Dual realm synergy

[Seravy]

While we have paid attention to single realms all being equally powerful, I think we should also look at what dual realms offer and which, if any, might need improvements by possibly adjusting some spells to be more combo friendly. This doesn't aim to be a complete list of good spell combinations, more like a generic evaluation of the most relevant syneriges.

Life+Chaos
+Chaos covers fills in best for most of Life's weaknesses : combat direct damage, counter flight, undispellable buff in Chaos Channels, being unable to directly hurt enemies, being bad at summoning.


+Life and Chaos buffs stack very well and especially in late game both realms have powerful global enchantments to buff all of your normal units.
+Both realms have a very heavy focus on global enchantments in the late game and have a spammable economy spell, so this works well for Runemaster and Spellweaver.
+Can destroy enemy economy globally while being protected from anyone else attempting the same, leading to easiest economy victories
+Cold Immunity, True Sight and Lightning Resistance items allow safe use of heroes vs every realm except Nature in the game.
-Both realms are hard to use in the early game, and potentially vulnerable to a lot of things.
-No access to sea travel magic, so has to rely on boats

Overall, I think lots of good synergy here and if Chaos early game gets better then I see no major disadvantages.

Life+Nature
+Both realms buff city economy which stacks in a multiplicative way (more population from nature, higher outputs per population from life)
+Can stack a ridiculous amount of defense boosting effects on any unit
+Nature covers for Life's weaknesses second best - Web, good summoning, mediocre but playable direct damage and save or die effects, overland curses, best combat summoning realm which is a major benefit for life wizards who otherwise don't have that ability until very rare
+Transmute offers mass produced adamantium, acting like an undispellable unit buff that stacks with Life buffs
+Earth Gate allows quickly reinforcing newly conquered cities which allows the unstoppable hero or buffed stacks to advance way faster.
+Call Lighting+healing/defense buffs can wipe out entire enemy armies with a single medium tier unit
+Second best set of item powers for artificers, all the life buffs, immunity to Crack's Call via Merging, and Regeneration
-Many buffs don't stack because they are either normal or summoned unit exclusive
-Some (but definitely not all) healing effects might be redundant

I think this is also good enough.

Life+Sorcery
+Best hero support via artifact powers and buffs
+Best buff stacking potential overall in the game (Life+Spell Lock!)
+Only two realms that have spells that benefit peaceful strategies directly.
+Time Stop is insane with the economic power of Life magic producing near infinite gold
+Overland movement boosting spells help unstoppable Life stacks or units to conquer faster
+Best late game lair/treasure hunting combination (Fast, invisible, immortal hero stacks)
+Buff own economy while dispel/counter enemy economy spells for economy victory
-Both realms lack good direct damage
-Both realms lack quality early game summoning spells, making early game hard, possibly even harder than Life+Chaos, but Aura of Majesty can turn that around

This is mostly about stacking buffs and using heroes, and is excellent at it.

Life+Death
+Spells to kill both normal and fantastic units instantly
+Dark Ritual affects Heavenly Light and stacks with Cult Leader for probably the strongest power output combo in the game
+Extremely good at dealing with unrest and as a consequence, best gold/production economy for snowballing rapid city development
+Both realms are good at avoiding losing units in battle (death units regenerate or you gain undead, Life heals or revives your normal units)
+Death offers Wraith Form and Shadow for Life's good heroes
+Stack Prayer and Black Prayer and Misfortune for some crazy combat advantage in battles involving larger armies in the early/midgame
-Both realms share having problems with flying enemies
-Undead aren't affected by Life healing magic
-Anti synergy in Death being unable to buff Life's normal units further while Life offers very little for Death's otherwise amazing summons

Decent, especially in its ability to mass produce large armies (or lots of economic buildings) early on while paying very little on maintenance and losing almost no units in combat. Overall might have the best early game potential.
However, other than that, not much is going on here and I see little reason to play these realms together if not for that reason.

Chaos+Nature
+Both realms offer solid, easy to use strong points : summoning and direct damage.
+Offers a powerful early (Nature) and late (Chaos) game.
+Raise Volcano is a combo with Nature's terrain modifying spells (but not a particularly good combo, it's more fun than effective)
+Survival Instinct with Doom Mastery
+Gargoyles with Land Linking are a serious force in the early game due to their low cost and being almost impossible to damage
+Nature is very good at stalling out combat, which can be used to throw lots of powerful damage spells from Chaos at the enemy
+Earth To Mud with Flame Blade bowmen is extremely good early on.
-Too much spell redundancy, both in combat spells and overland summoning spells.
-Even more spell redundancy : building destruction spells, Fire Storm/Blizzard.

