FfH2 0.33 Changelog

Sounds awesome. I'm especially looking forward to the AI tweaks, but there's a lot of exciting stuff in there, including performance improvements. New art is always a very welcome sight, too.

Also, great to see that Cephalo's mapscript made it into the release at last.
 
Someone mentioned the Kuriotates above. Flavorwise, Tolerant seems like a trait Cardith Lorda absolutely has to have, even though he's unlikely to be able to make much use of it.

Yeah, from a flavor perspective it works so well for the Kuriotates. But it doesn't mesh with the Sprawling trait at all. At first we were goign to make the Kuriotates the Tolerant civ and move their Sprawling trait to another civ. But we backed off of that because everything in the Kuriotates design is because of sprawling (special buildings, centaurs, huge late hero) so moving the trait would mean a design challenge for the civ that recieved it and for the Kuriotates.

So we looked for other civs that we could see as allowing local customs to remain and the elohim were the next best choice. They also suffer from being very bland wthout a significant gameplay mechanic or uu's. So it made for a great fit both on the flavor and on the function.

The trait rewards warmongering, so its a little odd for the elohim. But placing it in a civ thats good are warmongering makes it to powerful. The nice thing about implmeneting it as a trait is that its easy to move around. I'll be interested to hear the playtest feedback once people have a chance to play with it.
 
...will Perpentech and/or the Adaptive trait ever be allowed to be tolerant? And if so, what happens should the trait change?
 
I think Sprawling would fit well for the Malakim. Because Settlements don't produce anything, it wouldn't matter if all the surrounding terrain was Desert. And many have stated a desire for a greater synergy between Malakim and Desert.
 
...will Perpentech and/or the Adaptive trait ever be allowed to be tolerant? And if so, what happens should the trait change?

No, it isnt a pickable trait. If you allowed the player to change this trait it would invalidate all the things this trait allowed them to build (like building something that requires a resource but losing the resource halfway through). Thats also one of the reasons we dont allow the individual city culture to determine which build orders they have access to (we'd hate to have it switch off half-way through). Culture driven build orders are also frustrating because players like to make plans for their empire and its hard to do when the city changes and you lose the ability to make what you were planning (sliding scale problems).
 
If the Elohim capture a Khazad City, will the doKhazadTurn update the captured Dwarven Vault properly (based on Elohim Gold Per City), strangely (based on Khazad Gold per City), or not at all (stagnant at whatever vault level you captured)?


Kind of sad to see the Gypsy Wagon removed. I just got done writing code to easily move their effects into the SDK and allow them to stack, was hoping to maybe get you to slide it in with a .33 release :( Ah well :)

EDIT: Another question on Tolerance: Does it modify the chances of buildings being destroyed when the Elohim capture a city? It seems like it ought to, especially since many buildings are only destroyed because they are Civ Specific.

Hrm... what happens if they capture an Infernal City? Can they get Demonic Citizens (they aren't THAT tolerant!)?
 
4. Illusions cant be upgraded to golems/elementals/etc anymore.
I take it this stops units from purchasing any usually-unpurchasable promotion which it normally stars with?
7. Unhappy production is now calculated correctly from Governors Manors and the Pillar of Chains (fixed by Sto!).
Can these stack now? I hope so. Ideally I'd like unhappy citizens handled just like specialists so you could edit a lot of things. (For example, they could generate GPP for a great person type that you would not want to get.)
1. Added the Jungle Altar, Necrototem and Warning Post improvements (for scenarios).
Care to Share any more details?
2. Added the Tolerant trait (captured cities maintain their ethnicity for build orders).
I don't like this. The Elohim are already too good as a militant civ, and this would only encourage more conquests. I don't see the Elohim as being tolerant enough of other cultures to build Vampires, Pyre Zombies, or any Infernal units either.

I'm still thinking the Elohim leaders should have the Spiritual trait (they are the spirit civ after all, so they should either have the trait or the trait name should be changed to "Zelous" or something), but 4 traits per leader would be too much.

Lastly, I don't think that who built a city should have much bearing on who lives there or what it should build. Build orders should really depend on the city's dominant culture. I'd rather that be a game option, and the presence of this trait makes that seem less likely to happen.

