@ balvan64 and Albaron

The MP Evolution 1.5 mod and BNW 3.2 mod are not compatible. They are both mods and you can either play one or the other.

Wrong =) MPE is a patch, it supports modding and can be played with whatever mod you want. The only problem is BNW (or any other mod for that matter) needs some adjustments to counter some MPE changes. I suggest you contact BNW author, he's the best person to make am MPE port of his mod.

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@ DarkMystery

The problem here is you undervalue healing rain a lot...

I probably do. But you undervalue Mass confusion

We had those games. using heavy summons with water is really not my tactic I rather go for great hail and ss and use lurkers and rarley waterdancers, they all have no fire weakness and are just support.

First of all, Lurkers do have weakness =) And usually water summoning is a valid strategy: Elementals are very good and rather possible to learn and use, Lurkers are not only good for scouting, but also for poisoning everything that can be poisoned, while Water dancers are basically pricey unicorns with the Poison strike. But when you play against fire, it all goes away. Just compare: in the battle Lurker always loses to Hell hound (weakness - poison immunity), Water dancer always loses to Efreet (worse stats - poison immunity and fire bolts), Water elemental always loses to Fire elemental (weakness). So basically your opponent can use whatever summons he wants, while you have to find another ways - that's really problematic, especially if the summoning was a big part of your plan.

wetlands is really awesome now in this mod. Whats not working?

The flooding effect is not working =) Though we probably came to a good solution with the slowdown effect indeed.

You missed poison domain of the earth globals and basilisk as a great summmon.

Yep, but they both are lv4 too =) It's very difficult to learn and use more than 1 lv4 spell (again, it depends on the map size, so I'm talking about our universe here), and even 1 is a number it's not always possible to reach.

EARTH is the sphere that is screwed against FIRE. As those stone skin tactics + boars are totally usless against fireballs + swarm dmg, they kill(or badly wound them) all these units in turn1, especially as defender where the attacker cannot spread his units. And especially if there is a cpIII in play along with the wizards cp. Now with war shrines new lvl up reward, its extremely easy to get these cp quickly.

On the other hand, you can spread units however you want and hide behind any walls, but it won't save you from Tremors =) And Deep fissure is a spell there's absolutely no protection from. So I'd say Fire vs Earth combat is mutual battle magic annihilation. But Fire is still better because of the better summons =)

And i think all these filler spells should get a closer look at, to make them useful in online games.

That's true for all the fillers =) Any concrete suggestions are welcome. Fire domain, Life domain, Mist cloak, Anarchy, etc...

It could like i said make units burn in TC at the start of the battle or work with a damnation global map effect and prevent healing only along with doing minor dmg only then fire domain is able to start dealing actual dmg.

Increasing damage would fit better than preventing healing. Also, burning down structure guards can be added.

When is the next version ready?

I'm not sure, but we finally continued testing, which is good thing. I hope that 1.5.2 will be out soon =)

And the rmg feature that will make ug races start always on surface, will be in there 100%?

Yes, it's included for sure.

The last one might be switched in setup...

People keep asking and modmakers are not responding in any way, so I've made a guide on migrating SM mods to MPE. Hopefully, it will be helpful to people who are interested in this

(Link is added to the main post as well)

In one of our games, stone skinned units were very well protected vs warmage tremors. ;> I consider fireball far better + its not that hard to get hellfire, with 2 war shrines and without interupting quest progression with other shrines, you get hard quests fairly easily and can have hellfire as a reward or in your research book

Oh, and the summons are very good, minotaur is better than waterdancer And earth elemental is only useful in forceships/Airgalleys/Ballons, you can give it 28mp and/or reduce its casting cost.

Tremors are just a bit op cause of its ridiculous low cost, afther the change.
------------------------------------------------------
AI Wizards:

Hellbrick, can you "teach" the AI wizards to enchant all their units and not just heroes only? It will improve it a lot. ;>

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 09-07-2011 @ 07:00 AM).]

Hellbrick, can you "teach" the AI wizards to enchant all their units and not just heroes only? It will improve it a lot. ;>

That's unlikely.

Secret laboratory news
It's been a while since I used this header =) And I'm not gonna use it again until 1.5.2 release, because the release is gonna happen too soon to allow more news to happen The testing is going on pretty well, and results are looking very optimistic. It seems that idea of theoretically calculating optimal spells/war mage parameters was good after all.

