Role of planes

[Nelphine]

It's equally unfun to NOT have a Myrran wizard show up when you are already in end game. Being able to build up stacks of end game units (whether strategic strength mega buff bezerkers to stop the opponent from attacking, or very rare units that the AI can't handle, or whatever else you call an end game unit) without interference isn't a war game. It's a pure economy game, and the human can do that better than the AI by too large a margin.

As difficulty increases, you should be expecting to need to conquer faster. Not conquering faster, should end up with you losing because the AI cheating bonuses should get out of control (regardless of what those numbers are). Admittedly, land size should increase how long it takes to conquer, but I simply haven't seen that - instead it increases how many random bits of an enemy are left over after you conquer them. It doesn't change the milestones of when that enemy is no longer a threat, when you can conquer their fortress, and when their doomstacks become a threat (if anything, it increases the time it takes for them to become a threat, and therefore makes it easier to choose when to fight).

[Seravy]

It's equally unfun to NOT have a Myrran wizard show up when you are already in end game.

You can open the towers yourself, so no it's not.

As difficulty increases, you should be expecting to need to conquer faster.

Except as difficulty increases conquering faster puts you into the same place, as the enemy also slows you down more and these cancel each other. You need to conquer "faster" to be able to get the same result, not to get a better result. (and by faster I mean, better, really, basically you need more and stronger stacks. But the AI is also killing more of your stuff and has more and better defenders.)

I think you're expecting too much from players.

[Nelphine]

Why would I open the tower before I have 9 stacks? I don't know where the AI is, but I know he hasn't been at war, so I have to assume he's got 9 stacks, 1 for each tower. So as soon as I open any tower, he'll open the other 8; and then I lose the treasure from those 8. So if he's not allowed to open them, no, I'm going to wait until I can break all 9 on the same turn. I'm not going to give him added strength by letting him open any.



No, as difficulty increases, producing more puts you in the same place. ACCOUNTING for that, you need to conquer faster - because the next enemy is growing faster than on the previous difficulty. You need to conquer faster. Not 'faster' because you have more units, and so your extra units cancel out his extra units and you end up in the same place by the end of the war - no, you need to actually conquer faster, because the next AI is going to have more units and won't have been fighting you to slow down, and you need to end up at the same place at the end of FOUR wars.

Basically, if there are two AIs:
On expert you kill AI 1 on turn 10. Then AI 2 has a relative strength of 20 compared to you, because he wasn't fighting you.
Your statement: On master, you produce faster, AI 1 produces faster, and you end up in the same place as on expert. So you kill AI on turn 10. But AI 2 produces faster, and now has a relative strength of 25, because he wasn't fighting you, so you lose, because you were expecting an AI 2 of the same relative strength as he was on expert when you killed AI 1.
My statement: On master, you produce faster, AI 1 produces faster; but you are aware of AI 2, so you have to conquer AI 1 on turn 8; now AI 2 has a relative strength of 20, and you and AI 2 are now on the same relative footing as you were when you started the war on expert.

So yes, on higher difficulty levels, INCLUDING the fact that everyone is doing things faster due to more resources, you ALSO need to actually conquer faster, so that your RELATIVE strength when you start to address the next opponent is the same as it was on the previous difficulty.

Please note, all numbers are completely made up to illustrate the point, they are not based on real numbers. Also note, maybe you can handle relative strength 25 of AI 2.. but that's going to keep getting worse when you go to AI 3, and then AI 4. You won't win all four wars with that route.

[Seravy]

But AI 2 produces faster, and now has a relative strength of 25, because he wasn't fighting you, so you lose,

No, this is where you play better and not lose despite AI 2 being stronger than you.

Also note, maybe you can handle relative strength 25 of AI 2.. but that's going to keep getting worse when you go to AI 3, and then AI 4. You won't win all four wars with that route.

