(October 11th, 2015, 13:35)zitro1987 Wrote: *It appears your dark elf spearmen's ranged attacks have 0-strength. Error?
Yes, thanks for noticing.
Quote:*Orc cavalry do not have first strike. Error?
I think that's default from the original, some cavalry have it some don't. ...wait, why are the Orcs the only one who don't have it, I thought it's like half the races. That's weird they have no other advantage, I think they should have it.
Quote:*Halberdiers look better now, but given fighter's guild cost, could use 1 more melee point (5 base). These units should overpower tier-1 (common) summoning units, especially with magic weapons.
Given their cost, which is 70, they should be roughly equal, or even slightly inferior to common summoned units who cost the same but require overland casting skill to produce. I think they are definitely stronger than the summoned units cheaper than them (Skeletons and Hell Hounds).
Quote:*Pikemen could lose 1-2 figures. The combination of very high health (esp. with the experience hp bonus) with extreme damage can be 'too good', especially if compared with the best racial halberdier units.
Their low resistance makes them quite vulnerable though and health isn't any better than halberdiers.
Only two races have them and one of these is High men who have a pretty serious drawback of bad unrest rates.
Neither race actually has Halberdiers, so this is pretty much a slightly superior replacement unit.
Maybe reducing the figures of the Nomad version which keeping them on the High Men could be good.
Quote:*Horsebowmen could lose a few arrows. 8 added arrows for a 5mv unit instead of 'first strike' at same cost is too good of a bargain?
I compared to the standard (nomad) bowmen. They have fewer figures and cost more for the same amount of shots at the same strength...but they have better mobility and health. A fair tradeoff. Yes, they are better than standard cavalry, they are a special unit afterall.
Quote:*Shamans are incredibly good for just 'shrine' with their excellent ranged damage, healing spell, and 'healer' - what an essential unit to an army!
Indeed, but an army of only shamans does poorly. You need to properly balance out the advantage of the Shamans with the versatility of mixing in cavalry, walking units, and/or magicians.
Yep, healers are always essential for any army in almost any game, that makes sense I think.
Quote:*What if priests require cathedral? Other than a balancing perspective, I can't wrap my head around having a pagan-like 'temple' giving christian-like units. You could give them higher cost with added benefits like +1 mv, 'resist to all', and/or additional armor
That's an option but it's already difficult to deal with them sometimes due to their high armor, decent health, and healing ability.
Not sure if I want to power them up further.
Quote:*Javalineers still remain superior (and cheaper) to halberdiers. Increase cost to 70-75? or Lower melee by 1?
How so? They have less health, less defense, and identical melee. Better resistance and bow attacks are nice extras but I wouldn't say it's superior to having 3 health instead of 2 per figure and an extra defense point. They are only better if it's guaranteed the enemy has no fast units and no missile immunity, otherwise they are much worse.
Not sure about the resist but I think 3 or 5 are both too low to really matter.
Quote:*Your pegasi are abnormally cheap for a flying ranged (8 shots) unit with good hand-to-hand capabilities. Given superiority associated with fantastic stables, shouldn't the cost be brought up to around 150-160?
Problem is their ranged attack is only equal to a bowmen's...so you are effectively paying 4 times the cost and build a fantastic stables for the flying, health and movement, without getting any additional attack power. In fact, as these are High Elf units, their bowmen is superior, with 4 attack compared to the Pegasai's 3.
I'm more worried about these being underpowered compared to the normal bowmen (better ranged), the magicians (a lot better ranged, magic and missile immunity), and the elven lords (high mobility and attack strength).
Not sure if people would even build the stables for just the added flying and health.
Quote:*Hammerhands have pretty weak armor for 220 cost (just a note), but their melee is very high. Maybe it balances out in usefulness.
In fact they are brutally powerful, and 3*6 health is not bad at all. Don't forget the race gets 50% more production from workers, and more gold, too.
Quote:*Suggest Golems requiring 'armorer's guild' as well as mechanicians (or at least fighter's guild) - they are very good units now!
