What's the difficulty in that one? Just give every secondary magic type 2 or 3 unique units. And that should do it. They would be a lot more different. Or are you worried about the balancing?

:bday: Master of Myrror thread! Thanks to Lusikka's post, you are 1000 posts old!

Now, where was I? Oh yes, the secondary magic.

It's a matter of balancing and logicality. It's hard to balance the units so that they form a good mixture with mage's own units. It's also hard to choose the units so that they 'feel right'. It feels stupid when for example a death mage has nature units three of the nature mages don't have.

It just feels like it's doing something just for the sake of it, not because it feels like the most intuitive thing to do. It's not out of the picture, but I'm not really tempted by it at the moment.

I'll (try to) make you a little suggestion/plan about the subject. :p Maybe tomorrow.

And Congratulations for the 1,000-post-old thread! :goodjob: [party] :bday:

Quick points

- you said that each of the 4 mages in a fraction would have a differnet secondary civ trait, but you've got both Galen and Oberic as industrious - presumably one (Oberic seems more suited) was meant to be seafaring?

- some of the UU seem much more powerful than others (just looking at the stats) i.e the hell hound only being +1 def

- if Oberic is the seafarer I'd give the Swordmaster ampib attack just to fit in with the secondary trait

- the half price granery is a bit to powerful (30 shields = free settler). A solution might be give the life mages their own granery (like the death Well of souls vrs other fraction shrines) that doesnt require upkeep or gives culture or something so its still better, but not faster.

- this mod is great and yet your tinkering with it to make it better - awesome.

I'm surprised the expansion is ready already, I thought it was going to take a while longer. All the changes you've described sound great. I started a game a few days ago as Galen, so I'm not using the patch yet. I did notice the comments about enchanted springs, so I fixed that myself.

I like the way you renamed the civ traits, and giving every wizard only two makes sense I guess. But I was a bit disappointed that warlord is restricted to chaos mages, and sage master is restricted to life mages. It would be nice to be able to play a chaos mage or nature mage with cheap culture buildings, or a non-chaos mage with a military bent. I think the magic types are different enough due to their units and governments that they don't need to have a trait to themselves. So I demand more mages and more trait combinations :crazyeye: .

I chose Galen because the energy focusing trait should help with early growth and expansion, something life mages are usually poor at. I noticed the civ selection screen also lists Oberic as an energy focuser, but his civ entry says he's a water elementalist.

That plan worked well. All you need for a 4-turn settler factory is some irrigated bonus grassland. I saw there is some discussion on how to slow down early expansion. I'd say that giving irrigation a tech requirement would be a good idea, except you'd be stuck with one city if you start in mediocre terrain. To grow to size 3 (and build a settler), you need at least one grassland, ancient forest, or food bonus. While that's fairly common, AIs always settle exactly where they start, and some of them will end up crippled by their starts. Plains in particular ore only good with irrigation. Either force everyone to start in a government like despotism, or just leave it the way it is. It's not a big problem, though it does make energy focusing powerful because faster irrigation equals faster growth.

Anyway, in this game I'm taking a halfway builder/warmonger approach to try stuff out. So I built basic improvements then went to war with bowmen. I attacked Vlad, so it wasn't much different than from before the expansion. Well, I chose to attack Vlad instead of Mordja because Mordja had built spider mastery early on. Those things are 4.4.2 beasts now, and I did NOT want to fight them with 3.2.2 bowmen. Those are great stats for something that comes so early, but you should get something good from a wonder. They look great too.

The war with Vlad went well because he had already been fighting Tauron. I advanced to the next age and got life VI for free, and I traded that to Oberic for life V. Now I've got guardians and sorcerors, both of which are very powerful units. It only takes 30 mana to upgrade bowmen to guardians, and at 5.3.2 with an extra hp, they're stronger and cheaper than chaos knights. They were blessed by the "later units are stronger" wand, but the stuff I'm fighting against wasn't. Sorcerors are also quite a bit better than devils or necromancers and not very expensive. I suppose I've got a bit of a tech advantege right now, so I shouldn't complain about having stronger units.

I've just declared war on Sss'ra. He's got lots of chaos warriors, and his towns are defended by human warriors (a bit odd choice by the AI). There's a few devils and chaos knights running around, but my guardians should be able to handle it.

Anyway, it looks good all around, though there's balance issues to think about. I haven't gotten my UU yet (or seen anybody else's). Do the UU's cause golden ages?

I'm playing as Merlin, got almost to the second age, and I'm currently at war with Lo Pan. I must say that the sorcerors seem a tad overpowered. At Life 5 I get defense 6 sorcerors, whereas he gets attack 5 chaos knights at Chaos 5. So the chaos mage is not the offensive powerhouse he used to be. I think Life has too much of an advantage at level 5 tech. Here's the breakdown of the units provided at 5:

Life: Sorceror (2/6/1 - 40 shields)
Chaos: Chaos Knight (5/2/2 - 60 shields) and Devil (1/3/1 - 25 shields)
Death: Necromancer (1/4/1 - 30 shields)
Nature: Ent (4/3/1 - 45 shields)

Now I know I haven't taken hit point bonuses into account, but it seems to me that Life gets a huge advantage at Life 5. Lo Pan is running around with his Chaos Knights, but I'm not worried since my Sorcerors outclass them and have catapult support. I also started with orcs nearby, so I have orc camps in almost every city and my units are all veteran. Black Orcs on offense are also chewing through his pitiful defenses. So in short, I'm really taking it to him. With sorcerors in my cities and covering my stacks, I'm pretty much unstoppable, unless he brings up a dozen or so catapults, which the AI most definitely will not do.

I think a defense reduction is in order for the Sorceror. At least Chaos has a chance with its 5 attack Knights. If I was fighting a death opponent with comparable tech, he would have only shadowmen (3/3/1), and they would just get slaughtered.

That's how I see it. Hope it didn't come out too critical. :)

First of all, thank you all for the feedback. Nice to see that people are playing the beta and reporting back. :)

@Disenfrancised

I fixed Oberic's trait.

I'll look at the UU stats more closely and see if I can tinker some more with them.

If half-price granaries are too strong, I could of course remove their agricultural flag so that they cost equal amount to everyone.


@nullspace

You got me excited about the more varied traits. It could also be a subtle way of doing the secondary magic. What I thought of (and put some rough sketches on paper) was that all mages would have 3 traits. Their current ones + one additional. Out of four mages in a faction, three would get one of the other factions' own traits and one would get an additional bonus trait.
Example:

Rjak - death mastery, energy focusing, mana channeler

Mordja - death mastery, charismatic, nature mastery

Vlad - death mastery, mana channeler, sage master

Kharan - death mastery, water elementalist, warlord

I may have to come up with some new names (Life mage with death mastery as a perk sounds a little silly), but other than that, I like the setup.


About the irrigation prereq. I tend to agree with TLC that waiting for it can be tedious. Maybe if I make granaries cost equal amount to all mages, it helps with the nature vs. others problem.

UU's do cause golden ages.


@LeeT911

You have an excellent point (And don't worry about sounding too critical. Being critical is part of being a beta tester. I much prefer honest criticism over mincing words just for the sake of not hurting my feelings - I've got a two inch mental skin, I can take it. ;) ) Your point also brings me to the issue of new unit stats:


Am I on right track with the way I've changed the unit stats?

I believe it was nullspace who brought up the need for steeper progression in unit stats. I agreed with him and I still do, but I've started to worry, whether I misplaced the point where the stats start to rise or simply overdid it.

I have a feeling that I started upping the stats too early - early part of MoM has been rather balanced IMO. I have a nagging feeling that I should've focused on the late-game units instead of both eras 2&3.

So should I get back to the drawing board, reinstall 1.0 units stats and increase the later game unit stats more moderately? I know it's probably too early to tell based on playtesting, but I feel like playtesting the current setup is time wasted on a flawed concept. Now that I look at the transition from era 1 to 2, I see loads of pitfalls - units becoming useless and dated too quickly and some units being too powerful.

Early game also has other incentives than units driving the player forward - essential improvements and stuff. Later on they play lesser part and units are emphasized when advancing in tech. Price/quality ratio also goes down towards the later game (units aren't as strong as their price would indicate) so late-game units benefit most from the stat lift.

When I try to load the Master of Myrror, the following error occurs

File is missing:
art\advisors\borgio_all.pcx
Civilization 3 will now quit.

Is this a common error? Do I have to reinstall Master of Myrror?

Note: I have not yet played any version of Master of Myrror yet.

Edit: I am using the latest version with the patch.

@n12m13

Ummm. Two days ago you said you only have regular Civ3. Have you invested in Conquests or are you trying to play the mod without it?

I'll assume that you have Conquests. Your error report would suggest that you have installed the 2.0 beta to wrong directory. Nobody else is getting that kind of an error so it's definitely a case of wrong installation. Read again installation instructions and follow them closely.

hmm i just looked at tech tree and one thing does strike me well two one is that Life path has icons of units produced with each civ advance... right on the civ-pedia tree..
should try updating the others
it becomes a pain when following chaos ,death or nature..


It seems to me especially in stages1 2 3 that Life has a disticnt unit advantage over death and choas.. units..
Now dont get me wrong im al for right makes might..
but.. I think some balancing could be done..
the example given above of Life 5 units
and of the chaos knight being less than blessed(no pun)
and look what death has at the same tech lvl..:(

I dont know what you did.. in terms of Boosting.. But it seems like maybe a few oversights happened..
or some sort of oversight formula... to aply

if you do go back to 1.0

for example.. each unit of def or attck or .5hp boost .. has an equal cost...
that way the units arent all carbon copies

but all have a cost and attck def move hp bonus etc..etc.. that balance... while not being the same as every other faction at lvl (X)
did that make sense??
there are of course exceptions rationale for having something being almost the same or the same but cost less for one particular wizard..etc

But those should be Exceptions and exceptional..
Balance is the hardest thing to achieve without losing the differences that make it interesting..

@BradRinWi

All mages have roughly the same amount of units. Life has basically one additional early game unit (Cleric), but others make it up with more later game units.

Yes, the balance is off regarding units of different mages.

It was rather hard to understand your post - the latter part of it is still a mystery to me. I'm sorry to complain about feedback that I get, but it has to be understandable so that it can be beneficial.

