Magister Modmod

I haven't tried Wild Mana, but I'm pretty sure those suggestions require a custom DLL/schema. I may very well make my own custom DLL (borrowing heavily from Xienwolf and Opera) eventually, but I won't be doing any C++ work anytime soon.



Progress update:
I finally got the new Mercurian summoning spells working properly!

Open Mercurian Gate summons Basium much the same way as finishing the Mercurian Gate used to. The big difference is that the number of angels he gets is scaled by game speed and turn number instead of being a fixed number. Once a Mercurian gate is completed the player may cast this whenever he wishes, so long as he does not adopt AV state religion and so long as Basium has not entered the game yet in the meantime.



Call Mercurian Reinforcements gives the Mercurians units according to the same formula as Open Mercurian Gate, but does not create a new player or cause an alliance. Instead, it makes Peace, Open Borders, and a Defensive Pact between the caster's civ and Basium, causes them to declare war on each other's enemies, and gives Basium a +8 opinion of whoever called him back. I haven't tested it completely to be sure yet, but I'm pretty sure it should bring Basium back even once his civilization has been completely destroyed.
I haven't tested it completely to be sure yet, but I'm pretty sure it should bring Basium back even once his civilization has been completely destroyed, thus allowing the civ to be brought back to life an indefinite number of times. It gives a new instance of the Basium unit, and restores the leader's traits.


Originally I was planning on letting each civ cast the spell once to call in reinforcements, but coding that was too hard. The only way I could get the spell to work without being horribly overpowered or extremely complex was to make it so that it can be only be used while the Basium unit is dead. I've come to think that this actually fits the meaning of the Life sphere rather well; by laying down his own life he makes it possible for him to return to Erebus with greater forces.



Oh, I also decided to make it so that Basium no longer automatically declares war on AV civs. Instead, every time someone creates (not just builds; this also includes summons and units placed in worldbuilder) a unit with either the Demon or Unholy Taint promotion Basium's attitude towards them is worsened by 1. That can build up really quickly.


Basium's Favorite Wonder is now the Mercurian Gate, which is a National Wonder so everyone can build it to help balance out the grudge he will hold against them for ever using a demon or ritualist.



(Speaking of attitudes, each time the Insane trait changes Perpentach's traits it also randomly changes his attitude towards each leader by between -5 and +5.)



Right now I'm trying to decide whether I should allow each (non-Infernal) AV civ only one shot at summoning a Demon Lord, or allow one civ to summon them all. (I had the limit in place but the AI doesn't build it often enough so I got board and removed it.)



I have not yet begun rewriting giftUnit() so that each evil unit that dies won't go to serve every Demon Lord.


I did change it so that Big Bad lair results have HN, and are summoned on the lair tile (pushing the caster off) so as to eliminate exploits of exploring while at peace with the barbarians or while having every nearby plot occupied.


Note that this is all still in a 0.41k version of the mod. I'll have to update it to 0.41m (or maybe n by then) before I release anything.

In response to Magister's Plans for Implementing the Mercenary System in his Mod-mod. I like Magister's thoughts for Re-Implementing the Mercenary system ... as having regular units to buy, as well as them costing money per battle (I maybe like that idea, not entirely certain) ... Then I thought that If he got the system running, he could use it to help out some other races in unique ways ... and of course my ideas for making Hippus Mercenaries inherently "better" or at least for the hippus to favor using Mercenaries more often. The old adage of paying other nations for your services might work in an RP ... but im thinking of symbolising that Tactic on a much more Pure, Simple way on the Strategic map - all hippus units having Bounty Hunter. This way they might have an incentive to throw an Army of HorseArchers in favor of Nation X for no other reason ... and even if its selfishly used its high in flavor of the Mercenary "War Economy" way of life. I've also noticed that its almost a replica of the system used on the Finnian fields ... of course there they could use the Magnadine "Hire Merc" option any time they wanted. Still, I think that giving them money in such a way only enhances their percieved ability to Raid and Pillage the coffers of their enemies.

original post below

I think I may have finally gotten the Mercenary system working in an acceptable way.

I have not yet removed the Mercenary units as I don't feel like scouring the code to fix all the events and such that may use it, but I'm not relying on the unit in my version.


The mercenary promotion is essentially Bounty Hunter in reverse (i.e, it costs you 2 gold per combat), plus a 1% chance of turning barbarian.


The Recruit mercenary spell does not actually recruit the mercenaries but instead gives out the Mercenary Recruiter promotion. This does nothing but allow of group of Recruit Mercenary Unit spells, and will wear off at the end of the turn or after combat or casting. (The spells were placed at the top of the spell list so you don't have to scroll down to get them, but as they only appear when you have Mercenary Recruiter they aren't normally in the way.)


