SORCERY Realm

[Nelphine]

I dunno, I don't think AI choosing 4 books of a second realm should be considered too few. And on most realms, 4 books only gives a 60% of an uncommon summon. Then you have 5 life books, that's only a 40% of an uncommon summon. So any dual realm AI that has life primary only has a 75% of an uncommon summon. So 1 in 4 AI dual realm life AI (probably closer to 1 in 5 due to some of them having more than 9 books) won't have uncommon summons. Which means buffs will be the primary for some time. Sure they can just summon nsgas/ghouls/war bears forever (which they currently do), but.. That's not terribly effective (we all know and cry about AI using nagas in late game - its why we're trying to give an uncommon summon to sorcery).

[Seravy]

Assuming we talk about high difficulty here, the AI will have rares by the time you have both Dispelling Wave and high enough casting skill to use it well. The chance of having neither an uncommon nor a rare summon is very low and now that Sorcery will get their own uncommon summon, even less - Sorcery+Life will no longer be limited to Unicorns only. The AI also has extra books, so the 5+4 books scenario will not be the most likely.
On lower difficulty, if the player is able to beat 1 out of the 4 wizard due to a good choice they made (researched Dispelling Wave and used it against that wizard actively) that is perfectly fine.

(Note that only 1 book in an external realm still has a fairly good chance of an uncommon summon - it gives the wizard one uncommon spell. In Nature or Chaos that's 30% for summon, in Death it's also 30%. In Sorcery it's 10% but Spell Lock is just as useful in helping against dispelling, so make it 20%. The AI is also able to trade for uncommon spells from other AI wizards, or find them in treasure - the availability of Uncommons through those means is very high.)

[Nelphine]

Welp, I disagree. But would you be willing to compromise, down to strength 30 or so?

[Seravy]

Welp, I disagree. But would you be willing to compromise, down to strength 30 or so?

No.
If you think Life wizards are at a disadvantage more than they should against a realm they are weak against, feel free to suggest ways they can be improved against Sorcery wizards without relying on buffing.
If this affects any other realms, do tell which you think is affected and why.

[Nelphine]

Realms have 4 main ways to fight each other. Summons (life is weak here), curses (life has none), heroes (the AI is bad at this, and is, in my opinion, unfair to force humans into this strategy given the controversy around heroes), and buffing (dispelling wave completely negates this).

The basic premise of life has always been buffs. Its specifically weak at summoning and curses, so it seems impissible to use these to make up for buffs. It's not meant to do mega bufing, although it can; but dispelling wave as a spell, counters the basic premise of the entire life realm. As a very rare, this is at least not awful (although consecration and spell ward are both pretty ridiculous spells, so even at very rare, this seems at best, problematical.) But dispelling wave is only uncommon.

What's your thoughts on diminishing returns, which you've previously agreed is a good idea, and trying to change the order to be unpredictable?

[Seravy]

There are three more.
Economy - if you reach higher tier spells and higher skill first, you win even if your primary spells do not work - you don't need any buffs if you have High Prayer or Call to Arms for example.
Normal units - There is no rule saying you can't use these without buffing them.
Access to the other plane - You can colonize half a world for free if you go for this early. It also makes sure you can find the Sorcery wizard and eliminate them if you really want to.

Life is strong in all those fields. With Prayer, your 1 swordsmen is worth as much as 2 of the Sorcery wizard. Add Altar of Battle and it's worth four.
Unfortunately, the economy aspect is suboptimal as those city spells can be dispelled, but if you put no more than 8 total AI priority worth of buffs on your cities, you can still take advantage of some of it.
...and early access to Myrror is a unique advantage of Life which can win games on its own.

While the AI is bad at heroes, the AI is twice as effective at the normal units and economy things, so it has its own alternate solution.

I've already said I changed my mind about diminishing returns, not only is it impossible to do but goes directly against the intended goal. It's impossible to make the order random btw, to do that you'd need to store a list of things you processed somewhere.

The basic premise of Death is resistance based spells so based on your logic Resist Magic and Bless is worse than Dispelling Wave as they are commons.

I've ran through LIfe's C and UC spells and complied a list of what is still viable if buffing is not (listing the powerful spells only) :
Holy Weapon
Just Cause
Heavenly Light/Guardian Spirit
Healing/Raise dead/Resurrection
Stream of Life
maybe Holy Armor (haven't yet seen the in-combat dispelling list)
Unicorns
Planar Travel/Astral Gate
Prayer
All the buffs in Enchant Item anyway

Seeing that list I don't think Life has any room to complain.

[Nelphine]

.. Try to use normal units (without flying ) without buffs and beat someone who isn't defending with sprites. If dispelling wave ignored the spells on the 'no priority' list it would be fine, but it doesn't. So as soon as you have a few slightly stronger buffs, all your cheaper ones get wiped out. Actually it still wouldn't be fine because too many of cheap spells are still on the priority list.

And I didn't say random, i said unpredictable. Each time you cast the spell it picks between oldest first or newest first.

However, you have clearly made up your mind. I think increasing the strength of the spell is insane, so I'm hoping you'll drop it to at least 50. Despite your claims, I don't think you've shown any convincing math reasons why it needs to be so strong, except in the case where it is targetting 15+ expensive (150+) spells AND the targets have no cheap buffs.

[Seravy]

Here is the list of spells the AI considers adding to Dispelling Wave priority in combat...actually, the list of what it does not consider as that's much shorter. Note that combat does not work like overland - the AI will likely need at least 8-15 buffs to outprioritize the good spells it has...but if you force it in a corner where it has no good options, even a few are enough (tho unless they are spread on at least 3 different units evenly, dispel magic will be used instead so that's a limiting factor).
Also note Dispel Magic has its own list, which includes fewer spells, as it's a much less effective option.

