1.
If human players can say "this node is mine because it's on my continent" and kill the AI's incoming stacks before they clear the node, I don't see why the AI needs to think otherwise. It wouldn't be fair.
That said, there is a workaround, I have explained it a million times. Put a nonmilitary unit on the node and then they can't claim it and also won't complain about the pact being violated.
This is a recurring problem where players either don't read the documentation to realize there are units they can put on the node, and/or are hypocrites who want the AI to stay off their continents but treat the AI's lands as their own anyway.
Diplomacy is about patience and coexistence, for a future benefit. Players who can't handle this minor inconvenience don't deserve to be good at using diplomacy - it wouldn't be realisitic.
Either way, troops can move onto the tile - for all intents and purposes it is an unoccupied tile so units might simply end their turn on it when moving through using the automatic pathfinding mechanism. Once the other player has troops on the tile, they will rightfully say "this is mine" because they have people there, and you don't, even if they ended up there as an accident.
I see very little value in this as a gameplay feature because even if the Wizard's Pacted other player ignores the node, if I didn't do as much as placing a spearmen on it, everyone else will still claim it.
2.
No, Chaos is good enough. I was considering this for a while but truth is Chaos is not that weak at all in the early game, it just plays differently from other realms.
-Hell Hounds aren't that great indeed, but you can have Gargoyles, which are.
-The situational spells are better than it seems. Or perhaps we could say if you don't need them, you are winning anyway. No City Wall to disrupt? Then my units will deal more than enough damage to conquer it - Chaos is excellent at dealing damage. Nothing to target with Warp Wood? Well if the enemy has no ranged units, they are sitting ducks, and magical ranged doesn't really exist this early in relevant quantity. Nothing to corrupt? Good, that means my first enemies has no extra minerals, so they don't have the advantage to overwhelm me.
The thing is, Chaos does fairly well using just a few staple spells : Fire Bolt deals the best direct damage in the early game, Shatter is as good at disabling any normal unit as Black Sleep for half the price, and Gargoyle hard counters every common creature in the game with the poison immunity, while Wall of Fire guarantees I'm never losing a city if I already conquered it.
In general, Chaos can pretty much cover all bases using only 3-5 of their best spells while other realms do not.
3. This is a good idea, assuming we can precisely define what activates the feature.
4. 3 Easy lairs are guaranteed for each player (in CoM I only the human player). I'm not sure about the need for an additional node or neutral city and there is no guarantee the map even allows placing one. (islands might not have a nearby landmass to place a neutral or there might be nodes already covering the area fully.)
5. More control over...
Mercenaries : No to this, as it makes the troops you build and races you control less relevant if mercenaries are too easily available.
Heroes : The game was already changed to offer heroes more frequently than the original. While luck is still involved, it's not a significant factor unless the player is overly picky in what hero they are willing to use. I don't think any further increase in hero offer rate are necessary, 1/6 chance per turn is high enough.
Artifacts : The primary source of these is treasure hunting and casting item creation spells and again they would be less relevant if items could be bought for gold.
The idea of the player being able to choose from one of the three options is good for gameplay but bad for flavor and implementation. It's hard to justify why 3 different offers always appear at the same time and it's even harder to justify why I cannot look at all three when I have an entire city of people to work for me. The artifact might need a wizard to recognize but even a normal soldier can report about the mercenary or hero... the implementation problem is the lack of compatibility with the existing hero system where missing an offer grants the hero extra levels.
6. No.
Ships move at a speed of 3-4 and land movement isn't relevant on overall travel time for a longer distance.
What land (or sky) movement does and sea movement does not, is reaching the next city and conquering larger continents quickly using one stack - a strategy exclusively used by the human player, and one that's in need of reduced effectiveness the most. Even with razing cities gone, this is one thing we shouldn't make easier.
7. I don't understand why players should win a game they've lost or why the game should have a win condition the AI has no access to.
Not even Master of Orion (1) had this - conquering Orion didn't win the game outright, it merely gave you same really good and OP tech. MoO 2 did but 1 was a better game overall. (I don't remember if the victory condition had anything to do with that though, probably not.)
An alternate win condition like the council votes might be more reasonable but then we need to make the rules for it very strict so only games where the victory of one player is unavoidable leads to triggering it.
... but then what makes it different from the existing "all enemy players surrender" feature? Nothing. So might as well simply keep that. If you are strong enough to win through it, you don't need to betray allies, and if you aren't then you haven't yet won the game so it makes sense you have to continue.
Enabling an "allied" or "diplomatic" victory sounds bad to me as it diverts players from the core gameplay and is also redundant - making allies already win the game by providing a major military (and indirectly economic) advantage compared to not having them, or having wars instead. If it was a thing then making allies would need to become significantly harder as well in which case the above "allies are a military advantage" gameplay would suffer.
Quote: If you don't already have a spearman stationed on a node on another wizard's land,I think that's self-explanatory. It's not your territory so the AI rightfully tells you to leave.
If human players can say "this node is mine because it's on my continent" and kill the AI's incoming stacks before they clear the node, I don't see why the AI needs to think otherwise. It wouldn't be fair.
