Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

I'm confused. Which is the ultimative file I should start? wizard.exe or magic.exe?

The same as always.

Magic.exe for the main menu, and wizards.exe for loading the continue save immediately.

[grazzy]

Think its quite obvious I love your mod Seravy.

Although had a weirdish type fight today. 3 archangels+a guardian spirit basically did nothing against 3 weakish heroes. One angel sort of chased one of the heroes, and the other two just sat there.

Uploaded a video of it.

Keep up the awesome work.

[Seravy]

Think its quite obvious I love your mod Seravy.

Although had a weirdish type fight today. 3 archangels+a guardian spirit basically did nothing against 3 weakish heroes. One angel sort of chased one of the heroes, and the other two just sat there.

Uploaded a video of it.

Keep up the awesome work.

The spirit could not attack because all your heroes were flying.

The Arch Angels got hit by the "I want to cast a spell but have nothing" bug.
I set the limit for 10 MP since every realm always has something to cast for that much but...the Arch Angels had 11 remaining so they still wanted to cast spells (original was 5 which caused this bug a lot more often). They already blessed everything they could. Holy Armor and Holy Weapon had no valid target. Healing costs 15. So they decided to cast a spell but had nothing to use and skipped the turn. If you dispel bless in this situation they'll recast it and start attacking
I will need to find a way to redirect spellcasting into melee attacks if it was selected but failed to execute, not sure how I'll do that.

[Seravy]

It seems there is a crash bug in 2.51, when the AI has Spell Ward it can crash the game - even prior to the spell being cast.
I apologize for this, it will be fixed in 2.52, but it'll most likely take a day or two before that is ready, I still have a lot of stuff on my todo list for it.

[Seravy]

2.52 is available for download!

Fixes two major instability/memory corruption bugs introduced in earlier 2.5x versions, so please upgrade as soon as possible.
Due to the urgency of this update, I haven't had too much chance to test the changes aside from starting the game and confirming they work as intended - at the very least there was no crash, but I can't guarantee all of the combat AI changes actually make the AI play better - they should but to test strategic changes like these, more time is needed.

Aside from fixing the above, this update contains
-fixes to less severe bugs like the AI fleeing when it's not their turn (this one is untested)
-Some tweaking to AI combat spell choices, especially these three :
-AI is now aware of Mind Storm being a good combo with Disintegrate and Annihilate
-AI now prefers to cast Black Prayer before Massacre
-AI will not target a unit already affected by sleep, shatter or confusion with another spell
-Arch Angel and Demon Lord power production is improved and raised
and this : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8270

