- I had Shuri, the Huntress with bow that gives 2x Black sleep. When I want to use it in combat I always have to first cast her web spell. I think it would be better if I can chose whether to use to web or black sleep spell.
- I found an item called "warrior mage armor" for the armor slot, but it looks like a helmet
- The overland casting of "True sight" is with 75 mana a bit to expensive in my opinion. It is very situational and I only used it a few times to prepare for a single battle (sorcery node) and after the battle it become more or less obsolete. Maybe 50 mana would be enough.
Hello, Mr. Seravy! Recently I bought in GOG an original game with a community patch and caster of magic! Thank you so much, Your Majesty , for your activity, that you allow this great game to live and develop! I hope that cooperation with Slitherine company will allow you to add even more new to the existing large list of in-game modifications, I hope to see more opponents in the game, maybe new races and more active neutral cities and I hope that later patches will be transferred faster from you to GOG and Steam. I look forward to new versions of CoM and community patches for the original. Thank you!
I have a question:
The names of the files of the original game and CoM indicated versions: 6.01c (community patch) and 6.01c respectively; in the launcher indicated versions of the community patch and СoM: 1.52.01 and 6.01; in "whatsnew.pdf" files indicated versions 1.52 and 6.01; the versions are indicated in the game 1.52 and 6.01. What are the real versions for Community patch and CoM?
I apologize for the errors in the text, because I used a translator.
Previous one took about 3 weeks but I think a more reasonable estimation would be 1-2 weeks - the entire company had to switch to home office so that probably delayed everything they did around then.
I have 305 hours of playtime in the steam version, so I thought I'd put together a post about some of my thoughts. Congratulations on the official release!
I play the game with no reloads with a hero-centric strategy primarily on Master difficulty.
I absolutely love the mod and have no interest in picking up the base game again.
Back in 2018 I made a lengthy post about some of the particularly hopeless situations that the game could throw at the player, which I thought I'd revisit now that I had a fair bit of playtime in the official release:
The AI has eased off on abusing Drain Power and Spell Blast, which I truly do appreciate.
I still don't really know what to do about turn 1 doom damage from Warlocks and Bats. I can put together a force to deal with it once or twice, but I can't deal with wizards that mass produce either of them and I have never been able to take out a "Many Doom Bats" node.
I don't really find Wave of Despair, Crack Calls and Psionic Blast as much of an issue anymore. I think that the artifact treasure table adjustments are close to the point where I can hope to have at least one Wraithform, True Sight and Innerfire item available for midgame.
I have never won a game where one of the final wizards I face knows Lightning Bolt. You need invisibility and for the opponent to have no invisibility counter. Elemental Armor, Lionheart and Syphon Life and the like just buy you a few extra turns against the merciless pounding. It might not be the turn 1 hero killer it was in the original game, but it's certainly has me stumped to find a reliable counter.
Mass Air Elementals are still crazy. Once again the higher availability of True Sight artifacts makes this matchup somewhat more manageable.
Overall I feel that while the difficulty of these challenges has not fallen since 5.4, the odds of finding an appropriate answer in time are a lot better.
Having played with Artificer in pretty much every game, I want to make a couple of suggestions in regards to artifact power balance. Overall it's exceptionally good in comparison to the original, but I feel that there's still quite a number of powers that I simply never want to craft:
I have never made an item with -Spell Save. It's very expensive and takes up a valuable slot. This effect is most powerful when stacked, so having a lower starting cost would make it somewhat more accessible. Something along the lines of 50/200/800/1600. The 50 starting cost would be in-line with the cost of +1 attack and provide more or less the same sort of help.
+X to Hit is somewhat pricey when compared to competing damage powers. It's a Holy Weapon effect that costs more than Flaming unlike the spells of the same name.
Wraith Form is a Water Walking effect that slows you down on Myrran roads, but costs more than five times the price and requires Create Artifact to make. It's also an effect that non-death wizards must find in order to win the game if the opponent has any nature books. The high cost makes it hard to discover in treasure piles and something that I would almost never craft as a Death wizard, relying on overland castings of Wraith Form instead.
The amount of help resistance provides falls off at high levels unlike attack or defense which do the opposite. Right now resistance has a linear cost progression, but I think it could actually have discounts at very high amounts to make the idea of crafting a +4 resistance shield less crazy and discovering one as a treasure less disappointing.
Some of my favorite effects are the ones that come as a bundle. Exorcist is probably my favorite and most crafted weapon enchantment, having a powerful effect that comes with a free bless. Inner Fire is one of the main reasons to take chaos as an artificer, being both a unique defensive tool and a great source of damage. On the other hand, there's a lot of very similar damage and removal powers available that have no real impact on helping your hero to survive, which is what artifact crafting is all about. I think some of the weapon powers that end up feeling a little too close to each other could be diversified by giving them a weak secondary effect.
Necromancy is a very cool idea for an item power, but is simply not worth it in its current form. I've only ever had access to it from found artifacts and it has never raised more than a couple of units over the course of a game for me. A good comparison would be the effect of crafting spell charges of Zombies, Life Drain, or Syphon Life onto an item, all of which would cost a fraction of the price but provide you with hundreds of valuable undead. To be worth the cost, Necromancy needs to be able to raise enemy units or have a Pandora's Box type effect that summons random undead.
The merchant rarely stocks the sorts of items I want to buy for the cost of two cathedrals. I suggest rigging the offering rates in favor of powers that the player cannot craft, item types that actually match the hired heroes or items that provide a defensive or utility effect.
