[MOD] MagisterModmod

I've been playing and enjoying this modmod as the Illians, and have been having a lot of trouble with Orthus. I've never played a game of FFH before, so I'm not sure if this is normal, or if your balance changes regarding his axe have made things too difficult. Orthus is attacking my city from a hill. I have Auric, plus the other three unique characters that building the white hand gives, stationed in the city, summoning ice elementals every turn. I then send in all but one of the elementals, (leaving the last one for defence: the barbarians who accompanied Orthus died easily to the first group of elementals I summoned). However, the elementals almost invariably fail to injure Orthus at all, and at strength 6 they're my most powerful units available (barring their summoners, who are irreplacable and don't fare much better). This rather removes the possibility of wearing him down gradually with a large group of units, which is what I'd normally do. Could the extra first strike be killing my elementals before they get to attack?

I've also tried making Auric enchant the other three elementals' weapons instead of summoning a fourth, but that had even more abysmal results. Are there any tricks to make the fight easier? I've managed to contain him for the time being, and could do so with only one summoner if necessary, so am able to use a long-term tactic like "research tech Y and build Z" if necessary. There's no copper in my vicinity, but there is iron. I also have two mana nodes in my borders (one ice, one undeveloped), but sadly they're next to the city Orthus is attacking. I could use elementals to protect units adding improvements to the area, though, if necessary.

Edit: One of my elementals just managed to kill Orthus while defending! Apparently I was either incredibly lucky, or Orthus is much worse at attacking ice elementals than defending against them...

I haven't played with the new Orthus changes myself yet, but I did suspect they would make him rather deadly. However, even before the changes, I usually dealt with Orthus by letting him hurt or even kill himself attacking warriors in my city. When I did attack him head on, it usually cost me four or five warriors, so that four ice elementals couldn't hurt him much at all indicates to me that he was using his first strikes very well. And you still won in the end, so I'm inclined to say the changes were well done. <Good job, Magister!>

As to tricks for dealing with first strike in FFH, which I'm guessing was the hardest part of the fight: horse archers (tech: stirrups) and assassins (tech: poisons) are immune, but those are rather expensive techs and require horses; promotion flanking 3 bestows immunity, but it's only available to cavalry units which you'd have to level up in some other arena; the simplest is to get your own first strikes via commando and drill promotions (which I would tend to personally recommend over combat anyways), but that's not an effective strategy for temporary summons either; and finally the first shadow (getting a node requires tech necromancy) spell, blur, makes all your units immune to first strikes for the turn it's cast. I *think* that one affects your non-living units like elementals, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong about any of that.
 
Note that Ice Elementals are extremely weak to Fire Damage (due to having both the Vulnerable to ire and Winterborn promotions), which Orthus's Axe provides. They are the worst unit to use against Orthus.

I'm not 100% certain if this was a change included in the last release or added just after it, but I have considerably weakened the threat of Orthus by giving him the bNoCapture tag. That prevents him from personally capturing any of your cities, although he could still kill all the units in the city and possible generate an Axeman from combat which would be able to capture it.

(The change was not about nerfing Othus per se, but preventing issues that could effect all bAlwaysHstile units. I made Orthus bAlways hostile because of his enmity with Rathus, who should be able to fight his nemesis to take his axe and restore the Matron Essendi without needing to declare war on the Barbarians. I thought it made more sense to give all bAlwaysHostile units the bNoCapture tag too rather than keep running the less efficient python code in CvGameUtils.py under def unitCannotMoveInto(self,argsList): )


Blur does work even on non-living units like elementals, and there is only a 50% chance of the bonus promotion wearing off each turn. The spell cannot be cast by members of the Overcouncil once Shadow Mana has been banned, even if some casters purchased the spell sphere promotion before the vote negated the mana source..
 
To be honest i haven't been following the thread in too much detail but i have gathered what i believe is the gist of what this mod adds, and since i have recently become addicted to FFH lore and using civ to gen interesting worlds, the ai fixes alone have me hooked.... anyways, ignore this ramble

my question is... do you have a schedule or list of ideas which u wish to implement, or have you just been taking community suggestions, or do you have some other method of determining what you add, when and how much?
 
To be honest i haven't been following the thread in too much detail but i have gathered what i believe is the gist of what this mod adds, and since i have recently become addicted to FFH lore and using civ to gen interesting worlds, the ai fixes alone have me hooked.... anyways, ignore this ramble

my question is... do you have a schedule or list of ideas which u wish to implement, or have you just been taking community suggestions, or do you have some other method of determining what you add, when and how much?

