[eWIP] Waiting For Next Beta Mod

from Elemental Forums

 

Waiting For Next Beta Mod

By Seanw3 and Werewindlefr

 

 

For all those that are tired of waiting for updates, I have thrown together a mod that fixes many balance issues that seem to be on the back burner for now. Since we seem to be waiting more for a new version than actually be working on bugs, I feel it's time to test some of my ideas for balance. This mod tackles everything from buildings impotency to Initiative costs for armor.

This version makes the mod better according to user suggestions. It is more so set to be compatible with the new and mysterious beta we are getting next week. Of course, we may not get it next week...

 

Notable Changes:

+Buildings cost alot more labor, have less maintenance, and do more. Levelup buildings are all valuable, but I can't change the descriptions. Please refer to the tooltips for information.The intent is to make buildings take a serious amount of time that equals their benefit. I have made some adjustments here. It will not be as painful as before, but you will want to stick to units until you get about 40 Production. A 3/4 spot is the best one in the early game now. Rivers and Forests are extremely valuable for the bonuses you get from them.

+Wages are primarily determined by unit size. Training cost is also a factor, but units in general won't break the bank. You can upgrade at a reasonable cost in armor, weapons, and unit size.

+Growth for your capital starts at 1 instead of 0. Tower of Dominion gives +3 to growth. Growth is more balanced. Don't be afraid to have a low Grain yield in your capital if you can get 4 Material. Your ability to produce will help you win Act I and expand to 3 or 4 high Grain cities. There are also more important growth buildings throughout the game. If you specialize in Civilization, you will have the advantage of lots of great cities.

+Camps of all kinds now offer excellent units. Serpent's Pact may be the best thing in the game. You can also now put them into logistical units instead of single only. Beware the food costs. Also, each level will significantly improve your monster's abilities. They are best countered with magic.

+Spears now do 33% armor penetration and have a higher attack. Be sure to make lots of unit design for that darn AI! It really helps the AI.

+50%,75%,100%, and 100%+ encumbrance now has real penalties. -4, -8, -12, and -12 Initiative -1 Move, are the respective penalties for encumbrance.

+Armor no longer automatically reduces Initiative. Labor costs for better armor are higher to reflect discussions on real platemail. It now has a bonus against pierce, but is vulnerable to blunt damage. Chainmail is great at stopping cutting damage.

+Unique weapons are more balanced with trainable weapons. The damages were way out of hand. 

+Many items have been changed to be more desirable to heroes. Potions and Food now do much more healing at much less cost. Stock up!

+Monsters breed very quickly but are positioned far away from your starting position. You should be safe, but still have to fight some big battles to expand. This is where feedback is needed, since the switches for this part are confusing. I suggest starting on Sparse. Each lair now holds a very angry army. They will move towards you and lairs will even send out wandering armies that respawn when killed.

+Mage Staves now do more damage, but it can be resisted with Spell Resistance and Elemental Resistance. I suggest getting some late game research buildings, as they increase Intelligence and offer some nice Mage Robes in the shop. The late game ones do AoE. This part may be buggy, gonna need feedback, but the intent is to allow AoE to hit friend and foe alike.

+Legendary weapons are now Legendary. In general, weapons get lighter and more powerful as you tech up.

+Magical Weapons now do much more damage. They are basic weapons with additional magic damage. They also cost more.

+There are now Frost bolts for frost weapons. No more fire out of those ice staves.

+Onyx Throne now has a tile, as do a few others that were missing tiles.

+Levelup Buildings at level 5 now have fundamental impacts on how you play the game.

+Shadow Gate should now be functional. I have yet to test it, but I believe I have fixed it.

+Lots of Unit Designs for factions. It makes the AI better when they have more choices.

+Each Sovereign Background Trait gives you special starting units. You will get great units from war based traits. Pick Diplomatic and expect to be hiding in your castle for long periods of time. But your bonus will be very good later on. There are many valuable weapons you may start with as well. I suggest making your own Sov for this mod.

-Turns will take longer in the beginning due to the number of creatures present. Kill them off to speed things up. Sorry about that.

+Quests are back! but divide all Gildar rewards by 10. Need to fix this, sorry.

+Be sure to read the descriptions of Levelup Buildings. As a rule, the ones that offer few bonuses will unlock some game changing things in the shop. Archivist will unlock books in the shop that cost Gildar, but can seriously upgrade heroes.

