Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Catwalk]

zitro, I'd argue the exact opposite. With high book counts you're far more likely to get useless spells as treasure (spells you could research yourself anyway).

Drax, why do you think random is better? What role do you think luck should have in games? I also don't quite understand your proposed algorithm, please dumb it down

[Seravy]

My preferred algorithm would be like this:
1) chose a random spell of any realm that the player has at least one book in or arcane.
2) give a chance to learn it like: (0.15+0.10*(books in realm)+0.025(books in other realms))*4/rarity
3) if player can't learn it or already has it give mana reward instead.

I don't understand it either.

Here is how the game works :
At the start of the game, monsters and treasure is placed into each lair. For treasure, it can be gold, mana, item, spell, special, or hero.
If spell is included, it can be either Common, Uncommon, Rare or Very rare, in any case each lair can at most contain 1 spell. Not going into details for the others as it's not relevant. Once all of these are rolled and the rest of map features are generated, the game starts.
When the player beats the lair, they receive the treasure rolled at the start of the game, with any undefined parameters being selected at this time.
For spells, that means if the player clear a lair that has "1x Uncommon spell" among treasure, they'll get a random uncommon spell they are allowed to have with their existing books. (In this case, as uncommons require 2 books, any realm they have at least 2 books of, plus arcane)

Example :

Start of the game, generates this lair :Tower, 6 Nagas, 3 Phantom Warriors, 500 gold, 1 Uncommon Spell, 1 Item of value 650 or less, 1 hero.
Actual treasure found : 500 gold, Fire Storm spell, Traveller's Ring, Dwarf hero.
Treasure found after reloading : 500 gold, Transmute spell, +3 Shield of Defense, Assassin hero.
etc.

PS : Zitro is right. You either get a spell from treasure, starting books, or enemy wizards. Enemy wizards are unreliable (they might not play your realm or not live long enough to have rares researched, or even get the same spells you did). So it's books vs treasure. If you find more spells in treasure, you need fewer books to have the same amount of spells. In the current system you'll usually not have every spell with fewer then 8 books, even if you find lots of spells in treasure. In the proposed system, unless the droprate of spells is cut to like a third of the current, you'll be able to get every single spell, including very rares, with as few as 5-7 books depending on the amount of spell treasure you find. Even if rarity isn't bumped up for unresearched spells, you can research your uncommons while in parallel find new uncommons in treasure, so by the time you research all your uncommons, there are no holes in your spells - all the missing uncommons were found. So now you can only find missing rares while reseaching existing rares - again by the time you research all, you find all that was missing in treasure, and from then onward all spells you find will be the missing very rares.

[Nelphine]

My problem with the current system is not that there are too few or too many spells.

My problem is that there are too many items. I think games where before I've even explored all of my home plane (let alone conquered all the nodes/lairs), I've already found more than 12 weapons, is a little excessive.

Now, that could just be that weapons are too common and armour/misc should be found (although as a note, my archer still doesn't have a weapon, so bows are definitely too infrequent).

However, there are only 5 things you can get from treasure:
Gold or Mana (of which I think this is already at a good level - I wouldn't want to get more).
Items (I believe we get too many items, or at least weapons)
Heroes (I think we get a good number of prisoners.)
Spell Books or Retorts (these are now extraordinarily rare, which is good.. but maybe it's too rare now?)
Spells.

So, I believe we should get less items. Since we have a good number of gold/mana/prisoners, then either Spell Books/Retorts, or Spells should go up.

I think spells should go up. Then we could leave the current system where many of the spells will be 'repeats' of our research; but since we'll be getting more, it should end up feeling better overall, but won't actually change your final number of spells much.

(Alternatively, we could reduce how many items we get, reduce how many spells we get but give a preventative formula so you don't repeat research, and increase how many spell books/retorts we get. I think this would feel the best, but I'm not sure it's actually balanced.)

[Catwalk]

I think the amount of spells is about right if we can be sure they most likely aren't in your spellbook already. I'd also prefer never getting Arcane spells, it should be simple enough to remove them altogether. On a rare occasion I'll be happy to get an Arcane spell, and in the other 95% cases I won't be happy.

[Nelphine]

Right but that doesn't take Seravy's point about making lots of books obsolete into account Catwalk. Given retorts are already often a better choice than more books, we shouldn't be doing anything that makes more books even worse.

[Seravy]

Then we could leave the current system where many of the spells will be 'repeats' of our research; but since we'll be getting more, it should end up feeling better overall, but won't actually change your final number of spells much.

Am I really the only one who goes on lair cracking journeys after researching all spells to ensure all the found "common" spell treasure actually gives me new rares or very rares?
Both Catwalk's and your suggestion would make this strategy far too powerful and it would be a huge advantage to monocolor wizards with a medium amount (5-7) books. Those are already the best, so we shouldn't go in that direction.

