Ideas and suggestions to improve MoM Xtended

[Calavente]

re-improvements :
improvement costs increase was chosen so that improvement "choice" has even more meaning than in vanilla FFH (and civ BTS).
The real aim was to have a more fantasy-like map :
not many huge cities,
clutches of improved lands separated by untamed lands.. even in civilized country.

some random ideas I thought that might give ideas on how to replace the "ever-increasing cost" or change it a bit (each idea is stand-alone ; was not evaluated in terms of coding/ cpu ; can be combined).
1): improvement cost decreases with duration of occupation /culture value of the tile: there is less danger to cut a forest just near the 300years old capitol than on the wilds
in the same way, old improvements cost have less impact on the "overall improvement cost increase"

2) why not have bonus from un-improved land ?
now you always hesitate when cutting a forest due to the risk of losing a .
what if each un-improved land had an effect ? and you loses that effect when putting an improvement on that tile : but not for 0/0/0/0/0/0 tiles (mountains et non-ressource-non-hill desert)
-reduce starting happy, but give 1/3 happy per un-improved tile ? it would push early cities but for latecities, the effect will be negligible.
-give +2-3% production per unimproved tile: it will boost early production by 12-60%... but only if you don't have any improved tile at all : your citizen are invested by the "pioneering spirit".
-have each unimproved hill give +1stone to quarries
-each unimproved forest give +1lumber to lumbermill
-each unimproved marsh/wetland give +1herbs to plantation
-each unimproved wetland gives +1F to farms
-each unimproved tundra gives +1leather to camps
or maybe only to the nearby improvements? unimproved forest give +1lumber to lumber mill touching the tile ?

3) have some improvement/tiles limit the number of improvement around them:
once upon a time ( )ancient temples, witch hut, and mana source forbid constructions of improvement around them. it was a bit harsh.
but what about having them reduce the number of improvements around ?
mana nodes, volcanos, temple, witch hut, mana source, unique features ...Etc reduce the number of improvements around them.. (only 4 on the 8 nearby tiles) or raises the cost a lot.

4) normal improvements can only be built on ressources and tiles surrounding a city... (first ring of BFC)
then later, river tiles allow for building improvements even if not near city. maybe villages-towns (but not hamlet) also allow to build improvements in nearby tiles (maybe also trade centers (maximum of trade-post line)
then, later, windmills, water mills, water-hole and forts can be built everywhere.
then, forts (and maybe waterholes) allow to build improvements in their surrounding tiles.

maybe a district-level building would allow improvements on all tiles ?
maybe some wonders/buildings changes that (XX's workshops allow workshops anywhere ..Etc) deep-mine allow mines even if not near cities ...Etc
sawmill (or enchanted sawmill?) allow lumbermills in forest not near cities.
hunter guild allows camps in tundra not near city
(all of those things would be too much if taken together, but a combination of some might work well)

all this would mean that you would have fewer improvements on the map, at least until mid-late game.... and it would impose the use of villages/forts/waterwell (that I almost never use) and boost the interest of windmills/watermills

5) have ruins and lairs/dungeons act like "ancient towers" : reducing the number of allowed improvements: when they are pillaged, they cannot be covered by another improvement unless there is a certain time spent, or a certain ritual, or culture cost or it increases by 2-4 the improvement cost.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Critic and analyse on the current improvement system

re-improvements :
improvement costs increase was chosen so that improvement "choice" has even more meaning than in vanilla FFH (and civ BTS).
The real aim was to have a more fantasy-like map :
not many huge cities,
clutches of improved lands separated by untamed lands.. even in civilized country.

- If you add a price to the improvement (more than the price of the time the worker uses...), it means the player is very demotivated to buid new improvements.

It means the improvements are meant to statics where they are buillt, all over the game, including when you gain new improvements (as windmill, which boost, or boosted, the others farms near it).

I don't perceive this static way as a good thing for the game.

the real aim is to have more fantasy-like map inside city radious

- If you want to limit the number of improvements in city radious, in the view to give them a more graphic-fantasy orientation, you can do it without any price of improvements, but just with a hard number limit of improvments per city (7 improvements, as it was before, I guess I remember. 7 improvements for 19 square, that is not much). Right ?

