What is the best offensive use of mana, or rather: Which elements/schools/thingamabobs are the most agressive? Fire is the easy one to spot, but what about the others?

entropy is all offensive spells and death is quite good with liches and contagion

It depends. On the sorcery side, Fire (fireballs, meteors), Air (maelstorm), Water (tsunami), Earth (rust, crush), and Death (contagion, lichdom) are all good choices. For summoning, Entropy, Fire, Death, Chaos, and Law work well.

Tsunami (water III sorcery) is actually quite desctructive because it can wipe whole city off the map and all the units garrisoned with it. Its also excellent tool for making natural defenses like shaping a coast around your city.

Fire and Entropy are two of the best due to their low level offensive spells- however, they lose out a little on the higher levels. One of my favourites is the Air 3 spell, because it damages all enemies in a huge area, through fog of war. 3 archmages with maelstrom is enough to wipe a city clean.

Fire in the early game, death in the later.
Firebals are crutial to conquer cities with cultural deffense [who goes for catapults these days? :) I dont cause they are exploitive] Later on death mana is better. Apart from that that contagnion in better than fireball [nerf contagnion] you get Pit Beast for your summoners. If you have the summoning trait you can keep those beasets almost forever [cause you have that 3 rounds buffer time to get the beast from one opponent unit to another]

Crush, Maelstorm, Tsunami are good if you are playing the Light side but overall they are not that destructive as a bunch of Moebious Witches with Death II and Fire II.

It is kind of hard to say due to the huge changes in the magic section we are going to see with the next version.

Entropy mana used to be the most agressive school at T1 allowing you to cast wither with every new produced and experienceless adept. Strong stuff. The negative healing promotion worked like a DoT on units within your cultural borders forcing them to retreat before they slowly died.

At T2 Contagion ( Deatch Sorcery ) and Ring of Fire ( Fire Divine ) are freaking amazing. Fireballs ( Fire Sorcery ) are solid and even though they are not as strong as a Contagion or RoF they make up for it with range and the ability to bombard City defences.
I can see this bombard City ( and actually fireballs at all) becoming more important due to the comming damage cap on AOE Spells forcing you to actually fight the city defenders instead of just AOEing them away.

T3 got Meteors ( Fire Sorcery) wich really hurt in numbers Pilar of Fire ( Fire Divine) used to kill almost everything with the focused fire of 3 High Priests. Crush ( Earth Sorcery) is your weapon of choice against magic resistant civs Tsunami ( Water Sorcery) suffers limitations in use ( can only be used next to water) so you can not depend on this school solely but it offers some nice utility. Air magic, kinda unspecacular in Sorcery T1 and T2 suddenly shines with Maelstrom. With its huge range and great damage output it is the most powerfull weapon of mass destruction turning the 5x5 tiles around your archmages into a zone of death. =)

Almost everything of this will change with the next version.



By fire be purged

dynablaster

Don't forget Mind 3 sorcery

It is kind of hard to say due to the huge changes in the magic section we are going to see with the next version.

Entropy mana used to be the most agressive school at T1 allowing you to cast wither with every new produced and experienceless adept. Strong stuff. The negative healing promotion worked like a DoT on units within your cultural borders forcing them to retreat before they slowly died.

At T2 Contagion ( Deatch Sorcery ) and Ring of Fire ( Fire Divine ) are freaking amazing. Fireballs ( Fire Sorcery ) are solid and even though they are not as strong as a Contagion or RoF they make up for it with range and the ability to bombard City defences.
I can see this bombard City ( and actually fireballs at all) becoming more important due to the comming damage cap on AOE Spells forcing you to actually fight the city defenders instead of just AOEing them away.

T3 got Meteors ( Fire Sorcery) wich really hurt in numbers Pilar of Fire ( Fire Divine) used to kill almost everything with the focused fire of 3 High Priests. Crush ( Earth Sorcery) is your weapon of choice against magic resistant civs Tsunami ( Water Sorcery) suffers limitations in use ( can only be used next to water) so you can not depend on this school solely but it offers some nice utility. Air magic, kinda unspecacular in Sorcery T1 and T2 suddenly shines with Maelstrom. With its huge range and great damage output it is the most powerfull weapon of mass destruction turning the 5x5 tiles around your archmages into a zone of death. =)

Almost everything of this will change with the next version.



