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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
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LIFE Realm
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(June 4th, 2018, 07:02)Nelphine Wrote: And yeah I always play max power, although the reason for that is gone now, I'm still in the habit of doing so. It actually benefits the AI more so I should probably stop, but oh well. I disagree, it benefits the player as the AI is slower to get the loots. The player is smarter with looting.
Could there be an issue with the trade of healing and just cause? I can't seem to get anyone (3 life wizards) to trade these for me, even though I could gift them uncommons.
ai values spells by a rating, which is independant of the rarity. some spells are better for the human (healing is notoriously powerful for the human to delay and abuse especially heroes); some spells are awful for the ai (nature's cures). Seravy has tried to take this into account whenever possible, causing some spells to be much harder to trade for.
Yes, those two spells are among the higher trade value commons.
Trade value works both ways - you also get more for your Healing if you trade it away, and might get some of the uncommons for it. There is only one strict rule, the spell you give must be equal or higher value than the spell you receive, if you are making the offer. Trade values are constant, I think the table was posted when the change was made, and the thread probably also explains what modifiers can apply to it. In Life realm specifically, there are a lot of strong commons, but a lot of weak uncommons, so getting those commons for uncommons is not as trivial as in other realms.
I've made it so that undead will refresh their levels after combat and at end of turn like any other unit. This should fix the heroism cancelling problem and I hope without side effects.
However, if you manage to put EXP on the undead by any means, it means they'll gain levels. While they still don't get EXP for combat and at end of turn, they might get some from other effects that don't specifically forbid it, I haven't checked (armsmaster, enlightenment, do we have more?).
June 27th, 2018, 06:33
(This post was last modified: June 27th, 2018, 06:48 by teelaurila.)
Armsmaster heroes of a death wizard increasing levels of undead actually sounds cool. It's a minor effect, anyway.
Enlightenment could actually even work too, very borderline case anyway to have undead with a life very rare. And if heroism now works with undead, no "logic" reason for enlightenment not to. (Wait, enlightenment is only heroes? So when would this even come up - if you purposefully bloodlust your hero? Or accidentally via mystic surge, is that even possible?)
I believe we need to discuss Planar Travel again, this time with the human player in focus. Copy from my tet game thread :
So on Planar Travel, this is what I think right now : -The AI cannot use it so why can the human? Spells that are human only shouldn't be a thing. (with the exception of spells that affect parts of the game where the AI has enough advantage to not need them, Earth Lore and Nature's Cures being those) -It's Russian Roulette. Find a friendly Myrran wizard? Huge benefit, you can trade, make alliances, exploit lairs, all kinds of stuff at zero cost. Find a Chaos/Death/Sorcery wizard? You're up against painful curses you can't do anything about, as waging war when you need to buff units one at a time for 50 MP is not very realistic. Either you have an unstoppable doomstack to raze the entire plane or you can forget it, and will have to suffer the curses. If you do have the doomstack then it's just utterly unfair, as you get to kill the AI (and win the game as you monopolize the plane) while they still can't go to your plane. -Rushing Planar Travel and getting an early Myrran city or even a dozen can heavily push the game towards your favor at almost no cost - the Myrran enemy will be much weaker while you'll be like twice as strong at the same time. And once more it's Russian roulette, because the resources spent towards it will be a waste and will cause you to lose if the wizard there is hostile. -There is only one Planar movement spell now with Astral Gate gone, so rushing it early is much less likely to succeed and isn't really a viable strategy for anyone exact when picking 8 books and selecting it as guaranteed first research. -Planar Travel item power is reliable instead, has no research cost, and one can start the game with Enchant Item by picking artificer. However if using this strategy, the player needs to find a neutral city on Myrror that's weak enough for the hero to conquer and is required to then spread that race on the plane. So it's even more of a luck based strategy than the others. So I question Planar Travel is healthy for the game - we generally want to reduce the luck factor on high impact basic elements of the gameplay, and being able to "steal" 8-10 cities worth of territory from the to-be-finall-boss of the game right at the beginning is definitely one of those. Just because it's harder to do for a human, and more fun than if the AI does it to them, doesn't mean it's good. Removing planar travel would free up an item power slot, a Life spell slot, and a unit buff slot. Shadow Demons are semi-related, but they are, at least, a lot more expensive (to research), and have a reasonable military force, so luck is less relevant - you can use your Shadow Demon stack for battle if you end up having to fight Myrran early. (but the fact you're conquering another plane and win early due to that advantage remains) If necessary, fixing Shadow Demons is easy, we can simply remove the ability from them. I believe we left Planar Travel unchanged because it's "fun" for the human and "harder to abuse" than the AI but...I don't know. I don't see the fun in playing Russian Roulette in my early game, and winning undeserved if it works out. If not removing, moving up the ability and item power to rare level and allowing it to transfer then entire stack is still an option.
So, for me, Planar Travel is first and foremost, not about game balance. I understand there are balance issues. However, planar travel is an iconic trope - and it's one of the few things that make MoM completely different from games like Civ and MoO.
