Master of Mana Xtended 4.0

[Sezneg]

Ok, so it's only the Extended. Are the other units going to be added in the future? With all the vast variety of units the games offers, the mod feels a bit bastardized now. Especailly in regard to all othre options the mod has.

It's a cosmetic change really, since you just end up using the "best" unit of each line (horse, melee/metal, divine, recon).

I find this to be a good change because of the equipment and class system.

1. Allowing units to gain strength through research helps keep your equipment investment in early/mid units valid through the game
2. The class system allows a wider differentiation/specialization of units beyond the unit system. Dragon Disciple and Warlocks are VERY different units that are used differently, but both can be made from the same base adept/mage/archmage

 

[Tasunke]

I agree, the new unit system is better.

 

[Ogi123]

It's a cosmetic change really, since you just end up using the "best" unit of each line (horse, melee/metal, divine, recon).

I find this to be a good change because of the equipment and class system.

1. Allowing units to gain strength through research helps keep your equipment investment in early/mid units valid through the game
2. The class system allows a wider differentiation/specialization of units beyond the unit system. Dragon Disciple and Warlocks are VERY different units that are used differently, but both can be made from the same base adept/mage/archmage

Although it needs to be noted that not all civs and units are converted to new model. Dural for example still use older method, and arquebus not gains strength.
There is also long term infernal/mercurian bug.

 

[Auric]

But that's not actually a problem? I mean increasing unit strength via military techs skips some units, however in previous versions you have for example: horseman->chariot->horse archer->knight line. In theory you have 4 units here, in practice that is single unit. Xtended just give you single unit that increase it strength during game.

But that's exactly my point. E.g. the Elohim have all cavalry units blocked! Making their armies totally stripped of any mobile and harassing units. All recon units for exploring animal infested wilderness and enemy movement totally blocked! I mean they weren't superflous in the previosu versions; they had their specific purpose. To me this is a huge setback in otherwise a great mod.
Beside that I think it would make more sense if for example a composite longbow transformed an archer into a longbowman.

 

[Sezneg]

But that's exactly my point. E.g. the Elohim have all cavalry units blocked! Making their armies totally stripped of any mobile and harassing units. All recon units for exploring animal infested wilderness and enemy movement totally blocked! I mean they weren't superflous in the previosu versions; they had their specific purpose. To me this is a huge setback in otherwise a great mod.
Beside that I think it would make more sense if for example a composite longbow transformed an archer into a longbowman.

You start off disadvantaged here, but can QUICKLY create units suitable for this sort of specialization using the class system.

 

[Ogi123]

But that's exactly my point. E.g. the Elohim have all cavalry units blocked! Making their armies totally stripped of any mobile and harassing units. All recon units for exploring animal infested wilderness and enemy movement totally blocked! I mean they weren't superflous in the previosu versions; they had their specific purpose. To me this is a huge setback in otherwise a great mod.
Beside that I think it would make more sense if for example a composite longbow transformed an archer into a longbowman.

Elohim starting unit is monk, it's two movement unit and if you chose leader with sacred warrior monk gets additional movement point.

 

[mihoshi]

Elohim's Devout can navigate wilderness very fast and kill things very effectively with some levels and upgrades. With right leader perks, that is.

Also you can get cavalry from religion.

 

[mihoshi]

What is triggering new guild unlock?

 

[Calavente]

Ok, so it's only the Extended. Are the other units going to be added in the future? With all the vast variety of units the games offers, the mod feels a bit bastardized now. Especailly in regard to all othre options the mod has.

well, it's not only eXtended, it was started in MoM, but only a few civs got the full rooster (and Elohim were some of the few done in MoM). eXtended only generalised the civ-rooster to most civs.

alas a few civs (Dural / Scion / akristash / Mercurian...etc) do not have roosters yet.. so they use the former way of building many different units, and thus their units cannot use the +2str gain from military techs.


Side Note on Magic Balance:

I find that AIR is really bad, and FIRE/LIFE are some of the best ones... mostly due to the xp-promotions.

furthermore it is sad that only LIFE has terraforming capabilities to help hell-terrain.

flavor-start in the hell-terrain part of the map is a pain in the arse everytime.

 

[esvath]

Hi, all! I am back!

Honestly, I am surprised and happy to see that people are still playing this modmodmod

I am going to read your feedback and do some balancing. So, please write your opinion on civs/magic/religions/promotions/whathaveyou. I will use 4.1 linked in the first post as the base since I lost my svn installation.

Not sure on bigger scale modding, still need to limit my on-screen time

What is triggering new guild unlock?

Research economic techs like Barter etc will unlock new guild, which you can choose on pop up screen.

