My more magic module

[vali]

This module is called more magic module, but the emphasis should be on the word my. I am a firm believer in the kitchen sink philosophy of modding, and this is my collection of favorite ideas. While I doubt anyone but me will want to play with them all at once, hopefully you'll like at least one.

Everyone so far has hated the Nether Portal, so I broke the module up into several pieces. Here they are. Currently, only modules 1 and 6 can be downloaded. I want to do some more testing before I release the others. You guys have high standards! And I don't want to publish any more stupid mistakes. Like misspelling governor in every single xml file .


MODULE 1 City Governor
City governor: new unit build-able at code of laws. Has a national limit of 3. Has access to the following promotions.

• City Planner: Each promotion gives 1 health to the city the unit is stationed in. Can be taken four times.
• Master Architect: Gives two culture, 3 defense, stackable.
• Politician: The first promotion gives 2 untyped GPP, the second gives 1. Can be taken twice.
• Engineer: Gives 1 production, stackable.
• Economist: Gives 1 trade route, can be taken 2 times.
• Recreation: Gives 1 happy, can be taken 2 times.
• General: Gives 8 defense, stackable.
• Guild Advisor: Gives 1 gold, stackable.

Changelog

Version 1.3
Melante is now a City Governor
Only one city governor allowed per city.

Version 1.2
Number of times you can take economist, recreation, and city planner promotions cut.
Xp per turn moved from .5 to .25
Defense strength of city governor changed to 1.


MODULE 2 -Religion
(Requires city governor module)

Order

Spoiler :

High Priests old spell, unyielding order, was removed. The new spell ends revolt, and instantly places a courthouse and walls in the city.

New unit, Inquisitor, added. High priests can become inquisitors, losing all promotions, but keeping any exp. Inquisitors function the same as city governors (See the Other category below), but have the advantage of more strength, start with all the xp of the high priest, and have better promotions to choose from. National limit of 2.

The Inquisitor unit does not have access to recreation. Instead it gets
Inquisition: Gives 1 happy, stackable.


Order priests are the best warrior priests in the game, thanks to command IV, but their spell requires them to sit at home. Since I want to have my cake and eat it too, I created the Inquisitor unit, so you can retire 2 priests and leave them behind to city-sit, while the rest get full use out of command IV

Empyrean: Added three new buildings.

Spoiler :

New national wonder, college of magic. Gives xp to adepts, reagents, allows sage specialists, boosts research.
New national wonder, college of natural sciences. Gives xp to siege equipment, allows sage and engineer specialists, boosts research.
Cathedral, gives 2 happy, allows two priest specialists, trains disciple units, gives +1 with sun.

Empyrean's focus is on wisdom, so colleges seemed fitting. Plus, the civilopedia already mentions a textbook by Chalid.

ROK: Added buildings

Spoiler :

Storage Pit: Gives 1 health, very small defense boost, stores 15% food.
Tunnel Maps: Boosts trade, 50% chance of discovering one of the following.

• Cavern: Most common result. Can be upgraded to farm, underground city, or temple.
• Bottomless Chasm: Gives production, 1 resource. I made three different versions of this building, each giving a different resource.
• Crystal Caverns: Gives income, artist.
• Mushroom Garden: Gives some food, 1 health, mushrooms.

Fellowship of the Leaves:
Treant base spawn chance moved from 5 to 10 percent. Because I really like those ents.


Ashen Veil:
Unholy taint is now given by the temple, and is applied to all arcane and religious units. Xp given was also boosted.

Council of Esus:
New spell allows recon units to gain the council of Esus religion. Costs 100 gold. Requires council of Esus state religion and deception. Because yes, I DO reload the game until Rathus Denmora can cast mask. This way is much easier.




Octopus Overlords:

Spoiler :

This spell gives between 2-5 xp (5-8 with theology). There are roughly 45 different results from this spell. Some effect the whole map, while others add a single promotion to the caster, but all of them are designed to be location and situtation independent. Or, in other words, it doesn't matter when or where you cast the spell. Each Cultist can cast the spell once. The negative results of this spell were designed to be "interesting". For example, units with the hunger promotion will try to eat a unit on a sorrounding square each turn. If the hungry cultist susceeds, the unit dies (without declaring war) and your cultist gains experiance. If you plan ahead, and keep the cultist in enemy territory, this promotion is a plus. If you forget about the unit and leave it in your own lands, well, then you have a problem.

There is a roughy 1/4 chance that the casting unit will die. Once you get theology, this 1/4 death chance is removed, and instead you have a 1/4 chance of your priest upgrading to a Speaker, the overlords high priest.


Cultists that upgrade to Speakers get a second use of the Channel spell. HOWEVER!!!! it will cast Channel as if you don't have theology. This means that when a Speaker casts Channel, it gains 2-5 xp, and has a 1/4 chance of death.

Here are some other fun effects of this spell.

Doom: This promotion has a ten turn duration. Once it reaches 0, the unit dies. What makes this interesting is that once the unit dies, either by being killed, having duration go down to 0, or being deleted by the player, the Doom jumps to a different unit. It (currently) cannot leave the game. Units with more than 30 xp are safe.
There are also two other promotions that are similar to this one, but less harsh.

Another effect creates an overpowered barbarian hero somewhere in the world.

