Fairy Tale

[Le Sage]

That's excellent! I will update the map some more in the future. Maybe make Namyr playable and create some more action in the south, but the important thing at this stage is that the situation between the Empire and the Dark Side works OK. I already made Yatenga, in the middle of the desert, a vassal of the Dark Side, hoping that it will get things going over there.

Yeah! The Fairy Tale music is very special. Not only do i have good taste in women, but in music too, eh!

 

[Jennvare]

Hey Le Sage,

Just DL'd version 6 and playing the Principality. I noticed that you cannot upgrade the Duke's Knight Guard Units or the Eagle Knights (sp?) to Paladins. Is there a reason for this? Only reason I am concerned is that I attached my King unit to an Eagle Knight to help defend early on. Now, I can no longer use him since the paladin's have twice the strength.

If this is intended, can you make it so i can remove my king from the eagle knight and put him on a new unit?

 

[Le Sage]

Hi. Yes. Actually, I intended it like this. I wanted the new units to have to be separately built and not older ones upgraded. I'm sure I had some good thinking behind that idea, but seeing it does make the king quite useless in late games, it makes me wonder if I shouldn't open up for upgrading.

The king still has his Leadership bonus, so he's always good to have in any stack although his unit is outdated. If you are fighting a lot, you will also be getting Great Generals from time to time, and you can attach those to the newer ones.

You've given me an idea for the fourth member of the Royal Family. I will make a Prince, with leadership abilities too; which can be attached to newer game units. That's the best way I know really, because I don't think it's possible to detach the king and put him on another unit, as he comes with all his promotions.

 

[Ajidica]

You could look at FfH's Commander Unit. If you set up a python function so all the promos his unit has achieved transfers to him, and in turn his new unit, it should work.

 

[Le Sage]

Yeah. That's a possibility. But updating all the knights is still easier and more logical, I think. All the knights upgrade to tanks right now, so it's a real easy change too. Then upgrade the Paladin to the Crusader as well, of course.

The unit upgrades will be in the next update, and so will the Prince, Jennvare.

EDIT: No wait. Paladins shouldn't upgrade to Crusaders. Heavy infantry unit should... So there.

 

[Jennvare]

Might want to do the same for spearmen and archers as well. The crusaders and paladins are primarily offensive units. Should have some archers and spearmen as defensive units.

The highest strength for a principality archer is str 6 if I remember right - the royal elite archer. Might want another that is str 9 or 10 just so if its sitting in a city defending, it has a chance to win and isnt just cannon fodder.

The better solution though - if you limit the number of crusader and paladin units per civ, the lesser units will then still have a use. The crusaders are a nice opening attacker. It helps to keep the game from being decided by who can build the largest stack of crusaders and keeps all units in play.

Just a thought!

 

[Le Sage]

That's a really good idea too, but I'll do the upgrade for the cavalry. I just need to add more civ-specific art for the Paladins too. I thought about giving the Good side one form of Paladins and the Evil side another. I will limit the Crusaders though. I'll start at allowing 5 per civ, and see how it works out. Thanks for your ideas!

I myself am quite reluctant to use the King's unit in combat. I keep it stacked with the army, and I use it to make attacks on already damaged units, and final pushes into towns. Such things. I build its experience up in as safe a way I can, and really use it as a national reserve unit.

Thinking about it, that was also how Napoleon used his Imperial Guard. Sometimes the Old Grenadiers of the Guard stood murmuring when he held them back and didn't let them just run into the heat of battle. they were always saved for last. Sometimes they saved the situation but took a heavy beating, like at Borodino, but they were never beaten, until that last day at Waterloo. I digress.

Building up a unit like that (for an example Principality Eagle Orders) also makes it, with all the promotions and experience, quite an equal to those later Paladins as well.

 

[MajKira]

there should be a discription manual when you can build national units or elite units of each faction what yu hav to build for that upgrade costs and upgrade tree explanation when its done
and beside the emperor yu can get yu could also get an Empress as now yu can get a prince beside a princess and perhaps significant promotion skills for royal family units able to attach only to a national elite UU unit and the queen stronger not only for defensive purpose

 

[Le Sage]

Yeah! The manual thing is a good idea. I have a lot of extra stuff hidden away in the mod that goes easily unseen. I will make such a description. A table of some sort should suffice.

As for an Imperial family, I'm not planning on making more Royals. There will be a Prince in the next update, though, and I should really change the Emperor model too.

 

[MajKira]

Yupp as Crystallin I got the Emperor Unit as Standalone Fighter who is very good but I would rather more likely have a CrystallinEmpress

and the Royal Queen Unit not defensive but rather likely a offensive WarriorQueen what the Princess Unit indeed is already

So as CrystallinEmpire havin a Royal Family with members who have all OffensiveFightingtraits

Empress, Queen and Princess who are strong

 

[Le Sage]

Oh yes. That's right. The Crystallin need to have a female Empress. I've updated both their Great General and their king, so they do need an Empress too instead of an Emperor, I should think.

