Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

human will attack with units that can kill fliers faster than lightning can kil them

Lightning is not the point. 9 sprites deal so much damage most units have a hard time surviving to fight back. The vast majority of ranged units do not have that much health and armor, especially early. Yes, elite bowmen are an exception due to double health but you likely can't have 9 of those unless playing Life or Warlord.
But ranged units strong enough to survive attacks from 9 sprites and the lightning will likely obliterate cockatrices before they can even get close. Bears even more so. Even ghouls are bad against these because poison 1 is not enough damage to kill 12 health bowmen even if the bowmen have 0 resistance it still only means 2 lost figures per ghoul attack. Elite bowmen are simply too much for the AI, don't use them as an example. Nothing works vs them (except magicians, but those will replace the sprites)

So the human will need fast moving, durable melee units that can hit fliers. That certainly exists but is far from trivial to have, especially this early. So I would not say flying is useless against the human, it is still pretty strong until ~1408-1410...but ghouls might be stronger. Bears and cockatrices not. (anything powerful enough to reach the sprites without dying will obliterate bears and cockatrices just cry for "use 9 ranged units to win" and are trivial to defeat for a human.)

But I already agreed ghouls might be better as garrison. That's not the problem.
Problem is, losing the snowball potential of having a dozen free early undead units from using ghouls on the offense against lairs and neutrals might be too high price to pay for this garrison. If they use sprites instead to take those out, the undead will never get created and by the time ghouls go outside there are no easy targets left on the map.

It might be more productive to simply say "AI with ghouls already picked does not pick sprites". Then they have the superior ghouls in both offense and garrison, albeit lose the ability to reach other continents until...they put wraith form or water walking on a few of those ghouls which they will do...so picking sprites when they have ghouls is stupid.

I think instead of (or in addition to) swapping garrison order, we should make the AI not pick Sprites as a starting spell if they picked Ghouls.

[Nelphine]

No, anything that can hurt sprites (4 armor and 5 HP???) Literally requires 5 times as much firepower to kill war bears. Those elite bowmen do very little against war bears (without a massive pile of buffs) - if it takes 2 shots to kill a sprite it takes 10 to kill a war bear. One unit of war bears surviving will kill about 6-8 units of elite bownen once they have no ammo left.

[Seravy]

Unfortunately it isn't that nice to the bears as you describe. The sprites will get a +3 wall bonus because they stay there if fighting an all ranged army. The bears have to go outside (and the limited capacity to go through the gate even stalls them significantly. Heck, you can web the front bear and the rest cannot even come outside - so they all die.
The sprites also benefit from a massive ranged penalty on your bowmen - at least -1 to hit, likely -2 on half the shots or more. Meanwhile the bears will at least get hit by one round of shots without any ranged penalty, and the other shots will also have less penalty, PLUS the archers will be at full force while against the sprites they'll have significant losses every turn.
I know it sounds very counterintuitive but (albeit untested) I believe sprites have a much better chance to survive against archers than bears despite being the less durable unit. Feel free to try testing it (easiest is if you produce 9 bears, 9 sprites and 9 bowmen, then put the attacker outside, the defender inside and use the tweaker to turn the attacker units neutral so it attacks your capital. Then you can see which work better, the bears or the sprites.

[Nelphine]

Unfortunateky, I've never learned to use the tweaker. That will stay untested for some time 

But watching war bears and sprites in a node, the problem is exactly that war bears don't do ranged damage. You beat them with ranged units. That can't take hits. But a fortress has both a wizard and lightning to do damage while the bears avoid dying. The ranged units to kill bears don't work. Lock the bears inside? Great, now the AI won't try to hurt you with the bears.

In a fortress the units don't need to do do damage in the early game. Lightning does. And by the time you get string enough melee to kill those bears, you have access to melee strong enough to survive and kill sprites.


Again, this is entirely a fortress problem. Lightning completely shifts the equation. But sprites just ignore that advantage, and get fortresses fortress spiked, sometimes by units that can't even hurt the other cities the AI has.

[Seravy]

Rearranged the priority for a few units :

Code:

