By Falamar's beard!
He has one?
I don't think making Guardian of Nature available at Way of the Forests is a big deal. The tech is a bit more expensive now, and more importantly it is not as powerful now that Bloom is harder to get. It is a Nature II spell now so instead of being able to cast it with Priests of the Leaves as soon as you build them you have to get Nature mana and then level up Mages or Druids.
I changed lairs to push their explorers off and spawn the big bads there so that you couldn't exploit them by surrounding them with units. It seems to be working just fine. It does seem odd that you could move a boat out of the ice though, unless you just mean there was ice in most of the surrounding tiles.
The Desert Shrine gives disciple units built in the city a free promotion pick for each non-floodplains/non-oasis desert tiles nearby. I meant that to be within a 2 tile radius but accidentally made it 3. I meant for it to allow up to 25 free promotions in an essentially worthless city, which is quite high, but not as bad as the current upper limit of 49. I'm thinking I should also make it not apply to tiles with resources, improvements, or maybe any yields.
Letting buildings give specialists based on improvements is a BtS mechanic that FfH just wasn't using. Tying it to state religion would be complicated and require SDK work, which I'm not willing to get into at this time. The closest I could come to it would be having alternate versions of the same temple, which are switched out in python each turn based on state religion. That seems needlessly complex. I'll likely just scale back what buildings use the mechanic. Also, I'm thinking of adding a Dwarven Mine improvement, which upgrade from mines in Khazad lands and can be built directly by Mud Golems. I may make RoK temples give their bonus based on these instead of normal mines.
This is default Civ4 behavior, the game doesn't care what kind of tile (impassable, etc) you're on, it only cares about the tile you're trying to move into. This also means you can get the same results for peaks and possibly pushing land unit into the water if you don't check for those cases when you push them off the lair. You should just be able to call the unit's CanMoveInto(pPlot) (I think, double check that) method to validate potential plots to push them into.It does seem odd that you could move a boat out of the ice though...
I just tested it in a quick game where I gave everyone a Mercurian Gate from the start. When the AI is allowed to cast the spell, they do so promptly. They wouldn't even wait one turn after Basium's death before calling in reinforcements. I'm thinking I may want to scale back how many free angels Basium gets, but otherwise it seems to be working quite well.I gave the Mercurian Gate spells each a high iAIWeight value, but it seems I forgot to give them <bAllowAI>1 so the AI probably isn't actually allowed to use the spells. That has been fixed on my computer, but not yet tested.
No, Kael changed that for FfH about the time he introduced the Maelstrom unique feature. Being in a tile with an impassible feature makes non-flying units stuck. as he explained, he was actually in a non-ice ocean tile surrounded by ice on all sides but where the lair was, and the lair was guarded by several monsters. My code already pushes them to the nearest tile that is passable to them (although I recently noticed it doesn't have a problem with pushing units into the borders of a civ with whom you their owner does not have an open border agreement).This is default Civ4 behavior, the game doesn't care what kind of tile (impassable, etc) you're on, it only cares about the tile you're trying to move into. This also means you can get the same results for peaks and possibly pushing land unit into the water if you don't check for those cases when you push them off the lair. You should just be able to call the unit's CanMoveInto(pPlot) (I think, double check that) method to validate potential plots to push them into.
No, Kael changed that for FfH about the time he introduced the Maelstrom unique feature. Being in a tile with an impassible feature makes non-flying units stuck. as he explained, he was actually in a non-ice ocean tile surrounded by ice on all sides but where the lair was, and the lair was guarded by several monsters. My code already pushes them to the nearest tile that is passable to them (although I recently noticed it doesn't have a problem with pushing units into the borders of a civ with whom you their owner does not have an open border agreement).
III III
III -> IMP
IIL IIP
I=ice; L=lair; M=mycaraval; P=pirate
You said you were able to move out of the Ice? I don't consider it a big deal, but I haven't seen the game act that way in years and don't see how anything I did could have changed it.
The code that spawns the Mercurians in my version should only be called if there is a free tile where the city's inhabitants can be moved. I just noticed that the IF statement checking to see if the player is human is not indented properly. It is not within the larger if statement as it should be, yet the things below it are intended thrice instead of twice. I'm surprised the code ever works this way. Fixing this indent should make the spell do nothing in situations like yours. I might add some block not allowing the gate to be built on a single tile island.