Master of Mana Xtended 5.0

[Vital Brasil]

Hi ! First of all, i would like to thanks Esvath to keep this awesome mod alive. Was a great surprise to find out there are still wizards taking care of it =)

I am having a blast playing the 5.0 version. So far, after a time victory game, had no crashes, and had a surprisingly balanced experience (at least in comparisson with previous versions and with other FFH2 mods). But there are still some bugs and inconsistencies in the game that i would like to point out.

I played a game with Calabim/Octopus Overlords/Evil and just started a game with Ljosalfar/ Fellowship of Leaves/ Neutral.

Regarding the first game, i noticed that i can cast the Drown Miracle on everything (undeads, demons, ships...), and that the global enchantments Armageddon and Malediction of Fear do not seem to be working.

Regarding the second game, i am receiving an adventurer unit at the beggining of the game, as ljosalfar.

I also noticed that i can’t find food resources on grassland anymore (not sure if intended) and that the A.I is not searching many relevants Technologies before delving into the Future Technologies. In my first game, the Lanun, for example, skipped many military techs and thus, crippled their own army.

And just to finish, i think that the beast lord class is by far the most useless class in the game. We can capture animals anyway just by getting the ranger guild, and if you don’t have this guild, why would you want to capture animals ? They are weak and will “eat” your army slots pretty fast.

So my suggestion, would be to remove from this class the chance to capture animals, and add an aura to it that Works only on animals (not sure if that’s doable), and that gives some nice buffs, like immunity to fear, x% of strenght and/or +1 movement point.

My Ljosalfar rangers would love it, and this would enrich the game as a whole, by adding new options of gameplay and strategy.

So, i hope i could make myself clear, despite of my limitations with the english language.

Thanks again to breath life into this mod !!

 

[Calavente]

re magic:

I would empower the auras !!!
I would give less free adepts (I always get too much of those: 1-2 is enough)

at the moment, the auras are strange:
either they are too marginal.
or they do not really profit from aura increase promotions. (range is rarely really useful, number of target is not a real bother / aura str... how can you increase str of "double move in hills".

As such, I rarely use the discipline that increase aura.

as a side note, I would like to have a "specialization" on mages: like chosing fire/life/death... etc. maybe as in the old way, by using a promotion ... or something.
It's always strange that each of my adepts can release a fire aura and a water aura and cast a chaos magic ... just because the empire reasearched those early spell techs. (I guess it would gives the feel of more choice in raising adepts/mages)

issue:
building adepts cost herbs,
building Mages cost herbs,
upgrading an adept to a mage cost as many herbs as building a mage from scratch... I don't know how to manage that.


re GE spells : I'm ambivalent on those:
there are few that are really useful...
or, more precisely:
I rarely have the GE spell that I would need... So I make use of those that I have as I can (until mid-late game when I have already won and all is a matter of 100+turns for finalizing the conquest and I have enough spell research/mana nodes to go take the schools I need).
for example : when I'm in a place that would profit from terraforming or need food/health... I can only lower peaks into hills (air) or build walls.
In another game, when I would need to lower peaks or create landmass to access a region... I can do aggressive terraforming.
In another game, when I would need to counter aggessive terraforming, I can "only" create health and food in cities (life)
...Etc
and if you want to access another one, you need to start a whole other tree... so any reactivity using magic is really slow.

(save for attack spells, which are found in any tree, and are all lookalike in that they damage ennemy in roughly the same way, modulo typed magic resistance)

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Further nerfing of combat magic is possible but I am afraid that nerf will come to "what is the use of casting damage spells? The damage is negligible."

AI does not cast damage spells that much (but they do) because they put more value on GE and summons. So, rather than nerfing combat magic, maybe I can increase the importance of GE and summons for human players instead? This will directly helps the AI too.

- Fist, I support most of the suggestions of Psychodad. He has right, except on the Great Persons. In my opinion the speed of generation is too slow. Even in quick speed, I find it very slow. I don't underestand you are happy with it.

- I don't support that you nerf magic (direct spells). I ask to give an easier access to magical protections as equipement, promotions first, then maybe auras and enchantements.

- Spells should not be nerfed, it's just that it's abnormal to be powerless again a strong magic civ, if you have the double of his armies troops (what I experimented with Khazad against Armurite game what I described).

- Maybe create a new class of adept's promotion which specialised your adept into magic protection ? Something as an aura which increase the magical resistance (or spell effects if it exist as factor ?). As counterpart, using spell for this adept cost double mana, so it's important to dedicate him only for this mission.

- You informed me and others players to the existent way to augment the magical resistance (especially with Dwarf and Kilmorph). It's very interesting, I would like to test them against a human in a game (but I know only Tasunke as guy who wants to play MoM in multiplayer, sadly... so anyone would like it ?

