New year, New Master of Magic! v1.5 fan patch

[spottedshroom]

There don't appear to be any valid Transmute targets near his cities. Maybe not your bug, but thought I'd point it out anyway. I don't recall ever having seen it happen before.

[Seravy]

Here's a save file.

http://tempsend.com/C8FB0458ED/4510/SAVE1.GAM

Okay, there are two things weird in that ruin.
One, it is in the slot of one of the towers.
And two, it's not empty. It has 1 gold inside. But it's not shown in the text for some reason.
I suspect this ruin was created by rampaging monsters destroying a town at a time when they could only loot exactly 1 gold.

And indeed, in the game code it says to display gold if it is greater than 1. Exactly 1 gold is not displayed, lol.
That's a small scale bug if I ever seen one, but might as well fix it now.

[Seravy]

I want to take this chance to congratulate you on your awesome treasure of 1 gold, that's really something! Be happy, you actually received it despite the display being buggy. :D

Now, let's take a look at Transmute.
First of all the AI will not start casting it unless they have a valid target. Of course if there was one but they lost it before completion to losing the city, or through raise volcano, they'd end up without one.
Second, if they don't find a target when the spell is ready, they cancel it.
So this implies, the adamantium cell was considered valid.
Now, the actual target selection. If the lowest bit of the ore byte is 1, or the next bit is 1, or any of those two is 1 (whoa that's redundant), then it's a target. Which means any number not divisible by 4.
For reference these are the actual ores :
01 Iron Ore (-5% unit cost)
02 Coal (-10% unit cost)
03 Silver Ore (+2 gold)
04 Gold Ore (+3 gold)
05 Gems (+5 gold)
06 Mithril Ore (+1 mana)
07 Adamantium Ore (+2 mana)
08 Quork (+3 mana)
09 Crysx (+5 mana)
So the AI can target Adamantium and Crysx on top of the valid targets, but cannot target Gold. Why this is made so, I have no idea. I believe the correct targets would be 1-6 from this list.

By the way, we can take this chance and actually teach the AI to only do the meaningful transformations out of these. As far as ores in the vanilla game go, I think that means silver to mithril only, right? The rest are...way too lame to be worth, how much was it? 200 mana?
(It can only be cast on self owned town, so turning enemy mithril into silver is not an option, without completely rewriting the whole thing, which I don't think I want to do at the moment. Maybe in the far future when I have nothing else to do.)

[Anthony]

By the way, we can take this chance and actually teach the AI to only do the meaningful transformations out of these. As far as ores in the vanilla game go, I think that means silver to mithril only, right?

Maybe the reverse if it's in the domain of an enemy city with an alchemists guild (oh, apparently that can't work. never mind).

[Seravy]

By the way, we can take this chance and actually teach the AI to only do the meaningful transformations out of these. As far as ores in the vanilla game go, I think that means silver to mithril only, right?

Maybe the reverse if it's in the domain of an enemy city with an alchemists guild (oh, apparently that can't work. never mind).

Thinking a bit more about this, it would also need to check the treaty status and hostility with that wizard, doing this to an ally or even neutral party is just not acceptable...far too much work for such a marginal effect, especially one I cannot even use to improve CoM. (there, Mithril and Adamant changes to crystals and those are worth a lot. It might help more than hurt if the town wasn't the center of unit production.)

[Tiltowait]

The population of Asengard dies every time it goes above 3. It should be growing fast, it's a fertile city site. RC7.

[Seravy]

The population of Asengard dies every time it goes above 3. It should be growing fast, it's a fertile city site. RC7.

2 of the 3 people are rebels.
One dwarven farmer cannot produce 3 food, so they are starving.
Not a bug.

[Tiltowait]

New game, RC7, Normal/4/Fair/1.5x. 6x Death, Myrran, Warlord. Trolls. I haven't played a Myrran race in forever, and it's time for some black channel war trolls!

With soundblaster (later), background music off, event music on, the music for events like completing an improvement or checking a ruin is not turned off. The volume just goes down but it's still playing. Doesn't happen with MIDI/Roland music.

is it possible to get the same item from 2 ruins in one game? I think this happened, even though I put the first item on the anvil.

