Faerun

[FramedArchitect]

Ok, found my problem. Do not use enhanced user interface.

Right! I added a note to the Steam version warning players not to load any mods with Faerun. I've changed too many things, so compatibility is out the window... There are three exceptions that I know of: IGE, IfoAddict, and my Greatest Cities.

Playing Calimshan I find myself unable to build Wonders in Calimport (Capital) when they are buildable in Memnon (2nd city). Bug or feature?

My guess is that you were trying to build a specific wonder that requires some feature (a river) or minimum population or religion. There are a few of those!

I have some detailed feedback, and will post it soon. Now I have only one question: How do I upgrade my units?

Great! There are no upgrades between differently powered units -- you'll have to build the higher tiers from scratch each time. They are generally worth giving up all the promotions of the lower tier units. The main upgrades to consider are the races.

 

[PawelS]

Thanks for answering my question, now I know that the lower tier units are expendable and I should focus on getting experience for my heroes, which will usually stay with me for the entire game.

Now the feedback I promised, organized into several parts. It applies to version 9 (BNW) of the mod, plus version 3 of the art assets.

General impressions:

Spoiler :

1. The AI is very strong in the early game, and it often declares war on me (sometimes multiple AI civs at once), which is quite dangerous. But later in the game I catch up and grow in position quickly. After that they never declare war on me.
2. The city growth is very slow above size 6-8, and the only effective way to grow cities above size 10 is to get a "food caravan" reward.
3. Happiness is a non-issue in this mod, especially in late game, when it's usually between +50 and +100.
4. Balance of policies: I feel like the alignment beliefs are much better than spells, so they should be always taken first. Perhaps you can add some more interesting economical effects to the spells, so they are a more attractive choice.
5. Victories: it's easy to get lots of Weave Energy per turn in late game. On the other hand, getting a large amount of science is hard, so the Magical victory always happens much earlier than Spellplague would happen. Influence Victory is practically impossible because there is no way to generate a large amount of influence.
6. Horustep seems to always be the leading AI civ, probably due to the extra city charter - having 3 cities instead of 2 in early game is a huge advantage.
7. Barbarian cities: this is an interesting feature of this mod - normally they don't capture cities, and just plunder some gold from them. So it looks like a DLL change that allows capturing them, which happens quite often (probably due to the ogre event). I've seen cities staying barbarian for a long time, which looked quite "climatic", as there was lots of smoke around them, because the barbarians don't seem to be able to build workers to repair their improvements.

Serious issues:

Spoiler :

1. Something seems to be wrong with diplomacy - several times the AI offered me peace if I give them things, like cities, resources and gold, but when I changed the deal to a "white peace" (neither side gives anything) , they always accepted.
2. After accepting some quests, I get empty messages (a dialog box with only an "OK" button).
3. There is a possible exploit, if you let the barbarians capture your settler, then build a new one and recapture the old one. This way you can build more cities than you have charters.

Minor issues:

Spoiler :

1. The description of Villages says that they replace Farms in this mod, but Farms exist too. Seems it's a leftover from the farm bug era
2. The Charter description lists techs that give a charter incorrectly (it mentions Astronomy, and doesn't mention Republic).
3. The +2 strength for mounted units from Paladin doesn't seem to work for existing units - it didn't increase their strength when I built a Paladin. I haven't checked if it works for new units, if so then the description should be clarified.
4. Stone has no Strategic View icon.
5. Please change the hotkey to build a Manor House, as the C key is used to center the map on the currently selected unit, which I often do. So it happens that I start building a Manor House unwillingly, when I just want to center the map on my Worker.
6. The Moonshae Isles are invisible on the Faerun map (I play on the Huge version), because the Great Barrier Reef model is designed to work only when it's on two adjacent hexes. So a one-hex version will not appear on the map.
7. One of the Good beliefs (Righteousness) gives +1 delegate to the World Congress, while there is no Congress in this mod.
8. Is Iron still a strategic resource? It doesn't appear on the top bar.
9. Some buildings (Circus, Stable) still appear to give bonuses from Horses (at least in the description) instead of Mounts. Also there are no bonus yields from Mounts improved with a Hunting Camp. And Great People improvements don't seem to connect them.
10. I can't seem to see any progress for the Great Sage from Mage specialists, both in the city view and on the Great People panel.
11. The Path of the Faithful description says about purchasing temples and clerics for divine favor, but I don't seem to be able to purchase them.
12. (balance) The Transmutation school finisher (+4 Weave per city) seems to be much better than any other one.
13. The Fisherman specialist icon looks really bad
14. When discovering a Natural Wonder, the message says that it increases happiness, but it doesn't.
15. There is a double notification when a civ chooses an alignment (one for civ, one for leader). I think one would be enough.
16. The icons below city states showing that quests are available appear 1 turn later than they should.
17. Sometimes I saw units (luckily not mine) disappearing with no apparent reason. Perhaps it's a mechanic I'm not aware of...
18. When I meet a city state, sometimes the "cult center" part of the window is not refreshed, so it displays incorrect data.
19. The "Sell exotic goods" ability for ships is supposed to apply to the Durpar only, but I got it for my Caravel and Galleass when playing another civ (Cormyr).
20. The Theatre description says it requires a Colosseum, but there is no Colosseum in the game.

