Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[Seravy]

Some more random thoughts from playing and converting to newer versions:

*the player has an added advantage with ranged units in that a player moves then shoot. AI does not do this. Is there a way to program AI ranged units to move all but 1 mv point before shooting?

The AI can only move towards a target to attack it which is not something you normally want to do with ranged units (unless it's flying or otherwise immune to being hit). Even moving randomly is done through the "move randomly" subroutine for the confusion spell. This is not entirely impossible but hard and questionable (which way do we move? back to buy time? forward to reduce the ranged penalty? Decision is not trivial, hard to comprehend for an AI which is better when).
Also consider the majority of battles are in a city and walls prevent movement (or stop the defender to be effective at reaching the attacking ranged units).

*ranged units (especially flying ones) in general seem to do more than what their cost implies. Maybe there needs to be more higher movement units or a few more that hit flyers from the ground.

While they are very efficient, they have several weak points :
-enemy units that move fast will kill them
-spells that target them will generally kill such units
-ammo runs out
-missile immunity or magic immunity units are invincible to the attacks (no direct melee immunity exist, flying can be bypasses by quite a lot of units and most ranged units don't fly)
-range penalty might apply if not magical
-attack strength is generally harder to raise with buffs

For this, their only advantage is being able to attack without the enemy retaliating (which is awesome but first strike, gaze, etc can do it in melee to a certain extent, even thrown and breath comes before retaliation can happen)

I have had mixed results with ranged armies, where they worked they were amazing, but at other battles they got wiped out without being able to do anything at all.

*heroes are very affordable in initial gold cost and upkeep, almost too affordable.

They don't do much without artifacts which are expensive, or levels which take effort to get. The chance of hiring them is also random, so the cost is not very relevant.

*mercenaries of 'units' appear to come rarely and when they do later, the lack of 'magic weapon' make them seem oddly outdated

Uses similar fame based formula as heroes. Main problem might be the lack of gold, or maybe there is an initial turn limit, not sure. I'll check when I have time.

*Ranged Magic attacks containing ‘poison’ is not very intuitive nor logical. It also makes ghoul ranged attacks rather powerful and it’s too easy to give nagas their ’12 poison’ ranged attacks with focus magic (combo of 2 commons in same realm).

Agreed. I believe this is because the original game contained no ranged unit with poison so this was never relevant. I'm happy with the ghouls doing it, but focus magic probably shouldn't. On the other hand, Nagas first strike allows them to kill enemy units with poision without retaliation...but even then doing it ranged is way better. I'll think about this. If it gets changed, Ghouls will need a higher ranged attack.

I play a little bit with 2.21. I think it needs more shortcuts: C for Cities doesn't work, in a lot of menus ESC don't close the window (like Apprentice with F3). Or are they other shortkeys? Is there a shortcut for next unit on the global map?

Quite a few things use weird keys, I don't remember them all but cities might be I or T. Insecticide changed/added quite a few keys but I don't know the details (all I see in the code is "key 79 changed to key 43" that doesn't tell me which is which.). Hotkeys are something I rather not bother with until I have absolutely nothing better to do.

[zitro1987]

More thoughts (thanks for agreeing to fix the poison ranged ... giving ghouls +1 ranged might balance the cost better)

I've pondered the idea of tweaking the concept of 'magic immunity' in the past (with Kyrub's own abandoned project) as well as strengthening elemental armor - splitting all benefits among itself and elemental armor better .
*In a game called 'master of magic' where magic is the main theme, granting units full immunity (plus non-magic protections as well) is a little too comprehensive to the point of silliness/boredom. Meanwhile, elemental armor (also rare) is not strong/comprehensive enough with limited protections and only 10 armor (not enough against some spells or dragons).
*Magic Immunity: Exclude things that make no sense relating to magic, such as fire/lightning breath, magicians, efreets, etc throwing regular fire attacks, poison (?), melee lifesteal (!??). Still complete 100%/100armor immunity to all curses (including things like 'stasis'), several 'special attacks' like destruction and also magical damage (doom bolt, life steal spell, lightning bolt, aether sparks, warp lightning, magic vortex, etc etc).
*Elemental Armor: complete 100%/100 armor immunity to 'all' ranged magic attacks (including death ones), firebreath, lightning breath, elemental spells (fireball, firebolt, icestorm, etc), and maybe even 'stoning'

Magic Immunity: eliminating the elemental non-magic protections would mean a lower cost of around 175-200 with 4upk and elemental armor with stronger and added protections up to around the same cost.

