Uploaded 1.6

new spell list http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=qbawFt8S 

From 1.5:

Arcane arrow tooltip fixed
Touch of Entropy can now never be resisted
Fixed Fireball damage, it was roughly +200% too strong
Removed negative combat speed modifier from Lord hammer, the weapon now only gives +40 attack and nothing else
Claymore (kingdom) now gives +3 dodge and -3 accuracy and 40 attack, instead of -5 accuracy and 40 attack
Great Scimitar (empire) now gives +3 dodge and -3 accuracy and 40 attack, instead of -3 dodge, -3 accuracy and 40 attack
AI more likely to hoard metal until it can build units with high armor, instead of spending it all on weapons only
Fixed a massive issue with AI cheating with pioneers (caused by this mod). The AI now appropriately pays exactly the same as the player does, instead of 75% less. If you had AI swarm the entire map with pioneers in 15 turns, that issue should be much reduced now.
Iron Ore mines now give 1.5 metal, and Ventri metal mines give 2.5 metal

Heavenfall, where exactly is the Install Directory located so I can extract the files, I can't find it in my C:Drive/Program Files/Elemental War of Magic Files anywhere and/or on Impulse either??  thanks, geecadwah

Might as well answer this; Open impulse, left click on Elemental and open application folder, that is the fastest way to see where the game is installed, can't recall the default for impulse, never used the default.

I'm fairly confident that this mod has reached its potential. There are things I would like to do, that are not possible due to the game limiting me. And there are things that I'd like to do, that are simply not worth the time (primarily 3d models).

The next step is to bring my other mods (Artifact, ExpandedFactions, ExpandedMounts) up to the same standard as this patch. The big question I pose to everyone really, is: are those mods better off as their own downloads, or should I merge everything into this patch, as a single download?

Benefits of having just one download:
-easy to install for everyone
-easy to update, in case I find bugs, I don't need to release a new version of several mods
-if everyone has the same content, I can balance around that - I don't have to worry about someone using Artifact but NOT ExpandedFactions

Cons of having just one download:
-difficult to uninstall
-some things are actually easier to mod as a normal mod instead of a coremod (doesn't really affect the user)
-some things would be added that the player might not want in the game - the modular nature of the mods is removed, and the player can't remove just one feature he dislikes anymore

(even if the mods are standalone, they will require this patch)

Well, depends.

I am not a big fan of the Mount expansion, they do look pretty and some of them actually look useful, but others are a bit too much and they do tend to add clutter to the interface, both in the shop and unit creator. Perhaps make the armored horses/Wargs Core and the rest an add in mod Flavor?

I haven't played with Expanded factions or Artifact, though the latter sounds interesting, mainly because of the version gulf, So I can't give you a real answer here.

I think, ultimately, as mods might work better, but I am speaking from ignorance

I usually just copy your xml into new files and then do my own tweaking. I can 90% of the time get it to work with the things I have been collecting over the past year of mod scavenging. I would prefer separate downloads for my own needs. But why not have a complete version for noobs and a fragmented one for vets?

That's literally twice the work

I'll go separate, but take a few shortcuts

I know right. I have to go through every line to make sure we aren't modding the same thing. Then I have to rebalance everything to make it all work. I make less errors though when I start with a blank file and add each item myself and then check for duplicates with a search. 

If only I put this much effort into anything else on the planet, it would end the recession. 

Any idea if these mods will be incorporated into any official version for the game?  i.e. 1.41 or something?  It sounds pretty good.

Who knows. I personally don't think so, they've moved on to FE now. You can't just "include" a mod like this, it needs testing, and that's resources.

I say combine them.   I personally would use all of them, so for me I would put them all together.

Uploaded 1.7

Fixed:
Lord hammer still had -1 combatspeed, this was removed
Remove Kingdom reference to archery range
Did lots of tweaking to make sure ExpandedFactions mod could integrate better
Embassy (kingdom) is now a once-per-city building and requires 15 used citizens instead of 0, and takes 8 turns to build instead of 3
Reduced Mining Guild (kingdom) to 3 gildar per turn upkeep from 6
Fixed an issue where Kingdoms would never ever train mounted warriors (still very low chance)

Think that last one is because, really, horses don't add that much to a unit, they are hard to find, hard to find the appropriate ones and add time to the build time.

