[Balance/Abilities] Impulsive + Fireball = dead enemy army

Note that there seems to be a bug with haste, as it make the target turn comme immediatly when hast is cast, so it shouldn't be as abuseable.

High init allows this to go off without even using Haste - by the end of my last game, I was casting turn 1 Blizzard, annihilating entire full strength garrisons with one cast.

And another thing... Focus & Impulsive and fireball. I tried some of that and it wasn't what I expected. First turn : focus & Fireball charge. 2nd turn: Focus lost & Fireball. What a delusion !

I'd consider that powerful but balanced compared to other things.

Speelcasters are much harder to make powerful (still very much possible) than using Melee (Maul comes to mind but also lots of other more in-line stuff...) and you have to pump some resources / perks into it. (also makes sense: You want your Mages to cast and be fast...)

Its a byproduct of the initiative-system and imo a tactically sound option. I have to say I like the initiative system quite alot and am not even sure I really dislike the option you pointed out above. (Can you outline how the above is not how it is supposed to work? And point out the real way it should work?)

If things need a nerf, there is always an option to up the casting-time to more turns (not sure if Fireball and Blizzard really need this)... No need to fiddle with the system in a way that makes it overly complicated.

Compare to Melee: Impulsive and Sweep (which is a much fairer comparison to the clearly overpowered Maul) which works quite similar to a Fireball, brings you into danger but doesn't cost mana and needs time to recharge.

Synopsis: Not everything which seems powerful is overpowered... Investment into magics should pay off and be a viable way to play and win the game.

The same can be done with Armies and Melee Heroes in other different and similar ways. This includes hoarding Shards and making some serious damage with spells (even with low casting cost with the right equip and perks which is far rarer than the stuff boosting the other ways...).

My specialised Fire-Mage with Impulsive + Casting cost Flame-Dart 1, Fireball 3, 2 Spellboosting Perks and a fire-shard is still a bit less powerfull compared to my 2 Melee-Monsters overall even if you don't count in Maul, just Sweep and double-Strike and good equip which seems abundant...

Balanced compared to what? At an equivalent level, with equivalent gear, no melee character can do the damage to an army in one turn that a caster can, it's not even close. Even WITH maul and high initiative, you can't wipe out as a garrison the way you can with a one turn blizzard. Sweep doesn't come close either, you can't annihilate a huge garrison with sweep, it isn't possible to get into the right position immediately (even with thunderstrike, you won't kill as many targets as a blizzard)

And no, casters don't require a lot to make them powerful - path of the mage, one level of evocation and fireball (that's four perks, one of which is guaranteed), is enough to start nuking the hell out of groups with ANY init boosting spells, gear, or traits.

Maul is going to get nerfed, and I don't have a problem with powerful aoe, but eliminating entire armies before they even get a turn is ridiculous.

Melee is still important in the late game for element/spell resistant monsters and heroes/single monster units with high hp that can't be easily debuffed, but magic is vastly superior for dealing with groups right now. I don't have an issue with that either, it's the '15 mana, your army dies before you can use it' part that I take issue with.

Melee currently doesn't have access to the Overpower trait afaik, so only spells get the multiplier on groups of units - which is fine I suppose, it's just turned up to 11 at the moment. Multi-figure multipliers PLUS aoe PLUS turn one casts is a bad combination.

Sorry having edited the last post to make it complete (so the forum doesn't eat it. I hate it when that happens): Compared to see: Last paragraph of my last post...

To make it short: Impulsive and Sweep + good Melee Equip. (just to give one example. Seems to be easier to aquire in my experience)

Or good regiments + Enchantments and possibly ranged weapons.

Overkill perk is not needed for melee thanks to sweep and easy possibility to boost (Growth, Giant Form ect) you just kill with straigt up damage. Around 50 at high Level with good buffs compared to 20-30 for caster (against High-defense Enemies, the thing tilts a bit in magics favor against lightly armored enemies).

Magics go up in damage fast at the start and kills regiments better but are harder to make easily and abundantly usable or buff (low mana cost is harder to come by than high melee damage), doesn't work as well on single enemies. And there is always the cost and the need to hoard shards to make really effective.


