Fairy Tale

Thank you, The J. Yes. This was quite a catch!

I will eventually be replacing all vanilla background music with most of Zero-Project's album. This will make the download swell a tad, though, so the first phase is just to use the initial theme song at first and then produce a major file for download that can then easily be patched in the future.

My current philosophical dilemma is that I don't want to make the download too large, since I update much and often. Right now the file is only about 20 megs, but soon, I will need to make a standard download with all the big files in it, like music, units and graphics, and just patch that as I go. I don't want all my hundreds of thousands of fans downloading 100 megs each time I update and patches can be kept on a few mega each time, at least.

Make it a separate addon .
Easiest way to do, will not enlarge the original download, and you can give the advice here, how to re-use the files with a newer version.

Version 2 is here!

V2 is ready for download. Here are the included updates.

1a Minor update, March 1, 2010

*Gave SaibotLieh's Great Swordswoman a combat value of 10. That is only fair, since the Crystallin lack heavy cavalry.
*Heightened the Raid archer's combat value to 7 and gave them 50% City Attack bonus. Now they are truly raiders.
*Corrected issue with missing Interface on the Angvina Archers! It was a matter of .kfm, strangely enough. The animations worked, but not the Interface. Baffling, but corrected now.
*Updated the map with resources.

V2. Update, March 6, 2010

*The Fairy Tale Theme Song, "Knights of Darkness" was composed by Zero-Project and used with full permissions, and I can use the rest of his Fairytale album as well. I therefore pasted many of the songs from the album as background music in this mod.
*Updated the design of the Main Menu screen.
*Removed Axemen from the Crystallin arsenal altogether.
*Wrote unique names for all the Great People. No more Francis Bacon or Columbus being born!
*Gave the Namyri a special building, the Lord's Mansion which is now required to build the national hero. The Namyri got their hero too early.
*The Collective now has a Black Dragon instead of the usual red one. The Black Dragon is stronger and does better against city fortifications too! The Black dragon goes for the Denereans as well.
*Included a Barbarian Sabretooth tiger instead of the boring old bears roaming about.
*Gave the Vikings a Longboat instead of the Galley. Now the Norse are real Vikings and can explore the seas early on.
*Added the Dark Elven Civilization (The Denereans). I added proper leaders and units also (4 unique units and a special building), and of course placed them on the World of Fairy Tale map, which was somewhat updated to cater for the new civ as well.
*Reskinned some Denerean units. Yes! This is REAL reskinning. I gave them blue skin. Also made most of them wear all black.
*Created the scenario "The Elven Civil War" to introduce the new civ.
*Gave Heroes a specific Promotion line. Heroes now get their own types of promotions.
*Added Goblin mercenaries. These powerul mercenaries will join any nation's armies from time to time.

This mod has a lot of potential. Here is some feedback.

- Light Horse should not upgrade into Duke's Guard Knights.
- Light Horse could be renamed as something like Sergeants at Arms to keep the High Medieval theme and feeling.
- Either Eagle Order Knights should upgrade into Duke's Guard Knights or perhaps into a new type Paladins.
- Paladins could be given a healing style promotion.
- I would like to see units such as the King, the Queen and the Princess as multifigure units with soldiers next to them. They could be renamed as Queen's Guard, etc. It makes more sense.
- The Queen figure is too small!
- I would like to see better figures for the Queen and the Princess. Armoured fantasy types with weapons.
- It would be nice to have a tech that allows irrigation to be spread.
- The mod needs a few more techs.
- Why are nations such as the Dal and the other minors missing lots of basic level techs?
- The AI seems to lack something. A powerful enemy army just sat in some forest inside my nation for many, many turns. It was hard to kill but achieved little.
- The AI does not use the special Royal units well. I killed the Dowager Queen's King unit as it wandered near to my lands.


I'm looking forward to more updates of this mod soon.


Cheers,
Sword

Thanks for some good comments here. I've thought about some of your points already and will be doing things to address the issues.

The Techs need to be addressed as soon as possible, as you point out. I will then be adding a new level of units as well; the next level will be even stronger and better than those I already have. Your ideas about the Principality knights are very good. The Eagle Order Knight is a bonus that can only be built in the Principality capital, but an upgrade level even to them can be very useful, I think.

The Queen figure is really out-of-place as yet, innit. It is only the female Settler with big boobs from Zerver's Settlers. She doesn't animate right either. I'm looking for a better queen, actually. I have a Jeanne d'Arc figure with armour and a sword, but I'd like something better than that too. SaibotLieh has a lot of female units, and I might just find an armoured lady there.

