#45 subtler effects of invisibility, magic immunity

[andrei]

hello nigel,

give an item conferring powers of invisibility & magic immunity to a hero
as of version 0.9.9.4, an opposing wizard may cast Doom Bolt instantly killing said hero.

1) enemy wizards should not be able to cast spells other than wide area spells at invisible targets (unless they have a unit with illusion immunity or someone with true sight)

2) even given they can target magic spells directly, magic immunity should protect against most spells (though it is technically possible to overpower magic immunity through sheer force)

To be fair, in the original game the opponent would cast Disenchant Area (correct) and "Dispel Magic" (incorrect even in the original) at invisible units, (but of course be unable to dispel powers conferred through items).

Apart from rendering overpowered heroes mortal, this may break the interesting Rock Paper Scissors dynamic where Slinger>Paladin, Paladin>Warlock, Warlock>Slinger. (The Paladin is supposed to be immune to Doom Bolt, admittedly I did not test this for the stronger Paladin unit)

Naturally getting the conditionalities of these effects right and modeling what the AI may or may not see is brutally complex, thank you for your amazing work so far.

[Nigel Gay]

That surprises me, I was fairly certain you couldn't target anything at invisible units if you didn't have something with illusions immunity/true sight, and even then only that unit can target them. Or you mean not the human player but the AI wizards are bypassing this?

I will look into it anyway. 0.9.9.4 is pretty old now by the way...

As far as doom bolt/magic immunity goes, I think I see what is happening.
https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_Immunity
"Magical damage" is used for things like magicians' regular ranged attacks, as well as spells that can't be blocked by anything specific like Fire Immunity... like for example Psionic Blast or Doom Bolt. But its defined as raising defence to 50, not giving complete immunity. So it raises defence to 50... but vs doom bolt defence is irrelevant so it still does full damage. So looks like I need to split this and define "Non-elemental spell damage" as a different damage type... thanks for pointing this out.

[andrei]

Yes, I was referring to AI wizards. I'll see if I can steal some time and test in the newest version.

YKYHBPTMMoM (You know you have been playing too much MoM) when this analysis of the doom bolt mechanics makes total sense.