Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[roarmalf]

Either way, engineers and settlers don't work for #1 primarily because of limited movement

Yes, that's the important part.
If it's not in your territory and it's inconvenient to get the move 1 unit there because you have no cities in the area then it's not really your node, it's theirs and it's perfectly reasonable they want you to leave.
Settlers are not cheap but I wouldn't consider spending 1 population and 150 production for a node unreasonable and they are available for everyone.

I agree that this is certainly reasonable when I'm over extending from my territory. However, the problem still comes up where there's a node 2-4 squares from one of my cities, and a friendly AI settlement drops me next to the node. In this case they're the one over reaching. Now I'm forced to leave the node or sacrifice a settler to keep it if I don't want to attack the settlement. Not to mention in the time it takes to get a settler built and moved there my diplomatic relationship is likely shot.


Mostly it just feels bad to have a Wizard say "hey, I know you've had an army on this square for the last 50 turns protecting your investment into this magic node, but I moved a settler next to it so you have to leave or I'll have to break the treaty I signed knowing you're army had already been established there."


Anyways, it's probably only am issue if you want to play a diplomatic game, and more of a pet peeve than a big problem. I've played with it with it since I found this wonderful DLC back in version 2.x, and I'll be happy to keep playing either way. Just my thoughts.

[MrBiscuits]

I think the diplomatic penalty should only happen when you first enter the node. Once you are established there then it's your territory and the diplomatic penalty doesn't apply.

By the way is there any alternative to having many small stacks of units from other wizards drifting over territory all the time? It's annoying when they aren't attacking you, but are just blocking you from moving units around between your cities.

[MrBiscuits]

For Guardian Spirits, I'm not exactly sure of the current behaviour, but I'd like to see it give the defensive bonus to the wizard that melded the node whether they are attacking or defending and also that bonus extended to every square of the node's aura.

[roarmalf]

<rant>
Just came up in another game. The AI is on another continent and snuck in a settler into an undesirable location before I got spearmen unit patrolled there to block it:

https://i.imgur.com/Evf1F6k.png


Now keeping my own Node, literally 2 squares from my capital, is hurting my diplomacy with an AI who is:

1. peaceful
   
2. based on another continent
   
3. unable to defend their own settlement
   
4. likely going to ruin my game if I attack them since I'm at war with someone else
   

Sure, I can build a settlers and put it there (likely what I'll do since I don't have engineers), but it's extremely counter intuitive play. A new player likely won't realize the problem or know to use a settler in a situation like this. In my mind if an "existing conditions" rule for global spells can be used (and it should) then the same should be true for node ownership. 
</rant>

[Seravy]

In my mind if an "existing conditions" rule for global spells can be used (and it should) then the same should be true for node ownership.

Yeah well computers don't use human ways of thinking.
For a global enchantment, "existing conditions" is trivial. You had the enchantment, or not.

This is different. Unless we literally store the position of every single unit in the area of a newly founded city and make the AI ignore those specific units, the AI has no way of knowing what was the existing condition.
If we do, players will be still unhappy because that means if they didn't already have the spearmen on their node BEFORE the AI built the city then it'll still count as a violation and of course they can't reinforce the garrsion or send new units if the old one is killed by a third party.
So we can't use an "existing conditions" rule here nor would it be any improvement : nodes are not part of the ruleset either way, units are.

We could instead add a different rule, like "if a node was around the city that was melded by another player and that player had units on it at the time the city was built, remember that tile and ignore it when checking for violations."
Even that has problems unfortunately :
-You want to reinforce the node garrison, unit stops on a tile next to it while moving there, it's a violation.
-You consider it your node (for example you cleared out the monsters), but the AI does not. (you haven't melded it yet, or haven't garrisoned it yet, the units/spirit are on their way to the node but the settler reaches the area first.)
-You lose the node to a 3rd wizard then reclaim it (so the AI sees it as "not your node" when the city is built, or if the rule clears the tile from the list if the node is taken, then later as well.)

So I'm going to need a better rule than that to consider changes.

I admit using the settler to garrison the node is not intuitive, but an intuitive solution does exist - abandon the node and accept that it's territory covered by the pact so it's not yours because they built a city there first.

[roarmalf]

"This is really complicated to program and not with the effort" is perfectly reasonable. 


I'm also willing to yield nodes far afield.


But the image I linked in my last post is nothing like that. I'm blue. That's my capital city just north of the node. I did build a city first. And a second and third. And captured the node and defended it. Then the AI built on a low max pop space near the node which was already in my capital's radius.


There's no human that would think the node is now their territory in these conditions. I understand the AI has limits.


Again, "we need better conditions for programming proposes" is extremely reasonable.


EDIT: maybe making units in your towns radius exempt from triggering negative diplomacy

[Seravy]

EDIT: maybe making units in your towns radius exempt from triggering negative diplomacy

That's reasonable and easy to program, but only works for that specific node.
If the same node was 1 tile to the south, it would still be a node on "your continent" that you cleared but it wouldn't be in range of your city. If your city was 1 tile to the north, same thing.

[Cruel100]

Suggestion: Open list in ".TXT" to include the preferred names of the city by the wizard's book type or Wizard or Race.

[Slingers]

Seravy wrote: "…it does make perfect sense - you need a body to raise it as undead and "non-corporeal" literally means there is no body to raise."

The new bloodsucker ability could get the flavour of chasing tasty warm-blooded units with sufficiently soft skin. A long list of units should be immune to bloodsucking. Then the effects of this ability could be improved. Sucking blood during a battle could provide overhealing for the time of the battle to represent the greed for blood, even if the vampire creature is not injured. Units that were damaged by bloodsucking during the battle but did not die should gain the bloodsucker ability. This is to add the flavour of the fiction of vampirism spreading like a disease.
1.      The unit remains loyal to its wizard. This should be made less exploitable. For example, there needs to be 1HP left after battle to trigger the effect, or a certain amount of bloodsuck-damage needs to be done.
2.      The unit changes sides after the battle. I don’t like this one. We already have game mechanics to raise the undead.
3.      The unit becomes neutral after the battle. Bloodsucking raiders everywhere!

[Suppanut]

I look forward for Caster of Magic II as you seem add lot of features which I always hope for them to exist as CPU and RAM move up specification.

I know that it may not right time yet (not yet reach Phase IV) but I want to say (as I don't know about how much I would visit this place in the future as I get older and older with more responsibility in real life to do) that I always want different variety of humankind to appear in game apart from just High Men (which seem to represent mostly medieval European or standard Tolkien-ish fantasy's men of the west), Barbarian (represent older antiquate European especially Vikings or almost ripped off from Conan stereotype, perhaps should add up some element of north amerindian too to spice thing up from real world) and Nomad (which represent real world counterpart of Middle-East, Persia, and Steppe cultures, with vanilla's Jafar as wizard represent this race as origin). I want to see counterpart of India/Southeast Asia/Mesoamerican people of rain forest (in vanilla has Tlaloc as wizard but no race represent him) and counterpart of East Asia (China/Korea/Japan and vanilla has has Lo Pan as wizard but also no race represent him as well as a few heroes like war monk, golden one, and ninja). For some other races maybe we could introduce some races (such as ratman/scaven) and elements (like units concept for exist races but with less love in vanilla in term of access of special units such as lizardman) from Warhammer fantasy or Dungeon and Dragon too.

Sorry for sidetrack the discussion.