AI scouting.

[Seravy]

Right, but this is equivalent to saying 'oh you have 9 great drakes. Well, now they're hell hounds.'

Chaos Ward almost does that - I admit the drakes have to attack for that but eventually they have to if the only wizard left is the Sorcery one.

To be honest, this is exactly what Sorcery does to most realms all across the board.

"Oh, you have Armageddon, Great Wasting and Meteor Storm? No, I have them."
"Oh, you have Crusade, Charm of Life, Doom Mastery and Chaos Surge? No, I have those...okay keep the Chaos Surge, it affects every player. "
"Oh, you have Massacre and Wave of Despair? No, you don't have them when fighting in my cities and btw when I'm attacking you, my units are immune to those."
"Oh, you have 3 turns until you win the game with those 9 Great Drakes reaching my capital? Too bad, you don't get turns anymore, so it's too late."
"Oh, you have 9 Great Drakes? Too bad they can't move for a turn. Now let me do that every turn from now on. Hey I have enough casting skill to do this to your second stack, too!"
"Oh, you have a huge army of undead? Now they're gone."
"Your city is fully buffed? Not anymore!"

Unless we want to completely redesign the Sorcery realm, this is how it works - it counters and eliminates all magic other players try to use, not limited to just unit buffs.

btw, speaking of Life. That realm is weak to Sorcery in general. Just like how Nature is weak to Death, or Chaos is weak to...Life I guess.
However it doesn't mean it has no answers to a Sorcery wizard. When going against them, use heroes - Artifacts cannot be dispelled, and you have True Sight for Illusion Immunity. Life item powers are not any worse than life buffs. The only hard part is getting past Spell Blast - if the sorcery wizard declares early war you have to rush them with whatever you have - a single high defense hero with true sight should do it, or a stack of buffed basic units before Dispelling Wave is available. If they don't declare war, Spell Blast won't be used unless they turn hostile - either make a treaty or time your artifact summons to when they have hostility off (you can easily tell the difference because with hostility on they attack your units and target your stuff). I admit a strong Sorcery wizard reaching late game on high difficulty is game over, but that is true for most realms.

. But as it is, I really think that a range of some kind is better, to give the illusion that there's something the buff tactic can do against an uncommon spell.

I literally listed at least 5 things they can do but there are more :
-Make a treaty with the Sorcery wizard
-Dispel their AEther Binding so they don't get double dispel power
-Pick Runemaster and/or Specialist
-Avoid water tiles so you don't lose units to drowning - you can always recast enchantments if they didn't die
-Test if they have Dispelling Wave in the first place (you need 2 Sorcery books to be able to see it in trade though)
-Don't overscout - no contact with anyone except your intended target means no third party interference from the Sorcery wizard (yes I know this needs luck, they might find you instead)
-Attack the Sorcery wizard first (seriously, if you don't you lose)
-Put fewer buffs on your units, only the essentials so they won't be targeted as much (if I remember right the chance of casting dispel increases as the intended target's priority rises)
-Put lots of cheap buffs on an unimportant stack to divert the dispels
-Keep this decoy stack in a city with Nightshade - It might counter the dispel (not sure if this is true but probably yes)
-Add city buffs to the city where your decoy stack is - even more priority to hit that instead of your main stack
-Cast Divine Order and trade it away - try to make a diplomatic situation where other wizards want to cast it as well to stack the bonus. If you stack 2-3 copies of this, you can recast a dozen buffs a turn.
-Take advantage of Good Moon events for rapid-buffing your stack at half price
-Instead of a single doomstack, buff 3-4 stacks mildly, like, Lionheart only, so the damage is much less

btw "against an uncommon spell" - even Spell of Mastery is no match for a Sorcery uncommon spell.

Anyway, I feel this is a potential problem with the core design philosophy of the Sorcery realm and not scouting. Sorcery is designed to be very weak early and unstoppable late - dispels or not, a 500 skill Sorcery wizard means you lost the game - stacking unit buffs can only compete with what they do because it's overpowered in the first place. There is nothing in any other realm that can reliably solve a Sorcery wizard with a flying capital warded from all but Sorcery and 9 Sky Drakes inside. (and eventually they'll use Time Stop to make sure they summon 5 times as many Sky Drakes as you summon anything of yours merely by having 5 times as many turns.)

btw an Archangel isn't much weaker than a Sky Drake, if weaker at all. And it's immune to Sorcery. (Spell Ward still turns it into a hell hound though)

[Nelphine]

Right, but any of those sorcery abilities are a) very rare (except spell blast, but that specifically stops SoM and can be used against the sorcery wizard in turn) and b) can't be spammed multiple times.

And well dispelling wave is the most obvious example, this is still about casting unit curses at long range - the thing about dispelling wave is that it often doesn't target units in a city (I have no problem with ai randomly hitting cities with unit curses - this really makes them a city curse, which justifiably everyone can do). But I would be just as annoyed with a blizzard or a fire storm or a stasis on a random stack in the middle of nowhere.

Additionally, I can survive time stop, I've beaten sorcery wizards with 500 casting skill (on extreme, don't think I've survived to that point on impossible). I have no problem with the game balance overall, and understand how sorcery works. That's why I'm not trying to take away dispelling wave, nor even increase it's cost. I'm simply trying to limit it (and other similar spells) range - the human can use it whenever a unit threatens them; the AI should be able to do the same - since the human can get faster windwalking more reliably than the AI, then the range should be longer for the AI than for the human, but it should still be limited to similar circumstances. Just like almost everything else has a limit (even all the things you mentioned have their own limits) AND specifically to match (or appear to match, which is really the important part) the human ability to use such a tactic.

