How to make spells hurt?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Something i am struggle with in age of wonders 4.
Getting offensive spells to accauly do damage.
On the strategy map casting offensive spells doesnt seem to do any damage at all.
Like zero, nada, nothing.
And on the battle map the damage is so little you better off using a buff spell.

Now i seen people complain that the spells are brokenly overpowered.
And i dont see it.

All i see is: 20 casting points. 20 mana, enemy unit barely harmed.
That is 20 mana and casting points i dont get back.
Meanwhile: area of effect buff makes my melee units not hit like a wet noodle.
Area of effect and last 3 turns.
Same cost in mana and casting point.

So how do you do it?
What build do you have that lets spell accauly do damage?

[mk11]

Strategy map offensive spells
- enemy will heal if you don't attack same turn (be wary if using simultaneous turns)
- if enemy has a lot of healing support they may anyway heal on the first combat turn

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by mk11:

Strategy map offensive spells
- enemy will heal if you don't attack same turn (be wary if using simultaneous turns)
- if enemy has a lot of healing support they may anyway heal on the first combat turn

Yeah the game was way to many healing options.

[Oaks]

I tend to use offensive spells at the end of my turn to finish off enemies my troops were not able to kill.

I haven't looked too far into it yet, but I reckon spells from higher level tomes do higher damage.

[Isidorn]

How to make spells hurt? Use debuffs to lower the enemies resistances. (and hope they don't have support units that removes the debuffs)

[Raymond Reddington]

There is a low level order spell called wrath of the faithful that can be juiced pretty high, and also a low tier chaos spell blaze of the horde with potential. Also you want the city upgrade in the throne city that adds damage to the spell school you want to use (Its called lens or amplifier - unlocked by high level wizard tower)

[Material Ghost]

I agree in the fact that spells, by themselves, are absolutely terrible when it comes to deal damages. But if we look at the big picture, We can notice damaging spells are not as short ranged as our units, and I mainly use them as strategic strikes, to support my armies, not to completely destroy the oponent's army by itself. Each spells can do different kinds of damages, and they inflicts buff to our units but also debuffs to enemies quite often as far as i've been going with the game.
And i also think this is the way the devs intended them to be played. To finish off enemies you didn't managed to kill, to strategically put traps in order to prevent enemy units to go a way you do not want them to go, or to debuff them when they felt safe to go, to inflict debuffs before attacking with your units, and when it begins to smell very bad to your units, higer tier spells can suddenly be launched at a high cost but in exchange for very high damages.
Damage spells are like pellets. They are not extremely dangerous by themself. You can throw one at somebody, and it may hurt, but you can't think about it kiiling somebody in one single shot. But if you take the pellet, let's say (100% randomely) a lead pellet (or nugget, to be exact) , put it with gunpowder in an iron cylinder ... you guess that's not exactly the same situation. spells are not dangerous by themselves, it's HOW you use them that makes them dangerous.
If you can't manage to use efficiently and correctly damaging spells, well you already use the buff spells. Everyone is not good at everything, and if your playstyle is buffing your units, well, it is. Mine is more a mix of attacking units in order to debuff, and then buff my units in order to kill them off quickely (i love mystics for that part) .

EDIT : I'm new in AoW, so i might not exactly now what everything do, but that's just how i feel things right now.

[Terrkas]

Dont forget the tower upgrades to buff dmg spells of your chosen affinity.

Also, ai healing turn 1, means the heal is on cooldown, those are on the longer side usually and they might not be able to heal all units.

[TirAsleen]

Déjà vu, we discussed this topic just recently?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/7260435303109795652/#c7260435303109849004

This is not SM with 3 Hellfires(with 80cp, 1 can be precasted) + Warmage where not even Shadow Demon Lords and Titans have a chance to surive.

Or the same deal with basicly sacred wrath, which was funny coming from the magic sphere of life that is more about healing.

You played SM recenlty, that you got that impression? And lets not forget units had not huge layers off additional HPs, with ranks. We only had silver and gold medal and small hp increases.

