MNAI-U: unofficial build & bugfixes

[Devils_Advocate]

Try it and let me know. As far as I know, I correctly installed the latest mnai-2.7.2u patch before starting this game. I am absolutely sure this behavior hasn't been any different in the last two years at least. It's still possible we're somehow talking about different things, though. I'm curious!

Indeed, this was as you described. And I wasn't talking about anything new, just bringing up an old bug that I've mentioned before. Thanks to lfgr for fixing it!

New release: mnai-2.8.0u. Should be compatible with 2.8-beta2u savegames.

It doesn't seem to be. (And some of the saves that I tried to load were from non-custom Scenarios, so it's not an issue with the particular settings.)

So I guess I can't swear to it but I really want to say that I've seen barbarian mistforms enter cultural borders

I remember some sniping Workers in a recent game of mine, but I'm not sure that they weren't just outside my borders at the time. If they did come in, they were definitely Gargoyle-like in thankfully still prowling around the edges of my territory and not attacking my cities.

Regardless, Mistforms showed up in a couple of games and do seem to be more common now, where before they were very rare in my experience. In one game, they definitely spawned from Smoke, as I got a message like "One of your scouts encounters strange creatures moving in the smoke". This event appears to spawn multiple Mistforms, which just seems like overkill for any event. One is enough!

I also blocked the ability to explore lairs if it was inside someone else's cultural borders

That seems like a good change to me. It does seem rather comparable to being able to use Open Borders to pillage the other civ's improvements. It definitely shouldn't be possible under Limited Borders, at least. Not that I use Advanced Tactics. (Hopefully I got the names of those things right.)

Speaking of Open Borders, there's an issue that Open Borders is "detached" from the rest of the trade deal. If Player 1 trades Player 2 Dye and Pig for Fur and Deer, one party can't unilaterally cancel part of that deal, removing the exchange of Dye and Fur but keeping Pig for Deer. But if Player 1 trades Player 2 Horse and Open Borders for Copper and Open Borders, one player can opt to remove the Open Borders part of that agreement, or remove Horse for Copper while keeping Open Borders. You can even agree to give someone Cotton in exchange for Open Borders, and they can cancel Open Borders and keep the Cotton while giving you nothing in exchange. Cheeky twerp!

In short, one trade involving Open Borders is treated by the game as two trades, one of Open Borders for Open Borders and one of everything else for everything else. Of course, since you're free to cancel the remainder of the deal, cancelling part of it effectively amounts to cancelling the whole deal and then proposing the remainder as a new exchange. So the problem isn't getting stuck with some Cotton for nothing exchange, it's that the AI doesn't "get" that it needs to leave its borders open to keep that Cotton, because that's what it was for. This would be less of a nuisance if the AI weren't so fond of cancelling Open Borders these days. But as it is, the way that the trade system works treats Open Borders for Open Borders as something that a player would never agree to for something else, whereas AI evaluation of deals is such that they'll sometimes only open borders for something else.

 

[lfgr]

It doesn't seem to be.

You're right, my bad.

 

[Devils_Advocate]

It's likely that this only comes up because I always play with all 19 beginning civs, but when Minister Koun appears, he gets assigned the Infernal color scheme, and then when the Infernal are summoned, they get the Mercurian color scheme, and the Mercurians wind up with one close to the Elohim's. Presumably this depends on the order in which they appear, and if the Infernals were summoned before Koun showed up, he'd wind up with the Mercurians' colors instead, provided that the Mercurians hadn't been summoned yet.

He needs his own colors. (Black on dark olive, maybe?)

Scorpion Clan goblins are now upgraded to Scorpion Clan wolf riders. (Terkhen)

Do Scorpion Clan Wolf Riders now upgrade to Scorpion Clan Chariots as well? (And if not, should they?)

 

[Devils_Advocate]

So, a Mistform recently entered Grigori land to kill my exploring Hippus Hunter. At first I thought that maybe it could only do this because there was Smoke on the tile that the unit was on. So I tested my theory by using Worldbuilder to place a Scout on another Grigori tile with no Smoke, only to find that the Mistform killed that too. So they do seem to be like the Gargoyles spawned by the Guardian of Pristin Pass. (Relatively cautious attackers, biased towards moving out of territory, won't attack cities? I dunno what the guidelines are, but they seem to act similarly.) And not only in their behavior, but in multiple ones appearing at once. I saw two. They're a significant hassle to deal with, but not civ destroyers, seemingly.

During Stasis, one of the things that my city was building starting losing hammers for not being first in the production queue. I thought that that was one of the things that Stasis was supposed to put on hold; it seems like it should be.