If Rock-Paper-Siccors is  Regiments--->Heroes---->Casters I'm fine with that.

My current experiences let me lean towards seeing certain imbalances with the melee part (mostly due to abundant equip and viability of single heroes in melee against regiments a bit to high...
Have to admit though that I didn't had the time to compare dedicated regiments strategy. Should work either though on paper. Just the Question if it works as good as the others though, have to test more to say that for sure.)

That may sure change as beta progresses / new loopholes / tactics are found.

Agreed on Maul (I hope they do the nerf gradually and don't axe it completely. We are still in beta and incremental steps are possible.). Hence me excluding it from the equation already.

I loathe the situation where in WoM Magics where nerfed into uselessness and am rather fond that its viable now... If anything it requires minor adjustments imo.


So I have to try to agree to disagree with you here on that last point even though I understand your issue with it.
Do you got any ideas for alternatives / how to reign the perceived issue in (longer casting time is an option but will that do.)? Not even sure if it works as well on highly experienced troops as compared to green ones (HP-progression simmilar to heroes or still so low on them when experienced?)
Most Powerful Option in WoM was Regiments with ranged + good buffs like burning blade. Easily finished off even dragons from the mods with sufficient advancement. Might still be simmilar or not.


I don't consider a once per 4 Turns option (due to mana) really comparble so casting cost-reduction (at least 50% better be at least 70% for perma-casting) mandatory for me to have a mage-based strategy work soundly. Impulsive and Sweep works multiple times in one season/gameturn or even battle and reliably so. Sure frying an whole army can be a game changer. But without the ability to do it at least once a turn its hard to base a whole game on. Less so than melee at least (excluding silly stuff like maul). And that should be the bar imo.

Getting a Hero into position in Round 1 with impulsive is also not hard (since you can do take 1 Move use focus (or other buff/s of simmilar effect like growth, giant form ect.), take 2nd Move sweep Army dead) and getting move-boosting stuff is also rather easy.

You seem to be misinterpreting the thrust of my complaint - I don't care about strong magic, I LIKE strong magic - my problem is specifically with the power of initiative. Barring situations where you grossly out-tech and out-level someone, one turn fights should never happen (much less when fighting against enemies with _superior_ basic troops to what I could field).

The combination of initiative and what SHOULD be multi-turn spells that are aoe and inflict multiplied damage against multi-figure units is devastatingly powerful, hence my complaint.

Again, at the stage of the game I was at, I could cast Blizzard for 15 mana and kill an entire garrison of normal units. Only single figures would survive (guardian statues/demon assassins/heroes), and that's fine, but wiping out the ENTIRE city before the AI can even move its units to mitigate some of the aoe is crazy.

I think what you observe stems from genuine difference in Level. The Magic-Power you seem to be describing is from at least a mid-level magican (around Level 10-15?). To have a fair comparison you'd have to fight mid-level regiments (city-defenders are by default green. Maybe that is an issue worth fixing?). Not sure if you actually did fight equal Level regiments (So at least Level 10 possibly higher).
I run around with a party of heroes who finished of a complete Wildland (Plaguelands + Ruin of Summer) including an Elemental Lord. So I am well beyond that point.

You do have a point that regiments might! be actually underpowered.
But then from what I see the AI on normal seems not very competent yet in regards to using regiments (It seems mildly adept in using Heroes not least thanks to the survival with a scar mechanics. Seems to be a Godsend for the AI from the amount of scars their heroes carry... ).
I would have to try a regiment based strategy for that and compare. I won't take the AI as a bar here. Seems like squashing Ants at the point in the game I seem to be (Hero Level 20 and up) so unlike you I won't get any fairly usable sample for that comparison.

Point being: The AI might not be soundly using regiments and the AI might have to be propped up to do that to fix the problem.
For your comparison falls flat in case the AI is using inferior regiments. (Not counted by the time in the game but regiment used vs. regiment possible.)
Otherwise you again end up with a game where magic is less powerful, the AI won't be able to handle either and the player runs around with buffed up regiments squashing all opposition (since the competent player can handle either and will use the clearly superior option. Which leads us back to square 1).

