Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Drax]

Did you play on high magic power settings?

Same settings as in your worst wizard video. so Yes 2.5x.

Node guardian points increase quadratically based on the amount of power produced by the node. At 2x power, there are 4 times more monsters and so on. This might need a change.

Just checked those full stack top tier nodes were 20-22 tiles on mirran.
My thought was to limit the power of nodes at high difficulties. Both upper and lower boundaries. So a node can have no less than (4+difficulty) and no more than (25-(difficulty*magic multiplier)) tiles, where difficulty would be 3 for Extreme(2-Hard, 1-Normal etc.). So for Extreme difficulty it would be min 7 tiles and max 16 tiles or something like that. Monsters will be tough enough in such cases, but not uselessly overpowered. A 10 tiles node contained 5 doom bats and 4 hounds, which is quite reasonable. A nother 10 tiles node contained 2 Great Drakes and

Was it ONLY nodes that were too strong, or normal lairs too?

Lairs also were powerful at comparable level to nodes. So similar constraints should apply there on the upper boundary i.e. similar to 16 tiles node value on Extreme @ Mirran.

(also, Myrran nodes have more tiles so they produce more power to being with as you have noticed)

Well on mirran the problem was with too strong locations and the way too weak ones were on arcanus.

Here is the obvious case screen:

There were two very weak nodes next to one of the opponent fortresses. These were taken very early and provided a great bonus to that wizard. There are 3 other nodes nearby on the same continent that are tough ones. That opponent was sending full stacks at me continuously, but never touched those nodes.

[Drax]

Another question.. Can the unit limit be increased? I had 3 units killed, killed full stack of enemies(in node) and then tried to summon a spirit and the summon failed due to unit limit exceeded? It has been obviously exceeded by more than 1 as I just lost 2 units.
What is the current limit? To whom it applies? I've seen the message during opponent turns also, but It seems units in dungeons are not part of it..

[zitro1987]

Wizard Fortress Lightning Bolts
*I have the feeling that the concept would work best if the power of the lightning bolts is based on wizard 'power' output than 'skill'. That way, you may need to weaken the wizard by using certain death realm spells, conquering and removing power sources like nodes and cities before heading to the capital.


Item enchantment costs and powers (for heroes)

*Wraithform seems very expensive for a very situational benefit. I have no reason to create an artifact with this, the spell is much cheaper.
*Death is quite a powerful ability for just 400 cost if it affects ranged attacks
*and stoning at just 150 cost is quite good, unless it only affects melee combat
*Doom with 1200 cost - I thought (According to experience and wiki, and doom bats), the doom damage is half of the attack power? a 30 melee hero would therefore deal 15 damage. Still very good and possibly still worth at least 900
*Inner Fire might be more worth 400 than 500 for a couple of immunities and an ability that wouldn't do much more damage than hero's general melee damage.
*Invisibility seems cheap for what it does

[Seravy]

Another question.. Can the unit limit be increased? I had 3 units killed, killed full stack of enemies(in node) and then tried to summon a spirit and the summon failed due to unit limit exceeded? It has been obviously exceeded by more than 1 as I just lost 2 units.
What is the current limit? To whom it applies? I've seen the message during opponent turns also, but It seems units in dungeons are not part of it..

It's 1000 units, but only 950 can be used on the overland map. For the AI the limit is a bit lower to allow the player to still make units even if they reached the maximum.
The AI is disbanding their weakest units every time the total hits over 920 but it can only help while they still have weak units.

Units in dungeons do not actually exist. They only get created when you attack the dungeon, so they are not causing problems, they go into the 950-1000 area even if the 950 limit is reached.
I've seen finding prisoners cause a bug though in this situation, as the new hero fails to get created.

It's 32 bytes per unit.
The theoretical maximum size of a data structure is 64kbytes, which would be ~2000 units.
However, only 32kbytes is used for an unknown reason, I assume because they used a signed variable to address it.
I could try doubling the limits but there is no guarantee it'll work at all.

Wraithform seems very expensive for a very situational benefit. I have no reason to create an artifact with this, the spell is much cheaper.

