Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[Seravy]

Also it would be good to see which map squares the node covers even before it has been melded.

As far as I remember, showing neutral node auras is already included for CoM II, if not, it'll be easy to add later.

The other ideas are interesting but I'd like to hear more opinions.

The current system is somewhat exploitable (if you have Astrologer and can get the AI to attack you in the node, they'll get some spells countered) but I'm not sure if the changes would make it more or less exploitable.

On one side if the AI does get the spells through 100% of the time, that's great, but if the consequence is they run out of spells on turn 2-3 of the battle, not so much.

Units regenerating in the node might be interesting but sounds overkill as they also have the stat bonus. The AI wouldn't be smart enough to use creatures of the proper realm to garrison their nodes either.

Overall I'm happy with the existing system - low and medium tier spells might or might not work, high tier spells usually do work (some always), so I most definitely need to hear more in-depth opinions about this first before making changes.

[MrBiscuits]

Also it would be good to see which map squares the node covers even before it has been melded.

As far as I remember, showing neutral node auras is already included for CoM II, if not, it'll be easy to add later.

The other ideas are interesting but I'd like to hear more opinions.

The current system is somewhat exploitable (if you have Astrologer and can get the AI to attack you in the node, they'll get some spells countered) but I'm not sure if the changes would make it more or less exploitable.

On one side if the AI does get the spells through 100% of the time, that's great, but if the consequence is they run out of spells on turn 2-3 of the battle, not so much.

Units regenerating in the node might be interesting but sounds overkill as they also have the stat bonus. The AI wouldn't be smart enough to use creatures of the proper realm to garrison their nodes either.

Overall I'm happy with the existing system - low and medium tier spells might or might not work, high tier spells usually do work (some always), so I most definitely need to hear more in-depth opinions about this first before making changes.

I find the current system where spells randomly get dispelled very annoying and unfun. 

The player would also run out of spells after a few turns too in this new system unless they had ones the relevant realm. AI could prioritise that realm higher if they have some spells they could use, just as the player does.

I'm not fully convinced about the regeneration idea, but I just noticed that it was inconsistent as ones that live in there get regeneration. Actually it's not full regeneration, it's getting back to full health if they weren't killed, but dead units remain dead unlike normal regeneration.

Could realms be added to towers too? Then you could have life and death towers as well as the other realms.

[Seravy]

One more idea "group" :

Windwalking allows units to participate in battles during sea combat, but they are just thrown into water and cannot move at all. That's not elegant and makes little sense.

Possible solutions :
1. Sea combat terrain includes some random islands which are basically land tiles so they are obstacles for boats. If any walking unit is forced into a naval battle, they start the combat on those islands instead of the normal starting location.
2. Wind Walking enables the exact same effect as Floating Island - a cloud area where walking units can move and ships cannot. (this would look weird coming from an Air Ship but it's suitable for a Djinn or other magical unit)
3. Wind Walking grants flight in combat similarly to Flying Fortress. Potentially overpowered? It might be worth considering though, as Wind Walking is not very different from the much lower tier "flying ship" strategy and that makes it feel kinda useless unless you have a high speed hero with lots of movement items. Obviously if this change is selected, we'll need to move the wind walking hero up to a hier tier. Probably will also need to change Air Ships to count as transports instead of a windwalker as well.

[Soviet elf]

I want to write bigger post on main topic, but for now just on last proposals.

Wind walking. My preference: 2, like floating island, but wind walking hero should be a champion anyway and air ships should be flying transports. I don't like "random islands in every ocean and sea battle" proposal and think it's unrealistic and silly. I agree that non-hero WW isn't different from flying ship and not interesting as a spell, but free flight in combat for everybody sounds too much.
Again, why Jaer (wind walker) isn't a champion? One of the best heroes in the game, more useful than most champions. Getting him early from a lair is a huge luck, difference between him and random garbage hero is insane. If you play with save/loading, one of the best moments for S/L in the whole game is to get good heroes like him from a lair or summon hero.

