What is your favorite Spell Sphere?

[Kael]

I agree with Darthcycle as well, though I can promise the AI does cast fireballs, summon monsters, etc, it doesnt do it as well as I would like. The nature of modding is that first we must create, then we tune. We know we have a lot of AI work to do.

As for skeletons, I did some testing with them over the weekend. The only thing I didn't like about them was the ability to double hit with them (hit with a skeleton from a previous turn, let it die, summon another one and attack with that. To stop that I have made all of the "permanent summons" unable to move or attack the turn they come into play.

Outside of that I don't see any balance issue with the skeletons. I certainly wasnt able to do more than feed my enemies a lot of xp with them.

 

[Kael]

First, I agree to what DarthCycle said. Those who are complaining that certain spells are too powerful should check whether that is maybe only the case because the CPU doesn't use them. Nevertheless I think that some basic balancing can already be done when some feature is extremely overpowered or useless.

About skeletons...

I don't think that skeletons are too strong. Although I try to pick Death I with most of my Adepts, just because they can't learn too many useful promotions, I never get overly powerful using skeletons. It's nice to summon a lot of them, but by the time you get a large number of adepts, 3 strength and no defensive boni is just not very strong anymore. They can make a difference, but that's how it should be; we don't want the spell to be useless, after all. They have their uses (scouting is one of them; I think scouting with skeletons is a feature, not an exploit), but since they're so weak, it's often more effective to build axemen instead of the adepts you need to support such an army. Additionally, death magic makes other civs hate you.

Please do not change the skeletons' permanency. When I play evil civs I love to have a standing summoned skeleton army, even if only for flavor.

I think that another spell is much more overpowering. As much as I hate to say it - because I love those units - the liches' twincast ability is too powerful in combination with meteor swarm. Since you can have three liches, that means 18 meteor swarms per turn...

Yeah, I gave them twincast because I had the ability free (the only unit with it isnt human playable right now) and I needed something for liches. We need to come up with a better lich effect (or maybe getting access to another archmage is enough).

Additionally, maybe you could make Guardian Vines castable only outside of cities or give them a defense malus for cities. As it is, they're great city defenders (as those don't need to move anyway) and any other potential use like guarding important resource tiles outside is not an efficient option. Mobile units are better for that. Deciding which tile outside should be guarded would make strategic considerations more important than they're now. Oh, and it would certainly add to their nature flavor if they wouldn't always be urban defenders.

Good idea, I'll add that.

 

[H.GrenadeFrenzy]

It is not death we need fear but what comes after death......and you thought they meant the afterlife........foolish mortals,HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA......

 

[Xereq]

On the balance of undead legions:
What about a promotion called 'conjured' which all "perma-summons" have, where they get a chance to turn barbarian if not within two squares of an arcane unit...this can of course be abused by sending wave after wave of conjures at a rival in hopes they will be hostile but also detrimental because then you armies have to cleave through the ones that didn't make it to your enemy...on second thought, that could be fun!

 

[lorgen]

On the balance of undead legions:
What about a promotion called 'conjured' which all "perma-summons" have, where they get a chance to turn barbarian if not within two squares of an arcane unit...this can of course be abused by sending wave after wave of conjures at a rival in hopes they will be hostile but also detrimental because then you armies have to cleave through the ones that didn't make it to your enemy...on second thought, that could be fun!

I`d prefer that they would get a chance of disappearing. If they turn barbarian as you propose, I`d probably find a suitable corner of my empire, keep the barbarians to myself and get lots of cheap xp.

But again, why do anything. Someone argued earlier in the thread that when you get to the level of being able to summon lots ofskeletons, your other units should be so strong that skeletons just are annoying (and cheap xp). I fully agree with this, and don`t see why they should be changed.

 

[Neo Guderian]

I really like the breadth of the magic system that you guys have implemented.

However, I would personally like to see more depth and cross polination.

Firstly, I really wished that mana nodes did more than just give a free first tier spell. Shouldn't a spell's castability be determined by what mana is available?