 

[Ajidica]

Ive been continuing my Namyr game and a few observations:
1>Currently it is impossible to build the Namyr hero, Dead Hero, Namyr Lightning Striker, and the Demon King. They all require a non-available tech.
2>Crystalling/Elchers/Dal need a further nerf. The Crystallin are the second highest scoring civ, Principality being the main one. Elchers are way to powerful, however I think that might just be due to their near infinite number of cities. I have also discover that I hate the beer drinking elfs of Dal. They annoy me in every singe campaing. They are however much easier to crush when they archers aren't 6 strength.
3>Zuur should also spawn with a settler on the mainland with a guard or two. I did that to Zuur and they are now slowly but steadily rising in points.
4>The Collective/Dead/Angvina need a boost. The dead even lost their capital to barbs and the Collective got the crap beat out of them by the Principality. Perhaps give them the barbarian trait found in FfH.
5>Yatenga needs to build more troops. They lost their capital and the two southern river cities to barbs. I saved them by giving them 4 Yatenge Horsemen.
6>Erezon is too isolated so they don't do anything. Perhaps shift them up to the western part of the Canwella Desert west of the mountain range. Then they will at least be a regional combatant to Yatenga, but they will in turn need a boost. Perhaps give all their units a bonus fighting in the desert?
7>The Nords need a reason to go over to the continent and pillage. Perhaps give them the promo that doubles (or triples) the amount of cash gained from pillaging.

 

[MajKira]

what I myself would also like to have would be my civ leader appearing as unit on map
so could possibly Socuzia Krey of Crystallin able to fight on map as CrystallinEmpress after Royal House is founded and further tech allowing founding the Empire Federation picking two others civs who are my friends with highest relationship to support me in the merged 3 civ empire

 

[Le Sage]

Ajidica: Thanks for your notes!

Wot? I've built the Namyr hero on several occasions and I do think I've built the Ligtning Striker as well. i must check the XML. I hope I haven't done anything strange to them lately, because it was quite a while since I playtested Namyr. The Demon King is supposed to be unbuildable though. He only appears in that one scenario and is supposed to be modded in using the World Builder. He is scenario specific, and I have other such units in the mod too.

What I'm interested in is whether Zuur understands to use their transport ships or not? Did you notice anything? In the case they don't, I will make them a Settler on the mainland. I do not want to remove their city on Black Dragon Island though, because I think it's really cool.

I really don't see a problem with the Crystallin being so effective, but indeed, the Collective should be the secons-scoring in my opinion. I will give the Collective some kind of advantage. As for Erezon's isolation, that is a bit intended, but I can see how it is no fun having them not taking part. I could give them another settler too in a suitable area.

Excellent! The Dal are irritating! Just excellent! And just as intended. I hate them too, you know. I'm going to make them a special hero too.

MajKira: It's an interesting idea to have the leaders appear as units. It wouldn't be too hard either to make the leader unit spawn according to leader choice. I've thought about it at some point actually, but really decided against it, because it would take so much work with getting the right unit models and implementing them. I mean, what would the leader's mission in the game be? And what happens if he/she dies?

I will indeed look into the idea of the Empire being founded like you say! Because that is a really interesting idea. I suppose it would require some Python, but it's not impossible to do.

 

[MajKira]

If its too much work, I would find it suffice when you get the Emperor/Empress Unit then that it could be named as the leader you have chosen at beginning of the game
the mission would be leading the main force in key battles and when you take the capital of an enemy then it could be done only with the leader alive to be able to make them capitulate
and the civ leader units need the ability to withdraw 100percent. Yeah it would be very serious if they would die. But normally they wouldnt be killed and rather taken as prisoner becuz of their important position
yeah the imperial history inspired me of that founding Empire

 

[Ajidica]

>The Prince (Namyr) and the Lightning Striker each require rocketry.
> I assumed the demon king was unbuildable, I just wanted to make sure.
>I don't think Zuur uses their ships for transport, at least I've never seen it in worldbuilder.
>I have changed my mind about they Dal, they are not the most irritating. Elchers is. I was friendly with them and then all of a sudden they attacked me with a HUGE stack of doom. Admittedly it was made up of mainly spearmen and horse archers, but they still hurt. I was also separated from Elchers by Yatenga and a huge desert. You think they would declare war on someone a little closer.

 

[Le Sage]

MajKira: I don't know if it's really applicable to give the Emperor the leader's name. That would also mean that I would have to have the female model for each female Empress, no matter what civ and not only the Crystallin. The Empire and the Emperor are really entitites on their own, but we'll see how things develop.

