ExtraModMod

[Tasunke]

I agree blinding light needs to work with promotions like essentials.

BL and Entangle 50% wear off (flyers immune to entangle)

Spores 30% wear off (living units only)

 

[Terkhen]

shouldn't stone get enabled with masonry rather than mining? also it should probably give +1 hammer unimproved like marble does instead of 2

It requires both technologies because it is meant to be a very useful resource. In vanilla BTS Marble and Stone also give +1 and +2 production respectively. I also made Stone give +2 production in ExtraModMod to compensate for the extra requirement and because IRL Stone can be used for more types of buildings and projects than Marble (and thus IMO it deserves giving more production).

I'd also remove the stone bonus from the governor manor since it's uber already and the regular courthouse gets no such bonus ( it might fit the sculptor's studio though )

The idea behind Stone is to be a resource which allows always-useful buildings and strategy-enabling buildings to be created faster. This is to make it a strategic resource worth trying to setup a city nearby or plan an early war to get it because it helps greatly with a civ setup. That's why it gives a bonus to buildings such as governor mannors or caves of ancestors. It is possible that the Stone bonus is too high (I remember it being 25% at some point, it could probably be set at 33%) or that it should be applied to more buildings (either unique, basic for certain strategies and common buildings that are built in nearly every city) but because of the idea that motivates Stone IMO it should not stop giving a bonus to governor mannors.

The Courthouse should have gotten the Stone bonus too. I have created an issue to fix this bug.

how come the mithril golem is 400 hammers and the meshabber is still 1200? I know it's an eitb change but the extreme difference is jarring.

I don't know; I never managed to build either of these units in a normal game and I'm unaware of the reasoning that resulted in reducing the Mithril Golem cost. It may have to do with the Mithril Golem requiring an endgame technology that only enables mithril and the golem.

please restore blinding light to immobileturns 2 so it can be used in SP, the doubled resist modify should nerf it enough already. or just change it to work with promotions like in essentials

We already had a discussion about this issue that started here. In summary; I don't want to give already annoying spells any chance to last more than 1 or 2 turns because it worsens my biggest issue with them.

That issue is that they allow a relatively small group of units to stop a stack of any size in its place almost indefinitely (it is equally easy no matter how big the stack is). If the amount of unnafected units is small enough and the attacker is doing this strategy correctly by supporting the immobilizing units with attackers, this forces the defender to either try to escape with the unnafected units suffering heavy casualties or to keep them inside of the stack, being unable to use it altogether. This "strategy" feels really cheap and annoying because it requires little investment from the attacker and it is really difficult to counter by the defender.

Reducing the % chance of success of the spells only increases slightly the number of units you need to pull this strategy, but it does not remove the problem. Increasing the number of immobile turns greatly reduces the number of unnafected units after some turns, because units are essentially affected twice (once if they keep the debuff since the last turn and twice by the spell being cast again this turn) The promotion implementation may solve the SP/MP difference but it does not solve what is IMO the main issue.

could you reintroduce automated spellcasting? that's awesome to reduce excessive micromanagement particularly in MP

I don't know how automated spellcasting worked in the past (I think that it is from before I discovered FFH2/MNAI and I never played with it) and neither do I know where to look to re-enable it. Spellcasting does not feel like too much micromanagement to me except for terraforming.

it would be great to merge EitB nox noctis when you have time for it

There is a crash in the Nox Noctis implementation of EitB 9. I decided not to include it in the merge until EitB 10 is released with a fix for this issue.

also it seems the tower of mastery and final altar are still wonders? making them rituals is a nice eitb balance tweak that should have been merged imho

In this case, I did not merge this EitB change because the MNAI AI victory code in the DLL has hardcoded references to both victory buildings, and since this code is changed relatively frequently (Tholal usually adds many improvements and tweaks to how the AI pursues victory conditions in MNAI between releases) making this change would make my merges with MNAI far more complicated. Mercurial also tends to choke with XML files with removed sections during merges for some reason. Is that change meant just to prevent rushing them? If that's the case, we could just make victory buildings unrushable (that would affect the lesser towers too, though).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

good point about stone, I see your reasoning.

the problem with current blinding light is it does absolutely nothing in single player

there's a fix for the eitb nox noctis crash here: http://strategicnonsense.blogspot.it/2012/12/eitb-dev-journal-nox-noctis-crash-fix.html

the altar and tower were made rituals for the purpose of blocking rushing for them, so it's just a workaround and your method would be better

a couple more things I've noticed:

paramanders should have dwarven instead of soldiers due to graphics and sounds.

eitb has the barbarian mistform and the shadow3 summon as two different units, the first has animal AI while the latter gets marskman. it seems like this wasn't merged. the summon could maybe have no unitcombat like golems and elementals, it's hard to view it as a melee unit. maybe recon would fit better?

you could also check the latest version of essentials to see if there's anything new you'd like to include

 

[Terkhen]

there's a fix for the eitb nox noctis crash here: http://strategicnonsense.blogspot.it/2012/12/eitb-dev-journal-nox-noctis-crash-fix.html

That fix does not include the source code of the DLL. I was not aware of EitB using a customized DLL either; if it does I've never checked it for changes.

the altar and tower were made rituals for the purpose of blocking rushing for them, so it's just a workaround and your method would be better

I have created an issue to do this for the next major version of ExtraModMod.

paramanders should have dwarven instead of soldiers due to graphics and sounds.

