Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Cruel100]

The impression I have is that the items require a lot of mana + turns to be effective. Using these resources directly in spells seems to give better results. The fact of building a magic weapon blocking other spells aggravates the situation. Furthermore, a lost artifact is a huge waste of resources. It seems better to summon more expendable strong units. However, some changes in the heroes I consider positive as giving them abilities that improve their synergy with normal units.

Note: aside from the game's balance, having strong heroes is one of the highlights of the game's fun. With them weaker, it seems that the "Army" screen should have space not for 6 heroes, but much more... a change from heroes to army generals.

[Cruel100]

Can you take a look at the "disenchant area" magic? I tried 6 times with maximum power to remove the magic "Chaos Rift" from the city of "Sereia" and it didn't work.

It worked on the 9th try with maximum power. Still, before I clicked wrong on purpose to get the error message before, and only after I clicked in the right city. I got the impression that the error message "cleared" for the spell to work correctly, but just looking at the code to be sure.

[Anskiy]

Yeah, the problem with heroes currently is that they basically need items, and good ones at that, to be effective in battle. Items cost a lot of mana to forge, and no matter how good the hero is, summons and buffed armies give you actual presence unless you burn down everything the enemy has. There's almost no scenario where the mana spent crafting for a hero is not better used building a stack of strong uncommon/rare summons, with Artificer being the exception. And even with Artificer, outfitting more than one hero with good gear(for the early/mid game) and great gear(for the lategame) is sketchy.

I kind of wish heroes started out more strong and then grew slower, perhaps with items being largely nerfed or being limited to spell powers. But that's a radical change so probably won't go down well with everyone.

[Seravy]

You get tons of items from lairs and nodes so unless you want far above average ones, you don't even need to make that many, only a few to fill any gaps like a missing ability (True sight) or stat (+2 resistance) for whichever slot was left empty on the hero.
Even if you don't hunt lairs, after defeating the first few wizards, you get plenty of items from killing their heroes.
Considering 90% of Sapher's Lunatic wins were with heroes, I can't agree to them being weak unless there was a major change between CoM I and CoM II that I'm not seeing. If anything, CoM II made it easier to use heroes with the cheaper item creation costs and added ability to craft +HP items and lightning resistance.

Of course, with some wizard builds and below average luck on treasure, it's sometimes better to not use heroes much but that's part of the game - you have to adapt your strategy to the circumstances. Neither heroes, nor anything else is a guaranteed " this always works" in CoM unless you heavily invested into it when creating your character - for example if you want to win using Great Lizards then you must spend picks to guarantee web, Resist Magic, and probably also want Conjurer. Lacking those the Lizards are still a good unit but they won't work against flying enemies, resistance targeting spells, etc, the same applies to heroes - they are good but won't always be the correct choice to use and if you want them to be, you must invest picks into it. Tactician, Artificer, Famous, 2 Life books for Heroism, any one of the options to counter Crack's Call, etc, and yes, that includes planning for something that gives you presence after the heroes had to leave to attack a different target. Most of the time simply having enough gold to buy a lot of magicians will do, or maybe having city defense enchantments like Flying Fortress, Earth Gate, Cloud of Shadows, or a way to make undead (Syphon Life weapon?) and so on. These usually don't require much investment from magic and doesn't interfere with creating artifacts much - unlike for example playing a summoning strategy, you will need to summon an additional 3-4 creatures to guard your city which does get in the way of summoning the same creatures for building stacks that go attacking.

[Anskiy]

Yeah, the problem with found items is that in my experience, half of them are pretty garbage, and the ones that aren't are still way too situational and don't provide defenses or the right stats or powers that I want. So they aren't really good for any solid strategy, it's much better to just craft your own items if you seriously plan to use heroes in battles.

It's interesting that you mention Sapher wins Lunatic games because of heroes, I would have to check that out.

But my problem remains that heroes require a LOT of mana to gear up appropriately if they need to be used more than situationally. Said mana is often better spent making stacks of summons, unless you need specific skills on the hero to win. Sending ungeared heroes is outright suicide, even when backed by armies. Enemy wizards know to prioritize them with dangerous spells and ranged attackers often focus fire them down. So there's really no alternative to making a bunch of bonus defense items, adding a few powers to counter whatever the wizard or their special units use to get around defense, and then using them.

[Intaka]

Heroes can be God tier or trash tier, so much depends on item drops and the specific hero in question. It's easy to let this discussion go far afield.

The main point I was trying to make is that unstoppable one shot spells feel less "fun" to the player, especially when you have emotional investment in your hero unit. That is why I suggested making Crack do less hp damage than a leveled hero has in current total hp, or give the heroes a few more base hp, etc. Either or. However, it's ok to say "not my vision". I think the idea of a hole removing a unit from combat is great. Does it need to do 21 damage to do that?

[Seravy]

Heroes can be God tier or trash tier, so much depends on item drops and the specific hero in question. It's easy to let this discussion go far afield.

The main point I was trying to make is that unstoppable one shot spells feel less "fun" to the player, especially when you have emotional investment in your hero unit. That is why I suggested making Crack do less hp damage than a leveled hero has in current total hp, or give the heroes a few more base hp, etc. Either or. However, it's ok to say "not my vision". I think the idea of a hole removing a unit from combat is great. Does it need to do 21 damage to do that?

Not really, in the original it simply destroyed the unit instantly. I thought that's too powerful and unfair against heroes, that is why the damage was reduced to 21. If you mean to simply make the hero leave combat without damage, that really misses the point that the spell should put the hero at risk.
I think that type of spell would suit Life magic better : "Target unit turns peaceful and leaves the battle" however the only reason that makes it fair on Crack's Call is the low chance of working and I don't want that in Life magic. It would be too powerful either way for Life to have that type of effect.

[Intaka]

Appreciate the always civil discussion Seravy.

Question: Does the green lit FLEE still mean safe retreat, or has that been changed? In previous builds I could whittle down a hard node with fliers for example, but in this build (any) fleeing results in units disappearing with no loss of unit message.

[Seravy]

That sounds like a bug, can I have the save file?

[Intaka]

29Dec2020 build.

Always reproduceable. Attack with Sprites. Wait 3 turns until FLEE turns green. Flee. Unit lost with no message. Happens with all retreats.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7l7sb6iziibn9rg/2.sav?dl=0