Modular Fall from Heaven

I agree... I doubt it _should_. The weighting would be most useful judging what units to upgrade. That the upgrade is better than the previous unit should be taken by the AI as a given.

Hmm... OTOH, the difference between upgraded and non-upgraded Weight might be useful prioritize upgrades. In which case too high a weight for the lower-teir unit could mess up the upgrade process.

Anyway, I _hope_ the Adept weighting does explain a lot of the AI's problems since it should be easy to fix.

And that the test could be interesting. Heroes only get about a 200 AIWeight. :)
 
Here are some things I would like to have:

Spoiler :
1. ANIMALS: I suspect this depends on availability of artwork, but there are a few “vanilla” mods that provide new animal types. The Panther should still be available from earlier versions of FFH. And perhaps some of the current art could be recolored. Anyway, I’d like to see more kinds of animals and some variations on the ones we have not. There is a BTS mod in Mod Components called Modular ExoticAnimals, which provides:
Lioness 3/2
Cave Lion 5/1
Cave Lioness 6/1
Bengal Tiger 2/2
Siberian Tiger 4/2
Polar Bear 4/1
Cave Bear 6/1
Cheetah 1/3
Dire Wolf 2/2
Camel 5/3
Stag 3/3
Drifa Dragon 10/4
Penguin 2/1
As to Zoos, there’s no reason that that a Cave Lion could not go into a Lion Cage and so on. Finally, it would be fun to have some one-of-a-kind legendary animals (again using common art) that would have superior abilities and offer superior rewards when defeated.

2. ORTHUS’ KIN: The giant ape in .30 is ludicrous looking and ridiculously overpowered, but I like the idea of more great beasts and barbarian heroes like Orthus. Especially nice would be for them to have unique weapons to drop. It would not be necessary to make new promotions for these. In fact it would be fun to have objects that granted otherwise inaccessible promotions to the units that carry them.

3. MAGISTER’S FOREST PRESERVE AND SMUGGLER’S COVE: These go along with my previous request for the DWARVEN MINES. All seem to be XML implementations based on Cottages.

4. WORKERS: Go back to .25 where captured Elven Workers and Slaves would build Elven Farms, Pastures, etc. (Same for Dwarven Workers, and maybe give Orcish Workers some bonuses for building Roads, Forts, etc.)

5. RESOURCES: There are several BTS mods that add resources, so art should be available. The rest is fairly simple XML – I’ve done it myself. Again, it would be fun to have some one-of-a-kind resources like a “Motherload” of Gold that provides extra commerce. You might even add special improvements for them, making these available to certain units.
 
1. Actually I already placed in some more animals, mostly stronger. I just realized after doing that a way that I can do new artwork Modular style (didn't think I could initially). So I will soon have graphics stolen from around the forums for everything new I added. For now, make sure NOT to use single unit graphics and all the new animals will look different (new tiger group is pretty cool looking). But I'll definitely add even MORE animals if you want it :)

2. Awesome idea. I can put in a ton of fun Barbarian hero units pretty easily. Most of the "rewards" for each will have to be equipment so I can do it through XML alone. I am lumping your legendary animals idea in with this of course ;)

3. I might be able to make improvements that upgrade, but so far the Cottage glitch has shown me that it is probably NOT going to be possible. The tag for upgrading isn't linked to the TYPE declaration, but to the numerical Index. That means I would have to make the module include all of the current improvements, which defeats the purpose of being modular. As it is, the fix to the cottage glitch won't work anymore if anybody changes the order of the first couple improvements (by adding or removing one) in their mod.

4. Actually, this one I can do pretty easily if I am thinking about it correctly.

5. Sounds fairly fun. Sort of a halfway point between a resource and a unique improvement :) Will have to provide the same resources to the city though since I cannot change the Font file for that. And may conflict with the Better Improvements, so will probably become a part of it.


Mostly: Thanks for some requests :) I've been hoping people will actually make a few. Now if only I could get someone to give some feedback :p
 
While you're looking for resources, I'd like you to find camels and goats for my modmod. These would mostly just be so that there are more desert improvements for the Malakim, but eventually I'd like to make camel mounted units availible to everyone requiring the camel resource. Most of my other new resources (silver, lead, ice mana) could just reuse existing graphics.