Hammerhands only need the Armorer's Guild and once you can build them, you'll never want a golem ever again, so they cannot share the requirement. Golems are great defenders, but not that good for offense, 1 figure does poor damage even with 14 swords.
Mechanician's Guild is a rather steep requirement considering you don't normally build a University, Builder's Hall, or Mech. Guild with a rush race, at least not for a while. You only build Miner's Guild if there are minerals around, too. The total cost of all of these definitely tops the Fighter's Guild's although not the Armorer's.
However, if you opt for a defensive strategy, you can build the golems and have extra production to build other stuff without having to get the expensive military buildings, which is nice.
I don't mind extra requirements but then it shouldn't be military buildings...and there isn't anything like that which would make sense.
Quote:*Now Paladins are strong! Too strong? suggest dropping 1 armor or melee?
Consider the racial drawbacks, though. If Paladins are not above average, people won't play the race for such a late game unit.
I was hesitating when I raised the melee by 2 but they were doing way too poorly against other top racial units.
Lack of Armor Pierce means they have to face at least 3-4 more shields on average than originally, 2 more melee seems fair to compensate.
Compare to Hammerhands : same melee but 6 figures, nearly identical total health (3*6 vs 5*4), and Dwarves have a lot of racial advantages while High Men have drawbacks. Paladins have great abilities but the raw stats and the circumstances aren't good for them at all. Even Wolf Riders for 100 have 8 melee.
Orc cavalry doesn't have first strike because the Orc units are all generic. They are all base price and have no special abilities. First strike isn't an inherent capability of cavalry, it's the special ability of human, high elf, and barbarian cavalry units. See, you have to think about it differently. Look at horsebows, they are just cavalry without first strike and a bow attack added. You might say Orc cavalry suck, but well that was the design objective with Orcs. The baseline race. No advantages and no disadvantages. Orc halberdiers don't have negate first strike, for instance. A unit enchantment to add first strike would be a nice addition, probably expensive and probably in black.
(October 14th, 2015, 01:34)Tiltowait Wrote: Orc cavalry doesn't have first strike because the Orc units are all generic. They are all base price and have no special abilities. First strike isn't an inherent capability of cavalry, it's the special ability of human, high elf, and barbarian cavalry units. See, you have to think about it differently. Look at horsebows, they are just cavalry without first strike and a bow attack added. You might say Orc cavalry suck, but well that was the design objective with Orcs. The baseline race. No advantages and no disadvantages. Orc halberdiers don't have negate first strike, for instance. A unit enchantment to add first strike would be a nice addition, probably expensive and probably in black.
Most halberdiers don't negate first strike, only like 3 out of 10 do.
All "Cavalry" have first strike, except orc. So the baseline is having first strike, and the lack of it is a disadvantage.
Horsebowmen are not "Cavalry" they are a special unit. (and it's quite pointless to have first strike when the bow does the same thing better)
First Strike enchantment? I believe that would cause balance issues, it is a very powerful ability, although I like the idea...
The problem is I don't have any spells left that I would want to remove in any realm. The last one was Unminding but I already used that for a new, poison element direct damage spell, which Death needed really badly. I even used up all item power slots that could be used.
An even bigger problem is that every single bit in the Unit Enchantments flags is in use so it's impossible to add a new enchantment without permanently removing another one.
This mod looks totally ace, and I like the sound of almost all the changes.
The only things I'm not sure about are:
Quote:-Broken bonuses provided by many books of the same type have been toned down. Research and casting reduction is a mere 3% and 2% per book, but for each book after the 4th. You cannot take a 11th book to start with rare spells and obliterate everyone with a single, powerful spell.
I always quite liked getting good discounts for having a lot of books. Also the 11 book starts are silly, but fun once in a while.
Quote:-The mod puts emphasis on maintaining larger armies. Food upkeep is halved. The two recall spells are removed to avoid solving every battle everywhere with the same hero or other powerful unit. I'm hoping to also eliminate enchanted roads but haven't found out how to yet.
This is my least favourite change as I really don't like having to move large armies around the map, especially across water. I imagine that I'll enjoy the early game but end up quitting once I have to move loads of newly built units from 20 different cities every turn in the end game.
