MarnokMod - (Explorable lairs)

[Y T]

Ok, before I start of with the newest build, I forgot one thing in my last game:
Got a minor bard as villageresult & used him to push culture, got 1200 at the epic game, IIRC, tad bit to much for a minor if u ask me, I could b wrong in remembering it, but am pretty sure.
I played 45 turns now on normal game speed, monarch game, creation mapscript, FFH vanilla (except your mod^^); no settlers, 2% barb village per tile upon creating map.
Got a barb village six tiles away from my capital, I thought:"Great!", until i realized it also was on a mana resource, so razing was the task, but as things go, all turns out differently:
- turn 13: Acheron created (in just that village)
- turn 34: got system msg: "1 was killed"
- turn 35: Doviello civ destroyed (I guess "1" referred to Lucian, checked Civpedia, but hes in there with his normal name & I'm pretty sure I didnt have this msg in the last testbuild (Lucian tends to die early))
- turn 43: Calabim destroyed

So, I had this barrow on a desert tile next to Acheron town, nice pick & training for my warriors, problem was: whenever i ended my turn on this tile to go raze the lair, another skeleton popped up & removed my brave willing warriors, tried it 6 times. Guess Im gonna set your "marnokBlockSpawn = 0" to 1 from now on, cant wait for Hunters to get rid of near lairs & i wont use scouts for that, bit of micromanagement too, if it was intended.
Intentionally I hoped for a lesser spawncycle, but after six times...
I remember with the last version, i could occupy a lair a few turns until eventually a spawn removed me, liked it better that way!

About Acheron town: he sits there accompanied by two warriors, whenever a third pops up (making unitcount up to 4, he disappears; I know u made "marnokSpawnStackCap = 4", so does Abashi count as 2 units?
Another vanishing barb effect I also observed with the last version: Sometimes (like now & as I recall: Lizzie Hunters) the barbs advance into my culteral border or near town & next turn they are gone, no fight, no nothing. There was a village next to my capital now & I had a scout guarding it (tending it^^), until those Lizzies came to near. Question rises up: can villages defend themselves?!
Two last things:
"Villagers tend to your unit" senseless spent 10G, if my unit is fully healed (esp. early on in the game, where I have to drop from 100% research to get money), but on the other hand, they remove some, if not all negative proms, guess it stays that way!
"...welcomes u as Guardians & Defenders", just my rough guess: they turn friendlier to me, reducing the time until i can try to relocate them?!

About all for now, starting a new game, that Dragon's Horde is just too suppressing for me & i need to get "marnokBlockSpawn = 1"!^^
Keep up the good work!

 

[Marnok]

Hi YT,
Abasi spawned again? I thought I'd got rid of that guy ages ago, I'll check my monster lists again.

"1 was killed" - sounds like I left a debug checker in there somewhere. Sometimes when I am debugging I'll put statements in to rename units (set to 1 at the start of a function, 2 at a later stage, etc so I can see which steps the unit is going through) I'll doublecheck the code and remove any, if that is the problem.

Stack spawn stops them spawning, it doesn't nuke existing units. So if he vanishes there must be some other reason. One reason might be budget; I suppose it is theoretically possible that the Barb AI might say, these guys are too expensive, better disband them? Or, the barbs go on strike?

Villagers tending unit - I might change the way results are rolled in the future so only useful/relevant results are in the list. But for now it stays - it's part of the risk of visiting a village, sometimes you get something cool, sometimes you get nothing for your 10g
The guardians and defenders - yes it increases the friendliness, when I get the "indicators" working you will see the friendliness increase, which will be nice.

Remember to switch dragons off if you don't like them.

 

[Marnok]

EDIT : yep some debug renames were in there, re-uploaded new version without.

confirmed Abashi is not in the spawn lists. HOWEVER, if you have Dragons switched on, there is about a 1 in 436686132158 chance that the name generator will produce "Abashi" as the name of a dragon....

 

[Marnok]

I see what you mean about the spawning. I must've bugged up somewhere. What I am seeing is a normal spawn rate, but as soon as I kill the defender and step on, it seems to auto-spawn another unit at the end of the turn! This is wrong, I'll fix this in a moment, thanks again Y T!

EDIT : yep, there it is... if the plot is owned, it would always spawn. Testing a fix...

EDIT2 : And now the test_marnok.rar has a fix in it.

 

[Y T]

Waaa, now I'm mixing up the dragons aswell, it was Acheron the Red Dragon ofc!^^
To much wine last night >.< Dunno if u let any other dragon spawn with a Horde itself.
Actually Villagers tending ur unit can stay as it is, as it also seems to cure any negative Promotion. Found it out with a fully healed, but enervated unit!
Checking fixed version now, finally wanna see the villageculture mechanic!

