New year, New Master of Magic! v1.5 fan patch

[Elestan]

BTW, I've been playing with the 1.50 patch, and really enjoying it; thanks for fixing all those bugs!

After playing for a while, and reading through the wiki pages on 1.40n and 1.50, I've compiled a list of questions/comments on a few of the changes. In some cases, it's not clear whether the change line describes the behavior before or after the patch. If there are already existing threads/posts on any of these, feel free to just point me to them.

From Insecticide:
* AI wizards have a 10% lower chance to raze a city if was owned by another AI wizard. (W $9F968)
* * Does this mean that they now (in 1.40+) have a 10% lower chance, or that they did in 1.31? I would prefer that the AI treat human players and AI players as equally as possible.

* AI will never cast Dispel Magic and Dispel Magic True if Holy Arms is in effect for the human player. (W $BA125)
* * Again, does this means that they didn't before, or that they don't now? If it means they don't now, why not? I mean, they can't dispel Holy Arms during combat, but they could dispel other buffs.

* AI is able to buy items from merchants. AI pays 50% of the normal price for items. (W $BE009)
* * Why does the AI get items at half price?

* When AI looks at strength of potential targets on the overland map for an attack, the human player's units are calculated at 25% of their effective strength instead of 125%, often resulting in unreasonable attacks from the AI. ($W7482)
* * (This seems related to this 1.50 item): AI no longer considers units owned by the human player at 25% of their calculated strength : fixes an Insecticide bug.
* * What is the 1.50 behavior? Does it now consider all units at their proper 100% strength?

* Wind Mastery doubles ship speeds and does not slow down enemy ships. (W $98698)
* * Why not slow down the enemy ships?

From 1.50:
* Towers are generated at locations where both plane has land instead of only one of them, making them easier to use. (009)
* Minimal distance between Towers of Wizardry is 4 instead of 10 (009)
* * Speaking as someone currently playing a Myrran game, I don't think I like these two changes. All of the towers are bunched up in the middle of my territory, and I'm having to fight a lot harder to keep enemies out than I used to. I don't think that the way Towers were often found in remote places was a bug, so this seems more like a design change than a bugfix.

* AI players no longer give a diplomatic penalty to each other if the human player has too many cities instead of towards the human player (391)
* * What is the 1.50 behavior? My preference is that having too many cities generates the same diplomatic penalty, regardless of whether it's a human or AI player.

* AI will prefer undamaged units as targets for Fireball (117)
* * This seems like an oddly specific rule. Isn't there a more general rule that says to prefer units with lots of active Figures for Area Damage spells?

* Breaking a treaty no longer reduces Hidden Relation towards unrelated wizards (071)
* * I think it should, if the unrelated wizard is Lawful. Lawful would say that keeping your word to everyone is important.

* Banishing a wizard no longer lets players take half the other wizard's mana reserves. (105)
* * Why not? Per the animation, the attacker has raided the target's Fortress, where the mana crystals were presumably stored.

So, that's all of my question points/concerns; all the other changes seem great to me!


Looking at the list of unapplied changes, I'd nominate these for 1.51:

* Maintenance cost field in unit tables now works - has no effect unless modding is intended to actually chance the data in the field (037)
* Towns can display up to 16 buildings for production - Only useful if modding the building tree (039)
* Production can display more than 10 unit types - ever wondered why Spearmen sometimes disappear?(427)
* * All of these seem like straight-up improvements with no down side...or is there a drawback to them?

* Leftover production is not lost but used for the next project (211)
* * Oh, please put this in. I hate having to micromanage production overruns. Or at a minimum, at least make the excess convert to trade goods ( = half value in Gold).

* Raise Volcano allowed on Hills, Mountains (277)
* * Why not? I see no logical reason that it shouldn't be allowed on those tiles. For that matter, I would allow it to be cast on Volcanoes too (taking ownership of the Volcano in the process).


Finally, I have one last request for 1.51: Can you make excess research carry over between turns? Or, if that's not feasible, have the excess roll into Casting Skill or Mana? It's really irritating having to re-balance my Power allocations every turn to keep from wasting research points.

