Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

and all heroes in stack receive +3xp(flat) per turn.

This would make the hero train itself, which is why it does not do it yet. The ability just would boost itself and reach max level in no time. I guess a flat 3 would be better than all of the exp but still. I'll think about it. It would help the AI for sure, they tend to keep several heroes in the capital for a significant amount of turns.

Battle experience is (enemy units cost/16) if I remember correctly, so stronger units give you more exp. in vanilla everything, even Sky Drakes were 2 exp per unit.
I had no problem leveling up heroes as long as I used them for combat, and honestly that's what they are for, except for a very few abilities like noble and sage, but even those heroes can fight in combat. As long as you pay attention to what you attack, they can be leveled up without much of a problem.
I've considered making free exp 2 per turn but I don't see a need, compared to active use of the hero, neither 1 nor 2 points are relevant.
Champions usually have a lot of abilities, so "losing" one of those for armsmaster is no big deal. It's not like your first strike armor piercing healer constitution super mighty illusion immune paladin would really be useless just because it has armsmaster instead of, say, blademaster. Sure the latter is better but it'll still be a great hero (and you can always just summon another one if you don't like it).
Not every champion can get it anyway, only those that are "leader" type can. Or was it "warrior leader" type. Not sure but it's in the heroes topic I posted yesterday.

[Drax]

and all heroes in stack receive +3xp(flat) per turn.

Yes. that's the idea. The hero has the ability to teach.. including him/herself. JA2 has such character ability for example.

Battle experience is (enemy units cost/16) if I remember correctly, so stronger units give you more exp. in vanilla everything, even Sky Drakes were 2 exp per unit.

I guess this is it then. I think it's a bit too much. Maybe toning it down a bit is good idea. I basically had elites in 3 battles sometimes in 2 .. or in 1 if they were regulars. Which makes regular and veteran to be skipped often.

I had no problem leveling up heroes as long as I used them for combat...

Yes. I do think combat experience is OP currently as pointed above. It goes the same for heroes.

...and honestly that's what they are for, except for a very few abilities like noble and sage, but even those heroes can fight in combat. As long as you pay attention to what you attack, they can be leveled up without much of a problem.

Such +3xp per turn(as part of ability, not free!) would not impact the case where you actually fight with a hero. But in the case of support heroes(sage could train noobs) it could allow you to get to a workable level like commander or even captain. Might be good idea to be capped at low level. Like they've learned by watching/studying and need field experience to move up further.

I've considered making free exp 2 per turn but I don't see a need, compared to active use of the hero, neither 1 nor 2 points are relevant.

I meant as part of ability or joining a high level hero. There is a case where it could make sense. The normal 1xp per turn for all is very much ok IMHO.

Champions usually have a lot of abilities, so "losing" one of those for armsmaster is no big deal.

The idea was making it more relevant to wider array of cases. We have cases of OP and useless that could be improved. My proposition was to actually tone it down for normal units to half it's current rate.

Not every champion can get it anyway, only those that are "leader" type can.

indeed and this is the perfect ground for making it useful in other cases. You would have extra reasons to use champions you might not be interested in otherwise. This would make the game even more varied and this is one of the types of changes you've been doing if I'm not wrong.

Think about it. If you like it and it's doable and you want to then do it .. as before it's just an idea.

[Seravy]

I guess this is it then. I think it's a bit too much. Maybe toning it down a bit is good idea. I basically had elites in 3 battles sometimes in 2 .. or in 1 if they were regulars. Which makes regular and veteran to be skipped often.

I'll check it out. It did feel a bit fast to level up the first few levels on my heroes but honestly, you can get elites from a single Heroism, Altar of Battle, or veterans from a War College. It's not such a big deal, and a normal unit surviving 3 big battles is...a pretty big deal for them, I mean they tend to get killed by spells or enemy units all the time.
...It actually is 1+(unit cost/32) rounded down.
This would give you
1 exp for swordsmen, bowmen and spearmen
2 for shaman, cavalry
3 for halberdiers
4 for magicians, priests
...
10 for nightmares, the most expensive normal unit in the game.

I think these numbers are reasonable. Fantastic creatures give a lot of exp though, 20-30 for one rare creature is easily possible. But hey, those are pretty hard to kill with a normal unit!

I think I'm starting to like the armsmaster giving exp to heroes idea. It's not really considerable compared to what combat gets you I guess. It would still take 60 turns to reach level 4 which you get from heroism instantly. On the other hand, this exp would be a significant help to AI heroes, especially those that sit in the capital for 100-150 turns in a game.
I'll add this to my to-do list.

Currently I'm trying to do something entirely different, I want to make dispelling stuff overland cause a reaction from the affected AI player. It's silly that you can just dispel anything, even from your allies, and get away with it. At the very least it should cause a minor relation score drop and a warning chance.

[Tiltowait]

Armsmaster is an *army* training skill. Heroes need to perform heroic deeds to gain experience. Just running through the obstacle course won't cut it. Even stay-at-home heroes like sages need to adventure early in their career before they retire for a lifetime of research. On the other hand, all those orcs and gnolls straight off the farm could do with a good spot of training. Normal units already receive training, hence the 1XP per turn gain, but the armsmaster is really good at it.

Besides, in game terms alone, it is totally cheesy to have armsmaster train your heroes. They're already overpowered and don't need more help. You wanna level up, go kill monsters, it's what they're there for.

