Some Modcomps for Tholal's More Naval AI v2.4

If you came here to report an event bug: Please report it here. Thank you!

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As the thread name suggests, this is not a modpack, but a collection of components I've done for myself or I plan to do so.
Most of them are experimental and are meant to improve the integration of RevDCM, which Tholal merged in his mod. I hope to get feedback from other people, to maybe finally suggest Tholal to include some of the components, or make a modpack myself.

I know, my english is bad, so if you don't understand anything, please ask, and I'll try to formulate it better.

This Project is now hosted at bitbucket here. Thanks to Terkhen for information about Mercurial and inspiration for the project structure (it's the same as the one of his ExtraModMod project).

Downloads

See bitbucket project downloads

Released

Events Enhanced
Wiki Page

Changelog.

Formerly named "More Events Modmod Expanded for MNAI 2.4.1"



Influence Driven War for MNAI 2.4.1

Merged Influence Driven War modcomp by Monteczuma

moctezuma said:

This way I try to simulate effect of battle victory: some peoples have tendency to give up and flip to victorious side.

Click to expand...

IDW introduces a mechanism that transfers plot culture (The "nationality" you can see while having the mouse over a tile and in the bar bottom-left in the city advisor) from the losing to the winning player, whenever a combat is done.
The reason why I merged this is (apart from that I always liked it), that some cities tend to revolt over and over and you cannot do anything, because another player has much more plot culture than you, and you cannot increase yours, because you cannot build culture buildings while the city is revolting. So this should make it easier to violently put down a revolution.

Notes:

• "Active City Resistance" is not merged.

Changelog:

• 1.1 (2013/01/06)
  
  • Update to MNAI 2.4.1
    
  • Defeated Illusions and temporary units are excluded (permasummons are not)
    
• 1.0 (2012/12/23) Initial release without "Active City Resistance".

Planned:

• IDW is affected by Civics, Alignment, Promotions, Civ, Unit type etc... I think the following factors should affect quantity of transferred culture:
  • Loyalty of population (more culture transfer from evil civs, particularly calabim, and from slavery civic)
    
  • Fame of units (more culture transfer when a hero or high-level unit dies; currently high-level units just increase culture transfer on winning)
    
  • Religious convincibility (civs with crusade civic, units with the command (X% chance to convert) promotion and disciple units in general should cause more culture transfer on winning)
    
• Maybe include "Active City Resistance". It's part of the concept at all.
• Maybe just enable IDW for fight with revolutions; the change of combat system is maybe too big.

Names mod
Modification of Dynamic Civ Names. Naming is more diverse with "feudal" civics (God Kind and Aristocracy), based on size compared to other players.



Screenshot:


Changelog:

• 1.1 (2013/01/08) Some bugfixes
• 1.0 (2013/01/06) Initial release.

Planned:

• Enable

Dead Player Culture for MNAI 2.4
Included in MNAI 2.4.1


Planned/Ideas

(Just IDEAS. I'd like to have feedback on them. Don't expect me to implement them all today ; but I'm probably able to code it (if I have enough time). It will depend on my preferences and negative/positive feedback)

Some thoughts on revolutions

The Revolution mod simulates revolutions and revolts in our worlds history. The question is: What shall it simulate in Erebus?
I've thought some time about it, but I'm really no expert on FfH lore, so I would really appreciate feedback on this.

Revolution and leaders
I think one of the main differences is the role of leaders. In FfH, leaders are characters of one big story. Also BtS they are characters, indeed, but they are mostly out of their historical context (f.e. Washington in 2000 BC); FfH is much more about lore than vanilla BtS. The Revolution mod is actually "wasting" leaders; almost every revolt gets a leader, even if it consist of two warriors and is put down next turn. It's good to have minor leaders for this, but I think less powerful revolutions should only gererate (potential non-orc) barbarians.
To implement this, I would like to introduce a system, that chooses from a pool of story-wise "revolution configurations", with unique text, revolting units etc.

Revolution Configurations
Current revolution kinds are:

jdog5000 said:

There are several different Revolution styles and the situation in the Revolution instigating city determines the style. Many styles have peaceful and violent variants: denying a request will just agitate the city further, but denying a demand will lead to civil war! In order of precedence:

- Return to or reform dominant culture: Cities in which you don't have a majority culture will become increasing aggitated and may attempt to break away for cultural reasons. The instigator and nearby, similarly cultured cities will ask (peaceful) or demand (violent) to join or reform a dead rival. Denying this request will cause your relations with the rival to deteriorate, and they may choose to declare war!