In that case we have to reduce the AI bonus. It used to be possible to win on that route, if it isn't, that means the difficulty level needs adjustments. Certainly, I have noticed it's much harder to beat stronger enemies now that the AI plays better. Which is why we have been reducing their bonuses. If it's still not possible to beat them anyway, it means they still have too much bonus.

I don't mind if there are a few, specialized strategies where you can actually produce more than the cheating AI and win that way. But 90% of the game's strategies don't and can't do that, so we can't have it as the only way to win. (especially if we get rid of Spellweaver)

[Bahgtru]

Before reducing please tweak the bonus so that it's progressive.

[Nelphine]

No, my example has nothing to do with numbers. And it's relative strength.

Against AI 1, we always start at virtually identical strengths (they have a few more swordsmen). Then they grow. Each difficulty allows them to grow faster, no matter what we reduce the bonuses to (it just changes what turn things happen at, it doesn't change that it happens).

Human, as difficulty grows, have to figure out how to combat that. They know AI 1 will be x strength, AI 2 will be x+y strength (I've called this '20 relative strength' in my example - it doesn't actually matter what this is.)

But if you don't conquer FASTER, then ANY bonus means the next AI will be relatively stronger ACCOUNTING for the resource bonuses, when you consider the baseline for war when it starts with that AI, all the time, because that's how exponential growth and snowballing works.

In order to be able to maintain difficulty, you have to be able to attack earlier in the curve; if you wait till later in the curve, you end up on the part of the curve where the AI is simply spiking out of control (again note, this might not happen with AI 2, and depending on the difficulty, it might be possible for you to handle it, and the AI won't actually go out of control, but the principle still holds).

That's why, using a lunatic strategy on expert, makes it seem like expert is a push over; because part of the lunatic strategy is aiming at an earlier point on the curve, but the curve isn't as pronounced on expert, so it makes it exponentially easier.

Similarly, this is why using the same strategy on expert and master, (or advanced and expert) will make the harder difficulty seem far harder, and maybe even 'too hard'. It's because strategies generally aim for particular times on the curve (because human resources don't change), without accounting for the fact that the curve itself is different on the different difficulties.


And that's why I say, I don't CARE what the bonuses are. That just changes the detail. But assuming the difference in cheating bonuses is relevant between the difficulties, than the difference in the curve will ALWAYS lead to that. If you play on higher difficulties, you must, INCLUDING the difference in resources, always conquer faster.

[massone]

Well I haven't played Huge map games recently, but in the past I had very bad experiences with it (losing on Hard for example, despite going 10 book 2 retorts with a good enough strategy). I'm ok with postponing land size balancing until everything else is done as playing larger maps for testing takes longer.
However I do have to say every single time I see Hadriex play on a Huge map and losing the game due to it, I feel bad. I believe Huge maps are harder, and by a very large margin. (they might not be IF you specialize your strategy around the map size, but for generic wizards, they are.)

I don't think you understand that I want to tie the research speed, the conquest rate and towers all three to the same spot. But difficulty and land size moves research speed and conquest rate in the opposite directions so it's by definition impossible. I'm willing to drop the research rate as a compromise. I'm not willing to drop the conquest rate - the AI breaking through when I'm still less than halfway done on the Arcanus plane is why we have this entire system in place right now. If towers break earlier on larger maps or higher difficulty, I'd never play any of those again. It's unfun to have a Myrran wizard show up when you aren't able to deal with it.

So this is a very old post, but still very relevant for the current game balance. I strongly dislike the current setup with the turn count limit on Tower breaking AND the Myrran wizard boss, and I think the problem you've been facing is that you keep tying the Towers to the idea of there being a Myrran boss that is too strong, and ultimately causing the game to play out in a very unnatural way.

