RifE 1.20 Ideas, Requests, and Feedback

[Dean_the_Young]

One thing I would enjoy are more/better starting eras, for advanced era start. There's a balance I like between starting with almost nothing (base start), and having all the first 3 technologies learned of every route. I don't want to start in the ice age, with nothing, but I don't want to already start with some powerful techs (like Knowledge of Ether, writing). I want them closer, but not already handed to me, if that makes sense. Classical era is too advanced.

I'd think an option of the first two tech levels would be nice. Everyone starts low, but better rounded. You can still 'rush' one route or another, but you won't have to abandon normally basic infrastructure technologies (mining, mysticism for god king) to get there.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

Edit: Never mind, stupid user error.

 

[running4cover11]

I'm too new to RifE to really be making suggestions, but I'm going to anyway (so there!). Anyway, I thought a cool tile improvement could be a Traveler's Inn (I realize we already have inns, but I mean something for workers to build not in cities). Sooooo, here are my thoughts:

-Must be built on a tile with a road
-Generates +1/2 (whatever is best balance-wise)
-Friendly units in tile gain +10/20% regen (again, I don't know how you would balance this)
-Tiny random chance of generating some kind of friendly Mercenary/Barbarian-style unit (or maybe even an enemy barb)
-Becomes available at the same time as the city Inn building

Anyways, just a thought

Oh, by the way, if you do wind up merging Wildmana into RifE I will most likely either sob tears of joy or start a cult in your honour... do you like Ox Blood?

CC

 

[smithroadtrip]

First, let me start by thanking Valkrionn, Keal, and everyone else who has contributed to FFH2, FF, and RifE. These are mods are so amazing, and make playing playing BtS be literally painful. Although I haven't posted very much before, I've been playing FFH2 for a while, and I have a suggestion.

The Bannor chain of command promotions frequently effect everyone in the line above you, or below you. I like this. The regular great commander promotions only effect the people immediately below you. I assume this is because the commander promotions were made at a time when you couldn't have more then 2 ranks of people. My suggestion is make the regular commander promotions (e.g. Archer Commander) have the effect [gives minions Archer Commander]. This would allow A general's Archer Commander promotion to effect every in his tree, not just the people one row below him.

The way it is right now, if I have a leet 500xp general who is an archer commander, it doesn't effect the Master Sargents or anyone else, only the Captains directly below him.

This change would make the Bannor chain of commander even more powerful, without helping anyone else. Perhaps the Bannor should receive a nerf to balance it out. Perhaps not. But I think this change makes sense.

Once again, thank you for all the time and effort you have put into this project. What you have done with the Civ 4 engine is truly amazing.

 

[Fluesterwitz]

I've installed the "Normal units as Great Commanders"-mod and it appears to work in so far as I get the occasional message that a tactician has emerged someplace else. However, I have not been able to turn any of my own lvl 10+ units into commanders, but get new style GCs, supposedly from the Bannor-mod.

1. How to deactivate the Bannor-mod?

2. How to turn my experienced units into commanders?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Cyrusfan]

More XP, please.

By way of explanation:

Spoiler :

I still haven't found any formulas for XP, so I'm doing a little shooting in the dark her, but bear with me. I've looked through several year old threads in the FF forum on XP so some of my information may be out of date. When training was introduced for garrisoned units, a similar mechanic was applied to units that get free xp over time for other reasons (like arcane, potentially heroes) which drastically cut back they're ability to earn XP, most notably in the case of arcane units which aren't built for fighting. There was an additional mechanic (may or may not be the same one) that gives diminishing returns for barbarian XP as a unit (hero only?) increases in level. Finally, there is a mechanic which gives ranged attackers XP to the tune of half the damage they inflict (some XP since they can never kill anything that way, but not much since they can't die that way, either), where I assume "damage" is based on the unit's health (from 0 to 1) rather than reported strength (from 0 to strength, including bonuses).

To be honest, I'd rather toss out the caps on arcane units (though there may have been some, I didn't see any opinion expressed that they needed to be nerfed-this is a side effect of the system) and the diminshing returns on barbarians (since at high levels you already need more XP per level and the XP you get is based as far as I can tell on the combat odds so it already decreases per unit as you get stronger), but I *love* everything else in this mod, so I want to work within the system.

First, I would tweak the ranged XP and apply it to everyone.

