Spells do damage to troops regardless of how heavy they are. Light troops will be damaged by
Purple Sun, 'Eadbutt, Comet of Casendora, etc.
Reduced Knockback means spells will do meaningful damage. Damage increase to almost all
damaging spells because of reduced knockback.
Increased Cooldowns for all spells. This is consistent with CA's trend with Lore of the Wild. This
also means casting a spell is a more meaningful decision and spells cannot be cast repeatedly in
a short time. Weak spells have shorter cooldowns and strong spells have longer cooldowns.
Miscast chance for very strong spells has been increased. Chance of miscast for overcast spells
that are weak have been reduced. Miscast chance added to some normal non-overcast spells
because they are powerful.
Magic Missiles have had their damage reduced by about a 1/3. They have larger explosion radii
than Vanilla magic missiles which makes them more effective vs infantry than they were previously.
Magic Missiles penetration have been reduced. This means they will no longer shoot through
units. Fireball will be stopped by cavalry sized targets instead of Troll sized and other magic
missiles will be stopped by man sized targets.
Why make this change? This means characters can effectively hide inside a unit to avoid a magic
missile - just like the tabletop game. The rule in TT is called "Look out, Sir!"
This also means that missiles will be stopped more often and then explode - if targeting infantry or
cavalry will generally result in more casualties to the target.
Spirit Leech has been reworked to do very slight damage over a 30 second interval. Instead of
being primarily a damaging spell - it has been changed to do a proportional debuff to stats. Targets
with high stats (Monsters, Characters) will have their stats lowered more than other units.
This means it is to be cast when the target is meant to be engaged in combat. The weakened stats
will result in the target taking more damage. However, unlike the original Spirit Leech, the target
can run from combat and avoid taking damage.
I would love for this spell to only be able to target units with a unit size of 1 but that isn't possible
as far as I know.
Fate of Bjuna does not deal damage to every soldier in a unit anymore. It will outright kill infantry
soldiers at intervals instead of weakening the entire unit. Will not completely delete units unless
playing on smaller unit sizes. (There are exceptions - some units have very small unit sizes but their
soldiers don't have high Health Point capacity - this results in them taking alot of damage)
(Irondrakes are an example)
Final Transmutation is similar to Fate of Bjuna except that it deals damage to every enemy unit in a
small radius - outright killing soldiers instead of weakening the entire unit.
Comet of Casendora actually deals damage and causes knockback. Overcast Comet has a larger
area of effect.
Searing Doom and Piercing Bolts of Burning have had their range increased. More missiles have
been added to each and the mass of missiles have been reduced
- resulting in less knockdown - I think. The mass stat is a little difficult to understand.
Overcast versions have increased area of effect and more missiles.
Buffs and debuffs have largely been left alone.
The cost of some spells have been adjusted - in some cases increased, other cases decreased.
!Problems!
Loose formation units will not be affected by non direct damage spells as much as tight formations.
This is purely due to hitting fewer targets. So Orcs, Zombies, Slayers, etc. will take reduced damage from AOE spells.
How to combat this? Wait until said loose formation unit is in combat. It will bunch up and be much more susceptible to magic.
Cavalry is a special case of loose formation units. Cavalry have higher hitpoints per soldier and typically always have loose formations. This results in AOE spells doing less damage to them.
How to combat this? Same solution as above. Note that direct damage spells that deal damage to multiple targets are also more effective vs Cavalry.