Mercenaries can be hired in any city, not just those you own. (I should really put a block requiring peace and open borders, but have not yet.) Each Hire Mercenary Unit spell lets you choose one unitclass. The actual unit generated will be the UU or have the default race of the city's original builder, and will have that civ's art.

Only players with AV as their state religion can hire demonic units in Infernal Cities. These same players are the only ones able to hire Chaos Marauders and Colubras.

10% of the cost of hiring the unit goes to the original owner of the city, unless that owner was Hippus in which case he gets 25%



Magnadine no longer has access to his special Hire Units spell. Instead, he starts with Bounty Hunter and Mercenary Recruiter and regains Mercenary Recruiter from combat (the way Losha gains immortality) so he doesn't need the guild in order to hire them. Additionally, his hires start with Morale, Loyalty, and Bounty Hunter instead of Mercenary.

any chance of more hippus units with Bounty Hunter?? Or will this be a Magnadine- specific Hippus advantage.

in addition, any thoughts on reducing the Merc hiring cost for hippus units OR magnadine specifically, as well as thoughts on Clowns hiring freaks (w/o Guild) and Bannor hiring Demagogues (w/o Guild) ??

I always thought it was wierd that the Hippus gets bounuses hiring mercenaries. Aren't the Hippus suppose to be the mercenaries. I have no idea on how to properly demonstrate this well, but prehaps they should declare war/peace for money. They would also need some reason to acumulate money. It is quite possible that I am wrong, if so, ignore this post...

the hippus "are" the Mercenaries, yet its hard to implement this in a 4x game. Therefore its generally acceptable to either give them better Merks or to give them Mercenary like abilities. This can be done by, say, giving all units Bounty Hunter if they are pulled into a war by someone else. Cause then theoretically it would be "paid" out of the Briber's pocketbooks. Of course, to set up a real system like this would be very similar to the Finnian Fields scenario except part of a much more organic world. Im not terribly certain how all of this would be possible, although if your "bounty hunter" money came directly out of the pockets of the person that hired you ... that would certainly be interesting. In fact, this very particular version of Bounty Hunter should theoretically only work on battles with the ppl the Client is hiring you to fight.

However, sans all of those pleasantries ... it makes sense for the hippus to have some sort of Warfare Economy/Mercenary economy. For the hippus to pay for their own mercs would be rather unfortunate, and relatively unflavorful. The idea is that the Hippus would want to use Mercs, because they get Gold (theoretically) from Foreign military contracts, and in this way they can use their Military Contract/ Mercenary Contract GOLD to actually buy more troops ... and MERCENARIES is how you use Gold as opposed to hammers to get more troops (well, that and upgrading warriors into Horse Archers). Therefore, giving the hippus advantages with Mercenaries gives them incentive to get gold, and in many cases this is stealing gold from others in the form of looting/pillaging, or Hiring themselves out for Foreign Wars.

another option would be to "sell" some units to a foreign entity.

Here is my rambling :

new diplomatic option :
raise hippus merc.
hippus can give/lend only units in their possession.
need ressource trading allowed

for the buyer :
gets unit for a gold cost (largely inferior to the real cost) or negociated or in gold/turn.
the unit has the promotions the hippus player gave it.
_unit is "sent back" to the hippus capitol after 20turns / or more / or while the trade option substists.
_-25gold if unit dies (+25gold for the hippus) so you don't use them as cannonfodder (25-50% of the cost if bought directly while building it ).
_-10gold if unit is disbanded + unit goes back to the hippus capitol (+10gold for the hippus)

if you don't have enough gold to pay the unit, your nearest city loses 1 population, goes into unrest and the hippus gains +50gold. Or : all your merc disband, go back to the hippus, your nearest cities loses 1 population, goes into unrest and the hippus gains +50gold per unit, you lose -1 diplomatic point per unit from the hippus (for 50turns).

all gains/cost may be scalable with the cost of the unit borrowed and/or it's xp.
any unit the hippus have can be lent / or only mounted units.

Would be difficult to code and use ... especially as it would need a new diplomatic option, and teach both AI (hippus and foreign) to use it...

I'm thinking of making it so building Mercs is blocked for everyone but the Hippus, and instating a national limit equal to the number of cities controlled. This kind of limit has to be enforced in Python; I forget the file name, but it's the same one that stops Illians from building Genesis. Guild of Nine would still function normally, but in the case the Hippus player doesn't get it, Mercenaries would still be on the table (or even if they did get it, they can fill up on "free" mercs).