Questions:

Spoiler :

1. Can you explain the function of Divine Favor in the game? It seems to be only really useful for bribing some city states. It can also be used to purchase some units, and a part of it is converted to Weave Energy, but the rules of this conversion are unclear to me.
2. I see that you renamed the neutral relation level with city states to "non-partisan". I suppose you did it because neutral relations could be confused with neutral alignment, but, probably because of my limited knowledge of English, I don't really understand what "non-partisan" means in this context...
3. Why do Macemen look like Spearmen?
4. Is it intentional that flying units like Wyverns can use roads?

Suggestions:

Spoiler :

1. Perhaps you can consider doing automated descriptions for some elements in the game, using Lua code that gets data directly from the database. This way you'd avoid errors and obsolete descriptions (I'm doing this in my unreleased mod).
2. It would be nice if you can add a notification when quests can be taken.

More feedback will follow if I encounter anything more worth mentioning when playing the game.

 

[tantara7]

Hey! awesome mod, have been really enjoying it.
That said, I have a question.

I'm playing Cormanthyr, and for mages, I can "prepare spell," but there's now "open spellbook" option at the bottom to actually use them. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Playing on the most recent update of everything with all DLC's (bless Steam's sales)

 

[Breunor]

I played my first game on King, I play Civ V at Immortal/Emperor. I lost badly!

Before I say anything else, I really want to give kudos – this is an astonishing mod. I’m a fan of the books and computer games (and yes, D &D) and this game does a great job of the ‘feel’ of Faerun; and I often think that these Civ conversions have the biggest problem getting the ‘feel’ right!

The artwork is tremendous! The work done on the spells, alignment groups, the maps, and especially the leader artwork are simply outstanding. Part of the ‘feel’ is getting used to the never-ending barbarians.

I especially like that this isn’t just ‘Civ V with fantasy units’. It is really a different game, with restrictions on settlers as an especially important point that does dramatically change the game and its strategy; and the difficulty of building cities too large is another feature.

However, I do think (from my limited one-time play) that there are areas that can be improved.

Since I played only once, please consider the following points as playtest notes and not as ‘criticisms’.

1. Bug. I started a second game as Obould, I accidentally moved my settler and went to restart. (Huge board, Faerun map). When I restarted, instead of a worker and a combat unit, I got Drizzt as a hero!! I restarted again and the same thing happened. II guess I would win now ….)

2. I had all of the victory conditions turned on. Honestly, there just doesn’t seem any way to get an influence victory. Cormanthor was the run-away winner and it probably didn’t get above 50% with anyone let alone everyone.

3. Science victory also seems impossible. I was second in science; Cormanthor had about 5 more techs and needed probably 10-15 to cast the spellplague.

4. The spells/influence victory does seem possible but very hard.

5. By far my biggest issue as that keeping enough money seemed to be very hard. I don’t know if this is a feature or not; but the whole game was an exercise in keeping positive money.

a. It seems like the key reasons for the money problem are that each city starts with a -6 building, and there are no money structures that you can build for a very long time (taxation). The taxation feature isn’t useful if you are losing money.

b. Generally in Civ 5 if I’m having money problems I sell resources for GPT. But the AI seemed to have money problem I had so none of them had positive GPT to trade. Indeed, I don’t know how Tethyr stayed solvent, they had -120 GPT/turn. I had close to -100 late in the game (see below).

c. So between having -6 maintenance building, needing to build troops for the barbarians, and cities that get limited growth, the whole game came down to keeping solvent

d. Trade routes became the major form of money – but with barbarians everywhere, you had to be especially careful and keep closer, local ones. Or they get plundered. I got better during the game of guarding them, but it was still challenging.

e. Because of all of the money problems, there weren’t a lot of building that I built and actually had my capital on wealth a lot.

f. However, I realize now that this may all be a feature. I killed a dragon and got about 4,000 gold. And then I did it again later. Is this game SUPPOSED to get you to kill dragons and the like for the money? Obviously if I break even on my own, the dragon money would be incredible as I could get a purchase windfall. So I can see this as being a key feature, but it is a little haphazard in my mind.

