ExtraModMod

[Terkhen]

ExtraModMod 0.2 has been released. You can find more information at the first post. The changes have been so huge that a proper changelog with the changes between versions would not have been very informative, but I'm going to list the most significant changes here. I may be forgetting many things, though.

More Naval AI updated to r1390. This includes version 2.42 and a few additional fixes by Tholal and red-key.
Events enhanced updated with the most recen changes and fixes by lfgr.
Great Generals and Great Commanders have been merged. Great Generals are available with Advanced Tactics disabled.
Erebus in the Balance has been merged almost completely into ExtraModMod (see https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/wiki/EitB)
Unsummon (Dimensional II) has been replaced by Labyrinth.
Many changes to the traits assigned to each leader.
The Luchuirp Blasting Workshop no longer requires Blast Powder to be built.
The Pyre Zombie explosion no longer requires Sorcery.
Golem Slayer has been removed.
Puppet States and Vassal States are now available with Code of Laws.
Defensive pacts are now available with Military Strategy.
Lightbringers get better results from tribal villages.
Reduce the cost of Planar gates from 300 to 200
The code of Junil does generate any GPP anymore. Instead, it increases Great General emergence in 20%
Great Commanders can build the Code of Junil-
Malakim get +1 Commerce on Burning Sands.
Nomad gives +5% fire resistance and allows the Malakim to enter into flames.
Nomad gives double movement on Burning Sands.
The Clan of Embers gets +1 food on Marsh and Shallows.
Non Good Adaptive leaders can choose Slaver.
The power ratio no longer requires an embassy to be displayed.
Minor leaders can no longer become leaders of Revolutions and Puppet States.

I have created a project wiki that describes the whole mod in detail. You can now get a complete overview of ExtraModMod changes (compared against MNAI) in the Features page. Future versions will include detailed changelogs, but for this release the complete features page will be your best guide to see the changes

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

awesome work, congratulations

 

[Terkhen]

awesome work, congratulations

Thank you

I noticed that the first Download link in the first post was wrong, it has been corrected now.

 

[akatosh]

It says to install this, I need "to install this mod you need to paste the compressed file's contents over a clean installation of Fall from Heaven II 0.41o."

Does that mean that if I install this mod, I can't play base FFH anymore?

 

[Kiech]

You can have more than one version of FFH at a time. Someone more knowledgeable should have the instructions, but I think its just a matter of re-installing FFH into a differently named folder.

 

[Terkhen]

You can make a copy of your Fall from Heaven II 0.41o installation, place the copy at the same folder and call it, for example, ExtraModMod. Then you can paste the compressed file's content over the ExtraModMod folder. If you do it this way you can play both vanilla FFH2 and ExtraModMod, but you won't be able to play the FFH2 scenarios with ExtraModMod. You can also keep a backup of your clean installation and go back to it (by renaming it to Fall from Heaven 2) when you want to go back to FFH2.

 

[akatosh]

Hmm, so I need to make two copies of my base Civ 4 BTS install, or is it something else that I need to copy?

 

[Terkhen]

Hmm, so I need to make two copies of my base Civ 4 BTS install, or is it something else that I need to copy?

Sorry, perhaps I did not explain myself correctly; there is no need to make two copies of BtS.

You have a "Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2" folder, which is your installation of the FFH2 mod. Make a copy of the "Fall from Heaven 2" folder and rename it to ExtraModMod. It should be placed at "Beyond the Sword\Mods\ExtraModMod". Once that you have both "Fall from Heaven 2" and "ExtraModMod", copy the contents of the compressed file into the ExtraModMod folder. When you launch BtS, you will be able to launch both "Fall from Heaven 2" and "ExtraModMod" from the "Load a mod" menu.

I plan to make an installer in the future, but I do not want to spend work on it until the mod gets into a more stable and consistent form. I think that we are getting closer to that with this version

 

[Kiech]

Or in your case, you need 3 versions. 1 for vanilla FFH2, 1 for MNAI, another for extramodmod.

 

[akatosh]

I think MNAI overwrote my normal FFH. I can't play base FFH anymore.

