Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Slingers]

There are other issues as well for example the respawning unit will get pushed outside if the city is full, and as its weakened and alone, it will be attacked again...and revive again and get attacked again in an endless loop, each time giving you a chance to destroy an enemy army with spells. In fact regardless of how it works, if you can keep a unit from a lost battle that is a free ticket for infinite combat spellcasting, as long as you can bait the enemy into attacking the unit which they will do most of the time.

The miracle takes some time. The unit would arrive first at the beginning of the next turn after the moves of the AI wizards. If respawning pushed the unit outside of a full City, it can now enter to heal. If the player decides to sacrifice and revive the same unit repeatedly, he saves exactly the production cost of 1 unit of Spearmen per turn. Since the resurrected unit only has 1 hit point left (no buffs aso), it is not very exploitable for a lot of “free” spellcasting.

[Slingers]

An idea to make Chaos uncommon slightly better.

1. Remove Insulation, but keep it as an Item Power.
...
2. Fill the spell slot with :
Sky Fires
Global Enchantment
In each of your battles, in every combat turn except the first three, there is a 10% chance a Fire Bolt spell will hit a random enemy unit.

Super good idea !

[Seravy]

The miracle takes some time. The unit would arrive first at the beginning of the next turn after the moves of the AI wizards. If respawning pushed the unit outside of a full City, it can now enter to heal. If the player decides to sacrifice and revive the same unit repeatedly, he saves exactly the production cost of 1 unit of Spearmen per turn. Since the resurrected unit only has 1 hit point left (no buffs aso), it is not very exploitable for a lot of “free” spellcasting.

Except, "after every combat" so it would be ALL your spearmen as long as there is only one on each tile. Basically, this spell gives you an infinite amount of respawning units if you use your units in 1 unit armies. For spearmen that's just for spellcasting opportunity but if you do this with something like a Great Wyrm then it can take out 2-4 enemy units each time. Being damaged doesn't really do much either because Stream of Life makes them heal to max instantly (and it's also trivial to heal them by Nature's Cures, or there is Herb Mastery which basically is a spell that says "units never have damage stay on them outside combat".

If it's one unit once per turn it's useless and too weak because a typical overland turn in the late game has many battles and units dying during a war.

[roarmalf]

Love the idea for Sky Fires, I would call it Rain of Fire (although I now really like Reign of Fire as a spell name, but it feels like a very rare), and make it 2 random rounds between 4 and 12.

"During each of your combats two firebolts will be cast on random enemy units. They will be cast randomly between rounds 4 and 12."

I think making it static rounds makes it: a. too predictable for chaos magic, and b. easier to exploit (being guaranteed a free shot at round 5 means your spearman can still attack certain stacks without concern)

[Slingers]

Except, "after every combat" so it would be ALL your spearmen as long as there is only one on each tile. Basically, this spell gives you an infinite amount of respawning units if you use your units in 1 unit armies. For spearmen that's just for spellcasting opportunity but if you do this with something like a Great Wyrm then it can take out 2-4 enemy units each time. Being damaged doesn't really do much either because Stream of Life makes them heal to max instantly (and it's also trivial to heal them by Nature's Cures, or there is Herb Mastery which basically is a spell that says "units never have damage stay on them outside combat". If it's one unit once per turn it's useless and too weak because a typical overland turn in the late game has many battles and units dying during a war.

Right, it doesn’t work that way. And there is already the “Resurrection” spell for heroes.
What if one-unit armies, battles that loose less than half of the units and units with intrinsic regeneration are excluded?

[Seravy]

That's overly complex to add an effect we don't particularly need for the game in the first place - the spell already has two other effects that are more useful and closer to what we want - effects that are semi-useful for life, suit the realm, and are more useful if combined with other realms, especially those Life isn't that good with at the moment (Death, maybe Nature. Chaos is actually great in theory it just needs too many very rare spells to be a combo and you can't guarantee those from two realms, so having one more like that helps.)
Reviving summoned creatures doesn't suit life and reviving normal units is not that interesting (unless the spell revives an unreasonable amount) - by the time very rares are a thing, you can produce dozens of units per turn. The combo potential isn't any better than Animate Dead or Inspirations - you have more units and that's all which is equally useful for everyone.

I'm wondering what's the ideal amount of dispel resistance is btw, as dispelling enchantments really is about your cost vs theirs, if the dispelling cost is significantly more than the recast cost then dispelling is useless.
Adding 100% is generally more than enough to make a human player say "yeah I'm not going to try to dispel that", unless they have AEther Binding or Runemaster in which case they still pay a steep price, basically the same as if they didn't have those at all.
The AI on the other hand already handles Disjunction based on what frequency of disjunctioning makes the game the most fun to play, not a real decision on when it's worth dispelling something. So against the AI the spell basically does what we tell the AI to do in reaction, regardless of the percentage. If the AI scales up their dispelling attempt frequency to match the bonus then the spell did nothing. If the AI does not, but pushes their slider to the necessary cost to succeed, it'll have some effect on more expensive enchantments where 100% cannot be reached and nothing on lower cost spells. If the AI ignores it then the 100% means the AI's attempts will fail half the time so your spells survive twice as long. If the AI actually cuts their research chances down, the spell can offer more then "double lifespan" protection with a 100% resistance. And then there is also the possibility of the AI reducing or not reduction the priority of targeting that particular enchantment. If they do then casting this will redirect the AI's disjunction spells to another player, keeping your spells safe as long as any other AI has enchantments to dispel that are higher then the reduced priority of yours.
All of these are valid options and matter way more than what number the 100% is, and this is why I would prefer the more clear "your enchantments cannot be dispelled" version because then it's obvious the AI will simply not target your spells with disjunction at all. I kinda agree that is bad because it also makes Runemasters or wizards with AEther Binding unable to dispel your stuff, but on the other hand, people most likely don't pick or cast either for the improved dispel power effect, more like the casting skill, dispel resistance or research.
However, we don't want to make it too powerful for Life wizards, and it also gives magic power so probably shouldn't be a guranteed protection. Maybe if we added the 100% and made the AI pretend it is not worth for them to dispel (even though it is due to the difficulty modifiers) and simply considered the player's enchantments a zero priority target unless they had AEther Binding or Runemaster...maybe we could even extend that to other dispel resistance effects?

