Test games played

[Ymer72]

Did you check if you have enough casting skill to cast Confusion?
Different amount of books start you with a different amount of casting skill.

You are so right, now I feel stupid. This is such a great game now! The 2 picks for warlord made me change my spellbook setup. But about this with treasure with spellbook or retort. From back when I played mom alot (many years ago) I seem to recall there was always atleast one site with 2 picks where you could get warlord. Am I remembering this wrong? Cause like I said, in 5 games I checked EVERY site so am I unlucky or is there a much lower chance for such a site to spawn?

[Seravy]

Probably unlucky. I guesstimate a typical map to have about 2-3 of those.
However the AI is a lot better at clearing them, so the real question is, how many of them did you get first?

Either way, it might be worth making a tool that counts the amount of various treasure and revise the numbers on map generation to match what we want. There have been plenty of updates to treasure generation but I don't think we ever actually set any goals like "we want x of this treasure on an average map" so they were only done to deal with obvious flaws.

[Ymer72]

Well, I checked my new game in the momtweaker and this time there is a 2 pick site, excellent. But what are the odds for having such a site in a huge map at lunatic?

[Ymer72]

Well, I checked my new game in the momtweaker and this time there is a 2 pick site, excellent. But what are the odds for having such a site in a huge map at lunatic?

Sorry, you answered that! Well off I go treasurehunting then!

[Ymer72]

Probably unlucky. I guesstimate a typical map to have about 2-3 of those.
However the AI is a lot better at clearing them, so the real question is, how many of them did you get first?

Either way, it might be worth making a tool that counts the amount of various treasure and revise the numbers on map generation to match what we want. There have been plenty of updates to treasure generation but I don't think we ever actually set any goals like "we want x of this treasure on an average map" so they were only done to deal with obvious flaws.

One funny thing though is that I have found many heroes in my previous games. But according to Momtweaker this game has no such sites. Could it be Momtweaker isnt compatible anymore?

[Seravy]

I became curious so I updated the lair analyzer tool :

  LairAnal.zip (Size: 14.44 KB / Downloads: 5)

The input is any 20 save game files named 1-20 (not save17.game but "17" as the filename, no extension), and it'll calculate the average amount of various things on the maps, so you can check any land size you want to know. You need to provide new games for it because it does not count already cleared lairs in the total.

This is the output I got for "Fair" sized maps :
Gold : 24719
Mana : 21207
Item Value :142601
Average Item Value :   31
Common : 13.2
Uncommon :  8.4
Rare :  4.5
Very Rare :  4.1
1 Book :  1.9
2 Book :  0.6
Prisoners :13.5

[zitro1987]

That's very lacking on the 'books' (and no retorts?). I thought the chance was supposed to be fairly decent for these, even if lower than all other categories.

[Nelphine]

Most games the very rare spells will turn into books .
Also any time it says books, it actually means books or retorts.

The problem is that books and retorts are ungodly powerful. Even getting 4 in a game virtually guarantees a win, even on lunatic. On expert, 2 should be enough.

Also those numbers match my experiences perfectly. As treasure hunting is my passion, I'd already settled on 7 very rares/books/retorts being the average per map.

For those categories I think it's perfect.

I think heroes is high, mostly because they're useless beyond the first 1-3, but I wouldn't change it. I'd actually increase rares to 7, uncommons to 10 and Commons to 16. (I'd even be ok with even more of those 3 rarities showing up.) I'd reduce the gold and mana to make room for the extra spells. Items is fine I think now that you can't get immunity to everything all the time. Weapons are still too common (yes even requiring 3 weapon types, there are still too many weapons) and accessories too rare.

[Ymer72]

I became curious so I updated the lair analyzer tool :


The input is any 20 save game files named 1-20 (not save17.game but "17" as the filename, no extension), and it'll calculate the average amount of various things on the maps, so you can check any land size you want to know. You need to provide new games for it because it does not count already cleared lairs in the total.

This is the output I got for "Fair" sized maps :
Gold : 24719
Mana : 21207
Item Value :142601
Average Item Value :   31
Common : 13.2
Uncommon :  8.4
Rare :  4.5
Very Rare :  4.1
1 Book :  1.9
2 Book :  0.6
Prisoners :13.5

Thanx man, checking the map with momtweaker was  very tedious... And it doesnt seem to be able to check prisoners.

[zitro1987]

A rare but annoying gameplay experience: when 2 out of the 3 AI enemies are sorcery/life wizards and they have aether binding/dispelling wave/divine order.

You are then biased towards half price unit enchantments (in my case, focus magic/flight/resist magic/wraithform/cause fear/bloodlust), only to have them dispelled brutally by both AI wizards over and over. Oh, and all their cities fly (flying fortress). I suspended the game despite being ranked 1st as it became somewhat tedious. Sometimes, divine order feels like a tedious 'number adjustment', especially on the receiving end of multiple of them.