Well the big point about pacts is you can't rely on border defense in MoM. I.e. you need to defend each city on it's own and can't rely on a border.
As a programmer I do agree with Seravi's conclusions that this will impair the AI's ability to pursue actions as well as inactions thus it will likely be counterproductive as he said. For example games following such "equality" are often way too passive once you cover the obvious holes in your borders. Also programming such changes as a mod are likely impossible. Thus I myself didn't ask for such obvious changes. It's good for the discussion to be present in the thread though. I think...
So far CoM has improved in many areas on the original game while keeping up with the general principles which I like a lot. So thanks again Seravi for your work on this mod!
Haven't had the time lately to make another Extreme run. I wanted to try pure Death again.
(April 1st, 2016, 10:34)Drax Wrote: Well the big point about pacts is you can't rely on border defense in MoM. I.e. you need to defend each city on it's own and can't rely on a border.
Making border defense actually work would probably involve an enormous redesign of the way the entire game works, because the main reason it works in the real world is logistics -- armies can't actually go very far without resupply so they need a secure path behind them. A MoO-style "you can only go X squares away from your closest city" doesn't seem easy to make work, particularly since you can have quite large areas, such as oceans, that cannot contain cities.
This is a major update that
-Adds 2 new Sorcery spells
-Adds 2 new city buildings
-Adjusts and balances many units and spells
-Further improves AI, including the ability to use Wall Crusher and Magic Vortex, comprehend the meaning of the Spell Blast spell, and tactics to counter Invisibility, Flying Fortress.
-Adds a new category for AI advantages, the AI overland casting cost multiplier. It replaces the row in the table for outpost advantages, so it can be changed with tweaker if desired, like all other AI advantages.
-Makes Large Shield add a +3 bonus defense
-Makes Mountains grant a higher production bonus
-Fixes some severe older bugs (no sound lightning crash, buggy AI targeting on overland direct damage spells, units missing in tower battles)
-Fixed bug : Wall of Darkness cast in combat is not recognized by the AI, units get stuck instead of proceeding for a melee attack.
-Halberdiers cost 60 to build instead of 70
-High Elf racial resistance bonus is now +1 instead of +2
-Nomad racial resistance bonus is now +3
-Updated the resistance of some units mostly Shaman.
-Priests now have a standard resistance of +4 over the base amount of the race
-When the next combat unit is autoselected, it'll be the unit with the highest (Melee-Ranged) attack rating, ensuring that units get prompted in the order of melee, then ranged.
-Animist's Guild maintenance lowered to 3
-Mechanician's Guild production bonus raised to 35%
-Bank, Merchant's Guild maintenance lowered to 2 and 3 gold.
-Inspirations now adds 100% production, but costs 4 to maintain. Note that this bonus is added the same way as other % based production bonuses, meaning this spell will not double your total production. If you have a 175% production (from building or terrain bonus), it raises that to 275%.
-Elven Archer hero now has Super Capacity, +1 to hit, and can have ANY type of random ability instead of Mage type.
-Adjusted combat terrain generation.
-Fixed bug/missing feature : Floating Islands do not properly put a floating island under units in combat.
-Trolls no longer have a +1 resistance racial bonus
-War Mammoths have 1 more resistance and 1 more melee.
-Beastmen no longer have +1 resistance racial bonus (race specific units not changed)
-Dark Elves now have a +2 racial resistance bonus instead of +3
-Spearmen have +1 melee, but 1 less resistance, defense and 2 less figures.
-Klackons can no longer build Shrines, but can build Universities, although no Mechanician's Guilds still. (They don't have unrest to need a shrine or oracle, and never had the cathedral. No shamans or priests either.)
-Removed Temple and Armory.
-New building : Colosseum, requires Fighter's Guild and Barracks. Generates 5 fame and reduces unrest by 1.
-New building : Amplifying Towers. Requires Alchemists Guild. Generates 7 casting skill.
