Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

5.22
-AI combat spell priority - resistance roll spells have a greater priority penalty for very low 10 and 20% success chance (10->25, 5->10)
-AI combat spell priority - direct damage spells now receive a bonus priority for high value targets like resistance based instant kills - but only if the player does not know any healing spells.
-Fixed : game shows Sharpshooter on some normal units that don't have it.
-Lizardmen can now build Forester's Guild and Sage's Guild.
-Demon Lord now has 30 health, a save modifier of -1, 13 resistance and no Fire Immunity. (subject to further changes if needed)
-New Lizardmen unit : Carrack, Requires Forester's Guild and sea access. It's a ship. Note this makes save files from previous versions incompatible (you can load them but your Barbarian Spearmen will turn into the new ships.)
Note that the unit currently uses the graphics for Galley. I know nothing about ships so feel free to submit new unit sprites for it, and/or ideas for how it should look like.
-Fix for bug now works correctly : “invalid target” cursor is shown when using a ranged attack against invisibility on a unit that does have Immunity to Illusions.
-Fixed bug : When the player cancels Resurrection, it still attempts to revive a hero but takes the target from an invalid index.

Note that I haven't yet played a game with the new Lizardmen and Demon Lord changes, so I can't guarantee they are balanced.

[Seravy]

New version!
Important : older saves are not compatible, as there is a new difficulty level added to the game so loading earlier saves will result in incorrect (1 lower) difficulty if it was above Normal.

5.23
-The +/-20% plane size modifier now also applies if the plane with fewer wizards has 0 of them. There is no need for the empty plane to be equal size to the other one. (Normal difficulty games)
-Demon Lords now have 8 armor but 35 health again. (Still might be subject to further changes)
-5.2 change now actually works : “-When an AI wants to offer a peace treaty or trade, it'll skip the “Break Alliance” check. It'll only do that if it is trying to offer a Wizard's Pact or Alliance.“
-Very Rare spells cannot be found in treasure until turn 200 instead of turn 140.
-AI wizards will not attack Towers before turn 200 unless at least one tower is already cleared.
-AI wizards will pretend Air Elementals, Sprites and Demons have higher strategic strength in lairs until a certain turn count, to make up for these units being underrated in strategic combat compared to their actual difficulty for human players.
-If a neutral attacking player fails to move for 8 turns instead of 4, they'll abandon battle to give more time for humans to raise their units as undead.
-New difficulty level : Fair, between Normal and advanced. (see table for before and after change effects of each level)

-Adjusted Wave of Despair again : base strength is now 255, reduction by resistance is (resistance+10) instead of (2*resistance).
-Adjusted AI use priority for Wave of Despair - now calculated expected effective strength to decide on using it or not and priority is proportional to strength- must expect at least 9 damage to be allowed to cast it. (this is a cost 66 spell - if we can't deal at least as much damage as a single target uncommon nuke, it's a waste of skill to cast it, especially as damage is distributed on targets.)
-Floating Islands will not attack weak enemy units like Spearmen - second fix.
-When the AI does idle movement on sea with their ships, they won't move onto a tile that contains enemy units, resulting in an attack.

The turn 200 limit for spells and towers is subject to further change once I gather enough data from games played to be able to judge. Same for the land size adjustment amount. It might be just a coincidence but the first game I played with this version was far too easy and the Myrran wizard failed to be a threat at all - but I did have a way stronger start than I usually do, especially for the realm I was playing. (I hope we didn't make lizardmen too powerful again...)

Either way, I was playing Chaos Lizardmen with Sage Master had all the Chaos globals in play before turn 200, while the AI still only had rares. They surrendered after like, 1-2 years of making contact.

I also haven't met an AI with Wave of Despair to see if the new AI code works properly. Do report if you see the AI use the spell wrong.

[Seravy]

5.23b
-Fixed 5.23 bug : map generation freezes if neither plane has at least 3 wizards on it.

[muxecoid]

Thanks. I want to use increased tower turn counter to play some solitaire in CoM.

[Nelphine]

Dwarf swordsmen definitely still start at speed 1 for the very first turn.

[Seravy]

I guess we updated the starting unit table before we increased the movement for dwarf units. I guess we should copy the table again after we finish balancing all the races.

[demiskeleton]

Just found out about this mod, and to learn you're still working on it even so much as today is really cool.

how stable would you say this mod is to play?

[Seravy]

More stable than the original game, at the very least.

If you are worried about bugs in new versions, I suggest waiting about 1-2 days after each update before downloading it - if there was any significant bug, it'll be usually found and fixed in that much time. (albeit less obvious ones might not, for example when the AI failed to use Disjunction it took me longer to notice. In general people tend to not notice AI bugs because they don't know how the AI is supposed to act in that much detail.)

[Nelphine]

In general, it's a lot more stable than most games out there. and any bugs, you can just mention to Seravy, and he usually fixes them quickly. And by that i mean, I'm pretty sure Seravy doesn't actually sleep.

[namad]

why give lizardmen sage's guilds and forester's guilds I thought they were already a top tier race?
or did the research cost and income overhaul nerf them in ways I don't comprehend and they needed a research boost?