Q's I can't find A's to

[xienwolf]

There is a small window of opportunity to get in an edit without it being registered. "Spellcheckers Window" is what I refer to it as So if he edited almost immediately, and you read it while he was doing so, it woulda happened.

Or I could be massively wrong

Most of the questions are answered, but I'll add that the main nice thing about the Fawns is that they upgrade to Satyrs IMO. The rest is just kinda nice, but without the upgrade not quite worth the price hike.

And Mary Morbus is granted through an event, but you must have an Alchemy Lab to get that event triggered. Hence why many people never see it (6 of the 21 Civs cannot even build Alchemy Labs)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I've managed to edit typos quickly enough to slip it by before, but only when I changed them immediately, before anyone else had posted anything (or to the best of my knowledge even seen it.) I had kinda assumed that it noted it as edited once anyone else had read it.

You know, his post and mine were almost exactly synchronized. I saw his as soon as I posted mine, even though mine appeared first.


I actually did mention upgrading to Satyrs (when I went back and edited my post), and that Satyrs have a spell that can capture animals without combat.


Hmm...I'm thinking the reason I typically don't use them is that they don't upgrade to Beastmasters, and so cannot get Subdue Beasts. Do you think that means we need to call for a Satyr Beastmaster unit too? Or maybe just let them upgrade to the normal Beastmasters.

I'm thinking they should add a new racial promotion for Fawns/Satyrs/Satyr Beastmasters. For one thing, it is odd for these creatures to be Elves, Dwarves, or Orks, and for another that would allow Beastmasters to look different than their humanoid peers. (I assume that a mesmerize spell that works on Beast would be too strong, right?)

 

[xienwolf]

Aye, I had meant only to emphasize that the Satyr is the main reason for the high cost. Without that upgrade option and spell it would certainly need to cost less than a Hunter.

I don't know if Mezmerize beast would work at all. Reasonably certain it does a check of relative strength (like Rantine's Convert City).

 

[Zechnophobe]

Q: How long does the Blight last? Is there any way to decrease how strongly it effects you?

Q: The Good Elf hero, Gilden Silveric has the Dextrous promotion... increasing his stats from 5/6 to 6/6...why isn't he just a 6? Is there something I don't know about dextrous?

Q: I thought elves could build without cutting down trees, but it keeps saying I'll cut down the forest if I build a farm where I want one.

Q: What's the difference between a forest and a new Forest?

Q: Fire, started int he various ways it starts... what can it do? Destroy improvements? Just burn trees down? I notice it's a good way to turn jungle into forest, but... can I use it to launch an assault on an 'enemy'?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It appears that the health penalties from blight last (city population) + (random number from 0 to 11) turns.

I'm guessing they thought the strength looked nicer with only one value. I don't think they wanted Gilden to be stronger or weaker based on whether he was built in a city with a Ljosalfar archer range or not.


Elves can buid anything without clearing forests, but it doesn't display it that way. I think that Kael is still looking for a way around this. Ths biggest problem here is that the Ai relies on the same info it is displaying, so AI elves rarely build improvements on forested tiles.


Forests take up 2 movement, new forests do not. Clearing forests provides hammers, clearing new forests does not. New forests upgrade to forests eventually. Forests can upgrade to ancient forests if in FoL territory.


Units need fire resistance (which orcs, demons, and angels all have) in order to enter a tile with flames. It doesn't actually hurt anyone, but it can limit movement.

The blaze spell works by creating a smoke "improvement," so it does destroy improvements on the tile where it is cast. Flames themselves don't effect improvements. Mostly it is for destroying forests/jungles, turning them to burnt forests and eventually forests again.

Whenever flames die out on non-hell terrain they create burnt forests, but extinguishing them with spring does not. Hence, putting out forests fires destroys the forests. This should be changes, imho.

 

[swinesteigersir]

It appears that the health penalties from blight last (city population) + (random number from 0 to 11) turns.

Elves can buid anything without clearing forests, but it doesn't display it that way. I think that Kael is still looking for a way around this. Ths biggest problem here is that the Ai relies on the same info it is displaying, so AI elves rarely build improvements on forested tiles.

You might want to talk to the Rise of Mankind modders as they seemed to have found a way around that problem.

 

[Caradoc]

Satyrs are great units. I like to give mine Mobility 2 and Woodsman 2 and let them zoom through the forests. And with an attack 9 (plus poison blade, etc) they pack a punch. Upgrading at level 4 for 150 gold seems like a good deal.