-Shrine now produces 2 power, Cathedral 6 power, both costs more to build.
-Bowmen and Cavalry type units now require a Smithy instead of an Armory.
-Smithy now costs 80.
-Priests require a Parthenon instead of Temple.
-Dragon Turtles have +2 resistance.
-Lizardmen no longer have -1 resistance racial penalty.
-Halberdiers have +1 melee and resistance.
-Javelineers have +1 melee, ranged and resistance but cost 15 more.
-Pikemen cost 75 instead of 90/100
-Fixed : Strength of Fire Bolt was still set to 18 when it was supposed to be improved to 20.
-Star Fires now costs 12, is strength 23, and hits any fantastic creature.
-Dispel Evil is now save -1, hits any fantastic creature, costs 20, undead modifier is an additional -3. Name changed to Exorcise.
-Hell Hounds have a resistance of 5.
-Fire Elementals have a resistance of 4.
-Skeletons have a resistance of 3.
-Shadow Demons have a resistance of 7.
-Phantom Beast has a resistance of 6.
-Phantom Warriors have a resistance of 4.
-Charm of Life now costs 1500 to cast.
-Longbowmen now require Forester's Guild+Smithy instead of Sawmill+Armory.
-Large Shield now adds +3 defense against ranged attacks.
-Berserkers now require a Fighter's Guild instead of Armorer's Guild.
-Mountains now add 10% production.
-Heavenly Light now shows up in detailed city power sources view.
-Life Force now shows up in detailed city power sources view.
-Eternal Night now reduces displayed power amount in detailed view.
-Tranquility now shows up in detailed city research sources view.
-Nature's Eye now shows up in detailed city research sources view.
-AI now considers building units a lower priority on the home continent than elsewhere (reversed behavior, original preferred home continent for units, away places for buildings)
-AI now considers building units less important, but presence of military buildings in city can raise this priority up to 2-3 times the original base amount.
-AI will be more likely to build units instead of trade goods if all buildings are built.
-Militarist and Expansionist AI has an even greater preference of military buildings.
-The AI no longer considers Shrine a must-have building.
-Fixed bug : AI Chaos wizards can begin the game with 11 books
-Draconians have +1 racial resistance instead of +2
-When a city is taken by an attack, there is a 20% chance of buildings to be destroyed, regardless of owner. (restoring original feature but higher numbers)
-Nightblades now have 2 health instead of 3. (The -1 to hit bonus from the invisibility makes it quite difficult to damage them even without higher health)
-When an AI unit with a ranged attack is unable to target anything, if it doesn't have over half of its ranged attack power in melee then it will not try to find a target for a melee attack.
-Dark Elf priests cost 20% more because their ranged attacks are stronger.
-Golems require a Fighter's Guild in addition to the Mechanician's Guild.
-Holy Avenger is renamed to Exorcist, resist at -3, and an additional -3 if undead, affects all fantastic units.
-Change Terrain now costs 40.
-Gargoyles now cost 110, have 5 melee.
-Fire Giants now cost 125, have Fireball Spell, 18 health.
-Chimeras now have 9 melee, 6 fire breath.
-Chaos Channels now adds strength 4 Fire Breath.
-Paladins have 1 less armor.
-Pegasai have 1 less melee.
-Resist Elements now costs 5/25, adds +4 def/resistance.
-Nature's Eye costs 40.
-Heavenly Light costs 60.
-Chaos Spawn costs 350.
-Efreet costs 450.
-Inner Fire no longer adds +1 attack.
-Djinn now costs 600, has +1 resistance.
-AI will now consider Pestilence a curse to remove
-AI will no longer try to remove Flying Fortress from the human player's cities (Changed Disenchant cannot do it anyway!)
-AI will no longer target Disenchant Area on the human player's buffed units/stacks (Changed Disenchant cannot do it anyway!)