Rystic said:

I'm thinking of making it so building Mercs is blocked for everyone but the Hippus, and instating a national limit equal to the number of cities controlled. This kind of limit has to be enforced in Python; I forget the file name, but it's the same one that stops Illians from building Genesis. Guild of Nine would still function normally, but in the case the Hippus player doesn't get it, Mercenaries would still be on the table (or even if they did get it, they can fill up on "free" mercs).

Click to expand...

CvGameUtils.py.

Valkrionn said:

CvGameUtils.py.

Click to expand...

Ah, that's the one.

Rystic said:

I'm thinking of making it so building Mercs is blocked for everyone but the Hippus, and instating a national limit equal to the number of cities controlled. This kind of limit has to be enforced in Python; I forget the file name, but it's the same one that stops Illians from building Genesis. Guild of Nine would still function normally, but in the case the Hippus player doesn't get it, Mercenaries would still be on the table (or even if they did get it, they can fill up on "free" mercs).

Click to expand...

What happens to Guild of the Nine then?

Valk, you see, Magister Has the same problem than you...
He changed the 1st post, but as He doesn't have date positionned next to the files... I didn't know if the file had changed until trying to dl it and I saaw it was the same name AND size than the previous version.

Thumbs up Magister for launching your mod.
I think we were many waiting for your "coming out"
I Have no time to play with it at the moment, but I read your comments and it seems supernice.
kuddos for you
-Cala

Edit: last second comment : As Gekko I never doubted your mod existed... I knew it existed but was everchanging, reflecting your mood or your creativity. I just wasn't sure that you would ever find the time/courage(for affronting the critics)/willpower/mood/disposition to release it and make us be able to see the portions of eternity that you created !

The files on the front page are from about 2 weeks after the initial release (of this thread). The changes are fairly minor, mostly fixes for the biggest bugs.


There is a good chance I'll release a new version this weekend. I'll see about putting a date on that one, and maybe even a changelog.

MagisterCultuum said:

The mercenary promotion is essentially Bounty Hunter in reverse (i.e, it costs you 2 gold per combat), plus a 1% chance of turning barbarian.

Click to expand...

How (if at all) is this affected by the Loyalty spell? Also, can Mercs gain the Bounty Hunter promotion?

arstal said:

What happens to Guild of the Nine then?

Click to expand...

Nothing. You'd still hire mercenaries like normal. However, if you hire past the limit based on the number of cities, you can no longer build them (any already being built will get the 'You cannot continue to build' message).

The mercenary promotion is essentially Bounty Hunter in reverse (i.e, it costs you 2 gold per combat), plus a 1% chance of turning barbarian.

Click to expand...

I don't like this idea too much. The Hippus are the mercenaries, they're not hiring them.

I'm not sure if Loyalty actually does anything. I haven't touched it. If would work with Mercenary the same way it does with Burning Blood.

Mercenary does not block access to Bounty Hunter. I just decided to make Mercenaries cheaper to hire and change the cost per battle to 5 gold instead of 2.



The way I have it now, anyone with the Guild of the Nine (or Magnadine) can hire mercenaries, which have the race or UUs of the original owner of the city where they are hired. That original owner gets a cut of the cost of hiring them, normally 10% but 50% if said owner is Hippus. Mercenaries hired by the Hippus do not get the Mercenary promotion.



I'm considering changing the Mercenary mechanics a little more though. I may make the promotion have a PyPerTurn effect that costs gold (perhaps the amount based on the unit's strength or level) and gives the unit the Rebel promotion if you don't have enough to pay. The Rebel promotion (already used for the Cult of the Dragon units owned by leaders who aren't/don't own dragons, Calabim units following The Empyrean, and summoned Chaos Marauders) combines the AI control of Enraged with a very high likelihood of turning barbarian.

MagisterCultuum said:

I'm considering changing the Mercenary mechanics a little more though. I may make the promotion have a PyPerTurn effect that costs gold (perhaps the amount based on the unit's strength or level) and gives the unit the Rebel promotion if you don't have enough to pay. The Rebel promotion (already used for the Cult of the Dragon units owned by leaders who aren't/don't own dragons, Calabim units following The Empyrean, and summoned Chaos Marauders) combines the AI control of Enraged with a very high likelihood of turning barbarian.

Click to expand...

The rebel promotion should also go to Order units in OO lands, Empyrean units in AV lands, and vice versa, IMO.

Idea of my own for Guild of Nine: Up the potency of the events, or let it recruit a wider variety of mercs?

You may wish to check the first post for the new version of this modmod which I just uploaded.

apenpaap said:

The rebel promotion should also go to Order units in OO lands, Empyrean units in AV lands, and vice versa, IMO.

Click to expand...

Do you not mean Order units owned by an OO player, and Vice Versa??