Land of Aramwyen - Fantasy conversion (pre-alpha)

[Zaelon]

So, With this major update, I also refresh a bit this presentation of the mod.

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----------------------------------INTRODUCTION----------------------------------------
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INFORMATIONS
Stage : Alpha.
Languages : French and English
The workshop item link
Land of Aramwyen is a conversion in a fantasy setting with Elves, Dwarves and magic.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

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FEATURES

- You start the game with a unique hero, your leader. If he dies, you cannot replace it (I'm
thinking about making it a defeat condition)
- You learn new spells instead of technologies, with various effects ranging from summoning
units to destroying ennemies.
- You can buy equipments for your units, if you have enough gold and the appropriate buildings
to buy them from.
- Techs don't limit the buildings, but local resources do and buildings have a higher upkeep. You
can't really build everything everywhere, you need to specialize your cities.
- You can recruit unique heroes from the tavern.
- Brand new civs and social policies.
- 17 custom epic and fantasy tracks playing.

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-------------------------------BACKGROUND STORY--------------------------------------
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At first the world was made of pure ether, the essence of what is now known as magic. Or so
the mages say, for there were no witnesses of this age. Then it began to gather and form
matter. In this matter, life came to be. Plants came first, then animals and monsters, and
finaly intelligent beings. But the process known as the prime creation was not over yet,
shaping and reshaping the world in cataclismic magical phenomena.
This period is known as the wandering. It was not possible to found cities anywhere because
the landscape kept changing. What seemed a fertile land one day could turn into a desert
soon after. But the nomads of these times had to deal with all sorts of dangers, including
roaming monsters and magic storms.
Now the world has found a sort of balance between ether and matter. Enough for the
wandering tribes of survivors to consider settling down. Many were just scattered people
without unity, called the barbarians. Some were more numerous and advanced and built
city-states. And a few were led by rare people gifted with charisma, ambition and leadership,
able to bring them even further than the foundation of mere cities. You are one such person,
one of the rulers of the land of Aramwyen.
There are three major tribes that are Humans, Elves and Monsters, which in turn split into a
several subtribes like Wood-Elves and High-Elves for instance. There also is a variety of minor
tribes such as Dwarves.

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FEATURES TO COME SOON
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- Strategic improvements (towers, castles and other improvements to increase defense and
provide ranged attacks
- Random events (the heroes will later be recruitable through this system rather than from
the tavern, as it now does
- More spells, heroes, civs and policies
- Temporary spells (curses)
- More eye candy for spells, if possible
- More 3D models (summons), if possible too
- Multiplayer (at least hotseat)

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KNOWN BUGS
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- The owner of spell targets sometimes bugs (especialy with barbarians)
- Mages can still cast spells after they moved

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CREDITS
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I leeched art from deviant art, but I left the artists signature when possible and will remove
any asset on demand from the original artist
2D Art comes from Stardock's fallen enchantress and wen-m's anima graphics, mainly
Took the reforestation mod and some 3D models from FramedArchitecture's mods
Took the plot iterator mod
Music tracks include Apocalyptica, Two steps from hell, Nox Arcana, Immediate music and
X-Ray dog.

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Feedback and bug reports very welcome ;D

 

[texdionis]

Interesting but... no techs anymore?
So all the buildings are available at the same time?
Sounds weird, but may worth a try
Keep up the good work

 

[Zaelon]

Well actually there are techs (spells) but they don't limit regular units and buildings you can make.
Buildings cannot be built in every city because 1/ they have high upkeep, so you will only want those you do need, and 2/ quite a few of them require local resources. You will have to prioritize when chosing what buildings to make, and to specialize you cities, for you cannot afford to build everything everywhere (you are not supposed to, at least).
But then again yes, it is meant to change the gameplay

 

[Zaelon]

Well, after further testing I noticed quite a few bugs which I am trying to adress right now. Here is a list of known bugs and imbalances in v1 so far :
- cavalry and some ships are too big
- light cavalry cannot be trained
- TXT_KEY_* HELP for naval units and unique units are missing
- the spreading of summoning is currently not a clean way, I'm working on an event based one.
- units' production cost is too low and building's upkeep needs tweaks
- some of the great people's improvements are missing

And if I have time today after I fixed those bugs I will try to add some spells or features.
If you notice unreported bugs, crashes, inconsistencies or gameplay imbalances, please report them ;pWell, if anyone tries it I mean ^^

 

[Zaelon]

Update v2 :
- light cavalry can be trained
- naval units and few more got their help text fixed
- cavalry and naval units resized
- added the build great improvement to great people
- tweaks to units and buildings stats
- summoning still uses a religion, but it is handled in a lot cleaner way
- added a hero unit for testing purposes, more to come

I didn't have time to implement more spells yet.

