Mod thought: Muspellheim and Tang

[RedRover]

One thing has been bothering me a bit about "Norse myth" and "oriental" themes and mods. This is the tendency modders have had to stack these onto a base nation with a similar cultural theme.

It seems to me that it might be better to use a base nation with a similar magic profile or tactical approach instead of a similar culture. For example, when working on the Grey Elves, I started by looking at flight + air magic and picking the base nation that most closely matched the magic.

If, for example, Niflheim, Muspelheim, Helheim, Utgard, Midgard, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, the Aesir, and all the other potential Norse mythology nation variants are stacked into Jotunheim, then how can we ever put together a Ragnorok-theme scenario? Wouldn't it make more sense to (for example) replace Abysia with Muspelheim?

Likewise, if Barbarian Kings mod represents Mongols, and the Ashikaga Shogunate and Tang mods also overwrite T'ien Ch'i, don't we lose the opportunity to put together an all-oriental-theme game? Wouldn't we be better off spreading the cultural variations across the national bases to encourage the creation of themed scenarios?

[Vicious Love]

Excellent point. Not one likely to be relevant until more mods gain mainstream acceptance and/or players actually start making use of them in MP, but an excellent point nonetheless.

[Kristoffer O]

A good point that has bothered me as well.

I'm running into the same problem in dom3, and I'm not quite sure how to make it work. It feels better to make a mod to transform a (making abysia into muspelheim) than to make a theme for a totally different nation.

Themes are made slightly different codewise in dom3 so there might be new solutions possible.

The dom2 mods are probably not too difficult to remake for another nation. Change #selectnation x, and perhaps couple of unit numbers.

[Arralen]

Kristoffer O said:The dom2 mods are probably not too difficult to remake for another nation. Change #selectnation x, and perhaps couple of unit numbers.

Can we mod national heros yet, including number of them etc. ? And what about modding themes?
If I want to do significant changes to T-C S&A, I have to rebuild the nation from scratch, making it the only theme available, haven't I?

On the other hand, there aren't that much special dominions -Abysia, Ermor, Pangaea CW and C'tis miasma comes to my mind-, so much of the other nations should be quite interchangeable. But what if I want the slow-killing Carrion Woods dominion for my mod? It's only available with the pre-made theme, isn't it?

[Vicious Love]

This might be far, far more trouble than it's worth, but would it be possible to dissociate modded nations from existing nations altogether, and have a game's host choose which nation overwrites which in a given game?
This wouldn't work for existing mods, since most of them edit existing units in addition to adding entirely new ones(Hero editing would otherwise be presently impossible), but this seems a small price to pay for the convenience and versatility this sort of fix would afford.

[Gandalf Parker]

Maybe in Dom3 a "default" nation could be added. Independents? Specifically described in ways that makes it informative on how to replace it. Something that is generally recognized as the one to overwrite with a MOD. It would make writing a tutorial easier.

Kristoffer O said:The dom2 mods are probably not too difficult to remake for another nation. Change #selectnation x, and perhaps couple of unit numbers.

Interesting. I wonder if an option can be added to the web-based game manager to put a mod into a particular nation, have it rewrite that line, then set the MOD to "on" for that game. OR if someone has a MOD nation which is fairly mobile in that regard I could quickly whip up an EXE that a user can click on to select which nation he would prefer to taken out by that MOD.

Im still waiting for someone, maybe someone who is looking to learn MODding, to MOD the nations we already have. Id like to see someone do a MOD of Ulm. No changes, just Ulm in a MOD. And one for Ermor, and one for Arcos. For one thing, it would be very informative for new modders to see how Ulm would be modded. For another reason, it would allow people who feel that they are the ultimate Ulm player to play a head-2-head game of Ulm vs Ulm. In fact, Im wondering now if you cant have 15 Ulms in a game.

It would be great if Dom3 came with all nations and all moddable items done as mod files the way SEIV does (and a set of newbie premade gods, and a started game)

[Endoperez]

Unfortunately, Ulm is one of the nations that can't be fully changed. Even if one just took away all the original units of the replaced nation, were able to change the starting sites and added Ulmish units (by id number) to recruit and provincial defense lists second Ulm couldn't have their special Fort resource bonus.

For this to be really worth the effort we (= I, hint hint ) would need a program that chooses the starting provinces of the nations by scanning the .map file and clears those provinces, adds a fort of the right type into it, adds special magic sites and new national starting units as well as the right pretender to it (some might not be needed, though). If that program would be made it would be great if you also were able to make .pr files which would contain province info. It would have terrain needed for the province (eg. forest for druids), rarity, defenders by Dominions name/id and numbers in correspondance to each other/changable variable similar to Dominion's indep. power. Also commander orders and rarity.

