Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0
- Thread starter Drift
- Start date
Drift
It's a boy!
@gonzozen
Elimination isn't a bug, it's a game mode chosen when starting your game. Any player that loses a single city to an enemy, is eliminated. It was new information for me too.
@Klyden
Lot's of bad starts there.
I'm starting to feel like the node requirements for units should come at a later stage. There would still be the wonders to keep the players hunting for nodes and they would know that eventually they need a node for their units too. This should make the early game a bit more relaxed and forgiving.
About the techs. What do you think is the problem? Simply too high costs or something else? When I've been playing, I've cranked tech high without thinking much of how wise it is. Should the minimum research time be lowered? I originally doubled it from 4 to 8 in order to make the tech progress a bit slower than in regular Civ, but now I feel I may have opened a can of worms there as raising the tech bar doesn't make enough difference.
Any suggestions on what I should try?
Elimination isn't a bug, it's a game mode chosen when starting your game. Any player that loses a single city to an enemy, is eliminated. It was new information for me too.
@Klyden
Lot's of bad starts there.
I'm starting to feel like the node requirements for units should come at a later stage. There would still be the wonders to keep the players hunting for nodes and they would know that eventually they need a node for their units too. This should make the early game a bit more relaxed and forgiving.
About the techs. What do you think is the problem? Simply too high costs or something else? When I've been playing, I've cranked tech high without thinking much of how wise it is. Should the minimum research time be lowered? I originally doubled it from 4 to 8 in order to make the tech progress a bit slower than in regular Civ, but now I feel I may have opened a can of worms there as raising the tech bar doesn't make enough difference.
Any suggestions on what I should try?
Drift
It's a boy!
I played a game to end of first era today as a death mage. Had things going pretty easy, but it was probably because I should consider moving to Monarch from Warlord. I'm in the lead with Raven close behind. Vlad isn't doing bad either and Tauron seems to be ok. Oberic, Lo Pan and Sss'ra are weak. Mordja was doing ok as long as he messed with the wrong mage - death mages are the most untrustworthy neighbours I've ever had in a civ game. 
Some observations:
- nodes are a bit too rare. There were again couple of mages without their own color nodes. Sss'ra was right next to me contained on a peninsula and I would've had a chaos node not too far away from his border, but he never made a move. Pity the AI doesn't fully understand their importance.
- as a test, I increased maximum research time to 75 and lowered the minimum to 6. I didn't touch the tech costs. I felt it worked ok. I did keep research pretty high throughout the game though and still waits for techs were pretty long in the beginning. I'm a little undecided whether it's such a bad thing. I've got only two eras and the intention always was that one era would take longer than a Civ3 era. However, I guess I could try lowering the tech costs a little bit more, but the maximum of 75 felt like a good idea as it forced investing into research
So what I'm considering for next patch is:
- making nodes more common
- reducing minimum research cost to 6 and increasing the maximum to 75
- making early techs a little bit cheaper.
Would like some feedback on this in case I'm forgetting/overlooking something.
Some observations:
- nodes are a bit too rare. There were again couple of mages without their own color nodes. Sss'ra was right next to me contained on a peninsula and I would've had a chaos node not too far away from his border, but he never made a move. Pity the AI doesn't fully understand their importance.
- as a test, I increased maximum research time to 75 and lowered the minimum to 6. I didn't touch the tech costs. I felt it worked ok. I did keep research pretty high throughout the game though and still waits for techs were pretty long in the beginning. I'm a little undecided whether it's such a bad thing. I've got only two eras and the intention always was that one era would take longer than a Civ3 era. However, I guess I could try lowering the tech costs a little bit more, but the maximum of 75 felt like a good idea as it forced investing into research
So what I'm considering for next patch is:
- making nodes more common
- reducing minimum research cost to 6 and increasing the maximum to 75
- making early techs a little bit cheaper.
Would like some feedback on this in case I'm forgetting/overlooking something.
I like the proposed changes on the science front and I think getting this right will be one of the keys to having the scenario be really successful.
