Final Fixes Reborn

black_imperator said:

unless i'm completely mad, manas are resources same as the other ones, nothing dll specific to them

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Strange. I seem to distinctly remember asking for it in the old RiFE threads and basically being told that I'd need to dig into the DLL if I wanted to add a new mana type and have it display on the side bar and all that.

Maybe I should just reorganize my old work and than post a concept thread for all the details of what I envision. And see how far things have changed toward allowing me to accomplish it.

Gratz on the move. Hope you enjoy your new place.

i'm quite sure that you just need to make sure that your new bonus has BONUSCLASS_MANA as class

Either way, here is a link to my ancient thread. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=361509

Also, I want to know something. Would it be possible now to create a building that acts as a corporation? As in, a building that gives you +1 per each of the same resource (so 20 pieces of wheat = +20 ? ) I know I could just create a custom corporation that spreads automatically, but that's too easy from a play balance perspective as it would give players access to that bonus too early. An early-mid game building sounds much better. And I know how I could hack it (have the building spread the corporation via python) but I don't think the AI would be able to work with that (would it?).

currently, only building i know that does this kind of resource affinity for building is the cave of ancestor, and that's all in python

Wow, I must be really out of touch with the game. You guys made quite a lot of changes since RiFE. I mean, would the AI understand it needs to collect resources to keep its health up if I used the python only method?

Out of curiosity. Has someone compiled a unit upgrade tree of some sorts?

not specifically without dll, but the AI will almost always try and control resources anyway.

One more suggestion I originally made for RifE a few years back -- you can see the original discussion on pages 75 and 76 of the Rife Ideas, Requests, and Feedback thread, but I'll summarize here.

New Infernal World Spell

I suggested at the time that the Infernals' world spell be improved/changed/something, because right now it's pretty useless, at least when used by an Infernal AI against a human player.

What I've seen happen against me is the Infernals cast Hyborem's Whisper and take one of my AV cities, but they're invariably far away and therefore can't possibly defend the city they've taken. I demand that Hyborem liberate the city, he refuses, then I declare war and walk in. World spell wasted.

One significant difference between Hyborem's Whisper versus other world spells such as Stasis, World Break, River of Blood, Raging Seas, or Arcane Lacuna, is that those other spells adversely affect all other players more or less equally. The Infernal world spell, by contrast, adversely affects only a single opposing player, so in that sense it seems unbalanced. So while those other spells are annoying, it's not quite the same as losing a city with several levels of the Altar of the Luonnotar in it and having to rebuild all that from scratch.

Anyway, Krieger66 came up with an idea, which Valkrionn modified. Of course, development on RifE stopped, so I don't know if it would have ever been implemented (Valkrionn said although this is what he himself would do, he would have to discuss it with the rest of the team), but here's what they came up with.

New World Spell-The Forsaken Path

Infernal units receive a promotion that causes them, if they die in combat, to create a hellish flames in the square they died, which spawns units for the Infernal civ.

The duration of the flame would change by level, lasting 5 turns + (Unitlevel - 1)*2. And-a possibly OP suggestion, units spawned from the flame gain half the experience the sacrificing unit had when they are spawned.



To balance out the the Infernals' inability to take a well-developed city, maybe have them start with an additional Settler and several Supplies, so they can quickly build up a new city?

I kind of like this idea, even if it wasn't mine, but not wedded to it. I just think the Infernals could use a better world spell than the one they currently have.

i do agree about the need for a better worldspell for the infernal, and this seems like a nice idea, i'll keep it in mind for the infernal civ review.

Here is a random thought I had. Would it not be fun if the mercenaries hired via the Guild were given a random racial promotion from among the basic races to represent the idea that they are mercenaries from all around the world.

@black_imperator:

Krieger66 had also originally suggested that enemy units killed would add to the Infernals' mana stockpile, but I'm pretty sure that was based on something Valkrionn had said about changing the way mana was going to be handled going forward. If that's not going to change, then no reason to incorporate this into a new Infernal world spell.


As for mercenaries, there was some discussion of that before RifE stopped further development (see pages 68 and 69 of the RifE Ideas, Requests, and Feedback thread).

Valkrionn said that mercenaries were going to be completely revamped and mentioned the Dune Wars mod. I've never played Dune Wars, but saw in the forums here on CFC that it used TheLopez's Mercenaries mod component, which, if memory serves, allowed anyone to hire and fire mercenaries of varying unit types (I'm pretty sure I played another mod that used it).

One big problem with Guild of the Nine is that it can potentially give a huge advantage to the player who builds it, especially a human player. Mercenaries are almost as strong as Champions, and you can set your science slider to zero for a few turns to crank them out and quickly beef up your military. Whenever I build it I know that I'm not likely to lose militarily.

i'd love to add the mercenaries modcomp at some point, but that's long term stuff too (also i'd need to find the source files for the modcomp which seems to be difficult).

Is it possible to cap affinity somehow so that it does not run away too far?

if it's the basic bonus affinity that is in xml for units, not currently, if it's the python version, you can do whatever you want ^^

I see. In that case I'll probably go for a +10% fire affinity via Python. At this point I am pretty much dead set on screwing the AI over anyway.

Also, here is a balance question. Is replacing the regular cavalry units (chariot, horseman, horse archer) with an UU that has -1 movement but can blitz by default OP? I am basically trying to balance out the fact that there is no proper cavalry line for my race.

not necessarily. it is powerful but i don't think being able to attack twice is that interesting for the average unit

black_imperator said:

not necessarily. it is powerful but i don't think being able to attack twice is that interesting for the average unit

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Basically this is my concept for the unit tree of the race.

Melee:
Warrior and Axeman remain the same but can't get any metal weapons at all.
Champion can get bronze weapons and maybe Iron. I am still debating that.
High tier units (berserker, immortal, phalanx) can get all weapons.

So their melee line is weaker than average. And they get no bonus to offset it.

Archers: remain the same as default units.

Divine and Arcane:
They can't adopt religions. And their mage line is limited to learning Fire, Creation and a third school of special spells. They do however start with access to healing promotions usually reserved for disciple units to offset the loss of those. And the unique school contains some useful spells such as one that greatly buffs their melee units at a terrible price.

Can not purchase with experience

+100% chance of wearing off per turn

The unit is destroyed even if it wins the battle

+1 Fire Affinity

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Artillery:
I am going to allow them to use regular artillery units. I think. I might actually take catapults away from them as well just to make things harder and force people to focus more on getting that fire mana. I probably will.
And their cannon UU is going to be different. Possibly worse at bombardment in favor of doing fire damage or something. Am still working on that.

Cavalry:
They have no cavalry.

Recon:
To offset the loss of cavalry and the general ability to damage stacks and retreat or do collateral damage before fireballs the recon line is converted into a skirmisher line. This basically means their hunting units lose the bonus against animals in favor of a retreat chance and cavalry like flank attack abilities.

And it's for these, in particular high level recon that I am contemplating adding blitz as a default promotion.


The ultimate end goal is to have combat with this civ revolve around using skirmishers to soften enemy stacks up and than melee units to break them. The civ would always have to balance (using Creation mana) and (using Fire mana) with the added ability to compensate for the lack of by turning their melee units into suicide squads.

looks interesting. We might want to start discussing it in chat to clearing this thread for bug reports ^^

I might start a new thread, or restart the old one. I don't really use chats. They don't mesh well with the IP hiders I routinely use when online.

Done: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=361509&page=11
Let's continue the talk there.

I'll be dropping you further questions on that thread than. Hope you check up on it from time to time.