Experimental version

[Seravy]

The new version is ready, but as it contains two major changes that we might or might not like in the end, I decided to release it as an experimental version first.

The download is the usual location, but the filename is "CasterEXP.zip" instead of a version number.

If we are satisfied with the results, this will be the next "official" release, if not, I can remove whichever features we didn't like. The features I consider "experimental" are the new spell system, spell treasure roll, and the new Sprites unit.

-Easy difficulty AI is no longer allowed to buy production for gold - this should reduce losing units to maintenance costs somewhat. (Easy AI has no maintenance discount and income bonus)
-All units regain their movement allowance before the AI turns start as well as before the human's turn. This should fix all issues with the AI not being able to move stacks the human player attacked - particularly, if the AI fled the battle, as the problem was fixed for other cases a long time ago.
-Added some additional conditions for AI priorities on economic buildings especially when the AI is low on gold. This should improve performance of low difficulty levels a little.
-Fixed bug : When AEther Sparks reduces ammo from 1 to 0, the ranged attack is not removed.
-When spells are awarded in treasure, the spell given will always be the exact same rarity as intended - if such a spell is not possible to find, no spell of other rarity is replacing it.
-When spells are awarded in treasure, spells that cannot be researched by the wizard are preferred. If everything can be researched, spells not in the current research candidates are preferred. The spell currently being researched is never chosen unless nothing else is available.
-Changed spell amounts per spellbook, starting spell amount per spellbook, and added Guaranteed Uncommon and Rare spells. This is an experimental feature subject to further change. Guaranteed Uncommon spells are automatically upgraded into guaranteed to appear on turn 1 if book counts exceed 7.
C/U/R/VR , C Starting/ U Guaranteed/ U Guaranteed turn 1 research/ R Guaranteed, other effects
Book 01 : 3/1/0/0, 0/0/0/0, Find/Trade common
Book 02 : 3/2/1/0, 1/0/0/0, Find/Trade Uncommon
Book 03 : 4/3/2/1, 2/0/0/0, Find/Trade Rare
Book 04 : 5/4/3/2, 3/0/0/0, Find/Trade Very Rare
Book 05 : 6/5/4/3, 4/1/0/0,
Book 06 : 7/6/5/4, 5/1/0/1,
Book 07 : 10/7/6/5, 5/2/0/1,
Book 08 : 10/10/7/6, 5/0/2/1,
Book 09 : 10/10/10/7, 5/0/2/0, +8% research, -5% casting cost
Book 10 : 10/10/10/10, 5/0/2/0, +16% research, -10% casting cost
Books  found in treasure follow this same pattern but have an exception : Book 2 contains 2 extra commons.
-The AI will prioritize the research of Aura of Majesty, Stream of Life, and Astral Gate before other spells.
-Sprites now has 2 ranged, 2 shields, 2 hit points, lucky, and a new ability : Fairy Dust Attack. This is an experimental feature subject to further change. Ranged attacks performed by the unit hit the target with a “Fairy Dust” spell that has strength equal to the attacking figures+2.
-Raised the amount of monsters in Towers by an additional +500 points, it is now 2000-4400 points.

Please report any bugs as usual, and let me know if you like the changes or not!

[Domon]

"-Sprites now has 2 ranged, 2 shields, 2 hit points, lucky, and a new ability : Fairy Dust Attack. This is an experimental feature subject to further change. Ranged attacks performed by the unit hit the target with a “Fairy Dust” spell that has strength equal to the attacking figures+2."

you were able to do such a thing?

more and more impressed.

was it hard?

[Seravy]

"-Sprites now has 2 ranged, 2 shields, 2 hit points, lucky, and a new ability : Fairy Dust Attack. This is an experimental feature subject to further change. Ranged attacks performed by the unit hit the target with a “Fairy Dust” spell that has strength equal to the attacking figures+2."

you were able to do such a thing?

more and more impressed.

was it hard?

Surprisingly not that much. Immolation already does this effect with different parameters so I could use that for this. Adding the ability icon took more time - fortunately I was able to reuse the code I had to make for Primal Force earlier.

[zitro1987]

I think that might make sprites overpowered when defending nodes. 4 shields with +1 to defend and higher hp (8 or 10?) is very significant.

