Legend of the Invincibles

[Delicius169]

In next version there will be this:

In scenario Jungle Hell, unpicked items (usually dropped by demons standin on impassable) are collected at scenario end, replaced all random items on the ground from start with chests

[Dugi]

Ah, I didn't get it, I forgot that the item fix was not deployed yet.

That teleport units to leader problem could be solved by placing the units only on hexes that aren't a long walk from the leader, but that might be slow and exploitable in some cases. I am rather inclined to removing these locations that can't be reached but are walkable. Can you please tell me where exactly it was (like coordinates)?

[firefox]

time to revive the undead unit discussion:

if i remember correctly someone said that ghosts can equip helms and boots.
so i expected that this would solve the ghost's equipment problem, but it did not.
i had 2 wraiths and wanted to give them some equipment to survive against the many mage enemies, but they couldn't equip any helms or boots.
just rings, amulets and cloaks, but none of them was actually helpful.

therefore i suggest to make those items craftable.
also i support the idea of the spiritual essence weapon that can be used by spirits, liches and faeries.

i'm at the beginning of part 4 now and so far every time i was able to recruit ghosts there were a lot of enemies that could easily destroy them.
everything else was great so far.

[Raijer]

Well, about ghosts and the likes, clearly, we need to improve their resistances, and make them more reliable.
The set "last guide, pale rider, angel of death" is awesome in that matter, but it's really rare, I'm not even sure it exists in the 1st part, I never completed it there at least. It gives you +25% in all resistances, and 36 hps. It was clearly made for ghosts, but I ended up using it for Lethalia...
Same thing for the gloomy set, which was most likely made for dark shades (damage + movement), but I ended up using it for Efraim...
I also agree with giving the possibility of crafting cloaks, rings and amulets, as I don't see why you could make gauntlets and helmets, but not a ring...

There's also a bug here: While I can equip helms and boots on Dark Shades, the other units of the ghost line can not.

I also support the creation of a new weapon special to liches, spirits and faeries, as I always felt that the seer were really underpowered compared to others.
I personnally like the sound of "spellbound essence", but anyway.

[Delicius169]

Now, I am fighting with Elvish seer, and she is great killer. She moves along with my Duke, and thanks to him, she has really cool resistances (some of thme above 100%), and hurts 80-7 in meele (arcane sword), 50-7( faerie touch), 25-7 faerie fire (arcane). I know that it every unit standing next to my Duke is inkillable (unles my Dark shade, who once almost died, has only 70%resistances against arcane, poor boy), but Seer combines great skill in distance and in meele.
But of course, if she will be albe to carry a magical weapon (or weapons?- one on faerie touch, one on arcane sword), she will be even much more cooler lady.

Also Faerie (that one who heals), should not wear a weapon too, it is not necesary, she is not unit for fight.
And Lich? Lich has a drain ability on his meele attack, giving him weapon would make him too much strong.

But I do agree, that ghost and dark shade should be improved.
Ghost should be able to wear a sword, and their AMLAS shoul be stronger.

[nuorc]

Also Faerie (that one who heals), should not wear a weapon too, it is not necesary, she is not unit for fight.

All my units have weapons purely for self-defense anyway.

No, seriously, ofc the Faeries gotta have a weapon; if you deny them staffs it would also weaken them overall. Actually melee is the strongest attack my two Faeries have, even if they only got one or two advancements in that department; but that also reflects that I think the ranged upgrades kinda suck. Much like my Elder Mage, who is doing a lot of hitting 'people' with his stick; that's partly due to the fact that I added slow to melee, and partly to - what I feel - disappointing ranged upgrades.

And sorry if I mislead people about the 'equipability' of ghosts, I wasn't aware that it only works for the Dark Shade-line.

[Delicius169]

I think Elder mage can be really great unit now, if is combined with Book of firebals. I used this book on my duelist wizzard, and now he has 5strikes on his fireball. My duelist wizzard has 80-5 fire attack now, and I use him as plant killer, because he can kill the weekest plant on one shot (108damage on one flower), and hurt every plant near( but not killing them). Unfortunately, I dont have a book of firebals, to try it...
Faerie incarnations dont have to have so many upgrades, I just improve their healing skills, and moving points. (Of course, mine faerie is a bit different, because she has legacy of kings,and both tome of bards)

Dugi: I do not want to annoy you with this question, but when will be the next version? I want to try metamorphose of my exterminator to lich, and in this version I cannot...

[Whiskeyjack]

And sorry if I mislead people about the 'equipability' of ghosts, I wasn't aware that it only works for the Dark Shade-line.

That explains my earlier confusion with the way the discussion was going, as I never tried to equip such stuff on Shades after my failed tries on Wraiths. In this case I think it would be useful (if not necessary) to extend this "feature" to the Wraith-line.

While I think this combined with the new item(s) might be somewhat enough to fix the weakness of the undead units, I believe that they are still somewhat... lacking in terms of the "interesting" department.
The last days I was thinking about a new Legacy-like line of AMLAs. While I believe to understand the idea behind not giving the undead Legacies I think those are some of the most exciting ways to build new units/combinations and so on. Therefore I thought that it would be interesting to give the undead something similar, but only for undeads and more strongly connected to their not-so-alive-ways.
Name-wise and thematically I would either connect those AMLA-lines to the way the units died, something they where strongly connected with while alive or take a more general approach with archetypes of darkness and necromancy.

