#300 - Experimental

[unclemike]

I had some time to enhance artifacts that grant the power of flight. There are two artifacts in the game that bestow the flying ability:

Last Herd of the Winged Stallions
Great Red Bats of the Lost Caves

If your group meets the artifact's number of brigade limitation (currently 5 brigades or less for both artifacts) then your group is considered to be flying at all times. The software checks various points in the game if your group gains/loses brigades to activate/disable flight for your group. The code checks after every battle result, reorganization for attrition, reinforcements, recruiting, kingdom special recruiting (order 565, 563 for Demon Princes skeletons, 566 for Black Dragon phoenix brigades), sea patrol losses (you lose brigades if you lose enough of fleets), and wizard summon (undead troops) spells. Even the wizard death spell (lose 2-4 brigades) is checked if your group now contains 5 or less brigades in order to activate the flight ability.

So for one battle you may not have the flight ability but due to losing brigades from combat, you may gain flight for the next battle. Flying at all times carries some advantages and disadvantages in the game:

Advantages:
(1) group is immune to Earthquake damage (spell 105)
(2) group is immune to Wall of Fire damage (spell 98)
(3) group may move up to the artifact's flight range (currently 7 areas) without regard to terrain movement cost
(4) traveling through Dimensional Portals (via order #726) no longer halts movement at the exit portal if it's in water (so if you issue order 726 and have enough movement pts leftover to move past the exit portal that's in water, you may continue flying up to your allotted movement even though you're using the portal's order 726 to move and not the flying artifact's order 727 [much like how dragon kingdoms may fly past a water destination portal], c.f. my post regarding portals earlier in this thread if you need to)

Disadvantages:
(1) cannot end movement on water
(2) cannot use sea movement orders (710, 715) as long as the group has a flying artifact in its possession (if you need to move a group to a water location then transfer the flying artifact elsewhere in your kingdom)
(3) cannot use sea search order (725) much like how the dragon kingdoms cannot use sea movement/sea search orders due to their flying ability that cannot land on water
(4) if your group acquires the ability to move across water despite the above due to some future ability or spell then your group cannot move across water if the Storm at Sea spell (660) is active in that sea (much like how the dragon kingdoms cannot fly across water if a Storm at Sea is active due to the spell's hurricane-like force winds)
(5) travel with a flying artifact won't display the locations of pc's being past over between your current and destination locations since the flying artifact in this regard acts more like a teleport rather than an area-by-area movement sequence (which is why order 727 only allows you to specify a single destination area rather than a full sequence of movement areas to reach your destination)

So there's some advantages and disadvantages in granting your group the power of flight. In addition, both of these artifacts happen to have further restrictions regarding Alignment and Race. Pegasi are Good so only the Good kingdoms may use them and Red Bats are Evil.

Good kingdoms:
Elf
Halfling
Paladin
Westmen

Evil kingdoms:
Demon Princes
Swampmen
Underworld
Urik
Witchlord

As Ry Vor mentioned earlier, there's a lot going on behind the scenes even for something as simple as a flying artifact. Have fun!!!