Life Realm

Life magic specializes in healing and buffing normal military units and cities.

Strengths

 * Good at buffing units, especially normal units
 * Most effective at using Heroes
 * Has various spells that boost resource production of various types. Especially good at increasing gold and production output both directly and indirectly.
 * Good at healing
 * Benefits most from maintaining peaceful relations
 * High availability of resistance buffs makes it strong against Death magic in general.

Weaknesses

 * Below average summoning spells
 * Can't use direct damage spells on normal units, mediocre at direct damage spells against Fantastic units.
 * Can have a very hard time against Sorcery magic due to extreme reliance on enchantments
 * Heavy reliance on using normal units
 * Low versatility in the early game
 * Many situational uncommon spells that might not be relevant for every strategy

1. Star Fires
Perform a strength 23 attack on target fantastic creature in combat.

2. Bless
Cost : 7/35 MP

Research : 320 RP

Enchanted unit gains +5 defense and resistance against Chaos and Death realm spells, breath, gaze, or touch attacks. (Reminder : petrification is a Nature realm effect)

''This spell no longer adds defense against physical attacks coming from creatures of the listed realms, nor against magical ranged attacks belonging to those realms. For a while it used to do the latter, but even that was far too powerful, making it almost as good as Resist Magic and Resist Elements combined. While I usually avoid spells working against specific realms, this is an exception as the majority of relevant harmful spells do come from those two realms, and most importantly, there is exactly one such spell remaning for each realm : Resist Elements resists Nature spells, True Sight resists Sorcery spells and this resists the remaining two. (Life has no spells that need to be resisted that affect normal units and many fantastic creatures were designed with their vulnerability to life magic in mind, so a spell to resist life would be a very bad idea.)''

While Sorcery and Nature also have spells that might hurt a unit, they tend to have effects that would ignore this spell anyway (Illusion damage, Crack's Call, Web etc) so excluding those realms makes very little difference here, literally only being relevant for Confusion and Vertigo in the early game, both of which are Sorcery, the realm Life is actually intended to be weak against.

3. Healing
Cost : 15 MP

Research : 320 RP

Target unit recovers 5 hit points in battle.

''To be perfectly honest, this might be one spell that isn't perfectly balanced yet, as restoring 5 hit points has an entirely different meaning on a big very rare tier monster and a common swordsmen unit. However, this also makes the spell equally useful for the entire game and means it scales with the game progress which is important : spells do need to be of increasingly higher relevance to be still worth using up a combat turn on casting them, and in that sense healing is perfectly balanced. While the target has better defenses, the enemy also has better damaging spells as the game progresses, allowing Healing to fill roughly the same role in being able to cancel out a certain percentage of incoming spell damage. For these two reasons, I decided to not nerf this spell in the end. I tried to ensure that healing is less efficient than damage spells on typical targets, so attempting to counter damage can only do so much before the damage piles up and destroys the unit. Still, the time it buys is often enough to end the battle and guarantee the safety of the unit. Fortunately, the original amount of 5 hit points healed worked perfectly in practice, although that's just a coincidence as both the damage output of damage spells and the hit pints of units were updated.''

4. Endurance
Cost : 60 MP (overland)

Research : 380 RP

Enchanted unit gains +1 movement and +2 defense.

''This spell originally only provided 1 movement which I believed to be too unimpressive. While now I realize movement is extremely valuable, I still think providing an additional effect wasn't a mistake, as Life magic, being bad at summoning creatures, deperately needs ways to improve their normal units to the level of good common summoned units and beyond - especially beyond, as casting multiple buffs on a unit is way more expensive than summoning a single creature - yet it has to be due to buffs' versatility of being possible to apply on any unit, even those where it has much more outstanding benefits. So in order for Life to have something competent during the first few years of the game, I had to make sure those fragile basic units like swordsmen, can be enhanced to the point where they can actually fight units like hounds or bears evenly and survive spells like Fire Bolt. The only way to have that happen is through extra defense, and while Holy Armor does provides some as well as extra levels from Heroism, a third layer seemed necessary. More importantly, while + To Defend was a stat, there were no targeted buffing spells in the game to provide any so it felt intuitive to include it here.As a consequence, Life became able to create virtually unkillable early units but at an extremely high cost, by putting all of their buffs on them. This was enjoyable to play but came with balance problems, so I had to make sure the strategy doesn't work on all possible enemies - against some using more units with fewer buffs each becoming more effective. As none of Life's spells are really effective against it, Poison ended up serving this purpose, making the mass-buffing strategy weak against Sorcery (Nagas have high poison) and risky against Death (Ghouls have low poison but convert the unit to their side if killed) wizards. This solved the early game problem but another issue became apparent eventually : Endurance was way too powerful on late game fantastic creatures. Considering many options, I decided on swapping the defensive effects between Holy Armor and Endurance, making sure the summoned creatures “only” get the 2 armor, not the much more superior +1 To Defend bonus which can on high end units be as good as 5 defense. It also resulted in Holy Armor and Holy Weapon becoming a proper symmetric pair of spells, one providing +1 To Hit and the other +1 To Defend.''