The AI shouldn't be able to do things that are downright impossible for the human - it can do them faster, it can do them sooner, and it can do more of them, but it shouldn't be able to simply ignore the rules the human has to follow. When the rules can't be used by the AI (or if the rule would break the AI), a similar rule should be designed for the AI to follow.


(On a different note, I don't think I've ever seen AI with spell ward on their cities... am I alone in this?)

[GermanJoey]

I've seen AIs with Spell Ward before, pretty nasty stuff.

[Catwalk]

I think it's okay for the AI to ignore some rules, if it leads to better opposition. I don't feel cheated just because the AI knows how to plan from the start, not having to gather intel first. I consider dispelling a hazard of using buffs, as long as the buffs are strong enough to warrant that vulnerability and there are ways to diminish the risk of dispelling then I think the balance works out.

[Seravy]

To put it simply, being able to target from an unlimited distance replaces the human player's ability to react instantly to an incoming stack or follow a target with a scout. It's a necessary feature, very much like the overland casting advantage that replaces the human player's ability to focus on casting spells that are part of a strategy.

If there is one thing in the scouting department I'd like the AI to be aware of, it would be to make it ignore invisible units on the overland map - unfortunately I doubt I can do that.

[Nelphine]

Can you mark tiles with only invisible units as valid tiles for pathfinding purposes?

[Nelphine]

Also, can you set their strategic strength to 0 except during actual combat? Those two changes are 'all' you need but probably are what you mean when you say not possible.

[Nelphine]

And I disagree that casting at any range replaces reacting when stacks are near. I think having massively more troops, and resources (such as casting skill and mana) so that even if they don't actively choose, they have enough actions that at least some of them will end up appearing to be a reaction, is what balances not being able to actually react.


Being able to do it outside reasonable range is simply unneeded overkill.

[Seravy]

Can you mark tiles with only invisible units as valid tiles for pathfinding purposes?

ehhh no thanks. I don't want to lose games because I bump into a peaceful wizard's invisible unit.
I meant the AI shouldn't target the player's invisible stacks with attacks, I didn't mean they should accidentally step on it.
Considering how easy it is to abuse either, it's probably better that I can't do it.

Also, can you set their strategic strength to 0 except during actual combat?

If I did that, the AI would think their own invisible units also have 0 strength. Unit strength is not variable based on the viewer.

Being able to do it outside reasonable range is simply unneeded overkill.

I already explained why it is necessary. The player can choose to fight the player(s) who cannot dispel, and gain enough territory to win the game through sheer economic advantage. And it's not just that. They can intentionally send their buffed stack after the 3 other players, while all their "normal" armies still fight the Sorcery wizard. Ultimately, unless every wizard has Dispelling Wave, this range limitation is clearly a major hole in the AI's ability to deal with the buff strategy.
In the vanilla game, it could have worked because disenchanting was in Arcane - every wizard had it.

By the way if we did it, aside from the balance problem it causes, it would be a huge burden on gameplay. I don't feel like counting up to 10 (or whichever amount you suggested) tiles from all cities belonging to every Sorcery wizard in the game before moving my hero stack. (and then get owned anyway because a settler decided to build an outpost inside the range, making it valid suddenly)
I either am prepared for dispels because I know the wizard is hostile, or I know they aren't and my spells are safe - easy to play with that. 10 tiles of distance? Ehh. Most players can't even keep the 2 tiles of distance for the wizard's pact and then they complain for the AI being stupid.
(other plane would be ultra situational and far more work then it's worth - wizards usually send settlers and build outposts on the other plane anyway, far before rare enchantments in large amounts come into play. And the player can't see the map of the entire plane so it's not something they can plan around either. At least I don't scout random ocean tiles just to make sure there isn't a 2 tile island with an AI city from Myrror and a tower there - I'm fine with finding that after I own the rest of the world.)

[Nelphine]

Interesting. For me, having a rule based on spell mechanics, even one I can forget all the time, is far more preferable. Actually its very much like the peaceful AI invisible units. I can already accidentally run into them if (for whatever reason) I'm moving 1 tile at a time. It makes no sense that pathfinding would avoid invisible units. If I lose the game because it starts a ear, the lesson is: don't scout where invisible units might be. They might be anywhere? That's a risk; and it's largely only peaceful sorcery that would endanger you. I would much rather a rule that makes sense based on mechanics (and applies to both AI and human), as opposed to being simple to work with.

Given that argument, I understand where you're coming from a lot more; and I can agree to simply disagree.

I also find it very interesting that you make the 'other plane is situational' comment. To me, it's standard. Control one plane, then control the other. I would say, oh 2/3-4/5 of my extreme games I can successfully prevent AI from the other plane from entering my plane. I can't always stop the AI on my plane from going to the other plane.

Given that I will make one last request - please don't allow AI to use unit curses on targets on a plane that the AI has 0 units or cities on. Its not my ideal, and I'm aware you think its a balance issue. I disagree that its a needed balance issue (and you yourself think it's rare, so it won't affect your game much), and I find it incredibly breaks immersion when it happens. I expect you'll still say no, but, I consider immersion extremely important, so I have to try.