[MOD] MagisterModmod

That combining different mana types actually sounds intriguing, providing the spells were useful.
I like ones that fill a gap, such as one to cool the terrain from Grasslands to Plains or Plains to Tundra or add variety such as Law casting Imprisonment.

I see Psychic damage being added. Are there plans to do more in that area, such as creating a psionic unit that deals mostly Psychic damage, which would be weak vs Golems and mindless undead.
A tier 1,2,3 upgrade path can be envisioned here. Even a mindflayer unit as the archmage equivalent for an evil civilization.
 
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I see Psychic damage being added. Are there plans to do more in that area, such as creating a psionic unit that deals mostly Psychic damage, which would be weak vs Golems and mindless undead.

In all honesty, Psychic Damage as a damage type kinda drives me up a wall, as it's not as well implemented as other damage types when you factor in things such as unit proliferation and magic resistance. You don't see Temperance and Magic Resistance giving a resistance to Psychic Damage, for example. Also, while we're talking about Damage types, Arcane as a damage type would also be pretty neat; some mana types and units could use it, and it would fill a major gap that exists imo.

By the way, what's the purpose of Physical Damage? Is it a stand-in for normal damage that isn't differentiated from the rest?

A tier 1,2,3 upgrade path can be envisioned here. Even a mindslayer unit as the archmage equivalent for an evil civilization.

Sounds like something the Balseraphs would have, but I'm hesitant to have something like that tacked in. Could use more time in the oven as an idea.
 
That Heatwave spell sounds like something the Malakim would cast to turn tiles into Desert like the Illians would cast Snowfall to turn tiles to snow.

Maybe an Earth&Fire combo spell that changes a Mountain into a Volcano.

Question, assuming a unit has the right mana and can cast these, if a caster stood on a plains forest tile and cast Scorch to turn the plains tile into a desert, would the forest stay?

and if it did, then if the caster then cast blaze to create smoke that turns into fire and burnt down the forest. Would it regrow from a burnt forest slowly back (3% chance/turn) into a regular forest?
Is there some calculation that would require that the tile be changed into one that could normally support life, such as by the spring spell converting the desert back to plains first, or will the burnt forest regrow from any tile?

It seems logical to me that a forest or jungle can't grow in a desert, but idk, there is a fantasy map that is very different than the base maps.

I'm surprised that Fellowship of the Leaves can't speed up this process, maybe a 5% chance/turn.

I just played Malakim and scorched a plains river tile and didn't gain the Flood Plain. ;(
A little disappointed. I scorched my Capitol Plains hill to gain the defense bonus, seemed like a practical thing to do. I lost +1 Prod and gained the Malakims +1 commerce.
I'm guessing I should still gain the xp if I parked a unit there alone. I have the Shrine.
 
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I usually play on large quick and am finishing games around when the tech tree ends (turn 200ish on immortal), give or take some RNG and how benevolent I'm feeling towards my fellow civs. Late game units (hello dimension 3 rifts) really speeds up the pace of late-game combat and usually a decent base to boom from in the transition to midgame ensures that you'll only have a couple civs that can effectively rival you. Of which none are a threat once you amass a critical mass of highly mobile deathstacks that can backcap cities faster than the AI knows how to deal with or counterattack with. An extra layer of techs on the back end that represent the transition to the age of invention would be a welcome bonus though, being able to play a semi-industrial lategame after playing the crucible would be a unique ending, at the least. Otherwise might add a bit more depth/tools to an otherwise channeling 3 dominated late game. Or really allowing for more civs to have some aspects of the late game Khazad gameplay (at least with multiple production on, horsehockyting out stack on stack of cannon+arquebus to mow down armies in giant kill fields is fun as fudge)
 
the Hand is Neutral: they fight against both Demons and Angels: Mulcarn is their only God.
in DnD they would be Lawful Evil : follow the Law of Mulcarn, up to immobility and stasis.

Isn't the White Hand Evil? I guess I've never seen anyone other than the Illians adopt the Hand, but it certain turns the Illians Evil. (But maybe that's the ritual more than anything else?)
 
Isn't the White Hand Evil? I guess I've never seen anyone other than the Illians adopt the Hand, but it certain turns the Illians Evil. (But maybe that's the ritual more than anything else?)

It certainly is, as it's perverting Creation in its own manner, like how the Ashen Veil helping demonkind out eventually perverts Creation if left unchecked, only instead of spreading hell into Erebus, it warps it into a plane utterly dominated by the Ice sphere at the expense of all other precepts. From what I'm aware of, Good as an alignment protects Erebus from any corrupting influences, while Evil propagates them vicariously, whichever they might be.
 
