V2.5 Beta Testing

[AnotherPacifist]

That's a funny image, Zhuge Liang and Zhao Yu being like nomadic camps that can actually move into a city to boost gold/hammers.

 

[stmartin]

5. How to use leadership and might attributes better Honestly, I don't know what these attributes do.

6. How to adjust the customization option when creating random hero. Add explanations for what each of the emphasizes mean.

8. Any thought on the new and complex (probably too complex) Army system is welcome. Personally, I think the added layer is unnecessary and kind of cumbersome. It favors a strong / warmongering player too much.

1. don't know what leadership and might mean? Leadership is obvious, it changes experience required to increase leading capacity. Might influence the chance of hero death,escape, wound chance in combat, grant some strength bonus to core units, and influence the chance of prison breaking. Any suggestions how to make these effect more obvious?

2. I think there are explanations in place already. Are those hint not enough?

3. About the army system. I agree it's not very user-friendly. A bit too complex. My goal with this system is to allow a faction's leader and grand generals to be different with other heroes. There is not enough time to adjust this system for V2.5 right now, so I will add a game option to disable this system.

 

[Ambreville]

1. don't know what leadership and might mean? Leadership is obvious, it changes experience required to increase leading capacity.

I didn't think it was obvious either.

Might influence the chance of hero death, escape, wound chance in combat, grant some strength bonus to core units, and influence the chance of prison breaking. Any suggestions how to make these effect more obvious?

Sounds more like "Luck" than "Might".

I really don't want to start harping on this because I've run Beta 2.5 just a few times, but in general I tend to dislike features that are so esoteric that their actual impact on game play can hardly be observed. I see this in various other mods, including bonuses, events, and other game features that barely impact game play (if at all). I'm not sure this is the case here, but in general I'd say if they don't really affect the game, don't add the extra levels of complexity.

 

[Kenjister]

I actually thought that the might component was very easily observed. Of course I'm the guy who studies the combat odds religiously before every attack, so I noticed the +X bonus from might really quickly. As for the prison break chance, I noticed that alot when playing as Gongsun Zan after capturing Wen Chou and Yan Liang.
If you really want to see the might feature in action, just play a Lu Bu game on the small map. You'll really come to love the +21% he gives to his core troop! Survival or death really hinges on every percent you can get for that scenario, especially when you're forced to make 50% odds attacks.

On the other hand, maybe leadership could be explained in a more prominent location. Maybe there can be a legion help screen that comes up the first time you form a legion?

 

[Ambreville]

On the other hand, maybe leadership could be explained in a more prominent location. Maybe there can be a legion help screen that comes up the first time you form a legion?

Something like that would definitely help, yes.

One thing I noticed is that the name of the hero does not appear on the screen when pulling up the hero's Civilopedia page. For Chinese-challenged players like me, it's not very easy keeping track/setting apart the various heroes, except for the best known ones. Sheesh, I'm still struggling keeping the factions straight. What happens is that I'll click on a hero icon (usually without looking at the hero's name) and skip to the Civilopedia page. Almost invariably then, I'll mutter something along the lines of "Darn it! Who's that dude again????" (go back to the previous screen) "Oh yeah, him..." (return to the Civilopedia... and forget what I was looking for.)

When managing multiple heroes in a stack, I end up doing this more than I'd really care to admit. It's annoying.

 

[Kenjister]

Actually I think the problem is that in the Pedia page, the hero that you selected is supposed to be highlighted on the list to the left. As it stands, it is highlighted in a slightly more tan color. Not very useful. I think that if that was changed to dark blue or something then the problem would be solved. It can get very annoying.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I thought the icons taken from RoTK were very representative. Cao Cao has that menancing look while Sun Ce and Guan Yu both look, well, war-like. (Yan Baihu looks like an idiot, while Liu Biao looks like a gentleman) Maybe trying to tie your memory to the pictures if the names are too hard, e.g. put the names on the pictures themselves?