I've also noted the stuff with the Collective army digging in north of the Principality Capital. They just stand there. I dunno what that is about yet.

The idea about multifigured units is really good! The King shouldn't be that, as he's a Great General at heart, but the Princess and Queen could surely be. That's really a very good idea. It seems a bit strange having the lonely Princess storming cities.

Thanks for the comments! They are very helful. The King had the wrong AI-type! He behaved like a regular infantry unit. No wonder the enemy couldn't use him. He's been corrected now. The update is coming in the form of a patch during the next week; there is more music already added and some corrections. I'll also work on the techs and some new units.

Wonderful, Le Sage! I already really enjoy the mod and it looks like it's going to get better and better.

Yes, at least the Queen model has big boobs!


More Feedback
- The Collective units are very tough actually. It's a race for me as Principality to get enough strong units before they invade my realm. Which hampers expansion of course. I like the game dynamic.

- Catapults and Trebuchet don't seem to work very well. Am I missing something? I can see Trebuchet get +100% vs cities making them useful there. What about catapults though? They don't work as stack softeners.

- Magicians take a very long time to build and then have no spells. Making a spell is a major undertaking needing a tech and building. What about giving them one or two weaker spells? I presume you're using the magic system from FFH mod, is that right? There are several useful spells that could be given.


Keep up the great work, mate!

Cheers,
Sword

Don't the catapults work? I've actually not touched them at all from Vanilla. I'll have a look at the XML and see if something's wrong. I can't say that I've encountered any problems with catapults. I've used them in most of my playtest games to soften city garrisons, and to good effect.

The Magicians do have a spell though. It's called the Snaketrail spell and is built in cities with the Mage's Guild building. It can then be loaded unto the Magician and cast by him. The Magician also does city bombardment, which also makes him de-facto artillery. I have not used FfH in any way, actually, yet I am planning on looking into it to see what I might use. FfH is one of my favourits mods, needless to say. The spell system is very limited as yet. It could indeed provide me with the opportunity to design more techs and things to build, so there's coming much more in that department in the future.

Magicians might be too expensive though, as you point out. I'll change that.

And, ooh yeah. The Queens boobs are really royal, aren't they? they're an important feature.

This is Patch 2a. I sadly didn't have time to do more updating than this right now. I've been playing Deanej's Star Trek mod, you see, and I'm quite addicted and it takes a lot of my time! Aaargh!

You will need the Full install of Version 2 of Fairy Tale for this to work...

Download here.


PATCH 2a INFO

Fairy Tale Version 2a

This patch upgrades your Fairy Tale game to version 2a. To INSTALL, simply unzip the Fairy Tale folder found within the zipped file into your Mods\Fairy Tale folder on your harddrive and OVERWRITE where asked. This patch might invalidate saved games, so to be sure, you should finish your current games before installing the patch.


The changes in this patch:

2b Update (patch), March, 2010

*Wrote the names of the Great Prophets as well. I forgot them when I did all the other names.
*The Denerean Angels no longer appear when Archery is discovered, but rather at Feudalism.
*Removed movies for Parthenon (renamed that one too) and Great Library.
*Added three more Zero-Project songs. These are not from the Fairytale-album, but very suitable pieces I found in his other production.
*Corrected Royal Family AI. The king had the wrong AI package, so the enemy couldn't use him. Corrected all that.
*Made the Princess and the Queen have two guards along. It makes more sense, since their missions usually involve combat.
*Techs are now a tad more expensive overall.
*Magicians are now cheaper to build.
*The scenario "The Collective War" now has victory condition Domination instead of Conquest.
*Corrected slight error where vanilla civs appeared playable in the Custom Game menu.
*Created a html manual instead of the long .txt ReadMe document.
*I added a tech too, Cavalry Tactics, but it actually doesn't do anything yet.

Hey! I saw your mod in MODDB a few days ago and my first thought was "why didn't I see it on Civfanatics"!

Awesome backstory and cool design. I am going to try it as soon as I play another Civ4 game!

Hey, Deon. Nice to see you here too.

I am now going to go install your add-on for Star Trek. That will probably make my own Fairy Tale mod updates even more scarce than they already are. But I have no panic with this mod. It's an eternal project, I guess, and will never be finished anyways. The Star Trek mod provides a lot of inspiration too, and it's just so well-done, that I'm quite jealous of you and Deanej and the others working on it.

