RifE 1.20 Ideas, Requests, and Feedback

[Valkrionn]

I wasn't aware of such and I didn't see anything about such in the existing code, so I presume they have so far been implemented just with XML order (or whatever previously determined the order) and leading spaces in the building name? Regardless, it doesn't handle those yet, but all I need for that is a reliable way of detecting them.

Right, that's exactly how it's done. The only cases I know of are the Alcinus Keep (BUILDINGCLASS_KEEP_MAIN, which must be followed by all BUILDINGCLASS_KEEP_SECONDARY) and the Archos Nest buildings, all of which have the <!-- Must be after Archos Nest in XML --> comment after the name comment. Should add this to the Alcinus buildings as well.

Edit: After checking again, there is one more place; The Dural Colleges. The religion-specific buildings have the <!-- Must be after School of Theology in XML --> comment.

hahaha, so what if the Shrine of Sirona, Odio's Prison, etc. are IN barb territory? Defense again?

The problem I'm finding is when your unit takes damage (either attacking or defending), you can bet before it can heal more barbs/animals will spawn right next to it. Especially bad is when a unit with 2 or 3 movement pts does this.

Anyway, an example in my next post.

Exactly, defense. Elohim are just as able as anyone else when on the defense, they just don't attack as well. Unless in their own territory.

 

[Valkrionn]

I sent my Grigori Scout out into the Wilderness to capture a Bear. He was attacked and damaged by a group of 3 Trolls that spawned one tile away. He survived, but 5 turns to heal.

What you see in the screenshot is what happened in a few turns. That's 23 barbs, etc. zeroing in on my Hunter/Adventurer. Most of those 23 units have an Age of less than 6.

I know you said it is all random how barbs, etc. spawn, but the map is less than half full and here we have more than 20 barbs spawning very close to my wounded unit. Then, there is the matter of barbs being able to see through the fog of war to join in the fray too.

Anyway, after I took the shot, I had another 10-15 barbs appear. With 3 movement pts. I sent my Hunter around the Wilderness as much I could and enjoyed the hilarity of this troop of 40 barb units following.

Maybe it is all random, but I have been able to repeat this 'feat' often. I think if you try it by sending a lone unit out into the wilderness you will see what I am saying.

Actually, Orcish barbs (NOT animals) spawn in groups. 5-6 at a time, typically... So that's actually just about 4 spawns, which seems typical.

 

[Ornedan]

Right, that's exactly how it's done. The only cases I know of are the Alcinus Keep (BUILDINGCLASS_KEEP_MAIN, which must be followed by all BUILDINGCLASS_KEEP_SECONDARY) and the Archos Nest buildings, all of which have the <!-- Must be after Archos Nest in XML --> comment after the name comment. Should add this to the Alcinus buildings as well.

Edit: After checking again, there is one more place; The Dural Colleges. The religion-specific buildings have the <!-- Must be after School of Theology in XML --> comment.

Altered the code so that it considers any building whose description begins with a whitespace as a "sub-building" and attaches it to the last encountered non-sub-building.
This will not work for the Dural Colleges, as their names do not seem to have the leading whitespace. (It did work properly for Thaumaturge's Keep when I tested my Scions save.)

 

[Sarisin]

Actually, Orcish barbs (NOT animals) spawn in groups. 5-6 at a time, typically... So that's actually just about 4 spawns, which seems typical.

The largest group I've seen spawn at one time is 5. Sometimes less. This also includes Frostlings as well as Trolls and the occasional group of Minotaurs and Cyclops. But, you're right, most of the time it is Orcs.

 

[Sarisin]

Maybe you can help me understand the following:

My Hunter is on a forest/hill with a 50% bonus for defense. I spot an enemy unit that I can kill. The posted Combat Odds are 99.9%. I decide not to kill the unit...and get killed by it the next turn without moving my unit.

I realize there can be some leeway with defend and attack values, but wouldn't it seem with a 99.9% chance of winning AND a 50% bonus that I should win that fight? This seems to happen more than it should.

Granted the posted odds in the game are wonky at best. There are times I think the game would be better if it just skipped giving you odds for so many aspects of the game - combat, withdrawal/fleeing, resisting magic, getting a certain type of GP, etc.

Over several games just for fun I tracked the GPs I received and compared it with the one the odds said I should have gotten. 15 out of 20 times I did not get the one with the highest % of getting. Sure, there were a few that had close odds, but also many that were 80-90+% vs. 10 or less percent.

Again, you just really have to take the odds given in this game with a grain of salt...or just ignore them completely.

 

[Valkrionn]

Altered the code so that it considers any building whose description begins with a whitespace as a "sub-building" and attaches it to the last encountered non-sub-building.
This will not work for the Dural Colleges, as their names do not seem to have the leading whitespace. (It did work properly for Thaumaturge's Keep when I tested my Scions save.)

