Orbis - the original thread

[Caradoc]

How long did this situation last? Was there a notification in the lower right of screen? I am just wondering if it could be the worldspell which blocked spellcasting.

You have solved it, Sherlock. The Amurites had cast Arcane Lacuna. (I did not realize their Worldspell had changed.)

 

[Visage Darkskin]

Great updates. I'm having my prospector fix. I may have spotted a bug. Keelyn, my restless neighbor, built strange mechanical-looking contraptions on top of her mana sources. Although I'm not completely sure, I presume this is be the way Mechanos use Mana (given their angel-aversion). If this is correct it may be necessary to disable such ability from adepts other than the ones Mechanos can build.
Regards.

Edit: Two more:
1. Regeneration spell has degenerated. Accessing the Body II sphere with vampires does not allow me to cast it. I can cast all other spells correctly though. A quick review shows me that the spell does not appear listed in the civilopedia nor does it appear listed when reading the description for Body II in the civilopedia either.

2. Building mines with calabim workers in tiles with ancient forest does not clear the forest, although it does clear them if building a farm or cottage.

Edit 2:
Millers and prospectors are getting the crazed promotion after not discovering a resource. Too much pressure drives them crazy?

 

[Marnok]

You have solved it, Sherlock.

Actually it's MARnok. M-a-r... oh nevermind.

 

[sputnik323]

It would be nice if the chances for millers and prospectors to find resources were greater. In a multi game, my friend had 3 millers working to find a resource on different tiles around his whole city for 50 turns and never found one... although he lost a ton of millers due to crazed and barbarian spawns. - a ton of production was lost to never find anything.

Also the corp that consumes fish, crab, ect. - would be cool to add a workboat that found naval resources, and could plant kelp.

So far... having tons of fun with orbi - no CTD's

 

[Ahwaric]

Keelyn, my restless neighbor, built strange mechanical-looking contraptions on top of her mana sources. It may be necessary to disable such ability from adepts other than the ones Mechanos can build

You are right that these contraptions are mechanos replacement for mana nodes. The problem is, I have never enabled it to any unit except mechanos adeptos & tech priest, but I have seen it Sheaim lands, too. I suspect foul event at play, but am not sure.

1. Regeneration spell has degenerated.

Added back

Building mines with calabim workers in tiles with ancient forest does not clear the forest, although it does clear them if building a farm or cottage.

That is correct. Mines in Orbi do not remove forests, jungles & ancient forests, but initially produce one hammer less.

Millers and prospectors are getting the crazed promotion after not discovering a resource. Too much pressure drives them crazy?

It would be nice if the chances for millers and prospectors to find resources were greater. In a multi game, my friend had 3 millers working to find a resource on different tiles around his whole city for 50 turns and never found one...

The chances for both prospecting & breeding are
5% big bad monster (as in lair exploring)
35% special bad (randomly chosen from a list: crazed, demonic possesion, diseased, poisoned, crazed cannibal, monsters dependant on terrain(lich, minotaur, wolf rider, griffon, treant, vines, lich, minotaur))
30% nothing
20% some gold
10% resource.
Adventurer adds +10 to the result. Also, you will get nothing if there is already any resource in the plot if you should get resource.
I am afraid to increase the chances too much (you get a new resource at the point of your choice after all), but 15% to get resource and if there is already one, some gold instead of nothing, can sweeten the deal a bit. I will probably lower the adventurer effect to 5%.
As for the crazed thing, it is a big pressure - all this time alone, full of greed, in wilderness, surrounded by demons, giants, wolves... It can drive you mad But I will add some possible results to make insane results less common. Ideas?

Also the corp that consumes fish, crab, ect. - would be cool to add a workboat that found naval resources, and could plant kelp.

So far... having tons of fun with orbi - no CTD's

I am not sure if I want to add any resource seeking to hansa - they are trade company, already have special ability (trade mission for some gold). Also from the all sea resources they use only fish.
Sea resources are also quite common and not diverse enough - just fish, crab, calm (pearls if you are lanun), all over the coast.
As fot the kelp planting - I am thinking of it for a long time, now I have a vote to go for it
Glad Orbi is stable - that was one of the goals of rebuilding it from scratch, to check for possible bugs.

I think I collected enough for one patch, I will post it later today (want to change some animal spawning rates first and get your opinion on proposed changes...)

 

[Visage Darkskin]

Cool. I imagined prospecting might have been given a lair-type mechanism. With the risk of being redundant, maybe adding the chance of discovering a hidden lair would be another possible, but unlikely, result.
If the adventurer promotion increases the possibility of a good result, does that mean that millers and prospectors can also get it from prospecting or they also have to go dungeon hunting. If that is the case, there are usually not many (if any) dungeons left by the time I can found the guilds, so it would be very unlikely that they should get that promotion.
I think 10% is a good chance for finding resources. More might be just too much.
I got the demonic possession event for another unit, exploring a dungeon, and it changed its handsome looks to an infernal UU, it may be interesting if it did the same to millers and prospectors. Mmhh, bread from the Miller from Hell... tastes like despair.

 

[Alzara]

WOW! Ahwaric! A completely updated version. Shame I'm gonna have to wait 8 weeks to try it

Look forward to seeing how this develops!