By fire be purged

dynablaster

just pointing out one thing about air (lightning) damage spells. Lit (lightning) damage does more damage=weapon upgrade level of combat units. So maybe in .022 when the caps are applied to spells like fire, etc.. so that these spells no longer wipe out stacks of combat units..than maybe now air spells will be good since combat units will want to have copper/iron/mithril upgrades for more str...but this will only hurt them more with your lit damage spell attacks.

but in .021 nearly every type of magic wipes out combat unit stacks cuz of the no caps on them yet. so theres no need to use lightning damage when fire does an even beter job because of the lack of caps

Don't forget Mind 3 sorcery

as it functions now, Mind 3 sorcery is worth forgetting most of the time :eek:

With Mind 3 Sorcery, i assume you mean Domination? If that is the case, well....I dont know if i would dare to use it. Giving the enemy one of my high level mages can turn the tide of battle pretty rapidly... :eek:

Sorry, body 3 sorcery

The most effective use for mana I've found recently was to build the Tower of Divination and pop Mithril Working at a ridiculously early point in the game...

I really don't see how the game can function without any negative healing. What's wrong with entropy letting you wear your enemies down by attrition, without ever attacking them. :) Seriously, I think that negative healing should become impossible after a point (say ~ 25% strength) but there are too many spells and negative promotions (disease, plague) to warrent removing it from the game.

Why is it that the only use of life III summoning is to summon a unit that does nothing but use the life III divine spell. The first time I built Yvain, this upset me greatly.

Sorry, body 3 sorcery

Wow, Stoneskin looks great! I'll remember to go for that in the next game! :D

Why is it that the only use of life III summoning is to summon a unit that does nothing but use the life III divine spell. The first time I built Yvain, this upset me greatly.

It also sacrifices itself to aid units in its tile that would otherwise die, IIRC.

yes i think lifespark can heal your units if they are under attack while its not your turn to move

I really don't see how the game can function without any negative healing. What's wrong with entropy letting you wear your enemies down by attrition, without ever attacking them. :) Seriously, I think that negative healing should become impossible after a point (say ~ 25% strength) but there are too many spells and negative promotions (disease, plague) to warrent removing it from the game.

Why is it that the only use of life III summoning is to summon a unit that does nothing but use the life III divine spell. The first time I built Yvain, this upset me greatly.

The AI doesn't understand whats damaging them. They will stop and try to heal even though they are dying from the attrition damage. So for now negative healing had to be removed, it may be added back if we can get the AI to deal reasonably to it.

With Mind 3 Sorcery, i assume you mean Domination? If that is the case, well....I dont know if i would dare to use it. Giving the enemy one of my high level mages can turn the tide of battle pretty rapidly... :eek:

Indeed Mind 3 sorcery is crap right now imo.
It HAS to be a risk vs reward spell of course or it would be overpowered.
But with the current mechanics the risk far outweights the reward in most situations making the spell only usefull in very few cases.
Either if you have allready won so losing an Archmage wont change anythin or if you are in the situation of "Ok i have lost this game anyways because i can not stop this stack from whiping me out, so losing the Archmage wont change anytin and i can risk a Domination on the most powerfull unit in the stack because this might turn the tides of the battle. *hope* *prey* *beg* "

There should be a different kind of risk to balance it out. Random thoughts:

Adding a betrayal function to the unit that WILL kick in every time, you just dont know at wich time ( next turn? in 5 turns? While it stands right next to my Worker? ) combined with making it impossible to delete the unit ( domination-deleting would be a very cheap trick to remove powerfull enemy units without a risk) could maybe act as the balancing backdraw.
Hell you could even give the unit a temporary "really very pissed" ;) promotion after the domination wears out, adding some nice percentage to combat strenght. So you trade solving a problem now for facing a problem later. Whether the problem later will be worse depends on how you use the given time.

Resisting Domination could cause the loss of Mind 3 Promotion instead of the loss of the Archmage itself. With increasing costs of levelups forcing him to repeatedly buy the same promotion will hurt the overal power of a caster quite well.

This is quite OT ofc, but i could not resist. :mischief:

EDIT: I allready miss negative healing. Bye Bye Wither. :(


By fire be purged

dynablaster

Domination should make some sort of check where it compares level of caster vs target, and modify the chance of success based on that (maybe use Combat I-V or Spell Extension to modify the chance even more in your favor). And make it a chance between 40-75% that it will succeed, based on the above. It would have to print the chance if possible though.

it already does that

it already does that
Thought it was 50/50 always

Hell you could even give the unit a temporary "really very pissed" promotion after the domination wears out, adding some nice percentage to combat strenght. So you trade solving a problem now for facing a problem later. Whether the problem later will be worse depends on how you use the given time.