You can see what I was mentioning on the nodes and why I was thinking about some upper units that are not dependent on them, but that are not as cost effective as those that use the nodes. Increasing nodes will help, but there will still be cases where AI positions (and player positions for that matter) won't have the node they need in their area. The nice thing about an increase is that it raises the possiblity they could trade for it from someone who does have an extra.
Something else I will toss out is currently I believe that there is only one of each type of race (dwarfs, elfs, etc). Perhaps doubling that, based on map size, might be something to consider. This would help in that it is possible a position could get a monopoly on them and could trade the "excess" to another position or at least have something to trade.
I will be trying a couple more games and see if I can get a good one going again. I have been playing on Monarch level. Higher and I seem to get dusted about every time because of the extra starting units the other positions have and also they get too big of a discount on everything.
You can see what I was mentioning on the nodes and why I was thinking about some upper units that are not dependent on them, but that are not as cost effective as those that use the nodes. Increasing nodes will help, but there will still be cases where AI positions (and player positions for that matter) won't have the node they need in their area. The nice thing about an increase is that it raises the possiblity they could trade for it from someone who does have an extra.
Something else I will toss out is currently I believe that there is only one of each type of race (dwarfs, elfs, etc). Perhaps doubling that, based on map size, might be something to consider. This would help in that it is possible a position could get a monopoly on them and could trade the "excess" to another position or at least have something to trade.
I will be trying a couple more games and see if I can get a good one going again. I have been playing on Monarch level. Higher and I seem to get dusted about every time because of the extra starting units the other positions have and also they get too big of a discount on everything.
Drift
It's a boy!
I'll try to work out something about the node requirements for the units. I don't think there will be units that are less cost effective though, but rather make sure that the mages always have some basic unit availabe that compares reasonably with other units of its time. It's still a little sketchy though.
Doubling the race resources can be considered. It's difficult to balance them right though. I'll think about it and do some tests.
I can edit the difficulty levels if they don't suit the mod. Should I do away with / reduce the additional starting units? (I never even realized they get free units
) As I'm not experienced at all when it comes to difficulty levels, I could use a few pointers here.
Doubling the race resources can be considered. It's difficult to balance them right though. I'll think about it and do some tests.
I can edit the difficulty levels if they don't suit the mod. Should I do away with / reduce the additional starting units? (I never even realized they get free units
) As I'm not experienced at all when it comes to difficulty levels, I could use a few pointers here. 
The Last Conformist
Irresistibly Attractive
I think you should keep the free AI units. Removing them would weaken the AI massively on the highest levels.
Gladi
The ignored thread killer
Bright day Drift
This feel much better. Price of technologies seems to me about right. As now I feel techs come soon enough and yet they have some value. One thing, aren't Life mages supposed to be bult Galleas (at least Grimoir Arcanorum says so)? And also, have you increade aggresivity?
This feel much better. Price of technologies seems to me about right. As now I feel techs come soon enough and yet they have some value. One thing, aren't Life mages supposed to be bult Galleas (at least Grimoir Arcanorum says so)? And also, have you increade aggresivity?
Drift
It's a boy!
Thanks for the compliments Gladi.
Life mages build Hawk Ships nowadays instead of Galleasses - chaos mages are the only ones who build them. Their pedia entry is erroneus, thank you for catching it. If you mean with aggressivity the aggressiveness of the mages, I haven't touched it apart from one or two minor tweaks.
Life mages build Hawk Ships nowadays instead of Galleasses - chaos mages are the only ones who build them. Their pedia entry is erroneus, thank you for catching it.
If you mean with aggressivity the aggressiveness of the mages, I haven't touched it apart from one or two minor tweaks.About bad starts - this is something I'm noticing with my in-the-works fantasy mod, too. For some reason, the computer is assigning REALLY bad start locations to some civs. One I remember is a start location *on a mountain*. Another is one at the very edge of a tundra, with no luxury or strategic resources within a pretty wide area (which is saying something, since I have 10 luxuries and like 20 strategics). Lemme see if I can find pictures...
