Spells not listed are spells I consider perfect and in no need of any changes.
"What can be added" only covers spell categories. Unique ideas that are neither category and likely end up in "special spells" might still be useful even in tiers where the conclusion was "no new spells are needed here" so feel free to throw in ideas. I was looking at the tiers based on what should be there but is missing.
Nature Common
Earth To Mud
Currently it has been simplified to turn the affected tiles into swamps. That might be a too large nerf as it means water walking units are no longer affected at all.
Nature's Eye
Research production is not part of this realm but we can consider it part of the "realm can do everything, just not so well" theme as it's a small amount. Two scouting spells at common in one realm (or even globally) might be too much but it is functionally very different from Earth Lore so that might also be fine. Realm has no other city defense enchantments, very much like Life and for the same reason of being good at not losing units while expanding, and this spell is a spell pair with Life's Heavenly Light in that regard. So overall it's probably fine as is. The only possible change I can think of would be to change the research bonus into a different resource but gold/production would be far too good as they can directly boost snowballing, Life already covers power, and food is basically more production and gold by allowing less farmers.
Earth Lore
One of the very few spells the AI cannot cast, but that's fair because they have no use for it due to not needing to scout for any purposes other tha cursing, and if the AI could use this to find and curse the player's cities that would make any strategies based around not letting the AI in scouting range worthless.
Summary
This tier is about as good as it can be. 2 very different overland summons, both above average at their intended role, and a good combat summon covers Nature's summoner theme. The game's only specialized scouting spell works well for the realm's role of being the only realm one with scouting, having a second one that doubles as an economy spell and as the realm's only city defense spell, and one that actually offers a benefit that's not in-combat : seeing the approaching units in time, also is perfect. Water Walking further improves the realm's exploration theme and is essential. The only buff in the tier offers protection from magic attacks and nature effects, both very fitting for the realm as well. The 3 combat spells also cover the realm's themes well, disabling enemy movement (Earth to Mud) and countering flight (Web). Finally Fairy Dust offers a generic, low power direct damage spell one would expect from a jack of all trades realm's common tier.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We don't want city defense spells - the realm shouldn't have good ones of those just like Life.
We don't want city economy spells - the realm isn't about that, neither is the common tier, and Nature's Eye already covers it in the qualitity appropriate.
We don't need more summons, either combat or overland.
We don't need unit curses or save or die spells - those aren't suitable for Nature especially at common.
We don't need overland global enchantments - those should be higher tier, more powerful spells.
Combat global enchantments, I can't really think of any - a global buff or curse doesn't really suit the realm - unless it's a buff for summoned units but that would be far too powerful at common - and Earth To Mud already covers the movement slowing theme.
We don't need more direct damage spells - one is the perfect quantity.
More units buffs are a possibility, if it affects summoned creatures, however, Land Linking, being a low cost uncommon, covers that pretty well by adding both defense and attack power, while Resist Elements covers resistance against the only kind of resistance based spells the realm should be able to defend agaisnt effectively.
Overall, I see close to zero need to add any spell here.
Nature Uncommon
Nature's Cures
This is currently the only other spell the AI cannot cast. While I could probably code some use cases, I seriously doubt the AI has massively damaged stacks with lots of wounded units oftenr enough to be worth doing so - in most cases the human player will try to kill the units - and even then it would go through a random chance to cast it or other spells, which undermines the main benefit (healing your stack instantly and attacking again).
Crack's Call
This was changed to destroy nonhero normal units instead of merely dealing enough damage to almost always kill anything using a hard to remember formula. It also makes the spell work better at it's primary role for the human player, to counter super-buffed units that are so powerful even Nature's massive monsters cannot do much about it. I'm aware this spell is hated by a lot of players, but it's necessary, not only to make heroes harder to play and thus less overpowered but also because this spell literally is the human player's only way out against certain types of enemies in the entire realm - even at later tiers.
Summary
The tier has 3 summoned creatures. A fast, strong early creature that's powerful compared to early units, hard to defend against due to poison and has very good utility through speed and webbing for the realm's powerful summoning themed early game. A flying, stoning creature that isn't that good by itself but covers the realms main weaknesses (shadow demons and other noncorporeal flying enemies, and generic lack of access to flight), offers combo potential and can occasionally counter higher tier creatures as well, and finally, a big, regenerating monster, which fits the "good at summoning" theme not through speed but raw power as well as the "Nature is weak against resistance based spells that aren't petrification" theme. There is one combat summon again, and this time it's a good ranged unit to take advantage of Nature's enemy slowing theme and offer variety over the melee Boars. Land Linkning covers both exploration (athfinding buff) and unit buffing for fatastic creatures perfectly in one spell. Ice Bolt is a functionally different direct damage spell from Fairy Dust while still filling the same role of giving the realm a bit of everything. Transmute and Change Terrain are the realm's city economy spells, as expected from the realm, working though targeting land instead of the city itself. Transmute also doubles as the realm's only, somewhat situational way to have access to a normal unit military buff - Adamanitum - if enemies don't play Chaos to destroy it. Crack's Call is the other combat spell in the tier that offers a subpar taste of Chaos/Death's random chance and instant killing. It's also the realm's only way out against strong heroes, and super buffed other units, making it very important to have even if it's situational and not always useless.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We don't want city defense spells - the realm shouldn't have good ones of those just like Life.
City economy is covered by Change Terrain and Transmute well enough.
There are an adequate amount and selection of summons even for a summon heavy realm.
Unit curses and save or die spells still aren't the realm's theme and Crack's Call+Cockatrices are plenty to cover this area. Let's not forget Spiders also deal damage though resistance with Poison, so if anything there is a bit of it than expected but that's fine as common tier had none.
Very much like at common, I don't see much room for new unit buffs, as the +2/2 from Land Linking covers how much buffing is expected up to uncommon tier from a realm that's mediocre at buffing.
Like at common, global enchantments are mostly for higher tiers. I think I won't spell this out for the common/uncommon tiers of other realms as it applies everywhere.
Combat global enchantments are the same deal as at common, there isn't really anything I can think of that isn't already covered by a different kind of spell in the tier.
Direct damage is covered by Ice Bolt and Crack's Call, which is enough and even Catapult has a similar role as damage spells being a ranged unit.
Overall, I see close to zero need to add any spell here either.
Nature Rare
Earthquake
This might be a bit better than it should be, as building destruction isn't the realm's strength and a 40% destruction rate is high, even if half of the buildings won't actualy be destroyed due to prerequisites. It's also one of the spells human players are much less likely to cast. Finally, it's quite a lot unfun to play against this spell, and it also comes from an enemy not expected to have this sort of effect, basically turning one more out of 5 realms into dangerous curse spamming machines one way or another. It might be a good idea to review this spell, although I have no specific plan how to improve it and address the above problems. I do believe Earthquake as a spell should exist as a Nature Rare but I'm not satisfied with the effect. Having a very rare that spams this effect isn't helping either.
Blizzard
This spell is almost entirely useless for the AI which doesn't coordinate it with attacks very well and the spell is unlikely to deal enough damage to kill anything valuable in one casting. It's useful for human players but in an unintended way - by killing magicians or other garrisons, which the player is expected to defeat using their superior monsters in combat, or counter through Elemental Armor. It's also not really offering much difference compared to Fire Storm, yes, it's cold damage instead of fire, and it's armor piercing instead of immolation so you can actually kill stronger monsters by spamming it a lot...is that a good thing? I don't think so.
Summary
We've got two overland curse type spells in this tier and that's probably fine but we should improve them for sure. There are only two overland summons this time but they do cover the bases well, offering a more defensive, ranged creature that's good for garrisoning, fast, or flying enemies, and a more offensive, stronger creature with a powerful added save-or-die effect to fight other melee targets and destroy them effortlessly. There are two buffs, both defensive, which suits the realm better than offensive buffs - the realm's creatures are plenty strong on damage output already and don't need such, and the realm isn't primarily about buffing normal units so that effect isn't worth adding for just the normal units. Elemental Armor is the realm's answer to Magicians which most realms need a way to deal with around rare tier, as by them most AI (or even human) garrisons will be filled with them. Petrify is the only true save-or-die spell in the realm and is actually quite good at it, but it would make no sense to have the spell weaker than the creature in the same tier, and it also does compare fairly to other similar spells if the tier is considered. It might be an off-realm effect but it's a rare spell while the -2 save similar spells in other realms are common. Earth Elemental covers combat summoning which is also expected from the realm, and offers the strongest combat summon in the game, both in attack power and health, and at a tier earlier than the final one. Survival Instinct covers the need for a global enchantment that supports the summoning theme, and negates the main weakness of low resistance, as overcoming weaknesses is usually expected by this tier as well. Finally, Gaia's Blessing might be the only city economy spell in the tier, but it pretty much covers everything Life would do by casting 4 different spells - protection from harmful globals, population, gold, production.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Summons are reasonably well covered, especially conisdering the next tier has 3 again.
Rare tier combat summoning is not available in most realms and more than one would be overkill.
Save or die is covered, unit cursing is not necessary beyond petrification which is the best such effect possible, causing irecoverable death.
Direct damage is missing, but we did have one in the previous tiers, and in fact no realm has any beyond uncommon except Chaos, for a good reason - any more powerful direct damage would question the value of using strong creatures or buffs.
There is only one overland global enchantment but it does exactly what you'd expect from the realm's only rare global.
There are no combat global enchantments, but the overland one covers the buffing of summoned creatures, Entangle at very rare covers the movement reduction, and these are the only themes of the realm suitable for a combat global.
Buffs were explained above, defensive are covered, offensive are unnecessary. Movement increasing would be useful but is more a Chaos/Sorcery thing.
So I also see no room for new spells here, except for the replacement of the curses.
A spell that prevents an enemy stack from moving for a turn might be interesting (using the slow movement theme as an overland effect) but we've that covered already in Sorcery and honestly, it is just better to have there so that's out.
A spell that destroys a land tile, like "Blizzard : target tile is a tundra" would be in theme but offers nothing to gameplay (it's basically just corruption or even worse.) and annoys human players on top of that.
A spell to destroy roads would be too powerful for earlier tiers but probably will be perceived as disappointing and worthless as a rare - and it actually is on maps that have small size continents where road networks don't add as much gold bonus.
So while I do think Blizzard is probably better replaced and Earthquake adjusted, I have no good ideas for either at the moment.
Nature Very Rare
Seismic Mastery
This offers 3 mostly unrelated effects in one spell which is not the best design - it ended up that way as effects were moved around while redesigning Nature's Wrath and Clairvoyance/Nature's Awareness.
It would be better to split this into two spells, now that increasing the number of spells is possible.
As the scouting effect was deemed too weak to be enough to be a spell on its own, and the earthquake effect is generally not desirable enough for human players by itself either, we can't pair those two which leaves us with two options :
A.Node power+earthquakes, and scouting becomes part of a new spell
B.Node power+scouting becomes Clairvoyance again, and Seismic Mastery will be generating earthquakes with the current effect and needs to likely gain another effect that makes sense with that spell name and makes human players (or AIs with no targets for a city curse) want to cast the spell.
Earth Gate
This spell fits mainly for flavor while offering the game's only military themed offensive city buff (yes you can refill garrisons but who doesn't use this to push all their armies into the enemy territory and expand faster?) - while being able to teleport units is very overpowered, this spell also plays into the "you must play high books with Nature" theme being a unique very rare that offers a major and often necessary part of the late game strategy - without it the expensive, large summoned creature stacks would be reaching the enemy too slowly. Might be too good to have in the game at all, but if it belongs anywhere, then it's at Nature very rare.
Fairy Ring, Power Link, Armageddon, Meteor Storm, Doomsday
These are spells that might be problematic due to the increased player count. While the current "plan" for them is that I'm assuming enough players get eliminated in before these spells come into play, if playtesting shows differently we'll need to do something about it. One possible way to deal with the issue can be very weak AI players surrendering to the nearest other AI player (or if the diplomatic relations are very good, to the human player).
The first two triggers on spells cast by other players, so a lot of surviving players with no access to very rare spells can power up the casting of these far more than expected.
