Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[Seravy]

- Sharpshooting makes Hero units unaffected by range penalties when using ranged attacks. It should be possible to undo by modding.

This will be included in the next update.

- making a Fighting Pit building that gives a certain amount of EXP per turn for each unit in the city. Armsmaster did not work on buildings. "ALevel" is used in CreateUnit.CAS by buildings that give levels.

I thought we already have an "end of turn" script and a way to check for the location of units, cities and city buildings?
I'll add a GainEXP script command which should in theory be enough to implement a building like that.

- to give buildings a Scouting range for the city.

A ScoutingRange parameter will be added to buildings.ini in the next update.

- How to make alternative City Walls on the building and city screen choose a City Wall preview image?

Setting IsWall to 1 should allow the building to be displayed as a wall in a city.
I will change the production preview to always show the wall preview image for IsWall=1 buildings - unfortunately all wall buildings will show the same preview for the time being but that should be enough the fix the problem of the building not fitting into the display box.

- There could be alternative city wall bonuses as well.

This is too vague to be a feature request.
I believe you can check for the presence of buildings and apply any bonus in UnitCalc.CAS already, as long as you don't insist on the "only applies against attacks from the outside" and "less bonus if wall section on the tile is broken" details.

- How to restore original MOM´s Astral Gate functionality, Wall of Stone spell?

Wall of Stone : When cast, make the spell create the City Wall building permanently then clear the enchantment flag of "Wall of Stone". I will add a SetBuildingState and SetCityEnchantState script command as they don't seem to exist yet.
Astral Gate : In UnitCalc.CAS, make the unit gain "Plane Shifting" if it's overland location is in an enchanted city.

- rewards for defeating a wizard could be modifiable

This would be difficult as "reward" can be pretty much anything so probably only doable with a script but then it's still a problem because most things you'd want to give as a reward are not possible to generate through scripts such as items or books or retorts so it would also need a lot of new script commands. I'll pass on this one.

- HPBonus/Penalty variable could also be in MASTER.CAS

HPBonus and HPBuff will be added. (gold icons like Lionheart, and gold icons from temporal effects like Life Steal are separate stats)
HP Penalty does not exist in the game currently and should not : Grey icons mean damage taken (which can be healed back).
A max hp decreasing effect is probably best implemented without showing grey icons, simply reducing the number of hp icons overall.

[Seravy]

- Spell charges from items overwrite the spell ability, a hero can have because of modding. If there are multiple item slots that allow spell charges, the second slot overwrites the first. This could be intended or done another way.

This is intended. Each unit can only have one spell ability at a time. Changing that would require changing unit data which loses save compatibility, definitely not doing that.

- Spells that cannot be researched (Disabled=True in spells.ini) cannot be found in treasure, or can they? If not, how about adding the possibility?

In general this feature was meant as a workaround for those who hate a spell so much they never want to see it.
I'm not sure why and how a spell that can't be researched at all would be fair and improve the game, as finding it would be entirely up to luck... unless the player abuses the rule where they are forced to get the spell if they already have all other spells available for them in that tier but that would force playing a single realm and postpone lair hunting until the desired tier is entirely researched. Both outsomes sound like something that would ruin the player's fun.

I'll pass on this one.

- Settlers might show up as mercenaries from time to time.

This will be added as a modding.ini option.

- "Tree of Knowledge" timing could be changable by modding.

I'm surprised this wasn't added yet. It'll be in the next update.

[Anskiy]

Setting IsWall to 1 should allow the building to be displayed as a wall in a city.

Just tested this, it doesn't work. The actual wall effect is hardcoded to the City Walls building itself, both visually and gameplay wise.

On that same note, which buildings the capital and new settlements start with is hardcoded too, though hopefully that will change next update.

[CreepyCaster]

Would it be possible to make the "Complexity" component of item creation moddable in some way? It gives a heavy discount that is making rebalancing item creation very difficult.

I want to make weak items with only a couple of buffs (ex: +1 attack and +1 defense) significantly cheaper to create by lowering the costs of the +1 and +2 entries in the "itempow.ini" file to make the Create Item spell more useful for the Artificer retort in the early game. This is having the weird side effect of making items have almost no cost at all because the "Complexity" component is largely cancelling out those small costs.  It's around a massive ~64% discount.  Even piling on all sorts of item powers only brings it down to a still large ~45% discount.

I'd like to greatly diminish the "Complexity" discount and scale it between around -25% down to -5% based upon how many items powers are stacked upon an item.

Even a very simple integer mod variable like "ItemComplexityScalingFactor=1" which the Complexity discount could be divided by would be enough.  I could thus set the value of ItemComplexityScalingFactor to 3 causing the Complexity discount to be cut down to 1/3 of its current value. ex: Complexity/ItemComplexityScalingFactor = 64%/3 = 21%.

Perhaps a floating point fraction that gets multiplied against the "Complexity" discount would be even better? ex: ItemComplexityScalingFactor=1.00 --> =0.33?  Complexity*ItemComplexityScalingFactor=64%*0.33=21%  This would provide very fine grained control.


Secondly, would it be possible to add a constant in MODDING.INI for max regular items powers and max artifact item powers per item? Both seem to currently be hard capped at 4. I want to reduce regular items to a cap of 3 items powers and 4-5 for artifacts. (An absolute max of 5 would probably be enough.  Even making it only moddable between values of 1-4 powers max per item would be fine.)

[Slingers]

- I like this idea. Why not expand more into subcategory of spells such as researchable, reward only, ability ( only accessable in combat by units, either as unit only spells or assignable charged ability), and last category is completely disable from game?

