I'm going to collect ideas I haven't decided what to do with yet in this thread. Let me know your opinion!
1. Armorer's Guild and Fantastic Stables in 1406.
This should be replaced by the spell.
We can have either a global enchantment that can be cast once and permanently unlocks the buildings on all of the wizard's existing and future cities, or we can have a city buff that allows the building in the enchanted city. Obviously, dispelling the enchantment would not disable the builds so it's probably best to make the spell impossible to dispel or cancel and have no maintenance.
The spell should be the first spell that appears for research beyond 1405 (maybe 1404) and have a reasonably low research and casting cost. The real purpose is to replace the counter-intuitive and ugly time based restriction with something that feels more appropriate but has the same overall effect.
2. New Ores
I don't see all that much design space here as existing ores cover almost all kinds of resources, including spell resistance and military stats.
I have one idea that looks good :
"Fossil" - appears on Tundra tiles only, produces research. This can position the "Frozen" climate maps as the areas with fewer troops/economy but the same or better advancement in research, making it different from "Volcanic" which mostly has economy/military minerals in the high amount of mountain terrain, and "Dry" which is crystals for magic power in deserts (albeit also gems, maybe those should not be a desert resource?).
And one that doesn't...
"Agaric" - on Swamp tiles only, grants Poison 1 for troops produced there. Very rare. This has a major influence on the game balance between magic realms so I'm not sure we should do it, in fact leaning towards not adding it. Would be a lot more powerful than mithril, too. Not adding this.
3. High Difficulty AI terraforming polar caps
While difficult to implement, it's not entirely impossible now to allow using these lands for cities. A wizard with both Raise Volcano and Change Terrain could convert these areas into grasslands. This would make Chaos/Nature specifically a lot more powerful for AI players (the cost of the spells would make it a weak strategy for humans) and is likely time consuming and difficult to implement so I have doubts it is worth doing.
Will not add, not worth the time and effort and might unbalance game.
4. Razing cities from the city screen instead of in battle.
This allows you to decide if you want to raze after looking at the city (and after you already know how much damage it suffered from combat). Razing will take several turns during which the buildings and population will shrink and get converted to gold. I've already decided to try this system, the main question is the amount of time needed and amount of gold earned from it and whether we want an effect or fame, positive or negative.
This removes the "raze and continue" strategy from both the human and AI players. Honestly, it was a huge balance issue on the human side but the AI razing one of your cities every turn is also not very healthy and leaves players with no chance to react. If the AI plane shifts a stack of 9 angels onto your main continent and you don't have an immediate answer, you lose the game, and that's not very good. Even if you do know how to summon Angels yourself, you have no time to summon your own stack so it will take at least 5-10 turns before you can do something about the situation and that means losing 5-10 cities.
Currently the AI does the razing with doomstacks not only because it wins but also because it prevents the doomstack getting stuck in the city, but with a source code based remake it shouldn't be too hard to make the AI mark that stack as "this has to leave the city next turn" instead of staying there and maybe even do so before normal troop movement and spellcasting, then fill the empty city with summoned creatures the same turn.
This change will also remove those rage-inducing moments when the AI razes a city for no particular reason - while they rarely do that to cities they can expect to defend successfully, it still means the player can't recover their lost cities by fighting the enemy. Also, if the AI evaluates the city as one they can't defend with the remaining stack, they could now move the summoning circle there to fill it with creatures, which opens up the chance for invading the whole continent though that city.
Will be added.
5. Life and Death nodes
Unless we find a reason not to, such as Life or Death creatures being too easy/hard to beat in nodes, or Life/Death not needing the benefit of having a node type that cannot counter their spells, we should consider adding these. Will need to design how they look and create the necessary art if we do though.
6. Black Sleep
Maybe this should set defense to zero instead of making the attacker deal 100% damage which is a lot stronger debuff?
Albeit Death has no other save or die spells until very rare, ironically, (except possession but that is limited to normal units) so this is a huge nerf to the realm.
7. Earth Lore
This could have 1/4 the cost and area of effect to allow more precise targeting and being less wasteful if you only want a specific lair scouted.
