that mapscript do you use? just in case, try the pangea mapscript. If that doesn't work either it's not an issue of the mapscript.
Master of Mana
- Thread starter Sephi
- Start date
that mapscript do you use? just in case, try the pangea mapscript. If that doesn't work either it's not an issue of the mapscript.
Blue Senshi
Warlord
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2009
- Messages
- 136
As it turns out, I was using the Pangea mapscript when this happened.
Willi_Tell
praefectus praetorio
Wow, a very impressive piece of work! 
Although I lack in time for gaming, it will be a great pleasure to try this Mod out!
Please keep on workin and don't care about little feedback - I feel there are still Civ4-Players out there and they appreciate your efforts!
Although I lack in time for gaming, it will be a great pleasure to try this Mod out!
Please keep on workin and don't care about little feedback - I feel there are still Civ4-Players out there and they appreciate your efforts!
Spoiler :
I have posted patch 1.02 now. A few small bugfixes and does not break saves.
http://www.masterofmana.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=636
what mapsize did you use? I have heard from some people that Memory Allocation Failures (MAF) are more common on bigger maps. Hopefully with Patch 1.10 there are less MAF issues.
Don't worry, there is a lot of feedback. So much it is difficult to read it all. Just take a look at the mod forum and you will see
http://www.masterofmana.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=636
what mapsize did you use? I have heard from some people that Memory Allocation Failures (MAF) are more common on bigger maps. Hopefully with Patch 1.10 there are less MAF issues.
I am sure you willI would so love to try this out, but my old machine just cant handle it.
I'll keep updates and hopefully will be able to play it when a new machine can be bought
Wow, a very impressive piece of work!
Although I lack in time for gaming, it will be a great pleasure to try this Mod out!
Please keep on workin and don't care about little feedback - I feel there are still Civ4-Players out there and they appreciate your efforts!
Don't worry, there is a lot of feedback. So much it is difficult to read it all. Just take a look at the mod forum and you will see
Luticus
Chieftain
Every time I download the mod and try to run the .exe, I get a message that "the setup files are corrupted." I've tried 4 times so far. Has anyone else successfully downloaded 1.0 and been able to run the .exe?
graywarden
King
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2007
- Messages
- 819
Yes, most of the beta team has downloaded and patched successfully. Delete all previously downloaded files, and try again. I suspect that the problem is your connection while downloading, if the problem persists, try downloading from another ISP or location.
Blue Senshi
Warlord
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2009
- Messages
- 136
I was using the huge map size. I don't know if it's a MAF error though. At least that error message didn't come up, as I recall.
I checked this mod out along with a couple of others, so here's some feedback from a semi-newbie that hasn't played anything FfH'ish since before FfH's final release - in other words, it's been a while.
The first mod I checked out with my Civ4 re-install was Dune Wars, and I was able to finish a game that was enjoyable from start to finish, so it's my reference mod for now.
Also, it's a fairly long post, for which I apologize - but hey, it's feedback.
Finally, being a new player and all, I played on Warlord, which explains some of the stuff I struggled with, I guess. You pros playing on Immortal where the AI gets major production boni have some stuff differently, I have no doubt, but imo you should be balancing the game on Noble at most, where the AI is as close to even to the player as possible in Civ4.
(Note that my observations below are a result of three games played up to the mid-game.)
Very early game:
Very early on, tech balance feels solid - you can get some starting techs researched quickly and despite not having much research income.
The world feels abandoned, especially compared with RfE, which is exactly the opposite currently (there are far too many barbs around early on that are too powerful), early exploration is a bit dull.
Very early building times feel too long, and it seems to take ages (as in Civ5ish ages) to get anything done.
Early game:
Tech costs quicky raise and it takes a little long to research anything. It's still bearable, though.
Scripts spawn animals and barbarians, which sometimes feels a little odd - you can explore a peninsula in the very early game and suddenly, it's full of monsters and lairs.