 

[Calavente]

yeah !!!!!!

well, well, what to say... I find that xp is king here, and also AOE effects.
and as such, Fire magic and Life Magic have free xp that other do not... and IIRC, both "attack spells" are multi-targets.
I mean that it is much easier to get those magic spells than the buildings or than grinding the xp.


stranded with Air Mana, I didnt use magic for most of my game as it brings almost nothing to the game... only a few lightning bolt, but those were mostly to put xp onto my adepts so they could become either sage to make a sage tower or dragon-mage for the fireball-fear effect.

a "must-do" work is the unit rooster of the civs that missed on it.

a second (old) feature is that I kind of remember that sheaim have access to a 9str unit without yield cost nor technologies, and I don't remember other civs having a similar early bonus.

I don't know how the AI works... but they are a bit too easy to conquer: they don't push enough xp farming
(IMO it is that training buildings are too expensive, too slow to give xp, with a training cap that is too low.)
and they don't seem to focus on teching to their non-free - UU.
and I've seen more barbs with a discipline than AI civs units

I'd like a redesign of the promotions in each discipline, and maybe a balance in the class effects.
some effects are much less interesting than others. (knight ? / wanderer effect is cut in half: no interest of reduce ugrade cost... etc vengeance discipline is interesting... but only for it's classes, not for the promotions - I always use the common tree promotion on those units / what is the use of vindicator (+damage to angels and demons ???) unless you specifically encounter elohim or infernals : there are not enough of those units to use a class for that )

Playing Hippus, it would be nice if horsearchers and (mounted) adepts got 3 mvt instead of 2... they are supposed to be mounted.... but are in fact slow for hippus units.


well, sorry for the wall of text but I love the game and a few things irk me

 

[mihoshi]

Hi, all! I am back!

Thank God. X4.1 is awesome, but so full of small disabalances and bugs.

As it was said before, barbarians grow fast, and often too fast. I have seen 17 strength fort and 20 strength attack team of them on turn ~70. Probably it happens when some AI civ feed them.

I also agree that magic is nerfed too much, especially compared to state-of art it was in X3. And agree with everything else that Calavente said.

Aristarkh can start building watermill, but it disappears on next turn.

 

[Ogi123]

Welcome back. I concur with Calavente most important thing is remaining civ rosters. Other than that bugfixing I guess and perhaps some "cleaning up", it's irritating to see in civpedia that all units are blocked. If you finish civ rosters then perhaps you can remove unnecessary units to not clutter pedia/wordbuilder?

And Air mana is mostly for erosion/zone of sweet air/gentle rain.

 

[Ogi123]

Okay so list of other things that should be changed:

-Trading/luxury/warehouse/schola arcana districts should be moved from guild to normal tech, those are districts that need specific guild and that's limits gameplay. Merchant district is useless if you are not going into merchant guild.

-luxury district: player should be able to choose bonus luxury.

-wizard tower/thaumaturge keep: should also be able to choose bonus mana.

-stables: to powerful. Stables should cost 300 wood, and require barracks, as archery range.

-Gambling house is awful, 300 wood, late in tech tree for +3gold and increase in crime rate? Why I would ever build it? Give it +10% gold or something to make it worthwhile.

-Dural great hall is OP, -50% maintenance when other courthouses give -20%? Reduce that to -30%, incerase crime reduction to -60%. This is basically +50% effective as normal courthouse, more balanced that way.

-Dural colleges needs to cut they effects in half, they are otherwise to powerful.

-Liberty civic is suicide civic. Increased maintenance kills you economy really fast. Remove maintenance penalty and civic anger.

-Order is OP. Temple and basilica are basically courthouse x2, social order adds -30% for -90%(!) reduction. Remove -30% maintenance from social order add -30% crime rate. Reduce temple to -10% maintenance. Increase basilica crime reduction to -20%.

-Sacrifice the weak, meh you could as well eliminate negative effects and increase food consumption to +2 instead of +1.

-Arquebus is bugged(?), it's 12 str unit at end of line with only gunpowder affinity. So max what 16/18 str unit? Reduce it strenght to 8/10 and give it str increase from military techs.

-Guardian golem sucks, 10str is nothing. Give it increase in str from arcane techs +2 from tech.

-Perhaps move arcane/priest units to same system as others? No adepts/mages/archmages, but single unit for every race that increase str from arcane techs, +2 from tech. For priest single unit for every religion that increase str from religious techs.

-Same for siege units.

-Affinity units are meh, they quickly lose any usefulness. You could also try to use str increase from various techs/guilds here. Dovoveo for example could be tried to number of priest chapter guild techs.

