Submod "Caster of Magic for Windows: Warlord"

[MrBiscuits]

Just played a quick game through, just on advanced to test it out....it's pretty awesome. I've got CoM 1.3.

- It's good sprites have gone, as that was my go to strategy early on every game to secure some sorcery nodes, so it's good to have to try out new strategies.
- Killer wasps graphics look wrong...it's got about 20 figures all over the place on mine (it seems to have the original sprite graphics as well over the top).
- Cloud giants can see invisible too? That was the only reliable way I had of beating a stack of them. Their ranged attack animation doesn't seem to work properly - they just seem to win the battle straight away without doing anything.
- Magicians only have 2 movement, but also need sages guild now? I agree with the first change.
- The new units are great...although for the klackons I want the mantises to have poison or having flying looking at the graphics for the unit. Maybe reduce their figures instead.
- It would be good if the advanced units come a little later maybe....I wasn't using the early units for that long and new units came thick and fast.
- 2 movements for roads again is great.
- Is there a manual for the mod? I'm a bit confused about the building tree order and what each new units do. How do you get Halfling Rocs?

Overall all though this is a great mod...thanks for making it.

[Suppanut]

Just played a quick game through, just on advanced to test it out....it's pretty awesome. I've got CoM 1.3.

- It's good sprites have gone, as that was my go to strategy early on every game to secure some sorcery nodes, so it's good to have to try out new strategies.
- Killer wasps graphics look wrong...it's got about 20 figures all over the place on mine (it seems to have the original sprite graphics as well over the top).
- Cloud giants can see invisible too? That was the only reliable way I had of beating a stack of them. Their ranged attack animation doesn't seem to work properly - they just seem to win the battle straight away without doing anything.
- Magicians only have 2 movement, but also need sages guild now? I agree with the first change.
- The new units are great...although for the klackons I want the mantises to have poison or having flying looking at the graphics for the unit. Maybe reduce their figures instead.
- It would be good if the advanced units come a little later maybe....I wasn't using the early units for that long and new units came thick and fast.
- 2 movements for roads again is great.
- Is there a manual for the mod? I'm a bit confused about the building tree order and what each new units do. How do you get Halfling Rocs?

Overall all though this is a great mod...thanks for making it.

1) One sprite of wasp contain 3 old sprites (wasp itself has 9 figures, so it look like 21 old sprites figures clamping up, but this is what swarm suppose to look like) pieces that why it look thick and their animation are intend to be swarm which roving around.
2) Cloud Giant is based on D&D lore, they are master of illusion magic and love gambling, that why they coming with lucky and illusion immunity. To beat cloud giants you need other illusion immune units, either enchant your thick skin units with true sight (life) or using death creatures against them. There are some normal units which coming illusion immunity (gnoll witchdoctors and high men paladins) you could use that too.
3) now each race which could use magic have at least 2 tiers of caster (except dark elf, which quite premium race for magic) disciples (sage's guild), and magister (wizard's guild which require sage's guild as prerequisite). Both of them now have only 2 movement. Now there are only 2 normal magic range units with movement 3, which are shamans and warlocks.
4) Mantises are hopping, sorry that it may look like fly. I don't think real life preying mantis has poison so I did not add one.
5) This would mean I need to make building cost higher or put something on before city could build barracks and fighter guild, I will discuss with others on this too.
6) Sorry, no manual yet. for Rocs, you need fantastic stable, halflings could build it now.

[MrBiscuits]

1) I think you need new graphics as the current one is very confusing. I can't see what tile it is on a lot of the time and it looks like more than one unit. Also they seem a little overpowered maybe, 9 figures, armour piercing, missile immunity and flying for an uncommon summon. Maybe lose the missile immunity.
2) Does they have armour piercing or is it phantasmal? A couple of shots managed to kill my heavily armoured hero.
3) Magicians have been made less powerful, but most investment to get (sage's guild + wizards guild required now). Maybe increase their ranged attack strength a little to compensate? Or another health would be useful.
4) They seem a little similar to the other new klackon unit, but without merging at the moment.
5) I've only played one game, so I could be wrong on that. Although I normally build a barracks before any units, so now swordsmen will be obsolete before I've even build one unit.

