[MOD] MagisterModmod

MagisterCultuum said:

I stopped by BestBuy on the way home from picking up my old laptop. The first saleswoman seemed pushier and once I shied away from the much more expensive models she was pushing recommended that I act fast to get that Asus. I then double checked online though and found that it was not available for shipping and is not in stock anywhere near here.

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Of course, that is why I like reading Newegg reviews because it's not some salesperson trying to move a product.

The second salesman took more time to listen to how I use my laptop and what went bad with my last one. He insisted that as someone who burnt out my last video card and lost a motherboard in the process, I should really have a machine with a dedicated graphics card. He said that among everything they sell this is the best suited for my needs. He claimed that it would last me a lot longer than any of their cheaper models. With tax it costs about $10 more than I have now, but if I put it on my mom's BestBuy credit card I won't have to pay anything for 18 months. They do not have any in stock at that location, but they do at the next closest branch, they are getting more soon here, and I could have it shipped for free to my house if I order online. I think I am leaning towards this one, but will continue to look for better deals online before making a final decision.

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My first thought was being surprised that the Intel integrated video chip would overheat that easily. I would look into it. Intel chips are usualy pretty cool, and when it comes to any computer, finding a solid motherboard and video (chip or card) is essential (again check reviews).

Edit: I just looked up the graphics card, and it seems that the salesman lied about it having a dedicated graphics card. My research shows that it has one of the best integrated graphics cards on the market with comparable performance to an entry level dedicated graphics card, but that frying the graphics card would still ruin the motherboard. Come to think of it, I am pretty sure that the sign there clearly said that the graphics card has 512mb memory that it does not share with the CPU. Maybe that is not the same as having a dedicated graphics card and he just chose not to correct my confusion.

You can see a side by side comparison of the two I am now most strongly considering here. Note that the Toshiba is $100 cheaper at BestBuy.com than NewEgg.com and with my gift card would be reduced to exactly the same price as the Asus, but would take a week longer to get to me. Edit: It appears that they actually just got a new shipment at my local store, so I could pick one up immediately instead of having it delivered.

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Again, I would check reviews(can't stress this enough). I don't know anything about Toshiba, but know Intel and Asus have been around and are decent companies. Newegg might actually match your price or plan, or don't care as much about selling Toshiba products. Oh, and about Bestbuy, I know their tech support is marginal, however if something happens during your warranty they will replace it with a better model if they are not selling it anylonger. My friend, granted a few years past, used to abuse the Bestbuy warranty program LOL. He'd buy the extended warranty (or not) and before it ran out, he would damage the product somehow and get a new one (often times a better model). In general BB charges more cause it's a storefront, has crappy tech support and/or too expensive, but their warranty program is very good

I just got around to trying your save game.First I tried to see if I could edit the file to work under my version without changing the name, but that corrupted the file and make the game crash so I changed the name of the mod on my version instead. I ran into a WoC Problem too, and since I'm using a 6 year old laptop my machine probably had a worse time handling it than yours. My computer became completely unresponsive until I just turned it off. I think that is a larger map than I usually used even with my newer laptop before it broke.

I could not tell much by simply playing the game, but since I have logging turned on (as explained here) I have a couple of ideas. The end of PythonDbg.log says that the last thing that was happened is that the city of Stoville was acquired and kept. That could very well be related to another Infernal player entering the game. Alternately the problem could be related to the last event found in BBAI.log, which is Jonas III's Dragon Fanatic casting Evangelize. Apparently I used the same txt_key for evangelizing to units or cities with this particular religion, so I'm not sure which spell is being cast. It it is SPELL_EVANGELIZE_UNITS_DRAGON_CULT and is successful, then it could be causing the next unit to call def effectCultusDraconis(caster) and defect to another player while the AI still thinks it needs to be given orders. If it is the city version, then maybe it is triggering a revolt.

I don't really want to risk another game on a map that size on this pc. Maybe you can test to see if changing the <bAllowAI>1 tag under SPELL_EVANGELIZE_UNITS_DRAGON_CULT helps?

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Lately I've been sticking with Large map size (I've always went giant in the past) but for this particular game I chose giant because I was using Full of Resources map (a mapscript that was also made for FFH2 but somewhat outdated) with the Hub map (and I thought it wouldn't be enough land). Anyways, bad idea I found out as for some reason sea maps bog down my computer more than full land maps (like Highlands, fantasy realm, etc.). It would be awesome to bring the Full of Resources up to date and improve it for FFH2 mods. I did notice evangelizing non disciple units the promotion had immediate effect, but the following turn was removed FYI. I'm going to try another game on a large map instead tonight and get back to you. I won't change anything, and if there is a problem hopefully this time can be played on your laptop.

