Cloud Walk and Mana Blast needs some balancing (0.77)

Resounding no on this...Listen to what you did. You capture as many resources as you could, turtled till you had ridic amount of mana, then used one of the most powerful spells in the game. How about suggesting they make the AI take steps to keep you from getting to that point? Even a suggestion to maybe add to the potential skills/abilities of units/heros a 'mage-dodge' that is on top of the resist (note, this should be a rare high level trait, equal to the cost and rarity of the spells)...

I hate 'nerf' mentality. Don't take something that makes people feel like, gasp, they are actually as powerful as the lore says they are through magic (keeping in mind the time and resources allocated to achieving it). How about, equally as powerful counters? .....

Cloudwalk (Teleport) is bunk. It is too cheap and too low level. Needs to be a high cost spell and level 5. 

I say keep the Mana Blast until the AI is functional. 

I hate the 'nerf' mentality too.. that is to say it bugs the crap out of me when someone complains not to make something less powerful, when making everything else just as strong would have the exact same effect, except take considerably more time. Don't nerf spell damage! Increase HP! .....

In any case.. I think you mean that cloud walk needs a cooldown, not a cast time, and it probably does. Mana blast is pretty broken, as you can easily make it cost zero mana and inflict several hundred points of damage. Adding a cooldown to it doesn't fix the matter, since everything will be dead >.>

Open ended abilities are bad news. There should be some sort of cap to the damage, even if it is (soft) based upon diminishing returns.

I agree.

When I say I captured everything I could, that wasn't a good thing.  There were very few resources I could get.  I was Empire side, so I couldn't place a second city anywhere I had access to due to no fertile ground.  I had two directions I could go, both cut off by the opponent.  I made settlers just to make an outpost to capture a single resource three times.  So I had one level three city, out of food, out of gold.  Cruel was often the tax rate just to keep up with the level three city and meager army I had.  It wasn't like I captured a ton of resources.

I didn't do anything because I didn't want to declare war on an enemy supposedly much tougher than I was by trying to cross his boundaries.  So I sat and did nothing.  And was rewarded for it by an overpowered spell.  If there isn't a cooldown on it, there should definitely be a cap.  Or... actually have the enemy use ultra-powerful spells against us.  The worst spell in three games used against me so far was "Chaos".  I would prefer that to be honest... but then I can hear people complaining when the 250 point spell kills their sovereign first every fight, with nothing you can do about it.

If you make it a three turn cast, yes, you can do insane damage... but the enemy at least has a chance to kill you first, or disrupt you.  And you won't be able to spam it like I did.  Even when facing nine enemies, I just walked backwards, then cast.  Almost nothing ever got close.  It's an overpowered spell, and I did nothing to earn it other than click "end turn". 

So... yes, I say nerf it.  Either with multiple-turn casting, or a damage cap... (100 or so feels right).

And Cloud Walk... ok... you don't like a 20 turn cooldown... then make it cost 400 mana.  This is an ability that lets you auto-defend anywhere you want just by keeping one killer group together.  We need to get away from the mentality of one group game-winners.

And of course, I'd love the AI to be better.  But I know that's being worked on.  If I can Cloud Walk/Mana Blast/Growth/Giant Form my way to victories, I pray so can the computer so I'm actually nervous about fights.  Otherwise, this game won't have any replayability.  Right now it's just a matter of picking which unbeatable path you want to take to win as opposed to worrying about winning.

Telaeus

No they don't. You were in exceptional situation and its not like you could have done the same in any of many other ways.

Cloudwalk does. It gives the human player a massive advantage at little cost. AI's can't use this spell efficiently, even once we get the AI finished. Pathing is extremely complicated for and AI and this puts it miles behind the player. It is fine as an emergency, endgame high cost spell, but I can currently waltz about the map with this spell. 

The ability to teleport should alleviate AI pathing issues not exacerbate them. It shouldn't be more complicated to program then the actual pathing algorithm.

And as is it is already a very limited use spell. I only used it once somewhere mid game to kill an ogre threatening an undefended town (all towns are undefended due to economy being bonkers).

Rest of the time I relied on my move 8 to get to where i needed to be.

While I am the same way (I see no reason to waste mana). This is clearly an issue with moves being much too high. 3-4 Should be the travel speed limit, perhaps with effects that reduce travel on hills/forests. The majority of talents/gear/spells that effect move speed should affect tactical moves only. Even 2 moves is plenty when traveling on fully upgraded roads in your own territory.

You clearly aren't playing on large maps.

A good work around for cloud walk is make it where you can only port to places of safety.. for example 15 or so spaces away from any enemy.

No more porting back to town when that Ogre is right next to your city and you attacking the same turn. You would have to port to your territory 15 spaces away from that Ogre... then walk your butt over there and pray you make it in time.

"The ability to teleport should alleviate AI pathing issues not exacerbate them. It shouldn't be more complicated to program then the actual pathing algorithm.

But with Cloud Walk as it currently exists, what incentive would you ever have to field more than one strong defensive group?  Have six cities spread out on a Large map?  No problem... as soon as an enemy enters my territory... Cloud Walk.  No enemy would ever get close, and you don't ever have to worry about having garrisons.  For that matter, you can even use the one strong group on offense, and just pull them back as needed.

If you're looking for long-term viability of a strategy war game, you can't have an easy-button defense like that.  Everyone will use it.  It's cheap, fast and unstoppable.

