Is there an incongruous distribution of magic?

[HotNifeThruButr]

I was thinking of investigating this while staring at list of nations and wanting to weighing which nation has the best magic for me to use. It seems to me that there is a far from equal representation of each magic type in the whole game, that I'll be attempting to put down in writing, with brief analysis.

I'll attempt to consider every aspect of the nation's magic before giving it a classification as one or two very accessible types of magic, but it will be a generalization. I wouldn't want to type out every nation's individual analysis, but I'll give my justification if anyone wants to discuss/dispute a nation. I'll leave a note if anything appears

(I will use brackets to note what magics exist for a nation but is not their strong suit.)

(I'll also be throwing out any magic that's unreasobly rare, like the Nahualli's 1/40 chance of Death in Mictlan, Reign in Blood or the magic found on Caelum's Amesha Spentas.)

My guess before actually counting all the national magics is that there will be a disproportionately large number of nature and air users and a disproportionately small number of fire and earth users and rainbowy nations will show up in surprisingly large numbers.

Early Era -

Arcosephale: Nature, Air [astral, fire, water, earth]
Ermor: Death, Fire [Astral, air, earth, nature]
Ulm: Earth [nature, fire, water]
Marverni: Astral, Earth [nature, water]
Sauromatia: Death [blood, nature, water, astral]
T'ien Ch'i: Water [all but blood]
Mictlan: Blood, Nature [water, astral, fire]
Abysia: Fire, blood [astral, earth]
Caelum: Air [Water, Death, Earth]
C'tis: Death [nature, astral, water]
Pangaea: Nature [blood, earth]
Agartha: Earth [death, fire, water]
Tir'na'nog: Air, nature [water, earth]
Fomoria: Air, death [nature, water]
Vanheim: Air, Earth [death, blood, fire]
Helheim: Death, air, earth [blood, fire]

Niefelheim: Death, Water, Blood [astral, nature, air] (Air comes on a little more than every 3 Niefel Jarls)

Kailasa: Water, Earth [Astral, nature]

Yomi: Death, Fire, Earth [nature] (Air could come on a little more than every 4 Dai Oni)

Atlantis: Earth, Water [Fire, Astral]
R'lyeh: Water, Astral [Death, Earth, Nature]
Oceania: Water [fire, nature, earth, air]
Lanka: Blood [air, death, nature]

count of strong magic

Fire:2 (Abysia and Yomi)
Air:6 (Caelum, Tir'na'nog, Fomoria, Vanheim, Helheim, Arcosephale)
Water:6 (Niefelheim, Kailasa, T'ien Ch'i, water nations)
Earth:5 (Ulm, Agartha, Vanheim, Helheim, Atlantis)
Nature:4 (Arcosephale, Mictlan, Pangaea, Tirnanog)
Death:7 (Ermor, Sauromatia, C'tis, Fomoria, Helheim, Niefelheim, Yomi)
Blood:3 (Mictlan, Abysia, Lanka)
Astral:2 (Marverni, R'lyeh)

I'm going to stop at Early Era because that's all the time I have right now.

I've tried to be fair by keeping in mind how high a mage should be in a path before being useful in a magic, which I realize is debatable, but FYI, I usually rank a nation with easily attainable fire 2 or earth 2 casters as being a strong nation in fire or earth, due to the easy accessibility of Phoenix Power and Earth Power to allow them to count as rank 3 in a battle. I was also more lenient on Blood because you don't need spectacularly high levels of it to bind the soldier demons and blood hunt, and the pretender can be tailored toward the really big projects like demon lords.

As it turns out, fire and astral were barely represented, and nature didn't turn out very big in Early Era, which surprised me, while Death had an extremely large following for some reason.

Keep in mind this is of course only an analysis of Early Era, which possibly skews the representation of certain magic as a design decision, since, for example, the armor pierce that's iconic for fire evocations don't function well in an era where most units have low armor. I'll have to wait until I can analyze the Middle and Late eras to really make a statement about what magic is underrepresentated or over.

[K]

I think a more useful way to look to the nations is to also look at how much of a magic they get. The best types of magic require a minimum amount before they do anything good.

For example, Death 1 is enough to create a death economy. You can cast Dark Knowledge to find sites and summon Revenants. The problem is that unless claw up the hill on your tongue by Empowering one guy with the Death gems you need to slowly cast Dark Knowledge, then making a Skull Staff to summon a Death 3. Then you must live with the fact that your only good Death Mages are summoned with your short supply of Death gems.