- Giving a price to the improvements it's not more logical to don't give a price, and it's not better for the flavour (again, having 1/3 of the world as wild uncolonisable land is 90 % more important than the 10 % esthetic problem of a too much improvements inside city radius).

But giving a price, it's something which tend these things :

- Slowdown the speed of developpement (but if want this, we can do this to others ways : increasing the tech price or playing into marathon speed, more simply...).

- Make workers management much less important but ressources management more important. Is that more interesting than managing the workers ? I doubt it. Managing units is always more interesting than managins numbers (of ressources).

- Create a micro management of ressources about improvements, what we don't need. Because MoM is already enough complex, and because the ressources are already used in the building construction, and in the equipement of units, and in the units (in Xtended, units themself requiert ressources).

- So, for all these reasons, giving a price to the improvements (especially a rising cost at empire size) is a useless new micro management, which decrease the skill of managing the workers, and it tend to force the "few big city strategy" artificially, not by an intelligent design (TM, lol) of the map.

I support the idea to go back to free improvements BUT with a limit of 7 or 9 improvements per city (because people are sensibles to have less improvements per city, although me I am 90 % more sensible to have more true wild land with barbs)

- At worst, keeping this improvements cost, but please, not scaling with empire size or number of improvements.

some random ideas I thought that might give ideas on how to replace the "ever-increasing cost" or change it a bit (each idea is stand-alone ; was not evaluated in terms of coding/ cpu ; can be combined).
1): improvement cost decreases with duration of occupation /culture value of the tile: there is less danger to cut a forest just near the 300years old capitol than on the wilds
in the same way, old improvements cost have less impact on the "overall improvement cost increase"

- Too complicated, too micro managements, too much thinks to calculate, not funny. These routines should be simplified, not complexified. Imagine how a begineer can feel it bad to have all these obscur data to understand.

2) why not have bonus from un-improved land ?
now you always hesitate when cutting a forest due to the risk of losing a .
what if each un-improved land had an effect ? and you loses that effect when putting an improvement on that tile : but not for 0/0/0/0/0/0 tiles (mountains et non-ressource-non-hill desert)

- Again : too complicated. Systems are satured in my opinion. I would prefer to have new units with specialisation counter (as the axemen vs infantery, spearmen vs horses etc. as in Vanilla Civ) than more and more things like that.

- I guess it existed in a past version. I mean, what you say, non improved lands used to increase output of the city, existed before. It was reverted by Sephi, probably because it was a useless calcul to do. What (I think) is truely important is to preserve large wide bands of unfertile and uncolonisable regions in the world.

-reduce starting happy, but give 1/3 happy per un-improved tile ? it would push early cities but for latecities, the effect will be negligible.
-give +2-3% production per unimproved tile: it will boost early production by 12-60%... but only if you don't have any improved tile at all : your citizen are invested by the "pioneering spirit".
-have each unimproved hill give +1stone to quarries
-each unimproved forest give +1lumber to lumbermill
-each unimproved marsh/wetland give +1herbs to plantation
-each unimproved wetland gives +1F to farms
-each unimproved tundra gives +1leather to camps
or maybe only to the nearby improvements? unimproved forest give +1lumber to lumber mill touching the tile ?

3) have some improvement/tiles limit the number of improvement around them:
once upon a time ( )ancient temples, witch hut, and mana source forbid constructions of improvement around them. it was a bit harsh.
but what about having them reduce the number of improvements around ?
mana nodes, volcanos, temple, witch hut, mana source, unique features ...Etc reduce the number of improvements around them.. (only 4 on the 8 nearby tiles) or raises the cost a lot.

- Again, too complicated for no benefit.

