[MOD] MagisterModmod

[Qgqqqqq]

Thinking about that promotion, and how it's made Orthus a little more threatening, had me wondering if the Unraveling should likewise have a shared promotion to indicate their connection. We've got the full set of aspects for Camulos, Esus, Bhall... one for Mammon, I assume Mulcarn's are gone (or is that what Aquilans are?).

As mentioned earlier, I do think Orthus is too threatening with Drill 1-4. Perhaps just limiting access to Drill 3 and up would be enough?

The Horsemen have always suffered from a tendency to ram themselves into deathstacks and die of attrition, and along with Abaddon and Apophis are a little underwhelming for how much effort and luck are needed to acquire them (compared to the archangels or Imprimaturs at similar difficulty). Perhaps they could share an automatic Defile/pillage ability similar to Auric's automatic Snowfall, spreading Hell terrain and destroying improvements wherever they go, and thus benefiting from Demon racial bonuses. Letting them all heal on the move would help survivability, a cannibalize effect might be too much?

I think Cannibalise would definitely be too much - don't they already have March? Perhaps I just play on high difficulty and occasionally Last Days, but I haven't found them too easy, personally.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

• Had a crash to desktop when starting a highlands game as the Luchuirp, with no leader selected. Classical start, No Orthus the only unusual settings. (Checked, it works with unrestricted leaders, and No Orthus off - so one of those two.)
• Lord of the Balors scenario doesn't seem to be working, defeated as soon as I roll

 

[Natch]

As mentioned earlier, I do think Orthus is too threatening with Drill 1-4. Perhaps just limiting access to Drill 3 and up would be enough?

I think Cannibalise would definitely be too much - don't they already have March? Perhaps I just play on high difficulty and occasionally Last Days, but I haven't found them too easy, personally.

I don't think the barbarian heroes being powerful is a bad thing, as long as their AI behaves in ways that aren't unfun to play against. Orthus can be oppressive and kinda eye-rolling if he spawns right on top of you, but I'm perfectly happy with him bulking up in the wilderness and then arriving as a legitimate threat that forces me to drop everything to deal with him. The game provides perfect information; it tells you exactly where and when he spawned, the only issue is whether you're actually given enough time to strategize before he beelines for your cities. If anything, I'd like it if Orthus stayed in barb territory after taking a city or two and spawned Axemen passively, like a kind of mobile lair.

None of the Unraveling have March; Yersinia alone has Cannibalize currently. Ironically higher difficulty makes them weaker, because the AI civs' financially-unsound stacks come with multiple free promotions while the Horsemen don't really benefit at all. Last Days just isn't strong enough; the AI refuses to raze cities and the Ashen Veil rarely takes off early enough to spread significantly. Stephanos is the only horsemen who occasionally shows up early enough to matter, but his capture mechanic doesn't get him very far because the barb AI is too dumb to retreat heavily wounded units after it captures them. Maybe what he actually needs is a super-medic promotion...

 

[FireBlaze]

I play on Deity+Last Days and rarely see horsemen unless directly trying to cause them. Using Barbarian World can help the counter because barbs do raze and them going apeshit early on can get a meaningful baseline. Will definitely second the AI on higher difficulties generally easily quashing most Barb heroes past early game from deathstacks; have you seen those Lurchip panzer brigades massed yet? Unrelated, what happened to Tum-tum the late game barbarian hero of our hearts?

edit. a curator costs 150 hammers with creation mana and can add 1150 hammers to The Crucible, seems whack

 

[Natch]

After getting to toy with the new Mask of Esus mechanics I think they need some changes.

Plain invisibility makes it too easy to capture them early (especially, ironically, for the Empyrean) but because they can't be picked up or moved, they're stuck sitting on top of the associated lair. If anyone then explores the lair and gets a result which would spawn enemies, the Mask can't be pushed off the lair like other units, but also won't be recaptured by the barbarians, and instead the Mask unit "never returns from the depths of the lair" and is deleted from the game entirely.

