Armored Princess Skill Analysis Part 3: Magic

Lastly, time for the Magic tree.



Wisdom
+6 to max Mana, and +3 to Scroll max.

+12 to max Mana, and +6 to Scroll max.
10 
+18 to max Mana, and +9 to Scroll max.
11 

Skill tree requirements: None.

More expensive and provides less Mana, but provides more Scroll capacity.

Honestly, the Scroll capacity is appreciated primarily because Wanderer Scrolls are a thing. Since you can just sell Scrolls as soon as you decide you don't care about them, with no Trade to make early selling sub-optimal, Scroll capacity is just not nearly as important as it was in The Legend. Even with Wanderer Scrolls being a thing, it takes a while to start mattering; they're rare, and enough of them are complete junk you should sell right off the bat that it can take a bit to accumulate an inconveniently large stock of them.

Regardless, Wisdom works out essentially fine on a design level. The Mage will probably take ranks in it just because a pure Magic Rune dump is an easy grab for her, and the other classes will probably grab the first rank and no more and not mind that they don't have the extra Scroll capacity and only slightly mind missing out on the Mana increases.

Linguistics
+1 Intellect.


+3 Intellect.


+6 Intellect.

12 

Skill tree requirements: None.

Huzzah! A way to directly boost Intellect with Skill Runes!

Linguistics is most worth grabbing the next rank in when it will take you past either of the breakpoints: a multiple of seven, or a multiple of 20. It's a good general choice for the Mage, period, boosting any Spell that can benefit from Intellect -which is most of them- and from the Mage's perspective it's fairly cheap. It's just you're probably better off putting off grabbing the second and third ranks until breakpoints because you've got other, higher priorities and individual points of Intellect are fairly low-impact in Armored Princess.

For the other classes, getting anything past the first rank is harder to justify, though not impossible. You'll probably want your Magic Runes for other vital Magic tree choices, is what it boils down to, and you're just not so heavy on Spell reliance. So it works out that the first rank is cheap; you probably are only going to grab that first rank, at least for a long time.

But anyway, speaking of one of those vital Magic Skills!

Alchemy
Crystal costs for learning and upgrading spells reduced by 15%.


Crystal costs for learning and upgrading spells reduced by 30%.

5  
Crystal costs for learning and upgrading spells reduced by 50%.



Skill tree requirements: None.

Made generally available, thank goodness, and had its cost scaling altered. You still spend the same number of Runes, but you spend more on the first rank and fewer on the final rank.

Alchemist being made general ties into the game restructuring Magic Crystal availability, so that it's no longer the case that the Mage has far more than they could possibly ever spend throughout basically the entire game while everybody else is constantly having to think hard about whether a given expenditure is even worthwhile. Instead now the Mage is the one most likely to end up having to make really hard decisions, because she can advance down so many Spell spheres that she just has a million things she wants to level up and not enough Magic Crystals to go around. Which is appropriate a design choice! Having the Mage be the one who delves deep into Spells and finds herself making hard decisions about what to specialize in is good and interesting design; the Mage in The Legend had a rather boring late game in some ways, since he got to be the best at everything he did with little in the way of interesting choices to be made.

The one complaint I have about Alchemist being made general is that it's a notable Magic Rune sink for everyone, because you really should try to max it as fast as you can (After actually grabbing a Spell sphere, obviously) so you can grab all the Spells you want without wasting Magic Crystals in the process. This is particularly frustrating for the Warrior, who really struggles to spare Magic Runes in the first place, but in general it just leaves me feeling like it would make more sense to halve Magic Crystal costs, get rid of Alchemy, and then replace it with some more meaningful Skill than the current setup.

Or get really weird and have Alchemy effectively apply retroactively, refunding you Magic Crystals you've already spent as you rank it up. That would actually be kind of an interesting dynamic, where you could ignore Alchemy for a while and just accept being a bit low on Spell diversity early on due to Magic Crystal intake not keeping up with Scroll variety, and when you started feeling you actually needed to diversify actually grab a rank or two. It would also make it potentially acceptable to eg have your Warrior reach the end of the game with only two ranks in it because they never found themselves needing the extra Magic Crystals.

Regardless, Alchemy as a general Skill is a bit annoying as-is and could use some work.

As with The Legend, it's good to keep in mind that if a Scroll drops to one Magic Crystal at a given rank you can just learn it then and there instead of waiting until you get the next Alchemy rank.

Order Magic
The Hero can learn Order Spells.


The Hero can upgrade Order Spells to Level 2.


The Hero can upgrade Order Spells to Level 3.



Skill tree requirements: Wisdom and Linguistics.

More expensive than before, but as I've repeatedly noted you get more Talent Runes overall so that's misleading.

Distortion Magic
The Hero can learn Distortion Spells.



The Hero can upgrade Distortion Spells to Level 2.



The Hero can upgrade Distortion Spells to Level 3.




Skill tree requirements: Linguistics.

Same as with Order Magic: more expensive, but that's misleading.

Notably, it's actually flipped with Order magic as far as ease of access: in The Legend, you needed one Skill for Order Magic and two Skills for Distortion. In Armored Princess, you need two Skills for Order Magic and one for Distortion. I appreciate this given that the Trapper Medal was introduced, as it makes it actually practicable for a non-Mage to get started on Trapper in a reasonable timeframe.

Magic Light
Increases the spell power of Divine Armor, Healing, Life Light, Resurrection, Avenging Angel, and Exorcism by 15%. Adds +1 to the duration of Bless.


Increases the spell power of Divine Armor, Healing, Life Light, Resurrection, Avenging Angel, and Exorcism by 20%. Adds +1 to the duration of Bless.


Increases the spell power of Divine Armor, Healing, Life Light, Resurrection, Avenging Angel, and Exorcism by 25%. Adds +1 to the duration of Bless.



Skill tree requirements: Order Magic.

Notice Exorcism being in the list means this isn't Order-only, unlike The Legend's Healer. Also notice it's pricier all-around, though as usual that's misleading.

I still don't really care for it personally, and while Avenging Angel and Exorcism are both effects that scale properly (where eg Healing and Life Light receive no benefit if they're already fully healing the 'top' member of a stack), Avenging Angel is only vaguely decent if you're specifically a Paladin or abusing summon spam and Exorcism is difficult to justify even when you're looking for single-target damage on a summon and have maxed Magic Light. You're pretty much always better off buying other Skills before Magic Light, and in some ways it's worse than Healer was in The Legend; a Paladin's Resurrection Skill both provides a bigger boost to Resurrection (ie the only Spell that really benefited from Healer in real terms in The Legend) for a more convenient Rune cost (Though admittedly they stack) and makes it less important to be able to use Resurrection-the-Spell competently because your Designated Meatshield will undo all the damage for free after a battle.

I'm sure there's people who swear by Magic Light, but I'm not one of them.

Also, just like in The Legend, that boost to Bless duration is 'the first rank adds a turn, the later ranks don't change it further'.

Transmute
When a stack dies, if it wasn't finished off by a Spell the player gains Mana. 4 is the base value.


When a stack dies, if it wasn't finished off by a Spell the player gains Mana. 7 is the base value.


When a stack dies, if it wasn't finished off by a Spell the player gains Mana. 10 is the base value.



Skill tree requirements: Order and Distortion Magics.

I say these are the 'base values' because you double it if it's a player unit and quarter it if it's a summoned unit. (Which means summoned player units produce half the listed value, incidentally)

Transmute is an amazing Skill, and ironically it's actually lowest in utility for the Mage. Since Spells don't trigger Transmute, and the Mage tries to kill things dead with Spells first and foremost, she has to go out of her way to let her units actually grab the finishing blow to benefit. Summon spam units like Royal Thorns and Engineers can still make it worth pursuing, and at minimum you should certainly take at least the first rank, but it's really much more a Skill that helps the Warrior and Paladin keep up with some of the burdensomely expensive support Spells they favor, such as Sheep.

I really, really like it as an idea, but I kind of think it should've gone under the Mind tree.

Chaos Magic
The Hero can learn Chaos Spells.


The Hero can upgrade Chaos Spells to Level 2.


The Hero can upgrade Chaos Spells to Level 3.

13 

Skill tree requirements: Distortion Magic.

Chaos Magic has been made 1 Rune of each type more expensive every level. Okay, sure, why not.

It's also a lot more accessible overall, since it only has one requirement, which itself only has one requirement, as opposed to having two requirements, one of which has a further requirement and the other of which has two requirements. This is a fairly huge relief to the Warrior, since it means it's actually true that Chaos Magic is relatively accessible to her, but it's also fairly important to the Mage since she doesn't begin the game knowing Fireball like The Legend's Mage did, instead starting with a Scroll to be learned from once she has Chaos Magic.

Little things adding up.

Meditation
Overland Mana regeneration is 30% faster. Also, +4 max Mana.

Overland Mana regeneration is 60% faster. Also, +8 max Mana.

Overland Mana regeneration is 100% faster. Also, +12 max Mana.
10 

Skill tree requirements: Magic Light.

Meditation is placed later in the tree, costs a lot more (But no longer costs Mind Runes!), but in exchange has more concrete benefits. I very much approve.

It helps that Armored Princess has re-tuned Mana regeneration to be faster overall, so that Meditation is no longer essential for your sanity. It feels like an actual benefit now just for that.

Though if you're not a Mage it's iffy whether it's worth the investment.

Summoner
Increases the power of summoning Spells by 15%. Also increases how much your units summon by 15%.


Increases the power of summoning Spells by 30%. Also increases how much your units summon by 30%.


Increases the power of summoning Spells by 50%. Also increases how much your units summon by 50%.

10 

Skill tree requirements: Transmute.

I'll admit to not being certain if this did anything for eg Phoenix in the base game. In Orcs on the March, at least, the Summons that don't do Leadership scaling only get half the benefit, and my understanding is that it's applied through the Intellect bonus. (ie someone with Summoner 3 whose current Intellect bonus would provide 50% more Health and Damage base would instead provide 75% more Health and Damage)

I've also never bothered in Orcs on the March. The first rank is equivalent to 6 points of Intellect, which will also boost all your Spells instead of just your summons, and same with the second rank, with the third being equivalent to 8 points. Certainly, Skills get more expensive as you buy higher ranks, but I'd still rather just max out Linguistics, Learning, Scouting, Thesis, etc, before even considering ranks in Summoner, and frankly a Mage with tons of Intellect already has fairly shockingly powerful summons anyway. It's just not a good investment of Talent Runes. It's not even required for anything!

