Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[Drift]

@Klyden
I haven't received any savegames from you. Did you send them to driftwood@sunpoint.net ? Maybe you should just post them here?

As for the feedback...

I won't go through with the life mage enslave. In civilopedia it was explained as converting, not enslaving, but it is probably too strong. I'll change the victory points. I have no clue about them so I'll just trust your word

My new tech costs were a bit too cheap. I just played a game as a nature mage up to the latter portion of the first era and I was making progress a little too easily. I did get an amazing start and was dominating the game, but still - a little too fast. Other than that, it played rather nicely apart from the other mages being really wimpy. Usually Warlord has given me an ok resistance (I know, I suck at Civ )

I did add the 2.2.1 nature mage unit. It's called Beorning and it uses Enkidu Warrior's graphics. Comes at Nature Magic II and upgrades to an Ent.

BTW, I've noticed life mages starting a lot from dry peninsulas resulting in their growth being stunted as they expand too slowly and never get any fresh water. It's probably because of the seafaring trait. I'm actually considering removing it from them.

Edit: and oh yes, I removed the +25% production bonus improvement from death mages and gave it as a test to chaos mages with a cost of 60 and an upkeep of 1. Also, nature mages have their mines now.

 

[Klyden]

Was a bit rushed with my last post as I had an appointment to keep and I have thought of some other things.

In regards to requiring a node for all the upper units, I would consider having one relatively offensive unit not have that as a requirement, but have it not be as cost effective as the other units that require the node. My thought here is that it is very possible to wind up with no access to the node and, depending on the map, it might be very hard to trade for it. This would give the AI (and players) a backup (although not an effective one) in that case. Once they get access to the node, players (and the AI) should switch to the more cost effective units.

For game points, I think you try 75,000 to start.

Will double check on the e-mail. Sorry about that.

 

[mrtn]

I've started playing as both life and nature mage, and I'm having problems with barbs, as I don't have any attackers. It is silly to build an expensive Protector to attack barbs, but this is what I have to do... Every one should get some sort of cheap warrior type unit.

There are no city view gfx for tobacco.

You should make a new industrial tech background (there's a new one in the latest patch for c3c). Not really hard, as you don't have any techs there.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by mrtn
I've started playing as both life and nature mage, and I'm having problems with barbs, as I don't have any attackers. It is silly to build an expensive Protector to attack barbs, but this is what I have to do... Every one should get some sort of cheap warrior type unit.

Well, in the new patch Protectors are 2.1.2 at 25 shields. Nature has (2.2.1 - 25) Beorning. Neither is cheap though. Then again, Death and Chaos are more militaristic in nature and it's IMO reasonable that they can deal with barbs more easily. Of course, as I play on Warlord mostly, my view of the matter may be biased. How bad is it up there with the barbs? Does "warrior type unit" mean 1.1.1 at 10 shields?

There are no city view gfx for tobacco.

I'll check that. Thanks.

You should make a new industrial tech background (there's a new one in the latest patch for c3c). Not really hard, as you don't have any techs there.

It's already included in the new patch.

I wish I had a place to put the patch to. Folks at CDG need some time to activate my ftp accounts and I don't want to bug Thunderfall about yet another beta patch.

@Klyden

I'll look into the possibilities of making some units not require nodes - something like that (not as cost-effective as the rest) was on my mind too. I only wish I had more useful unit graphics. Still no email BTW. It could well be because of my email provider. Could you upload the savegames here? Edit: Now it came through. Thanks. I'll check it out tonight.

 

[mrtn]

A warrior type unit means a 1/1/1 unit of some kind yes. The cost should be fixed relative to the other units in the mod.

You have mucked up the transparency of Tlaloc in the F4 screen! Mr Quality Assurance to the rescue...

The barbs "up here" (Monarch) is not very bad (mainly because of the broken barb AI in c3c), but it's annoying not having an easy way to deal with them. This would also be eased with a faster tech rate, as you'd get new units to fight them with.
It's all connected...

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by mrtn
You have mucked up the transparency of Tlaloc in the F4 screen!

And you've missed the beta8 update patch that was released two weeks ago!


I'll think about the low level units.

 

[Drift]

@Klyden

The savegames were very interesting. I built Spell of Secrets and spied a bit on the other players. Raven was indeed quite weak. Culturally he was very strong though. His units were mostly Torosaurs (Gnoll Champions in the new lineup). I guess it's the pitiful production values of nature mage cities - all they can handle is building the required defensive units. Giving them back their mines should ease the problem. And you were right about the death mages being very strong...

Units Mordja had:
435 Shadowmen
104 Vampires
150 Zombies
179 Clansmen
127 Berserks
103 War Dancers
129 Rangers
~70 lizardmen

How do they pay for all those units?! Mordja was pretty large, but Vlad with his 13 cities also had 550 Shadowmen and 107 Vampires. Is there something I'm missing here? They do have the largest support limits for their cities and they can draft, but there's still the financial problem. Is this because of the too expensive techs - not being forced to pump up the research bar, all mages have more money to spend on units? If so, why did the other mages have so much smaller armies?

Thank you for the savegame - very enlightening. It feels pretty good to know that there are people who play my mod in so huge scope. I could have never finished that game - I hardly ever choose anything above small for my map.

 

[mrtn]

Originally posted by Drift


And you've missed the beta8 update patch that was released two weeks ago!


I'll think about the low level units.

You should know I don't read threads, I just look at the pretty pictures.

BTW I'm also a small and standard map player... but if anyone wants to sponsor a new comp for me I can try larger maps.

