Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[Drift]

More planned additions (very aaglo-centric it seems ):
- Sea Serpent Mastery great spell, creates aaglo's Sea Monsters.
- Aaglo's Steam Tanks for Chaos mages and Cannons for others at Chaos Magic X.
- Aaglo's Black Ark to Death mages as Deathfortress. Carries 8 units and has tough defense.
- Fix for bombard units not being transportable.

It may be a while before I release this patch, so don't hesitate to start a new game while waiting.

 

[mrtn]

Originally posted by Drift
...- Death mages will get a Carrion Beast unit that is essentially a helicopter. Graphics are a palette edited Kinboat's Pterosaur...

How does this look? If it's less green and more brown/black I'm very interested in using it in Magnamund. Will you post it in Kinboats thread?
Sorry for just cannibalizing your mod, and not helping.

EDIT: Apparently you already posted it... and it wasn't brown. I'm sure the Blue Bird of Carrion will fit this mod, though.

 

[Drift]

Ok. I won't promise anything about a brown/dark pterodactyl, but I'll consider it. I'm pretty busy ATM though.

 

[mrtn]

It wasn't really a request. I'd happy if you made it, but please tell me if you start it, as I could probably make it myself (and we don't want to duplicate the work).

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by mrtn
It wasn't really a request. I'd happy if you made it, but please tell me if you start it, as I could probably make it myself (and we don't want to duplicate the work).

In that case, I believe I'm going to hand it to you. Palette-editing this one was for some reason particularly tedious - took me quite a few drafts to get rid of all the flickering pixels.

 

[mrtn]

Originally posted by Drift
In that case, I believe I'm going to hand it to you. Palette-editing this one was for some reason particularly tedious - took me quite a few drafts to get rid of all the flickering pixels.

So it would be easier to edit your blue one than the original?
Sorry for going so off topic, but at least I'm bumping your thread.

 

[Drift]

Could be. However, I may have done some kind of mistake at the beginning stages of the palette-edit (for example, loading a palette with nearest colors matching instead of maintaining indexes) that caused all the troubles. There's really no reason why this unit would be harder to edit than others.

Kinboat makes lovely palettes BTW - everything has its own place and palette-editing has often been taken into consideration when making the palette.

And like you said, there's no such thing as a bad bump when it comes to mod threads.

 

[Klyden]

I have a game in progress that I have been playing off and on as a nature mage. The map I wound up with has a lot of mountains, hills and a pile of volcanos. I am seeing the fast growth for most of the cities, but a lot are capping out early because of the terrain. I am researching harbors as quickly as I can to help get around the issue, but it is still hurting in this particular game.

The ability to irrigate without water is an interesting trade off to not be able to do mines. I am also interested to see what others think on this as well, but think that a lot of it is going to come down to what type of map the game comes up with.

 

[Drift]

Yep, there are times when the nature mages don't end up benefitting much from their ability to irrigate without fresh water. However, most of the time there are closeby areas that don't have access to fresh water and it does allow faster expansion.

I can think up some adjustments to nature mages if people feel they are getting the short end of the stick here. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[mrtn]

I'd guess nature mages would rock on dry archipelago maps.

 

[Klyden]

I have been tinkering some more and have a couple of observations:

1. I have version 1.15 (going to patch now since I have most of the scenarios done I want to play) and the date does not increment. It is stuck on December. This also causes issues in auto save as only 1 turn will be available.

2. The other civs are driving me nuts from the stand point that they seem to freely trade tech with each other with no issues, but won't cut deals with me unless they are overwhelmingly in their favor and I usually wind up in a position not being able to trade because I have nothing to trade with. The only way I have been able to redress this in the past is to attack a civ and force them to give up techs for a peace settlement, but this is a chancy strategy.

The other issue that puts player civs behind is the AI's ability in this to go on expansion binges much faster than the human can. As a consequence, the size of the PC civ is a bit smaller and they struggle in that regard.

Not sure of some suggestions and perhaps it is my own skill (although I usually do pretty good), but it seems the other Civs are much to friendly with each other for tech and too stingy with the player. (Most are annoyed).

I have still been tinkering around for it (and will continue to do so).

Thanks!

 

[Drift]

@Klyden

1. Latest version is based on 1.20. Next patch will be based on 1.22 although it shouldn't affect anything. Check whether patching to 1.22 helps.

