[Module] Maogata

shoggi

Team RifE Grunt
Joined
Jul 10, 2008
Messages
252
Location
Germany

MAOGATA


Introduction

The Maogata are a race of magically engineered anthropomorphic cats. They were created during the age of magic as soldiers, guards, hunting "dogs" and prestige objects. They were made to be strong, resilient and nearly immune to magic. During the Patrian civil war and the Age of Ice that followed it a lot of them could escape from their wizard masters and formed the first Maogata settlements.

Over time they began to ritualize the process of hunting, since it was the only way to survive during the cold of the Age of Ice. It became so important to their culture that results and effectiveness during hunting determines most of the social standings and even political positions.

A few Maogata have begun to hear strange whispers or voices, which seem to come from the mana crystals themselves. These few chosen ones are the closest thing they have to mages.

Leaders

Rishakim - Major Leader. He doesn't have much background. This will change in the future.
Kirbasfen - Minor Leader. He was one of the first to understand the mana voices and dedicated himself to their mission.
Tasanny - Emergent Leader. She wants the Maogata to break from tradition, to stop their seclusion and become more open to new ideas.

Civilization Trait

Teeth and Claws - This is a purely negative trait, since it gives every Maogata the unarmed promotion which prohibits them from using weapons.

Main Mechanics

- Maogata can't use weapons. They have a few things that balance this out. Mainly there is the Great Hunt worldspell and additionally they have a number of innate abilities that the gain at certain levels.
* Level 6: Fearless and immune to enrage
* Level 8: 15% magic resistance and the ability to destroy hell terrain on the plot they are standing on at the beginning of the turn.
* Level 12: Additional 15% magic resistance and the ability to destroy hell terrain on the plot and surrounding plots of the unit at the beginning of the turn.
- Maogata heal from most diseases without help in a couple of turns.
- Maogata get +1 Food from Forest and Jungle and can build improvements over Forests (but not jungles).
The Food represents their superior hunting skills.
Why maintain Forest but not Jungles? To show that they can survive in Jungles but really have adapted to living in forested regions.

- Their recon line is hidden and gets an additional poison strength while in forests.

- Their mages don't gain the usual spells. In fact, Maogata don't have any normal spells at all. The mages can destroy improved mana nodes inside your borders instead. Based on what node they destroyed they gain a rather strong promotion.

Spoiler :

* Air - +3 movement and flying
* Earth - +3 defense, and +20 magic defense
* Fire - +3 fire damage
* Ice - immune to "spooked, enraged, shattered nerve, enervated, slow, capture and fear, with +1 cold damage
* Water - +50% fire resistance, +50% cold resistance, +25% lightning resistance, +75% poison resistance, +25% combat defense
* Law - +3 to command limit, +25% strength to commanded units
* Life - immune to blackblood, plagued, poisoned, withered, diseased, +10% heal rate in all lands
* Mind - +1 per combat win, +50% experience
* Spirit - +1 command limit, +1 command range, + 3 perception, +3 perception to commanded units.
* Sun - +3 visibility, can see invisible_animal and invisible_land, +30% attack/defense in desert
* Body - healing while moving, +2 base strength (attack and defense)
* Creation - each battle victory carries a 10% chance to add +1 pop to smallest city.
* Enchantment - units on the same tile gain "Poisoned Claws" which passes poisoned to units in combat. (need to add the effect to the unit as well)
* Force - +3 aircombat, +1 operational range, +30% damage cap
* Nature - +30% attack/defense on/in grassland, marsh, jungles, ancient forests, kelp forests, +20% attack/defense on/in plains, coast, ocean, forests, kelp.
* Chaos - Every turn the promotion adjusts the base strength within the range -2 to +4
* Death - +2 death damage, +20% heal after combat
* Dimension - units in the same stack can use the promotions owner as a portal to escape back to the capital. (need to add the "feline" promo as a prereq, and make a version for the unit itself)
* Entropy - Killing a unit with the arcane unitcombat gives +100% strength for 5 turns.
* Shadow - immune to first strikes, +10% withdrawal, +2-4 first strikes.
* Metamagic - allows "Channel Voices" ability. Damages all enemy units within 2 tiles and grants the insane promotion to the survivors. The damage done is random and increases in strength with the number of other infusions the unit has.


