Balancing Wrathful Skies

[alexti]

Yvelina said:
> Have you ever played a lich?

No. I do not play male pretenders, and the Lich Queen loses 40% hps, 3 protection, 3 attack, and 3 strenght, compared to the Lich, and gets 2 Dominion for it. But even the lich itself is hugely underpowered. It is vulnerable to fire, and is both an undead and a construct, which makes it useless in middle-late game as a combatant. Immortality in my book is mostly a crutch for weak players - sure it is useful in the initial expansion, but I have never lost a pretender in the initial expansion.

You haven't met uber-militiaman yet, who can kill half-equipped VQ (or dragon) in one hit

Yvelina said:
Immortality has two benefits for the good player. Recuperation and willingness to fight to the death in friendly domain. The first is a major benefit, but the undead are poor middle game combatants anyway, so it applies less to them. The second is only important if you are supporting your pretender with troops. But if you are fighting in your domain, you are either in trouble (because you are defending) or the other player is weaker than you (because he could not maintain his domain when he knew he was against an immortal)

Well, usually you always have to fight in your dominion, any sensible opponent will first try to disrupt your better provinces with his hordes from hell, calls of wild, sneaky troops etc. With those, half-SC pretender can deal fine and immortality is a good insurance against opponent cunningly dropping couple of well prepared ID on top of those hiding wolves who took the province originally. It's always nice to get your pretender back after such surprise

And also immortality allows you to take some astral on your pretender without fear of mind duel.