Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[Psyringe]

Some random thoughts that crossed my mind, which I just didn't get around to post during the last days ...


- Racial Resource Appearance Ratio

During my current game, I think I found another reason why these should remain scarce: The AI isn't able to value them correctly in many cases. Two examples:

1. By just giving Lo Pan Trolls, I managed to turn him against his former ally Rjak *and* extorted some gold per turn from him. However as far as I can see he won't have any benefit from the trolls. He is already producing chaos ettins, which have the same value as ettins and are slightly cheaper. He is a good deal away from the third Troll tech that would allow him to build troll arenas. Even worse: If he decides to actually build troll units, I will break his upgrade chains when I let the deal run out. I don't see how he gains any benefit from this resource, yet the AI assigns a huge value to it. This can easily be exploited.

2. The AI will never trade (with other AIs) resources from which it only has one single instance. The human player will, because he can see when a resource is of less use to him. The AI can't, because it expects a vanilla-Civ3 world, where each strategic resource is very valuable and where it is expected that you gain access to all of them in the course of the game. This gives the player a huge advantage at diplomacy.

So, I think we should even go back to the ratio of 20 we had before. Trading of racial resources was a good idea, but the AI just can't adapt to it very well.


- Assignment of units and buildings to races

Some of the current assignments seem non-intuitive to me. For example, I would have expected assignments like the following:

Lizardmen: slow, tough (bonus HP) units, amphibious; fishery improvement (lizardmen were amphibious in Master of Magic)
Goblins: cheap, offensive units, can pillage; improvement with military bonus
Elves: fast units, superior ranged attack (bows), skillful but fragile melee attackers (good attack but -1 HP?); improvement which reduces pollution (living in harmony with nature)

These are just some random ideas with no regard to game balance. However they show what I (and probably some other people too) expect when they hear about lizardmen, or elves. It's no problem to deviate from these cliches, but if you do, it's probably better to guide the players a little. Here's an example:

The "magistrate" now is an elven building. This sounds odd, because (at least for me) "magistrate" is a part of a more "bureaucratic" way of empire management that is entirely human. If you tie it to elves, I suggest to call it "Elven Council" and provide an explanation for its effect that is in-line with "elvish" attributes, like "The Elven Council consists of several elven elders, who use their wisdom to solve conflicts among the populace. It instills a sense of harmony in the town, which results in a reduction of waste and corruption." (should be rephrased in better English, but you get the idea).

I've got some more, but have to stop now, I'm at work and customers are coming. Later.

 

[Psyringe]

What I would have to do is add a new tech - maybe second era and branching off the nature magic branch. All it would do is give the option of planting trees. Then, I'd give this tech to nature mages from the start and others could research it when they get to it. Is this too cumbersome? It would have to be un-tradeable of course.

AFAIK this won't have the desired effect. I remember reading somewhere (perhaps in the editor?) that you can give civs techs that have prerequisites from the start, but the techs won't be available to the civ unless the prerequisites are met. This means that the nature mages would get the tech only after researchinbg the required Nature tech level.

Haven't tested it myself though and I'm not entirely sure whether I understood you correctly; if I didn't, its entirely my fault, as I'm a little distracted right now.

 

[Psyringe]

Two other things from my list. Sorry for flooding the thread like that, but I'm continuously interrupted by customers ...

Graphics: ocean

In my games I can barely tell the ocean from the sea, they are nearly the same blue. Often I cannot tell the difference from just looking, so I right-click on the square or check whether my ship could go there or not (via clicking the mouse, holding it and dragging the mouse around; when there's no number inside the white circle, it's an ocean square). I'll attach a bitmap below. The tile to the upper left of my curragh is sea, the tile to the upper right is ocean. You see what I mean?

Is this intended? Or is this a problem of using terrain mods together with MoM? (I think I have Snoopy's 4.5 installed, but I'm not entirely sure.)


Graphics: racial resources

I also find it hard sometimes to detect the racial resources. Some are very easy to spot (trolls, men, goblins), but some tend to blend with the background. This is especially the case for dark elves. In my last game, Ariel had Dark Elves on a tundra forest square, and also I had a scout on that island for about 30 turns, I didn't spot the resource until I saw the dark elves in the trade screen. Perhaps you could attach some clothing to them that cannot be confused with terrain, like a purple belt or something like that? Alternatively, one could attach a common symbol to all of the race resources.