The more I think about it, the more new stat system feels like a mistake. I'm considering very strongly returning to 1.0 stats with some tweaking at high end units. I don't know if I'm even equipped to handle a stat rehaul of this size right now. I would like to get 2.0 done as quickly as possible so that I can focus on my studies.

It's not decided yet, but it sure looks tempting. Why reinvent the wheel when all your current one really needs is more air pressure and new hubcaps?

I bought the expansion. I think i did the right directiry. Ill look into it more.

It turned out that during the upgrade to beta 2, quite a few files hadn't gotten installed

@n12m13

Good to hear the problem was fixed. :)

A little worrying though, that the installation may skip files like that on occasion.

Anyway, welcome aboard. Hope you enjoy Master of Myrror. :)

Would four additional race resource be a completely idiotic thing to do? There are more mages now so there are less resources per player. I'm also pretty interested in the idea. I've already done preliminary planning and it would seem that I might be able to scrape the 20 required units together...

Let's hear your plan then... :)

Well, it's just rough sketching... The four new unit groups that came to my mind (read: have lots of similar units made or getting them in the near future) were:

Chaos Dwarves (chaos)
Nomads (life)
Amazons (nature)
Nightlings (death)

CD's are self-explainatory, they are naturally aaglo's in-development chaos dwarves.
- Axeman and Sorcerer are already made. Bull Taurus is probably coming, Kinboat is making one and then there are possible future additions + Whirlwind machine.

My first reaction to Nomads was CamJH's Aielmen/Maiden, but they are rather similar (don't show progress in tech) and there's only four of them. Then I decided I could go for Kinboat's Egyptians.

Amazons have plenty of units.

Nightlings could be replaced with Hobgoblins if I can't palette-edit all of their skins blueish-purple. Sneaky Git turned out ok. There are two made and possibly some more in the future. If not, I can always change plans or be creative.

Out of 20 required units, I have 14 at the moment. :)

Hey, there's also the chaos dwarf earthshaker cannon (good - more arty for chaos... :p ) and the bolt thrower for hobgoblins. ;)

I've stayed away from mixing arty with infantry/cavalry so far. I'd like to keep it that way. If I include the arty, it would be a bonus unit much like three races have one naval unit in addition to their land units.

heya drift

1 sorry i was un intelligible..
but that doesnt matter

i think your on the right track ewith tweaking the wheeel rather than reinventing math and physics

1.0 modified moderately.. at middle and high end and a slight re balance at lower end should be great..

as for the four new unit groups is a good idea with the potential for more players to share the same resources.. and the fact that the graphics exsist or will shortly is a big plus..

btw any thoughts on monastaries??

so far i do love 90% of the changes.. and going back to the 1.0 unit stats with some low end rebalance and some higher end boosting would resolve most of the rest

IMHO. of course..
no mod is perfect no game is perfect..and everyone has different taste

But your mod is one of 3 and based on one of a very few game systems that comes close

@BradRinWi

Don't worry about me not understanding, this time I got your message perfectly.

Thanks for the feedback. I've done some small balancing to the 1.0 stats and they look pretty good. I'll continue to tweak them though.

Monasteries are still on the to-do list. Haven't given them much thought with all these unit stat problems keeping me busy.

I think you should be able to make a race out of the Aiel, and possibly some more, maybe add some horse archers or something...
Personally I think that the Amazons are silly, and most of the units doesn't look very good. I wouldn't include them, but then, that's only IMNSHO.

I dislike the Amazons as well. I'll try to think of a replacement for them.

Hi Drift, great to see your expansion is out! :goodjob: :goodjob:

I haven't actually played it yet - this evening, hopefully! - but the expansion looks great! I'm especially looking forward to playing the new mages and I'm real excited about the unique units! [dance]

Just one thing: I see you're already thinking about going back to 1.0 with some tweaking...for chrissakes, why?! Would that mean giving up the new mages and UU's? Pleeeaaase, noooooo!!!

Give some more of us a chance to try out your Beta before throwing it all out - or making too drastic changes - there's such a thing as responding TOO quickly to every criticism on the thread... give us a chance to play a couple of games through, first.
Of course, ironing out bugs is something else again - patch away! :D

@Dragonlord

No, no... I'm talking about going back to 1.0 unit stats. All other changes and additions would remain in place. :)

I am a little hasty sometimes, but with unit stats I pretty much know what I'm dealing with: endless balancing and tweaking with uncertain consequences. In retrospect the new stats were a mistake and shouldn't have been included in 2.0 in the first place.

I'm probably putting out a small patch tomorrow with tweaked 1.0 unit stats.

That's a relief... *wipes sweat from brow*

I understand that there are some issues with unbalanced units, but overall I feel it's a good idea to have a steeper progression of unit stats - personally I like having some incentive to keep up the science race in the game.
On the higher difficulty levels - I play DemiGod and up - there's no fear of running away with the tech lead, which would unbalance the game with a steeper progression, I admit - maybe that is a real problem on lower levels.

I guess I'm naturally affected by the fact that my skill level is somewhere around Warlord/Regent. :lol: It's a good thing I have superior players testing the mod. :) Balancing the mod for both groups and the people in between can be a little problematic sometimes.

Running away with tech lead isn't the only problem, there's also the matter of how quickly units become outdated and how much AI hurts because it doesn't upgrade enough. MoM's tech tree with the race techs, or "AI speedbumps" as someone called them also makes it easier for human player to race his own branch for a higher level unit and take out AI that advances more evenly.

I will do some adjustments to the unit progression so that some units reward the player a bit more than they used to. Hopefully it'll turn out ok.

I would have my suggestion ready on a piece of paper. It has 2 unique units each magic (with some spare units in case of you not liking my plan:D), techs and stats planned ready and also mages given the sec. magics. Do you still want to read it? It would use mostly the units from WH 2.0 but also other units not yet included in MoM.

Of course I want. Can't promise I'll follow your advice though, but I will read it carefully.

BTW do you mean an actual piece of paper or a piece of paper in Word? ;)

Actual paper. The post will deliver it to you before Christmas.:p



Or then I'll just copy it to Word asap and post here. Which do you prefer?

Actual paper. The post will deliver it to you before Christmas.:p

Or then I'll just copy it to Word asap and post here. Which do you prefer?

You can decide. Naturally typing it to Word is less hassle, but you need to do some extra work when compared to just mailing the thing. Also, the sooner I get it, that much better chances it has to affect things. Development advances a lot before Christmas... :)

After hours of considering I decided to post them here.

First of all, I would like you to know that I don't know crap about Master of Myrror outside this mod so you'll have to rename the units and consider them carefully.:p

So, here is the plan:

Unique units:

Nature:
Lion Mistress (WH2) - Nature V - 6.4.1
Great Eagle (WH2) - Nature III - 4.2.1
Other possibilities: Lion warrior (utahjazz)

Life:
One of the Aielmen - Life IV - 2.4.1
Sea Giant (aaglo) - Life IX - 7.3.4
Other: Mounted Rohirrim (utah), CamJH's next units

Chaos:
War Mammoth (WH2) - Chaos VI - 5.5.2
Fire Giant (aaglo) - Chaos X - 5.8.1
Other: Chaos Dwarfs (unless you make them resources), Asha'man (CamJH)

Death:
Nazgul (mrtn) - Death III - 3.3.2
Black Ark-ship (aaglo) - Death IX - 6.6.3 transport: 4



Mages and Secondary Magic

Life:
Oberic - Life
Merlin - Chaos
Galen - Nature
Ariel - Death

Chaos:
Ungor - Life
Tauron - Chaos
Sss'ra - Nature
Lo Pan - Death

Nature:
Minerva - Life
Raven - Chaos
Freya - Nature
Tlaloc - Death

Death:
Kharan - Life
Rjak - Chaos
Mordja - Nature
Vlad - Death


This way every mage would be genuinely different and thus the mod would be more fun to play. And there also would be some interests to research also other than "own" magic techs. The unit stats may need some balancing but I believe they are about fine. And yes, I think those aaglo's giants are good enough if the original spider and the hellspawn are :p

So, tell me what you think? I do hope this leads to something.

...Death:
Nazgul (mrtn) - Death III - 3.3.2
Black Ark-ship (aaglo) - Death IX - 6.6.3 transport: 4
...
Nazgul is too LOTR-specific IMO, better rename it. Grabbing a bunch of undead unit names from ToT gets: Fell Wraith, Barrow Wight, Lich. Fell Wraith was a mounted unit in that game... Maybe MoM can give some names too.

@Lusikka755

Thanks for the feedback. Some initial thoughts:
- Are unique units mage-specific? Do they replace regular units?
- Great Eagle and Black Ark are in the mod. Eagle is a Nature Mage aerial transport and Black Ark is a Death Mage late-game naval transport.
- Original spider isn't in the game any more and Hellspawn blends in with other units reasonably. Aaglo's old giants don't blend in and they don't look very good. Mrtn's Nazgul is IMO simply too black. Sorry. :( (edit: now that I think of it, Nazgul does fill the graphical requirements of the mod. It's more of a case whether it's needed.)
- I'll consider the other suggested units and/or their stats.
- What would secondary magic do? Would it give the mage access to the units of his secondary magic type or what?
- I honestly feel the improvements, wonders and race techs are enough of an incentive to research the other branches.

I really hope that any new units don't go outside the list of those in teh original Master of Magic game. I think the original game list was sufficiently broad that there isn't any good reason to step beyond them anyway. It would be like the Warhammer mod including TSR's umber hulks. Sure, they're cool, but then it wouldn't be true to the original source material, and couldn't really justify keeping the original name that inspired it.

I'd make an exception for sea and air and artillery, where teh original game didn't really expound on all that much.

@rhialto

You're in for a rude surprise as many of the new units don't have their origins in Master of Magic.

I've never said Master of Myrror is a Master of Magic mod so you shouldn't treat it as one. All I've said is that the mod is based on Master of Magic loosely. It has never even tried to be 'true to the source material'. Whenever it has been possible, I've tried to stick to the stuff that is familiar from Master of Magic, but I've mixed in my own vision from the start and the end result is a fantasy mod with strong MoM influences, but a nature completely of its own. Not for a minute have I considered this to be a weakness.