Spoiler :

"Half of damage done" is a fair enough napkin calculation, but it ignores the strength of the foe. Also, why aren't other units getting XP for non-fatal combats (like the scout who heroically beats back a full strength hippogryph only to have it withdraw and attack next turn at strength .2 for minimal XP reward overall). Thus, I propose the following modification:

-Before each battle, calculate a Potential XP reward for both units based on their best strength (so archers would use their defense value modified for the tile they're in when attacking, because the real threat to them is that their foe will counter attack on its turn) at full health (regardless of the units' current health). [If this is too much hassle, just use the strengths appropriate for the battle, at full health-that should be a minor modification to the Improved Combat Odds mod in RoM and elsewhere.]

-After battle, before a destroyed unit is removed from play (if any), each unit gets XP equal to PXP times damage done (that's 'times one' if the dead unit started combat in perfect health). Thus units with Spirit Guide (which IMHO should apply when attacking as well) and summoned units (which give some of their XP back to their summoner) would earn XP even when defeated. And if either unit withdraws, both units still get something for the effort.

-Now use this mechanism for other circumstances that result in partial damage. Because of the lack of threat in 'partial' battles, it may be appropriate to reduce the XP reward to a ranged attacker by half or by half the withdrawal rate for a unit that could withdraw. Rewards for spells that damage a single unit which do set health damage, ignoring strength, might be reduced to one third. For spells that damage multiple units in a single casting the reward might be reduced to one-fifth (or use the largest award from all affected units). There's plenty of room to fudge constants here, I just think these situations should be earning XP, too.

-This would have to be considered on a case by case basis for suicide effects. A Pyre Zombie could earn XP for the battle itself that it loses (in case that matters to other units) but not for the explosion that occurs after it dies.

Second, I would give active spellcasters some XP as they do their thing.

Spoiler :

Spells that summon or inflict damage directly already would get XP from the mechanics above. So I'm only talking about buffing and utilitarian spells here. I suggest something fairly straightforward. Arcane spells require an upgrade which requires a particular Channeling promotion. So, I'd give 1XP per spell level (Fair Winds and Blaze would get 1XP, Fertility and Stoneskin get 2XP, Birth and Vitalize get 3XP, as examples). I would feed this through the barbarian diminishing returns funnel to be consistent with units that can spend their time 'on the hunt.' Divine spells look to be primarily available at the second tier of those units, so maybe 2 XP for all of them? I'll trust your judgment on that (assuming any of this idea is useful).

Third, I would give some nominal training empire wide if there are any appropriate facilities connected to a unit's current location.

Spoiler :

This seems to me to be more difficult to do and may not be worth it since we can manually shift units back and forth for training. It may make for a little less micromanagement.
-Basically the training cap for any unit, which doesn't move, in your territory (or maybe just those in cities) would be equal to the maximum cap overall your cities.
-The training XP would be the maximum of A)what it would get if it's in a city and B)one third of the maximum training XP among the cities with the highest cap.

Finally, I'd give bonus XP for destroying units based on the defeated unit's level.

Spoiler :

What I have primarily in mind here is heroes and vampires. 1XP per level is too much as it swamps the XP award from combat odds. But it's the proportion I want. It should matter if the victorious unit is of similarly high level, but the bonus should still matter. I suggest the maximum of 0 (this is a positive bonus only) and one fifth of the defeated unit's level minus one tenth of the victor's level. This bonus is not to be part of PXP.

Anyway, I don't know if that's at all workable, but it's been bugging me the last couple of days. It's off my chest now. Thanks for reading.

 

[Valkrionn]

Well, some of that will already be addressed in the next version (whenever I get it to a releasable state); Namely, when a unit withdraws from combat the OTHER unit gets xp as well.

The rest... I'm honestly considering moving it all to a flat amount of xp a turn, rather than an arcane formula noone quite understands. Would need a lot of balancing, for mages in particular, but potentially worth the effort.

 

[Cyrusfan]

Oh, if the arcane formula noone quite understands is going away, that would simplify things considerably. Units withdraw from combat when they would have been destroyed, if I understand correctly, so you could just give the XP they should have gotten from victory. Ranged partial attacks are already taken care of.

I'd still like to see some XP for partial damage effect (summons that lose, damage inflicting spells), but maybe those might better use just the range XP effect? It just bugs me that some units could take actions that deprive other units of XP, and those XP simply be lost into the ether rather than awarded to the responsible unit.

