Caster of Magic spell balancing for 1.1

[Seravy]

The jump from 1.0 to 1.1 is planned to contain all the fine tuning and balancing of all spells in the game that hasn't been done yet.

The following spells are considered to need further changes :

Move Fortress - This has no business being in Nature and should be Arcane, if at all present in the game.
Awareness - An uninteresting spell that completely eliminates the need of scouting and preventing enemy scouts from finding cities. Also redundant if you have Nature Awareness already. This can be removed to free up a global enchantment slot, and a slot in Arcane magic, the latter can be used by Move Fortress.
Psionic Spark - Not very interesting, and would be better to use this slot for something else, but I don't have any good ideas.
Vertigo - The spell itself is good the way it is, but would be more suitable to be a common, in place of Psionic Spark.
Haste - Far too overpowered effect, doubling the damage output of the target with no drawbacks whatsoever, including counterattack damage. No idea what to do with it, though.
Wall of Darkness - Effect feels more Sorcery than Death, but Sorcery has no need for another anti-ranged spell to go along with Guardian Wind and Mass Invisibility. Moving it to Sorcery would open up a slot in Death for a new spell, though.

That's pretty much all that's left, as you can see there is a chance to add a completely new Nature, Sorcery or Death global enchantment (and at least one Nature or Sorcery spell of any type, if it's not the enchantment), but I don't have any good ideas right now.

Additionally, spell changes I already did and plan to have in 1.1 are :

-Warp Creature now selects the effect at random like in the original game.
-Call Chaos now has a -15 resistance penalty when applying Warp Creature.
-Call Chaos now applies Confusion instead of the “do nothing” option. This effect cannot be resisted and bypasses any immunity.
-Great Wasting now corrupts 6-8 cells per turn instead of 4-6.
-Armageddon now generates 6-8 volcanoes per turn instead of 4-6.
-experimental : any new volcano raised has a 20% chance to contain a new mineral.
-Adjusted chance of each mineral :
Iron – 6
Coal – 3
Silver – 5
Gold – 2
Gems – 1
Mithril – 2
Adamantium - 1
-experimental : you can raise volcanoes over hills, mountains, or existing volcanoes.
-Phantom Beast costs 5 more mana
-Call Centaurs cost 3 more mana
-Construct Catapult costs 5 less mana
-Earth Elemental costs 10 less mana
-Gargoyles have +1 defense and +2 resistance
-Magic Vortex now does 7 damage.
-Magic Vortex will always hit any nearby unit with lightning. Strength of the lightning is 20.
-Chaos Surge now grants +2 resistance on top of the original effect.
-Multiple Chaos Surges are now cumulative, but the additional copies only grant +1 to stats instead of +2
-Shatter costs 2 less MP

Any new spell ideas for a Nature rare and Sorcery common or uncommon slot are welcome, and death is also an option, but then it would need to lose Wall of Shadows which I'm not so sure about. As much as I think that is a blue spell (it's illusion), it would be useless in blue.

[Seravy]

Some ideas :

Survival Instinct
Nature rare global enchantment
Cost : 600 MP
Maintenance : 15 MP
All fantastic creatures owned by the caster gain +2 resistance and +1 defense.

Magical Surge
Sorcery uncommon unit enchantment
Cost : 15/75 MP
Maintenance : 2 MP
Enchanted unit gains +3 to their magical ranged, Lightning or Fire breath attacks and gains +10 MP if they are a caster.

[zitro1987]

Many of these ideas are either mine or username Kyrub.

If you're not a fan of 'haste' and need a combat unit enchantment, how about 'teleport' ? (unit gains teleport ability until the end of combat)

'skeletons' to allow you to pick exactly where they show up (like with the floating island)

'Holy Arms' - add holy armor

'Chaos Rift' - not aggressive enough to balance out against animist-guild city healing, especially if combined with a shaman/priest. Suggest 8 -> 12 lightning bolt strength.

'Wraithform' +1 to defend (bringing usefulness to the level of a rare enchantment and costing 30/150 and 4-5 upkeep)

'fortify wall/defenses', a combat enchantment that adds +X armor to allied units only if defending a city (could be uncommon, rare)

-Ferocity (chaos common) - 15cost - Adds 2 movement point to enchanted unit (combat spell)

'Raise Volcano' - bring back 200 cost, but volcanos act like 'chaos nodes', therefore +2 stats to chaos units and the countering effects (may be difficult to program)

'Resist Elements' and 'elemental armor' to include armor and resistance against sorcery as well

A nature global enchantment that provides a lot of food to your empire.

Sorcery Uncommon - --Silence - 20 cost - Target unit loses all magical spells and mana.

