ExtraModMod

[spaceman98]

Sorry for the multi-post but suggestion: Treasure Chests should spawn as barbs rather than as the nation that got the event. If I find another civ's treasure chest I should be able to claim it for myself

 

[spaceman98]

Here is an even more pure version of the arquebus glitch: I can build an Arquebus in Dis right now, and I can see it if I double-click on the city (though its description is missing).

This is all I can give you

 

[ledtim]

Exploration seems to spawn monsters way too often for the % indicated on the tooltip. Even with 100% exploration chance rate, it seems to take several tries.

 

[False Dead]

Sorry for the multi-post but suggestion: Treasure Chests should spawn as barbs rather than as the nation that got the event. If I find another civ's treasure chest I should be able to claim it for myself

Use something to see invisible then move into the square with the chest, you will capture it. One of the best reasons to keep metamagic mages around.

 

[spaceman98]

ah I see. Thank you. I even had something with see invisible next to one, I just never thought that I could capture it...

 

[Terkhen]

...

Thank you for the very detailed bug report and the savegames! I will create an issue in the tracker and get this one fixed for 0.6.0-beta1.

Interestingly both anomalous unit offers only show up in the screen that pops up after a city finishes a build. Double-clicking on the city reveals the normal list of unit options.

That observation is going to save me a lot of time, good one

Sorry for the multi-post but suggestion: Treasure Chests should spawn as barbs rather than as the nation that got the event. If I find another civ's treasure chest I should be able to claim it for myself

They are supposed to be well hidden, so you can only learn their position from an event. Other civilizations that do not have the same info should not be able to see it.

Use something to see invisible then move into the square with the chest, you will capture it. One of the best reasons to keep metamagic mages around.

I didn't know you could do that! It makes sense though, I like it

Exploration seems to spawn monsters way too often for the % indicated on the tooltip. Even with 100% exploration chance rate, it seems to take several tries.

Thank you for the report! In my opinion, it makes sense that even units with near perfect exploration chance rates should get bad results sometimes. No matter how good you are, sometimes the dungeon is just hell in earth and nothing good can come from it. But in that case, maybe the exploration chance value should not be shown as a percentage. I need to review how it works before I can discuss this with the rest of you, though.

 

[Ogi123]

Any chance of graphic enchantments? Playing Master of Mana made me somewhat spoiled in case of model looks...

 

[Terkhen]

Any chance of graphic enchantments? Playing Master of Mana made me somewhat spoiled in case of model looks...

I have brought to EMM a couple of models that caught my eye during the years (for example, the flesh golem uses a model from Rise from Erebus) but it is not something that I have spent a lot of time with. There are no graphic artists working in this project, and since my eye for graphic improvements is quite bad this is not something that I could do. I am open for any suggestions for graphics improvements, as long as the new models, images or whatever stay true to the lore of Fall from Heaven 2. Feel free to propose improvements along with some screenshots; we can discuss them here and add them to ExtraModMod if we like them

 

[Ogi123]

Do you have Master of Mana (Xtended 4.1) installed? There are lot of good models here that can be utilized. For example they Iron Golem is much better looking.

 

[Calavente]

I can concure.

the Golems in MoM are quite nice...

 

[lfgr]

Thank you for the report! In my opinion, it makes sense that even units with near perfect exploration chance rates should get bad results sometimes. No matter how good you are, sometimes the dungeon is just hell in earth and nothing good can come from it. But in that case, maybe the exploration chance value should not be shown as a percentage. I need to review how it works before I can discuss this with the rest of you, though.

In the last released version, the chance of barbs spawning is always 50%. The level of the unit and the few exploration chance boosting promotions only affect whether you get good or bad non-spawn exploration results.
The strength of the non-spawn outcome, i.e. the risk/reward is determined solely by the wilderness value of the plot (plus a bonus if it's an epic lair). IIRC, the reasoning behind not letting unit level affect barb spawn chance was that the barbarians represented a risk/reward in itself, giving experience. I also thought I would be adding extra rewards for defeating bosses soon, but this hasn't been implemented yet, so overall I agree that spawns mostly feel like a bad thing.
The exploration chance display really only means how much of the possible chance your unit has. I agree that this is misleading. I could change it to a simple Very High/High/Medium/..., but it also would be nice to be able to notice smaller improvements in exploration level e.g. through promotions. Any thoughts on this?

Aside from the gameplay perspective, and while the fact that more experienced explorers somehow come across more rewarding things isn't much more logical either, it feels much more an infraction of immersion to tie the chance of barbarians in the lair to the level of the unit exploring. What do you all think?

I tested 30% instead of 50% for spawns the last week and it seems to work better.

Also, the exploration chance display might be a bit off, I have to check that.

EDIT: removed a wrong statement about spawns occurring more often.

 

[scutarii]

open borders or perma alliance AI "unpolitely" explores "my" dungeons, destroys barrows, or - its workes "like " to build forts at my territory. Understandably, I do not like such behaviour.

 

[spaceman98]

then cancel open borders

 

[ledtim]

Aside from the gameplay perspective, and while the fact that more experienced explorers somehow come across more rewarding things isn't much more logical either, it feels much more an infraction of immersion to tie the chance of barbarians in the lair to the level of the unit exploring. What do you all think?

Is it possible to limit the number of hostile unit spawn to two or three explorations, after which no matter the chance of the exploring unit, the lair can be explored and removed?

Currently it feels like a clown car with potentially endless stream of hostile units. Frustrating when you're actually trying to get rid of the lair, and sometimes an exploit for free xp.

 

[lfgr]

Is it possible to limit the number of hostile unit spawn to two or three explorations, after which no matter the chance of the exploring unit, the lair can be explored and removed?

