Malakim+

[Deon]

Download here:
Version 0.2 for FF 042; bug with champion model reference is fixed; new adept art (recolored unit by NakNaks93).
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10878

There're a few major bugs caused by the modular loading. I can't fix them now until I release a version which overwrites some original FF xml files (this may be the only option).
1) Adaptive doesn't replace the current trait, it adds another.
2) Desert People is avaliable for other civs.
3) Workers start with Fire I instead of Sun I (FF feature), my bad.
I will make a few changes and release 0.3 soon.


Greetings, comrades.

I felt like I want to tweak Malakim so I made some little work.
For now they are a decent civ with nice abilities but they do not have enough unique units/features (in my opinion) and their racial should-be-a-power is underused.
So, let's look at them. They are supposed to be desert dwellers and have nice bonuses in deserts but they can't actually work deserts so their cities end somewhere in "casual" regions and their possible desert domination is wasted.

Kael promised to make them stronger in 0.34 so I'm going to wait till then but I will post my thoughts/research here after a few games.

The changes I've done:

Unique "Desert people" tech which allows Malakim an easy access to their bonuses.

New "Merchant" trait for Varn instead of previous "Financial"
+1 , in each city.
+15% .

Bedouin unit:

Raider unit:

Bedouin Swordsman (graphics only):

Bedouin Champion, Knight and Immortal (graphics only):

Mercenary Musketman (graphics only; replaces Arquebuser)

Adept (graphics only; recolored unit of NakNaks93; replaces current "alien woman" graphics):

Special actions for Bedouin:
Has Fire I (can turn plains into deserts).
Can establish caravan route (works like road but only for Malakim; +1 on plot)
Can build Bedouin Sit (only in deserts):

Bedouin Sit (cost 15 ) +1 -> Bedouin Camp +1 +2 -> Bedouin Village +2 +3
They grow slower than cottages.

A picture of a working desert country:
(smaller "tribal villages" are bedouin village graphics)

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The overall picture is: Varn loses his financial trait -> he's not that good now at "grassland/whatever cottage spam". Instead he gets a possibility to "farm" deserts gaining nice profits (+2 +4 from a desert square with bedouin village + caravan route). Also he doesn't need to build roads all over the desert so he is not an easy prey for "raiders" anymore on his sandy territory.

Any ideas/suggestions are welcome!

 

[MasterofDisasta]

I really like this new idea of cottage-type desert upgrades. I think they definately need the +1 food at first level though otherwise his cities will grow very, very slowly especially if these develop slower than cottages. At 0 food every one of these would have to be balanced out by a farmed floodplain. That brings me to a question: Are these meant to work with floodplains too? I'm really not sure whether that would be too strong or not.

Overall great idea. It adds a good mechanic thats not used a lot and I bet this would make the Malakim very distinct from other civs.

 

[xienwolf]

Null food on the first one is good I think. Then either you have plenty of developed Bedouin's and you are growing, or you have some new ones and you are developing them while the city does not grow until the development is complete. End result is that your cities will be able to grow to larger sizes, but VERY slowly (you use a single Floodplain with 3 food to grow an extra population, then you place the new guy on a floodplain as well to build up spare food. Once you have enough food you move him to a fresh bedouin and the city starves for a while as he gets it up and running. At first rank the city stagnates while he has the floodplain's extra food keeping him alive, then at final rank he is self sufficient and the floodplain works on bringing a new population into the world.

 

[Deon]

The main reason I skipped +1 on level 1 are flood plains. +4 and +3 tile for a 1 scout? Too cheap for me. So if you find a nice desert river with Malakim there should be no problems with food there.

Let's see. Previous cottage system: 3 1 (floodplain) + 4 (big city) +1 (financial) = 3 6
Now: 3 1 (floodplain) + 2 3 (bedouin village) +1 (caravan route) = 5 5, a bit better with food but less effective with gold.