[Seravy]

Magic Immunity: Exclude things that make no sense relating to magic, such as fire/lightning breath, magicians, efreets, etc throwing regular fire attacks, poison (?), melee lifesteal (!??). Still complete 100%/100armor immunity to all curses (including things like 'stasis'), several 'special attacks' like destruction and also magical damage (doom bolt, life steal spell, lightning bolt, aether sparks, warp lightning, magic vortex, etc etc).

Let's first see if it's doable! Effective Defense is calculated using these parameters :
-Realm : Either None (physical attacks) or the Realm of the attack (for magical attacks). There is no such thing as a neutral magic attack or an elemental physical.
-Immunity flags : The list of immunity flags effective against the attack. For example Fire, Cold, Missile, etc.
Magic Immunity does have an immunity flag associated with it, so we might be able to work with that, but Elemental Armor has no such thing. It only checks for the attack being "Chaos" or "Nature".
-Ranged type (the type of the attack, spells are 26h which is normally the druid hero's attack type but we can change this and make it unique).
-Attack Flags (Armor Piercing, Doom, Illusion etc is here)
-The defending unit

So we can
-distinguish spell damage from nonspell damage
-distinguish based on realms
-distinguish based on the cold, fire, poison, etc properties (but not lightning since it's not an actual element, just an armor piercing property)
-distinguish based attack flags but it's important to mention most of their effects are applied elsewhere, ONLY armor piercing is done during effective defense calculation.

For resistance, these parameters are used :
-The defending unit
-The realm of the effect (or "None" for poision)

So here we have no options, if it has a resistance roll and belongs to a realm, it IS magical and the spells working on that realm will have an effect.

Let's see how everything you mention works now :
Poison : This is not magic and is actually the only thing in the game that checks resistance and is not magical. No spell protects against poison aside from those that raise resistance directly such as Lionheart or Prayer.
Regular fire attacks : This does not exist in the game whatsoever. Magicians, Efreets etc attack with Chaos projectiles but they do not count as fire. Flame Blade only adds to melee and makes the weapon type "magical" to ignore weapon immunity, it also does not make the attack count as fire.
Thrown : Counts as physical ranged and is not affected by any spells related to magic.
Fire/Lightning Breath : These count as Chaos realm Fire or normal damage. Changing that would make Bless, Resist Elements, and Elemental armor ineffective.
Lifesteal : There is only one of this (regardless if it's melee or ranged, it's the same thing), and it is a Death realm attack. Changing it would make Bless ineffective.
Magical ranged attacks : These are usually Chaos, sometimes Nature, and a very very few are Sorcery. Meaning Elemental Armor and Resist Elements works against most of them (except the two Sorcery heroes, Djinn and Focus Magic which are the only sources of Sorcery ranged attacks). Changing Elemental Armor to provide more than 10 armor/resist would make units mostly immune to these (except the sorcery types) but would also stop spells (both damage and curses)
Doom Bolt : This is unreducable, but since all direct damage spells automatically do nothing at all if the target has magic immunity (and they cannot be targeted at such units in the first place), Magic Immunity blocks it. Other spells don't.
Doom type damage : From doom bats, or heroes, this bypasses all defense and immunities, and since Magic Immunity adds to defense against attacks, it has no effect, neither has the other spells.
Lightning Bolt, Warp Lightning, Lightning Breath : These are Chaos realm so Bless, Resist Elements, Elemental Armor and Magic Immunity adds defense, and Lightning carries the Armor Pierce flag so the bonus is then halved. However if it's a spell then it cannot target and cannot damage against Magic Immunity.
Destruction : This is a Chaos realm attack, so Bless, Resist Elements and Elemental Armor works on it.

