hard anyway so it's not a big deal. The defenses against breaths, touches and gazes are a lot more situational, yet still appreciable when they matter.
2. Star Fires:
Cost: 12 MP
Effect: Deals 23 damage to the target. Regular units ignore this effect.
Effect: Deals 23 damage to the target. Regular units ignore this effect.
Analysis: While not particularly powerful, it works about as well as most direct damage spells, and in fact has much less obnoxious limitations than its counterparts. Most powerful units are either summons or heroes anyway, so its drawback of not hitting regular units doesn't matter all that much.
3. Holy Weapon:
Cost: 8(in combat)/40 MP
Effect: Raises the target's To Hit on physical attacks by 10%. Only works on regular units.
Analysis: Raising To Hit may not seem like much, but it makes attacks considerably more accurate, and reduces the damage variance on them. 10% bonus To Hit is fairly powerful, though the effect depends heavily on the target's base attack, working considerably better on already strong attack strengths. That's a theme of many of Life's buffs actually - while they work fine for patching up lackluster stats, they work much better for pushing already good stats beyond limits.
4. Healing:
Cost: 15 MP
Effect: Heals 5 HP of damage on the target.
Analysis: On its own, the spell isn't that impressive. 5 HP is a piddling amount of health, and while it can cancel out damage, it's not really all that effective on its own. However, on targets with good armor, it goes a long way in keeping them alive, as their defenses will negate most of the damage directed at them, making most of their hits small scratches. So, it's basically like all the other Life buffs, helping the weak but really bolstering the strong.
5. Holy Armor:
Cost: 50 MP
Effect: Raises the target's To Defend by 10%, raises their defense by 2 if it's below 5. Only works on regular units.
Analysis: The defensive counterpart to Holy Weapon, this makes the target's raw defense more reliable, making it block more damage per attack. As with Holy Weapon, and other Life buffs, this works better the higher the target's base stats are, being outright amazing on high defense units. To compensate, it does provide a raw defense boost for low defense units, but this doesn't do enough to change its scaling.
6. Just Cause:
Cost: 150 MP
Effect: Reduces unrest in all of the wizard's cities by 1, and raises the wizard's fame by 10.
Analysis: This is an underhandedly powerful economic buff. Getting an empire wide unrest reduction, even if it's as small as 1 per city, is quite strong, letting the wizard benefit greatly from boosted taxes alongside higher production. The 10 fame isn't as remarkable, but it does help tide over army upkeep costs, and also helps the wizard hire better heroes, both of which are quite relevant to a Life wizard, as they're more reliant on their regular armies than others.
7. Heavenly Light:
Cost: 60 MP
Effect: Generates 3 power, raises the city's garrison's stats by 1 attack, defense and resistance, and makes them ignore Weapon Immunity.
Analysis: Easily one of Life's best Common spells. Generating power would be powerful enough, but the bonuses also make it excellent for city defense, especially when used in conjunction with singularly strong buffs like Heroism or defensive effects like City Walls. Definitely cast it across as many cities as possible.
8. Guardian Spirit:
Cost: 60 MP
Effect: Summons a Guardian Spirit unit on the overworld.
Analysis: Guardian Spirits aren't really built for fighting. Their stats are pretty bad, outside of their To Hit and Resistance. However, they grant an extra point of Resistance to the entire stack, and their Poison Immunity can help them survive some fairly dangerous attacks. They also grant the Heavenly Light effect on melded nodes, but this is much less helpful, as it's fairly unlikely to use any substantial armies to guard nodes. All in all, a situational summon with some decent, if unlikely potential use.
9. Heroism:
Cost: 15(in combat)/75 MP
Effect: Sets the target's level to maximum. On heroes, boosts their level up to either Commander(level 4) or Champion(level 5) depending on the existence of Warlord. Only works on regular units.
Analysis: This is THE Life buff, easily one of its most defining and potent spells. Going from base level to Elite(or Ultra Elite) is a big deal, immediately boosting the unit's stats considerably. While units will eventually level up enough on their own, that takes considerable time, time which should be spent conquering instead. Not to mention, this spell dissipates by itself once the enchanted unit reaches their maximum level, or the listed hero levels if they are a hero, naturally. Between this and Heavenly Light, Life gets a smooth, if not necessarily fast route through the early game.
