While the AI tries to concentrate their Invisibility spell targeting on stacks that already have invisible units to enable that to happen, unfortunately there is no guarantee those units stay together and even less that they reach or attack the human player - those are determined by generic AI movement and attack rules. It can happen, and if you let a late game Sorcery wizard go out of control, eventually you fill find stacks of 9 invisible djinn or sky drakes on the map, but Invisibility being a late game spell, it's not a common occurence.
The only two other invisible units are Night Stalkers and Nightblades. The former doesn't work well in large stacks - it only takes a single high resistance unit to kill them all. Expensive and unless the AI cheats by looking at your units and spellbook, also risky. Nightblades, by the time they can reach a player on Arcanus, are not powerful enough to win the battle.
Adding more types of breath attacks to Hydra could make sense. "Poison Breath", "Lightning Breath", "Cold Breath" etc.
It wouldn't really make the unit any better or functionally different though, it already kills everything with low defense as it does 18 attacks, so adding even more attacks makes no difference. So this is low priority.
Lizards have been rebranded from Basilisk exactly because Nature had way too many save-or-die effects on their creatures, so adding poison is definitely something I don't want to do. Water Walking, I don't know, can you imagine one of these swimming through the entire ocean? Because that's what a water tile represents in CoM. I admit they can probably swim in lakes and rivers, but a thousand miles of salt water? It wouldn't make a difference mechanically as Nature can cast Water Walking if they need to. It's probably better to not give the realm a creature that already has the ability as it makes casting the spell less useful.
Speak of waterwalking, I think engineer should have skill something like "river rafting" that allow stack that have engineer preside in it transverse river as if it is road. Perhaps this should make engineer more useful to tag along the army (currently I see no point to use it in combat, I could not imagine it would able to walk to the wall and breaking it in siege either.) Perhaps give it ability to cast disrupt in the same way that giant spider could cast web maybe better idea about using wall-crushing function on engineer.
Reorganizing my though, here is the "wishlist" i can think of (obvisouly some points are massevely more difficult than others, but still i will mention them !). if those option were enabled i would definitley buy/support such a game :
1° An hotseat mode : Even if it meens that combat between human are AI controlled (or generated) or that "the current player control both camp and player have to be honest giving the mouse to the other player". I would definitively LOVE playing with my older brothers and my girlfriend an hotseat game of COM2.
2° A game speed option : Scalling the research points needed, spell casting duration outside of battle and pop growth. I really have the feeling everything is QUICK in COM2 compared to MOM. i wouldn't scale the unit production time, but maybe the building one.
3° A scalled unrest / corruption related to empire size : The point is, the world is filled in no time, i would like the unrest reducing retort/spells to be more vital in managing an empire. So that building many cities wouldn't be always a usefull strategy. By the way it would allow more "wilderness" in the world. I would see a "corruption" thing for large empire too (just like older civilization games) where the further you are from capital the less income (and power) you get. The point is, i would like the world to be filled in a slower pace .
4° Dangerous Wilderness : In linking of the previous idea , i would love to see the "wild zone" filled with increasly strong stack of dangerous wild magic creatues. Those wouldn't alway "rush" the weakest human cites but stay "in the wild" and defend their dungeon and node from intruders.
5° Appereance of Dungeon : I absolutely LOVE the dungeon concept of MOM. I like exploring them and getting some random treasure. I completly understand it could unbalance the game a little but i would like to have some option that allow the random creation of dungeon (in an "option") from "not frequent" to "very often".
6° More Race(s) : Well, of course MoM is already full of interesting races, but a sequel which could integrate at least a new race by plan would be a nice thing.
7° An "heavy weight" mode : A mode where everything about upkeep is toned up (elite units, magic creatures, buff, big city enchantement, global enchantement) I would give the feeling that magic et scarse and precious and you wouldn't spam your spells everywhere and keep them for your elite creatures.
8° Levels for fantastic creatures : I feel sad for my poor hell hounds wich accompanied me for the first third of the game to be completly useless quickly because it don't level up. I know it was discussed a bit in the forum but i think some levels for fantastic creatures would still be nice (maybe not all of them? just "living creatures" perhaps ?) , why wouldn't them learn from battle ? I would definitly like that ...
Of cours everything is pure wish, but anyhow thats what i wanted from MoM, and i would like them in CoM . Thanks for reading me !! Have a nice day !
1. The engine was coded with the assumption that player 0 is always the human player. This requires a very long time to add so it's only a possibility on the long term, definitely not in 2021. Even then it's a lot of work so it'll only happen is a lot of people request it.
2. This is easily doable on the programming side, but needs to be discussed on what exactly changes and how, what is the intended purpose and pacing, and the math behind the game economy has to be recalculated using that information. So again, a very long process. This is more realistic to do in 2021, but after the game release as an update the earliest.
