Merge Sorcery and Summoning?

[mtagge]

Earth
Wall of Stone (kinda boring, maybe add an effect when it is cast outside of cities?)
- Have this spell create a fort when cast outside of the city. That's basically what it's creating in the city; besides having an adept spamming a generally unimpressive tile improvement seems suitably powered for a level 1 spell.
Stoneskin
Conjure Earth Elemental (replaces crush)


Enchantment
Enchanted Blade
Flaming Arrows
- I would like this ability to either offer a larger bonus OR allow the unit to bombard the enemy. As is, (non-elven) archers are outperformed by melee units so this spell needs to be disproportionately better to make up for it. That and allowing bombardment would make it more than just a numerical bonus to the unit while still fitting the theme.
Spellstaff
- I always felt this ability, while nice, was a little underwhelming. Maybe have the promotion also decrease the chance of a spell being resisted/increasing spell damage?

Interesting suggestions. If I were dictator for a day I would instead make Earth I give stoneskin, and Earth II create permanent walls or make forts appear at a cost of a movement point. Besides in my personal mod I let archers and cats fire opportunity fire from forts and cities into an adjacent square that is in your cultural bounds when an enemy enters them. This would let a group of archers and a Earth II mage force a field battle or at least a chokepoint in a hurry.

 

[seZereth]

Interesting suggestions. If I were dictator for a day I would instead make Earth I give stoneskin, and Earth II create permanent walls or make forts appear at a cost of a movement point. Besides in my personal mod I let archers and cats fire opportunity fire from forts and cities into an adjacent square that is in your cultural bounds when an enemy enters them. This would let a group of archers and a Earth II mage force a field battle or at least a chokepoint in a hurry.

that sounds like a really cool idea but I am just the art guy

 

[sylvain5477]

Would you mind updating the first post so that everyone can more easily follow the decisions regarding the new system and react more appropriatly about it ?

 

[Kael]

Would you mind updating the first post so that everyone can more easily follow the decisions regarding the new system and react more appropriatly about it ?

Everything in the first post should be up to date.

 

[xaliger]

Add some more direct damage spells.

Like:
Air 1: lightning, str 2, no colateral
Ice 3: iceball, str 5, -2 movements to whole stack

also some evil and good spheres can have direct damage. Like
sun2/3 and shadow2/3 doing holy/death damage.

And please consider magic resistances/imunities. All dwarves should have some resistance to all spells. Orcs can have fire/death resistance but ice vulnerability, etc.

This can somewhat increase the fun of using magic in attack. Fireballs everywhere is boring And also, fireballs (they should be most damaging spell) are inefective to some opponents like dragons and late barb heroes.

Mine 2c

 

[TheJopa]

Special Use spells:
Burning Blood (maintained for the Moroi)
Rage (maintained for the avatar of wrath)
Contagion (becoming a unique spell for Mary)
Lichdom (becoming a special 2nd spell that is available with death3)
Crush (becoming a special dwarven druid spell)
Pillar of Fire (becoming a special spell for Chalid)
Entangle (becomes a special druid only spell)
Hide (becomes a special spell for units with the stealth promotion)
Hasturs Razor (becoming a unique spell for Hemah)
Lichdom (becoming a special 2nd spell that is available with death3)


Spells that would be removed by this plan:
Transmutation Kept as event
Unholy Taint Kept as free AV priests promotion
Summon Imp Imp unit kept as Infernal Adept UU
Summon Azer Azer unit kept and can be gained through events
Summon Law Bringer Law Bringer unit kept and can be gained by sanctifying graveyard
Summon Griffon Unit kept
Summon Guardian Vines Unit kept
Summon Sand Lion Kept as Malakim special spell
Summon Djinn Kept as metamagic spell
Spirit Guide Order priests start with Spirit Guide Promotion
Summon Chaos Marauder Kept as Sheaim UU

SPELLS REALLY REMOVED:

Summon Kikijub
Spiritual Hammer
Banish
Meteor Swarm
Restore City
Righteous Cause
Summon Lifespark
Hideous Thoughts
Summon Phantasm
Whitefire

 

[stp]

Everything in the first post should be up to date.

Great, you made a minor mistake though: Hemah's unique Hasturs Razor is still in the remove list instead of the special use spells list. Lichdom is on both lists accidentially.

EDIT: Overlooked the the "may" on Hasturs Razor, so it is only lichdom, which is correct now anyways.

 

[TheJopa]

Huh, according to the first post Order priests get unyielding order spell and High Priests Bless?

 

[Kael]

Huh, according to the first post Order priests get unyielding order spell and High Priests Bless?

Yeah I just reversed them (and put Bless up to full strength). I think Bless is a more powerful spell.