Anyway, a lot of the spawns are a little bit too powerful until you can roll out some hunters - which takes quite a while.
I'm not sure what's causing it, but building costs seem to be wildly fluctuating. I suspect the new global resources play a role, but why exactly (a) is buildable in no time and (b) takes ages isn't made clear enough. A very problematic unit are settlers - I had no idea why, but building times were wildly fluctuating, and generally growing quickly.
Early mid-game:
Tech costs are clearly too high at this point, imo, because it takes far, far too long to research more advanced stuff. Having only crap that takes 3 turns to research and stuff that is only semi-useful but takes 30 turns to research sucks.
The AIs are pursuing an aggressive expansion strategy, which makes the exploding settler costs painful, because I was unable to compete with them. For a while, I wondered how they even managed to pump out so many settlers.
As soon as you get the tech that allows open borders, you can still roam the world, and the constant spawn rates make sure there's usually still animals and barbs in yet unpopulated areas. I liked that one.
However, too many forts litter the landscape that are protected by lizardmen, a unit that you cannot dislodge with the first tier of offensive units that become available.
Warfare with actual AI players is more rewarding, however at this point it becomes clear how the AI can pump out so many settlers - it's neglecting everything else.
It builds basically no wonders and appearantly very little in terms of other city improvements. It doesn't even bother to connect resources to it's cities in most cases. Thus, warfare vs. an AI player usually means slaughtering vast numbers of warriors assisted by a couple of religious units (str3).
As for city building, construction times of buildings are a tad erratic and generally take too long for buildings that aren't really useful enough considering how long a city takes to finish them. If you want to get ANYTHING done, wonders are off-limits.
But that doesn't really hurt too much, practically all wonders suck and are too weak for the price of admission.
By this time, the cost of settlers is completely out of hand, I had cities being able to finish my best military unit in 2 turns and settlers taking 47 turns. That's no fun.
Also, unless you can find a varied collection of resources, health is a BIG issue at this stage of the game. Some additional buildings to remedy this would be nice.
Not-so-early mid-game
The research situation continues to deteriorate, to the point that research means waiting ages for a tech that's usually only a stepstone to something truly useful.
AI players seem to be able to at least pursue certain goals with their research - they found religions and appearently go for useful units, only often fail to construct the buildings required to actually train them later. Even if they do, they appearently are discouraged to build some units - one AI I fought a war against had archer ranges in every city, but it never built a single archer. I guess it figured: These guys are far too expensive compared to Warriors. Having lots of lumber will possibly speed up construction of archers enough, but the AI never bothers with lumber, and in general, when, how and why to use the global resources is a mystery not only to the AI.
(For example, the tooltip for Mines makes you think building a mine would make Stone available to it's city, but for me, the only way to acquire stone was to build a stonemaker - mines on hills just had no effect for a reason unknown to me.)
What the AI player still does is to aggressively pursue it's ICS strategy. It plops down cities EVERYWHERE (except in jungles, appearently).
If only the AI had to properly pay maintenance and could go bankrupt otherwise.
I noticed that, in the "no mans land" that results in the shrunk cultural radius of freshly conquered cities, there seemed to be a far too high spawning percentage at this point. I had eight Axemen spawn in a area of maybe 3x5 tiles in a single turn.
Settler costs remain at their high costs, but other buildings at this point become buildable, and there's finally some decent stuff to chose from.
Mid-game
Fuelled by the first round of science-fueling buildings, research times become bearable again. Well, mostly.
The world is fully ICS'ed and warfare is the only option to expand by now.
However, cities acquired by conquest take FAR too long to get on their feet.
A size 7 city with a decent amount of production should have some basic stuff to build to help it become useful, but there's too little of that. Even the frigging monument usually takes >10 turns. I'm not sure what specifically made that possible, but conquered cities in Dune Wars could get useful fairly quickly - Master of Mana's conquered cities are a major drain on the treasury, and that's it.