- Religious differences: Cities may ask for a change away from Theocracy or to Freedom of Religion, or to switch your state religion. They can also ask or demand independence for religious reasons.

- Homeland revolutions: Ask for various different civics. May ask for you to go on a crusade to capture your religion's holy city.

- Colonial revolutions: Ask for change to representative government. (Independence handled below)

- Capital or majority of cities revolting: Cities will ask for changes in away from repressive civics, or for some form of a say in the government. They can also ask or demand a change in ruler! If you're running a representative government, accepting their requests will mean facing election. If you are replaced, the game will automate some number of turns and then return control to you (this feature can be disabled).

- Independence: If none of these particular conditions apply, the cities will ask for or demand independence. They may request full independence or assume Vassal status.

Click to expand...

Some Examples on "revolution configurations" I have in mind:

• "Peasant Revolt": A Barbarian, low-power revolt, if nothing other fits.
• "The Splintered Court" (Yes, I know, it was before Age of Ice): Civ must be Ljosalfar, Svaltafar must not exist. Should be clear.
• "anti-king": If revolutionary sentiment is high, people might want a change in ruler. With appropriate text, this may occur f.e. in doviello civs, civs with aristocratic or tribal regime etc.. Mostly the anti-kinds will be minor leaders, but they could also be leaders, whose own civ is destroyed and who come to lead other civs like in the scenarios (f.e. Amelanchier/Doviello, MagsiterCultuum mentioned that in his mod's thread)

You may notice there is not much new in that examples, compared to the original; but what I especially want are nice lore-wise texts and the lore-wise choice of revolutions style.

I will later add a more detailed plan for this.

Generic Dynamic Civ Names
I would love to have a XML file for Dynamic Civ Names. An example, how this could be done is found here (sadly that one seems pretty dead).

Barbarians and BarbCiv
At the moment the BarbCiv mechanism from RevDCM is not viable for FfH, since all barbarians are orcs and popping a human, dwarfen or elven civ out of an orc city is rather odd. So to enable this feature, barbarians have to be split into several types; I think humans and orcs should do it (maybe plus winterborn and nomad humans, elves and dwarfes, while humans and orcs should occur much most often).
A proposal how to do this:
Each barbarian city has a specific "Barbarian-Type" (This would be - most elegant, but also most complex - a new info type, which defines race, artstyle and available units; or a civ; or just a racial promotion). A city has appropriate artstyle and can only build specified unit types. Units build in the city gain the unit artstyle and/or racial promotion from city. Units spawned outside will first look for a city nearly, and get it's racial promotion etc.. Units far away from any city are random (maybe influenced by terrain).
I've done the cities thing once, but unfortunally cannot find it anymore. But I know it wasn't that hard. A bigger adventage (at least for me) is to prevent e.g. orcs to fortify in human cities.
Events spawning units must also be considered. I think in fact it requires some changes in the unit spawning system (For example: If an archer spawns in wilderness near a dwarfen city, it should be dwarfen; but dwarfs have no archers, just slingers. So a slinger should spawn instead).
Like Revolutions, I think BarbCiv should fit to the lore.

Ideas what the rise of a BarbarianCiv could actually "mean":

1. (Referred as (1) below) Simply the emergence of a new civ, that didn't existed before (such as in vanilla barbCiv and in RFC). Since this does not fit to most of the FfH Civs, maybe a bit violence could done to the lore, shifting some things from before the age of ice (age of magic?) to the Age of Rebirth (such as for example the "splintered court" svaltafar revolution; although the spliter actually depended on the long winter in the age of ice. A better example is the sidar). Since we actually play a quite "free" civ-game telling it's own story, I think this is OK.
2. (Referred as (2) below) Think of (especially human) Barbarian cities to be less important and less organized civs that existed before the age of rebirth and mostly didn't play a major role in the Age of Ice (Idea from Tasunke: "While the hippus existed before the Fall, no reason to think they wouldn't go barb. (and then back again); unlike the Bannor who went to hell, or the Illians who worshipped their god, or the Elohim who remained vigilant in keeping to the old ways, and keeping the old knowledge, or the Amurites that formed during the Age of Ice")

I think 2. is better (It's nice to have a complete and consistent prehistory), but I have to see if it is to limiting, so that there are too less BarbCivs, I probably have to include some not-so-lore-wise. I think a good criterium whether to include a civ is the possibility to create an announcement text (see below for some examples), that does not interfere with at least that parts of the FfH lore, that are actually in the game. For example I do not think that "moving" the creation of the Sidar (of course only sometimes, if there is a civ needed for a barb city, and they are not already in the game) to the Age of the Rebirth would impair the lore much. I don't want to strictly follow the lore, but don't want to add illogicality to the game either.

