Final Fixes Reborn

[Erikulum]

Currently having a fort commander costs 2 gold per turn to maintain, and it seems a bit costly early. When playing races like the Khazad, Dwarven mines come with that same -2 upkeep unless you delete the commander. Also it seems counter intuitive when discovering an abandoned fort while scouting to consider leaving it unclaimed for economic/research reasons, especially considering barbs will convert them into cities if you do. Thoughts?

I don't like the upkeep early game either and I'd like to see the mechanic altered too.
idea: Let the player have a free fort commander for each city in the first era. (If Ashes of Erebus still have era)
idea: Make the upkeep higher (~4) but lower the upkeep cost for each food(.5) hammer(.5) and gold(1) on the tile.
idea: The upkeep cost could start at 0. Some tech would make it higher
idea: Lower the upkeep for each food ressources around the fort
idea: Give the civilisation a free, weaker unit when a fort commander is disbanded

Bug: Fort commander with the immortal promotion (gained from Blood of the phoenix ritual) respawn in the capital when killed. They should respawn at their original location or shouldn't get the promotion at all

Balancing: Murris clan goblin event shouldn't happen in the early game. They spawned next to my city turn 2, game over turn 3

Rinwell Isle has featured in most FfH story-thread-game-things (whatever the hell they are called).

Traditionally been the source of some kind of evil.

That's pretty much it. I have it function as a claimable fort, and spawn drowns/stygian guards.

Bug: Rinwell Isle convert to demonic when it become Rinwell Isle (every 50 turn) even if claimed

 

[cthom]

just discovered this bug, sorry if it's been mentioned previously..

gave the baron the subdue animals promotion, turns out there's a chance of getting the beast and the were-form. happened with a brass drake a few minutes ago.

(ashes version...)

 

[A Moon]

You'll never really appreciate that glitch until you use it on Acheron.

 

[Viatos]

But I think that THIS unit would be PERFECT for her. It's much better done and has both ranged (gun) and melee (sword) animations for first strikes and close combat. And it's an amazing unit overall:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=16579

She's explicitly a sniper; I think giving her a pistol wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Something is very wrong. My warriors got bronze weapons, but they are still 3/4 (while it says +1 attack/defense in the promotion tooltip).

The penalty is removed when they upgrade to Axeman or other units. Mechanos warriors are 2/3 by design.

 

[cthom]

oops, i've done something really wrong...
i re-installed Ashes and the patch, but now i get a 'GFC error: can't initialize primary control theme'. what's happened?
---

ok, i re-re-installed and it fixed the GFC error. now i just have to work out why i have no interface when the game loads. >.<
i've done the usual- play now and hold shift while loading, but no joy

 

[arcticnightwolf]

oops, i've done something really wrong...
i re-installed Ashes and the patch, but now i get a 'GFC error: can't initialize primary control theme'. what's happened?
---

ok, i re-re-installed and it fixed the GFC error. now i just have to work out why i have no interface when the game loads. >.<
i've done the usual- play now and hold shift while loading, but no joy

gfc error means wrong mod folder name in your resource file - you have to edit the "\Resource\Civ4.thm" file and change the paths

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Hello.

Is there people who still plays in multi to this excellent mod ?

 

[Erikulum]

I do... sometime, in hotseat since we get a constant Out Of Sync otherwise

 

[Moos]

I have probably missed something but when did Sidar lose the wane spell?
I noticed it was no longer in the Spellinfos.

Also when was D'tesh affinity moved away from +1 death?

Thank you for any insight into this.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Oh I did not know the mod was buggy in multiplayer. That is sad we cannot play to it.

 

[A Moon]

I have probably missed something but when did Sidar lose the wane spell?
I noticed it was no longer in the Spellinfos.

Also when was D'tesh affinity moved away from +1 death?

Thank you for any insight into this.

I don't think the Sidar have had wane for a long time. Instead, Sidar units have a chance to become immortal for one turn, based on their current level.

The D'tesh death affinity was changed into multiple affinities with different affects. Multiple sources of shadow mana will eventually give all D'tesh units an extra first strike, for example (I think it's 5 mana per first strike, maybe?)