8. AI artifact creation
Maybe the AI should learn to create new items for their heroes based on what is the ideal item to fill the empty slot on heroes.
However the AI creating more quality items the human player can loot from the heroes ultimately helps the player, not the AI so this might be a very bad idea. Heroes are mostly a thing fun to use for humans, it's not that fun to be on the receiving end of an unstoppable hero.
9.Desert movement cost
In most games Deserts are among the slowest terrain to move in. In MoM it's the fastest, costs only one to cross. We should consider the possibility of having a cost of 2. Likewise, maybe the cost of 3 for hills and 4 for mountains might not be ideal either. Swamps at 3 and Rivers at 2 sounds fine.
10. Enlightenment
What if this allowed heroes to gain an additional level, like Crusade does on normal units?
Edit : I mean an additional max level, not current level. So beyond Demigod, heroes can reach one additional level, maybe "Avatar"?
11. Amplifying Tower
I think this should be split to two or three separate buildings.
The Tower itself would grant +7 overland casting skill, while one or two new buildings could offer combat skill.
In this case the combat skill buildings should be a flat +X SP to the player's SP pool while the building is under their control instead of a +X skill bonus.
For example the building could add 2000 SP, which would raise a skill of 40 to 60 (1600 to 3600) but a skill of 150 would only go up by ~6.7. This building might work best with two tiers, an early one for something like 400 SP and an expensive later one for a much higher cost and 1600-2000 SP.
Will add.
12. Spy Master advisor
This would show your diplomacy relation on a graph like Historian does for your economy.
We can limit it to only show the "visible relation" stat, or we could either add a new global enchantment, or building that adds more spying information, such as the "hidden relation" or "peace interest" stats. In this case we need to come up with a way to make that spell or building useful for AI players who have no use for diplomacy data (their diplomacy behavior is entirely determined by game rules).
Will show visible relation only for the time being. There is no need to rush a decision on showing additional information at this time.
13. Research Treaty
Forming one of these with another wizard would select one spell from each tier and divert some of their research income into obtaining those spells. When the research completes, both wizards get both spells. Basically, this would be a "blind trade" for a random future researched spell. I haven't decided on the detailed rules but at the very least both parties would need to have a spell the other cannot learn on their own but could trade for in at least some of the tiers.
14. Spell of Mastery casting cost.
This should probably scale by the map size, as it takes more turns for an army to reach you on larger maps.
15. Demand/Offer cities in diplomacy.
I have no idea if we want this, nor how to implement it if we do. Maybe we don't.
This can of worms is better left closed.
16. Map size effects on diplomacy
Which actions in diplomacy should be allowed between empires too far to reasonably hurt each other?
-Hostility rolls
-War declaration
-Treaties
-Same between two AI players or an AI and the human. Prohibiting war and hostility can lead to AIs becoming friends more often. Prohibiting treaties will mean the human player can get a head start on forming treaties with people while the AIs cannot. Prohibiting the human player from doing either violates the core design of "human can do anything in diplomacy".
17. Random event to spawn a new lair or lairs.
This becomes possible but do we want it?
It might upset treasure balance.
18. Divine Order
With more players this becomes an issue. The probability of at least one person casting it might be too high as is the chance of multiple players doing so.
Best solution might be to move this up to become a Rare spell.
19. Level up MP
What if Magicians and Apprentices gained an additional few points of MP at max level? Probably no more than +3.
20. Enchanted Roads
These don't really have a reason to exist in my opinion. Why does Myrror need faster unit movement than Arcanus?
Of course Myrran roads can still glow yellow if we want them to but cost the same 1 to move on as Arcanus roads.
21. Addition of race specific buildings only one (or very few) races can build.
Examples :
- Draconians: Altar of fire gives +4 power for each volcanoe in the city terrain
- Halflings: Giant telescope gives +12 research and sight range of 5.
- Gnoll: Fighting pit gives +1 EP for each unit per turn
- Nomad : Gain +3 Gold for each Desert Tile, or chance of Deserts turning into Gem/Crystal tiles.