The other three are different, the problem there isn't the spells being stronger but the increased chance of having a player capable of casting the spell in the late game. In general, we don't want more than a fraction (like 20-40%) of the games to end with a "chaos enchantments destroy the world" scenario. For these though, weak survivors aren't as relevant, as only the stronger players will be able to reach and obtain very rare spells, but a large amount of AIs growing equally without a few stronger ones killing the rest can be a problem.
Summary
We have 3 very powerful but also functionally different creatures here, as expected from the best summoner realm.
Entagle+Call Lighting offers a great in-realm combo that makes picking a high number of books in Nature desirable, as missing either of these spells is a critical decrease in your overall late game options.
Regeneration is probably the best buff in the entire game, well worth being the only one that's a very rare spell.
Fairy Ring was carefully designed to both support the summoning them in the form of a powerful global enchantment that's actually interesting, and Herb Mastery support's the regeneration theme in the form of a global enchantment.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Unit buffs and curses, direct damage spells and in general most things that are single target are considered to weak for this tier so no need for those.
Merging could be considered but there isn't really a use case for it at this tier anymore. Heroes get it from items, Wyrm has it, Colossus is a ranged unit, and Behemoth can web enemies. At rare, it might be useful but is too powerful (Gorgons that teleport? Better not, that's 90% the same as a Great Wyrm...)
It's late for city economy spells.
Combat globals are well covered, the realm has two of the best ones in the game.
If Seismic Mastery is split into two spells, a new global effect will be necessary to have two effects on both spells.
In general, Nature could use more global overland enchantments, as it has fewer than average.
New Global Enchantment idea :
Global Warming or Nature's Wrath
Each turn, X land tiles at random are converted into Forests. Gain +0.5 power for each Forest tile on the map.
Basically, Mini-Armageddon but not particularly harmful for other players, and you do get power immediately, in excahnge for the amount growing slower over time. Plays well into the role of Nature countering Chaos's effectviely, in this case by reverting Volcanoes from Armageddon into Forests. (X is the same as it is for Armageddon)
This could possibly be paired with whichever effect is removed from the 3 on Seismic Mastery
Other ideas for global enchantments (or anything else) : none.
Sorcery Common
AEther Sparks, Psionic Blast
While both illusion damage and halving MP/magic ammo suits the realm, two common direct damage spells, especially in a realm that's supposed to be weak at dealing direct damage (not as much as Life but still), might be too much. Moving either up to uncommon would probably just make the problem worse though. (As it makes the spell more powerful)
If anything is moved up, it should likely be Psionic Blast, as it's hard to afford early on anyway, and Phantom Warriors offers a similar function, but I would be surprised if that idea wasn't already considered and discarded in the old Sorcery thread.
Psionic Blast does offer one answer to Sorcery against heroes and is what makes True Sight relevant (along Confusion) so moving it to uncommon is probably a bad idea.
Confusion
This effect is much more suitable for the realm as it kills units with trickery. Generally tends to be disliked by players when used by the AI, but it offers probably the only good strategy for early game sorcery which is attacking things, confusion them, then retreating after 25 turns to safety. Very indirect, and honestly a perfect match for the realm of trickery and illusions. The spell also fills an important role in making True Sight relevant and slowing down Life and hero strategies a little, or just by generally making it costlier to attack the Sorcery player who is very vulnerable in the early game.
So even though the spell isn't very liked by the more casual players, I don't think we can afford changing or removing it.
Phantom Warriors
While it's great as is and I don't want to change it, this spell does escalate the "too many direct damage spells problem" by also being a summon that is often used as if it was direct damage.
Blur
No other realm gets a common global combat spell that buffs all troops, but considering this realm has literally nothing else to support normal troops (except in special circumstances) and is also bad at summoning while early combat skill is typically too low to rely on damage spells which also isn't really supposed to be something the realm does well, I do believe this is the correct tier for this after all, especially as some extra effort has to be invested into reaching the necessary 25 casting skill. (Not even building a Monument is enough in most circumstances, at least 2, often 3 will be needed.)
Summary
We have one, mediocre overland summoning spell, which is fine as this realm is bad at that, and early game in general. Nagas, while not offering that much fighting potential, are still decent creatures and their main strength is their mobility that allows the Sorcery player to be well aware of surroundings and plan accordingly for the long term. Floating Island plays into the realms role of travel through water and air, and actually offers a similar benefit as the higher tier Flight, but only in naval combat, where the boats cannot reach and melee archers stationed on the island. The realm offers three buffs, neither of which really offers any raw power, instead offer combo potential and protection from specifc types of enemies or spells. There is one combat summon that's very in-theme, but also is functionally like a third direct damage spell, making the too many direct damage spells an obvious problem here. There is a powerful but not trivial to use save or die spell and no other unit curses, and one pretty good defensive combat global enchantment.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Obviously we don't want more direct damage.
We don't want more summoning (this is a summoning light realm).
We have 3 different buffs, that's plenty.
We could move down Vertigo from uncommon as there is no proper unit curse here, only a save-or-die one, but then we likely need to adjust either the effect or the save modifier, or both. Adding a new unit curse, if Vertigo stays at uncommon would be unnecessary unless we can design something that's very different functionally from both Vertigo and Confusion (and all the other Sorcery curses later on.)
Sorcery doesn't do city economy so we can't have that.
Sorcery is suitable for city defense spells, and it's actually a bit odd to have none for the realm in common and uncommon, although having them might make the realm too powerful (as suviving the early game is the key difficulty in playing Sorcery) and also undermines the diplomacy aspect a little (why do diplomacy if I can defend myself anyway?). Common city defense enchantments also are a bit too accessible for strategies of realms that aren't supposed to get city defense enchantments of their own, so overall I think it's better to not have a common city defense enchantment in any realm except Chaos, the least likely one to get picked as a 1-2 book choice by Life and Nature players. Sorcery books benefit those strategies way too much so they shouldn't also offer a city defense spell.
So overall, even if we removed a direct damage spell, we'd not really have anything to fill the empty spell slot with except maybe a tier-changed version of Vertigo.
Sorcery Uncommon
Vertigo
This one is odd, as it's basically less effective than Shatter, yet it's a higher tier than it. It is priced accordingly, and has a strong save modifier, as well as working on summons, so it's more than enough good for an Uncommon spell, but I could see this working as a common spell if we needed the slot for something else.
Counter Magic
While the formula has been fine tuned so it's fair and mostly balanced, it might still be a bit on the powerful side. That might be fine though as the realm gets very little in the first tier that's useful in combat directly, and protecting your army from enemy spells is exactly that kind of things. Most change I can think of to this would be to reduce it to 60-65 power from 70, or change the decrease in pool value to 12.
Dispelling Wave
This is meant to counter unit buff strategies, and does so exactly as intended.
However, it also counters city economy spells (which is basically almost as powerful as curses but an entire tier earlier) and city defense enchantments, both of which are unnecessary overkill that make this spell way too good.
I believe this should be reduced to ONLY dispelling all unit buffs on the target tile or in battle, and the other effects should be separated into a new spell that dispels all city enchantments in battle and overland instead.
This new spell most likely should be rare, as most economy based or otherwise relevant city buffs are rare or higher tier, and also because being able to remove all enemy defensive enchantments is simply that powerful and has that much influence on the game. However, it doesn't have to stay Sorcery. Sorcery rare is an obvious choice, but it could also function reasonably well in Nature and Life, although MoM/CoM doesn't associate a dispel theme with those realms - but MtG definitely does. On the other hand, Sorcery is a long term realm with no economy buffs of its own, so removing them from enemy cities does make perfect sense.
Also, sadly the AI can't coordinate this with planned attacks - splitting to a separate city buff removing spell could help if we add a similar rule as fire storm, target the enemy city with the most owned troops nearby, in the case it was cast against a city defense spell.
Spell Blast
I'm very strongly leaning towards moving this up to rare instead of the other possible soution (redefine time stop rules and restrict AI usage even further), as a rare spell it would be perfect, no further changes necessary.
Phantom Beast
This might be a bit on the too durable side although not entirely sure. It definitely stands out but probably only because Sorcery has no other powerful combat spells in the first two tiers, and a raw brute force combat summon isn't all that suitable for the realm. It also has a fair bit of redundancy with Psionic Blast and Phantom Warriors. However, it does follow the Phantom Warriors->Phantom Beast->Air Elemental progression tiers very well, the first offering basically zero staying power, the beast offering a little but still being easy to kill and the last offering the most staying power in the entire game as long as the enemy can't detect and blast it with spells.
Spell Lock
This is pretty much fine as is, or maybe it has just a little bit too good dispel resistance? Hard to say.
Summary
There is one summon here which follows the Nagas in their role being now semi decent in battle and ranged.
We have Flight, the most realm-defining buff in all of Sorcery.
Aura of Majesty is the main plan to survive on the long term despite having less than ideal combat potential early on, and the only diplomacy modifier spell in the game, very suitable for the realm's diplomacy theme.
Phantom Beast offers the necessary punch in combat, perhaps a little too much of it even, but it might be necessary for the realm to function. AEther Binding is part of the "good at dispelling" theme and the extra skill woks well to augment the weaker early game spells as well as setting up the Sorcery player for a stronger late game.
Spell Lock is a necessary part of the puzzle in the buff-dispel-dispel resitance game and this is the most suitable tier and realm for it.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
There is no direct damage but Phantom Beast is functionally a pretty good direct damage spell so there is no need for one.
There are no city economy spells but Sorcery isn't about those to have any at this tier.
There are no city defense spells which is a bit odd, and it might be a good idea to have some? It would be to good to have them as early as common, but by uncommon, not having any definitely doesn't seem right for the most defensive realm in the game.
We don't have many unit buffs but nothing really stands out as a sorcery type effect that would be fair as a new uncommon unit buff, and we don't want raw stats.
We only have one unit curse but that's probably enough as it's a powerful and versatile one, unless we change that.
Obviously don't need more combat summons, nor overland ones.
Most likely don't need combat global enchantments at this tier (we already have Blur and Counter Magic which covers both spell and unit damage reduction)
City/player targeting curses are not suitable especially as the realm doesn't want to make enemies at this tier.
We do at least one empty slot to fill though, if we do move Spell last up.
Sorcery Rare
Uranus' Blessing
This is a "do it all" economy spell for Sorcery, a pair to Nature's Gaia's Blessing, except...this spell doesn't actually do only economy, it has military effects. So I think this should be split up.
The city gaining Counter Magic, and the troops gaining magic weapons is more appropriate for an uncommon spell, while the power and skill boosting effects can stay rare.
How this spell interacts with the new skill buildings should be considered as well.
Wind Walking
This was discussed in another thread, basically, as is, it offers nothing more than what Flight can already do if cast on a ship. However, granting flight to the units in combat as well might be far too good? Did we have any other idea?
(Yes, this spell is much better than a ship if you have a fast hero. But what about using it on nonheroes...)
Magic Immunity
This might be far too good even for rare, and might be better as a very rare. Also, it has a redundancy with invisibility as both counter being affected by spells as well as magical ranged attacks, but Magic Immunity is better at doing both.
Summary
Overall, we have the best stalling combat summon which is very adequate for the realm and fortunately the AI is smart enough that it's no longer that overpowered as it used to be. There is one solid overland summon, not outstanding but definitely not weak either. We have a unit curse that's a great combo enabler on top of it by making the unit more vulnerable to actual save or die spells. We have a spell that kills summoned units, very fitting for a realm that cancels enemy magic. We have two, redundant and very powerful unit enchantments, the stronger one should likely be very rare instead. We have a unique utility spell to stop enemy armies for a turn - rarely useful but when it is useful, it'll prevent an inevitable major defeat from an unexpected fast moving enemy doomstack. Finally we also have two city defense spells, one of which also doubles as the realm's only city economy spell (albeit only for magic), and which should likely be split up to 2 spells instead.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Spell Blast comes up here, as well as the city dispelling half of Dispelling Wave, that covers overland curses and it's +2 spells even if we add nothing new.
We might want one more overland summon as there is only one, but it's not particularly important as that one is useful and I don't have a good idea for one anyway. The realm isn't that much about summoning either.
Uranus's Bless covers city economy, and we have that plus Flying Fortress for city defense.
