D2R 2.5

Diablo is being dumped down once again!
This makes me want to scream  

Along with terror Zones for easier farming and lvling comes
The Sundered Charms 

Note: You can put all of them in the inventory at the same time.




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As in, for example, if I choose 4 players, and then want the three opponents to be Ariel, Sharee and Freya, can I do it? I'm willing to hex edit my saves to do this if possible, and I think being able to choose specific opponents would be useful for testing.

Hello. I need a sub for PB65 and PB66 for this coming Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I should be back later Tuesday for normal play slot. Will leave extensive notes and for PB65 the sequential game I can at least do a little for 1 turn in advance.

For the past 10 years I've been tweaking a personal mod of Civ4 based originally off RevolutionDCM as a base.  I'm calling this mod "PsillyRevolution."  I don't have the mod posted anywhere yet, but if there's interest, I could open a Moddb page for it and post it there.  

The changes even from RevolutionDCM are too numerous to mention (I never kept a changelog).  Most of the changes are minor, centered around balance.  Where I do have major changes (to units, traits, civics, tech paths, etc.), those changes are motivated by a combination of balance, "realism"/flavor, and giving the player what I perceive to be more interesting choices/playstyles, especially early on in the ancient/classical era.  

Anyways, I feel like posting a walkthrough of a sample game with this mod.  I'll make sure to highlight the important changes as I go along.  

Settings:
*Emperor difficulty (keep in mind that, in reality, it's probably a bit easier than normal emperor because the AI has a tenuous grasp of the RevolutionDCM mechanics at best.  I've actually beaten this mod on Deity before, which is probably analogous to Immortal in unmodded Civ4, but it was a nail-biter, so I'm going for a more relaxed game just to show off the features).  
*Tectonics, 60% water
*Standard size
*Normal speed
*Raging Barbarians
*Revolutions ON
*Barbarian World (the map starts with ~7 barbarian cities already founded)
*Barbarian Civ (barbarian cities can spawn new civs after a random length of time)
*Random leader

...And our random leader is...



Hirohito of Japan (one of the RevDCM addons).  Expansive/Imperialistic.  Both traits in my mod are a little different than in base Civ4:

*Expansive does not give a health bonus, but instead gives 1 extra food for every 4+ food tile, kind of like how financial gives 1 extra commerce for every 2+ commerce tile.  For most of the game (until biology), this will only apply to food bonus tiles. Expansive also gives +50% hammer bonuses to worker and settler production, but no production bonuses to any buildings. 
*Imperialistic gives +50% great general emergence (I think the same as in the base game?), plus free Drill 1 on all archery, siege, gunpowder, trench, and armor units, as well as double production on courthouses and palace relocation.  

OK, so this is a leader that will want to REX and get to Code of Laws for courthouses.  Of course, you gotta be careful about REXing with Revolutions on.  1st-ring expansion away from your capital is not a problem.  2nd-ring expansion can be a problem if you have financial troubles, foreign religions, or other problems in your empire.  Early 3rd-ring expansion (12+ tiles from your capital) can work in exceptional circumstances, but probably ought to wait until the Renaissance Era or until you have a fairly stable situation and can easily deal with an occasional revolt.  Note that imperialist-boosted courthouses will not only reduce maintenance costs, but they will also help quell revolutionary instability in my more distant cities.  (By the way, if you are wondering what Organized adds bonus production to in this mod, it is lighthouses, aqueducts, harbors, customs houses, and airports). 

Imperialistic helps a little bit too if I need to do some early warring.  

And here's the starting position, after moving my warrior: 



OK, I already know that I'm not going to settle in place.  I'm going to settle close to that barbarian city and snipe it with some early archers before it can spawn another full-fledged civ.  (When that happens in RevolutionDCM, the spawned civ usually gets a free golden age, a free great general, and some free era-appropriate units, and I'd not like to deal with that).  

I went hunting --> agriculture while building a worker and exploring with my warrior.  I'm actually gonna rely on camps from hunting mainly in the beginning, but I'll eventually want to improve that corn too.  