On the positive side, the AI players at this point are finally able to field some advanced troops (which means >Warrior) and conduct proper warfare.
Some units are appearently excluded from that, though - I don't think I ever saw archers, nor a navy of any kind.
Last but not least, a few words about the new magic system.
Problem is, I don't really know what to write here.
It takes too long to even get magic started by building a guild and some Adepts, and even then those are utterly useless.
Spell research is a nice idea, but right now, it seems completely borked.
Selecting spells to research has no effect - the research just randomly selects "something" by itself, and for the longest time it's best ignored, because you don't have mages to do anything with it anyway.
After a long time, I accidentally entered the new screens for casting global spells and summoning, but they contained nothing that was actually interesting and/or useful for me. (Around turn 350 of that game)
On the positive side, in hindsight, it's nice that the AI appearently knows these features are there and is using them.
This concludes this wall of text, maybe it's interesting to you devs to see how a total newbie approached the mod without any knowledge or research about it beforehand.
Then again, maybe it's not - in that case you can always ignore the post.
Oh, and that I bothered to write that all down should show you that I don't think the mod by itself sucks etc., it just needs some work, imo. Still, great job so far.
_____
rezaf
The first mod I checked out with my Civ4 re-install was Dune Wars, and I was able to finish a game that was enjoyable from start to finish, so it's my reference mod for now.
Also, it's a fairly long post, for which I apologize - but hey, it's feedback.
Finally, being a new player and all, I played on Warlord, which explains some of the stuff I struggled with, I guess. You pros playing on Immortal where the AI gets major production boni have some stuff differently, I have no doubt, but imo you should be balancing the game on Noble at most, where the AI is as close to even to the player as possible in Civ4.
(Note that my observations below are a result of three games played up to the mid-game.)
Very early game:
Very early on, tech balance feels solid - you can get some starting techs researched quickly and despite not having much research income.
The world feels abandoned, especially compared with RfE, which is exactly the opposite currently (there are far too many barbs around early on that are too powerful), early exploration is a bit dull.
Very early building times feel too long, and it seems to take ages (as in Civ5ish ages) to get anything done.
Early game:
Tech costs quicky raise and it takes a little long to research anything. It's still bearable, though.
Scripts spawn animals and barbarians, which sometimes feels a little odd - you can explore a peninsula in the very early game and suddenly, it's full of monsters and lairs.
Anyway, a lot of the spawns are a little bit too powerful until you can roll out some hunters - which takes quite a while.
I'm not sure what's causing it, but building costs seem to be wildly fluctuating. I suspect the new global resources play a role, but why exactly (a) is buildable in no time and (b) takes ages isn't made clear enough. A very problematic unit are settlers - I had no idea why, but building times were wildly fluctuating, and generally growing quickly.
Early mid-game:
Tech costs are clearly too high at this point, imo, because it takes far, far too long to research more advanced stuff. Having only crap that takes 3 turns to research and stuff that is only semi-useful but takes 30 turns to research sucks.
The AIs are pursuing an aggressive expansion strategy, which makes the exploding settler costs painful, because I was unable to compete with them. For a while, I wondered how they even managed to pump out so many settlers.
As soon as you get the tech that allows open borders, you can still roam the world, and the constant spawn rates make sure there's usually still animals and barbs in yet unpopulated areas. I liked that one.
However, too many forts litter the landscape that are protected by lizardmen, a unit that you cannot dislodge with the first tier of offensive units that become available.
Warfare with actual AI players is more rewarding, however at this point it becomes clear how the AI can pump out so many settlers - it's neglecting everything else.
It builds basically no wonders and appearantly very little in terms of other city improvements. It doesn't even bother to connect resources to it's cities in most cases. Thus, warfare vs. an AI player usually means slaughtering vast numbers of warriors assisted by a couple of religious units (str3).