There is an obvious lack of an overland global enchantment, although Sorcery did get two at uncommon which makes it the best in this department for that tier. Still it might be worth considering ideas for a rare sorcery global. All units gain +3 resistance perhaps? Manually casting resist magic on everything actually starts to no longer be viable at this tier due to having too much units. That might be too good against Death realm players though.
Sorcery Very Rare
Haste
It is now possible to make this an overland/combat spell like most other buffs. I don't think we should but it's possible.
Spell Ward
This has been made more balanced by reducing the summoned creature penalty and by the countering effect not affecting players that have Spell of Mastery. That is probably enough to make this spell balanced but the complete denial of combat spellcasting might still be a bit too much, especially if dispelling city spells will be moved up to rare tier. On the other hand, the option of having more opponents makes this that much less dangerous in larger scale games, as you can simply avoid the Sorcery wizard and conquer everyone else, outnumbering the last Sorcery player by the time of Spell of Mastery 10 cities to 1.
Summary
There has been extensive rebalacing done on this tier so most spells are now perfect as they are, I don't have much to say about them.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
There actually aren't enough global enchantments although Spell Binding can possibly make up for that. There are enough creatures and unit buffs, and Creature Binding fills the role of the ultimate save or die spell in the realm well enough. There are no overland curses but those aren't fun escpecially coming from a really this good at turtling so better not add any.
Possible new global enchantment idea :
Wind Mastery - all units gain Flight and +1 movement. Could reuse the currently unused Wind Mastery art. A mass-flight spell would be very fitting for the realm and it makes sense to have that one tier higher than the city defense spell that provides the same effect (although it slightly reduces the value of Flying Fortress as the units fly either way, but FF still prevents enemy troops from entering city tiles which WM would not.
Chaos Common
Summary
Chaos commons are a big mixture of random utility spells that are good but situational. Hell Hounds and Fire Bolt offer a solid core however as they are efficient generic spells that can be used against almost anything.
It has the best early city defense spell in the game - very much needed and no risk of breaking balance in this realm which is bad at defense and even early game expansion - a weak but situationally powerful combat summon, and many combat spells to put emphasis on the realm being oriented towards offense and combat.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Hell Hounds offer enough versatility that even though it's the only creature in the tier, more creatures are likely not necessary. It covers damage output well, it's reasonably fast, and can hit flying enemies. It's weak on the defensive side but the realm should be bad at that, and also Gargoyles can cover for that weakness in the next tier. One possible addition I could imagine being useful here would be a high speed fragile unit with first strike and high attack strength, a similar role to basic cavalry units. It might be a bit too good to have one though, considering it opens up the "spam spells and retreat" tactic to the realm without having to rely on the race producing those units, making it almost entirely race independent to play.
Only one direct damage spell from the direct damage realm isn't much but it's the strongest available in the tier, and the realm is about straighfoward raw damage so that leaves no design room for something else.
There are no economy spells but the realm shouldn't get those anyway - instead there is Corruption to hurt enemy economy.
There are several unit curses, and save-or-die doesn't belong to the realm so resistance based spells are well covered - it's hard to design a more powerful spell than Shatter in the unit curse department anyway.
There is no combat global enchantment, and perhaps one, offense oriented such spell might be useful? Flame Blade does cover offense buffing well enough though in my opinion, even if it's single target. As combat globals are generally cumulative with each other, it can be dangerous to add to many of them to the game, and this early it's not typical to have a large enough army to really benefit from a "buff all" spell. Still, there is one area not covered much by existing spells, magical ranged/fire damage.
New Spell idea :
All of the caster's units gain +1 magical ranged attack strength if they have a fire magical ranged attack, +2 strength to their breath attacks, and Fire creatures gain +1 melee attack and defense. (Fire creatures would be Fire Elemental, Fire Giant, and Efreet.)
It might be a bit too good with a stack of Hell Hounds though, and the AI is bad at using breath attacks (as it requires positoning the unit to be the one attacking first), more importantly, magicians aren't really available this early, so overall, it might be a bad idea.
Buffs are not a speciality of Chaos and what it is good at, buffing offense, is already covered.
Chaos Uncommon
Fire Storm
This should be rare. Not only are all other spells that counter Magicians in the garrison rare, but it costs too much to be convenient to use as an uncommon as well, and it was originally rare. It's also too powerful for an uncommon, rendering all units halberdier tier and below useless, but not in the way of the units losing in battle against the wizard, but in the way of producing them becomes not viable in the first place, EVEN if they are not produced for the purpose of attacking that wizard. If any of your enemies know Fire Storm, you literally have to stop producing Slingers, Magicians, Halberiders, and pretty much anything that's not an Armorer's Guild or Fantastic stables unit, because if you don't then you risk losing significant economic value as the units get wiped out even before they had a chance to enter a battle. An uncommon spell that counters all the common units in its own tier so hard that even building them stops being a viable option is bad design. I am aware moving this higher up will make Chaos even harder to play in the early and midgame, but it still should be done.
Immolation
While this spell is good as is, I see one thing that could be done to make it better.
Chaos is generally not very good at using heroes, and Inner Fire was added into items to help with that, but it got no actual spells. I do believe spells that grant immunity to a few specific direct damage spell effects have room to exist in the game, in particular, if Chaos could grant protection from Fire, Cold and Lightning, that would be enough to allow Chaos to use heroes against most non-Death wizards (who still have Reapear Slash to be afraid of) without the need of finding a Regeneration items. Of course, fighting Nature would still require a Wraith Form item and fighting Sorcery would be safer with a True Sight item, but overall it improves Chaos's ability to use heroes in battle well enough, and specifically in the uncommon tier, making it different from Sorcery and Nature which have excellent support for heroes but only at rares.
Fire Immnunity and Cold Immunity already exist in the game, and Lightning Immunity or Lightning Resistance can be added now. I think the latter, with the effect of "Lightning attacks lose the armor piercing property against this unit" is probably good enough - a hero should have no problem surviving strength 36 non-armor piercing attacks when backed up by Heroic Shout spells and decent stats, levels, equipment, and due to the wide availability of lightning in the game later on, complete immunity might be overkill. So to summarize, we likely want to add Cold Immunity, Fire Immunity, and Lightning Resistance to this spell tier as available effects.
After this detour, let's go back to the original topic, Immolation, which would, or more like, should get the "Cold Immunity" effect from the above three, while the other two can be a new spell.
If it is done this way, we likely should change the item owers to match the setup (so Immolation items would also grant cold Cold Immunity, and Inner Fire would be the other two and renamed to whatever the new spell's name is. )
Summary
Chaos has 3 uncommon creatures filling 3 different roles, an early creature that helps pure chaos wizards and covers the realm's weakness of being bad at defense, a soldig versatile utility creature, and a more expensive heavy hitter melee unit. There are two direct damage spells that cover the two main use cases, a heavily armored single figure and many figures with less armor. We have a buff that grants the realm its anti-flight effect which is very necessary for an offense oriented realm and can even grant defensive power with luck which the realm is weak at. Two of the spells cover the random chance theme while being still useful. Raise Volcano offers the only economy benefit the realm has, in the only area every realm needs to have some access to, which is magic power, and does so in an interesting way by also being an improved version of corruption. Finally there is the obligatory offensive buff, Immolation.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We want buffs to add Fire Immunity and Lighting Resistance as explained above.
New Spell :
Insulation
Enchanted unit has Fire Immunity and Lightning Resistance.
With that defensive buffs are well enough covered. There are two offensive buffs in the tier, Mystic Surge and Immolation, which is enough.
There are 3 summoned creatures which is plenty, no need for more.
The two damage spells cover the possible use cases perfectly, more are not needed. There is Raise Volcano to cover economy and city curses.
There are no city defense enchantments but Wall of Fire is more than enough to not need another, and this realm isn't about defending anyway.
I do see a bit of a risk of Chaos becoming a bit too weak in the early game if Fire Storm is moved higher up, but if that actually does happen we should probably cover that by improving Fire Giant and/or Chimeras as necessary. It might not be though because Chaos really shouldn't need to expand quickly at this tier and those creatures as well as imporved heroe protection should be more than enough to cover slower expansion needs.
Chaos Rare
Chaos Rift
This might become a lot more useful if Fire Storm is moved up to this tier, as it's a good alternate option for a similar purose. With Fire Storm at uncommon, this wasn't all that great as dealing damage instantly is almost always better than dealing more damage over a longer period of time.
Magic Vortex
This no longer needs the "max 3 in play" limit but we might want to keep it anyway to avoid it becoming too powerful. With many of these it's likely trivial to wipe out even a full stack of very rares, even 3 are often enough to kill several. It can be 3 per player or 3 globally but I think per player is fine.
Summary
Again, 3 creatures here, filling 3 different roles, melee, ranged, and resistance based attacks.
We have an offensive combat global, an overland global that's an all-enchanting version of an uncommon spell, and an amazing 4 different combat direct damage spells, one of which with a double role as it can also damage city buildings.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Obviously, no more creatures or direct damage spells, we have plenty.
There is an offensive combat global enchantment and the realm isn't about trickery or defense so that's enough.
There aren't many overland globals, although both enemy economy destuction and own unit buffing is well covered by Doom Mastery and very rare spells, so I'm not sure if anything could be added. I don't feel the need for any as the combat and summon spells are powerful enough without any support from enchantments.
City defense spells and economy spells are not suitable for Chaos so there are none and shouldn't be.
Unit curses and save or die spells don't exist but they'd be useless when there are enough raw damage spells to destroy anything anyway.
Unit buffs are nonexistent as well and there might be some unexplored opportunities in that, for example a spell that grants fire breath, lightning breath, doom, doom gaze, or maybe first strike, however I don't really see why I would want to buff the damage of a single unit when I can summon an Efreet or cast Flame Strike in combat, and buffing everyone is covered by Blazing March, any more would be too much for the tier, as such global buffs are cumulative.
Overall I see little room for more spells here but Fire Storm already raises the spell count to higher than the original so that's probably for the better.
Chaos Very Rare
Armageddon, Doomsday
I have adjusted the formula for the number of tiles affected per turn, but we'll need to see in action if it's good or needs more adjustments.
Warp Reality
This might be too powerful as is, as even on units with magic weapons it's an obscene 50% reduction of damage dealt before shields are applied by pretty much anything that isn't a summoned creature. Now that hit chance has 2 digits, altering this to be a 15% reduction in hit rate might be a good idea.
Summary
Chaos very rare spells definitely pack a punch and are more consistently powerful than Sorcery.
We have the highest attack power and the highest health creatures in the game, both suits the strangthforward raw power realm perfectly. The 3 world destruction enchantments offer the road to an "economy" victory by being the only person left with any resources. Chaos Surge and Warp Reality open the path to the military victory using either summoned or normal units, converting even trivial units like hell hounds and gargoyles into serious forces. Disintegrate and Apocalypse cover the direct damage aspect in both single target and AOE so the realm is very capable of winning through combat magic as well. Finally there is Call the Void, the ultimate single target city destruction spell.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
While Chaos Surge/Doom Mastery/Warp Reality/Blazing March is enough to make the realm potent in combat, the effects I've listed at Rare as possible single target effects could function as very rare instead, buffing all targets. It could be one or more combat or overland global enchantment, and it could be granting any of lightning breath, doom gaze, first strike, or armor piercing, none of which currently obtainable thorugh buffs and all being very in-theme for Chaos. As there is quite a bit of overlap here (3 of these are abilities to enable striking first, and 3 of them are abilities to somehow reduce or ignore armor) probably no more than two should be turned into a spell. For example :
Blazing Eyes
Overland global enchantment.
All units with a base normal unit type gain Doom Gaze 2.
Electric Mastery
Combat global enchantment
All units in combat gain Lightning Breath 5 and Lightning Resistance.
Only two direct damage spells isn't that much either, although other realms get none beyond uncommon. Neiher are pure damage as one is a random chance based spell, the other checks resistance.
For a pure damage spell though, I don't have good plans. Single target is a bad idea because we generaly don't want to make it easy to kill the highest tier creatures a spell dealing more damage than the rares would do so.
