The Wikia

[TwilightSparkletheAlicorn]

Hello there. I'm Twilight Sparkle the Alicorn Pony Princess, from over the Master of Magic Wikia. The Wikia is still work in progress, and is not going to be completely done anytime soon, unfortunately. On the other hand, there's a plenty of information, (almost) all explained in as much detail as it could be done. Due to the high amount of mods and patches with the use of revengineering, this site can offer us great help, because most things that are unclear on the wikia are best explained if you take a look at the code, so we surely could use a hand of someone who knows the game mechanics. We have already earned the attention of Kyrub, he visits the wikia time to time, but does not reply that often. Also, the amount of questions is great, there are too many for Kyrub alone to just answer them all in an instant.
Non-modding, but experienced players are also welcome, as there is probably a plenty of page mistakes/non-mentioned bugs/exploits/examples lacking as well, and the help is most welcome.
Finally, players with a little experience (though I doubt there are any) can learn more about the game on the Wikia.

By the way, there's a (hopefully) full intel on how to build roads on ocean and shore tiles on our Wikia, if you're curious about that wonderful exploit. Not just a little unseen brief mention like in Simpsons FAQ, but more like a full guide.

[I like Serena]

Hi Twilight Sparkle the Alicorn Pony Princess!
Welcome to RB!

Nice effort on your wikia.
I definitely like the section on road building which mentions things I did not know yet.
Cool animation about how to build 3 sections of road per turn. I've started a game just to see how that works out.

I did some investigations myself, for instance on city walls.
The wikia article on walls appears to be a bit incomplete, since it doesn't mention what happens when a flying unit attacks through the wall, or a non-corporeal unit for that matter.
The not-mentioned illusionary attack is also kind of interesting, since it ignores armor, including the city wall armor bonus.
So a great drake and a wraith can attack through the wall, but only at a penalty.
However, a phantom beast can attack through the wall without penalty (due to the combination of non-corporeal and illusionary attack).
Btw, it seems merging as movement type is left out.

Anyway, do you have, say, a top 3 of most pressing questions?

[TwilightSparkletheAlicorn]

Spearman did the animation and the most of the text, he has very good prose, which I lack. I'm just the girl that likes exploits, not a good author sadly.

As for City Walls, it would be nice if you could register and add that information based on your tests on armor bonus. What's about AP damage here, by the way?
Also, Merging is not a movement type, just the ability like Teleport, I think. There were some arguments on movement types and hierarchy, but mostly due to the fact our Wikia lacks Sailing movement type, which isn't good in my opinion.

Well, one of the most pressing questions - how undead creation works - was answered already.

Of what is left, personally for me one of the most interesting things to know is "Where exactly is created item located?" Well, the obvious reason is "Fortress Town tile", but it is not as right as it seems. The thing is, after your empire expands (I do not know the exact factor, but it is possibly the amount of towns or/and movements of summoning circle), the item is not summoned in any of my towns (heroes in them cannot pick it up freely)! Yes, I can still teleport it to the vault for free, but I'd like to know where my item is created.
There's more at comments of Summoning Circle, Create Artifact or Enchant Item, I think.

Is AP damage defense malus applied before or after the application of bonus MagIm, FireIm, WeaponIm, MissileIm defense? I only know that Illusion overrides any shields and sets the defence exactly to zero if target is not IllusionIm.

Another tough nut to crack is movement system - how exactly do units move overland and why is road exploit possible? Kyrub refused to answer this questions, as he found the movement part of the code too complex, and we're still curious.

What is code basis for Food Production (there was no clear answer)? Can Power somehow go below zero with Warp Node, if yes, what will happen (negative numbers at power distribution, with mana, research and skill drawn from respective pools instead?)?

Is Hydra sometimes treated as SFU or not?

Are any hero abilities like Life Steal affected by -N Spell Saves?

There are also many spells that do not work properly, such as Evil Presence, and we'd like to know why and how exactly they do not work. Some were already answered by Kyrub, as with undead creation. Check out the forums, there are lots of questions lying there, answered or not. The most important ones are Suggestions, Exploits and Unexplained Issues, where Kyrub's answers are located mostly.

