Zitro mod - spell development & discussion

[zitro1987]

Work in Progress
This is a spell wish-list and discussion forum related to my unnamed 'zitro' mod. The plan is to work around the general problems associated with the original spells and Aureus spells (at least, in terms of how they fit in to my mod)

Phase 1 - new ideas, or Ideas barely discussed
Holy Weapon and Holy Armor = allow these to enchant fantastic creatures as well
Chaos Surge - to add 'first strike' on top of the +2 attack (or add +2 armor / +2 resistance as well)

Phase 2 - Ideas discussed, but not fully worked on yet - State your concerns or it'll get to phased 3
*Zombie Mastery to simply turn undead normal units automatically 'elite' and for zombies to be obtained after other creatures brought from the dead by 'create undead' and 'life steal' Optional: Too challenging of an idea
*Cloud of Shadow - undead stationed earn 3xp per turn challenging? or some combat bonus like black prayer
*Cloud of Shadow Alternative - units recruited earn 'cause fear' and 'illusion immunity'
*Armageddon to remove redundant 'unrest', replaced by 'call lightning' for every battle. (fits the theme of apocalypse). Massive upkeep cost.
*Replace exploitable 'stasis' with a 'word of recall' equivalent aimed at opponent units (one at a time) - exploit/bug potential due to transport units.
*Flying Fortress to allow flying or wind-walking to all units.
*Nature Awareness to be replaced by another global bonus - adding elemental armor to all friendly units or another strong global effect that may be easier to code (+2 movement, armor piercing, elemental armor, +2 nature spell books, first strike, large armor, I don't know)


Phase 3 - Ideas generally approved and awaiting programming (cost/upk will be decided later)
*Skeletons to be summoned in any square - like 'floating island'
*Change terrain to change hills to mountains (and mountains to be +8% prod)
*All undead units to heal 2%
*Astral Gate to extend 'wizard fortress' lightning bolts to any cities with astral gate
*Volcano to not cause damage if cast in opponent's city.
*Magic Immunity to be a +20 armor instead of +50 armor. Magic immunity to not give poison protection
*Chaos Channels to be brought back unbugged - replacing Immolation (in my mod)
*Suppress Magic with half strength (250 instead of 500)
*Holy Arms to also include 'holy armor'
*Evil Omens to apply to other realms as well, maybe weakened (or with high cost/upkeep).
*Life Force to be an automatic 'prayer' for all battles
*Switching 'Stream of Life' (rare) and 'Consecration' (very rare) spell placements. Optional as Stream of Life could be weakened by removing pop growth bonus
*Heavenly Light - +50% pop growth (if stream of life loses pop growth bonus)
*Eternal Night to also prevent regular enemy healing or half enemy religious building's power (besides the 'darkness').
*Nature's Eye improved to provide a 7 sight radius instead of 5 and ability to detect invisible units
*Earthquake - overland spell that eliminates city walls (100% chance). The chance of non-flying units dying still there, but maybe lowered. No longer with other city damage effect
*Word of Death to be replaced by a superior version of 'possession' (resist -4?)
*Chaos Rift 5 lightning bolts of 12 strength instead of 8 (to counter self-healing in garrison)
*Meteor Storm to deal 9 fireball damage instead of 4 per turn.
*Warp Node to absorb (instead of negate) power from node (some talk of also creating rampaging monsters?)
*WraithForm to also add +1 to defend.
*switching 'mass healing' (rare) and 'plane shift' (uncommon) spell positions low priority
*My black channels spell (spectral force) to add 'create undead'

Phase 4 - Completed
*Tranquility to be a weakened version that also applies to death spells (Kyrub already provided programming instructions)
*Zombies to be replaced by Cloak of Fear
*Blur now reduces damage by 20%
*Crack's Call brought back, but severe damage instead of instant-kill

[Anthony]

Cracks Call is 15 mana; doom bolt is 40; by extrapolation, it shouldn't average more than 3/8 of doom bolt, or 3.75, or 25% of 15. However, cracks call bypasses magic immunity, destroys walls, and does irreversible damage (all good), only affects grounded targets (bad), and is Uncommon instead of Rare, so overall I wouldn't set its damage to more than 10.

