Final Fixes Reborn

nice thinking, it should work mostly. (it is still a hack so i won't implement the fix that way, but great quickfix) . initial civics are in the Civ4Civilization.xml

Thanks! It was fun trying to figure out how to do it, as I've never tried to edit civ files before a week ago. Interesting to see how these things work.

I've got some balancing feedback I've been putting together--you mentioned you were busy with some interface issues for the next revision in your earlier post, should I store them up and hold off on posting until after release? I can easily just make a file and keep adding for the next couple of weeks or so while you finish up, if you'd rather not be distracted right now (I can also switch to only reporting bugs for now and save suggestions/balancing notes in the file, whatever is best).
 
please continue, discussing stuff helps me get motivated ^^ and xml changes are quick to make mostly so 'ill probably end up adding most of the balance feedback i want to add in the update itself.
As for the update, it's not so much interface issues than a large bunch of interface work. It's not the area i'm most used to, so it's taking a while getting it done properly ^^
 
please continue, discussing stuff helps me get motivated ^^ and xml changes are quick to make mostly so 'ill probably end up adding most of the balance feedback i want to add in the update itself.
As for the update, it's not so much interface issues than a large bunch of interface work. It's not the area i'm most used to, so it's taking a while getting it done properly ^^

Awesome! Ok, here's some of the issues I've hit lately:

Odd thing:

1) Many units can upgrade to berserker that probably shouldn't, like slaves, apprentices, etc, once you have the rage tech. This is because they are marked as potential upgrades to the lunatic unit, and even if you never develop mind stapling, the upgrade path will let them skip it and go straight to berserker. I'd say disable the upgrading of lunatic to berserker (more fun and flavorful to upgrade to lunatic anyway, and having the later upgrade will I think prevent those units from going for lunatic, which is a sad loss of an interesting mechanic). Also most civs won't be octopus overlords, so it seems wrong to let them turn these odd units into berserkers because of the potential existence of lunatics.

Balance feedback:

1) I think there is a serious problem with how the necropolis is structured with the +production it gets based on number of health resources. Namely, It is way too powerful, and distorts the intended role of the building.

The health benefits and elimination of unhealthy dissent are the intended mechanics, and function well. The intended purpose based on the lore is to allow your huge cities to escape the cycle of unhealth, by absorbing the remaining non undead population by giving them the gift.

However, by the time you get the tech, a well developed scion empire very well might be capable of having sufficient life mana and health resources to get the +10 production per turn. Since it costs 120 on normal, you pay back construction cost in 12 turns, and then have pure profit. And even if it is a size 1 city, it still gets the full +10.

It then means the building actually becomes most important in tiny cities, synnergizing with the scions already existing incentives to found tons of pop 1 or 2 production houses, and forcing them further into this as a dominant playstyle even as it makes it even more overpowered. The building essentially functions to double or triple the production of a small city, with an investment that is paid back in a negligble amount of time. It makes it the first choice building everywhere, and also helps the scions in an area they didn't need more benefits in (production).

Assuming the production bonus is desired, harnessing the essence of the living and such, it would be better done on a percentage basis , perhaps granting up to a 20% production increase at maxed out health resources to replace the +10 base production. The amazing thing is that that 20% production rate would be a huge nerf to the building (as it would take a base 50 production city to equalize), which points to how dramatic the original version was. It would also make it more valuable in large powerful cities, as it should be, and make its cost something of an investment.

Alternatively, to fit the role of the building in allowing mass giving of the gift, perhaps it should keep the straight hammers boost, but only if reborn are being constructed (like the currently existing open borders boost, which grants a straight hammers amount also). Although that doesn't fit the lore of 'harnessing the energy of the living' as well. Perhaps then the best solution would be both--up to a maximum of +10 hammers for reborn, and a +20 percent bonus to production overall.

EDIT just realized the combined solution wouldn't work, given the conditional nature of the reborn production boost system from open borders and the need to keep everything in one building. At any rate, I think anything that gives a boost that scales with population would be fine, including happiness from the new citizens ascending from their lower class ranks or the production of that distilled life energy drink mentioned in the civilpedia to a foreign trade boost from the excess food resources to be sold to simple unit XP would all be viable choices. I really just dislike the straight hammers boost because it doesn't scale.

