Final Fixes Reborn

Bug Report: Attacking a stack of sheaim units, took a "burning eye" unit as a slave. Slave is generic, fully functioning humanoid. Very odd. Confirmed in message log, which reports the burning eye unit captured as a slave.

Suggestion on a new mechanic to implement: Realism Invictus has a mechanic whereby if a civ possesses the holy city of a religion but does not implement it as a state religion, then the holy city may switch to a different city under a civ that does follow that as a state religion. Also, if holy cities are destroyed, then a new one will take its place from among those that follow the religon. I think this is a wonderful mechanic, and better reflects the realities of how these religions would likely operate.

I also think it would improve game balance. In my wife's recent game, the light elves founded the ashen veil (no clue why, they were following fellowship of the leaves, perhaps there is a problem with aendal pheadra's research priorities? or maybe they got the tech for free from some event or great person?), and then had the holy city locked up in their civ, which rather weakened its potential. To allow all religions to flourish and pose the threat they should, would be somewhat better to have the holy city capable of migration I think.
 
Bug Report: Attacking a stack of sheaim units, took a "burning eye" unit as a slave. Slave is generic, fully functioning humanoid. Very odd. Confirmed in message log, which reports the burning eye unit captured as a slave.
Added to buglist
EDIT: Suggestion on a new mechanic to implement: Realism Invictus has a mechanic whereby if a civ possesses the holy city of a religion but does not implement it as a state religion, then the holy city may switch to a different city under a civ that does follow that as a state religion. Also, if holy cities are destroyed, then a new one will take its place from among those that follow the religon. I think this is a wonderful mechanic, and better reflects the realities of how these religions would likely operate.

I also think it would improve game balance. In my wife's recent game, the light elves founded the ashen veil (no clue why, they were following fellowship of the leaves, perhaps there is a problem with aendal pheadra's research priorities? or maybe they got the tech for free from some event or great person?), and then had the holy city locked up in their civ, which rather weakened its potential. To allow all religions to flourish and pose the threat they should, would be somewhat better to have the holy city capable of migration I think.
On the one hand, i'm not fond of it because i like holy city hoarding to be a valid mana strategy, on the other hand, i agree that the initial distribution of religions should be more varied. I need to think about a way of achieving it. The part about the destroyed holy city moving is already in i think, and if it's not i'll add it .

EDIT2: Noticed something odd: Poking around the scion awakening code, I was struck by two rather odd things:

1) On normal you get x2 as much awakening chance as on marathon. But everything about marathon has x3 the cost (except for building units, but growth is set at 300%, buildings 300%, tech 300%, etc). It seems like table for awakening percentage (and decay) based on gamespeed was calibrated incorrectly (though certainly possible I am overlooking something).

It seems then the scions are relativelly too powerful on marathon vs normal.
i'll take a look
2) On higher diffficulty levels (up to deity) the scions under human control get an awakening malus. However, this doesn't seem to make sense--higher difficulty levels in civ iv are about greater ai bonuses, not human penalties, and for example if I play any other civ on deity I don't get hit with a growth penalty.

It seems then that the jump in difficulty playing the scions for each higher level is greater than for a normal civ, which seems like it shouldn't be the case.
Actually if you look at Civ4HandicapInfos.xml, you'll see that there are small maluses to the player too in high difficulty levels, though nothing about growth it's true.
 
There has been no holy city for runes of kilmorph now for 100 turns after the holy city was razed, despite some with it as state religion, so the mechanic might not be working (holy city listed as none).

Oops, I just tried to delete my complaint about scion/gamespeed before you saw it, but it looks like I was a few minutes too late. I realized I had failed to consider that pop growth for normal civs requires an increasing food stockpile with each higher pop number, so that x3 food requirements does not mean 1/3rd the population, actually rather you'd end up having a good deal more than that. 1/2 seems a decent enough estimate for mid range cities. Sorry, I should have thought more before complaining. The diffficulty level point might be worth considering, but I was confused with the game speed part.
 