How about this?
If AI dispel power is more then 75% below the target's dispel resistance and the target's priority is below X, the target priority becomes 0.
X should be the amount where enchantments that automatically cause the AI to lose start. (Meteor Storm I guess? Not sure if there are any other left, the AI is kinda smart enough to not lose to specific spells anymore. But maybe we still want them to try dispelling things like Doomsday? Idk. We can get back to that tomorrow when I update the dispel priority tables for the new spells.)

[Seravy]

Roots of Genesis - do we have any particular preference of what tiles get turned to Forest? Unlike Armageddon, this can be beneficial or harmful depending on what the tile originally was, so it's not as obvious as "enemy territory only".

[htester]

According to change terrain spell, Swamps, Deserts, Hills and Grasslands should be the only tiles that can be directly converted to forests . Mountains aren't directly converted to forests so the spell shouldn't be able to target this type of tile directly. To ensure the effect is beneficial even on questionable trades like (losing grasslands for a forest) I would priotize like that:

Swamps or Deserts to forests (yours) -> Hills to forests (enemy or yours)-> Grasslands to forests (enemy) -> Grasslands to forests (yours) -> Swamps or Deserts to forests (enemy)

[massone]

Except, "after every combat" so it would be ALL your spearmen as long as there is only one on each tile. Basically, this spell gives you an infinite amount of respawning units if you use your units in 1 unit armies. For spearmen that's just for spellcasting opportunity but if you do this with something like a Great Wyrm then it can take out 2-4 enemy units each time. Being damaged doesn't really do much either because Stream of Life makes them heal to max instantly (and it's also trivial to heal them by Nature's Cures, or there is Herb Mastery which basically is a spell that says "units never have damage stay on them outside combat".

If it's one unit once per turn it's useless and too weak because a typical overland turn in the late game has many battles and units dying during a war.

Then each town with a religious building can only revive 1 unit per turn maximum. That cannot be abused infinitely, and is still relevant for late game if you've got a lot of towns. Supreme Light only affects caster units and Life Creatures. There is exactly 1 Life creature (Archangel) I would bother to cast Supreme Light on (or even summon, for that matter), and exactly 1 race with a unit I'd consider using Supreme Light on for offensive battles (Nightmares). That's it. This is very limiting for a pure Life play, and only works well when combined with another Realm with strong caster units.

I specified no heroes in the original proposal because Resurrection exists already. I think a spell to revive normal units (with enchantments), and summons is interesting and thematic. Raise Dead is a terrible spell on anything except a hero due to no enchantments retained and I never use it on anything else.

Furthermore, pure Life has almost no ability to win by combat spellcasting. I continue to believe that Call to Arms for Paladins is a worthless spell in 95% of situations except when your casting skill is way bigger than your opponent's and you use them to straight up outlast them in a tight battle. So are Exorcism/Holy Word without a hero using at least -2 spell save. The only way Life wins is with combat buffs, and you can't do that with weak units.

I have no problem with "cannot be dispelled" on Ruler of Heaven. It can always be Spell Blasted. As for why shouldn't Sorcery and Runemaster players be able to dispel...well they can dispel unit/city enchantments just fine, and at the moment, nothing can dispel Combat Globals either. Really, it makes more sense for there to be a way to make Globals impossible to dispel, by virtue of having changed the world on a fundamental level, than for Combat Globals to be undispellable.

[Cruel100]

According to change terrain spell, Swamps, Deserts or Hills to Grasslands should be the only tiles that can be directly converted to forests .  Mountains aren't directly converted  to forests so the spell shouldn't be able to target this type of tile directly. To ensure the effect is beneficial even on questionable trades like (losing grasslands for a forest) I would priotize like that:

Swamps or Deserts to forests (yours)  ->  Hills to forests (enemy or yours)->  Grasslands to forests (enemy) -> Grasslands to forests (yours) -> Swamps or Deserts to forests (enemy)

In many games, there is a differentiation of forest from the terrain where it is. I like this proposal with one caveat: I don't think forests should harm the Wizard who casts. I think that the magic must observe if the territory (around the cities) is proper for the wizard or for the enemies and makes a differentiation.

Perhaps it is worth adding a benefit to magic, for the forest to be as good as grassland. Or even just affect the wizard who cast the spell.

Another idea is to be a magical forest. With different characteristics from the common forest. And if it is harmful to the opponent, perhaps he can use the engineers to take it down.