The Werewolf Civ Mod

Werewolf Expansion Modmod for FfH 2032e

This began a while ago when I thought it would be fun to cause Duin to be added as a Barbarian unit when someone researched Feral Bond. It was lame; he didn't do anything. Throughout the many solitary hours at my job the idea grew into this.

What This Mod Does
When a player has researched both Feral Bond and Knowledge of the Ether, the Halfmorn civilization joins the game led by Duin. The human player is given the choice to control them if they were the founding player.

If Duin is controlled by a human player, the civ begins with only a Duin unit with Hidden Nationality.

If controlled by the AI, the unit Duin gets promoted to Hero, some extra werewolves, and starts at war with everybody.

Halfmorn Civ Details
"Mankind, in the words of the Baron (who is at his most poetic immediately before a feast), is simply meant to breathe, breed, bleed and believe. If only the denizens of Halfmorn's baroncy could enjoy so many freedoms. Working to feed themselves and reproducing to feed their masters, the citizens have little time for more civilized pursuits. His citizens are hardly suited for a proper infrastructure and provide an even poorer military but the Baron couldn't care less. With his gift he can 'recruit' an army powerful enough to give him whatever his appetite desires."

The melee line is replaced by werewolves, which are unbuildable. Werewolves (except for Ravenous and Blooded ones) have a spell that creates a Ravenous Werewolf by reducing a city's population by 1. This uses the Feast code from Magister's Modmod, meaning you can destroy a city by doing so (which makes for FUN conquest!).

Additions/ChangesDownload
Is attached. Unzip to the FfH folder (replace "Assets").

Please note that I have set "Require Complete Kills" to be on by default, otherwise Duin dies immediately. If you have set default options yourself in the xml, you will need to redo them after installing.

Changes from Previous Version
And Finally
I hope you enjoy. I am very open to suggestions and help.

Bugs
During startup, I get a message saying "info type 1 not found, Current XML file is: xml\Buildings/CIV4BuildingInfos.xml." I have yet to find what it's referring to. It does not upset the game in any way that I've seen.

Hidden Nationality
Keep in mind that you must declare nationality in order to take a city.

Fall Further-compatible version.

Small fixes, tweaking, and whatever you ask me to do.

Yipee! More mid-game Civilizations to play with I can't wait to test it out and see what all you have done, but it sure sounds fun.

This got me thinking of how to deal with werewolves in my modmod. I don't I plan to add a werewolf civ, but I think the spell that feasts on a city and creates ravenous werewolves looks nice. I think I may add it too, but limit it to units with both werewolf and unitcombat_beast, i.e., Duin and Greater Werewolves (who are currently still animals, but won;t be in my modmod)

Oh, my modmod will also include an SDK change that allows HN units to capture/spawn units, but still not be able to take cities. I'll also try to make the HN promotion be passed on to the unit created in such instances.

I'm also thinking that I may make werewolves sometimes pass on lycanthropy when they lose. Sometimes the defeating unit would switch sides, sometimes it would remain loyal to its old civ, but usually it would turn barb. Typically it would change to a ravenous werewolf like usual, but sometimes it may be able to hold on to its old identity and retain all its old abilities while gaining the werewolf promotion and ability to spread the disease.

MagisterCultuum said:

Typically it would change to a ravenous werewolf like usual, but sometimes it may be able to hold on to its old identity and retain all its old abilities while gaining the werewolf promotion and ability to spread the disease.

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An unit shifting randomly from turn to turn into werewolf and back (or a spell to shift) would be extremely cool.

MagisterCultuum said:

This got me thinking of how to deal with werewolves in my modmod. I don't I plan to add a werewolf civ, but I think the spell that feasts on a city and creates ravenous werewolves looks nice. I think I may add it too, but limit it to units with both werewolf and unitcombat_beast, i.e., Duin and Greater Werewolves (who are currently still animals, but won;t be in my modmod)

Click to expand...

This exists for the most part in this mod. I changed all werewolves to beasts and made a Mature Werewolf promotion that the spell relies on. That's just my way of making it so Ravenous Werewolves can't cast the spell.

this looks really intersting, im going to keep my eye on it

I updated, fixing the AI-Duin and adding a new leader, Emma Vargamor. After taking the throne from Duin, she is trying to find a common ground between her kind's need for killing and her remorse for the oppression of her citizens.

Please let me know about the pacing of the Alma events, and whether the AI Duin is causing enough havoc.

Awesome! Duin is by far my favorite hero, and this modmod is simply amazing. I love it. Playing as Duin is incredibly fun. My only complaint is that he spawns a little too early... If you rush the techs for him, you get him before any AI has Axemen, and he is totally unstoppable. It got to the point that I was taking a city every other turn or so. Sure, my economy would have crashed eventually... but not before I wiped out basically every civ in the game.

