Final Fixes Reborn

[black_imperator]

See the first post in the thread, Download and Installation part, Beta Version if you want the very latest one.

 

[FireBlaze]

So what am I doing wrong when a fresh install gets a ctd everytime I try and start a game?

edit: the answer appears to be my mapscript.

 

[Nor'easter]

A couple of thoughts based on a recent game I was playing as the Grigori, with one of my opponents being the Lanun.

1) Is there any possibility of giving the Grigori a low-level Tier 1 unit that can create a +20 great work? Not being able to immediately pacify a city really slows them down during a war. I know the Grigori usually have a strong military because of their many Adventurer units, but this seems like a pretty basic ability that they should have. (I made a similar recommendation about the Cualli a while back, but I think that was in one of the RifE discussion threads rather than here in Ashes of Erebus.)

2) I'd like to suggest rethinking the Pirate as a Lanun UU replacement for the Privateer. Unlike with Privateers, when you're attacked by a Pirate you know exactly who's doing it, so the fact that Pirates are HN doesn't mean much. Pirates have 5 versus 4 for the Privateer, but the Seafaring tech gives Lanun water units +1 anyway, so that's kind of redundant.

Pirates have a larger bonus against other ships than Privateers do, but perhaps one way to handle that would be to get rid of the Pirate as a separate unit and instead have the Seafaring tech give Lanun ships something like the Combat I promotion, or 2XP, or some such thing.

 

[black_imperator]

I never liked the whole pacify city through great work mechanic. It cheapens the revolts way too much in my opinion. Though if it stays in, i'll see about giving a similar effect to grigori. There were plans about some blood cult abilities for the cualli and this could tie in it pretty well too.

The pirate thing is a symptom of the larger Hidden Nationality issue. It doesn't hide enough info to actually trick the player. Your suggestion is a good idea for the pirate issue, i may go through with it if we don't do something for the larger issue.

 

[Nor'easter]

I never liked the whole pacify city through great work mechanic. It cheapens the revolts way too much in my opinion. Though if it stays in, i'll see about giving a similar effect to grigori. There were plans about some blood cult abilities for the cualli and this could tie in it pretty well too.

The pirate thing is a symptom of the larger Hidden Nationality issue. It doesn't hide enough info to actually trick the player. Your suggestion is a good idea for the pirate issue, i may go through with it if we don't do something for the larger issue.

I hadn't really thought about Hidden Nationality as a larger issue. It's pretty obvious with Pirates versus Privateers, of course, but The Black Wind also starts with Hidden Nationality, as does Alazkan the Assassin, so unless they Declare Nationality you again know exactly who's attacking you because they're UUs.

Same with the three Hill Giants that come with Pact of the Nilhorn, once you look up who's completed the ritual. An easy solution to that would be to get rid of the names Larry, Moe, and Curly, so if they remain HN they just appear to be barbarians to other civs. The names are kind of fun, though, so maybe get rid of the HN promotion for them instead -- I always have them Declare Nationality from the beginning, so I don't have another civ attacking them early on while they're still relatively weak.

I don't know if that's what you meant by HN being a larger issue -- I guess the Svartalfar world spell also comes to mind, since once they cast it it's not hard to tell that those "barbarian" units are actually Svartalfar.

 

[black_imperator]

yeah those are the worst offenders, but it 's a problem for most UU if they happen to get Hidden Nationality. If you get attacked by hidden nationality vampires ( not sure if that's possible, just giving an example), you know you have an issue with calabim.

Some possibilities i thought of is (should be doable but haven't looked into it yet):
-Hidden nationality units show no specific details ( promotions/ names) to enemy leaders.
-Hidden nationality units switch their art to the default one of the default unit of their unitclass ( that wouldn't help Alazkan, but the rest of the Svart would look like barbs)
-For alazkan, short of offering him the choice to switch between a bunch of 'persona' (as in artstyle and names), i'm not sure how much we can do

 

[Nor'easter]

One positive aspect of Hidden Nationality is that it not only allows someone to attack without declaring war, but allows the other side to react to those few HN units without having to declare war, either. So maybe the way to think of it as a somewhat abstracted way to simulate things like espionage, minor skirmishes, border incidents, etc. Not every military encounter results in a full-blown war, after all.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I personally let the Barbarian state build Pirate ships too, so you cannot be positive whether the Lanun or barbarians are the culprits.

