CHAOS Realm

[Hadriex]

I don't much care for chaos rift or meteor storm. If I want to nuke a city I'd rather call the void, and if you want to just ruin everyone's day Armageddon does that just fine. Really Chaos has to many 'screw over the world' globals.

Now as for eldrich weapon, I like the idea that it can apply to fantastic creatures. I think boosting the amount of defense ignored is probably the best way to go.

[Seravy]

Only thing I really ask is: why does great unsummoning ignore your own units when meteor storm doesn't?

That...is an amazingly good question. Why have no one asked this before?
It doesn't hit your own cities either so...I can't even say because the meteors are too hard to control.
There is no reason, aside from that's how it was in the original game.

There is one thing. Not being able to attack cities owned by other players with anything but high tier summoned units (or trolls) is overpowered if you can attack them meanwhile just the same. Except...there is Final Wave which ignores this argument and wipes out all lower tier units anyway. Besides, as a Chaos wizard with very rare spells, if you reach a city with units, it's yours anyway, you can nuke all the defenders...so MS isn't really hindering you in attacks all that much.

We need to rethink Meteor Storm.

What is our intended purpose for the spell?
1. Hold back enemies from advancing to higher power base, income and better spells by destroying buildings repeatedly.
2. Reduce enemy economy over time until there is nothing left and win the game
3. Deny the ability to attack our own cities with lower tier units.
4. Deny the ability to attack us with high tier units by destroying the buildings required to produce such.
5. Prevent new cities from being founded.
6. Prevent enemy units from guarding nodes.

As is, it does all of the above and is bad at all of them except 3 and 5. This one is not trivial to answer because all of the above makes sense, so this is a design choice. However notice that 3 and 4 combined means the enemy can't fight back at all using normal units.

Do we want the spell to be AI friendly?
1. Yes, it shouldn't hit its own units
2. Yes, it shouldn't damage units at all, the AI is unable to respond by sending vulnerable units back to cities or healing them with spells, while the human player can.
3. No, it doesn't matter.

How powerful do we want the economic part to be?
1. Win the game over time on its own (like Armageddon and Great Wasting does by destroying all terrain and causing enough rebels for population to shrink)
2. Stall the enemy so they are roughly stuck at the same level of development
3. Slow down the enemy but still destroy less than they can produce allowing some advancement.
4. None at all, killing units is plenty.

So we have a lot of options, not just not hitting own units.

Chaos Rift is more straightforward, I think the spell is fine, except the cost should be like 200? The current cost is way too expensive, if I can afford that, I rather summon another Efreet, or cast Doom Bolt or Disintegrate in battle 6 times or...cast Fire Storm twice on the city or...Call the Void if I have that, or 6 Magic Vortexes in combat to ruin the city way better than the Rift ever will...or 5 Flame Strikes to just conquer it.
The only case I see a use for this is if the city is too far from my troops to hit in a forseeable amount of time, in which case I probably don't want to spend 300 on that. Or if I want to slow down someone who is not an enemy but will become a threat if left unchecked...in which case I certainly can't afford paying 300 per city to do so as well, doing that slows down myself too much.
(The spell is definitely powerful for Small and Tiny maps where there are only a few cities that are much more valuable but I think it should be useful at least on normal sized maps too)

[Nelphine]

Why does +defend only affect the first 15 Armor? I'm assuming that's a hard coded thing, so I don't actually need details.

[Seravy]

Why does +defend only affect the first 15 Armor? I'm assuming that's a hard coded thing, so I don't actually need details.

For hero balance purposes, I added that quite a while ago. (nothing else has significantly more than 15 shields in the game)

Let's say you have a hero with 35 shields and +3 To Defend. That's pretty good but reasonably possible if you play a Life wizard. You only need Prayer, Endurance and a Divine Protection item and a good hero of course.
The strongest unit in the game attacks with 35 swords and +3 To Hit. So maybe that unit - Great Drake - might be able to deal damage to the hero...a few points at best which you heal back, and nothing else can.
This is too much benefit for an easy to access effect that is only easy for one realm in the game. Basically every + To Defend on a 30 shield hero is as good as adding an extra 10 shields. So Endurace becomes twice as good as Iron Skin, as does Prayer and Lucky and all of these stack. At this point the unit is as good as if it had 60-70 shields without bonus To Defend.
On the other hand if it only affects 15 shields then the effect is limited to the damage reduction of 5 shields for every + To Defend. The example unit would be as good as if it had 50 shields, which is still brutal, but it can get damaged by very rare units - not killed by them unless you're careless, but at least the risk is there unlike how it was before, walk in the middle of that 9 great drake stack, kill them all with your counterattack and be still alive.

Any suggestions on what kind of Meteor Storm we want? I'll also keep thinking about it.

[Nelphine]

For me, I don't care about economic destruction with meteor storm. It's cool that it has it, but other spells are better.

For me meteor storm is long term sustained damage on units. Final wave should be highly effective against normals, great unsummoning against Rares, and meteor storm should be effective against anything. Alternatively meteor storm could be highly effective against everything but hurt your own units too.

So I want something that will damage sky drakes and Spearman, but not simply wipe out the Spearman.

I want AI to keep using it because it terrifies me when they do.

I don't want it to wipe out sky drakes anymore than Spearman because AI can't defend against that effectively.