I started a game palying as Galen on the chieftan level (I'm not to good). SO far I have about 12 cities, lvl 5 life magic, adn I'm way ahead of everyone else, in cities, tech, gold, and about equal in units. I think the barbarians need to be a little more powerful. Not a single unit of mine has died because of a barbarian. I think you should wait a bit more before giving teh drak tower or whatever. So far this mod is great. I hope you continue developing it. The only piece of critisicm is that the tech tree is way to straightforward. Also I think I should only need the first 3 or so lvls in each category of magic to advance to the next age.

n12m13, you get huge bonuses against the barbarians at chieftain level (800% IIRC). You're more advanced than everyone else because of the difficulty level, it's nothing to do with the mod. :)

Dargon lord does have a point I play at emporer lvl and some times demigod..

so Im glad to hear that some of the unit boosting..based on incentive to devlop tech and higher lvls isnt going to be trashed ...


barrow wight is a lord of rings term as is balrog and many others...
so its noit technically any better than nazgul though less known perhaps
But tolkien pretty much coined the term..in modern usage..
unless you go back several hundreds of yrs..


ummm
otherwise great mod drift.. I look forward to any further betas and patches...

It seems like you have a "vision" and arent easily diswayed from it though willing to listen..

which is a good quality

Brad

@n12m13

- Like mrtn said, the barbarians are weak because of your low difficulty setting.
- I could of course give Dark Tower a prerequisite tech, but why?
- Tech tree stays as it is. It's one of the unique things in the mod and I like the freshness of it when compared to the traditional, more interweaved tech tree. It's not something for every mod, but I view it as a strength, not a weakness. Why should first era be over after three techs in each branch?

@BradRinWi

I'll have to be careful with the unit boosting though. After all, majority of players don't play Emperor or demigod. Balance at all levels is naturally more important than tech development incentives at high levels. The latter is a nuisance, the former a game ruining element.

I do have a vision and I can be hard to sway. :) However, during the development of 1.0 quite a few suggestions from testers made it to the final product. I guess things are more set in stone now, even though I am still willing to listen. Back then I was also willing to listen, but also willing to rip things apart and build then differently just to get some cool thing in the mod. ;)

Mod development just has to be either centralized or a team effort with clear division of responsibilities. MoM is being run by me and I can't take everyone's advice. There has been only instance when I was ready to share power. During late summer I felt like I had lost my inspiration with MoM and needed something to spark up the project, so I offered embryodead co-working with the mod, but like I expected, he was too busy. Results would've probably been interesting. :)

Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta 2 (1.5MB) (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/MoM_20_Beta1_to_Beta2.zip)
Before installing, make sure you have Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta1 installed.
Extract to Civ3\Conquests\Scenarios\. Overwrite existing files.
Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta 2 - Patch 3 (0.4MB) (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/MoM_20_Beta2_patch3.zip)
Before installing, make sure you have Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta2 installed.
Extract to Civ3\Conquests\Scenarios\. Overwrite existing files.

Changelist Beta2:
- return to 1.0 unit stats with some tweaking. Generally low level units remained as they were in 1.0 but high-end units got a slight stat lift. This should reward lategame tech research with more powerful units. Some unit prices were also tweaked (usually downwards) to better represent unit's strenght.
- trait system redone. Each mage has three traits. Formula is as follows:
"Mage's faction's own trait + Mage's secondary faction's trait + one of the four traits that don't belong to any faction." Those mages that are purely one type of magic get two additional traits in addition to their faction's own trait. This is the only way secondary magic is included in the mod.
- Some traits were also given better names.
- Civilopedia polished a little.
- Some minor bugfixes.
- Some small balancing. Granaries aren't half-price for agricultural mages. Drake Mastery produces Doom Drakes at correct pace. Maulers come at Chaos XI instead of Chaos X...

Changelist Beta2 - Patch 2
- Artillery's stats were fixed (this is identical with the earlier mini patch).
- Dragon Shrines were given wonder splashes so they don't crash the game.
- Artillery costs were fixed and their pedia entries were made clearer.

Now that the unit stats are back to normal, there is less urgent stuff to test. Naturally other additions need testing as well, but the biggest obstacle between the mod and ultimate balance has been removed.

Now I'll probably take it easier with the mod for a while. The addition of four new resources is still on paper, but it's going to take a while before I come close to having most of the units. In the meanwhile, keep playing and reporting what you think of things. Naturally there are less to report with the old stats making their comeback, but I will be reading and acting on feedback if it requires my immediate attention. My plan is however to focus on Mr. Henry Kissinger and his actions with Argentina in 1976 for a while. ;)

@Lusikka755

Thanks for the feedback. Some initial thoughts:
1. Are unique units mage-specific? Do they replace regular units?
2. Great Eagle and Black Ark are in the mod. Eagle is a Nature Mage aerial transport and Black Ark is a Death Mage late-game naval transport.
3. Original spider isn't in the game any more and Hellspawn blends in with other units reasonably. Aaglo's old giants don't blend in and they don't look very good. Mrtn's Nazgul is IMO simply too black. Sorry. :( (edit: now that I think of it, Nazgul does fill the graphical requirements of the mod. It's more of a case whether it's needed.)
4. I'll consider the other suggested units and/or their stats.
5. What would secondary magic do? Would it give the mage access to the units of his secondary magic type or what?
6. I honestly feel the improvements, wonders and race techs are enough of an incentive to research the other branches.

1. No and no. They would be extra units in addition to mage's own units.
2. Then use the other possibilities. I haven't played death mages that much :blush: Isn't there many sizes of great eagles in WH2?
3. Well, I wouldn't complain about aaglo's giants... Any chance have aaglo to remake them?
4. Good!
5. Exactly, but those units wouldn't be available to those who have that magic as primary magic. Only for the secondary. But it could also be access to some of the units the mages on the other magic type already have.
6. But there are some techs that have one wonder that is no use. I have put them in those techs by the most part.

@mrtn: That's what I said. Drift should consider the names himself 'cause I don't know anything about MoM.

It seems I'm in the minority though... :(

@Lusikka755
1. With units that don't replace any other units, comes the problem of upgrading. I don't like units that don't upgrade (and it shows in MoM). I should play WH2 more and see how the stricter upgrading embryodead favors works in practice.
2. I don't know exactly. MoM already uses two sizes of the eagle. Smaller one is the nature mage hawk.
3. I don't want to sideline aaglo from his current hobgoblins and chaos dwarves. ;)
5. I see. Very similar to what I thought of when considering the secondary magic units. I will think about it, but I can't help feeling that it's a tad cumbersome and hard to balance...
6. No use wonders? I know there are less useful wonders in there, but I've considered all of them worth building in certain situations. Besides, regular Civ3 has techs with no benefits at all and numerous techs with nothing but a single wonder. I won't cram the tech tree full just for the sake of it. It has a reasonable amount of stuff already.

I'll consider your suggestions, but at the moment I can't promise they make it to the mod. I'm sorry about that, but I need to stick to my own plans when I feel they are closer to what I envision to be best for the mod. Naturally, feedback can change things - for example, if I get a lot of requests to include secondary magic in a more drastic form, I'm more inclined to follow the feedback and include it.

@Drift:
1. If you don't like that maybe the first of the two units could upgrade always to the second one. Then we'd have to put the ships off though.
2. I thought there were three.
6. No use wonder is especially that wonder that requires both chaos and nature nodes within city radius. That never happens. Same with the vanilla Civ3 Iron Works. About Civ3 having "useless" techs; yes it does and I don't like it. That's why I don't play it very much anymore and have modded it quite a bit. If there is a "mistake" in regular game it doesn't mean it should also be in the mods;)

Anyway it's up to you if you add the secondary magic or not. :) But if somebody else likes my idea, please say that. I would still like to emphasize that it would make every mage genuinely different. I think two same type of mages are too much the same. Just like in regular Civ 3 all civs are.

I like your other plans though. The additional race resources sound great. :goodjob:

BTW, I have noticed you haven't added my building graphics in the latest patch yet. Have you forgot them or cancelled them?

I have played both Master or Myrror and Warhammer Mods for some time now and i wonder why the 'wheeled' units are not used in MOM? At least in WH mod the inability of standard units to use mountains made fortresses finally an usable option rather than nuissance. Atleast when playing standard Conquest without any mods the fortress option was almost totally useless.

@Lusikka755

I'll keep those suggestions in mind. I don't like 'useless' techs as well, but I think additional wonders or stuff like that is more suitable filling material than new units. New units should be added for different reasons (although filling for tech tree can be a partial reason).

I can also try to think up some ideas of my own for differentiating the mages more. Can't promise that I'll come up with something intelligent, but I can always try. :)

Your buildings are still on the list. I haven't forgotten them, but I have forgotten to include them in a patch with all these other troubles taking up the spotlight. I'll get to them at some point, but them being just graphical updates, it's not as urgent as the things I've done so far. :)

@Warriori

Welcome to CFC.

Wheeled units, hmm. Artillery is wheeled in MoM, but you're probably talking about extending wheeled tag to units like cavalry.

My own opinion about impassable mountains and extensive use of wheeled units is that the sum of their plusses and minuses is roughly zero. Yes, it does add variety as mountains create natural barriers and different units are required for different terrain, but it also creates frustrating situations and trouble for AI. I've never gotten excited enough of the idea to consider including it in MoM.

I like beta 2.02 very much and i can understand being careful about boosting

I believe most ppl probably dont play at demigod or emporer lvl but some do..
and a well balanced Mod remains so throughout any difficulty lvl..

I am bugged by the no unit icons on the tech tree except for life..

but thats a minour graphical thing...

I still need to play nature and chaos .. to fully form an opinion
so far seems nice im a bit perplexed why shadow demon death 15 is less powerful than arch demon .. chaos 15..death seems kinda weak.. but i havent played them fully yet.. just starting so maybe it all balances into 2nd and 3rd era..

@BradRinWi

Achieving good balance for all difficulty levels would probably require removal of certain features. I'm not going to go there. What I'm looking for is good balance for lower difficulty leveles and reasonable balance for the high-end.

I can't do anything about the other branches not having unit icons. They are units the player can't use (as they belong to other mages) so their icons will be automatically hidden.

