Rebirth and Legend

Right, so it's the bugfixes that's the issue. Now I understand. Those are the primary concerns anyway. For those who aren't using my changes on Ashes of Erebus, go ahead and report them - even if you're just linking to posts in either of the Final Fixes threads where the fix is found.

Wyverns... I'm not sure what I can do about that, but I'll find something.

The Jotnar: Yeah, that makes sense, particularly now I've disabled the Citizen spawning mechanic - that just wasn't necessary with my overhauled version.

Furia, and other leaders. Much like Jherel (at least I think it was you who said it on #erebus, correct me if I'm wrong) I think every leader needs to bring something unique to the scene. Not necessarily a mechanic, but something that has a significant effect on the way you play.
Take the Bannor. Here's a breakdown of their leaders:
Sabathiel: Lawful Good, Organised and Spiritual
Capria: Lawful Good, Imperialist and Spiritual
Tethira: Neutral Good, Instructor
Angaad: Lawful Neutral, Imperialist
Gaius Octavius: Lawful Evil, Theocratic
Decius: Lawful Neutral, Organized and Conquerer
Ophelia Rosenthal: True Neutral, Strategist.

With the exception of Ophelia, all their leaders are either Lawful, Good or both. Gaius Octavious stands out by being the only Evil leader, and Theocratic makes his units need 10% less experience for promotions and gives Potency and Mobility 1 to all disciple units. That makes him a nice unique leader.
Tethira doesn't look like much at a glance, but has Instructor, granting one free Promotion. That's a Promotion that costs no experience whatsoever, and depending on your choice can be fairly powerful - another unique one.
Angaad however is just a weaker Capria - and a leader that will be put into a module as a result. Nothing new, nothing unique.
Decius has his own mechanic of being one of three civ's, and brings Conqueror to the Bannor - something they don't get otherwise, allowing them to build buildings and train units of other civs, which can potentially be very powerful.
Ophelia is very similar, Strategist granting various tactical promotions - no need to change her.
Naturally Sabatheil and Capria as major leaders will stay. So for the Bannor, only Angaad will be made modular.
That's the kind of logic I'm applying to any leader which doesn't have Historical status, or a valid lore reason to keep them. I hope that gives you an idea of what I'm looking at.

But do remember all the leaders will remain available through the modules they'll be moved to, so if you want Furia, just load her back in. Nothing will be lost as such.

derf : about emergent leaders:
it all pertains to the fact that they are emergent ... thus can gain further traits.. and thus angaad can become different than Capria.
further there was the will to change the way emergent leaders traits work and to give them "evolutions".. upgrades of the trait. It never happened, but that was a powerful way to render an initially not-so-useful trait into a trait worth 2-3 normal traits.

RifE benefits and suffers from too many ideas. Getting a good core game and then making all the rest available through modules is an admirable ambition.

I wouldn't be a big fan of all of the extra equipment and master outfitters, etc. I'd like if they were separated out into a module. It's possible that they're a vital component for some civ's balance that I'm unaware of.

I also think the climate mechanism might benefit from a critical assessment. I see how it makes sense for some civs but for others it seems unnatural. Then again, it might be the most practical way of minimising the terraforming that some do. No strong conviction on it, just another aspect for you to look at.

As regards typos, don't change them in the xml. You'd just be creating unnecessary work for yourself, increasing the chance of a python error where non existent tags are referenced and lessening compatability chances of modules between mods. By all means, fix any typos in the text files that will be displayed to players. It's a minor thing that bugs me but you could change the text, "War Tortoise" to "War Turtle" (tortoises don't swim).

If you are messing with dll, you might make bForceOverwrite available for all xml files. There's a few that don't have it.

Anyway, good luck. I know now that I don't have the time and skill to undertake a task of this magnitude.

Lplate said:

I wouldn't be a big fan of all of the extra equipment and master outfitters, etc. I'd like if they were separated out into a module. It's possible that they're a vital component for some civ's balance that I'm unaware of.

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Everyone who depends on the Engineering line, notably the Khazad, Luchuirp, and Mechanos.

The Master buildings and their buyable equipments could be made modular, but as Viatos points out it'd hurt the engineering centric civs. It could be done though. I'll look into it, since it is in keeping with the modular idea of Rebirth and Legend.

The leaders are going to need work, as has been pointed out my Bannor example suffers from the flaw that Angaad can grow, Capria can't. I have to draw the line somewhere though, otherwise I might as well not do this.

The flip side of this is that, with the upcoming changes that make Mercurians and Infernals playable, if people were to write modules that added new leaders for them, they may be merged in. It's about time we saw something new for those two.

The automatic climate-forming is handled in python (I know that, I found the lines for it just last night) and I don't yet fully understand it code-wise. For two civs - the Illians and the Malakim - it makes sense. Illians want winter, Malakim are at their best in a desert.
For the lizardfolk, it can be overpowered. They gain vast bonuses, especially with swamps. If I can slow the process for them, that may be the way to go, otherwise they'll become a favourite for rush-strategies, simply because they get the best right off the bat.