I think the real problem is the Myrran boss, not the early contact between planes. Right now, on Expert difficulty, the Myrran boss will essentially always fully settle all of Myrror by the time of turn 160, which means they are unstoppable unless a Wizard on Arcanus owns a similar amount of territory, or there's an alliance. Perversely, this means that the "rush-conquer" strategy Nelphine uses actually involves turtling until 160 for a single ultimate showdown after rapidly conquering all of Arcanus, while peaceful economic strategies are forced to rush break the towers/get Plane Shift BEFORE the Myrran wizard settles too much territory, so that the Arcanus Wizards can put up a reasonable fight and invade Myrran together (either in an alliance or competitively to get more land). The rush-conquer only works for a few select builds, it's not viable for most Wizards even Chaos and Death wizards with all the offensive power they have, because the defender first-turn and wall/defensive enchantment advantage is too large until you have an entire spell-tier advantage over your opponent or something like Magic Immunity or a super hero or highly buffed offensive races like Barbarians.

So for more economic strategies, fighting wars on Arcanus just aren't worth the cost unless you have extremely easy targets. Instead, you have to plan to invade Myrran around turn 140 or earlier when the Myrran wizard isn't done settling, and preferably pre-120 for most strategies that don't have the super economy enchantments when you run out of settling territory.

It's a pretty bizarre state of affairs. It would be much more enjoyable if the Myrran Wizard was not an endgame final boss, but a major opponent occupying a rich land that every Wizard on Arcanus is rushing towards. The current system lacks strategic depth because you know for sure that your final enemy is the Myrran Wizard and must choose either to rush-kill all Arcanus Wizards to have enough territory to compete, or rush the Myrran Wizard before they're too strong. There's no state of continuous and dynamic competition from all Wizards, no real chance for any Arcanus Wizard to be the more dangerous opponent in the late game.

Some ideas for adjusting the role of planes and the problem with scary Myrran invasions:

• Make the Myrran Wizard start with the standard number of settlers instead of +2. There's no reason to give them the extra edge when they already have such a big one from having no competition early on.
  
• Make some of the Towers far more difficult than others. Those near an easy Tower could therefore deprioritize Plane Shift, while everybody must go for Plane Shift fast or risk falling behind in the new colonial rush.
  
• Introduce not an arbitrary turn count on behaviour, but a "Planar Seal" built-in to the game. To open the seal, at least one Tower MUST be opened. Plane Shift and Shadow Demons don't work otherwise.
  
• Let the Myrran Wizard invade whenever they want, but suffer a penalty for opening the "Planar Seal". When the planes are sealed, we could have something like magic flowing and concentrating in Myrror, enhancing the power of the native races and all fantastic creatures, or even node output too. When the planes are first unsealed, and the Myrran races suffer a penalty for leaving that magic rich environment. Over time, the penalty goes away, but Arcanus races gain a bonus as magic power leaks into the normal plane. Furthermore, rare resources spontaneous appear on Arcanus, through events causing new ores to be found. This lasts for a period of turns until both planes stabilize, maybe the course of 20-30 turns, by the end of which, node power also even outs on both planes, OR when ALL the Towers are opened.
  
• In this way, the Arcanus Wizards risk facing the powerful Myrran Wizard in their home territory if they open too early, but are also incentivized to do so to both explore Myrror and to power up their home plane. The Myrran Wizard faces a temporary weakness preventing them from executing a devastating invasion before anyone has the means to respond, yet still benefits from invading the weaker races if done well.
  
• Increase the cost of casting or researching Plane Shift to correspond with the number of total Towers opening, as well as the Wizard's owned Towers. The more Towers that are opened, the weaker the barrier between planes is, so the easier it is to access the other side using any method.
  
• Make the AI treat the Towers as a garrisoned place like the nodes. Give the Towers an aura of their own, but one that suppresses ALL realms except Arcane, and suppresses combat casting skill for whomever doesn't own it.
  
• Implement a lag time for using the Towers and/or Plane Shift. If somebody is shifting planes, other Wizards can see it from either side, and prepare accordingly. Plane Shift takes longer than with a Tower, and becomes vulnerable to curses while they're either preparing to shift or recovering from the planar travel, even though it has the geographic advantage of going possibly right into undefended territory.
  