Its funny but even the combined solution would represent a serious nerf to the scions production potential, especially on large maps and if they spread out, but I think that is a good thing. I also have some ideas on the scions that would represent a strengthening in other areas, and I'll write those up more comprehensively in a day or two.

2) The Event "An issue long thought decided is being discussed again amongst our people" dealing with practice of necromancy, suffers from a couple of problems.

a) the order solution giving a golden age seems overpowered. And I don't think suppressing people wanting to talk about necromancy should launch an entire order following civ into a golden age.

b) Many civs/religions have no way of dealing with it, no matter what preparation is made, which doesn't seem fun, especially for a repeatable event, even when many of them should have better options that the civs currently programmed to have them (ie, the scions, or amurites, both lack anything to respond).

c) The tooltips for the events report the -1 happiness is permanent for your cities. Should it instead say temporary, and this is a tooltip problem, or is the unhappiness really permanent? Because on a repeatable event with no way to forestall, that seems very bad.

EDIT: If I understand correctly it is indeed making the happiness permanent, meaning repeatable permanent -1 happiness to all cities:
<EventInfo>
<Type>EVENT_THREAD_NECROMANCY_6</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_EVENT_THREAD_NECROMANCY_6</Description>
<iHappy>-1</iHappy>
<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Process/Blank.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Beyond_the_Sword_Atlas.dds,8,5</Button>
<iAIValue>100</iAIValue>
</EventInfo>

Also the event is set to <bRecurring>1</bRecurring>, so both the golden ages and the permanent all city unhappiness are repeatable I think.


EDIT2:

Questions:

1) If <bGlobal>1</bGlobal> is marked for an event, like in the treasure hunt quest from moreevents, that means on the same turn every civ will get the message regarding the start of the quest and be able to start? Even if they don't meet the prereqs, like in that example of the treasure chest <PrereqTech>TECH_ASTRONOMY</PrereqTech> ? Or would they have to meet the prereq to participate? Just trying to expand my knowledge of how these things fit together, but couldn't find info online to answer that question.

2)Rites of Ohgma is listed as "1 allowed every 0 turns". A little confusing--I can certainly start building it during the game (I tested), what does the 1 every 0 turns mean? EDITNOTE: tested and the ritual is repeatable every single turn, no wait. maybe it was intended to be something like 1 every 200 turns, but a 0 was entered by mistake?

EDIT3:

1) I was trying to figure out bane divine, and found a note valkerion posted saying it now kills all disciple units. probably should update the in game strategy text, it still says it reduces them to level 1.

2) Curse the land has the never tech as a prereq, is it intended to be unavailable? Is it because the AI couldn't handle the mechanics of the rituals to correct it?

3) I had thought I remembered that The Deepening ritual wears off, at least for the terraformed terrain, but I ran on quick speed for over 50 turns and the terrain that had changed did not change back. Is there a different mechanic for ending it, either because of rife or the frozen module, or did one of them make it permanent?

4) Completing asscenssion as the illians grants them two auric ascended units, one has the additional promotions that the previous auric commander mortal unit had, one has the base promotions. Two gods of winter at once seems like overkill. ;) (note--the code works fine for the frozen and taranis completing the ritual, only 1 taranis ascended appears as it should)

5) Speaking of overkill, although auric ascended is blocked from receiving blood of the phoenix through the ritual, mortal auric isn't, and he carries it over into his auric ascended form. So it is possible to get a reincarnating god, even should you happen upon the godslayer. Not sure if that is worth changing or not on its own, but maybe auric ascended shouldn't carry over promotions, it gets a little weird him having random city garrison and such promotions. Only thing I would really want to carry over is magic items.

6) Should the Frozen really end up locked in a teammate relationship with whoever summons them? Given the lore from the civilpedia, it makes it sound like the illians summon them and then they go rogue seeking their own ascendency, which is in conflict with the locked team relationship (especially given taranis's goal to ascend instead, he doesn't seem like the loyal sort of guy, instead better to do like hyborium, start friendly but not teamed).

7) This one is just another question: is there any spells or other ways to raise hills in this mod? I searched the civilpedia but didn't find anything, makes sense there wouldn't be, too powerful for certain civs and such, just curious.

8) I think it is strange that the ancient warrior burial mound event flattens the hill if you elect to build a tourist trap. Just seems odd that something otherwise unachievable by magic or feets of worker labor (as far as I can tell), would be done with a simple tourist site construction.
 