Sorcery Uncommon --force field” - combat unit enchantment - uncommon - 25/125 cost - enchanted unit cannot act but drastically increases toughness

Sorcery Rare or Very Rare - Steal Artifact - steal random opponent item

Death common or uncommon - a spell that instantly destroys an outpost (-7 micro_pop)

Lycantrophy - option to cast in combat at 20% cost, converting a friendly unit to werewolves for duration of combat

[Seravy]

If you're not a fan of 'haste' and need a combat unit enchantment, how about 'teleport' ? (unit gains teleport ability until the end of combat)

I like haste but not the way it works currently. It's too powerful, you get to attack the enemy twice and only suffer one counterattack.
Although...I'm not sure. It's a balanced spell on most units, but on strong ones, it's a problem. For 50 Mp your sky drake fights as well as two...
At the same time, Sorcery is about control. Doubling melee damage is...anything but blue. Red? Sure, your unit does more damage. Black? They already have it in form of berserk. White? Well, it's a buff...and white has endurance too.
Time manipulation is blue, though, so I can't say it's not fitting...

I really don't know, maybe I'll just leave it the way it is.

[Seravy]

I think I'm gonna swap Haste with Flying Fortress, it's a reasonable as a very rare, it's just far too good to be just rare.
At the same time Flying Fortress was pretty useless as Very Rare, it came too late, by that time you generally did not need to defend your cities that much.
Spell Ward is fine as Very Rare because what is does is so awesome and it really does make your city almost impossible to take for wizards of the selected realm, but Flying Fortress is nowhere near that awesome.

Currently done :
Survival Instinct, new spell replacing Move Fortress as a Nature rare. It's a global enchantment that buffs all fantastic unit of the caster by 2 res, 1 melee, 1 defense.
Focus Magic new sorcery common unit enchantment, grants + magical ranged attack to units that have such, turns nonmagical ranged attacks to magical, or grants a strength 3 magical attack to other units. Adds +15 mp to casters.
Move Fortress, now an Arcane spell that cost more to cast (250 mp)
Awareness, Psionic Spark removed.
Nature Awareness renamed to just "Awareness" but has the better effect.
Vertigo, Wall of Shadows will stay unchanged.

Oh, zitro1987 you edited your post, let's see.

'Chaos Rift' - not aggressive enough to balance out against animist-guild city healing, especially if combined with a shaman/priest. Suggest 8 -> 12 lightning bolt strength.

Good idea, I think I will do this. I'm buffing Chaos in this update anyway.

'Wraithform' +1 to defend

Also good idea but I won't, I'm worried about stacking too much + to defend being unstoppable. You can already grant one with Endurance, another with prayer, and one with equipping a Divine Protection item. The Guardian retort can even bring it up to +4 on defending.
I think the current effect : Non-Corporeal, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity and magical weapons all in one is good enough.

'fortify wall/defenses', a combat enchantment that adds +X armor to allied units only if defending a city (could be uncommon, rare)

Can't do new combat global enchantments, or enchantments of any kind without replacing an existing one to use the memory bytes reserved for them.
Focus Magic is possible because Stone Skin is gone, and Survival Instinct is instead of Awareness.

Raise Volcano' - bring back 200 cost, but volcanos act like 'chaos nodes', therefore +2 stats to chaos units and the countering effects (may be difficult to program)

Yep, it is too difficult and it would be far too good for an uncommon.

'Resist Elements' and 'elemental armor' to include armor and resistance against sorcery as well

I think there is no need, every unit (except two heroes) do Nature or Chaos damage with their magical ranged attacks. Also, the new Sorcery spell will add a Sorcery type attack and I don't want it to be easy to resist, would make the spell weak otherwise.

A nature global enchantment that provides a lot of food to your empire.

Unnecessary, Change Terrain and Gaia's Blessing is excellent at this.

Sorcery Uncommon - --Silence - 20 cost - Target unit loses all magical spells and mana.

Thought about that but it would be very unfun.

Sorcery Uncommon --force field” - combat unit enchantment - uncommon - 25/125 cost - enchanted unit cannot act but drastically increases toughness

Been considering this as a curse on enemy units, actually.
I think this would be somewhat useless as a Sorcery spell, it's already easy to make units that cannot be attacked by the enemy in this realm (flight, invisibility, magic or missile immunity, flying fortress).. Would be excellent in Life, though.

Sorcery Rare or Very Rare - Steal Artifact - steal random opponent item

No idea how to program this and it's too overpowered as a combat spell, as items cost 1000s of mana. As an overland spell it would be hard to target, as you would need to know which enemy hero has an item, and you do not.

Death common or uncommon - a spell that instantly destroys an outpost (-7 micro_pop)

Interesting. Problem is by the time you scout the world to have targets, it's too late for it.

Lycantrophy - option to cast in combat at 20% cost, converting a friendly unit to werewolves for duration of combat

Sounds very good but I can't do this one. There are no more unused unit enchantment slots left. It would be quite hard to do even then, actually.

[Anthony]

I don't know if this is doable (though I think it would be), but giving units extra movement points at the start of each turn (without actually increasing move) would let them make more attacks than normally possible (since a melee attack costs half of max MP)