Overall, it's kinda average but being the most newbie friendly and easiest to play that's probably not a bad thing.

Chaos+Sorcery
+Several unique, powerful spell combinations : Mind Storm+Disintegrate, Magic Vortex+Magic Immunity
+Inner Power buffs most Sorcery creatures
+Extremely good at defending or conquering cities without using much, if any, units. (dispel city buffs, rain fire, summon an air elemental, spam flame strike, etc)
+Invisibility+direct damage spells = win
+Most powerful late game spells in the game in both realms
+Sorcery magic is best to cover for the weaknesses of Chaos creatures or support them. (Invisible Chaos Spawn, Reinforce Magic and Focus Magic for Efreets, etc)
+AEther Binding offers high casting skill for Chaos spells
+Can dispel buffs that would protect from direct damage
-Extremely mana hungry
-Early game is slow

My favorite combination, definitely good enough.

Chaos+Death
+Can destroy both buildings and production/population to effectively destroy enemy cities without having to conquer them
+You almost always have some spells that can be used to destroy enemy units in combat
-Too much combat spells and overland summoning cause spell redundancy
-Chaos's resistance based spells and creature are strictly inferior to Death's options at least until Disintegrate

Nothing really stands out here. Might be good in games with fewer opponents where curses and economy reducing globals can easily win you the game but overall I think this isn't a good combination. Maybe if some of the Chaos commons offered more synergy to death...

Nature+Sorcery
+Focus Magic on Cockatrices
+Resist Magic covers for low resistance of Nature summons
+Nature covers for Sorcery's weak summoning and early game and lack of city economy options
+Earth Lore+Floating Island to scout the Myrran plane without opening it up (I think this even allows you to get Myrran mercenaries?)
+Good options for heroes/artifacts.
+Versatility in combat summoning (Nature offers durable, Sorcery offers high damage units)
+Regenerating in general is very powerful in the hands of a realm that is good at stalling for time (Flight/Invisibility/etc)

Definitely a solid combination here.

[b]Nature+Death[/b]
+Can destroy both buildings and production/population to effectively destroy enemy cities without having to conquer them
+Can heal undead
+Survival Instinct buffs undead
+Both realms can summon early regenerating units
+Strong early game through versatile, powerful summons, decent combat spells, and cheap hordes of undead
-Shares the weakness of low resistance
-Too reliant on save-or-die effects

Overall good but could be better?

[b]Sorcery+Death[/b]
+Best at destroying both summons and normal units in and outside combat
+Stack lots of resistance reducing effects to improve the above
+Lots of access to invincibility to abuse the combat spell potential
+Strong Death creatures fix weak Sorcery early game
+Resist Magic covers for Death creatures having low resistance
+Lots of magic power from cities in the late game
+Extreme control during late game as Death globals make it harder to cast and research spells and then you counter them if necessary

Many synergies, no obvious disadvantage, I think this is a great combination.

So I think most are fine, but Death could be better with Chaos/Nature/Life. On the other hand, Death being a selfish realm that's offering the least for others does make sense.

[Suppanut]

Those spells are from CoM II?

I found that CoM synergic system is completely difference from Magic the Gathering no matter how superficial of their similarity. look like most of CoM seem to be case of "opposite attract" case more than than "like dissolved like" synergy. Exception of Life-Death, most of opposite realm seem to synergy very well (life-chaos, nature-sorcery, chaos-sorcery), some even synergy on very fundamental philosophy level (chaos-sorcery). And it seem that chaos and sorcery synergy well with almost everyone.

Duel realms of chaos and nature could be the best bros or boring brothers up to what kind of late game spells player get from random picking. Early and mid game synergy is good and easy to do but mid-to-late game spell similarity could be problem due to redundency. If player end up deal fatal hand, player may have to rely on dungeon raid to get spell they miss. (and maybe with save scum to get what they really want from dungeon)

Agree on combination of sorcery and nature too. Regenerated sky dragon and flying great wyrm are one of the craziest things player could imagine.

I think best way to make death synergy with others without lose its selfishness would be for death to able to take advantage effect or buff from other realm to make their own even better or at least piggy-back effect of other realm. Maybe if there is spell which allow death unit to passively get share of vitality of living units on the same side to heal itself would be something that make undead synergy with life and nature better.