 

[Y T]

The usual normal speed/monarch/nosettler game, 2% barb cities on initial start, played roughly 80 turns sofar:
Got another Lizardman advancing towards my capital, then >poof< disappeared.
Tending villagers dont cure the Plague, just to hard to heal for them! ;P
Recon units can get weapon upgrades, I guess all units can get them now, not a bug per se.
Serious AI bug:
I found an Elohim border & was a bit puzzled seeing their score at "11", discovered it was only a 3x3 border, declared war & killed a scout on a village. I thought their capital might have been destroyed & he was the last remainder, waited for the culture to drop back, but the Elohim were still in the game. After exploring the vicinity i finally found them, a warrior & settler. I checked the initial autosave in WB & found out his starting location was two tiles away from a barb city, so he couldnt settle. When i found the couple, he also only moved two tiles away from his starting position.
Maybe due to the fact the scout reached a village & "settled", something got wrong with the AI routine.

Nice to see barb can pop culture out of villages too. Whats the next step, allowing villages to upgrade to cities?^^
Relocate villagers button still has the TXT_KEY_..., also Im happy u perfected the code when u let those villages join your nation inside the BFC. In the past versions I was only able to get cottages & mines, with this version I also got pastures & plantations.
Another issue with this mechanic: In the past I was able to let them settle on forested tiles, getting (like elves) forested improvements. I didnt check for this version though, might do it later.

 

[Marnok]

Maybe due to the fact the scout reached a village & "settled", something got wrong with the AI routine.

I suppose maybe having some tiles of culture might've confused them, but they still ought to have treated their settler as normal - they wouldn't normally park a settler just because they have some land. I think perhaps they were hiding? I don't know.

Nice to see barb can pop culture out of villages too. Whats the next step, allowing villages to upgrade to cities?^^

I was thinking that might eb more like an Event. I've not done any events yet...

Relocate villagers button still has the TXT_KEY_..., also Im happy u perfected the code when u let those villages join your nation inside the BFC. In the past versions I was only able to get cottages & mines, with this version I also got pastures & plantations.

Ought to have worked before! Glad it is seen to be working now though.

Another issue with this mechanic: In the past I was able to let them settle on forested tiles, getting (like elves) forested improvements. I didnt check for this version though, might do it later.

Yes, because villages can just start in forests, it seemed odd to me to stop them relocating or upgrading there. I might put a setting in if a lot of people feel strongly.

 

[mahazel]

Quote:Originally Posted by Y T
Maybe due to the fact the scout reached a village & "settled", something got wrong with the AI routine.

I suppose maybe having some tiles of culture might've confused them, but they still ought to have treated their settler as normal - they wouldn't normally park a settler just because they have some land. I think perhaps they were hiding? I don't know.

It is a bug reported in vanila FFH, AI cant build city nor move first settler when they are starting inside barbarian borders.

 

[Marnok]

It is a bug reported in vanila FFH, AI cant build city nor move first settler when they are starting inside barbarian borders.

aha, thanks, not actually my fault then! I'll see about making sure barb cities don't get created too near starting settler positions, that should prevent it.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It makes sense that the AI couln;t settle in barbarian territory, but don't see why it shouldn't move the settler out of the territory and then settle down.


That reminded me, I really want to allow founding cities in rival territory--but make doing so an act of war. Actually, it would probably be better to only allow settling in owned territory if you are already at war (or the owner, of course), as the other way would probably make the AI declare war stupidly). I'll have to look into again. I tried a few moths ago, but I guess I didn't find all the needed blocks. I was able to order my settlers to build the city, but they would disappear without actually creating the city.

While I'm at it, I think I'll try to make the city start with the settler's religion and maybe population based on its level (my modmod will include worker mod, so setters can get levels)

 

[Y T]

Yeah, Jean Elcard posted it, read it. On this current game the Calabim shared the same fate as the Elohim. One thing hopefully not a problem is, both had mushrooms in their village/scoutsettled border. I dont now if or how other events might trigger with those "culteral depandancies", just started to gain extra land, by placing villages where i want them to & defend them with a strong unit. So any eventtriggered mismatch might be popping up for me too.
Its past midgame now & Im lucky my small twocity empire is not a transit one this time, allowing me to completly shut if off on one side. Im beginning to plan for an altar victory, seems to b the safest in my position.
Still, my raiding party trying to clean out the wilderlands gets butchered down eventually with remainders fleeing home to get restocked.
Im just telling this, cause Im a little bit upset to have lost 3 lvl6 Swordsman in my stack to a single unit called "Axeman", every time Saverous left the stack, it attacked, but well, nowhere to be seen.
I had to back off keeping the stack closely together, until i got my metamagic mage close enough to cast a floating eye. "Axeman" is a simple axeman unit indeed, but fully promoted with Hero, Str II & Invisibilty, & a few of other neat proms.
Im sortta glad I casted this floating eye, I knew I had a small dragon near by, but the eye also revealed he had an invisible brother just two tiles away!

