"The AI will now only cast Great Unsummoning if the number of enemy fantastic creatures with 12 or lower resistance – allied fantastic creatures of the same is >=5."
Does allied and enemy mean their own and other wizards? their own and players? or literally all allies against all players they're currently in a war with?
(September 15th, 2016, 17:18)namad Wrote: "The AI will now only cast Great Unsummoning if the number of enemy fantastic creatures with 12 or lower resistance – allied fantastic creatures of the same is >=5."
Does allied and enemy mean their own and other wizards? their own and players? or literally all allies against all players they're currently in a war with?
Ally means wizards how have an Alliance treaty with the wizard. Enemy means everyone else.
(September 14th, 2016, 15:55)Nelphine Wrote: I'd like to keep the predetermined item, mostly for people who like making their own for the item make file. Maybe an optional file for people who want mote randomized ones?
The options "City spell events" "Overland spell events" and "Summoning events" seem to do nothing at all, as "Enemy spells" is in charge of showing enemies casting those types of spells. So we can change one of those into "More random items", space in item generation can be a problem though.
Update, found a crash caused by the previous update which had to be fixed.
Quote:2.81
-Great Wyrm now has 32 melee and 40 poison.
-Casting cost of Colossus and Behemoth swapped.
-Research cost of Colossus and Great Wyrm swapped.
-Fixed bug : game crashes if a city has fewer nonrebel population than the minimal farmers needed.
-Added new option to the Settings Menu : “More Random Items”, causes each item to be randomly generated at a 50% chance even if a predefined item would be available.
First off, thank you for making this wonderful mod! It's absolutely incredible how awesome it is, after all these years, to come back and see how much better you've made MoM. I had no idea it was some of this stuff was even feasible, and I know my way around a hex editor and assembly language myself! Absolutely brilliant stuff - cheers =D
Secondly, I've got a few hopefully-constructive suggestions and questions about how all this stuff works!
1) I'd encourage you to post the current CASTEROFMAGIC.HTML page online in a consistent place on http://seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/, so people can read all about it without downloading the zip file, decompressing it, and finding the html, and opening it. You might also want to rename it to CASTEROFMAGIC_README.HTML or something, because people expect readmes, you know?
2) I'd encourage you to consider formatting said doc in a little nicer HTML, and maybe creating a small similarly-formatted index.html for the main http://seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/ site to go with it. I'd be happy to help with this, if you want, although I'm sure you don't really need the help, but I could do something simple and designed to look like this forum pretty easily!
3) 2.71 savegames should be compatible with 2.81, right? To update to the latest version, can I just copy the 2.81 files over and be good to go?
4) If wanted to hexedit a turn-1 savegame file to change one of the other wizards from gnoll to orc, I'd just have to edit their starting city and units, right? Is there anywhere else in the file I would have to edit?
5) Why do ships have zero upkeep? This incentivizes me to build huge maintenence-free navies... 1/2/4 gold upkeep for Galleys/Triremes/Warships, removing the food but keeping the gold, seems perfectly reasonable to me. What am I missing?
6) What do you think about the possibility of, without sufficient unit upkeep, units starting to go rogue instead of just disbanding? This could simulate rebels quite nicely =) Would it be feasible for units, instead of disbanding, to join the Rampaging Monster faction instead and act accordingly? Or is that pretty impossible, given the codebase?
7) My troops don't seem to be using my roads. Is that just because there's other grasslands tiles around, which are also movement 1, and so not particularly preferable? If so, what about setting road movement equal to 0.9, so troops have a reason to go on roads even over grasslands?
8) I'm not sure about the Conjure Road spell behavior, with its massive spiderweb situation. I never found the old-style road-enchanting approach to be useless. On the contrary, protecting one's engineers became a valid operational objective and tactical challenge. And isn't it weird to just, boom, have tons of roads everywhere? Maybe there should be two versions of this spell - Enchant Road (original version, cheaper) and Conjure Roads (new version, more expensive)? What am I missing? =D
9) Do you know of any other non-anime alternate wizard portrait sets, off the top of your head? If not, do you know of any good descriptions about how to create them? Some alternatives would be nice, and while I respect the anime look - to each his own - but it's just not my style =D
Regardless, thank you again for all your work on this, and holler if there's anything you need help with!
1. Good idea. I should have done that ages ago.
2. Updating and testing takes so much time I barely have time to even keep the information in the doc and html up to date. I'm quite sure a lot of changes that are mentioned in the changelog are not even in the main part of the text. Even once in a while I read though it and make sure it's updated but can't do that every day. Since I don't even have time for the contents, formatting is something even less of a priority at the moment.
