SORCERY Realm

[Nelphine]

Ah got it. OK thanks. Still, I think it should apply to all globals. The economy ones are just as important for the AI as for the human even if the impact isn't immediate damage.

[Seravy]

Done with implementing the Spell Blast changes.

Next, we have these on the menu :

Time Stop

Either we can reduce casting skill availability while it's in effect to cut down on the skill multiplier effect, or we can increase maintenance.
Which do we want?

Also, what is the preferred amount of casting skill where Time Stop starts to be superior in producing casting opportunity compared to spending the same amount of power on producing SP instead of mana over a 100 turn time period?
(consider that Time Stop provides this skill in advance while spending SP does so gradually.)

Spell Binding
The AI already pays 40% more for this and I'm not sure if 1200 cost is overpowered in the hands of the human player.
Still, while the price might not be overpowered, being able to steal or copy all of the overland globals from all other realms kinda is regardless of costs. It enables Sorcery to have massive power production (Life Force, Armageddon), strong normal armies (Crusade, Charm of Life), the entire fantastic unit spell combo (Doom Mastery,  Survival Instinct, Crusade, Chaos Surge, Charm of Life), mass destruction (Armageddon, Doomsday, Meteor Storm), and denial of spellcasting (Evil Omens, Suppress Magic), all in one, in a single very rare slot.
Effectively, this spell is worth as many spell slots as there are globals used by the enemy wizards, which is like, 3-4 per wizard. In short this by itself is worth as much as 6-8 extra spellbooks.

Spell Ward
I think reducing the Hit penalty by 1 is a good start.

Dispelling Wave
My preferred change is to remove the ability to dispel combat global enchantments. This really does too much for one spell slot, and then there would be one more type of spell Sorcery cannot counter.


I think these are all the spells on the "too powerful" list, once we solved all of them we can start buffing weak spells.

[Nelphine]

I like proposed spell ward.

I'm really not sure about time stop, but given how much power production has increased in the mod, I'd be happy changing the maintenance to 500 per turn (or as high as 1000 if it seems necessary).

We know I advocate a 1500 cost on spell binding (maybe even 1600).

Dispelling wave: no way to circumvent order at all? Even a reverse order would be pretty hard to abuse, therefore allowing diminishing returns. Ideally random order would be better, even if it wasnt perfect.

[Seravy]

Dispelling wave: no way to circumvent order at all? Even a reverse order would be pretty hard to abuse, therefore allowing diminishing returns. Ideally random order would be better, even if it wasnt perfect.

A reverse order is still determined. It makes no difference if I have to put those spearmen in the first two or the last two army slots.
I think I'm against diminishing returns anyway now, the whole point of DW is to punish buff stacking proportionally to the amount of stacked buffs.
If the spell dispells too much stuff then you are either using more buffs than you are supposed to against it, or it just plain dispells too much even if there are a low number of spells to dispel in which case we can reduce its effectiveness.
I don't think that's the case though, as it already has a 50% effect penalty in combat so it takes at least 3 equally buffed units for it to be better that plain Dispel Magic.
Unless, is the overland effectiveness the problem? On human too or just the AI? The latter is easy to fix through priorities, but if it's everyone then we can reduce the effectiveness instead. (I believe zitro did suggest this)

[Nelphine]

I think my problem is that both in combat or overland I generally like to use lots of the same movement buff. And as an example, endurance overland is only useful if on a transport or on every target (similar to water walking, flight, or wraithform). So, you get 9-18 movement buffs, and dispelling wave will easily dispel all of them because they're all individually weak. But that's still 810 mana dispelled. Even if it misses a few endurance, overland, even dispelling 1 is enough to ruin the whole stack. Throw in other buffs that are cheap enough to be cast on every unit intended for offense you produce (holy armor, holy weapon, anything else with no maintenance, even flame blade, or any of the common resist spells) and its easy to have dispelling wave dispel over 1000 mana without even talking about buffs that 'shouldnt' be stacked up so high. The biggest reason I think that it becomes so bad is that little buffs can be placed throughout the game, even if spread across your empire - but as time goes on, you can collect them into one stack, because, why not? Then by very nature of putting them together (especially the movement buffs, which are only useful when stacked), the dispel wave will target and destroy.

And specialist doesn't help, because a lot of the utility buffs are spread across realms, so specialist can't protect them all.

[Seravy]

Did some Time Stop calculations.

