Dungeons & Dragons: Mystara

Wow. This mod is simply fascinating. Maybe the best one ever :goodjob: .

I've started the standard map as Izonda, and after about 10 hours I'm just through the first age - at least half of that time I've spent exploring some tiny bits of the huge civilopedia, the rules, and the map in the editor. And only then I discovered that I picked the one civilization with what must be the worst custom government: Monarchy with one additional MP (and +2 support for metros). Other than that I like the Izonda: farming is great on grassland, and the militaristic trait gives cheap barracks and obviously also cheap powerful harbors. Haven't built a single mine yet though - is it correct that mountain mining & roads only become available with engineers very late in the game for all civs? Then mining is really poor compared to farming.
I struggle a bit with the scarce distribution of resources, especially luxuries on this map - many civs must wait a long time to get even one, let alone 2 or more. However the long wait for many resources and buildings (not to speak of wonders) is a nice way to slow down expansion and encourage early wars. (Actually I like it more than Rhye's way of increasing settler costs to ridiculous amounts.)

I have to agree though about the Shires being overpowered. At the end of the first age they have by far the highest score, land area and population, and are twice as powerful as the strongest competitors (including me). Their regular & veteran spearmen & archers are about as powerful as my units (I've checked with the combat calculator), elites are significantly more powerful, but they cost at least 25% less. Why? The reduced cost alone would be more than a fair compensation for the lost hit point if you take into account the MP ability and possible elite status.
But I think the main problem with the Shires is their fantastic starting location on this map: Immediate access to 2x (4/2/1) tiles in despotism, plus 3 or 4 additional Ancient Forest tiles (all of which produce an extra food and 3 commerce at the end of the 1st age), plus fresh water, plus lots of nice free grassland/forest space around. Probably no other city can compare with the Shires capital in any aspect until mountain mining becomes available.

As for the leader type unit issue, I remember from other mod discussions that the leader flag in the editor is bugged and essentially does nothing.

It would be great if the civiliopedia description for each civilization would include links to their special government (the Izonda govt came as a shock to me) and maybe other important things like the most outstanding unique buildings and units. Maybe I'll add that myself...

Oh, and btw I love the music! :)
 
Thanks for the compliments and the suggestions. You probably noticed that the Civilopedia is incomplete when comes to background and detail. The idea of putting the government for the civ in their civ description is a great idea. Even I forget which governments go with who. IF you make any additions along the lines of what you mentioned, you can post the text file here and I'll make sure all your additions that still apply in the expansion will be included. ;)

Thank Arghis for the music. He was the one who did that. :)

The Leader issue? I'll be testing that myself very soon. I made an adjustment in the fix, which is in the downloads page, and I haven't heard of a problem since, but I still want to make sure.
 
Well I've only played this one time so far (random map, huge, frostgiants, swordmaster), so I'm not an expert; however I haven't found the shires too powerful in my game (I'm in the fourth age and I have the most land, then Zuyevo, then the 2 dwarves and shires are all about even, then about ten other nonessential civs) Of course once you get spells, the defense number doesn't matter (learn to use artillery)

As tjedge1 says this mod is supposed to be harder than regular Civ, and it is. Also this mod is supposed to be fun and challenging all the way to the end, which it definitely is (my big problem with regular Civ).

The fact that terraforming comes in the last age is a problem if you start in the middle of jungles or marshes. The solution is to either start over, play on a pre-designed map, or see if you are up to the challenge. The answer is not to change the realism (in regards to the Dungeons and Dragons world) of the mod by putting terraforming in an earlier age.

In the game I'm currently playing my capital city was built on or next to floodplains, and the disease is annoying (im in the fourth age and that city is size 7 while most of my other core cities are around size 24) but manageable. I'm almost sure i still had people dying from disease after i discovered sanitation so i'll check that.

Again, tjedge1, awesome mod, very fantasy realistic, and very challenging!
 
I really like this mod, however, I must agree that the wonder units are a bit too long to spawn. I'm currently in a game as the duargor dwarves, the amazon dwarves seem to spawn fastest and they are really rare. As far as rune mages, golems, and thunderers I've seen one or two of each from the time I built them to getting into the industrial age. It's sort of sad to get a wonder unit every 25 turns when I'm turning out infantry in 2 turns each.

Maybe decreasing the times to 75% of what they are now would help a lot. I understand you don't want every city defended by a stack of rock golems.
 
I've switched the raider goblin war party to 2-2-2. The 3-3-2 stats were simply killing the AI in my games.
 
Nwoll,

I have had the same thing happened to me. The disease from flood plains still affected the city even after sanitation was researched. It did not stop till ALL jungles & marshes were cleared.
 
There is no tech that removes the disease form jungle and marsh. The game doesn't allow it. Only flood plains, which is kind of stupid but that's how it's hardcoded.
 
Do you mean there's no tech in the Mystara mod to remove disease from jungle/marsh, or that the game engine doesn't allow for that? Because if it's the second, we really should have a way to clear those terrains, even if it's just a very late 4th age tech.
 
