Life spell slot, city curses

[Seravy]

While not giving up on Sanctuary completely yet, I definitely want more, and possibly better ideas.

So, that previous list was what kinds of spells/changes we actually do, but that doesn't really help deciding or coming up with ideas.

Instead we should try to look at what do we need for the realm?
Last time we had a free slot, we pretty much concluded the realm doesn't need any spells at all for human players, but the AI definitely could use any help they can get as they are very bad at playing the realm (no direct damage means they can't force damage through attrition, no summons means no doomstacks, and no intercontinetal movement also means no doomstack and, well you get the point.) - so that can be one goal.

However since last time the realm changed - it lost a fairly important ability/spell. So maybe we need to make up for that loss with the new spell. What did we lose? The ability to cross planes, which was specifically given to life for one purpose, to allow pushing settlers to the other plane and have more cities, making it possible to have enough cities to win a (mostly) peaceful game without having to attack others (until Spell of Mastery). Altar of Peace already plays into this role, rewarding a peaceful strategy, but I don't think you can actually win that way without pushing settlers to Myrror early, unless getting an extremely lucky map where you start alone on the largest continent of the world and other players don't discover it due to long naval distances. So something to help with this can be the other goal. Normally, city buffs do this job by improved economy that makes your one city worth as much as someone else's two, but Life doesn't get those until rare and they are nowhere near that powerful.
...but I'm actually unsure about this one. Not going to war saves a ton of resources, so as long as you can get a fair share of territory, and stay out of all wars while the AI's do not, you're going to win...not, because the Myrran wizard will be miles ahead. Which is what Planar Travel actually prevented by stealing from their territory.

So, summary :

Goal 1 : The new spell should make the realm more playable for the AI (same as last time)
Goal 2 : The new spell should somehow make winning without war possible again to replace Planar Travel's "steal Myrran territory" function.

(Altar of Peace actually already does both of these so I guess the second goal isn't very different from the first either...)

[Nelphine]

As a note, my expert life game with 4 life wizards (only 1 mono life, 2 with nature, 1 with sorcery) with the 5 way alliance, I ended up with 9 cities (7 on arcanus, 2 on myrror), and the AI had: 6 cities (sorcery), 10 (nature), 11 (mono), 21 (myrran/nature) respectively. I did end up with.. I want to say 15 nodes.

I still won without going to war. The human absolutely can snowball a lot of things directly whereas the AI scattershots everything. I had inspirations and prosperity and heavenly light and altar of peace on all of my cities (and eventually uranus' blessing and gaia's blessing) by 1408 or 1409 (1412 for the off realms i picked up from treasure), whereas my opponents, even mono life, were still casting those spells in 1417+.

So, while I agree that individually the life economy boosts don't double your city, altogether they do; and uranus' blessing by itself almost doubles the city output again. If you know you're playing for economy, you can go for it VERY early and snowball much faster than the AI, and you can make that decision on the fly after the game starts (I always start assuming I'm going pure war).

Conclusion: I don't think you need goal 2. I think life economy is plenty strong (only sorcery can hope to compete).

Therefore, goal 1. Actually, just changing heroism to a 'summon' category spell could help the second problem. Which leaves doomstack travel and attrition damage. I honestly think attrition damage just doesn't work in the realm; they specifically have healing (both combat and overland) instead, to limit their own attrition damage. Unfortunately that's simply completely cross purpose to how the AI was taught to play.

So I think the spell should address doomstack travel.

What about giving them windwalking, but reduce speed to match the slowest unit in the stack? As uncommon, it's worse than sorcery true windwalking; as it grants overland movement to the whole stack, it's better than sorcery uncommon flight BUT since it doesn't provide flight in combat its also worse than sorcery uncommon flight. Call it something like wings of the angel. Or maybe hands of the angel.

[zitro1987]

I like the idea of weak wind-walking for life, helping movement somewhat. but definitively not as powerful as actual wind walking.


Life could also get an instant spell or city enchantment that improves relations, adding synergy with altar of peace.

*if instant spell, adds a fixed +X to all wizards each time it is cast, probably with diminishing returns (if you cast this all the time, you might fall behind on other things)
*if city enchantment, adds a fixed +X relations as long as the enchantment is still there.

[Seravy]

The AI cannot use windwalking in doomstack generation, as it picks units that can cross their sea on their own, otherwise the units would fail to meet the waindwalker (as the gathering point is likely on ocean).
It also picks the highest cost unit, so a summon that has a high cost has to exist for it to be relevant.