Really, it always felt as if it was the L1 tech missing the upgraded mounts on L2 with armor and what not (a tech called Stirrups?).

Maybe add extra mobility and some defense?

The AI is just poor at designing units. But the problem I fixed was that the AI was set to never research it anyway. Now they do, and thus they can sometimes train mounted units.

Sad to hear this, since I recently discovered your game fixes (as well as the factions and dungeons mods) and am loving them--I still find it strange that you are doing what SD did not, and they're the ones who made the money from it.  Just seems twisted to me. *shakes head* Anyway, I have glowing praise for your efforts to flesh out this game, yet there's still tons of untapped potential (and waiting on another game vs. fixing the one we have goes against the ancient wisdom that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush").

Many of your fixes line up perfectly with my observations about the game deficiencies (those highlights are posted in the general Elemental forum). Your improved game pace (aided by SD's 1.4 patch, to be sure) is great with every faction I've played (even though they handle differently--quite the accomplishment!).  Gold/mats/metal all seem to be balanced fairly well, so they seem like strategic choices (rather than the inevitability of collecting them all in sick amounts that you have no use for).  Your expanded faction's special units have been integrated wonderfully, and are a real joy to discover--the dance of balancing unit variety/strengths/weaknesses has never been better (though again, much improvement could be made in this area alone).  Much has been tightened and feels more properly epic (rather than the cakewalk it was), even though there's so much you can do without better basic AI.  Your dungeons are a refreshing change--so fantastic that it makes me wonder why SD doesn't implement them in the core game (more on dungeons below, since they still need tweaking).

I can tell how much you care about this game, so bear with me while mention some bugs I've found, along with suggestions on ways to better enrich the game (I have no modding experience, but my natural inclinations, schooling and work all favor creative/analytic--perhaps that can help here).

--Captured capitals should not give the ability to summon that (dead) leader's special units.  It makes no sense from either a gameplay or roleplaying standpoint.  If the game allows, the player should be restricted to his own faction's special units, regardless of which city is captured.

--Factions like Altar and Kraxis had silly amounts of food available to them (like 86 food with 1 settlement!). Is this to make up for the poor AI design (where they seem to have issues building up their cities properly)?  This can't be stressed enough: the game will never be fixed until the AI can build and defend their cities well, and then those captured cities don't make winning the game inevitable (with sick bonus boosts and duplicate powerful structures--as an example, no Empire should benefit from a beacon of hope; perhaps many of the faction-only buildings should be automatically razed upon capture, and balance this by automatically converting others like housing into the faction's own so you get the upgrades).

--Magic, while moving in the right direction, is still very weak/unworthy in many cases.  I'd be happy to lend more input to help balance and make spells more exciting without becoming silly-overpowering (at least without sweating blood first--tier 5 spells rightly ought to be fearsome).

--The Combat spells seem especially useless, though a player has spent build points to have that book.  Pretty sure the "8^" damage of the main Arcane Arrow isn't functioning as intended, since it does 8 damage, regardless of # of shrines or caster intellect (non-scaling spells in a game with so few spells is a perfect example of a broken mechanic).  It also says it uses 8 mana, but uses 16 (and mana is precious rare, especially in the beginning--this should be the guide when carefully tweaking spell effects and costs).

--The "high end" summoned creatures are all a joke, when so much can be done with them (see your own work with mounts and pets).

--The 100 intelligence requirement to cast the Spell of Making is completely out of the park, especially with your otherwise great tweak of only 4 points per level--heck, on a medium map, you'd have to win several times over to get high enough (like level 25!) to get at that.  This effectively shuts down that victory path; I know this wasn't your ineptness, but I believe you can easily fix it.  I'm unsure if you can have control over this, but I'd balance the requirements with a complete understanding of magic (which only makes sense), meaning you'd have to not only have at least one of each shard, but have researched every spellbook, including summoning (and I also thing the shards should be within a city, as opposed to wild improvements).  Then even with a reasonable minimum requirement of 60 intelligence, it'd still not be an easy path to victory (it takes quite a bit of doing to reach level 12+).

