Ideas, Requests, and Feedback

@Valk:

You might be interested in this post from the More Naval AI thread, if you haven't already incorporated something similar in RifE.

1.4 includes a merge of BBAI by Snarko, so that should be in already.

Sounds good.

Hey everyone I was wondering, maybe perchance, you may know to go in and edit "promotions". The reason being is because it seems that one of my units keeping getting "burn out" each time they cast a spell. Any help into what files to edit would be appreciated.

Grigori are my favorite Civ, and I was thinking it would be awesome if the sidequest came in two variations, the regular as it is now.
And one where so long as they're visible they would automatically take all their movement points back to the fortress and skip the rest of the turn.
Usually midway into the game, if I secured a couple of animals, particularly a spider, an elephant and a tiger, I will start mass producing scouts, leveling them through sidequest, cast all the animal bloods on the scout and turn them into horsemen > chariots.
Babysitting 20 or 30 units each turn is kind of a drag.
Anyway, would this be difficiult? Could I maybe make it myself, maybe it would be easier if they were just leashed for 10 turns, so you'd have to really think about it if their is a sudden barbarian incursion or something.

Features I would really like:

Automatic archer/falconer/fort commander ranged strikes as enemy units get into range. Wild Mana has this.

The whole spellbook mechanic from Wild Mana whereas Mana Guardians hold spellbooks that are dropped when they are killed. This makes it possible for magic heroes like Hemah, Govannon, Alcinus and such to get really powerful.

The Master Buildings mechanic needs to be reworked a little. Its virtually impossible to get all Great Engineers to pop out in one session.

The Grand Menagerie should provide better benefits for how hard it is to get it. Maybe let you breed or recruit the animals you used to build it for money.

The Catacomb Libralus should provide better benefits. Either faster research of magical techs or faster experience gain for arcane units.

Animal Revolt should make peace with animals optional.

The Illians Stasis worldspell is too annoying, nothing to do but click away. Maybe replace it with a worldspell called Fimbulvinter where the two workable rings for your city gets turned to ice, dropping your food to almost nil for 20 turns. Maybe with a chance to spawn frostlings.

TheToadsAreonFire said:

Features I would really like:

Automatic archer/falconer/fort commander ranged strikes as enemy units get into range. Wild Mana has this.

Click to expand...

Defensive strikes is the feature simulating this idea. I'm not convinced we need the additional automation.

TheToadsAreonFire said:

The whole spellbook mechanic from Wild Mana whereas Mana Guardians hold spellbooks that are dropped when they are killed. This makes it possible for magic heroes like Hemah, Govannon, Alcinus and such to get really powerful.

Click to expand...

I haven't played Wild Mana in a while, so i have no idea what the spellbooks are.

TheToadsAreonFire said:

The Master Buildings mechanic needs to be reworked a little. Its virtually impossible to get all Great Engineers to pop out in one session.

Click to expand...

It's not that hard to get them, you just need to focus your city. But i agree that this needs to be reworked.

TheToadsAreonFire said:

The Grand Menagerie should provide better benefits for how hard it is to get it. Maybe let you breed or recruit the animals you used to build it for money.

Click to expand...

I'll think about it.

TheToadsAreonFire said:

The Catacomb Libralus should provide better benefits. Either faster research of magical techs or faster experience gain for arcane units.

Click to expand...

That's reasonable.

TheToadsAreonFire said:

Animal Revolt should make peace with animals optional.

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No on that one

TheToadsAreonFire said:

The Illians Stasis worldspell is too annoying, nothing to do but click away. Maybe replace it with a worldspell called Fimbulvinter where the two workable rings for your city gets turned to ice, dropping your food to almost nil for 20 turns. Maybe with a chance to spawn frostlings.

Click to expand...

I agree that Stasis needs to get an alternative for people who wish so. Yours is a potential idea. I'll think about it.

My two cents.

