Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

Yeah, I still think rampaging monsters are the solution to the rush problem, as well as larger distances between continents. Unfortunately we can't do the latter without source code.

[Nelphine]

What about making oceans cost 2 movement for flyers and water walkers?

Or oceans cost 3 for flyers, 2 for windwalkers and water walkers? (Maybe 3 for water walkers?) all ships get speed reduced by 1, and mountains cost 2 for fliers.

[Seravy]

Not doable.
Flying, Water Walking, Sailing, and Noncorporeal would all need to be slowed down equally for this to have any effect and not mess up movement type stacking. Out of these, Waterwalking has its own movement cost table but the others are hardcoded to always cost 1 (unless on enchanted roads for flying) as far as I remember. It's also very counterintuitive.
Besides a factor of 2 is nowhere near the required multiplier. We'd need it to take 6-12 turns to travel to another nearby continent while on a typical map it currently takes 1-2, at most 3 turns. You can literally reach the furthest point on the map in less than 8 turns in the current system.
Of course if we increase land size, increasing sea isn't the only option we have. We can also increase landmass and raise the required distance between cities. Either way, a larger map size is the only solution - if rampaging monsters don't work.
Not sure about it though - the current game pacing for non-rush is near perfect. There are minor problems, like doomstacks being able to move and conquer too quickly, but we've already concluded that's not a major issue when you have to simultaneously defend on dozens of locations and only conquer one enemy city at a time. Ultimately, if you have garrisons that hold, a doomstack that's invincible, and resources for combat spells to keep both working, you deserve the win. We just have to ensure the garrisons part is required, and for late game, it seems to work perfectly. It's only a problem for the early game and that's where monsters should help. Anyway, as the current pacing for all but rush is perfect, maybe slowing down the game by adding more distance isn't the correct move. Ultimately, making it harder to hold overexpanded territory in the early game is the only real direction left I see. I definitely don't want that nonsense later Civ games do where more cities cost exponentially more gold to maintain so that leaves military force that is strong enough to retake the cities. In other words, monsters, because AI players already lost the fight if you're overexpanded.

[merlinp]

Some brainstorming ideas to deter rush and early far away expansion:
sea monsters,
monsters attacking passing by units from lairs,
city inefficiency/corruption based on distance from a citadel.

[Bahgtru]

We can also increase landmass and raise the required distance between cities.

Maybe adding a requirement that the straight linear horizontal/vertical distance between cities needs to be 5? 
But city fitting is so hard on the AI that that could mean an AI nerf.

[Bahgtru]

sea monsters,

Mmmm summonable transports that pop up only on the nodes on the shores. To make it work though raiders should pop up on nodes rather than adjacent.

[vicwaberub]

Around the time I suggested changing the number of wizards that spawned on myrror I was saying life draconians were "op" and the "best" race. In fact one of the reasons I suggested that the myrran retort should cause 2 enemy wizards to spawn on myrror with you... was based on a test game in which I was a life draconian and just instantly surrounded my opponent, killed all his settlers, avoided his tower because his tower makes the flying strategy slightly less op, then camped out at/around wizards towers, ended turns a bunch, kept a single flying unit guarding every tower.... etc...etc..

Yes, Draconians are one of the best. I never play them. IMO Myrror is a PvP world, it should have more monsters and lairs to play great adventures.

[vicwaberub]

I have been always wanting to learn and play this game, but the lack of multiplayer discourages me. This Caster of Magic mod would be fun if I can play with other people.

Multiplayer games are multiplayer games by design: Pacing, dilpomacy, instant kill spells,...

But there is a solution for you: 'Dominions 5'. It is a nice turn based fantasy strategy game (the authors write about MoM as a source of ideas) and you can find a lot of videos on YouTube. More as 1000 units, 800 spells, 3000 events...

[Seravy]

5.56b
-Fixed 5.56 bug : New feature had no effect : “When rampaging monsters are generated, there is a cap for how much a single monster in the stack can use up from the budget. “
-Hydras will not appear among rampaging monsters. (their relevant cost value is way too low and they'd appear far too early. Also undead hydras are a problem.)

Also, monsters not disappearing after battle has two interesting side effects.
One, if they decide not to raze the city, they'll be attacking it again next turn, so ultimately, they'll always end up razing the city and two, after razing the city they are still there and will head to the next. So the player has to stop them otherwise they lose the game, there is no more "I can afford to lose a city or three, I expand fast enough" way out.

[Seravy]

5.56c
-Fixed 5.56 critical bug : Neutral monsters don't disappear after rampaging through a city and are left on the city tile.

Please test. Alternately, there is a beta version of the next major AI update available in the file ship.zip.