Test games played

[Seravy]

The ship is built in the city with the stack already garrisonung the city, and the real garrison waiting outside, so no need to waste movement moving into the ship

Doesn't make a difference, city or not the units spend a movement point for moving from the land to the first tile of sea. It still means you can't make it through on 3 tile wide seas, only 2. But it's more realistic to assume armies will have 2 movement, which is only 1 tile wide seas. That might be good enough for Huge land maps, but on Fair or Tiny, it won't.

But really, the inconsistency is the disturbing issue for me - either the units are carried and don't spend moves, or aren't and spend moves, but windwalking does BOTH. They are carried and don't spend moves if they have exactly 0.5 moves left and the ship didn't use their last movement.

I actually wonder how other games implement transports, but I doubt it's this way.

I only know HoMM is different there entering and leaving ship takes a turn. However there the units get to participate in sea combat and ships don't, so the wait never puts the units at risk. I don't remember the Civ games anymore but they were from the same company so I guess it was same as MoM. And I haven't played anything newer.

[Nelphine]

I was too hasty in my comment last night anyway. Windwalkers can go on land, which means the ruleset isn't quite translatable to shops anyway.

However, I think my biggest problem is that ships are flat out better at transport than windwalkers. And 3 realms can give you flying ships, so you just never transition away from ships, because windwalkers are bad. So the units we get on turn 10 of whenever you get that first trireme.. already make very rare units obsolete as long as you can deal with the 'dying at sea' combat problem.

But you're right that wjndwalkers are inconsistent.. but it's still intuitive. Units don't move farther than they should, unless being transported, but you can disembark and not be forced to keep moving if the windwalker wants to drop you off. That's the biggest problem with ships. You can't NOT be carried. So heaven help you if you move the wrong one of your 50+ stacks first, it's out of movement, and blocking the ship's way, so now the ship is forced to carry you. Thought that node was protected ? Nope! Only if you don't move your doomstack. Oh wait, thought that city garrison was coming with you like the node garrison? Gotcha! City garrisons don't get moved! Now your ship has to go back and pick them up next turn, and the ai doomstack can't be intercepted now!

So anyway, sorry for my tone. But I do think ship movement is problematic. But I'm one person! Get some other voices before you listen to mine.

[Nelphine]

Other big problem is that ships and windwalkers are inconsistent. Particularly if you use flying ships a lot, this has bad results - my windwalkers regularly fly away from patrolled stacks they were supposed to pick up because I mix it up with ships. (And this causes me to save reload ... Regularly. This and attacking an AI unit because it was out of my vision when I started the movement are my biggest save reload moments.)

For me, I think they need to be the same - whether you use ship or windwalker rules, or something else entirely, they both need to be the same, simply for ease of use and learning.

[Seravy]

Actually there is one more problem.
Let's assume for a moment the world is perfect and ships and windwalkers work the same way. (using the ship ruleset, whichever that ends up being)
So what happens when the two move together?
Option A, the windwalker counts as a ship so will not work as if it was a normal unit, in this example, it won't be carried and would use up movement, while all nonwindwalker units are still carried. In this case windwalkers would not be able to use ships. We clearly want windwalkers to act as normal units when on board a ship.
Option B, the windwalker counts as a unit, so it will be carried, using no movement. However, this applies both ways, so the windwalker is also carrying the ship, the ship uses no movement. So then the stack can move without spending movement, for an infinite distance.

So the two can't be the same, as one has to take priority over the other if they are both in the stack. (currently the ship takes priority if it's sailing and the windwalker takes priority if the ship is not sailing, if I remember that right.)

In well designed games this is simple - instead of the units moving as a stack you actually load the units into the ship, windwalker or any other form of transport, move the transport, then unload the units. Then you define rules on loading and unloading, while transportation only moves the transport itself and doesn't affect the units. So that way it's well defined which unit is carrying the others. Here, the game has to take guesses, and then cancel spending movement points based on those guesses, and stack the movement types and displayed amount into one shared type based on that guess etc. It's a horrible mess.

(In fact, this goes even deeper, for example a unit that walks 5 and a unit that flies 2 can't move over a mountain together even though they individually can, as their shared movement type and amount is "walking 2".)

[Nelphine]

I don't think that one is an issue actually. We'll still have 2 different unit buff flags, so we can still prioritize which one carries, and I would assume it would be a currently - a ship on terrain it can move on (water by default but also land if the ship can fly or has wraithform) carries the windwalker, while a ship on illegal terrain is carried by windwalkers.

The bigger problem is 2 ships stacked together. Currently, they only both move if both are selected. 

But this leads to weird situations where a ship and several water walking units are patrolled somewhere (for instance guarding a chokepoint) and a second ship moves over them (say, you left 7 water walking units to garrison specifically to allow other ships to move through), and as the second ship moves through, it 'carries' the patrolled garrison along, but not the second ship. Yet on the map, transports are always the top of the stack, so the human doesn't even see a difference that the garrison is suddenly gone.


At the very least, without changing any other rules, I'd like to see ships stop transporting patrolled units, when those units are on legal terrain for their movement type.

[Sapher]

Recorded a new lunatic playthrough using heroes strategy. Part1
No adamantium was found this time so my draconian archers are a bit weak (i have alchemy for +1 to hit for them so whatever, they can work even without adamantium). Start is not very lucky, bad heroes from prisons(i aim for agility and hate mages). But i have a lot of time to find someone better because myrran is almost mine. Yea, i can't kill fortresses yet, but who cares. Later.

[Seravy]

Thanks, will watch immediately.

