Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Seravy]

I think this we should have such detailed priorities.
We want the spell to feel like it affects the entire world at once, so if it only converts your swamps and deserts first, then moves to other player's territory afterwards that's not good.
So I think it should be a random tile. We can exclude Grasslands on the caster's territory to keep Change Terrain useful.
Converting mountains is actually beneficial if you have Gaea's Blessing on your city (7->9% production, 0->3% food.), more importantly we definitely want the spell to overwrite volcanoes and volcanoes are a type of mountain so it would make no sense to exclude mountains.
Allowing Tundra would make the spell more useful on Frozen climate although it would help all players equally. Disallowing Tundra retains the original functionality of "need Chaos to terraform Tundra tiles".

I already excluded volcanoes owned by the caster, only volcanoes of other players are affected.

[Seravy]

Diplomacy penalties :
I removed it from Eternal Night as it no longer has an economy effect.
I've added the same penalty EN used to have to Darkest Hour.
The other new globals have no diplomacy penalty.

[Seravy]

I realized Wind Mastery and King of the Underworld both suffer from a critical flaw.
Dispel them and all the units the owner had drowns in sea instantly.
Is there anything we can do about that?

The only thing I could think of is making them undispellable but they are a pretty large advantage in combat so that's not ideal.
Pushing the units on the sea to the nearest shore is technically possible but makes units "warp" large distances so I don't like that at all.

(Yes, this is no different from casting dispelling wave on a stack enchanted by Flight but this is a global enchantment so the AI will likely have a significant portion of their army on water so it's not only killing one stack of units but possibly hundreds.)

...I guess adding "when dispelled, the owner's units on sea keep the noncoroporeal/flying status until the next time they enter a land tile" can work but feels very forced.

[roarmalf]

I realized Wind Mastery and King of the Underworld both suffer from a critical flaw.
Dispel them and all the units the owner had drowns in sea instantly.
Is there anything we can do about that?

That's a significant problem...

I would say let the overland movement type effects of the enchantment linger a few turns so that units have a chance to avoid drowning, but I don't know if that works for the AI. Would they be able to get units to safety/recast the spell semi-intelligently? At least with wind mastery you could summon floating islands if you needed to. Death is significantly more limited.

I don't see another realistic way to deal with it other than preventing dispelling which I don't love.

[Seravy]

Would they be able to get units to safety/recast the spell semi-intelligently?

I can force the units to head to the nearest unoccupied land tile but we need to insert a new AI movement phase for it. Of course if the nearest land is too far to reach, the units die anyway. Compared to that "keep the effect until the next time the unit walks onto land" is more elegant and doesn't require the player to keep track of how many turns it has been since losing the enchantment. The AI will move towards a land tile eventually anyway.

Forced recasting of the spell would be a bad solution as it's effectively the same as the enchantment being undispellable except tricking the player into believing they can. It also comes with unwanted side effects like interaction with Spell Blast.

This btw is also an issue for AI doomstacks made of very rare creatures that were buffed by water walking, but it's not as bad because only Nature very rares don't fly and you need to actually see and target the stack on the water tile.
What is a problem is the inconsistency, as the globals would allow the units to survive while the other spells (wind walking etc) would not. It's also unprecedented in the game for a spell to do something after it was already dispelled.

[Slingers]

I have no problem with "cannot be dispelled" on Ruler of Heaven. It can always be Spell Blasted.

How did you mean “always”?  Atm Spell Blast is a rare Sorcery spell.

I realized Wind Mastery and King of the Underworld both suffer from a critical flaw.
Dispel them and all the units the owner had drowns in sea instantly.
Is there anything we can do about that?

The only thing I could think of is making them undispellable but ...

I would expect Flight and Wraith Form to stay on these units as enchantments with an upkeep. Now it´s 2mp per unit per turn. Player or AI might choose to cancel some.

[Seravy]

I would expect Flight and Wraith Form to stay on these units as enchantments with an upkeep. Now it´s 2mp per unit per turn. Player or AI might choose to cancel some.

It has these problems :

1. Holy Arms doesn't work that way, so inconsistency.
2. While dispelling Ruler of Underworld is still useful (your units can piece weapon immunity again), dispelling Wind Mastery becomes useless (the units still fly, even in combat, why bother?).
3. The AI isn't smart at cancelling enchantments to save on maintenance and only does that in emergencies when income<maintenance but then cancels everything on each unit until there is enough mana. So it'll be either stuck with all the enchantments or lose other unit buffs as well.

If we want this kind of solution, the spells should grant a different version of the buffs instead like

"Hovering"
Unit enchantment, 0 maintenance
A leftover effect of dispelled global enchantments. This unit has flying movement on the overland map as long as it stays on an ocean tile, but the effect ceases as soon as they enter land.

Maintenance could be more than 0 because all the units not on sea tiles will have the effect instantly disappear so it's only paid on those few dozens or hundreds (or thousands) of units actually standing on a sea tile and only as long as they stay there, but 0 is the safest, especially because the effect is no better than water walking which costs 0.
It still has an unwanted side effect though, the unit will be able to move through land tiles without losing flight as long as it doesn't stop on them but there might be a way to solve that by forcing the path to terminate on the first land tile the same way it does if movement runs out before the next tile.

[Slingers]

1. Holy Arms doesn't work that way, so inconsistency.

Holy Weapon has no upkeep, so dispelling Holy Arms and keeping the unit enchantment would not be the same as it would not cause economic problems.

2. ... dispelling Wind Mastery becomes useless (the units still fly, even in combat, why bother?).

The units are still fying, but +1 movement slower. The new units do not fly automatically.
Removing Wraith Form and Flight after dispelling the Globals creates a lot of units that got stuck somewhere. I would think it is more difficult to organize, than removing some unit enchantments. But if the AI can´t get any smarter atm …
Alternative thought:
Only the units on water tiles that would otherwise drown keep Wraith Form/Flight as a permanent unit enchantment with upkeep. Does anybody remember how to play “Fire, Water, Storm” ? So yeah: Water ! Or would that be cheating?
Hovering a bit would be nice too, but it´s not easy to program I think and units could still get stuck.

[Seravy]

Hovering a bit would be nice too, but it´s not easy to program I think and units could still get stuck.

It's not that hard to program at least compared to making the AI smarter.
Units getting stuck on land after reaching any is not a problem - recasting the enchantment fixes it, as does sending a ship to pick them up.

[Seravy]

Mostly finished adding the new spells, these are the still undecided stuff on my list :

1. Dispelling Wind Mastery and Ruler of Underworld.
(we probably don't have a better solution than adding hovering for these?)
2. Magic Vortex, in the original it wasn't allowed to turn more than 90 degrees after each tile of movement. Do we want this restriction added?
3. Mystic Surge, should it add the new unit buffs? (Discipline probably yes, what about Destiny? Remember, Mystic Surge ignores targeting restrictions so this could double the stats of a summoned creature.)
4. Drain Power, do we keep the effect as is, or readjust the amount of MP drained for the new tier of rarity? If the latter, do we prefer the percentage or the constant component to be more relevant?
5. Uranus's Blessing, do are we happy with 180 casting cost, 5 maintenance, +11 power on the two buildings and +4 skill on the Amplifying Tower or do we want to change it?
6. AI Disjunction behavior in response to dispel resistance effects (see http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...?tid=10061)

That's all the remaining things on the list.