One spell causes the cultist to "lose faith", and change to a different religion. So yes, if you cast channel, there is very small chance (5% or so) that your cultist can use spells of another religion.

Just to reassure you, the number of good effects and bad effects is equal. I just listed the bad effects because they are cooler.

Also, because I didn't know where else to stick them

New building, Prospecting: Chance of discovering metal resources within a three square radius. Is more effective with runes of kilomorph.
New building, Quarry Yard: Gives an engineer for each quarry in city area.


MODULE 3 -Portals

New building, Nether portal, is similar to Planar gate. Buildable at sorcery. It can summon the following units.

• Mana spirit: Can build roads, mana nodes, in one turn. Also has metamagic 2.
• Chaos Spirit: Has spell that casts wonder several times, then kills unit.
• Life spark: Has medic 1, 2, and 3, as well as life 1. Requires alchemy lab in city to spawn.
• Muse: Can give a free artist specialist to a city. Requires alchemy lab in city spawn.
• Intellectus: Has a spell that shares xp between units on it's stack. Total xp given = 15 + (2 * the amount of spirit, mind and metamagic mana you have). Kills unit. Requires new building, research lab, in city for it to spawn.

The research lab is similar to the Alchemy lab, is buildable at arcane lore, requires an alchemy lab in the city to be built, and also gives a 10% boost to rituals. Both of these buildings boost the number and variety of summons from the Nether portal AND Planar gate. (Kahdi gate unaffected. )

Nether portal summon numbers also boosted by having the arcane trait.


Lastly, the buildings required to get each unit for Planar gate have been changed
Chaos marauder, flaming eye, and Revelers do not require a building to spawn.
Mobious witch and tar demon require the alchemy lab in the city to spawn
Mantacor, Succubus, and minotaur require research lab in the city to spawn.

Hero now gives free xp up to 300.


MODULE 4 - More unique improvements

All credit/blame goes to my brother, since he did all of this part. I just took it from him and made it modular.

Lightning temple: Moves to a new place every turn. If your unit steps on the temple, your nation gains a 4 turn golden age.

Adelairs Cove: Has a mana source that changes now and then.

Ferbiots Citadel: When a unit goes on this improvement, they can create three 10 strength golems under your control. As long as unit remains on the citadel, the golems are yours. If unit is killed, or leaves, golems disappear. Enemies can claim citadel, and it's three golems, as well. Just play the game, and it will all make sense.

Changelog

Spoiler :

Version 1.0- Now with 100% more art!

MODULE 5 - Shapeshifter
The shapeshifter unit requires Esus state religion, and alteration tech. It starts with 1 movement, 3 attack and defense, and can take any four of the following promotions, all of which are stackable.

• Strength: Gives +1 attack strength, + 20% attack.
• Defense: Gives +1 defense strength, + 20% defense.
• Agility: Gives 1 move discount, +30% withdrawal, 2 first strike chances.
• Speed: Gives +1 movement.
• Forsight: Gives +2 first strikes, +4 first strike chances.
• Regeneration: Unit always heals, +10% healing in enemy land, +20% healing in neutral land, +30% healing in friendly land, +20% defense.
• Vision: Gives +1 sight, +3 perception.
• There are also 7 promotions, one for each damage type. Each gives +1 combat in that damage type, +20% defense in that damage type, and requires a specific resource. For example, icy touch requires ice mana, gives 1 cold combat, 20% resistance to cold damage.

It also has a spell called morph that removes all promotions, levels, xp ect... allowing the shapeshifter to take an entirely new set of 4 promotions.

National limit of 4.

New as of version 1.1
Changed the mechanics behind how shapeshifter can choose promotions. As a result, old promotions now remain on the unit, and it doesn't matter how much xp the unit has, you still only get four promotions.


MODULE 6 - Spirits
I stole the idea, and some of the code, for this mod entirely from Magister Cultuum. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, so hopefully he is pleased to see his ideas adapted for Rife.

Short version of changes: You can now resurrect all heros, and some units. Also, Basium gets a hammer!

Long, somewhat technical version: When a unit dies, its soul, or "Slaugh" as Magister puts it in his mod, has a chance of lingering in Erebus. Units with the hero promotion have a 100% chance of remaining. Other units have a (unit level * 4)% chance of remaining. Death, life, and especially spirit promotions boost your chances.

Hero units, and units with spirit 3, remain forever. Other unit's souls remain for (unit level + 5) turns. After that they are gone for good.

What the resurrection spell does, is pick a random Slaugh, and bring it back to life. Each unit can be resurrected in this fashion once.

Example: Your hero, Bambur dies. Five hundred turns pass. Then, you get an archmage with life 3, and cast resurrection. Bambur comes back to life, with all the promotions he had previously.


Basium enters the game with a hammer. When a demon is killed by the unit weilding the hammer (Usually Basium, but you can kill him and take the hammer like any equitment), the unit with the hammer gets +5% strength. Any unit with entropy 2 can destroy the hammer. When that happens, every demon killed with the hammer reappears, under the control of the demon barbarian faction.



Lastly, there is a price for casting resurrection repeatedly. After a certain number of casts (I'm still trying to decide how many) something really horrible happens. DON'T READ THE SPOILER UNLESS YOU ARE THE SORT OF PERSON THAT LOOKS AT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS EARLY!!!

