Best Unit in the Game... Any thoughts?

[Endoperez]

mivayan said:

(uselessinfo
I know one - summon lesser air elemental!

it was cheaper 4-5 years ago and isn't used now.. I think.

Also False Horror, and the Vampire summons (Blood Rite etc). In earlier Dominions games, Caelum used to be the nation casting Illwinter because they preferred Cold 3 and Jotunheim (Iron Woods, or MA nowadays) preferred Cold 2. Reascendance (Marignon national Blood spell) is now restricted to Marignon only, while it used to widen up all Blood/Astral nations' magic by giving access to a Fire mage. Same with Angel summons and Pythium/Marignon. Carrion Reanimation used to rock in Dom:PPP (the first game), because it didn't need corpses and Jotunheim could have thousands of Soulless Giants in two turns after researching it.

The flying, gem-free summons that are very hard to kill (etherealness) and very good at routing enemies (trample or fear) were good enough to let groups of sole mages destroy whole armies themselves. Seraphs used to be Caelum's infantry: 1 Seraph == 3-5 Lesser Air Elementals, or later ~8 or so False Horrors.
Vampires aren't ethereal any more, but their cost hasn't been rebalanced.
Illwinter is still good, and very useful for EA Niefelheim, but now only three nations will ever consider it. Same with Reascendance - it isn't any worse, but it's going to be used only rarely. Same with Angel summons (Harbinger, Heavenly Choir, etc).
Carrion Reanimation is a bit weak now, because it needs corpses to work at all. If it would always create at least a certain minimum amount of undead (say, 10) and then existing corpses would be added to that, OR if it could be cast at a remote province, it would be useful again. Especially for Jotunheim and other nations with tough undead.