Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[htester]

Convergence
Cost 100/300
About Life Global
Half of the spell doesn`t work for life (I don`t remember life spells that require rolls). And a whole global for the 2 healing spells? I am not sure about that.

About Convinience
Enchanted unit has the effect of all positive unit enchantments that can also be casted (besides overland) on battle you can cast that can target the unit.

There is only one rule really to allow enchaments that can be casted both overland and combat (with a different casting cost). That would include all rare tier enchaments that are relevant in battle.
Considering life enchaments - Losing endurance (that doesn`t stack with lion heart), holy armor (1 def) and destiny (I am assuming it cannot be casted on battle, I don ` t remember).
Either we are happy with that or we can add another Convenience buff that includes exclusively life enchaments at rare tier (invulnerability, lion heart and Divine protection-lucky + death immunity).

[Seravy]

Half of the spell doesn`t work for life (I don`t remember life spells that require rolls). And a whole global for the 2 healing spells? I am not sure about that.

They actually have some fairly decent ones : Exorcise and Holy Word.
Only Star Fires for damage tho unless you found a spellbook that has a common damage spell in it.
Unfortunately if it's in Life it's not that useful to make Heroic Heart better.

Irionically, while this is not that many spells, it literally is all the Life combat spells in the game that aren't buffs so if you are not buffing with Life for any reason then this will improve all your other spells.

The problem with Convergence isn't so much the combat spells.

The problem is there are far too many spells in the game you don't want the unit to get at all, combat, or overland.
Chaos Channels and Blood Lust permanently change the type of your unit to Chaos or Undead. That's often a disadvantage.
Mystic Surge might be a buff but it isn't supposed to be added to units without the "gains random buffs" effect which won't be applicable in this case.
Focus Magic gives your Paladins a strength 3 ranged attack which is annoying to have.

Well, I guess requiring the spell to be both available in combat and overland does remove all four of those as well so that can be a solution but then it also loses a whole lot of other spells so it's back to "I still have to cast multiple enchantments on the unit manually" and "there are multiple things on this unit that could get dispelled so it'll be targeted by dispel". Holy Armor and Discipline are definitely spells I'd take the time to cast manually if they are not included, if the target was a creature then Land Linking is too. Then there is also Flame Blade...

If anyone has other ideas, please post them. Ideally we should add a spell that's either a new combat option for Life, An overland nonbuff spell that benefits from spellweaver, or a spell that's mildly useful for Life but very useful for Chaos/Sorcery/Nature.

[Seravy]

Meanwhile added Destiny :

DESTINY
Life Very Rare - Overland Unit Enchantment
Target: friendly (base type) non-hero normal unit
Casting Cost: 400 mana
Upkeep: 10 mana/turn
Enchanted normal unit becomes a Supernatural Life creature permanently, with doubled base melee and ranged attack strength, health, and +4 defense and resistance.
The change to the unit's type also changes the unit's base type, so other buffs not valid for normal units cannot target it, and it loses any levels or experience.
This enchantment cannot be dispelled.

Edit: one more done

MISLEAD
Death Common - Combat Unit Curse
Target : enemy normal unit
Casting Cost : 13
Target normal unit must resist, or gains Misfortune. All normal units fighting in the same army as that unit lose 1 attack, defense and resistance (not cumulative and can't be dispelled). The target suffers a -1 save penalty when attempting to resist this spell for each two fantastic creatures on the casting wizard's side.

One problem I realized with the Life global that raises damage and save penalties is we probably don't want to buff Banish, Creature Binding and Great Unsummoning on Sorcery/Life wizards and those are also affected.
I guess we need something entirely different then that fits this criteria :

"Ideally we should add a spell that's either a new combat option for Life, An overland nonbuff spell that benefits from spellweaver, or a spell that's mildly useful for Life but very useful for Chaos/Sorcery/Nature. "

[Seravy]

Another Life spell idea :

King of Heaven
Global enchantment
Whenever any normal unit dies anywhere, if it wasn't killed by you, gain X magic power the next turn.

This rewards relying on allies to fight each other and not getting involved. Unfortunately, completely useless if there is only one enemy left.

Same but different version :

King of Heaven
Whenever a combat happens anywhere and you aren't the attacker, gain X magic power.

The difference is this wording allows the caster to get power for battles where they are being attacked, rewarding defensive play as well as diplomacy.

One more idea :

King of Heaven (or other name)
Your global enchantments cannot be dispelled.

At first I thought it's too powerful but Life still stays vulnerable to Sorcery : unit enchantments still get dispelled.
They can't dispel your Crusade, Charm of Life and so on, but they can copy them, evening the ground. So it helps but isn't really a big deal, exactly what we wanted, something that's useful for Life but not a game-changer.
If you play this with other realms though, it IS a game changer. Chaos is obvious, undispellable Armageddon and the likes means winning the game. Nature, Sorcery and Death all got a bunch of new globals, so it's useful for everyone. We want to discourage dispelling globals and encourage using them anyway.
One downside is that it makes Runemaster a bit less useful but not by much - you still want it for your unit (and city) enchantments when playing Life.

