Astral magic seems overpowered
 

You can basically enslave the entire enemies army.

In a game I was in, on turn 23, the guy had 40 astral mages casting enslave on me. I had 50 guys, with 14 magic resist, but they all were enslaved before I could touch him.

And soul slay is even easier to get. Its only a level 5 spell.


And then there is control, to enslave the mindless units.

And of course, master enslave, where one guy can enslave an entire army by himself with one spell.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Well astral is strong. Perhaps THE strongest magic in the late game.

But on turn 23... imagine 40 death mages spamming drain life? Your 50 guys would've died just the same. Or 40 air mages spamming thunder strike. Any 40 mages spamming something nasty. :)

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Yes, but at least I would have killed some of his guys. With enslave,my guys immediately start attacking each other. So his guys never got touched. And after the battle, he now has his army and MY ARMY to attack me with. So enslave is 10 times better than thunder strike.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

I think for early game, death magic wins out; with raise dead. It is actually feasible to have 20+ mages who can spam raise dead (not really possible for any nation to have that many mages who can spam thunderstrike or enslave, maybe confusion, but not enslave, which brings up another point: confusion > enslave.)

With, say, just five mages spamming raise dead, a heavily outmatched army can beat back another.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Astral magic is good (and yes, overpowerful if you're not using CBM with the clam nerf), but it does have several weaknesses. One is the vulnerability to Mind Hunt/Soul Slay type spells that Astral leaves you open to. The other is that it's seriously lacking in Summons, whereas other Paths are heavily balanced (perhaps even overweighted) towards Summons.

I think one of the major issues of Astral Magic being overpowerful, is that it has great, efficient combat spells, which other magical paths tend to lack. Twist Fate, Personal Luck, Body Etherial, Resist Magic, and Astral Shield are all available within 2 schools, and 3 levels. A unit with just those 5 spells is nearly invulnerable to many of the threats presented in the game.

Even Nature doesn't offer the same comprehensive personal enhancement, which is a little scary, considering the esoteric/ellusive character of Astral (concerned as it seems to be with stars, the mind, distance, and fare). Astral even has healing magic (Healing Light), which I consider particularly odd and out of place.

So yes, I would consider it atleast somewhat overpowered, as well as somewhat overreaching it's intended purpose.

But then, I've wanted to have the ability to heavily mod/edit the Magic system for some time now, and this is one of the reasons for that.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

There are ways to increase troops' magic resistance.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Yeah, Astral is very strong but very expensive also.

Just consider that your 50 units against 40 enslaving mages example he was outnumbering you probably by 10:1 or more in terms of gold.

I don't think the enslave the whole army spell are really that much better than kill the whole army spells - because of the mr+4 tag they get mostly chaff, the elites can continue to fight for the enemy.
Consider trying to master enslave an army of demons (14 mr) buffed with army of lead or antimagic (so they have 18 mr).
With an s9 mage and max pen equipment (+5 - 4 master enslave penalty) that costs you incredible amounts of gems, and is paralyzed after spending 8 gems to cast the spell, you'd still loose the battle because the 2 or 3 devils that are enslaved make no difference.

Now consider blood which has cheap spells for destroying SCs with no way to defend against it (claws of cocytus or life for a life), kill armies (there's a spell that casts life drain on the whole battle field for example) or summon SCs and armies + the ability to generate income at will, and I'm not really sure that astral is so powerful in games without clams.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

I Don't know where you are getting that from. My guys cost 150 gold and 88 resources each.
His mages cost 150 gold and 2 resources.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Oh, somebody mentioned that astral has no summons...

Not true. Some nations also have astral summons. Angels (Marignon, MA Pythium) and monkey indian weirdos. Also, Golems. Not as good as they used to be in Dominions II (I even believed they became not worth the trouble for some time), but still one of the best summons you can get.

But without clams, astral just took a very heavy hit in the groin.

Ah. Ashdod, is it?
Think of it the other way. He had to send 40 mages to counter your summons. Where did he get so many on turn 23 anyway? Probably had to hire indie lizard shamans or sages as well. He had to stop researching completely just to counter recruitable sacreds. It was a desperate move.

