NATURE Realm

[Seravy]

My ideas :

War bears : Don't know yet. Maybe it was underperforming because of prayer and the good armor of klackons. In the other game they clearly lost to black sleep. I have to try using them more to see. They might be better than it looks.
Catapult : magical weapons and they should count as Nature units if summoned this way. Or a new spell. Probably not warship though, checking for sea combat would be hard. If you mean overland, lack of summoning graphics would crash the game, and summoning into non-coastal cities would be a problem.
Centaurs : They should count as nature units if summoned otherwise they're fine. Unlike catapults, these don't need a hit bonus, they do enough damage usually without.
Cockatrices : fine as is but not sure about cost. Maybe don't need a change, I was just using it on the wrong type of enemy.
Lizard : I think going with 22 melee but keeping 6 armor instead of 8, and keeping regeneration is fine. 250 mana is a lot especially for an uncommon that is weak to black sleep, confusion and a bunch of other spells...and still is barely stronger than a halberdier with prayer (wasn't even max level halberdiers).
Fairy Dust : I agree +1 strength is probably enough. Maybe Fireball also needs +1? It isn't very impressive for an uncommon, especially compared to lightning bolt or other chaos spells.
Pathfinding : Rename to "Land Link". Enchanted unit gains pathfinding. If it is fantastic, it also gains +2 armor and melee. Can be used in combat. This gives more relevant options for battle and can make the otherwise just a bit too weak creatures shine again. Nature not having any stat buffs until rare is weird to begin with.

[namad]

Pathfinding is more common in your mod, I think the spell should be upgraded. I think though that perhaps the spell should add +1 movement. Situational but more in theme? if you went with my old idea of renaming large shield pathfinding could also grant that (it would be in theme if the rename was to something like cover or camoflague or ranged defense +2 perhaps? robin hood was famously hard to hit with arrows)

I think all summons should be fantastic units, just for consistency sake. So summoned normal units are fantastic but the same unit when built is not.

Nature lacks buffs because you removed several. Yes the ones you removed from the game were awful, but maybe if they came with bigger numbers or renamed and new effects they wouldn't be?

IMO nature was never that great even in the base game. One of my least favorite realms to play as a kid. Life was boring but at least life warlord was strong.

Cracks call was amazing in the original game because you could save the game go into a lair with a single enemy colossus against your 2 sprites and then win 25% of the time and reload the game if you wanted to be lame, or just attack four times if you didn't.

The fact a successful cracks call doesn't slay very rare creatures anymore imo makes it worthless. IMO remove the random factor, just make it a direct damage spell that is a bit overpriced (because nature doesn't do direct damage) but it still overpowers fairy dust against single targets AND it has the side effect of the interaction with walls to help make it useful to have in your spellbook? Alternatively give yourself over to the RNG gods and let it slay a colossus again.

If you want to buff nature's eye maybe make it more like heavenly light? (or remove it from the game in favor of a new idea).

Looking at magic the gathering the green color is often seen as dealing with lands, mana, defense, anti-flying, etc... Maybe a new common nature enchantment could be to add +0 thrown to a unit? or maybe +1? (the purpose would be to allow non-flying normal units commanded by a nature wizard to attack with their full regular attack a flying opponent.) Maybe a bit redundant with web... however "reach" is an evergreen magic the gathering keyword for green. I don't know of any other way in the code to allow such a behavior other than to add 1 thrown or 1 fire breathe (or 0 thrown if 0 isn't a violation of the code, zero might suck too much anyways so maybe 1 is better?).

[Seravy]

Situational but more in theme?

No thanks I already had enough situational spells that couldn't stop a stack of 3 halbderiers :D
Movement is situational. Ranged defense is also situational (and Sorcery is IMMUNITY at common for that.)

Yes the ones you removed from the game were awful, but maybe if they came with bigger numbers or renamed and new effects they wouldn't be?

That doesn't work. Giant Strength with 2 swords is Flame Blade...except better because it can be used on any unit. Stone Skin at 2 shields is Holy Armor, see above. Increasing the numbers was never an option for these two because spells that do the same thing with 2 exist.