Huh?   Camps, you say?  Yes.  In my mod, camps can be built on any forest or jungle tile.  By default, they only give +1 commerce, so they are not stellar later in the game, and get outclassed by lumbermills or just clearing the land for towns.  But our starting labor civic is...



Communalism.  Long-term, it's not a civic we want to stay in.  The larger and greater in number our cities become, the more crippling the increased city maintenance costs become.  The production, commerce, and worker speed penalties are also a drag.  But this labor civic supercharges camps and pastures.  Pastures can actually be built on any cleared land with at least 1 base food, and ordinarily they'd just give +1 food, but with communalism it's another +1 food, and with expansive I'd get another +1 food on any grassland pasture tiles (because they'd have 4 food), so potentially 5 food total on any grassland tile if I want.  However, I don't think I'll need that much food.  I'd rather have the slight food bonus, and big riverside commerce bonus, from building and working camps on the riverside forests and jungles.  Those tiles with be 3/1/2 while I'm in communalism.

Here's how things like after founding my city and exploring for a few turns:



I have some nice backlines, a goody hut I can take my time getting with a scout (I chose to not pop it with my warrior), and I can already see where my backline cities will eventually go.  One to claim the westernmost fish, one to claim the crab and sheep in the first ring on the east coast, one to the NE to claim the sheep, and maaaybe one more city on the far north peninsula by the river to slow-grow and just work cottages (unless the map wants to throw in some seafood up there in the fog, in which case that would be even better). 

Techwise, I'm probably gonna go archery, then wheel, then mysticism for border pops (because by then I'll probably be expanding to new cities and/or conquering that barb city), then animal husbandry, then...I'm not sure.  



Mining and bronze working would be nice at some point to see if I have gold/silver/gems and copper, respectively, although I'm not in a huge rush to swap into slavery because I have quite a bit of REXing to do, and communalism is actually perfectly fine for that with the food bonuses and being able to build ALL units (not just workers and settlers) with surplus food.  But if I ever want to start building libraries or other infrastructure, I'm gonna have to swap into slavery eventually.  I'll want to start chopping my trees anyways too.  You can get a bit of production into infrastructure under communalism using high surplus food into units, and then using overflow production into buildings, but it's not ideal.  

There doesn't seem to be any happiness resources in my neck of the woods, except for spices, which will be a while before we can get online with calendar, so an early-ish religion is a possible play.  Hinduism is already taken, but notice that Buddhism comes a bit later and is roughly contemporary with Judaism in this mod, albeit on a different tech path.  Code of Laws and Confucianism is not too far beyond that either.  And we know we'll want Code of Laws for cheap courthouses.

The nice thing about the early religious path in my mod is that Bureaucracy comes at Priesthood.  Don't get your hopes up:  it's +50% hammers and +50% GOLD in the capital, not commerce (kinda like Godking in FFH2), and +50% city maintenance (which becomes fairly crippling beyond 6 or 7 cities).  But it is a nice way to run a little ancient-era Palace economy while you have a small empire, and is a nice consolation prize even if you miss out on the early religions.

The Dune Wars Revival mod is very underrated, and the AI can play it pretty well - even launching "seaborne" (desert transport) invasions proficiently.

If you're interested in such a succession game please sign up here. I'd love to then balance the mod for MP and launch an MP game on it sometime

Hello friend,

After many hours of CoM gameplay I want to share with you the strategies I use to get superiority in the game quickly in the hardest difficulties.

1. So, let me present the setup I use:

Almost in all my games I take:
High elves, 4 Life books, 4 Sorcery books, 1 Nature book. Arch-Mage, Artificer, and Astrologer.

The reason for 4 life books is that in my personal opinion, life has the strongest spells in the game, additionally, I want to create super strong heroes and life books provide the best artifact enchantments, namely: invulnerability, lion heart, divine protection, and overall the best hero buffing and protecting spells (heroism, holy armor)

The reason for 4 sorcery books is that they provide the best tactical advantage, spells like, for example Aether Binding, Wind Walking, Mind Storm and more... provide much needed protection and tactical ability of speed and protection, also they enable the invisibility enchantment into an artifact.

