Name: Call to Arms
Circles: Life / Protection
Description: when a city you control is attacked, one low-level unit is created to defend it, every three population point of the city. If the unit is destroyed, the city loses one population point.
Interesting. So each unit created will cause a loss in population?
Is the unit permanent? or does it disband after combat?
This spell seems WAY to risky to ever cast. First, it's global so it affects all your cities- whether you want it to or not. If my opponent ever casts this spell, I'd be targeting his cities non-stop. Then I'd kill all these weak low level units and retreat. Rinse and Repeat and I could decimate his cities with little cost to me. I mean, basically, it forces you to risk 1/3 of your city's population every fight. No thank you.
My RPG Design and Theory Blog: http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/
In my view the unit is disbanded after combat, and you lose population only if the unit is killed during combat. And yes there is a small risk, but I don't see the "attack, kill the drafted units, retreat" being really usable. If you have enough forces to do that safely (without losing units in the battle), it means that without the drafted defenders, you would be able to take the city, and raze it if you wish, in just one turn. There are probably some combinations for which it's not true, but usually it would be.
So... to me this spell is a way to not have to build defense for your cities against weak units (raiding parties/scouts/...), but if facing a strong stack, it wouldn't change much. Unless it's combined with other global enchantments (like "life force", "crusade", "holy arms", ... in MoM) boosting units, then it gives a nice combo.
I agree with Kilobug
All it takes is targeting those low level units with ranged units, and my opponent loses 1/3 of his city's population. There's been plenty of times I've played MoM on Impossible, and all I can do is harass my enemies to keep them from taking my cities. If someone casted this spell, my eyes would totally light up. It makes it so I can't lose no matter what.Originally Posted by kilobug
My RPG Design and Theory Blog: http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/
Let's see the possible cases :
1. The attacking forces are very powerful. Then, the attacker can take the city, and killing population is useless for him. This spell would make taking the city slightly harder, allowing the defender to inflict more damages to the attacker troops, and make the city less valuable to the attacker once taken. Win for the defender.
2. The attacking forces are just relatively weak, but not too weak. Then, without this spell, the attacker could take the city, with it, it cannot. Sure the defender will lose some population, but not the whole city. Win for the defender.
3. The attacking forces are very weak. Then, they won't be able to kill any unit, especially since defenders get the first move (so, the first offensive spell). Win for the defender.
4. The attacking forces are moderate, too weak to take the city even without this spell, but strong enough to be able to wipe out the units created by spell. That's a corner case, which will happen very rarely. And even then, it's mixed between the defender and the attacker, since the defender will be able to use spells and units to kill units of the attacking stack, but will lose population. Remember defense has (at least, not counting walls) two bonus in any battle : first one to play (so to cast spell), and usually closer to fortress, so less mana cost to cast spells.
So in 3 scenario it's a win for the defender, in one it's a mixed outcome. It's a spell that a smart opponent may be able to exploit, yes, but that still grants a very meaningful bonus. Definitely one I would cast, it's tedious to keep stacks in all cities to defend against raiders/weak fast stacks, and this spell provides a clean solution to that.
I could get behind this if it only triggered if you had no defenders garrisoned in the city. If I have 5 high level (or really effective units) already guarding the city, these recruits would serve no purpose other than to get in the way and cause a population drop if they were targetted.
However, if I conquer a city that's in the middle of my domain and is generally safe, it'd be a cool thing to not have wandering monsters just wipe it out w/o resistance.
I see this spell as most useful as a way to allow my wizard to basically defend the city with magic while the recruits exist to keep the combat window open.
Maybe this should be a city enchantment with a fairly low upkeep rather than a global enchantment? I could definately support that, and I think it could keep the strategic implication kilobug and WyldeRhide mention in their posts.
My RPG Design and Theory Blog: http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/
+1 to demote this spell to a City Enchantment
I would prefer a global enchantement, one of the purpose of the spell was to make the middle-to-late game bookeeping/micro-managing easier by having a spell ensuring a basic defense of all your cities, so you only need to defend the one really threatened, having to cast it on all cities defeat the purpose.
Maybe both versions ?Shouldn't be hard to implement once one is working.
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