Life spell slot, city curses

[Seravy]

So, with the removal of Planar Travel, we'll be gaining a Life Uncommon spell slot.

We can use it in several different ways :

1. As a temporal solution until we decide on something better, Heroic Shout is now in the slot, and the new "Heroic Heart" spell that heals a hero for 3 is in the Arcane Slot that freed up that way. However there is no guarantee Heroic Heart works well for game balance, in which case we might need to undo this, also Heroic Shout is probably not particularly suitable as a Life uncommon (would rather see it as common since it's an effect designed for early game, and it's direct damage in life...) so we should consider other options before making this one final.
2. We could add a new unit buff, as we removed one. I don't think Life needs a new unit buff, but if you have an idea, this is the time for it.
3. We could separate Endurance into two spells, one for +1 To Def and one for movement. However Life relies heavily on Endurance for their early game to stack defense, so that would be the common effect, meaning the new uncommon would be movement, so it likely needs to be 2 instead of 1 to be worth an uncommon slot. Definitely dislike this solution either way but it's one possibility.
4. We could make Disenchant Area a Life spell. Life already has city curse removal (Consecration) at a higher tier and it suits the realm. However this implies non-Life wizards will no longer be able to remove curses.
That means curses will be more viable for use by human players - the AI can't dispel them. Unfortunately the human not being able to dispel is very unfun, even though dispelling is not economically viable in most scenarios anyway. If we pick this option, we might need to tone down some of the city curses to less crippling levels, but I'm not 100% sure about that either. Needless to say this option affects the Death realm the most, as Chaos Rift is the only non-death, dispellable city curse.
5. We could move another spell into the Life realm from some other realm, and give that realm a new unit buff. Again, I don't think I can name a spell that would need moving.

[Bahgtru]

I don't like much heroic heart, I think it overlaps too much with life.
I like the split of endurance. I'd rather keep both common and move something else to uncommon. I don't think life needs endurance that much, some races in defence with holy light are already unbeatable.
I don't like disenchant area as life.

[zitro1987]

I don't like 'heroic heart' much. I'd rather have a 'if hero present' mini-prayer spell that adds +1 to all stats to all units as an arcane spell. In other words, a good early-game army buff led by a hero.

I like the idea of splitting endurance. I do however think the armor-stacking can create some overpowered/indestructible early units/heroes early on so I may be inclined to make endurance a cheap +1 move spell as common, and as uncommon the +1 to defend (with lower cost, maybe 40 to 50, and maybe castable in combat as well)

I also would like an option to make endurance an uncommon spell (make it a bit more cost effective to compensate?) and take out this whole +1 to defend and make it a +2 move buff to have a more well-rounded set of buffs (life is too armor-oriented)

The reason is because I think life would tremendously benefit early on with a buff spell that specifically targets weak units.
*If target unit is less than X cost (or X power rating), add +2 melee, +1 range, +1 armor, +1 resistance, +1 hp. Costs 10/50?
-This would help a life wizard where they struggle the most - buffing weak units like swordsmen with current buffs is less cost-effective than summoning even hell hounds. Giving them to swordsmen a very strong benefit. Eventually it gets obsolete, so the player has to decide whether to start with an early-game spell.

[Nelphine]

Heroism + cavalry is usually better than hell hounds, albeit more expensive. The right race cavalry is much better (I've used one cavalry to kill 7 hellhounds)

But again I wouldn't want anything that can be used to buff heroes - because it will stack with life. That's why I LIKE heroic heart - it gives one of the best parts of life, to all realms, making it easier for other realms to actually keep heroes alive, without boosting life in any way.

[Nelphine]

Also in case it matters, heroic shout is off realm enough I think it's fine as uncommon in life. And agreed the hero wouldn't use it much, but the magicians with him will.

[Seravy]

The Magicians? But they have Fireball which does the same thing...ok, for 3 more MP but still. Isn't really a difference.
I do like the idea of a "target weak units only" buff. If we have that, we can move Endurance up to uncommon or move Just Cause up to uncommon.

(Do we need Just Cause to be common? You can't even get heroes or items until turn 30 and you don't pay much unit maintenance, so there is no use for fame that early... unrest reduction is nice though.)
(Endurance is probably still critical to the early game. Even if you do have a buff that makes your swordsmen into a halberdier, the halberdier still needs to be buffed...)

