Dynamic Dural

[WarKirby]

You can not win this game via pure building. You will HAVE to attack at some point.

Yes you can. Cultural, Domination, Tower of Mastery, Altar of Luonnotar, Gone to Hell, Religious

several ways to win that don't require fighting.

Religious victories are easiest with esus, since the unit isn't consumed.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

ON the other hand, Esus does not have any units that can get the Inquisitor promotion. Removing competing religions is often much more important to getting a victory than spreading your religion. (I believe you can still get priests with Inquisitor before switching to Esus and keep using it afterward though, so it isn't that big of a deal. I find it rather wrong that priests can be used to eliminate their own religions like that though..)

 

[Iceciro]

Esus should be able to pay to remove all religions but Esus. Regardless of anything.

Also, WarKirby, you can win like that, sure, but the AIs will declare war on you as you near completion, so even if you have full diplomatic friends, at the end, baring cheesy tactics like 400 slaves or a GE, you need military to achive those victories.

Also, don't lump Gone To Hell in that. Gone To Hell requires you eliminate the Good civs so hell terrain will spread.

 

[Breez]

I have never once won a cultural victory. I kinda wonder if it works. Never definitively tested tho. Regardless it requires you have multiple cities, as many or more than the AI or they will attack you and destroy your improvements and besisge your cities while starving your population.... kinda makes it hard to do with out counter attacking them with in your boarders.

Religious victory is doable if you can take other cities and remove their religions from them... or raze them to the ground.

Alter and Tower Victories are both very military orientated unless you exploit with hurry/slaves/GP and even then getting the mana for the tower is all but impossible peacefully.

Please demonstrate a domination victory with out attacking.

Try what you are actually mentioning, as proposed to which my comment was directed.

Is it possible to luck into a game that it happens to work in? sure but as consistently as other tactics on challenging maps/level?

 

[readercolin]

Cultural victory is actually rather easy, though it does take a while. Best way I have found to get it is playing as a OO balsferas, FoL elves, or interestingly enough the Khazid (any religion). The reason is that it only requires you to get 3 cities with legendary culture. It is harder than in regular civ, but I don't really see that as a problem.

Religious is VERY easy to win if you play on small maps, though it gets progressively harder the larger the map size. It is also very easy to do with order.

Altar can be won even playing single city challenge. You just need one city dedicated to spamming priests, which of course gets progressively easier the more altars you build and the more religions you have (and religious buildings you have). As for that last altar, well, if you are building it in a city with nice high production, you can build it pretty easily before the AI can react, even without using slaves, gold, or engineers. On top of that, only 1 city gets dedicated to the altar. Every other city you have then can get dedicated to building military to defend yourself with.

As for the tower, that is another one that is easy. All you need is 5 mana nodes. On larger maps, you can often get that just through regular expansion. On smaller maps, it often only means that you need to wipe out 1 opponent. Keep one blank till you get sorcery, then get 1-2 mages with metamagic 2. Then you can dispel nodes and build new ones nice and easy. As for the final tower, again, only one city has to be dedicated to building it, and the rest of your cities can be dedicated to military/defense. Again, if you build it in a nice high production city you don't need slaves/gold/GE to make it work.

Lastly, gone to hell. You don't have to eliminate the good civs... you just have to... convert them . Or you just have to get peace with agares and let him do the work for your - works every time .

Now these are all builder conditions, and all can be won either with no battle, or with little battle. However, I rarely win with them, not because they are difficult, but because domination is so easy. I usually only win with these conditions when playing wild mana, simply because I can't compete against the supergigantic AI stacks. And of course I always end up competing with myself - start tower of master and see if I can't win domination/conquest before I finish it. Same for altar of the lunnotar. Its turn 400, and I win cultural victory in 50 turns, can I conquer the world first. It usually happens because I'm bored with playing the game for the past several hundred turns, building up a nice large army, getting all those nice lategame techs, and I want to use that rather than clicking enter some more.

-Colin

 

[far_wanderer]

I really like a lot of your ideas and the general theme, but I think you're beginning to suffer from feature overcrowding. A lot of what you propose can be better implemented as replacements and improvements of existing things, rather than additions.

The Statues, the religious schools, and now your new colleges are all adding buildings - there can be some simplifying there. The Dural have a really good theme going of having better versions of normal buildings - a lot of your ideas could fill in gaps there instead of being new buildings. College of Peace - Add those training modifiers to a Command Post replacements that can be built directly. College of Engineering - unique replacements of the Master Buildings, buildable directly. Remove the Statues, but spread their bonuses around to the other buildings. Keep the University, but make it better (that may be a good place for the +1 free promotion from Statue of Glory). End result: only three new buildings (counting the religious schools as a part of the College of Theology), but nearly every regular building is better.