I'm sure you've already considered it, but you probably need to mildly reduce the per turn training from their current values. You'll still want training to take long enough to be different from just giving a +XP on creating the unit.

As for mages, I'm not sure how much you need to worry. Beyond their combat upgrades, they mainly just get versatility. I might suggest altering the rates for their spellcasting abilities, too. .2 for spell level 1, .3 for 2, and .5 for 3. That way all those free promotions for multiple mana nodes aren't as overpowering and you get a little extra incentive to specialize early on. By the way, do they get checked for free promotions whenever they're in a city (like copper/iron/mithril users), or just when they're built/upgraded?

I really liked my last idea of what I might call a 'fame' XP bonus.

Spoiler :

Another way to go about it is add
-one fifth the level of any world unit.
-one eighth the level of any national unit.
-one tenth the level of any unit over level 5 (which is about the point I start developing a fondness for otherwise mundane units)

These would all be accompanied by a message "PlayerA 's UnitA has defeated the great UnitB belonging to PlayerB (+<award>XP)" Or something like that.

 

[odalrick]

The rest... I'm honestly considering moving it all to a flat amount of xp a turn, rather than an arcane formula noone quite understands. Would need a lot of balancing, for mages in particular, but potentially worth the effort.

Yes, please!

There is already a diminishing return built in with increasing xp required for each level. (And to a lesser extent most promotions having less effect than previous ones.)

Second, I would give active spellcasters some XP as they do their thing.

It could be argued that this is already the case. Each turn a mage casts a spell, they get some experience.

Not only that, to reduce micromanagement, at the end of each turn, if the mage hasn't cast a spell, they automatically cast a training spell!

 

[Valkrionn]

Summons already give the mage that summoned them xp when they die, and mages gain xp each turn so if the system is changed to a flat rate I don't see a need for normal spells to grant xp.

As for what you suggested... It's already in, for certain units. Orthus, the dragons, and so on... They all have a higher xp value than a base unit. Could be made modifiable by promotions, and have promotions grant a small bit of xp.... Would be a royal pain to balance though, so I don't think I'd attempt it for quite a while. Already need to balance an entire new alignment axis, major new features, and so on.

 

[Riot_Starter]

I found the formula for per turn XP gain (arcane, training, etc.) and made a spreadsheet to let people test different values for themselves and understand how it works.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ar5z8b262qevdEI0S19VX0FzT21JTVFEUDk0M2I0UXc&hl=en

---

Also, ranged combat works like this (for those who are confused):

Damage taken = 2d30 * Attacker Str / Defender Str

This damage is on the HP scale (1 to 100) or percent of total str if you want to think of it that way.

Attacker Str = Air combat str * (1 + (All normal combat modifiers)/2)
Defender Str = Normal defending str

So combat promos, woodsman, etc. only work half as well on attack, while defender gets full defense bonus. Also keep in mind, most ranged attacks have a damage limit.

Ranged XP = 0.05 * Damage / ( Current XP / 5 + 1)

---

I also think XP per spell for arcane units is bad. This encourages micromanaging, which is what we want to reduce. And if we make them get XP for not casting a spell every turn (for the sake of reducing micromanagement) then how is that different from the current system?

 

[Cyrusfan]

I think summons give their summoner some portion of the xp they had at the moment they die, at least according to the old FF threads. Summons that lose their first battle never get any xp to send back to the mage, unless I'm missing something. I guess I'm just arguing for consistency with the archer mechanic at this point, otherwise. Which doesn't make a whole lot of difference with a flat rate system. It should probably be one or the other, and the flat rate is less hassle.

It could be argued that this is already the case. Each turn a mage casts a spell, they get some experience.

Not only that, to reduce micromanagement, at the end of each turn, if the mage hasn't cast a spell, they automatically cast a training spell!

Huh? In the sense that they get xp each turn, that's true. I haven't noticed any extra spell effects, so I assume you're talking about the model.

I didn't notice the extra xp for Orthus and friends. I'm usually too miffed by the bunch of units I sacrificed to get them in beatable states to be looking for that.

Spoiler :

Another way to go about that would be to give a couple of experience increasing bonuses Famous and Legendary (or synonyms since I think the latter is already used) with high level or age prerequisites. These could be automatically assigned to some of the nastier barbarian units.

