Fairy Tale

[Highwayhoss]

Hidy Everyone: I just posted my HEFT 1.31 patch for Fairy Tale: It adds Civopedia Entries for the Drunken Trait and a new Trait ability: +1 Happiness from the Tavern.

Unfortunately it didn't fix the Civopedia problem...

Anyway regarding the feedback (especially regarding Zuur) I always disliked having so many early units dependent on Iron. I addressed this in HEFT somewhat by removing the Iron requirement from Spears and Crossbows but Jennvare's Comments on the Zuur confirm my dislike...so I propose the following changes:

1. Remove Iron as a Resource Requirement from all Melee and Mounted Units.
2. Modify the Forge so that if Civ has access to Iron or Copper the Bonus changes from 25% to 50%.

This way Iron and Copper are still important but if a Civ doesn't have it off the bat it will not be totally useless.

EDIT: FIXED THE CIVOPEDIA!! (Thx to NotSoGood ) Reuploaded the file with the additional Bugfixes!

 

[Jennvare]

Highway, LeSage,

Something else that I have noticed about the Zuur...the Ghost archery unit obsoletes way too early. When you research iron weapons, the camerca (the crossbow equivalent) obsoletes the ghost and this leaves the Zuur with some very slow producing units early in the game. At that stage, even though the Camerca is better, the ghost still has some viablility. Maybe make them obsolete with whatever the equivalent of the longbowmen is?

As for the Iron and Copper debate, I would let the first teirs of cavalry and all archery units be free of the iron requirement. You can have mounted spearmen (wood spears) after all and most archery does not need iron. However, I would keep it in place for the melee units. If you allow archery units to gain the city attack promotion, it will allow those that are cut off to still be able to attack and defend.

 

[Highwayhoss]

As for the Iron and Copper debate, I would let the first teirs of cavalry and all archery units be free of the iron requirement. You can have mounted spearmen (wood spears) after all and most archery does not need iron. However, I would keep it in place for the melee units. If you allow archery units to gain the city attack promotion, it will allow those that are cut off to still be able to attack and defend.

If you take a look at my HEFT mod, you'll notice I eliminated Resource Requirements for both Spears and Crossbows, so I already addressed this to some extent.

I was thinking also of incorporating The_J's Training Obsolete Units Modcomp so you can build older units like the Ghost.

 

[Le Sage]

OK. I bet this makes a good argument for Hoss who wants to take out iron dependancy altogether. So we will do that now after I've heard this. Also, thanks for the idea to make only first tier units non-dependable of iron and copper. I think that will work best and then let the later game units still require these resources. I'll implement that as a start and we'll see where it goes.

I will also go over Zuur again. Their troops may cost too much; or better - make them a building like the Collective hives which turns down unit costs substantially (The Zuur have a hive already, and I can make it appear earlier.). The Collective can pump out units at a very good rate and i must do something similar for Zuur.

Also note that the problems with the generals persists. I encountered it in my testgame earlier. Sigh. What I am going to do now is make the special Great General building buildable by all Great General persons. Including kings and royal princes. That should - for starters - make all the Great Generals equally important in the game. The Royal ones already get a greater XP-amount, but that's not enough.

Hoss. I will upload your latest HEFT to ModDB right away. (By the way, Hoss. LOL at the plus one happy face for taverns on Drunkard trait. Good thinking there! )

 

[Jennvare]

LeSage, Highway,

Still playing the Zuur and moving right along. They still dont seem to make troops as fast as the others. Again, I dont know how their production times compare with other races. Couple of things I did notice though:

1) I finally advanced to a tech to build the Veteran Legions (str 12). This allows me to upgrade tthe Legions (str 8). Went I went to upgrade, its slated to cost 720 gold for one unit upgrade!! That's pretty hard. I dont remember Principality Duke Guards, Knights, and Paladins costing so much to upgrade. I am wondering if this is what is killing the Zuur midway through. I am not sure how much weight the AI puts into upgrading it's units, but at that cost, Zuur could be sacrificing his research to make more coin to upgrade troops. Something to look at.