-Player should have more freedom as to where place improvements:
-Trade centre: also on grassland/wetland
-Cottage: also on plains etc.

-Cottage-Town line should not give unhealthiness, otherwise I almost never build them.

-Workshop should get some buff, perhaps additional +1h from some tech?

-GM/GE missions should also get more freedom, grains/cattle on plains/grassland/wetland. GE should also be able discover stone/marble resource, should only discover resource that you can use. So no gold for example if you don't have proper guild. Perhaps player could choose type of resource discovered by GE/GM?

That's all for now I think.

 

[Calavente]

-Guardian golem sucks, 10str is nothing. Give it increase in str from arcane techs +2 from tech.


-Perhaps move arcane/priest units to same system as others? No adepts/mages/archmages, but single unit for every race that increase str from arcane techs, +2 from tech. For priest single unit for every religion that increase str from religious techs.


-Affinity units are meh, they quickly lose any usefulness. You could also try to use str increase from various techs/guilds here. Dovoveo for example could be tried to number of priest chapter guild techs.

I disagree on those few points.

Golem don't get +2 from tech... the whole Luirchip civilization (and artificers) is based on that.

however I agree that guardian golem suck for 200 metal.
I'd propose to have it at 15 or 20str... (and even then, it wouldn't be much)


further I kinda like the way adept/mage...Etc work differently.... otherwise you wouldn't really need to spend beakers on those arcane techs... (sorry; I misunderstood your point, I thought you wanted them to get +2 like other units).... however I think Sephi expressed that it was not possible to have the +2 by techs target only 1 kind of unit and not another.... : either a unit receive +2 for each of the special techs, or it receives from none of the special techs...


further I kinda like affinity units... they work differently than the others. (but maybe they could on top of that get the +2 from techs ??) (or maybe they all need to get +2 affinity instead of +1 : +1 was balanced for FFH or WildMana and not so for the current values of str for units.


For discovery I agree....
and Maybe GM could also discover plants ? (plantation ressources) ??

Craftsman guild shouldn't be the one that allow you to see gold/gems/silver...Etc (maybe only copper/iron/mithril/coal). Taking Craftsman guild is always a gamble... and further it costs you a lot in term of health.

 

[mihoshi]

Considering that this mod has multiplied everyone's power by at least 2, affinity should be at least doubled too.

Also, a question: now that fireballs don't siege, what' siege option for siegeless?

 

[Ogi123]

Problem with affinity is that it's capped at usually 1-3 units of resources. So Dovoveo gets between 2-6 additional str, that means it's useful only early game. On the other side you can't uncap affinity or early units can get to powerful.

So you can't assign different tech for different units to increase strength? That's not that much problem. For religion new tech should get you buildings other units (oathkeeper for example) and miracles, those techs are researched by faith anyway.

For arcane units it's somewhat more complicated but still doable. Later arcane techs also give access to buildings/promotions/generic spells so you would want also research them. Arcane spellcaster units with only small exceptions should not be able to attack anyway and have reduced chance to defend stack.

 

[mihoshi]

Maybe some late game researches could increase affinity multiplier?

 

[esvath]

About units with affinity:

- If you hoard the resource, a unit can get stronger faster than tech-dependent units.

- Another benefits: you don't have to dedicate your beakers into researching military techs to increase their strength.

I don't remember if there are civilisation units with +1 affinity but increasing all units with +1 affinity to +2 affinity, and +2 affinity to +3 affinity or +4 affinity is easy to do.

About magic:

- I aim to give each school same number of benefits unlock (~30 per school) but I will maintain different flavour for each school:
--- Chaos is the best in dealing direct damage but harder to control enchantment.
--- Death is all about undead. Not using undead will take away most of the benefits of Death Magic.
--- Mind relies on its global enchantments either to maintain peace or during war. While Mind school has no direct damage spell, its Archmage with Domination is something to be recognised.
--- Nature has no direct damage spells but it has the best terraforming projects and (arguably) strong summons.
--- Life is mainly about buffs and healing.
--- Fire is the second best at dealing damage and it has enchantment/combataura which grant you mana.
--- Water has two branches: one to harvest the Ocean and another, more offence oriented Ice sub-theme.
--- Air is about manipulating movements. It gets "Stunned" side effect to Lightning Bolt and Thunderclap spells and Charged Weapon combat aura will make friendly units stun enemies. Stunned units can not move, can not attack, can not cast spell. Stunned has 50% chance to wear off per turn and is dispellable.

 

[mihoshi]

What's use case for Charged Weapon being useful? You usually bump attack with intent to kill, not to lose a unit and maybe weaken and stall one enemy for one turn.