Nodes

[Seravy]

Since I had a feeling I'm not seeing each node type equally often, I generated 6 maps and counted the results :

12 S
9 C
9 N

11 S
9 C
10 N

13 S
9 C
8 N

16 S
8 C
6 N

11 S
10 N
9 C

16 S
8 N
6 C


As you can see, every single map had more Sorcery nodes than any of the other two kinds, sometimes significantly so. Are we happy with this or do we want to change it? If yes, to what?

[crusader.mike]

More Life nodes

[zitro1987]

My thought is that sorcery is a bit under-represented in lairs/ruins/towers but yes, over-represented in nodes. It doesn't help that they don't have a great monster variety. They vary from the very easy (phantoms/nagas) to the guaranteed losses (ranged units), to the annoying:

some tend to be annoying to fight ('escaping' units like djinns and air elementals don't make sense to me if they are protecting treasure)

Some of these challenging or 'annoying' enemies are more vulnerable outside a node, and would be nice for a change.

[Seravy]

Done writing a new algorithm that generates exactly 10 of all node types, but still observes the original intention of nodes being on terrain they "like" better than the original (where it did that first then randomly reassigned to adjust the numbers...)

So...for each node the game counts the number of tiles in the node aura that match each node type then in a loop of 10, picks the one with the most "Nature", most "Chaos" and most "Sorcery" tiles and assigns that node type for each from the remaining unassigned nodes.

The terrain tiles are divided as follows :

Forest, Grasslands : Nature (original)
Desert, Hills, Mountain : Chaos (hills was not in the original)
Tundra, Swamp : Sorcery (original had ocean/shore here which is why we always see sorcery everywhere - ocean is the most frequent terrain type, it most definitely should not be used for this. Tundra and Swamp had no effect in the original.)

Note that rivers do not yet exist on the map when nodes are placed, and will eventually replace other terrain types so they can "hide" the tiles that cause the node to become what it is. This is unfortunate, as rivers for Sorcery nodes would make sense.
There is no rule set for node types per plane - in theory it's possible for all the Chaos nodes to be on Myrror if Myrror has lots of mountains and deserts and Arcanus has none but this is an extremely unlikely outcome as terrain is fairly evenly randomized on both planes.

Is this acceptable, or do we not want to guarantee an even chance of each node type? (In this case we could assign only 7-8 through the above algorithm to each type and set the rest to a random type but that would be extra work and an additional, probably undesired luck factor?)

[Suriname]

Having more sorcery nodes gives a small boost to sorcery at the beginning (barring astrologer use) and having sorcery close to oceans makes sense.

[Seravy]

Well, I can try to readd ocean to the Sorcery nodes and see what happens.

Ok, I tried but I like the other version better. This one made most Sorcery nodes appear on tiny hard to approach islands which is not very early game friendly. The other one makes most of them appear near the poles which is easier to find and more predictable.

[Nelphine]

I'd like something like 8 of each with the last 6 randomly determined.

Also, for some reason I thought we went with a 14/16 split but it's sometimes 13/17? I actually like that it's not certain, so I prefer this, just didn't realize it was possible.

[Seravy]

I don't think it's randomly 13/17 but we recently changed it (think 2 months ago?) so maybe those results are from different versions. Otherwise it's a bug.

We have three main options to pick from for nodes I believe :

Option 1 : 10 of each node, no random involved. In this case the last picks will be sometimes (especially for sorcery) be weird results like 1 tundra and 3 mountain tiles, as the appropriate areas run out. However on the upside, as tundra are specifically located near poles, even the 1 tile tundra means the sorcery node appears close to polar regions, so they will have a pattern you can take advantage of. (Unless you play wet which brings plenty of swamps to the map.)

Option 2 : 8 of each node assigned to the "best match". The last 6 are assigned at random. This would mean 8-14 of each node randomly, with the 10/10/10 being most frequent, 8/8/14 being extremely rare (3/216?)

Option 3 : 8 of each node assigned to the "best match". The last 6 assigned to the type of terrain that's most frequent in their aura. This makes node locations match terrain best, but the distribution will likely be affected by map settings (wet causing more Sorcery nodes, Dry more Chaos nodes and I guess Fair with medium or lower land size more Nature?)

[Nelphine]

I'd personally go option 2; i don't think any of the realms need to be favoured by world settings. Unless you specifically want to keep extra sorcery nodes for sprites to take advantage of. IF possible, what it sounds like is that the location of the node will already be known, the type of terrain will already be known (although not complete, so it could change after this). So I'd like to see the last 6 determined randomly, but then placed in the 6 locations as appropriately as possible by terrain.

Oh, maybe we should swap desert to Sorcery? Hills are pretty common so they should be enough for Chaos, and with desert and tundra, it would be a lot harder to guess where sorcery nodes would be. (If you want to be able to guess where they are, then leave deserts as Chaos.)

[jsb]

I also think option 2 is best. A little random is always more interesting but it shouldn't be weighted towards any particular source. The large amounts of sorcery nodes now imo favors Nature and Sprite-tactics, which is already strong.