Awesome! Ok, here's some of the issues I've hit lately:

Odd thing:

1) Many units can upgrade to berserker that probably shouldn't, like slaves, apprentices, etc, once you have the rage tech. This is because they are marked as potential upgrades to the lunatic unit, and even if you never develop mind stapling, the upgrade path will let them skip it and go straight to berserker. I'd say disable the upgrading of lunatic to berserker (more fun and flavorful to upgrade to lunatic anyway, and having the later upgrade will I think prevent those units from going for lunatic, which is a sad loss of an interesting mechanic). Also most civs won't be octopus overlords, so it seems wrong to let them turn these odd units into berserkers because of the potential existence of lunatics.
I'm more tempted to make upgrade paths only take available routes. (so no berserker unless you can actually go through lunatics)
Balance feedback:

1) I think there is a serious problem with how the necropolis is structured with the +production it gets based on number of health resources. Namely, It is way too powerful, and distorts the intended role of the building.

The health benefits and elimination of unhealthy dissent are the intended mechanics, and function well. The intended purpose based on the lore is to allow your huge cities to escape the cycle of unhealth, by absorbing the remaining non undead population by giving them the gift.

However, by the time you get the tech, a well developed scion empire very well might be capable of having sufficient life mana and health resources to get the +10 production per turn. Since it costs 120 on normal, you pay back construction cost in 12 turns, and then have pure profit. And even if it is a size 1 city, it still gets the full +10.

It then means the building actually becomes most important in tiny cities, synnergizing with the scions already existing incentives to found tons of pop 1 or 2 production houses, and forcing them further into this as a dominant playstyle even as it makes it even more overpowered. The building essentially functions to double or triple the production of a small city, with an investment that is paid back in a negligble amount of time. It makes it the first choice building everywhere, and also helps the scions in an area they didn't need more benefits in (production).

Assuming the production bonus is desired, harnessing the essence of the living and such, it would be better done on a percentage basis , perhaps granting up to a 20% production increase at maxed out health resources to replace the +10 base production. The amazing thing is that that 20% production rate would be a huge nerf to the building (as it would take a base 50 production city to equalize), which points to how dramatic the original version was. It would also make it more valuable in large powerful cities, as it should be, and make its cost something of an investment.

Alternatively, to fit the role of the building in allowing mass giving of the gift, perhaps it should keep the straight hammers boost, but only if reborn are being constructed (like the currently existing open borders boost, which grants a straight hammers amount also). Although that doesn't fit the lore of 'harnessing the energy of the living' as well. Perhaps then the best solution would be both--up to a maximum of +10 hammers for reborn, and a +20 percent bonus to production overall.

EDIT just realized the combined solution wouldn't work, given the conditional nature of the reborn production boost system from open borders and the need to keep everything in one building. At any rate, I think anything that gives a boost that scales with population would be fine, including happiness from the new citizens ascending from their lower class ranks or the production of that distilled life energy drink mentioned in the civilpedia to a foreign trade boost from the excess food resources to be sold to simple unit XP would all be viable choices. I really just dislike the straight hammers boost because it doesn't scale.

Its funny but even the combined solution would represent a serious nerf to the scions production potential, especially on large maps and if they spread out, but I think that is a good thing. I also have some ideas on the scions that would represent a strengthening in other areas, and I'll write those up more comprehensively in a day or two.
Haven't played the scions recently, but yeah percentage instead of straight gain would be nice ( not sure if we can do a +x% prod per health resource yet, but that's not difficult to make)

2) The Event "An issue long thought decided is being discussed again amongst our people" dealing with practice of necromancy, suffers from a couple of problems.

a) the order solution giving a golden age seems overpowered. And I don't think suppressing people wanting to talk about necromancy should launch an entire order following civ into a golden age.

b) Many civs/religions have no way of dealing with it, no matter what preparation is made, which doesn't seem fun, especially for a repeatable event, even when many of them should have better options that the civs currently programmed to have them (ie, the scions, or amurites, both lack anything to respond).

c) The tooltips for the events report the -1 happiness is permanent for your cities. Should it instead say temporary, and this is a tooltip problem, or is the unhappiness really permanent? Because on a repeatable event with no way to forestall, that seems very bad.