-Disenchant Area can now target own cities or units only to remove negative effects. It can still target warped nodes as well. It still cannot be used in combat.
-Disenchant True can only target enemy cities and units on the overland map, to remove positive effects. It cannot target warped nodes. It can still be used in combat to remove both positive and negative effects. Renamed to Dispelling Wave. Can be used for 15-75 mana in combat, 75-375 overland. Dispelling power on units is halved compared to Dispel Magic (but it hits all units!)
-AEther Binding now increases the effectiveness of Dispel Magic, Disjunction, Disechant Area and Dispelling wave to double, but costs 400 to cast, 20 to maintain. This effect also applies to your caster units, unlike Runemaster.
-Dispel Magic True and Disjunction True are removed from the game.
-AI will now prefer using Dispels in combat if Aether Binding and/or Runemaster is in effect.
-Ships are now allowed to gain flight from Chaos Channels.
-Lionheart now costs 40/200.
-Lighning Bolt and Ice Bolt are strength 35.
-Cloud of Shadow costs 200, maintenance is 4.
-Warp Node now costs 100.
-Wraiths and Cloud of Shadow now both have the standard research cost.
-Lycanthropy now has a halved research cost.
-Eldritch Weapon now costs 7/35, has 1 upkeep.
-Shatter and Warp Creature have double research cost.
-Corruption has halved research cost.
-Sky Drake, Lightning breath is reduced to 18 (but melee stays 25)
-Nature's Wrath only triggers on spells costing over 333 but includes Arcane spells too. Earthquakes more powerful, 8% chance of unit and building destruction. Casting cost reduced to 800.
-Destruction item power and ability now destroys entire unit, costs 600, 4 books.
-Weapon abilities are now displayed on heroes if the appropriate weapon is equipped.
-Klackon, Dwarven and High Elf Halberdiers now have Negate First Strike
-Stasis can now be used in combat, in addition to the overland, with the following combat effect : Target unit must resist at -5 or becomes locked into stasis : It cannot act for the remainder of combat, or until dispelled. Costs 25/125 mana.
-Terror's Resistance penalty is now -3.
-Survival Instinct cost 600, but grants +1 To Hit instead of +1 melee.
-Warp Reality is now a Very Rare spell.
-Doom Mastery is now a rare spell, casting cost reduced to 666, maintenance raised to 18.
-Doom Bat is now rare and has 16 melee, has Doom, and 30 health, costs 400.
-Fire Storm is now uncommon.
-New Spell : Aether Sparks – Sorcery Common, instant combat, 12mp, does a strength 20 magical damage to the target, and the target loses half of its mana and magical ammo.
-New Spell : Uranus' Blessing – Sorcery Rare city enchantment, 300mp, Combat in enchanted city starts with a 50mp Counter Magic in effect for the defender. Wizard's Guilds and Alchemist's Guilds produce an additional 7 power. Amplifying Towers produce and additional 7 skill. Newly produced units are built as though an Alchemist's Guild was in effect, even when there is none.
-Confused units will always die at end of battle, not just when “retreating exhausted” and cannot regenerate.
-Death Spell now costs 60.
-Summon Demon costs 41/205.
-Haste no longer doubles counterattacks.
-Healing Charge now heals 8, costs 30.
-Incarnation now has normal research cost.
-Earth to Mud now affects 7x7, costs 20.
-Renamed spells : Metal Fires → Blazing March, Death Spell → Massacre, Death Wish → Final Wave, Word of Death → Annihilate.
-AI will now cast spells against invisible armies that either grant illusion immunity or hit all invisible enemies.
-AI will now cast spells that help against Flying Fortress (flight, air elemental, magic vortex etc)
-AI is now able to use Magic Vortex.
-Fixed Magic Vortex Lightning bolt strength.
-Fire bolt is now strength 24.
-Warp Lightning now starts with a strength 11 bolt.
-Universities now cost 140.
