Experimental version

[Seravy]

How does it make the AI worse? That's what I'm trying to get across. What AI is actually worse off with less than 3 starting commons (usually 4). And yes, you can still get 3 with 6 books. But you force me to take 2 more books. That's 2 less retorts. That's huge. 

ehhhh people actually play 4 books? That's not fun at all...it's one thing to do that for "let's try to beat impossible" games but for usual games, nah. Wait, 8 on retorts? two double cost retorts? I don't think there are even that many that work well together in the early game. (Spellweaver is one. Warlord doesn't work with spellweaver, one is magic the other is military. Chaneller is late game. Guardian, I suppose that works but I can't think of that as a balance threat in any way. And Runemaster does absolutely nothing to improve the early game either. That's all of them if not counting Myrran which is an entirely different game.)

I wanted to avoid having to spend another hour to prove this but here goes. For each AI template, I'm assuming the worst case scenario - 7 books for mono or 4 books for dual.

1. Mono Life : Loses Heavenly Light and Endurance. Was already the weakest enemy wizard but without those two spells it's pretty much unable to even defend their capital, let alone retaliate or do anything. Endurance is essential for any sort of buff stacking - heroism by itself doesn't do much on swordsmen and similar early units.
2. Mono Death : Loses Summon Zombie and Darkness. Not as bad as Life, but without Darkness, that capital with 8 ghouls is quite a lot weaker. And it can be relevant in other battles as well - ghouls and undead will be participating everywhere.
3. Mono Nature : Loses Web and Call Centaurs. This wizard ends up with zero combat spells, a major blow I'd say.
4. Mono Chaos : Loses Fire Elemental and Corruption. Fire Elemental is worthless if not picked as a starting spell, as that is the only time when nonmagical weapons are frequent. Corruption also hits a lot harder if used early. While not hurting the wizard all that much, it hurts the game as a whole.
5. Mono Sorcery : Loses Focus Magic and Psionic Blast. I'd say this is a huge loss for the AI and leaves it vulnerable to early hero attacks (even from nonlife wizards).
...do I need to continue with the 10 dual wizard templates or was that enough for demonstration?

[Nelphine]

I love myrran. I play it all the time. Its literally probably the biggest draw the game has for me.

What are the three that life starts with that are more important than endurance? Healing? I'd take endurance over healing any day. How much does it hurt mono nature to have to research war bears instead if having them turn 1, given it already has sprites? I mean, my 4 book games I can research things in 10 turns - how often is the first 10 turns so critical you can't afford to wait to research it? (Note that my 4 book game there's a decent chance I don't get a given common at all, but the mono nature is going to have war bears in his research list if he didn't start with them.)

However, if you think its that big a problem, no, you don't need to keep explaining. (But I don't think a current dual realm 4 4 is all that screwed, which is why I don't see why a mono would be - its not like right now dual realms try to complement each other so starting with only 3 should be bad for them if its bad for mono.)

[Seravy]

Life spells are Heroism, Just Cause and Healing. These are the essential spells for hero strategies, which is Life's strongest point.

Bears might be obsolete units now - sprites are probably better. I need to play Nature to tell.

I haven't played Myrran in, a year, perhaps? I have too many things to test and for testing, using the default Plane is better.

[Nelphine]

Don't worry I play arcanus too (and not just lizardmen, even if I love them). But I love me my Myrran.

[Seravy]

Update :

Experimental 2
-Fixed bug : Units don't reset their “action selected” before picking a new one, possibly causing them to be stuck on doing nothing or an invalid action if no targets can be found for an attack. Most notable when units failed to move up to the gate when the unit there got killed.
-AI Units will now avoid attacking from behind Wall of Fire even to nearby enemies, the same way as they don't move to attack those further away. This should force the player to attack through the fire and take damage more effectively.
-Fixed bug : All direct damage spells have MP as though they were AEther Sparks (3.4 experimental bug)
-Heroes now have a separate “fame required” field in their unit table instead of calculating it from their gold cost. The field used is the same the AI uses for “production priority” on normal units.
-All heroes have changed hiring costs and upkeep costs (generally higher).
-The Bard is now a fame 0 hero, and the Thief requires 5 fame.
-Adjusted the starting armor of many heroes (usually reduced by 0-2 points)
-In addition to mercenaries, now heroes and item merchants also cannot show up before turn 30.
-Awareness has been renamed to Clairvoyance.
-Awareness/Clairvoyance now increases the power production of all nodes owned by the wizard by +20.
-Adjusted AI casting and dispelling priorities to match new spell functionality of Clairvoyance.
-Fixed some buggy predefined items. Replaced  a few less useful weapons with new accessories.
-Raiders now cannot spawn before turn 40 the same way as Rampaging Monsters
-AI Resist Magic priority raised to 15.
-AI Bless priority raised to 10.
-AI Holy Armor priority raised to 15.
-AI Endurance priority raised to 15.
-AI Lionheart priority lowered to 40.
-AI Planar Travel priority lowered to 10.

Had no time to test, if there are any bugs, let me know.

[Nelphine]

I somehow can't find the post about sprites strategic strength.

If you're going to make sprites stronger offensively than magicians, I think you should just teach all AI to take focus magic and sprites and then rush every city on the map.

The new sprites don't make sense to me at all. Absolutely nothing at the common level can fight them, and almost nothing at the uncommon level can fight them (chimeras probably, at several times the cost.) The only thing that can remotely fight them is.. Bowmen? And only on defense.

[Seravy]

I somehow can't find the post about sprites strategic strength.

If you're going to make sprites stronger offensively than magicians, I think you should just teach all AI to take focus magic and sprites and then rush every city on the map.

The new sprites don't make sense to me at all. Absolutely nothing at the common level can fight them, and almost nothing at the uncommon level can fight them (chimeras probably, at several times the cost.) The only thing that can remotely fight them is.. Bowmen? And only on defense.

If it doesn't work out, which is possible, we can revert to the old sprites. I haven't used nor fought against them in the game I played so idk yet.

[Nelphine]

Fair.

Could you make freezing attack thing phantasmal instead of armor piercing, and reduce to str = number of figures? And reduce strategic value to 50 per figure?

[Seravy]

Fair.

Could you make freezing attack thing phantasmal instead of armor piercing, and reduce to str = number of figures? And reduce strategic value to 50 per figure?

Phantasmal - no. It literally casts the Fairy Dust spell and overrides the strength.
Strength and strategic - yes I can change those if needed. We'll need testing.

[Catwalk]

"ehhhh people actually play 4 books? That's not fun at all...it's one thing to do that for "let's try to beat impossible" games but for usual games, nah"

There's no such thing as a "let's try to beat impossible" games. There's also no such thing as usual games. Do you intentionally handicap yourself when creating your wizard? You're welcome to do so (I'm also fond of challenge setups), but you should consider the norm to be when the player tries to perform as strongly as possible.

I like the changes, but at first glance they look unbalanced. I think I can still crack lairs with the new sprites as effectively as before, and I think low book strategies remain as potent as before. But I appreciate the structure of the changes, that's definitely in the right direction.