• Implement a limitation on using Plane Shift, so that it only works with a certain distance of a Tower, which DECREASES when a Tower is owned by somebody else/non-active, and INCREASES when the caster owns the Tower, enhancing the strategic value of owning towers, yet also make sure it's not a perfect chokepoint.
  

[Seravy]

There's no state of continuous and dynamic competition from all Wizards, no real chance for any Arcanus Wizard to be the more dangerous opponent in the late game.

I have seen that happen but it definitely isn't the most common outcome.
The problem is, if there is no final boss, then once you conquer half the opponents, the game is over. There is no way the remaining 2 players will be able to compete with you, holding 3 player's worth of land.
It's a pacing issue. There are 4 opponents. If they are all equal then conquering two is enough to win. That's too early, the game ends before anyone even gets a very rare spell.

dropping the 2 settlers for Myrran wizard is a good idea. Except, I do remember someone actually asked for Myrran wizards to settle faster so this really is a personal preference I think. It's unfortunate but if people simulataneously ask for a stronger or a weaker enemy, I can't really do both other than by tying it to difficulty levels, so the AI uses "rapid settler production" strategy on Myrror if it's Master and above, and there is no AI at all on Myrror on Normal or below. We could maybe refine this further by removing a settler or two on Fair but that's the most we can do and only if actual testing data proves the myrran wizard is too powerful on these levels of difficulty specifically. Even then I rather make the AI not build settlers for the first year of the game than not get the starting two settlers, it's easier to implement.

Introduce not an arbitrary turn count on behaviour, but a "Planar Seal" built-in to the game. To open the seal, at least one Tower MUST be opened. Plane Shift and Shadow Demons don't work otherwise.

This is pretty much how it works except the AI isn't allowed to be the one breaking the seal before the specific turn. If it could, players would complain about getting stomped into the ground by Myrran armies swarming to their plane in 1410. I know, I had fallen victim to that which is why this thread was started. Realistically speaking, in the midgame, around 1410 the Myrran AI has a huge advantage that crushes the Arcanus players : their top tier units are that much better and they even have adamanitum on them. To deal with that, at least rare spells are necessary and it's almost impossible if there are other enemy players still fighting you on Arcanus as well.
So yeah the problem is the Myrran wizard doesn't get unstoppable at 1416, they are already unstoppable around 1409-1410 and their relative advantage actually start shrinking somewhere around 1414-1420 because by then all the Myrran land has cities on it mostly grown to their max sizes. More importantly, the player can grow by conquering Arcanus to match this size instead of having to fight the 4 times larger Myrran opponent with only 1/4 of Arcanus under their control.

Let the Myrran Wizard invade whenever they want, but suffer a penalty for opening the "Planar Seal". When the planes are sealed, we could have something like magic flowing and concentrating in Myrror, enhancing the power of the native races and all fantastic creatures, or even node output too. When the planes are first unsealed, and the Myrran races suffer a penalty for leaving that magic rich environment. Over time, the penalty goes away, but Arcanus races gain a bonus as magic power leaks into the normal plane. Furthermore, rare resources spontaneous appear on Arcanus, through events causing new ores to be found. This lasts for a period of turns until both planes stabilize, maybe the course of 20-30 turns, by the end of which, node power also even outs on both planes, OR when ALL the Towers are opened.

This doesn't work, not only is it overly complex but a lot of Myrran advantages are quality, not quantity based. For example Nightblades are invisible. Many realms have no answer to an invisible army until rare spells. It doesn't matter if the nightblades have half the stats, when they are impossible to kill or target.
This is a good idea in theory but wouldn't work in practice, the advantage of various myrran races and units are too diverse.

Make the AI treat the Towers as a garrisoned place like the nodes.

Units cannot move through tiles that are already filled with units. That makes the tower unusable for the AI - their own garrisons would block their movement. I guess it could be done if we forced the AI to use Plane Shift instead of towers but that isn't a good idea.

