MarnokMod - (Explorable lairs)

[Marnok]

WHERE TO GET IT:
http://www.marnok.com/Civ4/marnok.rar
This rar file ought to have an Assets folder which can be dropped in to FfH installation folder. Please backup your FfH folder before installing! Even better, make a copy of the folder so you can play this modmod and still play FfH.

WHAT THIS MOD DOES

Changes:
LAIRS (Barrows, Ruins)

• do not vanish when a unit steps on them
• can be Explored - send a unit in to the lair to face the perils, possibly finding danger and rewards within.
• act as breeding grounds for monsters, spawning an interesting variety of monsters.
• can be Visited by barbarian allies while still at peace with the barbarians, to stir up trouble and possibly find reward
• can be Converted by barbarian allies when within cultural borders, becoming a useful plot improvement

VILLAGES

• no longer vanish when a unit steps on them
• barbarians will occupy villages, possibly breeding/spawning/growing
• can be relocated by a player once they have protected the village for long enough. Villagers can also be added to a city for population gain.
• can be Visited - costs some gold, maybe gain support from village
• can be Attacked for gold and slaves
• can be Converted when within a city's cultural border, becoming a hamlet or other useful improvement (will become a Farm if the village was build on Corn, for example)

MONSTERS

• monster units often spawn, with unique names thanks to the name generator
• Some monsters can spawn special lair types - Lich tower, Giant's castle
• Animals have extra lairs (to help populate with animals) and predators will feed on meat resources they find

other features:

• Units can become Adventurers, individual named characters better suited to clearing lairs
• Naming system is sensitive to civ, alignment, religion and more
• Treasure chest items spawn, only recoverable by treasure hunter characters. These chests can provide a lot of wealth.

HOW YOUR GAME EXPERIENCE WILL CHANGE
There are many more Barbarians in the mod. Some of them will be powerful.
(Balance systems mean units tend to spawn Boss types in a rational way, and more powerful villains tend to lurk in Lairs and villages during the earlier stages of the game)
You will find that you need to put some effort into clearing an area to settle it properly. You may want to protect villages, or leave them as "flypaper" for passing barbarians, or pillage them for loot...
Exploration of "dungeons" may bring treasure, magic items (including some of Vehem's magic items, thanks Vehem!), experience, and other things...

DISCLAIMER
This mod is still being developed. At the moment it seems to work, do what I intended, and not mess things up. But, because I kept having to stop/start work on it, and update for the main mod patches - there may be oddities. So, backup first!

Please report:
Bugs, Oddities, Failings etc.
Ideas and Suggestions
General balance/gameplay/feel feedback

Permission is granted to use the stuff I've made up here in other mods and modmods - please give credit where appropriate, unless it doesn't work in which case leave my name out of it.


Thanks for looking!

 

[Marnok]

0.32d version
I started this thread over here - as requested here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=272494

Future Work

• A lot of the functions can be tidied up behind the scenes.
• Dungeon exploration results to be expanded upon - need more civ specific, etc.
• Looking at the Sea next - first an ocean predation system(for example when sea monster finds Fish, it stops and starts breeding) then expanded to include ideas from threads about making seas for interesting
• Cosmetic changes

 

[TheJopa]

Very, very nice, eager to try it for 0.32.

What does this mean:

* Animals have extra lairs (to help populate with animals) and predators will feed on meat resources they find

I hope they wont eat entire sheep resource or something!

 

[mahazel]

OK, I found first bug

When my settler is on the village, and want to join it to my empire (two hands icon) the game is crashing and returning to windows. Village is on the hill with gold. It happened 3 times.

On the other hand, it was great when I tried the same thing with my warrior in previous game (village was on plain) and a horde of orcs appeared and destroyed my civilization in next turn

And I have a question: what the fame promotion is doing?

 

[Marnok]

Very, very nice, eager to try it for 0.32.

What does this mean:

I hope they wont eat entire sheep resource or something!

Not consume it, but they will happily sit there and chomp away - the bonus stays, and the animal gets to roll on the "lair" table so it can spawn more, gain XP, or whatever. They have just found a rich hunting ground is all. Also:

Spoiler :

If you see them before you have husbandry sitting there spawning predators, and don't see the food, maybe there's horses. Might be a clue.

The extra lairs are just copies of the bear den for wolf, lion, tiger... they won't last long but they will pop out a few extra animals at the start.

 

[Marnok]

OK, I found first bug

When my settler is on the village, and want to join it to my empire (two hands icon) the game is crashing and returning to windows. Village is on the hill with gold. It happened 3 times.

On the other hand, it was great when I tried the same thing with my warrior in previous game (village was on plain) and a horde of orcs appeared and destroyed my civilization in next turn

And I have a question: what the fame promotion is doing?

Thanks for the report.
I'll check the turn-to-mines option, maybe I have a typo. I've not seen it myself. (Sorry about your civ, these things happen! Never plunder a lair next to a city unless you have defenders. It's all in the small print. No refunds.)

Fame promotion just notes that the unit has a unique name. At the moment, it is just used to stop a named unit getting renamed again later. I had plans to use it for events and spell checking (that is checks relating to magic spells, not checking the order of letters within words...), it's there for the future at least if I need it for anything like that.

 

[Dogfax]

great mod!! thnx for your efforts.. The villages around my start are giving me all sort of goodies for cash. Any chance of Civilepedia udates?