IMO remove the random factor, just make it a direct damage spell that is a bit overpriced (because nature doesn't do direct damage)

The fair price for 20 unpreventable, magic immunity bypassing, doom damage that's prevents regeneration, without random, is what, 120 mana? 150? 200? This isn't doable. Especially not as uncommon. And the spell has to do this much damage since it's one of the very few ways the AI can counter heroes while having a reasonable chance getting it.
It's not that the spell is bad. But in the early game I can cast it once per battle. That's acceptable if I attack. On defense, not, it means I have 75% chance to lose my city. So I can't use it unless I have no other option. Even then it doesn't help against a large number of not-so-strong enemies.
Restoring infinite damage is an option but the spell was overpowered to begin with, we probably should not go that way. It's still very very strong, just situational...it should be, that's what it is meant to be. The problem is not this spell, the problem is the total lack of non-situational spells that can be used instead.

What Nature needs to be playable is higher numbers. In MtG it was good because it had the highest numbers on their creatures for the lowest cost. In here, it doesn't, instead we have situational weak sprites, medicore bears, situational cockatrices and now very good but also situational spiders. And then we have a not situational lizard which is supposed to work but it did not because it simply is too weak to beat halberdiers if they have a prayer! On top of costing so much to research and summon that it's barely an early game spell anymore, more a midgame one. If I had a way to buff their armor to not die after killing one halberdier then they could have dealt with halberdiers as they were supposed to. But Nature doesn't even have a way to buff until rare! At all! Even Death and Chaos buffs earlier than Nature!

I don't know of any other way in the code to allow such a behavior other than to add 1 thrown or 1 fire breathe (or 0 thrown if 0 isn't a violation of the code, zero might suck too much anyways so maybe 1 is better?).

Problem : I can't deal enough damage to kill a halberdier unless I sacrifice a way more expensive unit to do so.
Suggestion : add a 0 strength attack buff.
???How would this help at all? I fail to understand. It would just make the realm even worse.

[Azvael]

Please forgive me my wall of text.

Regarding nature realm...

I'm not an expert by any means (I can barely beat the game on hard), but I do play a lot of nature magic. Here's my two cents, for what it's worth:

In general, I consider nature to be one of the weaker realms. It wouldn't be a first choice for an average, situational strategy or a conquest strategy. Where it shines is with its summonings and its utility spells. The ability to terraform one's territory in order to maximize a specific resource strategy (magical power or increased production, for instance) as well as being able to turn every city into a fertile utopia is a big deal and one of the major draws for me. The map revealing spells are very powerful, IMO. They provide reconnaissance ability that no other realm possesses. Nature is "weaker" because it sacrifices combat power for utility options.

While nature is much improved in COM, it is still pretty weak in the earlygame when compared to the other realms. To be honest, it survives the earlygame with a stack of sprites, used to quickly capture neutral cities (8 sprites with resist elements can take any neutral city except trolls or high archer garrisons) or situational lairs and nodes. Without this tactic, nature falls quickly behind.

Here are the weak spots as I see them:

War bears: I rely heavily on sprites, and almost never use war bears (WB). WBs only advantage is it's cheap to summon and maintain. A stack of 8 WBs can be used to take a neutral city (the above-mentioned trolls or archer garrisons), but why go to the trouble when I can just use normal troops?

Solution: Increase the movement to around 3 to 4. Right now, WBs are as fast as infantry. Actual bears are terrifyingly fast when they run, but not so much as a horse, so a movement faster than infantry but less than cavalry might do the trick. Add forester to that, and suddenly you've got a fast, mobile army I want to keep around to mix in with the giant spiders.

Giant spiders: Much improved now, but seem somehow off. I'd really like to see them with a move of 4 (cavalry level -- they're spiders, they're fast), dump the missile immunity and wall crusher, and add fear (because GIANT SPIDERS! OMG RUN!!!).

Cockatrices and basilisks: In vanilla MOM, I considered cockatrices useless and basilisks my mid-game death army. In the COM 2.4, that's reversed. I've found cockatrices to be very viable in the earlygame and early to mid-midgame. While weak, their stoning is excellent and they can fly. They're great at hunting and killing AI wizard forces, but mediocre in dealing with lairs and nodes.

Basilisks are the exact opposite: better for lairs and nodes and mediocre when used against AI wizards.

Because black sleep. And yes, I know basilisks and cockatrices have the same resistance, but for some reason, Rjak seems to only cast them on basilisks, and not the cockatrices. I've never lost a rooster to black sleep, but I've lost armies of lizards to that spell.

Death magic has an advantage over nature for this reason.

Solution: I dunno. Dump basilisk’s stoning and Increase the resistance by +1? I don't mind losing my big guns to black sleep, because that's what that spell does, but i seem to lose a lot of basilisks to this spell.