Do you mean the Dwarven race promotion? If so, I agree.

eitb has the barbarian mistform and the shadow3 summon as two different units, the first has animal AI while the latter gets marskman. it seems like this wasn't merged. the summon could maybe have no unitcombat like golems and elementals, it's hard to view it as a melee unit. maybe recon would fit better?

Tholal did his own version of this fix, which ExtraModMod 0.3.1 will "inherit" from the merge. Why do you need two different units? Is the UnitCombat relevant in this case?

you could also check the latest version of essentials to see if there's anything new you'd like to include

25) seems like something that should be fixed in MNAI. Without 26), you can get more than 4 Sons of the Inferno in Acheron's city?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

dwarven race for paramanders seems good.

for mistform, eitb adds marskman promotion to the summon which is nice. adding it as another unit is to avoid barbarian mistforms having it. no unitcombat instead of melee would mean it doesn't suffer from enemy troops having shock, but it also wouldn't be able to gain levels. so Recon seems better as it would avoid this issue ( and suffer appropriate penalty vs empyrean units ) . recon would mean it can get poisoned blade though ( melee means it can get enchanted blade ) . so with two separate units you could have the summons with no unitcombat and the barbarians being recon which would be best imho.

I don't think Tholal will include 25, it's similar to 10 which he hasn't included yet and would be nice to have.

without 26 you can teorically get infinite sons of the inferno, yeah. the change is in eitb and it's recently been uploaded to the mnai svn by tholal as well. edit: I checked and it's already included in extramod

for victory buildings it would be best to only disallow rushing for the final two if possible.

could the mana bar on the left side of the screen be moved up a bit? it makes reading some mouseover info very hard, like culture rates on a tile with a resource for example.

 

[Tasunke]

1) Mistforms should be Recon unitcombat (imho)

2) Paramanders having dwarven race is fine. I assume by meaning that you will make them 4/6 and start with Iron, that they will have access to Mithril? This is probably fine, I only hope that Soldiers of Kilmorph will have their mithril access removed

3) I would like to reiterate the change to Castiel from Philo/Org to Philo/Cultural (still Adaptive)

4) You could make blinding light have a 70% wear off instead of a 50% wear off ... the % is negligible as far as importance ... 50% just means 2 turns on average, but with 70% you can get pretty close to 2 turns 'max'. The IMPORTANT thing is that it IS a promotion instead of ... whatever it currently is.

---Reasons-----

Current incarnation of Blinding light has no defense. IF you make it a promotion, you can make other promotions give blinding light 'immunity' (like Shadow3 for instance).

Also, one little detail I had in one of my modmod incarnations was a little promo called 'Cataracts' ... blinding light gave a 20% chance of getting Cataracts, and Cataracts makes you immune to blind. Of course, you get a 10% chance for Cataracts to wear off ... but the important thing is that this avoids the problem of the infinite loop.

Example:

you get Blinded (50% wear off) ... and oddly enough it lasts for 4 turns instead of 1 or 2 >_< ... but WAIT! Some good news. You got Cataracts! (maybe some penalty like -1 vision ... but not so bad if you are in your own territory). Now you are immune to future blinds for an average of 10 turns!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

agreed on PHI/CRE Cassiel, but I think he already made up his mind on that one

No mithril for soldiers and mithril for paramanders seems right given their tiers.

I'd like to re-request removing defensive strike immunity from blur:

the first time I mentioned it you said you didn't want to do more changes than necessary to spells. However, I've read through all FFH2 changelogs since the introduction of the defensive strike mechanic, and while there's mention of adding immunity to Shadowwalk, there's no mention of adding it to Blur as well. So it really seems like a bug, and it makes shadow1 a lot better than shadow2 which is just wrong. to summarize:

current behaviour:

Blur gives immunity to first strikes and defensive strikes. very useful spell.
Shadowwalk gives immunity to defensive strike ( obsoleted by the previous spell ) , and overrides building defenses ( palisades and walls no one ever builds anyway, doubly so now that there's no defensive trait to make them cheaper ) . useless spell.

suggested behaviour:

Blur gives immunity to first strikes. useful spell.
Shadowwalk gives immunity to defensive strikes and overrides building defenses. useful spell.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

this would also be great to add if it's not too much trouble, it's in both Rife and MoM

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=326545

also Kandros is still AGG/FIN , he's supposed to be FIN/ORG ( Alexis already has AGG/FIN ) - also Khazad get magic resistant as a 2nd civtrait in Eitb, you might want to include that ( or not ) . I think they also have Varn as SPI/CHA ( which would make sense if Cassiel is to get CRE instead of ORG ) .

