Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Drax]

The player does not, and they can also use automatic combat if desired. I believe a battle is supposed to create a mixture of wounded, dead and undamaged units, not only dead and undamaged.

Let me explain the ideal logic I imagine for auto battle:
1) battle starts with all units on their own side.
2) there is middle zone. i.e. 3 lines in total. One for each side and a middle.
3) an unit can use it's actions each turn. turn logic could be same as normal combat.
4) ranged units can shoot enemies in the middle zone with small penalty and units in the enemy zone with large penalty.
5) melee units need to be in the same zone to attack a unit.
6) units can move 1 zone ahead. very fast units 5+ maybe could move 2 zones or move one and attack in melee once.
7) spells could be cast as normal combat.
8) flight would work and so on.
9) spell effects could work like "web" and even "confusion".
10) the 25 turn limit could apply.

It's basically similar to normal combat except the field is simplified(1D-ish).... Which could make it much faster because there are few calculations for moves and all actions are computationally cheap... supposedly.

Flaws of the current mode that would be avoided:
- Ranged units problems ... like killing invisible units.
- Powerful fantastic units will stay powerful.
- Flight would apply.
- Other effects(immunities for example) would apply.

If something like this is possible that's the closest thing to full blown AI combat that could be efficient to calculate.

If you're not interested or it's not possible... well it's just an idea.

The original game used such a queue and it wasn't good, weak enemies could kill your best hero in the stack if it got selected to be first in the damage queue.

Is it possible to add this old auto combat mode as an option in the game?

[Seravy]

7) spells could be cast as normal combat.

That's 100% impossible, seriously, do you think I can code all 100+ combat spells alone and in a limited space to function?

8) flight would work and so on.

See above. Basically you are asking for making the entire game again from zero but in a 2000 byte space.

Positioning and damage order is one thing but abilities, spells or anything that complex is not gonna ever happen.

Something else :
I'm planning to change some Life spells.

Righteousness I'll remove from the game. It's too powerful, it's like magic immunity except...well only against two realms, which makes those two realms much worse. With the buffs Life has, units are far too powerful to also be invincible against two realms.
Another explanation is that it's redundant, magic immunity does the same thing better. If you play Life+Sorcery, at least it is.
I've already got rid of most anti-realm spells, the remaining ones...
Elemental armor and resist elements are fine because most magical ranged attacks on units count as chaos and nature and the buff isn't powerful enough to completely prevent spells from working (you can still use doom bolt, ice bolt lightning bolt, etc).
Consecration is fine because protecting cities is reasonable for Life and all anti-city spells are in those two realms anyway (except earthquake which doesn't actually hit a city, but the land under it) so it doesn't feel like an anti-realm spell that much.
Bless is not a big enough spell to matter and honestly it's more useful at reducing firebreath damage than at countering chaos and death spells. Holy word hits all equally as long as they are fantastic, only undead are exceptions which get an extra penalty but those are cheap to make so it's fair. Dispel Evil and Star Fires aren't fair but all other realms have good nukes so it isn't very special either, no matter what you play, you need to be able to deal with resist or die or direct damage spells it's just that otherwise they aren't coming from the Life realm.
Which leaves Righteousness the only thing still very unfair. Not only does it completely block an entire spell type, but it blocks the type those realms need the most to work and even blocks some combat damage (fire breath, magical ranged chaos damage, lightning breath even!). I don't mind Life having good protection spells but there is Invunerability, Holy Armor, Prayer, Endurance, Lionheart, High Prayer and also : Healing, Healing Charge, Mass Healing and Raise Dead. I see no point in righteousness, not only is it unfair but pointless too, you buff resistance, defense, or counter damage by healing! In fact, all of those spells are less valuable because you can just go "righteousness, hah I won't take damage at all, take that!" and then you don't need any other life spell against a chaos or death wizard.
The empty slot would be used to move Inspirations to rare, extra production is awesome but far too late at very rare level.
This leaves us with an empty slot at very rare, and I also want to get rid of true light, it's kinda pointless to buff life creatures as there aren't many, and weakening death creatures, see above.

I'm considering to put this in the very rare slot :
Supreme Light
Very Rare
Cost : 50 mana
Combat Enchantment (replacing True Light's slot)
All units with magic ranged attacks and all Life units gain +2 melee, +2 magical ranged attack (if available), +3 defense, and regeneration.

High prayer does not buff magic ranged attacks, nor does holy weapon or lionheart. You'd expect Life to have at least some spell that can make Priests hit harder. It would be a great combo with Magicians and Unicorns too, as well as summons of other realms that have magical ranged attacks.

For the common slot, this is the plan :
Heavenly Light
City Enchantment
Cost : 75 mana, 1 maintenance.
The city produces +3 power. This effect counts as a religious building and is affected by effects that modify their production.
All friendly normal units defending the city get +1 attack, defense and resistance.

