Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Seravy]

... but what's the point in 9 very rare spells with 3 guaranteed, isn't is simpler to just have all 12?
I mean, ok, players won't ALWAYS find 3 very rare spells in treasure, but they'll often find at least 1 or 2 so they will almost always have almost every very rare spell and only miss out on one, maybe two. And that just opens up the possibility of being unlucky for no reason at all, if that spell is actually need to win but too situational to pick as guaranteed. (Consecration anyone?)

And with that we've completed the circle and we're back to the "no guaranteed" system, except with some refinements at books 5-7 :
   

(I'm not sure if book 9 should have 8 or 9 very rares. At 8 the chance of missing out on spells is probably enough to make giving up the 10th book hurt. At 9, it might be still too easy to obtain any missing spells from treasure and trading. But at 9, book 9 is worth picking much more than at 8, because for the 3 rares, it's not that useful except for Nature players.)

so yes, we have lots of options and each have their advantages.

No guaranteed :
Simpler, easier to understand, play, and program.
Forces a choice between guaranteeing a combo that contains rare spells, or picking more retorts.
Forces a choice between guaranteed uncommon spell combos or spending more than 2 picks on retorts/offcolor books.
Mono realm is more reliable but dual/trplie realm is more varied and replayable
Dual realm gets much fewer spells than mono realm.

More guaranteed spells :
AI gets the "powerful" midgame spells you'd rather not see them have all the time, in general, AI is less diverse.
Powerful combos relying on rare spells can coexist with picking additional retorts.
Combos based on uncommon spells are possible even with maxed retort picks.
Mono realm is slightly less reliable, but dual/triple realm is more reliable (at the price of losing replayability, yes the guaranteed combos are options but if I can guarantee a powerful combo, I won't play anything else.)
Not having every very rare is a good though as makes the endgame more diverse, and also reduces global enchantment spam on large games and many opponents. (No one can deal with 4 AIs that each have two of Time Stop, Power Link, Armageddon, Meteor Storm, Evil Omens and Seismic Mastery at the same time, nor is it fun to do so)

So... trying to draw a conclusion, more guaranteed uncommons and rares in books 4-6 seems bad. More guaranteed rares in books 7-10 are unnecessary, as adding more rares to the book without guaranteed works better, making giving up on books 8-10 pricier. Not getting every very rare and having guaranteed very rares instead might be better.
We need to somehow set the numbers in a way that 2-3 realms with 4-6 books in each don't get fewer total spells than mono realm (but do miss out on guaranteed very rares and the cost/research bonus, making it fair despite the added trading potential).
Well, that's a lot to try to do at once but I'll try to fill another table...

[Seravy]

   

Columns marked with green are what I consider the main "motivation" to pick that book. (Ignored the first 3 as their value is obvious)
Books 4 is pushed up hard, but we do want it to be the cutting point between "I play this realm as a main color" and "I don't play this realm but added a few books for some needed low tier spells in a combo".
Why book 4 exactly, because 12 = 3*4. So 4 books in 3 realm uses all picks leaving none for retorts or a 4th/5th realm. If you want to play triple realm, that's the price for having access to 60% of the spells in the game through trading.

Book 5 doesn't seem to be so great but at such low spell counts, the +1 to every spell is more relevant than on later books, the first guaranteed spell is a big deal to have, and in my opinion, starting commons are also a big deal. Each starting common increases the player's options drastically, at least if they aren't playing Sage Master then researching additional spells in the first 1-2 years is critically pricey.
Book 6 is the same but with the rare being guaranteed.

So far it's the same as before except there is an extra rare which is needed if we don't want people to have a greater than before chance to miss out on rare spells even though there are 2 new spells added to the tier.

Book 7 gets the extra guaranteed very rare, otherwise it's still the same as before. One spell is not much but still enough to be able to plan for one, and only one strategy. This is probably enough to make sure these builds don't suffer from the "there are more very rares but we get the same amount so the chance to get one that wins is lower" syndrome. I'm slightly worried this is too good for "7 books, 5 retort picks" builds but considering they used to get 6/10 rares in the old system, the chance of not getting one that can win the game was near zero either way, and albeit there is a guarantee now, the overall chance of missing spells is higher than before. So as long as that one pick can be beaten by the enemy (and probably anything can, even Time Stop is vulnerable to one thing, Spell Blasts.), the risk remains real and even greater than before.

Book 8 has all the uncommons which actually is a bigger deal than it seems, and has the starting early uncommons which in my opinion makes this good enough to be comparable to the 4th book, a new milestone, opening up powerful early strategies. Due to that, this is the ideal place to add no very rare, as this pick actually boosts your early game similarly to a retort. By not adding a very rare here, the numbers between mono and dual realms become reasonably balanced, as well as making the guaranteed very rare system more relevant and reducing endgame very rare availability.
I added another guaranteed rare here but that is the one thing I'm completely unsure about. Maybe it shouldn't be there but having a late book being entirely focused on the early game (by uncommons) doesn't feel right and this is a good way to compensate somewhat. If the game drags out and very rares become the deciding factor, the extra rare won't be enough to turn it around either way.

