How to mod Angels to not be wimps.

[Cainehill]

Boron said:
Giving the angel 4 more attack as Zen suggested is too much : He has already a flamebeau and if you run a fire 9/10 bless for +4/5 additional attack then suddenly the angel would have an attackrating of 23-24 !
Then he would be the bane of all banelords , tartarians and other SCs because he has a flamebeau .

I wonder if you've ever seen a tartarian in the game? The typical one has 150-250 HPs, making it almost impossible for the angel to kill in 1 hit. The tartarians on the other hand only have to hit the angel once, and also have a variety of magic paths they can use.

In addition, you say "if you run a fire 9/10 bless" : well, yes, _IF_ you do. How many people run fire blessings for the effect on angels? And even with an unholy, er, holy, attack rating, the angels still die like holy flies to many forms of attack, especially magical.

[Arryn]

In my Caelum SP game (circa turn 60) I've summoned tartarians and got the monstrum as the first one. Very impressive. Once I finish kitting it out it'll eat almost anything in the game as a light snack. Heck, even freshly summoned with no gear whatsoever it'll rip up most things. Boron needs to take another hard look at Zen's SCQR.

[Taqwus]

Tartarians are very, very nasty. A Tartarian Cyclop has full slots, loads of hp, decent base prot, generally nice stats, and Earth-4, which allows Invulnerability and Iron Will for starters. The Tartarian Manticores have even more hp and flight, but far fewer slots and different (2?/2?) magic. Still, they cost not only Conj-9 research, but death-7 to cast, 10 death gems per, usually 20 nature for Gift of Reason, and additional time w/ Chalice / Gift of Health to remove feeblemind and other fun afflictions.

But yeah, an angel will have trouble with one.

One bit: Archangels, Harbingers are unbounded. Their demonic / devilish rival nobility are capped, and don't benefit from divine backing unless made into prophets or given Shrouds. Weak gods, weak angels; this makes a lot of sense to me. It's also thematic with the usual story lines of Good being under siege and seriously threatened by Evil.

[Huzurdaddi]

One bit: Archangels, Harbingers are unbounded. Their demonic / devilish rival nobility are capped

Uhm that's true but a single devil TROOP can eat a harbringer or an archangel. It may actually take two devils TROOPS depending upon how the battle goes.

The change of a modest increase in attack and an area effect holy attack as a 2nd attack would make the angels worth while as a hard counter to devils/undead. They would still be inefficient vs. normal troops which is ok by me.

As a hard counter they should PROBABLY be very cost efficient against the troop they are going to counter. I mean that is the way that counters are supposed to work. But I would live with +4 attack and the holy attack.

It would also be nice to have a similar hard counter to magical units. It looks quite a bit like ether warriors are supposed to fit that bill, however they lack the skills to consistantly hit and they are not remote targeted. They are also hampered by their 1 strategic movement.

However I would not want to destroy the spell as it stands. Perhaps a slight bump to their attack rating ( perhaps +2 or so would do it ). And two new spells one that would be remote targeted ( and more expensive on a per-unit basis, perhaps 8 ether warriors and some leader, for 50 gems or so ) and a ghost rider like spell for 10-15 gems that would be the normal load of 15 warriors+1 ether lord.

This would make astral summons ( which are currently ... uhm ... lacking ) the summons of "hard counters."

[Edi]

Definitely slap more HP on the angels, equal to the devil's maybe? 100 FR would also be fitting. They already have FR 50, and the Flambeau should give them another 50%, but because it's intrinsic instead of an item, it does not, and the archangel will fry his minions half the time with falling fires, fireballs and other offensive fore spells.

Blood summons are available far earlier and are much cheaper and use a type of magical resource generally not suited to much more than summoning nasties, while the angels are expensive, die quickly and the resources generally are much better used elsewhere. It is quite telling that you generally need to drop at least two Angelic Hosts on a moderately large indie province (at indie strength 7) to conquer it with them, and even then you will lose two to three of them, most likely because the Archangel will flashfry his minions with fire magic instead of laying the smackdown on the enemy.

Tight now, the angels are a completely losing proposition almost every time, unless you have insane amounts of astral pearls to spare or find a conjuration bonus site like The Crypt Underneath or The Ultimate Gateway. With the latter one, they become a viable option, but that site is very rare.

Edi

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

I wonder if you've ever seen a tartarian in the game? The typical one has 150-250 HPs, making it almost impossible for the angel to kill in 1 hit. The tartarians on the other hand only have to hit the angel once, and also have a variety of magic paths they can use.

In addition, you say "if you run a fire 9/10 bless" : well, yes, _IF_ you do. How many people run fire blessings for the effect on angels? And even with an unholy, er, holy, attack rating, the angels still die like holy flies to many forms of attack, especially magical.

You didn't include the costs .
1 angel costs about 4-7 pearls depending how much you think the archangel alone is worth .
1 Tartarian costs normally 10 deathgems + 20 nature for GoR + at least 40 gems for equipment .

With Zen's change with +4 to attack the normal angel with fire 5 bless would have an attack of 24 without experience .
So the 6 angels who are worth about 30 pearls would have a not too bad chance to get 2-3 hits in the first combat round and each hit would do 26x3 + 2d6 oe ap damage .
Against tartarians this is not a big chance but at least a chance and banelords at least would be defeated easily cause there 1 hit is enough normally .

[Cohen]

Personally all the Angels are underpowered, from Virtue, to the smallest Angel of the Host.
I'm going to adjust their stats in my mod in fact.

[Huzurdaddi]

I'm fully confident that Zen's mod will address Angels. They will not be uber units but hopefully they will on a cost basis whoop devils.

[Cainehill]

And Cohen's mod will also, probably by giving them 50 HPs and Fire-4.

[Vynd]

I like the idea of making Angels stronger. But another possibility would be to simply make them cheaper, either by reducing the gems/magic paths necessary to summon them, or by increasing the number that you get from the spells.

Sometthing else to consider is that Angels compare poorly to Devils because Devils are too strong, not because Angels are too weak. Heck, I'd rather see Devils weakened than Angels strengthened.