 

[Niveras]

Overall I like that the number of options and superfluous spells are being removed, but on the other hand I feel that some important ones are being thrown out (primarily with respect to offensive spells). I also had some possible suggestions, but because I am only an average player at best they may be ignorant of some particular nuances in balance.

In particular I don't like that crush is being removed from the mages. Going from a spell that can pretty much destroy a stack of city defenders (provided you have the army to clean up), to a summon that - while having earth affinity - can still only attack once per (or once, if you're not summoner) turn is a bit a leap. On the other hand, Crush was only worse than Meteor Swarm because it could not kill units (and I guess was also limited to 80% total damage, does collateral damage have a limited beyond not being able to kill?). Mostly this is just a pet peeve because Crush gave RoK civilizations, if they chose to use mages, a powerful spell and with a nice secondary effect for spamming earth nodes (getting more metal resources).

I'm also anxious about losing white fire. Perhaps it is only because I am Malakim/Empyrean in my current game, but Whitefire is a very nice mid-range offensive spell for good civilizations, versus AV's Ring of Flames. While it doesn't do as much damage per turn, it also doesn't hit good or neutral units, which I think makes it better than Ring of Flames.

The air elemental would be a good clean up tool if you gave it blitz and it kept the ability to spawn lightning elementals. With flying and a high movement rate it can help cripple your enemy if you don't have the brute force to kill him yet.

I like that meteors are being removed. It seemed that everyone found them overpowered. The fire elemental that replaces probably should still do collateral damage, but that you only get one (albeit with a much higher strength and no ability to bombard) surely still puts it weaker than meteor swarm.

On the Life3: I think you should keep both lifespark and resurrection. That is, you can summon a lifespark, which can then be used on a lifenode to consume the node and to resurrect your hero.

Crown of Brilliance could probably have Revelation added to it, albeit at a shorter range, although I've never personally had to use Revelation (and, at least in single player, Revelation alone is a weak tier 3 spell). I've noticed a few people were chagrined over it being removed, I guess it is way more useful against opponents who are smart about using hidden nationality units? Does it have any other use? I know it also removes invisibility, but I thought that you couldn't do anything except move while invisible without it being removed, meaning whether enemy units are invisible in your territory is pretty moot.

I think regeneration is fine as is since it means you don't have spend that one or two turns in enemy territory waiting for your stack to heal itself, even with a priest (unless you have a high priest, I guess, or, under my suggestion, a lifespark). It could maybe remove disease and plague as well, but that may make it way too powerful.

 

[jimi12]

are you keeping the art for the phantasm in the game? i really thought that unit art was very well done and i would be sad to see it go.

 

[Kael]

are you keeping the art for the phantasm in the game? i really thought that unit art was very well done and i would be sad to see it go.

Really? That was KaelArt(tm) and never intended to be permanent. I dont mind using it but personally I never thought it was very good.

 

[sylvain5477]

Everything in the first post should be up to date.

Thanks.
I may go too far, but would you add which summon will be permanent and which temporary (add the summons characteristics would be nice as well althought already written on the changelog, so that everything concerning magic is in this one post) ?

 

[Mewtarthio]

Wait, Confessors can cast Unyeilding Order now? That's pretty powerful. You could pretty much eliminate all unhappiness in any important city, while still having disciples left over to fight.

 

[Yaotzin]

*checks date* Nope not April 1st.

Confessors can cast Unyielding Order?? The heck? Aside from the pretty darned powerful elimination of happiness, it removes all maintenance, thus making the Order's bonuses (lower maintenance, garrison happiness etc), completely useless.

It's a joke or a misunderstanding right?

 

[Roghar]

In order to make Trust a bit more powerful, how about have it reduce rate of increase of war weariness also? The people love and trust their leader and are happy to support the war as they believe it is in their best interests.

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

Not sure if this was asked already, but what would the new druid spell line up look like. Will they still get summon treant?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Yeah I just reversed them (and put Bless up to full strength). I think Bless is a more powerful spell.

I think part of the reason unyielding order might seem weaker is that you had a limit? An unlimited number of units with UO seems unduly useful--besides which, like was said, makes any other maintenance or happiness modifiers that the religion grants irrelevant. (If it stays like this, might as well cut basilicas and social order.) The power of UO goes up exponentially with each caster, while more casters just make using bless less micro-intensive.

I'm not sure why you think bless is that strong--it's equivalent to flaming arrows which you get at the same time (or can); while it effects more unit types, it is temporary.

Let Bless be dispelled, then you give a good counter to it and I think it'd work fine as a priest-level spell. But we'll see.

 

[kenken244]

I don't think that unyeilding order should eliminate unhappiness, i think it should just eliminate crime.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Well, now that would be next to worthless at the moment.
edit: unless you mean maintence, though that's still kind of redundant with basilicas.