[MOD] MagisterModmod

[akatosh]

I'm still playing. In fact, I have several ideas for things I want to post. The main thing holding me back is that the left shift key on my keyboard is busted, so typing with proper capitalization and punctuation is a pain in the ass:

Game diary of a completed Kane/Malakim/Esus game
Game diary of a completed Sidar pure specialist economy game (no cottages or aristofarms)
Some thoughts on city specialization
A weird specialist economy idea for Khazad... not fully thought out
A test game using drafting and ingenuity with Valledia
Some general thoughts on things I'd like to see incorporated in the game
Some general thoughts on the new leaders in Terkhen modmod, and areas where I'd consider making tweaks

 

[Ghostslayer]

In a current game, I was surprised that the infernals did not search any tech at least 10 turns after the infernal pact. I checked with the WB and they have not settled any city. The full stack is just waiting on an hellfire for turns. They are in a free area with many good spots to build a city.

There is another problem that is present in this mod for a long time. After discovering feudalism, when a city a conquered, sometimes I am proposed to install a puppet state (or to give the city to my vassals), but most of the time I have the standard message (raze, conquer or examine). Why is this behavior so unpredictable? Is this a bug, or am I missing something?

 

[zldrago1000]

Could we get a bonus for summoning basium like there is availible for creating the pact?

For puppet states I think its an option that was included in the MNAI merge so I think the guy who did MNAI would know more about it. (I've only used it a couple of times, but I didn't notice anything unusual with it)

Also, how does enrage work? The description makes it seem like the unit that is enraged should be controlled by the AI and attack aggressively, but in my experience, units that are enraged just kind of wander around, not attacking the closest hostile unit. Could we get that changed to attacking the nearest hostile unit, and have it wander until it has a hostile unit nearby?

 

[BvBPL]

What are the rules for the Sheaim planar gate summons?

I thought that in the core game there was a limit to how many summons could come out based on number of cities with planar gates, qualifying buildings, and the AC.

In my current game, the Sheaim have like 300 Mobius witches and never had more than a score of cities. The AC has never risen to 40 and has mostly stayed at 30. That seems like a whole lot of witches.

 

[Cutlass]

In a recent game I had, they had at least 200 Mobius Witches in a stack. They had dozens of manticores. Seriously massive power. This is what it looked like when they lost a battle.

Someone earlier in the thread was talking about mimics and how they lost the steal trait ability once promoted.

Not a problem.

Mimic promoted to paladin before that battle noted above:

And after:

That one paladin, in the open field, absorbed the attacks of about 300 units. Capturing about 50 of them. Those units were all damaged by my magical attacks in the previous rounds. Still, there's some serious power imbalances going on here.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The comments about Mimics losing their ability to steal promotions when they are upgraded were made by those playing with a previous release. Since then, I was convinced to transfer the ability from the unit defines to a promotion which Mimics have in their XML defines and which could be added to any unit in worldbuilder.



I'm a bit confused as to how you could have that many creatures from planar gates. From a glance at the code it appears that you should never be able to have more of any particular type of planar gate creature than you have planar gates. I'm assuming you don't have hundreds of cities with planar gates, so something must be wrong here.

Edit: Ok, actually the limit does not equal the number of planar gates but rather the number of planar gates multiplied by the global counter divided by 25. I don't recall right now whether this global counter is the percent counter or the real one that scales with map size.

Edit2: Ok, I think I understand the issue now. For no good reason, I left the line iMax *= iNumPlanerGate in the portion of code that runs for every city with a Planar Gate, rather than in the code that runs one per turn before checking any city. That means the cap was effectively iMax = iAC/25*iNumPlanerGate^iNumPlanerGate (at least for the last city with a gate), which could be very high when you have a lot of cities.

I think there are some other ways I can make this code run more efficiently too.

 

[akatosh]

@ cutlass - lol, that is awesome. I gotta try out some Mimic cheese in my next game

 

[BvBPL]

Would it be possible to expand the automatic Pilgrim powers to those unique features within the terrain of teammates?

Also, in my last play as the Bannor, their world spell did not create units on my towns but instead gave each city a free unit. Is this an intended deviation from vanilla FFH2?

Also also, the Grigori free defenders on Homesteads can be problematic because the game checks for the defender pop up each time a new unit moves onto a Homestead. That contrasts with the FoL trent defender that is only checked once an enemy unit moves on the ancient forest but not when additional units move onto the same tile. This is problematic when moving large stacks and can render a Grigori city basically invulnerable if it is surrounded by nine Homesteads. (You may have previously addressed this issue. If so, please accept my apologies.)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Would it be possible to expand the automatic Pilgrim powers to those unique features within the terrain of teammates?

Yes. I just made that change.

I also switched to a different style of coding, using a list and loops rather than writing each conditional separately.

Also, in my last play as the Bannor, their world spell did not create units on my towns but instead gave each city a free unit. Is this an intended deviation from vanilla FFH2?

Looking at the Rally code, it appears that it grants units under the same conditions on the same tiles in both Base FfH2 and MagisterModmod. They should appear in both Towns and Cities. The only difference is that in MagisterModmod these units will be granted your state religion, and if not in a city will be granted weapons promotions based on the metal available in the nearest city.

Edit: Ok, I just found the problem. When finding the closest city in order to determine what weapons promotions to grant, I used the variable iPlayer even though in this spell that was defined as iOwner instead. That could cause an error that might break the loop before the second free unit on a town in granted.

I just decided to modify Rally so that it no longer requires the Crusade civic for human players to use, but will force the player into the Crusade civic without requiring a waiting period between civic changes or any period of anarchy. If used while in anarchy, it will end it.

