(September 12th, 2015, 21:52)Tiltowait Wrote: Well, it seems you are picking up where kyrub left off. Good job. I, for one, would like to see some tweaks made to Insecticide rather than a mod. Notably, modifying the combat routines to attack sensibly rather than make a beeline for my archers and ignore the attacks of frontline units along the way. This is one of the greatest failings of Insecticide as I see it. If you can keep track of your bugfixes and computer player tweaks and roll them into Insecticide at some point, that would be a great achievement. Kyrub's best attribute was that he didn't really monkey with the game, he just fixed things and made the game follow the manual/strategy guide like it should have.
I do take notes of the changes that can be useful so they can be applied later, so it's going to be possible.
The new feature of allowing the AI to cast more than one spell overland if their skill allows could also be added, I expect that to make a big difference on harder difficulty.
I still need to find where the combat AI is in the code, been busy with overland yesterday.
Quote:Relating to halberdiers, did you also consider adding 1 resistance to them (and maybe lowering 1 for spearmen)? Giving more resistance to halberdiers can bridge the large resistance gap between mid-tier units and stuff from armorer's guild.
The gap is intentional. If you want resistance, you can build shamans, priests, magicians, or high end units, or summon something.
Quote:Wyverns - I just they just need 1 or 2 more melee points, and they will be functional below-average top-tier units.
Will do that, I think 2 is fine because it's only 2 figures.
Quote:I do hope that AI prioritizes high-tier summoning units, because once you get a stack of Stone Giants, can their stag beetles, etc really compete? I suggest boosting city wall defense bonuses and AI summoning priorities focused on 'rares' and 'very rares' to make city conquest more of a challenge.
I have done the AI summoning priorities yesterday. In fact the original was extremely biased towards high cost summons (regardless of their usefulness), I abolished that system and assigned a fixed priority to all summons. As you say, top summoned units have scores in the 80-200 range while early stuff like sprites and nagas have 5. I made two exceptions however, Hell Hounds and Skeletons have a priority of 30 and 50 because of the low cost. Now that the AI can summon more than once a turn, these cheap and effective low tier units will be pretty strong up till midgame due to their numbers, and summoning them won't really hinder the AI in casting stronger spells.
Quote:because once you get a stack of Stone Giants, can their stag beetles, etc really compete?
Depends on the unit, but the better ones can. I definitely would like more AI fantastic units but even the 200% advantage on hard isn't really enough to summon that many as skill goes up slowly. I think I'll see a lot more of them on Extreme and Impossible, only started the first Extreme game yesterday. I did get attacked by a stack of 5 Sky Drakes while casting spell of mastery in yesterday's Hard game so the AI seems to do it well, just lacks the resources to keep such units in every town.
Edit : I think I found where the AI selects the combat spell to use. It works differently from overland. Instead of choosing at random weighted by priorities, it seems to always select the highest priority spell and ignores all others, this explains the spammy behavior.
Edit : Youtube still not letting me post comments there for some reason so here you go
at 50:00 it doesn't display the forester's guild because you unlocked too many different buildings and it only shows the first 10 unfortunately. Same problem as with the City Walls in the beginning. Also I've removed the requirement of forest cells from Sawmills, but after seeing your video, I believe it should be added to Forester's Guild instead.
0.2 should fix the problem with weak lairs having no or minimal treasure.
I also see you found that towers are still ignoring the costs of very rare spells, the fix only worked for other structures. Have to do this one too ASAP.
v 0.2 is now up for download.
Changes :
Version History
0.2
-Major : Generating Books/Retorts in treasure no longer causes the rest of the treasure to get discarded.
-Major : AI is now able to keep casting spells overland during their turn instead of being limited to one spell a turn as long as their skill and mana allows. No more wasting a whole turn on casting Skeletons.
-Major :AI Overland casting BUGFIX : Enchantments that were cast without checking if they are already in effect now check it instead of wasting the skill and mana: Nature's Wrath, Tranquility, Life Force, Evil Omens
-Gold and Mana picks now spend points equal to the mana/gold added instead of a fixed 100 for a random amount between 10-200, possible putting only 10 gold into a value100 lair.
-Encounter zones now have a flat +120 added to their treasure pool to prevent disappointing lairs with no treasure or just a few gold coins. This replaces the old check of treasure having a minim value of 50, which I broke when I tried to change to160 (used a signed byte value so 160 = -32, which made it even worse than having 50.). Note that the new version actually adds to the pool instead of just raising it to a minimum value if below.