As you see, there are plenty of things to know, sorry if that's too much for this post (as you asked just three, and I've unloaded that barrage).
Thanks for the answer, I never thought it would be so quick, as MoM part of the forums seems stagnant.

[I like Serena]

That's quite a lot you're asking.
So let me start with what I already know.
It takes a bit more effort and time to analyze any of it in code and/or game.
Note that the Tweaker is a useful tool to set up conditions in the game, and to analyze what happens under the hood.

Spearman did the animation and the most of the text, he has very good prose, which I lack. I'm just the girl that likes exploits, not a good author sadly.

As for City Walls, it would be nice if you could register and add that information based on your tests on armor bonus. What's about AP damage here, by the way?

Since the wall bonus is merely an armor bonus, I'm pretty sure that AP will pierce (half) it.

Also, Merging is not a movement type, just the ability like Teleport, I think. There were some arguments on movement types and hierarchy, but mostly due to the fact our Wikia lacks Sailing movement type, which isn't good in my opinion.

True. Still, units with merging ability (only the wyrm) can also pass city walls.

Of what is left, personally for me one of the most interesting things to know is "Where exactly is created item located?" Well, the obvious reason is "Fortress Town tile", but it is not as right as it seems. The thing is, after your empire expands (I do not know the exact factor, but it is possibly the amount of towns or/and movements of summoning circle), the item is not summoned in any of my towns (heroes in them cannot pick it up freely)! Yes, I can still teleport it to the vault for free, but I'd like to know where my item is created.
There's more at comments of Summoning Circle, Create Artifact or Enchant Item, I think.

Items are created in a special slot in memory that is also saved to save file (see e.g. SaveGam2.html).
When complete it is offered to the player, who can then move it to a hero or to his vault.
In other words, it is sort of outside the game, and it's the code that dictates how it can be moved at that time.

Is AP damage defense malus applied before or after the application of bonus MagIm, FireIm, WeaponIm, MissileIm defense? I only know that Illusion overrides any shields and sets the defence exactly to zero if target is not IllusionIm.

Yep. That's also one of the questions I still have.
As yet, I haven't come around to it to analyze it.

Another tough nut to crack is movement system - how exactly do units move overland and why is road exploit possible? Kyrub refused to answer this questions, as he found the movement part of the code too complex, and we're still curious.

Well, the answer to that is not really simple, and I can only mention a couple of things I know,
Obviously there are some flaws in the code here.

What I can say, is that the game keeps separate maps for each movement type, both for the overland map and for the combat map.
If I remember correctly swimming, sailing, and waterwalking are completely treated as the same thing.
Flying is more interesting, since you can get it from so many sources, and the code has so many conditions (implicitly meaning flaws) on it.
For instance fortress location in a combat map, as well as any city wall towers, are hardcoded to be impassible.
Otherwise the abilities of a unit are combined with each movement map to figure out how much movement points a specific move costs.
Oh, and movement points are counted in half moves.
On the overland map diagonal moves count the same as straight moves, but on the combat map a diagonal move counts as 1.5 moves.
Unless you attack, because a diagonal attack costs the same movement points as a straight attack.

When a road is constructed, that can be either done in place, or as part of a build-road-from-to command.
Obviously there is a flaw in the code that calculates only once how long that will take.
The calculation is based on the construction ability (a separate number) of the engineer.

I guess I'm not really saying anything new here.
Anything in particular that you're looking for?

What is code basis for Food Production (there was no clear answer)?
Can Power somehow go below zero with Warp Node, if yes, what will happen (negative numbers at power distribution, with mana, research and skill drawn from respective pools instead?)?

Don't know.
It should be possible to find out with the Tweaker.
I can say that there is a bug in the code when a defending wizard at his fortress could cast a pumpable spell.
If he has a lot of mana, the 50% fortress discount would cause his mana to overflow, becoming negative.
As a result he won't cast any pumpable spells, and casts hardly any spells, effectively being a sitting duck.
So in the end game, it's particularly easy to defeat a wizard at his fortress.