Actual suggestions. Something like doom damage instead of regular damage, attacking a unit not a figure, keep the small chance of destroying buildings (should be lower than any direct attack city enchantnent), and have a reduced attack strength against your own units.

[Nelphine]

The problem with any amount of damage is AI and healing. If it does more damage than healing rate eventually it will kill all unprotected AI units. This would be fine if it also killed enough human units but a human can alternate troops to make them last much longer.

Ideally the spell would do more damage based on a target units percentage of life. So do 10 damage against s full health unit and 2 damage against a unit with 20%. This would make it so human troops quickly get reduced but AI troops don't simply die quickly. (It also means that humans don't have to bother with troop rotations so they end up being affected identically )

Low health troops could still die, if they took an unlucky large hit while their percentage was high. High health troops wouldn't ever die, which is probably balanced compared to great unsummoning and final wave.

[Seravy]

The problem with any amount of damage is AI and healing. If it does more damage than healing rate eventually it will kill all unprotected AI units. This would be fine if it also killed enough human units but a human can alternate troops to make them last much longer.

Agreed this is the main problem and reason why the damage part of the spell is problematic.

So do 10 damage against s full health unit and 2 damage against a unit with 20%.

All figure hitting damage does exactly this on multifigure units. More figures take more damage.
No scaling for single figure but this is the only even remotely similar existing spell effect.
Aside from this, other valid spell flags are Illusion, Warping (think warp lightning), Armor Pierce, and Doom, I think that's all.

Maybe the attack strength should go back to 4 or 5 instead of the current 6?

Or should I try to actually implement some AI logic for this spell?
Something like, if health per figure*2<6-defense then do not produce? Nah they should be building those to defend the city and some races don't have low figure or high defense units at all.

Maybe the best is your original idea, "no damage to own units" and keeping the rest of it unchanged. Then we have an acceptable economic slowdown, with strong unit control, but high end units can slip through and still launch attacks so if the AI has access to those, it can still fight back.
While the AI has more production, it also loses more of it through making units that will die so the overall economic effect might be fair. I see one more problem though even then. Those high end units will end up getting stuck defending nodes because weaker units just die.

Let's see the units...

Expected to survive over long term : (6-DEF)*.3<=HP/20
Warship
Galley
Trireme
Minotaurs
Doom Drakes
Air Ship
Steam Cannon
Golem
Stag Beetle
Dragon Turtle
any troll unit
All uncommon or better fantastic units, except Unicorns, Wraiths, Chimeras, Giant Spiders.

That's...quite limiting.

One thing I can do for the AI, not sure how much it helps is the adding the following if I find space for it :
IF any other player has Meteor Storm in effect AND Blessing, Resist Elements, Elemental Armor, Regeneration, Iron Skin or Magic Immunity is known, unit buff priority:=unit buff priority+100
If same as above, priority of the best spells on the list doubled, if none of those are available, priority of the others raised.
Or maybe go easy on it and just increase buff priority regardless of spells? Actually over half the buffs are good against meteor, I even missed out Endurance, Invulnerability, Lionheart, Holy Armor...

[zitro1987]

My preference:

Flame Blade moved to common, possibly with a 10 to 20% cost increase as it is now 'common'
Eldritch Weapon moved to uncommon and having a 'warp creature' melee effect. Make it cost about 100/2 if so. While eventually obsolete, it would be interesting for black/chaos wizards with black prayer.

Meteor Storm - I'd like it if it doesn't target own units.

[Nelphine]

I'm still not sure that any of the three spells not affecting your own units is a good idea (meteor storm great unsummoning final wave) because they're insanely strong in the hands of impossible AI.

But, that's impossible. So.. I'll go with it. Down with hitting your own units!

Still, meteor storm will be extremely penalizing against extreme or lower AI. Any way to tell AI not to build weak targets if meteor storm is in play? (Also do paladins get immunity to meteor storm?)

[Seravy]

Any way to tell AI not to build weak targets if meteor storm is in play? (Also do paladins get immunity to meteor storm?)

Nope. I mean I could but then cities of races that don't have high armor single figure units would not make anything and the AI couldn't even replenish their garrison.
See the above list, every unit not listed is a bad choice if Meteor is in effect. Even halberiers or berserkers or hammerhands melt away like butter.
Paladins have Death and Illusions immunity, neither helps against Fire damage. If they have at least one level they have enough armor to not die quickly though but they'll still some take damage.

I think making the AI cast unit buffs more frequently should help a little - we probably want to limit it to Life, Sorcery and Nature wizards though. Death and Chaos buffs don't offer any protection from damage. (except Chaos Channels if it lands on armor but...chaos wizards should do doom mastery for that)
On high enough difficulty the AI will also have at least some strong summons that can move freely...and on lower difficulty, if you reached very rares, you won anyway. Most Chaos very rares are "you win the game" tier. Disintegrate, Call Chaos and Flame Strike make enemy units disappear as much as Meteor; Armageddon and Great Wasting outright wins by reducing all enemy cities to a bunch of rebels running away from lava, Warp Reality says enemy units don't do damage in combat, Chaos Surge boosts your armies more than a Crusade, Great Drake...is the hardest hitting monster in the game, did I miss anything? Call the Void wipes out any city and the units in it, and Hydra...well it's just the unit with the most "figures" and health in the entire game plus regeneration.