- Dwarves : Some extra benefit from Mountains
etc
Having thought about this a little, Altar of Fire could also be a spell. Giant Telescope is pretty much Nature's Eye so that would be redundant. Fighting Pit, not sure if you mean each unit gains +1 EXP or each unit gains as much EXP as units in the city but both seem interesting options. Honestly, War College is simply better as it starts with 80 EXP for new units, but having this as an additional option on a military race only is a good idea. Nomads and Deserts match in flavor but nor good mechanically. Dwarves already benefit extra from Mountains (ore bonus, additional production per worker).
Nonetheless the concept is good and might work if we can design a good building for all races.
22. Peace Treaty could be visible on the diplomacy screen and/or a notification could be shown to the player when it ends.
While I don't plan to show the player the number of turns remaining, especially because their actions can reduce the amount even significantly, showing the fact the treaty is still in effect might or might not be a good idea. The downside is the player will know exactly when the enemy is expected to retaliate for provocation, such as attacking their troops or cursing their cities while currently, after doing so, the player can't be sure if they'll get attacked next turn of it's still safe and in general have no precise information other than "if I leave this wizard alone he won't attack for at least a year, maybe two."
The upside is knowing when "Threaten" needs to be reused to guarantee safety and when "Declare War On" requests become possible for players to use to restart a war between two AIs.
23. Scaling research costs
Currently larger size games result in research reaching the next tier much earlier, while smaller size games have research that is much slower. This an obvious consequence of available resources.
If research costs scaled with map size settings, this would no longer be an issue, although of course having more or less territory to conquer would still affect the pacing of the game, at least spell tiers would be roughly similar which means the mana/skill/research spending ratios will be the same and spell tier advancement would keep up with rampaging monster strengths.
24. "Break Alliance With" in diplomacy should work more often and/or the AI should demand a steeper price in gold or a better spell than usual as an additional possible outcome between failure and demanding the default amount of stuff.
This can help against the "too much alliance between AI's" issue and if we don't change the "declare war on" formula then it doesn't directly risk the AIs being turned against each other by the player.
Currently the formula for this is extremely unforgiving, requiring 50 points higher than the "declare war on" formula despite the fact the relation between AI's during an Alliance is typically at least 50 higher than normal leading to a cumulative 100 higher requirement.
Overall I think the requirement to force a war declaration might need to be stricter than the one to demand breaking the alliances.
Not that this would make it easy - typically AIs with high personality modifiers make the most alliances such as Peaceful and those have the lowest chance to accepting (Peaceful is an extra 130 points required for success) but there is a loophole here that the player can use against the system - then the Peaceful AI makes the treaty with someone else, they can ask that someone else to break the alliance (unless it is also a peaceful wizard).
If we want to be extra careful, we can also let the AI's affected form a short Peace Treaty to give them a fair chance to reform their Alliance or get at least a Pact, or prevent them from attacking each other some other way, as losing the Alliance does mean they can randomly start fighting even for no reason at all unless they are Lawful/Peaceful.
25. When spellbooks are sorted by realm, they are also sorted by rarity.
This one will be added.
26.Zitro's idea
Advanced military buildings to increase experience of less advanced units only:
Fighters guild allows spearmen, swordsmen, bowmen to start at veteran
Armorers guild allows halberdiers, pikemen, berserkers, etc to start at veteran
Fantastic stables allows cavalry to start at veteran
War college: all units start at veteran
Wizards guild: all shaman, priests and other lower tier support units at veteran
Barracks: unsure maybe garrison units earn 3xp per turn, but costs a bit more
Why? It prolongs use of lower tier units when advanced units get unlocked
Low priority at this time but it is worth considering later.
27. Spell Blast to rare
With larger maps and more players, longer game duration might mean we want to make Spell of Mastery wins more relevant and the number of Sorcery wizards the player has to eliminate before they can cast it without getting countered should likely be lowered by making the spell more rare.
With this change it also becomes possible to remove the "do not use at random if the human player has below 200 casting skill" which is a very artificial solution. If the spell is rare and low on the AI's research priorities, this is simply not an issue, unless they find it in treasure but even that has some turn based restriction. If necessary we can also add a condition for the AI to not use it before a certain turn count. The problem here is Sorcery having no Rare spells that could be moved down to uncommon.
