Caster of Magic II Game balance brainstorming.

[Seravy]

Here is a detailed post about how automatic combat spells work : https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...?tid=10162

I already found and fixed a few problems - basically several categories of spells were weaker than they would be in normal combat - but there is much more to discuss than that even after fixing the numbers.

[Seravy]

Ok, so now today's update added a part of code to determine which AI wizards should disappear from the game.
However despite all my efforts to improve AI performance, the stronger AI players are still unable to make that happen, even though they are now declaring war, etc.

It's not impossible that there is still some continent selection or other bug that prevents it but after I saw the garrisons, I don't think so.

The problem is there isn't really anything the AI can do to beat a fortress with things like 8 Shadow Demons or 8 Chimeras or Gorgons or Efreet or Storm Giants. It's extremely unlikely for a wizard to not even reach a decent uncommon summoning spell, so these uncrackable fortresses are inevitable. In fact these might even cause trouble to human players (which is great) but the AI is way more affected because they can't use combat spells to eliminate units one at a time, taking advantage of weaknesses, can't coordinate and launch multiple attack and can't even build the specific stack to counter the garrisons intentionally. It doesn't matter if Shadow Demons are weak to Cockatrices that have Elemental Armor, the AI has less than minimal chance to own such a stack and have that stack actually go to that continent instead of fighting other targets.

So possible solutions :

Solution 1.
The weak wizard can surrender.
I don't like this one because it's not a game mechanic in the game's diplomacy system. AI's can't surrender to the human player, and the human player, well obviously they have no use for another "yes, I want to lose the game" button either.
It also comes with the problem that the other wizard shouldn't get the summoned creatures as they are not in their realm and not undead either (we really don't want to give a Life wizard a stack of 9 invisible storm giants for example) but if we remove them then the other wizard ends up getting an empty, undefended city (as the fortress always has only summoned units and heroes which we also can't transfer between players).

Solution 2.
The weak wizard can commit suicide.
Remove their garrision units, pretend they can't afford maintenance, etc.
This is definitely a horrible solution that at best smells like a bug, but at worst if breaks immersion a lot because, well, people don't normally lose wars and die on purpose.

Solution 3.
There could be some sort of an automatic combat modifier.
For example, for the elimination target wizards, battles in their fortresses could halve all attack and hit point stats on the army.
The problem with that is : it's cheating.
Fortunately, it's not unreasonable cheating, and can be justified.
Automatic combat doesn't simulate most of the tactics you actually NEED to use to crack a fortress city.
This includes but isn't limited to using spells that deal irrecoverable damage and using multiple waves of attacks, or killing the heroes that buff the rest of the army first. Removing the Soul Linker from the Shadow Demon army actually does reduce their damage dealing and defensive capacity by a good 25-50% and that's the obvious thing to do in normal combat.
Automatic combat has none of this. So fairness might not be an issue because automatic combat isn't fair in the first place.


Where problems start is
-We don't know if this is even enough to solve the problem. (but this only depends on the amount of the modifier so it's not a real problem unless the necessary modifier is too high)
-Hard to explain why this only applies to the fortress city and not to that city with 9 magicians or 7 great lizards next to it (and in worst case that city might even survive and not get eliminated)
-There is no guarantee the fortress always has this sort of defending army. It might actually have something weak in which case the reduction will be really obvious and stand out as a bug if it doesn't do so already.
-It's the exact opposite of how the game normally works. (defender gets fortress lightning)
-It's not transparent to the human player. If they play by Automatic Combat, they'll beat one wizard and lose to another with the exact same units in their fortress, only because one is "marked to lose" but the other isn't. The research and casting skill difference will often be an adequate excuse for that but it's also entirely possible for two equally powerful wizards to have only one of them marked to be eliminated.
(-we don't even have an automatic combat effect for several defensive city enchantments yet, which makes the fortress even more invincible if implemented, requiring an even larger modifier)

Solution 4.
Your idea here??? I don't have anything else right now.

