Yeah might need to give the Angels a slight buff.  They are supposed to provide a different style to the Dragon though.  The dragon is essentially a sledgehammer where as the Angels are supposed to have a bit more of a utility / army boost kind of theme.

Agreed.  I'll do something about the Delin thing next version.

Cheers.

@StevenAus - yeah I agree that to keep the Warrior and friends comparable in effectiveness that some kind of per level bonuses are probably in order.  

I'm also trying to think of some ways to make the non spell casters more fun, or at least a bit more engaging.  I know i'm biased but I find that the Summoner and (new) Mage path are just flat out more fun that the other classes.  To me the Warrior and probably the Commander are the least fun.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're bad or whatever... and I still like using them... but it kinda just feels like there isn't quite as much to do.  Probably because a lot of their abilities are essentially passive.  I think also partly because (with the Warrior at least), you're a bit at the mercy of whatever random loot you find.

So i'm thinking about some ideas to make them a bit more engaging.  Maybe some active abilities or something tied to shards.  Like I dunno maybe the Defender has an ability called "Nifty Defenses" (not really something cooler obviously).... and depending on what base spellbooks they have it unlocks abilities like this:

Iron Form (if you have Earth1) - for next 3 turns, anyone attacking the champion has a 50% chance to have their attack reduced as their weapon is damaged

Icy Barrier (if you have Water1) - for the next 3 turns anyone attacking the champion has a 50% chance to be frozen, halving their initiative

A Mantle of Fire type effect for Fire.  Some kind of weird thing for Life where you gain life when hit by an opponent for the next 3 turns.  That kind of thing.  

Not sure exactly but I like tying in different abilities like this to the spellbooks because it means that a "Water" Defender and a "Earth" Defender would have some unique abilities, that would (hopefully) be fun to use.

Anyways, one thing at a time, will get to these a bit later hopefully.   

Are these reduction of cooldowns worth it anymore with the change in mechanics.  I can't see why I would take this path now.  Help me understand?

On another note, yes Summoner and Mage are just so much more fun than the other classes.   It would be great if there was some way to get the other classes some shard related benefits.   By the way, the Path of the Ranger class mod is a good one to try if you want to have an archer class, it seems to play nicely with this mod (at least I haven't noticed any problems yet).

I like the idea of magic related abilities for the non-mage, non-summoner paths as mentioned in Reply #78.  I still think all classes need a counterspell of some sort - maybe the Warrior one could be "Throw Rock" which might cause the caster to lose their concentration.  Maybe it could even be a ranged attack for no damage (or 1 damage) that gets judged as Accuracy vs. Dodge too!  (instead of Spell Mastery vs. Spell Resistance as with spellcaster counterspells)  If that is possible it would allow Accuracy to be more useful for melee/archer-type paths.

Wow, this mod is a heck of a lot of fun.

A few thoughts regarding the Summoner tree:

1) I made a beeline for the Summon Drake trait, and I was able to get my first drake by Season 67. Not too much longer, I picked up my first Storm Dragon and immediately took on Vetrar easily around Season 80 (the Arctic boss that gives the amazing sword Heart of the Glacier along with other goodies.)

2) As a Summoner, it's possible to almost entirely ignore the Warfare research tree until later in the game, when one has developed a lot more research per turn. Likewise, Fortress cities are less necessary, and one can instead focus on Conclaves to boost mana (through use of Herbalist, etc. and the Meditation city enchantment) and research as high as possible. More mana = more summons = faster experience gains for the Sovereign, which in turn allows for more powerful summons as you go along.

3) Similar to #2, since military units aren't that important, metal and crystal are less necessary to develop. The buildings that are required to acquire these resources take up a long time in the building queue for cities for non-Summoner games. But as a Summoner, one can build research, mana, and growth related buildings significantly faster by being able to skip most iron ore and crystal sites.

4) A custom faction with Decalon and Scouting goes perfect with a Summoner sovereign (Mancers with 3 basic moves rather than 2 are particularly awesome for this.) Decalon allows for cheap access to all four elemental schools of magic, and it's also possible to spam Arcane Monoliths (outposts) with the amount of mana that's being generated from having so many Conclaves and other sources of mana generation. Often it pays off to place outposts on resources just as a means of denying them from one's opponents not to mention being able to develop a road network all across the map.

