Wild Mana for FFH 2

[[to_xp]Gekko]

yep, I tried loading your save game with 2.1 and it crashes.

 

[Sephi]

Just started playing v2.0 of the wild mana mod. The save gave I have attached always CTD before even finishing the loading screen.

Basically started a Bannor game. Met the Illians, then a minor leader for the Calabim. Then next turn CTD.

weird. I checked my modifications of loading/saving a game and they seem fine. Can you load previos saves?

 

[Sephi]

you also mentioned some issues with spells and that you had to change the Clan of Embers due to a bug. may I ask you what these 2 issues are exactly?

I removed the abilty to cause war on vassals by exploiting area damage spells.

oh, and are my guesses for the reason why you set No tech brokering and No Acheron as default, and you suggested to use pangea-like maps correct ? I'm curious to know why

I just set them to default cause I usually want to use the game options this way but to do it I suggest pangea-like maps because I have done all my testing on them. No idea what happens on other maps. BTS Better AI has quite a bit fixes for naval warfare that I haven't included.

 

[Honor]

Sephi, you are a GOD. Thank you very much for this mod, it is awesome to say the least.

I think it is much more than just "Wild Mana" now, with all the AI, interface and functionality changes. Calling it "Sephi's Better FfH 2 Mod" or something would be more fitting IMO. I wouldn't have known about all the new cool stuff you did if I didn't decide to randomly drop by.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

umh, it seems that FFH-only sections no longer exist in the Pedia. I was looking for spells and effects, but they're no longer there... same for heroes, unique features, items and races. heroes and items are merged with units, unique features with improvements, and races with promotions it seems. spells are present in promotions, and most effects too. but worldspells are nowhere to be seen? also, some promotions are sentences, like "my arrows are sharp" and "I will protect my friends at all costs" what's that?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

1) spotted a couple TXT_KEY in the pop-up that lets you choose new techs to research: Alteration tech: build force node and build ice node TXT_KEYS are missing. moreover, build ice node should really be available with elementalism instead of alteration

2) another, pretty annoying, minor issue: notice in the upper left corner of the screenshot how much the games wants to make sure that I understand that my hunter has double movement in forests and ancient forests

3) another minor gripe I have is that some civ4lerts ( LOVE THOSE!!! ) seem to only pop up for a second, then disappear. for example, "city x is going to grow next turn" pops up immediately at the start of the turn and stays there long enough for me to notice, while "city x is going to become unhealthy next turn" pops up some 3-4 seconds after, and disappears after maybe 1 second, so you often miss it... these 2 should pop up together, and stay there together. sometimes it seems that they don't even pop-up, but I guess that I just missed 'em cuz they went by so quickly. imho "city is about to become unhealthy/unhappy" alerts are vital information, and should stay up there as long as possible so that you can't ever miss them.

4) this one is a pretty serious issue: the new mana nodes ( force and creation ) cannot be built, as in, the techs activate them, but arcane units can't build them. moreover: if Wild Mana gameoption is not activated, Creation mana should be buildable, otherwise it's out of the game for good. actually, I disagree with the fact that creation nodes can't be built, and I think that Ice and Creation should be buildable just like in FF, it's bad to have them be the odd ones imho. and while you're at it, you should also add in Dimensional mana, so that we don't have all mana in the lore present aside from poor dimensional being left out ( why should the poor sheaim lack their signature mana? )

5) another pretty serious issue: my priest of leaves can autocast bless and shield of faith ( even though they can't cast it manually )

6) btw, you should totally add monkeyfinger's tweak that makes forests visible on tiles with towns and farms, it makes playing as the elves and using bloom a hell of a lot easier. it's in FF and it's pretty good.

7) weird... when you discover a new technology and the box with the info about it shows up, the "improvements" box also contains unlocked new civics... whas it always like that?

8) another very minor issue: the picture shown in the great people progress bar for great commander is actually the one for the great spy in BTS, but there are no spies in FFH, so that picture should be changed to the globe-looking thingie that's used in FF for great commanders in the great people progress bar .

9) another small issue: the naming system doesn't work very well with FFH. units are frequently upgraded, so you often end up with, for example, archmages named adept I,II,II , etc. ...

10) an issue that's been plaguing FFH ever since lumbermills were moved to archery: the AI is WAAAAAAAAY too fond of them. lumbermills are way below average, unless you are non-elven FoL or in dire need for health. not a good choice. either the AI gets thaught to build better stuff, or lumbermills get some boost with a later tech ( actually, I would prefer both since it's kinda sad that they suck so much compared to others, and they are the only one that have no tech to boost them ) ( also note that this is WITHOUT gameoption improvements can be built without techs, which, judging by FF, seems to make the issue even worse )

11) also, a question: what does the small yellow triangle on the upper left corner of a specialist mean? I guess it means there are 10 of them?