It would be easy to make the Emperor be taken prisoner though. The Worker units are taken prisoner when defeated and turned over to the side that defeats them.

Ajidica: I've corrected the XML for all the units you've mentioned. They should be OK by the next update then. I hate it when things are left over because of the cut-copy-paste writing of XML. It's easily missed.

Oh no! Not the Elchers too. Maybe I should build up the Elchers clan more. Maybe make them cooler, like some Scottish/Celtic Highland Clan instead of the rather bleak thing they are today.

At least they have some interesting military strategies. Once I was playing the Crystallin and had my army going and was already pretty powerful. All of a sudden and out of nowhere, one single Elchers Crossbowman crossed my border, declared war and tried to attack one of my cities. I had my Crystallin Archers shoot them off easily, but I was rather surprised at the questionable declaration of war. I love it when things like that happen and the AI throws some nice spice into the diplomatic pot.

I will make the Elchers Clan good.

 

[MajKira]

My ongoing game in imperial great war starts to crash to desktop, I can play on few rounds then I get ctd
I havnt played on a huge map before
do yu think its some corupt data ingame or rather the hardware Iv 2gig ram and a doublecore proz

 

[Ajidica]

For the Elchers to be toned down, I think there needs to be another civ either west or south of them. Currently they have way too much land to expand to as the Dead are occupied with barbs.

I actualy managed to create a very fun world war. I attacked the Dal for hopefully the last time. (Those buggers snuck a settler by me into the jungle and they now have a decent pocket sized empire that I have to erasebefore moving onto their proper empire.). However they had a defensive pact with the Collective and Crystallin who each promptly declared war on me. I manage to bribe the federation into attacking Crystallin. Oops! They had a defensive pact with the Principality that is now voided. the Elchers take advantage of that and declare war on the Principality. Now the whole friggin continent is basicaly at war with each other!
The Vikings stay out of it. Meanwhile Arcana is being a tech-zilla and vassal-zilla getting Yatenga and the Dead as vassals and racking their score up into the high 800's. Eek.

I forgot about poor Angvina. 3 worthless jungle cities. I would send my armies down their to put themselves out of their misery but it would take too long.

As to my world war, I did manage to finish it because the ferocios trolls of the collective decided marching across the continent was against union regulation which as a utopian Marxist state, Gregory Lysander had to oblige. Crystallin didn't do anything. And I have promptly eridacted all worthwhile remnants of the Dal. They have a few cities scatter around between the Twin lakes and Angeeye pass but I'm not going to go hunting them down.

I now have an issue. Where to expand next. I was planning to fight Yatenga but now that they are a vassal to Arcana I don't want to fight the purple godzilla. My only other options are:
>North but that entails its own challenges which I will adress later.
>Bypass the Jungle to Erezon but maintance would kill me and I lack any great engineers nearby to rush the forbidden palace.
>West and overseas to Denerea but that would involve building a navy wich I don't want to do.
>Expand into the jungle slowly. Although this may be the best course of action it is also by far the most booring so no thanks.

If I am to expand north, I'm pretty screwed. The area is a hodgepodge of different cultures so I would have to conquer the whole area which would be long, tedious, and involve pissing of the Principality who are my only friends. Any ideas?

I have been playing a slightly modified map of Namyr where I have them a hill in the BFC so they can get some production.

Lastly the AI is still annoying. I was one turn away from finishing the Great Cathedral when the Principality built it. AARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! It would have solved my war weariness problems indefinatly.

 

[Le Sage]

MajKira: Acutally, the 100x100 map ain't working at all on this computer of mine that I'm modding on. This one is 2 GB's RAM too, and I cannot use it for the larger maps, because the game just crashes! Therefore i get to test and design all the greater maps on my girlfirend's computer and that's a plan that really has some positive implications, believe it or not. I test all my patches and updates on her comp also before releasing them to the public.

I will have more maps of the great war between the Demon King and the Empire coming. Smaller ones. Trust me, because my computer doesn't handle big maps in civ either.

Also, if you can, can you upload the saved games file here? The saved game that crashes. I could take a look at it and see if there's something wrong other than the hardware stuff.

Ajidica: I am currently working on updating the Elchers. They will be mean; I hope to make them even better than the Crystallin. It will be great to see the game's underdog rising above the rest and doing some great stuff. Also, I've updated the AI of the Collective leaders and hope to get their expansion get going, making them even more dangerous. I am thinking about adding more highland-type clans in the area between the Twin Lakes and the Angleeye Pass.

I am most interested to read your game descriptions and see how the games develop and how some really interesting situations appear. I think your most exciting option in your ongoing game is to really start pizzing the Principality off. You're friends with the Elves, aren't you? It could make an interesting war situation.