Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[massone]

But they also have fairly high production costs, such that your one Adamantium prod. centre might take 3-5 turns to make one, depending on just how rich the surrounding land is. If you could produce these units elsewhere then upgrade for a lot less production, then it'd be a major boost in overall speed of producing the best troops. Eg. if upgrading cost 50% of the production, then by using that city to upgrade 2 other cities' units, you could output twice as many adamantium troops as the one city could before.

A solution to this already exist within the mod. Buy the unit for gold every turn and have those other cities produce Trade Goods if necessary. It has a 50% gold conversion rate so it's roughly similar in cost (yes, it effectively is 100% more but the adamantium city pays part of the cost with its own production so only the remaining cost is doubled.)

Quadruple, actually. Trade goods convert production to gold at 2:1, gold converts 2:1 to production, so overall it's 4:1 from the other cities' production. Plus, despite the 2:1 gold to production conversion, the cost isn't just doubled, because there is the opportunity cost of not being able to convert to mana. Buying units only works well for rush strategies or if you already have more resources than the AI--otherwise the cost is too large. Suppose we're buying Slingers or Berserkers (the cheapest ones) at 100 prod each assuming there's no coal nearby. That's a 200 gold per turn expense. If the town itself produces 50 prod, that's still a 100 gold/turn expense, requiring 200 production in other cities to subsidize with Trade Goods. Even if you weren't using Trade Goods, the 100g/turn = 50 RP/SP per turn.

If you have 300 power in the mid-game, that's still 1/6th of your total. Meaning that for these units, you're giving up 16% research/CS gain speed. Suppose you reach 300 power by 1406 (optimistically), over the course of five years, that's 3000 RP/SP without modifiers, or up to 4500 RP/SP with modifiers.

That means reaching the first Very Rare 3-5 turns later (with VRs ranging between 9000 - 24000 RP cost). With Alchemy, the opportunity cost is doubled, so you reach VR 6-10 turns later. That's enough to win or lose the game.

If you chose to max SP instead, supposing you would normally have 120 base casting skill (excl. Amplifying towers) by 1411, by Gauss' formula, that's

SP Invested = n/2 * ([Casting Skill * 2] + [Casting Skill + n] * 2)
4500 = n/2 * (240 + 240 + 2n) = n/2 * (480 + 2n)
4500 = 240n  + n^2
0 = n^2 + 240n - 4500

Solving for {n ∈ ℝ, n > 0}, we have n ~= 17.4 more casting skill, and with Alchemy, replace 4500 with 9000, now that's ~33 casting skill.


Over the same period, the buying produces 30 extra boosted units (60 units over 60 turns, but only half were incremental from buying). If you actually used Trade Goods, then the regular producer could have produced 120 extra weaker units instead of converting to mana. So the buyer has 60 boosted units, the regular producer has 30 boosted units and 120 weaker ones.

No matter how you look at it, it would take an expert using a very specialized strategy to make the buying work out better, by conquering more resources with those extra units in those five years to outpace growth with these other alternatives. Since you don't actually have the full 30 units immediately, you have an average 15 extra boosted units over the course of the 5 years. In fact, just getting an extra stack's worth would take 1.5 years.

Compare that to the 50% upgrade version, where you could use 1 city with 100 production + the 50 production Adamantium city to produce 1 boosted unit/turn. So the same 3 cities as in the above example would result in 5 years would produce the same extra 30 boosted units + an additional 60 regular units.

[Seravy]

Quadruple, actually. Trade goods convert production to gold at 2:1, gold converts 2:1 to production, so overall it's 4:1 from the other cities' production.

Yes, sorry, I was tired.

Over the same period, the buying produces 30 extra boosted units (60 units over 60 turns, but only half were incremental from buying). If you actually used Trade Goods, then the regular producer could have produced 120 extra weaker units instead of converting to mana. So the buyer has 60 boosted units, the regular producer has 30 boosted units and 120 weaker ones.

There is one problem with this. To do that you need the buildings in the other cities. Yes, the Alchemist Guild and War College (where available, many races don't have one) isn't necessary but the Fighter's Guild and Armorer's Guild is and that's the majority of building costs.
So depending on the number of cities set for Trade Goods, there can be a significant additional cost to building the troops and upgrading them.