I wonder if it would be possible to make Earthquake usable in combat. Effects would be:
+10% to combat loss of citizens and buildings (similar to Magic Vortex)
Break all walls.
Cracks Call on all units (possibly including friendly?)

Probably too complicated.

Replacements for ice bolt would likely require redoing the animation, which seems annoying.

[zitro1987]

Good Idea on 'earthquake' breaking all city walls, but sounds like a really difficult task.

[Lucean]

I wouldn't take out Ice Bolt, as it's the only innate direct damage spell for Nature. Crack's Call may be more effective, but only when it works and you have target restrictions.

[kyrub]

*Petrify to be replaced by an enhanced 'web' spell that also deals damage to unit (approx 40-strength)
Nice idea, it should be possible. Maybe it could reduce unit health to 50% of the current (or 33% of the full) health instead of direct damage effect, to make it different and slightly less effective against wounded units, but potentially very solid against big targets?

I wouldn't take out Ice Bolt, as it's the only innate direct damage spell for Nature.
Good argument. Maybe zitro thought about replacing with some other type od damage spell? Since there are many tasks, I'd keep IB for now as it is.

Natures eye will good if it would detect invisible units overland.
Exactly! - Still not a fan of Nature's eyes. Could the spell make immune against monster and barbarian attacks on top or is it a far stretch? [Seems relatively easy to do.]

Good Idea on 'earthquake' breaking all city walls, but sounds like a really difficult task.
Breaking city walls is simple. Making damage to the town must be changed to "increase combat damage to the city", then it should be simple. Universal Cracks Call is possible. The biggest obstacles are: What other combat spell (of any color) makes coding space, e.g. will not be used in the game? What are the combat graphics and sound? Without these questions answered, it seems like a pretty big chunk of work.

*Life Force to be an automatic 'prayer' for all battles (... I wonder if this is not too complicated)
Good idea! Shouldn't be complicated.

Cracks Call
Good idea again, I wouldn't mind going with Anthony's 10-12 dmg but I'd increase chance 25%->33%, to make it less frustrating roulette.

*Replace exploitable 'stasis' with a 'word of recall' equivalent aimed at opponent units
I like how this works with current AI and it will be great anti-SOD instrument. It shouldn't be too cheap, to avoid exploits.

I am sorry, but healing at cities complete negates the weakness of death units.
There's some truth in this. I am also doubtful about the capacity of the AI to organize its units and use the spell effectively (which human player will). Suggestion: (variant a) Replace CoF with a global spell (Night of the Dead, 800 mana?) that can heal all undead units instantly. This is hard to exploit and AI will be able to use it effectively. (variant b) Like (a), but the spell is targetted at a stack, expensive (400 or 500m). This one seems much easier for interface and execution, although I find it slightly less desirable.

Suggestion: LIFE.
Heavenly Light is replaced by city spell Longevity. Increases population growth in the city by +X. Alternatively, it allows the use of an extra worker in the city. [not sure which variant is easier and/or more desirable].

[Asfex]

I am sorry, but healing at cities complete negates the weakness of death units. Healing must not excess the doombolt damage .( and even 7,5 by psionic blast fully buffed). Hovewer, city spells can increase healing effect , and dark city spells increase Life drain effect?
The main uses of death channel is gain immunities against direct damage spells (except fire and star fires).
Magic immunity is a core protection against fire direct damage spells (especialy,doombolt) .Hovever , its ishield increase effect may be moved to the other spell (breathe protection).

crack call can not be neither resistance based or immunity based nor life based. The main purpose if it to kill the regenerating high defence creatures. (and invisible ones).
Natures eye will good if it would detect invisible units overland. Also, earth to mud may show invisible units in combat.

Posession may have extreme spell strenght to be dispelled ( about 100- 150). In this way confusion + dispel magic may be remaked to not cause change ownership.

[Anthony]

I am sorry, but healing at cities complete negates the weakness of death units.

The only death units strongly affected by being unable to heal are zombies, skeletons, ghouls, night stalkers, and created undead; everything else has either regeneration or life steal. How about having Dark Rituals be required, though?