For other classes, you just don't have Magic Runes to burn, and it's questionable whether it's worth it given that. Especially since Alchemy has been made general; it's disproportionately effective to be upgrading the actual Spell Level of the historically-non-scaling summons, and Alchemy means non-Mages can actually afford the Magic Crystal demands for getting a good selection of Spells to Level 3. You're probably better off maxing Order Magic if you want strong Phoenix, Chaos Magic if you want better Books of Evil and/or Chaos Dragons, and Distortion Magic if you want better Ice Balls than trying to take ranks in Summoner.

... of course, this all comes with the very significant qualifier that it affects how much your units summon, where it has no competition and where its effect is actually pretty drastic. Summoner units are generally very powerful and useful in Armored Princess, and in fact on higher difficulties they're borderline mandatory to get through a good chunk of the game. +50% to how much your Royal Thorns put out can easily take their Thorn spam from a stalling tool that does a little damage in the process of Thorns dying to a fairly impressive rate of wearing down the enemy. If you're fond of summoner units and expect to use them throughout the game, Summoner is a very worthwhile investment no matter your class.

It is slightly awkward that it's placed relatively late in the tree when summon spam tends to be most essential in the earliest portion of a run, but its only direct requirement is Transmute, which is a great Skill for the Warrior and Paladin; you'll have to wait a while to get to Summoner as those classes, but at least you're not having to invest in anything really low-value for your class to get at it. So if you want to beeline for Summoner as best you can, you're not having to actively cripple your build for the short term.

Note that, for whatever reason, Rune Mages are an exception and don't benefit from Summoner. As their summon scales with how many Magic Runes you're carting about, it's actually counterproductive to take ranks in Summoner if your goal is to maximize Rune Mage summoning. Also note that Demonologists are bugged in an unimportant way -for most units the summon vale predicted when hovering over the Talent will correctly account for Summoner ranks you've purchased, where for the Demonologist their summon's predicted values will reflect their base value. Nonetheless, they do benefit from Summoner.

Also, it should be explicitly noted this does affect the Phantom Spell, even though the Rune Mage's Talent that is conceptually them casting Phantom is unaffected. So if you're fond of Phantom, you should probably invest in Summoner.

Destruction
Damaging spells have their spell power increased by 15%.


Damaging spells have their spell power increased by 30%.

9 .
Damaging spells have their spell power increased by 50%.

10 

Skill tree requirements: Chaos Magic.

I like how Armored Princess has changed its requirement from Archmage to Chaos Magic. It's a lot more thematically appropriate, not to mention practically appropriate, that you unlock access to 'I nuke thing better' by purchasing the school oriented toward nuking things, rather than by buying a Skill that... let's you lead... better?...

Otherwise it's basically the same as always, just more directly accessible once you're raring to nuke things with Chaos Magic. Which is very much appreciated by the Mage; it was genuinely frustrating in The Legend to have to jump through Archmage before you could get to making your Spells better at killing things, when you're the class whose entire thing is killing things with Spells. (It's not like The Legend had any other Mage Skills that oriented them toward leading mages)

And it's fine it's nearly the same as always, because Destroyer was nearly perfect in The Legend. The bizarre Skill requirement was really its only design flaw, and Armored Princess has fixed that, so there you go.

As with The Legend, the Mage should max it out ASAP, while for other classes it's more dubious whether you should bother. In some ways this is less true -it's way more accessible, making it easier to justify the Runes if you want to try a Mage-y Warrior or Paladin- but in other ways it's more true; now that the Warrior actually has an amazing tool for specializing in Rage (Bloodlust) and the Paladin has an amazing army-supporting tool that redefines how she plays (Resurrection-the-Skill), trying to go play at being a bad Mage is just a silly waste of your potential in these classes.

Thesis
+2 Intellect and +7 Mana.


13 
+4 Intellect and +14 Mana.


13 
+6 Intellect and +21 Mana.


13 

Skill tree requirements: Destruction and Meditation.

An essential Skill for the Mage, simple as that. For the other classes the requirements and costs are rather difficult to break into, and the only thing it has over eg Linguistics is the Mana bonus; if you want to extend your Mana reserves as a Warrior or Paladin Transmute is probably smarter, being more accessible and also able to be leveraged fairly significantly in several ways. The need to grab Destruction in particular is inconvenient for them, and Meditation is also dubious as to whether it's worth pursuing, with the bigger appeal of Meditation being going for Concentration, which costs less than Thesis, has better Mana extension per rank if battles last even 5 turns (And the third rank of Concentration actually beats out the third rank of Thesis in 3 turns, which is a typical length for a short and easy battle), and doesn't require you waste Talent Runes on Destruction.

Of course, if you're trying to run a Paladin as more of a Mage I suppose you'll want ranks in Thesis eventually...

Concentration
+2 Mana per combat turn.


+4 Mana per combat turn.


+8 Mana per combat turn.

16 

Skill tree requirements: Meditation.

If you're not paying attention: the third level is twice the price because it's an increase of +4 instead of +2.

The big thing about Concentration is that instead of being an early, accessible Skill that kind of breaks the Mana economy's assumptions, it's now an end-tree Skill that breaks the Mana economy's assumptions... which is honestly not that big a deal because the Mage tends to blow through even crazier amounts of Mana in Armored Princess than in The Legend, while for the Warrior and Paladin Transmute tend to much more readily break the Mana economy in real terms. Rank 3 Transmute will give you 50 Mana from a typical fight if no enemy dies to Spells (Ya know, aside from Trap actually being a Spell and yet still tripping Transmute), where rank 3 Concentration takes six turns to equal/beat that amount, and battles usually don't last that long... and the ones that do are often battles against more than 5 enemy stacks, and so Transmute still wins.

It's a really nice improvement on the design, though I'm not sure how I feel about it still specifically requiring Meditation. I get the thematics behind it, but mechanically it's weird and a bit frustrating. They're sort of related, with Concentration sort of being a superior form of Meditation -if you're generating Mana in battle you don't necessarily need to wait for your Mana to recharge out of it- but it's only thanks to Meditation now affecting maximum Mana that it's not true to say that Meditation doesn't affect things like how many instances of a Spell can be cast within a battle. Meditation is still really more of a Rage supporting effect, and Concentration more a Spell-slinging supporting effect, which has in fact been emphasized by Transmute's existence/mechanics. (ie as covered the other classes tend to want to take Transmute for Mana extension, and this is less effective for the Mage)


As before, two Magic Skills are exclusive to the Mage, and again I'll be using this as an opportunity to cover the Mage as a class.

I'm... not sure why being a Mage involves dressing like a fantasy stripper. More precisely, she's wearing almost exactly the same thing as the other two classes, color aside, except the chest/belly-covering portion has been replaced by some weird... jacket? I guess? I think it's supposed to be a leather jacket, but it's honestly hard to say.

I actually used to be kind of uncomfortable with this aspect of Armored Princess, especially since the Mage was the version chosen for the boxart (Where they used the Paladin for The Legend, and I've already covered how the Paladin is logically the most 'correct' Amelie depiction), but eventually when I went back to The Legend it struck me that its Mage is wearing a Fabio shirt. While people are very aware that women dressing in a way that shows off their chest is sexualized, something people are less strongly aware of is that the same applies to men, and indeed if you think about eg dress codes for work it's actually a cultural truism that men aren't supposed to show off their chest when they're being professional and all. (With allowances for eg 'it is blazingly hot out here, we're not forcing people into shirts'... aaand if you look at for example ancient Egypt, it was normal for both sexes to go topless and indeed wear barely anything because, you know, otherwise people would be literally dying from the heat)

In conjunction with the 'looking soulfully right at you' phenomenon, which all of The Legend's portraits engage in while depicting handsome men who are conveniently smiling at you the camera... I'm pretty sure the King's Bounty games are just kind of generally going for the 'main character as eye candy' dynamic, with Mages just happening to be especially chest-baring for whatever reason. As you'll see when we get to Warriors of the North, this shows up with Olaf too! His Warrior-equivalent has his body largely hidden by his clothes, aside his bare arms, his Paladin-equivalent has nothing showing aside his face and hands, while his Mage-equivalent is conveniently barechested. (And only his Paladin-equivalent isn't staring right at you the camera, which is also consistent with The Legend and Armored Princess having their Paladins be overall the most 'prudish')

That's actually very interesting to me, instead of worrying, and I'm curious as to why the developers have a fairly consistent idea that wizardry is intertwined with... whatever neatly summarizes this phenomenon. Magic as power, where power is attractive? Nerds are sexy, with mages as nerds? Something to do with some element of Russian culture I'm entirely unfamiliar with and thus will never, ever guess on my own? I'm very curious, because it's not what I'm used to seeing from fantasy. Certainly, plenty of stuff out there has female wizarding types practically naked, but that's because fantasy is prone to doing that with women in general: female wizards are not more prone than female warriors to looking like a fantasy-themed stripper.

The King's Bounty series is the only fantasy series I'm familiar with that connects magic to sexiness like this, and it's not even exclusive to the main characters: back in The Legend King Mark has no love life at all, his daughter literally a gift from the gods with no wife to be seen, but one of your Quests in that game involves getting his scholarly/wizardly brother hooked up with a witch whose scholarly writing so impressed him he desperately wants to marry her. (While having missed that she's over a hundred years old, because The Legend has that kind of sense of humor) This is the most memorable example, but shades of this keep showing up across the series.

So I'm really curious what drove it.

Anyway, though, Mage-exclusive Skills.

Higher Magic
Twice per battle, the Mage may cast twice in a single turn, so long as the first Spell cast in the turn cost 10 or less Mana.
12 
Four times per battle, the Mage may cast twice in a single turn, so long as the first Spell cast in the turn cost 15 or less Mana.
14 
Six times per battle, the Mage may cast twice in a single turn, so long as the first Spell cast in the turn cost 20 or less Mana.
16 

Skill tree requirements: Destroyer.

Higher Magic has been made a lot more accessible -which is appropriate, since it's now the Mage's only class-defining Skill if you ignore the Orcs on the March addition- in terms of Rune cost, and it's been tweaked to be simultaneously less ridiculous (No double-casting your best nuke spells to wipe out everything) and yet more consistent/useful. (In The Legend, battles in the extreme late game tended to drag on long enough for Higher Magic to be benefiting you for only a relatively small portion of the battle in a direct sense, and Armored Princess resolves that issue with more turns to use Higher Magic in)

The Mana limitation on the first Spell also does a lot to redefine how the Mage goes about picking her Spells, as I've already touched upon previously, with it being important to have a selection of low-cost Spells that are nonetheless significantly contributing and then ideally have high-cost high-power Spells to follow up with.