-Game length on largest map needs to be tested and a decision on the intended relevance of SoM has to be made. (alternate victory conditions such as diplomatic/political can also be considered)
-AI should always recast Detect Magic at high priority on highest difficulty (Lunatic+1) : Added
-if we do not want SoM to get more relevant, then we probably need to remove the "SoM during Time Stop" strategy from the game, and AI random spell blasting might need adjustments.
-if we do want it more relevant, Spell Blast has to be rare.
28. AI offensive Transmute
Basically, change Adamantium on enemy cities into crystal.
Might reduce ore relevance too much, as it means not only Chaos but also Nature wizards will disable your ores.
9 out of the 15 default wizard templates have either Chaos or Nature which is 60% but even a single random book or two can add the spell so the real rate is closer to 70-75% chance per opponent that they will destroy the player's ores.
With Chaos only, this is a much more reasonable 33%+random books chance so probably around 40% total.
I think those numbers are convincing enough that we don't want Nature AI to do it.
29. AI node scouting system
Basically the same thing the AI uses to determine if they have seen a city to target it with a curse, but for Warp Node. If added, it will not be used for anything else.
Magic Spirits will be limited from going too far from the AI's own territory (to avoid making long distance diplomacy contact without a reason) but that will be independent of this.
30. Auto outpost destruction.
In the current game outposts are automatically destroyed as a side effect from any building destruction roll happening in the city (regardless of the results of that roll). This won't be automatic in CoM II so we can individually decide which of the following should destroy affected outposts :
-Raise Volcano
-Call The Void (or Comet event)
-Earthquake (or EQ event)
-Meteor Storm
-City changing controllers when conquered
Possible way to abuse it is to cast your curses on the AI during this 6 turn period - but warning based war declaration doesn't need to be affected by this rule and the relation penalty will just make it even more likely to get a normal war declaration after the 6 turns are over so I don't think the abuse potential is much, if any.
32.Combat attacks.
see https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid732908
...
1. Armorer's Guild and Fantastic Stables in 1406.
This should be replaced by the spell.
We can have either a global enchantment that can be cast once and permanently unlocks the buildings on all of the wizard's existing and future cities, or we can have a city buff that allows the building in the enchanted city. Obviously, dispelling the enchantment would not disable the builds so it's probably best to make the spell impossible to dispel or cancel and have no maintenance.
The spell should be the first spell that appears for research beyond 1405 (maybe 1404) and have a reasonably low research and casting cost. The real purpose is to replace the counter-intuitive and ugly time based restriction with something that feels more appropriate but has the same overall effect.
2. New Ores
I don't see all that much design space here as existing ores cover almost all kinds of resources, including spell resistance and military stats.
I have one idea that looks good :
"Fossil" - appears on Tundra tiles only, produces research. This can position the "Frozen" climate maps as the areas with fewer troops/economy but the same or better advancement in research, making it different from "Volcanic" which mostly has economy/military minerals in the high amount of mountain terrain, and "Dry" which is crystals for magic power in deserts (albeit also gems, maybe those should not be a desert resource?).
And one that doesn't...
"Agaric" - on Swamp tiles only, grants Poison 1 for troops produced there. Very rare. This has a major influence on the game balance between magic realms so I'm not sure we should do it, in fact leaning towards not adding it. Would be a lot more powerful than mithril, too. Not adding this.
3. High Difficulty AI terraforming polar caps
While difficult to implement, it's not entirely impossible now to allow using these lands for cities. A wizard with both Raise Volcano and Change Terrain could convert these areas into grasslands. This would make Chaos/Nature specifically a lot more powerful for AI players (the cost of the spells would make it a weak strategy for humans) and is likely time consuming and difficult to implement so I have doubts it is worth doing.
Will not add, not worth the time and effort and might unbalance game.
4. Razing cities from the city screen instead of in battle.
This allows you to decide if you want to raze after looking at the city (and after you already know how much damage it suffered from combat). Razing will take several turns during which the buildings and population will shrink and get converted to gold. I've already decided to try this system, the main question is the amount of time needed and amount of gold earned from it and whether we want an effect or fame, positive or negative.
