Mod: Randomocalypse 0.3.6.1 - Pile of new features

[elmokki]

Randomocalypse is not really a mod but a program that generates mods. The idea is to generate 1-14 (that's the amount of flags I've bothered to make) random nations using vanilla game units that are at least roughly balanced. This happens via lists of units with their powers defined - currently about 900 units are listed. Basically you can end up with many things you couldn't end up with before. Many sacreds and mages that appear as capital only can appear as recruit everywhere in this mod.

The program is made with Java (JRE 1.6 or newer), so it works on Mac/Windows/Linux/any platform that can run a commandline java application. That said it while running it on Windows is simple since that's the platform I develop it on, Mac requires opening it in terminal and about Linux I have no clue. There is absolutely no reason it won't work though: in the end it's a rather basic Java application.

You will also want to use CBM 1.92 or newer since the program generates at least 4 CBM added units and the (rather bad) balance of nation is based on CBM stats. Generated mods with units of ids of 2107 or below should technically all work without CBM though.

Installation
Either extract all the files to dom3 folder and just start playing after generation or extract all files to wherever and move the contents of /mods/ to dom3's /mods/ folder after generating a nation. The program generates the modfiles with filenames "randomocalypse_.dm" where is the seed used to generate the nations. That said you might want to clear out the files once in a while since if you don't specify the same seeds again and again you'll eventually have quite a few different randomocalypse-mods generated.

Can it be modded/tweaked!
Oh yes. Many things are read from .txt files. Unitlists folder contains unit lists and powers, weight.txt contains some numbers used by balance algorithms, story.txt contains nation description generator material and players.txt contains bases for nation names (optional file really)

How is it balanced?!
It generates a pile of different power values that range from 1 to 100, ie for example troop power, sacred power and mage power and weighs them so that it returns a total of 1-100. Units have powers of 1 to 5 (fractions are fine). For balance info on invidual check the .dm file: It has somewhat easily readable debug data listed at start.

Get it!
0.3.6.2
- Added an ability to make all cap only things recruitable from conquered capitals.
0.3.6.1
- Sometimes gives priests ability to reanimate. Death magic and blood magic to some extent make this a bit more likely.
- Sometimes gives priests ability to blood sac. This is more likely with blood mages and strong priests.
- Sometimes gives nations ideal temperature different from normal. This depends on nations units, especially sacred and mages. You'll rarely see anything except +1 or -1, even though every value is possible.
- Nation summaries!
- Debug is slightly easier to read.
- Source code included. Do edit it and tell me what could be done better!
0.3.6.0
- Fixed the major bug generating cap only sacreds as coms.
0.3.5.9
- Fixed magic site generation in Customocalypse
- Added randomly chosen picture for temples for the nations!
- Fixed a few bugs
- Added some content to names.txt and story.txt
- Made nation epithets sometimes be more abstract and not related to the first start site. For example: Bluetha, The Enigma of Reanimation
0.3.5.8
- Fixed couple of Customocalypse bugs.
0.3.5.7
- Starspawn unit definition was wrong and generated a king of the deep instead. Fixed.
- Customocalypse mode added. -Customocalypse command line arguments opens a mode where you can akwardly customize a nation with randomocalypse rules. Read readme.txt for help. This is not something I'll actively maintain.
0.3.5.6
- The .csv understands units with id over 2106. As an example the CBM MA Agartha netter pale one is added to the .csv. I might make a program that automatically generates .csv lines from mods at some point if I can be arsed to get all those cbm things causing unit not founds into the .csv with minimum effort, but I'm not too bothered by them so we'll see.
0.3.5.5
- Tweaks to:
-- Troop generation and power calculation
-- Sacred power weighting
- Minor tweaks to:
-- Mage power calculation
- Tons of other minor tweaking
- Ability to generate nations with a set target power straight from the program. This was already possible with weight.txt. Also command line argument -power
0.3.5.4
- New and better command line arguments if anyone even uses them. Everything is optional.
- Troop power calculation changed
- Sacred power calculation changed
--> Just a draft that needs more work, quick checks make it feel better even with the rough numbers used to shift troop and sacred weights depending on their powers and sacred cap onliness.
0.3.5.3
- Nations now get #descr and #brief that contains an awesome randomly generated backstory!
- Debug data in .dm gives units a * to their name if they are cap only
0.3.5.2
- More \'s to /'s for Linux/Mac people.
0.3.5.1
- Retardedly rapid versioning for retardedly small changes!
0.3.5
- Fixed game crashing bug, fixed sacreds being rec everywhere almost always, made troops vary slightly more
0.3.4
- One of the fairly hidden features added in 0.3.3 made all nations have sacreds and mages both have at least 50 power when it should've been enough to have one over 50. This is something changeable in weight.txt btw.
- By default no two nations will get the same national priest or primary mage now. This too can be disabled in weight.txt
- You could have duplicates of the same unit on one nation.
0.3.3
- Seeds are now printed to filename
- Bugfixes
- Added a couple of (fairly hidden) features that were missing from since Java port.
- Changed \ to / so Linux (and Mac?) people can play without too much fiddling.
0.3.2
Horrifying infantry generation bug and forgot to update .jar last time.
0.3.1
Fixed a special power bug and made debug a bit more readable.
0.3.0
I rewrote the whole application in Java. In theory it should work on Linux and MacOS now.

