(September 28th, 2015, 16:56)zitro1987 Wrote:(September 28th, 2015, 16:16)Seravy Wrote: How about 1.5/book but no +5 for the Myrran trait? Myrror provides plenty of advantages anyway.
I think that might be a good choice, though testers should heavily monitor how much that changes the dynamics of the game. Seems subtle, but it would likely make a huge impact.
My main argument is: is it worthy to get a third or fourth retort vs +1 power / +2 skill / +1 starting common / +spell availabilities? It should be 'maybe', not 'most likely'.
It's actually...
+1 power / +2 skill / +1 starting common / +3% bonus to research on all spells of the realm / +1 (or 2 in some cases) rare spell to research / +1 (or 2 in some cases) very rare spell to research / -2% casting cost of all spells of the realm (which gets more beneficial the more books you have of that realm).
Individually these are small effects, but there are plenty, and research/cost reduction does have a big positive synergy with the increased chance of you casting spells of that realm instead of others when having more books.
Anyway I added the power change to my "to do" list, I will include it in the next version if possible. Although our reasons are different, we want the same change.
Quote:** More multi-color spell combos: hard to come up with many ideas and generally difficult to mod, but spell modifications with the intention of allowing additional color combos, particularly for white/black wizards, would spice the game up.I think this is for the players to come up with. I'm 100% happy with the spells as they are now [now meaning the next version not 0.51], except for Cloak of Fear which I'm still unsure about. I never actually cast it because it kinda sounds underwhelming, so I don't know much about how useful it actually is...or isn't.
I think a nice new combo will be Endurance (+1 to defend) with Iron Skin (+5 defense).
Tranquility or Life Force with Gaia's Blessing
probably a lot more but my job is to make the spells good on their own, combo potential is what we need to find out and have fun with afterwards.
Quote:it is too advantageous to have 8 units per city.That actually was my intention. I want to encourage players to actually defend their cities with proper garrison instead of relying on hax near infinite movement allowance units that can defend anything anywhere.
Now you have two options :
-Defend your towns with weak units, get plenty of gold, but risk losing the city to an attacking army
-Defend with strong units that can actually beat a stack of 9 AI units, but this will cost you more in production and maintenance than what you gain from the unrest removal.
The highest tax causes 55% unrest, assuming a 20 pop city that's 11 people. You still need 7 reduction from buildings (if that's even available) even if you have 4 from units.
The new tax system was designed with the highest rate being a viable option in mind if unrest reduction if properly done and the race doesn't have high unrest (or bad building options to reduce it) by default.
I've only played one game on Impossible difficulty yet, but having 6-8 top tier normal units in each city felt almost essential, places with weaker defense often ended up losing battles.
This is ofc only valid for the default unrest, if there are unrest increasing enchantments around, even max units and buildings will be nowhere near close enough to have no unrest at a high tax rate.
Quote:Have you consider allowing normal units to start with +1 to hit and somewhat reduce their attack ratings?It's pretty hard to reduce attack ratings as low end units generally have 1-5 attack only, reducing it would significantly reduce the diversity I can have between races. This would also make all attack buff effects a lot stronger and there are plenty in the game.
Quote:** Warlord - doesn't seem very worth it now.I've just watched a friend play with Warlord and it was quite good. +1 experience level on ALL units in the entire game is a lot, even if it's not very noticeable individually.
You still get +2 stat points for level 1 and 2 units, +4 for level 3, and another +4 for level 4, so on average all your units have +3 points of stats. It's less powerful on units with small amount of figures, but those units are generally very powerful to begin with.
If you play Warlord, it's a good plan to use units with 4 or more figures, but it's still pretty useful even if you don't.
Quote: Early Production Boost - This suggestion may be hard to implement, but imagine if every city has an added constant of +5 production. Add a cheap but weaker sawmill with +2 or +3 production, and city mechanics would greatly improve.Buy the sawmill immediately for gold and you have exactly this. 200 gold is not much except for the starting city.
It looks much better if the production is actually coming form somewhere instead of being "free" for the same outcome.
This also gives the player a choice not to go for it (which is usually a bad choice but a game is a game because you can make bad choices and suffer the consequences).
Quote:Champions: careful with the low cost, champions are very powerful (including yours) and many players can do great work with them.I noticed, but prefer to nerf the champions themselves if necessary. If something is gamebreaking, it is gamebreaking even for 750 mana. I'm especially worried about the Black Knight and Paladin, they have the same problem as the Paladins had, Magic Immunity+First Strike+Armor Pierce = unbeatable in melee AND by spells.
Other champions seem less of a problem. (Although they are too good for 400 if you also have heroism)
Quote:When you get to spells like iron skin, the added cost would be so worth it.The "cost" in these spells is that they take up your overland spellcasting skill so you can't do other stuff like...well, cast Armageddon, summon champions, create an unstoppable sword, and so on.