6. I found many building were so specialized that they weren’t useful very often, I thought it was a shame that I’ sitting there with 10 buildings I can build with specialty benefits but I didn’t want to pay maintenance and they seemed to be not useful enough. In Civ V, I WANT to build all of the buildings but don’t because I need something else, here there are just buildings I don’t want.

7. I couldn’t figure out how to use religion (which may be why I lost). I got a great priest early, I didn’t know how to build a cult so I settled him. It took forever to get a religion in a city so I ended the game with 3000 or so faith points and I used them only for minor unit purchases (and again the money problem)!

8. I thought the wonders were a little weak, I would hope to have a few more besides the cults.

9. The hero quests are a great feature! As are the dragons, and other nasties!

Sorry if soem of these points are adressed elsewhere, I haven't read the whole thread.

Thanks so much for this mod!

Breunor

 

[HammerU89]

Been forever since I've played and since I put together a new system I thought I'd play again. Two problems though.

First, it crashes on Brave New World Version while it's configuring. Have the latest version that's in the first post. Only other mods I use is the ingame editor and no xp cap from barbarians.

Second, I turned off that DLC and went with G&K version and it starts ok, but the match ends in just one turn. The only thing I've seen odd is the date reckoning is -9000 iirc when starting. It ran fine on the old system so I'm stumped. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update. Figured out the crashing problem. I have steam and another game installed on one drive. I was running low on space and installed this game on another drive. The documents/game folder was on the first drive and was screwing with things. Copy and pasted that folder over to the other drive and it now no longer crashes and I can see everything. However I still have the one turn win problem and that -9000 starting date.

 

[FaerunPlayer]

I just started playing your mod and think it's great.
I built a fighter hero and it appears to give +2 production but not the +2 food capitalbonus. I inspected the sql and lua for heros and it looks like you use a different method for the food bonus than the production bonus ...

 

[kentt86]

I don't really understand the system of religion. Is there anything like a manual to introduce it?

What is the requirement for building a temple, and spread the religion to other city within border? After a quest in city state, I only able to build a temple in one of the cities, but not other. Meanwhile, which cult consider as good, neutral, and evil? It seems that the pedia didn't mention about the alignment of these cults.

 

[ZeroZeroSix]

I don't really understand the system of religion. Is there anything like a manual to introduce it?

What is the requirement for building a temple, and spread the religion to other city within border? After a quest in city state, I only able to build a temple in one of the cities, but not other. Meanwhile, which cult consider as good, neutral, and evil? It seems that the pedia didn't mention about the alignment of these cults.

As far as I know from play experience a city must have a given number of adept/s to build a temple of that religion (I think its one). To spread religion, the easy way is to have a caravan. After a quest, one of your city gain 1 or more adept. Cult alignment are represented by their color icon wich are white=good, green=neutral, red=evil. Those icon are on the city bar that have a cult center.

 

[fairyflyer]

Great work! But I have the real problem playing this mod on Mac X. When I transferred .sav file from windows version to my Mac - all magic (all units "spell book" icons) became unavailable. Perhaps the problem is in DLL or something like that. It's a pity... (I have steam BNW version and Mac OS 10.10.1)

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Faerun uses a modded dll and so will never work on MacOS (and probably not on Linux either unless they made the Linux port using wine)

Nothing modders can do about it

 

[fairyflyer]

Faerun uses a modded dll and so will never work on MacOS (and probably not on Linux either unless they made the Linux port using wine)

Nothing modders can do about it

It works fine, the only exception is the spell book.
It would be good at least to warn other players.

 

[blah701]

Thank you for making such an epic mod.

I have been playing this game for 10-ish hours with no bugs from player's end. It is really well polished!!

One thing, though... I am currently playing dragons, and it seems like melee ships do not attack my dragons when overseas. Not complaining OP-ness of my own units, but if ships cannot simply engage dragons when dragons can... it may be a bug worth fixing ^^;;;

 

[FramedArchitect]

Thanks to everybody for posting comments, criticism and suggestions! I'll make a more detailed response below.

Please excuse my delay in responding here, as I lost my subscription to this thread. My assumption these past months has been nobody was much interested in the mod.

I am planning a minor update to the mod to fix bugs, iron out economy issues, and explain religion.

 

[FramedArchitect]

Some responses.