Fairy dust: Great idea, but it's too weak. +1 damage.

Crack's Call: One of the very rare instances where I disagree with Servay. IMO, it's now too weak. I disagree with the idea that it was too strong originally. Death gets its "Resist or Die" spell in the form of black sleep. Crack's call did the same, but now, rather than being a gamble one-shot, it's a gamble maybe-shot. I don't use it. It wastes needed skill points.

Solution: revert it back to resist or die, and adjust costs as appropriate.

Summon catapult: Great idea, but also too weak. Catapults have a decent damage, but they're killed too fast to be useful as a combat summons.

Solution 1: Replace it with another summons: giant spiders, or perhaps manticores (one tier up from centaurs).

Solution 2: Replace it with a combat buff. Since we already have iron skin, why not bring back stone skin? Make it half as strong as iron skin and half as expensive. Nature's early game would be helped by the addition of another combat buff beyond resist elements.

The other spells that I haven't mentioned are either perfect, near-perfect, or I haven't used them enough to comment. I love nature's eye. Water walking is very useful. Pathfinding is a little weak IMO, but still good. Resist elements is now worth casting. Etc. etc.

[Seravy]

While nature is much improved in COM, it is still pretty weak in the earlygame when compared to the other realms. To be honest, it survives the earlygame with a stack of sprites, used to quickly capture neutral cities (8 sprites with resist elements can take any neutral city except trolls or high archer garrisons) or situational lairs and nodes. Without this tactic, nature falls quickly behind.

I agree. However in my recent game, I did manage to expand to as much as 10 cities (not even neutral, I took it from already banished wizards thanks to luck) but without any decent option for my military, I wasn't able to defend myself afterwards, and lost all my cities on my main continent including my capital as the game progressed. From that position, against a wizard with no better summoning than nagas, and no better units than klackon halberdiers, losing should not happen. So even early expansion does not help to survive - maybe I should have tried to push research to rares instead of trying to defend myself with uncommons but I didn't have the casting skill either to consider that viable. Being relatively weak on common spells is fine, also uncommons, is not.

War bears: I rely heavily on sprites, and almost never use war bears (WB). WBs only advantage is it's cheap to summon and maintain. A stack of 8 WBs can be used to take a neutral city (the above-mentioned trolls or archer garrisons), but why go to the trouble when I can just use normal troops?

As you point out the problem on the bears, a cheap summoning cost does not help if the unit is merely as strong as also cheap normal units. As is, a unit of bears seems weaker than a unit of halberdiers : both have 16 health but the bears only have 2 figures of 8 melee while halberdiers have 6*5. Yes the bears have an extra point of armor but...that's about it. It makes them amazingly durable vs swordmen and similar units, but pretty much worthless if those units gain levels and obtain magical weapons, since their large number of figures will allow them to kill the bears effectively.
I think what they need is either better stats or more figures : I'm tempted to go with 3 figures with 1 less melee and health than the current. Increasing movement to 3 also makes sense.

Giant spiders: Much improved now, but seem somehow off. I'd really like to see them with a move of 4 (cavalry level -- they're spiders, they're fast), dump the missile immunity and wall crusher, and add fear (because GIANT SPIDERS! OMG RUN!!!).

These have already been changed, just still being tested so the change is not yet in the public version, see the above posts. I'm happy with their new stats so far.
I don't want to do fear because it's just another resist based effect, and also because spiders are strong vs ranged - adding fear would make them strong vs melee as well, since fear rolls at -3 even high 8 resistance units that barely take damage from poison would only have a 50% chance to retaliate. I'm worried this might make the spiders overpowered. Although bless, and resist magic do help against fear. Maybe I should try it for a test run and see.

Cockatrices and basilisks: ...

What you describe is because the AI uses spells based on relative calculated power of the two armies. The military power the AI assigns for the two units are different, one puts it in a range where black sleep receives higher priority, the other does not. If different - stronger or weaker - units go together with the creatures or the enemy army has different units, the used spell might also change.

Fairy dust: Great idea, but it's too weak. +1 damage.

Yes, I'm going to do that.

Crack's Call: One of the very rare instances where I disagree with Servay. IMO, it's now too weak. I disagree with the idea that it was too strong originally. Death gets its "Resist or Die" spell in the form of black sleep. Crack's call did the same, but now, rather than being a gamble one-shot, it's a gamble maybe-shot. I don't use it. It wastes needed skill points.