3. Yes. Unless the changlog specifically mentions save game incompatibility or a new feature that obviously requires new data in the save files like a new building or unit type, save files are always compatible. I don't expect that to happen much in the future.
4. Yes, nothing else.
5. The AI can't disband naval units because that might drown important units like heroes. While results in the AI disbanding ALL of their land units if they have maintenance problems and have a large naval force. Although some maintenance related bugs have been fixed and the severity of this is lower now, I still don't think it's safe to have ships with maintenance.
6. Can't do that, it would result in units of multiple players on the same tile which will definitely make the game malfunction if a third person attacks that tile. Moving the units is way beyond what can be done by hexediting. The existing procedure for that only works on excess units over the 9 the player already has, and cannot be used for this.
7. Yes. If other paths are the same distance, they have no reason to use roads. 0.9 is not a number in the game code so can't use it. Movement is counted in units of 0.5.
8. Spell slots don't come for free, none of the spells are worthless enough to remove just to have two versions of enchant road. The problem with enchant road is, it's worthless. You build roads for the trade bonus, and enchanted roads provide the same. Movement is nice extra but rarely something you want to spend overland casting skill on, and the roads won't go with your armies. In the original game enchanted roads were 0 cost movement. Which is overpowered as hell and most likely worth using. 0.5 movement isn't that good. It's all tiles because it was easier to code since it already affected that area, and honestly it would be annoying to cast it one tile at a time so I see no point changing that. A 5x5 area is almost always sufficient to connect two, sometimes even 3 or more cities.
9. No I don't. I remember explaining how to in this thread somewhere to Hadriex who wanted to make a guide about it. It's really simple, take the tweaker (from the forum), open the LBX files, save the images you want to change, edit them, make sure the palette stays the same, re-import and done.
Do you want me to send you a draft of a formatted-html readme and index.html? It wouldn't be anything terribly special, but you could use it if you wanted. No pressure either way =)
Also, I wrote a post hyping Caster of Magic on Reddit, because not nearly enough people know about it, and they should! Seriously, MoM with CoM is wayyyy better than most of the fantasy 4x stuff that has been floating around for years... People should play CoM to understand what was possible in 1994, and so they can demand better from folks making games now!
Thanks for the offer but I really think I should be focusing my time on actually playing the mod to make sure there are no bugs and balance is good, whenever I have time between adding new features.
I hope more people will know about it, the main reason I'm making this is because there are still no better 4x fantasy games than MoM and probably never will be no matter how much we wait so...the best way to improve the situation is to improve MoM itself.
This version mostly focuses on improving AI, especially the following : -The way the AI reacts to someone casting the Spell of Mastery
-The AI will try to save mana in strategic combat to ensure they have enough left for their own turn, and tactical battles against the human player - this also helps making sure they have the reserves for blasting SoM. -The AI is now able to handle multiple magic spirits per plane at the same time, reducing time needed to meld nodes.
-AI is now aware of Focus Magic enabling ranged touch attacks on melee units.
-AI will always prefer to buff their heroes first (questionable but the risk/reward is way higher than buffing a rare creature so this is the safer choice) -Jihad hostility is now implemented with roughly the effects described in the game guide, but is limited to Ruthless wizards at a low chance only (wizard will neglect their own defenses to carry out an all-in attack). It is also triggered by Spell of Mastery.
-AI will prioritize animating expensive dead fantastic creatures over almost everything else
Additionally, it also improves the gameplay :
-Spell research will now select the lowest available rarity to add to the list period, not per realm, so no very rare nature spells for you when you are still having 7 common Chaos spells waiting to be added to the list.
-Keeps will now contain Sorcery creatures and books to balance out realms better.
-Dark Elf race improved
-Manticores are now a stronger, more expensive unit with 2 shots of ranged poison. (haven't been tested for balance, please report your experiences with the unit, same for the new rangers which I also haven't had time to use yet)
There is a LOT of new code in the game so if you see any problems, please report.
One last thing, there is a new patch file, AUTOAI.TXT. If you apply that to any version of wizards.exe (haven't tested but might even work in 1.31), the new wizards.exe will auto-press next turn and disable all possible interaction with the player, allowing the game to play by itself - the AI players will ignore the human player completely - stopping only once every 50 turns. Feel free to use this tool to test how the AI works if you feel like it. The good news, I was able to go through several full games without crashing using this tool, so it seems the random crashes might be really gone for good, finally.