Typos: Yeah, XML tags I'm not changing unless I have to. I've already made that mistake once when I just did the modules for Ashes. Typoes in what the player sees are more important. I've got a separate list dedicated to just typoes and corrections.

DLL comes later, but that shouldn't be a problem. I'll poke about and see. Which files don't have it that you need/want it in?

Lastly, quick note on modules. All of LPlate's modules should work without an issue, as we're based on Rise from Erebus, not Ashes of Erebus. The terrain renaming that happened there isn't going to here - it's just pointless.
My modules are another matter, since I updated them to Ashes. Most of them should work, though you shouldn't use the Jotnar or Frozen from my thread - they've been included as replacements for the outdated modules. Lizard Art Fix is unnecessary, as it has been merged into the main code.
If you do experience issues with my modules, then make sure you specifically say whether you're using it with Ashes of Erebus, or Rebirth and Legend.

Derf said:

For the lizardfolk, it can be overpowered. They gain vast bonuses, especially with swamps. If I can slow the process for them, that may be the way to go, otherwise they'll become a favourite for rush-strategies, simply because they get the best right off the bat.

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The lizardfolk have arguably the strongest mid-game defensive situation in the game - moving anything through their territory is a nightmare compounded by their skirmish-happy archers and unusable Trails. They also have, much less arguably, the most stable economy in the game. What they do not have is the freedom to improve their territory with cottages or mills until very late in the game, which generally puts them behind in production and commerce and denies the player the ability to temporarily shift a city towards what's needed - they tend to be unable to win tech races against other players or the rare awakened AI that seems to know what the hell it's doing, especially important for the Mazatl given that their religion actually functions (unlike the Cualli, who also have less going for them in general). It's impossible for them to have bad cities, but it's also almost impossible for them to have great ones.

The main issue with terraforming is that it doesn't go away unless you counter-terraform it. After the Malakim settle an area, it's a desert. After you finally take out the lizards there's nothing but worthless swamp and jungle. You have to do a lot more work to conquer them and get a benefit out of it. The code exists - although it is so buggy - to change an area's climate back. Possibly some implementation of this that checks for cultural control could be used, but I'm worried that that would cause undue stress on the engine. Maybe if it only checks every 25 turns or so and only for Deep Jungle/Wetland.

I'll throw in my two eurocents here, I think.

Terraforming is a very powerful thing that is much too accessible, especially with the automatic climate changes. In my opinion it shouldn't be there at all, unless you're willing to pay for it - either through an actual cost, or through opportunity cost - like having your mages locked up for a few turns to change a tile's terrain.

I personally think it would be better to roll it back all the way to third level spells for most civs, and just removing auto-terraforming entirely, instead giving the civs with a specific climate flavour more easy access to (still costly) terraforming spells. Ultimately, if terraforming is unambiguously bad for everyone but the civ doing it, it should either not be there, or it should be really expensive. D'tesh, Malakim and the Lizards are prime examples - wastelands, jungles and deserts are worthless to anyone else, and that makes them too secure, since taking their territory would be a pain in the ass as well as adding little to your own civ's assets without further investments.

The only auto-terraform I'd think would be ok is the White Hand / Illians snow terraforming, since that's a core part of their concept - stopping the spread of one Hell by bringing another into the world; the Fellowship of Leaves' spreading of Ancient Forests and Kelp Forests, since that is good for anyone involved (although I'm not sure that actually qualifies as "terraforming"); and Hell spread, which is arguably not really terraforming anyway.

I think Jheral assessed terraforming pretty well there.

So in short, aside from Illian/White Hand (+Frozen if loaded and working) and FoL, disable the climateforming?
My only concern is how well said lizards will work without their natural habitat, but I'll muck about a bit and see what I can do.

Now does anyone actually know how the old Temple of the Hand effect got applied? The one which just created snow in a two-tile radius? I know RiFE doesn't use it, but it'd come in useful for the Hell Terrain plans.

I agree with jheral on terraforming.

but maybe you could give the option to one of their UU in combination with a given tech (religious or not).
like malakim lightbringer + empyryan tech: can cast "scorch".
lizard's Priests of oghma can cast "deep-jungle bloom" with ... a specific tech : "ranger tech?" or "commune with nature"?
..Etc

Derf said:

Now does anyone actually know how the old Temple of the Hand effect got applied? The one which just created snow in a two-tile radius? I know RiFE doesn't use it, but it'd come in useful for the Hell Terrain plans.

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Its done in python. Pretty sure its in CvEventManager.py - cant tell you the function name offhand but if you just search for _HAND you should find it and the code should be easy to import.

Whoa, just installed and activated the Frozen and Jotnar modules. When I loaded the game I got a couple dozen errors relating to the Frozen, so I quit and took them out. Now it loaded fine. Gonna try your Jotnar, and see how they go. Haven't really played any FFH2 in years though, so I might be a bit rusty.

