2042 development thread

[Anonymous]

Game 2 battlereport

Ricky - Loladins (cosmos), Assyra
vs
Mesk - Baelificus (Cosmos, 3 water, 3 earth), Marcus

XL map, underground, shadowlands.

http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... /index.htm <-- Screenshots from Ricky's POV


My side -

The game started off with a fairly hilarious surprise. It was a big map, but we both spawned right next to each other. I opted for an early mid-tech attack strategy with my heroes and tried for an early offense while spending cash on diplomasizing towns. Since Baelificus units are very expensive I depended heavily on my initial attack to gain ground and at least hold ricky in place for a while. Such didn't quite go as planned as one of the heroes he soon got was the only legendary hero in the game, Jaheira. To make matters much, much worse, he was going his typical gay mass enchant build where he can stack 5-6 enchantments on each hero and make them incredibly powerful.

All the while throughout early game and midgame he used Pegasi to randomly jack my towns and income structures and then just barely escape. Baelificus only have two anti-air units and none of their units are particularily fast. I had devilwing towns, but they were too small to tech at a decent speed and I was forced to hold ground and wait for them to grow.

Without any real strong offensive abilities, Marcus is a heavily economy-oriented wizard who starts with Constructor, I believe. He opts for fast expansions and early economic superiority. I suspected ricky was using a large amount of his money to build towns everywhere, or at least build a secondary wizard tower somewhere, but I had no real means to stop him since my military income was almost non-existent. I wanted to get a Balrog fairly fast, as I knew it would be my only hope in defeating his heroes when we finally encountered each other.

I knew from the start I would have one major advantage - if I could hold him off, I could get Bloodseekers and maybe even Devilwing Drakes.

Throughout the game I was scouting about the map, jacking towns where ever I could find them. Evil-aligned towns were hard to find and only in the very end of the game did I find what I was looking for - Confederate towns, that could build powerful airships armed with cannons who would surely destroy ricky's setup. Unfortunately, they came far too late to help out in the final battle or any other circumstances.

Commenting now by ricky's screenshot # -

7 - I think this was our first major fight. After ricky realized I controlled towns fairly close to his domain, he attacked with his heroes alone. I had some strong units, such as a Souldrinker, which is a tier3 heavy melee, a Grim Herald, which is a tier2 melee dps/disabler, and a Thunderer, which is a really crappy disable unit and the second Baelificus unit capable of attacking air. Primarily, Thunderers are used to spam lightning to disable small units. I was expecting ricky to mass padawons with enchants for an early extremely strong army, but instead I was faced almost exclusively by heroes, which made Thunderers fairly weak for their $200 price tag.

8 - Fighting ricky in this game is quite possibly the single most annoying thing I have ever had to deal with. He will run and run and run until he empties his virtually limitless mana pool by spamming the strongest spells available, usually targeting the weakest but most valuable units, such as Grim Heralds, although in this battle he is not yet aware how strong Grim Heralds really are. Their high attack and strangle ability make them extremely dangerous when on the offensive. Ricky goes into a defensive posture by moving upwards, which puts him at a serious disadvantage when the battle lingers on.

9 - We are carefully positioning our units. When I finally attack, I don't want to send in one unit to die horribly. I want to overwhelm his support units and bring it down to just Jaheira so I can spam strangle and hopefully control her damage output.

10 - I attack. Unfortunately I lose my best hero, which is the best hero I'd see all game, and several units, but my initial attack is almost completely decisive and forces him into a corner. Selecting units above the map is hard.

11 - I won the fight and expected the game to be completely in my hands. I advance, but cautiously - I know he still has a lot of money being thrown around. I am still in an economy dark age. I have a lot of towns, but all of the cash is going into tech and a small number of units.

13 - My Balrog enters play. A level 5 unit, I expect this to be game-ending and I march on ricky's territory.

14 - I hit one of ricky's expansions and utterly crush it. I expect his main to follow shortly after. Even if he has padawons, they can't defeat the Balrog.

15 - When I see this, I start to panic. I have a Balrog, and I started construction of a Bloodseeker, but I know how powerful Jaheira can be with those enchants. I also realize that this game could easily turn around if he can ressurect his heroes so quickly. I try to capture and expand as much as possible to get an advantage in numbers, but my inability to tech fast enough limits my options.