So far I like this one the most.
What does everyone think?
I need to decide on one soon otherwise I can't continue working. This and Chain Lightning are the last two spells not added yet but CL I will only add to the spell tables first and make the effect after I'm able to start the game and program the visual effect. So I need to know what this last Life spell does before we can start discussion things like the research cost table, AI guaranteed spell choices, AI trade priorities, AI research priorities, etc.

[roarmalf]

The problem is there are far too many spells in the game you don't want the unit to get at all, combat, or overland.
Chaos Channels and Blood Lust permanently change the type of your unit to Chaos or Undead. That's often a disadvantage.

What if we made it "Enchanted unit receives all dispellable unit enchantments the caster knows"

That eliminates the problem spells without removing the spells we want to keep, right? We could either give the effects of those spells, or actually give each spell (the latter lets you cancel an individual spell you don't want like focus magic."

[Slingers]

King of Heaven (or other name)
Your global enchantments cannot be dispelled.

Another idea:

King of Light (King of the Underworld -> King of Darkness)

Global enchantments get a X% bonus to their resistance against dispelling. This bonus is cumulative with Specialist and Runemaster. Whenever any Undead or Death unit "dies" in battle, gain X magic power the next turn.

[Seravy]

The problem is there are far too many spells in the game you don't want the unit to get at all, combat, or overland.
Chaos Channels and Blood Lust permanently change the type of your unit to Chaos or Undead. That's often a disadvantage.

What if we made it "Enchanted unit receives all dispellable unit enchantments the caster knows"

That eliminates the problem spells without removing the spells we want to keep, right? We could either give the effects of those spells, or actually give each spell (the latter lets you cancel an individual spell you don't want like focus magic."

Well, the Blood Lust is dispellable, so is Focus Magic, so that doesn't work.

King of Light (King of the Underworld -> King of Darkness)

Global enchantments get a X% bonus to their resistance against dispelling. This bonus is cumulative with Specialist and Runemaster. Whenever any Undead or Death unit "dies" in battle, gain X magic power the next turn.

X% resistance is an option to consider but I think "can't be dispelled" is not all that powerful to begin with to need that kind of nerfing.
In the typical scenario, enchantments being dispellable only mean you have to recast the one that was highest priority on the AI's dispelling list and the others will never get dispelled at all. At most the two highest priority if you're unlucky enough that more than one AI starts Disjunction simultaneously and both succeed.
For example when I play Chaos, my Armageddon and Doomsday are never dispelled because the AI has to dispel Meteor Storm first and if these spells are my main strategy, I will recast Meteor Storm immediately.
In case of Life globals, none of them are the kind that causes you a major problem if they disappear for 2-3 turns, losing the military ones in a war hurts but they can only dispel one at a time so you still have like 4 other buffs to rely on - basically you lose Charm of Life but you still have your Holy Arms and Crusade as well as High Prayer.
So ultimately what this dispel protection does is, saving you the price of recasting, and letting those enchantments not go down for those 2-3 turn periods.
It's a different story if the enemy is Sorcery and/or Runemaster though, but that's really the case when you will actually care to have this enchantment, and for that case, +X% won't be enough (unless X is super high but then why not make it infinite?).

I don't know if leaving the word "your" out from the text was intentional but I don't think I would want to cast this to protect my Crusade if it means it also protects someone else's Armageddon.

I don't like punishing the use of death magic though. That effect might be more subtle than the old "All death spells are countered" global was but it's still fundamentally the same thing, "don't use death magic or you'll suffer". In particular with Zombie Mastery out that can turn absurd very fast, and as this part also doesn't contain "enemy death units" it means while everyone else is punished for using those units, you get rewarded for it. Cast Zombie Mastery yourself, let the zombies die, profit.

We can have the more generic version though, like this :

King of Heaven
Your global enchantments cannot be dispelled
Whenever a normal unit dies that wasn't yours or killed by you, gain X power.

Excluding own units is necessary because it's trivial to build millions of spearmen and make them die. Excluding units killed by you is needed because that's the whole point, to benefit from other people fighting each other. I'm afraid this might not be a good game mechanic though because it's a "win more" thing in the sense that when other players kill each other's units, that's good for you either way. That much less enemies to fight later on.

[Slingers]

In the typical scenario, enchantments being dispellable only mean you have to recast the one that was highest priority

That was with 4 opponents. Now it´s possible to program it like this ofc.

King of Heaven
Your global enchantments cannot be dispelled
Whenever a normal unit dies that wasn't yours or killed by you, gain X power.

