Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[htester]

About monster mastery... It's a little bit weird that you cast a Global spell that affect all nodes on rare tier and discover that nodes with a later very rare spell. Also I still think it would be a case of nature spells affecting creatures from other realms like my previous Call of the Wild suggestion. As nodes have a clear effect of "dispelling"-"interrupting" spells from other realms it's hard to justify how could a nature Global work on Sorcery and Chaos nodes. Harsh Enviroment spell at least affect terrain (I would still tone down to be unnable to target non nature nodes) and not monsters directly. If Seismic Mastery keeps only the earthquake effect them Earthquake Spell should stay the away it is (not toned down). Node Mastery sounds so generic that I could even picture that as an Arcane Spell. I am even troubled by the effect of Seimic Mastery granting extra power to nodes, wouldn't be better to just increase power gains from
" 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.". The chaos version not only give 6 times more power per tile converted but also makes the tile cursed (no resources). I believe that this spell should only grant power and have the conversion effect on "visible" tiles to make necessary casting the new spell splited from Seismic Mastery that make all map visible. Another suggestion is to add the effect of making all tiles visible to " A. New Nature Very rare ". If I had to choose between the options presented (Version A and B) I would do that: keep Seismic Mastery (version A), keep Clairvoyance (version B), discard other spells.

[Seravy]

he chaos version not only give 6 times more power per tile converted but also makes the tile cursed (no resources).

This gives you power for Forest tiles already present in the game even before it converted any. Armageddon gives you nothing for volcanoes not created by it.

It's a little bit weird that you cast a Global spell that affect all nodes on rare tier and discover that nodes with a later very rare spell.

That's how it works for all other global spells, so I think that's fine.
Divine Order affects wizards you have never seen.
Armageddon raises volcanoes anywhere on the map.
Great Unsummoning kills creatures anywhere.
etc

As nodes have a clear effect of "dispelling"-"interrupting" spells from other realms so it's hard to justify how could a nature Global work on Sorcery and Chaos nodes.

Nodes don't counter or affect global effects. A node will not counter your Zombie Mastery or Crusade either. So if you did cast a spell that affects monsters worldwide, nodes won't be able to stop that.
Ideally, the monsters should be coming from "anywhere", but nodes are the only distinguishable feature on the map that are permanent and could serve as a spawning location. (we really shouldn't make it just put the stacks anywhere at random, that's too unpredictable both for deciding if it's useful to cast and to plan a defensive strategy against it.)
...wait, there actually is one more and that one might make better sense, too.
Towers! What if the monsters came from towers?

Also I still think it would be a case of nature spells affecting creatures from other realms like my previous Call of the Wild suggestion.

This is true, I agree that would be a mistake. A good workaround for that is to reword the spell to do one of the following :
-All nodes (or towers) have a 10% chance to spawn a rampaging monster stack each turn that consist of monsters from realms you own at least 4 spellbooks of.
-All nodes (or towers) have a 10% chance to spawn a rampaging monster stack each turn that consist of monsters that you know how to summon.

Alternately we can ignore the problem here because you aren't actually controlling any monsters. They are for all intent and purpose, still neutrals. You don't control them and when they attack the AI, it won't even use "normal combat", but strategic. Being a global spell, you can't even control which player they'll be attacking, so it might also hurt your allies and probably will have a diplomacy penalty.

One reason why using the node's realm is preferred is because that limits the creatures to Nature/Chaos/Sorcery.
Life and Death creatures are not very suitable for this purpose in my opinion, being both hard to deal with due to special abilities with and lacking variety. Meanwhile Nature/Chaos/Sorcery monsters are threatening but generic enough to be solvable for any realm or strategy. (for this same reason, I think it's better if we don't add Life and Death nodes to the game.)

We definitely need to address this issue on the other spell (if added) that gives you units from nodes however. Unfortunately, spawning only creatures you know how to summon would make it far too redundant with Fairy Ring.

What if the node spell simply made you immune to the countering effect of nodes, like the original retort and current Astrologer, instead of spawning creatures for you (which Fairy Ring does already anyway)? Or did we already consider and discard that idea? I don't remember.

So how about...

Version C

Monster Mastery (rare)
Any tower not owned by the casting wizard has a 10% chance to generate a rampaging monster stack each turn that consists of units you could summon / belong to a realm you have 4+ books of.
Rampaging monsters will never target the caster's cities and will avoid their units.
Whenever you attack a Lair, Node, Tower, or other neutral monster stack, each monster has a 25% chance of not participating in the battle. (they are forced to retreat if you win, but stay in the area if you lose.)

Clairvoyance (very rare)
The casting wizard sees all tiles on the overland map.
The wizard is immune to the countering effect of nodes.

Planetary Mastery(very rare)
Whenever you cast an expensive spell, an earthquake hits a target city.
All nodes under the casting wizard's control produce an additional ?? power.

Version D

Monster Mastery (rare)
Any node not owned by the casting wizard has a 10% chance to generate a rampaging monster stack each turn. (of creatures of the node's realm)
Rampaging monsters will never target the caster's cities and will avoid their units.
Whenever you attack a Lair, Node, Tower, or other neutral monster stack, each monster has a 25% chance of not participating in the battle. (they are forced to retreat if you win, but stay in the area if you lose.)

Clairvoyance (very rare)
The casting wizard sees all tiles on the overland map.
The wizard is immune to the countering effect of nodes.