 

[Bandersnatching]

Thoughts and experiences after playing about 1/2 a game from the mod (not entirely complete list, though)
I played to turn 187 on your mod before something came up that froze the game, so that's good news I guess. The game froze when I tried to grow a forest with an Archmage; it was the first time I had tried to do so and I don't think any of the AI had done that, as they were playing as per normal civ (i.e. very poorly)
Also, whenever my mouse hovered over the dwarf hero, I got this error message:
Unable to load texture (Hero Atlas.dds)
Has that come up for you?
Gameplay imbalance: I think you need too many buildings in a city for it to function well and be able to produce the units you want. Perhaps allow some 1st/2nd tier units to be built without special buildings?
Also, I was playing as the Wood Elves and I noticed that one of my cities did not start with an Archery Range. It only happened once to my knowledge.
User Interface thing: wayyy too many units and stuff visible from turn 1 in all city build lists. Is is possible to make them invisible if you can't build them, rather than just shaded out?
The boats were huge! I did like how barbarian boats would smack up coastal cities until the AI started defending them properly. While that is a good start, I think you should make those big, imposing barbarians navies even scarier by allowing them to heal and giving them a bonus vs. cities so that they can legitimately threaten coastal areas.
I had horses, and for a while had iron, but was never able to build cavalry or knights (also had 1 mithril).
I was able to buy the missile things with faith after building a lot of mage buildings in the capital, but was never able to buy wolves.
There was some other mod (I believe Sengouku Jidai) that allowed you to buy specific units with faith, rather than outright give Holy Warriors. Seeing as you only want fireballs and stuff like summoned wolves to be bought with faith, would it be too hard to make the purchasing of those specific units a belief in the overall religion?
Is it possible to make mithril more valuable to the AI? I never saw it in high concentrations and it is a very valuable resource, but the AI thinks of it just as it would iron - 45 gp for a 30 turn deal.
There were no city-state quests aside from 'kill the invading barbarians'. Was this something that you did intentionally or was it caused by the mod changes?
Hope this helps, Zaelon!

 

[Zaelon]

Thanks a lot for the feedback Bandersnatching !

Yes boats are huge, but trirems are weak. I haven't put much love in the naval units yet, I have been focusing on things that didn't work at all xD

I will check that hero texture. It seemed to display but it might be lacking one size !

I tried to grow a forest without crashing, but actually I didn't wait for the whole 6 turns to make it to be over. As it was an imported mod I assumed it worked and didn't further test it. I'll investigate that. Well I'll investigate all those bugs actualy. I'm currently working on v3 so that's a good thing you pointed those things out.

I could train a horseman but actually didn't try heavy cavalry, I'll check this. I will also see if I can increase the AI value of mithril and magic cristals.
The idea of putting the magic things inside a belief is interesting, I'll see if it is compatible with the required tech (I mean if it will still check that the tech is available before making the unit buyable).
I too found that the number of units greyed out in cities was a bit annoying but I didn't remove it as I thought it might be helpful to know what to build to get there. I might try to remove that and make a building chart in pdf instead.

As for the number of buildings required to train units being high and expensive ... well it is meant so so far. As there are no "techs" to limit what units you can train, in order to prevent you from getting the very best units from start you need another gameplay mechanic. This one forces you to have a balanced and strong economy before you can reach tier two units, and at least one huge city before you tier three ones. Here are the unit requirements :

Tier 0 (no requirements) : militia and scout

Tier 1 : swordsman (barracks), spearman (barracks), archer (archery range), light cavalry (stable and horse), battering ram (siege workshop), apprentice (library and cristal), chariot archer (stable, archery range and horse)

tier 2 : longswordsman (barracks, forge and iron), pikeman (barracks, forge and iron), composite bowman (archery range, forge and iron), heavy cavalry (stable, forge and iron), catapult (siege workshop, forge and iron), mage (mage tower and cristal), mounted archer (stable, archery range, forge, horse and iron)

tier 3 : praetorian (barracks, arcane forge and mithril), halberdier (barracks, arcane forge and mithril), marksman (archeryrange, arcane forge and mithril), knight (stable, arcane forge, horse and mithril), trebuchet (siege workshop, arcane forge and mithril), archmage (arcane chamber and cristal)

So to get tier one units you only need barracks (or an archery range, or stable, ... depending on the unit category). Then tier two ones also need a forge (and iron). And at last for tier 3 you need an arcane forge (hence a forge and library) and mithril. Do you think it is too much ?