Solution: revert it back to resist or die, and adjust costs as appropriate.

It never was a resist or die spell, which is the main feature. It ignores all resistance and immunities, it's a 25% chance on anything. Even on a hydra or behemoth. If those would die in one hit from the spell, that indeed would be too overpowered.

Solution 2: Replace it with a combat buff. Since we already have iron skin, why not bring back stone skin? Make it half as strong as iron skin and half as expensive. Nature's early game would be helped by the addition of another combat buff beyond resist elements.

See above, Holy Armor already does that and I don't want two identical spells.

[namad]

My ideas were flawed. Yes the exact numbers I suggested were awful. I do think that nature needs a new common spell that improves them in combat in the form of a spell that is either a buff, debuff, or direct damage spell. I have no idea where to get this spell from so I'll keep brain storming.

What about crack's call 10 damage 50% chance?
What if either the damage or the chance goes up when the unit is next to a wall? (100%)
I do agree that crack's call is hard to balance, it was way too strong in the base game.


War bears suck. Fix that somehow without ruining all the other similar common creatures?
If 2 attack or 2 defense is too much what about 1 attack AND 1 defense so half flame blade half holy armor? Call it giant growth to pay homage to magic the gathering maybe?

Or how about 1 thrown or 1 fire breath? 1<2 but the situational benefit of going first and hitting flying could be worth it?
Or heck give the unit 2 thrown OR 2 fire breath at common! a 2 strength attack that is separate will have trouble penetrating shields so it won't be better than flame blade strictly? it will allow hitting flying and potentially slaying figures before they retaliate.

Sprites die too easily. Solution? Give nature holy armor. Find a way to make it different.
Nature's holy armor could effect only fantastic units? Ideal to combo with sprites?
Also I thought large shield worked against rocks and magic? Which makes it not strictly worse compared to guardian wind.

What about both then?
Large Shield+1 thrown attack on the same common spell? Maybe too OP? Both are very situational but when combined give a raw score value approaching that of what life would give you but while feeling different?
Is it possible to make the enchantment that adds +1 thrown attack also boost the units base ranged score by 1 if it cannot gain the thrown attack because it's a sprite or bowman?
That way if you give it to the sprite it gains large shield +1 attack but if you give it to your own halberdier it gains 1 thrown attack and large shield?
Heck throw in +1 ammo to if you want? That'd help sprites quite a lot. (Heck if you want merge this idea onto pathfinding to save spell slot space? +1 ammo +1 ranged attack +large shield +pathfinding all on one spell? The thrown/breath makes literally no sense though to be on pathfinding.... that's the nature problem though so many situational spells players love and would hate to see removed where is the room to add a new good workhorse use always option?)

If large shield as an enchantment is too distasteful what about first strike at uncommon? Could be good against enemy normal units that are about as strong as halberdiers but don't have negate first strike.
You could remove nature's cures from the game and merge nature's cures into nature's eye? making it a stream of life? (as in healing units to full in the city every turn but none of the other features of stream of life).


Also IMO life isn't fair. Life books+normal units early game is basically the strongest possible AI start. They have the cheating production gold and mana to produce a large normal army with a lot of buffs with no clear weakness.
If the enemy halberdiers had only prayer though and no heroism and no holy armor then maybe nature is truly awful.

[Seravy]

Tested the regenerating army of lizards this game. They're pretty good but not that outstanding. A strong enough army might even beat 9 of them (even with survival instinct) but where they really have problems is they are unable to beat shadow demons, night stalkers, chaos spawns, gorgons, die to confusion, you need enough mp to cast web on every enemy that flies, generally need at least twice as many lizards than enemy rare creatures if they have those, and are so expensive you probably won't have more than 1-2 such stacks. Yes they will take most cities you can reach (you need to cast water walking on all of them, ships are an option but if sank, regeneration won't save you so it's great risk) but they won't be there to defend them : keeping a stack of 6-9 lizards in every city is not an option, you have to move towards the next city and then the previous just gets retaken.
(this was on extreme difficulty, they might be much more effective on hard or normal, but they still get stopped by shadow demons, wraiths, chaos spawn, night stalkers, gorgons, confusion, and a bunch of other things)
Overall regeneration doesn't feel overpowered at all.

