Homeless mod ideas (wishful thinking)

[b0rsuk]

Hi

Since I'm not yet sure what Catnip will be precisely about, I'm posting these in a new thread. In mail Catwalk hinted they might be too ambitious and not what he's looking for. Many of them are not simple number changes, although most stem from desire to improve balance. And kyrub doesn't share my love for modding, so at this moment I consider the ideas homeless.

Nevertheless, I feel most of these ideas are consistent with the way Master of Magic does things, and much of code could hopefully be reused. My main intention is to make things interesting. Feel free to discuss, copy to other threads, etc.
-----------------

New and modified spells

First of all, it's good to know MoM's spell system is a ripoff of Magic: The Gathering. The older, less consistent and more messy version, which was all over the place with green and blue damage dealing spells and so on. MoM's magic system could use more consistency too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_...s_of_Magic

Sounds familiar ?

General note: I would happily see the water theme taken away from Blue (Sorcery) and given to Green (Nature). This would result in Wind Mastery and Summon Kraken becoming Nature spells. As for WM, Sorcery already has abundance of transport spells.

Death's Call
Death
Combat spell
Common
15 mana
Replaces Black Sleep, which becomes a monster-only spell, much like Summon Demon.

Hostile enchantment, usable only on normal enemy units. No chance to resist except immunity. The unit behaves normally in combat, but if you win the battle and the unit dies, it comes to your side as a created undead.

So basically this is a handicap in combat, because you spend mana and get no benefit during the same fight. I think the "created, throwaway undead" theme of Death magic should be expanded.

Rebuild
Life
Overland spell
Rare
75 mana
Rebuilds a building that was destroyed this turn.

Mana Flare
Sorcery or Chaos
Combat spell
10 mana
Common or Uncommon

(In M:tg it's a red spell (Chaos), but I think Sorcery fits better, it's metamagic)
Castable only once in battles where two wizards are present. Both wizards get +X casting skill, where X is their normal casting skill. So, for example, if Rjak has 50 skill and used it all up, you have 20 out of 40 and Mana Flare is cast, after the casting Rjak will have another 50 skill and you will have 10+40=50 skill.

Summon Kraken
Nature
Overland
Cost: ?
Level: ?

Replaces one of Nature's abundant faceless, boring summons. Aquatic-only creature for naval battles. Needs a summoning circle, then can move from city to water like a ship (and never come back to the city). Potential bug: sailing would make it affected by Wind Mastery.

Rough stats:
8 figures
special ability: Holds enemies in place. Attacked enemy can't move (but can attack) until kraken dies, moves, is confused/falls asleep etc. Or just attacked enemy can't move (but can attack) for 1 turn, for simplicty.

kyrub likes spells with distinct purposes so he might like this one...

Infection
Death
Combat spell
Common
10-15 mana

Deals damage proportional to unit's wounds. None if unit is healthy, little if lightly wounded, dangerous at half health, and likely to kill a unit with less health. A good finisher.

Replaces Life Drain. LD barely differs from other direct damage spells. This is more fitting and would be used differently.

Rebellion
Chaos
Overland
Rare or Very Rare
250 mana
A randomly chosen (chaos !) neutral city joins you. (Should be especially fun with the event where one of cities goes neutral)

Psionic Blast
Removed. It just doesn't fit an indirect magic like Blue/Sorcery. The spell is frustrating like hell with no way to defend against it save for heaps of life. I can provide you with two good ideas in place of each removed spell. Sorcery already has a great damage dealing spell: Phantom Warriors. It's more interesting to use and can be defended against. Speaking of which...

Phantom Warriors
gets 1 turn summoning sickness once summoned. In this turn it has reduced attack strength. This is to prevent cheap summon/attack moves. I think direct damage should be exclusive to Chaos. In my opinion it makes games shallow. I prefer more manipulative magicks.

The problem I'm trying to fix in Phantom Warriors exists in all combat summons, really, but it's most pronounced in the two phantom spells and Air Elemental. If all combat summons get this, then Conjurer perk could be removing it.

Corruption
Now also destroys roads. Also affects Great Wasting. Otherwise unchanged.

Fire Elemental
Gets Immolation. Immolation and Wall of Fire are pretty weak so no harm done.
---------------

Unit changes

Bowmen
Missile attack strength 2 on Recruit (+1). Bowmen are currently not an option worth considering. In my opinion Bowmen are too weak, while Shamans, Priests, Slingers, Longbowmen and perhaps Javelineers too strong.

