Master of Mana Xtended - Download and Changelog

[Alexej]

Only won by faith with Elohim and they can be faith powerhouse so...

 

[Ombatur]

- Build lumbermills on hill, forested tiles. You will get lots of lumbers and hammers that way.

I will try that. I find it tricky to balance resource yield and other income, but that's a good thing

- CMIIW, but Agravain Supply's benefits do not stack.

Yes, thats correct.

Only won by faith with Elohim and they can be faith powerhouse so...

Yeah, I was specifically thinking of Elohim. I will have to try to go for a faith victory with a civ that is not as good in getting faith as Elohim and see how that feels.
If it's only too easy to get faith victory for Elohim, maybe one should reduce their faith income a bit.

 

[Vital Brasil]

I was thinking about resources and improvements in extended 5.4 recently:

First, i really like the fact that sawmill and woodcutter now cost metal. I also like, that getting enough resources is a struggle and i cant build everything i want immediately. Wood now seems to be harder to get than stone. You can get some extra wood by cutting down trees which is an interesting aspect. But there are two things i noticed in my games:
- Chopping down jungle trees doesn't yield anything. I know that is the case in vanilla civ4 as well, but that doesn't need to mean it should be in MoM. Even mushroom forests give wood when chopped down, so why no wood for jungle? They seem much more woody than mushrooms anyway.
- I rarely build lumbermills. This might be a bad play on my side, but they just never seem attractive to me. Maybe they could yield one more wood?
- Agravain Supply seems too powerful to me. I think they could yield something like +1 lumber/+1 stone for Trading Posts, +2 lumber/+1 stone for Trading Markets and +2 lumber/+2 stone for Trading Centers
or +2 lumber/+1 stone on all 3.

An improvement a rarely build are cottages. They yield a good amount of money, but this isn't so important since one can build merchants districts to get income. Their culture bonus is interesting, but one could just build a farm instead and get culture through specialists. To make them more interesting one could give hamlet +1culture, village+2 culture and town +4 culture. If that's too powerful, the money income could be reduced by one. I would much rather have more culture but less money.

Another thing, which is totally unrelated:
I was going for an altar victory as elohim recently. But I failed to do that, because i got to the faith victory before. I had enough prophets but it took to long to unlock the priest-chapter. I'm not sure it's a good idea to make altar victory easier, because it could become too easy, but i think faith victory should be harder. Otherwise it's nearly impossible to be able to finish the altar before one can finish the faith victory. I think faith victory should require 20000 faith instead of 15000.

I endorse what you said about making jungles give wood on removal, about how powerful is Agravain Supply is and about making faith victory harder. Regarding the lumbermill and cottage improvements i would like to point out a few things:

I think building lumbermill on forested hills can be pretty attractive if you have Valoels Grand Sawmill (Harvesting civic makes it even better). The advantage of lumbermill over another hills improvements is that it does not remove forests, thus helps your city being healthy. Actually i only build quarries and mines on tiles without forest, unless there's a resource on it. Otherwise i only build lumbermills.

But i agree that this improvement is a bit boring. To be honest, i would love to see some wood resources, like darkwood on the game. I think this would fix this issue.

About the cottages, what prevents me to use more this improvement is the harsh unhealthiness penalty it gives on maximum level. Because of this, for example, i never remove a forest to build cottages. But i think its a great improvement to build around your workshops due to the synergy between them. I think reducing their unhealthiness penalty to about 2 (on its maximum level) would make this improvement a bit more attractive, and still would be enough to avoid the problem of cottage spam. Or maybe make benevolence civic or the sanitation tech reduce the from improvements by 1?

Also, just to clarify, cottage does not give money , it gives commerce . You can get culture from it using the slider. So if you set your culture slider to 30% and have a lot of towns, i am pretty sure you will get a decent amount of culture from your towns.

 

[esvath]

To be honest, i would love to see some wood resources, like darkwood on the game.

Yeah, I want some wood related resources too but iirc there is no good graphic for that. Haven't searched again, though.

About the cottages, what prevents me to use more this improvement is the harsh unhealthiness penalty it gives on maximum level.

What if I reduce the unhealthiness penalty to -1.00 for cottage, hamlet and village, and -1.50 for town? Hamlet/village/town/enclave will give +1/+2/+3/+5 culture?

 

[Vital Brasil]

Yeah, I want some wood related resources too but iirc there is no good graphic for that. Haven't searched again, though.