Here we go, perfect example. This is in the absolute center of a huge jungle... the closest non-jungle/marsh/hill/mountain tiles are at least 10 turns north. (Remember again this is from my own mod... but I'm beginning to suspect there's a bug in the start location generation that we're both running into, which is why I bring this up)
Here we go, perfect example. This is in the absolute center of a huge jungle... the closest non-jungle/marsh/hill/mountain tiles are at least 10 turns north. (Remember again this is from my own mod... but I'm beginning to suspect there's a bug in the start location generation that we're both running into, which is why I bring this up)
Attachments
I finally have an interesting game going, although I had my doubts. I am playing Vlad and while my starting position was not that hot, I have managed to get 3 lux items, lizards, and elfs. I do not have access to a death node.
I am behind tech wise (I am working on the 3's and most of the others have level 4 techs done) and I am also behind in other areas, but have a pretty secure position.
The VP spread at the moment goes from Ariel with 12445 to Rjak with 6195. The order is Ariel, Freya, Merlin, Raven, Tauron, Lo Pan, Vlad, Rjak.
Power spread runs from Freya at 1987 to Vlad at 737. Order is Freya, Ariel, Merlin, Tauron, Raven, Lo Pan, Rjak and Vlad.
I started a war with Raven to kick him out of my sphere and captured 2 cities (one was tougher, other was pretty easy). After he landed a couple treant units and I killed them, I offered a peace, which he took. Raven violated my territory several turns later and declared war on me. After giving him another beating, he wished for peace. Raven has been duking it out with Rjak as well and I think he has a slight advantage, but it has been a slugging contest for both sides. Raven does have a unit advantage with the birds as 4 point attackers and with the 3-4-2 Gnoll unit. Rjak seems to be doing ok with his 3-3-1 units. Raven has been very agressive.
Ariel got one of my outer cities early on bribes and culture. not much I could do about it and she has threaten me at times if I don't make some payments, which I have been doing to keep her off me for now.
Tauron has not been doing any fighting that I can see and while he occupies a large area, it is sort of weak with most of the land being tundra. He does have Orcs and Trolls tho and I am his only land neighbor. He did trade me a death node resource, so I hope to stay on good terms with him until I can get some more of my own resources.
My science effort has been somewhat puny, but I think it will pick up a bit as I get the wizard guilds in. The only reason I am still in this game is because I have access to elves and lizards for additional units and I have been able to make deals with my resources to shave time off on research.
Looking things over, I think the skeleton spearman needs to go back to a 1-3-1 unit. The only reason to build it right now is because it is cheap, but other than that, it offers nothing new and I think the death mages need a 3 point defender in there. (They have Zombies and then go from that to the 1-4-1 unit). If they want more offensive units, then they have to do the Death Summons for the 3-3-1.
My ace in the hole is I have also finally gotten a leader, although I have yet to form an army. I am not at war with anyone right now and like to wait as long as possible to stick the best possible units in the army. As soon as I go to war, I will try to score a kill as quickly as possible, but one of my long term problems is that my top production town is 11 or 12 per turn.. not really that hot, but that is more of a function of my start position rather than any inherent issues with Vlad.
I am behind tech wise (I am working on the 3's and most of the others have level 4 techs done) and I am also behind in other areas, but have a pretty secure position.
The VP spread at the moment goes from Ariel with 12445 to Rjak with 6195. The order is Ariel, Freya, Merlin, Raven, Tauron, Lo Pan, Vlad, Rjak.
Power spread runs from Freya at 1987 to Vlad at 737. Order is Freya, Ariel, Merlin, Tauron, Raven, Lo Pan, Rjak and Vlad.
I started a war with Raven to kick him out of my sphere and captured 2 cities (one was tougher, other was pretty easy). After he landed a couple treant units and I killed them, I offered a peace, which he took. Raven violated my territory several turns later and declared war on me. After giving him another beating, he wished for peace. Raven has been duking it out with Rjak as well and I think he has a slight advantage, but it has been a slugging contest for both sides. Raven does have a unit advantage with the birds as 4 point attackers and with the 3-4-2 Gnoll unit. Rjak seems to be doing ok with his 3-3-1 units. Raven has been very agressive.