-Halberdiers now have 1 more defense. Troll Halberdiers also have 1 more health for a 6 total.
-Warships now have only 12 shots.
-Fixed Djinn's movement (was set to 2 instead of the intended 4)
-AI decision : AI now ignores Evil Omens when deciding which overland spell to cast, as it no longer differeniates between realms.
-AI now recognizes Nature's Wrath as anti-Life when selecting spells to cast. Unfortunately, checking for Sorcery cannot be done in a simple way as no anti-Sorcery spells existed in the original game.
-AI Overland casting priority : Resist Elements is now only 2 instead of 5.
-AI Overland casting priority : Regeneration is now 50 instead of 10.
-AI Overland casting priority : Flame Blade is now only 5 instead of 20.
-AI Overland casting priority : Eldritch Weapon is now only 8 instead of 20.
-AI Overland casting priority : Resist Magic is now 6 instead of 2.
-AI Overland casting priority : Immolation is now 20 instead of 2.
-AI Overland casting priority : Holy Weapon is now only 4 instead of 15
-AI Overland casting priority : Bless is now only 3 instead of 5.
-AI Overland casting priority : Holy Armor is now only 6 instead of 10.
-AI Overland casting priority : Heroism is now only 18 instead of 40.
-AI Overland casting priority : Invulnerability is now 40 instead of 25.
-AI Overland casting priority : Lionheart is now 50 instead of 40.
-AI Overland casting priority : Magic Immunity is now 35 instead of 20.
-AI Overland casting priority : Cloak of Fear is now 1 instead of 10.
-AI Overland casting priority : Path Finding is now 5 instead of 20.
-AI Overland casting priority : Endurance is now 1 instead of 10.
-AI Overland casting priority : Nature's Cures is now 0. Casting this spell without checking in advance if the AI has wounded armies is worse than not casting it at all. (Originaly priority was a mere 2, anyway)
-AI Overland casting priority : Enchant Road is now 0. I want to remove this spell later anyway, and enchanting roads only hurts AI as it's easier to reach their cities and fortress.
-AI Overland casting priority : Chaos Channels is now 15 instead of 30.
-AI Overland casting priority : Guardian Wind is now 6 instead of 15.
-AI Overland casting priority : Summon spell priority is no longer based on a (casting cost/multiplier)^2 formula but instead is a fixed value for each spell as follows :
War Bears : 2
Sprites : 5
Giant Spiders : 15
Basilisk : 25
Stone Giant : 32
Gorgons : 50
Behemoth : 40
Colossus : 100
Great Wyrm : 100
Nagas : 8
Storm Giant : 32
Djinn : 40
Sky Drake : 100
Hell Hounds : 30 (this is pretty awesome for 40 mana now that the AI can use the remaining skill on something else)
Gargoyles : 15
Doom Bat : 25
Chaos Spawn : 20
Fire Giant : 15
Chimeras : 25
Efreet : 40
Hydra : 32
Great Drake : 120
Unicorns : 20
Angel : 35
Arch Angel : 120
Skeletons : 50 (Dirt cheap for 25 and no maintence, worth summoning one or two between each stronger summon just to fill ranks, see Hell Hounds)
Ghouls : 5
Night Stalker : 20
Wraiths : 45
Shadow Demons : 32
Death Knights : 100
Demon Lord : 200
Cockatrices : 25
Enchant Item : 5, 0 if artificier
Create Artifact : 20, 60 if artificier
Resurrection : 100
Summon Hero : 20
Summon Champion : 64
This allows a more reasonable distribution of summoning, unlike the original which basically made the AI summon the most expensive unit all the time, even more so if it had a good modifier. Example : Behemoth had a modifier of 10 (average), while Basilisk had a modifier of 7(frequent). With the origial formula, this gave basilisk a chance of (325/7)^2=2135 chance and Behemoth a (900/10)^2=8100 chance, so Behemoth was summoned 4 times as often even though Basilisk was given an increased chance and Behemoth wasn't. The squaring in the formula also caused these priorities to skyrocket at high casting costs, so spells in the same group without this modifier were selected way less often once high casting cost options were opened, including guardian spirits, resurrection, enchant item Create Artifact.
-AI Overland casting priority : Enchant Item is now zero prioroty for Artificiers (they have Create Artifact instead)
-AI Overland casting priority : Global Enchantments are also no longer priorized based on their casting cost, instead have a fixed value.
