Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[tjedge1]

I've pieced some together for my mod, but I used sounds form in-game and a couple others for gnolls like a hyena laugh. For the spiders, I just used the old giant spider sounds.

I could try to upload them if you wanted.

 

[Drift]

Please do so. If you upload just the sounds and ini-files, it doesn't even take up much space. (The way I would do it is make a copy of the unit folders in question, delete all the flics, and then pack them into a one zip).

Thanks a lot for the offer.

 

[tjedge1]

Ok here they are. With INI's included and a Sounds folder where the sounds are. Each INI has the links to the sound folder and vanilla sounds. I can't promise high quality, but I haven't had any complaints from my beta testers.

 

[Drift]

Thanks a lot. These will sure come in handy.

 

[MacktheKnife]

It's a great mod, seems like it would be really fun in multiplayer. A few problems I've noticed, though. Chaos and death mages seem to roll over and die throughout the game (monarch difficulty). Most of their cities have very low populations, making them fall like dominos. Perhaps the AI decides to constantly draft citizens with those? Nature and life were well balanced, though I saw Minerva with several black dragons mid-game (Tech level VI or VII, and I was ahead of her). I thought those were exclusively death, and I have no idea how she got 4 of them while we were still using ents and half gnolls. Keep up the good work.

 

[Drift]

OK, now we’ve settled down in our new apartment, my big study project has been submitted and I’m starting to get the hang of my new work. So, I finally have some time to look at the feedback properly.


Bezhukov & others
- Tech of other factions costing more to research. Interesting, but not a priority. Fiddling with tech is always very risky as it contains a large probability of messing up the whole system so I’m very hesitant to try it at this point. At the moment, at least I find myself focusing on my own branch just to get my higher level units, so the priority of research is forced ‘softly’. BTW MoM doesn’t use the flavor system at the moment for anything.
- Tedious late game. I’ll adjust the rally point system and the race units. I do hate having too much units to move around and it was my one fear with the rally points - being overwhelmed with the task of managing the units created by them. I’ll do what Bezhukov suggests.
- Limited government options. This is another concept that would be nice to implement, but that would be very impractical due to technical limitations forced by the game engine. Also, I don’t have the time for major stuff like this. I hate having to cut down on my involvement with the mod, but it has already taken too much of my time.

@MacktheKnife
- Chaos and Death mages being too weak. The main thing holding them back is the forced labour. It seems that they whip their citizens just for the fun of it. However, I’ve seen dominant chaos and death mages. I do realize that it’s more common to have life mages and especially nature mages at the top, but balancing this kind of a mod with the tools available while keeping the factions diverse, will always result in a compromise of some kind. I’ve lowered the penalties for forced labour and from time to time I wonder if that’s because they use the whip so willingly. Maybe I should bring the penaly back to normal level and see what happens.
- Minerva having dragons. This is probably due to mixed up unit producing wonders in a previous version. It has been fixed so you should get the latest update.


I’ve been hoping for a bit more feedback actually. However, myself staying pretty quiet for the last few weeks hasn’t probably helped. The rally point system especially is something I’d like to hear more about. I guess it’s a good sign, that no-one has written a bitter complaint about how I’ve ruined my mod. Anyway, I do plan to follow Bezhukov’s advice and tone down the spawning rate with 4 turns being the fastest.

Next patch will come in the near future. Exact date remains to be decided, but I plan to get it done rather soon.

 

[Lusikka755]

I would be eagerly testing but I have the matriculation examination starting on Monday And after that the entrance test to the university of Tampere. So I'm quite busy this spring.

 

[Drift]

@Lusikka755
Don't worry, I understand perfectly. I also hear you on the entrance exams. I'm studying at Tampere university for my third year and I'm considering to take them again this year in order to change the subject I'm majoring in. Those exams are brutal.

 

[aaglo]

I've been playtesting this patch for quite some time now, and the only true complaint I can find is the 6-turn minimum research time .

There are also some minor issues, mainly in the civilopedia which isn't up to date (wrong links and such).

And there's also one thing (that is actually my fault): some of the undead sounds (especially on the tomb swarm) are a bit too loud

 

[Drift]

@aaglo

Nice to hear you're liking it overall.

Hmm, 6 turn minimum. It has been some time since I fiddled with the tech and all I can remember is that it wasn't fun. Not fun at all. I don't know... tech advancement has been ok for me, but do you feel like the overall tech advancement is too slow or is it just the 6 turn minimun that's bugging you?

Maybe if I made the minimum 4 turns and increased tech cost slightly? I really don't know as the whole tech thing has million different variables with all of them affecting each other.

I'll put the civilopedia in order for the final version. What are some of the other minor issues not related to civilopedia?

I've played 2.0 beta 3 so little that I haven't really heard the undead units much. Hmm. I have the tools to tone down the sound files, maybe I'll have a go at it. Although I'm not very good at the whole sound thing. What's the wav-format they should be in? Mono/stereo, 8/16 bits per sample, what frequency? edit: mono, 16 bit, 22Khz seems to be the norm.

 

[Cabbit]

I've been playing the new Beta whenever I've had some free time, for a while now, and like Aaglo, I don't really have any complaints. I like the new rally point system, even though it's annoying not to be able to upgrade any of my race units.

I'm slightly annoyed by the research limits, but not enough that I think it needs to be changed (or, at least, changed on anybody's Mod besides mine).

I still haven't gotten past the second era in any of my games yet, so if there are late-game changes I haven't really experianced them, so I can't comment on them.