Missile units require a mage tower to be purchased, and summoned units a summoning circle (and of course the corresponding techs).
Monolith => Library => Mage tower => Summoning circle (requires one cristal).
Actually I might just make the summoning circle available right after the monolith in v3, alse you get to summon units too late in the game, while not all summoned units are meant to be powerful.

Anyway so far summons and missiles use the existing faith purchase system because it is an easy implementation but it is not the way it will be handle ultimately(I don't find it too clean). I mean to create a spellbook from which to cast spells, but it will take some time to get it done, since I'm not too familiar with the UI coding right now.

Edit : about city-states quests : well I didn't change much about them, except the names of the expansion ones (still the others to do...) so it might be a side effect of another change.

I hope I adressed all your comments. Thank you again for the feedback, it is helpful.

 

[FramedArchitect]

I was able to buy the missile things with faith after building a lot of mage buildings in the capital, but was never able to buy wolves.
... would it be too hard to make the purchasing of those specific units a belief in the overall religion?

As far as I know you can only use faith purchase via religion, as you mention, though every religion can have the follower EnablesFaithBuying set to true. This allows purchase of ANY units with FaithCost > 0 and the RequiresFaithPurchaseEnabled set to true. This effectively means you cannot have civ or religion specific faith purchasable units... bummer.

EDIT: I was going to mention that the most recent Reforestation mod will try to place a forest type resource on the new forest, which may cause a crash if resources have been changed or deleted. It also requires Fertilizer tech... so may cause conflicts and/or not work if that tech isn't available.

 

[Zaelon]

Yes the problem with the current implementation of summoned units and destruction spells is that they appear also in the regular production list (although they are out of price). I need to add a variable to make them hidden in the normal production list. Then it should be ok, I guess.

Framedarchitecture : I didn't add or delete resources, I just renamed some and changed their 2D icons. So it shouldn't make it crash, I suppose. I also changed the prereq tech to the corresponding spell, made it buildable by mage units only and changed the texts to suit my mod's flavor.

My mages units aren't ok yet. In Faerun they have an animation for ranged attacks, which they don't use in my mod (must have screwed the setup...! maybe you could help me with that ;p). And as they are not supposed to be workers they don't have a working animation either. Hence so far they are most of the time just idle !

When I tried to grow a forest with them they changed the tile to a sort of plantation the first turn, then instead of staying 6 turns they were already ready to move. So actualy I didn't get to see the actual forest !

Side note : I'm working on the last features : buying equipements and casting individual enchantment spells. I hope I can make an update with both those features this weekend. I will also try to add spells and heros, I hope I will have enough time for all that xD

 

[Zaelon]

V3 Patchnote :
- Added the equipement feature (promotions buyable from cities depending on buildings) - the window will be empty if none is available
- Added the enchant feature (promotion you buy with mana depending on the spells you know) - the window will be empty if none is available
- Added promotions : 18 equipements (including 4 civspecific ones) and 15 enchants
- Added 14 new spells (enchants)
- fixed a bug that prevented arcane forge building
- summoning circle now only requires a monolith and is twice faster to build
- fixed goody huts bugs

 

[Zaelon]

V4 PTACHNOTE : (half of the promised update)
- Added the mana upkeep for summons and enchants, making mana more important (and the magus civ more interesting), and updated the mana tooltip accordingly.
- Fixed a bug in the enchant screen.
- Changed the name of the religion to "Summoning".

 

[Craig_Sutter]

You can link a unit to a specific religion.

First create a building that requires a belief. Similar to mosque and pagoda.

Next have that building create a unique resource.

Finally create a unit that requires that resource and have it purchasable with faith.

In my mod I do this with berserkers and a berserker hall building.

 

[FramedArchitect]

You can link a unit to a specific religion.

Interesting workaround!

 

[FramedArchitect]

I like your interface ideas Zaelon, and I have enjoyed playing the mod thus far. I wish you would join me in refining and expanding the Faerun Scenario, which needs a lot of work and somebody with a sincere interest in fantasy genre.

 

[Zaelon]

@Craig : I'm not too interested in the religion system and do not intend on developping further. I think magic and social policies provide enough depth to the civilization's specialization so far. The bonuses religion would provide would be redundant and hence unnecessary. At least so I think. I might eventually change my mind about this later.
But this workaround seems smart though. It is always interesting to stores thoses ideas, just in case.