There are ways one can counter enemy communions; you could meet him with some turn-1 earthquakes, for example. And retreat, just to be sure. Fenita la comedia, all his mages are dead, his nation has no hope anymore.
Better luck next time. :)

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

*sacreds*, not summons.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Astral does have access to ridiculously powerful battlefield-wide spells. However, such spells require a massive amount of slaves/boosters/gems, and a good antimagic or SC makes the whole thing useless very ineffective. Soul slay, enslave mind, and paralyze are great counters, but blood and death have even more effective counters. Claws of Inferno/Cocytcos for example, while very high level (and hellbind heart), are awesome anti-SC/thug spells. Drain life also, as it isn't resistable (unless lifeless).
But in general though, astral took a really big hit when it lost clams, which very much evened the field. Astral has some really powerful nation-only summons, like Seraphs or Devatas, but those require ridiculously high amounts of astral pearls, and pearl income is limited. Golems are also vulnerable to a good ol' magic duel. Other magic paths have much more, and much more efficient, summons. Death: Tartarians (still ridiculously good). Blood: hell, everything (with slave income in the 100s, your not really all that limited) from demon lords to heliophagi to archdevils to armies of demons.

But in any event, communions are counterable. Earthquakes are the bane of all communions.

But anyway, astral is good, but not imbalanced or anything. I personally feel blood wins purely on the basis of powerful summons and massive income.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

So basically, water and fire are very underpowered compared to the others..

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

I don't think 'underpowered' is the right comparison operator. Not 'keystone' or 'central' is better. S and D (and B for such nations) comprise keystone of a magic strategy; A, E, and N provide crucial utility AND power; F and W have some great offerings (especially in combination: acid spells, rune smasher, etc) but just don't have the sort do or die spells/items that the other schools offer.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Water used to be a source of clams. :)

Now its a source of naiad soldiers. In other words, yes its crap.
))))))) Actually, it has got frozen heart, quicken self, breath of winter, sea troll kings, boots of quickness etc, lots of useful thingies.
Oh yes!!! Rune smasher. This item alone is worth empowering a mage in the late game.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Yeah, Astral isn't really so bad, now that clams have been nerfed, other than the silly out of place healing spells. Water and Fire, on the other hand, need help, in the form of brand new spells, rather than improving on what we've already got, since atleast Fire is too monotonous.

Air isn't as bad, but not quite as strong as Earth. More illusion-based Summons would be nice, and possibly an improved version of the Corpse Man Construction spell? Or maybe just a stronger "Vine Ogre" version at a higher level?

I liked how another thread suggested the Ziz be given the Assassinate ability. Putting that on the Great Eagle, along with a little Stealth, would be nice.

Nature could stand to be brought up to the same level as Blood/Death/Astral, but that wouldn't take much.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

They aren't as useful, but they still have some uses. But they can't compare to the big three (Astral, Death, and Blood), and don't have the quintessential utility of Earth, Air, and Nature. Still useful. Boots of quickness and rune smashers, at the very least.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

I feel that the Elemental paths should have much more variety and usefulness in the early parts of the game than they currently do, while Astral and Death come into their own in the Late Game.

Blood and Nature could/should then ideally serve as a balance between the two, with Nature having the most, and most useful, but generally weakest spells, at every level, but steadily increasing in potency, and Blood having the least number of spells, but being powerful at every stage of the game.

I also feel that Holy magic should be a fully realized path of it's own, instead of a tiny group of mostly redundant spells, and that it should be combineable with the Elemental paths--and only the Elemental paths--to make up for their straightforwardness and Late Game deficiencies.

Ofcourse, this would probably require extensive reworking of the Magic System, but I feel this ideal form would create a much more balanced game.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Fire gives you very nice early to midgame artillery (fireball, falling fires) items (fire brand, golden shield, charcoal shield) and flames from the sky is the spell that makes armies obsolete. Phoenix pyre and fire shield are nice on scs, and incinerate is a nice SC killer (also there is an item for it, so that you can cast it twice a turn with quickness). Also if you have archers, flaming arrow is very powerful.

Water gives you quickness (in spell or item), with falling frost and frozen heart some nice artillery and clams (is there an other use for water gems than clams and boots of quickness?).

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

[quote=Hadrian_II;719829]frost brand and sometimes water bottle

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Frost brand is the worst brand of all, and water bottle is only useful when you enemy is spamming earth attack on you.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

:P Tell that to my dead golems.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Frost Brand may be the worst brand, but that still leaves it as one of the better weapons. And if you're fighting Abysia, it's far better than a Fire Brand.