It all adds up.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Déjà vu, we discussed this topic just recently?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/discussions/0/7260435303109795652/#c7260435303109849004

This is not SM with 3 Hellfires(with 80cp, 1 can be precasted) + Warmage where not even Shadow Demon Lords and Titans have a chance to surive.

Or the same deal with basicly sacred wrath, which was funny coming from the magic sphere of life that is more about healing.

You played SM recenlty, that you got that impression? And lets not forget units had not huge layers off additional HPs, with ranks. We only had silver and gold medal and small hp increases.

It all adds up.

That is a different topic.
And i am aware they have been nerfing magic since age of wonders 1.
I am just hoping someone proves me wrong about age of wonders 4 magic system.
So far no luck.

[Aurumworks]

Most damage I could pile up on enemy armies before a fight was in a siege. I stacked harass defenders, dragon attack and fumigation (with a wizard bombardment for breaching) as siege projects and then cast three blizzards on the city at breach. The defenders were dead, mostly dead or dying from poison stacks when fighting started.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Aurumworks:

Most damage I could pile up on enemy armies before a fight was in a siege. I stacked harass defenders, dragon attack and fumigation (with a wizard bombardment for breaching) as siege projects and then cast three blizzards on the city at breach. The defenders were dead, mostly dead or dying from poison stacks when fighting started.

That is a lot of stacking just too kill a few units.

[Aurumworks]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

That is a lot of stacking just too kill a few units.

Yeah, it's not very effective. If everything did 50% more damage, it might be worth all the investment.

[Balekai]

The spell damage scaling tome (at least for combat) is Tome of Amplification, which gives:

SPELL AMPLIFICATION (hero skill mentioned above and in link above)
Increases the damage of your spells by +50% damage (Does not Stack) *i'm guessing with itself with multiple heroes but does stack with other modifiers like the Pylon. It would have to be tested*

CONJURE AMPLIFICATION PYLON
Conjures an Amplification Pylon, a stationary structure that deals damage (80HP, 2 Armour/ResistLightning, has Static Shield for possible stun when Pylon is hit, deals 20 damage with Lightning Blast, 4 range) and increases the damage of your spells by +50% damage.

This summon lasts for 3 Turns.

CHAIN LIGHTNING
Target enemy unit:
Sustains 30 Lightning Damage.
This effect passes on to another enemy within 3 hexes.
Passes on up to 2 times.

Plus the usual goods of Frenzying Focus, Astral Blood, Amplified Arrows and Amplified Minds.

So if you want to do a lot of damage with spells this is a great start, but isn't the end. The biggest problem is going to be stacking resistance working against spell damage. So you want to have means to debuff enemy resistances on a massive scale or at least for your chosen damage channel. Since you're going to want Tome of Amplification, a good synergy is:

T1 Tome of Evocation for:

LIGHTNING TORRENT
In target enemy army:
All units sustain 20 Lightning Damage.
All units suffer -3 Lightning Resistance for 1 World Map Turns. (Resist Debuff)

Another perfect one late game for the same affinity is of course Tome of the Archmage for:

DISRUPTION WAVE:
Disables enemy Unit Enchantment for 2 Turns.
Dispels all positive status effects on all enemies.
Dispels all negative status effects on all allies.

Of course you want units (Like Mystic units) and other things that will Sunder Resistance before all that in combat. You can probably also get some mileage out of random negative status effects form various units/abilities/tomes.

Lastly look into Order tomes for their scaling spirit spell damage based on various things. Also this beauty hero skill in Order's Tome of Supremacy which scales very well with Combat wide damage spells:

SUPREME MAGIC (Hero Skill)
Causes a Unit to explode when killed, dealing 20 Spirit damage to adjacent enemies.

Edit: Just thought it would be a good idea to add more on Mystic Culture to improve damage and spell sustain for a damaging caster faction build. I see this post was marked helpful so I might as well add it here instead of a new reply:

As I mentioned above, with Mystic you have the T1 Arcane Guard Polearm and T2 Shieldshield shield units that both Sunder Resistances for 3 turns on hit, stacking up to 5 times (-1 resistance and -1 status effect resist per stack). Their Soother support unit has "Spell Channelling" trait, which adds a non self stacking 20% discount to spell mana cost. Spellbreaker battlemage unit that has "Attuned Cast" ability, that can add 10 combat casting points every 3 turns.

