tesbs further flavored civilizations [development thread]

Valkrionn said:

Part of the reasoning for my method is honestly balance. With it done in the city, everything must be balanced for that city. Any sacrifice must be made up for by an equal or greater amount of benefit, to make it worthwhile. As a feature, though, it suddenly becomes balanced for the empire. This means you can have some cities take a hit, and become less productive, in return for your other cities being safer and better able to focus on economy.

So basically, with the city method you've got a city that is hard to attack, but does absolutely nothing for the rest of the empire; Armies can go around and attack the non-hidden cities the same as always. With the feature method, you have an empire that is harder to attack, as a well placed Mist-city can block entry to the empire. Makes me much more willing to accept massive hits like no trade.

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To make the tradeoff worthwhile, the Sidar would need some way to mobilize extremely quickly, as a smaller standing army is the main (only?) way to better focus on the economy.

This could be achieved by an option to recall units who have joined cities as specialists. A bit messy to code, i am sure, but it would make for a very unique gameplay.

Till said:

To make the tradeoff worthwhile, the Sidar would need some way to mobilize extremely quickly, as a smaller standing army is the main (only?) way to better focus on the economy.

This could be achieved by an option to recall units who have joined cities as specialists. A bit messy to code, i am sure, but it would make for a very unique gameplay.

Click to expand...

Ah, but I'm removing the 'shade into specialists' feature. Instead shades get a special form of immortality... %chance each turn to be immortal, based on their level.

So a smaller standing army could be VERY effective, particularly if you keep leveling them past level 6.

tesb said:

this is perfect

just one question what happens if the overall chance is negative for example:
I guess the chance has to be positive to hinder the unit from attacking and if it is 0 or negative the unit can attack?

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There is a minimum chance for the effect to trigger, 10% or so

tesb said:

I will make the following changes:
- Hidden City: reduces the worktile radius to 1, increases defense, decreases damage to the city defenses, mediocre bonus to mist, bonus to specialists in the city, increased food income.
- Mist (can have more then one): increases the mistdensity, reduces the trade routes by 1, decreases the food income by a small amount.

If you cast the spell once you will have city with worktile radius of one, nearly full trade capacity, better specialists and a better food income.

If you cast the spell more then once the trade routes will disappear, the food income will be reduced but the city gets more and more protected.

I will also add a spell that lifts the mist, but for that i would need a reversed <CreateBuildingType> ==> <RemoveBuildingType>

So a player can choose how much economy he wants to sacrifice to additional protection. The spells themselves will have a considerable cast time so you have to plan in advance.

how does this sound?

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sounds good. Might have to block it in MP since there are OOS issues with the Jotnar who use 1tile radius cities.

edit: the new required tags are in Patch 8.20

thanks for the tags, i already found them. it was the first thing to do after downloading the patch

sounds good. Might have to block it in MP since there are OOS issues with the Jotnar who use 1tile radius cities.

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Why not make a multiplayer version where the line <iPlotRadius>1</iPlotRadius> is removed in both files from the jotnar and sidar?

1)
i finalized the sheaim and included the new tag. they should work fine now.

2)
i am nearly done with the sidar, that means i am done but i need someone to tweak the worldspell for me, so that when cast, it will not only hide all units, but also hide all cities:
<CreateBuildingType>BUILDING_HIDDEN_CITY</CreateBuildingType>
<CreateBuildingType1>BUILDING_MIST</CreateBuildingType1>
in all cities.

i also made a little overview over the whole concept:


i updated all strategy, help and pedia entries.


all those spells needs sidar civilization, pass through the ether technology and lvl 6 arcane units. all have a cast time of 10.
the spell hide city gets obsoleted by intensify mist 1 which gets obsoleted by intensified mist 2 and so on until your reach intensified mist 4. this makes for a very smooth and simple gameplay.

instead of raising the bonuses to specialists with the hidden city, i instead gave 4 free specialists to use. i done this for two reasons:
1) you already get a bonus to all your specialists via the palace
2) the tag that increases the yield of specialists, increases it in all cities making it ridiculously overpowered when there are multiple hidden cities.

I will update post 3 with the new files. besides from the worldspell all changes should work fine with the current version of wildmana, so if you want to test these changes go ahead and install the files in post 3.

@sephi/ modders:
can the ranged warfare ability be mitigated? (for example if it would use collateral damage i could just make the units immune to it)

tesb said:

@sephi/ modders:
can the ranged warfare ability be mitigated? (for example if it would use collateral damage i could just make the units immune to it)

Click to expand...

currently not but interesting idea to use collateral damage protection for it

added the python for the worldspell

great!
thanks

Some nice improvements here
But it is a littel boring to watch every tar demon to attack mature cities..

yes
you might want to turn on quick attack and no combat zoom in the options ^^

What if mist had a small chance to produce Mistforms in the same way the Ancient Forests occasionally produce Treants for FOLlowers?

I am going to merge the modules so you get some more feedback.

For the Demonic Enclaves, to use these tags you need to put in BUILDINGCLASS_X, not BUILDING_X

In this case you would need to change buildingclass of Planargate from civBuilding1 to Buildingclass_planar_gate. I will add it.

tesb said:

I will also add a spell that lifts the mist, but for that i would need a reversed <CreateBuildingType> ==> <RemoveBuildingType>

Click to expand...

If you still want to do this I can add the necessary Python for it.

thanks sephi, i knew i could do that to solve the issue, but id did not know if this would cause issues elsewhere. i am always a bit cautious changing the original files.

Edit:

If you still want to do this I can add the necessary Python for it.

Click to expand...

honestly i do not know. while it would make the module round it could screw up the ai, casting hide city, lift fog, hide city, lift fog, ...

i do no think it is of importance since the downsides of the hidden city are not that big anymore.

if you think it is necessary i could add a spell, that would be no problem for me (if you provide the tag)

Sephi said:

There is a minimum chance for the effect to trigger, 10% or so

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Whoops. I forgot about that.

Please increase the MistDensity of the "Emperor's Hand" building to 46%.

EDIT: Ambiguous. iMistDensity to 46.

@sephi
if you already merged this:
there is a typo in the history for intensified mist:
it should read: The fog can be intensified four times.
not: The fog can be instensified four times.
(see the screenshot in post #66)

you will find this entry in CIV4FurtherFlavor.xml under the tag:
<Tag>TXT_KEY_SPELL_INTENSIFY_MIST_PEDIA</Tag>

i work on the next update, it is coming today or at least very soon*.


*i mean soon, not blizzard or valve time

tesb said:

@sephi
if you already merged this:
There is a typo in the history for intensified mist:
It should read: The fog can be intensified four times.
not: the fog can be instensified four times.
(see the screenshot in post #66)

you will find this entry in civ4furtherflavor.xml under the tag:
<tag>txt_key_spell_intensify_mist_pedia</tag>

i work on the next update, it is coming today or at least very soon*.


*i mean soon, not blizzard or valve time

Click to expand...

responded to duplicate entry in 8.2 bug thread by gw

I'd move the Hide City spell to Deception and let it be castable by Adepts, and have the Intensify Mists at Arcane Lore, Strength of Will, Pass Through the Ether, Omniscience. This way one can actually plan for and utilize this strategy without waiting for the end game (at which point the winner is usually pretty much decided anyway).

As of now, whenever you cast the worldspell all your cities become hidden. It is only later (@passage through the ether) that you can intensify the mist or hide additional cities you build or conquered after casting the worldspell.

However it might be appropriate to attach this to a different technology, i leave that up to sephi. You also do not need archmages, just arcane units with lvl 6, this can be adepts too.