Caster of Magic for Windows School Evaluations

[Anskiy]

I was inspired by Hadriex's video to evaluate combinations of two magic schools myself. To begin, I decided to look at the schools themselves and evaluate what they were good and bad at in practice. I started by doing some test games of Nature, and wrote an analysis of its Common and Uncommon spells here: https://revierofriver.blogspot.com/2023/...chool.html

Next, I wrote a similar analysis for Sorcery: https://revierofriver.blogspot.com/2024/...chool.html

Chaos: https://revierofriver.blogspot.com/2024/...chool.html

Life: https://revierofriver.blogspot.com/2024/...chool.html

and Death: https://revierofriver.blogspot.com/2024/...chool.html

[Desertfox]

Web + a few Earth-to-Muds is a very strong combination if your own magicians can fly (Draconian) or are wraithformed. A few of them can take out e.g. Great Drakes without getting hit themselves. Once they are webbed they are subject to Earth-to-Mud too, meaning they are too slow to use their breath attacks.
Crack's call is essential when fighting multiple strong regenerating units like Hydras. Or enemy heroes that are just too overpowered to kill any other way.

[Seravy]

Nice, it's always good to read some feedback, looking forward to the other 4 realms!
tbh Lizards really only excel when you combine them with resistance buffing spells (Bless or Resist Magic usually but even a Prayermaster hero can do the trick) or specifically use them to counter an enemy with no resistance based spells (Chaos and Nature, for the latter you might need Resist Elements if they already know Petrify though)

[martinl_00]

Good stuff.

Things I'd add:

0. 4 RP is not much, but u can start with it, and at a 40 mana cost it pays for itself in 10 turns, which is actually quite good. 5 tiles of visibility is also great vs. raiders.  The real cost is a not getting a different spell.

1. Cracks Call is not for the player - it is so the AI can attrit player doom stacks. It works for that purpose. 

MoM and CoM both do a lot of "balance via infuriating asymmetric gameplay features" and this spell is exhibit A. It is unclear if said infuriating features increase or decrease engagement.    

2. Cats have wall crusher, which can be very useful in some situations, such as sprites guarding a gate.

3. Ice bolt is indeed not worth it as a pure attack, but the freeze is tactically quite powerful. It is great for stopping powerful units that you hope to bring down via multi-turn attrition.

4. Change terrain can remove or create logistic hurdles, and can be combined with raise volcano to terraform arctic tiles.

5. I'm pretty sure that 1 land linking unit can give pathfinding to an entire stack, which is powerful if you lack other sources of that ability.

6. Cockatrices are weirdly synergistic with the sorcery spell that grants 3 magic attack, since the stoning carries along with it. However, even with that I rarely summon them unless the enemy is using lots of low res units. They are effectively a curse strat in the form of a unit.

7. The pile on of tile destruction for any good mineral deposit is exhibit B.

8. Lizards make great punching bags/mobile walls for strong missile units, and there are a fair number of lairs where this is useful. Some wizards also just don't have curses early on. But this still means they are a specialist unit.

That said, "exorcising the lizard" is one of the more euphemistic possible CoM spell uses.

[Seravy]

1. This is mostly true but there is one exception where the spell is intended for the player, and that is mono Nature players facing strong AI heroes. There is absolutely nothing in Nature below Great Wyrms that can kill or even damage a Demigod hero with 40+ armor so as uncommon as that is, I have been in a situation where I had to use it to save myself.
7. Yes, but only partially. Mineral destruction can be avoided by diplomacy or denial of scouting in many cases, whether the Adamantium is worth that extra effort or not though really depends on circumstances.

[Anskiy]

Thanks for the replies!

@Desertfox: IMO Magicians generally come online too late to participate in lair hunting, but you can certainly try rushing for them, especially if you start with Draconians. I find Cracks Call too unreliable for lair hunting, unless you save and load a lot, but with say an invisible hero stack I could see spamming it working.

@martinl_00: Some good points in there, thanks for bringing them up!

@Seravy: Yeah, Nature definitely benefits a lot from resistance boosting magic, and Great Lizards enjoy its benefits the most. I'll elaborate on it later, when I start evaluating synergies.

[GMBarak]

1. This is mostly true but there is one exception where the spell is intended for the player, and that is mono Nature players facing strong AI heroes. There is absolutely nothing in Nature below Great Wyrms that can kill or even damage a Demigod hero with 40+ armor so as uncommon as that is, I have been in a situation where I had to use it to save myself.
7. Yes, but only partially. Mineral destruction can be avoided by diplomacy or denial of scouting in many cases, whether the Adamantium is worth that extra effort or not though really depends on circumstances.

Gorgons will do an average of minimal damage of 10.5 in each attack to such hero with their Supernatural and in the double attack of melee they will probably kill such hero with his 40 defense in a single double attack ~=15 damage. Also the nature wizard is assumed to have high defense heroes of his own at that part. all the other three nature very rare summons will also have Supernatural and can kill such high defense hero, isn't that so?

[Seravy]

True, the game has the Supernatural ability now.
It didn't exist back then.
Now that the AI cannot raze cities anymore, stopping those heroes immediately with a combat spell is no longer as critical as it used to be.
Both of these changes made the spell less important.

But it's still the only combat damage spell in the realm that's effective against higher end targets, if you need that for any reason. Superbuffed normal units sent by a Life wizard, even if they are "only" Hammerhands or something like that, can be hard to stop with Nature. It can also counter Sky Drakes (I'm pretty sure they can be webbed?) and Regeneration in general.
Nonetheless I have to agree the spell is weaker now than it used to be.
While there is RNG involved, technically the spell does offer 5.25 unblockable damage or more for 25 MP spent which is not that bad from an uncommon in a realm that's weak at direct damage spells and it comes with extras (prevents healing, regeneration and immobilizes the target)

...I wonder if maybe slightly increasing the success rate would be an improvement? Nothing too drastic but 30% instead of 25% perhaps?

Edit : at ~33% the spell would be equal at damage per MP spent to Psionic Blast and Doom Bolt so 30 or even 33% would be fair?
It's pretty powerful in the hands of the AI at 25% though.

[Desertfox]

I don't see a need to change Crack's Call. It's a special option in special emergency situations. If you make it equal to other more general spells, then it loses its special character.

[Anskiy]

I kind of liked what Warlords did with it, increasing its odds of succeeding with the target's defense, so that it worked reasonably reliably on strong targets. That's its main purpose after all, deterring strong targets from mounting attacks.