It really depends on the enchantment, I did increase the base cost of the most overpowered ones.
As the concept behind the mod is maintaining more armies, lower upkeep is a must. If something is too good, I prefer to balance it by raising the casting cost.
Elemental Armor and similar "immunity to one type of attack" enchantments are cheap because they are situational. +10 defense against most magical ranged attacks isn't bad...although...it isn't that good either compared to Guardian Wind which costs even less. They both block specific types of ranged attacks (magical+fire breath vs missile+arrow). I think 15 is a fair cost for Elemental Armor in combat, which leaves no option but 75 for overland. Maintenance cannot be high considering it's a situational unit buff that's entirely defensive (and very much inferior to Righteousness). I need more ingame experience how useful it is, though.
Iron Skin by the way isn't that cheap, it costs 100/3.
Quote:Prayer - Despite added cost, this spell would remain extremely powerful, particularly due to your removal of elite to hit bonus.
Recommendation - removing the 'to hit' and keeping the 'to defend' ... maybe with lower cost.
Might be a good idea, I didn't know how to change that when I was adjusting the spell. However, reducing any of the +1 bonuses to 0 would make it far too weak I think, so not much room here for changes.
And tbh, it's not all that better than Black Prayer (-2 resist is a killer, -1 attack and defense on a low or medium tier unit is worth as much as a -1 "to" penalty), the improved Blur (ok Prayer is nearly twice as good but costs more and is of the "buffing" realm so that's reasonable), and in some cases even inferior to Metal Fires.
I'm fine with some spells being better than others, and there is a catch with Prayer : Unless you are in a big enough battle with 4+ units on both sides, it won't be really helping you much compared to a unit curse or nuke or even a summon.
Quote:Inspirations - Wasn't it +100% production? Your notes state +50%.I'm a bit confused with this one, I think I found contradicting numbers in the game and assumed it was 100% but later got nerfed to 50...I still don't know what's the official value but 100% sounds way too excessive, I prefer to keep it at 50 and have a low cost to use.
Quote:Phantom warrior / psionic spark / psionic blast - similar damage-oriented spells. Could use some variety.Well, Sorcery is the realm for illusions. They have different uses, though, Spark is to finish off 3 health units, Blast is expensive but hurts, and warriors are best used when you need additional presence in the battlefield to avoid the battle ending too early due to lack of units. I guess Warriors could be changed but don't have any good ideas for it and don't really see the need.
Quote:Mind Storm - Still too powerful and cheap. It's unresistable and can cripple most units, particularly multi-figured ones. I recommend weakening the penalties somewhat or not letting it affect its attack ratings.I actually like this spell for the combo potential. For 35 you can usually outright kill (or even take control of) a unit that would be rendered useless from a -5 penalty. However, the resistance reduction allows hurting targets that would be otherwise impossible with resistance based spells. Think of it like this, would you want that enemy unit to lose 5 attack and defense, or...summon a Phantom Beast for 18, defense ignoring melee attack which it can use every turn unit it dies? I'd go with the beast 75% of the time and only use the reduction if I face a 6-8 figure unit with highly buffed to hit and a medium or low attack.
Quote:The weapon-immune fire elemental - nothing should be weapon-immune this early. Too easy to conquer towns, even an enemy capital with a single unit.The fortress lightning bolt will have a word or two to that. And those 9 Skeletons/Hell Hounds/Nagas if you play hard or higher.
There are way fewer neutral towns in the game now, and most players can easily conquer them even without a fire elemental anyway. Although my main reason is that Fire Elemental is worthless without Weapon Immunity. Single figure, unimpressive stats, it could barely beat a single unit of swordsmen without it. Not to mention, Weapon Immunity is only useful in the early game, after that, everything has magical weapons.
Quote:Immolation - disallow ranged attack effect with it. Otherwise, this unintentional ranged attack 'fireball' bonus gets excessive.I fixed that bug today morning. I didn't know it was still in insecticide before I actually tested.
Quote: I see an exploit here with the easily accessible one-realm +5 combo with flame blade. Particularly deadly and unstoppable with archers.Metal Fires is rare though, that means like turn 150+ for this to work. And archers still die to a single hit from a fireball spell, and Flame Blade needs to be cast overland on each of them individually. Powerful vs neutral targets for sure, not so much for enemy wizards. But anything works against neutral targets, a single invisible archer will do the job better.
Quote:what if caster has a 'call lightning' effect on every battle instead of the unrest effect on enemies? that way, you can differentiate it better against great wasting.Armageddon is plenty strong already, that would be an overkill. The problem was Great Wasting being too weak, not the other way.
Quote:Call Chaos - I actually find the spell pretty poor for 75 mana compared to your flame strike.It actually can disintegrate targets with over 10 resistance, though. Good point tho, I need to add this spell to my "debug needed" list. There are quite a few problems with it.
