Some general feedback

[Nelphine]

I agree that rampant dispelling is too much. I understand why it's done but if I've spent, oh, 700+ overland skill on one unit to buff it, one or two dispel magics (even a rune master) shouldn't get rid of them all. I clearly need to read the formula again and see if excessive dispelling is happening.

I also need to retest if spell lock works against overland dispelling wave. Problem is spell lock comes so late, the game is usually already decided.

[Nelphine]

Hum. How does the sea of single stack javelin were cause problems? (I've never encountered it )

[Seravy]

Problem is spell lock comes so late, the game is usually already decided.

It's an uncommon....how is that late?

[Nelphine]

Because if you're going enchantment buffs then the 5 starting common ones win the game for you, or you die. Literally, that's how my impossible life games go; I could probably set research to zero, never build a research building in the game, and it wouldn't affect the outcome except to get a mechanicians guild (although it would hugely affect my enjoyment. )

Uncommon and rare spells are virtually meaningless on impossible. You survive on commons, and you win on strong openings or strong very Rares. There are individual Rares that can replace very Rares, and probably individual uncommons that could replace a common but those are both for very specific strategies; and I really really doubt spell lock is one of them.

[Seravy]

Could you, like, not consider impossible the "normal" difficulty to play?
Besides, I know it might sounds strange but impossible can be beaten without rush tactics - at least could two or three updates ago (tho I admit the early game counts a lot. Maybe a bit too much but that's how this genre works.)
I should play more impossible myself but time is finite and impossible games take like 25-30 hours each unless I lose early.

I would never say uncommons or rares are meaningless. Any of these uncommons can easily decide the game in your favor : Prayer, Lycanthropy (if rushed as first pick), Raise Dead (if playing heroes), Transmute, Great Lizard, Shadow Demon, Fire Storm, Black Prayer, Possession, Flight, Giant Spiders (if rushed as first) and much more. I won't even waste time on listing powerful rares there are so many.

[Nelphine]

While I agree impossible isn't the standard, I don't honestly think it matters about difficulty. Yes they are what my experience is based on, but go through games on a lower difficulty. When does a storm giant change the game? Not make the game easier but actually change the game? When does prayer win you a war as opposed to a battle? When does firestorm allow you to conquer a fortress (not just a city) that you couldn't otherwise?

Shadow demons, if it gains you access to the other plane and gets you neutral cities strong enough that you can make a proper presence on that plane without losing on your home plane, they could change the game - specific strategy. Great lizard? What can it do that endurance and holy armor and holy weapon on a common summon can't? Transmute, maybe, if adamantium wins you the game, and you couldn't get it otherwise. I think that's rare - easier to not rely on adamantium, or expend effort getting more cities including one with adamantium. Flight, maybe if you can conquer some nodes early? But sprites plus focus magic is better.

Uncommon and rare don't win the game. They enhance a strategy you already have so you win faster, they buy you time to get to very rare, or they are a lot more fun.

But clearly we don't agree. which is fine! That's why we have different strategies and give different feedback, and love this game, and most especially, love the work you have done to make this game amazing.



Back to the point! Spell lock isn't worth rushing for like lycanthropy might be. It's ex pensive, so by the time you have it cast, your opponents have magicians. If the enemy is going to dispel you, in many battles they will dispel you numerous times, often in the first turn, making your spell lock useless. So you will win based on your units as if they are unenchanted. If you can win that you don't need the spell lock or the enchantments because you having spell lock makes no difference to the units your enemy makes. If your opponent doesn't dispel much, spell lock isn't necessary. The only time you need spell lock is when your opponent has few opportunities to dispel you, but will take every one of those opportunities - and if your opponent can't cast dispel much why are you going to research and cast spell lock? (Yes I'm aware this is a generalization. But the game rules are based on generalities.)

[Seravy]

When does prayer win you a war as opposed to a battle?

It wins most major battles, which wins the war. Obviously not talking about the 1 spearmen vs 3 sky drake scenario but where both sides have 6-9 decent units.

When does firestorm allow you to conquer a fortress that you couldn't otherwise?

Always if the enemy did not get an uncommon creature, single figure units, or I get the spell before the can fill their capital with this. Even on extreme you can often find wizards with 6-8 sprites in their capital on turn 100.

Shadow Demons, you can effortlessly conquer anything that can't attack a flying creature, not to mention due to regeneration you have no losses if fighting anything weaker than a Shadow Demon stack. Also free treasure from spiders, wyrms, unicorns, phantoms, etc...

Great lizard? What can it do that endurance and holy armor and holy weapon on a common summon can't?

Not die to Dispel Magic. Regenerate after the battle.

Uncommon and rare don't win the game. They enhance a strategy you already have

First sentence is true. They don't win the game on their own, you need strategy and often you also need other spells or normal units. Second is not true, many uncommons open up new stuff you do not have access to otherwise. New unit abilities like regeneration or flight or stoning touch, death gaze, invisibility etc. Access to the other plane or adamantium. Spell Blasting. Dispelling enemy city or unit buffs in or out of combat. Killing units with spells on the overland map. Increasing your own casting skill.
Rares..open up invisibility, immunity to magic, mass damage to all enemies, doom damage, destruction of enemy cities/economy, Damage over time in combat. Probably much more but some of them are realm specific stuff other realms can do earlier.