Yeah, Frozen has some known issues, mostly python-based. Since it's effectively the same as the module in my Ashes modules thread, just tweaked for RaL, it's the same issues in both.

Dev work is a little slow at the moment, but I'm steadily working toward another release. Most of the changes involved in it are bugfixes, and many of them found thanks to the Ashes of Erebus changelog. Not all of them have been fixed however. Some because I don't agree with what they do or how they do it, some because they conflict with changes I've made myself, and some because I'm not copying any code from AoE - I'm implementing them myself, my way, as a way of learning the code.

It does however mean that if you're trying to merge my changes with Ashes of Erebus as some have done so far, it won't work for the next release - the code-base won't be compatible.

Immediate balance note on the Jotnar: they presently have Plot Radius 1, meaning they're encouraged to build lots of cities.

They also have Traditions, which gives them no maintenance cost from distance...and 400% cost for number of cities, and they need 3 food per population.

Obviously these things don't go together. I'd suggest flipping Traditions to ignore maintenance for number of cities and if they can only work 1 radius, drop the food increase because they're not going to get big anyway, or leave them at 3 food per pop and 2 radius rather than the 3 they used to be at.

From what I've read, learned, gathered and discovered (Not necessarily in that order) the higher food requirement is to deliberately limit the growth of their cities. I may change this depending on the balance of them.
The Maintenance by distance/number similarly has an explanation. A few, spread out cities. Again, I'm not entirely certain on this. Once I'm satisfied with the next version I'll go back to working on the modules for a bit and tackle things like this.

(In short: Taken on board, added to my huge list of notes about the Jotnar, will get around to it Soon)

Regarding the Jotnar, I'm sure that's right, that the 3 food requirement is to slow their growth. Plus it makes sense: giants need more food than humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.

In their original implementation in Fall Further, Jotnar cities could work only one ring and had a hard population cap of 8 per city.

I don' remember much about how they were implemented in RifE, other than their cities being able to work 3 rings. They might have had increased food requirements then, I don't remember. I played them only once in RifE, before they were disabled by the development team pending redesign.

I'm not sure exactly what I would propose for the Jotnar here. I liked their implementation in FF, but people have pointed out that while one imagines giants having low-population cities, you don't really imagine their cities being tightly packed, given their size and space requirements.

Higher food requirements make sense, and I would imagine that their settlements should be big as well. The problem is that to make use of all that space, their populations would have to be bigger as well, which is not really appropriate either.

I don't know if it would be possible to enforce a longer minimum distance between cities, but if that's possible then a bigger city work radius coupled with that might make sense, to give them a lot of space while still forcing you to spread out more despite low pop. I would avoid hard population caps though - soft caps from happiness and health are preferrable, since those can more readily change through local circumstances.

Maybe have scaling happiness penalties based on city population, to make sure the cities don't grow too big (justified by the cities becoming "too crowded" for the giant population, perhaps)?

As a note, the issue is specifically that at some point in the past, two things happened: the Jotnar were given Traditions as described (enforcing few cities and high food requirements) and the Jotnar were given a Plot Radius of 3, like the Kuriotates.

They have recently been given a Plot Radius of 1, which is extraordinarily punitive in combination with Traditions - they must settle near to food resources or they cannot work their 8 plots, and since numerous cities is so incredibly expensive they really need to work all 8 plots of every city, which can deny them the ability to prioritize commerce or production resources, which feeds into the issue of their expensive units in a spiral that seems unintentionally vicious. High food makes sense according to the idea of giants, and 1-ring cities make sense according to the idea of small homestead communities, and neither mechanic by itself is too onerous, but TOGETHER they're multiplicative.

Traditions worked with 3-ring cities because even though you could only have a few cities and they wouldn't have great populations, you could spread them as far as you liked and be confident in your ability to pick up the resources you needed with that extra ring. I've set them back to Plot Radius 3 in my personal game and I'd recommend anyone intending to use them/allow the AI to play them do the same until they're reconfigured for 1-ring city patterning. As far as the lore is concerned, there's two resolutions that struck me immediately: one, say they don't need higher food because even though they eat a lot individually there's not that many of them, or two, keep the higher food and leave them with 3-ring cities because they can cover so much ground.

And that's sort of my point - covering more ground despite the smaller populations would make much more sense, since they are giants. A small settlement of humans or human-sized creatures (which the 1-ring city style would represent) would not be of the same size as a small settlement of giants, after all.

Never made sense to me that they were restricted to that, back when they were first added to FF. But then, there were a lot of things about them that didn't work as intended/at all.

I'm pretty sure that in the original implementation of the Jotnar in Fall Further, their "Traditions" civic reduced maintenance cost for number of cities, which made sense because in FF Jotnar cities could work only one ring. (I don't remember what, if anything, it did for maintenance costs from city distance.)