Aren't their 2 tele spells? Tele and Tele Army? Why does normal teleport even work on your army? It makes the second one redundant. It should just effect the sovereign and then late game you get tele army......

The game needs balancing.  People jump on the current FOTM over-powered feature/trait, then complain when it's balanced, meanwhile jumping on the next-most overpowered FOTM which they'll then complain about when that gets balanced, etc. etc. etc.

This happens all the time in games.

Folks want balance -- but don't dare nerf my favorite over-powered feature/trait -- just balance the other stuff!

It's a common human foible, one we all share (myself included).  Taxes for example -- raise the other guy's taxes, not mine!  Politicians -- we gotta get rid of incumbants, but not my incumbant!

I would suggest several different teleport spells.  Basic:  self teleport (castor only).  Party teleport (say, for discussions purposes: castor + up to 9 individuals (3 char + 6 soldiers / mix and match).  Army teleport castor, chars, and soldiers, unlimited number...)  Obviously, each one is more expensive, and harder to learn.

But MoM also had magical roads to instantly teleport any number of your units to any place in your empire...

This is the best way to balance the teleport spell.

I like the 15 mana cost teleports, it has made the game way more fun.  And I think it should take that much for teleporting entire armies around.  As an alternative you could scale the cost of the teleport by the number of units in the stack.  That would be fun for me..

At least allow us to mod the cost ourselves.

Has anyone noticed that you can use teleport to get anywhere as long as you send a scout hero first? Just send a hero out until you find some really valuable land and then find the nearest quest that will open up a new goodie hut. After one turn the goodie hut appears as under your influence and then boom. You can port there with a pioneer in your party and take the resource heavy spot. Broken to the letter.

The broken part about teleport isn't the cost, it's the use. If all teleport did was allow you to travel faster around the world, then I doubt there would be any problems even if it was made to cost 2 mana. But that's not all teleport does.

Say you're at war with an AI, so he sends a strong army against your nearby city, one that has no real defense against his army. Normally, the city will fall, and you have to build up a force or wait for your army to get back, then fight to take the city back. This isn't how it works now with teleport. Not only does the city not fall, but if he was silly enough to bring along his sovereign on the attack (and he probably will), the entire war will be over in one teleport. The use of teleport in this manner just can't be countered by the AI. Changing the mana cost of the spell doesn't change this. Whether it's 5, 15 or 30 mana, if you can destroy entire empires with this spell, there's a problem. Now you might also argue that the empire destruction mechanic itself is the culprit (which is my belief), but it's just so much easier to change one single value (5->15). It's essentially a hotfix to a problematic mechanic, one that will probably see other "fixes" as the game evolves.

Oh and for the record, no, I don't think removing teleport entirely will help either.

Any time a spell or character ability is a "must use" in a game, it is limiting choice. At 15 mana teleport is for emergencies only. I would prefer to see it researchable and have you start with a cheaper version that only lets you teleport a shorter distance and maybe doesn't teleport other units.

On a side note, it concerns me that thinks are being "tweaked" by 200%.

I never saw it as a "must" use even when it was 5mana. I think the spell got nerfed on the basis of a small minority of players petitioning that it was broken when it wasn't. I've also noticed that only the soverign can use teleport now, none of my other champions can use it even though it's listed in their spellbook, altough when I try to use with another unit it does subtract the 15mana, just doesn't teleport.

This was a very useful spell to have when influence areas cutoff areas of the map in odd ways, or when the "lower land" spell fails, now it just can't be used except by one unit. It might as well just be removed from the game, it's worthless now.

Every single one of these things I've done in every game since the teleport spell got nerferd, and I've never used teleport once at 15mana. Caravan routes with city spam are great.

I don't have one "super" stack btw, I have several (because you can only put 12 units in a stack). Nerfing teleport has changed nothing about the game. The problem wasn't the spell itself, it was the lack of AI using the spell in the same way the human player used it. BTW: as of 1.08, the AI *still* doesn't use the teleport spell. In the game I'm currently playing, around turn 250, the soverign of umbar is "stuck" in a small pocket between my influence zone & that of trian (or whatever that faction is), it hasn't moved in over twenty turns. It makes no difference if teleport costs 1, 5, 15, or 15million mana the AI still doesn't use it. This is why the spell seems overpowered to the human because the AI *never* uses it in relation. $1,000 dollars seems like a fortune side-by-side with 0 dollars, but the same when side-by-side to $1,000 dollars. 

