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Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

It is not really the meh effect of conjunction and moons, but rather the meh effect combined with the fact that these events happen far more often than all of the others put together. I would prefer a cool event for each color, which is what these are, one for each color.
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(September 21st, 2015, 01:00)Tiltowait Wrote: It is not really the meh effect of conjunction and moons, but rather the meh effect combined with the fact that these events happen far more often than all of the others put together. I would prefer a cool event for each color, which is what these are, one for each color.
They certainly could be better but I think coding space would be an issue considering there are 5 of them and we most likely want the same or similar effect for each color so all the space needs to be at one place.
Events have the same chance of being selected, but those that target something need to check if the selected target is valid, and I believe they reroll for another event if not, causing them to appear less often.
I'll see if I can come up with anything for this, but there are higher priority things to do. Fortunately these aren't gamebreaking problems, unlike, for example, fortress generation hanging at the start of the game. I wonder if I can find a way to fix that.

Edit : I seem to have been successful on eliminating the crash on map generation, so Tiny landmass will actually be playable in 0.4 without having to try generation a hundred times lol.
I changed these to make generating small maps work better :
-Neutral towns have been reduced to 6 per plane from 15...why were there that many, I wonder? that's like covering the entire available land, kinda makes settlers a meaningless unit.
-Player starting locations now skip one check which I believe was responsible for putting the city at a place with lots of available land or food, don't really care which since on smaller landmass, neither of these will be available anyway. This was responsible for most failed map generations.
-Dungeons now only need to be 1 cell apart from each other instead of two. This was the other big source of failed generations.

I have also managed to finally eliminate enchanted roads, or to be precise, alter them.
Normal roads now allow movement at a speed of 1/turn like pathfinding does. Enchanted roads allow movement for 0.5 like normal roads did before the change.
I couldn't find the movement cost in the code for pre-generated roads, but I was able to eliminate them instead, starting towns will no longer have a road under them, nor between them. You actually need to build one now. This change most likely will get rid of the problems related to pre-generated roads possibly not counting as roads when checking for trade bonus, since now there aren't any.

I also managed to add the requested feature of autosave happening every turn now, originally it was once every 4 turns. I'm considering to release this update immediately after I watch the second part of that video, as failure to generate maps is a quite severe bug.
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Watched the video :
-I think you had bad luck with your magicians. Priests have 5 defense and magicians have 6 attack, so it's not impossible to do low damage. Or maybe Long Range is bugging them, as I already mentioned they weren't supposed to have that, it's not for meant magic attacks. If it takes priority over having no range penalty for magic, then they could have actually received -1 to hit from that misplaced ability.
-Your longbowmen did good damage on the same priests because they are elves, and all elves have +1 to hit. They also had magical weapons for another +1 to hit. That resulted in an average damage output of 0.5*5=2.5 per figure compared to the magician's 0.3*6=1.8, although the elves also had a range penalty of -1 to hit until the enemy moved closer.
-Seeing the create artifact attempt, I realized I need to remove the 2x multiplier for accessories and quickly did so. I don't get why they cost twice as much as any other item.
Either way, the highlight of Magicians is their ability to cast fireball, which hits every figure, delivering much more damage than their normal attack as long as the enemy has 6+ figures.
-Battles cause loss of fame if a certain number of units have died, summoned units seem to count so if you summon many elementals, you will lose fame (and they will gain it)
-Speaking of Fire Elementals, the Conjurer retort feels really powerful as the 25% reduction stacks with the ones you get for books and Chaos Mastery, so Fire Elementals ended up half price. I don't want to change it tho as you need to heavily invest picks into this combo for that 50%+ reduction.
-About Paladins. Armor Piercing+Magic Immunity+First strike is auto win because it makes them superior to everything both in melee and magical combat. They also happen to be the only normal unit in the game with Holy Bonus (a very strong ability that is only available on quite expensive Angels otherwise). I do want to keep Holy Bonus as it is unavailable from spells and items unlike Magic Immunity, and fits Paladins since it is "Holy". I also want to keep first strike because that makes the most sense, many other cavalry type units have it. With those two already on the units, Magic Immunity or Armor Piercing on top would be far too much, especially because they both make a deadly combo with First Strike. Magic Immunity is also a troublesome game mechanic : This game is about casting spells, so an ability that makes most spells worthless is problematic both for balance and enjoyment. On top of these issues, it also provides complete immunity to magical ranged attacks as well as breath attacks. I certainly enjoyed Paladins in the original game...until I realized I cleared my previous 3 games with only even using Paladins (even if my starting race wasn't human) because they are completely unstoppable. I didn't need to use spells, heroes, anything except Paladins and maybe a few buffs on them if I had any available. They really made the games boring and repetitive due to having so much unstoppable power.
I don't mind adding Magic Immunity to a different unit instead, but it can't have powerful abilities or high starting stats like Paladins. It has to be something that's actually possible to kill in direct combat with other normal units.
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Caster of Magic 0.4 is now up!
The highlights :
-2 new events replacing Mana Short and Disjunction
-Normal roads now cost 1 to move on to match Pathfinding effect
-Enchanted roads now cost 0.5 to move on
-No more freezing during map generation with New Game, as restrictions on town and dungeon placement are less severe.
-Minor adjustments to lairs
-Fixed most remaining bugged gold/power/production displays.
-Accessories no longer cost double mana to create
-Autosave is done every turn now

I obviously didn't have time to do extensive testing beyond launching the game to see if the changes had the intended effects, so minimal balance or AI related changes this time.