2) When making the Underworld Lord (Zuur's hero unit), I get an event build error message. It's not a game breaker, but it has come up fairly often.

3) The Kenderra Druid - what special ability does this unit perform? So far, it seems to be a weak knight essentially. Str 8, immune to first strikes, flank against siege. Against same era units, this pretty weak. You may want to give it atleast a withdrawl bonus so it can flee or maybe (since its a druid) defensive bonuses and forest attack & defense. Make it much more useful for homeland defense.

4) Magician and Archmages - You may want to think about turning these guys in siege units instead of gunpowder units. In the last game I played and even in this one, the civs dont seem to making alot of magicians (even when they hae crystal). They make catapults by the TONS, but they never use them to attack. They use them like cheap defense. This might be something in the AI coding. If you want the AI to start using these units, you may want to bump up their withdrawl odds (if they have any, I have to check again). The AI may then use them to weaken an enemy stack and send in other troops afterwards.

Just some thoughts and observations.

 

[Le Sage]

Thank you, veBear, for your tips and suggestions. Everything like this is most useful. I don't really remember now, but I think the Zuur hive is considered a Class Forge, but I could add similar buildings as well.

Jennvare. I am aware of the problem with the error message popping up whenever you build a hero. This is because the unit naming of the hero somehow conflicts with BUG and I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet since it doesn't break the game. It's rather irritating though, innit.

Thank you for all your notes on the Zuur! This is really useful. As I see it there are some unit related problems to Zuur, and it might not be the AI package for the leaders after all. I will tweak their units for the next update, make them cheaper and more useful in the areas they are meant to function. And also give them a building corresponding to the Collective Hive which makes unit creation really easy and fast.

I think I must have changed something in the catapult's AI, because I've noticed the same problem with them. I think I did it way back when I was trying to get the AI to use magicians as siege units instead of catapults and back then, Magicians and Catapults were buildable at the same phase in the game. Now I need to change that again, since I've delayed the Magician.

Thank you kindly all for your suggestions. It all goes down on paper and will be dealt with.

Oh. And the Druid is really supposed to be their knight. The Zuur will have no horse dependancy at all, so I created them a Druid instead and it's mission is to function as a slow knight. I will turn up their strength and they should also have Withdrawal, as you note.

 

[Highwayhoss]

What about giving Zuur some extra cheap forge improvement who give a 50% bonus with Iron and an additional 25% with Copper?

I was thinking of a similar idea; all forges (and UBs from them) would get their production bonus raised to 50% with access to either Copper or Iron.

OK. I bet this makes a good argument for Hoss who wants to take out iron dependancy altogether. So we will do that now after I've heard this. Also, thanks for the idea to make only first tier units non-dependable of iron and copper. I think that will work best and then let the later game units still require these resources. I'll implement that as a start and we'll see where it goes.

I think this is a good compromise; this way you can build a decent army at the game's early stages and have a chance of fighting for those important resources (an inworld explanation is that these units require relatively little metal anyway since they would have leather armor or a similar nonmetallic armor)....also I suggest later units like Macemen,Knights(w/horses) and Pikemen require either Copper or Iron.....that way a civ with Copper but no Iron can still build them.

I am also thinking of integrating The_J's Training Obsolete Units mod so that if you lose access to those metals you can build those early units in a pinch.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

If you lose access to the required resources you should be able to build the obsolete units anyway, no further moddign required .. iirc

 

[Jennvare]

Hey guys,

Concerning the copper, iron, dependency...why not do what Kael did for FfH2. Instead of making these units depend on it (hence non-buildable), why not allow these units to be built, but if you have access to copper and/or iron..you get a free promotion (bronze weapons +1 base str --or-- iron weapons +2 base str). As soon as you get copper and/or iron, the promotion would automatically be applied to all units that have access to that promotion.

