EitB 13 planning thread

[xist10]

Towards "spell needs time" - The unit can't move for the casting time. So you can't really "precast" 2 turn combat spells.
You can test it with Priest of Leaves (or Explore Lair).
Spells with casting time also counts as casting for one more turn - so if I start casting Bloom (2 turns) in T100, this ends the turn of the priest in T100, stops the priest from doing anything in T101 and is still blocking casting in T102, even if the priest can move - the New Forest appear at start of T102.

Okay, maybe I could explore the interaction between <iDelay>2</iDelay> and <bHasCasted>0</bHasCasted>. Does this still ends the turn in T100 and stops the priest from doing anything in T101 ? I'm reasonable sure, that this would allow the priest to start the next casting in T102.
Okay, you also can argue that losing casting for another turn is a feature, not a bug.

Still, I think maybe outside of summon spells, a <iDelay> makes a combat spell more or less useless.
Most spells need an enemy on adjacent tiles - and you should see if the mages are casting something and can avoid them for one turn. And even if you don't avoid the tiles, you get your own first strike, which should be enough that the spells shouldn't really matter if you decided to go in.
I expect damage spells to be mostly dead, and debuff spells are only interesting if you have a second army behind (in the fog) to make use of the debuff spells.
And even then, the fact that you only can every second turn makes it difficult to use summons on the defensive. You need to guess the turn the enemy attacks to make use of the summons.


Okay, when I'm thinking about it, I have no problem with adding <iDelay>1</iDelay> and <bHasCasted>0</bHasCasted> to (temp) summon and buff spells to test things.

Increasing terrain cost for Mobility also sounds interesting, I won't disagree.

[xist10]

I tested the <iDelay>2</iDelay> and <bHasCasted>0</bHasCasted> interaction - the only change between that and <iDelay>2</iDelay> and <bHasCasted>1</bHasCasted> is the fact, that you can cast in T102 again.

So I would change at least Haste to <iDelay>1</iDelay> and <bHasCasted>0</bHasCasted>.
I also would do this for the temp summons (Meta1, Law/Fire/Death2, Air/Water/Fire/Earth/Death/Meta/Sun3) - did I miss any ?
I also would increase the FE range again, when you can't move forwards, scout and move back anymore. - Outside of ships.

[BING_XI_LAO]

How about these:

Move Haste to Body3 (why is Body1 spell far far more powerful than Body2 and Body3? and far more powerful than every other 1st level spell? HELLO??)

Add a "Rune Walls" building that grants defensive bonus against summons, and/or damage reduction vs spells. Give it to forts too. Or make city defenses/fort bonus effective against spells.
maybe even make it impossible for Summons to enter cities with Rune Walls completely

Instead of nerfing Lanun, buff every other national pick to have some other similar economic bonus. Like hiking the food bonus of the Calabim breeding pit and so on.

Increase Optics vision range bonus

Disable damage spells / summon spell while embarked

[BING_XI_LAO]

Also is there a new EITB game to sign up to? Who's game?

[xist10]

1. Haste is in general relative inline with the other T1 spells. More or less the equivalent to one directly pick able promotion. Yes, Mobility is one of the stronger promotions, but the real advantage from haste is the flexibility, you get from adding +1 movement during the turn.
Regeneration is similar, but "Can heal while moving" (and +20% healing) is a bit more niche, but I think stronger than +1 movement.

2. Not possible - maybe we could add one "is a summon" promotion with a general city attack malus, but I don't think this solves the problems we have.
Damage reduction isn't implemented, I think, the only "Option" would be more likely to resist spells, which is (outside of Sun2) no problem ?

3. Bad idea and too much effort. As long as we only have one nail that's sticking out, we should hammer this nail down (or ban it when it's difficult to balance).
And we would need ideas how to buff the other (15 ?) ecos - which would have the Lanun lose the competitive edge outside favourable maps.

4. I think that would be more or less useless ? That should have no influence on Hawks/Floating Eyes, which are the primary option to detect ships right now.

5. Yes, something I wanted to see if I can do this (2.2.1 of my first proposal) - if there is a majority for that.

6. And no, when don't have a new sign up thread. I kind of want to finish the balance discussion first.

[Mr. Cairo]

Just want to offer my thoughts on Haste. I very much disagree with making it take 1 turn to cast. That would make it mostly unusable beyond a first strike, which is too much of a nerf in my opinion. Rather than going after the Haste spell I would prefer making changes to the Mobility promotions.

This goes for the summons as well, although I could be convinced otherwise. Perhaps a different nerf to summons would be to make them die at the end of the caster's turn, rather than the start of the next one, so you can't use temporary summons to defend locations. Also could put Spell Extension (the promo for Adept/Mages that gives summons Mobility) locked behind other promotions, like Combat 1 or Combat 2.

But in general, I think adding delays to any spells that don't already have them is going too far.

[xist10]

In what situations do you think this makes Haste unusable ?
It makes using haste a bit more difficult, because the mages needs to survive the turn, but outside of that, I think we're mostly stopping "exploits" ?
I would like to go after Mobility for the same reasons, but there it's a bit more difficult to find a good option to stop this and this is a maximum of 2 times per unit.

[Mr. Cairo]

Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you're doing? It sounds like your making it so that the Mage/Adept casts Haste and nothing happens that turn. Then on the next turn the units that are in that stack get the extra movement. Is that the case, or is it something else?

Edit: And does the casting unit get to move the turn after it casts the spell?

[xist10]

Yes, you are understanding it correctly.
T100 adept starts casting - this ends the turn for the adept, aka no more movement - this can still be casted after spending all movement points, like before
T101 all (own) units in the adept stack gets haste for +1 movement; the adept can cast the next spell
T102 - all units are losing Haste

[Mr. Cairo]

In that case this seems like a much less impactful change. To get almost the same effect as before you just need two casters with Haste that alternate casting each turn. The only significant change is that you can't move-haste-move in one turn, which is a good thing, but I wonder if there are different ways to do that?

Would it be possible to change the Haste spell such that it takes effect immediately, but doesn't add a MP to units that already moved? That would have the same effect as what you're proposing, but be less clunky. But idk if that is possible in the programming.

An alternative still would be changing the Haste spell to effect terrain movement cost instead of adding movement points, but maybe that's already been considered and ruled out?