Herb Mastery : 10
Aether Binding : 100
Aura of Majesty : 5
Great Uncummoning : 30 – The AI is using this without checking how many of its own units are vulnerable, suicide much? Fortunately most high end summons are immune. Added an extra considition : Priority is 0 if the AI has Zombie Mastery in effect. Hopefully, other than that, it won't have too many low resistance units left by the time it's first casting the spell.
Suppress Magic : 100
Spell Binding : 0 because it has no effect when cast by AI. Need to make that work first. Also, it was casting this without checking if any enemy had any good enchantments to steal, ewww.
Great Wasting : 20
Chaos Surge : 0, but 200 if Doom Mastery is in effect. Again, casting this without checking who has more chaos units in play is meh, could even help the enemy as it buffs ALL chaos units not just own. Funny enough, the AI does cancel this after casting it, if his main realms are not set as Chaos.
Doom Mastery : 80
Meteor Storm : 40
Armageddon : 300
Just Cause : 50
Planar Seal : 50, this actually does a check to see if it's beneficial, yay!
Holy Arms : 60
Charm of Life : 120
Crusade : 200
Eternal Night : 50. Again, no check to see if it even has Death units. Fortunately the new added effect makes it valuable even if not.
Death Wish : 75
Zombie Mastery : 100
Awareness : 5
Nature's Wrath : 200 (Uses a different spell group “anti-color enchantments”)
Life Force : 300 (Uses a different spell group “anti-color enchantments”)
Tranquility : 120 (Uses a different spell group “anti-color enchantments”)
Evil Omens : 100 (Uses a different spell group “anti-color enchantments”)
-AI will no longer cancel the following overland spells if playing the wrong color : Eternal Night, Evil Omens, Chaos Surge, Tranquility, Life Force. 4 of these had their effect changed or enhanced, Chaos Surge is now not being cast unless Doom Mastery is already in effect and then there is no need to cancel it.
-AI will now always try to dispel Evil Omens regardless of played Realm.
-AI will now always try to dispel Nature's Wrath if not playing Nature as primary.
-AI priority for dispelling Herb Mastery reduced (50->5)
-AI priority for dispelling Tranquility is now 20 regardless of Realm played
-AI priority for dispelling Life Force is now 40 regardless of Realm played
-AI will now properly recognize knowing Suppress Magic as a spell to increase priority of casting enchantments instead of incorrectly adding priority to the anti-color enchantment category.
-AI will now consider casting (anticolor) enchantments regardless of colors played by player, as they no longer have a color related effect.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Death Spell now only counts units with a resistance score where the success rate is a minimum of 30% instead of the default non-zero.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recognizes Syphon Life as a Drain Life spell.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recognizes Fairy Dust as a Ice Bolt spell.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Haste, Berserk and Drain Life now only receives a +5 priority boost instead of +10. (Why these 3 anyway? Original Drain Life was horrible...other two are good I guess.)
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recognizes Call Centaurs and Contruct Catapult as a neture summoning spell (Earth Elemental's code but lower priority due to lower summoning cost)
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recognizes Summon Zombie, Summon Demon, and Call to Arms as a summoning spell (Earth Elemental's code because there were no life or death combat summons to redirect the code to, realm shouldn't mattter anyway, except at nodes maybe)
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recognizes Psionic Spark as a Psionic Blast spell instead of as the removed Word of Recall.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recognizes Heroic Shout as a Fireball spell instead of as the removed Recall Hero, with a fixed priority of 20.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Lionheart now receives the same priority buff as Invulnerability (+30).
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : AI now recoginzes the replacement of Wall of Stone with a noncombat spell and assigns “Not valid” priority correctly. (although I never seen the AI cast it anyway)
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Metal Fires now considers fantastic units (because they are now eligible for the buff)
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Warp Reality now requires at least 3 more chaos units than the enemy to be cast instead of only 1 more. Spell priority is higher if condition is met. Change is done because this spell it pretty expensive and a waste on only one unit that might even be Hell Hounds.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Raise Dead now only considers “Dead” and “Dead from drain damage” units instead of everything except “Alive” and “Disintegrated”. This might fix the bug (or at least make it less frequent) of the AI raising units carried by the ship in naval battles, I assume those might be the type “Not involved” which was actually considered.
-AI Combat spellcasting decisions : Blur is now not ignored by the priority system and receives the same priority boost as Prayer.
-Counter Magic : Failure to counter a spell no longer decreases remaining power.
-Counter Magic : Succesful counters decrease power by 10.
