Mod: Better Independents

[Edi]

Thanks for pointing that out.

Seems they've changed it from the Dom2 days, or my memory is playing false. I made a fixed version that removes the comments from inside the #selectmonster - #end sequence and places them right before #selectnmonster so you can still tell immediately what unit the modification affects.

Damn, still does not work! No, I did not test, but apparently Dom3 mods are a lot more particular about what kind of comments they allow than Dom2 mods. I'll test this out and fix it. It worked right fine when it did not have any comment lines at all.

[Foodstamp]

Comments should be fine as long as they are outside the #selectmonster and #end. I use them all the time in my mods

The reason you are getting more crashes is because of the other problem I found with the mod. Dominions will not accept the resource value for a monster at 1000. That is why it was giving the error message "bad monres". I reduced all the resource values to 800 and the mod works perfect, loads turns etc etc.

It is a bit annoying to have to rewrite a mod because someone did not test before they posted it! Be sure to atleast play the mod once before posting it for others to use!

[Edi]

Found the problem. Apparently the game does not like overly large resource costs for units. 1000 was far too high and so was 800, so I knocked it back to 500, which was the value I originally used. It works with that one.

[Edi]

Hmm, must have tested with 900 accidentally. In any case, fixed. Thanks for helping troubleshoot it, Foodstamp. I was sort of in a hurry to get that out and getting interrupted every 5 minutes tonight did not help my concentration. Sorry for any inconvenience to those who had problems.

[Foodstamp]

NP at all, glad I could help. This idea was worth the little time trouble shooting to get to use. Nice job thinking outside the box when it comes to helping the AI.

[MaxWilson]

So far I really like it. I hadn't realized how annoyingly stressful the provinces full of militia were. I notice that Atavi are still recruitable, and perhaps I'll use a Chieftain to lead my Umbrals. Much as I like the NI maps, it's nice to have the option to recruit the non-boring commanders.

(Of course the Atavi are still there because of Bandar Log, but if I really wanted to I could #copystats Bandar Log's version and change the resource cost on the poptype one. Maybe I will later. Agartha shouldn't really have access to shortbows with decent precision, or worse yet Sticks and Stones with Strength of Giants--worse than longbows. )

-Max

[Foodstamp]

I have been playing a pretty massive game as well with this mod. Here are my observations so far.

The AI builds less units, but atleast the units it build are useful. I think the AI gave me a harder time before, because he would hit me on so many fronts.

Now the attacks are normally concentrated in a few armies instead of a gazillion militia forces taking provinces left and right with me having to chase them down all over the map, one province behind them the whole time

It may be my imagination, but it seems like my load times have gone way down now that the AI has to use it's forts to produce units. I am at a point in my current game with around 35 nations on a medium sized map where the turn loading would reach a point where I would call it quits. With this mod, the turn processing seems fairly reasonable, and I think it is because the AI does not have to figure out what to do with all those trash units.

I like the mod, I will probably use it for now on in my single player games, or atleast until someone comes up with a more elegant solution to the junk indies and the AIs <3 for them.

[Edi]

Thanks for the comments, guys!

The reason it decreases hosting time for turns is directly related to the number of units that have been recruited in the game. Each one of those units takes up memory, requires appropriate calculations in battle etc, which slows the game down. That's why the hard limit for units that can be on the map at the same time was only tripled from Dom2 instead of being maxed out. Maxed out, it would bring any system, no matter how top of the line, to its knees.