Kyrub removed the condition at some point, with the result that the defending AI wizard would "fart" a pumpable spell, still being easy to defeat.
Furthermore, he would always be permanently defeated, since he couldn't cast spell-of-return with negative mana.

Is Hydra sometimes treated as SFU or not?

What's an SFU?
Oh wait, I guess you mean single-figure-unit.
Yes, I'm pretty sure it is.
The code is riddled with special conditions for hydra and also another creature that I forget.
I wouldn't know at this time though when it actually matters.

Are any hero abilities like Life Steal affected by -N Spell Saves?

Life steal is counted against resistance, so yes, I believe it would be affected by a -N spell save.
Any reason to think differently?

There are also many spells that do not work properly, such as Evil Presence, and we'd like to know why and how exactly they do not work. Some were already answered by Kyrub, as with undead creation. Check out the forums, there are lots of questions lying there, answered or not. The most important ones are Suggestions, Exploits and Unexplained Issues, where Kyrub's answers are located mostly.

As you see, there are plenty of things to know, sorry if that's too much for this post (as you asked just three, and I've unloaded that barrage).
Thanks for the answer, I never thought it would be so quick, as MoM part of the forums seems stagnant.

Yeah. It's kind of stagnant.
I think it became that way in particular when the current green skin, that I consider awful, was introduced.
Moreover, the email notifications don't always seem to work anymore, making it difficult to track threads.
Anyway, I'm still monitoring it, although sometimes it takes awhile before I realize someone posted.

[TwilightSparkletheAlicorn]

Thank you for the answers, though you misunderstood a few questions, I think.

True. Still, units with merging ability (only the wyrm) can also pass city walls.

As can teleporting ones. Nothing exceptional here.

Items are created in a special slot in memory that is also saved to save file (see e.g. SaveGam2.html).
When complete it is offered to the player, who can then move it to a hero or to his vault.
In other words, it is sort of outside the game, and it's the code that dictates how it can be moved at that time.

As far as I can remember, the same goes for items created with itemmake.exe when they appear in the game - they're stored at save file slot. The thing is, the item has coordinates (?) at overland map which determine whether or not should the transporting price be paid. Battle-earned items appear at the encounter tile, and may be taken by conquering hero for free, while others are going to pay to get it, two heroes on the same tile can give each other artifacts for free. Conjured items usually appear at your capital, except with the conditions I mentioned or something: sometimes item does not appear with coordinates of any of my cities when I conjure it. I'd like to know how are the coordinates set when the item appears in the game, created by the spell.

I guess I'm not really saying anything new here.
Anything in particular that you're looking for?

Well, the thing is, road exploit works because continious road build has it's movement set by coordinates! So each tile the engineer has to move next has a preset coordinates (not plane-dependent though), to which building engineer will go even if it was Recalled to somewhere far, far else, or even changed planes (though it will not change planes back, it will build on the same coordinates at the plane it's on). I remember selecting recalled engineer when building with my method 2 for a weird depiction of the route starting ten tiles away from the unit.

What I'm interested in is how movement overland handled, by +1/-1 X/Y, by exact coordinates like with engineers building, or by some unneccessary complex movement calculation algorythm, which is as hard to understand as rocket science.

I can say that there is a bug in the code when a defending wizard at his fortress could cast a pumpable spell.
If he has a lot of mana, the 50% fortress discount would cause his mana to overflow, becoming negative.
As a result he won't cast any pumpable spells, and casts hardly any spells, effectively being a sitting duck.
So in the end game, it's particularly easy to defeat a wizard at his fortress.

Kyrub removed the condition at some point, with the result that the defending AI wizard would "fart" a pumpable spell, still being easy to defeat.
Furthermore, he would always be permanently defeated, since he couldn't cast spell-of-return with negative mana.

Nice, never knew that.

What's an SFU?
Oh wait, I guess you mean single-figure-unit.
Yes, I'm pretty sure it is.
The code is riddled with special conditions for hydra and also another creature that I forget.
I wouldn't know at this time though when it actually matters.

