Invisible Swarm III: over

[Jurri]

Well, yeah, but most battfield-wide buffs don't much care for what exactly is being buffed! Army of Gold makes five 3 gold militia a no-brainer compared to one black plate of Ulm, in the way of an example. And with the requirements to cast said spell toned down, it's available to anyone with an E2 mage, with a not-so-high research-level. Also, with the change in the supply modifier there really isn't a problem in fielding five times as large militia armies as the black-plate armies would be (At least I don't see the point in having more than ~50 black plate in an army, and that's a large one at that.)

I guess what I fear is that the armies fielded tend to homogenize, as the buffs are easy to cast and the differences in unit cost so huge. 23 militia or 1 van, when you have weapons of sharpness available? 53 militia or 1 niefel giant assuming you have fog warriors?

But, I haven't tested this at all (aside from the army of gold... it really is great at that research-level and at E4!) so it's just guesswork against your testing, so what do I know? I'm sure Resok et al. will show me the wisdom of fielding other stuff than militia! I'll comment more on the combination of the mods after my butt has been kicked...

[Saber Cherry]

That's actually a pretty good point... in the magic-mod I'm making (and may or may not ever release) I'm making battlefield-effect spells generally more expensive, and not reducing their research level, as I think that several are already too strong. Army of gold / lead / marble warriors / fog warriors / haste / relief are particularly suspect... especially in combination with each other! I had been thinking more about mass-evocations in my response.

As far as cheap units with powerful buffs go, I guess they're a pretty potent strategy to which I had not given much thought. Such strategies only work on the offensive (meaning, when you correctly allocate your gems and script your mages), and only when your offensive goes as planned, as I learned in SOC1 when somebody's Ghost Riders absorbed all 45+ of my mage-gems before the real battle But they will still probably work.