I personally won't link to Dominions 3 content made by me any more and I hope no-one else will either (old links are fine, whatever). You should be able to find them or most of them by asking on IRC or googling the other forums

Credits:
Programming, most of the balance lists - Elmokki
Sacred and special unit lists - kianduatha
Mage power algorithm - Squirrelloid
General input on balance algorithms - people on IRC

Attached below is a shot of an example how you could use players.txt for a multiplayer game. It also shows site name/epithet generator and what it does to randomize nation names.

[Valerius]

Thanks, this seems fun. I generated a nation and copied it to the mods folder but when I try starting a game I get an error: myloadmalloc: can't open ./mods/./randomacalypse/red.tga (using Win XP with default install location).

Edit: maybe I downloaded it too quickly and the 021 release fixes that?

[Foodstamp]

It looks like it may be a problem as to where it is looking for the image for one of the flags. I bet you copied the images directly to the mods folder instead of the mods/randomacalypse/ folder. You may also check the spelling of the folder, it may need to be randomacalypse and you may have named it randomapocalypse etc.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

You may also check the spelling of the folder, it may need to be randomacalypse and you may have named it randomapocalypse etc.

Yes, that's it. The program generates #flag "./randomacalypse/red.tga" but the folder name (and other references like #icon "./randomocalypse/banner.tga") are for randomocalypse.

Attached is my first nation. Starting army was 60 Jotun spearman and 10 archers.

[elmokki]

0.2.1 fixes the flag not found thing. I didn't bother to update the first post other than change the link since I figured no-one had downloaded it yet anyway. The mod used to be named Randomacalypse but due to pressure on terrible spelling was renamed to Randomocalypse, and I had the old /Randomacalypse/ folder on my computer when I originally tested this.

60 jotun spearmen sounds very strange. It should be 6. I checked the code and unit definition (278 2 0 0,6) and it should generate 0.6*10 = 6 units with that (yes, I know it's a , in definition, but it's supposed to be that). I'll have to ignore this bug for now since I've seen modifiers of under 1 work before on other giants.

[Valerius]

Ok, I'll run some more tests later and let you know the results (it's quite fun - like rolling D&D characters) but I forgot to mention that I also had CBM 1.92 active on the off chance that is an issue.

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Ok, I'll run some more tests later and let you know the results (it's quite fun - like rolling D&D characters) but I forgot to mention that I also had CBM 1.92 active on the off chance that is an issue.

It shouldn't affect troop amounts. The biggest reason it should be enabled is balance: for example Daughter of Avalon gets buffed fairly heavily (and deservedly).

[Foodstamp]

Elmokki,

Should this bit...

(278 2 0 0,6)

be...

(278 2 0 0,.6)

Maybe?

Just guessing from the info you provided, so I may be way off.

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

Elmokki,

Should this bit...

(278 2 0 0,6)

be...

(278 2 0 0,.6)

Maybe?

Just guessing from the info you provided, so I may be way off.

No, (278 2 0 0,6) is correct. For some reason C# likes to print out and convert string to number with , as the decimal marker while inside code the decimal marker is . so therefore it's 0,6 as in 0.6

This is also the reason I couldn't just print out the nation colors (Dom3 reads them with . as decimal marker) without actually swapping the , to .

The syntax is:

278: Unit id (Jotun Spearman)
2: Power (1-5, decimals are okay but marked with ,)
0: Cap only or not, 0 being not and 1 being yes. Defaults to 0 if left out but if you leave it out you can't write anything else to that line.
0,6: PD/Start army multiplier of 0.6. Basically this means you'll get 0.6*10 = 6 units per 10 PD or 6 units of this to starting army. Multiplier of 0 means the unit can't be in starting army or pd. Defaults to 1 if left out.

Starting army algorithm tries to get the heavy infantry with the multiplier closer to 1. There's always one with multiplier that isn't 0, but sometimes that's the only unit or both units are giants or something with an abnormal multiplier.

That said, same goes for ranged. There are fairly many slingers and they've got an multiplier of 2

[elmokki]

I heard a bug of generator generating same nations repeatedly. I added an ability to give a custom seed to help with that to some extent.

Also remember that you can change most of the aspects of the generator if you feel like the nations aren't suitable. Just open weight.txt or unit lists in /unitlists/ folder and get working.

weight.txt explains things fairly well, unit lists' syntax is for example:

278 2 0 0,6
-----------------------------
278: Unit id (Jotun Spearman)
2: Power (1-5, decimals are okay but marked with ,)
0: Cap only or not, 0 being not and 1 being yes. Defaults to 0 if left out but if you leave it out you can't write anything else to that line.
0,6: PD/Start army multiplier of 0.6. Basically this means you'll get 0.6*10 = 6 units per 10 PD or 6 units of this to starting army. Multiplier of 0 means the unit can't be in starting army or pd. Defaults to 1 if left out.


the generated randomocalypse.dm also has debug data for nations. All this combined you can probably create parameters that give more balanced nations than it currently does. If you think you do find such parameters, do post them please!