The problems are :

- It's not doable to equipe your units massively as you cannot XP rookies. The problem come from the passive XP system.

- Units with high strengh or later tiers, should have more resistance to magic I think. If not, buildings strong units expansive in ressources has no sens against a magic ennemy, you should justThe idea which proposed Psychodad looks good. He said : "Maybe give each unit Spellresitance = (2*Str)% making high strengh units less vulnurable for spell damage."

Now the main questions are :

- Which part of GE should I improve?
--- Increasing their effects?
--- Reducing the cost?
--- ???

- Decreasing their cost of -25 % would be good but more important, decreasing their upkeep of -50 %. Enchantements are expansive to reserach, but very expansive to maintain. If you use several enchangements you cannot use spells anymore as your mana resplenish is very low. Spells, have no upkeep and are crucial in war. Rituals too should have a diminiution of their upkeep.

- Which part of summon should I improve?
--- Increasing their strength?
--- Reducing the cost?
--- Making summons do not require unit supply?
--- ???

- Not increasing their strenght but increasing their XP from zero to 20 would be good.
- Reducing the cost from -25 % yes. And making they dont require unit supply yes off course, as it's magical units they only need mana as supply and fuel, they don't need any others supply.

 

[esvath]

Hi ! First of all, i would like to thanks Esvath to keep this awesome mod alive. Was a great surprise to find out there are still wizards taking care of it =)

Thank you for playing!

Drown Miracle on everything

Yes, this is an oversight. Drown will need caster to be alive on next version.

Armageddon and Malediction of Fear do not seem to be working.

Will look on this!

i am receiving an adventurer unit at the beggining of the game, as ljosalfar.

Do you still remember what was happening? Maybe you complete an Adventure for the Ljosalfar?

can’t find food resources on grassland anymore (not sure if intended)

It is intended by Sephi that grain resources can only be found in Fertile grass. I am not sure whether I want to change this because grass+farm is still powerful and you can still get grain resources using Great Merchants. If not keeping it that way, maybe GE in Nature magic which transform Grass into Fertile Grass? Any thought?

So my suggestion, would be to remove from this class the chance to capture animals, and add an aura to it that Works only on animals (not sure if that’s doable), and that gives some nice buffs, like immunity to fear, x% of strenght and/or +1 movement point.

Brilliant idea and doable! I will adopt this for the next version!

either they are too marginal.
or they do not really profit from aura increase promotions. (range is rarely really useful, number of target is not a real bother / aura str... how can you increase str of "double move in hills".

Yes, there are only few auras affected by aura increasing promotions. The most important ones are the ones which reduce elemental damages. So, against magic heavy civs, these auras will be powerful.

+aura range and +aura target are important in keeping the number of arcane units low and open the slots for other type of units.

RE: more specialised mages, IIRC, to make a promotion that increases Holy damage from spell casting (for example) requires DLL work. At this moment, we can do that only through tech.

upgrading an adept to a mage cost as many herbs as building a mage from scratch... I don't know how to manage that.

IIRC upgrading units cost no yield, though?

RE: diversity in GE is intended. You can always beeline for various wonders which grant new type of mana. This also makes each gameplay different.

 

[esvath]

@Jojo_Fr

Wizardry discipline should give you protection against all elements, including from spells.

On GE, I will take a look on their upkeep.

 

[Psychodad]

Further nerfing of combat magic is possible but I am afraid that nerf will come to "what is the use of casting damage spells? The damage is negligible."

AI does not cast damage spells that much (but they do) because they put more value on GE and summons. So, rather than nerfing combat magic, maybe I can increase the importance of GE and summons for human players instead? This will directly helps the AI too.

I dont think Spells are too strong compared to other means of using magic, but compared to conventional combat, especially against high Strengh units and veterans.

ATM i play a game with grigorie. The militia upgrades to adventurer with 5% chance after successfull combat can be exploited. Especially as adventurers (for some reason?) don't count against the troop limit. I have a skeleton lair near my starting location wich i farm with militias, i have 7 adventurers so far (5 upgraded militia) and im just in Round 70. Also upgrading adventurers to lvl 6 lets you choose the "heal while moving" promotion. Later he can be upgraded to a fast moving unit (mounted, recon) and keep this promotion. I now have 3 fast moving, healing, high level bards (generating culture on victory), whitch kill a barb unit every round, soon going to rush my first neighbour... very, very, very OP

 

[Ogi123]

It is intended by Sephi that grain resources can only be found in Fertile grass. I am not sure whether I want to change this because grass+farm is still powerful and you can still get grain resources using Great Merchants. If not keeping it that way, maybe GE in Nature magic which transform Grass into Fertile Grass? Any thought?

