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[Antur]

Also, tHEY GET SPIRITS TO GUARD THEIR PRIESTS IN BATTLE?!?!? HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

Wait what ?

[Mindmaker]

Not to dampen the mood, but are they in any way balanced?

[Frumple]

Possibly not balanced enough, quite yet, but in any way balanced, yes. Most of their good stuff is either very expensive (in either gold, resources, or both), old, temperature locked, or all of the above -- and almost none of them are particularly tough without some help. Something like half their stuff is ice-forged, but the other half can only be recruited in a province with heat scales -- meaning you either have to mostly-forgo half your army, burn gems on temperature effecting rituals, or accept half of it being relatively ineffectual. As noted, their temples are 800 bloody gold -- they generate fire gems, sure, but each individual one costs nearly as much as a fortress. Their sacreds are pretty awesome, but they're also capital only, really need a good bless (Major water would probably be ideal, since they're both flying with a charge attack, but they want at least minor earth and probably some degree of N or D if they can swing it, too.) and the really sexy one is 125/60 and can only be recruited at heat >=1.

Basically, they've got a lot of neat stuff but their pretty much everything* costs a shitload, and they're in that unenviable position where they want both scales and a bless, and both heat and cold. They've got a lot going for 'em, but using it all is more than a little bit of a juggling act.

*Except those delicious flying composite bow users. 10/7, base 12 prec, composite bow? Yes, oh gods, please. Of course, their flaming arrow casters can't fly, but...

[Il Palazzo]

From a quick glance at them, I can see that the fun units, including top mages, are horribly expensive(125gp 60res for a griffon, 19gp 40res for an iceclad, both cap only), and unrecruitable for better part of the year.
Unless you take cold/heat scales, you're basically only able to buy anything that is not a basic mage-priest(100gp, 1F 1H +1?, 9rp) or mundane(good, albeit very resource heavy) units during winter and summer.
If you do take some heat/cold scales, you're practically shutting half your options out, unless you plan to get to Murdering Winter/Breath of the Desert quickly. You'll still be spending gems and killing your cap population just to be able to buy some units.
Unit gp/res prices and horrendous temple cost mean you need to invest heavily into scales AND high dominion, leaving little extra to give those rare, costly sacreds some nice bless.

The concept is fun, but they'll be a pain to play.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Wait what ?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well that guy kept on showing up in battles with my prophet, so... I dunno what else to call it. And their nation overview mentions guardians under the priest entry too. Not terribly useful from what I can tell, but still pretty neat.

-snip-

Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you've said. They're good in the sense that they've got excellent strengths, not that they're good at everything.

[Delta Foxtrot]

That guardian spirit thing sounds like the shikigami (ethereal eagles, basically) of Jomonese Onmyo-Ji casters. They're pretty fun if you happen to have 20+ of them in one army. Fravashi do seem a lot better than shikigami though.

[USEC_OFFICER]

The only problem is that I don't know exactly how to get them to spawn. None of the priests of Ragha have the Fravashi as a battle starting summon thing, so... More testing will be required I guess.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Oh, that might be a balance thing. The shikigami are very weak but are present at the start of every battle. Do the Fravashi appear once the priests take any damage?
Should be easy to test with a few priests v archer indies.

[E. Albright]

(Major water would probably be ideal, since they're both flying with a charge attack, but they want at least minor earth and probably some degree of N or D if they can swing it, too.)

Major water is actually almost entirely irrelevant to the charge attack, as it won't give them enough AP by itself to increase their charge damage above what their size as flyers does (the Abysians need AP above 30 to exceed that bonus, and the Caelians need AP above 18). They still benefit from the other aspects of it, ofc.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Oh, that might be a balance thing. The shikigami are very weak but are present at the start of every battle. Do the Fravashi appear once the priests take any damage?
Should be easy to test with a few priests v archer indies.

No, they definitely appear at the start of the battle, before the priests take damage. I haven't really done any testing though, so I can't say for sure. I've been mostly looking at Caelum's tweaks. And so far it seems like a step sideways to me.

Spoiler: USEC Rambles about Caelum's changes. (click to show/hide)

They've got new summons, but they're at the high end of the Conjuration school of magic. LA Caelum has fire magic now, as if their magic paths weren't all over the place already. But that does mean that they have access to some of their new summons, and banefire too. But their Harab Elders are worse than before. Same magic paths, but they're older and thus suffer from more penalties. Including encrumbace. And with the Harab Seraphs/Caretakers being unchanged... At least their units are slightly better. More armour for more resources and a point off of defense. And they use broadswords and composite bows too, so they're deadlier compared to EA/MA Caelum which use short bows and lances. And their encumbrance is down by a point or two, so that's excellent. Unfortunately the new sacred archers are crap. Partly because they're capital only, and partly because the Earthbound have crossbows now. It's probably a preference thing, but I don't really see much of a use for the Iron Hail Archers that can't be fulfilled by other units. Oh, and the Iceclads are capital-only now, which isn't too much of a problem. The Raptors are good warriors after all, and the Storm Guard are similar but weaker since Iceclads use lances now.