(I also let ships on Pirates Ports gain the HN promotion, and let Boarding parties become HN to board HN ships.)

I used to make privateers bAlwaysHostile rather than Hidden Nationality, so you knew who exactly was attacking with normal Privateers but could still fight back without war anyway. Tholal had some issues teaching the AI to use this tag though, so I cut it to prevent AI loops.

 

[Calavente]

I understand the point about HN...

one way would be to have "random nationality barbs"...
thus, once you get attacked by barb elves, you won't know if it's svartalfar or if you have the bad luck of getting multiple "stacks of elvish barbs".
(but in fact mostly Svart-like are needed ; there is not many other civ that can easily get HN)

there are already centaurs and orcs/gobs/ogres
so you could have "random nationality barbs" that appear : 30%chance svart, and 5% per other civ. so sometimes you get a few "malakim-camel-archer", and sometimes a highlander comes around.

you could also have a few events (semi-frequent) that appear
"The XYZ report that they have a few deserters".

or you could have that any unit that dies during a war has a small chance (10%) of being reborn without promotions (or only a few) as barb unit in a 10+ tile direction "deserters/war survivor".

for the WU (blackwind/ Alkazan) : IMO it would be best that "HN" gives them another appearance : pirate and assassin respectively.

any of those would increase chaos .. but help with hidding HN operations.

 

[Gafgar]

A small note, but it appears the Sourceforge download for 14.11 may be broken. Every time I try to download it it gets to 100% then has a network error and cancels itself.

 

[Babarigo]

I have a bug to report. I've played with the beta version and I couldn't use the scorch and spring spells with Mechanos' adeptus while I had discovered elementalism.

 

[black_imperator]

just checked the download, it works perfectly for me, don't know what happened. Will check the mechanos thing

 

[black_imperator]

both scorch and spring worked for me for mechanos, are you sure the amurite worldspell wasn't activated ?

 

[Babarigo]

I've just checked it and no, the amurite worldspell was not activated. I can cast the entrech spell who also needs elementalism. I've tested by adding all techs and it still doesn't work. I've also tried with the techpriest and neither spring and scorch nor vitalize work. Last thing, where can I see the changelog of the beta version ?

 

[black_imperator]

two links for the changelog :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cjEfA_NBkVV1xyx6nyAP7D2pay_xG813mB4FkYCYEwo/edit#gid=2
this shows the changelog of fixed bugs that were reported ( the part for the svn version is at the end)

https://sourceforge.net/p/ashesoferebus/code/215/log/?path=
this one shows the general svn log.


for the mechanos spell thing, do you see the spells but can't click on them or just don't see them at all ?

 

[Babarigo]

I see the spells but I can't click on them and thanks for the changelog.

 

[black_imperator]

in your CivilizationIV.ini file ( that you will find in Documents/My Games/ BTS by default) can you change HidePythonExceptions from 1 to 0 and test again? (also try giving yourself an Apprentice with Water 1 in world builder to see if he can cast it)

 

[Babarigo]

Ok I'm am reinstalling the mod to see if it changes something. I think I will be able to test what you said in 20 minutes.

 

[Babarigo]

I've tested both things and still doesn't work. The SVN checkout looks to have been incomplete. I see exclamation marks in Assets, README and Ashes of Erebus configuration parameters (I've translated this file name from French to English so it might not be accurate). Any ideas why I have those errors ?

 

[black_imperator]

the red mark in Assets is the one you need to find out more about. It may just be a server bug during the transfer, try doing an svn Update on the folder.