I'll look at it, but from what you said I think it means it adds it to the last building the city gained? That doesn't work for anything but the Thaumaturge's Keep.

I'll honestly likely just keep those buildings out of order; If the mechanic is used more often, then I'll add a tag which sets it as a sub building for whatever building is listed.

The largest group I've seen spawn at one time is 5. Sometimes less. This also includes Frostlings as well as Trolls and the occasional group of Minotaurs and Cyclops. But, you're right, most of the time it is Orcs.

What I meant by Orcish barbs is the 'standard' barb faction; Referred to as Orcs in the code, because the majority of them are. So yes, it includes all the others you listed, just not Demons or Animals.

Maybe you can help me understand the following:

My Hunter is on a forest/hill with a 50% bonus for defense. I spot an enemy unit that I can kill. The posted Combat Odds are 99.9%. I decide not to kill the unit...and get killed by it the next turn without moving my unit.

I realize there can be some leeway with defend and attack values, but wouldn't it seem with a 99.9% chance of winning AND a 50% bonus that I should win that fight? This seems to happen more than it should.

Granted the posted odds in the game are wonky at best. There are times I think the game would be better if it just skipped giving you odds for so many aspects of the game - combat, withdrawal/fleeing, resisting magic, getting a certain type of GP, etc.

Over several games just for fun I tracked the GPs I received and compared it with the one the odds said I should have gotten. 15 out of 20 times I did not get the one with the highest % of getting. Sure, there were a few that had close odds, but also many that were 80-90+% vs. 10 or less percent.

Again, you just really have to take the odds given in this game with a grain of salt...or just ignore them completely.

Not sure, but there are any number of things which aren't accounted for very well (and really can't be, because they only affect SOME battles, like First/Defensive Strikes). Like you said, odds need to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[25Hour]

A pet peeve of mine (inherited from base FFH): It seems to me that Bounty Hunter is not a terribly worthwhile promotion, despite its cool flavor and mechanic. +2 gold/combat is peanuts, given that BH almost always has the opportunity cost of a promotion granting +20% strength, which is really quite powerful and very often means the difference between victory and defeat. (Optional thought experiment: How common is it that you would trade 2 gold for an extra 20% strength for a given combat?)

I would suggest that the gold amount per combat be upped to +5 or so, to make the promotion more comparable with Combat promos and such.

 

[Ornedan]

I'll look at it, but from what you said I think it means it adds it to the last building the city gained? That doesn't work for anything but the Thaumaturge's Keep.

I'll honestly likely just keep those buildings out of order; If the mechanic is used more often, then I'll add a tag which sets it as a sub building for whatever building is listed.

No. All "sub-buildings" are attached to whicher normal building immediately precedes them in building infos XML order. Screenshot of how I have it working now - Keep and Nest.

As I said, the only thing it currently won't work for is the Schools, because they don't have the distinctive leading spaces in their names. Attached is patch for the text XML file to add the spaces.
A tag to explicitly specify sub-building status would certainly be less of an ugly hack way of doing it though

 

[Leverkuhn]

Two things I'd like to see:

1. An official list of suggested game settings. You could start with simply disclosing what the various mods use when designing/testing. Typical settings for me would be normal game speed, a relatively crowded map (i.e. Erebus Continent small/low sea/11 civs; maps with plenty of room for everybody seem to make it too easy to hammer the AI), flexible difficulty starting at Emperor (will ramp up to deity fairly quickly, but without the possibility of an insane early game invasion), and no animals (just because they're broken this patch; it's not my preference). But there's still a lot of options I haven't tried much, and I may be missing out on a better experience. Certainly, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a mod this big to be optimized for all settings, and it would be useful to know what the mods are designing around.

2. A little rebalancing of the standard traits. One of the things I love about rife is the cool unique traits for the emergent leaders. Work on the vanilla traits, however, has lagged behind. Not only do many lack flavor, being imported from BTS without only minor adjustments, but they're so wildly imbalanced that variety suffers. Even if for example I wanted to play for a cultural victory, I'd be crazy to use a creative leader, which doesn't seem right at all. To me, expansive, organized, and industrious are weak, and arcane and creative absurdly so. And each could be more interesting (-50% building cost effects are pretty bland). In order for the new minor leaders mechanics to really work well, I think this is going to have to be addressed, though it won't necessarily be easy.

 

[twinkle]

so um, this was an issue for me in vanilla civ, but has anyone ever figured a way around this? when you're beginning a game and choosing your civ, you have to choose a leader before you can choose your civilization. i always wished the process were reversed. just makes sense to me. i dunno.

1. and a real question: is it gryphons or gryphon flight or what, but there are some units which when they attack, they cause ALL units in the defending stack to move out of their square. there could be 1 gryphon attacking a stack or 10 archers and the result is that ALL archers will leave the plot. when i first encountered this, i was playing as the frozen, so i just figured it was the buggy frozen. but then i encountered the same mechanic while playing the mechanos. it seemed to be the gryphons that were doing it though i need to test it some more to find out.

