Blaze's FfH MaxMod

[Kael]

does ring of flame deal holy damage now and is pillar of flame weaker than ring of flame now?

Ring of Flames doesnt do holy damage, only fire damage. It does 10-20% damage (before all the modifiers) to all units within 1 tile of the caster.

Pillar of Fire does unholy and fire damage (for ashen veil priests) or holy and fire damage (for everyone else). It does 30-90% damage (before all modifiers, half of each damage type) to all units in the targeted tile.

edit: oops sorry. I was answering for FfH2 in general. Blaze may have changed this.

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Not at all Kael, I appreciate the response. I haven't changed any of the damage Types those 2 give off... though in that thought, since I have swapped their position of power(RoF now being Divine/Fire 3 and Pillar being Divine/Fire 2) I may swap the damage typing to keep the holy/unholy damage in the Divine 3 ranked spell.

Also a note, I did not reduce the Str of RoF as Kael did in Patch D. So, with that said, being that RoF can stike at more opponents, with only slightly less damage potential than Pillar(which only does damage to units in one tile, as opposed to multiple tiles), overall I think RoF is not weaker than Pillar.
If you find this to be untrue in practice, let me know and I'll see about creating a better Balance.

Cheers!

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Okay, just wanted to pop in and let you all know that I saw Patch f roll right over patch e... and I will get this stuff integrated as soon as I can. I may wait a couple days to see if SureShot or Maniac are going to do anything tricky with this update, and wait till then to upgrade and bring their new stuff in-line.

Cheers!

 

[kenken244]

i really think the damage from pillar of fire needs to be reduced, flipping them just made confessors and ritualists even more uber. also meshabber of dis cant cast ring of flames anymore so his special power with it is useless

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Well.. I'll run some more tests.. you may be right about the Pillar damage... I look at it like this though, Pillar can hit a stack in one tile... while RoF can hit stacks in up to 8 tiles... total damage is huge! Plus, I didn't reduce the damage of RoF, like Kael did... my solution was the spell level change... It still may not be the best fix... but I'm always glad to get constructive feedback.

I'll fix Meshabber.

I have patch F mostly corrected, and am looking into a couple of bugs, but should have an updated ready relatively soon.

 

[cvlowe]

I appreciate the feedback Magister. I'll shift the movement stop to a slow instead. I haven't seen the fort building behavior you are seeing... but I usually don't automate my workers(they tend to get into trouble that way... this seems a bit worse than usual though!).
The issue could be that there really isn't anything else you can build on Tundras, so the automated worker will just build what it can... thats probably part of the SDK AI behavior, but i'll see if changing some simple settings can curtail that type of building, or I'll need to impose a more exacting restraint.

Actually, I LIKE the fort stopping and doing damage ability- that rocks! It doesn't matter how UBER your stack is, you still have to take out that garrison on your way to conquer.

Well.. I'll run some more tests.. you may be right about the Pillar damage... I look at it like this though, Pillar can hit a stack in one tile... while RoF can hit stacks in up to 8 tiles... total damage is huge! Plus, I didn't reduce the damage of RoF, like Kael did... my solution was the spell level change... It still may not be the best fix... but I'm always glad to get constructive feedback.

I'll fix Meshabber.

I have patch F mostly corrected, and am looking into a couple of bugs, but should have an updated ready relatively soon.

One problem I noticed- the invisibility doesn't seem to work yet, except to make my city defenders get pushed out of my cities instead of defending them. Grr... It's kind of aggravating having to check it's turned off on my troops after they are built- can you make it so they stay if they are in a city, or at least the invisibility is off while in a city?

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Thanks for the feedback CV. Well, I compromised on the Forts. I kind of agree with you, but Maniac developed this part of the code first(I think, him and bdmarti were kind of working at it at the same time a while back), and its part of Mania, so I understand most people are more familiar with the slow mechanic. That said, I increased the amount the fort slows, so most units will stop regardless(I think you have to have over 3 movement points, or Commando or be a Mounted unit not to get stopped).

I thought the check for units fortified in cities was already in there... I'll check it out and see if there is an issue with it.. and double check to make sure units in Forts are like-wise visible while in Forts(and Towers).

