FlavourMod 2

[Jean Elcard]

totally awesome! the only change I disagree with is the nerf to farms for elves, since it means they have less choice in improvements now ( cottage all the way instead of having the choice to choose aristocracy and spamming farms for a hybrid SE/FE )

Those changes are all open for discussion. To be honset I'm thinking about adding the 3 food / population feature. It's wokring very well in Rise of Mankind and other mods and it would open the door to be more flexible with civ specific food penalties and bonuses. Grassland could produce three food by default marsh two and so on. Would help to make Marsh more distinct. But that's a thing from the future. Let's discuss the recent changes first.

a bonus to tundra for the doviello would be nice as well

Take another look, Tundra is like Grassland for them now. (+1 Food than normal)

EDIT: Sorry, I was thinking you meant the Illians. I'll have to think about the Dovilello. If they get the bonus they should get a penalty somewhere else.

 

[razzach]

Quick question: This is included in Orbis modmod right? (Latest patch I mean). Thanks!

 

[Valkrionn]

Ahwaric merged it into Orbis so yes it is.

 

[Ahwaric]

Those changes are all open for discussion. To be honset I'm thinking about adding the 3 food / population feature. It's wokring very well in Rise of Mankind and other mods and it would open the door to be more flexible with civ specific food penalties and bonuses.
Take another look, Tundra is like Grassland for them now. (+1 Food than normal)
EDIT: Sorry, I was thinking you meant the Illians. I'll have to think about the Dovilello. If they get the bonus they should get a penalty somewhere else.

First of all, thanks again for the code - it really helped

The 3 food per pop is working quite well in Orbis. AI needs some work I think, but it needs anyway. It helps with the flavour, too. Some farms required, plus cities tend to be smaller, which is expected ay FfH tech level. Before industrial revolution, only one city reached 1 million population - it it was Rome.
I disagree on doviello. They are already not one of the most powerful civs. The ability to use marginal terrain with the same effect as plains (I have added 1 ) helps both their flavour and economy. In end of winter, especially your extended version, this can be quite powerful early game, but this is a time when Doviello are expected to shine anyway.

Quick question: This is included in Orbis modmod right? (Latest patch I mean). Thanks!

Well, more or less. Still trying to get growth control to work, plus I did some changes, i.e. Illians do not get the penalties either. They often start on normal terrain and that handicaps them... But I am curious how the changes will work.

 

[Elm]

# Illians: changed +2 Food from Ice to +1 Food and +1 Production
# Illians: +1 Food from Tundra, -1 Food from Grass, -1 Food and -1 procuction from Plains

It may make more sense to make Ice=Grass, and Tundra=Plains for Illians. Then the could scorch ice->plains if they want production. It would be nice for the temple to promote growth (grass) by default. They can always mine for production (not sure how good the AI is at changing terrain types with scorch/spring) So I think that Illians are better with ice=grass + mine for production, then have the option of changing ice->tundra.

Another thing to consider, is to add 1 commerce to ice/river tiles. Now that ice is now useful for something, it doesn't really make sense to have no river benefit.

 

[Verdian]

Does casting Scorch in other civ's borders cause you to declare war? Because if not, I forsee a lot of deserts in my enemies' lands.

In general, though, I think this makes Scorch too useful. The amount of terra-forming now possible makes starting locations for the player irrelevant once you reach Knowledge of the Ether. I like the idea of Ice to Tundra, and of course Plains to Desert, but allowing the whole chain of possibilities? Look at the spell Revitalize, which requires a Tier 3 unit, in comparrision.

I would prefer keeping Scorch the way it is, and letting Marshes be drained at Sanitation.

 

[Valkrionn]

Scorch does indeed cause war.

 

[loffenx]

I think it would be a good idea to list the changes in plot- and improvementyields on the first page, I got quite chocked when my dear farms turned useless on me (as the elves) and it took some time to realise that this mod was the cause.

I would also recommend a way to disable that feature of the mod, I love the original function of the mod but these yieldchanges was not at all what I was looking for at the moment. Wil have to uninstall in the meantime

 

[Jean Elcard]

I disagree on doviello. They are already not one of the most powerful civs. The ability to use marginal terrain with the same effect as plains (I have added 1 ) helps both their flavour and economy. In end of winter, especially your extended version, this can be quite powerful early game, but this is a time when Doviello are expected to shine anyway.