If you want to keep it the way it is, and you don't want to nerf it at all... then you have to have something like Group Invisibility.  Then you'll never know the enemy is getting close to your cities.  That would still enable you to zip around the map, but not use it as an auto-defense since they could hit your city before you knew they were there.  Of course, then people will complain the enemy was cheating since you don't see them approach... but that's the only thing other than nerfing the spell I can see to balance it.  And of course, what fun is that?  You won't see them coming... so you can't set up choke-points... then you'd just have to keep units in the cities at all times. 

Same with Mana Blast.  You want a counter to it other than nerfing or capping it?  Make units have the ability to be upgraded with magic immunity or drastic magic damage reduction.  Having an instant-cast, auto-kill ability for little to no cost is broken.  It's not a strategy game at that point.  Stockpile mana, make all champions casters.  Maybe give a little initiative boost.  Game over.  And just having the enemy use the spell as it exists won't be fun either.  Fair... sure.  But how fun will it be if every encounter is 8 casters taking turns one-shotting the opposition's heroes? 

We need variety in this game... which means making sure there is no overpowered abilities.  We need mulitple paths to victory or defeat.  I don't want the toughest things taken down with one cast.  It should be a nasty drawn-out battle, with multiple attacks/casts to win.

Just my opinion.

Telaeus

IF the game was fixed in other ways so it would be POSSIBLE To have more then one stack / solo sov (ex, fix the economy so you could field armies). THEN it would make sense to nerf teleporting somehow.

There are about a million of posts about how cheesy teleport is on every forum of every game known, but here is the one that changed my mind. The sad fact is that the AI in every game ever made has never been able to learn to use this spell or defend against it. I doubt even Frogboy's talented AI values can make the AI path well with this. Even if it could, it should be at the end of Air Magic. It is the perfect spell for a magical stack of doom.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/410752

Obviously I vote against Cloud Walk. It's game killing broken. Should be caster only.

Again I ask you how would bad AI pathing be made WORSE by teleport?

It would make more sense for the AI itself to solve its bad pathing by simply teleporting where it needs to go.

As far as fixing it.. how about removing it as a spell and instead of the following:

Technology: teleportation gates: Allows towns to build teleportation gates, and units to cast return.

Building: Teleportation gates: Allows teleporting between this and other towns at a small mana costs. Automatically counts as one merchant (but still need regular merchants due to the mana costs)

Spell: Return: Teleports from current location to an existing gate at 3x the cost of teleporting from an existing gate. Acquired via the above tech or a subsequent tech.

As for the AI, it would be much easier to make it use such a spell to teleport back to a town that is about to get seized.

That thread suggests the exact same thing. Most people that debate this end up agreeing that the spell needs some kind of change. I would love Telegates. I would do that and have Cloudwalk stay where it is and become a movement enchantment that allows all tiles to cost one move point. That in and of itself is a huge advantage. If you specialize as an Air Wizard, yo could get up to 6 moves no mater the terrain. In the expansion this would even translate to free movement over water. That is how I see Cloudwalk as a good spell. 

But AI decision making is poor right now. We have a long wait for the AI, probably a month or more, to get really good at pathing and strategy. I hope the next balance pass addresses the issue. 

So I guess I'm not a fan of any spell/skill that has no counter.  So....add counters

For teleport, add an enchantment spell that either prevents the enemy from teleporting within a certain radius of a unit/town, or scrambles the result, so instead of teleporting to the tile you asked for, you end up x tiles away (at the bottom of a chasm).  X could be proportional to how far the enemy tried to teleport.  Or, to be really evil, add a "teleport capture" spell, so if someone tries to teleport their stack of doom, the teleporting army is caught in the ether and redirected to appear right next to your stack of doom (Mwuhahaha).

For mana blast, you could either do the same sort of thing - add spells that scramble where the spell lands, or reflects (and disperses) damage.  Or you could limit the amount of mana a spellcaster can channel per turn.  Fantasy fiction has many examples where a spellcaster has burnt themselves out or destroyed themselves by trying too powerful spells, so why not say "Lvl 10 spellcaster can handle channeling 30 mana worth of damage (plus x given by specific levelup skills)", thus limiting total damage.  Or, say that the spell takes an extreme toll on the body and causes HP loss when you cast it, so that you can only cast it once or twice per battle before it kills you.

I think that problem with Cloud Walk is mana cost... Increasing the base mana cost and implementing additional mana cost per tile (cost can raise linearly or exponentialy per tile) would be ok, i think....

Yeah, cloudwalk is pretty fubar in current implementation.  It's like as a community we're eternally doomed to repeat these same issues with teleport, with some other examples being AOW (teleport was crazy too powerful, even though iirc it was less powerful and cheap than this) and HoMM3 (imbalances magic in favor of specific technology paths).  About the best thing I can say about cloadwalk is that the AI doesn't know how to use it, otherwise pretty much all other overland strategy and logistics are meaningless.  so the human player can choose whether to abuse it, save it for emergencies or just ignore it or balance it themselves via houserules.

HoMM5 & 6 have very powerful town portal but at least it's not favoring one spell school and the AI more or less knows how to use it. Being tied to city portal gates and consuming movement points it's "just balanced enough" to give attacking armies a chance, but might be in part too because maps are handcrafted.

Civ4/FFH2 actually had a pretty reasonable airlift/townportal system.  It was still very powerful but a late game tech, if you wanted to get it early you pay the price w.r.t. passing up other tech, and the transport had some significant drawback specifically limited number of units capacity per city per turn.

Playing on larger maps shouldn't justify higher move speeds, it should encourage fielding more armies to cover the land a single army unit cannot. Playing on a larger map implies that you accept the inevitalbe requirement to have a larger number of cities, larger number of armies, and overall changes the scope of the game.

If you would prefer to have one group of units cover all of your defenses/offence play on smaller maps.