To the actual news. The practice shows that people generally don't know how to open campaign maps in the editor =) Let's say, to play them with another mod or to copy some events that you don't usually have access to. Well, the problem is no more: campaign maps are now displayed in the open map dialog without any additional magic:



(You can also notice the .acm extension - that's for TC maps, they have been made visible too.)

Also, the editor can now open all campaign maps. I don't know why, but some campaign maps have the flag that prohibits opening them in the editor. I would understand if ALL maps had this for anti-cheating and anti-spoiler purpose, but there are only 3 locked maps, which just doesn't make any sense. But whatever is the reason behind this, this flag prevented people from resaving campaign maps, so it was considered evil and was vanquished =) The editor ignores it now and opens map anyway.

And the final one: the editor's developer menu has been unlocked, just for the hell of it. I still think it's boring, but there's a chance someone might find it useful or at least interesting. It's not like you can break something down using this menu =) And I even removed the items that have no effect to avoid confusion.

HellBrick (all ways to contact me are in my profile, pick any one), so I could tell Groll more about the bug and probably fix the save. I collect AoW bugs, and this map is such a precious source of them =)

I grabbed this quote from another topic... AOW:SM has one MAJOR bug which would be great if it could be fixed. The Indepedents Turn does not follow the timer unlike the other players which have their turns automatically end after X amount of time which is determined during the setup of the game. As a result there's situations where games will permanently hang on the Independents turn. Sometimes reloading an autosave as simultaneous works, but not always. I can provide details of the situations, but if the Independents turn could follow the same timer as everyone else it would allow games to keep playing.

[This message has been edited by NTJedi (edited 09-07-2011 @ 10:58 PM).]

Makes sense to have such a robust solution against AI freezes, I'll see if it's possible. But it would still be good to fix the underlying issues instead of the symptom - or at least to try.

Hey Hellbrick!

Can you make the Air combat spell: Chain lightning so, that it does not hit your own units? Cause else you can only use it from afar and thats usually mean just 1 round, cause distance between armies is really short, in aow1 distance of armies was a very long range.

Also i saw a close chain lightning can struck your units even if 2 rows of enemy units are between you, so it ignores 2 enemy units that are closer to the center of chainlightning and strike your units far away from it. Not only does it not make any sense its annoying too.
Compare this spell to great hail, fireball, tremors, sacred wrath. It needs some care. And suffocate could hit a bit more than just 3 dmg minimal, too. After all undead and machines are immune to it. So yeah half of the combat spells are not that great. And while you honor(or damn) Tornado, its a lvl4 spell. And this haste change with cavecrawling while making sense, it hurts ug races that want to play with air. Cause starting spell haste is totally useless in a ug scenario,where all cave crawlers are kinda hasted anyways and haste does not stack. Please more care to Air. Its not just about Zphyir birds and Tornado, i hope :P

Nice idea about Chain lightning, will definitely look into it.

I like it as it is, the danger of hitting your own units is part of the fun

Investing 20cp to hurt yourself cause you could cast it more than once is no fun in any way and certainly not competitive vs all those other area hex combat spells. I think i descriped the problem very well, it will even hit you when your own units are far away and the enemy units are way closer to the hit center of chainlightning.

If you think the cost is too high, it can be decreased. Some corrections to the way the spell works would be nice (so it won't hit your units when enemy units are closer), but I don't think it's a good idea to make caster's units completely immune to it.

We will make this behavior configurable eventually. But for now we really see the value in allowing the spell to hit enemy units only.

Another editor issue: Structures have "RebuildCost" and "RebuildTurns" properties, but they can't be changed - after clicking OK and double-clicking on the structure again, they go back to 0. Would it be possible to make these values changeable, and will they work in the game?

Chain lightning:

I like it as it is, the danger of hitting your own units is part of the fun.

I think the same. Hitting my own units is nice.
Such spells should hit own units too. Hailstorm for example.
The cost is OK too because it is a powerful spell.

We will make this behavior configurable eventually.

Would be a cool solution.

Structures have "RebuildCost" and "RebuildTurns" properties, but they can't be changed - after clicking OK and double-clicking on the structure again, they go back to 0. Would it be possible to make these values changeable, and will they work in the game?

This would really be nice.
I always wonder why the rebuild of a city only takes one turn while a teleporter takes two. Of course it makes sense because the the teleporter is a dangerous structure and destroying it can save the live of fleeing forces.
I think two days are nice but then the rebuild of a city seems total wrong.
This should take three days maybe or should even be adjustable/configurable.

