ExtraModMod
- Thread starter Terkhen
- Start date
0.4.2 has been released!
0.4.2 includes a small number of bug fixes, along with lfgr's tweaks to barbarian spawning. For the sake of balancing barbarians for future versions, it would be very useful if many players took the time to answer the following questions after each game and posted them here:
This version also includes the first stable release of my version of MapScriptTools (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=540261), which includes a new map script. I hope that you enjoy this new version
In the first post of this thread you can find the links for downloads, wiki, Features, future plans and other useful information.
Qgqqqqq: Why? Was that done to prevent them from entering into civilization territory?
0.4.2 includes a small number of bug fixes, along with lfgr's tweaks to barbarian spawning. For the sake of balancing barbarians for future versions, it would be very useful if many players took the time to answer the following questions after each game and posted them here:
Code:
[B]NOTE:[/B] Make sure that you are running 0.4.2 before posting!
Difficulty:
Civilization:
Number of players:
MapScript:
Map size:
Raging barbarians: (Y/N)
Wildlands: (Y/N)
Spawning rate: (Perfect, too frequent, too low and so on)
Barbarian unit strength: (Challenging but good, weak, too stong...)
Other comments:This version also includes the first stable release of my version of MapScriptTools (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=540261), which includes a new map script. I hope that you enjoy this new version
Spoiler :
In the first post of this thread you can find the links for downloads, wiki, Features, future plans and other useful information.
Qgqqqqq: Why? Was that done to prevent them from entering into civilization territory?
Fibonacci1123
Chieftain
Hi Terkhen,
Thank you for all your hard work. I played a game:
Difficulty: Emperor
Civilization: Hippus/Rhoanna
Number of players: 7
MapScript: Erebus Continents (high cohesion)
Map size: Standard
Raging barbarians: (Y/N) N
Wildlands: (Y/N) N
Spawning rate: (Perfect, too frequent, too low and so on) too low
Barbarian unit strength: (Challenging but good, weak, too stong...) perfect
Other comments: By turn 100, I had seen 1 Scorpion Clan Goblin and 1 warrior (plus Orthus). This is despite having a large wilderness on one side. By turn 140, a savage had shown up. It felt like I was playing noble.
As for animals, I did not see any wolves. Some wolfpacks showed up around t50. Two scouts were eaten by griffins far from home. Overall the strength seemed fine, but a few more would make me fear the wild.
We are Hippus, so we ride horses, not boats. No idea about the situation on the ocean.
Thank you for all your hard work. I played a game:
Difficulty: Emperor
Civilization: Hippus/Rhoanna
Number of players: 7
MapScript: Erebus Continents (high cohesion)
Map size: Standard
Raging barbarians: (Y/N) N
Wildlands: (Y/N) N
Spawning rate: (Perfect, too frequent, too low and so on) too low
Barbarian unit strength: (Challenging but good, weak, too stong...) perfect
Other comments: By turn 100, I had seen 1 Scorpion Clan Goblin and 1 warrior (plus Orthus). This is despite having a large wilderness on one side. By turn 140, a savage had shown up. It felt like I was playing noble.
As for animals, I did not see any wolves. Some wolfpacks showed up around t50. Two scouts were eaten by griffins far from home. Overall the strength seemed fine, but a few more would make me fear the wild.
We are Hippus, so we ride horses, not boats. No idea about the situation on the ocean.
Thank you for the report
Hmm... that would be a good solution if making mistform submit to the same rules than the other barbarian spawnings is too complicated to bother with it (I did not check the details yet).
[/url][/IMG]Bug report: I can't seem to cast spells that add buffs to stacks. Am i doing something wrong? As you can see they are greyed out. I could, however, cast a spell while on board a caravel. Did you add some sort of new stack management in this mod?
http://i.imgur.com/hoYsPLK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hoYsPLK.jpg
The bug is related to ExtraModMod's visualization of khazad vaults. Thank you for reporting it, the bug has been fixed for future versions
ExtraModMod does not include any new stack management mechanics. In that screenshot, all disabled spells have a reason to be disabled:
- Fair Winds (Air I) can only be cast on water tiles.
- Poisoned Blade (Nature II) only affects recon units, and there are no recon units in the stack.
- Treetop Tactics (Nature I) requires a forest or ancient forest in the tile. There is only a new forest in that tile.
diqbudt: If this is happening for you in other spells too, please tell me which ones, tell me the version that you are using and, if possible, send me the savegame. Thank you!