 

[rokel]

Started up a game, have to assign leaders to civ's manually or it's totally random who ends up leading what civ.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what do you mean by that, rokel? don't like the new leaders showing up?

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Yeah, I didn't notice that bit until just now. (Didn't know about the update, at that.)

Minor leaders in the main mod was never a good idea, and it really sucks that they're bundled in with all the good changes. Mechanically, they were designed to fit into a structured storyline, and are really out of place in a sandbox game. In theory a system wherein you can choose to have only the original cast assigned randomly would be acceptable, but that would probably be ball breaking to code.

Gekko, my forest mod is compatible with this one, so you can still use it if Sephi never incorporates it.

 

[maglock]

weird. I checked my modifications of loading/saving a game and they seem fine. Can you load previos saves?

Here is a previous save about 5 turns before. This one I can't get to CTD though. So maybe it's a one time glitch?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

wow, that's nice to know Monkeyfinger! thanx for getting that done

I just got an idea about something that could be considered as "micromanagement-be-gone" : if a unit that's capable of casting a spell ends its movement, it's not automatically deselected. I've lost the count of how many times I wanted one of my units to cast a spell right after it moved, but then I forgot because the game immediately moved my focus to other stuff... and then the next turn I'm always like "damn, I wanted to do this and that the last turn!"

edit: just applied Monkeyfinger's forestfix, everything seems to be working fine and perfectly compatible... I had forgotten I good this looks... hahaha! my elven empire looks a hell of a lot better now! thanx man, I'm tempted to take a before/after screenshot to show the difference to everybody out there

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I didn't have to do anything. It's just built in such a way that other mods don't break it unless they also mess with existing improvements (adding new ones like Sephi did doesn't count)

 

[Valkrionn]

Yeah, I didn't notice that bit until just now. (Didn't know about the update, at that.)

Minor leaders in the main mod was never a good idea, and it really sucks that they're bundled in with all the good changes. Mechanically, they were designed to fit into a structured storyline, and are really out of place in a sandbox game. In theory a system wherein you can choose to have only the original cast assigned randomly would be acceptable, but that would probably be ball breaking to code.

Actually, Opera already made options that do just that. One for only Minors, one for only Majors.

 

[Sephi]

4) this one is a pretty serious issue: the new mana nodes ( force and creation ) cannot be built, as in, the techs activate them, but arcane units can't build them. moreover: if Wild Mana gameoption is not activated, Creation mana should be buildable, otherwise it's out of the game for good. actually, I disagree with the fact that creation nodes can't be built, and I think that Ice and Creation should be buildable just like in FF, it's bad to have them be the odd ones imho. and while you're at it, you should also add in Dimensional mana, so that we don't have all mana in the lore present aside from poor dimensional being left out ( why should the poor sheaim lack their signature mana? )

I designed the FF mana types to be different to what how they are in FF (no reason to simply copy stuff) and that you are able to play under the same rules FFH has. I wasn't that sure about Force Mana, but I guess it's better to move it to the wild mana only section too.

5) another pretty serious issue: my priest of leaves can autocast bless and shield of faith ( even though they can't cast it manually )

only a display error but will be fixed.

7) weird... when you discover a new technology and the box with the info about it shows up, the "improvements" box also contains unlocked new civics... whas it always like that?

That's a feature from BUG 3.6 I think.

9) another small issue: the naming system doesn't work very well with FFH. units are frequently upgraded, so you often end up with, for example, archmages named adept I,II,II , etc. ...

The BUG mod lets you customize it. Maybe someone finds a better default for FHH.

I'd love to take a look at all you have written, but sadly I lack the time.

@MonkeyFinger:
That's a really nice mod you made there.

@maglock
Thanks for the savefile!

@Honor
Better FFH2 is really a bit too much

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

no problem man, take your time. make sure to re-read point 4) though: not being able to build ice and creation nodes might be a feature, but not being able to build force nodes seems to be a bug since you never mentioned force should be wild mana only

I still strongly disagree about having these mana types be unbuildable, the best way to handle this would definitely be with a new gameoption "new mana types" that adds force, creation, dimensional AND makes ice buildable. after all, there might be people that dislike the new mana types but love the wild mana option. also, make sure that "can build creation/force/ice node" under the description for Alteration tech is removed when playing with gameoptions that make those mana types unavailable and/or ice nodes unbuildable, cuz it's misleading

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

new idea: you could also add a gameoption that does nothing but make ice nodes buildable. then if you don't want it to clutter the custom game screen, you could always set it to be <bVisible>0<\bVisible> ... I would love that

