unfortunately the whole quest reward issue is more complex than people think.

just found out that you get everyting with an average quest and most stuff with easy quest rewards as well, except lvl4 units.

lvl4 units will come usally with average quests.

lvl4 spells too.

its also intersting that you get static shield and sacred wrath with easy quests as well as with average quests.
gold dragon summon spell with average quest.

the real easy quest unit rewards - in the editor those are the unit rewards 0-9 are disabled for the game. they will never show up whatever you do. the easy spell rewards e.g. fire halo for war shrine are disabled for sm.

the whole quests are screwed. ever wondered why a quests usally often gives 2 lvl3 units as reward? doesn't matter if it was easy or average.
...........................................

on the relation side. 1 order quest was to rebuild a mine, while nature suggest to raze it. that could mean that they don't like each other as well(slightly).

order and war are irritating terms reagarding to what they really do. the order spirit is more than about order only, he is about peace as well, since he wants you to build structures and make peace and alliances with your neighbors. the war spirit is also about chaos(gives anarchy spell). so indeed order is oppossing chaos as war is opposed peace and that makes finally sense. i think the quests and spirits are not fully developed in this version of the game, since there is a lot of stuff here that makes no sense. however it will take quite some time to research it all. keep in mind that there is a lot of unlogic in the game that works differently than the manuals or descriptions say or even some posts here!

finally, i would like to say that i hate the way how the nature shrine is, it has totally wrong theme its bugged actually. it doesn't make sense that nature shrine orders to raze all earth nodes as well as other elemental nodes as air and fire on sight, while leaving life nodes unharmed! nature shrine should more about earth to make things not too complicated, yes it can probably include the elments air, water and fire too, while i think it should stay more life and earth friendly to make things easier for the game.

secondly, it can't be good if order and nature offer almost only good and pure good units. this is what i call unbalanced. and i don't consider a razer as the nature spirit be a good boy(girl)

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 04-11-2005 @ 10:39 PM).]

Hi, I discovered a while back the thing on quest rewards and how slots 0-9 are not used. It basically jumps ahead a level. Well I wanted unit rewards for hard quests, so I added to the list and put level 4 units (pairs of em hehe) in slots 30-39 and these do come as rewards for hard quests.

By the way, it's been my experience that the units that are available to hire in Critter Dens and Druid circles seem to work in a similar fashion (slots 0-9 not used). However, Circus and Rogue shacks work the way one would expect them to.

Kirky

So you mean there is at least a partial fix to the quest reward inadequacies?

As far as the razing quests. I've not yet had nature have me raze a earth node. A fire node and a number of mines but no earth nodes. Computers generally do seem to do things in sets.

[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 04-11-2005 @ 11:41 PM).]

thats good and helpful to know kirky, thanks!

TruePurple, i made a testmap with different variations of nodes. 6 earth nodes, 6 life nodes, 1 death, 1 fire and 1 air node.

the nature spirit always demands to raze the earth nodes first. after exiting the game and playing the map again( no load and save) the same happened. i guess all nodes are subject to razing, with the single exception of the life node. nature will never give oders to raze a life node even if those are the only ones around.(tested this as well).

other magic stuff that i noted while testing:

razing an earth node will disable the 2 tremors when guarding or attacking the earth nodes. same as with fire nodes, the combustion is gone. but death, life and air node will still have their spells active while razed. i am certain mud of water will work too after the node was razed, but have not tested this, does anyone know, if nature spirite gives orders to raze water nodes?

the windmills are bugged, they will never grow crops, once the crops are gone. this can be easily done with clear terrain. once the crops are gone they never grow back.(at least after several classical turns, dunno in simultaneus turns) i tried multiple storm combinations. ice storm, then death storm and divine storm. its odd that cities you own can crop again but windmills in your domain not and it does not play any role for the cities to crop in wasteland if darkland is cast, or snow if ice age is cast if the city is in your domain or not.(what i think is not quite ovious)

with level terrain you cannot only build cities suddenly in the mountains, but even if mountains are very close to your cities so you can't see your crops, the city is still beeing able to get the full amount of the crops.

then rejuvenate doesn't work against swampland and snow/iceland, but i guess thats old stuff, however i did overwrite it with death storms/darkland and then divine storm/rejuvenate

also intersting: nature shrine wants to disjunct fire domain and darklands if it is active(i didn't know about fire domain before). i guess better than always the nasty raze attidude of her.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 04-12-2005 @ 00:34 AM).]