Program could be used to create a new, modified .map file in which the provinces would be hardcoded to whatever the program had randomized. Each run of the program would make different maps, even with the same choices and files.

This would make it easy to add quite spesial provinces, eg. "Dragonspine Mountains" defended by Beast Trainer in command of some fire drakes, Abysian Infantries and Humanbreds. There would always be two times as many Humanbreds as Abysians and Drakes together, so their numbers would be 1, 1/4 and 1/4 or something similar. There would always be a Volcano in this Common Unique province, so the map randomiser program would only put one of these in the map, but it would be somewhere almost always.

I'm sure Gandalf atleast would appreciate a tool like this... Great fun for all the members of the Random Map Cult.

This would allow some special games like Ice Age in which you have to liberate the provinces from vicious Beasts before you would be able to recruit whatever happened to live there. I haven't started modding any of the nations (Tribes of the Wolf, the Bear, the Horse, the Snake and the Eagle, Great Empire before its fall, water-powered Caelum before Raptors left, Abysia at the time Humanbred were first created (Crossbreeding variant)... dreams, dreams ) I have had in my mind since summer, but if someone makes the program I promise to consider it...

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually I have been considering mod/map combos, and I have requested that the mod switch provided for the webBoards be extended to a map command (or a mod command) so that using one can "turn on" using the other.

And yes an EXE to do the placement wouild be possible. Even easy to do. But its still in the area that someone (not me) would have to create an Ulm-clone mod, or an Ermor-clone mod, or an Arcos-clone mod, etc etc as a starting point.

[Endoperez]

I could do that, as I said. I could do a .mod, but it might have to be changed for the mapmaker...

Would the starting site of Tien Chi allow Celestial Master recruiting to another nation that starts with the site? If not, THEN we would have some big problems. There aren't enough sites for all national commanders/units, especially if multiple players are playing races with many capital-only units like Man.

[Endoperez]

EDIT: I can't post it through forum's attachment system. I will save it as an .rtf (general edited text file type available across many OSs, IIRC. More OS's than .doc, at least.), so most text editors should be able to open it. To try it, open it in an editor and save it as "ulm.dm". Try putting " marks around the file name if it doesn't work without them. Remember, renaming isn't enough! If someone wants to host it, go on.

As I said, I can do it. And I did. Took about half an hour:

I chose Abysia. I cleared off its units, changed #preferredtemp to 0, took away heroes and disabled themes. After that I wrote up all unit id's of Ulmish units/commanders and added them to Abysia's recruit list. (In the first Version, Second Ulm got a Strategos... That was a quick fix, however. )

Then I checked Ulmish province defense with Clash of Titans, Caelum vs Ulm. I saw a battle that took place between Ulmish provincial defense and lone Caelumian scout, wrote down the unit id's and approximated the number of units. 10 units/10 points of pd in the case of Ulm. Forgotting this would give Machaka-Ulm extreme province defense!

After that I replaced starting units, cleared off starting sites and added The Forge of Ulm and The Keep of Ulm. Both nations were able to recruit Guardians, both nations had both sites. It seems starting unit types can't be modded to contain two types of units, so I took off 2 of the 14 starting Infatry and made all shielded ones. I tested this quickly, found out the bugs about Strategos and starting units, fixed them and sent this message, so if it doesn't work try bothering me tomorrow. I didn't check provincial defence.


Few things I found out: starting units must all be of the same type. "Unique" sites can be doubled. "Nation-spesific" units can be recruited from multiple doupled sites. I didn't check if the nations can recruit special units from each others' capitals. It is not worth changing the flags. This is quick and simple: the (modding) manual is all one needs. Ulm-spesific fortress boni can't be doubled ATM. National heroes can't be doubled, but they can be disallowed: no heroes for the break-outs, they are loyal to the main nation.

Quesses:
National pre-researched spells can't be disallowed if the game doesn't quess the right one (both the nation-spesific and the normal one have the same name). Nation-spesific spells can be added, but this takes the spell away from either all other nations or the original nation. I haven't checked how that works.


Boring:
Descriptions, nation pop-up texts and short military/priest/magic power texts might have to be copied by hand: they can't be just copy-pasted. If someone can make black&white picture of the text screen and put it full-screen he should try print screen - paste at notepad. It did work for roguelike screenshots!