Critically, this means that Higher Magic can no longer be accurately characterized as doubling the Mage's damage output at the beginning of a battle, since you can't actually do stuff like open by double-casting Geyser like you could in The Legend. It's still a fairly significant boost in power, certainly worthy of being a class-defining Skill, but it's not so drastic, which is good since it was kind of ridiculous in The Legend how you could find yourself struggling intensely, juuuust shy of buying your first rank in Higher Magic, and then you buy it and suddenly encounters that were notable challenges don't even get the chance to deal damage to your forces. Too much power from a single Skill purchase can genuinely be unhealthy for the game experience just in terms of messing up the difficulty curve.

Higher Magic also has the somewhat silly consequence that the Mage is the fastest class at grinding out Guardian Angel, which is pretty bizarre on a thematic level and kind of weird as far as gameplay consequences goes; the Mage is the class that least cares about reducing how much damage her units take when struck! I really think there shouldn't have been a Medal that was ground out through Spellcasting unless it was going to be one that improved your magery. (eg how Fire Mage increases your max Mana)

The overall picture is that Higher Magic is a much better designed Skill, and I particularly approve of how the Mage has less egregiously difficult a time breaking into other Skill trees. That was a very strange consequence of how the Magic tree was so unusually intensive in its non-Magic Rune costs in The Legend.

Archmage
Reduces the Leadership requirements of magical units by 10%.


Reduces the Leadership requirements of magical units by 17%.



Reduces the Leadership requirements of magical units by 25%.


12 

Skill tree requirements: None. Quest-locked, instead.

The list of affected units is: Priests, Inquisitors, Archmages, Rune Mages, Orc Shaman, Blood Shaman, Goblin Shaman, Druids, Necromancers, and Demonologists.

In any event, Archmage itself has been made noticeably more powerful, which I appreciate. If I have an incentive to specialize in a specific sub-set of units, I'd really rather feel like I'm getting bang for my buck, which The Legend wasn't very good at.

The fact that it's not connected to any other Skills is also nice; you can take it or leave it at your discretion. If you feel like doing a run specializing in mages, you don't need to wait particularly, but if you're not planning on using mages particularly you can just ignore it, instead of being forced to spend Talent Runes on a Skill you might get literally zero benefit from because it's mandatory for Skills you actually want.

The overall result is way better than The Legend's iteration, though I still find it fundamentally an odd choice for a Magic tree Skill, and in this case it's even odder now that it's actually class-locked. Again, it'd be one thing if Armored Princess had a larger, more consistent theme of the Mage being best at using mages -imagine if mage units used your Intellect score where most units use your Attack score, and maybe throw in Destruction increasing their Damage- but it's this weird one-off thing that's there for purely thematic reasons to all appearances. I kind of suspect it's only here because it was already a finished bit of code/graphics from The Legend and they either couldn't think of something else or didn't really want to put in the effort to think of something else, honestly.

-----------------------------

Next time, we move on to covering Armored Princess' Bosses. Which are more interesting and better-designed than The Legend's, thankfully.

Comments

  1. I've actually never thought about mages being the least... clothed individuals in the series. As for why, I'm not entirely sure, but they could be subverting expectations, as mages are always these old wise Gandalfs, who are not sexy by design. It doesn't have anything to do with Russian culture, as far as I see :)

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    1. Given what little I know about Slavic myths and whatnot, I kinda figured, but my education about Russian culture comes primarily from Red Alert and Red Alert 2, so I know I know basically nothing and I like speculating. Thanks for the feedback.

      Delete
  2. Just a note about Summoner - It really amps up the power of your Phantom spell, (and Necro Call and others like them) far more than any investment in Intellect.

    Phantom is great as is, and it took the summoned health from 55% to 84% for my level 40 Mage. Maxing Learning at this point only brought it to 57%

    Granted, Phantom is used only for making spare meatshields for my caster mage, but it can help the Warrior and Paladin much better.

    And if you're doing the Black Knight play, you should max this - no questions asked.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As a Paladin I did have magic runes to burn and I've spent them on Summoning 3, it's very effective with Paladins and Royal Griffins in your army. Angelic Guard summon gets boosted up to your current leadership, then you cast a 70% Phantom (this is with relatively low Int) on Royal Griffins and summon another stack of Angelic Guard at 70% of your leadership and an extra Cheer. Even if enemy hero uses Dispel, you already got use out of your phantom by using the Angelic Guard summon talent right away.
    Add an extra stack of normal griffins (mostly to benefit from griffin boost items and Royal Griffins) and enemy is straight up swarmed with griffins of all kinds, and you can keep multiplying the original stack.
    When the enemy is inevitably decimated within a handful of turns you can cast Phantom on Paladins for another AoE heal to fully recover the losses. This is more effective than a Resurrect spell in most situations, especially with Summoning.
    Well, it's all about the Phantom.

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  4. Summoner is a bit better than Ghoul King gives it credit for. For the casters summons it's not amazing, although its an acceptable minor boost. The real strength is that it boosts unit summons leadership ratio. Summoner is working to boost Royal Griffin, Orc Tracker etc as others mentioned which is great. Demonologist= Is actually working correctly and getting boosted, albeit the tooltip shows the same non-boosted leadership range. Sadly for Rune Mages though Summoner is not working, on top of already lowering the leadership amount due to burning magic runes on it which innately boost his summon. In the forums some speculated it's a bug, but i'm not 100% sure it is actually a bug for Rune Mage. Regardless it's a strike against Rune Mage, bug or not.

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    1. Testing myself... uh, wow. And checking the Skill description, it does have what is probably an attempt to describe this effect, though very badly worded if so. So that's kind of bonkers given how useful summoners already are in Armored Princess.

      Time to overhaul the description...

      Delete
  5. Both of the comments from years ago regarding Summoner were salient. The one about Royal Griffins must not have been clear enough to indicate that Summoner affects unit summons in AP/CW. Glad i was able with my testing to get you to update the description of Summoner, which is now nearly perfect. Might be worth mentioning that it buffs Phantom as well, since that is more relevant than yone might expect. Some players (sadly) only/primarily cast Phantom, such as my friend Boris (NoFairFight) on his Impossible Lp's. For the Phantom addicts of the KB world (there probably are alot) it's a relevant point to mention that it gives a nice boost to it for all classes (it's the type of thing that Warriors/Paladins get alot of leverage out of, and a Phantom tier 2 also fits into Higher Magic 3 as an opener if the Mage wants to).

    Anyways it's been a lot more pleasant and fruitful to comment in your solid AP analysis after our Empathy disagreements in Dark Side (as an aside Empathy was actually providing better values than i even thought once the 100% bug rage would be reached for level 3, since then the level 2 version would actually be over 70% and climbing. Only noticed that level 2 scales so well at the end of the game when i used Depth of Thought to climb into the 30's intellect range on my Orc, which provided the incredible. breathtaking 89% empathy 3, and over 60% for level 2. So I can extrapolate that once the 100% barrier can't be avoided for Mage, it's easy enough to transition into the 70++ level 2 version. Oh how i wish I had Empathy in CW, but maybe it's for the best that such a powerful spell isn't in the game to keep the challenge up. The player being so powerful in DS, regardless of the class, makes Empathy seem less amazing than in reality it is).

    Very good job updating the Rune Mage hidden resistances as well, aesthetically pleasing update and very informative. I'm working on the Rune Mage's spells that it casts depending on the magic runes it has stored (17 is where it hits the all-powerful Sheep! also just need to hit the easy enough 5 magic runes stored range for the useful Slow, but i'm trying to get exact values for everything). My assumption so far based on the in game description is that the base chance is 30% on regular attack (Destruction excluded sadly, but that is reasonable) to inflict the spell effect, and that each Magic Rune increases by 1% the chance that the effect happens (I don't know this to be a fact though, and no documentation exists. Would be useful to check out the code). Also i'm nearly certain that tier 5 units can't be affected by any Rune Mage spell (would be hilarious if it could Sheep them. Even Helplessness at the 1-4 magic rune range would actually get alot of value being cast on tier 5 units, but sadly i have never seen anything work on tier 5 units). Anyways keep up the great work GK, so far nearly everything i've seen of your AP/CW analysis has been top tier.

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    1. Rune Mages can Slow Level 5 units. Pretty sure Helplessness as well, though it's been long enough I might be misremembering that part. I'm pretty sure they just operate on the limits the Spell version does, where eg Sheep never works on Level 5 units. I really should've determined whatever Level they were considered to be casting, in retrospect...

      And yes it's 30% base chance, adding 1 to the percent per Magic Rune. I've never tested if it cap out/what happens if you were to push it over 100 -that would be a huge pain to actually test and won't matter to the overwhelming majority of players.

      And yeah I should update it to mention Phantom explicitly. I don't tend to think of it as a summon, it behaves differently from most summons... I'm sure plenty of people would expect Summoner to not work on it. I'll do that later.

      The other comments ended up awkwardly timed. Stuff was happening in my life, I didn't have the time/energy/wherewithal to dig into them when they happened, and then I forgot about them entirely before I was in such a position.

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    2. Maybe i have just abysmal luck, but in the numerous battles i've done with Rune Mages attacking tier 5 units recently, none of them applied helplessness/slow in those battles (rune count changed between battles). I just went into a battle and got about 10 attacks off with them and their phantoms versus trolls (Spell was weakness with 10mages runes, weakness starts at 8 magic runes) and not one applied it. So i'll stand by my point that they can't affect tier 5 units with their attacks, unless i see evidence to the contrary at some point (i'd love to be wrong, believe me, but unless my luck is beyond horrendous, hard to imagine that the roughly over two dozen attacks i've done with them in recent days versus generic tier 5 enemies with no magic immunity etc have never applied either slow/helplessness/weakness, all of which can affect tier 5 units). Probably part of why the Devs made it to not affect tier 5 untis was exactly because of spells like Sheep if i had to guess (which ofcourse shouldn't apply to tier 5. But it's possible they took the "easy" way out and just made the Rune Mages debuff only apply to tier 1-4, which is my best working theory). I don't spew things out lightly without having tested it (i have draw the line somewhere when dozens of ~35-40% debuff chances are never ever be being cast. This is way outside of margin error and into lottery odds type numbers). If i ever see them land an effect on tier 5 units i'll immediately jump here and update, but the assumption should be it doesn't affect them. You can choose to update or not, perhaps if you test them you will get it to affect a tier 5 unit where my luck has failed. If like 50 of your attacks in a row don't apply anything, well, even if by some miracle the ability worked against tier 5 units, it may as well not if it never happens in actual gameplay, and is worth mentioning in the Rune Mage section.