4) normal improvements can only be built on ressources and tiles surrounding a city... (first ring of BFC)
then later, river tiles allow for building improvements even if not near city. maybe villages-towns (but not hamlet) also allow to build improvements in nearby tiles (maybe also trade centers (maximum of trade-post line)
then, later, windmills, water mills, water-hole and forts can be built everywhere.
then, forts (and maybe waterholes) allow to build improvements in their surrounding tiles.

maybe a district-level building would allow improvements on all tiles ?
maybe some wonders/buildings changes that (XX's workshops allow workshops anywhere ..Etc) deep-mine allow mines even if not near cities ...Etc
sawmill (or enchanted sawmill?) allow lumbermills in forest not near cities.
hunter guild allows camps in tundra not near city
(all of those things would be too much if taken together, but a combination of some might work well)

- Same remark here. The problem is not here, the problem is not infinite city spranwl too. The problem is that the infinity city sprawnl is possible at the point in the game the world itself loose his savage and dangerous soul (what we have in all the early game). The topography and nature itself should not let the ICS possible, not artifical gameplay mechanism (unless maybe with a very late game for the civ who master a powerfull level of terraformation -> colonisation).

all this would mean that you would have fewer improvements on the map, at least until mid-late game.... and it would impose the use of villages/forts/waterwell (that I almost never use) and boost the interest of windmills/watermills

5) have ruins and lairs/dungeons act like "ancient towers" : reducing the number of allowed improvements: when they are pillaged, they cannot be covered by another improvement unless there is a certain time spent, or a certain ritual, or culture cost or it increases by 2-4 the improvement cost.

 

[Psychodad]

I like the old mechanism of unimroved tiles give boni to improvements. Maybe just the adjacent ones? Btw i also liked the old adjacence boni for most improvements.

First i disliked the ressource costs for improvements, but now i think it is an intresting desision: costruct that building or build that improvement? What i still dislike is the percental increase in cost for number of improvements. I already posted my ideas to reduce improvement spam and city spam. But after they got a little lost between JoJo´s textwalls p no offense here), i reput them here in spoilers.

1. Constant improvement cost, but limit number per city.

Spoiler :

4.Improvements

Nice summary. I suggest combining two systems.

1. Improvements have konstant ressource cost.

2. Number of improvements per city has a soft cap. Building more improvements cost double ressources. The cap can be raised by

• city culture level
• size of a city
• bought with empire culture
• technology
• traits
• politics
• guilds
• palace, wonders, districts, buildings

2. Intoduce corruption system to penalize city spam and giant citys alike.
(Maybe substitute with crime system? What does crime actually do? Maybe substitude with city upkeep?)

Spoiler :

Corruption system

I don't like the additional upkeep for size 10+ citys. It makes me often turn of groth in citys becouse more workes don't copensate the high upkeep. Maybe some kind of corruption system would do better.

For exaple every city has a percentual corruption score witch hampers everything (culture, research, gold, produktion, spellresearch, food,...).

Base corruption is maybe ((#cities + city size)*2)% and can be altered by technology, traits, politics, guilds, palace, wonders, districts, buildings, events

Maybe this can also be used to limit army size. Make the hard cap a soft cap and raise corruption by 1% for every unit beyond that cap.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

I like the old mechanism of unimroved tiles give boni to improvements. Maybe just the adjacent ones? Btw i also liked the old adjacence boni for most improvements.

First i disliked the ressource costs for improvements, but now i think it is an intresting desision: costruct that building or build that improvement?

What i still dislike is the percental increase in cost for number of improvements. I already posted my ideas to reduce improvement spam and city spam. But after they got a little lost between JoJo´s textwalls p no offense here), i reput them here in spoilers.

- If I would need to choose a better (or the less worst) system, I prefer any system exept those which increase the cost of each improvement at the empire level. It's really an anti wide strategy system, frustrating. Moreoever it have no sens because in small map you have few city so you pay less, but in large map everybody tend to have more cities, so every large civ tend to pay an exponential price !

1. Constant improvement cost, but limit number per city.



2. Intoduce corruption system to penalize city spam and giant citys alike.
(Maybe substitute with crime system? What does crime actually do? Maybe substitude with city upkeep?)

- Again, why do you want to penalise city spam, or giant cities ? I don't understand.

Is that not enough now ? There is the barbarian presence, the lairs, the animals + the vanilla maintenance city system (number of city + distance to palace) + MoM buildings upkeep) + the high cost of improvement + the risk of being attarly-mid game where your military infrstraucture can be weak).

