Okay, this is another "Caelum is dreadfully overpowered" post, so I fully expect to elicit some harsh comments in response. But I think that my points are valid, so please correct me where I'm wrong:
1) Caelum has cheap, very, very effective, clamhoard capable, recruit anywhere mages. Okay, Caelum is a "magocracy" so we'll skip this.
2) Caelum has a cheap for its price 3H priest. I mean 90 gp for a 3H priest is a really good buy. The closest thing I can think of is TC's "Minister of Rituals" at 100 gp. But the Caelum Version flies, is cold immnune, is stealthya and comes with a magic weapon (though admittedly that's not likely to be used much). Granted, Caelum has no 2H priest to recruit, but indy 2H priests can be recruited just about anywhere with just a temple for the standard price of 50 gp.
3) Caelum has what must be one of the best scouts in the game. It flies, resists cold, and costs exactly the same as the standard indy scout! It even has better armor than the standard scout!
4) Caelum has what I think is a decidedly above average sacred troop for a very reasonable price in the form of the "Temple Guard". It even comes with a built-in magic weapon to break mistformed SCs and kill ethereal stuff, so you won't need a fire 9 blessing with them. They have a pretty good defense so it might be interesting to do a water 9 blessing with them. Sure, their defense is not in a league with Vans but then they are a long way from being as expensive as Vans and Vans sure don't have their armor.
Okay, their armor breaks down in hot lands, but they get better in cold lands too. Besides, Abysian Lava Warriors have disadvantages in cold lands too and most people think they are a pretty good sacred troop.
Okay, they are resource intensive, but just because people usually take Sloth 3 as Caelum doesn't mean that they HAVE to.
5) Caelum does not have bad national troops. I think their national troops are actually rather good. They have good archers (especially with Wind Guide as a free starting spell). Their archers have 12 precision, same as longbowmen though of course they use shorter ranged and less damaging shorbows.
Their infantry actually has pretty good stats and are reasonably priced. The complaint that most people have is not that their infantry is bad at fighting. It's that because of their flying ability, they don't tank for archers in the way that they are supposed to. In fact, what Caelum wants is strategic flight, but they don't want tactical flight. Without tactical flight, Caelum infantry can hold and attack just like normal infantry and tank for archers. There are workarounds to this, for example, setting the infantry to guard commander to a carefully placed seraphine who is herself set to only cast spells for example.
6) Caelum because of cold 3 has spare points to play with.
So what disadvantages does Caelum have? I can only think of two:
1) Caelum has crappy PD. There's nothing redeeming to be said about infantry that flies straight up to be killed fairly quickly, though I wonder if the free magic weapons and free seraphine might be good against SG Ermor.
2) Caelum has supply problems and has no easy access to nature magic to alleviate that. I have no answer to that.
When all's said and done, Caelum's advantages are immense. People say that Caelum's one big advantage is their cheap mages, but it seems to me that Caelum has above average everything else AND cheap, good mages to boot. A while back, Cohen was complaining about how Abysia was terribly underpowered because all their stuff is so expensive. I don't agree with him by the way, and other people have pointed out that Abysia's stuff is more expensive to pay for more hit points and fire immunity. Well, Caelum has flying, built-in magic weapons, and cold immunity, but unless I'm very much mistaken, it doesn't seem to me that Caelum is paying anything for all this.
Okay, this is a bit of rant and I admit that I'm being beaten to a pulp by Caelum in an ongoing MP game (thanks Panther.
), but I'd still like to hear what others have to say to my points.