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So, you've kept that the AI will keep using plane shift at full speed, even when at war with the human on their own plane? Doesn't that vastly weaken them (since it targets strongest stacks first)? Why not make it variable based on having war on their own plane? My priority numbers suggestion ignored my own thoughts on when they should be using it, so saying 'no better idea' without addressing it seems odd. (The numbers with my own thoughts would be much much more skewed).
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If the human is at war with the AI on their own plane then the destination plane is the AI's home plane. So stacks will be shifted back to home, if any exists, otherwise the spell won't be used. I see no problem with that.
Basically, the assumption is, if a target was found then the spell is worth using.
There is a bit of abuse potential my making the AI withdraw from a "who conquers Myrror first" race by declaring war, but as that means war on the player's home plane, 99% of the time it's not worth it...
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Done so far :
Quote:-Removed spell : Move Fortress
-New/Returning spell : Plane Shift. Arcane Rare, has the same effect as old Life Uncommon.
-The AI will use Plane Shift more often on higher difficulty levels.
-Disenchant Area is renamed to Ritual of Cleansing and is now a Life Uncommon.
-Planar Travel is removed from the game.
-New Arcane spell : Heroic Heart. Costs 18 MP, 440 RP. Heals 3 damage on a hero.
This spell aims at making heroes more playable for non-Life wizards. It's strictly worse than Healing but everyone gets it.
-Heroic Heart shows up as a common, Heroic Shout as an Uncommon, Plane Shift as a Rare in research order.
-Heroic Heart shows up as a common, Heroic Heart as a Common in treasure. Disjunction shows up in treasure as a Rare.
-Plane Shift, Summon Champion, do not show up in treasure. (Create Artifact was already disabled)
...now to teach the AI to use the new healing, to recognize the swapping of disenchant and swap the sound/animation for those two...
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Oh I didn't recall you ever explaining destination plane. That makes more sense then.
Life only gets disenchant area.. makes them even bigger for countering Chaos and death (well, technically it makes everyone else worse.)
I definitely think losing heroic shoot would be better than that. If you dislike city curses and play long term strategies, you must play life now. Given that nature chaos already have problems I don't think thats good for overall balance.
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Quote:Oh I didn't recall you ever explaining destination plane. That makes more sense then.
Guess I didn't make it clear enough that I'm using the "destination plane" procedure from AI movement (towers). Only way to ensure the AI stays consistent and always moves in sync with the spell.
Quote:Life only gets disenchant area.. makes them even bigger for countering Chaos and death (well, technically it makes everyone else worse.)
Only if we don't change curses, but we plan to.
In which case everyone else is better and life is unchanged - Life already removed all curses with Consecration and everyone else pretty much didn't remove them because they couldn't afford a dispel war against the AI.
Note that this change also makes Nightshade more relevant (and chaos/death better because they can disable it).
Downside would be...weaker Runemaster I guess? You no longer need dispel resistance on city curses. However Runemaster was already a horrible pick for Death and others have no permanent curses so it doesn't matter.
I suppose Runemasters also lose their ability to remove curses better though which is actually a significant loss - I'm not too happy about that. I don't think anyone picks it for that though...
Alternately we could have Heroic Shout in Life and keep curses and disenchant as is...
Note we have to fill the Life spell slot and we don't need any new spells for Life. We also don't want Move Fortress - at this point I'm convinced it's not a good spell for gameplay.
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I have no good idea on how to improve curses and not being able to dispel them doesn't feel right even if doing so isn't a good strategy. So I guess that means Heroic Shout is now a Life spell.
...Maybe we should buff it? It's kinda weak for an uncommon...in fact a hero with life buffs almost never wants to use a direct damage spell, do they? Not that Life needs it to be any stronger...idk.
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Heroic shout is quite strong, it already does the same amount of damage of fireball for less mana and I suspect that it's also got a better damage type.
To me it's mainly useful for annoying stuff like sprites and shadow demons. Normal troops can be dealt with in a lot of ways.
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Ok, so everything done so far except...
We need to decide what to do with the item power slot (I would prefer a new Death item power) and what to do with Shadow Demons (no idea what I want).
July 31st, 2018, 16:59
(This post was last modified: July 31st, 2018, 17:07 by Seravy.)
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But the way one last argument against expensive Plane Shift. If there is something blocking the tile on the other side, you lose the entire cost. You can't be sure there are no units on the other side unless you already have units there to see it... in fact considering how probably half the attempts end up like that, even 180 is way too expensive...
For Shadow Demons, one idea. What if planar movement was limited to only tiles you have scouted on the other side?
So basically, you need to crack a tower (or get plane shift) to enter the plane and reveal tiles first before the demons can go there?
Downside would be Earth Lore allowing entry. (nice combo but it's common and OP enough as is...)
Other downside would be the inability to enter the plane in locations not yet scouted which makes it a lot more inconvenient to use the demons as scouts.
Alternately...what if you could only use the planar travel ability if you know about the existence of the other plane by having at one open tower on the map, or Plane Shift researched? Demons might have the ability to travel between dimensions but unless you know where to send them, they would just get lost and disappear...
Which leaves the item power, don't have any good idea for that still. Anyone else?
We would want something that is relevant to using heroes in Death... they already have thrown, instant death, and the ability to drain life in many ways (Vampiric, Spell Charges, + Spell Skill to cast life draining spells), even fear to avoid melee so what else could they need? The new spell offers them limited healing too, don't think we need to have healing or defensive abilities, but heroes already have like unlimited offense so not that either.
One idea : Lord of the Dead - hero gains +X attack and defense where X equals the number of Death realm units on your side of the battlefield.
Downside? Completely useless if you find one and aren't a Death wizard...that's bad. We'll need something else.
July 31st, 2018, 17:17
(This post was last modified: July 31st, 2018, 17:18 by Nelphine.)
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I don't see anywhere near half the casts if planar travel not working. It is true though. I'd rather keep it 300 cost and refund the mana if it fails. Sure, the skill is more important, but the spell is worth it.
I like shadow demons only able to use it once planar travel is researched. Sure tower breaking also makes balance sense, but researching planar travel seems to make more flavor sense.
However a natural death combo is kind of a neat idea, as that's a combo I don't think I ever bother with right now.
No particular death abilities come to mind. Maybe one that acts as soul linker but only for undead? (And applies to the owning hero as well)
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