(No, this strategy does not work if you have more than one realm.)

increase how many spell books/retorts we get. I think this would feel the best, but I'm not sure it's actually balanced.

It wouldn't be. I remember when these were more frequent and we ended up with the Myrran AI having 19 books plus 6 retorts. Or the human player, whoever cleared more lairs.

I think the amount of spells is about right if we can be sure they most likely aren't in your spellbook already

No, it isn't. How many spells do you find in treasure per game? Let's say only 12. (Conservative amount with 100 lairs in play, out of which the 6 towers guarantee spells. Of course only if the AI doesn't beat you to all of them but there are other difficulties than Extreme and Impossible.)

At 10 books you have all spells anyway, nothing changes. Finding spells merely makes it happen faster.
At 9 books you miss 4 spells. It's pretty reasonable to assume you'll clear at least enough of those lairs to find those spells after all research is finished, so you have all 40 spells. No real change here, except that the time when the found spells no longer count against your research is a lot earlier - at the time you finish your last rare instead of very rare.
At 8 books, you miss 7 spells. Currently, it's possible to find them all in treasure but unlikely - chances are you'll miss one or two, as there won't be enough lairs left to find 7 more spells after you researched all very rares. In the new system, you'll almost always have every spell, so it's clearly more favorable than 8 or 9 book picks.
At 7 books, you miss 11 spells. As long as you aren't left behind by research much, the 12 spells found will fill these gaps and you'll have every spell in the new system - in the old you most likely missed at least 3-4 very rares and a few rares - if unlucky, even an uncommon or two. So picking 7 books gets massively better.
At 6 books, you miss 16 spells. Here, you won't get everything even using the new system...unless you trade for spells, in which case you can still do so. But the chance is still reasonably large to have as many spells as with 10 books if played well.
5 books is the same as 6 but needs a lot more trading and pushing research earlier to have a chance for all spells.
4 and fewer books won't benefit too much from the new system, as there will be too many unfilled common and uncommon slots to have a major influence on rares .

[Nelphine]

I agree with the flaws of more spells. I also agree with the flaws of more spell books/retorts.

Do you have any comments on the fact we get way too many weapons right now? (And other items too, but primarily non bow weapons.)

[Seravy]

I agree with the flaws of more spells. I also agree with the flaws of more spell books/retorts.

Do you have any comments on the fact we get way too many weapons right now? (And other items too, but primarily non bow weapons.)

Unlike other items, weapons come at 3 different types - melee, bow, and staff. Finding more is reasonable, while you can't equip them all, finding fewer would mean you won't find any weapon of the matching type for some, or even many, of your heroes.

If this still feels a problem despite that,
-Try playing with "more random items" enabled or disabled, whichever you aren't doing right now
-If you did play with it disabled, the problem might be too many weapons among predefined items. As only predefined items can have spell charges, and only weapons, there are quite a few of them. (there are more "weapon only" abilities than "Armor only" or "Acessory only" as well.
This is the distribution in the file currently :
Sword : 32
Mace : 15
Axe : 11
Bow : 16
Staff : 33
Wand : 33
Accessory : 66
Shield : 18
Chain : 10
Plate : 16

(wow, that's a lot of staves/wands. Spell charges, I guess, are to blame...bows are rare, but so are bow heroes.)

[sayke]

Sword : 32
Mace : 15
Axe : 11
Bow : 16
Staff : 33
Wand : 33
Accessory : 66
Shield : 18
Chain : 10
Plate : 16

(wow, that's a lot of staves/wands. Spell charges, I guess, are to blame...bows are rare, but so are bow heroes.)

Interesting! Considering that Accessories are the most common item slot by far, wouldn't it make sense to have a lot more of those pre-defined, along with a lot more armors? That way we'd start to balance out the proportion of pre-defined ones a bit, you know?

It's possible to make a mathematical model of how many items of each type we "should" have in proportion to each other, but I don't want to do it right now...

[Seravy]

Interesting! Considering that Accessories are the most common item slot by far, wouldn't it make sense to have a lot more of those pre-defined, along with a lot more armors? That way we'd start to balance out the proportion of pre-defined ones a bit, you know?

I already explained why there are more weapons :
-You can equip any accessory into any accessory slot but you cannot equip any weapon into any weapon slot.
-There are several levels more possible ways to make weapons than other items : Spell charges allow about 50 different spells at 4 different quantities. Even right now, there are plenty of spell charges that never appear in items, and those that do only appear in 1-2 items at most despite the quantity option scaling from 1 to 4.

So no, I don't want to change the ratio.