10. Discipline:
Cost: 8(in combat)/40 MP
Effect: Grants +1 defense at base level, +2 defense at Regular(level 2), +2 defense and +1 melee and ranged attack at Veteran(level 3) and +2 defense, +1 melee, +1 ranged, and either Negate First Strike if casted in combat, or +1 movement when casted on the overworld at Elite(level 4) to the target unit. Only works on regular, non hero units.
Analysis: Discipline is a flat stat buff that scales with level, making it synergize nicely with Heroism. The boosts themselves are solid if not remarkable outside of the movement buff, but given that Life has the potential to layer buffs, and has some of its buffs benefit from higher stats, it can actually become fairly potent. That said, since its effect is tied so tightly to level, and thus is dependant on either Heroism, or level granting buildings, it's more situational than other Life buffs. Strong, but not essential.
Uncommon Tier
1. Endurance:
Cost: 60 MP
Effect: Grants +4 HP and +1 movement to the targeted unit. The HP bonus is split between all figures, but always grants a minimum of +1 per figure.
Analysis: Life's first "general use" buff, Endurance is actually fairly powerful. The HP buff is more potent on multifigure units, but +1 movement is very generally useful. While this doesn't help Life's own summons that much, it's still useful for buffing its heroes or even regular units, as it stacks with Discipline's own movement bonus! Definitely worth using, especially on powerful units.
2. True Sight:
Cost: 15(in combat)/75 MP
Effect: Grants Illusion Immunity to the target unit.
Analysis: While obviously situational, this is often a very crucial tool in Life's toolset. All of the buffing doesn't mean much if Sorcery can simply ignore the unit's defense or trick it with its curses, so this is required to reasonably fight it off. Of course, Sorcery wizards can dispel it, but this still often involves them using up their casting skill and MP "fighting" the buff instead of resorting to their nasty tricks. Not necessarily game winning, but always well worth looking for.
3. Stream of Life:
Cost: 120 MP
Effect: Reduces the unrest of the target city by 3, doubles its population growth, and makes its garrison heal to full health at every turn.
Analysis: This is a fairly potent economic effect, and the additional healing can certainly be very handy, but usually unrest isn't a big problem if managed correctly, and the potential gain in production from the population growth is often offset by the additional population needing and consuming more food. Given the cost, it certainly should be used sparingly, only on the cities which can really benefit from its effects. Slow growing races appreciate its benefits more than usual, for obvious reasons.
4. Resurrection:
Cost: 325 MP
Effect: Revives a dead hero. They keep their levels and XP, but not their gear or buffs. If they were transformed into either a Chaos creature or an undead unit, they return back to normal.
Analysis: This is a fairly straightforward spell, letting Life get more use out of its heroes than other realms. The high casting cost and the loss of gear and buffs are a pretty steep price, so it should be used quite sparingly, only on heroes that are powerful enough to warrant continued use.
5. Exorcise:
Cost: 20 MP
Effect: Attempts to instantly exorcise every figure in the target unit at a -1 resistance penalty. Undead units suffer an additional -3 resistance penalty. Regular units ignore this effect.
Analysis: A fairly basic instant death spell. The save modifier isn't all that powerful, though it is potent against most Death units, due to either their low base resistance or the greatly increased effectiveness against undead units. It does the job, but usually Star Fires works better, unless the enemy regenerates.
6. Unicorns:
Cost: 200 MP
Effect: Summons a Unicorns unit to the overworld.
Analysis: Much like Guardian Spirits, Unicorns aren't built to fight. Every stat of theirs except HP and To Hit is horrid. They can teleport and kill soft targets, as well as avoid most melee encounters, but their high cost makes them difficult to amass for the purpose. The Poison Immunity is also nice, if situational.
But their real use lies in their resistance bonus to the stack. At +2 resistance to all units, it actually becomes a considerable enough boost to bring in serious fights, especially if the stack's units are from races with low resistance, like Barbarians or Lizardmen. It also helps that they move at 4 speed, letting them keep up with most offensive stacks. While they are inefficient, they are actually surprisingly useful. Unfortunately, their resistance bonus doesn't stack with the Guardian Spirit's.
