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Hadriex · September 15th, 2015, 07:05

"Please make sure to test your game using all of the options, not just the ones you like. "

I think that's our job.

Seriously, no game designer, or in this case modder, can hope to do all the playtesting for themselves. Especially a large game like MoM. I've worked with a few game game designers, there is so much their eyes miss simply because of how close they are to the project they're working on.

Videos are best, as they let a developer see exactly what happened.

Believe it or not, I was making videos for beta testing years before I started Let's Playing. In fact, it was those beta test videos that eventually led me to try my hand at LPing.

Seravy

My god, looks like casting Corruption is a -25 diplomatic action and Raise Volcano is -50 while ummm Call of the Void is only -20 and Pestilence is -8 and even an Armageddon or Great Wasting are just -25 and -20.
Why? What did the makers think? Oh blowing up a town with a nuke or destroying the whole world with volcanoes is nothing compared to the evil deed of raising a single volcano?
Meanwhile, I found and successfully edited the starting and default diplomatic relations between wizards which was based on books, so look forward to not being hated by fellow Death wizards anymore in the next release. 0.3 will be primarily about updates to diplomacy.

Hadriex · September 16th, 2015, 04:07

I laughed out loud. Corruption worse for diplomacy then the great wasting. That's unbelievable.

Seravy

Found the part where volcanoes revert to mountains. There is no code there that would generate ores whatsoever, it's not even calling for a random number to do anything based on a random chance (other than the initial decision of reverting the volcano or not). Fortunately I was looking for the reverting chance anyway, I'm changing it to 1% because at 2% a volcano only produces a total of 50 power during its expected lifetime which is...horrible considering the spell costs exactly that much so there is zero benefit other than the enemy town losing one useful cell.
...And to think you received a -50 diplomatic penalty for this lol.

I managed to move the Fighter's Guild's function.
I decided to move it into the Barracks and separate it from the Military building tree. Now you only require Smithy to produce Swordsman or build an Armory. The Barracks is now a standalone building that only unlocks the War College, which now doesn't require any additional buildings. I also separated the Animist's Guild from the Stables, now it requires a Forester's Guild instead, which means you'll need a forest to build it, but can do so even if your race cannot build stables. It makes more sense to have the best food producing building require 2 other food producing buildings to build.
I want to further investigate diplomacy before releasing 0.3 however.

Tiltowait · September 16th, 2015, 21:40

IIRC the penalty for those spells is every turn they are in effect. The details are in the official strategy guide. Diplomacy works as intended, if you keep the spell up the other wizards will get pissed off and declare war on you. They'll even tell you that it was your spell in the declaration of war. How did you reach the conclusion it was a one-time penalty? I'd be a bit more reluctant to heap scorn on the game. In fact, I'd recommend to re-read the entire OSG cover to cover if you're serious about Master of Magic.

The point of volcanoes isn't as a mana source. Again, I'm curious how this conclusion was reached. By the time you can cast it, you don't need mana anyway. The point is to ruin enemy cities' production. Honestly, this isn't really intended for the player. Like most of the city curses, it is meant for the computer to cast on the human. On the higher levels the CPs receive big bonuses to both gold and food as detailed in the OSG, so it's pretty pointless to use curses.

Seravy

(September 16th, 2015, 21:40)Tiltowait Wrote: IIRC the penalty for those spells is every turn they are in effect. The details are in the official strategy guide. Diplomacy works as intended, if you keep the spell up the other wizards will get pissed off and declare war on you. They'll even tell you that it was your spell in the declaration of war. How did you reach the conclusion it was a one-time penalty? I'd be a bit more reluctant to heap scorn on the game. In fact, I'd recommend to re-read the entire OSG cover to cover if you're serious about Master of Magic.

It's 100% of the penalty when cast, and an additional 10% every turn after that. So in case of Armageddon, -25 once and -2 every turn after that.
It would take 13 turns of Armageddon to get that 50 penalty of the single Raise Volcano, although Armageddon affects everyone not just one wizard.
Either way, a -50 penalty is ridiculous for a spell that only destroys a single cell around the city. Earthquake is only -9, Famine -5!
Armageddon does work as it should and I won't change it, nor will I change any enchantments that hurt other wizards.
Speaking of enchantments, a whole bunch of them cause a negative effect even though they don't hurt the other players at all, including Holy Arms, Crusade, Zombie Mastery, Doom Mastery, I'm removing it from these. Also, I had to change it for enchantments whose effects were altered or replaced : Aether Binding, Tranquility, Life Force, Evil Omens and Nature's Wrath.