Some thoughts how civs could fit in the mechanism:

Please remember I'm no lore expert

Different "barbarian types" and associted civs (Barbarian type of a city will be determined by surrounding terrain):


Ideas for Messages on Spawning (I really need somebody who speaks english better for this)


After all that thinking about lore, we should not forget the purpose of this mod (as I think of it): Make the game more dynamic. Civs SHOULD spawn not only in the early, but also in the middle and possibly in the lategame.

Parts of MoM
First of all: The avoid city unhappiness button (often requested in the MNAI thread). It's in C2C, too. I will try to isolate it. EDIT: included in MNAI 2.4.1
Second, I really like the wilderness concept (f.e. spawning lairs and more diverse barbarians) of MoM.

Very cool!

I had originally included IDW with my RevDCM merge, but I found that it obsoleted the Disciples Great Work ability and made new city conquests a lot safer in general. It also seems slightly counter-intuitive in that most 'small folk' (ie those people who are living on the land you are fighting over), dont like armies marching across their fields, though I guess Culture is a broader concept than just population happiness with the local rulers.

Anyway, I look forward to checking out your modcomps!

In regards to Revolutions, it's always been a pipe-dream of mine to take the semi-official Erebus map and make a Rhye's and Fall type mod that would simulate the actual historical events of Erebus. It would be a lot of work, but could potentially be very cool.

Tholal said:

but I found that it obsoleted the Disciples Great Work ability

Click to expand...

I personally just use disciples to get the second city ring (e.g. city culture)... But I never tried to get nationality that way

It also seems slightly counter-intuitive in that most 'small folk' (ie those people who are living on the land you are fighting over), dont like armies marching across their fields

Click to expand...

Good point! I'll have to think about this.
I once wanted to completely separate "culture/nationality" and "influence" in another modcomp, but that would probably be very complex both to understand and to code.

lfgr said:

I personally just use disciples to get the second city ring (e.g. city culture)... But I never tried to get nationality that way

Click to expand...

Using Disciples to quell revolts is very useful! I think at the time I had also just taught the AI how to use Disciples in that manner, so I didnt want my work to go to waste!

I do like the concept of IDW, it just needs some sort of twist or change that I haven't been able to pin down yet.

excellent work!

The planned/Ideas part is finished for now. I'm happy about any feedback
EDIT: re-uploaded Dead Player culture and IDW and DPC DLL. There was a file missing.

Nice!

In my early days of experimenting with FFH2 I tried the More Events Expanded Modmod. Sadly, I noticed that it created OOS errors. If you are interested and able to fix that kind of errors I can merge it with my stuff again and try to see if those errors still happen.

I am not sure if it is relevant for BarbCiv (I found Revolutions a bit unstable the first times I tested it in MNAI and I have not tested it since then) but MultiBarb may be interesting. MultiBarb is a modcomp present in RifE which allows to have multiple Barbarian factions that can have different art styles and diplomacy. This modcomp would allow, for example, to make the Clan of Embers be at peace with "Orc" barbarians but still be at war with "Animal" and "Demon" barbarians. Infernals would be at peace with Demons, but not with normal barbarians or animals. This is something that I would love to see in MNAI; it is in my list of stuff that I would like to port but given the size of the modcomp this is not easy (I already tried and failed once, because I did not take into account some parts of it).

Terkhen said:

Nice!

In my early days of experimenting with FFH2 I tried the More Events Expanded Modmod. Sadly, I noticed that it created OOS errors. If you are interested and able to fix that kind of errors I can merge it with my stuff again and try to see if those errors still happen.

Click to expand...

Since I'm never played multiplayer, and I have no Idea what could cause OOS errors, I probably cannot help here much.

I am not sure if it is relevant for BarbCiv (I found Revolutions a bit unstable the first times I tested it in MNAI and I have not tested it since then) but MultiBarb may be interesting. MultiBarb is a modcomp present in RifE which allows to have multiple Barbarian factions that can have different art styles and diplomacy. This modcomp would allow, for example, to make the Clan of Embers be at peace with "Orc" barbarians but still be at war with "Animal" and "Demon" barbarians. Infernals would be at peace with Demons, but not with normal barbarians or animals. This is something that I would love to see in MNAI; it is in my list of stuff that I would like to port but given the size of the modcomp this is not easy (I already tried and failed once, because I did not take into account some parts of it).