As for city building, construction times of buildings are a tad erratic and generally take too long for buildings that aren't really useful enough considering how long a city takes to finish them. If you want to get ANYTHING done, wonders are off-limits.
But that doesn't really hurt too much, practically all wonders suck and are too weak for the price of admission.
By this time, the cost of settlers is completely out of hand, I had cities being able to finish my best military unit in 2 turns and settlers taking 47 turns. That's no fun.
Also, unless you can find a varied collection of resources, health is a BIG issue at this stage of the game. Some additional buildings to remedy this would be nice.
Not-so-early mid-game
The research situation continues to deteriorate, to the point that research means waiting ages for a tech that's usually only a stepstone to something truly useful.
AI players seem to be able to at least pursue certain goals with their research - they found religions and appearently go for useful units, only often fail to construct the buildings required to actually train them later. Even if they do, they appearently are discouraged to build some units - one AI I fought a war against had archer ranges in every city, but it never built a single archer. I guess it figured: These guys are far too expensive compared to Warriors. Having lots of lumber will possibly speed up construction of archers enough, but the AI never bothers with lumber, and in general, when, how and why to use the global resources is a mystery not only to the AI.
(For example, the tooltip for Mines makes you think building a mine would make Stone available to it's city, but for me, the only way to acquire stone was to build a stonemaker - mines on hills just had no effect for a reason unknown to me.)
What the AI player still does is to aggressively pursue it's ICS strategy. It plops down cities EVERYWHERE (except in jungles, appearently).
If only the AI had to properly pay maintenance and could go bankrupt otherwise.
I noticed that, in the "no mans land" that results in the shrunk cultural radius of freshly conquered cities, there seemed to be a far too high spawning percentage at this point. I had eight Axemen spawn in a area of maybe 3x5 tiles in a single turn.
Settler costs remain at their high costs, but other buildings at this point become buildable, and there's finally some decent stuff to chose from.
Mid-game
Fuelled by the first round of science-fueling buildings, research times become bearable again. Well, mostly.
The world is fully ICS'ed and warfare is the only option to expand by now.
However, cities acquired by conquest take FAR too long to get on their feet.
A size 7 city with a decent amount of production should have some basic stuff to build to help it become useful, but there's too little of that. Even the frigging monument usually takes >10 turns. I'm not sure what specifically made that possible, but conquered cities in Dune Wars could get useful fairly quickly - Master of Mana's conquered cities are a major drain on the treasury, and that's it.
On the positive side, the AI players at this point are finally able to field some advanced troops (which means >Warrior) and conduct proper warfare.
Some units are appearently excluded from that, though - I don't think I ever saw archers, nor a navy of any kind.
Last but not least, a few words about the new magic system.
Problem is, I don't really know what to write here.
It takes too long to even get magic started by building a guild and some Adepts, and even then those are utterly useless.
Spell research is a nice idea, but right now, it seems completely borked.
Selecting spells to research has no effect - the research just randomly selects "something" by itself, and for the longest time it's best ignored, because you don't have mages to do anything with it anyway.
After a long time, I accidentally entered the new screens for casting global spells and summoning, but they contained nothing that was actually interesting and/or useful for me. (Around turn 350 of that game)
On the positive side, in hindsight, it's nice that the AI appearently knows these features are there and is using them.
This concludes this wall of text, maybe it's interesting to you devs to see how a total newbie approached the mod without any knowledge or research about it beforehand.
Then again, maybe it's not - in that case you can always ignore the post.
Oh, and that I bothered to write that all down should show you that I don't think the mod by itself sucks etc., it just needs some work, imo. Still, great job so far.
_____
rezaf
You could try a smaller world. Rumour says that there are less MAF issues on smaller map sizes. I will try to fix the memory allocation issue in Patch 1.1 but since we modders have no access to the graphic engine it is a blind guess
thanks for the feedback. I am sure it can be tough for a new player to get into the mod, but this isn't a mod that you master after a single game or weekend. warlord difficulty is for new people to get used to the mod or for those who just want to have a fun time, etc. That you aren't attacked early on and that the AI does not build all the wonders is part of that difficulty setting. I am definetly not going to balance the game around noble or any other difficulty setting that almost no one plays.
