Abolish the distinction between Arcanus and Myrran races

[Seravy]

1) Estimated value of capital terrain
2) Estimated value of starting continent
3) If the starting continent is shared, divide the value by the number of wizards on it

1. If it's only max pop, that's easy, we have a procedure to calculate that. If you mean anything else (gold or production bonus, etc), unfortunately, this is in magic.exe where there is no Surveryor procedure to call. So we have no access to that information unless we manually calculate it from raw terrain data - I'm definitely not going to do that, there are hundreds of different tiles. Ores are slightly more doable as there are only about 10 types.
2. Same problem as above, but worse. We can't even use "max pop" for this because the tiles share the terrain. I guess the best we can do here is count the number of tiles on the continent...no, we at least have "food from tile" as a procedure. So we can use food instead.
3. This is easy.

add one or more ores to balance it out.

This is the hard part. Assuming we don't want to break normal rules, we can't have it just be random. No Adamantium on Arcanus unless "Rich". No Mithril if "Poor" if I remember right. No Crysx on Arcanus. and so on.
Lot's of details and restrictions.
Wild Game is probably the only special that can freely appear on any plane and setting.

So...if we want something that can be done in a reasonable amount of time using a reasonable amount of space, we can have "Add 1x Wild Game to the tile of the city if max pop is below X". And that's about it. Anything more complex would take a lot of time, and an even greater question is, do I even find enough room to add it. I don't think I have any unused space in magic.exe, we need to make some which is not trivial at all.
And then we are kinda back to square one. The game already has "Max pop has to be 8 or higher" so adding a wild game to fix low population places...does nothing. It's already in the game. (And +2 won't balance out the gap between a 8 pop location and a 25 pop one)

Note that adding ores to random tiles takes a lot more code so I'm going with the assumption that we add it on the tile of the capital itself - the only one that is guaranteed to be land and contain no ore yet. If we don't, then we must check for the tile to be land and containing no ores yet.

Anyway, step one is looking for free space in magic.exe.

[Seravy]

...okay, I found a pretty large unused procedure in ovr54. Assuming it's really unused, and I can plant a far call to there, we have about 800 bytes of free space or more.

So we can make it more detailed than I expected.
...we also have "Ishills", "Isforest", "IsMountain", "IsDesert" etc. procedures. Nice.
Okay, we can use actual terrain data.
Now all I need is the actual algorithm and I can start working.

[GermanJoey]

I'm not suggesting that every game starts with the same amount and type of ore, far from it. I'm not sure where you read that in my suggestion.

He doesn't care and is not interested in having a discussion. If he doesn't like what you're saying for whatever reason, he'll just twist whatever you're saying into a strawman that is convenient for him to refute.

[Nelphine]

Actually I think he was confusing it with an earlier suggestion I made to have set numbers of ores on capitals, although it has nothing to do with catwalks discussion.

[Seravy]

I'm not suggesting that every game starts with the same amount and type of ore, far from it. I'm not sure where you read that in my suggestion.

He doesn't care and is not interested in having a discussion. If he doesn't like what you're saying for whatever reason, he'll just twist whatever you're saying into a strawman that is convenient for him to refute.

As there were no details at all, I asked for something more precise I can try to implement. To prevent wasting time, I stated what kind of algorithm I don't want to do. I never said anyone already suggested it, I wanted to prevent someone suggesting it. It's common sense if you ask someone for something, you tell them what you expect to get (or, what you don't want to get, in this case).
If I wasn't interested in a discussion, this thread would be locked.

I'm not interested in coming up with an algorithm myself as I'm not the appropriate person for it (I don't understand the problem it is meant to fix well enough, and aside from "more balanced" which is way too vague for this particular problem, I don't even know the goals. )
I might or might not be interested on implementing the suggested algorithm - as soon as some actually comes up with one that's detailed enough to consider.

Fortunately, I found enough space and there are procedure calls for terrain types, so it's at least doable in a reasonable amount of time (reasonable is relative though, it will most likely take a full day - but if we didn't have these resources, it'd be a lot worse.) - it's not zero risk though as it involves using many new far calls. So far it has only happened twice but sometimes using them makes the game unstable and crash.

Give me an actual algorithm I can implement and I'll consider doing it. Without one, I can't even say yes or no, and I can only really nitpick about whatever bits of information I was given.

You can use the the main type of terrain (forest, tundra, etc) and the ore type in the algorithm, both on the same continent, or in the area of the city. You can also use trivially accessible variables such as difficulty, number of wizards, their capital, etc.

[Catwalk]

GermanJoey, I don't think that's fair. While Seravy can be a bit stubborn at times, keep in mind that this is his baby. I also find that it's difficult to convince him, but I feel I'm making progress with what I feel are important additions. My main approach right now is to demonstrate through test games which game features are overpowered. I'm absolutely rocking my current FMS game, although I have yet to cast a single Focus Magic.

It's more difficult to prove that something is underpowered, I think poll questions like "How often do you build swordsmen in your games?" will go a long way there. I still find it puzzling that spearmen and swordsmen are so underpowered, and I suspect that it's harming the AI who doesn't know that this is the case.