Cheers!

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The problem with forts stopping everyone is that it stops an invading stack from being able to take out the garrison in a direct attack on the fort. I didn't mind it doing damage or being a hinderance to further incursion, but a single goblin shouldn't be able to stop 3 fully promoted wind knight heroes headed straight for the fort. It shouldn't even be able to hold them off for a whole turn in order to call in more reinforcements. If the forts only stopped units already in the zone of control from moving to another adjacent tile it would be fine, but as it is it doesn't give you much of a chance to remove this obstacle. I would also be fine if forts only stopped one passing unit per unit garrisoned, or something like that. If he makes it so that a unit passing uses 2 or 3 movement points, the effect will usually be the same as stopping the unit.

One thing that irritated me enough to make the suggestion was that units don't follow the paths you tell them to; the arrows will show them bypassing the fort's zone of control, but they will try to take a short cut through it anyway. Is there a way to stop this (other than only telling a unit t move 1 tile at a time)?

 

[cvlowe]

Thanks for the feedback CV. Well, I compromised on the Forts. I kind of agree with you, but Maniac developed this part of the code first(I think, him and bdmarti were kind of working at it at the same time a while back), and its part of Mania, so I understand most people are more familiar with the slow mechanic. That said, I increased the amount the fort slows, so most units will stop regardless(I think you have to have over 3 movement points, or Commando or be a Mounted unit not to get stopped).

I thought the check for units fortified in cities was already in there... I'll check it out and see if there is an issue with it.. and double check to make sure units in Forts are like-wise visible while in Forts(and Towers).

Cheers!

Commando and mounted bypassing the move restriction would make sense, but still should get the damage "ping" if that's possible.

I should mention I am still on patch D so if you fixed the invisible problem after that, then it's my bad. So hard to keep up with all the patches and mod-mod- patches with 3 games running. So I decided to hold off until patch f updates were available for all the mod-mods before updating, now I see they are so I'll do that tonight!

The problem with forts stopping everyone is that it stops an invading stack from being able to take out the garrison in a direct attack on the fort. I didn't mind it doing damage or being a hinderance to further incursion, but a single goblin shouldn't be able to stop 3 fully promoted wind knight heroes headed straight for the fort. It shouldn't even be able to hold them off for a whole turn in order to call in more reinforcements. If the forts only stopped units already in the zone of control from moving to another adjacent tile it would be fine, but as it is it doesn't give you much of a chance to remove this obstacle. I would also be fine if forts only stopped one passing unit per unit garrisoned, or something like that. If he makes it so that a unit passing uses 2 or 3 movement points, the effect will usually be the same as stopping the unit.

One thing that irritated me enough to make the suggestion was that units don't follow the paths you tell them to; the arrows will show them bypassing the fort's zone of control, but they will try to take a short cut through it anyway. Is there a way to stop this (other than only telling a unit t move 1 tile at a time)?

That pathing problem is annoying. I attacked a city from the tile directly to the right of it, and my unit went up-right diagonal, up-left diagonal, down-left diagonal, and attacked straight down. This not only added in a river-crossing penalty, but left my unit with no movement points to get back to the forested hill he originally attacked from to defend against the counter-attack. And somebody once told me to use the keyboard to move to avoid that, that doesn't work, they still go roundabout ways instead of directly where you want them to go.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't think either Blaze or I recommended doing away with the damage from forts. I don't think any type of unit should be immune either to the damage or the movement penalty, but stopping any unit with 7 movement remaining is too much. I wouldn't mind costing 3 movement points, which would leave only properly promoted druids, cavalry, recon, and naval units plus some summons still able to move/attack.

Also, shouldn't forts do damage of the same type as the units garrisoned there? As it is, garrisoning units in forts makes their death/unholy/poison damage useful against passing angels, who would be immune in a direct attack.

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Yeah, I like the damage component, and Archer and siege weapons do extra damage if they are garrisoned in the Fort... I am not sure how easy it would be to add the Typed damage component based on unit type in the garrison... I would think one would have to build a rather large if:else block to the code to deal with each damage type eventuality, the cpu time to check this might not be worth it... but maybe. I guess I look at it like, (to follow Magisters example) if an Angel is passing a fortified emplacement, since he is embodied in this world in some way.. a stray arrow or chunk of rock can still injure him... and the fort code includes a check so it can't do max damage. Maybe I should look to add a check so it can't kill a unit no matter what.

