Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Seravy]

Yeah, the AI is casting "Ghouls" but it went into the Combat spellcasting function because it's still "in combat" for some reason.
The combat is being done at 1,26,49. Let's see what is there...
So Sss'ra is attacking his own city so it neither proceeds to a combat nor to a "cancel this move" result so combat just stays turned on without actually happening.
...Why is this a combat movement though? I mean the defender is the same player. Is it because the unit is an engineer?
...Well it seems there is a neutral unit in that city. How did it get in there?

According to the logs, neutrals attacked the town and won. So it's probably a bug in that leaving the neutral units in play.
This happens at the end of turn 46.

[Seravy]

Well, this is worth an extra upload :

2020-09-28-b
-Fixed bug : When a player attacks himself, combat mode is stuck enabled causing all sorts of bugs.
-Fixed bug : When neutral monsters rampage in a city but don't destroy it, the monsters aren't removed and stay stuck on the city tile.

[Seravy]

2020-09-29
-Changed the number of neutral cities to 1-6 per plane per unit or plane size instead of 2-8.
-Neutral cities start with a minimal 4 units in garrison
-Added trees and rocks to city view.
-When Abundance is cast on a city, the city gets more trees and the trees will have fruit on them.
-Added placeholder empty icon image for (CInfoxx.png)
27 : Inner Power
28 : Blazing Eyes
29 : Ruler of Heaven
30 : Ruler of Underworld
31 : Reinforce Magic
32 : Wind Mastery
33 : Sky Fires
34 : Bad Moon
35 : Good Moon
36 : Clairvoyance
-Updated Tree of Knowledge global spell image
-Added info icon for Sky Fires
-Added info icon for Ruler of Heaven
-Added info icon for Ruler of Underworld
-Fixed bug : Power gained from Power Link isn't reset after the turn.
-Adjusted the "elimination mark" function to start marking wizards slightly earlier and adjusted the number of players. (at most half the wizards should be eliminated, rounded up, instead of two thirds)
Experimental : When an AI wizard is marked for elimination, and they are in an automatic combat
to defend their fortress against another AI, their army hp and attack stats are halved.
Experimental : Wizards marked for elimination cannot form a Peace Treaty with other AIs
Experimental : At continent selection, fortress continents of wizards marked for elimination get an additional 4000 priority.

[Seravy]

Today's update :

2020-09-30
-Fixed bug : Wizard image on Banish/lose screens has background
-Fixed bug : "Monsters have been spotted" report too long to be displayed in one line of text.
-Minor adjustment to AI buy priority calculation
-The condition to not spawn monsters if fewer than 4 sources exist no longer applies to the early game turns.
-Atlantis event can only happen after turn 160.
-Fixed bug : Treasure sometimes has additional gold that shouldn't be there.
-Fixed bug : Engineers forget their road building order immediately after it is issued and they start building the road.
-Fixed bug : Neutrals miscalculate garrison strengths, failing to pick the weakest city.
-Fixed bug : Hero level report and battle result report are displayed at the same time.
-Removed additional Alliance trade bonus for AI trade offers
-AI will priortize putting the first garrison unit on nodes higher than pulling garrisons into cities but additional units lower.
-AI will consider nodes not garrisoned by anyone as needing garrisons as if they were their own.
-Fixed bug : Flying overland movement takes priority over non-corporeal even on stacks that do not fly.
-On defeating a wizard, mana is only looted if Time Stop wasn't active.
-Losing/conquering a fortress is now worth +/- 10 Fame instead of 5.

And something different : The recording of the test game I started to play. I'm trying to see how bad the trading issue is.

https://youtu.be/DRfhS-cOwy0

So far :
-Horribly slow start due to low power, skill and no retorts.
-Trading starts slowly because finding wizards takes a while, they need to research spells and I needed to research spell they want as well.
-Beyond a breaking point though trading gets a lot of common and uncommon spells
-However casting skill is the same as usual so while there is more to choose from, a lot of them doesn't get their time to be used.
-Didn't help accelerating into earlier rares but the game isn't there yet anyway. Due to the high number of low tier spells in the research list, it probably won't happen.

Trading with only 1-2 realms might work completely different and might actually be easier to abuse (by accelerating into rares through skipping many commons and uncommons) so it'll probably need a separate test game.

[Seravy]

2020-10-01
-Disabled the "maximize" button on the window
-Fixed bug : Gold and mana overlap with buttons on the cities screen.
-Cities screen default is now "unsorted" (oldest city first)
-AI engineers will now cancel their road building order if the destination tile has units that are neither their own nor an ally's.
-Fixed bug : Sky fires doesn't set animation position
-Fixed bug : Dispelling Wave can't be used in combat.
-Fixed bug : When a unit casts a slider combat spell, the slider cost isn't included in checking the available MP.
-Fixed bug : When units cast a spell, cost modifiers are still applied.
-Fixed bug : Dispel report reports 3 fewer dispelled spells.
-Adjusted dispel report text to fit better in the window.
-Fixed bug : Number of displayed stat icons is still wrong if there was a penalty icon on the unit.
-Fixed bug : Hero levelup window doesn't block wizard defeat animation
-Fixed transparency issues on banish screen
-Fixed bug : AI overland unit buffs have no target validity check
-The AI will not cast Blur if all enemy units are immune to illusion.
-The AI will have a lower priority to cast Blur depending on the percentage of enemy units immune to illusions.
-Fixed bug : AI break alliance request shows wrong name
-Fixed unit icon for Bloodsucker shows Healing Aura

Part 2 of the test game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee0p9ibu...e=youtu.be

