Tides of Crimson (FANTASY MOD)

[ezakiel]

i guess my only real complaint was the fishery which used to be combined with the harbor and cost less maintenence kinda hard to cope with when your cities start needing them and your total income is probably about 10 (that's me in everygame slow starter)

but it balances itself out as you start to get some of the money techs. I was just a little frustrated with it at the time.

on another note army of defilers for the win =D, i will especially enjoy using them to obliterate those who enslave our brethren e.g. "spider rider"

and one little suggestion if this mod is based off of Warcraft the dark elves should have a unit called "tree of ancients" or something that when fortified gives off the same ally bonuses as a fortress if that's possible.

 

[haluu]

you will be happy to hear that the next version will have increased support for units in the early game, which will allow for a few extra dollars to be spent on more units/improvements. so the early game will be less frustrating.

as for that tree idea, i like it! i don't plan on including dark elves in the next release, but they will mostly likely be in the release after that. =)

 

[Bengal Tiger]

First off, I'd like to say great mod, you've obviously put a lot of tie and effort into this, and it shows. I've been playing a round as the Undead, and I have to say, it feels very true-to-life in that whenever I go to war I end up with an army of ghouls that I can use to swamp the enemy with numbers. Of course, one time I moved a stack of them into a mountain tile, unaware that the enemy had some invisible units there, so that wiped out about 3/4 of my stack of around 12 ghouls, which also seems kind of realistic, as a horde of zombies marching unknowingly to their death.

Anyways, the amount of free ghouls helps make up for the relatively weak quality of my troops. I'm only midway through the scond era, but I've found keeping Dark Riders back to bombard a city from a far while having a stack of ghouls escorted by a Death Knight or two to be a very effective method of conquering territory. Of course, after my stack was mostly wiped out, I had to quickly teleport Myst Warriors from overseas to help replenish the ground troops, although their weak defense makes providing an escort mandatory for them.

Another thing I've found interesting is the difficulty in building up infrastructure. The Tomb Crawlers are fairly expensive, as well as costing 2 population, making it hard for some isolated cities to build them. Of course, they are extremely useful, being able to both settle as well as work tiles, but I'm not quite sure that I wouldn't be better of with two seperate units for settling/building. Of course, that may have been the point. Another two-edged sword are the invisble ships. The AI accidently starting a war by running into them is slightly annoying, and there aren't any visible ships to provide escorts to hel pprevent this. Still, I think I prefer this to remain the same.

Anyways, great game, my only minor complaint is how leaders produced by combat seem to upgrade to Maniacs for every single race. It just seems wrong having an axe-wielding barbarian fighting alongside the hordes of the undead. Having race-specific upgrades for leaders might make things a lot more interesting, in my opinon. Although that might mean a lot of work, but also a whole new creativity process as to what abilities the leader might have.(ex for the undead maybe an undead horde unit with extremely high hit points but only average combat stats, while the Burning Legion might have a unit with an extremely high attack but vulnerable on defense, etc)

Anyways, just some of my thoughts, and once again, great mod.

 

[haluu]

Bengal,
Thanks so much for your kind words. it's people like you that make any work i put into this free mod worthwhile. =)

The undead are indeed meant to be 'handicapped' by the single settler/worker unit, as their other advantages need to be made up for. as i have stated in my initial mod post, my goal was to make all the races as different as possible, while still balancing them so that no one race had a clear advantage over others.

As for the Maniacs created from leaders, i've been meaning to change this to some sort of dragon, that would fit more with all the races. this will most likely be included in version 0.70 beta, the next release. unfortunately, due to the limitations of the civ 3 editor, i can not make this unit race-specific. =(

keep me updated on your adventures in tides of crimson. i'd love to hear more about them! =)

 

[Bengal Tiger]

Are you sure they can't be race specific? I know in King Arthur/Vuldacon's EFZI2 that each leader produced from combat upgrades to a unit specific to each faction.

It looks to me from the Editor like he simply made each "Champion" unit only available to one civ.

Oh, I got it now, he made it so that each leader upgraded to the next. So the actual leader doesn't build an army, it upgrades to whichever one is available to the civ.

 

[haluu]

wow. this is a very interesting concept. a good way to make units that aren't normally race-specific be race-specific. it will take a bit of extra work but i might apply it to starting units to get rid of the generic voodoo dolls and such. however, i might just keep the leader created one unit, most likely a dragon as i've previously mentioned.

EDIT: actually, now that i think about it, it still won't work. as the unit being upgraded still has to be the same. oh well.