Some minor things:

1) Scions should be blocked from building the Salthouse, as the only benefit it carries is storing food after growth (unlike the other building like granary, smokehouse, which at least give them health), so it carries no benefits for them.

2) If there was any interest in giving them a unique replacement, I think the thing most missing from the scion lineup based on the lore is some building representing the many non-scion residents of their cities, such as a "Resident's Council" that generates a small increase to foreign trade route income by attracting more long-term foreign merchants and artisans.

3) Varulv can lead 4 units, while baron duin halfmoon can only lead 3. Is Varulv intended to be slightly better? I was under the impression he was only there in case duin halfmoon was a leader.

4) Maer, the "important leader" for the mechanos only has the charisma trait, which is possessed (along with another trait) by the historical leader. I understand the important leaders are meant to be weaker, but usually they at least have something different that what the main ones have, perhaps her trait should be changed.

5) Blood of the Phoenix ritual doesn't really help the scions at all (other than red Korinna, and centenni, no other units are eligible for promotions, as undead can't get immortal). Perhaps it should be blocked from them and other civs with an undead theme? Or grant some other promotion as well that has undead as a prereq?

6) Baby_boom event triggered for the scions, wives making children with returning soldiers, + to food stored in cities, doesn't really fit. Perhaps block event for civs with fallow trait?

7) now that ancient ruins have been split from city ruins as a separate improvement, the scions only get the production and commerce bonus from the normal city ruins. It would seem to fit the lore to allow them to also get some kind of bonus from the ancient ruins, to reflect their interest in artifacts of past ages and to encourage them to settle in clusters of ancient ruins of past metropolises.

Balancing feedback: (note the below is from playing with barbarian world and raging barbarians, which might have influenced at least the degree to which the below was experienced. Not sure if as much a problem on normal settings)

The scions starting with 3 creepers feels overpowered, vs the lost velite. No barbarian units attack my creepers (I guess because they are hidden somehow? Not sure why this is), so I can wander the dangerous world with 3 separate guys who can water walk picking up goodie huts everywhere. Even when I get the bad result, and spring a small army of barbarian Orc axemen, then I have pretty much handed one of my opponents a serious problem and very possibly a lost city (did this to the chislev), and the orcs ignore my creeper, and he marches on to continue this behavior.

One velite could maybe have gotten 1 goodie hut before getting killed. Instead my three creepers get a couple each. And why exactly do these villages I wander into share technology and money with a bunch of death plants?

All things considered, I would favor returning to the old way, scions get 1 centenni 1 velite. Creepers come along later when goodie huts are gone, so none of the above is much of a concern when you normally get them. Assuming haunted lands can be obtained somewhat early trough other means? Not sure when they start spawning on their own.
 
Some minor things:

1) Scions should be blocked from building the Salthouse, as the only benefit it carries is storing food after growth (unlike the other building like granary, smokehouse, which at least give them health), so it carries no benefits for them.

2) If there was any interest in giving them a unique replacement, I think the thing most missing from the scion lineup based on the lore is some building representing the many non-scion residents of their cities, such as a "Resident's Council" that generates a small increase to foreign trade route income by attracting more long-term foreign merchants and artisans.
There is a module called Scion HealthCare that makes Healthcare UN for scions, included the Salthouse, i think. You could check that out. We may end up partially merging it or reworking that line ourselves down the line
3) Varulv can lead 4 units, while baron duin halfmoon can only lead 3. Is Varulv intended to be slightly better? I was under the impression he was only there in case duin halfmoon was a leader.
added to buglist