[Seravy]

* AI wizards have a 10% lower chance to raze a city if was owned by another AI wizard. (W $9F968)
* * Does this mean that they now (in 1.40+) have a 10% lower chance, or that they did in 1.31? I would prefer that the AI treat human players and AI players as equally as possible.

The patch reduces the chance by 10%. I assume it's because the game gets too easy if the AI burns down the cities and fails to expand. Since kyrub never talked about his reasons for AI changes and preferred to keep them a secret, I don't actually know why he did it.

* AI will never cast Dispel Magic and Dispel Magic True if Holy Arms is in effect for the human player. (W $BA125)
* * Again, does this means that they didn't before, or that they don't now? If it means they don't now, why not? I mean, they can't dispel Holy Arms during combat, but they could dispel other buffs.

They did and now they don't. A very crude solution to prevent the AI to waste their skill on dispelling holy weapons. One of those things I don't agree with, I don't remember if my own dispel changes made it into 1.5 or not, if yes they replaced this, but they probably did not. This makes Holy Arms and Life magic a lot stronger against the AI because dispel is essential against Life and buffs. And it's even worse if the player ever notices it and starts taking advantage of it.

* AI is able to buy items from merchants. AI pays 50% of the normal price for items. (W $BE009)
* * Why does the AI get items at half price?

Ask kyrub, I have no idea. Did I mention he kept all of his AI changes a secret?

* * What is the 1.50 behavior? Does it now consider all units at their proper 100% strength?

Yes. This was a bug in insecticide.

* * Why not slow down the enemy ships?

kyrub belived that breaks the AI's ability to use ships. Don't know why he would think that, ask him. It might even be true.

* * Speaking as someone currently playing a Myrran game, I don't think I like these two changes. All of the towers are bunched up in the middle of my territory, and I'm having to fight a lot harder to keep enemies out than I used to. I don't think that the way Towers were often found in remote places was a bug, so this seems more like a design change than a bugfix.

There was a thread about this. To put it simply, this was a bug for the AI not you. They have pretty much no way to use those island towers at all - no ships on the other side to pick them up-, leaving them with no access to the other plane and a bunch of stuck units.

* * What is the 1.50 behavior? My preference is that having too many cities generates the same diplomatic penalty, regardless of whether it's a human or AI player.

Original game code was basically "If HUMAN cities>X, everyone penalizes everyone else" , I had to look it up, 1.50 behavior is "If anyone cities>X, everyone penalizes that player" so it is equal.

* * This seems like an oddly specific rule. Isn't there a more general rule that says to prefer units with lots of active Figures for Area Damage spells?

No. I don't think there are other area damage single target combat spells in the unmodded game.

* * Why not? Per the animation, the attacker has raided the target's Fortress, where the mana crystals were presumably stored.

Very bad for gameplay. The AI usually had 30k mana crystals even while the player is still in the hundreds. It's like unlimited free mana for banishing any AI wizard. Besides the AI got that mana from bugs, sometimes they spent negative mana into spells and gained it for that. (hopefully those are fixed now though)

* * All of these seem like straight-up improvements with no down side...or is there a drawback to them?

No, there isn't.

* Leftover production is not lost but used for the next project (211)
* * Oh, please put this in. I hate having to micromanage production overruns. Or at a minimum, at least make the excess convert to trade goods ( = half value in Gold).

* Raise Volcano allowed on Hills, Mountains (277)
* * Why not? I see no logical reason that it shouldn't be allowed on those tiles[/i]. For that matter, I would allow it to be cast on Volcanoes too (taking ownership of the Volcano in the process).

These change game rules where no bug actually requires it, which is why they were optional.

Finally, I have one last request for 1.51: Can you make excess research carry over between turns?

I don't remember why but I think I concluded this cannot be done for some reason. Oh yea I remember. There would be no place to store that research because the new spell isn't chosen where the previous is done, and the game keeps track of "research left for this spelll" and not "research made" unlike with production in cities.

[Tiltowait]

* Banishing a wizard no longer lets players take half the other wizard's mana reserves. (105)
* * Why not? Per the animation, the attacker has raided the target's Fortress, where the mana crystals were presumably stored.

This is documented nowhere, including the OSG. I thought it was a bug, honestly. I'm glad it's fixed.

