Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[sayke]

I'm going to play more games to test the difficulty level settings, so I wonder, which difficulty should I play first? Which is the most used by players?
So far I played hard twice, using the exact same wizard. One felt a bit too easy, the other way too hard. Not a very good start.

I assume about 2/3 of the players would play 'normal' and 'hard', with a few of the expert hardcore fans playing 'extreme'

I play on Hard, with world size, players, and Magic levels maxed, and with both Barbarian settings on. In my current game I'm using 4 Nature, 4 Life, and 4 Sorcery, with High Men, and I'm winning, but have had to reload several times!

[lechium]

I'm going to play more games to test the difficulty level settings, so I wonder, which difficulty should I play first? Which is the most used by players?
So far I played hard twice, using the exact same wizard. One felt a bit too easy, the other way too hard. Not a very good start.

I assume about 2/3 of the players would play 'normal' and 'hard', with a few of the expert hardcore fans playing 'extreme'

I play on Hard, with world size, players, and Magic levels maxed, and with both Barbarian settings on. In my current game I'm using 4 Nature, 4 Life, and 4 Sorcery, with High Men, and I'm winning, but have had to reload several times!

Save scumming makes all the difference here. I'd like the game to be balanced around playing without save scumming.

I made the observation playing on tiny land is crazy hard. I got steamrolled in all my tries. The AI is more aggressive than on more land settings. (I play on hard)

[Seravy]

What is DP?

Visible Relation, I was lazy to type it out (the official strategy guide uses Diplomacy Points for it.).

One more question: Does elemental armor and resist elements stack together? (4 + 12 = 16 defense?)

Yes.

Btw. I noticed long time ago (maybe version 2.6x) drowning cockatrices. The setup is that you should try on a 1-2 tile island (2 tile with tower or node) and keep the city tile (and other tile) maxed with 9 units. And then summon a flying creature.

I tested and it worked fine now. There was a bug like that ages ago, but not anymore.

[sayke]

I'm going to play more games to test the difficulty level settings, so I wonder, which difficulty should I play first? Which is the most used by players?
So far I played hard twice, using the exact same wizard. One felt a bit too easy, the other way too hard. Not a very good start.

I assume about 2/3 of the players would play 'normal' and 'hard', with a few of the expert hardcore fans playing 'extreme'

I play on Hard, with world size, players, and Magic levels maxed, and with both Barbarian settings on. In my current game I'm using 4 Nature, 4 Life, and 4 Sorcery, with High Men, and I'm winning, but have had to reload several times!

How is the performance with maxed world size? I didn't try max world size since Seravy's last performance optimizations. I play mostly on small size due to performance.

I play mostly (70%) on hard, sometimes trying extreme (30%)

It's fantastic, although I would prefer it if the world could be even bigger! Performance is a total non-issue, and the gameplay itself evolves remarkably. You're pretty much guaranteed to get into a late-gate overland-spell slugfest, with the entire world suffering the brunt of at least one wizard's wrath. Knocking out everybody quick is extremely difficult, so it ends up being a pseudo-nuclear-war of attrition, with Famines, Volcanos, and Corruption galore. This makes the endgame very different from the early game or middle game, because you have to be prepared to fight the larger strategic magic war, as well as win the small tactical battles and operationally out-maneuver the AI.

In practice, if you can get several good heroes into a doom stack, you can pretty much crush any enemy stack except capitol cities - but you can only hit one target at a time, and you run the risk of losing those precious heroes, so you have to plan an operation that looks several turns ahead... All the while playing defense on the tactical and operational levels, and perhaps engaging in limited offensive operations.

I love it. In my current game I'm using 4 Nature, 4 Life, and 4 Sorcery, no retorts, and starting with High Men. That's a very strong setup, but for me it's still quite difficult. Due to my incomplete knowledge of the game I have no problem reloading from saves sometimes - otherwise I'd just be toast. This is how it was meant to be all along =)

PS: I still think Conjure Roads should be just one tile though ;-)

[Tlaloc]

I've been playing around lately with version 3.02c and noticed a few things.

1. In an ocean battle between a magic spirit and trireme, I successfully cast Black Sleep on the trireme. I then cast Life Drain on it and the spell did no damage no matter how many times I tried.

2. (Minor issue) On the Magic screen, when you click on a mana bar to lock it, save then game, then reload it, the mana bar is no longer locked. It would be nice if the saved game could remember that information.