Letting them be spawn and be captured but not picked up feels like a messy halfway point. It might be best if each mask just had an associated spawning spell requiring Arcane Lore and the unique feature, akin to Free Brigit and Free Odio. Those two destroy the unique feature which wouldn't make sense for the masks, but the new religious world spells make it seem like any spell can just be marked as once-per-game? Perhaps the resurrected council members could be scripted to cast the spell automatically on their resurrection, although they're on the martial-divine tech branch and not the arcane branch currently so Arcane Lore wouldn't be guaranteed.

The council members might make more sense attached to Omniscience anyway. Divine Essence already has all the dragons, Omniscience only has Embarr. Though, personally, I find it a bit boring having to wait for the absolute endgame techs to acquire them. There's not much point to resurrecting a Channeling IV unique unit when techs at that level already let you promote any Archmage to Channeling IV. The dragons are a unique new weapon with immense stats, but the council members are really only giving you one new spell for all that research expended, and none of them are built to go toe-to-toe with endgame forces. If the player knows enough to get resurrection early and pursue a council member, it's not like a tech barrier is really stopping them from trouncing the AI regardless.

 

[FireBlaze]

I'll second the above, as I had gotten lucky with some general with true-sight that allowed for me to collect a couple masks in the very early game (pre-100 on epic) only for most of them to be lost to further explorations. Also friendly reminder that you can rush any building in a turn if you have enough curators in the bank to promote to patreons.

edit: why do the Dovello have a UU for Phalanx that's just one str weaker? Am I missing something?

 

[Natch]

edit: why do the Dovello have a UU for Phalanx that's just one str weaker? Am I missing something?

It's kind of their schtick that the Doviello melee line gets worse and worse the further they move on from the Age of Ice. The Beastman is superior to other warriors with a bonus to city attack, Sons of Asena are identical to Axemen, then the Battlemaster has a worthless bonus to Tundra strength instead of the Man-at-Arms' bonus against other melee, and the Verdandi is outright weaker than the Phalanx. They're the civ of fading glory and have to find a gimmick outside of themselves to succeed. The obvious one is to bring back Lycanthropy with Duin and the Sons of Discord, but I've also had success going Undertow and converting their inferior melee units to Drown.

 

[FireBlaze]

^^ fair enough, though it's pretty funny that the pedia entry pretty much just implies they're only useful for being intimidating off their reputation in late Rebirth/Early Invention.

I think the tooltips next to the gold counter for Khazad need to be updated, I should be neutral according to the top-left but all my cities have low vaults instead

edit; Unrelated, but it could be cool if the "delve to the underhome" world spell also unlocked a series of events detailing the fall of the Underhome and various interactions with it, to make it a bit more whelming.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Letting them be spawn and be captured but not picked up feels like a messy halfway point. It might be best if each mask just had an associated spawning spell requiring Arcane Lore and the unique feature, akin to Free Brigit and Free Odio. Those two destroy the unique feature which wouldn't make sense for the masks, but the new religious world spells make it seem like any spell can just be marked as once-per-game? Perhaps the resurrected council members could be scripted to cast the spell automatically on their resurrection, although they're on the martial-divine tech branch and not the arcane branch currently so Arcane Lore wouldn't be guaranteed.

The religious world spells are not once per game - if another civ casts one, you can also (at least for Motherlode).

I've never seen the Masks, though in fairness I house-rule myself to only exploring each epic lair until I get one good result, as it seems too cheap to do otherwise.

Actually that makes me think that exploring lairs in rival territory should also be a declare-war spell, Magister. Otherwise you can just explore far from home and then run away, leaving the AI to deal with the consequences.

 

[Samson]

Actually that makes me think that exploring lairs in rival territory should also be a declare-war spell, Magister. Otherwise you can just explore far from home and then run away, leaving the AI to deal with the consequences.

I agree with this.

