[BTS] The History of Three Kingdoms

[Ambreville]

Tower building or improvement with inherent ranged bombardment ability? That sounds pretty cool. Drop it on the reserved for future use idea pile then.

I gotta stop giving you guys bad ideas. I'm sure I'll be cursing myself for it later!

One more observation about Heroes (as if I hadn't made enough already) -- the choice of promotions available to a Hero seems to be "pre-ordained" in the Civilopedia. It's both okay and not okay. The problem I have with this is that some key promotions that are specific to certain unit classes are missing, even though leadership in that unit class is available to a Hero.

Case in point: a Hero has a significant potential with Siege units, but only some of the related promotions are ever available. That's a pain!

What if Hero promotions are tied to both the unit classes in which they do have leadership and the command rank attained therein? I hope I worded that correctly. So a D-Rank leadership with Cavalry would unlock only very few Cavalry-related promotions (or maybe just generic promotions that apply to any unit class). On the other hand, an A-Rank Cavalry leader, or for that matter an S-Rank Cavalry leader, could choose from most or all Cavalry-related promotions when attaining a new XP level. Ya?

There are three benefits for this:

One -- if you choose to specialize a Hero in one style of leadership, then you have a certainty it'll really be worth it in the long run.

Two -- This "dynamic" approach ensures that the more powerful promotions are kept out of the game until a Hero attains a sufficient leadership rank. This opens up the idea that some promotions might be more worthwhile than others -- by design. It also removes from the list of promotions available to a Hero those that just aren't relevant to the Hero's current leadership rank. I hate to have promotion choices pertaining to Naval warfare available to a Hero when that Hero has no Naval leadership ability at all, or maybe just a lowly D-Rank. On the other hand if I have a Hero with leadership rank of C or B, I'd like to see more promotion choices connected with his specialty.

Three -- There is no need to specify in Civilopedia which promotions are available to each Hero (unless they are "free"). You can simply state which leadership ranks each Hero can attain, and let the ranking mechanism determine automatically which promotions become available.

In some cases, certain unique Heroes existing at the beginning of a scenario might start with promotions that wouldn't normally be available because their current command rank is too low -- that's okay! These "free" promotions are dictated by the needs of the scenario (or their historical background).

Makes sense?

 

[stmartin]

I'm happy to release cumulative Patch F for V2.4. Download here: http://sanguoforciv4.googlecode.com/files/HoTK V2.4 Patch F.exe

This Patch F will break save game. Also it will be the last patch for V2.4, because we will soon release V2.5 beta1.

Here's the change list:

fix:
1.in scenarios the experience needed for first random hero will change according to number of heroes recruited by faction.
2.fixed wrong strength modifier from Promotion Do-Or-Die (Now it uses actual withdrawal chance in combat rather than in civilopedia)
3.fixed wrong strength modifier from Promotion Conqueror when hero also has Promotion Indomitable
4.fixed CTD when a hero in an island with no own city tries to escape to nearest city when defeated
5.fixed stealth I to work when attacking hills as well
6.fixed CTD when trying to range bombard empty city

Interface:
reimplemented join legion command

rule change:
Strong Bow promotion will no longer grant siege unit bombard bonus.

new content:
add hero natural death event

 

[stmartin]

@Ambreville

There's at least one very serious problem with your latest idea: it will make every hero will the same leadership rank exactly the same, which we will never do.

 

[Ambreville]

@Ambreville

There's at least one very serious problem with your latest idea: it will make every hero will the same leadership rank exactly the same, which we will never do.

Not true.

It depends on how many promotion choices per command rank are available to choose from. In any case, it also depends on whether the player decides to increase the command rank rather than pick a new promotion. Furthermore, if you have a pool of generic promotions available to any class unit command rank, plus more than just one promo per command rank that is specific to a class unit (obviously), then I don't see how you could say that all Heroes might end up looking the same. If you add on top of that the special Heroes (those with "free" or unique promotions because of their historical backgrounds), not only there would be ample variety, but the benefit that I described earlier would really kick in, which IMO is a far better structure from a game-design standpoint.

Sorry for the long-winded answer.

 

[stmartin]

@Ambreville

If you love that idea so much, can you give me a list as to which promotion should be unlocked by which level of which unit combat type?

The problem is, I don't see we can do this to many promotions. Most of the legion promotions are character and ability of the particular hero. They are not restricted to particular unit combat type.

 

[Ambreville]

@Ambreville

If you love that idea so much, can you give me a list as to which promotion should be unlocked by which level of which unit combat type?

The problem is, I don't see we can do this to many promotions. Most of the legion promotions are character and ability of the particular hero. They are not restricted to particular unit combat type.

