Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

Haha...sounds like a bug but might be worth keeping as a mod. The one-city challenge! Your quest is to locate and destroy all other fortresses. It sounds like an interesting way to play!

It would be...if the AI knew not to build outposts. All their capitols are population 5-6 because they keep building settlers.

Does easy have a population growth modifier? Apparently that's what I started that game on... I just thought the AI was retarded because they couldn't expand. I started another game on normal and one on hard and outposts grow correctly.

on Easy, the AI has a 25% penalty to city growth but no penalty to outpost growth. I'll test easy then.

Edit : confirmed, outposts don't grow at all on Easy including the human player. This is a bug.

Edit 2 : It seems the AI outpost growth multiplier is affecting the human player the same way as the AI. A bug in the original game, plus I seem to have made a big mistake while editing it. This is what I get for always working on this till 3am :D

[Seravy]

2.11 is out!
Changes to strategic combat. Removed AI's cheating in combats against neutrals and other AI. Adjusted effect of spell book realms in strategic combat.
Fixes a crash bug and the outpost growth bugs.
Spell Ward balancing.

2.11
-Fixed bug : Outposts fail to grow on easy difficulty, growth rate is different from intended on others.
-Adjusted racial outpost growth rate modifiers.
-Spell Ward no longer prevents fantastic creatures from entering cities. However, they receive a -3 to Hit, -4 Defense and Resistance penalty in combat in warded cities.
-AI ranged unit value rating now has same modifications as melee.
-Destruction ability value increased for ranged and melee units value ratings
-AI no longer gets a 50% advantage in strategic combat vs nonhuman opponents. This not only resulted in an advantage against neutrals, but also less damage taken from battles with other AI, as the damage on the bonus health does not translate into actual damage taken.
-Spell power has a larger influence in strategic combat for “direct damage” and “defensive” types.
-Changed which way each realm affects strategic combat. Nature is unchanged, medium direct damage, defensive and low attack buffing. Sorcery is medium direct damage and highly defensive, no buffing at all. Chaos is highest direct damage, nothing else. Life is high attack buffing and defensive but no direct damage. Death is high direct damage and some defensive, but no attack buffing. This means that Life relies heavily on the power of the army you bring. Sorcery and Nature relies on it somewhat, while Chaos and Death generally have a major influence even when having a weak army.
-Fixed game crashing on Magic screen after finding a spell already being researched while banishing a wizard.

[Seravy]

2.12
-Roads are now generated between/under neutral cities again, and have the correct movement cost.
-Fixed bug : Colosseum counts as a religious building for Cult Leader and Evil Presence
-Oracles now count as religious buildings for Cult Leader and Evil Presence unrest reduction.
-New Option : Minerals. Poor generates a map with significantly fewer and generally less valuable ores. Rich generates a map with significantly more ores and the ores are also better than usual. Some ores might appear in places they are not normally available at : Myrran mountains can have Quork, Crysx and Gems, Arcanus Mountains can have Quork, Adamantium and Gems. Myrran hills can have Quork.
-New option : Climate. Dry generates more deserts and fewer swamps and rivers. Wet does the opposite.
-Chance of Quork in Arcanus deserts is slightly better vs Gems. (4 to 5 instead of 3 to 6)
-Fixed bug : When AI prefers to target overland enemy stacks near own units, plane is not considered.
-Adjusted AI priority of using Fire Storm, Corruption.
-Adjusted AI trading priorty for many spells.

[Rannous]

Wow - impressive work! I only found out about your patch last week, and you've already updated 3 times! When do you sleep?

Quick question. I've been playing a game (ver 2.1), and I've noticed that events seem to be happening at a much lower rate. I'd say I'm well into the midgame (researching rare spells) and I've only seen 2 events - 1 Aether Flux and 1 gold mine depletion. I remember from the old days that events happened almost constantly - you couldn't blink without a Mana Short or a Population Boom. Now, I know you took some of the negative events out, but did you change the overall rate of occurrence?

Maybe that's something that could be a game setting, much like the mineral option you added - a "Rate of Events" speed setting, assuming that's something you can adjust.

Either way, thanks for the work, this is still on of my favorite all time games!

Val

[Seravy]

Wow - impressive work! I only found out about your patch last week, and you've already updated 3 times! When do you sleep?

Quick question. I've been playing a game (ver 2.1), and I've noticed that events seem to be happening at a much lower rate. I'd say I'm well into the midgame (researching rare spells) and I've only seen 2 events - 1 Aether Flux and 1 gold mine depletion. I remember from the old days that events happened almost constantly - you couldn't blink without a Mana Short or a Population Boom. Now, I know you took some of the negative events out, but did you change the overall rate of occurrence?

Maybe that's something that could be a game setting, much like the mineral option you added - a "Rate of Events" speed setting, assuming that's something you can adjust.

Either way, thanks for the work, this is still on of my favorite all time games!

Val

As far as I remember, I did not touch event frequency.
It is, however, depending on the difficulty level (and random chance, but higher difficulty means a higher % chance per turn). If you play a lower difficulty in the mod, that will result in less events. See http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Event

[Seravy]

Small but important update a lot of people probably wanted to see :

2.12a
-AI naval overland movement decision optimized to be faster. AI turns should be roughly 2-3 times faster now.
-Fixed various bugs in AI Spell Blast targeting.

[Seravy]

Another small but important update that helps the AI play properly on huge landmasses :

2.12b
-Slightly increased AI priority to move units through towers. This is a minor change but should allow the AI to properly judge which tower is the closest (as minimum priority is still minimum priority when scaled down by distance).
-Fixed another possible problem that causes the AI to bump into other players' units unintended.
-AI can sent multiple stacks to attack the same target, but the second and above stacks MUST be no further than 5 map cells. This should help the problem of AI not attacking properly on large landmass, where the first sent stack is probably too far away to arrive in a reasonable number of turns, while still preventing all other stacks from attacking the target.

Meanwhile, I'm considering to reduce the AI resource advantages for the highest two difficulty levels (but at least impossible), but still want to play a few test games prior to doing that.

[Seravy]

Fixed a critical bug, and used a workaround solution to force units to take better paths on the overland map.

2.12c
-Units moving on the overland map now consider their movement speed when finding the shortest path. (in other words, settlers no longer go around mountains as it doesn't let them arrive faster). This isn't 100% perfect, but way better than the original.
-Earth Lore now reveals the monsters guarding nodes lairs and towers and costs 40.
-Nature Awareness now reveals the monsters guarding nodes lairs and towers.
-Fixed bug : University, Wizard's Guild shows up on detailed research view when it is not built.
-Fixed bug : Game crashes when the AI is casting Stasis or Black Wind on the overland map.

[lechium]

Amazing work! Really appreciated and interesting let's play as well.

[vicwaberub]

@Seravy: Thank you for your good work!

Do you know if the map making algorithm is based on diamond-square or is it random only? The worlds in MoM (1994) are very nice (fractal, with bottlenecks, big mountains and great deserts) and I am confused about the problems in "Worlds of Magic" (2015) and "Fallen Enchantress" (2012).