About seeing pools. Is it possible to remove the "razed seeing pool bug"?

Do not know, how greathail can be compared to chain lightning, great hail while possible hitting own units too, has way more control, cause you can see where it will hit, chain lighnting gives absolutely no control, once you are at close range with the other player, what is just very bad design.

About CL:

chain lighnting gives absolutely no control

You're not exactly right, behavior is somewhat predictable: If I'm not mistaking, CL only hits units inside the spell radius (set up in resources), so it's basically a Fireball with limit on target count (again, set up in resources) and cool animation.

But the problem here is you can place the center of the spell area only on a unit, while Fireball can be targeted more accurately. This is the real design flaw here, but unfortunately we can't do anything about it, so another solution is needed.

---

About rebuilding:

The fact that a city and a teleporter already have different rebuild time means it's possible =) These two properties are probably bound to corresponding virtual properties of a base structure class now, and we just need to move them to the resources. Or it's just a UI issue, which makes things even easier =)

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About seeing pools:

Yep, the bug can almost certainly be fixed. And I'm pretty sure the same applies to that quest failing bug - they in fact have a lot in common.

[This message has been edited by HellBrick (edited 09-09-2011 @ 02:09 AM).]

About chain lightning:

chain lightning gives absolutely no control

Interesting answer HellBrick. Thank you for that.
We know it has not an unlimited range but to know (now) that it is the range of the fireball is nice to know.
I like the spell and I love the randomness and I believe it was liked by the devs too when it was created.
I donīt like to play AoWSM like playing chess where I can foresee all possibilities. Itīs much more interesting if a hit fails and spell misses or hits own units.
We talk about elemental might and magic and I hardly believe even the greatest magician can control every "mana electron" in such a casted spell. So this is of course a question of what we prefer and what we like but I think the game should not be total foreseeable. Itīs not mathematics is chaos nature that rules - for me.
I am sorry to speak a little bit off topic in this last part.

Great news about the seeing pool bug and about possible different rebuild times!
About the rebuild times:
You can change the days in the editor when modding as far as I remember but they donīt have any effect.

I also have a burning general question:
Is it possible to do all this nice changes for the upatch 1.5 or for the standard resources without terrible work?
Sorry if the answer was already given earlier. I have not read the whole thread because it is to specific and hard to understand for me.

We know it has not an unlimited range but to know (now) that it is the range of the fireball is nice to know.

I was just trying to say that CL is just another area-spell, and Fireball has the biggest radius of all area-spells, so I picked it as a comparison subject =) In fact CL's radius is 1 hex bigger than Fireball's.

Is it possible to do all this nice changes for the upatch 1.5 or for the standard resources without terrible work?

Despite the name, uPatch is technically a mod =) And mods can be ported to MPE, I even wrote a guide on doing it recently. Though Swolte and co are not gonna use MPE as a platform for uPatch 1.5^*, no one can stop you or anybody else from creating an MPE port.

^* At least they are not gonna use MPE 1.5 as default platform. We're planning to eliminate the reasons not to do it in the next major release MPE and uPatch do absolutely different things, and it would be perfectly natural for these two projects to coexist.

[This message has been edited by HellBrick (edited 09-09-2011 @ 05:55 AM).]

There are quite other problems here:

.) Interface is not showing target shadow radius of CL, unlike fireball, great hail and similar spells, you are losing control.

.) CL is working completely differently, while in a fireball all targets will be hit, check their res and immunities/weaknesses, CL hits randomly within that area radius. In extremes that i saw in game, some months ago, in mpe, it can mean: center enemy unit will be hit by CL and all other enemy units within the radius were ignored and only your units were hitted after CL jumped away from the center unit.
Again, you are losing control.

And that is, why is say: "You have no control at all." Cause just using CL from afar is not the best option in a combat design with close starting armies to begin with.

I repeat: In aow1 armies did start very far away. This spell would have been much more useful there. However, aow1 was balanced with spell range so a CL in that universe might have its flaws too.

