[Module] Maogata

[Meldon]

If there was a feline race in the original FFH, can't you get in touch with Kael and ask if you can borrow art from there?

 

[shoggi]

They didn't have any unqie art.
FH1 was somewhat of a very early test version for FFH2. there were a bunch of different races that didn't have much unique things going for them beside their names.

 

[Torugu]

It doesn't. (Edit: Break saves)

Is there any way (other than great healers) for the Maogata to remove the Diseased/Plagued/Withered/etc. promotions, seeing how they don't have access to priests?

Also, how does the Find Prey spell work? I didn't see any effect after casting it (I'm playing on my laptop and my screen brightness is on minimum + I don't have much of the map explored yet, so chances are I missed something.)

 

[Jabie]

I maybe mistaken (I'd have to locate and redownload the original Fall From Heaven) but I don't recall there were a great deal of individual unit animations. There were a couple of leaders, with fairly typical fantasy art for them - the kind of thing you used to see a lot on the covers of Dragon magazine - certainly good enough to be appropriated.

Hyenas - and therefore Ngomele - are feline. Mae Culpa. The wikipedia entry on hyenas is quite interesting. This little snippet caught my eye...

In Malawi, in the local language large hyenas reputed to be a man-eater were called lipwereri and the ordinary hyena was called a fisi. The Bouda is a mythical tribe reputed to house members able to transform into hyenas. Belief in "Werehyenas" is so entrenched within the traditional lore of the Bornu people of north-eastern Nigeria, that their language even contains a special word, bultungin, which translates as "I change myself into a hyena".

The haunting laughter-like calls of the Spotted Hyena inspired the idea in local cultures that they could imitate human voices and call their victims by name. Hyenas are also associated with divination and sometimes thought of as tools of demons and witches. In African folklore, witches and sorcerers are thought to ride hyenas or even turn into them.

I guess that makes them an alternative on the Leopard Men mythology. Are Ngomele derived from ancient sorcerors and demons that shapeshifted and enjoyed the kill so much that they never turned back? This would mark a clear distinction between the two cultures.

 

[shoggi]

Normally the diseased, plagued and withered promotions should be automatically replaced by duplicates that have a duration.
Withered should be gone in 3, diseased in 6 and plagued in 9 turns.
I'm pretty sure that i had this working at one point. If it doesn't i may have broken it later with something else. -_-
Have to look at it later. Don't have acces to my civ/working pc right now.


Find Prey should locate all units that have the prey promotion across the map and point a "google marker" at each of them. if you don't have any of those, then there were no units with the prey promotion. Either you cast the spell at a time where no barbs were on the map, or somebody else killed all your prey.
(I don't know what those google markers are called officially. I mean those things that point to where events happend and stuff)

 

[Opera]

I guess that makes them an alternative on the Leopard Men mythology. Are Ngomele derived from ancient sorcerors and demons that shapeshifted and enjoyed the kill so much that they never turned back? This would mark a clear distinction between the two cultures.

No they aren't. The Ngomele have nothing to do with mankind. Their origin and the source of their power is a mystery to anyone (but it may be uncovered at some point).

 

[Torugu]

Some more questions/feedback/bugs from my game:

-What effect does the Infusion of Dimensional Mana have? When I freed the Mana node my Voices didn't get a promotion and there's no text for it in the civilopedia. Is this a bug/not yet implemented or just me being stupid (again)?
-When a Mana node is freed any improvement on the tile is destroyed, while this is good if it is a Mana improvement and understandable when it's a "normal" improvement it's kind of strange when it is a fort you built specifically for that purpose. Perhaps you should make it so that players have to raze the improvements first before they can free a node? This way you could also prevent them from exploiting the GC + Voices of Mana combination to rapidly hook up huge amounts of manainfusions.
-This is almost certainly intended, but Plant Forest creates a full grown forest but can't be cast on improved tiles. Not allowing you to cover your towns in forest afterwards is fine with me - probably would be a bit overpowered otherwise - but I still think it should generate new forest...
-I don't think the Maogata need any more national tier units, the Cajar promotions make more than up for that. You should however consider capping them at some point, my Chosen of Aeron assassin is now at 11 Cajar and still hunting and my hero is at 9, despite having only started killing barbarians 10 turns ago, he just got lucky and found 6 prey bears next to a lair. But make sure to not overdo it, as I said, they need the Cajar Prowlers as late game units.
-I think you should give them some movement advantage in forests, you don't really feel like you're playing a forest dwelling civ unless you can move faster in forest than an army of dwarven artillery. Perhaps you could reduce terrain movement in forest by 1? This way you won't be stepping on frail elven toes but at least your faster units would be bothered by their own forest any more.