Instead of trying to accommodate religion-specific units, diversify Students' unit classes and give them more useful abilities. Then expand their upgrade paths. For example, the Student of Order could start with Demon- and Undead-Slaying, and upgrade into the Melee and Mounted lines. You could also remove professors too and have a few non-religious students, like a Student of Rhetoric (Can cast Courage, Hope, and Loyalty) or a Student of Biology (Can Cast Fertility, Growth, and has Medic).

I'm less keen on the Commander modifications. Professors upgrading to Tacticians seems kind of cool in theory but then you run in to the Bannor CoC problem that regular Tacticians end up seeming less useful. The Tactician already gets free promotions and your passive training idea will make them even better. The Arcane Commander is another neat idea but there are several other civilizations who deserve it far more than the Dural. I would suggest making the Arcane stuff a separate project.

Finally, the Diplomat. I think it's a wonderful idea, but I don't see any reason to make it a Dural unit. It would be a perfect addition to the Overcouncil.

As far as making a building remove more than one promotion, the duct-tape-and-string method is to make an auto-aqcuire must-maintain promotion that overwrites everything you want to remove.

 

[Breez]

I understand what you are getting at Far Wanderer but I believe his point was to appeal to the builder aspect of the civ by adding more buildings.

I think your way is more streamlined. Maybe increasing the hammer costs of the buildings is the way to go but keep less buildings.

 

[warriorofala]

How's progress on this? I'm looking to the Dural for my next game.

Also, you think it'll work with FFPlus?

 

[jrandrew]

Sorry, I got distracted. Am working on it. Found some issues with promotions and mods, a bit stuck. Not sure about how/if it would work with FFPlus, I haven't really loaded that.

 

[Valkrionn]

If you do this modularly it should. If not, then it won't work correctly with FFPlus.

 

[jrandrew]

It will be modular. I managed to deal with the issues that I was having in pulling promotions out to be modular -- an XML mistake on my part.

I am concentrating right now on finishing up work on the "Arcane Analyst" -- the Great Commander unit that acts as a mage advisor. As per some good advice earlier in this thread, I am splitting it out as a general unit that can be acquired by many civs (although not all, I want to require civs to have libraries and mage guilds, I don't think civs like the Doviello should have this unit) and promoted from a lv. 6 Mage. I hope to publish the separate Arcane Analyst mod in a couple of days.

Next, with the Dural I think some of the things I want to do are going to require more than XML. I've been trying to look at the python and C++ but I haven't ever done python and it's been a long time since C++.

A couple of things

1. The XML tags to add culture to a rival city don't work right (see posts in the FF Mod-Modders forum.)
2. I would like to emphasize the training aspects of the Dural more, but it's hard to tell how long it will take a unit to reach the next level. Also, there is no clear documentation on what the training modifiers in the XML file really mean in terms of "How much XP will this unit get in the next turn with all additions combined."

 

[readercolin]

If a unit gets .5 xp from anything (spell, promotion, etc.), then each turn it gets .5 xp, until it reaches its limit. To get an example of this, take and worldbuilder yourself a mage, and don't leave him in a city. You can see that every turn he gets whatever XP channeling 1 allows. It gets more complicated as you add building modifiers, xp rate gain modifiers, etc., but it seems to all be additive. So if you have say .5xp from channeling, .2 from a command post, .25 from mage guild, then you will get .95xp per turn.

Now, I could be wrong about this, but this seems to be what it does from my testing.

-Colin

 

[odalrick]

There are two systems for passive experience gain.

• The Hero system. The unit gets whatever experience the promotions says. Used by Hero and Battle Hardened.
• Training system. Designed to get units to 10 xp and not much beyond. Used by mages and training buildings et cetera.

Both have absolute limits on how much experience they can give. I think both systems just use the highest available limit, but I don't know if they use the same limit or not.

I think they are both scaled to speed, but I'm not sure as I never play anything other than normal.

 

[jrandrew]

I suppose this falls under the "promotion" and not the "Training" category above, but there are also

1. The "Channeling" traits which automatically give casters some XP every turn.
2. The "Spell" promotions -- e.g. Ice I, Fire I, and so on, that increase XP gain every turn.
3. The "Potency" promotions that increases Arcane XP gain.
4. The "Arcane" civ trait -- does this just give "Potency" to Arcane units?

Adding all of these up can get fairly complicated, and I think many of the promotions go through a formula calculation which adjusts the amount of XP gained per turn based on the amount of XP that a unit already has and/or the level.

 

[odalrick]

I suppose this falls under the "promotion" and not the "Training" category above, but there are also

1. The "Channeling" traits which automatically give casters some XP every turn.
2. The "Spell" promotions -- e.g. Ice I, Fire I, and so on, that increase XP gain every turn.
3. The "Potency" promotions that increases Arcane XP gain.
4. The "Arcane" civ trait -- does this just give "Potency" to Arcane units?