Spell lock isn't worth rushing for

I agree with this for entirely different reasons. You'll need to enchant your stuff first, which takes a while, and at that point no one has dispel magic yet anyway (or not the skill to cast it many times in a battle). So by the time you need it, you can get it the normal way, tho you obviously need to pick it first and not last when researching your spells, but it's fine to get it only on turn 70-80 or 100. I don't think it's useless however. Using it means you win that battle. Even if it's dispelled from some units, you still win because the other enchantments are safe - at least on most units if not all. There is no way anyone can cast 50 mana Dispel Magics on all your units 4 times every battle (Spell Lock resists at 150, plus one more to get rid of an actual enchantment). Then you can recast it and continue and it's way cheaper than having to recast everything else.
(against magicians, send a stack that only has bless and Resist Elements on it.  You don't need all the other buffs to kill a unit that has 1 melee and shield and health per figure.)

You also have the option of picking Specialist or Runemaster and have your Spell Lock resist at 300 at which point it'll get removed only once out of 6 Dispel Magics at max slider. (Honestly I think Spell Lock is overpowered, if anything, not useless)

[GermanJoey]

Hum. How does the sea of single stack javelin were cause problems? (I've never encountered it )

It's like this: imagine you have 5-6 cities, arranged somewhat like a circle, capital in the middle. You control maybe 70-80 tiles in the areas around your 5-6 cities, between which are roads and say 3 nodes, upon which is a small defensive stack. MoM/CoM doesn't have delineated borders, but we'll call this area your empire.

Now imagine that in roughly half of the tiles of your empire, especially on all of your roads, there are single stacks, originally arriving from any direction,  consisting of: dragon turtles, lizardman swordsmen and spearmen, and especially javelineers controlled by an enemy wizard moving around seemingly at random. You're might not even be currently at war with this wizard! You may even have a Wizard's Pact with him, as I did in one game. So what are these units doing? You have no idea... however, they cause you a lot of problems:

a.) if they're on your roads, you can't use your roads to consolidate stacks, shift forces to respond to threats, send out settlers, etc. To make matters worse, Lizardmen can cross penninsulas and lakes, while your units probably can't. In the game I had a Wizard Pact with the guy who was doing this to me, I was at war against a different wizard, who was actually sending kill stacks at my cities for which my main difficulty defending against was reinforcement logistics caused by the lizardman wizard I was allied with! And, no you don't want to build even more roads to allieviate traffic jams because...

b.) The lizardmen can form stacks at time and attack you! They might strike at your node guards, or try to wear down a city, etc. For example, that wizard I had a pact with eventually turned hostile when I banished another wizard, and I immediately had to survive an onslaught. 

c.) Even if they attack you one at a time, without forming stacks, you can find yourself drained quickly due to enemy combat casting. All lizardmen units are pretty hearty, especially Dragon Turtles. It takes three freaking lightning bolts to kill a single one of these things, and resistance-based attacks are completely useless against them. That means that the enemy wizard will have many, many turns to fling spells at you. Better hope they don't get mana leak at try to kite! You're forced with the dilemma: do I waste extra mana trying to kill these units ASAP, or do I try to kill them normally and let myself get worn down under repeated flame strikes, posessions, reaper's slashes, etc. If this was the AI's basis of a strategic assault, there wouldn't be a problem, but like I said they're kinda just hanging out. You have to respect a Wizard's Pact conditions but they do not.

d.) Trying to attack them proactively results in the same problem... you're gonna get worn down even worse, because now the enemy will get an extra turn to fling spells at you. On top of that, you probably have to bring 4 units to kill 1, unless you have turtles of your own (or Golems or something like that).

And of course, the worst problem is that it is extremely unfun and tedious to fight what is essentially the same petty battle OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, getting most of each turn's new resources drained in the process as if you were on an never-ending treadmill. 

If this were a deliberate AI tactic, I could live with it, but I'm pretty sure these units just don't know where to go so they just wander around, and they don't respect a Wizard's pact so they don't see an issue wandering inside of you. Other random units will wander around your borders too of course, but that's not anywhere near as bad of an issue because it's the lizardmen's sheer numbers and map-wide ubiquitousness that cause the headache.

[Nelphine]

Actually, there is an ai tactic to put troops next to all important things - cities, nodes, etc - even when they aren't at war. (Or if that's not it, that's how it ends up acting, so it's the same thing.)

So, while I can understand the frustration, at least part of it is them trying to build 9 unit stacks near important targets.

[GermanJoey]

Spell lock isn't worth rushing for 

I agree with this for entirely different reasons. You'll need to enchant your stuff first, which takes a while, and at that point no one has dispel magic yet anyway (or not the skill to cast it many times in a battle). So by the time you need it, you can get it the normal way, tho you obviously need to pick it first and not last when researching your spells, but it's fine to get it only on turn 70-80 or 100. I don't think it's useless however. Using it means you win that battle. Even if it's dispelled from some units, you still win because the other enchantments are safe - at least on most units if not all. There is no way anyone can cast 50 mana Dispel Magics on all your units 4 times every battle (Spell Lock resists at 150, plus one more to get rid of an actual enchantment). Then you can recast it and continue and it's way cheaper than having to recast everything else.
(against magicians, send a stack that only has bless and Resist Elements on it.  You don't need all the other buffs to kill a unit that has 1 melee and shield and health per figure.)

You also have the option of picking Specialist or Runemaster and have your Spell Lock resist at 300 at which point it'll get removed only once out of 6 Dispel Magics at max slider. (Honestly I think Spell Lock is overpowered, if anything, not useless)

The really nice thing about Spell Lock is it makes loading up your units with buffs in order to take neutral camps pretty economical, because once you see it in your Apprentice Book you can be assured that you're not just "spending mana to get mana", so to speak. IMHO you don't need to necessarily rush the spell itself but it's really good to know early that you'll eventually have it available.