Master of Mana Xtended

[Ombatur]

First of all, thanks for the new version. I always thought the mazatl looked cool, so i had to try them out with the new rooster units. I enjoyed playing them but was a bit confused about the wordspell. Its not available form the beginning and it doesnt say anywhere what is required. I assumed you need a wyvern monastary or a wyvern guardian so i tryed to unlock righteousnes in the priest guild. But there is something weird about this guild. The priestguild-techs seem to require much more culture than the tooltip displays. I had 100000 culture and couldnt unlock righteousness, which costs 28000 according to the tooltips. I was also able to unlock Way of the wicked, which i shouldnt be able to as a leader with good alignment.
In the same game i ran into a crash (reloading didnt help). It might still be caused by kuriotates trying to build too many cities because theyre part of the game. But im not sure so i added a save 2 or 3 turns before the crash happens.

 

[esvath]

I have the same problem. What folder needs to be renamed?

on my computer the path is C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 Complete\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Master of Mana

GFC error every time

If you have a Master of Mana folder, then you should be able to play the game.

First of all, thanks for the new version. I always thought the mazatl looked cool, so i had to try them out with the new rooster units. I enjoyed playing them but was a bit confused about the wordspell. Its not available form the beginning and it doesnt say anywhere what is required. I assumed you need a wyvern monastary or a wyvern guardian so i tryed to unlock righteousnes in the priest guild. But there is something weird about this guild. The priestguild-techs seem to require much more culture than the tooltip displays. I had 100000 culture and couldnt unlock righteousness, which costs 28000 according to the tooltips. I was also able to unlock Way of the wicked, which i shouldnt be able to as a leader with good alignment.
In the same game i ran into a crash (reloading didnt help). It might still be caused by kuriotates trying to build too many cities because theyre part of the game. But im not sure so i added a save 2 or 3 turns before the crash happens.

Ah, I forgot to add the help text for Mazatl world spell.

About the Righteousness, I think it is a bug. Mazatl is agnostic, right? I think they can't research Righteousness because they can't have the 3rd Sacred Knowledge (from religions) that is required.

Duh, sorry about this.

For quick fix:

1. Download and unzip this attached XGUILDS_CIV4TechInfos.zip
2. Copy and replace it to Master of Mana/Assets/Modules/NormalModules/Xtended/XGuilds

This will allow Mazatl to research Righteousness and it should not break your save game.

 

[esvath]

Oh, and in case you haven't noticed this:

Age of Wonders III: Eternal Lords is out now! While it is not heavy on empire management, it is an excellent fantasy strategy game. Go play it!

The base Age of Wonders III and Golden Realms dlc is on sale now, both on GOG and Steam. Enjoy!

 

[User0918]

I play random most of the time and just happened to roll the Dural civ for the first time. I noticed that you can upgrade their Warrior starting unit right away to Axeman, Archer or Horseman for only 5 gold. While the latter two are just specializations, the Axeman upgrade gives you quite a substantial damage upgrade with +2 str and +25% city attack, making it the strongest starting unit of any civ I played so far.

That honestly seems out of line with the lore. A distinguished (can't think of a better word) civ like the Dural should not have the most powerful early game unit, that would be way more fitting for feral/low-tech civs like Clan of Embers or Doviello. Mid- to lategame this should eventually turn and the more "advanced" civs should get the upper hand.

Maybe those upgrades are leftovers and weren't meant to be available right from the start?

And big props for the district changes, now I actually have to ponder what to build instead of going straight for the Nobles District

EDIT: When I researched Warrior Caste, I received 2 Adventurers, I always thought those were Grigori-exclusive...this Dural playthrough is really confusing so far
EDIT2: I'm also able to upgrade these Adventurers to Elohim/Bannor-exclusive units (Swordsman, Lord, Shrine Maiden, Hospitaller, etc.). I converted one into a Lord, now this unit has 2(!) weapon buffs, Sword (+10%) and Steel Lance (+40%). The lance it got with the upgrade, but shouldn't those cancel each other out? Pics below.

 

[TheIO]

Some things:

1 - The Victory Conditions screen doesn't have enough space to show all victory conditions; meaning that I can't read the bottom third of the possible victories.

2 - Why don't the civ-unique units simple replace the base ones, instead of being entirely separate and banning the base ones? It causes clutter in the Civilopedia.
2a - Lots of Civiliopedia entries are missing.

3 - How do resource yields translate into hammers? I'm playing as Ljosalfar and my capital is producing ~30 hammers/turn before modifiers, when the city screen only indicates 12 are being produced. There's a lot of fur being produced from camps, is that the cause?

 

[esvath]

About Dural:
Yeah, they are not upgraded to current unit roster mechanic yet.

About Adventurers:

1. You can upgrade them to other civs' UU is a feature.
2. Upgraded Adventurers got double weapons/armors is bug, but I could not find a way to solve this.

About Victory Condition screen:
That is a bug.