[Seravy]

Armsmaster is an *army* training skill. Heroes need to perform heroic deeds to gain experience. Just running through the obstacle course won't cut it. Even stay-at-home heroes like sages need to adventure early in their career before they retire for a lifetime of research. On the other hand, all those orcs and gnolls straight off the farm could do with a good spot of training. Normal units already receive training, hence the 1XP per turn gain, but the armsmaster is really good at it.

Besides, in game terms alone, it is totally cheesy to have armsmaster train your heroes. They're already overpowered and don't need more help. You wanna level up, go kill monsters, it's what they're there for.

Compared to heroism's 150 exp boost, or anything you get from monsters, I think an extra 3/turn is not a big deal.
Considering the exp curve, a hero will most likely only get to level 4 or 5 during a game from this at best.
Also, consider that there might not be monsters to kill, the AI is pretty good at killing them all on higher difficulty.
My main motivation for doing this is helping the AI heroes to level up, though.
I agree that normal training is far less effective for heroes, maybe even completely worthless, but a hero can definitely come up with a way of training that is at least somewhat effective for heroes.

I'm not a fan of the armsmaster training itself, but can't do much against that.

Edit : I managed to make it work, but set it to 2 exp/turn because you also get the 1 for free on any unit. I tested and it takes :
9 turns for level 2
27 turns for level 3
50 turns for level 4
91 turns for level 5
148 turns for level 6.
Level 7 it not achievable in a typical length game unless the hero appeared on turn 1 and it takes a long time to win.

By the way, this is the current exp table :
25 = level 2
80 = level 3
150 = level 4
275 = level 5
450 = level 6
750 = level 7
1200 = level 8
2000 = level max

One side effect, though : The game will not pop up a "hero leveled up" dialog if they get the level from this 2 exp, because the ability originally didn't work on them. They do get the level properly, though.

[Drax]

I think you both missed the point where such training could to be capped. At Commander maybe or even Captain level. Then it won't change anything for AI sitting heroes or other similar abuses.

I do think experience gain fro combat should be lowered. And yes I do think elite normal units should not be the norm in a high casualty war... unless you've explicitly made it so through training and care. Maybe increasing experience needed for unit level up is a better solution?

I think your changes to armmaster make sense. Will test as soon as I can.

[Seravy]

I think you both missed the point where such training could to be capped. At Commander maybe or even Captain level. Then it won't change anything for AI sitting heroes or other similar abuses.

I do think experience gain fro combat should be lowered. And yes I do think elite normal units should not be the norm in a high casualty war... unless you've explicitly made it so through training and care. Maybe increasing experience needed for unit level up is a better solution?

I think your changes to armmaster make sense. Will test as soon as I can.

How does this EXP table sound :
30, 80, 180, 300, 550, 900, 1400, 2500?

(it's the same for both normal and hero units)

I would also mention here that the difference between the levels is more balanced, elite is no longer all that more powerful compared to veteran.

Indeed, the gap from 80 to 150 is a bit too easy to cover by battles, assuming you built a war college to start at veteran, you can get the level in one battle against 9 paladins for example, or 2-3 battles against medium cost normal units.

Edit : with that exp table you can reasonable expect to get to at most commander or captain level before the end of the game from armsmaster.

[Seravy]

1.42!

1.42
-When using Spell Blast against a wizard, relations drop and a warning might appear.
-When the human player dispells or steals a global enchantment belonging to an AI, relations drop and a warning might appear. There is no such effect if an AI dispells another AI's enchantment.
-When the the player asks an AI to declare war on another AI, if they have a peace treaty, they'll refuse until it expires.
-Heroes now gain EXP from armsmasters, but no more than 2 each turn. This includes the Armsmaster herself.
-Reduced the exp reward for some high end (rare or very rare) summoned monsters.
-Reduced EASY difficulty AI advantages.
-Fixed bug : Heroes under AI or auto control can cast fireball as though they were magicians.
-Fixed bug : AI avoids targeting heroes with Crack's Call instead of preferring
-New Experience tables for leveling : 30,80,180,300,550,900,1400,2500.

[Seravy]

It seems the AI settling improvements might function really well. I suggest playing 1 lower difficulty than usual until I manage to get more testing done and adjust resource advantages better.

[Drax]

I do feel that leveling of units was way too easy and reduced the value of these levels and the spells and structures that gave xp.

So I do think this table is reasonable. It is not a huge change, but I think it reflects the current stats better.

Had a game last night with halflings famous life+node master. Training is a major issue for halflings and it is supposed to be a weakness of the race. ... unit training did require substantial care to be winning this game on extreme. I did get Sir Harold mid game though with armmaster*

found out some cool stuff:
1) the Behemoth stats seem good. It makes sense.
2) Colossus stats are good also.
3) in general I like how high level fantastic creatures turned out.
4) human basic units are terrible, but magicians are pretty powerful now. I think magicians should cost more support than priests though. They are better in every way except +1 resist to all.
5) barbarians seem to be utterly useless at any higher difficulty for a non AI player. You can't abuse their qualities fast enough and they become inferior very quickly. AI can abuse those qualities way better. Got one barbarian city.. a large neutral one... and could never make any good use out of it.
6) AI did go for naval supremacy... there was a warlord with adamantum warships... they were constantly dumping raiding parties at my shores and those nagas never stopped.

All in all it seemed reasonably fun game

Also found a couple of wrong descriptions. The long descriptions are correct, but short one shown in the screenshot are wrong.
http://prntscr.com/aaueeb

P.S. this all is about v1.41