Dragon Golems/Life III absurdly powerful?

[MagisterCultuum]

World spells use the Feat mechanism (like circumnavigating the globe) and could not be easily extended to add more one time use spells. Well, you can add as many as you want, but casting one world spell would block your civ from casting any other.



In my version Peace is not unit specific, but rather requires both Spirit 3 and Life 3. (I felt both of these were very weak/situational/not repeatable (especially true of Trust), and so could use a boost.) It still kills the caster.


I'm thinking the best fix for the graft flesh/resurrection exploit is to block world units from being grafted.

Mokka's Caldron should also create undead units (again) with modified strength rather than Flesh Golems. The current way is unthematic, unbalanced, and weakens the Body III spell.

 

[onedreamer]

*shrug* everything is overpowered in FFH2, it's not like this new exploit will change the tides of balance.

 

[Darksaber1]

Mokka's Caldron should also create undead units (again) with modified strength rather than Flesh Golems. The current way is unthematic, unbalanced, and weakens the Body III spell.

I agree whole heartedly. It's really quite odd that pot that raises the dead raises them as sculpted flesh.

 

[smusebaer]

It would be realy cool if the cauldron raises the dead unit with a special undead Promotion (perhaps with additional downgrades) , that pervents raising this unit.

 

[Darksaber1]

Well, Mokka did seam to have a habit of raising people he killed as his toys.

 

[Blackmantle]

Just a much better fix for peace dawned on me:
Just give it a casting delay of 2, 3, 4 or 5 Turns (or whatever else seems to be the most fitting). Makes sense flavorwise as well since i disbelive that Corlindale does his diplomacy at the blink of an eye and whould prevent massresurection / repediately chaincasting peace multiple times in one Turn.

No undue diminishing of Life 3 for other civs and no unresonable cost attached that makes the ability less apealing.

 

[xienwolf]

Single (or other limit) time castable spells would be VERY easy to add. The World Spells use the Feat system because it was there and it served the purpose. Should it be decided that it is useful to limit the number of times other spells can be cast, it is child's play to add a variable which controls how many times a spell may be cast (and you could even set it up so that it is a certain number of times cast in a span of turns by adding a decay function).

 

[Blackmantle]

Honestly, a limit put to low (as suggested in that thread) whould make peace / the elhoim civ even weaker than it was before the change to Life 3 where the elhoim where one of very few civs with a real incentive to cast Resurection to get their hero back and not much (not any?) ranting was heard about that combination here.

So this should be taken into consideration before just putting the possible time to cast it to a measly 1 (And the Elhoim aren't really one of the stronger civs).
A more reasonable limit sounds more or less fine but the question is if a sufficient decay time whouldn't serve that purpose better.

A decay function whould be another interesting way to limit that combination and whould perhaps make a good mix with a small delay of one or two turns. If that is really that easy and without any other serious implications on performance and the likes.

 

[xienwolf]

Thinking about the Decay function I am liking the idea more and more. I'll have to add it to my "to do" list. I'd even think it is worth replacing the concept of "Has Casted" on the majority of the spells in the game and instead setting up a limit for how many times you can cast it per X number of turns. You can set it as 1 Cast per 5 Turns, and it would work much like the Spell Delay, but with an instant action and allowing you to use the Caster during the next 5 turns for other functions. You could also set it for 3 casts per 3 turns (and does nto trigger "Has Casted") for things like Spring, allowing a mage to spring multiple tiles along a road in a single turn, then have to wait a while or do something else until he can Spring again.

Might be useful to define a limit globally and individually though. I had initially been thinking global limits, but then some things are far too tricky to balance, and there is little reward for building large quantities of Magic users.

 

[Valerarren]

I'm thinking that units with World Limits should be blocked from grafting.

That would stop the archmages from being golem'd. It would also stop me from goleming religious heroes (before switching religions).

Btw, I have golem'd Acheron the Red a couple times when I managed to capture him but I wasn't able to give him movement. Actually, what was odd was that during the last game I played Perpentach had managed to gain Acheron.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

That would stop the archmages from being golem'd.

No, it wouldn't. Those have National limits, not World limits. Graft them to golems as much as you like.

Of course, I personally still think that Flesh Golems should be unable to cast spells, so you might not care about grafting them anymore.

It would also stop me from goleming religious heroes (before switching religions).

True, but getting rid of that exploit is probably a good thing. Especially now that Religious heroes that abandon you become available to be built again.

 

[Kael]

Thinking about the Decay function I am liking the idea more and more. I'll have to add it to my "to do" list. I'd even think it is worth replacing the concept of "Has Casted" on the majority of the spells in the game and instead setting up a limit for how many times you can cast it per X number of turns. You can set it as 1 Cast per 5 Turns, and it would work much like the Spell Delay, but with an instant action and allowing you to use the Caster during the next 5 turns for other functions. You could also set it for 3 casts per 3 turns (and does nto trigger "Has Casted") for things like Spring, allowing a mage to spring multiple tiles along a road in a single turn, then have to wait a while or do something else until he can Spring again.

Might be useful to define a limit globally and individually though. I had initially been thinking global limits, but then some things are far too tricky to balance, and there is little reward for building large quantities of Magic users.

Your moving the toward a spell point system. Mages gain x amount per turn (modified by promotions, etc), spells cost y amount to cast (depending on the spell), mages can store up z amount of spell points max (modified by promotions, etc).

There are some people that would love this system and its really easy to code. But:

1. Its to complex for where the focus of the game should be (at the empire level). It would be great for a game or modmod that focuses more on the units level (like lutefisk's dungeon mod). Otherwise its unnessesary detail for the game.