--The math is wrong for the Heal spell. I've had units down 6 points only heal 1 or 0.  I had a unit (a bladedancer, if that matters) missing a single point of health actually lose 9 more health when "healed" (thank you, sir, may I have another). I wanted to top off the health so they leveled-up properly, which is another serious beef of mine, that a fully healed unit magically gains health when leveling, yet if they are missing a single point, they are suddenly far weakened when they level--this is especially painful with high health units like those of your elemental faction and the expensive upper quality units, where they actually become weaker when they level and the stack drops in size (from like 4 to 2 or 3, dropping bother their attack and defense). Heal spell is a vital mechanic, especially when supplementing weaker units, so please recheck the formula.

--Just to make sure this horrible game flaw isn't missed, I'll repeat that no unit should ever be *weaker* after leveling.  The current process makes high health units more of a curse than a benefit.  Is there a way to keep the same percentage of damage when a unit gains health from leveling?  That'd be the simplest, elegant fix (i.e., if they were 15/20 health--25% damaged--and they level and now have 50 health max, their current health should show 40/50, keeping that 25% damaged).  Heh, trying to find workarounds to not suddenly have a 15/50-health worthless unit is like trying to push a broken car to town instead of fixing it.

--The technology path for Kingdom seems so inefficient on vital things like housing and better research (by comparison, the Empire's is streamlined and simple); some of them are okay to add to the flavor and challenge (if you play Kingdom against Empire), but some have no good reason, like making the longbow rare to research (I think this is leftover from the days when bows were so overbalanced, and should be removed now that a better balance is available). This might not be within your control, but instead of lessening a bow's damage, a much cleaner/more realistic fix would be to give shields higher range dodge chance (like 8 with the starting shield, scaling to 20 or more with the top shields, or whatever it takes for bows to be only 10% effective). Another idea would be to make bows like spells, in that using a bow ends your turn's AP, which makes them more a strategic weapon. (A combination of both tweaks would be best as long as unmodified bow damage is high on non-shielded, less armored units.)

--While I'm on about archery, there are many fun ways to offset the previously mentioned ranged limitations (you have already done two good ones with the top elven special unit--kudos to you).  Specials like rapid fire could help against heavily armored units, as well as sureshot (using an extra turn to make an indefensible hit, which could only happen in the proper circumstances); can these be trained into normal units (for big costs like crystal and elemantium)?  If carefully balanced, they would be good fun without placing them back into a boring kill-all position.

--Population numbers are inconsistent and don't add up.  In two cities I founded, both with four houses and a 10% boost to housing, one had 224 max population while the other had 181.  Oddness.

--Prestige pacing needs work.  Some cities grow faster than you can build improvements, and prestige improvements/champions/leaders have been rendered worthless.  I realize that is a cheap fix to help game pace a bit, but it's gone overboard (and the "hidden" growth modifiers just make everything misleading--why even have a prestige "calculation" if it's never correct?).  Without spending resources on prestige items, a city should maintain reasonable growth that can leave it waiting to "level" (and out of tile spaces) without specific action from the player.  Conversely, prestige amounts could be left alone and the buildings and charisma stat could be tweaked to be more meaningful.  For example, an Empire statue should naturally add influence as well as prestige--seeing a row of awe-inspiring or grotesque statues should have a noted effect besides making residents want to breed more.  On the other side, inns and pubs have a venerated track record of being profitable and helpful to the community.  Inns can have well maintained stables, which care for mounts and therefore help in the growth a tiny bit (by not having so many steeds die from poor tending).  Pubs would make good money, because we all know kingdoms, real and fantasy alike, make tons of money with a "sin tax" on alcohol.  Just ask the United State's ATF...  A nice offset would be to make influence more meaningful (like tied to build potential and safe/advantage zones) and kingdom upkeep tighter (though higher wages, mostly, as well as some maintenance increases).

