Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Seravy]

That's an interesting idea.
Except...if the population is low, you gain more money from building housing.
If it's high enough that housing is no longer worth it, then trade goods loses too many hammers.

How often would you prefer a silver mine over building a marketplace, magic market, library and sawmill? (as realistically looking you probably could build these four in the timeframe you're using the spell.)

The exact opposite though...

Greed
Citizens in this town pay halved taxes, but production increases by the same amount.

Now this would be a great spell, except, too great probably. You basically get a 50% discount on "buying" production at no real cost.
I do like that it acts like a dangerous deal though - reduced income and boosted production means more maintenance costs and less way to pay those costs. So we could try to make that into the hidden "cost" of the spell.

Greed
Citizens in this town pay halved taxes, but production increases by the same amount. This enchantment cannot be dispelled or cancelled once it has been cast, it's permanent.

It's also AI friendly - the AI doesn't care to have gold and pays less maintenance either way. I'd risk the statement it's a bit too AI friendly in fact, it's pretty much free production for the AI.
However, I'm worried this would be a major source of imbalance in the game because basically, production is the source of every other resource so any spell that boosts production early at no real cost (you'd spend the gold on buying production either way) will snowball into paying for its disadvantages on its own (and with Alchemy you could directly use power producing buildings to pay for the missing gold)

A version that can't be used to snowball buildings :

Greed
All units produced in this town have a 30% lower production cost but require an additional 50% gold to maintain, rounded up.

The best part is this does encourage the player to lose the units in battle. Very suitable for Death.
We need to look at the math though.
A typical early unit for example a bowmen costs 30-40 so 9-12 production is saved, which would only cost 18-24 gold.
Maintenance increases by 1 so if the unit lives for more than 18-24 turns the spell becomes a net loss - unless the units made enough profit by killing targets which they most likely do.

The problem? It makes the realm with the fastest early game even faster. Which is not something we'll want I think - and this sadly applies to the very concept of being greedy - getting things now and paying later will always accelerate the early game no matter how it is done.

So while I like the concept and it's very suitable for the realm, I don't think it's healthy for the gameplay at all.

[htester]

How about Greed Spell (Greed All units produced in this town have a 30% lower production cost but require an additional 50% gold to maintain, rounded up) on rare tier? It kinda resembles Inspirations and Gaia's Blessing.

[Seravy]

That's probably safe except by then people won't care about producing normal units with Death.
Also I just realized, Blood Lust cancels maintenance costs on units so this mechanic doesn't work in this realm.

[htester]

The idea to get unit discount is to cast it Along with Zombie Mastery. If you use blood lust on them they can't become zombies. On common/uncommon tier blood lust would be awesome but on rare not so much as you get more units from zombies without doing anything and have better stuff to cast. But I do agree the gold penalty is kinda useless for death. Btw if you get more normal units the spells proposed for death that expect you to lose battles could also be implemented.

[Seravy]

The idea to get unit discount is to cast it Along with Zombie Mastery.

Why would I ever do that?
If I have an infinite supply of zombies, I'll never produce normal units again aside from garrisons where I don't want increased maintenance.

btw we have a common or uncommon slot, no rare.

[Seravy]

Let's try to make progress on the Life realm.

We already know we want

-exactly 1 creature that preferably supports armies without buffing their stats.
-1 unit enchantment that turns a normal unit supernatural and adds a major buff
-Either 1 more buff, or a combat spell with a special effect (life actually has none of those except healing, I think)

For a buff...

Destiny
Overland unit enchantment
400 mana
Enchanted nonhero normal unit gains Supernatural and is a Life creature. This changes the unit's base unit type.
Enchanted unit has doubled base melee attack, ranged attack, hit points and gains +4 defense and resistance.
Optional : Enchanted unit is unaffected by other unit enchantments.
Optional : This spell cannot be dispelled
Optional : It's a Special spell with the above effect instead of an enchantment, and changes the unit's base stats permanently.

The first line is obvious, this is what we want the spell to do : turn a normal unit into an equivalent of a good rare creature/weak very rare creature, for the price of one. The upside it the large versatility, the downside is, obviously, that it isn't as powerful as an actual very rare creature, especially its abilities.
The stats, let's see...