Adding all of these up can get fairly complicated, and I think many of the promotions go through a formula calculation which adjusts the amount of XP gained per turn based on the amount of XP that a unit already has and/or the level.

Nope, all of those are in the training category. When a promotion grants .3 training rate modifier, it grants .3*(base training xp). (Base training xp) depends on the current xp of the unit, and it is very small over 10 xp, negligible over 17. Buildings all work in the same system.

And, yes, Potency is all the extra training Arcane grants. Doesn't it also boost production of some buildings?

 

[jrandrew]

Thanks very much Odalrick, a few questions (just a few ).

Nope, all of those are in the training category. When a promotion grants .3 training rate modifier, it grants .3*(base training xp). (Base training xp) depends on the current xp of the unit, and it is very small over 10 xp, negligible over 17. Buildings all work in the same system.

Well, this explains what the tags regarding "Training XP Limit" or somesuch means on certain buildings. Or at least I think it does. E.g. I created a replacement for the standard "Training Yard" for the Dural called the Dojo, and added this:

			<TrainXPCaps>
				<TrainXPCap>
					<UnitCombatType>UNITCOMBAT_MELEE</UnitCombatType>
					<fTrainXPCap>20</fTrainXPCap>
				</TrainXPCap>
			</TrainXPCaps>

Does that mean the "(base training xp)" calculation for this building is now raised to 20? And that the default for any building, if not mentioned, is 10?

Also, does this mean that the standard "<TrainXPRate>" is therefore .3 for any building for which is it not specified?

Finally, not to pester you too much, but do you know where in the C++ code this is all handled? Or is it in python (I hope, then easier to mod!)

Thanks!

 

[odalrick]

Does that mean the "(base training xp)" calculation for this building is now raised to 20? And that the default for any building, if not mentioned, is 10?

No, it means that units that building applies to can train to 20 xp. The default for all buildings is 0, id est buildings don't normally allow training.

The (base training xp) I mentioned is 0.5 / ( current xp+1 ) xp per turn, or at least it was in January, the last reference I have. (On normal speed.)

When a promotion or a building, anything says it modified training by some number, it's that number it's talking about. For instance Spell Extension I modifies training by .3 . That means that a fresh 0 xp adept with Spell Extension I gains .5*(0+1)*.3 = .15 xp per turn more than an adept without Spell Extension I.

The part about training only working up to level 4 is just my personal observation. The base value is then so small that the xp gained is negligible. .5*(10+1) = .05 , multiplied by two or three; that is Channeling I & II, some spell promotions... A mage gains .15 xp per turn, 50 turns to get another promotion. More actually, since more xp means slower gain.

Also, does this mean that the standard "<TrainXPRate>" is therefore .3 for any building for which is it not specified?

No, again it's zero. .3 is just a common value for those things that have a value.

It is called fCasterXPRate in promotions, same thing different name. Essentially it started as free xp for casters, then got appropriated for all units. It kept "caster" in the name for units, but for buildings it was named "train".

For fFreeXPCap and TrainXPCaps (same thing, units and buldings) only the greatest value is used. A unit allowed to train to 15 xp by promotion and 10 xp by building, can train to 15 xp.

TrainXPRates and fCasterXPRate add together. A unit with .4 training rate from promotion and .5 training rate from building gets (1+.4+.5)*0.5 / ( current xp+1 ) each turn. As long as it is not over all applicable fFreeXPCaps and TrainXPCaps.

Finally, not to pester you too much, but do you know where in the C++ code this is all handled? Or is it in python (I hope, then easier to mod!)

I know it is the dll, so C++ . More than that, I don't know. I avoid C++ like the plague.

---

If I was going to mod the training system, I'd start by removing all traces of the passive caster xp system. Just remove the tags from all buildings and promotions.

Then I'd add auto acquire promotions of the same type as Hero. They grant the same amount of xp each turn, making them easy to predict and thereby easier to balance. There is no need to reduce the xp gained when the unit gets more xp, each level already costs more to get.

I could then easily decide how long an Adept needs to mature. It needs 10 xp for magedom. If it should become a mage in 50 turns, it gets 10/50= .2 xp per turn. If a balanced number turns out to be 20 turns, I'd know exactly what to change and it would not have cascading changes the way the current system does.

Same thing for all other things that can train.

There are promotions prereqs for buildings, civilizations and much more.

 

[Valkrionn]

That would be quite a few promotions... But could easily be done modularly.

 

[civ_king]

do .3 from promos stack so if I have 5 t1 spheres it would increase by 1.5?

 

[Valkrionn]

Yes they do.