(Tolerant would also make much more sense for the Kuriotates, and if it went by Culture it wouldn't be so bad combined with Sprawling. You might need to change their world spell though.


I was actually thinking recently that it could be good to get rid of Settlements altogether, and instead make Sprawling work like Jeckel's JCityLimit modcomp, and also add his JCultureControl modcomp to let improvements extend cultural borders.)
3. Improvements and Features can trigger a python script when a unit moves onto the tile.
4. Improvements can trigger a python script when a unit is one tile away.
Awesome. I expect to use these quite a bit.
10. Removed the Serfdom civic.
Well, I never used this one anyway.
11. Added the TumTum unit (barbarian hero).
Any details?
12. Added the Desert Shrine building (Malakim UB, replaces the Pagan Temple, loki).
How does this differ from a normal Pagan Temple?
20. Removed the Gypsy Wagon unit.
21. Removed the Gypsy Camp building.
Why remove these?
28. Added python callback blocks for the Combat Result, Plot Revealed and Unit Move python functions (for performance).
Very nice. Do these work like the PythonPostCombatLost/Won and PyPerTurn? What files are these in, just CIV4UnitInfos.xml?
29. All spells are now pre-qualified in the SDK to minimize python calls and improve performance.
Very nice, so long as nothing is hardcoded and <PyRequirement> still exists for modmoders to use.
30. Removed the Dragonship unit.
I rarely used it. You might want to consider changing ships entirely, perhaps borrowing from ORBI modmod


1. AI will pick starting locations based on 2 ring cities instead of 3 ring cities.
Including Sprawling trait leaders?
4. Good AI's prefer to research Orders from Heaven, Righteousness, Honor and Way of the Wise.
5. Evil's AI's prefer to research Corruption of Spirit, Malevolent Designs, Decption, Necromany and Way of the Wicked.
Do these mean more python hardcoding (which I've always hated) or did you move to a system that weights things by alignment?
6. Units strength makes up a larger part of players power/score (it will help the AI make more reasonable attack decisions).
Promotions should really play a part in power ratings too. The AI always tends to underestimate small elite armies, and thus attack when they have no real chance to win.


6. Hyborem loses the Expansive trait and gains the Spiritual trait.
I still think Hyborem (and Basium) should have more traits than most leaders. Changing Expansive to Spiritual is a good start, but why not also add Aggressive, Arcane, Raiders, Charismatic, etc.
7. Os-Gabella loses the Spiritual trait and gains the Industrious trait.
Frankly I don't see how either of these is thematically appropriate. Arcane seems most appropriate, but of course that might leave Os-Gabella and Tebyrn with the same traits.
11. The Crusade civic grants 50% free military units from population.
This still seems awfully weak. For starters, I think that this civic should grant a significant amount of free xp in cities with the state religion.
21. Temple of the Empyrean loses its -10% military production and gains +10% research (loki).
The old bonuses never made sense. I think I still prefer my change of making it slow military production and boost the GPP rate.
22. Beast of Agares doesnt cause rioting or population loss in Infernal cities (loki).
A needed change.
4. New Yvain model (and Yvain is now a treant instead of an elf).
I'm not sure I like making Yvain a Treant. The lore change gets in the way of a character I'd made and was considering for my modmod

29. New War Elephant models for the Amurites, Balseraphs, Bannor, Clan of Embers, Elohim, Khazad/Luchuirp, Kuriotates, Lanun, Ljosalfar, Malakim, Sheaim, Sidar and the Svartalfar (replaced the existing war elephant driver with a more civ specific version)
I'm of the opinion that the Illians and maybe Doviello War Elephants should get Mammoth Rider graphics from AoI.
 
Very nice changes again.

I'm very excited about the tolerant trait and all the new graphics and balancing changes (I think it's great that you remove bloaty, un-fun things!).

Great that the Creation map script is now included, too!
 
I'm of the opinion that the Illians and maybe Doviello War Elephants should get Mammoth Rider graphics from AoI.

Doviello already have the AoI rider graphic without the mammoth skin, so I'm not sure that's a needed change. I'm with you on the Illians though, including the mammoth part. Kael's said before that Mammoth Riders will be making a return in Ice, so maybe we'll see them there.