It's all situational.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

FR might be more likely then CR, due to so many items that are popular on SCs giving FR. Also, there are generally other uses for E gems, so Frost Brand makes a great alternative (unless you are going to be fighting hordes of undead.)

My personal fave, actually, is Demon Whip. As long as you don't encounter FR, you're good to go, and it is only Const 2 and 5 F gems. By far the most economical SC/thug weapon.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Frost brand is better than shadow brand.
Bottle water is ok for assassins.

Water also has tidal wave (vastly underrated), wolven winter, and murderous winter.

Water also dovetails extremely well with water nations. So for example, your cold scales will not affect you (underwater) and can be devestating to heat loving nations. Your summons (winter wolves) are pretty reasonable.

Water has an excellent site searching spell (voice of tiamat). I was against the change that required it to be your province.

Frozen heart, encased in ice, prison of Sedna are all excellent spells. Water is a well rounded school having good construction items, good anti SC, good site searching.

Falling frost is devestating in the hands of someone that knows how to use it... and there are others.

Demon whip is only Con2 in CMB and then only 1.5 or later iirc.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

One of Water's greatest strengths though is how effectively it lets you bootstrap into Death and Nature through Streams of Hades and Contact Naiad. With how crucial either of those paths are for winning strategies nations with water magic have a decent advantage right there.

What Water lacks is strong globals and rituals, but no single path can have everything (except Death, or Astral, I guess).

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Wow, so they finally took away clams?:shock: this is news to me

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Au contraire. Water bottles can be very useful against teleporting SCs (high def high strength units with immunity against awe and blindness and I think life drain and multiple forms), or combined with cold to make them tramplers.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

CBM 1.6. Made all gem-producers unique (including bloodstone, but we'll probably see a substitute earth booster next version).

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Sounds a bit like the Holy War mod to me...

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

So it's only a mod then

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Yeah, but CBM is pretty much the quintessential MP mod.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

damn, looks like a dictatorship to me.
all heil CBM!

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Well, CBM is enabled in around half or more of llamaserver MP's, which seem to be the majority of multiplayer games organized here. I can't say for other forums though.

But getting back to the topic - astral seeming too good. It is good. Very good. You can't go wrong with recruiting astral mages really, it offers very good spells, but mostly in the form of MR negating effects - there are a few exceptions like stellar cascades and Astral geyser which don't seem to see the use they should (well, perhaps astral geyser isn't that good afterall, it's a good opener if you call a few horrors though). SCs can easily have around 25-30 MR, I've seen 40 MR without artifact MR gear (mainly mage bane) used on a pretender. Death has it's own version of soul slay and has very good summons in conjuration (tartarians, different types of mages) and in echantment (liches, behemoths) and even their own remote raiding spell which beats pretty much any reasonable PD in the game, and one should never forget soul vortex which is one of the best tools an SC can have vs. armies.

The elemental paths have useful spells, but are a bit easy to counter or easily reduce the effectiveness of them in the form of resistance spells and thug/sc immunity gear, with maybe the exception of combination of water and fire in the form of acid spells. Still, they have their uses like it has been said in this thread.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

CBM is the standard, and in this case I'd suggest it's appropriate. Dom3 is a beautiful game, even out of the box, but I think it's just too complex for someone as close as the Devs, to the game they created, to balance it appropriately. CBM fulfills that purpose admirably (if not perfectly--there are certain points at which I disagree with certain choices. Also, CBM tends not to actually add any new content.).

I can't absolutely say that CBM is a "dictatorship" as such, but I think it's a great jumping off point, for either adding new content to, or to tweak what's already been done.

And I for one certainly wouldn't want to redo everything Quantum_Mechani has already done.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Generally, I find Water to be the weakest path. As I found in one MP game against Rlyeh, it's a struggle to even find useful spells to cast underwater that are as good as astral's.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Shark attack is pretty good, but other than that and frozen heart there's not too much that's very effective for water magic underwater.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Friendly Currents and Water Ward (if that's the large scale one) can be nice. Quickening is also good.

In general you're right. Water really should be more effective underwater. Of course, that would make it even harder for land nations to attack underwater nations.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Some of the changes in balance103

Well of misery is based on water.
Volcanic eruption (earth blood deep well) is based on fire.
Maelstron switches to air
And Mother Oak switches to earth.

thus there is one huge change: Water gives you the death gem global.

The less important is that fire gets you earth, earth gets you nature, and air gets you water.

