Era of Miracles fantasy mod - developer diary
- Thread starter PawelS
- Start date
rocklikeafool
Warmaster
Do the mages cast spells?...Cuz that'd be awesome!As for units art, I suggest to take a look at the Faerun Scenario available in the mod browser (latest version of a couple days ago), at last a bunch of relevant fantasy units have been successfully designed for CiV: mages, druids, giants, assassins, clerics, paladins, demons and.... dragons! Yay! Nice work
texdionis
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2005
- Messages
- 113
nope...
they are ranged units with some special promotion, but it's a good start
nope...
they are ranged units with some special promotion, but it's a good start
That's what I'm going to do as well, at least in early versions. I think the magical units can have the "indirect fire" promotion, so they will shoot over obstacles (this promotion will be unavailable to units like Archers and Siege Machines). The priests will be have a weaker attack than wizards, but they will also have healing abilities.
About the scenario: I can't use it for now, because I don't have the required DLC, but I'm going to have them at some point... What would you say about the quality of the new unit graphics? Are there screenshots available somewhere? (I'm just curious, I'll use these units even if they don't look very good due to lack of other options.)
Going back to the Freedom policies...
Actually it's not a new idea, one of the policies in the base game works this way.
I think it will be just a fixed amount of happiness that you need to have for a Settler to appear, like +15. Also a Settler won't appear if you already have a Settler, or when you're at war. And it will be possible to get one only at special "Settler turns" (frequency depending on game speed, for Normal it can be every 20 turns), so after losing some cities in a war, you won't get several Settlers immediately to rebuild your empire.
It will work the same way as the policy that is in the base game which gives the same effect. I don't remember how it works, will have to check as it's an important balance factor.
Thanks
Changed to "Ambition", sounds good
Actually it's not a new idea, one of the policies in the base game works this way.
I think it will be just a fixed amount of happiness that you need to have for a Settler to appear, like +15. Also a Settler won't appear if you already have a Settler, or when you're at war. And it will be possible to get one only at special "Settler turns" (frequency depending on game speed, for Normal it can be every 20 turns), so after losing some cities in a war, you won't get several Settlers immediately to rebuild your empire.
It will work the same way as the policy that is in the base game which gives the same effect. I don't remember how it works, will have to check as it's an important balance factor.
nice policy tree
Thanks
Changed to "Ambition", sounds good
Domination (excludes Freedom):
I think it can give some production and cause +1 uphappiness, but I don't know how to do it, unhappiness would be useful for some other buildings as well, like the Tax Collector. Some time ago I tried to assign a negative happiness to a building in XML, but it didn't work. Probably it will require some complicated LUA code, or a DLL change.
** In this mod the Courthouse is NOT the building that you build in anexed cities. It can be built anywhere, and gives +1 Happiness, +10% Gold and +10% Production (the effects may be subject to change).
- Opener: Reduces the extra policy cost from number of cities
- A1 Social Mood Control: 10% less unhappiness from population
- A2 Entertainment for Masses: +1 Happiness from every Circus and Colosseum
- A3 Social Engineering: +2 Happiness, free policy
- B1 Sacrificial Captives: Culture from kills, can build Sacrificial Altar (+1 Culture, +1 Mana, +1 Happiness)
- B2 Slavery +1 Production from Quarry, +1 Gold from Plantation, +10% Production in assimilated cities, can build Slave Market* (now I know how to make buildings buildable only with specific policies, and perhaps I'll add buildings to some other policies as well...)
- B3 Imperialism: +3 Happiness and -20% Gold/Research/Culture in assimilated cities (thanks to Calavente for the idea)
- C1 Workforce Control: +10% Production in all cities, Workers build improvements 10% faster
- C2 Workforce Focus: +25% Production when building Wonders
- C3 Absolute Power: extra bonuses from government buildings like Courthouse**, City Hall etc. (details not determined yet)
- Finisher: future policies cheaper by 10%
I think it can give some production and cause +1 uphappiness, but I don't know how to do it, unhappiness would be useful for some other buildings as well, like the Tax Collector. Some time ago I tried to assign a negative happiness to a building in XML, but it didn't work. Probably it will require some complicated LUA code, or a DLL change.** In this mod the Courthouse is NOT the building that you build in anexed cities. It can be built anywhere, and gives +1 Happiness, +10% Gold and +10% Production (the effects may be subject to change).
haha.. you noticed I haven't ciV yet
you're welcome.
I'll have some coments : A2 seems more powerfull than A3 (roughly 2 happiness /city if the city is developped. compared to only 1... empire-wide ... unless the 1 is "per city"... in which case it seems ok.
