Dungeons & Dragons: Mystara

Tjedge,

I liked your mod a lot at first but now I don't want to play it all. There are two reasons, one major and the other minor.

The major reason is the inability to Clear Wetlands till the Industrial Age. The random number generator of Civ3 is horrible. I have had a city of 15 reduced to 8 in successive turns with just ONE jungle tile set in its city radius (or should that be squarious?). I would rather have the Clear Wetlands researchable in the Early Civilization Age, say with construction. Its not like you would be running around willy nilly clearing marsh or jungle till latter in the game. With a 100% worker efficiency goverment in place a slave takes 192 turns, a worker takes 28 turns and a gnome takes 13 turns to clear a jungle tile.

The minor reason is the adjustment to the food production to the floodplain tile have made it the worst one in your mod, rather then the problematic one it was.
Is there a reason you reduced its base production by one to 2 food and only allow irrigation to improve food production by +1?
Both plains and grasslands food production increase by +2 when irrigated. Thats not even counting the fact that floodplain tiles also generate disease and you can't plant forests makes this the worst base tile in your mod.
 
hmm...Alright, but what about the matter of Golden Age units? I'm looking at Heldann, and they only get a star knight every 20 turns. They're powerful, but I think making them spawn only every 20 turns is a bit harsh. Especially considering that these things are your best bet for a golden age. And it's especially bad for a civ like Thyatis, whose unique unit not only comes every 10 turns only, but is also pretty mediocre compared to other units.
 
Krexel - The concerns you have can be corrected to your liking easily enough in the .biq file. I'm at work now or I could run you through it. Maybe someone else could. Changing the marsh and adding a food to the flood plains will take about 2 minutes. ;)

Copter - I'm having the same concerns. I've started and played maybe 20 games through the second age and can't recall even seeing a UU! For some reason the game gets either unwinnable or unlosable by then for me. I understand the need for SWs generating powerful units, but the generation is slow and almost not worth it. I truly want to see these units in action, but can't seem to wait! :sad:
 
The civilopedia entry for the blacksmith states that you must have iron in the city radius. However, I can build blacksmiths in any city that has iron in the strategic resource box, even though only one of them has iron in the radius(Actually, none of them have iron in their radius because I'm getting my iron through a colony).
 
Ok guys. I'm aware of the blacksmith issue, thanks, it will be fixed in the expansion.

The GA units can be worked on in the expansion. I'll be making them tougher and more common. They are no worse than the vanilla game GA units though. Most of them were obsolete in games I played before I could even use them. The rareness of these units makes the game tougher. This is supposed to be a tough mod. That was one of the points. CivIIIConquests was too easy. What's the fun if you always win?

As far as clearing wetlands early? Well that wasn't ever done in Mystara and I thought about not allowing it at all, but added it for gameplay. If the wetlands were all cleared out in this "fantasy world" then where would the Lizardmen or Black Dragons or other evil creatures stay? They can stay on the newly developed farmland that the humans turned it into. This mod is going to have disease problems, it's based in a time without much science. Flood Plain disease is curable when you get Sanitation in the 3rd age.

@woodelf: Most of the powerful units make their appearance in the 3rd age. It's basically when Mystara becomes what it is was when TSR/Wizards of the Coast stopped working on it. Before then, there isn't much going on.

I'm sorry you guys are having such problems. These never seemed to be concerns for the many testers I had. If my testers had such problems maybe they should have posted their concerns. In fact the wonder built UU's were my testers idea, and I like it. You can't always rely on a GA to win the game.

You can adjust the mod to your own liking. I always do with mods I download myself. Just save your changes with a different name or the expansion will overwrite your changes. I will write down these issues and discuss them in the beta testing of the expansion.

Anti-christ said:
In light of the current conversation, I decided to play the shires just to see what they are like and I must say the are fairly powerful but not overly so. I did notice a civilopedia error though, I have the ability to build seige catapults with the shire but in the civilopedia entry it says that this unit can only be built by eusdria and yavdlom? So either shires needs to be added to the list or I'm building the wrong type of seige machinery.
Click to expand...
I'll look into that, thanks. They are supposed to build that unit, I must have missed them in the Civilopedia. I'll fix that in the expansion.


EDIT: After reading my own post it comes across as hostile to me so just so you guys know, it isn't meant to be. ;) Just typed in a hurry.
 
No hostility noted. ;)

Getting to the third age and having the game still be competetive is the hardest part of any Civ MOD for me. If it's too easy than I quit from boredom, but if it's too hard I quit out of frustration. :blush:

Finding that happy medium and entering the 3rd or 4th age of a balanced setup is a great feeling and the entire reason I keep starting up new games. I might jump to the next difficulty level and if I don't fall too far behind in tech stick with it until I see some sweet units!
 
Just reread something about the wetlands...do the lizards and such evil doers get bonuses from marsh? Is this even possible or limited by the game engine? It would be great if one man's hell was another's heaven, like mountain lands for dwarves, ect.
 