Isn't the White Hand Evil? I guess I've never seen anyone other than the Illians adopt the Hand, but it certain turns the Illians Evil. (But maybe that's the ritual more than anything else?)
you might be right... I hardly ever play illian, so I don't know. For me Mulcarn did secession from both good and evil sides...
 
I was originally planning on having Caravans be a land-based Malakim-only replacement for the Merchantmen other civs would get, but now I'm thinking it may be best to make them separate units and let any civ build either of them. (The main thing that changed my mind was a reference in the Ashes of Brigdarrow to a Ljosalfar Caravan that was expected to visit Barathrum soon.) I had let Merchantmen/Caravans/Smugglers construct a wide variety of buildings (like supplies), but then decided against it. (I also played around with letting caravans join cities as merchants, but that is too easily abused by players who want unlimited GPP towards great merchants.) Smugglers can still build Smuggler's Ports and Caravans can build Markets, but that is it. I'm also thinking of letting Merchantmen hurry production like slaves.



I am currently playing around with making every tier 3 spell sphere promotion grant +1 affinity for its mana type, and making the Affinity promotions grant not only +1 affinity but also +1 strength of a damage type thematically appropriate for the given mana. That is largely so that barbarian Djinns are not so weak.

I just just changed the various elementals to have lower base strength but the same total strength, as they get more of the typed damage.

I'm thinking of making the Summon Djinn spells work more like other summing spells, where the greater version summons 3 of the summon rather than only one summon with Mastery of Magic. (I find that when I can pick affinities from a summon I feel compelled to keep purchasing Creation 3 to have Abundance in as many cities as possible, rather than relying on the chance blessings of Amathaon to give me such mages/archmages.)

Canonically Djinns are very strong to magic but easily thwarted by non-magical traps. I'm thinking of making them Magic Immune (instead of only Magic Resistant) but giving them a significant weakness to Physical damage. Would that make them too similar to Runewyns though?


I had not realized Magic Immune/Magic Resistant did not grant resistance to Psychic damage. I just corrected that oversight. Temperance was not changed, as it is specifically meant to help neutrals defend against angels and demons, not to protect against mind mages. Golems have been immune to Psychic damage since I fits added that type.

I was thinking Physical damage was the same as what base strength uses, but slightly surprised to see that when I assign a unit physical damage it is not added together with the base strength but listed separately like the rest.

I just made it so that when the Disrupt ability is used to steal a city the caster may get injured by the city's defenders. The function pCaster.doDamage(getCombatOdds(pUnit, pCaster)/10, 99, pUnit, gc.getInfoTypeForString('DAMAGE_PHYSICAL'), False) won't work if I don't give it a damage type, so physical it has to be.

My most current version of Disrupt lets you flip cities to your control (without the bNoCapture restriction I had placed a few days ago) only if you are at war with the owner. Agents of Esus would not be able to enter a city while at war, but one could remain in the city if stationed there before the war starts. To flip a city the caster would also have to be more likely than not to win hypothetical combat against all defenders. Since Agents of Esus were reduced in strength, that it unlikely to happen unless all the defenders are picked off first. The spell also lets you turn the city to Barbarian control if the caster is hidden nationality. Shadows upgraded from Agents of Esus can do so easily (perhaps too easily, so I may change this) but normal Agents of Esus would need to use the Shadow Affinity + Channeling 3 greater mask or the Svartalfar world spell to become hidden nationality. Note that this disrupt spell is still impossible before the Fund Dissidents resolution passes and the city flipping (like the occupation timer) effects require CoE as a state religion. When cities flip through Disrupt it counts as it being acquired through conquest, and so has an occupation timer.

I decided to let Agents of Esus sacrifice themselves to add culture and end revolts just like all the other basic disciples.

Agents of Esus can carry cargo of 1 great person, which may be useful for smuggling kidnapping victims through rival territory. Whisperers and Unseelie shadows can carry more persons.