Al

 

[sputnik323]

10% chance for resource finding does seem like a balanced ammount. Especially because I think you gain access to corporations earlier in the game than before. Although it seems like less than 10% while playing sometimes... rotten luck! - To make the crazed promotion have less impact, the loyalty promotion could be added as a rare good result. BTW how do corporate units get the adventurer promotion (never got it before)? do they have to search dungeons or is there another way?

The Doviello now have a special flavor that makes them a lot of fun in the begining of the game - and scary when you are on their bad side. - which is how I think it should be. have you thought about giving their mounted line totems?

Ive also been messing around with the mechanos civ, so far they seem interesting... but I haven't done too much with them yet.

Im also wondering what you are planning for future versions... your ideas with espionage and thieves guild seem fun. Do you have ideas for a corporate unit for the thieves guild?
Im also wondering if you looked into trying to put in jeckels fort mod?
Parts of snarko's mod, the AI deplomacy would also be a good addition to orbi.

 

[Bulbhead]

Tried this mod for the first time the other day and have to say its great! The additional buildings and other extras make playing builder style so much more fun. I can live without ranged combat though, I personally think it doesn't add anything to the gameplay and just adds additional micromanagement which is not good in multiplayer. I have also adjusted a few other things for multiplayer, like resetting settlers and workers to their normal costs in Civ IV and speeding up tech research and buildings in the GameSpeedInfo.xml - that's something I don't like about FFH, it concentrates on single player epic games.
Anyway, my real concern is that I'm getting a lot of OOS issues with Orbis014, every multiplayer game so far has to be ceased due to OOS issues somewhere between turn 100-200. In FFH 0.34 we're getting an OOS once every 20 games or so. What additional features are the usual suspects here? And is there an easy way to disable ranged combat? I love almost everything else in Orbis 014 though and think a lot of the changes make FFH even better.

 

[Ahwaric]

Adventurer is avarded for bigbad and big good results. There is no big good chance in prospecting & breeding, so only 5% chance for bigbad counts. Or rather it would if I did not forgot to enable it. It is fixed in patch a.
Great news about doviello I have yet to see their units with totems, but I did not play that much. And expanded dens I added in 14a should help that too.
I thought of the mounted line, even disciple in fact. I think it fits melee better, and melee is more in Doviello theme, but I do not say no.

Mechanos are not really finished, but certainly playable, both spell & hero should be ok. But I am seeking ideas for expanding and balancing them.

I have checked the jeckel's forts and like the idea, just try to find a way to implement it (and need some time to actually do that).

@Bulbhead
The OOS is is bad. I did not realize that it is so much different in Orbi than in unmodded FfH. I mostly tweaked things, there is no SDK and only limited python additions. So far I suspect mostly some guilds (guild of the nine, stewards, circle of eight and resource finding), maybe ranged combat too (but it is an option from Final frontier so should be ok). But I need OOS logs to really find out. So, if anyone can provide them I will be glad to check. I do not play LAN & internet games thet much.

Ranged combat is hard to disable, you need to manually edit CIV4UnitInfos.xml and for example set airrange to 0. But Orbi is balanced taking ranged comabt into account and i.e. siege engines with just disabled ranged combat are useless. I also like it - it is great to soften hard enemy & attack great stacks.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

expanded dens sounds very interesting Ahwaric. care to explain what that is? ( I guess it's explorable animal lairs ? I hope so, I've always wished for that )

 

[Ahwaric]

ehem, I mean expanded as more types, in fact one for every animal, except elephants and giant spiders (I may add spiders later). I was thinking of making griffin's nest explorable but for now it is just another den.
Sorry to disappointing you. But I changed city ruins to produce skeletons and be explorable, so that may cheer you up a little

 

[Ahwaric]

Now that I think of it, explorable dens are not a bad idea. With their own special results of course.

Also, the patch 0.14 a is ready. You can get it at the usual place or in first & second post of this thread.

 

[scutarii]

.014 worked
.014 patch A - CTD

 

[Ahwaric]

It works fine for me.
Are you trying to load save from 0.14? Unfortunatelly, patch a breaks saves, and I forgot to write it in the file description itself.

If you want to continue the old game and do not care for the new lairs (and you probably do not in the late game), try the attached quickfix. Apart from the 4 lairs I had to remove for the compatibility all other changes should be ok.
Tell me if it works as I do not have a save to test it on.

 

[scutarii]

tried to start a new game, even deleted old folder, reinstalled orbis. CTD with patch. 0.14 itself is fine.

 

[Ahwaric]

I might have found the cause of CtD. Have you been using blue marble terrain by any chance? (there was a broken art link in marsh/wetland terrain definition)

Anyway, please get patch a again (I have fixed it), install, and let me know if it works.

 

[scutarii]

It works now...Game broke earlier when map creating reached to "init graphics", so some sort of graphical thing really was the problem...yeah, blue marble option was active.

 

[Visage Darkskin]

Hi Ahwaric, thanks for the quick update. One question, are you supposed to be able to join a Great General (the ones generated by battle) to units? If so this function might be broken, at least in the games I'm playing, 014a.
Regards.

 

[sputnik323]

Hi Ahwaric, thanks for the quick update. One question, are you supposed to be able to join a Great General (the ones generated by battle) to units? If so this function might be broken, at least in the games I'm playing, 014a.
Regards.

Yeah I have had the same problem with .14 and forgot about it.

Also have castles (defensive buildings) been removed for .14? I can still build citadels but thought both were available in .13.