- Their palace doesn't have any starting mana, but stores some food after growth instead.

Hero

Chearsul. He starts with Hero and the water infusion (was born with it) and is a ranger/mage hybrid. He can only destroy Water and Ice mana nodes to gain a stack-able promotion.
I'm not really satisfied with him at the moment. He will probably change.

Worldspell

The Great Hunt - This Worldspell doesn't do much on his own, but is repeatable every 50 turns (modified by game speed). It gives a number of barbarian (animal, demon or savage) units equal the number of units you have the Prey promotion. This doesn't do anything either. But if one of your units kills one unit that has been marked as prey it gets a stack-able promotion that adds strength and first strikes.
Don't worry, you can locate prey units via city spell.

Credits

Most button and other 2D art is from Magic: the Gathering.
Manavoices concept is based on an idea by Onionsolider and found HERE
A lot of thanks go to the #erebus regulars and Swinkscalibur for some productive brainstorming sessions and ideas.

Download
Newest version is always attached to this post.

Newest Version is 0.33

To install, extract it into <Path to civ4>\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Rise from Erebus\Assets\Modules\NormalModules\
 

Attachments

  • Maogata_0.32.rar
    721.4 KB · Views: 369
  • Maogata_0.33.7z
    543.7 KB · Views: 603
CHANGELOG

0.33
* Dimension Infusion works now. Was a typo like i thought. Also mage can escape now too, as it was intended.
* Fixed prereqs on a few of the maogata specific promotions. They couldn't actually gain some of them, since i screwed them up.
This includes:
- Disease, Withered and Plagued Variant. They replace the normal versions of these promotions for the maogata. They automatically vanish after a few turns. (maogata healing on their own)
- Predator's Nature. Gained at level 6 and a min age of 30 turns. Makes units immune to fear and enraged.
- Magic Resistance - Maogata Version. Granted by the Whisper of Mana unit to all other units in the stack.
* Free Mana, now actually checks for a node, instead of just an improvement.
* Plant Forest plants new forest now.
* Movement cost reduced for all maogata while in forests. This doesn't work 100% as i would like it, but there is nothing further i can do about that at the moment. If you enter a forest from a non-forest tile you still lose the normal movement points, but if you move from forest to forest the reduction effect works.

0.32 (slight change in naming the version, since anw's launcher doesn't like additional periods in the version number)
* Fixed python exception regarding spellChannelVoices. This should fix the problem with Scions being not able to add Awakened to the City and other spells not working.
* Added Jabies origin story variant, with one small change, since he used the term outcast for the mages and I want to avoid confusion. Outcasts are a completely different thing for the Maogata.
* Changed Kirbasfen to emergent for the time being. He can now get one additional trait during the game. He will change to minor once RifE includes a certain change.

0.3.1 - Quickfix
*Added Swinkscaliburs changes to the Chaos infusion.
*Fixed a python error i made in version 0.3 while merging Swinkscaliburs stuff
 
Things the civ is still missing:

Art, of course: Since no-one made any anthropomorphic feline models as of yet they use the lizard art to show that they are non-human. If anyone wants to make unit art for them, feel free to do so :)

Unique Archery units: They will get some. I have some ideas, but i am not 100% sure how to best represent them. For the moment they have normal archers.

Unique Fort and Great Commander: Great Commander may stay, but the fort commander really should change. Need a good idea for that.

Flavor and strategy texts: Some flavor and strategy text are still missing, or are incorrect, due to changes that were made after the texts were created. this will change piece by piece when i feel in a writing mood again.
 
Cool!
I'll read it later...

I made those comments to Valk a month ago on the maogota

IF some thing changed, don't taake those into account :D
-Maogata : can they get archmages (or units that can cast lvlIII spells?)
-losing/destroying mana nodes makes for very few powerful voices of mana.
-what can they do with mana from shrines and wonders ?
-with no religious priests (as no temples) + limited mages + no immortal, phalanx, arquebus, X-bow... won't they be a little feeble on late game ? (only 4 druids/eilodon/paladin + 4shadowrider + 4knights +4beastmasters.. makes very few tier IV units compared to other civs.
-without catapults, cannon nor fireballs (their mages can't have fireII can they ?) how will they be able to attack cities to get more mana nodes?
But on the whole I was really taken by what I read about this civ :D
 
@Calavente: You make a few good points. I'll go through them in order.