PS : did anyone test if they can beat AI fortresses with reasonable effort using automatic combat? The issue might not be only limited to AI, it's possible that it's more generic - the more accurate automatic combat might make conquering well defended cities too hard in general.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

If the weak AI is attacked by a stack with a high enough power, you could say that the weak wizard is desperate enough to try a powerful spell he's never tried before, resulting in a magical blast that wipes out the wizard. Whether what remains is still a city (can grow) or a ruin (corrupted tiles?) is a matter what works out to be the most interesting/satisfying/fun. Either way, the defender's garrison could end up as wandering monsters, hopefully not all remaining in one stack. They, and maybe additional monsters, could show up in the area randomly in later turns.

I think the attacking army shouldn't be damaged much if any, in the blast. If you're not getting a major city from it, it would be expensive for just removing an annoyance. However, if successfully removing the wizard provides significant value (spells, items, etc) then some damage is appropriate. If you go with the city being destroyed, turning into a node from the magical tear in the world might be appropriate.

[jhsidi]

Solution 4 possible idea: a mini version of the Spell of Mastery, intended for overpowering and destroying individual, weak wizards.

So basically, it's a spell that wizard A (and maybe B, C, D...) casts to target wizard E. If the spell is completed, then the targeted wizard is weakened or eliminated.

... actually a spell doesn't work that well, because this isn't a Spell of Mastery situation: with the SoM the intent is to tie up the player's spellcasting so they can't anymore. That's not worthwhile for eliminating a specific wizard. So maybe the spell could initiate an event that takes a while to play out, but is not a spell.

Perhaps it could center on a stack outside the wizard's fortress. If the targeted wizard destroys that stack or captures that point, then the event is cancelled.

Here's what I'm trying to get at -- in Master of Magic / CoM, there is no "siege" mechanic for taking particularly intimidating fortresses. But a siege is really what we're talking about: the ruler has retreated to their fortress and needs to be rooted out. It's best if that process takes place over more than one turn.

[Seravy]

So something like this?

Solution 4

Domination
Arcane Rare - Instant
Cost 1500 MP, 4000 RP
Target wizard with no more than 33% of your spell power loses their ability to use magic and becomes defeated. All of their cities turn neutral and all of their spells dissipate.
The target must be selected at the time you start casting the spell.

That would work very well except I definitely don't want to give this option to the human player.
Unlike the AI, the human player can defeat the fortress (unless Automatic Combat option was on, maybe even then, we need to test that) and it's definitely a critical part of the game where a lot of less experienced players fail by underestimating the threat and wasting too many good armies.

(Edit : one more reason why fortresses are hard for the AI is flight. In normal combat casting flight or web inside the battle among others is a solution but in automatic combat, flying/breath/thrown/ranged abilities need to be on the unit before attacking otherwise they won't be able to hurt flying enemies.)

[Seravy]

Oh, one more thing that can be added to the list of spells that cause a balance issue if there are too many wizards : Call the Wild.
Five people casting that means 5 times as many monster stacks coming.
Fortunately that one solves itself because the monsters will eventually eliminate the weak wizards...assuming there are any nodes in their territory.

[Anskiy]

I remember having a lot of trouble beating down a wizard fortress of someone who was nearly defeated on Normal. She was running a Death + Chaos setup, and her Shadow Demons backed up by caster heroes gave a lot of trouble. I eventually broke through by summoning Demons a lot and nuking enough of the garrison with Gate of Hades. Fortresses are generally hard nuts even for severely weakened wizards, unless you have units or spells that negate their defenses. I suspect this problem will get more pronounced with multiple wizards in play.

[jhsidi]

Why couldn't Domination be available to the player? Yes, the player "can" break the wizard's fortress. However...

It's not fun. Nine times out of ten I'll just sign a peace treaty with a wizard once it's down to one or two cities.

Honestly, it hasn't been particularly fun to assault wizard fortresses since the auto lightning bolt was added. As a player, I don't have tons of units to throw away; or I could, but I have to basically stop what I'm doing for multiple turns and just build up an assault force to take this fortress I don't care about. With no benefit to doing it. It's rare that I'd find any useful spells in the ruins and other than that, it's just another city, no different from any other.

