Seriously. It's too much micro to constantly recast Haste on things, and it reduces my Fun Per Minute value.

It's not like Enchanted Blade or Dance of Blades etc wear off next turn. Can't we make Haste semi-perm like those spells?

It is quite the micromanagement pain.

Plus, it doesn't work on some units where it should: Siege units. I mean, does anyone truly believe the catapults and cannons just move around all by themselves and that there aren't living beings pulling them?

Okay, maybe the Luchuirp siege units move around by themselves... But then they should get the Golem promotion :)

why not make it "Until Next Combat" or something rational?

It is quite overpowered already... please power it up yes!

+1 movement for one turn is overpowered?

wow, you must hate the mobility promotion.

Movement in FFH is important. Haste is overpowered ? Not so much. If it is made to be permanent ? Then yes, Haste will be extremely overpowered.

The AI is compleetly unable to deal with hasted commando mobility vampires for some reason...

the AI is fail in general :P

Obviously.. I still think it is stupid that haste allow you to move two moves through forested hills though..

AI being suboptimal is not really an excuse to hinder it even more, you know.

It could be made to give a promotion with a chance to randomly wear off instead of do so every turn.

The AI is compleetly unable to deal with hasted commando mobility vampires for some reason...

But...can the AI deal with unhasted commando mobility vampires?

If this were a petition, I'd sign. "Until next combat" makes sense, and I hate micro.

my favorite option (but possibly difficult to code) would be to allow specified adepts the option of auto-casting haste at the beginning of each turn.

Haste should definitely not be permanent, and even "until next combat" is questionable due to the fact that a single haste spell could last a unit the whole way from the city it's built in to the front lines. IMO it's the most powerful adept spell and should require the constant presence and attention of an adept to maintain.

Aye, if you don't like casting Haste every turn, then just don't bother with the spell.

But if you want the edge, then you need to cast it each turn. I could POSSIBLY see an argument for allowing it to be permanent within your borders and until any combat. But even then... allowing a level 1 spell to grant EVERY UNIT the equivalent of a promotion that some don't even have access to? No.

The majority of the spells that wear off with combat require that you enter into a fight to be of use. The majority of the ones that wear off with a certain percentage per turn have effects that are fairly conditional (ie - must WIN in a combat). Haste is a spell you see immediate benefit from.

Comparison to Enchanted Blade I do not completely see as applicable, because strength is something that varies heavily in the game, and there are a multitude of options to enhance it. Hence a permanent, small boost to strength does not nearly equate to a movement enhancement.

And IIRC Dance of Blades does happen to wear off the next turn.

Haste, like Friendly Winds (or whatever it is called) should have an option for auto-casting, like someone said. It would be overpowered to haste a stack, leave the adept at home, and have the affect be permanent. However, it is also annoying to haste each and every turn, as it makes the goto command useless. But if you could attach an adept to a stack/ship and say "haste/wind until I say otherwise"? That would be great.

+20% str forever isnt good? Ok, let's put five of my Champions with enchanted blade on vs five of your Champs with haste, we'll see who wins. Don't say absurd things like that.

Nothing is gained by making Haste such a micro nightmare than reducing the fun of the user. You know in vanilla civ, the Indian civ had workers with +1 perm extra movement and it certainly never broke the game. As for rushing melee units ... again, see my example up above. Who cares if you make it to the show early if you forget your ticket, eh?

The inconvenience of any game mechanic is not a balancing factor. You could turn your monitor upside down and say ljos/fol is perfectly balanced then, but it wouldnt make it true :P

Haste should stay on as long as the adept is part of the stack.

coldnt this be solved by having buff spells, such as haste, cast in a slightly different way. basically instead of needing to press the button every turn you have it as an on/off switch ... you cast haste and the adept will then auto cast it at the begining of every turn until you tell him not to (a bit like a worker not requiring you to tell him to build a farm every turn, you tell him once and each turn he just carries on building)

Haste should stay on as long as the adept is part of the stack.

Completely agree with this

coldnt this be solved by having buff spells, such as haste, cast in a slightly different way. basically instead of needing to press the button every turn you have it as an on/off switch ... you cast haste and the adept will then auto cast it at the begining of every turn until you tell him not to (a bit like a worker not requiring you to tell him to build a farm every turn, you tell him once and each turn he just carries on building)

Or until the Adept casts a different spell.

Comparison to Enchanted Blade I do not completely see as applicable, because strength is something that varies heavily in the game, and there are a multitude of options to enhance it. Hence a permanent, small boost to strength does not nearly equate to a movement enhancement.


I think Enchanted Blade is a little powerful for what it is. It should wear off after next combat. Currently you get one caster using it to enchant everyone. That would make the spell a bit more widely used. I think the same thing for spells like courage and Spiritual hammer.
Maybe at least a chance of expire after the next combat.

People that say it is a pain to have to recast, just shouldn't use magic. All magic should have a chance of dissipating on its own. It takes a powerful mage to create a spell that lasts eternity.

The strength rating should increase the chance of spells lasting longer, including an added bonus based on level and unit type.