[teelaurila]

Death+Chaos: The most useful combo to me has been warp creature. With ghouls and magicians there is plenty chances to get early rare creatures as undead that single-handedly turn the tide for you. But it is only a chance - befitting chaos.
Still, if you want to boost it, perhaps another way for chaos to nudge down resistance? Mass-effect (randomized) curses perhaps? Either in combat or map square.

[massone]

I never realized that Earth Lore + Floating Island could be used that way. That's actually super cool, and I'm going to try it asap. Lately I've been playing as triple realm and finding that the synergies produced can actually be competitive with stacking the best retorts in COM II, and possibly even better, even on Lunatic. It's definitely a sign of good balancing and design, and the new spells have opened up a lot of variety. It also helps that trading is stronger in high wizard count games. There are very interesting new ways to play at high difficulties instead of stacking 3-5 picks worth of retorts.

[Seravy]

Death+Chaos: The most useful combo to me has been warp creature. With ghouls and magicians there is plenty chances to get early rare creatures as undead that single-handedly turn the tide for you. But it is only a chance - befitting chaos.
Still, if you want to boost it, perhaps another way for chaos to nudge down resistance? Mass-effect (randomized) curses perhaps? Either in combat or map square.

What about adding the following to Warp Creature's effect?
If the unit is affected by Black Prayer or Misfortune, add an additional effect for each.

Basically, Warp Creature adds all 3 if you have both global effects in play, or two if you only have one of them.

[teelaurila]

Death+Chaos: The most useful combo to me has been warp creature. With ghouls and magicians there is plenty chances to get early rare creatures as undead that single-handedly turn the tide for you. But it is only a chance - befitting chaos.
Still, if you want to boost it, perhaps another way for chaos to nudge down resistance? Mass-effect (randomized) curses perhaps? Either in combat or map square.

What about adding the following to Warp Creature's effect?
If the unit is affected by Black Prayer or Misfortune, add an additional effect for each.

Basically, Warp Creature adds all 3 if you have both global effects in play, or two if you only have one of them.

It might be even too strong with Black Prayer: The reduced resistance is already a strong combo to get Warp Creature to affect strong things, and with 2/3 chance to get to zero resistance it's amazing. Would be ok if it was uncommons both, but a death wizard with just one or two chaos books getting this seems way out.

Have to say Misfortune must be a new mechanic I am not familiar with: doesn't exist in the present manual either? (Am still playing CoM1, not the test version of II)

[Seravy]

Misfortune is a new common Death spell. If the targeted normal unit fails to resist, all units on their side of the combat get a -1 attack, defense and resistance penalty. (can only be applied once)

[Suppanut]

Chaos+Nature
+Both realms offer solid, easy to use strong points : summoning and direct damage.
+Offers a powerful early (Nature) and late (Chaos) game.
+Raise Volcano is a combo with Nature's terrain modifying spells (but not a particularly good combo, it's more fun than effective)
+Survival Instinct with Doom Mastery
+Gargoyles with Land Linking are a serious force in the early game due to their low cost and being almost impossible to damage
+Nature is very good at stalling out combat, which can be used to throw lots of powerful damage spells from Chaos at the enemy
+Earth To Mud with Flame Blade bowmen is extremely good early on.
-Too much spell redundancy, both in combat spells and overland summoning spells.
-Even more spell redundancy : building destruction spells, Fire Storm/Blizzard.

Overall, it's kinda average but being the most newbie friendly and easiest to play that's probably not a bad thing.

Perhaps spell redundency should be fixed, no other realm have spell redundency with nature more than chaos. Although natures have many spells which similar to other realms but they tend to have their own nature twist in it but nature version of combat spell and overland destruction spell of nature is too similar to chaos (although I understand that you want it to be blend mediocre). I would try to suggest some idea to make it a bit less redundency.

- Blizzard could cost more MP and have less damage but have additional effect of cause units on that tile to skip that turn's movement due to blizzard off-and-on on that tile for whole month and make unit outside that tile to lose all movement point if move pass through that tile to spend all of their movement point too.
- Earthquake could have something like aftershock effect (similar to warp lightning, repeat with smaller chance of destroy building) and make unit could not move out of that tile until the end of turn like case of blizzard too.
- Maybe icebolt could have effect of skip attack turn for unit that has cold immunity that not noncorporal too (as for them to not feel cold does not mean it could not be frozen to the place).