I don't think the cheese will be that bad.  Generally if you're using these spells, it's because you can't win in melee.

Ideas: make casting "hard" spells require a "Concentration" command which is only avaliable if you haven't done anything in a turn, then the spell fires off at the end of the turn.  Won't work of Touch of Entropy though.

Idea #2: disallow casting the same spell twice in a round.

Idea #3: make casting multiple spells in a round come at a penalty to INT.  Have INT be a component in more spells (You moved away from this so far, which I personally think is a bad).  If your minimum effective INT falls below what is needed to cast it, you can't cast.  Sovereigns would be subject to INT on this one feature.  They can cast any spell they want as their 1st spell, but the 2nd and following spells would follow this rule.

The problem with this is defining the penalty.  -5?  1/2 INT each time? (my suggestion would be 1/2 the int for multiple spells)

I'd consider throwing in an exception to the rule as well, if you have a shard, you don't suffer a penalty for casting a spell of that element perhaps?

(Unsure on this, this idea would need some testing)

I like idea #3 the best.  #1 feels a little too "hardcoded rule"-ish for my taste.

I do think after 1.1 in done , you guys should poll us some on what we think are problems with the game mechanics after the fixes- and let's see what solutions can be made via code changes in the first expansion.  Things like the resource spawning, spell casting, etc.  This would help you guys focus on what we want changed that won't be simple changes.

I'd agree with this.  

As far as tactical casting goes you could have the spells use up a varying amount of combat points instead of always 2.  For instance they could cost 1 point per level and max it at 5 or so.  A higher level nuke would use up all of a wizards turn.

Generally, to get that much mana a turn that you can blow scads of it require owning multiple shards.

My suggested solution here: for strategic spells: you can't cast the same spell twice in a round.

Has anyone else seen these:

BUG: All items are being double listed in the Empire Defense tech.  Gives access normally, just has multiple entries for "Leather Helm".

BUG: Combat speed calculations and effects are being shown with 4 decimal places.

Five things I would prefer for dealing with spell-cheese and spell scaling:

1) Spell casting requires twice the AP it currently does.   (Because spellcasting should really be a significant thing that takes a lot of effort from the caster.)
2) One spell can be cast per turn per caster. (To avoid spamming cheese.)
3) More spells scale with INT, perhaps if not direct damage for elemental spells, with tertiary effects, to keep things interesting and flavorful for the various elements.  (So INT is a more useful stat, especially for the Sovereign who is evidently unaffected by INT requirements, which I find sort of silly in the first place.)
4) Spell mana cost is increased slightly to compensate for only one spell per turn, perhaps 15-20% across the board for tactical spells (So casters actually have to budget mana a bit, which WILL be a problem if they're flinging less spells overall.)
5)  All enchantments have more considerable effects that make them comparable decisions to imbuing via means of percentage rather than direct buffs (so it scales, especially for city enchantments), but to compensate, all enchantments require a meaningful initial cost, scaled relatively to their power level and cheese-ability.

+1 for that idea.  It sounds like it would work.

Base spell points off of intelligence somehow (int*2 or int*1.5) and then assign mana costs to spells accordingly so spells can't be spammed and more powerful strategic spells take multiple turns to cast.

i have not played the beta(decided to wait for official patches) but why not try it this way.

a spell takes action points equal to the spell level. so a level 1 spell takes 1 action point. a level 5 takes 5.

if a spell takes more action points than you have then it goes into the next round.  so basically a casting time.

this would prob cause a re-balancing of spell damage and effect but would allow for spell casting units to really be a spell caster. being able to move and cast spells every round.

I think it would be neat if they updated counter in two particular ways. The first would be to make spells cast at melee range causes a counterstrike from the target (at least unless specified). This would allow for magic spells and ranged attacks to not be counterless at point blank range. The second would be to add a counter spell so that if a spell caster has the spell caster has the spell active they can counter melee strikes and other magic with the counter spell. This way spell casters could use their magics to counter incoming spells.

Great news about the increased population on buildings. In the long run you guys should look into perhaps having more buildings akin to the archery ranges as this would allow you do use population to make people think carefully about if they want a kick arse army or a uber city. Lets be honest because unit sizes are so small armys arn't going to make a dent in population considerations atm.

This thread here has some further thoughts on the matter https://forums.elementalgame.com/401746

Cool, all the changes look nice. Hate to sound ungrateful but could we get a quick Great Mill nerf as well, it's obviously OP.

Also There is still the monster bug which I have a thread on here.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/401821

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this yet, but a bug that bothers me is when you mouseover your unit icons when they're in a city, the displayed information is undependable.  That is, sometimes my swarm spiders all say 2 defense, sometimes 0. Sometimes they all look healed, sometimes you see the damage (the info to the left if you actually select them remains correct).  This isn't between turns or actions or anything; just keep moving the mouse around and you'll see oddities.

Also in my game last night (1.09r), I researched quests, and wile they showed up on the detailed 3-D view, the new quests were not showing on the cloth map - which is irritating since I use the cloth map to precisely control my movement and make sure I didn't miss anything hiding behind mountains, etc.