All enemy hitting is covered by Apocalypse, and Flame Strike (for reliable lower, or chance based higher damage output).
Spells that hit an area (like 3x3 around a target) don't exist in the game but I think they'd be bad anyway for three reasons. Units are crowded in cities, units start crowded at the beignning of each battle, and the AI won't be able to spread them out to avoid taking too much damage.
That leaves damage over time, like Call Lightning but...Magic Vortex have that covered as well. I guess a very rare spell that's less chance based, could work better but even then, why wait when I can just cast the Flame Strike 3 times now and everything dies? Damage over time is not useful in the tier and realm where you can destroy all enemy units with spells anyway. I guess we can add one anyway as multi-realm players might miss out on the Flame Strike and Apocalypse spells, but it's definitely not necessary and would actually take away quite a lot of uniqueness from Nature's Call Lightning.
Obviously, single target unit buffs are not needed by this tier, and unit curses aren't fitting the realm's highest tier.
So beyond the global enchantments I don't think anything else is really necessary.
Life Common
Summary
Lots of buffs. No summoned creature that is actually capable of fighting well, to make the realm uniquely rely on buffed normal units instead of summoning.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We defintely have enough buffs.
The realm shouldn't get more damage spells, resistance targeting spells, or summons and obviously no overland curses either.
It's too early for city economy but the realm does get a taste of it in Heavenly Light, which also covers city defense and is the most the realm can be given in that area.
There is a global enchantment that's also boosting economy and makes Life the only realm to have one this early so obviously no need for more.
There is no combat global enchantment but Prayer in uncommon is more than enough for that role.
I don't think anything needs to be added here.
Life Uncommon
Divine Order
This has to be a rare, as it's a global game rule modifying spell and this rule modification shouldn't be coming up this often.
Unicorns
A teleporting creature might be too early at uncommon although its mediocre stats and Life having no direct damage to take advantage of the infinite stalling capability makes it likely fair. It does counter magicians earlier than other realms can but it's an expensive counter that isn't nearly as good as Elemental Armor or Fire Storm - the Unicorns do kill magicians but you need several and will lose a few to the attacks on the initial turn.
So while there are a few arguments for making it a higher tier, it's probably good as is and moving it would leave Life with no uncommon creature at all.
Summary
Uncommon gives Life wizards the next step in healing with two reviving spells, and Prayer as a global major combat buff, the best such in the game at least excluding very rares. There are two spells that play into the "peaceful realm" theme and boost magic power and research respectively, and a third city economy buff that also helps that by accelerating growth.
We get the next tier in fantastic unit damaging spells as well, and get a protection spell against the realm's greatest weakness, Sorcery's illusion spells which ignore our armor buffs. Finally the realm gets it's first real fight capable creature.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Having no unit buff (other than True Sight which isn't really a buff, just a situational protection spell) does stand out.
Of course, with Prayer in effect every battle, units are greatly buffed even without a new single target buff, so having none might be for the better.
If we do add a buff, it likely needs to be something that isn't cumulative with the common buffs in a way that makes them even more absurdly powerful.
Maybe a spell that adds extra hit points, but only a smaller quantity? There aren't any of those and it could make units that otherwise are too fragile to bring into combat (like magicians) useful. For example :
Bravery
Combat/overland
Enchanted unit gains +1 hp per figure but a minimum of 4 total if there are fewer than 4 figures. This bonus is not cumulative with Lionheart.
The tier covers city economy spells reasonably well, and in general doesn't seem to be lacking in any particular type of spell other than a unit buff.
Life Rare
Lionheart
This spell is a mixture of 3 different effects, out of which extra hp is currently unique but might no longer be if we add it as an uncommon spell, and might be an overkill to have two spells that buff it. Extra attack and resistance are however not new but the spell still offers two "new" benefits, first it buffs summoned creatures which most other Life spells do not, and second, it allows buffing 3 different things at once which is very relevant if you need to cast something in combat - you can rarely afford spending time on casting 3 separate lower tier buffs in battle and this does all three most important things (resistance, attack power and durability) in one. The hp bonus likely shouldn't be cumulative with the uncommon spell if we add that.
Summary
There are two city economy buffs, a summoning spell, two kinds of higher tier healing, one kind of higher tier anti-fantastic unit spell. A higher tier version of heroism in the form of a city spell. Two great unit buffs, one defensive and one both defensive and offensive.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Buffing is covered well. Summoning, only one creature but this realm isn't good at that so we shouldn't add another.
City economy is covered and with these spell all resources can be buffed as you'd expect from the realm. (except for food but food is just more production by changing people to workers.)
Everything else are things the realm isn't supposed to be during (curses, etc)
There aren't any global enchantments (neither combat nor overland) which is odd although moving Divine Order up adds one. Holy Arms could possibly be moved down here as it's not really good enough for a very rare but due to the vast amount of very rare globals, I don't think we really need to add anything new.
I don't see much opportunity for new spells in this tier.
Life Very Rare
Holy Arms
This is a bit on the weak side and might work better as Rare.
Enlightenment
This could enable a higher maximal level for heroes (Avatar?) in addition to the existing effects although I'm leaning towards considering that a bad idea as other level raising effects demonstrate heroes have no levels beyond the normally highest. (Warlord or Crusade does not allow heroes to level up beyond Demigod even if they have enough experience to do so, the extra level is simply ignored.)
With games likely reaching spell of mastery more often due to higher map sizes and player counts, this might be a bit too powerful now, but most likely it's fine.
Archangel
Wind Walking on this might be overkill and depending how the Wind Walking effect gets changes, if at all, it might be better to remove it. Although the issue of other units moving much slower than the archangel is real so it might be best to keep it anyway.
This is the only unit still listed on my CoM I list as "might be too powerful" but as it's powerful thanks to the buffs and healing supporting it, I doubt nerfing the unit itself would achieve much other than making the AI and lairs easier.
Summary
There are 2 economy globals and 3 military globals. There are 2 combat globals in addition to that to have some spells that actually cost mana in battles and isn't vulnerable to dispelling.
There is one summoned creature and the obligatory "city is safe from curses" spell that is a must have for a realm that is seriously aiming for an peaceful, economy based SoM victory. Finally there is a combat summon, the only one in the realm, which covers the greatest weakness of this realm, not being able to do anything in battle without a relevant army already there.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
I think one more creature could be added. The realm isn't about creatures, but this is the higest tier, and even the other creature light realm gets two. If one is added, it likely shouldn't be about raw power, and should do something comepletely different.
I have one idea for a new life creature, that covers something the realm otherwise cannot do, a resistance based effect on normal units, making it unique enough for a very rare.
Prophet / Cupid
Medium/high durability, low-ish attack power. Could be melee or ranged, depending on which is more balanced. Normal units attacked by this unit must save or (get removed from battle, retreating safely / change sides for a turn).
Basically this fills the role of "Life dominates in the area of normal units" in a new way and as normal units are mostly obsolete by this tier, it probably isn't even overpowered. It's not AI friendly though, in the sense that in automatic combat, the effect cannot easily be turned into numbers. A solution for that could be :
Prophet
At the beginning of combat involving this unit, all enemy normal units must save at (+?) or switch sides/retreat from battle.
Forced retreat might be the better choice in this case as it would be too powerful otherwise. As the effect applies before the combat starts, this is AI friendly as the AI and automatic combat feature will already see the game state resulting from the effect of the ability.
If the number of removed units is a potential problem, it can be limited to no more than 3 retreating units, or maybe even the resistance roll can be ignored entirely, simply forcing the X units with the lowest resistance to retreat.
Anyway, this is a bit of a dangerous territory as a unit with an ability like this can easily be overpowered, so we need to carefully think about it, but I do believe a a "Prophet" creature that brainwashes enemy normal units one way or another might be a flavorful addition.
There are no unit buffs at the tier at all and while globals are usually better, having some unit buff should be considered.
I have two ideas for that :
-A spell that simply puts a major buff on the unit, adds supernatural to it, and basically converts said unit into a rare tier creature equivalent, but costs as much to cast as a rare creature. Probably should also turn the unit into a Life creature.
-A spell that adds the effect of all buffs the player can cast, but in a single spell. Costs less than casting the buffs individually, but higher risk as in case of a dispel the unit loses all the buffs at once.
There are enough global enchantments, however a global that adds Holy Armor to all units to form a pair with Holy Arms could be interesting, although potentially overpowered.
There are no city buffs for economy, but it is far too late for that in this tier anyway and the race to Spell of Mastery is covered by Enlightenment and Life Force.
Death Common
Mana Leak
This is probably far too good for this tier, and being a counter to Magicians, it's both coming too early and actually is kinda useless as no one has magical ranged units at this time. (Ok, actually, they do, Shaman. But fighting (neutral) Shaman really shouldn't be the argument for keeping this common.)
Summary
We have two creatures, an economic, weaker one with some utility (missile immunity) but mainly useful for garrisoning and exploration, and a stonger one that's expensive but great if a lot of combat is expected.
There is one direct damage spell and one save or die spell. There is a simple but quite potent unit curse. There is a combat summon that's the second best in the tier after Boars, a global that gives a minor buff to all summons of the realm and undead, a resistance based defensive buff, and another buff that offers a package of defensive or utility effects.
There are 3 sources for making undead.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
The 2 creatures cover the imporant roles well so there is no need for more, especially as rushing the research of uncommons is a very common strategy here.
More unit curses are actually not needed as weakness is generally enough to render anything useless at this tier and at a very good price too. A save-or-die spell that actually kills, unlike Black Sleep, but possibly with a worse modifier might make sense. It's not very likely to be useful though as Black Sleep is almost as good as killing the unit, you almost never want it to be better than that.
Overland curses would be too early at common.
City economy isn't something death gets, and it has plenty good city defense spells later on so that is no need for any here.
Overall, nothing comes to mind that is missing at this tier.
Death Uncommon
Drain Power
This spell is on theme for mana denial, although own casting skill increase is no longer a death exclusive theme. It's an early curse spell that doesn't have too much abuse potential for human players but does provide one spell that can help in playing Death peacefully (as it has no diplomacy penalty).
My main problem with it is that the AI had to be restricted to never cast this spell earlier than a certain turn which is a red flag indicating the spell is not in the appropriate tier and should be rare or very rare.
Summary
There are 3 creatures, one for early use, and two for later, both offering very powerful options usually not available in this tier but for a steep research cost. We get a resistance based and a normal direct damage spell.
Only one source of undead but it's a universally available and powerful combat spell. The obligatory "debuff enemy units" combat global.
Wall of Darkness stands out as an odd choice as it's illusion, but having this in Sorcery would be far too powerful for them, and Death does need its city defense options. It also makes Illusion Immunity relevant against more than one realm (along with Night Stalker).
Blood Lust serves well for the anti-normalunit theme as well as providing the strongest attack buff in the game and a bit of an economy potential by removing maintenance costs.
Finally there is Drain Power to have a taste of how it feels to be a nuisance to other wizards.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
There aren't any save-or-die spells here that can affect fantastic units, and the same is true for rare. In fact, Death doesn't actually get a proper save or die spell that actually kills the target until very rare, in the form of Annihilate. The problem is the too much overlap, as having a spell like "Target unit must save at -3 or die" makes sense for the tier and realm but there is too much overlap. Why would I prefer using that over Black Sleep (on summons) or Possession (on normal units)? Simply, the existing options are too good to need more uncommon or rare save or die spells even if the lack of it is weird. (Even Nature gets Petrify but Death does not get an equivalent.)
There are enough summons and direct damage spells.
Suprisingly no unit curses but as it has been discussed many times in the past, this has an obvious reason, if you can kill the unit outright then cursing it is pointless, and Death definitely can kill the unit.
There is one city defense spell, no city economy spells but the realm doesn't need those.
There is no need for more combat globals - Death already has the highest number of those.
The realm isn't about unit buffing either, although if there are any good ideas, adding one isn't necessarily a bad thing.
One idea :
Vampirism
Enchanted unit gains +1 hp per figure that successfully deals any melee damage to the enemy unit.
The difference between this and Life Stealing is that this doesn't deal extra damage and the amount that can be healed is limited. It also doesn't work at range. It might still be too powerful though.