This report made me wonder if spells like Poisoned Blade should give feedback about why they cannot be cast when the promotion cannot be applied to any units in the stack.
Yes, I wasn't aware about the prerequisites! (other than Treetop Tactics, but I didn't know they couldn't be used with new forest). Good to know! It should definitely say *somewhere* that a lot of the spells are situational, especially as these are spells of the ljosalfar starting mana and ljosalfar is a pretty popular civ to play.
Thanks for your help!
corrections:
Fair Winds (Air I) is not limited by water tiles but as it only affects naval units, it cannot be cast if there are no ships in the stack.
This often is limited to water tiles, but it works also in cities (land-tile).
It should aslo work on land-tiles when a flying ship is on the tile. (but I never tested it)
Fair Winds (Air I) is not limited by water tiles but as it only affects naval units, it cannot be cast if there are no ships in the stack.
This often is limited to water tiles, but it works also in cities (land-tile).
It should aslo work on land-tiles when a flying ship is on the tile. (but I never tested it)
ArkhanTheBlack
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2008
- Messages
- 150
I've now tested the new version a few days ago. Overall, the AI itself felt a lot better in the mid and late game. They were trying to get advanced unit types much better than before and they were pretty much outgrowing us. The weaker AI's were also surrendering to the power houses if they were close to be wiped out which was also nice. Not sure how many of those changes are specific to 4.2 though, since we played mostly 3.1.
The not so good thing was that we got a OOS once. We didn't get any in 3.1, but it's also possible that it was in before and the AI was just not building advanced unit/tech x that causes it. But since it happened only once in a rather long game, we can live with that I think.
Now the bad stuff: Barbarians! The good thing is that lairs are at least possible. I made several test runs and the chance was about 0-1 lairs per map with small lakes map type and quick tech on monarch. I could easily get 4 lairs in 3.1. So naturally, no barbarians in early game. Instead, they turned from an early game threat to a real late game annoyance. The one lizard lair we got survived very long and when I tried to get rid of if I had to click about 10 - 20 times explore lair to make it vanish. It was more like a 'send new troops' button than an explore lair button. I don't know how many ogres, azers and additional barbarian troops I had to kill before I could get rid of it. My entire late game army consisting of paladins, a hero and lots of crusaders were busy with it for far too long. Furthermore, barbarian towns were almost as annoying since they started to protected their towns with longbow men. I have no problem if they have strong offensive troops like ogres, but protecting their towns with ultra-elite defensive troops isn't particularly funny. I shouldn't need a Paladin just to get rid of a barbarian town.
For strong barbarians the ogres are fine and for VERY strong one the special evens like Orthus and Asheron would be better. I think I saw a huge King Kong like monkey years ago. It would be great to see this stuff getting spawned more frequently. Maybe even the 4 horsemen without the Armageddon counter.
Anyway, is it possible to make the barbs plus extension optional again? Since IMHO, it isn't working very good at the moment and one of the main reasons I always liked this mod is that it didn't break stuff.
The not so good thing was that we got a OOS once. We didn't get any in 3.1, but it's also possible that it was in before and the AI was just not building advanced unit/tech x that causes it. But since it happened only once in a rather long game, we can live with that I think.
Now the bad stuff: Barbarians! The good thing is that lairs are at least possible. I made several test runs and the chance was about 0-1 lairs per map with small lakes map type and quick tech on monarch. I could easily get 4 lairs in 3.1. So naturally, no barbarians in early game. Instead, they turned from an early game threat to a real late game annoyance. The one lizard lair we got survived very long and when I tried to get rid of if I had to click about 10 - 20 times explore lair to make it vanish. It was more like a 'send new troops' button than an explore lair button. I don't know how many ogres, azers and additional barbarian troops I had to kill before I could get rid of it. My entire late game army consisting of paladins, a hero and lots of crusaders were busy with it for far too long. Furthermore, barbarian towns were almost as annoying since they started to protected their towns with longbow men. I have no problem if they have strong offensive troops like ogres, but protecting their towns with ultra-elite defensive troops isn't particularly funny. I shouldn't need a Paladin just to get rid of a barbarian town.
For strong barbarians the ogres are fine and for VERY strong one the special evens like Orthus and Asheron would be better. I think I saw a huge King Kong like monkey years ago. It would be great to see this stuff getting spawned more frequently. Maybe even the 4 horsemen without the Armageddon counter.
Anyway, is it possible to make the barbs plus extension optional again? Since IMHO, it isn't working very good at the moment and one of the main reasons I always liked this mod is that it didn't break stuff.