5. Holy Armor
Cost : 50 MP (overland)

Research : 320 RP

'''Enchanted unit gains +1 To Defend. However if it has 5 or less defense, it gains +2 defense instead.'''

''As explained above, this is now a symmetric spell to Holy Weapon, but I also had to make sure it retains the original functionality of being beneficial to low armor units, by making it provide the old 2 armor on those. I have some doubts about that decision now, as it was originally meant to have a low MP cost early game combat spell for defense in the game, but allowing the spell to be cast in combat was too powerful for the midgame, where +1 To Defend is a more sizable bonus and being able to instantly recast it when dispelled was entirely too good, although the real problem was it was a lot more economical to simply not cast the spell and only use it in combat if the target was fighting alone and could reliably expect to survive a turn without major damage, freeing up overland casting capacity entirely, and going against the intended design that buffing has to deal with losing enchantments thorugh dispel magic in exchange for the massively powerful units it can create.''

6. Holy Weapon
Cost : 8/40 MP

Research : 260 RP

Enchanted unit gains +1 To Hit and can bypass Weapon Immunity.

''This still works like the original and is Life's way to buff damage output, in contrast to Chaos which adds attack strength instead. Being one of the 3 common spells that enable the bypassing of weapon immunity, it ensures that game mechanic is powerful but not unbeatable in the early game. Without that it wouldn't be possible to allow that ability to be part of the early game which would be very bad because it's definitely not good enough for any phase of the game later, as Alchemist Guilds are already built everywhere by then.''

''There aren't enough Life creatures for a spell exclusively buffing them to be worth existing, especially considering the design of Life is “bad at summoned creatures”. The other half of the effect, debuffing Death creatures, could be useful but goes against the design of not selectively penalizing realms, thus this spell is removed.''

7. Heroism
Cost : 15/75 MP

Research : 320 RP

Enchanted unit is elite.

''In the earlier stages of the mod, a significant amount of complaints were posted saying this spell is too powerful. The possibility to replace it with something else was considered. This spell is somewhat special because it fills the role of being a major buff that doesn't stack which makes is super useful for the early game of the realm, yet, as it doesn't stack with unit levels obtainable through normal means, doesn't raise the overall potential units can reach by putting all the buffs available on them. As overbuffing is a serious game balance threat, this valuable design had to be kept. Other ideas were considered but they either didn't solve the issue of stacking too many buffs, were redundant with existing spells, or weren't able to provide the same level of benefit for the early game as Heroism. However, when discussion about what makes Heroism too powerful despite the fact it actually does not give any bonus you can't gain through leveling the unit (which isn't particularly difficult) - and level-up bonuses were slightly lower than in the original Master of Magic already - started, I realized the issue is not the spell itself, but its potential interaction with heroes. In particular, a hero who has a level scaling resource producing ability such as Sage, Ritual Master or Legendary, produces a huge amount of resources which is game-changing at that phase of the game - the additional 30-50 income per turn causes a massive snowballing effect. As a consequence we realized the root problem is heroes being available from turn 1 - there simply is no way to make it balanced to hire a hero who might have abilities such as Noble which generates 20 gold a turn, at a time when the player's only town produces less than 10 gold a turn. Resource producing abilities aren't the only problem though - a hero with good abilities at a time most other players can still only produce settlers and build outposts or summon common creatures is a potential game winner. So as it has already been explained in the Heroes chapter, the solution turned out to restrict heroes to appear at turn 30 or later only and cost more gold to hire, instead of changing Heroism. Later, the economy rebalancing to slightly improve how the early game economy plays and provide players with enough resources to actually be able to play the game properly and have choices, further mitigated this issue as typical early game towns were slightly more productive on the whole, nonetheless the restriction of turn 30 on heroes remained in respect of their military potential and also to reduce the luck factor present - even if a turn 5 hero is a game winner, it's entirely up to luck whether the player gets an offer and can amass enough gold to pay for it so better to not have that chance to begin with.''

8. Just Cause
Cost : 150 MP

Research : 480 RP

'''Gain 10 fame. All cities have 1 lower unrest.'''

''Life being “the” enchantment realm, having a global common spell is good design, especially as it allows players to be familiar with the concept immediately. The Fame bonus can make it relevant for hero strategies, while the unrest reduction is overall good for economy, but fairly balanced by the fact in the early game the total population is too low for increased tax rates to make a game breaking difference, and later, unrest reduction buildings and garrisons are easily avalable and make this spell quite a lot less important but still useful thanks to the larger number of cities potentially affected.''

