Minor requests and questions thread

[Seon]

Could you pleeaase make at least Giant Spiders unable to attack inside borders? I mean, strength 8 invisible monster killing your workers around turn 78 can ruin a game .

 

[Ahwaric]

@Jake: Yes. They have a huge modifier against using their HatedCivic... at least in LeadersEnhanced. I don't know if Ahwaric ported this change to Orbis. They also won't hate someone using their HatedCivic if they're using it too.

I ported everything except inter-leaders modifiers, everything marked as hated civic should be in - so should work as you described.

What controls how common or rare resources are on the maps? I generally find resources too common; I just started over a game because it seemed like every other hex was a resource. There were like 30 on the screen at any given time. So I'd like to cut it way back.

Opera laready gave you details what to edit, but are you sure you had not blessing of Amauthaon marked? It should not spawn resources one next to another otherwise.

The AI on a number of Civ's seems somewhat confused. In few games, Bannor and Illians in particular, have expanded incredible slowly compared to most other races. While the dam elves are rampant! Would giving every civ agriculture help?
Also, Lanun tend not to build their pirate coves and the tree huggers tend to spam forestry (which is actually a good tactic). I appreciate that AI is hard but while everybody else clamours for new shiny toys, the AI is the most critical aspect of game play to a lot of people who only ever play single player.

Ai is really tricky to tweak. I am working on it and agriculture should be researched fine. I still have some problems with decius and other military leaders, they just rush for military techs.
I forgot some old python that was forcing civs to research some wrong techs, but it got fixed. I will check Opera's fixes, too.

 

[Opera]

Resources can spawn next to each other, at least for certain resources. Dye, cotton, etc. Each resources with a iGroupRand superior to 0 has a chance of spawning a twin at iGroupRange tile away. Even Mithril has it, even though it has only 25%...

 

[Seon]

I had 3 mithrils in a row once..

 

[AgentTBC]

Quick Scions questions since I'm playing them for the first time.

Is there any disadvantage at all to having unhealth in your cities? Since you don't use food I don't see why there would be. But the red background on the city name and green frowny face is kind of annoying, so if there is no effect of unhealth on Scions why not make them get no unhealth from population, which would mean no frowny face most of the time?

How do I build Thaumaturge's Keep with Alcinus? I assume there is an undocumented requirement, maybe a tech past Knowledge of the Ether I need or something. I don't see it listed anywhere though.

 

[Seon]

You just have to send Alcinus to any city other than your capital and cast his spell called "Build the Keep" or something.

 

[AgentTBC]

You just have to send Alcinus to any city other than your capital and cast his spell called "Build the Keep" or something.

Oh, I didn't realize it had to be something other than the capital so I've just had him sitting around. He keeps going crazy and running off by himself when I move him

 

[Valkrionn]

In FF, too much unhealth as the scions causes 'Unhealthy Discontent', reducing happiness. I believe unhealth also reduces hammers.

 

[Seon]

Yes, health is still important to the Scions

 

[AgentTBC]

I'm trying to learn more about how the mods are made so I can fine tune what I like and don't like. Where is the animal stuff controlled? In terms of whether or not they can enter owned territory and which civs they are at war/peace with at the start? I see references to UNITAI_ANIMAL but I don't see what I'm looking for in the UNITAI file.

Bonus question: Is there any modder documentation so I don't have to bug people for every question I have?

 

[Ahwaric]

In FF, too much unhealth as the scions causes 'Unhealthy Discontent', reducing happiness. I believe unhealth also reduces hammers.

And I have imported this code with no changes (well, not sure if anything needed name change, but that is not relevant). So yes, you should try to keep unhealth under 3.

I'm trying to learn more about how the mods are made so I can fine tune what I like and don't like. Where is the animal stuff controlled? In terms of whether or not they can enter owned territory and which civs they are at war/peace with at the start? I see references to UNITAI_ANIMAL but I don't see what I'm looking for in the UNITAI file.
Bonus question: Is there any modder documentation so I don't have to bug people for every question I have?

Unfortunatelly, entering borders is controlled in dll, so no easy thing to edit. But it will get back to standard behaviour in patch e and I think that is what you want. By the way, I add everything that is already added in to the changelog in the first post of the bug thread, you may want to check it.

Unfortunatell, peace with animals is not easy accesible either. It is set in python to enforce it on game start for certain civs. I guess you want to be able to set yourself at war with animals to be able to plunder animal dens, right?