Unremovable wraithform means 100% protection from Crack's Call, probably the greatest threat to heroes. Additionally it is as good as Water Walking+Path Finding+ it even grants weapon immunity. Furthermore it even grants immunity to Web. For all of these, it merely costs 400, which isn't all that high. Item powers are always more expensive than the spells cast normally (usually about 4-5 times as much).

Death is quite a powerful ability for just 400 cost if it affects ranged attacks

Indeed it is the best out of these types of abilities, however, all such abilities only affect a single figure so they are not as good as they look like (unless fighting expensive single figure units such as basilisks)
All of these affect only the type of attack that is performed by the type of weapon they are in. Bows work ranged, swords, maces, axes are melee, axes also work on thrown, and wands/staves are...not sure, I think only ranged, but might be both.

*and stoning at just 150 cost is quite good, unless it only affects melee combat

Works the same as Death and has the same problem (only affects 1 figure). Save modifier is worse than Death, too. Maybe a 200 cost on this would be better.

[Seravy]

Meanwhile, good news.
I started experimenting with a 2000 units limit and it didn't cause any gamebreaking bugs yet, 3 turns past when I exceeded the critical 1024 units and still no crashes. I had to edit one thing so far (game used 1000+ for cities on the interface for the list of things that are clickable, so they conflicted with units, had to change all code related to that).

If this does work out, that's awesome, 2000 units are quite a lot and are unlikely to be reached any time soon, at impossible, huge land, still only 1100 units in year 1412 (and there are very few wars going on).
At the same time, maybe a boost for max cities could be done. In that case, best to do 100->125 there only, breaching the 127 shortint limit sounds quite risky. Not sure if this is even needed, Huge land is no longer big as it used to be in the one game when I ever reached the 100 city limit.

Either way, this obviously changes the save game format, so the save files will stop being compatible with other versions of the game and tweaker.
It's also worth saying that I have absolutely no idea how safe it is to allocate that extra 32k memory, and whether it risks running out of memory or not, but it might. All I know is, it works so far.

[Seravy]

Other things I have noticed:
3) Shadow weapon buff seems vastly overpowered. See second attachment. It's 21 thrown attack and this hero has potential for at least 10 more damage thus 25-26 thrown attack due to a single weapon buff. At the worst case it would be 5thrown for a novice hero which is also a lot.

I've tested, a max level hero with super might and a Shadow weapon has 14 thrown granted from the ability itself (+- a few depending on the hero's starting melee stat)
Your 21 must be coming from having buffs that directly affect thrown, and not from buffs that affect melee attack.
Flame Blade is +2 for sure, I don't know what else you used, Lion Heart is the other such unit spell.
As far as I remember, Shadow is not available for Axes, so you can't take advantage of Axes increasing Thrown. However, accessories will increase it.

[Drax]

Meanwhile, good news.

Great news! About 200 more units and 20 cities will make it quite unlikely this limit to be reached normally. It this is safe it's a good change.

Your 21 must be coming from having buffs that directly affect thrown, and not from buffs that affect melee attack.

I don't think anything buffs thrown directly. It's melee 42 strength.

It's a Lord level hero with Might and Sword+3 and shadow that I crafted on purpose and also has "Heart Chara Egg" which gives +6 strength and Lionheart. As seen from the screen I posted it's +15 strength from artefacts(+3+6+3) and spells(+3). This hero can grow +4 more levels which is +8 strength from levels and Sword could get extra 3 at least... possibly also flaming would help too. But strength can be raised to at least 53 in this case.


I actually turned down Shalla(the amazon) because she came out weaker with only normal agility and less!!! thrown(base 8 or 9?).... which reminds me that Taki(a hero) is half the cost of Shalla and should never be stronger than a champion.

a Shadow weapon has 14 thrown granted from the ability itself

At 14 thrown from "shadow" it would still be better than Shalla at the same level which is ... well too much. The amazon was the strongest throw in the game.

Does thrown attack use the to hit bonus? melee bonus? or ranged? It seems to me that the +4 to hit from this case is applied to thrown.

[Seravy]

I don't think anything buffs thrown directly. It's melee 42 strength.

