Crystallized Mana; Conquerable Nodes

[Elm]

Interesting. Barbarians built a city on a raw Earth node. I captured the city, and got earth mana, without researching anything Earth doesn't do anything (active), but this would be beneficial if you want get 1 health or 1 happy early. Settle on the appropriate node. So, this works just like settling on gems, etc before mining, or copper before bronze working.

 

[Gelvan]

one question: the Pyre give Mana if you just build a ROAD there. could it be, that this is the reason why the AI does handle crystalized (e.g. already "warped") mana like it would get a bonus by just building a road there, even if he does not (because it only works with the Pyre, but maybe the AI regards the Pyre and the Crystalized mana the same, but on the Pyre he can't build an improvement, because it's blocked, while on a crystalized mana he can build an improvement, because it is not blocked).

ok. that sentence maybe is a bit strange.

Edit: a bit more structured

The Pyre gives Mana if you build a road there.
You don't need a node on the Pyre.
It's impossible to build cottages on the Pyre.

What if:
The AI regards Crystalized Mana as if it were a Pyre?

If so, then:
He would build a road there, thinking that building a road gives him the mana, which it does not (because this only works with Pyre improvements), but he does not know about that.
Because it is not the Pyre he can build cottages on the crystalized mana, and so he does it.

Maybe the AI just thinks a crystalized mana is like a special improvement which gives him mana just for a road. If this is the case, he should learn to regard them not like he regards the Pyre but like it regards normal mana (the blue one ).

 

[orlanth]

Starting in unmodified vanilla FfH I copied the Civ4BonusInfos XML entry for uncolored mana (BONUS_MANA) onto some of the other existing mana types, to make them exactly identical to the uncolored mana except for the name and graphic; I still got the situation with AI Workers going to build nodes over uncolored mana only. I think there must be something specific directing AI Workers to build specifically on BONUS_MANA by name.

By tweaking the Adept entry in Units/Civ4UnitInfos.xml to enable use of UNITAI.WORKER, I could make AI players' Adepts able to build nodes again, but they would still do this only on uncolored mana. I can't see anything in Units/Civ4BuildInfos.xml or elsewhere that would cause this..?

 

[Jhoniten]

Orlanth, I am playing around with your mod and i love the mechanics so far. I merged your mana mod with Marnok's Dungeon mod with a copy of FF42g. I am planning on creating a spell to tame the nodes, add random events for when they do try to tame it, and spice up the spawns a bit with the boss code Marnok uses.

My first thought was to make the taming spell Arcane units only, but that leads me with the problem of the nodes spawning critters til you can get an arcane unit. Not always a bad thing but could get nasty with a flesh golem or something spawning right next to your city.

 

[Gelvan]

the nodes are also in the file CIV4PlotSystem in the buildings folder, no idea though what it does?

 

[Jhoniten]

Think I have found my toughest game yet. Thanks Orlanth. Your mod was the crucial element to a truly enjoyable game for me.

Playing a huge 35 civ tectonics map, 30% water, normal aridity on Warlord. got raging barbs, barb world, living world, no vassal state, blessing of armathaon, wildlands, no ai level requirements, no ai building requirements, and flavor start. Only victory condition is conquest.

Notice I said on Warlord. took me 4 starts to live past 10 turns. I have to put my initial warrior in my city for defense. Those node critters start coming decently quick.

Man this is a blast.

 

[deadliver]

Think I have found my toughest game yet. Thanks Orlanth. Your mod was the crucial element to a truly enjoyable game for me.

Playing a huge 35 civ tectonics map, 30% water, normal aridity on Warlord. got raging barbs, barb world, living world, no vassal state, blessing of armathaon, wildlands, no ai level requirements, no ai building requirements, and flavor start. Only victory condition is conquest.

Notice I said on Warlord. took me 4 starts to live past 10 turns. I have to put my initial warrior in my city for defense. Those node critters start coming decently quick.

Man this is a blast.

Hey can you show me how to get a 35 civ map going please?

 

[Jhoniten]

single player, custom game, go to each player and keep scrolling down as you select them as AI, eventually you will have all 35 in there.

 

[deadliver]

Duh! I play with 60% water so no way I could stuff so many civs on small landmass, heh heh.

I'll try that out tonite cos in my game with 16 civs most got wiped out before turn 50 lol. My big nemesis turned out to be the RoK power bloc, first time for everything.