Spoiler :

If you cast resurrection enough, Laroth will use the spell to escape the vault he is stuck in (Look at the Magister mod for lore, not me).
Any units killed by the netherblade, by Laroth himself, or by Laroth's legionnaire's will resurrect each turn on Laroth's square. Any undead units in a two square radious will come under Laroth's control.

Also, resurrection spell will now create some nasty barbarian units placed randomly over the world.

Laroth is controled by the barbarians, like the four horsemen. When he dies, all units with immortal, or death magic die with him. I'm considering changing this, seeing as it kills every single scion and d'tesh, but it stays for now.

The number of times you need to cast resurrection to call Laroth scales with map size. That said, on a regular size map, you need to resurrect a total of sixty unit levels to call Laroth (That's three level twenty units, or six level ten units.) This is another thing I'm still balancing.

While I stole many of the ideas from Magister's mod, the implementation is rather different. In this module, the units come back fully, not as champions with the promotions they had in life. The SPOILER mentioned above is also new. Lastly, you can't control who you resurrect, unlike in Magister's mod.

You cannot resurrect units of other religions, nor can you resurrect other nations national hero's. No one can resurrect any of the five horsemen of the apocalypse. There is also a new hero, Gosea, who can only be obtained through resurrection.

Bugs: Foxtools library is missing some white hand religious units, so those aren't blocked from resurrection. The same goes for several of the OO religious units, though I have NO IDEA why they mess the spell up. I triple checked my spelling, and everything. I could fix these bugs right now, but the spell just looks UGLY with gc.getUnitTypeInfo sticking out for a bunch of units.
The original resurrection spell remains in the game, because it refused to allow itself to be overwritten (???). Lastly, units carrying the nether blade AND being able to convert units (Command 1, 2, 3, ect...) can both capture a unit and create a Slaugh. No idea how to fix this, and I don't care enough to try. Same goes for an angel and a Slaugh being created by the same unit. The Infernal already get two manes for each evil unit killed anyway, so I figure these people's souls can withstand a bit more stretching.

I'll try and squash some of these bugs, but not until after I finish the ritual module. I should have it done shortly after 1.31 is released.


In case you are wondering how I did this...

Spoiler :

If a unit dies and IF it manages to become a slaugh, a copy of the unit is placed on square 0,0 of the map under barbarian control. The copy has the Slaugh promotion, which makes invisible, blind, flying, free unit, and some other things. If the unit doesn't have the hero promotion, it also gets a unit duration. Resurrection picks a random unit on plot 0,0 with the slaugh promotion to resurrect then moves that unit to the casters square (changing to your nationality) with all promotions EXCEPT the slaugh promotion. The new unit also gets weakened soul, which prevents it from being resurrected again.

Units killed by the hammer and nether blade have a 100% chance of becoming Slaughs, only they have their own special promotions that make them ineligable for resurrection. Like with the hero promotion, they remain there forever, until they are summoned.

You know how the grigori, archos and others have that little counter for things like heros and spiders? Well, it turns out every nation has their own civ counter, but most are not being used. Each time resurrection is cast, I add +1 to the civ counter for the barbarians. SPOILER happens when that counter reaches the magic number.

Grimmer grimoire: I added in more results for the grimoire. As always, code stolen from Magister.



MODULE 7 - rituals --Coming soon. Probably after the release of 1.31
Requires spirit module
Eclipse: Esus only. Adds Council of Esus to some citys and units. Removes Empyrean from some citys and units. Civilizations with Esus religion gain golden age, civilizations with Empyrean gain several turns of disorder. Can be built once.

Tainted Mana: All units with channeling 1,2, or 3 have a chance of gaining enraged, modified by the units magic resist. All mana nodes returned to base mana, and baddies spawned based on the mana source. Can be built unlimited times.
Example: The ice node goes back to raw mana, and an ice elemental spawns there.

Rising ocean: Raises ocean level. Can be built unlimited times.

Bar gates of death: All units, on death, have a 100% chance of becoming Slaughs. They also remain on erebus forever. SPOILER is blocked from happening. However, units can still only be resurrected once. Can be built once.

Master of magic: All units with channeling 1,2 or 3 are teleported to the capitol of the nation that has created this ritual. Resistable. Can be built once.


Both master of magic and tainted mana seem like game-killers for the amurites, but remember, all of their units have high resistance to magic. That said, if it still hits them too hard, I'll give their units a bonus chance to resist.


Future plans

Spoiler :

Release module 7
Balancing
Add more results to channeling.
Possibly add new artwork. If I feel like it.

Any help, advice, criticism or comments would be appreciated. I would especially appreciate advice regarding balance, as so far everyone has said these modules are OP.

 

[Calavente]

nice piece of work...

20xp + some seems imbalanced... very quick way to boost units ...
+I suppose Rok/empy buildings disappear if you change state religion ? or not ?

For OO ... it means that if you already casted the spell before theology, the unit can never be upgraded to a speaker of the waves. So in a way only junior units will be able to "upgrade".

 

[black_imperator]

So couldn't try it yet because of issues i have with my current version (i have some changes that currently make the game more or less unplayable ^^), but i'll comment on the changelog.

Firstly , to stay general, there are things i like ( the UF , the city governor idea ) and some i like less (the nether portal). in a whole it seems a little too overpowered, so i won't say it at each entry.


now let's see that in details:

Religious changes: - like the ideas of making the order priests warrior-priests, i think it fits well.

