Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Seravy]

The numbers in that table seem to be wrong or I misunderstand what they represent but that's definitely not what you get from the formula I posted.

Anyway, this was my suggestion :

   

(The table obviously doesn't cover cases other than 1 realm or 2 realms having the same amount of books in both but you can calculate that by adding up the 1 realm numbers for each realm then adding 10 to the total)

[roarmalf]

Ahhh, the visual helped a lot, thanks.

I don't like having that 10 base for power and skill, I think it gives too much to someone avoiding books and makes 2-3 realm builds generally superior to single realm builds. What if we did something like this:




You could make power equal to: Greater of (<value gained from books> OR 10) 

That would help keep low/scattered book strategies are still viable but not overpowered. 

10/2 = 25/25
6/6 = 24/24
4/4/4 = 18/18
5/5/2 = 18/18

Given that 4/4/4 adds so much versatility and combo potential I think this is fine. If you really wanted to you could just bump totals for book 4 to 8 power/skill and book 5 to 10 power/skill to give 4-5 book strategies a little oomph, but I think cutting Book 1-2 value is the most important thing since they're already so valuable.

That would change
4/4/4 = 24/24
5/5/2 = 20/20

[Seravy]

Let's see...

-Your suggestion is less intuitive in the sense that it can't be explained by a simple formula and is harder to calculate for players. 3 power/book in the realm, not counting the first two and +1 for the 10th then finally raise to 10 if the total is less is way more complex than "10 plus 2 for each book where books in that realm >=4".
-4+4 books and some retorts gets punished way too much. Mine would be 18, yours is only 12. 4+4 books is still within the "reasonable way to play 2 realms" category in my opinion that shouldn't be significantly worse than 5+5 and 2 on retorts, only a little. Dropping from 18 to 12 is a drastic reduction that feels excessive for that choice.
-4+4+4 books is actually not that great. You still no retorts with that and it even gets fewer spells than 6+6 books does (3+3+3 starting commons vs 5+5 starting commons.) as well as no guaranteed uncommons, so overall it's not stronger than playing 6+6 books. I don't see the need for it to be worth less than 6+6.
-Your suggestion contains the same amount for power and skill. I wanted to break these two up because the early game is way too one-sided if all the power has to be spent on producing mana to keep up with the starting skill. I wanted to let players have some extra room to spend on SP or RP possibly, or at least have some left over to combat casting, and see if that improves the early game. One reason why Alchemy is so powerful is that you can't afford using all your skill both overland in combat using your starting MP. It can also help races with no Magic Market a little. That's why mine adds more mana than skill even if the difference is small.

[roarmalf]

Well I replied point by point to everything, but then I accidentally closed the tab when I was switching to it losing all my text, so here's the short version.

Your explanations helped a lot, I think your system is solid (mine had issues). My thoughts on your system:

• It enables more strategies than it cuts off
  
• It comes down a little hard on 3 books 
  
• It doesn't give 7-10 books enough of a boost, but this could come in some other form rather than starting skill/power (an extra common known, harder to dispel spells of the realm, expanded research discount, etc.)
  
• I still don't like that 6/6 gives more skill than 10/2
  

A clear improvement on the existing system in my eyes.

[Seravy]

It doesn't give 7-10 books enough of a boost, but this could come in some other form rather than starting skill/power (an extra common known, harder to dispel spells of the realm, expanded research discount, etc.)

Well, the idea is that if we increase the number of rare and very rare spells that problem resolves itself (you miss out on more spells if you don't get those books than currently).
This is especially true if we take the route of more guaranteed spells instead of 10 books giving a player every spell, although +3 spells per realm might not be enough to be worth doing that.
(a bit of a problem with that route though is that it's usually obvious which very rare spells to pick as guaranteed so instead of increasing, it reduces replayability. If I can pick Time Stop and Sky Drake, I will, 100 out of 100 times. So it might be better not to do that.)

