[MOD] MagisterModmod

[FireBlaze]

There is literally nothing funner in this game than stealing cities with dimensional warps like some sort of mad wizard.

 

[plasmacannon]

There is literally nothing funner in this game than stealing cities with dimensional warps like some sort of mad wizard.

My nephew mind controlled the giant gorilla and orangutan. That gave him the strongest units at the time. He defeated everything he came across. LOL.

 

[thegreekweegee]

There is literally nothing funner in this game than stealing cities with dimensional warps like some sort of mad wizard.

My nephew mind controlled the giant gorilla and orangutan. That gave him the strongest units at the time. He defeated everything he came across. LOL.

That's what makes Fall from Heaven so fun compared to other mods tbh; you can just go balls to the wall with the insanity and make a complete joke out of the endgame once you're reasonably built up with the necessary "infrastructure". It's a mixed blessing the AI can't understand half of what you can theoretically do as a human player, otherwise fighting against them would be complete hell. I'm pretty sure the AI can't be just taught to be aware of and utilize everything, as it'd take a very radical rewrite of the AI mechanics for it to be up to snuff. As one example, it just can't understand how it can use dimensional rifts to exercise complete power projection capabilities, as if I'm right their temporary status as summons and the fact Magister had to jury rig the nuke function to make them go anywhere at will confuses them to no end.

I could be wrong, but that's how it is right now, and how it will be unless someone drafts a team and gets the AI mechanics up to snuff. One can only dream right now.

PS: Does the AI see temporary summons as expendable? It's been a while since I last played, as I've been messing with retro PC builds for a long while.

 

[Smayo]

That's what makes Fall from Heaven so fun compared to other mods tbh; you can just go balls to the wall with the insanity and make a complete joke out of the endgame once you're reasonably built up with the necessary "infrastructure". It's a mixed blessing the AI can't understand half of what you can theoretically do as a human player, otherwise fighting against them would be complete hell. I'm pretty sure the AI can't be just taught to be aware of and utilize everything, as it'd take a very radical rewrite of the AI mechanics for it to be up to snuff. As one example, it just can't understand how it can use dimensional rifts to exercise complete power projection capabilities, as if I'm right their temporary status as summons and the fact Magister had to jury rig the nuke function to make them go anywhere at will confuses them to no end.

I could be wrong, but that's how it is right now, and how it will be unless someone drafts a team and gets the AI mechanics up to snuff. One can only dream right now.

PS: Does the AI see temporary summons as expendable? It's been a while since I last played, as I've been messing with retro PC builds for a long while.

Yeah the AI is honestly the major gate to simulating a "proper" FallFromHeaven game with 8 or so players who know what they're doing. I feel like they just tend to spam warriors and keep them in their capital all game. I'd love to learn how to fix these kind of things, but I'm struggling to even fix basic things that bug me in the game. As an aside, doing a multiplayer game would solve this issue, but given stability problems that have arisen, Out of Sync errors that I have experienced myself in vanilla FFH, and the splintering of an already miniscule playerbase with all the modmods, its unlikely to happen.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

As an aside, doing a multiplayer game would solve this issue, but given stability problems that have arisen, Out of Sync errors that I have experienced myself in vanilla FFH, and the splintering of an already miniscule playerbase with all the modmods, its unlikely to happen.

You could try setting up a PBEM game?

 

[Nothrazim]

Has anyone else experienced issues with the Pact of Winter (& perhaps other Pacts too) not being selectable? I have half a dozen mages with Ice Affinity, converted them to the White Hand, have Ice mana and Malevolent Design but i can't always pick up the promotion. The same is true for my Priests of Winter; whether they have Ice Affinity or not, they can't always pick up the promotion.

 

[FireBlaze]

I'd play a Magister PBEM

 

[plasmacannon]

Citadels have a range of effect out 3 tiles. So if placed as close as possible, (Such as one 3N, 3E, 3W, and 3S of one at the center), they can over lap.
Do the +15% Strength bonuses from 2 or more Citadels stack?
Such as in the above example, units in the center Citadel would gain a +60% Strength?

If we had the Empyrean Religion, (therefore all of those Citadels were Citadels of Light), would a vampire unit stepping into that center Citadel of Light take damage from all four around it? It would seem so, but I figure the damage done is low so it caps out quickly.

Also, I was looking for a map that has mostly plains, plains hills and rivers with some marsh on 2 Continents. This has been difficult to find. The Great Plains map was close and good for a while, bit it lacks any serious navy scouting ability for us and I didn't see any raw mana.
In fact I haven't seen much of those Marshes on maps at all. Are they only on certain maps?