--Combat experience is backward.  No one in any other setting gains more experience from hunting down a bear than defeating a large army. No one should gain less experience from dungeon clearing than wandering around in the wilds.  This seems a simplistic fix to me, so perhaps I am missing important elements.  The roles of wilderness spawns are to occasionally threaten unguarded/poorly guarded cities (something balanced pretty well with these latest tweaks, but could use increasing) and help gain that first level or two of experience, not to be a cash cow or build elite units--the very idea is preposterous. How about this: Wilderness spawns equal 3 experience per unit per level, and dungeon monsters have that same scale while applying an overall 30% boost.  This is simply offset by making dungeons more rare--it's quite silly to have each tier of dungeon spawn tons of dungeons (sometimes even 2-3 in the same area).  From my limited experience (so far!), dungeons could still be common enough with half the spawn rate, and every bit as challenging and rewarding (though I think they need more challenge at higher levels, but it seems balanced extremely well for 1st and 2nd levels). Then warfare, which is life's best forge for makes elite soldiers, should have significantly higher experience (say, 100% boost on those same numbers--this is already balanced against life expectancy of soldiers locked in war and the steep leveling curve).  No worries about "farming" the AI for experience, because if you're doing that, you're dominating and winning the game anyway.  It baffles me that any dev would get this natural/reasonable order of things so completely reversed, that a single one-shot spider is worth far more than an army of 12 enemies that take some doing to kill (*chuckling* let me remind people of the name of this game--it's not called "Explorers R' Us," even though adventuring is a very fun/needed diversion as well as one path to victory).

--This might not be in your control, but I think it worth mentioning that when a caravan gets eaten, you can send a new one to a different city to collect yet another 10% bonus.  This makes no sense, because if your roads aren't clear, you should not be able to benefit from trade ("What trade?" asks Robin Hood); the easy fix would be to apply the bonus only when there's at least one active caravan working the route.

--The primary quests' timing is now quite random (had one happen in midgame, when it's of no use whatsoever); is it in your control to make rewards and fights scale?  It'd be a nice fix that would make them more of a feature than a bother.

--Some minor problems I've noticed: The avatar for the ghost troll is missing, giving just a shadow on the ground, and taking long turns to be able to damage it (I suspect the game engine is trying to deal with missing animation info and having to time out, since it takes ages in computer times, like 20 seconds in real time).  This happens with every hit or miss, and adds up to annoying.

--The text on the bladedancer special unit (elf) says "extremely quick" to make up for its other weakness, presumably.  However, it's no quicker than a standard unit.  I'd suggest giving it 3 move and 5 combat AP, especially since 2 of those are taking up "casting" the special ability on itself (I wish there were a smoother way to do this, since it makes no sense unless the game engine requires it). Can you have a 0 or 1-AP "spell"? Slipping into a stance would be as fluid as breathing for this unit, and I cannot see it as overpowering (mine still get beat up by large stacks, as they should).

--The training icons (at least in the elven city recruiting window) do not match (neither unit size nor quality), which can be very misleading, and is poor UI.  Not sure you have much control over that without the devs fixing their buggy engine, but I thought it worth the mention.

--The elemental special unit ability, Hot Breath (from lavaling), sounds quite...underwhelming for what it does.  How about "Scorching Breath" or the more humorous "Hellfire Halitosis."

It seems to me your mods are totally complementary, each one making the other better (especially once more balancing, like the things mentioned above, are done).  It'd take a ton of careful work to integrate them, but it'd end up being like FO3's Wastewanderer Edition: the quintessential must-have mod to properly enjoy the game--I cannot see ANY gamer wanting to go back to SD's broken vanilla game after playing your mods (again, once they are polished).  If you could make the features individually enabled/disabled, then it'd make the mod a win even for those who would sometimes want the added dungeons and sometimes not (the extended factions aren't an issue, since you can already choose to include them or not).

