Master of Magic 1.5, temporal codename "Raid" development

[Seravy]

So, maybe I'm not understanding this correctly. Death wizards are...death. They want everyone dead. Why would anyone like them? Death isn't just another random faction, they're death. And why would two death wizrards like each other? Neither of them want the other to win.

Been thinking about this a bit and I understand your point but the game works otherwise.

All your Death units are immune to their spells. The reverse is also true so fighting them is inconvenient on top of them being less of a threat.
You are immune to their Evil Presence and they are to yours.
You can trade spells with them, so their survival helps you advance in research faster.
If they cast Eternal Night, it buffs your units and hurts your enemies.
If they cast Evil Omens, it has no effect on you but hurts you enemies.
Death wizards understand the threat level of the curses the other have and prefer to avoid conflict, it would hurt them both way too much. It's a more viable strategy to eliminate everyone else first. No other realm can target the wizard with a curse directly, and aside from Chaos, they can't hurt cities seriously either, so they are "safe" targets, the Death wizard is not.

I don't see why death wizards should hate each other, there are only two spells in the game capable of helping another player directly, one is Death the other is Chaos.

[Seravy]

New file W290.
Found a bug that causes an automatic crash on turn 384 in the patch W274, this removes the overflow causing it.

[Seravy]

Holy god!
I always had a feeling items seem to just vanish in combat sometimes, but now I see why!
Here it says "if items received after combat>6 then change it to 6".
So you lose 3 fully geared heroes, 3 of the 9 items just...get forgotten about.
Wow.
I guess it's because the puffer where the items are granted is only 6 long but geez, that's some lazy coding.
I actually managed to fix this so easily, if there are more than 6 items, call the procedure in increments of 6 items repeatedly. Sure the player has to click OK one extra time but...I think that's worth it for not losing 15 out of the 18 excaliburs you looted in the enemy wizard's capital :D

patch file uploaded as W291.

[Seravy]

In the current game, the situation where I dispelled Black Sleep came up. Unfortunately the unit does not regain its original movement type. Fixing it would probably break web (which also relies on the lost movement type not coming back, but it is meant to do it there). Not sure what to do, or even if there is still space left to add code there, but I'll see what I can do.
I actually wonder if web not giving flying back after it expires or is dispelled is a bug or not, now that I think about it, might even be. My guess is it is intended to do so but only until it is dispelled, not after.

Edit : Made the movement type refresh and web actually does remove the flight even after it expires, so it works as intended, and as an added bonus, dispelling Web actually returns flight now.

[teukros]

I only found out about this project yesterday, and I registered so I could say

WOW!

You're doing some incredible work here... you're not related to "Timeslip" from No Mutants Allowed, are you???


anyway, my two cents, for what it's worth (about one cent after adjusting for inflation):

005 - Life+Death wizards - optional
Should this even be an option? I vote to not include.

006 - 2 picks Myrran - optional
I'm fine with three.

008 - no runemaster books needed - optional
I vote to not include. I think Rune Master is fine the way it is.

038 - always 2x buy cost - - optional
I don't see the need for this. I'm counting 22 Optionals plus 15 Undecideds, that's quite a few.

162 - Gold gained for conquest - optional -
Why wouldn't you get gold from conquest?

276 - Fix : No ores from volcanoes on creation - Include
Despite the evidence from the documentation AND code, (and despite the way that I voted yesterday before I really thought it through, much to my embarrassment) I think that this is a bad idea. Volcano farming is a prospect too horrifying to contemplate.

277 - Allow raising volcanoes on hills, mountains and volcanoes - optional -
It should be possible to raise a volcano on any land square (OK not shores, rivers, nodes). Besides, being able to wipe out Ariel's Paladins' mithril supply would make Raise Volcano really useful...
And I agree that it should obliterate roads.

291 - Items dropped don't vanish after the first 6 - Include
I'm fine with this either way - fixed or unfixed - because if you lose three or more heroes in a single attack it is a rout, and items might get lost/destroyed/scavenged by locals from the cold, dead corpses...

[Seravy]

you're not related to "Timeslip" from No Mutants Allowed, are you???

Nope, never heard of him.

162 - Gold gained for conquest - optional -
Why wouldn't you get gold from conquest?

You get gold, it just a different amount.
I think getting 3-5k gold for taking a single city, at the point in the game when you earn like 30 a turn is just...unreasonable for killing 9 swordsmen or whatever normal that was inside. That's the kind of treasure you get for killing 3 Sky Drakes!
Take one city and it gives you gold enough to buy thearmy needed to take the next one. Not always, but on high difficulties this is way too frequent. On top of the excellent city built up to max by the AI, where you can buy the best possible unit(s) at the spot where you need it most, in the enemy territory.
Ofc, this should be optional, but I do think it makes the game more fun.
The original system does not really make sense either. Who would store their gold evenly distributed between their cities ready for taking instead of...keeping it in the treasury or hiding it somewhere with spells. At the very least not near the border. Looting gold proportional to the taxes the city pays is reasonable, the money does come from there afterall, but proportional to the entire treasury, that's just crazy.

I'm fine with this either way - fixed or unfixed - because if you lose three or more heroes in a single attack it is a rout, and items might get lost/destroyed/scavenged by locals from the cold, dead corpses...