4) Maer, the "important leader" for the mechanos only has the charisma trait, which is possessed (along with another trait) by the historical leader. I understand the important leaders are meant to be weaker, but usually they at least have something different that what the main ones have, perhaps her trait should be changed.
I'll need to check how Maer came to be before thinking about it.
5) Blood of the Phoenix ritual doesn't really help the scions at all (other than red Korinna, and centenni, no other units are eligible for promotions, as undead can't get immortal). Perhaps it should be blocked from them and other civs with an undead theme? Or grant some other promotion as well that has undead as a prereq?
I actually like the idea of them nearly wasting the ritual to prevent others from using it ^^
6) Baby_boom event triggered for the scions, wives making children with returning soldiers, + to food stored in cities, doesn't really fit. Perhaps block event for civs with fallow trait?
added to buglist
7) now that ancient ruins have been split from city ruins as a separate improvement, the scions only get the production and commerce bonus from the normal city ruins. It would seem to fit the lore to allow them to also get some kind of bonus from the ancient ruins, to reflect their interest in artifacts of past ages and to encourage them to settle in clusters of ancient ruins of past metropolises.
added to buglist
Balancing feedback: (note the below is from playing with barbarian world and raging barbarians, which might have influenced at least the degree to which the below was experienced. Not sure if as much a problem on normal settings)

The scions starting with 3 creepers feels overpowered, vs the lost velite. No barbarian units attack my creepers (I guess because they are hidden somehow? Not sure why this is), so I can wander the dangerous world with 3 separate guys who can water walk picking up goodie huts everywhere. Even when I get the bad result, and spring a small army of barbarian Orc axemen, then I have pretty much handed one of my opponents a serious problem and very possibly a lost city (did this to the chislev), and the orcs ignore my creeper, and he marches on to continue this behavior.

One velite could maybe have gotten 1 goodie hut before getting killed. Instead my three creepers get a couple each. And why exactly do these villages I wander into share technology and money with a bunch of death plants?

All things considered, I would favor returning to the old way, scions get 1 centenni 1 velite. Creepers come along later when goodie huts are gone, so none of the above is much of a concern when you normally get them. Assuming haunted lands can be obtained somewhat early trough other means? Not sure when they start spawning on their own.

I thought we had decided on preventing the creeper from being able to explore unknown territory. Will think about it.
 
That is a great idea about making creepers unable to reveal territory. Would completely resolve the issue.

I had checked out scion healthcare, but there isn't a replacement for the salthouse (at least on the list posted online).

Request: if you do decide to incorperate the module or parts of it, as a long-time scions huge fan I'd like to voice my strong hope that you keep it modular and optional. It really messes with the lore and original scheme set up by Tarquelne, basically forgetting the idea of the scions as a mixed citizen and foreign resident society dividing along lines of who has the gift (I always imagine somewhat similar to how ancient athens worked with its resident foreign craftsman and merchant population), forgetting that only post necropolis are the scions capable of granting the gift on a mass scale and converting their large living population, and instead pushing them towards a generic undead civ.

For example, all of the normal health buildings make perfect sense for the scions to build, as they benefit the needs of their large living population pre necropolis. In their place, the module tries to make everything undead themed (the ghosthouse and paper mill instead of smokehouse and granary, scuplture instead of sewers). Sometimes it is more dramatic, replacing the well with a poisoned well, which would be actively hostile to the living population.

In that sense, it tends to confuse the society the scions have post necropolis with what comes before, in the context of health buildings that sould only be built pre necropolis anyway. Especially odd when it gets rid of the great healer and replaces with a doomsoother, which still has the primary effect of granting health. But you would only need the health pre necropolis, when the healer makes perfect sense.

In other places its choices seem even odder. It replaces the infirmary with an embalmer, but why would the scions embalm anyone? The lore never suggests they have a ritual of buring people, instead people wake up after dying and have the gift, without even realizing what happened. It justifies this loss of infermary for embalmer in the intro text by saying "just die and accept the gift already", but again that statement only makes sense post necropolis, when the health bonus wouldn't matter anyway for the building.

It also seems determined to make sea tiles workable for the scions, granting them a larger bonus from lighthouse. But why? Working a sea tile almost invariably must mean fishing partially, and so water tiles should be less usable for the scions, except to the extent they are the pathways of trade, which scions already get good benefits from.