As for "imperialism"... same remark as before : 3empire-wide seems a small gain, as IIRC, your "unhappy /city" is ... 10... and 0.5/pop. so 3 empire-wide is meh.
My earlier proposal was "3happy per annexed city" (so expending is not as costly happy-side), compensed by the -20% in gold/research/culture/(gpp?)... in the same annexed cities.
I've got some ideas for "slave market" :[*] B2 Slavery +1 Production from Quarry, +1 Gold from Plantation, +10% Production in assimilated cities, can build Slave Market* (now I know how to make buildings buildable only with specific policies, and perhaps I'll add buildings to some other policies as well...)
* Effect of this building is not determined yet. Ideas are welcome
+ 1-2-3 gold (fixed income seems better than %... especially if slaves already improve quarry and plantations... you wouldn't have those have both the improved yield and the yield boosted by a %)
risk of "slave revolt" event : "troubles in city for 1-5-10 turns"
enables one of the following :
- allow slaves in city to be "sold" for + production or +gold.
- enable to build "slave stands" (maybe 1 per race you have ?, maybe some slave stands may be unlocked with different techs) (using-up the slave)
(luxury slave stand: +1 culture +1gold, combat slave stand: -1unhappy +1gold, heavy-weight slave stand : +2production (or 1free "citizen specialist"; cannot be assigned to a specialisation (sorry, don't know if ciV has specialists))
another idea would be
-slave market: + FOOD (food %), opens 1 specialist slot of each type, +unhappiness
(reasoning is the following : the civilizations with slavery had most of their "unskilled" work done by slaves, which costed less than free-workers, liberating more people to do specialised work. Athenes could only work as a republic because half (or more) of it's population were slaves, doing grunt work.. thus other 'free" citizen could spend time develloping culture, embassies, artisanry, architecture, military prowess (sparta)...Etc
so while it seems contradictory that a slave market increase possibility of specialists, in reality, by providing a influx of "cheap" labor (even specialised labor), the native people could become more specialised..
in game-play that could either be translated by : more food AND opened specialists slots so you can free some citizen to put them as specialists.... OR giving soem free specialists, without opening the slots..)
my 0.2
(I'll think on that and amend/edit latter as I think on this...)
texdionis
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2005
- Messages
- 113
haha.. you noticed I haven't ciV yet
I'll have some coments : A2 seems more powerfull than A3 (roughly 2 happiness /city if the city is developped. compared to only 1... empire-wide ... unless the 1 is "per city"... in which case it seems ok.
A2 is not +2 per city, because the Circus can't be built in all cities - it requires Horses or Ivory (renamed Elephants in this mod) nearby.
A3 is only +2 happiness globally, but it also grants a free policy, so it's better than any other policy, because it contains another policy as well as +2 happiness
It's per city, perhaps I should have used a different wording. "+3 happiness" applies to assimilated cities too (assimilated means an annexed cities after building the Assimilation Center, which works like Courthouse in vanilla game). I don't know how to apply such modifiers to all annexed cities, so I apply them to the building (also it's important that puppeting is disabled in this mod).
Interesting ideas but quite complicated, I'll have to think about them...
v9 is up now, no DLC required
I checked it and there are some interesting units indeed. Will contact the mod author about using them in my mod.
rocklikeafool
Warmaster
A minor note: I do hope Assimilation Center is a placeholder name? Because it just doesn't sound very fantasy...PawelS said:
Edit: I'm sure I'm being super picky.
sorry for my complicated ideas
however, wouldn't "allowing" a "spell / action" only if a slave is in a city with slave market doable?
(or giving a free specialist? or slots for specialists ?)
(I think even I would be able to do such a building in civ IV... (for the free specialist slots with +5 or +10 food (or +10%food))
however, wouldn't "allowing" a "spell / action" only if a slave is in a city with slave market doable?
(or giving a free specialist? or slots for specialists ?)
(I think even I would be able to do such a building in civ IV... (for the free specialist slots with +5 or +10 food (or +10%food))
It sounds SF-ish indeed, if you have a better idea then tell me about it
sorry for my complicated ideas
however, wouldn't "allowing" a "spell / action" only if a slave is in a city with slave market doable?
(or giving a free specialist? or slots for specialists ?)
(I think even I would be able to do such a building in civ IV... (for the free specialist slots with +5 or +10 food (or +10%food))
I think it should be doable with LUA, but I'm not sure if I want to do it.