Click to expand...

I know that and considered it, but I think, since the Barbarian Player has so much references all over the DLL and python, it would be horrible complex to merge this. Clan of Embers is actually at war with animals, because they are hidden nationality (but indeed not with demons).

After I finish another projects which have been in my ToDo list for too long, I'll give another try to separating MultiBarb and merging it with MNAI. I'll keep you posted if I manage to do this

Tholal said:

In regards to Revolutions, it's always been a pipe-dream of mine to take the semi-official Erebus map and make a Rhye's and Fall type mod that would simulate the actual historical events of Erebus. It would be a lot of work, but could potentially be very cool.

Click to expand...

Which one is the semi-official map?

And where do you guys get all this lore from? Magister seems to know who all these sages were, going back to Patria or before Bhaal fell.

All I see are the scenarios and the blurb in civipedia.

Where does it all come from? And are the scenarios something Kael came up with, or scenarios people made that have been adopted as canon?

he's referring to Nikis-Knight's map I think, it should still be on the first page of the modmodding section.

Friendly bump to show interest

*edit* The barbarian idea I am quite keen on. Hopefully it'll be separate from Revs?

CurseUppl said:

Friendly bump to show interest

*edit* The barbarian idea I am quite keen on. Hopefully it'll be separate from Revs?

Click to expand...

I will probably not work on barbciv until the revolution thing is completed (or abadoned), since it is a bit more complex. This year I will not release anything, except maybe a dynamic civ names modification (it's completed, but still needs testing).
So I'm afraid it will take at least one or two weeks before I'll start the Barbarian thing. I'd nevertheless appreciate any further Ideas on it.
To answer your question: When it's realeased, you will definitely be able to turn revolutions on and barbarian civs off .

Updated to 2.4.1, added "DCN Feudal Modification for MNAI 2.4.1"

Moderator Action: Moved as requested.

IDW should probably be made its own gameoption

any chance you'll also re-release the Events with images mod? would be great alongside with expanded events... the one with great people images and quotes was also nice

When I tried the "Events with images" mod I ran into an issue; in my old laptop (1280x720 IIRC) the text below the image would not be shown completely and there was no scrollbar or any other way to read it completely. This happened for example with the armageddon counter messages.

[to_xp]Gekko;12127146 said:

IDW should probably be made its own gameoption

Click to expand...

You can disable it in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml, IDW_ENABLED (I know, Gameoption is nicer, but I'll probably not implement this until IDW is more polished.)

any chance you'll also re-release the Events with images mod? would be great alongside with expanded events... the one with great people images and quotes was also nice

Click to expand...

I'm planning this, but it has DLL changes... Another DLL to manage
I'm currently considering to put it all together in a modmodmod after all, for easier management, with gameoptions or at least GlobalDefines for most components (IDW would get it's gameoption, then ).
First I'll try to merge some tweaks to MoreEvents from RifE and possibly WildMana, such as better descriptions (and maybe some new events), and then move on to Events with images.

Terkhen said:

When I tried the "Events with images" mod I ran into an issue; in my old laptop (1280x720 IIRC) the text below the image would not be shown completely and there was no scrollbar or any other way to read it completely. This happened for example with the armageddon counter messages.

Click to expand...

Are you speaking of a MNAI/Events with images merge?

lfgr said:

First I'll try to merge some tweaks to MoreEvents from RifE and possibly WildMana, such as better descriptions (and maybe some new events), and then move on to Events with images.

Click to expand...

That sounds great

lfgr said:

Are you speaking of a MNAI/Events with images merge?

Click to expand...

Yes, I merged it many months ago. I removed it from my build but I still had the diff file (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff#Unified_format if you don't know about this format) lying around. I have attached it to this post in case that it is helpful. I removed the XML changes and image additions from the diff file because those should be straightforward to merge and they increase the size of the diff file a lot. Mind that the diff is created against a somewhat old MNAI revision (I reckon about r800 or r900) so I don't know if the changes since then will render this diff useless or not.

I remember that I tried a bit to fix the issue I mentioned in my previous post, but I did not find a way to do it. Hopefully when your improved version of MoreEvents is done you may have better luck with the event window size problem than I did

Events with images merged. Thanks Terkhen! I didn't noticed your graphics bug, however, armageddon messages worked fine.