[MOD] MagisterModmod

[Cutlass]

Once again I've run into a waiting for other civ crash. And going through your directions, I cannot find the log files to look for. And since I was forced to "upgrade" to win10, I can't find any way to search for files.

 

[AndrejH]

Barbarians seem to never build Archeron, the red dragon. So the cult of the dragon never starts. What's up with that?

 

[Cutlass]

They do. But only if they have a city on an island someplace where it's left alone for a really long time. Maybe make it possible to build it faster?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I have decided that the Pool of Tears should cure Lunatics of Lunacy, transforming them into whatever unit would be conscripted in the nearest city (or an Axeman if that is unavailable).

Based on Kael's recent reddit post, I added a new wonder (for now called the Carcer Judicii, although I'm considering alternate names) available at Pass Trough the Ether with the Order State religion, which adds a promotion that acts as a combination of Demon Slaying and an inverse Prophecy Mark (reducing the AC when the unit is built, and increasing it with the unit's death) as well as binding Demons much the same way as the Clava Vindex does. It won't prevent mortals from becoming demons, but will remove immortality from demons and make them ineligible for Resurrection.

I also made Witch Hunters trainable with Basilicas.

I made Prophecy Mark grant some free spell caster xp and a 5% AC bonus, so the Sheaim might not be the only civ to want the Prophecy of Ragnorok wonder.


Since I've improved other religions, I think the Ashen Veil needs a boost too. I never find myself using Sacrifice the Weak, so to make it more desirable I made it allow sacrificing population to hurry production. That means you don't have to run Slavery with it, but can use Guilds or Caste System to give you the option of using both hurrying methods at the same time.

I still find myself always trying to rush adoption of either the Runes of Kilmorph of the Empyrean when playing as an evil civ, just to allow me to construct Altars of the Luonnotar in the early game before pursuing a more thematic religion. As such, I'm thinking about removing the alignment prepreq for the wonders, at least at the lower levels. (For the final Altar, which provides not only victory but a protection form Barbarian incursions if that victory option is disabled, I'm considering requiring a Neutral alignment.) That seems like a big enough balance change that I'd like player feedback before proceeding though.

Thanks for keeping FfH alive! I just installed your modmod, and I must say I'm very impressed with your thoroughness.

One issue I found that might be from MNAI or from your work, is that it's possible for a unit to cast Join and Split Commander in the same turn. In the original FfH I had earlier, you could only cast one of them per unit and turn. In effect, this means that you can use a Great Commander with every unit in a stack, each of them getting +1S and more XP per combat.

It might be your intention to it to work like this, but I find this a rather large loophole.

I just changed it so that you cannot split a commander from a unit that has already attacked.

Barbarians seem to never build Archeron, the red dragon. So the cult of the dragon never starts. What's up with that?

They do. But only if they have a city on an island someplace where it's left alone for a really long time. Maybe make it possible to build it faster?

I just changed the cost from 200 to 150

Once again I've run into a waiting for other civ crash. And going through your directions, I cannot find the log files to look for. And since I was forced to "upgrade" to win10, I can't find any way to search for files.

I have been using Windows 10 since a July of last year. I don't think anything about the logs changed. They should be in C:\Users\[your user name]\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs

This could be different if you have the Steam version though.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by a "waiting for other civ crash" though. Usually WOC errors just make the game freeze up, not crash.

I unfortunately have been getting a lot of actual crashes since the last MNAI update, and never found anything in the logs that seems relevant.

 

[kjnoren]

I just changed it so that you cannot split a commander from a unit that has already attacked.

Good. That's a nerf compared to how it is in vanilla/MNAI, where they can be used twice in a turn by two different units, but maybe that's what you intend.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I never find myself using Sacrifice the Weak, so to make it more desirable I made it allow sacrificing population to hurry production. That means you don't have to run Slavery with it, but can use Guilds or Caste System to give you the option of using both hurrying methods at the same time.