This would allow the civs w/o resources to still build the units and those with the resources to have slightly stronger units.

FfH2 also has mithril metals (+3 base str) as well but i dont think we really need this one.

As for horse dependency, HoTK had it where you could build the cavalry without horses, but they would build faster if you had them; +50% production time with regular horses, +100% production time with purebreed horses.

Also..concerning the Zuur; I am still moving along with my game, but I think I'm gonna be held to a stalemate until the time ends. My major competitors are the Namyi (sp?) and the Yatenga. I've got stronger units, but they are swarming with lots of fast producing horse units and infantry. If they ever made a true stack of doom or did a united attack against me, I might be in trouble since my strongest unit (the veteran legion) takes atleast 3 turns to make with a fully tooled out city with the heroic epic as well. I know I've made this point already, but I just wanted to let you know where things stood. I can post a save game if you like to see where it's at.

 

[Le Sage]

Good Morning all.

veBear. I don't think we'll be adding a new resource in the early game. HighwayHoss' argument for taking out Iron dependancy is that he don't want a whole kingdom's military might to rest on one single iron deposit, for example. That is an understandable viewpoint and making only the early game units non-dependable on iron while still having iron dependancy left for later game units, is a good compromise. I still want to add some sort of resource for the real late games though. Maybe something that works like oil in the vanilla game, so if anyone has suggestions to that, I'm listening.

Jennvare. I think the promotions idea for resources is a bit complicated.

The horse dependancy is a matter for thought too. In my ongoing game I met the Black Banner early and snatched away their only Horse resources really early in a battle where I didn't lose one single unit. This now just makes them sit there, since they're meant to be a horseman nation just as the Principality or Namyr. I can trample all over them at will and my early battle with them where I took that only horse in the area, just changed the outcome for their entire game.

I think that, at least for the mighty horseman kingdoms, I need to rethink the horse dependancy as well. I was thinking of giving the horseman kingdoms a special building that just gives them the ability to build the Horse units whether they have the resource or not. A new stables, in fact. Such a solution could also be applied to the Iron issue, but I think we'll go with just taking out the Iron dependancy for the early units first and see how it turns out.

Fuyu and Hoss. Yeah. The units that don't require a certain resource are automatically buildable instead if you lose that resource.

Also, Hoss, I am planning a bigger operation as well. You once told me about The Age of Ever After, a fourth era to be added. That name of the age is the best one ever and I am starting to see the need for that fourth era now. This will be quite a bit of work; I need to redesign the tech tree quite substantially. I was thinking about adding all the Imperial Techs to the Age of Ever After for starters and some of those other suitable end tech-tree techs as well. I really wanted the game to end in the Age of Fairy Tale, but the need has arisen for that Fourth Era.

 

[Balbo]

Hey, about the horsemen nation, it may be a nice idea to have their capitals giving a horse resource, like in FFH Hippos.

 

[Le Sage]

That is also a very good option, actually!

 

[Highwayhoss]

Good Morning all.

veBear. I don't think we'll be adding a new resource in the early game. HighwayHoss' argument for taking out Iron dependancy is that he don't want a whole kingdom's military might to rest on one single iron deposit, for example. That is an understandable viewpoint and making only the early game units non-dependable on iron while still having iron dependancy left for later game units, is a good compromise. I still want to add some sort of resource for the real late games though. Maybe something that works like oil in the vanilla game, so if anyone has suggestions to that, I'm listening.

Jennvare. I think the promotions idea for resources is a bit complicated.

The horse dependancy is a matter for thought too. In my ongoing game I met the Black Banner early and snatched away their only Horse resources really early in a battle where I didn't lose one single unit. This now just makes them sit there, since they're meant to be a horseman nation just as the Principality or Namyr. I can trample all over them at will and my early battle with them where I took that only horse in the area, just changed the outcome for their entire game.

