Are the Royals worth it?
 

I've been trying out the game for a while and after reading a lot of Posts on this form I have found lots of summons are great. The devils are great with the high base protection, good combat stats, and fine resistances. The undead are great with 0 encumberance and excellent resistances. However I find that the royals are lacking. None of the royals have feet so you can't give them boots of quickness or boots of flying. A Super Combatant who can not fly or who does have quickness does not seem quite as super to me.

Am I thinking the wrong way about this? Is there something about the royals that makes them worth 50 gems?

I've also looked at Zen's mod, which seems excellent, and he makes some improvements to the royals but even there they seem somewhat lacking considering their scarcity.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Air Queens are more than worth it, they can be game winners.
Water Queens are probably second best, but hard for most nations to summon. Earth and Fire are not that great, but rarely go unsummuned in long games.

EDIT: Don't overlook jade armour for royalty, it gives quickness just like the boots.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Earth and Fire royals make great casters. Aim for stuff like Firestorm and Army of Gold etc. Don't try to make them into SCs.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

The earth kings make very good tank sc's, that is things that are almost impossible to actually kill(tm), thanks to high hitpoints, possibility to cast invulnerability, summon earthpower, internal regen (has to be boosted a bit more though) and decent internal mr.

Of cource, not even the can win battles alone in the late game, buth they can be a big bonus as damage absorbers: Enough regen and mr and it can soak much of the spells and attacks that would harm less sturdy troops instead.

You gotta be ready for them to be paralysed by petrify very quick though, so dont depent too much on spells.

Another cool one is the banefire king, it isn't very common to see him in play (fire and death are not very common together), but due to the nature of his banefire aura (kills all non-undead troops that hit him until the end of battle), he can cause some serious damage as a suicide bomber. In an ongoing game I lost Aella and Magebane to a suiciding banefire king, not fun at all. Got Aella back, but no idea who got the Magebane. Sucks. Anyone know if decay works on demons?

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

I pulled an arch-devil the one with fire and astral into the hall of fame... then after he died used ritual of return so he returned as a giant mummy with magic. Then I just resummoned the original arch-devil again as well.

Also I like the earth elementals especially the one which summons an earth elemental every turn. He rarely moves since his purpose is just to summon more elementals.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Bane fire works against demons. I had a banefire archer kill an arch devil from friendly fire once (died after battle was over of coruse). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Yeah I found out the hard way that if you are going to be shooting banefire around you had better have troops that regen on the front lines.

BTW: I have no idea what the cap is on decay damage but it's pretty high if there even is one.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Until death do us part. Regen might prevent death if the regen is higher than the decay rate. There is probably some fifty turns limit on decay dmg after the battle is finished.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Yes that follows with what I have seen. I have an unnatural desire to create as many banefire archers as I can. I love the little guys. Sure they are fragile. But the firepower is crazy. Heck they even do ok against SC's. There are problems with them namely: they don't seem to be too careful about your troops on the front lines and quickned preists can really wreck them in a hurry, but gem for gem I find them a pretty good investment.

As for the spell Banefire, well what more can be said about it? It owns so hard it's crazy.

Re: Are the Royals worth it?
 

Doh just lost a tartarian with 191 HP to banefire after combat. Would have to say that it is indeed till death do us part. OUCH.