Role of planes

[Nelphine]

And 500 was a starting point. It needs to be expensive enough that it isn't mutiple times per turn. I'd say 250 is too low (average lunatic would have 300 casting skill by the time this is researched so could cast it 3 times in one turn, even if unlikely).

300-350 then?

[Seravy]

My suggestion is aimed so that as soon as the player kills a doomstack, then another appears.

That's EXACTLY what I don't want. Both because we want the pressure to be proportional to difficulty, not "always on", and because that generally results in one stack a turn (since you have one turn to kill it before hit hits your city and then you again either kill it or lose the city) which is too much for all but the highest (maybe highest two) difficulty levels.
(and also because the cost of that is quite bad for the AI)

On higher difficulty the AI has more casting skill to spare, more troops to spare, and we generally want tower blocking to be less effective as difficulty goes up.
Or am I wrong and we really want Fair and Advanced difficulty to send a new stack immediately when it's killed? Even if the stack is too weak and the AI puts all their skill into it?

I would never cast this for 300+. (Even 180 is pushing it, towers are there to use, no one can block them except me...and monsters but if I have rares, I can deal with that.)
I rather not want the AI to cast this for 300 either - that's giving up on an entire rare creature. Not worth it unless the towers are actually blocked by the player (which we don't know), or the AI has very high skill (so it can afford tons of rare creatures anyway) and dozens of full stacks of them waiting to get into a tower (unlikely, even for lunatic). Since any skill used on this is wasted if the towers aren't actually blocked, or the human did have decent defenses and can deal with the stacks, I rather not want it to be expensive enough to really hold the AI back on summoning.

But let's assume we want to make sure it only transfers relevant stacks. If summoning a rare creature is 200 priority, and we want the spell twice per full stack (so we send those and another random stack of normal troops), then we need 2*200/9=45 priority. Then if we assume each level of difficulty makes the AI produce more troops so we want an additional stack for each difficulty level, then we can make it (2+difficulty)*200/9 instead.
(numbers are examples, but I'm looking for a formula like this.)
However in this case for each 9 creatures we summon, we cast this 2+difficulty times. If the creature is the same price as this, doing so would halve our creature output on difficulty 7, or reduce it by 33% on difficulty 1. That a significant loss of summoning potential.

So while the original cost of 50 was a joke, I don't think over 200 is reasonable. (I don't see why casting it more than once a turn is relevant if done by a human. The AI has a skill modifier so they do it anyway even if cost is very high - but priorities would be low enough so this would happen quite rarely.)
Also the main reason why the original 50 cost was a joke was the two other spells that were much more expensive for much less benefit. But those spells are gone...

Either way, time to sleep, to be continued tomorrow.

[Nelphine]

Right. We again have differences. I wouldn't expect to kill these stacks for at least 4 turns on average after they cross. Odds are they don't come out immediately next to whatever their target ends up being. So two turns to get to their target. Then we lose the target (otherwise these stacks arent relevant and none of this matters). And 2 more turns to actually defeat the stack. And that's on lunatic. On lower difficulties, it could be slower, maybe 5 turns on expert.

But if ignoring that I'd say out of every 18 rares summoned for offense on lunatic, 9 should be sent across. But at least 5 more will be summoned for defense. So cast it once for every 23 rares.

But we don't actually need full stacks of rares to make it worth it, so drop it to once for every 15-20. That makes its priority 10-14. And lower on other difficulties.

That's too low when you consider other modifiers that can change things. 


I think the biggest problem is that at the start of a war, it should be cast much more often - the numbers I just gave are if the opponent is already strong on the AI own plane. Yes it needs to attack but it needs to defend too.

But if it's the beginning of the first war, when it still controls it's own plane, it has enough units lying around to throw it at 10 times that priority. That would be fine on lunatic, but too high on expert. 



So, 75 priority if at war with opponent on other plane and opponent had no cities on AI home plane. On expert. Add 25 priority per difficulty (so 125 on lunatic, and 0 on ... Normal or easy).

If at war with opponent with cities on both planes, divide priority by 5 regardless of difficulty.


Ok you think 300 cost is too high, I think 200 is too low. 250? (That's still half the price of current planar travel which is still ridiculously effective for that price. I currently throw planet travel on units just cause I might use it in the next 100 turns - meaning I can already afford to waste mana on it because it's THAT good, and it currently costs 450+maintenance!)

[Seravy]

Then we lose the target (otherwise these stacks arent relevant and none of this matters).

That's what matters most!
Those are the stacks that are wasting the casting cost!

Also we need to plan on the human being able to hold against the attack. If they aren't, the game ends and again the cost isn't relevant. (Not to mention if this is the more frequent scenario then the difficulty isn't done right. We should be assuming the player can win, and you can't win if you lose a city to every incoming stack...)

(That's still half the price of current planar travel which is still ridiculously effective for that price. I currently throw planet travel on units just cause I might use it in the next 100 turns - meaning I can already afford to waste mana on it because it's THAT good, and it currently costs 450+maintenance!)

