Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[htester]

UNDECIDED
1. Earth To Mud - keep it making swamps or improve to have the original effects?

1. Earth Mud: definitely keep the old effect. The spell is barely used because other nature spells are better on early game and the research cost is high. I don't see a need to nerf it.

[MrBiscuits]

In the early game, sprites and ghouls dominate you can't expect skeletons to beat them...skeletons can win with quantity against nagas and hell hounds. They're definitely more cost efficient and will win head to head in terms of casting skill used (not unit 1 on 1, ofc, that'd be an unfair comparison). 3 7-figure skeletons units vs 1 3-figure naga? Nagas will get destroyed, even without darkness.

True, but I don't expect skeletons to win in that situation, I'm just trying to figure out when darkness could be useful instead of other better spells, especially early on when you get it.

Then maybe you're overusing it, and using it too early. For much of the early game, spells like Black Sleep and Cloak of Fear have more impact.

Well my point was that I never use it at all as it is under powered, I agree those spells are much better.

It's the other way around. Blur works all on your ENEMY units by blocking 20% of attack damage before defense rolls. The more attack your opponents have, the more damage it blocks.

Thanks for the blur information, I need to get my head around the maths exactly. But my point was really that blur helps all your units and none of your enemy units.
If blur and darkness have a similar benefits, then the one that helps all your units and none of your opponents is a much better spell for the same price. 

29. Darkness, do we want this to cost 20 instead of 25? or maybe 18?

18 sounds like I might use it occasionally. If the new death summon had many figures then it would be useful for the entire game.

[zitro1987]

What about a life-buffing idea that is not meant to over-buff strong units, but cover unit's weaknesses? A buff that adds stats until reaching a maximum?

*Target Unit attack increased to 9, defense to 6, resistance to 8, and hp to 3. Boosts have no effect if unit stats already exceeded"

The benefit being a buff spell not meant for unit buff stacking, rather a standalone buff with interesting combinations, like making an archer durable and worthy of melee, covering low resistance of strong units, boosting melee to a durable but soft-hitting unit, or making a cheap normal unit into an armorer-guild level unit.

[Seravy]

What about a life-buffing idea that is not meant to over-buff strong units, but cover unit's weaknesses? A buff that adds stats until reaching a maximum?

*Target Unit attack increased to 9, defense to 6, resistance to 8, and hp to 3. Boosts have no effect if unit stats already exceeded"

The benefit being a buff spell not meant for unit buff stacking, rather a standalone buff with interesting combinations, like making an archer durable and worthy of melee, covering low resistance of strong units, boosting melee to a durable but soft-hitting unit, or making a cheap normal unit into an armorer-guild level unit.

Interesting idea but it has a problem. It makes higher tier units useless because lower tier units with the buff would have the same stats.
Why build Halberdiers when I can build a Spearmen and after the buff both units have the same 9/6/8/3 stats anyway?

[massone]

Thanks for the blur information, I need to get my head around the maths exactly. But my point was really that blur helps all your units and none of your enemy units.
If blur and darkness have a similar benefits, then the one that helps all your units and none of your opponents is a much better spell for the same price. 

According to this train of thought, Darkness would still be the better spell. Blur is useless against both Death, Life, Colossus, Sky Drakes, HM Paladins due to Illusion Immunity. That's 2 realms and several other powerful units outside those realms. Darkness only helps your enemy if they also use Death Realm units. So Darkness helps you against 4 realms and every race, whereas Blur only helps against 3 realms with exceptions.

On top of this, Darkness provides a penalty to Life units, and Life has no corresponding spell to penalize Death units as True Light was removed from CoM.

[Cruel100]

8. Fire Elemental. Do we want to raise its attack power or add hitchance? Currently, it deals enough damage to kill roughly 3 figures of a swordsmen unit per attack which is pretty good for a common tier combat summon in a realm that's bad at combat summoning.

Increasing the attack a *little* would be a good idea.

[MrBiscuits]

Thanks for the blur information, I need to get my head around the maths exactly. But my point was really that blur helps all your units and none of your enemy units.
If blur and darkness have a similar benefits, then the one that helps all your units and none of your opponents is a much better spell for the same price. 

According to this train of thought, Darkness would still be the better spell. Blur is useless against both Death, Life, Colossus, Sky Drakes, HM Paladins due to Illusion Immunity. That's 2 realms and several other powerful units outside those realms. Darkness only helps your enemy if they also use Death Realm units. So Darkness helps you against 4 realms and every race, whereas Blur only helps against 3 realms with exceptions.

On top of this, Darkness provides a penalty to Life units, and Life has no corresponding spell to penalize Death units as True Light was removed from CoM.