What if I reduce the unhealthiness penalty to -1.00 for cottage, hamlet and village, and -1.50 for town? Hamlet/village/town/enclave will give +1/+2/+3/+5 culture?

The mods Caveman 2 Cosmos (first image) and Pie's Ancient Europe (second image) have some neat graphics for wood resources, imo
.
I personally support those changes to the cottage line. Right now its a worse version of trade post line, with a heavy penalty on top of that.

 

[esvath]

The mods Caveman 2 Cosmos (first image) and Pie's Ancient Europe (second image) have some neat graphics for wood resources, imo

I'll check on the model from Caveman 2 Cosmos.

Btw, has anyone here got the Blood of Dragon? The potion is in my test games; every single game. Should I reduce the probability of getting it? Or everyone is having fun with it?

 

[Vital Brasil]

I'll check on the model from Caveman 2 Cosmos.

Btw, has anyone here got the Blood of Dragon? The potion is in my test games; every single game. Should I reduce the probability of getting it? Or everyone is having fun with it?

So far i am in the middle of my first 5.4 game, with the Austrin, and i got this potion in the early game. It helped me a lot clearing the barbarian lairs and was fundamental on my early expansion. Haven't seen this potion in this game since then.

I am having fun with it and i think its quite powerful even in the mid game, but i think this should be a really rare thing. Imo, the drop rate should be similar to the drop rate of breastplate brimstone and armor of kings.

I personally think that the rarity is one of the key elements that makes one powerful item fun.

 

[esvath]

Imo, the drop rate should be similar to the drop rate of breastplate brimstone and armor of kings.

Code-wise, Blood of Dragon and the armours have the same drop rate. It's just that somehow I got more Blood of Dragon than the armours. Maybe I was just lucky.

 

[shihongyi88]

Have you considered uploading an SVN/github for most recent changes?

 

[Vital Brasil]

Code-wise, Blood of Dragon and the armours have the same drop rate. It's just that somehow I got more Blood of Dragon than the armours. Maybe I was just lucky.

Maybe the drop rates are a bit too high but i am just not being lucky enough to get it all the time ?? Lol

I am saying this because when i invaded the Aristarkh i noticed they had many fire drakes (i killed 5 during the war) and none of them were summoned.

In the picture i am uploading there are 2 fire drakes and they don't have the summoned icon, so they must have been created by the dragon's blood potion.

 

[esvath]

Have you considered uploading an SVN/github for most recent changes?

Xtended is on svn but I commit update to the svn nearing release. Don't want to clutter the svn with many updates, some of which I change again.

RE: Blood of Dragon
I reduce the drop rate to 10% of its initial value.

 

[Calavente]

thanks.

re-Faith victory / Altar.
IMO it will generally be linked: Altar needs many Great Prophets, which needs priests (a lot), so you need temple district and related wonders + (faithful trait?).
all of that gives you a lot of faith + Altar improves faith from priests.
Further, while faith victory needs to go up the faith tree, Altar needs to go up the Priest chapter guild tree (which is expensive)...
Last : you usually envision the Altar victory when you have a synergy with disciples units... which is usually with faith-generating civs.

therefore IMO unless you specifically use a lot of faith in miracles / faith-spells, you'll accumulate easily 15.000 or even 20.000 Faith before even having the last altar tech and the number of GP.

re-Cottages :
- I never ever build cottages (or at most 1 or 2 par game): they are too dangerous due to the unhealth (MoM is often a pop-focused game where health is difficult to get, getting unhealth is hard.
Commerce-wise, it's better to try to pop minerals using GArtisan or to try plantations...
rivers-farms with aristo also give a better throughput : a bit less commerce, but more food = more pop = more District-related bonus + part of a specialist ...

removing unhealth might make them better and usable.
I'm not afraid of a "only-cottage" (only for Kurios, but they already do it).
Indeed, now, you NEED yields + as I said, farms and
(maybe cottage could give a debuff to nearby cottages to limit the clustersiation ? in the same way that workshop gives +1H to cottages)

re-Jotnar:

Spoiler :

- Food: I'm currently managing to have semi-sized cities : size 12 and even 22 for capital.. but it's hard (and I have the jotnar leader that gives +1F for tiles with 4F) I expect that other leaders will have the work being much harder.
- gold : I'm barely managing only because I had the chance of having 5 cotton in empire and my merchant city had 1 in 3rd ring... so It could build the weaver building (+18 gold) and I'm often building wealth in all cities as I rarely have enough lumber for buildings and upgrading units is very costly. (due to city size, and need of 3rings for city number)
- Having the capital being limited to being a Noble district is sad.

