DEATH Realm

[zitro1987]

On the create undead topic. I like syphon life and can be great with death-sorcery wizards (focus magic, mind storm). I like to keep it, though 'life drain' feels redundant with all the other common spells (and syphon life). I wonder if a nuke like this can be moved to 'rare/very rare', but it's wishful thinking as it would mean losing a nuke spell.

EDIT: accidentally posted it in the wrong folder and got a response anyways. Erased 'zombie mastery' part

[Seravy]

As explained above I'm not giving Create Undead to stronger units. Creating buffed zombies falls into that category.

[Seravy]

Looking for some suggestions to improve the following spells :

Wrack - This is pretty good as is except for one detail - it is very ineffective against low figure count units such as Stag beetles, even if they have a low resistance. I think if we want to improve the spell, that might be the area to focus on. Maybe damage should be 1 or 10% of the figure's health whichever is higher, rounded up, instead?

Evil Presence - With the coming addition of a new nonreligious power producing building, this will be even less effective at completely denying power income. However, it is questionable if we even want that as a strategy in the game - it's not fun to play against, and even playing the strategy isn't fun, sure, if the enemy is not casting spells that's victory but the lamest one possible. So we need to rethink if we still want a complete shutdown of power or not, and if not, keep the spell as is, or change it, maybe even make it do something completely different.

Eternal Night - Another candidate for revision, as it also reduces religious power production. Not sure if it even need to have a third effect anymore as it does two other good things - but if yes, we might want something new. Or we can leave it alone especially if Evil Presence stops doing power reductions.

Dark Rituals - as only 12 out of 28 city power will be coming from religious sources, we might want to alter this spell as well.

Do note that losing the effect of "affects religious buildings" is generally considered a suboptimal solution as it removes interaction with Heavenly Light which is sad to lose.

[Kaiku]

I think Wrack is very bad for a rare, only useful in those scenario's where a bunch of raiders attack a city policed by Spearmen while your doomstacks are on the other side of the map. Those few low tech battles in late game. Yes, there's the potential for exploitative behavior by sending in an unkillable unit and skipping 25 turns, which is unfortunate as it holds this spell back from being useful in regular combat.

I don't think the suggested change will make it worthwhile. It's still way too weak to impact battles after the rare stage. It would only be with a resist penalty/improved effect, but then the opportunity for exploits only gets worse, and I have no idea how that could be balanced. I suppose a mechanic that it can damage a unit, but not kill one, is not possible? Or that it gets weaker, the more damage it has done?

Not really sure about the other spells. That involves many other factors I'm not on top of.

[Seravy]

Yes, there's the potential for exploitative behavior by sending in an unkillable unit and skipping 25 turns, which is unfortunate as it holds this spell back from being useful in regular combat.

That's actually the intended use for a damage over time spell. For regular combat, one-time attack spells like Wave of Despair, Flame Strike etc are obviously better unless for some reason you expect the battle to take very long (like both parties have high defense units and lots of healing).
Basically, Wrack is a spell that is meant to be better than other spells if the battle is long, worse if the battle is short.

[Nelphine]

Which is probably part of the problem. Wrack is a DoT (niche given that unlike nature its much much harder for death to extend a fight out for 25 turns) that also only works on low resist units (also niche given its a rare spell).

But death also doesn't have a lot of other choices at the rare level - if they miss wave of despair, they only have summon zombie, reaper slash, syphon life, and black sleep to fall back on.

But if wrack isn't working, then syphon life and black sleep probably won't work. And reaper slash itself is a little niche, and units strong against wrack will also be strong against reaper slash.

And in some ways wrack is based around black prayer - so whichever one you cast first, it feels bad.

I'd be tempted to increase wrack to attacking 4 times per unit (instead of per figure), but I don't even know if that is possible.

Alternatively, if we had a unit debuff slot, we could cause wrack to apply an additiinsk -3 (or -5) penalty to resisting wrack, but that penalty would be reduced by 1 every time the unit failed a check against wrack, so that once it had done 3 damage to a given unit, it would be back to the save penalty it is now.

But I don't think we have a unit debuff.


What if we made wrack resisted by armor instead? Make the penalty -3 or -2? (Don't use the armor mechanic, use the resistance mechanic, just make it based on armor number. Kind of a reverse reapers slash effect.)
That way at least if wrack is bad against a certain target, at least you might be able to fall back on the other death spells because the unit might still have low resistance.


This is mostly babbling.

[Nelphine]

Oh, what if you don't make resist based at all. Just give it a 15% chance of working, regardless of resistance, similar to cracks call. Check every unit once per turn, not per figure.

[Seravy]

Oh, what if you don't make resist based at all. Just give it a 15% chance of working, regardless of resistance, similar to cracks call.

Absolutely not. At least Call Lightning is reduced by armor even if it has pierce. But this would just go and kill a stack of 9 Great Drakes (assuming you can hide your night stalker in a corner.)
...well assuming we set the damage to a relevant amount. 15% would do 3.75 damage per combat to a unit. That's useless.

Making it roll 4 times for any units is doable.
Using Armor is...not very doable and would be hard to understand for players.

It's a death spell so it should work based on resistance. We already have a rare that bypasses it in Wave of Despair, and an uncommon, Reaper Slash. Two exceptions to a rule are plenty, any more and the rule just breaks apart, and while not popular it seems, Death is meant to be a resistance based realm. I have no intention to change that.

(Speaking of which if you have Black Prayer, Wrack is way more effective. 12 damage per combat on a Stag Beetle, and that's a single figure unit. Why do people think it's weak? I'm starting to doubt it needs a buff at all. Two battles and you kill a stack of 9 stag Beetles. For 2x50 MP. That's an amazing bargain.)

...well ok, if they have levels then you don't. Maybe that's the problem. Wrack might need a -1 save modifier or idk.

As for making battles longer, Terror. At save -3, this has over 50% chance to make units skip their turns on anything where Wrack is effective.

[Nelphine]

Again, battles are won by spells. Not units (except in the few ultimate battles with the fortress and the strongest doomstacks). Terror doesn't affect this.

Those 9 great drakes don't just do nothing.. They also flame strike you every turn. And that's far far scarier than the great drakes.

And part of the problem is that the things wrack is effective against.. You already destroy. Wrack is a win more spell in most cases. (Wrack plus nightstalker, in rare omg I can't Garrison cases is the only time wrack actually matters.)

[zitro1987]

The much higher research costs (and non-religious power building) does bring up the point of a few underwhelming spells

Wrack - resist at 0 and/or with a 10% of total HP, as seravy mentioned, are reasonable proposals. However, what if it also (at a higher casting cost) causes life drain damage?
*We now could introduce an advanced non-ghoul create-undead strategy (though it's not very good against advanced units)

Evil Presence - Maybe with a different name it could target more things, or cause a production loss like 'cursed lands' on top. What if it also negates alchemist guild and amplifying tower?

Eternal Night - We could simply remove the power-building negation, and allow room for a permanent -2 armor or -1 to defend nerf on top of the -1 resistance. If it's 'night', enemies can't see well and fail to defend as well.

Pestilence - does not appear as worth the research cost, particularly as we have a few good rare spells like warp node, famine, evil presence. Pop reduction may need to be more aggressive, maybe lose the unrest component?

Dark Ritual - do we really get all the rp back? how many turns would it take? Eliminate the unrest penalty.