Test games played

[Nelphine]

Yeah multiple divine orders send things really out of whack. I think having the effects only being half as strong for any other wizard besides the casting wizard would be good.

[Seravy]

The problem with that is the part of the effect that RAISES costs is meant to be useful against other wizards, and sometimes you cast the spell for those effects (in particular to get hit by less direct damage spells in combat).
Divine Order is definitely one of the few remaining spells that are marked "potentially too powerful, more testing needed." however.

[zitro1987]

I see multiple issues with the spell:
*The AI sometimes shoots self in foot, hurting own spell-casting or benefiting enemy or player casting (I was getting 40-ish mana werewolves!)
*Number adjustment feeling doesn't seem engrossing, sometimes not feeling very powerful either (if only 1 cast). It also seems to make no sense at all. * why do I get rewarded with cheap 'possession'?
*Multiple enchantment usage doesn't seem to be 'multiplicative'. I fear what 3 of them could do, which is not that unlikely.
*Multiple uses feels really unbalanced in a way that impacts the 'fun' factor, especially knowing the first bullet again


One subtle solution is to remove both the self-penalties & 'vs enemies' benefits, and tone down the %s (especially if 2nd/3rd). Something like:
*Own Wizard has a 10% cost reduction in [certain spells] and 15% cost reduction in enchantments. All other spells still 100% cost, not 100+%
*Other wizards have a 10% cost increase in [certain spells/summons] and 15% cost increase in curses/direct damage. All other spells still 100% cost, not less
*Multiple usages of spell enhances percentages by an additional 5-8%

[Seravy]

The AI sometimes shoots self in foot, hurting own spell-casting or benefiting enemy or player casting

The AI casts it only when their side has a large amount of Life books or the "enemy" side has a large amount of Chaos and Death. That should be good enough. Yes there are spells even in Death that benefit but on the whole it's not that helpful. Werewolves are nice but get obsolete fairly quickly, and possession, while good, is situational (target has to be a normal unit with not high resistance).

Multiple enchantment usage doesn't seem to be 'multiplicative.

It is.

One subtle solution is to remove both the self-penalties & 'vs enemies' benefits, and

Not going to do that, as it would remove the diplomacy aspect of the spell. One good thing about Life, and Life/Sorcery is that it benefits from positive diplomacy/peace, through this spell which your allies cast for you, and Altar of Peace.

[zitro1987]

I see, good to know that the AI primarily casts it based on what books they have, though most realms have unintended benefits and death doesn't suffer too much honestly and should be re-evaluated for this realm.
*Possession and werewolves are an early example but
*death have a LOT of essential enchantments it benefits mid-game from divine order, such as terror/black prayer, the city defense enchantments, bloodlust becoming spam-worthy, and many others (wrack too?).
*In my case, I had 3 sorcery books and 3 more enchantments - if I had spell lock, divine order would have helped me, not hurt me.
* I know 'divine order' sounds like a holy vs evil ... but I think only chaos is the realm that really suffers from this spell. I'd either make the incentive only when enemy has 'chaos' instead of 'chaos/death'
* Another option is to give cost increases for at least 'curse-like' unit/global combat enchantments, targeting all those essential death spells.

Diplomacy Element - I can offer an alternate suggestion:
*Own wizard and 'positive relations' wizards receive 10-15% cost reduction benefits which can be cumulative by an additional 10% per casting
*Wizards at 'neutral to negative relations' (could be war) receive 10-15% cost increases which can be cumulative by an additional 10% per casting.

This way, you benefit on your expected main type of spell casting, you help your allies (or allies help you), and you also mutually hurt your opponent. Once you decide to betray your fellow life wizard, then a bit of the benefit goes away, and the cost penalties kick in for your summons and direct damage spells.

[Seravy]

While Black Prayer, Terror, Wrack etc benefits, they are combat global enchantments : You can only use them once per battle and they are in the 10% reduction category, so the bonus isn't enough to make up for more expensive Wave of Despair, Massacre, Annihilate, Reaper Slash, Syphon Life, and summoning.
Lycanthropy is good, but it does get obsolete fairly quickly considering Divine Order itself is also an uncommon, and a later one.
So Possession and city curses are the only real worries. However city curses are meant to benefit - it is the main drawback of casting divine order. If possession is a problem, we can move it from "unit enchantments" to "special spells" or "combat spells". However I do like that there is at least one good spell that does not get expensive - without it Divine Order would be far too overpowered against Death.
Chaos is definitely hurt more by it, albeit it does get reduction on the pretty amazing and underused Shatter and Warp Creature, plus Chaos rifts, and it's most important uncommon spell, Fire Storm is unaffected. Cheaper Mystic Surge, Flame Blade and Chaos Channels are also decent, even if not as good as Possession.

