My experience with this system comes from Neverwinter Nights. The big problem I had with it is that I pretty much never found a good reason to counter the spell. It was almost always more useful to save my own spell instead of wasting it on the counter.

How does this work though? All combat in MoM takes place inside of one turn. Or do you mean a combat round or two inside the tactical battle? In that case, I think a lot of spells would have their usefulness severely curtailed by this, heavily favouring conventional attacks.

Guardian Wind is single target, there is no "mass" version. Since you can cast only one spell per combat round, you couldn't cast Guardian Wind on your Phantom Warriors before your opponent gets a full round of attacks on them (Phantom Warriors must be summoned in combat, requiring a combat round to do so).

Compare this against another player who goes 11 death books and summons a wraith right off the bat. Wraiths, being undead, are completely immune to the illusionary attacks of Phantom Warriors and with their life-draining attacks they are capable of running rampant through your swordsmen and spearmen, leaving a horde of undead garrisons in their wake.

Counter spelling in NWN was incredibly useful in multiplayer if your team was coordinated. One sorc would stack up every dispel of every kind and lock onto an enemy caster, preventing him from casting anything, since dispel counters any spell. Meanwhile your buddys would beat the caster to a pulp while he was being countered.

I was referring to what could happen in elemental for multi turn casts, i know mom didn't have them. And if you bump up their power, they are still useful, even if they take a few turns to hit. Plus, in massive battles with thousands of troops, its likely to take a while for anything to happen anyway, a spell taking a few turns should not be a big deal.

You could cast multiple spells in combat per turn in MoM, you just needed an ungodly huge casting skill. I forgot what the threshold was, but it was like 100+ or something. By the time you could multi cast per turn, you should of won anyway. Although tbh i wouldn't be putting guardian wind on phantom warriors anyway. The buff would be more expensive than the troop. Cheaper to just summon a second one.

And yes, death does hard counter most of sorc. But tbh, death isn't all that easy to start either. Its very mana expensive and thier attack spells, aside from the absurd life drain, are all crap. I was thinking more of nature or chaos. Both have strong summons, powerful buffs, and dangerous attack spells. Death really has the most amazing summons, and then some absurd stuff at the end(black wind and death wish, im looking at yall!). Life was also really strong for the whole game. Their attack spells were a bit limited, but they have the best summon by far and their buffs are way OP.

And undead garrisons are pointless, they don't suppress unrest. No summoned or undead unit does.

Ahh. The concept of more than 2 sides in a battle would definitely throw this whole debate out the window, as magic would have to be severely toned down in that case.

I think you're way out to lunch if you think you'll be commanding 1000 individual anythings in a battle. No, I don't consider a MoM halfling slinger to be 8 units just because it has 8 little pixel-art halflings in it. You control it as 1 unit and so that's all it is.

I doubt we'll have any more than 20 units under our control, regardless of whether each unit is depicted as 1 figure or 100.

No. You could cast multiple overland spells per turn if your spellcasting skill was high enough (based on the mana cost of the spells), but never in combat. You could have heroes or other spellcasting units cast extra spells for you, but you yourself never got more than one.

Death magic has the cheapest and most powerful early game summons. I have actually won a game simply by summoning a wraith at the beginning and then using that single unit to conquer the entire map. Perhaps a bit overpowered, heh.

Wrong. Undead normal units raised by ghouls or life drain attacks do suppress unrest. They are identical to regular troops except with the added bonuses and penalty of undead, just like any normal unit that's been buffed by black channels. You're probably confusing these with fantastic creatures (such as wraiths, ghouls, skeletons, sky drakes, demon lords, zombies etc.), none of which provide unrest suppression.

*all units will be fighting as individuals*

there will be units of 1, units of 4, ect, up to units of 1000. This plays on important things like formation, (morale?),(endurance?), and ease of Ordering. A unit of 1000 will be somewhat ordered as one, but will still be 1000 individual units.

All *individual units* are coming directly from your Cities population.

I doubt anyone would possibly have any more than 20 legions, however 100 Brigades or 500 Platoons(Battalions)**? I certainly see that as a possibility. 10,000 individual units??? Absolutely insane, impossibly ineffieicent, and just plain crazy, most likely hardcoded against for the AI .... yet STILL possible.