EDIT: If I understand correctly it is indeed making the happiness permanent, meaning repeatable permanent -1 happiness to all cities:
<EventInfo>
<Type>EVENT_THREAD_NECROMANCY_6</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_EVENT_THREAD_NECROMANCY_6</Description>
<iHappy>-1</iHappy>
<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Process/Blank.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Beyond_the_Sword_Atlas.dds,8,5</Button>
<iAIValue>100</iAIValue>
</EventInfo>

Also the event is set to <bRecurring>1</bRecurring>, so both the golden ages and the permanent all city unhappiness are repeatable I think.
Ah, so that's what this event is, i got it a few times my last few runs and i couldn't understand what it was about. so yeah, i'll rework it.
EDIT2:

Questions:

1) If <bGlobal>1</bGlobal> is marked for an event, like in the treasure hunt quest from moreevents, that means on the same turn every civ will get the message regarding the start of the quest and be able to start? Even if they don't meet the prereqs, like in that example of the treasure chest <PrereqTech>TECH_ASTRONOMY</PrereqTech> ? Or would they have to meet the prereq to participate? Just trying to expand my knowledge of how these things fit together, but couldn't find info online to answer that question.
if i remember correctly, global just indicates that the event can only occur once globally
2)Rites of Ohgma is listed as "1 allowed every 0 turns". A little confusing--I can certainly start building it during the game (I tested), what does the 1 every 0 turns mean? EDITNOTE: tested and the ritual is repeatable every single turn, no wait. maybe it was intended to be something like 1 every 200 turns, but a 0 was entered by mistake?
It's intended, it's just that the display code wasn't written with 0 in mind, should just display something like "Repeatable"

EDIT3:
1) I was trying to figure out bane divine, and found a note valkerion posted saying it now kills all disciple units. probably should update the in game strategy text, it still says it reduces them to level 1.
I'll check that.
2) Curse the land has the never tech as a prereq, is it intended to be unavailable? Is it because the AI couldn't handle the mechanics of the rituals to correct it?
that and it had a tendency to really spam it ^^

3) I had thought I remembered that The Deepening ritual wears off, at least for the terraformed terrain, but I ran on quick speed for over 50 turns and the terrain that had changed did not change back. Is there a different mechanic for ending it, either because of rife or the frozen module, or did one of them make it permanent?
I think we decided that not making it permanent was a bit of a letdown for the ritual itself. I do feel the need to add more ways(rituals, spells, processes,...) to play with the Weather system though, if only to counterbalance this.

4) Completing asscenssion as the illians grants them two auric ascended units, one has the additional promotions that the previous auric commander mortal unit had, one has the base promotions. Two gods of winter at once seems like overkill. ;) (note--the code works fine for the frozen and taranis completing the ritual, only 1 taranis ascended appears as it should)
that's probably a frozen issue all the same, i'll check;
5) Speaking of overkill, although auric ascended is blocked from receiving blood of the phoenix through the ritual, mortal auric isn't, and he carries it over into his auric ascended form. So it is possible to get a reincarnating god, even should you happen upon the godslayer. Not sure if that is worth changing or not on its own, but maybe auric ascended shouldn't carry over promotions, it gets a little weird him having random city garrison and such promotions. Only thing I would really want to carry over is magic items.
i'll prevent him from getting the blood of the phoenix, but anything that's not linked to mortal, he can get ^^
6) Should the Frozen really end up locked in a teammate relationship with whoever summons them? Given the lore from the civilpedia, it makes it sound like the illians summon them and then they go rogue seeking their own ascendency, which is in conflict with the locked team relationship (especially given taranis's goal to ascend instead, he doesn't seem like the loyal sort of guy, instead better to do like hyborium, start friendly but not teamed).
will change that, i really thought it was already that way.
7) This one is just another question: is there any spells or other ways to raise hills in this mod? I searched the civilpedia but didn't find anything, makes sense there wouldn't be, too powerful for certain civs and such, just curious.
the khazad worldspell was doing it at some point. not sure if it still does.
8) I think it is strange that the ancient warrior burial mound event flattens the hill if you elect to build a tourist trap. Just seems odd that something otherwise unachievable by magic or feets of worker labor (as far as I can tell), would be done with a simple tourist site construction.
Never underestimate the destructive power of a tourist horde ^^. More seriously, yeah there are magic stuff we could add, but we need to try and keep the various spheres a bit balanced
 
Cool! Yah, I actually prefer keeping terrain elevation out of magical hands, I think MoM went too crazy in allowing terraforming. It's more fun when you can't achieve the absolutely perfect min maxing of your territory, becomes too uniform.