Units of the different mages have varying strengths. That's what makes the mod interesting. The point isn't that all mages have equally strong or even identical units at all times, but that the units of the different mages would differ. Shadow Demons are weaker than Archdemons because that's the way I want it to be.

Besides, I'd say Shadow Demons are a tough enemy even for the Archdemon. They are cheaper, create Wraiths out of defeated enemies and have strong enough an attack to beat an Archdemon. Also, Archdemons are meant to be one of the über units of the mod.

Death mage units don't often have as good offensive stats as the other mages, but their defense is among the best, units are generally cheap, they can support the largest armies, most units create new ones out of defeated enemies and they aren't really that far behind the other mages when it comes to offensive. Also, they have really strong navy and a pretty good government.

Got the new patch and started the first game as the new Chaos mage, Unger, on DemiGod. I'm having a tough time keeping up in tech and have to pay tribute regularly while I build my army, but that's as it should be at this level. Seems balanced enough up till now... I'll see how it goes.

I like the new trait system and the UUs (though I haven't seen them yet in my game ;)

Just one thing: what did you do to the bombardment units?!? A fire catapult now has only 4 rather than 6 in 1.0... and it says in the pedia that a regular catapult has only 2!!!! bombardment! Who would ever build that? Totally useless...

I'd strongly recommend going back to 4 - 6 - 8 for catapult - fire cat - trebuchet.

Ah yes, the bombardment units. I had forgotten about the changes I made to them. What I was trying to do was lessen the strenght of chaos artillery as the AI doesn't really know how to use it so the benefit is mostly for the player...

*checks unit stats from regular Civ3*

:blush: well, it seems that I remembered the regular game stats wrong, catapult doesn't have bombardment of 2. I'll go back to 4-6-8-12. Sorry about the hassle.

edit: this problem has been fixed in Beta 2 - Patch 1.

Here's a mini patch with just the new artillery stats:

Thank you, that's what I call good support! :goodjob:
Firaxis, take note.... :mischief:

no prblem drift . I had only just started my death mage game so i was just giving first impression Life i have plaYED EXTENSIVELY i like

nature chaos and death im just starting to get into mid game...

looks good so far..

just played death thru your right defense and navy make up for any lacks..



thanks for the artilery fix

I got the Following Error Message while playing, think I was just about to build the Dragon Shrine as a life Mage.

Missing Entry in "Scenarios\MoM\text\Pedialcons.txt":
WON_SPLASH_DRAGON_Shrine_Life

Sorry if I am posting a prior problems but with 50+ pages its to much to go back and read them!

BTW Thanks for the hard work, I have been haveing alot of fun with this!

btw re units not visible on tech tree

youre right..hmm never payed attention to it before cause i usually play life...


thats actually a neat idea Not showing units on tech tree that cant be built..by the player unless you.. explore the tree itself

@Antipaeter

Thank you for the bug report and welcome to CFC. I can't believe what I've been thinking when I forgot to add wonder splashes for all dragon shrines. Meaning that every one of the dragon shrines causes the game to crash. Don't build 'em with current versions.

Oh well, I better get to work with this - patch to follow later today. :)

@BradRinWi

That's how the basic Civ3 also works. You don't see the UU's of other civilizations in the tech tree because you can't build them.

Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta 2 - Patch 3 (0.4MB) (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/MoM_20_Beta2_patch3.zip)
Before installing, make sure you have Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta2 installed.
Extract to Civ3\Conquests\Scenarios\. Overwrite existing files.

Changelist:
- Artillery's stats were fixed (this is identical with the earlier mini patch).
- Dragon Shrines were given wonder splashes so they don't crash the game.
- Artillery costs were fixed and their pedia entries made clearer.

To get the new artillery stats you need to start a new game, but the dragon shrine problem should be fixed for your existing savegames as well.

@BradRinWi

That's how the basic Civ3 also works. You don't see the UU's of other civilizations in the tech tree because you can't build them.[/QUOTE]


you know its funny but since i had been such a huge supporter of the orignal CiV and played it to excess I never got into civ 2 et al..
when i found civ 3 and had enough time I installed it and the same night Put warhammer and Mom on and never actually ran a Normal Civ scenario..
LOl

btw just finished a Vlad game the civ entry for vampire lords says stronger and faster than normal vamps But .. the only difference is a 2 move instead of one...

did you forget to boost when going back to more familar stat system??
or did you forget to edit the civ pedia entry ..??
just curious

@BradRinWi

Forgot to edit the pedia.

Thanks for reminding me. I'll have to check for similar mistakes with the other unique unit pedia entries.

Started a new game as Ssra and found another little niggle with artillery after the mini patch:

The Fire Catapult only costs 15 shields now, though the pedia says 25. I guess while you were experimenting, you lowered the costs as well as the stats.
While I don't mind getting them cheaper :D it does seem a little too much help for the human player... better raise the costs again.
Better check the costs for the other artillery units as well..

@Dragonlord

Thanks again. :)

Edit: download the fixed patch two posts below.

I just got an error telling me the PediaIcons.txt is missing the "ANIMNAME_PRTO_Hellfire_Catapult" entry, and the game promptly kicked me out. I'm guessing this is related to the artillery changes somehow. I haven't built any catapults yet in my game, so it was probably the AI (building catapults? is that even possible?). I would've taken a screenshot but I don't know how.

I looked through the PediaIcons.txt, and there is no entry of that name, although the "Hellfire_Catapult" is referenced a few times. I'm not sure what unit this is. The Fire Catapult?

I swear, I spent too long a time away from modding, these mistakes are the stuff of amateurs. I'm actually pretty pissed off at myself.

So, here we go again.

Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta 2 - Patch 3 (0.4MB) (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/MoM_20_Beta2_patch3.zip)
Before installing, make sure you have Master of Myrror 2.0 Beta2 installed.
Extract to Civ3\Conquests\Scenarios\. Overwrite existing files.

Teaches me to test my stuff instead of relying on it working just because "I've done it thousand times". Thank you LeeT911 and sorry everyone. Even though it's a beta, some stupidities have no excuse. Like forgetting ANIMNAME entries.

Edit:

And yes, the Hellfire Catapult is something of a placeholder. I thought it was a little confusing with the chaos/others versions of same unit so I gave the units different names and individual pedia entries. I'll probably come up with better units and names for finished 2.0 but for now, it's just chaotic versions of normal artillery.

Chaos artillery line:
Hellfire Catapult
Chaos Trebuchet
Hellcannon
Steam Tank

Artillery line for others:
Catapult
Fire Catapult
Trebuchet
Cannon

Hey Drift,

So, finally got around to registering to post on the forum, so I could comment on Master of Myrror. :D First off, great mod. I've been playing and re-modding it for a while now, and have a some additions I enjoy, and a bunch of other comments I thought I'd mention, offered with the greatest respect:

1. Upgradable wizard units. I really liked the Shogun upgrades in the C3C scenario, so I added an upgrade series for the king units in MoM. I'd be happy to send on the specific stats if you're interested in incorporating it. Basically, each faction has different unit abilities (so the stats for Oberic and Ariel are the same, but different than Rjak), with 6 levels, which upgrade at magic levels 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15.

2. I've been experimenting with incorporating the Sorcery faction (Kali, Horus, and Jafar), though it's a ways off from finished. Biggest flaw is that there is a max of 4 prerequisites for a tech, so all 5 can't be required for, say, Mastery. :(

3. In regards to whomever mentioned the Aiel units (can't remember, too lazy to search back), they would be ideal for use with a Nomads race, from the original Master of Magic.

4. One thing I'd love to see is Klackons. Granted, they are more powerful when they get starships and head to the Orion cluster, but... they were just so much fun, and such a challenge! Ah nostalgia.... I've worked up some decent stats for race units, and even have a resource icon, but no unit graphics. :( My skill is enough to probably pull out decent units_32.pcx icons, but not the animated dojobs.

5. Is there any way to make specific units immune to nukes? In regicide it just seems a shame that two hits on a civ's capitol destroys the entire civ, as the king invariably dies.

6. Okay, maybe I should go play 2.0 now, and get some more comments.

Cheers,
Clearbeard,
The 6'2" Dwarf

@clearbeard

Thank you for the feedback and welcome to CFC!

1. The reason I'm against upgradable king units is that the AI doesn't understand them. At all. Also, I don't like regicide so I'm not very motivated when it comes to modding the king units (the reason why all mages have an identical mage king unit instead of a customized king)
2. Good luck with adding it. I opted against it a long time ago as I deemed it too impractical, but I sincerely hope you can pull it off. :)
3. Actually the Aiel units are at the moment scheduled to be implemented as the Nomad race resource. Great minds think alike. ;)
4. I have a hard time believing anyone makes units for Klackons, but I'd love to add them as a race resource. I could of course ask aaglo, but I don't think even he wants to take more on his plate. Also, bipedal ants aren't exactly easy to model and animate...
5. I don't think there is, but like I said, I'm not very familiar with modding king units.
6. Good to hear. It's nice to have more people playing and reporting about their ideas and findings.

Darn you Drift! As soon as I start one game, you update it! ;)

hmmm drift your against regicide?? what victory conditions do you set when you play then??

I am curious and would love to know

im curious since regicide seems a logical way to go for MoM.. though i suppose Mass regicide might be valid too.

@The Omega

I see the smilie, but I still want to say that I'm really sorry about the storm of updates. I swear that barring game crashing bugs, Beta 2 with Patch 3 will remain the latest version for a while now. It's about time you people get to play the mod without running into my screwups or noticing that I updated the mod, again.

Edit:

@BradRinWi

I play with 'spacerace', cultural and domination (I think). Regicide just feels silly to me. Kill a king and his whole kingdom is destroyed. I want to take over my enemies, not burn them into ash by luckily getting their leader.

I've yet to finish a game of MoM ( :blush: ) so victory conditions have always been a little theoretic thing for me. Actually, I could start a good game of MoM during the holidays and do some playing for a change. Every time I've played the mod extensively, I've been in the middle of development and the mod has kept changing during my game, so eventually I've started a new game to test the new additions.

I agree with the regicide thing. It just seemed silly that when their king died, the entire nation would smultaneously burn their homes to the ground and then kill themselves. If regicide turned the remaining cities into barbarian cities, it would make far more sense.

