Tweak Mod for Xtended + Master of Mana Updates

[SpyFanatic]

V0.3 is released!

 

[OzzyKP]

Yay for .3!!

One minor annoyance is when I have enough faith to get a new religion tech there isn’t a pop up or anything letting me know. Could we add something else n 0.4 to the left side of the screen like when you have enough culture to get a tech or trait?

 

[OzzyKP]

I think that this is due to the fact that the event of sell slaves is available also for friendly (maybe can be worth to have gold in exchange of population?) but other friendly events are not available as the other preconditions are not met... A savegame could be helpfull for debug and correct this.
Maybe a solution could be to add an additional events that triggers only for friendly attitude 'we are fine thanks' with no options... But if you can provide a savegame it could save some time on my side to replicate the case and check deeper what can be done...

On Discord, Zusk (who apparently wrote the barbarian outpost events) said he is working on an update to the system and more explanation in the civilopedia. Hopefully he can finish in time for it to be included in 0.4.

 

[miniJack]

When you reach the faith points required for the next level of religion tech as showed in your image (i think you need 1 more turn for that to happen) you will get it and it will show you a window explaining to you that you got it and you save the faith points you have produced till now; it will require more points than the original cost but the pro is you still have the faith points to use for other things.
On the other hand you can buy the tech with faith points directly in the tech screen under Magic/Religion section but you lose the faith points.
You can only buy the second level and go on of a religion, if you don't have the first level you can't progress on that religion if you switch to it.
You can have the first level by researching Ancient Chants tech or by the dogma on the Priest chapter guild.
So you can have maximum 2 religions
Hope this will help

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Thank you very much for the update Spy Fanatic.

MoM extended is a masterpiece. There are lot of problematic stuff, unbalanced features, but as no one plays it in multiplayer, it does not matter.

 

[OzzyKP]

I am not quite sure how changing religion works and what is allowed then... Never done! But I believe it will be the same also for 0.2 or 0.3...
About increased resource spawn rate this has been introduced as part of initial merging, did some bugfix on it in 0.2 and it works fine as part of our gameplay (quick speed, tiny maps, game over in about 200 - 300 turns) but I do not know how it feels for larger maps and slower games as in this cases I guess even small percentage once applied each turn and on a lot of plot results in a lot of spawning. I can try to add some logging to have a feeling on the overall spawn rate and to adjust it on different game styles... Just a thought...
On Artistan guild we felt it was almost a must in each game in order to be able to access to vital resources like gold and gems, on 0.3 you will be still able to see them but only access them if you own the guild (the nearby city bonus will still be applied like deer and fur for example) and in this way they will be treated like all other resources in game.

I agree that it should be decreased. I play on normal speed, elf size maps. Especially if you have Nature mana or build a few merchant districts you can pretty much count on every improved tile to pop a resource. In my most recent game I stopped building cottages, windmills or trading posts because I knew that a plantation or pasture would get me a resource.

 

[Felis catus]

Thank you spyfanatic for the new version. A great gift for the new year!
If you release v0.4, could you make mouse hovering on a unit icon display it's level? We have to figure out from it's XP to know a unit's level for now.

I thought the resource spawn rate was perfect in 1.09 and unplayable in 0.2

So I reduced the rate enhancement effects of Cottages(and its analogues) and Trade post(and its analogues) in civ4ImproventInfos.xml and Xguild_civ4ImproventInfos.xml. Reduced all <iAdjacentFindResourceModify> numbers to 3. Its better but I feel its still not enough. My games end usually at around t400 (normal speed, standard map) and most of civilized territories are covered with resources before that time. And actually I consider this as a nerf for human(only me) because AIs don't build cottages and Trade posts a lot and effectively.
I think I will start a new game of v0.3 with those values down to 1 however I also wish the resource spawn rate reverted to Sephi's v1.09.

In my most recent game I stopped building cottages, windmills or trading posts because I knew that a plantation or pasture would get me a resource.

You can build a cottage or Trade post adjacent to a plantation, pasture or farm. It will accelerate the resource spawning rate greatly. Then you can change the cottage into another Plantation, pasture or farm once a new resource spawns. Adjacent resource also increase the popping rate.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Deity difficulty, classical era start, quick speed, turn 76.
The AI score is much highter than before. It's a big success!

 

[Jet]

Happy New Year. I'm enjoying 0.3 and hopefully I'll say more about it later.

One quick funny note is that I think the new barb city plunder gold formula might not be having the desired result. MoM_Lakes_Climate, Human size, Epic speed.
Maybe barb cities could just give the same amount of plunder gold as any other city?
Or double the standard amount, if you want it to be higher.

 

[Jet]

I was going to say some stuff about resource spawning but TLDR, still too much. From the same game. Most cities aren't quite as bad as this, though.

