CHAOS Realm

[Littlenog]

7. Fire Giant
Cost : 125
Maintenance : 3
Research : Normal
Effect : Summoning 1 figure : Melee 18, Magical Ranged 12 (3 ammo),  +1 To Hit, Defense 5, Resistance 7, Moves 3, 18 health, Mountaineer, Fire Immunity, Wall Crusher.

Gave this +3 health and the Fireball Spell, lowered cost to 125. See old comments below.

(Costs as much as a Stag Beetle but is actually not any stronger aside from having a rather limited ranged attack despite being a summoned unit. This has been buffed up several times but is still kinda unimpressive. Giving it a Fireball Spell ability, more armor, or more health could be needed.)

My idea for the Fire Giant is give them Long Range for their Rock Toss (If it is not immune to warp wood I would make it immune like Slingers).  They already have +1 to hit if you lower the range penalty and let the rocks hit a bit harder for a Maint 3 with Melee they don't seem so bad maybe?

[Seravy]

Fire giants in the mod use magical ranged attacks, and thus have no ranged penalty at all.

[Seravy]

I found Doom Mastery early in a node this game...and I can't use it because I'm playing buffed halfling slingers and using it would prevent Holy Weapon, Heroism, and Flame Blade.
This is not very fun so I'm wondering what reason I had to keep it that way - looked through the thread but couldn't find posts about that. Undead not working with these is fine - they are 100% fantastic creatures for all intents and purposes, and they are "opt-in", you make things undead on a per-unit basis. But Chaos Channels is mandatory (with Doom Mastery) and the units are only halfway fantastic (they still have levels and gain experience for example).

Life spells aside it even has negative synergy with its own realm (Flame Blade). Being able to buff things, THEN Chaos Channel is a nice trick and I do like tricks like this, but that does not work with Doom Mastery and is somewhat counter-intuitive, too.

So yeah, was there a post where I had a reason for keeping this "feature/bug" or is it just something I had no time to deal with?

[Nelphine]

I've brought it up a few times (holy arms vs doom mastery, which is very ai unfriendly, so maybe in life thread? Also flame blade vs doom mastery because flame blade by itself is often far better than chaos channels, again very ai unfriendly; and general life Commons vs doom mastery) And you've always been against it.

The impression you gave was that you disagreed that it was a problem, and that buff stacking is too strong anyway so who cares.

Perhaps that's not a favorable interpretation of what you meant, but it's still the impression given.

[Nelphine]

Nevermind confirmed nothing was mentioned in the life realm thread.

That means it's probably in random play threads.

[Seravy]

"buff stacking is too strong anyway" yeah that makes sense I guess. +3 armor that can't be dispelled is quite a big deal - albeit that's about it, flight and breath probably aren't a threat to balance.

Holy Arms, btw is an entirely different subject while obviously related. It's an interaction that rarely comes up, and one that has to be implemented in the "unit stat" procedure. The common buffs on the other hand need to have their targeting restrictions changed. (which is probably even harder since there are 4 of them : combat/overland, AI and human - this probably is the main reason why I haven't really made a decision and just let it hanging with "buffing is OP anyway")

So yeah, we will need to look at several separate things :
-Is Chaos Channells stacking with buffs a threat to game balance (any more than buffs already are?)
-Is it even doable to change the targeting restriction to exclude Chaos Channels?
-Which restrictions do we want to remove? (Overland targeting, combat targeting, passive bonus like Holy Arms)
-Would this change make the game more fun to play? (I think that's probably a yes)
-Wouldn't this make Doom Mastery overpowered? (as it's losing its greatest drawback?)

[Nelphine]

The greatest drawback to doom mastery is the units are now fantastic, and vulnerable to the higher tier spells that target fantastic units.
Unlike holy arms, this provides it a major drawback (except against death where the immunity to spells targetting city units is much more important).

If you're going to make the change, I think it must include overland/combat/holy arms. Only doing some would be extremely confusing.

Chaos channels generally doesn't add a lot to buff stacking as you can't control what buff you get so you often don't need the one you want. The exception is fliers with a ranged/magic/breath/thrown already, as you can force the bonus to armor and therefore know what you'll get.

Overall yes this will be a benefit to chaos. But I consider chaos to be weaker than life/nature/sorcery as it is, and this is boosting the area chaos is worst at anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue. Additionally playing AGAINST doom mastery is not unfun, whereas many of chaos strengths often are unfun (city curses and unavoidable mass damage); so giving strength to enjoyable areas I think is a good idea.

Life will be a much bigger concern, as free buffs on the realm that focuses on city troops could be dangerous. But generally life can't guarantee getting this spell unless they have more chaos than life (in which case they aren't really life and won't get a lot of the life tricks), or they give up all retorts (which is a much bigger loss).

Overall I think boosting the strength of doom mastery is fine.

[Seravy]

A quick peek at the code, will do more later.

AI overland will be fine - AI targeting procedures are made entirely by me anyway.
Combat human is a problem - this uses the battle unit, which is completely a chaos creature - its type is already overwritten by the spell. It is also checked in two different places - first for the "there are no units to target" message, then for the "this unit can't be targeted" one. Even if I were to add an exception to exclude units with Chaos Channells it would be wrong - if an already fantastic unit ends up with Chaos Channells somehow, it'd be a valid target. I don't really have a good, consistent solution, if I were to look at the original type of the unit, it'd fail to catch other type changing effects.
AI combat is probably a problem for the same reason - there is no way to tell if the unit would be fantastic without the Chaos Channels or not.
Human overland - looks problematic at first sight but at least there is nothing that would make it impossible in theory.

[Nelphine]

The only way to have chaos channels AND originally be a fantastic unit is via Mystic Surge. Since Chaos Channels is one of the less interesting results Mystic Surge can give you, I don't think it would be a problem to simply say 'in combat, if the unit has chaos channels, it is a valid target for these spells'. Yes, mystic surged chaos channel fantastic units could get it, but I think that's fine. It still requires yet another combat turn spent casting a single unit buff, and mystic surge obviously isn't reliable in the first place.

[Seravy]

So there are two possible approaches :

Valid target = any currently normal unit + any unit with chaos channels on.
As you say, this will give a false positive on a Mystic Surged Fantastic unit that got the buff.
But it'll also be a false positive on any undead that has Chaos Channels on (can that happen?) and any creature raised from Death with CC on (as they are fantastic from Raise Dead) or anything with Mystic Surge (as they are fantastic from Mystic Surge).

Valid target = any unit whose base unit type is normal.
This will be a false positive for any undead, raised, or mystic surged creature the same way as the "any unit with chaos channels on" case, except here it doesn't even need it to count.