Does FFH need a Lizardman Civ?

[Rex rgis of Ter]

This Post by PL would make an interesting upper class lizzie, or a mage. The lizards could have strong mind mages.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i cant believe that found its way all the way over here the slann's mind works in mysterious ways...

im so close to finishing him now, just the bloody animations and i noticed that he has a line down his middle when i put him in game.

 

[Ekolite]

lol

BTW Hopefully this will actually start being made after ICE. Not much point doing it before then IMO and FFH wont work on my PC atm for some reason.

 

[JDexter]

Erm you mean nobody started work on either of the Liz civs yet??
I was already looking forward to playing them... *sniff*

 

[Ekolite]

lol AFAIK they haven't started. It's Hian and woodelf + anyone else who can help who's doing the actual modding. Woodelf's involved in about 50 different mods as it is and I haven't heard from Hian in ages so the lizzie civs are unlikely to be descending on Erebus anytime soon sorry. Saying that, I'm not sure how far away Ice actually is and I'm not sure how long it takes to make new civs - It might not be as far away as I think.

 

[JDexter]

I thought you were the leader of the other lizard civ project...?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

civs are actually fairly simple to implement. the time consuming part (IMO) is the units

 

[woodelf]

Yeah, I've found that modding isn't much fun since I started making graphics. I used to love XML and the like, but now it sucks. I don't know how much time Hian has to do the grunt work either.

 

[Ekolite]

Well... the other civ was my idea yes. Sadly I don't know a thing about modding and are too busy with RL to start learning . I'm doing my GCSE's this year - probably should do some revision lol.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Yeah, I've found that modding isn't much fun since I started making graphics. I used to love XML and the like, but now it sucks.

here here! 3D graphics are so much more fun. but it is nice to see your efforts materialise when you do XML (and im even more amazed when my botch pyhton jobs work )

 

[Hian the Frog]

Hi All,

I was off for the last days. I went to Paris to prepar my exams.
I haven't started working on a Lizzi civ. Before anything, i have to know what art files we have in hands (units, buildings), what pictures (for leaders),... I add that my english is not good enough to write the needed pedia texts. (Help will be needed there). More, i need to have a real discuss with woodelf about FfH2 progress. Do we wait for Ice or no ? And so on... Many unanswered questions....
All in all, we can still continue discussing about this civ. Maybe interesting ideas can appear.

Hian the Frog.

 

[Vehem]

I kinda saw this thread a while back but stopped following it. Woodelf just reminded me of it in the "Fall Further" thread and suggested it might make a good 4th civ. I tend to agree and I'm leaning strongly toward the intelligent, Law-based-evil Aztec-theme suggested.

In anycase - I just want to check that I wouldn't be treading on any toes or upsetting anyone who may have already started work on it if I were to do so. I'd certainly be stealing a good few ideas from this thread (though maybe not some of the "bigger" ones - some are great but beyond the scope of just a "Civ-addition" which is what Fall Further is about - I try not to interfere with the base game as far as possible) and hopefully they'd end up to everyone's liking.

If anyone does want to lay claim to the idea before I start - it'd be no problem at all, just let me know and I'll plunder some other mythology for the next civ

 

[Ekolite]

The Aztec Lizzie thing was my idea, your welcome to make it if you like. I'll help in any way I can, if you don't mind. I had a lok at the other civs you made and they look seriously awesome, as soon as I get FFH working on my PC i'm d/l ing it .

 

[Hian the Frog]

Vehem,

You can create a Lizzie civ. It's not a problem. We are just talking and sharing ideas on this thread. As you can read, there are many solutions to add them in FfH2. Making a violent Lizzie civ as Kol.7 asked for can be your job.

All in all, i prefer waiting a bit for woodelf and the needed art files before starting anything.

