1.5 Betrayers still works on a city that is "immune to magic"

What ability makes a city immune to magic?

Edit...

I guess because Broken Loyalties is not a city curse.  And costs money rather than mana.... so although it's a "spell" does it count as magic.... dunno.

I always imagined it as a case of bribing corrupt guards who would give you the keys to the city... or something like that.

I presume immune to magic means well ... immune to magic.

Yes but it's a castable spell from the sovereign.

So is the Bandit Lord's "recruit bandit" ability - but I still don't think of it as magic, per se.  I just see it as not being worth the dev time to create a whole new UI area just for a couple one-off abilities that function in the same way as spells, even if not "magic".

Would be nice if the description in the Online Help/Hieragemnon-thing mentioned that it would not be affected by magical resistance/immunity, though (if it doesn't already; I haven't checked.)

The Hieragemnon needs to be updated.

Also, we still have no way of knowing without dev confirmation if this is a bug or working as intended.

Given the nature of the "spell" I think it is working as intended, as it is not a spell but a spell-like ability. (but you are right we have no real way of knowing, until they say something, one way or the other).

The deeper problem is whether that is the only spell that can be cast upon an immune city or is there legitimately a bug going on with other curses as well. That would determine if the appropriate tag is in place to prevent the spell from taking effect on such a city.

I think we need a dev to confirm or deny this.

Not a dev (obviously), but I have to agree with the general consensus - I don't view it as a magical ability.

Personally,  I think this "spell" is unbalanced. The cost should be based on the unrest level of the city...the ability should have to have unrest to work with. It makes no sense that a city with 0% unrest should be subject to this spell. Realm capitals should also be immune to this "spell" as it makes no sense to me that someone can defeat a realm with a bribe in the first place. But then, perhaps that is just me.

Yeah I would have to agree with this.

A more interesting question than perhaps is how the spell should be reformed?

Deliberately inducing a very high level of unrest?

Or something else that is very potent?

I think the Death magic school has a spell  that increases unrest already. The quest is whether there should be a high-level sovereign spell that increases unrest significantly, thus allowing the Betrayal spell to work...sort of a one-two punch.

In that case, we need something else. Something powerful, but not overpowered ... like an instant city capture.

Why is 1000 gold too cheap to steal a city? It is a rather large amount of gildar. I don't see this skill being used very often in my games, but then I don't play the extreme difficulties. I'm more curious vs. against.

I also wouldn't change the spell cost to be dependent on unrest.

If you really want to nerf the spell add a casting time. Giving the opportunity to interrupt the spell... Casting time of 3 - 4 turns.

At the higher difficulties, its easy for the AI to get that sum of money even in the early stages of the game.

One fix would be to make Broken Loyalties scale to the level of AI gold bonus.

"Antipathy", "Brokenloyalties", and "CurseCity" are more black ops / diplomacy than spells... That being said, copy the spells in a mod file and change their <SpellClass>:

<SpellDef InternalName="Antipathy">
<SpellClass>Offensive</SpellClass>


<SpellDef InternalName="BrokenLoyalties">
<SpellClass>Offensive</SpellClass>


<SpellDef InternalName="CurseCity">
<SpellClass>Offensive</SpellClass>

Normal ProtectFromSpells protects from "FrozenBones", "GripOfWinter", "IncinerateCity", "Earthquake", and "CurgensVolcano". Maybe others that I can't think of.

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Old thread, but yeah I think that may be the only thing that works.

Somewhat OT, but I guess it may be worth looking at making an "immune to diplomacy" ability for the future.