I agree the current Crack's Call is less than ideal but I'm not seeing how the spell could prevent regeneration, item recovery and resurrection otherwise. This isn't just a matter for heroes, but as you say, Lizards or other regen units as well. If the damage isn't irrecoverable then any hero that gets Crack's Called then hit by a fire bolt is basically still alive, same for any lizard that gets CCd then fires on by the enemy magicians.
Quote:- Even with an overland casting skill of >240, I can't raise supernatural units as undead. You can try it on the above file, Ravashack is adjacent to a tower with djinn, you can use vertigo / web to tie one down and kill it with an iron skin enhanced zombie. Even if the zombie makes the kill alone, the djinn won't raise.
When splitting overland and combat skill, this one was also changed. Apparently, the current requirement is 200 Base casting skill.
Basically, neither the combat, nor the overland skill buildings help with it.
Quote:2020-09-17
-Added Darkest Hour global enchantment image (Slingers)
-Fixed bug : AI cannot cast new spells Vampire, Phoenix, Discipline, Philosopher's Stone, Abundance, Disillusion, all new global enchantments
-Added logging of AI marking cities as "need to summon", and summoning into them
-Added logging of AI overland spell priorities within categories that contain many spells.
-The AI now considers all units as invalid targets for Mislead if the spell is already in effect on any possible target.
-Penalty icons (like lost hit points) are now darker grey.
-Added missing feature : Tower appears in combat even if it was already cleared from monsters
-Fixed neutral banishment text
-Fixed bug : AI war declaration request random chance has no effect, request appears every turn
-The AI will send a military strength based Wizard's Pact offer only half as often
-Chance for the AI to send a "Demand war declaration" request is now 1/8.
-The AI will not send a "Demand war declaration" if the player has an ongoing Peace Treaty with the target. (as the player cannot make the AI break a peace treaty either)
-Added logging of AI spell trades with other AIs
-Fixed bug : one of the hp bars in combat uses wrong hp and maxhp values.
-Fixed bug : Crash when the AI tries to cast enchant item/create artifact : item is generated only on spell resolution instead of at the time of starting it making its casting cost calculation to fail.
-Fixed bug : Automatic combat Poison Resistance stat wsn't capped at 11 (full immunity).
-Fixed bug : Automatic combat wizard spell damage only applies on turn 1
-Fixed bug : It's possible to spend more mana in automatic combat than available combat casting skill
-Fixed bug : Call the Wild generates monster stacks of race 0-2 instead of realm 0-2.
-Fixed bug : Regeneration does not remove irrecoverable damage after combat from surviving units.
-In automatic combat, the faster army only gets at most 1 turn of melee hits on the other army before it is also allowed to do melee attacks instead of 1 per speed difference.
-Fixed bug : AI does not progress their overland spellcasting whle Banished (Spell of Return)
-Fortress presence now adds 25 to direct damage effect instead of 10
-Fixed bug : Replaced and destroyed building status isn't updated until the city finished its current production when it shoudl happena t the end of each turn BEFORE progressing production.
-Added logging of building status refreshing (destroyed, or replaced)
-Wand and Staff items now have a base cost of 50
-Plate Mails require a budget of 500 or more to be randomly generated
(the above two changes should be enough to guarantee no item with zero powers can be generated - as minimal possible budget for items is 300.)
-Fixed bug : Call the Wild also affects the owner's own units if they were units raised as undead from a lair.
-Fixed bug : Targeting menu for Animate Dead does not list enemy units even though they are valid targets.
-Fixed bug : Animate Dead sets Animated, Undead and Owner on the wrong unit
-When the AI has fewer than 8 units in their fortress, they will mark it as a "summoning required" city.
Quote:2020-09-18
-Added Blazing Eyes global enchantment image (Slingers)
-Added combat icon for Bloodsucker ability
-Added combat icon for Raise Dead Spell ability
-When a rampaging monster (or call the wild) stack spawns from a lair or node within 4 tiles of distance from the human player's nearest city, it'll be added to the monthly report, unless the player has Call the Wild in effect.
-Added Philosopher's Stone city view animation
-Fixed bug : AI Dispel Magic targeting doesn't check for target validity, and can target dead or out-of-combat units.
Bugs:
- Doom bolt, at least the version cast by warlocks, is only doing 8-9 damage sometimes. This seems to usually happen with 4+ figure units, where it sometimes fails to do partial damage to individuals in multi-figure units. You can test it over the end turn battle with neutrals: https://ufile.io/qftuws60
- When you request an AI wizard to declare war on an enemy wizard, there's a button that says "More...". This button doesn't work. Can check with above file.
- Also, it includes wizards in the list who have been destroyed.
- Undead great lizards do not regenerate during combat, only after combat.
- When auto combat is on, your flying ranged units will sometimes move instead of using their ranged attack. What's worse is, if there's an enemy in movement range, they'll move to it and perform a melee attack. You can test it with this file, I've got a stack of shadow demons and pegasai next to a node with one great wyrm: https://ufile.io/65wl2kl4
- Turning off "More Random Items" doesn't seem to be working, I turned it off and still got weird treasure that I doubt someone actually made, like an item with both merging and teleportation on it. You can try destroying the tower that Jaer is beside to see the treasure results: https://ufile.io/jsdlypjb
- You can click on enchantments shown on the info screen of an enemy wizard's city to cancel it like you would your own. Sometimes this causes an exception, but it works anyway.
