Nargott
Auto-translated
Hello
I played some duels and noticed the uselessness of the Destruction school in specific cases and on a global scale
For example, the match Ibba (Dwarves) vs Dugal (Humans) - the Dwarves' only use for Destruction is to punch through an angel not for 14 damage from hand, but with an ice bolt for 30. On other troops, damage from hand is higher than the spell. If the Dwarves had the Summoning school, the impact would be noticeably greater
Maybe give them some lightning spell. Dugal, on the other hand, has two useful magic schools
Hafiz is even worse - same situation with 3 cold spells like Ibba, but doesn't even have a single ice bolt
If we consider the scale of 3 or more growths, then Destruction magic is purely a support magic for a physical hero. You take Destruction and its perks at the last levels and throw debuffs. By level 15-20, any hero will have 4+ Knowledge, and Sorcery doesn't play a role in that case
In a case where you have high Sorcery (15+), Light and Darkness simply annihilate, and this is where cheap spells come to the forefront
like Mass Haste for 150% or Attack boost for 22
Among expensive spells (15 mana = 3 Knowledge), Resurrection and Repair justify their cost, and the further into the late game, the more control spells carry
Spells like Holy Word don't justify their cost at all, unless you manage to replicate the duel situation of meeting a single growth with Expert school
Meanwhile, there are spells like Teleport and Vampirism which are very strong for their cost and in general
Specifically for Humans, Finger damage in duels now doesn't exceed 20, for other factions - less than 30, except for Ents (32).
With growths up to double the duel scale, I think Chaos magic will manage; with triple growths, that's already a question.
There is a certain margin by using top-tier tier 4-5 spells with sufficient mana, by leveling Sorcery and Chaos perks.
But fighters also have their boosts (Physique, Meat, Leadership, Luck, Offense), so it's unclear.
In any case, from a certain amount of meat, Chaos stops working. It was like that in the original, and it will be like that here; the question is only the specific numbers.
Personally, my view is this: the punch should be equal in effectiveness to free spells in this mod (like Weakness or Earth Spikes), and at the basic level of development! (without the basics of Darkness or Chaos magic respectively).
Previously, the Punch was balanced for an advanced school, and for the Arrow, not the Fist (which is illogical - the Arrow hits with magic), and with normal Sorcery, plus it dealt even more damage to low tiers, because HP weren't pre-calculated, but the Finger was.
Regarding Logistics - that's exactly what it will do. But of course, it won't boost initiative like Leadership, but will boost the starting ATB of units by 10-20-30%, which is especially useful for units with low initiative, as they will make their first move much earlier.
Regarding multiple magic schools - the benefit will be in obtaining additional spells. You level 2 schools - get 2 combination spells; level a third school - get 4 more; level a fourth school (aka Archmage) - get 6 more.
Regarding the prospects of Chaos in a drawn-out game - I think the balance mechanism here is the use of hit-and-run tactics, where Chaos has time to process the enemy army several times, reducing the amount of meat and thus equalizing the chances in the final battle.
If we judge on a scale of 3 or more growths, Destruction magic is purely support magic for a physical hero. You take Destruction and its perks at the last levels and throw debuffs. By level 15-20, any hero will have 4+ Knowledge, and Sorcery doesn't play a role in that case
In a case where you have high Sorcery (15+), Light and Darkness simply annihilate, and this is where cheap spells come to the forefront
like Mass Haste for 150% or Attack boost for 22
Among expensive spells (15 mana = 3 Knowledge), Resurrection and Repair justify their cost, and the further into the late game, the more control spells carry
Spells like Holy Word don't justify their cost at all, unless you manage to replicate the duel situation of meeting a single growth with Expert school
Meanwhile, there are spells like Teleport and Vampirism which are very strong for their cost and in general
I wouldn't even aim for scales larger than 10-15 dragons for the entire army in total (specifically in duels - the scale of 7 dragons). Chaos players have only one tool to even the odds in such drawn-out battles - to have much more meat, regularly using hit-and-run tactics (the longer the term, the more hit-and-runs needed), to reduce the enemy's meat significantly below their own. A Chaos player cannot do it "fairly," because their magic weakens over time with accumulating growths, while buffs/debuffs/controls do not. And it's very strange, under such unequal conditions, to have final battles on equal meat, as if nothing were wrong.