Interesting idea nevertheless and looking forward to testing.

[Domon]

Well, you can't protect a node with op sprites if they fail to kill the great wyrm inside.

[Nelphine]

Looking at these changes:
Low books/high retorts got stronger. (Weren't these already the best? Or did I misinterpret?)
Choosing 5 books got 'better', but not as much better as either less books or more books. 5 books is therefore even worse off comparatively than it was before and it was already bad.
Choosing 7 books got noticeably better (it was already arguably the best number of books if you weren't going retort heavy.)
8, 9 and 10 all have noticeable benefits which is great. But no one addressed my point that even with these changes retorts are still better, and 8, 9, 10, aren't good enough to be worth losing retorts compared to 7.

And an overall comment - specialist is AMAZING now. It was already one of my first picks for every single strategy, and its miles better now.

[Nelphine]

Can we make some of the spellbook benefits based on total spellbooks instead of books over realm? Especially things like cost/research? That would make balancing easier maybe

[Seravy]

Can we make some of the spellbook benefits based on total spellbooks instead of books over realm? Especially things like cost/research? That would make balancing easier maybe

We could but that would be weird. I rather have the books provide benefits for their own realm.

As I said there are a lot of contradicting goals and any change might make things worse - which is why I never touched the system until now, it wasn't perfect but I wasn't sure there is a better solution.
Guaranteed spells are a feature that makes low books better and it's the biggest new thing, so I'm not surprised if high books look worse. (I'm more surprised you could play enough games to be able to tell - I haven't even started my first yet.)

Keep in mind (if you haven't actually played games and base your judgement on the numbers only) that the AI uses the same system - they are less likely to be vulnerable in the early and mid-game thanks to guaranteed uncommons, which should in theory make very rares more relevant, and they are probably also harder to get from treasure (no rank up mechanism - you actually have to find "very rare" treasure to get any) - but this is all just a theory, we'll need to play dozens of games to be able to tell for real.
The main question is, can people really win the game on 2 uncommons and a rare effectively, or do they need more spells in the higher ranks to do so.

I don't understand your comment about Specialist - that retort was not changed in any way, and the total sum of  cost bonus you can obtain is lower now, making it less effective (cost reductions get more effective at the higher numbers) - unless a 11th book is found.

Retorts are better by definition and I can't do anything with that, nor was it a goal of this update. Ultimately, books require researching and casting the spells, while retorts don't require either. However, retorts don't win the game - all of them merely boost your effectiveness by a percentage. If you don't have enough spells (or the spells you need), it doesn't matter how much bonus you have, you will still lose.
There is another, probably better and more scientific way to explain : Books provide you with your base "ability", let's call it X. Retorts are a multiplier to that, we call it Y. Math says If you want to max out X*Y where X+Y is a constant, you have to spend equally on both. So if books and retorts were perfectly balanced and of equal value, the best wizard would always be 6 books and 6 picks of retorts. And no matter how we change things, there will always be a point where X*Y is the highest, we can only move that point one way or another.

..meh, I ended up proving this problem cannot be fixed. Oh well, I guess that's one way to solve it. We have to accept some wizards are better than others and there are high difficulty levels exactly for that reason.

[zitro1987]

The only way to properly balance book against retorts is to have max books at 9 or even 8, forcing bonuses of each individual book stronger. This concept will have to be combined with 11 intro picks instead of 12

That doesn't mean it is a 'fix' and in the wrong hands, can make retorts overly powerful. I can only see this alteration only working with max 9 books.
Book 01 : 3/2/0/0, 0/0/0/0, Find/Trade common
Book 02 : 4/2/1/1, 1/0/0/0, Find/Trade Uncommon
Book 03 : 5/4/2/2, 2/0/0/0, Find/Trade Rare
Book 04 : 6/5/3/3, 3/0/0/0, Find/Trade Very Rare
Book 05 : 8/6/5/4, 4/1/0/0,
Book 06 : 10/7/6/5, 5/2/0/1,
Book 07 : 10/10/7/6, 5/0/2/1,
Book 08 : 10/10/10/7, 5/0/2/0,
Book 09 : 10/10/10/10, 5/0/2/0, +10% research, -6% casting cost
Not bad, more powerful books, but not necessarily better than Seravy's experiment right now.

