Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Nelphine]

Actually he's only tense, not hate, but we are at war. Somehow, I doubt he'll get a very rare summon. I think he's researching spell of mastery. (I know I am, and I haven't bothered putting any points into research for like 5 years).

Oh. Its the divine orders. We've got multiple in play. And he finally got Dispelling Wave from Jafaar. So.. he's got 125 +.. whatever the relation is for tense.. +120 (2 divine orders, used to be 3) +25 +40 +50 = 360 + relation, so over 400.

Summon is 120+50% = 180. Even with the old version, it would still have been 300. So basically, he doesn't have good summons. But even with the best summon, it would only be a little over 500 old version, around 400 current. Or a little under 500 up to 600 if militarist/expansionist.

So curses, even for a conjuror, are actually more important than summons, unless they had the absolute best summons, when life is in play.


Ugh, remind me to go through the entire spell priority algorithm when I have some time. It's fantastic, but certain things make it go wonky, and me messing with it at all is a bad idea when I don't know how all the parts work together.

*bows low* sorry for my crude attempts to make it better. If it helps, this guy is actually buffing a lot of his units, which I think is very effective. So was Merlin.

Also, you do seem to have all the pieces in it for curses to be cast a decent amount of time.. but when things happen (that don't SEEM to impact curses, like divine order), it can throw a wrench in it. Given I'm the one doing all the complaining, I'm quite serious about going through and examining the spell priority algorithm and seeing if I can make actual suggestions that work, instead of just asking you to do it all. I'm really sorry, I forget just how incredibly intricate this work is.

[Seravy]

Opened a thread for AI spell priorities.

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8760

[Nelphine]

What kinds of setups encourage a game to reach the stage where the AI uses very rare units offensively? As I've often stated I don't experience this, my guess is its due to my play style. So instead of watching videos of people who do encounter this (as by its nature that would be quite a long game) I'd like to know what wizard picks, game settings (including things like difficulty, land size, and power level), and overall strategies permit both the human player and the AI to build up equally without one or the other gaining the upper hand before 1420-1425.

[Seravy]

Don't think this depends on your wizard, more on the enemy and diplomacy. If you can make an Alliance with the strongest wizard, and take some time eliminating the other 3, that's one way. If one wizard (most likely on Myrror) can expand unchecked and gain lots of territory while the others fail to expand for any reason, same deal. Both of these are most likely to happen to Peaceful or Charismatic AI wizards.

I'd say playing half or full Sorcery is most likely to encounter it - it has a slow early game, but can survive through diplomacy even if the enemy is a lot stronger.
One more thing that can contribute is setting land size to Huge.

...and of course the most obvious, aside from playing less effectively, is picking a weaker wizard than what you'd normally want to play on that difficulty level.  Like, playing a random generated wizard on extreme.

[Nelphine]

Ugh I'm poor with most realms so I didn't want to go random. But the idea of focusing primarily on arcanus sorcery should work. Extreme seems like a good difficulty for this? Arcanus race to give the myrran AI the best opportunity to expand. Probably charismatic myself for the best chance to control diplomacy.

I'll try that. And I need to be fast enough to expand early but weak enough not to dominate. No warlord, no slow growth races. Thanks.

[Catwalk]

Just play worse than you normally would

Easy fortress strikes are the biggest obstacle to letting games draw out longer. The lightning bolt is neat but insufficient. There should be Guardian bonuses for all fortress battles. And Guardian should be substituted for something useful, nobody uses it as a strong pick. No retorts should be designed to be used as handicap options. 

Fortress strikes are enormous strategic advantages, and you even get free spells from them.

[Seravy]

Easy fortress strikes

Are they? I find attacking fortresses a huge gamble nowadays. Lost important forces or even games to doing it.
I don't mind adding the same bonus as Guardian to the fortress if it's really necessary but that doesn't mean Guardian has to be removed.
Besides, it was pretty hard to come up with a new retort last time, even if we removed it we have nothing to add.
And I already said I consider it a strong pick and won't remove it. If it's not good enough, we can increase the bonus but I don't think that's necessary.

[Nelphine]

So then, what kind of year are you trying fortress strikes Seravy? And what are you attscking with and what are they defending with?

[Seravy]

So then, what kind of year are you trying fortress strikes Seravy? And what are you attscking with and what are they defending with?

That's completely different every game.

When playing Death I often use 9 Shadow Demons and they sometimes lose to completely random things that have too much defense from Bless, Resist Elements, city walls, heavenly light etc. stacked together. Units that normally go down without problems like Stag Beetles.
Or there was that time when 9 War Bears didn't work against something like 9 ghouls. I expected bears with their 5 armor to be able to win that.
Then there was another where my stack of...idk what actually, maybe 9 Efreets? Couldn't damage the AI's 30 shield hero holding the magic immunity sword so I killed the 8 other units then lost my army. If I couldn't summon 3 Hydras fast enough in nearby city to attack again and kill the hero about 5 turns later, I would have lost that game because the enemy had military advantage and was death/chaos with rares (and btw that attack was a really close one too - it's insanely hard to corner nightmares with hydras. I literally won that battle from the fire bolt cast from my last 10 skill out of over 300).

Plenty of times I just stay away when I see there are 3-4 champions inside with most likely op tier gear (easy to approximate that based on how strong the wizard is - if they are strong, they cleared a lot of nodes and lairs and got good items, otherwise they did not) or a big horde of very rare creatures (that game where I had the 28 battles, the AI's capital was already filled by Demon Lords, and Colossus and I had no stack that could beat that - my heroes weren't strong enough for that yet.)

And while that's not me, Hadriex lost his main stack in two AI capitals in his last 3 games, both to Guardian wizards, one full death with shadow demons and a Soul Linker hero, the other full life in the late game with an archangel, a soul linker hero and a lot of crap like magicians.

[Nelphine]

This actually sounds exactly why I use unit buffs
- raw numbers. Summons are great but I would always want to attack a fortress with a tier higher than my opponent has. So shadow demons against war bears or ghouls, but not war bears against ghouls. Buffs tend to increase a unit by 1 tier, so buffed stag beetles shouldn't be a pushover for shadow demons. A swath of very rares would require something with so many hit points as to soak up attacks without dying *cough 8hp/figure hammerhands* that also outmuscles the very rare once it manages to close with it.

So for my experiment I definitely need to not use buffs much, because I really need a strategy that isn't good at fortress srikes., and I can't go research heavy because I'll be able to get a tier ahead of the AI.