It´s in the same tier like Time Stop, but anyways “cannot be dispelled” sounds far too powerful. Mono-colour wizards look weak now. Why should Sorcery Runemasters not being able to do what they are good at ? It also looks very strange, if dying units increase the Power of Life, because the Life wizard is doing nothing. The opposite should happen ! Benefiting from other people fighting against each other one would expect from a Death wizard using Subversion.

One more idea:
Your global enchantments get a very high X% bonus to their resistance against dispelling cumulative with Specialist and Runemaster.
Whenever an enemy fantastic unit or monster was killed by you, gain X power next turn.

[massone]

What if we used the "Amplifying Wave" idea as a Life spell?

Life Mastery
Global enchantment
Whenever you cast a spell that heals or deals damage, that spell heals or deals 1 more to all targets, or 2 more damage if the spell is single target. Whenever you cast a spell that requires a resistance roll, there is an additional -1 save penalty for that spell.

Explanation :
I feel Life doesn't have as much combo potential between realms as others, while it also has a set of spells that offers the least redundance and situational effects - basically in other realms your creatures, damage spells, etc will be replaced by a higher tier spell much more often than in Life which has no creatures to speak of, and all their buffing spells stack so nothing ever gets obsolete.

The concept seems reasonable. I like the -save modifier, but I'm not so sure about extra damage. Life Chaos already has really good synergy on buff stacking. For example, Elite Magicians with Flame Blade, Blazing March, Holy Weapon, Magical Weapons, Lionheart, and Prayer would have 12 attack +3 to Hit. Add Supreme Light +High Prayer, or Doom Mastery + Chaos Surge and now this thing is already stronger than the Destiny version of most races' advanced units.

If you put only the rare spells on an actual advanced melee unit like Paladins, then add Discipline and Holy Bonus into the mix, to make 6 base + 2 from elite + 1 from discipline + 3 flame blade + 3 blazing march + 3 Lionheart + 1 Holy Bonus =19 attack +3 to Hit with Armor Piercing, it would be almost twice as powerful as Death Knights. This is 19 * 4 * 70% to Hit = 53 armor piercing damage.

I don't see a need to further massively improve spells like Flame Strike, Warp Lightning, Chaos Rift, Magic Vortex, and Call the Void/Meteor Storm that deal multiple attacks or AoEs.

King of Heaven
Your global enchantments cannot be dispelled
Whenever a normal unit dies that wasn't yours or killed by you, gain X power.

Excluding own units is necessary because it's trivial to build millions of spearmen and make them die. Excluding units killed by you is needed because that's the whole point, to benefit from other people fighting each other. I'm afraid this might not be a good game mechanic though because it's a "win more" thing in the sense that when other players kill each other's units, that's good for you either way. That much less enemies to fight later on.

So...does the undispellable global include itself? Unstoppable King of Heaven -> Power Link -> Time Stop -> Spell of Mastery? Cannot be dispelled. Cannot be Spell Blasted. Cannot do anything during Time Stop. Just build up 30,000 mana reserve and it's Game Over. AI would need to make sure they Spell Blast at Power Link or Disjunction on King of Heaven as soon as either is being casted by a wizard that has both these spells.

I don't think the second effect is "win more". If you can still benefit from enemies killing each other, you clearly aren't winning yet. You'd normally only want that when you're the underdog. Otherwise, it'd be you attacking to conquer towns.

[Seravy]

So...does the undispellable global include itself?

Yes, unless we specifically exclude it but that makes it a whole lot weaker (it no longer eliminates the need to spend on recasting spells).
Fortunately, guaranteeing both this spell and Time Stop/Power Link is not possible. We might want to remove the "spell blast and drain power are countered" effect from Power Link, idk., it has been added to preserve the original role of Suppress Magic but Drain Power isn't really a threat to a wizard who has power link. Spell Blast is but the enemy can spell blast the power link so it isn't that simple to cast against it.

Personally, I'm about 70% happy with the "no disjunction" global and 40% with the "extra damage and save modifier" one. So while I would like something better, as we need to decide immediately, I'll go with that for now, especially because there are no guarantees that "something better" actually exists. We have considered pretty much every possible Life spell I can think of.

Actually we have two options :

Add the "no disjunction" version of King of Heaven or add "Placeholder spell" that does nothing and keep thinking. The problem with the latter is that we'll need to change all the related AI tables and research costs once we fill the slot which might affect other spell research costs or the AI's choice for guaranteed spells. So it would be good to know what the spell is in advance.
(and we also can't playtest for overall game balance if one of the spells has no effect...)

Maybe if "King of Heaven" had a secondary effect the boosts your religious buildings? That's something I would expect Life to do but only Death has such a spell. It can't be too powerful though, only an addition for flavor and synergy, like "all of your religious buildings produce an additional 2 power".

...also, I'm going to use "Ruler" instead of "King" for both spells because the game does have female "wizards" so King wouldn't be appropriate.