There is one change I sort of like a version of:

It grants the scions +1 production on all other tiles, bringing everything up to plains level. I'd say it makes sense to do this for grassland tiles (some years back Tarquelne mentioned in a thread he was considering changing scions flavor start to grassland, because the kind of beautiful terrain and green hills are what they would most prefer to inhabit (he specificaly mentioned lounging about in boats), and one person suggested adding a + to grassland, or a - to plains, to achieve this effect, but the conversation quickly moved on). Now that this has happened for dessert, really no reason not for grasslands, as it would just redirect their expansion and save them scorch, but I wouldn't go as far as the module and do this for tundra/snow, as the scions would face little competitiion from other civs for these areas and it would hurt game balance, unlike the stiff competition they would face in the grasslands.

Anyway, I recognize the above is lengthy and just one player's opinion, and many people probably love the module's changes. Just wanted to voice my thoughts.
 
To be honest, i mentioned that because it's been discussed as a potential improvement but i haven't looked at it myself in depth yet. I do try not to add things that conflict the lore, don't worry
 
To be honest, i mentioned that because it's been discussed as a potential improvement but i haven't looked at it myself in depth yet. I do try not to add things that conflict the lore, don't worry

Yah, my wall-of-text was probably not needed, and I've seen that you are very attentive to the lore. Just wanted to fully voice my objections to each building out paranoia/love for the scions (and voice my support for the grassland +1 production, which I use in my personal edits as well).

Thanks for all your continuing work perfecting this mod!
 
On Maer, i'm tempted to upgrade her to Emergent if i find a good concept for her ( To be perfectly honest, i prefer the Emergent System to the Important one, tempting me to upgrade all of them when possible)
 
On Maer, i'm tempted to upgrade her to Emergent if i find a good concept for her ( To be perfectly honest, i prefer the Emergent System to the Important one, tempting me to upgrade all of them when possible)

That makes sense. Aside from a couple of important leaders with 2 traits (Kane for malakim is an example, he is quite effective and fun) most have 1 trait and seem much worse than the alternatives.
 
Maer uses the Important leader trait gain right? (the one with chances to gain regular traits through certain actions?)
If this is true, then she serves as a Mechanos leader with good growth potential, she starts with Cha, which is decent, and instead of starting with Ind like Verocchio, she can gain Ingenuity (from golden age), to grant all gunpowder units corned powder, and still be able to gain another trait later, so she can end up better than Vero, but starts worse, which I think is fine, although a well done Emergent trait would also be fine, but I dont want to lose the capability to get corned powder on my handgunners! ^^
 
I haven't tried playing with important leaders myself, and just returned to RIFE, you might be right PhoenixBlood about her making up for it with the potential synnergy with the gunners.

Some bugs and a Question:

Bugs:

1) creating haunted lands, at least via redachtor spell, does not remove lumbermills, thus allowing you to retain lumbermills on haunted lands (unlike if you had a worker chop down the forest). Either lumber mills should be enabled on haunted lands to be built in the first place (probably not), or the spread of HL should remove them.

2) Redachtors should have their spell for HL automatically change flood plains to desert

3) Haunted lands should gain +1 commerce from being river adjacent, just as forests do. Fits the basis for river commerce boosts (more easily transport the goods), as that is the source of haunted lands value, the strange trade goods. Plus, as it currently stands scions would prefer forests to haunted lands on river tiles, which seems wrong.

4) I can't change cultural values civic option playing as risen emperor. Tested and same with Cassiel, but Korinna can switch. I think somehow his agnostic like trait is blocking it, maybe some unintended carry over from blocking religious civics?

Question:

Can you point me in the right direction of the file I'd want to edit to hotfix number 4) for myself? Its serious enough that I want to try to patch it up for myself instead of waiting for the next revission, but I understand if you aren't sure.
 
Noted. As for your question, i think the reason is that all cultural Values civics require a state religion in the code ( see Civ4CivicInfos.xml in the GameInfo folder, you probably need to remove the <bStateReligion> tag)
 
Awesome. I removed it from everything but sacrifice the weak, social order (for the obvious reason it didn't seem to matter), and it fixed the problem.

