5.6 Brainstorming thread

[Seravy]

For the next version I'm planning to look through all the patches Drake158 posted here : https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Us...ravySensei , while they are mostly meant for the base game, some should be useful in CoM as well.
We also wanted to replace Call Centaurs and possibly Fairy Dust with new creature spells.
But first, we have this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bFA9G-C3c8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aDmbmLKwXQ

Night stalkers. I can't really spot an obvious problem with them, it's more like they are slightly too good at everything? What I see, focusing strictly on their early game potential only
-They come slightly too early for a "late uncommon" summon, at 1280 RP, only half as much as Shadow Demons.
-Same for a unit with Invisibility, we've required 1406 on Nightblades for balance reasons, but this comes much faster, so even considering the fact they are harder to mass-produce early on, it's still a bit too early? All other sources of Invisibility are rare tier other than found items.
-They are effective in stacks of 1 which was a recurring issue previously, on pre-nerf werewolves.
-They result in "no losses" battles which was the other half of the above problem of werewolves.
-There are 2 realms with a hard counter to them and one with a soft counter but Death is one of the hard counters and it's easy to ally with another Death wizard. (True Sight and creatures with Illusion Immunity)
-They have enough HP to survive a few melee exchanges even against enemies where the gaze has no effect, and do enough damage to slowly wear them down. With the large enough HP pool they heal efficiently from Shamans to do this often enough to matter.
-The AI wastes mana on casting combat spells against them in case of the "soft counter", Sorcery's Resist Magic. This isn't really a significant amount but it's cumulative : you get to do it once every turn for every night stalker you own. As long as you don't lose them, the AI loses more and more mana each turn. Of course same happens if the AI has no counter at all but in that case winning the battle is more effective than draining mana so no one cares.
-The save modifier is maybe too good at -3? Nothing to compare to, really, the only other gaze units are rare.


Potential solutions can be, depending on which of the above we deem critical :
-Higher RP cost
-Add at least one more counter against Invisibility to one of the realms lacking it. (Phantoms could have immunity to illusions, or if we do replace the Nature spells we want to, that is another possibility. This might make Invisibility too weak overall.)
-Move Night Stalker to rare and buff it (do we have a rare Death spell that functions fairly as an uncommon?)
-Reduce Max HP (might make them too easy to kill by spells for a human player)

Do note he doesn't seem to be winning as quickly as usual so fixing this isn't very urgent, we can take our time discussing if, and what we need to do. Doing nothing is an option too, he did have a Barbarian (kinda autowin due to no magic weapons) and Death (ally) opponent so the video by itself doesn't necessarily mean there is a problem.

[Seravy]

1. Night Stalker
I've been thinking about this and I believe we should face reality : Invisibility and Gaze -3 have no business being on an uncommon creature. The stats on the creature being low is not a working solution to balance those abilities : both work towards the creature's stats becoming irrelevant by avoiding danger.
This should be a low cost, early rare instead.

Unfortunately our options to swap it with a rare spell are extremely limited.


Terror - This might be doable but then the spell needs to lose the "-1 to hit" part of the effect and get reduced to a simple "resist or skip a turn" spell. That's far too unimpressive due to its random nature and reliance on enemy resistance scores. The effect not working until the next turn starts isn't helping either. Basically it brings back the old, useless common version, just with a better save modifier.
Wrack - Area damage is rare.
Evil Presence - Disabling weapon effects and power production is way too powerful if it comes earlier.
Wraiths - "the" rare creature in the realm. Life Steal from 4 figures is too powerful for uncommon.
Cloud of Shadow - This puts a rare spell on your city. However if we cut terror and limit it to only Darkness, Mana Leak and Black Prayer, it could make a good uncommon and make it harder to rush AI death wizards. Still, Terror was kinda the main selling point, buying time for combat spells by not letting enemies take turns.
Warp Node - The current version is biased towards helping the human player so I don't want it to appear more frequently. (you can use it on your own node to protect it from the AI, the AI can't do the same.)
Wave of Despair - Area damage is rare.
Zombie Mastery - I consider this one of the best spells in the game.
Drought - We didn't want curses to appear too early because they aren't fun. Slowing production and growth early is very effective to win the game - although that might be the push the spell needs to see more use? Of course it can be avoided by diplomacy - making a pact or forcing a peace treaty. More importantly the reduced max pop might not be relevant at the time the spell is cast, and lost percentage production bonus only really disables miner's and mechanician's guilds and makes mountain cities useless. Not building those first if expecting a Death realm enemy might be a good answer to the threat. Looking at it from another direction, this is ultimately no better than Corruption (disabling max pop and production bonus are the main effects that has on terrain) so it isn't really worth being a rare anyway?