[Azvael]

I agree. However in my recent game, I did manage to expand to as much as 10 cities (not even neutral, I took it from already banished wizards thanks to luck) but without any decent option for my military, I wasn't able to defend myself afterwards, and lost all my cities on my main continent including my capital as the game progressed. From that position, against a wizard with no better summoning than nagas, and no better units than klackon halberdiers, losing should not happen. So even early expansion does not help to survive - maybe I should have tried to push research to rares instead of trying to defend myself with uncommons but I didn't have the casting skill either to consider that viable. Being relatively weak on common spells is fine, also uncommons, is not.

LOL. You just described a typical heavy-nature, hard difficulty game for me.

IME (again, I suck at this game, but I do play a lot of nature) nature does better as myrran + conjuror. The isolation time, however short, helps nature get started, nature needs a strong race to start (I usually pick dark elves or beastmen), and transmute is made more useful by myrran's better minerals.

In this scenerio, I usually have a little time to build my empire before I make contact with other wizards. Conjuring is a must-have for nature, IMO, and I try to get a flock of 8 cocatcies up ASAP. Regular units relagated to defence, with small amount put into a mixed-race army used to supplement my fantastic creatures. Doing this, I find I can survive quite a bit longer before I'm finally crushed.

...snip...

I think what they (war bears) need is either better stats or more figures : I'm tempted to go with 3 figures with 1 less melee and health than the current. Increasing movement to 3 also makes sense.

I like your idea a lot. Makes sense and would make bears worthwhile.

...snip...
I don't want to do fear (giant spiders) because it's just another resist based effect, and also because spiders are strong vs ranged - adding fear would make them strong vs melee as well, since fear rolls at -3 even high 8 resistance units that barely take damage from poison would only have a 50% chance to retaliate. I'm worried this might make the spiders overpowered. Although bless, and resist magic do help against fear. Maybe I should try it for a test run and see.

I didn't think of that point regarding fear. Good point. I agree.

What you describe is because the AI uses spells based on relative calculated power of the two armies. The military power the AI assigns for the two units are different, one puts it in a range where black sleep receives higher priority, the other does not. If different - stronger or weaker - units go together with the creatures or the enemy army has different units, the used spell might also change.

Ah, thank you for explaining that.

It never was a resist or die spell, which is the main feature. It ignores all resistance and immunities, it's a 25% chance on anything. Even on a hydra or behemoth. If those would die in one hit from the spell, that indeed would be too overpowered.

A fair point. However, I still prefer the original. As a player, I just don't use the current version. 25% chance to do some decent damage, once or twice in a combat due to limited spell points vs. casting multiple combat summonings, earth to mud to slow infantry, or even three to four ice bolts. Tried it, and didn't find it an efficient use of my skill points.

The original crack's call was useful when ambushed by an opponent you couldn't hope to beat. You cast it in the hope your army or city will survive. It added a much-needed, overpowered attack spell to a magic realm that otherwise sucks at attacking. Yes, it's strong, but it's a gamble, and it dosen't even work on flying or ethereal creatures (again, Rjack is in a superior position against Freya).

Plus, playing against it was fun. It added a lot of apprehension when facing off against a nature wizard. I mean, the original CC was the reason I used to fear Freya. Now, she's just an annoyance.

Don't get me wrong. Your logic here is sound, and if you keep CC as is, I wouldn't complain. I just disagree that the original was overpowered, considering how relatively weak the nature realm is overall.

[Azvael]

Sprites die too easily. Solution? Give nature holy armor. Find a way to make it different. Nature's holy armor could effect only fantastic units? Ideal to combo with sprites?

I just wanted to chip in here and say I think sprites are about perfect. Yes, they're fragile. They're supposed to be. They're extremely effective in a very narrow range of circumstances. I think they fit this role very well and don't need any additional changes.

[Seravy]

Don't get me wrong. Your logic here is sound, and if you keep CC as is, I wouldn't complain. I just disagree that the original was overpowered, considering how relatively weak the nature realm is overall.

I did think about it meanwhile and there is one very strong reason why it can't be restored.
Hero strategies are Sorcery and Life mainly. Those two realms can't protect heroes from crack's call. (yes there is flight but web bypasses magic immunity and removes flight) So hero strategies would not be viable at all unless going as far as playing death books just for wraith form. With 20 damage, Crack's Call is still strong against hero strategies - strong enough to be a threat - but not impossible to deal with. A high enough level hero, with lion heart, charm of life, or healing charge can survive a hit, and then get healed (only by healing charge though) before the next turn if the player pays attention.