Actually, the panther graphics were from vanilla, so you don't have to add any graphics files to get them back. (I plan to add them back in my modmod, but I want them to have Forest Stealth. I actually added them back that way when they were first removed, and quite liked it. I'm waiting for this promotion to be reimplemented, and don't think it can work the old way without making some major SDK changes. If it isn't added soon, I may make it use a pyperturn call to grant either the invisibility or hidden promotion to units in forests/ancient forests/jungles and remove it when they are not in jungles.)

Forest preserve is just borrowed directly from BtS (except for different tech requirements, allowing FoL units to build them, and the synergy with Guardian of Nature). It doesn't rely on Cottage mechanics at all. What do you mean by "smugglers cove"? Does that mean the spell I added to get smugglers ports in cities once the resolution passes (which didn't work and is unnecessary now), or do you mean my pirate cove/harbor/port fix (a minor python change to make sure coves aren't built too close to their upgraded forms)?
 
Ah, forest preserve is just an improvement buildable in forests then? I think I prefer the camps for now, they are pretty nice and will not remove a forest, while being allowed to be built in any forest. But I'll look at the forest preserves sometime when I get a chance to see if I like em. IIRC they also spread forests, which may be worth setting up again.


One promotion I have fallen in love with the idea of is "Blind," This would cause all units to be invisible to that unit, thereby allowing it to travel onto tiles that are blocked by HN or enemy units. Might have to partner it with invisible of course so that they are not killed too easily by people you just didn't notice were standing there :)


As for resources: No luck getting your camels and goats from me :) If I do put those in as the graphics on the worldmap, I will have to make them provide Cows as a resource or something. In order to add a new resource that shows up in the city AS a new resource you have to change the font files, which is a non-modular adjustment. Unless I just use Kermit the Frog for all of them, but that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth :)
 
Yeah, Forests Preserves are just improvements in forests/ancient forests/jungles that cause the feature on the tile to spread. I also made temples of the leaves and the new leaves wonder provide 1 free specialist from them. They also grant +1 :) if in a city radius with guardian of nature (like with environmentalism in BtS), and I gave them yield boost with commune with nature. (They are allowed by Hidden Paths in my version, instead of Biology)

Of course, if you wanted to then you could make them upgrade to a "Sacred Grove" or something like that after a long time, and make this improvement change the feature to an ancient forest. You could also make it so that resources are created when they are formed, or that resources like nature mana are likely to be found there. You could allow it to harness resources, add defensive boni, etc.


Blind looks pretty cool, if it is doable. Preferably it would also have 0 line of sight, so it cannot reveal more of the map. (There is a no reveal map tag for units, but not promotions). It might also be a more reasonable implementation of the the Sun II Sorcery spell than immobilization.


When talking about game fonts, you are just talking about the way in looks in the city view right? I think that making them look like sheep or horses there would probably be fine, sine the icons are pretty small. I wouldn't want them to look like that on the map though (for much longer)
 
Yes, I am talking about the Assets\res\Fonts\GameFont_75.tga file. That is where the icons are grabbed for what it appears as in the city screen on the bar to the right. Not sure if it is used anywhere else or not.

Appearance on the map is set seperately from that, so should be doable. In fact, I don't even know where the .tga is referenced from, so I assume it is a python thing. If that is the case it might be difficult for me to add new resources.
 
Wow! Anything you can do would be most welcome. And I'm really glad to see you and Magister are cooperating.

As to the Mines, I would be just as happy with upgrades tied to the tech tree (like Magister has done Forest Preserves). This would dodge the timer problem. The fun part is being able to see the Improvements, um, improve as the game goes along, giving you ways to sustain city growth. If you don't want to meddle with standard Improvements this way, make them special Improvements (like Elven Farms or Preserves) that can be built by selected units. It's kinda cool when something besides a Worker can build the improvement, like Hunters building Camps. I'd like to see the Camp give an extra bonus when built in an Ancient Forest.