I agree with the regicide thing. It just seemed silly that when their king died, the entire nation would smultaneously burn their homes to the ground and then kill themselves. If regicide turned the remaining cities into barbarian cities, it would make far more sense.
It would be coolest if each city just became its own nation, with no diplomatic contact available, and then if one such city conquers another that city becomes the nation that those cities used to belong to (and the rest stay in their independant state until conqeured, with no ability to build settlers.)
I wonder if that's been suggested to Firaxis yet for cIV. =X

Well, more actually minor errors and comments on past comments I've found so far.

1. "spaceship" screen, runes of moon and sun are under "elemental", switched with fire and earth.
aside--is there any historical/literary/linguistic source for those particular designs being those runes? Or are they original random sketches?

2. Playing as Freya this first run, with "accelerated production" or whatever it's called. Growth does seem to be very quick for the druids, even so. I'm actually able to match the emperor AI's settler production, unlike usual. Might need tweaks, but reasonably balanced so far.

3. New 4 mages' civilopedia entries are missing the "more" button for info on the faction they belong to.

4. Was the drop of beholders' defensive bombard intentional? Seems like a logical ability, for what they are. Perhaps make the chaos spider the normal unit, and beholders Lo Pan's UU?

5. As was mentioned earlier, some of the UU's seem underpowered compared to others, i.e. Freya's 6/4/1 --> 6/5/1 vs. Lo Pan's 1/4/1 --> 2/5(6)/1...WOW!

6. Some other minor unit balance issues occur to me, but those may be more personal preference than real issues. I'll post again if any of them seem really unbalancing.

Okay, well that's from the first couple of hours. More playing after dinner, probably, so more nits to pick. ;) BTW, if I'm being TOO trivial, let me know and I'll hush up.

Cheers,
Clearbeard
The 6'2" Dwarf

Beyond making them gold in the .pcx file, any further thought to implementing enchanted roads?

Just because they're so cool, why not make the dragon shrines small wonders? That way everyone can be in on the fun! It still keeps us from the swarms of 100+ black dragons annhiliating everything in their path (like always seemed to happen in 1.0), but we can't have everything. ;)

Cheers,
Clearbeard
The 6'2" Dwarf

@clearbeard

First of all... Aaarrgh! I've meant for the Dragon Shrines to be small wonders, but like you point out, they're not. :(

1. I meant to fix it, but must've slipped my mind. Will fix for next proper patch.
2. Keep me informed on how it plays. Nature mage early expansion has been borderlining on overpowering, especially with the player in reins, but I wouldn't want to touch it too much.
3. Hmmm, I meant to do that also, but seems I've forgotten it. I would also need to rewrite some of Klyden's stuff under "more" as things have changed. Too bad he doesn't hang around here anymore, he was a class tester. :)
4. I've stayed away from defensive bombardment so far. Chaos Spider is an experiment on that department. I'm reluctant to make it more common an ability. My view on it has always been that all it really does is add some variety, but also needless complexity for the combat system.
5. Chaos Spiders may be a tad too strong. Freya's Forest Spiders also get an additional hitpoint as well BTW. UU's are open to discussion and suggestions. Naturally there will always be differences in UU comparable strenghts. Some of them will be a better deal than others. However, I want to take care of the ones that are clearly too strong/weak when compared to others.
6. You don't have to be 100% certain of your own stance in the matter in order to post some balance issues. I'm interested in what units are the ones in question.

There's no such thing as being too trivial. (well, I guess there is, but you're not even close to it) :)

Enchanted roads are unfortunately out of the picture. The discussion about whether railroads should be implemented has occurred from time and again in this thread and always I've had to say no. If there only was a way to limit them instead of ending up with continents filled with enchanted roads... Infinite movement takes away most of the strategy and 'medieval' feel of the combat and makes attacking a lot more difficult due to instant reinforcements. It just doesn't feel right.

Thanks for the feedback. :)

But the dragons... I won't make a formal patch out of this yet, but here's an updated biq with Dragon Shrines as small wonders. I hope nobody ends their current game just because of this.

Curses! Another update! ;)
I'm just glad I've decided to wait until I'm sure there's no more updates before I start a new game. :)

@The Omega

I can't make any promises, but I firmly believe that now is a safe time to start a new game. I even started one myself. I'm playing Ungor and I'm almost through the first era. Should've picked Regent though, Warlord is going too easy so far, but it's been a long time since I last played the mod so I decided to play it safe.

I'm playing a game as Minerva on deity on the latest patch, minus the updated for the dragon shrines.

Full price granaries are a good change. Nature mage expansion is a bit less insane, though still very good. Nature mages aren't particularly good at anything else, so their expansion has to be good. But now some other mages have the druid trait, and it might too good for them. It's kind of weird most mages have entirely different traits than they did before the expansion.

I fought against Tauron form a pretty bad tech disadvantage. I had beornings, catapults, and half-gnolls. He had devils, chaos warriors, and had just gotten the tech for chaos ettins. It was tough going when my borders were being flooded by the devils and warriors. I didn't have the tech for embassies and didn't think I was going to make any progress. But then Tauron was building ettins, and couldn't produce them quickly and I was able to wipe him out. I got a bit lucky when Kharan attacked Tauron from his back, but he would have been better off building chaos warriors, which are half the cost of the ettins. So I still think higher tech units should be stronger, though it doesn't seem like many people agree with me. Maybe its the cost of units that should be adjusted. There aren't any production boosters until death 8, so a cost of 60 for a chaos ettin, or 80 for an earth elemental is a lot.

Beornings upgrade to earth elementals, not ents. Is there a reason for that? By the time I get nature 5, I'd much rather be able to upgrade beornings than to still be able to build them for cheap. On a related subject, curraghs don't upgrade at all, but they should go obsolete some time so they're not always on the build list.

I captured spell of knowledge from Tauron, so I'm caught up in tech now. Just started building some hounds. An extra attack and move over centaurs is pretty amazing, but they do cost 10 more. I suppose they're the cavalry to the sorceror's musketman, so they're not that powerful.

And finally, is there any reason behind the way the dates are numbered? You're just using the same years/turn as unmodded civ, but starting at 0 AD, right? The only gameplay effect this has is the 1000-year culture doubling, so if there's a different scale that makes sense, you should use it.

@nullspace

The other mages with the druid trait don't have irrigate without fresh water though, but I do see your point. Agricultural is a very strong trait. As for the completelty new traits, yes, I pretty much built the system from scratch. Some continuity would've probably been nice there. New system just made it pretty difficult to achieve.

I think I'd rather adjust the cost than the stats of units that don't give enough bang for the buck. I did notice the problem of Chaos Warrior -> Chaos Ettin in my ongoing game. I've known of it, but this is the first time I really focused on it. I think the start of second era is the hardest part of cost balancing. Like you said, first production booster comes at Death VIII, but the new units that come at VI and VII need to be more expensive than their predecessors.

So, Chaos Ettin and Earth Elemental are definite candidates for a cost reduction, EE especially - it's cost was meant to be 70 so it's extra expensive at the moment. I believe there are others as well, for example Cursed Legionaries can't stay at 45 if Chaos Ettins come down to 50 (would 50 be enough BTW?). I'm open to suggestions on the matter.

Beornings not upgrading to Ents was part of giving the player an option of building cheaper units, but I believe that if you feel it's redundant, I can safely change it. After all, you've been a big fan of favoring cheaper, lower level units over more expensive high tech ones. :)

Curraghs going obsolete... Good idea, but I'm not sure how I would go about doing it. Is the unit really required BTW? Should naval expansion start with mages' first own naval vessel instead of the shared curragh? I don't play archipelagos so I'm a little biased, I guess the curragh is very useful when you start from a small island, but I've found myself starting the sea exploring with the Galley equivalents.

Great feedback, thanks!

For my money, curraghs can be dropped entirely. I've played about equally on the three land types, and usually build one on archipelago maps, to send a settler early to a nearby island, but that's usually not vital and could wait until the galley transports, which are rather early after all. Another alternative is to use a cyclic upgrade tree for the ships, i.e. curragh --> death galley --> chaos galley --> life galley --> dreadship --> cog --> caravel --> ghost ship, which I think is all the transport ships. Perhaps add a human longship --> caravel upgrade step, too, as they're not useful if you can build caravels or ghost ships. As with UU upgrades in base Civ3, if a race can't build a unit on the tree for whatever reason, the upgrade just skips it. I don't know of any way to just obsolete a unit though, without having something it upgrades into (like you could in Civ2).

Cheers,
Clearbeard
The 6'2" Dwarf

@clearbeard

I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think there's some hitch in using cyclic upgrade path for the ships of MoM. I'm not sure though and I'm in little bit of hurry right now. I'll check it out.

I think removing curraghs is the most attractive option at the moment. They are not a big problem, but they are somewhat redundant and hang around in the already crowded build list forever.

I think the start of second era is the hardest part of cost balancing.

So, Chaos Ettin and Earth Elemental are definite candidates for a cost reduction, EE especially - it's cost was meant to be 70 so it's extra expensive at the moment. I believe there are others as well, for example Cursed Legionaries can't stay at 45 if Chaos Ettins come down to 50 (would 50 be enough BTW?). I'm open to suggestions on the matter.

Yeah, tech advancement around there is wierd. Sage wizards get their free techs, and sometimes it takes a very long time to get your V tech, since you can only buy and sell them with wizards of your own magic type.

Those sound like good changes. I think cursed legions would be fine at 40 or even 35; they don't have bonus hp. Also, the centaur is pretty bad compared to other cavalry of the time when looking at attack power/cost, but maybe that's intended.


Beornings not upgrading to Ents was part of giving the player an option of building cheaper units, but I believe that if you feel it's redundant, I can safely change it. After all, you've been a big fan of favoring cheaper, lower level units over more expensive high tech ones. :)

Heh, I like artillery and cheap units even in the unmodded game. That feature is much appreciated for acolytes and clerics, but having to wait until nature 8 to upgrade beornings is a bit much. If you REALLY want to keep building beornings, you don't have to research nature 5 for the ents (which takes a long time). I was crawling with beornings before I got there.


