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[Pex]

Originally Posted by Smiling Spectre

Well, there is misunderstanding, I think. I said already: this surplus gold is not from tax. It is really converted food. But it seems, it is not total food (that needed for all your armies and cities), but any surplus produced by city. Even if it is not actual "surplus", but consumed one in some other city. That's because of that I named it "even".

Ah, ok. I understand what you are saying now. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

It still doesn't make sense (comparing to what manual says), since how can you sell the food that your army needs? But if that's how it is, there's nothing we can do but accept it.

@ Pex: The Demon does not have magical immunity but it has quite high
shielding and also quite high resistance. After all this is a top level monster.
Star Fires only has 5 attack value. So it might also be a rounding issue when calculating the odds. If after calculating the effect of defense/resistance the possible damage goes below 1 point/1 heart then it might just be rounded downwards and never do any damage at all. Civilization 1 was full of such rounding issues. Since MoM has taken a lot from Civ it might be the same thing here. There are even some bugs that existed in Civ and also show up in MoM.

I did not have a lot of casting skill left after summoning the Fire Elemental in that battle. So I initially thought that casting a number of cheap spells woud give me a higher chance of doing damage than casting one heavy spell. But I may have been wrong. Of course I'm still a bit of a noob at MoM but I have observed that Fire Bolt misses more often than Psionic Blast does. The latter is more expensive - so one would expect it to have some advantage over the cheaper spell - maybe the greater chance to hit is what makes it more costly.

Moving on the road peculiarity I noticed. While the game manual states that roads give you extra tax revenue when they connect two cities I have been suspicious for a while that this actually doesn't work in MoM. Today I tested it (playing my first games as Klackons btw). I only had 3 cities when I tested it and made sure, that no other changes where happening when one road
connecting two cities was finished. It's a bit easier with Klackons to check it because Klackons grow slow - so you can have a situation with static population in several cities for a number of turns. In addition no buildings were finished and no units were produced.

I checked this several times. Every time I connected two cities with a road the income from tax stayed exactly the same - no change at all.

In Civ 1 they programmed the effect of roads to work on the income of the squares that the roads are on. That works fine in Civ. But in the MoM manual it says, roads should give extra income when they connect two cities (so it's not calculated on a per-square basis). But it doesn't work. They may just have forgotten to program it...

Of course roads still do have strategic effects but they do not seem to give you extra income. Not sure whether race choice makes any difference but I think it probably doesn't.

Originally Posted by Philos73

@ Pex: The Demon does not have magical immunity but it has quite high
shielding and also quite high resistance. After all this is a top level monster.
Star Fires only has 5 attack value.

Demon has only 5 shields. And Star fires attack is actually 15, which should give you (checks Of.st.guide) 3,1 damage on average. That is quite incredible - did you try to cast it several times?

(Star fires seem suspicious, even the people who wrote the guide admit it does not work as it should. I have a theory it is somehow connected to the number of figures in unit (worked perfectly on Zombies until I attacked all but 1 in my test). I have spent an hour trying to find the problem, but no succes. Grr.)

Moving on the road peculiarity I noticed. While the game manual states that roads give you extra tax revenue when they connect two cities I have been suspicious for a while that this actually doesn't work in MoM.

I thought that the roads bonus work. Did you notice there are a number of extra conditions? 1) There is a maximum of (3 * POP) % of bonus . 2) When you have cities placed on the shore they automatically (without roads) get + 20% bonus. 3) WHen on river they get another + 10%.

Summa: you may quite well connect two 6-8 POP cities with no change.

[Pex]

Originally Posted by Philos73

@ Pex: The Demon does not have magical immunity but it has quite high
shielding and also quite high resistance. After all this is a top level monster.
Star Fires only has 5 attack value. So it might also be a rounding issue when calculating the odds. If after calculating the effect of defense/resistance the possible damage goes below 1 point/1 heart then it might just be rounded downwards and never do any damage at all. Civilization 1 was full of such rounding issues. Since MoM has taken a lot from Civ it might be the same thing here. There are even some bugs that existed in Civ and also show up in MoM.

It is possible. I wish I knew the exact mechanics of spell casting, 'cause you probably noticed that sometimes a spell whipes out entire unit and sometimes does minimal or no damage in the same fight and against the same type of the unit.

I did not have a lot of casting skill left after summoning the Fire Elemental in that battle. So I initially thought that casting a number of cheap spells woud give me a higher chance of doing damage than casting one heavy spell. But I may have been wrong. Of course I'm still a bit of a noob at MoM but I have observed that Fire Bolt misses more often than Psionic Blast does. The latter is more expensive - so one would expect it to have some advantage over the cheaper spell - maybe the greater chance to hit is what makes it more costly.

