Spellweaver

[zitro1987]

I guess it is quite difficult to come up with new ideas that are practical and fun and that it happens to be a 2-pick retort, unless we split around dual-benefit retorts and make them stronger.

Examples:

*Channeler as a 2-pick spell that reduces mana upkeep by 2/3 and grants enchantment spell cost reductions (And faster research)
*New retort that combines the distance penalty of channeler with a +25% overland skill effect

*Channeler as a 2-pick spell that eliminates distance penalties, but all combat spells also cost less / faster to research.
*Channeler as a 2-pick spell that reduces mana upkeep by 2/3 and grants enchantment spell cost reductions (And faster research)



Am I the only one that thinks specialist's dispel resistance at 100% is overkill? (instead of something more moderate like 50%)

[Nelphine]

zitro, i've suggested before making specialist, runemaster, and aether binding all lower amounts. Each of their existences make the others mandatory, and anyone who doesn't have them useless (which is a big reason sorcery is the only realm that can dispel life; no one else gets aether binding; because aether binding exists, life is forced to take specialist; if you don't have aether binding, specialist is virtual immunity)

So yes, I'd also like them all halved in their effect.

[zitro1987]

For me, I would like wizard's enchantment resistance to be less reliant on Specialist. It would be more interesting with a riskier retort like runemaster.

*So Specialist being 16%/16% and 50% resistance (instead of 12/12/100) or even 20%/20% with no resistance bonus would still be reasonably balanced
*Runemaster keeps the high percentages adding up to 250%, whether it is the current format or reversed (dispelling being +150%) or both at +125%
or
*Runemaster dispel resistance is weaker at just +100% but runemaster allows a starting dispel spell, which can be very powerful at +100% early in game

[Seravy]

I like Chaneller as is, there is nothing to separate.
The maintenance bonus is useless for the AI so we can't have that half as a separate retort.
We rejected having + overland skill and reduced enchantment costs as separate retorts so we should avoid having the same as half of another retort as well.

Dispel Resistance is an ability that's useless in small quantities. You can either have your spells in play with minimal recasting, or not, there is no middle ground. At 50% you're still losing too much enchantments to cast any in the first place.

If Specialist was 50% for Life I'd simply not buff units. Too much loss to combat Dispel Magic to keep up with recasting. (Do note we won't have Spellweaver soon so recasting an early Endurance WILL take 2-4 turns as intended in most cases.) 
Raising the cost reduction and research just breaks the retort. 75% of the time, the dispel resistance isn't relevant and the cost reduction is what you pick it for.

It's certainly hard to come up with a new retort since we haven't been able to in the past few years.

I guess we mostly exhausted the options existing game mechanics and numerical changes to stats and resources offer, so maybe we need to try coming up with retort ideas that change a game mechanic instead.
(example : You have twice the normal chance to flee from a battle. (no I don't want this one, it's just an example))

[Nelphine]

You're not supposed to have minimal recasting. The buffs cost as much as proper summons. You should be recasting a few buffs most battles, just like replacing lost summoned units. Aether binding makes it so that all your buffs have to be recast after every battle if no specialist. That's too much. So you have to take specialist. Then all the people without aether binding or runemaster effectively can't dispel you at all.

Thus, sorcery beats life, life beats everyone else.

[Seravy]

The buffs cost as much as proper summons.

No, they cost a LOT more that's the problem. I lose a bear? 55 mp or less with conjurer, no big deal. Stack still usable but I'll need to summon a new bear eventually.
I lost a heroism and an endurance? (since dispel targets ALL spells on my unit and it had 5) Well I'm down 140 mp AND the entire unit is useless until I replace the spells - and since the stack mainly consisted of that unit, the stack itself is also useless - I either split it up (bad move, it gets targeted overland by enemy stacks), or lose the half buffed unit as its defenses are down so it gets targeted in combat (also bad move).
Also, killing a summon is not trivial. (Sure, bears are easy with their low resist but better units like spiders aren't.) Killing an enchantment is trivial, the AI can do it anytime in any and all battles.