There should also be a low level unsummon spell that increase in strength as detailed above. It is hard to deal with hundreds of fully healed summons that keep spawning.

Just 2c...

People that say it is a pain to have to recast, just shouldn't use magic. All magic should have a chance of dissipating on its own. It takes a powerful mage to create a spell that lasts eternity.

The coolest feature of FfH shouldn't be limited only to people who like to micro.

Haste should be compatible with automation commands like Goto, and Amurite workers who've learned haste should be automatable (if anyone automates workers).

But it shouldn't be too hard to create a modmod that changes haste to last as long as there is there is a caster in the stack who can cast haste. I think. I've never created a FfH modmod, but I might try.

But it shouldn't be too hard to create a modmod that changes haste to last as long as there is there is a caster in the stack who can cast haste. I think. I've never created a FfH modmod, but I might try.

Would it be easier to change the effect of haste to be a permanent, caster only buff? All living units on your tile get +1 move at the start of the turn.

I wonder if you could get rid of the haste and water walking spells entirely and just have those buffs be automatic for anyone with the right sphere.

Would it be easier to change the effect of haste to be a permanent, caster only buff? All living units on your tile get +1 move at the start of the turn.

I wonder if you could get rid of the haste and water walking spells entirely and just have those buffs be automatic for anyone with the right sphere.

That's a good idea. I think that only requires changing the Haste spell to grant a new promotion, Hasting.

Hasting would never expire, and would run a new script each turn (via <PyPerTurn> I suspect), which would cast the original Haste spell.

Hasting should be removed whenever the unit casts a different spell. But I'm not sure how to do that, and I think that would actually remove the Haste effect for the next turn, not the turn when the spell was cast.

I think Enchanted Blade is a little powerful for what it is. It should wear off after next combat. Currently you get one caster using it to enchant everyone. That would make the spell a bit more widely used. I think the same thing for spells like courage and Spiritual hammer.
Maybe at least a chance of expire after the next combat.

People that say it is a pain to have to recast, just shouldn't use magic. All magic should have a chance of dissipating on its own. It takes a powerful mage to create a spell that lasts eternity.


Haste should stay on as long as the adept is part of the stack.

Both seem to make sense to me. Why not just say all T1 spells either:
(A) Need maintenance (Winds, Haste);
(B) Have a chance of wearing of any given turn its used (Enchanted Blade after combat).

It makes low level magic (more or less) evenly unreliable/caster dependant. Ideally wear-off chance would be inverse to XP; eventually becoming permanent, (or the dubious 99.9%). After all, when they have 100 or 150 XP they are a pretty powerful magi.

I have never had much complaint about the haste spell, but then I micromanage like a crazed fiend. As far as how to make it less painful for those who don't like the current mechanics:
- The Fair Winds spell affects naval craft, the very slowest of which have 2 base speed. Remember also that coasts and oceans do not have roads! The extra move doesn't proportionally increase their movement nearly as much as Haste does for land units, so the idea of Haste functioning similarly seems a bit flawed.
- Making all tier I spells wear off with time goes against the balances of certain "weaker" or "less useful" tier I spells such as Loyalty, Courage, Enchanted Blade, and such. They are permanent because they do not give effects that are similar to what Haste does.

I think the best "fix" for this problem is one that can be accomplished by the player. Most of my Amurite kingdoms by the time Govannon is running about teaching all units Haste have had perhaps a dozen workers. After they all learn haste, most of the core kingdom has been developed, and I can stack them up in pairs or fours, leaving one summoned skeleton skipping turn every turn on the tile to bring the cursor automatically to that location, where I activate one of the workers, cast haste, and continue to work. As far as automove goes, it can be somewhat annoying, but moving units with the keypad over roads, one gets two or three extra squares. That justifies any micromanagement for me personally, and if it doesn't, then take the time to design a modmod for yourself that will allow Haste to work as you like.

This game is the creation of the team, and while I know they value our input, things such as this only make more work for them, particularly when not everyone is agreeing on the issue. Regardless, we'll see what action (if any) they take. I forsee Magister's mod (once he works out the kinks and possibly releases it to the rest of us) as being quite popular in certain circles, just as Sureshot's various multiplayer adaptations have been.

Ok, let's fight, on the plains, I get haste, you get EB.

I attack, probably lose, almost as probably win. If I win, I then move back and get a chance to heal. So, let's say you win 2, I win 1. Now you have 2 weak units, I have 1. But you cannot reach mine. Now I follow you, keeping you from being able to stop & heal, while my new champ & yours race to the scene. Guess who gets there first?

Absurd examples aside, my point was that there are 15 ways I can get 20% strength. Only 2 to get +1 move. Should we redo the promotions to reverse that?

Any way you change haste, except the newly proposed 'while in the stack with the mage' means you can haste the majority of your civ with 1 or 2 adepts. THAT is overpowered. (and the while caster is in the stack, with proviso they do not cast anything else, could be a coding nightmare).

And if haste on every unit wasn't so strong, this topic never would have started because you simply wouldn't care and would not know it takes a little micromanaging.