At the same time, purely formally, a Warlock can of course increase Mana and Sorcery to actively use Empowered Disintegration, continuing to one-shot stacks (for example, Empowered Disintegration at 21 Sorcery deals 450 damage, which can kill 3-4 Devils). But the problem is that they have to increase their parameters just to stay at the same level, while a fighter increases their advantage beyond what they already have with Attack, Defense, and even Sorcery (which in WGE converts well into Attack and Defense). Therefore, in a fair fight on equal meat, even a Warlock will have no chance at all.
And I think this is normal - there are perks that work exclusively on small meat (like Deadly Cold), and there are spells that don't work on large meat (all damage spells, including resurrection spells). This means you shouldn't look for a "fair fight," but rather use the advantages of Chaos as profitably as possible, and if the deadlines are tight, you need many hit-and-runs just to even the odds.
About perks like Oversight, that's absolutely right. You could give a reduction via a hit on the ATB bar or from Oversight, double-triple damage right away as a package. This needs testing. If the game were on a map with bots, I'd have written everything down long ago =) But as it is, I can't understand in my mind how strong or weak it is)
But the concept "Heroic Attack = spell for 0 mana" is absolutely correct; that was the initial intention. It just needed to be oriented towards the zero-basic level of magic at low Sorcery, not average parameters.
If we consider the hero as a shooter, then using expensive spells is powerful, one-time abilities; using cheap spells is regular shooting; and using free spells or Punches is the equivalent of melee combat, in which all shooters without the corresponding perk have a penalty. But if you run out of mana - it's the same as running out of shots, and you are forced to use such weak attacks.
Furthermore, there are sometimes situations where a shooter has no profitable shots (for example, no one at close range, and no vulnerable targets at long range), and in such a case it's profitable to waste a turn, buy time - move to a profitable distance, sometimes finishing someone off along the way. In complete analogy with this, free spells or Punches also work - sometimes it's not the right time to play powerful spells and you can either wait 0.5 turns, or use a weak (but free) Punch or a free level 1 spell, and sometimes there are conditions where such things are very important - for example, a tier-7 unit has 10% HP left, and then finishing it off with a Punch is very profitable, or a key unit is under heavy fire and free 50% Evasion or Distraction can help significantly.
So, roughly speaking: the damage of, say, Earth Shock 120 (I made up the number!) + 4*(Expert skill)*K (hero's Sorcery)*X where X is a percentage of the total HP of a unit stack. Balancing this will be difficult, but Chaos will always be relevant with such a formula, not just in the early-mid game.
No such mechanics are built into the original, and I don't feel like artificially constructing them with scripts. First, we need to verify that, firstly, the late-game problem is actually relevant, and secondly, that the existing tools (hit-and-runs) don't work.
Specifically in WGE, it is planned to balance maps so that using a single "fist" (stacked army) is not profitable, which already implies splitting troops, so it might be that there won't be any "late game" in terms of a huge amount of meat in battle. How specifically?
1. Many towns of different races (you won't be able to consolidate them into one army). This is a key difference from TE (Tournament Edition), where foreign towns are generally not used as sources of armies.
2. The absence of huge guards that are unbreakable without a powerful army. This is another key difference from TE, where routine breaking of mega-packs of neutrals and abusing the broken AI was made into a cult that takes up 90% of the game.
3. The absence of the ability to use the same army for repeated breakthroughs on the same day (a ban on transferring an army in a chain without losing a turn, plus the cost of a turn for the battles themselves), which means for several battles a day, you need to have several different armies, from which the economic benefit is much greater than from a single "fist." And this is another key difference, not only from TE but also from the original itself.
Make the Ballista weaker, but invulnerable. What's with the jokes in the original, where a Demon invests 12 perks (Attack and Machines) into the Ballista, while enemy Centaurs move before it and destroy it on the first turn =))))
For example, 12 Hunters with 11 initiative need about 5 volleys at the Ballista to destroy it (and that's with an Orc's developed Engineering = 75% of the Ballista's maximum durability, and low Attack of a Druid hero).
With high Attack, a shooter stack equivalent to 3+ dragons will one-shot the Ballista.
In this regard, the Ballista's durability does not exceed that of an ordinary tier-7 dragon.
On the other hand, there are no absurd firearms that would require additional Offense leveling, and you invest one skill in machines, not two. Machines are always support, a supplement, but by no means the main and only tool. If your Ballista is killed, it means an extra tier-7 dragon (or equivalent) wasn't killed, which compensates significantly. The maximum power of the Ballista is about 2 Titans (in duels, a double-shot Ballista works approximately like a Titan, and a triple-shot one like 1.5 Titans). At the same time, the maximum durability of the Ballista is 400 HP, while a Titan has 150 HP with a significant advantage in Defense (10+).
