Myrran retort

[zitro1987]

I still recommend that if we do lose a unit, (if Seravy is against removing bowmen, it could be removal of spearman or even shaman), for fun and lore and uniqueness, I still recommend the following traits:

*Lore-centric sage-like unit or firebreather.
*Requires Sage's Guild, maybe a minor 2nd building
*Costs less than 100
*Caster 20
*No ranged shots
*Mediocre melee/firebreath combat but more durable than a magician (2 hp/figure instead of 1)

Purpose in Game - an early non-ranged caster that can't be abused too well early on with focus magic (sure, +15 caster is nice, but not optimal with common spells). This unit not necessarily obsolete against later magicians due to lower cost and higher hp.

Uniqueness - a massively produced caster unit that doesn't do much other than spend its mana points. Early potential for spell-casting units outside heroes.


*edit - I agree with Seravy, so I want to focus on a Sage Guild cheap non-ranged caster 20 unit

[Seravy]

Oh one thing I should have realized. Doom Drakes also fill the role of a heavy fire breath unit, albeit it has much less figures and is late game. At least it has the durability (and fear) to survive attacking, and the speed to make it there. So this new unit would be conflicting with the role of those - if stronger then because it's just as good but comes earlier, and it weak then because it's pointless to make any instead of going straight to doom drakes. First Striking isn't a tactic where a larger amount of weaker units are effective, unlike normal melee.

[Seravy]

5.02 with the reduced Myrran cost is up for download now. Adjusted the Draconian bowmen a little, any more drastic changes (if necessary) will have to wait until after I played games using them.

[Seravy]

Looked into the "free byte" in unit data - unfortunately it's not free at all - it is used after loading a unit to store the pointer to the unit's loaded graphics I think.
So we have no room for adding variable Caster into unit data.
I guess making a hardcoded list of units and their MP is a possibility but...then I need to make at least 100-200 bytes of free space in ovr116.
That sounds hard to do and space there is quite valuable - any unit stat effect goes into that area from holy weapon to mind storm and spell ward.

[Nelphine]

These fancy new dwarves still don't stand up to chaos lunatic AI.. mystic surge destroys elite adamantium golems, and, well, corruption/volcanoes destroy minerals. Admittedly I got greedy and colonized 6 cities, and then spread myself way too thin trying to defend it. Should have done 3 or 4 and went crazy on defense before doing anything more. (In other words: I played poorly, don't take this as any kind of indication of anything.)

[Arnuz]

Yeah you should really first strike a myrran chaos AI when playing dwarves. Probably more important that sorcery. The amount of production, gold and mana should easily allow you to plan that.

[Nelphine]

Nah, he found me late, and declared war the turn after. He was the smaller of the myrran ai. But yeah, I overextended, so I didn't have my navy ready to immediately go off and hit him. Then he did 6 volcanoes in the first 2 turns of the war.

[Arnuz]

Triremes are cheap! Find the AIs first!

[Nelphine]

They're only cheap individually. They're expensive in terms of opportunity cost of more military and more settlers. (When I died I only had one city, my capital, that could build triremes - although it was building warships; and only had one other hamlet on an ocean - it had farmers market, sawmill, miners guild, all of which are more important than triremes.)

I shouldn't have built my other 4 settlers, but instead built 13 halberdiers/steam cannons to defend my 3 cities. Then used the 2 warships and 3 golems I sent to defend those other 4 cities to find and kill the chaos AI first. (But those other 4 cities had: a second coal/adamantium city, a 4th adamantium city, 5 gold mines, and 3 blue crystals. That was literally 2/3 of my income. And if I hadn't taken it, by the time I reached the chaos AI, the sorcery AI would have settled all 4 of them.)

[Arnuz]

Yep but then there's the other opportunity cost: being found by an AI before you find them