I know this is asking a lot, and I have gained much admiration for you based on what I've seen so far (even if you change nothing else); however, it's natural (and healthy) to dream of a perfected game.  Much of this seems to be within your reach (though I admit to having no clue other than what I observe about what you can and cannot do).

Okay, enough of this--I'm back to digging out of the deep hole I've put myself in. *grin* Happy gaming to all.

I'm cutting unique units from the EF mod. They're impossible to balance against the changes in the core game, ie every unit now has almost no health and deals massive damage because they come in fours.

I've said the same many times, it is beyond the engine unfortunately.

Again I'm limited by the tools. If I could do anything, it would be a small thing to balance magic so that it scales properly. What I'm left with is having a single solution that has to scale from the beginning of the game to the end-game. If you've got any specific suggestions about weak spells, let me know.

In my game, Arcane arrow scales and costs 8 mana. Make sure you don't have any mods that interfere.

This is true; I just find it too boring to change to bother.

Your sovereign can cast any spell, sovereigns ignore such limits. The intelligence requirement is there merely as a tool to make sure that it is your sovereign that casts it and not some random hero.

I'll take another look at it, thanks.

Sorry, beyond my control

Bows and shields are really there for the player; the AI never uses shields and only rarely bows. They're as balanced as I can make them at the moment.

Generally, I try to avoid adding content the AI can't use. Mainly because it feels like a cheat.

I think all the numbers are right on my end, if the problem is in the .exe I can't fix it.

Unfortunately, prestige and influence is nearly impossible to mod.

Dungeons specifically have a low experience rate simply so you can't level up in there. I played a while with high experience in there, and I realized that it was much more important to save low-tier dungeons than actually use them. That way, you could just walk 12 high-end units into the dungeon, auto-resolve every battle and come out with 12 fully healed level 8 units.

Hardcoded, can't change it.

Primary quest? Don't know what that is. Anyway, no, generally there's no way to scale difficulties in such a manner.

Noted

Sorry, can't change that either. And believe me, I tried.

Unit removed

Thanks for all the feedback. Really, unique units and summons could work with the game, if someone understood how to balance them properly. Unfortunately, that's not me (I was never good at that kind of balancing). I'd be more than willing to put them back in if someone made the effort to make them playable.

As you've pointed out, there's still a LOT of problems with the game. But only very few that I have actual power to fix (besides summons). So in that sense, that's why I think the mod has reached its potential.

By the way, if you download the latest artifact version 5.4, armor pieces can now boost your base level magic power (before magic bonuses are applied). That should boost the magic in the game some for the player.

Edit: I mentioned earlier in the thread that the whole monster aspect of the game is in need of loving. It is practically not there. But it's just too much for me to do, and I don't have that in me.

Also, to be honest, I'm saving my strength for Fallen Enchantress. While I'm not sure what we can do with it, I'm certain it will be far more than E:wom.

Understood, Heavenfall.  There's only so much you can do, and it's tough to be motivated when things are broken beyond your control.  Like I alluded to, it's still an awesome accomplishment to have done so much with the content (and I only use your mods, btw--haven't tried any others, and probably won't).

You probably know this, but I'll mention it anyway. Balancing units and spells is laborious, but not too difficult if one has the right tools, a decent analytic mind, and a lot of patience; the trick is to put all the information in large spreadsheets, grouping like together and applying plenty of notes fields (to track relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as ideas).  Then you cross reference each spreadsheet as you make tweaks (this can be done for town buildings as well as spells).  If the devs ever fix the AI (which has no ability to win right now--I gave it plenty of opportunity in my last round while I played around with the dungeons and other things), look me up and I'll be happy to detail what I'm talking about (and help you by compiling and sharing those mentioned spreadsheets--basically putting my money where my mouth is).