Anyway, let's see, some ideas.

You cast combat spells from SP instead of MP.
You never run out of combat mana, you don't need to guesstimate how much mana or skill you need, but if you overspend, your casting skill starts to drop and you might end up on just your amplifying towers eventually. Very useful for the AI, but can be nice for the human as well. Weaker than Chaneller though, it's better to spend half than to be able to spend from a different resource. So bad idea I think, let's drop it.

Anything that manipulates fleeing...is probably too easy to abuse for humans, while the AI doesn't really benefit and can be tricked into a loss (corner the stack and when it tries to flee there is no space so it fails anyway).

Manipulate overland movement.
All your units have 1 (or 2?) higher overland movement.
AND/OR
All your units have pathfinding overland movement.
OR
All your units have flying overland movement.
OR
All your units have waterwalking overland movement.

I don't like the last two because it turns every AI into potential lizardmen, but the first and/or second can be amazing. As it's limited to overland only, it does not do anything for combat. It merely enables you to get your stacks to where they matter. It's also quite powerful as an AI retort as the human won't be able to swap their garrisons to trick stack into failing to attack anything and AI stacks might be able to attack from outside of view.

Manipulate combat movement.
Really powerful, so probably shouldn't, but we ARE talking about a cost 2 retort here, so maybe we could have it do this (all units move 2 more in combat). Since the AI knows how to stall, it's equally beneficial to human and AI.

Manipulate research order.
Like, "press R on the magic screen to reroll the researchable spell in your last slot for an MP cost equal to 5% of the RP cost of the spell." OR "Whenever a new spell would appear for research, you pick the next one from a list".
This would basically allow you to do the guaranteed research thing 8 books offer, but on all rarities or all spells even. The AI could likely use this because all they need to do is check the research priority of the spells, and pick the best or reroll otherwise. (though not sure if the priority could be accessed from where the effect is implemented, but we can make the AI "cheat" and use it during their normal research selection.
I'm a bit unsure on this one, on one hand it's a really powerful effect, on the other, well, you are paying 2 picks for not actually getting anything except guaranteed lucky rolls on research order.
Also the AI implications would be VERY nasty, like several times the usual amount of "Armageddon first" wizards...

Some sort of Naval bonus
Probably too limited for a 2 cost retort and horrible roll for the AI who already has naval dominance, so no.

Start the game with the entire map revealed and/or see the entire map at all times.
AI cannot use so should avoid. (works as a last resort though if we disallow the AI picking it)

That's all the ideas I have right now. Did I miss any important game mechanic?

[zitro1987]

*I like the movement. I would probably combine that +1 overland movement with pathfinding to all units. 2 overland movement without pathfinding is another possibility.
*If combat movement, '2' may be too high. '1' may be too low. So I'm not sure what the best course of action is here.
*I like manipulate research order if you pick the next one from a list of 3-5 spells of reasonable tier of rarity (meaning, no stone giant in turn 40 if 10 nature books)

Other mechanisms:
*how many melee attacks your units can make (if 2mv, move and attack once … if 3mv, move and attack twice). Maybe allow added flexibility here with the potential of 3 melee (unit that has not moved) or 2 melee after spending 50+% in moving unit.
*Increasing suppression effect in combat, rendering enemy units less dangerous if swarmed.
*ranged unit range penalties (I wouldn't use this, would stack with warlord/alchemy too much)
*Military costing no food.
*Improved buying process (0 turns)

*Improved razing bonuses and reduced chance of building destruction

*Every unit or every building grants +1-2 mana power

*Banishing wizards not allowing spells combined with a way to not be banished (or have it take 1 turn)

[Seravy]