@FramedArchitecture : I have leeched a few things from Faerun so I guess it is only fair that I contribute to it in return. Especialy since I am fond of the D&D. Unfortunately between my job, my mod and quite a few more personal projects, I don't have that much time. What we could do is work on interface/mechanics that we could share on both mods. I can PM you my skype if you want.

 

[Zaelon]

V5 PTACHNOTE : mostly a content update, rather than a gameplay mechanics one
- Fixed a few text strings
- AI tweaks, should make some civs more agressive (tell me if they declare war more often now !)
- Fixed the hero texture bug
- Lumbermills can now be built on jungle tiles
- Stable now improves local cows, horses and sheeps
- Spies and assassins now have hidden nationality
- Fixed the assassin power bug
- Added two civs :
* Horse lords : best cavalry, many bonuses for horse tiles, get more horses
* Tribe of the marsh : good in jungle and marsh tiles, cities can get more from those tiles too. Chamans (healers that have magic abilities)
- Added two heroes (an Archer and an Assassin)

 

[Calavente]

Zealon, nice system you have here.

I propose you to create some "wonders" ala cIV.. to help boost all cities for the unit constructions.
like :
-Collosseum : needs barracks and forge in city, "policy x" gives : barracks in every city.
thus, once you can build tier II units in capital, you can make investement that help all other cities to build tier I units.
it would then work a bit like "spreading" of the knowledge.

because otherwise, every new city will have to grow from naught...
and thus it will be very boring in the long term to developpe your empire.

or maybe you could create some other units/spells that help build building faster and help boost production.:

university + archery range : can build master archer : (not very good unit) but : can build archery range in cities (sacrifice the unit)

or university + arcehry range : worker can get "archery trainer" promotion : allow to sacrifice to build archery.
university + engineering workshop : worker can get "engineer" and/or "architect" promotion : can build wall in cities and engineering workshop:
two ways :
-paying for the spell (with gold, and takes 6 turns)
-sacrifice the unit... no gold, instant, you lose the unit.

or any archer with level .. 4? 6? 10? can get promotion : trainer : +10% xp to nearby units, allow casting : "create archery range" : sacrifice the unit.

etc...

I know it might be very hard to code, and even impossible for the AI.. but it would be a way to help diffusion of knowledge once it has been "invented" in a city.

 

[Zaelon]

@Calavente : That's actually an interesting idea.
It is possible to spread buildings through policies, for instance free barracks in the X first cities in a military branch, same for the forge in a production oriented branch.
As for the more specialized buildings, I don't know. You don't really need one in all and every town. You can only build stable when you have horses, and you may have one city specialized for archer training, one for mages, one for siege units, etc.
The idea of a unit sacrificing to create such a building immediately seems fun though, I might consider trying that.

Somes civs are oriented toward one or another unit type, wood elves have (edit : not barracks ! sorry) free archery range in all their cities for instance, and Magus can get mage towers more easily, etc. So I guess you can always get your favorite units quickly if you chose you civ wisely.

I'll think about those suggestions.
Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Calavente]

Ah. I didn't knew that.

and just to complete my initial idea:

I was just thinking of some way to create mid-late game "shortcuts" so that end-game new cities don't have to start from scratch.
like mid-end-game cities (in FFH) can directly build forge because the tech is known, while early game cities built many things before forge, because the tech wasn't known.

in your game you don't have techs; limiters are buildings...
this means that every city is on is own and must start on the exact same path (save fro specialisation).

i don't know exactly but if you have the following line :
fair -> market -> Merchant guild -> Bank -> Exchange

maybe you could have "merchant guild" give a fair to every city so every city can start quicker on the economic path. And the Bank give a market in every city.
Or 3 banks allow for building 1 "central bank", which give free market in every city
(a level n of development enables to GIVE level n-2 or n-3)

or merchant guild enable to quickly create markets in other cities:
-merchant units can found markets.
-city-spell is enabled once you have merchant-guild in one city; can be used in any city, once per turn, creates a market in exchange for xxxx gold.(or faith)…
Maybe it can even create a market without needing a fair…
(a level n of development enables to QUICKEN level n-1 or n-2)

In the second way it just transfer costs from new city to whole civ (cost in gold / sacrifice an experienced unit) or to a developed city (sacrifice the "caster"). It also increases developpement in that new city only need to build the necessary parts, and the supplementary parts are built with the aide of the rest of the empire.

 

[Zaelon]

Here are my thoughts about it ; lower level buildings could be given through policies in the right branch (monolith, forge, barracks, watchtower or market maybe), while medium level buildings could be given by world wonders (hence not everyone could have them, and a civcould hardly get them all).

I will also add a civ with the roman trait (buildings that exist in the capital are built faster in other cities).