Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

Now that we're on the topic of Magicians/Warlocks. I think Dark Elves in general are way underpowered now. The loss of their +1pow/pop unique trait makes their glacial population growth somewhat unjustified. Sure, Dark Elf Spearmen with Focus Magic and Heroism can do a ton of damage but that's a lot of investment into a unit that can still be 1-shot by a Doom Bolt.

I would've thought that the general buffs to power-producing buildings and religious structures would've made it unnecessary to remove the +1pow/pop from Dark Elves, since other races would have more options for producing a lot of mana in their cities. As it stands right now, I think Dark Elves are probably the weakest race on Myrror.

Dark Elves have Nightmares and Warlocks both extremely powerful units. Also they have Nightblades who are invisible. I considered restoring the additional power since there might not be a reason to keep it lower but their units are far too good for that. If they have the best units AND the best power production, why would anyone ever play anything else? Taking a city full of warlocks is hard enough, in fact even more so now without righteousness.
Don't forget their units do not cost 2.5 times the normal cost anymore and they still have their ranged attack.
Besides they have high resistance and can build anything on top of all the above.
I think all 5 Myrror races are good, but if I had to name a weakest, probably trolls...but they are worth playing just for the regeneration alone so that's fine.

Although....their population growth rate is indeed horrible. Still worth it for those units.

[ChongLi]

Although....their population growth rate is indeed horrible. Still worth it for those units.

Maybe, but I think it's more worth it as a secondary race you conquer than a primary race. Being able to pump up a Dark Elf city by buying all the buildings is much easier when you start as the Dwarves than when you start from scratch as Dark Elves.

I think in general both Dark Elves and High Elves are just bad to start with; the inability to rapidly expand hurts you so much in the long run.

[kjara]

the 5/turn idea is not bad but has 2 critical flaws :
-I most likely can't do that or at least it would eat a lot of space in the combat end of turn procedure on top of taking a lot of work to do.
-Spellcaster units generally don't have the HP to survive a turn if damaged, often don't even one hit. Heroes, Archangels, Unicorns, Efreets and the like could benefit from the healing but the main objective, helping out priests, shaman and magician would be lost.

Now that you mention, Priests are far superior indeed. Although Healing and Fireball are equally good (depending on your army, with heroes, healing is better, if you only have a bunch of normal units, fireball helps more), Priests have 2 health, cost less, and require fewer buildings. Magicians only have 1 higher attack power, but 1 lower defense! They are expensive, vulnerable, and although I consider Fireball very good - It does kill an entire enemy multi-figure unit in one shot - , for 120 production and only living through 1-2 battles, their use is questionable. Perhaps they should cost only 90, and Wizard's Guilds only 600?

"Fireball Spell" is a unit ability. There is also a Doombolt, Healing and Web version and..that's all. There is no "Warp Creature Spell" unit ability in the game so I can't give that to them. Once I tried to give them MP to work like other casters but that failed, it crashes the game because units can only cast spells of their own realm and magicians have none. If I could find where the game fills the book with spells and make it work, I could give them any spell or set of spells, for example Fireball+Warp Creature+Weakness+Confusion, with Caster 20. Or just let them cast their owner's spells like heroes. I do believe this should be racial though and not something for all magicians. Some could be cheaper and have only the usual fireball, others could have this solution, if I manage to do it.

I agree "fireball spell" ability is reasonably useful against multi-figure units. However, by the time they are available you probably aren’t worried too much about neutral cities or lairs with mostly common/uncommon units. Thus you are bringing them into fights against other wizards (where they often are somewhat effective, but die quickly to enemy caster and wizard spells – although most races also tend towards less figures with their higher tier units like paladins or elven knights) or higher level lairs/nodes which are almost always single figure units. It seems fireball’s niche is to effectively deal with spearmen, bowmen, swordsmen and halberdiers primarily, but their ranged attacks already kill those units fairly quickly.

One Idea:

Would it make sense to weaken the fireball ability a bit and push it to a much earlier unit (say shamans?). They show up early enough that it would be useful even with reduced power, but would naturally be obsoleted by tougher units appearing. Then we could give magicians one of the other abilities, like web. I think web might be a decent fit for them, giving them the ability to “disable” a problematic enemy troop for a turn or two and giving them a spell that isn’t redundant with their strong ranged attack. There were a number of cases with elite+ mages where a fireball would do less damage than their basic attack (esp if they were boosted with things like whatever that common blue spell is or accuracy buffs like prayer) on units with 1-2 figures. Could also consider revisiting their defenses, ideally still keeping them different from priests(though availability and spell might be enough there still). Perhaps they should have a defense boost but keep the single hp and/or get a resistance boost?

Alternative idea:
Embrace the idea that they are primarily a defensive unit (they perform much better with city walls and getting in the first strike) and give them further incentives to be used as city garrisons, such as a mini-sage ability (1-2 points of research per turn)?

On the 5/ turn idea. If it was instead healing charge, it could still have the effect of also raising max hp. If difficult to code, still probably not worth it.

[ChongLi]

Yeah, heroes with Agility are stupidly overpowered. All they need are a few levels and they become impossible to damage by anything short of Very Rare creatures.

[Seravy]

What if Magicians had Weapon Immunity by default?
Alchemist Guild counters it so the more expensive building in the same tree producing units that have it would make some sense.
They'd also need a few points of melee attack to be able to actually do something in melee though.

