Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

How did the lightning immunity give a decisive advantage? You can keep the magical vortex away from your own cavalry pretty easy with its 1 controllable movement plus your cavalry's 2. The rest is just mindless tedium waiting for the vortex to strike down the last units in the city walls. How did you do that in one run? It seems like it would take more than 50 (ahem 25) turns to do this, and it would be really boring. Did you have to attack multiple times?

The cavalry would have been killed by the lightning from the fortress, not the vortex. (It effectively works as a Call Lightning spell that hits once per turn but for a larger amount of damage.)

As I wrote above, Vortex's damage was...not exactly the amount originally intended because it copied a different spell which was changed meanwhile. Strength 30 lightning bolts on everything next to it for every cell it moves kills even archangels in 2-3 turns. This problem will be fixed in the next version.

Good deal the CP now casts magical vortex! I hope that patch can be rolled into v1.5! I love when the CP gives the player a taste of his own medicine. It's like watching the first time Hadriex had the "flying unit block the city gate" used against him in v1.4. His reaction was priceless..."that's not fair! Only I should be able to do that!" :D

Unfortunately it's not compatible, most new combat spell selection logic goes into the space gained by the removed of recall spells. Hadriex still gets angry every time the AI does that, happened a few times in yesterday's video too. He attacked a city with war trolls and the AI just said, hah, take that, you'll retreat now and your trolls won't regenerate because I won the battle :D
Vortex gets this decision process on top of its default ranking of "prefer when outnumbered" :
-Defending own city : never use
-Attacking enemy city : boost priority by 30
-For each own magic immune unit : boost priority by 7.
I also made the AI use "anti-invisbility" spells if all enemies are invisible and none of their own units have illusion immunity. "anti-invisibility" spells include obviously True Sight, but also any combat summon that has immunity, and any mass-destructon spell that does not target, like flame strike and call chaos. So there are like 10 spells total they can use if the situation comes.
Similarly I made an anti-flying fortress spell group containing flight, flying summons, disenchant true, call lightning and magic vortex.
I hope these will work because I only tested the vortex yet.
Caster of Magic 2.0 will be way different from earlier versions, I'm starting to become afraid of playing Extreme

(btw the original game didn't use the vortex because there was no target selection coded for it. So it just assumed it's never legal to cast one)

[CyberFoxZA]

Hi - Firstly let me thank you for bringing Mom back to Life. Well since it's release way back in 1996, it was never dead - rather dormant, for short periods of time, for me. I've been playing it on and off every 2 or so years. But this mod(or is it re-engineering) of the game made me grateful to you for coming back to MoM yet again. I was just trying my luck searching for mods before I starting to play when I came across your mod.

Reading through the changes you have made and not only that, everything is so well documented. Again thank you so much for your hard work.

What you have done with CoM is beyond words. In short an old game with a completely new way to play it and a much better implementation of the game mechanics.

However(HA and you thought i was only going to praise you) - But I have a rather serious problem(BUG???)

Now firstly I'm not sure if I'm the only one with this problem, since it is so severe I find it strange that no one has reported it.

I did read that you are aware of the combat bug, but that is to rare to concern yourself over it. Well it is not that rare.(If this is the same BUG)

This happens 100% of the time when I'm attacking a Wizard in their Capitol(The one with the Wizard Tower in it). This is on the battlefield. My 1st hero can move normally and attack - No problem - But as soon as I move my 2nd hero or trying to enter(go past the town walls) the game crash straight to desktop. This happens every time without exception.

One way around this is to cast what ever buffs and debuffs you can and then hit the AUTO button - Strange thing is that my units when on auto enter the wizards battlefield town without the game crashing.(But auto is just not good enough YET as it did not heal??? my Heroes - There was enough manna and power) - when I disengage the Auto - game crash as soon as i move.

Also at this moment I have a save game(early about 20+ turns) I was attacked by raiders and moved my unit out of my (battlefield town) and then the moment I moved him back the exact same thing as above happen - crash to desktop.