 

[lemonjelly]

so um, this was an issue for me in vanilla civ, but has anyone ever figured a way around this? when you're beginning a game and choosing your civ, you have to choose a leader before you can choose your civilization. i always wished the process were reversed. just makes sense to me. i dunno.

IIRC, this is called in the .exe and can't be changed. Because, I'd like that to be changed as well.

 

[Sarisin]

so um, this was an issue for me in vanilla civ, but has anyone ever figured a way around this? when you're beginning a game and choosing your civ, you have to choose a leader before you can choose your civilization. i always wished the process were reversed. just makes sense to me. i dunno.

1. and a real question: is it gryphons or gryphon flight or what, but there are some units which when they attack, they cause ALL units in the defending stack to move out of their square. there could be 1 gryphon attacking a stack or 10 archers and the result is that ALL archers will leave the plot. when i first encountered this, i was playing as the frozen, so i just figured it was the buggy frozen. but then i encountered the same mechanic while playing the mechanos. it seemed to be the gryphons that were doing it though i need to test it some more to find out.

I'm not sure what you are saying in the first. I use the Random leader/civ generator anyway.

On the second, did any of the attacking units have Fear? That could move all the Archers away from the tile. It seems random, though, whether all the units move or some stay behind. I'm not sure if the Gryphons have Fear, but many of the powerful animals and beasts do have that.

 

[Randomness]

I've gotten annoyed at the many early AI deaths due to barbs and animals lately. So, I decided to play a game without them. After about 20 turns I realized that the game really needed barbs, so I created several barb cities, raised their pop, gave them some production, and the amount of barbs was managable, but still noticeable. I know this is going to be fixed in the next version, but untill then, this may be a decent way to keep some of the AI alive.

 

[Valkrionn]

A pet peeve of mine (inherited from base FFH): It seems to me that Bounty Hunter is not a terribly worthwhile promotion, despite its cool flavor and mechanic. +2 gold/combat is peanuts, given that BH almost always has the opportunity cost of a promotion granting +20% strength, which is really quite powerful and very often means the difference between victory and defeat. (Optional thought experiment: How common is it that you would trade 2 gold for an extra 20% strength for a given combat?)

I would suggest that the gold amount per combat be upped to +5 or so, to make the promotion more comparable with Combat promos and such.

I'll take a look at the promotion... I doubt I'd increase the gold per combat, but how about a postcombat effect that grants a temporary 'Free Upkeep' promotion? Similar to how the Scavenger promotion works for the Doviello.

No. All "sub-buildings" are attached to whicher normal building immediately precedes them in building infos XML order. Screenshot of how I have it working now - Keep and Nest.

As I said, the only thing it currently won't work for is the Schools, because they don't have the distinctive leading spaces in their names. Attached is patch for the text XML file to add the spaces.
A tag to explicitly specify sub-building status would certainly be less of an ugly hack way of doing it though

Ah, so you changed the actual python to put them in alphabetical order, rather than xml order? That works then.

Two things I'd like to see:

1. An official list of suggested game settings. You could start with simply disclosing what the various mods use when designing/testing. Typical settings for me would be normal game speed, a relatively crowded map (i.e. Erebus Continent small/low sea/11 civs; maps with plenty of room for everybody seem to make it too easy to hammer the AI), flexible difficulty starting at Emperor (will ramp up to deity fairly quickly, but without the possibility of an insane early game invasion), and no animals (just because they're broken this patch; it's not my preference). But there's still a lot of options I haven't tried much, and I may be missing out on a better experience. Certainly, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a mod this big to be optimized for all settings, and it would be useful to know what the mods are designing around.

2. A little rebalancing of the standard traits. One of the things I love about rife is the cool unique traits for the emergent leaders. Work on the vanilla traits, however, has lagged behind. Not only do many lack flavor, being imported from BTS without only minor adjustments, but they're so wildly imbalanced that variety suffers. Even if for example I wanted to play for a cultural victory, I'd be crazy to use a creative leader, which doesn't seem right at all. To me, expansive, organized, and industrious are weak, and arcane and creative absurdly so. And each could be more interesting (-50% building cost effects are pretty bland). In order for the new minor leaders mechanics to really work well, I think this is going to have to be addressed, though it won't necessarily be easy.

I'll try and answer, but I'm on the laptop, which doesn't have Civ installed; Can't remember specifics.