3. This is not happening. Building cities is always useful, that's a core game mechanic. Let's not make this into another Planar Conquest.
4. I fail to see what makes this different from existing lairs and nodes that have strong monsters in them.
5. This could be added as an optional game mode but it needs to be discussed, as depending on what the lairs contain, determines if it has to be scored as an increased or reduced difficulty mode. Lairs by themselves increase difficulty by providing spots for rampaging monsters to spawn, but depending on the treasure quality, it can reduce the difficulty or extremely unbalance the game as well.
6. I want this but it's definitely an after-release update thing because designing races and then making all the required unit graphics is very time consuming.
7. No, the AI can't handle this mode and was designed to spam units and spells.
8. Definitely not. Their stats weren't designed with leveling as a feature in mind.
(December 10th, 2020, 07:40)Seravy Wrote: 1. The engine was coded with the assumption that player 0 is always the human player. This requires a very long time to add so it's only a possibility on the long term, definitely not in 2021. Even then it's a lot of work so it'll only happen is a lot of people request it. => then I'll hope others peoples will manifest interest for it
2. This is easily doable on the programming side, but needs to be discussed on what exactly changes and how, what is the intended purpose and pacing, and the math behind the game economy has to be recalculated using that information. So again, a very long process. This is more realistic to do in 2021, but after the game release as an update the earliest. => OK sure it need some exchange and discussions
3. This is not happening. Building cities is always useful, that's a core game mechanic. Let's not make this into another Planar Conquest. => I didn't mean to make cities not useful but to Slow city spamming a little to make conquest a bit slower by have some management of number of cities but I understand your point
4. I fail to see what makes this different from existing lairs and nodes that have strong monsters in them. => the difference lies in the fact thoses monsters would hunt trespasser in 'their territory' rather than look for an easy target even miles away from their home. I feel like wanderering creatures should be more living inhabitant of arcanus and mirror than homing missile toward human player cities.
5. This could be added as an optional game mode but it needs to be discussed, as depending on what the lairs contain, determines if it has to be scored as an increased or reduced difficulty mode. Lairs by themselves increase difficulty by providing spots for rampaging monsters to spawn, but depending on the treasure quality, it can reduce the difficulty or extremely unbalance the game as well. => sure I see that as a mode too. You are right it is both a difficulty factor and a bonus factor.
6. I want this but it's definitely an after-release update thing because designing races and then making all the required unit graphics is very time consuming.
7. No, the AI can't handle this mode and was designed to spam units and spells.
8. Definitely not. Their stats weren't designed with leveling as a feature in mind.
My answers in purples, thanks for your answer . By the way maybe it is wrong to ask (I lack knowledge about your project) but do you plan (and did) to dev everything alone or is there some kind of git repository and you plan to share your dev with others at some point?
I'm doing it alone.
I use the git as a backup copy but it's set to private.
I'm not planning to share it any time soon, as it's not a free game. Maybe a few years after the official release if Slitherine also agrees to it.
Just a small suggestion. The game got plenty of races but nearly all heroes are human, with "mannish" races right in second place. Would be interesting to see some new faces of the under represented races. Artistic assets will naturally be an issue, but I wonder if MoO1 and 2 portraits could be repurposed...
Is it possible to include information on how many movements there are in the unit when clicking on it? That is, the amount of movements left to use. Or does it already exist somewhere?
Combat screens now have mountains. Units cannot enter these tiles. How about making units hiding behind mountains immune to ranged attacks?
The tiles under the trees in the Combat view could have stumps or something else to show the character of the tiles even without trees after you press “T”. Now the forest with the trees cut down looks like grassland.
The Surveyor could show, how much Power a single Node generates! But I’m not sure this is a good idea since the player’s brain could do something too. So this Sorcery Node covers an area of 8. It’s the setting x1.5 times and x2 from the Sorcery Conjunction =24. Melded with a Guardian Spirit that’s 27. Phew.
“If the player starts on Myrror, Myrror has total picks between 1 and (1+total number of players).” So I can find anywhere from 1-15 on my own plane ! Normal difficulty is needed otherwise I must to share. No! … <So much for role-playing the wizard. How about replacing this mechanic with 1 book or 1 pick retort from a defeated wizard and then having fewer possible random picks in lairs? Otherwise, it´s an idea for a Score modifier.
How about a tiny chance of mercenaries showing up with some kind of mineral bonus at a higher price? This would make the “Famous” and “Charismatic” retorts a lot more attractive. Or is that already implemented? I hired units with magical weapons! Or was it because of the “Alchemy” retort? Units with a mineral bonus have not yet appeared as mercenaries.
After an AI loser-wizard who has done something really stupid is defeated by another AI in a "fortunate" maneuver, only one badly wounded attacker unit should be left. That way it would look more realistic. Shit happens!
. Thanks for reading me !! Have a nice day !
