Patch 'n mod

[Cainehill]

Alneyan said:
Back to the Oceania mod: I gave a Moonshine Cap to an Astral 1 Capricorn, and it kept Astral 1 on the land (he should have lost Astral 1, and the Cap should have had no effect on his paths). Is it intentional, or a bug? It seems rather interesting to me (pay to keep your magic on the land), but that might not exactly be what Illwinter had in mind.

It seems likely to me that the astral path is simply reduced by one on land, so empowering or putting a starshine skullcap on it raises it high enough to still have 1 on land. This would be consistent with the way a number of the shapeshifters (primarily dragons) have their paths reduced in one form.

[Alneyan]

You are correct Cainehill; I thought the magic reduction was because of two different sets of magic paths on the land and water Capricorns, but it is merely a reduction of 1 level everywhere. If this drops the level in any path to 0, it is still possible to raise it back to 1 with any item, so the path is not "lost".

[Vicious Love]

Would this make it possible to use an air path booster underwater? And would it have to be equipped on land, when air >0?
Also, any word on bugs relating to path reduction and spells like Returning, Teleport, Twiceborn, etc?

Update: Err... not that an aquatic nation would want to cast Twiceborn unless Thetis' Blessing was in effect.

[deccan]

Alneyan said:
You are correct Cainehill; I thought the magic reduction was because of two different sets of magic paths on the land and water Capricorns, but it is merely a reduction of 1 level everywhere. If this drops the level in any path to 0, it is still possible to raise it back to 1 with any item, so the path is not "lost".

That's interesting to know. So I suppose that even at 0 astral, he can still be mind dueled!

[Kristoffer O]

Seems likely.

[Alneyan]

An Astral 1 Capricon wasn't Mind Dueled on the land, so it looks like you do need Astral 1 or better to be targetted by a Mind Duel. (My astral mage overrode my script, and cast Luck, Paralyse/Mind Burn/Paralyse/Mind Burn)

Still about the Capricorns, they have a limited Stealth ability on the land. If they move from a water province to a land province, they can still hide (you will have to click on the province to put back the hide order though), and so will not be attacked even with their Stealth gone. They cannot move either, so they will have to stay lurking in the province, or to try taking it.

[PvK]

I had a lot of fun spending most of yesterday playing a new 2.15 game as Oceania. It didn't seem overpowered against other water nations to me - they can all field swimmers, fodder, and armored underwater troops. Oceania may have a slight troop advantage, or not, but it seems perhaps weaker than Atlantis or R'lyeh at research, magic, and above-sea troops. It's different and interesting, anyway. Luring folks into the sea is fun... and interesting when the unexpected happens.

Regarding magic-changing capricorns and sirens... I wonder if their morphing magic skills can lead to discounts in empowerment - I didn't try that yet...

PvK

[Kristoffer O]

No empowerment cheezieness possible

[Edi]

This is a repost from the bug thread, but thought it should be put here as well because it is relevant to this thread and won't be buried under other issues.

Three bugs with Oceania:

• Mermidon (1101), the land-form, has wrong action points. It retains the AP value of the underwater form, Base 24 modified by armor, when it should have base 14. As a consequence, they are as fast as heavy cavalry on land.
• Turtle warriors turn to regular mermen (1046) when you take them to land and back to water again. This is because the regular Oceanian merman (1046) has land-form merman (1047), which is shared by the turtle warrior. 1047 reverts back to 1046, regardless of whether it started out as turtle warrior or merman 1046.
• Turtle Captain suffers the same fate as turtle warrior, he just becomes merman captain.

I think the turtle warrior and captain bugs are a consequence of incorrect secondshape assignment, because turtle warrior is #1097 and turtle captain is #1099, but I can't get monsters #1098 and #1100 (presumably the turtle warrior and captain landforms, respectively) visible in any way. These bugs take a lot of the flavor out from Oceania, in my opinion.

Edi

[tinkthank]

Ì must have been really out of the action for a few months -- when was Clam of Pearls changed from 2W to 2W1N ? Was this in 2.15? I cant find these balance change notes anywhere. Is this mentioned in a thread somewhere?

(Boron: This is another reason why "clamhoarding" will not be more difficult with them, Boron. Actually, I see no real feasible way to give them a fire blessing, since they dont have any pretender with decent fire-skills.)