- If what you want it's to preserve the wild lands, I guess that work on the map generation as I described it, should be very satisfaisant (CarnivalBizzare worked on it before I gave my opinion about it).

Maybe this can also be used to limit army size. Make the hard cap a soft cap and raise corruption by 1% for every unit beyond that cap.

 

[Psychodad]

- Again, why do you want to penalise city spam, or giant cities ? I don't understand.

Because i dont like OP Strategies.

Because of the huge % boni you get from buildings an ressources and the generally increased yield compared to vanalla civ, giant citys really kicks as. To support this many options to increase health and happynes exist. Atm this is nefed with a huge gold maintaince penalty, kicking in for citys bigger than 10. This makes me spam size 10 citys.

City spam on the other side does really not fit in this fantasy Setting. A.I. is not agressive enough and Barbs not strong enough to prevent it. In nearly every game i play there is some point when i got economy going, that i spam citys. But i really dont like that. The actual maintaince penalty is not high enough to prevent it.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Because i dont like OP Strategies.

Because of the huge % boni you get from buildings an ressources and the generally increased yield compared to vanalla civ, giant citys really kicks as. To support this many options to increase health and happynes exist. Atm this is nefed with a huge gold maintaince penalty, kicking in for citys bigger than 10. This makes me spam size 10 citys.

- It's possible that several bonus from buildings are too much. For example, the support bonus in big cities is perhaps too high. But, I don't think the ressources (like wood) can be too important due to big city, because this come front the improvements, not the population size. And except the (perhaps) too high support of units gived by big cities, I don't see the problem with them.

- Anyway, I don't criticize your taste for smaller empire, or smaller cities. Me I prefer to plant some city fast (which I cannot do in the actual MoM version...) because I like the danger and I like to have the choice to choose between a fast expansion or prudent expansion. To me, it's fundamental in my pleasure when I play, to take decisions and risk about early expansion or not. Now I am private of this pleasure in MoM.

That's why I really dislike the idea to force every player to be tall (few cities) by all these artificial mechanisms. But as I like the wilderness, and the dangers which can come front (events or barbarians spawns, or surprise attack by a civ), I support the idea to have a strog and large non colonisable wilderness. I think it would really be the solution to the global problem of tall vs huge & the lost of fantasy atmosphere due to closed ICS cities !

City spam on the other side does really not fit in this fantasy Setting. A.I. is not agressive enough and Barbs not strong enough to prevent it. In nearly every game i play there is some point when i got economy going, that i spam citys. But i really dont like that. The actual maintaince penalty is not high enough to prevent it.

- I support the idea of less city closes from each others, or small region of grouped cities vs large wideland in the campaign, all this by a fine map generation configuration. You would not spam too much city in a situation like that, but you could colonise very distants fertile regions (hard to protect and to do), or conquiers rivals ennemy, if you want more cities.

 

[colonelflag]

Hi guys,

Does anyone know where in the code i can increase this max unit limit from 15 to say 50 ?

Cheers
Colonelflag

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Hi guys,

Does anyone know where in the code i can increase this max unit limit from 15 to say 50 ?

Cheers
Colonelflag

GlobalDefinesAlt.Xml file in Assets\Xml folder...

<Define>
<DefineName>BASE_UNIT_SUPPORT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>15</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

 

[colonelflag]

GlobalDefinesAlt.Xml file in Assets\Xml folder...

<Define>
<DefineName>BASE_UNIT_SUPPORT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>15</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

Great! Thanks CarnivalBizarre.

 

[sloul]

Hm... one thing I would like to see is an Earth-like map (not Erebus, just a vanilla civ4 map) without that many barbarians. I am starting to hate those barbarians.
I just started a game and an insane stack of 3 necromancer (strength 15) came with 9-12 skeletons of strength 7, and it was just turn 30 or so... I could really take a break from them and play a casual map.