Let's do without a penalty then. Doviello +1 Production and Extended End of Winter sounds just too cool.

It may make more sense to make Ice=Grass, and Tundra=Plains for Illians. Then the could scorch ice->plains if they want production.

Illians do not get the penalties either. They often start on normal terrain and that handicaps them... But I am curious how the changes will work.

I had it that way first, but decided against it after I saw they would more likely start near Tundra than Ice. But since then I had another idea and might change it back. Why not make the Illian Palace act like a Temple of the Hand? I'm also thinking, it might be good idea to make the Temples give a mix of Tundra and Ice and let them cool down Terrain more slowly than now? Like in a reversed End of Winter.

Another thing to consider, is to add 1 commerce to ice/river tiles. Now that ice is now useful for something, it doesn't really make sense to have no river benefit.

Worth considerering. But it sounds somehow strange to me to trade via boots on a frozen over river, and that's what the commerce bonus is probably about. If I could give the river bonus to the Illians only, it would be an non-brainer, but I can't.

In general, though, I think this makes Scorch too useful. ... I would prefer keeping Scorch the way it is, and letting Marshes be drained at Sanitation.

I know, I'm not too happy with the availibility of the whole chain either, especially not with how easy it is to scorch all the way through from Ice to Desert. Two things I did to prevent this are the monster spawns and the chance for fire, but that's probably not enough. There are two solutions to the problem that came to my mind:

1. Make a plot only scorchable once.
2. Add a Mana System: Each Mana Node you own would then lead to the accumulation of a certain amount of available Mana of the repective type each turn. You could then use this mana to pay for spells. Terraforming via Scorch could be made very costly. Maybe you would also have to pay upkeep.

I think it would be a good idea to list the changes in plot- and improvementyields on the first page. I got quite chocked when my dear farms turned useless on me (as the elves) and it took some time to realise that this mod was the cause.

I'll add this information to the first page, as soon as I decide, which changes will persist. For now it should be enough, if the Dawn of Man Screen, the Pedia and the Flag Help tells you about it.

The -1 Food from elven farms change will have to go it seems. Most people seem to like there overpoweredness ...

I would also recommend a way to disable that feature of the mod, I love the original function of the mod but these yieldchanges was not at all what I was looking for at the moment. Wil have to uninstall in the meantime

To have an option to disable everything that's a game play change is becoming more and more difficult as FlavourMod is growing into something more than just Flavour Starts. Sorry. Is it only the -1 Food from farms you don't like? To disable this would be an easy XML change you could easily make yourself.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Let's do without a penalty then. Doviello +1 Production and Extended End of Winter sounds just too cool.

I had it that way first, but decided against it after I saw they would more likely start near Tundra than Ice. But since then I had another idea and might change it back. Why not make the Illian Palace act like a Temple of the Hand? I'm also thinking, it might be good idea to make the Temples give a mix of Tundra and Ice and let them cool down Terrain more slowly than now? Like in a reversed End of Winter.

The -1 Food from elven farms change will have to go it seems. Most people seem to like there overpoweredness ...

these 3 sound great

suggestion to "nerf" scorch: make the "new" possibilities require a few turns to cast. so for example ice -> tundra and plains -> desert is only gonna take 1 turn, while tundra - > grassland takes 3 turns ( or 4 or 5, whatever seems balanced, possibly scaled with gamespeed ) . this way the new perk is retained while the spell does not become overpowered. ( since it's gonna take a long time and/or a lot of adepts to terraform everything, so starting terrain is STILL important )

 

[Verdian]

As for Scorch, I like the idea of only letting it be cast on a tile once with the exception of plains. This is simple to understand and severly limits the possibilities of abuse. I say "with the exception of plains" so that you can freely switch from plain to desert like you can in normal FFH (with Water 1).

I think making it dependant on mana types or something is too complicated. And having a caster sit around to wait for terrain change sounds dull without really solving the problem of being too powerful.