9. Heavenly Light
Cost : 60 MP

Research : 440 RP

'''Enchanted city produces 3 religious power. Units defending the enchanted city gain +1 attack, defense and resistance during combat, and if they do not have magical weapons, they also receive a bonus equivalent to having them.'''

''Originally providing the effect of True Light at a higher tier of rarity, this spell had to be completely redesigned, as True Light was also removed and binding it to city defense only made the spell even less playable. Life being the least aggressive realm, if felt intuitive to give them a city defense spell that can be used in the early game and provides a benefit without any special condition. As Life struggles more than other realms at expanding early due to lacking summoning and combat spell options, this can at least help them be the top dog at avoiding conflict and defending their territory obtained through settlers. Later on though when Life becomes able to build stacks the enemy can't stop or even meaningfully damage, a strong higher tier city defense spell, while matching the flavor of the realm, would be very bad for game balance : the only thing that keeps expansion limited in this stage of the game is the need to provide decent garrioson for all the conquered cities, and a better city defense spell would reduce the need for doing that significantly. This means common is the only spell tier a city defense spell in Life can exist at, and honestly, I think one has to exist for flavor reasons. As city defense spells are not particularly popular among players preferring an aggressive playstyle, and this spell was designed before the addition of Magic Markets, which made Life wizards extremely mana starved due to high buffing costs and no summoned creatures to conquer nodes, a power production of 3 was added albeit at a cost of 1 maintenance. While this effect isn't as important nowadays, the power counting as a Religious source makes it still highly relevant in specific combinations : Cult Leader and Dark Rituals.''

10. Guardian Spirit
Cost : 60 MP, 1 MP/turn

Research : 200 RP

'''Creature : 7 melee,+3 To Hit, 6 defense, 10 resistance, 2 movement, 10 health, 1 figure, Non-Corporeal, Poison Immunity, Resistance to All+1, Meld with Node. Melded nodes are affected by the effect of Heavenly Light, buffing garrions and producing 3 additional power.'''

''While the creature's stats have been improved, it is still fairly weak as it should be for a Life creature. Poison Immunity however can make it relevant in providing the Life wizard one way to deal with poisonous enemy creatures which hard counter Life's main strategy. The Spirit itself is not strong enough to be efficient at fighting them, but being hard to take down through Poison Immunity and providing resistance to all other units at the same time, it is extremely helpful to have one in battles against multiple Poison units. Providing a global buff in combat that comes at no additional cost, while 1 resistance is unassuming, this can be a significant addition to any armies that need resistance in the early game nonetheless. The main function of the sprit however has always been to provide a better way to meld nodes than the default. Originally the spirit provided a 80% chance to prevent the melding of the node by others, which was a very problematic effect : It was extremely annoying to have such a luck based feature from the human players perspective, often requiring to summon 10 or more spirits to meld the node, while at other times needing only one, mainly because you had to guess how many spirits you needed before sending them to the node, if it wasn't located right next to your cities. Underestimating the amount resulted in missing out on the node until your second pack of spirits reached it, and overestimating left you with useless spirits and wasted spellcasting power. This was even worse from the AI's perspective though - as the AI sends sprits one at a time and isn't smart enough to summon them close to the node, it was able to seriously hinder the AI's ability to take the node, while still frustrating the player if they assumed their node is safe but luck was on the AI's side. Ultimately the effect was meaningless : you had to still garrison the node because the protection failed 20% of the time and the enemy could keep trying until it worked. So this effect was eliminated and instead an effect that's useful for players and AI alike and helps defending the node through conventional means was added. It's also worth noting that effects based on pure random chance belong to the Chaos realm and have no business being in Life whatsoever - Nature only gets one because it's the “can do everything” realm.''

1. Exorcise
Cost : 20 MP

Research : 640 RP

'''All figures in target unit in combat must resist at -1 or be irrecoverably destroyed. Additional resistance penalty of -3 for undead.'''

''Following the same process as Star Fires, this too has been changed to work on all fantastic creatures. The save penalty is low, but so is the casting and research cost, to make sure it's useful early when low resistance creatures are still abundant. It's existence is a major balancing factor for several uncommon Death creatures especially the two that Regenerate and have very low magic resistance but huge military potential. Undead penalty was kept because destroying undead is definitely something Life realm is expected to be good at, and the Undead game mechanic is extremely powerful and definitely needs some counters to keep it in check : players are essentially receiving free units without having to produce them or spend resources or maintenance on them.''