 

[Ambreville]

Actually I think the problem is that in the Pedia page, the hero that you selected is supposed to be highlighted on the list to the left. As it stands, it is highlighted in a slightly more tan color. Not very useful. I think that if that was changed to dark blue or something then the problem would be solved. It can get very annoying.

I can't see any name highlighted on the pedia list. They are all exactly of the same color. The individual Hero window (the one that pops up when clicking on the flag command icon when the Hero unit is selected) does not have the Hero's name either, unless you mouse-over the Hero's illustration.

@ AnotherPacifist

I thought the icons taken from RoTK were very representative. Cao Cao has that menancing look while Sun Ce and Guan Yu both look, well, war-like. (Yan Baihu looks like an idiot, while Liu Biao looks like a gentleman) Maybe trying to tie your memory to the pictures if the names are too hard, e.g. put the names on the pictures themselves?

I agree as far as faction leaders are concerned. There are far many more heroes running around that there are faction leaders however. It gets even more confusing in the beta version because a lot of the usual faction leaders get bumped off and replaced with others less well-known. Keeping track of them just isn't easy.

 

[Kenjister]

I can't see any name highlighted on the pedia list. They are all exactly of the same color. The individual Hero window (the one that pops up when clicking on the flag command icon when the Hero unit is selected) does not have the Hero's name either, unless you mouse-over the Hero's illustration.

Ah, you see, that's the problem. It is highlighted, but in an almost identical color as the background! In addition to that, the entry you select gets moved to the very bottom of the list, making it extremely hard to find, even if you know where it is.
I agree though, the pedia definitely needs some fixing in the highlight and naming departments.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Try using the conscript militia that's south of Yuan Shu's only city and attack (I thought the odds were OK, going to reload if I lost). In this game I've killed all my neighbors and my arch nemesis Liu Biao and his distant 2 Liu cousins (Chong and Yao), but have no cash at all, and capturing cities was the only way to keep me afloat.

With the no-city scenario starting at 196 AD, I'm just starting to see how much Lu Bu's greedy trait helps so much when rushing early on (I had 1/3 of all the land before 205, running oligarchy and running 10% science with still decent rates, partly helped by Legalism--the philosophy of the Qin Dynasty). All you need early on are a few decent small (to avoid unhappiness) cities with food to build good troops. Can't really rush with Sun Ce since there's no cash and Gan Ning is probably too strong to be captured early.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So I played on with Sun Ce, finally capturing that bastard Gan Ning who gave me 950+ gold as tribute! DOW'd on Liu Bei and captured one of his cities.
Then I asked Gan Ning to captain a floor galley, and found out I can't load any troops on it--is this intended or a bug? (this might be because he has the hidden nationality promotion that I thought would be useful for cash in the future without war, and maybe you can't load on a nominally "pirate" ship since it's not counted as yours?)

 

[Raize]

You can't ever load on a hidden nationality unit. That's a game-specific feature; it's not HoTK-specific.

 

[Ambreville]

I thought you could load HN units onto HN ships. Isn't that true in HoTK?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Too bad you can't have Gan Ning hide units in a floor galley or a 5-floor galley (or a fleet of them)--you can then attack whenever the time is right, e.g. when the AI is busy building inferior ships to counter yours and leaving only a few land units in the city.

Also, it seems that the Dread promotion doesn't work if Gan Ning is in a ship rather than a land unit.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

2.5 is out! Thank you very much.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I'm really sorry, but it still crashes due to the hero system. Try this following game: no matter how you do it, whenever you capture Pu Yang (I have enough troops to kill the mighty Lu Bu), it'll crash.
Addendum: I tried waiting 1 turn (also DOW'd on Gongsun Zan), but still crashed when I captured Pu Yang. Doesn't matter if I kill using a halberdier in a legion or not.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Oh, I'm so impatient to have this CTD bug fixed...any word on how? Or can we just revert to 2.4 for now (but I don't have the installer anymore...)?

 

[stmartin]

I'm working on this.

if don't mind downloading again, go to the google code server and look for files that are 'deprecated'.

http://code.google.com/p/sanguoforciv4/downloads/list

change the 'current downloads' into 'deprecated'