This removes the "raze and continue" strategy from both the human and AI players. Honestly, it was a huge balance issue on the human side but the AI razing one of your cities every turn is also not very healthy and leaves players with no chance to react. If the AI plane shifts a stack of 9 angels onto your main continent and you don't have an immediate answer, you lose the game, and that's not very good. Even if you do know how to summon Angels yourself, you have no time to summon your own stack so it will take at least 5-10 turns before you can do something about the situation and that means losing 5-10 cities.
Currently the AI does the razing with doomstacks not only because it wins but also because it prevents the doomstack getting stuck in the city, but with a source code based remake it shouldn't be too hard to make the AI mark that stack as "this has to leave the city next turn" instead of staying there and maybe even do so before normal troop movement and spellcasting, then fill the empty city with summoned creatures the same turn.
This change will also remove those rage-inducing moments when the AI razes a city for no particular reason - while they rarely do that to cities they can expect to defend successfully, it still means the player can't recover their lost cities by fighting the enemy. Also, if the AI evaluates the city as one they can't defend with the remaining stack, they could now move the summoning circle there to fill it with creatures, which opens up the chance for invading the whole continent though that city.
Will be added.
5. Life and Death nodes
Unless we find a reason not to, such as Life or Death creatures being too easy/hard to beat in nodes, or Life/Death not needing the benefit of having a node type that cannot counter their spells, we should consider adding these. Will need to design how they look and create the necessary art if we do though.
6. Black Sleep
Maybe this should set defense to zero instead of making the attacker deal 100% damage which is a lot stronger debuff?
Albeit Death has no other save or die spells until very rare, ironically, (except possession but that is limited to normal units) so this is a huge nerf to the realm.
7. Earth Lore
This could have 1/4 the cost and area of effect to allow more precise targeting and being less wasteful if you only want a specific lair scouted.
8. AI artifact creation
Maybe the AI should learn to create new items for their heroes based on what is the ideal item to fill the empty slot on heroes.
However the AI creating more quality items the human player can loot from the heroes ultimately helps the player, not the AI so this might be a very bad idea. Heroes are mostly a thing fun to use for humans, it's not that fun to be on the receiving end of an unstoppable hero.
9.Desert movement cost
In most games Deserts are among the slowest terrain to move in. In MoM it's the fastest, costs only one to cross. We should consider the possibility of having a cost of 2. Likewise, maybe the cost of 3 for hills and 4 for mountains might not be ideal either. Swamps at 3 and Rivers at 2 sounds fine.
10. Enlightenment
What if this allowed heroes to gain an additional level, like Crusade does on normal units?
Edit : I mean an additional max level, not current level. So beyond Demigod, heroes can reach one additional level, maybe "Avatar"?
11. Amplifying Tower
I think this should be split to two or three separate buildings.
The Tower itself would grant +7 overland casting skill, while one or two new buildings could offer combat skill.
In this case the combat skill buildings should be a flat +X SP to the player's SP pool while the building is under their control instead of a +X skill bonus.
For example the building could add 2000 SP, which would raise a skill of 40 to 60 (1600 to 3600) but a skill of 150 would only go up by ~6.7. This building might work best with two tiers, an early one for something like 400 SP and an expensive later one for a much higher cost and 1600-2000 SP.
Will add.
12. Spy Master advisor
This would show your diplomacy relation on a graph like Historian does for your economy.
We can limit it to only show the "visible relation" stat, or we could either add a new global enchantment, or building that adds more spying information, such as the "hidden relation" or "peace interest" stats. In this case we need to come up with a way to make that spell or building useful for AI players who have no use for diplomacy data (their diplomacy behavior is entirely determined by game rules).
Will show visible relation only for the time being. There is no need to rush a decision on showing additional information at this time.
13. Research Treaty
Forming one of these with another wizard would select one spell from each tier and divert some of their research income into obtaining those spells. When the research completes, both wizards get both spells. Basically, this would be a "blind trade" for a random future researched spell. I haven't decided on the detailed rules but at the very least both parties would need to have a spell the other cannot learn on their own but could trade for in at least some of the tiers.
