Spell of Mastery casting cost

[Nelphine]

Also, isn't 1000 skill excessive for extreme? I would think only impossible would reach that. So don't balance around 1000 skill. (Most humans will probably never reach 500. You don't want to make it take forever for a human either. Even if AI can't stop it, it should still be a win that doesn't take so long the hunan player wins by military first.)

[Nelphine]

I wouldn't balance it around vanilla turns required. In the mod, if you are using SoM, either you've won already and just want to do it (yah! ) in which case 1 turn casting is fine.

Or you can't hope to win militarily, and so you need to cast it to win.
In this case, if you can't win militarily, how long would it take the AI to get its strongest stack to you. (If you can't win militarily, you can't defeat the strongest stack.)

but some stacks take forever to get anywhere. Speed 4 is probably reasonable. So if the AI immediately set off to kill you it could take... Bleh. Like 20 turns to travel to tower then to your fortress. That's ages.


Can you set it up so that when someone conquers a city, and the cities owner is casting SoM, the cities owner loses mana?

make it so the cities owners loses 15% of their mana.

Then keep casting cost at 5000. If someone starts casting SoM, instead of defeating the fortress (very hard for ai) you only need to take a bunch of cities and stop them from having enough mana to finish the cast. AI should be able to do that.

Also leaves the cadting cost low enough that someone doing it just to win, can still do it fairly quickly instead of having to wait out 30+ turns.

[Seravy]

In this case, if you can't win militarily, how long would it take the AI to get its strongest stack to you.

More than 20 turns. Usually more than 30. In some cases literally forever (especially if you know the AI).
The question is more like, how many turns it takes for the AI to crush your economy enough in an all-out war that you can't keep up casting it and protecting your capital at the same time.
Don't expect for the AI's only 9 sky drake stack to find their way to the capital specifically. It will attack SOMETHING, probably multiple somethings after razing each of them, but it won't go specifically for the capital. The 5 stacks of 8 halberdiers might instead, each taking 12 turns to arrive while blocking the target capital from other stacks to go for it.

The problem with this is, if you don't waste your mana crystals on defensive battles, you can just flee from all your cities and still win from the 15k mana you had initially.

Can you set it up so that when someone conquers a city, and the cities owner is casting SoM, the cities owner loses mana?

It's really hard to justify that change in any way. It just makes no sense considering what Spell of Mastery and your Mana Reserve are.

can still do it fairly quickly instead of having to wait out 30+ turns.

After already waiting out 100-150 turns to research it, I fail to see the problem with this.

Well I don't think anything (aside from changes in the gameplay itself) will make the AI have a real chance to stop it against a smart player now that I thought more deeply about it, so I guess that leaves "how many turns should the PLAYER have to stop the AI" as the standing question instead. (also factor in the 25% discount for runemasters)

If we are fine with the AI casting it in 5-10 turns then I don't mind making the cost 7500, but I rather not go below that. Probably keeping it at 10k is for the best.

[Nelphine]

Honestly, I would expect most people at that point in the game to be able to kill any enemy capital in under 10 turns, if they can do it at all. (My idea for AI: 'if game is past turn 1420, ensure wind mage is in capital with maximum movement items. If enemy casts SoM, take capital stack, label it kill stack, and head directly towards capital of enemy casting SoM.' Redefend capital with other stacks. Kill stack will always move directly towards capital of wizard Casting SoM. If multiple enemies casting SoM, move toward nearest. If stack is weakened, collect strongest unit that will not reduce how many turns it takes to reach enemy capital. If no units exist, collect nearest unit. Every turn try to strengthen stack by collecting units that will not reduce how many turns it takes to get to enemy capital.')

[Nelphine]

Can you set it up so that when someone conquers a city, and the cities owner is casting SoM, the cities owner loses mana?
It's really hard to justify that change in any way. It just makes no sense considering what Spell of Mastery and your Mana Reserve are.


Justify it with balance. Describe it as you spreading your being across both planes, with all your mortal cities as your base, and the first thing you have to do for the ritual is infuse all of your cities with your presence. Thus you have to teleport huge supplies of mana crystals everywhere. Effectively your whole empire becomes your fortress instead of just where your wizardry body is.

[Seravy]

ensure wind mage is in capital

This weakens the defense of the capital significantly, and wastes a good hero whose mobility should be taken advantage of.
Also if the Wind Mage left the capital it will be unable to ever return because it is FULL with units.
Finally there is a good 75% chance the AI will not even have that hero.

with maximum movement items

This is already done, at least movement is prioritized above average on that hero.

take capital stack

This leaves the capital completely empty for a whole turn in a predictable manner. Anyone smarter than a pea will notice the AI leaves the capital empty the turn after SoM is started.

head directly towards capital of enemy casting SoM

Thanks to the wind walker this actually works if it's the same plane. Otherwise a tower need to be found, it needs to have zero units on it (we are moving a stack of 9), and preferably be close to both the capitals.