This is probably caused by the condition that lairs with guardians (i.e. all lairs that spawn units) can't spawn near starting points, and that minimum distance isn't well suited for smaller maps. I added an issue (4 lairs are above average, though).
If you want to try it yourself, change LAIR_GUARDIAN_STARTING_PLOT_MIN_DISTANCE in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml to 0.
Do you have a PythonDbg.log for that game?
This is standard FfH behavior. The only difference is that barbarians now get techs earlier. I'm unsure whether to change anything, as making them defend always with archers whould be inappropriate in my opinion.
To disable Longbowmen spawning in barbarian cities, locate and remove the following lines in CvEventManager.py:
Code:
if eTeam.isHasTech(gc.getInfoTypeForString('TECH_BOWYERS')) or CyGame().getStartEra() > gc.getInfoTypeForString('ERA_CLASSICAL'):
iUnit = gc.getInfoTypeForString('UNIT_LONGBOWMAN')As mentioned above, a "No Wilderness" option will be available in future versions, but it won't address any problems you mentioned (the first two are probably bugs and will be fixed in future versions anyway).
The general problem is the high amount of customization possible for civilization games. I don't like small maps. Neither do I play lategame very often, as my computer doesn't handle it very well. Same for difficulties above Prince. I don't have the time to test all combinations of settings, and some are simply not possible, as I probably wouldn't even reach lategame at Deity.
Consequently, bugs and poor balance are to be expected whenever a new feature is added, even after it is released, and those won't be fixed unless someone plays a game with specific settings and gives feedback (as you just did, and thank you very much for that!). As the playerbase of FfH is very small, all that takes longer. And all I can do (besides trying not to write buggy code) is giving you an instruction or patch to fix something or tell you to wait for the next version.
Long story short: the temporary loss of stability is the price for new features, and unfortunately barbsplus is a pretty complex feature.
Oh, and try enabling Raging Barbarians if you don't already have.
ArkhanTheBlack
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2008
- Messages
- 150
Yes, that sounds like a very likely reason for that problem. I don't think this is a good change anyway since it removes depth from the game. Lairs act like an 'anti-resource', the opposite of dye, gold, etc. They have to be considered for the strategic placement of a city. There's a reason why the starting setter in FFH2 has the speed of a sports car. It's not unlikely that I leave the starting spot completely and change to a different position. Sometimes I even use lairs as 'training centers' to get experience for my troops. And this is also more difficult now since they are so far away. I prefer lairs over random spawning troops since I have more control over them.
Sorry, I didn't have any logging active.
Sorry, I don't know the changes in detail. I was just writing down what was bothering me. But why can't they defend with just more or more experienced archers instead? Better give them horsemen or other better attack troops. They are supposed to be a barbarian 'horde' and not defensive elite troops from the British war academy. They were still attacking with axe men but already had a longbow men for defense. Their tech focus should be offense not defense. They should get longbow men much later.
Sure, testing with all settings is difficult. Still, the lair problem on small maps could have been tested in 5 - 10 minutes. Anyway, if you focus your changes on your own play style it would be better to make it optional. Barbarians weren't broken before, so some slight changes like keeping Asheron from spawning too close would have been enough IMHO. Especially since the player base isn't that big anymore I'd really like to avoid to go through an experimental phase again since 3.1 was already rock solid. Don't change what's not broken.
Good point.
I think the main reason for this change was that lairs have guardians by default, and thus you can't just clear or squat them like in vanilla FfH. Especially starting near ruins and not being fast enough was a huge disadvantage.
But considering that lizardmen are nerfed in barbsplus anyway (they get -1 strength in early game), the change is probably obsolete. Other opinions?
I don't think so. In my opinion barbarian cities should not just be "free to conquer", and just letting them make offensive units negates the point of having cities in the first place (the units could be spawned from lairs or randomly).
I test all options that I think could be affected by a change. I admit it was shortsighted not to consider small maps, but if I had considered them, I actually would have anticipated the problem anyway. My point was that the only way to prevent such oversights is to test every setting.
I don't mean to focus on my own play style, but as I tried to explain, this is what comes out if the testing personnel is limited.
Making the whole barbsplus component optional isn't really feasible sadly.
Terkhen tried to provide a more stable alternative to future versions by supporting 0.4 longer by providing bugixes. If there is something specific why you don't use 3.1, you could ask him to create a branch and providing the necessary fixes (I'd help with that).
But, of course, there is no way we can support every single version.
I can agree with "don't fix what's not broken", but your statement would forbid adding any new features.