0.4
-Fixed Barracks help text to correctly display 0 maintenance.
-Fixed ore produced gold displays
-Fixed ore produced power displays
-Fixed dwarven double gold not being applied to road/river trade bonus displays even though it does get applied into the actual gold produced.
-Limited number of primary monsters in lairs to 6 to avoid the inconvenient situation of the 1 secondary monster being stronger due to excessive remaining points
-Autosave now happens every turn instead of every 4th turn.
-Mana Short event is now replaced by Aether Flux event : All spells cost 50% less to cast.
-Disjuction event is now replaced by Stroke of Genius event : Every wizard's current research makes a progress of ~9900 points, resulting in immediate research of the current spell, except for Spell of Mastery.
-Surveyor now shows the correct production and gold bonus value, taking into account the new effects of Sawmill, Forester's Guild, Mechanician Guild, Miner's Guild, Prosperity, Marketplace, Bank, Merchant's Guild, and also fixed the bug of Inspirations adding 100 to the display despite only adding 50 to actual production from the original game.
-It now costs 0.5 movement to move through enchanted roads. Warning, this only affects newly created roads. Loading a prevous save with already made roads still allows free movement because cost is decided at the time of road creation and kept in the save data afterwards.
-It now costs 1 movement to move through normal roads.
-New Game generates no roads between the neutral cities, to avoid having pre-generated roads that ignore the new movement costs. Considering the huge trade gold bonus they grant, finding them already built is too good anyway.
-Removed the check from placng the starting capitals that caused frequent failure of generating new games on tiny to medium landmass. The check was most likely for the quality/amount of land available for the town at the selected location. Some other parts still seem to sometimes cause hanging, but less frequently.
-Each plane now has 6 neutral towns generated on them instead of 15 at start.
-Newly generated towns at the game start no longer have roads under them.
-Book and Retort treasure now costs 800 points not 600 each.
-Minimum distance of duneons from each other is now 1 not 2 (probably was the other reason tiny landmass generation failed)
-Enchant Item and Create Artifact : Making accessories no longer costs double for stat points.
-Counter Magic is now 14-70 mana, instead of 16-80.
-Pathfinding units now have the proper interaction with roads : moving at 1 on normal and 0.5 on enchanted roads.

I really need a good idea for a replacement spell instead of Enchant Road now...as well as Plane Shift.

Some possible ideas for improving the realm based events, would like some opinions about these :
-Good Moon : original effect+Enchantments are 50% cheaper to cast and maintain
-Bad Moon : original effect+All units have 2 lower resistance in combat (including own)
-Chaos Conjunction : original effect+direct damage combat spells do 50% more damage
-Nature Conjunction : original effect+living Fantastic creatures have +2 attack and defense
-Sorcery Conjunction : original effect+Power spent on casting skill is three times more effective.
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0.41 because the Armorer's Guild still had been set to replace War College even though they are no longer related.

0.41
-AI combat spellcasting priorities : Counter Magic now calculates priority based on number of units instead of adding a flat +30.
-Aether Flux has ended message is now properly displayed
-Counter Magic combat help icon now displays the proper information
-Metal Fires combat help icon now displays the proper information
-AI combat spellcasting priorities : Doom Bolt now gets a +18 priority boost
-AI combat spellcasting priorities : Mind Storm now gets a +15 priority boost
-AI combat spellcasting priorities : Having an invisible unit in battle only adds +30 to disenchant area priority instead of +160.
-AI combat spellcasting priorities : Each combat global enchantment only adds +20 to disenchant priority instead of +30 (except for the two predetermined exceptions, Wrack and Call Lightning)
-AI combat spellcasting priorities : Disenchant area priority no longer gets a boost for its high casting cost (it event got this boost if there was nothing to dispel!)
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-Enchanted roads now cost 0.5 to move on
This is actually a brilliant compromise.

As for paladins, eh, it's your mod. Do as you see fit. I feel having a unit with natural magic immunity is a good thing for the game to have in it. Perhaps it could be moved to Elven Lords or something?

Normally I only do 1 MoM video per week, but I'll try to finish this game sometime in the next day or so. I'm very excited to move on to v0.41 and to try out some of the other schools of magic. Particularly Sorcery and Death.
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crazy question but are the High Men really supposed to be restricted from building City Walls? I've also noticed I think a couple other races having trouble with that as well. on .3
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Its really nice mod. Few questions from my side. I am not sure how you make this mod so i am not sure if these ideas are applicable at all.

