Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Nelphine]

Agreed. I'm not sure what the best solution is either, but this certainly emphasizes the problems of fast units, or shows that monsters aren't a good solution to weak garrisons.

[Seravy]

Fast units are definitely a problem but it's not solvable - we need larger map sizes to deal with that and we can't do that without source code. Without that the only other route is what the base game took - units that are absolutely sluggish and move only 1-2 tiles overland a turn. Which isn't very fun and doesn't really allow properly responding to anything.

However I think the retreating monsters is something we can actually remove without losing the convenience feature - if I remember correctly, neutrals surrendering if they can't move for 4 turns, and neutrals disappearing if they have to retreat after combat, are two separate things (in fact, raiders can retreat and stay alive. Only monsters can't.) So we can probably still have them disappear when they can't enter due to walls, but have them left around if a cavalry is stalling for turns.

Watching this right now : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q5XtJFxQag
Spiders still seem faily balanced which is good ... but the amount of centaurs that can be summoned using the 4 retort combo (conjurer, archmage, alchemy, specialist) is crazy and centaurs can actually do the cavalry stall tactic. So yes, the cavalry tactic is a problem but I think it can be dealt with by carefully adjusting the neutral monster rules (max cost per unit cap, slightly higher budget to ensure monster count is at least 3-4 each stack, monsters staying on map after battle) - however I'm now worried Call Centaurs might just be a too powerful spell still. No other realm can summon anything even remotely competent in battle - but Nature gets what is essentially a halberdier tier normal unit from myrror - and one that's both ranged and cavalry in one. Ultimately, a centaur isn't that great as is - 6 fairly weak ranged attacks and almost no melee capability, but the versatility is huge, mostly the ability to stall as well as hold back on casting skill and summoning them after the enemy has no answers (no more casting ability and no more ranged units left). Unsure if the problem is stacking the retorts, or centaurs themselves, or both.

[Nelphine]

Centaurs are so terrible as units that I've never seen one built.

Summoning them (and the ability to place them far away AND stall) is what's great about them, and why we can't improve the unit for beastmen.

[Seravy]

While it'll probably take a few extra hours, I decided to remake the rampaging monster spawn procedure entirely. I'm planning to make it so that instead of the spawns prioritizing the human player's plane, they should prioritize any continent that has a human city. I'm unsure at the percentage though. Considering the role of the game mechanic, any monster not spawn on the human's territory is a complete waste and has a very high chance to go undetected as well as increasing the variance on the strength of AI players which is actually a pretty bad thing. On the other hand, if the human player already scouted those areas and never sees any monsters while they appear every second turn on their continent, they'll be angry about it and rightfully so. A game has to pretend it's fair to all players at least to a reasonable extent, even if doing so makes it worse. But this is again questionable - you don't actually SEE the AI territory you scouted unless you have units nearby. So maybe, limiting the lair to a tile the human can SEE the time the spawn happens, or is on a continent that has a human city, is the perfect solution? Note that if it's at the edge of their vision and the monster appears in the opposite direction from the lair, the human still won't see it until either of them moves. Unfortunately, this system can be manipulated and favors players who have more units and expanded further. Which is exactly the opposite of intended. So for the time being I think I'll go with the most basic "50% chance to reroll is lair's continent has no human cities" instead, until we have a better plan. Or maybe not, there already seems to be a check present for monsters to have a city they can attack on the continent. Might as well change that to require the city to either be human or pass a 50% roll.
Something else. Life lairs don't spawn monsters. This is a nice touch for flavor but does reduce diversity of the monsters and actually eliminates Unicorns, which can stop the cavalry tactic. Do we want to keep this feature even despite that?

[Nelphine]

I'm shocked I never noticed that.

I would add life spawns.

[Bahgtru]

Yes, "more monsters" on from before the update, I didn't even remember that existed.

Have a laugh - '04:

[Seravy]

Yeah, we definitely need to do something about that ASAP :D

[Bahgtru]

I actually find this entertaining, if it's only due to the "more monsters" button. If it happens without it as well then it's probably in need of a fix.

Life: I noticed it also in MoM and I liked it, it's clearly because the good guys don't go on rampaging sprees it would be super cool if they did but only went after "evil" wizard empires - chaos and death. But as that's probably unlikely to happen, I wouldn't introduce them, the cavalry tactic will be nerfed when you lower the monster quality in favour of numbers as they'll wreck the city completely.

[Seravy]

5.56
-Fixed 5.5 bug : Pandora's Box summons more than intended (instead of less)
-Holy Armor is now overland only and costs 50.
-Gorgons overland summoning animation replaced (by Pinkeh)
-Draconian bowmen reduced to 4 ammo.
-Life lairs can now produce rampaging monsters.
-Rampaging monsters have a higher chance to spawn on a continent that has at least one human city.
-Minor adjustment to rampaging monster budget formula (difficulty now has a larger effect on the early turns)
-When rampaging monsters are generated, there is a cap for how much a single monster in the stack can use up from the budget. This is to ensure even on high difficulties with the extra monster setting enabled, no rare monsters spawn earlier than intended and ensures the rampaging stacks will usually contain more than one monster.
-When monsters retreat exhausted, they will not disappear (same behavior as raiders)

[namad]

Around the time I suggested changing the number of wizards that spawned on myrror I was saying life draconians were "op" and the "best" race. In fact one of the reasons I suggested that the myrran retort should cause 2 enemy wizards to spawn on myrror with you... was based on a test game in which I was a life draconian and just instantly surrounded my opponent, killed all his settlers, avoided his tower because his tower makes the flying strategy slightly less op, then camped out at/around wizards towers, ended turns a bunch, kept a single flying unit guarding every tower.... etc...etc..

So, I'm all for a life+draconian nerf, although draconian units cost so much and grow so slowly that without life I think it doesn't get moving fast enough and enemies have time to tech up into some sort of counter strategy.....

Since the update, having two opponent on the same plane as you.... kept ME from running out of control with the strategy you described, but I'm kind of a sucky n00b. I can totally see that even with two opponents instead of one this sort of strategy could've been OP.