-Empyrean i don't know, i understand the idea behind, but i fear it might become a little too Dural-bis

-RoK: good ideas but too many buildings, people will be lost . some buildings giving resources will also be quite powerful . The way i'd go for this is a prospecting one-time ritual that may gives one of this building in one RoK city. This way you show that roK followers can find almost anything in their underground, but not natural crystal caverns and mushroom gardens in the same city.


FoL and AV: no particular comments

OO: Channel is fun , you could give Hemah a special version of it with more results(to show his dreams have unpredictable effects)


Magic: don't really see the point here, it kinda steals the unique mechanic of the sheaim and offers it to anyone , even if the units are more specialized.


UF: the ideas are fun and original, i'll look for the art as soon as i can


Other : About City Governors, i like the idea, might be good to rebalance a bit the promos, especially if they keep being stackable. On the unit itself, i hope there can be only one per city being active (i'd also make it a national unit). More specialized promos for some civs could be good too
-300xp for heroes ?? isn't that too much?


and that's all for today

 

[Milaga]

Whoah, that's quite a list! Some of these things look very interesting. I'll comment on a few that stand out.

Order priests are the best warrior priests in the game, thanks to command IV, but their spell requires them to sit at home. Since I want to have my cake and eat it too, I created the Inquisitor unit, so you can retire some priests and leave them behind to city-sit, while the rest get full use out of command IV

Order high priests are the best in the game, it's balanced by the fact that they can either use Command IV or bolster their city. I haven't played an Order game in RiFE 1.30 yet, so I can't say how useful Unyeilding Order is to cities that are probably going to be health capped anyway.

Personally I don't like this idea for the exact reason you like it (having your cake and eating it to.) But since you are giving boosts to all religions, I suppose it balances. Except for those pesky agnostics.

Empyrean: Added three new buildings to help produce great people.

I only see two listed. I can understand the college idea, but I'm not sure if specifically either of those colleges are flavorful for the Empyrean. I don't know if boosting siege units really is in their flavor either. I might have a "college of reasoning" (or a catchier name) that boosts both disciple and arcane xp.

ROK: Added lots of new buildings

That is a lot of buildings. Can some of them be combined? Personally I find RoK to already be the most powerful religion now, hands down, so I don't think they need any additional boosts.

I like the idea of a quarry yard.

Treant base spawn chance moved from 5 to 10 percent. Because I really like those ents.

Me too. Was it lowered to 5 at some point? I always thought it was much higher before.

New spell, Channel. Can only be cast once, by adepts and cultists. Channel can cause one of (Currently) 30 different effects, sort of like wonder.
...
Cultists no longer upgrade to their high priest, speaker of the waves. Instead, at Theology that chance to kill to the unit is changed, and is instead the chance to upgrade to speaker of the waves. Also, xp given by spell is boosted.

This is kind of neat, but I'd have to see this one in action before I can comment on it. I really like the idea that they cannot upgrade to high priests but have to roll the dice.

Mana spirit: Can build roads, mana nodes, in one turn. Also has metamagic 2.

Why can a mana spirit build roads?

Life spark: Has medic 1, 2, and 3, as well as life 3

Is life mana a requirement? I don't like the idea of giving spells to civs that don't have the proper mana. Are the spirits required to have the appropriate mana?

Muse: Can give a free artist specialist to a city.

Why is an alchemy lab required for mana spirits? These spawns seem quite powerful. Is the building that spawns them a world wonder?

Intellectus: Has a spell that shares xp between units on it's stack. Total xp given = 20 + (2 * the amount of spirit, mind and metamagic mana you have). Kills unit.

I don't like giving out free xp like this. The Grigori quest mechanic already shows how powerful doling out chunks of 20xp can be. So with Intellectus, an adept could be built and sacrifice itself to give 20xp to a unit? Imagine this being used on one of the dragons.

Lightning temple: Moves to a new place every turn. If your unit steps on the temple, your nation gains a 4 turn golden age.

Adelairs Cove: Has a mana source that changes now and then.

Ferbiots Citadel: When a unit goes on this improvement, they can create three 10 strength golems under your control. As long as unit remains on the citadel, the golems are yours. If unit is killed, or leaves, golems disappear. Enemies can claim citadel, and it's three golems, as well. Just play the game, and it will all make sense.

These all sound interesting.

City governor: new unit build-able at code of laws, has access to five promotions. Each promotion is stackable (So it can be acquired multiple times).

This is an interesting idea, but the details look incredibly powerful and prone to exploits. Is the governor a national unit? How does the governor gain xp, and thus, promotions?

Here's an exploit. If the promotions all stack, why not use Intellectus repeatedly on your governor to grant more happiness and health than you need, more production (3 hammers per promotion is a lot!) than you could use and enough gold to keep your economy booming. And just do that in every city.

My advice is to not make the promotions stackable and slash their effects. Get rid of the +2 gold in economist, +1 health and +1 happy in general. Reduce recreation to +1 happy. Reduce Guild Advisor to 1 GPP, 1 production.

 

[vali]

-RoK: good ideas but too many buildings, people will be lost . some buildings giving resources will also be quite powerful . The way i'd go for this is a prospecting one-time ritual that may gives one of this building in one RoK city. This way you show that roK followers can find almost anything in their underground, but not natural crystal caverns and mushroom gardens in the same city.