As far a schedule goes, that is heavily dependent on the release schedule of the mods on which this modmod is based. Whenever Tholal releases a new version of MNAI, I merge it with my latest modmod and playtest it just long enough to be sure it is stable before releasing it publicly. When Platyping releases a new WorldBuilder update, I first merge it with MNAI and then with my modmod. Depending on how major the update was and how many of my own changes I've made recently, I may or may not release a new MagisterModmod after a new worldbuilder update. I typically make most of my custom tweaks in the week or two after a release, often in response to players' feedback.

I'll occasionally note things in this thread to remind me to implement them later, but for the most part any list of new features exists only in my head.

There are still some features which I have not yet implemented which at one point I really wanted to add, but frankly I'm not sure it is worth it. Major changes at this point would probably require re-balancing too much. I don't expect this modmod to change much more in the future, except in response to bug fixes or changes in the base code which open up previously unanticipated possibilities.


I originally stared the modmod just for myself, to make the game run in a way I would more enjoy playing, without any plans of releasing it publicly. Had I from the beginning been planning to release then I would have kept a thorough changelog, but it seemed pointless to go back and figure out all of the changes I'd made in previous years

I have not really been following a pre-decided long term design plan. I have taken some suggestions from the community, but not much in regard to major features. I have tried to avoid the sort of feature creep and bloat found in other modmods. Sometimes I have added things though just because I realized that a new way of coding them was possible, and sometimes I have wanted to add things badly enough to request DLL changes to make them possible. Sometimes I have changed things juts because I wanted to take advantage of a new capability Tholal's DLL changes added.

In general, for a change to make it into this modmod it must only meet two criteria:
"Is this consistent with the lore?" and "Does this make the game more fun?"

While other modmods have veered off into adding new civilizations, leaders, units, etc, and written a lot of additional back-story which does not often mesh well with the canon of Erebus, I have aimed to make this mod even more faithful to the lore than is the official FfH2.

(Despite my canonical conservatism, I have changed a couple things in the lore when I thought my idea fit the rest of the lore better than some element Kael or the team wrote.

Most notably, I did not like it when he changed Yvain from a Wood Elf to a Treant, in order to borrow graphics I didn't really like from the Warhammer mod. Yvain's old pedia entry clearly stated that he was "the favorite son of Cernunnos," which we all originally took to be figurative. Kael later established, however, that Cernunnos had many biological children whom he fathered with his three elven wives during the Age of Magic. The females all looked like normal elves but the males had horns and hooves. The Fawns and Satyrs of the current age are distant descendants of Cernonnos's sons, much weaker than their remote ancestors but still maintaining an tendency to be wild in their youth and wise in their old age. I thus decided that I would rather keep the old pedia entry but make it literal, making Yvain a Satyr of the first generation. We know that Cernunnos's favorite child was Gower, but that he is dead. (Agares killed him. Cernunnos's failed attempt to rescue his son dragged Sucellus into the war and ultimately led the neutral parties to force the signing of the compact.) Yvain can easily be the favorite son still living. I like to think that the wives of Cernunnos were Faeryl Viconia, Arendel Phaedra, and a third much more favored elf whose only sons were Gower and Yvain. (Cernunnos's relationship with Gower and Yvain would thus mirror the biblical Jacob's relationship with his favorite sons Joseph and Benjamin, the only sons of his beloved wife Rachel.) I like to think that she gave birth to Yvain shortly after Gower's death, and that her grief left her too weak to survive her labor. I like to think that Arendel became Cernonnos's new favorite by raising Yvain and his possible sisters as her own, while Faeryl refused to care for any but her own offspring. I like to think that Yvain was a runt born prematurely and was the weakest of the first Satrys, but also grew to be the wisest and is the only one who has survived into the current age.


Another change I made was the addition of Thalatth the Blue Dragon. It was already canonical that a Blue Dragon went on a rampage and was killed by a hero named Lucar during the Age of Winter, but when Nikis-Knight wrote that Age of Ice pedia entry he was probably thinking that Drifa would be called blue. I decided to make him Danalin's dragon as well, and in keeping with other beasts of that precept to make him a gentle guardian who was driven insane by witnessing whatever horror destroyed the last of the Aifons.)



Does this mod change the way Aeron's Chosen works? I haven't seen it at all in my recent games.

Aeron's Chosen in base FfH2 is granted through an event which may only be triggered for a UNITCLASS_ASSASSIN unit of level 5 or higher.

That includes the Elohim UU Devout, which serves a very different purpose than do Assassins and which I don't think should be associated with Aeron at all.