About civ unique units cluttering the pedia:
There are too many unitclass and unit types in the base MoM. I tried once to delete them and build a new CIV4UnitInfos but somehow it caused errors. I gave up and took the easy way out

Someday when we have time, maybe we'll clean the CIV4UnitInfos.xml.

About Yield and Hammer:
Hammer is one of yield types. The others are food, commerce, lumber, leather, herbs, metal and stones. One can not be converted to other.
Maybe you got bonus from resources? Cows, Bisons, Horses in a city's BFC give 25% or 33% to hammer produced in the city.
Other resources give similar bonus to food and commerce.

 

[Ombatur]

Duh, sorry about this.

For quick fix:

1. Download and unzip this attached XGUILDS_CIV4TechInfos.zip
2. Copy and replace it to Master of Mana/Assets/Modules/NormalModules/Xtended/XGuilds

This will allow Mazatl to research Righteousness and it should not break your save game.

No need to feel soory. Im glad i didnt do anything wrong and its "just" a bug. I didnt try the hotfix because i was getting ctd's anyway and couldnt proceed with this game, but i might try later.
On another note, when adopting the third tech of the slavery guild i cant find an option to hire mercenaries. I was expecting it to be a button on a unit stationed in one of my cities, like the way you can buy slaves, but there was nothing. Did i miss something?

 

[TheIO]

About Victory Condition screen:
That is a bug.

About civ unique units cluttering the pedia:
There are too many unitclass and unit types in the base MoM. I tried once to delete them and build a new CIV4UnitInfos but somehow it caused errors. I gave up and took the easy way out

Someday when we have time, maybe we'll clean the CIV4UnitInfos.xml.

About Yield and Hammer:
Hammer is one of yield types. The others are food, commerce, lumber, leather, herbs, metal and stones. One can not be converted to other.
Maybe you got bonus from resources? Cows, Bisons, Horses in a city's BFC give 25% or 33% to hammer produced in the city.
Other resources give similar bonus to food and commerce.

Are the details for every victory condition available somewhere, in-game or out-of-game? I'd like to know.

And re yields, I've got 3 deer, 1 incense, 1 silk, & 1 mushroom in the radius. I'll put a screenshot later.

 

[GenEngineer]

Are the details for every victory condition available somewhere, in-game or out-of-game? I'd like to know.

And re yields, I've got 3 deer, 1 incense, 1 silk, & 1 mushroom in the radius. I'll put a screenshot later.

3 Deer and mushrooms probably means you have enough food that the city is deciding to just put a bunch of people as unemployed citizens or engineers, so your specialists are giving a ton of hammers. Or does the city not have any specialists?

 

[BlueGenie]

A few points of potential interest.

Treants not having double movement in forest+ancient forest does bug me a bit. Not sure if that was fully intended or a side effect of changing things around. I am talking about the spawned ones defending Ancient Forests.

City population sizes and maintenance costs favour a lot keeping cities at 10 pop and spamming more cities rather than having a few very high population cities. Is this intended?
The one thing that fewer cities favour is that improvement costs do not go up so much so need less cities with lumber/stone/metal/leather income, but that is easily overcome by having a couple dedicated cities for those as it is easy to have a few more cities instead.

Food from hunting animals with non-capture units is very high. I could run 7 pop 7 cities with negative food and just make a hunt kill every few turns to keep them afloat.
Should it really be spread across all cities or could it be halved (or even 25% as much) and only go to the nearest (or 4 closest) cities?

Guild and Religion choosing is bugged a bit in Team Play in Multiplayer.
We were 4 in team (teaching the game that way). We had Slavery from start so the first Guild Founding gave no extra guild. The second Guild Founding gave 3(?) more Guilds, Priest, Artisan's and Magi. The 4th player chose Ranger's but we did not get that one. I suspect only 1 Guild should be allowed to be taken on each Founding (and when someone has one from start maybe allow someone else to get one anyway???)
Only 2 out of 3 non-agnostics leaders in the Team got to pick a religion on getting Priest Chapter.

Bloom by Faith, both by religious units and casting the spell seem excessively expensive as it is not like Mana where it replenishes to a set cap but is needed to "buy" tech levels too.

Comments on this anyone?

 

[TheIO]

3 Deer and mushrooms probably means you have enough food that the city is deciding to just put a bunch of people as unemployed citizens or engineers, so your specialists are giving a ton of hammers. Or does the city not have any specialists?

Good shout actually re specialists. I usually run aristofarm economies - though as Ljosalfar I'm going for Guardian of Nature and super-camps - so never paid much attention to them, but thanks for the heads up.

Is there anything I can do with leather? I've got far too much of it due to running a camp-based economy (hey, Guardian of Nature makes it damn powerful), and I'd like to sell some because I could really do with cash.

 

[GenEngineer]

Good shout actually re specialists. I usually run aristofarm economies - though as Ljosalfar I'm going for Guardian of Nature and super-camps - so never paid much attention to them, but thanks for the heads up.