16 - Fuck that pegasi.

18 - From here on, I was not given a single day's peace without those fucking trees. If I stood still in them, I wouldn't get hurt past the first cast, but my units wouldn't regenerate, either. FUCK THOSE TREES. Ricky possessed enough mana to cover the entire map with those things.

20 - Ricky attacks my only military units I have with everything he's got. I seem to have the advantage in both unit strength and numbers. However, this battle quickly goes bad.

21 - I try to take his legendary hero out of play but Ricky is too smart for that. With only one Grim Herald and an unreliable Thunderer on my side, I am forced to use nothing but raw dps to bring out the fight.

22 - In an attempt to damage his legendary hero, I attack her with my Balrog. Not only does the Balrog fail to land a single hit, he is almost instantly killed by the retaliation attacks. 800 gold and 8 days gone instantly. This battle is over.

23 - My remaining units put up a resistance but nothing that will change the fate of the fight. This was a massacre.

26 - This fight went even worse then the last one. Hellboars are excellent siege units but horrible at fighting beefed up heroes.

33 - I eventually discovered a lone pedophile like 3 feet outside my main base, and killed him with Marcus. He was one of these guys.

34 - This is the game-deciding battle. Ricky again encroaches on my territory and I am forced to form a ragtag army of what stragglers I have floating around and face him before he can threaten my towns. I manage to strip a few of his buffs, and have to attack him with no mana to hope to turn the tides in my favour.

This battle goes HORRIBLY. Every thing that could go wrong goes wrong. Seduce fails, all of my attempts to destroy the fucking ballistas end up leaving them with 3-4 hp despite repeated attacks, and his legendary hero goes on a fucking rape spree. At one point she killed a string of 3-4 units without any of them landing a single hit.

39 - The battle finally comes down to this. I've killed everything but his legendary hero, who is still at full (It's hard to see her because for some reason the version other players are using has problems displaying that particular graphic, you can see her HP bar though, in the center), and I have a few humiliatingly weak units left. I am seriously considering just giving up and forfeiting. However, I still have a grim herald, who can reliably melee her. I decide to try strangling her. It doesn't work for a while, and a lot of those units start to die.

40 - The turning point of the game. Strangle finally goes off, and I take her down to 3 hp. She has first strike I think, and both of my remaining units will surely die should strangle fail to hit. Unimagineably, it DOES hit, and I finally kill her. I didn't know at the time, but ressurect can't res a hero twice, and I expect to enter the same battle once more. In reality, this has seriously crippled ricky's offensive power, and my economic advantage begins to move in.

44 - In an effort to sneak into ricky's territory, which I believe he's still trying to res his heroes before I can advance, I am hoping to steal some buildings. Instead, he instantly finds my only hero and kills him instantly.

45 - Ricky is extremely aggressive and attacks my only army at the time. I do believe my Bloodseeker is almost done at this point, but these initial forces stand absolutely no chance and are easily destroyed by ricky's tier4 heavy melee.

46 - My Bloodseeker enters the battle. Mega-Priors are very powerful units, but the Bloodseeker is a level 7 ultra-heavy melee unit that doubles as a disabler. This battle massacres ricky, although he manages to kill several of my weaker units. I am forced into a more of a defensive posture by ricky's extremely annoying kite tactics, as even the Bloodseeker can't outrun most of his units. Most of the game is attempting to avoid losing my smaller but still extremely valuable units such as Bladewasps to his repeated kite attacks with units. Since my units are flooding in from 3 seperate locations, it is hard to protect them all.

52 - This was fucking scary. I was wondering why he was attacking me with units that can't run very far when I suddenly realized, only after I had moved the seeker into melee range, that it lacked both Undead and Willpower. If seduce had succeeded, I would have easily lost the game.

53 - I suspected ricky had backup wizard towers somewhere, since he was so close and I know he thinks ahead. However, where that wizard tower is is actually extremely close to where I was later mass-expanding confederate towns and teching to airships in case my original plans failed. I scouted the whole region but somehow missed his town.