Night Stalker
gets 1 charge of Black Sleep. Black Sleep is a very unreliable, all or nothing spell. Many people dislike it. It would be easier to swallow if it was available for free.

Sprites
Loses ranged attack ability. Gets Natural Healer (passive healing like shaman). Gets 1 or 2 charges of Black Sleep.

Reasoning: sprites are ridiculously deadly in groups player can't afford, and not useful alone. This would make them more useful to have around and not instantly deadly. Groups of sprites could be defended against with clever dispel usage, bowmen etc. They would still need to reach your units after they put them to sleep. Modelled after faeries, inspired by Dominions.

Shaman
Weaker or removed ranged attack. Gets ability to cast some minor spells like Resist Elements, Resist Magic, Web or perhaps Star Fires (too focused on countering 2 magicks). If shaman keeps its ranged attack, I think it should have more (but weaker) ammo. Reason: 4 ammo causes them to empty their clips almost instantly. Together with general low combat speed this makes combat quite shallow. Most of the time you just can't stop shamans before they deal the damage.

Javelineers
Damage unchanged, but short range.

-----------------
Wizard ability changes:

Mana Focusing becomes Astrologer. The bonus is kept, but additionally you always know in advance what the next event global will be. And when the current lasting event will end. This should be possible at least with some events. The code might need changes if, say, Conjunction's chance to end is 5% each turn.

Conjurer
Now also starts knowing the Summoning Circle spell

Nature Mastery, Chaos Mastery, Sorcery Mastery
Now you can also see the node's aura before it has been conquered. For the uninitiated: the area where Nature creatures near Nature node get +2/+2/+2. It's always present, but only visible once a spirit melds there.

Node Mastery
All of the above. Or perhaps not, the ability is strong as it is, and specialised masteries would be more interesting this way.

Myrran
Split into two perks:
Myrran Native: Allows you to select only Dwarves, Draconians, Beastmen, Dark Elves, or Trols
Myrran Intruder: Allows you to select any race of Arcanus, but you still start on Myrror.

The point of the split ? So that they can have separately adjusted cost. Conquering Myrror with Gnolls shouldn't cost me 3 or 4 picks.

-----------------

Increasing importance of water

Shipyard (not Ship Wrights' Guild) allows to mine special water resources. There should be at least 2 of them so Transmute spell can be used.

Water lairs
Can't be entered by land units. This should make water more valuable. Water lairs would generate monsters too, but perhaps not as often, and only if there are ships on the same plane. (Ideally, there would be water nodes, so wizards constantly have something to fight over...)
-------------

New and modified resources

Nightshade
Currently very weak. Hostile city enchantments are present only in Death and Chaos. They are often so expensive they're unlikely to be dispelled. This resource is anti-death, anti-chaos and boring. It doesn't even affect Corruption and Volcano, the two most common nuisances.

Idea:
Nightshade causes shamans (not priests) produced by this city to have special abilities, like casting Resist Magic etc.

Mandrake
Another plant, no idea so far but improving Transmute spell involves making all resources interesting. There should be real choices and tradeoffs. No no-brainers like coal vs gold.

===========
In the worst case, I'm talking to myself...

[Catwalk]

Some interesting ideas here. I do intend for Catnip to have new spells, to the extent that it's technically feasible and I can get someone to do the hacking for me. My guess is that it's pretty difficult to do, summon spells are probably easiest.

[b0rsuk]

Hero Abilities
-------------------

Barbarian - pillager

Gets double gold from looting and razing cities. Could also get 5 gold for each enemy unit dying in combat.

Thief - Opportunist(backstab)

If Thief attacks, and there's a friendly unit directly on the other side of it, Thief gets bonus swords. (For example +100% swords)

Orc Warrior - boastful

Baghtru likes to brag and boast about his conquests. Every battle sounds important in his stories. (if you defeat 1-2 unit you get 1 fame, 3-8 units: 2 fame, 9 units: 3 fame)

Bard - inspiration

Whenever a unit is killed in combat, bard regains 3 mana points. This includes combat summons. 5 mana points if a hero was killed.

Dwarf - Wall Crusher

New units
-------------

Crossbowmen (orcs)

I think orcs are quite boring. They're much like Nomads or High Men, except they don't get anything interesting in exchange. Wyvern Riders would be decent scouts if they came earlier.

