Game mechanics

[Seravy]

If you're interested, I just noticed that kyrub managed to code a feature in Catnip that prevents the player from switching production item after purchasing. That would prevent ladder purchase abuse and re-enable variable rush cost.

I don't know why you want to limit rush buying. It's a hugely beneficial change to the game's pace. CoM is so different than MoM, try playing it a little more before suggesting changes.

I have played with it quite a bit now, and I must say that it's not my cup of tea. It's fun to try out overpowered combos and stomp around, but that's not what I'm looking for. It looks like our priorities in what makes a good strategy experience are very different. I do wish you all good luck with the mod, I'll bow out of discussions now.

That's unfortunate but I understand, everyone has their own preferences. I need the patch for no change production anyway if you have it.

[Nelphine]

I'd be very interested in knowing what was allowing you to stomp around. I find that yes the game is far stronger than the original, but everything is, especially the AI wizards. There are a few outliers, such as focus magic sprites, but that only gets you particular nodes/lairs (and my current lizardman argument). (Or anything against neutrals.) Wizard against wizard combat, on a difficulty matching your desire, seems highly balanced with everyone getting powerful combinations.

If however wizard vs wizard combat (for you) is not the main focus, and nodes/lairs/neutrals are meant to be 75% of the game (which is how I played 1.31), then I totally understand where you are coming from.

[Catwalk]

If you're interested, I just noticed that kyrub managed to code a feature in Catnip that prevents the player from switching production item after purchasing. That would prevent ladder purchase abuse and re-enable variable rush cost.

I don't know why you want to limit rush buying. It's a hugely beneficial change to the game's pace. CoM is so different than MoM, try playing it a little more before suggesting changes.

I have played with it quite a bit now, and I must say that it's not my cup of tea. It's fun to try out overpowered combos and stomp around, but that's not what I'm looking for. It looks like our priorities in what makes a good strategy experience are very different. I do wish you all good luck with the mod, I'll bow out of discussions now.

That's unfortunate but I understand, everyone has their own preferences. I need the patch for no change production anyway if you have it.

I'm afraid I have no documentation or technical knowledge, I was perusing the change log in this thread.
While strictly speaking it is kyrub's property, I'm sure he has no objections to you using it if you find any of it useful.

Nelphine, I'm playing around with the Focus Magic + Sprites strategy. Barring exceptionally poor luck, it seems to boost me to an exceptionally powerful start in just about every game. There are many different incarnations of it, it's interesting to find out which one works best. My objective is greatest certainty of winning against 4 wizards on Impossible. Lairs and nodes are an interesting means to accomplish that, but not a goal by itself.

[Nelphine]

If it helps, I've literally never beaten impossible with that strategy. Not saying you can't, but rather, trying to show that there are many different strategies that are very powerful. And the AI do use very nasty things back on you.

Totally fine if that doesn't help though.

[Seravy]

If you're interested, I just noticed that kyrub managed to code a feature in Catnip that prevents the player from switching production item after purchasing. That would prevent ladder purchase abuse and re-enable variable rush cost.

I don't know why you want to limit rush buying. It's a hugely beneficial change to the game's pace. CoM is so different than MoM, try playing it a little more before suggesting changes.

I have played with it quite a bit now, and I must say that it's not my cup of tea. It's fun to try out overpowered combos and stomp around, but that's not what I'm looking for. It looks like our priorities in what makes a good strategy experience are very different. I do wish you all good luck with the mod, I'll bow out of discussions now.

That's unfortunate but I understand, everyone has their own preferences. I need the patch for no change production anyway if you have it.

I'm afraid I have no documentation or technical knowledge, I was perusing the change log in this thread.
While strictly speaking it is kyrub's property, I'm sure he has no objections to you using it if you find any of it useful.

Nelphine, I'm playing around with the Focus Magic + Sprites strategy. Barring exceptionally poor luck, it seems to boost me to an exceptionally powerful start in just about every game. There are many different incarnations of it, it's interesting to find out which one works best. My objective is greatest certainty of winning against 4 wizards on Impossible. Lairs and nodes are an interesting means to accomplish that, but not a goal by itself.

The download link in that thread (catnip 0.5a) seems to be broken, so I have no files to try to find and extract the code from. (though if you don't have it in a separate patch file, it might be faster if I just tried it on my own. I only see one bottleneck in this, I have to find an unused byte in city data to store "bought" status and was wondering how Kyrub solved that. Unless...wait a second. Maybe...if you buy something, the remaining production needed is set to zero. That can't happen naturally without buying because then it would have been completed the previous turn. Nah, wrong logic, it's possible to change production from something more expensive to something cheaper to generate that state. No way around it, the "bought" status has to be stored somewhere.
...bytes 17, 1F, 20 and 21h seems to be marked unknown in my city data, maybe one of those is unused? Gotta find it out.

Wait, you're playing on impossible and are winning too easily? That can't be right, did one of the recent updates break the AI or something? Now I'm worried, I felt my previous Extreme game was a bit too easy but I assumed it was just the starting adamantium on my capital. Focus Magic was mentioned several times as potentially too powerful so I tested it at least twice and never felt it's a problem. It wasn't bad, but nowhere near gamebreaking.

