Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[MrBiscuits]

It would be good to see what node aura a tile has on it, sometimes two nodes are nearby and it's not obvious while tile belongs to which node.

Being able to see what the terrain and any minerals/food under corruption would be useful.

A queueing system for overland spells would be good, I often forget what spells I wanted to cast (such as heavenly light on a newly conquered city or magic spirit near a node).
It would make buffing stacks of troops less painful too.

[jhsidi]

Comments on a few Rares and Very Rares in Sorcery and Nature that I've gained / used recently...

Sorcery:

• Power Link -- Probably overpowered with 13 wizards. I thought the power would all go to my mana bar but it does indeed to go "power", meaning it can apply to research and skill. My power income went from ~1000 at time of casting to nearly 10000. I think in theory this spell is supposed to be more powerful than the Life/Chaos/Nature globals that grant power, but it may be giving too much more? E.g. Life Force might give you around 500 - 2000 depending on your population, but with Power Link I had ~9000 additional power out of the gate. OTOH this spell would work fine with fewer opponents and, probably, lower difficulty level (due to less AI casting). Maybe it needs a scaling mechanic? As-is, casting it was an instant game over in terms of my strength.
  
• Wind Walking -- Maybe also a bit too good? 6 move speed on a whole stack is really amazing. I'm able to rip apart AI empires very, very quickly once I've got this spell, and/or grab all the treasure. I'm split on whether this is really too good or not, but the game did get quite easy once I researched it.
  

Nature:

• Call the Wild -- The stacks produced are not strong enough to accomplish much of anything. Also, I WANT rampaging monsters to reach my cities. It's free training for my troops and free Fame; once I no longer get stacks, I'm actually losing out on those benefits. I think this spell might be better if it just significantly increased the strength of stacks sent against AI, instead of spawning tons of weak chaff that has no effect.
  

• Clairvoyance -- Nice in theory. In reality, this spell makes watching the end turns impossible. It takes a looooong time for all the units on the entire map to visibly make their moves and it's so fast that I can't retain any information about what happened. Additionally, since I'm Nature anyway, I already have Nature's Eye on all my cities (and thus, visibility on everything that matters). Ignoring node dispel is nice, but a rather random effect to tack on to this. I think this spell would be much better as a Rare that, perhaps, reveals the whole map but doesn't provide constant surveillance; and automatically applies Nature's Eye to all cities (less busy work casting it on conquered cities is always nice).
  
  
• Call Lightning -- A terrible spell. Strength 10 lightning bolts do effectively no damage on anything that matters. For instance, fighting a bunch of Klackon Halberdiers, it took the spell all 25 turns to whittle down the army, usually only killing 1 figure at a time.  Fate Mastery actually does significantly more damage than this spell, which is kind of silly. I know the theory behind this is that you could combo it with something like Entangle... but why? The only enemies it can damage are so weak that the player could get a no-loss win anyway.
  
  
• Entangle -- Also fairly useless by the time you get it. I don't understand what the theoretical scenario is in which I care about reducing enemy movement -- only of corporeal creatures! -- by 2 matters. Maybe getting attacked by a Sorcery player with Wind Mastery and a bunch of flying melee units? I've never encountered one of these scenarios.
  

• Planetary Mastery -- I was eager to get this; so many Earthquakes! As it turned out, the AI is really not casting spells with power >370 very often, and when I DO get a free Earthquake, there's no guarantee I have a useful target for it. I'd prefer this spell if it just automatically cast Earthquake a certain number of times each turn on random cities. (There's a  long-term benefit even to causing allies difficulty.)
  

[Seravy]

Power Link - In theory this should win you the game if you are ahead in research and get it in play before other players have rare/very rare spells. In theory the wizard elimination mechanic should get rid of players who are left behind in research and would give you too much power before then unless you are really dominating the game in research speed.
Clairvoyance - That's what the "Show enemy moves" setting is for in the settings menu.
Planetary Mastery - It should give you free Earthquakes when YOU cast a spell that costs more than 370.

[jhsidi]

Clairvoyance -- Yes, there is an option to turn off Show Enemy Moves. You're missing the point. I want that ON. But this spell makes it unusable. 3-4 minute long end turns with thousands of enemy stacks moving and the screen jumping fast enough to give a seizure is torture, not a usable effect. I'm assuming you keep it off and thus don't care, but is that a good reason for having something broken?

This is an issue that's particular to Nature. Every single Very Rare spell for all the other magic types is pure benefit. Nature has 3 spells that either hurt the gameplay (Clairvoyance) or are useless (Call Lightning and Entangle). Fully 1/4 of the spellbook.