Web is a big no, it's one of the most valuable Nature combat spells. I don't want to make it available without playing Nature books.

A more offensive approach would be to give them Armor Piercing but that might be overpowered.

My personal preference is Caster 20, if I can do it.

[vicwaberub]

What if Magicians had Weapon Immunity by default?

Good idea!

[vicwaberub]

It was possible to make a "turn counter" in the tactical map. But is it possible to make a visible counter for the 'Mana-Skill' research? It would be nice to see how many mana point left for the next casting skill point.

[Seravy]

It was possible to make a "turn counter" in the tactical map. But is it possible to make a visible counter for the 'Mana-Skill' research? It would be nice to see how many mana point left for the next casting skill point.

Why would you need to know that? I mean, it rarely takes more than 1-2 turns to gain an entire point.
(btw it takes 2x as many power to gain a point than the skill you already have)

I was successful at adding Caster 20 to Magicians. They can only cast the spells you already researched, but any of those as long as they cost no more than 20 MP.

The value of Caster 20 entirely depends on which spells you found. If you don't have fireball, this might even prove less useful than the original version, sadly, although ...
A quick look at the available spells :
Nature
Earth to Mud - Pretty awesome actually considering they are ranged
Resist Elements - this might actually be too good, since it counters other magicians!
Call Centaurs - double the firepower and bypass magic immunity with arrows? check!
Web - As powerful as it can get, seriously. The enemy will just wait and die while the magicians fire at them. And they can use it twice!
Sprite dust - green's fireball.
Construct Catapult - Awesome firepower, ignores guardian wind and breaks walls.
Elemental Armor - Counters pretty much any other ranged magical unit
Petrify - Resist or die!
Overall, nature's options are all awesome, I'd definitely want to have these protect my cities!

Sorcery
Resist Magic - Immunity to most curses? Check! Up to 4 times protects half the army!
Dispel Magic True - This will hurt a lot even if the enemy wins.
Guardian Wind - not very useful unless there are other units paired with the Magicians. In that case though, entire army immune to missiles!
Phantom Warriors - DEF ignoring damage? Always great!
Confusion - One of the best common spells in the game.
Counter Magic - Useless when cast from 20 MP.
Vertigo - Pretty strong curse.

Overall, not as impressive as Nature but still decent. What is impressive though, is the ability to cast Focus Magic on Magicians, enhancing not only their damage output but their Caster ability too! This allows them to use Mind Storm, Flight, Blur, and Psionic Blast on top of the above.

Chaos
Warp Wood - Not that useful, already having Missile Immunity.
Disrupt - Nice but nothing special
Fire Bolt - Pretty good considering they can use it twice.
Eldritch Weapon - not particularly useful if you already have magical damage from Magicians to bypass weapon immunity.
Wall of Fire - This is awesome, a single magician in a city and you don't need to enchant it with this.
Shatter - 2 attempts to neutralize an enemy melee unit? nice!
Warp Creature - chance to reduce enemy resistance to 0! Impressive to get this without losing a turn casting it on your main wizard or heroes.
Fire Elemental - Conjure a weapon immune unit? Check!
Flame Blade - slight attack boost to other units...but can do it twice, pretty nice, actually.
Fireball - where the entire thing started from, a great thing to have.
Immolation - Fireball except to everything attacking your target for one casting. Awesome if you have a high def unit that is being targeted.

Slightly less good than Nature but still excellent. Shatter and Warp Creature are especially powerful if cast without losing your turn for casting normally.

Life
Healing - You didn't make priests? No problem!
Bless - Ok I guess, not as impressive as Resist Elements or Resist Magic but...does both to some extent.
Star Fires - Chaos and Death units? Your magicians can deal with that if you play Life!
Holy Weapon, Holy Armor, heroism - Pretty useful if they are stacked together with some powerful melee unit.
True Sight - Invisibility? No problem anymore!

Overall, Life's options are the most limited. I probably would not make Magicians with a Life wizard if they weren't also a priest due to Healing.

Death
Weakness - Inferior to Chaos's similar options but still good enough and costs less.
Summon Zombie - Outright overpowered, not only is an excellent units as strong as 2 halberdiers but also raises them to serve you.
Cloak of Fear - Low resistance armies in sight? They can't attack your magicians!
Black Sleep - Resist or die pretty much. Awesome for an early game common and multiple magicians can spam it!
Life Drain - Pretty good nuke and you get undead. Powerful for not costing your turn.
Wraith Form - Weapon Immunity on demand. Excellent! Also comes with Poison Immunity and Crack's Call Immunity.
Mana Leak - Suddenly, enemy magicians are not very useful. Very powerful option for a mass produceable unit.

Death's options are probably the strongest of the 5 realms, and they cut the effectiveness of enemy magicians to half if Mana Leak is researched. Definitely a must have unit for them.

Finally, they can also use Dispel Magic and Heroic Shout, both also very useful options to have.
I believe Magicians are excellent units now, and this even makes those otherwise outdated common spells valuable for midgame.

[kjara]

Wow, caster 20 might honestly be a bit too good? We can test it I suppose. If too strong, could dial it back to caster 15 or something perhaps.

I think i like the aspect of common/uncommon spells still being worth using in the mid/late game aspect the best though.

[ChongLi]

I love Wraithform as a common spell! Death benefits so much from having early access to water walking!