Can you make excess research carry over between turns? Or, if that's not feasible, have the excess roll into Casting Skill or Mana? It's really irritating having to re-balance my Power allocations every turn to keep from wasting research points.

Don't micromanage MoM too much, accept the fact you're going to lose a few points here and there and you'll enjoy the game much more.

[Akkalevil]

I'll probably remove it from the 1.51 version.

Great news !

And thanks for the incredible work you put into this. My main beef with MoM, that often made me give up starting a new game, was the utterly broken diplomatic system. After seeing the countless bugs in it in the Wiki, I understand why.
Fixing it is a boon to the entire gaming world !

I think it's probably the case that the diplomacy bias toward Life and against Death is a bit too strong, and that could be considered a bug worth fixing; I just think it warrants a tweak, and not a complete replacement. How about changing the diplomacy multiplier for Death books from -5/-3 to -4/-2 per book, and the extra multiplier for Life books from +2 to +1 per book? That keeps the basic design the same, but mitigates the problems.

The designers were certainly aware of this bias when making the game, and I suspect that they wouldn't have deliberately made some schools worse off than the others without compensating for it in some other way.

Maybe, maybe not.
But I think that in the spirit of just fixing bugs and not going into rebalancing what isn't very obviously broken or nonsensical, it's better to just fall back on original values.

[Elestan]

* AI wizards have a 10% lower chance to raze a city if was owned by another AI wizard. (W $9F968)

The patch reduces the chance by 10%. I assume it's because the game gets too easy if the AI burns down the cities and fails to expand. Since kyrub never talked about his reasons for AI changes and preferred to keep them a secret, I don't actually know why he did it.

* AI will never cast Dispel Magic and Dispel Magic True if Holy Arms is in effect for the human player. (W $BA125)

They did and now they don't. A very crude solution to prevent the AI to waste their skill on dispelling holy weapons. One of those things I don't agree with, I don't remember if my own dispel changes made it into 1.5 or not, if yes they replaced this, but they probably did not. This makes Holy Arms and Life magic a lot stronger against the AI because dispel is essential against Life and buffs. And it's even worse if the player ever notices it and starts taking advantage of it.

* AI is able to buy items from merchants. AI pays 50% of the normal price for items. (W $BE009)

Ask kyrub, I have no idea. Did I mention he kept all of his AI changes a secret?

Yeah, though I'm very grateful for the many good fixes in Insecticide, I would not call the above changes improvements, and would suggest that perhaps they be made optional for 1.51.

* * Why not slow down the enemy ships?

kyrub belived that breaks the AI's ability to use ships. Don't know why he would think that, ask him. It might even be true.

Hmm...I suppose this one's okay if it really does completely break AI ship use, but it would be much better to fix the actual issue with the AI than to nerf Wind Mastery.

* * Speaking as someone currently playing a Myrran game, I don't think I like these two changes. All of the towers are bunched up in the middle of my territory, and I'm having to fight a lot harder to keep enemies out than I used to. I don't think that the way Towers were often found in remote places was a bug, so this seems more like a design change than a bugfix.

There was a thread about this. To put it simply, this was a bug for the AI not you. They have pretty much no way to use those island towers at all - no ships on the other side to pick them up-, leaving them with no access to the other plane and a bunch of stuck units.

If the AI can't be taught to use flying units for the island towers, then I would just take those towers out completely, as long as there were still at least a minimum number of towers. Ideally, I think the number of towers should depend on the world size, so that the average density of the towers is roughly constant between games.

* * This seems like an oddly specific rule. Isn't there a more general rule that says to prefer units with lots of active Figures for Area Damage spells?

No. I don't think there are other area damage single target combat spells in the unmodded game.

It would also be good to prioritize multi-figure units for Doom Bat attacks, or any unit with Immolation on it.

* * Why not? Per the animation, the attacker has raided the target's Fortress, where the mana crystals were presumably stored.

Very bad for gameplay. The AI usually had 30k mana crystals even while the player is still in the hundreds. It's like unlimited free mana for banishing any AI wizard. Besides the AI got that mana from bugs, sometimes they spent negative mana into spells and gained it for that. (hopefully those are fixed now though)

Well, as you indicate, the real bug here is that the AI is building up all that mana. If the negative mana bugs are fixed, and they stopped putting any Power into Mana once they reached a few thousand, then maybe this change wouldn't be needed any more.