14. Spell of Mastery casting cost.
This should probably scale by the map size, as it takes more turns for an army to reach you on larger maps.
15. Demand/Offer cities in diplomacy.
I have no idea if we want this, nor how to implement it if we do. Maybe we don't.
This can of worms is better left closed.
16. Map size effects on diplomacy
Which actions in diplomacy should be allowed between empires too far to reasonably hurt each other?
-Hostility rolls
-War declaration
-Treaties
-Same between two AI players or an AI and the human. Prohibiting war and hostility can lead to AIs becoming friends more often. Prohibiting treaties will mean the human player can get a head start on forming treaties with people while the AIs cannot. Prohibiting the human player from doing either violates the core design of "human can do anything in diplomacy".
17. Random event to spawn a new lair or lairs.
This becomes possible but do we want it?
It might upset treasure balance.
18. Divine Order
With more players this becomes an issue. The probability of at least one person casting it might be too high as is the chance of multiple players doing so.
Best solution might be to move this up to become a Rare spell.
19. Level up MP
What if Magicians and Apprentices gained an additional few points of MP at max level? Probably no more than +3.
20. Enchanted Roads
These don't really have a reason to exist in my opinion. Why does Myrror need faster unit movement than Arcanus?
Of course Myrran roads can still glow yellow if we want them to but cost the same 1 to move on as Arcanus roads.
21. Addition of race specific buildings only one (or very few) races can build.
Examples :
- Draconians: Altar of fire gives +4 power for each volcanoe in the city terrain
- Halflings: Giant telescope gives +12 research and sight range of 5.
- Gnoll: Fighting pit gives +1 EP for each unit per turn
- Nomad : Gain +3 Gold for each Desert Tile, or chance of Deserts turning into Gem/Crystal tiles.
- Dwarves : Some extra benefit from Mountains
etc
Having thought about this a little, Altar of Fire could also be a spell. Giant Telescope is pretty much Nature's Eye so that would be redundant. Fighting Pit, not sure if you mean each unit gains +1 EXP or each unit gains as much EXP as units in the city but both seem interesting options. Honestly, War College is simply better as it starts with 80 EXP for new units, but having this as an additional option on a military race only is a good idea. Nomads and Deserts match in flavor but nor good mechanically. Dwarves already benefit extra from Mountains (ore bonus, additional production per worker).
Nonetheless the concept is good and might work if we can design a good building for all races.
22. Peace Treaty could be visible on the diplomacy screen and/or a notification could be shown to the player when it ends.
While I don't plan to show the player the number of turns remaining, especially because their actions can reduce the amount even significantly, showing the fact the treaty is still in effect might or might not be a good idea. The downside is the player will know exactly when the enemy is expected to retaliate for provocation, such as attacking their troops or cursing their cities while currently, after doing so, the player can't be sure if they'll get attacked next turn of it's still safe and in general have no precise information other than "if I leave this wizard alone he won't attack for at least a year, maybe two."
The upside is knowing when "Threaten" needs to be reused to guarantee safety and when "Declare War On" requests become possible for players to use to restart a war between two AIs.
23. Scaling research costs
Currently larger size games result in research reaching the next tier much earlier, while smaller size games have research that is much slower. This an obvious consequence of available resources.
If research costs scaled with map size settings, this would no longer be an issue, although of course having more or less territory to conquer would still affect the pacing of the game, at least spell tiers would be roughly similar which means the mana/skill/research spending ratios will be the same and spell tier advancement would keep up with rampaging monster strengths.
24. "Break Alliance With" in diplomacy should work more often and/or the AI should demand a steeper price in gold or a better spell than usual as an additional possible outcome between failure and demanding the default amount of stuff.
This can help against the "too much alliance between AI's" issue and if we don't change the "declare war on" formula then it doesn't directly risk the AIs being turned against each other by the player.
Currently the formula for this is extremely unforgiving, requiring 50 points higher than the "declare war on" formula despite the fact the relation between AI's during an Alliance is typically at least 50 higher than normal leading to a cumulative 100 higher requirement.
Overall I think the requirement to force a war declaration might need to be stricter than the one to demand breaking the alliances.