58 - I took the town but immediately lost it to independants. I camped the gate waiting for my scavengers to regen, and ricky still believed I held the town and made no less than 10 efforts to disjunct my shadow lock (which I had casted to prevent him from backdooring my territory), while in reality I was virtually helpless. I later attacked the independants with the scavengers and lost, but ricky didn't come back down until later on.

60 - My only hero in the better half of the game was killed, but the battle ultimately helped in crippling ricky's unit buildup and helped to control his ability to enter an offensive posture.

62 - I constantly disjunct ricky's shadow lock to give him the impression that I am trying to send units up the gate, and also just to annoy him because I have no other use for my 7k+ mana. It works pretty well as he never does enter the portal until way later in the game, even though all he'd need to do is talk to the independants and get the town back.

64 - Ricky's decision to go offensive even though I had a Bloodseeker close to his main would serve to screw him, or so I thought. I try to position all of my units in front of his base to launch a full-scale attack, but he actually pre-emptively strikes my smaller army which contains several Souldrinkers. His tiny level 1 disablers get completely annihilated by the strength of the Souldrinkers, although his magic manages to deal some damage to my units.  I then press with both my armies and easily take the down, which I immediately raze once I realize that he's turning everything he has around to retake it. Unfortunately, it isn't a day or two until he uses a pioneer to instantly rebuild the town to the way it was. I was really, really pissed off at this point as he was still non-stop spamming trees and moving my units meant sacrificing a lot of them to the damage incurred by them.

However, at this point, I am producing a Devilwing Drake and a Deep Horror, the most powerful Deep Hive unit currently in the game, which is a tier6 heavy melee siege/disabler and will surely annihilate his heroes and his Mega-Priors. I am also producing a second Bloodseeker and have reinforced my armies with air units.

81 - A full turn spent on spamming enchantments on my units only to have them disenchanted. Ricky finally gave up. Also, just before he attacked, I rushed a 10-turn Searscale Drake, which is a tier5 heavy air strike unit from the Devilwing, and reinforced my armies with the second Bloodseeker, vastly improving my odds against him. He attacked my army with a full party of Searscale Whelps, level 1 units, with hopes of spamming magic to deal damage to my army before launching his main attack, but they instead surrendered. This proves to be devastating.

82 - Ricky attacks. His army of Spectral Flayers don't make it into combat. Although his group of heroes and Mega-Priors are strong, these heroes are not very high level and his mega priors are no match against both the Deep Horror and my collection of strong melee. His other units are all level 1-2, and are utterly annihilated by my collection of Souldrinkers, the second Bloodseeker, and various support units.

Should this battle have somehow gone horribly wrong, I had my Devilwing Drake, another Deep Horror, and a second Balrog reaching completion that could have arrived to save my bases from destruction. However, the game had already lasted a very long time and this was pretty much the deciding battle for me.

In conclusion - My economy was very strong and eventually saved the day by allowing me to tech to the stupidly overpriced high-end demon units.

Baelificus lack true anti-air options. If ricky had spammed Pegasi I would have been in serious trouble.

Enchantments are overpowered. I nerfed them in my current build.

Baelificus units are way too expensive. I have fixed this, I think.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

By the way, you screwed up screenshots #1 to #9.

EDIT :
As a side thing, for expanding, it didn't help that I had a starting 35 pop/turn while you had a 65/turn (both with stone wall that boosts pop gain but without expander) In end game, my main could had a max of 65 pop/turn (with maxed pop) while yours was 105 pop/turn if we both had expander (you did, I neglected it and thus had 45 pop/turn but still).

I found that out after hosting the save I made after surrendering and then making starting games with both of our heroes to check starting pop gains.

Other than that, I got overreliant on mass reviving my heroes until it exploded on my face on the 2nd attempts. In the past, I thought "resurrected" was just a simple flag for any given revived hero.

EDIT 2 :

Also was the Mega-Prior my highest tier unit for the loladin race? I had no clue since I don't know what exactly you changed (including the prerequisites of each unit especially when it can be easily possible to have 3-4 random-looking prerequisites for each high-end unit) and I didn't wanted to start building everything when we were pretty much in the heat of war. I believe I even found the Mega-Prior available by relative accident after constructing some buildings.

