[1.004][BUG] Tremor and freeze immobilise for one season only

This is due to the order in which all players move. First the AI, then the human player. When you cast the spell, the AI has already made it's move for this turn. This means, that the spell has no effect in this turn, but it still counts against the duration of the spell. The next turn works as expected and the AI is free to go at the beginning of the third turn. In essence, you prevent the AI from moving for only one turn.

There are two ways of fixing this. Rearranging the order in which everybody moves (highly unlikely at this stage of the beta) or increasing the duration of the spell by another turn while keeping the description as is.

What I hear is: "This is because the AI Cheats"
I think its silly too, I would still hope the AI would lock the game down for a little while and take they're turn so I would rid of all the silly movement bugs.

Sincerely
~ Kogndej

Updated post to reflect the fact that this also applies to freeze, and persists in the latest version.
With a five-turn cooldown on freeze, it is especially useless at buying time. 

Still agree with you sratner, my casting of tremor should not be affected by the ability to cast it before the AI gets a chance to move the units, nor should it automatically lose 1 turn off the timer because I move last in a global turn...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

This really needs to get fixed. It was one of the first bugs I reported back in May and it is still in. Just increasing the internal value for the spell duration by 1 would solve it.

Fix it !

it shoudlnt be a feature...

They ought to at least correct the description if nothing else. If you want to go a step further, how about reducing the cool down on freeze? Seeing that it only immobilizes for 1 season, 5 season cd is pretty bad.

i definitely agree that this is a bit of a problem.

The fact that the player always takes their turn last, does not make sense. I think that they should at least be auto-first, or better still that some mechanism be devised to logically choose an order, or to randomise it. I really think the game should have been designed with continuous turns, where a "turn" is the time between pressing end turn, and gaining control again after everyone else is done. Instead they've made it that a turn ends at some arbitrary point after everyone has made their actions, and artificially placed the human player last. There's plenty of "right" ways to fix this, but putting a deceptive two turn duration on the spell is not one of them.

I like to say that i already consider these spells to be overpowered. To be able to reliably prevent an army from moving, permanantly, for only 20 mana per turn, is too strong in my mind. I've successfully "exploited" this to hold multiple invading armies in place as they closed in on a defenseless city, while i use that time to build new troops and prepare a defense. I think the 5-season cooldown on freeze is more than adequate, because this can already be worked around by giving the spell to multiple casters. If you have 3 people with the freeze spell, then you get 3 shots of it, which gives 60% uptime, allowing you to hold an army in place for 3 turns, then let them move for 2. I'd be opposed to any suggestion of increasing their duration in order to get a "real" two turns. Freezing someone  for one turn is enough

Don't forget that it freezes everything on a tile, allowing you to hold several stacked armies in place if they end up standing on the same tile. makes map chokepoints very powerful.

This is only a problem IF the AI uses it against you... but they don't. If they did, you could make an argument that the AI gets benefit for 2 turns, but you only get it for one. But seeing as how they don't, the only question is whether Tremor of Freeze is balanced, or underpowered and needs that extra turn of effect. The answer, IMO, is that they are fine as they are (and I use Tremor a lot), some might even consider them OP. Yes, you do have to cast it every turn to keep an army stuck. But for the cost of 20 mana per turn, you basically have the ability to COMPLETELY disable their strongest army. I can't see any reason why you would argue that it's too weak and needs help.

Freeze has a long cooldown, but it isn't meant to be used like Tremor to stop an army, its use is more like Wither, where you use it to weaken the army and then attack it with an advantage.

I suppose you could just alter the description to say 1 turn, but it really is 2 turn of no movement (it just so happens that the AI would have already used one of those movement). So maybe something like "Stops the army from moving next turn" would be more accurate. Still, it's a pretty small issue.

I never think that information to the player is a small issue.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Hmm, Im unable to repro this in the manner it is stated.  For me when I cast tremor on an AI unit it says that they are immobilized for two turns.  When I click end turn it shows that they are immobilized for 1 turn.  Then when I click end turn they aren't immobilized they can move.

So the effect is that they only lost one turn of movement.

I could increase the duration to 3 to make the spell more powerful.  I could increase the game effect to 3 but keep the desc saying 2 so that it is less confusing to players that are expecting the unit to lose two turns of movement (though that will mean they cast it and see "immobilized for 3 turns" after casting a spell that was supposed to immobilize for 2.  Changing the way the turn order happens is a bad idea at this point.

Have to think about this a bit.

Atleast consider the description is all, and when the AI learns to cast it, think about what should happen.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Ach! Unclear turn ordering strikes again! I vote to make each enemy have their own turn, in a clear order! [/broken record]

I have to agree with that, though.

Still, when it says "Immobilizes for 2 turns" and the enemy only loses *one* turn of movement, that's confusing. People are used to playing board games, where if it says "Lose two turns", the player loses their next two turns. It's really quite counterintuitive that "Immobilized for two turns" means "Immobilized for two player turns, which means only the one AI turn in between."

Could the description say something like: "Immbolized for 2 turns (including current turn)"

This is what I suggested during Beta.  You must have been sick that day and didn't read my post. 

Yeah, sounds good.  Im going to increase it to 3 seasons and put the qualifier Leo suggested on it so it makes it more understanable.

Or perhaps tweak the code behind the spell, so that it checks if you've already used all your movement. Such that, if you already moved (cast on an AI, move == 0), the effect is applied starting on the next turn (or just add one to the effect), and if you have not (still have movement left), then the effect starts on this turn (like it does now).

That way, if the AI ever learns how to use it, it'll still be fair.

Seems the problem isn't turn order, but rather the point at which the spell duration is checked/decremented. As long as the spell immobilises for "next two turns", it shouldn't matter what the order of the turns is. If expiration is checked at the end of the target's turn (and not at the end of the caster's turn), the target will miss two turns of movement, since it has already had it's turn, and didn't decrement the duration, during the "current" player turn.

This is how duration works in tactical (effects expire based on the target's initiative, not the caster's), so why is it different in strategic?

Thanks!