And about the Grolls comment: its an mp mod. Its about competetive magic. Not unpredictable magic. What you said would make more sense in a different mod, like BNW or SL. Anyways, tell me why should this spell unpredictable and in your book be "fun", while all other magic in this game is quite easy to control and predictable? Either its all unpredictable or predictable. Right now CL is just unbalanced and not in line with other multi target hex spells in this mpe mod. While i would like more diveristy this kind of diversity only sucks, cause its a big disadvantage for the caster that invested 20cp. Besides i want to mention that Air is really the most weakest of all spheres in this mpe mod, it does not need underdog spells in a competitive multiplayer mod. Its allready the underdog sphere if compared with what other sphers can offer and what the game mechanics of mpe especially changed here.

Just an example how bad Air now is: Full Air starts with only haste enchantment. Now that cave crawling and haste can no longer stack together, its useless for cave crawlers and ug dwellers. You start with a spell that is the most usless enchant in the game in some situations. And to make it worse hall of enchantmet gives this spell too. Most critical sphere enchants you start with are always useful. I cannot remember a situation where dark gift could be useless, for example, even if you fight death immune units you still get +dam + res.

Windward is another not so useful spell, most units deal big dmg in melee in 1.4 and mpe1.5. The big hitter ranged units only exist in Strange Lands mod, where units can have up to markmanship40(you read it right) and many more units have ranged abilities with markmanshipII-IV on average, without medals.

The lvl1-2 summons are not really any good for combat, the norther glow might catch some on surprise with this high speed and staticshield ability on the other side it has lower hps than most lvl1 units do have and could be stopped with a simple wildfire.

So in this desolate situation where only high lvl spells like air elemental, ice dragon and tornado are any useful, where would you improve the desolate air sphere? It looks quite obviously for better combat spells, cause electricity certainly can hurt as much as fire. I played quite some games(dominions comes to mind) where evocation magic was all about fire and lightning.

With all due respect to all the players here.....i think air combat spells should hurt more! i do not see that powerful enchants, not that many powerful summons(low tier) and no economical global spells, let it at least excel in the combat spell department!

I think just using it for slow surface races and for vision and some weak ranged tactics is too specific for a whole sphere of elemental magic.

----------------------------------------------------------

Hellbrick i want to ask you, if you can bring back some of the old aow1 racial siege machines and some unique spells? AoW:SM was a developer and community effort to bring back some flavor of AoW1 back to the AoW2 engine. While 1.4 team, where i was part of and some other posters here, brought back racial priests, some fun elements are still missing.

.) turtle catapult/turtle Ballista, it was non machine and had swimming, so it could be healed by priests too, its a Lizard machine.

.) maybe its easier to make evil and good theme of siege units, so skullmachines for all evil races, for example.
In aow1 undead had a skull ram(should maybe replace one of the drills) and skull catapult. Undead ballista should shoot black javelins.(for all evil races not just undead?)

Now the missing aow1 spells:

**AIR**
AIR LEVEL 1
Bird's View (8 Mana, Global)
Allows caster see the details of terrain at a great distance around themselves.

Chain Lightning (8 Mana, Combat)
Discharges a streaming arc of electrical energy at an enemy and through up to three other beings near the initial target.(just mention this so you see how it was balanced in the very original)

AIR LEVEL 2
Cold Breath (16 Mana, Combat)Blasts a short-ranged area with a cone of frigid, frozen air.

AIR LEVEL 3
Shock Wave (22 Mana, Combat)
Blasts the air around the spellcaster with shockwaves of ever expanding sonic destruction.(This one was real 1hit on multiple targets killer!)

AIR LEVEL 4
Air Mastery (360 Mana, Global, Upkeep 25)
Air shifts to the caster's favor. Ships and fliers move at double speed, movement for similar enemies is halved. Earth spells cost double.(surprisngly aow2 mastery of air still gives advantages to mp/hex to flyers)

------------------------------------------------------------

**EARTH**
EARTH LEVEL 1

Entangle (6 Mana, Combat)
Attempts to ensnare a target by summoning grasping tentacles, which restrict all movement and lower Defense (-2).

Slow (3 Mana, Combat)
Halves the target's mobility for the duration of combat.(seems not very useful now, as a 1 hex mud)

EARTH LEVEL 2

Nothing new.

EARTH LEVEL 3

Nothing new.

EARTH LEVEL 4
Earth Mastery (360 Mana, Global, Upkeep 55)
Forces of Earth envelop the land, granting friendly units Stone Skin, and doubling the cost of Air spells.

------------------------------------------------------------

**FIRE**
FIRE LEVEL 1
Summon Fire Sprite (35 Mana, Global, Upkeep 6)Summons the playful Fire Sprite.(not needed cause of hellhound replacement)

Call Flames (6 Mana, Combat)
Targeted area bursts into flames. Flammable materials ignite and burn.