I think that, at least for the mighty horseman kingdoms, I need to rethink the horse dependancy as well. I was thinking of giving the horseman kingdoms a special building that just gives them the ability to build the Horse units whether they have the resource or not. A new stables, in fact. Such a solution could also be applied to the Iron issue, but I think we'll go with just taking out the Iron dependancy for the early units first and see how it turns out.

I do have a suggestion for all of these potential problems: a series of National Wonders that generate a particular resource: here are a couple of suggestions:

1. The Royal Stables: This would generate a horse resource in the city where it was built plus extra XP for mounted units.
2. The Royal Armory: It would generate an Iron and Copper Resource in the city where it is built plus a big production bonus.
3. The Royal Manahouse: It would generate a mana resource in its city plus bonuses to magic users.

Also, Hoss, I am planning a bigger operation as well. You once told me about The Age of Ever After, a fourth era to be added. That name of the age is the best one ever and I am starting to see the need for that fourth era now. This will be quite a bit of work; I need to redesign the tech tree quite substantially. I was thinking about adding all the Imperial Techs to the Age of Ever After for starters and some of those other suitable end tech-tree techs as well. I really wanted the game to end in the Age of Fairy Tale, but the need has arisen for that Fourth Era.

Ah great minds do think alike!

Anyway I do have a reference that can be a useful source of inspiration: The Darkness series of Novels by Harry Turtledove (The Master of Alternate History and one of my favorite authors); here is a Wikipeida on the series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Series

BTW a suggestion for the King and Prince: Make then separate units like the Queen and Princess, then create a new unit class: UNITCLASS_ROYAL. Give the King the Tactics and Leadership promotions and the Prince the Leadership promotion.

 

[Le Sage]

VeBear. Thanks for all your suggestions. Sulfur actually sounds like a perfect resource. I am quite reluctant to introduce purely gunpowder units, but I do have a Cannon in there somewhere already and the Dwarves could actually use a gunpowder musketeer-like unit of some sort. That wouldn't be all wrong.

I fought a war with your dwarves yesterday and while they only have the Fairy Tale basic units yet, they still did a pretty good job. I think I'll make their units have good defensive capabilities overall, because they're not garrisoning their cities too well and they seem to value territorial expasion over building troops. They mounted a pretty substantial counteroffensive when I was invading them, but I had to sign a peace treaty with them in haste, because I was invaded on another front by Yatenga with a massive army. Shame. I had really wanted to see what had happened when I struck deeper into Dwarven lands...

HighwayHoss. Yes! The Age of Ever After will be present in Version 9, but first I have all these smaller things to do and there will probably be another smaller update before I get to the big one still.

Do you think that rearrangement of the Royal Generals will solve the spawning issue as well? On paper, the problem with the Royal Generals spawning as common Great Generals is the fact that they rely on Combat Experience Points to be born, like all generals. Without those points and when removing them, they won't be born as Great Generals, but in the manner i want. The problem then is that I lose the promotions they give out when they're attached to a unit. I tried looking into my Hundred Years' War mod to see what I did there and I copied it straight off for version 8a of FT, but they still keep spawning wrong. Aaargh! My interim solution now is that i am going to give the Royal Generals the ability to build the special building that comes with common Great Generals as well. That makes them all equal for starters, although the common Great Generals will be somewhat weaker when giving out promotions.

 

[Jennvare]

LeSage,

I still say let the Royal Family member be their individual units and buildable with a national or team limit of 1. The "building" part could be considered "training" of a sort since most Royal Princes and such aren't born with inherent leadership abilities. It's one way of looking at it. Atleast then, you can keep the great general as they are and still have the royal family with specialized roles. After all, when building them, you can make them start with whatever promotions you prefer.

As for gunpowder units, even for the drawves, I'd be real careful here. Even with cannons, I am sure you want to keep this a "Fairy Tale" and not have it become "World of Warcraft" Use steam power since the drawves would have something like that and have a steam powered siege unit. Something to consider.