"What can be added" only covers spell categories. Unique ideas that are neither category and likely end up in "special spells" might still be useful even in tiers where the conclusion was "no new spells are needed here" so feel free to throw in ideas. I was looking at the tiers based on what should be there but is missing.
Nature Common
Earth To Mud
Currently it has been simplified to turn the affected tiles into swamps. That might be a too large nerf as it means water walking units are no longer affected at all.
Nature's Eye
Research production is not part of this realm but we can consider it part of the "realm can do everything, just not so well" theme as it's a small amount. Two scouting spells at common in one realm (or even globally) might be too much but it is functionally very different from Earth Lore so that might also be fine. Realm has no other city defense enchantments, very much like Life and for the same reason of being good at not losing units while expanding, and this spell is a spell pair with Life's Heavenly Light in that regard. So overall it's probably fine as is. The only possible change I can think of would be to change the research bonus into a different resource but gold/production would be far too good as they can directly boost snowballing, Life already covers power, and food is basically more production and gold by allowing less farmers.
Earth Lore
One of the very few spells the AI cannot cast, but that's fair because they have no use for it due to not needing to scout for any purposes other tha cursing, and if the AI could use this to find and curse the player's cities that would make any strategies based around not letting the AI in scouting range worthless.
Summary
This tier is about as good as it can be. 2 very different overland summons, both above average at their intended role, and a good combat summon covers Nature's summoner theme. The game's only specialized scouting spell works well for the realm's role of being the only realm one with scouting, having a second one that doubles as an economy spell and as the realm's only city defense spell, and one that actually offers a benefit that's not in-combat : seeing the approaching units in time, also is perfect. Water Walking further improves the realm's exploration theme and is essential. The only buff in the tier offers protection from magic attacks and nature effects, both very fitting for the realm as well. The 3 combat spells also cover the realm's themes well, disabling enemy movement (Earth to Mud) and countering flight (Web). Finally Fairy Dust offers a generic, low power direct damage spell one would expect from a jack of all trades realm's common tier.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We don't want city defense spells - the realm shouldn't have good ones of those just like Life.
We don't want city economy spells - the realm isn't about that, neither is the common tier, and Nature's Eye already covers it in the qualitity appropriate.
We don't need more summons, either combat or overland.
We don't need unit curses or save or die spells - those aren't suitable for Nature especially at common.
We don't need overland global enchantments - those should be higher tier, more powerful spells.
Combat global enchantments, I can't really think of any - a global buff or curse doesn't really suit the realm - unless it's a buff for summoned units but that would be far too powerful at common - and Earth To Mud already covers the movement slowing theme.
We don't need more direct damage spells - one is the perfect quantity.
More units buffs are a possibility, if it affects summoned creatures, however, Land Linking, being a low cost uncommon, covers that pretty well by adding both defense and attack power, while Resist Elements covers resistance against the only kind of resistance based spells the realm should be able to defend agaisnt effectively.
Overall, I see close to zero need to add any spell here.
Nature Uncommon
Nature's Cures
This is currently the only other spell the AI cannot cast. While I could probably code some use cases, I seriously doubt the AI has massively damaged stacks with lots of wounded units oftenr enough to be worth doing so - in most cases the human player will try to kill the units - and even then it would go through a random chance to cast it or other spells, which undermines the main benefit (healing your stack instantly and attacking again).
Crack's Call
This was changed to destroy nonhero normal units instead of merely dealing enough damage to almost always kill anything using a hard to remember formula. It also makes the spell work better at it's primary role for the human player, to counter super-buffed units that are so powerful even Nature's massive monsters cannot do much about it. I'm aware this spell is hated by a lot of players, but it's necessary, not only to make heroes harder to play and thus less overpowered but also because this spell literally is the human player's only way out against certain types of enemies in the entire realm - even at later tiers.
Summary
The tier has 3 summoned creatures. A fast, strong early creature that's powerful compared to early units, hard to defend against due to poison and has very good utility through speed and webbing for the realm's powerful summoning themed early game. A flying, stoning creature that isn't that good by itself but covers the realms main weaknesses (shadow demons and other noncorporeal flying enemies, and generic lack of access to flight), offers combo potential and can occasionally counter higher tier creatures as well, and finally, a big, regenerating monster, which fits the "good at summoning" theme not through speed but raw power as well as the "Nature is weak against resistance based spells that aren't petrification" theme. There is one combat summon again, and this time it's a good ranged unit to take advantage of Nature's enemy slowing theme and offer variety over the melee Boars. Land Linkning covers both exploration (athfinding buff) and unit buffing for fatastic creatures perfectly in one spell. Ice Bolt is a functionally different direct damage spell from Fairy Dust while still filling the same role of giving the realm a bit of everything. Transmute and Change Terrain are the realm's city economy spells, as expected from the realm, working though targeting land instead of the city itself. Transmute also doubles as the realm's only, somewhat situational way to have access to a normal unit military buff - Adamanitum - if enemies don't play Chaos to destroy it. Crack's Call is the other combat spell in the tier that offers a subpar taste of Chaos/Death's random chance and instant killing. It's also the realm's only way out against strong heroes, and super buffed other units, making it very important to have even if it's situational and not always useless.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We don't want city defense spells - the realm shouldn't have good ones of those just like Life.
City economy is covered by Change Terrain and Transmute well enough.
There are an adequate amount and selection of summons even for a summon heavy realm.
Unit curses and save or die spells still aren't the realm's theme and Crack's Call+Cockatrices are plenty to cover this area. Let's not forget Spiders also deal damage though resistance with Poison, so if anything there is a bit of it than expected but that's fine as common tier had none.
Very much like at common, I don't see much room for new unit buffs, as the +2/2 from Land Linking covers how much buffing is expected up to uncommon tier from a realm that's mediocre at buffing.
Like at common, global enchantments are mostly for higher tiers. I think I won't spell this out for the common/uncommon tiers of other realms as it applies everywhere.
Combat global enchantments are the same deal as at common, there isn't really anything I can think of that isn't already covered by a different kind of spell in the tier.
Direct damage is covered by Ice Bolt and Crack's Call, which is enough and even Catapult has a similar role as damage spells being a ranged unit.
Overall, I see close to zero need to add any spell here either.
Nature Rare
Earthquake
This might be a bit better than it should be, as building destruction isn't the realm's strength and a 40% destruction rate is high, even if half of the buildings won't actualy be destroyed due to prerequisites. It's also one of the spells human players are much less likely to cast. Finally, it's quite a lot unfun to play against this spell, and it also comes from an enemy not expected to have this sort of effect, basically turning one more out of 5 realms into dangerous curse spamming machines one way or another. It might be a good idea to review this spell, although I have no specific plan how to improve it and address the above problems. I do believe Earthquake as a spell should exist as a Nature Rare but I'm not satisfied with the effect. Having a very rare that spams this effect isn't helping either.
Blizzard
This spell is almost entirely useless for the AI which doesn't coordinate it with attacks very well and the spell is unlikely to deal enough damage to kill anything valuable in one casting. It's useful for human players but in an unintended way - by killing magicians or other garrisons, which the player is expected to defeat using their superior monsters in combat, or counter through Elemental Armor. It's also not really offering much difference compared to Fire Storm, yes, it's cold damage instead of fire, and it's armor piercing instead of immolation so you can actually kill stronger monsters by spamming it a lot...is that a good thing? I don't think so.
Summary
We've got two overland curse type spells in this tier and that's probably fine but we should improve them for sure. There are only two overland summons this time but they do cover the bases well, offering a more defensive, ranged creature that's good for garrisoning, fast, or flying enemies, and a more offensive, stronger creature with a powerful added save-or-die effect to fight other melee targets and destroy them effortlessly. There are two buffs, both defensive, which suits the realm better than offensive buffs - the realm's creatures are plenty strong on damage output already and don't need such, and the realm isn't primarily about buffing normal units so that effect isn't worth adding for just the normal units. Elemental Armor is the realm's answer to Magicians which most realms need a way to deal with around rare tier, as by them most AI (or even human) garrisons will be filled with them. Petrify is the only true save-or-die spell in the realm and is actually quite good at it, but it would make no sense to have the spell weaker than the creature in the same tier, and it also does compare fairly to other similar spells if the tier is considered. It might be an off-realm effect but it's a rare spell while the -2 save similar spells in other realms are common. Earth Elemental covers combat summoning which is also expected from the realm, and offers the strongest combat summon in the game, both in attack power and health, and at a tier earlier than the final one. Survival Instinct covers the need for a global enchantment that supports the summoning theme, and negates the main weakness of low resistance, as overcoming weaknesses is usually expected by this tier as well. Finally, Gaia's Blessing might be the only city economy spell in the tier, but it pretty much covers everything Life would do by casting 4 different spells - protection from harmful globals, population, gold, production.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Summons are reasonably well covered, especially conisdering the next tier has 3 again.
Rare tier combat summoning is not available in most realms and more than one would be overkill.
Save or die is covered, unit cursing is not necessary beyond petrification which is the best such effect possible, causing irecoverable death.
Direct damage is missing, but we did have one in the previous tiers, and in fact no realm has any beyond uncommon except Chaos, for a good reason - any more powerful direct damage would question the value of using strong creatures or buffs.
There is only one overland global enchantment but it does exactly what you'd expect from the realm's only rare global.
There are no combat global enchantments, but the overland one covers the buffing of summoned creatures, Entangle at very rare covers the movement reduction, and these are the only themes of the realm suitable for a combat global.
Buffs were explained above, defensive are covered, offensive are unnecessary. Movement increasing would be useful but is more a Chaos/Sorcery thing.
So I also see no room for new spells here, except for the replacement of the curses.
A spell that prevents an enemy stack from moving for a turn might be interesting (using the slow movement theme as an overland effect) but we've that covered already in Sorcery and honestly, it is just better to have there so that's out.
A spell that destroys a land tile, like "Blizzard : target tile is a tundra" would be in theme but offers nothing to gameplay (it's basically just corruption or even worse.) and annoys human players on top of that.
A spell to destroy roads would be too powerful for earlier tiers but probably will be perceived as disappointing and worthless as a rare - and it actually is on maps that have small size continents where road networks don't add as much gold bonus.
So while I do think Blizzard is probably better replaced and Earthquake adjusted, I have no good ideas for either at the moment.
Nature Very Rare
Seismic Mastery
This offers 3 mostly unrelated effects in one spell which is not the best design - it ended up that way as effects were moved around while redesigning Nature's Wrath and Clairvoyance/Nature's Awareness.
It would be better to split this into two spells, now that increasing the number of spells is possible.
As the scouting effect was deemed too weak to be enough to be a spell on its own, and the earthquake effect is generally not desirable enough for human players by itself either, we can't pair those two which leaves us with two options :
A.Node power+earthquakes, and scouting becomes part of a new spell
B.Node power+scouting becomes Clairvoyance again, and Seismic Mastery will be generating earthquakes with the current effect and needs to likely gain another effect that makes sense with that spell name and makes human players (or AIs with no targets for a city curse) want to cast the spell.
Earth Gate
This spell fits mainly for flavor while offering the game's only military themed offensive city buff (yes you can refill garrisons but who doesn't use this to push all their armies into the enemy territory and expand faster?) - while being able to teleport units is very overpowered, this spell also plays into the "you must play high books with Nature" theme being a unique very rare that offers a major and often necessary part of the late game strategy - without it the expensive, large summoned creature stacks would be reaching the enemy too slowly. Might be too good to have in the game at all, but if it belongs anywhere, then it's at Nature very rare.
Fairy Ring, Power Link, Armageddon, Meteor Storm, Doomsday
These are spells that might be problematic due to the increased player count. While the current "plan" for them is that I'm assuming enough players get eliminated in before these spells come into play, if playtesting shows differently we'll need to do something about it. One possible way to deal with the issue can be very weak AI players surrendering to the nearest other AI player (or if the diplomatic relations are very good, to the human player).
The first two triggers on spells cast by other players, so a lot of surviving players with no access to very rare spells can power up the casting of these far more than expected.