The slow is in the latest patch.Sadly, the pathing thing is an AI heavy function, and I am just not to where I want to mess with that sort of thing. Frankly, what I love about the current implementation is that.. what attacking force(with the exception of a fast moving hit-and-run group) would just go around a garrisoned fort, and leave them at their backs... I would think even trained barbarian forces( Orc Axemen for example) wouldn't be that insane... and yet, they do it all the time(in vanilla FfH).

That said, I checked, and for some reason, The code that Mania had to check for the Invisibility promotion wasn't working they way it was intended... for a variety of reasons. I just rewrote that code, and it seems to be working correctly now(the only downfall, is it is located in the onUnitMove function, so it requires a unit to move into a City or Fort, or Tower! fo it to make this check. I am not sure if there is a better fucntion to embed this in without it eating a lot of CPU cycles, but I'll hunt around and see).

Also just added Towers(since they are my Fort "upgrades") to the Fort code and Invisibility fix. And added Cities with Walls! If your city is defended by a wall, it will behave like a fort regarding Damage and Slowed movement... it just seemed to make sense to add it. I considered using this function only if Castles were built, but thought a good Wall would be just as useful to city defenders for a function like this.

going to run a couple more bug test runs before releasing it.. so you might want to hold off on that download a bit CV

Cheers!

 

[Maniac]

That said, I checked, and for some reason, The code that Mania had to check for the Invisibility promotion wasn't working they way it was intended...

How do you mean?

And added Cities with Walls! If your city is defended by a wall, it will behave like a fort regarding Damage and Slowed movement...

Heh I like the idea that cities need walls to slow down opponents.

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

Hey Maniac, thanks for stopping in.. as per CV's report

except to make my city defenders get pushed out of my cities instead of defending them.

I checked, and that was definitely the case. I'm not sure why.. I looked at the code you were using, and it looked like it should have been valid(but then, it seemed like you used a number of False/True returns to get the correct promotion state.. and frankly, I started getting dizzy tracing it)... but I jsut rewrote it so it was bit more direct in its promotion setting, and it seemed to work fine at that point. I also added Forts and Towers as visibility points.

Yeah, getting Walls to work was kind of a pain(but then I have my code in a seperate file altogether, so I had to get some args imported properly)... but I think worth it...
This is what I added

    for iiX in range(iX-1, iX+2, 1):
        for iiY in range(iY-1, iY+2, 1):
            pCurrentPlot = CyMap().plot(iiX,iiY)
            pCity = pPlot.getWorkingCity()
            if ((pCity.hasBuilding(gc.getInfoTypeForString('BUILDING_WALLS')) or pCurrentPlot.getImprovementType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString("IMPROVEMENT_FORT") or pCurrentPlot.getImprovementType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString("IMPROVEMENT_TOWER")) and pCurrentPlot.getNumVisibleEnemyDefenders(pPlayer.getID()) > 0):

after that I know our codes start to seperate with the slow rates and damage additions...

Cheers!

Ohh, and here is the Code change I made to the Invisibility block
in onUnitMove

		pUnit.setHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_INVISIBLE2'), False)
		if pPlot.isOwned():
			if (pPlayer.hasTrait(gc.getInfoTypeForString('TRAIT_HIDDEN')) and pPlot.getOwner() == pUnit.getOwner()):
				if (pUnit.isHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_HIDDEN')) and pPlot.getOwner() == pUnit.getOwner()):
					pUnit.setHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_INVISIBLE2'), True)
			if (pPlot.getImprovementType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('IMPROVEMENT_FORT') or pPlot.getImprovementType() == gc.getInfoTypeForString('IMPROVEMENT_TOWER') or pPlot.isCity()):
				if (pUnit.isHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_HIDDEN')) and pPlot.getOwner() == pUnit.getOwner()):
					pUnit.setHasPromotion(gc.getInfoTypeForString('PROMOTION_INVISIBLE2'), False)

I feel like I should be able to streamline it a little bit more... but this works!