Good idea. For the next version, I've changed it so that ROK allows the following.

Storage Pit: Gives 1 health, very small defense boost, stores 15% food.
Quarry Yard: Gives an engineer for each quarry in city area.
Tunnel Maps: Boosts trade, 50% chance of discovering one of the following.

• Cavern: Most common result. Can be upgraded to farm, underground city, or temple.
• Bottomless Chasm: Gives production, 1 resource. I made three different versions of this building, each giving a different resource.
• Crystal Caverns: Gives gold, artist.
• Mushroom Garden: Gives some food, 1 health, mushrooms.

Prospecting can now be built by anyone, but gives better results for ROK followers.

Also changed city governer.

City governor: new unit build-able at code of laws. Has a national limit of 2. Has access to the following promotions.

• City Planner: Each promotion gives 1 health to the city the unit is stationed in. Can be taken five times.
• Master Architect: Gives two culture, 3 defense, stackable.
• Politician: Gives 2 untyped GPP. Can be taken twice.
• Engineer: Gives 1 production, stackable.
• Economist: Gives 1 trade route, can be taken 3 times.
• Recreation: Gives 1 happy, can be taken 5 times.
• General: Gives 8 defense, stackable.
• Guild Advisor: Gives 1 gold, stackable.

The Inquisitor unit does not have access to recreation. Instead it gets
Inquisition: Gives 1 happy, stackable.

Why is an alchemy lab required for mana spirits? These spawns seem quite powerful. Is the building that spawns them a world wonder?

Let me clarify.

New building, Nether portal, is similar to Planar gate. Buildable at sorcery. It can summon the following units.

• Mana spirit: Can build roads, mana nodes, in one turn. Also has metamagic 2.
• Chaos Spirit: Has spell that casts wonder several times, then kills unit.
• Life spark: Has medic 1, 2, and 3, as well as life 3. Requires alchemy lab in city to spawn.
• Muse: Can give a free artist specialist to a city. Requires alchemy lab in city spawn.
• Intellectus: Has a spell that shares xp between units on it's stack. Total xp given = 20 + (2 * the amount of spirit, mind and metamagic mana you have). Kills unit. Requires new building, research lab, in city for it to spawn.

I moved Nether portal back to sorcery, and Research lab back to arcane lore, so that the units it gives are less OP, and more of a convenience. That said, if enough of you guys hate this part of the module, I'll make it seperate, so it can be easily removed.

Lastly, the Empyrean buildings. Yes, there really are three.

Spoiler :

New national wonder, college of magic. Gives xp to adepts, reagents, allows sage specialists, boosts research.
New national wonder, college of natural sciences. Gives xp to siege equipment, allows sage and engineer specialists, boosts research.
Cathedral, gives 2 happy, allows two priest specialists, trains disciple units, gives +1 with sun.

Empyrean's focus is on wisdom, so colleges seemed fitting. Plus, the civilopedia already mentions a textbook by Chalid.

I'll update the changelog at the top of the page in a couple days, once I release the next version. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[EugeneStyles]

My issue with this: I like my modules to be modular. I think I might like the City Governors, and some of the religion stuff. But oy that's a lot of new buildings and I don't think I like the Nether Gate idea at all, and then a Sheaim change tacked on. I might try out your module at some point if I feel like RifE is getting stale, but it just seems like a lot changes otherwise.

Maybe you could separate it into a few different modules? One for city governors, one for nether gate, and maybe two separate ones for all the religion changes? One for the rituals later when you add them?

 

[Fanghorn]

Interesting changes indeed. Looks a bit overpowered though. Especially the city governor is heavy. High priest becomming inquisitors is cool but giving them a spell that instantly builds a courthouse and a wall is a bit crazy unless they stay only as long as the highpriest stays. Even that sounds rather heavy to me. Chaos Spirits dont make much sense to me.

Modularity and general nerfing would be nice.

Post scritum i feel the Spirit Mana branch might become less important with city governors

 

[vali]

I've updated the first post with a bunch of new stuff. The last two modules aren't released yet, but I thought I'd put out their changelogs anyway, for commenting purposes.

My school starts on monday, so I hope to finish and post the last two modules by sunday night. But we'll see how it goes. The spirit module is mostly finished, but ritual has a ways to go.

All the modules except the more unique features module have been given new, nerfed versions. Hopefully it's all a bit more balanced now.

 

[Calavente]

for shapeshifter :

are the "damage type" promotion stackable ?
as you'll mostly always have at least one of the 7 mana needed (at least at alteration)
and +1 + 20 resist magic is mostly better than +1 attack +20% attack or than +1defense +20%defense. (as it allows defense AND attack at +1 strength ; and a 8 unit at alteration is no joke)

does the "morph" spell really has to remove all experience ?
isn't it possible to keep the experience ? (if one gives valor, or giving him the shard of courage so he gain a minion that give him some xp, one can hope to give more experience to the unit and such an investement would be worthwile to keep.)
(wouldn't removing all levels be enough ? but it's true you'll gain 2 turns as you don't have to wait until upgrading.)


last question : what happens to other promotions :
-combat 1 from aggressive leaders, commando from raider leaders...etc
-mana spheres from govannon's teaching ...Etc
maybe, "morph" should only remove the "special shapeshifter" promotions and leave the other there.