Second, How about cross polinating some of the different spell types? For example, Fire and Earth might yield a spell for summoning a Lava Elemental. Death and Life might allow access to a Drain Life spell. Personally, its not individual spells that excite me, its killer combos.

Im sure you guys have more ideas running through your heads than time to actually complete though. I salute all your efforts.

 

[Kael]

I really like the breadth of the magic system that you guys have implemented.

However, I would personally like to see more depth and cross polination.

Firstly, I really wished that mana nodes did more than just give a free first tier spell. Shouldn't a spell's castability be determined by what mana is available?

Second, How about cross polinating some of the different spell types? For example, Fire and Earth might yield a spell for summoning a Lava Elemental. Death and Life might allow access to a Drain Life spell. Personally, its not individual spells that excite me, its killer combos.

Im sure you guys have more ideas running through your heads than time to actually complete though. I salute all your efforts.

Yeah, right now we are just trying to fill the base slots up (and we have 5-6 new spheres left to add) before we look to combo spells. Although I would say there are a lot combos already available just in considering the interaction of different spells effects. Im poretty sure someone has come up with a VERY broken flesh golem that we are going to have to outlaw at some point.


The mana nodes will also be playing a larger role for wonders in the future.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I think there are way too many mana combos possible to try to design spell for even a fraction of them. That'd be fun if there were, like, 4 elements. You just made those combos immediately accessible as seperate spheres in essence.

You were playing with ideas to make multiple mana more useful--is it possible to decrease adept cost by 10 hammers if you have a two of one mana type, and by 20 if you have a triple? That might give a slight incentive, though probably not enough.

 

[Kael]

I think there are way too many mana combos possible to try to design spell for even a fraction of them. That'd be fun if there were, like, 4 elements. You just made those combos immediately accessible as seperate spheres in essence.

You were playing with ideas to make multiple mana more useful--is it possible to decrease adept cost by 10 hammers if you have a two of one mana type, and by 20 if you have a triple? That might give a slight incentive, though probably not enough.

Yes, we can effect the production costs with bonus's. This is a double effect though. Since the adepts are boosted for the mana you have to also decrease their cost means better units for more cost. Nothing wrong with that if it isn't unbalancing but I would probably tend to either boost power or lower cost, not both.

 

[Love]

I voted nature cause i like ljosalfer very much and so on

 

[Xyshi]

I would definitely say that fire is the most powerful right now. It gets good spells in all 3 categories. For summoners you get the awesome sand lion and a fire elemental, liches and archmages get meteor swarms, and best of all is the inquisitor using pillar of fire....

Kael i think that pillar of fire is incredibly overpowered right now, but only because the AI never uses it. I conquered a much more advanced AI opponent who had many T4 defenders with only a few crusaders and a couple high priests and inquisitors. The pillars of fire just completely annihlated everything.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I agree with PoF, haven't used it but a couple times, but it is the equivalent of 3 or 4 catapults, iirc. Without the chance to level up the opposition.

 

[jselsmark]

Firstly, I really wished that mana nodes did more than just give a free first tier spell. Shouldn't a spell's castability be determined by what mana is available?

I finally got my answer to why my adepts got some extra promotions all of the sudden, and I really hope that u will make the nodes a more critical resource in the future, not being able to cast death spells without death mana for instance.

Oh, which brings me back to the poll... death magic rules... my army of undeads march through the land of the living causing disease and burning cities where ever they find them... Yes, I am Rosier, DESTROYER OF WORLDS!

 

[Aletr]

Early on water and death, when first able to build cojurers starting to build many adepts(must have one chaos mana), at start they shold get at least 5 exp and that free chaos 1, after they built giving them 2 combat promotions, upgrading to conjurer and learning 2nd chaos spell(afterwards only combat promotions). This is very powerful sphere, you can summon 7 str units with promotions, who will stay in your hands until are in cultural borders of enemy, and gaining even more promotions. So I prefer chaos in middle game because I really killing off oponents like that without loosing even 1 unit.