Except what makes Planar Travel good is having infinite uses. Meaning simultaneous presence on both planes all the time, whenever needed. This is exactly what the new spell does not give you.
For a one-time use, towers are free and this costs casting skill. With 9 towers on the map it shouldn't be hard to find one.

...and then there is the Research cost. If we want high RP cost it should be low enough to be worth having. I wouldn't research it for 4-5k RP if all I get out of it is "oh look now I don't need to use the tower, saved 3 turns". Sure, stack gets there 3 turns earlier. For a 10 turns delay on my spell research and another turn or two on my summoning. Not worth it. Even for 200 or 180 it's useless for the human.

[Nelphine]

Moving in to attack range without worrying about interference is never not worth the cost. It's the ultimate fortress strike. The whole point is to attack where your stack can't be stopped. That's literally worth multiple turns of casting.

Now admittedly the AI has no idea how to run proper interference anyway, but that doesn't mean the spell shouldn't cost that much - that means the spell should be expensive, and the AI should learn to do that interference (I know, that's not actually easy, and may even be impossible. But to a human who thinks the AI will play smart, yes, the spell us worth 500.)

[Nelphine]

And you'll note in my example, the human promptly gets the city back. You absolutely can afford to lose a city every time, if it's only happening 2-3 times per year, and you get the city back if they don't raze it. That's actually about what doomstackd do anyway when there is no planar travel.

[Seravy]

But they will raze it 75% of the time, it's a doomstack...even if not, over 50% of the buildings will be wrecked from changing control twice.
I believe we agreed the AI needs Plane shift to be able to use their superior numbers of units. Their actual doomstack is strong enough to attack towers (usually) even if blocked, but everything else never becomes a threat. If those 9 stacks of random adamantium normal units want to be relevant then they need to change planes. Which means, at least on high difficulty, Plane Shift needs to be cast a lot, and on things that will not actually conquer a city on their first try (but will weaken garrisons and force the human to spend their mana). This type of use isn't possible at a high cost, making our whole reason to have the spell - letting the AI's accumulated units attack the player - not work.

[Seravy]

Having no better idea, I'll use a table of constants for casting priority :
0,5,10,20,40,50,80

So Easy won't use it, Normal only once about every 40 summons, Fair once every 20 summons, Advanced almost twice as much so it'll start adding normal stacks, Expect once every ~5 summon so by then over half of them will be the normal troops, and priority further goes as difficulty goes up.

I'll put RP cost at...idk, 8000? Slightly above the current most expensive Disjunction.
Since the RP cost is already prohibitive and you wouldn't get this spell without a very good reason to use it, I don't think a high per-use cost is really necessary. Investing 8000 RP is no joke, even in the rare phase. For that much cost, I'd expect a spell that isn't prohibitively expensive to use. We can increase it if it proves too low but for AI reasons I want to keep it as low as possible.
Now, AI Trade priority...I think should be fairly high. Not only is it a highly valuable spell for the AI (assuming they can't use towers), but it has a huge RP cost so it shouldn't be easy to obtain by trading (yes, I know trading for it late game when the AI already is researching it first isn't very useful but anyway). I'd say you should be able to get, idk, up to middle, maybe even good rares for it?

24 "Great Lizard 14"
24 "Iron Skin 18"
24 "Blizzard 19"
24 "Stasis 44"
24 "Lightning Bolt 5B"
24 "Prosperity 91"
24 "Summon Hero D0"
25 "Cracks Call 0B"
25 "Elemental Armor 15"
25 "Counter Magic 33"
25 "Banish 40"
25 "Chimeras 64"
25 "Evil Presence B7"
26 "Transmute 12"
26 "Invisiblity 3E"
26 "Magic Vortex 69"
26 "Possession AC"
26 "Cloud of Shadow B9"
26 "Create Artifact D3"
27 "Petrify 16"
27 "Wind Walking 3F"
27 "Blazing March 66"
27 "Holy Word 96"
27 "Shadow Demons B4"
27 "Wrack B6"
28 "Earthquake 1A"
28 "Creature Binding 49"
28 "Chaos Rift 6E"
28 "Altar of Battle 92"
28 "Terror A8 -> B5"
28 "Warp Node BA"
28 "Disjunction D2"
29 "Flying Fortress 4D ->46"
29 "Angel 93"
29 "Famine BD"
29 "Dark Rituals A3 -> BE"
30 "Stone Giant 17"
30 "Regeneration 1F"
30 "Uranus Blessing 3D"
30 "Efreet 6A"
30 "Lionheart 8D"
30 "Consecration 9B"
30 "Wraiths B8"
30 "Summon Champion D4"
31 "Gaia's Blessing 1D"
31 "Dispelling Wave 34"
31 "Warp Lightning 65"
31 "Stream of Life 94 -> 84"
31 "Invulnerability 8F"
31 "Inspirations 98 -> 90"
32 "Aether Binding 39"
32 "Storm Giant 41"
32 "Doom Mastery 75 ->6C"
32 "Black Prayer AE"
33 "Earth Elemental 1E"
33 "Earth Gate 25"
33 "Air Elemental 42"
33 "Mind Storm 43"
33 "Doom Bolt 68"
33 "Doom Bat 61 ->6B"
33 "Prayer 8C"
33 "Summon Demon BF"
34 "Gorgons 1B"
34 "Spell Blast 3A"
34 "Hydra 6F"
34 "Zombie Mastery BC"
35 "Behemoth 20"
35 "Haste 46 ->4D"
35 "Incarnation 8E"
35 "Wave of Despair BB"
36 "Survival Instinct 1C"
36 "Herb Mastery 26"
36 "Great Unsummoning 4B"
36 "Chaos Surge 74"
36 "Call to Arms 99"
36 "Holy Arms 9A"
36 "Animate Dead C3"
36 "Eternal Night C5"
37 "Magic Immunity 45"
37 "Flame Strike 6D"
38 "Warp Reality 6C -> 75"
38 "Enlightenment 9D"
39 "Djinn 47"
39 "Pestilence C4"