Implement a lag time for using the Towers and/or Plane Shift.

The enemy being able to throw an army at you from the other plane in the late game is intentional design. If I don't do this players put nothing in their cities and save thousands of gold and production on having no defending armies at all. That breaks the game balance because they AI is forced to produce and maintain large garrisons - there would be no game if they did not.

[massone]

dropping the 2 settlers for Myrran wizard is a good idea. Except, I do remember someone actually asked for Myrran wizards to settle faster so this really is a personal preference I think. It's unfortunate but if people simulataneously ask for a stronger or a weaker enemy, I can't really do both other than by tying it to difficulty levels, so the AI uses "rapid settler production" strategy on Myrror if it's Master and above, and there is no AI at all on Myrror on Normal or below. We could maybe refine this further by removing a settler or two on Fair but that's the most we can do and only if actual testing data proves the myrran wizard is too powerful on these levels of difficulty specifically. Even then I rather make the AI not build settlers for the first year of the game than not get the starting two settlers, it's easier to implement.

There's a big difference between settling faster and having +2 extra settlers. The first is a behaviour/strategy change that I strongly support. If a human-intelligence player were alone on Myrror, they'd obviously expand as fast as possible knowing there's no competition. The second is an overwhelming artificial advantage that lets the Myrran snowball way faster and ties in the idea of the "end game boss" to difficulty levels, which is bad design.
Having 2 extra settlers right off the bat means having almost double the starting territory, allowing the Myrran player to effectively be "ahead" of normal game time by 12-24 turns. It's much worse than simply building more settlers.

What if the player really likes the planar travel mechanic and the eXploration part of 4x genre? I can't just turn off the Myrran boss, but I have no choice but to use higher difficulty levels so that the Arcanus AI uses advanced strategies and keeps up. The game shouldn't railroad the player into conquering Myrror from an established foe, and remove the possibility of a second exploration competition after the initial Arcanus exploration phase. I think many MoM players love it specifically for the planar mechanics, and it doesn't work if it's designed to provide a fixed boss instead. You could just as easily design the Arcanus AI to rush for Myrror instead to provide the challenge, so that it's not always the player that gets to settle the new land.

This is pretty much how it works except the AI isn't allowed to be the one breaking the seal before the specific turn. If it could, players would complain about getting stomped into the ground by Myrran armies swarming to their plane in 1410. I know, I had fallen victim to that which is why this thread was started. Realistically speaking, in the midgame, around 1410 the Myrran AI has a huge advantage that crushes the Arcanus players : their top tier units are that much better and they even have adamanitum on them. To deal with that, at least rare spells are necessary and it's almost impossible if there are other enemy players still fighting you on Arcanus as well.
So yeah the problem is the Myrran wizard doesn't get unstoppable at 1416, they are already unstoppable around 1409-1410 and their relative advantage actually start shrinking somewhere around 1414-1420 because by then all the Myrran land has cities on it mostly grown to their max sizes. More importantly, the player can grow by conquering Arcanus to match this size instead of having to fight the 4 times larger Myrran opponent with only 1/4 of Arcanus under their control.

Yes but that's exactly my point. The Myrran player's advantages are too large and they are too strong too soon so you're forced to have this behavioural restriction, and it introduces all sorts of weird results because the player knows about the restriction (or if they don't, it's worse because they face an unexpectedly powerful enemy). Rush conqueror strategies turn into turtling strategies because they use the limit to prepare, while peaceful economy strategies are flipped into rush strategies to break the towers sooner. It's a very artificial situation that makes the game feel railroaded.

This doesn't work, not only is it overly complex but a lot of Myrran advantages are quality, not quantity based. For example Nightblades are invisible. Many realms have no answer to an invisible army until rare spells. It doesn't matter if the nightblades have half the stats, when they are impossible to kill or target.
This is a good idea in theory but wouldn't work in practice, the advantage of various myrran races and units are too diverse.

