[Modular Modmodmod] Keepers of the Holy Places

How about giving weaker promo for good UF (since the city will have commerce from Dragon Bones, hammer from Remnants of Patria etc) and stronger combat promo for bad UF? The logic is, for the monks to be able to subdue Barbatos, of course they will have to be stronger vs Undead and resist Death Damage. Order which purify Bradeline's Well should get stronger resistance -or even immunity- over Unholy Damage to reflect their never-ending study of corruption.

About unsealing, I think it is better to give options for it, in condition like Calavente's and :
3) Unsealing while Elohim presents and there is Order of YYY automatically declare war to Elohim and has x% failure chance. The Elohim won't agree for peace unless they acquired the UFs again or the enemy is destroyed or the Elohim is destroyed; no capitulation, if that's possible.
 
Uploaded minor patch 0.21a. (won't break 0.21 saves)

Selphi provided promo button art for 16 of the 19 UF promotions. These should fix the pink square problem for all UF promotions except Aifon Isle, Mount Kalshekk, and Tower of Eyes. I haven't actually tested these and won't be able to for the next 12 hours. If someone tells me that they work, I'll ask Selphi for the last 3 button arts.
 
Lot's of room for adjustment but there are two rules that I won't break:
Elohim won't be pillaging/looting UFs. (at least if they are good)
The unholy places are bad places to live (even when sealed), at least relative to other Elohim cities.

I'll boost the promos for the bad UFs. It makes sense for these units to be extra tough. Maybe +30% vs demon for Well and Sepulcher (that's on top of the demon slaying); +30% vs. orcish for Pyre; I'd like to make the Tower promotion work against illusions and puppets (and make various hiddens visible), but I'm not sure if I can do that.

There also should be some civ-wide benefit for sealing many or all of the 5 UFs. I don't have access to the purity counter (different module) but some other possibilities:
Boost in Tithe to all cities
Golden Age*
Add a Trait
*This only works if Sealing is really permanent. The other 2 effects could be reversed if UFs are later unsealed.

Unseal / unsanctify. This would restore bad manas and trigger the normal exploration function. There could be a cost (100 gp?) and a spell delay (not sure if that will work with the exploration code). Requirements would be:
not under Elohim control
minimum level (6?)
alignment: not Good

Edit: In my old mod I had some mechanisms present for Elohim-gone-bad. Purity counter for evil Elohim will always be 0 (from Elohim+ module) but there could be some pos/neg effects applied here. I don't want to put too much work into it (it's a rare situation). But I could make the UFs never seal and even speed up the upgrade so they could be explored often (although this could get out of control).
 
youhou !!! you're stickied ! stuck ?
well done Pazyryk :D
I promise you, my next game will be with "keepers" modmodmod... well, maybe only next month or so... but promised, it will be my next game !
 
If someone wants to do me a favor, please try out the mod with Elohim controlled by AI. I know the basic functions work (AI will found orders; captured cities will loose Order and other mod-specific buildings). But I don't know how well the AI will hold up in a full game.
 
Perhaps some Orders for Holy Cities, and maybe for the Altar of Luonattar as well, would be a good addition. This way you can get a few Orders in maps with no unique features, and one order whose location can be controlled (Luonattar).
 
Calavente: I played the Mod with an AI Elohim, and surprisingly they did pretty well. They lost about two-thirds of their Order cities, but held on to some of them, and were in the top half of the score board in the later part of the game. The AI (and player) does better on fragmented non-pangea maps, but on a pangea maps the isolated order cities get conquered quickly by barbarians.
 
Thanks for this modmod, it's a blast... enjoyed its precursor in Orbis as well.

It's quite something to have a little settler and escort pop into the middle of a very, very wild wilderness that Wildmana is known for. Sometimes you manage to survive (fortify a hill city and build warriors immediately to supplement your novice), sometimes you don't!
 
I've started an 8-civ all Elohim game to test this system out. I've always liked the Elohim, hopefully this works out. Before I even start, I have a question: if I have a city with three UFs in the BFC, will it gain all three orders, or else what will judge which it will receive? I have a pretty sick start, and don't want to waste it.
 
The short answer is that you should be able to build 3 cities around those UFs that each have one order.

The way it works is that any city that doesn't already have an order will "search" for UFs out to 3 tiles (4 tiles in water), taking the closest "available" one (if 2 are equidistant, it will pick only one). Once an order is established for a UF, then that UF is no longer available. This is permanent unless that city is captured or razed, in which case the order will reappear in another city if the other city is in range and doesn't already have an order. So by these rules the UFs aren't always associated with the closest city -- it's more of a first-to-claim-but-you-can-only-claim-one rule. The 3-tile distance is the same as the 3-tile cultural ring (as long as x^2 + y^2 < 11) so 3 tiles diagonal is too far.

Edit: Are you really playing with 8 different Elohim civ's? (scrambles to look at python code...) OK, it should work. The only weird thing is that any number of "different" Elohim civs will all be able to claim a single UF if they all have cities in range (the check for "availability" is only done within civ). Perhaps this is something I ought to fix... I didn't think at all about this situation in my coding.
 