While trying to implement something, I looked at the Warlords MOD from time to time. Since I haven't added many spells yet, I just set Disabled=True and gave the new spell as an ability to a unit or building, or put it in a hero's spell book for now. E.g. The Snow Queen just got Snowstorm, which is a bit reminiscent of Hurricane. This was a cool spell idea by the way. I failed miserably when trying to also make random units Frozen. In the end I thought it's even better not to have too many effects in one spell anyway. Also, some discarded (not necessarily important) spells from the original MOM can appear as relics from the past in this way. Some overland only spells work well as an ability in combat. However, I ended up preferring to swap Great Drakes for something else ...

Mercenary Settler fails:
- Brax settles down and founds a beautiful early dwarven city on Arcanus. The city doesn’t have Armsmaster for some reason.
- A Magic Spirit creates an Outpost labelled: Arcane. Once it grows to a town, the game crashes of course. Maybe Realm towns are possible … I don’t say it makes a lot of sense!
- Purifying and road building units seem to crash the game if they also have CreateOutpost=Yes.
 
@CreepyCaster
I read this random article about your work: How to reduce stress as a developer. No worries!

@Seravy
Thank you for many detailed answers and a forthcoming update! Reading it just made my day.
Whatever ideas come up, I don't think anyone would expect them to be implemented the next day, if ever.

[Suppanut]

I have modified Sanctify to turn cleric units and some heroes into life fantastic creature and give them MP. I found that although hero get MPmax from unitcalcpre.cas and could cast spells, they could not cast life creature exclusive spells the way normal units turn fantastic could and artifact that give them MP does not expand the hero who gains MP from unitcalcpre.cas and unitcalc.cas while Focus Magic give them MP as it should without problem if script give MPmax to them earlier in unitcalcpre.cas. Case of Unitcalc.cas is understandable but in case of unitcalcpre.cas, does spell skill artifact power has base MPmax check? Seravy, could you make make artifact give spell skill if hero gain MP from unitcalcpre.cas earlier?

[CreepyCaster]

Currently ships are "healed" by units with the "Healer=Yes" flag such as Priests. It should be obvious this is very unrealistic but without Priests to provide this service it takes ships a VERY long time to fully recover from combat.

Engineers have very limited use in this game beyond building roads. Perhaps you've already got plenty of work on your plate for the upcoming patch Seravy, but something to consider for the future is adding a "Mechanical=Yes" flag to units.  This flag could enable units to receive an amount of healing(repairing) from other units stacked with them that have the "Roadbuilding=?" setting.  The amount repaired per turn could be equal to the "Roadbuilding" value. (1 for all Engineers except Dwarven Engineers)  Perhaps there could be a moddable flag in MODDING.INI that specifies the max number of units with "Roadbuilding" that can contribute to repair?  "MaxRepairUnits=2" for example would allow 2 Engineers stacked with mechanical units to repair their combined "Roadbuilding" value worth of health to each mechanical unit per turn.

There is already a "NoHealing" flag so the "Mechanical" flag would NOT need to exclude regular healing thus it would be possible to make specific units able to be healed by BOTH Healers and Engineers, like Golems perhaps.  Modders could set units like Catapults and Ships with both the "Mechanical" and "NoHealing" flag to only allow Engineers to repair them.

[Seravy]

they could not cast life creature exclusive spells the way normal units turn fantastic could

Isn't that how this always worked? I don't think you can cast Chaos spells after Chaos Channels on the hero either?

give them MP does not expand the hero who gains MP from unitcalcpre.cas and unitcalc.cas while Focus Magic give them MP as it should without problem if script give MPmax to them earlier in unitcalcpre.cas.

Focus magic checks for mp on the current unit, artifacts do on the base unit. As these two would always be equal without modding, I never noticed the inconsistency. Change your script to set the mpmax for both base and current unit and it should work. I'll update artifacts to check for the current unit like everything else for the next version.

Engineers have very limited use in this game beyond building roads. Perhaps you've already got plenty of work on your plate for the upcoming patch Seravy, but something to consider for the future is adding a "Mechanical=Yes" flag to units. This flag could enable units to receive an amount of healing(repairing) from other units stacked with them that have the "Roadbuilding=?" setting. The amount repaired per turn could be equal to the "Roadbuilding" value.

It will be possible to disable natural healing from UnitCalc.CAS in the next update.
It should also be possible to use OverlandEndTurn.CAS to add custom healing.
(Do we have a script command for healing or editing damage on a unit? I don't remember.)

[Suppanut]

Focus magic checks for mp on the current unit, artifacts do on the base unit. As these two would always be equal without modding, I never noticed the inconsistency. Change your script to set the mpmax for both base and current unit and it should work. I'll update artifacts to check for the current unit like everything else for the next version.

Thank you for your response.

[CreepyCaster]

Engineers have very limited use in this game beyond building roads. Perhaps you've already got plenty of work on your plate for the upcoming patch Seravy, but something to consider for the future is adding a "Mechanical=Yes" flag to units.  This flag could enable units to receive an amount of healing(repairing) from other units stacked with them that have the "Roadbuilding=?" setting.  The amount repaired per turn could be equal to the "Roadbuilding" value.

It will be possible to disable natural healing from UnitCalc.CAS in the next update.
It should also be possible to use OverlandEndTurn.CAS to add custom healing.
(Do we have a script command for healing or editing damage on a unit? I don't remember.)

Being able to dynamically disable healing from UnitCalc.CAS will be nice but the existing "NoHealing=Yes" unit flag is adequate for my purposes. I could just set NoHealing=Yes on all the "mechanical" units to stop it.

There is a script command for applying damage and a command for retrieving the current amount of damage on a unit.  There is no command to apply healing.  The SETSTAT command can currently be used to alter the max HP of a generic figure but that's not healing. (I use this in my re-implementation of the Heroism spell)