Flaming Arrow (4 Mana, Combat)
Launches a flaming arrow with a solid core at a distant target.

FIRE LEVEL 2
Cloud of Ashes (27 Mana, Global, Upkeep 6)
Causes the belching forth of a thick ashen cloud, concealing all units within.(a filler spell like mists for water)

Fire Breath (16 Mana, Combat)
Directs a torrent of fire at the caster's target, igniting objects in its path.

FIRE LEVEL 3

Fire Barrier (45 Mana, Global, Upkeep 5)
Ignites great stretches of terrain with raging flames. All units passing through the fire are subject to fire damage.(just a more permanent variation of wildfire)

Sacrificial Flame (22 Mana, Combat)
Channels flames through the caster causing him minute damage while devastating a target area with power greatly amplified.(hellfire for the poor )

FIRE LEVEL 4
Fire Mastery (260 Mana, Global, Upkeep 20)
Forces of fire sear the minds of all. Unaligned troops pillage and ransack their nighbors. Water spells cost double.

Warmonger (110 Mana, Global, Upkeep 12)
Causes all units produced at a town to start at the veteran (silver medal) experience level.(who needs war shrines)

**WATER**
WATER LEVEL 1

Healing Water (10 Mana, Unit)
Restores all lost hit points to a unit.(pretty op now and would spoil life magic healing)

Ice Shards (8 Mana, Combat)
Flings jagged shards of ice at long distances at a single target.

WATER LEVEL 2
Vortex (25 Mana, Global)
Churns a whirling vortex in the water, damaging all water-based units caught therein.(well, unlikey aow2, aow1 AIs used suprisngly boats and water)

Frost Beam (14 Mana, Combat)
Icy water pours down, attempting to freeze units in the target area in a block of ice.

WATER LEVEL 3

Fountain Of Life (80 Mana, Global, Upkeep 8)
Creates a fountain in a town, which heals all units that enter. Wounded units residing in the city are healed at the end of every turn.(who needs great temples)

Great Hail (30 Mana, Combat)
Rains heavy hailstones upon the target area, damaging both units and structures.(nothing new, just to show that there was frostbeam AND great hail)

WATER LEVEL 4
Flood (380 Mana, Global, Upkeep 30)
Invokes a great flood. Existing bodies of water surge over their shores dramatically changing the landscape.(ruining game spells are fun + Lizard units had all swimming with 1 exception)

Water Mastery (360 Mana, Global, Upkeep 25)
Forces of Water envelop the land. All Fire spells cost double. Thick mist halves vision for all enemies.( like penality on vision kinda global domain of darkness and fire nerf spell)

**DEATH**
DEATH LEVEL 1

Nothing new.

DEATH LEVEL 2

Terror (15 Mana, Combat)
Frightens enemy units on the battlefield, gripping them with a paralyzing fear.(it gave worst morale status for all enemy units on the TC only so they get bad res and def stats)

DEATH LEVEL 3

Mind Decay (28 Mana, Combat)
Spews forth dark spawn to attack and penetrate the target unit, consuming their will, as well as their body, over time.(multi hex target spell in TC, with low chance of dominating units, + giving them "animated" status and losing hp in each turn, it had some nice graphic effects too, especially when such an unit died it did explode and souls were released from the dead body)

DEATH LEVEL 4
Death Mastery (360 Mana, Global, Upkeep 35)
Forces of darkness envelop the land, unexploring terrain, cursing Good units, and doubling the cost of Life spells.

Hatred (110 Mana, Global, Upkeep 10)
Causes all race relations to decay, wounding alliances and destroying the chance of friendly encounters with independents.

-----------------------------------------------------------

**LIFE**
LIFE LEVEL 1

Solar Flare (4 Mana, Combat)Projects a blast of Holy fire at a target.

LIFE LEVEL 2

Recall Spirits (20 Mana, Combat)
Recalls the spirits of slain units in the form of Spirit Puppets.

LIFE LEVEL 3

Tranquility (60 Mana, Global, Upkeep 8)
Envelops the land with a sense of harmony. Relations between races improve and unrest in towns decreases.

LIFE LEVEL 4

Crusade (280 Mana, Global)
Causes the independent forces of light to mount attacks on all forces of darkness.