Regarding Planetary Mastery -- oops, you're right. I just misremembered, it was me that wasn't casting spells of 370+ very often. There aren't many spells you'd cast on a regular basis that cost over 370. IIRC, Gorgons are slightly less. In that particular game, I somehow got no Very Rare creatures and this spell just didn't work as a result.

[jhsidi]

OK, looks like I still had that Nature save file with Clairvoyance on. Here it is: https://ufile.io/a0rme9pe

So the end turn came out at just over 3 minutes for me with enemy moves on. You might be interested to see Kali's (dark blue player) continent since that relates to a previous discussion somewhere about AI filling up every space in the game with units. It's not actually possible to move on that entire landmass.

[Seravy]

Clairvoyance.

Yes, unfortunately, seeing everything isn't convenient. There isn't anything we can do about that, you either see everything and has to deal with the additional information in any way you choose to, or you don't see everything.

The only solution to this would be to add a new setting or modding option that only shows you relevant moves according to some well defined rules.
But for that to happen, I'm going to need a list of exact rules on what kind of enemy movement the users want to see or don't want to see.
At the moment the default is to not show moves by allies or wizard pacted wizards, and show everything else.
We can start by making these two optional in modding.INI then add more rules to that, according to what is desired. (for example show moves only in range of X from your cities. Or units. )

I disagree with Entangle and Call Lightning being useless. Those are some of the best spells in the game.

[jhsidi]

I disagree with Entangle and Call Lightning being useless. Those are some of the best spells in the game.

What is Call Lightning useful against? It did very little damage per turn in my plays. Usually 3-5 damage. That's against very mediocre enemies, it wouldn't damage anything tough.

Anyone else out there consistently used this spell? Anyone look forward to getting it?

As for Clairvoyance my only suggestion would be: do not show any move that is not within 5 tiles of one of your units or cities. That might make it manageable.

[Seravy]

What is Call Lightning useful against? It did very little damage per turn in my plays. Usually 3-5 damage. That's against very mediocre enemies, it wouldn't damage anything tough.

Combat lasts 25 turns. Assuming 4 damage, that's 100 damage total. You killed 5 of the highest tier normal units (stag beetles, nightmares etc) or 2-3 very rare summons. All that for 60 MP and it can't be dispelled or prevented effectively.
Unless the enemy plays Life and spams healing, you can use this to destroy entire enemy armies for 60 MP and a few junk units that no longer matter.

[jhsidi]

What is Call Lightning useful against? It did very little damage per turn in my plays. Usually 3-5 damage. That's against very mediocre enemies, it wouldn't damage anything tough.

Combat lasts 25 turns. Assuming 4 damage, that's 100 damage total. You killed 5 of the highest tier normal units (stag beetles, nightmares etc) or 2-3 very rare summons. All that for 60 MP and it can't be dispelled or prevented effectively.
Unless the enemy plays Life and spams healing, you can use this to destroy entire enemy armies for 60 MP and a few junk units that no longer matter.

I just spent a while trying to give this spell a fair shake. Basically, using it in every battle.

... OK, not every battle. My first discovery is that it has no place in a hard battle where you're under a time crunch to kill the enemy. For instance, if the other wizard's spell selection poses a threat, regardless of what their troops are -- you don't want this spell, because you want the battle to be over in 3-5 turns and something like 9-20 additional damage is not a good use of a spellcasting turn. Much less 60 mana from your skill pool.

Similarly, with Rare creatures, or buffed normal units, it's useless. Invulnerability for instance, completely cancels this damage. 

... here's a use case. One unit defending a node. I get variations of this battle a lot. Now, Earth to Mud, Flight or Wraith Form, and Call Lightning... OK, not bad. It takes usually 15 turns before anything is dead, but by 25 usually the battle is won. This doesn't work in all of these battles, though. Some wizards have good spells for spam casting (e.g. fire bolt) and eventually they can whittle my defender down.

So, it's situational. In some % of battles, let's say 15%, I can play for time and wait around. Although -- that's not my only option. I'd be winning these battles anyway, but now I'm winning them for a bit less mana expenditure and additional time waiting around and repositioning my units.

I guess I see the value. Although to say it's "one of the best spells in the game" is a pretty big stretch. There's just a huge number of battles where you won't have the leisure to sit around while weak lightning slowly whittles down enemies.

[Seravy]

There's just a huge number of battles where you won't have the leisure to sit around while weak lightning slowly whittles down enemies.

True but you can make those battles where it is good happen intentionally by building cheap armies of weak units that will get attacked often.