When I started playing I thought that those symbols (chaos, sorcery, etc) in the spell book during the battle meant the strenght of the spell and it was logical that they would grow as the game went on. Of course, they mean how many times you can cast that spell during the battle (providing you cast only that one and add no extra points) and depend only on your casting skill and mana reserves.

As for Fire Bolt vs. Psionic Blast, well, let's look at the definitions:

Fire Bolt:
Chaos. Instant Combat. Casting Cost: 5+ mana. Common.
Shoots a searing bolt of flames at one figure in a target unit. The
strength of the fire bolt and the damage it can inflict depends on the
amount of magic power pumped into the spell. A fire bolt has a base
strength of five; each additional point of mana spent on the spell
increases its strength by one.

Psionic Blast:
Sorcery. Instant Combat. Casting Cost: 10+ mana. Common.
Targets a unit with an intensely damaging stream of mental
energy. This strength five non-corporeal attack can be increased in
strength by one per every two extra mana points spent on the spell.

So, they are both strenght 5 attacks. My first thought was that with chaos magic being more combat orientated than sorcery, chaos combat spell should be cheaper than sorcery combat spell of the same strenght. Sounds logical? Maybe.

Next thing you can notice is that Fire Bolt attacks only one figure in target unit, while Psionic Blast targets the whole unit. Does that meant that if you attack a unit of pikemen (9 figures) with Fire Bolt you can kill only one figure no matter how much extra power you use? While at the same time Psionic Blast can kill the whole unit? That would easily explain difference in the cost, but I'm sure you've noticed that it's not the case in the game - both spells are capable of killing more figures of a unit.

Which bings us back to those spell mechanics that we don't know. Maybe Fire Bolt does attack a single figure with whole its strenght and if that figure dies and the spell has some strenght left, it moves to attack the next figure until the spell strenght is spent. That would explain why increasing spell strenght can kill more figures in a unit. On the other hand maybe Psionic Blast attacks all figures in the unit with strenght 5 and every figure then attepmts to resist, so those that fail die (in case of single health point units). That could explain why casted with the same strenght Fire Bolt causes less damage and therefore costs less skill/mana to cast. But that would also mean that this only matters when both spells are used against units with more then one figure and in your example of the Demon, it's obviously not the case.

Btw, those are just my theories. Maybe I hit the nail on the head with one of them or maybe they all are wrong

Moving on the road peculiarity I noticed. While the game manual states that roads give you extra tax revenue when they connect two cities I have been suspicious for a while that this actually doesn't work in MoM. Today I tested it (playing my first games as Klackons btw). I only had 3 cities when I tested it and made sure, that no other changes where happening when one road
connecting two cities was finished. It's a bit easier with Klackons to check it because Klackons grow slow - so you can have a situation with static population in several cities for a number of turns. In addition no buildings were finished and no units were produced.

I checked this several times. Every time I connected two cities with a road the income from tax stayed exactly the same - no change at all.

In Civ 1 they programmed the effect of roads to work on the income of the squares that the roads are on. That works fine in Civ. But in the MoM manual it says, roads should give extra income when they connect two cities (so it's not calculated on a per-square basis). But it doesn't work. They may just have forgotten to program it...

Of course roads still do have strategic effects but they do not seem to give you extra income. Not sure whether race choice makes any difference but I think it probably doesn't.

Interesting. I never thought to check that one. Although, I do remember reading somewhere that this particular bonus depends on whether or not the two cities connected with the road belong to the same race or two different races. It should still exist for the same race, but I believe it's higher for two different races. Again, I can only offer some theories

1. The bonus does exist but it's too small to affect your cities at this stage. For example, if it's 5% per every city connected by road to your one, then with your tax money of like 8gp in that city, you'll get only 0.4 extra gold. It won't show anywhere and if that rounding down principle works here too, it won't show untill your tax earnings are 20gp.

2. Maybe the bonus is applicable only if the city production is set on 'Trading Goods'. It doesn't say that in manual of course, but it would be logical. But, it's something you can easily check providing you still have the saves.

3. Like you said, maybe they just forgot to implement the rule in the game. Wouldn't be the first game with something like that happening

Btw, now that you mentioned races, which race do you normally play with? I played mosty with High Elves (quick acess to Longbowmen which rock and every citizen generating extra power) or Nomads (Horsebowman compensate less figures with fast movement and decent melee and rangers have pathfinding, though you need to develop your city a bit to get them). In only game I played as Myrran, I've chosen Dwarves cause I like them as a race from some different settings. I also wanted to have a game with halflings to benefit from their food production early in the game and be able to field more units and lizardmen - their javelliners seem quite decent and the ability to walk on water is useful for shortcuts. I also wanted to try some other Myrran races, but on Hard level there are traits I prefer to spend points on and on lower levels it's not much of a challenge anyway.