      Regarding the level, I've seen them cast level 1 helplessness i believe but maybe it was level 2, but i'll keep an eye out for those. Sheep atleast should be the level 3 version of it since it can hit tier 4 units (well i don't remember exactly who was sheeped, but i feel it was a t3 or t4 but who knows. Didn't lounge around at the 17 magic runes stored for long as an early game mage). Their slow i just confirmed is level 2 , reducing movement by 2, and lasting 3 turns, but ill try to get exact values for all the spells.

      "And yes it's 30% base chance, adding 1 to the percent per Magic Rune." That's what I assume. If it can be confirmed somehow (hard to really know forsure, all though if one could test with say 20 runes and do 50 attacks and expecting about 25 to apply the debuff, and then do 50 attacks with rune and expecting about 15 to debuff, it would go a long way) it would be great, that or the actual game code. The in game description is probably accurate, but as we saw with Dark Side and the game claiming that Crit has a 5% innate chance to apply bleed (and i had huge doubts about that, and then saw you mention it was actually 20% which sounded much much more accurate), the game sadly is not always right.

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    3. "The other comments ended up awkwardly timed. " Yup yup its all good. All for the purpose of spreading higher level game knowledge of KB to those seeking perspective and game knowledge. Will always be some disagreements, and here I am just "unknown" username, but some in the KB world know me as being extremely knowledgeable over the many years, but understandably there is no apparent way for you to know that in regards to things like explaining some of the downsides of tier 5 units and the like, all good points that less knowledgeable players should be cognizant of in terms of benefits/downsides, but not something that I am not familiar with long since. Also when out of the gate i meant there were some mistakes to be corrected (so it may have sounded like I was being overly critical, when in truth in youtube comments of KB Lp's i was watching I was praising the work you did here and directing players to use this as a valuable resource filled with largely accurate and helpful information and analysis) , it was more in line of relatively minor things like say the Giant actually have physical resistance in CW (magic armor thing was an obviously slightly larger thing that needed to be rectified and was immediately, just was a minor oversight on your part). Not like "omgosh how dare you spew so much misinformation", just some points about things here and there that i largely didn't get to, including alot of abilities that are bugged in Dark Side and worth mentioning. Here are just some examples (there are many, too many, but just to give u an idea of the type of things that would have been worth noting)
      1) "Goblin Catapult "Commander" is properly benefiting Goblins and Furious Goblins with +1 Morale. However Spirit Talker which it claims it also gives +1 Morale to, is NOT receiving the bonus."
      2) Goblin Catapult- Their "Commander" passive Doesn't gain any adrenaline from "Bow Master's/Swordmasters" gaining adrenaline as the game claims, nor from Goblin's/Furious Goblins which is probably what was meant.
      3) Shaman- Doesn't gain any adrenaline from Adrenaline Control from other Orc units gaining adrenaline.
      Tldr- don't believe the game regarding Adrenaline gains, they are usually bugged (some exceptions thankfully is Shaman's amazing "Shaman" ability which refills its adrenaline at the stated percentages of likelihood. Also Spirit Talkers "Keeper" ability thankfully works).

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    4. Sadly Crossworlds has some of the same issues from my observation regarding Adrenaline from "Thirst for Glory", atleast in the A.I hands its not working properly, but i have yet to test Orcs properly besides the Orc Tracker, since I just played the largely superior version of Orcs in Dark Side. It's a bit much to "downgrade". For example Holy crap Spirit Talker was imo the best ranged unit in DS, due in part to a bug/oversight which i'll summarize here from my notes= "Ancestral Anger allows for 2% of resistances to be bypassed per 5 adrenaline, allegedly it is only able to ignore a max of 20% of resistances if the Spirit Talkers have 50 or more Adrenaline. However in reality it actually goes up to 40% of resistances at 100 Adrenaline. Not only that, but the way it works is that if an enemy unit has 0 resistance, it's instead counted as negative resistance, up to -40% negative resistance if the Spirit Talkers have 100 adrenaline (which they will gain very quickly in an all Orc Army, very likely by turn 2 due to "Keeper" which grants it additional adrenaline at the start of it's turn equal to 25% of the adrenaline all Orc race units have). So that means that in reality Spirit Talkers can do up to 40% more damage on top of the max possible, which gets outrageous when combined with damage boosters that Orcs have numerous quality gear of. That and their perfect range, and also they get a generous boost from the Hidden Bonus of First Blood which i'll quickly note here-

      "After obtaining the "First Blood" and giving it to Marie Curie, thus completing the Research Department quest, there is a Hidden Bonus reward which is: The following units get +1 initiative, +5 Attack and +5 Defense!- Orc Scout, Spirit Talker, Hyena, Wolf, Cannibal Werewolf (so a Wolf/Hyena theme going on. I couldn't find anything else that qualified)

      Werewolf Elf- Gets +3(!) Initiative, +1 speed, +10% Physical Resistance, +50% Magic Resistance, +5 attack, +5 defense, and 5% increased critical hit chance. Sadly the Cannibal Werewolf does not get these full insane boosts, otherwise it would become much more viable, and immediately transform from a forgettable unit into a viable force Those buffs are like a literal tier worth of upgrades (short of hp), all at the same leadership, and not a small tier jump either.

      Didn't mean to segway into a ramble on why Spirit Talkers are bonkers, but i'll close the point out by mentioning that Goblin Shamans in CW seem like absolute trash relative, not even a tiny fraction of their power (they are annoying as enemies, and overall Orcs have been the most troublesome enemy by a long shot in CW, but Spirit Talkers were a dangerous enemy the few times you face them in DS as well). Even if Goblin Shamans were 50 leadership instead of the outrageous 130, i'd still think there would be a strong case for spirit talkers. Thats how obscene the gap is. So yeh, Orcs in CW relative to Dark Side, ouch. Ogre is sexy though, but he always is. Oh and Trackers are dope as hell, makes them a perfect splash unit for Onslaught/Adrenaline buffs, and you just know i love their "Empathy" type damage reduction from having their summon out.

      Here is one that directly contradicts something you wrote "The Adrenaline numbers relating to Running are also a bit interesting, in that you'll always start with enough Adrenaline to Run, but never more than once", where the reality is 4) Orc Veteran- Can use "Run" a second time if they have atleast 5 adrenaline even if it supposedly costs 8. So that means if they have 13 or more adrenaline to start (50% of the time not counting tincture) they can actually use their Run twice for atleast 7 total action points on turn 1.

      Just some of the bugs/notes I documented extensively. I may revisit your Dark Side analysis and add a few things of note at some point, just busy with CW (by and large everything I have seen has been pretty damn accurate here which is great). Keep up the good work!

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    5. Where do I say Bleeding is a 20% chance on crits in Dark Side? I'm only finding the 5% value, in the Orc unit post.

      And yeah double-checked Giants and corrected them. Not sure how I missed that one.

      I've seen Shaman gain Adrenaline off other units gaining Adrenaline, in both Dark Side and Crossworlds. As in, check the Shaman's Adrenaline, attack non-lethally with a different unit, check Shaman, they have 1 more Adrenaline than when I previously checked. I don't remotely understand how it actually works in detail, but it does work, just... jankily.

      why does dark side have so many hidden bonus stat mechanics

      I guess that First Blood stuff at least explains why you can get regular Werewolf Elf stocks -because you get to significantly upgrade them in particular. Now if only the game actually *told* you about this... I'll be double-checking that and updating the Dark Side posts appropriately later.

      I'll be testing that Orc Veteran Running thing. It did seem to be usable more often than I intuitively expected...

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    6. Part 1 of 2
      "Where do I say Bleeding is a 20% chance on crits in Dark Side? I'm only finding the 5% value, in the Orc unit post." I can't recall off the top of my head exactly where you wrote it, but i believe it was in a comment response. I have a couple ideas where, let me check- hmm struggling to find it, but i did see you wrote under Orcs - "Crits now also have a 5% chance of causing Bleeding". I could swear i saw you write it had 20% which was a "damn, that sounds right" moment in mind since I felt the 5% the game claimed was off. Oh thankfully i found it, I knew I wasn't delusional and my usually impressive memory wasn't failing me.. You have it written "under unit analysis part 8 elves", under Werewolf Elf- "They're one of the units hurt most by the overhaul to crits, it's worth mentioning; they already inflict Bleeding on every hit, so crits having a 20% chance of inflicting Bleeding is irrelevant to them, whereas the drop in crit damage is absolutely relevant to them. It's all disadvantage, where for other units it's a trade."

      Look on this issue I am going to cede to whichever of your two stated numbers you think is correct. All i know is that when i saw the 20% my eyes lit up and it rang true to my experience and guestimating. I really don't know, and hopefully you didn't dig up the 20% out of nowhere.

      "I've seen Shaman gain Adrenaline off other units gaining Adrenaline, in both Dark Side and Crossworlds" Crossworlds the jury is still out on (haven't gotten to play with them, and just from my astute observations constantly like a hawk since it really matters to me, they were getting 0 from each orc ally gaining adrenaline. I can testify that the player's Shaman in Dark Side gets 0, always 0, no matter what 0, adrenaline from other allies. had well over 500 battles with them, and it was like a Dagger in my eye that i couldn't forget about when all the "gain adrenaline when other orcs gain adrenaline" type passive abilities were bugged and doing absolutely nothing (this was extremely noticable. I'd love to see it working properly for you, but call me skeptical). Just went and tested again with a combination i didn't use, namely Catapults with the lowly Furious Goblins and Goblins, and not surprisingly it stayed the same regardless of what all the goblins and orcs adrenaline gains were throughout the fight. I stand by my documented facts.

      "why does dark side have so many hidden bonus stat mechanics" Good question. I don't know, but very little slips by me since I constantly check stats/resistances etc so I am always fully in the loop for instant damage calculations etc. It's how i notice all these things like Rune Mage hidden resistances, and why you can rely on me for things like when units are gaining adrenaline (or really any statement i make is not just spewed out lightly, i verify and reverify etc since I hate being wrong and giving out misinformation). If there is a stated passive on a KB unit, i will test constantly to make sure it's working. Things like the Warrior Maiden not granting Initiative to allied vikings from her "Messenger of the Gods (+1 Initiative to allied Vikings)" is something I immediately noticed in original WOTN (i'm uncertain how you didn't, but you should update her post because it's a really big deal) and it basically ruined the game for me (I tried to modify initiative to fix and account for the bug, but it wasn't a full solution) and caused me to leave it early (i revisted with Ice and Fire to playthrough it till the end, and with great pain stomached the forced viking usage with their crippled warrior maiden not granting them initiative. Also it goes without saying it still remains bugged in Dark Side...). Very very little gets by me. Believe me when I say my game knowledge of KB is formidable.