In this modmod the promotion is still granted by the same event and there is the same level prerequisite, but the unitcombat is irrelevant. Instead a unit must have the Marksman promotion to be eligible.

That means that Assassins, Chanters, and Taskmasters are still eligible, but Devouts are not. It also means that Shadows and Dwarven Shadows may be chosen, as may the heroes Rathus Denmora and Losha Valas.

I also block summons and limited duration units from being eligible, so the promotion is not wasted on something like a Mistform which will disappear the following turn.
 
Aeron's Chosen in base FfH2 is granted through an event which may only be triggered for a UNITCLASS_ASSASSIN unit of level 5 or higher.

That includes the Elohim UU Devout, which serves a very different purpose than do Assassins and which I don't think should be associated with Aeron at all.

In this modmod the promotion is still granted by the same event and there is the same level prerequisite, but the unitcombat is irrelevant. Instead a unit must have the Marksman promotion to be eligible.

That means that Assassins, Chanters, and Taskmasters are still eligible, but Devouts are not. It also means that Shadows and Dwarven Shadows may be chosen, as may the heroes Rathus Denmora and Losha Valas.

I also block summons and limited duration units from being eligible, so the promotion is not wasted on something like a Mistform which will disappear the following turn.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, Magister. For some reason I thought the promo would go immediately to the first lvl 5 assassin.
 
awesome lore on Yvain and why u changed it, loving the mod so far, especially with the focus on lore!!!
 
I recently encoutered a strange bug. The great commander counter disappeared. I realized that after around one hundred turns as I was surprised not to get any commander, and when I checked with the WB all civs were at 0/30 in the GC counter despite many wars... I am playing Van/Basium in large/quick if this can help.

Also a couple of questions that arose during this game.
What is the actual mecanism for great wonders for a team? Some wonders have a global effect that applies to all team members (pillar, guild of hammers), but some don't (catacomb libralus, great lighthouse). Also, the behavior is somehow unpredictable on cities captured by Basium, probably due to the arrogator trait.

It does not seem to be possible to give a unit to another member of the team. It makes sense, otherwise it would be probably too powerful. But this restriction seems to be extended to vassals. Is it a bug or specific to teams to avoid an inter team member unit exchange by transitivity?
 
I recently encoutered a strange bug. The great commander counter disappeared. I realized that after around one hundred turns as I was surprised not to get any commander, and when I checked with the WB all civs were at 0/30 in the GC counter despite many wars... I am playing Van/Basium in large/quick if this can help.
That does seem strange. I'm not sure what could cause it, short of deactivating the Advanced Tactics game option. Could you have just forgotten to turn that option on, or perhaps accidentally deactivated it in World Builder?
Also a couple of questions that arose during this game.
What is the actual mecanism for great wonders for a team? Some wonders have a global effect that applies to all team members (pillar, guild of hammers), but some don't (catacomb libralus, great lighthouse). Also, the behavior is somehow unpredictable on cities captured by Basium, probably due to the arrogator trait.
Again I'm not really sure. I gave all of them the <bTeamShare>1</bTeamShare> tag, so I don't know why some would be treated differently.

I do know that it is normal Civ 4 behavior for some wonders to grant bonuses to their current owner and others to whatever player originally built them, but I'm unclear as to the distinction.
It does not seem to be possible to give a unit to another member of the team. It makes sense, otherwise it would be probably too powerful. But this restriction seems to be extended to vassals. Is it a bug or specific to teams to avoid an inter team member unit exchange by transitivity?

It should be. I gift units between team mates all the time.

It should be noted though, that not all units may be gifted. I do know that while I gift Adepts and Mages frequently, I have never been able to gift an Archmage.

I don't remember exactly the criteria. I suggested once Tholal just make a unit and promotion tag that would block gifting, but he took a more complicated route. I think that world units, national units, hidden nationality units, and units with civic or state religion prerequisites are blocked.

(As of Tholal's last update, gifted adepts and mages no longer get the free mana promotions from the new civ. They still gets such bonuses if you upgrade them after gifting though.)


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I've been playing around with making the Supplies unit trainable, thus allowing production in one city to be put towards constructing buildings in other cities. I made the unit require Mathematics and cost slightly more then the most expensive building it can be used to construct.

Does that sound like a feature I should keep, or should I remove it before the next release? What about the prereqs, should those be changed? Maybe it maybe require a certain trait (like Industrious or Sprawling), or a certain wonder?




What do you think of this new event I just added last night?

In the event, the students of Govannon demand that the Mage Guilds be forced to accept their master's philosophy, which the establishment obviously opposes.

