Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[tehemperorer]

Hey, loving caster of magic 2, have been playing it a lot. One thing that comes up in my mind as a pure death magic wizard is how niche bloodlust is, in that the only good targets are Shadow demons or werewolves. Has the idea of healing undead units been considered? I know healing is not supposed to be deaths thing, but casting bloodlust on normal units seems like a waste because even though they do double damage against normal units, they can't heal so they're really like fire and forget weapons that are only good for one or two uses. Thoughts? I was thinking maybe having siphon life or drain life be able to heal undead units or having undead shaman or priests being able to heal only undead units with their healer ability.

[mshih]

life drain and syphon life is already there.

Undead magicians can use life drain to heal. (Similarly undead casters -- like djinn, efreet, angels, behemoths).

For bloodlust to be effective -- you would need a melee caster -- so spellzerkers.

[tehemperorer]

life drain and syphon life is already there.

Undead magicians can use life drain to heal.  (Similarly undead casters -- like djinn, efreet, angels, behemoths).

For bloodlust to be effective -- you would need a melee caster -- so spellzerkers.

Yes I know that casters can use those spells to heal, but I'm talking about the healing of non-caster undead, i.e., casting siphon life on my bloodlusted jackal riders to heal them, or the overland "healer" ability applying to undead units only if the unit with the ability (shaman, priest) is undead

[tehemperorer]

Any chance we can "upgrade" wraith form to allow the recipient to attack flying units? Would that be too much of a increase in power to the spell? It is hard to defend towns in the early game with my setup against flying units like sprites.

[GMBarak]

Any chance we can "upgrade" wraith form to allow the recipient to attack flying units? Would that be too much of a increase in power to the spell? It is hard to defend towns in the early game with my setup against flying units like sprites.

what is your build? which spell books/retorts and race do you pick usually? not opposing your suggestion, just trying to understand.

[tehemperorer]

Any chance we can "upgrade" wraith form to allow the recipient to attack flying units? Would that be too much of a increase in power to the spell? It is hard to defend towns in the early game with my setup against flying units like sprites.

what is your build? which spell books/retorts and race do you pick usually? not opposing your suggestion, just trying to understand.

Yeah of course - I do 10 book Death with Gnolls, pump out Wolf Riders and Ghouls and take out neighbors early. What I'm finding is enemy wizards taking my captured towns pretty easily with sprites against Bowmen garrisons that I've made there. I can put mostly bowmen in the garrison but then I'm really weak to War Bears, and a balance of Wolf Riders and Bowmen isn't enough to fight off a full stack of Sprites. In my current game I was lucky enough to be able to push out Magicians from one city to another to defend but it was a real struggle having to fight repeated invasions of the same sprite stack using mana leak and/or weakness, and I foresee the same difficulties would arise if I was Lizardman or Klackon or hadn't conquered a race that can make bowmen within the time that I'm attacked.

[GMBarak]

Any chance we can "upgrade" wraith form to allow the recipient to attack flying units? Would that be too much of a increase in power to the spell? It is hard to defend towns in the early game with my setup against flying units like sprites.

what is your build? which spell books/retorts and race do you pick usually? not opposing your suggestion, just trying to understand.

Yeah of course - I do 10 book Death with Gnolls, pump out Wolf Riders and Ghouls and take out neighbors early. What I'm finding is enemy wizards taking my captured towns pretty easily with sprites against Bowmen garrisons that I've made there. I can put mostly bowmen in the garrison but then I'm really weak to War Bears, and a balance of Wolf Riders and Bowmen isn't enough to fight off a full stack of Sprites. In my current game I was lucky enough to be able to push out Magicians from one city to another to defend but it was a real struggle having to fight repeated invasions of the same sprite stack using mana leak and/or weakness, and I foresee the same difficulties would arise if I was Lizardman or Klackon or hadn't conquered a race that can make bowmen within the time that I'm attacked.

Lizardmen have Javelineers you can make one city build barracks and alchemist guild
and only make Javelineers to send to other cities.
these Javelineers will have have 6 figures, 5 attack, 40% to hit = single hit kills Sprite 86%, see calculator here:
https://gmbarak.github.io/COM-Damage-Calculator/

Klackon: mere recruit swordsmen behind city wall will have 10 defense vs the Sprites,
so each ranged attack by the sprites will cause about 0.7 damage again see calculation above.