Planetary Mastery(very rare)
Whenever you cast an expensive spell, an earthquake hits a target city.
All nodes under the casting wizard's control produce an additional ?? power.

The good part about this pair of very rares is that they offer a strong synergy. Seeing the map allows targeting your Earthquake spells, and being immune to node counters allows conquering more nodes to gain extra power.
As Nature is the realm where players are encouraged to take many books as there are lots of "one of the kind" essential spells, adding another such combo probably is good design. (similar to Call Lighting and Entangle, albeit not that powerful)

Also, I think I might be underestimating the "see all map" effect a little, it's not as weak as it used to be. Some maps will be so large that scouting the entire thing will be unlikely to happen even near the end of the game so the effect becomes better.
Unfortunately the reason why people dislike casting the spell - having to choose between watching every enemy unit move which makes turns super slow, and having to disable enemy move display and not seeing any incoming threat at all - will also escalate with larger maps.

[htester]

I liked the new Clairvoyance and Planetary Mastery a lot (nice!). I don't like monster mastery that much because it's basically a curse (by that I mean: something bad happens to other players but nothing good to you and diplomacy penalties for nature spells isn't good either) type effect but I do like the "Rampaging monsters will never target the caster's cities and will avoid their units." part of the spell. What if the spell was a city enchament defense type of spell? I know that you aren't that inclined to make nature city defense but an effect that keep monsters away does make sense for the realm.

[Seravy]

(by that I mean: something bad happens to other players but nothing good to you and diplomacy penalties for nature spells isn't good either)

Good things do happen to you, aside from the monsters not attacking you, 25% easier lairs, nodes and towers can be a quite relevant benefit. Imagine the tower has only one sky drake and a bunch of nagas. You can easily kill the nagas, then send spearmen in until the drake has a bad day and decides not to fight, letting you clear the node...and on top of that there is now a neutral Sky Drake there who will not attack you, but will attack anyone else trying to conquer or build a city on this continent. (save/reload can be a problem but if anyone is into doing that they already cleared every lair with Crack's Call spam or even worse...)

It certainly does have that "curse" feeling to it, but even that can be turned to an advantage - neutral monsters are not very threatening if your armies are well organized, and provide an easy way to gain experience for your troops.

If necessary, we can turn this into a diplomacy observing spell that has no effect on players you have a wizard's pact or alliance with, only enemies and "no treaty" people, and by no effect I mean, not spawn monster stacks unless those stacks can and will target an enemy player. Monster stacks are already "locked on" to a target when spawned, so it's easy to add this detail if we want to.
We should consider if we want that or not though, as it would be the only global spell where friendly players are not affected and I'm not sure it's worth this exception. In fact, these monsters could be a good way to get rid of "obsolete" AI players who are far too behind in economic and military power to matter but their presence could break game balance by feeding someone else's Power Link or Fairy Ring spells or open up trade abuse (by giving these players things like Divine Order, Spell Blast, Chaos Surge, Doomsday, Meteor Storm, etc) - let's not forget we are only assuming the player count will naturally drop before very rare spells are reached, but we don't actually know that happens, so any new game mechanic that pushes the game in that direction is likely an improvement.

Not adding a diplomacy penalty is also an option as it's not directly targeting or hurting anyone.

[htester]

I might have been too focused on the monster generation part. If I look at the spell as a variant of Harsh enviroment, it's basically another form of (easier) treasure hunting without completely ignoring combat. No diplomacy penalties is better. Also I would change the name of the spell to keep "you aren't actually controlling any monsters" feel. Mastery -> Master kinda implies that the generated creatures are doing your bidding/ following orders. Possible new names: Lure Creatures, Mass Lure, Lure Of prey, Hunter's Season.

[Seravy]

Well, the idea is basically you are manipulating the monsters through natural instincts so I agree that "Mastery" isn't a good name.
"Call of the Wild" suggested previously for another spell might be better.

[Cruel100]

Well, the idea is basically you are manipulating the monsters through natural instincts so I agree that "Mastery" isn't a good name.
"Call of the Wild" suggested previously for another spell might be better.

Good name, sounds better.

[htester]

Well, the idea is basically you are manipulating the monsters through natural instincts so I agree that "Mastery" isn't a good name.
"Call of the Wild" suggested previously for another spell might be better.

I don't know if I have talent to design spells but my name suggestions do catch attention xD.

[htester]

Btw after looking at Fire Mastery I had a thought: Doesn't a bonus to magical ranged damage makes more sense to sorcery as they have the only single target enchament that have this effect? Even life have a Global that does that even though they don't have a single target spell similar to Focus Magic.

[Seravy]

Btw after looking at Fire Mastery I had a thought: Doesn't a bonus to magical ranged damage makes more sense to sorcery as they have the only single target enchament that have this effect?

It does, but then we can't have "all units gain +3 resistance" unless...the spell does both, which might be a good idea.

Reinforce Magic
Global Enchantment
All of your units gain +2 resistance.
All of your units gain +2 magical ranged attack strength, if they have a magical ranged attack.

Keeping Fire Mastery might be worth it though as it's actually a pretty good combo with Reinforce Magic. (Efreets and Fire Giants are both fire magical ranged units that suffer from low resistance stats.)

Are we happy with Supreme Light? Is it fairly balanced now after it lost the health regain during battle part of the effect?