Meanwhile checked the Life Drain tables vs resistance, and you pretty much specifically need 4 or 5 resistance targets for the Life Drain spam on trolls to actually be gamebeaking. (it's still profitable at 6 and 7 but the amount is much more reasonable)
So raising Troll resistance specifically, might be enough to close this hole. Whether we want to or not, I don't know as I haven't yet tested the race, but low resistance is supposed to be the weak point of most regenerating units (as mostly resist based spells are the ones that prevent regeneration) however, as the problem is specific to spearmen and swordsmen, raising both to the 5 resistance of halberdier (which is 6 as soon as the unit gains a level and they likely will, as it only takes 30 turns to do so) could be a solution even if we do not raise resistance of the race globally.

[Sapher]

Added part 2 a bit earlier because i will have no time to do that tommorow  

[Seravy]

Oh, Life Drain is -5 to save now. Yes, remember now, we raised the save modifier. We likely should have reduced the gained power multiplier at the same time then? It roughly means +5 SP gained each use, basically 50% more effectiveness at making SP out of MP. So targets need to be at least 7 resist for the effect to not be gamebreakingly powerful which is a lot. At 4 SP/damage, it would be 18 SP for 6 resist targets which is still great but more reasonable, and would be a net gain it up to 8 resistance (at 1x range). Syphon Life is about 20 more SP each use (at a 4x modifier) but costs 20 more MP so it should be fine.

[Seravy]

Started the next test game. Same strategy, death werewolves, Alchemy, Specialist, Nomads.
I started on a small/medium continent, about 10 cities size. Shared the continent with another wizard, Maniacal Militarist Life/Nature. Guranteed to be an enemy so perfect for the first target. Playing Klackons too, one of the very few races I definitely want to raze (+3 unrest to nomads).
Starting city has mithril. Continent has plenty of rivers. Found 3 neutrals, I burned the Barbarian and kept the lizardmen and orc. Now building a trireme to scout other areas. A many Phantom Beast Sorcery node will be easy for werewolves and horsebowmen. Two targets with cockatrices, these might be good for horsebowmen. Not much for werewolves and I already pretty much defeated the wizard here simply by starting too close to them. Used Life Drain to kill all their swordsmen in outposts, giving me some nice no maintenance unrest removal. I already reduced Life Drain to 4 SP/damage, but it's still amazing for raising my skill, which went up from 20 to 30, without any regenerating target - I killed about 10 random weak units with it total and that was all. So 5 SP was clearly too much.

Death is really powerful - not only does it have the very powerful regenerating werewolves, but also gains casting skill for free and gains units for free, without maintenance. No other realm comes close at common rarity. Ideal for Nomads who struggle with food problems otherwise, and generally are busy producing horsebowmen so aren't doing that well on building magic power boosting buildings.

Life Drain is powerful enough to win the war against the first enemy by itself - it effectively costs no MP to use (you'd need to spend the MP on casting skill anyway), and also provides free units to enable starting battles to use it. Of course this is only true is they start this close, and have no powerful early creature - Bears and Nagas, even Hell Hounds have enough health to be able to survive 1-2 used of Life Drain and once they AI has multiples in a stack, you need something more powerful to fight them  but zombies usually do the job against all but the bears.

Found an island and a continent to the south. No sign of other wizards yet. The continent has two neutral cities, a high men and an orc. The island has another "many phantom beasts" node. It also had a many ghouls lair and has a chaos spawn lair too. The continent has a phantom beast place, the other half is not yet scouted. The wizard has no cities aside from the capital left, unless he has one on a continent I haven't found. Since he was at the norther tip of my continent and I scouted towards south, this is very well possible, albeit as the continent has very good terrain I assume most of his settlers went for those places and got killed. One more person has Just Cause but I forgot which portrait it was, maybe Tenshi? No other globals so at least two nonlife wizards in the game.

I found a dervish hero as prisoner which I plan to only keep while the 20 gold is a relevant income, and I was able to hire a beastmaster. Unfortunately I don't think I can use them against the AI's fortress which is full of sprites - the plan for that is researching mana leak (5 more turns or less if I want to), and using 9 mithil horsebowmen. I'm going to raze it because klackons and on a pop 19 spot which is good enough to have nomads. For the spots with bad terrain, I plan to spread the orcs. High Men unrest is also +3 so while I plan to keep the neutral once my wolves get there, I rather not build more of them.

Suddenly both other wizards appear at the same turn. Tenshi, 5 chaos, 5 life, Warlord and Reimu 9 Life 1 Chaos 1 Nature Conjurer. Reimu didn't pick Just Cause because 9 books are enough to have it anyway so that's why it wasn't cast. Tenshi is peaceful and my army strength is higher so I think I should focus my attention on figuring out where Reimu is spreading from.

So, my horsebowmen got slaughtered - they didn't survive 2 turns, despite mithril and barracks. Sprites are really powerful defenders, I should have known better than to attack them. Heavenly light now buffing ranged makes a huge difference, so does the walls, this battle is normally a win for the horsebowmen. I have to re-learn the game again

Reimu seems to be playing Nomads, while Tenshi is Lizardmen.  By the time I'll start attacking Tenshi, razing will likely be obsolete so I guess I'll have to keep the lizardmen cities.
   
The updated AI diplomacy formula already seems to have an effect - the peaceful wizard instead of getting a treaty from the ruthless at -3 relation, got attacked by them first. Of course it's still up to luck, but a 22% vs 66% roll is way different from a 69% vs 66% one.
   
While red has slightly higher army strength, so far green seems to be winning. I guess it's because they were the attacker so we've only seen the starting moves so far?
I'm planning to attack green next turn so this is very convenient.

...the Beastmaster died. Life Drain is nice but it's not guaranteed to actually heal the hero. It only takes one bad roll and they die it seems. I've found an amazing meanwhile though.
I've cleared quite a few lairs and nodes, but don't have much items. Many there should be slightly more cheaper items in the game? Idk, I guess I could have researched enchant item and made one or two.