But their real use lies in their resistance bonus to the stack. At +2 resistance to all units, it actually becomes a considerable enough boost to bring in serious fights, especially if the stack's units are from races with low resistance, like Barbarians or Lizardmen. It also helps that they move at 4 speed, letting them keep up with most offensive stacks. While they are inefficient, they are actually surprisingly useful. Unfortunately, their resistance bonus doesn't stack with the Guardian Spirit's.
7. Raise Dead:
Cost: 40 MP
Effect: Revives a regular unit killed in combat at the targeted tile. The unit revives with half HP, loses all buffs it had, can't be healed or revived again, and counts as a fantastic unit until combat ends.
Analysis: It's supposed to help out attrition the enemy in battles...but given that the revived unit loses all its buffs, and Life relies heavily on buffing, it's not all that great. It can still help keep a stack healthy, and is still very useful on heroes, as they get to keep their items, but otherwise the limited effect and high cost make it a hard sell.
8. Sanctify:
Cost: 50 MP
Effect: The targeted unit has their gold upkeep removed, and generates 3 power.
Analysis: So...this is a pretty bad spell. This might seem odd, considering it's cheaper than Heavenly Light, and I praised it for generating power. The thing is, Heavenly Light's effect is tied to a city, as in, an actually defensible location. A unit is just far, far more volatile and frail. Its one main constructive use is in shaving maintenance costs on expensive high end regular units, but by the time you can field armies of those, you likely already have the economy to afford them, and besides, buffing them to not die takes precedence over making them generate power. Don't bother.
9. Altar of Peace:
Cost: 100 MP
Effect: Makes the target city generate RP based on current relations. The better the overall relations, the higher the RP generated.
Analysis: This is another bad spell. It's a nice fantasy to think that you can maintain relationships with other wizards and out speed them with this, and, to be fair, picking needless wars is often detrimental. But, unless you pick Charismatic, or smartly play off others with a Sorcery heavy wizard, they are often temperamental and will turn upon you the moment they smell opportunity.
Further, this isn't a game where you can really win peacefully - you either need to defeat all the wizards, cast the Spell of Mastery, or outrank them all in several major categories to win, and trying to accomplish the latter two while playing passively is a fool's errand. Enemy wizards have considerably more resources, and will readily beat you in the research game without much effort. As such, this spell only has merit when you're already considerably ahead, which is the hard part! Forget about this.
Further, this isn't a game where you can really win peacefully - you either need to defeat all the wizards, cast the Spell of Mastery, or outrank them all in several major categories to win, and trying to accomplish the latter two while playing passively is a fool's errand. Enemy wizards have considerably more resources, and will readily beat you in the research game without much effort. As such, this spell only has merit when you're already considerably ahead, which is the hard part! Forget about this.
10. Prayer:
Cost: 40 MP
Effect: Buffs all of the caster's units by +1 Resistance, +10% To Hit and +10% To Defend in battle.
Analysis: By and far the best Life spell of this tier. It's a mass Holy Weapon and Holy Armor with a nice additional boost. It even stacks with those aforementioned spells! While it does benefit stronger base units more, like most Life buffs, this spell is considerable enough to visibly elevate even an ordinary army against roughly equivalent opposition. A definite must get!
Life is dependant on its units, and its buffs prefer strong units over weak ones. This makes its advantages and limitations pretty clear - it needs good regular units to accomplish anything of note, and since those are tied to military buildings that take a significant investment of resources, its speed of conquest is slower than most realms at the beginning. It does eventually pay off once you can assemble a formidable army of buffed good regulars, and support them with strong enchantments like Prayer and Healing, but making that army takes a lot of time. Also, it has little to deal with fliers, forced either to spam mediocre damage or instant death spells, or risk its ranged units.
Still, the school has a fair number of solid tools, and some intricate design tying it all together. Even from this overview, it's not hard to see how its flaws could be remedied. But we shall cover that when we start discussing school combinations. For now, I shall mark another school covered and conclude this study of the schools' strengths and weaknesses in the next entry. Until then!
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