[MOD] Fall from Heaven

[cordas]

Kael, continued kudos as this mod keeps getting better and better. I refered more than a few people to it and they all love it.

I had a few ideas and things I noticed:

1. Seafaring trait: I know it's been discussed to give them a free lighthouse in all coastal cities. I thought letting all coastal squares produce a hammer would be better. Not ocean squares just coastal ones. This might be too good in some peoples opinions, just a thought.

2. A "Dispelling Circle" city upgrade: One of the most effective strategies for a human player is to build some good defensive units and then a ton of conjurers and mages. Your fireballs and elementals trash the city and then your units walk in. It may cost you experience but you very rarely lose a unit and the AI doesn't counter it well at all. An anti summoning city upgrade would offset this strategy or at least make it less effective. Maybe call it a null shield or anti magic shell for all those old AD&D players.

3. I've always been partial to the wonders that give you X building in all cities on the continent. I know you're going for more of a specialized cities theme so you may not like this idea. You could have a Marksman Academy for archery range in each city, War College for barracks etc..


5. Blatant Warhammer ripoff here but how about using the uranium icon as a warpstone resource? Maybe have it revealed by a wild magic tech and used to power a better siege weapon as right now there's just catapults and cannons. Makes more sense for players using a magic heavy civ or strategy than a cannon IMO.


7. How about an ancient fortress in the same vein as the watchtower? Have it give 125% defensive bonus or so and make it have a zone of control that can't be moved through by enemy units until the fortress is taken. Fortresses, especially along the border, were a huge part of medieval warfare and it'd be cool to be able to have a strong point outside a city to create choke points and the like.


Just a "few" ideas and once again great work.

1. I think that would be way too powerfull, unless you where penalised for production on land.

2. I think this is a great idea, although i would just have it add XX% to the city defense against magical attacks, similar to the way City Walls do. Say a 25% bonus, then an upgraded castle equiv that gives +50%, you could even have a wonder related to this as well that gives an empire wide bonus.

3. Whilst I do like those wonders, and miss my stonehenge (well maybe not as it would make building new cities even more expensive) having to many of these wonders would really mess with game balance.

5. Great idea, I think the idea of a Hell Cannon rolling across the map would be great, esp if you could put a chance in that it would turn barbarian every time it is used in anger.

7. I like it, but I have a slightly different take on it. Give it a min of +50% defense on top of the forts 25% (or replaces a fort with 75% + ) as a fort upgrade. I have always thought that the fort was way under powered as you are better leaving (or planting as you now can) a forest and defending that.

- You could even make the fort something like a cottage-town, where after so many turns of it being defended by a unit it gets automaticaly upgraded.
- 10 turns the fort turns into a Keep with 50% def value
- 25 turns Keep becomes Stronghold with 75% def value
- 45 turns Stronghold becomes Ancient Fortress with 75% def value and40% vrs magic attacks.

It would be even cooler if a stronghold became impassable to other empires units even if open borders was in place, if this is too powerfull could you make it impassible to civs that aren't at least pleased with you.

 

[Morbius Wraith]

Ok I think I found out what the crash was in that game I sent. In my capital I was building a forge.. The town was both sick and unhappy (not sure this mattered or not)? anyways upon finishing the forge it crashed. So I removed the forge from the build que at 1 turn and I was able to continue. Now I am at roughly 290 turns and have a new bug to report I built the Prophets special building in the holy city (the veil one) and I think it spreads the veil. well within so many turns of building that the game crashes. Hope these help I'll post the game as it is currently with the latest crash in it.

 

[Morbius Wraith]

Hmm ok tried to see if not building the holy building would help ... now I crashed upon discovering Theology... last time I was able to research theology for 1 or 2 tuns before the crash came. Possibly something another faction has done? 1 just finsihed building the Taj .. ?? Anyways hope it helps.