About the Faerun Scenario: I'm playing it, and I think it's quite good! It requires some work to be a proper total conversion (for example the Policies aren't changed), but it's very enjoyable in it's current state. An interesting idea is that units don't get XP, it eliminates exploits that allow "XP farming"...
texdionis
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2005
- Messages
- 113
All units start with exclusive promotions and no Xp gain, it seems.
At first I thought it was a bug, but then noticed some policies/building would give them up to 30 XP points, so that some unit could get at least one more promotion to pick.
Interesting
rocklikeafool
Warmaster
Here's a few ideas. Maybe 1 or 2 would be UBs.It sounds SF-ish indeed, if you have a better idea then tell me about it
Temple of Harmony
Amalgamation Tribunal
Sacellum of Order
Court of Judgement
Oratory of Perception
Hall of Rendering
Omnibus of Association
Codex of Adjuration
Just a few basic ideas. Keep in mind, some of them seem "religious" themed, but it can be implied (through the pedia) that they may or may not be, as you desire. Anyway...just a few ones I came up with using a thesaurus.
A primitive version of "improving through combat" was present even in Civ1, where a unit can get the veteran status after combat.
I don't think I'll remove getting XP in my mod, but I'll think about some ways to prevent the exploits.
The XP cost already goes up with subsequent levels, also there is an XP cap on Barbarians. But I have some other ideas...
(I'll post more later, now my niece wants to play with me
)About my ideas to prevent XP farming:
All of these sound like UBs, and most of them are variations of the Courthouse building from the vanilla game. I need something more generic, and I don't want this building to be something related to law, it should be something that allows other races to assimilate with the conquering race. I know it's hard to come up with such name, that's why I'm still using "Assimilation Center"...
Edit: What do you think about "Hall of Joining"? I mean a place where the members of both societies would introduce themselves to each other, to join these societies into one. It's similar to your "Hall of Rendering" idea, but it's difficult for me to catch the non-technical meaning of the word "render" in English, according to dictionaries it has lots of different meanings that seem quite distant from each other...
---
Some thoughts about the happiness system after playing the Faerun Scenario. I haven't played it to the end yet, but I played it long enough to come to some conclusions, also it plays quite similar in this regard as the vanilla game.
At first, if I want my cities to grow, I'm very limited when it comes to the number of cities I can have. And I don't like limiting the growth of cities, so I had only 2 cities for a long time. The first thing that allows me to increase the number of cities are luxury resources, after getting a few of them (and trading for one more), I could increase the number of cities to 5.
And then, after some time, happiness starts to go over the roof, because of 2 reasons: the Circus building, which can be built in all cities, and increases happiness by 4. Most of my cities were size 6-7 at that time, so, along with other buildings that give minor bonuses to happiness, it allows to practically eliminate the unhappiness per population. And unhappiness per city is very low (1.8), so I can found or conquer cities indefinitely, especially combined with another factor: the policies. There are a lot of policies that increase happiness significantly, especially if you have a large number of cities. The effect is that in late game happiness is not a problem at all.
So, in vanilla game and the Faerun scenario, at first happiness limits the total population in all your cities rather than their number (due to high unhappiness from population, low unhappiness from number of cities, and many policies that give happiness bonuses per city), and, in later stages of the game, it doesn't limit anything at all.
How I'm going to do it in my mod (I already wrote about most of these things in this thread, but now I gather this information in one place):
- The Barbarians should be more aggressive. They shouldn't just sit or walk around and wait until you kill them, and then you wait for new ones to appear near the camp. I like the idea of using Barbarians to train your units, but it should be a more dangerous experience, where they attack the player's units more, or run away when damaged instead of waiting to get slaughtered. Perhaps there will be some changes in this regard in the expansion, also maybe I'll be able to change some things when the DLL becomes available. But even in XML there are some things that can be changed - like removing the bonus that the player gets against Barbarians (the AI should still get it), and making the Barbarian UUs (like the Brute) stronger than their standard counterparts (Warrior in this case). With all these changes, training your units on Barbarians is a good thing IMO, and the XP limit can be increased, I think it can be 100 XP, so even units that you produce with all possible buildings that give XP can improve their abilities when fighting Barbarians.
- There is a problem of cities having a range of 2, so you can place a unit with range 3 and attack such city without worrying about getting damage. I think there should be buildings that increase city range (available about the same time as units with range 3), but I'm afraid it will require the DLL to make it work. Maybe I'll remove the XP for ranged attacks on cities?
- To reduce the human player's advantage of having experienced units, the AI's units (especially at higher levels) should start with some extra XP or other bonuses.
