Remove Curses and Horror Marks?

[Aezeal]

yeah lol but that is a bit of a hassle, not having a button is enough for me (I mean .. as I said I'm actually prefering not being able to save.. without the button the temptation is gone )

[kkarski]

Hi everyone,
I'm new on the boards, so, hello again ;>
Curses never bugged me, but I feel that horror marks are too easy to put on people, seems like every John the Astral Mage is able to do so.
Guess it would be better if HM would be astral 3, not 2. It would prevent many frustrating situations when your combat pretender gets marked by an indie mage or by cheap, mass produced national ones.
My question is, would someone be so nice to make a small mod which would put the "horror mark" spell a level higher in astral? Or tell me how can I do it myself?

[Saulot]

Eh sure, why not.

Stick this into any mod you play with (or better still, make a personal preference mod for your SP games):

#selectspell "Horror Mark"
#pathlevel 0 3
#end

Modding the game is enjoyable, so I do recommend reading the modding.pdf and learning about modding, and (after you've gotten more comfortable with the game) examining other people's mods to learn what makes them tick.

[Endoperez]

There's no way to see it, but Horror Marks vary in power. One Horror Mark cast at your pretender will send any horrors called to the battle against him, but won't call in any horrors. Or if it does, it's one of the Lesser Horrors which can die to one well-placed spell or one hit from a magic weapon. There's an Evocation spell, Astral Geyser, which causes more severe horror-marking, and takes Astral 3 IIRC.

You have every right not to like the Horror Mark spell, though, and if you make a mod of your own, put this line in:

#modname "test"

That's enough to make the mod work, and you can add any other commands into it afterwards. New mods only affect games created with the new mod active; changing mod on the fly makes the changes more or less immediately. It might take a turn until e.g. the research level of a spell changes, but most changes are instant.

[jscott]

The lack of a savegame feature in single player gives the game too high of a learning curve in my opinion. The game would seem a lot more accessible to people playing the demo if they could make a mistake, play a few turns, realize the mistake, and start again from an earlier point, having learned from their error.

As it is, the game forces you to live with every mistake, which can cause many, many restarts, especially on smaller maps.

Also, in a single player game, who is offended if I re-load if my pretender dies a cheap death and loses one level of all their magic? I once had a Pretender die because my own longbowmen shot her in the back as the enemy armies were routed. That's just idiotic and the game had to be completely restarted.

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
The lack of a savegame feature in single player gives the game too high of a learning curve in my opinion. The game would seem a lot more accessible to people playing the demo if they could make a mistake, play a few turns, realize the mistake, and start again from an earlier point, having learned from their error.

I feel it's more important to live with the mistakes you make and continue playing. For ANY multiplayer game where all your opponents are human there's no option for reloading a previous saved game either. I feel the ability to reload saved games originally became available so developers could easily investigate bugs and the feature remained so if bugs or computer crashes occurred the gamer would not lose as much time.
Reloading a saved game every time you make a mistake is choosing to live with a crutch so things will always be easier.

jscott said:
As it is, the game forces you to live with every mistake, which can cause many, many restarts, especially on smaller maps.

Simple solution... don't restart... live with the mistake and be stronger by fighting onwards even if your pretender and prophet died in the last battle.

If you absolute cannot stomach making mistakes while learning a game then save the specific folders via manually or download a tool.

[Endoperez]

Living with the mistakes you made is one thing, but living with bad luck that really hurts your strategy is quite another. While being good at both is nice, when you want to know how well your strategy can do you want to avoid the latter. It makes it easier to see if you had done any of the former.

It's a design choice that has been with the game from the very beginning of the series. Illwinter's other game, Conquest of Elysiun II, had save/load capability. I don't know why they chose not to include it, but they could have a mindset similar to NTJedi's.

[jscott]

If the game contains a single player component, it should contain modern conventions on saving. Its that simple. To argue that people shouldn't be able to save and reload because they should have to live with their mistakes doesn't make sense. If you dont' want to save and reload your game, that's your decision. I respect people who have the patience (and, more importantly, the free time) to struggle through trial and error type mistakes and play games to their conclusion whatever the result.

I don't have that kind of time, plus I'm trying to learn the game and I don't want to put 40-50 turns into a game only to find out that a decision I made on turn 10 was disastrous. I have to restart enough because of silly pretender designs. I don't really think its necessary to force me to restart because my pretender dies on turn 15 after having been asleep and I'm hopelessly behind in expansion.

Again, I respect people who play the multiplayer and enjoy the great challenge offered by this game. I like the game as is. But I do think that the game could stand to offer the CHOICE to be a little less harsh and challenging. It would keep new players interested longer and allow them to appreciate the depth of the game. Everyone I've introduced the demo to so far has abandoned the game because of the steep learning curve and the difficulty of the game (random events that kill an early hero, deaths of pretenders in battle, things that a reload feature could minimize, are common complaints from people I know who have tried to play the game). There's just no reason for the game not to feature real saves and to limit its appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore strategy gamer.

[Darkstone]

I'd argue that it isn't about living with mistakes, it's about realistically considering your choices. Playing fast and loose with a pretender (unless you're a very experienced player) tends to result in a quick death of that pretender. SP games vary significantly in difficulty based on the settings you use, and if the game is too difficult, simply tone down the AI.

I confess that at first I found the concept of not saving pretty discomforting and a little scary. So I manually copied and pasted saves for my games, for probably the first 3-4 months of playing. Eventually, I started saving less and less, and then finally stopped. I still used a crutch of playing with an immortal pretender for a while, but eventually got over that as well (I think I've played with a Lich more than 15 times).

Anyway, the reason I eventually stopped isn't because I mastered the game or something, it's because it's actually more fun to think things through, and feel like my choices have consequences even if I make a wrong one.

Obviously, I can't tell you what would be more fun to you, but I can advise you that turning down the difficulty or playing with an immortal, (and not getting too attached to prophets, who come and go) is preferable to the feeling of fearlessness & carelessness that you get with a save/load game.

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
If you dont' want to save and reload your game, that's your decision.

If you choose to save and reload your games, that's fine and your decision, but you'll need to download tools or manually copy the save folders. The game was designed without the save/reload crutch for a reason and won't change at this late phase.

jscott said:
There's just no reason for the game not to feature real saves and to limit its appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore strategy gamer.

The reason is because gamers use the save/reload as a crutch to avoid consequences of making bad choices. Poor computer opponents NEVER have a chance against the human opponents who NEED the let me always win save/reload option.
Your options...
1) manually save the required folders as backup and choose to give yourself an unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

2) use a tool to save the required folders as backup and choose to give yourself an unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

3) play another game which will have the save/reload option which will provide the cheating edge you desire.

4) toss in the towel and start a new game.

5) continue fighting to the bitter end... win or lose you keep fighting down to the last man/creature/thing.


** If you play any games with friends or family I guarantee they would all want their ally to be someone who chooses option #5 .