 

[vali]

Added Module six for download. It's probably horribly OP. Oh well. I love it anyway. It'll be much easier to balance once the new spell system, with it's civilization-wide mana pool, is released. I'll just crank up the cost until players think twice about casting it.

Calavente: To be honest, the shapeshifter was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing, and not very well thought out. So yes, there are sneaky ways of getting more xp. As for how morph works, it creates an entirely new shapeshifter unit, and kills the old one. So nothing survives the morph. Not name, not xp, not level, nothing.

What I might do to fix this problem is to drop the max xp down by ten, which would limit the shapeshifter's strength a great deal, and create a python-per-turn function to make sure that no extra xp sneaks in. Then rewrite the morph spell. But I'd rather find a way to get the same functionality without resorting to all that python, as it slows down the game. I try to save python for special occasions .

 

[black_imperator]

MODULE 1 City Governor
City governor: new unit build-able at code of laws. Has a national limit of 3. Has access to the following promotions.

• City Planner: Each promotion gives 1 health to the city the unit is stationed in. Can be taken four times.
• Master Architect: Gives two culture, 3 defense, stackable.
• Politician: The first promotion gives 2 untyped GPP, the second gives 1. Can be taken twice.
• Engineer: Gives 1 production, stackable.
• Economist: Gives 1 trade route, can be taken 2 times.
• Recreation: Gives 1 happy, can be taken 2 times.
• General: Gives 8 defense, stackable.
• Guild Advisor: Gives 1 gold, stackable.

Changes as of version 1.2

Spoiler :

Number of times you can take economist, recreation, and city planner promotions cut.

Xp per turn moved from .5 to .25

Defense strength of city governor changed to 1.

It still seems powerful but much better than before. Will try it as soon as i have a clean version of the game^^

question: if there are two governors in a city , what bonuses are applied ?

MODULE 2 -Religion
(Requires city governor module)


ROK: Added buildings

Spoiler :

Storage Pit: Gives 1 health, very small defense boost, stores 15% food.
Tunnel Maps: Boosts trade, 50% chance of discovering one of the following.

• Cavern: Most common result. Can be upgraded to farm, underground city, or temple.
• Bottomless Chasm: Gives production, 1 resource. I made three different versions of this building, each giving a different resource.
• Crystal Caverns: Gives income, artist.
• Mushroom Garden: Gives some food, 1 health, mushrooms.

much better too , less buildings at once prevents the player from being too confused

MODULE 4 - More unique improvements

All credit/blame goes to my brother, since he did all of this part. I just took it from him and made it modular.

Lightning temple: Moves to a new place every turn. If your unit steps on the temple, your nation gains a 4 turn golden age.

Adelairs Cove: Has a mana source that changes now and then.

Ferbiots Citadel: When a unit goes on this improvement, they can create three 10 strength golems under your control. As long as unit remains on the citadel, the golems are yours. If unit is killed, or leaves, golems disappear. Enemies can claim citadel, and it's three golems, as well. Just play the game, and it will all make sense.

Changelog

Spoiler :

Version 1.0- Now with 100% more art!

will definitely play with that

MODULE 5 - Shapeshifter
The shapeshifter unit requires Esus state religion, and alteration tech. It starts with 1 movement, 3 attack and defense. It gains 10 xp per turn, until 30 xp, and cannot gain any xp from combat. So for non-charismatic leaders, after 3 turns, the shapeshifter can take five promotions.

It has access to the following promotions. All of them are stackable.

• Strength: Gives +1 attack strength, + 20% attack.
• Defense: Gives +1 defense strength, + 20% defense.
• Agility: Gives 1 move discount, +30% withdrawal, 2 first strike chances.
• Speed: Gives +1 movement.
• Forsight: Gives +2 first strikes, +4 first strike chances.
• Regeneration: Unit always heals, +10% healing in enemy land, +20% healing in neutral land, +30% healing in friendly land, +20% defense.
• Vision: Gives +1 sight, +3 perception.
• There are also 7 promotions, one for each damage type. Each gives +1 combat in that damage type, +20% defense in that damage type, and requires a specific resource. For example, icy touch requires ice mana, gives 1 cold combat, 20% resistance to cold damage.

It also has a spell called morph that removes all promotions, levels, xp ect... allowing the shapeshifter to take an entirely new set of promotions.

National limit of 4.

Interesting. Will need to test it for balancing



the next one has some good ideas, but has some issues, lore ones as well as game ones, so i'll go in details:

MODULE 6 - Spirits
I stole the idea, and some of the code, for this mod entirely from Magister Cultuum. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, so hopefully he is pleased to see his ideas adapted for Rife.

Short version of changes: You can now resurrect all heros, and some units. Also, Basium gets a hammer!

Long, somewhat technical version: When a unit dies, its soul, or "Slaugh" as Magister puts it in his mod, has a chance of lingering in Erebus. Units with the hero promotion have a 100% chance of remaining. Other units have a (unit level * 4)% chance of remaining. Death, life, and especially spirit promotions boost your chances.

Hero units, and units with spirit 3, remain forever. Other unit's souls remain for (unit level + 5) turns. After that they are gone for good.

What the resurrection spell does, is pick a random Slaugh, and bring it back to life. Each unit can be resurrected in this fashion once.