I realize not all people will necessarily min/max like I have here, but for the sake of testing the mod's balance I wanted to see how far I could push the limits. Keep in mind the game was played on a custom Medium sized map, with balanced options other than high world and high opponent difficulty. I set the number of opponents to 3 and made them all Empire so they'd tend to band together more often against me (granted, with my Faction Power score few would start wars with me -- after all, I have Storm Dragons!)

It would be great to see a way to maintain the depth that the mod brings to the game while keeping it in line with the usual level of difficulty. My first suggestion would be to add a moderate crystal requirement for some of the more powerful summons. Not that the crystal would actually be CONSUMED, but rather that it simply needs to be present, similar to the Summoning Pool. This would force players to mine at least some crystal resources. Metal could be used in lieu of mana for casting summons via a Transmuting spell. This would encourage players to mine metal and would keep things more balanced between Mana, Metal, and Crystal.

Secondly, the Warfare tree could add small bonuses to the summons all the way throughout. For instance, the Armor technology could give bonus defense, etc. This one would be pretty straight forward.

I'm just throwing these ideas out there for what they're worth. The mod is already great. Thanks for the hard work!

Going to start a new game with the loot dlc installed and 0.3 of this mod (finally finished my last game with still 0.2 installed). I don't think it'll cause any problems, but I will report if I run into problems.

Great feedback thanks.

Particularly I think you made some good points about the resources... (less need for Iron and Crystal), and the Technology balance.  Will definitely think about that stuff for future releases.

Might make the Drake/Dragon a bit more expensive in terms of mana and Summoning Pool next release.

Cheers.

Good points.

Maybe I should make the dragon like 5 mana maintenance per turn or something.  Will probably do that next release.

So, I've been playing a game with your mod, and it's awesome.  Getting a dragon or two running around is, basically, the best thing ever =D 

But, I think I've found a bug with the mage tree and Decalon spellbooks.  I trained a Henchman with the intent of making him a mage, and bought him a couple spellbooks right after he trained.  When he gained a level, I took Magic Missiles and, as expected, got the life and fire spells.  But, when I saved and reloaded, the magic missile spells had disappeared from his spellbook, and mousing over the trait tree showed blanks where the spells should have been.  I'll do further testing tomorrow, your mod has made me stay up an hour later than I should have

An update on what was going on with my henchman: apparently the Magic Missile tooltips will disappear upon saving/loading (or just taking the Improved Missiles trait, I haven't figured out which quite yet), while leaving the spells themselves available for casting in tactical.  Just a visual bug.

I'm optimistic that he will take a look at this (tactical summons) in the next patch or two given all the feedback on the subject in various threads.

Here's hoping, because it would be great for sure.

For items where you can add effects or abilities without re-defining the item (maybe spells?  I'm not sure), it would probably mostly apply in addition to the original effects.  For things like Champions or items that when you re-define them, you have to re-define all aspects, then it depends on the order they are loaded.  Core files first, and then whatever order the game reads the mod files and other files in the custom folders.  Champions and items for example would probably only show the last way they were defined before the game loads up.  For example, I customised the Blessed Hammer, and then had to delete the custom definition from CoS because that was defined after and the CoS version was showing up in the game.

Hi abob101,

i have a suggestion regarding procipinee's crown.

The queen currently screams to be played as a summoner but as you know casting other kinds of spells becomes expensive as a result.

Im guessing this was the idea behind giving the crown mana generation which was a neat idea however as you said you can't make items generate resouces.

But how about making the crown reduce tactical spell costs?, right now it gives minor bonuses to spell mastery, spell resistance and damage but truth is they are so small that they aren't really an advantage, but reducing tactical spell cost instead of these bonuses would be truly useful.

In case you consider it here's the modifier you need to add.

        <GameModifier>
                <ModType>Unit</ModType>
                <Attribute>AdjustUnitStat</Attribute>
                <StrVal>UnitStat_TacticalSpellManaCost_Multiplier</StrVal>
                <Value>-0.15</Value>
                <Provides>-15% mana cost for tactical spells</Provides>
        </GameModifier>

I found out that 15% seems to be a fair amount with some tests i ran, but it can be any value.

Please keep up the good work!