I suppose u will let the barbs keep invisibilty as promotion & therefore must rather be much more aware in future. (Imagining an invisible Stoneskin Ogre Hero!)^^

 

[Marnok]

I suppose u will let the barbs keep invisibilty as promotion & therefore must rather be much more aware in future. (Imagining an invisible Stoneskin Ogre Hero!)^^

Yeah invisible barbs are "fun" - it should have renamed them though. I suppose they were Famed not actually Hero.

 

[PapaMonkey]

I really like your culture generated on a protected village. In my opinion Forts (and their improved versions) should work the same way. Is there a way you can modify your code to allow that too: if a fort is occupied it generates culture, but if it is not, it decays? I find forts are a bit (a lot) more useful in your mod to close choke points.

 

[Marnok]

I really like your culture generated on a protected village. In my opinion Forts (and their improved versions) should work the same way. Is there a way you can modify your code to allow that too: if a fort is occupied it generates culture, but if it is not, it decays? I find forts are a bit (a lot) more useful in your mod to close choke points.

funny you should say that, I am testing forts now. I am thinking they will get their culture instantly if they are occupied with enough force, rather than having the buildup time villages have.

I am also thinking, maybe upgrade option to turn villages into forts; or perhaps a special category of "fortified village" so forst can upgrade to them to! Gathering peasants from all around, looking for protection.

I'll have to playtest; building forts in neutral territory, that sort of thing.

 

[Y T]

Nice Idea with the forts!
Barbfriendly AI suffer from keeping or occupying lairs & villages, especially if its in one of their BFCs or a valuable ressource (mana/metal), seriously slowing them down & not helping at all (researchwise).
Even the other barbunfriendly civs occasionally keep villages inside their BFC. Solution: Just see fit to have a routine to check for that & make a "villagejoin"-attempt if the treshold is high enough.
I captured my own villagebuilders, intended or not; having an small gold Dragon with invisible, Hero & villagepop proms is actually another funny thing!^^

 

[Marnok]

Capturing a villagebuilder should not break things too much, as the promo is removed after use. Regular tribal villagers of course can resettle, so it isn't too much of a problem.

I need to tweak the re-evaluation of villages; the AI needs to switch to conversion-mode (or attack) when the plot with the coveted resource is within city culture. Perhaps I can just get the plot's culture level and check that way. I also need some sort of timer - if the unit has held a village for a number of turns and no worker has come to link up the resource, the guarding unit should probably think about some other action.

 

[Raize]

This mod is tough! It's thoroughly enjoyable - I love how many lairs there are and how they sometimes come out to get you, but the random wandering beasts (as they are now) make it nearly impossible to survive, at least in the early game.

For instance, around turn 130ish on epic (nobody had bronze working yet), there was a "Clan Blood Baerd Manticore" who destroyed the Lanun and then every unit in my and my teammate (AI's) city. It was 15 in strength, with all 5 strength promotions and Cannibalize, versus Warriors. I couldn't even whittle him down. At least he couldn't take cities. But then there were the strength 9 Wraiths and then Drowns and the Orcs...

In fact, I started the game (Large map, Monarch) with 32 civs in paired teams. By turn 150, only 22 were left standing, and 6 of those were because they were part of a Barbarian team. Only 3 civs had more than their initial starting city.

I love the mod, but how do I tone down the wandering monsters a little? Does Raging Barbarians have an impact? It's on by default.

 

[Marnok]

I love the mod, but how do I tone down the wandering monsters a little? Does Raging Barbarians have an impact? It's on by default.

I think Raging will make the monsters mre likely to attack early on, so yes.

There are ways to deal with big monsters; using lairs are flypaper is a good one. (they will tend to settle in a lair or village so if you can get them to attack you there, they will be stopped for a good while)

Try tweaking some of the settings in setting.py and see if that helps, but, there is still a chance for something Big and Nasty to appear. That's part of the fun and the challenge!

In future releases, the lists of monsters appearing and when they appear might be more unified. It depends how much time I get. This would make it easier to customize and tweak, bt, it would mean quite a bit of work so for now you might find yourself looking in lots of files to make modifications.