"End of month report show dispelled global enchantments!" - good proposal. "Require Detect Magic to be cast for this effect?" - you can notice changes in globals without DM just by checking them every turn, so it should not require DM.
Pandora box summons near hero - yes. Doom gaze - keep, no reason to buff chaos spawn in melee even more. Better familiar for sorcery - ok, may be, but do you have a proposal? No, not Cirno, please. Aura for CC, horde - I prefer no change. Retire hero, neutrals target one player, islands - I don't like it.

City maintenance like in Civ4 - Civ4 not just has city upkeep, it has almost no buildings with flat +gold/science/food/production effects, almost everything is +% boost. Some Civ4 mods that add many buildings with flat +X promote heavy ICS (city spam as close as possible) even with city upkeep. But upkeep + no flat boosts from buildings doesn't prevent expansion, Seravy has wrong impresson of Civ4, in Civ4 you absolutely want more cities with more population that works more land, you want to grab more productive land, but you don't want more cities just for sake of city buildings, you don't want ICS and you don't want tiny tundra/Arctic/Sahara cities.
Personally I really like Civ4 system and also consider it more realistic, and if I made a TBS game (MoM- or Civ-like) I would use "buildings should be +% or +per pop or +per worked land/improvement and almost never flat +X" principle. But Seravy doesn't like it and isn't interested in it.

[Seravy]

Flat +x effects are necessary to have a playable early game.

I played civ4 with something called "realism" mod. Maybe that broke the game economy too much.
Nonetheless, the first 2-3 hours of the game was no different than old Master of Magic - my cities produced nothing and I couldn't really do anything. Building a single worker was 10, a settler like 50 turns. The city had like 20 tiles in its area but only 3-4 people to work on the tiles, so 80% of the area was left unused. Cities didn't grow while building a settler which was absolutely ridiculous considering it took 50 turns to build one. I only managed to get up to 5 cities because I triggered a random event "you found 2 settlers" from a..whatever the game had instead of monster lairs. That was 100 turns of production from my capital handed over for free.

Flat +x bonuses allow you to actually participate in the game for the first 50 turns instead of just hitting next turn doing nothing.
Considering there are spells in MoM and they cost mana to cast, it's even more important to have them. Without the Magic Market, the game was pretty much "can I find an easy node early? If yes, win, otherwise, lose". You CAN find external sources of income, but they are random and unreliable. If cities can't augment that with reliable income in the early turns, the game is just pure luck. (very much like the 2 free settlers I found, something that literally made me 3 times as powerful as any other player and pretty much won the game instantly, if I cared to continue playing. Yes, I did look at the charts so that's a fact.)

Of course, flat +X does make city spam more effective, but it's not really the problem. Sooner or later the cities will be profitable either way, so you'll want more of them. If we push that to "later" then building cities will be less beneficial, but the AI still has to (otherwise they lose by default since no cities = no stuff in the mid and late game), which means the player can simply take them from the AI and nothing really changes except building your own cities becoming less viable.

In fact, I think we should consider city spam a feature. If there are no enemy cities, how am I supposed to play the game? I mean, this is a game where wizards fight each other for world domination. That's what the game is really about at its core and if we want that part of the game to exist from the beginning then the AI has to spam cities.

(I don't think player city spam was ever an issue. You need to build a million units if you want to be able to actually hold that much territory without losing most of it to monsters or invading enemy players.)

Better familiar for sorcery - ok, may be, but do you have a proposal? No, not Cirno, please

I don't but obviously it can't be anime stuff, that's only for the optional addon. Fairies are nature magic in this game anyway.
An eagle maybe? A turtle? At the very least it should be an animal that lives in air or sea.
What does scarabs have to do with water/air magic?
It's just an idea though, I don't think I can make art like that myself.

[MrBiscuits]

One thing with civ 4 is that buildings don't cost any maintenance, so maintenance for the city itself isn't so bad. It just means that there can be a problem with early over expansion.

The issue with low early production in MoM is that it doesn't give you any base production from the land, instead giving a % increase for certain terrain, which means that there is nothing to increase with a % modifier until the city has grown. 
If there were base terrain production instead of % increase eg. +0.25 for desert/grassland, +0.5 for forest/hills and +1 for mountains ithen you could have % production modifiers for sawmill, but otherwise it wouldn't work.