 

[Tasunke]

I almost feel like a new trait could be created xD

Technically though, lore-wise maybe starting Cassiel off with Phi/Defender would be best.

(If defender is still a trait, of course)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it's still ingame for the new Kurio leader only. pretty good with centaurs, but meh early on imo.

personally I like CRE best for both Varn and Cassiel as a first adaptive trait, CRE is at its best early on and it's fitting. CHA less so, because you'll have to account for losing the extra happiness after a while.

 

[Tasunke]

Defender gives 20% strength in borders and 10% withdrawal for units built during that time.

Still way better than Org.

I prefer Varn as Spi/Cultural and Cassiel as Phi/Defender ... but having both use Cultural would likely be 'optimal' from a gamey standpoint

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it's actually 10% strength, not 20% so yeah better than nothing I guess

despite its weakness I liked it for Sidar, the withdrawal comes in handy for waning and the small strength boost means you get more XP compared to aggressive for example ( due to lower odds )

 

[Tasunke]

Oh yea, guess you are right. I wonder if homeland was ever 20%? Maybe a modmod had it at 20% without the withdrawal. Well, 10/10 is just as well ^_^

Definitely better than nothing xD

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Creative is definitely stronger in the early game as a adaptive trait, and that's why it was stripped from Varn.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yes, but he also lost access to spiritual potency doubling up as arcane, I feel Malakim are needlessly nerfed in eitb. although it's kinda nice that he's not Arendel 2.0 anymore

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

just noticed Flauros is now already PHI/ORG . Cassiel PHI/CRE with Varn SPI/CHA seems best then.

Riuros and Capria share FIN/SPI, but her old SPI/IND is taken by Thessalonica :/

you could make Capria SPI/IND again, Thessalonica IND/CHA and Einion PHI/SPI . all unique combos, and Einion is the Gandhi of Erebus so SPI is more appropriate than CHA Capria was changed in eitb to buff her with financial, then financial got nerfed and industrious buffed so her original traits seem best now

you could also make radiant guards and rathas more expensive in order to avoid big stacks of sun2 casters.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

yes, but he also lost access to spiritual potency doubling up as arcane, I feel Malakim are needlessly nerfed in eitb. although it's kinda nice that he's not Arendel 2.0 anymore

No he didn't.
There are two promotions, one for spiritual, one for arcane, and the two are functionally the same. The malakim can also promote lightbringers to mages still.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

wait, so what was the reason for that change? I must be missing something...

 

[Terkhen]

For Paramanders and Soldiers of Kilmorph, I have created the following issue: https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/83/paramanders-and-soldiers-of-kilmorph

for mistform, eitb adds marskman promotion to the summon which is nice. adding it as another unit is to avoid barbarian mistforms having it.

I did not include that in ExtraModMod, although I don't remember why. I'll include it, I have created an issue to do various modifications to the Shadow sphere (https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/84/shadow-sphere). What is the problem with having barbarian mistforms with Marksman?

no unitcombat instead of melee would mean it doesn't suffer from enemy troops having shock, but it also wouldn't be able to gain levels. so Recon seems better as it would avoid this issue ( and suffer appropriate penalty vs empyrean units ) . recon would mean it can get poisoned blade though ( melee means it can get enchanted blade ) . so with two separate units you could have the summons with no unitcombat and the barbarians being recon which would be best imho.

It seems to me that it would be better to have them with no unitcombat as all other summons do. That way you can't empower them with buff spells. I don't like to include multiple versions of the same unit as it leads to confusion when making changes and loads of merge problems. It also makes it appear twice in the civilopedia.

for victory buildings it would be best to only disallow rushing for the final two if possible.

With the method I described earlier it would only be possible to disallow rushing for all buildings tagged as "victory buildings" in the XML. I don't know if it would be possible to remove the victory building tag from the 4 lesser magical towers without any adverse side effects but I'll look into it. If it is impossible then all 5 towers would be made unrushable.

could the mana bar on the left side of the screen be moved up a bit? it makes reading some mouseover info very hard, like culture rates on a tile with a resource for example.

It could be moved up a bit, but I'm not sure if it would represent any difference since the margin between the mana bar start and the civilization flag is quite small.