The main problem here that the road is built 'atop' of the caravan and AI thus loses his +1 bonus building roads. Should I remove roads totally? Or there should be a way not to allow the caravan route to be destroyed by buildiung a road...

Another idea is to give them hidden "camel" resource for deserts (like pearls are for Lanun) and it would give production bonus with bedouin sits/camps/villages to allow Varn to get production in deep deserts and open a "camel riders" branch instead of horsmen branch.

 

[MasterofDisasta]

Ok if they work on floodplains too I guess then no food at first level is only balanced.

On the roads question, could the Malakim's racial bonus be modified to prevent the construction of roads on desert squares? That way the AI won't destroy his caravans but Malakim can still build roads everywhere else.

 

[Deon]

I don't know how to make it yet, I'll dig into it.
I prefer to have caravans in desert only/roads everywhere but desert (it's a bit strange to have a road in a desert, isn't it? ).

Also I started a game with Sto's "Full of resources" script and it gave me a lot of Scrubs! Scrubs + bedouins = food + small production (like forest). Now we need a tech/building/civic which gives +1 to bedouin camps and we get a nice tile.

This is my starting position. The script is a bit insane so next time I'll lower the number of resources...

Spoiler :

As you see, 1st level bedouin sit + flood plains = Oasis's yield.

 

[Valkrionn]

This sounds great, although possibly a bit overpowered once the new version is out. May have to play with the yields a bit. Also, I love the idea of a camel resource only available to the Malakim... As far as I'm concerned, they should have been riding camels from the beginning.

 

[MasterofDisasta]

So, the bedouin villages can be built in scrubs? That makes them actually really good tiles. 2 food 1 hammer and 4 commerce is great tile yield, especially for a square no one else wants!

I think the camel resource idea is great. Were you planning on making camels a resource similar to nightmares or only having it replace horses? The new camel mounted units sound great, the Malakim need more UU's to set them apart from the other civs.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Having camel's act like nightmares would be interesting. If that is added, I'd say it should change the unit's graphics, its name, add an attack and defense boost in deserts, a bonus vs mounted units, and be mutually exclusive with Nightmares. The Malakim might be the only ones who can harvest/domesticate them, but they could trade them their allies to help in desert warfare.


Actually, It might be better for Camels and Nightmares (and also deer for the elves and pigs and rhino's for the dwarves) to work more like the Crew Promotions. It might even be cool if you separated horses into different breeds, some of which would would make the unit stronger but slower and some of which would be quick but weaker. The Hippus' free horse resource could be changed to Maeras, which would combine the strength of the heaviest lightest breeds. Maybe a unique feature sacred to Tali could provide Pegasi.

This is probably taking things too far.

 

[Deon]

Yeah, Magister, you're as usually a nice suggester and dreamer . Now I won't go too far to python crew promos (who knows, maybe in future... ) but the idea of camels should be implemented IMO.

I played the game on emperor and was pretty screwed by dwarves. These cities are great GP nests but they can't build a thing if you compare them to my neighbour Luichuirp. He's got almost every wonder... Hills + dwarves = power .

However as I tested Malakim + conquest in such situation are good warmongers.
You should be lucky to get a copper/iron in the desert near your cities to get them going nice still. Or a few of desert hills which work worse.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Patch O - Download
1. Resolved issue with Feats/Options
2. Functionality of Nox Nocts/Chosen of Esus invisibility reworked - you may now choose to become visible at will whilst under the effect.
3. Ship crew mechanic switched to use Exclusive Promotions mechanic
4. Weapon Tier mechanic switched to use Exclusive Promotions mechanic
5. XP cap "removed" for fighting animals of other civilizations (100 XP cap still applies for barbarian animals)
6. "All Unique Features" game option added
7. Mana-Surge "Anti-ritual" ritual added
8. Default barbarian first-spawn time based on number of cities (as with base FfH)
9. "Barbarian World" game option ignores the number of player cities when spawning barbarians (Raging + Barbarian World is nasty)

Actually, in FF Crew Promotions don't use python. "Mount Promotions" wouldn't either, except maybe to have appropriate new names for each different type of mounted unit (assuming we don't want a seperate promotion for evey unit in the game).