Abandoned keeps always seemed to have exactly 67 gold or mana.

I'd like to single out the random walk when no targets are found as a misfeature. The circumstance it's trying to solve, invisible attackers, happens seldom, while the random walk occurs at the end of every combat and is very annoying. I understand what it's trying to do, but the situation just does not occur often. What does occur is endless delays while units race around the combat screen.

I lost 1 fame from a battle when I lost a level 1 hero. I thought they had to gain a few levels before they counted against your fame.

Fair size continent, but only 1 Adamant on all of Myrror.

Inside a ruin with 6 spiders and 2 sprites, I found 454 mana and a Death book. Isn't that a bit small to have a retort?

How are retreats handled now? Is it changed? I seemed to get away clean far too often.

The computer had Triremes in garrison. How does that even work? They won't appear when the city is attacked.

I threatened to attack Horus, who had 41 gold. He caved and gave me 10 gold as a bribe. He still had 41 gold afterwards.

A stack of 7 triremes decided to attack one of my flying Draconian spearmen scouts. It followed the spearmen all over the world, including when they flew through land. The triremes didn't follow over land, but would circle around and eventually find the spearmen when they went back over water. No matter how hard they ran, the triremes were never far behind. It was like Captain Hook and the tick-tock crocodile.

I cast black prayer and then weakness on a hell hound, and it stopped moving. I moved next to it with a spearman and killed it. It had 0 attack.

Fighting a ruin with 4 chaos spawns. Cast black sleep on one of them. The rest of them stop moving and remain still for the rest of the 50 turns, when they likely could have mopped the floor with my units.

I cast Subversion on Ss'sra but none of his treaty icons changed.

I'm not really sure about this whole 'make nice with the player' diplomacy. I was able to make a Wizard's Pact and then an Alliance with the first-place player (Sharee), while I was the second-place player. I think it was because we both had 5 death books. I then used this breathing room to crush the other 3 players, who were all smaller than us. Mission accomplished, Lawful Sharee eventually backstabbed me and declared war, but it was too late. She should have made war on me instead, it was the only chance she had to win, or even cause problems for me.

Units on ships don't get automatically set on patrol any more. You have to manually do it. Otherwise the units stay active and have their movement run out by the ship's movement. It's kind of annoying to have to select every unit every time you board a ship and click patrol.

I used Drain Power to great effect. It works much better when enemy wizards don't get 2000 mana per turn for free. In general, on normal, I feel like the computer wizards are playing the game the same as I am. It's quite refreshing.

I never got black channel until the end of the game so never even used it. It was Gunther and Valana with a stack of ordinary war trolls who took all the enemy capitals. Malleus with super arcane power showed up...at the very end of the game.

[Seravy]

With soundblaster (later), background music off, event music on, the music for events like completing an improvement or checking a ruin is not turned off. The volume just goes down but it's still playing. Doesn't happen with MIDI/Roland music.

I remember reading about this in Kyrub's forum section, and it most likely cannot be fixed.

is it possible to get the same item from 2 ruins in one game? I think this happened, even though I put the first item on the anvil.

No, it isn't normally possible. The default items contain some redundant ones (different name, same stats) though, and ofc random generated items can end up identical too.

Abandoned keeps always seemed to have exactly 67 gold or mana.

I thought I set the minimum treasure to 75, guess not. Not that it really matters, but people complained about 118 being too much.

I'd like to single out the random walk when no targets are found as a misfeature. The circumstance it's trying to solve, invisible attackers, happens seldom, while the random walk occurs at the end of every combat and is very annoying. I understand what it's trying to do, but the situation just does not occur often. What does occur is endless delays while units race around the combat screen.

It also makes it harder for flying units to target them because they keep moving. The problem here is auto will finish the turn before checking for the end of combat even if all enemies are dead, which I don't think I can fix. When they weren't randomly moving, they walked into the enemy city or even casted Counter Magic and such so I don't think this is such a major change. If anything, they'll not cause damage to the city you take which is better.

I lost 1 fame from a battle when I lost a level 1 hero. I thought they had to gain a few levels before they counted against your fame.

Maybe you had 4 units?

Inside a ruin with 6 spiders and 2 sprites, I found 454 mana and a Death book. Isn't that a bit small to have a retort?