For Gnoll, maybe you can use halberdiers, recruits will have 6 defense behind city walls,
each attack by the Sprites will cause about 2.14 damage, about kill a single figure.
Also here, mere recruit swordsmen behind city wall will have 8 defense vs the Sprites,
so each ranged attack by the sprites will cause about 1.1 damage, about kill a single figure.

so I would suggest that a single city will create barracks, alchemist guild and send halberdiers/swordsmen to other cities to defend.
also - remove the wolf riders from the city and all other weaker units from the city before the sprites attack.

Also - if you can maybe place ghouls in each city? up to you.
again not opposing the idea of allow wraith form to attack flying units.

as I understood from Servey here:
https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/Casterof...manual.pdf
page 23, "They need to rely on conquering other races"
So, the philosophy of Gnolls is to conquer other races cities quickly and use their units and abilities.

hope these helps until another solution is found...

[Slingers]

..., but casting bloodlust on normal units seems like a waste because even though they do double damage against normal units, they can't heal so they're really like fire and forget weapons that are only good for one or two uses. Thoughts? ...

Aha. Maybe with existing modding options it's possible to split Bloodlust back into some sort of Berserk and Black Channels spell? What I can confirm is that Bloodlust works well as a spell ability. Like this it could get exploited by a human player. Who knows?

[Dragonfabri]

I'll post this here in the appropriate thread:
A new retort that could finally allow a satisfactory treasure hunting gamestyle:

Treasure Hoarder
4-pick cost and doesn't let you pick any other retorts (only at wizard creation)
When defeating strong lairs (cost of creatures higher than X and it must be a lair/City ruin/monster den) you have a 50% chance of recieving double gold/mana, 20% of finding an additional item, 20% of finding a spell, 10% of finding a book or retort.
Additionally, when banishing a wizard for the first time, you get a random book/retort they possessed.


Percentages can be fine tuned of course, but i think this solution would solve different issues.

-)Balance-wise, it would be a huge early game trade off and gamble. 4 picks that do literally nothing until you are able to break strong lairs. And at that point, the benefit is still random, but you are GUARANTEED SOME BENEFIT. This keeps the randomness where it matters (getting always exactly what you want makes early wizard picks useless) but takes away the frustration of breaking 10 lairs and getting junk (the retort effectively generates extra loot, which could even be save scummed).
Also, the 18 pick/6 retorts limit still ensures that the game doesn't devolve into fully-fledged rainbow wizards every game.

-) Challenge-wise, this can enable "win with what you can find" playtroughs, making the game quite harder for those willing to adapt and use what tools each game provides(or easier for savescummers who just want the loot) while being extremely vulnerable early on.

-)AI-wise, this could just put the "treasure impact" behaviour on AIs that start with it. On higher difficulties, this could make AIs even more challenging, given that they could scrounge up a huge arsenal of spells and different creatures to defend against (while the pick cap still ensures AI have some weak spots left to exploit, aka the less developed spell school for example)
This can also open up trade opportunities that were not possible before, or improve relations thanks to the now in common new books, which adds more variety and strategy evolution rather than stoic and immovable diplomatic relations.

-)Fun wise, well... treasure is always great! But it's great only if it comes after overcoming a challenge, be it a very hard lair or surviving until reaching that point, otherwise we might as well cheat. But i'm of the opinion that this pick encourages a different playstyle, if balanced with proper disadvantages (like a huge early game disadvantage and no control over what extra loot you get, not to mention the race for lair busting)

[Slingers]

I've been thinking a while back about how to reduce the defeat-one-and-run-strategy a bit without removing it entirely and was experimenting with Regeneration=0 for all monsters that are also combat summons. This restricts Sprites a bit, for example, but is of no use against irrecoverable damage from Confusion. In the base version of the unit, 28 of the 48 lair monsters are vulnerable to Confusion. If you select "Units don't die at end of combat from these effects" in MODDING.INI, this often leads to crashes because the control change effect, e.g. from Confusion, is not removed before switching to the overland map. Does anyone know if this is possible to do, e.g. using a .CAS file and how?

An idea from Hadriex regarding Divine Order/multiple copies: “How about applying Divine Order only to your own units so you could toggle the spell on and off as needed?”