We'll do some more tests on the recruitment structures!

(Seems the rogue shack can use a little variety as well, in terms of units).

Well it might have been your test map. Maybe nature will always have X raze quest depending on the map used.

According to the manual the following spells piss off mother nature. Death storm, pestilence, darkland, firestorm, firedomain and iceage. Each casting by you causes reduction of favor to the nature spirit equivalent to failing a quest twice (10).

So I suppose those spells of your enemies that can be disjoined become quests for you to do so.

I have some questions about crops if you would be so kind please.

DarkMystery, what do you think of my suggestions for nature quest rewards?

[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 04-12-2005 @ 06:15 AM).]

Quoted from TruePurple:

new units should not be part of the unoffical patchV1.4,this is a too big change, the exceptions here are racial priests and the extra units placed only by mapmakers.

suggestions from your side are welcome, but should not be too dramatic. e.g. creating new stuff like new units as quest reward, if you have ideas about new units please post it in the extra unit thread.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 04-12-2005 @ 09:25 AM).]

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It doesn't specify that those new units must be only for map makers to place. Anyways the purpose of any new unit doesn't effect how difficult it would be to create that unit, right?

This is meant to be a nice balancing reward for nature raze quests. We could take some of the extra units for map maker placement and edit them so they are level one and give then as nature quest rewards, couldn't we?

made some tests where nature quest reward was to raze water node as well. so this means all magic nodes will be razed with the single exception of life sphere.

again it makes no sense, since nature is not only life oriented and 100% anti magic focused, since nature gives life, water and earth spells as quest reward.

also strange is that all gold structures are raze quests for nature. even windmill and watermill what seems a bit ood given that they are more nature friendly.

hard quests usally only give gold and mana reward. the average hard quest reward is 380 gold or mana. to kill 1 lvl4 unit with guards or 2 lvl4 units.(1 gold and 1 black dragon) quest can be declined and those units could be hired. what is always the better idea than to solve the quest.

Fire halo is too cheap and does too much.
Could it please be changed to only give fire resistance instead of fire immunity? This will help prevent fire sphere players from having too much of a advantage on one of the few maps with lava.

Also if its going to have ignition as well as fire strike and fire protection, Could its casting and upkeep cost and even level please be increased?

I think fire halo is good as it is.

How do you figure tearion? It gives you a bunch of useful abilities for dirt cheap. Plus it makes any maps with lava useless because any player with fire halo has a unfair advantage over everyone else.

Its a fine thing to say you like it as it is, care to elaborate and justify your position?

It's not that useful. stone skin, haste, static shield, enchant weapon, dark gift, liquid form.. almost everything is better than it. There are no lava in RMG and rarely in scenario too.

What does RMG stand for? Liquid form is extremely expensive (five times as much as halo). Yet doesn't give you alot. Yah physical protection is nice but at that upkeep price its not worth it except maybe on heroes. Speaking of, water elementals should have liquid form. (physical protection)

The great spell Static shield is the air equivalent of fire halo yet costs 4 times as much in maintenance.
Static shield-lightning immunity
Fire halo- fire immunity

Static shield-lightning strike
Fire halo- fire strike

Static shielf- shockes enemies that attack it
Fire halo- ignition (burns enemies that attack it)

Even though fire halo is fire equivalent of static shield it only costs a quarter of the upkeep!

I'd take fire halo over enchanted weapon for sure.

For those maps that do have lava, halos ability to cross it becomes extremely powerful. Especially when you compare it to water walk which costs twice as much and only allows units to cross water. Whether map makers use lave much or not, they should have the choice without worrying about halos lava crossing ability unbalancing it.