Stats:
8 figures
missile strength 2
armour piercing
8 ammo
requires Foresters' Guild. Bowmen wouldn't be available to orcs.

Must load crossbow before each shot. It would be a separate command taking 1 turn. With a ranged unit as powerful as this, it's better to err on the side of caution. What I would especially like to avoid is a situation where one army is killed in the first turn. Note that they would actually be worse against unarmored stuff, especially Phantom Warriors.

[kyrub]

and much of code could hopefully be reused.

The changes you requested are very hard to make. Many of them are over the top (adding resources = adding data format everywhere). This is not some C++ or python programming. Creating content is always extra hard, modifying content is much easier.

First of all, it's good to know MoM's spell system is a ripoff of Magic: The Gathering.

Yeah. In this respect, my biggest gripe with the game spell system as it is - it did not conserve the adversity of spell "colours". In MtG, if I remember well (not a fan, in fact), Blue was particulary good against Red, Green had some cool anti-flyer spells against Blue. And some Red cards worked wonders against Green. And you got your obligatory White >> Black, while Black was particularly strong against anybody and itself.

The only area where this adversity theme is present in MoM is black/white (and I find the implementation very poor and uninspiring). So in this area I would love to see a real improvement, like every school having maybe just 1 uncommon + 1 rare spell better against another school. It would really enhance the game experience for me.



I found 2 of your suggestions that would probably make MoM significantly better in my eyes:

All combat summons get 1 turn summoning sickness once summoned...
then Conjurer perk could be removing it.

Water lairs
Can't be entered by land units. This should make water more valuable.

I like both very much, although they are hard to achieve, the second one is almost in the 'over the top' category. Something like HoMM 3, which had those treasure chests that made ships interesting. The question mark is over the flyers who could still pop these water lairs...


Other interesting stuff:
Rebuild, Corruption now also destroys roads.
Otherwise, I am on totally different wavelength to you, to be honest. But that's hardly surprising given my general relation to mods.

-----

Nightshade - It doesn't even affect Corruption and Volcano

- this probably should be repaired in MoMup, no? Or is it a feature?

[b0rsuk]

The changes you requested are very hard to make. Many of them are over the top (adding resources = adding data format everywhere). This is not some C++ or python programming. Creating content is always extra hard, modifying content is much easier.

That's a bit disappointing. I'm a fan of Python, and know ANSI C well enough to not be discouraged. Many of the ideas work within MoM's framework, and should be pretty easy to put together from pieces of other effects, if I had access to source code. But nobody has. For example, one of my favourite ideas - the Death enchantment which makes unit raise as undead if it was still enchanted at the point of death. Drain Life does something similar, it is tracked how much damage was dealt by draining. And there are, of course, creature enchantments.

Yeah. In this respect, my biggest gripe with the game spell system as it is - it did not conserve the adversity of spell "colours".

Here I disagree a bit. I like more subtle anti-color stuff. Certainly not abilities like "protection from Red" or "Swampwalk". Nothing that explicitely targets another color, I think that's limiting. You mentioned anti-flying cards, and that's okay in my book. As blue has a lot of flyers, it ends up hitting blue especially hard. But it's not useless with no blue in play, it has other uses. I like researching my strategy myself and finding intriguing combinations, rather than being told "this stuff is good against color X". I don't like being limited.

I like both very much, although they are hard to achieve, the second one is almost in the 'over the top' category. Something like HoMM 3, which had those treasure chests that made ships interesting. The question mark is over the flyers who could still pop these water lairs...

Both things (summoning sickness and water lairs) lay outside patching. If you assume modding, it is natural to consider some balancing too. Many flyers and floaters are stronger than ships, but it wouldn't have to be this way. I would allow flyers, floaters, swimmers, and sailing units. That would still exclude hammerhands, berserkers, minotaurs, paladins, elven lords, longbowmen, slingers. Lizardmen (and dragon turtles) would gain a lot.

If you end up working on this, it would be best to make these places provide some continuous bonus like nodes (gold ? Food ?). This is to encourage fighting over them over and over. Otherwise players will conquer water lairs once and forget about them.

- this probably should be repaired in MoMup, no? Or is it a feature?