However, Life's design is "everything is a doomstack", through buffs. It doesn't matter if the AI used land based stack generation and ships, the stacks can be dangerous anyway, if it has enough buffs.
Late in the game the global spells can help in that, but earlier it's all about stacking normal buffs and that is less cost effective than summoning unfortunately. Still, with the AI's skill advantage and the possibility of multiple Divine Orders, it can work very well.

But there is one thing that still allows the player to stop these stacks, and that's combat. Life doesn't do direct damage, flight or web, and can only buff movement by 1. So Life units are easy to stall and slowly kill through whichever combat spell or ranged unit you have. If buffed life units were harder to kite, the AI could be much stronger.
I definitely don't want the realm to get a flight/web type spell, but that's ok, the AI's stacks will often contain naturally flying units, or ranged ones. However, movement is a problem. Which brings us back to this : an uncommon buff that increases movement by 2 (or 3). Maybe specifically in combat only, as overland movement is overpowered and inefficient for the AI.
Alternately, a combat instant that has the effect of "all units gain +X movement for this turn only", but that would come with an unwanted side effect of being able to attack using melee more than twice.

...problem is, that is the kind of effect we probably don't want the human player to have.

[Nelphine]

The wind walking wouldn't be used for doomstack generation. The ai would cast it on expensive stacks of 9 that aren't already individually all intercontinental, using a procedure very similar to (or the same as) planar travel. Then, it effectively creates a doomstack every time it casts this spell. However if I recall, it doesn't consider buffs when determining expense, which is a problem.

However, you've just described a completely DIFFERENT goal than the two you had previously posted.

More accurately, you've described a very particular goal in terms of making life playable for the AI. But if you've fought life buffed units, they don't need to cause as much attrition as other realms. They don't need to kite and blast. Because life buffs work. The units become very very hard to kill. Of all the realms, life is the one I have to think about the most, aside from early very rare summons. Everything else, is relatively straightforward. You know how tough the units are, you can determine how long they take to die, how much damage they do in the interim and how many combat spells theyvwill get, so you can determine roughly how much damage you need to absorb. Life is the one that pushes that envelope. I'd rather fight uncommon summons of any realm rather than face megabuffed halfling swordsmen. Swordsmen!

Further, what you're describing is exactly what I already addressed. 'causing damage via attrition is exactly counter to the theme of life, which is to heal faster than attrition occurs, avoiding the attritional losses the other realms inflict.'

Even if you successfully design a spell that does what you describe, you will turn life into a massive powerhouse - they will be the best (by far) realm at avoiding damage, and will also be able to dish out massive damage.

If you wanted to go that route, you would need to remove 'healing' as a spell. (Exaltation would probably need to be reduced to 5 as well.)

I don't believe that's good for the realm.

[Seravy]

Yes, so this direction doesn't really help either.
Sanctuary btw is bad for the AI - they'd use units that have it in stacks sent to attack. So that's also out.

I was thinking a spell that makes a unit cost no maintenance or maybe even produce gold, but the AI doesn't care about maintenance and I definitely wouldn't waste my overland skill on that unless the difference in gold is huge. (Even then it's Russian Roulette, the unit might get killed)

So idk. We can't do diplomacy either because that's Sorcery territory.

[Seravy]

What if we made it slightly different and produce power?

Sanctify
Buff, normal unit only
Cost 92?
Maintenance 1 mana
Target unit is overwhelmed by religious feelings and desires to serve a greater power. The unit costs no gold to maintain, and produces 3 magic power.

Explanation : No maintenance is a highly desired effect for human players, while 3 free magic power is a fairly good boost to the AI (as they cast the spell cheaper, don't pay the 1 upkeep, and get a bonus to the power produced) so everyone benefits. It also greatly helps peaceful strategies, by giving a reusable economy spell that isn't limited by city count. We'd need to find a way to let the AI target units that are the least likely to participate in battle - I think prioritizing units with magic ranged attacks, the primary garrison choice, could work.
Basically it's the economy part of raise volcano, and the destruction part replaced by further economy.

