Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[namad]

Keeping in mind the extra soldiers and settlers in the early game.... turn 25 and turn 40.... it's the same thing, the goal here as I read it wasn't to make it so there are more monsters sooner, but that since this mod basically skips the first few boring empty turns of a master of magic game, that leap frogs the player... wandering monsters were therefore too minor a threat, without being tuned to match the boosted player early game pacing.

basically? right? or am I misreading this?

[Seravy]

Yes, mostly. The goal was both the make the first time monster spawn keep up with the mod's changes (free settlers), and to make them strong enough to be a threat and actually require garrisons to fight (you can kill 1 hell hound with a spearmen and combat spells even that early. However you can't kill 3 of them...)

[Seravy]

5.55b
-Runemaster no longer starts with free Dispel Magic.

[Seravy]

A new bug was found so I'm going to release an update tomorrow.

A summary of what this update is about :
- Life magic problem : Holy Armor will be overland only. Heroism will not.
- Draconian problem : Bowmen should likely lose ammo. At 4 ammo they still deal higher damage than Sprites with just Barracks and Alchemy (same stats but 1 extra figure - flight ensures no range penalties), but the per unit cost is lower - although production is harder to spare in the very early game, the unit is used for farming gold which is basically production so it pays for itself. The existence of the 3 starting easy lairs definitely made this a bigger issue than ever.
- Draconian problem 2 : I'm unsure what to do with this one, but the extra racial armor and breath attack is clearly a lot more powerful for a life player and the two amplify each other. Unbuffed the breath attack will not deal significant damage, but with buffs it will be strong at eliminating enemy figures and the retaliation damage will have a hard time to break through extra armor. Furthermore Draconians can position themselves to attack the nonflying enemies together so suppression penalties will likely apply to at least some of the retaliation. Prayer in particular is extremely relevant, raising defensive power and breath damage simultaneously and significantly. To a lesser extent Heroism can too but that one is mostly obsoleted by the existence of War College by the time you mass produce halberdiers or better.
-Negate First Strike to apply vs throw and breath - this is too difficulty and major to be added to an update that's urgent due to fixing a bug so it'll be postponed for the next one. Also, which this helps the AI a little, ultimately breath and thrown will still favor the human and the AI will still not be able to use it effectively. Maybe rethinking the thrown/breath mechanic and allowing it to be used on the defense is a better long term solution? It still maintains the main benefit of the ability (hitting before normal melee retaliation), but takes out the unit positioning element which is not just an AI problem : if the AI knew how to play it better - not that such is possible, just in theory - we'd have a very unfun game where units stare at each other as whoever moves first, loses. Of course there are ways to break out of that, but it rises game complexity to unhealthy levels either way I'm afraid - we have to remember this is a game where you fight hundreds of battles, and thrown/breath is a very common ability.
-Lair monster spawns : checked and it doesn't seem to have a bug. Sapher simply won too quickly in the draconian game - there weren't enough relevant turns as the game was essentially decided on turn 40ish and monsters appear only after turn 25. Not a problem with the spawn turn limit - it's a problem with Draconian/Life.
-Dark Elf large neutral cities can have an Armorer's Guild at start which violates the turn limit for building one. We should likely replace that with a different building, problem is, it should be for a unit with no ranged attack and the race has no other such unit.

I think that's all the current short term problems we wanted to have fixed.

[Bahgtru]

I have played 2 quick test games with barbarians and either heroism or flameblade replicating with their (much cheaper) bowmen what he did with draconians. Early speed is an early in-combat buff issue, not a draconian issue. Their armor is irrelevant this early, you're not going to be hit by anything, but I guess that fix is for another problem. For me they're not THAT good as a race - many maps won't have so many lairs to buff or won't have them close, resulting in getting the war college as late as the other races. Compare with, say, nomads: they have a gold farming unit that works also against say, cockatrices, super-high resistance compares with drac armor, and they don't even have to pay the myrran toll...

During the tests I've been attacked by lonely wraiths, efreets coming from who knows how far in the first 3 years. The roaming monster buff just means that you need to have a cavalry per city for running around, then you can keep doing spearmen... Holding the city and rebuilding costs less than building garrisons everywhere which is useless - the wraith would have killed them - and impossible - some of your cities won't ever garrisoned and the roaming monsters would just go towards those. For me the roaming stack buff is not helping towards your perceived problem. Which is ok, as it's not a real problem.

[Seravy]

How can non-flying bowmen do the same thing? They can't pass turns to retreat and what makes the strategy so powerful is you could do that and use only 1-2 bowmen a time.
Efreets and Wraiths? You sure about that? There shouldn't be that much budget in the first 3 years.
I don't see how cavalry running helps against ranged monsters but it's a good trick against melee. Except you can't be sure the monsters coming will be melee ones.

[Bahgtru]

They do the same by being as fast, and cheaper/more expendable: you have 4 for each 2 draconians. Sure, you need to pass water, that slows you down eventually, but triremes are not that expensive.

I had a thought on this: why is heroism common? If it were uncommon it'd be equally useful for heroes, that come later, and that'd fix the issue with early resource heroes+heroism. For me if you want to keep heroism castable in combat then you should swap it for true sight, but the latter should lose in-combat casting.

On monsters: keep in mind that I play lunatic. Cavalry works, you just need to survive the shots. There's many ways to achieve that with its decent hp base against neutrals, and if you see a big ranged monster coming you can move another cavalry thanks to speed 5 vs city distance 4. Single critters are easy to deal with even when they are high-end.

[Seravy]

Heroism is common because it's useless any later. War college is a thing.

Are you playing with the double monster option in the settings on? That could explain the early high budget monsters coming alone. Maybe the generator should cap the spawned monster to be no better than 50% of the total budget, and prioritize ranged units?

[Nelphine]

I'm against prioritizing ranged units. 

AI already do that for a majority of combats that the human will engage in, but a huge part of the game is the variety. While it may be helpful for balancing (although I'm not sure, cavalry speed is already an issue discussed elsewhere for this very reason), I'd rather see the full variety of monsters, particularly as they are being presented as random wandering monsters, not random wandering anti-"keep cities easily" attacks. Obviously that's what they're being used for, but that's not how they're presented in game, and we need to keep that presentation in mind.

[Seravy]

Unlike raiders and wizard controlled enemies, monsters disappear when retreating exhausted. This is a convenience feature because who the hell wants to hit "done" 25 times every overland turn if they have a walled city the monsters can't even enter.
But if this feature gets abused, we might as well remove it and let the retreating neutrals attack again.
I don't have a better idea at the moment.