2. I've been there too. Being left out of the club and stuck so much behind that I can't trade anything. However, I feel this is the way Civ3 AI opponents behave always. I don't have any way of altering this. One tactic is to beeline for a higher level techs and trade them for the rest.

One reason why other mages may be stingy towards you is shunned governments. Nature mages don't get along with chaos mages and life mages don't get along with death mages. This is just a penalty though, you can make a good relationship with your counter-faction. Members of the same faction get along pretty well.

Can't really do anything about the early expansion. These are issues with the Civ3 itself, not the mod. Although, some of them may be heightened in mods.

Thanks for the feedback! Keep on playing.

 

[grumbler]

Great mod, small problem (and I'm sorry if this has been mentioned already): The AI uses the Protector unit to attack, which does not make sen se, given its stats of 1/3/1.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by grumbler
Great mod, small problem (and I'm sorry if this has been mentioned already): The AI uses the Protector unit to attack, which does not make sense, given its stats of 1/3/1.

Whoops, will fix for next patch.

Thanks for the compliments.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I've been playing a bit as Tlaloc, and I must say that no mines hurts. To make it even worse, I got no race resources in my starting area, so I'm in a somewhat tough spot. Still, I managed to out-expand most of the AIs on my continent (not that tough - playing on Monarch), and figure once I research a non-resource attacker, I'll achieve some racial parity.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
I've been playing a bit as Tlaloc, and I must say that no mines hurts.

Do you feel the positive perks nature mages enjoy don't balance the lack of mines? I personally like the idea and wouldn't want to get rid of it. If it's hindering nature mages too much, I'd rather think of something other to compensate it with.

Planting forests is meant to be the nature mage equivalent of mines. It's not as good and can't be done one hills and mountains, but it's at least something. Too bad AI doesn't plant too many forests as it seems to be intent on chopping them down (Or is it? I haven't really observed this with nature mages of MoM.)

To make it even worse, I got no race resources in my starting area, so I'm in a somewhat tough spot. Still, I managed to out-expand most of the AIs on my continent (not that tough - playing on Monarch), and figure once I research a non-resource attacker, I'll achieve some racial parity.

I hope you at least have a nature node. Ents are the unit nature mages without race resources and a nature node should aim at as they don't require any resources and have a decent 3.3.1 with +1 hitpoints.

In the games I've played nature mages have held their own pretty well. They are usually very large and pretty powerful. Irrigation without fresh water seems to really boost the AI in the beginning. Although, in some games they have crumbled down rather quickly when they got into a war with another powerful faction. I've changed some things since that though.

I've got one game going on where I'm trying to observe stuff, but it's an immensely frustrating one as the pangaea is in circular formation and my two neighbours are death mages Rjak and Vlad. I'm also a death mage - Mordja - but that doesn't stop the two from attacking me all the time. The bastards are both gracious or polite but still they come. I've been struggling really bad and as much as I would like to see it through, I don't know whether I have the stamina to fight a continuous two front war. Especially when Vlad can throw more units to his front than I have in total.

Anyway, in that game the two nature mages are leading the scores with Vlad. Life mages are struggling real bad, but that's probably because they don't have any fresh water. Tauron, the only chaos mage is relatively well in the game in the same league with me and Rjak.


Patch information: Next patch will come soon. It's ~8 megs at the moment and as I don't want to bug Thunderfall all the time about ftp access, I'll probably split it in 3 parts for CivFanatics. I'm finally setting up a second base of operations at CDG and as I'll have my own ftp access there, the patch will be available as a single download at CDG.

 

[Drift]

Some new units planned for the next patch: (stats are tentative)
- Dragon of Light, a life mage unit. 6.3.3 all terrain as roads
- Helldrake, a chaos mage unit. 7.2.2 all terrain as roads
- Black Dragon, a death mage unit. 5.2.2 all terrain as roads
- Wraith, a death mage unit. 3.6.1

Also some balancing and stat tinkering for existing units.

 

[borgun]

Well, one solution for Nature mages would be the ability to plant forests that produced like mines and "irrigate" hills instead

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by borgun
Well, one solution for Nature mages would be the ability to plant forests that produced like mines and "irrigate" hills instead

Hills can't be irrigated. It would be an interesting feature and one I would love to implement.

 

[mrtn]

Originally posted by Drift
Hills can't be irrigated. It would be an interesting feature and one I would love to implement.

How do you mean can't? They can in the Mesoamerican conquest. Just make the irrigation bonus 1 instead of 0.