Re Fort Commanders, I hadn't thought that way about Defensive Strikes, but I like it. I usually set my Fort Commanders to Sentry rather than Fortify, so I know if a hostile unit approaches and then can Bombard.

I also haven't played Wild Mana in a very long time -- years -- so don't remember Spellbooks.

I've never (or almost never) had a problem getting enough Great Engineers in a game to build the Master Buildings.

Because different types of animals spawn in different areas of the map, by the time i get enough to build the Grand Menagerie -- if I do, which is almost never -- I usually have Carnivals in most of my cities anyway, so agree that the Grand Menagerie could use something more.

I'm happy with the Catacomb Libralus as is, but if you want to give it a buff, maybe have it provide one (or two?) additional Mana, with the type(s) chosen randomly.

I've never bothered with Nature's Revolt, since I like being able to capture animals and build their buildings, even in the late game.

Stasis is annoying, but I guess I've gotten used to it after playing this mod and its predecessors for so long, so I just have my Workers keep building improvements and send my recon units out exploring. But something different for an Illian World Spell might be good.

On Stasis, the idea is to offer an alternate worldspell through a module, so that people who like it can keep it.

A little about the Wild Mana Spellbooks and how they work.

You had two types of Spellbooks, store-bought from an Adventurer's Guild (which was like a conglomerate of all those different Master buildings, you needed a 6th level unit to sacrifice to build it). Those books, you could buy in first and second level varieties (50 and 250 gold) and they taught the unit a random first level spell or a second level spell. The school spellbooks, you would find on Mana Guardians. They didn't roam but formed like a 4 unit stack with the oldest unit being a 5-promotion elemental generally. Once you captured the book it got teleported to the capital. When you used the book, it would teach you random spells (1st, 2nd or 3rd level) from different domains (Divination, Alteration, Necromancy, Elementalism and Metamagic...Creation, Force and Dimension mana didn't fit there) in addition to giving you enough experience to gain 2 or 3 levels. They made a VERY good incentive to attack capital cities and to expand aggresively. A powerful archmage could make an imbalanced war winnable...and be a very juicy target for your 15-level, invisible Alazkan the Assasin.

Edit:

I remembered a feature I don't if it's possible to implement...templates. Say you capture or build a late game city, it would be neat to have an option to choose a template and have a series of buildings built sequentially (defense, industry buildings, research buildings and so on). I know you can shift click and queue as many as you want but it gets tedious.

A feature/question. Metamagic mana. In Wild Mana its not common either but if you rushed sorcery or arcane lore, you could build a national wonder (a tower of something or other) which would give you one metamagic mana so that you could correct mistakes or not as useful mana nodes (law mana?). It seems very rare in Ashes and I feel that making it node dependent kind of neuters magical strategies. I am running a game right now where I spawned next to the Malakim who started desertifying half of the continent. As luck would have it, one of their city had founded Overlords and in a ridiculous war (gimmegimmegimmegimme) I ended up capturing the founding city AND had a great prophet that I could rush there and build the Necronomicon for water mana so I could correct their idiocy but other players might feel stiffled.

you might want to edit that last post. I can't see where the quoted post ends and yours starts

Hi,
spell books were from Wild Mana (and not Master of Mana).. so it's really oldish ! they were very nice !
Spell books were "gear" that could be dropped; --> new spell promotion from a "school" and xp... sweet for our little mages...

Master engineers : I most often get all of them, but not always worth it (save for the gold income)... but you have to start by mid-game (early phase of mid game): then it's a snow-ball effect, each Mastershop enabling to get more engineers specialists... (I'm a bit disappointed by the ranged master engineer (especially for arquebuses, but not only), and the lack of gear for disciples or mages ... and the lack of "alternatives" : it's most of the times : x>y>z... whereas I'd like to have X or Y or Z, each having different balance effect... + having better gear as tech upgrades)

On Grand menagerie : for me the issue is that often times the grand menagerie is built late (due to hard conditions, and animals being spread out in the world) I already have carnivals in most places... thus the effect is much less than catacomb librarus (for which you need to rush if you really want it): so maybe no free carnival, but maybe some free cages of the rarest animals : free panther cages in all cities ? or free gorilla cages ? ; or you are allowed to "build" the animal cages instead of needing an animal ???