Given that, I believe we need to maintain planar travel, and with at least 2 modes of planar travel (towers that are neutral and out of your control - these end up being similar to worm holes on opposite sides of the galaxy, and magic, that is within your control - this ends up being more like teleport which nothing is similar to in other games). As such, I think that we must keep it in the game. It may be difficult, but I do believe that we should be making sure that the rest of the game is based around the two planes (including planar travel); not seeing how the rest of the game is set up, and deciding that planar travel doesn't suit that. Two planes is the core of the game, and should be maintained as such. I think we should do things like (we don't need to do all of these; i'm simply giving suggestions and seeing what may seem interesting/effective to others): Limit targetting on AI - they must have a unit that is both within 5 (or 10) squares of the target and on the same plane (for unit targetting; city targetting is already limited, but we could add in limits to city targetting to both human and AI so that city targetting across planes is more difficult - perhaps increasing cost of all spells taregetted on the other plane, similar to increased mainteance described below). Perhaps do something like increase maintenance for units that are on the other plane; and increase it further if towers are not broken (or if all towers are controlled by other wizards). Make it expensive to use planar travel, such that it makes sense that the AI chooses not to do it, instead of simply saying the AI doesn't get to do it. Perhaps +200% more maintenance, -10% for each city you control on the other plane (this would be based on fortress location), -100% if towers are open and not controlled by other wizards/neutrals, to a minimum of +0%. So you CAN planar travel, but trying to do a 'burn everything' strategy would be so expensive that it wouldn't be easy to do, except if you controlled so much of your plane that you could realistically break the towers anyway. Either reduce maximum combat modifier for spell cost on your home plane to x2, or increase combat modifier on the other plane to x4. Prevent trading/gifts/tributes unless you both have cities on the same plane. Make diplomacy checks based on empire on accessible planes (so all 3 graphs would have a portion for your home plane, and a portion for the other plane; and for diplomacy, they would only be added together if at least 1 tower is open and another wizard/neutral doesn't control it); for instance, if the human uses planar travel, and doesn't break towers, then a militaristic opponent on the other plane would see a VERY tiny opponent, and promptly declare war. Make a new diplomacy 'war' declaration: if wizard A is on their home plane, and wizard B has cities on that plane AND that plane is not wizard B's home plane AND towers are not open, have a high chance to declare war, which increases as number of cities wizard B controls, until wizard B has at least 30-50% of the number of cities that wizard A has, at which point it slowly decreases until it doesn't exist (around 60-80% of the number of cities of wizard A) and only 'normal' war conditions apply. Modify AI difficulty so that as soon as someone else has a unit on their plane, they operate at full potential instead of being artificially slower. Increase rarity of planar travel to Rare. Personally, this may actually be a spell that should be Arcane, not based on one realm, so that all wizards have access to it. (This would still require a lot of teaching of AI, so it probably won't help by itself; I would still suggest increasing cost/maintenance to make it expensive enough that it makes sense the AI would simply choose not to do it.)
None of your suggestions address the core problem :
You only need to ever plane shift one unit once to have the entire game drastically changed in an irrevocable way for or against your favor, without knowing in advance which it is. Imagine if lairs would, after scouting them, immediately spawn the stack of monsters that you found inside as rampaging monsters. Makes sense? Sure, if you disturb that nest of Great Drakes, they might go and burn down your entire empire. Is it playable? No, it's not. No one would ever touch any lair. Planar Travel is the same. You contact another wizard, who will either help you immensely (by trading, or letting you form an alliance before anyone else, so they are guaranteed to be on the losing side of the endgame and you on the winning) or make your miserable (by spamming curses on you. Yes, they can't hit the cities but the rest are bad enough. Fire Storm, Blizzard, Spell Blast, Stasis, Warp Node, Drain Power are all available.) Even if you couldn't use it to conquer the other plane, this by itself is horrible design. The price of the war on the other plane and its outcome is secondary. The effect of having contact itself is huge and also that war shouldn't even happen. As you say, the design for Planes is important. Our design for the two planes is that if you start on Arcanus then Myrror has the "final boss" for your game. If you can reach and fight the final boss at the start of the game, that directly contradicts this design. (likewise if you start on Myrror, then Arcanus has two, weaker, "bosses". Whether that is easier or harder and by how much is subjective, the point is, the core design role of planes is to have a direction of travel that is not available early and stays separated for a while. Kinda like how in Master of Orion you can't reach star that are further away than your researched fuel cells allow, so you often need to go up a few tiers in tech to even be able to meet races on the other half of the universe.) Quote:Modify AI difficulty so that as soon as someone else has a unit on their plane, they operate at full potential instead of being artificially slower.I don't remember ever having this as a feature. They are disallowed from breaking towers early, but they always operate at full potential. (which is exactly why they can't be allowed to break through too early) Making Planar Travel rare or Arcane (also rare) would be a solution. However then we need to swap it with another spell (and likely buff it to enable the entire stack which makes it much more AI playable). For life, Prosperity is probably the only rare spell that would be acceptable as uncommon. For Arcane we could get rid of Move Fortress which is a big loss but at least it's a spell the AI cannot use. But then we end up with an unused Life slot (and we can't use it for a buff as we kept the ability as buff). For Planar Travel items, we'd need to make it Create Artifact only. Still unsure about Shadow Demons. (moving them to rare is also an option, Death only has 1 creature at rare but 3 at uncommon. Still it is the best uncommon creature so losing it would hurt.) |
