Why is magic so weak?

Yes, I agree. Summoning is quite useful, but every direct attack I have seen is a joke and pales to everything you can do with swords. I feel exactly the same as you, OP.

The damage is increased with every shard you control. If you for example control two air shards and attack with an air spell, you deal triple the normal damage.

Also you could edit the XML files and crank up the damage if you'd like.

For a game titled Elemental: War of MAGIC.

I find Magic to be the most underwhelming part of the game....

I agree. I love the game so far, but I really wish that I could create a sovereign that could destroy masses of soldiers by conjuring magical flames or bolts of lightning. Instead, I am following a similar pattern with each one of simply building up large, well equipped armies. I barely even spend time researching the magical tech trees anymore.

Magic is underwhelming right now because its bugged.  Currently, magic is using a 0-X damage calculation range instead of a min-max damage range.  Shards are also not functioning properly during tactical battles.  As in shards do absolutely nothing.  If you use auto battle the game actually calculates magic properly.

Stardock is aware of this problem and is working on a fix.  They also intend to add equipment to support mage sovereigns.

As the above poster says, this is apparently not working at the moment, at least in tactical battles. Have you experienced otherwise?

Shards should be gravy, not required for magic to matter in combat.  Magic should be reasonable without shards and better depending on the number you hold, otherwise, you have to get lucky for your spells to matter in a game.

right now you start with all books so where is the luck? you just use the spells buffed by shards

anyway 2 wrongs dont make 1 right thing

both having all books and empowering so much is wrong and not fun

same with the usual randomness in combat and spells

i partially agree with autoattacks but spells should deal a reliable damage, something like maxINT+-10%

Don't forget that magic in many ways is predicated on the build of your initial channeler.  Wisdom is what effects your cost per spell. So if you do create a new hero, try and max out the Wis. You cannot change that in game.

Yes.  If I use the auto-resolve feature and take a look at the combat logs, I am routinely hitting for 130+ damage with certain spells (the fire spell that is 2X int damage coupled with some shards).  I actually haven't tested whether or not using this spell results in the same damage in tactical combat due to its short range.

During tactical battle, spell damage is horribly low.

Magic is OP if you know how to "Channel" it, haha love that pun, anways as stated you need to optimize your channeling threw research and shards in the world. If you do, then you will hurt your abilities in other things like making better armor for your army etc. In elemental there is give and take, you are great in one thing or mediocure in it all, that choice is up to you, but if you want those huge exploding 100+ damage fireballs, do the research and know what you need to get there. Assuming in this game is the worst thing you can do, all that text you see actually has meaning in the game.

 EDIT: oh and in tactical as I am reading further in the thread, this was done to fix the way OP abilities of the magic before, it can (again if done correctly) still be OP in tatical. As far as autocombat, personally I noticed the high numbers as well ,I think it still has the old build.

Which is a real head scratcher as to why not since other stats can be increased.

RAT

shards are not working in manual tactical combat atm. thats why you see so low damage outputs.

really? I didn't know about this to be honest, first build after beta has been more tankage army for me, but alas if this is the case, this would be why many think it's under-powered atm.

Reliable damage on spells could be nice if it was implemented as an attribute.  I see no reason for spell damage to work differently to weapon damage, it just needs rebalanced.  That said, it would be cool to have a couple of good (say level 3-4) spells that do normal damage but randomise from, say (Int) to (Int-50%).  Drawback could be in extra mana cost or short range or whatever, but they'd be useful when you really need to do just a few points of damage.  Just an idea.

Also, has anyone gotten to the so called "unthinkably powerful" magic of the late game.  Just curious as to what the max level spells do (including the ones you get from researched and quest-obtained spellbooks).

I'm doing quite a lot of damage with my spells... IF they hit. Which happens nearly never. Apparently every little thug is fast enough to evade a fireball flying at him.

I think Magic is simply bugged in tactical combat, shards or no shards. It misses way too much. I mean it suppose to roll 0 - intelligence, and defender rolls 0 - defenses. So how I can miss HALF OF THE TIME when I have int of 14, and defender has defense of 1??? I should miss only one in 14, which is nearly never. Shards or no shards, combat is not working.

My main issue is that it seems building for normal combat is WAY more effective than making a caster, which is silly in a game called war of magic.  I am not saying magic needs to wreck everything, but I shouldn't need to cast 20 spells to have 5 hit for less damage than normal attacks.  It is also stupid that your children are SO much better than your sovereign because the have the mutant mana regen gene (100% of the time).

Try this for example.

I have a ridiculously lucky game going where I have 8 shards, 4 of which are fire.  Maxing out the adventure tech tree and some stupidly good luck combined.  Melting Touch (aka 2x int plus shards) claims to do up to 120 damage.  I have yet to see it hit for more than 24, and it *STILL* frequently misses or does low single digit damage...  against level 1 creatures with very low defense (spiders).

the problem with shards can only be fixed by playing auto combat then the bonus applies from shards

I have seen shards increase my spell damage, but my hit chance seems to be affected by INT, opponent DEF, and distance to target.

For example, each fire shard you control increases your fire spell damage by ONE POINT...

So if you control 3 fire shards you do 4-13 damage instead of 1-10... (aka, totally irrelevant)

Anyways, the sovereign is AWESOME... just ignore all magic and put all your points into abilities that let you move more, and be a more effective fighter... rather quickly your sovereign is more powerful than a dragon and fast enough to slay several enemies a turn (which make him level more, which make him more powerful)... your sovereign can then single handedly (and easily) conquer the AI using quick resolve on battles.

Then you must be talking about auto resolve because they categorically do nothing to boost damage in tactical as has been confirmed by numerous reports and a Stardock employee

my biggest gripe isn't the power of the single spells. but mana regeneration rate. it's way to slow. i don't know if it gets better when you have that building that increases it but it requires a level 5 city. and with the base regeneration rate you can barely do anything.

I agree that shards are useless right now in tactical.  I have three of every shard type with 16 intelligence, and I don't think I've ever seen more then 20 points of damage done by my best spells to even guys with 0 defense.

Something needs to be done to fix magic right now because it's whack.  I focused my sovereign on magic and he's probably the weakest character I've got, especially since the quests are so bugged.  Never received Alzor's armor after completing the quest (tried many times from save) and Moriah's lost spell books did nothing for me (I'm at level 5 spells and have yet to see any new spells to research).

Magic-focused sov's are really weak right now.