So, what exactly are these conditions? Also, could you check what is that "another creature"? That's quite valuable information.

Life steal is counted against resistance, so yes, I believe it would be affected by a -N spell save.
Any reason to think differently?

It's an ability, not a spell. I just don't know. Someone should take a look at the code and see it.

[I like Serena]

All right, I've analyzed the code on Armor Piercing versus the various immunities, or more generally how the final defensive rating is determined.

The defensive shields are calculated in the following order (v1.31).
Note that the items are only executed if they are applicable.

1. We start with the defensive rating of the unit, including all permanent effects.
   
2. Add large shield +2.
   
3. Add bless +3.
   
4. Add elemental armor +10.
   
5. Add resist elements +3 (if no elemental armor).
   
6. Apply armor piercing on the current shields (divide by 2 rounding down).
   
7. Increase shields to 10 if weapon immune.
   
8. Increase shields to 50 if any of the other immunities apply, including the effect of righteousness (here there's a bug, since weapon immunity overrules missile immunity).
   
9. An illusionary attack overrules all this, making the shields 0 (assuming it applies of course).
   
10. Finally, the city wall bonus of +3 or +1 is applied (only when attacking from outside to inside).
    

In other words, MagIm, FireIm, WeaponIm, MissileIm are all applied after AP.
Note that since there is no such thing as Lightning Immunity, so the AP of sky drake's lightning breath and storm giant's ranged attack is only stopped by magic immunity.

[I like Serena]

Thank you for the answers, though you misunderstood a few questions, I think.

True. Still, units with merging ability (only the wyrm) can also pass city walls.

As can teleporting ones. Nothing exceptional here.

My point was that in the wikia article about city walls, teleporting is mentioned while merging is not.

As far as I can remember, the same goes for items created with itemmake.exe when they appear in the game - they're stored at save file slot. The thing is, the item has coordinates (?) at overland map which determine whether or not should the transporting price be paid. Battle-earned items appear at the encounter tile, and may be taken by conquering hero for free, while others are going to pay to get it, two heroes on the same tile can give each other artifacts for free. Conjured items usually appear at your capital, except with the conditions I mentioned or something: sometimes item does not appear with coordinates of any of my cities when I conjure it. I'd like to know how are the coordinates set when the item appears in the game, created by the spell.

Hmm, it might matter if the item is offered by a merchant, by an event (gift of the gods), or if it was conjured.
Likely the first 2 would be offered at the fortress, while the conjured item might be offered at the summoning circle.
I'll get back to you on that once I've analyzed the code.

Well, the thing is, road exploit works because continious road build has it's movement set by coordinates! So each tile the engineer has to move next has a preset coordinates (not plane-dependent though), to which building engineer will go even if it was Recalled to somewhere far, far else, or even changed planes (though it will not change planes back, it will build on the same coordinates at the plane it's on). I remember selecting recalled engineer when building with my method 2 for a weird depiction of the route starting ten tiles away from the unit.

What I'm interested in is how movement overland handled, by +1/-1 X/Y, by exact coordinates like with engineers building, or by some unneccessary complex movement calculation algorythm, which is as hard to understand as rocket science.

The game keeps track of a road-from-to in progress with: starting X/Y coordinates, final X/Y coordinates, and number of turns until completion.
In particular this does not include a plane.
The game will try to continue on the line between the start coordinates and the end coordinates.
When there is a jump in coordinates strange things will happen that the code does not anticipate. :-)
I'd expect that for a more or less horizontal road, only the X coordinate of the unit is tracked to build the road.
The Y coordinate would follow from the starting and ending coordinates, meaning the Y coordinate would be off.
But I'd have to investigate the road building algorithm to see what it will actually do.

You should really think up a top 3 or something like that, because this thread is spinning out of control.

I can say that there is a bug in the code when a defending wizard at his fortress could cast a pumpable spell.
If he has a lot of mana, the 50% fortress discount would cause his mana to overflow, becoming negative.
As a result he won't cast any pumpable spells, and casts hardly any spells, effectively being a sitting duck.
So in the end game, it's particularly easy to defeat a wizard at his fortress.