Curraghs going obsolete... Good idea, but I'm not sure how I would go about doing it. Is the unit really required BTW? Should naval expansion start with mages' first own naval vessel instead of the shared curragh? I don't play archipelagos so I'm a little biased, I guess the curragh is very useful when you start from a small island, but I've found myself starting the sea exploring with the Galley equivalents.


Curraghs get eaten by kraken before they get very far, but they're still useful for contacts if you're isolated, or general exploration if you're water elemental. I think the trick is to give them a unit to upgrade to, but don't give them the "upgrade unit" action. That way they disappear from the buildlist but can't upgrade.

One more thing about the traits: the Mystic trait doesn't make any of the shrines cheaper, and there's no government changes, so it's the weakest trait by a long shot. That was OK when only death mages had it (they had other features to make up for it), but it's wasted on the other mages. Cheap shrines are a must, the well of souls could stay at its current cost because it has lots of other features.

IIRC, there's a bug/feature allowing units without the "upgrade" order to upgrade regardless.

Personally, I can't see anything wrong in letting curraghs upgrade to the first racial transports.

Just finished my first game, not counting the dozens of restarts cause I am not that good ;), and had one more problem to report. When I researched the last tech, I didn't have anything else to select to research and the game wouldn't let me out of the "Select next Tech to research" Screen. I had to quit out of the game restart and turn my economy to 0% research to keep playing.

All in all thought I had a pretty fun time with it and plan to play this some more, um alot more! I think you did a really good job with it!

Thanks again
Antipaeter

@nullspace

Thanks for the suggestions regarding unit stats. Nature is supposed to be a bit handicapped in cavalry so Centaur's relative weakness is intended. I'll look at its stats and price though.

I'll change the Beorning upgrade path and reconsider other such cases where a unit doesn't upgrade to the next in line, but skips one.

I'm not sure, but I believe TLC is correct - you can still upgrade units with the key command even though they don't have upgrade ability. I'm not sure though and can't test it right now. The simplest solution might after all be to upgrade curraghs to racial transports. I'll look into it later today (but won't make a patch, I plan to keep the current version for a while and collect more stuff for a bigger patch.)

You're absolutely right about the mystic trait (sage is for life mages, their names are a bit confusing). Will do. I'll also consider whether the trait could be beefed just a little bit more with something else. With fixed governments, religious is pretty weak.

@Antipaeter

I've had someone report the same bug before. I asked whether he had missed some race tech from earlier eras, but I don't think he replied to that. Did you have absolutely every tech researched? If yes, I'll have to find out what's causing this.

Nice to hear you like the mod. :)

I checked and rechecked a saved game and I had all the race tech's from all the periods.

Feedback: I was a little dissapointed with the Dragon shrine. The Dragons were a tuff unit to try to use and keep alive. The only time I had two of them was after an extended period of peace. After that they didn't last to long in combat. I wouldn't increase the Attack or Defense, but maybe a point or two of movement.

Antipaeter

maybe give a Slight science research. for advances... bonus.. as well as cheap shrines.... to Mystic...

I know its not really science but the age of alchemist .. and mystics in Real Earth spurred some scinece just by the laws of advocay *or devils advocacy...


or a slight bonus to imporvemtns and wonder building

again theres historical/fictional.. basis for it.. the most evil and horrid figures in Rl and in lit.. have also been part of or spurred on or exsisted because of some advanced centers or new centers of thought.// culture.. and or art.. and science..

either one of these (and i do mean small.. something that when combined with cheaper shrines (a nice but Not. all that great... idea)
would put it on par with the Sage cheap sci... Or the ..
druid ablitiy

or the cheap fast warlord ability..

Has anyone else experienced the problem of being stuck in tech screen after you've researched everything?

My only theory about it is that the last era should be the fourth one. Could it be this?

@Antipaeter

Thanks for confirming the tech screen thing.

Dragons too wimpy? I'll keep that in mind, but I would like to hear what others think of them as well. Could it simply be that they spawn too slowly? I also think that the difficulty level is a factor here. I'd imagine that the usefulness of the dragons is heightened at lower difficulty levels and lessened at high ones. Also, size of the map is a factor. I wouldn't want to give them more movement, as they are already able to strike really deep into enemy territory and guarding against even longer attacks like that isn't IMO fun.


@BradRinWi

Thanks for the ideas regarding the mystic trait. I'll start with making sure that all religious buildings are half priced and work from there. Haven't yet decided on the course.

two quick things drift

Great mod


mystic glad you liked the ideas an other way to go is cheap shrines etc

and a bonus to units produced by a mystic.. perhaps .. a 5 shield price break??

or something Mystical like that??
or a random chance of a +1 Hp?? or creating a Elite unit...???
dont know if you can Do random chances like that just thoughts.. and ideas

also dragons I agree with antipaeter...

maybe dragons at 11 or 12 instead of 15??

by 15 maybe a super dragon yes its an embroydead concept from warhammer.. but worth considering

I do think dragson are a Bit unwieldy.. or maybe faster production..
I never managed more than 3 except once when all the Ais were attacking the same target and i got a breather...

last thing for right now

Nature mages i hate em my strongest opponent always seem to be the tree hugging forest dwellers...

Im not sure why but against chaos and other black.. and life mages No problem I always have the #1 civ but whenever my AI generates a nature mage or all 4 of em...
I get screwed...


is it druid and irragate without water... and the expansion that follows or is there some big imblance in the advance line...

Hello again,
got a bit further on my DemiGod Chaos game. I agree that the Chaos Ettins aren't worth building as they are - I mostly built Chaos Knights instead, they're more useful at the same price.

Another small niggle (sorry!): Galens unique unit, the Paladin, has no sound effects at all - neither movement, fight or death sounds. Maybe a file name problem?

Re the Regicide discussion: I also loved the cool upgrades in the Sengoku Conquest, but don't especially like Regicide.
How about making the UUs upgradeable, giving them new abilities with each upgrade? Something like a combination of the Shogun upgrades and the Legionary I-III upgrades in Rise of Rome?
Hard to balance, I know, but it would be loads of fun to play!

I agree about chaos ettins

C knights are a much better deal and cost the same..


I also like the upgradable UUs idea...
hmm new ablities with each upgrade
thats kinda cool...

Yeah, I meant "mystic" when I said "sage" in my earlier post. I edited that so it says the right thing now. Some of the things people have been suggesting to buff mystic simply aren't possible in the editor. My idea is to make the obelisk and monolith half cost. That kind of makes sense, and it makes mystic a very good trait for those with few but large cities. That might be too strong, but I don't think it's any better than druid or energy channeling.

And finally, is there any reason behind the way the dates are numbered? You're just using the same years/turn as unmodded civ, but starting at 0 AD, right? The only gameplay effect this has is the 1000-year culture doubling, so if there's a different scale that makes sense, you should use it.

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this. Umm, what's 1000-year culture doubling? When I changed the system, I had no idea it would affect culture in any way. I'll fix it, but I need to understand what I'm doing.

On to the other feedback...

Like nullspace said, some of the suggestions for mystic trait are undoable. Monolith and Obelisk being half-cost is a very interesting proposal. I'll consider my stance and tell it here before making any changes. Thank you all for the ideas. :)

@BradRinWi

Yup, nature is the faction AI plays best. Probably due to easy expansion and fast population growth. It's hard to tone down without removing their main strenght.

@Dragonlord

I'll try to balance the Chaos Knight and Chaos Ettin (and other cases of cavalry vs. infantry). Thanks for pointing it out.

Paladin will get sounds for next patch. Thanks for reporting it.

Upgrading UU's. I agree, sounds fun. However, I need to conserve my time - already this beta development is taking considerable amount of it. I can't keep just adding new stuff - a line has to be drawn somewhere, especially when the new feature would mean lots of designing, testing and tweaking. :)


Thank you all for the feedback. Please, keep it coming. :)

Re mystic..oops sorry forgot you cant do scripting with civ 3 I hope civ 4 allows it...
hmm maybe something more than monolith and oblisk..
maybe temples too..???
or crypts??


anyways regarding nature .. I understand it kinda sucks.. especially a sage druid mana channler combo like minerva..

she usually gives me headaches..

anyways.. regarding UUs upgradable..

I understand time constraints.. would you be open to Ready to use suggestions from the peanut gallery..
i mention it because this is supposed to be MoM ver 2.0
so would you be open to pre thought out progressions??


i suspect tween dragonlord and myself and others interested in this concept a balanced . logical progression of upgrades.. could come into being..
and even be tested..
just a thought since i really like the idea..

anyways great mod..

@BradRinWi

Temples are religious so they are already half-priced for mystics. Just like shrines and halls of the dead. (I'll have to verify that this really is the case, but that's how it's supposed to be). Crypts are death mage only and all of them are mystics.

As for the UU suggestion, I'm having again a little hard time following your line of thought. :) I believe what you are asking is whether I'd be open to thought out suggestions about stat progression for the upgradable UU's.

I'll have to say "no". There's no harm in submitting such a suggestion, but I'm still against adding the idea. I do think that the idea has loads of potential, but it will have to wait for some other mod to pick it up. Maybe I'll make MoM 3.0 one day and reconsider it, but right now, I'm just too busy and getting the balance right is a priority. Even though you guys would do most of the designing, it would have to be fitted into the current system, implemented, tested, tweaked...

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

no problem understood..

I still haven't downloaded the beta (I'm busy playing one of my first Emperor games in my own mod), but regarding the "too good" Nature mages, what about giving them crappy UUs to balance it out? Give them late ones, then at least they won't expand early and get an early GA.
BTW, do wonders trigger GAs? I think they should...

@mrtn

Unfortunately 2 of the nature mages have early UU's. I'll consider my options, I don't want to touch the units much, I'd rather tweak the nature early expansion directly. I have a feelng it's entirely doable.

Wonders should trigger GAs. It has never happened to me, but it should be set correct.

Temples are religious so they are already half-priced for mystics. Just like shrines and halls of the dead. (I'll have to verify that this really is the case, but that's how it's supposed to be).
Halls of the Dead and Temples are already cheap for mystics. That feature works fine, it's just not enough advantage for the trait. The shrines are full cost, and that seems like a bug to me.