(October 14th, 2015, 10:19)MrBiscuits Wrote: This mod looks totally ace, and I like the sound of almost all the changes.
The only things I'm not sure about are:
Quote:-Broken bonuses provided by many books of the same type have been toned down. Research and casting reduction is a mere 3% and 2% per book, but for each book after the 4th. You cannot take a 11th book to start with rare spells and obliterate everyone with a single, powerful spell.
I always quite liked getting good discounts for having a lot of books. Also the 11 book starts are silly, but fun once in a while.
Quote:-The mod puts emphasis on maintaining larger armies. Food upkeep is halved. The two recall spells are removed to avoid solving every battle everywhere with the same hero or other powerful unit. I'm hoping to also eliminate enchanted roads but haven't found out how to yet.
This is my least favourite change as I really don't like having to move large armies around the map, especially across water. I imagine that I'll enjoy the early game but end up quitting once I have to move loads of newly built units from 20 different cities every turn in the end game.
You can still have "good" discounts, even 50% is reasonably possible (Conjurer+Nature Mastery+10 books for example is 52 on summons.). The original system however made it possible to cast spells at 75+ or even 100% discount, literally for free.
11 books+conjurer+nature mastery was like what, 40+25+15=80% cheaper? that's not "good" that's crazy, you could summon 5 creatures for the cost of one.
About the armies, it really depends on the race, strategy and realm you play. You can still have one powerful stack of doom going around defeating everyone, but you have to keep proper garrisons in your cities while doing so instead of "8 spearmen to remove unrest and I'll recall if an enemy is coming". Of course, only if the enemy has the capability to attack anywhere with flying or such units, otherwise don't really need defense either.
You only really need to move 20+ units every turn if you have heavy losses in battles regularly, or wage war to 2-3 directions at the same time.
If you want to enjoy a 11 books start, nothing stops you from loading a save game editor and adding a rare starting spell, but I don't want to encourage this way of playing because, as you say, it's only fun "once in a while", but some people can't hold back and avoid playing the most powerful strategy all the time.
I have a serious problem when defending my capital. The second time I try to move a unit or summon centaurs outside my city boundaries the game just ends. It's really hard to defend myself this way
I saved a game to show you. I was using insecticide from around march this year and just added your version to it. I didn't use tweaker for these games yet.
(October 14th, 2015, 12:39)Lucean Wrote: I have a serious problem when defending my capital. The second time I try to move a unit or summon centaurs outside my city boundaries the game just ends. It's really hard to defend myself this way
I saved a game to show you. I was using insecticide from around march this year and just added your version to it. I didn't use tweaker for these games yet.
sounds like you turned your sound off and didn't read "Known bugs".
Call Lightning, and the fortress lightning bolt crashes the game immediately if the sound setting is turned off. This has been the case even prior to insecticide as far as I know, and is some bug in the sound engine. Call Lightning is rarely used so this isn't very widely known, but the fortress bolt uses the same lightning more frequently.
Playing the game with the sound disabled is definitely not recommended, it might even cause other problems.
If you want to play without the game music, change the settings of DosBox to mute sound, but never turn it off in the game itself.
It the problem persists even after enabling sound, do let me know.
(October 14th, 2015, 11:54)Seravy Wrote: You can still have "good" discounts, even 50% is reasonably possible (Conjurer+Nature Mastery+10 books for example is 52 on summons.). The original system however made it possible to cast spells at 75+ or even 100% discount, literally for free.
11 books+conjurer+nature mastery was like what, 40+25+15=80% cheaper? that's not "good" that's crazy, you could summon 5 creatures for the cost of one.
Oh I see the problem. Does nature mastery reduce the summoning cost? Perhaps make different type of reductions multiply rather than add up, so the above would be 0.6*0.75*0.85 which is a 61.75% reduction rather than 80%. Then you wouldn't need to nerf taking multiple books of the same type as well.
Quote:About the armies, it really depends on the race, strategy and realm you play. You can still have one powerful stack of doom going around defeating everyone, but you have to keep proper garrisons in your cities while doing so instead of "8 spearmen to remove unrest and I'll recall if an enemy is coming". Of course, only if the enemy has the capability to attack anywhere with flying or such units, otherwise don't really need defense either.