I still don't like that 6/6 gives more skill than 10/2

True, but honestly a difference of 2 skill and 4 mana is pretty much irrelevant. Less than a half of what you can get even from a new town with only the essential magic market, monument and library. Considering the spell discount for books 9-10, it's really the same thing.

[Seravy]

Assuming we don't need the slots for anything else, one way to increase the number of Nature Rares is splitting Gaia's Blessing to two spells.

Spell 1 : Increases max pop by 50%, reduces unrest by 2
Spell 2 : Convert terrain, remove corruption, Forest production bonus increased

I'm afraid the second spell would be subpar and kinda useless though - Change Terrain and Shaman can cover pretty much all of those effects except the forest bonus which is, let's just say very little compared to the +100% on Inspirations. It's also very similar to Consecration. Maybe if the unrest reduction was also part of the second spell then it would work better.

[Seravy]

Vertigo : the possibility to reduce To Hit by a number not a multiple of 10 now exists. It might be a good idea to make the spell reduce To Hit by 25% and To Defend by 7% instead of the current 30/10%.

[Seravy]

Updating the summary

DECIDED (not yet implemented)
A. New Nature Very rare : Each turn, X land tiles at random are converted into Forests. Gain +0.5 power for each Forest tile on the map.
B. Split Dispelling Wave : it loses the ability to dispel city enchantments
C. Add Sorcery Rare : Dispel City - dispel city enchantments, the same way Dispelling Wave could. Probably overland only.
-Name for this spell?
D. Split Uranus Blessing : lose unit buffing and combat effect, boost new skill buildings instead.
-By how much?
E. New Sorcery Uncommon : Philosopher's Stone. The two effects removed from Uranus' Blessing.
F. Spell Blast becomes Sorcery Rare
G. Magic Immunity becomes Sorcery Very Rare
H. Add new Wind Mastery Sorcery very Rare spell : all units gain Flight and +1 movement.
I. Immolation should gain Cold Immunity.
J. New Chaos Uncommon spell : Insulation : enchanted unit gains Fire Immunity and Lightning Resistance. (and same change to item creation)
K. Fire Storm becomes Chaos Rare
L. Divine Order becomes Life Rare
N. Drain Power becomes a Death Rare
O. Eternal Night loses "halved power" effect.
-Possibly change to be +2/+2 for Death creatures through Darkness?
P. Restore Earth to Mud to the original 6 movement cost tile effect.
-Currently doesn't affect Forest tiles, like the original did to Hill tiles which no longer exist. Are we happy with that or should the rain destroy the trees and turn those to Mud tiles as well?
Q. Fire Elemental, reduce cost to 14.
R. Darkness, reduce cost to 20.

