Nobody understands Resoln. That's their thing: being enigmatic and all that.

Anyway, Binding is excellent to gain an early-game advantage. Their other traits are...flavorful.

Pariden has (one of) the best trait in the game, Enchanters. But don't tell anyone. Before you know it, someone will cry 'nerf'.

Does anyone use the spiders? 

Dear Elana, Resoln are great fun to play. 

My advice for a good experience: go summon at start up to skeleton horde / horrific wail, then just climb in dark / water (leveling both), then pick the -1 turn on spell cast, after either go for more damage on spells, or continue with summons.

Convert any non water shard to a death one. Blind + slow + curse + graveseal + wither + beguille (from the black widows or w/e they named the first spiders you can train) spread with infection = easy battles vs anything non magic immune (until later on when you can do other stuff).

The free elementals as well as summons are enough for early game to help you level heroes / explore and clear areas around settling locations (well mind you not deadly / epic enemies).

The dark magic + spiders is so powerful atm in game because there is no way to remove harmful effects. So your army will be blinded (-25% accuracy and dodge with new patch), slowed (scales with number of water shards), have no armor from curse, take critical damage from graveseal, have reduced melee and ranged attacks (scales very well against large groups of enemies since each unit has it's atk decreased by 2+1xdeath power, for example with 4 shards you decrease it by 5, so a group of 6 archers with 20 atk each will lose 30 total atk) and have a 50% chance on melee attack to hit a friendly nearby unit. Add the native high dodge units of wraiths, and you pretty much are in full control of battlefield.

Phazon, that's a different Pariden trait.

The 'decalon' costs 2 picks, so I don't feel that one's overpowered.

Enchanters should cost 2 points indeed

Oh, and dirge of ceresa and graveseal are two of the best spells in the game. 

I read in another thread that someone thought that Wither is a weak spell.  Wither is not a weak spell with Resoln.  With Resoln you can covert all your shards, and yes I mean all of them, to Death Magic.  Then the Wither spell is reducing opponents attack by 18 or so.  In other words, the opponents have 0 attack.  Those are instant wins.  You can definitely win with Resoln.  That's just one of many strategies with them.

Oh and about those spiders... you only need the cheapest spider (20 mana).  Don't be fooled into paying the high mana cost of those other spiders.  The spiders are for crowd control and controlling ranged units so you only need 2 of the cheapest ones.  That's it!

I've noticed that they get units from shards.  I haven't noticed those units actually doing anything in battle other than dying.

Young Grave Elementals do basically no damage when they hit something, Young Mirror Elementals I've never seen attack because every time I've had one with my army, it's been hit and killed on its very first turn of combat.  I haven't seen any other types of elementals come from shards because this game, all I have near me is water and death shards. 

What research do I need for Cyndrum demons?  I've looked through the whole research page, and can't find any reference to them.

you don't need research for those. they are the demons that spawn on death shards. each shard type has one demon type associated with it. the power of the demon corresponds to the level of the shard improvement (higher tier shrine upgrades spawn higher tier versions of the demons)

I remember Sean modded the Mirror Elementals to have massive amounts of HP in order to make them useful at their intended roles.  Still no armor, but when even the weak one has ~60 hp, they don't need armor so much.  Besides, every point in damage they don't take is one less point of damage their attacker takes.

For the fire demons, does their tactical ability permanently raise their attack?  Or is it only for the duration of the battle?  If it's the latter, the cost should probably be lowered, or have its bonus improved to +3.

It's only free if you couldn't have used the army space better somehow.

And unless it's the first turn of the game, you probably could.  Your fortress is going to pump out units at some point; might as well use the army space for something that isn't "one time negligible damage".

Also, is there any way to see how long until you get another elemental from a shard once a city has overtaken the shard?  I can't select the shard itself anymore, since I get the city instead.

Anyone notice that the change to shard levels nerfed Resoln demons?

They need a way to unlock the greater demons again.