Role of planes

[Nelphine]

Actually, Move Fortress is enough to do with cities, it could make sense as life. Back when unrest was based on capital, it actually would have been very good for Life, as uncommon, as an alternate unrest reduction vs stream of life. Now, not so much. I feel like it needs something else, but I'm not sure what.

I would be hugely against disenchant area, specifically due to city curses, and warp node, etc, and I think it would be too big a change.

Detect Magic is critical for spell blast; however, as the way it is currently isn't intuitive, I'd be ok with changing that, but I think it would require a lot of changes to keep spell blast playable.

Heroic shout, eh. It's neat, but it's not something I'm worried about either way.

[Seravy]

So, Plane Shift, let's investigate the possibility of having it back.
The old targeting procedure is gone but we need a new one anyway. We likely have space for that, the AI spellcasting segment is huge. But, we need to call the "destination plane" procedure to know where to target, which is in ovr158.
This doesn't look like a safe far call but the procedure doesn't make other calls and I don't think the call can swap its own parent segment out at least I don't think I've ever seen that happen so maybe it'll work.

The effect of the spell seems to be deleted, but the space is not yet used so all we need is to put it back.
I'm pretty sure the spell had bugs which we'll need to fix...I guess it was no check for nodes on the other side?
Should be doable and space should be available - we can get rid of "casting wall of stone" for example.
The place for where the casting procedure should be called still has the space as well.

So overall, Plane Shift most likely is usable.
Status update :

0. Planar Travel tier
We already know this will have to be late rare or early very rare. Probably the latter, since "late" isn't a thing we can enforce in the existing research system, anyone can click to research it as their first rare, and unless the RP cost is on par with a very rare, it will not be enough to prevent that.

1. Tower blocking. 
a., Tower blocking is desired and absolute. Planar Travel shouldn't exist.
b., Tower blocking is desired but not absolute. Planar Travel should exist, in Arcane, but the AI should use it rarely, probably on-demand on doomstacks of 9 units only. Planar Travel spell should be expensive to justify low AI use in the eyes of the human player. Optional : Difficulty level can increase the frequency of using this spell.
c., Tower blocking is desired but not absolute. Planar Travel should exist but limited to Life wizards.
d., Tower blocking is not desired at all. Planar Travel should exist, the AI should use it frequently and it should be Arcane.

2.  Method of Travel
a., Planar Travel for entire stack
b., Plane Shift

3. Planar Travel items
a., Keep the item power, as a Create Artifact tier. Effect works on entire stack. (AI would still be unable to use it.)
b., Remove the item power and add something new (probably for the Death realm which has the fewest item powers still)

4. Shadow Demons
a., Keep them as is (makes them come an entire tier too early for planar movement)
b., remove Planar Travel ability
c., Move up to rare (probably need to raise stats and be a higher end rare. As AI is strongly reliant on this unit this would be quite bad )
d., other?

5. Strict planar access
a., Neither human nor AI players are allowed to break towers before turn 200
b., The AI isn't allowed to break towers before turn 200 unless broken by the human. (current)
c., Neither human nor AI players are allowed to break towers before <condition> unless someone else already did. (need to come up with a good condition)

6. Planar Travel should replace
a., Move Fortress
b., Disenchant Area
c., Detect Magic
d., Heroic Shout

7. The empty Life spell slot should contain
a., Move Fortress
b., A new unit buff to replace Planar Travel
c., Something else

[Seravy]

btw, are we 100% sure we are happy with the current role of city curses? This might be the chance to reconsider.

Basically, as is, you can use them to crush a player economically and win the game without ever attacking them (ofc they'll probably attack you, but in theory) - but this means if you are behind in casting power, or the AI is maniacal then you've pretty much lost the game unless you can quickly raze all their cities.
An alternate design could be that city curses are a reliable way to weaken enemy economy but not completely crush them - the same way city buffs improve it - in which case Life Disenchant Area would be reasonable, and city curses could see much more use.

Currently we have :

Warp Node, we even had specific threads about this being unfair, unfun, and possibly overpowered. (It's not, but it does take out one of the most important unique aspects of the game, nodes. You picked Astrologer? Too bad, nodes don't work this game...)
Chaos Rift, which would be a nice way to weaken economy and garrison over time but due to the "over time" part, it getting dispelled makes the effect worthless - you'll want to spam it enough that dispels can't keep up and they stay in effect, at which point you're better off summoning an army and razing those cities - it's not like much of it remains after prolonged Chaos Rifts anyways.
The Evil Presence, Famine, Pestilence trio which pretty much say "you win", or more like "the AI wins, you don't because they can dispel...".
All other "curses" are one time effects that aren't even affected by Disenchant Area, so the change would have no effect on them.

Basically, we'd need to nerf the more OP Death spells and in exchange, the Death wizard could be sure their spells don't get dispelled, so humans could rely on them even against stronger opponents.

It sounds like a big change but is it?
How often are you in a position to actually use Disenchant Area? The AI has enough casting power so it only really is an option if they aren't in death otherwise having the full set of spells pushes the casting priority up and they are ahead in casting power...
If it's a spell you can't afford to use anyway, does losing it matter?