Example: Your hero, Bambur dies. Five hundred turns pass. Then, you get an archmage with life 3, and cast resurrection. Bambur comes back to life, with all the promotions he had previously.

i like the idea in a whole, might need some balancing . Unis becoming angels and manes should be barred from resurrection too

Basium enters the game with a hammer. When a demon is killed by the unit weilding the hammer (Usually Basium, but you can kill him and take the hammer like any equitment), the unit with the hammer gets +5% strength. Any unit with entropy 2 can destroy the hammer. When that happens, every demon killed with the hammer reappears, under the control of the demon barbarian faction.

good one

Lastly, there is a price for casting resurrection repeatedly. After a certain number of casts (I'm still trying to decide how many) something really horrible happens.

If you cast resurrection enough, Laroth will use the spell to escape the vault he is stuck in (Look at the Magister mod for lore, not me).

This is the point i'll start becoming more critical. First i really like the idea of laroth coming back, BUT he would only be able to come back after having conquered (if it's even possible) the Death Vault. And Casting Resurrection actually makes his spirit army weaker, since resurrected souls are leaving the Underworld battleground. I'd rather link the return of laroth to the number of Slaugh created, and then using resurrection

Any units killed by the netherblade, by Laroth himself, or by Laroth's legionnaire's will resurrect each turn on Laroth's square. Any undead units in a two square radious will come under Laroth's control.

Also, resurrection spell will now create some nasty barbarian units placed randomly over the world.

Also remember that Laroth is the Spirit Student, not the Death one. He doesn't really have power over the classic undead such as skeletons since he controls souls

Laroth is controled by the barbarians, like the four horsemen. When he dies, all units with immortal, or death magic die with him. I'm considering changing this, seeing as it kills every single scion and d'tesh, but it stays for now.

this is kinda overpowered and not really "logical", the only units that should disappear are the ones linked to him.

On a side note, you could also make the netherblade destroyable, so that units killed by it can be resurrected once it is destroyed

Grimmer grimoire: I added in more results for the grimoire. As always, code stolen from Magister.

nastier is always good ^^

MODULE 7 - rituals --Coming soon. Probably after the release of 1.31
Requires spirit module
Eclipse: Esus only. Adds Council of Esus to some citys and units. Removes Empyrean from some citys and units. Civilizations with Esus religion gain golden age, civilizations with Empyrean gain several turns of disorder. Can be built once.

Fun tool for Esus

Tainted Mana: All units with channeling 1,2, or 3 have a chance of gaining enraged, modified by the units magic resist. All mana nodes returned to base mana, and baddies spawned based on the mana source. Can be built unlimited times.
Example: The ice node goes back to raw mana, and an ice elemental spawns there.

Why not

Rising ocean: Raises ocean level. Can be built unlimited times.

Currently undoable without graphic glitches

Bar gates of death: All units, on death, have a 100% chance of becoming Slaughs. They also remain on erebus forever. SPOILER is blocked from happening. However, units can still only be resurrected once. Can be built once.

interesting

Master of magic: All units with channeling 1,2 or 3 are teleported to the capitol of the nation that has created this ritual. Resistable. Can be built once.

don't really like this one. It seems particularly unfair.

 

[Sjru]

MODULE 6 - Spirits
I stole the idea, and some of the code, for this mod entirely from Magister Cultuum. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, so hopefully he is pleased to see his ideas adapted for Rife.

Short version of changes: You can now resurrect all heros, and some units. Also, Basium gets a hammer!

Long, somewhat technical version: When a unit dies, its soul, or "Slaugh" as Magister puts it in his mod, has a chance of lingering in Erebus. Units with the hero promotion have a 100% chance of remaining. Other units have a (unit level * 4)% chance of remaining. Death, life, and especially spirit promotions boost your chances.

Hero units, and units with spirit 3, remain forever. Other unit's souls remain for (unit level + 5) turns. After that they are gone for good.

What the resurrection spell does, is pick a random Slaugh, and bring it back to life. Each unit can be resurrected in this fashion once.

Example: Your hero, Bambur dies. Five hundred turns pass. Then, you get an archmage with life 3, and cast resurrection. Bambur comes back to life, with all the promotions he had previously.


Basium enters the game with a hammer. When a demon is killed by the unit weilding the hammer (Usually Basium, but you can kill him and take the hammer like any equitment), the unit with the hammer gets +5% strength. Any unit with entropy 2 can destroy the hammer. When that happens, every demon killed with the hammer reappears, under the control of the demon barbarian faction.



Lastly, there is a price for casting resurrection repeatedly. After a certain number of casts (I'm still trying to decide how many) something really horrible happens. DON'T READ THE SPOILER UNLESS YOU ARE THE SORT OF PERSON THAT LOOKS AT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS EARLY!!!

Spoiler :

If you cast resurrection enough, Laroth will use the spell to escape the vault he is stuck in (Look at the Magister mod for lore, not me).
Any units killed by the netherblade, by Laroth himself, or by Laroth's legionnaire's will resurrect each turn on Laroth's square. Any undead units in a two square radious will come under Laroth's control.

Also, resurrection spell will now create some nasty barbarian units placed randomly over the world.

Laroth is controled by the barbarians, like the four horsemen. When he dies, all units with immortal, or death magic die with him. I'm considering changing this, seeing as it kills every single scion and d'tesh, but it stays for now.