I know how to avoid this - For the Wizard's - Don't attack their towns, rather use the Spell of Mastery - to end the game.
For my home town only thing I can do is stand there and cast buff spells on my units and hope that "bolt"(thank you) strike the living daylights out of f the attackers. Witch did work in my current game but if there is more than 1 attacker this early in the game - It would be in serious trouble.

All of this only happen if you attack a town with a Wizard tower present in all other towns I never had this problem.

My setup:
CoM copied over GoG version 1.31 (Also tried to apply Patch 1.40n - then Applied CoM(current game)
Life - 10 Books - Arch mage & Famous - Normal Game - Huge Map
Win 10 - though same thing happened in Win 8.1

I would really like to know if other players have had similar problem and or if there is a solution.

I attach my savegame here.

HAPPY EASTER WEEKEND!!!!

CyberFox

OOOPS - Almost forgot to mention - just play 3 turns then the raiders will attack then move any unit out of the "battlefield town" and then move him back or just move the unit backwards in the town.

[Seravy]

This happens 100% of the time when I'm attacking a Wizard in their Capitol(The one with the Wizard Tower in it). This is on the battlefield. My 1st hero can move normally and attack - No problem - But as soon as I move my 2nd hero or trying to enter(go past the town walls) the game crash straight to desktop. This happens every time without exception.

If the sound is turned off, the spell Call Lightning, and the lightning from the fortress which uses the same type of lightning, crashes the game. I haven't yet found what the source of the problem is but it ONLY happens if your sound is turned off (and in that case, happens even in the original game).
To fix it, turn on the sound. You can turn it off in DOSBOX, but it has to be enabled in the game itself.

In general, never run ANY version of Master of Magic with the sound option turned off, it causes instability.

EDIT : I might have fixed this bug, if the fix proves to be working, it'll be included in the next version.
See http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=8108

[CyberFoxZA]

This happens 100% of the time when I'm attacking a Wizard in their Capitol(The one with the Wizard Tower in it). This is on the battlefield. My 1st hero can move normally and attack - No problem - But as soon as I move my 2nd hero or trying to enter(go past the town walls) the game crash straight to desktop. This happens every time without exception.

If the sound is turned off, the spell Call Lightning, and the lightning from the fortress which uses the same type of lightning, crashes the game. I haven't yet found what the source of the problem is but it ONLY happens if your sound is turned off (and in that case, happens even in the original game).
To fix it, turn on the sound. You can turn it off in DOSBOX, but it has to be enabled in the game itself.

In general, never run ANY version of Master of Magic with the sound option turned off, it causes instability.

EDIT : I might have fixed this bug, if the fix proves to be working, it'll be included in the next version.
See http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=8108

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Wow never new that - Turned on sound and will check it out using that save game.
But can'st seem to find the patch file??

CyberFox

[CyberFoxZA]

Problem Solved

See this thread - http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=8108

[zitro1987]

Random thought:

What if players have the option to exclude 'spell of mastery' from their game ... either by finding a new use for the unbalancing 'node magic power' or an optional fileset txt hex-coding file? It's one of those game mechanics one sometimes likes integrated, but sometimes wanting to have epic late-game battles given your game improvements here. These are the occasional annoyances:
*late in game, I start getting rewarded books via lairs/nodes but I can't research these spells because I'm forever researching 'spell of mastery' ... there is no option to change research temporarily.
*Once you reach this stage, it becomes a game of waiting, especially once you get to begin casting the spell.
*late in game, enemies cast the spell, usually before you do. If so, they stop casting overland spells and the game becomes a 'find the fortress', sometimes many fortresses.

Also, what if the victory condition of 'enemies have no cities' gets changed to something more more accessible like 'player owns 80% of the world population/cities'? By the time you get to this point, you obviously won the game and are trying to find a few scattered cities - a very boring late phase of the game.


