Heroes...overpowered?

[GermanJoey]

Awesome, really looking forward to this patch.

IMHO I wouldn't worry too much about weakening Life, as its so good at enabling a normal unit based strategy between the cheap common buffs and all the rare city enchantments. I think that if you want to make an uncommon Life spell into a common in order to make Endurance into a uncommon, the best one to choose, balance-wise, would be Divine Order. That's because a.) its not really a spell that helps you early game and thus won't really change how Life is played in the first few years, but you still might want to choose it at start in order to guarantee that you have it (especially for a multi-book strat), and b.) the main thing that limits its use is its high casting cost and mana upkeep rather than its research cost.

[Seravy]

That's because a.) its not really a spell that helps you early game and thus won't really change how Life is played in the first few years, but you still might want to choose it at start in order to guarantee that you have it (especially for a multi-book strat), and b.) the main thing that limits its use is its high casting cost and mana upkeep rather than its research cost.

That spell has a way too large impact on the overall game balance to be common. Yes you can't cast it early, but the AI will and by making it common, the number of AI wizards having it increases. So Life becomes more powerful across the board without having to do anything for it.
It is cumulative with itself too, so if more AIs cast it, the effect is escalated. It's fine if you end up with a game where 2-3 wizards use the spell every once in a while as it encourages adapting and using new strategies (if not playing Life when it happens, ofc) but if that was the normal case, it would tip the balance towards enchantment based strategies.

I'm already thinking about reducing the 25% effects to 20% as it feels a bit too high impact.

[GermanJoey]

Oh, that's a good point, I forgot that it stacked when I wrote that post.

What about Exorcise as a common?

[Seravy]

Oh, that's a good point, I forgot that it stacked when I wrote that post.

What about Exorcise as a common?

Nah, would be too similar to Star fires, and save or die should not be common in Life.

[GermanJoey]

Maybe axe it and give Life a new spell then?

[Seravy]

I'll finish playing a game or two with heroes and see if it's necessary. I like the spell and would prefer to keep it if possible.

[zitro1987]

True Sight or Planar Travel could be common spells. They're more subtle or situational, therefore fitting in well as common. Some of your common unit enchantments are more powerful (cause fear, focus magic, and I seem to underestimate wraihtform)

[Seravy]

Halfway through my Sorcery/Life Tactician game. Extreme difficulty.
The dungeon changes really make a huge difference.
I was able to eliminate the first two wizards (both lizardmen, one Chaos Sorcery, one Chaos Life), didn't have much choice there as they were playing realms that are a huge late game threat so they usual approach of staying away from them because lizardmen is strong early but weak late was not an option.
The remaining two wizards both had Crack's Call and playing blue white I had no armies to use against them. While I had many javelineers, they aren't very good against Entangle and Guardian Wind, I can't rely on them.
Attacks are coming from everywhere, earthquakes almost every turn, so not much opportunity for making better units - I'm trying to get an army of Elven Lords and orc magicians as I only have lizardmen, elf and orc cities.
Whan makes the biggest impact is the nodes. Unlike in previous games, a lot of nodes are open and they are constantly under attack. Magic spirits keep coming, I have to fight off at least one each turn...and doing that costs me additional units and weakens my already insufficient defenses. I didn't get any of the "big" spells that win the game like Sky Drake or Supreme Light. I did get Enlightenment and Time Stop so most likely my only way to win is to go for Spell of Mastery...but one of the remaining wizards is a runemaster with Aether Binding. He dispells my Enlightenment all the time. Fortunately I was able to find Spell Blast in a tower, but if I cast anything longer than a turn, I miss the chance to spell blast so it's not helping that much. At this point I'm considering to attack his capital with my heroes anyway, as the defenses seem poor, 5 heroes and a basilisk. I might lose one or two to Crack's Call but I don't think I can keep up defending against both wizards and deal with disjunction spam and incoming magic spirits any longer. I've already lost 3 cities. To make things worse he also casts Famine on my remaining cities. The other wizard, on Myrror, is not that bad yet, no disjunctions and no Death books..but the 4 Sorcery she has is worrying and combat against Entagle+Call Lightning is difficult.

Overall, I feel the balance of heroes is much better
-They don't work on every wizard, as you need specific items to block specific spells, and treasure is not abundant enough to have one for every hero from it. Or to have one at all.
-The AI is smarter with using Magic Spirits and much more nodes are clear so defenses have to be spread even thinner. It's impossible to send a hero after every incoming spirit or stack threatening a node.
-No extra books or retorts from treasure yet, so I don't have an excessive amount of options
-The heroes are quite a lot less powerful as I could only fill half my slots and with medicore or weak items only. They can still beat typical normal unit stacks effortlessly but I don't think they are up to fighting stacks of rare summons.
-Despite having a windwalker hero, it takes long to reach targets on the map, as there are no movement bonus items. I didn't find a single one the hero could equip.

If I manage to win the hero vs hero battle at the wizard's capital, I can still win. Otherwise, probably lost. And this is only Extreme, not Impossible.

Edit :
I managed to take that capital and some more cities. The wizard returned to the Myrran place where he is no longer reachable by the heroes as it's too far - unlike in previous versions where I could have covered that distance in 2 turns. The heroes are effective at countering Crack's Call on their own, as they all fly the enemy has to web them first and they can dispel it. So they can keep getting me new cities, roughly one every 2nd turn but it's not enough. I lose cities on other continents at equal or even faster rate. I do not have any strong late game summon, nor the casting skill to use them in large quantities. Normal units can't hope to deal with incoming Djinn and such, especially when backed up by Entangle and Call Lightning. The wizard I failed to eliminate researched Demon Lord meanwhile. I could still win if I had Flying Fortress and Uranus' Blessing on all cities plus a wizard's build and amplifying tower, with that much casting power I could use Storm Giants as defenses or just rely on summoning lots of phantoms in combat, but I had no chance to cast that. Uranus' Blessing is prohibitively expensive if you are busy fighting against the entire world. I don't think this game is winnable anymore, especially as I looked into the game data and the Myrran wizard is researching Time Stop. I can't even hold my cities when I get turns, lol.