My broken laptop did not have an intel chip. It had a 2.20 GHz AMD Turion II Dual-Core Mobile Processor M500 with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphics.

According to the guy at the repair shop, that model of HP had a design flaw. From what little research I've done on that, it seems that HP chose to switch to a new environmentally friendly lead-free solder which had a much lower melting point than what they had originally planned to use. The card could be functioning within its parameters and still get hot enough to detach from the motherboard. I'm not entirely sure I understood the explanation given by the technician I spoke to on the phone after the diagnostic, as he did not seem to speak English as well as the the one I spoke to in the shop. It may be that the chip would have been fine operating at that temperature if it had not been damaged by flowing solder.


We were glad we got the BestBuy warranty on our first desktop, as it was replaced with a better one with only one month left in the coverage. Their warranty also bought me a new hard drive for the old laptop I'm currently using when I dropped it. Since then though, they have increased the price of their warranties, reducing coverage from 3 to 2 years, and changed how it works so that it is much favorable to consumers. It used to be that they would replace it with a better machine if it failed and the same type was not equivalent. Now they only pay a certain sum towards a new machine, a sum that gradually depreciates over time and is reduced every time they make a repair. My sister's warranty did cover the cost of replacing the motherboard in her Gateway laptop when it failed late last year a month before the warranty expired. (Actually, they replaced it twice, since they messed up the solder on the USB ports the first time.) I however think that she would have been better off if she had put the money spent on the warranty into savings and used it to buy a new machine when hers broke. (At least, she would have been had she backed up all her important files first as I have been doing regularly since getting the external harddrive.)


All the reviews I have read say that the Toshiba's AMD Radeon HD 6520G graphics are much better than the Asus's Intel HD 3000 Graphics. Despite the salesman's claims it is still integrated rather than discrete, but has performance on par with some discrete graphics cards. Some reviews claim that this is easily the best integrated graphics card on the market today. It apparently outperforms any integrated graphics chip made by Intel on every benchmark, often by a wide margin. The Toshiba's A6-3420M processor is considered to be about half way in between the Intel Core i3 and the Intel Core i5, whereas the Asus's Intel B960 is slightly worse than the Intel Core i3.

The computer on NewEgg is not actually identical to the one at BestBuy, just the closest I could find. They appear to differ only in color (Brushed Aluminum Blue vs Matric Graphite) and price. NewEgg also claims its processor is dual core instead of quad core, but every other source agrees that this model has 4 cores.


Apart from some complaints about poor battery life and weak speakers, the reviews on the Asus seem universally very positive. The Toshiba says that it has a 5 star review on BestBuy's website, but when you scroll down for details there are actually just as many 1 star reviews. There are no reviews in between. It seems like there is a significant chance of getting a lemon, but that it is a great deal when it is not defective.

I've also started looking into some reviews of refurbished laptops. It is more than I'd like to pay, but this one seems quite nice. I cannot afford to fully pay for it right now, but I could buy it using their 18 month 0 interest financing. Even if I am unlucky and don't find a job anytime soon, I could get more money for Christmas and my birthday before my current savings run out.

On the other hand, it was an HP that just dies on me, and last night I came across a chart that showed that HP is the least durable brand while Asus just barely beat Toshiba at being the most durable. I've also heard that Toshiba focuses on high end laptops and tend to neglect quality control on their low end machines though.


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I used to prefer standard or large maps, but recently I have rarely risked anything bigger than small. As my computer got older it just couldn't handle the bigger maps very well. (If I get that Toshiba there is a good chance I could handle the largest maps again, at east for a while.) I find that small is actually a pretty good size when you make it 70 land.

The Evangelize to Units spells do not themselves change the religion of units. They instead hand out promotions, which do the converting as a PyPerTurn effect and then (generally, but not for monothiests) wear off. I originally added the promotions not for the Evangelize spell, but so that I could cheat and give units the religions I want them to have in worldbuilder. Having the spells give out the promotions just seemed convenient, and a little more efficient than complicated python code that has to run checks on every unit within range.

A few more things I've noticed while playing, just to help make sure you don't have any yucky free-time while you're trying to sort computer-related things out.

As a neutral civ with nature mana and groves, I can't build druids. They don't appear on any city's build list.

