it was a newly installed MoM 1.31 and then i copied CoM over it. of course newly installed must means that i extracted a zipped copy from somewhere on my HDD, so maybe it wasn't really vanilla at all... the whole game was played with this version. yes i'm sure it's the correct file because of the last changed date/time. but if it's just a local problem, maybe it's not CoM related.
Quote:2.91c
-Fixed bug : Teleporting units can only move to tiles a flying unit with infinite movement can reach. AI teleporting units surrounded completely and trying to move causes the game to freeze as no valid destination is found.
-Fixed bug : The human player can cover no more than 10 distance per step with a teleporting or merging unit (The AI is not affected by such restrictions)
-Gargoyles move 3 instead of 2.
-Rangers have 1 lower armor and health.
-Fixed : Path Finding items no longer grant Path Finding movement on the overland map (2.9 bug)
I'm been playing a bunch of 2.91b starting as Draconians, and I've noticed a behavior that I believe is a bug and isn't noted in CasterofMagic.odt:
If I have a mixed stack of flying creatures (e.g. Draconian bowmen with movement fly 2) and land creatures (e.g. some heroes with movement 4), sometimes the stack ends its movement prematurely. I.e. I can get farther by separating the stack into flying only creatures and land only creatures, and moving the two substacks separately to the destination square.
It is as if for the movement of the whole stack, since some of the creatures are land creatures, when moving into a cost 2 terrain type (hills, forests), every unit's movement remaining is reduced by 2, even though the flying creatures should be able to move into the terrain for just cost 1.
I don't remember if this was the behavior in the original Master of Magic, it's been a long time. I also haven't noticed when the above behavior happens every time that it could, but whenever it does happen it involves a terrain type with movement cost above 1.
My apologies if this has been discussed previously in the thread and isn't fixable, the thread has gotten a bit too long to read the whole thing. If necessary, I can probably create a situation where this happens repeatably and provide a save file, just let me know.
(October 3rd, 2016, 16:14)wwhitney Wrote: If I have a mixed stack of flying creatures (e.g. Draconian bowmen with movement fly 2) and land creatures (e.g. some heroes with movement 4), sometimes the stack ends its movement prematurely. I.e. I can get farther by separating the stack into flying only creatures and land only creatures, and moving the two substacks separately to the destination square.
While counter-intuitive and unrealistic, this is not a bug. The stack moves as one entity with one movement type, not as individual units. This ensures the other units are there for you when a battle is initiated anywhere along the part. In other words your flying units have to walk because that's how military works. If it's one army it must march together, individual action is not tolerated
On the technical side, if I separated the stack into individual units moving, it would result in one unit reaching the lair, attacking it, then the next and so on, a stack of 9 would be 9 separate combats. Also it would break windwalking and transportation which entirely relies on the moving stack staying together.
So yes this is known and cannot be fixed. At least I don't dare to try.
i notice in the item editor (using create artifact) there is a little yellow arrow down and it seems like not all available options are shown. is that true? clicking on the yellow arrow closes the interface. is there a way to see the other hidden options?
editing this with random thoughts while playing:
ships should have an upkeep, at least 1 gold, better more since 1 gold barely matters now
the rogue had lucky twice (one red and one yellow background). do these stack?
chance to find prisoners is too high
confusion and possession are extremely annoying, just as in the original game. not being dispellable is a big buff to possession, i had rather expected a nerf to these spells.
I'm not a big fan of how neutral AI (let's say a node) will have strong ground units moving around, or worse: merging/teleporting around, simply because your units are ranged.
I understand the reasoning behind an enemy AI doing this (stalling = more spells), but not neutral AI. Why can't they stay in one place like in the original master of magic and save the player a lot of time?
I also experimented with a maximum turn limit of just 15. I think it works very well and never had a long battle lasting this much anyways.
Quote:i notice in the item editor (using create artifact) there is a little yellow arrow down and it seems like not all available options are shown. is that true? clicking on the yellow arrow closes the interface. is there a way to see the other hidden options?
There are no hidden options. Those are what you can add to that item type with that spell. The arrow was added by kyrub for faster exiting the screen. I think he didn't like having to start the spell then cancel it externally. I'll check if there is a more suitable icon (like X) to display but probably not.