[zitro1987]

I heavily tested the wasp performance and all tthings and scenarios considered, it is only marginally better than the war bear (but with a 2upkeep). They perform well against single figures (including heroes), low-tier troops, and of course archers. On the other hand, they do terrible against poison units (common early in game), ghouls, nagas, curses, weakness spell (seriously this one!), psionic blast, fireball spell (now common) if you think about it most realms have early spells that counter them. Also, these can be mediocre against mid-tier multifigures with higher attack strength like experienced halberdiers with regular magic weapons, or a basic unit with heroism+discipline. The attack, if unbuffed, can be blocked by high armor regardless of armor piercing: 0.9 avg base dmg per figure is low, each shield would block 0.15 instead of 0.30, so still something. Note th
They are admittedly a great unit for exploring, conquering neutrals, nature nodes, and weak-ish lairs with units like unicorns, but i think sprites were better at it. What helps wasps is not being utterly useless against other wizards

The lowest tier units were buffed so they won’t become obsolete as quickly as in original where mere cavalry would obsolete the units. The barrack unit for some races is somewhat less cost effective and barracks boost low tier with the extra experience. Fighters guild is probably what would make bottom-tier obsolete, but it is quite the investment early on and even the units themselves generally cost 90-100. I may be a bit more concerned about the generally buffed top tier units being easy to reach

I see the point on magicians (and the new disciples) caster units that are not racial uniques being a tad low-tier for the buildings that unlock them, i may discuss further with mod creator.

Cloud Giant ignores armor for sure, but compared against efreet its fewer attacks and no spells still deal less damage. Being countered by illusion immunity is something that ‘storm giant’ armor piercing attack didn’t have to worry about. Cloud Giant is merely decent all things considered, but hard to deal with as lair guardians

[Suppanut]

Version 1.3.1 is released with these new changes
- Include enna's city names list
- Engineers now have 1 charge of disrupt
- Priests and saints now have 2 charges of healing, War monk hero has 2 charges of healing while priestess hero has 3 charge of healing
- Gnoll witchdoctors lose healing charge but gain 2 charges of weakness instead.
- Increase spell appear in lairs by 100%
- Add manticores, sprites, and storm giant back into mod as lair/rampage-only monsters. You could not summon or train them but you may fight them or create undead out of them in game. (there maybe more proud monsters to come in the future)
- Add ghost ship as lair/rampage-only death creatures
- Flame Blade now also enchant throw attack
- Blazing March now also enchant throw and breath attack
- Pantheon renames to Monastery
- Giant spiders now has 2 charges of web and cost increase to 110
- Djinn cost increase to 400
- Increase trade value of fire elemental due to it now has much more combat power
- Holy Armor could now casted in combat
- Weakness spell now has save penalty -17
- Paladins gain 2 charge of Bless, while hero paladin gain 3 charges
- Death knights gain 1 charge of cloak of fear, while hero black knight gain 2 charges
- Monks requirement change from shrine to monastery
- Priest requirement change from monastery to cathedral
- All beast types armorer guild units (not cavalry) and fantastic stable units' upkeep get -1 gold but food upkeep +1
- priests range magic attack get -1 as compensate for additional charge of healing
- Nightmare lose -2 melee and range attack but gain cause fear, illusion, and caster 20. Upkeep cost and production cost increase and now also require wizard's guild
- Crusaders lose 1 charge of healing but gain 1 charge of holy armor instead
- Chieftain lose casting skill but now has 2 charges raise dead instead
- Night Stalker gain stealth
- Arch Angel gain 1 charge of Exorcise
- Vampire lose casting skill but gain 1 charge of Syphon Life
- Sea Hags casting skill reduce to 12 but gain 1 charge of Confusion
- Magic Knight production cost increase to 120

https://www.mediafire.com/file/chxcpderv....1.7z/file

[MrBiscuits]

I'm sure I like the new building tree...with several buildings being locked behind Alchemists Guild. The AG is a military building and in the original non-military cities or wizards with alchemy can skip it entirely unless they want Amplifying Towers, but in this mod you need to build them in most cities anyway.

Also Sages Guild is often skipped in the original, but you need it for Wizards Guild here. You can't sell the SG after researching the Spell of Mastery for example.

I find the lesser versions of magicians and priests are too close the superior version currently. Also Ballistas are similar to Catapults with almost identical stats. 