On the necropolis implementation, considering that it is that weird 5+ different subsidiary buildings that spawn via Python dependent on health resource presence (i.e. It spawns a weaker subsidiary building version at a lower level of health resources, more powerful at higher health resources), I'm pretty sure you can add whatever effects you like for the different versions, same as any other building. It's actually about as hacked together a system as my hot fix for the agnostic issue, and I think mom replaced it with something that didn't require a useless 5 dummy buildings (though I could be remembering incorrectly). The same dummy building system that is used for reborn open borders bonus (though I think it's like 9 different buildings there)

Everything you said makes sense, thanks for the info!
 
The 'issue long thought dead" event is intended to poke fun at thread necromancy, actually. It was originally posted in response to someone necro-ing a 3 or 4-year-old thread (can't find the original post right now). Nothing wrong with re-balancing the potential results, of course.

Regarding the Scions, I posted a few months back that they have no Unhealthiness, which is a change from their original implementation in Fall Further. Don't know what you plan to do on them yet, maybe go to back to the FF implementation and then incorporate the Scions Healthcare Module to replace the buildings that have Food effects? Or stick with the zero Unhealthiness and get rid of all the Health-related buildings? Or something else altogether?
 
To be perfectly honest, there are plenty of civs where i know what i would add or change, but scions ain't one of them, i haven't played enough or read enough of their lore to have a clear picture in mind. Will try to get to it at some point. I've already gathered all threads in the forum talking about them for further reading .^^
 
To be perfectly honest, there are plenty of civs where i know what i would add or change, but scions ain't one of them, i haven't played enough or read enough of their lore to have a clear picture in mind. Will try to get to it at some point. I've already gathered all threads in the forum talking about them for further reading .^^

Fair enough. Incidentally, I didn't mean to sound overly critical, I realized after posting it that "I posted a few months back" might sound a bit obnoxious, and I didn't mean it to be. Sounds like you didn't take it that way, but still.
 
Ok, that is going to be a wall of text.But Black_imperator you did say I should post the balancing feedback I had been saving up, so here you go. ;)

I definitely agree that the scions gaining unhealthiness should be brought back. First, it was very fitting with the lore (scion cities early on being a mix of undead aristocrats and foreign craftsman and laborers, and the need to appease the underclass with decent living conditions), and second, it was an exceptionally well designed system mechanics wise, with the "unhealthy discontent" buildings that spawn at unhealthy levels, giving them minuses to all sorts of rates, as well as a separate -1 production for each unhealthy point over the limit, and the resulting incentive to build the early healthcare buildings to forestall this, until you get the necropolis, which lorewise transitions the scions from their original situation to their late-game situation (a civ that has learned how to mass grant the gift, and is transforming all of its residents into undead, and thus needs not worry about health in the future).

I don't know why anyone would remove the unhealthiness, unless they mistakenly thought the scions were an entirely undead population. At any rate, the change was incomplete--the necropolis still has its health bonus, and the unhealthy discontent buildings are still present. I just checked customfunctions.py and the python to spawn them is still there, its just scion cities don't become unhealthy so they don't spawn. So it should be easy to turn back on and regain the old system in its entirety, just by erasing whatever is keeping them from gaining unhealth, which I assume is some python function.

However, aside from that, I am not sure if the scion healthcare module does much in terms of game mechanics for health, as it changes very little there--most of the UB still grant healthiness as their counterparts did, though a few are given some overpowered and questionable additional abilities, like granting free gunpowder resources and bonuses based on refined mana. And I've already posted my extensive complaints about it conflicting with the lore. ;)

Honestly, one of the things I love about Ashes implementation of the scions is that, apart from the health thing which I think I can edit out, it hasn't changed almost anything from Tarquelne's initial vision, aside from starting with creepers. Sure, they get a desert bonus to production now, but that makes sense to even out terrain (indeed, a bonus to grassland should arguably be added alongside it), but Korinna the Red still gets undying and can leave patria's borders, Korinna the black still gets dark empathy, the many spells and abilities and stages of creepers are all left in, all the same bonuses and penalties are there, alcinus still needs to be hunted down by emperors daggers because he joins other civs...Orbis and MoM have heavily edited scions where much of this isn't true.