On items, the Righteousness item power would be gone entirely, and would be replaced by a new power :
Shadow
The unit gains thrown equal to its melee attack, unless it already has another ranged attack type.
Can be added to : weapons
Requires : 3 Death books.
Cost : 500 mana

[Drax]

That's 100% impossible, seriously, do you think I can code all 100+ combat spells alone and in a limited space to function?

See above. Basically you are asking for making the entire game again from zero but in a 2000 byte space.

Positioning and damage order is one thing but abilities, spells or anything that complex is not gonna ever happen.

I don't know what's possible and it is you who decide if any of those ideas could or should be used I thought that there could be a chance to be possible to copy or clone the full combat as a module and go from there.. or something like that.

[Seravy]

That's 100% impossible, seriously, do you think I can code all 100+ combat spells alone and in a limited space to function?

See above. Basically you are asking for making the entire game again from zero but in a 2000 byte space.

Positioning and damage order is one thing but abilities, spells or anything that complex is not gonna ever happen.

I don't know what's possible and it is you who decide if any of those ideas could or should be used I thought that there could be a chance to be possible to copy or clone the full combat as a module and go from there.. or something like that.

If I had the source code, sure. By hex editing? no way :D
Even if I could, I would need to manually edit out anything that displays stuff on screen which is...half the entire code or more :D

[ChongLi]

I like your ideas for changes to Life, addition of the new Shadow item power and removal of Righteousness! One question though: isn't Regeneration (not to mention the other benefits) on all units in a battle way too powerful? Nature's Regeneration spell affects only one unit, costs more mana (60!) and it's also Very Rare.

[Seravy]

I like your ideas for changes to Life, addition of the new Shadow item power and removal of Righteousness! One question though: isn't Regeneration (not to mention the other benefits) on all units in a battle way too powerful? Nature's Regeneration spell affects only one unit, costs more mana (60!) and it's also Very Rare.

Yes I will need to see that in practice. My reasoning currently is :
-Spellcasters are generally vulnerable and hard to use, and often not as good as melee units. This might make them much more viable because it negates their greatest problem, always getting killed.
-Life can Raise Dead, Resurrect, or use Inspirations to produce more identical troops. Keeping the units after battle isn't as large a benefit as it sounds.
-The spell is expensive, you pretty much already paid the casting cost of 2x Raise Dead whether your units die or not.
-If you attack, the enemy goes first and can kill your units before they have the regeneration. It's very strong for defense, but that's what Life is supposed to be good at.
-If you lose the battle, you don't get anything back.

The power in regeneration lies in being able to put it on anything, anytime which is why it costs 60 MP, and you can have it precast when entering battle.
Most spellcasting units are not as powerful as what you normally cast regeneration on. Exceptions exist though, units like Archangel or the Chosen benefit greatly from such buff, but let's be reasonable, if anything of that caliber dies, you raise dead it anyway for 35 MP.

If I decide to replace regeneration, I will need to come up with something suitable and powerful though. Weapon Immunity might be appropriate but I think at very rare level it's far too weak. Not sure what else would be suitable for a Life spell while being useful on priests magicians and similar units. The other option is to further raise the cost (to 80 or even 100) and keep regen. That would only help the AI though, they can afford it but the player won't be able to.

Oh and also consider this :
You are giving up your chance to cast High Prayer (unless you have 140 skill to use both) which is...a risky decision even if your units get a bunch of extra armor from this, they won't get + to defend or hit. You do get regeneration, but not +3 resistance so your units might get disintegrated, petrified, banished etc more easily as well.

This also got me thinking about the cost of Regeneration. 50/250 might be more reasonable. It's a great spell but paying more than for an Animate Dead which gets the unit back during the combat, with buffs, even from the enemy side idk, feels overcosted at least in combat.

[kjara]

I like your ideas for changes to Life, addition of the new Shadow item power and removal of Righteousness! One question though: isn't Regeneration (not to mention the other benefits) on all units in a battle way too powerful? Nature's Regeneration spell affects only one unit, costs more mana (60!) and it's also Very Rare.

An alternative to regeneration (if codeable) would be a call lightning type effect but with the base (5hp) healing spell or healing charge (10hp) on your own units. Basically a free 5/10hp per round, but only on a random (hurt?) target and no ability to survive death.


Other thoughts:

IMO, bless is actually fairly strong against death up through at least the mid game. Pick any of your highish resist races (say High elf or dwarf), 8 resist + bless (3) + prayer (1?) gets them to the point that many of deaths debuffs have at max a 20% chance of working. Seems to make the AI prefer to use reaper slash every round in the mid game, where the added 3 shields on a 6 figure unit (assuming about 2-3 die) reduces damage by 3ish per cast still. Really not bad for how cheap it is, but clearly situational. Less useful against red midgame due to doombolt, but probably useful earlier against hellhounds/fireball. Late game probably not a huge deal, but if you are relying primarily on 1-2 adamantite cities pumping out your core midgame force, you can afford to get bless up on most of them when at war with anyone with death books.

