Clone

School of Water Magic

Level 1

Bless

Cure

Dispel

Magic Arrow *

Protection from Water

Summon Boat

Level 2

Ice Bolt

Remove Obstacle

Scuttle Boat

Visions *

Weakness

Level 3

Forgetfulness

Frost Ring

Mirth

Teleport

Level 4

Clone

Prayer

Water Walk

Level 5

Summon Water Elemental

School of Air Magic

School of Earth Magic

School of Fire Magic

Clone
	School:	water magic
	Level:	4th
	Cost:	24
	Duration:	1 rnd/sp
Basic effect
Creates a duplicate of target, allied troop level 1-5. The duplicate can attack but is dispelled if it receives any damage.
Advanced effect
Same as Basic Effect, except the duplicate may be of a level 1-6 troop.
Expert effect
Same as Basic Effect, except the duplicate may be of a level 1-7 troop.
Probability of occurrence (%):
Castle    Rampart    Tower    (*) Inferno    Necropolis    Dungeon    Stronghold    Fortress    Conflux    Cove     Factory     * Without Library

Clone is a 4th level spell in the School of water magic. It creates an exact replica of the target creature stack, which has all of the original stacks features and special abilities. The clone will disappear immediately (no retaliation) when it recieves any damage.

Comments & debate

Clone is specially useful in the latter game, when you have large hordes of creatures at your disposal. The known fact is, that creatures do more damage than spells causes clone to do much more damage than implosion, which is the most powerfull spell in the game damage-wise.

Because clones do not withstand any damage, it is advisable to clone a creature stack that has the speed higher than the enemy creature stack next in turn. This is due the fact, that that the cloned creature will be next to act if it has the highest speed of all the remaining creatures.

Good target for clone are creatures with no enemy retaliation, for example nagas and vampires. When this kind of cloned stack attacks, it does not recieve counter attack and therefore does not recieve any damage.

Of course it might make sense to destroy cloned units as opponent first if they can be reached (requiring only one point of damage no matter the health total of the stack) as they could make quite some damage as long as they exist.

Force Field might prove useful to defend ranged cloned units, making them persist longer on the battlefield than melee units could be.

Clone might work better than the summon water elemental spell and its 3 other variants belonging to the the state of matter (solid, liquid, gas and plasma) schools which creates creatures that stay the entire encounter - especially in the late game when using Clone for a even a single attack might be better than Implosion as Clone scales with the number of original units it is used on.

There are no spells that would give a hero creatures that also stay past encounters and thus would make it possibly to exchange refreshable mana points with creatures instead of using gold and regrow timers although there is an encounter type called Griffin Conservatory that randomly results in angels addded to the troops without payment like in towns or creature hangouts on the map, and the Necromancy skill which adds skeletons to the own troops (which is one of the slowest units in the game and may slow down the army) - and then there's Diplomacy and random monsters on the map that might join.