Balancing Wrathful Skies

[tinkthank]

I like WC and I think it is a valid, if somewhat boring, tactic to use it. I do think, however, that options for utilizing valid counters to it could be increased. Here are a couple of small suggestions.

1. Make Staff of Storms a Very Powerful magic item

2. Some counter-spells could be thought of, here is one idea I posted in the Wishlist:
Sunburst: Conjuration 6, Fire4 Astral1, Fatigue 200-, calls for the warm rays of the sun upon the battlefield, clearing the skies, and thus has a chance (mage casting strength + d6oe vs. opposing mage casting strength + d6oe) of eliminating any any storms, mists, or rain currently active; in addition, it automatically casts "fanaticsm" once upon coming into effect.

What do you think?

[Cohen]

Adding +2 Air magic required (bringing it to 5), and 3-4 air gems required.
Put it on 7th or 8th level of research.
Staff of Storm = lvl 6 construction, 40 air gems.

I'd think this is sufficient.
It will be more or less on pair to Fire Storm and Astral Tempest.

[Boron]

Yeah wrathful skies is too cheap .

It could be increased to air 5 needed and 6 airgems must be used and 600- fatigue .

Atm wrathful skies with A3 , 2 airgems and 200- fatigue is very cheapo .
The similiar fire storm requires F5 , 5 firegems and 500- fatigue .

And together with a storm wrathful skies is stronger + the storm makes firemagic weaker + avoids flying almost completely so the grounded enemy army has to suffer the wrathful skies probably a bit longer .


But in lategame you will face anyways only strong armies + SCs + strong mages which are all immune to wrathful skies anyway so it is probably wrong to worry about wrathful skies at all since it is only effective for a couple of turns in midgame .

[Pocus]

you are speaking of MP here Boron? I never saw an end game where a wrathful skies cant be devastating somewhere.

[Tuidjy]

What he means, I think, is that in the late game, Wrathful Skies is a fact of
life, and almost everyone is immune to it. As for me, I do not think that
Wrathful Skies is what needs to be balanced. Instead, I would allow protection
spells to stack. Thus a casting of 'Storm Warriors' and 'Gaea's blessing' would
make your troops immune. I think that anyone who can stack two mass-protection
spells deserves to laugh at elemental damage.

I understand that, because of the way protection spells are coded, making them
stack is no easy task, so I have little hope for Dominions II... but still
expect that Illwinter will at least look into it for Dominions III.

If people really feel that Wrathful Skies is a problem in Dominions II, which
is agruable at best, I think that the way to balance would be significantly
reduce its power. Why? Because we have Fire Storm, which is a much harder
spell to cast. Instead of homogenizing the two spells, why not have Fire Storm
as the much more powerful spell, and Wrathful Skies as a more common, but less
effective alternative?

How weak do I think Wrathful Skies should be? The average damage on a tough
troop(30hp) should be neutralized if the unit has 50% shock protection and
regeneration. With Storm it would still be double that.

But once again, I do not think there is anything wrong with Wrathful skies.
There are enough air nations, indy mages, and alternative methods of clearing
the battlefield of wimps...

Nerfing whatever works for the sake of the mythical beast called 'Balance' is a
certain way to a boring game. The choice between removing a feature and adding
a counter should be very easy to make.

[Huzurdaddi]

Wrathful skies makes armies a waste of resources very early in the game. Many find that this "ruins" the game since so many unit types become irrelevant so quickly.

I personally find that a nice A7 casting requierment ( and a similar bump to all battlefield spells ) works quite nicely. It still possible to cast the spell, but it is very expensive to get a caster than can do it.

[The_Tauren13]

From what I've heard, in Dom I national troops were too good and spells too weak. Now, it appears in attempting to balance it out in Dom II they've overshot the mark, and troops are useless and spells too strong. So, hopefully, they have something else in mind for Dom III (kinda like halving all income from Dom I in Dom II) that will balance things.

[Boron]

Pocus said:
you are speaking of MP here Boron? I never saw an end game where a wrathful skies cant be devastating somewhere.

Yeah basically as Tuidity said .

In lategame you just field then either almost only SCs or cheap troops en hordes which replenish for free , mainly vampires + devils or really tough troops , e.g. tartarians , abominations or airimmune troops , mainly mech men and storm demons .

All your SCs are airimmune anyways so Wrathful skies is not such a big danger imo .

[johan osterman]

Boron said:

Yeah basically as Tuidity said .

In lategame you just field then either almost only SCs or cheap troops en hordes which replenish for free , mainly vampires + devils or really tough troops , e.g. tartarians , abominations or airimmune troops , mainly mech men and storm demons .

All your SCs are airimmune anyways so Wrathful skies is not such a big danger imo .

The troop mix you describe is a consequence of wrathful skies, amongst other things, though. So saying that the spell is spell is not a problem based on that is arguably a little disingenious.

[Boron]

johan osterman said:
The troop mix you describe is a consequence of wrathful skies, amongst other things, though. So saying that the spell is spell is not a problem based on that is arguably a little disingenious.

You could then say that Airmagic is in general too strong .

Even if Wrathful skies wouldn't exist Air would still be 1st priority for most players because Air is AN damage and has good precision .

Lightning , Shimmering Fields , Thunderstrike , Orb lightning and Shock wave are excellent spells too .


But since there are already enough counters in the game it is imo balanced enough .

And Airnations have 2 big problems already anyways :
Problem 1 : after 5 turns normally your Airmages just spam battlesummons
Problem 2 : If you face Air immune stuff your Air mainly mages are rather useless in this combat , especially true for caelum , vanheim and man . Most severe though for vanheim because the Vans are Air-blood mages so they have no other battlefield spells while caelum mages could at least cast water spells like frozen heart and Pythium has good astral magic .


Airmagic is indeed the most lethal battlemagic but expect for boots of flying , AQs and staffs of storm + of course the few gems needed for wrathful skies you don't need Air Magic much .

Imo it is really quite fine as it already is :
Air : Best direct damage battlefield magic , AQs
Fire : 2nd best direct damage battlefield magic , artillery via flames from sky
Earth : dwarfen hammers , good summons like mech men
Nature : fever fetishes , GoH , GoR , good summons like lamia queens , ivy kings , charm
Astral : best indirect battle spells with soul slay and the like , mind duel , wish , Sc items like lucky coin , Amulet of antimagic etc.
Water : Clams , Water queens , Boots of quickness , Jade armor
Death : Summons , Summons , Summons ... , Wraith swords
Blood: Summons , Summons , Summons ... , Blood thorn , Hell sword

So to really do well you should have about 6 of all 8 possible magics at least covered , even better all 8 .
This is a sign of good balance .

In a further patch Wrathful skies requirements could be upped to air 5-7 and false horrors could be a bit nerfed but that's really all that should be considered . If more is done it really harms the game imo and maybe even those 2 changes harm the game already .