Book 9 added the cost and research as well as the second guaranteed very rare.
The last book does the same and also maxes rare spells. While that makes it more powerful, it is also pricier, as going down from 3 remaining pick to 2 is a much bigger sacrifice.

Finally, maybe it's worth looking at each realm to see how many and which very rares are "game winners" alone or as a combo, of course this is only my subjective opinion. Spells that give you more power or other similar benefits are not counted because power isn't very useful if there are no good spells to spend it on.

Nature :
Call Lighting + Entangle, maybe even separately each.
Any of the creatures
Regeneration
Earth Gate

Sorcery :
Spell Ward (if you can't lose any cities, you win, eventually)
Spell Binding
Magic Immunity
Time Stop
either creature

Chaos :
Armageddon+Doomsday
Meteor Storm (AI can't attack you with a large quantity of units so you never run out of resources to burn their armies away in combat)
Any 2 of Chaos Surge+Warp Reality+Blazing Eyes.
Either one of the two combat spells

Life :
The creatures
Destiny
Supreme Light
Having at least 2 of the global buffs (High Prayer, Crusade, Charm of Life)
Call to Arms
Possibly even Divine Favor but I doubt it's that good

Death :
Massacre
Animate Dead
Demon Lord and Death Knight
Evil Omens
Pestilence

So I think each realm has more than enough gamewinning spells to not run into the case of missing all of them at 9 or 10 books or getting only the ones the enemy can counter. It also seems fairly well balanced, each realm having 5-7 gamewinning spells now.

[Seravy]

Something else :

Mourning - I'm worried about this spell. Maybe we should pick something else for that very rare slot.
The effect itself isn't so bad but the micromanagement of having to find which of your 20 identical Archangels died that turn is horrible, and the AI randomly losing units from stacks it already assembled isn't that good either.

[roarmalf]

I didn't factor AI or programming work in at all when I was thinking about this. I'm also sure I have biases to my own style of play. I think your last chart looks really solid given your reasoning. AI variety is important, especially with more wizards in the game, so I think that should be a big factor.

[Slingers]

Mourning - I'm worried about this spell. Maybe we should pick something else for that very rare slot.

I think most human players resign if they repeatedly lose their best unit.

[zitro1987]

Maybe then an antihero global spell?

All heroes have 0 movement overland. If currently sitting on a non-capital tile, hero is moved to next available tile

[Seravy]

Mourning - I'm worried about this spell. Maybe we should pick something else for that very rare slot.

I think most human players resign if they repeatedly lose their best unit.

Yeah, that too might be a problem, even if realistically looking at it, they can summon (or build) 2-4 of them in the time they lose one. Another problem is that this will usually kill a summoned unit and Death should be bad at doing that.

The other Death very rare idea we didn't pick was this one though :

Withering? All enemy units lose 1 (or a percentage) of maximal hit points. Units with zero hit points die instantly. (too powerful against magician garrisons?)

I think this is a problem spell as long as magician garrisons are the primary endgame choice for defending towns, even more so for AI players.
In fact in many ways it's worse than Final Wave or Great Unsummoning. Losing 2-3 units in each city is really bad but losing all units in all cities is instant game over.

So then we need a new spell idea. Death killing units on the overland map sounds good but Final Wave already does that absurdly well so trying to make a spell that does it differently or better is probably doomed to fail.

We also had these :

29. Maybe a curse that stays on a unit after battle? (this requires playing battles for the loss, not a player friendly game mechanic)
30. Maybe curses that spread between enemy units? (also requires losing a battle to cast the curse, and why spread instead of simply making it a global enchantment?)
31. Possibly a stronger version of the old, removed Black Wind? (we removed it because we found no balanced solution for the effect so most likely not?)

I don't think they can work though.

If Death specializes in debuffing then maybe...

Anti-Magic Aura
60/300
Friendly or enemy unit.
Enchanted unit is unaffected by unit enchantments.

Not good... Death is mostly immune to debuffs so you don't want to cast this on your own units. However casting this on an enemy unit is basically a better dispel effect than what Sorcery wizards get, not to mention without the buffs, pretty much any unit in the game is vulnerable to most higher tier spells in Death.

Shadow Form
60/300
Friendly unit
Enchanted unit is not affected by enemy spell effects that do not target it and gains Thrown equal to half its attack strength.

