You may have to destroy the world to save it

BTW, I made the above spell including the new land in less than 5 minutes. ANYONE can make these spells and effects.

Played with the particle effect editor and modified it:

It is always fun to make spells that destroy the world... in interesting ways. Are there chasms in this iteration?

More terrain manipulation that could be fun:

Curse lands

Create Antimagic zones

Create Teleporter gates

Curse resources (e.g. to consume 4 logistics instead of 1)

Terraform useful tiles into low-yield types

Create forests/swamps/hills to obstruct movement

Create monster lairs / demonic gates

Upset a monster lair guardian so it goes berserk and looks for something to kill

1. Asteroid spell - leaves huge, fiery crater.

2. Rise Sea Level spell - hide in the mountains (or build an ark) and drown your enemies!

3. Wall of Fire spell - creates wall of fire across all land. It's not impassable, but who will dare?

4. Dead Space spell - makes everyone in the area undead.

5. Lightning Force spell - makes huge damage to everyone wearing metal stuff or near water.

6. Ice Age (aka Winter is Coming) spell - makes it so cold that every unit looses half HP and cannot move for 3 turns.

7. Winds of Change spell - summons the biggest hurricane known to man. Can put out Wall of Fire, but at what cost?

8. Terraforming Tree spell - plants huge and growing tree that gradually terraforms nearby terrain, destroying all previous life in the process. Wall of Fire will (eventually) kill it, but at the same time will create the biggest fire known to all gods - old and new alike.

9. Ghost of Winter spell - summons the most powerful ghostwriter that will help GRRM finishing A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Mist of Death: A mindless force of dark energy that destroys anything and everything in its path, friend or foe. Randomly travels around the map, not under the control of the caster

Tsunami: Summons a a big wave to hit a city (doesn't need to be near water)

Avalanche: A bunch of boulders or an ice flow comes crashing down on a city

Crop Disease: Reduces a city's food yield by 50%.

BonFire: Cast on enemy city, reduces stationed units hit points by 1 (+1 per Sovereign level), per turn - until dispelled

Dispel magic: To counter spells that were cast on city

Invisibility: Reduces to-hit chance of opponent by 50%

Mirror Image: Creates multiple images of friendly unit. Opponent has a % chance of hitting image as long as the spell lasts.

Interposing Hand: Creates a impassable barrier between friendly unit and opponent for a certain number of turns.

Anti magic shell/wall: prevents magic from being cast during a tactical battle.

Summon Monsters: Summons monsters based on sovereign's level. The higher his level, the stronger the monster, and the larger quantity of monsters he can summon.

Destroy Logistics Capability: reduces SK's logistics by 2 plus one per level of sovereign.

Champion Algore casts anthropogenic global warming spell: all sea levels rise 50 meters to gain 10,000 gold. It would have a multi-turn cast requirement and fortunately can be disrupted.

Open a portal for titans to come play with us.

Great idea!!!

How about an earthquake spell that destroys a neutral faction (you support the sorcerer king? see ya!), but with a chance that other neutrals not yet forced to choose will in fact choose the SK over you.

Sort of the like the 'plant nuclear device' option in Civ II - you can wreck a city but the whole world hates you for it.

Quoting AlLanMandragoran, reply 7

Champion Algore casts anthropogenic global warming spell: all sea levels rise 50 meters to gain 10,000 gold. It would have a multi-turn cast requirement and fortunately can be disrupted.

End of AlLanMandragoran's quote

Heh heh.

Revolt- target SK monster lair joins you, and assaults all nearby monsters as long as the lair survives

Wall Of Rock- target shard is surrounded by mountain, leaving it impervious to wandering SK monster attacks but ineligible for shrine-building

Spells that summon a monster lair, a demon gate, a breach in the ground, whatever. Monsters come forth and attack the SK and maybe the player too. 

Ex: Call of the Serpent King. An ancient temple is unearthed, spewing forth deadly serpents until destroyed.

Ex: The Crystal Forest. A piece of forest is transformed into deadly, living shardlike entities. 

Ex: The Bound Dragon. A dragon is summoned and bound to protect a piece of land. The dragon will attack nearby opponents, but otherwise not venture out.

It would be awesome if the SK took my largest city and locked it onto an island.

Animate Terrain - That mountain you created to wall off a shard? Turns into a mad rampaging Torax.

Vortex - Your very own Bermuda Triangle.

Perpetual Darkness - Make things go bump in the night. (Reduces sight by 1)

Locusts - Starve cities that happen to be in its path.

Soulnado - Wrench the souls out of armies and cities with this randomly wandering horror, creating undead in their stead.

Reverse Midas - curse unit to create barren land wherever it stays for the end of turn

Monster Magnet - each turn a monster lair gets one step closer to the designated location. Along with its attendant guardian.

False Flag - deal damage to a minor faction, making it seem like the other side did it to gain favor with them. (if you do it, the Doom Counter gets raised)

Trap Shard - if the SK destroys this shard, it explodes in his face and reduces the DC by 25.

YES PLEASE!