...or maybe not. I mean it's not a bad concept but it's obsoleted by building a fighter's guild so it has a way too low period of usefulness, especially for the AI.

[Seravy]

For 4.

I was about to start my next Gnoll test game, then I thought...what am I going to do if the enemy plays Death again? Sure, if I prepare the appropriate troops, I will be able to not lose the game immediately and hold off the Myrran invasion. Assuming I also manage to have enough of them to counterattack, I can even slowly conquer their cities and/or raze one at a time. But what about the city curses? Do I really need to kill the wizard in the first 30-35 turns otherwise my cities go down to no population, no food and no power, leaving me with a disbanded army and no mana to cast spells?
This can't be right.
Hell, I don't want to play against it. And I'm not like Hadriex, I don't particularly care about losing a city or resource, it's part of the game. But I still don't want to play against it. Chaos blowing up cities with Call the Void is one thing, it's a very rare spell so it's late and the game is about to end anyway. But Death gets theirs 6 years earlier.

So I thought... maybe the city curses aren't properly balanced as is?
Let's try to compare.

Warp Node. Assuming nodes are 20-50 power each, this reduces enemy power by 35-65 on each use. Compared to a rare city buff, Dark Ritual raises city power by 24, Uranus by 22 plus other effects, I'd say it's worth at least 30-35 overall. So warp node is overpowered compered to these - not only do you get a larger change in amount, but at a lower cost, too. 
(Yes, there is that argument this affects only one player out of four but I think it's invalid. Assuming the worst case scenario, which is what you're supposed to prepare for, you will have to fight all four players and beat them all, and it's not different from all 4 being the same, one bigger player in overall resources. We have also designed the game with a late game having a one on one battle against the other plane, and these are late game spells. So they are only really worse due to multiple enemies if you are behind in your conquest AND the other players fight each other BUT they are also not your ally - allies are not a concern as they are guaranteed to not become enemies until it's convenient for YOU. )

Evil Presence. You lose 12 power in your city (but possibly up to 30+ if Cult Leader, Dark Ritual, etc), and gain anywhere from 4 to 11 rebels. Assuming a rebel is worth about 6 gold (tax+production+bonuses), that's another 24-66 loss.
Prosperity, for a larger casting cost, adds 50% gold - assuming a taxable population of 15 and max taxes, it's +18 gold.
So again, Evil presence does (a lot) more, at a lower cost - not only does it have a higher impact on gold economy but also takes away an equally large share of power.

(Yes, rebels might not be actually doing anything - if the extra unrest is still being remove by excess unrest reduction the target had. However, having such unrest reduction typically means the other player could have raised their tax rate but did not, meaning they are voluntarily losing money already.)

Famine. Food is cut to 1/3. Adds 25% unrest.
So first, you get an additional 4-5 rebels - 24-30 gold loss, already stronger than Prosperity.
Then, you'll need like an additional 10 farmers, and while you're not losing taxes on these, you are losing about 15 production which is worth 30 gold.
So overall the spell is twice as powerful as Prosperity by itself.
However if paired with Evil Presence, the city will start to shrink due to lack of food, and effectively end up with like 90% of its income lost.
On top of all these, if you have Famine+Evil Presence on all cities, feeding troops becomes a problem, you might end up completely unable to have an army.

Pestilence. You lose 1000 people a turn (or 100/population below 10 pop) on average.
Hard to compare this to anything as there are no very rare city buffs. But it's safe to say it's a (near) instant loss of all population above ~5, so a 60-80% loss of city gold and production output. Assuming an average city, that's like 40-50 gold and 40-50 hammers. So it's about the same value as two Prosperities and one Inspirations. I think it's roughly on par with Call the Void (no building damage but population damage is permanent, while the damage from CoV can grow back), but for half the cost.

In addition to the above, buffs add resources. Curses take them away, and resources aren't really linear. Having more past a certain point isn't anywhere near as relevant, while having less below a certain amount is much more critical.
In other words, buffs make your empire go from 100% output to 180%, but curses make it go from 100% to 20% if they are numerically even. It's obvious which 80% is worth more.

tl;dr I think curses are vastly overpowered currently and we must redesign them and make them weaker otherwise it's an instant "you lose" if a Death wizard shows up. However, if we do, I don't think we can avoid making dispelling them Life exclusive - curses that get dispelled by the AI are not attractive for a human player unless they outright win the game (which as seen is ridiculously broken and unfun).