So yes, I think the fact that a legion is 1000 individual soldiers will have to bring you to terms that there certainly IS a difference between unit sizes. Beyond organization of commands, they are truly a different number of units grouped together, much as if you had Click-Dragged a huge mob of units and placed them in rank and file, and told them to stay that way *most of the time*.

**-personally I think there should be some syllabic or consonant differences in Troop Organization names. Party(4)->Squad(10)->Company(50)->Platoon(250)->Legion(1000) personally fits me better than having Battalion and Brigade sitting right on top each other.

I would also like some *flavor naming* of Army sizes. Any army lower than 1,000 would be called a Band. aka Roving Band of Explorers, Invaders, or Mongrels. Alert! A Band of Kraxians are invading us!!!

An army of 1,000-5,000 would be considered a Battalion. Anything would be larger would be called a Division (up to say 20,000 troops), split up into individual Battalions. Once you research the tech to allow you to "build" Legions should allow you to assign a Legion to a Battalion, and to assign Battalions to Divisions. Theoretically nothing larger than a Division could fit into one battlemap (without crashing your computer). However, most likely a Division would be spread out across the map with several different Army Groups (battalions) fighting separate battles, being led by different champions. I think that certain kinds of Champions should be able to be used as Generals and Field Marshalls. A General should be able to command a Battalion ... essentially his "bonuses" are stacked to all units within his battalion, even if not within the same "army" as he is. Field Marshals would be able to do the same thing for Divisions. Maybe only certain bonuses would apply to units not in the same stack ... AKA reduced maintanence, increased experience points, and increased force-march speed.

A Division led by a hierarchy of Champions that all used stackable "increased force-march speed" traits, their Division would be a mightily speedy one indeed. Same for stackable reduced maintanence "Generals" promotions/traits. A mobile army's maintanence could be severely reduced.

To get back on Topic ... not every spell-book has to have every defensive spell. Not every element needs to defend itself in the exact same way. Perhaps cost-on-turn counter spells are VERY specific, cost a reasonable amount, cost only one time, and wear off after 5 turns. Maybe these type of specific counter-spells are available by a book of Balance. If you have a Fire Book and a Balance book, the anti-fire spells and anti-water spells show up earlier in the spell-research list, however all spell-specific counters are available by the book of balance.

The book of nullification could provide generic global protective spells. These spells nullify at least a percentage of the damage if not all of it. These types of active non-specific global protection spells should tie your mana up in Semi-Permanent mana-per-turn-burns. Where lets say you have 100 mana, and want to buy a global shielding spell, protecting all cities with a forcefield. It uses 20 manaburn. Each turn you now have 80 mana to use, since 20 of it is locked up in maintaining the Global Forefield/Shield spell. Same effect could work for battle-field wide protection wards. The more affective the spell, the greater the ManaBurn. However, if you know your opponents aren't going to be using very high-end spells, or if you only want half the damage averted, you can use less strong versions, with less mana burn. (20 mana burn vs 80 mana burn). So that you have enough mana to actually attack something instead of remaining an impervious shell that can't do much on *their* turn.

yea, book of Nullification is a reall doozy

The Book of Reflection/Comtemplation. This book would give protective spells which are Semi-specific (against a certain element, against AOE vs single-target, vs any spell that tries to inflict X status ailment ...) counter spells. Semi-specific, and don't cost any mana to cast (when its cast). Also, most of these spells are unit-specific, but can be applied to larger units or even cities or armies (however that can be risky). Its a defensive spell, and when the attack is inflicted that meets the requirements, an amount of mana is subtracted from the defender that is equivalent to the mana used by the attaker. (could however be a combination of Mana x (Potential Deaths/ Caster's HP)

Essentially this type of counter could be infinite in expanse, to cover every possibility. The main concern, however, is that you could easily run out of mana by getting carried away and Warding everything. Also, I think it would be best if, instead of getting dispelled, un-used wards are simply non-triggerable until enough mana gathers up again (to make for less frustration). I rather like the Mana x (Potential Deaths/ Attacker's HP), as attacks from powerful mages can be countered more easily. However it might be fairer to simply have mana cost = attacker's mana cost. Or even, simply the destructive might of the attack could be calculated in an appropriate mana cost for the defender. In any event, the weakness of this book is that your mana reserves depend on what attacks the enemy use, and also who has more mana?

Other than the Book of Balance, Nullification, and Reflection, I think Elemental Books should have simple *SHIELD* spells for their element, which gives a certain value of magical defense against attacks of that element.

