About caves and darkness

[Twan]

I was thinking the idea of caves with perma darkness was abandonned since a long time, but someone showed me that "caves are not dark as they should be" is still in the bug list.

Hum... If it's just considered a bug, to be honest I hope it won't be fixed soon. Seriously darkness is a level 6 spell, extremely powerful against some nations, extending the effect for free to all caves provinces IMO will have one only effect : make maps with caves unused for balance reasons (or force mapmakers using caves to make them border mountains to avoid the effect).

(so as the only maps I've made have lots of caves I feel concerned )

Anyway I also find unthematic that darkvisions nations don't have some reasonable advantage in caves. So I have a suggestion (no two in fact) :

-Create an half-darkness state (non magical = non ultra extreme darkness) for caves, with effects comparable to those of a swamp or quagmire spells (or even a little bigger, say -2 att and -4 prec, lowered by darkvision %).

-Or another one (if you find time to implement that) : give caves the default darkness effect, but add specific counter to non magical (caves) darkness (items or spells in the paths the most nations without darkvision have - air&fire I think-, allowing them to be competitive in caves in mid-game, not only one astral high level spell with a high gem cost).

A third option would be to add lots of counters to darkness in general but nations actually using the spell won't like that.

[konming]

Maybe half darkness, so attack and defense are reduced by 1/4, not 1/2, and precision reduced by 3/8.

Another way is to assume that everyone carries torches in caves. This would replace shield and give penalty to those who use two hand weapons. Precision is reduced as usual.

[Sombre]

Well it isn't like there are a lot of maps with cave provinces and those that do have them the designer might not have even been aware that caves don't cast darkness.

I really hope caves/cave forts/possibly deep seas too get autocast darkness in the future. To me it makes perfect sense and most of the nations with darkvision (Atlantis, Agartha, Abysia) are pretty underpowered anyway.

[Twan]

I think some other nations would become underpowered on maps with caves if darkness is total/without more counters (human nations without death especially if their force is archers). And they are already weak on maps with many seas. IMO it may lead to caves map not considered good for MP, or nations like Man or Tien Chi not played on them.

For dark cave forts, I think it's a good national advantage for Agartha, and would find magical darkness normal for them even if an half-dark effect is added (but don't think other darkvision nations really need the same effect - are Atlantis and Abysia really underpowered ? always seen them having good results).

[Agrajag]

Cave like they were meant to be shouldn't be too different from sea provinces, just dedicated to other races, and a bit harder to infiltrate.
EDIT: (Which is why I'll be happy if they will just work as intended.)
[Not that I've seen many/any cave provinces, afaik they are rarely used (maybe because they don't work properly?)]

[Twan]

Sea nations can't build all their units out of seas and often may not even use all, so it can't be the same.

Agartha (with att < 10 units weaker than others out of darkness) may be designed to be the cave nation in maps with some dark caves but I see no other darkvision nation having this weakness in light lands, and all may build all units under the sun...