After playing some time, I have observed some issues and decided to communicate them here in case you feel apropriate to change in the mod.
The Attached Warlord ability - When used, the chosen unit does not inherit the name and promotions of the selected Great Commander, only the Attached Commander Promotion. For example, it would be fun if an Axeman with Averax the Cambion as attached commander inherit the Sundered Promotion, as well his name.
It might be fun, would be a nightmare to code unless we get rid of the Detach Commander ability. A detached commander would be given a new name and possible promotions before I could possibly assign them their own name and promotions. I'd have to do a lot of python hardcoding to keep track of what promotions to associate with the commander unit when detached. If I rely on the unit's name to keep track of the commander type things could be easily broken by upgrading units or manually renaming them. Renaming commanders or units with commanders attached could be used to cheat. The only other place I know to store data to try to keep track of things is the Alternative Unit type, and using that could easily break the mechanics I use for code that is needed for my Werewolf and Sluagh Ressurection mechanics. I do not want to break them just to make Great Commanders more thematic.
Also, why they don't have an skin with their attached units like the Great General unit ?
I believe that would require adding custom art for every combination of a unit and commander. That sounds like a lot of work for little payoff. It would not show up in single unit mode or for heroes anyway.
Is it possible to space the religions names in the religious advisor window? Some of the names are appearing on the next one.
I think this depends on screen resolution. I believe I spaced it so that they would not overlap and so that the basic 7 religions would not require scrolling over to see on my screen. I could try to tweak it more, but it is not a high priority.
The crime rate – This one is a nice tool applied to the mod, but not well explored. In some games I have cities with 100% of crime and they are the richest, high culturally, and scientific of the empires I have built. Also, they was the happiest cities. The problem is that an absurd rate of crime should have great consequences that not happen in the gameplays. Events like riots, stolen money, corruption, increased unhappiness and unhealthy, more facility in kidnapping great people that stand in such cities, spreading evil religions and others can be applied to the mod, giving a much more dynamic and fun experience.
Kael added the mechanic planning on doing things like that but then lost interest before implementing such effects. I never had a lot of interest in making up such events, but could add some if people make good specific suggestions.
The Advanced Diplomacy – Certain elements like the cease talking bottom does not work. In addition, when the player is at war with civilization B, the diplomatic tab shows the option to declare war to civ B even if they are already at war.
I believe that is an issue for Tholal. I have no idea how that code works.
Events – Some of the events have no physical consequences in the game, like the volcano event that never destroys any improvements in the titles around it or cause considerable damage to cities close to the recently created volcano. It only eventually burn the forests around it. Other example is Tali Constellation, which never occurs anything.
Events that help modify the Alignment of a civ – At now the only things that modify the alignments are mostly religious. Maybe some of the events could be more active in that element, like the one of the children that will change the world, for example.
Maybe, but that is a major change for a minor event. I would like the idea better if the mod used the alignment ranges that Xienwolf added his modmod long ago. I used to base my mod on his and would not mind adding such alignments back into MagisterModmod if Tholal shows up again and wants to add it to MNAI, but I am not good enough with C++ to merge such mechanics in my myself and care a lot more about mechanics allowed in MNAI and not those other modmods.
The White Hand – Just technical issues like the initial text that appears doubled, the video is the same of Council of Esus and the soundtrack that exists in the scenarios is not the same of the standard game. Maybe the video could be some part of the Age of Ice mod intro.
Well, these are the only ones, for now. Thanks for this great work and dedication of yours !
I have always played with videos turned off. I really do not think it is worth adding more media of that sort which would make the download size bigger.
A rift gate with more than 1 movement point can already make multiple trips, so long as each trip is to a tile with no additional movement penalties.
A Rift Gate is the Dimensional 3 Building (a duplicate of an Obsidian Gate) not the Dimensional 3 Summon (an ICBM that can carry cargo).
I may need to give them better names to reduce confusion.
I used to call the summon a Tesseract, but could not find artwork that looks anything like a hyper-cube.
What names sound good to you? Void Vessel? Null Elemental? Ether Ark? Void Gate? Warp Gate?
In my last release I used the Lightning elemental artwork, but have recently changed it. It now uses the Maelstron icon and a llarger version of the Severed Soul animations. This looks much cooler, like a clear spherical bubble of distorted space burning with white flames.
Hi there, MC. I see you are still working on your mod which is already great! Keep it up. I am playing with this minor graphic tweak (making mana nodes linked to mana types, not religion like the original FFH2). I think it adds a nice flavor to it and I play all FFH2 modmods like this. I have taken the liberty to attach a small zip with the patch. It replaces 3 files (Artdefines Improvements and Bonus - sun mana was blue instead of yellow from orig FFH2, and removes all mana nodes from civ4plotLSystem) and copies some art files for them and a better looking coastline. I hope you find them to your liking. It doesn't break saves. Taken from MoM so credits to them
. Let me know if you like them and plan to use them for a next patch. Cheers!
Also, I have tried to include the other flavor improvements from MoM (via the civ4PlotLSystem) - like flavor quarries, workshops and lumbermills but for some reason the game cracks. If I were to introduce the nifs to improvements via CIV4ArtDefines_Improvement, they work just fine, but the Civ4PlotLSystem seems to cause the game to crash
. Could anyone help me with this issue? Thnx
To be honest I am not a fan of most of the MoM mana art, and do not consider it worth the effort of changing things.