Life Mastery (360 Mana, Global, Upkeep 55)
All friendly units are Blessed. Enemy creatures of evil alignment must resist or suffer Fear. Death spells cost double.



For some few spells there is no replacment at all: Like Death's Terror and Mind Decay. While Life's recall spirits is a varation of animate dead.
The Mastery spells are all very unique, powerful and more interesting than the generic aow2 mastery spell, that only bore the hell out of players!

I wonder if these old spells are still hidden somewhere in the aow2 source code, because old mechanics of air mastery suggests it?

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 09-09-2011 @ 08:27 AM).]

Hellbrick i want to ask you, if you can bring back some of the old aow1 racial siege machines and some unique spells?

I kinda doubt that there will be significant amount of new units or new units at all: even if you don't believe it, MPE is really more of a patch than a mod =) So the main focus is and will always be on improving the game engine. That's not a definitive "no" though: for example, I remember having a conversation about good/evil siege units, but I really think uPatch guys will do it faster =)

Speaking about spells, I can draw a bit brighter picture. Adding possibility to add new spells is №3 priority, and if we succeed, I'm pretty sure we will use this power a bit =) The list you've written is actually kind of thing I wanted to see for quite a while: it provides a good list of additional requirements for the theoretically revised spell engine. But I have some questions:

Bird's View (8 Mana, Global)
Allows caster see the details of terrain at a great distance around themselves.

Wouldn't it make more sense to make this an enchantment?

Cold Breath (16 Mana, Combat)
Blasts a short-ranged area with a cone of frigid, frozen air.

Can't really imagine this as a spell: breath requires a unit on the battlefield, don't know how it can be casted from a far away tower.

Shock Wave (22 Mana, Combat)
Blasts the air around the spellcaster with shockwaves of ever expanding sonic destruction.

That's just a whole-battlefield spell like Combustion or Hellfire?

Call Flames (6 Mana, Combat)
Targeted area bursts into flames. Flammable materials ignite and burn.

What's the difference from the Fireball?

Vortex (25 Mana, Global)
Churns a whirling vortex in the water, damaging all water-based units caught therein.

Water-only version of Violent storm?

Terror (15 Mana, Combat)
Frightens enemy units on the battlefield, gripping them with a paralyzing fear.(it gave worst morale status for all enemy units on the TC only so they get bad res and def stats)

Paralyzing fear = like Panic attack, but with Paralyzed status instead of Panicked? (By the way, I've always been wondering why Panic attack is an Air spell. It would would fit in Death sphere a lot better.)

Solar Flare (4 Mana, Combat)
Projects a blast of Holy fire at a target.

Another Shooting stars?

Recall Spirits (20 Mana, Combat)
Recalls the spirits of slain units in the form of Spirit Puppets.

Who are Spirit puppets? =)

Crusade (280 Mana, Global)
Causes the independent forces of light to mount attacks on all forces of darkness.

Patrols attack oppositely aligned players anyway, what's the difference the spell makes?

Call Flames only ignites, like the Fire Nodes ignition effect, but affecting only a small part of the battlefield.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Bird's View (8 Mana, Global)
Allows caster see the details of terrain at a great distance around themselves.

Wouldn't it make more sense to make this an enchantment?

You mean as a vision enchantment? Well, why not ist certainly powerful in mp games.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Cold Breath (16 Mana, Combat)
Blasts a short-ranged area with a cone of frigid, frozen air.

Can't really imagine this as a spell: breath requires a unit on the battlefield, don't know how it can be casted from a far away tower.

I see, you never played AoW1! You missed something definately. In this case it was the limited Spellrange in Combat, TC maps were much bigger and armies started farther away, but there was spellrange and only units with cp could cast anything, it was the time of unique designed leaders and Leader off(only units) and not the time of wizards with unlimited spellrange. This spell just worked like an ability on an unit, just was limited with cp and mana.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Shock Wave (22 Mana, Combat)
Blasts the air around the spellcaster with shockwaves of ever expanding sonic destruction.

That's just a whole-battlefield spell like Combustion or Hellfire?

The power of sound If you could hear it, your ears will bleed. This air spell had multi hex range similar to great hail and fireball, do not know exact number here, but it was limited. Its a radius around the caster, while in aow2 engine you can place it where you want of course. It does very high dmg. Think of current fireball + warmage, just there was no warmage or any skills in aow1.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Call Flames (6 Mana, Combat)
Targeted area bursts into flames. Flammable materials ignite and burn.