This mod is a bit like chess. it's difficult to get into it and the real beauty you will only see once you understand how all the game mechanics work. And yes, they need a bit more documentation. Gladly there are already two guides in the Strategies and Questions section of the forum.
Thanks for your response Sephi.
Well, you should be. I'm not saying that you should balance it to play best under that difficulty, but I think all the mods features should be in full swing at that point, with the game not getting more complex with even higher difficulties, but only more difficult because of AI cheating.
Also, I think it's a bit of a misconception you modders are likely to make to think Noble is a difficulty "almost nobody plays".
A lot of players prefer to play on even terms with the AI, and not see it do completely silly things because it's granted bonuses and cheats everywhere.
King and beyond is for those truly professional players which (a) have gained so much skill at playing Civ4 (in this case) and (b) want to be challenged by the game, so that playing on even terms with AI players ceases to be fun for them.
But hey, of course it's your mod, and so it's your call to develop it however you see fit.
Btw, in the meantime, I've played some more RfE, which is another FfH modmod, and the main issue I still have with Master of Mana is the completely erratic building times.
It's just no fun. I thought it was a FfH thing, but it appearently is not.
Also, I maintain my point that there should be A LOT more to do with magic early on.
In the true MoM, magic was useful and almost essential from very early on, whilst in Master of Mana it's a bit dull and not terribly useful, possibly even non-existing until turn 300 or something.
Again, of course it's all your call.
_____
rezaf
Well, you should be. I'm not saying that you should balance it to play best under that difficulty, but I think all the mods features should be in full swing at that point, with the game not getting more complex with even higher difficulties, but only more difficult because of AI cheating.
Also, I think it's a bit of a misconception you modders are likely to make to think Noble is a difficulty "almost nobody plays".
A lot of players prefer to play on even terms with the AI, and not see it do completely silly things because it's granted bonuses and cheats everywhere.
King and beyond is for those truly professional players which (a) have gained so much skill at playing Civ4 (in this case) and (b) want to be challenged by the game, so that playing on even terms with AI players ceases to be fun for them.
But hey, of course it's your mod, and so it's your call to develop it however you see fit.
Btw, in the meantime, I've played some more RfE, which is another FfH modmod, and the main issue I still have with Master of Mana is the completely erratic building times.
It's just no fun. I thought it was a FfH thing, but it appearently is not.
Also, I maintain my point that there should be A LOT more to do with magic early on.
In the true MoM, magic was useful and almost essential from very early on, whilst in Master of Mana it's a bit dull and not terribly useful, possibly even non-existing until turn 300 or something.
Again, of course it's all your call.
_____
rezaf
This new mod of yours greatly interests me. In part, because I'm playing WildMana now, and in part, because of the concepts you've added, making magic more consistently applicable in the game, adding improvements to all the basic improvements, etc. Hope the balancing issues don't get to absorb too much of your time, and that you'll turn out a good manual, too. Manuals typically add for me both flavor to a game, and the all-important background that explains what everything does, and how it all relates.
In any case, keep up the good work. Looking forward to 1.1!
In any case, keep up the good work. Looking forward to 1.1!
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
[to_xp]Gekko
QCT junkie
I play at Prince/Emperor and I agree with rezaf that mods should be built with noble in mind since that means as little AI cheating as possible. why take all the time to build a good AI in the first place if the AI still has to cheat like hell in order to be somewhat competent?
the complexity of the game has nothing to do with the difficulty setting you choose. It depends on how you experience the game, where the number of times you played the mod is a large factor. If you play chess for the first time it will be also a much less complex game, than if you played it several times because in every situation of the game you will see more things, take more strategies into consideration,etc.
