Confirming this in unmodded games, same spell (stacked 3 times). Rendered my first expansion city largely useless early in the game, when I had only met one other faction and was at war with no-one.

MisterAeden, if you have a save from a base 0.915 game without any mods or core mods, could you please post it on dropbox or similar?  Did you uninstall Stormworld since you installed it?

If you had, that would be most helpful!  Or you could start a new thread and post it, so that Stardock will see it comes from an unmodded game.

You don't have to uninstall it yet if you don't want to.  But anyone who's reading this thread - if you get an early save when an unknown opponent casts a hex on your city, it would be great if you could start a new thread and post it.  Thanks.

I've had a hell of a time trying to reproduce this, mainly because the AI isn't unlocking city hexes - all four of the Empire AI sovereigns take the same set of abilities (paths of warrior & assassin, 2x strength, merchant, and any combat abilities that pop up) and none got beyond level 8, so no-one is getting Death III (which is what unlocks Antipathy, I think?). Karavox eventually dropped 3x Frozen Bones on me over the course of three turns, but by then it was later in the game and we were at war, so no bugs there unless it's not meant to stack.

I eventually got bored and went back to playing modded games. In my first Stormworld game, playing as Drota, I had an Antipathy dropped on my city in the first few turns. I know that at least one of the Stormworld sovs starts with Death III, but I'm also pretty sure I hadn't met him by that point and he shouldn't have been able to see me.

So I'm in a bit of a bind. We all know the bug's there, but in the unmodded game it's being hidden behind other problems (the AI's failure to level up, and bugged level up selections) and I'm more or less having to play and play until conditions are right for it to come up. So I have a few questions for more experienced players:

What settings should I use to try to reproduce it? I'm thinking fast pacing & as many shards as I can get in hope of pushing them towards unlocking the abilities quickly, is there anything else that can encourage them?

Should I only play against Empire players, or do Kingdom players also get city hexes early enough for it to matter? Or if the more likely-looking hexes are unlocked through the tech tree should I just get as many opponents in as possible in hopes of them being researched? Am I right in thinking that the elemental hexes are unlocked through the random "book of" techs early in the magic tech tree?

On what difficulty does the AI see through fog of war (and is it different in Stormworld)? I'm curious to see if I can reproduce it in games with and without AI FoW, once I figure out how to reproduce it at all!

How far into the game should I give up looking and start over? Once I have met everyone? Or is it still the bug we're looking for if I have met everyone but managed to stay at peace and it comes up? I actually don't know if these spells are only meant to be usable on a player you're at war with, since I've never used them myself.

EDIT

One more: are there any city hexes that can be made available from sovereign setup in an unmodded game? Or are they all tied to higher-level magic than can be given to level 1 sovs?

EDIT EDIT

It occurred to me to actually look up Mal's post about this. Here it is, for reference. I agree 100% with the suggestions here & hope that both city buffs and debuffs get a looking at in Beta 4, what with all the other changes to cities.