Playing as the Clan with Octopus Overlords, and having researched divine essence, I couldn't build Stir from Slumber. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or if there's more to ressurecting Thal-, Thalatha- the blue dragon than that, but I had its bones in my territory, and in the BFC of a city, and the ritual wasn't buildable.

The new drown mechanic is very interesting, but I don't think national units should be able to use it. Otherwise I can spam phalanaxes, drown them, and have a horde of strength 19 or so melee units.

A mage with the shadowwalk promotion can't cast shadowwalk until it wears off. Which is problematic when another unit in the stack doesn't have shadowwalk, and can't receive it.

Playing as Illian and am having a few problems.

1. As I complete the white hand, as the wonder splash come up my game keeps crashing with a render failure of some sort, and some advice about turning down the graphics. Turning everything down fails to help.

2. A bit before this, I had a message about sending some units in the langus fridges thing (sorry about the spelling), being advised that there would be some benefit. However, nothing seemed to change upon entering.

Any ideas?

Have the Scenarios been redone in this mod?

I bought a new laptop yesterday (this one, since BestBuy ran out of the ones I preferred) and just got back to modding this afternoon.

So far I have found and fixed an error in the python prereq of the Feed spell, implemented the changes to the Share Maps and Obscure Maps votes that I had done just before my last laptop crashed, and made it so that you cannot build the Shrine of the Champion when your national hero is alive and well under another player's control.


@ A Moon:
Druids now have a minimum level of 3. You can never build them, only upgrade to them. The Kuriotates Dryad UU may be built, but nothing may upgrade to it.

Do you have The Cult of the Dragon religion present in the city where you are trying to perform Stir from Slumber? That is a prerequisite.

Ok, I'll block national units from casting Drown.

It seems that in the python prereq for the Shadowwalk and Blur spells I accidentally used pCaster where I obviously meant pUnit. I have fixed both of these.

@zoommooz:
I really don't know anything about render failures. I'm not even sure what you mean by wonder splash. Is there normally a movie associated with the ritual or something? I wouldn't know, as I always turn movies off.

I believe Kael included an event explaining about Letum Frigus, among other unique features. In base FfH2 there is an event triggered by entering the tile, which has special options for the Illians and Amurites. I removed the PythonOnMove call from the feature so this will never be triggered. I think I neglected to remove the actual events, but they should not matter. In my version, Letum Frigus is just an epic lair, a Blizzard source, and the site where the White Hand ritual will create Auric and his lieutenants.

@Elder Methyl:
I have not touched any Scenarios is years. Some might still be compatible, but I doubt it. I may release updated scenarios eventually, but it is not high on my to do list.

One reason I have not worked with scenarios is that they must contain the name under which the mod is saved. Right now everyone is saving my modmod under different names. I may rectify this my making an installer which always saves it under the same name, but I have not yet given much time to figuring out the instructions to do so.

Thanks for clearing all those things up.

"Wonder Splash"


Just showing my age, as this was the way Civ 3 described the pictures for wonders.

Anyway, did a bit of investigating and the whitehand religion has no movie attached to it (neither as a ritual) but it seems that quite a few of the rituals are like that, However, when founding a religion a movie attachment is required it seems (unless you turn off movies ). I worked around this by just grabbing the closest movie file above it in the 'religious xml tag, and no problems now.

And cheers for clearing up the Letum Frigus thing.

Lastly, just a compliment on you revised stats for the units. I much prefer your dragon stats for instance. Also, how hard would it be for me to add the small mod called 'Arcane Mastery' to you mod? It adds a few new promotions and spell, and I just like the way it allow's a mage to continue up the ranks (albeit very slowy).

Edit: Just a balancing point, the spell that Bridget uses (pillar of fire) which can damage all units in a stack 50%, up to 75% seems way to powerful to me. I had Bridget and the one of the ai, teamed with the mercians came into my lands with over two hundred units, against which I had maybe 15-20 at the front. With pillar a fire, and a few levelled up hero's I sent them packing, as it is just to easy to heavily damage so many units with this spell. I edited the damage amount and damage threshold for my game (25, and 55 respectively), but what I really would have liked to have done is limit the number of units that can be damaged by this spell, but could not find the relevant code to change. Just an idea.

I just uploaded a new version. I believe that many of you will be pleased to learn that I provided an installer this time.


The update itself is fairly minor. It fixes a few bugs I discovered, such as those in the prerequisites of the Feed, Blur, and Shadowwalk spells and the assignment of names priests of winter to the wrong leaders. A few TXT_KEYs were changed. Some unused events were removed. National units may no longer cast Drown. The Share Maps Overcouncil resolution is no longer a one time thing, but causes every member to share his maps with every other member at the end of every turn. I decided that the Obscure Maps resolution was too powerful (way too powerful when I made it apply every turn), and that the Undercouncil was good enough without it. Destroying your rivals maps of your territory is now exclusively the domain of the Sidar world spell.

