Lets talk about magic

[Soronarr]

I'm not familiar with it, care to elaborate?!

You never played Age of Wonders 2? Man, you're missing much. I like that game even more than the HOMM series.

Hmr..long story short, you got several spheres of magic, and you can choose which sphere you will use. All spheres have a wide array of magics that can be used both on the battlefield and on the strategic map (for instance, you can freeze a river with a ice spell, then move your army across)
You have single-use spells and constant effect spells. Constant effect spells (like blessings, flaming weapons or summons) have a mana upkeep as long as they are active. The highest lvl spells are usually summons. If you take the sphere of Life, you can summon Angels or cause explosion of life (which looks nice when forests and grass explode on the map)
Fire can summon Phoenixes and fling fireballs and stuf.

You have also (expensive) domain spells that affect the lands you control, and change them, and have effects on enemies. The land changes to your sphere slowly and there is an effect on your and the enemy army as long as they are in your domain (for example, Life Domain heals your armies every turn)

Mana sources are very sought after. Units also have upkeep, so you can defeat a stronger opponent by sabotaging his economy, till he can no longer support such a strong army. Etc...

Give it a try, it's great
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umOrBzGM ... re=related

[Elvin]

The idea is a lot of fun but actual implementation suffers from very limited mana. I mean when you start with 20 mana and the cheapest spell is 8 mana you don't get a lot of action, to increase that you need to research casting specialist I, II, III, IV each adding 10 mana. It offers a lot of freedom in what to do but you don't get the feeling of a magic showdown in battle.

Certainly a game worth trying if you like tbs.

[ThunderTitan]

I've been meaning to try it for some time, but i still haven't finished some games i started over a year ago... stupid work, can't get anything important done because of it.

[Soronarr]

The idea is a lot of fun but actual implementation suffers from very limited mana. I mean when you start with 20 mana and the cheapest spell is 8 mana you don't get a lot of action, to increase that you need to research casting specialist I, II, III, IV each adding 10 mana. It offers a lot of freedom in what to do but you don't get the feeling of a magic showdown in battle.

Depends on how many and what spells you are using. Upkeep for permanent spells can eat a lot of your mana pool, but given just how powerful land how big some of those spells are...Do you have a spell in HOMM2 that affects the whole map and keeps affecting it for the whole turn?

Sure, you're limited to several spells per battle, but methinks it's partially due to balance reasons. Armies need to be useful too.

[ThunderTitan]

So, i've been playing the tutorials from Shadow Magic when i had some free time at work... it's an interesting system, but i don't see it working in Heroes. Now for Disciples...