The reason for 1 Nature book is first of all the chance to get or trade the 'Web' spell, and additionally make use of 'resist element' and in some cases 'earth to mud'

2. overall strategy:

using an online damage calculator, I can predict the outcome of trying to clear a node with an army, you can use any of these online calculators:
https://gmbarak.github.io/COM-Damage-Calculator/
https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Ad...Calculator

for spells I pick:

1. Heroism - useful for heroes and when defending your cities from rampaging monsters.
2. Guardian spirit - I send Guardian spirit to all the nodes I take
3. Just cause - is important for me first because it increase the chance to get fame 10 heroes from July 1502. which can become very powerful very quickly with the correct strategy as will be shown, but also decrease unrest - more money and decrease army spending.

1. Floating island - is important to transport units quickly right from the start.
2. Blur - very strong spell by itself it's in-fact decreasing the to-hit of enemy units by 20% which is substantial. also is a good trading spell since most AI will not have it and will trade any of the other lvl 1 spells for it (except web).
3. Confusion - is a very strong spell which is in-fact "incapacitate and destroy enemy unit with -2 resistance penalty"

The actual gameplay:

So, from the start of the game, first I make 5 magic spirits and send them to explore the map, usually 4 will go to find enemy wizards checking nodes/lair content on the way for potential targets and 1 magic sprit will check the nearest nodes/lairs.

in the main city - build order: Market, library, Forester's guild, barracks, alchemist guild an repeat longbowman.
usually the regular (level 1), magical weapon (+1 to hit) longbowmen will be ready to be sent to defend your cities before the first monster attack. a single longbowmen should be able to defend a city for the next 4/5 years with no problem. when attacked you just cast heroism/discipline/holy weapon. and in the case of skeletons attacking you, buff up the swordsman instead.

Also, once the first longbowmen are ready you can clear the easy lairs with you for money:
to kill 1 magic spirit/3 phantom warriors/ 1 fire elemental you will only need 1 longbowman.
send a spearman first to the nearest easy lairs nodes and another spearman to guard it.

finding other wizards soon is of supreme importance, because each spell you get in trading is such a huge boost. even if it's not a good spell, it decreases the chance of you getting that bad spell from a node/lair and speeds up your research.

after the magic spirits I cast just cause, right after just cause I adjust the taxes (just cause = -1 unrest) and cast enchant item: chain, 3 defense, 3 resistance. you should plan it so that by July 1502 you will have 400-500 gold. so you don't miss up on a chance to get a good hero. usually the item will be ready by July 1502 just in time for the coming hero to use it.

if you get a "bad hero", kill him/her ASAP to increase your chances to get a better one quickly. for me a bad hero is:

Dwarf
Barbarian
Sage
Dervish
Beastmaster
Orc Archer
Healer
rogue

unless they come with guiding beacon - in such a case I keep them because the +1 attack is a huge boost to the longbowmen.
and unless you need a spell caster to kill a high value node/lair and you got a spell caster.
or you need temporally arms-master to get high level longbowmen quickly to kill a node/lair.

druid - if you don't have web or have very hard nodes around you keep him. his web spell is very strong and effective and his ritual master might help.

a good/effective fame 0-10 hero to keep:

huntress - can reach a huge damage value very quickly and so can be a very good node/lair cleaner.
war monk - the agility* is very valuable. if he comes with luck/blade master even better. 
warrior mage - agility, web spell, spell caster, range attacks - all makes him a very good hero.
assassin - the to hit from blade master*, 4 movement, stealth, makes him good, if he gets luck/agility - even better.
thief - combination of agility, luck will make her very hard to kill, combined with holy armor, 15 defense and she is a very durable hero.
bard - has the +1 attack holy bonus, a strong boost to the longbowmen + she is a spell caster

using regular, magical weapon 9/8 longbowmen, you can clear almost all low level nodes around you and place guardian spirit in them.
with spell casters and web and buffed longbowmen (discipline, holy weapon) you can clear sky drake/great drake/phoenix/angels/vampires/gorgons by also using the web/earth to mud spells. 

