Prince of Darkness Scenario

Prince of Darkness is a scenario designed for FfH Scenario Contest.
It's inspired by techumseh's Prince of Darkness scenario for Civ2.

This is still a work in progress, and is posted to request feedback.

The scenario can be installed by unpacking the attached zip in you FfH folder.
It is compatible with patch 'v'.
Be careful, as it replaces existing FfH files. Normally, this scenario doesn't make any modification that harms other scenarios or standard play but make a backup. I mean it, make a backup, you never know.
You should start the scenario by picking the menus "Single Player/Play A Scenario/Map for Prince of Darkness".
Loading the map from in-game World-Builder will probably not work.

The following files are modified, a few more are added:
CIV4EventInfos.xml
CIV4EventTriggerIndos.xml
CvRandomEventInterface.py
ScenarioFunctions.py
I attached 2 zips:
PrinceOfDarkness_0.1.zip is full with some images, and big.
PrinceOfDarkness_0.1 - NoArt.zip is much lighter to download, but you'll miss some (hopefully nice) pictures. I'll have to pak/compress the images when the scenario is finished.
Pick whichever you prefer, you don't need both, the bigger one is heavier only because of a few dds images.

Verzsion 0.2 has been added too. It's the full version, is compatible with patch y and has the Armageddon Counter rising and effects toned down a bit.

The last zip, Doviello-... is an alternative where I replaced most barbarian cities with Doviello cities. It's mostly untested but is slightly different in the sense Infernals aren't at war against barbarians in this version, which makes for less modifications. I only upload it for reference.

The start of the quest:



Your heroes fighting barbarians:



The Wise Men Isle:



Defeat these sons of Asena in order to rescue the wizard Ilmarinen, who will help you in your quest. His magicks depend on your starting mana, so your civ's choice will make him very different if you're a fireball launching hasted Amurite or a peaceful Elohim.


And more...

I hope you enjoy!

aburke made a fix for this scenario if you run into errors and use version BtS3.19 and FfH2 0.41m (or anything more recent), I suggest downloading
aburke's fix for FfH2 version 0.41m and replacing my file with his.
This is confirmed to work with patch 'o' of FfH2.

Features include:

-Playable as several civs, some of which are easier than others.
-More Heroes,featuring in particular Lord Vladimir.
-The most powerful unit ever, the Heart of Fire, is actually a hawk, but usable once (who said nuke?).
-Infernals are at war with barbarians and ready to take over the world.
-A Main Quest in several steps.
-One optional side quest.
-Mages who really differ depending on your civ.
-New art in popups linked to scenario specific events.

Balance:
All civs are not as easy to play.
The easiest is the Amurites, by far, due to location and their magic, which rocks compared to all the others.
Next come just about everyone else except the Elohim.
Elohim are the hardest, due to pitiful magick and not so nice starting location.

Hints:
-Beware the Armageddon Counter.
-Avoid wars with the civs you don't start at war with.
-Cartography is your friend.
-Heroes aboard ships can explore shipwreck lairs to get experience beyond the 100 mark.

Versioning, known issues and bugs, design issues:

Version 0.1
Known issues
If you play and load another scenario, without exiting the game, I'm not sure the events will be right.
Be careful with your heroes exploring lairs, as they can become crazy or withered, which makes the game very hard.
The riders don't actively cause mayhem when the AC causes them to appear, they usually take one city and stay there. May be due to the fact they're not barbarians?

Design questions:
Should the "independants" be barbarians, or should I put a minor non-playable civ instead?
I tried with the Doviello, but they're not good at defense, only attack, and the Clan doesn't fit for at least one city, which they might screw if it remained barbarian (and it doesn't fit as Doviello either).

End-game, if you go that far:

and even farther:

Not a single feedback?
Is nobody interested in helping Lord Vladimir prevent Hyborem from destroying the world?
Will noone help him rescue the wizard Ilmarinen and sail forth to meet the hermit Khelavaster?
Would you let the Illians finish their winter rituals unpunished?
Will you let the city of Babel and its arcane secrets fall to the Sheaim?
Aren't you interested in the mysteries of Alexos by the sea and its tales of flying castles?
If you don't retrieve the Breath of the Dragon, who will destroy the Gates of Dis?

Heh.... I'd do it, Li, if I wasn't currently occupied with a twisted combination of Real Life (which sucks) and TES-Oblivion (a little aged, but I've addicted myself for a second round... moddable RPG's just never go bad). Once school calms down, I'll get a chance to re-addict myself to FFH, and promptly try this out.

is this patched to y?