Whether LA Caelum has been improved by this patch depends on their new summons. The addition of fire magic just makes their mages a bit more scatterbrained, but it does add in some use and flexibility which could be exploited, especially since some of the summons need fire/death. Unfortunately the Harab Elders are even weaker now, mostly because they have worse stats and their increased magic diversity makes the odd 10% mage less useful. But at least their units are better warriors, so they have an easier early/mid game before they crash and burn in the late.

MA Caelum's a similar story to LA Caelum. Their units have less encumbrance than before, and their sacred archers are capital only. But at least the Temple Guard don't have crossbows, so at least the Blizzard Warriors are more likely to be used. Actually, this reminds me. The Caelums used to have a unit called Blizzard Warriors, which were basically flying archers with some armour and ice protection. They've sorta disappeared from the unit roster. Not that anybody really seemed to use them, but it's good to know I guess. Magic-wise their mages are petty much the same as before, but the Seraphines have lost a point of holy for a 20% chance of fire magic. Not really worth it in my opinion. Much more interesting are the Ice Crafters. They've got the Ice Forging (4) ability, which gives the province that they're in 4 more resources for each point of cold in the province. Given how many resources it takes to recruit their 'heavy' infantry, it will definitely be used.

Overall MA Caelum likes the new update. Their units are better, they have a new scared for some added flexibility and new scareds for their pretender to summon. Honestly they haven't changed too much from before but it has mostly been for the better so it's hard to complain. Especially since they have the same/similar guardian spirit ability as Ragha.

EA Caelum is probably the happiest of the Caelums right now. They've got so many improvements it's not even funny. Oddly enough their basic units are identical to the ones before the update... But they've got three new ones and holy crap are they useful. The (flying, non-sacred) Blizzard Warriors are still around, but they've got ice bows now. The ones that deal 10 fatigue damage if they hit. Unfortunately they also cost more (16 gold compared to 10), but extra fatigue is definitely nasty. The Temple Guards get a point of defense and magic resistance, and their ice blades have a length of 2 instead of 1 which is good. But best of all? EA Caelum has 2 new scareds. Holy crap. The Kavi Archers are Spire Horn Caelums with storm immunity, short bows and Storm Power (2). I'll have to do some testing, but these guys could be pretty nasty in a storm. The Mairya Warriors are the Raptor's scared unit. Stealthy and strong for a Caelum flying unit, they also have pillaging and thus are perfect for raiding or leading the charge into hot provinces. Magic-wise their Seraphines have a point of fire magic, which is definitely useful. And the Harab Seraphs have a 100% chance of A/E/D instead of 10% D that they had before. Also, rather sillily, EA Caelum has a new sacred commander that they can recruit in their capital. The Mairya Ahu pretty much exist to ferry the Mairya Warriors around from what I can tell... But the Seraphines can lead more men than the Ahus, can bless the warriors and then hang back and fling spells. So in other words the Ahu is sorta completely useless. Oh well.

If you can't tell, EA Caelum got the most out of his update. New sacreds, new magic paths and of course the new summons. In other words lots of new stuff to play with, and overall they are definitely stronger than before. But still, you know, Caelum.

[tompliss]

[EA] Harab Seraphs have a 100% chance of A/E/D instead of 10% D that they had before.

I though I read about that going also for the LA StR mage...
It would be great to give them more ThunderStrike/Storm potential.

[E. Albright]

They've got new summons, but they're at the high end of the Conjuration school of magic.

Did you notice the new combat spell and remote (neutral) attack spell under Thaum6 and 7, respectively?

[USEC_OFFICER]

[EA] Harab Seraphs have a 100% chance of A/E/D instead of 10% D that they had before.

I though I read about that going also for the LA StR mage...
It would be great to give them more ThunderStrike/Storm potential.

Yeah, I wish that the Harab Elders got some more magic too. Or at least some more focused magic or something. Right now they can get a random from Fire, Air, Water, Earth and Death and that's just silly.

Did you notice the new combat spell and remote (neutral) attack spell under Thaum6 and 7, respectively?

Nope, thanks for pointing them out to me. I'll have to use them to see how effective it is I guess. At least it makes LA Caelum happier, since their basic mages can now paralyze people and summon random chaff at the same time. Also, it's hardly a neutral attack spell if it's specific to Caelum. Doesn't take much to figure out who used it after all. Anyways I guess I'll talk about them when I talk about their summons too.

[E. Albright]

No, I mean it's neutral like Phantasmal Attack is neutral - sure, you know that either Caelam or Rahga cast the spell, but if the attackers win, the province is an indy province (defended by the remaining villains) instead of being theirs. But yeah, it's not a particularly deceptive spell.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Ah, whoops. Yeah, that makes sense. Carry on then.