The case in point is a bit extreme, but you could very well have two elohim Civs with the Minister Koun event, so it definitely should be cheked for all cities in range of the UF.
 
Again saying kudos, I really like this modmod.

I've played it recently on an Earth type map, which like many such maps, dictates that every civ starts in the "old world." This brought about some interesting things for my Elohim, namely, jumping the ocean to the new world to start establishing cities around the UFs out thataway. The new world of course is teeming with barbarians and animals, very dangerous to fledgling cities (or the settler and novice) if you teleport in within range of something nasty. If you luck out and survive long enough to build defenders, you end up with a decent chance at a monopoly on new continental masses. No, your new cities out there can't build settlers, but they can sure try and conquer barb cities over there if you can handle the overseas maintenance :)

Anyhow, not really a balance critique or anything, it's just interesting to discover a chunk of the world before anyone else can, and stake your claim on it. Little different than For the Horde, where you can end up with weak critters overseas who can't do much except sit there and cost money with no real home.
 
I, too, am enjoying this mod a lot. It is great fun. I have two requests for it.

1) Can you make the starting settler able to found an order? I find myself going into world builder and deleting the starting settler, giving myself a Missionary of Sucellus. It really bothers me that my first city cannot start an order, especially when being able to see and move to a UF early on is a strong point of the Elohim.

2) Give the Orders less similar benefits. Not all of them have to give monks abilities. Maybe they just give the entire city benefits. Maybe the Sepulcher gives the city's adepts something (but the promotion would require a monastery). Perhaps the mirror of heaven gives ALL of your units true sight (but again, that promotion would require a monastery). The +5 health bonus to a city? Great! Turning a unit into a dragon/angel? Fun stuff! Chaining enemies? Unique! City defense and bonuses to demons and undead? Rather boring.
 
If you settle your first city near a UF, it will foud the order (even if it doesn't take the name).

The mechanism is, in short and if memory serves : if a UF is in range of the city and the city doesn't have an Order, found the Order.
 
As silaor says, any city will get an order if there is a UF nearby that is not currently claimed by another city. But you have to wait one turn to see it, and it doesn't change the name of the city.

The python code uses the presence of Order buildings in cities to know which UFs are currently claimed. Each turn, a city asks: Do I have an Order building? If no: Is there a UF nearby that is not associated with an Order building in any other city? If yes: create the UF-appropriate Order building in this city. This check runs between turns for all cities. The only 2 things different about the Missionary of Sirona is that this same check runs the instant you settle, and the city takes the name of the order.

I'll try to diversify the bonuses a little more in the next version. The only 2 that will have additional bonuses vs. demons are the Well and Sepulcher. Since the new version is mostly just small tweaks, I've been stalling a little to get more comments and suggestions (and waiting for 9.0).

Edit: Is everyone else seeing the pink squares for Order promotions in mouse-over (but not unit window)? Or am I the only one that sees these?
 
I was seeing pink squares in mouseover.

Anyhow, quick question... upgraded three Monks of different Orders to Hospitaliers (Paladins). Those lucky Paladins kept all the "Purity" based promos which are a monk special, lucky them. I also upgraded a Confessor to a Paladin due to his decent XP, but while he got to have the fun "Monk and Paladin only" benefits of being in an order, the variety of Purity Counter related promotions were a no-go. So basically, that one paladin got to keep the "Bless" ability of a Confessor, but was out of luck on extra speed, first strikes, and whatever else tied to a PC of the 70s+.

Probably working as designed, but I do not know. Didn't trouble to double check if these guys ever gained or lost any of those "from their monk days" promos due to purity changes as the game went on, although to be honest, the purity counter only ever went up and up as I grabbed more UFs, stayed "Orders from Heaven", built nice Elohim unique buildings, etc. It taught me not to do a priest upgrade to pally, which used to be something I almost always did just to have some spellcasting potential (and which I still do if I found a religion and get the free priest, but never build a priest of that religion the rest of the game... like going Orders from Heaven, and making a free Empyrean Vicar into a Paladin who can cast Revelation if he needs to).
 
Two answers for you:

1. The purity system (and associated promotions) come from Elohim+ module, which is separate from this module so I can't change it. (Just to confuse the issue, however, I'll say that these purity promos were "stolen" by the Elohim+ author from an earlier and different version of this module. I mean "stolen" in the best possibly way though. I'm flattered. And anyway I stole them from AD&D.) From looking at the Elohim+ code, I can say that these promotions will only be added or removed from monks as purity goes up or down; they are "frozen" when the unit upgrades to paladin.

2. I like the way it works. You can have the benefit of upgrading from a monk (purity promos) or priest (priest spell and freely acquired xp) but not both at the same time.
 
I'll be off line for the next 2 weeks while hiking on the Olympic Peninsula. I tried to release 0.22 tonight (many minor tweaks) but it appears that my minor tweaks broke the tithe system, and I don't have the time now to try to fix it. So next version will probably come after Selphi's 9.0 (I'm hoping for a bug free 9.1+ version when I'm back). If this mod causes problems with 9.0, just remove the Elohim Keepers folder from Assets/Modules/NormalModules/ (there is a Python file also, but it won't do anything without the above folder). Thanks for all the comments and feedback so far.
 
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