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    7. Part 2 of 2
      "Now if only the game actually *told* you about this... I'll be double-checking that and updating the Dark Side posts appropriately later." Dark Side and the game being informative don't really go together as you know lol. It is what it is, probably a relatively minor issue for DS considering it's plethora of other serious problems.

      "I'll be testing that Orc Veteran Running thing. It did seem to be usable more often than I intuitively expected..." I only used it hundreds of times, but sure double check. It's a good idea in general to double check something if you think I'm wrong (spoiler alert, that will almost never be the case, that part about me being wrong that is. I clearly have a ways to go in convincing you that i'm a reliable arbiter of testing and information in KB, but maybe eventually you will know I'm legit, so I will try not to take umbrage eventhough I have never been gainsaid before in regards to KB so it's a new experience for me) but it's still good to have confirmation from both of us in case there is some KB wonkiness which isn't out of the question).

      Anyways i do enjoy our KB dialogue even if it got off to a rocky start. It's very rare that I find someone in a similar galaxy to me in terms of KB game knowledge, so you have my respect, and these analysis/guides are something that I always thought about doing, but my laziness got in the way of.
      My online alias is Slick Rounder, just so i don't get lost as one of the numerous "unknown" on the website (uncertain how many comments there have been the past few weeks since i found your great KB game analysis after I am getting back into them after years of hiatus, but I assume a hefty amount have been mine). So i'll end messages with -SR just so you know, since it seems unfair that i know you as Ghoul King but I am anonymous with this unknown moniker (if only i could muster 1% of the effort i put into KB to figure out how to change my username on this website to Slick Rounder.. alas that is where it's tough for me to put in the effort).
      -SR

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    8. You just click into your own screen name, then click Edit Profile, then check yes for Share My Profile, which is one of the highest bits. Your screenname will then display.

      I got 20% Bleed rate from the config files, I just wasn't finding where I said it myself. I've now updated the Orcs post to reflect the 20% number and include an explanatory comment.

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    9. Finally confirmed the First Blood thing, noticed it technically refers to it ("Quest Reward: Blessing of the First Blood"), and particularly confirmed the utterly bizarre part of the biggest benefit being to... Light werewolves. Why, Dark Side, why.

      Working on incorporating this info into the Orc and Elf posts now.

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  6. Sweet, i figured it out. i think this should do it.

    Figured you found the 20% bleed rate from something like config files, and yeh that sounds right to me. I see the update, looks solid.

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  7. Magic Light is Light Magic in the original. I guess translators thought it sounds too much like another magic school? And like you propably guessed, Bless gets +1 to it's duration from the first level of the skill and nothing from higher ones.

    Summoner is Summoning in Russian. It follows the pattern of magic type specialisation skills along with Light Magic and Destruction. No so much in English through. And no, it did not do anything for Phoenix in the original AP.

    "female wizards are not more prone than female warriors to looking like a fantasy-themed stripper" - it may be a surprise for you but in Russia it's WIDELY believed for westerners female mage=stripper look and that westerners generally expect a female mage to be a seductress type, use her looks as a tool or just be promiscous. All while generic male mage is an old man. There is no such stereothypes about warriors in bikini armor.
    In case you are interested, in Russian myths it was pretty much other way around. Female human mages are ugly (usually both inside and outside) and old-looking, unless they use illusions or drain youth/life from someone. Notice me saying 'female' - male magic (which is different) have no relation to looks or age, and male mage can easily be a dashing man. In addition, unlike western stereothype, male mages often have good combat skills and wear armor and weapon. Staffs and robes are priest's equipment - again, exact opposite of western fantasy stereothypes.

    Um, the wife of King Mark died. He loved her very much and could not force himself to marry another woman.

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    1. Ah, right, forgot to look forward on the Bless thing. I'll update the post appropriately. But yeah, 'Light Magic' would sound like a sphere of magic. Though 'Magic Light' is just confusing, so they really should've gone more different...

      I'm sort of bemused to hear these stereotypes. I'd hesitate to call them wrong, but it sounds like a... subtle misunderstanding? US fantasy absolutely loves its Female Minion To The Bad Guy Who Attempts To Seduce The Hero, and these characters are usually some manner of spellcaster (So their Feminine Wiles can involve literal magic, so our hero being tempted is very definitely the Wicked Seductress' fault and not a sign of him being inadequately faithful to his Designated Love Interest), but this exact intersection is villain-specific -when you get friendly female casters, they tend to range from 'ambiguous' ("Okay, that robe looks pretty Sex Sells, but if you think about it the male mage character is dressed pretty similarly...") to 'actively more prudish than most female characters in this story'. ("Here's the Priestess of Light. She's literally patterned after actual nuns; her face is her only visible skin at all.") It's female warrior types where it tends to be really blatantly Sex Sells. ("Here's Mr Warrior. Everything below the neck is covered in steel. Here's Ms Warrior; she's wearing a scale-mail bikini with runway boots. And I don't mean a full-body bikini.")

      Interesting to hear Baba Yaga is more or less representative. I've long wondered about that -I've absolutely seen cases of outsiders latching onto something specific as Distinctively X Culture where it's actually very much anomalous for that culture, so Baba Yaga getting a lot of representation outside Russia was something I was reluctant to take as meaningfully telling of Russian folklore and so on.

      I'll admit I'd forgotten King Mark had a wife who died, but it doesn't actually undercut what I'm talking about in the post. A trend is a trend, and in fiction patterns tend to meaningfully come from the context of the creator lives/thought processes. Patterns of this sort are rarely consciously intentional... but that doesn't mean they're not meaningful or interesting.

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    2. Well, a priestess of light is not the first (or second...) thing that people think when they hear 'female caster'.
      I believe video games helped to create this stereotype. To my experience female mages are way more sexualized than female warriors, and in PartyRPGs a female mage companion have a VERY high chance to be the most sexually open/heavily flirty/casually sexual character. That it, if she is not a sheltered naive virgin or a cloudcockoolander.

      Eerr, not really - Yaga is not human (she is a fey-like creature), not Russian herself ("in-story" I mean), not exactly evil (more like Chaotic Neutral in D&D terms) and is not cursed/decaying (more on it below). For an ordinary Russian she is more of a humorous character.

      I must say, I really hate to see Yaga in any foreign works due to how wrong she is usually portrayed.
      Please forgive my rant here but I wnated to tell it to someone for a long time :)
      First of all, 'Baba' is very often used as if it's her name (FAIL). It's just 'old woman' here. Old Woman Yaga. Yaga the Old Woman. That's it. Also, it's ya-GA, not YA-ga. The latter sounds like a male name. Btw, stress is way more important in Russian than in English - we have a good number of different words that is written and pronounced the same way, with stress being the only difference. 'Замок/Zamok" for example. 'ZA-mok' is a castle, 'za-MOK' is a lock. Here both words are innocent but there are cases where wrong stress may make turn one's words into quite questionable or funny.
      Second, like I said, she is a fairy-like creature that lives in some wilderness in a house with chicken legs. Sometimes she can steal children eat them (or get her ass kicked by them). Sometimes she helps a hero(ine) in his/her quest. Sometimes she can make a test of character and act depending on result. She is alos friendly towards friends or relatives of her own friends or acquaintances. And sometimes she can do something for lulz. She is also very knowledgable but not a master of straight fight, be it physical or magical. She can be friendly with actual villains (like calling them for a tea party), but she can also act the same with the good guys. Finally, she is NOT Russain herself, and even through she lived here for many centuries of years, she still does not consider herself local, so to speak. She is very good at finding hidden Russians or distinguish them from others due to Russian spirit having very disctinct smell from her perspective. And like I said, she have strong humorous association this days. And by days I mean dozens of years atleast.
      For some reason, Westerners often portray her as some kind of super powerful badass evil witch whom everyone know and fear. And she is always native pseudo-Russian(?) and very often is/was a human. In the same time, the actual Big Bad guys of Russian legends (Koschei the Deathless and Zmey Gorynich) are usually ignored. In case you are not familiar ('sad sigh'), Koschei is THE lich and the actual super powerful badass evil sorcerer whom everyone know and fear. Zmey Gorynich is manyheaded dragon/serpent monster and the greatest of his kind. Also, his name is written as, well, a name but can be translated as 'Serpent, fathered by Mountain", which I found awesome.

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    3. If you want an actual massively anomalous yet very persistent western stereotype about Russian mages, it's those goddamn winter witches. Or (pseudo-)Russian casters being matriarchal/all-female. 'cringe'

      First, human female mages are bad people in Russian mythology. Very bad. The reason for it is that there are two ways to get magic powers - been born with them or dealing with demonic forces. Among humans only males can be born mages (they still feel allure of evil but can resist it). Thus, female mage is either a fairy-like creature or a voluntary servant of demons. The former can be heroic but is not a, well, Russian woman strictly speaking. The latter is an old ugly evil bitch. Even if she helps someone, she always does it for a reason - accepting her help can have very bad consequences. Worse, they may be revealed many years after. Her magic is deeply rooted in rot, decay and impurity, which is why she may get prematurely old. Male sorcerer can be just a male analogue but can also, like I've said, be a born mage. Such mage is always stronger than ones who sold their souls and thus either leads them (if he succumbed to evil) or their great enemy (if he didn't). He can also become a witch hunter of sorts.

      For bonus points, even closest Russian analogue of Elves (Volots) have only males being those badass heroic handsome magic guys. Their women are dumb aggressive unmagical brutes, known for having fits of destructive rage. They actually envy humans for having such cool, beatiful, smart and even-tempered girls. Actually, in Russian mythology majority of supernatural creatures envy humans for this very reason.
      Human woman can be VERY strong physical warriors through. There are many stories about a literal one-woman army, or about heroines saving thier boyfriends-in-distress. Even, Dobrynya Nikitich, one of the greatest and physically strongest heroes of Russian epics, become married man after being BEATEN INTO SUBMISSION by a female warrior and kept as prisoner until he agreed to marry her. And no, he did not escaped later, he just accepted that he has no choice and indeed married her under threat of continued violence. And no, she isn't even a villain somehow. Tough love and the like. Well, atleast it's not portayed as funny, like so many modern cases of female-on-male violence.