 

[orlanth]

Jhoniten, thanks, I am really glad to hear you are working on adapting this with the Marnok's Explorable mod! I was just thinking its Boss features would be great for enabling a few powerful Elementals with some weaker minions, it looks like there's also a "grace" period function that could enable node monsters to scale up in intensity as the game goes on. Have you managed to get some of the spawns to guard their nodes using likesPlot or likesImprovement in marnok.py? I think this is key to making it suitably difficult to get those nodes under control . Yes, some node events would also be a blast.. maybe you could make it so all units are able to explore/pacify the Wild Nodes, but the Channeling promotion gives a somewhat better chance of good results, just like the Adventurer promotion in Marnok's mod. I will definitely look forward to seeing the results!

Meanwhile I am still struggling with the strange AI mana node building behavior with little success Gelvan it looks like the CIV4PlotSystem.xml is mostly graphical. I suppose it's not game-breaking since the AI still has trouble using magic in general, but I'd really like to get this fixed eventually if I can figger out how!

 

[xienwolf]

Yes, the PlotSystem is a graphical file only. So you shouldn't need to touch that unless you created entirely new Node Graphics.

Do NOT set the Adepts to use Worker AI, causes odd spinlocks sadly. It is untested, but in theory they might not spinlock if allowed to build roads as well as improvements. This could be fixed in the next FfH patch though, I recall Sto talking about finding the cause somewhere.

 

[orlanth]

Thanks xienwolf; it didn't seem to cause any problems when I tried enabling the Adepts, but it also didnt solve the issue with the AI building nodes only on BONUS_MANA (and somehow using Workers!) Do you happen to know whereabouts this might be coded; or should I probably just leave it be for now if adept node building is to be changed in an upcoming patch?

(edit:by the way I had given them both UNITAI_WORKER and UNITAI_RESERVE, I don't know if that explains why they didn't seem to cause lockups)

 

[xienwolf]

All AI Workers can build Nodes, and no AI Adepts can specifically because of the Spinlock issue I mentioned. To dodge the issue and still give the AI mana that was the only option.


I would advise you wait on the upcoming patch. Or read the last 80 posts or so of the bug thread (or just search the bug thread for posts by Sto). It is an SDK modification if that is specific enough about where it is to make you not want to search for it yourself, tends to the stopping point for many people

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How exactly is that coded? Does it check for the bonusclass of the resource to be harnessed? If it is hardcoded for specific resources then I'll have to be careful when implementing all 21 spheres.

 

[MaxAstro]

orlanth: As far as having the barbarians guard wild nodes, I was recently pointed in the direction of the proper code.

It is in CvGameUtils.py, under the definition AI_unitUpdate. There is a section of code there that starts by checking if the unit is barbarian owned; eventually it gets to a long "if pPlot.getImprovementType" statement with many "or" cases. Any improvement added as an "or" case in that line of code will be guarded by the barbarians. It's as simple as that. Obscure in it's location, but simple.

 

[Jhoniten]

Getting the units to guard nodes would do a lot for softening up the opening bit of a new map. First wave of node units would be guarding, giving you time to get defenses up before they start coming after you.

Going to work on the guarding bit first.

 

[xienwolf]

How exactly is that coded? Does it check for the bonusclass of the resource to be harnessed? If it is hardcoded for specific resources then I'll have to be careful when implementing all 21 spheres.

Pretty sure it was based on BonusClass. SDK block is what I am remembering, so that is the only non-hardode approach possible.

 

[orlanth]

xienwolf thanks, yeah that's enough to scare me away especially if it will change in a future patch.

MaxAstro that's a good find - if you want, also still take a look at the Marnok.py likesplot function, since it has some additional capabilities like unit-type-specific control of preferred guarding tiles.

MagisterCultuum, my guess is it checks directly for type=BONUS_MANA, since I'd tried changing the other mana types from BONUSCLASS_MANA to BONUSCLASS_RAWMANA with no effect. Actually, if the current Worker system checked BonusClass instead it could work fine with this minimod, as well as enabling the AI to build nodes over the colored mana in vanilla FfH (eg pillaged nodes, pillaged Pyre etc) which it currently can't. I remember coming across some entries for Dimensional Mana and others, is this a precursor of the extra spheres you are implementing?

 

[Jhoniten]

I got like lightning elemental to guard raw mana node. I am going to set them up to guard the nodes they spawn from instead of guarding all nodes.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I remember coming across some entries for Dimensional Mana and others, is this a precursor of the extra spheres you are implementing?

Dimensional Mana used to be implemented, but only had a level 1 spell (Escape, which was changed to a unit specific spell for Chanters, who used to have the the promotion). Kael removed it when he implemented Metamagic, because he claimed he couldn't think of good enough/balances spells for it to have a full 3 spells like all the other spheres. I've added it back with a full set of spells summon perks, and also added in the Ice sphere. That just leaves Force and Creation. I've pretty much decided on the lower 2 levels of force, but have no real idea what the Creation spells should be.

(Plus, I'm extremely busy with school and so haven't been/won't be able to work on it for a while.)