Actually as I said I just merged to mods, I haven't done anything for it yet. I am helping to work on MOO2Civ though and making my StarCraft mod, so lots of space mods here, hehe .

If you will need some help, feel free to ask.

Great Mod - thanks for all the effort you have put into it.

I do have one quick newb question. Would it be possible to setup a scenario that allows you to follow the tech tree to Dowager Queen, then have a "dark ages" where no more techs are found, then after that jump into the remainder of the Civ and BTS techs and finish up history?

Hey. Thanks, man.

That is actually a good idea. I am currently removing all units from the mod that go beyond the Middle Ages though; that in purpose of creating a proper Civilopedia. That means that I am also cutting out the possibility of adding units like musketeers, riflemen and tanks and airplanes that go with future eras.

But I do not think your idea would be impossible. Fairy Tale could be taken all the way into Science Fiction with mechanized units and domes and things; mixing that genre with good old Fantasy. As of now, that is beyond the scope of this mod, but I will be thinking about it, because it's actually a thrilling idea.

Hey, this looks awesome! I'm going to go play this right now.
I'll edit my post with some thoughts.

At first I was worried that it was only a scenario based mod, but since you mentioned Planet Generator, custom games are an option. That's good. I love custom games. More control over everything.

Anyway, I'll go look at things.

Hmm, one thing so far, the Creation mapscript is a little broken. It seems to think a valid fantasy world is 65% desert.

It's basically unplayable, especially with forcing you to start in the desert. Will check out Planet Generator.

Just like you, David, I like random worlds and options. Therefore, I wanted to keep this mod open like that too with some good mapscripts.

Thanks for reporting on Creation. I must say that I haven't had any problems with it myself, and I've done several good playtesting games on Creation. I must admit that I changed it a bit from the original though, and I should try to change it back to its original state at the next update, just paste my own civs in there. Changing it back, may be best, if there indeed are problems with it.

The World Generator is a very powerful mapscript though. You'll like that one if you like having options to choose from when generating maps. It's simply loaded with options. That script is easily mergeable with Civilization as a whole, so you can use it in other civ games too!

If anyone knows of any other good and suitable mapscripts I could use, please report them here. I'd be more than happy to include them in Fairy Tale.

Well, my experience so far is that this mod is awesome and win and epic.
Uh, seriously, I like this mod.
Oh, and some more original wonders and buildings would be nice. So far I haven't seen any "Brand new" wonders. Maybe some buildings. I don't know.

It's a little weird seeing the Hanging Gardens suddenly called the Harem.
All that's probably just me.

Edit: Got some more random events, and even went through the entire tech tree. Which dead ends after Calvary Tactics.

Thank you kindly for your comments.

Yeah! There are some new buildings, but not really enough of them yet. I've really been concentrating on the units so far. The more important civs have their Unique Buildings already though, but I'm adding more as I go. The same goes for techs as well. Cavalry Tactics was added this week as I was going to make "Layer 3" of techs and units; there will be stronger units and some more techs.

But I didn't have the time this week to complete that project as I was playing the Star Trek mod all the time instead of working on this! Blast that Star Trek mod!

I am updating the mod very often and keep working on it all the time. I do stuff more or less every day (when not playing the Star Trek mod), and have now adopted a system of patches which makes it so that those who have downloaded the Full Install only have to patch the game and not download the full install again. Last night I cleared out the Civilopedia and made entries for all units, civs and leaders. They are empty as yet, but I'll be adding the text today and - bam - we have a proper Civilopedia like all the good mods have!

The goal is actually to make it feel like a completely new game; if not a total conversion. But I still want to retain the feeling of playing good old Civilization, so many things will stick in any case.

Well, I guess I could set Phasers on stun and zap you.

Yeah, the main thing is you work on the mod on your pace and time.
Don't let too many people pressure you. I'm a bit annoying at times, I should say.

Well take your time and have fun while you mod. But damn that Star Trek mod!


Cheers,
Sword

Oh, I'm taking no panic with this. My deadline is set for Autumn 2010, and I guess it's self-explanatory why I chose that date. I guess I will never be really done though.

Right now i'm writing the Civilopedia entries about the leaders. That is actually very much fun and an excellent sunday morning hobby. I get to write small stories about each of the leaders, and in a way, make them persons. I also need to update their traits since sometimes their personalitities don't fit their biographies.

I am going to look for diplomusic too. I need MP3 files about or under 1 meg; national anthem or ethnic sounding. Zero-Project, who composed the main game music, has a few pieces I can use in that respect. I'm open for suggestions in the diplomusic department.