Oh, by the way, once I defeat the city I get enraged messages from half the other wizards as my diplomatic relationships with them drop. So yeah, I'm actually penalized for eliminating a wizard.

I hadn't really thought about it until this topic came up. But now that I am thinking about it -- with so many wizards in the game, and elimination needing to happen multiple times, I feel like a decent reward for eliminations could really benefit the game. The AI wizards can keep their secret bonuses for defeating other wizards, and the player can race them to do so.

[Seravy]

Well you get that wizard's best city and one (or two) of their spells. Oh and ALL their items from all their heroes.
I really can't think of anything more that could be the reward for it.
(oh and you also get all of their remaining gold and mana as far as I remember though that might have been removed since then. I only remember simply banishing them no longer gives you half their mana.)

Diplomacy is a good point though. You get a bonus on your diplomacy relations with people who were at war with the wizard (but get a penalty from their allies, neutrals don't care either way) so if most AIs will declare war on "elimination mark" players that's a massive abuse potential in diplomacy. Crack the fortress first and you get a +40 with (almost) everyone. On the other hand, this "elimination mark" and hidden bonus might result in the AI kill-stealing the player a lot. If you win the war then naturally the other wizard will be the weakest in play soon enough and before you can deal the finishing blow which likely requires preparation, everyone else declares war and whoever has nearby armies gets the kill.

(in theory, but in practice even with the hidden bonus the AI failed to eliminate more than 1-2 people until 1416. Afterwards things likely accelerate (especially with Myrran wizards getting access to the plane) and that might be good enough to remove the desired 6-7 players before very rares are commonplace which is okay even if slightly later than ideal.)

Also, it's most difficult to beat enemy fortresses around uncommon tier creatures, and I too often don't bother with it. The problem is these creatures are good at defending cities, and at that time it's not possible to have a relevant advantage in research (a rare creature) or enough skill to kill things that way while the reward is not interesting (I only get an uncommon spell and the AI's heroes don't have good items yet, plus cities still have time to grow so I don't need to try conquering the more developed one) so the problem is the rewards are simply the worst at the exact same time the difficulty is the highest.
(in particular, Shadow Demons, Prayer, Water Elementals, Counter Magic, Flight, Mana Leak, Wall of Shadows, Chimeras, Great Lizards, all of these are things that make conquering a fortress a lot more difficult and very few things can counter them at uncommon. Even Unicorns are a problem, or just Life in general due to all the buffs. A Shadow Demon fortress in particular is extremely hard to beat even with good spells and strategy but many others are almost as bad.)

[jhsidi]

OK, so evidently there are some problems here because the current game doesn't line up with the benefits you're listing out.

Well you get that wizard's best city 

Not really. I get a city on whatever settlement slot they started in, which is often mediocre at best. I see a lot of capitol city plots with 10-12 max pop and no particularly worthwhile bonuses. Oh, and buildings? They're all gone. I'm already on a difficulty above normal, so taking a city already destroys a lot of stuff. On top of that, it was a wizard fortress battle, which means I probably had to take troops into the city, which destroys even more buildings and kills a bunch of pop.

Summary: no, the city is not a reward.

and one (or two) of their spells.

Very rare. 1) you may not share any schools of magic with them. 2) even if you do, we're talking about a weak wizard here, who's behind on research. The only spells I've gotten the entire time playing CoM2 so far are commons that I didn't care about or even really want.

This ties into trading, though: I've traded for all the stuff I really wanted. So maybe it'll be better once you can lock down trading somewhat.

Also, it occurs to me there may be some bug lurking here. I've seen wizards who around 1510 are still lacking very basic spells. Maybe certain personality types just never get any research points?

Oh and ALL their items from all their heroes.

Which is usually no items. I'm rarely seeing enemy AI heroes with items in CoM2.

So basically I get: a terrible, burnt down city; either no spells or useless spells; and no items.