It would probably be better to just make Camel-mounted units a seperate mounted line, requiring Camels instead of Horses. (I've tried to do this for my modmod before, but the camel resource graphics didn't look right, and I know noting of modding graphics.)


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May I assume that all the builds for Bedouins work though spells? Units with both offensive strength and build orders really confuse the AI, leading to WoC errors.

 

[Deon]

That's good to know, it will allow a lot of funny things to be avaliable much easier.

Also I thought that since scouts are not mounted units I'd better use Chugginator's arabian worker unit. I've made buttons for new actions (caravan route/build bedouin sit) and for the Bedouin unit. I will remove the maul later .

Also I managed to set it as a module without changing actual files so a few tweaks and I'll release the preview version.

For some weird reason when I've made new improvements to be modular they no longer upgrade in each other... Any ideas?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Is that still a scout UU, with combat strength and worker/adept-like build orders? Did you miss the part about this driving the AI crazy, leading to infinite loops and with an eternal "Waiting for Other Civilizations"s? (There is a block stopping barbarian adepts from building nodes, but letting workers build them, to stop this, but such a block was never added to stop WoCs from hunters building forts or Hammerfists building forts.)

It could work as a spell though.

 

[Deon]

Oh my, I'm unfamiliar with this. I should rework the idea then .

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

can I be completely honest with you?

I think this is AWESOME. really. good mechanics, and those screenshots you posted? man, that's EXACTLY what Malakim territory should look like. well done, a much needed rework of this civ imho.

a couple suggestions: caravans should be the malakim substitute for roads, exactly like trails are for the lizardman. that will make things simplier and eliminate AI issues. and the idea about malakim-only camel resource is awesome as well.

so overall this is a great job, keep it up

 

[Deon]

I already replaced roads with caravan routes: AI messed things up without it.
Also I re-vamped the idea so Bedouin now is a worker replacement, thanks to Magister for pointing out the issue with non-worker units and buildings. I want to collect a "desert"-like unit set from different unit graphics for them to look more complete. For now they have "camel archer" from nowhere and other units has plain civ4 vanilla look. I want to change it flavour-wise. Also a bit of variation would be nice too.

I.e. Raider replaces Horseman: no bonus vs. archers (they do not experience a lot of horsemen vs. archers fights in deserts, they are more like bandits from "Ali Baba and 40 bandits") but they mastered hit-and-run tactics so they get 60% withdrawal instead of basic 25%.
I will update the 1st post.

 

[xienwolf]

The issue with the AI and build orders on combat units was actually an issue with having a build order but NOT being able to construct a route. So in your case it was perfectly fine because you COULD build a route with the unit.


Modular Mods cannot internally reference any file. So promotions cannot have prereqPromotions, or SummonPerks, or PromotionNextLevels. Improvements cannot have ImprovementUpgrades, ImprovementPillages. Techs cannot have TechPrereqs... And so on. In general Modular Mods don't work too well with references to other XML files, unless that XML file was already completely loaded, for which you would have to know the load order of "readpass1" or just guess and hope.


The workaround is that instead of being Modular "I only list what I changed" you can be Modular "I included the entire file, with my changes at the end" for each of the files which need to internally reference.

 

[Deon]

Uh, so the only way to make this feature working is to manually insert it into files? Sad .

Bedouin Swordsman graphics (I'm not sure about stats yet):

 

[azzedar]

... another modification that needs to find its way into the main game, but tragically won't ... so far my pessimistic view on the things

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edit:
btw. i like the maul the workers wear. looks nice
dont remove it =)

edit:
ok, ignore my post, got the wrong stats

 

[JeffSteel]

Wow, this is looking great! I will defiantly be keeping an eye on this.

As far as traits go, is "Merchant" still going to be the trait he changes via adaptive?