However, I usually have enough gold income to buy the troops without requiring Trade Goods, and I see absolutely no reason why one adamantium resource should be able to produce more than one adamantium troop a turn (by making them elsewhere and upgrading). Adamantium is already very powerful.
It makes slightly more sense for extra levels from War College but if I'm serious about building troops in multiple cities, the cost of the War College is marginal compared to the cost of the buildings actually producing the troops. Furthermore the logistics of the upgrading process is a micromanagement hell I wouldn't do even if it was an option.

Finally, being able to upgrade the troops makes Corruption and Evil Presence worthless because the units wouldn't permanently miss out on the upgrades.

So unfortunately there are a lot of problems with this, it's not compatible with the game.


@Zitro
That might be a good idea. I see no downsides besides the difficulty of implementation (every singe unit needs to be listed individually for every building that improves them) so we can consider it after everything else is done.

[massone]

There is one problem with this. To do that you need the buildings in the other cities. Yes, the Alchemist Guild and War College (where available, many races don't have one) isn't necessary but the Fighter's Guild and Armorer's Guild is and that's the majority of building costs.
So depending on the number of cities set for Trade Goods, there can be a significant additional cost to building the troops and upgrading them.

However, I usually have enough gold income to buy the troops without requiring Trade Goods, and I see absolutely no reason why one adamantium resource should be able to produce more than one adamantium troop a turn (by making them elsewhere and upgrading). Adamantium is already very powerful.
It makes slightly more sense for extra levels from War College but if I'm serious about building troops in multiple cities, the cost of the War College is marginal compared to the cost of the buildings actually producing the troops. Furthermore the logistics of the upgrading process is a micromanagement hell I wouldn't do even if it was an option.

Finally, being able to upgrade the troops makes Corruption and Evil Presence worthless because the units wouldn't permanently miss out on the upgrades.

So unfortunately there are a lot of problems with this, it's not compatible with the game.

Sometimes Adamantium shows up in the mountains where you have 1 max pop, 6 with granary. That's probably where I'd be willing to suffer the micromanagement hell to take advantage of upgrading. But otherwise, you're right, it isn't really an attractive option even if implemented just solely on the planned efficiency benefit, though you might use it to upgrade a few already experienced troops.

Where I've seen this implemented before, in MTW2, it was tied to healing/refilling the unit numbers too. Perhaps using that part would be a a way to help non-Life Realms have their units survive longer. Instead of waiting for units to heal over many turns or replacing with new ones, they could slow down other production to rebuild their weakened units. It might help the AI manage their garrisons better against multiple attacks, especially when a Priest is not available, or they don't have access to Animist's Guild. Does the AI normally disband very weakened troops to make way for replacements? On some of the high HP units, normal healing would take a very long time.

[Seravy]

Does the AI normally disband very weakened troops to make way for replacements?

They don't but as the unit's calculated power drops, it will most likely not get picked for inclusion in new stacks, so unless the damaged stack is still capable of attacking targets, it'll do nothing unit it heals up.
The AI doesn't normally have many seriously wounded troops for above explained reasons though.

(The unit might get disbanded as part of the normal "disband X weakest units to make room" process though, if the global unit cap is near.)

[Slingers]

1. Armorer's Guild and Fantastic Stables in 1406.
A temporary global enchantment to unlock the buildings is a better way to delay them than time-based restriction. If it does so for everyone it would be a waste of resources and nobody would cast it. I would prefer an Arcane spell to unlock the building with or without maintenance. Dispelling the enchantment could disable unit production, while the building stays there. The active spell could be shown as a flag on the building.

I wondered if there are other ways to delay the unlocking of Armorer's Guilds and Fantastic Stables apart from sky-high costs or spells.
a)    A certain level of Casting Skill (Power Base, Empire Size) must be reached.
b)   The City must have access to a Unit/Race specific land-tile (ocean for ships, woods for bowmen in vanilla)
Alternatively the connected Empire must have access to a Unit/Race specific land-tile. Connected means roads and coastal cities or to play Nomads.
c)    The City must have a certain size. 
Especially b) and c) are pretty changeable, such restrictions should not prevent having the buildings, but producing the units would simply not work.