 

[Mordax_Praet]

Multiplayer works great actually

My friends and I play online using Hamachi, we have different PC hardware and operating systems but only suffer the occasional desync

The mod is wonderful by the way, regular Civ is very dull but Erebus is awesome

 

[Moos]

Could I ask teo more questions about Sidar:
Was the wane mechanics deemed to powerful, AI unfriendly, anyone knows?

And just how can you attack a Sidar city which have gone into the mist? I'm having a hard time finding how to give perception 5 to my units.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

Could I ask teo more questions about Sidar:
And just how can you attack a Sidar city which have gone into the mist? I'm having a hard time finding how to give perception 5 to my units.

Air I spell removes mist from surrounding tiles. I think Sun I can do so as well? Can't recall at the moment.

 

[Mordax_Praet]

Air I spell removes mist from surrounding tiles. I think Sun I can do so as well? Can't recall at the moment.

Is that what Gust of Wind does?

Because I can't find any text in the game describing it's effects and I've never seen the spell light up for use

I could do with knowing what Accelerate does as well, because as far as I can tell it exists just to be an inactive icon on a unit's ability list.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

Is that what Gust of Wind does?

Because I can't find any text in the game describing it's effects and I've never seen the spell light up for use

I could do with knowing what Accelerate does as well, because as far as I can tell it exists just to be an inactive icon on a unit's ability list.

Yeah, Gust of Wind is the one that removes mist. Haven't had a chance to go check on other things that might do so yet though.

Accelerate is Haste (+1 movement) for siege weapons. I'm unsure if it works on constructs, like golems, or not.

One other thing, are Illians under Auric Ulvin meant to go from Lawful Evil to Lawful Neutral on converting to the White Hand? I don't recall how exactly the alignment system is meant to work anymore, but it seems a bit odd for there to be a shift.

 

[Mordax_Praet]

As a newer Erebus player, and having very little Civ4 experience I found the mod very tricky to learn despite having a more experienced player to help me.

Theres very little documentation around, even the Civilopedia is missing a lot of information and what is there is often hard to find or difficult to understand.

When it came to getting other friends into the mod, I knew I was in for a challenge because of the vast quantity of underdocumented features and the fact that none of us like Civ.

In order to remedy this, I had a go at documenting the mod myself. Whats attached is based on thorough reading of the Civilopedia, the experiences of myself and 2 friends and information from this forum (see post above, thanks for the info).

Theres probably a lot missing and a fair amount of misinformation on account of my own lack of experience but as it's allowed me to get fellow civ-haters into the mod I'd say it's been a success.

I'm hoping that others who are more experienced with the mod can take the document and use it as a basis for something much more useful and that the community can grow as a result.

Note that it was primarily written for friends to read, so the tone is very informal. It was also written with people who have never played civ in mind - I think this should be kept as Erebus beats Civ in every way and the very fact that I'm here is evidence that it appeals to people that Civ doesn't.

I chose to put the Civs first as the document also had to sell Erebus to my friends who do not like Civ. I consider the diversity and flavour of the different civs in the mod to be it's key selling point to newer players.

Disclaimer: This document is saved in .doc format for forum compatibility only. This should not be construed as the poster being nieve or stupid enough to use Microsoft Office over Open Office.

 

[Erikulum]

Yes, the wiki need work. The wiki need A LOT of work. I consider myself an experienced player but there's probably existing mechanics I never even heard of. If you'd like to help, the pedia is really easy to modify.

I'm sure any of the modder would be happy to add entry you wrote if you don't want to do it yourself

idea: Make Mordax_Praet document the default page when opening the civilopedia for the first time

Civilizations
Adding a difficulty level to each civilization would be nice for new player.

Spoiler :

Amurites - intermediate
Archos - novice
Austrin - intermediate
Balseraphs - intermediate
Bannor - intermediate*
Calabim - advanced
Chislev - intermediate*
Clan of Embers - intermediate*
Cualli - advanced*
Doviello - advanced*
Dural - intermediate
Elohim - advanced*
Grigori - advanced
hippus - intermediate
Illians - intermidiate
Infernals - novice
Khazad - advanced
Kuriotates - novice
Lanun - novice
Ljosalfar - intermediate
Luchuirp - advanced*
Malakim - intermediate*
Mazalt - advanced
Mechanos - advanced
Mekara order - advanced
Mercurians - novice
Scions of Patria - master
Sheaim - advanced
Sidar - intermediate
Svartalfar - intermediate
The legion of D'tesh - Grandmaster
* probably

Research
You say in your research paragraph that you can reduce your Research Level, this grants you more wealth per turn. You should explain the difference between gold and income. Income is distribued between research, gold and culture.