The Lizardmen ignore move cost in the Jungle and Marsh (Which is pretty high), they also ignore disease from Flood Plains from the beginning. Other than that, no not really. I could set something up for them to get more bonus out of it like the mounatinous civs get with the resources. I'll consider that in the patch. Something like a food/production resource only they would get. May not be very useful like the Mushrooms aren't in the random game, but could work well in the set map games.
 
Would there be a way to set up the lizard (or dwarf) specific settlers to be able to settle marshes (and mountains)? Also maybe a specific tech could allow a bonus resource to be seen and used by just that race/civ? The mushrooms are great (when found), but can be used by everyone. What if the lizzies found something in the swamp that no one else could use or maybe a civ that liked deserts found a food resource in the desert and could settle there? Just brainstorming so don't mind the blather.... :D And since I'm still at work I can't try making these modifications myself yet to see if they can or would work.
 
They are all almost completely doable. The problem is the random map game. The more resources added to the game the more rare they randomly place. And then some that have set amounts like strategic and luxury have a tendancy to clump in one area and nowhere else. The Mushrooms are meant to help those who can't mine. There could be any number of resources added to a game with a set map. So for those maps I could add resources that will appear using thier non-era techs that give them their unique tech trees and then would show civ-specific bonus resources that only they would be able to see or use.

As far as settling for dwarves and lizardmen in those areas, I would have to make those areas impassible by wheeled units (mountains already are) and then allow each to be able to build cities. Problem with this would be invading these regions. Nobody else could invade them until the either remove the terrain or build roads to the city.
 
Yeah, I keep confusing the random maps we can play now with the premade ones that this MOD was designed for. After tweaking quite a bit I understand the problems with resources and their limitations.

Not sure what could be done about invading mountain cities since roads are tough or impossible to build, same with marshes. I did mess around and made mountains settlable once, but had to end that experiment since capturing the city was nearly impossible with defensive bonuses and the such.
 
I think unfortunately this mod will never reach it's full perfect self until Civ4. I do intend to redo it for that game since it appears that many of the things I will need will be possible. Including needing some of the missing civs and mulitple leader choices.
 
Inever ran into any problems with this mod. I like the fact that some of the UU can be giveing to you like after only 20 turns, it really keeps you or the AI from becomeing too powerful.
 
tjedge1,

I know that the disease from floodplains is curable with researching Sanitation. The point about floodplains was that you made the food production, both with and without irrigation, worse than plains or grasslands. In the orginal game the benefit was balanced because you risked disease.

Historically all the great early civilizations started in floodplains areas because it was easy to have a food surplus without science. You need that food surplus to support non-food producing populace like craftsmen, clergy and a military.
 
tjedge1,

Now as for the problems with jungles and marsh it is a frustration and a gameplay issue. The biggest problem with disease is that it gets really bad the more your population grows. Eventually in all 3 games I had any city with floodplains, marsh or jungle in their city radius either stop growing or actually shrink. I started raiding other civs workers just to keep my cities at a steady population.

Is it possible to limit ability to clear wetlands to the tiles in a cities radius?
Is it possible to seperate the ability to clear jungles from marshes?
I agree that you need more advandced resources in order to drain a swamp. However clearing jungles has always been easy to do. All you need is fire.
 
Unfortunately Firaxis didn't think about that. They only allow Clear Wetlands, which works for Jungle and Swamp. Would be nice to seperate them and then I would make Jungle earlier. None of the ideas you have can work with the Civ3 coding. It's too limited. In fact you are right about the Jungle removal. The nation of Yavdlom in Mystara burn jungle to build farmland on their island and throughout the nearby peninsula they ocupy. If only Firaxis had seperated the 2...

I see your point with the flood plains. I don't think it needs to be improved though. It has a better food rate than plains and if irrigated, it is equal to irrigated plains. The only terrain with better food production after farming is grassland. Unfarmed, it is equal to grassland, forest and jungle. Jungle has disease also till the 4th age and desert is barely usable at all. I think you are exagerating on flood plains being the worst. Sand Dunes are and in a random game that would be Desert. It's practically worthless till it's farmed. Tundra isn't much use either. And on Earth the great early civilizations started in flood plains, but in Mystara that is not the case. I want this mod to be more accurate to Mystara, not Earth. Sorry. If it is really a problem this is easily fixed in the editor. Just give it another food point in the terrains tab. I won't do it for the mod though as it isn't fitting for Mystara. In Mystara nations that live near flood plains are weak. This may not be realistic, but neither is a world of dragons, elves, etc. It isn't a gameplay issue. Just avoid flood plains and other disease causing terrain until you get the right technology to deal with it. Maybe leave those areas open and hope the AI settles it instead.
 
Ah but the True Elves love Tundra :). They can still plant a forest there. The True Elves are fun to play. They may not have the highest production in food or shields but they can cover the world in trees. Which not only gives a nice 2 food, 1 shield production but doubles a way to slow down any ground invasion.

I never read the books/modules that the mod is based on. I just like playing mods because they give a different flavor to Civ3C.
 
Here something humorous. To the game: I suggest to make the worker more efficient.
Monarchy.jpg


Adler
 
Yup, every time you pass by Code of Laws you get the double Monarchy/Republic change of government choice. Funny how when you're in anarchy they ask it again anyhow.
 
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