While I did say Thrown isn't something Death should get, that was for C/UC.
At very rare, being able to attack flying enemies is no longer a big deal (in fact Summon Demon can fly), on the other hand the partial immunity to spells can matter. But again it's too much like a Sorcery spell... Magic Immunity.
Even so, it's immunity to Holy Word (not to Exorcise tho) which is definitely good, immunity to Flame Strike and Apocalypse and Great Unsummoning, all of which are things Death creatures are weak against.
...oh wait, I remember why I didn't post this. It has a critical flaw. It's a buff that makes the unit immune to Dispelling Wave.
(it's also a bit of a pain to program because each and every spell that doesn't target needs to special case not applying the effects to these units.)

...do we have any other ideas left, or need something completely new?

Maybe a wizard targeting spell of some sort? We used to have Subversion and Cruel Unminding but lost both as we needed the spell slots and they were unbalanced.
While I don't think a casting skill reducing spell is a good idea (unless it uses drastically different mechanics but even then, still bad, we are in the realm that has Evil Omens which is basically a global that reduces the casting capacity of everyone else by 1/3 already), Subversion is a different story.

Subversion was removed originally because it was useless - diplomacy didn't work so the spell did pretty much nothing useful. Then diplomacy got fixed. Later on it was never readded because the slot was already in use by a more important spell, and also because the effect was way too powerful in a fixed diplomacy system. A spell that effectively makes everyone declare war on a target, no matter the cost, is a game-winner at uncommon, as dealing with a 3-4 front war is usually impossible assuming the player is on a difficulty level suitable for their ability.

However, now we have a very rare slot. By then, endgame alliances start to get broken by the human player unless they aim for a Spell of Mastery win, and if AI alliances still haven't broken by then, that is a problem for the game by itself, resulting in too many surviving AI players and no target the human player can safely fight without being attacked from all directions. So there are reasons for adding the spell, but there are also strong reasons against it. First of all, it still destroys any chance the human player had at a Spell of Mastery win, and undermines the very purpose of the diplomacy system's existence. Second, maybe even greater problem is, if the endgame does not have multiple surviving enemies then the spell does nothing, which is still the most likely case for maps with 5 or less opponents (1 myrran only).

So I'm afraid the cons outweight the pros for Subversion as well.

Is there any other spell we could add that targets a player? We don't want to drain MP, SP or RP but maybe a spell that drains gold? Redundant with Pestilence though as killing citizens does kill gold and production which is indirectly gold as well so I guess not. (Drought also reduces production and population which is basically one more spell that is very similar)

Hey, how about...

Corrosion
Global Enchantment
All enemy units lose magical, mithril and adamantium weapons while Corrosion is in effect.
OR
End of Magic
All enemy normal units count as if they had normal weapons.

Basically, this makes all normal units without magic weapons deal no damage against your summoned creatures or anything you put Wraithform on, but an interesting side effect is that Life players can also take advantage of these in their fights against a third party through Invulnerability.
Sadly, it's still useless if the enemy uses magical ranged units, as well as against Life wizards (Holy Arms) and Chaos wizards (Blazing March), but can be good against Sorcery, Nature, and Death.
The difference between the two versions is that the former also makes the unit lost their +1 to hit and mithril/adamantium bonus, the latter doesn't touch the stats, the weapons only lose the ability to penetrate weapon immunity.

Or what if we pushed the idea further...

King of Underworld
Global Enchantment
All enemy normal units count as if they had normal weapons.
All of your units gain Wraithform.

This is useful even if the normal weapons aren't relevant : with Wraithform, you can go through walls, bypass Weapon Immunity yourself, and even move faster on combat and overland terrain.

I think I like this last version the most.

[Slingers]

Subversion for high costs ?  It might be better not to have this spell back ... King of the Underworld - All units gain Wraithform, sounds useful. How about a Resistance buff for the Units of the King instead of normal weapons for enemy units ?

[Seravy]

Death is supposed to be one of the "bad at resistance" realms and it actually is the only one left without a global resistance buff, so I don't think so. We can throw a "death immunity" buff on top of the wraithform though, Death being able to give their normal units protection from enemy Final Wave spells is a good idea, what I don't want is being able to protect the summoned creatures from Stoning effects (and Exorcise/Banish of course). We probably should use a better wording for the weapon effect as it's easy to misunderstand. So then we will have...

King of Underworld
Global Enchantment
All of your units gain Wraithform and Death Immunity.
Enemy units lose the ability to ignore Weapon Immunity obtained from alchemic sources : Alchemist Guilds, Alchemy retorts, and Philosopher's Stone spells.

The Death Immunity is probably overkill though. It also blocks Massacre, Wrack, and a lot of other spells.

[zitro1987]

I like the idea a lot but drop the death immunity. It would make death vs death even more frustrating

Edit: Your last spellbook table is your best yet and i agree with the extra guaranteed rare at book 8