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.