*Elemental Armor: complete 100%/100 armor immunity to 'all' ranged magic attacks (including death ones), firebreath, lightning breath, elemental spells (fireball, firebolt, icestorm, etc), and maybe even 'stoning'

Based on the above, this is doable except for Stoning. We only need to add "if ranged type<>spell, def+100 instead of 10".

Exclude things that make no sense relating to magic, such as fire/lightning breath, magicians, efreets, etc throwing regular fire attacks, poison (?), melee lifesteal (!??).

Again, doable except for the lifesteal. we need to add "ranged type<>spell then ignore"

For both we need to change the ranged type of spells from 26h to an unused number.

Now that we know it's mostly doable, the next question is, do we want it.

Pros :
-Separates the effects of Magic Immunity into two spells

Cons :
-Sorcery loses their ability to protect from magical ranged attacks (which they should be able to do since they are both the most defensive and most magical realm)
-Magic Immunity still stays as unfun and powerful as before, since it will still block every magic, aside from those coming from units, which will do nothing against high enough defense (aside from heroes who might have a magical ranged attack that has the Doom property).
-Makes Elemental Armor weaker not stronger

Overall I'm leaning towards
-Making Magic Immunity not work on Fire Breath and Lightning Breath, but still work on everything else as usual (gaze is obviously magic, as is touch and lifesteal)
-Not changing Elemental Armor this way but maybe in a different way.

How about this?
Resist Elements : grants 4 DEF and 4 RES against Nature and Chaos. (unchanged)
Elemental Armor : Provides complete immunity to Cold, Fire, Lightning element (both spells and attacks) and adds +10 DEF against Nature and Chaos attacks (but no resistance!). Stacks with Resist Elements.

This would make Elemental Armor massively better against direct damage spells, but would lose the resistance effect, making Resist Elements no longer obsolete if both are available. Using both would also result in a total of +14 DEF which is enough to be immune to most (non-sorcery) magical ranged attacks.

Edit :
Actually, Elemental Armor should not be working against specific realms now that I think about it, and total immunity would be overkill, it's overpowered and should be reserved for Magic Immunity only (which is both priced accordingly and comes in a realm that has the weakest early game of them all at rare tier)

Maybe this would be better :
Elemental Armor : adds +10 DEF against all magical ranged attacks (any realm, breath included) and spells.
Resist Elements : +5 DEF against the same and +5 RES against Nature realm only (meaning only stoning effects as Nature has nothing else that uses resistance)

This would mean only Bless works against Chaos resistance based curses, but nature spells would still be good against chaos damage.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to do and I'm not sure if any change would improve the game at all. Making Elemental Armor stronger equals to making Nature/Chaos spells and magical ranged units less effective.

[zitro1987]

How about:

Magic Immunity: only loses firebreath/lightning breath immunities (not magic-related), slightly lower casting cost. All other immunities stay.

Resist Elements: your latest recommendation is great as it's a bit less realm-specific and avoids acting too much like 'resist magic'.

Elemental Armor: stacks and is a strong defense (+12 to +15) against all magical ranged attacks, breath attacks and spells, but completely loses the resistance bonus.
*Compared to across-the-board armor bonuses of invulnerability (+6.66) or iron skin (+5), a situational +12-15 armor with nothing else is not overpowered. Sorcery/chaos have cheap accessible anti-missile (guardian wind/warp wood), nature has a more rewarding later one (that gets obsolete with dragons whose attack rating is superior)

[Seravy]