2.52
-Fixed bug : AI rarely says “I'm breaking a treaty” when they are meant to say “I'm declaring war”, when declaring war twice in the same turn, also they will NOT go through with declaring war the second time since they already did and doing it twice doubles the starting relation penalty.
-Further improvement to AI's use of Fire Elemental, Wraith Form.
-AI will priorize Eldritch Weapon, Flame Blade and Holy Weapon if there is an enemy unit with Weapon Immunity or 10+ armor. These spells are now priority group “B” use when at advantage, avoid when outnumbered. Countering armor or weapon immunity is pointless if the enemy army has much superior stats anyway.
-AI now has an “A+C+D+10” priority for Disintegrate instead of “C+40”. This ensures Disintegrate will always be high enough priority to be used instead of any other direct damage spell when available, while still maintaining its property of being a “generic” direct damage spell potent enough to use when direct damage is not particularly necessary.
-If the AI knows Disintegrate, it'll priorize it so that the Mind Storm+Disintegrate strategy can be used effectively. Same for Annihilate.
-The AI now recognizes Heroic Shout as a “fireball” type direct damage spell that is superior to fireball : Priority is now “A”+12+(max figures-3)*4
-Fixed : Magic Immunity blocks Lightning Breath when it isn't supposed to.
-Fixed : Resist Elements and Elemental Armor works on thrown attacks.
-Demon Lord and Arch Angel now produce 20 real power instead of merely granting a 10 mana maintenance discount on your other spells.
-Fixed : caster units in combat under AI control fail to attack if they have no spell to use.
-Quick Casting now has an effect even if the spell was countered.
-Fixed : game crashes when the AI tries to cast Spell Ward.
-Fixed another memory corruption source caused by the previous update
-Completely removed obsolete old “enemy stacks” data and old continent rating system since both were no longer used by anything inportant. Freeed up memory is used for global old stack system to handle up to 345 own stacks. The only use of these were to grant lower priority to disbanding troops on continents rated as “not enough presence” - instead now the troops on the main action continent will be disbanded less than others.
-AI prefers to use Black Prayer first if Massacre is known, general preference of Black Prayer slightly higher, preference is even higher is Disintegrate is known.
-The AI will avoid targeting units affected by Black Sleep, Shatter, or Confusion by spell groups 13,14,16,12,4 – Single target instant kill, direct damage and curses.
-The AI can no longer flee during the human player's turn.
-When a Demon Lord fails to cast Summon Demon due to the 9 unit limit, it will not lose its movement points, and can act normally.
-AI players will not lose peace interest towards each other when hit by hostile spells (dispelling, global enchantment, city curses). Other effects alter peace interest as normal. This is to prevent unending wars between AI players due to a global enchantment or spell blast, and also because it benefits the AI player to make peace as then the other AI stops throwing those spells (in case of city curses, nuking and spell blasting).
-AI combat spell priority : Iron Skin +25 → +16
-AI combat spell priority, Berserk, Haste are now type “B” use when at advantage instead of “C” use when even match. Haste also gains a +20 priority on top of that.

[Seravy]

Another one :

2.52b
-Fixed bug : saved dead hero data still gets corrupted if the save file is loaded from Magic.exe

I thought I fixed the resurrection missing hero name and levels bug a long ago but seems there was a copy of the bug in the other exe file...

[Turin Turambar]

Hi Seravy, I just registered here to say thanks for your effort!

Also, two possible bugs? : the AI declares war against me saying I was entering too much in their territory, but it wasn't true, I barely had discovered them and the closest unit was a ship in the middle of the ocean.
A I had an enemy gargoyle that fly towards me and then stay still, without attacking, which is a problem because after a few shots, I didn't have a way to kill it.

[Seravy]

Hi Seravy, I just registered here to say thanks for your effort!

Also, two possible bugs? : the AI declares war against me saying I was entering too much in their territory, but it wasn't true, I barely had discovered them and the closest unit was a ship in the middle of the ocean.

Can you show me which message it was? None of the war declaration messages refer to territory so it must have been something else, probably a warning.
Did you have a scout in 2 tiles range of their cities? Even if your unit has a scouting range of 1 and don't see the city, they might see you.

A I had an enemy gargoyle that fly towards me and then stay still, without attacking, which is a problem because after a few shots, I didn't have a way to kill it.

Assuming your army was more powerful than the gargoyles, this is a feature, not a bug. Flying units are now able to decide not to attack if they know you can't attack them and they would lose if they did.

also, new patch :

2.52c
-Fixed bug : game crashes if the total number of combat units – including already dead units – exceeds 36.

[grazzy]

Maybe Im not unzipping it right or something, but all save games are now "blank" (aka have no text), I can load them fine, they just dont have names.

Add yes, I have multiple, multple backups of the save*.* files.

[Seravy]

Maybe Im not unzipping it right or something, but all save games are now "blank" (aka have no text), I can load them fine, they just dont have names.

Add yes, I have multiple, multple backups of the save*.* files.

The names are stored in magic.set, if you backed that up then good, otherwise they're gone but the save files still work. You can load and resave and name them any way you want.
Your scores are also stored there so you better keep that file safe in the future. It's part of the download because there were scoring changes so anyone switching over from something prior to the change needs a clean file. (same reason for having empty save*.gam files included, save files older than something like 2.x are incompatible)