-removing "Grove" from Elder troll would be important
-removing Grove from Woodfather would be useful (no tech difference, but you will not need to go back to city with grove to upgrade).

- Mouth of the Divine (disciple) does... NOTHING with its channeling 2 + disciple promotion.
The only use is to have a medic unit.
a series of faith spells & miracles for jotnar, spread along the priest chapter tree could be useful even if possibly not balanced.

- Skald (mix of adept and mage) is interesting.
however they are much more limited in number than normal adepts.... and their str barely compensate.
(in fact, skald comes later in tech than adepts + normal civs get 1-2 free adepts per mana-branch upon completing some spellresearch .. Jotnar get none.)
why does this matter ?
- jotnar need to wait for a really late tech before being able to upgrade mana nodes
- jotnar have few spell casters... but mostly few aura-bearers.
further: it is a bit out of the way:
giants get increase spell damage with each aging promotions
Titan and Berserker get chaneling promotions
however, Jotnar starts with nature (which is good for many aspects) but which lacks attack spells that could make use of the specificities of jotnar and/or could be used by a non-arcane focused Titan/berserker:

To compensate partially it would be useful if giant-age promotion could improve : aura str/ number of aura target / number of spell target (may need to be balanced) / or just have skald have an inherent increase in aura-str/range/targets + spelltargets
- Jotnar get a jotnar-only spell ?

- Local legend:
getting a Jotnar citizen is sad. Maybe a Hill giant (15str ?)

- RECON:
savage troll: 7 str (less than a jotnar citizen) cost as much as a hill giant (215gold) which is at 15str. risk (important) of becoming... barbarian !!!
Troll hunter : recon (550gold) 15 str regenerates after killing living unit, no mvt cost, costs as much as a wielder of arms (22str, can pass on mountains, 1mvt) or a Cyclop (recon 22str, no mvt costs, can pass on mountains)
only interest of Troll hunters : can upgrade to Elder troll : 22str (as cyclop), can regenerate, can build camp and nature mana nodes.
it seems like "regenrates after killing a living unit" is valued as much as +7str... IMO it's a bit too costly.
Elder trolls : they cost much more than cyclops, but have exact same str, and the only bonus is "can regenerate"

IMO savage trolls, troll hunters, and elder trolls are remnants of the old ways, when trolls were buildable... therefore it was normal that they were less interesing hammer-wise than giants.
Now that they are also upgraded from Jotnar citizen they are much less interesting now (even if I upgraded 1 unit to troll hunter in order to have a recon unit... However, that was before discovering that Hunter guild gives a Cyclop... in next game, there would be no need whatsoever to build a troll hunter: too expensive for the str).

IMO trolls could get a rewamp.
-savage troll : 10str, no barb risk 10gold (you transform a jotnar citizen into a "dedicated recon jotnar citizen")
-Troll Hunter : 15str, recon : 215 gold. Recon alternative to hill giant
-Troll Elder : 28 str, same price as Jotun: a "recon" Jotun, slightly weaker.

And/or something else !
(maybe troll hunter can upgrade to triton ? )
(maybe cylcops can upgrade to woodfather?)

(I did not research/play yet titan / berserk / woodfather / elder trolls...Etc)

- Melee
Prices and all seems ok for the moment for melee, even if globally costly.
I'm missing a "hammers for Jotnar" line of equipement : more expensive in metal than normal hammers (as jotnar do not need metal to build units) but : increase collateral damage / increased damage : smae % as normal hammers but maybe a +1/+2+3str depending on level of hammers ?
however "properties" and upgrade paths of Melee giants are all over the place

Spoiler properties :

-Jotnar citizen is 2mvt ignore terrain cost
-Hill Giant is 1 mvt, ignore terrain cost (troll hunter is 2mvt ignore terrain cost)
-Wielder of arms is 1mvt , (pay terrain cost), can pass over impassable (cyclop is 2mvt ignore terrain cost can pass over impassable)
-Triton (30str) is 2mvt, water walking, ignore terrain costs (can not pass over impassable, carries 2
-Jotun (30str) is 1mvt, ignore terrain cost can pass over impassable
-Titan/ Berserker : 2mvt, ignore terrain cost can pass over impassable

In fact, it seems that the 2 only issues, for coherency, are wielder of arms losing ignore terrain cost, and jotnar citizen upgrading to a slower hill giant (maybe give 2mvt in hills to hill giants?).
Wielder of arms have no real advantage over Cyclop (only 1mvt, loses the "can pass impassable") save that it has access to melee promotions for attacking cities (but you don't always fight against cities) and that one day it will upgrade to Jotun, titan or Berserker
Maybe Wielder at arms could get an innate "collateral damage, no limit" ?