But I actually have a very specific suggestion for Erebus barbarians AI.
I get it. I get the vision of Erebus being a place of hardship.
So... I gave it a thought, and that's what in my mind could make the barbarians work as something funny, hard and yet not frustrating (but it ain't little tweak):

AI for barbarians could be to come in vast stack of units just to pillage tiles. Not killing workers nor other units and not assaulting towns. Just pillaging improvements.
Their behaviour could change to attack units if city grows too much (15+ pop) or civ is creating too many cities.
On the map there would be only a few barbarian outposts. On the largest maps, I would say 6 top.
But those Outposts would be vastly defended (15 or so units) with high strength.

Here is the idea behind it:
Barbarians are not conquerors, they are just bandits.
They come strong but not to wage war: They don't destroy towns, they don't attack workers (hell not). They just come and pillage your lands and then they leave to pillage other Civs improvements. They feed on you and your lands (farms, pastures).
Now... that's your choice: you don't want them to do that in your parts, you build up vast stack of defenders to prevent them from doing so. But you don't have to build your strength so early, and most importantly, barbarians do not mean a direct threat of loosing game. They'll just slow you down and be annoying.
But if you decide to defend against them, they might decide to go stronger against you and to assault your cities to get you on your knees (never to completely destroy you though).
You can handle them, but it becomes more of a decision.
Now, if you decide to target their lairs and to destroy them, you might find a lot of riches. Or if you beat them, they might just agree to completely stop bothering you, while still running their activities with other civs (hell you might even ask them to stop bother your allies).
Their lairs location, would then become a valuable piece of information, any of those bands would become a big actor of the game.
I mean, look at it, in term of ''what does it bring?''.
For those playing dota-like (because I don't have any better thing to compare to), it would act as those jungle boss. They wouldn't feel so random, each of them would be unique, and beating them would get you something (because in the first place they got fat feeding on anyone).

Expanding on this idea: at some point of the game those few lairs might start a confederation of bandits.
Now from there,
- Players scouting for locations of those lairs might get reports of band of human/orcs/giant barbarians doing business together, rumors of them sympathizing. They could then try to slow down the process of those barb confederating.
Players that did not scout, will stay in the dark.
- Ok now, I'm going pretty far, but MoM is doing some pretty sophisticated stuff so why not, the player could join the confederation or even create it.
Good civs would become neutral, evil would stay evil.
- The first role of confederacy might be to join their hands to assault civ cities that became too big. So vast assaults of Giants, orcs, human horses, trebuchets etc.
Once the confederacy is created, barbs might target just anyone, even those that previously beat them at their lair. But not any civ part of the confederacy (although it would be too easy if anyone could just join, they still need those farms).

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

I think the thing I'd like to see added the most is a few more map scripts.

1) Make sure all special features are placed on the map (if the map is max size)
2) Good, thematic starting spaces for civs
3) Variety of barbarian liars with strong types placed far away from starting locations
4) Various controls to customize the start
5) Dungeons!

Maybe some updated versions of Erebus_Continent and Mountains_Coast would do the trick.

I really like the direction MoM/X-tended has gone in the last year. I think some focus on generating good maps would have the largest practical effect on gameplay at this point.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

I think the thing I'd like to see added the most is a few more map scripts.

1) Make sure all special features are placed on the map (if the map is max size)
2) Good, thematic starting spaces for civs
3) Variety of barbarian liars with strong types placed far away from starting locations
4) Various controls to customize the start
5) Dungeons!

Maybe some updated versions of Erebus_Continent and Mountains_Coast would do the trick.

I really like the direction MoM/X-tended has gone in the last year. I think some focus on generating good maps would have the largest practical effect on gameplay at this point.

I'm not sure what esvath out in the last version before his break, but I put some climate based scripts in that generates zones of climate based on the players of the game, and places civs in those zones, lanun are placed on small island in the ocean etc etc. I think lakes and erebus was the only ones I converted to this system.

I am in Taiwan on vacation for almost two months so I cannot fix anything right now, but some feedback on the climate version of the map scripts would be nice. There is some softening between the zones, and some extra mountains between zones for possible chokepoints.