-Fixed a possible source of the AI gold = 30000 bug.
-Adjusted monster lair cost and EXP per kill tables.
-AI will no longer consider neutral cities and units as “hostile armies” when evaluating continents. This made the AI get stuck on its home continent due to a strong neutral town “holding” the main conquest continent as the home continent.
-AI will now always evaluate for a settling target when evaluating all continents, not only if it was due to the timer expiring. If non-timed reevaluations were frequent, this made the AI unable to ever set a settling continent.
-War Bears have +1 melee.
-Giant Spiders have 6 melee, 5 health, Missile Immunity and Wall Crusher.
-Basilisk has +1 to hit and costs 250.
-Stone Giants have +2 melee and ranged.
-Cockatrices cost 200.
-Gorgons have +3 melee and +1 health.
-The AI is now allowed to declare war on turn 40 the earliest.
-The AI is allowed to turn hostile on turn 37 the earliest.
-Golems and Steam Cannons now have Wall Crusher
-AI can now use Wall Crusher units to move towards and attack units standing on an existing wall segment.
-Adjusted the scouting range of some units.
-Fixed bug : Game crashes after Call Lightning if Sound Effects is off.
-Warships now have only 25 health instead of 30.
-Warships now have 10 ammo instead of 12.
-Removed the effect of the “AI OUTPOST GROWTH MULTIPLIER” from the AI difficulty table and replaced with with a linear effect, for each difficulty level above easy, there is a 25% chance to receive the extra 1-3 growth, instead of the original, which gave as many % chance to receive it as the multiplier, which was always set to over 100 anyway.
-“AI OUTPOST GROWTH MULTIPLIER” in the data tables now functions as “AI OVERLAND SPELL COST MULTIPLIER”. The casting cost of ALL overland spells except Spell of Mastery and Return are scaled by this percentage. This affects overland spells only, and has no effect on combat. This does not change the “total cost” of the spell used for various effects, like Suppress Magic, only the effective mana and skill requred to cast it. Currently set values : Easy : 100, Normal : 80, Hard : 66, Extreme : 50, Impossible : 40. This means the AI can cast 25% more spells on Normal, 50% more on Hard, 100% more on Extreme and 150% more on Impossible. This bonus is independent of the bonus they receive to their power income and only applies to casting overland spells. The intention is to allow the AI to successfully conjure up enough forces of rare or better fantastic creature to become relevant to the game, instead of the human player being able to avoid attacking the one or two cities with such units guarding them while taking over the rest of the world unresisted with their own stack of powerful units. When Spell Blast is used against an AI player, this cost reduction is considered and will not count towards the required mana to blast the spell.
-Adjusted prioirty of various summoning spells for AI Overland casting.
-When the AI fails to find a spell to cast, it will cast Magic Spirit instead of nothing at all, allowing another spell to be cast afterwards instead of skipping an entire turn on spellcasting. (Note that this will be done even if the spell is not known, which cannot happen without editing the save file anyway.)
-The AI can now properly target with Fire Storm, Blizzard, Black Wind and Stasis instead of hitting random (sometimes even own!) stacks.
-The AI now properly casts Summon Demon overland through the summoning spell selection, instead of the curse selection (Demon was a replacement of a curse spell)
-Barbarian Swordsmen have Thrown 2 instead of 1.
-Barbarian Cavalry have Thrown 3 instead of 1.
-Draconian Swordmen have Fire Breath 2 instead of 1.
-Draconian Halberdiers have Fire Breath 3 instead of 1.
-Dark Elf Halberdiers have 3 magical ranged attack instead of 2.
-Dark Elf Cavalry have 3 magical ranged attack instead of 2.
-Fixed bug : Units fail to enter combat in tower.
-Dwarves can now build Ship Yards and Maritime Guilds.
-When the AI casts Spell Blast, if there is any possible target that is casting Spell of Mastery, they'll be selected. If there are multiples, the lowest player ID is chosen (human player is 0).
