Magical ranged damage too powerful compared to physical?

[Question]

Physical ranged damage has a distance penalty, magical ranged does not. It's also easier to get missile immunity compared to magic immunity, and there is no magical equivalent of warp wood (dumb spell, no resists rolls to make a unit useless is incredibly OP).

A 1 on 1 match with, say, a priest vs a normal unit (halbrediers, cavalry, etc) willl always end up in a lopsided win for the priest and its especially obvious if you are fielding garrison stacks of them. You just kill pretty much everything before they can reach you (excluding the end tier units obviously).

Does anyone have any clue why there is such a massive power gap? Does anyone even build non-unique bowmen? Even with admantinium weapons, the distance penalty is just so god awful.

[Seravy]

I agree in the original game bow attacks were horrible, even on heroes.
I modded the penalty to be 1 per 4 squares of distance instead of 3 to improve the situation (that actually allows firing at the enemy with only a -1 penalty unless both the target and bowmen are in the back row of the starting positions) but I still find bowmen somewhat weak unless they have a +1 to hit bonus from anywhere, like magical weapons.

I really don't get the logic of this penalty, I mean "Bowmen" are meant to fight at range so they receive a penalty for their...ranged attacks? ummm yea...well it is Master of Magic we talk about, the game where we about Magic...where we have Magic Immunity, Mana Short, and Disjuction just in case you thought magic could do something useful for you...

Anyway, changing the penalty to be once per 4 squares, and buffing ranged units to have at least 2 more bow attack strength helps.

[Anthony]

The big advantage of physical ranged damage is that it can benefit from alchemical/mithril/adamantine and weapon-type enchantments (this doesn't help heroes); while basic bowmen aren't much, slingers, longbowmen, and draconian archers are quite powerful. However, much of the problem you're seeing is that ranged attackers in general are overly strong compared to melee attackers.

How would you mod the game so range penalties apply to ranged magical attacks?

[Tiltowait]

You have to march your archers up to the target, just like they did in antiquity. You want to fire from a long distance, you can, but you're probably just wasting arrows. These aren't WWII artillery pieces where you just park them in the rear and they fire all game long. They follow the ground troops into battle. That's how you have to use them, if you just want to keep them on the back line with the priests and shamans it's not going to work.

I agree that basic bowmen are underpowered and need more attack strength. I still build them, especially with High Men (3 cav, 4 archer, 2 hero is my fave early game ruin plundering stack).

[Anthony]

The other problem is hero ranged attackers -- the flat 3 mp cost of ranged spells means low level casters are really useless with ranged attacks, and later they become overpowered.

[Seravy]

The other problem is hero ranged attackers -- the flat 3 mp cost of ranged spells means low level casters are really useless with ranged attacks, and later they become overpowered.

Agreed, I removed that "feature" and made them use 8 ammo like everyone else.

[Question]

How do you mod the penalty?

And even with admantinium weapons, bows are still weaker than magical attacks at range and it is WAY too easy to neutralize them (guardian wind, warp wood, etc) compared to magic.

If the enemy is 2 tiles away, any unit with 3 moves or better can just walk up to them and hit them since there is no intercept mechanic in the game. And any unit with teleport style attacks renders them useless (although this applies to mages too).

I'm going to see how basic bowmen perform with 2 ranged attack instead of 1...

[Seravy]

How do you mod the penalty?

And even with admantinium weapons, bows are still weaker than magical attacks at range and it is WAY too easy to neutralize them (guardian wind, warp wood, etc) compared to magic.

If the enemy is 2 tiles away, any unit with 3 moves or better can just walk up to them and hit them since there is no intercept mechanic in the game. And any unit with teleport style attacks renders them useless (although this applies to mages too).

I'm going to see how basic bowmen perform with 2 ranged attack instead of 1...

The exact byte you have to change for the range penalty was posted somewhere, probably in the thread that collects modding info.
As far as I remember there was at least one other location where it was used though, where the AI decides what to target.

[Anthony]

Agreed, I removed that "feature" and made them use 8 ammo like everyone else.

Most caster units actually have 4 ammo; only shadow demons and demon lords have 8. That's another balance point for ranged physical.

[CaptainPedant]

Funny you should ask this, because when I discovered this site the other day (someone linked me up from boardgamegeek.com when MoM came up in a discussion about computer games with woeful AI ) I downloaded, fired up, and started a campaign geared to producing adamantium slingers. They are kicking a$$ and taking names. There was an anxious moment when we found out that Lo Pan knew Flame Strike, the bane of all single-hit-point armies, but I got him to waste his mana before storming his fortress and that was all she wrote for him.

Adamantium's not the half of it, experience levels plus Holy Weapon plus Flame Blade plus... well, you get the idea. Slingers only have base 2 ranged physical attack but the number of buffs you can pile on them makes a nonsense of that base number and if you want to argue that physical ranged attackers are underpowered then I know an inordinate number of dead sky drakes, great wyrms, great drakes, demon lords and even archangels (Invulnerabilty? What's that?) who are queueing up to give you a hollow laugh.

Archer heroes really need a good bow and some miscellaneous items to give them teeth, but if it comes to that the zapping heroes are none the worse for having a staff custom built for them and I've many times used B'Shan and Alorra to huge effect against those same monsters I've listed as slinger-fodder above. Warp Wood's the nuisance, as mentioned - quite why it works on slingers at all isn't clear...

The wizard in my latest reincarnation is named "Your Mum" by the way, just for the childish pleasure it gives me at being able to answer the question "Who shall cast?" with "Your Mum" or seeing the video of another wizard's downfall captioned "Your Mum defeats Lo Pan".

Many thanks to the community for keeping this excellent game going.