Master of Mana Xtended

[Soulmate]

Hey guyz, having a blast with this mod. Really impressed by the AI performance(something which is always lacking in civ) This is especially surprising considering a number of new features this mod has over the vanilla civ!

Apart from all the great things already present, let me focus on the issues that I found to be rather obnoxious...

Balance issues:
1) There are still a lot of units that don't scale with the techs. Especially impactful are summons(prime example is Guardian golem).
While allows for cheap units early game, this hinders the AI greatly in mid-late game. Please, I know the argument about early rush strategies and bla bla bla. The point is simple, AI doesn't know when to stop producing them and move to better units. This needs to be addressed.
Mana affinity does not help with that in late game, ANY unit u produce with exp+equipment will whoop the floor with ANY top-tier summon.
- Solutions: let the summons scale with MAGIC techs, or with SPELL techs.
Here's an example of AI empire army(he had steamrolled half a continent in early game, but now is a giant on a clay feet): http://imgur.com/mLfJS8x
2) Siege equipment(catapult,trebuchet, cannons, etc) are heavily outclassed by mages and have weird bombardment cap. Why the fudge am I allowed to do only ONE single hit with my cannon on a stack? Okay.. forget the stacks. I get it, I can do collateral by just attacking... Why on earth am I not allowed to bombard the horsehocky out of the fudging city defenses? Any amount of siege equipment greater than 3 units is utter an complete waste of slots..... Since you can't actually use it for it's MAIN purpose....
3) Next issue that comes from the previous one is that AI SPAMS catapults. And then get rekt by proper stacks that don't use this nuisance(see the screen on point 1)
4) Is it even possible to have the armageddon counter go higher than 40? Here's a screenshot of the ridiculously powerful Sheam empire with only 35 counter(there is not a single one even half as powerful empyrean/order civ) I have decided to stay neutral and see how it goes, but it never moved from 30+
http://imgur.com/DmGZ5DH
5) This mod is absolutely in favor of aggressive conquering. rarely a defender has a chance fortify and siege out due to the:
- lack of def buildings(outside of magic buffs)
- lack of proper def promotions and MAGIC
- Heavy focus on attacking promotions and skills
What are your thoughts on this?

Graphics/aesthetics:
1) This one is mildly irritating: hippus SPEARMAN does not have a SPEAR : http://imgur.com/LhELQRt
2) Now this one is the only reason that prevents me from going with Octopus overlords religion: vanilla maceman model on lunatics.
I mean, do we seriously don't have a better model over all these years???It is so vanilla-bitter that I don't even want to see them in my games ever....
3) Same issue as with the lunatics: can we please have a proper slavers models instead of some ugly vanilla maceman ones?
Even in this mod alone there's enoguh of unused models to cover that....
- This is the only reason why I never use the slavers guild as well(also the fact of how boring and uninteresting slave mechanics... take a look at PAE for proper slavery implementation)
4) Alongside many cool and authentic civs that got a lot of love in this mod, there'es Sidar... One of the oldest races(by game lore and by development) and... The most lacking in it;s feel at the moment. It just looks ugly and without a distinct feel(units). I seriously feel like they need some love.
- And here's their archer unit... some rubble peasants... zzz:
http://imgur.com/K4jLrEJ
It just... Doesn't feel right for such a cool and authentic race to feel so hollow.
5) Circle of urd model... Fighting with corpse? Srsly? I mean.. that's fantasy... but this one I jsut can't understand. Nor do I like the model(with any other weapon they would look cool)

Questions:
1) How does the barb lair mechanics work? I mean it is not really okay to have a 30 goblin archers by turn 200 on epic speed(all civs have max 1 tech in military)
http://imgur.com/JAFtkzp
http://imgur.com/Dw10LOR

2) I had a game where clan of embers with Ashen Veil lost one of it's major cities to barbarians... how is this possible?
http://imgur.com/qDlPt49
No, they are not in a war with undead

Really enjoying my playthrough, all these points are not a criticism but rather my input on where I would like the mod to improve.

 

[Sezneg]

The Barbarians gain strength over time, and gain more strength when you buy them off with gold or population. It doesn't seem to handle non-normal game speed settings well and I'm not sure if these are handled in the parts of the mod the current few working on it can change (the original modder SEPHI handled all of the DLL changes, and did some amazing work on the AI and time between turns).