Cheers!

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Maybe only the base 'physical' strength should be taken into account for fort damage. I can't really see forts doing Holy, Unholy, Death, or Cold damage, although Fire and Poison arrows make sense. I like your idea of units that use ranged weapons doing more damage.

Does the Wall of Stone (the walls created by the earth spell) behave like fort as well?

Maybe castles should also have the slow/damage effect. It would be nice if the stronger defensive building had a greater effect, so cities with both walls and castles could slow and damage the enemy twice as much.

I would also like it if a city built on top of a fort started with walls.

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

From what I can tell from the code, it sets Damage. It doesn't actually use a doDamage function which might use Typed damage... so, for all intensive purposes, it does "Physical" damage based on total unit Str in the garrison... I suppose that includes the more nebulous damage Types.
Wall of Stone spell does not function as a real wall would, in terms of movement and damage changes. I suppose it could, but just don't feel like it should, you know?
Since you have to have Walls built in a city before you can build a Caslte, they in theory do have the slow/damage effects. I suppose we could add some damage to them, but I think a city with a Castle would have a decent garrison anyway, and likely do a good amount of damage already.. plus you get the defensive bonuses as always.. not sure if it needs a boost.

hhmm.. I kind of like the Idea of building a city on a Fort would give a city Walls... assuming the city was build in the original fortress... which seems more likely than the settlers just ignoring it or plowing it down to make room for their new city... I'll look into that.

::EDIT:: It looks like since Forts are an improvement, it gets cleared before the city is established, so there is no way to read if the plot the city is created on had a Fort on it beforehand, so I'm not sure its possible to grant Walls like this.

Cheers!

 

[MagisterCultuum]

What I was trying to say was that, if forts only do "physical" damage, only the "physical" strength of the garrison should count. This was much more of a problem when Bards had +10 damage for 3 different damage types. Your territory could be practically unconquerable if you built a fort on 1 out of every 9 tiles and garrisoned a bard there.

I'm not really sure that walls of stone should do damage either, but then again, my first impression was that the castle was the only building that should do damage. Since walls currently have little use except for be a prerequisite for Castles, and sense they already add to culture and allow certain units to be trained, I guess your way probably fits better in actual gameplay.

 

[BlazeRedSXT]

I see what your saying now Magister, but I think its just the reverse of trying to impliment special damage types as opposed to excluding them... I'm not sure if the time(cpu)/reward balance is there... and yes, broken units can effect this sort of thing(good news you guys are so on top of me to get these things fixed ).

Well, in theory, a Castle could be prepared to use Siege weapons more accurately and at better range, ditto for Archers, than Walls alone, that said, I figured well build City Walls would be just as effective at ranging the enemy as a fortress out "in the wilderness" would be, so it works for me, plus, as agreed, Castles already have several bonuses/abilities built into them.
I'll get patch 7 up in the next few minutes, with the Fort changes/fixes in it and the Invisibility fix.

Cheers!

 

[cvlowe]

What I was trying to say was that, if forts only do "physical" damage, only the "physical" strength of the garrison should count. This was much more of a problem when Bards had +10 damage for 3 different damage types. Your territory could be practically unconquerable if you built a fort on 1 out of every 9 tiles and garrisoned a bard there.

I'm not really sure that walls of stone should do damage either, but then again, my first impression was that the castle was the only building that should do damage. Since walls currently have little use except for be a prerequisite for Castles, and sense they already add to culture and allow certain units to be trained, I guess your way probably fits better in actual gameplay.

Aren't bards limited to 3? or am I thinking of something else entirely?

And I don't think castles add culture in FfH, I think thats only in Vanilla Civ4- one of the things I missed.

 

[Maniac]

I checked, and that was definitely the case. I'm not sure why..

He probably didn't turn invisibility off when inside cities.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Bards do 3 damage now, but some horrible typo or copy-paste error at one point made their strength 3, +10 poison, +10 death, +10 fire (I think, I'm not really sure what the 3rd type was)

I was pretty sure they still added culture, but a closer inspection just showed otherwise. Perhaps this should be reintroduced? As they are, castles don't do much for neutral civs.