UNDECIDED
1. Possible new Nature Rare spell :
Stone Age  - all normal units owned by the wizard gain +1 defense.
2. Earthquake - Are we satisfied with the 40% rate and 150 cost of this spell? Are we satisfied with the unit destruction percentage?
3. Blizzard - Overland unit destruction really shouldn't be a Nature thing outside of Earthquake so this spell should be removed in my opinion.
However in that case we need a replacement. Any ideas? Best would be if we could reuse the spell animation but if not, that's fine as well.
Maybe a combat spell that deals damage (stronger Fairy Dust) and freezes enemy units for a turn? But we have that in Web.
4. If we select 11 rares per realm, we need another Nature Rare. If we select 12, we need two.
5. Seismic Mastery - how do we split up the effects into two spells?
6. If we want 12 rares per realm, we need another Sorcery Rare. This could be a global enchantment to buff unit resistances.
7. How to improve Wind Walking?
8. Split Gaia's blessing into two city buffs?
9. Efreet and Doom Bat, do we want to exchange their resistance stats?
10. Magic Vortex, do we want to reduce the doom damage? The lightning damage? Do we want to keep the original movement behavior of not turning more than 90 degrees at a time?
11. If we want 12 rare spells per realm, we need a new Chaos Rare spell.
12. Warp Reality, keep -20% hit chance or adjust to 15-16-17-18%?
13. If we want 12 very rare spells per tier, we need two new Chaos Very Rares. Any ideas? Direct Damage would be nice, or there are the two ideas for globals I posted.
14. Do we want Prayer to be 9% instead of 10%?
15. We need to add a new Life uncommon unit buff. Two basic ideas have been posted and many versions of them, basically, a buff that scales with experience and/or a buff that raises hit points.
16. If we want 12 rare spells then we need 1 more Life Rare.
17. Archangels are way too good (are they?). How to change that?
18. New Life Very Rare spell : some expensive overland only buff that turns a normal unit into something nearly as good as a very rare creature.
What effects should be granted by the buff?
19. New Life Very Rare creature. Prophet : some sort of a "save or retreat" or "save or change sides" effect.
19b. What if it had a different effect, like "this creature cannot be attacked by normal units"?
20. Mana Leak, does this really need to be a common? Other anti-magician spells are Rare.
-except Resist Elements which is common as well. One can argue that's fine because it's much less powerful, but is it? Mana Leak "only" halves damage taken from magic ranged attacks and Resist Elements can easily achieve that much.
Moving this to a higher tier will make magic ranged units more powerful than they currently are which might or might not be desired, but seeing as they are pretty much the best unit type already, probably isn't desired.
21. We have 1 free uncommon slot in Death after moving Drain Power. We have a common slot if we move Mana Leak to uncommon. Add a Vampirism buff to it? Should it also deal damage equal to the stolen life?
"If this unit deals melee damage, it deals an additional X damage and gains X life"
or the same per figure, where X is the ability strength.

If it's per figure and deals extra damage, then it's basically as good as Flame Blade (3 swords is roughly 1 damage) plus a powerful healing effect equal to that value, so the spell must be uncommon and most likely expensive to cast (20/100?)
If it's per figure but does not deal extra damage then it can be common, as it's effectively a reverse flame blade (heals as much as damage would increase from Flame Blade), yes, healing doesn't go through armor but the unit had to deal damage to be able to trigger the vampirism which assumes armor was already surpassed with damage.
If it's per unit and deals extra damage, the amount should be higher. It's more difficult to include the "deals any damage" condition because it's very unlikely for none of the figures to do so, essentially turning this into a source of guaranteed damage that is dealt bypassing armor. Probably not what we want.
If it's per unit and deals no extra damage, we end up gaining life without any harm to the enemy which is plain weird and a bad idea.

...but there is a fundamental problem. We've reduced Regeneration 2 on Werewolves because a unit refilling its own health in the early game was simply too powerful - that single unit could pretty much do the job of 3 or more of the same unit alone, effectively tripling the player's ability to conquer and defend territory. Vampirism, in any form, would restore this problem, so it's most likely a bad game mechanic for a common or uncommon spell. It might work as a Rare spell though, if we need more of those (most likely not).

So we need something else for a new Death C/UC I think.

22. If we want 12 rare spells then we need 1 more Death Rare which can be Vampires if we add it, otherwise we need something new.
23. Vampires/Death Knights/Wraiths have similar role problem, so if we want Vampires then...

Idea 2 :
Keep things as is, possibly add Death Touch to Death Knights anyway. Vampires are a new unit that have the same effect as the new common "Vampirism" spell but twice as powerful.

Idea 3 :
Vampire has 1 figure and low resistance with the usual immunities. High defense, high regeneration, not-so-great maximal hp. Percentage of the melee damage dealt is recovered as hp.
Basically, much more durable than Wraiths against ranged enemies, more effective against other summons, better for stalling, but more vulnerable to exorcism and spells in general and doesn't create undead.
Potentially overpowered?

