The other possibility for balancing it could come from changes to outposts.  Frogboy has talked about his wish (not necessarily Derek's though) for more complex outposts.  Surely at that point there will be maintenance costs and/or other downsides to too many outposts. 

Some sort of negative from building outposts would probably go a long way towards balancing the spell, though maybe not far enough.  Worth considering though.

how about a compromise. The Spell would require an initial mana cost and maintanence for the next X turns, then be a full outpost.

I think raising the mana cost to anywhere from 70 to 100 makes sense.

not enough imo range  should be a factor too

Glowing_Ember has hit the exact same issue that I find with the spell. 

I was just thinking, even thoug houtposts are squishy, you can't actually destroy someone's outpost unless you are at war with them.  Perhaps when the AI is more agressive, those far off outposts by them selves won't last very long.

As for the road issue, I think there was a thread talking about the use of roads through enemy territory, should be disallowed.  That would solve the instant road to rome.

I tried playing Pariden thinking it would be the race I liked least, live and learn, but that is one whopper of a spell.  I think it might be fine with 1 mana upkeep a turn.  I feel like 30 mana is about right for the cost though.

In my latest game, a pack of umberdroths and a certain cantankerous forest drake, were eating those magic structures for breakfast, they also had a certain thing for snacking on townsfolk.  It would have been easier for me to use pioneers, but not quite as fun.

LOL!!  I love that tactic Glowing_Ember  Sooooo much fun   and unless they go to war, you can completely surround the poor little empire 

But no..... we're honourable gamers..... we wouldn't gimp the system......well actually we would

Putting in a cooldown for the time it takes to train a pioneer would be just early game, and completely unjust mid-late game because you can have multiple cities train pioneers in the late game.  Early game it takes ages to train a pioneer, so the spell wuold be better (3 turn limit assumed).

heh thank you for the idea i think ill go abuse it right now 

on a side note it would be easy to fix this if you made it so that the spell can not be cast in another player or npc's zone of control

Furthermore the spell can also be used to block other players from building cities. If you do not want a lot of cities, but you still do not want the other players from building more cities, this spell can go in and block the area.

I agree it is overpowered as I can cover every tile on a large map with this spell - preventing the computer from building cities or reaping resources. I can also scout an area and later on cast this spell if I want a particular resource I didnt need earlier on even with FoW

I also agree that a maintenance cost (1 mana/turn) would be appropriate. I believe the cost is ok. As someone mentioned earlier a cool down of 2 turn or maybe just limit the casting to 1 per turn would also balance this.

I agree it is very powerful. It is also pretty fun to play with. Don't know what the right option is for balance, but if they are re-doing outposts then that would be the time to balance it, it obviously doesn't need protection to be a very useful spell.