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

btw, you should edit the first post of the thread, currently it says that Lumbermills can be built in forests... that should be Ancient Forests. actually, the best thing would be to add the Forester improvement from Orbis, since lumbermills in ancient forests obviously make no sense at all. the treants would get really angry ( which is why lumbermills were not buildable in ancient forests in the first place )

while I'm at it, let me ask: how does the clan of embers worldspell work now?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

a request: the civ4lert portion that lets you know when other leaders have techs for trade is invaluable. is it possible to add one that works exactly the same, but with resources instead? that would be totally awesome!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

1) very minor issue: if you have trade+defensive pact+open borders with a leader, apparently there's not enough space in the "score bar" to show the attitude smilie, and it shows a dot instead. btw, the unhealthy smilie used for cautious seems out of place. FF has varying levels of smile<--->frown that look better imho, maybe you can take the icons from there

2) one gripe I have with the current autocast system ( as much of a godsend as it is ) is that it looks kind of unelegant to have 2 icons with the same picture in the list of "stuff you can do" , plus, and more importantly, it's not easy to understand if a unit has autocast activated or not. I suggest that "activate autocast for spell y" gets an icon which is the same as it is now, but with a green V that makes it easy to understand it activates autocast. similarly, to deactivate autocast for spell y, the icon has a red X on it. this should be easy enough and make it a lot easier to understand at a glance what each button does.

3) another "display issue": I'm playing without "more mana" , but my palace description says it gives 5 kinds of mana. the additional 2 should not show up in the description if not using that gameoption, it's misleading.

4) the more I think of it, the more I think that a gameoption that makes ice+creation+force+possibly dimensional buildable instead of wild mana only would be a good idea. I, for one, would always enable that

5) not sure if it's possible to change the way "citizen automation" works, but it would be nice if cities would prefer to use a specialist instead of working an unimproved tile. a specialist is definitely better than an unimproved tile, but right now citizen automation doesn't realize that, so you have to micromanage cities to make sure that they're doing their best. also, artist specialists should probably be considered inferior to other specialists ( culture is not as useful as hammers, gold or science imho ) , but still better than unimproved tiles, due to the fact that they generate juicy great people points

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

WoC error in the attached game, when I end turn the globe starts spinning and never stops. I'm currently deleting stuff in worldbuilder to see if I can narrow it down to a specific thing causing the bug.

edit: it's those damn bannors, I knew I should have destroyed them sooner! deleting all their cities causes the WoC error to cease. now off to find what exactly it may be.

umh, this one looks like a bug: the bannor are building a shadow in a city that does not have the CoE religion inside of it ( and shadows require CoE to be present in the city, even if they don't require it as a state religion - btw, deleting this city in worldbuilder does NOT fix the WoC issue ) . they also built and entropy node, which even if not a bug is definitely out of flavour. good civs should get a way lower preference towards researching necromancy, right now they love doing that, which looks really weird.

edit2: something in the bannor capitol makes the code very unhappy about life in general. deleting the city in worldbuilder fixes the WoC error.

edit3: figured it out, this is the fishiest thing that has ever inhabited the kingdom of fishy things. basically, in order to prevent the WoC I have to change the UNITAIs of BOTH the stonewarden ( currently UNITAI_COUNTER ) AND the adept ( currently UNITAI_WARWIZARD ) in Torrolerial ( I tried setting them to UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE and it works, obviously I did not try every UNITAI out there ) . changing only one of them doesn't work, I've tried that. either I change both or the WoC rears up its ugly face. What the...?!

edit4: another minor issue: I upgrade one of my priests of leaves to Eidolon, so now he can, obviously, cast bloom. unfortunately, he can no longer use "automatic terraforming" . similarly, my archmages with Vitalize can't use "autoterraform" , which would really come in handy. btw, units that are using "automatic terraforming" should be thaught that they can't both terraform the same tile. they seem to all target the same tile en masse, which makes this automatic terraforming thing kinda useless right now. they should spread out.

another issue, although this one not caused by your modmod, which I've been wondering about for ages: some units have the "automatic explore" button, while some others don't. for example, I have 2 Eidolons on the same tile, both upgraded from priests of leaves. one of them has the autoexplore button, while the other does not :\

edit5: update on the WoC issue. one turn later, the 2 motherhumpers leave the city. if I delete them in worldbuilder, good. if I don't, WoC again. let's hope I fixed it for a while this time!

btw, about that "city automation should know that specialists are better than unimproved tiles" thing. I'm serious. one my cities prefers to work damn 1F2C coastal tiles instead of using my unlimited, great libraried, scholarshipped, hall of kinged scientists that give some 6science2culture, and it's not because it needs food, it has a surplus of +5. ( and it's using 4 of those worthless tiles )