-Counter Magic : Now has a linear formula : Casting success chance = Spell cost/Counter Magic strength. Spells being more expensive than CM's strength will never get countered, so it works similarly to the new Suppress Magic.
-Counter Magic: Now costs a minimum of 16 mana and a maximum of 80. This means that combat spells equal to or more expensive than 80 mana cannot be countered at all by Counter Magic ( This means Mass Invisibility and a boosted Disnechant Area only at the moment). In general, it's less effective if the enemy casts expensive spells only (as there is a good chance nothing gets countered before they use all skill), but as strong as ever against low cost spells, so it's a pretty good protection against direct damage spells.
-Nodes use the same formula as Counter Magic, but their strength is 50. This means your 50+ mana spells will be always successful, and your 25 mana ones have an exact 50% chance of working.
-Fixed a possible instability source added by a previous change (although it never actually caused a problem).
Note that I had no time to actually play other than testing the changed features directly in a set-up test battle, hopefully everything should work, if not, let me know and I'll fix it.
Now I want to spend some time playing before I make further changes. I looked into the AI combat unit movement code and it looks pretty difficult to understand, it's not as simple as "always go for the weakest unit" so it'll take time to improve that I think.
Primary remaining tasks are AI combat tactics (other than spells) and diplomacy, both of which use a lot of unknown purpose variables so they'll be difficult to work on.
A question, should I change the AI hero name choices to match the character (which would result in everyone having the same names) , keep the default, or make up random names that feel right on the character?
Fire elemental has weapon immunity? Wow, it was already pretty good. Now all you need is a magic spirit to conquer neutral cities as you discover them. Check 42:00 on the video.
The increased speed of swordsmen and other normal units leads to surprise attacks by raiders you couldn't see.
if you can do something about those explored square graphics that don't show as fully explored even when all adjacent squares have been seen, that would be awesome.
Cities are greatly damaged on conquest even if there is no invasion of the urban area.
Computer player doesn't declare war even after getting its capital sneak attacked by the player.
There are now unguarded dungeons that contain absolutely nothing.
CP still doesn't attack undefended cities. Even a magic spirit can win in this situation.
Faster movement makes melee units more viable in combat and lessens the value of ranged units.
The game should auto-save every turn in case of crashes, disk access is cheap these days.
Guardian spirits are plus THREE to hit? Seems like that would re-enable the old "conquer the world fast with them" exploit from v1.31.
Ever thought about changing the random events? Bad Moon and the various node events are ripe for being replaced. How does it work when the wizard has both life and death books?
The greatly increased spell research rates would seem to make the game end faster with the Spell of Mastery.
Why do Magicians need Long Range? They already have a magic attack that isn't affected by range.
Units seem to heal very quickly. Being injured as a mechanic appears to have been mostly removed.
The help text for Heroic Shout is missing a space after the period in the first sentence.
At 1:48 in the video the combat screen showed enchanted roads instead of the correct ones.
Quote:Fire elemental has weapon immunity? Wow, it was already pretty good. Now all you need is a magic spirit to conquer neutral cities as you discover them. Check 42:00 on the video.
Yep, noticed that. It only worked because the city had a few swordmen and nothing better. When he tried the klackon city, he lost. I don't mind early expansion as it's almost necessary to stand a chance at higher difficulty, and other realms have their options. Nature has sprites, death has skeletons for early invasions and summon zombies in combat, sorcery has nagas although that's costly it can go through water and poison+first strike annihilates neutral units of low res races. I guess life has fewer options but it's strong in mid to late game instead. Fire Elemental is only good in the early game and only vs towns, as you do need enemies without magical weapons for Weapon Immunity to be useful.
I wouldn't say the original was good, though, it was far the least effective combat summon and for a rather high 20 mana.
Quote:The increased speed of swordsmen and other normal units leads to surprise attacks by raiders you couldn't see.
Build City Walls or Oracle. Or keep enough defenders to be safe.
Quote:Cities are greatly damaged on conquest even if there is no invasion of the urban area.
According to wiki :
Roll once per Town Building to determine whether it is destroyed.
Chance as follows: +10% if attacker wins (+50% if defender is neutral).
...
so this comes from the original game. Whoa 50% is pretty harsh, maybe I'll change this if I find how.
Quote:Computer player doesn't declare war even after getting its capital sneak attacked by the player.