Resist Elements
Holy Weapon
Bless
Orihalcon.

That's it. Everything else contributes to disenchant priority, albeit that contribution is fairly minor for each spell. Note that a whooping +20 priority per combat global enchantment is missing from that formula - so assuming you used Prayer, that allows another 6-7 enchantments for the same overall priority to exist.

I think this list could use some changes as well.

First of all, Bless should be on it.
Planar Travel shout not - it has zero relevance in combat.
Spell Lock should not - if anything, it makes dispelling less worth it.

Unsure about Immolation and Cloak of Fear here - while of low threat level to be worth overland attention, a large number of either is likely to be a high risk, as the human will probably attack a target where they work well.
On the other hand, including them here but not overland opens up the possibility of luring the AI is a wasteful dispelling wave - the human player can stack 50 buffs that are on the "ignore" list, avoid overland dispelling wave, and force the AI to use it in combat, wasting all their combat skill. If the stack is powerful and this was the AI's capital, that tactic can win the game.

To close this hole, we probably should make Immolation, Cloak of Fear, and maybe even Holy Armor not contribute to the total, although I'm unsure about Holy Armor. While not powerful enough for overland dispelling, in combat, taking out 5-6 of these on top of several other spells (only 9 Holy Armors is unlikely to trigger casting the spell by themselves) is a very much relevant effect.
That leaves only two spells where the overland and combat lists are different. "Animated" is not the thing the player can use for spell baiting, being very rare and valuable. Holy Armor is almost always relevant and by itself won't provide enough priority for the tactic to work. So I think we are good with these changes.

So as soon as you have a few slightly stronger buffs, all your cheaper ones get wiped out.

See, this is the problem. Don't put stronger buffs on the stack with cheap buffs in addition - that's the very thing we want to prevent.

You can safely have Holy Weapon, Holy Armor and up to 3, exactly 3 not 4, Lionhearts on your stack, plus Prayer. If that's not enough against a Sorcery wizard, you need to start producing better troops :D

[Nelphine]

Right but its also, up to 3, exactly 3 endurance. And heroism. And focus magic. So, for instance, your hero stack. I agree we don't want to stack 5+ buffs on each of 9 units. Megabuffing should be stopped. But disallowing heroism on your flame blade halfling slingers?

And I've got 30 units throughout the game that have survived and have buffs. So I gather them together - then I learn Lionheart - I'm not allowed to continue using the buffs I had before, even though I still have them? That's extremely counter intuitive. Which is where this entire discussion began - sorcery prevents playing, prevents options. That's what we are trying to change.

[Seravy]

And with that, my work on Dispelling Wave is complete.
To summarize, taken directly from the changelog :

-Dispelling Wave now has 1 effectiveness per 2 mana both in combat and overland instead of only in combat. This is now rounded up instead of down.
-Dispelling Wave no longer removes combat global enchantments.
-AI no longer includes combat global enchantments in Dispelling Wave priority calculations as they are no longer removed by the spell.
-Adjusted priority calculations of picking targets for an overland Dispelling Wave spells.
-AI will not use Dispelling Wave on targets with priority 7 or less instead of 4 or less now. Priority to cast the spell is calculated priority of (target tile-6)*2 instead of (target tile-4)*2.
-Revised the list of unit buffs the AI considers for calculation priority for combat Dispelling Wave.

I will leave Spell Binding alone for now. We don't have good solution, nor conclusive evidence there is a need for change. In worst case, the damage it does is still limited due to the availability of Disjunction - if needed, we can rethink it later.

And with that, the "nerf overpowered spells" chapter is finally closed.

Chapter "Buff weak early game spells" - current plans :

Water Elemental - To be added, replacing Conjurer Roads in the spell slot, Orc Spearmen in the unit slot. On the code side it's a bit trickier - first we need to move War Mammoths into the Orc Spearmen's slot. Then move Phantom Warriors into the old War Mammoth slot, putting the phantoms into the last "normal unit" slot. Then we need to move the threshold one lower to count that slot as fantastic. Next we need to put Water Elemental into the now free slot. Finally we'll need to replace Phantom Warrior's overland summoning image with Water Elementals.
(note that we'll also need to make some water elemental graphics. I don't know how long that'll take but if needed, we can use a placeholder meanwhile)

Blur - Move into a common slot. This spell is half as effective as Prayer, so it has no place being the same rarity. (Tho it will be a very good spell for a common. Might be the best common in the game, even. 2 Sorcery books for Blur might become a thing to consider.)

Psionic Blast - Move into an uncommon slot. Keep cost, raise damage slightly. (16->20, maybe 24? Will need to do some calculations.)

Spell Lock - make common, reduce effectiveness and cost. Unsure but if we don't, PB can't be uncommon.

Counter Magic - Move into an uncommon slot. Rename "Mystic Barrier". Counters all spells that have direct harmful effects on the caster's units at a chance. Chance should be proportional to spell cost or rarity, I support rarity. (anything from Weakness to Exorcise to Black Prayer to Flame Strike would get countered.)
Cannot counter other spells that would not hurt the AI's units. This is actually another change that makes Life good against Sorcery. All their healing, revival, etc will now never get countered and they don't use spells that hurt units anyway.
Instead of anything harder to achieve, we'll make a list of spells that should be affected directly. I suggest we omit Crack's Call from the list : It targets the ground, not units, and it is supposed to bypass even Magic Immunity. We can have other exceptions if we feel it's needed.

Conjure Roads - Remove from the game.

Flight - new cost of 22/110.

Nagas - 10 lower cost, +1 melee, +1 movement, or something around that.

Storm Giants - +2 ammo, maybe lower cost, maybe a bit higher ranged attack.