So Mystic Culture + Astral Tomes mentioned above + Wizard King of course like others suggested + Mana Channelers (50% mana discount on all summon spells including in combat summon spells) + Gifted Casters (20% discount to combat spells, stacks with Mana Channelers etc. in combat), can add up to near infinite spell casting since you don't really use any mana for it. You will be able to sustain massive summon armies because of all the mana discounts (upkeep still an issue, but you have so much mana income it shouldn't matter). Not only do your spells hit hard in combat at least, but you can cast as long as you have casting points to spend with spellbreakers + leaders giving you more. When you don't kill enemies the first time with a hard hitting spell, kill them on the second cast instead! Might as well because you have total 90% mana discount on combat Summons and 40% discount on combat spells. :p :P

[Bob]

Spells are more supplemental in this game, not a replacement of your units doing the damage. That said, there are powerful spells in high tier tomes. If you are talking 20 CP and 20 mana spells you're looking at early game low tier spells, they're not supposed to be almighty powerful. When talking powerful spells, Demonic Onslaught from the Tome of the Chaos Lord for instance gives your entire army Killing Momentum and Hastened for three turns. It works incredibly well with Barbarian culture's Primal Strike and a whole bunch of Shock units like Berserkers and Demonkin major transformation so they get Frenzy and fly so they just fly over walls or your enemy front line. Get a large army of Shock units, cast Demonic Onslaught at the start of battle, rush in with the entire army, deal huge Charge damage, get that Frenzy boost and immediately attack again on Killing Momentum before the opposition even gets a turn. Get that Chaos Boltering Matrix in your Throne city and all your Chaos buff spells will also give +3 Strengthened. Demonic Onslaught affects your entire army, so it immediately also gives +3 Strengthened on top of Killing Momentum and Hastened, it is brutal.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

That is a different topic.
And i am aware they have been nerfing magic since age of wonders 1.
I am just hoping someone proves me wrong about age of wonders 4 magic system.
So far no luck.

No, its the same topic and i tell you magic is more than fine, it does a ton of damage, especially with amplification, quickening and overchannel from a WK. Did you even try to cast Lava Burst? Its only 100 mana, other equally strong spells costs usually more than that like 200-300 mana.

Magic in AoW4 is not as hilarious broken as it was in AoW2. As i told you in my hellfire example, in addition you had those storm spells for the global map, but usually, that was not really game deciding in most cases, just very gimmickly to raise earth on an army or use poison plants to prevent movement.

Its was merely always all about unit enchantments and summons, and some quite strong combat damage spells that only appeared in AoW2 in a big way, AoW1 had tame combat damage magic and you lacked most of the time the mana anyway to cast it, AoW3+4 have stronger combat dmg magic allready.

And here in AoW4 you have Tome of the Crucible, basicly budget spells that cause mass destruction, if used correctly usuable by everyone, because its only T4 Materium Tome, and who doesn't invest into some materium just to get arcane artisan for +10/mine?

You can also just use overchannel with sleep of oblivion + greater reanimation on any T4/T5 unit and watch how cool and disrupting that is. It won't be that strong anymore once the wolf update is live, as greater reanimation is limited to a T3 undead unit called corrupt soul. Now, you can turn Dragons, Giants and the like to your side in 1 turn and there is nothing anyone can do about it, its always a 100% success chance that cannot be avoided.

Why is that not strong magic?

You only play vs the A.I. right? The A.I. has real problems with that kind of magic use, its very disruptive for it. There is also the possiblity that it routs at any given turn after enough kills or dmg was done.

So there is not even anymore a need to burn anything to ash with like 2-3 hellfire casts, + army size is much smaller, as well, its not like we face now 6 stacks of T4 units in a siege or something so it does not even matter, if the whole battlefield is no longer affected, but just a 2 hex range. Some spells still do that, but they are typically in T5 Tomes, when games are long decided.