Overall, swapping with Drought and Cloud of Shadow seem to be the only two viable options.

2. New Combat Nature summon
(Reminder : we want to remove Call Centaurs. We can possibly also remove Fairy Dust and/or swap Change Terrain to common to have an uncommon slot)

We are removing Centaurs because 4 moves and being ranged at common is simply too good for a combat summon. This means the new creature either shouldn't be ranged and/or should be slower. However, "slower but still ranged" is already covered by Construct Catapult.
So we need a non-ranged, preferably 2-3 movement creature. 3 moves allows it to evade and stall for end of combat against most other small groups of early units but larger groups might still corner it. 2 moves are unlikely to manage to stall unless the enemy is very weak. In either case, as the unit is not ranged, it's not too much of an issue even if it does manage to stall.
Next we need to decide on figure count, attack power and armor. Multiple figures with high armor is obviously out. A single figure with high armor is still too good for a common, might be okay for uncommon but common is the one that lacks the combat summon. So we should probably do low or medium armor, doesn't really matter how many figures (Nature can't buff attack in combat), and medium attack power.
Something like

Boars -20 MP
2 figures
10 attack
+1 to hit
6 armor
6 hp/figure

3 movement

could work? If we decide on this, we'll need a volunteer who makes the graphics for the unit though.

3. new Nature overland summon
This isn't really needed for the human player, but the AI needs something that's not Sprites and works for Garrison duty. So a slow movement, ranged creature, preferably at uncommon. Basically an uncommon version of Stone Giant?
However it actually does have benefits for human players as well. Nature has this concept of "slowing down enemy movement then use ranged attacks" but has no ranged overland summon to benefit from it (Sprites fly, they don't need Earth to Mud to support them). This can fix that.

Ent - 110 MP
14 melee
16 ranged
1 figure
4 ammo (rocks)
1 movement
8 Resistance
7 armor
long range
negate first strike
+1 to hit

20 hp


OR

Dryad - 110 MP
8 melee
16 ranged
1 figure
5 ammo (magical)
2 movement
8 Resistance
6 armor
+2 to hit
18 hp

Like above, if we decide on this we'll need someone to create the sprites for it. I might be able to make a Dryad out of Water Elemental (recolor upper half green, lower half brown, change lower half to look like roots) but drawing a boar is probably too much for me.
Furthermore, for this we need an uncommon slot. To free one up I see a few options :
A. Move Change Terrain to common, remove Fairy Dust.
This works but leaves Nature with no common direct damage spell. However it still has web so has a proper answer to Sprites (or other flying units) anyway.
B. Remove Nature's Cures
This is a spell the AI cannot use at all, and one that generates potential balance issues when used by the human. (You can basically heal your spider army to max every turn and conquer really fast) It also has weird interaction with Undead (it either heals them which is way too good for uncommon, or doesn't which is inconsistent with Herb Mastery, not sure which we ended up with).
C. Move Land Linking to common, remove Fairy Dust
This might be too good for a common, picking this likely means we need to reduce the buff to +1/+1. An extra 2 armor on Bears is quite a lot to deal with in the earliest turns. I think this is the worst option out of the 3.

Doing either leaves Nature with 4 summon spells at uncommon which is a lot but I think it's acceptable considering summoning is the main focus of the realm.

[zitro1987]

I'm not sure adding a new uncommon that doesn't necessarily defend towns better than other uncommons is a solution to the sprite defender issue.

These kind of units would better fit as common (weaker version of course)

[Seravy]

That is of course an option but then Sprites will not see much use from the AI. There is no need for two defender units and Sprites are poor on offense and (for the AI) lair hunting. It's also useless for the human, because Sprites are a better ranged unit for a human.
In general, two move 2 ranged units in common Nature feels redundant.

[Nelphine]

Personally, I find 3 summoning creatures pushing it. In general, there's still a 'best' one, and the others only get used in very narrow circumstances. 

So realms with 3 summons in one rarity I almost never play - I don't want that many 'wasted' spells. 4 summons in one rarity would be even worse.

I'd much rather sply replace sprites if you're going to make a unit like that. Yes it would remove a playstyle, but high Elf longbowmen with earth to mud would get very similar results without as much abuse potential (even though we've basically removed all the abuse at this point anyway).

I'm not saying that's what we should do, by if we're going to introduce a unit like that, I'd rather remove sprites than make 4 uncommon summons.

The boars seem too strong compared to warbears - why waste time ever overland summoning war bears when I can just combat summon boars with my spearmen?