It's the same problem with gold (apart from minerals in some cities), in that there is no base gold to modify until your tax base has grown. 

I've often wondered why iron and coal only increase unit production and not everything you build.

[Soviet elf]

I really don't want to go too deep into unproductive debate about Civ4. Especially considering Seravy level in the game.
I'm not a fan of Realism Invictus mod, some people praise it, but I don't like it at all and prefer Civ4BtS. I don't consider it especially realistic and RI is slower than regular Civ4 (though Seravy probably wouldn't like regular Civ4 either). Almost every good player plays Civ4 with huts off (thing where you got your free settlers). ICS is not about "more cities", it's a strategy of placing cities as close as possible in the same space, at min distance. For example, in CoM city - 3 tiles - city - 3 tiles - city is ICS, in Civ4 it would be 2 tiles, 1 tile in SMAC. Against other players ICS is not harder to defend, it's easier.
....................
Back to CoM.

- "Water" - water elemental in sorcery is your addition, original descriptions in the game say that Nature is a sphere of "earth and water", while Sorcery focuses on "air and illusion". Yes, eagle sounds better than a blue bug, unless it's an ugly or badly drawn eagle.
- "Without the Magic Market... If yes, win, otherwise, lose" - poor gnolls still don't have MM (in addition to not having any ranged units, even though gnoll bowmen existed in MoM). Is there a reason to play gnolls and not barbarians if you want a rush race? Barbarians work even on Myrror (or are they even better on Myrror because you want to build cities of other races, and average Myrran race has better economy). ..If you wanted to improve mana/power in the early game without MMs, you could increase power from fortress.

To your page 1 proposals.
30. Outposts? My suggestion: remove outpost system completely. When settler founds a city, you immediately get 1 pop city like in Civ games, MoO2 etc. This will also accelerate early game - you like that, right? What's even the point of outposts instead of instant pop 1 city? Races that have especially slow outpost growth may get (even) more expensive settlers, it you want to slow them.
1. AG/FS spell - do you really need a spell? Just make it a "tech" (or two techs, separate for AG and FS) like in Civ games, appears in spellbook, but unlocks buildings after research, no need to cast a spell. I don't see a point of adding one time spell.
4. Good idea, razing cities is too easy. Time should depend on city size. During razing all citizens should be rebels and don't pay any taxes.
9. Desert movement - agree, deserts should be harder to move.
11. AT & skill - my preference is for ATs to raise only global skill and no new building for combat skill.
18. Divine Order. May be, DO should apply only twice - once from other players DO (doesn't matter how many players have it, 1 or 10) and once from own DO (so casting your own is always relevant). With or without changing DO rarity. But exaltation or prosperity can be moved to UC tier for DO, of course.
19. Lvl up MP - pointless for magicians. What does 22-23 mp give them? They can cast flight or cast weakness 3 times instead of 2, no effect on important spells like fire bolt, web, confusion, black sleep, life drain etc. Pointless. Apprentices are different story, even +1mp unlocks 15mp spells like healing, fire ball, black sleep, boars. Giving them even +1 mp at veteran lvl means barracks+warlord can produce 15 mp apprentices.
20. Enchanted roads. I agree that roads shouldn't be enchanted just for being on Myrror. But removed competely from the game? May be, bring enchant roads spell back in the game? Without Myrran roads being enchanted by default, it's not useless on Myrror. I prefer it being nature spell (instead of construct catapult?), because I associate roads with earth sphere and nature transform lands, but sorcery is ok too.
21. Racial buildings - do you have good ideas that improve balance or gameplay? I don't mind racial buildings in theory, but I don't like these examples at all.
21.5. "+1 EP for each unit per turn" - extra XP per turn should be war college feature (at least, up to 80). After all, it can instantly, in one turn train completely new unit to 80 xp, why already existing units don't benefit from WC at all? And it's quite expensive building. In MoO 2 space academies not only make new ships start 1 level higher, but provide XP for existing ships in the system. So, something like "+3-5 XP for all units (incl heroes) in the city until 80 XP" for WC.
27. Spell blast to rare? I don't mind. Actually I prefer very annoying spells to be higher level, and sorcery already has many meta spells useful only against other wizards on UC level (aura, counter, wave). Good idea.
28. AI offensive Transmute. My suggestion: player should be able to cast transmute only at tiles in vicinity of his cities. If you need excuse for this, imagine how hard for a wizard to change whole gigantic deposits of metal, not surprising if he can cast it only in areas he can personally visit. (One may even wonder why wizard can change iron deposit into mirthril deposit, but can't change already existing iron weapons and armor into mithril ones..)