 

[Bengal Tiger]

I played a round as the Demons(won Domination victory), Dwarves(Lost VP), and Humans(won Diplomatic).

However with the diplomatic victory, I got an error, attached at the bottom of this post. I'm not sure if anyone else has gotten that, so it might be a problem with how I downloaded it, so I thought I'd mention it.

Other remarks: For the Demons I had lots of fun, although I was absolutely appalled that there was not a single Mystile resource anywhere to be found on the map. I made do without the fantabulous Arch Devil, Hellspawn, and Hell's Dragon, but in all other rounds I played Mystile was abundant, so I guess I just got unlucky.

And for the Dwarves, I had started off on an island, and I discovered that there was no way for me to move Gyrocopters to the mainland, as they canot be loaded in ships. Perhaps giving them the "teleport", or "rebase" flag might alleviate this, although I don't know if that would overpower them or not.

 

[haluu]

i have already noticed the inability to load some particular units onto ships. i have already fixed it, and it should not be a problem on the next version that i'll release. so gyrocopters, dragons, etc should be able to be loaded just fine.

as for the crash, i found a bug in the text file! and i have fixed it accordingly. thanks so much for letting me know about this bengal tiger!

i'm glad you are having fun trying out the different races. =)

 

[haluu]

Just a quick update guys...

i know i've said that the next version would be released by now, but i'm trying my best not to release a product that isn't ready. I'm actually planning this next version to be v1.0 now, to take it out of beta. That means a full game that's fun to play with no bugs at all (hopefully). I've taken a lot of suggestions from you guys in this thread. i'm also considering adding more races than just the 2 additional ones planned, but that is yet to be decided. give me a few more months of patience, and I promise y'all will be well rewarded. =)

also feel free to post races you would like to see in the next release. the Blood Cult (a vampire/zombie race) and Lizardmen are already done. but i will possibly add 2 more races to that mix. =)

 

[ezakiel]

this thread has fallen quiet for a couple months.. are you still working on the mod?

 

[haluu]

sure have been! the gameplay flows much smoother in the version i'm working on (v1.0). with new buildings and a more lenient economy, there is much more freedom of choice in what to build. i'm also working on adding new concepts such as having some units with shorter (but more versatile) teleportations, unit sacrifices for culture, etc. to make the game more interesting. the new races are already extremely unique (lizardmen and blood cult), and i plan on adding 2-4 more races before i'm done.

there is also a new fantasy soundtrack and i will hopefully be able to get a new fantasy movie that is more relevant when the 'ultima spell' is cast. i've also added some interface tweeks that fit the fantasy setting better.

overall, this new version will finally take this mod's development out of beta, and i must say so far the whole game 'feels' a lot better. but because it is such a large overhaul, i don't plan on being done until about the middle of this year. but rest assured, i am working on it. =)

 

[ezakiel]

ok awesome I'm looking forward to it

on another note i just now ran into a glitch where vesfeen spawned on a volcano. I can't build a road to it so I can't use it.

 

[haluu]

Thanks for noticing that! Ill get that fixed. Also one a side note, you will be happy to know that dark elves will be in the next release. They will be the only race that can build barricades (actually a tree of ancients in my mod).

 

[Russian Soviet]

Can we expect to see new units or such fluff for existing civilizations?

 

[haluu]

Absolutely! Im going over all the existing races and editing them, especially if the original unit rosters feel 'dry'. Ive already added new units to such races as the trolls and zorge swarm, and new characteristics to other races such as the ability to build cities in water with the Naga.

 

[Russian Soviet]

Absolutely! Im going over all the existing races and editing them, especially if the original unit rosters feel 'dry'. Ive already added new units to such races as the trolls and zorge swarm, and new characteristics to other races such as the ability to build cities in water with the Naga.

That sounds really cool! Any updates planned for the humans?

 

[haluu]

Yah the humans now get twice as much income from the 'wealth' city improvement than any other race. Im also debating whether or not to add a Spell Casting system to the mod. If i do, the humans will likely have a greater variety of spells than other races.

 

[Russian Soviet]

Yah the humans now get twice as much income from the 'wealth' city improvement than any other race. Im also debating whether or not to add a Spell Casting system to the mod. If i do, the humans will likely have a greater variety of spells than other races.

Sounds cool. Loving this mod and where its going!

 

[haluu]

Thanks soviet! I appreciate the kind words!

 

[ezakiel]

sounds awesome. how are you gonna get the water cities to work right tho. people seem to have quite a lot of troubles with that; like after some meddling they can be capturable, but the AI does not know how.. if you can get it to work right then a big thumbs up to you.