MoM 5.6 XT single-player game setup

[me_myrmidon]

A player boots up MoM for the first time in @10 years and finds it's better than ever!

...with some map setup issues.

While I relearn MoM on lower difficulty settings , I'm a bit challenged by the map setup.

The issues I'm running into

1. AI civs are often right next door

Is there a way to tweak the map generation (or civ generation) to get some distance between civs at game start?

Not TOO far away but "more than just a single barbarian camp away". My ideal is for player and AI to have 2-3 cities on average before meeting any other civ. My game experience goal is: settle 5+ cities that can take over and hold the territory while defeating at least one AI Civ...and may restart at some point but I LOVE the early game and expansion/discovery and lair busting.


2. I often get outright app lockup if I set up a map with "random good", "random neutral" leaders for the various slots.

My workaround is to manually pick the civs.


3. The only settings I adjust are:

a. "double events" = true

b. choose the map. Generally I like much more wide open maps then Erebus. My recent game was on the MoM map.

Are there certain factions that are bugged and should be avoided? The only one I avoid always is the civ that had the "undying Loki"...that has to be the most annoying enemy hero ever.


4. Do AI civs struggle to expand at Noble difficulty in the current MoM to expand/survive?

On my noob first game I had the difficulty on "Noble"...and found that the AI civs were mostly unable to expand to more than one city. I'm on city 4 when I discover my closest neighbor and he has just his capital.

Would an AI civ at Prince or higher have the bonuses that would help it expand a bit better? MoM must be a challenging environment for an AI...I spend many many game turns locked behind the first layer of barbarian lairs before having a stack is leveled up to win consistently without excessive losses.

However while I think I'm fine on the warmaking part, I'm not so great at the economy part and don't want an AI has too many econ/research bonuses. My next game will be Prince or higher.

5. Asking in a different way: what maps does the AI expand/proper best on?

____________________________

It's great to be back to MoM with the new version! I really tried to like Civ5+ over the years but I just keep coming back to Civ4 mods (Final Frontier Plus). I was excited to discover that MoM was picked up and continued.

MoM is so feature-deep it is unreal. I played for 10 hours before I remembered...oh yeah, I can equip units! And then remembered something about mana nodes, and then there's the promotion tree to relearn. Oh my (in a good way).

edit: OMG 11 hours back and I finally remember to use the "garrison" button to assign defenders and free up units.

 

[Sephi]

1.) Either reduce the amount of players or increase the map size while not increasing the amount of players. Most mapscripts usually try to put player at similar distance of each other.
2.) I'll try to reproduce it. It does sound familiar now that you mention it.
3.) I don't know of any.
4.) The AI exands slower and catches up once their economy boni kick in. It's also a bit random with civ manages defeat the barbs and which fails. Since combat is crucial but also random some civs will struggle. Don't expect all AI civs to expand at the same pace. It actually helps them if some AI's struggle since it creates room for others. On higher difficulties the AI exands faster.
5.) pangea mapscript is quite challenging, but also a bit random if you have like 3 hostile neighbours. If you don't mind odd mapscripts you can also try donut. Given the shape of the map you will always have not more than two neighbours.

 

[me_myrmidon]

Thanks Sephi! I'm finding success for "giant" map with seven opponents as a fairly dispersed arrangement to give AI room to grow and me time to be ready for them.

2) Last night I was able to reproduce a similar scenario with one of the "MoM..." map varieties. Not a lockup: but simply that the AI civ wasn't added to the map.

In which I have giant size "MoM arboria" map, seven players. Of the six AI players, three civs are explicitly chosen with random leader: "Malakim, random leader" for example. The remaining three at the end of the list are "@random good", @Neutral and @Evil.

The result when I enter worldbuilder after ending the first turn?: three AI civs have cities and it appears that the @random didn't make it.

5) Hmm I don't have a pangea or similar in my options for custom game. But I've been leaning towards all-land sort of maps anyway since there aren't a lot of sea units in MoM vs. the megaton of land units.

 

[Sneetis]

I have also experienced the (old?) bug of the random leader chosen by alignment crash.

It would be a nice feature to have but the sometimes the story it creates can be interesting too. Like playing as the only good nation in a largely evil/neutral world or somesuch.

As far as the difficulty goes, when I set it to Immortal and upwards it does become difficult to keep up with AI expansion, in my experience. The AI tends to be quite ruthless in taking advantage of that, too.

I like the "Erebus_Climate_MoM" mapsrcript, as it gives enough breathing space and strategic chokepoints with mountainranges that vanilla civ4 actually kind of lacks imo.

 

[me_myrmidon]

thanks Sneetis for the suggestion of Erebus_Climate_MoM...I think I tried it once but map generation locked up...I may give it whirl for the next game.

regarding chokepoints...my thinking is "the AI will handle landscape constraints less well than the human player" which is why i like maps that no seas and no mountains. I want them to be able to expand in all directions freely...but I will give Erebus_Climate_MoM a shot...I do like your game setup idea of "big nasty AI locked behind a chokepoint while I struggle to catch up and be ready". Then if the AI hasn't come knocking...I go and open pandora's box only when I'm good and ready

On totally non-related subjects

a) did the "tombs/lairs" feature make it from the old wildmana version into MoM? i.e. places for players to send parties to explore? That's one of the features I really like in a game called "Deity Empires"...the dungeon delving. edit: I did resolve the Ring of Carcer "dungeon"

b) is there a way to increase the incidence of mana nodes (Amurite player at the moment who wants a shot at two, minimum, in the starting region within 10-20 squares of the starting area)
edit: i found that MOM_Fantasy_Realm map gave me two in my starting region

 

[Sephi]

regarding 2)
I have fixed it now in the tweakmod. That bug was like 9 years old. oh well, better fixed now than never I guess.

a) I think there should be some lairs, not sure.

 

[me_myrmidon]

Great!
I've downloaded and installed: https://sourceforge.net/projects/masterofmana/files/MoM Tweakmod 1.01.exe/download

(I started out with a fresh download and install of the "complete version" from https://www.moddb.com/mods/master-of-mana-xtended-v56/downloads. So in fact I'm wondering if I have been running without the tweakmod and have been running the 2019 MoM. So I'm glad this bug/fix scenario happened to get me in sync)

I will try out the @good @Evil @Neutral settings.

 

[OzzyKP]

Excuse the bump, but I'm having the same problems in finding a map. My first game was in the ErebusContinent and I was doing really well until I realized that all the AI Civs were shoulder to shoulder in a cluster on the other side of the world and I had unlimited space to expand in peacefully. Every other time I try it I'm sandwiched right next to other civs.

I've tried several other scripts, but, as the Lanan, I keep ending up in the middle of a giant continent, or in a desert, or arctic start. Or on a tiny 6 tile island in the middle of a small lake (the only water on the map). I"ve been at it for an hour and a half, just loading and reloading different map scripts. Suggestions?

 

[Sephi]

Donut mapscript

 

[OzzyKP]

I like more naturalistic maps.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

I don't play MoM, so there may be issues with this. But I like Tectonics or Totestra.

 

[OzzyKP]

Unfortunately those map scripts aren’t available for MoM.

But I did, at last, get lucky with a good WorldofErebus map. Had enough room for six cities, and found another patch of land where I’m setting up colonies. Everything is jungle though, ick.