Any word on who made the new units and buildings which don't have their designer alongside them?
 
Doviello already have the AoI rider graphic without the mammoth skin, so I'm not sure that's a needed change. I'm with you on the Illians though, including the mammoth part. Kael's said before that Mammoth Riders will be making a return in Ice, so maybe we'll see them there.

Any word on who made the new units and buildings which don't have their designer alongside them?

Its mostly just my fiddling, don't expect to much. A lot comes from seZ's art but bits and pieces of his old work that I found to fit into a particular niche. Its not at all like the speciality units he makes.

For example it bothered me that when i made a Sheaim war elephant I had the normal war elephant driver sitting in the basket. So I took one of seZ's Sheaim units, took off a couple detail pieces (so it looked a little different) and stuck him in the basket instead. It looks a lot better but it isn't anywhere close to what seZ would make (the elephant would be all deathed out with big gold earings, tatoos and dark images).
 
The trait rewards warmongering, so its a little odd for the elohim. But placing it in a civ thats good are warmongering makes it to powerful. The nice thing about implmeneting it as a trait is that its easy to move around. I'll be interested to hear the playtest feedback once people have a chance to play with it.

Maybe you could punish warmongers for playing Elohim "out of character" by implementing an addidional 25% to war weariness.
 
does tolerant trait work on unit upgrades, eg upgrading your normal elohim adepts to amurites mages in a captured amurite city.
 
. I don't see the Elohim as being tolerant enough of other cultures to build Vampires, Pyre Zombies, or any Infernal units either.

Seconded. In my opinion it would destroy their flavour if there aren't limits on their tolerance ;)

[/QUOTE]I'm of the opinion that the Illians and maybe Doviello War Elephants should get Mammoth Rider graphics from AoI.[/QUOTE]

It would be really nice!
 
20. Removed the Gypsy Wagon unit.
21. Removed the Gypsy Camp building.
22. Added the Entertain spell (Loki only, boosts happiness and steals gold from the city).
23. Added the Disrupt spell (Loki only, causes unhappiness and reduces culture of the city, can convert 0 culture cities).

I'm not sure Loki's two new spells will be adequate replacements for the Gypsy Wagon and Gypsy Camp. Loki's only one unit, after all, while you can build many Gypsy Wagons and send them to opposing cities everywhere to build Gypsy Camps and cause a constant drain of culture and gold.
 
I'm not sure Loki's two new spells will be adequate replacements for the Gypsy Wagon and Gypsy Camp. Loki's only one unit, after all, while you can build many Gypsy Wagons and send them to opposing cities everywhere to build Gypsy Camps and cause a constant drain of culture and gold.

There were a few reasons the gypsy wagons were cut. In order of importance:

1. With the addition of puppets and freaks the balseraphs are doing fine on mechanics.

2. The AI didnt understand gypsy wagons, either in protecting from them or using them.

3. They were a performance hog. In order to have wagons in the game I needed to check every unit in every city every turn to see if it was a gypsy wagon. If it was then I ran the gypsy wagon code. If you assume a map with 40 cities and 4 unis per city thats 160 python checks each turn so that we can have one unit that may or may not even be in the game. In 0.33 I went through all the python checks looking for places to improve performance and gypsy wagons were a big sore thumb.

4. Im not convinced they were ever worth the production it cost to make them (would an efficient human player ever spend hammers making wagons?). Note: this isnt a huge concern, especially in the balseraph, I dont mind giving fun options that some players can enjoy and other can skip if they want.
 
I haven't played a vanilla game of Civ4 or BtS since I tried FfH2. Vanilla just feels hollow now. I think that what you've all been able to do with mods speaks volumes about the strength of the core game, but after playing mods it's really hard to go back.

I'm eager to play this next version. Just like a kid waiting for Christmas all I can say now is, "Please hurry August 15th and come soon."

Cheers! :D
 
It wont make it trival, just give more options. Like building the sheaim palice to build the tower of necromancy
Ah yes, I see what you mean. Like using metamagic to switch manas once you've built a tower.
 
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