1. My games (when I play to play, not test) are: Erebus Continent (Standard settings, maybe adjust sea level), Normal map, Normal speed, No Tech Brokering, FlavorStart, WildMana/FeralMana/ManaGuardians, Double Bonuses, Double Events, Lock Modified Settings (or whatever it's called; No worldbuilder), All UF's. Can't remember the difficulty name, it's 2 steps below Deity.
2. This will likely be done... Any suggestions you have, feel free to post. Haven't started it just yet.

so um, this was an issue for me in vanilla civ, but has anyone ever figured a way around this? when you're beginning a game and choosing your civ, you have to choose a leader before you can choose your civilization. i always wished the process were reversed. just makes sense to me. i dunno.

1. and a real question: is it gryphons or gryphon flight or what, but there are some units which when they attack, they cause ALL units in the defending stack to move out of their square. there could be 1 gryphon attacking a stack or 10 archers and the result is that ALL archers will leave the plot. when i first encountered this, i was playing as the frozen, so i just figured it was the buggy frozen. but then i encountered the same mechanic while playing the mechanos. it seemed to be the gryphons that were doing it though i need to test it some more to find out.

I assume you mean when doing a 'Play Now!' game? No, that's in the EXE; Can't be accessed.

As for the other question, Fear. If you're unlucky (Or the unit is much stronger than you), and all your units fail the fear check, they'll all run. Griffons are one of the main animals with Fear.

 

[Sarisin]

As for the other question, Fear. If you're unlucky (Or the unit is much stronger than you), and all your units fail the fear check, they'll all run. Griffons are one of the main animals with Fear.

What is the fear check?

Is still the only way to 'defeat' Fear giving your units Courage?

It seems strange how it works. I have a group of identical barb mountain trolls on a tile. My Giant Lizard with Fear attacks and kills one. Sometimes the whole remaining stack will move outside my border (or a tile away if in wilderness), but sometimes one or more will be left behind on the tile. They are the same, and certainly none with Courage.

There is also a unique item you can get from lairs, etc. that allows you to scatter units much like Fear. It does the same as above.

One thing that is a little bizarre is when you have two units both with Fear meet up, for example a Great Spider and Great Lizard. You would think the Fear would cancel out, but it doesn't.

 

[Valkrionn]

What is the fear check?

Is still the only way to 'defeat' Fear giving your units Courage?

It seems strange how it works. I have a group of identical barb mountain trolls on a tile. My Giant Lizard with Fear attacks and kills one. Sometimes the whole remaining stack will move outside my border (or a tile away if in wilderness), but sometimes one or more will be left behind on the tile. They are the same, and certainly none with Courage.

There is also a unique item you can get from lairs, etc. that allows you to scatter units much like Fear. It does the same as above.

One thing that is a little bizarre is when you have two units both with Fear meet up, for example a Great Spider and Great Lizard. You would think the Fear would cancel out, but it doesn't.

By 'Fear Check' I meant the odds it will affect the unit; The chance the unit will resist, in other words. Believe it's affected by the strength difference between the units as well.

If some units are left, that just means that some units passed it and were unaffected.

Fear doesn't actually have the 'immune to fear' tag... Should add it.

 

[twinkle]

i see. so does the fear check run against the entire defending stack? kind of like collateral fear damage?

i can see how it's a good thing, but i'd think it would have diminishing returns for a larger stack. to the point where a huge stack would be nearly un-fear-able. logic being that a lone scout is more likely to get feared by a monster, but what if you have a large, secure army fortified within a city or fort? wouldn't they be less likely to be feared due to... all those factors? i mean, you're an archer in a city. a gryphon approaches and you think, "oh noes, abandon the safe, well-lit city with walls! seek shelter in the exposed, dark, and scary swamp!".

 

[lemonjelly]

Is there a Unique Improvement that gives Air Mana?

I can't think of one, and there really should be one.

Obviously, it should have something to do with Air and Tali, but I can't think of any good ideas.

 

[Valkrionn]

i see. so does the fear check run against the entire defending stack? kind of like collateral fear damage?

i can see how it's a good thing, but i'd think it would have diminishing returns for a larger stack. to the point where a huge stack would be nearly un-fear-able. logic being that a lone scout is more likely to get feared by a monster, but what if you have a large, secure army fortified within a city or fort? wouldn't they be less likely to be feared due to... all those factors? i mean, you're an archer in a city. a gryphon approaches and you think, "oh noes, abandon the safe, well-lit city with walls! seek shelter in the exposed, dark, and scary swamp!".

It may already, I'm honestly not sure; Haven't checked the formula myself.

Is there a Unique Improvement that gives Air Mana?

I can't think of one, and there really should be one.

Obviously, it should have something to do with Air and Tali, but I can't think of any good ideas.

Not that I can think of. Does Aifon Isle?

 

[lemonjelly]

Aifon Isle is water, because the Aifons were the people of Danalin, god of Water

Tali is the god of the Hippus and the Austrin and possibly the Lanun. She is playful, and in the story where Mammon falls, she imitates a cloud and annoys him xD

EDIT: 1200th post