I started another game on a Large map this time as the Amurites. I'm getting a CTD this time. Have any idea what is causing it?

Here's the saved game -

Oh, and it was quite the challenge fending off all the Sons of Acheron with their fireballs early on! Some of the AI got hit pretty hard with the barbs (like the Balseraphs & Bannor).

Freesmog said:

I started another game on a Large map this time as the Amurites. I'm getting a CTD this time. Have any idea what is causing it?

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Not really, and I don't feel like checking.

I downloaded the file, but before trying to play it (even though my new computer can handle Huge maps fine) I checked in Notepad++ and saw that the name of the mod was "Fall from Heaven 2" rather than "Magister Modmod for FfH2. " The latest release uses an installer which would have saved it under that name, so it is obvious your issue is with an old version. I would rather focus on fixing issues the latest version rather than finding bugs that might no longer exist. Also, since you did not tell me which version you are using, I could not go through the hassle of setting up that version under the FfH2 name to test the save game even if I wanted to.


If you want to figure out what the problem is yourself, I would suggest that you check the logs. Edit CivilizationIV.ini so that LoggingEnabled = 1, load your game, and check the files in C:\Users\[insert your user name here]\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs. Usually PythonErr.log is most useful in helping isolate a problem, although, I've uncovered issues using PythonDebug.log, xml.log, and BBAI.log too. Posting these files would do more to help me isolate your problem than the saved game would.

Oh, and it was quite the challenge fending off all the Sons of Acheron with their fireballs early on! Some of the AI got hit pretty hard with the barbs (like the Balseraphs & Bannor).

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I'm not really sure why Disciples of Acheron are spawning so early in the game. When I saw them in earlier versions I assumed they were just being built in Acheron's city, but in my current game one of them destroyed my second city a good 30 or 40 turns before Acheron showed up and the religion that is their prereq was founded. I just (an hour and a half after the latest release) tried added a holy city prereq to see if that stops their aberrant spawning, but haven't had time to test it yet.

will you do an update version after tholal's release of his next version (he said it will be soon)? or will you not?
(to see if it is worth it to wait for tholal's and your next versions, or if I'll have to not upgrade tholal's when I'll dl yours).

MagisterCultuum said:

Destroying your rivals maps of your territory is now exclusively the domain of the Sidar world spell.

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Whoa, this is a verrrry nice idea, fitting with the Sidar! How did you do it? Using python only or some dll magic?

Calavente said:

will you do an update version after tholal's release of his next version (he said it will be soon)? or will you not?
(to see if it is worth it to wait for tholal's and your next versions, or if I'll have to not upgrade tholal's when I'll dl yours).

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I intend to include Tholal's new version in my next version, but cannot say exactly when that will be.

esvath said:

Whoa, this is a verrrry nice idea, fitting with the Sidar! How did you do it? Using python only or some dll magic?

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I have not touched the dll in years. The dll of my mod is still identical to More Naval AI's last release. I just used about 10 lines of python in CvSpellInterface.py.

Oh, and one more thing. Lunatics. They're a little bit insane. Hannah completely destroyed Varn Gosam in the game I'm currently playing, and I don't think there was anything he could do against the strength 7 units rolling around his territory.

And then she started drowning some of them and declared on me.

I think they should have some requirement beyond Message from the Deep, although I can't quite think what.

I haven't tried your latest version with the installer, as it was the version before that. Didn't realize it could simply be a "name" issue. I'll try your latest version next time. Thanks for the PythonErr.log tips. The Sons of Acheron were spawning all over the place, and all I had to defend against them were Adepts & Warriors.

MagisterCultuum said:

I downloaded the file, but before trying to play it (even though my new computer can handle Huge maps fine) I checked in Notepad++ and saw that the name of the mod was "Fall from Heaven 2" rather than "Magister Modmod for FfH2. " The latest release uses an installer which would have saved it under that name, so it is obvious your issue is with an old version. I would rather focus on fixing issues the latest version rather than finding bugs that might no longer exist. Also, since you did not tell me which version you are using, I could not go through the hassle of setting up that version under the FfH2 name to test the save game even if I wanted to.

