Caster of Magic II Spell System overhaul discussion

[Anskiy]

Don't see why it should do irrecoverable damage, it's already a big hit that ignores defenses entirely.

[Seravy]

That was discussed recently, it's a spell against heroes and heroes come back from the dead all the time otherwise.

[Anskiy]

it's a counter to Raise Dead? I suppose casters or priests could keep extending the hero's lifespan otherwise, though it's hard to recover from injuries without Life's Healing.

[Seravy]

Raise Dead, Resurrection, Regeneration, or putting the items on a new hero after it dies...

[jhsidi]

I'm trying out a Life run -- rare for me as I don't much like Life. It's going OK but there's one spell in particular that's nearly useless: Altar of Peace.

If you're playing Expert / Master / Lunatic you've got a relations malus, right? Out of 8 wizards I know, 6 have spontaneously declared war on my by 1505. The two that haven't are both at "Unease". It's partially luck of the roll, too: all other Life wizards in the game have multiple spellbooks in Death, Chaos, or both. And diplomacy in the game being what it is, my only lever to do anything about it is giving away spells.. a LOT of spells, to everyone including enemies. Which, fine, I can do that -- but doing so will erase the lead that Altar of Peace gives me in the first place.

Maybe it suits someone's playstyle? It just seems really awkward and unpleasant to use, for me.

Suggestion for a change: base it on rebels. Presence of any rebels, in any city, drastically reduces research. Satisfaction above full peace increases research. (Although there's no way to check how much you're above the peacefulness bar.)

[Seravy]

Altar of Peace is mainly intended for AI usage (they were weak at using Life at that time and probably still are) and non-conquest runs like combo with Aura of Majesty or Charismatic, etc.
It can occasionally be very good but it really depends on what opponents you roll and might not work so well in a high player count game (mainly because at least some your allies will eventually go to war with each other and force you to break some of the alliances, although if you take the side of the stronger and eliminate the weaker that solves that issue).
Relation itself isn't affected by difficulty, but many other diplomacy formulas are. For example you will get harsher penalties for owning too many cities, and you need to be at a higher relation to avoid a war declaration if all other conditions are identical. But as long as you manage to avoid those, you're good, your relation score is not affected by difficulty in any way.
Then again, avoiding to have equal army strength to any of 12 wizards instead of just 4 is a completely different kind of game, same for avoiding to have lower than a militarist, or not having a chaotic in the game. On the other hand even if 1-2 people declare war, it reduces your average less than it would in a 4 player game.
However one thing does work for you in a game with many players is the distance. Players too far away from you cannot declare war even if you would otherwise trigger the war declaration. Basically any player displayed on the historian as (name) instead of just their name isn't allowed to declare war, except as a result of escalated warnings but that would be your fault for making them angry.

[jhsidi]

OK.. but the war dec distance ban is affected by game size. I'm playing a small map, and a few turns on in this Life game, I now have 8 of 9 wizards at war with me. About 5 of those haven't made any effort to reach me, they just randomly declare war for no apparent reason and it wrecks my relations. This is a general trend in COM2 -- I don't know if it's because there's a malus on being at war with allies, but I can't think of any game I've had where even half the wizards had decent relations with me. "Unease" is about the best I can manage without love-bombing a specific wizard.

Regarding Altar of Peace, if the spell is just there for AI to use that's an explanation ... not a satisfying one, though. All spells should attempt to at least be good or useful -- and actually, almost all of them are. I can't think of any other uncommon besides Altar of Peace that causes me to roll my eyes and mutter "ugh, not that piece of junk" and load the game when I get it as lair treasure (which seems to inevitably happen when I pick 1 Life spellbook).

... yeah, I just looked at the entire list of uncommons. Every spell is good or great except Construct Catapult, which is still situationally decent. Altar of Peace just stands out as something I never want to get.

[Seravy]

Well, I have used Altar of Peace more than once and it was good, but it definitely is situational. I could say the same for Crack's Call or most summoning spells (if I already have one of the tier, I rarely have use for a second). Life still offers the lowest spell redundancy of all realms due to having minimal summoning spells and direct damage - it's most about buffs and those stack so no matter how many you get, none of them will be redundant.

A long term peace based game on a small map is bad regardless of this spell. Games on small maps aren't long enough and the territory per player isn't large enough to reach the endgame spells the peace strategy could use to win. In general map size affects which strategy is good or bad. Smaller maps make aggressive early conquest strategies work better while larger maps benefit long term strategies better.

