[Sombre]

Yeah the gold costs on some of the units are a bit steep and I've already reduced them from what I originally had them at. I didn't want people building entire armies of slith because in the exile games they aren't that common as a race. Plus they do have some fairly impressive stats for basic troops. Exile armies (apart from the avernites) tend to have a lot of high skill (att and def) but low protection troops.

I can drop the prices of those three somewhat, but Exile is going to remain a gold powered nation,... actually a gold and astral powered nation since the Crystal Souls can end up giving you quite a lot of pearls. I'm actually tempted to make them produce 2 APs per turn, since they cost 400 and can only move via teleport. That encourages you to build a 'chamber' of them in your home province doing research and cranking out the gems.

As for the mages - I'm going to give them basic f/a/s 1 and then 2 f/a randoms at 100%. That way you still get solid 2/2s but you also get some 3/1s who have specialised in fire or air and can get the key level 3 spells. I initially figured boosting magic might be viable for some mages (like shapers and hero archmages) because of the gem spawning souls, but maybe 1 AP per turn is too little to encourage empowerment and/or skill item forging.

Any other thoughts?

Edit: I've reduced some gold costs across the board. Slith and nephilim are now more useful as you can afford to take some casualties before getting in close. The changes to the vahnatai mages have made them more interesting and I like to grab as many as I can now to back up the troops with heavy artillery - mist can be useful if you decide to go with the elite melee troops, as can body ethereal and the buffs offered by the shaper. Crystal Souls with teleport are surprisingly handy at securing provinces under threat, though I prefer to keep them at home researching and cranking out pearls. The Slith troops go well with the pyromancers and vahnatai mages because stray sulphur or fire damage is reduced.

I'm still working on 0.5 (all 5 unique national heroes, hopefully ages fixed, maybe new flag etc) - but attached is the 0.42 .dm file with reduced gold costs. The fixed prices will work with saved games.