As for civs not being very strong on the defensive front, I think this is an issue with all civs. I know when I go on the offensive, cities are very lightly garrisoned usually with archers and spearmen which never upgrade far enough to compete with Paladins and Crusaders. The only time my offensice stumbles is when their offensive stack comes in to retake the cities or if I just happento run into them. Once, I beat that stack, their whole civ is prime for the taking unless they spam alot of offensive units.

For defensive, you may wish to have a third tier or archers and spearmen so that they can atleast compete or slow an enemy advance. To defense myself, I leave offensive units and magicians in my border cities to help break an advancing stack. I may lose the city, but they lose alot of units in the process. When I attack, I can run through their cities without a lost unit until they counterattack.

Just some observations. Don't sweat it either. This is a problem with Civ 4 in general and most mods have this issue as well. You tackle this issue, you'll make a name for yourself as an elite modder

Good Luck!

 

[Highwayhoss]

I still say let the Royal Family member be their individual units and buildable with a national or team limit of 1. The "building" part could be considered "training" of a sort since most Royal Princes and such aren't born with inherent leadership abilities. It's one way of looking at it. Atleast then, you can keep the great general as they are and still have the royal family with specialized roles. After all, when building them, you can make them start with whatever promotions you prefer.

I very much agree with this approach; this would eliminate the problems inherent in "spawning" Royal Generals and ensure more control. Remember that the Royal units are not just the Royals themselves but also represent their retinues (Bodyguards, Advisors etc.) I suggest treating Royals as similar to the legendary units found in Legends of Revolutions; as highly potent elite units.

As for gunpowder units, even for the drawves, I'd be real careful here. Even with cannons, I am sure you want to keep this a "Fairy Tale" and not have it become "World of Warcraft" Use steam power since the drawves would have something like that and have a steam powered siege unit. Something to consider.

Yeah, that would make sense....in fact I can see a case for the Steam Power Tech in The Age of Ever After. I have some ideas for some new units created by the Mad Scientists workshop....

As for civs not being very strong on the defensive front, I think this is an issue with all civs. I know when I go on the offensive, cities are very lightly garrisoned usually with archers and spearmen which never upgrade far enough to compete with Paladins and Crusaders. The only time my offense stumbles is when their offensive stack comes in to retake the cities or if I just happento run into them. Once, I beat that stack, their whole civ is prime for the taking unless they spam alot of offensive units.

For defensive, you may wish to have a third tier or archers and spearmen so that they can at least compete or slow an enemy advance. To defense myself, I leave offensive units and magicians in my border cities to help break an advancing stack. I may lose the city, but they lose alot of units in the process. When I attack, I can run through their cities without a lost unit until they counterattack.

The key to dealing with this problem IMHO is to neuter The Stack of Doom. How to do this you may ask? I have an idea of adapting some Python code from the Defense mod so that if a stack in a tile exceeds a certain number of units, each unit is gradually weakened in strength until they hit Str1. Result? The Stack of Doom becomes The Stack of the Doomed .

Here are some other ideas percolating in my twisted mind:

1. Have attack penalties in Forest and Jungles for mounted units (from Rise of Mankind).
2. Rework the Explorer into a Ranger Style Light Infantry Unit; Make it capable of attacking and boost its Str to 6, but keep its unique abilities.

About gunpowder units, I think rifles is to go too far, but cannons and arquebuisiers could be a good idea (remember, cannons were indeed present long before the real-long time use of rifles began, and present at the battle of Azincourt too (on the french side)). And thinking that this is the Age of Ever After, there should indeed be some changes in the fairytale socitey <-(damn, I hate that word) at this point, thinking of an age after the great Age of the Fairy Tale. And last, but not least, make them more like the Musketman, who does not obsolete the medieval units, but instead goes as a late-medieval addition.