If your relations are consistently bad that's because you are over-expanded. Smaller maps allow fewer cities before the AI considers it too many. The other possibility is your book choices. If you go heavy in the Good or the Evil alignment, the overall probabilities will shift towards people disliking you more.

For example if you have 10 Life then out of the 15 main wizard templates,

Life will like you a lot, you can easily score an alliance without much effort
Nature+Life will still like you quite a bit
Nature only will also start with a positive relation but not as high as the other two. It's still probably enough to get an easy early wizard's pact.
Sorcery+Life is about the same as pure Nature, there is an alignment difference but not that much and shared books help.
Life+Chaos and Life+Death will be around neutral. The 8-10 difference in alignment cancels out the 4-6 shared books.
Sorcery+Nature has no shared books the the alignment difference is not that high so it's about the same as the above two, you get near neutral.
Nature+Chaos and Nature+Death will dislike you - no shared books and the alignment difference is 8-10 so you get Unease here.
Pure Sorcery is the same as above.
Sorcery+Chaos and Sorcery+Death will dislike you even more - Alignment difference is another 4-6 higher and still no shared books. Might even drop below Unease here.
Finally, pure Chaos, pure Death and Death+Chaos will hate you with passion.

So overall 4 combinations get you a positive result, 3 gets neutral, 3 will dislike you somewhat and 5 will dislike you greatly.

If you instead had an alignment neutral set of books that have two realms, your odds of positive will be higher than negative because there will be much more chances to share reams and the worst alignment difference you can have is only half as much as if you were on the edge of the spectrum. Playing 1 realm is bad for diplomacy also because it reduces your chances to trade or tribute spells.

[massone]

For example if you have 10 Life then out of the 15 main wizard templates,

Life will like you a lot, you can easily score an alliance without much effort
Nature+Life will still like you quite a bit
Nature only will also start with a positive relation but not as high as the other two. It's still probably enough to get an easy early wizard's pact.
Sorcery+Life is about the same as pure Nature, there is an alignment difference but not that much and shared books help.
Life+Chaos and Life+Death will be around neutral. The 8-10 difference in alignment cancels out the 4-6 shared books.
Sorcery+Nature has no shared books the the alignment difference is not that high so it's about the same as the above two, you get near neutral.
Nature+Chaos and Nature+Death will dislike you - no shared books and the alignment difference is 8-10 so you get Unease here.
Pure Sorcery is the same as above.
Sorcery+Chaos and Sorcery+Death will dislike you even more - Alignment difference is another 4-6 higher and still no shared books. Might even drop below Unease here.
Finally, pure Chaos, pure Death and Death+Chaos will hate you with passion.

So overall 4 combinations get you a positive result, 3 gets neutral, 3 will dislike you somewhat and 5 will dislike you greatly.

This doesn't appear to be the case in the 3 games I've started on COM II recently. In my current game, using 5 Life + 4 Sorcery, I get Unease with a 6 Life + 4 Sorcery Wizard, Unease with Life + Nature, and worse relations with everyone else. Sorcery + Death was Restless, and pure Chaos was Tense. Nature + Chaos was also Unease.

As a result of this, I've also found Altar of Peace useless now. I can't even get a Wizard's Pact with any of these Wizards, and making several trades didn't move the relations up either. They weren't heavily in favor of the AI, but I'm not going to trade anything lopsided until they are already near ally potential, let alone negative relations. The only Wizard I have a positive relations with has a Chaotic personality and randomly allied me. Even if I could get a Wizard's Pact, they are so far away on Maximal that it would take too much time for it to be relevant. It's already 1507 and I see no chance of getting any more allies in the next two years.

[Seravy]

This doesn't appear to be the case in the 3 games I've started on COM II recently. In my current game, using 5 Life + 4 Sorcery, I get Unease with a 6 Life + 4 Sorcery Wizard, Unease with Life + Nature, and worse relations with everyone else. Sorcery + Death was Restless, and pure Chaos was Tense. Nature + Chaos was also Unease.

That has to be from the overexpansion penalties then, you should be starting at Relaxed with that Life+Sorcery wizard. 9 Shared books, alignment difference of 1 means starting relation of 18+9 = 27.

PS : relation changes should be in the logs, so you can see the relation going down if it's the result of overexpansion warnings. It should also be visible on the F5 chart. However, if the relation started low that indicates a bug in the starting relation formula.