What should be theme of "Nature" realm?

[Suppanut]

Summoning, improving terrain, buffing summoned creatures, the element of Earth, dealing Cold damage, Petrification. Slowing/preventing enemy movement in combat.
In general, summoning, terrain, Slowing in combat, and being able to do everything else on an average or below level are the four main themes.

I think that last point is a bit too much, it looks like admitting "actually it doesn't have much of a theme, so it does a bit of everything"

I think "Nature" realm should be more than left over and mediocre like it is. It should be unique in its own way too. If nature means wild, feral, and savage, then it should be wild, feral, and savage. If want to straight up make fantasy forest creatures, why not included nymph, dryad and ent too.

Do you have any proposal about what "Nature" realm should be?

[Tiltowait]

Typically, and I don't just mean in MoM, nature's strength is growth, and regrowth.  You can trim it down but it always comes right back.  No matter how civilized, nature is always ready to reclaim any area the moment it's abandoned.  

But compared to the other elemental forces, nature is always a bit weak.  It's strong, after all it made the world, but it's not flashy.  It doesn't have a lot of effects that are good for powergaming such as fire, storm, etc.  Nature is always the one that gets hit hard by the other powers in the world.  

You could give nature the power of disease, except that's already taken in this game by black.  The power of weather, except that's already taken by red.  Maybe city debuffs?  Kudzu, decreases food by 2. 

If you want inspiration, perhaps look at Magic: the Gathering cards circa 1994-5.  After all, they ripped off half the game from there.

[Anskiy]

I think "Nature" realm should be more than left over and mediocre like it is. It should be unique in its own way too. If nature means wild, feral, and savage, then it should be wild, feral, and savage.  If want to straight up make fantasy forest creatures, why not included nymph, dryad and ent too.

I definitely agree. In the original, it felt like a hodgepodge of stuff from other realms, as if the developers didn't know what the "nature" theme meant. I personally feel like it would be interesting to have nature focus on the, well, more natural aspects of units, like maybe moving Heroism to the realm and calling it "Natural Talent", or improving resistance to statuses in general. After all, statuses could be seen as imposing unnatural forms on the units.

[Anskiy]

BTW nice to see you around, Tiltowait! Haven't seen you in quite some time...

[Seravy]

Yes, nice to see you are back!

Nature kinda has a lot of themes going on, but most of them are a bit harder to describe and less obvious than other realms.

Control of the terrain : in combat, spells that slow enemy movement (Earth to Mud, Entangle, Web), in overland, Change Terrain, Transmute, Gaia's Blessing, and the new global. In MtG, this was basically spells that allowed Green to put more lands into play.

Summoning : Nature has the best summon and buffs that affect summons only. MtG definitely did this as well (except they failed at it, Green creatures were pretty much the worst among the old cards. )

Spells that bypass protection : Crack's Call, Web, Earthquake can affect units/cities immune to magic. MtG didn't have this because you can't really define rules for bypassing protection well.

Counter flying creatures : Mtg had a lot of this and we have too : Web and Giant Spiders.

Petrification : This was mostly on old cards but green did have the monopoly on "if this unit fights andother, the other unit dies after the combat" effect. We already have this in the game - Gorgons, Petrify spell, Cockatrices.

Nothing else really comes into my mind that Green in MtG had honestly. Produce lots of (green) mana? But that was done through terrain and we have that covered, except in this game terrain doesn't produce mana, it produces other resources. We don't have colors of mana in the game either.

Oh, there was one : Combat tricks like Giant Growth. But that doesn't fit the game mechanics, you can't cast a spell in response to the enemy attacking your unit here and lacking that, it's just a generic ability to buff.
I guess we could have combat only buff spells that can't be cast overland but is that useful? I rather just summon one more Boar 90% of the time.

[Suppanut]

Agree. I think combat enchantment which give something like +1 melee +1 defense per figure in units (represent giant growth), or +1 melee +1 defense for number of unit enemy have more than caster (represent rampage), or +1 melee for each level of exp or creature rarity along with armor priecing (represent stampede), or maybe grant throwing would be nice too.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

No, buffs for normal units are what Life and Chaos are for. Adding that to Nature is anti-thematic.

A global or city spell that adds 'wild creatures' to assist in combat or garrisoning would be thematic, but I'm not sure whether there's a need that it would satisfy. Since we already have wild boars, any wild animals would have to have a different role, such as providing tempting targets for ranged attacks.

