Slitherine

Hey, long time MoM player. I got your version as soon as it came out. I've played a couple of games. A few notes.

#1 Great looking game.
#2 I like some of the minor tweaks you have made, such as toning down Crack's Call, which was totally necessary, though its still obnoxious. The problem with CC is that on higher difficulty levels the AI sends so many stacks at you, including endless Magic Spirits, and every time you have to engage you stand the chance of being CCed. So you have to make powerful units to defend against the waves of AI attacks, but eventually the AI can just wear any kind of army down with nothing but Magic Spirits and CC. Yes, now Life can Raise Dead against it, which is good, and Sorcery can still counter it, but for Chaos and Nature there is not much to do against it, other than re-load. Still, glad you at least toned it down some.
#3 For some reason the Ai is totally fixated on Dispelling unit enchantment, even more than in the original game. To an absurd degree. The AI will cast almost nothing except Disenchant, even when it makes no sense. Like I have a stack with nothing but Water Walking on them and the AI will endless try to Disenchant the Water Walking, even though that has zero bearing on the outcome of the fight. A) This disadvantages the AI because it wastes time casting useless spells. B) its very annoying and makes it so unit enchantments are almost worthless. C) Sometimes it seems like the Disenchanted remains in effect after the battle, but other times not.
#4 Counter Magic cast by Zaldron (or whatever his name is now) doesn't seem to work. When I've cast it, 100% of the time every spell is unaffected by it, after about 20 casts against it. It doesn't seem to be doing anything, even at full strength.
#5 Air Elementals seem way OP. I had two elite Stag Beetles killed by a single Air Elemental, even though the Stag Beetles both had Holy Weapon on them. They were barely able to damage it, and I definitely had Holy Weapon as I cast it during the battle. It doesn't seem like a single Air elemental should be able to take out two elite Stag Beetles with Holy Weapon. They certainly can't in vanilla MoM.
#5 I also like the way you toned down Pathfinding and Heroes. Heroes were way too powerful in regular MoM, so glad to see that you've toned them down a bit and I think it seems like the right level so far.
#6 Still not sure about Alchemy going to 2 picks. It makes it not seem worth it to me anymore, especially since in 90% of cases when I would take Alchemy its with a Life build so I can just use the extra pick for Holy Weapon instead.
#7 I am pretty sure I saw a bug with Transmute. I tried to Transmute Silver to Mithril and nothing happened. Unless I somehow mis-clicked on the wrong tile or something.
#8 There are aspects of the UI that I don't like. The map is too hard to read. We need to be able to pull up a full-screen sized view of the bottom corner map and need the towns to be easier to identify. The fog is also a little heavy, so makes it hard to really see where the cities are even after you have explored the map. And there are some things that just require too many clicks, etc.
#9 Also, why did High Elf Magicians get knocked down to regular movements? They should have teh same movement as Cavalry, its the only thing that makes them worthwhile.

But overall, its looking good.

Y4eah, I don't think Holy Weapon is working. When I attack stuff with weapon immunity, like Fire Elementals or Air Elementals, with Holy weapon on normal weapons, I barely do any damage. Should be easily damaging them. Stuff like Doom Drakes with Holy Weapon are dying to Fire Elementals.

Trying to read the map is virtually impossible, esp on Myrran. Like trying to locate good places to settle, like near adamantium and wild game with no desert, etc. You just can't see the features of the terrain.

Also, having to click through two screens to inspect a lair gets old fast. Can that first screen be removed, or at least a check box for "Don't show this again".

Both I & a good friend of mine are enjoying this first release of this 'remake'. Looking forward to any improvements (per the community wishes) & any 'dlcs' similar to the Caster of Magic for Windows &, of course,...more modding options.

The game is way too easy and something seems wrong with the AI. I am playing with all difficulty set to maximum, except I'm using 11 books instead of going down to 10, and at a point fairly late in the game I just walked into an AI capital that was completely undefended, even though they have many stacks of units out on the map. Many towns are defended with just a few spearmen and like units.

Another general observation is that you've made the game more consistent and predictable, which has its pros and cons. Seems much more like just going through the motions.

I'd say that right now Classic MoM 1.5 on Hard mode is more difficult than this game on max difficulty, to say nothing of 1.5 Extreme or Impossible (which actually is impossible, though Extreme is beatable).

Also, when battle starts the lineup of the attackers makes no sense. I often start with most of my melee attackers in the back and stuff like Shamen and Bowmen in the front. All the melee attackers should be front line with the ranged attackers in the back.

There should be a easy way to re-roll the map as well, instead of having to quit and go all the way through the setup all over again.

Even on the difficult settings the AI should not immediately declare war all the time. It never did that in classic MoM and its pretty absurd. On the settings I'm using the AI declares war as soon as you meet them every single time, even if its only 5 turns into the game. It entirely removes any kind of diplomacy from the game. There should be conditions that lead to the AI declaring war, not just declare war as soon as you meet 100% of the time.

There needs to be a way to disable 11 book starts. 11 books starting with a Rare spell is grossly overpowered. It should be that either no one starts with 11 books or everyone does, otherwise its not even a close to fair setup. Playing on difficult settings that give the Ai more picks just increases the chance of 11 book starts and makes things pretty lopsided.

Sad, but diplomacy not work in this game.

Oracle range should be increased to 6 or 7. In the original game the Oracle game a pretty big sight bonus. I like the fact that you increased the sight range of Nature's Eye and made it the premier sight range bonus for a city, but the Oracle is now almost pointless and not worth the cast. City walls give a sight bonus of 4 hexes and Nature's Eye gives 9 hexes, while Oracle gives only 5. Seems like Oracle should be at least 6 if not 7.

Regarding 11 books. In my current game Freya started with 13 Nature books. This made her way overpowered, but oddly she didn't seem to use much of that power. I haven't seen her using any Uncommon spells, like there are no Gorgons on the map. However, it makes her tower insanely powerful, so her tower 1 shots just about everything. Makes it so Paladins are about the only way to attack her capital. I did take her out with heroes and a bunch of Priests though actually. My heroes with more than 14 health are able to survive an attack and then be healed by the priests and the priests provide fodder for the random shots.

But generally, I think there should be a starting option to allow or disallow the AI wizards to have 11 or more books (of the same school). Ideally, if the human player chooses 11 books then every AI would also start with 11+ books and if the human player does not choose 11 books then none of the AIs would start with 11 books either. 11 Books is really just a totally different game.

To add something:
#1 Stupid way planning: units avoid other units and cities on the way for all cost
#2 Land unit and naval battles: (was reported before) if the boat is destroyed carried units are left moveless on the water
#3 Map difficult to read
#4 Double report (one for production done, another 'hammer' for empty cue)