(I tried adding the tag to theocracy, which has most of its benefits tied up to religion,but on adding the tag something very odd happened--it changed theocracy to + some crazy high number of happiness per religion in city, instead of -1 per non state religion. I'm thinking the government civics weren't designed to handle that tag, so I took it off)

Thanks so much for fixing this for me! I love the agnostic civs, so this will really help tide me over until the next revision.
 
Actually, deleting the tag (or changing it to 0) for the civics creates a new problem--it prevents any civ from adopting a state religion. Which is probably a worse problem.

Maybe editing something at the level of how agnostic traits work? I searched everything I could find in the xml and python for "bstatereligion" and "bAgnostic" but couldn't find anything that looked like it would help. Maybe it isn't subject to a quick fix?

I'm guessing this is the result of rewriting the relgious civics into cultural values? But other mods like MoM don't have religious civics anymore either, so there must be a way to fix it. Anyway, I appreciate you trying to give me a possible fix earlier, but totally cool if you don't have time to come up with other ideas at the moment, I can always put the scions on hold and play non-agnostic civs for a while.
 
sounds like the tag is seriously messed up doing at the same time "Allows a State Religion" and "Requires a State Religion", i'll sort it out after next rev (taking a bit of time, there's lot of interface to deal with)
 
Cool, thanks for that! Just to make sure I've expressed the result of the tests I did correctly), the civics don't require a state religion to actually be adopted with the tag, just that you not be agnostic. Here are the test cases I ran:

With tag left in:

Case 1, cassiel or risen emperor, cannot change cultural values ever.

Case 2, korrinna, alexis, can change cultural values on turn 1 even though no religion.

With tag removed:

All civs can freely change cultural values, but no civ can adopt a state religion.

Anyway, thanks for all your work!
 
So I've found an inelegant but simple way of fixing the bug. Curious whether you have thoughts on it.

Basically, the only problem with deleteing <bstatereligion> from all religious civics is that every civ needs at least one <bStateReligion>1</bStateReligion> tagged civic before it can adopt a state religion.

So what I did was delete all the <bStateReligion> tags, then add a dummy new category of civics, with only a single entry with no further effects, tagged <bStateReligion>1</bStateReligion>.

Here's the first version, temporailly grabbing texts from no membership (planning on cleaning this up):

In Civ4CivicOptionInfos I added this:

<CivicOptionInfo>
<Type>CIVICOPTION_NONE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_CIVICOPTION_MEMBERSHIP</Description>
<TraitNoUpkeeps/>
</CivicOptionInfo>

In Civ4CivicInfos I:

deleted all bstatereligion tags and

added this:
<CivicInfo> <!-- NONE -->
<CivicOptionType>CIVICOPTION_NONE</CivicOptionType>
<Type>CIVIC_NONE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_CIVIC_NO_MEMBERSHIP</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_CIVIC_NO_MEMBERSHIP_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<Help>TXT_KEY_CIVIC_NO_MEMBERSHIP_HELP</Help>
<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/TechTree/Never.dds</Button>
<bStateReligion>1</bStateReligion>
</CivicInfo>


Ran some in game tests and seems to work fine, only hitch so far was I needed to switch to the new civic before I could convert to a state religion. I am currently looking online to try to learn how to define it as a starting civic (since currently agnostic civs have no problem continuing in their starting bstatereligion tagged civics, I'm fairly certain having everyone in this new civic even if agnostic will work fine).

Anyway, wanted to see if you have any thoughts. Problem I see is that it is ugly to have another line of civics sitting there with just a dummy placeholder (but not so bad given the RIFE scroll down screen, and perhaps there is a way to hide it. Or maybe I will make one for agnostic civs, one for non agnostic, and then it is a graphical reminder of your civ's status). But game mechanics seem fine, unless you foresee a problem arising from adding a new civic line?
 
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