Quote:The point of volcanoes isn't as a mana source. Again, I'm curious how this conclusion was reached. By the time you can cast it, you don't need mana anyway. The point is to ruin enemy cities' production. Honestly, this isn't really intended for the player. Like most of the city curses, it is meant for the computer to cast on the human. On the higher levels the CPs receive big bonuses to both gold and food as detailed in the OSG, so it's pretty pointless to use curses.

This is my mod so I decide what's the point of various spells. The primary philosophy of this mod is that every spell must be worth casting for the player.
Raise Volcano is uncommon, you can get it quite early in the game. I reduced the casting cost to 50, too, so you can cast it.
Volcanoes produce zero food, so no matter how big the AI multiplier is, it's still not producing anything. Enough volcanoes should be able to limit the maximum size of the city significantly. However, investing this much resources into limiting the growth of one enemy city isn't very good as a strategy on its own in most cases. If it also improves your future power production, even if just by a little, it becomes worth using for its original purpose. It's still not worth casting them just to produce power unless you have absolutely nothing better to do.

Seravy

Some info about what I did today.

First, I tried to make the undead rising when you have 9 units already and regroup them like it happens when you hire stuff. I made some progress - in fact it should have been working - but it actually doesn't. The 10 units stay together despite calling the procedure that should separate them, so more research is needed on this.

Second, I implemented one of the missing effects of Spell Ward. This took a good 5-6 hours but now every combat spell of the selected realm will be countered. I don't plan to also add protection from city curses, that would be too many effects from just one spell. No fantastic units and no combat spells is already a really powerful restriction.

I also adjusted the scoring feature and fixed the "feature" of the AI and neutral towns bypassing building restrictions on a whole bunch of basic buildings like Barracks, Granary, Smithy, Shrine and most notably the Builder's Hall just to build them before considering anything else. I also made the AI go for Sawmill first, and added new, less random checks on when to buy production.

I plan to release 0.3 tomorrow if I manage to finish playing my currently ongoing game without running into any major problems.

GreyWolf · September 18th, 2015, 13:05

Interesting!

Seravy

0.3 is now out!

There are numerous changes, you can see them all in the spoiler tag below.
In short, this update deals with the AI behavior and diplomacy, as well as doing the leftover changes to the building system (Starting as Regulars now have their own dedicated building instead of being included in the Fighter's Guild for example).
Hopefully the AI will be more capable now, thanks to distributing their power base better (no longer neglecting casting skill so badly), building sawmills to accelerate production, focusing on mana early to expand, and not wasting large amounts of mana on using disjunction on worthless targets as well as having access to the higher tax rates. In exchange, diplomacy is more forgiving now, if you know what you are doing, you can usually maintain good relations with at least some wizards. Oh, and a lot of spells that can hurt you now work when used by the AI, the new one being Spell Binding, previous versions fixed Cruel Unminding and Drain Power. These spells literally did nothing in the original game.

To answer a previous question, I have been checking the code and Bad/Good moons are cumulative with both each other and themselves regarding various books. Meaning that if you have both Life and Death books, you'll get half the power twice, in other words you are unaffected. I believe that's the optimal way to handle it, no change needed.
My thoughts about events :
-Moons are fine the way they are. There is no effect on power generated from non-Religious buildings, so under this mod, where other power generating buildings are of equal importance, this event is less influential.
-Conjunctions : same thing, you get lots of power from cities so nodes generating more/less is not that gamebreaking (unless you are lucky enough to have multiple nodes of the same time and node mastery)
-Disjunction : This is very gamebreaking, I want to change it somehow, or if that's not possible, eliminate it completely.
-Mana Short : another gamebreaking one. Would prefer to remove it and add something completely different, but don't have a good idea yet. Maybe an event that causes all spells to cost half their normal price would be more fun.
-The rest I have no opinion about yet, I need to actually encounter them in a game to see if they are fair or not, but I expect them to be ok.

Edit : replaced both Mana Short and Disjuction with new events :
Aether Flux - All spells cost 50% less to cast while the event is in effect.
Stroke of Genius - Everyone's current research will be done next turn, unless it's Spell of Mastery which only makes a progress of ~9.9k RP.
(These changes will be available in the next release, 0.4)

Hadriex · September 21st, 2015, 00:35

Aether Flux - All spells cost 50% less to cast while the event is in effect.
Stroke of Genius - Everyone's current research will be done next turn, unless it's Spell of Mastery which only makes a progress of ~9.9k RP.

THAT IS AMAZING!

...Though disjunction was more often positive, as often the AIs had managed to caste innumerable globals.

Mana short was always obnoxious though.

Anyway, here is part two of the CLow Reed playthrough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHtFDXow...e=youtu.be

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