Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Nelphine]

The Eternal Night was no longer active - it had been disjunctioned several turns previous.

Also, I just had a turn where the first AI disjunctioned my spell; then when my turn came around, 2 other AI messaged me to dispel the spell that had been disjunctioned or suffer the consequences.  (Since the spell was already gone, this seems somewhat out of place.) j

[Seravy]

The Eternal Night was no longer active - it had been disjunctioned several turns previous.

Also, I just had a turn where the first AI disjunctioned my spell; then when my turn came around, 2 other AI messaged me to dispel the spell that had been disjunctioned or suffer the consequences.  (Since the spell was already gone, this seems somewhat out of place.) j

I think I figured it out. The game does not have a variable to store the subparameters and never does that at all. It only stores the message type to refer. Which means if you received a different type of threat meanwhile with other subparameters (or none at all) then you get that bug.
In short the AI has no actual memory of what the spell was, it's a coincidence it works well because it most often fills in whatever it mentioned last.
All of these messages have to be reworded to stop referring specific spells or cities.

[namad]

When you nerfed the exploit combination that allowed you to runemaster artifacts for a lower mana cost than you could smash them... it did end up slowing down how fast artifacts got made. So speeding them up by that exact amount it was nerfed might only be fair (as long as they don't also get the cost benefit back.)

[Seravy]

When you nerfed the exploit combination that allowed you to runemaster artifacts for a lower mana cost than you could smash them... it did end up slowing down how fast artifacts got made. So speeding them up by that exact amount it was nerfed might only be fair (as long as they don't also get the cost benefit back.)

Runemaster is only a 25% discount and it still exists.

If you mean how Runemaster+Artificier resulted in a 75% discount, I don't want to see such ridiculous prices ever again.
I think half of the problem is people's greed. It's not hard to make +1 or +2 items in the early game, and it's not hard to make a perfect item in the endgame with 300+ skill. You can get it done in 5-15 turns per item, not cheap but often worth it. But people want the perfect item as soon as they get create artifact and then it takes 50 turns to make it. Or they want +3 of everything on that early game item which again costs like 1000 mana and you have 40 skill for it.

The other half is, that +1 or +2 item for the hero might be worth the cost of 150-300 mana but...other options, like summoning an uncommon monster just feel more important in 99% of the cases. It's not necessarily the better investment, saving the life of the hero now can pay back much more than having an extra werewolf of spider, but the summon will boost your military much more than the item. And here is the catch, in this kind of game, early victories are far too critical. Much more critical than not losing a hero. If you lose the hero, you'll be able to hire another. Yes it won't have those 3-4 levels but it'll have much better abilities because higher fame heroes have that. So early game heroes are rarely worth making items for, when the other option is to take a city from the enemy 10 turns earlier. And on top of this, losing the item is a much worse scenario than just losing the hero without the item, so it is not only a more long term investment into a resource that gets outdated (low fame hero), but on top it is also the higher risk strategy.
Oh and the worst, eventually the item will get outdated too, and this happens at random because you find random treasure. So that really useful +3 Defense, Flight accessory you just made for your hero can end up worthless when you find a better item and it can easily happen the turn after the item is done, or worse, before it is even completed.

I seriously doubt there is a good way to balance a feature that is high risk, low to extremely high reward, disregards the basic concept of how you progress in a 4X game, and involves major random elements.

[GermanJoey]

There is a big difference. Sky Drake is something you research on turn 200 while Create Artifact is something you can start casting on turn 1. Also, the 9 stack of sky drakes will still have losses (ok not always but against stronger AI stacks) you need to replace and will need to heal after battles and it can only move 4 tiles, but the hero moves 12, regenerates after battle or doesn't take damage at all, and you never have any losses, once it's done it's free. Which reminds me, the items have no maintenance either while 9 Sky Drakes cost like 100+ a turn.

That's true, but if you start casting on T1 you're gonna spend like 50-100 turns casting that first uberartifact, and that's assuming you're funneling all your mana into skill and funding the artifact with gold via alchemy. So many turns without access to overland spells, and then the hero your item will be placed on be what, level 1 or 2? Sounds more like a challenge game with an alternate win condition.

When you nerfed the exploit combination that allowed you to runemaster artifacts for a lower mana cost than you could smash them... it did end up slowing down how fast artifacts got made. So speeding them up by that exact amount it was nerfed might only be fair (as long as they don't also get the cost benefit back.)

IMHO Heroes contributing only 1/6 instead of 1/2 of their casting skill practically nerfs the MoM runemaster+artificer strategy by itself. A freshly hired caster hero, with Heroism will have about 40-50 casting skill, and then you could add on a trio of +20 casting skill items to pump them to about 100. That means each of these guys would add about 50-60 casting skill to your wizard just sitting there and doing nothing. That was a big reason the runemaster+artificer strategy snowballed so hard. 

Even without that though, Runemaster+Artificer still shouldn't be allowed for all the other reasons...

[Seravy]

Update!

2.92c

-Inquisitor AI wizards will never pick Halfling, Barbarian, Gnoll or Orc as their starting race.

-Manticores have a strength 1 ranged attack instead of 2 (it is enough to apply the poison)

-Fixed bug : AI wizards fail to remember the city or spell they want to refer to when refusing a treaty, and instead say “I refuse while you maintain your spell of None”.

-Sage Master no longer requires picking two realms.

-AI will now always reevaluate all continents when a settler is boarding a ship, not only if it is leaving an empty continent. This ensures the selected destination will never be outdated and will eventually change if it was this continent.

-AI will never reevaluate the settling continent unless there is none set, or a settler boarded a ship that turn. (this should make sure the AI won't change their destination while they are on ship, which if too frequent, results in never arriving anywhere. It might still happen if another settler is boarding but can't do much about that.)

Having some second thoughts about allowing Sage Master with 1 realm, as 1 realm games always come with a huge advantage in research : you get 9 starting commons plus the book research bonus, so it takes less time to reach rares. Still I think it will increase variety in games to have better accessibility to early research strategies.

[Nelphine]

Well, I specifically wanted to do a chaos saw master game. So at least I get a chance to try that!

[Seravy]

2.92d

-Fixed bug : When Dispelling Wave is used in a city with Nightshade, it can result in dispelling “None”.

-Fixed same for overland casting.

-Fixed bug : When summoning in combat, it is possible to summon on top of an invisible enemy units.

[letsdance]

the problem is, a +3 item doesn't make your hero usable, while a giant spider is much more likely to save him. heros are so good because they can be more powerful than any other unit. but as long as they are not more powerful than other units you can get, they're pretty useless because you don't want to risk losing them (unless you save before combats of course). so the solution would probably be to make artifacts cheaper in general and just make those powerful enchantments expensive.

i still think a big problem is the big advantage of artificer, leaving artifact prices either too cheap with it, or too expensive without.

[Nelphine]

I'm playing an extreme game with 3 life books, and every retort that helps heroes (artificer rune master warlord sage master tactician myrran), and despite building a strong artifact by 1407 I have yet to bother using heroes in combat. My standard troops are better with life enchants - they can cover more area and don't need to use in combat mana to win. Whereas heroes need healing and you always want to choose good targets etc.