However, just to remember you, I'm the guy with the weak eyes - so visual problems for me are not necessarily problems for other people as well.


Also, I think that with the blueish tint, desert and tundra now look quite similar ... but I'll stop now.


Edit: Image removed, it was just blocking server space now that the problem has been solved.

 

[Drift]

@Psyringe

I've come to the same conclusion regarding the race resources. I've already reduced the ratio to 20. I agree 100% with your reasoning.

I did consider amphibious originally for lizards, but then I decided to go with the Viking themed humans and it was even better match.

Goblins match pretty well your description. No pillage though, but I've treated pillage as a death magic orientated spell only some units know how to cast. Again, orcs were better match for military improvement and rather weakish goblins needed a strong improvement. I figured they were shamanistic nature worshippers so the life tree wasn't such a bad match.

I'm against HP penalties for combat units. I have a feeling that the attack would have to be pretty high to make up for the HP penalty. Pollution isn't such a big deal in MoM since only population causes pollution. Magistrate will get a new name and graphics. I just moved it to elves from men in a hurry and thought I'd change it later. Nice description BTW.

Thank you for the information regarding the tech issue. If I can't get it to work, I'll just give forest planting to everyone at the same time.

Sea and Ocean graphics melding is a known problem. I've tried to fix it in the past, but couldn't get it done. I can try again though. Having additional graphics packs in use doesn't affect anything - MoM has its own version of all terrain graphics. Problem is in Snoopy's seas and oceans that I've used for the graphics - when given the twlight-treatment, they start blending together.

I'll check the race resources and try to make them more visible. Tundra and desert are somewhat similar, but since they appear in different parts of the world, I don't think it's really a problem.

Thanks for these problem reports. Very useful stuff.

 

[Klyden]

Couple things from the cheap seats.

I like the name of Elven Council better.

I also struggle with the difference between sea and ocean as well. I have to use the small map and also click squares a lot to figure out what they are.

 

[Drift]

I'll promise to do my best with the sea/ocean. It bothers me as well. Elven Council is a good name - I'll use it.

 

[Klyden]

Oberic game report continued:

The battle of controlled attrition continues for several more turns and comes to a climax when Tauron succeeds in stacking up 23 units next to my bridgehead. I am somewhat fortunate to be able to use my navy to bombard this turn as they had been busy dealing with Tauron's ships. They don't accomplish a lot, but every bit helps. I managed to kill all 23 units at a loss of 5 White Riders. This will probably be the turning point of the game as my ships scouting up and down the coast don't see much more coming when in the past, there have been multiple stacks.

I kept a bit better track of what Tauron sent against me and it includes 11 Beholders, 3 Ettens, 2 Hellspawns, 1 Executioner, and 60 Giants/Maulers. My losses from all this were 1 Glade Rider, 19 white riders and 1 Paladin. In addition, I get two more leaders, so now I will have 3 armies on Tauron's continent.

I finally got Paladins (woot! Time to rock and roll!) and also the upgraded transports. I begin work on the next level which should give me improved warships and the production enhancement. I manage to get the temple wonder completed, so that helps as well although I still don't think I can start thinking about putting in sewers yet without winding up with a lot of unhappy people.

I elect to take a chance as there is a city just to the east of my position that is in the open and appears to be the old capital of Rjak, Tauron's first victim. I figure if I can get it, it will help in the VP race. After a hard fight (he had it pretty well guarded with something like 3 beholders, a giant and 2 executioners), I take the city and also take the city down the coast (not as well guarded, 2 beholders). A side benefit is I now have tobacco as a lux.

The VP race has indeed tighten up with Tauron at 71105 and Oberic at 71085.

Econ is 1873 with 992 science, 259 corruption, 421 maint, 156 units. I can run 60 percent and get devs in 7 turns and maintain a small surplus.