On Catacomb Librarus : yes !

Nature revolt : never built it... I really want to be able to capture the last remaining animals.

Whatever spell creates hell terrain is just game breaking if you're playing Ljosalfar. I'm guessing it's a first promotion, like sanctify.. But to restore forest requires vitalize, which is a Nature III promotion. So even if you have adepts everywhere autocasting sanctify, it doesn't restore the forests, so you lose from that - and hills seem to remain arid or semi-arid even after sanctifying, so you lose from that too.

That's not to mention enemies being able to teleport units into the middle of your kingdom all over the place.

Ljosalfar only having one hero (and no other units) that can enter mountains, while demons and death seem to have lots doesn't seem very balanced either. If I had lots of mages/adepts with fireball that might sort it, but of course, i don't because fireball is Fire II - and i need to give my first trained promotion as sanctify to any adept in order to have a chance.

And the glory ritual only reducing armaggedon counter by 40 doesn't seem like nearly enough for the amount of production turns required.

It depends on if you use them properly. The proper way to use sanctify is not to go chasing hell terrain when its already spread into your territory but to park autocasting adepts at the edge of your land so that they clear it before it can enter. It's hard and requires a lot of adepts but that's the only safe way to do it.

Hell terrain isn't caused by a spell, but spreads automatically once the Infernals enter the game. The Civilopedia has an explanation of how Hell Terrain works in an entry under "Fall from Heaven Concepts."

If you're following Fellowship of Leaves, which a Ljosalfar player usually does, then your Priests of Leaves can create new forest by casting Bloom, so you don't need to wait for Nature III Archmages.

Maybe we need a Hellish version of forests, I don't know, so when the underling terrain changes to Hell Terrain the forest changes too. Something resembling what happens with the Malakin, when the terrain changes to Desert the forests become Scrubs.

Nor'easter said:

Hell terrain isn't caused by a spell, but spreads automatically once the Infernals enter the game. The Civilopedia has an explanation of how Hell Terrain works in an entry under "Fall from Heaven Concepts."

If you're following Fellowship of Leaves, which a Ljosalfar player usually does, then your Priests of Leaves can create new forest by casting Bloom, so you don't need to wait for Nature III Archmages.

Maybe we need a Hellish version of forests, I don't know, so when the underling terrain changes to Hell Terrain the forest changes too. Something resembling what happens with the Malakin, when the terrain changes to Desert the forests become Scrubs.

Click to expand...

Ok thanks for the explanation of where it comes from. I can cast Bloom for new forst, but it won't have anything like the same bonuses for ljosalfar as when it was ancient forest will it? And if they don't even have to be there to cast it, it's even more of a game breaker imo.

I'll just start again from scratch with a custom game with no hell terrain option.

Would it be possible to merge all or portions of More Naval AI into AoE? Right now I'm missing the BUG Mod functionality MNAI incorporated (while noting AoE does have similar components), particularly the Strategy Layer so I can plan city locations.
I also prefer MNAI's Civics and Religion panel UI as they're cleaner and a bit more informative.

possible, yeah, but time-consuming and complicated.

PPQ_Purple said:

It depends on if you use them properly. The proper way to use sanctify is not to go chasing hell terrain when its already spread into your territory but to park autocasting adepts at the edge of your land so that they clear it before it can enter. It's hard and requires a lot of adepts but that's the only safe way to do it.

Click to expand...

that's exactly it.
but you should also note that you won't notice Hell Terrain approach on water/coast... so all your coasts needs to be auto-sanctified to protect from hell terrain encroaching, even when not seeing it.

My preferred method for doing this is to build a picket line of galleys with adepts on them. They also double as a picket line against pirates and stuff.