Supreme light looks like a nice buff that might be needed for magic ranged units. However, tangentially related, I wonder if its worth revisiting magicians? Personally I find them considerably weaker than priests and a bit underwhelming. I suspect part of it is that they take so long to get out and have so few hp. The missile immunity is ok, but doesn't work against most lairs ranged threats (things like giants, efreets, djinn, heck even ghouls/sprites kill them fast) or offensive spells. Unless the target is missile immune bowmen do comparable damage and are much easier to buff to insane levels (mithril/adamantite/flame blade/lionheart/etc vs that one blue spell). Finally, in most tough fights healing is significantly better than fireball (as the targets fireball is good at killing die fast enough to priest/magician/bowman etc ranged attacks already) while healing can keep themselves or a hero alive an extra round through enemy nukes. Would something like warp creature (or whatever the random half def/attack/res) spell or some other debuff perhaps make more sense for them to give them a bit more utility against harder lairs?

Other than that the changes to life sound great.

[ChongLi]

If the spell is only limited to magic ranged attackers and life units, why not have it give a whole bunch of shields and crosses? The lack of shields (and hp) is the big thing that kills magic ranged attackers, though with a spell like this available to both sides it would make the defender nearly invincible when you factor in the first strike and this defensive buff.

You may be right that Regeneration is too expensive. How about making it 40/200? If Behemoths could cast it then they'd be able to accomplish a lot of interesting tactics, even when alone in a battle!

Re: magicians/warlocks. What if magicians had flamestrike and warlocks had death spell? That would make those units very scary to have around and definitely worth using instead of bowmen. Perhaps they could be made way more expensive but kept squishy so you'd only be able to keep one or two with an army and it'd be risky to use them?

[Seravy]

An alternative to regeneration (if codeable) would be a call lightning type effect but with the base (5hp) healing spell or healing charge (10hp) on your own units. Basically a free 5/10hp per round, but only on a random (hurt?) target and no ability to survive death.
...
Would something like warp creature (or whatever the random half def/attack/res) spell or some other debuff perhaps make more sense for them to give them a bit more utility against harder lairs?

Other than that the changes to life sound great.

the 5/turn idea is not bad but has 2 critical flaws :
-I most likely can't do that or at least it would eat a lot of space in the combat end of turn procedure on top of taking a lot of work to do.
-Spellcaster units generally don't have the HP to survive a turn if damaged, often don't even one hit. Heroes, Archangels, Unicorns, Efreets and the like could benefit from the healing but the main objective, helping out priests, shaman and magician would be lost.

Now that you mention, Priests are far superior indeed. Although Healing and Fireball are equally good (depending on your army, with heroes, healing is better, if you only have a bunch of normal units, fireball helps more), Priests have 2 health, cost less, and require fewer buildings. Magicians only have 1 higher attack power, but 1 lower defense! They are expensive, vulnerable, and although I consider Fireball very good - It does kill an entire enemy multi-figure unit in one shot - , for 120 production and only living through 1-2 battles, their use is questionable. Perhaps they should cost only 90, and Wizard's Guilds only 600?

"Fireball Spell" is a unit ability. There is also a Doombolt, Healing and Web version and..that's all. There is no "Warp Creature Spell" unit ability in the game so I can't give that to them. Once I tried to give them MP to work like other casters but that failed, it crashes the game because units can only cast spells of their own realm and magicians have none. If I could find where the game fills the book with spells and make it work, I could give them any spell or set of spells, for example Fireball+Warp Creature+Weakness+Confusion, with Caster 20. Or just let them cast their owner's spells like heroes. I do believe this should be racial though and not something for all magicians. Some could be cheaper and have only the usual fireball, others could have this solution, if I manage to do it.

If the spell is only limited to magic ranged attackers and life units, why not have it give a whole bunch of shields and crosses? The lack of shields (and hp) is the big thing that kills magic ranged attackers, though with a spell like this available to both sides it would make the defender nearly invincible when you factor in the first strike and this defensive buff.

You may be right that Regeneration is too expensive. How about making it 40/200? If Behemoths could cast it then they'd be able to accomplish a lot of interesting tactics, even when alone in a battle!

Fun fact : Behemoths gained regeneration yesterday. I buffed all very rare nature summons, Wyrms will pierce armor, Colossus are immune to illusions and Behemoths regenerate. Adjusted some stats too, especially the sluggish movement on the latter two.
The spell does give a "bunch" of shields, well, usually at least 2-4, for some units even more.
It doesn't help if the entire unit has 4 health, though (and I can't make it buff health).

[ChongLi]

Now that we're on the topic of Magicians/Warlocks. I think Dark Elves in general are way underpowered now. The loss of their +1pow/pop unique trait makes their glacial population growth somewhat unjustified. Sure, Dark Elf Spearmen with Focus Magic and Heroism can do a ton of damage but that's a lot of investment into a unit that can still be 1-shot by a Doom Bolt.

I would've thought that the general buffs to power-producing buildings and religious structures would've made it unnecessary to remove the +1pow/pop from Dark Elves, since other races would have more options for producing a lot of mana in their cities. As it stands right now, I think Dark Elves are probably the weakest race on Myrror.