Zitro 'Balspeed' / 'one' / 'mod of mod' Removed

[Anthony]

One thing I sort of wanted, though it's probably challenging, is to have death units heal while in cities -- and reduce the population in the process.

[kyrub]

Zitro, this is in Asfex' mod.

54. the death curses : cursed land and famine gets mana to the spell's owner's spell skill:
the amount is: stolen hammers/8 and stolen food /4 respectively.
55. the evil precence gets the spell owner +2 casting skill overland per religious building's level of the affected city.
56. the pestilence gets the spell owner the 4xPopulation mana to the mana pool.

If you want something else, be specific.
(Famine could give you extra food = money, for a change. Warp node could give you mana or small amount of power, logically. Evil presence could give you + casting skill as Asfex suggests or improve casting skill accumulator. Pestilence could improve your power (or even globally improve healing rates of undead in cities by +1, since pestilence is very rare, see below). Or everything mana, that is simple and probably easy to do. Your choice.

_the dark equivalent allows healing for undead (seems hard) but it could make things really interesting!

Well... what is possible:
Cloud of Darkness (rare) => heal +1/per turn in given city // it comes a bit late for such an important spell... If you can think how to swap it with something in uncommon, it would be nice. But you may leave it for late game as well (especially if you include both very rare spells below, one has good chance to acquire at least one of them).
Eternal Night => can fonction as Cloud of Darkness AND Darkness in every city.
Pestilence => improve healing in cities by +1 for every pestilence in effect, regardless of CoD.
(Or there could be a check for Demon Lord in a stack giving you +1 heal undead rate even outside cities, something AI can naturally handle for a change).

Anthony's modified idea: Healing undead is normal (or slow, maybe every second turn +1), but healing undead stops growth of the city (or decreases it by 10-20). His other suggestion is too complicated. Not sure about it, but your choice. CoD can remove the growth penalty and/or make it every turn +1.

Btw, why did you get rid of possession? Such a nice and intricate spell, I saw AI bite me with it... The resistance is easy to change.

*Tested both with a 0armor, 50+ melee first strike unit which never received any damage whether attacking or defending. First strike seems to work

What I like about it, is that thrown or gaze attack can still override the (defensive) first strike effect. A new tactical effect!

I learned that all units other than spearmen and swordsmen can be given 2 scouting.

Great, I will look into it.

[kyrub]

Guaranteed Spells:I'm not sure whether I fully like it as one has to be careful not to discourage use of few spellbooks by adding even more benefits to multiple books.

Hmm, we disagree here, in my eyes, selection of 5, 6, 7 books give almost no benefits in the original game. I never use it.

Anyway, this is as conservative suggestion as possible. It almost keeps all the original starting spells. It adds selectable guaranteed spells.

   

Pros:
- It encourages long-planned strategies for the game.
- Starting from the 3rd book, you may select an uncommon guaranteed spell you will need later in the game (like Enchant road or Resurection).
- Starting from 5th book, you may even pre-select a rare spell... like Incarnation, Magic immunity or Gaia's blessing, or Cloud of Shadow.
- You may now take 1 book and select 1 guaranteed common spell you really want for your game, no more pure lottery.
- some incentive to have 5-7 books as they give the player guaranteed rare spells.

Cons
- The system would need more balanced spellbook to give more choice dilemna.
- It's different from original

[kyrub]

Here is my last bigger update, the window of opporunity is all but shut. The update is not even that big, since I was somewhat doubtful about your ideas and I found the concepts too hasty (the spell section of your patch makes me uncomfortable, it's direct damage bore-fest). Sorry, maybe we can find some common ground next time.

Anyway, something was done. I finally landed the Tiny mass (thanks Whitemage for the word), and it works like a treat. You have the diff file in the attachment. The thing will be put in next Insecticide patch, along with... the bug I found while trying to work with Life Force. It ssems the game uses wrong algorithm for these global dispells. In fact, they should be stronger. Some other things, food to gold, Dispel evil and Holy word.



I may finish some undone work in a week, if its tiny, like the Evil presence, Warp node, Heavenly light or Undead healing or whatever thingy. If tiny. Hopefully, I have helped a bit to this interesting patch. Good work, Hernan - good luck.

[zitro1987]

Happy about bunch of responses I will get to later.

*Heavingly light and Cloud of Darkness: how about adding prayer and black prayer, respectively? Maybe still not good enough, but I'll take these over the weak original enchantments.
*Damage spells and replacing of them, resistance problems (post further below, resistance-stuff fixed!)
*I realized how misguided my 'tranquility' and 'life force' are. I simply dislike such spells and you mentioned better alternatives, but for the time being, I haven't changed either one.
*Undead healing (wishful thinking) - whether by 'cloud of darkness' or just regular overland healing, it's wishful thinking but would help black summons out. In the meantime, units that don't look undead (night stalker and lycantrophy) no longer undead.
*I really like the suggestions of economy benefits to enchanting your opponent's cities (famine, evil presence, warp node etc) and it's interesting asfex already did this.
Ideas on what my vision is for those:
Warp Node: +5 power to caster
Evil Presence: you absorb the power (or maybe get it as 'skill' as suggested)
Cursed Lands: Unsure. What if we reduce production by 75% instead of 50%?
Famine: Probably strong enough to keep as it is, not sure if it's difficult to strengthen spell to 66%
Pestilence: +5 food / -5 food maintenance per 'pestilence'?

