How to get rid of starting Rare spells? Wraith problem...

[Seravy]

There is a big problem with starting the game with the Wraith spell, and rares in general, but this one seems to be the most easy to abuse.

I have already changed (the latter two independent of the wraiths themselves)
-nerfed wraiths to have only -1 on the life steal
-and no +2 to hit bonus.
-reduced the casting cost reductions of spell books, so casting it takes like 10 turns longer than before. (no -40% bonus, only 14%)
-Accelerated city growth and early production, so enemies can defend better
-And added the fortress lightning bolt mod (btw any idea how to make the lighting stronger? It barely does 1-2 damage a turn, it never felt like something that matters in the battle)

Despite all of the above and playing Hard, a single wraith summon is still enough to take over ANY enemy city in the early game, even the capitals of enemy wizards. A stack of 7 war bears and 2 heroes simply can't compete with a Wraith.

Now, the problem is, the intended use of Wraiths is exactly this, a unit that's unstoppable with numbers alone, low tier units shouldn't be able to efficiently stop a Wraith. So further nerfing them isn't really a good option.

I think any of the below changes could solve this problem, but I haven't found any specific information if they are possible to mod, and how (simply putting magic.exe into a disassembler won't really tell me much without knowing where the related code is) :
-Limiting the books you can take from every realm to 10. The 11th book does not give you any new researchable spell anyway, you already have all 40 from book 10. The AI tends to keep their best summons guarding his own capital so them having early Wraith is a lesser problem. This is probably the easiest to do, and best solution.
-Removing the Rare (and Uncommon) picks. I tried, and know where they are located, but doing so causes the game to take unintended other spells like Armageddon instead, so changing the code also seems to be necessary. Skipping the part where uncommon and rare spells are given does not seem to hard if we knew where that is located in the code.
-Restoring the old Guaranteed spells feature instead. I've seen a screenshot with that, but I don't know if it actually worked safely. That feature was quite good anyway, considering some spells can be worthless to you (like Eternal Night if you play 3+3+3 books). This probably takes a lot of work.

Anyone can help me in achieving any of the above?

[zitro1987]

There is a big problem with starting the game with the Wraith spell, and rares in general, but this one seems to be the most easy to abuse.

-And added the fortress lightning bolt mod (btw any idea how to make the lighting stronger? It barely does 1-2 damage a turn, it never felt like something that matters in the battle)

If you remove 'weapons immunity / Wraithform' , increase upkeep to 8, have a weak 'life-steal' for wraiths of 0 or -1, lower their armor, and maybe add 1 melee and keep +2 to hit, then their usefulness would be better balanced against other good starting 'rare' creatures like Storm Giant and Gorgons, particularly against normal units without magic weapons.

Fortress Lightning Bolts -
Current Strength (each point is 0.3 armor piercing damage in average) : 2 + min(casting skill/8,30)
Recommendation: AE4B3 is the '2' in that formula. I recommend changing it to around '5', making early game lightning bolts to be of strength 7-10 instead of strength 4-7. This recommendation does not significantly alter late-game when those lightning bolts get pretty nasty.

[Anthony]

Another thing you can for wraiths and death knights, to make them less binary, is reduce their figure count; what makes life drain -3 unbeatable is that it gets rolled 4 times.

I might also remove their flight.

[Seravy]

Another thing you can for wraiths and death knights, to make them less binary, is reduce their figure count; what makes life drain -3 unbeatable is that it gets rolled 4 times.

I might also remove their flight.

Oh...I didn't know it's rolled per figure, that's even more OP. I think it'll work fine with only -1 to resist, that way it's quite weak vs anything that has 8 or more resistance (which means most fantastic creatures, high end units, and even some low end ones from high resistance races), and useless at 11 or more resist.
Death Knights are fine, they are Very Rare and I increased their casting costs.
Still, even if I nerf Wraiths more, you can pretty much abuse a lot of other rare (and even uncommon, like Shadow Demons) spells in the early game, so I would love if this was gone from the game.
I downloaded ArtMoney and found the spellbooks in the memory when generating characters, but I have absolutely no idea how that can let me find where that memory address is referenced in the code in the exe. It's been a long time but I remember you first allocate memory and use segment and index registers to read/write to it, so it's not as simple as finding the address itself, it won't be in the code like that.

[Asfex]

Despite all of the above and playing Hard, a single wraith summon is still enough to take over ANY enemy city in the early game, even the capitals of enemy wizards. A stack of 7 war bears and 2 heroes simply can't compete with a Wraith.