As to feedback, I need to play a bit more and then I'll give you my thoughts. But so far, it's been great.
 
Well, I've already made all of the improvements a bit better EXCEPT for farms, mines and cottages. I honestly don't ever build the other things unless on a resource which FORCES me to build them. Of course, for some that was because that is the only place you CAN build them...

My ideal is that once you know how to make workshops, Windmills and all the other late game improvements you have a reason to swap to those. Hence I made them a bit more attractive yeild-wise. Any boosts I give to the standard improvements I'll try to make sure is such that unless you are running civics to improve them (or REALLY want to specialize), the late-game improvements are better.
 
This mod crashes FfH during load on my computer. I get the standard Vista program has stopped responding message a couple seconds after the load screen comes up.
 
Wierdness. You do have FfH installed, and then had this install in the same location, right? (this is just a mod-mod, not a standalone mod)

And are you able to run FfH without the same crash happening? If this Mod-Mod gives any error it should be XML only. I don't do anything that can crash a full program :(
 
Made some Ninja-Patch action since I am about to start my test and no more updates will come for about a week. I thought the fix for the Cottage glitch important enough to include right away.

Also raised the yields from Unique Improvements since they are dangerous now, and made animal lairs auto-seed on map generation
 
It seems to be related to the Modular XML. I turned that off, didn't remove the modules, and it works fine. And yes, I do have everything installed.
 
Well crap. I hope someone else who uses Vista can let me know if it works for them or not. Could be some strange issue with that. I'll look around the main BtS forums real quick and see if anyone mentions it there. I know that lots of Mods use Modular setups for that.


Try deleting all the modules and turning Modular Loading back on in the .ini and see if it loads fine. Then maybe put the modules back in 1 by 1 to find what specific one might be breaking you. But I suspect just having it turned on is the problem.
 
Is there a way to make unique improvements stop spawning units after a while, perhaps once the tile is owned (making the spawns belong to whomever owns it would be cool too). I'll assume it is not, without changing the SDK or making the spawns happen through python. (I may make some spawn units through python in a future version of my modmod.)

(I actually make a few of the unique features spawn barbarian units about a week after they were first implemented, and it got annoying after a while. The most annoying ones were the lightning elementals from the Maelstrom. Since I had given them flying and units spawned this way have unlimited duration, they usually managed to wipe out a few civs on each continent)
 
There is no way to do it. I had hoped that the units would spawn under the control of whoever owned the feature. And I think Kael plans to make that possible someday. For now it just makes things.... more fun ;)
 
I have not been in the habit of building Workshops etc. later in the game, so I'll have to try that.

Agree with Magister that the spawn rate on the Dangerous Special Features might be nerfed a bit. I was "lucky" enough to settle near the Remnants of Patria and by turn 40 I'd already fought off 3 Wraiths. It would also be nice if there were some way to stop the spawning altogether. You can kill Barbatos, but the Remnants just keep spawning, even when inside my city radius or with a unit sitting on top. Maybe casting Sanctify?
 
Station a unit on top of the improvement. I have NO idea what will happen, but it'll either auto-kill the unit, move the unit, or stop the spawning.

EDIT: helps if I finish reading your post before I answer :p There is NO way to stop the spawning then :) (But that means more XP for later, right? :p
 
Patch K is out now, and contains Kael's attempt at the fix for the modular promotions.

He also went ahead and improved a couple of elementals. Water Elementals have water affinity now, and Air Elementals spawn Lighting Elementals in combat. Combined with the chain-lighting promotion (which I'll probably steal for the next version of my modmod), I think I have a new favorite sphere (well, I might if I hadn't added Ice and Dimensional...)
 
Yeah, I would advise people to go ahead and delete my change to water elementals and try his. Future versions won't include that guy anymore (so if you like him my way instead of Kael's, make a copy).

I think I'll leave the Lightning Elemental as I changed him though.

Sadly the changes he made for promotions didn't work for Dimensional, so that still needs to be adjusted with a deep fix if you want it to work, I'll re-post the files for that to work with K, but the rest of the modules all work fine without any tweaking :)
 
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