I am not familiar with the most recent versions of MoM, but I believe that the only reason our coasts look different is that I added a hellish version of ocean and coats and found that without making a certain change the game showed a really ugly sandy shore between the different types of water terrain.
It has been a long time since I dealt with Civ4PlotLSystem. I know I broke a lot of things there before finally figuring out how it works, and have since forgotten how.
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I just changed Lichdom, so that instead of being available to level 8 living units with Death 3 it is available to any living level 6 with Channeling 3 in a city containing your Tower of Necromancy.
Liches lose their Death promotions but gain Death Affinity.
I added a new Dominate Undead spell available to units with Death Affinity and Channeling 3 (including Liches). It removes Rebellious from your team's undead units as well as letting you take control of any hostile or rebellious undead from other teams.
I decided that Skeletons summoned from the Death 1 spell would start out Rebellious, while those summoned from Death Affinity will not.This was inspired by rereading the Bestiary entry saying "Skeletons have few thoughts beyond wanting to end life and they will attack anyone they come into contact with. Necromancers have to use magic to give them an aura of the undead to keep their skeletons from attacking them."
I also decided to change the Sailor's Dirge in light of its pedia entry. It now has Death Affinity. Since it has Seafaring, the Skeletons it summons gain Boarding. It may generate Drowns from combat. I removed the special Skeleton_Sailor unit, which was just a skeleton with boarding generated from combat with this ship or when the ship was first created. When it first appears it will be filled with random undead units, including Spectres, Drowns, Hollow Men, and Diseased Corpses. The Bestiary says that the only undead not welcome on the Dirge are Pyre Zombies, but I a thinking putting a Lich or even Wraith on the boat would probably be to much.
I decided to allow units with Death Affinity and either Body Affinity or Demon or Undead to purchase Plague Carrier.
The Life II Destroy Undead Spell can do a maximum of 95% damage. The Life Affinity version does more damage and kills them outright.
Assuage does Psychic damage instead of Holy damage to anger based units if the caster has unholy taint.
It may be too powerful so I may remove it, but for now Water Affinity and Channeling 2 allows a mage to add Water Walking (the temporary version of the promotion) to all the units in its tile, letting your armies walk from Isle to Isle. Water 2 no longer has any spell, but just gives the permanent version of Water Waking for the unit itself. The Oasis spell has been merged into the Affinity version of Spring. Spring Greater adds an Oasis (which is a source of fresh water than may be used for irrigating farms) on a desert without any water on adjacent tiles. Otherwise it acts just the same as the current Spring.
Blaze Greater creates Flames as well as Smoke.
The 1st level affinity spells to not prevent further casting.
There are now 6 Bloom spells, 2 to make New Forests, 2 to upgrade them to Forests, and 2 to Upgrade them to Ancient Forests. The Nature 2 versions have a longer delay than the Nature Affinity version. The Nature 2 version that turns Forests into Ancient Forests requires Fellowship of the Leaves as a state religion, while the Nature Affinity version does not.
If a unit with a summoner casts Escape, it is moved to its Summoner's tile rather than the capital. Escape now has a PyHelp description telling you where it moved, much like Sever soul does.
Dimensional Affinity allows other units in the same tile to cast Escape. Rifts start with Dimensional Affinity. Summon Rift Greater creates 1 rift with Channeling 3, letting it go to a distant city and then make a Rift Gate there. (I tried to make the affinity escape spells take the unit to the tile of the Affinity-unit's caster, but that code proved too complex. If there are multiple units on the tile with Dimensional affinity, it is hard to know which one to pick.)
The Summon Djinni Greater spell summons 1 Djinn with Channeling 3, and thus Archmage level spells with at least one affinity.
All of the other Channeling 3 Affinity summoning spells create 3 summons with Strong.
All of the Channeling 2 Affinity summoning spells (Summon Ice Elemental, Summon Spectre, and Fireball) create 2 summons with strong.
The Channeling 1 Death summon is a single skeleton with strong (instead of Rebellious) which (since the number of units is limited to one per caster) does not prevent the caster from casting again.
I decided to treat The White Hand Ritual/Auric much the same as an Infernal Pact/Demon Lord, so that Auric and whoever summons him (and remains on good terms with him) get Ice Affinity for any units with the Unholy Taint. The Pact with Winter promotions also gives Ice Affinity to White Hand Priests and High Priests, as well as the Channeling promotions to let them use the Affinity spells that are replacing their standard ice spells.
I have rejected my previous idea of making Ice nodes unable to be built on raw mana. It is just too irritating to face that limitation to getting the Tower of Elements in every game. Instead I am thinking about making it so that The Deepening makes it impossible to build Ice nodes without a Pact With Winter, which you can only have by being on Auric's team.
In my last game testing Unholy Taint's Demonic Pact effects I was very upset to find that units were losing their affinity for the relevant spheres before any Demon Lords were summoned. Just rewrote the code so that it only runs after the ritual has been completed and only if the summoned demon lord was ever alive. I still have to test this.
For some reason the Tower of Elements and Tower of Necromancy seems to adding be double the free promotion pick that they should. I definitely have to fix that lest they be way too strong.
Edit: I'm thinking now that the problem may just have been that I was playing as Tebryn, and thus getting an extra +4 supplemental death mana. I decided that giving more than 2 of one type supplimental mana per leader is just too much.
The free affinity for Ritualists from summing 3 Demon Lords seems overpowered. I'm thinking I may have to reduce the team limit on Infernal Pact, or make it so that summing a second demon lord breaks your pact with the previous one.