Spiders are worth - I think - about 150-200 , sprites are 100, so that sounds correct. You need 1000 for a book.

How are retreats handled now? Is it changed? I seemed to get away clean far too often.

Not changed, it's the original code.

The computer had Triremes in garrison. How does that even work? They won't appear when the city is attacked.

Was there an empty shore tile adjacent to the city? If there wasn't (for example an enemy unit was there), then they couldn't leave the city. New ships appear in the city, including yours, and you (or the AI) has to move it outside.

I threatened to attack Horus, who had 41 gold. He caved and gave me 10 gold as a bribe. He still had 41 gold afterwards.

Interesting, I thought they only use phantom gold when paying extra to make you accept a treaty offer. Will check this later.

A stack of 7 triremes decided to attack one of my flying Draconian spearmen scouts. It followed the spearmen all over the world, including when they flew through land. The triremes didn't follow over land, but would circle around and eventually find the spearmen when they went back over water. No matter how hard they ran, the triremes were never far behind. It was like Captain Hook and the tick-tock crocodile.

They had nothing better to do. If they aren't needed to transport units and your spearmen is the only enemy unit in the world entering sea, this will happen. Normally they would just kill it but I guess the wizard had no way to deal with flying units.

I cast black prayer and then weakness on a hell hound, and it stopped moving. I moved next to it with a spearman and killed it. It had 0 attack.

Yes, 0 attack units ignore melee attack orders because they would do no damage anyway.

Fighting a ruin with 4 chaos spawns. Cast black sleep on one of them. The rest of them stop moving and remain still for the rest of the 50 turns, when they likely could have mopped the floor with my units.

This one sounds like a bug, can I have a save?
I severely doubt they thought they are outnumbered considering multigaze has a really high rating.

I cast Subversion on Ss'sra but none of his treaty icons changed.

It only cancels Peace Treaty directly which is invisible. A loss of 25 RP might not be enough to make him cancel his treaties, at least not immediately. Try casting it more than once.

I'm not really sure about this whole 'make nice with the player' diplomacy. I was able to make a Wizard's Pact and then an Alliance with the first-place player (Sharee), while I was the second-place player. I think it was because we both had 5 death books. I then used this breathing room to crush the other 3 players, who were all smaller than us. Mission accomplished, Lawful Sharee eventually backstabbed me and declared war, but it was too late. She should have made war on me instead, it was the only chance she had to win, or even cause problems for me.

You got lucky with her personality and books. If the leading wizard was a Maniacal with nature books they would have attacked you. Games heavily depend on who the other wizards are in this system, which can make it a lot easier, or harder.

Units on ships don't get automatically set on patrol any more. You have to manually do it. Otherwise the units stay active and have their movement run out by the ship's movement. It's kind of annoying to have to select every unit every time you board a ship and click patrol.

Intentional change. I've lost way too many settlers and spirits because they walked through an idle ship and decided to board it and get forgotten for the next 50 turns. In Hadriex's lizardmen game, he had like 10 settlers getting stuck on warships.

[Tiltowait]

I lost 1 fame from a battle when I lost a level 1 hero. I thought they had to gain a few levels before they counted against your fame.

Maybe you had 4 units?

It was Reywind the Warrior Mage who had just joined me, I sent him in alone to a ruin to die because he sucks and I don't want to see him show up for hire again.

The computer had Triremes in garrison. How does that even work? They won't appear when the city is attacked.

Was there an empty shore tile adjacent to the city? If there wasn't (for example an enemy unit was there), then they couldn't leave the city. New ships appear in the city, including yours, and you (or the AI) has to move it outside.

The screenshot is attached to my previous post.

Fighting a ruin with 4 chaos spawns. Cast black sleep on one of them. The rest of them stop moving and remain still for the rest of the 50 turns, when they likely could have mopped the floor with my units.

This one sounds like a bug, can I have a save?
I severely doubt they thought they are outnumbered considering multigaze has a really high rating.

Ooh, I don't have it. One of the features of kyrub's Master of Orion bugfix is that it saves a new version of the save file every turn, named according to the turn number. If I had a feature like that, I could go back and find the situation.