An interesting path to take could be to rename the "combat spells" category to "damage and curse spells" and move everything there that's currently in "special spells" and "city/unit enchantments", but doing that would make the Divine Order a lot more powerful which is something I rather avoid. A large effect on a smaller portion of spells is more interesting and relevant for gameplay than a small effect that affects a large number of spells.

Making the spell depend on relation scores is an interesting idea but making it even more complicated is bad because there would be no space in help text to actually add that information there.

Overall, I'm happy with what Divine Order does, and at most I would want to adjust the percentages, or move one or two spells into other categories, if necessary. However I'm not yet sure if there is a need to.

[Nelphine]

Again divine order is fine when there's one. It's stacking it that crushes. Casting Uranus' blessing for 74 mana/skill is .. incredibly overpowered. Sure 3+ divine orders are rare, but as life, if there are other life wizards, it's worth rushing research on divine order just to gift it to them. You can easily research it nearly as early as werewolves, gift it, and now summoning werewolves suddenly costs ~40 in 1404. 

But even without cross realm, casting holy weapon AND holy armor AND bless on EVERY unit you produce is a completely real possibility.

Which means the ai can do the same thing, as zitro brought up - multiple life/sorcery ai, especially perfectionists, will end up with every city having every city buff.

[Seravy]

Looks like I'm going to lose the current game. Orc nature summoning doesn't really work against a 3 wizard alliance - you can't summon enough to fight 3 people and orc units are not reliable. I'm hit by Fire Storm almost every turn so I can't expect to use anything but catapults and those are not really a good idea against 2 wizards Death books.

Maybe I shouldn't have razed all the elven cities, but at a +40% unrest modifier, keeping them would have meant to give up on the only real advantage of playing orcs : getting a lot of gold from the fast growing population and build up all the magical buildings using it (since their units suck).

Anyone else has experience playing Orcs? It seems obvious they should aim at using magic (summons or otherwise) to win and not their units, which are as generic as it gets, but having horrible unrest from 2 of the 4  other late races on Arcanus (elves and high men) make them work fairly poorly as a late race - not only do they lack really strong late units (hordes are ok but I wouldn't want them against fire storm and death wizards, and wyverns are really just weaker, flying spiders and I had spiders) but their good late economy (in gold) falls apart as soon as you need to conquer elves and high men.

That said, if I had to fight only one wizard at a time it might have worked anyway, but 3 are impossible with this strategy. Unfortunately that also means I won't find out how well myrran wizard balance is from this game - I didn't make it there.

Maybe I should have poured that gold into one elven or high men city to buy their units despite the unrest. Paladins, Elven Lords or something - Probably paladins as they are at least immune to death. Paying 400+ gold for one is expensive though...I can get an amplifying tower for just 4.

[Nelphine]

Hordes (mithril war colleges), strategic strength, doesn't matter what the enemy has if they won't attack, summons for offense and killing the occasional doomstack. Max skill, gold to buy more amp towers. Conjuror, spellweaver.

That's how I've always won with orcs (or just life buff hordes and win) although retort selection changes depending on realm and particular goal.

[Seravy]

Adamantium hordes, good idea I should have done that instead of the crappy catapults. While catapults defend better in actual combat, hordes prevent attacks completely...
Strategic strength can even prevent Alliance based war declarations (albeit I'd need an insane amount for it).

I also think I should have picked Alchemy, even at the price of dropping Specialist (or the 10th book but being Nature Orcs, I definitely don't want to drop the book.) - best way to use that gold is to convert for mana, it's more cost-effective than buying the amplifying towers up until, I don't remember, was it 150 skill?
Having alchemy also means I can push out swordsmen or other random crap without needing an alchemist guild, to quickly reduce unrest using the low upkeep units. So it means raising taxes earlier.