The name anti-magic is unfortunate.
It should be meta-magic.
but wouldn't most people playing this be doing so to have a fantasy war of magic? I mean the name, the MoM background... all these things make this different than Stronghold or Total War...
maybe a mod for your idea would appeal to people, but for the main game, I prefer magic to be magical.
Well.. Given that this is a war of magic (well at least the original game was), I don't see why there shouldn't be magic that fights/blocks magics?
You mention MoM, MoM had plenty of spells that defended against magic.
Honestly if I am a very powerful Wizard fighting a weaker one, I don't just want to trade spell blast for spell blast (though that would be fun), but sometimes I want to laugh as I block, counter, dispel, absorb, sub-verse or otherwise alter his weak magics, before returning the favour with TRUE magic.
It's all good, but careful warrior can be powerful that way and mage are useless, unable to fight, for my game it's not easy to get lot, lot of mana when playing mage in early to mid game, even late game my mana is so low to nothing, while I playing warrior of densene, I had lot, lot of mana that I don't need very much.
The warrior may have a lot of mana left over because he hasn't being using it much. In late game even if he has a lot mana, he *shouldn't* be able to do much either cos all he should have is weak spells, or champions that don't have the right traits to make the spells effective. So the warrior based champion shouldn't be able to cast many of the "Anti-magic" spells.
The problem of course is as currently balanced that isn't true. As such the magic casting champion is faced with a double whammy
1) He is likely to have lower mana reserves as he has being expanding them to kill monsters to level, while for a warrior champion, the marginal cost of swinging his sword one more time is zero.
2) With a lot of mana, even if a warrior can cast only low level spells, is almost as good as someone with equal mana casting higher level spells.
3) You can get a lot of powerful spells from tech/quests relatively easy to get right magic traits.
The problem isn't with anti-magic or the spells per se though.
Solutions?
1) Champions that go the "Way of the wizard" should have some way to scale. More *traits* that allow more mana generation , such as more effective shard channeling (in traits/not in tech, as "warriors" can get that too), more bonuses to mana generation per turn (like mediation), more mana absorbing abilities as you hit, more discounts to spell casting e.g Fire Archmage has 50% discount to casting Fire 1 spells etc.
2) Higher level spells must be really really powerful, such that even if the warrior had the same (or even x2 more mana) than the Wizard, and they fought
magic vs magic only, the Wizard would still stomp all over him because his spells are just more powerful given the same mana expansion. This could be qualitatively different (ability to time stop, raise the dead and yes block mahic) or quantitatively more effective.
I see talk that some high powered direct damage spells are OP. Nonsense I say. They *should* be more effective per mana than lower level spells.
If Firedart does the same damage per mana with say Mana blast, the advantages of the latter over the former would be relatively low.
True to get the same effect of the higher spell, you would have to cast it several times, but mana wise there is no efficiective gain and we
already said the mage is likely to have lower mana reserves.
3) Tech tree shouldnt have that much magic stuff
The difference between the "Way of the wizard" and the "Way of the warrior" lies in the traits you can unlock. But if you toss shard refining, powerful spells with no or little trait requirement in the tech tree that are more important than the traits you unlock as a wizard, you pretty much make it pointless.
I will go way of the warrior to get an early lead.. then once i have it, I pour resources into the magic tech tree just as any magic using champion can, and hey, I can be almost as powerful magically..
ll this should play into the effectiveness of anti-magic. In a balanced game, this generally means you will end up with very powerful complete shutdown of melee/ranged spells, and then spells that reduce magic somewhat. Mundane counters mundane, Magic counters magic. However, magic should never compeltely shutdown magic ala "This spell makes the unit immune to magic for X turns".
MoM had paladins with Magic Immunity. Very powerful.
But this didn't protect against cracks call or web (I think) spell because logically speaking the spell was not directed at the unit. They were almost 100% immune to spell blasts from say Warlocks but not 100%, they just had 50 "shields" resistance, so it would take a lot of firepower to punch through.
In short there are in deed problems with magic using vs warrior using champions. But this isn;t the fault of anti-magic/meta magic or any
other school of spells.
Champions who go the way of the warrior should either have very few anti-magic spells