Famous requires level 10 (just something high, should be higher than the 100 free xp given a her would produce) or age 150 (again just something high, more than the age a hero would be to get his maximum free xp), grants +10%xp, +5% strength (mainly to make it appealing).

Legendary requires level 15 and Famous, grants +15%xp, +5% strength

Any unit defeating a Famous unit gets the Famous promotion for free and any unit defeating a Legendary unit gets both for free.

Edit Riot Starter, thanks for finding that. It's best we know what we're talking about.

Edit2 Actually, does anyone know the formula for combat xp?

 

[Riot_Starter]

Ok, I spent some time playing with some numbers and found out some interesting stuff (What? You don't find numbers interesting? Freak...). Since people (most importantly, Valk) seem to want training/arcane XP to move on to a flat rate system, I thought I would play with the numbers to see if I could make one work. What follows are the distilled conclusions from all my number tweaking and how I came to those conclusions. If anyone wants it, I can upload the spreadsheet I used for all this, but it's a bit more complicated/cumbersome than the first one.

Notice: All these turns are for normal speed. Gamespeed will affect these turns.

First: Arcane XP

I first found the # of turns to upgrade a 0 XP adept to a mage and archmage using the current system and taking into account taking the Channeling 2 promo when he hits mage and I even started the adept with one spell promo for the extra XP gain and assumed he didn't take any others. I did this for a plain adept, one with potency, one with mages guild, and one with both. I then found flat XP gain rates which gave comparable turns. I removed any XP gain from the spell spheres, since I think that won't be necessary in this system since it was sort of tacked onto the old one. The results are:

These are the best rates I found to match up the mage times, but the archmage times are a bit less. I thought about this and I think this works perfectly. The reason is that people were wanting non-combat and non-summon spells to give XP, but I think this simplifies it by just giving them a little bit more XP per turn. To balance everything out, the summon XP may need to be removed to prevent those casters from gaining too much XP, but that will be something to think about.

Another feature(?) of this system is how it interacts with XP gain on training compared to before. Presently, if an adept gains 2 XP on training (from apprenticeship, for example) it only saves you about 4 or 5 turns of waiting till it hits mage. Now it will save you about 20 turns (for plain) to around 13 with potency of waiting around, which seems to work with the slightly longer mage times. This may or may not be good depending on the wanted end result.

-------

Second: Training XP

I did something similar to arcane XP for this. I found the # of turns to gain certain lvls from 0 XP.

I couldn't settle on one fixed rate here because it depends on the desired result. A rate of 0.15 XP per turn gave closer turns for the lower lvls, but a much lower time for higher, while 0.1 stayed kind of high for the lower lvls and lower for the higher lvls. So this depends on desired balance and how fast you want troops in towns to lvl up. And also, ditto for the apprenticeship thing from the arcane explanation.
---------

There are a lot of little tweaks that I could have done, but this simple per turn XP rate is easy to understand and easy to balance because its easy combine rates from different sources and predict the outcome. Also remember that there are limits that can be placed to XP gained, which gives another dimension to tweak.

 

[Valkrionn]

Wow. This will prove useful...

Still likely to be put off for a bit, but now I might actually do it sooner, rather than later.

Actually, this could be pretty easily done in a module by another modder....

 

[Riot_Starter]

Actually, this could be pretty easily done in a module by another modder....

After I posted all that stuff, I started thinking the same thing. Its just changing some promos. The only problem are the buildings. I don't think a tag exists for giving a set amount of XP. I would have to make up temporary promos gained while in a city with the correct building that gives XP. It would be a quick fix, but would work until the proper XML tags are added.

Sigh... This XP stuff is consuming my Saturday.

 

[Cyrusfan]

That's kind of impressive. And good point about gamespeed. My desire for per spell xp, while it would be in keeping with the notion of getting xp for doing stuff, was largely about getting an extra source of xp because I think the xp gain rate for mages is too slow to significantly diversify spells (and get any of the combat ratings). I'm more looking at "How does a mage get level 11, 15, and 20?" where the real balance issue is "How long does it take and adept to become a mage and a mage become an archmage?" There are (or were at one point) promotions for having three ranks in collections of spells and it boggles my mind how,even with a massive number of nodes and vassals, one could hope to get an archmage 16x3 promotions off of free xp.

That's a very important point about how a flat rate makes Apprenticeship worthwhile again.