Common Death 3 on your recruitable mages is enough to be a "Death Power." You can spam skeletons and Shadow Blasts, make a Skull Staff and summon only slightly better Death Mages, cast Terror, and with a Skull Staff make a Skull Helmet, and with either spam Drain Life. With a Helmet and a Staff you can cast almost all of the most powerful death magics.

Air on the other hand, is only actually useful if your recruitable mages are natural 4s or 5s, considering that the best battle magic is Air 6 or 7 with heavy drain, so you really want to be like an 7 or 8 with most spells. You can't even make an Air boosting item until Air 4, meaning they cost far more than any other type of magic to boost.

[HotNifeThruButr]

Strictly speaking, the potential to grow your magical arsenal is possible in every path, getting 1 to search sites and then empowering until you can actually become a "power" in that path. But yes, Death would be easier to grow than most of the other paths.

But if anything, that makes Death even more heavily represented in at least Early Era.

[K]

Being a Power, in my mind, means not having to do anything crazy to be good at it.

Fire for example, is a Path that you just don't get into except by straight empowerment, which is wasteful in the extreme.

Death and Nature are very easy to get into, since summonable mages are available that let you "walk up the ladder" to powerful amounts of those magics.

[Sombre]

Air is only useful if you have 4s and 5s in it? Huh?

What about arrow fend, thunderstrike, wind guide?

[K]

Arrow Fend. A3. Costs a gem, but its great for the value. You want an air 4 or else your mage is knocked out.

Thunder Stike: A3, and is 50 fatigue. Cast two, then get get knocked out. Compared to Falling fire or Falling Frost, its underpowered and overpriced.

Wind Guide: A2. Cheap, but costs a gem.


Sooo, thats three spells, one of which is a loser and others two cost gems. Do you seriously expect anyone to build an army on that?

Look at the best Air spells:
Mists of Deception, A6, 200 fatigue
Wrathful Skies: A5, 200 fatigue
Fog Warriors: A5, 300 fatigue

Considering that the AI often won't cast high fatigue spells and overspends on them if it does cast them, you are spending Air gems at a very fast clip.

Add in that the Bag ogf Air needs an Air 4 to make(20 gems), and a Wind Helmet is A5(25 gems).

So lets say you are Lanka and you best Air mage is A3, and you want to ever cast Mists of Deception. You spend 60 gems to empowered youself to A4, then another 55 gems to get yourself to A6. Now you can overcast the spell with an extra gem and only knock yourself out(total spent: 115 gems).

[RamsHead]

Or, in the case of your mists of deception example, you can use a sabbath.

[K]

RamsHead said:
Or, in the case of your mists of deception example, you can use a sabbath.

Sure. Anyone can use a Communion or a Sabbath to make up for weak magic, and some nations even get those options on recruitables. What's your point?

Setting up a Sabbath is difficult and easy to foil, and costs blood slaves, and its not going to help 99 out of 100 castings of spells you need to cast over the course of the game. Even implying that it makes up for weak magic is baffling to me.

[Micah]

Erm...doing a bit of setup for a BE (especially one that doesn't kill your mages) is pretty bar for the course...

Even without a communion it's pretty easy to drop a single booster onto your caster, cast summon storm power and then burn an extra gem while casting to get mists off.

The one time empowerment cost to get to A4 for the boosters (assuming you can't get there some other way, via trading, etc.) isn't THAT steep. You're also flat-out wrong about the helms being at A5.

Thunderstrike is also an incredible spell. It's lower research level than falling foo and has 50 range. A single caster with each spell might fall in favor of the bigger AE spells, but if you bring along a whole squad of mages the range advantage of thunderstrike will become obvious, since the army getting pounded by it will be well on the way to routing before their mages even get in casting range. If you commit enough mages to a fight you'll find that 3 casts of it per mage is generally enough to do the job. It's also never rendered obsolete against troops. Army of Niefelheim completely shuts down cold damage and army of gold makes fire magic pretty worthless...the best you can do against lightning is a 50% resist from storm warriors.

[Agema]

I personally consider magic skill of 1 in any path to be virtually useless. However, once you're at level 2, you can boost with constructed items to 3 or more, and it's at level 3 (and the then attainable level 4 battlefield) spells where a mage becomes really effective.

I've played ME Vanheim, and a series of A3/4 mages pounding a battlefield with thunderstrike is devastating; similarly Arrow Fend is incredibly effective if you're up against any enemy with lots of archers.