On a related note, research isn't shown returning to normal on the turn that Stasis ends, but hitting the min and max research buttons corrects it. (As I recall, it also takes a turn at the start for maintenance costs to become 0; related?)

On a less related note, WInterborn units take damage from Blizzards when they're first created.

Ancient Towers seem to sometimes increase a tile's defense bonus by +25%, per the Civilopedia, and sometimes by +50% instead. Maybe it's the info from mousing over them that's wrong.

BUG doesn't realize that the Deruptus Brewing House gives Dwarven units +2 XP. It also doesn't take into account production due to unhappiness for its "Actual:" for a Governor's Manor.

I can't access my advisors via shortcut keys during diplomacy. Sometimes I'd like to check relationships between civs, tech availability, etc. before deciding whether to agree to a leader's demand, but in FFH2 I can't do that by pressing F4. (I could change the screen resolution so that the diplomacy popup doesn't obscure the relevant buttons, but the game doesn't want to be a higher resolution; it won't have those advisor reports fill the screen, which I find to look awkward. Which is a shame because the FFH2 tech tree could really make use of the greater space.)

Odd interaction in one of my games: As the Illians, I built a city next to a Cage with a Luchuirp Scout in it. Not having Open Borders with Garrim Gyr, the Scout was ejected, and the poor unit now seems to be permanently Held with no hope of remedy. (I subsequently removed the cage, but that didn't do anything for the unit that was no longer in it.) I feel sorry for it...

Moreover, please consider setting

AutoSaveInterval = 1

in your CivilizationIV.ini file (see Terkhen's Guide on how to find it). This makes an autosave every turn. The impact on turn times should be negligible, and you will be able to provide saves directly before bugs happen, making it much easier for me to fix them.

Is there a way to preserve the CivilizationIV.ini file? Something must keep altering it, because I've twice gone back to redo this change. In fact, the file doesn't even contain an AutoSaveInterval line now, though it did before.

I've noticed that, when starting a new game, usually some of the options are the ones that I used previously, but sometimes they've been reset, with the Fractal mapscript and Standard world size rather than Erebus and Huge, for example. Presumably that's caused by this file being reset. Has anyone else seen that behavior? Any idea what would be causing this?

 

[lfgr]

So, a Mistform recently entered Grigori land to kill my exploring Hippus Hunter.

Do you have a savegame?

I've noticed that, when starting a new game, usually some of the options are the ones that I used previously

Gameoptions are reset when starting a new game via "Play Now". I'm not sure if this also applies to map settings, though.

Thanks for all the other reports, I'll look into them when I have time again.

 

[Devils_Advocate]

You're welcome. Thanks for your work on the mod.

Do you have a savegame?

Attached. Just end turn.

I have a theory on why Mistforms are more common now, by the way! You fixed a bug that was preventing multiple volcano eruptions, right? Especially if that was limiting eruptions to one per civ and not just one per city, there could be several times more Smoke now.

Something else that I just noticed in the same save: the map label for the Broken Sepulcher is still there, even though that unique feature is no longer present. (That's one of the features that doubles as a super dungeon; the Grigori presumably eliminated it through exploration.) The label should be removed along with the feature, right? That's how it normally works, as I recall, so it's quite odd that that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Gameoptions are reset when starting a new game via "Play Now".

I never use that, though. But I have been playing and loading saves from scenarios.

 

[Tielby]

I built a city next to a Cage with a Luchuirp Scout in it. Not having Open Borders with Garrim Gyr, the Scout was ejected, and the poor unit now seems to be permanently Held with no hope of remedy. (I subsequently removed the cage, but that didn't do anything for the unit that was no longer in it.)

Granted it's a legitimate bug, but you'd have to be SERIOUSLY petty to build a city next to somebody's caged unit just to perma-trap that unit. Does the AI actually ever delete a unit? I don't think I've ever seen it happen.

 

[Tielby]

I have a theory on why Mistforms are more common now, by the way! You fixed a bug that was preventing multiple volcano eruptions, right? Especially if that was limiting eruptions to one per civ and not just one per city, there could be several times more Smoke now.

Could the event be triggering multiple times when it triggers? We've had that issue before with other events IIRC.

 

[lfgr]

I have a theory on why Mistforms are more common now, by the way! You fixed a bug that was preventing multiple volcano eruptions, right? Especially if that was limiting eruptions to one per civ and not just one per city, there could be several times more Smoke now.

