(March 22nd, 2020, 18:33)Taskr36 Wrote: Not sure if this is the place to mention bugs, but I recently got this game with the Caster of Magic 6.0 update on Steam, and came across an issue. I am using Klackon as my race, and have the alchemy retort. All was fine until I built a city next to a mithril deposit. After building an alchemist's guild, my klackons are still just using regular magic weapons, instead of mithril. I know they didn't get alchemist's guild in the original game, so maybe this bug is specific to their race.
That does sound like a bug, I have never seen it happen. Please post the save file.
Tested it further. It looks like a slight change was made to the game. It used to be that if your city was within two squares of mithril or adamantium, having an alchemist's guild would use it in weapons. Now it appears that it only works if it is two squares up, down, left, or right. Deposits that are two squares away diagonally are not used. I didn't see anything about that change in the notes so I'm not sure if it's a bug, or was an intentional change. Save file is attached.
Quote:Deposits that are two squares away diagonally are not used. I didn't see anything about that change in the notes so I'm not sure if it's a bug, or was an intentional change.
Neither. It has been that way ever since the initial release of the original game in 1994. The 4 corner tiles in the 5x5 area are not part of the city and are not used, this isn't exclusive to ores either, the terrain is not used either. You can see those tiles are darker on the city screen.
This has a very simple reason - those tiles could overland 4 cities instead of the usual two, if they belonged to the city range.
There is only a single exception : when wizard's pacts check for troop presence, they include those tiles even though the city isn't using them because they check for "a range of 2 tiles".
Quote:Deposits that are two squares away diagonally are not used. I didn't see anything about that change in the notes so I'm not sure if it's a bug, or was an intentional change.
Neither. It has been that way ever since the initial release of the original game in 1994. The 4 corner tiles in the 5x5 area are not part of the city and are not used, this isn't exclusive to ores either, the terrain is not used either. You can see those tiles are darker on the city screen.
This has a very simple reason - those tiles could overland 4 cities instead of the usual two, if they belonged to the city range.
There is only a single exception : when wizard's pacts check for troop presence, they include those tiles even though the city isn't using them because they check for "a range of 2 tiles".
Wow, just tested it out in the original and you're right. I guess it's been too long since I played the original, or my mind is going with age. Probably a little of both. Don't mind me.
Ok, here's one that's definitely a bug. Disenchant Area doesn't work. I cast it, and no matter which city I target, no matter how many enchantments that city has, it says that there is nothing to dispel. I've tried it on cities and overland units to see if maybe it was altered to affect overland units, but it doesn't work on them either. According to the notes, it should work on overland spells. Saved game is attached.
So, I've never cared a ton about trading with the ai in the past, I've been more of a jerk to them. So, I'm wondering. Are base values of spells in trades based on research cost? or is research cost irrelevant? I read that unobtainable spells have have a tier higher value, and whole bunch of really lethal spells also have increased priority, but, how does the base value work? is it flat? all commons the same value? or it scaled via research cost?
So, in my current game, focused on spell trading, the ai is handling spell trading a lot better than I remember last time I tried this. Although I'm noticing that, actually, I think omniscient might be MORE powerful if it disabled my ability to trade and find treasure of common spells when I had only 1 book. This has pretty much only hurt me, because it's spread the spells I find from treasure out of 5schools instead of 2or3. (My build is split up 4/3/2/1/1/omniscient for maximum trading play). Yet that bonus is so big, I want to take that first book, I almost think this might be a "trap" tricking newer players into picking a lot of 1 book schools. Essentially I'd actually I think prefer if those 12 common spells I gained access to via random treasure and trading were disabled to force the 18 common spells in my favored schools to appear more likely. Of course, maybe this was intentional in the design of the retort. Then again, now that I have this experience I'll probably use the retort more wisely. So, maybe just an extra sentence or two in the readme warning new players either away from this retort entirely, or some such? I dunno. I don't want someone to think it sounds cool, and then think the game is entirely too random after giving themselves such a gigantic common pool.
That might be impossible to code, another way of handling it might might be making it cost something like 4 picks but just giving you 4common spells in any school you have 0 books in (and giving a flat bonus of 16.5% instead of scaling). I mention this because in hadriex's lunatic victory attempts I think he was mostly taking omniscient as a way to "cheat" how many books you can spend on retorts, and end up with a mega retort with mega cost.
Oh also, I think that preventing halflings from building barracks hurts strategic depth rather than adding to it, why? well, pretty much everyone who goes halflings will go life2. If they could build barracks but not war college that would make the heroism issue a bit more 50/50 IMO. Now the problem is klackon's and lizardmen also cannot build war colleges, and you want halflings to be even more peaceful than them. Is it not possible to do something like make halfling barracks cost 100% more or some such? (Or who knows, maybe altar of battle will be buildable for orcs and beastmen in master of magic 2).
Also, if none of this is possible to code, I suggest making it possible to code in master of magic 2, even if these specific ideas suck, I think having more fine grain control over retorts and buildings could be good for any future ideas you have that are better than mine.
edit: Oh, and do retorts guardian and omniscient effect outpost success chance? Or are those bonuses only applied after the outpost phase? If they're only applied after the outpost phase (this is my assumption), I assume that's a coding limitation? And, ideally, one that could maybe be solved for master of magic 2?
Quote: Is it not possible to do something like make halfling barracks cost 100% more or some such?
Yes, that should be possible.
I see no problem with Omniscient.
Having more realms with fewer books in each means you the spells you get will be less predictable and luck plays a larger role BUT you have increases opportunity to trade or get spells from treasure or other wizards (by banishing or threatening them). So it's a bit of a "instead of 5 you get 4-6 at random" kind of deal. This is true for all spell tiers and is not related to Omniscient in any way. It's just how playing multiple realms works in general.
Even if you pick 2, 3 or 4 books for your Omniscient (or not) wizard, your uncommons, rares, or very rares will be unpredictable while with 10 of the same realm you are guaranteed every spell.
I didn't mean to imply that there was anything wrong with omniscient, in that it isn't overly strong or overly weak, just that it seems like it was designed to fit constraints of the code. You even mentioned as much in the readme. If you for example could include a larger number of retorts, with more varied costs, it might make sense to redesign. Sorry, I was reading the MoM ideas thread while I was writing in this thread. It just seemed to me, like, there were a lot (well at least the two I mentioned) alternate ways to design a retort like omniscient if there were more wiggle room in the code's rules. I could even see a third variant of the retort that instead of reducing randomness, increases it. By doing something weird like increasing the spell rarity of possible treasures found, or doing something odd like paying 2 retort picks for 2 extra common spells in all five realms. But without actually granting the books. Overall, 3-5 realm wizard builds don't have a ton of retort options to pick from. Which is fine, because the list of retorts has only so much space. Maybe in MoM 2 though the list could be longer?