 

[Ahwaric]

Why not make the Illian Palace act like a Temple of the Hand? I'm also thinking, it might be good idea to make the Temples give a mix of Tundra and Ice and let them cool down Terrain more slowly than now? Like in a reversed End of Winter.

A very good idea, especially since AI does not seem to like building Temples.

Worth considerering. But it sounds somehow strange to me to trade via boots on a frozen over river, and that's what the commerce bonus is probably about. If I could give the river bonus to the Illians only, it would be an non-brainer, but I can't.

You can always use sleds . But for me, if it is a river that appears on the map, then it should not be considered frozen all the time. Not very safe to travel, but still quite nice.
I generally have problems with snow. Tundra can have trees all over, so it is more like boreal forests, and if snow=glacier, then why rivers do flow through it? And you can found cities on it? So, I think that snow is like extreme north part of tundra, with no trees and almost no vegetation...
Anyway, I added commerce to snow rivers a long time ago, for everyone. That 1 does not make snow cities any better, while for illians it is a nice extra. But, on the other hand, adding commerce to riverside forest/jungle was the first thing I modded in Civ IV years ago (no really did not make any sense at all - it was quite the opposite in hard to travel areas, look at Amazon, Congo, Mekong or Siberian rivers).

I know, I'm not too happy with the availibility of the whole chain either, especially not with how easy it is to scorch all the way through from Ice to Desert. Two things I did to prevent this are the monster spawns and the chance for fire, but that's probably not enough. There are two solutions to the problem that came to my mind:

Making the plot scorchable only once would be ideal - it would balance it to other lvl 1 spells. If you want further improvements, you need to use vitalize.
I am not sure how would it be coded, especially without slowing turns (a lot of data after all), but you are MUCH better in that departament than I am

Another possibility is to make the spell have i.e. 3 turn dleay. If bloom does, why not total terraforming?
It would make it useless as an offensive spell, but it more or less is even now (unless for malakim). Plus, I do not mind.

The -1 Food from elven farms change will have to go it seems. Most people seem to like there overpoweredness ...

Well, I like this change in Orbis. Elves seem to have a bit smaller cities, while still being powerfull. But I have 3 per pop, and base farm yield is 2. Here, it makes farms useless without sanitation.
In general, I hate elves having so much population - they are supposed to life long, do not have many children (unless FfH elves are different to all other I have heard about) and were almost extinct in Age of Ice...
I think that part of the problem is ancient forest yield. An extra that only elves can use to it's best - other civs can't build anything (that is why I decided to add forester improvement). Changing it to extra would balance it better.

 

[Jean Elcard]

Scorch: I'll go for the Scorch each tile only once solution. To add a delay is not really solving the problem (as Veridian stated). I don't think the scorch it only once solution would be to difficult to code. I just need to add a boolean flag to each plot to mark a plot as already scorched, check this status in the scorch prerequisites and display it in the plot mouseover help. Of course there would be some spells which reset the scorched-flag, but that's not a problem. Just have to identify them by looking over all of them. Spring is probably a candidate. Any other spell that comes to your mind?

Illian refrigeration: To make the Palace act as Temple would be only one solution to counter the Illian dislike for building temples. Another would be to "slowly" cool down everything that falls into the Illian borders. Ideally there would be also a new Terrain/Feature/Bonus XML tag to identify the cooler/hotter version of a Terrain/Feature/Bonus. Could need this for End of Winter too. Will have to decide which solution to go for. I prefer the second one, but the first one ist more easy to implement (maybe as temporary solution).

Commerce from rivers everywhere is going to be in the next version. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Spring is probably a candidate. Any other spell that comes to your mind?

Vitalize, I think that's all.

Illian refrigeration: To make the Palace act as Temple would be only one solution to counter the Illian dislike for building temples. Another would be to "slowly" cool down everything that falls into the Illian borders. Ideally there would be also a new Terrain/Feature/Bonus XML tag to identify the cooler/hotter version of a Terrain/Feature/Bonus. Could need this for End of Winter too. Will have to decide which solution to go for. I prefer the second one, but the first one ist more easy to implement (maybe as temporary solution).