 

[pimparel]

Future Work

• Looking at the Sea next - first an ocean predation system(for example when sea monster finds Fish, it stops and starts breeding) then expanded to include ideas from threads about making seas for interesting

Maybe create something like the barbarian pirate cove improvements and/or a barbarian cove/treasure island, which would spawn pirates, etc...

 

[mahazel]

I don`t know if this bug is from your modmod or from normal FFH, but Amelanchier created two Gilden Silverics.

I got promotion Tresure hunter, but didn`t see tresure chest nowhere.

My Centaur had about 300 exp, and everytime he explored dungeons, got greate result. But it was weird when he got immortal 3 times in a row. So my question is: is it possible to prevent from having some event if unit had it before?

Yap, it was really weird and wonderful game. Half of the world was in barbarian hands (emperor level), lot of monsters and beasts, Elohim and Amurietes destroyed by barbarians before 150 turn (start on 99 turn, classic era), elves had big empire on the east coast, dwarves in south-east part of the continent. Ech, just like I like

 

[TheJopa]

As Svartalfar I was unable to attack or visit tribal villages, and I'd get python exception error every turn I'd have unit stationed on it.

 

[Marnok]

As Svartalfar I was unable to attack or visit tribal villages, and I'd get python exception error every turn I'd have unit stationed on it.

sounds like the sdToolkitAdvanced.py file was missing? Please check it is there, maybe re-download in case it corrupted.

 

[Zifnab]

sounds like the sdToolkitAdvanced.py file was missing? Please check it is there, maybe re-download in case it corrupted.

I'm getting the python errors too. By around turn 50 I'm getting 50-60 errors a turn.

Oh, and I do have the sdToolkitAdvanced.py file.

 

[Sureshot]

the wolf den improvement is called "TXT_KEY_WOLF..etc.", a random note about that, you can just put the actual name you want like "Wolf Den" in the improvements file instead of putting a "TXT_KEY_XXX" and itll work fine ive recently noticed (works for units and such too.. not sure why they always use a text key pointer instead of just putting the name of things, seems like unnecessary extra work)

great to see this finally in the mod section

 

[Marnok]

the wolf den improvement is called "TXT_KEY_WOLF..etc.", a random note about that, you can just put the actual name you want like "Wolf Den" in the improvements file instead of putting a "TXT_KEY_XXX" and itll work fine ive recently noticed (works for units and such too.. not sure why they always use a text key pointer instead of just putting the name of things, seems like unnecessary extra work)

great to see this finally in the mod section

Hi

I think the reason fro the TXT KEY is so if anyone ever bothers to create translations, people in Spain can have ... well according to google translation, also "Wolf Den". But with a different accent.
I'll put in the missing entries for next time.

 

[Marnok]

I'm getting the python errors too. By around turn 50 I'm getting 50-60 errors a turn.

Oh, and I do have the sdToolkitAdvanced.py file.

Thanks for the details, I will have to see why this might be misbehaving, I've never had a python error yet!

 

[Sureshot]

im getting the same errors as Zifnab, i decided to do "Hidepythonerror=1" in the CivilizationIV.ini so that they wouldn't come up anymore heh, for the first one it seems theres two ways to do setDamage and that for the "caster" type youre using it wants the other way (int,int instead of float,bool)

 

[MaxAstro]

Just played a game with this mod, no bugs to note (except for missing text keys, and I think the one time I got a scout to a Tribal Village, he couldn't do anything but Raid it).

I just have one comment: HOLY CRAP.

Never before have I seen a game so totally dominated by the barbarians. There were lairs literally EVERYWHERE. By turn 150 or so, I could send a Hawk on top of a peak and have a barbarian unit in every other tile for the entire visible range. I lost half a dozen hunters just to clear out three or four lairs... and I don't know WHAT I'm gonna do about that Hill Giant Castle... Perhaps the rate at which everything multiplies could be toned down a bit? It was fun to have to fight an incredibly dangerous wilderness for every inch of terrain, but I don't know if I'm ever gonna make it to a point where I can safely wage war on another player... XD

 

[Marnok]

im getting the same errors as Zifnab, i decided to do "Hidepythonerror=1" in the CivilizationIV.ini so that they wouldn't come up anymore heh, for the first one it seems theres two ways to do setDamage and that for the "caster" type youre using it wants the other way (int,int instead of float,bool)

aha, ok, makes sense, thanks.

 

[Marnok]

Just played a game with this mod, no bugs to note (except for missing text keys, and I think the one time I got a scout to a Tribal Village, he couldn't do anything but Raid it).

I just have one comment: HOLY CRAP.

Never before have I seen a game so totally dominated by the barbarians. There were lairs literally EVERYWHERE. By turn 150 or so, I could send a Hawk on top of a peak and have a barbarian unit in every other tile for the entire visible range. I lost half a dozen hunters just to clear out three or four lairs... and I don't know WHAT I'm gonna do about that Hill Giant Castle... Perhaps the rate at which everything multiplies could be toned down a bit? It was fun to have to fight an incredibly dangerous wilderness for every inch of terrain, but I don't know if I'm ever gonna make it to a point where I can safely wage war on another player... XD

It seems that different people with different playstyles want this mod to work in different ways. At some point I am going to have to put a simple file with variable settings so people, can tweak to taste. I'll add it to my list of things to do...

About the tribal village, you can always raid them, but visiting has requirements. if you have 10 gold and sit on the village for a turn, you ought to get the chance to visit.

 

[Sureshot]

ya i personally want even more and tougher barbs heh