____
*Spellbooks: with that table, you're starting to really convince me that it is a cool idea. I'm confused by the 'can be given' column - does it reflect spell exchanges or spell rewards? or both?
Maybe we disagree, but I still can't help but notice the disadvantage of 6-7 books and the advantages of 8-10 books with those massive cost/research bonuses. I think I may be more convinced if either:
*instead of 10% increments from 8-11 books, to have 6% increments from 6-11 books, as the improvements from 5 to 6, and 6 to 7 are not great on that table.
OR *Cap the starting common spells at 5 from 7-10 books (11 books with the 9 commons can be kept as suggested).

[kyrub]

*I had a problem with possession. I don't remember ever modding it, but it has always worked as if it was resist at -infinite and no matter what I followed on the wizards.exe hacking guides, this one spell remained unresistable. Enemies also loved using it, kind of breaking my game. I made a quick fix for the time being by replacing it to a moderate-strength damage spell so that you still suffer somewhat at the hands of the enemy.

Oh dear! Why did not you say that?

You created your own problems by invalid hex editing. The basics are: the game code uses most of the times DOUBLE bytes for values (4 digits), e.g. so called "words", typically "05 00" or "02 00" or "FF FD". The last one is a negative value (basically it is "- (100 - FD)" which is equal to 3, so "minus 3"). The problem is, when you change a negative value to a positive one, you have to erase the FF, otherwise you create "a resist at -256". Also note, that the positive value is the first byte followed by zero, not vice-versa as you did it. The bytes are always reversed, before being considered, so "05 00" is 0005, while "00 05" is 0500, and similar "FF FA" is FAFF (-6) etc.

You have made irresistible these spells: Possession, Black sleep, Black wind, Dispel evil (I still found your last suggestion to change the extra resistance very good, keep it please), Holy word, Petrify, Vertigo. To learn how to do it right, below are the adresses. Example B8 00 FF => B8 00 00. B8 FF FE => -2, B8 FF FC => - 4 etc. (Now I wonder about all other places that you have used it. I suggest you re-check the places where you were changing the in-code values!).

84E1F
84E28
84E31
84E67
84E70
84E78
84E80

Time to correct them and have those spells back! And don't feel down about that, it's part of learning process, I was there too 4 years ago.

EDIT: Below, you have the diff file with defensive First Strike. After application, run 2-3 tests to see if there is no interference. I suggest.

[zitro1987]

Kyrub, you might like my upcoming new wishlist: It's about replacing 1/3 to 1/2 of my damage spells with easy alternatives (mostly bringing back stuff Aureus removed). I'm also planning on bringing back 'black sleep' and 'possession'

Thanks Kyrub, a goal of mine (a couple of versions later) is to bring back 'black sleep' and 'possession', replacing my uncommon and very rare damage spell replacements. Yes, I want possession to be a scary very-rare combat spell that is hard to resist. (to the extent of 1.31 confusion, but we got black prayer on our disposal!)

I'm not sure if it's hard, but I'm also considering replacing early-game damage spells 'crack's call', 'acid fog' and maybe 'chill touch' with spells/effects removed by aureus mom2.0. I might like an improved version of life-drain, I wonder how cool 'earth to mud' would work in my mod,

I'll let you know later for my wishlist.

[kyrub]

Thanks for reconsidering spell section, zitro.
As far as damage spells go, I actually find new spells (Acid fog and Chill touch) more interesting than the old "pumping" ones, they are not "all the same"... But it is not only a question of too many damage spells.

It would be better, instead of changing wishlists, to first write down the conception, and have a chat about possible modifications. Spell system is the corner-stone of MoM and while I am willing to help, I am (always was) touchy about it. - There may be interesting and simple solutions. For example, there is no more Chaos channels in your spell system, but we may insert a simple chaotic combat-only firebreathing spell, allowing attack of flyers. We may replace Planar Travel or Tranquility with something else, or we may just modify it, but it's important to think twice and hear suggestions and possibilities before we act.

[zitro1987]

Thanks for reconsidering spell section, zitro.
As far as damage spells go, I actually find new spells (Acid fog and Chill touch) more interesting than the old "pumping" ones, they are not "all the same"... But it is not only a question of too many damage spells.

It would be better, instead of changing wishlists, to first write down the conception, and have a chat about possible modifications. Spell system is the corner-stone of MoM and while I am willing to help, I am (always was) touchy about it. - There may be interesting and simple solutions. For example, there is no more Chaos channels in your spell system, but we may insert a simple chaotic combat-only firebreathing spell, allowing attack of flyers. We may replace Planar Travel or Tranquility with something else, or we may just modify it, but it's important to think twice and hear suggestions and possibilities before we act.

I agree, spell system is the most difficult part of modding in every way (coding, balance, fun) and I'd try not to change the spell system too much - it's the touchiest of subjects, more so than units, city mechanics, etc.

I could start a separate thread for that on the mod subforum.

[Anthony]

Where is the 200 damage for crack's call encoded? Change it to 10 damage and it's still not entirely useless, but not an instant kill on very rare beasties.