Spellweaver

[Seravy]

We talked about Spellweaver being the main culprit behind retort stacking/rush strategies being too powerful.
Are we still ok with it as is, or do we want a change?
With cheaper summoning, it's no longer important to have this effect, or keep it this powerful.

Looking at the math, Archmage is +50% SP for both combat and overland. Adding that together it's 100%.
Spellweaver is +50% skill on overland only, but that is the equivalent of 225% SP, so +125%. There is also a 25% bonus on power income, in best case if all power is spent on skill, that brings up the total to +181%. However it costs two picks so being almost twice as effective would be still ok.
Except, there are two small but important details. One, overland skill is usually more powerful than combat skill, because it is always useful while combat skill only during wars, and only when fighting an enemy with higher skill.
The other, Spellweaker does work on Amplifying Towers. Assuming you have 200 skill out of which 70 are towers, you have 16901 SP. With Spellweaver you have 300 skill out of which 70 are still towers, so it's the equivalent of 52901 SP. That's more than 200% higher and this is without considering the effect of the power bonus which raises that to 275%. And that is way better than Archmage even without considering whether combat or overland skill is more useful.

[Nelphine]

Given that was my argument for spellweaver being insanely strong before we changed summon costs, I will continue to stick by it now.

[Seravy]

Leaving how good it is aside, I actually don't feel it's beneficial for the game anymore.
You want more summons, pick Conjurer. At 25% off, summons are fairly cheap already, there is no reason to offer another retort that allows stacking 2 more picks into a similar effect.
Same goes for Artificer, 50% off should be enough.
However aside from these two there aren't really all that many reusable overland spells that allow high amounts of skill spending. Ok, you can curse better, but Runemaster is for that. You can buff better but again Runemaster is for that. So it only really is relevant for special spells, or stacking multiple benefits on the same effect - and the latter is generally not balanced and less than ideal. But I don't think we need a retort for special spells either - more fire storms or change terrains are, well, I don't think it should be a retort, really. It's just too limited use.
And if you just want more spells of any type, there is Archmage.

So overall, whether the numbers are good or not, I think Spellweaver is bad design.

...which brings us back to the "we have a free retort slot" discussion where we had no more usable ideas.
So I think I'll postpone solving this until after the current update moves out of beta, which gives us time to try coming up with new ideas.

I would like to keep it a 2 cost retort that makes magic stronger, as we have that for Military already (Warlord for generic use, and Guardian for specialized) but not for magic (Runemaster would fit for specialized, matching Guardian but we have nothing that is like Warlord. We have Channeller instead but that is pure economy, basically free mana crystals - and also specialized at combat. It's not allowing you to cast more, or stronger spells at all, it just makes sure you don't run out of mana crystals to use your magic. ) - but I'm not 100% sure a good solution like that exists so I'm interested in any sort of suggestion for a 2 cost retort (or even a 1 cost retort but I rather keep it 2).

Edit : Considering the above I guess "more spells" is adequately covered by existing retorts and "stronger spells" doesn't seem to be possible in a generic way as each spell is different. So I guess we can't have either and need something different.

[Bahgtru]

-1 to save resistance? (like the items) I'm a bit baffled sometimes by the heroes being better casters than the wizard.

[Seravy]

Let's try to figure out what we already have and what's missing. We should pick something that won't stack too much with existing things and isn't redundant.

Magic
All spells : Archmage.
All spells in primary realm : books, Specialist.
All spells in Arcane : Artificer/Runemaster
Stronger spells : Don't have, probably can't have as it's too vague and generic, while each spell has a unique effect.
Overland - Summoning : Conjurer covers it.
Overland, city curses : Runemaster - curses will often fight against dispels.
Overland, city buffs, unit buffs : Runemaster again.
Overland, global enchantments : Runemaster.
Overland, artifacts : Artificer
Overland, special spells : Nothing. 
Combat - summoning : conjurer
Combat, unit buffs : Runemaster
Combat global enchantments : Don't care, can only use each once a battle anyway.
Combat special spells : Nothing
Combat combat spells : Nothing
Combat unit curses : Nothing really, as dispelling is rarely a concern when using these.
Combat, spell impact per turn : Nothing. This is separate in combat because in overland you effectively get stronger if you cast a spell cheaper as you have unlimited spells per turn as the skill allows. In combat, you have only one so how powerful it is on each use has a different relevance than how many of them you can use total in the combat. This probably has the highest risk on game balance though as it overrides a basic rule "one spell of the tier you can cast per turn" and replaces it with a stronger spell per turn instead, making you win battles faster, or cause more damage to enemy armies before losing. Also it's a subcategory of "stronger spells" making it hard to do in a way that it has a generic useful effect. (save -1, or stronger healing, or stronger direct damage are some ways to have this and even all of the won't cover all spells you can cast in combat.)