Haven't touched diplomacy yet, need to investigate variables related to it first, which seems a pretty difficult task. As far as I remember, AI only declares war if your attacks succeed even in the original. In fact it doesn't really care about fights as long as it does not result in losing a city, attacking a node for example is usually safe.
Quote:There are now unguarded dungeons that contain absolutely nothing.
The absolutely nothing part is a bug, fixed in 0.2. I set the minimum value to 160 in 0.1 but later I found out it was a signed byte value so 160 was treated as -32. Now it's adding 120 to the treasure instead of checking for a minimum value.
No defenders are caused when the roll for the strength is so low that the cheapest unit available of that realm costs more. Only happens in "weak" type lairs and pretty rarely, he was really (un)lucky to find two. Weak lair generation does not use a minimum value and there wasn't space to add one, so if it rolls 2 or lower out of 20 you get no defenders when Life or Nature is chosen (cheapest unit of those cost 70+).
Quote:CP still doesn't attack undefended cities. Even a magic spirit can win in this situation.
Again didn't touch diplomacy yet. It make sense not to attack if they aren't at war with you yet.
Quote:Faster movement makes melee units more viable in combat and lessens the value of ranged units.
Which is why ranged units have higher attack strength than original.
Quote:The game should auto-save every turn in case of crashes, disk access is cheap these days.
I think the continue feature does that? I never really used it because I save my game manually anyway.
Quote:Guardian spirits are plus THREE to hit? Seems like that would re-enable the old "conquer the world fast with them" exploit from v1.31.
They cost 80, are single figure and have bad attack strength (lower than original) and medicore health. Hell Hounds and Skeletons are still better, however spirits can now benefit from buffs, especially the previously worthless True Light spell more with a higher hit. I would still summon Nagas or Hounds instead if I had the option but at least Life now has a playable common summon. As you cannot start with rare spells, buffing the attack of spirits is not really possible anyway for a long time.
Quote:Ever thought about changing the random events? Bad Moon and the various node events are ripe for being replaced. How does it work when the wizard has both life and death books?
Haven't tested yet, I usually play with events off. Have to look into this but I would expect it to cancel out, applying both the double and halved power.
Quote:Why do Magicians need Long Range? They already have a magic attack that isn't affected by range.
Removed it after seeing the video, it wasn't supposed to be there.
Quote:Units seem to heal very quickly. Being injured as a mechanic appears to have been mostly removed.
Haven't touched this, in fact I don't even know where it is in the code yet. Insecticide might have changed it if it's different. I think the guy bought shamans in that town maybe they accelerated the healing (which is faster in towns anyway).
Quote:The help text for Heroic Shout is missing a space after the period in the first sentence.
Fixed for the next version.
Quote:At 1:48 in the video the combat screen showed enchanted roads instead of the correct ones.
Not serious enough as a problem to look for and investigate combat terrain generation code for days. If anything I would like to get rid of enchanted roads as a feature altogether, moving for 0 is a broken idea.
Quote:The greatly increased spell research rates would seem to make the game end faster with the Spell of Mastery.
Max research per town is only 4 higher at 22 instead of 18 but now all Rare spells cost 1600 and all Very Rares 4000, some even more. Unless the player dumps all the power (which is indeed higher from cities) into research, it won't be any faster, and doing that is somewhat of a suicide as you'll have no skill nor armies. Also Spell of Mastery now costs 10000 to cast, you need to be able to defend your fortress for at least 50-75 turns to cast it...and that assumes no one uses Spell Blast.
Found a serious bug introduced to AI spellcasting, which had to be fixed right away. If you downloaded 0.2, please download 0.21 immediately.
0.21 :
-Major : Fixed a bug caused by the previous update in the AI spellcasting that caused the AI to cancel spells and restart casting another one at the beginning of turn instead of continuing it, which caused Spell of Return to not complete.
-Towers now go through the normal spell roll procedure instead of forcing one random spell into the trreasure ignoring costs. This means that if the tower actually rolls a spell it does not have treasure points for, it will not contain spells, but it will always attempt to roll for a spell first.
-Forester's Guild now requires a forest to be built. (Sawmill doesn't because it's intended to be a general purpose, important production building.)
-Slightly inceased advatages for the AI on hard and above levels, it felt a bit too weak.
(September 14th, 2015, 16:44)Hadriex Wrote: Will I be able to apply v0.21 and still continue off the save file I was playing on yesterday? Or should I finish that game before updating?
Most likely yes, but the difficulty changes might not be applied until the next game. I don't change data formats or anything so saves shouldn't be affected.