Is there anything I can do with leather? I've got far too much of it due to running a camp-based economy (hey, Guardian of Nature makes it damn powerful), and I'd like to sell some because I could really do with cash.

Economically, not too much (as far as I know, no buildings require leather), and you can't sell resources. Militaristically, you could always build an army of recon units and equip everything that can buy equipment with high quality leather armor - goes a long way towards making units last.

 

[User0918]

It would still be cool, if they'd give some bonus on top of buying gear.

Maybe one could implement something akin to the Khazad Vault mechanic. Meaning that hitting certain thresholds gives you a marginal bonus at first, and a more meaningful later on. It's kinda sad to have 100k resources of one type just sitting there doing nothing. By the way, do they influence the game score in any way?

 

[esvath]

Leather is very powerful. You need leather for majority of Recon and Mounted units, and also for various types of Leather armors that can be used by all units. In my opinion, leather is more flexible than Metal, which you need to build Melee units and plate/chainmail armors, which can be used by only limited units (most Melee and some Disciples and Archers).

 

[TheIO]

Leather is very powerful. You need leather for majority of Recon and Mounted units, and also for various types of Leather armors that can be used by all units. In my opinion, leather is more flexible than Metal, which you need to build Melee units and plate/chainmail armors, which can be used by only limited units (most Melee and some Disciples and Archers).

OTOH, it's gonna be tricky to work through the over 10k of leather I have at this point.

 

[User0918]

While we're on the topic of armour, do the regular ones (not Wyrm or something like that) reduce spell damage in any way? Cause that is still my biggest grief with the mod, and I'm deeply sorry that I constantly bring it back to the table, but I just can't help myself.

As soon as I have around 10 adepts and have them up to 30 XP for the +100% spell targets und +25 spell damage, every encounter becomes trivial. Recon units? Good luck evading or withdrawing from a lightning bolt. Melee units? Have fun frying in your big chunky plate armour. Even the most basic spell becomes deadly when 10 guys can dual-cast it onto you, that stack of 10 adepts hits 20 times AT MINIMUM.
The first Chaos school spell (Explosion) even hits 3 times normally, that's 60 attacks from those 10 guys!

Spellcasters will always be the premier attacking force unless this gets changed, no non-magic unit or summon can even come close in destructive potential. Unless you have a stack of uber-promoted Blitz units with at least a movement of 2, those might be able to kill the stack first. But then again, how long does it take to upgrade and equip those compared to churning out 10 adepts and just cast 10 spells at the wildlife to get them to 30 XP again?

The Magic Resistance/Immunity promotion is buried too deep behind Combat 5 to be of any use and the AI wouldn't take it anyway, pretty much only see offensive promotions on them.

The question is, what's easier to do, rework the spell damage or give other units more effective ways to protect themselves against it? One of these has to happen I'm afraid, otherwise spells will continue to be the "I win" button, that you have to restrain yourself from (over-)using. Which is a shame, because I love the magic in this mod, but it trivializes any encounter, especially mid- to lategame (I cleared maps in record time without even stopping once to heal up - I just got no damage).

 

[esvath]

As I see it, there are several options to reduce the potency of spells without making them unworthy to use:

1. Increasing spell cost. Now spells usually cost 20 mana per cast. Maybe raise it to 30 or 40?
2. Delay the promotions that increase spell damage. The first of these might require min level of 4, the second might require Channeling II (so Adepts can not get it), the third might require Channeling III (so only for Archmage).
3. Increase the cost of Knowledge of the Arcane.
4. Increase the herb cost for arcane units.
5. Make various resist promotions easy to get (reducing prereqs of these, more protection from combat auras?).
6. Make some armors grant (small) protection from the elements. Some civ specific armors already do this, but maybe medium level armors should too?

Personally, I prefer increasing spell cost, making promotions that increase spell damage harder to get and increasing resist from combat auras but I'd love to hear feedbacks.

 

[Psychodad]

1. I like the idea of giving armour a bonus to elemental resistence or spell resistence. Or make the spell efficience depenent on the units defence stregth, so armor would have an indirect effect.

2. Also it would be nice give the unit a chance to completly avoid damage of a spell based on units defence stregth/tier/promotions and caster level, maybe spell level. So a high level unit would just shrug off an adepts fireball.

3. Still conjure matter should be nerfed

P.S. I really would like to see more threads, like one for balance discussion, one for bugs, one for questions, one for ideas/suggestions. this way no posts get lost and its much easier to keep track of a discussion.

 

[TheIO]

You know how ATM we can turn mana into resources after a certain tech is reached? The reverse sounds just as possible too.

 

[esvath]

P.S. I really would like to see more threads, like one for balance discussion, one for bugs, one for questions, one for ideas/suggestions. this way no posts get lost and its much easier to keep track of a discussion.

I like more threads too! Sadly only a few respond my civ balance thread etc