Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Seravy]

If the game has got to the point where cities are filled with stacks of them, it should require better spells or units to defeat it.

Well, yeah, but there aren't really better normal units in the game, and summoned ones can't conquer a large number of cities.
Tho as far as I remember the main problem was the fortresses with uncommon creatures. Those generally start appearing around 1506-08 but the AI barely has a stack capable of taking them out in 1518 because they both need to research rares, build them up into 9 stacks, and make the stack reach the fortress without losing it or it attacking another city. Normal units can't fight them.
Maybe I should run new tests again since there have been a lot of changes but that was what I remember happening.

[Slingers]

Some notes from a test-game with the current Alpha version:

• No big deal, but pressing F10 will throw the mouse-pointer out of the game-frame.
  
• A City pop 1000 does not produce its last Settler. In vanilla, the City built it and disappeared. It used to be the only way to raze a City. Now the last Settler was not produced. “Turns to complete” is stuck. Buying it didn’t help either. After the first, it was not possible to sell more buildings in this City in the following turns. It’s a local time stop! After that, pressing the Raze button didn’t remove the City either. I loaded an earlier turn. Razing of this City happened in 1 turn with pop 3000 or 2000. This was a conquered Neutral town with a growth rate of 0. It looks like the bug has something to do with pop1000 growth rate 0. Razing a player founded city with 1000+x pop was no problem. But the production of a Settler @ around 1000+x pop – which didn’t grow to 2000 this turn – didn’t remove the city. The Settler appeared and population dropped to exactly 1000. These Settlers must have quite some babies on the way to their destination!
  
• Item traits now have help texts when creating artifacts! Still not all of them like True Sight, Lion Heart, Flight …
  
• After moving a unit, the overland view immediately jumps to the next unit that needs to be moved. For example, if a unit enters a boat that is on patrol and needs to be activated, the view should not pop away. When a unit scouts something, a split-second pause would help see what it is. The reaction time of a car driver is between 1/5sec – 1/3sec. Gamers are faster I think.
  
• On the Magic screen, the power received by the Nodes has been increased from 70 to 98 by melding 1 Node (8 tiles x1.5 option & no other influences). That’s +28! I would have expected +12. Maybe I got it wrong how that is calculated? Not that I’ ve ever checked before … 3 times what I expected. Hmm …
  
• Usually numbers are not my topic, but while I’m at it: It’s Sorcery Conjunction and the Skill bar shows 453 SP. Skill: 33, +6.7 Skill/Turn … it should be 6.8. The turn before that was 447SP +8.4/Turn (instead of 8.5 or 8.59). However, the Skill only increased from 26 to 33 = 7. Whatever ... Wherever wood is chopped, splinters must fall.
  
• The Phoenix unit does not yet have an overland image! Some time ago I put a bird with a different beak in the Missing art thread. It had an overland image, but yeah … maybe it’s way too ugly? In case it was overlooked: I put alternative GE images “Call the Wild”, “Ruler of Underworld” there too. Fiddling with the game graphics can be a lot of fun. The Santa of Hadriex could equip heroes with candy canes or maybe someone would like to exchange the ghoul image with his mother-in-law. Will it stay that way in the released version? That would be cool!
  

[massone]

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to play any recently. My personal feeling on the elimination mechanism was that it wasn't going to be well received regardless of how it's implemented. Whenever it obviously looks like the AI is playing by different rules, players will be offended.

However, I believe I've mentioned before that I don't think it's necessary to eliminate Wizards. Just keep them in their Fortress. Realistically, I see no reason for any Wizard to obsess over banishing a Wizard who has hardly any resources left except for roleplay reasons. I certainly wouldn't do it for strategic reasons, even to a Chaos wizard. it's extremely easy to make peace to avoid stuff like Volcano by the time they have only a Fortress left. It's also way easier to Disjunction or Spell Blast annoying Globals than to banish them, for Sorcery Wizards. I'd rather keep them alive than to incur the diplo penalty, then destroy every Fortress-bound Wizard on the map simultaneously in the end game or use Spell of Mastery to finish things.

The true issue is STACKING Global Enchantments, when there's too many Wizards on the map, so we should keep that in mind when looking for a solution. I can see a number of possibilities:

1. Create a new algorithm for building offensive stacks with specialized purposes. But this is programmatically extremely difficult. The "easiest" way to do it is to make a table of effective army templates for every Realm/Race and make the AI build such units according to the template upon certain triggers, which is still quite a lot of work. It is also the "best" solution that solves a number of other related issues and players would probably be most happy with.

2. Add an algorithm to allow AIs to include multiple stacks in their combat prediction calculations, and move multiple stacks to attack the same target simultaneously.