''Originally a very rare spell, this was moved to uncommon to match the rarity of the other two plane travel spells, as really, it isn't any more powerful than them and does the same thing. However, later at the time the role of planes and planar travel was reconsidered, all such spells have been removed from the Life Realm and now the only planar movement spell is Arcane, giving each realm an equal access to it. While being able to send settlers to the other plane did support peaceful strategies achieved through economic superiority, it was simply a far too large advantage to be able to both gain roughly half of a plane for yourself without contest, AND weaken the “final boss” enemy by the same amount at the same time. It also encouraged risk instead of strategy, as entering the other plane could potentially result in meeting a hostile wizard who not only prevented building any cities there due to being superior in military, but often even using various curses and hostile spells on the player such as Drain Power, Dispelling Wave and Fire Storm. While city based curses were not available without scouting the player's territory, spells that do not target cities have no such restriction. This also worked in the reverse : AI players throwing units onto the other plane from Myrror often resulted in a situation when superior enemy forces “spawned” deep in the players territory, in worst case destroying the cities, and in best case, opening up the possibility for the AI to use curses on them, while the player still had no way to go to the other plane unless they were lucky enough to find a weak tower.''

2. True Sight
Cost : 15/60 MP

Research : 420 RP

Enchanted creature gains Illusion Immunity.

''While Bless protects Life wizards from Chaos and Death, this spell works against Sorcery to ensure the game is fair and all realms are equally covered. More importantly, this effect can ensure heroes remain playable and don't get wiped out by the common tier, but very powerful Illusion ability which entirely ignores their armor. While it seems like it goes against the design of Life being weak to Sorcery, there is a catch - being an enchantment itself, the Sorcery player can and will dispel it on all but hero units wielding artifacts with this spell. However the spell is priced low enough in research cost to give Life players the possibility to fight a successful war against Sorcery wizards, if they manage to do it in the timeframe between researching this, and the Sorcery player researching their more potent dispelling magic. Other than requiring a way to counter Illusion, which unlike Doom comes at the beginning of the game, this spell is also extremely important in ensuring Invisibility has enough answers and doesn't dominate the game too much, making Life one of the realms that are good at countering it.''

3. Prayer
Cost : 40 MP

Research : 2140 RP

All units in combat gain +1 To Defend, To Hit and Resistance.

''By far the most powerful global combat buff of its tier in the game and likely one of the best Uncommons overall, this spell wasn't changed because buffing is exactly the intended strength of the realm. Being a global combat spell, it is also one of those very few advantages Sorcery wizards can't remove by dispelling it (as that ability was removed from all dispel type spells in the game). As it's impossible to have an integer amount fewer than 1, there wasn't really any room to make this spell weaker numerically other than redesigning the entire To Hit and To Defend mechanic, something that was considered but Caster of Magic was far too ahead in development to go through with such a massive change to a core game mechanic. More importantly, the effect of this spell was the baseline for similar global spells in other realms, of course, taking into account that they have to be overall less powerful than it, as Life is the realm that specializes in buffing.''

4. Raise Dead
Cost : 40 MP

Research : 1280 RP

'''Target dead normal unit in combat is revived with half hit points. The same unit can't be revived or healed until the end of combat and counts as a fantastic unit (with no realm) until the end of combat.'''

''This was mostly fine as is, except for one detail - it made it literally impossible to lose heroes to damage and more importantly, it allowed heroes to fight and kill powerful units, come back, and do it again and again and again, enabling one hero to take out any number of units equally powerful as itself. Restricting the unit to be revived only once per battle means the player either has to avoid relying on the dead hero until the enemy runs out of threats, or requires extreme caution to ensure it doesn't die again - sending it to attack other strong units is out of question. Converting to fantastic is both for flavor reasons (the unit is halfway back from the grave explaining why it isn't affected by healing properly yet) and because it makes them vulnerable to fantastic unit hitting spells such as Banish or Exorcise both of which can destroy the unit permanently, finally it's also the way the game's coding knows the unit is under this effect, by setting its race code to this new special value. Most of these changes only really matter for reviving heroes, as other normal units were usually only revived with the intention to prevent suffering losses in the battle after it was decided in your favor, not to let the newly raised unit engage the enemy again.''

5. Sanctify (new)
Cost : 70 MP

Research : 960 RP

Enchanted unit has no gold maintenance and produces 3 power.

''A completely new spell that plays into the role of Life wanting to avoid conflict, this makes your garrisons (or treasure hunters) also serve as an economic investment. Needless to say, entering a war and risking to lose these units on a battlefield is not a smart thing to do. To be perfectly honest, this spell was created to fill the hole caused by removing Planar Travel which already happened at a time when it was concluded Life doesn't need a new unit enchantment and most possible options would be redundant and unbalanced. However a spell had to exist so I tried to design one that has an effect that will be popular for human players without being particularly powerful, and playing into the underused theme of peaceful economic victories which are much harder to achieve and less often attempted in Caster of Magic compared to Master of Magic mainly due to the fixed diplomacy system and AI which means the player does need to put effort into staying on good terms with others and can't expect to easily manipulate all AI players into signing a peace treaty when the player's forces are obviously inferior and the AI could expect to win the war, nor can they expect to see no enemy forces showing up after a war declaration anymore. As people often hate paying maintenance costs with passion, a spell that removes that seemed intuitive. There was another design goal though - AI players tended to underperform when using mono-Life due to the lack of summoned creatures early on and generally not AI friendly themes later (heroes, intelligent use of buffs, building doomstacks) - so I wanted to make a spell that also gives an edge to AI players behind the scenes. While the AI already pays reduced maintenance costs on higher difficulties, they also receive a difficulty scaled bonus to their power income and overland casting ability, the two of which combined makes this spell a lot more beneficial for the AI as they can both get more power out of the spell and cast it more times for the same investment, albeit in exchange for the maintenance elimination being less relevant. To ensure the AI doesn't lose the units enchanted by this spell in lairs or other battles, it prioritizes casting it on spellcasting units such as magicians which typically stay behind to garrison their towns.''