Tower of Mastery
With metamagic (sorcery) it's possible to convert any mana node to raw mana so a player may be able to built all 4 tower with only 5 mana node available

Religious victory
You need to have the corresponding holy city and it can be achieved by spreading your religion as much as possible using disciple units. Some units can gain a promotion that allow them to remove every non-state religion from a city and you can bribe other civ to convert them to your religion, helping your cause. Having a special building in your holy city (built by great person) give you a bonus for each city with that religion. So spreading it isn't totally useless. And NPC civilizations will like you more if you both use the same state religion.

Gone to Hell
Hell terrain will appear whether or not good player are in the game. But good civilization usually want to lower it as much as possible since a high Armageddon counter only have negative effect for them (harder diplomacy, hell terrain are almost useless... etc). The Elohim is the most anti armageodon civilization. They start with a ritual that lower the counter by 5 points. The Sheaims is the civilization with the most chance to do a Armageddon victory, starting with a ritual that rise the counter by 5 points

P.-S: Hasmtalfar are ridiculous but modular, so you can remove them fom the game if you don't like them.
Add a line in the introduction explaining that the original mod, Fall from heaven 2, was a dark and uncaring world. For example, the mercurian are good only because they want to eradicate demon. And they may declare war on other good civilization in order to fuel their army of angel (they get free angel when good unit dies).
The barbarian are very strong early game, making expanding early very dangerous. Explaining to new player the other civilization have the same problem may prevent some rage quit

 

[Mordax_Praet]

Thanks for the reply Erik, I'm glad my input was well received

I'm a professional C# developer these days, but Python was my very first programming language many many years ago.

I only used it for a short time before moving on to more sensible languages so I'm rusty to the point of barely remembering any of it, but I definitely have the skills to help out with the mod.

Time is another matter, as I have my own project to work on, and I would need to sit down and properly work through how both Civ4 and AoE are put together before contributing anything big.

Sprucing up the pedia sounds like something I could commit to doing slowly though, so count me in.

Civilisations:

As a novice, I've found some of the civs you've listed as being difficult to be very easy to get along with.

I've been recommending Scions and Sheaim as good factions to start with.
Not having to worry about food or health makes the Scions easy to get to grips with, and allows newer players to focus on learning other mechanics while giving them less to have to manage.
The big advantage of Sheaim for newer players are those free skeletons, they completely negate the rage-quit factor of losing early scouts and make the barbarian threat that much easier to deal with.

I'm playing as the Grigori atm and I'm finding the free Adventurers to be a similar help

While I've not played as the Doviello yet, one of my friends said that he was getting along very comfortably with their mechanics, finding them both interesting and intuitive

I've sunk more than a few hours into trying to get the Legion working, glad that's not just me.

Research:

The problem with explaining it that way is that newer players will conclude that they can get research or culture by gathering coins, which isn't the case.

Assuming I have this down correctly, the actual mechanic involves converting Research into Gold or Culture, and the flexible income that can be spent as the player wishes really only comes from Research bonuses.

Tower of Mastery:

Doesn't that make this victory condition really easy to get? Especially while playing with Wild Mana on.

Religious Victory:

This is very good info, will add thanks

Gone to Hell:

The pedia says that Hell Terrain doesn't spread into Good owned territory, this means you'd have to wipe them out to reach that 90% for the win, right?

Hamstalfar:

imo they just don't fit with the rest of the game, it's like putting a faction of Space Marines or a McDonalds Empire in.
When I put text on them into the pedia I'll update it to be less scathing, they aren't to my tastes but clearly other people enjoy them or they wouldn't be here, but I will leave instructions for turning them off.

Other Advice:

Will take all of, thanks, though as far as I can tell AoE is still a dark and uncaring world, Hamstalfar aside.

A few questions:

How exactly does the game determine when the Grigori get an Adventurer?

Surely there's more to Empyrean than the Civilopedia lets on? I plan to investigate in my next game but that may not happen for a while.

