MarnokMod - (Explorable lairs)

[Blackmantle]

I whould sometime in the future like to play a coop game against AI / Barbs with your modmod when its polished.

About promotions: There have been a lot of changes in the last patches (valor, stoneskin, enervation cut, wither) which all have been for more or less good reasons and don't seem to have yet been updated. So plenty of the spells and references don't work (like cure for enervation which is nonexist now) or at least are not balanced (like Valor which is a tier 3 spell now.).


Beyond that, featurewise i only find that a deep-sea-lair (and perhaps something for peaks) is needed as well as some polish for what spawns where.
(A small idea for the bucaneers dens: Have them progress / make them workable like Lanun pirate coves do if within someones cultural borders (yieldwise as well as perhaps more powerful spawns). That whould perhaps offer some trade-off for not instantly razing them + make sense imo + offer additional "resources" for the otherwise often barren shores) Also Sunken Cities could offer a bit of additional yield (2 commerce perhaps?).

Oh and multiple settings.py whould be nice indeed.
I for one think that the base version is balanced allready but everyone experiences there game differently and no need for tempering with code + testing alot is always welcome .
The only thing i do change is disabling villages. Then it works fine for me. (Map type may also be a factor: Nearly always play creation and for that map it works like a charm. Imo at least.)

Still for polish there seems some work to be done. Nice to hear you have ideas in pipeline allready (like 2 types of villages depending on setting enabled / disabled). Im sure you will find a way.

 

[KingOfLands]

Thanks KingOgLands.

The spider you encountered had picked up a random promotion, there's thousands of possible combinations of promotions/monsters, I think you got "lucky" with tht particular combination! Those bits of luck help balance out the harsher bad luck.. sometimes...

Yes water elementals will spawn from sunken cities, but normally only after a Drown gets a result to spawn its "boss" type. I think Wellies still can take over a land-based lair, I stopped Drowns from doing so but I think I left wellies with a chance.

A spider with Death 2 showed up twice, so I was a little surprised.

The water elementals were certainly trying to hang out in villages; I may have seen one hanging around on a barrow as well, but I won't swear to that.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

This sounds neat, I've been meaning to try it. Can anyone tell me if it works on pre-made maps?

 

[Y T]

It worked well with Sureshots huge map of Erebus.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

regarding inviting villages, I think you should make it so that when they join as an improvement, it removes forests if they are in them. Getting a forested mine or village early is very strong.

But overall this is a blast, the boss monsters add a lot of personality to games.

 

[Kael]

Great work at this. We are talking about possibly implementing this (or a similiar version) in 0.34. I was thinking about this mod when I added the improvement python scripts for when someone moves onto the improvment or 1 tile away from the improvement. Im curious to see what you decide to do with it.

 

[Marnok]

Great work at this. We are talking about possibly implementing this (or a similiar version) in 0.34. I was thinking about this mod when I added the improvement python scripts for when someone moves onto the improvment or 1 tile away from the improvement. Im curious to see what you decide to do with it.

Who's this Kael spamming up my thread?

/me tries to hide glee on hearing kind words from Da Boss

I'll look into the improvement script thing and see if there's anything I can use there. I need to tidy up a few other bits too, I'll try and find time for another release, if official eyes are on me

 

[KingOfLands]

Yes water elementals will spawn from sunken cities, but normally only after a Drown gets a result to spawn its "boss" type. I think Wellies still can take over a land-based lair, I stopped Drowns from doing so but I think I left wellies with a chance.

You post reminds me of an idea I wanted to try - cooperative multiplayer, all against the barbarians! With the right settings.py that could be a fun game, I think.

Just so I'm clear: The Water Elementals replace "boss" Drown? Had one show up at like turn 80 on me. I hate those things. Thankfully this time I was playing Dain; I put them down with massed fireballs for most of the game.

Co-op multiplayer would be pretty excellent. In the above game I ended up with two vassals, and Sabathiel got crushed early, due to the vicissitudes of the Creation mapscript and Acheron taking over Innsmouth. Made the Tower of Mastery win a lot easier.

One other idea: Any way to make the "beast taming" promotion Beastmasters have available earlier? It could be a really good time with all the critters you have running loose.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I was just thinking it would be cool if the "Explore Dungeon," "Contact Village," etc., spells weren't so random. It could be nice to set them up so that they instead triggered events, in which you could choose different ways to approach the situation.