3) I would like to reiterate the change to Castiel from Philo/Org to Philo/Cultural (still Adaptive)

I don't think that already strong leaders (Adaptive leaders) should be rewarded with great traits to make stronger starts. No one would choose Koun with a Philosophical/Creative/Adaptive Cassiel. I already mentioned that IMO Organized is not a weak trait for starts, although it is certainly not optimal and meant not to be.

The IMPORTANT thing is that it IS a promotion instead of ... whatever it currently is.

WRT the blinding spells, I would need a consensus over a new method that also solves all mentioned problems. Giving a temporal blocker promo seems like a good solution to me as it makes blinding spells a temporal nuisance instead of a permanent one, but let's wait for more feedback

oned it you said you didn't want to do more changes than necessary to spells. However, I've read through all FFH2 changelogs since the introduction of the defensive strike mechanic, and while there's mention of adding immunity to Shadowwalk, there's no mention of adding it to Blur as well. So it really seems like a bug, and it makes shadow1 a lot better than shadow2 which is just wrong.

That convinced me. I added a note to the Shadow Sphere issue (https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/84/shadow-sphere).

this would also be great to add if it's not too much trouble, it's in both Rife and MoM

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=326545

I'm not sure about that. It gives high-production civs an edge that they previously did not have and therefore alters balance.

also Kandros is still AGG/FIN , he's supposed to be FIN/ORG ( Alexis already has AGG/FIN ) - also Khazad get magic resistant as a 2nd civtrait in Eitb, you might want to include that ( or not ) . I think they also have Varn as SPI/CHA ( which would make sense if Cassiel is to get CRE instead of ORG ) .

Thanks for spotting that bug in Kandros, I have created another issue (https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/85/wrong-traits-for-some-leaders). Why do the Khazad need a second civilization trait? They don't seem that weak to me. I'll also change Varn to SPI/CHA.

I almost feel like a new trait could be created xD

Technically though, lore-wise maybe starting Cassiel off with Phi/Defender would be best.

(If defender is still a trait, of course)

Adaptive leaders cannot choose to be Defenders. Defender is nearly forgotten in ExtraModMod; in EitB it is not used at all and in ExtraModMod as Gekko mentioned I used it to give Cheron an edge (otherwise no one would choose him over Cardith).

you could make Capria SPI/IND again, Thessalonica IND/CHA and Einion PHI/SPI . all unique combos, and Einion is the Gandhi of Erebus so SPI is more appropriate than CHA Capria was changed in eitb to buff her with financial, then financial got nerfed and industrious buffed so her original traits seem best now

I agree. I made a note in (https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/85/wrong-traits-for-some-leaders).

just noticed Flauros is now already PHI/ORG . Cassiel PHI/CRE with Varn SPI/CHA seems best then.

As I already mentioned, I'm against giving Adaptive leaders obvious great choices for start, but Cassiel should get another trait since it starts like Flauros. Maybe going back to PHI/IND?

you could also make radiant guards and rathas more expensive in order to avoid big stacks of sun2 casters.

I'll wait to decide about this until we reach a conclusion in the blinding spells issue.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

re: mistforms. there's no real issue with the barbarian version having marskman imo, and I think you can avoid having the clone show up in the pedia with the graphical only tag iirc. No unitcombat seems wrong if you want to keep it as a single unit, since then the barbarian ones would be unable to gain levels. a single unit with Recon unitcombat, animal AI and marksman promo seems fine


re: Cassiel, you can't make him PHI/IND again as that's already taken by Sandalphon now. If the problem is Koun being too weak, just buff him a bit with Defender for example. Adaptive is not as good as it used to be since financial is no longer OP

for the blinding spells, you can take a look at how they're handled in MNAI Essentials, it's all in promotioninfos and spellinfos. Let's try and be careful not to nerf them into uselessness here, remember we already have charm person and slow which are very similar and nobody complains about those.

for blinding light in particular, you could make it apply two promotions: one with the current MNAI effect that locks you in place for a short while + a permanent one that gives -1 vision and 30% chance to resist subsequent blinding lights. you can then drop the resistmodifier back to 30 from 60, and it should be useful without being too annoying. afterwards rathas and radiant guards could get a small hammer cost boost if they're still deemed too powerful.


re: multiple production, it's included in the various major modmods and it's always been considered a change for the better. it's not hard to be able to produce 1 unit per turn, which makes very high hammer yields kinda wasteful unless you wanna build wonders. it also means the Kuriotates do not HAVE TO have the guild of the nine in order to be competitive for example. honestly, I think it just fixes an issue with base civ4


for the Khazad, magic resistant is debateable and I'm not sure how easy it would be to add a second civtrait so I think it's fine as is imo.


re: Kurios while I'm at it, you could consider having their number of cities scale better i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6 instead of current 2,2,3,3,4,5 which makes them quite inferior on larger maps.