Spoiler upgrade paths :

nothing much here.
it would be better IMO to have more upgrades possible:
hill giant upgrading to triton/Jotun/Titan/Berserker without needing to go through "wielder of arms"
Mouth of the Divine (and Cyclop? if cross-unit_category is ok) upgrading to Woodfather

 

[esvath]

Thanks for the extensive opinion on Jotnar, @Calavente! I will sit and think on that for sure.

RE: Altar vs Faith Victory
At present, Altar victory requires more efforts than Faith victory.

• Altar requires lots of culture to unlock Priest Guild (which is more expensive than other guilds).
• Altar requires some involvement in religion, since you can only research Righteousness/Commune with Nature/Malevolent Designs after acquiring third level of Sacred Knowledge.
  
• Altar requires seven Great Prophets.

The "plus" side of Altar are:

• You are free to spend you faith.
• You get the benefits of the Altar (stronger Priests, stronger disciple units, more happiness etc).

So, my thought on this issue:

• Maybe reduce Altar's dependency toward Sacred Knowledge?
  • Way of the Wise will require Orders from Heaven, Luminous Sol, Way of the Earthmother or Way of the Forests.
  • Way of the Wicked will require Way of the Forests, Message from the Deep and Corruption of Spirit.
    
  • Righteousness will require Way of the Wise.
  • Commune with Nature will require Way of the Wise or Way of the Wicked.
  • Malevolent Designs will require Way of the Wicked.
    • Sure, the above might result in Good Arendel adopting Malevolent Designs, but that is also possible at current build because alignment is not considered on guild techs...
• Increase the cost of victory miracle tremendously, maybe to 30,000? That will delay the victory, especially since your faith income is still halved even after acquiring the last Sacred Knowledge (coded in dll, can't do anything about that...).

EDIT:
I managed to make the shortcut to guilds (the one on main screen) to take player's alignment into account (thus only allowing Righteousness for Good players).



I also managed to make the techs' colour in Guild screen change according to the player's alignment (thus Commune with Nature and Malevolent Designs are black for Evil players).



But I have not managed to block the pop up at the guild screen which allows you to get Commune with Nature/Malevolent Designs if you are a Good player. Sigh.



I am doing the above in Assets/Python/Screens/CvMainInterface.py and CvGuildScreen.py. If someone is skilled in python, please do check, especially on CvGuildScreen.py, to disable pop up for blackened techs.

 

[Ombatur]

At present, Altar victory requires more efforts than Faith victory.

• Altar requires lots of culture to unlock Priest Guild (which is more expensive than other guilds).
• Altar requires some involvement in religion, since you can only research Righteousness/Commune with Nature/Malevolent Designs after acquiring third level of Sacred Knowledge.
  
• Altar requires seven Great Prophets.

When I was going for an altar victory recently, the required culture was slowing me down the most. The required faith and great people were not a problem. In hindsight, I might not have balanced my resources well. I probably should have built one less temple district and one more bard district.

• Maybe reduce Altar's dependency toward Sacred Knowledge

I don't think, this will have a great affect. If you build at least on temple district, you should be able to get the sacred knowledge before the corresponding priest chapter anyway.

• Increase the cost of victory miracle tremendously, maybe to 30,000? That will delay the victory.

Maybe. 30000 seems a bit high, but for numbers that big it's always difficult to say.

My idea is, to reduce the faith bonus, priest get from the Altar to 0 (or maybe even to -1 if that's possible) and increase in return the culture bonus priests get by one (or 2). This way, you are able to unlock priest chapter a bit faster and are a bit less likely to reach the faith victory before the altar victory. On the other hand, lore wise it just makes sense for the altar to increase the faith income of priests. So this might not be the perfect solution.
Additionally i still think, the faith victory should cost 20000 or 25000 faith.

Your faith income is still halved even after acquiring the last Sacred Knowledge (coded in dll, can't do anything about that...).

I don't think that's a big deal. All uses for faith are kind of balanced around the fact, that you only get half of the faith, anyway

I managed to make the shortcut to guilds (the one on main screen) consider player's alignment (thus blocking Way of the Wise from Evil players).
I also managed to make the techs' colour in Guild screen change according to the player's alignment (thus Way of the Wise will be black for Evil players).

