SORCERY Realm

[zitro1987]

Maybe if spell lock is reconsidered to become a 'enchantment resistance' as opposed to 'indestructible enchantments', all it might need is a spell change.

I say this because I like the idea of spell lock being a spell that increases your dispel resistance in unit, something like 'all unit enchantments, including spell lock, have +150-200 in spell cost for dispel calculations'



Also: I'm not sure I understand the rationale that shows up every now and then in the forums that if sorcery gets very rares, then they should win, because late-game sorcery wins. The rational feels unnecessarily unbalanced and arbitrary. We need to make sure it's not a guaranteed win, even if Sorcery is conceptually the strongest at very rares.
*The boosts in common/uncommon and storm giant should be balanced with slightly weaker very rare sorcery.
*Slightly weaker very rare sorcery would translate to the time stop maintenance adjustments discussed, the weaker spell ward, spell binding costing 1500 to match most expensive globals, and maybe a slight research increase to powerful cost-effective spells like great unsummoning or djinn.

[Nelphine]

Right, but spell lock again, isn't rare. So, it doesn't need to give surety. If it gives 100 extra protection to all spells on the target, that will make a huge difference. And it will make it so that double dispelling wave isn't so awful and make spell lock feel useless. (As it does right now, especially overland; yes its rare, but its terrible when it happens)

Edit: I like everything zitro said.

[Seravy]

I'm not sure I understand the rationale that shows up every now and then in the forums that if sorcery gets very rares, then they should win, because late-game sorcery wins. The rational feels unnecessarily unbalanced and arbitrary.

I've explained it in the post that started this discussion why it ended up this way, and that I also don't like it. (somewhere around page 20 ?)
We are working to change this right now.

The problem with Spell Lock granting extra resistance - the chance of losing the spells keeping your important units alive increases.
For example, you send your spell lock+wraith form heroes against the Nature wizard, all 6 of them.

Old version : Turn 1 Dispelling Wave. You lose Spell Lock on, let's say 2 heroes. Turn 2 Dispelling Wave. You are unlikely to lose both Wraith Forms. Turn 3 you recast the Wraith Form if you lost one, hero is safe. AI already used up 250 casting skill, unlikely to dispel enough times to remove any more Wraith Forms and still have skill left for a Crack's Call.

Suggested new version : Turn 1 Dispelling Wave. You got unlucky, lose 2 Wraith Forms. You recast one, the other hero is open to Crack's Call and dies. The AI also have only spent 125 on turn one, so it can still use CC many times. (yes, heroes who are casters can recast their own Wraith Form. But you might have fewer casters than lost WraithForms. The chance of DW hitting both SL and WF on the same hero is much much lower than hitting only WF, even if WF is more resistant, and takes more turns and mana.)

But it's not just CC which is the good case as it only has a 25% chance to kill.
If it hits Resist Magic, your hero is dead next turn to Petrify, Annihilate, etc. And Resist Magic has low resistance, even if Locks raise/double it.

But there is more. When "more unit spells dispelled" appears, you have to manually check each of your units for each "survival" buff. You might not notice missing one Resist Magic or Wraith Form, but the AI will and that hero is dead.

But there is even more than that. If the AI has casters on their side, losing the hero on turn 1 is far more likely. Instead of having to go through "Dispelling Wave", "Dispelling Wave or Dispel Magic", "Petrify/Crack's Call/etc", the wizard can cast DW and the magician can petrify the hero immediately. That kind of Spell Lock is not even playable. With the current Spell Lock, attacking into a magician is 99% safe - even if the Spell Lock is lost, the caster can be killed before I also lose the relevant enchantment, and with no casters alive, I can safely recast the dispelled buffs, keeping the heroes from getting insta-killed as the wizard can only cast one spell a turn.

So if this change is in the game, I'll stop using Spell Lock to protect heroes period. (or anything else, really. It would be solely for protecting offensive buffs where losing them isn't lethal. But I don't care enough about offensive buffs to Spell Lock them in 99% of the games I play exactly because losing them does not matter - unless I stacked too many but I would not do that against a wizard with DW.)

...so I'd like another solution if possible.

[Nelphine]

Um. OK, I understand your point, but you're basically saying 'for hero strategies or anything else that relies on a few very key units, this is a bad change, because when bad luck happens, its worse for the new version'.

This is completely valid, and I understand why you're saying it - but I think there are 3 counterarguments.

1) heroes are already (in my opinion) overly strong. And if that's such a huge deal, make wrairhform items. Or whatever kind you need for your strategy. Hero strategies SHOULD be reliant on items, not spells, because spells are cheap, and heroes are cheap. To balance a hero strategy it needs some kind of required expense - building items to keep them alive is perfect for that. And it SHOULD require crafted items, because found items are far far too common.

2) MOST strategies are about large numbers of units. The new version is far better if you're using the law of averages to make your strategy work. Addirionally, this is the ONLY kind of strategy the AI can use, which will make the spell more AI friendly.