On the subject of alignments, evil is the most clearly defined in FfH terms. Evil gods are those who openly rebel against The One and his plan. The difference between good and neutral is more nebulous. You could argue that the neutral gods are the most loyal to The One, as they remain the most focused on doing what he designed them to do. The good gods are those who swore to protect the children of Nemed from Agares' machinations, but they often get carried away and focus more on defeating the enemy than on protecting the innocent. Agares' main goal to to prove that everyone else is as inherently corrupt as him, because The One is not perfect but as flawed as his creations. All of the good and neutral gods are indeed hypocrites for using the power of the gems of creation that Agares stole. (More recently Kael revealed that not every sphere had a gem of creation to provide infinite resources, but there are such gems in the heavens of Lugus, Bhall, Sucellus, Kilmorph, Tali, and Danalin.) Mulcarn was the least evil of the evil gods, but he still sided with Mulcarn and openly rebelled. Mulcarn does not mind using demons. His hell is sort of like limbo. It is not especially unpleasant compared to lower hells, but it is a vital part of the machine that makes demons. It is mostly for those who lacked the drive and convictions to do much with their lives. Unlike with other hells, one descends past it not by embracing its vice but by eventually overcoming the urge to languish there longing for a return to how things used to be. Mulcarn was never fully sold on creating humans and after Gabella's rebellion decided she should be unmade rather than protected. In the Age of Magic when he saw how mankind had advanced, he wished them to return to the primitive state they were in during the godswar. After Agares seduced Bhall to fall, he broke the compact with a subtle nudge from Agares but no explicit coordination. He did not like how the other evil gods have embraced his old enemy Bhall, but certainly did not become good or neutral. Mulcarn is of course dead now. The sphere chose Auric to take his place. Although Auric was quite decent as a child, it seems in his quest for power he might become more depraved that Mulcarn himself ever was.

Esus is evil and lets his vault be used as a sort of relief value to recapture souls seeking redemption from hell lest they become demons. He does not actually like demons very much though. Some demons do serve Esus, but he has a strong preference for living beings. He likes to take his most devout worshipers to his vault before they die, so that they can live there forever and never be processed into demons by his allies. Esus's plans are often at odds with those of other evil gods. He actively opposed Ceridwen and Hastur's plans to destroy the world or unite Erebus with hell, choosing to task the Svartalfar with aiding the forces of good in the Dead Lands and Fane of the Lessers. He prefers the subtler evils of wicked mortals who portray themselves as paragons of good.
 
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Canonically Djinns are very strong to magic but easily thwarted by non-magical traps. I'm thinking of making them Magic Immune (instead of only Magic Resistant) but giving them a significant weakness to Physical damage. Would that make them too similar to Runewyns though?

Not really, as Runewyns and Djinn are clearly defined by what their purpose is. Plus, it's explicitly said that Djinn are impossible to fight against magically, so Magic Immune makes sense. My only concern is about Physical Damage; is normal damage defined as Physical, or is Physical just its own thing?

I had not realized Magic Immune/Magic Resistant did not grant resistance to Psychic damage. I just corrected that oversight. Temperance was not changed, as it is specifically meant to help neutrals defend against angels and demons, not to protect against mind mages. Golems have been immune to Psychic damage since I fits added that type

Try looking around for other promotions that would be thematic to have psychic damage resistance too. I only mentioned those 3 in passing, so there might be something else too.
 
As a broad balance thing, I'm unsure how I feel about barbarian dijin or other high-level spellcasters. Had a game recently where AI popped an invisible dijin around turn 30-40 (quick) that had dimensional affinity. Dude was locking down something like twenty tiles in any direction via rift spam, and only being held stopped it from becoming a leveled up monster. I understand exploring various dungeons is supposed to have a sense of danger and can backfire and destroy civs, but there's a huge power difference between archmage tier threats (of which nothing else in an equivalent strength level really pops out, afaik) and Ogres and such, especially if the caster doesn't get instantly rushed down.

edit: small flavor/localization thing I just saw, I got the "view victory conditions to check the space race" tooltip while loading a game
 
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Personally I like having lairs guarded by strong casters like Djinns, but agree that they can control too much territory due to the Spell Extension promotions increasing the range of their summons. I thus decided Djinns will not start with Extension I anymore. I also just gave that promotion Knowledge of the Ether as a tech prereq, and am considering maybe even changing that to Sorcery, so that barbarian casters cannot purchase the promotion early in the game.
 
Are Archmages with Enchantment Affinity suppose to be able to spam "Cast (Enchant Spellstaves (Greater))" and "Cast (Spellstaff)" nonstop in a single turn?
I was playing as Illians when I noticed that all my other arcane units in the stack could then combine "Cast (Spellstaff)" and [Insert Any Spell] to obtain an infinite number of spells/summons. I upgraded another Archmage with Dimensional (+Ice) Affinity into the stack and then realized I could conquer the map in a single turn with just two those Archmages.