Commerce from rivers everywhere is going to be in the next version. Makes a lot of sense.

sounds cool ( pun intended ) . if they're gonna get commerce from snow rivers, the only thing that keeps them from actually WANTING to cool the entire world is the fact that their workers build improvements slower on tundra/ice. so, giving winterborn a bonus to workrate for tundra/ice that brings their workrate on those terrains back to normal would be great and make a lot of sense imho.

then to make things more interesting instead of ICE EVERYWHERE, you could set the temple of the hand to change the BFC terrain depending on what it was originally. so hotter terrains ( desert, plains, marshes ) could result in tundra, and colder terrains ( grassland, tundra ) could result in ice. make them get 1F 1H from ice and 2F from tundra and you're set. ( imho tundra should give more food than ice does )

if you want to give bonuses from colder terrains to the Doviello, I'd give them +1F from both tundra and ice. that way they will be able to thrive in their beloved tundra, and somehow survive in ice, although it's not gonna be pretty. alternatively you could give them +1F from tundra and +1H from ice. it's gonna be weird to see a terrain that only gives 1H and no food, but I think that could be interesting, although maybe not very feasible. I don't like giving them +1H from tundra since I don't think that makes much sense ( they are masters of tundra survival so they get food easier there, but it's hard to justify increased production from it. otoh, ice can be used to build igloos and whatnot )

 

[Ahwaric]

alternatively you could give them +1F from tundra and +1H from ice. it's gonna be weird to see a terrain that only gives 1H and no food, but I think that could be interesting, although maybe not very feasible. I don't like giving them +1H from tundra since I don't think that makes much sense ( they are masters of tundra survival so they get food easier there, but it's hard to justify increased production from it. otoh, ice can be used to build igloos and whatnot )

Well, I think the other way: +1 form tundra and 1 from ice (but hammers are ok for me, too). Plains do get extra hammer at the expense of food, right. Now why is that? I always say, there are mostly animals that get hunted or herded. And you can use skins, horns, bones... If so, doviello should have extra hammer from tundra...
Extra from ice would come from some hunting done there, but following the above logic, is just as good...
Also, remeber that both settlers and military units use hammers when produced...

Regarding scorch, I decided to change it to: snow -> tundra -> plains -> desert
The reason is, both tundra (including boreal forests) and "snow" tend to get low precipitation and simple warming would make it praire rather than temperate forest/meadow.
For grassland vitalize is needed.
I decided to exclude marshes from the chain (as they tend to be more dependant on rivers and terrain level than climate). It is ok in Orbis as they are really good terrain. Here it should be kept to be able to get rid of useless terrain. But I think it would be nice to get a random terrain from tundra - be it grass/marsh/plain.

Ok, I better stop now as I can go like that for ages... That is what happens if you talk of your job

Edit: I think that both scorch and cooling in illian lands are great
Some idea I got after listening to complains that temple of the hand removes flood plains - a feature that replaces them. I have added crystal plains +1 , plus +1 if illians. Actual bonuses are not important, something that replaces flood plains and not just make them disappear is...

 

[Valkrionn]

First off, I'd prefer the second implementation for the Illians. Seems cleaner to me.

Second, if you do implement a scorch limit, I think that the Malakim should be an exception, if just from grass on down.

 

[Ahwaric]

I agree, no need to link it to palace, just to the civ. I do not think xml additions are needed, but up to you

 

[Jean Elcard]

The advantage of having XML tags available to declare the warmer and colder version of a Terrain makes it easier to show this info in the help texts (as you probably know). I'm still thinking about how to do it right, though. Should I add a temperature range for each Terrain or should I make it a simpler step system from one terrain type to the next? What I have to do is to save the original terrain type somewhere. Warming plots up again to the origial climate should be possible after all.

First of all I'll have to add my complete speed hack for large scale terrain changes from Fall Further though. It seems I'll need it here more often now too (not only for Hell Terrain Spread).

 

[Verdian]

Please just make it a step system. >_> Unless this is a code thing, and not an implimentation thing.

 

[Jean Elcard]

I tend to complicate things sometimes.

Btw, it would be nice to have a python function like "onPlotGained" to do the cooling and some other things right. A shame nothing like this exists in the base game.