[Seravy]

"Water" - water elemental in sorcery is your addition, original descriptions in the game say that Nature is a sphere of "earth and water", while Sorcery focuses on "air and illusion". Yes, eagle sounds better than a blue bug, unless it's an ugly or badly drawn eagle.

I guess "sea travel" would have been more appropriate term to use than water element, but Sorcery did have the only spell in the game that affects boats, and the only realm that summoned a water walking creature (Nagas).

- "Without the Magic Market... If yes, win, otherwise, lose" - poor gnolls still don't have MM (in addition to not having any ranged units, even though gnoll bowmen existed in MoM). Is there a reason to play gnolls and not barbarians if you want a rush race? Barbarians work even on Myrror (or are they even better on Myrror because you want to build cities of other races, and average Myrran race has better economy). ..If you wanted to improve mana/power in the early game without MMs, you could increase power from fortress.

Gnolls are an entire tier faster than Barbarians.
Wolf Riders only cost a Stables and move 5 with pathfinding while being as good as a fighter's guild unit. Barbarian units require a fighter's guild tier building or higher and only move 3. (yes, there is a Barbarian Cavalry but it cannot be compared to a wolf rider.)
Gnolls also offer a powerful highest tier unit - Jackal Riders - while Barbarians have no units in that tier at all.

There are other differences as well, I think barbarians have no Sage's Guild and Cathedral while Gnolls do (but don't get the magic market instead).
Oh and Barbarians don't get Amplifying Tower either which can matter if you transition your rush into a late game strategy instead of aiming to win the game before a late game can happen.

30. Outposts? My suggestion: remove outpost system completely.

I'll add this to my list of ideas to consider later. That might be falling on the other side of the horse though, accelerating early game way too much. We might not have base production like Civ Games from terrain but we do have base production from the city itself - Smithy is free, housing can give you 2-4 free citizens in a small amount of turns, and sawmill is buyable for another +6, so in just a short 10-12 turns you can have a base production 14-16 for a mere ~150 gold investment.

Speaking of early game, one thing I keep thinking about is, I feel the balance has been pushed a bit too far towards magic in the early turns. Maybe lower starting casting skill and book based power income could fix that and make the early tier units like swordmsmen and cavalry play a slightly larger role. Not much, thanks to the Magic Market and how the skill formula works -only takes 300 SP to raise it from 10 to 20 skill - but just enough that the game doesn't automatically start with "summon 9 <insert creature here>" and send them at the enemy. The new building to add combat casting skill can help there, too. Of course doing the summoning thing will still be the best beyond the first 15-30 turns but maybe before then other units can get a bit more role. What I'm mostly worried about in this is it not being AI friendly - the AI basically guarantees to not lose automatically to the first player attack by having a large enough summoned army to be a threat. It might be possible to overcome that by simply telling the AI "buy the magic buildings before anything else in the fortress city" so that it can get back to the older starting numbers quickly, but then we're back to square one, the AI having so many summoned units that normal armies can't do much against it. The other problem with it is the "I don't have enough skill to use my common spells I started with" side effect which isn't fun at all. So maybe a smaller reduction (instead of 2x books, get 1.5x books skill) could work better?

1. AG/FS spell - do you really need a spell? Just make it a "tech" (or two techs, separate for AG and FS) like in Civ games, appears in spellbook, but unlocks buildings after research, no need to cast a spell. I don't see a point of adding one time spell.