Random other thought: Have you ever thought of making 'poison' involve negative resistance rolls (and lowering the number of poison points in units), keeping poison [somewhat] relevant later in game?

[Seravy]

to have epic late-game battles given your game improvements here.

Given the 4x increase in SoM research cost I don't think this is a problem, there is enough time to conquer the world the normal way if you are actually doing good. Spell Blast can delay it indefinitely if you have it.

*late in game, I start getting rewarded books via lairs/nodes but I can't research these spells because I'm forever researching 'spell of mastery' ... there is no option to change research temporarily.

That is indeed annoying but I don't think I can change that. I mean, I could do the effect probably, cancelling research, but not the interface to activate and this isn't something I would want to trigger on some obscure mechanism the player won't recongnize. I would need to be a huge warning with yes and no buttons because cancelling research is..a bad thing if done unintended.

Also, what if the victory condition of 'enemies have no cities' gets changed to something more more accessible like 'player owns 80% of the world population/cities'? By the time you get to this point, you obviously won the game and are trying to find a few scattered cities - a very boring late phase of the game.

Considered this one but it's hard to implement and would annoy players who actually want to conquer the stuff. Unless you want to see the scoring screen, nothing stops you from saying "Hey, I won, let's start the next game!".

Random other thought: Have you ever thought of making 'poison' involve negative resistance rolls (and lowering the number of poison points in units), keeping poison [somewhat] relevant later in game?

No, I like the current way it works. It stays relevant against (some types of) normal units and if you can reduce resistances.
The amount and the resistance penalty are stored in the same byte of data so it cannot have both unless we change that, too, but I prefer not to. I would be rather confusing to see "Posion 4 -3".

[zhantul]

I lost a game on Extreme. I'm happy . Wonderfull improvements to balance and the opponents.

There is one improvement that I hope can still be made. It may be very hard to implement due to the difficulty of programming AI. When I have a wizard pact with someone, they complain when there is even a single spearmen near their cities. On the other hand, they send in whole stacks of armies to just wander around inside my territory or to sit on nodes. Shortly afterwards, a settlers unit comes in and puts a city right between mine and they complain again about troop buildup.

Could there be a solution for this? Perhaps such as a check to not send in units near the cities friendly wizards in a 5 square radius (when none of their cities is inside that area). Or a diplomatic option that teleports their units back to the nearest city as a quick fix.

[Seravy]

I lost a game on Extreme. I'm happy . Wonderfull improvements to balance and the opponents.

There is one improvement that I hope can still be made. It may be very hard to implement due to the difficulty of programming AI. When I have a wizard pact with someone, they complain when there is even a single spearmen near their cities. On the other hand, they send in whole stacks of armies to just wander around inside my territory or to sit on nodes. Shortly afterwards, a settlers unit comes in and puts a city right between mine and they complain again about troop buildup.

Could there be a solution for this? Perhaps such as a check to not send in units near the cities friendly wizards in a 5 square radius (when none of their cities is inside that area). Or a diplomatic option that teleports their units back to the nearest city as a quick fix.

That would both be hard to do and counterproductive.
It would cause two AI's who have a wizard's pact to be unable to settle all the territory between their cities.
Wizard's Pact is assymetrical, it provides different advantages to the AI and the human player. You can't go near their cities, but they cannot attack you the turn they break the pact, while you can.
If you want to peacefully coexist with the AI, either retreat your units (you have a few turns for that) or form an Alliance which allows keeping them there.

[Tiltowait]

A wizard's pact means you won't put any troops within two squares of their cities in any direction. They're complaining because you're breaking the treaty. I don't know how it could be done otherwise.

Occupying nodes is a worthwhile objective. If you don't want the CP's stacks to come and sit on your nodes, occupy them yourself.

Planting a city in order to claim territory is a good move, too. If you don't want settlers invading your territory, settle the area yourself and the computer will be disallowed from founding cities due to the 3-square rule.