For spells, you have to play with the major variables you have (and mix and match to give flavor); these include: spell power (INT), shards, area of effect, debuffs, buffs, unit effects (single or groups), utility/strategic.  You are on the right track by making some spells more powerful by shard and by area effect/unit, but be sure not to ignore INT (making it a worthless stat).  It can be scaled back in some cases, but it is a wonderful tool for building in scalability (as is % of health, if the game lets you access that--this way a spell stays viable across most difficulty levels).

With dungeons (after having cleared them all on a medium map from 1 to 5), I can confidently say they get too easy in the higher levels (which can be supplemented by making them spawn more stacks, rather than simply higher level ones--in fact, the most stacks I ever faced was in the 1 and 2 tier dungeons).  Also, as I said, you can balance the dungeon xp by making them less common (by half).  That's still plenty to find and defeat, but without the craziness of getting no xp.  Perhaps my case was rare, but in the map I just played, I had almost no wilderness spawns, so my troops were only 4-6th level by the end game, and I had no way to train up new troops at all (takes like 6 dungeon levels to reach 1st--surely there's a balance where they don't bank, but can get some).  Anyway, this is all probably moot at this point, but we can hope the devs finish what they started rather than pretending it never happened.

Why not combine them, but provide a switch so players cahn choose which to actually install?  Kinda a modular approah?

I don't like intelligence as a way to boost power. The AI doesn't know how to use it, so it just ends up as a cheat. Also, it's a sort of one-trick pony. Intelligence already dictates how often you get resisted, what spells you can use, and your own magic resistance. There's no need to base spell power on it. What I COULD do is allow the player to level up spell power as a separate stat. It would make magic stronger, but the AI wouldn't know how to use it.

Dungeons are not there to give you experiene. They're there for champions, artifacts and resources (and fun). I realize the lack of experience doesn't make sense, but I can't be heaping experience on the player because there's nothing at all similar that the AI can gain.

@ElanaAhova it's either or, anything else is just extra work for me (which I'm not willing to put in). I went with the separate approach, three different mods people can install if they want to. Artifact and ExpandedFactions both require the After the War mod now.

Nice mod, HF.  There is a problem with the Fireball spell which is included.  I fixed it on my machine.  Here how the gamemodifers ought to read:

<GameModifier InternalName="TileDamageModifier_Instant">
            <ModType>Unit</ModType>
            <Attribute>CurHealth</Attribute>
            <Calculate InternalName="ExtraDamageFromShards" ValueOwner="CastingUnit">
                <Expression><![CDATA[[UnitStat_NumFireShards] * -1]]></Expression>
            </Calculate>
            <Calculate InternalName="ExtraDamageFromMagicPwr" ValueOwner="CastingUnit">
                <Expression><![CDATA[[UnitStat_Magicpwr] / 100]]></Expression>
            </Calculate>
            <Calculate InternalName="MinValue2">
                <Expression><![CDATA[[ExtraDamageFromShards] + -4]]></Expression>
            </Calculate>
            <Calculate InternalName="Value2">
                <Expression><![CDATA[[ExtraDamageFromMagicPwr] * [MinValue2]]]></Expression>
    </Calculate>
                <Calculate InternalName="Value"  ValueOwner="TargetUnit">
                <Expression><![CDATA[[Value2] * [Troopcount]]]></Expression>
            </Calculate>
        </GameModifier>

Thanks.

Heavenfall,

I tried to unzip this mod to the install directory.   It took some of the files but for others the computer said I did not have administrative privilages and would not complete the update.

Have you run into this before?    It may be pretty basic:  my system uses windows vista.   While I am the sole user of this computer and have done some "run as administrator" updates before thats not an option when I unzip the file.  

I know this is not a problem with your mod but I very much want to try it and would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks in advance,

Xaltotun

Thanks mqpiffle

xaltotum, I have no idea. Try googling up some.

Not familiar with Vista. You know I'd recommend you'd try and get 7, better product over all, but it might not be an option to you, so, not sure. It sounds like some permission issue though. Tried bugging the MS folks yet?

After imbuing one of my champions (not sure it has to do with anything) I have noticed that I can cast spells in every battle I am in. Even though no caster is present. Is this a feature or a bug?