I go back and forth on the barbarian and wild lands parts of this mod. Some civs are not well equipped to handle them early, usually due to the deficiencies of starting mana. Nature mana is great for growth and resources, but the summons are bad compared to other mana types, and there are no direct damage spells. Non-living summons are VERY good for barb busting because they avoid the poison damage on goblin archer. This lets you get them under control early while their STR is low. If you let the lair get stronger than what you can field, you are in a bad spot and will fall behind the AI.

Also, I really like the idea of giving some scaling to summons based on magic techs. At least help them keep up. They fall behind too fast.

 

[Soulmate]

The Barbarians gain strength over time, and gain more strength when you buy them off with gold or population. It doesn't seem to handle non-normal game speed settings well and I'm not sure if these are handled in the parts of the mod the current few working on it can change (the original modder SEPHI handled all of the DLL changes, and did some amazing work on the AI and time between turns).

Yeah, I am aware that the original modder is not anywhere near nowadays, unfortunately... he had some great plans.
As for the barbarians - I do not buy them out with gold, on contrary, I may even Taunt Orthus occasionally. The actual scaling happens when the goblins do start to marauder... and they scale at enormous speed(until I can get to them they are already beyond reach of for my units). That only happens to one lair at a time(usually goblins). All the other barbs are scaling at normal speed. And I treat them all equally(e.g. kill with the first opportunity)

 

[Sezneg]

Yeah, I am aware that the original modder is not anywhere near nowadays, unfortunately... he had some great plans.
As for the barbarians - I do not buy them out with gold, on contrary, I may even Taunt Orthus occasionally. The actual scaling happens when the goblins do start to marauder... and they scale at enormous speed(until I can get to them they are already beyond reach of for my units). That only happens to one lair at a time(usually goblins). All the other barbs are scaling at normal speed. And I treat them all equally(e.g. kill with the first opportunity)

I believe they increase if they are able to pillage your improvements. Try leaving a few defenders on the improvements as you build out?

 

[esvath]

The Barbarians gain strength over time, and gain more strength when you buy them off with gold or population.

As for the barbarians - I do not buy them out with gold, on contrary, I may even Taunt Orthus occasionally. The actual scaling happens when the goblins do start to marauder... and they scale at enormous speed(until I can get to them they are already beyond reach of for my units). That only happens to one lair at a time(usually goblins). All the other barbs are scaling at normal speed. And I treat them all equally(e.g. kill with the first opportunity)

Barbarian units in a particular lair are getting stronger when you give them weapons or threatening them.

It doesn't seem to handle non-normal game speed settings well...

Correct. Yields, Faith, Mana, Spell Research cost... these are not balanced on non-normal game speed.

...and I'm not sure if these are handled in the parts of the mod the current few working on it can change (the original modder SEPHI handled all of the DLL changes, and did some amazing work on the AI and time between turns).

CarnivalBizarre did fantastic job on polishing what Sephi had coded, including fixed many bugs. But he is not active and I don't have anyone else capable of doing DLL modding. So, that's that.

 

[esvath]

1) There are still a lot of units that don't scale with the techs. Especially impactful are summons(prime example is Guardian golem).

This is intended.
- normal humanoids are getting stronger with techs.
- magical units and summons are getting stronger with mana nodes.
- constructs are not getting stronger in regular method, atm. Golems do gain benefits from Artificers (Luchuirp UU).

Hmmm, now that we have timber resource, maybe Catapult etc should gain affinity bonus from Timber?
Golems will gain affinity bonus from various metals? If I mod this, their starting strength will have to go down, though.

Any opinion?

- Solutions: let the summons scale with MAGIC techs, or with SPELL techs.

This is not feasible. There is only one tag in TechInfos.xml controlling how many +str a tech gives and another tag in UnitInfos.xml controlling whether a unit is affected by +str from tech or not.

Siege equipment(catapult,trebuchet, cannons, etc) are heavily outclassed by mages and have weird bombardment cap.

3) Next issue that comes from the previous one is that AI SPAMS catapults. And then get rekt by proper stacks that don't use this nuisance(see the screen on point 1)

Yes, these are problematic. I'll take a look at siege engines.

4) Is it even possible to have the armageddon counter go higher than 40? Here's a screenshot of the ridiculously powerful Sheam empire with only 35 counter(there is not a single one even half as powerful empyrean/order civ) I have decided to stay neutral and see how it goes, but it never moved from 30+

Armageddon Counter is heavily tied to how deep a civ's commitment toward the Ashen Veil. A "secular" Sheaim civ (which is totally possible) won't achieve 100.