The other three are different, the problem there isn't the spells being stronger but the increased chance of having a player capable of casting the spell in the late game. In general, we don't want more than a fraction (like 20-40%) of the games to end with a "chaos enchantments destroy the world" scenario. For these though, weak survivors aren't as relevant, as only the stronger players will be able to reach and obtain very rare spells, but a large amount of AIs growing equally without a few stronger ones killing the rest can be a problem.
Summary
We have 3 very powerful but also functionally different creatures here, as expected from the best summoner realm.
Entagle+Call Lighting offers a great in-realm combo that makes picking a high number of books in Nature desirable, as missing either of these spells is a critical decrease in your overall late game options.
Regeneration is probably the best buff in the entire game, well worth being the only one that's a very rare spell.
Fairy Ring was carefully designed to both support the summoning them in the form of a powerful global enchantment that's actually interesting, and Herb Mastery support's the regeneration theme in the form of a global enchantment.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Unit buffs and curses, direct damage spells and in general most things that are single target are considered to weak for this tier so no need for those.
Merging could be considered but there isn't really a use case for it at this tier anymore. Heroes get it from items, Wyrm has it, Colossus is a ranged unit, and Behemoth can web enemies. At rare, it might be useful but is too powerful (Gorgons that teleport? Better not, that's 90% the same as a Great Wyrm...)
It's late for city economy spells.
Combat globals are well covered, the realm has two of the best ones in the game.
If Seismic Mastery is split into two spells, a new global effect will be necessary to have two effects on both spells.
In general, Nature could use more global overland enchantments, as it has fewer than average.
New Global Enchantment idea :
Global Warming or Nature's Wrath
Each turn, X land tiles at random are converted into Forests. Gain +0.5 power for each Forest tile on the map.
Basically, Mini-Armageddon but not particularly harmful for other players, and you do get power immediately, in excahnge for the amount growing slower over time. Plays well into the role of Nature countering Chaos's effectviely, in this case by reverting Volcanoes from Armageddon into Forests. (X is the same as it is for Armageddon)
This could possibly be paired with whichever effect is removed from the 3 on Seismic Mastery
Other ideas for global enchantments (or anything else) : none.
Sorcery Common
AEther Sparks, Psionic Blast
While both illusion damage and halving MP/magic ammo suits the realm, two common direct damage spells, especially in a realm that's supposed to be weak at dealing direct damage (not as much as Life but still), might be too much. Moving either up to uncommon would probably just make the problem worse though. (As it makes the spell more powerful)
If anything is moved up, it should likely be Psionic Blast, as it's hard to afford early on anyway, and Phantom Warriors offers a similar function, but I would be surprised if that idea wasn't already considered and discarded in the old Sorcery thread.
Psionic Blast does offer one answer to Sorcery against heroes and is what makes True Sight relevant (along Confusion) so moving it to uncommon is probably a bad idea.
Confusion
This effect is much more suitable for the realm as it kills units with trickery. Generally tends to be disliked by players when used by the AI, but it offers probably the only good strategy for early game sorcery which is attacking things, confusion them, then retreating after 25 turns to safety. Very indirect, and honestly a perfect match for the realm of trickery and illusions. The spell also fills an important role in making True Sight relevant and slowing down Life and hero strategies a little, or just by generally making it costlier to attack the Sorcery player who is very vulnerable in the early game.
So even though the spell isn't very liked by the more casual players, I don't think we can afford changing or removing it.
Phantom Warriors
While it's great as is and I don't want to change it, this spell does escalate the "too many direct damage spells problem" by also being a summon that is often used as if it was direct damage.
Blur
No other realm gets a common global combat spell that buffs all troops, but considering this realm has literally nothing else to support normal troops (except in special circumstances) and is also bad at summoning while early combat skill is typically too low to rely on damage spells which also isn't really supposed to be something the realm does well, I do believe this is the correct tier for this after all, especially as some extra effort has to be invested into reaching the necessary 25 casting skill. (Not even building a Monument is enough in most circumstances, at least 2, often 3 will be needed.)
Summary
We have one, mediocre overland summoning spell, which is fine as this realm is bad at that, and early game in general. Nagas, while not offering that much fighting potential, are still decent creatures and their main strength is their mobility that allows the Sorcery player to be well aware of surroundings and plan accordingly for the long term. Floating Island plays into the realms role of travel through water and air, and actually offers a similar benefit as the higher tier Flight, but only in naval combat, where the boats cannot reach and melee archers stationed on the island. The realm offers three buffs, neither of which really offers any raw power, instead offer combo potential and protection from specifc types of enemies or spells. There is one combat summon that's very in-theme, but also is functionally like a third direct damage spell, making the too many direct damage spells an obvious problem here. There is a powerful but not trivial to use save or die spell and no other unit curses, and one pretty good defensive combat global enchantment.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Obviously we don't want more direct damage.
We don't want more summoning (this is a summoning light realm).
We have 3 different buffs, that's plenty.
We could move down Vertigo from uncommon as there is no proper unit curse here, only a save-or-die one, but then we likely need to adjust either the effect or the save modifier, or both. Adding a new unit curse, if Vertigo stays at uncommon would be unnecessary unless we can design something that's very different functionally from both Vertigo and Confusion (and all the other Sorcery curses later on.)
Sorcery doesn't do city economy so we can't have that.
Sorcery is suitable for city defense spells, and it's actually a bit odd to have none for the realm in common and uncommon, although having them might make the realm too powerful (as suviving the early game is the key difficulty in playing Sorcery) and also undermines the diplomacy aspect a little (why do diplomacy if I can defend myself anyway?). Common city defense enchantments also are a bit too accessible for strategies of realms that aren't supposed to get city defense enchantments of their own, so overall I think it's better to not have a common city defense enchantment in any realm except Chaos, the least likely one to get picked as a 1-2 book choice by Life and Nature players. Sorcery books benefit those strategies way too much so they shouldn't also offer a city defense spell.
So overall, even if we removed a direct damage spell, we'd not really have anything to fill the empty spell slot with except maybe a tier-changed version of Vertigo.
Sorcery Uncommon
Vertigo
This one is odd, as it's basically less effective than Shatter, yet it's a higher tier than it. It is priced accordingly, and has a strong save modifier, as well as working on summons, so it's more than enough good for an Uncommon spell, but I could see this working as a common spell if we needed the slot for something else.
Counter Magic
While the formula has been fine tuned so it's fair and mostly balanced, it might still be a bit on the powerful side. That might be fine though as the realm gets very little in the first tier that's useful in combat directly, and protecting your army from enemy spells is exactly that kind of things. Most change I can think of to this would be to reduce it to 60-65 power from 70, or change the decrease in pool value to 12.
Dispelling Wave
This is meant to counter unit buff strategies, and does so exactly as intended.
However, it also counters city economy spells (which is basically almost as powerful as curses but an entire tier earlier) and city defense enchantments, both of which are unnecessary overkill that make this spell way too good.
I believe this should be reduced to ONLY dispelling all unit buffs on the target tile or in battle, and the other effects should be separated into a new spell that dispels all city enchantments in battle and overland instead.
This new spell most likely should be rare, as most economy based or otherwise relevant city buffs are rare or higher tier, and also because being able to remove all enemy defensive enchantments is simply that powerful and has that much influence on the game. However, it doesn't have to stay Sorcery. Sorcery rare is an obvious choice, but it could also function reasonably well in Nature and Life, although MoM/CoM doesn't associate a dispel theme with those realms - but MtG definitely does. On the other hand, Sorcery is a long term realm with no economy buffs of its own, so removing them from enemy cities does make perfect sense.
Also, sadly the AI can't coordinate this with planned attacks - splitting to a separate city buff removing spell could help if we add a similar rule as fire storm, target the enemy city with the most owned troops nearby, in the case it was cast against a city defense spell.
Spell Blast
I'm very strongly leaning towards moving this up to rare instead of the other possible soution (redefine time stop rules and restrict AI usage even further), as a rare spell it would be perfect, no further changes necessary.
Phantom Beast
This might be a bit on the too durable side although not entirely sure. It definitely stands out but probably only because Sorcery has no other powerful combat spells in the first two tiers, and a raw brute force combat summon isn't all that suitable for the realm. It also has a fair bit of redundancy with Psionic Blast and Phantom Warriors. However, it does follow the Phantom Warriors->Phantom Beast->Air Elemental progression tiers very well, the first offering basically zero staying power, the beast offering a little but still being easy to kill and the last offering the most staying power in the entire game as long as the enemy can't detect and blast it with spells.
Spell Lock
This is pretty much fine as is, or maybe it has just a little bit too good dispel resistance? Hard to say.
Summary
There is one summon here which follows the Nagas in their role being now semi decent in battle and ranged.
We have Flight, the most realm-defining buff in all of Sorcery.
Aura of Majesty is the main plan to survive on the long term despite having less than ideal combat potential early on, and the only diplomacy modifier spell in the game, very suitable for the realm's diplomacy theme.
Phantom Beast offers the necessary punch in combat, perhaps a little too much of it even, but it might be necessary for the realm to function. AEther Binding is part of the "good at dispelling" theme and the extra skill woks well to augment the weaker early game spells as well as setting up the Sorcery player for a stronger late game.
Spell Lock is a necessary part of the puzzle in the buff-dispel-dispel resitance game and this is the most suitable tier and realm for it.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
There is no direct damage but Phantom Beast is functionally a pretty good direct damage spell so there is no need for one.
There are no city economy spells but Sorcery isn't about those to have any at this tier.
There are no city defense spells which is a bit odd, and it might be a good idea to have some? It would be to good to have them as early as common, but by uncommon, not having any definitely doesn't seem right for the most defensive realm in the game.
We don't have many unit buffs but nothing really stands out as a sorcery type effect that would be fair as a new uncommon unit buff, and we don't want raw stats.
We only have one unit curse but that's probably enough as it's a powerful and versatile one, unless we change that.
Obviously don't need more combat summons, nor overland ones.
Most likely don't need combat global enchantments at this tier (we already have Blur and Counter Magic which covers both spell and unit damage reduction)
City/player targeting curses are not suitable especially as the realm doesn't want to make enemies at this tier.
We do at least one empty slot to fill though, if we do move Spell last up.
Sorcery Rare
Uranus' Blessing
This is a "do it all" economy spell for Sorcery, a pair to Nature's Gaia's Blessing, except...this spell doesn't actually do only economy, it has military effects. So I think this should be split up.
The city gaining Counter Magic, and the troops gaining magic weapons is more appropriate for an uncommon spell, while the power and skill boosting effects can stay rare.
How this spell interacts with the new skill buildings should be considered as well.
Wind Walking
This was discussed in another thread, basically, as is, it offers nothing more than what Flight can already do if cast on a ship. However, granting flight to the units in combat as well might be far too good? Did we have any other idea?
(Yes, this spell is much better than a ship if you have a fast hero. But what about using it on nonheroes...)
Magic Immunity
This might be far too good even for rare, and might be better as a very rare. Also, it has a redundancy with invisibility as both counter being affected by spells as well as magical ranged attacks, but Magic Immunity is better at doing both.
Summary
Overall, we have the best stalling combat summon which is very adequate for the realm and fortunately the AI is smart enough that it's no longer that overpowered as it used to be. There is one solid overland summon, not outstanding but definitely not weak either. We have a unit curse that's a great combo enabler on top of it by making the unit more vulnerable to actual save or die spells. We have a spell that kills summoned units, very fitting for a realm that cancels enemy magic. We have two, redundant and very powerful unit enchantments, the stronger one should likely be very rare instead. We have a unique utility spell to stop enemy armies for a turn - rarely useful but when it is useful, it'll prevent an inevitable major defeat from an unexpected fast moving enemy doomstack. Finally we also have two city defense spells, one of which also doubles as the realm's only city economy spell (albeit only for magic), and which should likely be split up to 2 spells instead.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Spell Blast comes up here, as well as the city dispelling half of Dispelling Wave, that covers overland curses and it's +2 spells even if we add nothing new.
We might want one more overland summon as there is only one, but it's not particularly important as that one is useful and I don't have a good idea for one anyway. The realm isn't that much about summoning either.
Uranus's Bless covers city economy, and we have that plus Flying Fortress for city defense.