A stupid remark on race-symmetry:
In the current version of MoM there is a race-required navel unit for elves, humans, and lizardmen(the Giant Turtle,which happens to be my favorite naval unit in the mod); this means that the resources are slightly unbalanced. If you added a navel unit or maybe a special unit of some other kind for orcs or trolls then the "bonus race-units" would be symmetrical over mage types (Life, Chaos, Death, Nature), even though the resources would still not be exactly symmetrically distributed w/ respect to each race resource (elves, dwarves, humans, etc.).

But that's not neccessarily something that needs "fixing", because I don't think that every resource has to exactly as powerful as the others, slightly un-even strengths lends itself to more variaty.

Anyway, for the most part, the mod still looks great, and it's nice to see some of the new Aaglo units in action. Btw. as regards your Mod surviving a lapse in development (this comment is in the WH thread), I personally think that MoM could and should survive, even if you after you are no longer able to devote anymore time to developing it. It's unquestionably (in my opinion) one of the best 2 fantasy modpacks for Civ 3), and is in my top 3 mods overall.

So don't feel like the mod is going to sink into total obscurity even if you can't devote much time to developing MoM. I look forward to the final release of v 2.0, but don't want to put any pressure on you to finish it anytime soon, becuase you've gotta have your priorities straight, real life always comes first. It's just nice to know (or hope) that it will be done eventually, and provide a sort of final gloss to one of the greatest (at least in my personal opinion) mods of Civ III in existence out there. (and besides, it seems like Clearbeard will still have some stuff to add after you finish, so the mod won't stagnate completely)

 

[clearbeard]

I've not found the 6 turn min particularly bad. I tend to like more epic games anyway, so that lends itself well. The expansion reduced it to 5 turns, but that's mainly because there are 5 branches to research instead of 4. With just the 4 factions 6 seems about right. I definitely wouldn't go all the way down to 4 turns. 5 turns with a cost increase might work too, though.

 

[aaglo]

What are some of the other minor issues not related to civilopedia?

That would be the sounds of many units - or rather the lack of them

 

[Drift]

Tech advancement

I'm tempted to drop the minimum research time to 5 turns. I'm not sure about the cost increasements, probably not for starters.


@Cabbit

Thanks for the encouragement.

I'll have to think about the resources. An Orcish ship should be doable, but I don't know how I would differentiate it from the other ships while keeping it powerful enough. No point in adding a unit just for the sake of adding it. At one point I thought of adding a bonus unit for all races. I still would like to do it, but coming up with original concepts is hard.

 

[clearbeard]

I'll have to think about the resources. An Orcish ship should be doable, but I don't know how I would differentiate it from the other ships while keeping it powerful enough.

As an alternative, perhaps an Orcish artillery unit? That would be in keeping with the philosophy of Chaos, you could give it move of 2 to make it sufficiently different from the existing art'y units.

 

[Fader55]

This is a great mod, that having been said I'd like it if the min tech research was a bit faster, since I seem to have quite abit too much money & would like to spend it there.

I think the Rally point idea is very nice, but I think that it's not working the way it's supposed to. I was playing as Freya, & had goblins, I built RP1 & then somehow skipped whatever RP makes it obsolete (3?) then built whatever the next one was 4 I think. I was getting goblin spearman & wolf riders every couple turns. Just thought you should know.

Again, a great mod.

Fader

 

[aaglo]

hey, that is true!
you can research some of those "dwarfs&elfs X"-techs without researching the previous ones. I think that each of those race-involved techs should have the previous tech as a required tech (so that you can't research "dwarfs&elfs III" before you know tech "dwarfs&elfs II"). And since you would need to research all those techs, the 6-turn minimum research could be a bit much. how about 5.5-turn minimum

 

[Drift]

@Clearbeard

Artillery would be my second choice, but since the other bonus units are ships, it would be best if it was a ship. However, if I was to give all races a bonus unit, there would probably be artillery as well in there.

Fader55

Good find! I'll have to fix that somehow. Aaglo's suggestion is probably the only possible option. I'm just not sure how it works with era changes as techs from a previous era can't be prerequisites for a tech in the next one. I'll look into it today.

As for the tech times, I'll go with 5 for starters. I'm actually tempted to go with 4 and raise the costs, but maybe I should go easy at first and see how it goes.

 

[Drift]

Aaglo, how would you feel about making a new earth elemental somewhere down the line? ED's version has disturbingly human-like look with the muscles and features. Also, it has no civ-color. I'm trying to replace all units with no civ-color and with your new Treeman, I think the only unit used by more than one mage with no civ-color is the Earth Elemental.

I had something like this in mind:
http://www.cglenn.com/images/3d/EarthElemental_b.jpg

I think it would be a cool unit. Lots of mass and weight, lumbering motions and maybe some gravel falling off as it walks and swings its huge fists...

I see you're pretty occupied with them hobbitses and you've said you're going to take it more easy with the unit making so I understand perfectly if you don't feel like making it. If you decide to make it, there's no rush. I'm going to release a small patch first with the gameplay changes, playtest it and then update the graphics for the final 2.0.

 

[clearbeard]

Good find! I'll have to fix that somehow. Aaglo's suggestion is probably the only possible option. I'm just not sure how it works with era changes as techs from a previous era can't be prerequisites for a tech in the next one. I'll look into it today.

AFAIK, it is not possible to have a prerequisite from a different era. I seem to recall trying to do that once and the editor got pissy at me. Maybe you could put the obsolescence points on the associated magic line, say one step above where the next race tech is available? i.e. Orc Rally Point III requires Orcs and Trolls III which is off of Chaos Magic VI, so Rally Point II would become obsolete at Chaos Magic VII, whether or not Orcs and Trolls III was actually researched. Since the magics are required techs, the rally points would all become obsolete at some point, but you'd still have the opportunity to get the next one before it does.