Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Tlavoc]

Thank you SO much for doing this! I used to play Master of Magic all the time, then lost it when the computer was upgraded. Found the game again a few years ago on Good Old Games and dusted it off once in a while, but there were a number of obvious issues that I hadn't remembered. I didn't think anyone would be modding the game, so I was -amazed- when I stumbled onto this last week. You (and all who have helped you,) have done an AMAZING job!

I downloaded the update last night and ran into a couple of things;
Change Terrain on a swamp makes grassland, but units moving over it lose movement as if walking over a swamp (might affect more terrain, but only noticed on the swamp tiles).
Focus Magic removes fire breath granted by chaos channels. (specifically elven lords->flame blade->chaos channels->focus magic, if that helps)
Early game the AI kept moving a stack of 5-7 hellhounds into view of my only city (very early) only to immediately move them away - repeated every other turn or so. Not sure if it's a bug, but it was odd.

Maybe not a bug:
In a game last week (experimental version) I had the global enchant that gives everything chaos channels and proceeded to mass produce ships (your mod makes them upkeep-free, and flying ships=free combat units) which, generating a ship per city per turn made my army strength skyrocket, which -seemed- to severely impact diplomacy. Everyone wanted to be my friend and though they would threaten they would never declare war - I even used it to convince one AI to kill two others without me having to raise a hand. The remaining two only declared war when I was halfway through casting the spell of mastery.

[Seravy]

Change Terrain on a swamp makes grassland, but units moving over it lose movement as if walking over a swamp (might affect more terrain, but only noticed on the swamp tiles).

Yes, unfortunately movement costs are stored separately from terrain and spells that change the terrain do not change the movement cost. As there are many different terrain types this would be very hard to fix but I'll add it to my list of things to look at.

Focus Magic removes fire breath granted by chaos channels. (specifically elven lords->flame blade->chaos channels->focus magic, if that helps)

This isn't a bug, it's just a side effect of the order of spells. Fire breath is a ranged attack type, so it's mutually exclusive with other ranged attacks. It's possible to swap the order of effects in which case Focus Magic would increase the fire breath strength by 3 instead of granting a magical ranged attack. Not sure which is better?
(Actually not entirely sure. There was a change to Focus Magic recently to fix another bug so it might override the fire breath anyway since the unit had no ranged attack originally and the latest version looks at that.)

Ships being part of total army strength is not a bug, especially if you make them fly so they can be used in land battles. If ships were enough army strength to affect diplomacy that much, I assume this wasn't a high difficulty setting? I would expect the AI to have much more armies than that on...idk, Expert and higher? Something like that.

I just checked, Triremes contribute 22, Galleys 57, Warships 111 to total army strength, for reference a Great Drake is around 1500, a Berserker (strongest nonship normal unit) is 121 but these are without levels. Ships benefit less from levels and buffs than most other things because they are a single figure.

Being able to scare low difficulty AI through free ships might be a problem but honestly I think it's not - if you have massive naval superiority, you can sink all their transports and keep your lands safe against any attacks, so declaring war would not help the AI.

[Tlavoc]

Thanks for the info! I hadn't realized that fire breath was considered ranged - only that it only worked when attacking and before melee. I've been playing on normal to decide what strategy I would find fun on higher difficulties and wanted to try high first strike damage to kill before being damaged. Fire breath wouldn't work for counter attacks, but 9 fire breath (land link, chaos channels, focus magic) with +3 to hit on top of first strike and armor piercing seemed useful for taking out tough enemies before they attack.

This is only my opinion (so take it with a grain of salt); if I wanted a ranged attack on something with chaos channels, I would prefer to cast focus magic on something with a net gain, like flight or armor. Then again, I've only played your mod on normal difficulty, in higher difficulties it may not be possible to be picky about who gets what.

The issue with the ships was more about the fact they had no upkeep, so I had no reason to get rid of the non-flying ones. Not sure it should be looked at, but it seemed odd so I brought it up since I was already talking about fire breath/change terrain.

The terrain thing is a bit of a bummer, but it's not like it's that bad. Most things end up with path finding, traveling by ship, or not caring about turn delay since they have to cross mountains and whatnot anyway.

Again; Thank you so much for all of this! I'm going to waste my weekend enjoying all your hard work

[Nelphine]

And by making your ships fly, presumably that'd with the flight spell. So you are paying that upkeep. Which is not an unreasonable amount since ships are generally pretty weak.

Focus magic used to enhance chaos channels flame breath instead of converting it to a ranged attack. Here's hoping that can be fixed again.

Although, focus magic also converts thrown attacks into a ranged attack, which I don't like, but in both thrown and chaos channels flame breath, could be good in some cases.

[Seravy]

Fire Breath is only ranged on the technical side of things - breath, gaze and actual ranged attacks are all stores in the same byte, each number meaning a different type of attack, so a unit can never have more than one type. (Chaos Spawn being the exception which has "multigaze" which is displayed and executed as 3 different types of gaze attacks but still is a single "type" on the side of code.)

Oh btw, if you case Focus Magic first, Chaos Channels after, I believe you won't get the fire breath effect as it cannot appear on units with ranged attacks (again, this isn't true if the game checks the unmodified original unit instead of its current data which is very much possible)

Sadly, ships cannot have an upkeep due to AI reasons. (they can't disband them so they end up with all ships no ground units if they have to disband units for some reason.)

Focus magic used to enhance chaos channels flame breath instead of converting it to a ranged attack. Here's hoping that can be fixed again.

It did? I suspect it's caused by the "focus magic doesn't work on water elemental" bug being fixed then. This probably also breaks the interaction with Shadow as well. I'll check if there is a way to fix it....no, thrown is always supposed to transform anyway. So it's only for breath.

[Tlavoc]

The ships were flying due to overland enchantment that made every produced unit undergo chaos channels. Anything without flight got tossed into the sea to drift for eternity among its peers of fire-breathing triremes (Thank you Chaos for wooden beasts that breath fire). No upkeep on flight, but the 'cost' is that flight was random.

As for ranged/breath/thrown, breath can be useless due to fire immunity (about that, it seems life drain attacks work on undead, but not the life drain spell - then again maybe I was just unlucky and the wraiths happened to hit really hard? My units had a lot of armor, but still seemed to die very fast - I always try to make low/no upkeep armies, hence undead units), thrown can be 'useless' on slower units and barbarians can't make alchemists guilds if I remember correctly, so no buffing with adamantium to make it stronger, whereas 'true' ranged attacks can at least always be used... until you're out of ammo. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

Anyone know of a thread that explains a lot of the details? Like, since thrown and fire breathing are ranged, does guardian wind help against them, or does that only work against arrows specifically?

Edit:
Somewhat ninja'd. Based on Seravy's post I assume breath/thrown/etc ignore guardian wind since they aren't -really- ranged, they just take that block of memory.

[Seravy]

Fixed the Chaos channel+Fire Breath and reuploaded. I'll be lazy and not increase the version number for this :D

[Tlavoc]

Woo! Thanks! Now for Elven Lords on Super Dragon Horses!

[Nelphine]

Overland dispelling wave still targets city buffs. I can't remember if that is intended or not.

[Seravy]

Overland dispelling wave still targets city buffs. I can't remember if that is intended or not.

It is. Only combat global enchantments were removed.