Would you at least agree that halo should have fire protection instead of fire immunity? With ignition and firestrike as well its much more then worth the 8 casting cost and 2 upkeep.

I mean I just can't see how you can sit there and say that all other enchantments are better then fire halo and that 2 mana upkeep for all those useful abilities isn't extremely cheap.

[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 04-14-2005 @ 05:54 PM).]

TruePurple, Tearion is right.

fire halo is not that good. fire immunity only protects you against being burned and pure fire spells such as fireball. acutally there i only fireball that checks fire only.

to make fire halo real good you have to use it with oily skin that cause a fireweakness! even as fire specialist you can miss some spells and keep in mind you get 7 spells on lvl2 - 1 is fire halo. max is 5 so you miss 2 spells on lvl2 and probably it was fire halo. the lava moving benefit is a big advantage on some rare custom maps though. the best thing on fire halo is its low upkeep of 2mana/turn.

also keep in mind that ignition protects against webs.(100%immunity) but not the ignition of fire halo - units still could be webbed by black spiders, spiderqueens and web hero upgrades and items. 1 name - 2 abilities. be careful same is true with resurgence 1 name but 3 abilities. resurgence works different as ability, different as enchantment and different as item. "da bomb" item with self destruct and "unlimited" resurgence ability! while resurgence as ability and enchant is only a 1 use/combat.

keep that always in mind. and keep in mind that there are quite some units with natural fire immunity allready, adding liquid form to a chaos lord will make it impossible to do max damage without dispelling LF.

the higher enchantment casting cost can be actually an advantage! spells that costs more are harder to dispel, cheap spells as fire halo will be easily dispelled on the first try.

Quote:

You mean fire immunity doesn't protect you against the unit ability fire bolt or fire breath?

You mean it doesn't protect you from the fire city enchantment defenses?

I know it use to protect you against fire enchantment city defenses. I don't know why that would have changed

You mean fire immunity doesn't protect you against the spells- wildfire, combustion, forge blast, firestorm, hellfire or fire domain?

I know it use to protect you against fire domain in WT. I don't know why that would have changed.

So whats lightning immunity protect against thats so much better then fire immunity?

Does ignition just cause units to burn or does it do damage to the unit as well? If it just causes them to burn, perhaps you can cause it to do damage as well so it can be nearly as useful as shocking units that attack.

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Outside of fire summoned units, the only unit I can think of that naturally has fire immunity is red dragons.

Fire strike is a very useful ability. Just like lightning strike.

So it seems to me that fire halo, while might be not quite as useful as static shield.. is nearly as useful. So it should have a casting and upkeep cost that reflects this. Perhaps 17 casting cost and 6 upkeep?

Could we please exchange its fire immunity for fire resistance so map makers can feel more free to use lava on their maps? Of course we would have to reduce its casting cost and upkeep to match. Maybe 13 casting cost and 5 upkeep?

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Oh ok, well can we please improve fire halo by increasing its casting cost and upkeep? Is it casting cost, maintenance cost or spell level that effects how easy a spell is to dispel?

[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 04-14-2005 @ 06:57 PM).]

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i was only talking about spells not abilities, fire halo will prevent any damage caused by fire bolts(efreet or fire cat) or fire breath of phoenix and red dragon.

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it doesn't protect against hellfire since that will do physical damage as well. not sure about the forge blast though i think it works on fire immune units, but i will probably check that.

wildfire is such a minor spell, only really worth against lvl1 units and to have a nice graphical effect on the screen, seriously it might stop fast clicks from enemies in mp and confuse the movementpath of the AI in sp and pbem.

fire halo makes you immune to both combustion and fire storms, but those 2 fire spells are hardly that good to consider a fire halo nerf, though.

fire domain is another minor almost useless spell it makes so pitiful damage that it will be regenerated next turn by almost all units instantly it will only destroy some lvl1 units if they are waiting in the fire domain a long time. this spell is only useful in combination of damnation that curses units too and prevent the natural healing rate.(play aow:wt fire3 against yaka and nekron for example)

its also useful against someone massing zephyr birds and spying on you, since summons cannot naturally heal without beeing in their home domain. however not a reasion to nerf fire halo, since FD is almost useless.(i wouldn't even cast it if the upkeep would be 10)

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runemaster, gargoyle, chaos spawn, chaos lord, sphinx, flamer, titan, incarnate, gold dragon, black dragon, flame cannon and fire specialization wizards.