I think the following helped the AI win :
-Entangle and Call Lightning. Older versions rarely used these spells and they are massively game changing. Especially the former which I fixed today.
-More active use of Magic Spirits
-Two lizardmen enemies that had to be beaten yet provided me with worthless cities afterwards.
-AI no longer getting stuck in towers. I don't think a Myrran wizard has even managed to actually threaten me while I was playing on Arcanus.
-The hero and dungeon changes, obviously.

This makes it the first time the AI actually won against me in late game when I was playing Sorcery+Life. And what's funny, it could have been much worse. Neither of the last two wizards had dispelling Wave.

[GermanJoey]

I agree, the balance is much much better. I had a couple sessions with experiences similar to yours; I've had time to play 4 2-hours sessions so far:

1.) Extreme, 8 Chaos + Sage Master + Specialist + Warlord + Lizardmen. Got EW/FB/CC on some javelineers very early plus Brax, proceeded to stomp. I had very lucky land though; a large lush continent all to myself, while all 4 of the AIs ended up being on small islands far away from me.

2.) Extreme, 7 Sorcery + Sage Master + Specialist + Alchemy + Archmage + Barbarians. Before this version, I thought Barbs were the second-worst race (better than gnolls), but now I think they're pretty good. I was able to variously use Swordsmen, Bowmen, Cavalry, and of course Berserkers for clearing all sorts of neutral stuff and ended up having a lightning fast start. The barb's awesome mobility was a key factor here. 3 of the 4 AIs were on little islands but my development was so fast that I don't think they woulda stood a chance anyways. I killed two of them and then called it "good enough" by the end of the session, as I was starting to get into Very Rares and the remaining AIs were nowhere close to that, I think.

3a.) Impossible. 8 Nature + Archmage + Conjurer + Sage Master + Specialist + Klackons. I had super awesome land but got wrecked! AI lizardmen came across the ocean and cleared out practically everything. Also, they all hated me and I had unstoppable army at my doorstep in early 1404.
3b.) Extreme. 4 Nature + 4 Death + Runemaster + Archmage + Conjurer + Elves. Ended up going about the same as the above.

4.) Current Game, and man is it freaking crazy. Same as the above except Klackons again. Here, I had a big continent that I split with others, but they all had plenty of land too. I broke through to Myrror in 1403 via sprites against phantom beasts, and ended up right near the Myrran wizard's fortess, whoops, sorta opened pandora's box there. But, its fine, as pretty much every tower on the map was open by the end of 1406! The really weird thing about this game is that everyone is at peace with everyone, so development is super fast. I've been pumping adamant halbers outta 3 cities for dozens of turns just to inflate my power but I'm still lagging behind. My fame is crazy low (due to the AIs clearing so much of the neutrals) that unit expenses are actually tanking my economy down to almost nothing. The AIs have more rares than me too, as I can see in the trade screens. (I've gotten tons of spells from trades this game). This game probably woulda been a loss except for the fact that I found a temple with 6 Night Stalkers and 3 werewolves, the former of which I easily cleared with spearmen and zombies. My prize? Entangle and 88 mana, wow! That enabled me to clear a bunch of other things and get me back into the game. I just took out the Myrran guy after realizing that the pair of golems in his city meant that I could probably wear him down with wave of despair (another neutral prize). So, I blew 2000 gold, 4 spites, 4 spiders, and 2 centaurs, and then pooled all my best items on my Thief to take out the golem pair in the 4th battle. Expensive as hell but the only way I could ever see beating him, as his capital had adamant + orcichalcum dark elves, and he also has a city producing adamant doom drakes somewhere. However, this guy probably had the least cities on Myrror at this point, and certainly had the smallest army/power/skill according to the demographics, so I sure ain't outta the woods yet. I have no idea how this one will turn out, and its very exciting!

Thoughts:
1.) The neutral camp changes make races with good early-game but bad late game much more viable now. I used to think Barbs and Nomads were pretty bad before, but they're both pretty reasonable choices now I think. (still wouldn't ever pick gnolls, except for the Gnoll Challenge...)
2.) Heroes are much better balanced. They're still your star units, but they don't seem to dominate the game to the point that all of your other units don't matter. It's way harder to kite units around. The decrease in uber items (due to neutral camp tweaking) also makes a big difference... it doesn't feel like the types of craziness that could happen before could happen now.
3.) The fact that you can count on being able to clear some neutral camps early makes your development so much faster and more reliable both. I love the faster pace of the early game! The fact that total rewards you can expect to earn is now far, far less than before also makes a strong economy both more important to have and more difficult to achieve. (which is good, because that's what makes the game interesting!)
4.) The AIs are so much more formidable now. Every AI that hasn't gotten stuck on an island is guaranteed to become very scary, and the AIs will clear all sorts of stuff before you can even think about getting an army together to defeat it.

The new changes aren't perfect though. You can sometimes get extremely good rewards from some rock-paper-scissors fights. For example, sprites can take out Great Wyrms and score a very rare spell very early in the game. Or the zombies vs Night Stalkers, etc. Its nowhere near as bad as before though. I think the solution here might be to limit some of the types of units that can appear with each other. For example, just the presense of a giant spider or two (or a sprite, gorgon, cockatrice, etc) ruins the sprites vs great wyrm strategy. Only pairings with War Bears or Earth Elementals, or isolated Great Wyrms, are easy to game this way.