6. Altar of Peace (new)
Cost : 120 MP (4 MP/turn)

Research : 1280 RP

Enchanted city produces additional research between 0 and 24 depending on your average diplomatic relation with other players.

''Created even before Sanctify, all options were considered and research was the only area Life wizards were not able to buff much on cities. For roughly the same reasons described above, this spell was designed to open up that option if, and only if, the Life player was indeed aiming for a peaceful, economic and research superiority strategy. This also fills the role of helping AI Life players out, as AI players who survive typically maintain good relations with each other - if they did not, they wouldn't be around in the game long enough to care about bonus research, unless they won their war(s) quickly and efficiently in which case they really don't need any further help from the spell system : they already control two wizard's worth of territory. The maintenance ensures the player has to carefully consider his diplomacy options, as casting this then ending up in a large scale war can easily turn the spell into a net engative. Having these two spells opens up a new way to play the Sorcery/Life dual realm as well, as Sorcery excels at manipulating diplomacy to their favor and has the strongest late game so research and magic power are extremely valuable for it.''

7. Unicorns
Cost : 200 MP (4 MP/turn)

Research : 1280 RP

Creature : 6 melee,+2 To Hit, 4 defense, 7 resistance, 4 movement, 8 health, 4 figures, Poison Immunity, Resistance to All+2, Teleporting

''Unicorns are the only uncommon creature in Life, and mainly excel at providing the significant +2 Resistance bonus to your army while also having high hit points for maximal survivability. Their teleportation allows them to avoid engaging stronger units in melee and also allows them to take out any ranged attackers that could still damage them. Their attack power is fairly low and their high To Hit score makes them not benefit from Prayer as much, while their cost of summoning is quite high. Thanks these downsides, the Unicorns manage to fill the role of “Life is weak at summoning” while still providing a useful, valuable, and quite impressive spell. Poison Immunity also allows the Unicorn to single-handedly counter the poison vulnerability of Life once it reaches this spell, as it is both immune to it, strong enough to kill those weaker creatures, and adds enough resistance to allow the rest of the army to do so as well. While Life is not a good realm for a Conjurer based strategy, picking Unicorns for research on turn 1 is viable enough to enable that, and while researching it is time consuming, the creature is capable of countering pretty much every common creature, and especially Life's traditional weaknesses, as well as being super efficient at dismantling garrisons with a few magicians, which could be hard to deal with otherwise. I doubt this strategy is anywhere near top tier but it should be at least playable for medium levels of difficulties which is already a big deal considering it's the realm's weakness.''

8. Stream of Life
Cost : 120 MP

Research : 1280 RP

Doubles population growth in enchanted city, reduces unrest by 3 and each unit in the city is fully healed at the end of the turn.

''With the faster pacing of the mod in population growth, a rare spell isn't very good for that purpose as by then most of the player's cities already reached a large size and there is no room left on the map for more, making it only really beneficial for a raze and rebuild strategy which would be far too late to start at that time. For this reason the spell was moved to be an Uncommon, the casting cost was reduced, and the unrest reduction was limited to a much more reasonable 3 to ensure unrest generating spells in other realms, while not as great against Life as usual, still do something. This spell really helps out the realm's peaceful economic potential, and being an uncommon, picking it as a guaranteed early research is possible, although the high research cost keeps this a balanced strategy, quite different from the original Master of Magic's ability to start with the spell already researched with 11 books.''

9. Resurrection
Cost : 325 MP

Research : 1600 RP

Revives an dead hero on the overland map.

''It was suggested to move this into Arcane but that would go against the design goal to keep heroes a very powerful but difficult to play mechanic where keeping them alive is super important. As Life is good at using heroes, I allowed it to keep the spell, but the casting cost is pretty high to punish losing heroes and make sure players can't use strategies that involve regularly sending heroes on suicide missions to do massive damage as they go down.''

10. Divine Order (new)
Cost : 250 MP

Research : 1920 RP

Effect applies to all players.

'''City and unit enchantments are 25% cheaper. Global enchantments are 10% cheaper. Summons are 10% more expensive. Combat spells are 20% more expensive. Multiple copies from different players are cumulative but at a halved effect.'''

