Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Nelphine]

Yes, go to the next turn, take the stack of steam cannons, attack the nature node. (You'll lose unless you're crazy super man - actually, I almost won the second time, only one great lizard left - 9 steam cannons killed the great wyrm and 4 great lizards). Then summon a floating island and cancel it.

So I THINK it has to do with a combat ending (since I was winning against the hell hounds, and losing against the nature node) and then cancelling a floating island.

With losing, I'm just getting frozen; with winning the graphics go completely wonky, but I can still move the cursor (even though I can't do anything.)

[Seravy]

Oh, cancel that way. I was "cancelling" by disbanding the island. This should be easy to find then - I bet the spell simply does not handle cancelling correctly.
...or not, from what I see it does exit the procedure without summoning correctly.

...except for one thing. After summoning, it correctly skips showing the "summon animation" for Floating Island, BUT still does the rest of the process : sets the movement of the unit, and centers the screen. But the unit wasn't actually summoned so that shouldn't be done at all... and this is where the connection with the battle comes from. It uses the last unit in the array (which is always the new summoned creature unless there isn't one) so if that unit is something that shouldn't exists outside of battle (and does not, as it's dead, but that isn't checked as the new unit can't be dead normally) then we have a problem because it has invalid overland positions.

...Now how do I fix this, is the problem.

Option A : If you cancel the spell, it'll ask you to cast it again anyway, so basically the cancel button won't do anything. (easy)
Option B : Try to hack the procedure to return a value that marks whether it was cancelled and if yes, skip the position setting. (lots of work)

I'm leaning towards Option A, but if someone casts this without having seen a sea tile, they'd be stuck so that's not really good.

...or maybe, how about

Option C : If a Floating Island was summoned, skip the centering and setting remaining movement. I HOPE new units are created with no movement used up in the first place, otherwise this won't work... but if they are, setting it here is redundant.

[Seravy]

Ehh, it is getting created with no movement left. I guess option C is out then.
Option B seems to work.

[Nelphine]

I dunno, I think its fine for it to be summoned with no movement. Just add it to the description that its supposed to work that way. Gives it a cost comparative to building a ship (where you would have to build it in a specific location that's often not convenient)

[Seravy]

No need, "B" worked.

[Nelphine]

That works then. I promise I'm not trying to find bugs :P

[Seravy]

Release time!

5.2
-Fixed Stroke of Genius not researching very rare spells due to the raised research costs.
-Casting Lycanthropy on a unit will now remove unit enchantments that require their target to be a normal unit.
-”normal unit only” buffs can now target units whose base type is normal, even if they are undead or have Chaos Channels on, or have been raised from dead or Mystic Surged.
-When an AI wants to offer a peace treaty or trade, it'll skip the “Break Alliance” check. It'll only do that if it is trying to offer a Wizard's Pact or Alliance.
-Fixed bug : Hitting Cancel on Floating Island causes crashes and data corruption.
-AI should no longer attack with an empty Floating Island into a weak unit that has equally low military rating, such as a Magic Spirit.
-Replaced the effect of Spell Binding : now it will allow the caster to “learn” a global enchantment another wizard knows, allowing the user to cast it, instead of changing the controller of the copy in play. However, there is a limitation to how often/many spells can be obtained.
-When there is only 1 wizard on a plane and at least 3 on another, there will be a land size modifier that makes the crowded plane 20% larger, the other 20% smaller than the default. This is an experimental feature to balance the (probably unreasonable) power of the lone Myrran enemy wizard.
-Minor change to AI priorities when picking targets to attack by units in combat.
-In the optional portrait files, the Dwarf hero's unit sprites have been redrawn to match the character name and portrait.
-In the optional portrait files, the Wind Mage hero's unit sprites have been redrawn to match the character name and portrait.
-Catapults now have 1 less ranged attack strength and cost 12 more.
-Steam Cannons have 2 less ranged attack strength.
-AI will not use rapid myrran expansion tactic on Expert difficulty anymore.
-Expert Difficulty AI changes :
production bonus +48->+40%
gold bonus +60%->+50%
research bonus +50%->+60%
overland casting cost 50%->55%
-Life Drain now has a -5 save modifier instead of -4.

Do report if you find bugs (especially with the new Spell Binding!)

[Seravy]

5.21
-AI will now avoid targeting undead units with Blizzard the same way it does for naturally cold immune units.
-Fixed bug : AI will sometimes target units with too much resistance using Annihilate or Exorcise
-Fixed 5.2 bug : AI cannot cast Disjunction.
-The AI will now avoid casting Final Wave if there are not enough units that will get affected. Priority to cast is proportional to expected amount of killed units. Note that unlike Great Unsummoning, this won't attempt to avoid killing allied units. Also note this, just like Great Unsummoning, looks at the base resistance of the units, not their effective resistance, however it does make adjustments for unit levels.
-Wave of Despair now has a base strength of 250 instead of 222 but enemy resistance is subtracted twice from it. This should make it roughly identical to the previous version for few average resistance targets, but damage against many high resistance targets will be worse.
-Fixed 5.2 bug : When targeting “normal unit only” spells in combat, an “invalid target” cursor appears.
-Fixed bug : “invalid target” cursor is shown when using a ranged attack against invisibility on a unit that does have Immunity to Illusions.
-Lightning Bolt now has strength 36 instead of 35.
-Repear Slash now has strength 42 instead of 45.
-Wrack now has a -1 save penalty
-The AI will now avoid using Wave of Despair against 9 targets (it's far too unlikely to cause relevant damage worth the cost with the new formula. Probably better to use a single target nuke even if they are low resist.)
-Hero units are now unaffected by range penalties on their bow attacks.
-Fixed bug : sometimes units are displayed with + To Def on the production view when they should not.
-Supreme Light no longer regenerates units during combat, only at the end of combat.
-Doomsday now causes cities that exceed their maximal population to have an additional -200 population growth.

[Nelphine]

Whoot! Been waiting for the disjunction fix. I think I should aim for a game with 4 AI all getting very rares. Not sure how to artificially speed up their research though.

[Nelphine]

Noticed something odd:

Summon hero (1280 research, 4 turns) vs Unicorns (1280 research, 3 turns), vs Shadow Demons (2140 research, 5 turns).

Summon hero is not getting the research bonus from Conjuror. (This is probably on purpose, I just don't remember it.)