Chaos-Sorcery

[Seravy]

Some name ideas for the Disrupt replacement spell (wall crusher to all, buff to noncorporeal and/or combat summoned units)

Impermanence
Temporal Aperture
Temporal Rift
Breakthrough
Indefinite Limits
Blurred Boundaries

[Suppanut]

Disrupt has its unique niche uses, such as opening a back door in city walls for defenders. Are there people around who don't normally use walls? ;p  If it gets removed, I would prefer the spell to only be disabled in Spells.ini so that it can be easily reactivated in a Mod.

An additional effect of Disrupt could be to remove the type of rocky terrain that units cannot normally enter... if the AI could learn to use it, perhaps to deal irrecoverable or unavoidable bump damage to nearby units . That would be an upgrade to situational area damage already.

IMO Disrupt's effect would be better served by granting all your units wall crusher. That way you could use it more reliably in defensive scenarios too.

If defending side have it would pretty much guerenter destroy their own wall during attack or defend, which is undesirable.

Wait, Wall Crusher can destroy the owner's walls? Was it always like that or is it a bug? Does it also happen when attacking from the inside to the outside, or only if the defending player walks out, allows the enemy in, and attacks from the outside?

I could not fully recall this, I get resemblance that defender side unit with wall crusher perform melee attack on enemy unit outside the wall or hit enemy unit on sit on your own wall with range attack would also break the wall. But one that I could guerentee that it break their own wall is when wall crusher unit accidentally walk out of the wall area directly (not through gate, this could happen so often due to pathfinding issue), wall of that section destroy even if unit that walking out own that city.

[Suppanut]

Some name ideas for the Disrupt replacement spell (wall crusher to all, buff to noncorporeal and/or combat summoned units)

Impermanence
Temporal Aperture
Temporal Rift
Breakthrough
Indefinite Limits
Blurred Boundaries

how about Penetrate?

[Desertfox]

Some name ideas for the Disrupt replacement spell (wall crusher to all, buff to noncorporeal and/or combat summoned units)

Impermanence
Temporal Aperture
Temporal Rift
Breakthrough
Indefinite Limits
Blurred Boundaries

Demolish would be the best because that's a synonym for destruction used exclusively for buildings, which is important in a game with multiple kinds of violence. If you want additional effects beyond wall breaking, perhaps Smash.

The words with temporal in them would fit better for a higher-level, or sorcery spell.

[Anskiy]

If defending side have it would pretty much guerenter destroy their own wall during attack or defend, which is undesirable.

Well, that's why wall crusher would be tied to the spell. Even now you only cast Disrupt in defensive battles when your units need to escape the city grounds.

[Seravy]

One more stray idea.

Did we have any reason for not making Water Elementals a non-Corporeal creature? It already has the weapon immunity and water movement so it wouldn't do much besides making them faster on mountains and forests I guess. However adding it would create extra synergy with the new disrupt replacement.
I guess immunity to Web is kind of a big deal in Sorcery though, if you give them Flight so maybe that's the reason. Webbing water makes no logical sense though.
(Air elementals are already non corporeal even though air, just like water, is physical matter)

[GMBarak]

Hi,

1. My opinion about the walls: for me walls as an attacker never concerned me because I play with a hero based strategy, I usually used them to my favor by attacking once and going back 1 step to heal my hero and prevent multiple attacks on it. so I never considered disrupt a useful spell, I think I never used it even once in all the 3 years I am playing that game (mostly because I don't play with chaos books, but even if I had it I would not use it).

2. For me fire giants in a node are very doable, you only need a 15 defense hero with 40 to block to survive, while water elementals in a node are scary you need about 20-25 defense with 50% to block to survive which is harder to get. so I don't consider them on the same level.

[Seravy]

How about this one?

Breakthrough
Chaos common - Combat global enchantment
Cost : 7 MP
All non-ranged normal units gain Wall Crusher and +1 attack
All Noncorporeal units gain +1 attack and defense
All combat summoned creatures gain +1 attack and defense

As I meanwhile realized, Chaos lacks any buffs specific to melee combat which is kinda weird, I'd expect the realm to have one.
This way it's no longer "just a wall destruction spell" nor "just a combo spell for Sorcery" but also a relevant army buff for large, melee focused armies.

7 MP might be too underpriced for it though? Making it too expensive undermines the value of the combo with Phantom Warriors, as we want the buff to be worth it even if the player has low casting skill and can only afford 2 Phantom Warriors. It's meant to be an early game combo.

Might be worth pushing it up to a higher research cost slot, like Shatter's at 440 RP.

[Anskiy]

I think that sounds fine. Why not give Wall Crusher to the non corporeal units and combat summons too, though?

[Seravy]

A comparison of Fire Giant and Water Elemental.
Green marks the area where each unit is better than the other. Grey are identical stats.

   

The most obvious difference is Water Elemental's higher hit chance in exchange for a higher casting cost.

Reducing the research cost of Fire Giant to go along with the "cheaper but faster" theme might be a good idea.
Gargoyles absolutely needs the 420 cost slot however.
So only the 640 slot for Chaos Channels and the 960 slot for Fireball are possible options for that and neither is really a good idea to bump up in research cost.

The difference in defense is mostly cancelled out by the difference of the HP but not really.
2 lower defense means 0.6 additional incoming damage which is roughly worth 3 hp against single figure attackers but is much worse versus multifigure.
Adding Resist Elements or Large Shield or both could make the Giant perform better against ranged enemies, even if they are multi figure.

The giant is also more melee oriented than the elemental which is good in theory as Sorcery lacks melee units however most of this power is expressed though the unit being cheaper to cast while providing a roughly equal performance in melee compared to the elemental - but weaker in ranged. However to make this unit useful as a melee fighter, it really needs protection from ranged damage to actually survive the 4 ranged turns and engage enemies in direct combat.
(Water elemental has 7 damage output in both range and melee, the giant has 7.2 in melee and 4.8 at range. However the elemental is 36% more expensive to summon.)

Additionally if we want the Fire Giant to be more melee oriented, it might be a good idea to adjust its stats so the AI chooses to advance instead of go backwards before shooting. This would require a melee attack equal to twice the ranged one, for example 20 and 10. However this is Chaos's only early ranged summon so maybe that would be a bad idea.

My proposed change :
Two of +1 defense, Large Shield and Resist Elements passive ability to help survive ranged combat and make the melee dominance more relevant. Probably the latter two.
A reduction of research cost to 960, or an increase in Water Elemental research cost (need to check Sorcery uncommon costs to see what this means)