So.... I'd say at least 29, but no more than 34? However since this actually allows you to make good trades with Arcane spells and obtain rares, bypassing the low book disadvantage, I rather play safe and go with the lowest, 29, especially as the human is guaranteed to have it first if they want to.
(unless, if we want to be that underhanded, we can make the AI start to research it when the human starts to research it, not when they already have the spell.)

[Seravy]

Research priority... I think they should first get their very rare summon. Investing 8000 RP into planar travel directly before they do that (which is the first thing in the very rare tier) is bad play - you'd want the stronger unit first, then invade, not the other way around.
So something like this :

Code:

1350    44    68    24    "Stasis 44"                                            
1360    19    25    24    "Blizzard 19"                                          
1370    95    149    22    "Mass Healing 95"                                      
1380    D2    210    28    "Disjunction D2"                                      
1390    D3    211    26    "Create Artifact D3"                                  
1396    8A    138    5    "Planar Travel 8A"                                    
1399    13    19    5    "Nature's Cures 13"                                    
1400    9B    155    30    "Consecration 9B"                                      
1480    C8    200    50    "Demon Lord C8"                                        
1514    4E    78    45    "Sky Drake 4E"                                        
1515    47    71    39    "Djinn 47"                                            
1520    76    118    44    "Great Drake 76"                                      
1530    24    36    50    "Colossus 24"                                          
1540    27    39    48    "Great Wyrm 27"                                        
1550    C1    193    44    "Death Knights C1"                                    
1560    9F    159    50    "Arch Angel 9F"                                        
1570    20    32    35    "Behemoth 20"                                          
1580    6F    111    34    "Hydra 6F"                                            
1600    4C    76    54    "Spell Binding 4C"                                    
1605    28    40    50    "Fairy Ring 28"                                    
1608    D1    209    29    "Plane Shift D1"
1610    4F    79    43    "Suppress Magic 4F"                                    
1620    72    114    50    "Doomsday 72"
1640    9C    156    40    "Life Force 9C"                                        
1650    98    152    42    “Supreme Light 98"                    
1660    A0    160    52    "Charm of Life A0"                                    
1670    9E    158    45    "Crusade 9E"                                          

Having it that far up also makes sure the AI won't get it significantly earlier than expected, even if playing a research heavy game. (But you might see it in 1414 on Lunatic with Sage Masters)

However if the human already knows the spell, OR we can trigger it on the human starting to research it (which turns it into a research race) then this should probably go up to after the rare summon. (no point invading the other plane with uncommons, that's just a loss...)
I think triggering it on the human starting to research would be unfair though - if a player picks that without the intention to actually research it quickly, they end up in a very bad position. So let's make the condition the human knowing the spell, priority 1116 :

Code:

1005    C4    196    39    "Pestilence C4"                                        
1008    BD    189    29    "Famine BD"                                            
1010    6D    109    37    "Flame Strike 6D"                                      
1020    BB    187    35    "Wave of Despair BB"                                  
1030    6C    108    32    "Doom Mastery 75 ->6C"                                
1040    8E    142    35    "Incarnation 8E"                                      
1050    B8    184    30    "Wraiths B8"                                          
1060    6B    107    33    "Doom Bat 61 ->6B"                                    
1070    41    65    32    "Storm Giant 41"                                      
1080    6A    106    30    "Efreet 6A"                                            
1090    1B    27    34    "Gorgons 1B"                                          
1100    17    23    30    "Stone Giant 17"                                      
1110    93    147    29    "Angel 93"                                            
1112    3A    58    34    "Spell Blast 3A"                                      
1115    CE    206    11    "Detect Magic CE"                                      
1118    CF    207    11    "Enchant Item CF"                                      
1120    67    103    21    "Chaos Spawn 67"                                      

[Seravy]

Next we need to decide :
-What to do with Shadow Demons
-What to do with Planar Travel items
-How to change the city curses

Meanwhile I'll try to add the hero healing spell. Might not be that trivial...