* * All of these seem like straight-up improvements with no down side...or is there a drawback to them?

No, there isn't.

Well then, by all means put them in, IMHO.

* Leftover production is not lost but used for the next project (211)
* * Oh, please put this in. I hate having to micromanage production overruns. Or at a minimum, at least make the excess convert to trade goods ( = half value in Gold).

* Raise Volcano allowed on Hills, Mountains (277)
* * Why not? I see no logical reason that it shouldn't be allowed on those tiles. For that matter, I would allow it to be cast on Volcanoes too (taking ownership of the Volcano in the process).

These change game rules where no bug actually requires it, which is why they were optional.

I suppose, though I really don't see a downside to these ones. Fiddly micromanagement is a sometimes necessary evil in 4X games, not a design goal.

Finally, I have one last request for 1.51: Can you make excess research carry over between turns?

There would be no place to store that research because the new spell isn't chosen where the previous is done, and the game keeps track of "research left for this spelll" and not "research made" unlike with production in cities.

Hmm...then I guess my request (at least in an optional patch) would be to roll the previously wasted excess into Casting Skill, so at least it isn't wasted.

[Elestan]

Can you make excess research carry over between turns? Or, if that's not feasible, have the excess roll into Casting Skill or Mana? It's really irritating having to re-balance my Power allocations every turn to keep from wasting research points.

Don't micromanage MoM too much, accept the fact you're going to lose a few points here and there and you'll enjoy the game much more.

Can't; too OCD. Must...optimize...sliders.... :-P

[Nelphine]

You get used to the towers. I'm not really terribly impressed with them close to each other, but if you have less than 6 towers you'd restrict AI access across planes almost as much as the island towers did.

It really is a necessary evil even if it requires a changed game play strategy.

[Seravy]

Ideally, I think the number of towers should depend on the world size, so that the average density of the towers is roughly constant between games.

Changing the number of towers is impossible, it's a hardcoded number that appears in at least 4-5 dozens of places in the code.

It would also be good to prioritize multi-figure units for Doom Bat attacks, or any unit with Immolation on it.

That's a completely unrelated place in the code and one that's by now vastly different from CoM so no changes I make there can be transferred (though this specific idea was never done anyway)

Well, as you indicate, the real bug here is that the AI is building up all that mana. If the negative mana bugs are fixed, and they stopped putting any Power into Mana once they reached a few thousand, then maybe this change wouldn't be needed any more.

Since this specific change was up for public voting and people wanted it in, it stays. Unless I remember wrong.

I suppose, though I really don't see a downside to these ones. Fiddly micromanagement is a sometimes necessary evil in 4X games, not a design goal.

Leftover production getting lost is an important game mechanic. It ensures you can't buy cheaper on a new building, which you could if you could if you had leftover production. The multiplier is 4x for 0% done stuff but only 3X or 2X otherwise. Even a single point remaining would ensure it almost never costs 4x. (Not that I like that mechanic but it is part of the game)

[Elestan]

Leftover production getting lost is an important game mechanic. It ensures you can't buy cheaper on a new building, which you could if you could if you had leftover production. The multiplier is 4x for 0% done stuff but only 3X or 2X otherwise. Even a single point remaining would ensure it almost never costs 4x. (Not that I like that mechanic but it is part of the game)

I'd actually be okay with losing the x4, as long as the AI players were treated the same. Alternatively, if the excess just went to Trade Goods, then it wouldn't interfere with the Buy multipliers.

[Seravy]

Leftover production getting lost is an important game mechanic. It ensures you can't buy cheaper on a new building, which you could if you could if you had leftover production. The multiplier is 4x for 0% done stuff but only 3X or 2X otherwise. Even a single point remaining would ensure it almost never costs 4x. (Not that I like that mechanic but it is part of the game)

I'd actually be okay with losing the x4, as long as the AI players were treated the same. Alternatively, if the excess just went to Trade Goods, then it wouldn't interfere with the Buy multipliers.

Okay, a question. Why don't you apply the optional patch if you want it so badly? I mean the entire point of having optional patches included is that people who want to play with them can. I don't see why it's any better for you if it's also required for everyone else.