Blur doesn't work with Illusion Immunity? Well that's news to me, fair point.
But there are a lot more units that aren't undead compared to ones without Illusion Immunity. And blur never benefits your opponent.

[Seravy]

Speaking of Fire Elemental. Maybe the problem isn't so much the attack power (12 is actually pretty strong for a common creature, and assuming it attacks twice, it's (almost) as good as a Fire Bolt) but the cost?
At 20, you can cast 2 Fire Bolts, or summon one Fire Elemental. Two strength 12 attacks are as good as one strength 24 attack, except for armor. Armor applies twice on the two attacks, so assuming an average of 4 enemy armor, you need 3 attacks to deal as much damage as Fire Bolt.
So the Elemental has to survive long enough to attack 6 times to be worth as much as spending the same MP on Fire Bolts, and it even has the downside of dealing the damage slower and not anywhere in the battlefield. The only way that will happen is when the Weapon Immunity ability is relevant, otherwise the elemental can't survive that long.
Fire Elementals of course also have health so they are slightly better than that as they also absorb damage dealt by the enemy, which Fire Bolts can't do, but that is of questionable value because the enemy will not target the elemental over other units in range most of the time and if there are no units in range then the enemy isn't dealing damage so nothing was gained.

So ultimately, the problem with Fire Elemental is that it's basically strictly inferior to Fire Bolt unless Weapon Immunity matters. However the realm doesn't have enough non-situational spells in common so while that would be ok otherwise, we really should aim for the spell to be useful under more generic conditions as well.
Maybe it should simply cost less?

If the Weapon Immunity does not work, 3-4 attacks are probably reasonable to expect from the elemental against common tier enemy units, so it would be fair compared to Fire Bolt at a cost around 12.
While there is the whole "Chaos is bad at combat summoning" logic behind that, early on it's simply not relevant - you don't have the casting skill to summon one or more Fire Elementals AND take advantage of the time bought by them to spam spells. Later on, it still doesn't work because the Fire Elemental is too fragile and won't survive a single combat turn, making it ineffective at buying time, exactly as intended.
So that is no reason to keep Fire Elemental weak either. Fire Elemental should offer a reasonable cost effectiveness that's at least better than Fire Bolt against weak enemy units (swordsmen etc) while still worse against stronger units like Halderdiers. Meanwhile as it's a counter to "no magic weapon" units, it should be extremely cost effective against those so it shouldn't be an issue that it manages to do 6-8-10 attacks on those yet the price paid only covers ~4 of those attacks.

We still should also compare to other realm common summons though. Wild Boars offer roughly similar damage output but have 15 hit points for 15 MP. If the Fire Elemental has 10 HP for 12 MP, Boars remain a better option to summon but only slightly. Nature creatures should be noticeably better so maybe the Fire Elemental should cost more than 12, or should have 1 less armor. Boards do have one large advantage though - they move 3 so while the Fire Elemental struggles chasing and damaging the units you want to damage, the Boars do it easily.
Compared to zombies, well, the Zombies are better because they create undead, otherwise the cheaper elemental will surpass the zombies in effectiveness noticeably - only if darkness or other all figure buffing effects don't exist though. With a single Holy Bonus hero present, zombies are strictly better already.

So maybe the Fire Elemental should cost 12-14 MP, keeping the current stats. (That would fit in well with Chaos commons being generally lower cost, but more situational spells.)

[Cruel100]

So maybe the Fire Elemental should cost 12-14 MP, keeping the current stats. (That would fit in well with Chaos commons being generally lower cost, but more situational spells.)

It seems to be a nice change.

[htester]

Nature Spells ideas for rare tier:

Stone Age/ Stone Weapons (Global enchament)
-All of the caster's recently trained normal units gain stoning (it isn't supposed to stack with doom mastery or with summoned creatures). If chaos can now play with heroes with new insulation spell maybe normal units are supposed to do something on nature as well. Also it would be an earlier version of "Blazing eyes" for the nature realm.

Nature's Lair (Fortress Enchanment)
-All summoned units in fortress cost X% less to summon (It's supposed to provide a similar effect to Divine order for nature without diplomatical penalties). Also it aims to make a pair with Earth Gate so that you summon units on capital them move those units elsewhere.

Ways of the Earth (Unit Enchament)
-All units gain Pathfinding + 1 overland movement (max 4 overland movement). A mass "Land linking" without the stats. Might be useful as elemental armor, iron skin and reg, should be the priotiries for buffing. You can save a few turns on overland movement and casting skill instead of casting land linking multiple times. It makes sense to be worse than Wind Walking because nature already has the best spell on game for deploying troops. Ideally with Earth Gate and at least a city on the continent you plan to conquer it would also be worth to cast on very rare tier.