2.9
-AI randomly moving units now use teleportation/merging if available.
-When an AI wizard is banished they will choose not to return if their empire population is below 50 and their mana*2+gold is < 1200, instead of when mana=0 only.
-Strategic combat now spends mana crystals over the first 6 “turns” instead of the first 3.
-In strategic combat, AI wizards will spend only half their available skill if their mana is between 8*Skill and 16*Skill, and will not spend any if it is below 8*Skill. This is to ensure battles between AI wizards never drain the AI too low to put up a resistance against the human player, or fail to Spell Blast a Spell of Mastery or cast overland spells.
-Spells that are of the lowest unresearched rarity are now eligible for appearing as next research, instead of lowest unresearched rarity within the realm. In other words if you researched all your nature commons and uncommons, but still have sorcery commons waiting to appear, you won't get nature rares. This is to prevent unbalanced games where a small number of books in one realm and many in another results in research getting filled by high rarity spells of the realm having fewer books since that realm runs out of common/uncommon research way faster than the other. Since the player is more likely to go for the higher rarity spell, this can result in reaching even very rares of the secondary realm before finishing uncommons in the first (Yes I had Great Wyrm and Herb Mastery appear before Spell Blast with 4 nature 6 sorcery.) and the chance of this is even escalated because the roll is based on the number of spells, so 3 rares vs 1 remaining common will give 75% rare. Even if that common belongs to a 10 book realm where you have finished the other 9 spells already.
-Swapped the growth rate of Dark Elf and Dwarf races.
-Nightblades have 3 hit points again.
-Warlocks now cost 160.
-Keeps now have Sorcery monsters in them instead of Death, Chaos and Nature, and may contain any book as treasure.
-Beastmen can now build Fantstic Stables. Manticores now require Fantastic stables and have 6 health, 7 melee, 2 ammo of 2 strength ranged (that applies poison), and +1 to Hit, but cost 180.
-High Elf neutral cities now have the same chance of spawning as any other race instead of being limited to Forest tiles.
-AI priority to cast Supreme Light in combat now receives a higher weight from Life creatures and units that have over 20 MP.
-Path Finding items now only grant Pathfinding, without a Lank Linking bonus if the hero is fantastic.
-Assassin hero now has Poison 9 instead of 5.
-Adjusted AI combat priority of attacking summoned creatures to make sure at least adjacent summoned catapults are attacked instead of ignored.
-AI now uses Call Lightning at an increased priority at turn 2 or later, and does not care about the number of enemy units.
-The AI will not target sleeping, confused or stasised units with buffs in combat.
-The AI no longer considers units with Death Immunity, Combat/Item Invulnerability or Illusions Immunity to have a higher combat rating (note that this is only used for AI decisions, not strategic combat).
-The AI now considers invisible units (from any source) to be 50% more powerful for combat value ratings.
-The AI now considers units enchanted by Black Sleep as though they had a combat value of 1.
-The AI now considers weapon immune units (from any source) to be 12% more powerful for combat value ratings. (including if it is granted by Wraith Form, Non-Corporeality, or Invunerability)
-Fixed : AI doesn't recognize allied units as intended for deciding on Great Unsummoning.
-Fixed : AI doesn't recognize allied units as intended for deciding on Chaos Surge.
-Hydras now have 9 melee and 6 Fire Breath instead of 7/8.
-Increased AI's priority for targeting its heroes with overland buffs. (AI uses them somewhat better so they are more worth it, and the AI now relies on at least a Necromancer/Beastmaster in their capital and buffs help keeping those alive. Also, losing items to the human player is one way the AI can lose games, so heroes should be protected at all cost. Somewhat questionable as a rare+ creature is usually more worth the buffs than a low level hero unless it has top tier items (in which case they would have the stats to outrank said creature anyway)) but certainly safer.
-When the AI decides to accept or reject a hero, instead of slots used<=Hero ID/4, a table will be used for the decision where each hero has an amount of free slots needed which if not available, the hero won't be hired. For example Beastmaster or Paladin can be hired anytime but Dwarf only if all slots are empty, Healer only if at least 4 slots are empty etc. Note that worse heroes may still be summoned through summon hero but that spell is not used if the AI already has 4 or more heroes. Champions are fortunately all good enough to not be a bad decision to accept any.
-Death Knights are now Noncorporeal
-AI will no longer use Crack's Call against walls, as it is rarely a good strategy. The spell is generally priorized when the AI is behind in combat power, while breaking walls is good if they're ahead.