There are three choices. You may ignore the issue, which has no effect. You may side with the Mage Guilds, causing those buildings to provide lot of free happiness but removing the Govannon's Ethics promotion from all your units. You may also side with the Students of Govannon, causing Mage Guilds to generate massive unhappiness but also granting Govannon's Ethics as a free promotion to all current and future Adepts. Govannon's legacy can thus spread even better without him.

You may choose to give Govannon's Ethics as a free promotion to all your current and future adepts in exchange for Mage Guilds causing considerable unhappiness, or choose to remove the Govannon's Ethics promotion from all your units in exchange for Mage Guilds granting extra happiness, or ignore the issue and have no effect.

The event can be triggered only if Govannon has already entered the game and subsequently died, leaving at least one unit with Govannon's Ethics behind. You must also control at least one Mage Guild.


Note that the inclusion of a new event like this does break saved games.
 
That does seem strange. I'm not sure what could cause it, short of deactivating the Advanced Tactics game option. Could you have just forgotten to turn that option on, or perhaps accidentally deactivated it in World Builder?
Ooops. Indeed Advenced Tactics was off. From time to time, my starting options are completely scrambled and I probably forgot to set it back.

It should be. I gift units between team mates all the time.

It should be noted though, that not all units may be gifted. I do know that while I gift Adepts and Mages frequently, I have never been able to gift an Archmage.

Indeed setting Advanced tactics solved the problem. I can now gift units to team mates or vassals. But the behavior is a bit weird. For instance, I can give an acolyte, but not an lightbringer. But after upgrading to radiant guard, there is no problem. Probably due to the uniqueness of lighbringers.

Again I'm not really sure. I gave all of them the <bTeamShare>1</bTeamShare> tag, so I don't know why some would be treated differently.

I do know that it is normal Civ 4 behavior for some wonders to grant bonuses to their current owner and others to whatever player originally built them, but I'm unclear as to the distinction.

Concerning great wonders, after rethinking to it, it is really strange. For instance, no team city get a mage guild from the CL. All get a forge from the hammer guild (and a Luchuirp city gets a forge not a dwarven smithy), and only cities built or given to Basium get a carnival from the menagerie while conquered ones don't.



I've been playing around with making the Supplies unit trainable, thus allowing production in one city to be put towards constructing buildings in other cities. I made the unit require Mathematics and cost slightly more then the most expensive building it can be used to construct.

Does that sound like a feature I should keep, or should I remove it before the next release? What about the prereqs, should those be changed? Maybe it maybe require a certain trait (like Industrious or Sprawling), or a certain wonder?

Very interesting, but I would reserve that to some traits. Why not organized? It is thematically coherent and is presently one of the weakest traits. Concerning sprawling, it can lead to interesting strategies, but it may be too powerful with all the buildings that give free specialists. Shoudl be checked is a real game with the kurios.
 
I've been playing around with making the Supplies unit trainable, thus allowing production in one city to be put towards constructing buildings in other cities. I made the unit require Mathematics and cost slightly more then the most expensive building it can be used to construct.

Does that sound like a feature I should keep, or should I remove it before the next release? What about the prereqs, should those be changed? Maybe it maybe require a certain trait (like Industrious or Sprawling), or a certain wonder?

I've often thought that trainable supplies would be an excellent addition. And also tweak them so that they provide a lump-sum rush to production, rather than instantly construct a building (and doing that would make it ok-ish for it to be a global rather than trait addition). I've also thought that maybe more advanced technologies, say engineering or machinery, could unlock somewhat more efficient versions.

[If you do decide to make it a trait addition, I think industrious is appropriate, because I feel industrious rather than organized is the weak trait. But that's just me.]

I've also thought there should be something similar with food. I'm sure you can make a food-cart trainable with food just like a settler or worker; I'm not so sure if there's an easy way to get it provide food to the city..?

And I think I recall trainable caravans/trade-ships present in other mod-mods. Have you considered whether they would be a good addition?

What do you think of this new event I just added last night?

In the event, the students of Govannon demand that the Mage Guilds be forced to accept their master's philosophy, which the establishment obviously opposes.

There are three choices. You may ignore the issue, which has no effect. You may side with the Mage Guilds, causing those buildings to provide lot of free happiness but removing the Govannon's Ethics promotion from all your units. You may also side with the Students of Govannon, causing Mage Guilds to generate massive unhappiness but also granting Govannon's Ethics as a free promotion to all current and future Adepts. Govannon's legacy can thus spread even better without him.

You may choose to give Govannon's Ethics as a free promotion to all your current and future adepts in exchange for Mage Guilds causing considerable unhappiness, or choose to remove the Govannon's Ethics promotion from all your units in exchange for Mage Guilds granting extra happiness, or ignore the issue and have no effect.