If you have a squad with rifles and your enemy squad has rifles but charges forward and only shoots their pistols & gets slaughtered do you nerf the rifles??? Hell no, that's just stupid. You make the AI squad use their rifles. In this case, the AI needs to be reprogrammed to use the teleport spell exactly as the human player does ("better" would be eye-opening nice & refreshing), in fact, the cost should be cheaper for the AI to use spells on ridiculous setting (say 15/20 percent less).

None of the changes that I've seen so far in 1.08 have addressed anything about actually improving the AI itself. It still does the same dumb stuff. Changes that have been made such as teleport, organized, have only reduced the color in the game. From my POV; changes to the game are only being done as to negate strategies that some (or maybe many) players are using, instead of improving the AI to make use of this strategy (or more effectively inhibit the strategy). The AI should have placed an equal weight on choosing the organized trait as the human does, otherwise it seems the human get massive & rapid expansion when the AI does not use it. I would rather be proactively surprised by a massive AI stack that is moving 6squares a turn, rather than finding an "unbeatable strategy" that increases stack speed to that of the soverign which the AI never uses.   

I'll go one step further: the AI should be programmed to use "every single" spell in their disposal under some circumstance. Sure, some spells will get more use such as fireball, but they should also use imbue, lower land, protect settlement, teleport, etc... If the AI can't be programmed to use a spell then the spell should'nt be added to the game.

Every time someone uses a spell, item, squad (type or design) that the computer AI doesn't use, then this is going to make that human spell, item, squad (type or design) seem overpowered .. are you going to nerf each of these one-by-one each time it happens, reducing the game to a blah group of club wielding neanderthals with 5 spells and and a stick per faction? or, would you make the AI "smarter" by seeing what the human does (or what units, spells, items, etc it uses) and either copying these to some extent (if stronger than current AI unit for example) or effectively countering them, or using the same strategy. That's what should happen.

Instead of taking away things from the game one-by-one (which removes color & fun from the game), the designers need to make a better & smarter AI.

Another example that fits exactly with this topic: there's another thread about city spam, would you arbitrarily remove city spam (somehow) just because many players (including myself) have been highly successful at using it? This is a standard strategy that's used in every 4x expansion game. The difference I'm seeing here is that others wouldn't nerf the city spam (or teleport). Instead, they would 1) make the AI use it more effectively and 2) make the AI more effective at countering it. It just seems to me that the method the devs use in this game is neither 1) nor 2) but 3) nerf the said tactic, unit, spell, item, which is exactly the wrong thing to do.

There are several good ways the AI could counter city spam in this game: 1) not just build more pioneers & guards but make sure they effectively go where they need to from turn one on and don't get "stuck" or "blocked" as I've seen happen to them. 2) wandering monsters should be more attracted to pioneers, nerfing the wandering monsters in 1.08 was exactly the wrong thing to do 3) AI should be capable of developing long range scouts or raiders that are buildable from the start (travelling boots + base movement of 3 + some item shop item that gives +1 mp = 5mp), or better yet a horse. With a movement of 5ish on caravan routes the raider should be sent out on "long range scouting/raiding" missions that specifically target pioneers & weaker human units plus avoid monsters. Each AI faction should have at least 5 or 6 of these by turn 25/30, as well as having 5 or 6 cities by turn 30 (whatever a good city spam amount is at that point). BTW: extra-move champions would also be great for this, as they can get the goodie huts too.

On a setting of "ridiculous" no human player should be able to beat the AI without extreme luck.

Don't nerf the strategy, make the AI use it.

Don't nerf the spell, make the AI use it.

Dont nerf the trait, make the AI use it.

Don't nerf the item, make the AI use it.

Specifically on the teleprt spell: it had uses unrelate to its percieved "broken" use, such as getting around influence zones without declaring war and more importantly, getting around mountain chains when the "lower land" spell fails, which fails too much. There's definitely a bug with that spell.  

Or increased range costs more mana, combined with carting extra units does something too?