Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

I'm very satisfied with Omniscient and the retort/spell system as is at the moment. I don't think I will want to add more at this time.

[namad]

Can anyone give me a top tier build for a chaos heavy focus? I really love life+warlord, I think I might even do best with a sorcery+death split, and I totally get how good nature conjurer is. Chaos though I don't fully get, the best damage spells, but the other colors have slightly weaker damage spells, so is that really a key advantage to build archmage+channeler around? Chaos has some great summons but they're categorized in large part by high damage and fragile bodies. Hell hounds specifically take massive casualties in the early game compared to ghouls or nagas or sprites. Hell hounds are much cheaper, and can run over normal units, but I dunno, I've never once had a chaos playthrough where I didn't feel powerless and give up fairly early on.

What's a tried and true chaos focused build?

[Seravy]

8 Chaos Runemaster, Sage Master, something else for a global enchantment strategy (specialist or a 9th book might be best)
8 Chaos Chaneller, 2 more retorts for a combat spell focused strategy (Archmage, Alchemy, Astrologer!)
10 Chaos, Conjurer, Specialist for a creature based strategy. (Not sure if I played this but I know it is good. Chaos creatures are actually quite decent especially the rare ones.)

For all 3, start with Gargoyles as soon as possible. It's the only early option in chaos that is cost effective enough to let Chaos expand in the early game. Larger land sizes are usually to your benefit as it gives you more early territory to work with without having to fight too hard and lets you reach the strong late spells faster but for summoning works better on smaller land so that one doesn't care and works for all sizes.

Don't play Chaos with Halflings. I know it's temping for the research but I had horrible results with that. You will need to have decent and versatile units to keep you in the game at least until flame strike. With Halflings, the first Night Stalker or invisible anything means game over and even something as simple as a bunch of units with Guardian Wind can be a major problem.

In the early game, prioritize holding territory, and expand only as much as you can afford. Wall of Fire is your best trick for a while, and Immolation is also great on the Gargoyles. Destroying enemy mithil and adamantium, if you can do that without undesirable diplomacy consequences, will save a lot of trouble. Units with those will be much harder to stop using gargoyles and walls of fire.
Life wizards are probably the worse thing to fight with Chaos, as buffed units can crush gargoyles and walk through fire unharmed. Avoid fighting those unless it's early enough that you can target their first few hamlets so they can never develop into anything stronger. Stacks of 2 gargoyles can usually take a fresh city that has only a swordsmen in it easily. (even 1 can but it's risky due to star fires, fire bolt, etc)

I don't know if any of these are top tier - I never managed to beat Lunatic myself.

Another thing worth considering, Myrran with Draconians. They are amazing with Doom Mastery and allow you to fire bolt things to death why they fly and shoot.

[shenbear]

Does anyone know if there's an up-to-date strategy thread for higher difficulty levels? There's lots of discussion from the 17-18 era, which is helpful, but details strategies that no longer work (wraithform warships, tactician/warlord strategies etc.)

[Sapher]

I'll make a playthrough as soon as steam will have 6.01.
I only recently discovered how good treasure is when there is no "more random items" turned on. So any treasure hunting strategy with transition into heroes should be very strong(draconian bowmen, cavalry+consufion+retreat, nomad horsebowmen(+flame blade+holy weapon+?heroism), packs of trolls)
Just strong is nature summoner(8-10 nature books, conjurer, specialist, alchemy?archmage?).
Life draconian (warlord, myrran, alchemy?, channeler?, the rest into life books). Mass production of draconian halberdier to fight wizards, bowmen to gather treasure.

[shenbear]

Thank you Sapher!

I'm slowly working my way up through difficulty levels. I was a huge sorcery player back in the 1.31 era, and could regularly win on impossible with monocolor strategies, and this mod is really stimulating to figure out!

I'm not sure I'm a good sorcery player in this version. I managed to win handily with Dark Elf Death, but I'm struggling with early game sprite strategies trying out 8 nature.

[namad]

Btw, the readme file at http://seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/CASTEROFMAGIC.HTML uses both the spelling gaia and gaea for the spell gaea's blessing. IMO gaea is the correct spelling, but regardless of which spelling is chosen, you might want to consolidate all instances of the word to match themselves?

[Seravy]

version 6.01 is now available!

6.01
-Fixed bug : predefined items with Invisibility or Invulnerability can't be generated even beyond the intended turn of 100. (note, this did not affect random generated items, those could have had these item powers on them.)
-On Normal and Easy difficulty, the AI will engage enemies in melee with ranged units that run out of ammo, even if their attack strength is low.
-On Fair difficulty, Neutral enemies will not try to use any of the stalling tactics.
-Fixed bug : Attempting to cast Holy Weapon when Holy Arms is in effect fails to display the correct warning message and might cause the game to crash.
-Fixed bug : Moving units with the keyboard bypasses the planar check.
-Map generation continent size is now more accurate and continent generation is faster. (thanks, Drake178!)
-Fixed 5.7 bug : game sometimes crashes or corrupts memory when AI is trying to flee.
-The AI will no longer flee from battles where all their remaining units are Confused and switched sides for the turn.
-On Easy difficulty, enemy wizards are now forbidden from being Chaotic personality in addition to the previous restrictions.
-Overland spells now have a Counter-resistance vs Nightshade equal to their base cost. Cost modifiers (such as Evil Omens or Specialist) will not alter the success rate.
-Overhauled the “base cost” vs “effective cost” handling for overland spells. This fixes the bug of incorrect Spell Blast costs during Evil Omens. Spells that use the spell slider : Disenchant Area, Disjunction and Dispelling Wave are excluded from this fix : Their slider cost still affects the dispelling power and the other cost modifiers still do not. Yes, this means Spell Blast might still counter these for a negative cost during Evil Omens, that can't be helped.
-Added a FAQ section to the document.
-Fixed bug : Towers are sometimes generated too close to the X edges of the map, especially on smaller maps.
-The frequency of generated rampaging monsters is now scaled down if player count is lower than 4 to compensate for having fewer players the monsters can attack.
-Overexpansion warnings will never trigger below 5 cities even if it's the early game on smaller landmass sizes.
-Fixed bug : The AI casts Dispelling Wave against Wall of Shadows when they are defending instead of when they are attacking.

[prokolyo]

Yay! Will updating do anything to existing saves?

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

[Seravy]

In theory it shouldn't. The magic.set file wasn't changed in the update so as long as the updater doesn't redownload unchanged files, it should be safe.
(if it does get replaced, the saves are still fine, but their names will disappear)