Also there should be a Book of Manipulation. Book of Manipulation would have spells like Dispel Magic, Dispel Counter, Counter Dispel, and Bind Spell.

counter-dispel would counter any dispel used by the enemy. Dispel Counter would have a chance to dispel any counters, including counter-dispel. (dispel counter defeats counter dispel under equal terms). While Counter-Dispel would defeat a Dispel Magic before the magic was dispelled. As the book states, this spell is about Manipulating others, which includes the phenomenon of the Manipulators manipulating each other in clever mind-games.

Bind-Spell, meanwhile, steals a spell which takes multiple turns to cast and uses it for your own. If there is a Spell that simply wins the game, it can be Dispelled, but *NOT* binded by another player. Bind-spell can be dispelled by Dispel-Magic.

As opposed to other schools of magic, where the defense is against a particular type of spell, Spells in the School of Manipulation are Targetted at a particular enemy Magic User or Sovereign. I'd like to have diplomacy score somehow influence the chances for a Manipulation spell to be sucessful. Perhaps such mind-spells like "Charm" and "Dominate Champion" can also be included. Such domination spells, however, should not be permanent-partially due to the rarity of Champions, and partially due to the already powerful nature of the School of Manipulation. Charm would dis-allow an enemy unit to attack for X-amount of combatvturns (but can still move) and Dominate (if sucessful) would allow you to control an enemy Champion for 5 combat-turns. Perhaps Manipulation could also include such spells as Ghastly Visage, Turn Undead, and Illusion army.

Ghastly Visage can cause fear, Turn Undead can cause undead units to weaken/flee, and Illusion army can reduce enemy morale.

A unit of 1,000 is not the same as 1,000 individual units, it is 1 unit. It is no different from the "BC" unit from Master of Orion. 1 BC was 1 Billion Credits. So what? You could only make use of them in minimum 1 BC denominations. For all intents and purposes, 1 BC is no different from 1 credit or 1 gold or whatever, it's just a silly label.

Same thing with units. Tack a 1,000 or go all out and tack 1,000,000,000 to a unit.  Doesn't matter, if it is 1 unit of control it is 1 unit, the rest is just statistics.

Controlling 1,000 individual units 1 at a time will never be an enjoyable experience, let alone a feasible one.

Chong Li ... controlling a Legion is controlling 1000 individual units at one time. There is a difference between controlling something one at a time and controlling alot of something one at a time.

Your examples work fine IF, say, legion was our lowest unit. Its not. Not everyone will have legions, being able to build one is an organizational tool, and is basically a way to pay for those 1000 soldiers more efficiently, and get them built more efficiently, therefore building the biggest available unit will usually be the logical choice when resources are plentiful and time is not a factor.

One thing to keep in mind is that the lowest available unit is 1. All units refer back to the lowest common denominator in this came, which is 1. Just assume for a minute that via the lore or some such, we were supposed to assume that 1 unit was actually representing 50 units. Then 1000 would be representing 50,000 units.

Essentially, a Legion is a fleet of 1000 ships, not one Giant Ship that has the number 1000 next to it. Read the combat information more carefully next time, please. "Using fleet analogy as final logical resort "

Because of what I have just told you, are the exact reasons WHY this combat system is going to be Awesome in a handbasket with added Sprinkles!

Very nasty. I agree 100%.

Counter Magic can create alot of Magic that simply becomes MOOT. No one likes MOOT right?

Without proper and balanced counterspells and protection spells, magic will be way too powerful. No one likes heavy gameplay imbalances, right?

One of Kael's design goals in making Fall From Heaven 2 was asymmetrical balance.

Things do not have to be identical to be balanced. Each path doesn't have to have identical outcomes to be competitive. Fall From Heaven did not have any counter-spells, and some of the spells were quite powerful, however I don's see any reason to not include different kinds of counter spells for each faction.

Asymmetry does not equate to imbalance. Its simply a harder goal to accomplish, but makes a far better game.

The Asymmetry I refer to in FFH is how the different nations function (economically and Politically).

See Kuriotates vs Dwarves vs Elves vs Calabim.

Shieam, Perpentach, and Luchuirp are also examples of factions with very unique ways of playing/strategies.

Sorry, but the whole pointing thing with arrows made your post confusing and difficult, if not impossible, to follow. I think you may have been trying to say having things unbalanced is okay, but i can't be sure, since FfH2 didn't have counter spells anyway.

