Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

Important bugfix!

3.03c
-Fixed 3.03 bug : The game crashes at the end of turn if any AI player has no enemies left or their army power is too low due to division by zero or division overflow.

I've been watching hadriex's random mage generated games and I think the random generation gives too many retorts and too few books.

I think that there should be a natural distribution of picks spent on retorts so like say... 8% chance of 1 point on retorts 20% chance of 2 43% chance of 3 points on retorts 20% chance of 4 and 8% chance of 5 and maybe 1% chance of 6? I'm not sure the generator should ever generate a mage with less than 5 spellbooks, but if you want it to, maybe 0.1% chance?

Something like this is what normal difficulty opponent wizards have. However the random generator seems to assign like I dunno each book randomly? So that you have 4-6 books each time? despite the fact an "average" wizard build probably has 7-9 books total. A random wizard should in theory have more books than retorts. That's how the game was designed, retorts are supposed to compliment books.

Is seravy the one in charge of this program too? or is someone else? Basically I think that whatever method is used to generate a random enemy opponent on normal seems like it should be somehow similar to what you're forced to play if you're giving yourself a random wizard build?

See the posts earlier about this (around page 100-101?). The current generator should only have a 4% chance to generate 5 retorts and 2% for 6. Either Hadriex used the old one or it's bad luck.

[namad]

4% chance for 5 retorts? or 4% chance for 5 points worth of retorts? do 2 point retorts distort the distribution?

[Seravy]

4% chance for 5 retorts? or 4% chance for 5 points worth of retorts? do 2 point retorts distort the distribution?

5 retorts. Number of picks doesn't matter. The chance of 2 pick retorts is almost the same as 1 pick retorts, 2 pick retorts are only about 0.5% less frequent than 1 pick retorts because the last 1 pick cannot be used for generating them.

[Seravy]

Next turn and I lost my capital to these 3 angels n their buddies. Frustrating

Check in the battle, those Angels are most likely undead.

[namad]

4% chance for 5 retorts? or 4% chance for 5 points worth of retorts? do 2 point retorts distort the distribution?

5 retorts. Number of picks doesn't matter. The chance of 2 pick retorts is almost the same as 1 pick retorts, 2 pick retorts are only about 0.5% less frequent than 1 pick retorts because the last 1 pick cannot be used for generating them.

Yeah see, that's what I'm saying. so really there's a 4% chance for 7-8 picks of retorts? first there's a 4% chance to end up with 5 retorts but then half of those cost double! leaving you with 3-4 books? as such hadriex getting 5 books is a lot more likely than 4% assuming I understand your sentence correctly! You might want to make it 4% chance to spend 5 points on retorts. or regardless of the percentage you should roll something that decides how many total books/total retorts and keep that distribution regardless of 2pick retorts. Logically at least, I think when someone designs a wizard they decide how big an investment to make into retorts. Then decide what the best retorts for their theme is. They don't decide they want 3 retorts then accidentally end up with 5 books. If they want to spend 6 points of retorts it's a reasoned decision to go down to a lower book count.

Oh also, look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX4E3E6KE6E 1hour and 21minutes in. A bunch of unicorns all teleport 4 times per turn for an entire battle until the battle times out. That isn't fun. I guess they're using search for invisible enemies script? Because even if they're using a stall script there's no reason to teleport more than once per unicorn per turn.

[Seravy]

4% chance for 5 retorts? or 4% chance for 5 points worth of retorts? do 2 point retorts distort the distribution?

5 retorts. Number of picks doesn't matter. The chance of 2 pick retorts is almost the same as 1 pick retorts, 2 pick retorts are only about 0.5% less frequent than 1 pick retorts because the last 1 pick cannot be used for generating them.

Yeah see, that's what I'm saying. so really there's a 4% chance for 7-8 picks of retorts? first there's a 4% chance to end up with 5 retorts but then half of those cost double! leaving you with 3-4 books? as such hadriex getting 5 books is a lot more likely than 4% assuming I understand your sentence correctly! You might want to make it 4% chance to spend 5 points on retorts. or regardless of the percentage you should roll something that decides how many total books/total retorts and keep that distribution regardless of 2pick retorts. Logically at least, I think when someone designs a wizard they decide how big an investment to make into retorts. Then decide what the best retorts for their theme is. They don't decide they want 3 retorts then accidentally end up with 5 books. If they want to spend 6 points of retorts it's a reasoned decision to go down to a lower book count.

Oh also, look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX4E3E6KE6E 1hour and 21minutes in. A bunch of unicorns all teleport 4 times per turn for an entire battle until the battle times out. That isn't fun. I guess they're using search for invisible enemies script? Because even if they're using a stall script there's no reason to teleport more than once per unicorn per turn.

