Cool, then I'll keep posting here! Ran some more tests, and a game out to turn 805 on marathon. Ran across the following potential issues (some balancing issues some bugs).
Bugs:
1) Event for an experienced traveler that offers to share info for a small amount of gold has many options (or perhaps all?) that don't seem to do anything. For example, paying him to tell about remnants of lost ages, even paying to find out about large cities doesn't seem to do anything. (I couldn't find this event anywhere in the text files, so I'm not sure of its designation)
2) Discovered forgoten burial mound of warrior from previous age event gives 4 options (ANCIENT_BURIAL from more events module); the last one (robbing the tomb for its riches) doesn't give anything but is attached to a decent chance of creating a held skeleton warrior. The other choices that don't involve leaving it alone all give something in exchange for running this risk, so I think there is supposed to be a reward there that didn't get programmed in.
The event info looks like this if helpful: <EventInfo><!--Ancient Burial events-->
<Type>EVENT_ANCIENT_BURIAL_4</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_EVENT_ANCIENT_BURIAL_4</Description>
<bPickCity>1</bPickCity>
<PythonCallback>doAncientBurial4</PythonCallback>
<PythonHelp>helpAncientBurial4</PythonHelp>
<PythonCanDo>cannotApplyGood</PythonCanDo>
<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Process/Blank.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Beyond_the_Sword_Atlas.dds,8,5</Button>
<iAIValue>1000</iAIValue>
</EventInfo>
3) end of winter game option played on huge maps leaves a couple of tiles near center of map as ice by the time the warming shuts off (tested out to turn 805 on marathon). Searched and discovered this was a known issue in Rife (
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=373633&page=85) from a fall further extended end of winter mechanic that would happen on large maps because the warming didn't scale, Valk said they hadn't fixed yet because they tended not to play with it, but said they would have to get around to fixing it. Apparently, they didn't.
4) Stepped on "mirror of heaven", but didn't get any additional scouting radius from it. I thought it functioned to allow you to see nearby at great distances? Or am I remembering incorrectly...
Balance issues:
1) child born to bring peace to the world event (Holy_Child in the main events file) has way too harsh a penalty for choosing to "kill all newborns", -2 to pop in a city. The thing is, the "good" option is basically the same benefits to the civ, it just has a minus to armagedon counter instead of a plus. Outside of the sheaim, I can't imagine ANY civ valuing that relative + to the armagedon counter enough to eat that loss of pop, so I'd suggest the option be changed to "search for the child and kill it" (rather than kill all babies), and no pop loss. Also, killing all babies comes with a happiness increase, which makes no sense even for an evil population.
Also, in Eventinfos the AI weights for this event seem set badly. It is <iAIValue>1000</iAIValue> for all 4 choices, even though the 3rd choice (and its loss of population) should probably be set to much, much lower, maybe 0 since there is no check for whether they are evil or not (and even then -2 pop can be a terrible blow early), and the 4th choice for octopus overlords religion should probably have an overwhelming AI weight (I mean, if I understand correctly the AI currently has equal chance of reducing pop by 2 as it does picking a free great prophet...which is nuts even for octopus overlords). If I'm undestanding correctly and AIvalue is the chance of it being picked? So maybe set the octopus overlord aivalue to 100000 to make it overwhelmingly likely?
2) The "you see a procession of angels" event (ANGELIC_PROCESSION in the main events file) that gives a -2 to the armagedon counter, if you are playing with a high number of civs (20 or so), then all of them rolling for the event adds up to a significant pressure keeping the armagedon counter down in the game. Same thing with the "child born to bring peace" event discussed above, presuming most civs choose to let the child live because they don't want the pop loss, except there the -10 to armagedon counter is more dramatic. Suggest reducing the event weight for both.
3) The constallations events seem unbalanced. Even leaving aside the random influxes of tech and money out of thin air, the random handing out of golden ages to select civs can seriously mess with game balance. I rolled up 2 golden ages as the illians in an 805 turn game, and many of my neighbors were coming in and out of golden ages at odd times (I assume many from this event).