I'm a bit worried it would turn into a "newbie trap" that makes players use this a lot then realize they can't win the game on this alone without expanding or building relevant forces - like how Change Terrain and Housing seems to do to Hadriex - but right now I see no other downsides. Also, it has a nice double "peace" theme - you can't afford to go to war if you have lots of units enchanted by this, as those units will likely get killed (by firestorm or an enemy stack attacking them). It also gives something to cast at the uncommon tier which I tend to struggle with - if I don't want to buff my units with military spells, Life (and Life/Sorcery) doesn't offer that much to do, targets for city spells do run out and summoning is not that great.

btw I feel the 3 power from Heavenly Light is kinda underwhelming now that we have Magic Markets - but it's a common spell and the main role is the defensive benefits so that's fine.
However, maybe we should seriously consider making it grant +1 to ranged attacks as well as melee now. Would make AI magician garrisons a bit more effective, too.

[Nelphine]

I don't think further economy is a good idea (although to be fair, 92 mana for +2 power and -x gold, is not going to do a lot; prosperity for 150 mana and -2 power gives you what, +30 gold with a bank and merchants guild?).

Put it another way; why would I ever cast this instead of stream of life? You already describe that you can barely afford to cast stream of life, so when would you cast this? And I agree; I rarely cast stream of life. However, inspirations and prosperity I cast with high priority - because they are very strong economy boosters.

Again I reiterate, life does not seem to actually need more economy. It has lots of economy. (The question about heavenly light actually may be relevant. I'm not sure I want to give out boosts to ranged attack, but that's more because strategic shenanigans than because I'm overly concerned about in combat results.)

What reasoning do you have that goal 2 is still something that needs to be looked at? 'Because planar travel isn't there' doesn't mean much - the AI was already terrible at that, and I haven't heard of people going crazy with it, specifically because they didn't want to risk war with a 4th AI. So Life hasn't actually lost much. And they already have the best economy and best ability to win without going to war (sorcery has the best ability to stop anyone else from winning, and the second best economy; but that's slightly different.)

[Seravy]

Put it another way; why would I ever cast this instead of stream of life? You already describe that you can barely afford to cast stream of life, so when would you cast this

Well, if I AM playing peaceful, then I don't need to summon or buff units. So I can only do city buffs. But I'm playing peaceful so I'm not expanding, so I don't have all that many cities to buff. So I cast Heavenly Light and Stream of Life and Altar of Peace on all 10 of my cities, that takes less than the time to advance to the rare tier, and then I have nothing to do. Assuming I even want Stream of Life - I might be playing a race (or cult leader) where I have no unrest to remove, I don't need to heal units, and double growth is only a temporary boost that's not really worth it if I'm playing a long term game where 75% of the game's duration will be with maxed population. Maybe worth it on that freshly built pop 25 spot, but definitely not on that pop 8 one. If you aren't planning on a war, you have nothing to use your overland casting skill for, every single reusable Life spell until Archangel is for a military purpose. (city buffs aren't reusable, they are limited to 1/city)

What reasoning do you have that goal 2 is still something that needs to be looked at?

Nothing. But we have a slot we MUST fill otherwise we can't release this update (it's still beta), and we don't have any other ideas that work. So we need something, and need it now, not 2 weeks later. (I definitely don't want people to think Heroic Shout is a Life spell when we are removing it as soon as possible)

This isn't a spell the human needs for their economy. Yes, it pretends to be but it isn't, It's intentionally too costly for that to work in all except the peaceful game where you aren't using your casting skill.
It's a spell for goal 1. It gives the AI an economic boost - more power - in a form that's barely useful for the human. Just like Raise Volcano (which is not bad but again is something you only cast if you don't have a relevant summon to cast or aren't expecting a war.)
Honestly, even if this ends up making peaceful life too powerful, that's still a good thing, as it's a massively underused, hard to play, and also risky strategy. You might have awesome "I win" tier economy going, but then the Myrran wizard shows up, they are Chaotic, declare war, and suddenly you lose the game. Which means you need some armies anyway - but they are armies you aren't using and might never be, so they just waste your money and food. So what would you want then? A spell that makes them have no upkeep...

(do note if we decide to have this spell, we must nerf the Divine Order stacking effect. We don't want this to be 75% off. But we wanted to do that anyway.)

[Seravy]

Also, this spell probably fits into the unsaid but common sense "goal 3", we want a spell players enjoy using and consider fun. This is most definitely one of those, I still remember how popular Black Channels was due to removing the upkeep from units. Yes, the unit was undead, never healed and turned pretty much worthless unless it was Troll, but people still loved it for that effect alone.