1. Increasing the casting cost has the least impact on high casting skill wizards where the spell is strong. It's not suitable to improve balance at all.
2. Raising upkeep from 200 to 500 pushes the amount of skill needed to receive any benefit at all up by about ~103 points. Assuming you want at the very least enough profit for 3 very rare creatures or a big spell, you need a minimal 150 skill at the current maintenance and would need 253 at 500 maintenance.
Furthermore, profits are roughly halved at all casting skill level by that much increase. However, the number of turns it lasts isn't affected as heavily on high skill levels.
3. Implementing a skill multiplier reduces the profit rate and point where it turns profitable equally to a maintenance rate. However, the number of turns is higher. So this is an inferior option, and it would be much harder to implement too.

This leaves raising maintenance as the only "good" solution.

This is the table for maintenance changes.
You'll want to look at three columns.
"Turns" is the number of turns you can keep the Time Stop going from 20000 mana, assuming you use all overland skill but no mana in combat. (peacetime use)
"Sky Drakes profit" is how much more (or less) of them you can summon compared to the amount of extras you could have gotten if you spent that 20000 on SP, and used the gained casting skill to summon them over the following 100 turns.
"Sky Drakes total" is how many of them you can summon overall before your Time Stop ends.

Based on this information, I'm waiting for suggestions on the preferred amount of maintenance.
Note that even at ridiculous maintenance you can easily summon at least one full stack of 9 Sky Drakes.
   

...about your movement buffing problem,  don't use movement buffs in wars against Sorcery AI with dispelling wave. Use a freaking boat. The amount of buffs dispelled is a joke compared to the possibility of losing the enchantment on water and having the whole stack drown.
Endurance only is a difference story, if you say it's needed we can alter the dispelling wave priority to not trigger on stacks having only 9 buffs total. (in fact we most likely should check how that is calculated and consider improving it....after we do Time Stop.)

[Nelphine]

No, I don't let my units drown.

Endurance plus water walking means two things: a) you are fast enough you can move from continent to continent without ever stopping in an ocean tile (assuming fair or higher landmass). B) you don't have to try to rule the seas, which the AI generally has a huge advantage on due to how target acquisition works.

So I consider those 18 buffs to be totally valid - meaning not crossing into megabuff unit territory. (Something like a stack with 9 lionhearts in it? Yes, this makes sense for dispelling wave. But specialist is a real thing there, and the base cost is high enough, especially with specialist, that only a few lionhearts get dispelled. You actually lose less mana on this stack than you do on the movement stack. I'd actually spend 200 for water walking if I could just to not deal with dispelling wave.)

Edit: what if dispelling wave treated all spells as costing 100 (or more if the spell actually costs more)? That way it couldn't dispel thousands of little spells all at once, and could properly be used on the nastier buffs.

Time stop: I would consider 500 a minimum. I could see going up to 1000. As I don't play with this spell enough, I can only speak about playing against it. If the AI gets more than 3 turns from it, I hate it. No reasonable amount of maintenance will ever make the AI get that few numbers of turns. So... I'd ask for someone else to look at the numbers.

[zitro1987]

I like the idea of increasing the skill cost to AI for certain spells, but I'd apply it to all summons and a few global-like instant spells (like great unsummoning) that are almost impossible to cast incorrectly.

That way, mediocre spell selection enjoys the overland skill bonus while globals that are almost never mistimed like 'survival instinct/armaggedon' do not enjoy the skill bonus as much.


Dispelling Wave - not a bad idea to make it harder to dispel the cheaper buffs like resist magic.

[Arnuz]

Time stop: couldn't maintenance be progressive? Too difficult?

Dispelling wave: isn't dispelling all the weak buffs kind of its point? Many weak buffs are a lot stronger than a few big ones for compounding effect. The movement bonus of the endurance example is the perfect example: sure, Lionheart makes the units stronger, but that's pointless of they can't reach the city next turn...

[Seravy]

Time stop: couldn't maintenance be progressive? Too difficult?

That's a very good idea. I'll recalculate those tables with that in mind.

Edit  : at a progressive maintenance of 100, duration will be around ~18 turns, and this will be mostly independent of the player's casting skill. About 300 skill is needed for it to be "profitable", at which point you can summon a total of 10 drakes. At 500 skill you can summon 15.
This looks good to me as it cuts down the "turns" quite effectively, without having much detrimental effect on wartime use (fewer turns due to massive spending in combat).