Maybe reducing healing rate and spells might slow the stack of doom down without increasing the number of troops and removing recall? I just find when I have to keep moving troops in and out of boats it gets annoying after a while.
Quote:You only really need to move 20+ units every turn if you have heavy losses in battles regularly, or wage war to 2-3 directions at the same time.
If you're going for conquest you're going to need to move loads of units all over the map eventually. It is made harder by the zoomed in view of the map, I always get lost when the screen moves to the next unit and have to keep checking the map every turn for each one.
Quote:If you want to enjoy a 11 books start, nothing stops you from loading a save game editor and adding a rare starting spell, but I don't want to encourage this way of playing because, as you say, it's only fun "once in a while", but some people can't hold back and avoid playing the most powerful strategy all the time.
Well if they're enjoying themselves....
The thing is it also removes starting strategies with rare spells that don't break the game. One of the best parts of Master of Magic is that is lets you do pretty much anything overpowered or not.
Anyway I don't want to nitpick too much as I like the look of this mod and will give it a bash soon.
(October 14th, 2015, 14:54)MrBiscuits Wrote: Perhaps make different type of reductions multiply rather than add up, so the above would be 0.6*0.75*0.85 which is a 61.75% reduction rather than 80%. Then you wouldn't need to nerf taking multiple books of the same type as well.
Would be great but this is unfortunately way too hard to implement. A multiplication would more coding space, so for every ability using a cost modifier, I would need to make new room in the code and add it. In other words I would need to pretty much rewrite the entire procedure from the start to the end. Don't think it's worth 10+ hours of coding.
Speaking of books, the original did not give you a discount for 5, 6 or 7 books, only 8 or higher. my discount is smaller, but starts earlier, too. This system wouldn't be possible with a high number like 10% per book. You can also find extra books in encounter zones, so the theoretical maximum books you can have of one realm is 19. It's very unlikely, but not impossible if the player is intentionally focusing on zones containing only that realm.
Quote:I just find when I have to keep moving troops in and out of boats it gets annoying after a while.
Who doesn't?
that's what flying units and windwalking units/enchantments are for
Or play Huge land size and forget boats ever existed :D
Not removing recall isn't an option, though. The space freed up by that in the exe was used to code a whole bunch of new things, it really helped me out a lot in unexpected ways. Same for Black Channels.
Quote:The thing is it also removes starting strategies with rare spells that don't break the game.
Did anyone ever played those? Wait, rare spells that don't break the game if gotten 150 turns too early, those most likely were quite underpowered o_O
Seeing the activity in the thread, I think I'll upload 0.64 now, I accumulated quite a lot of changes, some pretty nice stuff included.
0.64 is up!
0.64
-The Rouge is now a fame 5 hero.
-The Druid hero now has Call Centaurs.
-The Beastmaster hero now has Call Centaurs.
-The Necomancer Hero now has -3 Life Steal
-The Necomancer Hero now has Summon Zombie instead of Weakness
-The Necomancer Hero now has 4 random mage abilities insetad of 2
-The Ranger now has 1 random abilities (any) instead of Might, and has Lucky.
-Warrior Mage now has 2 levels higher mana pool.
-Warrior Mage now has Agility
-The Sage now has the spells Confusion and Disenchant True instead of the original two
-The Golden One now has 3 random abilities.
-When a unit with more total damage than maximum health (ghost units bug) is converted to a battle unit for any reason (combat, viewing etc), the unit will be set to have 1 remaning figure with 1 remanining health instead of the invalid amount.
-”Ghost” units can now heal naturally to “debug” themselves without entering combat.
-Heroic Shout no longer counts as Fire damage.
-Fairy dust is now a strength 6 armor piercing cold attack that hits all figures. AI will not priorize damaged units with this spell as it is blizzard type so more figures=better.
-Fixed Dark Elf spearmen having 0 ranged strength.
-Orc Cavalry now has First Strike
-Nomad Pikemen only have 6 figures now, High Men still have 8 but cost 10 more.