Quote:ships should have an upkeep, at least 1 gold, better more since 1 gold barely matters now
I'm not gonna risk that, it's bad for the AI who cannot disband ships when low on gold.
Quote:the rogue had lucky twice (one red and one yellow background). do these stack?
No, they don't stack. Hero lucky (red) now grants normal Lucky (yellow) and only normal Lucky applies the stat bonus. This was done to prevent the stacking.
Quote:chance to find prisoners is too high
Agreed but it's the minimal possible 1/15.
Quote:confusion and possession are extremely annoying, just as in the original game. not being dispellable is a big buff to possession, i had rather expected a nerf to these spells.
Possession was never dispellable, I merely added that to the help text. It isn't implemented at all so I can't change that. Confusion has a much worse save modifier then the original and is generally weaker due to not having bugs anymore, although it does kill the unit after battle all the time instead of just randomly.
Quote:I'm not a big fan of how neutral AI (let's say a node) will have strong ground units moving around, or worse: merging/teleporting around, simply because your units are ranged.
They don't. They do it because your units are flying or invisible.
Quote:Why can't they stay in one place like in the original master of magic and save the player a lot of time?
They have no valid target to attack. That is the trigger for the "search for invisible" process because checking for their existence directly takes up more space and is also cheating. Also this tactic does help against flying enemies : They can't attack the unit all at once, so less suppression penalty applies to retaliation. If the flying units are slower, they might even be unable to attack the units often enough to kill them.
If you mean the running around tactic, which is triggered by you having superior nonranged forces, they just want to survive by running away. If the speed difference is enough they might manage to escape for all 25 turns. Disabling this is for neutrals is under consideration but I haven't decided on it yet. It doesn't make much sense to kill a move 4 unit with a move 2 unit if it's wants to escape.
Quote:I also experimented with a maximum turn limit of just 15.
That doesn't give enough time for AI players to cause real damage to your city by moving units there. That tactic starts being used on turn 10. I've had plenty of battles where I needed more than 15 turns, it's not that common but happens, especially big battles against capitals with high armor heroes can take forever.
see attached jpg for open create artifact interface. it sure looks like there could be something below invisibility, and the entry above it is not readable. i realize that's not a CoM specific issue, but could be mitigated by higher book requirements.
yes my problem was primary with possession than confusion. usually it's possible to stay away from the confused unit so at least it lets you use the unit in some way, and the enemy still has to kill it (triggering counterattacks) to win the fight. also it does not give the enemy instant control. possession is alot better. it usually instantly removes 2 of your units (the one possessed and the one that gets killed by it) and the enemy does not have to kill it to win. i would like better if possession had a much worse save modifier (like +0), so it's alot more unreliable witout -save items. same goes for black sleep by the way, which is in many ways similar to possession except that it removes only 1 unit and you may be even able to save it.
the running around search for invisible units, and the stalling, are annoying. the stalling especially when i realized that i had nothing that could attack air elementals when playing dwarves. the search for invisibles when they didn't attack them even after finding them. it would be good if this behaviour could be different for neutrals compared to players. neutrals don't need to be so intelligent, they might just attack whatever approaches their home.
maybe add in the lucky description that it does not stack on heroes.
Possession and Black Sleep are what makes the Death realm scary in combat. I'm not going to change them.
The running around search should allow the units to attack if they find the invisible unit. If they did not that means they were not searching, but unable to attack or trying to run away.
I still haven't decided if I want to change neutrals, it has been mentioned a few times. I just can't accept that logic of "neutrals are so dumb they throw their lives away in hopeless battles". Even a real animal runs away if something bigger tries to attack it.
Looking at that item list the real problem is, 90% of the item powers are in Life and Sorcery. Even if all powers in those realms costed 5 you would end up with the screen like that.
Unfortunately not many of these would make sense in other realms. There are no Teleporting monsters outside Life and Sorcery. Divine Protection is obviously something belonging to Life. Everything else is a copy of the identical named spell from its own realm. Most of these aren't powerful enough to warrant a high book cost either, only Divine Protection (3), Lion Heart (3), Invulnerability (4), Teleporting (5) and Haste (5) but these already have a pretty high cost.
Hey, an idea. Why don't we make the lines of text appear closer together? If there is no 2-3 pixel gap between the lines, it might fit into the screen properly.
