The Touhou Mod Development Thread

[bouncymischa]

Well, I can confirm the Demons do now spawn, and I'm a big fan of the fact that they don't cost maintainance, given that I spent the majority of my game at war with Attila and not making any money. They do not, however, get the EXP from buildings in the city they spawn at. (Personally, I'm kinda sad there's no ranged one of a mage variety either, though I suppose that'd crowd in on Mima's turf.)

I also lost said game, because apparently on standard with several city states being taken out of the game, the diplo victory only asks for like 10 delegates. If it weren't for that, it might have been possible to win, although I don't think I got everything I needed. (Also the aforementioned lack of any money thanks to Attila, good neighbor that he is.)

Regarding Shinki's terrain bias, I have to say that desert is SO much better than tundra and snow. desert has Petra to assist living in it, but there's nothing like that for the arctic terrain and without some way to improve that terrain beyond literal tile improvements, I honestly think it could in most situations be better to run Shinki from a jungle or grassland than snow. (And that's WITH a mod that gives a cursory food to snow. >__>)

It'd be nice if she had some way to improve her lesser terrains, even if it was say, adding a small bonus after building the travel agency in a city. (Which, unlike Petra isn't really something you can beeline for in the early game.)

Otherwise she seems like a pretty good culture victory civ, although I'm not the type to fully utilize her late game free army for conquest.

Hmm... I've been considering tweaking her UA to provide some better early game bonuses. Given that the denizens of Makai are accustomed to living in harsh environments, maybe some kind of yield bonuses. Alternatively, tying the bonuses to the Travel Agency may be good, as you said, to help them take off more in the later game? Hmm.

Also, DarkScythe reported a bug with the icons, and I found out I hadn't updated them after I changed the icon atlas around a bit. Should be fixed now.

In the meantime, I've started planning my Marisa civ...

 

[Huitzil37]

Also you should totally do what ViceVirtuoso did and have fake "TSL" locations for YNAEMP. You'd probably run into the same problem as him regarding not having them all in Japan though.

...The heck does this mean? I have no idea what either acronym stands for.

Also, you can always do what I did, and name cities after something associated with the leader.

 

[bouncymischa]

...The heck does this mean? I have no idea what either acronym stands for.

Also, you can always do what I did, and name cities after something associated with the leader.

TSL = "true start locations"

YNAEMP = "yet not another Earth map"... or something like that.

Basically, it refers to assigning proper starting locations to civs on Earth-like maps, so historical civs appear in the appropriate locations. When it comes to fictional civs it gets trickier, though, as most tend not to be scattered about on Earth (or even exist on Earth!)

 

[nvdr]

I've been putting more thought into my Reimu idea that I posted previously and I've come to the conclusion that it's not exactly right to have her only source of extra gold be military actions. (Especially if there's some sort of gold penalty applied.) So I was thinking that there should also be some sort of gold bonus based on tourism as well. After all, people visiting the shrine means donations.

I'm not sure if that should be part of the previously mentioned Donation Box national wonder though. If the DB is an IEC replacement, the tourism gold could be on a market replacement, perhaps even as the only yield the building has. (Call it a Goshintai?)

I also do think there should be SOME penalty to gold, but perhaps it could be in the form of a hidden building given at the start of the game that has high maintenance (3-4 gold?), forcing you to find a quick solution and making it easier to overcome in the long term versus a flat percentage.

 

[bouncymischa]

I've been putting more thought into my Reimu idea that I posted previously and I've come to the conclusion that it's not exactly right to have her only source of extra gold be military actions. (Especially if there's some sort of gold penalty applied.) So I was thinking that there should also be some sort of gold bonus based on tourism as well. After all, people visiting the shrine means donations.

I'm not sure if that should be part of the previously mentioned Donation Box national wonder though. If the DB is an IEC replacement, the tourism gold could be on a market replacement, perhaps even as the only yield the building has. (Call it a Goshintai?)

I also do think there should be SOME penalty to gold, but perhaps it could be in the form of a hidden building given at the start of the game that has high maintenance (3-4 gold?), forcing you to find a quick solution and making it easier to overcome in the long term versus a flat percentage.