The other important thing is that it isn't self reinforcing.. if you have nature - your won't won't be able to bootstrap into an insurmountable lead.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Shark Attack used to be more awesome. You need a pretty big battle to make it worthwhile now. I'd prefer to cast Summon Sharks three times instead, in most cases. The little sharks distract mages in the backfield, and split up the enemy army so you're only fighting a bit of it at a time.

In a medium battle underwater (10-15 turns before an army rout), I've been lucky to get 1 or 2 sharks out of Shark Attack.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

lol, ask Calahan about Shark attack :D He cast Rigor Mortis in a battle as LA Ermor, there must've been 150+ sharks that showed up!

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Yeah, it's not really impressive now.


@chrispedersen

The idea is interesting, what do you do with the other globals, though?
Air now has 2 gem gens (and a couple of others already) and is a quite powerful path as it is.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Water has a number of good spells for UW combat or just combat in general:

Shark Attack/Summon Sharks, Frozen Heart, Water Ward have already been mentioned. Friendly Currents its generally better to get from the item.

Numbness can be amazing when spammed (admittedly also doable via item, but its worth casting without one).

Encase in Ice is a pretty good anti-SC spell. Worst-case scenario you can freeze an SC until they auto-die on turn 75.

Water has some good summons as well, including Clay Men (in enchantment), Sea Serpents, Naiad Warriors, and Asp Turtles for UW use. (On land it has Catoblepae and winter wolves - both of which i've used). It also has Naiads and Kolkythiads (Streams from Hades), the former is good for bootstrapping nature, and the latter is great for bootstrapping in death or gaining death casters *while using water gems*.

Bone melter would be good if its targetting was better or it was easier to cast.

And of course the acid spells are a good supplement to the cold spells for non-UW combats, since they aren't resistable.

The problem is that many of the good water spells are crosspath, and thus require you have the right other paths to use with them. Meaning any given water nation will have access to some but not all of the decent to good water spells. Pure water spells that are good are mostly useable UW though.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

To the same addressee as quote:

I'm all far experimenting with more drastic balance changes. However, the other benefits of the paths need to be considered in making changes; particularly the bless benefits.

W has a big (maybe the best) bless benefit, and will get big-W pretenders for that reason. Adding a big-W spell to buff this school is a mistake because it will not persuade anyone to take water that wouldn't have anyway, and will only give certain already powerful builds even more power. Instead, W needs low level spells added/buffed, or maybe the level of existing W spells lowered to make this school more powerful via ease of access.

For the same reason as with W, putting more big-F spells to buff that school is probably not the right tack. Why not try making Falling Fires/Frost F2 and W2 respectively instead?

A has maybe the worst bless benefit, so it can stand to have more big-A spells because that will actually make it worth having a big-A pretender. Additional gem boosters might be a good idea for that reason, but should probably be a minimum of A7 because it is pretty easy to get to A6 if you have A4.

A big-N spell added might also be a good idea, because no one takes N big-bless, and would therefore make taking big N more of an option for some builds, while removing power from builds that already have a great big-bless benefit. I say _might_ because N little-bless is a great option, and so there is already some incentive to have a higher N on a pretender.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Some of the issues are valid balance issues.
However, I viewed this as a different kind of problem. Getting these generators reinfoced themselves. ie., getting Well of misery makes it much more difficult for someone else to overwrite well of misery.

Designed to make the late stage globals *less* overwelming.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Just ban all the late stage globals, together with gem gens. :)

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

I think that design philosophy is flawed. The late game generally moves toward a global stalemate situation, where neither side can inflict enough damage to matter. Endgame globals need to be overwhelming in order to break the stalemate, otherwise games just don't end.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

At the risk of derailing the animated discussion of water gems and CBM :)

If you find yourself needing to counter massed astral mages, something like Earthquake or Rain of Stones can be you best friend.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Where did your opponent find 40 150 gold S4 mages by turn 23?

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Falling Frost is ultimately too powerful to be cast by W2 - it's quite capable of really messing up many armies when cast in large quantities. Compared to its rough equivalents in other paths like Blade Wind, Thunderstrike, Shadow Blast, Stellar Cascades etc. it's pretty reasonable in terms of effect (AoE and damage), casting requirements, fatigue cost and research necessary.

Re: Astral magic seems overpowered
 

Falling frost is worse than falling fires, especially since F2 mages can cast falling fires, while W2 mages can't cast falling frost.