2. Its nearly impossible to teach the AI how to efficiently deal with a spell point system. Its hard enough to get him to make good decisions within one turn, but when it comes to the choice of should I cast enchant weapons now or save the mana so that i can cast fireball twice in 3 turns is crazy hard. Humans would deal well with it and drive us back into an ai abyss we are trying to crawl out of.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I never liked the whole "Its to complex for where the focus of the game should be (at the empire level)" argument.

Go ahead and implement the system xienwolf! Maybe not actually require it to be used for all spells, but it would be very nice to have the option.

Itwould be really nice (and complex) if the spell points were tracked separately for each mana type, and spells could require points of multiple sphere. Letting Metamagic at as a substitute for any other type might be cool too.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, the main difference between this and a spellpoint system would be that each spell is still considered individually. In fact this makes the spells more individual than the current system as it would allow you to cast Enchant Weapons, Summon Air Elemental AND Fireball all in the same turn. Just now you'd have to wait another 3 turns to cast Fireball again, and another 5 to cast Summon Air Elemental (where Enchant Weapons you could cast another 2 times this turn if you really wanted to, but what's the point? No valid targets anymore since the first cast).

By giving each spell an individual timer you can ditch the "has cast" function on all but the strongest spells. I don't know that any of them are strong enough I would bother so far, and quite a few in the game now I would probably grant an IgnoreHasCasted attribute, because it doesn't really matter too much how many times you cast Haste IMO.

Not sure how hard it'd be to get the AI to use it, but for a first attempt I would just stick with having the AI cast anything which makes sense to cast as soon as it is allowed to cast it again. I'd only fret over the logic heavily for spells which have a player limit or no Decay Function for number of casts allowed.


But by and large, the majority of the ideas I have are far more Unit-centric than the main mod would aim for. I'm hoping to eventually bring the game down to the point of being more about city building and hero/army movements. Then each player would only have a small handfull of units out at a time, each one representing either:

1. a Hero
   • Buys Equipment, Hires Underlings. Can occasionally find one or the other
   • Spends XP on Skills, which rely on having the right Equipment or Underling
2. Special Force Squad
   • Buys Assignments (well, you Contract them out Technically)
   • Spends XP on Specialists' Talents
3. a General
   • Buys Regiments (Most have an ongoing Salary as well)
   • Spends XP on Formations & Tactics, which rely on having the right Regiments

Rather than the current Civ Model of

1. Crapload of various units
2. Can't really buy Squat
3. Spends XP on Promotions

[/list]

The Civ model works decently well in general. But you wind up with really silly things, like using the same promotion for a single tank as for a regiment of Machine Gunners, and having the classic Spearman Beats Tank issues. I think it'd be fun the way I plan, but there is a LOT of groundwork to lay first, as well as just getting accustomed to the code (mostly there now).

EDIT: In case anyone notices the disparity between me still having the chance of Armies vs Individuals (Heroes), it'll actually be set up such that the 3 categories need to meet special requirements to interact with enemies of another category. Like a spellscroll for a VERY powerful area effect spell for a Hero to attack an entire Army)

 

[Kael]

I never liked the whole "Its to complex for where the focus of the game should be (at the empire level)" argument.

This I knew.

People generally want to feel like they know all the main features of a game and want another layer of new detail to learn and play with. So at your level of knowledge about the game (ie: great sage) you want much more detail, but we cant expect that many people will be willing to learn the mod to the same level you have.

The art of game design isnt adding endlessly. We could have a spell point system, rpg level stats on all the units, multi-sphere spells, new features on all units, a full class system for your units, full equipment, turn based combat resolution, etc. That game would be loved by some people, and very intimidating to new players.

There isnt really a right answer here, its personal preference. I tend to thinkt hat all the above are really fun systems to design, but not nessisarily that fun to play. If your a modder they sound great, we could spend months talking about ideas and tinkering with systems like these. But in the end I dont know if the game is really all that better (and perhaps even worse).

But it is just personal opinion so I fear we may just not agree on this one. If Civ4 complexity is a 5 and I like FfH to be an 8, you may be in the 12 range. They are all valid options.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

Couldn't we just make Life III have a casting delay, like Bloom does? It would be somewhat of a stopgap measure, but it should work well enough. That, and it makes sense that it would take some time to resurrect a hero who was say, incinerated by a dragon on the other side of the world.

 

[Kael]

Couldn't we just make Life III have a casting delay, like Bloom does? It would be somewhat of a stopgap measure, but it should work well enough. That, and it makes sense that it would take some time to resurrect a hero who was say, incinerated by a dragon on the other side of the world.

This is the way Ressurection is currently set in 0.33 (a 7 turn spell delay), Ive been testing it out and it seems to work pretty well. Also, Add to Flesh Golem no long works on magic immune creatures, like dragons. Though thats mostly for flavor, the spell delay pretty much kills all recursion exploits.

 

[eerr]

make spells on a certain level of power destroy the node and change the mana to "drained" mana
10% chance per turn of returning to normal mana
"edit"
or that works too

 

[xienwolf]

Still quite possible to replicate equipment. Ought to be easily fixed by setting the ressurection spell to check for any Promotion on the UnitInfo which is flagged bEquipment and removing it immediately after unit creation.

 

[Kael]

Still quite possible to replicate equipment. Ought to be easily fixed by setting the ressurection spell to check for any Promotion on the UnitInfo which is flagged bEquipment and removing it immediately after unit creation.

Well, thats not all we changed.

I tried to go through this thread and hit all the exploits you guys mentioned. The only one Im still scratching my head over is the Corlindale exploit (declare peace every 7 turns). I don't know if thats a huge deal, but I may need to work out something for that as well.