With Shinki and Yumemi near completion, I've been starting to move ahead with brainstorming the next set of mods I'd like to make. I've got a model for mushroom patches I can use for Marisa, and the people making fantasy models have promised a "witch" model eventually, so she's starting to take shape. So I've started brainstorming Reimu as well.

I'm not entirely sure about the idea of penalizing her gold output yet -- as much as poverty is part of Reimu's character, it's also an issue in game design that players tend to dislike penalties. Ultimately I'll have to see how she develops as a civ.

A Tourism-to-gold/faith conversion may be possible -- there is a Player.GetTourism() Lua function I can use to find out how much Tourism Reimu is generating per turn, and I can give her gold and/or faith in proportion to that, much like the Moriya Shrine converts faith into science.

Another idea I've been strongly considering is having the Donation Box add gold/faith from trade routes -- specifically, producing bonus gold/faith for every trade route connected to the city.

A third idea I've been considering is giving the Shrine Maiden units the ability to build shrine improvements. I've got art for a shrine improvement sitting around that I was debating how to use (I don't want to give Reimu a standard UI), but while working on Yumemi I figured out how to make a Citadel replacement. Since the Shrine Maidens would be a Great General replacement, it would be quite possible for them to build shrine improvements instead of (or in addition to) Citadels. So what would the shrine improvement do? While working on improvements, I found out that you can determine if a certain plot has a trade route going through it. So the idea I've been tossing around is that these shrine improvements could be parked on or near trade routes, and generate additional gold or faith for Reimu.

So there's multiple ideas I've been tossing around, and admittedly, all three could actually be used. The first could be part of the UA, along with the "get gold from killing units" thing (which I'd like to definitely keep as part of her UA). The second would be part of the EIC replacement. The third would give the Shrine Maidens something to do when not helping fight things, although I'll probably also give them the ability to do something when stationed in cities.

Either way, there's a lot of different options.

 

[nvdr]

I'm not entirely sure about the idea of penalizing her gold output yet -- as much as poverty is part of Reimu's character, it's also an issue in game design that players tend to dislike penalties. Ultimately I'll have to see how she develops as a civ.

A thought would be to have some way to enable the penalty if you want it, but otherwise leaving it out. I know ViceVirtuoso had his spoiler Madoka civs disabled but able to be enabled in an older version of the pack, so maybe there's a way to do that here to whatever applies the penalty?

A Tourism-to-gold/faith conversion may be possible -- there is a Player.GetTourism() Lua function I can use to find out how much Tourism Reimu is generating per turn, and I can give her gold and/or faith in proportion to that, much like the Moriya Shrine converts faith into science.

Another idea I've been strongly considering is having the Donation Box add gold/faith from trade routes -- specifically, producing bonus gold/faith for every trade route connected to the city.

Tourism seems like the best way to allow for a "peaceful" money source, although it probably can't be a raw Tourism = Gold since that means you could get 1000+ gold per turn from tourism alone, even if it's only in the late game.

The donation box trade route thing also seems very viable, especially since being a OCC civ with no annexing options means there's no real reason to not build national wonders. Hopefully the bonus will still apply to her own internal routes as well, given how those would need to be set up.

A third idea I've been considering is giving the Shrine Maiden units the ability to build shrine improvements. I've got art for a shrine improvement sitting around that I was debating how to use (I don't want to give Reimu a standard UI), but while working on Yumemi I figured out how to make a Citadel replacement. Since the Shrine Maidens would be a Great General replacement, it would be quite possible for them to build shrine improvements instead of (or in addition to) Citadels. So what would the shrine improvement do? While working on improvements, I found out that you can determine if a certain plot has a trade route going through it. So the idea I've been tossing around is that these shrine improvements could be parked on or near trade routes, and generate additional gold or faith for Reimu.

I'd think a shrine should provide faith, although probably not to the extent of a holy site, as well as some kind of military buff since it's a general's tile improvement. (I wouldn't say it should be like the citadel though.) Other than that I'm not sure what exactly it should do. The trade route thing is a cool idea though.