I have no idea what MoMup is. And there's still no link to the MoM editor by Joel Schlecht (it's not trivial to find with google). Back to nightshade - I think it works as expected. It dispels (removes) hostile enchantments. Unfortunately, hostile enchantments are only in Death and Chaos schools, so you end up with a anti-red, anti-black resource. Inelegant in my opinion. Part of the blame is on Simtex for using the term "dispel" very loosely. They use it also in the context where in M:tg it would be called "countering" - preventing a spell from being cast. So, a spell countered in a node is called "dispelled" in some places. Globals like Tranquility and Supress Magic talk about dispelling when calling it "countering" would be more precise. Volcanoes and Corruption are not enchantments, they don't to be maintained. It would be (technically, not conceptually) inconsistent to expect Disenchant Area work against them. Why would other forms of dispel work ?

[Catwalk]

Joel's editors will be put up as soon as I get hold of them. I've sent him an e-mail, expecting him to get back in a couple days.

[kyrub]

Death enchantment... ...it is tracked how much damage was dealt by draining.

Yep. This one is possible to do. But, looking at the easy way to get a big undead Great Wyrm, not my favourite one.

Here I disagree a bit. I like more subtle anti-color stuff. Certainly not abilities like "protection from Red" or "Swampwalk".

Exactly. We are on the same tune.
Anti-flying stuff for green (Web), anti-red-direct damage for blue (Counter-magic), Black bad against black - maybe it is already in the game... It seems to me to be somehow too soft and, these spells being Common, it is easy to get them later in the game if you start with different color. Hmmm. Meh.

I have no idea what MoMup is.

A new abbreviation for Master of Magic Unofficial Patch. I am fed up writing it all over and over. - MoMup -

Part of the blame is on Simtex for using the term "dispel" very loosely. They use it also in the context where in M:tg it would be called "countering"

Well said! "Counter" means possible prevention during the spell setup, while "Dispel" targets something existing. This one is for Psyringe and his help work. I find your notes quite important, b0rsuk. And I remember how confusing it was for me in my first MoM games.

[Psyringe]

Well said! "Counter" means possible prevention during the spell setup, while "Dispel" targets something existing. This one is for Psyringe and his help work. I find your notes quite important, b0rsuk. And I remember how confusing it was for me in my first MoM games.

Noted. Precise terminology is important in complex games (and MoM isn't really a shiny example in that regard *cough*). If you find other examples of unprecise terminology, please mention them in the Plight thread, I'm definitely interested in cleaning them up. ("unrest" vs. "rebel" is another example where I expect some imprecision in the game#s descriptions).

[b0rsuk]

Most of the ideas in this thread have one thing in common: they're more unusual than just number changes. In fact, I prefer ideas like these because they're a bit off the wall. I'm attracted to unusual stuff. So if you're wondering why so many ideas sound out of reach or not worth the effort, that's why.

Minor point, really, but black is not that bad against black. In MoM it made me consider using otherwise unpopular spell: Black Channels. In one game Rjak had so many skill points and mana his Possession and Black Sleep were just scary. And he started sending Wraiths my way ! Black Channeled wolf riders and halberdiers made short work of them.

Yep. This one is possible to do. But, looking at the easy way to get a big undead Great Wyrm, not my favourite one.

I thought about that already. Note the word "normal". Only recruitable units.

So you may get hammerhands or paladins at best. It's silly how many combos there are with paladins. They work with Black Channels and even Berserk. I fully agree with making anti-magic remove enchantments and prevent positive enchantments. Only stuff like Web and Cracks Call should be allowed.

Speaking of Cracks Call, does it sound easy to change the spell to work on per-figure basis ? That way results would be more reliable. "All or nothing" spells are those I hate with passion. It wouldn't fix Cracks Call against big expensive things, but it's the next best thing.

As for paladins, once I get my hands on the editor I'll try to remove Armor Piercing ability from them. A strong, magic immune cavalry with holy bonus would still be very powerful, even after proposed immunity changes. And people would have reasons to consider elven lords over paladins. Death to no-brainers.

A new abbreviation for Master of Magic Unofficial Patch. I am fed up writing it all over and over. - MoMup

Why have you abandoned the name "Insecticide" ? It's more distinct and memorable. Does it look bad on CVs ?

About countering - I'm pleased to see Psyringe is so vigilant :-). I suppose you would prefer this kind of stuff in PM in the future ?

[Psyringe]

About countering - I'm pleased to see Psyringe is so vigilant :-). I suppose you would prefer this kind of stuff in PM in the future ?

If you're asking me, I prefer to have everything Plight-related in the Plight thread. It's easier for me if all Plight-related info is concentrated in one spot. Don't be shy to mention any problems, inaccuracies, typos etc. there either.