Some thoughts on the magic system

In Fallen Enchantress magic seems much more effective than WoM and thats very much a good thing IMO; I also like how each shard has its own clear identity and abilities - well done devs for the work you have done so far. Having played a few games I feel like sharing my thoughts on what we have so far and to make some suggestions about other things that could be added - mainly counters I think.

All the shards seem to be very useful to me but the two that stand out as particularly strong are Air and Water - both of which have some extremely useful spells.

Air gets cloudwalk, which is obviously amazing and I think the 80 mana cost plus high level requirement is entirely justified but it also gets evade and haste early on and the fantastic tornado, which is like a tactical nuke if you invest in evoke and air shards (fire gets something similar too).

Water gets meditation and mantle of oceans which are both good for stockpiling mana, blizzard (which you can easily start casting for free), freeze (a really handy strategic spell), and grip of winter (pure evil).

Most of the spells seem really good however I am underwhelmed by spells like celerity and the equivalents - 250 mana for a 1 point stat increase? seriously?

At the moment, I think spellcasters have no real answer except opposing spellcasters - and since the AI doesnt seem to level it's channelers quickly this puts them at a disadvantage. I would like to see some more magical defences too. Here are some things I think they should include:

1) nullify magic - strategic & tactical spell - removes all magical buffs/debuffs/enchants from target unit - maybe there should be checks between the spellmastery of the casters (the ones that cast the spells and the and the one trying to disenchant them)

2) back to basics/ null pulse - high level tactical spell - removes all enchants/buffs/debuffs from ALL units on the battlefield automatically

3) spell wards - enchantments that boost defences against spell damage and resistance checks - this could be a generic catch all enchantment or based on opposing elements - e.g. fire mages could create a ward against water magic, death mages could create a ward against life magic etc

4) buildable defences in cities that protect against magic in a similar way to hedge wall against physical attacks

5) ring of embers, ring of the glacier - lets have a ring for all six shards and buildable at the same tech as all of these - and the AI trained to assess its enemies/rivals and equip its troops with the appropriate rings

6) spell resistance - does this protect against spell damage? - it should if it doesnt

7) the rituals tech should allow units to pick traits like fire resistance etc - again, the AI should be trained to scout it's enemies spellcasters and plan ahead to build units with corresponding defences - Galciv 2 did this with lasers vs shields, missiles vs flak, mass drivers vs armour

Anyway, those are a few thoughts on counters against magic

An aggressive strategic spell I'd really like to see in the game is insurrection - this should be a top tier curgen's volcano type spell that allows the caster to steal an enemy city (and all its population and garrison army) unless a channeler or the tower of domination is in that city - it's not an enchantment

This post is getting pretty long so I'm going to leave it at this for now - what are other people's views on magic at the moment? I know it's getting a big overhaul for the next public beta so I'll be interested to see the changes.

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Good post. It should be possible to build troops that are fairly resistant to magic BUT it should come at a cost such that the magic resistant troops are either noticably weaker than normal troops or sufficiently expensive that it is difficult to field a large number of them. Either way would make magic resistant troops able to counter a strong magic faction but fall to an equivalant investment in normal troops.

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Cheers Mistwraithe glad you approve. I agree that there should be a cost involved vs conventional armies.

So to elaborate a bit further:

building defences (could be called something like nullstone shrine) would give catchall magic defence but have a maintenance cost

rings - cost crystal and labour

traits (could be called nullstone shrouding - fire or arcane defence - fire) cost labour and a trait slot - plus they could give -1 strength +1 intelligence so if you take all 3 slots as magic defence then you're going to have weak soldiers

However the life shard spells are all about buffs so maybe their counter traits and rings would be that the unit's attacks have a chance of disenchanting life buffs.

On a sidenote, I hope that with beta 0.8 Frogboy has trained the AI to be aware of spells like freeze, tremor, pillar of fire, cloudwalk and tornado - they should use these against enemies in their territory and they should be aware of these spells when attacking another player - they should try to invade and attack a city in one turn against a player with a large stock of mana and access to these spells

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For pure tactical mayhem, it's hard to beat Fire. Flame Dart and Fireball are the bread and butter of any of my casters with the Fire School.

Does anyone know what effect Spell Mastery has on magic? I always level it up when I get the chance but I'm not sure what effect it has.

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Yes Fire's good too but it seems more limited compared to the other shards - more spells are being added so it will be good to see what additional spells fire gets and I suspect Feedback will be awesome for fighting enemy spellcasters in the next beta

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I like each sphere having its strengths.

Fire's great on damage
Air's great for mobility (currently doing too much damage)
Water's great for control
Earth's great for defense
Life's great for healing and growth
Death's great for debuffs
I want to see an Arcane or Ether sphere that is dedicated towards non-elemental things, such as force spells (pushing/pulling enemies), mana burns, counterspell (maybe), arcane defenses and offenses (ethereal weapons make all attacks by unit avoid x% armor). This sphere would receive small bonuses from all shards, as opposed to huge bonuses for a certain type.

This is well designed. We don't need spells added to bring everything in line. New spells should enhance each sphere's feel. They should remain asymmetrical. They need to be balanced however.

That said to add to the list of ideas, I propose changing counterspell to act as a sort of reaction spell instead of an interrupt mid progress spell. When cast, the next spell an opponent tries to cast before your next turn is countered when it is tried to cast. There are a couple of advantages to this.

This will keep counter spell from being avoided by MOAR INIT for double turns.
Adds interesting gameplay with multiple spell casters, such as trying to cast a cheap spell to burn your opponent's counter so that your fireball still goes off.

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