Is it intensional that the Ashen Veil allows you to not bother with building units, and just summon imps and upgrade them? They start with Master of Magic, which with summoner gives them twincast straight away if cast in a city with a planar gate, as well as making upgrades free. You can summon one, and if it keeps Master of Magic upgrade to ritualist free, then cast 2 more imps and repeat ad nauseum.

 

[Castleburger]

I just want to say stellar job with the modmod, Magister. When I discovered it years ago it reinvigorated my love for Fall From Heaven and the rich setting.
That said, there is one bug that has been bothering me quite a bit during my current Luchuirp game and that is the free promotion from command posts and how golems interact with it. Golems will cease any queued tasks and awaken to inform you that they have a promotion that they cannot take. This is quite the annoyance the longer a game goes on, especially if you are at war and have numerous great commanders whom are otherwise not very useful for the Luchuirp as they cannot attach to a golem and recruit units is my least favorite use of the great commander. This is especially true if playing with revolutions enabled as the command post can be necessary for stabilizing a larger empire. This problem has caused me to go as far as to delete all of my golems and spawn in replacements using the world builder so as to quiet their constant pleas for me to pick a nonexistent promotion, a hamfisted temporary solution that has to be repeated far too often.
I don't know what sort of solution there can be for this bug, but it bothered me enough to create an account so that I could inform you of it. Otherwise, keep up the good work and thank you for the hours of fun that your modmod has provided.

 

[AppTitan]

Hello again everyone! Here, under the "courage " of the new patch, I decided to make the outline of the drawing according to the Brotherhood of Warden, or rather, according to their ability to lead people out of oppressed settlements. How do you like it? Should I digitize and colorize? Maybe you would like to offer something of your own? (Based on your vision of this religion))))

 

[FireBlaze]

Should the Nightmare promotion be applied to cav similar to how metal weapons are upon entering a city?

 

[civerfey]

What's up with the giant snow bird? 15 strength 5 star strength with collatoral damage destroying all my cities and turning all the land to ice when I'm at bronze age tech. That's a bit overwhelming for early game.

Also... thanks for the awesome mod! Great stuff as always and super neat that you are continuing to work on it!

 

[Nothrazim]

You should definititely not have an Aquilian spawn that early. It must have been the result of a lair exploration, but i didn't even know they could spawn from those. They can be summoned via Ice Affinity + Channeling IV, but i don't know what unit could possibly spawn out of a lair with those two promotions (my first thought was a Djinn, but they only have Channeling III).

 

[Samson]

There is Gossea (sp?), that you get at Sorcery + The Inbetween. Some AIs seem to beeline Sorcery so it could be that.

 

[Nothrazim]

Gosea lost Channeling IV along with the various high priests, so she has Divine II now.
I was going to say this should give her access to Summon Tar Demon instead, but i just noticed the caster religion pre-req for each of the Divine II spells. Given she's the hero for The Between (abandoning you if you change state religion), i assume she won't change religion with possessions, so i don't know if she actually can cast spells now anymore (except for The Between's spell, Consume Soul).

If there's something that lets her cast them despite her religion then she's fine, otherwise she might need to be reverted to having Channeling IV (which would of course make her extremely powerful, but if she can't use the Divine II spells she's a very lackluster hero).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Gosea is the champion of The Between and will abandon you if you abandon the religion, but her personal unit religion shifts around randomly much like her affinities do. She channels spirits of all sorts, mostly demons but sometimes angels of good or neutral gods.

Aquilan can appear from exploring Letum Frigus when not in the grace period. Perhaps I should add a higher prereq.


To be honest I'm thinking of eliminating the Summon Aquilan spell. I made the units strogner when it was revealed that they are Aspects of Mulcarn, but it doesn't seem right for Aspects of a god to be able to be summoned like that. There should never be more than 7, but the summoning spell could let you have an unlimited number if you have enough Dimensional Affinity casters to keep casting Planar Binding to keep them around. I may make them late game heroes of the White Hand with a world limit (not national limit) of 7 instead of 1.

I'm tempted to make Stasis the Ice IV spell instead of it being a world spell. I could make The Deepening or Samhain a world spell, or make a world spell that triggers a ritual without requiring a city to build it.


