You are wrong about Gemini. I'm gonna copypaste my Discord message:
when it costed 12, people teleported it onto row 3 and split, and this was okay because it was so OP that paying "6 army points + 2 morale" was worth it for each, but it was actually better to split on row 1, because 1. gemini gives you the defensive edge and you can stall, 2. units with overcosted value (such as geminitwin and phalanx with armor broken) are more vulnerable so it is better to hide them away
the same thing i said for morale-positive pieces also applies for pieces with on death morale penalty, but the sheer overpoweredness of the morale penalty pieces is making people think that trading them is an equally good tactic to keeping them
Also, your LifeStone (lol capitalization - at this point, I should stop being such a game purist and say "Lifestone" because it even looks better to me) analysis does not mention the massive material gain from it, instead opting to call it turning it into "a champion slot" (which is true but would hardly be what I consider most important about it, because so many minions are like champions anyway). In fact it seems like you never analyzed the material/morale value at all, creating a LifeStone that just gives +3 morale and +3 material?
Anyway, current LifeStone at best basically gives -1 morale and +7 material, which is actually insane. The free material from LifeStone is so strong still that I am very confident that it's still overpowered and the only reason it's not is because of nuance (nuance is a meme term that makes fun of grand calling RPS nuance). ThunderMage and GravityMage have made it basically unplayable, Grand still thinks it's okay to require low-cost swappers and making a mess out of your defense to counter ThunderMage vs. LifeStone.
There is one exception, though:
also phoenix+0 lifestone+3 is a thing, you thundermage your own phoenix early so your lifestone cannot be exploited
An acceptable rebuttal re: Gemini: certainly I can see the appeal of trying to keep one or both Twins alive for stalling purposes because of their high value.
Yes, I definitely should have mentioned the increase in material from successful LifeStone usage, as that is the entire reason for the piece's existence. I will note however that your comment does not assert that LifeStone is "bad design", merely that a piece whose usage provides a net benefit of "-1 morale and +4 to +7 material" is still a strong piece despite its RPS issues against gravity and thunder. If that is your belief, then that means you would fall on my side of the "should LifeStone exist or not?" argument camp, which I appreciate.
For the record, I have argued in the past, and would again in the future, that nerfs to LifeStone should not be mere simple numeric edits. For example, pieces revived by LifeStone could come back frozen/petrified for 3/5 turns, which would allow users to pay for a material advantage with a tempo or positional disadvantage.
This is a disgusting interaction. Phoenix reviving itself is one thing; Phoenix cloning itself through LifeStone manipulation is quite another. If I was Grand, I would consider this interaction to be a bug and endeavor to figure out some way to make it not work.
Thanks for the comment; I shall send you 10 RP shortly.
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Just a sidenote on Gemini, I don't believe that the vanilla moveset of "3 range rook" is worth 8. Probably around the lower end of 7-8, especially as Crusader and AirElemental are basically strict upgrades to that.
I don't have a problem with LifeStone reviving things. I'm thinking of a design in our game that does the same but is more granular with costs (so you could revive a number of different units, or one big cost one). Though this is even more difficult to balance and may not see the light of day (because of the idea of "unit advantage", the idea that units may have a different extra innate cost than their number such that, say, two WaterElemental for a Rook is NOT an equal trade - for example, Pawns in this game are 0 but not literally zero value). To make a properly balanced unit like the one I mentioned, you would basically have to figure out that number and incorporate it into the design, or rebalance the game so the piece costs make sense with the unit advantage idea.
I feel like that interaction is pretty intentional, at least the Phoenix LifeStone part. Gemini's value was probably pulled out of LifeStone range for that reason, as you could do it with Gemini too. But there's a devbot army that uses 4 Phoenix+++'s and spams LifeStone+++.
Basically, currently I think LifeStone is really bad design right now, but the idea of reviving (which is really broad) can be quite good.
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