Dugi, if you are interested to give this a try I would flesh out those ideas and make a bigger suggestion in the next days.

[Delicius169]

The legacies of undead unit can be ELvian, Dwarfian, Humanian, acording to species, they used to belong to.
And undead units can be moving closer to darkness, or to light...

[noimbecile]

Bug report:

Code: Select all

Level 4 Dualist Wizard - Standalone resistances: 
    Arcane[70%]
    Blade[%46]
    Cold[89%]
    Fire[89%]
    Impact[35%]
    Pierce[46%]
Level 4 Dualist Wizard - Royalty boosted resistances(notice reduction of Cold/Fire resistances) :
    Arcane[80%]
    Blade[%66]
    Cold[80%]
    Fire[80%]
    Impact[55%]
    Pierce[66%]
Level 4 Dualist Wizard - Royalty + Song of Metal(25)(notice reduction of Cold/Fire resistances):
    Arcane[80%]
    Blade[%80]
    Cold[80%]
    Fire[80%]
    Impact[80%]
    Pierce[80%]

Shouldn't these 2 resistances remain at 89%?

[Dugi]

Some ghosts equipping some armour parts, others not - there is a list of units who are too inhuman to use armour pieces designed for humans, and because of crappy design of this section of code, when adding new units to the list, I did not correctly apply it to all units. I have found the cause and fixed it.

I have added a special weapon type for touch attacks, intended for attacks where the touch brings some magic to deal damage rather than kung fu. It also affects baneblade of the Wraith line. I am wondering how to deal with armour, I see these possible solutions:
1. (the easiest) simply allowing them to use them (disadvantage: can you imagine an ethereal ghost wearing a heavy plate armour?)
2. (the wacky one) new item type as armour wearable by ghosts (disadvantage: less item flexibility)
3. (the one I see interesting) giving them a considerably more powerful AMLA to counter it
4. adding a new property to some armours that would allow them to be used also by non-humanoids
Which one do you prefer?

The next version should come out soon, I am waiting for one thing to be done by someone (I suppose that it's about to be finished) else and I think that including it in this version would allow getting it good feedback (it can't damage gameplay in any way, don't worry). This is known as creeping feature, I apologise for it.

Undead's legacies - I wanted the undead to differ by having no legacies. However, what I haven't planned is that they are too weak. My latest changes to the item list should improve the undead to some extent. They'll need more improvements most likely. Maybe they could have stronger AMLA in exchange for the lack of legacy.

Resistance issue - fixed. The code has an unintuitive behaviour that if an ability increases resistances up to a maximum value, it sets the maximum value to all those affected whose resistance was originally higher. I forgot to deal with this in some rarer cases. Fixed.

[Raijer]

I would personally find new AMLAs to be the most logical, and that would make them differ even more from living units. I'm eager to see what you're going to come up with for the new weapon type, will they're be droppable items of that type ?

[Dugi]

No, craft-only. There aren't many units capable of using them.

[nuorc]

I think Elder mage can be really great unit now, if is combined with Book of firebals.

Yeah, well. It's a level 5 unit, mine has his next AMLA at 2448 XP (he's been around and done stuff), I chose mostly ranged attack upgrades and no melee upgrade, his equipment should increase his magical damage by ~75%, resulting in: him not being the über-killer with ranged and his non-upgraded melee often being the more powerful choice.

I do have another Book of Fireballs, maybe I should give it to him?

Spoiler:

Faerie incarnations dont have to have so many upgrades, I just improve their healing skills, and moving points. (Of course, mine faerie is a bit different, because she has legacy of kings,and both tome of bards)

Ofc my Faeries have +40 healing and as much MP as possible, I gave them Royalty and stuff. But it's great if they can do the killing blow if another unit missed it. Also AMLAing them further adds HP, mine now are around 160 instead of the cataloged 55. I don't know the Tome of Bards.

Some ghosts equipping some armour parts, others not - there is a list of units who are too inhuman to use armour pieces designed for humans ...

1. (the easiest) simply allowing them to use them (disadvantage: can you imagine an ethereal ghost wearing a heavy plate armour?)

I am blissfully unaware of any supposed levels of inhumanity and if there is a reasoning behind it we ought to adhere to in LotI. Also, if an ethereal ghost can carry or wear anything (like an amulet or a helmet), why shouldn't it be able to wear heavy plate? And with all this (Demi-)Godly stuff I don't know why they shouldn't get in touch with their legacy like everybody else.

My approach would be to just make them comparably strong as other units. I guess if we agree that now the average fully equipped ghost with 10 AMLAs sucks badly compared to other units (especially the wraiths), how much would that change if we give them armor and/or AMLAs? Unfortunately I don't know jack about balancing units.

[Whiskeyjack]

Hey Dugi,

I understood that it was no AMLAs for undeads to differentiate them, thats why I thought something new that kept the difference would fit best for them, but having a random element like the legacies would also make them more exciting:

Name-wise and thematically I would either connect those AMLA-lines to the way the units died, something they where strongly connected with while alive or take a more general approach with archetypes of darkness and necromancy.

The randomness is of course not nessecary for buffing them and if you think its better to just give each unit fixed new AMLAs that should be enough to solve the issue. Heck, think of Lethalia and Ephraim, they already have more potential ones than one could use without even including legacies.
(Quite literally, I tried it once in debug mode and their exp reached some cap before they had all the AMLAs they could possibly get )

Do you intend to just buff the existing legacies or do you want to add new possibilities as well?