There is an obvious lack of an overland global enchantment, although Sorcery did get two at uncommon which makes it the best in this department for that tier. Still it might be worth considering ideas for a rare sorcery global. All units gain +3 resistance perhaps? Manually casting resist magic on everything actually starts to no longer be viable at this tier due to having too much units. That might be too good against Death realm players though.
Sorcery Very Rare
Haste
It is now possible to make this an overland/combat spell like most other buffs. I don't think we should but it's possible.
Spell Ward
This has been made more balanced by reducing the summoned creature penalty and by the countering effect not affecting players that have Spell of Mastery. That is probably enough to make this spell balanced but the complete denial of combat spellcasting might still be a bit too much, especially if dispelling city spells will be moved up to rare tier. On the other hand, the option of having more opponents makes this that much less dangerous in larger scale games, as you can simply avoid the Sorcery wizard and conquer everyone else, outnumbering the last Sorcery player by the time of Spell of Mastery 10 cities to 1.
Summary
There has been extensive rebalacing done on this tier so most spells are now perfect as they are, I don't have much to say about them.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
There actually aren't enough global enchantments although Spell Binding can possibly make up for that. There are enough creatures and unit buffs, and Creature Binding fills the role of the ultimate save or die spell in the realm well enough. There are no overland curses but those aren't fun escpecially coming from a really this good at turtling so better not add any.
Possible new global enchantment idea :
Wind Mastery - all units gain Flight and +1 movement. Could reuse the currently unused Wind Mastery art. A mass-flight spell would be very fitting for the realm and it makes sense to have that one tier higher than the city defense spell that provides the same effect (although it slightly reduces the value of Flying Fortress as the units fly either way, but FF still prevents enemy troops from entering city tiles which WM would not.
Chaos Common
Summary
Chaos commons are a big mixture of random utility spells that are good but situational. Hell Hounds and Fire Bolt offer a solid core however as they are efficient generic spells that can be used against almost anything.
It has the best early city defense spell in the game - very much needed and no risk of breaking balance in this realm which is bad at defense and even early game expansion - a weak but situationally powerful combat summon, and many combat spells to put emphasis on the realm being oriented towards offense and combat.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Hell Hounds offer enough versatility that even though it's the only creature in the tier, more creatures are likely not necessary. It covers damage output well, it's reasonably fast, and can hit flying enemies. It's weak on the defensive side but the realm should be bad at that, and also Gargoyles can cover for that weakness in the next tier. One possible addition I could imagine being useful here would be a high speed fragile unit with first strike and high attack strength, a similar role to basic cavalry units. It might be a bit too good to have one though, considering it opens up the "spam spells and retreat" tactic to the realm without having to rely on the race producing those units, making it almost entirely race independent to play.
Only one direct damage spell from the direct damage realm isn't much but it's the strongest available in the tier, and the realm is about straighfoward raw damage so that leaves no design room for something else.
There are no economy spells but the realm shouldn't get those anyway - instead there is Corruption to hurt enemy economy.
There are several unit curses, and save-or-die doesn't belong to the realm so resistance based spells are well covered - it's hard to design a more powerful spell than Shatter in the unit curse department anyway.
There is no combat global enchantment, and perhaps one, offense oriented such spell might be useful? Flame Blade does cover offense buffing well enough though in my opinion, even if it's single target. As combat globals are generally cumulative with each other, it can be dangerous to add to many of them to the game, and this early it's not typical to have a large enough army to really benefit from a "buff all" spell. Still, there is one area not covered much by existing spells, magical ranged/fire damage.
New Spell idea :
All of the caster's units gain +1 magical ranged attack strength if they have a fire magical ranged attack, +2 strength to their breath attacks, and Fire creatures gain +1 melee attack and defense. (Fire creatures would be Fire Elemental, Fire Giant, and Efreet.)
It might be a bit too good with a stack of Hell Hounds though, and the AI is bad at using breath attacks (as it requires positoning the unit to be the one attacking first), more importantly, magicians aren't really available this early, so overall, it might be a bad idea.
Buffs are not a speciality of Chaos and what it is good at, buffing offense, is already covered.
Chaos Uncommon
Fire Storm
This should be rare. Not only are all other spells that counter Magicians in the garrison rare, but it costs too much to be convenient to use as an uncommon as well, and it was originally rare. It's also too powerful for an uncommon, rendering all units halberdier tier and below useless, but not in the way of the units losing in battle against the wizard, but in the way of producing them becomes not viable in the first place, EVEN if they are not produced for the purpose of attacking that wizard. If any of your enemies know Fire Storm, you literally have to stop producing Slingers, Magicians, Halberiders, and pretty much anything that's not an Armorer's Guild or Fantastic stables unit, because if you don't then you risk losing significant economic value as the units get wiped out even before they had a chance to enter a battle. An uncommon spell that counters all the common units in its own tier so hard that even building them stops being a viable option is bad design. I am aware moving this higher up will make Chaos even harder to play in the early and midgame, but it still should be done.
Immolation
While this spell is good as is, I see one thing that could be done to make it better.
Chaos is generally not very good at using heroes, and Inner Fire was added into items to help with that, but it got no actual spells. I do believe spells that grant immunity to a few specific direct damage spell effects have room to exist in the game, in particular, if Chaos could grant protection from Fire, Cold and Lightning, that would be enough to allow Chaos to use heroes against most non-Death wizards (who still have Reapear Slash to be afraid of) without the need of finding a Regeneration items. Of course, fighting Nature would still require a Wraith Form item and fighting Sorcery would be safer with a True Sight item, but overall it improves Chaos's ability to use heroes in battle well enough, and specifically in the uncommon tier, making it different from Sorcery and Nature which have excellent support for heroes but only at rares.
Fire Immnunity and Cold Immunity already exist in the game, and Lightning Immunity or Lightning Resistance can be added now. I think the latter, with the effect of "Lightning attacks lose the armor piercing property against this unit" is probably good enough - a hero should have no problem surviving strength 36 non-armor piercing attacks when backed up by Heroic Shout spells and decent stats, levels, equipment, and due to the wide availability of lightning in the game later on, complete immunity might be overkill. So to summarize, we likely want to add Cold Immunity, Fire Immunity, and Lightning Resistance to this spell tier as available effects.
After this detour, let's go back to the original topic, Immolation, which would, or more like, should get the "Cold Immunity" effect from the above three, while the other two can be a new spell.
If it is done this way, we likely should change the item owers to match the setup (so Immolation items would also grant cold Cold Immunity, and Inner Fire would be the other two and renamed to whatever the new spell's name is. )
Summary
Chaos has 3 uncommon creatures filling 3 different roles, an early creature that helps pure chaos wizards and covers the realm's weakness of being bad at defense, a soldig versatile utility creature, and a more expensive heavy hitter melee unit. There are two direct damage spells that cover the two main use cases, a heavily armored single figure and many figures with less armor. We have a buff that grants the realm its anti-flight effect which is very necessary for an offense oriented realm and can even grant defensive power with luck which the realm is weak at. Two of the spells cover the random chance theme while being still useful. Raise Volcano offers the only economy benefit the realm has, in the only area every realm needs to have some access to, which is magic power, and does so in an interesting way by also being an improved version of corruption. Finally there is the obligatory offensive buff, Immolation.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We want buffs to add Fire Immunity and Lighting Resistance as explained above.
New Spell :
Insulation
Enchanted unit has Fire Immunity and Lightning Resistance.
With that defensive buffs are well enough covered. There are two offensive buffs in the tier, Mystic Surge and Immolation, which is enough.
There are 3 summoned creatures which is plenty, no need for more.
The two damage spells cover the possible use cases perfectly, more are not needed. There is Raise Volcano to cover economy and city curses.
There are no city defense enchantments but Wall of Fire is more than enough to not need another, and this realm isn't about defending anyway.
I do see a bit of a risk of Chaos becoming a bit too weak in the early game if Fire Storm is moved higher up, but if that actually does happen we should probably cover that by improving Fire Giant and/or Chimeras as necessary. It might not be though because Chaos really shouldn't need to expand quickly at this tier and those creatures as well as imporved heroe protection should be more than enough to cover slower expansion needs.
Chaos Rare
Chaos Rift
This might become a lot more useful if Fire Storm is moved up to this tier, as it's a good alternate option for a similar purose. With Fire Storm at uncommon, this wasn't all that great as dealing damage instantly is almost always better than dealing more damage over a longer period of time.
Magic Vortex
This no longer needs the "max 3 in play" limit but we might want to keep it anyway to avoid it becoming too powerful. With many of these it's likely trivial to wipe out even a full stack of very rares, even 3 are often enough to kill several. It can be 3 per player or 3 globally but I think per player is fine.
Summary
Again, 3 creatures here, filling 3 different roles, melee, ranged, and resistance based attacks.
We have an offensive combat global, an overland global that's an all-enchanting version of an uncommon spell, and an amazing 4 different combat direct damage spells, one of which with a double role as it can also damage city buildings.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Obviously, no more creatures or direct damage spells, we have plenty.
There is an offensive combat global enchantment and the realm isn't about trickery or defense so that's enough.
There aren't many overland globals, although both enemy economy destuction and own unit buffing is well covered by Doom Mastery and very rare spells, so I'm not sure if anything could be added. I don't feel the need for any as the combat and summon spells are powerful enough without any support from enchantments.
City defense spells and economy spells are not suitable for Chaos so there are none and shouldn't be.
Unit curses and save or die spells don't exist but they'd be useless when there are enough raw damage spells to destroy anything anyway.
Unit buffs are nonexistent as well and there might be some unexplored opportunities in that, for example a spell that grants fire breath, lightning breath, doom, doom gaze, or maybe first strike, however I don't really see why I would want to buff the damage of a single unit when I can summon an Efreet or cast Flame Strike in combat, and buffing everyone is covered by Blazing March, any more would be too much for the tier, as such global buffs are cumulative.
Overall I see little room for more spells here but Fire Storm already raises the spell count to higher than the original so that's probably for the better.
Chaos Very Rare
Armageddon, Doomsday
I have adjusted the formula for the number of tiles affected per turn, but we'll need to see in action if it's good or needs more adjustments.
Warp Reality
This might be too powerful as is, as even on units with magic weapons it's an obscene 50% reduction of damage dealt before shields are applied by pretty much anything that isn't a summoned creature. Now that hit chance has 2 digits, altering this to be a 15% reduction in hit rate might be a good idea.
Summary
Chaos very rare spells definitely pack a punch and are more consistently powerful than Sorcery.
We have the highest attack power and the highest health creatures in the game, both suits the strangthforward raw power realm perfectly. The 3 world destruction enchantments offer the road to an "economy" victory by being the only person left with any resources. Chaos Surge and Warp Reality open the path to the military victory using either summoned or normal units, converting even trivial units like hell hounds and gargoyles into serious forces. Disintegrate and Apocalypse cover the direct damage aspect in both single target and AOE so the realm is very capable of winning through combat magic as well. Finally there is Call the Void, the ultimate single target city destruction spell.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
While Chaos Surge/Doom Mastery/Warp Reality/Blazing March is enough to make the realm potent in combat, the effects I've listed at Rare as possible single target effects could function as very rare instead, buffing all targets. It could be one or more combat or overland global enchantment, and it could be granting any of lightning breath, doom gaze, first strike, or armor piercing, none of which currently obtainable thorugh buffs and all being very in-theme for Chaos. As there is quite a bit of overlap here (3 of these are abilities to enable striking first, and 3 of them are abilities to somehow reduce or ignore armor) probably no more than two should be turned into a spell. For example :
Blazing Eyes
Overland global enchantment.
All units with a base normal unit type gain Doom Gaze 2.
Electric Mastery
Combat global enchantment
All units in combat gain Lightning Breath 5 and Lightning Resistance.
Only two direct damage spells isn't that much either, although other realms get none beyond uncommon. Neiher are pure damage as one is a random chance based spell, the other checks resistance.
For a pure damage spell though, I don't have good plans. Single target is a bad idea because we generaly don't want to make it easy to kill the highest tier creatures a spell dealing more damage than the rares would do so.
All enemy hitting is covered by Apocalypse, and Flame Strike (for reliable lower, or chance based higher damage output).