(In any case Vampires should be Rare.)
24. De we want to keep "Death Demon"? Or make Demons always the Caster type?
25. Demon Lords would be too good if they summoned 3 Caster demons? In general, summoning Demons is much more powerful now because it doesn't require a free combat unit slot so we need to nerf this somehow? What if Summon Demon wasn't cumulative, in the sense that if any Demon Lord summons one, all of them lose 1 charge of the summoning spell? (So even 9 Demon Lords only summon 3 Demons per battle.)
What if Demon Lords summoned different Demons than the Summon Demon spell, one Caster type and two others? (possibly the Death demon we already have and a third new type.)
26. Evil Omens, do we want to nerf this?
27. We need 2 more Death Very Rares if we want 12 very rare spell per tier. Ideas :
27a. Global spell that kills the strongest unit for each (or each enemy) player. (exclude heroes?)
27b. Global spell that halves religious power and city research for all other players.
27c. Global spell that reduces all city resources by 20%.
27d. Unit curse that can spread between enemy units
27e. Unit curse that stays after combat.
(might be bad because you need to lose a battle for this to be useful)
27f. Global enchantment that's the opposite of Charm of Life : all enemy units lose 25% hit points but a minimum of 1. (units with zero hit points per figure die instantly.)
I like a, b and f the most but we don't have 3 slots (unless we remove a Death Very Rare or move one down a tier. Is Summon Demon worth being a Very Rare spell?
28. How do we distribute the additional spells between book picks? Do we still want 10 books to have all spells? If not, do we want guaranteed very rares?
29. Vertigo, change effect to -25% To Hit, -7% To Defend or other numbers, or keep the 30/10%?
30. Nature rare spell idea :
Harsh Environment
All neutral fantastic units on a targeted tile, including guardians of lairs, towers or nodes, have a 25% chance to abandon their location and disappear, returning to their original plane of existence.
31. Nature rare creature idea (probably too powerful as it overcomes the main weakness of the realm, rare tier Sorcery and Death players)
Guardian of the Forest
Flying, First Strike, 4 moves
4 figures, 12 attack, +2 to hit.
12 resistance, Illusion Immunity.
32. Another possible Death common/uncommon :
Reaper's Favor
Cost : 13
Target normal unit must save at -1 or die. If it died, your remaining casting skill for the combat does not decrease as a result of casting this spell and you can cast another spell this turn that isn't Reaper's Favor.
33. Holy Arms move down to rare?
34. Chain Lightning for Chaos?

[htester]

I don't know if spliting spells will work on other realms as well as it did on sorcery realm.
Here are some new spells suggestions (Let me try again xD):

Nature
*Rare Tier
Another overland summon with high resistance (11-12) and melle damage. No save effect and weaker than gorgons in raw stats, possible more figures (4-5). Some beast resembling animals, maybe something elk like? Basically "war" unicorns without teleport and the resistance + 2 bonus as Survival instintic provides that. Another issue is that Death will have the same number of fantastic creatures as Nature (the supposed summoner realm, even though Death has normal summons plus the dead creatures).

*Very Rare Tier
Call of the wild (Overland map tile)
Attempt to convert a stack of rampamging monsters. Initialy I thought this spell as a rare but even the effect was partially disbanding an enemy stack it would still be powerful for that tier (or not? something to think about) . I think that if the spell is unable to convert very rare creatures it will be balanced enough. The concept was to make something similar to a city defense enchament. As a very rare it could be used to actually provide more creatures as well.

The old thereads didn't helped much basically there were 2 ideas not implemented:
Mana Link
Whenever another players casts an expensive spell, you gain 500 mana crystals (or SP). (maybe this was the prototype of fairy link?)
Summoning Mastery
Your summon spells cost 50% less to cast. (Maybe this could be ajusted to resemble Divine order for nature)

Also there is the catapult spell that can be replaced by the "boulder throwing creature". Overwall if the stats remain unchanged I don't see a need to replace but it could have increased defense or hp or resistance and reworked in such a way to be able to appear on nodes. I had some ideas for that but anyway for the "can do everything realm" it seems surprisinly difficult to design spells for Nature.