I will propose rather different solution of eliminating fertile grass terrain completely. Honestly it just grassland wit +1food and ability to discover agricultural resources. Just allow resources to be placed on normal grass and make GM able to conduct their mission here.

 

[Linvega]

- bug about AI not settling is an old bug and we thought we had it squashed but apparently not Basically, whenever AI settler spawn in a tile which it can not build city upon, like spawning on Lost Temple or hill plains, then that AI civ will freeze. Let me try some workout on this.

Yeah, about that: What exactly is the goal with this? It doesn't really seem to add depth to the game to not be able to build your city in so many places, it's mostly just frustrating. Especially when I'm playing Malakim and I can't build my city in a great place because it's desert, it seems just absurd.

Also, the grand trading market from the malakim seems pretty absurd. It's easily 20 gold or more very early, and even without putting it into every single city, I could stay at 100% science slider with a HUGE money surplus the entire game.

Further nerfing of combat magic is possible but I am afraid that nerf will come to "what is the use of casting damage spells? The damage is negligible."

I'd also advise to do one thing after another like Ombatur and not nerf dmg AND buff other spells at the same time. Balance is always easier if you do it that way. But in general, so far it seems to me that a nerf to the max dmg of AoE dmg spells wouldn't impede the usefulness of "regular" usage of dmg spells too much, while cutting down on OP-ness. Single-target dmg spells seem really weak in comparison anyway, though maybe I just don't know how to use them right.

 

[esvath]

ATM i play a game with grigorie.

Adventurers not requiring support is an oversight. Will be fixed in the next version.

Grigori Militias farming Barbarians to become Adventurers is intended. If some rebalancing is needed, I will increase the gold cost to upgrade Adventurers.

I will propose rather different solution of eliminating fertile grass terrain completely.

I'll just make Farm able to find grain resources in any terrains (that can build Farm).

Yeah, about that: What exactly is the goal with this?

I don't even remember why. Unfortunately I think it is hardcoded in DLL. I tried to find the code in xml/python but couldn't find any.

Also, the grand trading market from the malakim seems pretty absurd. It's easily 20 gold or more very early, and even without putting it into every single city, I could stay at 100% science slider with a HUGE money surplus the entire game.

Malakim (and Kuriotates/Lanun/Dural) Grand Trading Market "only" gives them +8 extra gold. Maybe the better option is giving them the same initial gold as normal Trading District but instead of +2 gold per population, gives them +3 gold per population?

 

[Jojo_Fr]

It will maybe sound crazy, but personnaly I would like game options to be able to desactivate few things :

- The bard promotion (I hate it, it is and has always been overpowerd).
- The XP on barbarians (barbarians would give zero XP).
- The barbarians lairs.
- Any wilderness (animals + barbarians).

I would like to play game where I can choose with what I want to play.

 

[Amarth0815]

Thanks for keeping this mod alive . It has been quiete some time since i played it last .

I started a new game as the Grigori and i am trying to complete the Epic Destiny .Beside other things i need to explore 20 Dungeons. They are really hard to find (did not found any by the way). I also do remember, that the Grigori had a special spell for creating a dungeon in their territory (earlier versions of the mod), but i´m unable to figure out how .

Can someone help me, please ?!

 

[esvath]

game options

Making new game option is beyond my modding capability, sorry.

Grigori had a special spell for creating a dungeon in their territory

Thanks for playing!

It's a global enchantment now, called "Discover a Dungeon". You will need:
- 100 mana
- Grigori
- Unlock Grand Expedition (Merchants Guild 6th tech).

It's quite far behind but doable if you collect lots of culture.

 

[Amarth0815]

Making new game option is beyond my modding capability, sorry.



Thanks for playing!

It's a global enchantment now, called "Discover a Dungeon". You will need:
- 100 mana
- Grigori
- Unlock Grand Expedition (Merchants Guild 6th tech).

It's quite far behind but doable if you collect lots of culture.

Ahhh.....i see. Thanks for the quick answer

 

[Psychodad]

Grigori Militias farming Barbarians to become Adventurers is intended. If some rebalancing is needed, I will increase the gold cost to upgrade Adventurers.

I would strongly suggest to make adventurer upgrades depandent on reserch. To have few units, double the strength of all enemy units, in the early game, is gamebreaking no matter what. You can get the money if you really want, but you can't get advanced techs as fast. If possible give them a promotion making them upgradable again to higher tier if the corresponding tech is reseached to not cripple them.

However my opinion here is clear, i will no longer complain about that.

