Game mechanics

[Seravy]

Are the rewards from lairs, nodes, etc reduced if you whittle away the defenders little by little each turn?

No, they are set when the map is generated and do not change during the game at all.

[Tlaloc]

Does excess research on a spell carry over to the next spell you research?

[Tlaloc]

Also, I noticed Raiders emerging from a neutral city, but I have the Revolting Raiders turned off in the Game settings. Is this a bug or a feature?

[GermanJoey]

Does excess research on a spell carry over to the next spell you research?

Nope.

Also, I noticed Raiders emerging from a neutral city, but I have the Revolting Raiders turned off in the Game settings. Is this a bug or a feature?

I believe "Revolting Raiders" simply makes raiders come way more often... it's like Raging Barbarians in Civ4, I guess.

[Seravy]

Does excess research on a spell carry over to the next spell you research?

Nope.

Also, I noticed Raiders emerging from a neutral city, but I have the Revolting Raiders turned off in the Game settings. Is this a bug or a feature?

I believe "Revolting Raiders" simply makes raiders come way more often... it's like Raging Barbarians in Civ4, I guess.

Correct. It also make the raider stack bigger in size.

[Tlaloc]

Would it be possible for excess research to carry over to the next spell, as with city production?

[Seravy]

Would it be possible for excess research to carry over to the next spell, as with city production?

No, I would have done it if I could.

[Catwalk]

Hey Seravy.
As I wrote in my PM to you, I'm very excited about this mod and the fact that the forum is still going strong. I haven't gotten around to installing the mod (or even MoM) yet, but that's not going to stop me from jumping right into discussions about balance  
I may come across as blunt with some of the below. I think most of this is awesome, so just assume that I like everything I don't mention  And these are just the thoughts of another random player, treat them as such.

Spellbooks
- Good that cost reductions are lowered, but I feel they're too low now. I suggest upping the cost reduction to x3 and the research bonus to x10. These bonuses are now all you get from going past 4 books, so they should matter. As is, I think the balance is too heavily against specialization.
- I really like what you've done with spell availability, thumbs up. Personally I'd remove the 1 random higher level spell, as I'm not a fan of chance. EDIT: I may have spoken too soon, is the higher level spell random or can you choose it? If so, thumbs up on that too.
- I like 1.5 power per book from the fortress, but how about going up to 2?
- Have I understood it correctly that you get no starting spells anymore? I think you should get a few from having more than 4 books. Something like this:
5 books = 1 common
6 books = 2 common
7 books = 3 common
8 books = 4 common
9 books = 5 common
10 books = 5 common + 1 uncommon
This is way less powerful than the old 11 books strategy, but viable. Again, you get no additional spell access past 4 books so the extra books need to be worth something.

Terrain
- Production bonuses were always largely irrelevant in favour of food. Upping mountains helps, but I feel production is still way too weak. It's also boring that forests and hills are identical. How about bumping forests to 1 food and 3%, hills to 1/2 food and 6% and mountains to 15%? Right now high pop areas are still your best bet for military production, with these changes you can actually start specializing your cities a bit. The real problem though, is that the terrain bonuses are additive. If you could make them multiplicative it'd be awesome, but I recall kyrub saying that was complicated.

Economy
- I don't like being able to buy everything easily in new cities. I understand your change to mean that you can instantly buy things to completion at 2x required production. Developing new cities should not be a simple matter of dumping money into it. If you're trying to do away with the spearman purchase trick I understand where you're coming from, but a better way to solve that (if possible) is to restrict the player from changing production after buying something to completion.  I would like to toss out the following numbers for consideration:
Less than 25% production = 6 gold
Less than 50% production = 4 gold
Above 50% production = 2 gold

If possible, this is done in steps the way Master of Orion 2 does it. Meaning that the first 25% cost you 6 gold, the next 25% cost you 4 gold and the remaining 50% cost you 2 gold. Otherwise the numbers should be 5, 3 and 2 respectively.

Wizard generation
- I don't like all wizards being generated randomly. I know I'll cringe when I see Ariel as a Death/Chaos Warlord. Was this done out of necessity or choice? I rather liked the semi-random approach in 1.31. I know it was possible in 1.31 to wipe the entire wizard and start fresh, never cared for that part
- Good job on removing the Artificer/Runemaster combo, but Artificer feels too weak without it. How about bumping it to -75% and also lowering mana from item destruction by 50% (for Artificers only if possible, otherwise for everyone)? That way it's an awesome pick for creating Artifacts, but you can no longer use it as an economic combo. Also make it require 6 books in the same colour, so you can't easily shop around among all your favourite abilities.
- Does anyone like Guardian? A purely defensive pick (while it may be useful) feels so boring. How about making a different retort and replacing the fortress lightning bolt with this effect? I really like making fortress combat more difficult, but it feels out of place that any wizard can cast lightning bolts. Plus I don't like the randomness of it, that's a chaos effect.

[zitro1987]

I do think the book system works quite well, and the starting spells is the same as the original game. While I'd prefer a special bonus that starts after 8 books of any realm (+2 power for 9th book, +3 power for 10th, +4 power for 11th, 12th) to lessen frequency of retort-heavy wizards

I like terrain exactly as it is, and the production bonus of mountains is very strong thanks to the 'sawmill' multiplier mechanic. You'd have to play a few games to really notice

I like the buying incentive the way the mod has it, it takes away some incentive from changing gold to mana, especially for non-alchemists

Artificer is slightly below average unless strategically used by a good gamer with a good plan. It probably should stay the way it is. Guardian is not boring given the much more aggressive dynamic of 'Caster' mod.

[Nelphine]

The spellbook reductions are huge. This game sees things cast far far more often than other variants - there is no need to increase it.

You still get to choose 1 common spell per spell book after the first in a given realm (so 0-9).

Spells have been hugely rebalanced. It is reasonably possible to make strategies out of anything you get - and since you can't just pick, you are forced into an adaptable strategy based on what you do get. You do not want to give use the choice of what spells will show in your soellbook. Ensuring you get the spells you really want IS why you choose more spellbooks, and it is huge.

Max population currently is the only thing that matters (see ongoing outpost discussion in the main thread). Buy after that production is far more important than food. No need to alter food vs production bonuses.

Buying things. Um. I'll wait for seravy to weigh in. I'm on the fence.

Wizard random generation is done BEFORE portrait choice. Then the game chooses the portrait closest to what was chosen. You can get strange combinations but its very rare. Seravy did a spectacular job with this.

There's been tons of discussions on artificer. I recommend looking them up before going further. You may still have valid arguments but its not a build I ever cared about.

I think Guardian is silly too, but Seravy really likes it. Its a VERY good pick for AI, so it really does have its place.