''A new global enchantment to replace the removed Planar Seal spell, this spell aims to take advantage of Life's supposedly diplomatic theme. Seemingly affecting everyone equally, it's pretty obvious that spells Life wizards use most are reduced in costs while spells other realms specialize in, are more expensive. Casting this spell can improve your relations with other Life wizards, or worsen it with Chaos and Death. AI players will take your treaty status with everyone into account and prefer to cast this spell if on the whole it helps their friends and hurts their foes more than the opposite. It's worth noting that while seemingly harmful for the more combat magic oriented realms, I've made sure they have options that can take advantage of, or ignore this spell, so in a game map with many Life wizards and copies of the spell, they can rely on those options more than usual. In particular, Death city curses are enchantments, so they'll cost less, as well as their Lycanthropy spell which is an enchantment used for summoning the werewolf creature. Combat unit curses are reduced in cost too, making Black Sleep or Possession more threatening. Chaos can take advantage of it by spamming their fairly decent buffs like Flame Blade and Chaos Channels, or curses like Shatter and Warp Creature, although I have to admit they are hurt by this spell the most. The spell's casting cost is low and the AI doesn't have a high priority to recast it, so dispelling it can be often viable. While Life mostly benefits, even they can sometimes be negatively affected, so carelessly casting this before summoning a bunch of Unicorns or relying on heavy use of Exorcise or Holy Word can backfire and punish players. It's worth mentioning the AI is aware of the effect and will prioritize spells that get around this effect more - so you can seriously expect them to throw a lot of curses in response, or Sorcery wizards might try to take advantage of the situation and make entire stacks of units invisible so while the benefits can be significant, the risks to consider are, too. Especially if all those friendly AI players helping you by casting the spell manage to reap the benefit better overall and get way ahead of you economically.''

1. Incarnation
Cost : 700 MP

Research : 5500 RP

Summons the Chosen

''And iconic and powerful spell in the original, and the peak of enjoyment for hero users, I had to make sure this spell stays amazing. Obviously the unremovable Magic Immunity had to go, and simply having a hero with good combat stats isn't such a big deal, so this hero received a different role : he has pretty much every single global army buffing hero ability, including the new ones to ensure whichever army the hero travels with is a significant force. Nonetheless he still has good combat abilities as well, and can fight on his own if necessary. Such a powerful and outright immortal unit - you can summon him even if he was lost to recoverable damage, the only such hero in the game! - obviously can't be cheap so the cost of summoning him stands out, being even higher than the best summoned creatures in the game. Worth it. The unusual side effect that he counts as a Life creature during battle only was kept, as this made losing him a significant event - Raise Dead can't revive fantastic creatures so you had to pay the full overland summoning cost.''

2. Inspirations
Cost : 200 MP

Research : 5000 RP

Enchanted city gains +100% Production.

''This was originally very rare and while certainly is extremely powerful, city production hardly matters at that time of the game when very rare spells already dominate. Buffing cities isn't what you want to do right before winning or losing the game. The bonus is additive, meaning that on typical endgame cities already having ~50-100% production bonus, this doesn't really double production which would be far too powerful, more like increases it by half. High research cost as this spell is really that good, being able to produce troops 50% faster is no joke.''

3. Prosperity
Cost : 175 MP

Research : 2500 RP

Enchanted city produces +50% gold.

''Not as potent as Inspirations but gold is much more versatile so it's better that way. Research cost is lower as unlike production to prepare yourself for a game deciding endgame, boosting economy is something relevant earlier, and also because this spell simply produces less resources overall.''

4. Invulnerability
Cost : 30/150 MP

Research : 4000 RP

'''Whenever enchanted unit takes damage, it takes 2 less damage. Enchanted unit gains Weapon Immunity.'''

''While Weapon Immunity is rarely relevant this late in the game, the damage reduction is as good as 6.66 additional defense, making this by far the best purely defensive spell in the game. This effect even reduces damage that would ignore or reduce armor fully, only the effect of Doom can bypass this reduction. Life having the best defense buff in the game definitely the correct design, so nothing had to be changed here except the casting cost.''

5. Lion Heart
Cost : 36/180 MP

Research : 4000 RP

Enchanted unit gains +3 attack, +3 resistance, and hit points equal to 8 divided by the number of figures, rounded down.

''Originally giving 3 hit points per figure, this spell was insanely powerful on multi-figure units. While it still is very good for them thanks to the attack bonus, now the additional hit points are reasonably the same total amount regardless of figure count. This made this spell a lot more relevant for single figure units, including heroes, which now gain a full 8 additional health from it. While this does give Life two powerful defensive unit buffs at rare, it is the primary strength of the realm so this many is expected.''

6. Mass Healing
Cost : 35 MP

Research : 3500 RP

All of your units in combat are healed for 5.