2. New Ores  &  3. High Difficulty AI terraforming polar caps
Agriculture is not possible in the northern Tundra regions of this planet. Natives nomadic lifestyle used large areas and resolved around exploiting herds of half-tame reindeer/caribou, hunting, fishing and gathering. In the past such regions had no permanent settlements let alone cities. Terraforming those regions on earth is impossible without first messing up the global climate. But the game mechanic is definitely fun. So … research-centers for wizardry in subpolar regions are completely weird and unrealistic. Why not. Actually spending time in such a region on earth can be a deep spiritual experience. But fossils ? Frozen mammoths ? In the original game it was possible to build settlements at the pole caps or to trick medieval engineers into building roads across the ocean. I did this all the time.
Nowadays some of the largest diamond mines are in the deserts of southern Africa. The traditional sources for diamonds were in the mountains of India. But Europeans got them and other gems by trading with people from the desert. Sindbad the Sailor collected diamonds and precious gems from the sandy ground of the valley of giant snakes. "Agaric" - on Swamp tiles might give Lizardmen too much power.

4. Razing cities from the city screen instead of in battle.
Fame should be gained after conquering the City. Razing should have no effect on fame, but at the number of rebels in the City and maybe Diplomacy. It is not nice to get starved to death and converted into gold. In Master of Orion 2 it is possible to send inhabitants to another planet, which leads to planets with several Races.

5. Life and Death nodes
Stairway to Heaven and Abyss. Cool idea ! 14 wizards might need bigger map size and more encounter zones.

6. Black Sleep
With only defence to zero the attacker gets the chance to be clumsy and the unit might even fight back a little ?  In this case it should become possible again to raise the unit as undead so Black sleep stays interesting for the Death-wizard to cast.  If that completely unbalances the game better it stays as it is.

7. Earth Lore
The area of this Nature spell is in perfect balance with other scouting options. Having a smaller scouting area for it is not practical to use. COM added the feature of showing primary and secondary monsters by using this spell. This is too much of a benefit and should be removed. A spell that does not reveal the map, but scouts lairs in a small area, would suit Sorcery.

8. AI artifact creation
AI heroes already can get quite scary in COM. With AI artifact creation perfected the last boss might become invincible. 

9. Desert movement cost 
Desert movement costing 2 is one more opportunity to slow down movement speeds. Deserts can be with or without sand dunes. Flying, roads and Land Linking would become even more desirable. Nomads would like some camels then.

10. Enlightenment
Being able to get avatars sounds awesome ! It would spice up this late game spell. If a higher number of spells is wanted, Enlightenment could be split into an earlier research-boosting spell and one that improves late heroes. But Life has already 7 globals.

11. Amplifying Tower
Skill-splitting sounds interesting. Will it be possible to select Combat and Overland Skill separately on the Magic screen ? 

12. Spy Master advisor
Far beyond base game mechanics a Hobbit with invisibility ring comes into mind or the High Council from Civilisation 2. Showing only the visible relation stats it´s a split of the diplomacy screen.

13. Research Treaty
Wouldn't it be a similar result if both wizards research their spells and then trade? Picking the spells is a more important strategic decision than saving some RP.

14. Spell of Mastery casting cost
To scale research and casting cost of the Spell of Mastery by the map size will add to the overall balancing of the game. In current COM everything is balanced around Fair map size, isn´t it? As zitro1987 wrote earlier, it would make sense to be able to switch research from Spell of Mastery to something else. 

15. Demand/Offer cities in diplomacy
Rare diplomatic situations in which this could play a role are conceivable. It could be the prerequisite for a Peace Treaty for example. It is already possible that a town changes sides. First it needs to rebel and get Neutral. Then it might join another wizard by the event Diplomatic Marriage. 

16. Map size effects on diplomacy
As soon as empires get into contact all kinds of diplomatic actions should be possible. The relation modifiers may need to be adjusted to the map size.

17. Random event to spawn a new lair or lairs.
A random event that creates a lair does not disturb the treasure balance most of the time. The value of this lair could be scaled by game time. Then sometimes it might contain a game changer. The frequency of this event could be doubled with Monsters Gone Wild setting.

18. Divine Order
Divine Order should become a rare spell. Multiple copies from different players could be cumulative with a 20% effect.

19. Level up MP
Magicians and Spellzerkers are Caster 20 MP, Apprentices Caster 14 MP. Compared to lower levels Elite +1 MP, Ultra Elite +2 MP, Champion +3MP.