For instance, you could specifically request whether the villagers help you by giving you money, maps, units, technologies, or joining as different improvements or a city, and also offer them different bribes or threaten them in different ways. The outcomes of each event would still be random though, with a chance that each choice could offend the village elders and lead to bad things. You would however be able to see the changes of such outcomes happening, and choose an option with an acceptable risk-reward ratio.


Exploring Lairs would work in a similar way. You could rush right in, or wait for reinforcements, pay someone else to do the exploring for you, set the place on fire and run away, etc. There should be some more expensive options that are guarranteed not to kill the unit doing the exploring, athough they may not be as profitable either and they might injure the unit or immobilize the it for a while.

 

[Marnok]

I was just thinking it would be cool if the "Explore Dungeon," "Contact Village," etc., spells weren't so random. It could be nice to set them up so that they instead triggered events, in which you could choose different ways to approach the situation.

For instance, you could specifically request whether the villagers help you by giving you money, maps, units, technologies, or joining as different improvements or a city, and also offer them different bribes or threaten them in different ways. The outcomes of each event would still be random though, with a chance that each choice could offend the village elders and lead to bad things. You would however be able to see the changes of such outcomes happening, and choose an option with an acceptable risk-reward ratio.


Exploring Lairs would work in a similar way. You could rush right in, or wait for reinforcements, pay someone else to do the exploring for you, set the place on fire and run away, etc. There should be some more expensive options that are guarranteed not to kill the unit doing the exploring, athough they may not be as profitable either and they might injure the unit or immobilize the it for a while.

One of the main reasons there's nothing like this in here so far, is the fact I don't know how to do it of course I didn't know how to do anything until I started, so maybe soon I'll have a go!

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, you can look at the Hyborem's Whisper spell for an example of how to trigger events with spells. And there are several events you can look at (for example, the adventure event that has a chance to kill or give a piece of equipment to a hero) to get an idea how to make the events themseles work.

 

[Blackmantle]

With the possible implementation of it into main-FFH2 you should look if that takes to much resources (slows the game) or adds to much complexity for the teams tastes though (the team should be able to answer that one without you doing it first i think).
Otherwise it may make implementation of your modmod a bit harder.

If thats not a problem it whould be appreciated naturally. (If you add the other features like ocean-lairs / peak-lairs and final cleanup first which should not be that far away according to your own estimates. I for one think they are more important right now.)

If you wan't to invest the time and still offer an optional download / setting in the .py for that its the best of both worlds naturally. (But that whould be more sensible if you finish the rest first as well since you whould have to update 2 Versions otherwise.)

 

[Blackmantle]

Will there be a version for 0.33 soon or do we have to wait a little longer?
(enough new things to try and running 0.32 Marnoks on the same comp as 0.33 is no real problem so no serious issue if an update isn't in sight soon. Still whould be good to know. )

 

[Marnok]

soonish! I didn't have as much time this week as I had hoped, but I hope to update fully soon.

 

[Blackmantle]

Lightining fast reply as ever. Thanks alot.

Very anxious now...

Lets hope 0.33 is the last version where these kind of separate updates are needed.

 

[Marnok]

of course you realise if this is taken into the main mod, I'll just look at it and think "I would definately do this differently" and make a modmod for it anyway...

 

[Blackmantle]

No doubt about that, but still an advantage for the time right after new versions arrive where now the player has to either stick to the old version or pass on all aspects of the modmod.

(And as i said, i doubt the village part will make it into the main mod. To much added detail / options + some balance issues which speak against it acording to kaels outline of wanted detail for the main game for much less impact on the game as a whole than the part with the lairs / features which is the direct oposite. So you have every incentive to keep working on that part because many will like it still and that alone could be the base of a very solid modmod + base for some serious modmodmod stuff like dungeon adventure or roleplaying games. But perhaps not for everyone who is playing FFH 2.)

 

[Kael]

Yeap, I agree. Im hoping that by integrating this into the main mod we:

1. Make FfH more fun by getting more people access to Marnok's work.
2. Make Marnok's life easier since everything we do integrate means he doesn't have to keep up working through various versions.
3. Add some core functionality to the main mod which enables Marnok to make things even better (Im really hoping the improvement python scripts helps with this).
4. Maybe even add in a tweak or two on Marnok's design that makes it more fun.

Im sure Marnok will continue to offer his mod even after integration and it will get even better because of it.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

so, is it bieng integrated in .34? or earlier?

 

[TheJopa]

Yeah! This is one of the mods that really should be integrated IMO.