Floating Island

[Seravy]

The casting cost of Floating Islands was recently increased to avoid the exploit when the spell is used to give an additional 3 movement to doomstacks by summoning one directly under them.
However this doesn't really solve the problem :
-You can still do the exploit, it merely costs more so it's less worth doing especially super early
-But the spell is more expensive which makes it much harder to use in the early game which it really is meant for : saving you the trouble of having to build a ship for your initial settlers and scouts.

So I have a better idea:
What if Floating Islands had the old lower cost of 50 (or maybe even less) but appeared with zero movement remaining so they have to wait a turn to be useful?

The unfortunate consequence is you have to plan ahead but considering the cost difference, you get the island summoned a turn or two earlier (in the early game) so you don't actually suffer any delays in movement (at least compared to the current state of things) and while you can move it, you can at least board.

The one downside I see is the island being vulnerable to enemy attacks for one turn, but as units on it can participate in combat, that really isn't a serious problem. Unlike transports, these won't get attacked much when they're full of units because those units can fight back.

[teelaurila]

Related, it seems the AI ignores, and in fact probably goes around, empty floating islands. As they never seem to be get attacked. Perhaps something to do with 0 strategic strength? This means that islands can be summoned a turn early and wait safely for the doomstack to arrive.

I would think the old slow but cheap islands might be better. They could even have speed of 1. With the chain-shipping limitation in place, exploitation of multi-islands probably is culled?

In the early game, naval transport is about crossing nearby straits, where move 1 would still do. A cheap move 1 island would still leave late-game later expeditions to actual ships. But if push comes to shove, the sorcerer could keep overland casting occupied to get a doomstack across a sea, essentially at it's own walk rate (probably +1), by keeping on casting islands. The latter application being relevant to the first trans-plane action.

Regardless, it would likely be an improvement if the AI would recognize lone islands as easy targets to make the player lose resources.

Oh, and also related, it seems sometimes the "chain-ship-prevention" feature seems to bug out, making it impossible to move a unit even when only one ship is nearby. My current guess it is has to do with loading a game mid-turn.

[Seravy]

There are several reasons why sea movement can fail :
1. If the unit was already transported by a ship that's not a ship still moving with the unit that turn (chain-ship-prevention)
2. If the movement would leave units behind to drown (for example the ship is selected to move but one of the units is not and it can't fly or swim)
3. At least one of the ships selected to move have no movement points remaining
4. Any moving unit already participated in battle (in this case you can't even select them but moving without them fails because they'd be left to drown)

In theory the AI should attack the islands and sometimes they do but I also noticed they often ignore them. Maybe there was another unit on sea they could target? The Island having the minimal possible military value is usually the lowest priority target, even if it's the closest thing.

[teelaurila]

I've noticed now at least twice the sea transport failing for none of the good reasons above (once was an island, the other a ship). I theorized that when a ship moves a unit the ID of the ship gets tagged to the unit (right?). Then after loading the game from a state where the ship has transported a unit part of the ships movement allowance, the ship is no longer recognized as the same one. But I am not sure, will see if it shows up again. Not very often does a game get loaded like that.

[Seravy]

Oh, I think I understand what causes the problem.
When units die, they are marked dead but not removed until eventually the cleanup function deletes them from the unit array. This is done that way to preserve consistency, this way things like the list of which units are currently selected, will not break when a spell kills a unit.
Loading a save does call the cleanup function as far as I remember. In which case that does break the stored unit ID for the ship.
Let me see... yes, loading does call this cleanup function. Nothing else that a player can do during their own turn does - other than loading this is only called during the AI turn or after everyone ended their turns.
I don't see any particular reason why loading needs to do that so removing those calls and letting the dead units stay in the array until the AI turn as if there was no loading should fix the problem. I'll add it to my list of things to do. Until then, just remember to move your ships all the way in one go instead of saving in the middle of movement.

[firefly]

So I have a better idea:
What if Floating Islands had the old lower cost of 50 (or maybe even less) but appeared with zero movement remaining so they have to wait a turn to be useful?

I like it.
For me, one turn without moving is not a problem - island can be casted long before actual troups/settlers are gathered at shore. At early game island casting cost is more limiting factor.
At late game sometimes it is nice to create island and move little further by sea, but it is not critical and turns into exploit with overuse.



By the way. Yesterday I have tried Endurance and notice it gives unit +1 movement only at next turn start.

[Seravy]

By the way. Yesterday I have tried Endurance and notice it gives unit +1 movement only at next turn start.

Intentional. Otherwise it's possible to cancel the spell and cast it again any number of times to gain extra moves each time.

[firefly]

By the way. Yesterday I have tried Endurance and notice it gives unit +1 movement only at next turn start.

Intentional. Otherwise it's possible to cancel the spell and cast it again any number of times to gain extra moves each time.

And it sounds very like to this floating island exloit... ;-)

[Cruel100]

So I have a better idea:
What if Floating Islands [...] with zero movement remaining so they have to wait a turn to be useful?

Good solution implemented. It was good in the game.