7 out of the 18 retorts in the game cost 2. This makes the average cost of a retort 1.388. So yes, that 4% means a 4% chance to have an average of 5 books with 7 picks on retorts. I'm not saying this is good but I think 4% is a low enough number. That's 1 in 25 games, and retorts are not bad picks. Even if it means having only 4-5 books. When Hadriex won against Impossible he used 6 retorts.

I'm aware of the unicorns but have no solution for that. Every unit, teleporting or not, uses all of its movement to scatter against fliers and/or search for invisibile units. The two are the same code, it triggers whenever a melee unit wants to attack but cannot. In case of the invisibility, using all 4 moves is necessary because it means a 4x higher chance to find the enemy, so they do it even if the enemy is flying or otherwise unreachable.
Turning off movement animation in flying vs ground unit battles helps but teleporting/merging is unfortunately an exception, those moves are animated anyway, though it does go faster than this. Holding down the "D" button for done on the keyboard is the easy way out, tho you still have to wait a lot, you don't need to worry about clicking the wrong button.

[Seravy]

Yes you are right all 3 angels and 2 fire giants are undead. Another defeat at extreme...

I recommend playing Hard or lower until I have enough experience with the new AI features to balance the higher levels better.

[sayke]

Yes you are right all 3 angels and 2 fire giants are undead. Another defeat at extreme...

I recommend playing Hard or lower until I have enough experience with the new AI features to balance the higher levels better.

Yea, reducing the bonuses given to Extreme and Impossible might be in order. Ideally, I think Impossible would be almost possible, but not quite. Nobody should be able to beat it, but the best folks in the world should think that they can, if only they try X, or Y, or Z... Only to to fail repeatedly when they try    

[namad]

4% chance for 5 retorts? or 4% chance for 5 points worth of retorts? do 2 point retorts distort the distribution?

5 retorts. Number of picks doesn't matter. The chance of 2 pick retorts is almost the same as 1 pick retorts, 2 pick retorts are only about 0.5% less frequent than 1 pick retorts because the last 1 pick cannot be used for generating them.

Yeah see, that's what I'm saying. so really there's a 4% chance for 7-8 picks of retorts? first there's a 4% chance to end up with 5 retorts but then half of those cost double! leaving you with 3-4 books? as such hadriex getting 5 books is a lot more likely than 4% assuming I understand your sentence correctly! You might want to make it 4% chance to spend 5 points on retorts. or regardless of the percentage you should roll something that decides how many total books/total retorts and keep that distribution regardless of 2pick retorts. Logically at least, I think when someone designs a wizard they decide how big an investment to make into retorts. Then decide what the best retorts for their theme is. They don't decide they want 3 retorts then accidentally end up with 5 books. If they want to spend 6 points of retorts it's a reasoned decision to go down to a lower book count.

Oh also, look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX4E3E6KE6E 1hour and 21minutes in. A bunch of unicorns all teleport 4 times per turn for an entire battle until the battle times out. That isn't fun. I guess they're using search for invisible enemies script? Because even if they're using a stall script there's no reason to teleport more than once per unicorn per turn.

7 out of the 18 retorts in the game cost 2. This makes the average cost of a retort 1.388. So yes, that 4% means a 4% chance to have an average of 5 books with 7 picks on retorts. I'm not saying this is good but I think 4% is a low enough number. That's 1 in 25 games, and retorts are not bad picks. Even if it means having only 4-5 books. When Hadriex won against Impossible he used 6 retorts.

I'm aware of the unicorns but have no solution for that. Every unit, teleporting or not, uses all of its movement to scatter against fliers and/or search for invisibile units. The two are the same code, it triggers whenever a melee unit wants to attack but cannot. In case of the invisibility, using all 4 moves is necessary because it means a 4x higher chance to find the enemy, so they do it even if the enemy is flying or otherwise unreachable.
Turning off movement animation in flying vs ground unit battles helps but teleporting/merging is unfortunately an exception, those moves are animated anyway, though it does go faster than this. Holding down the "D" button for done on the keyboard is the easy way out, tho you still have to wait a lot, you don't need to worry about clicking the wrong button.

Well what about hadriex's suggestion? Just give unicorns 2 movement? This would only weaken them against invisible units. They could still do everything else exactly the same? That would at least make the boring combat take half as long?

In fact any non-caster teleporter should probably be capped to 2 movement, because why not?

As to the distribution percents. Yeah 4% might be fine for 4 books 7 retorts. As long as you're using a flatter distribution that ensures other more standard combinations also have a good chunk of the pie. 4% chance for 4 books wouldn't fit well at all into a natural distribution, since I'd except 4 books to be a 3rd standard deviation or worse outcome. Personally I'm partial to natural distributions, but it would probably complicated the math a lot to force one to exist where it didn't naturally arise.

[GermanJoey]

Unicorns having only 2 movement would make them horrible on the overland map, often being unable to keep up with a lot of the units you'd want to group with them for their resistance bonus.