Hian the Frog.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

yes! please do make a lizzie civ Vehem! your other civ were great and i think you will do the lizzies justice

 

[Vehem]

Well - I think one of the defining features of the Lizardmen would be their preferred habitats so I've had a play around with the terrains. As it stands, I've got a fairly rough terrain-swapping function that's run for the Lizardmen territory each turn. It gives a chance of Grasslands turning into Wetlands, and unimproved Wetlands turning into Swampland. For most races, this is a bad thing (-1 food), but the lizards gain a hefty food bonus (+3 net food) from the swamp-terrain. The swamp terrain counts as an improvement - you can't farm it etc. I've also temporarily cloned the Jungle feature and removed the Maluses from it. These are also swapped each turn - any Jungle in Lizard territory is swapped for the "healthy jungle", any "healthy jungle" not in Lizard territory becomes normal again. I want a better way to do this - but for now it eludes me.

I'm toying with the idea of making the swamp improvement "permanent" - meaning it can't be pillaged *or replaced*. If I were to do that, I'd also add an effect onto the "Scorch" spell to return a Wetland/Swamp to a Grassland. Likewise, I may change the Swamp-mechanic from an automatic spread to a result of casting "Spring" on Wetlands. If I go this way, the Palace will be getting both Sun and Water mana.

So far as the AI is concerned, I think I'll allow them to use the automatic spread regardless. Saves them having to worry about spell casting.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

thats an excelent idea for the terrain spread Vehem. would it be possible to instead of cloning the jungle, just give the lizies a tech that grants additional bonuses to jungles?

 

[Vehem]

thats an excelent idea for the terrain spread Vehem. would it be possible to instead of cloning the jungle, just give the lizies a tech that grants additional bonuses to jungles?

I was looking into it, but can't find anyway to do it purely from a given tech. I can add happiness to a feature using a civic, but not health. I can change the yields of an improvement using a tech, but not a feature and I can remove all unhealthiness in a city using buildings, but that would likely be a little too potent for what we're looking for.

At the moment, the two options I can see are to either change the DLL to do it neatly, or using a messy cloning/switching method. If I make DLL changes, it makes updating future versions kinda tricky.


EDIT: Well - it works well enough for now, and is tied into the same function that handles the Armageddon counter, Demagog spawning, Hell Resource swapping and Ancient Forest conversion - so I guess it's not actually that messy anymore (it was originally a "doLizardTurn()", now it's in "doMapTurn()" - mostly so that there's only one call to cycle through the plotlist, but also so that the "LizardJungle" is removed correctly after all Lizard players are dead)

My current thinking regarding swamp spread is to have a low-level of natural spread, and grant the Lizardman workers the ability to cast Scorch and Spring within their own borders only (prevents any early damage to other lands with scorch). These spells would have the additional ability to remove wetland/swamps and add swamp to wetland (lizardmen only) respectively.

EDIT AGAIN: I think the terrain mechanic is about done now. In fact, I think it works pretty well. I'm actually tempted at this point to double up and make the two differing Lizardman civs (ala Summer/Winter court) so that they can both make use of the new terrain and can have a shared history. As I originally intended to always release three civs at a time, that'd leave just one more to decide on (currently leaning toward a redux of the "Wild-elves" that DharmaMcLaren started work on).

As a side-note, if I do go with the elves, I'd probably also try to add a darker version of the Ancient forest for them and the Svaltafar (and Archos). Same effects, different flavour.

Current Terrain Mechanic Pseudocode

if inLizardTerritory
	100% Jungle becomes LizJungle
	if grassland
		0.5% chance to convert to Wetland per turn
		3% chance to convert to Wetland per turn if next to a river
	if wetland
		5% chance that a swamp will develop naturally if no other improvements present (10% for AI)		
		5% chance that a forest/ancient forest will become a LizJungle
else
	100% LizJungle becomes Jungle

Not sure whether to allow Plains to switch to Grassland at a very slow rate, as the race is largely dependent upon grassland.

 

[JDexter]

I love your ideas Vehem!

And for a little thread-hijacking: the alternative, darker ancient forrest is nice. After all why would an evil forest be friendly to nice elves and the nice forest friendly to evil elves? On the other hand in LotR it doesn't matter much, the elves are always accepted in the forests IIRC (Mirkwood is evil per se, but the elves there live in harmony with it, same in Lothlorien).

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

great stuff Vehem. i think alowing plains to grassland is fair.