Does the Clan of Embers World Spell really do that? Because I've played a few games with them in and I think I would have noticed all of the Barbarians vanishing

Why is the Cualli World Spell so odd? The net result seems to be just +4 Production in all cities but the way it's done is so convoluted and the end result so weak that I'm sure there must be more to it.

How exactly do trade routes between cities work? What is the default number of Trade Routes a city can make before being modified by Civics or Buildings?

Do good events for high crime rate actually exist?

How upkeep is being calculated is something that's particularly hard to get info on right now, any pointers? What units cost and how much? What about buildings? What's the standard formula for city count and distance upkeep before a Civic modifies it?

Can anyone tell me exactly which magical summons are permanent units, and how long each of the others last? The pedia doesn't make this clear at all.

 

[Erikulum]

civilization
That's was a quick rating, I think you are right about the sheaim and you're probably in a better position to evaluate them than me since you started playing recently.

But I've found that the Scions are best used with lots of small cities to use each citizen to full extend. That require a lot more management but is worth it. And I put every civilisation that required more managing advanced. for example the mekara order can train and add slave to their city, each city can have one slave/4 population plus the bonus attribued by diverse building. Each slave add one sickness to the city and production/research/gold depending of the building. That alone would had been enough for me to rate them advanced.

For the doviello rating, I mistook them for the calabim. I blame erfworld

Research
But if you don't they won't understand they can get more research by exploiting tile with high commercial value.
If I got it right, you get commerce from the tile you exploit (and some building) and you distribute it between science, culture and gold as you see fit. Then the game give you your bonus gold from building and you pay your maintenance cost

Note that building can grant goldgold and/or commercecommerce

Tower of Mastery
Never really tried to achieve a tower victory but that's how I'd do it. I don't think it would be too easy since you don't only need to get the correct mana type, you also need to build four 800 building and one 4000 to win. Abusing the great person spawn to get only great prophet and a fast altar victory is probably easier. I did it in 320 turn, using 4 mage with charm person as my only defense (I was in 3 war when I won) and hurried my last tower for 14000 gold

Gone to Hell:
possible, I've never seen a really high counter, even in long game with the sheaims.

Hamstalfar:
I think they're an hommage to Valkriion, the modder that made Rise from Erebus. One of their leader use the same name and forum image. I know the civilization didn't existed 3 years ago.

Grigori spawn mechanic:
The grigori have the best spawn mechanic. They have an adventurer counter (top left of the screen) that go up each time the great person counter go up (mainly from the specialist in city) when the counter reach 100 (+20 each time), they get an adventurer and the counter reset. Their farm and pasture can become homestead. Each homestead give one free stateman to their city. When the city have a citizen's forum (code of laws, writing) stateman will affect the adventurer counter. Their world spell also affect the adventurer counter.

For the horde work as intended, only the bhall units are affected.

I can't say why the cualli world spell give citizen instead of 4 production. Maybe the building was suppose to give 4 free specialist, maybe he wanted to add a way to make each citizen produce more (maybe there is, I wouldn't had cared enough to remember) or maybe it was to give them a specific feel. Hard to say since there's very little info explaining tit. The slave pit building lore insinuate the slave were once dead but it doesn't fit their starting mana (water, shadow and body)

I remember geting a underground slave market, upon disbanding it I got 2 free slave. So yes, "good" event for high crime rate exist. I'm not sure if the chain of event where you can put a mad scientist as headmaster of the mage guild is tied to the crime rate but you can get 2 world unit out of it (altough, the price is very high)

Not sure enough to answer your other question but some of them could be tested using the worldbuilder

idea: Make the cualli slave pit buillding give 3 specialist instead of 4 citizen. It would make a more fun gameplay and wouldn't affect the little lore we have about them

idea: To be more new-player friendly, add an option called "nerf barbarian" and "nerf them more" in the custom game list. Each giving a -20% strength promotion to every barbarian unit

Balance: The grigori sidequest ability (any unit in a stack with a fort commander) is probably supossed to use the affected unit move each turn. Currently the unit affected move before the player but the player can still move it afterward (if the units isn't in the fog of war) so he can simply bring it back to the fort each turn. It give 100xp to any of their unit in 50 turn.