Nice.

 

[Calavente]

re righteousness / commune with nature and other needing having sacred knowledge level 3.
shouldn't that limit a LOT all our friendlies agnostics?
(especially Grigori... if grigori cannot pursue the altar of luonnatar, it will be strange.)
Further, Jotnar have the unit "woodfather" at commune with nature.
but if they cannot research it due to being "good" and/or cannot research it due to having no sacred knowledge.... that becomes complicated.

slight bug on "agricultarian" trait (for that jotnar leader).
trait is supposed to give : +1F on tiles with 3F.
however, plain give 1F
pasture gives 1F
and nearby waterwell (or however that is called) gives +1F on nearby pastures
however, in my game those pastures are at 3F... there is not the +1 from the trait. (it's like the validity of the +1from the trait is calculated before having the input from nearby improvements)

 

[esvath]

RE: Guild Screen
Finally I made it! Guild screen now takes alignment into consideration. Evil players will have Way of the Wise and Righteousness and the whole Healer's Circle blocked in their Guild screen and Guild shortcut on the main screen.

Not only that, a particular tech can block other techs too! So, a Neutral player can choose Way of the Wise or Way of the Wicked. After choosing one, the other will be blocked for that player!

Now, my plans are:

• Good is blocked from Way of the Wicked and Malevolent Designs. Good can choose between Righteousness or Commune with Nature.
  
• Evil is blocked from Way of the Wise and Righteousness. Evil can choose between Malevolent Designs or Commune with Nature.
• Neutral can choose between Way of the Wise or Way of the Wicked. Neutral can choose one from Righteousness, Commune with Nature or Malevolent Designs.

Need inputs on the following:

• I want to make Slaver's Guild and Healer's Circle exclusive. Adopting one blocks you from the other (thus no Neutral player adopting both).
• I want to make Good is blocked from Esus.

 

[Calavente]

good work !!

 

[Alexej]

You are getting unhappy faces from slavery and happy faces from healers but your decision seems right and logically natural.

 

[Vital Brasil]

RE: Guild Screen
Finally I made it! Guild screen now takes alignment into consideration. Evil players will have Way of the Wise and Righteousness and the whole Healer's Circle blocked in their Guild screen and Guild shortcut on the main screen.

Not only that, a particular tech can block other techs too! So, a Neutral player can choose Way of the Wise or Way of the Wicked. After choosing one, the other will be blocked for that player!

Now, my plans are:

• Good is blocked from Way of the Wicked and Malevolent Designs. Good can choose between Righteousness or Commune with Nature.
  
• Evil is blocked from Way of the Wise and Righteousness. Evil can choose between Malevolent Designs or Commune with Nature.
• Neutral can choose between Way of the Wise or Way of the Wicked. Neutral can choose one from Righteousness, Commune with Nature or Malevolent Designs.

Need inputs on the following:

• I want to make Slaver's Guild and Healer's Circle exclusive. Adopting one blocks you from the other (thus no Neutral player adopting both).
• I want to make Good is blocked from Esus.

I am personally not a fan of this idea of blocking Esus from the good, i think that's unnecessary. This would mean a bigger limitation on guild's choice for good leaders.

Unnecessary because good leader usually have better guild options than Esus, but would still be a limitation for some good leaders that may want to improve their recon units, or at least have some espionage capability .

Now, from a lore standpoint they follow an evil god an thus, are aligned to the evil. They are not as evil as Ashen Veil followers though, who want to basically destroy the world. Their wickedness comes essentially from selfish purposes and those kind of citizens can be numerous even in good civilizations. Even good civilizations can have its criminals, even good civilizations can spy its rivals.

So i like to think of good civilizations that use Esus as those civilizations who give secret support to its criminals, so they can wreak chaos on enemy lands.
Imo, the ideal would be to make good civilizations become neutral after adopting this guild, and even adopting the order as state religion would not change that. But i can see this could cause many gameplay related problems, so this solution would not be that good at all.

So maybe, giving a huge diplomacy penalty for civilizations that have this cult may be a better choice ? It would be less limiting, but i think it would make sense lorewise.

 

[Melanie88]

So, am I the only one who takes perverse pleasure in playing Sheim and choosing the Order as a religion? It changes alignment to good and makes for interesting demon wars with Ashen Veil civs