 

[DharmaMcLaren]

<Just realised this thread has a page 2 and so his answers were useless>

 

[Zechnophobe]

A Few more:

Q: Some units have resistence (Positive or negative) to damage types. For instance, dwarves are somewhat resistent to poison (25% if I recall). Now, a Giant Spider is strength 4 + 1 poison, does the 25% resist mean that it is basically a 4.75 total strength? Is the 25% taken off the total strength of anything with poison damage?

Q: Spell damage is fairly vague. Generally it does ~X damage to a maximum of Y. I pretty much get that bit, but how do effects that boost damage change this? Combat 1 increases damage by 5... does that mean the spell does it's normal damage, and then gain another Absolute 5% on top of that? I.E. 35% damage turns into 40%, if that doesn't put it over the cap.

Q: Some spells are resistable, such as charm. Charm says it has a +40% resist chance... so I assume it's 40% greater than some base resist... right? If I decrease the opponents resistence with, say, arcane trait, that decreases it by 10%... so do they resist it now 40%-10% =30% of the time or 40% - 10%(40%) = 36% of the time?

Q: It seems to me that spells like Charm that have a % chance to wear off, do so at the end of your turn. This means that sometimes Loki will charm a fellow, and have it still attack right away because it wore off at end of my turn. Am I correct in this, or just not keeping track of things well enough?

Q: One last sorta magic related Q, the Over Council can make votes to ban certain mana types... does this effect people not in the council? If you still want to use those mana's, can you leave the council?

 

[xienwolf]

Ah, getting some tougher questions now I am actually not sure I can answer all of these so hopefully someone else comes along.

Q: Some units have resistence (Positive or negative) to damage types. For instance, dwarves are somewhat resistent to poison (25% if I recall). Now, a Giant Spider is strength 4 + 1 poison, does the 25% resist mean that it is basically a 4.75 total strength? Is the 25% taken off the total strength of anything with poison damage?

Yes, resistance only affects the specific portion of the damage due to that type. So the spider would seem to be a 4.75 in this case.

Q: Spell damage is fairly vague. Generally it does ~X damage to a maximum of Y. I pretty much get that bit, but how do effects that boost damage change this? Combat 1 increases damage by 5... does that mean the spell does it's normal damage, and then gain another Absolute 5% on top of that? I.E. 35% damage turns into 40%, if that doesn't put it over the cap.

One that I am not perfectly crystal clear on, but how I get it is that the ~X means that it should do precisely that much damage, with a bonus for the attacker's boosts, and a penalty based on the enemies resistance. However, the Limit of Y is solid and the spell is incapable of every harming a unit past that (so you could make a spell have a limit of 99% and it would absolutely never kill a unit, though with enough castings it would get them to show 0.0 ).

This answer however I am not completely certain I am correct on.

Q: Some spells are resistable, such as charm. Charm says it has a +40% resist chance... so I assume it's 40% greater than some base resist... right? If I decrease the opponents resistence with, say, arcane trait, that decreases it by 10%... so do they resist it now 40%-10% =30% of the time or 40% - 10%(40%) = 36% of the time?

Minimum resistance for any spell which is resistable is 5%, maximum is 95%. Thus there will ALWAYS be an element of chance unless the spell is non-resistable, or the target is magic immune. Reasonably certain I recall the base being 20%.

Q: It seems to me that spells like Charm that have a % chance to wear off, do so at the end of your turn. This means that sometimes Loki will charm a fellow, and have it still attack right away because it wore off at end of my turn. Am I correct in this, or just not keeping track of things well enough?

The chance is done at the START of the turn for the player CONTROLLING the unit who holds the promotion with a chance to wear off. Hence it can easily wear off before the AI actually gets a turn since they must start their turn between when you cast it and when they can choose to attack or not.

Q: One last sorta magic related Q, the Over Council can make votes to ban certain mana types... does this effect people not in the council? If you still want to use those mana's, can you leave the council?

It should only affect members of the council. But I have heard of enough glitches with other resolutions I wouldn't be amazed if it affects everyone sometime

 

[Niveras]

It should only affect members of the council. But I have heard of enough glitches with other resolutions I wouldn't be amazed if it affects everyone sometime

I'm not convinced it works at all. I was able to teach adepts shadow 1 after the AI passed the resolution to ban it, even build new shadow nodes (yes, of course I was on the council at the time, I voted against it, though I don't think it was with .31). Probably the team is aware that it's buggy, but it is such a minor thing that it is low priority to get working properly. Defying resolutions also don't seem to have any negative effects, which could still be on the table to be implemented.