The svn version is what you really should play, just Google Xtended SourceForge, get tortoise svn and grab the latest version.
Esvath gave some civs too much unit bonuses so they dominate very much, I changed this and gave ai much higher difficulty bonus so that deity will be more of a challange. Also more defence bonus from capital so the ai does not just go straight for the capital all the time. At least I think I committed this change before I left. Will be back 12 of December btw, will just look in now and then here until then. I'm not gonna stop nodding even though I have much less knowledge of all esvath did than he, just wanna fix up some things and get a more challanging game going basically, fix bugs and clean up.

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

The svn version is what you really should play, just Google Xtended SourceForge, get tortoise svn and grab the latest version.
Esvath gave some civs too much unit bonuses so they dominate very much, I changed this and gave ai much higher difficulty bonus so that deity will be more of a challange. Also more defence bonus from capital so the ai does not just go straight for the capital all the time. At least I think I committed this change before I left. Will be back 12 of December btw, will just look in now and then here until then. I'm not gonna stop nodding even though I have much less knowledge of all esvath did than he, just wanna fix up some things and get a more challanging game going basically, fix bugs and clean up.

Ah, enjoy your vacation then, CarnivalBizarre.

I appreciate that you guys are interested in tightening the bolts and sanding off the rough edges. MoM/Xtended is quite feature rich already and, in my opinion, needs calibration more than anything at the moment. I'd be happy to test (play) the latest version, especially if it has updates to mapscripts, and I do have svn installed (after much screwing around with Rise of Mankind). When you have a chance, could you direct me to the server/location I should download files from?

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/masterofmanaxtended/
svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/masterofmanaxtended/svn/ masterofmanaxtended-svn

I agree, fixes and clean up is the important things to focus on.

 

[James the Wise]

FeatureFreeze + OOS fixes I think should be priority

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

FeatureFreeze + OOS fixes I think should be priority

I'm sad to say Out of sync fixes are way low on priority, crash to desktop and eternal loops needs the focus before anything, I have fixed, maybe 20 so far, but there seems to be many in there, sometimes a game runs from start to finish without problem, and sometimes there is many issues, and I still have not tracked down what is going wrong. I had hoped to get someone else willing to do dll stuff but situation is what it is. Anyway, I will continue later.

So far, there are sometimes animal units with corrupt values that crashes the game, presumably kuriotes issues (not verified by me) and initialization issues of some civ after reload , so you get ctd, when reloading a new game (only me it seems, Esvath never got that issue)

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

I hope you guys don't mind if I pop in with a few balance suggestions and a miscellaneous question. One of the things I actually do for fun is play hotseat games by myself. I really, really, like empire building in Civ or perhaps I am a control freak. Either way, I get to play a *lot* of starting positions on a *lot* of maps. Incidentally, I am quite impressed with how distinct the Civs are in FFH now, and how polished the mod is getting. Salut.

Suggestions/Questions:
1) The Malakim should get +1 hammer from desert. A mod I've made on my installation.

Reason: If they start in their native environment, I find they are *really* hammer deprived. Even with ample floodplains, desert starts provide very little surplus food and very little health bonuses, and as a consequence the Malakim can not easily operate workshops or mines. The low production makes it hard to build health buildings, etc., which just reinforces the vicious cycle.​

2) Luxury metals (gems, silver, gold, amber) should be visible without guilds.

Reason: I've found that close wine, plantation resources, or salt make for some of the fastest starts in the game. Quick money creates a real virtuous cycle, with commerce leading to tech, tech leading to improvements, and improvements leading to everything. It is kind of a pity that gold, silver, gems, etc. cannot contribute to a strong start. I'd like to suggest that these luxuries be changed so they can be seen and harvested without the artisan guild, but only provide happiness bonuses with the guild (and perhaps some of the yields, such as lower base commerce from gold but +2-3 coins from the early levels of the artisan guild).​

3) Now for a question: If I wanted to experiment with a slower ramp up in the cost of tile improvements, such as half a % rather than a full % per improvement built, is there a value somewhere in the XML files I can edit?

Cheers and happy gaming.

 

[sungchiahao]

How do you change the resource yield?

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

How do you change the resource yield?

Hmmm... I can't find the tag, but I think one of the xml attributes in bonus.xml allows it. Perhaps I'm remembering it incorrectly and it is actually an attribute in improvements.xml.