Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[kjara]

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

I think that barbarians still have a niche usefulness as a player if you start with them, do a quick initial spread with them to 4-5 cities, capture a better race, then use that small set of barbarian cities to rush out/defend cities of that better race in key spots (high pop or special metals). Also, possibly with high enough magic level, if you can jump from barbs to summons by taking enough early nodes with the barbs? Seems a bit risky betting that you can find a better race that meshes well with your picks though and they are pretty bad to capture as a neutral unless you can do it absurdly early.

[Azvael]

Seravy,

I just wanted to thank you for developing this mod. I just discovered it, and it's a wonderful mod. Thanks for the massive amount of work you must be putting into this.

The only negative I have to report so far is in the current version (1.42) I'm having pretty significant slowdowns between turns: about 15 seconds on average by the mid-game, and about 30 seconds on average by the beginning of the late-game.

I didn't have any such slowdowns until the last version (1.40?). There, the wait was about 30 seconds by the beginning of the middle game, so whatever you did with 1.42 is a definite improvement. Still too slow for me, though (I've accounted for hardware specs, dosbox optimization, etc.).

Not looking for tech support, just reporting my experience so far. Beyond this, I love this mod.

[Seravy]

Seravy,

I just wanted to thank you for developing this mod. I just discovered it, and it's a wonderful mod. Thanks for the massive amount of work you must be putting into this.

The only negative I have to report so far is in the current version (1.42) I'm having pretty significant slowdowns between turns: about 15 seconds on average by the mid-game, and about 30 seconds on average by the beginning of the late-game.

I didn't have any such slowdowns until the last version (1.40?). There, the wait was about 30 seconds by the beginning of the middle game, so whatever you did with 1.42 is a definite improvement. Still too slow for me, though (I've accounted for hardware specs, dosbox optimization, etc.).

Not looking for tech support, just reporting my experience so far. Beyond this, I love this mod.

It is because the AI now considers more possible attack options, and pathfinding is new too, so more actual processing is needed.
Setting your dosbox.conf to Core=dynamic and cycles=100000 (hundred thousand) should help, it worked for me and at least 2 more people so far. Higher values might even work if your computer can handle it, mine didn't like 200k.
The default core option can usually handle fewer cycles before causing problems.
Experiment, and find a setting that works for you, the key is to get the cycles as high as you can.

[Drax]

Had some unexpectedly hard fights with Nightblades and it took me some time to catch up to the fact that they now have 3 health per figure. I think this is way too much. It's an invisible unit with many figures and high stats. Health is supposed to be low on such stealth assassin unit, but 3x6=18 is way too much. It can go against tough units directly which it is not supposed to be able to. I think that 2 health is more than enough. The original one health was a bit lacking, but it has been a valuable unit even then. Defending nodes with nightblades has been lots of fun.

[Seravy]

Had some unexpectedly hard fights with Nightblades and it took me some time to catch up to the fact that they now have 3 health per figure. I think this is way too much. It's an invisible unit with many figures and high stats. Health is supposed to be low on such stealth assassin unit, but 3x6=18 is way too much. It can go against tough units directly which it is not supposed to be able to. I think that 2 health is more than enough. The original one health was a bit lacking, but it has been a valuable unit even then. Defending nodes with nightblades has been lots of fun.

It's 3 health because it is THE strong unit of night elves. Nightmares are more expensive and probably better overall due to flight and ranged, but the Fantastic Stables is, afterall, a side-branch of the tree, not the main one, so at least in theory, Nightblades are the top unit in the race.
It requires the Armorer's Guild and they cost 66% more than halberdiers on top of that. They don't even have a ranged attack unlike all other unit in the race which is a downgrade in a sense.

With 2 health they would be nearly identical in stats to halberdiers, although with invisibility and poison as extras, but without ranged. That would work if they were the same tier with an additional medium cost building required on top of Fighter's Guild, but for the cost of an Armorer's Guild and the unit itself having a 66% higher cost, that extra health is deserved.
I don't consider them a stealthy, assassin type unit, like Night Stalkers are, more like an actual melee army that is most effective against ranged or low resistance targets, but is slightly below average otherwise, compared to other units requiring Armorer's Guilds.

I will need to test them more, like everything else, but so far my experience with them was mixed, like all other such units, they are also weak to "area" damage that hits all figures. Their melee is also poor compared to the high end units of other races (Hammerhands, Berserkers, Elven Lords, Mammoths, even Paladins or Wolf Raiders), so they are inefficient against high resistance melee troops, especially if they are also armored. City walls and Walls of Fire together render them close to worthless.

Changing them to require a Fighter's Guild only is an option, but then the race would have no unit requiring Armorer's Guild at all. That's not unheard of, 4 other races are like that too, but I prefer this version. A weaker, but lower cost Nightblades unit could not compete with the advantage Warlocks or Nightmares have in my opinion. (Especially warlock's whose required building produces power!)

I understand what you say, but Nighblades do not have any attack that would let them be a "stealth" unit, meaning to attack the enemy without receiving a counterattack. Yes, they would not get fried by spells on the way, but once they reach the enemy, they need to be capable of killing them without dying in the process.
Night Stalkers are different because they have Death Gaze, which is effectively a first strike, anything killed by that isn't attacking back, so they function as stealth units. Even they needed high health and weapon immunity to actually survive fights in practice, though, since Death Gaze is just a chance of killing the enemy, if it misses and they hit back, the unit needs to be able to survive at least that one blow to safely move away.

[Tiltowait]

Area damage? You can't target invisible units with spells IIRC.

