Caster of Magic 6.0 Contents
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Caster of Magic 6.0 Contents Philosophy Game Mechanics - Spellbooks and retorts Starting options World Map Random Events Economy Combat Levels and Experience User Interface Retorts Common units Buildings Races, race specifc units Hero Units - Hero abilities Hero types Item Powers Spells Diplomacy AI Difficulty Known Bugs Changelog Philosophy Italics will be used in this document to describe and explain what's behind various design decisions. The core goal of the mod is to keep the game as similar to the original as possible, while simulataneously maximalizing the fun factor, achieved through improved game balance, smarter AI, and redesign of useless units, spells or other features that drag down the game - in other words, to draw out the full potential of what Master of Magic could have been. A heavy emphasis is placed on Magic and Spells, summoned creatures and artifacts dominate the game, while mundane economy and normal unit armies merely stay relevant through sheer quantity and exist to be outclassed by the much more limitedly available but powerful supernatural forces. Game balance is achieved through a vast array of powerful and diverse abilities and spell effects, all of which having an appropriate amount of counters. Game mechanic changes keep all of the above in mind, and are specifically trying to be AI friendly to make sure the AI can provide a sufficient level of challenge. Obviously, the mod also aims to fix all the bugs and other oversights that exist within the original game. I would like to give my thanks to all the people who kept providing me with feedback and bug reports on the forums or uploaded gameplay videos to help me make this game as good as possible. Many thanks to Sapher, Nelphine, and all the others. I'd also like to give special thanks to Hadriex who provided me with the art for two of the new units, Wild Boars and Gorgons, and regularly has streams of playing Caster of Magic on Youtube. Seravy Caster of Magic developer http://seravy.x10.mx/Wordpress Game Mechanics Spellbooks and Retorts The process to create your custom wizard has been fine tuned to offer the maximal possible choices and replayability. For this purpose, most retorts can be chosen without requiring specific books, and have no limitations, however 2 pairs of retorts that support similar purposes are each mutually exclusive as stacking them would be far too obvious and efficient. Likewise, there is no resricition on which realms and how many books in each you can play together - if you want, you can even play a wizard that has Life and Death magic at the same time! The same applies to enemy wizards, and the new algorhitm to generate their choices increases the variance in enemies maximally, while avoiding to generate wizards that would be far too inefficient. Enemy wizards now pick their books and retorts first, then select the best matching portrait that is still available, so it's entirely possible for two or more enemies to use the same realms of magic, and the player selecting a portrait will not prevent a wizard using those realsm from being generated. Finally, Myrran is also generated randomly (as long as the quantity of Myrran wizards matches the requirement) so it will not be the same person on Myrror all the time. Guaranteed spells are reintroduced to encourage the strategy element and spell combos, and reward the player for picking a larger amount of spellbooks while simulataneously reducing the luck factor. Picking a larger amount of books leads to a slower but stable and reliable strategy, while picking a smaller amount of books spread over several realms and/or including many retorts maximizes the early game potential at the risk of having an extremely weak endgame. For this same reason, Very Rare spells can't be guaranteed - you have to pick enough Spellbooks to ensure your randomly generated spells will contain at least a few options you can use effectively against your last remaning enemies. The required amount of books to obtain spells of each tier by trade or treasure has been increased to give greater relevance to picking your third and fourth book in the realm - which ensures any attempts to play 3 or more realms will have to involve some sort of tradeoff. You can play 3 realms and have very rares in each but then that means sacrificing the option of picking any retorts. Alternately you can pick retorts, but then you won't be able to obtain very rare spells in some of your realms. Do note however that you can