Yet another overpowered strategy (Empire only)

So I wanted to try out the Empire faction after having played though several times with a custom kingdom and I have to say I really like the vibe you get while playing them. They seem to exchange some defensive power (no teleport until spelllevel 3) for some early game aggression (mounted warfare combined into their first combat tech). Even the spells you get are different!

Anyways, the problem lies exactly within one of those differing spells, namely "summon spy" which summons a small(-ish, it has 20 hp) demon to do your bidding, a level 2 (at most 3, I'm not entirely sure atm) death spell. It comes with 5 mana and a spell which deals 10 unmitigatable damage to every (!) enemy on the battlefield for a cost of 3 mana. Fortunately this little guy doesn't reg mana mid combat like some other summons do (the golems for example) so it's not that bad, right?

Well... no.

I am very fond of a multi channeler strategy because it let's you get more bang for your initial payment of your hired champions, naturally I had a couple of magic adept followers with me during my adventurous explorations (or conquests if you like). So I was wondering if I could summon one of these familiars for each of my champions and... I could! From then on I would wander through the wastes with 3 demons following me, dealing up to 30 damage to every enemy I would encounter on the field of battle, pretty much insta gibbing any opposition I could meet.

Of course had I created more channelers I would have been able to deal even more damage within the first round.

I fully expect this spell to get nerfed in the future.

The spell:

http://j.imagehost.org/view/0697/arcanedoom01

The damage:

http://j.imagehost.org/view/0257/arcanedoom02

This was by turn 55 btw

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Oh yeah, those guys are seriously OP, especially given the AI's tendency to produce mostly single units rather than groups. I was disgusted when I found the dragon-rider in the campaign had one back in day 0 and in the first round of combat it wiped out all the units the AI kingdoms had sent with me. Easy enough to counter with groups, sure, but even then 10 damage to every unit on the board is nothing to sneeze at. Then I discovered they were available as a low level summons for Empire and I had a field day sending out imbued champion 'anthill squads' to earn easy xp for whatever troops I needed leveled up by wiping out 300+ point spider/wolf/bandit hordes in one round. With what sounds like nearly a complete overhaul of the magic system coming soonish, though, who knows what it'll do when they get done with it.

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Quoting phril,

reply 1

With what sounds like nearly a complete overhaul of the magic system coming soonish, though, who knows what it'll do when they get done with it.

This is my thought exactly too since I not only expect an overhaul of the magic system, but of combat in general (at least we need a hp buff to counter the glass canon approach in unit design).

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