In other words, the Ballista, like a summoned Phoenix, although they can be boosted more than a tier-7, it's not by much (a tier-7 can also be boosted with good hero Physique - so I wouldn't definitively place the Ballista or Phoenix above a tier-7).
A tier-7 (Dragon, Titan, and others) is the highest combat unit in the game, and even a high-level fighter hero without magic cannot significantly surpass it. At level 20, a hero's Punch will only kill 20% of a dragon; only with the Knight perk for double hero damage - 40% (or with an Elf's Deadly Shot, killing a dragon).
A Cyclops alone, by its very appearance, should command respect, not be just an ordinary stack aka a fat Peasant without a couple of zeros in its numbers.
A hero who takes Light magic: buffs their army with spells so that their stats approximately equal a warrior hero. The Holy Word spell, and especially Divine Wrath, seem completely out of place to me in this school (my opinion!). Instead, mass versions of buffs. In general, I see buffs, healing, resurrection, and more buffs here. In fact, it turns out to be the same as a fighter, with its own pros and cons.
It's very important: Sorcery should have a direct conversion to physical stats (Attack and Defense).
That is, roughly speaking:
There is a fighter 10/10 with a conditional 0 Sorcery (no particular magic).
And there is a Light caster 5/5 with 10 Sorcery, who casts two buffs (Stone Skin and Power) and converts their Sorcery into 17/17 stats (not on everyone, but on key units in an area). And they can also cast a third buff - Haste for double initiative, and simply destroy the fighter if they haven't managed to realize their passive advantage by that time (3 rounds), dealing critical losses to the caster.
If there is no direct conversion of Sorcery into Attack and Defense, then the fighter with high stats will surpass the caster with low physical stats, which is bad. Magic should work to create an advantage, not just be a compensating factor.
Regarding Holy Word. If a caster plays as a caster, that is, takes care of their Sorcery, which then effectively translates into physical stats, then they will be able to effectively use the strike spell, which is also demanding on Sorcery. This is quite an option, why not. Even when playing with buffs, you put a full set of strong buffs (Stone Skin, Power, Haste) for 4 rounds, and then you have time for a fourth cast, which might just be a top-tier spell like Resurrection or Holy Word. Especially since situational Holy Word will no longer clutter the guild, but will only be awarded for the combination of leveled Light and Darkness.
Regarding Divine Wrath. This is a situational spell for the middle to end of battle; it has different timing of use than buffs. At the same time, it is especially effective at punishing rushers who seek to inflict maximum losses on the caster before they can be covered with powerful buffs.
A hero who takes Darkness magic: this one, on the contrary, makes the warrior hero's army as weak as his own))) And it's precisely this tactic, not: throw Mass Slow - then Mass Stone Skin, because you have it, Defense is a must, and then cast Berserk while the army stands on defense. That is, you really debuff the enemy army with this school so that they are equal in strength to you and it's profitable to fight them! Berserk in general, as you've probably understood, I simply hate this spell =) What nonsense is it to hit the nearest, especially if it's 200 people in a stack or 10 Hydras =) And if they are mixed, why didn't they attack everyone at once? =) Forgetfulness (where Part of your own stack came under the spell's effect) was ideal, but anything beyond that is too much, I think. I would generally change this spell: instead of it: 1. transfer Defense to Attack with an increase in initiative of an allied target, 2. the unit deals slightly reduced damage to itself (the most logical), or summon Death Knights (like summon elementals) - the most spectacular =).
At the same time, for Darkness, it is often enough just to reduce the enemy's damage so that they cannot effectively attack in principle for a long time, and during this interval they can be destroyed by other spells or the army.
Debuffs in WGE can be very powerful (and in the same way, directly convert Sorcery into physical stats).
Weakness reduces the enemy's Attack proportionally to Sorcery, and Ray reduces Defense proportionally to Sorcery, and can be repeated multiple times. And all this can work on an area on several targets (saving the opponent, because not on everything!).
All these seem like nuances, but they are fundamentally important. An army under buffs or debuffs is not the same as an army under passives. It is an accumulating advantage that is not created immediately and dissipates over time, meaning it must be realized within a certain time frame. At the same time, Darkness has much more time than Light (Weakness is long-lasting, and Ray is permanent), because Darkness doesn't boost damage like Light does. From this perspective, buffs, debuffs, and passive bonuses are fundamentally different from each other, both in effectiveness and in gameplay feel.