Necromancer HERO    120    
Beastmaster HERO    110    Soul Link, good for endgame capital even! (garrison will be fantastic)
Colossus    100    
Sky Drake    100    
Demon Lord    95    
Great Drake    95    
Arch Angel    95    
Illusionist HERO    90    Overpowered defender, keep in capital if has levels, or no VR creatures!
Great Wyrm    87    
Behemoth    87    
Djinn    87    
Efreet    85    
Stone Giant    80    
Storm Giant    80    
Chaos Warrior HERO    80    Better than a Storm Giant
Hydra    75    
Death Knights    75    
Gorgons    75    
Swordsmen HERO    74    Raise Dead!
Priestess HERO    72    Prayer, Prayermaster
Shadow Demons    70    
Sage HERO    70    Has mass dispel, good capital defender
War Monk HERO    70    Super agility, extremely hard to kill
Magician HERO    70    Flame Strike!
Witch HERO    70    Black Prayer, nice for capital defense
Warlock HERO    70    Doom Bolt
Dwarf HERO    67    Has armsmaster so should stay and level other heroes in capital for a while
Warlocks    65    
Nightmares    61    
Chaos Spawn    55    
Wraiths    55    
Angel    55    
Great Lizard    55    
Magicians    55    Troll
Chimeras    55    
Golem    50    
Magicians    50    Draconian
Unicorns    50    
Demon    50    
Earth Elemental    50    
Magicians    50    High Men, Halfling
Paladins    50    
Magicians    46    High Elf
Magicians    42    Other
Doom Bat    30    
Water Elemental    29    
Fire Giant    28    
Gargoyles    27    
Dragon Turtle    25    
Rangers    25    
Air Ship    23    
Pegasai    22    
Ghouls    22    
Sprites    20    
Steam Cannon    20    
Bard HERO    20    
Paladin HERO    20    Send these out to fight enemies, they are better in attack teams
Black Knight HERO    20    Send these out to fight enemies, they are better in attack teams
Priests    18    High Men, Dark Elf
Slingers    18    
Saints    17    
Shaman    17    Troll
Hammerhands    17    
War Trolls    17    
Minotaurs    16    
Jackal Riders    16    
Crusader    16    
Giant Spiders    15    
Shaman    15    Halfling
Priests    15    Other
Horde    15    
Doom Drakes    15    
Stag Beetle    15    
Javelineers    15    
Wyvern Riders    15    
Dervish HERO    15    
Healer HERO    15    
Huntress HERO    15    
Elven Lords    14    
Pikemen    14    Nomad
Griffins    14    
War Mammoths    14    
Bowmen    13    Draconian
Manticores    13    
Catapult    13    
Werewolves    12    
Cockatrices    12    
Halberdier    12    Nomad, Dark Elf, Draconian, Troll
Shaman    12    Other
Berserkers    12    
Longbowmen    12    
Apprentice    12    
War Bears    10    
Halberdier    10     Gnoll, Klackon, Lizardmen, Beastmen, Dwarf
Pikemen    10    High Men
Barbarian HERO    10    
Orc Warrior HERO    10    
Thief HERO    10    
Druid HERO    10    
Warrior Mage HERO    10    
Assassin HERO    10    
Wind Mage HERO    10    
Ranger HERO    10    
Draconian HERO    10    
Golden One HERO    10    
Ninja HERO    10    
Rogue HERO    10    
Amazon HERO    10    
Unknown HERO    10    
Elven Archer HERO    10    
Knight HERO    10    
Chosen HERO    10    Send this one out as soon as possible to gain experience!
Knights    10    
Phantom Beast    9    
Swordsmen    9    Nomad, Dark Elf, Draconian
Bowmen    9    Other
Zombies    8    
Halberdier    8    Other
Nightblades    8    
Night Stalker    7    
Swordsmen    7    Barbarian, Gnoll, Klackon, Lizardmen, Beastmen, Dwarf, Troll
Cavalry    7    Dark Elf
Centaurs    7    
Wolf Riders    7    
Horsebowmen    7    
Hell Hounds    6    
Nagas    6    
Fire Elemental    5    
Skeletons    5    
Spearmen    5    Nomad, Dark Elf, Draconian
Swordsmen    5    Other
Spearmen    3    Barbarian, Gnoll, Klackon, Lizardmen, Beastmen, Troll
Cavalry    3    Other
Phantom Warrior    2    
Spearmen    1    Other
Guardian Spirit    0    
Air Elemental    0    
Settler    0    Any
Engineers    0    Any

Ghouls, Pegasai and Air Ships have been raised to be above sprites instead of below.

[Seravy]

Update!

5.11b
-The AI will not pick Sprites as a starting spell if they already picked Ghouls
-Pegasai garrison priority is now 22 instead of 18
-Air Ships garrison priority is now 23 instead of 18
-Ghouls garrison priority is now 22 instead of 17.
-Starting cities now default to 4 farmers.
-Fixed bug : Some settlers do not have a food upkeep.
-Fixed bug : Catapults can get disbanded for food maintenance problems.

[Nelphine]

Thank you! 

Has anyone else found that playing on dry with slow outpost growth races, you can end up with negative gold/food very early, especially if the capital has low productiin. I'm not sure what do about it either.

[Nelphine]

I'm at war with Sharee; who is at war with all 3 other AI as well. (4 way war AGAINST the AI wheeeee)
When I talk to Merlin, he says 'blah blah blah, here, please take 720 gold for your attacks against Sharee'. If I continue to try to talk to him, he continues to say this, but no money changes hands. I'm not even sure I got money the first time he said it. However, I'm unable to do any other diplomacy with him, because he says his spiel, and then the conversation is over. This is also happening for Lo Pan.

[Seravy]

This is listed at "known problems" - you get the money when the diplomacy bonus applies at end of combat, but the conversation happens at the normal timing (end of turn, or if you want to talk to the wizard yourself).
It would be hard to "queue" the money as it might no longer be available on the wizard after they process their own turn and spend it, and if a different message has a higher priority, the money would just get lost as the conversation does not appear.

[Nelphine]

OK thanks