Looks like you are even more right then you think! The extra smoke may be on thing, but additionally the Mistforms event actually is recurring and used the mechanic I fixed, so before that fix it was effectively limited to once per game. Now it can occur multiple times.
I will make the Mistforms event non-recurring and make it require a technology (maybe Sorcery?) for the next version. In the meantime, if you are troubled by too many mistforms, you can do the following: in Assets/XML/Events/CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml, change line 12919 from <bRecurring>1</bRecurring> to <bRecurring>0</bRecurring> to make the event trigger only once per game, or change line 12857 from <iWeight>400</iWeight> to <iWeight>0</iWeight> to disable it altogether.

 

[schlalex]

Came back to some FFH2 last Octobre and played a bit now and then. Also installed the MoreNavalAI Mod, but just found this Mod here today. So i have not installed or tried it already, but only played with the "normal" MoreNavalAI. One of the biggest problems i have with this mod is, that the AI is now crazy about exploring all the lairs. First of all, this is a bit sad, because after a short time there are no more Lairs left for the HI to explore. Second problem is, all of the early AI exploration means either huge bonuses for them (free GP, Techs and so on) [what is not great for balance, but you can live with it] OR spawn bigbadresults meaning several AI usually get wiped out early. So when only 4 of 7 Enemies make it past Turn 40, thats normally a restart. On Top of that, it is not uncommon, that the bigbadResult happens close to the players borders, meaning that so many times i was just destroyed by a powerful enemy at a time, when i was still building my 1st worker and had 0 chance to defend this threat.

I also had a lot of trouble with mistforms. I found the real problem was not the "Smoke Event", but that it could spawn from a bigbad result. As soon as i removed them from the Units List in bigbad in CustomFunctions.py, at least this problem was gone. Maybe thats also the source of your trouble with them? Personally i don't like the idea, an enemy can spawn early, which you absolutely have no option to make visible until the very late game. They guys will roam your lands and as soon as 1 Unit leaves the sanctuary of a city, it is instantly destroyed.

On a side note, i had some cool ideas for events, but since its all python, it is beyond my skills to properly implement them. Well, maybe i will try to learn a bit in the future .

Anyway, still very nice to see guys working on FFH2, it is still an amazing Mod!

 

[Tielby]

Came back to some FFH2 last Octobre and played a bit now and then. Also installed the MoreNavalAI Mod, but just found this Mod here today. So i have not installed or tried it already, but only played with the "normal" MoreNavalAI. One of the biggest problems i have with this mod is, that the AI is now crazy about exploring all the lairs. First of all, this is a bit sad, because after a short time there are no more Lairs left for the HI to explore. Second problem is, all of the early AI exploration means either huge bonuses for them (free GP, Techs and so on) [what is not great for balance, but you can live with it] OR spawn bigbadresults meaning several AI usually get wiped out early. So when only 4 of 7 Enemies make it past Turn 40, thats normally a restart. On Top of that, it is not uncommon, that the bigbadResult happens close to the players borders, meaning that so many times i was just destroyed by a powerful enemy at a time, when i was still building my 1st worker and had 0 chance to defend this threat.

I also had a lot of trouble with mistforms. I found the real problem was not the "Smoke Event", but that it could spawn from a bigbad result. As soon as i removed them from the Units List in bigbad in CustomFunctions.py, at least this problem was gone. Maybe thats also the source of your trouble with them? Personally i don't like the idea, an enemy can spawn early, which you absolutely have no option to make visible until the very late game. They guys will roam your lands and as soon as 1 Unit leaves the sanctuary of a city, it is instantly destroyed.

On a side note, i had some cool ideas for events, but since its all python, it is beyond my skills to properly implement them. Well, maybe i will try to learn a bit in the future .

Anyway, still very nice to see guys working on FFH2, it is still an amazing Mod!

As you can see above, we've been debating some of these same issues very recently. Personally, I see the AI lair-exploring issue as a good motivator for me to be less cautious in my game play. It pushes me a bit out of my comfort zone, which is something I appreciate... in a game. The same with having more barbarians roaming around, although I agree we need to find a way to keep bigbadresults from triggering too early. I will agree that it's sad for AI civs to get wiped out too early. That's my job! Just joking. If a bad start can wipe me out, it'd better be able to wipe out an AI player too. Seeing an AI civ succumb early in the game reminds me that FfH is intended to be inherently more deadly than a vanilla Civ game. Still, there's a "happy medium"/"golden mean" in there somewhere we can keep working on.