Spells that hit an area (like 3x3 around a target) don't exist in the game but I think they'd be bad anyway for three reasons. Units are crowded in cities, units start crowded at the beignning of each battle, and the AI won't be able to spread them out to avoid taking too much damage.
That leaves damage over time, like Call Lightning but...Magic Vortex have that covered as well. I guess a very rare spell that's less chance based, could work better but even then, why wait when I can just cast the Flame Strike 3 times now and everything dies? Damage over time is not useful in the tier and realm where you can destroy all enemy units with spells anyway. I guess we can add one anyway as multi-realm players might miss out on the Flame Strike and Apocalypse spells, but it's definitely not necessary and would actually take away quite a lot of uniqueness from Nature's Call Lightning.
Obviously, single target unit buffs are not needed by this tier, and unit curses aren't fitting the realm's highest tier.
So beyond the global enchantments I don't think anything else is really necessary.
Life Common
Summary
Lots of buffs. No summoned creature that is actually capable of fighting well, to make the realm uniquely rely on buffed normal units instead of summoning.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
We defintely have enough buffs.
The realm shouldn't get more damage spells, resistance targeting spells, or summons and obviously no overland curses either.
It's too early for city economy but the realm does get a taste of it in Heavenly Light, which also covers city defense and is the most the realm can be given in that area.
There is a global enchantment that's also boosting economy and makes Life the only realm to have one this early so obviously no need for more.
There is no combat global enchantment but Prayer in uncommon is more than enough for that role.
I don't think anything needs to be added here.
Life Uncommon
Divine Order
This has to be a rare, as it's a global game rule modifying spell and this rule modification shouldn't be coming up this often.
Unicorns
A teleporting creature might be too early at uncommon although its mediocre stats and Life having no direct damage to take advantage of the infinite stalling capability makes it likely fair. It does counter magicians earlier than other realms can but it's an expensive counter that isn't nearly as good as Elemental Armor or Fire Storm - the Unicorns do kill magicians but you need several and will lose a few to the attacks on the initial turn.
So while there are a few arguments for making it a higher tier, it's probably good as is and moving it would leave Life with no uncommon creature at all.
Summary
Uncommon gives Life wizards the next step in healing with two reviving spells, and Prayer as a global major combat buff, the best such in the game at least excluding very rares. There are two spells that play into the "peaceful realm" theme and boost magic power and research respectively, and a third city economy buff that also helps that by accelerating growth.
We get the next tier in fantastic unit damaging spells as well, and get a protection spell against the realm's greatest weakness, Sorcery's illusion spells which ignore our armor buffs. Finally the realm gets it's first real fight capable creature.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Having no unit buff (other than True Sight which isn't really a buff, just a situational protection spell) does stand out.
Of course, with Prayer in effect every battle, units are greatly buffed even without a new single target buff, so having none might be for the better.
If we do add a buff, it likely needs to be something that isn't cumulative with the common buffs in a way that makes them even more absurdly powerful.
Maybe a spell that adds extra hit points, but only a smaller quantity? There aren't any of those and it could make units that otherwise are too fragile to bring into combat (like magicians) useful. For example :
Bravery
Combat/overland
Enchanted unit gains +1 hp per figure but a minimum of 4 total if there are fewer than 4 figures. This bonus is not cumulative with Lionheart.
The tier covers city economy spells reasonably well, and in general doesn't seem to be lacking in any particular type of spell other than a unit buff.
Life Rare
Lionheart
This spell is a mixture of 3 different effects, out of which extra hp is currently unique but might no longer be if we add it as an uncommon spell, and might be an overkill to have two spells that buff it. Extra attack and resistance are however not new but the spell still offers two "new" benefits, first it buffs summoned creatures which most other Life spells do not, and second, it allows buffing 3 different things at once which is very relevant if you need to cast something in combat - you can rarely afford spending time on casting 3 separate lower tier buffs in battle and this does all three most important things (resistance, attack power and durability) in one. The hp bonus likely shouldn't be cumulative with the uncommon spell if we add that.
Summary
There are two city economy buffs, a summoning spell, two kinds of higher tier healing, one kind of higher tier anti-fantastic unit spell. A higher tier version of heroism in the form of a city spell. Two great unit buffs, one defensive and one both defensive and offensive.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
Buffing is covered well. Summoning, only one creature but this realm isn't good at that so we shouldn't add another.
City economy is covered and with these spell all resources can be buffed as you'd expect from the realm. (except for food but food is just more production by changing people to workers.)
Everything else are things the realm isn't supposed to be during (curses, etc)
There aren't any global enchantments (neither combat nor overland) which is odd although moving Divine Order up adds one. Holy Arms could possibly be moved down here as it's not really good enough for a very rare but due to the vast amount of very rare globals, I don't think we really need to add anything new.
I don't see much opportunity for new spells in this tier.
Life Very Rare
Holy Arms
This is a bit on the weak side and might work better as Rare.
Enlightenment
This could enable a higher maximal level for heroes (Avatar?) in addition to the existing effects although I'm leaning towards considering that a bad idea as other level raising effects demonstrate heroes have no levels beyond the normally highest. (Warlord or Crusade does not allow heroes to level up beyond Demigod even if they have enough experience to do so, the extra level is simply ignored.)
With games likely reaching spell of mastery more often due to higher map sizes and player counts, this might be a bit too powerful now, but most likely it's fine.
Archangel
Wind Walking on this might be overkill and depending how the Wind Walking effect gets changes, if at all, it might be better to remove it. Although the issue of other units moving much slower than the archangel is real so it might be best to keep it anyway.
This is the only unit still listed on my CoM I list as "might be too powerful" but as it's powerful thanks to the buffs and healing supporting it, I doubt nerfing the unit itself would achieve much other than making the AI and lairs easier.
Summary
There are 2 economy globals and 3 military globals. There are 2 combat globals in addition to that to have some spells that actually cost mana in battles and isn't vulnerable to dispelling.
There is one summoned creature and the obligatory "city is safe from curses" spell that is a must have for a realm that is seriously aiming for an peaceful, economy based SoM victory. Finally there is a combat summon, the only one in the realm, which covers the greatest weakness of this realm, not being able to do anything in battle without a relevant army already there.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
I think one more creature could be added. The realm isn't about creatures, but this is the higest tier, and even the other creature light realm gets two. If one is added, it likely shouldn't be about raw power, and should do something comepletely different.
I have one idea for a new life creature, that covers something the realm otherwise cannot do, a resistance based effect on normal units, making it unique enough for a very rare.
Prophet / Cupid
Medium/high durability, low-ish attack power. Could be melee or ranged, depending on which is more balanced. Normal units attacked by this unit must save or (get removed from battle, retreating safely / change sides for a turn).
Basically this fills the role of "Life dominates in the area of normal units" in a new way and as normal units are mostly obsolete by this tier, it probably isn't even overpowered. It's not AI friendly though, in the sense that in automatic combat, the effect cannot easily be turned into numbers. A solution for that could be :
Prophet
At the beginning of combat involving this unit, all enemy normal units must save at (+?) or switch sides/retreat from battle.
Forced retreat might be the better choice in this case as it would be too powerful otherwise. As the effect applies before the combat starts, this is AI friendly as the AI and automatic combat feature will already see the game state resulting from the effect of the ability.
If the number of removed units is a potential problem, it can be limited to no more than 3 retreating units, or maybe even the resistance roll can be ignored entirely, simply forcing the X units with the lowest resistance to retreat.
Anyway, this is a bit of a dangerous territory as a unit with an ability like this can easily be overpowered, so we need to carefully think about it, but I do believe a a "Prophet" creature that brainwashes enemy normal units one way or another might be a flavorful addition.
There are no unit buffs at the tier at all and while globals are usually better, having some unit buff should be considered.
I have two ideas for that :
-A spell that simply puts a major buff on the unit, adds supernatural to it, and basically converts said unit into a rare tier creature equivalent, but costs as much to cast as a rare creature. Probably should also turn the unit into a Life creature.
-A spell that adds the effect of all buffs the player can cast, but in a single spell. Costs less than casting the buffs individually, but higher risk as in case of a dispel the unit loses all the buffs at once.
There are enough global enchantments, however a global that adds Holy Armor to all units to form a pair with Holy Arms could be interesting, although potentially overpowered.
There are no city buffs for economy, but it is far too late for that in this tier anyway and the race to Spell of Mastery is covered by Enlightenment and Life Force.
Death Common
Mana Leak
This is probably far too good for this tier, and being a counter to Magicians, it's both coming too early and actually is kinda useless as no one has magical ranged units at this time. (Ok, actually, they do, Shaman. But fighting (neutral) Shaman really shouldn't be the argument for keeping this common.)
Summary
We have two creatures, an economic, weaker one with some utility (missile immunity) but mainly useful for garrisoning and exploration, and a stonger one that's expensive but great if a lot of combat is expected.
There is one direct damage spell and one save or die spell. There is a simple but quite potent unit curse. There is a combat summon that's the second best in the tier after Boars, a global that gives a minor buff to all summons of the realm and undead, a resistance based defensive buff, and another buff that offers a package of defensive or utility effects.
There are 3 sources for making undead.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
The 2 creatures cover the imporant roles well so there is no need for more, especially as rushing the research of uncommons is a very common strategy here.
More unit curses are actually not needed as weakness is generally enough to render anything useless at this tier and at a very good price too. A save-or-die spell that actually kills, unlike Black Sleep, but possibly with a worse modifier might make sense. It's not very likely to be useful though as Black Sleep is almost as good as killing the unit, you almost never want it to be better than that.
Overland curses would be too early at common.
City economy isn't something death gets, and it has plenty good city defense spells later on so that is no need for any here.
Overall, nothing comes to mind that is missing at this tier.
Death Uncommon
Drain Power
This spell is on theme for mana denial, although own casting skill increase is no longer a death exclusive theme. It's an early curse spell that doesn't have too much abuse potential for human players but does provide one spell that can help in playing Death peacefully (as it has no diplomacy penalty).
My main problem with it is that the AI had to be restricted to never cast this spell earlier than a certain turn which is a red flag indicating the spell is not in the appropriate tier and should be rare or very rare.
Summary
There are 3 creatures, one for early use, and two for later, both offering very powerful options usually not available in this tier but for a steep research cost. We get a resistance based and a normal direct damage spell.
Only one source of undead but it's a universally available and powerful combat spell. The obligatory "debuff enemy units" combat global.
Wall of Darkness stands out as an odd choice as it's illusion, but having this in Sorcery would be far too powerful for them, and Death does need its city defense options. It also makes Illusion Immunity relevant against more than one realm (along with Night Stalker).
Blood Lust serves well for the anti-normalunit theme as well as providing the strongest attack buff in the game and a bit of an economy potential by removing maintenance costs.
Finally there is Drain Power to have a taste of how it feels to be a nuisance to other wizards.
What's missing/can be added? What does the realm not need more of in the tier?
There aren't any save-or-die spells here that can affect fantastic units, and the same is true for rare. In fact, Death doesn't actually get a proper save or die spell that actually kills the target until very rare, in the form of Annihilate. The problem is the too much overlap, as having a spell like "Target unit must save at -3 or die" makes sense for the tier and realm but there is too much overlap. Why would I prefer using that over Black Sleep (on summons) or Possession (on normal units)? Simply, the existing options are too good to need more uncommon or rare save or die spells even if the lack of it is weird. (Even Nature gets Petrify but Death does not get an equivalent.)
There are enough summons and direct damage spells.
Suprisingly no unit curses but as it has been discussed many times in the past, this has an obvious reason, if you can kill the unit outright then cursing it is pointless, and Death definitely can kill the unit.
There is one city defense spell, no city economy spells but the realm doesn't need those.
There is no need for more combat globals - Death already has the highest number of those.
The realm isn't about unit buffing either, although if there are any good ideas, adding one isn't necessarily a bad thing.
One idea :
Vampirism
Enchanted unit gains +1 hp per figure that successfully deals any melee damage to the enemy unit.
The difference between this and Life Stealing is that this doesn't deal extra damage and the amount that can be healed is limited. It also doesn't work at range. It might still be too powerful though.