Spell charge costs could be cheaper at high quantities. The utility effect of a single spell charge is very high, multiple charges however rarely all get used. I also find that high cost spells can only really be added during an Aether Flux to be worth the cost and time investment.
Spell charges are not nearly as useful on wands and staves as they are on other items. These weapons are used by casters who already share access to the spell that you're crafting onto the item. Crafting spell charges onto wands and staves has a similar effect to crafting spell skill, but at a much higher cost and loss of flexibility. I suggest reducing the costs of crafting charges onto caster equipment by half.
Pandora's Box is amazing and is my favorite item power. Thank you for adding it to the game!
I'm absolutely thrilled with the official release, you've done a fantastic job bringing the mod to its current form over the years Seravy.
Very much hoping that balance patches keeping coming in and that you continue to have a fun time working on this project. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all of your hard work!
Great mod! I wanted to know if we could have a build queue file for building management, most of the time I have the same build list per race (maybe a slight variant for a fast military strategy) but going like Granary -> Marketplace -> Farmer's Market to start. I just saw it was a feature in MOO2, and was wondering if it could be implemented easily?
(April 27th, 2020, 14:21)Impy Wrote: Back in 2018 I made a lengthy post about some of the particularly hopeless situations that the game could throw at the player, which I thought I'd revisit now that I had a fair bit of playtime in the official release:
The AI has eased off on abusing Drain Power and Spell Blast, which I truly do appreciate.
I still don't really know what to do about turn 1 doom damage from Warlocks and Bats. I can put together a force to deal with it once or twice, but I can't deal with wizards that mass produce either of them and I have never been able to take out a "Many Doom Bats" node.
I don't really find Wave of Despair, Crack Calls and Psionic Blast as much of an issue anymore. I think that the artifact treasure table adjustments are close to the point where I can hope to have at least one Wraithform, True Sight and Innerfire item available for midgame.
I have never won a game where one of the final wizards I face knows Lightning Bolt. You need invisibility and for the opponent to have no invisibility counter. Elemental Armor, Lionheart and Syphon Life and the like just buy you a few extra turns against the merciless pounding. It might not be the turn 1 hero killer it was in the original game, but it's certainly has me stumped to find a reliable counter.
Mass Air Elementals are still crazy. Once again the higher availability of True Sight artifacts makes this matchup somewhat more manageable.
Overall I feel that while the difficulty of these challenges has not fallen since 5.4, the odds of finding an appropriate answer in time are a lot better.
[Comments about crafting]
I agree with many of your comments about crafting. Well, I believe Seravy plans to adjust the cost scaling such that weaker effects are more worthwhile to cast, which should solve many of those issues.
I'm interested in the strategy discussion so I'll comment a bit on the challenges you brought up, both in this post and your 2018 post. I've seen many posts saying that the game is mostly won using heroes, and I disagree. I've played on Lunatic Huge and won with Spell of Mastery--and only because I couldn't be bothered to finish conquering everybody. I've never understood other players' obsession with heroes when they're so vulnerable to all sorts of things.
Aside from Magic Immunity, Doom Damage is supposed to be very powerful, but against non-hero units who don't have superb amounts of defense, its damage isn't all that high. 12 guaranteed sounds good until you compare that to the advanced normal units that have 20+ HP, or any of the Rare summons that have just as much HP and attack power. In fact, veteran HM Magicians deal 18 average gross damage before shields, and can be buffed a lot higher (at least double with Focus Magic + Orihalcon + Prayer/Guardian) whereas Doom Bolt is 12 no matter what. Stacks of Efreets, Stone Giants, even Water Elementals, Unicorns, or Shadow Demons can take them out. I'd be much more afraid of Veteran Flame Blade, Blazing March boosted Nightmares with 16 attack +3 Hit. Sure you might take some losses, but so what? If you rely only on heroes that aren't expendable, then that's just the weakness of that strategy.
Lightning Bolt is even less of a problem. The Fortress has super powerful lightning bolts anyways. A weak 35 attack version is nothing. You do not need any of those spells. Even in a hero strategy, all you need is 30+ shields to reduce damage to an average of 6.33, as the spell has no +Hit, and that's easily healable. If you have Holy Armor, Lucky, Prayer, then it'll barely tickle. A fully equipped Agility hero can reach 40-50 shields after all buffs in the late game without even creating artifacts of your own. Elven Lords, Paladins, and Pikemen are a bigger threat than Lightning Bolt when buffed up, as they can one-shot Very Rares, and unlike Lightning Bolt, these aren't limited to one attack per turn.
I find Air Elementals extremely weak for a Rare tier creature, but that's necessary because they're a combat summon. They are easily killed by normal units without even True Sight, as they have too little defense. You can trade any melee multifigure unit with 8 or so attack to take down one Air Elemental, and they're no match for the other Rare summons. Invisibility is much more dangerous when used on a heavily buffed unit.
There are a lot of situations that are very difficult to deal with if you don't have the right wizard setup, but that seems to be the intended design of the game. Some setups are much better than others, and it's impossible to have counters to everything. Different realms have different strengths at different stages of the game. Races are perhaps a bit less balanced, though. I do admit that Dark Elves have a pretty big advantage over most other races.
, for your activity, that you allow this great game to live and develop! I hope that cooperation with Slitherine company will allow you to add even more new to the existing large list of in-game modifications, I hope to see more opponents in the game, maybe new races and more active neutral cities and I hope that later patches will be transferred faster from you to GOG and Steam. I look forward to new versions of CoM and community patches for the original. Thank you!