Night stalker would be bad at rare - other rares would utterly destroy it. It would need to be buffed, but then you have a naturally occurring very powerful invisible unit, which I think would be very bad. I'd much rather leave it uncommon but reduce its hp by 1 or 2 and reduce the death save to -1.

[Seravy]

Yes I do think Night Stalker would need to have better stats at rare, like 15 melee and 4 movement.
What's the problem with a naturally occuring somewhat powerful invisible unit? If anything, that makes stronger garrisons more important which is something we want. Makes the realm better by providing a second rare creature, too. Death at rare lacks save-or-die spells, too.

Yes, the redundancy between Sprites and the possible new overland summon is bad but I rather keep the sprites than add a new unit that's basically another fire giant/water elemental and will only really see play from the AI. (as you said, longbowmen or other normal units already do the same thing at a lower cost, albeit they are slightly more fragile.)
Still it is questionable whether Fairy Dust (or Nature's Cures) is really a better spell to have than this creature.

You don't have the casting skill to summon more than one Boar but you can build a stack with 9 bears. That said, maybe the stats are a little too high, we can lower them. The important part is gaining a melee combat summon and getting rid of centaurs. However I based it on Fire Elemental which is well known for being a pretty bad combat creature. This has 1 better armor and move, 2 more overall hp, and equal damage output after one figure dies, double before. But most importantly, this has no weapon immunity and no immunity to anything else.
Bears have 50% more total hp, similar damage output (7*3 vs 10*2), same armor. I tried to make sure Bears are better, and they probably are, but the difference might not be enough. Boars probably need to have lower attack (8 or lose the hit bonus). Or maybe they need much less attack and more figures, like 4 figures, 3 hp each, 5 attack each? A Boar figure really shouldn't be better than a Bear figure.

why waste time ever overland summoning war bears when I can just combat summon boars with my spearmen?

Unfortunately this is true in general - all combat spells are more cost-effective than overland spells by design. Which is why using spearmen with ANY combat spell that does damage works. It doesn't matter if it's Boars, Phantom Warriors, or Fire Bolts, it's the same thing, the problem we recently discussed. It has nothing to do with this particular creature.

Edit : Death also has 3 uncommon creatures. Moving Night Stalker to rare could improve that by making it 2 uncommons and 2 rares.

[Ozymandyus]

I don't think I'd want to remove Nature's Cures, Seravy. That's a spell that's really definitive for the Nature realm, and if you took it out, that removes a big reason to play that realm.

[Seravy]

By the way, if we decide not to pick any of the three ways to make a free Nature uncommon slot, that still means we can choose any of these :
D. Add the Dryad as common instead. However this makes it redundant with Sprites and its stats would need to be kinda too low.
E. Keep Fairy Dust, do not add Dryad.
F. Add Dryad as common, and keep Fairy Dust, do not add Boar.
G. Get rid of Construct Catapult and make Dryad a summon available both combat and overland. Then it can fill both roles although it's difficult to come up with stats that are actually suitable for both, unless we "cheat" the system and make them two different creatures with different stats. Basically make it so when the combat spell is cast, replace the unit's type with another on the newly created unit - not the same but a similar hack as Summon Demon making 2 types of demons. (Example : Overland creature name Dryad, stats in first post, combat creature name Sproutling, catapult stats.)
H. Do not add Dryad

G might be too good though especially for a low research cost (if we want the AI to actually use these to defend the capital it should be low... in fact that is a pretty strong argument for making the spell common. But it also has to be strong enough to be a strictly more powerful defender than sprites and sprites hit quite hard and with flying and moving backwards they are fairly durable too. So that sets the bar kinda high.)

[Bahgtru]

Whatever you do please don't introduce more uncommon summons that make rares feel underpowered. Stone giants have +2 to hit and only 2 projectiles. Uncommons should not get +2. Oh! And nature should be about melee, more than ranged, but that's "just"flavour...

[Nelphine]

I would much much rather keep fairy dust than get yet another summons for nature, especially at uncommon. And I almost never use fairy dust. However, I'd also rather get a new unit than keep sprites.

Fairy dust > new unit > sprites.

I don't think nature's cures should even be considered. Unlike sprites, nature's cures doesn't hurt the AI, even if (like sprites) it can only effectively be used by the human. This leaves it as at least a spell the human can feel good about using (much like earth lore).



I like the boars idea, I'd make them 3 figure, 6 attack, 6 (or maybe 5) HP, 4 or 5 armor, +1 to hit, 3 move.

Weapon immunity of fire elementals is meaningless, except as a gotcha against neutrals and new players.