Now, the problem is, the intended use of Wraiths is exactly this, a unit that's unstoppable with numbers alone, low tier units shouldn't be able to efficiently stop a Wraith. So further nerfing them isn't really a good option.

The native strength of death realm is its ability to kill almost all regular (gold upkeep) units. However , dwarf golems have death immunity and can be found in the neytral city. Also, wraith are vulnerable for low-lvl life magic (dispel evil, and dispel touch from angels), and low chaos magic (warp creature + life drain, or WC + petrify, ) .Even resist magic can almost stop wraith's life stealing. I think death realm have enough problems.The control over regular units is the death's speciality.

[Seravy]

Despite all of the above and playing Hard, a single wraith summon is still enough to take over ANY enemy city in the early game, even the capitals of enemy wizards. A stack of 7 war bears and 2 heroes simply can't compete with a Wraith.

Now, the problem is, the intended use of Wraiths is exactly this, a unit that's unstoppable with numbers alone, low tier units shouldn't be able to efficiently stop a Wraith. So further nerfing them isn't really a good option.

The native strength of death realm is its ability to kill almost all regular (gold upkeep) units. However , dwarf golems have death immunity and can be found in the neytral city. Also, wraith are vulnerable for low-lvl life magic (dispel evil, and dispel touch from angels), and low chaos magic (warp creature + life drain, or WC + petrify, ) .Even resist magic can almost stop wraith's life stealing. I think death realm have enough problems.The control over regular units is the death's speciality.

I'm planning to (in fact already did) buff Death spells that are not powerful enough.
Wraiths are a problem not just because of life steal, they are also non-corporeal (magical weapons are unlikely early in the game) and have a good attack, defense, and health stat. Dispel Evil works but it is Uncommon, so chances of an enemy having that is low, 2 in 10 if playing 11+ books, almost zero otherwise. Angels are even less likely, and I doubt the AI can rely on Warp Creature.

Early Gogrons, Incarnations, Gaia's Blessings and Stream of Lives, and a whole lot of other spells are game-winning, so rares have to disappear. I'll try to figure it out myself with a disassembler but for now I want to finish balancing all spells and realms first, I expect looking for spellbook code in magic.exe to take lots of time, and I don't need to play 11 books if I don't want to.

[Asfex]

I doubt the AI can rely on Warp Creature.

You are right. AI does not count the creatures become zero resistance. can AI penetrate the unit resistance - its the only question that AI interest.

I'm planning to (in fact already did) buff Death spells that are not powerful enough.

What way do you want buff death? did you read the others approaches to buff the death realm on this forum?

[Seravy]

I doubt the AI can rely on Warp Creature.

You are right. AI does not count the creatures become zero resistance. can AI penetrate the unit resistance - its the only question that AI interest.

I'm planning to (in fact already did) buff Death spells that are not powerful enough.

What way do you want buff death? did you read the others approaches to buff the death realm on this forum?

Life drain : no slider, better base resistance penalty, more skill received
Skeletons : no maintenance
Terror : resist at -2
Weakness : resist at -8
New uncommon Life Drain spell : stronger resistance penalty for a higher cost (resist at -10 for 35 mana)
Possession : resist at -3
Wall of Darkness : lower casting and upkeep
Evil Presence : fixed to stop power generation as intended
Cloud of Shadow : Costs 80, no maintenance
Berserk : You can use it both in combat and overland
Demon Lord : Costs more, but higher resistance, health, casts doom bolt, generates 10 power instead of maintenance, and summoned demons have caster 40
Summon Demon spell : available both i combat and overland, very rare
I'm only halfway done, haven't changed most rares and very rares, and even some uncommons.
Planning to make Evil Omens increase the cost of all non-death, or all enemy spells if I can, but only by 25%.

I've read a lot of stuff in the forum, probably about Death, too.

Oh, and not a direct change in Death, but basic normal units tend to have lower resistance.

[Asfex]

looks like you want degrade version back to 1.30. In that version: weakness was automatic, skeleton have no maintenance,
berserk is used overland and in combat.

Also, demon must be a combat-summon only- it can not be overland - its a game mechanic. The unit must be either overland or combat-summon - but not both.

[Seravy]

looks like you want degrade version back to 1.30. In that version: weakness was automatic, skeleton have no maintenance,
berserk is used overland and in combat.

Also, demon must be a combat-summon only- it can not be overland - its a game mechanic. The unit must be either overland or combat-summon - but not both.

It's an exception to the game mechanic, that's what makes it special enough to be Very Rare. Other new summoning spells I've added are all combat only.

Edit : I solved the problem, managed to limit the amount of books the player can select to 10 per realm.