Also also, the Grigori free defenders on Homesteads can be problematic because the game checks for the defender pop up each time a new unit moves onto a Homestead. That contrasts with the FoL trent defender that is only checked once an enemy unit moves on the ancient forest but not when additional units move onto the same tile. This is problematic when moving large stacks and can render a Grigori city basically invulnerable if it is surrounded by nine Homesteads. (You may have previously addressed this issue. If so, please accept my apologies.)

I just now changed Homesteads as suggested.

I also added a message to announce the unit coming forth to defend the homestead.

More importantly, I temporarily deactivated python on the plot to which the invading unit is ejected, so as to prevent a unit from being kicked around from one homestead to another and triggering the creation of a large number of defenders. I made that change for Treants from Ancient forests as well.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I have just finished merging MNAI and MagisterModmod with Platyping's latest update, WorldBuilder 4.06.

I think I'll try to playtest it a little longer before releasing it though, and perhaps either try to extend the new python effects toggle to a few more things or else wait and see if Platyping will do it himself. (I'd really like it if Tholal would release another update first too, with the new promotion tags I've requested. Those would work better than the workarounds for a couple bugs I've come across.)

Before I upload it, I'd like to know what host my users think is best. Some people have had problems with both of them I've used recently.

 

[Cutlass]

I don't recall having any real problems with any of the hosts you've used for any of the mods I've downloaded. But I don't have the free time to get or play them all.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I just uploaded the new version to GameFront, since I didn't get any real feedback expressing a preferred host.

You may download the installer here or the archive here.

This version includes WorldBuilder 4.06c, which extends the "Toggle Python Effects" button's functionality to control pretty much everything that could trigger in CvEventManager.py.

(I noticed after the upload had begun though that I forgot to remove the conditional I had added a long time ago to prevent onReligionSpread from triggering in WorldBuilder. That was done so as to avoid the various religious conflicts occurring and The Order's free units from being granted. Since the "Toggle Python Effects" button is a better way to avoid this I had intended to remove it, but forgot and do not now think it important enough to re-upload everything.)

I'm not positive whether this will break saved games, but I suspect that it might in the common case where a player has both a capital city and a state religion. This is because I noticed that I had oddly given the various free mana dummy buildings names in the style BUILDINGCLASS_ instead of BUILDING_ and decided to change that lest I confuse myself later.

 

[ssmage]

Thank you for the updates.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

I have an odd error as Hippus, where instead of recieving monuments after building one, I get a stable instead (I'm not even sure I have the tech to build them - I only have AH up that line). After that, I can build a second monument which works as it should.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm not sure what might have interrupted the completion of your Monument the first time, but I don't think that the Stable has anything to do with it. The Hippus Palace grants a free Stable in every city. That is not even a recent change, but a feature that has been part for this modmod for years.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Ah, apologies. It has happened twice that a monument has, for all intents and purposes, finished with the appropriate popup and then the building isn't there, so I'm not sure what could have caused this.

 

[Nothrazim]

For some reason, the download linc does not work for me - the exe one grants me an error where it cannot find the file, the archive instead a 403 forbidden error. Does anyone know what to do?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

@Nothrazim:
I'm guessing that it is an issue with GameFront. I think there were complaints before about that host not working in certain countries.

I guess I'll go back to that other hosting site.

You can download the installer here or the archive here.

I also am attaching an archive to this post which contains all of the changes between the August 21 and August 24th versions. (Only 5 python files were altered, and the only significant changes are in CvEventManager.py.)

I was not intended to release another version nearly this soon, but Platyping did release a minor update which I have since incorporated. It is basically just bug fixes for things related to Script Data.

Other than the Worldbuilder 4.06d merge, I don't think I've changed anything but making it so that the onReligionFounded code can be called in worldbuilder if the Python Effects toggle is active and updating the modVersion field of CvModName.py (which I had forgotten to update since July 20).

(I have not tested these files as I usually do, since since the changes are so minor I think it is ok. I just copied the altered files over the archive from the last release and renamed it.)

Since this update is so minor, I think it is safe to guarantee that it will not break any saved games from the August 21st version.

 

[Jecado]

I think I may have been experiencing the same problem with the installer as Nothrazim. It looked like the installer spontaneously quit, with its progress bar only ~3/4 done (and interestingly enough seemed to delete itself, too), and when I launched the game it gave several error boxes saying something about "more siblings than memory allocations", or something like that. This happened last night with the Aug 21 update, and again just now with the Aug 24 update. I just reinstalled the July 20 update and that works fine. So I'm guessing something got messed up with the .exe file itself? :/

As a side note, I noticed the past few installers have said "This will install the June 5 version" in the opening dialog box. I'm presuming that's just a matter of not updating the text.



Also, since as of last night I finally finished a game as Auric, and got far enough into the tech tree to perform Stir from Slumber: I really like the changed dragon mechanic, compared to vanilla FfH2, but...is there no way to get Drifa if her bones don't start on the map? I completed the ritual, which spawned Acheron, whom I promptly killed, resurrected, and immensely enjoyed , but...I was hoping for Drifa...

In addition, while I was fortunate enough to have Kuriotates as a rival in this game, I was not so fortunate in a previous Sheiam game, where I found to my dismay I couldn't perform the Stir from Slumber ritual without Cult of the Dragons. Well, that makes sense, but...for some reason Acheron hadn't ever spawned, and the religion didn't exist. Seems a little cruel for the Sheiam (and Illians, for that matter) only to be able to play with their funnest toy iff the fire lord decides to wake up.

 

[Cutlass]

The download from myflair.com seems to have worked fine.