[Nelphine]

As a further note, so far curses are balanced by personality. So no, death doesn't kill you - maniacal death does. Just like maniacal chaos kills you in the early game. I know it doesn't do much individually, but a dozen corruptions and raise volcanoes are bad at the beginning. And while the cost is much more balanced, those volcanoes and corruptions last a LONG time. (Yes you can purify the corruption but until you stop it from being cast you're invariably slower.)

[Seravy]

Certainly but personality doesn't apply to the human player. So why do they deserve to use spells that are 3-4 times more cost effective in Death than in all other realms? Even though curses actually do benefit more than buffs in the first place? (since they are targeting the AI and the AI has higher resources, so any percentage gain or loss will be a higher effective value)

Also, the other curses the maniacal casts don't kill me. Spell Blast, I can get around it, so can the AI, we designed that. Blizzard, not a threat. Earthquake? Painful but I can rebuild the damage - if I have enough cities it's not a problem. Even if the AI casts it twice per turn and causes like 1500 hammers worth of damage a turn, if I have 20 cities producing 60 hammers each and 60 gold each then I even have 600 gold to spare and in exchange my enemy is not summoning creatures.  (would be interesting to calculate how much damage EQ actually causes in hammers.)
Firestorm? Ok that hurts a lot, but if I'm expecting it I can avoid building the types of troops that die to it and then the maniacal is wasting their MP. And it only kills units so it's not different from losing them in a battle.
Chaos Rift... is a city curse I just forgot about it because it's not in Death. Not sure how bad it is but compared to the damage Chaos usually does, this is the least of your worry. Chaos is the "must defeat ASAP if at war because too much damage" realm, Death isn't supposed to be. The game isn't very playable with two of those.
Corruption and Raise Volcano I don't consider serious threats on Expert Difficulty. On Lunatic they can be bad indeed but even then it takes such a long time to add up that you should be able to defeat the wizard by then (since it's early game).
Call the Void works, even if not maniacal, that's what it is for. It's a win condition. The wizard doesn't need to have a nasty personality to cast it enough to be a problem.
I think that's the whole list. So no it's not Maniacal, it's these Death spells specifically. The others I can deal with, even from a Maniacal. (on Expert, haven't tried Lunatic...)

By the way the wizard in my previous game was Lawful. I guess curses wouldn't have become relevant in that game then - albeit every time I have to cast disenchant area when evil omens is up really hurts. I need that skill for other spells.
...ugh this game is starting to become too complex, recently I notice I don't even remember the basics. First I produced Jackals against a Death opponent then I forget about personalities. Not good.

[Seravy]

Also, nerfing the Death curses and keeping the ability to dispel is also an option, although then we need to figure out a way to nerf them in a way that the human will still use them (despite the AI having the capacity to dispel).

So we maybe need to ask "what kind of city curse would a human player WANT to use?"

Reduction of food? Definitely not. The AI pays minimal food maintenance, and has enough production that needing more farmers don't impact their troop building speed much. Instead of building a unit each turn and have hammers carry over, they'll build then and not have unused hammers left.
So Famine is bad design.

Less gold, power or production? Not really. These are definitely worth it but the AI has so much of them it is necessary to curse a significant amount of their cities to see the effect. 1000 incoming enemy units instead of 1200 is not an improvement. 500 would be. Problem is, cursing all cities is expensive so it has to be a major part of your strategy to bother, and when facing that many curses the AI will dispel a lot and we can't reliably fight a dispel war against the AI unless playing Runemaster and Specialist. So while these are good, they don't work well.

Less research? Same as above.

Less casting skill? Yes, I would pay for that but I don't want to see it being used against a human player so no.

I only really have one good idea so far :
A curse that makes all troops produced in the city come with no levels and normal weapons. Basically a "no war college and alchemist guild allowed" curse. This makes a difference, you can carefully target it at the AI's most relevant production centers. Even if the AI eventually dispels it, the troops built are already permanently inferior - and Death can take advantage of it well. Furthermore it isn't too effective against the human : they can build magicians or use spells that grant magic weapons like Chaos Channels, Flame Blade or Holy Weapon.

But we have 3 curses to replace (4 if also counting Pestilence but that one is very rare and definitely good enough as is for human usage so I think we can leave that as is)