MP: ANDalusian Sun: Lolomo wins after more than 2 years of gruelling competition!

[Amhazair]

The game is up. (Temporarily using a previously-uploaded version of the Riverlands map, will change that as soon as Calahan finishes assigning start positions.) Time to upload preternders. Hurray!

By the way... I hope I guessed right here:

Originally Posted by Amhazair

In the meantime, for people in the know: Do I only have to upload the dm file of a mod to the Llamaserver?

If not we might have a game running with 3 faulty mods. Feel free to correct my humble endeavours and/or mock me mercilessly if necessary.

[Fantomen]

The wishing problem I see as minor, but I suppose you're right.

We could perhaps increase the magic setting to compensate for the holy sites?

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

The wishing problem I see as minor, but I suppose you're right.

We could perhaps increase the magic setting to compensate for the holy sites?

Hah! I used way more words than you to say the same thing. You suxxors!1one11!

[Calahan]

Blood is overpowered as it is, so I really don't think it needs the boost that increased site frequency would give it. Not even sure why it was increased to 45 from the LA base of 35, but that was in from the start so....

Why not just edit the mod to make sure each new Holy site give at least +1 Astral, thereby making sure each new Holy Site is at least as good as the base game site "Ancient Temple" is, which gives +1S (as I suggested above towards the end of my novel)


And you could set a house rule for the wishing problem, but I must admit that this idea is really doing a number on the logic circuits in my brain. Since this would not be a rule to solve a hardcoded problem with the base game that we can't solve any other way (like copying Bogus orders). But instead a rule to deal with a problem that we are adding. So we ourselves are deciding to create this problem to the game with our choice of mods, and then making a rule to accommodate the exact problem that we ourselves are creating due to our choice of mods?!??! [:Calahan's brain explodes:]. I apologise if I'm the only one who finds that idea simply whacky.

I'm far from a modding expert, but nation packs have been used as stand alone mods in games several times before, so I have a hard time believing it can't be done again here so that we only use the New Jomon nation. Sure the mod might need editing, but the code is already in the Extended Nation pack (assuming that actually works properly, since it's never been tested either), so it should be just a matter of lifting the code out of the Expanded Nation Pack (which I might attempt to do once I get the map sorted).


Edit - Although I do agree with Fantomen in that the Wishing problem is a minor one. But it is a problem (that we are creating) none-the-less.

[Colonial]

keeping up my general stalking of your game, Byzantine Pythium has 7 unique archangle summons that might merit a wish, particularly the seventh

[Calahan]

Ok, the map is more-or-less done. I'm about 80%+ happy with it.

The unhappiness comes from one or two starts being a little good/bad compared to some of the others. And while I was hoping to have several starts near the coast so that players can't just play the easiest ever game of "Where's Wally" with Marignon, in the end I only managed to have 4 coastal starts. Atlantis don't need a coastal start though, neither do they have a preference for one. So players will have a 25% chance of guessing where Marignon are. (in the test starts I did to bug hunt the starts, Atlantis often started away from the coast)

Each Land capital is at least 4 provinces away from their nearest Land neighbour. So that's X-1-2-3-4-X. All Land capitals have between 4-6 neighbours, with the ones having 4 getting at least 2x Mountain or Forest neighbours to ensure decent Capital resources. I had to put R'yleh in the smaller of the two inner lake provinces I created, as in the larger one they would share neighbouring provinces with Land caps. (which I really want to avoid)

I've also included a save game so you can see where the starts are (the location of the nations in the save game is entirely random apart from R'yleh.)

I'd also like to ask for some volunteers to create some test games on the map with the nations in the game to see if all the nations start in one of the intended start provinces. As I wasn't able to use the usually #start map modding command for some reason (guessing it was to do with Marignon). So instead of being able to indicate which provinces are to be a start location, I've instead had to go over the map making every other province a no-start. As such I might have missed one which could really screw thngs up badly. Although I have created half a dozen test games with the attached version, and each time everyone has started in one of the intended places. Which are....