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    4. Now on winter and cold. First, it's not 'ours', it's a neghbour and a pretty cruel one. In older times it was personified as a strictly evil child-killing demon, later as an old man who can help you if you are polite and humble enough, but can also kill you if he don't like you. He especially hates arrogant, greedy or boastful woman. 'Ours' magic (in fantasy terms) would be Air/Nature if you want to be closer to earth, Water/Nature for "faeries" and Air/Light/Fire if you into Princes/Tsars/Patriarchs stuff. I guess, ice magic could work for a witch hunter mage or a some sort of pupil(s) of the old man Frost. It definitely shoud not be mainstream.
      Second, due to magic fairy-like creatures being connected to flowing water/large bodies of water and human witches' magic being rooted in decay, female mages get really screwed in cold. This theme present in the legends of many native peoples of Siberia too. Like, good but not very powerful shaman must defeat a mighty evil shamaness. So he runs away from her until they both find themselves in a permafrost area, where he goes "surprise! We are in a realm of winter, where she-mages have no power and you are just a wicked old woman" -"...OH SHIT!!!"
      Also, in pagan times priestly duties were normally male (often priests were former warriors who either got weak from age and/or old wounds or voluntary "laid down their weapons"). And Christian priesthood, of course, was and still is male-only.

      And yet, for some reason, in foreign works (pseudo-)Russian casters are always either female-dominated or outright all-female. WHY?! Really why? It make no sense at all! And it becomes utterly absurd with those damn oxymorons that are winter witches. It's just soooo retarded. Kinda insulting too.

      ...It was not supposed to be that long. Again, I'm sorry for the rant. It won't happen again.

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    5. I'd honestly assumed the Evil Baba Yagas of western interpretations were... biased, let's go with. (I grew up in the Cold War era, and it was really, really obvious to me even as a kid that Russia And Everything From It were not getting a fair shake in the majority of pop culture I was exposed to) And I did know Baba is basically just 'grandma', so I've cringed at it being treated as her name, myself. In this case by 'representative' I mean 'loosely in line with common tropes', or more precisely 'not defined by how contrary to the normal tropes they are'. Like, I talked about the 'outsiders latching on' thing, and what I was trying to articulate is that I've seen cases of people seeing deliberately subversive tropes and taking away from them the idea that these subversive tropes *are* the mainstream, rather than them being cases of deliberately flouting the norms.

      So in this case by 'it sounds like Baba Yaga is roughly representative', I mean something like 'Baba Yaga is not defined by Being The Exception That Proves The Rule'.

      (I do appreciate the overview, mind, I just have the impression that what I said got taken very differently from how I meant it)

      I... think I've heard of Koschei before? Difficult to be sure given his name apparently gets rendered in some pretty different ways when using Roman letters. I'm pretty weirded out I haven't seen him more, though, given he's basically literally A Modern Fantasy Lich, centuries before that got strongly codified in western pop culture. But no, when I see liches with referential names, it tends to be to Norse mythology...

      I know I've heard of Zmey before, though not often. And to be fair global mythology gives a lot of options if you want a massive bundle of snakes monster...

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    6. I'm finding interesting the 'magic carries dangerous temptations even for people who didn't literally sell their soul to demons' undertone to all that. US pop culture often struggles with wanting magic to be special and rare because it doesn't really provide a root for such rareness -the most common fallback that works at all is to give up and say it's a genetic lottery where only a tiny fraction of people have the inborn capacity for magic, and this itself clearly goes over poorly with creators wanting to put in messages about how Anyone Can Accomplish Any Dream and whatnot. ("If my dream is to be a wizard, and I wasn't born one, how is your message not a flagrant lie?") A background assumption that magical ability comes with evil temptations and whatnot provides a pretty straightforward answer to the question "Why isn't everyone a wizard?"

      It's also interesting to me how all that intersects with the female warrior stuff, in terms of contrasting with US pop culture -US pop culture is really prone to female casters under a clear implicit logic of 'this is the only way it's palatable to have them fighting on the battlefield with men', where you can tell the creators fully believe women can't win physical confrontations with men. This is, for one thing, giving me context on Amelie's handling in Armored Princess itself -one of the low-key elements I like about the game is that it feels no need to get defensive about Amelie's skills as a warrior if you play a Warrior or Paladin Amelie; there's no nonsense where the narrator tells us she can go toe-to-toe with men thanks to her divine blessings, or whatever. It's just taken as natural and obvious that a girl who commits herself to such a life can in fact make it work.

      The details of the winter/cold stuff is new to me (And interesting in its own right), but not... surprising, I guess? I've long been frustrated by pop culture taking an 'external' view in a really blatant way when it comes to stuff like Fantasy Versions Of Real Countries, and Russia and winter is actually one of the cases I've specifically thought about a bunch as an example of the people around me blatantly not even *trying* to think of the internal perspective. Like, if I were writing Shallow Unresearched Fantasy Russia, I'd take it as a given that these Fantasy Russians would specialize in fire magic -so they have a tool to fight back against their murderous winters! Old man winter is already plenty deadly without assistance. The only way I'd go with Fantasy Russians Do Ice Magic would be if I was taking a 'the environment soaks into people in a mystical way' sort of route. (So you get ice magic by growing up in the coldest parts of the world, you get fire magic by growing up near an active volcano, that kind of thing) Which... I'm not sure I've ever seen a fantasy story actually operate on that logic... I think it may just be a model I developed as a kid through trying to logically parse the nonsense tropes I was faced with.

      Rants are fine. I'm a rant-y person myself, and tend to find them more interesting than anything else.

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  8. Oh. Glad to see you found it interesting :)
    May I ask a couple of questions than?

    Do you have idea of where the hell did this idiotic stereotype of (pseudo-)Russian mages/priests being either matriarchal (with males often being weak or distrusted) or all-female came from? I mean, it's exact opposite of both reality and mythology yet it's pretty much everywhere.
    Even weirder, I think in majority of European cultures magic is seeing as more of a feminine thing - our mythological thing with males being inherently more magical gender is pretty unusual. As is percent of very physically strong mythological females. And yet, in non-Russian fantasy it's pretty much always psedo-Russian mage=woman, while pseudo-English/French/German mages are either gender-equal or sometimes even male-dominated. It make no sense to me. Especially with such an mythologically anti-female element as Ice.

    Also, maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that it's way more common and acceptable to use wrong stereotypes/random bullshit for a pseudo-Russia than for other cultures. I mean, look at Warhammer Fantasy - other human realms clearly take various thing from their real-life inspiration. Sometimes in grotesque form but still. Than look at Kislev (it's name sound really silly btw) that is supposedly Russia but is pretty much Poland+tatars+Soviet/Cold War stereotypes. And all-female witches that rule the land, of course.
    Oh, wait, there are Streltsi. Wow. Totally changes everything. 'sigh'

    Or take the Dominions series. For the majority of races devs clearly did their research - there tons of obscure mythology elements or shout outs to less known but very interesting cultural/hystorical stuff.
    In case you are not familiar, most of the races are basically real life nations but with magic and sometimes non-human. Than comes "Russia" - and it's Baltic(why?) mythology-Norse gods-BabaYaga-Rasputin. What.The.Hell. I guess using Russian words for wrong things should not be surprising after that.

    Also, in addition to THE original lich our mythology also had ...somewhat... good, maybe benevolent is a better word, vampires. There are supposedly very rare and there is no known named ones but they were possible as a very specific case of a born-mage trying to exploit the system, so to speak. They don't sparkle, not romantic pretty boys and are still bloodsucking undead that is doomed to hell after death. But still, I find the concept interesting.

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    1. Russian ice witch-wise, Total Warhammer 3 (Yes I know that's not its actual name) is my first exposure to such, which I'm noting to make clear I absolutely do not know The Answer here.

      That said, there's some (cringey) phenomena I'm familiar with that seem likely to be relevant.

      The first of these is Foreigners As Scapegoats; a depressingly large fraction of people will happily foist A Local Thing They Dislike onto Those Weird And Bad Foreigners, and then try to tie these together to demonize both. And a lot of traditional western fantasy is written by men who benefit from the current social norms and don't want to see society move away from misogyny because they're scared it'll take benefits from them; societies dominated by women in fantasy are depressingly likely to be a vehicle for 'proving' that moving away from misogyny is somehow bad. And up until the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia/The USSR was The Foreign Bad Guys for a lot of 'the west', and thus probably the most common recipient of this kind of nonsense.

      The second is the point that people outside the ex-USSR territory have a tendency to genuinely believe that Russian Baseline Weather is universally a thick blanket of snow. Never mind that Russia is a lot of territory, and the USSR was even more territory. Also never mind that humans actually live there with cities and farms and so on, so imagining it to be basically Antarctica year-round is just obvious nonsense.

      This then intersects with general Nonsense Fantasy Tropes, where fantasy has everything that lives in A Cold Environment have Ice Powers... even when this means describing an ecosystem in which all predators rely exclusively on Cold Damage and all possible prey is literally impossible to hurt with Cold Damage. When this is obviously nonsense. So if Russia is an endless field of snow, then obviously Fantasy Russians have Ice Powers, because nonsense tropes layered atop incorrect beliefs about Russia as a region.

      Again; I've no idea if this is The Answer, but... probably relevant.

      As for Russia getting more weird/inaccurate stuff than average in pop culture... I'd say yeah, that's a real thing. For one thing, western pop culture tends to 'westernize' Russia when it's being 'counted' as 'western' (Generally this is 'by non-western, we basically mean China'), glossing over things like Cyrillic not being a Roman alphabet at all ("It's more like English than Chinese or Japanese are!", says someone who can't read any of those; I'm not making this idiocy up, to be clear), and conversely when Russia is being treated as Not The West (This was the default for... the first 15 years of my life?) suddenly commonalities are downplayed and divergences given tons of emphasis. (Even if they aren't that divergent; I was pissed when I learned that public bathhouses are not only not A Weird Russian Thing but are actually found in quite a lot of countries, including multiple European ones, and in fact ancient Rome loved its bathhouses. This all didn't stop bits of US pop culture from acting like bathhouses were Russians Being Weird)

      That people outside the USSR were prone to just interpreting all of its territories and cultures as Russian did not (Does not?) help. A given depiction of Russia/a Russian had non-trivial odds of being a depiction of a culture or individual who would be offended to be labeled Russian...

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    2. Oh, and I meant to comment on the vampire thing, because it sounds like Loop Hero didn't make up the basics of its depiction of vampires? Loop Hero being a Russian game with vampires having a historically semi-positive relationship to regular humans, which I've really enjoyed its depiction of vampires.

