DEATH Realm

[Nelphine]

7 mana difference is a lot. If a human has both they're going to get confused as to why reaper slash even exists.
I wouldn't make quite such a large combined change. I'd do +1 and -2.

[Seravy]

Found the previous Wrack discussion.

Looks like it ended prematurely due to generic dislike of Damage of Time spells. That's too bad, but it is one.

This is the amount of damage you can expect per combat if you cast Wrack and Black Prayer, against various enemies.
   

So, currently :
-Multifigure units die if their resistance is 10 or lower, and suffer a lot of damage at 11, otherwise they are safe.
-Single figure (or low figure count) units likely won't die at all.

Which makes this an "I kill your useless garbage units" spell, pretty much.
Now, that's not a bad thing considering the AI has a lot of those and you do need to fight them in a cost efficient manner (40(+35 MP if needed) per stack of 9 is as good as it can get) but the spell does nothing at all against anything stronger - so if you can already kill weak enemy units it won't really do much.

Raising the save penalty adds 2.5 damage per combat per enemy figure - as Flame Strike is 7.5 damage per unit, this is one third of a Flame Strike against single figure units, or an entire FS on 3 figure units.
That's actually not negligable, and the multi figure units don't really care - they already died without a penalty as well. It does extend the amount of resistance this is effective against though - up to resistance 11 or 12 which is extremely rare on a normal unit without some sort of a boost.
So raising the save penalty would pretty much mean there won't be multifigure normal units capable of surviving this at all - but even as is there are barely any.

So I think a -1 or -2 save penalty might be a solution.

Dealing more damage/turn would instead be a more drastic raise to damage done to single figure units, without raising the amount of resistance where units are safe from the effect, so without extending which units can be damaged or not, "only" making sure they suffer enough damage. That might also be a working solution. (however a sworsdmen failing 1 resistance roll would lose 3 figures to the 3 damage as damage is applied to the entire unit)

[Seravy]

I decided to go with a more conservative +1 for Lightning Bolt, as I'm worried making it better will make Warp Lighting and Doom Bolt look worse (especially the latter which doesn't really deal much more damage than LB for 40% higher cost and a higher tier even as is, with the only upside being that it can ignore the other half of the armor as well.)


This makes Lightning Bolt 31 strength and 1.24 effectiveness against 10 armor, 33 strength and 1.32 effectiveness against 6 armor.
Ice Bolt is unchanged at 25 strength 1 effectiveness against 10, and 29 strength, 1.16 effectiveness against 6 armor.

Reaper Slash would be, depending on its base strength :

42 : Against 10 armor it's 32 strength, 1 effectiveness, against 6 armor it's 36 strength, 1.125 effectiveness.


So same cost effectiveness as Ice Bolt (both being "this realm can do that but not very good at it" that's fine) but more damage in a single turn, making RS strictly superior at 10 armor or above.  9 and below armor it still deals more damage in a single turn, but the cost effectiveness is slightly worse.

Against Lightning Bolt, it's 1 strength stronger but roughly 20% less efficient - you only get 4 shots of this for 5 lightning bolts. I think that fits the "strictly inferior" definition, but, only at 10 armor. Against lower armor, it might be worth picking Reaper Slash to deal more damage/turn even if it means slightly less cost effectiveness, if killing the target quickly matters.

For Wrack I think we should try a -1 save penalty first, and then decide if we need more or not.

[Nelphine]

Sounds good for both.

[teelaurila]

Wave of despair is certainly complex and unusual in seemingly two ways:

Damage depends on number of units (I played one black game thinking it was per figure, so in between direct and immolation damage, only now realized it depends on units in play)
Resistance acts as armor. Still not clear whether this means after the leading figure dies, the next one gets to add in it's resistance. If this is not true it is not "as though the unit's resistance was its defense".

I must say I feel this is all bit too much special snowflake for just one spell. Are you sure we cannot attain the desired effects with normal attack, immolation attack and drain life type attack? Even combination thereof would be more clear than the new concepts.

Having used the wave in one game, it does roughly do it's purpose. Killed warlocks en masse, and this a direct damage spell should. Never understood it also nukes lonely (single-figure) units hard. Figured it did the damage depending on per figure on each unit, so never bothered to use it when not facing many units. Mass healing is a good counter to flame strike - it not working on the wave is big when life is on the other side.