Rare is the tier AOE effects start to appear at, so AOE healing should, too, there was no need to change that.

7. Altar of Battle
Cost : 300 MP

Research : 4500 RP

All units produced in the city are Elite.

''Pretty much the late game vesion of heroism, this is a buff that affects a large amount of units, yet doesn't increase their maximal potential. The buff is quite significant compared to the usual rare spells that affect multiple units, and this can pretty much affect all of your units produced after obtaining the spell, so keeping the cost high seemed like the best idea.''

8. Exaltation (new)
Cost : 30 MP

Research : 3000 RP

Target unit in combat gains 8 additional hit points.

''An improved healing spell that is less effective on MP/HP but can restore more in one use, and allows overchanging the unit above its maximal health, so it works well as preventative measure. It can also bypass irrecoverable damage by adding new hit points instead of healing that damage, making this functionally superior to normal healing spells. Nonetheless the amount healed is slightly less than the amount of damage a spell of this tier is expected to do, just like the basic Healing Spell.''

9. Holy Word
Cost : 60 MP

Research : 4000 RP

'''All enemy fantastic creature figures in all units must resist at -2 or be irrecoverably dead. Undead suffer an additional -3 penalty.'''

''All enemy targeting version of Exorcise, with slightly better save modifier. Ensures summoning stacks of 9 rare creatures isn't always the correct answer to everything. While pretty much unchanged from the original this spell was a perfect fit for both the realm's role and game balance. At this rarity, mass production of Undead for free through Zombie Mastery is available, so countering them is still fair and despite the efficiency, it's an economic benefit to the Death player who doesn't need to pay nearly as much for creating the zombies as it costs to destroy them even with this spell.''

10. Angel
Cost : 310 MP (8 MP/turn)

Research : 4000 RP

Creature : 18 melee,+2 To Hit, 9 defense, 11 resistance, 5 movement, 27 health, 1 figure, Holy Bonus 1, Illusion Immunity, Exorcise, Caster 24

''Although the damage output of Angels is not better than an uncommon creature to play into Life's “weak at summoning” role, Angels still offer a formidable movement speed that can take out ranged units easily, have natural Illusion Immunity to provide a tool against Sorcery magic which the realm needs badly, and can support your army thorugh Holy Bonus and casting spells. Angels are also surprisingly effective against other rare creatures, as they are typically single figure and the Exorcise ability might destroy them instantly. Even with all those perks though, this creature isn't as powerful as it appears to be : Unicorns are faster, Sorcery will be able to use Banish to eliminate it, and Holy Word is usually more effective against enemy creatures even though Exorcise has a better save modifier. The unit does stand out in one role though, and that's support, being durable enough itself and able to do relevant damage to most normal units, while providing a passive boost to the offensive and defensive power of the entire army.''

1. Life Force (new)
Cost : 900 MP

Research : 15000 RP

All of the caster's cities produces 1 magic power for each unit of population.

''Like Tranquility, this too was removed as countering all Death spells is not acceptable. The two spells were reassigned to be resource production spells that depend on population, something that is very suitable for Life and helps playing the realm peacefully as well. One spell was decided to produce magic power, the other research, as these two resources are difficult to increase through Life magic in the previous tiers. The power production spell ended up using the same name the removed spell had as it matched the new effect perfectly. The research producing spell had to be renamed though.''

2. Enlightenment (new)
Cost : 900 MP

Research : 6000 RP

All of the caster's cities produces 2 research for each unit of population.

All of the caster's heroes gain +10 EXP each turn instead of 1.

''The research producing version of Life Force, this spell has a lower RP cost to ensure it's viable to research it before other very rares, as doing it afterwards is quite pointless, having no spells left to research other than the Spell of Mastery. The experience boosting ability was added to help AI players make their heroes a threat, way before the difficulty based AI hero experience modifier even existed as an idea, but it's also very useful for human players who want to replace their high level but obsolete tier heroes with champions that would have no experience, and suits the realm's hero theme.''

3. Crusade
Cost : 1200 MP

Research : 18000 RP

All of the caster's units gain a level.

''This spell was perfectly suitable for the design goal of big, impressive and powerful spells and required no change. It also supports the AI's “overwhelm with a large amount of units” strategy very well.''

4. Charm of Life
Cost : 1500 MP

Research : 24000 RP

All of the caster's units gain +25% hit points (but a minimum of 1)

Same as Crusade this spell was good as is, although it has been given the highest RP cost slot and a high casting cost because the effect is quite significant and usually more powerful than Crusade's extra level.