A golden age is at least the value of a great person by mid-game, and these constallation events are much more common than the very uncommon events that gives great persons. I think it is simply too powerful a random result to be so liberally distributed.
Also, I worry--do all the civs have constallation events associated with them for a golden age? If one was left out accidentally, that is a huge detriment to the civ, because it amounts to a repeated loss over the course of the game.
Weird or annoying things:
1) scions can break off from an existing civ and come into a game that way. Seems odd, given their lore. I'd suggest removing most of the 'unique' civs from the list of potential breakaways, if possible.
2) With an AI controlled Scions, you get spammed with "alcinius was created messages" as he dies and gets reborn. It gets rather annoying. I would suggest disabling the creation message for him.
3) Relatedly, if playing the scions these alcinius was created by messages clue you in to which civ he went traitor for when he gets reborn into another civ, taking out the mystery and the cool mechanic where you would have to use the emperor's daggers to cast the locating spell in order to send your killers to regain him. So another reason to remove the message.
4) The event that gives you a choice to build a library or a mages guild for money (Something like, our facilities for research are insufficient), can fire before knowledge of the ether is researched, making the complaints of mages and the option to build them a guild very odd.
5) At some point I was spammed by "the savage ogre warchief has been born again!" messages turn after turn, for about 10 turns. That may be intended, I don't know what was going on.
Side comments:
1) Tested erebus_107b again (my wife was adamant she wanted to play her game on it, unsupported or not), volcanos created on mountains that float in air most noticeable problem. More interesting, seems to create some cool map markers I haven't seen in other map scripts though (a bog that consists of 4 lake squares surrounded by swamp, a moor, some fairy land of a single green square surrounded by less nice terrain in the middle of an island, all with names), I wonder if those are map specific, or why I don't get them for the supported maps? If they are indeed missing, perhaps they can be added to the supported maps when you get around to messing with the scipts, these sort of unique map features can add a great deal of flavor.
Suggestions:
1) Some of the organization improvements that master of mana did to the civilipedia (separating heroes from normal units, wonders of various types from buildings), would be a welcome change.
(questions deleted and revised at end)
EDIT: Randomness, thanks for your comment and advice regarding the erebus mapscript.
EDIT2: Revised my questions:
Questions to aid in my own personal modification and play (only if you have time to answer of course):
1) I would like to force all random events to be in the event pool every game, while removing all constallation events, for a personal modification. Can you let me know if the below plan is correct?
I went to Civ4eventtriggerinfos.xml. Changed all <ipercentgamesactive> for all events to 100, but for all the events marked "EVENTTRIGGER_SIGN_(name)" to 0. (I noticed that the sign of NANTOSUELTA has its event commented out while doing this, not sure if intended, but it is the only event like that so thought I'd report it)
Are there any other xml file containing events or quests to edit? The only other one I could find was the more events module, but they are all set to 100 anyway. The fact that I couldn't find the traveler offers to sell info event makes me think I missed some additional events file, but I looked everywhere...
Also, I assume removing the constallations won't break anything else in the game, like the appearance of any unique heros or something? I couldn't find one that did anything special, just making sure.
2) Do you recommend playing with the "no inflation" option with this mod? What about the "dark forest" one you told me the mechanics of earlier, do you think the AI can handle it? Just curious, since I haven't played enough to have any idea what makes sense.
3) followup to earlier response: So installing the FFH media pack shouldn't create any crashes or problems from the longer movies?
4) Is there an easy way to edit starting alignment for leaders, or to change alignment in-game with the worldbuilder (using broader alignment)?
EDIT3: supplemented above events with their names in the code, and revised several reports.
Also, it occurs to me that the holy_child octopus overlords aivalue problem might be more general--I would guess there should be a general look through the events cauusing the AI to value the choices that grant them benefits higher than the others, and especially if said choice requires a special religion or other requirement (when it could usually be presumed to then be more valuable), as it seems most events have equal values assigned for most choices despite clear advantages of some of them.