The Legacy and the Future of Wildmana

The goals of Wildmana modmod

The main goal is to make FFH more enjoyable by teaching the AI the unique abilities that exist in FFH. Magic is a very good example here: having to fight amurite champions+catapuls or Amurite Firebows supported by wizards makes quite a difference.

The other two goals are adding tools for the human player to the game which make the game more enjoyable and tweak a few things that look like a missed opportunity.

Improved AI:

• AI use their resources better. This avoids the need to give the AI too high handicap bonuses
• AI makes their decisions based more on flavor. Flavor is a big part of FFH, the AI needs to understand this.
• AI is able to achieve every victory condition. Make the endgame more interesting
• AI understands to use the game elements unique to FFH, like magic for example. Why have 21 different civs around if 20 of them play the same way and do a champion and catapult rush. If AI understands their Civ advantages better, it makes it more interesting to play against them.

Tools for the human player to make the game more enjoyable:

• Better Display of Information
• Reducing unnessary micromanagement
• Making Gamespeed an important criteria

Tweaking of Game Elements:

• No big changes
• small balance changes by making not so useful things like mercantilism civic a bit more interesting
• The shining example of balance is Starcraft, which features three civilizations that are completly different and still very very balanced. Civilizations "more the same" credo is no option.
• attempt to keep most game elements the same with FFH, cause
  • never change a winning team
  • FFH had a lot of playtesting
  • makes it easy to learn the mod

A sample of what has been achieved so far

• AI has basic strategies for all victory conditions: The AI can achieve a tower of mastery victory with access to only to 4 mana nodes and metamagic mana. It has a unique conquest strategy which gives it a better understanding of how to wage war and when. The strategy for culture and religion victory are only very basic. The AI will adopt theo civic and use lots of priests when it attempts a religion victory, also it understands how to use the great priests.
• AI is much better at using magic: Direct damage, Haste, Buff Spells, Summoning, it's all something the AI understands now. It will try to give adepts in a stack different spells based on how useful it is to have a spell multiple times. AI is able to bombard city defenses with fireballs.
• AI groups its units better: The AI knows that sending out a settler with only one guard is no good. The AI knows that it should not use tier4 units or heroes for city defense in fishervillages. The AI likes to build Stacks of Doom
• AI has a better economy: Better and still flavorful tech selection, much much better understanding on what to build, best example here is that the clan of embers now builds warrens.
• AI has a better gold management: Khazad save up gold, AI gets a reserve of gold for events, they get some gold for trading and prefere to trade with long time allies (based on alignment and favorite religion)
• Religion: AI unterstands much better that Religion in FFH is more than a cheap way to get happiness. There decision is based a lot on flavor. Some are opportunistic and choose whatever religions heroes haven't come to life yet.
• Barbarians: They know better what's good for a barbarian.
• Animals: More unique behavior. Will move their lairs if necessary and become enraged from time to time.
• AI understands their civs abilites better: A lot could be listed here. One striking example is Lanuns ability to use pirate coves which has been teached to the AI by Skyre and is merged in Wildmana.
• BUG (BTS unaltered Gameplay) 3.6 has been merged in which adds a lot of interface improvements. Might update to denevs FFHBUG since I already merged lots of his improvements.
• War on Micromanagement: Spellcasting and Terraforming can be automated. Don't have to tell the mage to cast haste every freakin turn.
• CAR mod merged in to improve gamespeed
• Some of the "What, this civic exists?" civics have been made better.
• Many of the buildings have either lowered costs or got small boosts.

Future directions for the project
Most of the changes will be AI improvements since there is still lots of room for improvement. A few small gameplay tweaks on the way are likely.

• better diplomatics: AI still lacks long term strategies. Most diplomatic decisions are based on randomness, not flavor or strategy.
• Naval Warfare: AI needs to understand what waterwalking means. If it builds fleets to settle or conquer distant shores, it should understand to send more than one ship
• Better lategame teching: Its still quite random what the AI techs lategame
• Hidden Nationality: The AI basically has no clue about it yet
• AI still lacks to understand a lot unique abilities of the many civilizations.
• AI warfare. AI needs more tactics than just Stack of Doom strategy. Assault stacks with high mobility units. Counter stacks with assasins. There is a lot of potential.
• Portals: Create Portals on the map which allow to travel between continents and teach the AI to use these.

reserved

reserved more

and even more

I read you un-HNed animals... please change them back to HN.

If you can, a simple rule for the AI using HN would be as such: If "our close borders cause tensions" of magnitude greater than -1, send them out if a sizeable stack is made. Same with if diplomatic tensions with neighbors are high.

Also, for end of winter, I really like the mod fall further uses. I don't think it changes gameplay much, the only difference being that sea ice covers the world for a while, resources change as the world warms, and that citadels and forts are already on the map.... and often at chokepoints.

I am also afraid of the barb animal war, but I have yet to play the newest beta.

I am also glad you chose to change many graphics... I miss some button graphics (scouts, warriors), but I really miss the advanced forest/farm graphics in wild mana but absent in vanilla FFH, (which I am playing right now).