[Seravy]

Another overland summon with high resistance (11-12) and melle damage. No save effect and weaker than gorgons in raw stats, possible more figures (4-5). Some beast resembling animals, maybe something elk like?

This could be the old Gorgons, a bull with decent speed, flying and first strike.
Except...

-Nature gets high resistance in the form of Survival Instinct at this tier, besides that the realm has the theme of low resistance so I don't think a unit should have high resistance naturally, unless it's very rare.
-Nature can stop enemy units with Web so it doesn't need speed on their units most of the time
-Nature shouldn't have flying units other than Cockatrice
-If Gorgons deal more melee damage (they do, they are almost as good at dealing damage as a very rare creature) then why use a creature that deals less damage AND has no stoning either?


I guess the unit could be useful against Sorcery wizards who already have Banish (Survival+this unit = enough resistance for immunity) except not, as the Sorcery wizard can use the Mind Storm+Banish combo, or avoid melee with the creature (thanks to flight, invisibility, etc) and wear it down using spells. So actually I can't really name a situation when this creature would be better than Survival Instinct+Gorgon or Stone Giant.

It's a different story if the creature has immunity to illusions, as that would make it a viable Sorcery counter, but still useless against the other 4 realms. So it should really offer at least something that makes it useful against other realms. (well, flight actually makes it good against Death I guess, as Death units can't be webbed.)

Summary
Guardian of the Forest
Flying, First Strike, 4 moves
4 figures, 12 attack, +2 to hit.
12 resistance, Illusion Immunity.

...but do we want that? How would a Sorcery or Death player deal with it? I'm afraid this would completely turn the tables and make Nature beat those realms at this tier when it should be weak to them... (very rares are what should turn the tables, in particular, Colossus)

Call of the wild (Overland map tile)
Attempt to convert a stack of rampamging monsters. Initialy I thought this spell as a rare but even the effect was partially disbanding an enemy stack it would still be powerful for that tier (or not? something to think about) . I think that if the spell is unable to convert very rare creatures it will be balanced enough. The concept was to make something similar to a city defense enchament. As a very rare it could be used to actually provide more creatures as well.

I like this one, except
-Shouldn't convert non-Nature units. Only Sorcery should have the ability to use spells or units from other realms.
-But then it's far too limited, even if we enable targeting units in lairs.

So instead of converting units, what if it simply did a "all units in target rampaging monster stack, lair, node, tower, etc has a X% chance to disappear"? Basically a spell to clear those locations. Nature already has the treasure hunting and exploration themes in the realm.

Like this :
Harsh Environment
All neutral fantastic units on a targeted tile, including guardians of lairs, towers or nodes, have a 25% chance to abandon their location and disappear, returning to their original plane of existence.

Possible downsides :
-Hard to make the AI use this well (though if we make them only target lairs where they have a strong stack nearby and the human player is not in the area at all we are most likely safe)
-Players generally want to clear those lairs themselves, it's less fun if a spell makes the monsters disappear or the AI clears them all

Also there is the catapult spell that can be replaced by the "boulder throwing creature". Overwall if the stats remain unchanged I don't see a need to replace but it could have increased defense or hp or resistance and reworked in such a way to be able to appear on nodes. I had some ideas for that but anyway for the "can do everything realm" it seems surprisinly difficult to design spells for Nature.

A long time ago "Ent" as a creature was considered but we scrapped the idea because it's too similar to the Stone Giant and most versions of it would have been either too good for a common/uncommon, or too useless for anyone except the AI.
(It tried to address the issue of AIs not having a better option than sprites for defending the fortress in Nature for quite a while.)

At the moment we have no empty slots for a common or uncommon though unless replacing the cataptault which is probably good as is.