I want as many spells as possible that makes demon portals (spawning bad stuf), influences wandering monsters, mutates wandering monsters, strengthen wandering monsters ++++ anything that makes the world more dangerous for me or my opponents. Cue evil laugh....

• Restless Master (area enchantment) - non-undead that die in the area of effect are returned to play under the enchantment owner's control, they gain type undead and have maximum hitpoints reduced to 5
  
  
• Requiem of the Mighty (area enchantment) - creatures with a power rating below 10 cannot attack or use abilities within the enchanted area
  
  
• Buoyed by Magic (area enchantment) - creatures within area of effect gain +1 to attack and hitpoints for every unit enchantment on them
  
  
• Steeled Numbers (area enchantment) - creatures within area of effect gain +1 to hitpoints for every unit of the same faction in area of effect
  
  
• Court of Tempests (area enchantment) - ranged attack rating of creatures within area of effect is reduced by 5
  
  
• Return to Nurture (global enchantment) - when a creature with more than 50 hit points dies, the land it dies on is restored (if it was ruined), otherwise becomes more habitable (desert becomes grassland, etc)
  
  
• Opulence (area enchantment) - enchantment owner gains +X gold each turn, where X is the number of champions in area of effect (champions of any faction count for this effect)
  
  
• Blood-Fueled Berserkers (area enchantment) - all creatures in area of effect gain Maul while in area of effect, and gain a permanent +1 bonus to attack whenever they kill a unit
  
  
• Weight of Time (global enchantment) - all creatures have their max hitpoints reduced by 1 each turn
  
  
• Shadow of Glory (global enchantment) - whenever any creature would be summoned, summon a shadow creature of type undead with 5 attack and 10 hitpoints instead
  
  
• Bountiful Pact of Planes (global enchantment) - whenever any creature is summoned, enchantment's owner gains 5 gold
  
  
• Death Bloom (area enchantment) - whenever any creature dies in area of effect it causes an explosion in a 1 tactical tile radius for damage equal to the dying creature's max hitpoints
  
  
• Elemental Flood (area enchantment) - whenever a creature would suffer elemental damage in area of effect, it suffers that much elemental damage + 10 instead
  
  
• Chain of Condemned (area enchantment) - whenever a creature in area of effect dies, all other creatures of the same type in the area of effect suffer 5 damage
  
  
• Immortal Time Lapse (area enchantment) - whenever a creature in area of effect dies, all other creatures in the area of effect have their current hitpoints reset to what it was at the start of the turn (referring to game turn, not combat turn)
  
  
• Hexfoil (unit enchantment) - enchanted unit is exempt from all global and area enchantment effects

Since SK conceptualized as an asymmetrical game, it is possible for very unbalanced spell effects to exist that would be hard to justify in traditional fantasy strategy games. All numbers are suggestions, I've not played the game so I cannot make informed decisions on what would make for appropriately balanced values.

I think it is important to have a mix of symmetrical and asymmetrical spells (i.e. whether it affects all parties equally, etc)

Summon Godzilla

Good idea!...except Godzilla isn't canon.

Utter Chaos (strategic spell) All tiles of the entire map become completely randomized.  Map is hidden in the fog of war, of course except for what your now scattered cities, outposts, and units can see.

Destroy him, my robots! (Stay awhile, stay forever! Muhahahahaha!)

"You may have to destroy the world to save it" Isn't that the new motto of the Republican party?

Or the Democrats. (or really any politician for that matter.)

Curse of the Tribbles (Strategic spell) - Summon a single 'unit' of Tribbles. Tribbles roam the country and will multiply every so often turns (by spawning a new 'unit of' Tribbles), and in doing so will turn fertile land into barren grounds. Kill them fast or live in a barren world.

It would be fun that if it would go on unchecked for a long period the land would swarm with them (and be utterly barren), and for every step you take you have to carve a path through them first. So individually they should be rather weak, because theirs is the power of attrition and multitude.

"Look, cute cuddly furry creatures. How can they possibly be harmful to anyone or anything? They are so weak and little."

Shard of Consumption (Strategic spell) - The shard on which it is cast will slowly destroy the lands around it, damage all units within a given range, generate more magic (depending on the damage done to the landscape and units), but it will slowly destroy itself.

"Sure, you can have more magic now. For the small price of the destruction of the lands, some life force of the unworthy or the careless, and the inevitable obliteration of the shard. But hey, that is a worry for later, if you don't survive now all that is worthless when you are dead."

Blessing of mindless relaxation (strategic spell) - Turn an area into fertile terrain where units generate health faster, but accumulated experience points will actually decrease. If the terrain is within city limits the production in said city is diminished, but unrest is lowered. Any combat on this terrain will be influenced: less chance to hit / block / etc, and will give less experience gain - in other words all the combatants will fight like incompetent morons.

"Come and put your feet up, relax and rest. No need to worry about anything. Here, have a toad from the vale of the happy people, if you hold him in your hand for a while you will start to feel really good. And then i am not even talking about how happy and relaxed you will feel if you lick him. It will be groovy. Eh man, you know what i mean?"