Ariel got one of my outer cities early on bribes and culture. not much I could do about it and she has threaten me at times if I don't make some payments, which I have been doing to keep her off me for now.
Tauron has not been doing any fighting that I can see and while he occupies a large area, it is sort of weak with most of the land being tundra. He does have Orcs and Trolls tho and I am his only land neighbor. He did trade me a death node resource, so I hope to stay on good terms with him until I can get some more of my own resources.
My science effort has been somewhat puny, but I think it will pick up a bit as I get the wizard guilds in. The only reason I am still in this game is because I have access to elves and lizards for additional units and I have been able to make deals with my resources to shave time off on research.
Looking things over, I think the skeleton spearman needs to go back to a 1-3-1 unit. The only reason to build it right now is because it is cheap, but other than that, it offers nothing new and I think the death mages need a 3 point defender in there. (They have Zombies and then go from that to the 1-4-1 unit). If they want more offensive units, then they have to do the Death Summons for the 3-3-1.
My ace in the hole is I have also finally gotten a leader, although I have yet to form an army. I am not at war with anyone right now and like to wait as long as possible to stick the best possible units in the army. As soon as I go to war, I will try to score a kill as quickly as possible, but one of my long term problems is that my top production town is 11 or 12 per turn.. not really that hot, but that is more of a function of my start position rather than any inherent issues with Vlad.
Drift
It's a boy!
@TLC
Additional starting units are problematic as the starting units of the mod are usually stronger than the warriors you start with in regular civ. I'm tempted to reduce their numbers a bit, but I won't get rid of them completely.
@Zurai
I've had a lot of bad starting positions, but I've never been assigned a start location on a mountain. I suspect you've made it possible to found cities there.
@Klyden
I'll think about the Skeleton Spearman. I meant it as a cheap unit that would replace the Skeleton Warrior as the cannon fodder unit once you get Shadowmen, but Necromancers come along rather quickly. I'll try to come up with something.
The game seems interesting. Again no node and not a very favorable starting location - ancient forests are rather nice actually, but the swamps are not so hot. The faction balance seems ok although I've yet to see Chaos mages leading in any game. Raven is the most aggressive of the nature mages with an aggressiveness of 4 so he should be treated with healthy distrust. 
(BTW have you seen him using the birds or are you guessing it? Would be nice to hear they are being used.)
I might as well list the aggressiveness of each civ while the topic is current:
Mordja 4, Rjak 5, Vlad 3
Sss'ra 4, Tauron 5, Lo Pan 3
Raven 4, Freya 3, Tlaloc 4
Oberic 3, Merlin 3, Ariel 2
Seems I was wrong about Raven being the most aggressive. May need to rebalance the nature mages with Freya 2, Raven 3 and Tlaloc 4. (Master of Magic's Tlaloc had a warlord specialty so it should fit.)
The forums go offline today so I'm not sure if I can squeeze an update out before it. I'll try though, but it won't be an official patch - just a little something those interested may want to try out.
Additional starting units are problematic as the starting units of the mod are usually stronger than the warriors you start with in regular civ. I'm tempted to reduce their numbers a bit, but I won't get rid of them completely.
@Zurai
I've had a lot of bad starting positions, but I've never been assigned a start location on a mountain. I suspect you've made it possible to found cities there.
@Klyden
I'll think about the Skeleton Spearman. I meant it as a cheap unit that would replace the Skeleton Warrior as the cannon fodder unit once you get Shadowmen, but Necromancers come along rather quickly. I'll try to come up with something.
The game seems interesting. Again no node and not a very favorable starting location - ancient forests are rather nice actually, but the swamps are not so hot.