Lionheart does. Flame Blade does. The attack stat on your accessory does.
so you have +6+3+2=+11 Thrown from those three. Meaning Shadow only gave your hero 10. (6 from might, 5 from levels, 10 from starting stats = 21/2)
It's a coincidence that your hero has 42 current melee attack, which is the double of 21.
At max level, your hero will have (10+9+8)/2+2+3+6=24 thrown.

I actually turned down Shalla(the amazon) because she came out weaker with only normal agility and less!!! thrown(base 8 or 9?).... which reminds me that Taki(a hero) is half the cost of Shalla and should never be stronger than a champion.

Shalla is not a champion, just a higher rank hero.
You got lucky with rolling Blademaster and Might for your Taki, without those, these two heroes could not even be compared. Shalla however has both guaranteed and also has Charmed on top of the Thrown.

Does thrown attack use the to hit bonus? melee bonus? or ranged? It seems to me that the +4 to hit from this case is applied to thrown.

It uses the "To hit" and the "To ranged" but not the "To melee".

At 14 thrown from "shadow" it would still be better than Shalla at the same level which is ... well too much. The amazon was the strongest throw in the game.

I don't see how the difference between 8 and 14 thrown is significant on a hero with 40+ melee attack.
What makes Shalla a great hero is the guaranteed Blademaster, Might and Charmed, as well as the ability to attack flying enemies due to the thrown.
However, let's compare anyway :
Shalla : Can gain +6 thrown from wearing an Axe. Shadow is not available in axes.
Shalla : Can wear an Axe with touch attacks (death, life steal etc) to make them trigger on the thrown attack, effectively doubling their effectiveness. Shadow is..still not available in axes.
Shalla : Comes with thrown for free. Shadow costs 500 and takes up a slot on your weapon.
Shalla : Can gain +3 thrown from wearing a Flaming Axe. Did I mention Shadow is not available in...I think you understand.
Shalla : Can gain bonus To Hit to her thrown from wearing an Axe. Other types of weapons do not affect thrown so shadow doesn't allow for such a bonus.

[Drax]

Lionheart does. Flame Blade does. The attack stat on your accessory does.
so you have +6+3+2=+11 Thrown from those three. Meaning Shadow only gave your hero 10. (6 from might, 5 from levels, 10 from starting stats = 21/2)
It's a coincidence that your hero has 42 current melee attack, which is the double of 21.

Hmm you're right the bonus from lionheart and accessory strength bonus were directly added. Odd coincidence Removing trinket substracted 9 from thrown value.

Removing fireblade substracted 2 from thrown not 3 so it's probably not directly added, but added to the strength base for the calculation.

You got lucky with rolling Blademaster and Might for your Taki, without those, these two heroes could not even be compared. Shalla however has both guaranteed and also has Charmed on top of the Thrown.

Precisely. I was shocked that I found Taki stronger than Shalla even though Shalla came with Agility

Does thrown attack use the to hit bonus? melee bonus? or ranged? It seems to me that the +4 to hit from this case is applied to thrown.

It uses the "To hit" and the "To ranged" but not the "To melee".

Does eldrich/holly weapon help with thrown attacks?

I don't see how the difference between 8 and 14 thrown is significant on a hero with 40+ melee attack.

I meant it's overpowered for a weapon pick. That's it. You can get 6-26 thrown attack from a single pick. That's a lot. and weapon picks are not that valuable as say trinket ones as you are less likely to use all 4 on a weapon.

I get your idea about axes though. Clever. Clarified a bunch of things. I did check the docs before asking

[Seravy]

Removing fireblade substracted 2 from thrown not 3 so it's probably not directly added, but added to the strength base for the calculation.

Wrong, it adds 3 melee and 2 thrown or missile ranged.

I meant it's overpowered for a weapon pick. That's it. You can get 6-26 thrown attack from a single pick. That's a lot. and weapon picks are not that valuable as say trinket ones as you are less likely to use all 4 on a weapon.

It's certainly strong, although you have Death and Vampiric in the same realm which are also quite good.
Compared to Haste, Doom, Illusion, etc however, it's not that outstanding.
It's also worth mentioning it does not work on heroes who have other types of ranged attacks, so it can't be always used.