And general counter spells don't make things unbalanced. If someone spends their casting time and mana putting up a counter spell, then that was time they didn't spend throwing fireballs. The other player could take that time to put up their own counter spell, or they could spend it in punching through the first players counter spells.

As long as counter magic is not an absolute defense it becomes a trade off which, if properly balanced, will not make casting pointless.

Post edited.

I was saying that all Counter spells don't have to operate Identically in order to be equal.

You don't have to be the same to be equal. That goes for Counter spells, that Goes for offensive spells, and that goes for Global spells.

Much nicer. And i strongly agree. The difference in power are what makes games interesting.  If every faction is identical and uses the same things, yes, they will be balanced, but you might as well be playing chess. (not that chess is a bad game, but its not a 4x fantasy).

True, which is why a wizard -who has the book of ice- should be able to counter the devastating fire or air spells for example and vice versa. [Ex.: Ice shield vs. Lightning storm or Firestorm]

As for general protection spells: I think that a new spellbook should be added, which offers all kind of defensive magery. Perhaps "global" spell should have more tiers. Example: City enchancement -> Minor magical shield [Absorbs 20% of magical dmg]; Magical shield [Absorbs 40% of magical dmg]; Greater magical shield [Absorbs 60% of magical dmg] etc.

However other wizards should be able to dispell these global/city/army enchancements.

Ice shield should be totally ineffective against lightning, since water is conductive. It should cancel out the fire storm but be destroyed since the firestorm would cancel it out. Any ice attacks would be totally stopped by it, and any water based attacks should actually increase its strength, as the water would freeze to it which would add layers.

Something like that.

Water is not conductive. It's the dissolved ions that are conductive. Pure deionized water does not conduct electricity. I'm just going out on a limb here, but I think magically created water or ice would not include magically dissolved calcium and sodium ions.

Huh? I would think that an ice shield would protect one unit from a fireball or firestorm, but all other units not underneath the ice shield would be vulnerable.

ya, if the shield dosen't cover a unit and the fireball splashes past the edges, than that unit should get hit. The point there was that the ice shield should only protect against one fire spell of the same strength before being used up, but it would have different reactions to different elements. Paper-rock-scissors, only with a dozen of different elemental types.

And ya, i didn't even think about the dissolved ions thing. Wouldn't that be funny. If someone is using a water shield you can just toss a bag of salt at it, then blast away with lightning.

Gave it a bit more thought. It would be pretty cool if you could use physical items to cancel out spells. If someone shoots an ice spell at you, if you happen to have some bags of salt and catapults, you could hit the ice spell with the salt and lower its freezing point enough that it goes back to water and falls apart. Would be pretty cool.

"Salt" could be an earth spell. Could cancel out ice attacks/elementals, and could make water sheilds vulnerable to electrical attacks.

In fact, a sufficiently powerful earth spell could increase the amount of metal in the whole battlefield (or at least beneath the enemy).

For instance, if you made the ground beneath the enemies lined with copper or diamond, then any electrical attacks in the area would attack ANYONE on that altered ground, and more effectively (max damage, central damage at all points).

Especially since Electric attacks, one possibility at least, is more damage for less area of effect.

Using high level earth spells to comliment your air spell could make it much more powerful.

Of course, a proper Earth Spell (without conductive Materials), would completely nullify any lightning based spells indefinitely, but would be incredibly weak to earth based spells, unless it was a Stone-shield.

Meanwhile, Wind, Fire, and Water work on a more percentage basis than Earth and Electricity.

For instance, Equal amounts of Water and Fire cancel each other out, and equal amounts of Ice and Magma cancel each other out. However, it takes only half as much Ice to cancel out fire, and only half as much magma to cancel out water.

It takes twice as much wind to cancel out Fire, and 4x Wind to cancel out an equivalent Earth spell (blow the earth out of the way). In addition, Earth spells of OIL can increase the Area of Effect and Damage of Fire spells extensively. Air spells of Oxygen can increase Firespells even more. Using Oil and Oxygen spells can stack, to truly make devastating Fire spells tripled in strength and Radius.