[IskatuMesk]

Fixed screenshots.

[IskatuMesk]

@ zilla/wibod

If you want to play a 1v1 or something with me on the mod tomorrow I suggest you catch me as soon as I come on before I switch to guild wars.

[Zilla-]

Around what time would that be?

[IskatuMesk]

about 10 hours ago

[Zilla-]

lol, I had classes today from 7am to about 8pm.

[Anonymous]

Updates -

- Added a 4th level Isadorian unit - the Bloodstone Draconisath.
- Added two Minotaur units, starting the process of converting Orcs to Minotaurs - the Minotaur Peasant, and the Minotaur Champion. Additionally, I converted an Orc Hero to a Minotaur one.
- Added a Dread Legion unit - the Glacial Whelp.
- Created Amon the Corruptor, a wizard for the upcoming Corruption race.
- Decided to experiment with hero levels. Setting Jaheira to level 5. If my theory is correct, she should only join powerful empires. Or, she won't ever show up at all. Only time shall tell.
- Across the board balancing changes. Archery and bolts spells are significantly stronger.
- Hopefully corrected any potential problems (although I have yet to identify why it happened at all) with the Silverblade Warrior not appearing for alpha testers. If it still happens, I am clueless as to why.
- Whipped HKS into action for graphic conversions, currently we stand at this.

We know how to convert things into ilbs.

We are having problems where max is rendering alpha channels incorrectly and causing these artifacts to appear. They could be fixed with a GIF optimization in psp, but you cannot batch process that function and we are talking about 2k frames+ per unit.

HKS thinks we can get some characters done, without worrying about shoulder or helm models. I suspect he'll try one tonight or tomorrow.

When characters get done I can add human/loladin units. Currently I have given him all of the old LoL models. I expect the Priestess to be done among the first conversions, as well as one of the ET characters I had made (Suulaan) which can be used for a hero and/or wizard.

- I wrote out a bunch of ideas for heroes and units in my private forum and hopefully we'll be able to get some graphics for those done soon. Other than a suggestion from ricky and my own few unit ideas, I am not sure what else to add to Loladins since spellcasting units seems impossible.
- Up for suggestions on what races to convert the original humans, tigrans, and syrons to. Keep in mind that I cannot change their native terrain or alignment. Feel free to suggest anything from any of my other universes, if you'd like to see some particular race added.
- Up for suggestions on heroes.
- I expanded the soundtrack some more.
- Added some more sounds from WoW. I am getting prepped to voice Horus soon. I may also be able to get an actor for Shiva, and a few other female wizards. Note I am going to have most voices speak in their native tongues, since they are just simple responses.
- Looking for someone who is capable of voicing a very dark/serious narrative voice for videos. I AM LOOKING AT YOU LEGION
- Very uncertain on later Deep Hive units but I have one idea so far. Will surely need a custom model.
- HKS thinks it would be easy enough to add some custom doodads since we got lots of models for that. I am going to research tilesets a bit more.


edit -

I am turning (old) Humans into worgen/naga.

[IskatuMesk]

THIS IS MADNESS

THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA







Updates -

- Trying to make AI tech faster. Some more buildings provide bonuses, or more bonuses as a result.
- Have witnessed comps building wizard towers.
- Added some preliminary stats for Corruption and Loladin units, plus preliminary units for Dread Legion.
- Meddled with some of the Pioneers according to ricky's suggestions.

[Anonymous]

- Further modifications in an effort to make comps tech faster. Also reduced the amount of gold some cities produce, to offset the bonuses of the structures. Most notably - Demon and Deep Hive towns.
- More balancing modifications.
- A few new units.
- New, unique sounds for many units, including Cassandra, Lausura (Which isn't spelled right... I forget the spelling), the Bloodstonian Bed Bug assault unit, and Horus (no voice yet tho).
- New additions to the soundtrack.
- Going to buff the Earth's eruption single unit damage spell, whatever the hell it was.
- Made some modifications to the Lurker. It is now the Man-Eating Frog, complete with new sounds and buffed stats. Beware, HKS!
- Speaking of HKS - When he's done some new graphics, including most of the Corruption graphics and a few Loladins, I'll put together files for an updated version of the mod. Since he is very lazy and unwilling, consider this reason to harass him to get to work, because I won't be redistributing it as it is.
- Changed Hell Hounds to Burny Puppies. What can they do? Well, HKS will find out for you when he gives me those graphics. I'm sure his discovery will be astoundingly explosive.