I'd like it if world spells were set up so that each spell could only be cast once overall, but the way it has always worked is that each player has a feat that stores a boolean that stores the data on whether they have cast any word spell yet. If 0 you can cast a world spell, if 1 you cannot until the Birthright Regained spell resets it to 0.

There is nothing that keeps track of how many times a spell has been cast.


Making Nightmares work more like the Bronze/Iron/Mithril Weapons promotions and applying them on move would require DLL changes. Applying weapons is basically hardcoded, relying on several XML defines and the weapons tier tags for units.

Buildings have a bApplyFreePromotionOnMove tag, but it is misnamed. Does not apply anything when a unit enters a city, but only to units in the city at the start of a turn. It applies the promotion to every unit with a valid unitcombat. It doesn't check for any resources like Nightmares, although I suppose I could work around this by making a dummy building that is added or removed in python based on whether the city has access to nightmares.


The glowing golem issue is an old one I have been trying to fix. I have a py per turn effect that ought to set promotion ready as false. I have not figured out why it does not seem to work.

 

[Samson]

I'm tempted to make Stasis the Ice IV spell instead of it being a world spell.

Being able to cast stasis repeatedly would allow you to stop the AI building anything for ever? It is about the most powerful world spell now.

I'd like it if world spells were set up so that each spell could only be cast once overall, but the way it has always worked is that each player has a feat that stores a boolean that stores the data on whether they have cast any word spell yet. If 0 you can cast a world spell, if 1 you cannot until the Birthright Regained spell resets it to 0.

There is nothing that keeps track of how many times a spell has been cast.

Now you can cast each spell once per game right? I am sure I casted both Stasis and Revelry in the same game one time, even though neither was my state religion.

Making Nightmares work more like the Bronze/Iron/Mithril Weapons promotions and applying them on move would require DLL changes. Applying weapons is basically hardcoded, relying on several XML defines and the weapons tier tags for units.

Buildings have a bApplyFreePromotionOnMove tag, but it is misnamed. Does not apply anything when a unit enters a city, but only to units in the city at the start of a turn. It applies the promotion to every unit with a valid unitcombat. It doesn't check for any resources like Nightmares, although I suppose I could work around this by making a dummy building that is added or removed in python based on whether the city has access to nightmares.

It makes a certain amount of sense to me that you have to learn how to ride a nightmare during your training, as opposed to taking a better sword or whatever when it becomes available.

 

[Nothrazim]

Gosea is the champion of The Between and will abandon you if you abandon the religion, but her personal unit religion shifts around randomly much like her affinities do. She channels spirits of all sorts, mostly demons but sometimes angels of good or neutral gods.

Ah, that is good to hear. I was concerned that requiring the state religion meant the unit had to be of the same religion, but glad to hear that is not the case and she works as intended.



I think removing (or putting a later requirement on) Aqulians from Letum Frigus is a good idea. I find Letum Frigus to be a nuisance to have close to you generally, due to the Hollow Men spawning making the area dangerous unless you have Sun mana or units who can contain them. It's an appropriate menace, but suddenly having an Aquilian emerge could spell the end of your game rapidly due to the terrain changes and the power of the bird.


If Statis had a limited area it could work. As a global spell, it's too powerful to be a Channeling IV spell, even if the duration was reduced to a single turn. Maybe something that gives -1000% production in nearby cities for 1 turn and applies Slow and Pacified (or another effect to prevent moving and/or attacking) to enemies?

Could the Nightmare promotion be implemented as a weapon-type promotion exclusive to mounted units? So the weapon tier would technically go bronze-iron-mithril-nightmare, but since mounted units are blocked from the regular weapons and infantry are blocked from nightmares it could perhaps work.
Although, that could raise another issue which is that all mounted units would get nightmares, even Wyvern Riders. Then again, i don't know if they get nightmares in the current version or if the promotion is exclusive to specific unit types (horsemen, knights, horse archers etc).