So Wind can block against Fire and Water, albeit more expensively. Water and Fire can cancel each other out in equal amounts, and any amount of Earth Shield will shield against 10x as much electirc damage, and any Stone Shield 10x as much wind damage. However Wind damage is twice as effective against an Earth shield, and Electric Damage is twice as effective against soldiers standing on conductive metals (at least twice). I suppose Stone Shields are effective against electric attacks as well??? only Stone Shields are twice as expensive, for being effective vs Electric AND Wind attacks. Although, I would find it more interesting if Stone Shields would inadvertently have just enough conductive Materials to cancel out the effectiveness against electrical attacks, and thus it is merely a shield against Wind. Therefore Stone is neutral to electricity and effective against wind, and "Dirt" is weak against wind but effective against Electricity (For sake of argument).

Stone and Dirt could be equally expensive, and then doubly expensive would be "Lead Wall" which is effective against both. Dirt would be able to defend against Twice as much Fire-magic. While stone and lead would be able to defend against 5 times as much Fire magic. Magma, however, is nuetral to Dirt, and only half as effective against Stone and Lead. (as opposed to Fire being one fith as effective).

Water and Ice would be Neutral to Electric attacks (no protection), while Water and Ice give "some" protection against Wind attacks, yet not as much as Stone. Fire is weak against Wind, yet weaker to Water and Ice.

Dirt offers almost Total protection against electricity, however weak to wind. Stone offers no protection against electricity (given the second assumption) and some protection against water and ice, yet much more protection against Wind. (optionally you could have stone somewhat effective against electricity).

Stone and Dirt require some protection against Fire, stone moreso. Magma is in some ways like a "stronger fire" yet Dirt offers no protection against Magma, and Stone offers some protection against magma.

Dirt and stone are weak to water and ice, however Dirt is weaker than Stone.

Lead offers protection against everything (other than arcane) although it offers the most protection against electricity and Wind.

Fire and Water offer Massive Protection against each other, and any excess in one or the other gives a Logrithmic Advantage. (for instance, a little extra water gives some water damage to the person protected by Fire, however a medium amoung ot extra water gives extreme water damage to the person protected by Fire)

If I missed anything (I know I repeated myself alot) let me know. Essentially im saying that we could be more scientific, and hopefully it wouldn't require damage types, simply "generic rules". While much might not be implemented, I would like the Conductive metals Idea and Salts idea.

Some interesting ideas there. I hope you are planning to do a mod with all of them, sounds like it could be pretty cool.

2 questions to the devs [hopefully they read this topic...]: #1. Can we mod in protection spells or counter spells? Is that possible?

Primitive example:

Firestorm, Volcano etc. -> Destroys x% of the buildings in a given city, and causing x dmg to the garrisoned troops.

The great anti-fire spell -> Offers 100% protection against fire based spells in a given city.

Question #2. If we can mod in new spells like the great anti-fire spell, what about the AI? Will it use these kind of spells properly?

You can break down these things into three types of spells:

1. Dispels (or Disjunction in AoW speak) that kill a currently active spell. Typically, the cost and chance of success are based on the power of the spell, the enemy spellcaster, etc.

2. Counters that try to cancel a spell being cast. I've never seen these modelled very well in a TBS game, personally. Mostly because of the turn based nature, if I throw a fireball in combat it's not your turn and you can't do anything about it. Multi turn spells could be fought with a counter, but still. I'd really like to see a way to attempt to counter instant combat spells, though how you do that fairly is not something I'm sure of.

3. Shields or buffs that protect against spells before they're cast. World of Warcraft's Anti magic zone (and Dragon Age's Glyph of Nullifcation) are such abilities, they weaken or outright block magic within them. AoW's forcefield structure protected a city from being hit by magic pestilience and such.

One other consideration that affects this is casting range. Can the Sovereign cast spells anywhere on the map, anytime? Or is there a range or influence zone of some kind? If you can simply blow up the enemy capital from anywhere on the map magically, there is a need for stronger counters in order to make that even remotely balanced.

...or not.

They're reading it, but they read more then they post. As soon as one of them posts, the thread changes into talking to them, instead of talking amongst ourselves.

Or, they may just have nothing to say on the subject right now.  

The devs read and see everything. They are like the eye of sauron. They only grace us with their wisdom every now and then though. If something has a clearcut answer they will often jump in. However, going on what they have said previously, i suspect that nearly everything will be modable, including the possibility to add in counter spells.

Ok but what about vanilla protection and/or counter spells? Since the devs are ignoring this topic, I suppose that the answer is: no, there won't be spells like these in the vanilla game...as for modding I am not sure at all, that we can mod in spells like these, but hopefully I am wrong in both cases.