Thoughts :
-AI performance seems to be good now. They had rare spells in 1410. I'm not sure what caused the bad results in previous games.
-5 realm spell trading strategy isn't good. It does get a lot of spells but low starting casting skill, weak starting spells, and no retorts paired with a high chance of weak late game. AI is much better at taking out lairs than in CoM I from what I can tell, so getting lots of books from treasure is not very likely, especially because the distances don't really allow for reaching or even finding all of them before the AI can clear them.
-Sky Fires was useful but underwhelming for "best Chaos Uncommon". It might have been very powerful if I researched Night Stalker though, as that allows engaging in battle without losing anything, but otherwise I never felt the need to build and sacrifice spearmen to have two free fire bolts. Lair monsters heal after battle so it's not useful against them, and wizards will kill your spearmen before the spell has a chance to activate. I'm afraid we have been overly cautious with this.
Maybe it should do 3 Fire Bolts between turns 3 and 7 at random instead?
Overall, I didn't fight any battles to be worth the casting cost and that's mainly because the spell is uncommon so it's not the phase of the game yet when each wizard has hundreds of units.
-Diplomacy felt balanced. AI's had alliances, wars, etc. I was able to get 3-4 allies as well. I did get into several wars as a consequence to those alliances but only a few wizards actually reached me with troops. I felt the game was lost on my own strategy being too weak, not the incoming enemy attacks which were almost nonexistent surprisingly.

[jhsidi]

Re: Sky Fires, I think the problem is really the wait time. How many battles do you have where you need support at turn 5? Even at turn 3?

Most of mine are decided within the first two turns. I've had three games with Sky Fires and it's generally useless in all but niche situations. The exception is abusing flight, invisibility or invulnerability, e.g. night stalker. But there's a problem there, too: it's really boring and not very satisfying to enter a battle and just click "done" until some delayed effect plays.

Possible alternate effect: when the battle begins (or at the end of the caster's first turn, but that's more complex), 2-5 fireballs immediately fall on the enemy's half of the battlefield. They are randomly targeted at any tile, so an enemy is only hit if it's in the landing tile.

There are 36 tiles in the deployment zone, if I counted correctly. That means a roughly 10% chance any given tile will be hit. So it's a luck-based skill, suitable for Chaos.

Also, it scales in effectiveness with larger enemy armies. The chance of at least one enemy getting hit scales with larger battles. Rarely, you might see a bunch of enemies get hit, and that would feel great; but you can easily also go into battle with a 9 unit army and get no hits at all. Bad luck is suitable for Chaos, too.

It's vulnerable to save-scumming -- but actually, far less than a skill like confusion or black sleep, where you can insta-kill a unit with 9 resist if you're willing to save-scum. So I don't see a problem there.

[Seravy]

2020-10-02
-Changed Ocean flag color to be more different from Malachite
-Minor adjustment to Blue flag color
-Experimental : Sky Fires now generates 3 fire bolts, between turns 3 and 7.
-AI combat attack targeting will apply the +4 priority for killing the target gradually between dealing 1 fewer and 1 more damage than necessary to kill the target.
-AI trade value of Sky Fires raises from 20 to 23
-Sky Fires in automatic combat deals a fixed 10 damage to the enemy army on turn 3. It no longer increases the owner's "Direct Damage spell level". This effect should match the spell's real effect better.
-Added two new AI overland casting categories.
"Anti-Missile" is proportional the percentage of enemy missile units based on total unit power among all enemy units (where enemy means ongoing war) while "Anti-Magic" is the same for magic ranged attacks, if the percentage is at least 25%.
"Anti-Missile" category casts Guardian Wind. Anti Magic casts Elemental Armor or Resist Elements.
Both categories are increased in priority by 50% for each Divine Order in play. Both categories are zeroed during Power Link.
The existing Invisibility category gains a bonus if the combined enemy missile and magic percentage is over 50% and Mass Invisibility is not known.
The existing Magic Immunity category gains a bonus equal to the "anti magic" category.
-Experimental : Holy Bonus affects ranged attack strength. (not thrown or breath though)
-Fixed bug : Help text for spellbook realms doesn't work

[jhsidi]

I think this latest build has a breaking bug in it. Just downloaded it and tried a new game. Crash on the end of the first turn. Same with the next game, same after I downloaded and installed a fresh copy. A couple saves:

https://ufile.io/z52cxmfj
https://ufile.io/wtbl47ne

Starting game options don't seem to matter, any build gets the crash.

[Seravy]

Fixed and reuploaded, sorry about that.

[Seravy]

today's update :

2020-10-03
-When the neutral player is the defender, combat shows the city or lair name instead of "raiders".
-When the wizard name is left empty, the default name will be used.
-"Phoenixs" is now "Phoenixes".
-When selecting starting spells, if only 1 pick is available, it's not necessary to unpick your previous selection to change it.
-Fixed bug : It's possible to find Arcane spells that aren't allowed to be found that way in treasure.
-Fixed bug : Slingers show bow attack instead of bullett attack in both small unit views.
-Rampaging monster value of Guardian Spirit is now 55 (CoM I change that was missing)
-Changed strongest rampaging monster formula :
60+(2+Turn)*Difficulty/2 => 60+(Turn*1.25-33)*Difficulty/2
This means difficulty has less influence at the beginning, but its influence grows faster as turns elapse.
-Changed rampaging monster stack budget formula :
(Difficulty+1)*(Difficulty+Turn-16) => (Difficulty+1)*(Difficulty+Turn-24)+16
-When the human player requests a trade with an AI, if there are at least 6 AI wizards (at the beginning of the game), then the player has to offer at least +1 spell value for each 2 AI players in the game above 4.