[Nelphine]

You ask how I win with 2 uncommon and 1 rare. I don't. I win with 3 commons.

You also ask doesn't the AI get a boost from this? The answer is yes, but they won't get better by a significant amount. My 3 common strategy already assumes the computer gets ideal spells, because they've always had that chance - so to plan on anything less is risking luck. Now they just get ideal spells more often, but that doesn't change the strategy.

Let us use catwalks sprites as our example and pretend for the moment you didn't change sprites. Please note that my discussion is not about the sprite changes, they are purely being used as an example we all understand.

Catwalk has crazy sprites, and we want to deal with it. We have 3 options (I think). We can pick one part of the strategy and try to make it worse (this is actually what you have done with the sprite change, but that is not relevant for this discussion.) We can make large reaching changes to the entire spellbook/retort system (this is also something you have done, and it is relevant to this discussion.) Or we can try to change the AI so they are not so vulnerable - in other words, we can make them cheat more.

My comments on the spellbook changes are based around these three options. You have tried to make them more balanced, but you've done so in a way that makes few books/many retorts stronger.

This leads to two things: first, the strongest human strategies got stronger. Second, the AI cannot use these strategies (since they can't go retort heavy).

However, assuming the changes do what they are supposed to (which I certainly haven't tested yet, but for this discussion, its a good assumption) that means strategies using lots of books, regardless of how many realms are involved, will be more balanced. Notably that means different AI strategies will be more balanced.

This then will lead the few book/many retorts human strategies to be roughly equal no matter what AI they are against. Since they are already strong, this could very well lead to deciding that the only way to fix the gap between these strategies and the AI, will be to have the AI cheat more.

I do not want to see the AI cheat more. I already think the AI cheats too much, and should be toned down - the AI is very good.

Therefore I think any system of changes that not only does not address the problem of few books/many retorts (which is OK - its a VERY hard thing to address) but also actually makes those strategies stronger (as this one does) is a mistake.


For your question about specialist - it will become the only reasonable way to get cost reduction on spells. This is very important, and so it will be more desired. (Its already the main reason I choose the retort. Everything else is gravy.)


For your comment about base ability, spells are NOT your bass ability. Cities are. Let's call it C. Spells are modifiers to that - some are multipliers, and some, like summons, are additive. So the formula is C*Y*X + Y*X.

It is not impossible to balance - rather the problem is timing. The nature of the AI cheating means that on order to win, you must do so early enough that their overwhelming resource advantage doesn't destroy you. Different strategies will have different times in the game where they 'peak' and are able to defeat the AI. But the higher the AI cheating, the shorter those time periods are (regardless of when they are). So trying to balance retorts and spells is intrinsically limited by the time scales put in place by the AI cheating. Reducing AI cheating will actually make large scale balancing easier, although individual strategies (like catwalks initial sprites) might be even more successful.

I think for a healthier testing of balance, cheating should be reduced, so that you can then address the difference between spellbooks and retorts by making more strategies viable (even if some, the current strong ones, will start out by destroying AI when cheating is reduced.)


More on topic:
As a further note: one big thing you are concerned about is making sure AI have enough commons to play effectively. This is put directly against the fact that low spellbooks/many retorts rely on only a few spells to win.

Given that AI do not have the ability to be retort heavy, you could increase how many spellbooks are needed for starting commons, and simply put slightly higher minimums on AI spellbooks in one realm. It would dilute triple realm AI, in that they would still have a focus in one realm as opposed to being roughly equal in all 3, but I think it would be a good first move towards balancing retorts and spellbooks.alternatively, for triple realms, teach them to pick spells from each realm that complement - they don't the vest spell from each, they need the best spell from certain groups - like they only need one combat spell not lnr from each realm, similar to how guaranteed uncommons take other realms into consideration

(Its also why I suggested making reductions based on number of books - 2 realm builds with 12 books might versatility but they have far lower reductions than 10 books in one realm, which means not only does one realm get more very rares, which should be balanced by 2 realms getting very rates of multiple realms, but the single realm gets noticeable reductions, allowing him to cast more of his powerful spells - and the realms are specifically designed to be stand alone, so versatility us not countering this greater quantity.)