The event can be triggered only if Govannon has already entered the game and subsequently died, leaving at least one unit with Govannon's Ethics behind. You must also control at least one Mage Guild.


Note that the inclusion of a new event like this does break saved games.

I was confused for a bit at first as to why anyone would ever not ignore the issue, but if Govannon has died then yes, that event makes sense and the pluses and minuses seem appropriate.
 
Regarding the Students of Govannon event; it doesn't really make sense that ignoring the issue has no effect. Or maybe I'm just overly idealistic regarding people's influence over their government.
 
How about making the Ignore option of the Govannon's Legacy event cause +1 :mad: per city + 1 :mad: per Mage Guild, while siding with the Mage Guilds against Govannon's disciples causes +2 :mad: per city but +12 :) per Mage Guild, and siding with Govannon's disciples causes +2 :) per city but +12 :mad: per Mage Guild?



The "Infinite Turn Time" issue seems like it is just a Waiting for Other Civilizations issue. In the particular case of the Spell Staff, I think it might be due to my decision to make equipment units bAlwaysHostile so that rivals can capture dropped equipment without war. The AI really does not use that tag very well. I have asked Tholal to address the bAlwaysHostile issues, but in the mean time I might need to stop using the tag.
 
Hi. Is there any way I can increase the size of a map when generating it or is it hardcapped at certain sizes for a reason?
I tried editing the CIV4WorldInfo.xml in both Magister and in FFH versions but to no avail.
 
How about making the Ignore option of the Govannon's Legacy event cause +1 :mad: per city + 1 :mad: per Mage Guild, while siding with the Mage Guilds against Govannon's disciples causes +2 :mad: per city but +12 :) per Mage Guild, and siding with Govannon's disciples causes +2 :) per city but +12 :mad: per Mage Guild?
I don't remember how easy are :) to get in your modmod, but that seems very drastic.
for me:
-siding with mage guilds should improve them: +1:mad:/city +3 Happy, +2:science:
-siding with govannons disciples allows you to continue to teach all units.... +1 happy/city +2-3:mad:/mage guild
-doing nothing is already a loss, because you don't get happies from mage guilds, no more science, and neither are you able to have "Govannon Ethics"
 
Hi. Is there any way I can increase the size of a map when generating it or is it hardcapped at certain sizes for a reason?
I tried editing the CIV4WorldInfo.xml in both Magister and in FFH versions but to no avail.

Depends on the map. Some (like the scripted ones) will be effected by the changes you have made (I am assuming you changed the correct parts in world info).

However, other maps have the size settings within the maps themselves, which overrides the world setting. Open the particular map you want to edit with a text edited. Do a search for 'huge' and you should find a section with 120X80 etc for each of the world sizes. This is what you need to change.
 
Regarding the whole "ignore the issue" thing, the only two outcomes I can think of are that either one of the two sides establishes dominance without your support, or the two of them are both crippled squabbling with each other. I don't know what that would translate to in terms of boni-ses though.

10 happiness in every city with a mage-guild, seems pretty far-out so I think you should definitely do it.
 
How about making the Ignore option of the Govannon's Legacy event cause +1 :mad: per city + 1 :mad: per Mage Guild, while siding with the Mage Guilds against Govannon's disciples causes +2 :mad: per city but +12 :) per Mage Guild, and siding with Govannon's disciples causes +2 :) per city but +12 :mad: per Mage Guild?

It's your choice. But there's always going to be a one right choice with that (normally against Govannon, unless it comes really early in the game - +10 happy for 40h, compared to 1-2 unhappy or not being able to build mages without 10 unhappy), so I wouldn't judge it a well designed event.

But the objectives can differ, and I know the focus of your mod is different from the way I play/design towards. So only you can judge it, really, you just need to take account what it will lead to in deciding.
 
Depends on the map. Some (like the scripted ones) will be effected by the changes you have made (I am assuming you changed the correct parts in world info).

However, other maps have the size settings within the maps themselves, which overrides the world setting. Open the particular map you want to edit with a text edited. Do a search for 'huge' and you should find a section with 120X80 etc for each of the world sizes. This is what you need to change.

Yes, the iGrid entries.
There is no "pangea" map script though and that one refuses to change size regardless of what I set in WordInfo. I even tried 200 in both width and height, still generated the same size map.
Only the supplied map scripts can surpass the hard-coded sizes it seems, and I never did like the Erebus maps.
So I am still stuck, unless going for the Erebus maps.
 
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