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high casting cost only will protect against dispel(a bit) resurgence(100 mana) is not even dispelable. so increasing upkeep would nerf it greatly. do you play some MP btw? if you do you will find out that fire sphere is the least used sphere. my guess is more cause 7 good spells are on lvl2 only and the max there is 5 spells/magic level. there must remain some good reasions to take it. that is why i kinda against nerfs here. as Tearion said, more popular enchants are: stone skin, seeker, dark gift, static shield, liquid form----->try it out on chaos lord, fairy dragon and runemaster which all have magic protection or magic immunity this and LF will effectively protect against magic strike often caused by enchant weapon.

for most the best enchant is static shield have you ever seen complains about fire halo beeing too powerful? if you are still not convienced i suggest to try out some mp games online or pbem, actually fire spheres needs all the help it can get. in aow1 it was the most horrible sphere i still play aow1 and take fire sphere just to make the game a bit more interesting and difficult. now i think the fire sphere is almost about right, just 2 spells of the second fire sphere level should be lvl3 spells actually. currently: 7 fire spells on lvl2 and only 3 fire spells on lvl3. spells like mass confusion and forge blast could easily be lvl3 spells.

always a pleasure.

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It does. But it still doesn't protect against spells with a physical component of damage. Such Blazing comet which is very common.

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On top of my mind.. Flamer, Sphinx, Runemaster, Gargoyle.. I'm sure there are others.

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Uh? Being completely unable to move and attack for an entire turn is much worse than suffering a simple -2 ATT and losing 1 hp. If you attack a unit with static shield and suffer lightning stike on you first attack you lose all attacks for that turn and all retailation strikes on the next. Static shield is one of the best unit enchantments in the game, Fire Halo simply doesn't compare.

Edit: DM beat me to it.. I type so slowly

[This message has been edited by Fistandantilus (edited 04-14-2005 @ 07:57 PM).]

Gargoyle has immunity to everything so hardly counts when considering halo compared to static shield. A number of units have lightning immunity as well anyways.

Well can we make ignition do damage against the attacker each time they strike as well as cause them to burn? Can we make burn do more damage each round?

If other spells of fire aren't powerful enough, well lets make them more powerful then. Rather then give them a hell of a package deal price in fire halo, which ironically makes fire spells even less potent with its cheap fire immunity.

If units heal up damage each turn from fire domain.. it still means every turn they are in your domain they are at a little less then full health and are a little easier to defeat when attacked. If its not enough damage, well then boost it up.

2 mana per turn and 8 casting cost is dirt cheap, especially with it giving you three or four abilities. (lava walking)

At least make it only give fire protection so that map makers can feel free to add lava on their maps.

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ironically gargoyle has no lightning immunity what makes him 100% vulnerable against static shield.

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You sure? I thought the devs stated this was a joke, since SD actually completely destroys the corpse Resurgence wouldn't work.

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Sort of. Gargoyle also has 20Res, making it fairly unlikely for him to be Stunned by the Static Shield.

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Not if I'm playing Dark Elves, or have Spiders. Nothing sucks more than Webbing a tough opponent and then setting him on Fire on your first attack.

[This message has been edited by ZombieEater (edited 04-15-2005 @ 11:12 AM).]

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only if you use SD resurgence will not work, the unlimited resurgence on that unique item is good, but the SD is more the joke, cause in most situation its unwise to use SD and loose resurgence.

Quoted from zombie eater:

What if units suffered extra damage if they are webbed and catch on fire, DnD style?

That and ignition doing damage as well as burning. Perhaps a percentage of damage done, fireshield style?

Those two changes would make fire stuff more interesting.

[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 04-15-2005 @ 06:07 PM).]