You know, I think nature mage expansion is pretty much fine now. The full price granaries was enough to slow it down. Yeah, they look powerful, but their government is less efficient than other mages' and their units are worse. Life mages typically lead the tech race, and chaos mages can make surprising military gains even when small and their spies are a pain (death mages are still kind of bad in the AI's hands). Plus some other mages have the druid trait so it's not always nature mages who get big. Though I admit, Minerva does have three traits that the AI plays very very well.

Re: "thousand year doubling" - A thousand years after it has been built a cultural building will start producing twice as much culture a turn i.e. a temple built in 1300AD will produce 3cpt till 2300AD after which it will start producing 6cpt. The thousand year bit is hard coded and turn independent (if you have each turn last a thousand years culture would double immediately :)

I would suggest having a constant rate of year passage/ turn as in MoM unlike the epic game there doesn't feel to be an acceleration of development. The longer you have each turn being the easier a cultural victoy will be and the later you will have to switch to it. In the epic game cultural wins their is a pressure to build culture as fast as possible to gain advantage of this.

@nullspace

I like the idea of flagging obelisk and monolith religious (of course, they are already flagged as industrious...) Shrines not being religious is indeed a bug. I'll think more about the subject after Christmas.

Good to hear the nature mage expansion seems to be ok. I also agree about the Chaos and Life mages being where they are supposed to be.

Death mages seem to be either struggling or doing average. Don't know if something should be done. Maybe I should just accept that the AI can't handle them as well as other mages. The player can easily beat the game as a death mage so giving them more bonuses may just imbalance the system. I'm inclined to leave them as they are, but I'm naturally open to suggestions.

@Disenfrancised

Thanks for explaining that to me.

Now all I need is suggestions of what the turn lenght should be. I like the idea of the turn length staying the same throughout the game, but I can't figure it out on my own.


I'll be checking out the thread during Christmas, but won't probably reply much (well, maybe just a little ;) ) Happy holidays to everyone! :)

hmm i just looked at MoM with editor.. and theres no death shrine..
i dont know if thats an oversight there is a cipedia entry for one..
and a pideia icon for one..but None.. under imporvments/wonders


anyways have a merry christmas..

@BradRinWi

Well of Souls is the 'shrine' of death mages.

Just a quick question. I noticed that Essence of Death requires Death Node but Essence of Chaos has no resource requirement. Is that intentional?

@LeeT911

No it isn't. Thanks for noting that, more stuff for next patch. :)

So far, I've got two complaints:
1. Wizards and White Wizards should upgrade to something. I've got over 100 white wizards with nothing to do, just be used as decoys.
2. Death Clouds seem unusaully weak for nuclear weapons. No matter how many I use, there alway seem to be more survivors than normally when I use nuclear weapons.

@The Omega

Wizards are highest tier of life mage defenders. Do you mean life mages need a new, even stronger defender class? I'm not at my own computer right now so I can't check the exact numbers, but Wizards are already among the strongest defenders of the game.

Death Clouds are set to function as ICBM's and their strength can't be altered in any way, meaning that they are just as strong as epic game ICBM's. So I guess it's just in your head. :)

@The Omega

Wizards are highest tier of life mage defenders. Do you mean life mages need a new, even stronger defender class? I'm not at my own computer right now so I can't check the exact numbers, but Wizards are already among the strongest defenders of the game.

Death Clouds are set to function as ICBM's and their strength can't be altered in any way, meaning that they are just as strong as epic game ICBM's. So I guess it's just in your head. :)
1. If wizards and white wizards are some of the best defenders of the game, then defenders really need to be improved! Late in teh game, most units attacks are over 10, and white wizards defense is only 8! Wizards defense is only 7! Dwarves fo up to 9, but i wasn't lucky enough to get dwarves in my game, so my best defense were death clouds (any ship that got near me was nuked immeadiantly)
2. Eh, it probably is all just in my head. the AI was building so many defenders, it took 2-3 nukes to kill them all.

@The Omega

Defenders get bonuses on basically every terrain. If the defenders become notably stronger, attacking becomes frustrating as you bang your head on defenders with defense values that nearly match your offense. I prefer a more offense orientated game balance where attacking is rewarded and encouraged.

We can tweak the defender stats, but they are meant to be able to hold and delay the enemy, not defeat it on their own. I feel they are correct or at least close to correct at the moment.

@The Omega

Defenders get bonuses on basically every terrain. If the defenders become notably stronger, attacking becomes frustrating as you bang your head on defenders with defense values that nearly match your offense. I prefer a more offense orientated game balance where attacking is rewarded and encouraged.

We can tweak the defender stats, but they are meant to be able to hold and delay the enemy, not defeat it on their own. I feel they are correct or at least close to correct at the moment.
Hmmm.....Okay, when you think about it that way, it makes sense.

@ Drift

Turn length should be how fast you think your mages do things; building cities, fighting wars etc. Never having played the orginal game I've got no clue.
The constant turn length fits this mod starting over from some refugees, i.e alpha centurai building with known goals rather than civilisation meandering up from prehistory.
Perosnally I'd say 5-6 years per turn so that you can start on a big cultural drive on turn 300 or so and still have some bonus from doubling before the end of the game. But thats just a shot in the dark :)

Yes, if you make it 1 year per turn, then the 1000 year doubling will never occur, making pretty much impossible to get a cultural victory. Although perhaps a cultural victory isn't really what's intended for this mod.

As to the offense/defense issue, I think it's fine that the late offensive units have more power than the late defensive units. It's that way in the original game anyway. Modern Armour is attack 24, but Mech Infantry is defense 18. So the MI is meat out in the open, but if it's fortified in a size 24 metropolis on hill, good luck taking it out without bombardment...

Don't know about the actual balance in MoM though, since all my games so far have been over before the end of the second era.

RE: Culture doubling/years per turn

One other related aspect is the tourist attraction flag, which lets wonders/sm wonders generate cash after 1000 years. Not a wholly applicable concept to MoM, but same mechanism. As to how long, I've modded my game to a flat 10 years/turn, which seems to work out okay. I never play with the cultural victory condition on, though (it just seems anticlimactic to me). I wouldn't go lower than 5 years, which puts the double point 200 turns after construction , as my games tend to only last 250-350 turns before casting the Spell of Mastery.

RE: Defender stats
They work quite well as they are, imo. Looking at the base game, for example, mech infantry defends at 18, modern armor attacks at 24, so a 4:3 attack:defense ratio is the designers' target. Defense 8 units should be able to handle anything up to 10-12 attack or higher, in favorable terrain (and high attack units slaughter them unfortified in the open, as it should be :).

RE: Nukes
I think the issue with units surviving comes from more and larger HP bonuses than in the base game. I've never figured out exactly how it works, but it SEEMS that nukes deal 2-4 damage to all units in the radius (or a %, like 40-80%, I'm not sure), maybe more in the center square and/or less in the outer ring. That would kill basically every C3C unit in 2 hits, and a good number on hit 1, while especially the trolls could survive 3 in MoM. Still works okay for me, as whenever I go to nuke an opponent, I usually have 50-100 missiles to play with. :P I hate nuking, though (usually build that many as a STRONG deterrent to the AI) and never devoted the brain power to nailing down the scheme.

RE: Regicide upgradable kings
One thing I'm twiddling with now, and will be playtesting soon to see if it works, is giving "king" units the "leader" flag instead of "king", and building games as a scenario, where each faction starts out with a level 1 leader (so they can't build more), who can be upgraded if he survives. The AI still would have no clue, but it would alleviate the necessity of using Regicide to get the idea. If it works, I'll look into adding it on to a future release of MoM for you, Drift. I've already worked out decent balance stats and graphic design for the 4 "races", and with a singularly unique unit, balance isn't as big an issue anyway, just adds a little flavor (as long as it's not a 1000 attack God or anything!). I'll let you all know how it works out.

That's about all my backlogged comments from pre-holiday civ-withdrawal. One general question: what's the deal with having to manually select ALL stealth attack targets? Shift-click etc doesn't work on that box. Anyone have a quicker method of selecting the whole list?

I have had the end-of-tech-tree game freeze once also. Reloading the game at the end of the prior turn and selecting "good lets play the game" at the era splash screen avoided the problem. I have no clue why it happens, other than perhaps the game expects you to end in the fourth era. If so, adding a tech to era 4 like "the last tech" and having nothing buildable from it should eliminate the problem, infrequent as it is.

re death shrines Duh...LOL my bad

umm just looked at ships


life 2 /death 2 /nature 2 give fairly equal ships...

life 2 however seems to give chaos mages a VERY very big edge..
wondered 1 was it supposed to be under Chaos 2?
and 2 .. why the huge navel advantage..
all throught.

@BradWinRi

How so? The war galleys are slower than life, and only have a 2 bombard. It's useful, but not overpowered in my games. The more deadly one IMO is the nature ship, with its 4 defense, giving them rather unhasseled early game passage, both against other players and the kraken! It's defense, so not overbalanced, just the most powerful of the set (to my style of playing anyway).

Thanks for the suggestions regarding cultural victory and turn/year progression. I think I'll start with 10 years a turn.

Nice to hear my sentiments about defenders are shared by most of you.

I'll have to do something about the tech screen crash. One option would be to move all techs one era forward. We'll see.

I don't think the War Galley is a problem. Sea Serpent however was. I'm not sure what my reasoning was there, don't think I meant to have those stats. I brought it down a peg making its defense 2 and price 30. Nature isn't meant to be dominant at seas. Thanks clearbeard.

I could try to reconsider the ship placement in tech tree. The system I use has changed during development and the current one is a mixture of old and new. Some ships are located in life branch even though they aren't owned by life mages. Then again, many ships are located in their faction's own branch (nature mages & death mages) It's a little confusing and even I have a little hard time getting a grip on the subject right now and I think it shows. I'll think about it and get back to it later.


@clearbeard

Hitpoints and nukes is an interesting point. Could well be the reason for seemingly underpowered nukes. (I wouldn't know, I don't like nukes and the only time I've casted one in MoM is when I've been testing the attack animation).

It'll be interesting to see how the leader experiment goes. Nice to hear you like the mod enough to fiddle your own additions to it. If it plays ok, I don't see any reason why it couldn't be included as an alternative playing method. :)

I don't know of a solution to the stealth attack problem either. It's annoying.