edit -

Well, as to be expected, HKS suddenly decided he doesn't want to do anything, and only after I figured out how we can fix the drake and get it into an ilb with no problems at all. So, that brings me back to square one with graphics. I'm poking Kirky to find out how he'd feel about converting wc3 format graphics that I can make out of WoW models (like in the aos), so we'll see how that goes.

[Anonymous]

Internal Update Installation Instructions[


Dict

Same as before - except this time it'll actually do something. Woot!

RC

Goes to F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\Images\Units\R\RC, Replacing any files it asks for (just being certain all of them exist)

Songs  - OPTIONAL

I am having a full redownload of songs as I intend to distribute it as a standalone download as well. This does contain about 7-10 new tracks or more. I can't recall.

edit II - MAKE NOTE, not all of the new music got put into my list. The most obvious right away is Spring.mp3, which you'll need to manually add either to the .txt file or through the ingame music list editor.

SFX -

This is going to be the largest (critical) file, because I found and introduced a large number of new sound effects, including a lot of diablo and diablo 2.

PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION

The SFX file has several folders.

D2 goes to your F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\SFX\RequiemSound directory, to produce F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\SFX\RequiemSound\d2

The other goes to F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\SFX\RequiemSound\Unit Responses\ to also produce a new folder there.

Requiem of the White Dream.rar

Replace the original files of the same folder in F:\Program Files\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\User\Resources . This is the mod data. You may choose to backup the old data if you wish, but I am personally not going to.

That should be that.

Edit

What's new?

General -

- Nerfs to enchants; They are much more expensive to use and research, and more dependent on sphere levels.
- Nerfs to skills; they are now much more expensive to research.
- Huge reduction in high-level unit costs.
- Buffs to archery and other "bolt" skills.
- Introduction of new wizards and heroes.
- Most evil-aligned wizards are now anarchists, although this unfortunately does not make their units hostile to each other which was what my intention was.
- Additional units for several races.
- String changes.
- Probably some other things I have forgotten.

AI -

- Ai should now expand even more. They should also build wizard towers, teleportation gates, enchanted walls, and other such buildings.
- AI should tech faster, but I have been unable to make them get monastaries or sanctuaries any faster.

Experimental

- Bloodstone, Corruption, Minotaurs, Worgen and to an extent, Dread Legion, are not playable.
- I have created racial income reductions on Baelificus and Deep Hive towns, to prevent huge cash flows with only a short amount of towns. This change may become global.
- I am still unsure if Worldeaters will do something crazy when life stealing is involved. I am also unsure what will happen if Martyr is used on a unit with more than 50 hit points.
- I may have to re-instate the high unit costs with the changes to buildings that greatly increase cash flow at points.
- Balance is still going to be wacky in general. I have yet to figure out which unit for the Baelificus to give a ranged attack to.
- Not all enchants, summoning spells, and terrain spells have been modified to the new system yet.
- I plan to alter the Scythewasp.
- Jaheira is still set to level 5. If you should get a join offer from her, let me know - I am unsure if heroes above level 1 will join armies.

[IskatuMesk]

Game 3 battereport

Me (Devilwing) and Ricky (Loladin) vs an Emperor (Devilwing)

http://www.doack.campaigncreations.org/ ... /index.htm <--- ricky's shots

My analysis:

This game was way, way too easy. I expected this kind of a fight out of a minimum-difficulty cpu. The computer never attacked and never teched past bonescale drakes and Anubisath warriors.

I have no idea what broke the computer. They have never, ever done this before. Therefore, this game was pretty straight forward, although some pretty hilarious shit happened.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

This time you managed to screw the next screenshot change of Screenshot #10 to Screenshot #100. :p

[IskatuMesk]

Blame photoshop's html generator. I am totally not renaming all of those files.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Quick fix suggestion then ...

Generate two of them, one that goes from 01 to 99 and then the other 100 to the end.