SORCERY Realm

[Nelphine]

Personally, I think sorcery mid game is much stronger than death, even if death has a lot more options that 'do something' - the death options simply don't do anything unless you have something else to support them.

But I'm also terrible at mid game, even going so far as to say uncommon and rare spells simply don't matter that much (excepting things like spell blast which are late game spells regardless of their rarity.) Yes I'm aware most people disagree with my statement - and they might even be right. Its just not the part of the game I click with.

I'm not a big fan of overland air elementals. Steps on the toes of too many other summoned units (invisible, fast, flying - sorcery already does all of these things through buffs, I don't think they need an overland summon too.)

[zitro1987]

I'm getting frustrated with the easy accessibility to overpowered features of 'focus magic'. In my opinion, it needs a balancing tweak and I'll explain:
I think the +3 ranged bonus is not overpowered nor even the +15 spell skill. Yes, those are powerful features for common, but the main issue is:

The problem I have is allowing ranged attacks for melee units. Melee units are designed to have special hand-to-hand abilities like stoning gaze based on the unit statistics and theme of the unit. While casting it on nagas can give a reasonable boost to sorcery-only wizards, this starting spell is too easily abused. It's becoming the successor of 'word of recall', albeit in a different way. 

All a player needs to do is put 2 starting sorcery books. Cast it on cockatrices and throw four -4 instant death multi-attempts (up to 16) with just 80 cost and 2 upkeep. Cast it on wraiths and death knights and get extreme life-steal damage (especially with black prayer). Cast it on gorgons and they're nearly unstoppable. Cast it on chaos spawn with multiple -4 attacks. On top of this, sorcery has access to a unit enchantment protection spell. There are more examples of combos that are too obvious and powerful, breaking the careful balance of your game. 

Yes you can argue that there are possible counters to these tactics (e.g. resist magic being the most effective one), but you can also say 'spell x can somehow counter v. rare y'/

I think the adding shots to melee units need to be reduced to 2-3 or removed altogether if this spell remains 'common'. It has too much potential for a starting spell.

[Seravy]

I'm getting frustrated with the easy accessibility to overpowered features of 'focus magic'. In my opinion, it needs a balancing tweak and I'll explain:
I think the +3 ranged bonus is not overpowered nor even the +15 spell skill. Yes, those are powerful features for common, but the main issue is:

The problem I have is allowing ranged attacks for melee units. Melee units are designed to have special hand-to-hand abilities like stoning gaze based on the unit statistics and theme of the unit. While casting it on nagas can give a reasonable boost to sorcery-only wizards, this starting spell is too easily abused. It's becoming the successor of 'word of recall', albeit in a different way. 

All a player needs to do is put 2 starting sorcery books. Cast it on cockatrices and throw four -4 instant death multi-attempts (up to 16) with just 80 cost and 2 upkeep. Cast it on wraiths and death knights and get extreme life-steal damage (especially with black prayer). Cast it on gorgons and they're nearly unstoppable. Cast it on chaos spawn with multiple -4 attacks. On top of this, sorcery has access to a unit enchantment protection spell. There are more examples of combos that are too obvious and powerful, breaking the careful balance of your game. 

Yes you can argue that there are possible counters to these tactics (e.g. resist magic being the most effective one), but you can also say 'spell x can somehow counter v. rare y'/

I think the adding shots to melee units need to be reduced to 2-3 or removed altogether if this spell remains 'common'. It has too much potential for a starting spell.

I've specifically tested this a few days ago. Here is the video of the game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DbG1TpL7mQ
Far from overpowered, in fact I lost the game. It wasn't weak, but not strong either, and took a while to research Cockatrices - too many common Sorcery and Nature spells in the books. The cost of cockatrice+focus magic+resist magic is far too expensive for the early game, and the maintenance of 6 is a lot. For that you only get one unit, which has to spend numerous turns waiting for hit points to recover after battles because it will get hit by direct damage. 4 ammo is quite low, even if every attack petrifies, it only kills 16 figures, which is like 3 units out of the 9 garrisoning the city. The strategy is weak to Web, Dispel Magic, Resist Magic, Resist Elements, all of which are common spells. It is also countered by stoning immunity : Gargoyles (which the AI actually tries to rush research for in this version) and the greatest obstacle, but Phantom Warriors, Phantom Beasts and even Fire Elementals are immune to it. Furthermore, while they are not very common in the early game, invisible units also counter this strategy.
If you are 100% sure this is an overpowered strategy, I can try again, maybe I played it wrong? Please watch the video and let me know how it should be done instead.