research one spell of the “unobtainable” tier by picking the previous book, you just can't trade or find more. So picking 2 books of Chaos will give you exactly one random rare Chaos spell, ensuring lower book counts still give you a taste of the next tier's power : you just can't expect to fully utilize it. The fourth book however adds 2 very rare spells instead of the usual one, to ensure playing multiple realms doesn't result in too much disadvantage. This still leaves a dual ot triple realm wizard with fewer very rare spells, but the difference isn't too high and the possibility to find and trade for more (assuming you did get the 4 books needed) will compensate for that. The system ensures each and every book you pick is a valuable addition, as your first 4 books unlock a new spell tier, books 5 to 7 enable picking guaranteed spells, one for each, book 8 enables the guarateed first turn feature, and books 9 and 10 guarantee you get every rare and very rare spell respectively, leaving nothing to chance, as well as improving your casting and research capacity in the realm - as these books likely already encroach on your ability to pick all the retorts you want to. You can have up to 10 spellbooks in each realm and 12 picks total. Each book contains/allows : Common/Uncommon/Rare/Very Rare, Common Starting/ Uncommon Guaranteed/ Uncommon Guaranteed turn 1/ Rare Guaranteed, other effects Book 01 : 3/1/0/0, 0/0/0/0, Find/Trade common Book 02 : 3/2/1/0, 1/0/0/0, Find/Trade Uncommon Book 03 : 4/3/2/1, 2/0/0/0, Find/Trade Rare Book 04 : 5/4/3/3, 3/0/0/0, Find/Trade Very Rare Book 05 : 6/5/4/4, 4/1/0/0, Book 06 : 7/6/5/5, 5/1/0/1, Book 07 : 10/7/6/6, 5/2/0/1, Book 08 : 10/10/7/6, 5/0/2/1, Book 09 : 10/10/10/7, 5/0/2/0, +8% research, -5% casting cost Book 10 : 10/10/10/10, 5/0/2/0, +16% research, -10% casting cost Where “Guaranteed” means you will be able research eventually and “Guaranteed turn 1” means it'll be on your starting page of your spellbook at the beginning. Any additional spellbook you find in treasure will have these exact same contents and effects, although “Guaranteed” picks don't apply - those are reserved to the beginning of the game. Your primary realm is the realm you owned the highest number of books of at the beginning of the game. In case of a tie, realms take priority in the order of Nature, Sorcery, Chaos, Life, Death. Each spellbook provides you with +2 starting casting skill, and 1.5 power, but if your total book count in all realms exceeds 8, each additional book is worth 3 power instead. Starting options Similarly to wizard options, the aim here was to ensure maximal replayability by providing more options. Climate and Mineral settings were added. The cost of Myrran has been reduced to ensure the races on the Myrror plane are much more accessible. There are 5 separate levels of Magic Power setting to control node power, 5 land size settings, and 7 separate difficulty levels to ensure players of all skill level can have fun. The Dry climate setting adds more deserts and reduces the amount of swamps and rivers. The Wet climate does the opposite : fewer deserts but more swamps and rivers. Minerals can be Fair, Rich or Poor. On the Rich setting, some otherwise Myrror exclusive minerals can appear on Arcanus in very small amounts and both the quantity and quality of minerals is higher. On the Poor setting, minerals will be quite rare and usually the less valuable kind. The Easy difficulty level is recommended for complete beginners. The AI receives a resource penalty and intentionally plays worse. The Normal difficulty level is recommended for the first few playthroughs of the mod, if you already played 4X games before, or Master of Magic in particular. The AI gets no advantage here, and is still holding back on strategies as well as being prohibited from using custom wizards or starting on Myrror. Fair is an alternate version of the Normal difficulty, the AI will no longer hold back on most strategies, and can create their starting wizard without restriction, but they still don't get much of an advantage otherwise. Advanced gives the AI a small resource advantage while Expert gives a relevant amount. These are recommended for regular playing if you're already familiar with the mod. Master and Lunatic are very hard difficulties where the AI gets a fairly large bonus (however still much less than in the original game) and might use some strategies that specifically take advantage of this fact. Use these for additional challenge once you found your favorite and most effective strategies.