Or rather the enraged/crazed promotion

My suggestions to Domination are either make the enemy unit die/get hurt or the mean version: damage the caster to 50%-90% if the domination attempt fails. :D

My suggestions to Domination are either make the enemy unit die/get hurt or the mean version: damage the caster to 50%-90% if the domination attempt fails. :D

Would be nice to see more spells hurt the caster. Like there is a chance that the caster gets hurt every time he uses a fireball. Would cut down on the spell spamming a bit if the caster had to heal eventually. (And he shouldn't heal a turn he casts a spell, if they currently do so)

T3 got Meteors ( Fire Sorcery) wich really hurt in numbers Pilar of Fire ( Fire Divine) used to kill almost everything with the focused fire of 3 High Priests. Crush ( Earth Sorcery) is your weapon of choice against magic resistant civs Tsunami ( Water Sorcery) suffers limitations in use ( can only be used next to water) so you can not depend on this school solely but it offers some nice utility.

How does crush work on magic resistant units?

How does crush work on magic resistant units?

Crush is physical damage only. Nothing can resist physical damage in this game.

Yeah, you can magically resist a magic force that is crushing you, but you cannot magically resist the boulders and buildings that have been toppled onto your head by a magic force.

- Niilo

Aye, like a hot knife through butter. :)


By fire be purged

dynablaster

Would be nice to see more spells hurt the caster. Like there is a chance that the caster gets hurt every time he uses a fireball. Would cut down on the spell spamming a bit if the caster had to heal eventually. (And he shouldn't heal a turn he casts a spell, if they currently do so)

And have the AI fireball themselves to death?

And have the AI fireball themselves to death?

I have never seen the AI even use fireballs.

I have never seen the AI even use fireballs.

Acheron uses meteors.... that's a start.

I've lost many a ship straying too close to his lair

I have never seen the AI even use fireballs.
Do you play with "Show Friendly Movement" turned on? Whenever I spread out a religion, I see lots of fireballs in the late game patrolling around cities... :rolleyes:

I've seen a mobius witch cast several fireballs in a row. Now if only they would actually attack me with them...

Anyway, I remember Kael saying that he doesn't want to introduce the idea of casters hurting themselves when they cast spells. AI wouldn't understand that casting too many spells may hurt the caster.

I've seen a mobius witch cast several fireballs in a row. Now if only they would actually attack me with them...

Anyway, I remember Kael saying that he doesn't want to introduce the idea of casters hurting themselves when they cast spells. AI wouldn't understand that casting too many spells may hurt the caster.

Well, it can be balanced a bit. Instead of a fixed amount of damage, deal 50% of current strength in damage. The unit can't kill itself, but takes damage. :goodjob:

I think we need to completely rework the way the AI looks at healing, so as to allow both spell side effects and negative healing. Unfortunately, I don't think that is within my programming skill, and I have no suggestions as to how.

I've been hit with AI fireballs before, though rarely. I think a lot of the problem is that they never take the spell promotions for the caster units, instead valuing the combat promotions higher.

I wonder how possible it would be to program the AI to configure it's casters into specific mission units. Probably would be impossible, given the various mana requirements for the spells.

I've been hit with AI fireballs before, though rarely. I think a lot of the problem is that they never take the spell promotions for the caster units, instead valuing the combat promotions higher.

I wonder how possible it would be to program the AI to configure it's casters into specific mission units. Probably would be impossible, given the various mana requirements for the spells.

it would be easy to program
IF arcane unit: value spell promotion (or promotion from plane X for different AI)

sure, it won't be optimum mage specialization like we do(we also specialize cities better then the AI), but it'd at least make a start that they promote and use spells.

it would be easy to program
IF arcane unit: value spell promotion (or promotion from plane X for different AI)

sure, it won't be optimum mage specialization like we do(we also specialize cities better then the AI), but it'd at least make a start that they promote and use spells.

Note that if you just want the AI spellcasters to use certain promotions more frequently, there is an XML variable that can be changed for that purpose.

Actually focusing on a particular task is a bit tougher - probably the easiest way would be to have a few AIs dedicated to groups of paths, and algorithms which encourage following those paths.

I am wondering if anybody is aware of the buffs that certain types of mana gives to units with that affinaty type, atm i am only aware of druids and yvain with nature

All the elemental summons get affinity. And the spectre has death affinity.

I just did a search through the unit xml and found the following to have affinities:
Elementals get 1 affinity of their mana type.
Spectres and Wraiths get 1 affinity of death.
Druids and Lizardman Druids get 1 affinity of nature.
Dwarven Druids get 1 affinity of earth.
Ars gets 2 affinity of death.
Yvain gets 2 affinity of nature.
Mithril Golem gets 4 affinity of enchantment and earth.

Seems like a lot of mana's don't have any units that have affinities for them. I think every Civ's hero should have an affinity of their mana type to help keep them useful as time goes on (naturally their initial strength would need to be lowered).