Here's a few ideas. Maybe 1 or 2 would be UBs.
Temple of Harmony
Amalgamation Tribunal
Sacellum of Order
Court of Judgement
Oratory of Perception
Hall of Rendering
Omnibus of Association
Codex of Adjuration
Just a few basic ideas. Keep in mind, some of them seem "religious" themed, but it can be implied (through the pedia) that they may or may not be, as you desire. Anyway...just a few ones I came up with using a thesaurus.
All of these sound like UBs, and most of them are variations of the Courthouse building from the vanilla game. I need something more generic, and I don't want this building to be something related to law, it should be something that allows other races to assimilate with the conquering race. I know it's hard to come up with such name, that's why I'm still using "Assimilation Center"...
Edit: What do you think about "Hall of Joining"? I mean a place where the members of both societies would introduce themselves to each other, to join these societies into one. It's similar to your "Hall of Rendering" idea, but it's difficult for me to catch the non-technical meaning of the word "render" in English, according to dictionaries it has lots of different meanings that seem quite distant from each other...
---
Some thoughts about the happiness system after playing the Faerun Scenario. I haven't played it to the end yet, but I played it long enough to come to some conclusions, also it plays quite similar in this regard as the vanilla game.
At first, if I want my cities to grow, I'm very limited when it comes to the number of cities I can have. And I don't like limiting the growth of cities, so I had only 2 cities for a long time. The first thing that allows me to increase the number of cities are luxury resources, after getting a few of them (and trading for one more), I could increase the number of cities to 5.
And then, after some time, happiness starts to go over the roof, because of 2 reasons: the Circus building, which can be built in all cities, and increases happiness by 4. Most of my cities were size 6-7 at that time, so, along with other buildings that give minor bonuses to happiness, it allows to practically eliminate the unhappiness per population. And unhappiness per city is very low (1.8), so I can found or conquer cities indefinitely, especially combined with another factor: the policies. There are a lot of policies that increase happiness significantly, especially if you have a large number of cities. The effect is that in late game happiness is not a problem at all.
So, in vanilla game and the Faerun scenario, at first happiness limits the total population in all your cities rather than their number (due to high unhappiness from population, low unhappiness from number of cities, and many policies that give happiness bonuses per city), and, in later stages of the game, it doesn't limit anything at all.
How I'm going to do it in my mod (I already wrote about most of these things in this thread, but now I gather this information in one place):
- High unhappiness per city is the most important thing, it's the best way to prevent the player (and AI) from spamming cities indefinitely. Some people say that it eliminates the "tall vs wide" dilemma. This is true to some extent, if you mean "wide" as spamming lots of cities over the entire area, and artificially preventing them from growing using the "avoid growth" option, then I don't think such strategy should be allowed. But things like placement of cities, and the buildings and improvements that you build, will allow you to choose to have a few more smaller cities, or a few less bigger ones.
- Lower unhappiness per population, so you won't be afraid to grow your cities. Also it makes planning easier (along with the more unhappiness from number of cities). In vanilla you don't really know how many cities you can afford, because when they grow, happiness decreases significantly, and it's hard to predict how big they will become and how fast.
- No luxury resources. Luxury resources aren't that bad (by "bad" I mean an important factor that causes the "happiness burst"), because every resource type is counted for happiness only once. In my early non-fantasy modification for Civ5, I reduced the happiness from them to 2, and it worked well with my system. But, as I already wrote in this thread, for some reasons (mainly the micromanagement - checking periodically if the other civs have something to trade), I decided to make them just bonus resources, but there will be special buildings that can be built when the city has access to them, and some of these buildings will give +1 happiness.
- Reduced (and distributed) happiness from buildings. There will be some buildings that give +1 happiness, and a few that give +2, but no such crazy things as ones that can be built in any city and give +4. Happiness being distributed among many different buildings encourages you to be generally well-developed, instead of building (or buying) a few specialized happiness buildings to "fix" the problem and continue to spam cities.
- Palace gives +1 happiness per adopted policy. This allows slow but steady progress, when it comes to the number of cities you can have. Some policies also increase happiness from various buildings etc., but this increase should be kept at reasonable levels (there shouldn't be a policy that gives +1 happiness from 4 types of buildings that you can build in all cities).
- Giving Settlers automatically is important especially for the AI, it helps it to have the "right" number of cities. From my experience when testing my system, the AI often "forgets" to build Settlers, or builds too many of them and has happiness problems.
rocklikeafool
Warmaster
That would work I'd think. Then, you could have UBs for certain civs where it warrants.