Quickest solution, for coding in, is probably a hotkey for the spell so you can just press 'h' when it auto selects an adept and they will cast Haste if able.

There is a major difference between a haste that doesn't wear off (even doesn't wear off until next combat) and a haste that is auto-cast or cast every turn. Adepts can only move two spaces max, so they slow down mobility promoted recon and cavalry, socavalry cannot go max movement (3 or 4 + haste) every turn. This limits the max speed you can get... unless you set up a "pony express" relay type system, I guess.
If it didn't wear off, the movement of the caster would be irrelevant, and the cavalry could move max distance every turn.

(And that is besides the fact that one adept could haste many stacks before they needed re-hasting)

An auto cast for some spells has been on the wish list for awhile, as it would indeed be nice. You're welcome to make the case to Kael that it is a higher priority than whatever he wants to work on next.

Personally, I don't worry about using haste unless it is an emergency situation in which case it is worth the micro. Otherwise I'll just tell my stack to move to where I want and forget about them until they get there. Not optimal power, but optimal fun.

There is a problem with an auto-cast implementation, as well, I suspect. When you qeue (sp?) up moves, on the next turn you move the units without orders first. So if you wanted your army to be hasted, you would still have to hit skip turn on those units until the auto-haste adept was triggered--not much better than selecting that unit and doing it yourself.

Otoh, if the spell was auto cast before you got a chance to move units (saving youthe trouble to skipping turn until the auto-cast triggered) then the unit would waste his spell casting sometimes when you didn't want to, if you wanted DoB instead.

It might still be good for moving stacks, provided it triggered the auto-cast haste before the stack moved, (since I doubt the auto-moving stack would re-check it's move points after casting), but it wouldn't be a perfect solution.

haste should scale by mana, if you have a certain amount it becomes less likely to wear off
(at 6 becomes permanent?, +20% for each over 1)

I wonder if people wanting 'less micro' doesn't in fact want 'more firemages'...

using a wearing mechanism isn't really any use unless it is calculated bys tack rather than by unit. As soon as one unit in your stack slows down the movement of the stack slows. There is no benefit in having the others hasted

What if there was a button for doing the auto casting (for all units)? If you want to cast something else select the unit and do so. When you're done with that click the auto cast button and all units set to auto cast something does. It's not perfect but I don't think perfect is possible in this case.

That would be cool, though more complex to create.

Only way I can see to implement that is to add some thirty to the GUI (a spell advisor screen?) with a button for each spell that when clicked will select all casters (globally) and attempt to cast that spell.

This could be done easier by just grouping your haste adepts (select all the adepts, press CTRL + 1, then at the start of each turn press 1, click haste, then press ENTER)

How about this?

Add new "Autocasting X" promotions and a new "Autocast" command to casters.

To start autocasting, the player would click the autocast command, which would add a "Waiting to autocast" promotion. When a unit with that promotion cast an autocastable spell, the "waiting" promotion would be replaced with "Autocasting X".

The script to autocast could run at the start of each turn, or when a button is clicked, whatever works out best.

Permanent haste worth 3-d level spell.

Autocasting is a long-term blue dream... This variant is better then nothing at least. Further: autocasting mode makes caster to cast all available buffs (according to priority list) in the beginning of turn if possible and in the end of turn if possible.

Haste is a very useful spell and casting it every turn IMHO is correct. Allowing it to wear off a few more turns after is a very powerful solution. I do not think that activate it every turn is a painful operation, it is only a question of laziness :)

It is only a question of laziness :)

Or, in my case, carpal tunnel syndrome. Repeatedly casting haste on dozens of units every turn is not good for ones median nerve.

Lazy? Look, this is a game, not real life, we want to have fun and enjoy ourselves.

As for micro, it's inevitable, especially Amurites. They have so much access to magic, for combat, summoning, buffing, TERRAFORMING (the intense micro that pays off), and then there's Govannon teaching raise skeleton to all the workers and raise bones to their dogs. It's micro, but if you have that many decision or commands to make, it's inevitable. Permenant would be overpowered.

And if you like mobility so much, play Hippus.

Any way you change haste, except the newly proposed 'while in the stack with the mage' means you can haste the majority of your civ with 1 or 2 adepts. THAT is overpowered. (and the while caster is in the stack, with proviso they do not cast anything else, could be a coding nightmare).

That's why I said it should endure as long as the adept is part of the stack. If you could just throw it on a unit once and it lasted forever nomatter where it went, that would of course be cheap.

It would be funny stacking adepts with my workers keeping them hasted... and so so right... *imagining the arcane corps of engineers again*

well...

the issue with autocast is which unit ??
because casting hast gives you the casted promo... you cannot attack, cannot launch another spell.

on one hand it seems relaxing and I want it, but on the other hand it would bring more issues than any other things, especially for amurites;

no units would ever be able to attack, no archmage to launch meteors, they would all have casted hast !!!

sometimes you want your mage to be hasted by the conjurer to launch a fireball, sometimes you prefer that the adept is hasted in order to spring a desert... but if it is autocasted, the mage and the adept would be hasted but un-interesting after that.

be careful about what you wish, you may get it.