Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[muxecoid2]

Is treasure that can contain actual non-hero units against the design goals? The budget considerations are a bit tricky, but can be brought to balance. Just imagine getting 3 chimeras from a node instead of a vial. And those chimeras could open new and interesting opportunities.

[Slingers]

Is treasure that can contain actual non-hero units against the design goals? The budget considerations are a bit tricky, but can be brought to balance. 

That's an interesting idea! Not only heroes can get into trouble. Perhaps there is a formula to use a unit's production cost and unit building requirements or tree lock to determine a unit's treasure budget points or affect the chance of getting such a unit. The odds shouldn't be too high, ofc - like 1% all the time. And by the way, how about finding monsters as a treasure?

Each prisoner (non-champion hero) is currently worth a flat 400 points of the treasure budget, I think. Thats 8 boars (8x50). Hm ... You write this thread about how every hero is different. No! They are all 8 boars! ;p 

Using similar rules as for rescued heroes, it could look like this:
Only units that do not require Tree of Knowledge to be cast can be found as a prisoner. Rare and very rare creatures are excluded.
Each prisoner (unit or creature) is worth a flat 150 points of the treasure budget.

Units from treasure could have random exp up to elite level - even common or uncommon enchantments ... even heroes and monsters from treasure could have enchantments ...

[Slingers]

I'm wondering if this idea I once had would improve gameplay: the fame required for a hero offering to join you also applies to heroes found as prisoners and summoned ones. They could say: "Thank you! But the time has not yet come."

[jhsidi]

I'm wondering if this idea I once had would improve gameplay: the fame required for a hero offering to join you also applies to heroes found as prisoners and summoned ones. They could say: "Thank you! But the time has not yet come."

I think that's on the right track but would be extremely frustrating. "Sorry, you would have gotten this treasure but instead you get nothing."

To me it's odd that treasure with a hero can produce ANY hero, with any value; but never champions. That's completely different from how treasure works for everything else: spells, artifacts, and even picks have a point value. Put another way, a lair that drops a common spell will always drop a common spell, not an uncommon or rare one. But the lair that drops the Barbarian (absolute worst hero) can also drop the Magician (probably the best). But never a champion level hero, no matter what point of the game you've reached.

So could heroes be gated the same way as spells? Give them a point value, and gate champion levels by X year.

[Slingers]

I think that's on the right track but would be extremely frustrating. "Sorry, you would have gotten this treasure but instead you get nothing."

To me it's odd that treasure with a hero can produce ANY hero, with any value; but never champions. That's completely different from how treasure works for everything else: spells, artifacts, and even picks have a point value. Put another way, a lair that drops a common spell will always drop a common spell, not an uncommon or rare one. But the lair that drops the Barbarian (absolute worst hero) can also drop the Magician (probably the best). But never a champion level hero, no matter what point of the game you've reached.

So could heroes be gated the same way as spells? Give them a point value, and gate champion levels by X year.

Being limited to six heroes at a time is more frustrating than getting dumped at times, but probably necessary. Let's say this hero gets a high probability of offering to join for free - even with one more level - once the fame requirement is met. What happens if you already have 6 heroes and found a prisoner?

Conversely, summoned heroes/champions could be as close as possible to the wizard's current fame. Or is that already the case?

Each hero/champion already has a prisonerturn that can be changed by modding. It should work after the next update I think I read.

[jhsidi]

If you have 6 and find a prisoner in treasure, you won't know -- there's no indication that there was a prisoner, and no replacement treasure. You have to figure it out from the fact that the treasure was less than you expected to get. Not optimal, but I'd imagine it's far too much work to solve in any satisfying way.

[Suppanut]

Why don't have rare and very rare creature seal in the lair as alternative to hero if player hero slots are full?

[Suppanut]

I get some feedback from Hadriex today which I think it is valid for both modding and vanilla CoM2.
1) Current global enchantment with stacking feature should be moddable, especially Divine Order, as they would stack like crazy and skewed the game beyond original design as they were design for 5 players game in mind. For Divine Order, this could be fixed with moddable value of both initial effect and stack effect. And for more universal stacking spell, I think number of same global enchantment in play should be limited, think about how several wizards try to manipulate same section of aether space to the limit and could not insert another copy of that global enchantment into aether anymore.
2) Hadriex suggests that there should be fatique period after disjunction that cause disjuncted global enchantment could not be recasted for a period of time (I think it should be introduced into lore of game as "aether fatique" that cause the section of aether that need to manipulate for global enchantment not able to be shaped into intend shape for a period of time) and period of time should depending on how much mana wizard who cast disjunction put into the spell. So global enchantment with high cost would naturally need longer period of time before recast the spell is possible.

[Suppanut]

I want to suggest there should be optional rule for the game that human player could choose rule that if hero has already joined a wizard, hero of that ID would nolonger available for others. To compensate for this rule, all ai player will start with 1 vial of soul linker for them to use on first hero that join their faction as replacement of role that used to belong to Rakir and Ravenshack.

[RodriguesCIA]

A bit ambitious suggestions, but considering the game has been entirely remade, I think it is within the scope of possibility.

1 - City sprawl. It won't have any gameplay effect, just aesthetic. The owned tiles of a city will get tiny modifications according to the population of the settlement. At first could just be faction-style tiny houses and tiled fields, with more squares having them, and having more of them, as the city grows. Effectively the center will still be the important bit, both strategically and economically (to control and properly tax all the surrounding lands). Would make the world feel a bit more alive.

2 - Sea lairs. Having more incentive to build up a navy / amphibious army, and would increase the importance of summons capable of water for reasons other than coastal mobility and inter-continental forays. Could be the start of transforming the seas in a fully fledged biome rather than an obstacle (or shortcut, depending if you can sail it).