Quote:

Yea, but none of that will happen in AoWSM, even with the 1.4 endeavour. Those suggestion fit better in the AoW3 thread.

Thats very authoritative of you to state as fact zombie.

Are you saying such would require minor code change? Swolte did say that such was possible, I guess though that minor code changes aren't being considered for 1.4. Maybe future versions or other mods.

Plus its very negative for you to say, it makes peops around here sound incompetent about making any kind of code change. Which I'm not sure is the case.

Alright, if it won't be considered for 1.4, can you think of any other ways to improve these abilities? Like perhaps making burning cause more loss of health per turn and perhaps greater stat reduction? Or would that also require code change and be beyond the scope of 1.4?

[This message has been edited by TruePurple (edited 04-15-2005 @ 10:57 PM).]

be glad that burning cause -2att and hp drop for 3 turns. thats awesome compared how burning was in aow1.
-1hp/3 turns but in each turn the victim could resist against it, while this is not possible in aow2/sm. and no attack stat reduction.

Would you have to change any code in order to change burn to do more damage or reduce stats further?

Is at least that something that could be included in patch 1.4?

Quote:

I'm sorry if it sounded somewhat abrupt, but if you had read swolte's intro about what's going into 1.4 and had experience in software development you could have guessed that most of your suggestions won't be possible without changes to the very mechanics of SM - which requires changing actual code. I have read many of your posts, and while they contain interesting suggestions, most of them ask for changes to Abilities that (IMHO) can't be done without code changes. Some of that stuff isn't even in the game in any way shape or form.

Changing code has been ruled out, for several reasons (not stated explicitly, but these seem obvious to me):
- more difficult to achieve if you are just hacking the binary, more or less blindly
- even if you find the place in the binary and think you figured out how to change it, to do what you want, there's still a significant risk that you make the whole thing unstable
- according to most EULAs I have bothered to scan it's illegal to change or reverse-engineer the binary, and we are all trying to stay on good terms with the devs

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I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere that you can change effects produced by Abilities, like Burning or Poisoned. It might be just a hard-coded value someplace in the binary, and the -2Att might be easy to change with a binary hack, if you can find where that "2" is; the -1hp could be a lot trickier, since it could be just a DECREMENT instruction now, and that would be nigh impossible to change to anything greater.

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Ah, I read your post wrong, I thought you meant using SD and then waiting for Resurgence, so you could SD again.

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I thought it was a Att7/Dam3 attack for three turns? I have never bothered to actually check how many hps were lost, but the Ability description states the above.

Since High Prayer spell only heals units but not blesses them (this was tested), I suggest to correct description of the spell by removing description that the spell blesses friendly units. In fact all magic/holy/black bolts have the same chance to hit no matter if the spell is active or not. The spell just heals units. It may also be right to rename the name of the spell to "Mass Healing" for example.

Also... How about excluding Mighty meek from spell-list and give it to each 0-1 level unit on silver medal?

Tremors may work like an analog of Armageddon spell from HoMM. Just increase it's attack and damage and welcome to hell. But it also may work as tremors usually do. Lower attack and damage to 5 (for example) and give this spell many "shots". So units with resistance of 13 will be almost immune (chance to hit can not be less than 10% - even a zombie may rarely hit a leprechaun) to this spell while units with lower resistanse will take damage.

[This message has been edited by Webusver (edited 04-18-2005 @ 07:03 AM).]

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I'm pretty sure Tremors does Physical Damage, so it checks Def not Res.

Too bad, that Tremors didn't get the benefit that Hellfire (and Sacred Wrath?) got, i.e. sparing your own Units. Maybe the Spell should be made cheaper because of that?

@TruePurple -
it turns out that some Abilities can be changed by hex-editing the data files. swolte seemed to indicate that we can get away with this. Turbo Beholder has done some experimenting with it. Check out his posts in the Mod forum to see what's possible. Maybe you'll get your Damaging Spiderwebs after all.

[This message has been edited by ZombieEater (edited 04-18-2005 @ 03:52 PM).]