[Nelphine]

I think the trope of long term spells, that can be dispelled is important.
That being said, due to how casting skill works, yes it effectively ends up Being 'AI can cast, so you must kill him before he does, and ai can dispel so if you cast only artificially reducing dispel priority allows it to work'.


So I don't like the current balance. However, WITHOUT these, then I don't think the AI has any counter to the human burn it all doomstack and so tower blocking will become undesired as opposed to 'do as you wish'.


All that being said, I think the most hated city curse is raise volcano, precisely because it is undispellable. Removing dispels would necessitate other city curses becoming instants like firestorm, or they would become equally as hated.

Even though we can't realistically dispel right now, the illusion of doing so exists and makes those spells far more palatable than raise volcano.



All in all I don't think we should change city cursing without a lot of thought. I'm not sure where we could start that would be less evil than they currently are.

[Seravy]

Well, let's see...
Chaos Rift and Pestilence would be fine as is, maybe with a minor numerical change (roll on d20 instead of d10 for pestilence?). Their effect is slow. Compared to Call the Void, Fire Storm, Earthquake, etc they are already weaker.
Warp Node would most likely need to change, but it probably already needs to.
Evil presence and Famine however are quite powerful, mainly because we wanted them to combine into a "city starves to shrink in size" effect. That probably can't stay as is. Evil presence would probably be fine with the old effect without the "and adds 3 rebels".

I guess we can swap with Move Fortress first and think more about it, but if we swapped with Disenchant, and removed Move Fortress, then we could have both Heroic Shout and the new hero spell. And two hero spells are better than one.

(note the vast majority of curses already cannot be dispelled. Volcano is one but Earthquake, Call the Void, Fire Storm, Drain Power, Spell Blast... btw Volcano annoys people because it destroys something that cannot be rebuilt. So it's not just a numerical effect but permanent loss in quality (on military ores).)

[Nelphine]

Re hate of volcano, true. However, look at what a plague did to your game. You have no way to dispel plague, and it was awful. Pestilence while definitely later on the game, can be cast on your while empire (and maniacal will). That will be hated. 

Also note, I didn't mention that the AI due to cheating bonuses is naturally less affected by curses - population grows faster, buildings are replaced faster, units are rebuilt faster. I've seen entire AI empire with Chaos rift without noticing a difference.

A spell like pestilence should be fine because it's a flat number no matter how good the cheating bonus is, but chaos rift is definitely far more effective against the human.



I see where you're coming from in the suggestion though, and I actually like that direction, but I'm still not seeing how to do it in a way that feels good to the human. (Yes current system has flaws too so I'm definitely open to something.)

I'm also not sure heroic shout is worth it. Consider right now, life is the only one that distinctly likes heroic shout but they already have the strongest heroes - heroism by itself is probably enough to make up for lack of heroic shout.

[Seravy]

Sorcery heroes probably need it. They are good at hiding, avoiding melee, and staying out of harm, but they don't get the defense buffs to actually fight things. Even Life heroes occasionally find it useful against Hydra or Pikemen or other multifigure units that have a strong attack can penetrate the hero's armor. I admit Life melee heroes using direct damage spells doesn't really suit the realm much though and if one wants ranged damage they can use ranged heroes.

[Seravy]

Either way as I lost my ongoing game, it's time to start working. Not sure where to begin, so many things to do.
Probably by adding the Plane Shift spell effect into the Move Fortress slot then teaching the AI to target it.

For city curses, we should maybe try coming up with an effect that works better on AI than humans. However, city curses actually are naturally MORE effective against AI already. They are a percentage reduction and the AI has more so they lose more. If the goal of curses is not complete elimination of resources, then losing 50 out of 120 should hurt more and be more relevant to winning than losing 25 out of 60. Still it might be interesting to try to make it so that the reduction is even greater.
This only applies to some resources though, not so much on others.
Food specifically is one where the AI doesn't care - unless they have like zero farmers left, they will still be able to maintain armies. Power does hurt the AI more than the human since they have a large bonus on it and use it wastefully. So Famine will likely need revision, while Evil Presence and Warp Node are efficient against AI. (the effect might be a bit transparent though, the AI not being able to spend as much on research and skill is a big deal but not obvious)
Likewise unrest hurts AI more as well, as they get a bonus on both gold and production so each rebel takes away more from them then the human.

[Seravy]

For Famine I'm unsure if we should really be aiming for a spell that causes food shortages and disbanded troops.
Maybe something that reduces population (but less than Pestilence) or reduces productivity (useful for the human, the AI spams less troops!) could be better. Reducing food is too binary, it either makes all your armies starve, or it doesn't really do much at all except indirectly reducing productivity.

[Seravy]

Fun fact, Move Fortress is a redundant spell that has the exact same effect as Spell of Return. If it wasn't hardcoded that casting SoR = being banished and instead the fortress status was determining this, it could actually be enabled as a real spell and used to move the fortress.
I don't think it's important enough to be worth the insane amount of work that would be but it's a possibility.