Nightblades are just halberdiers with invisibility. No more, no less. The Dark Elf awesome unit is Warlocks.

[Seravy]

Area damage? You can't target invisible units with spells IIRC.

You can as long as there is at least one unit with Illusions Immunity in your army.
Some spells don't target, like Wall of Fire, Flame Strike, Call Chaos, although only WoF does damage to all figures out of these.
Oh and Death Spell, but Dark Elves have good resistance.
Also there is Meteor Storm on the overland map which can wipe out an army of Nightblades in like 4-5 turns.

Nightblades are just halberdiers with invisibility. No more, no less. The Dark Elf awesome unit is Warlocks.

I can't justify requiring an Armorer's Guild for halberdiers, with or without invisibility.
I agree Warlocks are the best, but I don't like it when only one of the 3 racial units is worth producing, which is exactly why Nightblades and Nightmares have to be good.
Seriously, what is the point of having invisible halberdiers?
What can you defeat with those, aside from even lower tier units like shaman or swordsmen?
Would you produce them if you can also have Warlocks?
Would you pay 150 for them when you can get visible halberdiers for half the price and with a ranged attack?

Or am I missing something? I mean aside from the obvious abuse of making the AI waste mana on spells while hiding, which can be done with pretty much anything, even spearmen, I don't see much of a point. Ok they are good against Shaman and bowmen, but cavalry does that better and cheaper. Besides, we are talking about Dark Elves, they can shoot back to kill those!

[Tiltowait]

Area damage? You can't target invisible units with spells IIRC.

You can as long as there is at least one unit with Illusions Immunity in your army.

How often does this even happen? You have to be playing blue, and then have the spell, and then have it cast.

Some spells don't target, like Wall of Fire, Flame Strike, Call Chaos, although only WoF does damage to all figures out of these.
Oh and Death Spell, but Dark Elves have good resistance.
Also there is Meteor Storm on the overland map which can wipe out an army of Nightblades in like 4-5 turns.

Again, how often are you even going to have these spells? Even if you happen to be playing red and flame strike has been selected to be available in your game, it costs a lot and you need lots of spell skill to cast it. Wall of Fire? Only works in a defensive situation, and even then only in a city. It just seems these are edge cases that will not happen the vast majority of the time.

[Seravy]

Area damage? You can't target invisible units with spells IIRC.

You can as long as there is at least one unit with Illusions Immunity in your army.

How often does this even happen? You have to be playing blue, and then have the spell, and then have it cast.

Some spells don't target, like Wall of Fire, Flame Strike, Call Chaos, although only WoF does damage to all figures out of these.
Oh and Death Spell, but Dark Elves have good resistance.
Also there is Meteor Storm on the overland map which can wipe out an army of Nightblades in like 4-5 turns.

Again, how often are you even going to have these spells? Even if you have flame strike, it costs a lot and you need lots of spell skill to cast it. Wall of Fire? Only works in a defensive situation, and even then only in a city. It just seems these are edge cases that will not happen the vast majority of the time.

Blue does not have a spell that grants Illusions Immunity. White does. Also Death can summon zombies which have it by default.
You can also target the invisible unit if any of your units stand close to it.
Plus there are a ton of units that have default Illusions Immunity (Paladins, all Death realm creatures, all undead, and a few more summons, as well as heroes wearing True Sight items.), and in case of undead you won't even know in advance until you attack as they look like normal units.

The AI casts Wall of Fire on most of their cities. It's a common spell so it's quite frequent. We are talking about using Nightblades against the AI not the other way around, I believe.

Anyway, this isn't important. The important part is : how would nightblades with lower health be useful? What could they be used for? Why would they be worth twice the cost of a halberdier and a cost 400 building?

[Drax]

Seriously, what is the point of having invisible halberdiers?
What can you defeat with those, aside from even lower tier units like shaman or swordsmen?

at least 70% of the units I produce are NOT for front attack, but for defense and support. Nightblades are great for defending strategic positions and ambushing weak enemy units. also for draining enemy wizard mana by attacking, allowing them to cast their spells and then not engaging. Good combo with mana leak. Can block a pass/tower/node/town. So there are many uses...

Would you produce them if you can also have Warlocks?

YES. I would and I have even when they were 1health/figure. There are many cases that I don't need them directly to engage the enemy.

Would you pay 150 for them when you can get visible halberdiers for half the price and with a ranged attack?

same reasoning as above.

Or am I missing something? I mean aside from the obvious abuse of making the AI waste mana on spells while hiding, which can be done with pretty much anything, even spearmen, I don't see much of a point. Ok they are good against Shaman and bowmen, but cavalry does that better and cheaper. Besides, we are talking about Dark Elves, they can shoot back to kill those!

It's not the same and invisibility is a spell I don't have at least 70% of my games so it can't be done with spearmen. And on higher difficulties you need to avoid engaging directly the AI if you can't outperform them as they have much more resources. Being 100% better is not enough most of the time on Extreme and those cavarly/racial ideas only work in big enough stacks. So it is a unit that is unique and valuable.

I see absolutely no reason to use them as a front assault unit even with the buffed stats as it doesn't fit how I use the race... and I don't see a need for it. There are more often than not better units if you need that. It doesn't hurt me in how I would use them either. What I noticed is that the AI acknowledges them as powerful and sends them as front line fighters buffing them with invulnerability for example in the case that I mentioned being surprisingly tough..

So it's not bad as it is. It's just unnecessary and a human player can abuse it a lot. AI does abuse it just a bit.
I generally view high figure count with high health to be overpowered in this game as it multiplies the buffs. I did abuse a similar effect with health charging phantom warriors in some fights.