Attack, converting the unit means it's missing Holy Arms and magic weapons, as well as levels, so it's basically losing +2 To Hit and +2 attack or more.
Doubling the base attack strength is roughly enough to compensate for losing those (+2 To hit is 40% of the damage output, the +2 attack is probably another 5-30% depending on figure count) without making the unit all that much stronger than it was, unless you had no access to levels, holy arms, or magic weapons in which case it's a quite big buff.
It's still a large indirect benefit though because the unit reacts more favorably to any + to Hit buffs after this, so Prayer and the likes do wonders for it.
Double hp is a huge bonus, unless you targeted a unit with 1 hp/figure where this is only compensating for losing the +1 hp for being an Elite unit. But on anything with more than 1 hp, it's a relevant, large bonus.
The extra defense and resistance, 2 of it makes up for losing the level bonuses, and another 2 to bridge the gap between a rare creature and a normal unit. We might want to push this a little and add +5 instead?

Then the optional effects. Unaffected by other enchantments basically says no buff stacking with this, but also protects the unit from any curses, in the odd case it has so horrible resistance. I think this might be better as an idea for a different new spell.
Instead, by converting the unit to a base Life creature, it already can't be buffed by normal unit only buffs, and as it's intended to be used as a summoned creature, allowing buffs that work on summons is probably okay. (although there are no high figure count very rare summons in the game so that's uncharted territory, but most generic and creature only buffs don't scale by figures as they add hitchance, not attack strength. Lionheart is the exception though and it's unfortunately an in-realm spell.)

The other two optional effects are two variations for making the effect permanent, the idea being that summoned creatures are also not vulnerable to dispelling. The former allows the spell to benefit from Good Moon and Divine Order, the latter does not, but both can benefit from Spellweaver and neither from Runemaster. Of course, making this a simple dispellable enchantment, which retains the weakness of the realm against dispelling, is also an option.

Lionheart might be a bit of a problem if stacked on top of this because unlike actual rare creatures, this can have up to 8 figures, so a Jackal Rider would be 6->12->15 attack and 8 figures. No hit bonus though, but that's still equal to a Hydra on attack power.

Next, the "unaffected by enchantments" idea might work well as the rare spell.

"Anti-Magic Aura"
Enchanted unit is unaffected by unit enchantments. (Any unit enchantment cast on the unit is automatically dispelled.)

This basically gives curse immunity but you cannot buff. Problem : Life can already have immunity to Curses. Cast Bless+True Sight on a unit and pretty much no curse in the game can affect it. So I guess this idea is not good. Let's discard it.

Then there was

"Convenience"
Cost 300
Overland unit enchantment
Enchanted unit has all unit enchantments you can cast.

This works but it's not interesting enough. Probably shouldn't.

Special spells... maybe something that prevents attacking?

Wall of Light
Combat City enchantment
No unit can attack from outside of the Wall of Light to a unit inside. Lasts 2 turns.

This is doesn't work because we don't want a city protection spell in Life and also because playing against this is unfun.

In general, spells that prevent attacking tend to be either useless (it buys time in a way that you can't use it) or overpowered (you can attack others but they can't attack you).
Spells that target areas don't work for AI reasons, so "all units on this 3x3 area heal 2 per turn" and the likes of it is out.

...Out of ideas at the moment.

Finally the creature. Probably should give up on the "save or take control" idea and "save or retreat" idea.
Life is good at enchantments, so maybe something of that, like "Spell Steal : whenever this unit attacks an enemy unit, a random unit enchantment from that unit is moved to this unit/random unit in your army"... but this feels too much like a Sorcery effect, as it steals magic.

Maybe we should try from a different approach and deicide what the creature should be, name, etc like we knew we wanted Vampires for death and designed the role, stats and effects afterwards. Is there any particular fantasy creature out there that would make sense in the Life realm other than angels and unicorns? And at very rare? I have no idea.

Edit : It's also an option to not add a creature and pretend the supernatural buff spells is one because it does fill that role. In that case we need 2 more buffs or special combat spells most likely. Some overland special spell might be interesting too, to benefit from Spellweaver, but I can't think of one right now.