Portals:

Aaah... still haven't given up on trying to get Myrror and Arcanus, eh? It would be the ultimate radness to have a map generator that split the map with an impassible barrier between the two, two different terrain sets, and then portals between them on corresponding points, a la Master of Magic. I know Kael wanted this, btu had to settle for hell terrain. It would also be awesome to have random small dungeons... OK... asking too much, but a man can dream.

portal idea = l33tness to the max! Definately try to get them working. One the ai uses them (dosen't need to be both implemented @ the same tine, IMHO) then someine can make the mapscript

Neomega said:

I read you un-HNed animals... please change them back to HN.

Click to expand...

There's no need for animals to have HN anymore if they are their own faction. They were only HN in the first place in order to keep them attacking Barbarian leaders.

Personally, I dislike it when there's the possibility for too many HN units. They should be rare.. Makes them more valuable.

My initial reactions, from about 150 turns:

1. Animals: too many, hunting is now the most important tech. Bears and tigers quickly gain stars fighting babarians. This means a settler needs massive, like 3 or 4, escorts, to chance survival.

2. city location promotions: I like them.

3. animals: they power up... ok, but when you capture them, they turn back to their weak original selves. That kind of sucks.

So, the AI is *really* good now. Jumping from 6.3 to 7.1, I can see the minor changes making big differences. It used to be, you could park a couple of units on a forested hill, and bluff your way out of a sticky situation. No more, the AI has a good deal of agression, and will throw away a couple of units to kill a couple of yours.

What I'd like to see: (in addition)

: each civ get a +, in the style of the other civs
: Esus changes, I liked Tweakmod's handling of Esus, it made sense

I can get through the game set up but when I "start" it will not load. I get the error message " Civilization has stopped working".

1. post in the bug thread or at worst open a new thread but don't post the same message in several threads
2. Start a "PLAY NOW" game to force the game to reset some gameoptions (my guess is that default difficulty here is set to an not existing value)

Nice idea. Sephi, hope you will like it.

First it was very difficult for me to play FFH2. But after a month when i developed new strategies it started to be very easy. Even in a Prince difficulty with 5 rival AI teams with 2 AI civilizations in each team. Even Acheron is not a problem. Normally I subdual him on 220-250 turn after animal mastery with Alazkan The Assassin. By the turn 300 I conquer entire world, conquer all 10 rival AI. (Putting Deity difficulty to make the game more interesting is not good because AI will just produce hundreds of units)

Evil environment appears not so dangerous and not so evil. I propose to include one optional possibility into the game. The Black Tower. barbarian extremely evil and powerful city. It can have some nice art like Sauron's tower from Lord of The Rings, the huge slim elegant black tower. The idea is that approximately by the turn 250 barbarians create The Black Tower which is pure evil and dangerous place. It has powerfull guardians, much more powerful then Acheron, and this place spawns extremely powerful creatures and holds rare artifacts and treasures inside them and a tower itself. I Think It can spawns liches, manticoras, ogres, wraith, mistforms, beasts of Agares and even may be mighty moving death dragons (strength 18+). (all beautiful made arts which were not included into the game can be included here like unique spawning hostile barbarian heroes and creatures). Terrain around is unfertile rotting undead desolation. To conquer the Black Tower should be really challenging, this is so difficult that it can be even the optional victory to the player who manage to do this. In most games The Black Tower simply will destroy every single civilization on a continent.

The main idea is to feel again the immensely desperate situation of persisting in evil Erebus world. The Black Tower should be more powerful then a half the rival AI altogether. To conquer The Black Tower is unachievable act of bravery. This is a task for the player who already conquered the half of the known world.

One suggested feature: perhaps instead of No New Civs, allow players the option to enable/disable each additional Civ?

Some of the new Civs I like , but some I don't want to ever see.

IS there any solid documentation on the noble houses? I find how to found them confusing. I know I was the first to hunting in my last game, but no Vidalis. The game before it, however, I quit, and looked in worldbuilder, and the Ljosalfar had gotten it, so I know it can be founded, I just can't figure out how, or if maybe it is limited to certain civs.

arstal said:

One suggested feature: perhaps instead of No New Civs, allow players the option to enable/disable each additional Civ?

Some of the new Civs I like , but some I don't want to ever see.

Click to expand...

This thread has some noCiv modules which disable a Civ
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=362009

there is a concept page about the noble Houses in the pedia. To get an Offer from House Vadalis you need to do Stuff they like, training hunters, blooming forests etc. (most is listed in their pedia page)

Sephi said:

there is a concept page about the noble Houses in the pedia. To get an Offer from House Vadalis you need to do Stuff they like, training hunters, blooming forests etc. (most is listed in their pedia page)

Click to expand...

Ahh, so it isn't just the first to research. I looked at the page, and I saw what built support, but I thought those were building support to stop revolt. A quick generic blurb about that for all the houses might help. Also, can you make it so training divided souls and other hunter UU's count, since they don't have hunters?

can you maybe change the wild flight from air mana to wild windwall? I really find wild flight annoying.
Also, a quick change out of the current ugly volcano with the FF volcano would be nice.

annoying because... ?

[to_xp]Gekko;9159465 said:

annoying because... ?

Click to expand...

I don't really like getting it because it is powerful, but also, your units cant use raods any more
But I really don't like flying goblins and orcs attacking me from lakes or the shore.
Plus, flying bears just seems wrong.