Maybe, but those items can be coming from the enemy heroes, and there is no excuse for that, if you are winning and killed the hero, your units should pick up the item. (unless it was a ranged attack, but can't be that detailed here)

008 - no runemaster books needed - optional
I vote to not include. I think Rune Master is fine the way it is.

You sure? 2x books from 3 realms+the runemaster itself is 7 picks out of 11, that's a crazy limitation I think. Especially for a retort that is associated with being colorless.

276 - Fix : No ores from volcanoes on creation - Include
Despite the evidence from the documentation AND code, (and despite the way that I voted yesterday before I really thought it through, much to my embarrassment) I think that this is a bad idea. Volcano farming is a prospect too horrifying to contemplate.

Considering the casting cost of Raise Volcano without mods, I see no threat. It takes 1000 mana to get one random ore, and the ones that are worth something (adamantium, mithril) are 10% each. So 5k mana and you have one Mithril or Admanatium on average.

[teukros]

Quote:
162 - Gold gained for conquest - optional -
Why wouldn't you get gold from conquest?
You get gold, it just a different amount.
I think getting 3-5k gold for taking a single city, at the point in the game when you earn like 30 a turn is just...unreasonable for killing 9 swordsmen or whatever normal that was inside. That's the kind of treasure you get for killing 3 Sky Drakes!
Take one city and it gives you gold enough to buy thearmy needed to take the next one. Not always, but on high difficulties this is way too frequent. On top of the excellent city built up to max by the AI, where you can buy the best possible unit(s) at the spot where you need it most, in the enemy territory.
Ofc, this should be optional, but I do think it makes the game more fun.
The original system does not really make sense either. Who would store their gold evenly distributed between their cities ready for taking instead of...keeping it in the treasury or hiding it somewhere with spells. At the very least not near the border. Looting gold proportional to the taxes the city pays is reasonable, the money does come from there afterall, but proportional to the entire treasury, that's just crazy.

I understand now, and agree





Quote:
008 - no runemaster books needed - optional
I vote to not include. I think Rune Master is fine the way it is.
You sure? 2x books from 3 realms+the runemaster itself is 7 picks out of 11, that's a crazy limitation I think. Especially for a retort that is associated with being colorless.

Hmmm... OTOH if the requirement was only one spellbook in each of three realms, one could still have eight spellbooks in one of them.... which might be overpowered. Is it possible for a retort to cost zero picks?

[Seravy]

Hmmm... OTOH if the requirement was only one spellbook in each of three realms, one could still have eight spellbooks in one of them.... which might be overpowered. Is it possible for a retort to cost zero picks?

No, it's not. Is it really that good to require all this?
Warlord, Alchemy, Channeller, Archamage and even Node Mastery is so much better.
Does anyone ever pick Runemaster for anything aside from the combo with Artificier (which really shouldn't stack to be honest)?

Also, if this is the "Arcane" retort, then why does it require books? You have all Arcane spells without books...yet the retort for it costs the most books of any retort!

[Zephirus]

Hi.
I have always wondered about to hit and crosses, and the fact that if you have 10 or more you never misses and never gets cursed respectively.
What if a unit with high crosses could still get cursed and 10 to hit does not garant always hit, while adding crosses and targets grants some minor bonuses.
That could be done changing the dice algo.
If you roll 5 or less, the dice returns the rolled value. If you roll more, add 5 to the result and roll again.
This way, crosses and to hit gets half effectivity above 5, 1/4 above 10, 1/8 above 15, and so on and so forth.
Curses would have a minor chance of affecting even high tier units, and would remain somewhat useful later on, and those super armsmaster heroes would not be so disproportionaly powerfull.
Is that possible?

[Seravy]

Hi.
I have always wondered about to hit and crosses, and the fact that if you have 10 or more you never misses and never gets cursed respectively.
What if a unit with high crosses could still get cursed and 10 to hit does not garant always hit, while adding crosses and targets grants some minor bonuses.
That could be done changing the dice algo.
If you roll 5 or less, the dice returns the rolled value. If you roll more, add 5 to the result and roll again.
This way, crosses and to hit gets half effectivity above 5, 1/4 above 10, 1/8 above 15, and so on and so forth.
Curses would have a minor chance of affecting even high tier units, and would remain somewhat useful later on, and those super armsmaster heroes would not be so disproportionaly powerfull.
Is that possible?

Possible yes (probably hard to do though), but I think the actual problem is everything having too much crosses but not enough save penalties. The system works, it's not perfect of course, but it's fine.
What's not fine is almost every unit in the game starting from 5-7 crosses, gaining another 3 while leveling up, while most spells in the game have 0 penalty. The lower half of the scale (below 5 crosses) goes unused completely.
To hit is a bit different, as it is actually very unlikely to reach the +7 needed for 100% damage. Most units can only get like 1-2, at best 3 points extra.
Heroes are an exception, they can get To Hit far too easily, from items, blademaster, and even leveling up gets them up to 3 I believe. But heroes can get too much of anything, shields, swords, unremovable magic immunity, invulnerability, illusion, doom or armor piercing attacks etc...

Either way, changing how the game works is not the goal of this project, this is meant to fix bugs and improve AI mostly. The idea is nice though, but it would just make Charmed and Magic Immunity, and Doom damage even more overpowered than they currently are.