a single 15 defense, holy armor with blur hero (which you can create by create item) can single handily clear unicorns/cockatrices/giant spiders/nagas (resistance 11 is required)/night stalkers (cast resist magic/bless) lairs/nodes.
for water elementals you will need something like 20-25 defense (which you can get with the help of create item and resist element) with holy armor and cast blur. 
for air elementals you can send a number of spearmen and try to cast a couple of psionic blasts (usually 2 will kill an air elemental). rinse and repeat until you clear the air elementals.

for phoenix without angels/guardian spirit you try to cast confusion with spearmen a number of times to decrease their numbers, once only a few of them left you can clear them with longbowmen and also web if you have the spell.

this way you can very quickly right from the start clear all the nodes except the extremely hard ones and place many guardian spirits in them. with the astrologer you can beat or match all the AI in spell power in the first years of the game.

more tips: 

you can create pathfinding item right from the start for 31 mana to give your hero.

That's it for now...
Thanks :D

Forgot to mention:

1. Right from the start increase tax rate by 10%
2. buy markets as soon as possible as they will return their value quickly as long as you keep 400-500 gold always for a hero.
3. Set in magic mana to max (not research and not skill) until you have guardian spirit in 1-2 nodes.
4. You can also create cheap artifacts to increase movement by 1, once the hero reaches his target switch back to the fighting artifacts.
5. don't mess with Djinns, Efrees, colossus ,unless you have a really strong hero/army/ raise dead.
6. to kill spiders + strong non shooter unit, try to send magic spirit (which is immuned to web) (maybe magic spirit with flight) kill them with spells (phantom warriors/psionic blast) then kill the strong monster.
7. a single shooter hero with 7 movement or teleport can kill 9 vampires/9 death knights/ 9 wrights
8. a hero with about 13 defense and holy armor can kill shamans city by itself. a hero with 15 defense and luck/holy armor or 20-25 defense (resist element) with only holy armor can kill a city of magicians defenders.
9. all these hero are easy to get/create with artificier and create item.
10. if you get the holy word spell, you can easily create -6 save artifacts to give a spell caster hero to cast the spell, if you get morgana the witch, the artifact "The Dark Pact" or 1-2 death spell books with black prayer, you can also cast black prayer and have holy word with -10 save to destroy any fantastic unit and about -12 save to kill any undead fantastic unit
11. an interesting strategy to meet other wizards is to not defend a node you cleared. the other wizards will send their magic spirit to the node. just remember to protect the node before they occupy it. also. remember you don't want chaos wizards to scout your cities, once they scan any of your cities they can cast harmful spell to the city and it's surroundings.

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While my intended solution to the problem these create is pretty much the "don't let that many wizards survive until the endgame", multiple copies of these spells might still use some fine-tuning on their unrest effect.

Currently you get +2 unrest for each Doomsday beyond the first and +1 for each extra Armageddon.

Maybe changing that to add +1 for any duplicate of either spell, and cap the total at 3 would be better?
With that, the worst case scenario is 10 additional unrest (5+2+3) instead of what's currently pretty much unlimited.
However that also makes the strategy of trading these spells away to escalate the effects ineffective.

Either way the effect is already moddable in the unrest script file and this should came up rarely, but we might want to adjust the default, let me know what you think.

D2R Patch 2.5 is now live on the ptr

I am liking it, first, because it didn't introduce any (major) changes to the core game play. Looks like I don't need to create new ladder toons, and concentrate on building the Variants.



I guess you guys would know I am not for patches for the most part. There are no (significant) skill changes, nor more overpowered runewords that the game balance on. The game as is, is already "ruined" by favouring the Ladder Chasers, those who thinks a character should be able to solo 8 any challenges in the game, and do it safe and fast.



The 1 big changes of this patch is the introduction of the Terror Zone. I am glad this is an Opt-In.