I'm sorry, but I think that's a terrible idea. One, Sacrifice the Weak is the best civic there is hands down, two, it doesn't make sense that a civ that is all about sacrificing the weak is discouraged from running Slavery. If anything it's the most logical labor civic to run in conjunction with it, and it is wonderful that realistic and logical synergy coincides with gameplay synergy here, like it does with Aristocracy and Agrarianism elsewhere. And you want to take that away? I don't agree that Sacrifice the Weak needs a buff in the first place, but if it did, decreasing or removing the health penalty would imo be the way to go. Your suggested change is Vanilla FFH's Social Order in the same civic category as Crusade all over again. Sure you could still be running Sacrifice the Weak and Slavery together in theory, but in practice that will now almost never happen because you effectively reduced Slavery's effects to a small chance of capturing enemy units as slaves and a small production bonus to Quarries.

I urge you to rethink this decision please. If you must give Sacrifice the Weak the ability to pop rush, which makes sense in isolation but not in the current setup, you should remove it entirely from Slavery and instead think up another (strong) bonus for that.

From personal experience I can tell you that you don't even have to run Slavery together with Sacrifice the Weak. There are other ways to get rid of surplus food than just whipping even if that might be the most obvious one: Military State allows you to draft, Caste System makes your specialists better, Guilds allows you to turn more people into Specialists in the first place, any Economy civic but Agrarianism de facto reduces your base food output, and Conquest gives you another way to turn food into hammers if you train units.

If anything I might be more worried about cottages if we are talking balance because even mature towns can't compete with Aristograrianism Farms, which is a shame. Imo there should be a civic or two that gives a bonus to towns, be it as an extra yield or double growth, and Guilds and Republic would be the most obvious choices. Guilds could also give another buff to Workshops. IIRC Apprenticeship and Arete boost their production and Commerce respectively, yes? This leaves Vanilla State Property's effect of negating its food penalty as another option, but if you go that route I think it might make more sense to give that to Apprenticeship, which is available the earliest and thus when the food penalty for pre-Smelting Workshops hurts the most, move the extra production to Arete and extra commerce to Guilds. Oooooor perhaps the food bonus would make the most sense for Arete because Dwarves in their hilly environment are chronically short on food?

Anyway, those are my two cents.

 

[Cutlass]

I got a witch hunter early in my current game from an event. But later in the game there's nothing really to do with him. Is there any other upgrade that makes sense for the unit other than crusader?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I got a witch hunter early in my current game from an event. But later in the game there's nothing really to do with him. Is there any other upgrade that makes sense for the unit other than crusader?

I was already thinking of letting a Witch Hunter upgrade to a Paladin, Prior/Pontif, and possibly Eidolon (since they re so often corrupt).

 

[Cutlass]

Not an intermediate, like priests or man at arms?

 

[Cutlass]

Odd question, don't know why this is happening. I'm in a game where a lot of AIs are at war with other AIs. Now 3 places on the board there are undefended cities that the AI at war with those civs are not taking the cities. Any idea why?

 

[AndrejH]

Quick question, what does the eremite promotion do? Like, what are it's actual effects? Any way i can find out myself?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Eremite promotion significantly increases the rate at which certain units passively gain xp (only those units with the <bFreeXP>1</bFreeXP> tag, which mostly means disciple or arcane units) and significantly decreases the chances that other units may resist spells cast by the unit. In the future it will also let the unit see invisible.

Eremite when combined with Crown of Brilliance also grants the unit Sun III for free.

Any unit with the Empyrean religion should get the promotion upon entering the Mirror of Heaven. Any disciple unit with both the Divine and Nomad promotions (i.e., Malakim priests) gain the promotion automatically when alone in the desert.

The promotion should also remove itself when the unit leaves the desert or shares a tile with other units, unless it is on the Mirror of Heaven.

(The word eremite both is a synonym and cognate of "hermit.")

 

[MagisterCultuum]

So, does anyone have an opinion on the idea of removing the alignment restriction from the Altars of the Luonnotar?

I'm sorry, but I think that's a terrible idea. One, Sacrifice the Weak is the best civic there is hands down, two, it doesn't make sense that a civ that is all about sacrificing the weak is discouraged from running Slavery. If anything it's the most logical labor civic to run in conjunction with it, and it is wonderful that realistic and logical synergy coincides with gameplay synergy here, like it does with Aristocracy and Agrarianism elsewhere. And you want to take that away? I don't agree that Sacrifice the Weak needs a buff in the first place, but if it did, decreasing or removing the health penalty would imo be the way to go. Your suggested change is Vanilla FFH's Social Order in the same civic category as Crusade all over again. Sure you could still be running Sacrifice the Weak and Slavery together in theory, but in practice that will now almost never happen because you effectively reduced Slavery's effects to a small chance of capturing enemy units as slaves and a small production bonus to Quarries.