Also my suggestion is to call the UI a Branch Shrine. While the only instance of one in the canon is a Moriya one at the Hakurei shrine, it's the most logical name for a shrine as a tile improvement. It's a shame that you can't do achievements for mods, because having one for making a branch shrine within a tile of Moriya's original capital would be a great one. (Since it seems you'll be the one making Reimu, there could still be some sort of thing between the two.)

So there's multiple ideas I've been tossing around, and admittedly, all three could actually be used. The first could be part of the UA, along with the "get gold from killing units" thing (which I'd like to definitely keep as part of her UA). The second would be part of the EIC replacement. The third would give the Shrine Maidens something to do when not helping fight things, although I'll probably also give them the ability to do something when stationed in cities.

A thought is that if you had all of these things, especially if their bonuses are potent enough, a gold penalty would be next to meaningless after the early game.

I'm definitely very interested to see Reimu in action with all these ideas, especially since I'm a fan of interesting mechanics on OCC civs. (Let's be honest though, nothing will beat Big Boss.)

Also here's the big question:

What would Reimu's colors be given that both Austria and Japan exist?


I've also been trying to think up a good tengu setup (lead by Lord Tenma obviously), but beyond a series of White Wolf melee units (since losing them from an upgrade would be a shame) and being defensive, I haven't come up with much. I suppose culture would be the logical choice of victory but tourism seems like the antithesis of the tengu in canon.

The idea with the wolves would be that they'd be your melee units the whole game, getting new unit names as they upgrade over the course of the tech tree. All instances get a defensive bonus and increased vision distance as well.

 

[DarkScythe]

I haven't poked my head into this thread yet, though I've read posts here from time to time.

I don't think penalties are a bad thing, as long as the bonuses justify having such a penalty. That's subjective though, and some people probably do hate having any penalty. If you do have one though, there's little point in making it optional -- who would actually enable it in that case? A penalty needs to be balanced out, so if you disable it, it would either make the Civ way too powerful (if it depended on it for balance) or it would make the Civ too hard (if balance made the assumption that the penalty wasn't active.)

If the Civ will be OCC, what kind of internal routes would they have? I haven't actually played a game with the OCC mode selected yet, so I'm not sure. That said, trade routes that only shuttle food or production back and forth between cities aren't modified by the Buildings table.

 

[nvdr]

If the Civ will be OCC, what kind of internal routes would they have? I haven't actually played a game with the OCC mode selected yet, so I'm not sure. That said, trade routes that only shuttle food or production back and forth between cities aren't modified by the Buildings table.

Well the idea was that she'd expand by forcefully taking cities I believe (hence shrine maidens replacing generals), and you can always relocate a caravan or cargo ship to another city after making it elsewhere. That said, if you can't add yield to internal routes I wouldn't say it's a bad thing, just kinda disappointing. That said, internal routes would probably still trigger the trade route thing bouncymischa mentioned as being possible for the branch shrine UI.

The OCC thing is just what I'm lead to believe Venice style no settler civs should be referred to as, but there's not really a clear terminology to my knowledge. When I say that regarding Reimu, just imagine Venice's UA without the Merchant.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Yeah, OCC specifically refers to the game option in which you can never have more than one city -- not even a puppet. There really isn't a term for a Venice-style Civ...other than "Venice-style Civ."

By the way, food/gold from internal trade routes can be increased via dummy policies (look up the Iron Curtain policy from Order as an example). Though if you're trying to give them any other sort of yield, you'd need a Lua solution which checks Trade Routes and their destinations, and provide the yield through dummy buildings based on whatever parameters you want.

 

[DarkScythe]

Yeah, internal routes can be changed via a dummy policy (I've done this with my Civ) and if you go into Lua, you can check the origin and destination cities in order to allow or restrict those trade routes from being affected by the Shrine UI, I think.

And yeah, there's a difference between OCC and Venice, which is why I asked. Venice sort of plays like a OCC, but it isn't, because you can buy/puppet extra city states.. As far as I understand it, OCC literally means you're stuck at one city.. Any city you capture automatically gets razed.