Rhialto,

You already can research Clear Wetlands in the 4th age. That isnt the problem. The problem is that after you research Sanitation, which is supposed to stop disease from Floodplains, the Floodplains are still causing disease till all jungles/marshes are cleared from ALL city radii.

I don't know if this is a Civ3C bug or Mystara mod bug.
 
It's civ3. In the standard game of Civilization3Conquest, PtW or possibley Vanilla, the tech that stops disease from Flood Plains does not mean all disease stops. It means that only disease form the Flood Plains stops. So if your city has jungle/marsh and flood plains it will still get disease. It's not a bug it's how they intended it when they set up the game. To remove disease form Jungle or Marsh, you have to clear it from the city radius. Clear Wetlands is in the 4th age. The Flood Plain disease is cured with Sanitation. If it doesn't work then it's a bug with the game itself, not the mod. Flood Plain disease should be stopped though. It always worked for me. The Jungle/Marsh disease however is only cured by an axe or machette. They are 2 seperate things.
 
I'm officially converted to the SW method of getting the really good units, but they need to come more quickly IMO. Also, needing something within your city radius to build an SW is quite a hindrance unless you get GLs to rush build them. All in all, I'm still loving this Mod.
 
Some are callin for the SW units to come more often. personally, I'd liek to see them become just a little more powerful too (or perhaps instead). This would help promote the 'heroic' side of Mystara. Great things are accomplished more often by heroics than by mundane troops, and making the UUs truly heroic would go towards that.

related to this, I'd like to see all the UUs generated this way. Thoth (and a few others?) can build theirs directly at the moment.

For Alphatia's final age infantry, can we have the boltmen from the Princess Ark stories? Rather than muskets, they are armed with various kinds of magic wand. Also, Alphatia should get more skyships and fewer griffon riders, to be more in keeping with the air force the background books give them.
 
Just played another game, the shires do seem a bit strong, they pretty much just wiped out a whole continent of other AI. This isn't that unusual as it happened in my first game with zuyevo too, but since others have been mentioning it I thought I'd mention it too, maybe they need to be toned down a bit in the early ages.
 
@bloodofages
I forget the url, but do a web search on the "vaults of pandius". Its a big archive on all things Mystara.
 
The biggest exploitable weakness of the Shires to me is their lack of mounted units. They are very, very susceptible to a lightning attack or counterattack. The drawback to this is that in this Mod the mounted units don't retreat when losing. If the retreat was enabled (not sure it can be with base movement of 2) then you could launch numerous mounted units at them and not lose your own units if they did back off.
 
woodelf said:
The biggest exploitable weakness of the Shires to me is their lack of mounted units. They are very, very susceptible to a lightning attack or counterattack. The drawback to this is that in this Mod the mounted units don't retreat when losing. If the retreat was enabled (not sure it can be with base movement of 2) then you could launch numerous mounted units at them and not lose your own units if they did back off.
Click to expand...

Heh, that was what allowed me to rush ahead of them in my last game. I sent adventurer parties into their territory and started hijacking all their workers. They got angry and declared war. Fortunately, I had a stack of roughly 80 Cataphracts and a few Cataphract armies waiting for them. I destroyed their army and had enough cataphracts to take over much of their empire. All they have left are a few of their own cities and stuff that they took from the Zuyevo. Now they're back into 5th in terms of score.

I think it may be where you put the stat bonuses they get. The ancient age attacker gets an extra attack point, and the ancient age defender gets an extra defense point. If they are hard to kill, being "invisible" and whatnot, then maybe all of their troops should get defense point bonuses only to simulate how they are harder to kill.
 
Greets,
at the first of all: good work :goodjob: :goodjob: :goodjob:
Cant find any great bug ;) ,some small things which anyone find within a foreign scenario but, Peanuts!!
- the shire: it was the first civ which was destroyed withon the southcontinent.
-wonderunits: i think they are strong enough and well balanced :) .
-to all of the folks: dont nerv about a whole.zip cause its real hard to find enough free downloadspace (no traffic limit i mean)for a file whith this size. :D Grumbl and i posted a ww2 scen with 360mb :mischief: . and i search 2-3 mounth for it.
Greets hulk :scan:
 
One thing about the wonder units, it really depends on what civ you are. I was duargar first game who only get rune mages and amazons and it seemed like I had none, but I reduced it to 80% of what it was and now I'm playing with the Frost giants and with all the wonder units they have I'm just overwhelmed with all the Giants, griffons, mercenaries (never got a leader in my first game) wiccans etc that I have, I haven't even really had to produce many regular units. In this case the original levels of production are probably balanced.

So it probably should be left at the original level so factions with a lot of them don't just overrun everyone. Other civs can always just build normal units or get mercenaries/red steel swordsmen/etc.


And also I do believe that the shires early attack units maybe should get +1 to def instead of atk. +1 to atk is really strong for an age 1 unit, even with the less hp. And I'm not concerned about vs me, I'm pretty sure I could overrun any ai in any diffuculty king or below and will probably get killed by them in any higher difficulty. I'm just concerned about the ai, I don't want to see one ai overrunning all the others in the first 2 ages, especially when it's on the other continent and I can't intervene.
 
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