Seravy, I fully understand you wanting others to come up with an algorithm as you're the one putting in the effort. I misunderstood your comment about not wanting every game to be set up in a certain way, I understand it now and agree. Do you agree that my rough points above can form the starting point of a useful and easy algorithm? If so, I'll put some more effort into it. EDIT: Just saw your response to me further up, I'll respond to that tomorrow. Thank you for useful information on what's possible to do.

On a side note, it might be a good idea to put forth (or renew) your design vision for Caster of Magic. Like, what does balance mean to you? Do you want to promote or diminish the role of luck? What is your ideal balance for hero usage? Stuff like that makes it a lot easier for everybody to get on the same track.

[Domon]

I disagree strongly that starting with +20 gold is not a big deal, your economy will snowball and let you expand and develop way faster. Getting almost any hero early on is also a huge random benefit, which is why I'm playing without them at the moment.

btw, wouldn't having +20 gold/turn from start making easier to afford (and so, being offered) an hero sooner? probably starting from turn 2/3.

[Domon]

GermanJoey, I don't think that's fair. While Seravy can be a bit stubborn at times, keep in mind that this is his baby. I also find that it's difficult to convince him, but I feel I'm making progress with what I feel are important additions. My main approach right now is to demonstrate through test games which game features are overpowered. I'm absolutely rocking my current FMS game, although I have yet to cast a single Focus Magic.

THIS. also see http://www.sirlin.net/sf-hdr/street-figh...n-overview

It's more difficult to prove that something is underpowered, I think poll questions like "How often do you build swordsmen in your games?" will go a long way there. I still find it puzzling that spearmen and swordsmen are so underpowered, and I suspect that it's harming the AI who doesn't know that this is the case.

if seravy is willing to experiment, the best way is boost anything that feels OP significantly, and then chek if it's OP. proceed with big buffs and then small nerfs until it's at a good power level

On a side note, it might be a good idea to put forth (or renew) your design vision for Caster of Magic. Like, what does balance mean to you? Do you want to promote or diminish the role of luck? What is your ideal balance for hero usage? Stuff like that makes it a lot easier for everybody to get on the same track.

THIS, too. also, some general ideas about what's is easier or harder to mod for you?

[GermanJoey]

As there were no details at all, I asked for something more precise I can try to implement. To prevent wasting time, I stated what kind of algorithm I don't want to do. I never said anyone already suggested it, I wanted to prevent someone suggesting it. It's common sense if you ask someone for something, you tell them what you expect to get (or, what you don't want to get, in this case).
If I wasn't interested in a discussion, this thread would be locked.

I'm not interested in coming up with an algorithm myself as I'm not the appropriate person for it (I don't understand the problem it is meant to fix well enough, and aside from "more balanced" which is way too vague for this particular problem, I don't even know the goals. )
I might or might not be interested on implementing the suggested algorithm - as soon as some actually comes up with one that's detailed enough to consider.

Like, I just gave you a "precise" parameterized algorithm you could implement that should greatly normalize starting positions. It even utilizes the existing algorithm for 95% of it. You quoted 2 random sentences of it and then dismissed it because I apparently used the wrong numbers instead of just substituting what you felt was a more appropriate parameter. If this was the first time this happened, I'd just shrug my shoulders. But you've done this to me numerous times. The last time was with the whole Wave of Despair debacle. Why even bother trying to discuss anything with you if you're not gonna even read whole replies?

[GermanJoey]

GermanJoey, I don't think that's fair. While Seravy can be a bit stubborn at times, keep in mind that this is his baby. I also find that it's difficult to convince him, but I feel I'm making progress with what I feel are important additions. My main approach right now is to demonstrate through test games which game features are overpowered. I'm absolutely rocking my current FMS game, although I have yet to cast a single Focus Magic.

It's more difficult to prove that something is underpowered, I think poll questions like "How often do you build swordsmen in your games?" will go a long way there. I still find it puzzling that spearmen and swordsmen are so underpowered, and I suspect that it's harming the AI who doesn't know that this is the case.

Seravy, I fully understand you wanting others to come up with an algorithm as you're the one putting in the effort. I misunderstood your comment about not wanting every game to be set up in a certain way, I understand it now and agree. Do you agree that my rough points above can form the starting point of a useful and easy algorithm? If so, I'll put some more effort into it. EDIT: Just saw your response to me further up, I'll respond to that tomorrow. Thank you for useful information on what's possible to do.

On a side note, it might be a good idea to put forth (or renew) your design vision for Caster of Magic. Like, what does balance mean to you? Do you want to promote or diminish the role of luck? What is your ideal balance for hero usage? Stuff like that makes it a lot easier for everybody to get on the same track.

It doesn't bother me if he disagrees on balance, or even if he wants a game that isn't balanced in some respects. As you say, it's his baby. What I find infuriating is how utterly dismissive he can be to honest suggestions and feedback. The impression I get is that he doesn't want to understand what we're saying until he randomly stumbles onto the same thing himself. That's compounded by the fact that he has an extremely specific way of playing and thus doesn't understand how anyone could/would play differently. 

I actually have posted many test game reports in the past, and reported demonstrations of how overpowered a certain spell/unit/etc is or whatever. It has never made much of a difference as far as I can tell.