 

[bouncymischa]

Hmm... so we need an acronym to refer to Venice-like civs, since they're not truly OCC. How about, POCCY, for "Pseudo-One City Challenge, Yeah!"?

 

[DarkScythe]

I want some Pocky, for some reason..

 

[bouncymischa]

I've also been trying to think up a good tengu setup (lead by Lord Tenma obviously), but beyond a series of White Wolf melee units (since losing them from an upgrade would be a shame) and being defensive, I haven't come up with much. I suppose culture would be the logical choice of victory but tourism seems like the antithesis of the tengu in canon.

The idea with the wolves would be that they'd be your melee units the whole game, getting new unit names as they upgrade over the course of the tech tree. All instances get a defensive bonus and increased vision distance as well.

I considered making a Tengu civ in the past (lead by Lord Tenma), but when apolodog made his Aya civ I put it on the back burner. It would be rather interesting to revisit it, now that I've gotten more skilled at making civs. My plan for a UU was to actually make a Ninja unit, since there are some vague connections between the tengu and ninjas in mythology. (I believe the some tengu actually trained ninjas?) For the UB, it would likely have to be a Newspaper Office, of course.

In terms of the UA, my original thought was just something scouty... increased sight range and mobility for all units, or something. Pretty generic, but this was early on. Rereading the wiki on the tengu, I suspect I'd go with something more like a Tourism civ, or at least a "Great Works of Writing" civ -- perhaps something like the Durrani. Bonuses from great works of writing, and such. It is rather interesting to read how their society does seem to revolve around their newspapers, with the social classes being divided up into such things as "the nimble information corps", "the printers", "the businessmen", and so on...

 

[bouncymischa]

Ugh... I have this feeling I'm not working on civs fast enough, though. Honestly, I look at how fast other people put out stuff, whether civs or unit models or whatever, and then realize that most evenings I usually don't get much of anything done on my own projects. ;__; I want to do so much more!

Anyways, with Shinki 99% done and Yumemi 95% done, I could use some help brainstorming on the next few projects...

Mima -- currently around 50% done? I need to do more testing with the various units I've got going for her, but her UI and UU are pretty much complete. The big issue with her is her UA -- I have the "casts spells when you go to war" part underway, with various ideas for what the spells will be like, but that alone doesn't really seem to make a good UA. It'd be nice to have some kind of passive effect that can run during peacetime, but it's hard to think of what Mima's "Dark Magic" evokes. Currently the best idea I've got is that she gets some kind of bonuses while being denounced...

Marisa -- just started coding her, but I've got a rough template for her abilities. I've got the Mushroom Patch working, so I need to decide whether to tie it to the Atelier or to the founding of a city. Either way, it'll probably function like the Seidi from Poukai's Sami civ -- building an Atelier or founding a city will reveal Mushroom Patches nearby. If it's tied to the Atelier, it should be an earlier building, probably replacing the Library. If not, then it frees up the Atelier to be a University replacement, and the Atelier could have more unique effects. The UU will be a Witch, although I'm not sure what abilities it'll have. For the UA, I'm probably going to go with "Stealing the Precious Thing", with an emphasis on tech stealing -- both a bonus to spy tech stealing through a dummy policy, and getting a boost to researching technologies that other civs you've met have researched. Marisa's ability to copy attacks other people have developed (Master Spark, Non-Directional Laser, Orreries Sun) is an interesting part of her character, so it seemed good to adapt as her UA.

The main issue is what her focus should be -- should she be a science civ? Her UA, at least, will help her keep pace in the tech race. But I tend to dislike civs with a single focus, so... science and gold? It seems to suit her nature as a thief fairly well...

Reimu -- I've discussed most of the ideas I've got for her already, although I haven't started any coding. (I've been working on models for the Branch Shrine, though.) The main question I've been having is what her focus should be -- she'll be a POCCY civ that puppets cities she conquers, with an emphasis on military expansion. I'm mostly wondering how much I should include faith as a focus for her, as it is a usable resource, but at the same time she's not a very good miko at building up faith. On the other hand, faith does seem like a good secondary resource to get from her various uniques, such as the Branch Shrine and Donation Box.