 

[shoggi]

Finally some real game feedback

- The Dimensional Infusion should make the Voice act as a sort of gate. Any Maogata in the stack, including himself (at least i hope it works that way) should be able to cast the escape spell. I kinda bend the "no spells" rule a little bit for that, since i liked the effect.
Check if the Amurites have their worldspell running. If not, i will have to check for the requirements again, to see where i screwed it up. And a helptext will be added.
- Yeah, i kinda cheated here a bit. There is no easy way to refer to nodes, except listing all 21 different ones. And since I'm lazy the spell only looks for any improvement on the mana nodes. Really should change it so that it looks for nodes instead.
- Thought about creating new forests, too. Bloom creates new forests, so plant forest should too. Maybe a cooldown could be added.
And yes, not using it on improved tiles is intended. It was supposed to be a nice gimmick, not something you base your game around.
- Worldspell/Cajar: That is a lot. How many times did you cast the worldspell? Or did you just wait some time until you had a larger number of units? If it was from multiple casts i have what i think is a nice way to limit it, beside making a hardcap for cajar on units. If it was just one cast.... i have to think about that.
The last full game i did with them didn't have the find prey spell yet, so it was way harder to get your units that many cajar promotions. The only way was to look on the map (the tiles where the prey was is revealed initially while casting the worldspell) and search the general area.
- Will look if it's possible to reduce movement cost on certain features. Or i could do it with auto-aquire promotions. We'll see. And yeah, I'm constantly looking that i don't encroach on elven territory too much with everything relating to forests.

 

[Torugu]

Finally some real game feedback

Took a while to get a game rolling.

- The Dimensional Infusion should make the Voice act as a sort of gate. Any Maogata in the stack, including himself (at least i hope it works that way) should be able to cast the escape spell. I kinda bend the "no spells" rule a little bit for that, since i liked the effect.
Check if the Amurites have their worldspell running. If not, i will have to check for the requirements again, to see where i screwed it up. And a helptext will be added.

Did a bit of testing and the problem appears to be that freeing Dimensional Mana does not add the Infusion promotion, the "spell" is working when you add it using WB (except on the Voice itself).

Finally some real game feedback

- Thought about creating new forests, too. Bloom creates new forests, so plant forest should too. Maybe a cooldown could be added.
And yes, not using it on improved tiles is intended. It was supposed to be a nice gimmick, not something you base your game around.

I assume it's impossible to make Plant forest an work order (like Build Cottage) since forests are features, not improvements?

- Worldspell/Cajar: That is a lot. How many times did you cast the worldspell? Or did you just wait some time until you had a larger number of units? If it was from multiple casts i have what i think is a nice way to limit it, beside making a hardcap for cajar on units. If it was just one cast.... i have to think about that.
The last full game i did with them didn't have the find prey spell yet, so it was way harder to get your units that many cajar promotions. The only way was to look on the map (the tiles where the prey was is revealed initially while casting the worldspell) and search the general area.

Used the Worldspell 2 or 3 times, I didn't have more than ~15 units on the first cast, but they should have increased to ~25 by the time I cast for the third time, mostly due to captured Scion workers and (possible exploit!) animals captured by my hunting high level recon units.
I think it's mostly a problem caused by the distribution of Barbs on the map. A large stack of Goblin Archers hiding in a fort can give you 2 or 3 Cajar promotions as can 3 or 4 Lairs surrounding a Barbarian city. Especially since these locations are prone to accumulate more prey promotions which each Great Hunt they "survive" (hence aren't found and destroyed by your hunters): Not only do they retain promotions from previous hunts, the shrinking number of barbarians and the increasing number units under your control work in favour of your hunters and turn long lasting barbarian hotspots into a Cajar paradise. No Idea what you could do against that though...