-Call to Arms now costs 70 (Paladins are stronger now)
-War Mammoths now have Cold Immunity
-Dragon Turtles now have Fire Immunity
-Rangers, the Ranger hero, Steam Cannons and Elven Lords now have Poison Immunity
-Holy Word now has an additional -3 penalty for undead instead of -5
-Syphon Life now displays an unused grahical effect similar to Drain Life.
-Removed Cruel Unminding
-New spell : Reaper Slash – Strength 40 single target direct damage spell for 32 mana, blocked by poison immunity.
-AI combat targeting : Syphon Life will now select target the same way as Drain Life (by checking target's resistance)
-AI combat targeting : Venom Slash will now be used on poison immune targets.
-Magic Spirit and Guardian Spirit now have Poison Immunity.
-Fixed casting cost reduction not being applied for owning exactly 5-7 books.
-Artificier now sets the total cost reduction to 50% instead of adding 50% so it's no longer cumulative with Runemaster.
-Fixed bug : Flying units have a view range of 5 regardless of their actual scouting range.
-The current combat turn is displayed between “Mana” and “Range” as “Turn : x”
-Normal Units no longer have a hardcoded maintenance of (gold cost/50), instead the actual maintenance cost in the Unit Tables is being used. (Spearmen are still hardcoded to 0)
Normal units (Orc race has 1 lower maintenance on most standard units) :
Trireme : 1
Galley : 2
Catapult : 1
Warship : 4
Spearmen : 0
Swordsmen : 1
Halberdiers : 2
Bowmen : 1
Cavalry : 1
Shaman : 2
Settlers : 2
Priests : 3
Magicians : 3
Engineers : 1
Racial
Berserkers : 2
Centaurs : 2
Manticores : 2
Minotaurs : 5
Nightblades : 4
Warlocks : 4
Nightmares : 6
Doom Drakes :5
Air Ship : 4
Hammerhands : 8
Steam Cannon : 2
Golem : 5
Wolf Riders : 2
Slingers : 1
Longbowmen : 1
Elven Lords : 4
Pegasai : 2
Pikemen : 3
Paladins : 5
Stag Beetle : 2
Javelineers : 2
Dragon Turtle : 1
Horsebowmen : 1
Rangers : 3
Griffins : 3
Wyvern Riders : 4
War Trolls : 3
War Mammoths : 5
-Berserkers now have +1 to hit to be able to damage high defense units like Stag Beetles even without an Alchemist Guild.
-Adjusted AI resource advantages. “Easy”, “Normal” and “Hard” should be somewhat less difficult, while “Extreme” and “Impossible” are roughly the same as before.
-AI Combat spellselection priority : Entangle now receives the same boost to priority as Black Prayer instead of none at all.
-AI building priorities : Military buildings have slightly higher priority
-AI building priorities : Power buildings have slightly lower priority
-AI building priorities : Expansionist Military building priority boost is higher
-The game is now not using item slot “0”. I suspect this slot is directly related to the “two items sharing data” bug that causes player's items to randomly get replaced.
Highlights :
-Ghost unit bug should now fix itself by restoring ghost units to 1 health when entering battle, and allowing them to heal normally.
-Current battle turn is displayed as "Turn x" under your mana.
-Some underpowered heroes got better abilities and/or spells.
-New spell for Death replacing Cruel Unminding : strength 40 direct damage uncommon that is blocked by poison immunity.
-Some units gained Fire, Cold or Poison Immunity as these abilities were way too rare, almost entirely restricted to fantastic units. They are still rare but there is at least one normal unit having each.
-Syphon Life has a new visual effect, one the game had but not used (probably from an early game version, is named Mind Twist)
-Normal units now have their own maintenance value instead of everything defaulting to (cost/50) gold.
-Difficulty of the first three difficulty levels somewhat lower.
-Made the game avoid using the first (0th) item slot. This might or might not be related to the bug of two items getting linked, causing the replacement of an item with another for an unknown reason. I've only had this bug happen to me once so far, today, and that item was using slot 0. If you still encounter this bug, please report. I did manage to confirm it wasn't caused by the AI creating items, though.
