Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Nelphine]

No. A wizard pact has nothing to do with human territory. A wizard pact does NOT restrict the AI from moving close to a human city.

A wizard pact restricts an AI from attacking the human. Therefore, even if you have a city adjacent to the tower, and the AI has units on that tower - the wizard pact stops the ai from attacking your city.

Wizard pacts are NOT symmetrical between ai and human. They do not provide the same restrictions.

Specific to my argument : wizard pacts are there to protect resources (which is NOT the same as territory). For the AI, since the pact prevents them from attacking the human, if the human puts one spearmen on a node in the ai territory, the AI loses that node and the human gains it AND the wizard pact is not impacted. The ai still likes the human.

If the AI puts a unit on the node in the human territory, and then takes the node, the human CAN decide to break the wizard pact. The human does not have to still like the AI. This is the fundamental difference between the AI and the human when it comes to wizard pacts.

Looked at the other way, during a wizard pact, any node with a human unit on it, is literally invulnerable to attack. That node is the humans. However, a node with an AI unit can still be attacked by the unit despite the wizard pact. So the human can still take the node away from the ai.

If a human puts a unit on a tower in the ai territory, the human can still use the tower to move units to the other plane - the human knows how to break up stacks, or move a stack our, move another stack through, and move the first stack back onto the tower. Therefore, the human can use the resource (the tower) while the ai cannot.

On the other hand, if the AI puts a stack on a tower in the human territory, 2 things happen.

First, the AI stack prevents any other so stack from using that tower. Therefore while the human is denied the resource, the ai is ALSO denied the resource.

Second, the AI knows the first point, so the stack will NOT stay on the tower. The ai will NOT block the tower (unless it coincidentally always has another stock that moves onto the tower after the first stack moves away - however, this is never planned, and will eventually result in the ai not having another stack.) Therefore, neither the AI NOR the human are denied the resource.



Therefore, in the case of a node, the wizard pact makes sure SOME nodes (those close to the ai) will either be unguarded, or by the human leaving a unit there, the wizard pact will be broken. The human can do the same thing by simply attacking the unit guarding the node.

In the case of a tower, since the human can block and still use the resource, the pact says if the human tries that, the pact will break. The human can replicate this by simply attacking an AI unit on the resource.

[Seravy]

You're misunderstanding what a wizard's pact is, like every single person all the time. It's not a treaty between two equal people. It's a treaty between a machine and a person. For a machine the treaty is enforcing itself : The AI is unable to attack you while the treaty exists, and has to spend a full turn on breaking it, so no surprise attacks are possible. That's what the treaty is for, security, and the mere existence of it is enough because it has binding power on the AI. 
Meanwhile the human player can attack despite the pact and does not need to take a turn to do so. So it does NOT offer security to the AI. So instead the AI demands you stay out of reach of their territory. Nelphine is right, it would be more realistic is it demanded 4 or 5 tiles but that's impossible due to the distance of cities.
Add to this the fact that you are allowed to curse their cities, drain their power, blast their spells and kill their troops with spells during the treaty, while they are unable to do the same, and although some of these come with a relation penalty, the wizard's pact improves relations so it actually cancels one of few such cases out by itself.

Even as is, the pact is a HUGE one sided benefit to the human player. Those who can't deal with the minor annoyances or pretend it's in the AI's favor when it's clearly not, don't deserve to enjoy it.

[Nelphine]

(thus why I think settlers and engineers should not be exceptions to a wizard pact! And make it range 5 but ignore units in a city. Mwahaha!)

[Bahgtru]

Nice walls of text. Go on, make the game more annoying.

...Instead of more challenging.

[Nelphine]

How is 'choose between nodes/towers, or alliances' less challenging?

Also, choose to not use wizard pacts. I do most games. No annoyance at all.

[Seravy]

If you want more challenge, don't use diplomacy. Diplomacy in games where the player gets free will but the AI is bound by its promises is a one sided feature to help the player, nothing more. If you don't want that, don't use it. In fact, declare war on every AI immediately, otherwise they might not attack you even though it would benefit them, due to their personality rolls.

There, short enough?

Yes, we could make a game that does not have diplomacy at all, and everyone recognizes everyone else is an enemy immediately. But that would be a waste.

[Bahgtru]

I'd hope that free will is a definition of human (player) and not a feature, but yeah sometimes I get that doubt. Just look at election results.

The approach to deal with that lack of balance in the game is the AI bonus, you can't have both AI bonus and no human advantage. There's much left to do for challenging the player without forcing him to test himself with additional constraints - that's not everyobdy's thing - in this aspect. Easy to implement as well.

[zitro1987]

If you want more challenge, don't use diplomacy. Diplomacy in games where the player gets free will but the AI is bound by its promises is a one sided feature to help the player, nothing more. If you don't want that, don't use it. In fact, declare war on every AI immediately, otherwise they might not attack you even though it would benefit them, due to their personality rolls.

Is it possible to have this as a retort with negative -1 or -2 picks. Basically a negative retort that grants space for more spellbooks or retorts.

In fact, the idea of negative pick retorts may give us additional ideas for fixing spellweaver.

[Nelphine]

I'd hope that free will is a definition of human (player) and not a feature, but yeah sometimes I get that doubt. Just look at election results.

The approach to deal with that lack of balance in the game is the AI bonus, you can't have both AI bonus and no human advantage. There's much left to do for challenging the player without forcing him to test himself with additional constraints - that's not everyobdy's thing - in this aspect. Easy to implement as well.

No, the ai bonus is to compensate for the bad decisions it makes due to the limitations of the AI. For instance, since the AI will randomly select which city to put the summoning circle in, and the AI will prioritize city garrisons over offensive stacks, then the AI needs to summon a lot more creatures than the human in order to actually send them out to attack. Therefore it gets a boost to how many creatures it summons.

You could make the ai simply get more power rather than have wizard pact impact nodes. However, a) the AI bonuses are percentage growths, not flat bonuses. So if the ai did get any nodes this could potentially be far too much power. And b) no amount of resources gives the AI the ability to use towers. Although partly that will be addressed by the new plane shift. But I think if you're winning as fast as you are, then to replicate the resources of blocked towers, you'd need to make sure the AI, but not the human, could research very rares in 1406. Since the bonuses are general it would allow all very rares though, which is absurd.


As for human free will bring the default: absolutely. But a good AI is one where that is addressed so it seems similar in outcome. And the current system does that. If there is a node near one of my cities, and the AI has units on it - I can use 'threaten to attack' diplomacy. And a turn later, if he hadn't moved, I can use 'break treaty'. That's exactly what the ai is doing.

[Nelphine]

Now, if you want to argue that the conditions that the AI decides you are a problem are set wrong, that's a different story.

Personally, that's my view - the AI should actually be harsher during a wizard pact, because that's how I am. That's how I win my games, is by being diplomatically harsh.

But if you think it should be easier, then provide the scenario where you would act that way, explain why, and explain why you think that is how the majority of people act.