New experimental version

[Seravy]

Found a bug in EXP9E :

EXP9F
-AI will prioritize casting flight or wraith form if a high value melee unit is stuck inside a flying fortress as a defender and can't leave.
-Fixed : Game is crashing when AI is casting Summoning Circle.
-Fixed : Black Sleep doesn't remove flying movement from units if Flight was cast on them during combat.
-Adjusted garrison priority of Great Wyrm and Behemoth
-Minor changes to the research cost of a few common spells

[Seravy]

EXP9G
-Unit offensive rating (AI/Strategic combat) - thrown/breath now has a multiplier of *20 instead of *30.
-Flying Fortress now grants flying movement to all units defending the enchanted city. This flight cannot be removed by Black Sleep and Web.
-Unit offensive rating (AI/Strategic combat) - First Strike now doesn't apply a bonus to thrown/breath rating.
-Fixed : “Cheap buff stacking” addressed the wrong spell table so it didn't use the correct spells in correct amounts.
-Reduced additional “curse priority” from Divine Orders from +40 to +25.
-Great Drake costs 500, Hydra costs 480, Death Knights cost 420.
-Doom Bat gains +2 armor
-Great Drake gains +1 armor, +5 HP
-Angel gains +1 attack, +1 armor, +2 HP
-Archangel gains +2 attack, +2 armor, +5 HP
-Behemoth gains +1 armor
-Great Wyrms gain +4 attack
-Fixed : “Destruction” has inconsistent ratings (120 in melee and 250 in ranged), now always has 250.
-Reduced Death Touch and Stoning Touch ratings to 160
-Regeneration and Herb Mastery restores 2 HP/turn

[Nelphine]

Testing regenerate: 9 war trolls (level 3, alchemy) all with endurance, against 3 colossus and a giant spider (in a lair).

Cost involved: 1350 production + 630 mana vs .. ~1600 mana. (I don't remember updated summoning costs.) Assuming production is worth 20% less than mana since its easier to acquire, that's 1720 mana vs ~1600 mana. The war trolls should win, but only barely.

I ended up using 4 holy weapons during the battle, so that skews it a little more towards my war trolls winning based on cost.

I started by hitting auto. Killed the spider and 2 colossus, but lost 4 units of war trolls in the process. All my others were hurt, and I was going to lose against the last colossus.

Turned off auto, cast the 4 holy weapons (my other unit for caught and died before I could buff it); then ran around in circles till turn 17 healing my trolls.

I still lost another unit, but I killed the colossus.


To me, regenerate at 2hp/round was key to this. I might have won at 1hp/round, but it would have been turn ~25, or I would have had to risk attacks with 2 figures and I might have lost from attacking too early.

Based on costs and units involved, I think this was ideal, and the balance here was wonderful.

Oh hell, I had charm of life cast. Well, that skews things dramatically in the trolls favor, and shows that very rares, at least colossus, are well balanced against city troops, at least war trolls.

In strategic, I don't think it would have been remotely close; my trolls would have simply clobbered the colossus.

[Seravy]

EXP9H
-New AI overland spell selection category : Spell Lock. For each unit that has 4 or more non-Spell Lock buffs, priority is added to this category.
-Bless priority in “cheap buff stacking” category raised from 100 to 130
-Disenchant Area priorities raised - as the AI uses minimal slider, more attempts are necessary than usual. Might still need further raising.
-Angel gains +1 armor.
-Elemental Armor cost raised to 18/90.
-Iron Skin cost reduced to 24/120.
-Regeneration cost reduced to 36/180.
-Invisibility cost reduced to 30/150.
-Magic Immunity cost reduced to 35/175.
-Invulnerability cost reduced to 30/150.
-Lionheart cost reduced to 36/180.

[Nelphine]

Channeler is amazing for the AI after they get banished. I think it might actually make the retort worth 2 picks.

[Seravy]

EXP9I
-Fixed : AI uses Spell Binding when it doesn't have the spell
-Fixed : Mystic Surge granting Endurance doesn't apply the “+1 to Def” bonus.
-When the AI steals the player's enchantments, the message “Your global enchantment was stolen!” appears.

[asche]

EXP9I
-Fixed : AI uses Spell Binding when it doesn't have the spell
-Fixed : Mystic Surge granting Endurance doesn't apply the “+1 to Def” bonus.
-When the AI steals the player's enchantments, the message “Your global enchantment was stolen!” appears.

Potential bug: Casting "Cloak of fear" on a Doom Drake (which has built-in Cause Fear) reliably insta-crashes the game.

(and BTW: Soooooo many thanks for continuing to improve this great game!)

[Seravy]

Update!

EXP9J
-Fixed 3.24b bug : When Cloak of Fear is cast on a unit that already has the ability, the game crashes.
-Call Lightning now does strength 10 lightning bolts.
-A new AI overland spell category has been added : “Doomstack Participation Enabler”. Contains Wraith Form and Water Walking, and is used after turn 200 if the AI does not have naturally intercontinental, powerful summon spells : Djinn, Sky Drake, Archangel, Efreet, Great Drake, Wraiths, Death Knight or Demon Lord. This ensures whichever strong units the AI has instead, will be turned intercontinental often enough to form doomstacks.
-The AI now recognized natural wind walkers as units that shouldn't use plane shifting on top of enchanted windwalkers.
-AI Doomstack building procedure will no longer consider windwalking units currently carrying land units over ocean as valid for use.
-Move Fortress no longer changes the wizard's home race.
-Racial unrest tables have been modified,

[Nelphine]

Shouldn't the doomstack participation enabled include flight as well?

[Seravy]

I left that one out because it's too expensive.
Wraith Form is too but that at least provides some very valuable immunities (web, entangle, crack's call) and some less valuable ones (poison, weapon) while Flight does not and costs 66% more. A doomstack quality unit that's also immune to webbing is massively superior so it's usually worth the cost. Even if the player isn't using Nature, web is available on 3 different heroes or undead spiders, and picking 1-2 nature books just for it is frequent. Noncorporeal movement is also faster than plain waterwalking (albeit this is true for Flight as well).
Yes, flight is useful protection against melee but at the time very rares are around, the player is expected to have a way to deal with it, and a doomstack isn't meant for such tactics anyway, if it's not obliterating the enemy regardless of flight, then it's not doing it's job.

The other reason is it's an Uncommon, and in Sorcery. It's not a frequent scenario for the AI to play enough Sorcery to have the spell, yet have no flying summons and be so weak after turn 200 to need a strong doomstack.

The main situation this is meant for is Nature wizards - none of their summons fly and they are guaranteed to have water walk anyway - wraith form is merely there as it's an upgrade over water walking worth the investment. Every other realm has mostly flying rare and above creatures - I think the only two that do not fly are Storm Giant and Hydra.

...which reminds me, I probably should have included Doom Bat on the list of creatures that disable the need for this tactic, it's also a flying rare. (I intentionally left Angel out as it's not very powerful in battle and works better if other units are mixed in the stack.)