For example:
Main_Targeting_Function() {
...
If (strength of available targets > strength of any available stack)
THEN call mass_attack()
...
}

mass_attack() {
choose target with the lowest strength to value ratio as mass_attack_target
add marker to strongest stacks on the same continent which add up to target strength + X% (to account for the disadvantage of using separate attacks)
}

main_movement_function() {
...
if stack has mass_attack_marker, run mass_attack_move() and don't run the rest of this
...
}

mass_attack_move() {
Move all marked stacks to 1 square away from mass_attack_target, then wait
attack when all stacks have gathered on the same turn
}

3. Finally, it's possible to add a mechanism specific to the Global Enchantments, making it harder for weak wizards to cast them. For example, introduce a peace mechanic called "containment", when one Wizard has 10x more historian magic rating than the other upon making peace. The one with 10x lower magic historian rating is banned from casting Globals (and maybe also offensive curses targeting the winner), until their magic rises to at least 5x lower than the other wizard.

[Intaka]

Fatal error in 15Dec2020 version. The same world edge surveying error. I redownloaded to be absolutely sure this was the newest version I've been using. In my particular game loc 2, 44 crashed on survey cursor but I am sure this is repeatable easily enough.

Also, just as a my 2 cents thing... I hate invisible to the player mechanics. "Destined for Greatness" mechanics from Paradox exist to cover their terrible AI, and force the world to be as they wish it to be. The exact opposite of what I find enjoyable about CoM2's customizable play experience. I am ok with the world coming to a pause while there is a magic buildup to rare / very rare spells. Things generally get sorted out then. I understand we can all have different opinions, and that they are just that... opinions. I am not calling anyone else's opinion invalid, since that would be ridiculous. Just saying that invisible mechanics which shovel the game in some preordained direction are not my personal preference.

I'm not sure how hard this is to code. I'm going to guess impossible off the top of my head, but what if the defender got to use a random unit (of their stack) first, then an attacker unit went, etc. Until both stacks had used all units. Then begin again. This would still give the defender advantage, but eliminate any stack of magicians shenanigans, since 2 stacks of magicians would mostly mutually annihilate each other. No weird invisible mechanics needed.

If one were looking for more player directed challenge, I'm curious who is playing on Lunatic and Phantasm difficulty recreationally. I'm not.

For me, the game isn't about winning, but this story of my Chaos Draconian's journey. (or any of a million other combinations). That is what makes the game enjoyable, for me at least. The diverse process by which winning is accomplished.

[massone]

I play on Lunatic. I haven't tried Phantasm yet, as I don't always win on Lunatic. But I also don't like when AI is playing by different rules. I have no problem with giving the opponent more pieces, or accepting handicaps, as long as we're playing the same game.

I can't stand it if the opponent moves a knight piece as if it were queen, or tells me that they can castle in the middle of the board. Now obviously there's limits to this because in a complex video game it's impossible for the AI to use all the same rules and stay competent, but it's always better to find a solution that minimize "obvious" AI cheating, or at least hides it in a way that you can't really tell the difference.

[massone]

Just thought of another easy solution that seems quite elegant. When a Wizard is too weak to make a comeback or pushed back to just a Fortress, let them peacefully get annexed by the Wizard they have the highest relation with. They can do this even if they're at war with the player, and it is actually fairly realistic. If you're about to be destroyed, it's only natural to look for protection from a stronger power.

[Intaka]

@massone Punishing weak wizards seems counterproductive. Compounds their inability to fight back. What if the weak wizard was you? Doesn't seem like it would feel very good.

If we actually did see a need to slow down global enchantment proliferation, wouldn't it be much more straightforward (and universally fair) to make global enchantments cost ((wizards alive in game / 4) * basecost). Stronger wizards could still cast globals easier than weaker wizards due to more resources. I'm not sure how one communicates that effect clearly to the player though. Rightclick help in the spellbook which includes cost calc? Part of the rightclick help for number of wizards during setup and just have it update dynamically (and silently) during the game? This would give you incentive to eliminate those cornered wizards too. Two birds, one stone.

Seems like a change to global enchantment casting costs would be messing with game balance on a fundamental level though. Could make globals not worth casting. They already lock up spellcasting for a very long time. I think the current design philosophy is that you have to just deal with their enchantments or eliminate them, which is fair enough too as a design paradigm. The game isn't really centrally balanced around 13 opponents. It is a skewed set up preference, like Rich ore, or Strong Magic. One incurs the hazard of global enchantment onslaught as a setup choice.

[Intaka]

@massone I'm not completely against the surrender to your least worst enemy thing, as long as the last wizard opponent never surrenders. The threshold where a wizard capitulates to join another empire is where this idea gets tricky in implementation.

[Intaka]

@massone Totally agree about setup handicaps vs game rules handicaps. There is so much setup customization to draw upon, if one gets creative.

AI wizards start with more gold / mana. AI wizards start with more basic units / settlers. AI starts with Tree of Knowledge researched. AI starts with more picks. AI starts with casting skill bonus.

In my ideal game, these are all setup options which can be applied to a non-resource bonus cheating AI. However, I don't play on Lunatic.

There's no reason that the best of both worlds can't be had though. Ajustments for all these things (would require a 2nd set up screen) plus your massochistic unit grinding Phantasm resource bonuses.

[Intaka]

The alternating units in combat thing would really take a bite out of alpha strikes in a way that was helpful to the AI's success, by increasing attrition. I think even players would find their cities in more danger from a multistack attack if the defender didn't get lossless guaranteed victory.