 

[Klyden]

Interesting and shocking on the level of the Death armies, but you can also see that I also had quite a strike force in the army department as well and was doing well with the navy.

I think the two death mages shut down on science or were doing it at minimal levels. There was one isolated to the south for a long time, so it might be interesting to see what he had. I don't know that the AI did a lot of tech swapping in this game, but that might be what they do to help keep up and still build the huge military.

The Chaos mages never got going in this game. Their starting positions were poor and Raven had taken over a couple Chaos cities, so he was doing something. Also, I think Raven was at war with Morja, but because the death mages were not doing much on the naval front, Raven was taking the war to Morja and getting wiped as his troops landed. (I saw several troop convoys I thought were headed for me never come to me and I also saw damaged Morja units).

Out of all that, what has free maintence?

*Edit* I was playing on Monarch as well. Not sure what extra benefits the AI gets from that in regards to unit maintenance.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I finally come around to playing on that Tlaloc game again. Just about the first thing to happen was that Lo Pan invaded with an approximately infinite number of Beastmen. Defending with a mixture of Catapults and Centaurs is doable, but not much fun. This far, they've lost one city and I none. My first Ents are coming online (did Life Magic III take forever to research?!?), which should spice up things some. But even they'll need artillery support to tackle the Devils Lo Pan is busy putting in his cities.

Why can't Centaurs pillage?

Techs are very expensive.

Klyden: On Monarch, the AI get four extra units free of maintenance, plus one extra per city.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
I finally come around to playing on that Tlaloc game again. Just about the first thing to happen was that Lo Pan invaded with an approximately infinite number of Beastmen. Defending with a mixture of Catapults and Centaurs is doable, but not much fun. This far, they've lost one city and I none. My first Ents are coming online (did Life Magic III take forever to research?!?), which should spice up things some. But even they'll need artillery support to tackle the Devils Lo Pan is busy putting in his cities.

Nature is very defensive - especially in early game. Next patch will bring a few new units and special abilities for them though.

Why can't Centaurs pillage?

Pillaging is available only to death mage units and lizardmen + few others. It's one of the things I'm going to reconsider for the next patch. Do you guys feel it's a problem? Is pillaging too essential for offensive warfare for it to be a perk of death mages?

Techs are very expensive.

Already fixed for next patch.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I don't think lacking pillaging is a much of a problem, but then pillaging has never been particularly important in my playing style; I imagine it will annoy others more. I asked because I figured it might be a slip.

After razing one Lo Pan outpost, I accepted peace in return for a few techs. I'm now at war with Ariel, who got a pretty poor start between me and Raven; this far, I've taken three cities, incl Arairia, and razed a fourth. I now control one race resource - Dark Elves.

Catapults and Ents make for pretty effective offensive stacks, I must say; Ariel's Sorcerers have not had much luck in stopping the Tlaloc siege train.

Save attached.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Concering the lack of early Nature Mage offensive units, I should point out that it screws me up on defense nearly as much as on offense, because I normally rely heavily on counterattacks with offensive units to wittle down enemy attack stacks. Even when I lack all offensive ambitions, I normally have more attackers than defenders.

 

[Illusion13]

Great mod!!!

 

[Drift]

@Klyden

I checked the savegame again.

Mordja: 1352 units
Vlad: 778 units
Rjak: 138 units

Support from cities:
Mordja: 218
Vlad: don't have exact numbers but 13 cities in total ~ 130-150
Rjak: 56

None of the units were free of maintenance. The amount of Shadowmen Mordja and Vlad had led me to believe I had forgotten to make them require support, but I was wrong. They were paying for each of all of those units. What's very curious is that neither of the two unit hoarders had a single naval unit. Rjak had 7 curraghs, but nothing else.

I'm considering removing draft or limiting it to lower level units only. It could well be part of the problem.

My ftp account at CDG should go online this weekend. I'm aiming at releasing a new patch as soon as possible. I've got you guys playing an outdated version of the mod and it bugs me a lot. In the meanwhile, I can't really recommend starting new games with beta 8 unless for just for the fun of it.

@TLC

I checked the savegame quickly. Seemed interesting, I'll look into it better when I have more time. Life mages were again pretty screwed with bad starting locations. I think I'm going to try removing that seafaring from them. Any objections to this? I can give the added movement bonus to their unique ships in the editor.

I understand the problem with the lack of offensive units. Next patch brings 2.2.1 Beornings and 5.2.2 Centaurs to address some of this, but early nature mages will continue to be worse off with offensive units.


Thanks again to everyone for the feedback and kind words. Keeps me going

 

[The Last Conformist]

5.2.2 Centaurs? Are the 1.2.2 ones going down the drain? And I assume the new ones are gonna be fairly deep into the tech tree?

The Beornings, assuming they turn up fairly early, should be a big improvement.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
5.2.2 Centaurs? Are the 1.2.2 ones going down the drain? And I assume the new ones are gonna be fairly deep into the tech tree?

The Beornings, assuming they turn up fairly early, should be a big improvement.

The new unit line drafts can be seen on last page.

1.2.2 Centaurs are replaced by 1.2.2 Gnolls that cost 15. New Centaurs come at Nature Magic V so yes, fairly deep.

Beornings come at Nature Magic II but they are not the best of bargains at 25 shields. I don't want to make them as good as Beastmen and Zombies.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The Beornings don't figure in that unit list ...

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
The Beornings don't figure in that unit list ...

What do you mean? That they aren't in there? I included them to the mod later than I made that list.

I updated the list now. Beornings belong to the footmen line and upgrade to Ents.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I meant, quite simply, that they weren't listed - figured it might be a mistake, and that you might want to be informed, so you could rectify it.