 

[Icezera]

Yea esvath I like the direction you are taking the mod in so don't feel a need to listen to every comment here. Comments on decreasing spell damage even more are just WTF to me. A civ that goes heavy into mages will have no army support left over for strong military units and a lack of powerful units because they invested so much time into researching magic techs. Mages can't even attack properly so comments about multiplayer make me think the non-magic civ is just being bad and not using cavalry to simply raid the magic civ to death.

I would simply suggest spending some time on the civilopedia in order to help new players understand how to play the game. Buying traits and tech with culture, for example, is not found within the civilopedia and can be confusing for new players. Other information like the Frozen currently being bugged can let them know not to play those civs. Good patch notes and changelogs are key to good communication in a mod community and I would be willing to help clean up the civilopedia if you need help.

 

[esvath]

I would simply suggest spending some time on the civilopedia in order to help new players understand how to play the game. Buying traits and tech with culture, for example, is not found within the civilopedia and can be confusing for new players. Other information like the Frozen currently being bugged can let them know not to play those civs. Good patch notes and changelogs are key to good communication in a mod community and I would be willing to help clean up the civilopedia if you need help.

You are correct. There are *lots* need to be rewritten in civpedia. I want to put quick guide I have written in the other thread, for the example, and if you can help with that, that would be great!

 

[cha dawn]

This week a started with the new version of this mod. I will report later about this mod.
Some things i noticed : victory conditions of the Elohim is the pasifist civic for 200 turns and purity counter of 100 . Do both things still exits ?
I had never ending turn bug. I removed Luciun and can continue my game.
About turn 200 the barbarian archers are level 46. I think it's to much for me.

All i have to say it's very nice mod and want to finish a game with the Durals.

 

[Linvega]

I don't even remember why. Unfortunately I think it is hardcoded in DLL. I tried to find the code in xml/python but couldn't find any.

That's really too bad...

Malakim (and Kuriotates/Lanun/Dural) Grand Trading Market "only" gives them +8 extra gold. Maybe the better option is giving them the same initial gold as normal Trading District but instead of +2 gold per population, gives them +3 gold per population?

That might be a good thing to do, but it could easily become OP in the late game when the cities are bigger, and especially in Kuriotates cities. You could also change it to +6 and give a later tech +4 to grand trading market or something like that. So that it's somewhat weaker at the start, but stays as strong as it is now in the long term.

Yea esvath I like the direction you are taking the mod in so don't feel a need to listen to every comment here. Comments on decreasing spell damage even more are just WTF to me. A civ that goes heavy into mages will have no army support left over for strong military units and a lack of powerful units because they invested so much time into researching magic techs. Mages can't even attack properly so comments about multiplayer make me think the non-magic civ is just being bad and not using cavalry to simply raid the magic civ to death.

The keyword here imo is SP vs MP balancing. Even if something is relatively easy to counter, if the AI is not doing that it can destroy the fun in SP since it gets trivially easy. And the issue that heavy magic might become useless can be adressed by simply giving the nerfed values back over various techs(especially the guild techs would be good candidates since the guilds are exclusive to some degree), f.e. you reduce the max dmg of spells by 20% but you give 4 techs 5% max dmg increase.
Though for the record, don't consider this as me actively advocating for a nerf; I still have to play more to really get a strong opinion either way. For now I'm just talking in general principles.

I would simply suggest spending some time on the civilopedia in order to help new players understand how to play the game. Buying traits and tech with culture, for example, is not found within the civilopedia and can be confusing for new players. Other information like the Frozen currently being bugged can let them know not to play those civs. Good patch notes and changelogs are key to good communication in a mod community and I would be willing to help clean up the civilopedia if you need help.

This 100%. There are just so many things in this mod that are at best not explained well, and not explained at all at worst. For example I still haven't found a way to cure the "plagued" effect. Just writing a short "can be cured by:" would help a lot.

 

[Psychodad]

Reconsidering Spells, i agree with Linvega. Its the AoE Spells that are OP, not the single target spells. 3 adepts (tier 1) with "spell slinger promotions" (+100% Tergets, + 30 damage) can half the Strength of a six unit stack of high tier units in one Round with Caos, or fire mana by only researching the first tech. Or 1-2 adepts can parcify even bigger stacks with mindmana. Thats too much power for too little investement.

I agree going Magic heavy should stay an valid option, but like it is now, u don't need mages, nor spell research, nor many army slots to do enormous amounts damage especially to high tier units.

 

[Icezera]

And at that point, I respond with magic nerfs will make adepts absolutely useless in early game then with spells doing around 5 to 10% at best which makes going for magic guild techs a horrible handicap. The best way to fix this would either be giving the high tier units some base magic resistance, mages and archmages giving their stack magic resistance through base combat auras or such, or making healing more effective and have the ai make use of medic units in stacks.