The trouble with wasps is that if you don't have anything that can hit flyers then you can't do anything about them (unless you have web). Nagas or halberdiers can't counter them as they can't hit them.

Cloud Giants don't seem overpowered now that I know they use illusion damage. Do they still have missile immunity?

[Suppanut]

I'm sure I like the new building tree...with several buildings being locked behind Alchemists Guild. The AG is a military building and in the original non-military cities or wizards with alchemy can skip it entirely unless they want Amplifying Towers, but in this mod you need to build them in most cities anyway.

Also Sages Guild is often skipped in the original, but you need it for Wizards Guild here. You can't sell the SG after researching the Spell of Mastery for example.

I find the lesser versions of magicians and priests are too close the superior version currently. Also Ballistas are similar to Catapults with almost identical stats. 

The trouble with wasps is that if you don't have anything that can hit flyers then you can't do anything about them (unless you have web). Nagas or halberdiers can't counter them as they can't hit them.

Cloud Giants don't seem overpowered now that I know they use illusion damage. Do they still have missile immunity?

No, Cloud giant don't have missile immunity. You could fire them with arrow until cloud disperse.

Ballista coming with armor piercing but its projectile could be protected by missile immunity, so in some sense it could deal more damage, most of its damage could be mitigated by cheap guardian wind. Just think about it as alternative city defending weapon or drag it to chaos node to shoot down thick skin chaos spawn.

Disciples (Lesser version of magicians) may similar to magister apart from casting skill until you realized that magister coming with magic shield (large shield) thus they could take more hit from range attack and direct attack spell, you could wiped disciples with fireball but not magisters.

Priests are now main role is healer, not attacker, they coming with 2 charge of healing spell while lesser version (Monk) coming with only 1 charge.

I think sell sage guild after research spell of mastery is a kind of cheese the system and I think every buildings should be connected to one another.

[MrBiscuits]

No, Cloud giant don't have missile immunity. You could fire them with arrow until cloud disperse.

Ballista coming with armor piercing but its projectile could be protected by missile immunity, so in some sense it could deal more damage, most of its damage could be mitigated by cheap guardian wind. Just think about it as alternative city defending weapon or drag it to chaos node to shoot down thick skin chaos spawn.

Disciples (Lesser version of magicians) may similar to magister apart from casting skill until you realized that magister coming with magic shield (large shield) thus they could take more hit from range attack and direct attack spell, you could wiped disciples with fireball but not magisters.

Priests are now main role is healer, not attacker, they coming with 2 charge of healing spell while lesser version (Monk) coming with only 1 charge.

I think sell sage guild after research spell of mastery is a kind of cheese the system and I think every buildings should be connected to one another.

I think healers need more health as they can be taken out with fireball or psionic blast before they get a change to use their healing charges.

Part of the fun of the game to me is choosing which buildings to build in each city and specialising them. If you need to build every building in every city as they are all dependent on each other, then it removes a lot of the game strategy and interest in the city building part of the game.

[MrBiscuits]

I've played some more and killer wasps really are a pain. Three raider wasp units beat my walled city with wall of fire and 6 bowmen, 2 shaman and a hell hound.
Two fire bolts did almost zero damage to them and they just picked off the units one by one. The bowmen couldn't harm them because of missile immunity and the shaman magic attacks did almost no damage.

[Suppanut]

I've played some more and killer wasps really are a pain. Three raider wasp units beat my walled city with wall of fire and 6 bowmen, 2 shaman and a hell hound.
Two fire bolts did almost zero damage to them and they just picked off the units one by one. The bowmen couldn't harm them because of missile immunity and the shaman magic attacks did almost no damage.

You could not use bowmen fight against wasp, it is intentional as you should try shooting guns or arrow to wasp or bee to understand the problem. And it is multifigure high armor unit, you should use other spell like flame blade (in case you are on defend and let's them go to melee you) or fireball (which now also common spell).

flame blade, fireball, web, anything with good melee buff, anything with breath, for other summon, number does, anything that have poison working well against wasp in defense such as naga on the wall, and ghouls would turn them into horde of undead quite easily. It even weak against some very basic spell such as weakness and also not doing well against resistance roll such as black sleep or confusion.

For some guidance, wasp has 9 figures so damage would go down a lot as they damage, buff/debuff mean a lot of them.