I'm not really sure why Disciples of Acheron are spawning so early in the game. When I saw them in earlier versions I assumed they were just being built in Acheron's city, but in my current game one of them destroyed my second city a good 30 or 40 turns before Acheron showed up and the religion that is their prereq was founded. I just (an hour and a half after the latest release) tried added a holy city prereq to see if that stops their aberrant spawning, but haven't had time to test it yet.

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Hi MC,

thanks for the installer... and... forgive me my dumbness after 12 hours of work, but I am so tired atm (and usually am when coming home) that I can't think very much anymore, so can you just please include all needed files in the installer and let it put in some other place then ffh 2 mods, maybe just bts mods as rife and mom does? It would be nice if it is handled like a standalone (forgive me the unpropper definition here) and just contains everything it needs to run smooth and fine. A lot of us just aren't so handy in these things... maybe valk or sephi can held out here and give you advice. Or make it for dummies: 1. do this. 2. do this. 3. now this. etc. pp.

Thanks,

Tschuggi

A Moon said:

Oh, and one more thing. Lunatics. They're a little bit insane. Hannah completely destroyed Varn Gosam in the game I'm currently playing, and I don't think there was anything he could do against the strength 7 units rolling around his territory.

And then she started drowning some of them and declared on me.

I think they should have some requirement beyond Message from the Deep, although I can't quite think what.

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I did not change Lunatics from base FfH2, but I agree they seem a bit much. I have decided that in my next release their strength will be reduced by 1.

Since Drowns are Undead, I'm thinking of making them require the Necromancy technology.

Freesmog said:

I haven't tried your latest version with the installer, as it was the version before that. Didn't realize it could simply be a "name" issue. I'll try your latest version next time. Thanks for the PythonErr.log tips. The Sons of Acheron were spawning all over the place, and all I had to defend against them were Adepts & Warriors.

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The name issue would not be causing your problem, but it would interfere with my ability to load your game on my computer in order to try to track down the source of your problem.

Tschuggi said:

Hi MC,

thanks for the installer... and... forgive me my dumbness after 12 hours of work, but I am so tired atm (and usually am when coming home) that I can't think very much anymore, so can you just please include all needed files in the installer and let it put in some other place then ffh 2 mods, maybe just bts mods as rife and mom does? It would be nice if it is handled like a standalone (forgive me the unpropper definition here) and just contains everything it needs to run smooth and fine. A lot of us just aren't so handy in these things... maybe valk or sephi can held out here and give you advice. Or make it for dummies: 1. do this. 2. do this. 3. now this. etc. pp.

Thanks,

Tschuggi

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I don't know how to make one installer create folders in two different directories. According to the tutorial I found through your link, neither does Valkrionn.

I could create a separate installer for the ini files, but I don't think it is worth the effort.

Tholal has claimed that in his next release all the ini files should be generated automatically. As I intend to update my modmod to be based on the new version of his, you should not need to deal with the BUG Mod folder in my next version either.

Edit:
I just realized I may have misread your post. Do you mean that you want me to include all the base FfH2 content in the installer?

I have no plan to do that. It would make the download so much larger that I would need to find another site to host it instead of just including it as an attachment to the opening post of this thread.

I think it is better the way Setup works now. So long as you have FfH2 installed, it puts everything you need for my mod in a new "Magister Modmod for FfH2" folder in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods directory.

You still need to keep the Resources folder intact within C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2 in order for the game to function. It copies this (and Private Maps) into the new directory, but I don't know how to make the game look for them in that location. I think I may be able to figure out how to make it only copy the Assets folder of FfH2 though, so as not to waste space on your hard drives.Edit: I just tried, but it does not put the contents of Assets in the Assets folder that way. Maybe it would be easier to find and edit the files that tell the mod where to look for Resources.

I have just uploaded a new version. It includes the latest version of More Naval AI, and so no longer requires anyone to download BUG Mod ini files separately. I changed the path in which the game looks for the Resources folder to refer to my modmod itself, so it is also no longer necessary for anyone to keep a copy of Fall from Heaven 2 under its original name after the installation is complete.


The rest of the changes are fairly minor. There are some new TXT_KEYS. Inquisition no longer removes Pagan Temples. Ritualists can build Metamagic nodes and learn Metamagic 1 & 2. (This is to provide the Khazad with a way to make mana nodes revert to raw mana without needing an arcane religious hero.) The range of the terraforming effect of the Temple of the Hand is now depended on the amount of Ice mana the city's owner controls.

it seems that the installer can't locate my ffh 2 folder... will report back. Thanks for your efforts and quick help! Looking forward to playing it.

Greez,

Tschuggi