CHAOS Realm

[Nelphine]

Then I don't see how the spell is balanced for its cost. It will ALWAYS be the right thing to spend ypur mana on to have the best chance of winning. It doesn't cost a lot of mana, you get a massive increase to base stats (easily worth 30 mana on its own). Then you get random buffs on top of that. There's 35 buffs I think you said. The average cost of those buffs if cast on their own is.. 20 mana probably? Might be 15. Call it 15. Let's say there's a 10% chance of getting each buff (what is the chance?) then you're getting 35 1.5 mana buffs. Now it might not be a helpful buff in that case, so let's say its 66% chance of being useful. Then you're getting 35 1 mana buffs.

That should cost 65 mana.

But you do lose 2 resistance, that probably reduces it to... 62 mana. And you have 2 other minor drawbacks - no healing, and reduced health after combat ends. That reduces it to..
55 mana? And you have a 1/35 *10% chance of becoming undead. Reduce it another 2 mama.

Final cost should be between 50 and 55 mana, assuming a 10% chance per buff.

Even if its a 5% chance per buff, it should still cost ~35 mana.

[Seravy]

It's a random effect with a drawback. People hate that sort of thing. It has to be at least this good to be playable and you're still risking to not get a useful effect and waste your MP. (3 movement isn't relevant on every unit, and 2 shields is not worth 25 MP. Unless the enemy is playing hide and seek, Lightning Bolt is usually a better choice.)
Oh and even if everything works out on your favor, you still are very likely to lose the unit as it cannot be healed and charges into the enemy ranks alone, ahead of the others. You won't always roll Iron Skin and Invulnerability together, more like 5% of the time. If the unit survives, it might still be undead, or get sniped while it's down on 1 hp...

(we might need revisions if actual testing shows it's too powerful but this isn't the sort of spell where numbers tell anything. )

[Nelphine]

Why would it charge in alone? If it has 2 of the rare buffs (haste, iron skin, Lionheart, etc) why would it matter?

And yes numbers still mean something. I've already assumed a full 1/3 of all the buffs will do nothing. I've lowballed the value of the buffs. And the base affect also acts as the old eldritch weapon, which in practice is about as good as holy weapon (worse against low targets, better against hard targets)

Sure it won't make an unwinnable fight winnable (level 0 halberdiers against a doom lord), but, go play 100 battles where its remotely balanced. Play each battle twice, once with a single lightning bolt and once with mystic surge. The mystic surge (based on the 15 tests I've dine, which admittedly isn't enough) is always the better choice, even if it doesn't always auto win the battle.

[Nelphine]

Trying hard chaos again. Going heavily for end game spells - conjuror, specialist, sagemaster, omniscient, 8 chaos.

Started with barbarians - a mistake. Without warlord and alchemy and common life, the cavalry barely took out some neutral cities. Without wraithform, warships are useless.

But I'm up to summoning chimera, with blazing march to support them, in.. 1406? So I've still got the ability to wreck things. And spamming bezerkers is keeping my army strength above the AI I've met so far (it is only hard), which is keeping diplomacy under control.

I'm also spamming raise volcano in the hopes of long term power.

Here's hoping that very rares will play an important role later on.

[Nelphine]

Found the great drake spell in a tower. My god they're bad. Two rares (gorgons, wraiths, etc) kill them, and that's with the great drake getting the attack every time. And the drake has blazing march. And a soul linker. They can't do anything against djinn, or any other very rare (except sky drakes). They can't fight anything with massed range (sprites killed one).

Ugh. Back to veteran bezerkers. At least they do some damage before dying. Researching doomsday. Hopefully that will do something.

[GermanJoey]

Both Great Drakes and Hydras are pretty chumpy, IMHO. Efreets and Doom Bats aren't bad though, although situational. Doom bats really want Channeler for maximal cheesing.

I don't remember what the renamed Chaos VRs are... is Doomsday the new name for Call Chaos? Now that's one hell of a spell. Call the Void is another good one.

[Seravy]

Call Chaos is Apocalypse.

Any idea how to improve Great Drakes? (tho with Warp Reality supporting them they are almost impossible to kill already.)

[Nelphine]

That may be the problem. Very rares can't really be relied on for synergy, not the way commons can. They really need to be almost entirely stand alone, or provide MASSIVE synergy. My main problem is the breath doesn't kill things, so things get to fight back, and their defense is weak. I wish I had more experience with very rares in general. My off the cuff gut feeling is to increase every very rare armor by 4 or 5. (Not just chaos, every one, except djinn due to teleport plus ranged.) But I have way too little experience to actually think that's a good idea.

At the same time, it means strategic combat waltzing over very rares isn't so bad.


I think my main problem is that city troops with common buffs are generally better than summons. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

For me, there's 4 tiers of summons, and 5 tiers of city troops. (Spearmen, smithy, fighters guild, armorer's guild, magicians - any odd ones like cavalry or bowmen get lumped into the nearest of these categories).

And in my head I have kind of a ranking, of average costs per tier. Production is easier to come by than overland casting skill, so city troops are devalued compared to summons. Then based on those devalued costs, we see how effective they should be.

So, 1000 cost for very rare, compared to 500 for rare compared to 150 for uncommon compared to 60 for common.
Compared to
8 for spearmen vs 24 for smithy vs 72 for fighters guild vs 144 for armorer's guild vs ... 120 for magicians? I don't even remember standard magician price, so I could have their cost wrong.

So looking at this by cost, the average very rare should be able to take 8 magicians, or 7 armorer's guild troops.

A demon lord can do that reliably. I think that's the only one. (And a demon lord is expensive - it should be able to take 9 armorer's guild troops.)

Similarly, the average very rare should take 2 rares, or 7 uncommons.


Right now, cost wise, I think the most effective units are fighters guild, with magicians a close second and common summons a close third. Nothing else really comes close.

[Nelphine]

I don't have a good way to compare combat spell support. Creatures can be expected to face multiple battles, but what is average? I THINK considering buff costs, the average buff is about 3 times as expensive outside of battle? Might be 4. So average life span is 4 battles, so combat spells are devalued by a factor of 4. So a very rare combat spell (60 combat cost) should be worth 240 of troops. So a very rare combat spell should kill 2 magicians. Or 3 fighters guild, or 1.5 armorer's guild or uncommon summon, by itself to be cost effective.

These numbers are a little wonky of course, since I'm really not sure of combat cist devalue factor.

So a great drake with warp reality could reasonably take 3 rare summons, or 8 or 9 armorer's guild troops, and that would be warranted based on costs.

[Nelphine]

Also note, magicians get a huge extra factor. Everything has a prerequisite cost: the building or research required to use it. Of these, magicians hands down win. They are the only unit whose prerequisite can actually pay for itself. If you think the average prerequisite cost... Huh. There is no average. A common spell or smithy might be x2, but a very rare is x8. Very rares need to overcome a huge prereq. Meaning they should probably take an extra armorer's guild unit out on average just to combat that prereq difference.


No wonder I base my play around city troops with buffs. They're ridiculously more cost efficient. Which also explains why I think AI who research very rare summons simply aren't a threat.