CHAOS Realm

[Nelphine]

Yeah my main thought is a high end game where two AI are very strong against a human player - then the chaos AI casts meteor storm and cripples the other AI. The human player won't be nearly as badly affected Depending on strategies but at least the human player has that option. The other AI doesn't.

[Seravy]

I realized one more problem with meteor.
You can steal nodes from everyone. Almost all of them. Their ghosts will die on the way towards the node, and the units guarding it will get weakened or wiped out. On the other hand, yours will be unaffected.
Although this is true in the reverse, if the AI casts it, they will steal your nodes. So I guess we don't need to worry about this afterall.

About the AI vs AI consideration...there are two cases. If they are not allied with everyone already, then the spell will be dispelled frequently. Even if not, a war might break out, in which case the "weak" AI's cities will be stolen by the strong AI, further powering it up. If there is a war ongoing and the other wizard knows Spell Blast, the Meteor will not be recast after dispelled.
If they are allied with everyone then...that's pretty bad. Then the Alliances will probably hold and the other 4 wizards will lose a lot of units and buildings. However in this case the player still has to deal with a 2v1 (or 4v1) situation and has to do so with Meteor Storm also hurting his economy and preventing him from using over half the unit types in the game.
However, almost everything in the very rare tier hurts allies a lot. Nature's Wrath, Suppress Magic, Armageddon, Great Wasting, Eternal Night, Evil Omens, Great Unsummoning and Death Wish all do.
Which might seem a bad thing that helps the human player, but it probably does not. Being allies means they won't do anything to stop these - no spell blast, no disjunction - so the player will be on the receiving end of it from all 4 other wizards, and he has the most vulnerable economy. (well not to meteor's unit damage part but to everything else, including building destruction)
Some of these are pretty nasty if combined, for example Suppress+Nature's Wrath mean both cheap and expensive spells are bad, Unsummon+Death Wish mean no type of unit is safe, and multiplies of Armageddon and Wasting, or multiples of Eternal Night are cumulative.
The other effect, if the game lasts long (and it probably will since stuff keeps blowing up), someone will get Spell of Mastery and a world war will break out. At that point whichever AI used these enchantments against his "allies" is much more likely to be able to overcome the others and win the game, which if the powers remained balanced then the war would go on forever and the human player would be in a good position to take advantage of it by attacking whoever is the weakest.
And finally, the player can't take advantage of the weak AI by attacking it without going to war with the entire world at once due to how Alliances work.

[GermanJoey]

For me, Meteor Storm is like pouring drano down a clogged shower drain, except in CoM the shower is "my own territory" and the clog is "enemy single-stacked javelineer carpet of doom." The real economic impact is the thousands of income I save on suicide units and combat spells trying to stem back the tide. Except for that, I don't think I'd ever want to cast the spell. The economic impact against the AI is nothing by the time you can cast a Very Rare spell, and the harm you do to your node and tower defensive stacks is harsh, and you also hurt your own offensive invading stacks. That said, it's a very harsh spell when the AI casts it against you, so maybe there's some merit in leaving it in just for that kinda reason.

With EW/FB, one thing I'd like to see from it is some kinda positive interaction with Chaos Channels and Doom Mastery. (and these, in turn, affect the value of a lotta of the high-end Chaos Magics, e.g. Chaos Surge, Warp Reality, etc) Right now, you can cast EW+FB on a unit first, and then manually cast Chaos Channels so that they can keep these enchantments. That can let you make some outstanding units for pretty cheap, which really helps Chaos in the early/mid parts of the game. However, that means Doom Mastery is a tradeoff: it saves you a load of mana and casting skill, but your resulting units will be weaker. That's usually worth it, especially for some units, like Turtles, as quantity can be better than quality. However, others, like Draconian Halberdiers, Hordes, or even Doom Drakes or Minotaurs, feel like they've got something missing...

[namad]

Don't actually do that. Pouring draino down a drain can damage the pipes and even violates most rental agreements.

[GermanJoey]

Bug report:

Setup: enemy wizard has Wall of Fire cast on their city. Enemy units leave the city (to advance towards me), and then reenter it (i.e. in retreat). They take damage from their own wall of fire! I also noticed this happening with units summoned outside of the city tiles (summoned centaurs that were trying to kite me).

[Seravy]

Bug report:

Setup: enemy wizard has Wall of Fire cast on their city. Enemy units leave the city (to advance towards me), and then reenter it (i.e. in retreat). They take damage from their own wall of fire! I also noticed this happening with units summoned outside of the city tiles (summoned centaurs that were trying to kite me).

That's how the spell always worked and what the description says. "units entering", not "enemy units entering".

[GermanJoey]

Oh, did not know that. That's surprising.

[Nelphine]

Given our changes to meteor storm and great unsummoning, maybe change that? Doewnt seem to fit the mod for it to hurt own units, and the AI does silly things like germanjoey explained.

[Seravy]

I'm considering to improve Call the Void to 12 damage, 66% building and population destruction.

Explanation :
Call the Void is meant to be used as an economic attack, the most powerful one in the game.
50% destruction of buildings sounds very impressive, however the rare Earthquake for about a third of the cost does 40%, making this vastly inferior in this regard despite the higher rarity. This is escalated by how building destruction chance works : replaced buildings cannot be destroyed this way, so the roll is actually only made on about half the buildings existing in the city.
50% destruction of population is impressive, and corrupted tiles ensure it won't grow back (unless cleaned) but Pestilence can cripple population down to 1-4 remaining population over time for a single casting and a cheaper cost...and keeps it that low until dispelled. Of course, not being able to dispel it is a nice bonus which makes the spell stand out, but the trade off is it's a oneshot effect, the city will regrow by the time you finish nuking half of them and then you have to start over. While corrupted tiles are great, if the enemy knows ways to neutralize it (gaea's blessing, consecration, shaman, especially troll shaman who can work during Meteor Storm) there is nothing preventing the city to grow back to its original size. Finally, the spell also damages units and very well at that but...there is a slight problem : unless the defenders are really that tough, Fire Storm is a better way to start an attack, since after CoV the city you conquered will be pretty much worthless. Which means the damage is basically an economy attack as well, through destroying units that need to be built again. However, 10 damage actually does not kill most units. Any 6 figure unit with 2 hit points can survive it, as well as any 4 figure unit with 3 hit points. At 12 damage these units also die. As the health of units is generally higher than it used to be, this extra 2 damage will merely restore the original function of the spell. It also ensures two shots can kill most normal units in the game,even at elite level, such as stag beetles or dragon turtles, unless they are given too much time to recover.

[Nelphine]

I think I'm OK with those. 66% seems very high, but, I'd certainly try it.