* No Archmages for them. No spellcasting at all. And the mage line is more of a combat/commander line for them anyway.
* Yes, they can get powerful. I have the feeling they will probably be horrible overpowered. But i need a few testgames to see how it actually turns out. If they are broken, i have some ideas to limit them.
* Mana from Wonders... I have no idea. Didn't think about it. Something else to consider.
* Actually one leader is not agnostic and can get priests. Though I'm not that fond of them building temples. But i may unblock the buildings. About the low Number of National Units: You are right. I didn't consider that cutting some of the Tier 4 units reduces the number of late game units that much. Maybe i will simply raise the limit of the tier 4 units they CAN get.
*Siege: Yes, you are right. I had some ideas for siege, but they got lost somewhere in the design process. Have to add some siege capabilities to them.
At the moment i think the best bet you have is to go with the Furies, since they have a pretty high collateral damage.

@Sjru and Valk: No, they're mostly scaly at the moment. I could use the Gnoll, Skaven or Musteval art for them to make them look furry at least. Don't know how much of that is around though. But these models are the best candidates for modifying to look like cats anyway
 
So as Shoggi mentioned, when I saw the wiki article I immediately had an interest in helping out wherever I could. I ended up helping with some brainstorming and implementation of some of the resulting ideas. Most of the added work was on infusions (the promotions gained by the Mage UU's when they destroy mana nodes).

As of this file, all of the infusions are done except for Chaos, which has an effect that will be changing in the near future.

I will be passing the file to Shoggi so that he can post it if he wants to. And if he does I will outline in more detail the Infusions effects.
 
@Sjru and Valk: No, they're mostly scaly at the moment. I could use the Gnoll, Skaven or Musteval art for them to make them look furry at least. Don't know how much of that is around though. But these models are the best candidates for modifying to look like cats anyway

Unfortunately, Sjru isn't talking about this, but rather about this.
 
I'm aware of them being a "Furry" civ.
One of the first comments my friend made when i told him about it was "Dude, you're making a furry civ!"
Well, they ARE a furry civ. So are the cualli and mazatl if you want to look at it that way.
 
Ok here is an unofficial download containing some of my changes. The files that have been altered are Maogata_CIV4PromotionInfos.xml, Maogata_CIV4SpellInfos.xml, Maogata_CIV4GameText_Maogata.xml and spellmaogata.py.

View attachment Maogata_v0.3.zip

This is a working version, but is not completely up to date with all of Shoggi's files. He should be posting an official download after merging my changes. (Version 0.3)
 
That's a working file of the civ? So early? I though that they're not ready yet.

EDIT:
I'm aware of them being a "Furry" civ.
One of the first comments my friend made when i told him about it was "Dude, you're making a furry civ!"
Well, they ARE a furry civ. So are the cualli and mazatl if you want to look at it that way.

Indeed, everything that is antrophomorfic, and based upon animals can be called "furry". It is the right word.

Unfortunately, Sjru isn't talking about this, but rather about this.

Why "unfortunately"? It isn't supposed to be bad, it is art.

EDIT : Darn, somehow it double posted, sorry for that, it wasn't my intention to generate spam
 
That's a working file of the civ? So early? I though that they're not ready yet.

They've been in production for a long time now. There have been two alpha builds that weren't released to the larger public.


Please don't use the version Swinkscalibur posted.

I added the official version to the first post.
Or you can download it HERE

It includes all changes Swinkscalibur made to the mana infusions. Thanks again for the help.


Hopefully you have fun playing them.
 
I'd prefer wait for an official art, actually. Hopefully it doesn't take long, else I will play them anyways.
:goodjob:
 
Can't you just try and reskin the Werewolf and Lizard models? Maybe graft the heads of the animals (read tiger) onto them?

Or just rebone the tiger model instead of the wolf in the werewolf model? I tried the last but am a noob so have failed so far.
 
Top Bottom