[Catwalk]

I was actually moving on to Troll strategies which are also fun, but I'll take you up on that challenge. So far I haven't progressed past the medium game, my assessment of AI strenght may be wrong. Still trying to decide what combo is best, hence many opening games. I'll create a different thread for it.

[Catwalk]

I don't know why you want to limit rush buying. It's a hugely beneficial change to the game's pace. CoM is so different than MoM, try playing it a little more before suggesting changes.

I have played with it quite a bit now, and I must say that it's not my cup of tea. It's fun to try out overpowered combos and stomp around, but that's not what I'm looking for. It looks like our priorities in what makes a good strategy experience are very different. I do wish you all good luck with the mod, I'll bow out of discussions now.

That's unfortunate but I understand, everyone has their own preferences. I need the patch for no change production anyway if you have it.

I'm afraid I have no documentation or technical knowledge, I was perusing the change log in this thread.
While strictly speaking it is kyrub's property, I'm sure he has no objections to you using it if you find any of it useful.

Nelphine, I'm playing around with the Focus Magic + Sprites strategy. Barring exceptionally poor luck, it seems to boost me to an exceptionally powerful start in just about every game. There are many different incarnations of it, it's interesting to find out which one works best. My objective is greatest certainty of winning against 4 wizards on Impossible. Lairs and nodes are an interesting means to accomplish that, but not a goal by itself.

The download link in that thread (catnip 0.5a) seems to be broken, so I have no files to try to find and extract the code from. (though if you don't have it in a separate patch file, it might be faster if I just tried it on my own. I only see one bottleneck in this, I have to find an unused byte in city data to store "bought" status and was wondering how Kyrub solved that. Unless...wait a second. Maybe...if you buy something, the remaining production needed is set to zero. That can't happen naturally without buying because then it would have been completed the previous turn. Nah, wrong logic, it's possible to change production from something more expensive to something cheaper to generate that state. No way around it, the "bought" status has to be stored somewhere.
...bytes 17, 1F, 20 and 21h seems to be marked unknown in my city data, maybe one of those is unused? Gotta find it out.

Wait, you're playing on impossible and are winning too easily? That can't be right, did one of the recent updates break the AI or something? Now I'm worried, I felt my previous Extreme game was a bit too easy but I assumed it was just the starting adamantium on my capital. Focus Magic was mentioned several times as potentially too powerful so I tested it at least twice and never felt it's a problem. It wasn't bad, but nowhere near gamebreaking.

As I responded to Nelphine, I haven't completed those games yet. So my previous post might have been an overstatement. I'll go ahead and try to complete these games now and see if I can indeed win Impossible reliably, I'll report it in a different thread.

[Seravy]

So far I haven't progressed past the medium game, my assessment of AI strenght may be wrong.

That might explain it. Especially as the recent updates to AI diplomacy made the AI less likely to attack the player early. (game was reaching the point where it was often unwinnable from all the AI 4v1ing the player on turn 50)
It's a new change so I'm not sure how much influence it has on overall difficulty.

[Nelphine]

But it certainly feels different. I almost want to change it so that one AI can declare war as early as before, but then other AI have to wait 15-25 turns each (although you still can't more wars than permitted by difficulty).

Actually opposite. The last AI permitted by difficulty to declare war on you will be limited as the update. Each other AI permitted by dicculty can declare 15-35 turns earlier, such that the first AI on impossible can declare war as early as pre- diplomacy update.

So on normal, 1 AI can declare war (I think on turn 150?). On hard, one at turn 120, 2 at turn 150. Extreme 1 at turn 90, 2 on 120, 3 on 150. Impossible, 1 at turn 50, 2 at turn 80, 3 at 115, 4 at turn 150.

Or something like that.

And while I know most non typical methods of war declaration ignore this restriction anyway, I'd specifically make wars based on allies fall under this restriction, to avoid peaceful AI allied with ruthless ones declaring war too fast.

[Seravy]

But it certainly feels different. I almost want to change it so that one AI can declare war as early as before, but then other AI have to wait 15-25 turns each (although you still can't more wars than permitted by difficulty).

Actually opposite. The last AI permitted by difficulty to declare war on you will be limited as the update. Each other AI permitted by dicculty can declare 15-35 turns earlier, such that the first AI on impossible can declare war as early as pre- diplomacy update.

So on normal, 1 AI can declare war (I think on turn 150?). On hard, one at turn 120, 2 at turn 150. Extreme 1 at turn 90, 2 on 120, 3 on 150. Impossible, 1 at turn 50, 2 at turn 80, 3 at 115, 4 at turn 150.

Or something like that.

In fact, the AI can still declare war at the same time as before from all sources, except the militarist one which is delayed. The AI also has the same chance to do sneak attacks without war. There never was and still isn't any limitation on the number of wars, except from the "low relation" source.
Despite that, it definitely feels very different.
I think the easier Wizard's Pact and Peace Treaty might be just as much of a culprit as the war change, but this seems to show militarist wars had the largest influence by far (and often served as the trigger for alliance wars)

Edit :
Byte 1Bh in city data is out, I used that for storing the upper half of the gold income to fix the 255 gold limit. That leaves 17, 1F, 20 and 21 for investigation.