Army is 274 units (118 allowed)

20 workers, 9 sword saurus, 8 glade riders, 6 army, 12 acolyte, 63 scorcerer, 9 champions, 25 wizards, 24 paladin, 1 trebuchet, 14 cog, 5 caravel, 16 giant spiders, 1 fire blast, 41 white riders, 83 warrior monks, 26 hawk ships.

Just glad I don't have to face my cities with all those warrior monks in them (over 10 in several now). The glade riders have been helpful (have been using them to kill multiple red lined units).

 

[Klyden]

Here is a screenshot of the action zone. I think most of Tauron's standing offensive army is dead as all I see now are the Maulers for the most part that are probably new construction. There might be one more wave yet from the east coast where Merlin was, but I don't think it will be that huge.

 

[Psyringe]

Despite the slow progess, I'm having much fun with my game. Here's what happened in the last 50 tuns. Check the minimap below and you_ll notice something ... erm ... missing.

3. Rjak's Defeat

In turn 150 I was in a war with Rjak (which actually started with Tlaloc declaring war on me and dragging Rjak along). I had made peace with Tlaloc and fought Rjak together with Ariel and Raven. Ariel had lost a city to Rjak, but held her other three. I had built ettins and taken one city that Rjak had planted in my sphere of influence.

I then directed my stack of 7 ettins southwards and took the northernmost of Rjak's cities. Rjak was defending with a single clansman and necromancers, which were crushed by my ettins. With this city I secured my second trolls resource, which later came in handy. Rjak had hooked it up, but never used it. This makes sense, because orcs are cheaper to build, and as a death mage, Rjak has the support to maintain a larger army.

I didn't feel strong enough to attack the next city, because I was nearing his core cities and six ettins might not be enough to take out several fortified 4-point-defenders in a large city hills with (possibly) a dwarven fortress inside. So I stopped at the newly conquered city and built roads to it, while I produced some defendes and many fire catapults. I was a little surprised how cheap the fire catapults were compared to their importance and power.

Meanwhile, Rjak was launching half-hearted counter offensives with black orcs, death knights and giant spiders, but somehow he never sent defenders with them, so my ettins could dispose them without too much effort. Rjak was smarter in diplomacy: He made peace with Raven and forged an alliance with Lo Pan against Ariel. Lo Pan managed to take two of Ariel's remaining three cities (not including one settlement of her on a remote island). I feared that he was getting too strong, and I also didn't want Lo Pan and Rjak to become close friends, because if they did, I was there logical next victim.

So I traded Lo Pan my surplus trolls for an alliance against Rjak. As lined out in earlier posts, these didn't help him, since he already had chaos ettins. But they were enough to let him change sides. I also brought Raven again into the alliance. Then I started to attack the next one of Rjak's cities (the one with the dwarves resource) with a stack of ettins and fire catapults. It fell surprisingly easy, there were only two defenders inside. Perhaps Raven's ents had softened up the defenses.

After that I saw that Lo Pan had conquered two of Rjak's cities. My plan to prevent Lo Pan from getting too strong by throwing him against Rjak didn't quite work out as I hoped. Raven also took one of Rjak's cities (seems to have been a culture flip though, it was the city that Rjak took from him earlier). Rjak's empire was crumbling seriously. I immediately sent my army against Rjak's capital before Lo Pan could get there. Rjak had accumulated several clansmen and necromancers there, but my catapults weakened them sufficiently, and I only lost two of my ettins. I actually was a bit lucky, I had just enough attackers to kill all defenders. I killed the last 1-hp-necro with a gnoll that was accompanying my forces only for the increased sight range.

I then made peace with Rjak and successfully demanded his second last remaining city. This made Lo Pan furious, but I just didn't want to concede *all* ex-Ariel cities on the southern coast to him. The war ended some turns later when Lo Pan crushed Rjak's last city in the far west. The interesting thing about Rjak's defeat is that he himself didn't start a single war. He just was being recruited by Tlaloc andthen got shredded between me and the allies I found.