The number of times you need to cast resurrection to call Laroth scales with map size. That said, on a regular size map, you need to resurrect a total of sixty unit levels to call Laroth (That's three level twenty units, or six level ten units.) This is another thing I'm still balancing.

While I stole many of the ideas from Magister's mod, the implementation is rather different. In this module, the units come back fully, not as champions with the promotions they had in life. The SPOILER mentioned above is also new. Lastly, you can't control who you resurrect, unlike in Magister's mod.

You cannot resurrect units of other religions, nor can you resurrect other nations national hero's. No one can resurrect any of the five horsemen of the apocalypse. There is also a new hero, Gosea, who can only be obtained through resurrection.


In case you are wondering how I did this...

Spoiler :

If a unit dies and IF it manages to become a slaugh, a copy of the unit is placed on square 0,0 of the map under barbarian control. The copy has the Slaugh promotion, which makes invisible, blind, flying, free unit, and some other things. If the unit doesn't have the hero promotion, it also gets a unit duration. Resurrection picks a random unit on plot 0,0 with the slaugh promotion to resurrect then moves that unit to the casters square (changing to your nationality) with all promotions EXCEPT the slaugh promotion. The new unit also gets weakened soul, which prevents it from being resurrected again.

Units killed by the hammer and nether blade have a 100% chance of becoming Slaughs, only they have their own special promotions that make them ineligable for resurrection. Like with the hero promotion, they remain there forever, until they are summoned.

You know how the grigori, archos and others have that little counter for things like heros and spiders? Well, it turns out every nation has their own civ counter, but most are not being used. Each time resurrection is cast, I add +1 to the civ counter for the barbarians. SPOILER happens when that counter reaches the magic number.

I have a question with this "Spirit" module.
Will the added "Ghost" units that are used as placeholders stats, have an significant impact in overall game perfomance? Specially in late game, when hundreds of units dies every so and then.

How does the AI handle this?

 

[vali]

I have a question with this "Spirit" module.
Will the added "Ghost" units that are used as placeholders stats, have an significant impact in overall game perfomance? Specially in late game, when hundreds of units dies every so and then.

How does the AI handle this?

As for how much impact it has on the game, I'm not really sure. Basicly, the way the code works is every time a unit dies, it gets asked the following. If at any point the answer to a question is yes, the code stops:

1. Are you mortal? (as opposed to immortal)
2. Do you have the souless promotion (In-game name is weakened soul)
3. Do you have the Slaugh promotion?
4. The game asks which of twelve promotions the unit has. Then, it gets a random number to check if the unit becomes a Slaugh or not.
5. If the unit becomes a slaugh, that's where a bunch of stuff happens.

There are some ways to speed this up, like using the python library and moving the questions order around. I'll do that for the next version.

As for how the AI handles resurrection, I set the weight of the resurrection spell at 1000. So, the AI should spam resurrection as much as it can. Of course, considering how rare an AI archmage unit with life 3 is, this might not be much of an issue.

question: if there are two governors in a city , what bonuses are applied ?

Currently, all the promotions from all governor units are applied.

i like the idea in a whole, might need some balancing . Units becoming angels and manes should be barred from resurrection too

Can't do it in a modular mod. The UnitKilled function creates angles/manes, THEN creates slaughs, so adding this would disqualify all religious heros and units from resurrection, something I'm not interested in doing. Sorry. You are, of course, more than welcome to make use of my code and mod your own game.

This is the point i'll start becoming more critical. First i really like the idea of laroth coming back, BUT he would only be able to come back after having conquered (if it's even possible) the Death Vault. And Casting Resurrection actually makes his spirit army weaker, since resurrected souls are leaving the Underworld battleground. I'd rather link the return of laroth to the number of Slaugh created, and then using resurrection

My rational is that the resurrection spell weakens the barrier between life and death, allowing the crossing between to grow easier with each cast of the spell. As you cast resurrection in-game, you WILL get warnings that grow steadily grimmer about a spirit trying to hijack the resurrection spell. That said, I will bend the lore however I have too in order to make an idea I think is cool work, so...

Also remember that Laroth is the Spirit Student, not the Death one. He doesn't really have power over the classic undead such as skeletons since he controls souls

I stole that code from Magister. If Magister says Laroth can take over the undead, so do I. But once again, my first concern is game balance, so I'll remove it if it proves unbalanced.

On a side note, you could also make the netherblade destroyable, so that units killed by it can be resurrected once it is destroyed

The problem is ALL units killed by the Netherblade become Slaughs, so this would open up a bunch of lower level units for resurrection. It'd be annoying to cast resurrection, wait seven turns hoping to raise your hero, and get a level 1 unit originally killed by the Nether blade.
What I could do, is make it so that destroying the Netherblade destroys all spirits captured by the Netherblade. A good bit of Laroth damage control.

Thanks again for the feedback, and I'm glad people are enjoying the modules I've made. Even if you all like my brothers module the best .

 

[Sjru]

I have a request for your city governor module:
Could you make those benefits to be also applied to Scion's Melante?
She's also a city governor, and could make Melante more interesting.

 

[vali]

I have a request for your city governor module:
Could you make those benefits to be also applied to Scion's Melante?
She's also a city governor, and could make Melante more interesting.

Sure. I also made some changes to the Shapeshifter module while I was at it. First post was updated with the details.