I noticed that I was not doing as much damage with my magic as I was supposed to, so I did a quick test. It's pretty simple, I attacked a group of 3 spiders (each had 0 defense) using the fire spell Infernal. I did this both before and after constructing on a fire shard, and I did it several times (more than 10 damage rolls) to get decent statistics. My sovereign had 15 intelligence. The results were:
Without shard: Average damage = 8.6
With one fire shard: Average damage = 7.6
Both results are what you'd expect without a shard. I've also done this for lightning bolt with an air shard, same result.
So has anyone been actually seen shards improve damage like they are supposed to, or are they completely non-working at the moment?
As I posted elsewhere I have a VERY lucky save game with a min-maxed caster sovereign (15 int, 15 essence and all spellbooks to start) and have managed to get to 4 fire shards only to see them do diddly squat in tactical. Time to do some auto resolves combats and see how it stacks up.
I think this game is pretty wonderful. Yes, there are a few bugs and clitches, but nothing that can't be fixed.
SD has always been very dedicated to its community and fans, they won't let us down.
I personally think that you should implement a separate "spell resistance" (maybe based on int or wis) stat which would defend against spells where defense defends against normal attacks. It doesn't make any sense that dexterity (which modifies defense) should help you defend against magic...
Just wondering about the xml:
<Expression><![CDATA[[Value] * [UnitStat_NumFireShards]]]></Expression>
If one has a single fire shard, isn't UnitStat_NumFireShards 1. A value multiplied by 1 is the original value. So shouldn't that be number of shards + 1?
Has anyone tried whether the damage increases when you have more than one shard?
I didn't do a lot of testing on that, but it seemed to me that with two air shards, chain lightning was doing no extra damage as well. And anyway, if UnitStat_NumFireShards was 1 when you had 1 shard, shouldn't it be zero when you have no shards, thus resulting in 0 damage? It simply looks like UnitStat_NumFireShards is not a working variable, but I'm sure the developers have a handle on it now that they are looking into it
I'm currently researching a spell that creates a volcano (lvl 10 or 11 spell), and it has shards listed as requirements next to mana and the other stats. I'm not sure if it just requires control of them or consumes them per cast, but that is kinda what you're talking about here I think. Can't wait to see what's past summoning a titan and volcano.
Though I don't like the "one defense for all" way things are now, I still can't say "it doesn't make any sense" because I could imagine someone with very high dex physically dodging an incoming spell. Think of of it that way, maybe it'll help a bit until things either change or get modded or whatever.
Just discovered tonight that the slow regen is an early game thing. Once you hit a lvl 5 kingdom town (no clue with the other guys) you can build a tower that adds +2 (for 3 total) mana regen for all your units per (non-battle) turn. Things get much better then.
Thanks for all the feedback guys. I'll be sure to do a lot of testing vs. high DEF mobs. If the miss rates are unacceptable, then maybe your damage roll vs. DEF would be a better option. I agree with you that without a magic resistance stat of some sort, it's a little odd to be rolling against defense for magic damage, but it's all we have at the moment without a major stats overhaul. I'd also like to see more magic items with +INT or +WISDOM or Clarity1-5 on them to help out you guys that love playing caster sovereigns.
I don't think Int vs Def is necessarily bad. However I think you should really reconsider how much defense a stack has.It makes sense to multiply their damage and their HP based on stack-size, but I can't see any rationale for why they should get harder to hit. If there's 12 enemies in one spot, how the heck do you miss?I don't know exactly how the code looks, but if you recode stacks so only their damage and HP is multiplied and their accuracy and defense remains the same as a single unit, then they'll work much more reasonably against both spells and non-stacked opponents. This follows the same pattern as most monsters, as I keep seeing 300 attack power, 5 defense dragons and trolls show up in my kingdom.If you remove defense stacking, keep monster defense reasonable and prevent the ludicrous ring stacking, then nothing in the game should have an exorbitant defense value.
int vs defense is horrible, theres no items that boost Inteligence for one and its means there no real reason to sepcialize in different magic schools, chainlighting is like fireball whichi s like ice bolt.
I would like to knwo that cold spells on fire based creatures did more damage and that fire cretures were immune to fire spells
IMO shards shouldnt add a set number of dmg to the spell. Better if they raise the dmg by a percentage value or some other solution, otherwise they will be awesome early game and crap late game.
The way shards were supposed to work (and presumably do work in auto combat) as I understand it is that one shard doubles damage, two triples and so on. That's pretty dang powerfull I'd say.
I absolutely agree with hermes33. What's the point of a 20 damage spell if the enemy has 1600 health and 600 defense? Shards are already very rare (and rarer still that you find one you can actually use with your magic books). +100% damage per shard is reasonable.
The largest problem, In my opinion, is that the AI prefers to build two hundred single units instead of 25 units with 8 guys in each. But that has to be an AI fix, don't try to balance that out by making shards crappy!
No, keep the shards powerful, maybe 100% increase is a bit overpowered, but at least keep it a percentage instead of a set number. And a pretty high & at that, no miserly 5, make it at least 20%. That way shards would still matter.
