Master of Myrror returns!

[aaglo]

Thanks for the savegame. I didn't really learn anything about the revealed map thing, but it was really nice seeing how your game had turned out. All sorts of mages seemed to be doing fine if they had gotten good starting locations. Yours definitely wasn't among them. Merlin seemed to hold most ground, but some death mages were doing good as well. Merlin also seemed to have lots of ships.

And one last thing... man that map was big! I feel like even the small maps are sometimes a bit too large for my taste... I really should expand those city name lists that map seemed to have lots of "New Avalons" and "Avalon 2's" around.

You're welcome . Yes, I agree that most of the mages were doing quilte all right... atleast compared to me. But all they can do is try to grab that island from me ... with all those minotaurs and gnolls defending my cities... . And turns are getting a bit long and boring, since Merlin keeps on moving in my borders & bombarding my cities with those eagleships.

Also, I was supposed to mention to you about the small city lists on atleast some of the mages, just because of the reason you mention
Cheers.

 

[Drift]

@aaglo

One problem that I thought of when looking at that savegame was that isolated civs like yours can accumulate pretty big number of summoned units as there are no wars taking them out - hedgehog-islands that are a pain to capture. Do you feel that the summoning rate is ok? Nature mages are actually the slowest summoners with 12 turns per unit - death mages have 8 turns and all others 10 turns. The special summons take 18 (Griffin), 12 (Shadow Demon) and 15 turns (others).

I don't think I'd have the patience to continue that game, completely hopeless situation and Merlin harrassing with those ships...

 

[aaglo]

Well, I think it could get tedious... unless disabling all unit animations (and thus making the turns go by faster). If I have time, i could play on that game and see what happens in the end

I think the summoning times are quite ok. It just might be, that the AI hasn't got a clue on how to make a stack-o-doom with ships (well, sometimes they do) to get rid of those isolated civs with gazzillion summons. I don't know how tough are the other race's summoned units, but that first one for nature (gnoll: 3-5-2, +1HP?) seems very strong compared to buildable units, but I guess that's the general idea.

BTW, I assume that the summoned units don't have upkeep cost, right?

Oh, another question about the master of Arcanus: Is it inteded to be a victory-point mod? When I start a new game, it was set on victory point scoring only by default (or are the victory conditions of the last civ3-game copied to any new game? Since the previous game I played was a VP-game...?)

 

[Drift]

All summons are tough. At least in their own field of expertise. They have generally +2 HP and possible additional HP's on top of that (big and tough summons like Archdemon and Earth Elemental have +4, Ents and such have +3). The first 2 HP's are so that the summoned units are summoned as elites, not regulars. Now that I think of it, they might be a tad too tough for the summoning rates. After all, regular units have their hands full taking them out or defending from them making it almost mandatory to fight fire with fire. Well, the system can be finetuned after I get more reports on how it works.

Summoned units actually do have upkeep cost, but that can also be changed. It could be somewhat problematic for mages with low upkeep levels (like the nature mages you're playing).

Arcanus isn't supposed to be a VP mod. I believe the last played victory conditions are copied to new games. I can look around the .biq when I get home and make sure there are no preset victory conditions.

 

[aaglo]

I think it's good for the summons have upkeep too. Actually, it makes better sense for the summons having a mana-upkeep than for regular units (now where did I get that idea from... ).

So far I think that the summoning rates could propably be slightly longer (like, +2 turns on each), but I'm not so sure yet . More testing should take place I think...

 

[Drift]

Deleted by user.

 

[aaglo]

Uh... Drift, I think that could have been said in PM too... because that thing you talk about seems a bit dodgy ...

 

[Drift]

Uh... Drift, I think that could have been said in PM too... because that thing you talk about seems a bit dodgy ...

Well, you're quite right so I deleted it. If someone is curious what it was, don't worry. It was a bit dodgy, but not by much. I didn't throw Conquests warez links around or anything like that. Just mentioned to woodelf (whose Conquest CD is broken) about a possibility that some people with perfectly legal Conquests cd's do... But this really isn't the place for that as things like that are easily misunderstood and abused.

 

[aaglo]

Hey, no worries
... damn... I just wish I had more hours in a day. Like, 28 for starters . I think I'm having too much going on right now, and I don't know what should I let go for a while . This is one looking a bit too good to miss so far

 

[woodelf]

Thanks guys. One of the problems with living in the Boonies is not having a store within an hour that sells computer games. I'm going to make a road trip for the game.

This is why I like e-license stuff. People like me don't have to leave home!

 

[aaglo]

Bug: Sorcery speciality Fisherman's blessing looks very strange in the game (I think it has some sort of wonder splash image used as a large image). Also, it has no explanation on what it does.

And another weird thing happens when checking the civilopedia of resource-specific units: for instance, dwarf units require dwarf-resource, which looks like Master of Myrror -goblin resource??? I wonder how that got to be... everything looks like it should in the editor, but the game itself messes somehow things up.