1. The AI is very strong in the early game, and it often declares war on me... After that they never declare war on me.

I think this may be due to AI not building advanced units. I'll look at that.

5. Victories:... the Magical victory always happens much earlier than Spellplague would happen. Influence Victory is practically impossible...

Ideally I should jettison the influence victory and bring back pure conquest, but it's so embedded in the BNW system. I have some ideas to make the spellplague a more immanent game effect, which would allow an earlier victory there.

2. After accepting some quests, I get empty messages...

I think think is due to the way hero names are generated. I will look at this again.

Minor issues:...

Thank you for this list!

Can you explain the function of Divine Favor in the game?

I will try to document this better in-game in future update.

1. Perhaps you can consider doing automated descriptions ...

It would great to have a good TT generator, like Thal's mods. That said, it's a lot of work for little payoff now. Had I been capable of such when I began this project, I probably would have undertaken it. Of course, I never expected to work on Faerun for four years...

...there's now "open spellbook" option at the bottom to actually use them.

This may be due to using with mac OS, as comments above reveal. As this is now DLL mod, it's very closely tied to PC version, sadly.

1. Bug. ... When I restarted, ...

Yes, the turn 1 map regen option destroys the game setup routine. Sorry, but if you don't like your start, you should just exit to main menu and go through setup again.

Honestly, there just doesn’t seem any way to get an influence victory. ...
Science victory also seems impossible. ...

As above, I may replace influence with a generic "conquer" victory. The issue is the way influence is embedded in the BNW mechanics. I will definitely rebalance the science victory. I'm thinking of making the spell plague more of a bottleneck in the tech tree, so that players can "enjoy" its effects more.

....keeping enough money seemed to be very hard.

I'm going to rebalance the economy. For one, all the tier one buildings will be free, and I'm going to reshuffle a few of the econ buildings and add one more trade route. I'm also thinking of adding an alignment belief that makes TRs immune to barb plunder (I hope this is possible). The AI is terrible because it believes it can grow its way into prosperity, which of course it cannot in Faerun.

6. I found many building were so specialized that they weren’t useful very often ..

Yes, I think removing the maintenance and enforcing requirements (population/resources/etc.) will make the build list more enticing.

8. I thought the wonders were a little weak, ...

Faerun really deserves a complete overhaul of the tech tree and buildings, much as I recently overhauled the units. But that is a subject for a major update!

... fighter hero and it appears to give +2 production but not the +2 food capitalbonus.

I'll look at that again. Thanks for the report.

I don't really understand the system of religion.

I will try to make the benefits of religious cults more obvious through in-game help.

...it seems like melee ships do not attack my dragons when overseas.

Interesting. I think certain units are limited to attacking only certain domains (sea vs. sea, air vs. air). I will test this a bit more.

 

[Deon]

What are the requirements for hero level up? I keep leveling up heroes normally but only some of them get "improvements" in stats.

 

[FramedArchitect]

What are the requirements for hero level up? I keep leveling up heroes normally but only some of them get "improvements" in stats.

The requirements are the same as for any other unit, but the levels stop around 5 I think.

 

[Brainjuggler]

Is there an easy way to re-enable domination victory? It just doesn't feel right without it Is it as simple as adding/removing a few lines from Faerun_Victory_Functions.lua?

 

[zoommooz11]

Just a heads up framedarchitect, a while back I complained about the witch-king siphon soul not working, and upon investigation I found the cause.

The ability DOES work, but because of the way you have handled hero levelling, it only works for a lich level 1. When the hero becomes a lich_2, the culture gain for kill no longer applies.

The good news is that this is easily fixed by adding lich_2, lich_3 etc into the 'yields from kills' section. I imagine that this would be the same for any units that use the _2, _3 levelling and are only listed in the 'yield from kills' section in their first level incarnations.

Additionally you may like to increase the strength of these yields as the unit levels up.

Keep up the GREAT work.

Cheers

 

[zoommooz11]

Just included a modded hero file with changes made. Feel free to use, adjust, or not use. BTW I tend to tweak other parts as well, so for the base mod probably just use the 'yields form kills' bit.

Edit: With the demonic race, 10 turns seems a bit short, especially if playing on marathon speed. Perhaps this could be adjusted for game length?

 

[FramedArchitect]

Is there an easy way to re-enable domination victory?

Not "easy" but yes I plan to bring back warmongering of some sort as a victory. Thanks for the suggestion.

...the witch-king siphon soul not working, and upon investigation I found the cause.

Thanks for the bug fix! I will add this to my lengthening list of fixes for the next version. Feel free to submit more suggestions, etc.