20. Enchanted Roads
My favourite topic. Different roads on Arcanus and Myrror was a bad design from the beginning. I would prefer Dwarven engineers building enchanted roads on both planes or all roads from map generation on both planes being enchanted but not possible to build with engineers.

21. Addition of race specific buildings only one (or very few) races can build
I tried to find some examples for  buildings and sorted them roughly by benefits. Some are more of a Wonder of the World (W) that would better only appear once per race (14) and game.
 
City growth rate
Aqueduct + 100 population per turn

Less Rebels
Brewery  1 rebel less
Theatre/ Amphitheater 1 rebel less
Dungeon/ Prison  1 rebel less

Food
Bakery +3 food
Fishing port + 1 food from ocean tile

Production
Water/Wind Mill + 12 production
Guild Hall + 18 production

Trade/Gold
Caravansary 
Bazaar

Power
Altar of Fire (W) + 1 power from every of the wizards volcanoes
Sacrificial Altar – somewhat similar to Dark Rituals
Palace + 10 power
The White Tree (W) + 100 power
Golden Hall (W) + 100 power

Research, Healing of units
Monastery + 6 research, heals units in the City 
Academy + 24  research
Giant Telescope (W) + 100  research
 
City Defence
Castle – equips City Walls with Catapults exceeding the 9 units limit
Citadel
Tunnels – grants Merging to all the City-defending units 
 
Scouting
The Eye from LOTR (W) shows all units in a selected map area maybe including invisible ones and their stats one time per turn 
 
Military units
Fighting Pit +1 EP for each unit in the City per turn
Fighting Pit (W) +1 EP for every unit per turn
 
Unit Movement speed
Lighthouse (W) +1 movement for ships 
 
Others
Town Hall
Garden
Monument
Statue

22. Peace Treaty could be visible on the diplomacy screen and/or a notification could be shown to the player when it ends
Peace Treaties visible on the diplomacy screen would be nice. Instead of the number of turns remaining, right-clicking could simply tell the date when it was signed.

23. Scaling research costs
Same here as in 14. Spell of Mastery cost. How is it with casting costs for spells that are not directly related with troops?

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
Agreed. There should be more opportunities for bribery in diplomacy. Having a Peace Treaty after a broken Alliance also sounds reasonable.

[Seravy]

Dispelling the enchantment could disable unit production, while the building stays there.

This allows Sorcery players to prevent opponents from building high tier units. I don't think this enchantment should be possible to dispel, as it gives Sorcery an unintended advantage.

a. This give the leading player a major advantage over others, which is unintended.
b. This doesn't actually restrict when the units can be built. The only reason they are being delayed is because they are gamebreaking when built before ~1405-1406. It also make the game more terrain (=luck) dependent which is not good.
c. has both the problems from a and b.

but at the number of rebels in the City and maybe Diplomacy.

Razing increasing unrest globally would make it never worth using, but a diplomacy penalty could work.
However, razing is, by definition, a fairly bad strategy as you're giving up long term resources in exchange for having less territory you have to defend - but that's only temporal as eventually other players will push settlers there and then you have to start over conquering the area. I don't think there is any need to punish razing cities as it's usually not beneficial to do so anyway.
(The old raze and move to the next city with a doomstack strategy will no longer work because razing will take time. Beyond that, razing was only useful in the early game if you needed to reposition a city or change its race)

Will it be possible to select Combat and Overland Skill separately on the Magic screen?

No, I don't plan to split that up at this time.

Wouldn't it be a similar result if both wizards research their spells and then trade?

The idea behind this is that you might get spells the AI doesn't want to trade, but you have to commit resources ahead of time and there is the risk of sharing spells you prefer to keep with the AI.
So it's an option to take the additional risk of both you and your enemy having more spells without knowing which spells they will be.
Maybe it wasn't a very good idea?

As zitro1987 wrote earlier, it would make sense to be able to switch research from Spell of Mastery to something else.

Switching research is already implemented, for all spells, not just Spell of Mastery.

[namad]

I do think it's a good idea to make the 1406 limit a spell, but I absolutely agree it should be undispelable, or even something like plane shift, where once it's cast once it unlocks shadow demons planar movement skill. It could be a special spell type, so that retorts which make global enchantments, or any spell of any sort more likely to appear sooner or cost less don't accidentally interact with it in anyway. No accidentally divine ordering for it.