Before I invest time and effort into such a list, I should want to see that there is interest in the general concept in the first place. If there is, I'd be glad to do the research. Judging from your response however, it doesn't appear there is much interest at this time.

 

[Steel Beagle]

Am I correct in assuming this is already in ROTK and I don't have to do anything to apply it?

Second - Is there a way I can apply it to BTS and then load a different mod and have it work?

 

[stmartin]

@Steel Beagle

Welcome.

CAR is in HoTK and will always in HoTK. We would develop HoTK first then check to see if there's anything new that can be put in CAR.

If you want to use CAR with another mod, then there are two cases: if that mod comes with a custom dll, which you can check to see if CvGameCoreDLL.dll file exists in Mod\name of the particular mod\Assets folder. If the dll file exists, then the only way to have CAR work with the mod is to ask the mod creator to manually merge them. If the dll does not exists, just copy CAR's CvGameCoreDLL.dll into the folder mentioned above, and start a new game with the Mod.

 

[Steel Beagle]

Thanks. Great mod. I am enjoying it very much. A bit frustrated at how few heros can do bombard, so I am probably spending too much time trying to save enough money for when I can get one

 

[Kenjister]

Hey, just declare war on Cao Cao... it's the fastest way to get the best seige hero! (Yue Jin). Yue Jin is actually pretty much the only decent seige general. Gao Shun really lacks any reason to promote him down the seige line. His special promotions really needs to give a City Attack strength bonus.

 

[stmartin]

We are happy to release V2.5 Beta 1. Go check it out at V2.5 Beta testing thread.

 

[Kenjister]

Wow, this mod is really making some progress here! Great Job stmartin!

 

[hrochland]

Yes. Excellent work in every respect

 

[Kenjister]

The beta's are coming along really well! Have you thought about updating the screenshots in the first post to better reflect the state of awesomeness the mod is in right now? I think the biggie is the new terrain and hero models. Oh and whatever happened to the info screen? I miss the times when I could see how the AI heroes were developing on their own.

 

[stmartin]

I'm thinking about make a tutorial for HoTK, before releasing 2.5. By then the first post would be updated too. We have included enough new things to scare off some potential players.

As to the info screen, I removed AI heroes because that screen has become a bit slow. I'm thinking about adding espionage prerequisite for human players to view certain AI heroes' stats.

 

[Kenjister]

Ahh, speed. Well that makes sense. As for new stuff, I don't know whether they're being scared off or not. I don't think it would make too much of a difference given that it's not a new concept that you have to learn, but more of a new toy that you can play with. Still, a tutorial would be great to see!

 

[geauxsaints]

awesome!!! I was coming on here looking for how to make custom units and such so that I could make a three kingdoms game, but lo and behold, somebody already did one much better than I could hope.

Damn, I am supposed to graduate in a few months but I think my GPA just dropped a few tenths of a point for downloading this mod

 

[stmartin]

@geauxsaints

Thanks! And no matter what, you GPA would be better than mine.

 

[Agent327]

I'm thinking about make a tutorial for HoTK, before releasing 2.5.

Neat idea.

 

[geauxsaints]

just beat the game as Liu Zhang. Diplomatic victory

Took forever. I had the entire West third of the map(defeated Zhang Lu, Meng Huo, Han Sui, Li Jue(East-West Pass?), Ma Teng, and Liu Biao.

I captured Huang Zhong from Liu Biao early on and so I had three great archer Hero's, then captured Ma Chao and had a great Calvalry and created some elephant units and was able to take half of Jing and Zhang Xiu's land.

Despite me now having by far the best score, I am never nominated for a Dynasty so I decide I need to march on Luo Yang. I severly underestimated Cao Cao's defense. Luo Yang had an insane defense% like 280 or something rediculous so I had to make about 10 trebuchets just to make a dent. after that, there were 16 really strong units, but with those 10 trebs suiciding, I was able to march Ma Chao and the elephants all over them and eventually take Luo Yang.

I immediately sued for peace because I probably had no chance against Xu Chang and the rest of Wei. I rebuilt the court and the vote came in. I was 81 votes short on the first ballot. Liu Biao, Cao Cao, Yuan Shu, and Yan Biahu were the only people not to vote for me. Liu Biao had 97 votes, Yuan Shu 71, and Yan Biahu had like 12...Cao Cao had a ton after taking most of Liu Bei and Yuan Shao's land. I decided to make good friends with my long lost cousin Biao and bribed the crap out of him with techniques, money, and resources. 15 turns later he voted for me and I won !

Took me 7 gameplay hours, but i was only playing on chieftain to get use to the game as it was my first playthrough. This game is very good. It is like ROTK XI-tactics + a much deeper strategy. I really forget that I am playing Civ IVs engine when i play this, it feels like a completely different game and the ROTK 7 soundtrack(at least that is what it sounds like) is awesome