 

[SpyFanatic]

Hi Jet
For the formula, yes I think I forgot to cap to 1000 max... so if the barb city was founded at turn 0, it means 196 * 20 to be added on top of the standard formula (as it is barbarian)...
For the resource spawn, yes I will do something about it on... Initially that cames from 'Master of Mana updates' merges, and after the bugfix on the formulas for us it play quite well (quick speed, we complete the game in 200-300 turns maximum) so you have some spawn in the first cities.. And I think most of it is in the dll rather than xml (I mean basic values are from dll but its there that a lot changed).
So yes, I think I will change it back 'similar' to 1.09... But I still likes the idea that there are other ways other than nature mana to increase it. Maybe I should play better on the speed scaling and map size as well, probably I will add a log that allows to understand how many resources are triggered in let's say 200 turns and test this on different speed and map size.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Barbarian cities are an infinite source of free XP. It is in itself, a huge boon which change your game. You don't need any gold reward for conquering them I think. That would be the simpliest solution.

I suggest to add the possibility to build cottage on plain. There is no reason why you should be able to build cottages only in grassland, and cottage is already a bad improvement because of the unhealth, because you need to tandem it with workshop too.

 

[Jet]

Besides speed, what settings do you typically play with, SpyFanatic?

 

[SpyFanatic]

MoM_Erebus, Quick speed, Cobold 6 AI + 2/3 human or Goblin size 9 AI + 2/3 human in LAN.

 

[Jet]

I see, yes. MoM_Erebus maps look quite different from the MoM_Lakes_Climate ones I've been playing on. Civ 4 has so many settings that the variety is beautiful, but it can be hard to compare gameplay experiences across different settings. Like "you can win a BC spaceship victory on Deity" but it's Marathon with mapfinder, etc.

One odd difference between map scripts that I have seen (just one random example) is that in my games, the Khazad cannot settle on plains hills. Now I see that it appears to be true only on the _Climate map scripts: it's true on MoM_Lakes_Climate and MoM_Erebus_Climate, but not MoM_Erebus or Tectonics. Other things, such the balance between how different civs and different starts interact with the MoM building material economy, can be pretty different with different map scripts, I think.

What I like most about the _Climate scripts is that they seem to do the best job of placing MoM terrain types and giving civs flavorful and somewhat balanced starts. I think I read a recommendation for them somewhere. Other scripts seem worse for MoM, in one way or another. That's true even for Tectonics, my favorite script for FFH games.

I wonder if resource popping might not be scaled to game speed. Maybe the game engine never scaled it because the resource popping rate in the unmodded game is so low that you don't notice it much. I think the difference between Quick and Epic is a factor of 3 (although different parts of the game are scaled differently) and so it could be that I've effectively been seeing 3 times as many resource pops as you have been seeing.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

SpyFanatic, the fear bug I talked a bit is linked to the Demonic Reflex aura. It adds a fear effect but not against the ennemy but against yourself.
I think if you add this tech to your adepts, you will see the bug immediately.

 

[SpyFanatic]

Sorry, I don't have the previous saves any more. But I found a new issue! When I finish my turn in turn 205 the game just hangs. Here is 204 and 205 just before I end the turn.

That's was really hard...
First, and I would like to share it for other to comment, on my PC I got a CTD and tracing back was due to a null pointer in updateGroupCycle after pLoopSelectionGroup = getSelectionGroup(pSelectionGroupNode->m_data); as pLoopSelectionGroup resulted in null. Adding thousand of logs I traced back in CvPlayerAI inside AI_doEnemyUnitData. I report here below the relevant correction but according to my poor c knowledge m_aiUnitCombatWeights[iI] will result in random memory area beeing modified...

for(int iI=0;iI<GC.getMAX_CIV_PLAYERS();iI++)
...
//m_aiUnitCombatWeights[iI] += 100;
m_aiUnitCombatWeights[pLoopUnit->getUnitCombatType()] += 100; //Spyfanatic bugfix: iI means out of array boundaries

Secondly, once that has been fixed, the hangs is due to Gibbon Goetia casting Body Snatch forever, as the newly created unit was missing a 'newUnit.setHasCasted(True)' and resulted in the AI triggering the effect infinite time...
Pew...

 

[OzzyKP]

Wow, good work!!!!

 

[Jet]

I would like to share it for other to comment, on my PC I got a CTD and tracing back was due to a null pointer in updateGroupCycle after pLoopSelectionGroup =

I agree that it was incorrect to use the array index iI on that line. It clearly was incorrect. I didn't try to check whether m_aiUnitCombatWeights is supposed to be indexed by values returned from getUnitCombatType(), but it's plausible that it is. If so, you made the correct change.

------------------------------

It looks like AI_doEnemyUnitData() was trying to set the current player AI's m_aiUnitCombatWeights member to the percentages of all enemy units that belong to each category:

m_aiUnitCombatWeights[category] = ((total number of enemy units in that category) / (total number of enemy units)) * 100

Why, I don't know. Maybe it's supposed to feed some logic like "if they have horsemen, build spearmen." Anyway yes, I think you probably made it more correct.

 

[Jet]

Can anyone say exactly when the Sidar can Wane? I think you need 100 mana, and you need one or more units with high XP that are not garrisoned and that that have spent all their XP, but some other condition is required in addition to that, and I can't tell what. It seems random.