[Seravy]

I've been playing around lately with version 3.02c and noticed a few things.

1. In an ocean battle between a magic spirit and trireme, I successfully cast Black Sleep on the trireme. I then cast Life Drain on it and the spell did no damage no matter how many times I tried.

2. (Minor issue) On the Magic screen, when you click on a mana bar to lock it, save then game, then reload it, the mana bar is no longer locked. It would be nice if the saved game could remember that information.

1. Sleeping units still make resistance rolls. Life Drain is not a defense targeting spell so the target being unable to defend doesn't make it work better. (It take some bad luck to repeatedly roll 0 damage on a Trireme though)
2. I'm not going to change the save format for something that trivial, it's far too difficult to do that.

[sayke]

I'm very much enjoying 3.04! I was also curious about what you've got in store for the next version, and was wondering if you'd consider making the following tweaks:

- Reducing bonuses given to AI wizards on Extreme and Impossible! Hadriex got wrecked repeatedly on Extreme, and nobody has any hope of playing on Impossible. There's just no way. I'm not sure what the current difficulty bonus tables are now, so I can't suggest what they should be updated to, but this seems like a reasonable one to look at, no?

- Giving Quick Casting to Halfling and maybe Beastmen magicians! Right now, Quick Casting is only used by two units - the Illusionist mage Champion, and Demon Lords. It's a fantastic ability, though! Shouldn't it be better integrated into the game? Halflings are already quite weak militarily, and this wouldn't help them much unless they've got Focus Magic on, but it would make them a lot more interesting to play with! It would also fit with the lore of traditionally fast-fingered and nimble hobbits =)

And I'd say Beastmen should also get it on their magicians because some Myrran race should have it too!

- Enchant roads only does one tile, costs 25 mana? As discussed above, this really seems like the way to go. Not only would it prevent the hideousness of the current arrangement, and make it easier to see the map, but it would allow races without engineers an expensive-but-doable way to make roads.


- Multiple ranged attacks for high-move creatures? Quickshot, like Quick Casting? I'm not sure how this would work, but I noticed that I got a Bow of Haste and assigned it to my Elven Archer, such that she has 10 move... But she still only gets one ranged shot. She can hit the appropriate number of times in melee, but ranged? Pfff... Nothin'. One shot is all you get!

I could easily imagine some weak but fast units being strengthened by this ability, as well!

- Speaking of the Elven Archer, is something up with her attack? Maybe I shouldn't complain, but she is absolutely deadly and I'm not sure why. She nominally has the same amount and type of attack as my Priestess, but does vastly more damage. She routinely one-shots Fire Giants and other serious opponents. Is there any chance that, say, she's doing both physical and magical damage with every shot, or anything like that? Also, why did you give her a magical attack, anyway? Now none of the Champions have a traditional arrow attack! We can always put Focus Magic on her, or give her a bow that shoots lightening or something, if we want her to have a magical ranged attack...

- Give The Chosen One a combined Sword/Bow slot! You mentioned that not enough of the Champions can use bows - only the Elven Archer can, but it doesn't really fit with any of the other ones. Why not assign it to The Chosen One?

These are just some ideas for you, and some of them may not even be doable. Some are though, and I think that combined they'd leave the game even more interesting and fun, in subtle ways! Thank you for making this wonderful mod, regardless =)

[Seravy]

I was also curious about what you've got in store for the next version

Outpost growth changes is the plan but I'm waiting for some more replies in that thread before starting.

- Reducing bonuses given to AI wizards on Extreme and Impossible! Hadriex got wrecked repeatedly on Extreme, and nobody has any hope of playing on Impossible. There's just no way. I'm not sure what the current difficulty bonus tables are now, so I can't suggest what they should be updated to, but this seems like a reasonable one to look at, no?

This is being considered but I'll need to play dozens of games to be able to judge how much, if any, reduction is needed. Considering a single game takes 15-30 hours on extreme, this won't be tomorrow. (Especially as testing hard and normal for the same reasons is the priority)
If people played more of these games on youtube which I can watch, it could speed up things somewhat - watching is less time consuming and gives me more information than a game I played myself.

Giving Quick Casting to Halfling and maybe Beastmen magicians!

Halfling magicians hit harder thanks to lucky, and beastmen have more hit points. I see no need to further improve either. Quick Casting is meant to be a very rare ability, originally it was made for that one hero. It's definitely not something I want to see on normal units.