[kyrub]

*Switching 'Stream of Life' (rare) and 'Consecration' (very rare) placements as the latter is arguably much more powerful.
I think that Plane Shift (uncommon) needs to be moved to rare bracket. The spell is by far more powerful than Plane travel. The question is what should be moved to uncommon...? Could Consecration go to uncommon? I find defensive spells very weak generally, but it seems somewhat powerful with that it "auto-dispels" negative city spells. But then it's expensive... This or some other ideas?

*Heavenly Light & Steam of Life - the proposed 'pop growth' for heavenly Light makes sense if overpowered Stream of Life loses pop growth bonus
Fine by me. Looking forward to having a simple development city spell.

*Eternal Night is a boring spell ... here's a bunch of alternatives: (to be a perpetual 'black prayer' instead of a feeble 'darkness' ?) ... (alternative 4 - Eternal Night to completely eliminate opponent healing)
There are my preferences. Alternative 1 is super easy. Alternative 4 is great thematically, as it puts undead and living in the same boat. Questions remain with the interaction with other healing spells, combat healing, Herb Mastery et al.. There's certainly more work with the second choice.

*Earthquake idea 1 - to destroy all enemy walls during combat (same graphic and sound as earthquake)
*Earthquake idea 2 - overland spell that eliminates city walls (100% chance) and loses all other effects.
Earthquake 2 is very easy to do. A bit underwhelming? Units watching on the walls could be wounded... On the other hand, I'd like to conserve a bit lower cost, so that the AI could use the spell just before attacking. Not sure about the availability of the variant 1, although you seem to prefer it.

*Switch 'Counter Magic' and 'Blur' positions - or double effect of Blur to 20%
Nothing is easier than increasing Blur effect. I could see it increased to 25%, since 20% may still feel slightly undetectable.

*A healing spell that heals 10-15 points (rare or very rare life or nature)
I like it. First, it is the Nature that could use a healing spell, Life has a plenty. On very rare level there's regeneration, and the healing effect could be added to combat version of the spell, at 60 mana, it is sky high already, and probably unused. The other possibility, to create a new spell, so one has to make place. And we need combat graphics etc. More work.

*Teleport - replaces Magic Immunity. Grants the ability to teleport
Now that sounds exploitable by Human player as hell. Not that I don't like the idea, but it would have to have limitted uses somehow. Just for the turn - think we could do it.

*A spell that automatically destroys an outpost?
If so, it must be an early spell, max uncommon. I don't see the space in either chaos or death.

[zitro1987]

*If we're moving Plane Shift to 'rare' to avoid 3 plane-related spells out of 10 uncommon, I propose moving either 'mass healing' or 'Consecration' to uncommon.

*Eternal Night as 'black prayer' is strong enough for both players and opponents - worthy of 'very rare', probably use this and we could come up with something better if needed.
*If we are going for 'Eternal Night' as preventing healing, we could simply write on game text that healing only possible with magic. Herb Mastery, combat healing, and nature's cures. Otherwise, regular healing, regardless of shamans, animist guild not possible. An easy fix is to make all enemy units undead (but then again, they'll be immune to life-steal and some other spells of yours).
*Another 'Eternal Night' alternative - enemy population growth of all cities down to 0 (it may benefit opponents more than player)

*Earthquake to destroy city walls overland (no other buildings) and keep that chance that non-flying units die.

*Blur, I wouldn't go beyond 20%. A unit with 50% chance to hit is now 40% (instead of 45%). When taking shields into account, the damage reduction could be about 25-35%

*Nature healing spell, hard to think of a replacement.

*What if 'Flying Fortress' got replaced by a 'teleport' unit enchantment? 'very rare' can be unbalanced.

Isn't 'Astral Gate' kind of underwhelming as a 'very rare' spell?

[Anthony]

Actually, would it be possible to have Eternal Night be Node Aura (Death) and True Light be Node Aura (Life)? That's really powerful, but the concept of node auras already exists.

Here's a cute (though probably impractical) idea for flying fortress: a flying fortress is a summon, similar to a floating island, except (a) instead of swimming with transport 8, it has Wind Walk, and (b) if units are attacked while in a flying fortress, they get city walls even if not in a city.