One option I considered is to make her a bit of a growth civ -- since there's lots of fanon of people donating food to her to help keep her fed, the Branch Shrines and Donation Box could generate a food bonus instead of faith...

 

[nvdr]

Regarding Reimu as a food civ: I don't see an issue with food bonuses as long as they're not inherent in a building or her ability, but instead rely on the established trading and tourism concept. I do think that some sort of religious bonus could be nice though, perhaps in the form of spread instead of raw faith. (And maybe some sort of thing that makes it harder to remove your religion from your capital if that's possible.)

I also still think that her ability should be called Fantasy Nature.

As for the others I can't say I can think of anything, but I'll be sure to let you know if I do think of something.


And regarding the Shinki release, I did one game so far, got a good tundra start (in terms of resources) and proceeded to be extremely powerful, however I did not have Attila as my neighbor this time. In terms of how powerful she is for culture victory, it's no worse than my hyper tall Eirin game was and ended about the same turn. I suppose it really depends on how nice your neighbors are in letting you get powerful.

 

[DarkScythe]

Snowballs are generally like that -- pretty slow and fragile early on, but once you get them going, they start growing out of control.

In my case, I had Japan for a neighbor who decided to attack early, but I had a tech lead at that point since I was doing the science beeline, and managed to beat his entire army back with 2 Crossbowmen and creative use of the terrain. After that I laid siege to his Capital for about 3000 years until I won the culture victory with tourism. Free Demon units only helped since I really didn't need to train an army. (They don't even need to attack, just sit in range of Kyoto for a turn and get the hidden promotion just from being shot at.)

 

[nvdr]

I suppose I should note that a hilly tundra start is very powerful in terms of production, and might actually put it on par with getting a desert start and Petra, although you don't get the food that gives.

Spoiler :

 

[bouncymischa]

Regarding Reimu as a food civ: I don't see an issue with food bonuses as long as they're not inherent in a building or her ability, but instead rely on the established trading and tourism concept. I do think that some sort of religious bonus could be nice though, perhaps in the form of spread instead of raw faith. (And maybe some sort of thing that makes it harder to remove your religion from your capital if that's possible.)

I also still think that her ability should be called Fantasy Nature.

I've started coding Reimu, and called her UA Fantasy Nature.

I suppose I should note that a hilly tundra start is very powerful in terms of production, and might actually put it on par with getting a desert start and Petra, although you don't get the food that gives.

Reading up on Petra, from what I can tell it gives Desert tiles +1 Food and Production. Since a Tundra tile generates 1 Food base, adding +1 Production to it seemed like it would bring Tundra tiles up on par with Petra. Admittedly, I suppose Desert tiles have access to Farms, so it's still not quite as strong... but I do think Tundra camps can be really nice with Shinki.

Still, sounds like Shinki's working out well for people, so that's great to hear!

Yumemi's nearly complete... just need to polish up a few things, but they gameplay now seems fully ready. I'm preparing Marisa's graphics today, so I can start playtesting her, and I've started coding Reimu. Unfortunately, I borked up Mima's code, so I've gotta wind her back and redo the various things I messed up.

 

[DarkScythe]

I suppose I should note that a hilly tundra start is very powerful in terms of production, and might actually put it on par with getting a desert start and Petra, although you don't get the food that gives.

Spoiler :

Jesus, that is a godly start.
With so many sea resources there, just pick up that God of the Sea pantheon and rush out a lighthouse/harbor and that city will be completely set.

 

[DeletedSettler]

After a handful of games against and as the Human Village and Makai I'm getting convinced they're just a touch overpowered. Makai's extra production is a big deal, and stronger cities mean it's that much harder to stop them before they go out of control, even if I go to stop them ASAP. I'm not sure what Keine's problem is but she becomes a diplomatic/tourism/domination powerhouse in ways I've never seen any other AI achieve.

Moriya Shrine and Oni Clans are fun to play with/against, the Kishins are a fun way to get golden ages from war.