Also, I don't think I've said this yet, you have done an excellent job on this civ, it's certainly become one of my favourite civs by now.

 

[shoggi]

Took a while to get a game rolling.

Did a bit of testing and the problem appears to be that freeing Dimensional Mana does not add the Infusion promotion, the "spell" is working when you add it using WB (except on the Voice itself).

Huh, probably a typo somewhere. Easy to fix at least.
And yeah, i noticed too, that the voice itself can't use escape, while testing the bug. Hoped that it would work like i want it too, but seems that "PromotionInStack" requirements ignore the unit that actually has the promotion. Will simply add another version of escape for him. Else the ability is kind of useless, if you can bring your whole army back home and leave the "mage" undefended

I assume it's impossible to make Plant forest an work order (like Build Cottage) since forests are features, not improvements?

Yes, that was the original intention. It kinda irks me that this is a spell (well an ability technically, since arcane lacuna can't block it), since i want to avoid spells as much as possible. But, you guessed right, features can't be created via buildorders. Else i would have done that.

Used the Worldspell 2 or 3 times, I didn't have more than ~15 units on the first cast, but they should have increased to ~25 by the time I cast for the third time, mostly due to captured Scion workers and (possible exploit!) animals captured by my hunting high level recon units.
I think it's mostly a problem caused by the distribution of Barbs on the map. A large stack of Goblin Archers hiding in a fort can give you 2 or 3 Cajar promotions as can 3 or 4 Lairs surrounding a Barbarian city. Especially since these locations are prone to accumulate more prey promotions which each Great Hunt they "survive" (hence aren't found and destroyed by your hunters): Not only do they retain promotions from previous hunts, the shrinking number of barbarians and the increasing number units under your control work in favour of your hunters and turn long lasting barbarian hotspots into a Cajar paradise. No Idea what you could do against that though...

Well, Valkrionn originally planned to confine stronger barbs to their own borders or leash them. I would then have the worldspell target only those, that way ensuring that all prey is at least on the stronger side of things. Sadly, he changed his mind. Leash is still in, but that are way too few units to target. So that doesn't work

There are a few ways this could be solved.
1) Easiest way: increase delay between worldspell casts. May do that anyway. 50 turns was just a blind guess that sounded ok. Do you feel the delay is okay? Too short? Too long?
2) Allow the worldspell to target other civs. You'd have to go to war to get a larger number. Still would target barbs. Just not exclusively.
3)My original idea to limit it: Make the prey stronger. The first cast of the great hunt would be the normal one. the second time you cast it, the prey promotion (that the prey gets) gives +1/+1 strength. second time +2/+2, etc. Or some similar buff. the exact effects are not that important yet until i decide what i do. would not work that well with idea 2, since you have a good chance to make your enemies stronger.

Also, I don't think I've said this yet, you have done an excellent job on this civ, it's certainly become one of my favourite civs by now.

Thanks.
Mmmhhh..praise feels nice

 

[shoggi]

New Version added to first post.

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.
* Plant Forest plants new forest now.
* Free Mana, now actually checks for a node, instead of just an improvement.
* 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.

I didn't make any changes to the worldspell yet. Want some more feedback first before i make a decision.

Also, if anyone has suggestions about what bordercolor they should use, i'm open for anything. At the moment they use the balseraph colors.

Border Colors
These are all colors used in rife at the moment. Balseraph (and Maogata) are the first orange tone from the top left.

 

[Opera]

Just please don't use jade green, as that's what I'm gonna use for the Ngomele

 

[PPQ_Purple]

What's the name of the 2nd(from left to right) red one in the bottom row and who is using it?

 

[Valkrionn]

I'm assuming you mean the one next to the purple? That's the Scions.

The borders are arranged in alphabetical order. The Mekara are the last one shown, however, as they're a module and come up last in WorldBuilder.

 

[shoggi]

They're ordered alphabetical, so that should be... scions.

also, i forgot to add something to the changelog:

* Free Mana, now actually checks for a node, instead of just an improvement.