Another good thing about making it a spell, is that you could do something like make it the first rare spell (Or 2nd or 3rd), then only let rare spells show up after year 1406, then scale the year by the mapsize, or add a new setting that scales research costs which could scale the year in which rare spells unlock. etc etc. I think you want it to be much more flexible than it is in CoM 1, but that flexibility should exist only for the game designer and game settings setup. Not for the wizards strategies or gameplay. Aka, a good way to make sure 1406 accurately reflects what's fair for various mapsizes and opponent counts and such.

[massone]

18. Divine Order
Divine Order should become a rare spell. Multiple copies from different players could be cumulative with a 20% effect.

On Divine Order, why? The benefit it provides is nowhere near the level of a Rare spell, even on the first casting. Because it applies globally, all players benefit, and the other Realms have a lot of powerful enchantments too. Sorcery, in particular, has more city and unit enchantments even more powerful than Life's, especially starting from the Rare tier. A mono-life wizard would actually give the Sorcery wizard a bigger advantage than they gain by that point (because Life's big Very Rares are all Globals + the one ultimate Summon), and only 1 city enchantment Consecration which is nowhere near as good as Spell Ward. They also have the strongest Rare Unit Enchantment and City Enchantment respectively, Magic Immunity and Uranus' Blessing. Not to mention Resist Magic, Guardian Wind, Focus Magic, Flight, Spell Lock, Wind Walking, and even Confusion, Vertigo, and Mind Storm, count as unit enchantments (Stasis doesn't...but that's probably a bug).

Nature also has 4 very powerful Rare enchantments. Even Death and Chaos have some strong enchantments.

In fact, most of their CURSES count as enchantments for Divine Order, so Death benefits a great deal...more than they lose, even. At Uncommon, 5 out of 10 spells get discounted, and at Rare, 8 out of 10 get discounted cost. Compare that to only 6 out of 10 for Life Uncommons (incl. DO itself), and only 5 out of 10 for Rares too (which somehow include Incarnation even though it's a summon).

Hell, I have seen Chaos Wizards with Call the Void, after stacking with 40-50% casting cost of the higher difficulty AIs, become able to spam Call the Void every turn even at 200 casting skill with skill left over for other spells, so it can't even be Spell Blasted.

If there is a shift to Rare, it needs to penalize Unit/Town curses instead of discounting them, and many other adjustments need to be made in regards to making sure it's not a "You Win" button for Sorcery.

Switching research is already implemented, for all spells, not just Spell of Mastery.

Is that in the current game, or you mean it's implemented for your current build of COM 2? I've never figured out how to switch research.

[Seravy]

On Divine Order, why?

Because it was intended to be a game modifying global spell that isn't always in effect.
Some games, no one has it, other games, only 1 person has it, some games, 3-4 people have it. So there is variety and it doesn't push the balance too heavily in one direction.

At uncommon with 13 wizards, every game it will appear 3-4 times at least.
At rare however, it's both less likely to be part of the spellbook for any specific wizard, and less likely that wizard is still in in the game at that time. Games where several Life wizards survive to the late game and have (or trade to each other) the spell will still be a thing, but it won't happen too often.

Basically, at rare, the difference in chance of the spell showing up between games with 3 or 12 wizards isn't as great as it would be at uncommon.

Is that in the current game, or you mean it's implemented for your current build of COM 2? I

CoM 2.

[massone]

On Divine Order, why?

Because it was intended to be a game modifying global spell that isn't always in effect.
Some games, no one has it, other games, only 1 person has it, some games, 3-4 people have it. So there is variety and it doesn't push the balance too heavily in one direction.

At uncommon with 13 wizards, every game it will appear 3-4 times at least.
At rare however, it's both less likely to be part of the spellbook for any specific wizard, and less likely that wizard is still in in the game at that time. Games where several Life wizards survive to the late game and have (or trade to each other) the spell will still be a thing, but it won't happen too often.

Basically, at rare, the difference in chance of the spell showing up between games with 3 or 12 wizards isn't as great as it would be at uncommon.

That makes sense, but in that case, as I said above, if moved to Rare major balance changes need to be made, or the spell just removed entirely for something else. It simply doesn't work at Rare tier for Life, as by then, you'd probably want to turn it off if there are any Sorcery or Death Wizards around (or even Life. Why pay maintenance on something that benefits someone else as much as it benefits you? Esp. if the multiple copy stacking effect was reduced.