Currently it feels like a clown car with potentially endless stream of hostile units. Frustrating when you're actually trying to get rid of the lair, and sometimes an exploit for free xp.

Certainly possible, and I really like the idea. It even makes sense, as there only fit so much gangs in a lair.

I'd be cautious with hard-caps though, as I don't want it to be predictable for players who know how it works. Maybe starting with 50% and halving it every time a spawn comes out?
Also, the counter should reset when you leave alone the lair for some time. I'll probably make it 15 turns to forget one spawn outcome, so if you got 2 consecutive spawns it needs 30 turns to get back to 50% percent.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Terkhen have you considered making Palace give 12 commerce instead of 8? it would mean a bit less boring warrior spam and make starts with lots of commerce less overpowered. Fall Further did this and it's a nice change.

 

[Calavente]

not contesting the balance change on FF, but wouldn't that mean that early commerce tiles (cottage...etc) have even less impact than now ? (and that second city commerce stays very low key until mid game ?)

(maybe it would be better to increase cottage output or something)

??

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that's the point, currently due to how expensive early techs are, if your capital has lots of commerce you pretty much won the game already since you're going to snowball early while your opponents slump by.

 

[Terkhen]

Do you have Master of Mana (Xtended 4.1) installed? There are lot of good models here that can be utilized. For example they Iron Golem is much better looking.

I plan to install it in the future to check if mapscripttools works with it, but I don't plan to look through it for models. Feel free to post a screenshot here so we can discuss it

In the last released version, the chance of barbs spawning is always 50%. The level of the unit and the few exploration chance boosting promotions only affect whether you get good or bad non-spawn exploration results.
The strength of the non-spawn outcome, i.e. the risk/reward is determined solely by the wilderness value of the plot (plus a bonus if it's an epic lair). IIRC, the reasoning behind not letting unit level affect barb spawn chance was that the barbarians represented a risk/reward in itself, giving experience. I also thought I would be adding extra rewards for defeating bosses soon, but this hasn't been implemented yet, so overall I agree that spawns mostly feel like a bad thing.

I agree with that reasoning.

The exploration chance display really only means how much of the possible chance your unit has. I agree that this is misleading. I could change it to a simple Very High/High/Medium/..., but it also would be nice to be able to notice smaller improvements in exploration level e.g. through promotions. Any thoughts on this?

If we keep it like this I think that the percentage is fine, but the UI should be worded differently to make more clear that the success rate is only applied after the initial chance.

Aside from the gameplay perspective, and while the fact that more experienced explorers somehow come across more rewarding things isn't much more logical either, it feels much more an infraction of immersion to tie the chance of barbarians in the lair to the level of the unit exploring. What do you all think?

I tested 30% instead of 50% for spawns the last week and it seems to work better.

Also, the exploration chance display might be a bit off, I have to check that.

EDIT: removed a wrong statement about spawns occurring more often.

I believe it makes sense that a more seasoned explorer can find better rewards. The explorer may be able to overcome more obstacles and find a better loot than someone who only explores the easy parts of the dungeon.

open borders or perma alliance AI "unpolitely" explores "my" dungeons, destroys barrows, or - its workes "like " to build forts at my territory. Understandably, I do not like such behaviour.

I will look into possible solutions for the AI (or anyone else for that matter) being able to explore dungeons in the territory of other players. I believe that no one should be allowed to do this, but any comments are welcome. I have created an issue: https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issues/343/ai-and-exploration

With regard to forts, do you mean that the AI is building them inside of your culture? If that's the case, that is definitely a bug.

I'd be cautious with hard-caps though, as I don't want it to be predictable for players who know how it works. Maybe starting with 50% and halving it every time a spawn comes out?
Also, the counter should reset when you leave alone the lair for some time. I'll probably make it 15 turns to forget one spawn outcome, so if you got 2 consecutive spawns it needs 30 turns to get back to 50% percent.

That makes sense. With regard to what I mentioned about improving the UI message, maybe it could display both the current dangerousness of the dungeon (I don't like that name for it, though ) without displaying any exact values, and also the exploration success rate.

Terkhen have you considered making Palace give 12 commerce instead of 8? it would mean a bit less boring warrior spam and make starts with lots of commerce less overpowered. Fall Further did this and it's a nice change.

I like the part about making starts with lots of commerce less overpowered, but I think this would change a lot how the beginning of the game plays. Given that we are still balancing barbarians properly, I prefer to not do a change like this one for now.

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Lately I have been mostly working on contributing fixes and features for MNAI; we will get those in ExtraModMod 0.6.0-beta1 once I merge MNAI into it. Besides that, I have also been working on improving the map selection included in MapScriptTools. The new Pangaea_mst that we will have in the next ExtraModMod version uses the terrain generator in MST, which IMO makes the terrain more natural, beautiful and interesting. The adaptation also allows Pangaea to remember map options between different runs, a resource balancer option, tubular wrapping, team start options and special terrain features among other things. Here are some minimap screenshots:

 

[False Dead]

Just a couple quick blurbs and half finished thoughts

1) Should the Lanun food bonus for water tiles really be tied to the Lanun Palace? I ask because as Decius of the Calabim I conquered Dunwich, and Built a Lanun Palace there to improve all my cities food uptake. Maybe tie it to Seahaven?

2) How much weight does AI put on defensive pacts when deciding to declare war? Hyberom just declared war on me and proceeded to get murderized by the 12 nations I had Pacts with.

3) Unit Limits: 4 normally is okay but on huge games with all the Civilizations it is just not quite enough, is it possible to tie those limits to map size? or create a slider for selecting more or less?