Edit : one possible way to support units is by healing them. For example :
At the beginning of each turn, heal up to 10 total damage distributed randomly between your damaged normal units.
Raise Dead Spell x3
This definitely sounds useful to have in an army of 7 other units and an archangel. More than one of this creature can possibly heal your normal unit to max each turn though, if the ability stacks.
(Maybe Archangels shouldn't have Caster 40 and instead this should? That could be one way to make them less powerful.)

[dashley]

I had a (crazy / stupid) idea for a very rare life spell.. how about a spell that transforms the wizard into a monstrous creature that can walk around the map? I like the idea of a godly titan at the center of a crusade.

"Titanic Ascension"
The wizard is reincarnated as an angelic titan that can walk the map
- The wizard no longer has a tower. Combat mana costs are calculated from the titan's position. Units on the same square as the titan can assist overland casting
- If the titan dies, the wizard is banished. On return, the wizard will be returned to normal form in a wizard's tower
- The titan cannot use transports. It can walk through oceans (water walking)
- In combat the titan cannot fight in the same turn that a wizard spell is cast
- This spell cannot be dispelled or cancelled

Maybe the idea could work for death (think Sauron). Probably its too much of a divergence from existing mechanics but its just an idea

[Seravy]

So kinda like the "Personal Incarnation" card in MtG?

Definitely a nice idea but the AI would kill itself by casting the spell and sending their avatar into risky battles. I prefer to only add spells the AI can understand and use well.

[Seravy]

Another idea.

Divine Favor
Rare
150 MP
Enchanted (nonhero?) normal unit has at least 70% chance to hit and at least 50% chance to defend.

This is basically a +10% hit and defend chance compared to what you normally have on a unit with magic weapons, holy arms, and prayer, but a much better bonus if you don't have those, making it more valuable for multi-realm wizards.

I still think it's better to add a "special spell" of some sort, either combat or overland for this slot though so this is still a placeholder idea if we can't design something better.

For the very rare creature that heals your army, maybe it should be an upgrade to Unicorns : Alicorn (s)? I have a very hard time coming up with Life creatures because pretty much every single white MtG creature card is something that's a normal unit in this game - soldiers, clerics, priests, griffins, pegasai, birds, etc, beyond that there are Angels but we two of those already in the game. (I rather not have an Ivory Dragon either, Dragons fit every realm but we already have two which is enough.)
However Unicorns are traditionally associated with healing so a flying version of the Unicorn that can heal would make sense.

Life Very Rare
Cost 450 MP
Alicorns
4 Figures
Flying, 4 moves. (Teleporting? Probably too OP on a healer...although at speed 4 and with flying, nothing will really attack it anyway at melee so why not.)
8 hp per figure, 8 armor, 10 attack, +3 to hit.
Raise Dead Spell x3.
Horn of Light : At the beginning of each combat turn, heal up to 10 total damage among your normal units distributed randomly.

Possibly also move Caster 40 from the Archangel to this unit - spellcasting might be one reason why Archangels are so much better than they should be based on their stats, as each one of them can cast a rare Life spell. Doesn't seem like a big deal but being able to cast Invulnerability plus Prayer without using up your opportunity to also cast Healing makes the unit pretty much unkillable. Or simply reduce the Caster 40 to a more fair amount (29 perhaps? Normal Angels are 24 I think so that's still higher but isn't enough to use any of the rare buffs or rare tier healing, and still only casts one normal healing spell.)

[dashley]

Another idea.
For the very rare creature that heals your army, maybe it should be an upgrade to Unicorns : Alicorn (s)? I have a very hard time coming up with Life creatures because pretty much every single white MtG creature card is something that's a normal unit in this game - soldiers, clerics, priests, griffins, pegasai, birds, etc, beyond that there are Angels but we two of those already in the game. (I rather not have an Ivory Dragon either, Dragons fit every realm but we already have two which is enough.)
However Unicorns are traditionally associated with healing so a flying version of the Unicorn that can heal would make sense.

Maybe the phoenix could fit:
https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/Phoenix
or "Sun Phoenix"

Taking inspiration from MtG the Pheonix would be a chaos creature associated with fire, but in other lore its associated with the sun, rebirth, and has healing abilities.