 

[lfgr]

Yeah, so I'll try to mitigate the problem with AI civs getting wiped out for the next version. I will be posting my plans on exploring and lair results and such before implementing them, hopefully we can get some kind of consensus on that -- I want to be careful with balance-altering changes, especially since I don't actually play (just playtest) MNAI much myself (I play EMM instead, which is very similar in a lot of areas, but has reimplemented barbarian mechanics).

I see the AI lair-exploring issue as a good motivator for me to be less cautious in my game play. It pushes me a bit out of my comfort zone, which is something I appreciate... in a game. The same with having more barbarians roaming around, although I agree we need to find a way to keep bigbadresults from triggering too early.

I'm not sure I understand. What behaviour/experience exactly are you arguing we should keep?

On a side note, i had some cool ideas for events, but since its all python, it is beyond my skills to properly implement them. Well, maybe i will try to learn a bit in the future .

I don't plan to add any events in MNAI, but I'm happy to help if you have any questions when making your own modmod.
On the other hand, I'm still regularly tweaking the events for Extramodmod. I don't know if you tried it, but if you like it, feel free to dump your suggestions there.

 

[omegaflames]

Confirming Mistforms do have the animal ai and they have no respect for borders. Not sure I agree with them being a once a game event but it does need to not be able to happen until someone is at least close to being able to counter it. Sorcery sounds good but I'd be ok with writing or even knowledge of the ether being the required technology.

Today I had an eidelon wandering around and me with bronze weapon swordsmen at best admitting defeat on turn 358/1800 (marathon). Maybe I'm just a bad player but I bumped explore lair/graveyards from needing at least 3 cities to needing at least 5 because of it.

 

[Devils_Advocate]

It seems that playing scenarios and other mods is what resets my game options and CivilizationIV.ini.

Is there a way to get it to... not do that?

Granted it's a legitimate bug, but you'd have to be SERIOUSLY petty to build a city next to somebody's caged unit just to perma-trap that unit.

That's not why I chose that site, though! I wanted to build a city there anyway, and I decided not to release the Scout first in part because I wanted to see what would happen. I probably should have saved first; if I get back to that game I'll probably just fix the Scout in Worldbuilder.

It's definitely a corner case, though. It could conceivably make a significant difference if a powerful unit wound up perma-Held in some far-off part of the map. (After all, the human player won't fix it if they don't see it.) But that's pretty unlikely!

Does the AI actually ever delete a unit? I don't think I've ever seen it happen.

I think that the AI will delete captured Workers. I think that it may always do that, even?

I'm not sure I understand. What behaviour/experience exactly are you arguing we should keep?

Well, I can't speak for Tielby, but I do like how Fall From Heaven seems to be more dangerous than unmodded Civ 4. I suppose that the relationship between "dangerous" and "hard" is that a more dangerous game is prone to sudden spikes in difficulty, rather than simply being difficult throughout.

Take Orthus, for example. In one game, I built my capital next to a Goblin Fort, and didn't garrison it very well, because I wanted to explore the map. Well, wouldn't you know it, Orthus spawned right next to me, and that game was over soon afterwards. And I actually rather like that that happened. I like that building Scouts and Workers isn't the obvious best thing to do at the start of the game, because there's more risk to only having a few units on defense.

I like how there are challenges that I need to modify my gameplay to deal with reliably. And I like having them show up rarely, so that you deal with different stuff from game to game and don't learn all of the relevant lessons at once. It keeps things interesting, and not needing to learn every lesson at once keeps stuff from being overwhelming.

The issue with some lair results early on is that, in contrast to the likes of Orthus and the Horsemen, it's not really possible to be adequately prepared for them, and getting wiped out by them isn't a calculated risk that you can opt not to take. If an early enemy is too strong, it can wipe out even a player who focused on building up a strong defense right away. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that this defines "too strong".

Confirming Mistforms do have the animal ai and they have no respect for borders.

Well, Barbarian Animal units never enter player territory. Obviously they have something that Mistforms lack, even if they also have something in common.

Not sure I agree with them being a once a game event but it does need to not be able to happen until someone is at least close to being able to counter it. Sorcery sounds good but I'd be ok with writing or even knowledge of the ether being the required technology.

In a couple of games, I've researched Hunting in order to see Mistforms with Hawks. Even then, though, they're hard to take down due to their strength. Sorcery makes sense as a prerequisite for a Mistform-spawning event because

(1) It also allows you to see invisible units, with Floating Eye.
(2) Players should generally be pretty able to deal with units that strong by the time that they reach that point in the tech tree.
(3) Mist monsters make sense as a possible result of throwing lots of magical energy around.