More melee attacks : feels too limited with abuse potential, better not.
Suppression : interesting idea but I don't know, it doesn't really do anything if you aren't using melee units. A bit too limited for 2 picks.
No range penalties : Yeah we shouldn't do that one.
No food military : Useless for AI.
Instant buy : This is definitely a powerful effect for the human but also useless for the AI since they don't produce things to react to a situation.
Razing/building destruction : No, we don't want another inquisitor and building destruction is a necessary game balancing mechanism.
Every building adds power : Too much power, also we have cult leader for this purpose
Every unit adds power : Interesting, would make military actually pay for its own combat mana costs, making mass producing units more playable. Extremely helpful for the AI. Probably should limit it to only produce power on higher cost units (50+ or 60+)? We don't want people to build 1500 spearmen and win the game that way (as it leaves no room for AI units). Problem is alchemy, combining with that basically allows your troops to buy more troops...
Banishing not allowing spells : No, too powerful, too situational, and useless for AI.
Can't be banished : I considered this idea as well but it's bad, you normally don't get banished anyway. Losing your capital is rarely a good plan, even less so for 2 picks.

Ok so it seems we have some ideas that look okay now.

1. All units gain +1 overland movement and pathfinding
2. All units gain +2 overland movement 
3. You can choose your next research candidate (from spells that could actually appear at that time, so no skipping rarities)
4. All normal units with a cost of 50+ produce 1 mana (probably should be strictly mana, not power?) and you cannot use alchemy. (Mutually exclusive with the Alchemy retort)

The movement ones have one problem though, you can stack them with all the military retorts and be within the 4 retorts limit still, so you could do warlord alchemy tactician and have faster moving units. Might be too OP for rush strategies. Units producing mana have a similar problem but less due to no alchemy restriction. Maybe 4 retorts are still too much and we should make the limit 2 or 3? Or we are fine with that as it means you are down to 6 books? Actually I think the limit of 4 is ok but should be "4 picks on retorts" instead of "4 retorts".

Ok, pathfinding kinda kills all value Gnolls have so we probably shouldn't pick that one, and should instead do the 2 move option (pathfinding doesn't help AI doomstacks either).
The research one is extremely hard to implement and probably not fun to play against (AI always getting the spells that hurt you most immediately) so I rather have option 2 or 4. In fact I kinda like both but we don't have 2 retorts we could replace so I guess we have to pick only one.

Edit : I think I like option 4 the most. Option 2 does help the AI but it's not fun to play against and encourages "raze and go" strategies. Option 3 might not be possible to implement and is too much work with low chance of success.
Edit 2 : Maybe there is no need to disable alchemy. It takes 300-600 units to be able to buy another unit from the amount produced per turn. So it would take 300-600 turns to double your army size this way. And let's not forget maintenance so the units aren't actually producing new money, they just pay for themselves (or not even that).

So we can have this :

All normal units with a cost of 50+ produce 1 mana.
(or power? idk... power is easier to implement? But it basically means everything you build is a wizard's guild (500 cost for 10 power) albeit more fragile and risky since enemy spells and attacks are more likely to wreck units than buildings. Might be interesting to make it 40, as that allows cavalry units to produce power.)

[Nelphine]

Option 2 would be ludicrous with windwalkers or flying ships. Utterly overpowered. Moving 6 or 7 squares with your doomstack (or the AI doomstack? outside oracle sight range? probably a bad idea..)

Option 4 if it's already limited to mana, there shouldn't be an issue with alchemy - the game is already designed with using gold to convert to mana anyway, so having tons of mana will generally just let you avoid needing to use alchemy (you may also buy more amplifiers, but since that's already a given with current gold income as well, so even if you buy troops or buildings, you won't be buying anything major).

Not sure I like option 4. It's very AI centric. Anything that's balanced for the AI (who build far far far more city troops than the human) is likely to be too weak for the human (my current game, where I have the highest army strength by a long margin and no summons, and my 2nd and 3rd cities do nothing but build qualifying troops, I would be getting about 15-20 mana per turn from it, depending if settlers, troll units (that start under 50 but the multiplier makes over 50), and ships are counted - much weaker than astrologer (24 power) for instance, and I only have 2 nodes).
Anything balanced for the human would likewise be crazy powerful for the AI.

[Bahgtru]

Is the multi realm spells thing ruled out?