A simple head-to-head comparison:
Power = 2 mana, increases Attack by Sorcery +2, for 1-4 rounds (depending on skill)
Weakness = 1 mana, decreases Attack by Sorcery + 2, for 2-8 rounds. Twice as cheap, twice as long. Unfair? That's how the school works. Light is much more dangerous per unit of time than Darkness.
A hero who takes Summoning magic: Summoner. Not all spells in the school summon, but it's not hard to imagine what the spells will do in that style. So the enemy approaches you, and you already have Elementals, a Phoenix, Hives, Walls blocking passages as backup, and also Mines placed somewhere. It should be very interesting to play like that in theory. Stats are weaker than a warrior, of course, but free meat tanks; we win by numbers, literally. Ooh, I got carried away, but now it can't be stopped)))))I would call it differently - Controller. But the essence is roughly the same - magical advantages are created, accumulated, and realized over a long period of time.
For example, you place Mines, which either buy time by restricting the enemy's movement, or quickly resolve, dealing a lot of damage and paying off doubly.
You set up Hives - you tie up a couple of enemy stacks with Hives.
Then you set up control and calmly work with a Phoenix or Elementals, supplementing with your own troops.
You can do it differently, like a pure Summoner first playing the Phoenix or Elementals, but a pure fighter can take down an unprotected Phoenix, and then the question is whether you have enough mana to constantly re-summon the Phoenix.
This is the most interesting and promising school, in my opinion.
And in the original, it had neither the time nor sufficient spell power for a full playstyle (and Summoning was only good for hauling neutrals). On the RTA map (arena format, on balance close to the original), it's still impossible to convince people that Summoning can play as an independent school, rather than an appendage to other magic schools. There, glass Hives fall apart with a half-kick (the hero spent a turn and mana, and some simple unit from one hit or even a 50% range shot just destroyed it - Summoning shouldn't work that poorly). And the Phoenix or Hives start working only when the army is left in tatters (because the speeds allow the enemy to reach you with a single ATB, for the same reason Mines are no longer relevant). Or the Shield, although it formally absorbs a large amount of damage, is very slow and protects one unit only slightly better than simple Stone Skin, which is of course not serious for a top-tier spell.
All this works differently in WGE, much better. Playing Summoning is simply a pleasure. And it is a full-fledged school that cannot be said to be "unable to stop a rush."
Phoenixes and Elementals have time to enter the game (Stone Elementals enter late due to initiative, but they are literally unkillable).
A Hive doesn't fall apart with a half-kick, only from a good attack of one or maybe two full stacks, certainly not from a 50% shot.
More Mines are placed, and they play much more consistently (8 or 10 might seem like a small difference, but in reality 10 is much more pleasant and reliable; they go where needed).
The Shield absorbs up to 100% damage, not a pathetic 50%; it effectively gives a unit complete invulnerability until it is completely penetrated. This is exactly how a top-tier spell should work.
Resurrection raises many troops, without extraneous health penalties, but you can't spam it - it's expensive.
The Sword Wall holds damage well, not falling apart with a half-kick.
Even the basic Wasps, although they don't deal real damage (and shouldn't), work as free control, even when mana runs out. From my experience, at Expert Summoning, this is the strongest free spell (effectively equal to the Encouragement ability, only working in the opposite way).
In short, in this mod, Summoning is objectively implemented more strongly and more impressively than anywhere else.
A hero who takes Chaos magic: Deals good direct damage. In general, this weasel will be the hardest to balance - because he doesn't depend on his own army: take seven tier-1 units and into battle. Cast what you can and retreat. Hire again and repeat. Perhaps it's worth somehow tying the damage to the number of your own troops. Yes, it's difficult, but it would be very interesting to come up with =)
You can compare a Chaos user to shooters. While the troops haven't engaged in melee, the shooter should have time to inflict losses on the enemy, preferably critical ones (if their own army is weak).
An important difference from the original is tempo and mana. A Chaos user should never have enough mana to sustain a high tempo for a long time. Otherwise, they would just sit in a deep defense for 5-10 rounds, during which they would simply throw out Shocks and Meteors. That's how it works in the original, but not anymore in WGE. Top-tier spells are too expensive to spam throughout the entire battle. On the other hand, they manage to deal enough damage early enough so as not to sit in deep defense for the whole battle, and start using troops. With a couple of casts, a Chaos user manages to create enough advantage for their troops to start working effectively.
Added after 23 minutes
With Summoning, with a favorable placement of objects and soldiers on the map, you can block everything you need from the enemy's large units. So Summoning does its job perfectly. Especially during castle defense, it's convenient for patching holes. And if you've managed to break the catapult, it's generally brilliant.