But some races seem to have too many restrictions and no obvious benefits. Like Klackon have lower unrest, but it's only effective if you are settle orientated player - personally I prefer conquest. And like you said, their pop has a really low growth so settling cities would be a painful process.

Orcs seem to be 'Jacks-of-all-trade' which of course means masters-of-none. Quite a dull race in this game, at least imo. Gnoll on the other hand are tough and wolf riders are a great unit but that's where it ends. I'd rather choose some other race and hope there will be a gnoll city somewhere around to conquer than play with gnolls. High Men are similar to Orcs, except that their cities grow more quickly which makes them preferable, but again no obvious benefits.

So, what are your thoughts?

EDIT: kyrubb obviously replied during me writing this reply, so for everything he has explained, feel free to ignore my theories

Fire Bolt:
Chaos. Instant Combat. Casting Cost: 5+ mana. Common.
Shoots a searing bolt of flames at one figure in a target unit. The
strength of the fire bolt and the damage it can inflict depends on the
amount of magic power pumped into the spell. A fire bolt has a base
strength of five; each additional point of mana spent on the spell
increases its strength by one.

Psionic Blast:
Sorcery. Instant Combat. Casting Cost: 10+ mana. Common.
Targets a unit with an intensely damaging stream of mental
energy. This strength five non-corporeal attack can be increased in
strength by one per every two extra mana points spent on the spell."
...
Next thing you can notice is that Fire Bolt attacks only one figure in target unit, while Psionic Blast targets the whole unit. Does that meant that if you attack a unit of pikemen (9 figures) with Fire Bolt you can kill only one figure no matter how much extra power you use? While at the same time Psionic Blast can kill the whole unit? That would easily explain difference in the cost, but I'm sure you've noticed that it's not the case in the game - both spells are capable of killing more figures of a unit.

This is simply poor wording, both work exactly the same in that regard. Both attack one figure AT A TIME, excess damage is then applied to the next unit and so on. Fireball is the only spell that attacks all figures.

About trade bonuses (copied from my answer on the forum at dragonsword.com, excellent MoM site):

It's a little tricky. For every pop unit of same race a town is connected to, it gets +0.5% trade bonus. For every alien pop unit, it gets +1%. A town cannot take advantage of more than 3% trade bonus per pop unit, ie. a town of size 4 cannot get more than 12% trade bonus. And it's then applied to your income, so a town with a small income may not get any bonus. Ocean/river bonuses work the same way, so if you have a 20% trade bonus from roads and are on a coastal/river square with a size 10 town, you'll only get 30% bonus out of the max 50%.

Concerning races, these are the values I've assigned to racial strength for the tournament game being launched at dragonsword.com:
5: Halflings
4: Nomads, High Elves
3: High Men
2: Barbarians, Klackons, Orcs
1: Lizardmen (move up to 2 if playing on a map with Small land mass), Gnolls

High Men are much stronger than you give them credit for. Pikemen, Priests, Magicians and Paladins are all excellent units. Compare with Orcs and High Men blow them out of the water.

I'm having trouble registering on this site. I'd like someone with a registered account to mail or MSN me at catwalkutopia[at][BEEEP]
Thanks.

[The Fifth Horseman]

The registration issues are a persistent problem over last few weeks.
Another bug that prevents us from manually fixing user accounts, else I would be working on that.
Our tech support is trying to fix these problems, but in the process they're running into even more issues >.<

Bummer I'm helping to build up a new MoM site which has a bunch of features and an active community, how much advertisement will you allow here?

[_r.u.s.s.]

i think that "advertising" for free projects dedicated to abandonware remakes is ok..

@Pex
Psionic Blast: it was not mentioned - it is better than Fire bolt because the $attack ignores armor (no shields blocking). The help texts are incredibly confusing, the attack should be called "illusionary". Per consequence, the immunity to illusions (undead units f.e.) makes the unit immune to Psionic blast.

Please, try reading the FAQ by Dan Simpson, if you want to know a lot about the game. You may find the big guide copy on the site mentioned here previously, too. A lot of pages pdf, but it has an index and almost 100% reliable, complete info on just about anything in the game.


Once more my question: did you attack that Demon several times with Star fires?