 

[Robby]

Hey Kael

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but when I try to spread the Order in a city with the Veil it doesn't work. It says twice that the Order has been removed from the city, and then it says the Order has spread in the city, but it doesn't actually work. I am playing v 0.95 and lovin it except for this little bug which is rather annoying.
Thanks

 

[Morbius Wraith]

Hey Kael

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but when I try to spread the Order in a city with the Veil it doesn't work. It says twice that the Order has been removed from the city, and then it says the Order has spread in the city, but it doesn't actually work. I am playing v 0.95 and lovin it except for this little bug which is rather annoying.
Thanks

Same thing happens to me when I am playing the veil...however I think it is intentional. What was annoying for me was when I built the inquisitor Wonder to rid my cities of the plaguesome order and it didn't clear it away. Then I lost a city due to rebellion because of it and none of the cities I wanted cleansed actually got cleansed. Can we make inquisitors or the wonder that clears your cities replace the unwanted religeons with your state religeon automatically?

 

[JDexter]

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but when I try to spread the Order in a city with the Veil it doesn't work. It says twice that the Order has been removed from the city, and then it says the Order has spread in the city, but it doesn't actually work. I am playing v 0.95 and lovin it except for this little bug which is rather annoying.
Thanks

This is intentional by design - these two religions hate each other, so there's no room for both in a city. You have to cleanse the city of the religion using an inquisitor before you convert it.

BTW: This is mentioned a few times during the whole thread already

 

[Morbius Wraith]

Hmm ok tried to see if not building the holy building would help ... now I crashed upon discovering Theology... last time I was able to research theology for 1 or 2 tuns before the crash came. Possibly something another faction has done? 1 just finsihed building the Taj .. ?? Anyways hope it helps.

Nope wasn't the Taj..at least Doesn't seem to be. I tested it by force building the Taj before the other player, seemed fine. Still crashes consistantly on turn 291 after pressing enter.

 

[Kael]

neither is marina!

Could you attach a screenshot with a fishing boat of Marinas selected so we can see what you are seeing?

 

[cordas]

7. I like it, but I have a slightly different take on it. Give it a min of +50% defense on top of the forts 25% (or replaces a fort with 75% + ) as a fort upgrade. I have always thought that the fort was way under powered as you are better leaving (or planting as you now can) a forest and defending that.

- You could even make the fort something like a cottage-town, where after so many turns of it being defended by a unit it gets automaticaly upgraded.
- 10 turns the fort turns into a Keep with 50% def value
- 25 turns Keep becomes Stronghold with 75% def value
- 45 turns Stronghold becomes Ancient Fortress with 75% def value and40% vrs magic attacks.

It would be even cooler if a stronghold became impassable to other empires units even if open borders was in place, if this is too powerfull could you make it impassible to civs that aren't at least pleased with you.

It would be nice if you also gave forts some value, if you used the upgrade idea similar to cottages you could make a stronghold generate an income of 1gold per turn, and an ancient fortress 1 gold and 1 production, these could represent the trade that such a building would encourage, and the production generated by having a well established military settlement. I would only let these bonus be available when the fort is occupied by a military unit (a unit with a strenght of 2 or greater). Also when pillaging these improvements I would have them become ruins in a single pillage action (remember you can destroy a city in one turn as well).

 

[Civmansam]

Hey Kael,

I just had some great ideas.

How about a Acromentula unit or civ (giant spiders
Or A sphinx unit or civ
Hydras
Minotaurs
Cyclopses
Chimearas
Medusas

Just saying ideas

 

[felwar]

Oh and the last couple of games i started the all-devourer of the overlords isnt getting his +2 food, +1prod +1 gold bonus from fishnets...

I'm fairly positive this is a patch issue. It happened to me as well before applying the patches, but maybe it was coincidental. I have definitely seen both occurences with Pearlfin, and the only change from one to the other was a patch.


On a side note, could someone tell me why I would ever want to develop an ancient temple square? The food penalty is often causing my cities to shrink if I conquer one in the later game, so I've been pillaging their locations prior to conquest.

