Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[vicwaberub]

Hi Seravy, good work!

The first moves in MoM are boring often. Is there a chance to get some more units or better units as the one unit of spear- and swordmans?

[Arnuz]

Update!

5.02
-Myrran now costs 1 pick.
How many picks it actually is worth is highly subjective, and hard to judge. Probably more, but enjoyment is more important than balance - at a cost of 2, wizard creation was far too limited for Myrran players, as it pretty much forced playing too few books or only a single realm. It also resulted in the Myrran AI having fewer spells, thus randomly failing to be a major threat. Please share your opinion on the forum!

I sort of agree, but in order to balance the retort, we need to slightly boost the difficulty of selecting myrror. I assume that nerfing the races is a no-go to most of us CoM enthusiast, and the talk of more myrran races didn't seem to go either, so how about:

rampaging monsters to be progressively tougher and frequent, especially by turn 100+ ... sending rare creatures your way
*In other words, you trade less AI hostility for interesting neutral attacks.

I enthusiastically support this, adding that the same should go with raiders. It could be like having the "revolting raiders" and the other tickbox for monsters checked, and if you check them the effect is doubled!

[Seravy]

The frequency of monsters and raiders is global, not plane specific.
For monsters, we can adjust the total budget so more or stronger monsters are included if they happen to spawn on Myrror but which plane they do spawn on is ultimately random so this won't be reliable.
For raiders, those are coming from neutral cities, thus have to be the thing garrisoning those. Considering the high variance of possible units (from spearmen to hammerhands), setting the amount higher is anything but safe as it applies to every possible unit type equally. +2 spearmen or +2 hammerhands is not the same thing.

While the idea is nice it wouldn't work well, and if we could make it work, it's be a seriously problem for the Myrran AIs. If they lose all their outposts to raiders, they pretty much lose the game.

[Arnuz]

[namad]

Update!

5.02
-Myrran now costs 1 pick.
How many picks it actually is worth is highly subjective, and hard to judge. Probably more, but enjoyment is more important than balance - at a cost of 2, wizard creation was far too limited for Myrran players, as it pretty much forced playing too few books or only a single realm. It also resulted in the Myrran AI having fewer spells, thus randomly failing to be a major threat. Please share your opinion on the forum!

I sort of agree, but in order to balance the retort, we need to slightly boost the difficulty of selecting myrror. I assume that nerfing the races is a no-go to most of us CoM enthusiast, and the talk of more myrran races didn't seem to go either, so how about:

rampaging monsters to be progressively tougher and frequent, especially by turn 100+ ... sending rare creatures your way
*In other words, you trade less AI hostility for interesting neutral attacks.

Another idea is to slightly reduce score of a player that chooses myrran, due to reduced difficulty.

isn't the retort already balanced at 1pick because of my suggestion that having the human player pick myrran adds an additional myrran opponent? or at least an additional chance of it? the most OP thing about starting on myrran would be lack of competition. if there's enough competition on myrran then your opponent is getting whatever benefits you are, and the normal plane is benefitting from less crowding. I think we had this discussion like 6 months ago or something?

[Nelphine]

Right now, when you pick myrran, you get 2 AI on myrror with you. That means you have less competition than you would on arcanus. That's worth at least 1 pick by itself. (When you only had 1 opponent with you on myrror, it was worth at LEAST 3 picks probably more).

You also have 2 opponents on arcanus - these will have worse races than you. You have a number of other minor benefits, like treasure, and minerals. Race and the other benefits combine to be worth a noticeable amount - not a whole pick, but certainly worth more than half a pick.

Combine them and the retort is still worth much closer to 2 picks today than to 1 pick.


Adding the extra guaranteed opponent on myrror when the human picks the myrran retort (as you mentioned, this was some 6+ months ago) was to bring the benefit down to match the 2 picks it cost at the time.

[zitro1987]

Which is why I proposed 3 AI starting on myrror on higher difficulties, paralleling how it goes when you pick arcanus.

Now you get very challenging competition right away (fun factor) and the fear of a potentially untouched powerful arcanus wizard.

[Nelphine]

Agreed.

[namad]

Agreed.

Personally I think it should be a random chance roll of 3 myrran opponents (like 50% 2 50% 3), but yeah, I didn't mean to imply it was perfect. Just that number of opponents was IMO the most critical thing to balance (not danger of myyror itself as the person I had replied to was implying, I thought, or maybe I quoted the wrong person.) Top difficulty 3, 2nd from top 3, 3rd from top (and all the rest) 2 myyran opponents, would be a fine idea for me. Although it might mean I stop picking myrror on the 2nd from top difficulty, which is the difficulty I play about 50% of the time. Now I'm just rambling. Maybe it should stay at 2 picks? but I agree that consuming 2 picks does limit creativity (for the ai random surprises.)

[Catwalk]

Right now, when you pick myrran, you get 2 AI on myrror with you. That means you have less competition than you would on arcanus. That's worth at least 1 pick by itself. (When you only had 1 opponent with you on myrror, it was worth at LEAST 3 picks probably more).

You also have 2 opponents on arcanus - these will have worse races than you. You have a number of other minor benefits, like treasure, and minerals. Race and the other benefits combine to be worth a noticeable amount - not a whole pick, but certainly worth more than half a pick.

Combine them and the retort is still worth much closer to 2 picks today than to 1 pick.


Adding the extra guaranteed opponent on myrror when the human picks the myrran retort (as you mentioned, this was some 6+ months ago) was to bring the benefit down to match the 2 picks it cost at the time.

Still agreeing with this.