- Enchant roads only does one tile, costs 25 mana? As discussed above, this really seems like the way to go.

See earlier replies, I don't want to give Sorcery wizards a convenient tool that extends the overland movement range of any stack by +1 tile for 25 mp. Races without engineers can use it regardless of the number of tiles.
If there was a way to restrict it to owned territory, I would love to do it but not sure how.

- Multiple ranged attacks for high-move creatures?

Since I took the time to remove this, I clearly don't want it back. Shooting twice with a haste unit is powerful enough, shooting 4 times is ridiculous.
A unit can attack twice with melee, or once with ranged. Under the effect of Haste, these attacks are executed twice each time but are animated only once. Your ranged attacks do damage twice and consume two ammo during haste.

- Speaking of the Elven Archer, is something up with her attack?

She is a Blademaster. That gives her a lot of additional To Hit. Most other magical ranged heroes don't have that ability.

Also, why did you give her a magical attack, anyway?

Because nonmagical ranged attacks are weaker. They suffer from range penalties, do no damage to units with Missile Immunity and are completely disabled by Warp Wood. Having a magical ranged attack but still wield a bow makes Bow weapons more useful. Focus Magic hasn't existed yet when this change was made. Weapons with Flaming/Lightning/etc do not change the attack type, only add the appropriate side effect (Flaming = +3 attack, Lightning = Armor Piercing)
I know bow attacks are convenient against units immune to magic, but sorcery wizards who have them will almost always have Guardian Wind or Invisibility to negate the bow attack anyway. For nodes with Sky Drakes, it's unfortunate but you have to find or make a Doom bow, use a nonchampion hero, or use normal units (javelineers, rangers, catapults) - it's worth saying if the node contains a Djinn along with the Sky Drakes, then Guardian Wind will still be available to prevent the ranged attacks despite neutrals usually not casting spells.
Either way this has been discussed at least 2 times before and once I even considered to revert it to a bow attack, only to realize that's a stupid thing to do and return it to magic.

Give The Chosen One a combined Sword/Bow slot! You mentioned that not enough of the Champions can use bows - only the Elven Archer can, but it doesn't really fit with any of the other ones. Why not assign it to The Chosen One?

He/She doesn't even have a ranged attack, bow or otherwise. I have no idea what would happen if you equipped a bow on a hero that doesn't have a ranged attack, but probably something bad.
If you suggest to give the hero a ranged attack, I can but then people would complain "I wanted to hit that with melee but it shot a weak bow attack this sucks". Strong melee heroes usually don't have a bow attack because that prevents them from using melee when you want to. Dropping melee and making it a primary ranged hero is an option but then Super Battlermage and Might needs to go and even Constitution is not very good for a ranged hero.

[GermanJoey]

Speaking of Magicians, how would you feel about giving something to High Elf Magicians? I feel like I never build these guys, because if I want a ranged attacker with the Elves I'll just go for Longbowmen, because they're sturdier, deal similar damage (thanks to long-ranged and the ability to wield metal weapons), and cost less than half the price. That's kinda too bad, because the High Elves are the only magic race on Arcanus and so I feel like their magicians should be an important unit. Maybe you could give them extra MP (say 25 or 30) and/or the ability to cast Ice Bolt, like how Warlocks can cast Doom Bolt??

[Nelphine]

Death to high elves! Kill them all! (Seriously, I have nothing constructive to add to this. But I hate high elves for lore reasons, so, as long as I can kill them and raze their cities with my beastmen armies, I'm a-OK. They are the only race I hate more than high men.)

On a different note: hard game against a maniacal expansionist (oberic). He has 4 nature and 4 chaos. I have 4 life. Within 1 year of meeting me he offered an alliance (no wizard pact first or anything.) St the time his army was about 4 times my size, and I had ~13 cities on a large map.

I've literally never had this happen before (I rarely ever get alliances at all, let alone without a wizard pact) so I thought I'd mention this is the first big thing I've seen with the new diplomacy.

(Also: hard isn't hard enough for strong wizard builds. By 1410 I'd cast enlightenment, and I'll have charm of life by 1412, and by 1408 I had a doom stack that none of the enemy could defeat. But, strong wizard builds are strong so this doesn't say much. I could never play that aggressively on extreme, I think. But imma try it soon!)