*Compared to across-the-board armor bonuses of invulnerability (+6.66) or iron skin (+5), a situational +12-15 armor with nothing else is not overpowered. Sorcery/chaos have cheap accessible anti-missile (guardian wind/warp wood), nature has a more rewarding later one (that gets obsolete with dragons whose attack rating is superior)

After a lot of thinking, I came up with this conclusion :

-On one side, the effect this change would have on the game is overall positive and I like it
-On the other side this would hurt the AI a lot. The AI as is, can't tell apart magical ranged attacks on units from magical resistance based effects. If we separate the protection for these two, the AI can't handle that. It'll still cast Elemental Armor against units that have stoning gaze, or if I remove stoning from the list of "Nature type attacks", it'll fail to cast Resist Elements and Magic Immunity to do the same.

If I do this, I need an entire new way for the AI to categorize effects on units. Currently this is by realm, so an attack is either Nature, Chaos, Life, Death or Sorcery.

If I changed this to an attack being checked for
-blocked by Resist Elements
-blocked by Elemental Armor
-blocked by Bless
-blocked by Resist Magic
-blocked by Magic Immunity
then we would have a functional AI but this is a massive amount of work. Fortunately that's exactly 5 categories, like there were 5 realms, so it's doable without needing extra memory space.
furthermore, the realms of books enemy wizards have to trigger the spells should probably be need a change too :
-bless : chaos and death no change
-resist elements : nature only, remove chaos
-elemental armor : both nature and chaos (they have good direct damage) probably not include sorcery (only has aether sparks), death (all except for one spell targets resistance) and life (only star fires does damage) even though they're affected. So overall no change.
-resist magic : currently it is only used vs Death books and I think that's fine. Other realms might use a resistance based spell but it's not very likely and this spell doesn't even offer complete protection.
-magic immunity : is being used against all but Life books, which will not need a change.

By the way this change would be an indirect buff to both Nature and Chaos, as their would be fewer ways to protect against their resistance based spells/effects. Especially disintegrate.

[zitro1987]

'beginnings of games' - my own take

for city-military to compete against summoning units, rushing towards alchemist guild (or using alchemy) is often beneficial and it gives you a bit of research and mana on the way there. A group of swordsmen, cavalry and bowmen with magic weapons can sometimes be more cost-effective than summons. Sometimes, it's just best to use the gold and time to get an early stack of 9 weak units. It depends on many factors and is generally well balanced. Cavalry tend to be more tactical and occasionally worth the cost of an added building. But generally, I find common-tier summoning units better than military units and fare better with economy-based races.

Now as for magic:

Nature has a fairly good beginning, mostly due to the summons (especially with conjurer) and 'web' against melee flyers. Some weaker spells balance out the powerful summons (the weaker spells are not as bad as the weaker original game spells like stone skin). Sprites are the best common summon due to sheer damage output. Giant Spiders or Basilisks are the immediate first research spell to protect sprites or fight on their own (against ranged units that kill sprites). Cockactrices are best to collect treasure. Nature's Cures is one of the best offensive spells with a large stack of melee units. Some more situational uncommon spells that eventually find their good use are later research targets.

Life has a nice series of buff spells that work best together but limited to normal unit. That's quite the challenge and not often the best investment with lowly swordsmen (200+ mana) if they could easily be nuked, forcing player to build military buildings for better units over economy buildings. A race with good durable halberdiers is preferable, such as klackons and lizardmen. Summon is decent, but a tough desperate attempt to get a neutral town as war bears are superior durable melee units. Let's say life struggles a bit at first but some of the common spells have great uses a bit later. The series of uncommons can be very situational-based and player should really hope they get 'prayer'. If not, they'll get a disadvantage though the economy-based common spells can really help when you have more towns. Life + Chaos (flame blade) can help complement added durability of life spell and higher to hit,.