1. 28
2. 41
3. 67 (C)
4. 69 (C)
5. 94
6. 128
7. 147 (C)
8. 150
9. 199
10. 185
11. 210
12. 237 (C)
13. 244

14. 95 (R'yleh)


I also had to remove a connection between 28-44, as I wouldn't have been able to get equal spacing without it (it looked a bit illogical anyway as it goes through a huge mountain). I think I've corrected all the connection and terrain errors. I also hope I've found and removed all the provinces tagged as many sites (although there were more than I thought, and harder to spot, so I could have missed some).

If I have generous amounts of free time between now and the start (ie. tomorrow) then I might have another bash at doing the map to increase my happiness level to 90%+. But if I don't get the time, I'm confident that the attached one will produce a balanced enough game.


@ Amhazair - Don't upload the map to the server yet in case I do have another attempt at balancing it.

[Amhazair]

Question for anyone with a bit of modding knowledge: Is combining several mods really as simple as copy/pasting the relevant parts one after the other? (Provided the ID conflicts had been resolved in advance) In view of the various minor issues we're having I thought I'd see if I could figure out how to do it, (In the expectation of getting nowhere and giving up after some frustrating tries.) and looking at some previous combo mods and it sure looked like this was the case.

So I tried it with the 3 mods we're using, and I did manage to start up a game without any explosions. (Also, al New Jomon recruitables are as they should be, and pretenders are the CBM version, but I didn't go around summoning all the possible summons or searching for (holy) sites or the like.)

So, behold: My first ever modding effort, (hopefully) combining CBM 1.84, Holy Wars LE and New Jomon, Brokens Swords 1.4, while fixing the blowpipe issue, and (again, hopefully) adding a minor gem income to all Holy War sites* I did not touch the Cur Scout's leadership, as I don't feel confident about it and don't want to screw up more than I fix.

*Mostly 1S, though I took any excuse given to me by the name of the site or the recruitables to use another gem type to not skew gem type balance too much. In 2 cases of a site with a very impressive name I added 2 gems.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE: Someone look at it, test, do stuff with it. While I'm actually surprisingly confident about my effort, and I'll never claim I know nothing about modding anymore if this works, I still insist I know very little about it and thus need to be supervised.

Follow up question: Do people have to enable the combined mod to create their pretender, or doesn't it really matter since any pretender created using the separate mods will also be legal using the combo version?

[Amhazair]

Well, since no one else dit I tested it out some, and it looks to work perfectly. Holy sites have their extra gems, and the Jomon summons are as they should be, as are the EDM and regular-but changed by EDM ones I tried. Unless someone else finds a bug I declare the Combo-Mod a-go. I will attach it to the OP. Use the version on the OP, I did fix the gem income from two sites in the OP version. (apparently they didn't show in my first try due to being on a wrong line or something.)

Llama comes back from his trip tomorrow, so I suggest we see about starting the game on monday.

[Calahan]

@ All

New version of the map attached. My happiness level approaching 90%.

Change Log

- Moved the start at 28 to 25, as 28 was a particularly bad spot.
- Moved the start at 210 to 202 and the start at 185 - 175 to accommodate the above change
- Moved the forest from 175 to 168 to ensure 175 has decent enough resources.


As before I've included a saved game that shows where the starts are.


@ Amhazair - I'll upload the map myself in a few hours, as I want to create a dozen+ test games with it first to make sure there are no rouge starts anywhere. And give it a final check over to make sure no other gremlins creep through the net (I'll post when I've uploaded it)

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@ Amhazair again - I'll try and check your mod out later if I get chance. Although as far as I know all you need to do is copy and paste the part of the code from each mod into one (which it sounds like what you did). Main issues when conmbining mods that I know of are the id conflicts, which should in theory already have been sorted by the PTB in charge of CBM, Expanded nation pack etc. But I'm sure llama can give it a once over as well.

[Calahan]

@ Amhazair - Sadly I didn't get a chance to test the map starts or look at your mod in the end today. (had a lot busier evening than I originally planned ). But I will try and do both tomorrow.

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@ Dimaz - Will you be posting the rules for the game? As besides the usual turning AI stuff, there's also cheese issues such as attacking with lone commanders to block movement ("I wasn't blocking movement, I was in fact probing his army" "Yeah right of course. Bollox"). Most of the time this is covered in games with "don't be a douche", but I wouldn't mind some clarity from above before we start. (and what punishments are due to rule breakers. As "Oh sorry, I forgot" isn't an acceptable excuse in my books)