3) the amount of bad luck it will require to end up with the situation you describe is extremely high. Right now, if you have 6 heroes, then 1/3 of them will be dispelled from a dispelling wave. With the change, closer to 1 spell lock will be dispelled, and depending on the numbers we choose for spell lock resistance, definitely less than 2 (but maybe closer to 2 than 1), and possibly even less than 1 wraithform will be dispelled. If you have less caster heroes than dispelled wraithforms then that is ENTIRELY on you for making a horrible decision given you are trying to use a hero strategy.

Conclusion: while your point about key defensive buffs is valid, I don't think it is more important than your previous point, that making spell lock artificially weak seems unintuitive. And I believe neither argument is more important than balancing dispelling wave around reasonable buff usage (before consisting spell lock).

Edit: also the current spell lock encourages mega buffing heroes. Since we've already decided mega buffing shouldn't be used against a sorcery wizard, why is it OK to use it with heroes?

So I'd be happy if you made spell lock into something like 'Embolster Spell' and made it into dispel resistance; and I'd be OK if you make spell lock stay with current functionslity and get dispelled at an arbitrarily high frequency. But I don't think your points warrant increasing overall dispelling wave effectiveness in order to maintain current spell lock dispel frequency.

[Seravy]

I tend to be overprotective so...yeah. You're right, in that case, not using the heroes against the dispelling wave+nature wizard is the correct move. Why would I even do such a thing...

Although...a Nature wizard with no Sorcery and no Dispelling Wave, and just, say, 5 Magicians. If the first one hits the Resist Magic with ...umm nevermind, I shouldn't attack 5 magicians unless I have 13 resistance total from items.
But if they can cast Crack's Call and I don't play Death or don't have Create Artifact yet then...but Magicians can't cast Crack's Call exactly for this reason.
Which leaves...hmm I can't name a cost 20 spell that can't be protected against from basic items.

Okay, your victory, we can try this Spell Lock version.

Question is how much extra resistance should it be? Double the base? Triple? +50%? A flat addition of 50? 100? 200?
(You can roughly guess how the extra resistance affects the result if you look at the difference between the 40/100/180 rows in that table, if needed I can add more numbers between those tomorrow)

Also, I never considered increasing DW effectiveness for this reason as an option. Even making Spell Lock have low resist would have been better than that.

...and now back to watching that Youtube video. Someone was playing on Lunatic! I should be sleeping already...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg6SAH2Hik4

[Nelphine]

I'd suggest a flat amount, probably either 60 or 100. Zitro suggested 150-200. I honestly don't really know. Higher is probably safe, since right now only 1 spell can be dispelled, while with this version multiple spells might still be. So if we assume a given target will probably have.. 4 spells in addition to spell lock? Then we probably want to increase them all to 'high tier' to keep 1/5 dispel rate, so probably add flat 120?

[zitro1987]

I'd revise my range to a flat 100-150 range, I think +200 is overkill but anything under +100 not very worthwhile.

I prefer a flat increase to all as opposed to a % increase to allow all unit enchantments the same level of extra protection. A percentage increase would be borderline unnoticeable with cheap spells like 'resist magic'

[Seravy]

Btw, about removing a normal unit.
If no one has a better suggestion, then mine is Orc Spearmen.The race is about paying less for the same unit (albeit in maintenance), so their spearmen don't serve much of a purpose - Orcs have Swordsmen with 0 maintenance which is the main advantage of Spearmen. (I guess 30 production instead of 10 also matters somewhat but we can have Orc Swordsmen cost 20 if needed, they are the second worst Swordsmen in the game I think.)

(...we can even recolor Orc Spearmen and use them for the graphics of Horde instead of the current recolored Halberdier to make them more distinct - it's a bit hard to tell them apart from Halberdiers now.)

[zitro1987]

Orc spearmen is not an important unit to me. Go ahead.

[Nelphine]

OK, if looking at units: possible units that I don't think fit thematically are orc spearmen, gnoll spearmen, troll spearmen. Of the three, I think trolls need to keep spearmen due to production cost of swordsmen. I think gnolls are my preferred - as a military race they should be moving toward armorer's guild in all cities, and I wouldn't mind being forced to get swordsmen. Orcs aren't bad, but I would suggest reducing the production cist as suggested - as an economic race, they're often going to use spearmen as ultra cheap garrisons just there to prevent unrest on their cathedral/amp tower/wizards guild/bank/merchants guild. As they're supposed to be about cheap units, it would be extremely painful to pay triple the cost for their useless garrisons.

Oh. How about klackon spearmen? They have the production bonus similar to dwarves to offset the higher cost. Though unless the wizard is klsckon, they need lots of garrisons, so the higher priced swordsmen could be a problem for people who conquer them. Then again, that could be thematic - its more expensive to garrison, bugs?

(Also I'd be sad to see orc spearmen go since its always funny to successfully destroy incoming attacks with a single orc spearmen. But the maintenance 0 swordsmen is a huge plus for choosing orcs.)