Extramodmod, unlike MNAI, is aimed at not just fixing bugs.
Take the Grigori adventurer counter. The old implementation with Great Persons were definitely not "broken", but had flaws. Terkhen implemented the counter, there were minor balance problems (IIRC), but now we have a better mechanic (at least in my opinion).
Sometimes, like in the case of barbsplus, there is just a longer "experimental phase" and everybody is annoyed, but the prospect is that eventually we have a better implementation which is more fun. In the meantime, I try to rather disable or tone down certain features (like the reduced barbarian spawning in the last version) than making the game completely unplayable. Yet I apologize to everybody that barbsplus caused more problems that I expected myself.
Another example would be Terkhen's proposed new spell system, which, if it ever is implemented, almost certainly would introduce bugs first, but later would make the game both more customizable and faster.
Besides, there were some parts of the vanilla barbarian mechanics that I'd call indeed broken. For example, the lair exploration was almost completely random. Occasionally there would spawn something really nasty and wipe out an entire continent. With the better AI in MNAI, that problem was even worse, as the spawned eidolon could now cross the ocean with galleys and really wipe out the whole world.
The old implementation of spawning barbarians in FfH was firstly unstable in a similar way (basically there were special cases and setttings where something unexpected could happen) and secondly not suited well for the changes I was planning, so I decided to rewrite it. The result will be eventually more stable and customizable (or at least I hope so!).
And, lastly, of course the new mechanic won't behave exactly like the old one even when bug-free, and maybe you'll have to adapt your playing style a bit (this is not directed at your reported issues).
ArkhanTheBlack
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2008
- Messages
- 150
So if a barbarian city doesn't have one of the most brutal defense troops that exists in FFH2 it is considered "free to conquer"?! Did you ever try to conquer a city protected by 5 - 10 or even more archers?! Even those can turn into demi gods pretty fast if you don't beat them all immediately. And if even one long bow men gets decent experience, he can wipe out whole armies of high end troops on his own. There's still an area between easy to conquer and almost unbeatable. Not even my own cities are usually protected with long bow men, because it is just not necessary. Civ favors defense like no other game. You should keep in mind that with the improved AI's you simply can't afford to sacrifice half of your army just for a barbarian city. Not everyone plays lower difficulty levels where the opposing AI's are just a nice distraction. In the last game we even had to reload because one of us got wiped out by one of the AI's. The next try worked, but it was pretty close.
Yes sorry, "don't fix what's not broken" was what I wanted to say.
Yes, that's indeed correct. I usually don't explore lairs anymore in early game for that reason. But I'm not convinced that it's much better now. If I click 10 - 20 times explore lair and I always get a new bunch of enemy troops that's still too much.
Overall, I'm probably fine if get the lairs back. And I guess we can agree to disagree on your opinion that you want barbarian towns to be impregnable fortresses.
Barbarians don't get Longbows before anybody else does.
Anyway, do you have a specific suggestion when barbarians should get what and how many units?
Besides, did you get more than 2 archers or longbows in a barbarian city?
It isn't better now, as it's buggy. But, as I said, it will be better eventually.
Yes, it is to much, and it's either really bad luck or a bug. I'll try to reproduce and fix it.
Yes, since 0.3.x, Tholal has improved AI a lot in More Naval AI, and I have incorporated those changes in ExtraModMod. The game gets a lot more fun thank to those tweaks
Recently I detected an OOS error that may be related to events, but I need more data in order to fix it. If you are interested, please enable logging as indicated in the Testing Guide in the computers of all players and send me the OOSLog BBAILog and SynchLog of them in the case of a desync. I believe that this may be the last OOS error remaining in ExtraModMod besides the puppet states one.
lfgr: Since you know more about the events code, could you check that issue and let me know if my hypothesis makes sense?
lfgr already answered about how ExtraModMod goals include adding new features and improving existing ones (that's the reason of the Extra in its name), the problems it faces and how we are striving to fix them, and I agree completely with said answer. I also agree with barbarian spawning and lair exploration being in my opinion kind of broken in vanilla Fall from Heaven 2 (that's what motivated my interest on BarbsPlus when I knew about the project).
I just wanted to add that, even if you got the opposite impression, we acknowledged the need of improving testing for barbarians by getting feedback from people playing with settings different from ours before the release of 0.4.2. That is what motivated the existence of 0.4.2, and why the release post of 0.4.2 specifically indicates a form to be filled in order to provide us with barbarian feedback, and the most important information about it is including data about the options of each specific game.