The faction balance seems ok although I've yet to see Chaos mages leading in any game. Raven is the most aggressive of the nature mages with an aggressiveness of 4 so he should be treated with healthy distrust. (BTW have you seen him using the birds or are you guessing it? Would be nice to hear they are being used.)I might as well list the aggressiveness of each civ while the topic is current:
Mordja 4, Rjak 5, Vlad 3
Sss'ra 4, Tauron 5, Lo Pan 3
Raven 4, Freya 3, Tlaloc 4
Oberic 3, Merlin 3, Ariel 2
Seems I was wrong about Raven being the most aggressive. May need to rebalance the nature mages with Freya 2, Raven 3 and Tlaloc 4. (Master of Magic's Tlaloc had a warlord specialty so it should fit.)
The forums go offline today so I'm not sure if I can squeeze an update out before it. I'll try though, but it won't be an official patch - just a little something those interested may want to try out.
Originally posted by Drift
@Zurai
I've had a lot of bad starting positions, but I've never been assigned a start location on a mountain. I suspect you've made it possible to found cities there.
Nope. I did that once long ago in vanilla civ and quickly undid the change after the AI made dozens of useless ungrowable mountain cities that crippled it. That's why the start location surprised me so much - I'd never seen anything quite that horrid. I guess more research is in order... I'll make a bunch of random maps with a default conquests rules biq and see if there are as many bad starts there. Maybe I've just been lucky in my unmodded games.
Drift
It's a boy!
Here's that small test patch I promised. Hopefully people interested in trying it out have time to do download it before the forums go offline.
Changes:
- Nodes and race resources are more common. It seems there are now usually two of each race resource in a map.
- Maximum research time 75 turns and minimum 6 turns.
- ~10% reduction in first era tech costs.
- More units free of node requirements. Only the most high end of units now requires a node.
- New aggressiveness for nature mages : Freya 2, Raven 3 and Tlaloc 4.
- Skeleton Spearman moved to Death Magic II (I'm not sure, but it being at Death Magic III may have been unintentional) Pterodactyls moved to Nature Summons.
- Additional offensive starting units removed from Monarch and Emperor difficulty levels.
- Maybe something else, but my eyes are telling me that I should go to sleep.
(actually, that's not what my eyes are doing)
Remember, if you install the patch, make sure you are using a fully patched version of the mod (Beta 9 with update 1) and make sure you backup the existing MoM.biq (or just extract the update 1 again if you want to revert back to normal). This is not an official patch.
Changes:
- Nodes and race resources are more common. It seems there are now usually two of each race resource in a map.
- Maximum research time 75 turns and minimum 6 turns.
- ~10% reduction in first era tech costs.
- More units free of node requirements. Only the most high end of units now requires a node.
- New aggressiveness for nature mages : Freya 2, Raven 3 and Tlaloc 4.
- Skeleton Spearman moved to Death Magic II (I'm not sure, but it being at Death Magic III may have been unintentional) Pterodactyls moved to Nature Summons.
- Additional offensive starting units removed from Monarch and Emperor difficulty levels.
- Maybe something else, but my eyes are telling me that I should go to sleep.
(actually, that's not what my eyes are doing)Remember, if you install the patch, make sure you are using a fully patched version of the mod (Beta 9 with update 1) and make sure you backup the existing MoM.biq (or just extract the update 1 again if you want to revert back to normal). This is not an official patch.
Raven used the birds on me and they are quite the pain since they ignore movment terrain. (I like them btw). He has basically attacked with those and also with the treants. This is one of the reasons you see a line of units in the hills to the south next to Brunn. While he can defeat them with ease with a bird, it does make it stop that much sooner and also the chances that it might be damaged are higher.
Drift
It's a boy!
Nice to hear they are being used. They were moved to Nature Summons BTW, forgot to mention it in the above post.
I was a little afraid they might be too annoying with their all terrain as roads, so I'm glad to hear at least you like them. They do have a pretty hefty price tag at 80 shields so taking one out is a considerable blow to the enemy.