I urge you to rethink this decision please. If you must give Sacrifice the Weak the ability to pop rush, which makes sense in isolation but not in the current setup, you should remove it entirely from Slavery and instead think up another (strong) bonus for that.

From personal experience I can tell you that you don't even have to run Slavery together with Sacrifice the Weak. There are other ways to get rid of surplus food than just whipping even if that might be the most obvious one: Military State allows you to draft, Caste System makes your specialists better, Guilds allows you to turn more people into Specialists in the first place, any Economy civic but Agrarianism de facto reduces your base food output, and Conquest gives you another way to turn food into hammers if you train units.

If anything I might be more worried about cottages if we are talking balance because even mature towns can't compete with Aristograrianism Farms, which is a shame. Imo there should be a civic or two that gives a bonus to towns, be it as an extra yield or double growth, and Guilds and Republic would be the most obvious choices. Guilds could also give another buff to Workshops. IIRC Apprenticeship and Arete boost their production and Commerce respectively, yes? This leaves Vanilla State Property's effect of negating its food penalty as another option, but if you go that route I think it might make more sense to give that to Apprenticeship, which is available the earliest and thus when the food penalty for pre-Smelting Workshops hurts the most, move the extra production to Arete and extra commerce to Guilds. Oooooor perhaps the food bonus would make the most sense for Arete because Dwarves in their hilly environment are chronically short on food?

Anyway, those are my two cents.

I'm thinking the reason Sacrifice the Weak might seem so strong now only because it is available too early. It is the only religious civic that is available at the same tech as the religion itself, which does not seem right to me. The tech which I think thematically fits best with Sacrifice the Weak is Malevolent Designs, but that is such a late tech that to make up for it the civic would need to be extremely strong. (I guess I could see some case for Fanaticism or Feral Bond, but those already have civics and they don't fit the theme quite as perfectly.)

I certainly do not plan to remove population rushing from slavery.

I did not realize that there was a tag that change the growth rates of improvements like towns. I think I will play around with letting Republic and Guilds boost their growth, and maybe letting Guilds boost workshops.

Slavery is an ancient social institution which certainly exploits the slaves, but generally grants them some degree of legal protection too. Masters were almost never allowed to actually murder their slaves. They could often get away with it if a slave died days later of injuries sustained during punishment for laziness or criminal activity, but courts would hold them accountable if their cruelty was bad enough to kill the man outright. Slaves usually started out as prisoners of war, which would simply be executed before the invention of slavery but were granted a sort of mercy when societies found ways to make them more useful. A master also of course would not want his slaves to be weak, at least physically, because his economic strength depended on their muscles. Masters were expected to take care of slaves when they were sick, and to continue to support elderly slaves even once they were incapable of work. . The slave owners were in many ways the weak ones, whose lives precariously depended on their ability to keep the slaves from coordinating against them.

Sacrifice the Weak may involve elements of slavery, but it seems to involve more eugenics, cannibalism, and of course human sacrifice to demons.

I suppose I could consider moving Sacrifice the Weak to the Labor category, as it seems at least as compatible with Religion, Nationalism, Consumption, Scholarship, or even (a Sheaim-style) Liberty as with a Caste System, Guilds, etc. Strict Castes and Guilds both protect ad privilege weak individuals, who could be sacrificed to allow stronger ones to take their place. If I did make Sacrifice the Weak a Labor civic, I think I'd let it allow both population and gold hurrying.

Actually, now that I think of it, from a thematic perspective Arete (which means Excellence or Virtue in Greek, and if pronounced differently can also refer to a kind of mountain range) seems more like a Cultural Value than a way of organizing Labor. It seems quite compatible with Apprenticeship, Guilds, and even sorts of Caste Systems.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

So, does anyone have an opinion on the idea of removing the alignment restriction from the Altars of the Luonnotar?

Dunno, you are the lore expert. Does it make sense for an evil civ to devote itself to the One when evil in Erebus is defined by opposition to the One?

I certainly do not plan to remove population rushing from slavery.

If you are running a civic which also allows pop rushing in another category then the pop rushing of Slavery becomes redundant and has literally zero appeal, so effectively it doesn't exist in that scenario.