Not that this would make it easy - typically AIs with high personality modifiers make the most alliances such as Peaceful and those have the lowest chance to accepting (Peaceful is an extra 130 points required for success) but there is a loophole here that the player can use against the system - then the Peaceful AI makes the treaty with someone else, they can ask that someone else to break the alliance (unless it is also a peaceful wizard).
If we want to be extra careful, we can also let the AI's affected form a short Peace Treaty to give them a fair chance to reform their Alliance or get at least a Pact, or prevent them from attacking each other some other way, as losing the Alliance does mean they can randomly start fighting even for no reason at all unless they are Lawful/Peaceful.
25. When spellbooks are sorted by realm, they are also sorted by rarity.
This one will be added.
26.Zitro's idea
Advanced military buildings to increase experience of less advanced units only:
Fighters guild allows spearmen, swordsmen, bowmen to start at veteran
Armorers guild allows halberdiers, pikemen, berserkers, etc to start at veteran
Fantastic stables allows cavalry to start at veteran
War college: all units start at veteran
Wizards guild: all shaman, priests and other lower tier support units at veteran
Barracks: unsure maybe garrison units earn 3xp per turn, but costs a bit more
Why? It prolongs use of lower tier units when advanced units get unlocked
Low priority at this time but it is worth considering later.
27. Spell Blast to rare
With larger maps and more players, longer game duration might mean we want to make Spell of Mastery wins more relevant and the number of Sorcery wizards the player has to eliminate before they can cast it without getting countered should likely be lowered by making the spell more rare.
With this change it also becomes possible to remove the "do not use at random if the human player has below 200 casting skill" which is a very artificial solution. If the spell is rare and low on the AI's research priorities, this is simply not an issue, unless they find it in treasure but even that has some turn based restriction. If necessary we can also add a condition for the AI to not use it before a certain turn count. The problem here is Sorcery having no Rare spells that could be moved down to uncommon.
-Game length on largest map needs to be tested and a decision on the intended relevance of SoM has to be made. (alternate victory conditions such as diplomatic/political can also be considered)
-AI should always recast Detect Magic at high priority on highest difficulty (Lunatic+1) : Added
-if we do not want SoM to get more relevant, then we probably need to remove the "SoM during Time Stop" strategy from the game, and AI random spell blasting might need adjustments.
-if we do want it more relevant, Spell Blast has to be rare.
28. AI offensive Transmute
Basically, change Adamantium on enemy cities into crystal.
Might reduce ore relevance too much, as it means not only Chaos but also Nature wizards will disable your ores.
9 out of the 15 default wizard templates have either Chaos or Nature which is 60% but even a single random book or two can add the spell so the real rate is closer to 70-75% chance per opponent that they will destroy the player's ores.
With Chaos only, this is a much more reasonable 33%+random books chance so probably around 40% total.
I think those numbers are convincing enough that we don't want Nature AI to do it.
29. AI node scouting system
Basically the same thing the AI uses to determine if they have seen a city to target it with a curse, but for Warp Node. If added, it will not be used for anything else.
Magic Spirits will be limited from going too far from the AI's own territory (to avoid making long distance diplomacy contact without a reason) but that will be independent of this.
30. Auto outpost destruction.
In the current game outposts are automatically destroyed as a side effect from any building destruction roll happening in the city (regardless of the results of that roll). This won't be automatic in CoM II so we can individually decide which of the following should destroy affected outposts :
-Raise Volcano
-Call The Void (or Comet event)
-Earthquake (or EQ event)
-Meteor Storm
-City changing controllers when conquered
Quote:31. AI cannot break treaties for the first 6 turns after they have been made.This is pretty straightforward - even if the AI would break the Wizard's Pact (or less likely, Alliance) as part of a "move towards war" trigger, it shouldn't be able to do so immediately after the treaty was made, there should be at least some turns of guaranteed protection.
Possible way to abuse it is to cast your curses on the AI during this 6 turn period - but warning based war declaration doesn't need to be affected by this rule and the relation penalty will just make it even more likely to get a normal war declaration after the 6 turns are over so I don't think the abuse potential is much, if any.
Quote:
32.Combat attacks.
see https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid732908
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