And in the original, not only is Summoning weak and situational (as people like to say, "demanding on skill"), but it also has a bunch of unfair counter-tools like Banishment skills, Elemental Equilibrium, enhanced Chaos against Summoning, enhanced troop damage against summoned units, and they even invented a special artifact against Summoning - the Ring of Banishment. There are such protective artifacts against Chaos too, but in the case of Chaos, there are at least enhancing artifacts for all elements (while in Summoning, there is only an artifact for Elementals).
My opinion is that Summoning is the most magical and self-sufficient school of magic, and it should be. This is the flavor of true magic - not the ever-rushing, straightforward Chaos; not the supporting or weakening buffs on troops; but real control, which doesn't depend on your own troops and has maximum prospects.
Summoning is personally a fundamental topic for me, because WGE itself is initially built around the concept of control, at the troop level, and Summoning provides exactly that, but at the magic level.
Added after 28 minutes
Chaos shows itself perfectly as a bane of enemy boxes. One Fireball and a Haven hero will think twice about whether to make a box or scatter soldiers in different directions, although I'm not sure about destroying single targets.
But point-target Chaos is also dangerous for Light. The strongest effect occurs if you put a couple of strong buffs (like double damage and initiative) on one powerful unit, and in that case, powerful point-target Chaos on that unit is a strong counter.
Divine Wrath is a magnificent thing if you have a lot of spam. Oh, how awesome it is to get it as a Demon or Necromancer. You can not just sacrifice a weak tier unit, but put it against the enemy in such a way as to take it down together with them. The mere presence of this thing on a hero forces the enemy to strongly reconsider priorities and perhaps postpone finishing off your peasant stack for a couple of rounds. And in that time, a lot can be done with them.Divine Wrath here doesn't depend on Sorcery, which on one hand weakens its potential imba-ness (it scales with troop size, unlike Chaos), and on the other hand makes it much more versatile, because it works the same with any Sorcery. A fighter with low Sorcery and weaker magic will be able to use it earlier, while a mage with high Sorcery will use it later, when the Wrath has "heated up" to the level of their top-tier spells that depend on Sorcery.
Berserk in its current form is ideal. You cast it on an enemy shooter and you're a genius. The shooter will move into a bad position, get a retaliatory strike from an ally, and get pummeled. An excellent thing. And if you add complex conditions for choosing targets, it will either become too strong due to effective self-elimination of enemy stacks against each other, or become completely uncontrollable, and then you personally will start thinking "Do I really need this?", well, you disable an enemy unit - and then it finds a lucky moment and destroys your unit, because it calculated how to inflict the most damage this turn.
Berserk can last 2 turns if it's applied randomly from an attack (Whip Strike), since in that case there is no choice of target, making it much softer in many cases (I haven't encountered a broken Berserk from an attack yet).
I'll also add that bonus damage on Berserk (like in the original) is absolutely unnecessary; the spell works perfectly without it. Berserk is often cast on the unit with maximum damage anyway, why boost it even more?
For some time, Berserk in WGE reduced damage to 50%. This was done solely because there was no technical capability to weaken Expert Berserk to 1 turn. And, frankly speaking, such a Berserk at a developed level was too weak and situational (it only worked normally against damage-focused Orcs and Demons). For example, a Dwarf doesn't deal much damage anyway, and with 50% damage from Berserk, it was an almost useless effect for such a powerful and expensive spell (which at the time often ate up all your mana).
Added after 20 minutes
That is, you really debuff the enemy army with this school so that they are equal in strength to you and it's profitable to fight them! Berserk in general, as you've probably understood, I simply hate this spell =) What nonsense is it to hit the nearest, especially if it's 200 people in a stack or 10 Hydras =) And if they are mixed, why didn't they attack everyone at once? =) Forgetfulness (where Part of your own stack came under the spell's effect) was ideal, but anything beyond that is too much, I think. I would generally change this spell: instead of it: 1. transfer Defense to Attack with an increase in initiative of an allied target, 2. the unit deals slightly reduced damage to itself (the most logical), or summon Death Knights (like summon elementals) - the most spectacular =).
In the original, it's a relatively cheap spell that can disable an enemy unit for 2 turns, plus with bonus damage, without any requirements for Sorcery or Knowledge. An extremely toxic thing that could break the game and forced you to rush headlong at the enemy to avoid catching Berserk on a key unit far from enemies.