Quote:Terror Zones
The journey to level 99 is a celebrated experience for players and quite the milestone if achieved—a rite of passage, even. We want to offer an alternative to repeatedly farming Baal, Diablo, or Nihlathak. We also want the journey to level 99 to be accessible to a larger population of players, full of variety, and most importantly, challenging—this is where Terror Zones come in. As we get into details, please note that players can choose to opt-out of Terror Zones if desired.

When playing a Terror Zone-enabled game, every hour, the armies of the Burning Hells will focus their demonic might on specific zones, terrorizing them. The monsters in these zones will be at least two levels higher than your current level or their original level, up to a maximum per difficulty. The experience received and the loot dropped by killing a terrorized monster will be based on this new level. In addition, terrorized monsters will also grant additional experience points.

Here are the level details for each monster type per difficulty:

Normal

Base: +2 levels up to level 45
Champion: +4 levels up to level 47
Unique: +5 levels up to level 48
Nightmare

Nightmare

Base: +2 levels up to level 71
Champion: +4 levels up to level 73
Unique: +5 levels up to level 74
Hell

Base: +2 levels up to level 96
Champion: +4 levels up to level 98
Unique: +5 levels up to level 99
The base player level used for the above calculations are taken from the creator of the game. If the host leaves the game, a new player will be selected for the base.

Upon entering a Terror Zone-enabled game, you'll be informed of the current terrorized areas through a message sent to you via the Chat Box. When the time for new terrorized zones draws near, you will be informed of the impending changes via the Chat Box.

In addition, you will be informed that you’re entering a terrorized area by several indicators:

Unique iconography next to a terrorized monster's name
On-screen text and messaging
Special audio cue
In-game text on the auto-map

v 1.04.05

Comments
- Spells seem much more balanced than before. Love them. Love the feel of the game - it's made a lot of progress!
- Various quality of life enhancements are so, so nice. X cursor over unit already affected by spell, the grid - awesome. The warning about all cities already have that spell, the new auto modes, so much more - you really impressed me!
- Where do I find the current manual? The one I have seems to be missing things, for example "Insulation" or "Monument"

Bugs
- When game suggests your next unit move (unit flashing), but you select different units which are on open tower and try to make them move on other plane, you get error saying they can't.
- After casting wall of fire in battle, my melee units wander out of it to intercept advancing melee unit
- On windows, two monitors. Playing on left monitor. Right monitor every 10 seconds or so, constantly forever pops up white boxes on top and bottom of it while game is open.
- After setting # of enemies to random and playing, it will be set to a number the next time you are on that screen. In other words if you set all the settings to Random when making a new game, then lose that game, and make a new one, everything will still be on random, except # of enemies.
- Casting target widget thing on the right side shows even when casting a global enchantment, or summon. The thing that says "Select a target"

Suggestions/thoughts
- Exit Game on main menu. Weird to need to alt-f4 in full screen mode, or exit full screen mode
- Click anywhere to close Wizards screen
- Flee is basically removed, as it virtually always means "lose all units immediately." Probably because of this line of thought/coding, the AI doesn't use it anymore, which was a cool mechanic. I suggest a revisit to this flee mechanic, because you might as well rename it to "commit suicide" as it is now. In real non-game history, fleeing virtually never means all units die. Anyway, just think it's too aggressive still.
- Still find it extremely stupid that some bears wandering in the woods will magically know when I have added more troops to my defenses, and then completely change their rampage direction, to target another city entirely.
- I can't remember what the logic was for adding a spell to the building tech tree, but it seems a strange avoidance of proper balance to me. Maybe easier said than done, but Tree of Knowledge is quite a weird one-off and hopefully will some day be removed.
- Auto on my units, would be nice to have them do similar movements to how computer AI does - move and shoot for example. Currently feels like a feature that punishes me for using it
- Auto on my units, would be nice to have some kind of "just stand there" mode. Often I want enemy fliers to expend their shots and come die on me in melee. Currently auto is extremely slow as I have to watch all my units wander aimlessly. So I still just mash "done" over and over. Maybe can be called "stand firm" or "hold ground" or something.
- Roads have been nerfed so hard that they seem to serve no purpose at all other than gold. Units just ignore them when pathing, for the most part, except in combat, where they work. Probably they should do something overland. And whatever that is, it could be different between realms maybe
- After research, there used to be a page flipping animation for the spell book. I realize 90% of the time I just click to skip it, but I still miss it.
- The enemy colors are very hard to keep track of. Just played a game against pink, purple and dark purple. I accidentally invaded the wrong wizard's city, and this wasn't the first time this has happened. Not sure what the fix might be but the colors are too similar because of the gradients built into the flags, etc.
- When you choose to be red, the minimap is quite confusing as volcanoes look like your cities. Not entirely sure if it's just red that has this kind of issue, but definitely at least red.
- I was confused at first by clicking "Next Turn" and seeing it turn to "Unknown" while I waited. Probably if there are no other known wizards it can not show that, or ... don't know. I actually thought it was a bug at first, like an unknown string.
- On potions, some kind of quick description of what the hero attribute does would be nice. I have to search it each time.
- Confirmation on potion use would be nice if practical to do
- Have gotten a message about city of atlantis showing up, but no indication where it might be, or if it's supposed to be something or do something(?)
- Maybe can disable more of the inappropriate spells in battle spell book. For example "Wall of Darkness" when I am attacking someone else
- In combat info list, Turn should be last or first, not in between the skill, mana and range (since those 3 are linked)
- In combat "possession" can be chosen, though all units rolled over are X (in my test case was a hero and some sprites). I believe this is because it is only searching for "normal" and is including hero, but it actually can't cast on hero.