BTW, I just had a wolf attack one of my warriors, run away, and the warrior levelled up. So there is some mechanism for giving xp to a unit if it's opponent runs away. Which leaves the question of whether a fleeing unit gets xp (I think they do in BtS already) and suicidal summons (which is largely philosophical issue at this point).

 

[Cyrusfan]

After I posted all that stuff, I started thinking the same thing. Its just changing some promos. The only problem are the buildings. I don't think a tag exists for giving a set amount of XP.

Non-programmer question: Couldn't you use the existing tags and rewrite the training formula as XP(current xp,training value)=training value? With those training values all lowered, that is.

 

[Riot_Starter]

Non-programmer question: Couldn't you use the existing tags and rewrite the training formula as XP(current xp,training value)=training value? With those training values all lowered, that is.

I could, but that would require recompiling the DLL, aka making another mod.

 

[Valkrionn]

After I posted all that stuff, I started thinking the same thing. Its just changing some promos. The only problem are the buildings. I don't think a tag exists for giving a set amount of XP. I would have to make up temporary promos gained while in a city with the correct building that gives XP. It would be a quick fix, but would work until the proper XML tags are added.

Sigh... This XP stuff is consuming my Saturday.

Honestly, with the system in place already that is the easiest, most time effective method. Having a promotion automatically acquired while in a city with a set building is trivial, takes very little computing time as it's all done in the DLL, and makes life easy for modders as then all balancing is done in 1 file, PromotionInfos.

The only issue is it's not easy for the PLAYER to see, but that can be fixed via building help texts. If you give it the proper formatting ([ICONBULLET]Can train units to X xp, at a rate of Y per turn), it even looks like a normal building tag.

So really, while it would be more than possible to allow buildings to add xp to a unit... I see no reason to do so, while those tags are in place. Wouldn't save turn time at all, and it's arguably easier for the modder (Same number of files to open in the long run, less files to search through in order to balance it, but more text to add).

That's kind of impressive. And good point about gamespeed. My desire for per spell xp, while it would be in keeping with the notion of getting xp for doing stuff, was largely about getting an extra source of xp because I think the xp gain rate for mages is too slow to significantly diversify spells (and get any of the combat ratings). I'm more looking at "How does a mage get level 11, 15, and 20?" where the real balance issue is "How long does it take and adept to become a mage and a mage become an archmage?" There are (or were at one point) promotions for having three ranks in collections of spells and it boggles my mind how,even with a massive number of nodes and vassals, one could hope to get an archmage 16x3 promotions off of free xp.

That's a very important point about how a flat rate makes Apprenticeship worthwhile again.

BTW, I just had a wolf attack one of my warriors, run away, and the warrior levelled up. So there is some mechanism for giving xp to a unit if it's opponent runs away. Which leaves the question of whether a fleeing unit gets xp (I think they do in BtS already) and suicidal summons (which is largely philosophical issue at this point).

Next version, both combatants will gain xp when one withdraws. Can't remember which one gets xp currently.

Non-programmer question: Couldn't you use the existing tags and rewrite the training formula as XP(current xp,training value)=training value? With those training values all lowered, that is.

That would require DLL work. Not necessarily HARD DLL work (Not sure, honestly, haven't looked at it), but distributing a DLL moves it from being able to be completely Modular (And hence working for RifE, FF, and Wild Mana) to being essentially a new mod, and MUCH harder to uninstall.

 

[odalrick]

The only issue is it's not easy for the PLAYER to see, but that can be fixed via building help texts. If you give it the proper formatting ([ICONBULLET]Can train units to X xp, at a rate of Y per turn), it even looks like a normal building tag.

So really, while it would be more than possible to allow buildings to add xp to a unit... I see no reason to do so, while those tags are in place. Wouldn't save turn time at all, and it's arguably easier for the modder (Same number of files to open in the long run, less files to search through in order to balance it, but more text to add).

The one issue is that xp per turn and maximum xp given are not connected by promotion.

Example: Suppose we have two promotions, Unready which gives 1 xp per turn until the unit has 15 xp and Influence which gives .25 xp per turn until the unit has 500 xp.

Suppose a unit, let's say a Tower Mage gains both promotions. It would then gain 1.25 xp per turn until it has 500 xp*. (That was a bug anyway, but it illustrates the point.)

It's something to be aware of.

* Actually it may be 515 xp, I haven't tested it thoroughly.