It was an exaggeration, but those who do not play noble are by far the majority, so I see no reason to balance the game around noble. The mod is supposed to be playable on all difficulty settings. They only give small handicap modification to the AI (except immortal/deity where it gets crazy), their impact on the game isn't much. You still play by the same rules.
In Civilization IV the AI never plays on even terms. The Information it has and the information a human player has are very different. That's different than for example chess where you have only 64 plots with one information (what figure is on it).
Do you use the latest patch? (http://www.masterofmana.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=636) Could be that there was an issue with the building time display in 1.0 But I played several games with 1.01/02 and it definetly works fine.
Well, it depends how you played MoM. For example you could put all your mana into spell research IIRC. Anyway, for many civs mana is useful early on as every civ starts with a branch of Spellresearch. As Lanun for example you can create kelp early on. There will be a few more globalenchantments for early mana use in Patch 1.1
The Manual probably will take some more time. But there are some pretty useful guides already at the forum!
Since the AI plays by different rules anyway (Roleplay AI), why bother much about the handicap bonuses? They are very small anyway on most difficulties. The point of the AI is to be fun. If the AI uses magic for example that adds much more to the replayability than if you start on noble instead of prince.[to_xp]Gekko;10098269 said:
What is that?
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
How did I miss it o_O.
Seriously.
It can't be real.
*Runs off to play and prepares to Flood with a feedback*
Seriously.
It can't be real.
*Runs off to play and prepares to Flood with a feedback*
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
Well, thank you! I've got owned by AI on monarch, and it means a lot for me. And you were right, it was not a stack of doom but a clever combination of horsemen/swordsmen/archers. I thought that I could fight 3 AI at once because I was used to its stupid behavior and SoD which were easy to dodge, but now it's... different.
Also I remember there were some issues, but I don't remember what was it. I'll remember later. And I've got a couple of MaF crashes pretty early, but well, I can reload.
P.S. I remember now. I couldn't build a mine as a clan because it required "bronze working" to clear the jungle under the worker, but I could chop that jungle manually (I guess clan get that because otherwise they would be screwed with their flavour start).
Aaaaand I couldn't build a mine in another place for some reason. Is there a limit on # of mines per city or something? The icon was grayed out with a red "estimated cost" line (but I had more than that in gold).
Also I remember there were some issues, but I don't remember what was it
. I'll remember later. And I've got a couple of MaF crashes pretty early, but well, I can reload.P.S. I remember now. I couldn't build a mine as a clan because it required "bronze working" to clear the jungle under the worker, but I could chop that jungle manually (I guess clan get that because otherwise they would be screwed with their flavour start).
Aaaaand I couldn't build a mine in another place for some reason. Is there a limit on # of mines per city or something? The icon was grayed out with a red "estimated cost" line (but I had more than that in gold).
Nor'easter
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2007
- Messages
- 1,925
Sephi introduced a new improvement system limiting the number of improvements each city can build. There's some explanation of this in the 'pedia, although it probably needs to be fleshed out a bit..
The basic flavor idea, as I understand it, was that having some unimproved tiles was more in keeping with a fantasy setting than having every tile fully developed.
In your city screen you'll see an item for "Improvement Cost," which you can mouse over. Cities can support a certain number of improvements for free; improvements beyond that number will cost maintenance.
Also, there seem to be limits on what improvements you can build next to each other, as well as certain absolute limits, such as you encountered when trying to build additional mines. I don't know how well these limits are explained in the current 'pedia, since I haven't played since installing the latest patch.
Also, they've created their own forum on a separate website now, www.masterofmana.com. Plus, there's of course the Wild Mana subforum here at CFC, http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=366. Might want to take a look at both of those.
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
Yes, I remember there were limitations of the amount of primary improvements next to each other, but that mine had no other primary improvements nearby, so a better explanation would be nice. I heard that Sephi works on some documentation, so I guess a bit of waiting will reward me here .
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