[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Liadran:
[QB]
Harab Seraph
Costs only 90 gold (10 gold less than base Caelum Seraph), 1 in earth, death and air

Note that the only useful skill on the unit there is the 1 air for orb lightning. Everything else has no useful rituals, and giving a mage ironskin isn't that impressive.

Harab Elder
Costs 270 gold (compared to 175 of base Caelum), but is sacred (so has much lower upkeep than base Caelum HS). Gets 3 Air, 2 death and 1 earth and 2 holy. No randoms hurts a bit. Capital only unit.

It actually doesn't have much lower upkeep, High eraphs are 11.7, Harab Elders are 9 per turn. The 1 earth is just as useless here as on the Harab Seraph.

Raptors are a bit faster researchers than base the theme and have to rely much on their magic (and summons also).

I doubt this. High seraphs are hard to beat for research.

Basically I like Raptors just the way they are, but it seems that most of the other people don't like them this way. Both Caelum themes are one my favourite themes in dom2. I'm willing to defend Raptors in a discussion here. I'll try to point out that it's as strong as base Caelum is. It just has to be played differently to be as effective.

I _really_ doubt that RotR is anywhere near as effective as base Caelum. They have less magical versatility with no random picks, less research ability with harab seraphs having the same research ability as default Seraphs and only costing 10 less, and far more expensive mages. A mage that costs less than 200 can be bought one per turn from about turn 3 or 4 onwards. One that costs 270 is going to be every other turn at most. You also have far, far fewer of the harab elders than the high seraphs, since you can't build them at every fortress. Their magic skills also have little synergy. The only notable death/air skills are summon valkyries and death wind, both of which are quite high level. That plus the fact that a mage can only cast one spell at a time, no matter what skills they have, severely weakens them.