 

[Kael]

Ok I think I found out what the crash was in that game I sent. In my capital I was building a forge.. The town was both sick and unhappy (not sure this mattered or not)? anyways upon finishing the forge it crashed. So I removed the forge from the build que at 1 turn and I was able to continue. Now I am at roughly 290 turns and have a new bug to report I built the Prophets special building in the holy city (the veil one) and I think it spreads the veil. well within so many turns of building that the game crashes. Hope these help I'll post the game as it is currently with the latest crash in it.

This was exactly the information I needed. I REALLY appreciaste you digging into it this far. I worked on your crash for about 3 hours last ngiht and I was unable to come up with anything, but when I read this it told me enough to fix it.

The crash is being caused by an art problem with the Temple of the Veil. The Temple can be drawn in the city from 2 angles, rotated 90 degrees or rotated 270 degrees. If it is drawn at the 90 degree rotation the game crashes.

The reason you are seeing it in places other than when the temple is built is that the game engine adjusts the buildings whenever a new one is added. So in effect whenever a new building was added to a city with a temple of the veil in it, there was a chance of a crash.

I am putting up an updated patch that fixes this (it only allows the 270 degree version of the building). I tested the patch against the save you attached today and the one you attached yesterday, it fixes both of them.

Get patch 4 applied and let me know if you have anymore issues Wraith.

 

[Kael]

I'm fairly positive this is a patch issue. It happened to me as well before applying the patches, but maybe it was coincidental. I have definitely seen both occurences with Pearlfin, and the only change from one to the other was a patch.


On a side note, could someone tell me why I would ever want to develop an ancient temple square? The food penalty is often causing my cities to shrink if I conquer one in the later game, so I've been pillaging their locations prior to conquest.

Hmm... I think im going to remove the negative food from the ancient temple. I don't really know why its negative.

 

[Snerk]

Lol i just noticed you've got some monty python pictures in the civic screen.
Brilliant detail!

 

[Myre]

ok this is weird im playing a game and i save every few turns (dont feel like losing a lot) and i crash once in a while but everytime i reload my game its fine for about 30-40 turns then i crash reload latest save play then im fine for a while ???

 

[naf4ever]

After the patch for .95 seafaring is still not working properly. The fishnets are not giving their bonus like they are suppose to. Im playtesting it with All-devourer.

 

[cordas]

I have noticed a problem with my religion. I founded the Runes of Kilmorph, and built the tablets of bambur in that city, yet when I checked the victory screen it said I had not founded any religion and when I looked the little star had disappeared from the city saying it founded the faith. I have not used any of the inquisitor stuff, and have stayed with that religion the entire game.

 

[Kael]

ok this is weird im playing a game and i save every few turns (dont feel like losing a lot) and i crash once in a while but everytime i reload my game its fine for about 30-40 turns then i crash reload latest save play then im fine for a while ???

The problem with the last few CTD's I've fixed is that they all involved a random process. So a reload can help if you change things, therefor random events come out differently and you may or may not have the crash.

In a environment that consumes random numbers changing one event changes all events. It really makes troubleshooting hard as you can isolate out one event that if modified seems to cause or fix the crash. But that event may have nothing to do with the crash.

Fixing issues is actually easier in business software that doesn't involve so many random events.

I uploaded a new patch this morning (patch4). Install it and let me know if it fixes your crashes.

 

[Kael]

After the patch for .95 seafaring is still not working properly. The fishnets are not giving their bonus like they are suppose to. Im playtesting it with All-devourer.

Can you attach a screenshot with the fishing boats selected?

 

[Kael]

I have noticed a problem with my religion. I founded the Runes of Kilmorph, and built the tablets of bambur in that city, yet when I checked the victory screen it said I had not founded any religion and when I looked the little star had disappeared from the city saying it founded the faith. I have not used any of the inquisitor stuff, and have stayed with that religion the entire game.

Does the religion screen show anyone as the founder? Did you do a worldbuilder save and load?