As for the stacking of stats, I have a different idea. Why not make them have several attacks instead. And I don't mean combat-speed increase, I mean several rolls. So if you have a squad of 4 units using broadswords, they would get 4x10 in attack. Still good, but not ridiculous.
As for defense, only one roll should be made. As someone pointed out, it's logical to get more attack, it's not at all logical to get more defense.
Keep the HP stacking though, that's working fine as it is.
This will still make the biggest squad the best choice, but takes their power down several notches.
Tomas
Spells should definitely have a chance to miss.
-in response to some random comment earlier in the thread.
Any ETA on when this will be fixed? This is a major flaw for me and I'm still holding off on buying the game until all major flaws (such as this one) are fixed.
I think it would be perhaps easier to change the spell casting system in that way:
Spell base damage: 5 - 15 (low level spells = low damage, high level spells = high damage)
Intelligence: Spell base damage x (Intelligence x 10 %) and every shard increases the Intelligence by 5 for that type of spell
With these changes spell casting would work as ranged and melee combat, with the exception that spell casting inflicts true damage. Items could increase the spell base damage or the mana regeneration.
We're still left with the problem that casters have no options vs squads. This isn't a complaint against your formula, but against the issue.(It's not like fighters don't have similar problems.)
Let's take your formula, give it to a wizard with about 15-20 INT, and put it up against a moderate force; enemy equipped with Leather Helm, Leather Armlet, Leather Cuirass, Leather Greaves, and Wood Shield-Defence is 6. It seems extreme, but it's these situations you're gonna encounter, and also what the enemy has to contend with. Wizard's got a few levels on him(Hence 15-20), but arcane research has been only moderate, so he's only got level 1 or 2 damage spells, so we'd be at the low end-5/7 damage base.
5+the 50% bonus is 7.5; just call it 7, I guess. 20 is 10. It beats it, sure, but the damage per turn is poor. As you're spending 2-4 mana per shot, that's no good at all; though the wizard can win a few fights, this is untenable.
Now there's a first rank of squad showing up, three guys for the Empire, 4 for the Kingdom. Uh-oh. 6 becomes 18/24. And instantly our Wizard has serious issues. It's not just the defence(He'll barely hit), he's got to carve through 3/4x the HP. It'll only get worse as the squad size increases and equipment gets better. Shards are a hellish expense to claim, and aren't guaranteed to be around or on type. And please remember that there's not a damage spell every spell level for every school.
There needs to be more than Shards to increase the strength of spells.
With my system for squads their defense would still be 6 though, and maybe by then you would have gotten a little better spells with say, 10 base damage and a sovereign with 20 int. With Wizards system for spells we would then have a damage of 20 against 6 defense 40Hp units. So basically a good chance of doing 10+ dmg per spell. Add a couple of shards and we're looking at 20+ damage. Sounds good to me.
Why can't spells be an int-int calc, instead of int-def? def seems more like a physical charateristic. I wouldn't expect dex or armor to help much against mind power type things (magic), but it would make sense to me that magic would hurt stupid creatures more than it would other sharp (high int) wizards.
AOE spell need to hit soldiers in a squad individually. Changing how squad works has to be done and soon before this ridiculous mechanic becomes too ingrained. Everything in the game right now is having to be balanced around the ridiculous capacities of a few peasants trained together as a group. The reason high level creatures have such high attack and defense is so they cna face up against groups of soldiers. This is a big part of what makes magic feel so underpowered and what makes comparing magic to defense values seem so silly...
Its even worse when a squad of soldiers is down to 1 hp and still has the off/def as if it was at max HP. they should have the squad's off/def drop as each member is killed off.
Separating the hit and damage rolls for offensive spells - Great!
The hit roll will be caster INT vs. defender DEF - Bad very bad, as others have said late game INT can't come close to matching DEF. If you changed this to INT vs DEX then we are good again.
Fireball Damage = ((5 - 9) + (2 * intFireShardControled)) * (INT * 0.15)
So a 10 INT caster with no shards does 7.5 - 13.5 per fireball and a 17 INT caster with 1 Fire Shard does 17.85 - 28.05. That looks to be just about perfect for Fireball.
Have straight DEF (Not DEX modified DEF as DEX will be used in the to hit check) reduce magic damage by 0 to DEF/2 points (Armour is made to stop sharp bits not Fireballs).
Sammual
Late game I've seen my own squads with over 400 defense easily. Heck just equipment alone on a lone guy can result in 110 defense on heroes pretty easily. (Due to elementium shortages, I never made a squad with that same gear, but that could be 1600 defense in a full company).
All of you guys talking about a shortage of shards need to do more research, with 5 cities, after research in adventure to spawn more shards and extensive magic research I had over 15 shards in my ZoC. I don't quite follow why shards would randomly spawn, if it was game age, magic reasearch etc. but they kept popping up as I researched magic techs (was only level 40 magic or so research, and the adventure techs state they spawn resources).
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