Chaos has a quite good beginning, mostly thanks to the cheap and versatile hell hounds (good for city defense and unrest reduction) and great spells against neutral towns (shatter, fire elemental, warp wood). It's a bit difficult to conquer fire nodes early on with hell hounds though (fire giants and elementals immune to fire, gargoyles being damaging + 11 armor in node). Getting flame blade ASAP is my favorite tactic to catch up with city units. Summoning fire giants is also something to get early on to cover hell hound weaknesses. Lightning Bolt and Fire Ball also tend to be essential. I cast volcanoes on tundra and my unlucky tundra towns eventually get mountains, ores, and of course mana income. Chaos is generally a good, well-rounded realm.

Sorcery has a fairly strong beginning with some excellent (if occasionally situational) spells. Focus Magic works best with multi-color wizards and elevate the realm. Nagas are very good against neutral towns and low-resistance units. Many Sorcery's common spells seem to work best against opposing wizards. Psionic blast is mediocre due to low if guaranteed damage. The anti-mage nuke is quite good and phantom warriors remain best (though not always). There are not many immediate 'uncommon' spells for me to rush towards ... they are nice, even great, but only Phantom Beast, flying (if multi-colored or with strong military race), and Aura of Majesty are notable for early survival, many of the others seem best when you have a lot of mana to spare. Blur barely seems worth 400 research cost as damage seems to be reduced after shields. Sorcery gets very powerful later on, but struggles if not combined with other realms earlier.

Death has the strongest start, especially with the help of another color with a strong summon like war bears. This is because 'cause fear' is unusually cheap for making your unit near-invulnerable in some situations, and about 2X as durable in others (generally superior to endurance for durability). I am surprised that the upkeep isn't 2 with a -3 resist ability. Combined with wraithform and cause fear, a single unit can decimate an army of lower resistance units with no magic weapons. Summons (including zombies) all have their good uses: skeletons for garrison, ghouls for the offensive and maybe snatch a superior enemy as undead from the distance (Best in groups), and zombies to get undead lowly units (Their melee isn't impressive to cut through armor). There are some other very powerful common spells, though I don't still get the love for mana leak -> rarely gets to shine for me. Black Prayer or Night-Stalker are among the most immediate survival needs, assuming you're using cause fear in your armies. Night Stalker + Cause Fear is a very very good combo as anything that survives may not retaliate. When player gets abundant mana, that's when the regenerating armies (Especially shadow demons) work best. Shadow Demons seem a tad cheap (or a tad too durable) for flying ranged units that regenerate and now move 2. Their ranged attacks (+2 to hit!) are rather brutal themselves given they get to shoot 8 times. I think if their ranged damage were brought back to 4, they'd still serve a good role thanks to that higher movement. Overall, death strikes me as the best realm to start with.

[Seravy]

Blur barely seems worth 400 research cost as damage seems to be reduced after shields.

I checked the game code. Blur reduces damage before shields.

[zitro1987]

Blur barely seems worth 400 research cost as damage seems to be reduced after shields.

I checked the game code. Blur reduces damage before shields.

Oh ok, maybe I got unlucky with statistics the times I used it.


Quick question I didn't pay much attention to: trade bonuses with roads. The original game had relatively mediocre gold bonuses. With your mod's faster pace and the movement bonus of roads eliminated, i suggest doubling the gold bonuses of roads to make them more worth it. Engineers take forever with this game's pace to connect towns.

[Seravy]

Quick question I didn't pay much attention to: trade bonuses with roads. The original game had relatively mediocre gold bonuses. With your mod's faster pace and the movement bonus of roads eliminated, i suggest doubling the gold bonuses of roads to make them more worth it. Engineers take forever with this game's pace to connect towns.

A better solution for that would be to speed up engineers. I think I'll do that. Gold bonuses are % and population based so they scale well with the mod. Towns reach high population faster, and the unrest/tax table is a lot more forgiving so the base gold you boost is higher. Furthermore, Banks and Merchant's Guilds are weaker, making the road bonus more important.

[Seravy]

I tried the double speed engineers. While the game reported it takes 7 turns to build a road, it took several times longer. Was this always bugged I wonder?