EDIT:
Ah, now I think what causes it: in the editor/rules/natural resources -tab, the civpedia-entry goes to GOOD_Goblins, and so it takes the goblin entry from the Master of Myrror, but stats and unit costs from Master of Arcanus

Errors with other resources are
Sorcery Node (GOOD_Life)
Life Node (GOOD_Sorcery)

Also I found a terrible building available for chaos:
Chaotic warcraft, available at chaos (from the start), requiring chaotic govt and chaos node.
costs 100 shields (ONLY!!!)
for this cost, it
- increses chances of leader appearence
- increases army value (+25% stronger armies)
- city growth causes +2 citizens (instead of +1)
I mean, this must be a mistake.... right?

 

[Drift]

@aaglo

Civilopedia is a complete mess in the current public version. It is full of mistakes, wrong icons, missing icons, missing texts and such. I was aware of this when I launched the beta as I figured it wasn't 100% essential. I'm working on a patch for pedia and I'll be sure to fix all those things you mentioned and many more. The pedia will also explain the concepts of Arcanus a lot more than it currently does.

I fixed the Fisherman's Blessing for the patch. Wrong size large icon. Still looks strange as I just chose the first fish themed pic I found. It's basically an additional harbor for sorcery mages. More food in water and veteran ships. I believe I've already added a pediaentry for it in the patch I'm working on.

Chaotic warcraft is a perk for Chaos mages. It is actually correctly set up. (Although I hate armies so much that I'd like to get rid of them completely). If I could, I would mod stuff like that directly into the mages themselves, but since I can't, I have to make do with relatively cheap govt specific wonders and improvements. Another ridiculously loaded improvement is the well of souls for death mages.

Thanks again for the feedback. Feel free to speak against my reasoning if you feel like it, my view of things may well be wrong.

 

[aaglo]

Oh, yes, I forgot already you mentioning earlier about the civilopedia being messed up - sorry about the inconvinience

But don't you think that the chaotic warcraft makes the chaos sorcerers a bit too powerful right in the beginning? I mean, a cheap small wonder with such stats? Well I guess it's okay for some people, but atleast give the chaos civs a lot longer citylists then

Cheers

 

[Drift]

Hmm. Maybe I should push it back a bit in tech tree. The two increase instead of one is indeed pretty powerful. It was introduced ages ago when chaos mages needed a boost as their cities were always too small. The AI doesn't still dominate with them, from what I've gathered the chaos is usually among the weakest or in the middle of the pack.

I'll think about it. I didn't like the addition when I made it as it felt artificial, so a replacement might be in order.

 

[Drift]

Just a quick note: I've been busy with RL and feeling like a break from modding for the past few days so the patch hasn't progressed much. I'll get back on it when I feel like it, probably during this weekend.

 

[Stormrage]

M`kay, I finally dl-ed this thingy and gave it a try

Bugs found so far:
*Clan archer has no sounds
*everything else relates to civilopedia - since you are aware of it, does that mean we shouldn`t report stuff like that yet?
Cos so far I`ve seen thing others already reported, and I noticed that by clicking on the "Dwarven units" you get an invalid entry , and that by clicking on the "warrior"`s description you get Firaxis pedia entry, with Romans and whatnot

And now to something completly different:
Any chance of renaming the goatman unit to something else? He doesn`t look like a goatman, with those horns.
Also, the unit using Firaxis Berserker gfx is named Longblade. I don`t think that fits for an axe-weilding unit.

I`m playing with Merlin, and am at war with my neighbour Tauron. It was like "howdy neighbour!" and then we started fighting

I`ll have to check in the editor for colors that each of the civs uses, Merlin`s is horrible

 

[Drift]

@Stormrage

Many of the units lack sounds. Another 'feature' of an unfinished beta. Reporting broken pedia and missing sounds isn't really needed at this point. No harm in it, but there's just too much to report.

Goatman will change, I just gave it a quick, temporary name. I'll also take a look at the civ colors - some of them are too close to each other. I've tried to group similar colors to the same factions, but maybe I've overdone it.


In other news, I didn't get anything done this weekend. I feel a bit like I'm stuck temporarily. Just don't feel like modding and with all RL responsibilities piling up, it may be slow going for a while. I'm going to write my master's thesis this summer and I've been gearing up for that for the past two weeks. Won't let anything get in the way of that so the time I have for modding is very, very limited.

So, please feel free to play the current version of the beta, but I want you to know that I also feel quite ok about a small break in testing. There's lots of stuff in the current version that can be tested, but I can't guarantee that I'll react much during the next week or so. And I hope that a new, enhanced version is on the way, so it might be clever to wait for it. But like I said, please go ahead and play it if you feel like it - it's not wasted effort and hopefully you'll have some fun with it.

 

[Stormrage]

I`ll play, I`m a helper!

Good luck with your thesis thingy

 

[Drift]

I'm going to postpone the next beta indefinitely. Too little time and too little interest on my part at the moment. In my current real life situation, modding is not the thing I choose to do with my precious free time and spending even an hour on the project feels impossible right now. Sorry everyone. I hope I'll be back when I've recharged my modding batteries.

 

[Stormrage]

Take it easy, Drift, welll test what we have, so when you do get the time you`ll have more feedback. I hope you`ll still drop by to check the threads?