5) This mod is absolutely in favor of aggressive conquering. rarely a defender has a chance fortify and siege out due to the:

Palisade and Wall already give high amount of city defense.
If players do think we need more city defence, I can:
- create more city defence buildings, maybe tied to Construction/Engineering techs so magical civs will have less priority to research them.
- create/modify more buildings which give bonus toward defenders, through promotions or something like that.

- lack of proper def promotions and MAGIC

I don't understand this. We already have one promotion discipline dedicated toward defending.
More over, every promotion which increase strength usually increase both offence and defence, unless specifically say otherwise.
Also, any kind of elemental resistance increases your unit's defence toward that particular damage from attacking units.

 

[esvath]

Graphics/aesthetics:

If you have suggestion on particular units, please put links to the unit graphic files here. Or feel free to modify them. I'll include them in the next update if the new models are good. I have scoured the download section in civfanatics and the current graphics are the best I can find or modify.

take a look at PAE for proper slavery implementation)

That would require DLL modding, which I can't do. Any help on that part is appreciated.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I'm willing to help with the dll.
Only some smaller things though, not full new functions. I have more than enough big plans for RFC Europe and Realism Invictus, no need for more
Bugfixes and improvements over already existing mechanics are perfectly fine though.
Do you use SVN?

 

[esvath]

I'm willing to help with the dll.
Only some smaller things though, not full new functions. I have more than enough big plans for RFC Europe and Realism Invictus, no need for more
Bugfixes and improvements over already existing mechanics are perfectly fine though.
Do you use SVN?

Thank you!

Yes, we use SVN that CarnivalBizarre set up. I'll PM you the details in a moment.

 

[Auric]

I'll put it here as well in case anyone is interested.
Magister's Erebus map recreated for Master of Mana.

 

[Vital Brasil]

I'll put it here as well in case anyone is interested.
Magister's Erebus map recreated for Master of Mana.

Wow, this map is amazing !!

Thanks for posting !

 

[Guru-Meditation]

I'll put it here as well in case anyone is interested.
Magister's Erebus map recreated for Master of Mana.

Thanks! Looks great.

Is this map correct according to FFH2-Erebus-lore, or a unique scenario?

 

[Sezneg]

Thank you!

Yes, we use SVN that CarnivalBizarre set up. I'll PM you the details in a moment.

I have SVNtortoise installed from WAY back when we were testing 2.0 alpha stuff. Can I get in on the SVN details?

 

[esvath]

I have SVNtortoise installed from WAY back when we were testing 2.0 alpha stuff. Can I get in on the SVN details?

It's https://sourceforge.net/projects/masterofmanaxtended/

But I usually commit when I am ready to release a patch, so the svn version usually corresponds to patch file uploaded here.

 

[Theodorick]

AI spamming siege units seems like a huge problem in late game. I recently went to war with the Khazad, who had a huge empire and were relatively advanced, but all he had were stacks of trebuchets, which made conquering him pathetically easy. He could have easily made a proper army with his tech level, and it would have been a real blast fighting him.

 

[esvath]

AI spamming siege units seems like a huge problem in late game. I recently went to war with the Khazad, who had a huge empire and were relatively advanced, but all he had were stacks of trebuchets, which made conquering him pathetically easy. He could have easily made a proper army with his tech level, and it would have been a real blast fighting him.

Yes, this is a bug. I will take a look on the code and maybe limits war machines for AI to certain numbers.

 

[Guru-Meditation]

AI spamming siege units seems like a huge problem in late game. I recently went to war with the Khazad, who had a huge empire and were relatively advanced, but all he had were stacks of trebuchets, which made conquering him pathetically easy. He could have easily made a proper army with his tech level, and it would have been a real blast fighting him.

Yeah, i have experienced this before. It is annoying when the AI simply cripples itself by Siege Weapon Spam.

 

[feng92]

Was playing Aos Si, tried to get larincsidhe and apparently the hero has literally zero attack, he cannot attack anyone and was killed by a barbarian. Is this a bug in the mod?

 

[esvath]

Was playing Aos Si, tried to get larincsidhe and apparently the hero has literally zero attack, he cannot attack anyone and was killed by a barbarian. Is this a bug in the mod?

Yes, it is a bug and is fixed on version 5.6 (released this week end).

 

[feng92]

Wow that's great. Thanks for all your hard work esvath! On a side note, just wondering if there is any way to increase the spawn rate of mana, as it seems to be pretty rare in the maps I chose.