 

[OKSleeper]

I am still having crash problems between turns. Downloaded update on 20 Dec 2019 and had 2 good complete games. But my last 2 have crashed between turns. Game files attached.

 

[plasmacannon]

I haven't had any game crashes in quite a while.

I had fun with maps that were mostly Great Plains and playing Malakin. I'd build farms (Homesteads) on the plains next to rivers (especially adjacent to my cities) then scorch them into deserts. This makes my foes have a -25% desert penalty and I still have my +50% Desert Strength. I was earning around 3F/3C from each tile (1C from river, 1C from being Malakin, and +1 for playing as Kane who has the Financial Trait).
I wish I could scorch Grasslands into plains and scorch tundra into plains as well. That would add some fun customization of our lands during multiplayer.

I am still having issues with the AI's getting killed off early by Barbarians on Prince difficulty (not even on deity)
I turned off Raging Barbarians.
In my last game only 1 opponent remains from a Huge map with the normal number of AIs.
Next I'm turning off huts, dungeons and whatever else produce random barbarians that would kill off my foes.

 

[Dominus the Mentat]

Has anyone else experienced issues with the Pact of Winter (& perhaps other Pacts too) not being selectable? I have half a dozen mages with Ice Affinity, converted them to the White Hand, have Ice mana and Malevolent Design but i can't always pick up the promotion. The same is true for my Priests of Winter; whether they have Ice Affinity or not, they can't always pick up the promotion.

Yes. Actually, Its possible to pick the promotion when it is accessible. However, the promotion is removed after the ending of the turn and, maybe I wrong, but appears that the promotion is not accessible by all the allowed units. I only managed to get a few mages and priests that have access to the White Hand Pact promotion.

 

[Dominus the Mentat]

I am still having crash problems between turns. Downloaded update on 20 Dec 2019 and had 2 good complete games. But my last 2 have crashed between turns. Game files attached.

The last save (TURN-0403) crash is a bug with the White Hand ritual. It needs the Letum Frigus in the map to be complete and when the feature is not present it crashes the game. To avoid the crash, just enter in the world editor and put Letum Frigus in the map. The other save I don't know what is the problem. Sorry.

 

[OKSleeper]

The last save (TURN-0403) crash is a bug with the White Hand ritual. It needs the Letum Frigus in the map to be complete and when the feature is not present it crashes the game. To avoid the crash, just enter in the world editor and put Letum Frigus in the map. The other save I don't know what is the problem. Sorry.

Thanks for doing that. I did resurrect the game for awhile, but again crashed between turns. Just posting these in case it helps you. Love the game.

 

[Dominus the Mentat]

but again crashed between turns

I have load the save and played a little but no crashes happened. Have you received some message after the crash or it just happened ?

 

[OKSleeper]

I have load the save and played a little but no crashes happened. Have you received some message after the crash or it just happened ?

Crashed between turns again one turn later. No message. Suddenly, blink, the program was closed.

 

[Calavente]

hello, little balance questions.

for the first time in a while I went for OO.
and please notice my disapointment when I couldn't drown my warriors anymore, I had to wait until researching necromancy.

by that time, I already had swordmen/axemen, so the little drown were of much more ambiguous use : amphibious & waterwalking, but undead (no haste) (so I didn't make any).

The lunatics that I could make out-of-the go, while strong, were not an equivalent exchange to me : they are mostly uncontrolable for harassing other people, they don't allow to defend against barb trirems or invade nearby islands.... and you get them by paying the huge early price of a 1 unhappiness building (which is less damaging later in the game, but founding-OO-early, it's expensive).

So my question is about the "why" ?
Why was it needed to nerf drowns ? (pushing them back in the tech tree without boosting the unit in any apparent way is a nerf)

what do OO get as a early religion bonus ? (FoL & RoK get units, RoK even get dwarven mines)
What was your philosophy while rebalancing OO ? (where did you push the big bonus ? ...Etc)

 

[Nothrazim]

hello, little balance questions.

for the first time in a while I went for OO.
and please notice my disapointment when I couldn't drown my warriors anymore, I had to wait until researching necromancy.

by that time, I already had swordmen/axemen, so the little drown were of much more ambiguous use : amphibious & waterwalking, but undead (no haste) (so I didn't make any).