Things you can access easily are:
max size of animal groups and max ancient animal strength enhancement - in global defines.xml
which civ can build which unit - there is a list for each civ, all barbarian ones are set to only allow listed units, so removing one from the list will disable it - civilizationinfos.xml
animal tag (bAnimal) in unit info decides whether it is vulnerable to special recon units bonus, and if they can attack city squares (should not be able, but there may be some bugs). - unitinfo.xml
In 23 e bAnimal barbarian units will still not be able to attack cities, and bAnimal units belonging to animal civ will not be able to enter borders.

I will probably start a modders guide thread soon, as I have recently added some more things that need explanation.

 

[AgentTBC]

Thanks: Yeah I didn't wanted animals owned by the animal civilization to come into owned territory. It's a good idea but I found that it leads to too much micromanagement for my taste since you have to be on constant lookout for griffons pouncing on to your workers. This is mostly a problem on Creation/Erebus maps for some reason. Maybe because of so many mountains? In any case I started gettng annoyed at the griffons constantly coming at me; the other animals weren't so big a deal.

I didn't want to be able to plunder animals dens with elves, actually. Once I got used to it in my game it was fine. I'm just trying to learn how to change things and right now I was looking at the animal stuff, and that was one of the things I wondered about.

I'm surprised there's no way to control whether animal civ animals enter owned territory using isAnimal but I guess then you have trouble because players can own animals and they need to be able to enter territory at that point, and so on.

edit: Oh yeah I did find the code that controls how quickly anmals gain strength over time. I think I'm going to slow it down slightly, although that's a personal preference only. Oh, and probably knock the max escalation to 3 from 5 (I think its currently 5?) but, again, personal preference only.

 

[Ahwaric]

I'm surprised there's no way to control whether animal civ animals enter owned territory using isAnimal but I guess then you have trouble because players can own animals and they need to be able to enter territory at that point, and so on.

Exactly. So, if unit has isAnimal, recon units get bonus against it. If it is also owned by any of the barbarian civ, they are unable to attack cities (or at least should not be able, that applies to trolls and hill giants). If (in 23e) it is owned by animal civ, it is not able to enter civ borders. So it is exactly for controlling what can they do.

 

[AgentTBC]

Thanks for the info. Looking forward to 0.23e! Except for the one repeatable CTD with the Balseraph city (I couldn't see anything odd about it either: No matter what I did to the city it still crashed, only deleting the city worked) it's been extremely stable.

What's the next big project? Another new civ?

 

[Seon]

The long waited Easter Eggs? Although new civ would be even cooler

 

[Ahwaric]

What's the next big project? Another new civ?

To finally get some rest?

I currently use all my time to fix and adjust both the AI and barbarians. I think I have it mostly under control now, but still would like to remove the source of the remaining crashes (if I ever find them) and perhaps work on OOS some day...

Also, I have some unfinished buissnesses to take care of (not including things I want to be in 23e, and it will take some work before it is ready):
engineering corps has to give something more than just some xp
need military academy for archers
a lot of balancing/tweaking - howitzer, plenty of ideas from enhance coastall city modx3 etc.
Easter eggs - I hope they will be in soon, but are not top priority...

So, while I prefer to add a new stuff (especially some flavour/ideas one) and would love to work on a new civ, I can't do it for now...

 

[Isotope]

I don't know if this was already requested but what about spy specialists and spy GP? It would be a nice addon.

 

[AgentTBC]

One tweak I'd like to see is buffing some of the civics a little. I find myself using the same civics virtually every game because they are so powerful. For example, there's little point to Magocracy as the big bonus is extra production on Metamagic nodes; but how many metamagic nodes are you really going to have inside your city radiuses? Radii? Uh, whatever the plural of "radius" is. I'd guess "radii" since it is Latin but whatever.

I'd love to see the bonus to production under Magocracy apply to ALL mana nodes not just metamagic. It would actually make it worthwhile for civs that have a ton of mana.

 

[arkham4269]

Any other suggestions?

Well as I mentioned earlier, since flying ships can escape pretty much every sea creature except griffins by hiding in plain site over ice, perhaps they need a very small chance of doing a Hindenburg every turn. Don't think this would apply to the Kuriotates flying ship since it seems that is a regular ship that has been magicked to fly.

Another thing is perhaps those dirigibles should be very expensive maintenance wise. I would think the upkeep of them would be much more expensive to the fantasy economy of the Mechanos than the industrial economy of the Wehrmacht.

 

[Caradoc]

What would you think about a dungeon event that awards Aptitude to an unit that already has the Adventurer promotion? Gives the intrepid dungeoneer a reason to use an experienced unit.