Economy
Overland - spell mana crystal costs : Don't care. The player can always afford the MP cost of overland spells.
Combat - spell mana crystal costs : Chaneller.
Research income : Sage Master, Omniscient, (specialist, conjurer, books, etc)
Power income : Cult Leader for cities, Astrologer for nodes, Omniscient for cities as well.
Gold income : Omniscient (and we don't want any more)
Production income : Omniscient (and we don't want any more)
Population : Omniscient (and we don't want any more)

Military
All units : Tactician.
Normal units : Warlord
Summons : Conjurer (summoning more is as good as having stronger)
Heroes : Tactician, Famous, Artiificer
Defense : Guardian
Offense : No need, offense is the primary strategy players use anyway

Diplomacy
(almost) all parts : Charismatic

So I think we need something that covers one or all of the bold lines. (Unless I missed something?)

[Nelphine]

TLDR: No helpful suggestions. Just lots of musings.

Just as a note, any of the spots where dispel matter, you should put Specialist as well as Runemaster. And for the heroes, warlord is pretty huge. I'd also argue, channeler covers overland spell cost - and it's actually a pretty big deal, as it lets you sink more power into buildings and skill (and research I suppose), so i completely disagree with the don't care. If there was a stronger version of it, I would probably use it as often as I use alchemy for the economy boost.
I'd also note, Alchemy increases gold/mana income. And Cult Leader also addresses Unrest in Economy.

However, none of that addresses what we might need. I do disagree that dispelling unit curses is a minor thing... it's probably the main thing I spend combat mana on with my bezerkers. 'Dispel confusion. Dispel confusion. Dispel confusion.' I've certainly cast it more often than healing. But I certainly don't think we want anything further in the dispel/unit buff/unit curse binary arms war where it either works or it doesn't and there's nothing your opponent can do, so I don't think we want anything there anyway.

I don't think we want anything for overland special spells. If we did, we could just change them to a different category for purposes of being influenced by an existing retort. (Ok it might not be that simple, but things like change terrain or raise volcano could easily be 'city enchantment'. I don't think that's particularly helpful or it would have been done a long time ago.)

We don't have a retort for it, but we do have quick caster unit ability for spell impact per turn. It's disgustingly powerful. I don't think we want a retort for that.

To me that leaves combat special spells and combat combat spells.

I personally think combat combat spells is what we should go with - but I have no ideas beyond the suggestion of -1 spell save. And that's a bit too narrow in focus.

Unless you do something like 'every time you cast a combat combat spell, you get to immediately cast a free firebolt/life drain/healing/fairy dust/aether sparks', but then that becomes more about spell impact per turn, and it would start out ludicrously powerful (or if we somehow tied it to existing caster skill, stupidly weak) and become stupidly weak (or if tied to cast skill, moderately balanced in late game). Which again is a bit bleh.

[zitro1987]

"Combat, Spell Impact per Turn"
"Combat"

This is more like wishful thinking as it is probably too hard to implement programmatically and has to have intuitive limitations. I'll try a few variations of it:

"Quick Casting"
*Wizard can cast 2 common spells per turn in combat (1 pick)
*Wizard can cast a 2nd spell, but it can only be of common realm (e.g. entangle followed by call centaur) - (2 picks, probably the easiest to implement)
*Wizard has a turn-level mana pool of 20% or 20+10% of his/her skill, capped at 40-50 (2 picks)
*Wizard can cast 2 common spells per turn in combat. If wizard's skill is at X, Wizard can cast 2 uncommon spells per turn in combat (2 picks)

Possibility that it cannot be mixed with 'archmage' for some of these options (3rd and 4th) that depend more on skill. The 3rd and the 4th options can be scary as they can apply to uncommons

[Seravy]

Well, there is that old "Annihilator" idea or a variant of it that would likely be worth 2 picks :

Your combat spells have -2 spell save and have 30% more attack power.

We didn't want it in the past for the following reasons I think?
-Not useful for Life wizards. (can't do much about that and I definitely don't want stronger heals. Maybe cheaper heals? idk.)
-Offsets the damage vs healing balance (probably a good thing, the AI gets to kill more units and it's harder to take no losses)
-Higher spell save is too powerful against very rare units (stopped being a problem as they now cost less and are probably on the "too powerful' side.)

Our other option is

"Wizard can cast 2 common spells per turn in combat. If wizard's skill is at X, Wizard can cast 2 uncommon spells per turn in combat (2 picks)"

or its variants but I'm worried it would be way too powerful. We've already had this discussion of casting more spells being too powerful on heroes, the wizard doing it would be even worse.

[zitro1987]

Annihilator is a pretty good choice, but I'm nervous of a specialized 2-pick retort (imagine how conjurer could be overpowered) that could cast -4 resist holy words and such. As a +20% and -1 spell save with 1 pick, it might be better for balance.

My quick casting ideas: I find the idea pretty exciting, but we have to tread very carefully with this one. I think the two main rules should be:
*common and uncommon (or spells at or below 25 mana) only,
*if uncommon multi-casting - you must already be very powerful in terms of skill

Another variant and probably the most early to late game balanced: after you cast a spell, you can cast a 2nd spell of 10+1 per additional 20 skill but no greater than 25. (or something like 6+1 per additional 15 skill)

I think the 'you cast a common spell' as a 2nd spell is the least likely to be overpowered as it would never allow uncommon double-castings.

[Nelphine]

I would personally call +20% damage and -1 save, worth 2 picks. 30% and -2 save seems utterly insane to me.

And while it may not affect life as much as other realms, most realms don't get nearly as much out of specialist or runemaster as life does. So I'm not terribly worried about that.