5. Holy Arms
Cost : 600 MP

Research : 12000 RP

All of the caster's units gain Holy Weapon

''Slightly underwhelming compared to the other two mass army buffs, this spell still provides a relevant boost that's usually around 25% extra in damage output, but does not stack with Holy Weapon itself, nor is it beneficial to magical ranged units, this fills the role of a more accessible and cheaper mass army buffing spell that supports relying on numerical superiority instead of using few, super powerful stacks. I believe that's about right because it does support the correct theme and gameplay goals, without escalating the problem of unstoppable stacks. While the effect is only good but not outstanding, every unit in the player's army gaining the white Life buff aura makes it look very impressive. Overall, I believe these 3 military purpose global enchantments were well designed in the original.''

6. Consecration
Cost : 200 MP

Research : 9000 RP

Enchanted city is protected from Chaos and Death magic, and corruption nearby has a chance to be removed each turn.

''Although it only affects Chaos and Death spells, this is still fair, because it does not really do so based on realms, they merely happen to be the ones who have such spells. Life definitely should have a spell to protect their cities from curses. As Nature's theme is bypassing protections, especially using Earth magic, its only spell that harms cities, Earthquake, is not affected by Consecration, and neither Sorcery nor Life has any such spells at all.''

7. High Prayer
Cost : 70 MP

Research : 15000 RP

All units in combat gain +1 To Defend, +1 To hit, 3 attack, 3 resistance and 2 defense.

''I don't have much to say, this improved version of Prayer which isn't cumulative with it is by far the most powerful in-combat buffing spell for raw stats, and is what the Life realm is expected to have, so I didn't change it. As combat enchantments are the one thing that cannot be dispelled in Caster of Magic, this can be helpful even in situations when the other, overland spells are not, however the steep casting cost, especially if range penalties are involved, can quickly drain the player's mana reserves if they get overwhelmed by a large amount of battles.''

8. Call to Arms
Cost : 70 MP

Research : 15000 RP

Combat summon a unit of Paladins.

''One particular thing Life struggles with is ensuring they actually have units in combat worth buffing. Lacking direct damage spells and combat summoning entirely, Life is very reliant on their units, and while this works fine for most of the game, in the endgame when losing large portions of armies is often inevitable, Life does need something to deal with the issue. At 70 MP this is fairly overpriced for a combat summon that's nowehere near as powerful as an Earth Elemental, but it does fill the role of enabling Life players to participate in the combat spellcasting game even if buffs or healing are not an option. Due to the Holy Bonus, it also works well as a combat buffing spell, in which role the 70 cost is much more reasonable, while the buff itself isn't that powerful, it comes with an additional, pretty good unit in one package. This spell became much better at that after these types of bonus effects have been updated to immediately apply instead of only at the beginning of the next combat turn.''

9. Supreme Light (new)
Cost : 70 MP

Research : 15000 RP

All of the caster's Life creatures and magic user units gain +2 melee and ranged attack, Defense equal to 1/3 of their magic resistance, and the units will be able to regenerate at the end of combat.

''While Life is outstanding at buffing, the original design missed one important group of targets : fragile magical ranged units didn't really benefit much from any of the buffs in Life other than those granting extra health. This provides Life with a spell that can increase the damage output of magical ranged units, most other spells can't do, while also making the glass cannon magicians a lot more viable to use, as they can expect to survive even if killed at no additional cost. Nonetheless, when attacking enemies, the spell won't be active on the first turn, so any units lost then stay dead unless revived by other means. This spell also makes the otherwise mediocre Life creatures a viable strategy, as they typically have high resistance and thus gain a lot of extra armor, and even the traditional “stack of 9 summoned creatures” strategy can become playable for the realm due to the units effectively gaining regeneration, increasing the realm's versatility in the late game to that of other realms.''

10. Arch Angel
Cost : 600 MP (18MP/Turn)

Research : 21000 RP

Creature : 21 melee,+4 To Hit, 12 defense, 18 resistance, 4 movement, 37 health, 1 figure, Holy Bonus 2, Illusion Immunity, Wind Walking, Caster 40, Negate First Strike, Supernatural, Primal Force

''The final tier of creature spells in Life, Arch Angels represent the qualities you'd expect from such a creature : it's very difficult to destroy, having the highest natural magic resistance score in the game and reasonably high defense. Its damage output is okay but not outstanding for a very rare creature and its movement speed of 4 is also average. However it shines at supporting other units, not only buffing them with Holy Bonus 2 but ensuring they can keep up on the overland map thanks to the added Wind Walking ability. Negate First Strike also tries to bring out the “good at defending itself” quality, and finally, Primal Force has been added for flavor. As Nature, Sorcery and Chaos have nodes, one might wonder where the planes of Life and Death connect to and influence the worlds? The answer is through theses creatures - Arch Angels and Demon Lords represent the connection and thus, like nodes, generate magic power pouring from those planes of existence. Arch Angels are amazingly good and versatile creatures, their main downside being the extremely high summoning cost, which makes them the second most expensive creature spell in the game even though they are nowhere near that powerful, so through the price, they still manage to achieve the “Life is not that good at summoning” role despite being a really outstanding creature.''