 

[lfgr]

Ok, here is what I came up with for lair boss balance. I listed the possible boss and henchmen spawns with their tech requirements to be added. Most have some other requirements not listed here, e.g., sea serpents do not spawn on land. I'm also thinking of adding an option (in XML GlobalDefines) to prevent exploring lairs in foreign territory, but I'm not sure if I want to enable that by default. Note that the tech requirements are all one or two layers below the tech were the units actually become available to the player. This preserves some of the challenge, and also takes into account that barbarians usually get the techs later than most players, and don't get boni from metal weapons and affinity.

As for AI changes, the AI probably shouldn't explore epic lairs near their cities with low level units, but changing that is a bit more difficult.

Bosses:

• No tech requirement: Giant Spider, Hill Giant, Spectre, Scorpion, Vampire, Pit Beast, Sea Serpent, Pirate
  
• Knowledge of the Ether: Azer
• Sorcery: Air Elemental, Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental, Lich, Wraith, Water Elemental, Kraken
  
• Hunting: Assassin, Satyr, Werewolf
  
• Animal Handling: Myconid, Treant, Manticore
  
• Bronze Working: Ogre
• Iron Working: Ogre Warchief, Death Knight, Balor
  
• Construction: Gargoyle
• Priesthood: Eidolon

Henchmen:

• No tech requirement: Griffon, Axeman, Wolf, Chaos Marauder, Wolf Rider, Lion, Tiger, Baby Spider, Fawn, Scorpion, Frostling Archer, Frostling Wolf Rider, Polar Bear, Skeleton, Pyre Zombie, Lizardman, Gorilla, Imp, Hellbound, Drown
• Iron Working: Ogre
  
• Arcane Lore: Mistform

Any comments?

 

[Calavente]

this seems great balance-wise.
thanks

 

[Tielby]

Well, I can't speak for Tielby, but I do like how Fall From Heaven seems to be more dangerous than unmodded Civ 4. I suppose that the relationship between "dangerous" and "hard" is that a more dangerous game is prone to sudden spikes in difficulty, rather than simply being difficult throughout.

Take Orthus, for example. In one game, I built my capital next to a Goblin Fort, and didn't garrison it very well, because I wanted to explore the map. Well, wouldn't you know it, Orthus spawned right next to me, and that game was over soon afterwards. And I actually rather like that that happened. I like that building Scouts and Workers isn't the obvious best thing to do at the start of the game, because there's more risk to only having a few units on defense.

I like how there are challenges that I need to modify my gameplay to deal with reliably. And I like having them show up rarely, so that you deal with different stuff from game to game and don't learn all of the relevant lessons at once. It keeps things interesting, and not needing to learn every lesson at once keeps stuff from being overwhelming.

The issue with some lair results early on is that, in contrast to the likes of Orthus and the Horsemen, it's not really possible to be adequately prepared for them, and getting wiped out by them isn't a calculated risk that you can opt not to take. If an early enemy is too strong, it can wipe out even a player who focused on building up a strong defense right away. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that this defines "too strong".

Yep, that sums it up pretty well. Thanks for that.

 

[Dominus the Mentat]

Any comments?

What do you think about putting golems as henchman too ?

 

[Devils_Advocate]

Scaling with Barbarian technology makes sense, and the suggested changes seem pretty appropriate.

The Armageddon Counter could also play a role in making more powerful enemies more likely to emerge from lairs... but I think that it already does? Would that factor would interact well with the proposed changes? I'd imagine so, but I don't know the specific details.

I'm also thinking of adding an option (in XML GlobalDefines) to prevent exploring lairs in foreign territory, but I'm not sure if I want to enable that by default.

Personally, I'd like for Open Borders not to allow it, but for hostile and Hidden Nationality units to still be able to do it.

However you decide that this should work, ideally the AI to know how to deal with it. E.g., if Open Borders does still allow lair exploration, the AI should avoid opening borders if it has lairs, especially unprotected lairs (with no Barbarian defenders), in its territory. If it's possible to explore lairs in the territory of a civ you're at war with, then it makes sense to explore a lair in your territory with your own unit before an approaching enemy stack gets there. And so on and so forth.

It's not necessarily a bad thing to make stuff work in a way that's easier to get the AI not to be stupid about, in my opinion, although I imagine that there are a lot of different views on how much of a factor that should be.

 

[fallfgrace]

Hi, been a long time, I just have to say I'm amazed what the community has done for this mod post Kael. It's so much smoother with added usability and revolutions. The games I have played are so amazing and alive. The emergent gameplay is just beyond what vanilla Civ4 has to offer.

@lfgr what direction are you planning to take this mod?