Kyrub removed the condition at some point, with the result that the defending AI wizard would "fart" a pumpable spell, still being easy to defeat.
Furthermore, he would always be permanently defeated, since he couldn't cast spell-of-return with negative mana.

Nice, never knew that.

FrancoK on this site created a mini-mod (only 1 feature) to cap the mana at 15000 instead of 30000.
That fixes this end-game problem.
You can find it in the mod subforum.

So, what exactly are these conditions? Also, could you check what is that "another creature"? That's quite valuable information.

I'll get back to you on that.
Perhaps we should start separate threads for each of these topics.

Life steal is counted against resistance, so yes, I believe it would be affected by a -N spell save.
Any reason to think differently?

It's an ability, not a spell. I just don't know. Someone should take a look at the code and see it.

You're quite right.
When life steal is executed, it is checked against a standard resistance roll consisting of:
the battle unit standard resistance, the life steal modifier, charmed (+30), magic imm (+30), righteous (+30), elemental armor/resist elements (+10/+3) which is not applicable, bless (+3), and resist magic (+5).
It implies that the artifact spell save bonus is not included.

Btw, note that the combination of bless and resist magic will make your unit effectively life steal immune.

[Anthony]

Also, Merging is not a movement type, just the ability like Teleport, I think. There were some arguments on movement types and hierarchy, but mostly due to the fact our Wikia lacks Sailing movement type, which isn't good in my opinion.

Technically, both teleport and merging are movement types (they're stored in the movement byte), though they have no overland effects.

[TwilightSparkletheAlicorn]

My point was that in the wikia article about city walls, teleporting is mentioned while merging is not.

On our Wikia, Merging and Teleporting share their page, they don't have separate ones.

Hmm, it might matter if the item is offered by a merchant, by an event (gift of the gods), or if it was conjured.
Likely the first 2 would be offered at the fortress, while the conjured item might be offered at the summoning circle.
I'll get back to you on that once I've analyzed the code.

As I mentioned, some of my testing could show that item won't appear in any of my cities sometimes. Thank you for looking through the code.

But I'd have to investigate the road building algorithm to see what it will actually do.

No, that's clear already, I don't think exact mechanism on these is needed. Instead, a mechanism of the normal movement makes a point of interest. How is the path stored, how is it executed, where is the 0/0 coordinate?

You should really think up a top 3 or something like that, because this thread is spinning out of control.

See, there are plenty of questions - these were but a few posts and the thread is already out of control. I don't know whether the detailed discussion should be held on RB or the wikia, but either way will do.

FrancoK on this site created a mini-mod (only 1 feature) to cap the mana at 15000 instead of 30000.
That fixes this end-game problem.
You can find it in the mod subforum.

Thank you, but I think mana cap is a bad thing.

I'll get back to you on that.
Perhaps we should start separate threads for each of these topics.

Again, here or at the Wikia?

You're quite right.
When life steal is executed, it is checked against a standard resistance roll consisting of:
the battle unit standard resistance, the life steal modifier, charmed (+30), magic imm (+30), righteous (+30), elemental armor/resist elements (+10/+3) which is not applicable, bless (+3), and resist magic (+5).
It implies that the artifact spell save bonus is not included.

Btw, note that the combination of bless and resist magic will make your unit effectively life steal immune.

Thank you.

All right, I've analyzed the code on Armor Piercing versus the various immunities, or more generally how the final defensive rating is determined.

The defensive shields are calculated in the following order (v1.31).
Note that the items are only executed if they are applicable.

We start with the defensive rating of the unit, including all permanent effects.
Add large shield +2.
Add bless +3.
Add elemental armor +10.
Add resist elements +3 (if no elemental armor).
Apply armor piercing on the current shields (divide by 2 rounding down).
Increase shields to 10 if weapon immune.
Increase shields to 50 if any of the other immunities apply, including the effect of righteousness (here there's a bug, since weapon immunity overrules missile immunity).
An illusionary attack overrules all this, making the shields 0 (assuming it applies of course).
Finally, the city wall bonus of +3 or +1 is applied (only when attacking from outside to inside).