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    3. Oh, alright. Well, if you are not familiar...
      Ice theme aside, like, I said, a lot of foreign games (video or tabletop RPGs) that have pseudo-Russia VERY often make it's priesthood/mages (regardless of being portrayed as good or bad guys) being either all-female or matriarchal (with males being openly considered inferior, forced to live in reclusion and the like) - exact opposite of both real life and mythology. I've grown to really hate it.
      First, if you want an action girl/female villain or something, why are they not warriors instead? I mean, in Russian legends 'polenitsas' are pretty common with both heroic and villanous roles. I already told about heroines saving boyfriends-in-distress but it one needs villains, there is also stuff like "Камское побоище/Slaughter at Kama", that, among other things, have a hero beaten and raped (yeah...) by a villainous female warrior - and commit suicide as result. So if you want "female power" or something, there is a lot of material. The same is true if you want to show evilness of women with power or something. And it will be much more correct to mythology.

      And, second, why specifically taking away magic from men? Even if you are not familiar with that trope youself, can you, I dunno, give a theoretical insight or something? I just don't understand how come this stereotype came to be in the first place but hearing an opinion from the other side would be nice. Just in case, I'm not an easily offended person or anything :)
      My best guess so far is "you need to be smart to be a mage but Russians are dumb so no mages. Except there is baba Yaga so we can propably make she-mages".

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    4. I am not familiar with Loop Hero and don't know how vampires portayed there. In mythology they are generally evil just because of what they are.
      Western vampirism is often looks like a HIV metaphore with sexual theme, "infecting" other people, possibility of being transformed against your will and the like. A Russian mythological vampire usually is a sorcerer who arose as blood-drinking undead. So in a way he is closer to a Western lich. The process itself is obviously very unnatural and sinful thing.
      There are "lesser" vampires so to speak who are not mages and can happen as a result of curse for example, but they are more like bloodthirsty zombies. Rotten, barely sentient and all that.
      "Proper" vampire is fully sentient alright-looking sorcerer. Benevolent vampire may come from, say, desire to protect his homeland (a village, for exapmle) and/or it's people, especially from supernatural threats. Place under such patronage will not be all that sunshiney, but any witch/evil sorcerer/roaming bandits wanting to harm it will suffer most horrible fate.
      The problem is that such rebirth is very dark magic by itself and thus dooms the sorcerer to eternal suffering after his final death. Not to mention you need blood. And you are physically dead. And this alluring darkness thing that every mage feel will only get stronger. Well, one can say that deciding to become a vampire in the first place already means you have succumbed, even if it's supposedly have a noble cause.

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    7. Okay, well... I'm going to need to provide context for my context so I can contextualize my context, which is to say I'm going to apparently-randomly jump topic a few times. Please bear with me.

      So first of all, an element common to a lot of pop culture is that generally what a story is actually about is much closer to home than whatever it's ostensibly about. If Bob the American office worker writes a story set in Fantasy France, ostensibly about Vaguely Medieval folks using sword and sorcery to slay flying fire-breathing reptiles, it's not about France, or medieval warfare, or what a dragon would be like if it was real. It's about how Bob's marriage is under strain, his performance at work is shaky enough he worries he'll be fired, and how much he misses what his life in high school is like. Which means inevitably Fantasy France conspicuously bears more cultural similarity to Bob's life in the US than to actual France. (If there are accurate elements, it's probably coincidental or convergent evolution; that Bob's life has some dynamics in common with some time and place in France, not that he did his research)

      Only rarely is Fantasy (insert country here) really coming from a place of familiarity with and love for the supposed nation.

      So right away Fantasy Russia is generally only pulling from the most superficial elements at all; there will be tsars in palaces with those spiral-y top bits I don't remember the name of, the country will probably be famed for its harsh winters, and that's about as Russian as Fantasy Russia will get. Even stuff that actually gets taught in US history classes will probably not be used as inspiration; real Russia being invaded by Napoleon until winter forced him to leave got taught in school, but somehow I've never seen Fantasy Napoleon fail to take Fantasy Russia because of winter coming. Even though I've absolutely seen Fantasy Napoleon...

      Returning in a roundabout way to 'ice witches'... well. I need to talk about feminism and cringe-y cultural norms.

      So in the US there's a widespread collage of expectations in regards to gender that... I'm not sure how common they are outside the US, and am especially unsure how readily foreigners recognize them all. Broadly, a lot of people in the US operate on a model where sex -and topics tied up in it like marriage- is something men pursue and women get to choose whether they acquiesce to a request or refuse it. This is sufficiently baked in there's a lot of assumptions and rationalizations that get attached to it that aren't actually inescapable truths but get bandied about as if they are; beliefs like 'all men are always up for sex' (To the point some people will seriously argue that a woman can't rape a man because of course he wants it) and 'sex is a chore for all women'. One of the consequences of this entire framework is that you get the point that if a woman refuses such a request, especially if she does so more than occasionally in contexts she's not not expected to refuse in (eg a married woman saying no to her husband more than occasionally), she risks being labelled 'frigid' -there's a whole wall of terminology here for using cold as a metaphor for not being sexually available. (I should also explicitly note there's at least some overlap with the UK here, given for one thing Warhammer Fantasy has come up)

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    8. This then intersects with feminism and female leadership terminology. The latter is more straightforward; describing a leader as 'cold' is by default taken as a negative descriptor, where a leader is expected to be 'warm'. With a male leader, this doesn't go anywhere weird by default; a man being warm is a man being friendly and socially accessible in a platonic way. (It gets more complicated if he has female underlings, but it's still possible to thread the needle of 'warm and accessible, but not being accused of sexual harassment', it's just harder) With a female leader the warmth/cold dichotomy instantly goes stupid and unpleasant places. (Yes, this can even crop up with heterosexual women leaders in charge of heterosexual women. I... don't feel like getting into that right now) After all, 'warm' behavior is both Proper Leadership Behavior and Yes I Am Sexually Available Behavior in this collage of expectations. Yeah.

      Anyway, feminism. As feminism is about changing current expectations/social dynamics, you get a lot of friction between people who buy into 'traditional' notions the people going 'can we do something that's not this'? Furthermore, the people buying into 'traditional' models tend to frame everyone inside them; this leads to stuff like the 'frigid' label getting applied to feminist women, or an assumption they must be lesbians, or other such nonsense because the idea of an alternate social model is inconceivable to people who genuinely buy into the idea that the current model is biological determinism ("All men always want sex, all women always experience it as a chore") rather than just one of many possible social dynamics. ("Men asking and women saying yes or no is just our culture's current rules. Rules can be rewritten.") Also common is presenting feminism not as a push for equality, but a push for superiority. (That some people actually are doing that doesn't exactly help)

      Meanwhile, there was a period starting from... I think the 50s... where the general perception was that the USSR was 'ahead of the curve' when it came to feminist progress. (To be clear, whether this was meaningfully true doesn't matter to this topic; the belief it was true is the important part)

      So I would guess this 'Russian ice witch' stuff occurring is all this stuff rolling together with the previously-covered fantasy tropes, so we have 'frigid bitches ruling over Russian society with ice magic.' Because there are people who genuinely believe that feminism is frigid women trying to dominate society, and believe Russia is more dominated by feminism than the US. Then combined with the cringe-y 'land of snow specializes in ice magic' trope.

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    9. So to summarise key ponts - you either keep girls in the kitchen or are/will be ruled by them. As Russia is not former it should be the latter. +Russia=winter, thus rulers=winter. Because of matriarchy it's icy witches. Cringe complete.

      These days West changed it's mind about itself and is obsessed with putting carboard 'Strong Women' eveywhere, but pseudo-Russias continue to be the same. Out of habit, I guess.

      Thanks.

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    10. Oh, and a lot of people will be offended by "Napoleon being beaten by winter". It was considered to be shameless and whiny propaganda even in 19 century itself.
      Napoleon's army started retreating in october and was finally crushed at Battle of Berezina at the late November, which is 1)not winter and 2)was not that cold.
      Gaspard Gourgaud (one of Napoleon ordnance officers) wrote that Berezina (the river) was still not frozen - and that made crossing harder; French expected/hoped it will be but weather was simply not cold enough. This allowed Russian army to get reatreting French. In other words - autumn was 'too warm'.
      Another French guy whose name evades me (sorry) wrote that weather-wise their biggest enemy were rains that turned roads into hard-to-traverse dirty mess.

      Napoleon faced actual dire cold before more than once - like at Eylau at 1807 or in Holland at 1795, and it never was a real hindrance.

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    11. Basically accurate summary, aside the leadership point where I failed to draw the connection I was trying to draw -that being that 'ice witch' would thus be a double-duty condemnation. ("You're bad women AND bad leaders!")

      My understanding is that Napoleon retreated because his logistics train would soon stop functioning due to winter coming, but I've also only read about him back in middle school, and school history books were... pretty blatantly skewed. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if what I got fed was basically dumb propaganda. A lot of other history stuff certainly was.

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    12. Ah, yes, I misunderstood you. Yes, logistics problem was one of the reason.
      Originally Napoleon expected to win a Big Battle, force Russua to surrender and peace on his terms and call it a day. He did not planned to take over it or anythimg like it. Than he thought that taking Moscow will be the end of war - Emperor Alexander will be totally demoralised and will agree to surrender lol. Later he expected to wait over* the winter in Moscow - except he got himself in an empty burned down city. His logistics also heavily suffered from partisan attacks. His army in general was surprised how much almost everyone they met on occupied lands hated them. People in conqured Western Europe were much more docile, according to French atleast. And while Napoleon considered Battle at Borodino to be his victory, separate parts of his army suffered defeats in smaller battles.
      So he finally got the idea that things go wrong. In the beginning of October he actually wanted to sent de Caulaincourt into Prince Kutuzof's (who menacingly sat at 90km from Moscow doing nothing for 2 weeks - and that was pretty unnerving for the French) camp to ask for peace (on conditions that will still "save [Napoleon's/French] honor"(c). Than Battle of Tartutino happened, where despite some ...discord among Russian commanders, French lost. Very next day Napoleon officially said 'screw it all' and ordered retreat. He wanted to merely move to Smolensk at first, wait for the spring here and than continue the war. During the retreat parts of his army got into battles with parts of Russian - and repeatedly lost. In Smolensk itself Napoleon found some serious problems with the discipline of his army (that was fixed by shooting down some people) due to lack of food, thoughts about "we are screwed" and, according to quartermaster named, um... Villeblanche? (I'm not sure how his name is written in English), some very scary peasant partisan leader named Praskovia (I guess village girls can be really scary when they are angry).
      Than they decided to retreat from Smolensk as well. Than Berezina happened, and Napoleon left most of what was left of his army and run away.

      Sorry for going so talkative again (like I said, I misunderstood you). It's just, well, to my experience, A LOT of Westerners imagine it like "Napoleon attack Russia, totally winning, than winter comes and his army freeze to death. He would totally took Russia over in he would have a couple of months more." Which is bullshit. I mean, one can read French own documents if one don't like Russian ones or something.
      Honestly, the most special talent Napoleon showed is the ability to repeatedly save himself during the retreat, living his soldiers to die/surrender.