If you're on 0.1 you can wait till next game to be safe.
If on 0.2 upgrade anyway, the bug messes up AI too much to play like that. The AI is literally unable to cast spells that take longer than a turn, including spell of return.
Meanwhile, I found some routines related to diplomacy and banishing.
Already managed to chance book-spell rarity restrictions to require 3 books for finding rares and 4 for very rares in enemy fortresses, or when trading, also in lairs. Books are easier to both find and get from 13 picks, so the original limitation was way too forgiving.
Now I'm trying to decipher diplomacy, already found a few interesting things for example AI to AI positive diplomacy is doubled after turn 200.
Would be nice if I could make it so that banishing a common enemy wizard would boost your diplomatic ratings instead of dropping it. It's really annoying to have the whole world attack you after you defeated that maniacal agressor who was at war with everyone lol
Quote:Fire elemental has weapon immunity? Wow, it was already pretty good. Now all you need is a magic spirit to conquer neutral cities as you discover them. Check 42:00 on the video.
Yep, noticed that. It only worked because the city had a few swordmen and nothing better. When he tried the klackon city, he lost. I don't mind early expansion as it's almost necessary to stand a chance at higher difficulty, and other realms have their options. Nature has sprites, death has skeletons for early invasions and summon zombies in combat, sorcery has nagas although that's costly it can go through water and poison+first strike annihilates neutral units of low res races. I guess life has fewer options but it's strong in mid to late game instead. Fire Elemental is only good in the early game and only vs towns, as you do need enemies without magical weapons for Weapon Immunity to be useful.
I wouldn't say the original was good, though, it was far the least effective combat summon and for a rather high 20 mana.
Well, that's what neutral towns have as garrisons, five swordsmen is about average. Being able to run around the map with a magic spirit and summon weapon immune fire elementals to conquer every neutral city you run into is not optimal. It's what happened in the video and seems to be a great strategy.
Quote:
Quote:The game should auto-save every turn in case of crashes, disk access is cheap these days.
I think the continue feature does that? I never really used it because I save my game manually anyway.
The continue feature auto-saves the game after several turns. You can also manually activate it with F9. I only use it in case of crash, or reloading due to a weapon immune demon randomly popping out of an encounter zone and ruining my game.
Quote:
Quote:Guardian spirits are plus THREE to hit? Seems like that would re-enable the old "conquer the world fast with them" exploit from v1.31.
They cost 80, are single figure and have bad attack strength (lower than original) and medicore health. Hell Hounds and Skeletons are still better, however spirits can now benefit from buffs, especially the previously worthless True Light spell more with a higher hit. I would still summon Nagas or Hounds instead if I had the option but at least Life now has a playable common summon. As you cannot start with rare spells, buffing the attack of spirits is not really possible anyway for a long time.
I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the game. Nowhere was it intended to be balanced. Why does white need a "viable summon"? Guardian spirits are supposed to meld with nodes, not go forth conquering the world with +3 to hit. The fact that it has combat stats at all is an afterthought. Guarding nodes without a garrison is its special power that it gives white. Node garrisons are troublesome and consume valuable hammers, food, and gold. Being able to leave your nodes ungarrisoned is a great advantage (even though most players do that anyway).
Quote:
Quote:Ever thought about changing the random events? Bad Moon and the various node events are ripe for being replaced. How does it work when the wizard has both life and death books?
Haven't tested yet, I usually play with events off. Have to look into this but I would expect it to cancel out, applying both the double and halved power.
Please make sure to test your game using all of the options, not just the ones you like. Bad Moon/Good Moon and the Conjuctions make up most of the events in the game, which is boring and predictable. Some of the others like New Minerals I have never seen happen. This area is ripe for revision.
" Why does white need a "viable summon"? "
Life has no other summon spell at common, and it is one of the only two units that benefit from True light (not counting angels and archangels as they are too far from common rarity).
I don't want Life wizards to be stuck not casting a spell and not expanding for the first 50-100 turns until they start producing units good enough to be worth buffing with Holy Weapon/Armor/whatever. They also need a summon to defend themselves in case the AI happens to start near their fortress.
"Please make sure to test your game using all of the options, not just the ones you like. "
I plan to, but modding the game is very time consuming, I barely have time to play at all, let alone use optional features at this point. Changing defeating wizards to take into account the war/treaty status instead of applying a flat -40 to everyone took like 4 hours and I still need to do it for banishing too, and that's just one change out of the list of dozens I need to do.