Perhaps there is still a way to think Wrack and Wave of Despair together so as to achieve the desired effects for death using existing effects?
Perhaps Wrack could make normal/immolation attacks (not resistance-based) to open another venue ala reaper slash (poison cloud)? This would slowly kill magicians, insteads of despair now wiping them like Flame strike. Or wrack doing life drain attacks each turn instead (add powerful sides to the damage).

Wave of despair seems also a bit too good on the concept side, working in wide variety of situations: many weak units all get hit, few strong units get hit hard, single-figures get hit hard enough (not immolation), many-figure units don't get to add up their defenses like armor (I think?). There's almost no reason not to use it (apart from the immunities). Couldn't a simpler attack on every unit ala flame strike do? (which you are comparing to already)? It could be resistance based (ala life drain, possibly even including the specials?) or it could be a normal attack (like reaper slash). Save-or-die exists at very rare so not that.

I think I would favor the wave as multi-target reaper slash, I know it "dumbs it down", but yeah. Then it also wouldn't overlap so much with wrack. (But even if resistance based, wrack is per figure)

I know that "nice, but over-engineered" isn't a very nice thing to say after someone put in a lot of effort. But it can be important for a game, thus I tired to be constructive.

Reaper slash: sounds good. It's more important for death than ice bolt is for nature, as death needs to kill but nature can also buff and control.

[Seravy]

Resistance acts as armor. Still not clear whether this means after the leading figure dies, the next one gets to add in it's resistance. If this is not true it is not "as though the unit's resistance was its defense".

It's actually neither, really. The spell description should be taken literally : resistance is subtracted from the attack strength. So there are no "rolls", 7 resistance will always lower the attack strength by exactly 7. This is different from attack vs armor where you roll attack, roll armor, then subtract the successful armor rolls from the successful attack rolls. While the average outcome is the same, this method has significantly less variance in the outcomes.

I must say I feel this is all bit too much special snowflake for just one spell. Are you sure we cannot attain the desired effects with normal attack, immolation attack and drain life type attack? Even combination thereof would be more clear than the new concepts.

Yes, I'm sure. We specifically needed a spell that deals high damage to strong targets the realm cannot otherwise hurt conditionally, with a condition that is hard enough to achieve to not be overpowered, but not so hard that you can't actually use it at all. Requiring to kill the other units in the stack first is such a condition and it works very well for the realm.

In short, we concluded the realm has no way to hurt or kill a strong high resistance unit, and needs a spell to address that problem. This is somewhat important for human players (hey the enemy has a 22 resist 25 armor hero Repear Slash cannot kill, so I lost) much for for the AI (which is more likely to be on the receiving end of that hero).

Wave of despair seems also a bit too good on the concept side, working in wide variety of situations

That's actually the flaw of the implementation. It wasn't meant to work well against a large number of weak units, it just ended up that way. This change aims to fix that. (It'll still kill the 9 magicians but for 2-4 uses that's not so great. And if they're Elite you can forget about it, you will need to use Wrack and Mana Leak or something along those lines.)

I understand what you're saying but this spell is trying to fill a very specific purpose that generic direct damage spells cannot and should not, but Death needs to be able to do : kill very strong units with high resistance.

(also it's a nice counter to the abuse potential of combat summons to keep the AI from ever actually winning a battle - as long as there are only a few units left, Wave will clean them up even if the player keeps summoning more)

[teelaurila]

Ok, thanks for the explanations.

If it is to kill strong units, then should it not be a simple® single-target spell? I mean the "damage spread between enemy units, each of which reduces its share with its resistance" (well, not directly so simple as the total also goes up with numbers, but this is the main effect of the present formula) -idea is brilliant in the sense that you kill the supporting units first, and then boom on the lead baddie. On the flip side, the need for supporting units shielding the hero from this nuke is great. The big but is the AI not being able to do all of that. It will almost certainly blow its casting up front, and not being able to target the player hero with this. And even more likely open up with this, without cleaning the trash first. Also it is a complex thing even for the player to wrap his head around. "wave of X" certainly sounds like an area-of-effect nuke, and it does affect all enemy units, but in fact that's a trap!

[Seravy]

Well, I wouldn't worry about the AI using it wrong in combat, I believe I have fairly good conditions set up for that.
Yes, it will blow casting on other spells first - but those other spells will reduce your stack size, so either they can uses Wave right there, or in the next combat unless you manage to refill the stack immediately.

Death doesn't really have buffs or other "wasteful" spells the AI could use - if they do find a spell to cast, that spell will be killing (or possessing) your units one way or another.