What's the difference from the Fireball?

It was only 1hex and wood always burned.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Vortex (25 Mana, Global)
Churns a whirling vortex in the water, damaging all water-based units caught therein.

Water-only version of Violent storm?

I think it dealt more dmg and i am not totally sure if it really was only water only, but think so. Water had very powerful healing in aow1, 10 mana and could heal to max hp.This one made some big dmg, so it makes only sense for water terrain to be balanced. Of course there is not much use of water as in aow1 in aow2+.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Terror (15 Mana, Combat)
Frightens enemy units on the battlefield, gripping them with a paralyzing fear.(it gave worst morale status for all enemy units on the TC only so they get bad res and def stats)

Paralyzing fear = like Panic attack, but with Paralyzed status instead of Panicked? (By the way, I've always been wondering why Panic attack is an Air spell. It would would fit in Death sphere a lot better.)

But Air is using its power of sound(along with cold and lightning) to make that panick spell possible, so i think its ok there. But usually yes, it fits to death too, but quite many evil and undead units have cause fear as an ability anyways.

This Terror hits the entire battlefield and it does not paralyze anything just makes your alignment drop to the worst possible status. So you get penality in your def and res stats. Another way to perform weaken. There was no weaken spell in aow1.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Solar Flare (4 Mana, Combat)
Projects a blast of Holy fire at a target.

Another Shooting stars?

Yes but with holy+fire dmg.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Recall Spirits (20 Mana, Combat)
Recalls the spirits of slain units in the form of Spirit Puppets.

Who are Spirit puppets? =)

Some lvl1 or rather lvl2 units similar to burning flames(as unit model) that have high att with holy strike but have little def and hp.

Quoted from Hellbrick:

Crusade (280 Mana, Global)
Causes the independent forces of light to mount attacks on all forces of darkness.

Patrols attack oppositely aligned players anyway, what's the difference the spell makes?

Not even sure if it worked technically. Certainly was not much used in mp games at least. But it should simply force good aligned indies to attack evil aligned players.


Heh.


The only really intersting spell, besides Terror, is Mind Decay you should get a hold of aow1 and look what it does ingame its easily the most interesting spell i ever saw in Tactical Combat. And it has scarry sounds and nice visual effects too.

Some other spells are just filler spells too, or do not much in current aow version.

Mastery spells are good too, they are like really powerful game winning global enchantments with a very special theme to its sphere.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 09-09-2011 @ 11:43 AM).]

I see, you never played AoW1! You missed something definately

I tried to play AoW 1 to check how this whole thing was started, but after 1,5 campaign missions got tired of struggling against very user-unfriendly interface. So I kinda saw what the game is about, but I'm completely unfamiliar with details =)

Mastery spells are good too, they are like really powerful game winning global enchantments with a very special theme to its sphere.

Yes, they look cool, but personally I like the way Masteries were deconstructed into separate spells more. And idea about doubling the price of opposite sphere spells is very nice, but again, it makes almost no sense in the modern world, since the only ways to get mastery and opposite sphere spells in the same time are rewards and vaults.

you should play through the evil campaing of aow1, its definately worth it, has good story telling and many decisions to the road of the valley of wonders, and it has multiple endings!

aow2+ campaigns were very boring i only play it for mp, there was never even a little twist.

btw, did you notice the different types of AI scripts for the AI players? Scorcher AI was useful to do some trouble to real players.

Storm altars and ships were external sites. This increased difficulty a bit too on some maps.

Rebuliders also external site. If you make an recruitment site with reproducable rebuilders and that site is unrazeable it would counter early razing well.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 09-09-2011 @ 12:57 PM).]

A completely mad and probably doable idea - a number of (different) racial buildings in a city
In custom maps only, the same way a manually edited city can hold more than one shrine - "all" you need is to make the editor allow this

Good news, everyone! New MPE is finally out. I already told a lot about this release in this topic, so without further ado:


(links in the main post have been updated as well)

Hooray, I guess =) We really hope that this is the last stable 1.5 build. Moving on! The next major version awaits. So many ideas, so many plans, so much feedback... It's gonna be interesting, I hope for you as well as for us. Stay tuned!

IMHO, Chain Lightning hitting only enemies is a turn-off. This spell existed in other games where it was not "safe".
Amazing job, anyways!

good job with the chainlightning.

But quite a few fire nerfs, not sure about that one.