The main strength of Nature should be its summons, plus city growth/wellbeing. How about a spell that buffs nature summons or somehow harms enemies when 'unnatural' magics are used in combat? That fits a couple of its VR spells. Casting a damage spell against a nature summons might boost its defense (or attack, by making it angry), while a curse might boost its MR (except that Nature is supposed to be bad against Death). Battlefield spells might cause 'dangerous ground' which might occasionally injure an enemy unit (snake bit you) or cause it to use up a movement (stepped in a hole/tangle). The latter fits 'bad vs Death', due to flying or wraithform.

I suppose the question is: should we reduce its versatility (remove the direct damage spells? make Nature's Cures summon-only?) to make its central theme stronger? That might bias it against sole-realm play.

[Suppanut]

I think the highest ideal of Nature realm is to in harmony with nature and and erase border between nature and other aspect of men and races.

So you think it should be "Mother Nature" combat enchantment which grant additional heal per turn and regeneration 0 for all nature creatures and randomly deal poison attack to corperal units (by venomous snake, insect attack, poisonous plants) and/or interrupt movement in battlefield (could not move to reach destination and get interrupt and loss all movement point half-way)?

And "Earth Bound"/"Natural Harmony" global enchantment that turn all regular units under caster wizard to be treated as nature creature (could get additional bonus from land linking) and fantastic creatures under caster wizard no longer treated as fantastic creature by spells of other realm (them all bound to natural aspect of the world, could no longer distinguish from normal units by wisdom of other realms, which good for some, due to no longer vulnerable to exorcise, holy word, banish, great unsummoning due to they become natural part of this world, but bad for others, especially many of death spells such as possession now also could target them) ,all units with supernatural trait of every wizards would loss this trait in process (due to everything now suppose to be part of nature), and every figures in all undead units of other wizards would get 1 doom damage at every end of monthly turn (natural decay and decomposition, get eat up by bacteria and fungus)?

And "Motherland" city enchantment which double food production and population growth in city (different from boost of man-made things by life realm) grant additional melee/defense bonus for regular units on caster's side if fight take place in area within 3 tiles from city?

And "Typhoon/Hurricaine/Cyclone" combat enchantment which -2 movement of all non-caster's flying and sailing units and randomly trigger several random armor piercing lightning strikes, random turn tiles to mud, strong whirlwind damage all enemy flyer units, or strong hails of cold water and ice (fairy dust on all enemy units) each turns (effect could trigger more than 1 type each turns) but this spell could damage building in city, longer the effect, more buildings would be destroyed. (maybe this should be replacing "Called Lightning" spell, This suppose to be one of strongest force of nature that nature could ever get with real life power more power output than nuclear bomb and on similar level to earthquake, nothing more "natural force" than this but not as cost effective when compare to different chaos spells with similar effects that combined into it.)

And perhaps uncommon combat summon for nature should be insect swarm (such as bee, wasp, and locust) which has weapon immunity, missile immunity, non-corporal, flying, and deal armor piercing and poison attack of sort would working too.

As we already have small forest fairy "spirites", why not bigger forest spirits of plants like Ents and dryads too (maybe giant immobile "Tree of Life" as combat summon that shooting magic from itself like tower and could use heal magic to replacing construct catapult)? And why not include tropical jungle features such as giant carnivorous plants, or verdant lords as summon too? Or if follow tropical jungle spirit trend, maybe were-tiger and were-jaguar (human possessed by spirit of the wild and turned into jungle predator) would also works.

Perhaps by add more "mother" and "nature" would make Nature realm better without breaking its theme.

[Seravy]

So you think it should be "Mother Nature" combat enchantment which grant additional heal per turn and regeneration 0 for all nature creatures and randomly deal poison attack to corperal units (by venomous snake, insect attack, poisonous plants) and/or interrupt movement in battlefield (could not move to reach destination and get interrupt and loss all movement point half-way)?

Herb Mastery. Call Lightning (yes, it's not poison damage but poison is obsolete past midgame). Entangle.
So these effects already available in the realm.

Converting all (own) units to Nature creatures - currently the are no spells in the game that buffs Nature creatures, but there are several for other types, so this would be a source of anti-synergy.
Damaging/unfavorably affecting enemy units globally should be kept for the Death realm.

Nature has little need for a defensive city enchantment - Nature's Eye, Earth Gate and combat summons allow you to react to threats immediately - and already has boosted max population (which raises food and growth indirectly).

A spell to damage flying units is a good idea if we end up needing to fill a spell slot.

Ultimate before adding new spells we need to pinpoint which spells are flawed and need replacing. Is there any?

[Suppanut]

Where could I find list of spell in CoM II?