Notes:
- I've noticed that I rarely get granted a spell of the type belonging to the node / monsters I'm fighting. For example, if I have Sorcery books and fight in a Sorcery node, it'll give me a Nature spell. I just tried this 5 times in a row, actually, and got a Nature spell all 5 times. I've got Sorcery books and only one or two Common level Sorcery spells, I think, so that can't be the problem. It would feel a lot better if the chance is higher to get a spell of the corresponding type. Here's the save to check out, in case it's a bug: https://ufile.io/849dlg7q
- AI shamans / priests don't use their heal spell every time a unit on their side is at low health. Maybe because they have a higher priority to damage a vulnerable unit on the other side? I think their priority to heal their own side should be max, if it's not already, otherwise you get weird results like the healer ignoring that their side's lynchpin unit is damaged. I've also seen them choosing to run away rather than heal, even when they're already cornered.
- Neutral dark elf apprentices need a built-in spell to use, I think they don't have anything to cast currently. How about fairy dust and / or fire bolt?
- Linking towers don't yet feel worthwhile to me, mainly because by the time I'm rich enough to afford one, 1500 sp is not that much. I do buy amplifying towers earlier on, but overland skill is simply more valuable than battle skill, unless you're a channeler (which is a rare build). I'd like the building more if it had a secondary effect. For instance, reducing my battle casting cost slightly in the region around the town, e.g. by 0.3x, so what would normally be 3.0x becomes 2.7x; that way you'd be a stronger caster in your strongly held regions, weaker elsewhere. As is, I'm skipping the tower in most towns and just producing trade goods.
Quote: When auto combat is on, your flying ranged units will sometimes move instead of using their ranged attack. What's worse is, if there's an enemy in movement range, they'll move to it and perform a melee attack. You can test it with this file, I've got a stack of shadow demons and pegasai next to a node with one great wyrm:
Spells in nodes are entirely random. Only books are affected by the node.
Quote:AI shamans / priests don't use their heal spell every time a unit on their side is at low health. Maybe because they have a higher priority to damage a vulnerable unit on the other side? I think their priority to heal their own side should be max, if it's not already, otherwise you get weird results like the healer ignoring that their side's lynchpin unit is damaged. I've also seen them choosing to run away rather than heal, even when they're already cornered.
As you suspect, spellcasting in general, compares the priority of casting the spell to the priority of targeting an enemy with a melee or ranged attack and picks the highest of the three. Healing spells and other spellabilities use this system, they aren't specialcased to "always use" like in CoM I where they basically counted as a special action not a spellcasting (and due to that even ignored counter magic when cast by the AI)
I will have to see in practice how this works then decide if it's necessary to override the default priority, but consider that overriding it will mean a hero with a staff that has "Healing x4" will be unable to do anything else but cast that spell for the first 4 turns of combat, even if they have an attack strength of 50.
Quote:- Neutral dark elf apprentices need a built-in spell to use, I think they don't have anything to cast currently. How about fairy dust and / or fire bolt?
Good idea although if we give that to the unit it probably means non-neutrals should also have it.
They have Fireball though so if they do gain enough levels they can cast that. Maybe it makes sense for an apprentice to not be able to cast spells without leveling up first.
Am i the only one who thinks that CoM2 graphics is bad even compared to a 25 years old game? Game balance is important but may be it would be better to focus a bit on improving graphics? New forest tiles, new mountains, hills, nodes, everything that is not an exact copy of an old game looks worse to me... just an impression.
(September 18th, 2020, 08:23)Sapher Wrote: Am i the only one who thinks that CoM2 graphics is bad even compared to a 25 years old game? Game balance is important but may be it would be better to focus a bit on improving graphics? New forest tiles, new mountains, hills, nodes, everything that is not an exact copy of an old game looks worse to me... just an impression.
I'm not satisfied with most of the combat terrain either but I haven't had a chance to worry about that while I had to fix 10-20 bugs daily but I will get to it eventually.
(also, while this is my personal opinion, Master of Magic had about the best graphics I can remember of old DOS games using that resolution. Making something better, or even something equally good will be a challenge.)
(September 18th, 2020, 08:23)Sapher Wrote: Am i the only one who thinks that CoM2 graphics is bad even compared to a 25 years old game? ... New forest tiles, new mountains, hills, nodes, everything that is not an exact copy of an old game looks worse to me... just an impression.
The current overland map looks a little too shiny. Maybe it has too much contrast and brightness? I was just remembering that one day I got a colorful Simpsons chess set as a gift! The unit enchantment auras aren't that good yet. One of the red units in the screenshot has a flame blade. I just found a graphical feature that is missing: when you right-click a unit in the overland map window, the stats won't zoom in like vanilla does.
Shiny?
I literally used the exact same hex colors as the original game for grasslands, ocean and forest pixels so I'm not entirely sure what's wrong, I need more details. Like, which tile, grasslands, or water, etc? On Arcanus or Myrror? For things like grasslands that is made from several pixel colors, is maybe the ratio of pixels wrong?
I guess grasslands are the most likely culprit (as pretty much everything is placed on top of grasslands, even hills, mountains, swamps) so here is a comparison :
The most obvious difference is mine uses a lot of $247524 color while in CoM I the dominating one seems to be the $3C5D3C one.
So assuming we do like the original colors more, swapping these two could help. (What does everyone else think? Is the brighter or paler grassland better?)
I'll add the enchantment auras to my todo list. They definitely aren't as good as the original and aren't using the original pixel colors.
I intentionally skipped the "zooming" and "screen fading" animations because even if they only take 0.5 seconds, you see them thousands of times while playing the game which does add up to a considerable amount of wasted time. If anything, the issue with this game is being too long. Most people even turn combat animations off and those are way more meaningful.
I would like to have the page flipping animation on the spellbooks but honestly I have no idea how to do it. If you look closely, in the original game, the text of the pages is distorted to look like it's on the page being flipped so I would probably need to analyze the original game's code to figure out how that effect is generated. So that's something to leave for last.