I would say Ashes should stick to the original design, while adding a few things. I recently reviewed just about every thread discussing the scions, as well as their implementation and code in other mods, and have been composing balance feedback for them. I would suggest:

1) Bring back unhealth, obviously. ;)

2) scale necropolis production bonus from hammers to percentage (discussed above)

3) soften the awakening hard cap to a diminishing returns formula, which Tarquelne said was "a particularly good change" when it was implemented in mom. Btw, I checked the MoM code, it is just if scion population exceeds cap, then the rate is multiplied by pop limit/current pop:
if iTPop >= iTPopLmt:
iSpawnChance =round(iSpawnChance*iTPopLmt/iTPop)

A significant buff to awakened production late game, but much less than you would think (because the separate decay formula mechanic is multiplying by a factor of 111- turns*decay rate, at the later turns when the cap would be reached the decay formula will already be applying an accelerating decrease to your rate each turn (since going from turn 100 to turn 200 will have MUCH less dramatic an effect than going from turn 300 to turn 400 in that formula, because it is a factor that is going towards zero), so mainly the change just removes the penalty for having gotten ahead of things with early game reborn production. A very good thing, because otherwise you are penalized in awakened production too harshly for having played intelligently in the rest of your pop hoarding, and the awakening cap is supposed to be more about the vault emptying than things getting overcrowded (so it shouldn't be so dependant on early reborn aquisition), and also for removing an interesting mechanic too early and abrubtly.

4) Removing the deity/immortal/emperor awakened penalty for human players, and just setting to 1. Never made sense in how difficulty levels are balanced.

5) founding the dark council should require 4 GP settled in the city, as in the change Tarquelne posted code for near the last page of the wildmana discussion thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=349623&page=9). (though I don't personally like the additional step he proposed of it removing Melante, as it is more fun to have her to play with and have her be an absent council head, I would understand if that was decided for the best as well). Dark council also buffed slightly as he proposed to reflect the difficulty of concentrating 4 GP (though perhaps the buff could be foregone if melante was retained)

6) again from the code Tarquelne posted in that thread (it was all around page 8 or 9 of the thread), redachtor code changed to alter flood plains into desert.

7) again from the code Tarquelne posted, Melante given the special version of the kidnap spell he created (no chance of war if successful, consumes 20 percent of player gold, success equal to gold/5000). Gives an interesting mechanic of whether you want melante governing or out there bribing people.

8) replace the salthouse with a UB that helps a bit in foreign trade (other food buildings add health making them situationally useful, but this one adds nothing for the scions).

9) If the food and health buildings were determined to need something additional for the scions aside from health, I'd say a small reborn production bonus makes sense, like what is currently done for resources. Maybe also a centenni production bonus, but I can't see that mattering much.

10) Health resources added to the list of resources that boost reborn production, basically everything from the necropolis list in custom functions.py, also granting additional reborn bonus. Would help balance the nerfing of the necroplis production bonus in a sensible way (you are making your cities attractive for the immigrants to come and be reborn), and preserve the intended incentive to maintain health resources.

11) add Korinna the White as a third option. From MoM (where the implementation can be found, she is a second tier mage with a couple of promotions), to my memory it was a change Tarquelne posted first in the forums there in a mini-mod of mom of his, but with the forums down I can't confirm my memory, still a fun option regardless. MoM lacks the later tech Korinna upgrades (undying or dark empathy for red and black), so it lacks one for her, and one would need to be created. I would suggest kicking in at the tech that grants arch mages, give her channeling 3, to grant the intended maintence of late game usefulness black and red get.

12) (this one is my own thought in balance partially to a weakening of the necropolis production bonus) I think Glory civic should grant an additional production point to a couple of improvements (probably mine and town). The reason is in the current civic schema I think mercantilism/scholarship are too attractive a combination for the scions, despite it meaning turning their back on their foreign trade mechanics and lore, as it grants them the ability to basically go super powerful specilist economy in a way normal civs can't, what with the +2 gold from mercantilsm and +2 commerce from scholarship for each speciliast (and the lack of food need meaning everyone can be a specilist (of any type with guilds)). I'd like the developing improvements in the outskirts of cities to at least be able to compete--curently I would rarely pick glory over scholarship's +2 per specilist, and that is an odd situation to be in with a civ specific very late game civic.I do not think it would be unbalanced, given it probably would only make up for the necropolis nerf in large cities, and giving up scholarship to take glory gives huge opportunity cost.