My recommendation would be to have him spawn at Animal Mastery; that's probably a more balanced place: Still rushable, but deep enough into the tech tree that some of the AI will at least be able to slow him down (It's pretty sad when you don't even need Blooded Werewolves because Ravenous Werewolves have 75% chances against all city defenders).

Sure, he'll be waaay behind in tech under human control... But he spawns a virtually free army so fast that he doesn't NEED any tech to be a huge threat.

I am having a blast with this Mod! I am eager to see it fleshed out a little more. I would have to say that they are extremly powerful at the early going and agree that perhaps moving the trigger to Animal Mastery might help. Great job so far!

My recommendation would be to have him spawn at Animal Mastery

Click to expand...

perhaps moving the trigger to Animal Mastery might help

Click to expand...

It's obvious now that as far as challenge goes, the later the better. How about we go with Feral Bond for now. There's not much difference between FB and AM that late in the game, except for the Beastmasters, and werewolves are now beasts. Or is that still being too nice to Duin?

So, updated, changed trigger to Feral Bond and KotE (for flavor).

Is there an easy/quick way to integrate your mod into FFH when one already has Fall Further installed, such that they will not conflict with each other and may be used together? I'm not following the changelog very well, so altering the files individually isn't really an option.

If you use Winmerge you can compare the files for this mod with unmodded FfH to find what is changed/new. Then take all of that and place it into FF in the right places and they should work together fairly well.

Easiest way I can think of.

Updated for patch e (thanks Xienwolf for that Winmerge tip!) and smoothed some things out.

Added New Moon Ritual and made some buildings grant promotions to werewolves.

TheJopa said:

An unit shifting randomly from turn to turn into werewolf and back (or a spell to shift) would be extremely cool.

Click to expand...

Would they become military units or something else? What would be some advantages of the human form? Avoiding Subdue Beasts comes to mind.

It could get rather difficult to determine what unit the werewolf would become when it reverts to its human(oid) form. It could require hardcoding, and adding a promotion (or different werewolf unit) tied to every living unit in the game.

You could also try getting rid of the werewolves as distinct units and instead make it a promotion. There could be 2 levels of it, one indicating that the unit simply has/carries lycanthropy, and the other that it is in werewolf form. The werewolf promotion could change the units stats and graphics, but couldn't actually make the werewolves into beasts or animals. The Lycanthropy promotion could allow a spell that gives the unit the real werewolf promotion, or could grant it randomly.

I think on a single-unit level that's a lot of work for what may only have aesthetic value. The New Moon ritual I threw in was an easy copy-paste of Nature's Revolt and has some strategic value for either side--it's useful to the werewolves because they're trading the Ravenous WW's -25% city attack for the Axeman's city attack bonus. Also if the enemy has Beastmasters then the werewolves are at a big disadvantage. Others may use it if the werewolves are multiplying too much. I thought that this would be a simple, useful, and still aesthetic way of implementing a human form.

As of right now the new human units are level 1 but keep their old promotions, so they will quickly gain new promotions. One way of explaining that would be that now they are human, they have higher aptitude, which also adds value to the ritual for the werewolves. Or maybe that should be changed. I haven't had a chance to use it in a game yet.

I'm working on a scenario right now and I've come to a couple bumps in the road. The scenario features Emma as she and other civilizations rebuild after Duin's rampage. The Halfmorn are on the west coast, Amelanchier in the forest to the south, and Alexis and Flauros are in the eastern plains and mountains. There is a desert in the north and lakes in the center, both inhabited by renegade werewolves.

First, the scenario will include a change that replaces Barbarian warriors with ravenous werewolves. This involves changing two xml files, and I'm wondering the best way to package that. Module? Modpath in the BTSWBsave (not positive that will work for a modmod)? Gameoption? This should be toggle-able so it doesn't affect normal games.

Second... I can't remember what the second was... oh, events. To add some sort of story to the scenario I set up some chains of events that involve an organization of orphans and Emma's daughter. Like I said, they are chains of events and the recent post on the witch events confirmed my suspicion that something is up with those. Does anybody have theories or info on what's messing those up? What I've found is that when an eventtrigger that has a PrereqEvent occurs, it seems to reset the required event, as if it had a ClearEvent (which of course it doesn't). If I loaded a quicksave and set the conditions for an event, it would happen, but no events with the same PrereqEvent would trigger after. Anyway, I think I can rewrite these without PrereqEvents, to an extent.

Anyway, those are the selling points of the scenario. I expect for this mod to ultimately be made of the Duin half, which happens in normal games, and this Emma scenario. Should those be packaged separately? If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions, warnings, complaints, I'll appreciate it and they will only make this mod better.

Updated. I'll add the scenario as soon as I redo some events and test it. I should find time for that this weekend.