During the whole war, Tlaloc remained calm. We have some sort of a maginot line, where he lined up ents, but he never moved them.He was leading in score for the most time, I only recently overtook him. He had 50 turns of peaceful buildup, so he probably is one of the winners of this conflict anyways. Lo Pan also emerged as a winner, he nearly doubled his number of cities and now owns some very good cities which once were the core of Rjak's and Ariel's empires. Raven remains small, insignificant and backwards as before. Ariel lost her capital and is now reduced to two cities which are 30+ tiles apart. I won 6 cities and start to consolidate now.

After some turns of peace, Oberic declared war on me after I wanted him to withdraw a single acolyte. He is a fair bit away from me, with most of his cities on an island, so I don't think he's a real danger. He keeps pummeling my coast with bombardements though, I'll have to build a navy. However I have given priority to build my cities up first, planting life trees everywhere.

Research-wise I have fallen back again, but catched up after trading Chaos IX around. I have the feeling that it's easier in MoM to catch up in the tech race as it was in vanilla civ, probably because you always have at least four alternatives to research, and with a little reasoning one will be able to pick a tech that the others are not researching at the moment. And if you manage to actually get this tech first, you can trade it around and catch up.

I still haven't met Vlad, Tauron, Merlin and Mordja. I won't meet Sss'ra, he has been destroyed. I'm eager to know how these mages fared.

Back to playing now.

 

[Drift]

Report was a good read, as usual. I have to admit that I didn't fully believe you would pull it off against Tauron. I raise my hat for you.

Should the warrior monks spawn at a slightly slower rate? It seems they are getting very numerous... Looking at the screenshot, I'm feeling very good about replacing the Mauler graphics with red color converted Minotaurs. Those orange-red giants with their red maces are pretty ugly.

Speaking of graphics, which one do you people prefer:

The regular one (edit: I already chose the graphics I'm going to use - attachment removed)

 

[Drift]

Or a new version (in this one, difference between coast and sea could be bigger, but I'm not sure yet how it looks in-game. These are from the editor):
(edit: I already chose the graphics I'm going to use - attachment removed)

 

[mrtn]

The last one has more visible edges between the water tiles, that's ugly, IMO.
But, I much prefer the non-shelf water, so I hope you work more on that one.

 

[Klyden]

Oberic (final report)

Bet some of you are glad the spam is over about this game and while I admit a lot of posting on it, it is because this has been one of the best games I have had in a long time.

Tauron continued his attacks with his foot troops, but just could not swamp my defenses with enough at once. I did manage to get another leader, so there are now 4 armies on Tauron's continent with paladins in them. This turned out to be a good thing as one of his better turns, he put 6 maulers into the hills next to my city and it took some digging to get rid of them. At one point, I observed probably 10 beholders move past the city I had just captured and headed south. I don't know what he was doing with them, but if I had to guess, I would guess shoring up defenses.

I achieved final victory without the map changing since my last post. Tauron had 72740, so it was a very close game and I agree Drift, I did not think I had much of a chance for victory, but would have been just as pleased either way.

Attached is the final saved game before the victory turn. Just space to pass on the last unit and that will end the turn. I have killed enough units to put me over the 75k mark.

 

[Klyden]

Couple things at random to toss out although I know the deadline is close at hand.

I think the warrior monks need to slow down on appearance a bit. Check my coast facing Tauron and you will see what I mean. (Cities have 12 and 13 each in them).

For Dark Elf foot.. what would be the feeling on the assassin ability? Would certainly add some zip to them although I don't know how well the AI utilizes this ability.

It would not exactly be a horrible thing to give the lizards amphib ability, but can understand if you don't. Having two races with amphib is not necessarily a terrible thing. I do think lizards do need something, be it an extra hp or amphib or something. They are not horrid, but just don't really excite me that much.

 

[Drift]

@mrtn

The latter version is based directly on Snoopy's green water that has more clearly defined tiles. It could be that it has been enhanced by the color treatment though.

I'm a little torn between the two. I like the sea with shelf and blue sea as it's more fantasy, but the latter is undeniably more clearer and the lack of shelf isn't entirely a negative thing.

@Klyden

Spam? Your reports have been far from spam - excellent stuff and highly useful. Congratulations on the victory. I haven't yet studied the savegame, but will do so today.

How was the 75 000 as a limit?