13) Theocracy should grant a +3 happiness bonus with temple of the gift. I'm unlikely to run it anyway, but no reason to not have the rule of the archons an option (given the lore behind the conflicts between the various cults: worship of gift/emperor/kyorlin being seperated and such, it makes sense there would be an option to place the heads of the gift worship in prominence). Game mechanics wise, it makes sense too, as the scions really do have a state religion, just not implemented, and others get +3 from state religion. Korinna is blocked from building temple of the gift, so that is not a concern.

14) grassland bonus 1 production, to bring it in line with plains (and now desert). tarquelne himself said that scions would prefer grasslands to any other terrain because it is more beautiful (he was arguing for flavour start to place them in grasslands, not for a production bonus, but grasslands should produce as much as plains if a civ isn't farming, and the current pressure to settle in plains doesn't fit the lore based preference).

Minor changes discussed earlier (just including them here for completion), and needed to resolve current scion mechanics with later changes to RIFE base mechanics: a) creepers need to be blocked from revealing tiles, to prevent starting creepers from being goodie hut collection machines; b) haunted lands should get +1 commerce from river, same as forest, c) Ancient ruins should get same bonus as city ruins from gift tech, d) no message for alcinus spawn to hide which civ he turns traitor to, e)creating haunted lands should remove lumbermill, or lumbermill blocks HL spread, since lumbermills cant be built on haunted lands.

Question: if I wanted to turn scions gaining unhealth from pop and terrain back on, could you give me guidance as to where in the code to look for the thing blocking it? If you don't know off the top of your head I'll just search through all the files, just wanted to ask if you did.
 
the no unhealth thing was something added to the fallow trait directly into the c++ code. no way to get rid of it easily for you. I'm quite certain that when snarko added that, he didn't think of the Scions, after all it does seem normal for the other fallow civs not to have any unhealth. It'll take a bit of work but i can dissociate the two, and have a specific trait for the scions that ignores food but not health.
 
For the record, I actually really enjoy playing the Scions, since they play so differently from other civs. My main complaint is the useless Health and Food-related buildings that show up in their building queue -- if you bring back the original Unhealth, that's no longer a problem, obviously, except for the Salthouse and Lighthouse. Those two buildings it would make sense to have a Scions UB replacement for, since the Scions don't benefit from the Salthouse's storing food after growth, nor from the Lighthouse's giving +1 :food: from water tiles.

I should probably try out a game of Fall Further as the Scions some time to remind myself how they originally played.
 
Nor'easter: Good point on the lighthouse, I didn't mention that one in my list but it could use a small bonus to foreign trade to make it worth building (could easily make sense for all civs, as lighthouses should assist trade).

EDIT: Wait, just checked and lighthouses provide +1 trade routes (thought I had remembered them doing this). Nor'easter, is there a reason you find it not worth building as the scions? Given the trade route bonuses they have from UBs, I'd find it worthwhile. Sure, it's not quite as powerful in their hands, but that is no different than the health buildings losing out on their food storage (and its fine for some buildings to be less useful I think...also with their trade bonuses it might actually end up being close enough anyhow)

Black_imperator: That would be an enormously welcome change! If you do end up having time to do so, I very much look forward to playing with it!

Ok, and now back to more simple bugs:

1) Phoenix blood survives a scion centenni upgrade into an undead unit. Should probably be eliminated when you remove the possibility from Auric (building centenni, mutating them, and then upgrading is a recognized strategy suggested in the civilpedia, so that should stay in, but phoenix blood seems unintended)

2)Heavy formation survives principe/honored band upgrades (including things like abomination, and more normal units that simply aren't formation fighters, like berserkers). Even where it might be lore approrpiate, as in phalanx upgrade, it is too powerful (granting the ability to upgrade to elite formation for a bit of gold), and shouldn't be added just because you chose an upgrade instead of building the more elite unit (+30percent strenghth at heavy, changes to +1 attack and defense at elite). Should be removed on upgrade unless from honored band to principes to phalanx (or maybe the base principes having it would regain it even if removed, I don't know how the mechanics work).

EDITED: oops, forgot phalanxes got it as well, so it just about the abominations and berserkers

Odd things:

1) Currently the availability of principes obsoletes the honored band, so you have to upgrade directly and can't build honored bands. I think this should be changed so honored bands don't become obsolete--with headless honored band is almost as powerful as principes on defense (5 +10 percent with the headless promotion vs 6), plus a bonus against archers that complements the principe bonus against melee, while being only about a half cost. There are tons of situations where I would rather build a honored band even after developing infrastructure and tech to build principes, but the system disables it.