1) I wonder if its possible to make cities produce more then one unit per turn if there are still production points left this turn ? Building 10 hammer spearman with 30 hammer city cause 20 hammers to be lost.
2) How about change of max people in city, which is currently 25. If you need more space on screen just draw sprites a bit closer to each other. I played few times and find that its much more common to have ultra big cities now and still can build single unit per turn.
3) How about change of max number of units per square from 8 to at least 12. If you need more space on screen just draw sprites a bit closer to each other.
4) Is it possible to change number of spells used during battle same way as overland ? On overland map player can use as many spells as his skill allows. During battle there is limit to single spell per wizard or any hero. That cripples strong wizards.
5) To hit icon shown on building screen in cities is shown to much to the right side. Its ok on unit screen thou.
6) Help info about Nature Eye is broken, it display some other information then it should.
7) Units inside cities could earn more exp per turn (1->2), and outside cities less (1->0). Or this could be changed by building inside cities. At least barracks to get 1 exp point per turn. War collage to get 2 exp points per turn.
8) Is it possible to automatically sell any additional food produced above minimum required ? Still you would not be able to buy it.
9) Is it possible to add more overland resources to the game with its special bonus ? Any chance to have resource on water to make water tiles a bit more valuable for gameplay ?
10) Is it possible to control how many terrain tiles of which type are generated during battle ? In case battle is in forest there should be at least some tree obstacles to limit units movement. I am not saying about obstacles for visibility or ranged attack, just for movement.
11) Is it possible to add terrain modifiers to units during battle ? Forest is +2 to ranged defense, Hills is +1 to defense etc. Now terrain has no effect on units during battle. This could be shown as bonus on unit just like any other bonus.
12) Is it possible to block production bonus for city from specific tile that is occupied by enemy units, just like corruption or volcano works ? This would make sense to cripple strong cities using massive number of units.
13) Is it possible to add famine effect to large cities that has crippled food production using corruption or other effect. Now it just reduce max number of food which defines max number of people in city. So large city will never be crippled by corruption etc.
14) Is it possible to define max possible level of experience per unit ? Imagine a short lived races that have max veteran level or long lived races that have by default ultra elite level. Another example is crossbowman vs longbowman. First one is better at start but is capped by low max level, the second one is much better in the long run due to higher max level of exp possible.

Tom
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(September 21st, 2015, 20:08)lordgoober Wrote: crazy question but are the High Men really supposed to be restricted from building City Walls? I've also noticed I think a couple other races having trouble with that as well. on .3

Everyone can build that. Unfortunately it's the last building on the list and the list only shows the first 10 available. If you want City Walls you need to either build it early, or after you exhausted enough options to have 10 or less remaining.
There is enough space on the screen for 2 more so if I could hack the list to display 12 it would help, but that sounds quite hard to do.

Quote:Its really nice mod. Few questions from my side. I am not sure how you make this mod so i am not sure if these ideas are applicable at all.
1. Might be doable but I rather not. There is a global maximum limit on units so if either you or the AI starts building 10 spearmen per turn in all cities, we'll be unable to make any units soon because the limit is reached.
2. This is possible but 25 max pop cities already produce a lot of resources.
3. Impossible, no space on screen to display, no memory allocated for additional units in battle.
4. Possible but would break game balance and take out a lot of strategy. Not going to do that.
5. It's because the normal unit view screen is wider. I assume it is draw at the same place. If I happen to stumble upon this in the code, I might be able to fix it.
6. Known problem, will need to find where the code handles that.
7. Might be possible to implement where the healing happens if there is enough space (as it is influenced by towns) but I haven't found that part yet.
8. That already happens, you get 1 gold for every extra food produced and not used. Original game also had this feature but at 1/2 gold per food instead I believe.
9. Probably but I don't know enough about terrain data to do those at the moment. To be honest I think there are enough resources, in my current game I found about 8 gold ores, 1 silver, 4 crystals, 3 adamantium and a few others on my starting continent. It's vastly different between games though, sometimes I barely find any.
10. I actually changed that to generate more of them in the very first version, just forgot to list.
11. Probably not. Unit modifiers are applied at the beginning of turns only and there isn't much coding space there.
12. That would require quite a lot of coding space, unlikely.
13. I don't really understand this. Towns that produce less food that needed have negative population growth, regardless the reason, Famine and Corruption act the same.
14. Might be possible but I'm happy with the default system.

"Perhaps it could be moved to Elven Lords or something?"
Elven Lord have the same problem as Paladins. They have good stats, First Strike and pierce armor.

Dwarven units seem the most appropriate but they unfotunately are also pretty strong, and the race itself is borderline overpowered with all the extra gold, production and minerals so giving them another powerful unit is just not a good idea.
A quick look through races and units made me realize how limited the options are, most races don't have more than a few special units. I think the only unit where Magic Immunity would look reasonable and wouldn't be too overpowered is High Elf Magicians. You can kill those with some decent cavalry units, although no spells and no ranged attacks except rock working does make them pretty tough, a higher cost will be needed for the unit.
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Golem could be an appropriate 'magic immunity' unit as it generally struggles against melee units, but its cost should still be brought to around 200-240.

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