My lazy work has been corrected (by stealing a list that includes all nodes from jemon's "mana is shiny")

edit/ ninja'd by valk,

 

[PPQ_Purple]

But what is the name of said color? Newer mind, I will look it up in the XML files.

BTW, I know this is going to sound bad but if it's no trouble, can someone take a short look at my issue with the art? I am baffled as to what is happening and since you are all experienced moders my guess is that you vould know.

 

[Torugu]

1) Easiest way: increase delay between worldspell casts. May do that anyway. 50 turns was just a blind guess that sounded ok. Do you feel the delay is okay? Too short? Too long?

50 tuns might be a bit fast. Perhaps you should increase it to 75 (2 hunts in 150 turns instead of 3)? I'm thinking that this might give the barbarians some more time to spawn between hunts when their numbers get low in late game without making the player wait to long. (In multiplayer games 75 turns can take well over an hour if more than one human player is at war.)

3)My original idea to limit it: Make the prey stronger. The first cast of the great hunt would be the normal one. the second time you cast it, the prey promotion (that the prey gets) gives +1/+1 strength. second time +2/+2, etc. Or some similar buff. the exact effects are not that important yet until i decide what i do. would not work that well with idea 2, since you have a good chance to make your enemies stronger.

I liked this idea at first, but I now could see it being counterproductive: As the prey gets stronger your non-elite units can't keep up anymore while the elite units who already have 6 or 7 Cajar promotions still have 99.9% odds, causing them to accumulate even more promotions which in turn allows them to hunt even stronger prey.... You get the idea.

2) Allow the worldspell to target other civs. You'd have to go to war to get a larger number. Still would target barbs. Just not exclusively.

I think this this is the best idea, it just so happens to solve another problem I forgot to mention in my initial feedback: Only a small part of your total number of units will ever be hunting, that workers provide free prey promotions is obvious, but there will always be garrison units who don't hunt AND, especially when playing with a warmonger leader like Rishakim, the largest part of your army will be caught up in a war making them unavailable for hunting. If those could get some Cajar promotions while in the field this would make for a much more even distribution among your troops.


And I guess modular events are still buggy? Since otherwise I think the Maogata should be blocked from getting Gaelan through his event. (I instinctively took him, but I'm feeling kind of bad about it now.)

Another little glitch: Mary Morbus spawn with both the Iron Weapons and the Unarmed promotion. I assume this is because Unarmed only stops units from acquiring weapons, but does not remove them if a unit already has them.

 

[Valkrionn]

Could easily have the prey promotion gain +% vs the Cajar promo... And if I make a change allowing it to work against each instance of the promo, that % would increase as you gain more. Meaning the unit must be ever stronger in order to take out the prey.

As for events... Buggy in 1.30, 'fixed' in 1.31. That fix may involve having to remove a certain mechanic from modular events (chance for a new event X turns after the current one); I know exactly what tags cause the issue, just not why, or how to fix them. Meaning they may just be ignored by modules.

 

[darkedone02]

played this module and didn't care for it much, it's similar to austrin, that's about it...

 

[shoggi]

Could easily have the prey promotion gain +% vs the Cajar promo... And if I make a change allowing it to work against each instance of the promo, that % would increase as you gain more. Meaning the unit must be ever stronger in order to take out the prey.

As for events... Buggy in 1.30, 'fixed' in 1.31. That fix may involve having to remove a certain mechanic from modular events (chance for a new event X turns after the current one); I know exactly what tags cause the issue, just not why, or how to fix them. Meaning they may just be ignored by modules.

I really like that. Makes it harder for units that are pretty high on the cajar ladder to kill their prey, which makes a lot of sense flavorwise, but without leaving new units in the dust. It would be awesome if you would change it that way.

And it even works with targetting other civs with the worldspell. I didn't like the flat out bonus idea with that, because you would make your enemy stronger against everything, but if the bonus is just against cajars, that would work.

I really like it.


About the Gaelan event. Didn't really think about that. I guess some events don't fit their flavor well. But i wouldn't block it. It happens rarely enough as is. Just make up your own story of how he ended up with the maogata

Iron Weapons: hmm, yeah. might have unarmed remove the promotions also, instead just blocking it.

Turn delay between worldspells: 75 turns what i was thinking of too. Will try that out to see how it works.