EDIT NOTE: Changed above on lighthouse, had forgotten about its bonus

EDIT2: Oops, forgot that phalanxes get heavy formation. So the issue noted above is confined to abomniations and berserkers retaining it and needing it removed.

EDIT 3: New bug:

1) Headless formation on a berserker tranforms them into a weird long bearded man. Taking headless formation on units (at combat III) is an important part of scions, and works well with most of the others (special graphics with head removed)...but if a graphic for berserkers isn't in the works, then I think either leave them with their normal scion berserker graphic even if headless, or make headless get removed if they go berserker.

EDIT 4: Hmm, the tooltip when you mouseover undead promotion says it removes mutated when acquired. It doesn't do this (and presumably shouldn't anyway, as the civilpedia entry for centenni recomends building them, mutating, and then upgrading to undead units as a good way to bypass limits on mutation for undead, and aside from that civilpedia endorsment, it is really fun to do things that way and pretend you experiment with the living and then grant the gift to the best candites). Tooltip should probably be updated to remove that reference.

EDIT5: I'm probably getting somewhat annoying with all the scion minor bug hunting. I'll stop with the above and move on to another civ and see if I can find more signficant ones. ;)
 
i'll try to get to those bugs when i'm done with the current thing.

Cool! I was just trying to exhaust everything I could do to make things behave badly and find remaining issues, so the last round are comparitvelly minor.

I asked my wife about her game as the dark elves (she just completed a 30 hour game), and she reported that she didn't run into any bugs at all. She did note that the Mazartl seriously outpaced every other civ, doubling up their closest rival among the AI, and that the archos did absolutely terribly.

Is there any particular civ it would be helpful for me to look for bugs in? I've been in a bug hunting mood lately, so happy to look where you might find most useful.
 
well the emergent leaders would be a good way to start with, but any civ you want works really ^^ If you really don't know what to choose, you might as well do the Hippus, there shouldn't be much to find but since the thing i'm working is mostly for them anyway ^^
 
well the emergent leaders would be a good way to start with, but any civ you want works really ^^ If you really don't know what to choose, you might as well do the Hippus, there shouldn't be much to find but since the thing i'm working is mostly for them anyway ^^

Cool, emergent leaders and hippus as the two targets it is (I can watch the Two Towers and get myself in a proper horselord mood). Wait, the thing you are working on meaning I should test the hippus under current revision, or I should wait for the next revission to start testing hippus and do emergent for now?
 
Any way you want, either you start on the hippus and i fix the bugs you find while i work on the new feature, or you start on the emergent and you'll test the hippus once the new stuff's in place
 
@BanTingyun:

I agree that Lighthouses are useful for the Scions for the trade routes, I was just saying that it probably makes sense for there to be a Scion UB replacement for the Lighthouse, since the Scions don't benefit from the +1 food that the Lighthouse gives. So you could have the UB give them some other bonus, either to production or commerce, or perhaps trade route yield.

The buildings I was describing as "useless" for the Scions -- because they have no Unhealthiness in Ashes and don't grow with food -- are things like the Granary, Smokehouse, and Salthouse. (The Infirmary and Herbalist Health bonuses are irrelevant to the Scions as currently implemented, but they do Heal units in their city faster, so not completely useless.)
 
Black_Imperator: sounds good!

Nor'easter: I understand, my point is even assuming unhealthiness is brought back then the lighthouse is in no worse position than granary/smokehouse/etc, because for both cases the scions gets part of the benefits but not the full list. Actually, the lighthouse fares even better, because while granaries/smoke houses etc will eventually become obsolete for the scions with the coming of necropolis, the lighthouse will always retain usefullness. So I wouldn't see a greater need for a lighthouse UB than for a granary or smokehouse UB.

Moreover, I actually wouldn't see the need for any of them, because buildings that are situationally more useful for certain civs are a natural thing. The calabim probably get more use out of the food storage aspects of the growth buildings than other civs if they constantly eat population, and the Ljosflar or Mazartl probably don't have much use for the lighthouse's +1 to food at all given their amazing tile working other options, so its a pretty hollow bonus in their cases.
 
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