I did not realize that there was a tag that change the growth rates of improvements like towns. I think I will play around with letting Republic and Guilds boost their growth, and maybe letting Guilds boost workshops.

Well that was one of the effects of the unmodded game's Emancipation civic, and in Erebus in the Balance it is used for Foreign Trade, which I think is the wrong choice.

What I would do is the following:

The Guilds Technology only increases production of Workshops by 1, but it now also increases production of Towns (and that Kuriotates super Town, the name of which I forgot) by 1.

The Republic Civic gives +1 Commerce to Towns and the Kuriotates super town. Apprenticeship only grants one XP for new units but it now also doubles growth of Cottages and its upgrades, the idea being that urbanization happens faster when you have many people moving from farms to towns to study a craft under a master. Arete (regardless of whether it is a Value or Labor civic) provides +1 Food instead of Commerce to Workshops, and now the Guilds civic provides +1 Commerce to Workshops instead. If Sacrifice the Weak remains where it is the only thing I would change is decrease the health penalty. If you move it to Malevolent Designs and the Labor category then sure, give it both pop and gold rushing too. You could even throw in a reduction of city upkeep, it would certainly fit well with the Sheaim playstyle.

Fair points on the distinction between Slavery and Sacrifice the Weak though.

 

[Calavente]

this discussion is interesting I think.

my views :
-on Altar : I would think that Evil wouldn't build the altar which is normally built to reach / "worship" The One.
Ideally, I'd remove all effects of Altar once you switch to Evil.
Or the Altar transforms into a smaller prophecy of Ragnarok once you switch to Evil. (and gives a few xp to disciples)

-On apprenticship: for me, Apprenticship means that young people quickly get skills and a trade, AND People get "free" help for their job's menial task.
a way to represent that would be +1xp, and maybe a free "working citizen" (non-specialized specialist) in the city (+1hammer in city) and maybe +1culture to working citizen.
another way would be to give +1xp, +10%Food, +10%culture, +10%gold, +10%science, +10%hammers. (10% of all of those is not too much IMO, especially with rounding errors), and it might be enough to represent increase of work-force: roughly a 10% increase of workforce efficiency due to having apprentice to help the butcher, the tailor, the blacksmith, the mage, the cleric, the farmer....etc (5% could also be good but I'm afraid it would be too negligible).

-Slavery is fine IMO.
-Sacrifice the weak : IMO it is a wrong turn to have eugenics, cannibalism, and of course human sacrifice to demons allow to rush-build.
I'd rather have Sacrifice the weak allow a "consume spell" according to which you gain either Science or Culture (or gold?) (or hammers, but only for rituals??) by sacrifying population. (like the vampire spell, but giving amount of science/culture/gold)
A "nice" twist would be to be able to cast said spell only when the city is unhealthy (or angry) : it would be a way to show that you kill the weaks... the sick ...Etc)

regards

 

[kjnoren]

When it comes to civics, I have two basic thoughts. One is that they apparently are notoriously hard to balance. The other is that a lot of the civics seem to be grab-bag and unfocused in their effects. (This last is, to me, a general problem in FfH in general, both for buildings and civics.)

So I'd be quite careful making changes in the first place. I'd start with looking at what EitB has done, from an MP balancing perspective. Sacrifice the Weak doesn't appear to have changed there.

Now, MagisterModmod has other goals than EitB, but I'd look into having a reason why something should be changed, be it balance or lore.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

What would you think if I changed the Recruit spell so that it does not only work inside cities, but adjacent to cities? What if that included enemy cities so long as they are in revolt and/or have most'y the caster's culture? That could of course mean that rebel states could use great generals to gain troops before they conquer their first city.

What would you think if I remove the Scourge free promotion from Demons Altars, but made them reduce the anger from sacrificing population to hurry things? (The tag for that exists already, having been introduced in BtS for the Aztec UB.)

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Those both sound like good ideas.

 

[Calavente]

Yes. All that sounds good. and I agree with being careful with changing civics. because Balance is a B*itch.

 

[kjnoren]

That said, I believe the game could use a couple of cottage-boosting civics or techs. Right now the situation is like this. Right now, the only boost they have is with Taxation, and that provides only a 20-25% boost in economic tile yield.

Compared to BtS, the farms in FfH are super-powered, but the cottages are positively anemic.