All in all I am so honored to experience the massive gains you've given to my favorite game. It is significantly better than it was even a year or so ago. Great job!

Since introduction of CoM for windows and 13 opponent wizards, I notice something about how each retorts actually become more or less useful as map get bigger and/or more opponents than standard original CoM 4 opponents in DOS version was. Some retorts scale rather well with bigger maps and more opponents (such as Guardian/Warlord/Tactician/Omniscient/Cult Leader which effect scaling up the more cities or units wizards have so they scale up much in larger map, or Astrologer that bigger map mean more opportunity to gain benefit from this retort, or Channeler which basically allow wizard to ignore one aspect of scale up problem you would have in bigger map completely, or Charismatic which benefit scale up well with number of opponents) While some retorts have effect that not scale up or down with map size or number of opponent (such as Alchemy/Sage Master/Archmage that gives the same scale of return depend on amount of resources to put on so bigger map means greater resource lead to great result with little to none deminishing return, or Famous that effect scale of fame that although technically fame could be raised faster on bigger map but output of it still not quite scale with map size or number opponent, or Runemaster/Myrran/Specialist/Artificier that benefit actually fixed in aspect that not related to map size or resource input).

But of some retorts are scale up poorly in larger map size and more opponent as map scale become bigger, especially for human player due to ai have resource use advantage that human does not have such as Spellweaver and Conjurer. Both of this retort have benefit scale up with casting skill that equation intentionally made it scale more linearly with constant investment time rather than shear resource input until very late game. This technically both of these retort suppose to have power growth somewhat as empire get bigger and has more resources on large map but target and need for using both retort scaling up quadratic along map size as wizards has more target to enchants or more cities in need of summons creatures to protect them but casting skill prevent players from actually use it on all the needed, so return of the benefit of both retort actually not scaling up for human players for their intended playstyles on smaller scale game. Among these two, Conjurer gives worse benefit in larger map due to there is no option to use conjurers to return resource for invest into expand its scope in the way that Spellweaver could until very late game for some specific combo.

On this issue, I think problem originate from casting skill growth (forced linear in relative to time by huge deminish investment as skill get higher), empire's growth (quadratic), and empire's needed (also quadratic) not grow at the same rate. This become more apparent in larger map and more opponents. This lead to overland-casted heavy playstyle such as summon-based and unit enchantment-based not scale well on larger map. Human player would never able to go fully summons army across empire in larger map as players would need more field armies and need to deal with several different fronts with a lot of logistic problem. Doom stack become less and less important as map get bigger too as players would need several good stacks to deal with a lot of different fronts that more than what player need to handle on smaller game.