Their advantages aren't that large at the uncommon spell level. True Sight is uncommon, for example. You can also fight invisible armies defensively even without it because they have to attack your gates/wall openings. I've had Elite High Men Knight defeat an Air Elemental 1v1 while boosted with Heavenly Light, behind wall, without True Sight. Furthermore, invisibility doesn't grant illusion immunity, so they're just as vulnerable to your own invisible units like Night Stalker, which is uncommon too. None of the Myrran races seem that impressive to me, compared to human's advanced units, Slingers, or Berserkers. Paladins also grant Illusion Immunity too, and they can be easily built by 1407-1408, and garrison 1 in every city by 1409, if you start Human. Even the Warlock is only tactically good against high defense creatures with Doom Bolt, but 1v1 they're about even with 6-figure HM magicians or Hafling +Hit magicians.

I mean, you can use Warship + Flight to create doomstacks comparable to rare Efreets which work against missile immunity and magic immunity yet cost 3x less mana even if it costs a lot of production. Nature has easy access to adamantium and I do see the Arcanus AI spamming Transmute everywhere as soon as they have it (pre-1406 even on Advanced difficulty). Chaos has Mystic Surge which I've see creating 15 attack +2 Hit, Endurance, Invulnerability, Iron Skin, Elemental Armor, etc on a single Berserker. I had a game against a 4 Chaos 4 Life Barbarian who pulled this on me and repeatedly got insane stack wiping Very Rare contenders when they cast Mystic Surge on Berserkers, and they can do it several times per combat with the casting skill available pre-1410. And they've got enough bserserkers that having it at 1 health next turn is irrelevant, plus they can just cast it again. Death can actually benefit from raising the more powerful troops as undead. The only Realm that has a major gap at uncommon is Life.

On the Towers issues, I suppose the current game wouldn't work with the garrisons, but for future overhauls with source code, perhaps.

[Seravy]

What if the player really likes the planar travel mechanic and the eXploration part of 4x genre? I can't just turn off the Myrran boss, but I have no choice but to use higher difficulty levels so that the Arcanus AI uses advanced strategies and keeps up. The game shouldn't railroad the player into conquering Myrror from an established foe, and remove the possibility of a second exploration competition after the initial Arcanus exploration phase.

I'm not entirely sure but I think lowering the player count can get you 0 Myrran wizards on any difficulty.

While obviously not possible in CoM1, an alternate game mode that starts everyone on the same plane as the human for this race to be possible, without any tower turn limitations, is a good idea to add. But it's exactly that, an alternate game mode. I see why it would be interesting but unless we change a lot of things (for starters, weaken the towers and make Plane Shift an uncommon spell with half the casting cost), the AI will not be able to compete. As much as it looks like the AI is good at expansing with settlers, it's only so because they do it in the early game when the human player doesn't have the resources to take advantage of their better logistics skill.

I'm going to add this to my list of things as possible additions for CoM 2 and with it added I don't think we'll need the alternate solutions like weakened Myrran forces after opened towers. I already have like 6 other "alternate game mode" checkboxes planned but I'm going to worry about these after the core game mode works fully.

A game mode for the same number of opponents on both planes is already on the list, everyone has different preferences on this too.

I think many MoM players love it specifically for the planar mechanics, and it doesn't work if it's designed to provide a fixed boss instead.

Honestly I have no way of knowing if the intention behind adding the planar mechanics was the final boss design or something else. For me that appears the most logical as having a separate plane fills the same role as oceans or space distances in other 4X games : to create an unreachable area where enemies you can't access early exist so you'll still have something to do after you exterminated everyone you could reach.
I can even guess why - because in this game oceans aren't doing that. Ships can cross them from turn 1 and Water Walking is common.
But it's entirely possible we are overthinking it and there were 2 planes because they thought "Okay, we have enough games out there about conquering the world, can we make this more awesome? I don't know, how about conquering TWO worlds instead? Great idea let's do that!"