MP: ANDalusian Sun: Lolomo wins after more than 2 years of gruelling competition!

[Aethyr]

It's just a suggestion, I'm not saying they are OP, just an "annoyance" I can do without. I'm cool with whatever either way.

[WraithLord]

I know you didn't say they're OP, neither did I say that I was thinking that you were thinking that I was saying that you were saying that they were OP
Bah, I blame it all on trigger happy Executor

On a more somber tone - I will accept the majority decision here and already stated my preference.

Oh, and I think I managed to PM Sasooli on the other forums.

[Fantomen]

I vote against banning spells.

This look very interesting: http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...?showtopic=377
It's an experiment in improving the spellcasting AI, if Llamabeast thinks it's ready for MP testing I'd be willing to give it a whirl.

[llamabeast]

You know, obviously it's brand new and kind of experimental, but actually I think it might be good for MP testing (once people have had a quick prod in SP). Because it just has two effects:

- Self-buff and summon spells will only be cast when scripted (with the exception of Raise Skeletons), or when the mage has absolutely nothing else to do
- Self-buff spells can be cast repeatedly (with no additional benefit of course). This is obviously undesirable, but in reality I think it hardly matters - you won't script to cast them repeatedly, so it will only come up when the mage has nothing to do, for example as the enemy are running away.

So I am optimistic that it will give a straightforwardly beneficial effect to casting AI. More Lightning Bolts, less Phantasmal Warriors. All your astral mages shouldn't cast Twist Fate, Resist Magic, Astral Shield, Personal Luck every single battle (unless you want them to). And hopefully, your massed ranks of fire mages won't cast Phoenix Pyre!

[WraithLord]

llamabeast, your mod sounds great and I'd like to try it out in SP but I think it's premature to introduce it to this game. I'm more concerned with what we don't know about it than what you told us, i.e. all those possible undesired side effects or possible bugs that needs to be ironed out.

I think a smaller MP game focused on play-testing this mod would be more appropriate. Perhaps as early as a week or two from now you'd have enough feedback to at least "beta" your mod. If it were "beta" then I'd be in favor of adding it, currently it's probably more "alpha" state.

[llamabeast]

WraithLord, I think you're right, this is too big a game to get too experimental on. Just got overexcited.

[rabelais]

I think I will have to drop out. My kid is sick again, and I was mostly excited about the holy war mod. Plus I just fell asleep from exhaustion and staled in a different game.

Definitely not time for a new one, sorry for the tease.

[Calahan]

I think some sort of executive decision (as democracy sucks) needs to be made regarding just how ""experimental" this game is going to be in regards to mod testing, and decide whether or not a (R)AND game is the best setting for mod testing.

Since not only are (R)AND games meant to be a more 'serious' type of game than regular games, there is also the simple mod-testing problem of it being a lot more difficult to provide feedback on the mods being tested, as you will often have to wait until the end of the game to do so. Since you can't just post in the relevant mod thread saying "I just had a fight and encountered a bug with XYZ", since a sharp eyed player can easily join the dots to the error report and the in-game battle to work out which nation a player is. (and I've seen countless anonymous ID's given away with careless posts in other threads). You could PM the bug to the mod creator of course to safeguard your ID, but players often get both lazy and forgetful, leading again to the careless thread post problem.


As someone who has done a lot of laborious testing with the casting AI, I really would add a note of caution to using any mod that adds spells to the game. Since while the modding code to add new spells isn't that hard if you know the system, and indeed it might look snazzy to add a few minor spells thinking "that won't do any harm", the actual effects it has on the casting AI in-game need to be thoroughly tested IMO before seeing use in proper/serious (call them what you will) games.

Since I'm sure any Machaka player will testify to how annoying just one spell can be in ruining a perfectly good mage. As they line up their item/spell boosted F5E5D1 Black Sorcerers on the battlefield expecting them to decimate armies with a range of Evo's for minimum fatigue, only to see the casting AI regularly decide that no, I don't want to kill the enemy, as I think the best thing is to utilise the D1 path and summon a skeleton for 30 fatigue instead. And if you haven't encountered similar problems with certain spells (Protection!!) for most nations, then you likely just haven't played the game enough.

But the point of the above example is to highlight how just one spell can screw up an entire nation's mage line-up, and this means adding new spells *really* has to tested in relation to how they affect the casting AI of mages, and not just "what the spell does". During my testing I also found that (unsurprisingly) mage-priests got an even more rotten deal with the casting-AI, as they can be easily distracted from using their mage paths if even one banishment target is on the battlefield (and not just in testing, as skelly spam to distract mage-priests is an example of just one tactic I'm sure many players will testify to having seen/used). And if there are H2 mage-priests around, then one sight of a deomn will see them spamming smite demon all day long (regardless of how high it's MR is)

And having looked at the Holy War mod this morning, I think a few spells there could potentially just make a mage-priest pretty much redundant in battle. As spells like True Heal and Divine Protection could easily see mage-priests happy to spam them all day long in every battle. Which may be good for *just* priests, but not so good for mage-priests, who will likely have something better to do with their mage paths than lightly healing/buffing a handful of troops.


Oddly, I'd be more confident personally about using llama's Well Behaved Wizard Mod than Holy Wars, since WBWM appears to be just a light version of a mod I'm currently working on to improve the casting AI, and as such I know that I've done a fair bit of battlefield testing on the effects that the changes have on the casting AI. But this confidence is purely my own, and there's no way I would project it outwards by saying my mod is ready for testing in a real game. And certainly not outside of a game with the stark proclaimer of *This is a very casual game to test an extremely experimental mod, and the consequences it will have on a proper game are totally unknown. As such please don't play if you don't like the thought of your game being potentially ruined due to changes the mod makes to how spell-casting works*


I'm not sure if I will be playing in this game yet, but whether or not I do isn't relevant to what I've said above. I'm all for creating mods and seeing them get some air time for testing, but like I said at the very top, I think some clarification is needed from those in charge on what the guinea pig setting for this game will be (since don't forget, if the game ends up using CBM 1.83, then there are still sections of that which are comparatively un-tested as well)

[llamabeast]

Well, Holy War has already seen a fair bit of MP testing. The new version is just a slightly toned down version of the well tested version. I don't remember having any issues in previous games with the mod, and certainly no-one has reported anything about AI problems.

[llamabeast]

I think I will play in this game after all, if there's still space for me.

My votes (predictably) are for CBM1.83 and for Holy War, since I think Burnsaber did a nice job on it and it's interesting.