The choice comes in that you only have limited enchant slots so you need to decide which ones to put on the settlement. Enchantments like inspiration are obvious no-brainers in the current beta but it's likely to revert to +1 research per essence. I'm hoping Derek and Brad look closely at all the spells over the next few weeks.
They took mantle of oceans away from empires for some reason so it's very hard to get 75% discount with death magic - if you go mage path, attunement and you luck into some robes then you would get 50%. I hope you are going to do a mod to make mantle water 3 again as I personally hate the design decesion to make it life 2 water 2.
@sean Kill costs 300 mana, unfortunately it's another spell I'll just ignore
I'd also like to see magic gloves as armour options. There's a whole bunch of mage gear items they could use but the -6 init penalty for staves makes them a bad pick for a mage. I agree it's kind of odd that daggers make casters quicker. Hopefully these ideas will be fleshed out further in an expansion or mod
Hi Brad when you say you want saved games, at what stage of completion do you want us to send them to you? Do You want early game, mid, or late? Do you want a series of saves for the same game at different stages?
@mqpiffle you say some spells might be undercosted but then don't specify which ones which isnt very convincing. Also, the spell system is a core mechanic that needs at least as much attention as the areas you highlighted. Of the spells I listed, which one's do you use every game? Which one's do you build strategies around? Which one's should be nerfed? It's great that Derek & co are creating all these spells for the game but you have some ama
Also with regard to the AI using these spells against me - I fully welcome it, in fact I've asked Brad to improve the spell AI (particularly strategic) on several occasions - I like my strategy games to be tough as nails so I earn the win
Hi guys thanks for all the posts, it's been interesting to see your thoughts on this. To you guys that have said you need to go for a more mana focused approach to be able to cast some of these spells, you're missing the point - it's about the relative merits of spells to each other. There are some really good spells that should be used again and again but the spells I mentioned don't get used and need to be made more appealing or they'll be ignored. The ho
Thanks for this guys I'll download it now
@bingjack If you can create mountains with it then that is a bug - the description states you can't create mountains with it
I think flame dart should be 15 mana as it's basically a ranged burning hands (it used to be 15 mana). I realise flame dart can be used well with a sov that's specced for it and it gets good with a few levels but it's supposed to help you in the early game, which it doesnt do any more. I forgot they stuck a cool down on it too. Since Derek's changed it to 8 damage plus 4 per shard (like it used to be) hopefully they will drop the cost too.
@Bingjack You cannot use raise/lower land to create impassable barriers, you need destroy land (at earth 4) to do that and it costs 30 mana to turn 9 tiles into sea - it is only useful for shortcuts - how about as a compromise they raise the spells to earth 3 but they also lower their mana costs? As for Curgen's volcano, it's not just about the mana cost - it's about getting the spell in the first place. Have any of you guys found this spell in beta
I accept that raise/lower land is open to debate although I strongly believe they are overpriced to the point where there is little incentive to using them - 50 mana just feels like overkill. All it's really good for is creating shortcuts and you need to cast on loads of sea/mountain tiles to do that. Destroy land is cheaper yet that creates a 3x3 lake which is effectively a hard barrier - I know it has to be cast in controlled territory but that spell is much more exploitative. &
Here's an A-Z of 27 crappy spells that aren't worth using in their current state and Derek I'm appealing to you to fix these before the game's released to the public - I did consider adding some more to this list, but these are the real stinkers - so without further ado; the 27 crappy spells: 1) Antipathy - 100 mana to cause mild unrest - garbage 2) Avarice - 200 mana for a mild gold boost that can be equalled with a couple of markets - garbage</
@Bingjack The balance for spells is totally out of whack IMO - regeneration is amazing but there are so many crappy spells out there too. I think Stardock need to address all this in the beta 5 stage before it's released. Life as a whole seems massively OP to me and they have also been given exclusive access to mantle of oceans too. I intend to do a series of posts highlighting where the magic system is dropping the ball. TBH I don't know why these issues haven&
As Guanathor mentioned, units are deducted from city population. That said, I think it's daft that you can have ghost towns with full output. I personally think that each outpost, improvement, and building managed by a city should require x population to function at full efficiency and the population requirement should be totalled for each city. If they don't have enough population to meet that requirement then they get an output penalty.
Brad another thing you really need to do is train the AI to use spells like pillar of fire and tremor, they never use these. The other thing is to reprice the mana costs for spells as many are way too expensive and are very underwhelming - incinerate city is a prime example
@Thimon2K I have Irane's initiative at 30 without impulsive as it's very easy to get a high initiative with her
This is an old bug that I mentioned ages ago but it still seems to have slipped the net. Most of the unit enchantment will update when you find extra shards of the correct type e.g. burning blade gets better with extra flame shards. However to get an increased bonus for regeneration you have to dispel and recast it once you have hooked up a new life shard.
@Kondej Thanks for the link, that explains alot and you're right about it being misleading - it literally drops from 3 turns in a row to just 1 - thats F'd up
I personally think that low initiative units should also get an accuracy penalty with melee weapons (not ranged though). Minus 1 accuracy per point of difference in initiative would seem about right to me. Also a unit with 8 more initiative than an opponent should get an extra turn but it caps at 2 turns to 1. This deals with the kiting issue but allows initiative to retain some importance. Also since I've mentioned dodge, I think that most large and mounted un
@bingjack Totally agree with everything you just posted there
OK I'm currently playing a game with Irane and I'm able to give her an initiative of 30 and she's going up against soldiers with an initiative of 16 so you'd think I'd get alot of extra turns as I pretty much have double their initiatve. Not so unfortunately. But the game does something weird with the turns too. In the first turn the turn order indicates that Irane (me) will get 3 turns in a row so I take my first turn and immediately the turn order changes - I los
I notice the OP classed Irane as a ranged assassin , I actually think she's much better with a short sword or a dagger. Bows and staves are pretty crappy for sovs unfortunately but daggers & shortswords are pretty good for assassin classes as they get counterattacks and improved criticals. Irane can do some really high damage with a sharp shortsword, the assassin perk, and burning blade and I think she's much more effective like this than with a bow - I ditch her crude bow ASAP</p
@Blingjack I think things like blind etc are priced right, it's other spells that are too expensive. I figure that loads of spells are really expensive to prevent the player using them and then it avoids having to programme the AI to use them. I honestly think they should drop prices for half the spells in the game because more spellcasting keeps things more interesting. I'm a bit wary about drawing attention to it in case it also gets hit