No, it's still the 'v' version. However, I don't think it should be an issue since there's no savegame incompatibilities between v and y.

Played through a game as the Bannor and was roundly stomped by the Infernals advancing from the south after they conquered the Calabim. They were bringing in champions with iron weapons just as I was discovering bronze working, and the Horsemen had already started to appear.

I also had an infernal Treant appear from the north, not sure where it came from.

It was fun, in that "Oh crap I am totally totally screwed" way.

Ow...
What did you start researching?
I usually tend to start with Bronze working almost immediately, what with the goblins around.

How far did you get with Lord Vladimir?

About the Armageddon Counter count: Did you think it skyrocketted? In particular, did you get the free Ashen Veil adepts event or were you toasted before that?
Do you know how high the counter was when the Infernals started invading you or the Calabim from the south?

Note that the ai for Calabim is quite pitiful. When the Bannor are AI controlled, they take over most barbarian cities, including those near the Calabim, who tend to stagnate. It's strange, as for humans, Calabim is a quite good start, but then Lord Vladimir can help jump-start them before going to the Wise Men Isle.

I started researching more economic techs, that's true. I didn't know the Infernals were on my continent, so I figured I should build an industrial base in order to be ready for them when it was time to fight them. I used Vlad to capture all the goblin cities surrounding me, so they weren't a problem. As far as the questline, I had captured the isle of the wise, rescued the mage from the dungeon, and spoken to the dying sage (though that was actually my first step, as I ran across him while exploring). I had spent a -lot- of time trying to find a route to the Illians, and was never successful doing so.

I did get the Ashen veil adepts, they showed up after the first horseman had popped, I think. I didn't use them, as I didn't want to make the count go any higher. Then ended up dying protecting my southernmost town against the Infernals.

no backstory? and what about this vladimir character you talked about? not eve a secnario mission? needs some work...

Janus:
Well, Vladimir warns you that

It is time to act

Click to expand...

so you shouldn't wait for too long before moving him around. I should try to make that clearer.
About the Illians, did you get a map to see how to reach them?
The intro precises that

befriending the other civilizations is essential

Click to expand...

. It means, among other things, that rights of passage and map trading will help you A LOT.
The trick to reach the Illians is to cross the continents with your ship: The eastern continent that's bothersome for the Western Bannor can be crossed by taking a few barbarian cities south of the Lanun (or north, you actually have several possible routes) with Lord Vladimir. This opens up a sea route to the Illians.

cIV_Khan:
There is a backstory! I'll attach screenshots in a next post. I guess I should have done this before, but didn't want to spoil some surprises.
Did you download it? On first turn, you get this text:

A tall stranger knocks at the gate of your palace. He pushed aside your guards as though they were weaklings, and interrupts you as if what he had to say was the most important thing in the world. He tells you his name is Lord Vladimir, and he looks concerned as he speaks to you:[PARAGRAPH:1]"I came to warn you of a terrible danger that looms upon Erebus. It is time to act before the compact is broken and the Infernals are unleashed upon the face of the world. I came with my ship, the Ocean Queen, to seek help from you. I will pledge you my loyalty as you are the only hope Erebus has to avoid the darkness of Hell. Command me, and I will sail to the Wise Men's Isle, to seek counsel from them and find the way to prevent the Infernals from unleashing the devils upon our world.

So you get a character who tells you that the Infernals are going to invade and you should send him to Wise Men Isle where you can learn more...

There's also the turn zero screen:
Welcome to the Prince of Darkness scenario, inspired by Techumseh's Prince of Darkness scenario for Civilization 2.[PARAGRAPH:1]In this scenario, you will receive the help of the powerful Lord Vladimir hero and his Ocean Queen ship to fight against the hordes of Hell. Treasure the heroes you receive thanks to the storyline, as they are essential to your victory. In particular, avoid sending your ship in the open ocean, full of danger, unless you have promoted her against easy enemies or exploring shipwrecks. But be wary exploring can have nasty results![PARAGRAPH:1]Your enemies are the Infernals and their allies, not the other civilizations. You should avoid fighting other civilizations, as this will only slow down your quest and eventually strengthen the Infernals. Fending off the barbarians and befriending the other civilizations is essential for success.

Overall there's almost 100kbytes of text just for the scenario, plus art that is several megabytes heavy and gives some flavor.