It can't be a simple single target spell because that much damage without some special restriction is just plain overpowered. Also can't be because unrestricted direct damage is Chaos's strength - we can't have the strongest direct damage spell in Death.

It also can't be because that wouldn't give the AI a weapon against human combat summoning - single target spells can't deal with that by definition as they can only kill that one unit which just got summoned that turn and nothing else.

[vicwaberub]

Found the previous Wrack discussion.

Looks like it ended prematurely due to generic dislike of Damage of Time spells. That's too bad, but it is one.

This is the amount of damage you can expect per combat if you cast Wrack and Black Prayer, against various enemies.


So, currently :
-Multifigure units die if their resistance is 10 or lower, and suffer a lot of damage at 11, otherwise they are safe.
-Single figure (or low figure count) units likely won't die at all.

Which makes this an "I kill your useless garbage units" spell, pretty much.
Now, that's not a bad thing considering the AI has a lot of those and you do need to fight them in a cost efficient manner (40(+35 MP if needed) per stack of 9 is as good as it can get) but the spell does nothing at all against anything stronger - so if you can already kill weak enemy units it won't really do much.

Raising the save penalty adds 2.5 damage per combat per enemy figure - as Flame Strike is 7.5 damage per unit, this is one third of a Flame Strike against single figure units, or an entire FS on 3 figure units.
That's actually not negligable, and the multi figure units don't really care - they already died without a penalty as well. It does extend the amount of resistance this is effective against though - up to resistance 11 or 12 which is extremely rare on a normal unit without some sort of a boost.
So raising the save penalty would pretty much mean there won't be multifigure normal units capable of surviving this at all - but even as is there are barely any.

So I think a -1 or -2 save penalty might be a solution.

Dealing more damage/turn would instead be a more drastic raise to damage done to single figure units, without raising the amount of resistance where units are safe from the effect, so without extending which units can be damaged or not, "only" making sure they suffer enough damage. That might also be a working solution. (however a sworsdmen failing 1 resistance roll would lose 3 figures to the 3 damage as damage is applied to the entire unit)

I have no problem with damage over time, its a good idea because it was not implemented in vanilla MoM. Its good in situations where units want no fight in the tactical combat.

Fight or die - this is the purpose of the spell I think

But I understand your points. My problem is: Wrack is a rare spell and you can use it to late in the game. And you can't feel the effect. If one figure of a multi-figure unit die per turn, you can see it and it would be a great effect. Is there no chance for a formula like "kill one figure of a multi-unit per turn"?

An other idea: -1HP but -10 save penalty! Fight or die - but for all enemy units on the battlefield. It would be mighty and 'rare' is a good choice.

[Seravy]

On Drain Power.
What worries me is that higher casting skill allows you to use more of it, BUT it also means you drain more power for each use, assuming the enemy casting skill is on par with yours.

This essentially means the amount drained grows as an X^2 function of time.
100 skill drains once, assuming an AI reserve ratio of 32, for 276. Gain ~1-2 skill.
200 skill drains twice, 2*372 = 774. Gain ~2-3 skill.
300 skill drains three times, 3*468 = 1404. Gain 2-3 skill.
400 skill drains 4 times, 4*564 = 2256. Gain 3-4 skill.
500 skill drains 5 times, 5*660 = 3300. Gain 4-5 skill.
600 skill drains 6 times, 6*756 = 4536. Gain 4-5 skill.
This is the entire power income of a high difficulty AI at this point, and using the spell does accelerate your casting skill, so getting there isn't that impossible.
Drain Power is supposed to be the "extra" on top of other power denial spells, not the main component.
And the amount of skill gained for using it is also quite a lot. Even with a large empire and Archmage, I can rarely put over 2-3k into skill and this tops that by itself.

So maybe we should drop the percentage component entirely and make it linear?

Drain 250 MP, and that's all. Using it 5 times still drains 1250, which still raises your skill by 1-2 and is a considerable amount proportional to both your and the AI's income - but it's not as crazy as 3300.

I admit I don't cast the spell much either, but mostly because summoning things or casting other spells is more important than raising my casting skill and draining the AI's MP, not because the effect is too weak.
Whether disabling an AI's entire mana income in exchange for not casting overland spells is worth it or not is a question, but I think it shouldn't be possible in the first place through that method. Mainly because it's unfun. So Drain Power should really be something to use when an enemy is critically low on MP to deny their combat spells, not something for winning the game through the sheer economic effect.