They were moved to Nature Summons BTW, forgot to mention it in the above post.I was a little afraid they might be too annoying with their all terrain as roads, so I'm glad to hear at least you like them. They do have a pretty hefty price tag at 80 shields so taking one out is a considerable blow to the enemy.
azzacanth
Warlord
Ok, some problems.
I built the Rune of mastery, or whatever it is called - the wonder that is supposed to start the space race. But I didn't get the option to build any of the 10 runes after that. I check the requirements - no requirements (well I checked air rune but it follows I should be able to at least build one of them if I have done the rune of mastery). So I don't know what is wrong there but the space race is not working for me.
A lot of the screens (Espionage and Victory status in particular) have tags that are one space off. I can provide a screenshot if you need it.. But for example the immediately / cautiously / safely tags in espionage, are instead spy / immediately / cautiously, and the options at the bottom are safely and cancel, instead of ok (or execute or whatever it normaly is) and cancel. Similar effect on the victory status, except the values are all in the right places, just the labels are off. Again if I am not being clear and you need a screenshot I can get you one. Its not unplayable, just a bit confusing if I am not sure what I am looking for.
Anyway I have played basically through as a nature faction, I guess now I will go back and play as someone else.. or maybe play a different mod. I don't want to burn myself out
But it is a nice looking mod and I am impressed
I built the Rune of mastery, or whatever it is called - the wonder that is supposed to start the space race. But I didn't get the option to build any of the 10 runes after that. I check the requirements - no requirements (well I checked air rune but it follows I should be able to at least build one of them if I have done the rune of mastery). So I don't know what is wrong there but the space race is not working for me.
A lot of the screens (Espionage and Victory status in particular) have tags that are one space off. I can provide a screenshot if you need it.. But for example the immediately / cautiously / safely tags in espionage, are instead spy / immediately / cautiously, and the options at the bottom are safely and cancel, instead of ok (or execute or whatever it normaly is) and cancel. Similar effect on the victory status, except the values are all in the right places, just the labels are off. Again if I am not being clear and you need a screenshot I can get you one. Its not unplayable, just a bit confusing if I am not sure what I am looking for.
Anyway I have played basically through as a nature faction, I guess now I will go back and play as someone else.. or maybe play a different mod. I don't want to burn myself out
But it is a nice looking mod and I am impressed azzacanth
Warlord
I had a big problem with that the first couple games I played (and quit fairly early). The last one I tried wasn't too bad - once I got a decent number of cities at a worthwhile size my techs progressed pretty well. But 50 turns apeice for my first 3-4 techs WAS a long time. :/ On the other hand considering the relatively low number of techs overall, maybe not such a bad thing. (afterall if you have the right barbarian settings and explore a lot you get more techs that way anyway)
As for the minimum research time it is a bit long to me. I was at a state later in the game where I had tech turned down to 10% and was making over 1k gold per turn and still stuck waiting 8 turns for Nature Summons I which I skipped earlier as useless. Is it possible to make it longer in one era and then shorter in the next?
Drift
It's a boy!
I'll look into the Rune Mastery. I have never played that far ( ), but the one time I tested it, I think it worked ok. I'm not sure though so I'll check it out.
As for the screens having text in the wrong place, my guess is that you don't have the latest patch for Conquests. They show up right with me. Either patch to 1.22 or if you wish to stay in your current version, delete labels.txt from Civ3\Conquests\Scenarios\MoM\Text\.
I can't make the minimum reseach time different for different eras. It's down to 6 in the latest test patch though.
Thanks for the feedback and nice to hear you like the mod. I'll look into the spacerace ASAP.
), but the one time I tested it, I think it worked ok. I'm not sure though so I'll check it out.As for the screens having text in the wrong place, my guess is that you don't have the latest patch for Conquests. They show up right with me. Either patch to 1.22 or if you wish to stay in your current version, delete labels.txt from Civ3\Conquests\Scenarios\MoM\Text\.
I can't make the minimum reseach time different for different eras. It's down to 6 in the latest test patch though.
Thanks for the feedback and nice to hear you like the mod. I'll look into the spacerace ASAP.
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