To illustrate the problem we have with barbarian feedback better, I would like to point out that I assumed your last barbarian feedback post to be about version 0.4.1 and that it made me think that maybe BarbsPlus needed to spawn even more barbarians (as in my games I mostly stomp over the barbarians without any effort). As you now mention that until recently you were using 0.3.1, I am guessing that previous post was about 0.3.1 even when that version was already one year old back then, and it may be possible that we have been getting other barbarian feedback from versions without BarbsPlus and making wrong assumptions.
Because of all of these reasons, we would deeply appreciate if we got more 0.4.2 feedback with the information requested in the release post from everyone. That will help us identify the game options, map scripts and map sizes that may be causing the problems that some players have with the new barbarian mechanics. It also addresses all of the possible problems in our testing process that ArkhanTheBlack mentioned, and it will help a lot in finally making barbarians balanced for 0.5.0.
I would also like to reiterate that testing and feedback have always been two of the factors that I value more when developing ExtraModMod. We have taken many efforts to make the new features suitable to all playstyles, and feedback and bug reports are nearly always taken into consideration (if sometimes I forget or overlook something, feel free to insist) and answered (usually line by line in one of my mega posts). The 0.4.0 series have seen three betas and three stable releases over the course of a whole year (including Wilderness since the first beta); I don't think that they have been rushed or untested.
I agree; with BarbsPlus mechanics for scaling barbarian spawns, lairs nearby cities will probably not be as complicated as they used to be. I also miss using them as training camps, as ArkhanTheBlack mentioned.
I would prefer to not continue development on a major version after the next one has been released. All old versions are available for download in case someone prefers them, but I would prefer to concentrate efforts only on the version currently being played and the version that is currently being developed.
In my opinion it is already quite stable and customizable, it is just missing some rebalancing
I just use catapults, fireballs or just suicide weaker troops in that case, until my good units can take the remainding defenders and get a lot of XP. I don't believe this is caused by changes in ExtraModMod as I have seen barbarian cities protected with a lot of archery units even in my first games with vanilla FFH2.
ArkhanTheBlack
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2008
- Messages
- 150
If that's the case then it could be a side effect of the better AI research since one of the AI's had longbow men. And those were just brutal. The only unit that could really deal with them was a strength 10 hero with +180% strength against archers backed up by catapults. Even my best strength 7 crusaders with +80% strength were just clowns if confronted with a heavily fortified longbow. When I got Paladins it got better, but those weren't easy to get. Fortunately the barbarian had just one longbow men.
My intuitive guess would be the end game tech Divine Essence. If anyone reached that then longbows are definitely justified. Before that, just give them 'more' or 'more experienced' archers. I'm fine with the current offensive troops like ogres & co. though.
No problem, those issues could have been in before. I just checked the barbarian behavior more closely than usual and our game was also longer than usual.
Nope! It was at least 4.0.
Not everyone can get fireballs or catapults (like elves) and weak units often just make the defenders stronger.
Anyway, I think I'm fine when I get the lairs back. I don't have to conquer barbarian towns if I don't want to and I don't have to explore lairs. So those aren't really game breakers.
BTW, when does King Kong usually spawn? I love those special monsters and I've seen him just once years ago. Would be great to see him spawn more often.
omegaflames
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2012
- Messages
- 181
If just 1 longbowman gave you that much trouble I'd say you might want to reconsider your attack force. What promotions did this longbowman have? What % chance of winning are you considering to be "just clowns" and what % chance do you think is acceptable for the initial attack? Also were there no spellcasters that could have hurt the defender or buffed even temporarily your attack force?
King Kong (Margalard/Gurid) are spawned by an event after a certain tech (which I don't recall) but require a) fogged terrain at a relatively late stage and b) that event to have been ticked as "on" in the game setup. You can make an event included in every game by increasing it's weight in the appropriate file (god, it's been ages since I coded...).
If the enemy has but a few longbows, use sacrificial units.
So you don't want the barbs to have anything but a 2/4 unit (orc archers spawn with weak) at a stage when you can build Champions (efffectively 8str units)? The current setup is fine.
Civ does favor defense (at certain stages, in certain settings), but FFH definitely doesn't.
If the enemy has but a few longbows, use sacrificial units.
So you don't want the barbs to have anything but a 2/4 unit (orc archers spawn with weak) at a stage when you can build Champions (efffectively 8str units)? The current setup is fine.
Civ does favor defense (at certain stages, in certain settings), but FFH definitely doesn't.
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