 

[Kiech]

It does that if you use the default location.

 

[Terkhen]

I think MNAI overwrote my normal FFH. I can't play base FFH anymore.

You only need to uninstall FFH2, delete your Mods/Fall from Heaven
folder and reinstall FFH2

 

[akatosh]

Terkhen,

I was able to play your mod without any problems by copying my directory as you suggested. This was despite having MNAI installed. Thanks for your help.

Btw, one question--did you nerf pirate coves in your modmod? I tried a game as Lanun and I noticed that sea havens now give +1 commerce per water tile and shipyards give +1 hammer (!!!). I thought this was busted broken strong (it's like playing Joao with access to both Portugal and Dutch's UUs) but then I noticed that it seems like you may have nerfed pirate coves to compensate. I am not 100% sure but it looks like you may have taken away 1 food and 2-3 commerce from the coves?

Regardless, I do acknowledge that you also crippled Financial in your version so Hannah is no longer the stronger of the two Lanun leaders. Now, essentially Hannah gets Financial back if she builds a sea haven.

 

[Terkhen]

You are welcome, I'm glad that it finally worked for you.

Besides giving double gold on pillage (a change shared by all other improvements), pirate coves are unchanged in ExtraModMod.

Sea havens give now +1 commerce on water, but normal harbors do the same. The shipyard change is also shared by other civilizations. In combination, both of these changes make water tiles more useful for all civilizations, although of course the Lanun benefit from it more. On the other hand, Pearls are no longer Lanun exclusive (the Lanun get additional commerce from them thanks to Seafaring, though).

You have a complete list of the ExtraModMod changes here: https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/wiki/Features

 

[Tasunke]

In my mod I removed Lanun's global food bonus, and instead increased coast food by 1 for all.

(I still increased Lanun ocean food by 1 though, so for the lanun the change is almost unnoticeable)

 

[akatosh]

Awesome, thanks for the quick response. Just my thoughts on it, while all civs get access to these bonuses, for them it probably makes bad tiles mediocre. Overall I would see this as a big buff to Lanun because it makes Falamar effectively Financial plus potentially gives him a Heron Throne in each city. As you point out it is a net gain for Lanun relative to other civs.

I am not saying you went too far (at all!) I am just saying this is my initial impression and I need to play out some games on Immortal/Deity to see how big of a change it really is. Overall I am looking forward to having these powerful coastal tiles, so I am not complaining at all. Perhaps balancing it out with Pearls at sailing and non-exclusive works out, as well as nerfing Hannah.

I noticed some other changes that I liked--+1 hammer from cottages as well as +1 commerce from Republic. This now a good buff for Bannor (needed IMO) and helps cottages be more competitive with aristofarms. We will have to test the balance from the standpoint of elves. I also like that you buffed Foreign trade, now it's not a Lanun-only civic... Bannor can gain very good advantage from it during Crusade. (Though thematically, it's weird that a crusading civ would be engaging in a lot of Foreign trade. What if you buffed Mercantilism instead?)

 

[akatosh]

Actually I just noticed looking back at Mercantilism. So now it is possible to run Scholarship+Caste System+Mercantilism for +2 beakers +2 culture +1 gold per specialist? That's pretty cool. The 2 free specialists might actually make it competitive with Agrarianism. You are essentially trading 1 food per farm for 10 beakers 2 gold per city BASE, plus however many specialists you are actually able to run from food surplus and happiness.

Alternately, this could make for some good combos with Theocracy and Sacrifice the Weak, and a civ like Khazad or Balseraph who gets some innate happiness bonuses.

 

[Terkhen]

akatosh: Most of the balance changes in ExtraModMod and all of the ones you are mentioning come from Erebus in the Balance. Besides merging them into ExtraModMod and making a review of the EitB changelog, I did not participate in discussing and deciding them so I cannot take the merit of deciding and designing them

Erebus in the Balance aims for "increasing the strategic viability of many units and technology strategies". I think that their changes fulfill this goal nicely; in my playtest games after the merge I noticed that their changes turn traditionally inferior civics, units or tech paths into valuable option to use. In my opinion this enrichs the game, and makes it a lot more fun.