That said, there is a workaround, I have explained it a million times. Put a nonmilitary unit on the node and then they can't claim it and also won't complain about the pact being violated.
This is a recurring problem where players either don't read the documentation to realize there are units they can put on the node, and/or are hypocrites who want the AI to stay off their continents but treat the AI's lands as their own anyway.
Diplomacy is about patience and coexistence, for a future benefit. Players who can't handle this minor inconvenience don't deserve to be good at using diplomacy - it wouldn't be realisitic.
Quote: They will also take over nodes regardless of diplomatic relationships and put troops on them like it's no big deal.This one makes more sense but is a bit questionable. If you have no units on the node, is it really yours? You are obtaining power from it, but can you say it's actually your territory? Cities are safe because they have civilians living there so you can point at them and say "this is mine" even without soldiers. But that doesn't really work for nodes.
Either way, troops can move onto the tile - for all intents and purposes it is an unoccupied tile so units might simply end their turn on it when moving through using the automatic pathfinding mechanism. Once the other player has troops on the tile, they will rightfully say "this is mine" because they have people there, and you don't, even if they ended up there as an accident.
I see very little value in this as a gameplay feature because even if the Wizard's Pacted other player ignores the node, if I didn't do as much as placing a spearmen on it, everyone else will still claim it.
2.
No, Chaos is good enough. I was considering this for a while but truth is Chaos is not that weak at all in the early game, it just plays differently from other realms.
-Hell Hounds aren't that great indeed, but you can have Gargoyles, which are.
-The situational spells are better than it seems. Or perhaps we could say if you don't need them, you are winning anyway. No City Wall to disrupt? Then my units will deal more than enough damage to conquer it - Chaos is excellent at dealing damage. Nothing to target with Warp Wood? Well if the enemy has no ranged units, they are sitting ducks, and magical ranged doesn't really exist this early in relevant quantity. Nothing to corrupt? Good, that means my first enemies has no extra minerals, so they don't have the advantage to overwhelm me.
The thing is, Chaos does fairly well using just a few staple spells : Fire Bolt deals the best direct damage in the early game, Shatter is as good at disabling any normal unit as Black Sleep for half the price, and Gargoyle hard counters every common creature in the game with the poison immunity, while Wall of Fire guarantees I'm never losing a city if I already conquered it.
In general, Chaos can pretty much cover all bases using only 3-5 of their best spells while other realms do not.
3. This is a good idea, assuming we can precisely define what activates the feature.
4. 3 Easy lairs are guaranteed for each player (in CoM I only the human player). I'm not sure about the need for an additional node or neutral city and there is no guarantee the map even allows placing one. (islands might not have a nearby landmass to place a neutral or there might be nodes already covering the area fully.)
5. More control over...
Mercenaries : No to this, as it makes the troops you build and races you control less relevant if mercenaries are too easily available.
Heroes : The game was already changed to offer heroes more frequently than the original. While luck is still involved, it's not a significant factor unless the player is overly picky in what hero they are willing to use. I don't think any further increase in hero offer rate are necessary, 1/6 chance per turn is high enough.
Artifacts : The primary source of these is treasure hunting and casting item creation spells and again they would be less relevant if items could be bought for gold.
The idea of the player being able to choose from one of the three options is good for gameplay but bad for flavor and implementation. It's hard to justify why 3 different offers always appear at the same time and it's even harder to justify why I cannot look at all three when I have an entire city of people to work for me. The artifact might need a wizard to recognize but even a normal soldier can report about the mercenary or hero... the implementation problem is the lack of compatibility with the existing hero system where missing an offer grants the hero extra levels.
6. No.
Ships move at a speed of 3-4 and land movement isn't relevant on overall travel time for a longer distance.
What land (or sky) movement does and sea movement does not, is reaching the next city and conquering larger continents quickly using one stack - a strategy exclusively used by the human player, and one that's in need of reduced effectiveness the most. Even with razing cities gone, this is one thing we shouldn't make easier.
7. I don't understand why players should win a game they've lost or why the game should have a win condition the AI has no access to.
Not even Master of Orion (1) had this - conquering Orion didn't win the game outright, it merely gave you same really good and OP tech. MoO 2 did but 1 was a better game overall. (I don't remember if the victory condition had anything to do with that though, probably not.)
An alternate win condition like the council votes might be more reasonable but then we need to make the rules for it very strict so only games where the victory of one player is unavoidable leads to triggering it.
... but then what makes it different from the existing "all enemy players surrender" feature? Nothing. So might as well simply keep that. If you are strong enough to win through it, you don't need to betray allies, and if you aren't then you haven't yet won the game so it makes sense you have to continue.
Enabling an "allied" or "diplomatic" victory sounds bad to me as it diverts players from the core gameplay and is also redundant - making allies already win the game by providing a major military (and indirectly economic) advantage compared to not having them, or having wars instead. If it was a thing then making allies would need to become significantly harder as well in which case the above "allies are a military advantage" gameplay would suffer.