Spell: Devinition or Future Seeing

I think this is a good idea.

reminds me of the chaos magic in the baldurs gate II addon: where every spell casr had a chance of something random happening like a cow dropping from the skies or spawning a sqirrel, change the sex of the char ect.

I agree that the RNG should not be a game decider, such as your sovereing being able to flee; however, it seems many people want to remove any RNG bad luck from having any factor in the game whatsoever.

Like the above example where you have a 90% chance of winning a battle, but the RNG makes you lose, you did everything right but shit just happened. that is a critical part of the game and trying to remove that or trying to "pre-run" a battle and either be able to accept or reject the outcome? Damn it people it is a computer game! Get over yourselves! Wow you act like a bunch of five year olds and if you lose a hero in a battle that you "should" have one your lower lips going to start trembling and tears are gonna well up in your eyes.

This is coming off as an attack on the OP and it isn't intended to, I like Robbie just fine, I just cannot get over almost every game that I watch getting developed there is always this faction of hand-wringers that just acts like anything bad happening in a game is just a disaster. I can't fathom the mindset.

Again if people have got to do save loads to protect their fragile little psyches then by all means let them. And other people are going to use save loads to learn from their mistakes and see what might have worked better in a situation. And some peope will never use save loads, if they lose a battle either due to poor judgment or just bad luck they will soldier on, adjust and still try to win but if they don't it is NO BIG DEAL.

To address the OP specifically, going into a battle that you have a 90% chance of winning by definition means you have a 10% chance of losing. To say "ah I had a 90% chance of winning and lost that is lame RNG BS" there is a ray of sunshine for you - sometimes you are going to be on the 10% side of the equation and guess what? AGAINST ALL ODDS you are going to win! Of course the save/loaders are NOT going to say "NOPE the computer had me fair and square." and reload.

Bottom line, I think this suggestion is a stinking pile of bear poop.

Saving and reloading is "cheating" in my book. I dont mind that people do this in their own single player games. But I do mind that this should influence game mechanics. I would NEVER reload unless game crashes or a bug mess up something. If the hero dies he dies.

I'm not so sure about this thing...... if the spell costs ANYTHING there will stuill be as many people save-reloading, maybe more since the spell would give them a taste of RNG control.

Goodmorning all

just like to say that I understand where you're comming from Denryu perhaps the 90% example was a bit light,   The basic idea is that the game should have a non cheat method to do something that some people are going to want to do anyway.  I myself am like you, most of the time, i play to play and have fun and take whatever the game gives and try to solder on. But there are other days where i'm not playing for the challange, and if i loose level 18 hero with spcial equipment because he opened a chest and the RND poped a angry draggon of bite your head off....  It's just not the type of fun i'm looking for to say 'oh, now how am i going to go from here'.  many day, even Most days it's a challange and a sudden twist that i can re-work my stratagy around, other days it's just an undesirable hassle.   It's not that the hero is supper inportant to me, or that it's a disaster, it's that the game is a game, i play it to have fun. . . and some days recovering from loosing a town or a hero or a mine is just won't be fun. 

People are going to save load either way, and there probably will be a hard code mode where you can't save load,  but i think it would be benifitial to have a spell that provides some ingame safetynet agianst those 1 or 5 or even 10% chances, Because some days i'm just wasteing time between classes or degassing after an exam and don't want to think.


Anyway that's what i was going for. thought i would explain myself better
Robbie price.

I do not think such a spell would work good with multiplayer, because who wants to force other players to replay a round. Nor do I think it would add much to the SP game, either.

That said.....

 Why all the hate against saving/ reloading outside a non-ladder, non-multiplayer game? Sometimes, that is the best way to learn from mistakes so when "showtime" is on and you are in a clan battle or doing a SP map contest at a fansite, you will be better at tactics.

I will give you two recent examples.

I was playing an Age of Wonders: SM game versus 7 AI opponents. I made a fatal flaw of getting too focused on eliminating a opponent I saw fairly early while neglecting exploring the map and making sure I had good garrisons where my wizard was and a critical city. I threw everything I had at that opponent. Well, what do you know? Two other wizards came in with 2 heroes and a few troops from nowhere and eliminated my fledgling empire. Restart again, and now I learn the lesson of garrisons and scouting and only going all out when I have scouted and am sure I am safe versus blindsides. I didnt want to start over, because I wanted to try a rush tactic.

I was playing Civ 4: BtS on a huge map with 16 opponents. I was in the middle of major micro and got a bit too focused on one thing. I didn't pay attention to Pericles massing troops up or the fact that I was friendly with my other nieghbor, Isabella and did not have a defensive pact. When war happened, I was totally screwed and had no tech to offer Izzy to help me. Go back one turn, and I learn the lesson of being mindful of my situation. Defensive pact with Izzy keeps Pericles off my lawn. I go on to space race victory.

I would never do this in a serious game or tourney. But if I am trying strats with my own game and time. By all means, let me! And let Stardock put a # times saved and actual time of each save header on my saved game so tourney runners can check my honesty if need be.

regaring multiplayer;

The spell i'm considering would only work for one event,  so fighting a battle but letting the Autoresolve sove it for you, [but only against an AI apponent] or during a battle one unit running up and hitting one other unit, once.  or casting it just before opening a chest, or clearing out the last of a cave (and exposing what is in the level below, if using the multi-leveled caves idea from Living cave discussion  https://forums.elementalgame.com/363350  )    so it would not conflict with Multiplayer.  since you would cast the spell, take the action ,see the result and then do it or not do it.  Which would take a second or two max.  No full human faught battles would be covered by this spell, because they inhairently cover more then one action.  As such it would not directrly inconvience others.

Now you can argue that if one person is using this and succesfully avoiding bad rands they have an anvantage, but to that i reply simply if the spell has a cost, they could be cating something else,  Fireball, or check weather your pikemen will take that archery squad..... it's a choice. and with all choices there are the oppertunity for tactics.

   Anyway, That's enough from me,

   Night all
   Robbie Price

Having mathomancy from erfworld ,... that would be nice. Enter units on side A, enter units on side B ... output approximate Probability (0.79) or percentage chance (79%) of To-Win. This would be based upon the Auto-battle option, which means that each unit is probably built with a default auto-strategy, and if you decide on an MP game to play "all auto" or something, you can adjust ... but if not, most of your opponents will probably be on default ... or even SUBOPTIMAL AI routines on purpose, which could mess up your mathomancy ... although it would still give good information on relative raw power-levels.

I mean, there is no guarantee that we will even have % chance of victory normally visible, (at least vs human) since its all via the battlemap. A spell to cast avg % chance victory, or avg probability victory, would be nice ... especially if it gives information more complex than you are automatically given, (or information you are possibly not other-wise given at all).

Hi Folks

My idea for a spell that can fortell the future does not involve replaying anything. If the spell is cast -you are informed of the nature of the next random event (earthquake, hords of monsters spotted, fire magic is earier to cast during the next 5 turns, ect).  At low levels there may be a chance of getting the wrong event (say 10-20%).  At higher levels of the spell, you   could also know things like in how many more turn will this event occur.  This gives you a mild advantage because it allows you to plan a bit for these events.  It also gives you some useful information that you could choose to pass on to other fractions (I sense a plauge on all first-born nobility in the near future, marry them off now!).  Of course you could also be devious and pass out mis-information just at the right time.  Anyway-I have not seem this in a game before and could see this being fun.

My spidey sence is tingling, Your town is about to turn into the focus site of a demon reincarnation, oh and you're going to loose your spectials in the toilet tommorow.

That's right!  And with moddable events, you would never really know what outlandish prediction was real or not!