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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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New poll
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Added a new poll about Spell of Mastery. Please vote.
http://seravy.x10.mx/Wordpress/ The relevant discussion was in this thread, see Drake178's and my posts : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1146370/d...165920645/ 
Although I think spell blast should able to counter spell of mastery (player should always take that into precaution), I have completely different problem with it. I play on 13 wizards maximal landmass in earth-like world, cost and time of spell of mastery is insanely high, it is 47k, even worse under evil omen (70k) which mean I would need at least 80 to 120 turns to cast it while defending (my casting skill is 650 in year 1435, I could not have more unless going on conquest spree due to I mostly dwarves in that game). With time 60 turns to finish casting spell of mastery, I found that it is easier for me to go on conquest spree to get rid other possible holder of SoM and push 'win' button would be much easier, and less time consuming/fustration and safer option than casting SoM myself.
And I think at this level of cost, once caster spend mana beyond 30k, it would nolonger able to blast anymore (due to mana cap limit). My suggestion would be reduce initial cost of casting skill but for each casting skill would need to spend double mana on spell of mastery while spell blasting SoM requires quadriple mana spending (double what caster of SoM spent) while Spell Blast should have limit of mana spending set by casting skillx10 (which mean some spell would beyond ability for caster to blast completely if casting skill is too low) and effect should be like tug-o-war, not completely counter the spell but reduce casting progress instead unless spell progress back to 0 mana spending which would become actual counter. With this, player should have less fustration about their ultimate SoM casting too long or countered too easily.
The casting cost scales with the map size because it takes longer for the enemy armies to reach your fortress.
The maximal map is ~140x140 tiles, with a move 3 stack that takes almost 50 turns to cross in the worst case scenario even without considering the need to move between planes.
As me and drake178 wrote in the Steam forums, balancing around the ability of armies of a single wizard being able to march to and take the capital is a bad idea. Especially when you aren't even considering their best armies. Even if they can't reach the capital, they can still wreck great havoc on the SoM caster by stealing away all their cities and nodes. And most of their cities and nodes should fall easily since many of them won't have garrisons that can survive good armies or spells.
You literally don't need any cities or nodes to win by SoM as long as you started casting with enough MP to complete the spell.
Some fortress garrisons are even good enough that you don't need to cast spells in the fortress battles either. Maybe if AI prioritized Drain Power higher that could help but there is no guarantee any AI has the spell.
Maybe making SoM require you still have mana and/or gold income will help. It would add a way to stop it without beating fortress or power drain. Or alternatively provide more ways to steal from mana reserve, i.e. by capturing cities.
The general idea add more ways to stop it. (June 3rd, 2021, 16:35)Seravy Wrote: I don't think I have one set for those. In CoM1, player's reserve gold and mana could not be more than 30k, that is its hard cap in previous version. I'm not sure if you have removed it in CoM2 or not. |