In other words, MagIm, FireIm, WeaponIm, MissileIm are all applied after AP.
Note that since there is no such thing as Lightning Immunity, so the AP of sky drake's lightning breath and storm giant's ranged attack is only stopped by magic immunity.

Oh, thanks! But then how can illusionary neutralise city wall bonus if itis applied beforehand? Same with Weapon Immunity for Missile Immunity (or does it just ignore other immunities then if the first is applied?).

Technically, both teleport and merging are movement types (they're stored in the movement byte), though they have no overland effects.

Interesting...

[I like Serena]

On our Wikia, Merging and Teleporting share their page, they don't have separate ones.

Ah. That is a bit confusing though.
Agreed, functionally they are the same, but they really do look and feel different.
For myself I'd prefer to always mention them separately. It's not as if they occur that often.
Ah well, making swimming and sailing the same is worse.

As I mentioned, some of my testing could show that item won't appear in any of my cities sometimes. Thank you for looking through the code.

I'll get to it. I'll get to it.

No, that's clear already, I don't think exact mechanism on these is needed. Instead, a mechanism of the normal movement makes a point of interest. How is the path stored, how is it executed, where is the 0/0 coordinate?

I think I already explained that: the starting coordinates and the ending coordinates. It's a line as straight as possible between them.
As for the coordinate system, the tile in the top left of the map has coordinates (1,1), while the bottom rightmost tile has coordinates (60,40).
If you switch the debug-mode flag on, you can toggle the coordinate display on if you want.

I did a test myself. Gave an engineer a road to build and recalled him to my capital on the other plane.
He appeared in my capital for 1 turn.
In the second turn he teleported to the coordinates where the road would have started and started building there.
So it seems the game has some tolerance for faulty coordinates, fixing them when needed.
In this case my capital was to the right of the starting point (building the road to the left), so he jumped to the first tile left of the starting point.

See, there are plenty of questions - these were but a few posts and the thread is already out of control. I don't know whether the detailed discussion should be held on RB or the wikia, but either way will do.

I'll leave that up to you, since these are your questions.
Separate threads should at least make it easier for other people to respond as well.

Thank you, but I think mana cap is a bad thing.

Yeah. It would be nice if kyrub fixed it in a neat way.
I tried to fix it myself, but found there were more places with problems than I could easily find.
Mostly the game became unstable and that I certainly did not want.
There already is a mana cap at 30000. I don't think that making it lower will affect game play any.

Oh, thanks! But then how can illusionary neutralise city wall bonus if itis applied beforehand?

To be honest, I'm confused by that as well.
I have tested this in game with the Tweaker.
I made the city wall bonus extra high, so I could definitely see the difference.
I'm pretty sure that a phantom beast could still get through while a great drake and a wraith couldn't.
But now I'm wondering if I somehow made a mistake.
Or perhaps vanilla versus insecticide makes a difference.

Same with Weapon Immunity for Missile Immunity (or does it just ignore other immunities then if the first is applied?).

Actually, I simplified the algorithm a little.
Where the immunities are concerned the code looks like this:

Code:

if (ranged attack and any immunity applicable) then
   defense type = raise-to-50
if (weapon immunity applicable) then
   defense type = raise-to-10
if (ranged attack and magic immunity applicable) then
   defense type = raise-to-50
if (ranged attack and righteous applicable) then
   defense type = raise-to-50
apply defense type

The only case where this goes wrong is when we have a normal ranged attack on which weapon immunity is applicable.
The only relevant immunity that can also be applicable then, is missile immunity, which is effectively overruled.

Technically, both teleport and merging are movement types (they're stored in the movement byte), though they have no overland effects.

Interesting...

I guess there is a distinction between movement types on the overland map and movement types in combat.
On the overland map the teleporting and merging attributes are ignored, while I think that in combat some other movement types are ignored.