So this thing might actually be an AI issue at its core. Even if it on paper seems to be an obvious issue with the above combination.



Initiative being powerful is in the nature of the new system and I like it overall. As I said I would need a viable alternative (can't think of a good one right now) or a good tweak of the current system (there might very well be ways. Got any good Ideas to reign it in without making it overly complicated / breaking the system?).

No, I was playing against Hard AI who were wayyyyyy ahead of me on the tech tree. These were full-size regiments with metal armor/weapons, when I still had leather armor and maces or whatever.

Beyond that, as I mentioned, you don't NEED to be super high level to get this kind of power. Spell damage is extremely flat, it only increases via two things: more shards (I rarely get this bonus) and % damage increases from traits or items. I never had any items that boosted it, but you can get the path of the mage bonus (50%) and one evoker bonus (50%), doubling your damage in just a few quick levels. Because Fireball/Blizzard/Curse of whatsitsname damage is multiplied by the number of figures, even a 'mild' amount of damage like 6 becomes 12 becomes 60 on a 5 unit figure, straight out of the gate. You don't even need high Int or high Level, neither of those has anything to do with base spell damage.

But fixing it is pretty simple, they just need to tone down initiative, lots of ways to do that:

• Randomize the init bonus from turn to turn. Init 20 doesn't give 20 'speed' every turn, it gives a weighted random value between X and 20
• Randomize the first turn order, if all init values are within X of each other
• Reduce the effect of extremely high init, each point past X gives less than a full points worth of speed

That's just off the top of my head, there are other methods that could be used to tinker with it. I'm also pretty sure Haste is bugged, I don't think a 2 point init boost should be giving an extra turn immediately every time.

As for aoe spells, allowing defenders the ability to spread out their units _before_ the battle starts (think HoMM Tactics style placement or similar) would also help.

Smoothing out spell damage progression would help as well - tie it to Int and Level with traits and items providing a smaller bonus. Right now, you get huge spikes in damage from picking up a few traits or items, and no benefit whatsoever from raising int or leveling, which isn't inherently bad, albeit somewhat counter-intuitive.

And finally deciding how to handle multi-figure damage. Having it tied to aoe spells makes logical sense (and gives a role to casters vs melee for multi-figure units vs heroes/monsters), but it's tuned to cause instant death too easily right now.

One possible fix would be to give fireball a casting time. In essence the enemy would see the great big ball of fire coming towards them and have a possibility to spread out a bit before it hits. Might make it more interesting too: do I spread out my units or try to maintain formation with some?

It has a casting time of 1, which means you cast it and on your next turn you get to fire it off. I would say Initiative is way too powerful for mages and Ashwake Dragons (personal grudge there  ). Mages should get fewer Initiative bonuses (simple fix). Timed spells should ignore Initiative or give the caster a penalty during each casting time (good balance). It makes the game sweet when you see a level 20 barbarian surrounded by peons and holding his own. It makes the game awesome when a level 15 Pyromancer casts a fireball and kills half an army before they can get in range to attack. It makes the game boring when you just cast fireball every time you attack a city and get it off before they can respond, especially when they are high level units.

Fireball is a low level spell and should not be a game winner against high level units. There are currently 3 fire spells for tactical combat. How about a higher level (IV or V) AoE fire spell that has less of a Initiative penalty? The third book of the Magi desperately needs spells in it. It is the weakest and hardest to attain. I would like to see some spells there that reward having different nodes in combination. The balance is up to the devs, but It would make sense to make a player choose between a book with combination bonuses and one with several of the same type, as far as research priority. I don't want to see every Wizard with the exact same books afterall.

I haven't actually used spells that have casting time yet. Do I understand correctly that the time it takes to cast the spell is dependent on caster's initiative? If so, then that sounds like a bad deal. The whole 'mages cast faster if they are holding a dagger' thing should go. Maybe use some set number for initiative if you go casting spells?