Infinite Movement:
Dimensional Archmage summons Warp Bubble, loads the two archmages, travels 7 movements spaces, unloads the 2 Archmages.
Enchantment Archmage uses "Cast (Enchant Spellstaves (Greater))" and "Cast (Spellstaff)".
Dimensional Archmage uses "Cast (Spellstaff)" and summons a new Warp Bubble to travel another 7 movement spaces in the SAME turn. Repeat.

I had to revert back to an older save because it was too broken and no city could withstand the endless barrage of Ice Elemental/Snowfall/Warp Bubble Nuke.
 
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I don't know if this is possible, but can the POW Exchange be modified to include what is at risk?
If I am about to give several units to someone who might declare war on me, I'd like to know. It it's only 1 worker and I can improve relations after a cease fire then I will do it.
Also, I selected the last option, "Ain't Happening" to the POW request and the Clan of Embers just kept coming back asking again for another 20+turns. Which gets Really annoying.
Can a response be added that is our Final response on the subject? or at least give us say 10 or 20 turns between requests for the same topic from the AIs?
Also, after I reject them, I get 5 error messages up top saying, "Util10 - Unknown item Type 10".
 
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No. Just the "Ain't Happening".
It won't matter. The game went OOS.
We restarted an autosave, but it froze on my nephew's laptop and showed on mine that we were waiting on him to reconnect.
That usually means we will be restarting it again trying different settings.
Next time on a smaller map size, apparently Large is too large. With fewer AIs, so there are fewer numbers for the program to crunch.
Sucks too, because that game was going so well for both of us. I had 4 AIs at Friendly. :)
We finally figured out how to keep the AI's alive long enough to be strong foes for us to combat.
On Aggressive AI they actually build enough units that they don't get killed off by the barbarians.
We were losing 3 to 4 AIs due to barbarians, even when Raging Barbs wasn't turned on because they would scout with their starting warrior, pop a barb unit from a dungeon or goody hut and lose their only city.
 
Try starting on a higher difficulty, AI gets more starting warriors with promotions and are better (not great) at not all getting themselves killed.
 
Try starting on a higher difficulty, AI gets more starting warriors with promotions and are better (not great) at not all getting themselves killed.
That was my suggestion to him, but his response was that we haven't finished one on Monarch yet.
Unfortunately, something usually happens before we can get to the end in our multiplayer direct IP games.
Single player, I usually don't have a problem. I've had a few fun wins with the Illians. :)
I still wish they could build a giant Ice Wall version of the Great Wall to keep out the skeleton barbarians. I know that would be So Game of Thrones-ish, but it would look so cool and be appropriate for the Illians. :)
If Great Walls ever get implemented, make them National Wonders, so we can see the different versions of them for different empires.
 
I still wish they could build a giant Ice Wall version of the Great Wall to keep out the skeleton barbarians. I know that would be So Game of Thrones-ish, but it would look so cool and be appropriate for the Illians. :)
If Great Walls ever get implemented, make them National Wonders, so we can see the different versions of them for different empires.

Good in theory, but it'd make you immune to many Armageddon Counter effects, bad lair raiding results, and Burning Blood units going barbarian. Plus, as I mentioned before, I'd rather we had barbs be split in 3 factions first (Savages, animals, undead + demons etc.).

For such a wonder with that effect to be balanced, it'd need to do one of two things:
-the simple method: add 25-40% combat to all units inside your borders against barbs, kinda like a souped up and specialized Homeland promotion.
-the complicated method: block any barbs from entering your borders whose total effective strength (calculated by units + their strength clustered amongst each other near your borders) doesn't exceed a certain multiple of your units' effective strength in your borders. this means with a reasonable defensive unit count, low-mid end strays should stay out, while the big boys (like the ones spawned by the Armageddon Counter) and a large mass of units together should break through and wreak havok.

Trust me, I too would love such a thing, but it'd throw a curveball to a LOT of things in the game if not balanced right.
 
the simple method: add 25% would be fine.
If it is possible to have it on just those tiles on the outside edge of out culture border, that would be realistic, since it would be adding an additional high ground effect bonus.
 
If you're only thinking outer edge bonus, you can get away with 40-50% pretty easily. Alongside the in-border great general generation, it'd be a pretty fun little gimmick, though I fear it wouldn't be easy to implement if it also has to check if it's an outermost border tile.
 
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