-The AI will now research Detect Magic, but will only cast it if they know Spell Blast.
-The AI has a high priority of casting a “curse type” spell if Spell of Mastery is being cast by an enemy, or if another spell on the “to blast” list is being cast and Detect Magic is in effect. The curse spell cast when any of these conditions is true will always be Spell Blast.
-When targeting with Spell Blast and Drain Power, the AI will target the player casting Spell of Mastery. If none are available, they'll target the player casting anything on the “to blast” list. If that's also not available, they'll target a random enemy, giving a higher chance to the enemy with the lowest player ID.
-Spell Blast cost is reduced back to 50 – AI is now casting spells faster so a quick reaction time is needed. As the AI is now also using the spell properly, and it has diplomatic consequences, there is no reason for the raised cost anymore.
-AI and auto now gets the 1 manual movement for owned Magic Vortexes. Movement will be directed towards the most enemy and fewest own units.
-If the AI knows the spell “Time Stop” they have a raised preference of producing mana.
(March 31st, 2016, 22:15)Tiltowait Wrote: 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.
The weak spot with this is that it increases the number of cities I have. That leads again to war as they think I'm growing to strong.
The main reason for me to have a wizard pact, is to prevent being at war with every enemy wizard at once. The second reason, is to keep weak enemies with similar spellbooks alive with just 3-5 cities. Enough for them to keep on researching, but never to grow into a threat. (Which they will, if they build in every tiny gap. Destroying those keeps me from exchanging spells for a while) As a Life player, an extra player to cast divine order strenghtens me too. And the research they perform, helps me aquire spells I don't really want to use, but take up spots in my research book. It also gets me a headstart when I find books in ruins. And with luck, a bounty for attacking their enemies
Playing as a death wizard, the skeletons and undead troops without maintenance allow for making a nice wall system which even lizardmen and draconian settlers can't avoid. I even abused the system by entrapping a full stack of sprites between 8 skeletons. Maintenance is a weapon too. I suppose with ships no longer having maintenance, those can be used as well as a more expansive/expensive option.
(March 31st, 2016, 22:15)Tiltowait Wrote: 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.
The weak spot with this is that it increases the number of cities I have. That leads again to war as they think I'm growing to strong.
Order a spearmen to patrol in all the map cells that can be settled (normally if it's just a gap between cities, this shouldn't be more than 1-3 of them) so no one can build there.
Mountains having +10% production ... would you allow hill -> mountain change terrain (instead of hill -> plains). That will add a new element to nature wizards, helping certain cities become very productive(at the cost of growth/city pop)
Among all these items, I think the only one I can disagree with is:
Terror at -3 is pushing it for a 'common' and that spell cost, making multiple ranged units early in the game relatively useless or early melee units unable to reach your bowmen. I'd put it in my top 3, if not my favorite common spell in the game now due to its power and versatility. I thought your earlier -1/-2 (I forgot) was a more balanced approach, even if it still was among the better common spells in the game.
(April 2nd, 2016, 06:42)zitro1987 Wrote: Awesome! So many improvements.
Mountains having +10% production ... would you allow hill -> mountain change terrain (instead of hill -> plains). That will add a new element to nature wizards, helping cities become extremely productive.
Among all these items, I think the only one I can disagree with is:
Terror at -3 is pushing it for a 'common' and that spell cost, making multiple ranged units early in the game relatively useless or early melee units unable to reach your bowmen. I'd put it in my top 3, if not my favorite common spell in the game now due to its power and versatility. I thought your earlier -1/-2 (I forgot) was a more balanced approach, even if it still was among the better common spells in the game.
Would wrack at -1 (instead of at 0) with a slightly higher cost better represent the 'rare spell' tier?
Terror is rare since 1.4x. I'm satisfied with Wrack, 25 turns are a lot of time to take damage, and Black Prayer makes it -2 if needed.
