MP: ANDalusian Sun: Lolomo wins after more than 2 years of gruelling competition!

[Calahan]

I think some sort of executive decision (as democracy sucks) needs to be made regarding just how ""experimental" this game is going to be in regards to mod testing, and decide whether or not a (R)AND game is the best setting for mod testing.

Since not only are (R)AND games meant to be a more 'serious' type of game than regular games, there is also the simple mod-testing problem of it being a lot more difficult to provide feedback on the mods being tested, as you will often have to wait until the end of the game to do so. Since you can't just post in the relevant mod thread saying "I just had a fight and encountered a bug with XYZ", since a sharp eyed player can easily join the dots to the error report and the in-game battle to work out which nation a player is. (and I've seen countless anonymous ID's given away with careless posts in other threads). You could PM the bug to the mod creator of course to safeguard your ID, but players often get both lazy and forgetful, leading again to the careless thread post problem.


As someone who has done a lot of laborious testing with the casting AI, I really would add a note of caution to using any mod that adds spells to the game. Since while the modding code to add new spells isn't that hard if you know the system, and indeed it might look snazzy to add a few minor spells thinking "that won't do any harm", the actual effects it has on the casting AI in-game need to be thoroughly tested IMO before seeing use in proper/serious (call them what you will) games.

Since I'm sure any Machaka player will testify to how annoying just one spell can be in ruining a perfectly good mage. As they line up their item/spell boosted F5E5D1 Black Sorcerers on the battlefield expecting them to decimate armies with a range of Evo's for minimum fatigue, only to see the casting AI regularly decide that no, I don't want to kill the enemy, as I think the best thing is to utilise the D1 path and summon a skeleton for 30 fatigue instead. And if you haven't encountered similar problems with certain spells (Protection!!) for most nations, then you likely just haven't played the game enough.

But the point of the above example is to highlight how just one spell can screw up an entire nation's mage line-up, and this means adding new spells *really* has to tested in relation to how they affect the casting AI of mages, and not just "what the spell does". During my testing I also found that (unsurprisingly) mage-priests got an even more rotten deal with the casting-AI, as they can be easily distracted from using their mage paths if even one banishment target is on the battlefield (and not just in testing, as skelly spam to distract mage-priests is an example of just one tactic I'm sure many players will testify to having seen/used). And if there are H2 mage-priests around, then one sight of a deomn will see them spamming smite demon all day long (regardless of how high it's MR is)

And having looked at the Holy War mod this morning, I think a few spells there could potentially just make a mage-priest pretty much redundant in battle. As spells like True Heal and Divine Protection could easily see mage-priests happy to spam them all day long in every battle. Which may be good for *just* priests, but not so good for mage-priests, who will likely have something better to do with their mage paths than lightly healing/buffing a handful of troops.


Oddly, I'd be more confident personally about using llama's Well Behaved Wizard Mod than Holy Wars, since WBWM appears to be just a light version of a mod I'm currently working on to improve the casting AI, and as such I know that I've done a fair bit of battlefield testing on the effects that the changes have on the casting AI. But this confidence is purely my own, and there's no way I would project it outwards by saying my mod is ready for testing in a real game. And certainly not outside of a game with the stark proclaimer of *This is a very casual game to test an extremely experimental mod, and the consequences it will have on a proper game are totally unknown. As such please don't play if you don't like the thought of your game being potentially ruined due to changes the mod makes to how spell-casting works*


I'm not sure if I will be playing in this game yet, but whether or not I do isn't relevant to what I've said above. I'm all for creating mods and seeing them get some air time for testing, but like I said at the very top, I think some clarification is needed from those in charge on what the guinea pig setting for this game will be (since don't forget, if the game ends up using CBM 1.83, then there are still sections of that which are comparatively un-tested as well)