I'm interested on your Lanun feedback, let me know how their power feels in comparison with vanilla. I also noticed that the civics changes buff cottage and specialist economies in comparison with aristofarms, which a quite welcome change in my opinion. Although I agree that it feels strange in the case you mention, I think that it is fitting that Mercantilism is geared for specialists and Foreign Trade is geared for cottages.

Tasunke: That's an interesting idea, I have added it for consideration to my balance problems issue on the tracker. I won't do any more balance changes until I get more feedback about the huge balance changes that 0.2 brings, though.

 

[akatosh]

Ok, then that makes sense... I am not familiar with EitB at all, but I know it comes highly recommended from several players on this forum.

Let me ask a different question, what approach or overall vision have you taken with respect to your mod? Balance changes? Closer to lore? New toys to play with?

Knowing that, then I can try to give better feedback rather than just focusing on balance.

 

[Terkhen]

I'm sorry, but with the examples I added this post ended up being a lot more long than I planned

My goals are (in priority order):

1) Avoiding big changes or additions to the original lore of the Erebus world.

This is in most cases a hard rule. There are two reasons for this; the first one is that I want to keep ExtraModMod true to the lore. The second one is that I don't want to distance my mod too much from Fall from Heaven 2. If at any point I want to start doing radical changes, it may be the time to finish ExtraModMod and start doing something completely different.

For example, the Magic Spheres modcomp is limited to adding the three missing spheres, tweaking other game features that require to be changed in order to be consistent with the now greater number of spheres and spells, and a few balance changes to existing spells. Adding the missing spheres is okay, because they are already mentioned in the lore and described many times on the forums. Creating new spheres is completely out of scope.

I only consider additions to the lore if they are relatively minor, and the benefits are quite big in comparison. The only example of this at the moment is the addition of Cheron as a leader for the Kuriotates. I think that each civilization should have at least two leaders that can give it different playstyles. The Kuriotates do not have any other leaders besides Cardith, and therefore I decided to borrow Cheron from Rise from Erebus.

2) Enhancing gameplay, which means that the mod is fun to play and balanced.

Of course, this goal is very subjective and each person may have a different opinion. Although in the end I have the final word (I'm the one coding it and "playtesting" it for hours, after all) suggestions and feedback about gameplay are highly appreciated because there may be better ways to implement my ideas, or they may just be wrong (as proven with the removal of my Luchuirp changes in 0.2). New ideas to be discussed are also welcome, of course.

My ideas for future development are listed in the issue tracker although they are only ideas until I actually decide to start implementing them, and then I mention them in this thread anyways. Even if they are just plans and not concrete decisions, everyone should feel free to give feedback for them, either here in the thread or at the tracker itself.

The Erebus in the Balance merge was included because I thought that it would enhance gameplay as a whole, both because of the balance changes and the modifications to game pacing. The Esus improvements I got as a result of the merge were other good reason

3) Each feature, and the mod as a whole, must be consistent.

This means that I want a modmodmod that is more than a random collection of nice features and ideas thrown together. Each feature must take the others into account, they must integrate nicely with each other and they must allow the player to use them in different ways (this is a strategy game, after all).

This goal is the main reason of the Great General merge. In vanilla Fall from Heaven 2, Great Commanders are hard to obtain because they have no specialist associated and they "pollute" GPP production, which in my games meant that I actually avoided them like the plague, and that made me miss the Great General feature in vanilla civ. In More Naval AI, you have both Great Commanders and Great Generals if you enable Advanced Tactics. Although MNAI has its reasons for keeping them separate (to keep gameplay unaltered unless the player selects Advanced Tactics), with this implementation you have two different units that fulfill the same role.

I decided to merge both units in a single one to make the feature more consistent. The Imperialistic trait and the Great General emergence changes to buildings were added because I did not want Great Generals to just be an extra that is identical regardless of the choices of the player. An Imperialistic leader will go to war more frequently to get more Great Generals, and a player that founds Order may decide to build several Great General emergence rate improving wonders to stack them with the Code of Junil.