Yeah but techs aren't a thing in the game. Those are not magic so they're not cool. It feels better to cast a spell (even if a passive ability would be more powerful).

During razing all citizens should be rebels and don't pay any taxes.

Good idea. I would prefer cities being razed to simply produce nothing though because there is a lot of courses for income but based on citizens (but the visual effect can show all rebels).

19. Lvl up MP - pointless for magicians. What does 22-23 mp give them? They can cast flight or cast weakness 3 times instead of 2, no effect on important spells like fire bolt, web, confusion, black sleep, life drain etc. Pointless. Apprentices are different story, even +1mp unlocks 15mp spells like healing, fire ball, black sleep, boars. Giving them even +1 mp at veteran lvl means barracks+warlord can produce 15 mp apprentices.

It can be +2 for veterans and +5 for elites maybe? Then magicians can cast 25 mp spells like Crack's Call, and...was there any other? Ice Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Dispelling Wave, Flight, Stasis, Mystic Surge.
It also unlocks 40 MP spells with Focus Magic. I don't see anything overly problematic there considering the cost of FM.

It's probably best if ultra-elite doesn't get extra MP beyond elite but maybe champion level could.

May be, bring enchant roads spell back in the game? Without Myrran roads being enchanted by default, it's not useless on Myrror. I prefer it being nature spell (instead of construct catapult?), because I associate roads with earth sphere and nature transform lands, but sorcery is ok too.

New spells will be an option but do we really want an overland spell that doubles the movement speed of all our armies during an invasion? If yes, it needs to be at least rare if not very rare and then we already have wind walking which is better and would be cumulative with enchant road so we'd be back to the "and I move my hero stack 16 tiles this turn" brokenness.
Nature already has a travel spell, no, two : Earth Gate, the current best, and Land Linking to grant pathfinding.
Sorcery has flying warships to travel which move 4. If Enchant Road came back, those would move 8.

21. Racial buildings - do you have good ideas that improve balance or gameplay? I don't mind racial buildings in theory, but I don't like these examples at all.

Nothing at all, that was an idea posted by someone.

[MrBiscuits]

In some 4X games you only get the road bonus in your own or neutral territory, maybe this could be a compromise to stop roads helping invasions without slowing the game down too much.
Then we could have the 0.5 movement cost for roads on both planes.

Could we have different map sizes as well as land mass %? So you could have a small map with lots of land or a huge map with islands.

Also could we have the option of choosing how many opponents on your starting plane and the other plane? Then you can play smaller maps without too many opponents crowding things too much.

[Seravy]

In some 4X games you only get the road bonus in your own or neutral territory, maybe this could be a compromise to stop roads helping invasions without slowing the game down too much.
Then we could have the 0.5 movement cost for roads on both planes.

I don't like the idea, it's definitely not meant for games where territory can overlap between players. Besides, if I conquered the AI's city, it's my territory so I can use the roads to conquer the next one. Solves nothing. It can only work in games where territory ownership doesn't change instantly. (to begin with, it doesn't even exist in MoM beyond the Wizard's Pact rule.)

Could we have different map sizes as well as land mass %? So you could have a small map with lots of land or a huge map with islands.

Different map sizes was the first thing I added.

Different land % wrecks game balance by shortening travel times and removing the relevance of sea travel mechanics, and has no benefit.

Different landmass distribution settings were added instead so while it's always X land tiles on a specific map, it can be either a lot of small islands or fewer, larger continents.

Also could we have the option of choosing how many opponents on your starting plane and the other plane? Then you can play smaller maps without too many opponents crowding things too much.

There are two optional game modifier settings planned, one for "equal wizards on each plane" and one for "other plane is empty".
I don't plan to add a button for "no one starts on my plane so I win". That's what Myrran does if you select Normal or Easy difficulty, and that's exactly the place this feature belongs.
However, "equal on both planes" should come close enough, as it removes the crowded from your starting plane.
Or, maybe the result you get by selecting only 1-2 enemy players but Maximal land size could be closer to what you want. Map size is scaled by player count so 12 players get basically 6x as much land as 2 players.