Updated first post with some screenshots.
By the way, khan, the first one showed a red line above the leaders names, like the "official" FfH scenarios, this line gives the current scenario objective. In this case, defeating the leder near the Letum Frigus.

thats exactly what i was talking about, why is none of this showing up? I decided that he would show up later and kept playing for about 15 turns, then quit. I didnt see it in the scenario file (Assets->XML->Scenarios) so i used the WB save in Public maps. Did i just not SEE it?

interesting,, in the copy i made for the scenario, i see the dungeon adventure scenario from lutefisk... ill try downloading it again?
EDIT: not workin. i hitmove to and then said yes to allabout copying over files with the same name. noprince of darkness scenario, yes dungeon adventure scenario. Tips?
EDIT2: so there's no scenario in the file, maybe i was running with FFH2 instead of Copy of FFH2? ill try it.

Almost everything is in the py file ScenarioFunctions.py.
Lord Vladimir can't be in the WB save nor in xml because he is always of the player's civ.
There may be a problem if you ran another scenario before (actually after is more likely), so try launching FfH and loading this scenario first through the Load Scneario screen, "Map for Prince of Darkness".

I didn't integrate in the "Official Scenario" list because I think this screen/menu is inconvenient and less practical than the regular "Single Player/Play a Scenario" menu, so using it is the regular way to load the scenario (after having loaded FfH mod).

Also make sure you have the right ScenarioFunctions.py. You mustn't have the default one, nor Lutefisk's, because they are all incompatible with each other (therefore you need to backup your files). ScenarioFunctions.py should have the line at line 17. It should call all functions from the PrinceOfDarknessScenario.py file in the same folder (Mods/FfH2/Assets/python).

For some reason, just having screen shots, now I'm interested to play.

Quit an Amurite game due to skyrocketing AC... it just seems to go very fast, maybe a function of how big the map is. That is, you're running around trying to do different errands by sea, all the time the AC is going up.

Maybe I never noticed before but the four horsemen are "owned" by Hyborem and not the invisible Barbarian leader? This means if one of them takes one of your cities, even in a nice hideaway like the Amurites have, POW, Infernals start gating to your turf. That happened with Buboes taking one of my "bronze warrior" cities and all of a sudden diseased corpses and Hyborem himself pop up.

I did get the event where Savants pop up everyplace, which caused every single civilization that I knew of to go AV, since none had founded any religion at such an early feeling point in the game (i.e. free Savants? Guess the Bannor, Lanun, Calabim, Luchiurp etc. may as well go AV...)

Maybe starting the scenario with more techs, so that some amount of useful "building up" whether economic, religious, firepower could take place before the AC outpaces the human player, would make decent sense. Or some roleplay events choices of some sort to manage the AC down... not just the typical Iron Orb and "funny tree in the forest" and other AC events, but stuff specific to the scenario like "run those two free Savants into the ocean, peddle their filth elsewhere!" (though all the other Civs will have at least 2 of their cities go AV so that's at least a quick +10 to the AC)

Anyhow I quite like the "run around and quest" element but it feels like a lot of running around against a merciless clock.

@ cIV_khanh93:

I am guessing that LDiCesare's scenario works fine with default ffH2, as does my scenario. But there is no way that my scenario and LDiCesare's would work when installed -- even partially -- at the same time. That is because both of our scenarios use the GAME_OPTION_WB_EXTRA tag.

But I would asume that his install .zip overwrites the files used by mine, and vice-versa, so I'm not sure if this is the whole answer.

Depending on version, though, my scenario also uses a custom CvEspionageAdvisor.py file in the Assets/Python/Screens folder. This is just the picker screen, but you never know. Try replacing that back to the vanilla FfH2 file. Again, I'm not sure if this would resolve the problem, but is an easy thing to try.

Between the above and flushing the XML as LDiCesare said, I'm not sure what else to suggest. Hope it works!

I'm going to upgrade to patch y right now. I don't know if it will help with cIV_khanh93's problems.
Actually, Lutefisk, I do'nt use GAME_OPTION_WB_EXTRA, but there's only one py file and no felxibility inside, so no two scenarios for the contest, even if they share zero resource, can't work together.

So the AC seems to go too high. It's partly on purpose, but apparently it's overdone. I'll try to calm it down a bit.
There are some choices you make that lower the AC:

You should also be very careful not to lose cities to the barbarians back and forth, which can easily happen, but will increase the AC.

And yes, the Riders are Infernals instead of Barbarians, because Hyborem conquers Barbarians. In my experience, it actually makes the Riders less dangerous, but the Infernal gates can make this very daunting.
Mind you, the goal of the scenario is to do a quest which will get rid of the Infernals, not to destroy the whole Infernal civ, so you can still win even if your homeland is mostly taken over, and it may be easier to complete the quest when Hyborem isn't at home.