In WGE, it's a fairly expensive spell that disables for only 1 turn without any extraneous bonuses. At minimum, it has a high Knowledge requirement. By original standards, it costs 40 mana.
Furthermore, here you can manage to press Defense, significantly reducing damage from Berserk. And this Defense actually works, unlike in the original (reducing damage by 50%, not a fictitious 10-20%).
Therefore, the toxicity of Berserk is minimized (it could be lower only by reducing damage below 100%, but that makes the spell too situational for its cost).
Similarly, I personally was also annoyed by Control, the most powerful spell in the game, which in the original not only scaled perfectly on any troops, but also scaled doubly with Sorcery, both in duration and initiative. Have 30+ Sorcery - cast Control without any initiative penalties whatsoever, practically for free (a measly ~20 mana is 2 cheap Knowledge). And the developers were perfectly aware of its imba-ness; like the Phoenix, Control is limited to no more than 1 at a time, but this somehow didn't motivate them to make the spell expensive or less dependent on Sorcery.
In WGE, Control is very expensive (by original standards, it's 60 mana), and the effect itself doesn't scale with Sorcery, only its duration. Which is correct and logical - the spell already imposes maximum Knowledge requirements and scales perfectly with troops; there is no reason to create a strong dependence of the effect on Sorcery. For the same reason (expensiveness), you won't be able to spam Control every turn, and this is also correct, as it motivates using many different spells instead of spamming the most powerful one. If Control is long-lasting (and the enemy has no counter), it becomes unprofitable to waste the controlled unit on retaliations, because it's better to preserve its potential for a second or even third attack. After all, there is no extra mana left to cast Control on another important unit.
I usually like to boast that certain things are strengthened, but specifically these two spells are actually weakened (although Control is not so clear-cut - with low Sorcery, it now works better than in the original). And there were objective reasons for that - balance and the overall picture of the battle are more important than just the desire to see things stronger. Sometimes some rare things must be weakened so that all other things strengthen their positions.
Almost all other Darkness, besides Berserk and Control, is strengthened. Except for Distraction (instead of the toxic 100% complete ban on shooting, a moderate 50% effect, but it's free).
Slow halves initiative. Weakness at high Sorcery can simply negate Attack (many times stronger than the original). Similarly with Ray. Plague damage is much higher, actually equal to Meteor damage (if compared to area-of-effect Plague). Vampirism immediately has a high percentage, at any Sorcery (100%). Blindness works much longer, with the same Sorcery. In short, the school turned out to be quite powerful, but thanks to a variety of spells, not just 1-2 top-tier ones.
Added after 1 hour and 18 minutes
Damn, again a lot of text - but that's because there is so much to say about magic. Actually, the improvement of magic is a fundamental improvement of this release compared to the old version, not just the original. Many things were discussed with practicing players of the competitive RTA map, but there the hands are tied by conservative restrictions, while here we can freely implement any requests (restrictions exist, but they are technical). And I can literally talk about each spell, explaining why it was done this way and how it is better than the original (or the previous version of WGE).
In the old version, spells had their own problems and shortcomings; in the new version, all errors are accounted for and fixed. And now the Finger is also brought into full compliance with magic. :)
Added after 16 minutes
In general, my opinion here is: with each new development of a skill (not a perk) of any school, the hero's movement should increase roughly by 0.04 percent on the ATB bar (conditionally). That is, we would embed Sorcery into all schools at once. And then it would make sense to take two schools at once for a greater effect.
The natural advantage gained by learning an additional magic school is not the raw power of the spells (that exists in the first school too) - but specifically additional spells of levels 3-5. That is, new effective spells.
It is precisely this natural advantage that I am trying to maximize. Instead of 3 new spells for a second school, you get 5 (plus two bonus spells). For the third and fourth - much more.
If this is enough - great, and no extraneous "power" or "speed" bonuses will be needed (for speed bonuses, there is no tool - scripts can set the hero's or unit's position on ATB, but cannot check its current position - meaning it's impossible to shift the ATB position relative to the previous one).
For example, you leveled Advanced or Expert Light - your first school. If you level Darkness to at least Advanced level, you will additionally get Vampirism (in Darkness) and Holy Word (in Light). Each of these spells has an appeal comparable to a perk (if you were to just attach each of them to a perk, they would 100% be in demand). Therefore, I believe the motivation to play with 2 magic schools will be sufficient. Whether it will be sufficient to play with 3 or 4 magic schools - we'll see, but that's already optional fun for Archmages; other classes do not have easy access to 3-4 magic schools at once.