I think they can work too; Musketeers would be a logical upgrade for Crossbows and a potent equalizer against Knights.

 

[Le Sage]

Jennvare. I can't make them buildable while still having the promotions they give out when they're attached to a unit. It is the promotions that makes them spawn since those tie them to the Combat Experience Counter. I am thinking that setting the amount of national units for Royal Great Generals to 0 instead of 1 could do it... Wait. I think I've found the problem. I went through my Hundred Years' War file and compared it to my Fairy Tale one once again. While writing this post, actually. I found the difference now! It's one of those things that just needs cutting out again to make them work. I think I've found it.

Yep. Defense is really bad in some cases. Sometimes it's harder to overrun smaller nations than widespread ones. I don't know if I really see it as a problem, since widespread, big, kingdoms without a doubt have problems of maintaining an army to cover all its space; like the Romans had back at the time of the Invasions and wanderings. However, in Fairy Tale, we are going to address that issue, because, I agreee with Hoss that the only thing we really need to do is break the reign of the SoD. This will also make battles far more exciting, taking them out in the landscape around the cities and making battles perhaps have centres and flanks and rears and so. I'm a big fan of that.

Actually, I have a late-game archer unit. They appear around when the Crusader and Paladin appear, actually. They're called the Skirmisher, but I might put them to appear earlier. That might help.

VeBear. Yeah. I was indeed considering the Musketman there for a while, but I am not going to add such units to the game. Instead it's pretty easy to make some more magical units instead of gunpowder muskets for late game units, and such magical units suit the style better.

HighwayHoss. Yes! Why didn't I think of that before!? Giving mounteds penalties for forested terrain. It's only logical, isn't it? That must be done ASAP. And OK, I'll make the Explorer into a Ranger. I hate it when I'm out happily running in the woods and meet arch enemy Angvina's fearsome warrior or worker and can't do naught about it. The Explorer could even be renamed Ranger. What do you think?

 

[Highwayhoss]

Yep. Defense is really bad in some cases. Sometimes it's harder to overrun smaller nations than widespread ones. I don't know if I really see it as a problem, since widespread, big, kingdoms without a doubt have problems of maintaining an army to cover all its space; like the Romans had back at the time of the Invasions and wanderings. However, in Fairy Tale, we are going to address that issue, because, I agreee with Hoss that the only thing we really need to do is break the reign of the SoD. This will also make battles far more exciting, taking them out in the landscape around the cities and making battles perhaps have centres and flanks and rears and so. I'm a big fan of that.

Well I found the code I needed and I'm going to do some testing.

HighwayHoss. Yes! Why didn't I think of that before!? Giving mounteds penalties for forested terrain. It's only logical, isn't it? That must be done ASAP. And OK, I'll make the Explorer into a Ranger. I hate it when I'm out happily running in the woods and meet arch enemy Angvina's fearsome warrior or worker and can't do naught about it. The Explorer could even be renamed Ranger. What do you think?

I think it will work nicely.

 

[Jennvare]

If you upgrade the explorer, make sure you give the new recon unit the ability to attack. Actually, why not allow all recon units the ability to attack?

As for the patch that you guys gave me to try and test, how do I load that in or will it self load when opening? I want to get it into the right place if you guys want me to test this out. As an aside, I will be off the internet over the next couple of days. Gonna join the family for a few days at the beach.

Be good to see if the anti-stack code works and if the AI can use it well.

 

[Le Sage]

You just drag and drop the Fairy Tale folder you find in the file Hoss submitted to us all into the BtS Mods folder on your harddrive. It's just like installing an update.

This is so exciting. I can't wait to try it out! Hoss is also away on the road this week, but I'll sit here and do some modding and very extensive playtesting with the new Stacklimit, of course, so have a nice time on the beach, Jennvare.

And yeah! Why not give the benefit of the attack to all the recon units. Consider it done.