Speaking of the Overcouncil in general, I think they need some better resolutions. Banning 'evil' mana is a good flavorful choice, but in terms of its effect on gameplay it's pretty minor or even non-existent. Since only council members are beholden to follow the council, banning them only weakens yourself (if you even plan to use them at all, which is not likely if you're good/Overcouncil). Every one of the Undercouncil resolutions has an obvious benefit, and only one has a possible negative (no foreign trade routes is iffy, depends on whether you get a lot of income from trade).

I guess I'll cross-post that to the balance thread.

 

[Vehem]

Q: Spell damage is fairly vague. Generally it does ~X damage to a maximum of Y. I pretty much get that bit, but how do effects that boost damage change this? Combat 1 increases damage by 5... does that mean the spell does it's normal damage, and then gain another Absolute 5% on top of that? I.E. 35% damage turns into 40%, if that doesn't put it over the cap.

One that I am not perfectly crystal clear on, but how I get it is that the ~X means that it should do precisely that much damage, with a bonus for the attacker's boosts, and a penalty based on the enemies resistance. However, the Limit of Y is solid and the spell is incapable of every harming a unit past that (so you could make a spell have a limit of 99% and it would absolutely never kill a unit, though with enough castings it would get them to show 0.0 ).

This answer however I am not completely certain I am correct on.

If you have a look here inside the spoiler tag, I rambled on at some length as I tried to work out the spell damage/resist interactions. The information is there, just not terribly well laid out as I was experimenting as I wrote.

(The "High-combat units take more damage from worldspells" issue has been resolved - Kael added a DoDamageNoCaster() (or similar) function to get around it several versions ago.)

EDIT: Short version is that iDmg is rolled for (2DX upto a maximum of Y) and then the damage bonus from CombatI-V is added on top of that. If the roll gives is 42% and you have Combat I, your total damage is 47%. Resists are then applied to leave us with the correct percentage of the total damage (in the above example, a 50% resist to the damage would leave us with 23% damage - half of 47% rounded down).

 

[xienwolf]

Cool, so if lucky you can do double of X in the one shot (to the limit of Y), and if you are unlucky you can do a whopping 2% with even the most damaging of spells. (both pre-resistance of course).

Now the Limit of Y is a hard limit though right? As in if you are already damage 65% then you will be completely unharmed by any spell which has a damage limit of 50%?

 

[Zechnophobe]

Good stuff, so combat for mages greatly increases the minimum and average damage spells will do. Combat 5 means that any spell which does % damage will do at least 27% damage, assuming it doesn't go over it's cap.

That's actually rather a big difference.


Q: This may be a bug, but it would seem the pillar of chains and Governor's Manor do not 'stack' the unhappy production bonus effect. Was hoping each perturbed citizen would give me two prod, but only gives 1 still.

 

[Grey Fox]

Q: This may be a bug, but it would seem the pillar of chains and Governor's Manor do not 'stack' the unhappy production bonus effect. Was hoping each perturbed citizen would give me two prod, but only gives 1 still.

This might be intended. But I hope it is not, cause it is Flauros favorite wonder, and I think the wonder should be useful for the Calabim.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Q: I've been noticing... mysterious combat bonus being applied to some units. A Lizardman on defense (Guarding a hut) has +25% fortify, and +25% tile bonus (forest). But his 'total' is 8.8. I'm attacking with a hill giant (Moe).

If I instead attack it with a dwarf warrior, the lizardman is correctly 6.0. What gives? I've been noticing this with my hill giants frequently... the target of their attacks getting seemingly unmentioned but significant bonus (20% here, 40% there..)

Edit: Combat log showed two additional bonus: +50% against animals, and +20% 'AI animal combat'. This is odd for two reasons: 1) Why does a BARBARIAN unit get an AI bonus? Secondly, hill giants are BEASTS not ANIMALS so shouldn't be in either of these groups, right?

 

[xienwolf]

Well, I guess the animal bonus applies to beasts too. Makes some sense.

And all AI get a bonus based on difficulty, even Barbarians.

 

[Grey Fox]

Some bonuses lower the enemy's STR rather than increasing yours. City Raider for example.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Some bonuses lower the enemy's STR rather than increasing yours. City Raider for example.

I was under the impression that all combat bonuses worked that way. (Promotions that boost base strength excluded of course)

 

[Grey Fox]

That's possible, I haven't looked into it much.