The lunatics that I could make out-of-the go, while strong, were not an equivalent exchange to me : they are mostly uncontrolable for harassing other people, they don't allow to defend against barb trirems or invade nearby islands.... and you get them by paying the huge early price of a 1 unhappiness building (which is less damaging later in the game, but founding-OO-early, it's expensive).

So my question is about the "why" ?
Why was it needed to nerf drowns ? (pushing them back in the tech tree without boosting the unit in any apparent way is a nerf)

what do OO get as a early religion bonus ? (FoL & RoK get units, RoK even get dwarven mines)
What was your philosophy while rebalancing OO ? (where did you push the big bonus ? ...Etc)

OO feels much more suited to mid-to-late game now imo, what with krakens via theology, Hemah as a full Channelling III caster and the drown nerfs. I have to say, the religion doesn't appeal to me much atm; i only ever adopt it on water maps

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Octopus Overlords (or rather "The Undertow," as I believe my last release included changing the religion's name to what Kael decided it should be in canon) is a rather powerful religion, but I guess you are right that it is not so much an early game religion in my modmod.

Its religious hero hero Hemah is one of the most powerful units in the gam, having Channeling 1-4 and affinity for both Water and Mind.

The hero Gaelen Sedracious can also be upgraded to an Undertow High Priest, gaining Channeling IV and all the spells in at least the Chaos and DImensional spheres. There is also a chance that becoming a high priest could give him affinity in Water, Mind, Undeath, Air, or Metamagic.


The main change to Drowns is not increasing their tech prereq, but rather allowing any melee units (except for World Units, National Units, Immortal units, Magic-Immune units, and non-living units) to become Drowns. Note that the Drown's base strength scales based on the strength of the unit being drowned. You are basically keeping the all same strength plus gaining +2 Death Damage.

I mostly train Lunatics just to turn them into stronger Drowns.

The Drown spell can also be used outside of cities now, on any tile that is adjacent to water and has a Cultist present. (I currently have this implemented as two separate spells, but I find having the same icon show up twice even if greyed out to be annoying so I will probably merge them into one spell with python checking first for a city and temple and then for a water source and priest.)

The gold cost of Drown does scale along with the unit's strength, level, and tier. It is possible that I made it too expensive. I may have to try to rebalance the gold cost a bit.

I'm thinking maybe I ought to make the Drown spell also remove Crazed/Enraged/Committed, as the sanity of the corpse doesn't matter much once it is raised from the dead as a thrall of the priest who raised it.

Drowns can also be created by the Water Affinity + Channeling IV spell "Drown Armies," which is like a more powerful version of Tsunami which can kill enemy units and raise some of them as Drowns in your service.

I had made it so that each High Priest of the Undertow starts with a Timor Mask, granting both Fear and Water Walking, based on the end of the Fall of Cuantine scenario where Rosier put on a slain Speaker's mask in order to be able to travel over water. I'm thinking now that I don't really like how one can


I get your point that the religion has been made weaker in the early game though.

What would you think if I made Temples of the Undertow grant +1 gold from Water tiles within the city's radius?

 

[Calavente]

thanks for the comprehensive answer !
(but it's true that I only have the version of 4-8 months ago -- the kids have 2people hotseat currently ongoing... so I'm not able to update yet)
so level 4 spells and affinities were not really in place I think.

 

[Calavente]

So Drowning is now a way to get water-walking Golems that gain experience ? ( )
(+2str, not upgradable, not-living, more expensive, seems to be the golem way... save that they earn experience and are sensitive to life2)

Wouldn't luirchips or sheaim get less effect out of Undertow drowning, having no tier III living melee units (or even tier II) ?

Question: what are stygian guards now ? upgrades for drowned units ? or buildable units ? (what is the use of stygian guard if you can drown champions for 8+metal units ?)


regarding boosting the early game.... I don't know anymore, mid-late is boosted, so early should matter less.. but then why choose UT early and not Rok then UT ?

(the early religions usually had an early unit..., and OO focus was to get an early cheap naval unit)
maybe still have the basic drown (made of drown warriors) as a half-assed version of the drowning spell ? or maybe they can be built ? (so as to not cluster the spell spheres ? 4str +metal + walter walking is kinda ok : unupgradable units)

or maybe a way to control the lunatics early game : controlled in forts ? 3-5 turns before they get crazed after they leave a city ?

if you won't go toward an early coast-land unit :
Early gold always help, but are we really in need of gold ? (OO is more of a culture & terror religion ; gold is more a Kilmorph focus)

so other ideas could be a hammer gain from coast (not ocean) ? or for fishboats ? either on the temple (OP) or only if OO state religion ?