      * Is there a single English word for,well, waiting over the winter/spending time until it's end? Like when army sets a camp until the spring, or just people like travelers or explorers getting a pause for the winter? Or when nomadic people stay in one place until the spring. Google translate does not help me.

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    13. 'Wintering' is the English word for just waiting somewhere specific for winter to end. It's not a very commonly-used word nowadays unless you're specifically talking about migratory birds, but it's the correct term when talking military or nomadic peoples doing the same.

      I'm guessing 'Villeblanche' is 'Phillipe de Ségur', as that's the name I'm getting for 'Napoleon's quartermaster when invading Russia'.

      And yeah, I'm sympathetic to that reaction. I've seen people formulate 'Napoleon failed to conquer Russia' as, essentially, 'he totally would've won if it weren't for Russian winter', myself, and I've long been extremely skeptical of that particular formulation. It just sounds like face-saving nonsense, or otherwise like dubious propaganda. (For one thing, if Russian winters are so predictably problematic, your invasion failing thanks to winter coming isn't an act of god that doesn't reflect on your abilities, it's a product of poor planning... which is a typical issue with face-saving lies, where they only work as face-saving if you apply zero thought to what's being said)

      So basically I got a simplified but not completely wrong representation of things... or, well, the wrongness was focused elsewhere, anyway. (Napoleon's intentions in regards to Russia are something that are usually presented as 'he intended to conquer the whole region, and totally could've done so', which I've historically been unsure if that's 'Napoleon was way underestimating the scope of that goal' or if that's 'pop culture and history books are being some manner of stupid'. Either way I was dubious on that as soon as I had any sense for how large Russia is)

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  10. Almost forgot - I do not plan to buy Total Warhammer 3 but I wonder - do streltsi still shoot from the wrong side of their weapon, like in trailers lol?
    The muzzle is supposed to be on the same side as the axe-like blade.
    Oh, and atleast Dominions do not use 'tsar'. In Warhammer it creates implied link/heredity between Kislev and Nehekhara. Which does not exist. I know that for average westerner "tsar is like king but Russian" but it's still stupid.

    Okay, I'll shut up :)

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    1. I'd have to look it up in a video; my computer ostensibly meets the minimum requirements, but in practice the game freezes and/or crashes when trying to load a battle. I have 8.4 hours logged in it; that's pretty much entirely me trying out different settings and whatnot to try (and fail) to get it into a playable state. I'd be surprised if it changed, though... mostly I'm surprised Streltsi are based on anything real in the first place. Getting it wrong, apparently, but still.

      I'm not following the tsar/Egypt comment. Digging into history reveals that Russia and Egypt have centuries of friendliness, which is new to me and interesting, but every source I can find places tsar/czar as being derived from Caesar, by way of Greek usage. (Which means it's really a variation on 'emperor', ultimately, not 'king')

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    2. It seems everytime I try to stop talking I somehow only provoke more of it. Talking, I mean :)

      About 'Tsar' - the word itself is derived from Caesar, yes, but it (Царь) generally means a monarch of сlassical antiquity or biblical times. Anax, balileus, pharaoh - they are all subtypes of tsars. Solomon of Israel a tsar too. And than, of course, Roman/Eastern Roman Emperors, who are the ultimate tsars, so to speak.
      And eventually, the only tsars. Constantinople was even more often call 'Царьград' - 'Tsar-city' :) Some of our Grand Princes also liked to call themselves this way (unoficially of course).
      As you know, Byzantium, the last true remnant of the classical age, eventually fall. Sophia Palaiologina, niece of the last Emperor/Tsar, Constantine XI, later married Grand Prince Ivan III, the guy known for his aspiration of uniting all of the Russian lands and becoming THE Grand Prince. This allowed him (with full support of his wife) to proclaim his dynasty as heirs of the Roman tsars (and thus THE Christian monarchs*), through only his grandson was officially crowned under this title. Thus "GOD! TSAR! FATHERLAND!" and all that.

      * - Catholic heretics are, well, heretics :)

      So, why I wrote this hystorical blah-blah-blah?
      If your fantasy setting has/had any pseudo-ancient Greek/Roman/Egypt/Babylon/Israel/etc. nation, for a Russian a medieval ruler called 'tsar' automatically implies heredity in some way (be it political, hystorical, or just pure pretence).
      Even if you are someone who don't care about specific history at all, any of those ancient rulers will still be called 'tsar' in Russian. In case of Warhammer, Tomb Kings are Цари Гробниц (Tsars of Tombs) in Russian. Settrah is the First Tsar. Arkhan is Tsar-Lich.
      And than you have those Kislev clowns who are also call themselves 'tsars', despite having no relation or even contact with Nehekhara.

      Just in case you wondering, could it be possible use 'король' (king) for someone like Tomb Kings - no. 'King' in Russian specifically means post-Roman European monarch or, in case of fantasy/sci-fy, one inspired/modeled after one.
      Well, and 'tsar' also kinda implies either divine patronage of some sort of inherent superiority (or both) while a king is just a guy with a crown.
      Fantasy terms like "god-king" may become tsars in Russian because of that.

      Random note - some of Warhammer old fan translation used 'tsar' for the High Elf ruler, translating him as 'Царь-Феникс'/Tsar-Phoenix. Considering HE being atleast partially Byzantium-like (even with their own Varangian Guard), being very ancient, and kinda being partial forefathers of most of human civilisations, it was kinda fitting. In the original English he is Phoenix King.

      Through like I said, atleast from my experience, westerners treat word 'tsar' as if it's just Russian king (not really Emperor, considering how many fantasy settings make their pseudo-Russias tiny and single-nationed). What is more amusing is that the word (again, in my experience) is treated as if it's something inherently, deeply Russian:)

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    3. P.S. Poor Streltsi. There was even a game that made a melee only cannon folder.
      MELEE ONLY. Word 'Streltsi/стрельцы' have the same root as 'стрелять'/'shoot'.
      Atleast in TW:WH they shoot. From the wrong side of their guns. Than again, they are commanded by Polish bear-worshippers and are ruled by khan-descended witch. Maybe they just want to kill themselves.

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    4. A frustration I have with a lot of fantasy (And a fair amount of scifi...) is that nation and ruler terms are clearly not understood to actually, y'know, mean anything in particular. 'Empire' and 'emperor' tend to be used as either 'bad guy nation/ruler' or 'nation/ruler when talking about ancient Rome', rather than as terms for nations that conquer and vassalize other nations. 'Pharaoh' gets treated as if it's just the Egyptian term for a king, completely ignoring that ancient Egyptians literally held that the pharaoh was a divinity walking the earth, which is a *bit* different from a European king who claimed divine right to rule in the sense of 'the Christian God has selected me for this role'. 'Tsar' gets used as just 'king, but for Russians'.

      Even 'city-state' sometimes gets treated as 'Ancient Greek Nation Word' even though it's a literal descriptor in plain English!

      Like yeah there's a certain degree of arbitrariness (The Japanese Emperor word is translated as 'emperor' pretty much purely because Japan was surrounded by empires and emperors when they were forced to actually interact with the larger world and didn't want to have their god-on-earth sound lesser than these other people, not because it's an accurate translation), and word meaning evolves over time, but the degree to which it's normal to act as if sultan, tsar, and myriad other terms are just 'king, but in a foreign language' drives me up the wall.

      Which is to say that yes tsar tends to be treated as if it's just 'the Russian word for a monarch', because for whatever incomprehensible reason this type of thinking is bizarrely widespread. Even when a fantasy story shows signs of having some meaningful familiarity with history instead of just repeating pop-culture memes, this is still depressingly normal.

      I'm similarly cringing at the Streltsi bit. "Here's the Shooter unit. It's a dedicated melee unit." Wow.

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    5. Well, Streltsi and just 'shooters' are different words with the same root but yeah, it's still absurd. Than again, in this game they also were the basic tier cannon folder/militia analogue instead of, you know, professional regular soldiers.
      Btw, in real life they were one of, if not THE first infantry in Europe (atleast) to wear mandatory uniform. Contrary to video games or "hystorical" movies, for the most of history armies looked rather motley.

      I guess 'streltsi' is just the only Russian military unit name of the time that most Westerners know, thus they try to use it.

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    6. Ah, Streltsi are Age of Empire's 3 Strelets... Romanized differently, I guess?

      ... I was always doubtful of the AoE 3 Strelet depiction, and now I'm cringing harder. At least they're gunmen, but ugh... so much of AoE 3 is cringe...

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    7. Strelets is singular (just one guy). Streltsi are plural.

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    8. Ah, that makes sense. Makes me cringe harder at AoE 3 have produced in packs normally, as the button really should use the plural in that case... but explains things otherwise.

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    9. One more thing - my memory is fuzzy but was AoE2 that game where China lacked access to gunpowder despite inventing it real life?:)
      It may also be the game where Dracula somehow was the hero of Slavic campaign.
      And Slavic nation(s) had no access to gunpowder (despite Russian and Poland being the first European countries to use massed firearms infantry).
      It possibly also had Spain use French arbalests while French themselves didn't?

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    10. Age of Empires 2 actually had gunpowder universal until the original expansion added the Aztec, Mayans, and Huns. I also am not familiar with any of the expansions past The Conquerors, personally, so if eg Vlad The Impaler is indeed the hero of the Slavs campaign, I wouldn't know. (In particular, just looking up a wiki summary would be unlikely to communicate how cringe-y or not it is; wiki pages rarely present info in a way that communicates this type of point)

      ... but certainly, the wiki says the Slavs faction gets zero gunpowder units. Which. Um. What?

      Like yeah, the game has a pretty wide range of time it covers, Saladin getting a campaign while having died before 1200 AD vs Hernan Cortez having been around 300 years later, but it's pretty eyebrow-raising to make Spain The Gunpowder Civilization, have Spain be depicted in the 1500s, and then have Ambiguously Proto-Russia have no guns when they did in that same timeframe... and Vlad certainly used cannons (As in, I can find this online with just a couple minutes of digging for this comment), so if he is indeed the Slav campaign perspective, there's no hiding behind 'oh, this is Slavic people from before firearms spread into the area'.

      And the later expansions came along when Easy Internet Research was really hitting its stride -The Conquerors and base game have the defense that digging up foreign history from actual books that may have no copies in your region is much, much harder than digging around online is today. (Among other ways research is easier now than when I was a kid)

      Neither faction gets the Arbalest upgrade, and Spain actually doesn't even get Crossbowmen, so you're half-right there.

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