NATURE Realm

[Domon]

well, it's still a risky spell, but i was really wandering about the feasibility of such a mechanic, more than advocating this implementation.

maybe something like this could ameliorate the worst aspects of hard to balance hit-or-miss effects?

[Seravy]

I'm happy with Crack's Call as is. It's a pretty good thing to cast against units you can't hurt otherwise.

[Kaiku]

Hah, I just wanted to complain about Crack's Call here. I understand it's the equalizer to OP heroes/units, and I can understand that, but that's not how the AI uses it.

In my current game there are two wizards with Nature, and both have Crack's Call, and both cast it nearly every turn in every single battle, even on my newbie heroes, who are FAR from unstoppable! If I give them flight, they just dispell or web before they start chain-casting it. 25% isn't much, but they get dozens of opportunities over the course of a few battles. It's literally impossible to have heroes on this map.

I also quite dislike the design of the spell, the massive luck aspect of it.

Edit: To be a bit more constructive - I feel that heavy use of dispell is also an equalizer to OP heroes/units, as they can hardly be that invincible without enchantments. And dispell seems far more fair and reliable. So I don't think Crack's in its current form is *that* necessary.

[Seravy]

If you see it every battle that likely means you are only initiating battles where the AI evaluates the combat situation as "I'm losing badly". The AI categorizes the combat situation based on the relative strength of the two armies, and each spell has a different modifier for each category. When the AI is heavily outnumbered, it usually wants to cast something to deal lasting damage to your units so next time it has a better chance. Nature doesn't have much direct damage spells, especially powerful ones, so Crack's Call is likely to show up in this case unless the AI knows Ice Bolt/Petrify and can expect to hurt units more with that.
Aside from that, targeting a hero with it simply has a high priority - it's not like the AI has a reason to wait until they are too powerful to kill by the spell.
Heroes are unstoppable even without buffs - with 3 items slots each having up to 4 powers, and anywhere from 0 to 8-10 abilities that scale the hero's stats up for each level, a hero with no buffs can easily be more powerful than a great drake.
If you insist on using heroes against Nature wizards, I suggest hunting for or equipping an item that grants immunity to that spell : Wraith Form or Merging.

But yes, as you say, sometimes heroes just don't work well. The same can be said about most strategies - you have to know what works well against which realm and pick your primary plan based on the opponents you fight or expect to fight soon. (Heroes excel at fighting Sorcery and Life, but do fairly well against everything as long as you equip them with items that counter the ways those realms can hurt the hero effectively. Their only real weakness is a large stack of very rare monsters, in other words letting the enemy get too far ahead. Everything else you can deal with through items.)

[Kaiku]

Hmm, actually stashing my heroes to go nature wizard hunting hadn't even occurred to me. Probably because I rely on them so much, and felt they were essential to the game, especially now that the AI is so much tougher. But that could be an idea.

Also, Entangle seems ridiculously strong. Not sure if it's just situational, but the strongest wizard in my game is dwarf and sends oceans of Hammerheads at me, who can't do anything at all.

[Seravy]

Very rare spells are strong. Well, most of them intend to be. Dwarves are quite a lot more vulnerable to this one than usual, too.

[Kaiku]

Some feedback on Herb Mastery. I think it's very powerful, as it allows you to win some funny battles where you'd get utterly stomped otherwise (weak node guards fighting off a stronger army, etc).

However, it feels like the longer a game progresses, the weaker it becomes. Battles (that matter) are often quite decisive with massive damage thrown on single high priority units, so the small regeneration often becomes negligible. Since Herb Mastery is expensive and you get it pretty late, its use in actually beating rival wizards feels a bit limited.

I don't have a conclusion other than that, so I can't say if it's worth it or balanced based on a single game. Maybe it works better with different picks. I did find Entangle to be much stronger, which stays strong regardless.

[zitro1987]

I think spiders should now cost 90 -> 100 at least because of improved poison.

[Seravy]

The poison on spiders has already been reduced at the same time the save modifier was added (4->3) so there is no need. They should do roughly the same amount of damage to average targets (albeit they are better vs very high and worse vs very low resistance)

[Kaiku]

Unrelated, but I feel Web is so much stronger than it appears to be. I remember first thinking it'd just drop flying units and prevent them from moving (as the description says). But it actually skips their turn altogether, like Stasis! That's incredible for such a cheap spell, especially since battles tend to be short, so I find it to be much better than Stasis.

I do think webbed units should still be able to act (cast, shoot, attack melee), but I'm not sure if it's possible to hold a unit in place yet still letting it keep their movement points.