-AI will prefer to target units that have touch attacks and no ranged attack with Focus Magic to enable the touch attack to work at range.
-Heroic Shout now costs 12 to cast.
-AI combat spell selection – Flame Strike and Call Chaos now gains +7 priority per enemy unit instead of +4.
-If the AI has Jihad level hostility towards a player, they threat their capital as though it had only 220 power worth of defenders or a quarter of the actual power, whichever is lower.
-If a player is casting the Spell of Mastery, all wizards will always set Jihad hostility towards them, except if they know Spell Blast.
-Ruthless wizards now have a 10% chance to set Jihad hostility during war instead of 20%.
-All other wizard personalities never set Jihad hostility unless SoM is being cast.
-When an AI declares war or receives a war declaration, it'll set the “reevaluate hostility”counter to 1, forcing the wizard to evaluate their hostility towards everyone the next turn.
-If an AI has Jihad level hostility towards anyone, they are allowed send out all but the 3 weakest units from all their cities for stackbuilding, except from their capital. (instead of the normal behavior which is exactly the third strongest unit from cities)
-If a wizard has Jihad hostility towards another, targeting that wizard's capital gets an additional +10 priority for city curses.
-The AI will now prefer to summon 3 magic spirit at a time (per plane) instead of only 1.
-New subroutine for AI sending spirits to nodes : Now it is for each node, send exactly one, the closest sprit. Original was, for each spirit, send it to closest node, resulting in all spirits going to the same node which is inefficient.
-Life Force now costs 900 to cast.
-Enlightenment now costs 900 to cast.
-Unicorns have 6 melee attack.
-Angels now have 10 resistance.
-Call Chaos now has a working graphical effect (however it's the same one on all units. Couldn't find why the original was crashing so I bypassed it and used the same part of code as Mass Heal and Massacre does. I suspect the crash is somehow related to loading too many different animations at once.)
-Fixed bug : Raise Dead plays a generic summoning sound effect instead of its own.
-Added new sound effect for Animate Dead.
-AI combat spell priorities : Animate Dead now receives a priority boost of (unit cost/10) instead of (unit attack+defense+ranged+health)/2. This yields an extreme high priroity to animating high end summoned creatures such as drakes wyrms or demon lords. Note that Raise Dead uses the old formula as it isn't working on fantastic creatures and only revives half the figures so the stats on a single figure is a more appropriate measure of how useful the unit is if raised.
-If an AI wizard knows both Spell Blast and Spell of Mastery, and another wizard also knows Spell of Mastery, the AI will not cast his own unless they have at least 125% of that wizard's casting skill to make sure they will be able to finish first.
-Spell of Mastery now costs 15000 mana to cast.
-When a “Spell of Mastery” type of diplomacy warning is triggered, instead of a 10% random chance of declaring war each time, it'll be a 100% chance if at least 1000 mana progress has been made in the spell, and none otherwise (aside from regular warning consequences) to prevent excessive delays of war and spell blasting from allies.
-During Jihad level hostility towards any wizard, all intercontinental stacks on the same plane with at least 300 simplified power (unit total health*unit total attack) attempting to do intercontinental movement will head towards attacking that wizard's capital instead of looking at any other targets. Note that even if a stack is seaworthy, if they find a target on their own continent, they are still going for that first because continental targeting takes precedence over intercontinental.
-During Jihad level hostility towards any wizard, all stacks on the same continent as that wizard's capital with at least 330 power will head towards that capital if it is reachable on land.
-During Jihad level hostility towards any wizard, stacks trying to find a path towards a destination treat units of that wizard as though they were not blocking the way, but were a tile with a really high movement cost. This should prevent stalling by surrounding the capital with a bunch of weak stacks, pretending it's inaccessible for attacks.
-When War is declared, the peace treaty between those wizards is immediately cancelled by resetting the peace counter to zero. (I find it hard to believe this wasn't already done and the game worked fine, but I found no indication of it happening so might as well add it to be safe. The Ai is actually able to declare war during the peace treaty if SoM is cast.)
-Further reduced the chance of nodes generated in sea. Unfortunately it's not possible to completely eliminate them as sometimes there isn't enough landmass to place them all on land, but they are very undesirable as the AI is literally unable to land on single tile islands like that because the node itself blocks disembarking, and sea to land attacks can only hit units and cities, not nodes. The only way they can go there is if the human player clears them out then leaves them undefended.