Redefend capital with other stacks.

There is no guarantee there are any nearby. Even if there are it takes multiple turns until they reach it, and cannot be done the turn the other stack was leaving because it's still there.

Kill stack will always move directly towards capital of wizard Casting SoM.

Eventually the player will figure this out and intercept the stack on the way, and kill the hero leading it.

If stack is weakened, collect strongest unit that will not reduce how many turns it takes to reach enemy capital.

In other words wait as many turns as it takes for those units to reach the stack? Or are you suggesting the stack to move towards the nearest pile of units that is exactly the number missing or fewer? The stack would still need to stop there for a turn because the units can't be assigned to move towards the destination before the wind walker is there.
Imagine that the AI has to move every stack they have with exactly one click in the order they are prompted by the game. There is no stopping halfway and changing directions or adding units in a single turn.

Anyway what you suggest is a poor tactic against a human player and impossible to execute for the existing AI at the same time. There is an AI thread and overland movement is already covered completely, I suggest reading that before suggesting such impossible features.

Justify it with balance. Describe it as you spreading your being across both planes, with all your mortal cities as your base, and the first thing you have to do for the ritual is infuse all of your cities with your presence. Thus you have to teleport huge supplies of mana crystals everywhere. Effectively your whole empire becomes your fortress instead of just where your wizardry body is.

I fail to see how this is related to how spellcasting and the spell itself works. There is no actual mechanic that makes casting the spell depend on your population or cities in any way. It would only make sense if the spell was more effective if you had larger territory, which it is not. Balance is important but not enough to put in some Deus Ex Machina that contradicts normal gameplay. (the 4x research cost doesn't count because 65k max research cost is not a gameplay feature but a computer limitation.)

I guess there is one more thing I can (if space allows, which I'm not so sure about) do for attacking the capital.
I can modify the intercontinental attack procedure (which I made in the first place) to send all intercontinental (flying/swimming/windwalking) stacks towards the wizard's capital if the appropriate hostility is set. This would still do nothing if the AI has only land forces, or is on the other plane but it is at least something. I suppose those situations are hopeless anyway, towers are a bottleneck so sending enough armies to overwhelm the player, especially in time is unlikely, and ships...work but are too time consuming and can be sunk. Seaworthy units on the same plane are really the only thing the AI can rely on.
There is a huge flaw in this tactic unfortunately. Unless said units already formed large enough stacks, they'll be attacking one unit at a time. Still worth a try I guess. Fortunately most lategame summoned units can fly (though Nature's cannot).

[Seravy]

Something unrelated, or semi-related.
While Spell of Mastery always triggers the elevated hostility level (called Jihad, it already exists in the game but has no actual effects caused by it) it's possible to trigger it in normal wars. Since it's somewhat reckless I definitely don't want it to happen often (not as often as the default at the very least). At the moment I set it up so that only one personality can use it (outside of SoM situations), which is Ruthless, at a 10% chance every time hostility is evaluated (roughly once every 20 turns during war). Not sure if that's ok or maybe it's better to set this chance to the Aggressive personality instead?
I believe it's nice to have the AI suddenly dump all their stored very rare creatures in garrisons into the playing field and use them in the war all at once as a surprise tactic, as long as it happens rarely (as it does mean they are much more vulnerable to counterattacks, ofc if they do lose a city the units that left it are still nearby to take it back...). (note that their capital is excluded as always so they can only risk their normal cities)

Maniacal already has two behaviors that make it different, the direct penalty to diplomacy and the highest curse chance.
Ruthless has higher than normal curse chance but nothing else.
Aggressive is the only trait that comes with nothing special, it has an average curse casting chance and no other rules set up, and medium personality modifier in diplomacy
Chaotic sends war declarations and alliances at random.
Lawful cannot become hostile without war declaration and doubles treaty break penalties.
Peaceful cannot become hostile without war declaration and cannot be influenced by the militarist or expansionist objectives to declare war. It also has an outstanding high diplomacy modifier causing them to declare the least wars and make the most alliances (not counting wars caused but the alliances ofc, they are on top of doing those...)

So aside from extra chance of curses, Ruthless and Aggressive are the same thing.
If we set the chance of Jihad hostility for Ruthless then we can retain at least one "normal" personality that is acting as the middle point with no extra effects to remember. If we set it for Aggressive then all personalities have some extra effect going, but Ruthless becomes the least interesting of them, as it only has extra curse chance, and less of that than Maniacal.
More curses can make such large scale invasions more effective (as curses include spells that kill units such as firestorm, as well as spells that wreck military production centers, or those that do both like call the void) which is another argument for Ruthless to do it.