In other news, christmas left me a little out of touch with the mod. I've done pretty much nothing regarding development, but I think I'm getting back in to the mood. Aaglo keeps hammering new units so the four new race resources are right on track. I'll just need to finish some other stuff like finally completing our honeymoon video editing (BTW, ~12 hours of minidv-tapes eats an INSANE amount of harddrive space)

"I could try to reconsider the ship placement in tech tree. The system I use has changed during development and the current one is a mixture of old and new. Some ships are located in life branch even though they aren't owned by life mages. Then again, many ships are located in their faction's own branch (nature mages & death mages) It's a little confusing and even I have a little hard time getting a grip on the subject right now and I think it shows. I'll think about it and get back to it later."


this could be part of what in am encountering...
and is causing me some confusion..

clearbeard i like the up gradable leader idea.. and would be happy to help playtest it.. I wish the AI could handle upgradable kings...

but then again i also wish you could script in the Civ3 editor...
(hopefully in 4 you will be able to.)


ohh any word or thoughts on the ultimate fate of monastaries??
first they were in then out then possibly made differnt..

just curious

btw i Do Agree with the concept of Defenders not being a means to winning a battle but an effective deterent /Delaying force.. while you move offensive units into play..

now if only i could convince the AI to swing at my Ghost and leave my Vampires alone.

@BradRinWi

I haven't thought of anything for the monasteries yet. I'll get to it, eventually. ;) Thanks for reminding me.

Do you mean that when Ghosts and Vampires are in a same stack, Vampires are the ones that defend? How's that possible? Ghosts have defense of 5 and Vampires 4.

hmm I believe i saw it happen more than once.. I could be mistaken... it was 2.0 pre switching back to 1.0 modified stats

I could be wrong.. but i belive it happened..

If the Vampires have more hitpoints they usually defend instead a Ghost, because the difference between 4 and 5 is not as big as the difference between one or two hitpoints.

What are the best leaders to play if you're just getting your feet wet with this mod?

Life mages seem good if you like a well balanced position and most any mage with a scientific trait seems to be helpful for starters.

Started a game of MoM 2 with the latest patches, etc. I elected to play Galen. Setting on the game is Monarch.

Getting started was frustrated as the first game I had a great starting postion, but was immendiately hemmed in on 3 sides with little prospects for expansion. Restart game

Game 2, I started in a terrible position with no life nodes around. Restart game.

Game 3, I started on a small island. Got 5 cities built, no life nodes and no luxaries around of course. Did some exploring as I thought the map might be a series of islands. Wrong. I was the exception rather than the rule. Most of the other nations were on a giant land mass and of course, they had traded a ton of tech around, so I was hopelessly behind.

Game 4. not a bad start spot and discovered a life node close by along with probably the potential at 2 luxaries and also, the elves were within distance as well. This is the current game I am on.

I have expanded out as quick as I can, but not fast enough it seems as the AI run civs just kill me with this every game I play it seems like. At any rate, I have 2 Oberic cities to the north of me and 2 nature mage cities up there as well. I have made contact with 1 death mage and another nature mage. My position is not that hot as I am stretched out a bit. My cities produce pretty good and I do have a good military going at the moment along with the option on the elves.

The thing that also hurts in this game is that the other positions just trade tech all over the place. As a consequence of starting out pretty good, I have since fallen behind and in some cases, I am 2 levels behind. Of course, I don't have anything to trade with anyone, so this is going to get nasty. I am ahead of the nature mage to my south, but the rest are kicking my butt. In the VP race, I am next to last and am last in power as well.

Having said all this, my army is about ready to go on an offensive someplace to help this out and I will probably either attack the nature mage to my south (she has dwarf defenders tho, so she might get a pass for now) or the big death mage that is the points and power leader. I only know where two of his cities are, but both are big. Best defender he has right now is the necromancer, so it will be his 4 point defenders with 4 pips to my 4 point attackers with 5 pips. I think the death mage will have a harder time counter attacking my gains vs the nature mage.

All in all, excellent so far as far as appearance and game mechanics and such.

Will report back when I get some more turns going and see if this game is going to shape up to anything.

@syndicatedragon

I'd say pretty much any of the factions is good for starting. Life and Nature are probably the most 'traditional' ones so they might be a good pick for a first game. MoM is different from regular Civ3, but as it's based on the same system, you should learn it pretty quickly. Expect to have a good hang of it by the end of your first game. You may want to set the difficulty setting notch lower than you are used to.

Hope you enjoy the mod. :)


@Klyden

Good to have you back. :)

MoM is probably a little worse than regular game regarding the AI tech trade due to the four branch tech tree. Each mage researches his own branch and trades for the other branches resulting in very fast tech progress. It's pretty much unfixable. :(

Nice to hear that so far the mod looks good. Keep my up to date on how the game goes.


@everyone

Do you feel the race resource units provide enough punch over the mages' own units? I've found myself sticking largely to my mage's own units and used the race units mostly in a supporting role. Trolls and Dwarves are units most mages (chaos has units that mostly match the trolls) can benefit from so they are sort of an exception.
- Death lacks good cavalry so they can use all fast race units. Strong infantry doesn't hurt either. Their own defenders are strong though.
- Chaos has bad defense so they need race units with defensive orientation. Their infantry and cavalry is strong.
- Life doesn't absolutely need anything as their unit set is very balanced on its own. Strong infantry can be useful though.
- Nature can use stronger defenders and better cavalry. Infantry is strong.

Is the balance between race units and mages' own units right? Do you people play mostly with your own units or the race units? Should the race units offer more and actually be better than the mages' units? At the moment I think they are pretty much on par with the mages' units and their usefulness is often decided on what mage you are playing.

One thing I noticed about the governments.

Chaos spies and diplomats are elite.

Everyone else is regular.

Not sure of the reasoning behind this, but I would think Chaos would be the last to have really good diplomats and spies could be iffy.

My thoughts:

Life Diplomats: Elite. Spies Regular
Nature Diplomats: Vet. Spies Vet
Death Diplomats: Regular. Spies Elite
Chaos Diplomats: Regular. Spies Vet.

@Klyden

The elite diplomats only affects the cost of diplomatic espionage missions. I think. It does sound a little stupid to have chaos with elite diplomats, but that's just the way the game treats the espionage system. Apart from setting up embassies, there's hardly anything diplomatic about the missions 'diplomats' can do (investigate city & steal tech)

I've treated both the diplomats and spies as simply 'espionage' and I think it fits rather well that the chaotic factions excel at it. Also, it was a nice perk for chaos mages to have. I've also kept the system simple so that the advantage of the chaos mages is clear. I could of course rename the concepts of diplomats and spies to something more fitting.

I guess it would depend how you look at these things....

If spies are perceived as ability to work in dark places (and with less-than-questionable individuals), I would think that Chaos would definitely have an advantage in this area relative to more ethical groups.

Certainly the opposite argument would be true for diplomats, where appearances and credibility would mean more.

I don't have a problem with Chaos' elite spies. I also think that there should be some variation between the groups, not make all of their spies veteran etc. That defeats the purpose of having each group be somewhat better at certain tasks than others.

Happy New Year to all.

Misfit

Play test as Galen continues:

Around turn 108, I was able to find out about most of the other civs:

VP total on 108:

Mordja 16555
Freya 14705
Ariel 13605
Kharan 13550
Ungor 11815
Tlaloc 10380
Vlad 9255
Galen 9110
Oberic 7105
Minervia 5150
Merlin 3500

Power scale

Kharan 1272
Mordia 1269
Freya 1227
Tlaloc 1227
Minerva 1104
Ungor 1069
Vlad 1041
Merlin 895
Ariel 820
Oberic 694
Galen 510

My army is ready and it is time to pick an opponent. I decide on Kharan, despite knowing he is very powerful. I have 3 cities my units can ambush and with Death being mostly foot, I hope to hang on to what I have.

The intial attack goes pretty well as I capture 2 of the 3 cities I was aiming for and also have the third city pretty much bagged. No real response yet from Kharan, but I know he is coming.

Next turn I bag the remaining city I was going for and Kharan starts to exert pressure on the center city. Over the next couple of turns, I realize there is no way I can hold the center city, so plan on a fighting withdraw. His army is very strong and has a good mix of all units. I loose the center city and he continues to advance, taking heavy casualties as I do hit and run on him with my troops.

After doing some diplomatics with other countries, I find myself in the same old situation.. far behind in the science race. I am ahead of only 2 other civs and of course, they don't have anything to trade me for the tech I have and the other civs have nothing they want from me for me to try to catch up. I find myself really frustrated with this part of the game. I have extra luxuary items and the other civs are not interested in them at all or will offer very minimal amounts (had one offer 2 mana per turn for 2 lux). I wound up giving some away to maintain good will. It is not like I am in the diplomatic hot box with my attack as I had not broken any deals, etc.

For Minerva, I don't think she had a very good starting spot and this might explain why she is having some issues. I find it interesting that at the bottom of the power list are the life mages and the death mages are at the top.

At this point, I am going to retire from this game.. I stand little chance of stopping the hordes of Kharan and am so far behind in tech that it won't matter.

The tech issue seems to be a bigger one in this version. While I had it as an issue in the first one, by playing races with science as a trait, I was able to compensate enough. That does not appear to be holding for this version. I wish I had a better fix, because it is terribly frustrating for me. I don't really want to play on a lower setting than Monarch as most people think that is too low anyway, but I am getting beat badly in both science and expansion during the initial phases of the game.

@Klyden

I don't know what to say. I don't think I've done anything that should affect the tech balance from 1.0 majorly... Wait, I just rememberd that there is the AI to AI trade rate number in the editor. Currently it's the same as in regular game:

Chieftain 110
Warlord 120
Regent 130
Monarch 140
Emperor 150
Demigod 160
Deity 170
Sid 200
(I could rename those difficulty levels to something more magical BTW)

Maybe I should bring these numbers down a bit. Perhaps a reduction of 10 for all levels for starters?

New game as Lo Pan on Monarch.

Not the best of starting positions with no water, but there appear to be some lux items around and I also have men in easy range along with a chaos node. We shall see. Lot of hills and rough terrain. Those with ag bonus are going to be a bit better off I think.

I get going and early in the game, discover Merlin dumping settlers and such at an incredible rate. Sheesh. He pops probably 3 cities on the