Gorgons and Chaos Spawn do not work with this strategy at all. GAZE attacks are "ranged", so Focus Magic cannot add a magical ranged attack - it would replace the gaze. Focus Magic on these units merely makes the gaze attack's physical component (which is normally 0) 3 stronger...meaning the gaze will act as though it was a strength 3 thrown attack in addition to it's normal effect.

Units you can use for this strategy are those who have TOUCH attacks. Cockatrices (Stoning), Wraiths and Death Knights (Life Steal), Nagas or anything else with Poison, Angels (for Exorcism), heroes with Death/Vampiric/Stoning/Destruction/Exorcist weapons or ability (but those can be ranged anyway and are single figure).
Poision is not strong enough to be a real threat to game balance, Wraiths and Death Knights are strong enough even if not using this trick, so it's only Cockatrices where it is a possible problem.

[namad]

I think actually the problem is that cockatries suck. Focus magic is just showing how massively it improves them, yet it's still balanced? maybe they should just be better?

[Seravy]

I think actually the problem is that cockatries suck. Focus magic is just showing how massively it improves them, yet it's still balanced? maybe they should just be better?

Cockatrices are great against the correct targets - single figure powerful units - but they aren't good for generic purpose. For that, Spiders, Lizards and Bears work better.

[zitro1987]

Some sorcery-playing observations:

Resist Magic is underrated in this forum. I love this spell and use it on nearly all decent-powered units. AI sometimes forgets I have it and wasted a couple of turns on possession (or maybe I forgot to enchant one unit in my stack and got lucky with the resistance rolls)

I'm not sure I love how 'vertigo' is set up as a cheap, yet fairly powerful spell. When your skill gets to about 75+, there's better options for the wizard (vertigo is good for magicians however). I experimented tweaking it as a 20 cost spell with -6 to resist and I like how it turned out - a near-guarantee curse for mid-resistance units.

Flight + WarShips is extremely fun, the best way to use skill while waiting for rare spells. I often used the Aether Binding + dispelling wave combo on enemy cities - great combo.

Blur isn't a bad spell (so I take back what I said several months ago)

Conjure Roads are as expensive and disappointing as predicted, if one considers the 400 power used to research it. Engineers are usually a better/cheaper option. I ended it up tweaking the cost down to 70.

Focus Magic remains feeling oddly strange as common. If I knew how to make it a +2 range/+10caster/+2 shots with the ability to turn ranged to magic and lower it to a common-like cost (60/1), I think it would work much better.

Banish is slightly weaker than petrify, especially considering cost-effectiveness. Reducing research cost to 1200 may be a recommendation of mine

I'm excited to try Stasis soon.

Suppress Magic is ridiculously powerful and hard to dispel (on paper). I wonder how it'll work when I have it, I may recommend 1000cost/80 upkeep and it'd still cost less per turn than detect magic + spell blasts.

If for some reason you want to get rid of a v rare spell, a random idea of a global enchantment I have is something that allows 2 combat spells per turn.

[occasionalplayer]

Thanks to zitro1987 advice, I have been trying sorcery, orcs, flying warships. That is a workable strategy; they are fast, great scouts and put up a good fight. 
However, they do not seem to hit hard enough, even with barracks and alchemist guild. It took more than 10 shots to kill a chaos spawn. 
I have had the same underwhelming result with cannons (the latter in a different context).  Is there perhaps anything wrong with rock attacks?

In any event, that combined with focus magic/nagas should be a combination that ensures survival, though probably still inferior to gargoyles/immolation and of course mid-game nature summons.

[Seravy]

Thanks to zitro1987 advice, I have been trying sorcery, orcs, flying warships. That is a workable strategy; they are fast, great scouts and put up a good fight. 
However, they do not seem to hit hard enough, even with barracks and alchemist guild. It took more than 10 shots to kill a chaos spawn. 
I have had the same underwhelming result with cannons (the latter in a different context).  Is there perhaps anything wrong with rock attacks?

In any event, that combined with focus magic/nagas should be a combination that ensures survival, though probably still inferior to gargoyles/immolation and of course mid-game nature summons.

Warships have 15 attack, with magical weapons, assuming you are attacking from more than 3 range, the expected damage is 4.5.
Chaos Spawns have 8 armor so they block 2.4 damage. This leaves 2.1 damage per attack, which kills the Chaos Spawn's 22 health in 10.5 shots. So no, there is nothing wrong.
15 attack against 8 armor is just not very effective : the armor blocks half the damage.

[Nelphine]

I hate Stasis. It splits up doomstacks.

[Nelphine]

Also, as far ad I can tell, AI won't use stasis on troops in a city. Is that on purpose?