I agree on the warrior monks. I'll lower their appearance ratio. I wonder how Crypts work BTW (3.2.1 Crypt Skeleton every 10 turns.). Never had a good opportunity to play a game with them.

I regret not trying the assassin for dark elves earlier. I've considered it in the past, but as I had my hands full with other balancing, I've passed it. I'm a little hesitant to try it at this point though. But basically, it allows the attacker to choose its target from a stack of units? I would probably need to downgrade the dark elf offense a bit as they are already among the strongest attackers in the mod. Hmmm..

Lizards being amphibious wouldn't be that bad, not at all, but I'd say only 3 of their units with the current settings could benefit from it (Toad Mages / Stegadon Riders attacking from ships is a bit too surreal).

Lizards are at the moment:
Skink 2.2.1 - 15
Pike Saurus 3.3.1 - 25
Sword Saurus 4.4.1 - 40
Toad Mage 5.5.1 - 60
Stegadon Rider 6.6.2 - 90

So, they are in the same category with goblins with their cheap costs. Just that while goblins are offensive, lizards are overall footmen. Just the type that doesn't interest all players that much. I could throw in +1 HP as well. Might need to tune some costs with it - they are extremely cheap as they are. One thing I could consider is replacing the awesome Toad Mage with an another skink unit. I'd hate to see the toady go, but it is a bit out of place. I could consider amphibious if just Stegadon was without it.

 

[Drift]

@Psyringe

Sorry. I've forgotten to reply to your report. Not intentional, just too much going around. (edit: now I realise what has happened. We posted 3 minutes apart and I didn't realise there had been a new post while I was writing my reply to Klyden)

Looking like a great game. Rjak met his demise a bit early, but he had too many enemies. No point in reading too much into it - death mages seem to be doing pretty good in general. My hunch is that you're in for a war with Lo Pan.

I've also studied the savegame and I have to say that the happenings in the rest of the world were very interesting as well. Don't know if you want to know what's going on in there so I won't go into detail. Interesting stuff though, would've been great to see it fully instead of just watching a replay of events. Nice to see the next savegame and check how the situation unfolds there.

 

[Drift]

Is this clear enough? I believe this is what I'm going to go with.

 

[Psyringe]

@Drift: Certainly no problem that you overlooked my post at first, we're close to the deadline and you have a lot of things to do, most of which more important than a game report.

I played for a couple more turns and got into another war, but not with Lo Pan. Report will follow soon.

I agree that we shouldn't read too much in Rjak's early fall. Besides having to fight on 4 fronts, he also suffered from his empire layout, which basically consisted of a thin strip of single cities. Without a real "mainland", it was clear that he would get trouble when defending against more than one enemy.

Regarding water tiles: I'd prefer the first example you posted. The square lines that show out from the second example look a little odd in water, especially when there are no such lines on the land tiles. Also the contrast between coast and sea ist better in the first example.

Regarding Crypts: I did build some in my first game (Vlad), but never actually used them. This was the game where I threw hordes of cursed legionaries against Sss'ra's walls and Tauron's dwarves. I figured that when even the legionaries are dying, there's not much point in attacking with crypt skeletons, all it would accomplish is to raise the defender's experience. It might be worth a thought to pull the crypt down a little on the tech tree though ... but that's not a priority thing, and would need to be given some more thought.

@Klyden: Drift already said it: hats off, and your reports were very far from being spam, I enjoyed them very much.

 

[Psyringe]

Is this clear enough? I believe this is what I'm going to go with.

Yup, I can see the difference. Certainly an improvement above the currently used water tiles.

 

[Psyringe]

Another minor thing that caught my attention (Drift, just tell me stop when I'm overdoing it. ).

For MoM, you replaced "shields" with "energy". However, in the pedia there are many references to shields left. For example, the Life tree "increases energy output", while the monolith and obelisk "increase shield production". This can be confusing for new players. In my first game, for some time I wasn't really sure whether "energy" meant "shields" or "trade".

I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to go though the pedia and exchange all "shields" for "energy", that might break something. But at least the description of the improvements should always talk about energy, and the page about "shields" in the index could use a short clarification like "In MoM, shields have been replaced by energy."