(we also have to option of both maniacal and ruthless do it but then the two becomes too similar again)

[namad]

I do not agree that a player can reasonably reach an enemy fortress within ten turns (although I usually can do this in 5 turns if I'm specifically planning a war against an ai in the near future, but what if my ally is the one who starts casting SoM?). Seravy I think your 20-30 turn goal is fine. I think nelphine's logic is very player versus player. If the ai is far enough ahead of the player that the player has to try to som to win, then the player might not even know where the fortress is.

I also don't think that a player who is way ahead and just wants to win by casting SoM for kicks should be part of the balance decision, so what if they're slightly bored? They already won, if they want they can start a new game, or just hit end turn rapidly ignoring all orders.

That said, if you can VASTLY improve the ai's ability to try and rush a capital and banish a human player casting SoM, then 10-20 might be okay. I've never seen the ai try this at all ever though, they usually just attack whatever is closest to them. A human player could even use like 30 spearmen to just blockade and waste turns and force the ai death stack to get blocked by it's own allied stacks.

[Seravy]

The good news, although it took the entire night, I was able to force the AI to ignore usual attack target selection protocols and first check if they have a Jihad hostility enemy. If yes, and the stack is at least as good as 5 halberdiers, and they can reach it, the stack goes towards the capital. Of course it's far from foolproof, but it should be enough to catch at least unprepared players off-guard (and especially so if the AI goes for this tactic when there is no SoM involved, based on the 10% chance roll on the Ruthless personality)

In a bit more details, during Jihad hostility the AI will do this with their stacks overriding normal behavior :

Garrison in AI's capital : Stay where it is.
Garrison in any other city : Treat it as though it was just a node, allow any unit to be used for new stack building there as long as at least the 3 weakest remain. (this does not mean all cities will go down to 3 immediately, as a stack only contains 9 units, and those are gathered from the entire continent. If there is one city with 9 Demon Lords, it might send 6 of those though if those are the best units available.
Garrison on node : No change. If needed for stackbuilding, use units, and leave at least 3.
Land stack on the same continent as fortress stronger than 5 halberdiers : If fortress can be reached, go there, otherwise do the usual target selection and attack anything else.
Land stack on the same continent as fortress weaker than 5 halberdiers : Do the usual but treat the fortress as though it had only 5 halberdiers defending it, or if it has a force weaker than 20 halberdiers then only a quarter of the actual force. (The usual means only one stack can select to go to the fortress, plus any stack within a distance of 5 having nothing else to do. Most likely these will attack units or other cities, or get gathered into a new stack)
Land stack on another continent with valid targets : Attack those targets as usual. This can blow a major hole in the player's economy (and even casting skill due to losing amplifying towers) though there is no guarantee those targets belong to the player casting the SoM. There is no way to change this anyway.
Land stack on another continent with no targets : Wait for a ship and leave continent. The wizard's capital has an extremely high chance to be selected as the target continent to unload ships.
Seaworthy stack on sea with the strength of 5 halberdiers : attack capital
Seaworthy stack on sea with the strength of less than 5 halberdiers : Attack nearby target that's weak enough, if none found, head towards gathering point on the targeted continent. (The usual)
Seaworthy stack on land : If on continent with enemy presence, treat it as though it was a land stack. Otherwise treat it as though it was over sea.
Stack on the wrong plane : Works as normal because there is no capital to attack.

I think that's about everything. Also city curses have a higher chance to target the capital (it is treated as though it had an additional 12 population or buildings) during the Jihad hostility.

Maybe during this situation the AI should also be allowed to treat stacks acting as a roadblock as though they weren't there and try to go through them - but only if there is no way to go around? I think they should...although this can result in some suicide attacks too and it wouldn't be limited to the continent where the capital is, it's most likely still worth it to stop the 8 spearmen tactic from working.

[Nelphine]

That's a great start. I'm aware of the limitations of overland movement, and I'm genuinely sorry I offended you with my suggestions. But from the experience I've had, making suggestions that are nigh impossible (maybe actually impossible but I don't KNOW the coding, and you've worked miracles before) is literally as helpful as increasing the cost.

Yes you can say 'just click end turn' but honestly, AI turns can take minutes at that time. 30 end turns could literally be over an hour. I would much rather suggest impossible things than resign spell of Mastery to such a Fate. And if you disagree and go with your proposed solution, at least I've made my voice heard. And since I don't feel SoM has ever really made an impact on my games, so I'll also be totally ok with your solution.