Another vague idea I was toying with, was the idea that if a monster is very powerful (function would test this) it would automatically build a lair and start lording it over everyone.

 

[Blackmantle]

Here to report back a few issues and ideas (always play without the village part as you might know, so i can't report on that one.).

First you haven't taken out enervation and didn't upgrade wither to its new form (maybe you have in the newest build. I play with the last nontest version. So sorry if this has allready been adressed.). It has been done in the Main Mod (thankfully. Unhealable promotions just suck big time + don't add anything substantial to the game and Enervation + Wither could well use the beef-up they gained.)
As a result even the pool of tears doesn't heal it anymore which makes it even worse than before.

Secondly not all dominated Lairbuilders lose the promotion. Whenever i get a Hill giant and build lairs in neutral territory i can chainbuild 20+ Lairs and bring an Adventurer along (so either Command / Domination need looking into or you need to have another look at the lairbuilder promotion). I belive other units than hill giants have this issue here and there as well. Also if the villages part is turned of those units shouldn't be able to build free goddy huts when inside cultural borders...
Btw. Its fun that Liches (+ the 3 Stooges?) can upgrade ancient towers, villages and lairs to Seats of Power of a fearsome lich (a mighty fortress of a hill giant jarl?). (Is that a good or a bad thing from the players perspective / danger level / rewards btw.?)

Thirdly a result that instant-kills high level units / world-units and othere treasured powerhouses in average barrows / ruins is unfun imo. Its allright that this result does exist, but it should be so high a number that it can only happen to nonadventurers / nonheroes / Units below level 6/8 (26+/50+ XP) and otherwise won't trigger it if you don't put the handicap up. (Imo its the worst result possible at all and happens rather often. Don't know what you have as the most dangerous outcome right now. But whould be good to know to compare.)
Or make it damage to a certain point (like 99%) so nondamaged units are "safe" (but i for one whould think that a result only for low-level units / nonadventurers whould be the better solution.)
Also it feels like Adventurer / Hero (don't know for sure if Hero also helps. But it should imo) has a bit to small an effect in my book .To me it feels a bit like its better to send in cheap fooder to explore and high-level units / heroes / adventurers for cleanup (but that may be related to abovementioned issue will wait until that is adressed before giving a final verdict.).

Fourth point whould be to make villages pop in cultural borders if the village-part is disabled. I know you have that as a known issue. If you could find a way to fix it, without major hassle it whould be appreciated.
Also related to that: if you have a unit that has allready casted this turn and enter a village with it, it doesn't trigger the village that turn (in non-village content mode). Just at the start of next turn. Seems like a little glitch.

Overall very fun / polished now. Thanks for the greath modmod.


Now some ideas / suggestions:


To make seas more interesting / dangerous you might consider to add a lairtype for the deap sea / ocean (like elemental well / deep necropolis / floating harbor or something along those lines) where Cultists, Stygean Guards and krakens / Water Elementals (as bosses) and the occasional high-level ship (like Man-o Wars, Frigates and Arcane Barges with some nice promotions) spawn.
Has the huge advantage of not beeing able to be plundered until midgame. Sustaining a certain challenge even if good parts of the map are settled early and AI is on its toes for a change so no one goes down / is hampered + offering something after Sailing is researched.

(also i whould dislike if you streamline the lairs to much. I whould think it more interesting if you specialized even more what came from what type of Lair and add more types of Lairs. Thats how i got your comment. Correct me if i got that one wrong.)


To add something to peaks (if possible) you might consider adding a griffons nest type of lair (with griffons and other low-power flying things as standart spawns and air-elementals or other high-powered flyers as bosses.) or the likes. Adding some lairs for lategame exploring when druids / flying units are available + keep up pressure from monsters.

Also on Tundra / Ice you could spawn a crystal palace type of lair where Frostlings, Frost Giants and other monsters from the cold spawn (more to come soon when the main mod is prepared for ice so even if there are not many options now there will be soon). Perhaps even the ocasional white Dragon if the modmodmod is enabled .

So long, back to playing your modmod.


@ Raize: Enter settings.py (via notepad for example), theres plenty of tweaks there to finetune the spawning / barb activity and also AI handicap if it copes to bad for your tastes.

 

[Marnok]

Thanks Blackmantle, there's lots to think about there

One thing, now that I am spawning villages "manually", I can have 2 tribal village improvements - one gets used in modded style villages, a different non-permanent one can be spawned if the option to have basic villages is set... so, when I have tested, your villages will appear exactly as you want them.