+Paths have been added. This is really just a preview of what we are planning on adding. Path of the Protector should be the first thing you check out. It is the best thing for a Field General class. There is also a Knight Path and some other good things. 

+Each Sov Background Trait allows you some special units at the start of the game. Monsters are more numerous and you start with some units. The beginning should actually be exciting now. But don't get too loose with those troops, they cannot be recovered or retrained. The traits themselves are also better and should alter how you play the game. Warlike backgrounds will give you much better starting units. Diplomatic, for example, gives you crap units, but you can keep the peace later on and afford an infinite number of trained monsters. Serpent's Pact+Diplomatic is a fun way to play. Also, Summoner gives Fire Elementals instead of men. Warlock gives Mages with staves. I will need feedback on balance here as some of them may be too good. FYI, General is supposed to be overpowered. 

+Materials now give 8 production by default instead of 5.

+Common Rarity Traits for Heroes are now cancer free. You might actually want them.

+Sov Talents now have some interesting options. Will you be a Necromonger? Do you come from money? What special abilities have you acquired in your travels? I would like to add more if anyone has any ideas.

+Unit Design Traits have been rebalanced. The costs are higher, but so are the effects. There are 2 free level options. Go ahead and read each one as they come to you.

+Spells got some balance. No more Mana Blast=Win

+Improvements not properly display their functions, all their functions, and nothing but their functions.

+Faction Traits now have more variety. Each Tech Trait offers 3 starting techs. The other options should be just as good as techs, but I am curious how other will balance these. You could choose 9 starting techs or you could choose 3 abilities. Master Smiths+Endless Legion+Warlord could be very powerful.

+Stock Sovs now use their 6 points of customization and are about the same as any custom one. Any thoughts on changes is welcome. I tend to go for two elemental spellbooks and the rest of the points go towards equipment and talents. Maybe there is a Talent i should add to better characterize a Sov?

+Upgrading Groups now cost 30 Gildar per soldier you are adding to the Unit.

+Many more changes all around. Let me know what you think.

 

How to Install:

First thing you need to do is add -localdataonly at the end of the file path for your shortcut. To do this, right click on any shortcut you have made for the game and click Properties. In the Target box there is a file path. At the end, add a space and type -localdataonly. Now download the link below and unzip it. In the file is the original xml file and the modded one, labeled Test. Take all the ones with Test in the name and copy them into FallenEnchantress/Data/English (except CoreImprovementsTest and ArtImprovementsTest, those go in the Improvements Folder there). Now delete the core files that my files are replacing. The backup copies are in the folder you downloaded. It is important to always have the original backup and a backup of your mod files as they may be erased by updates by the devs. To summarize, you just put the modded files in the game folder and got rid of the originals so that the game will read the modded ones. You added -localdataonly to the end of the file path for the desktop shortcut, allowing the game to see your computer's xml instead of the ones on the server. You should now be ready to play a new game that is much more fun!

Links Here:

Waiting For Next Beta Mod (v42.Hitchhiker's Guide to the Realm)

 

Rules:

Don't post bugs in FE Support when using a mod. We have a special thread for mod bugs.

Remember to put the original files back before updating and keep a copy of the modded files. Many things change from one version to the next. Better to keep things as the devs expect them to be. 

Do post new ideas and problems you encounter here. The whole point of this is to give some parallel feedback on what you think works and what doesn't. Then we can present that to the devs and see what they think.

Do ask questions. I am more than happy to teach anyone that cares how to mod these files to their personal liking. I can also help if this is your first time adding a core mod to the game.

Might want to start on easier settings. The game is so much more challenging now. I may need to think about AI help if it turns out they can't handle the monsters.

60,850 views 132 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I will definitely try this after I finish my current game. Most of these changes sound spot on. Thanks!

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm a little confused. Both downloads are needed?

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

The second one is just my unit designs and the Hasta weapon. But I figured I would add them since they make the game much better. You need lots of unit designs to make the AI functional.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh ok. So I got it working I think but noticed some weirdness. For one I've been getting more than 5 level ups and got a bunch of non path choices when I was supposed to be choosing a path. Also tactical battles were weird. I was fighting an air elemental and when a unit would attack it would often show it missing and then what looked like a counter attack for 16 damage or whatever but no health was actually lost. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I upped the number of choices at levelup. I really just wanted to see how many would fit. Turns out there is a scroll feature. I left it in because I am almost ready to add some new paths to the game.

 

I have fought lots of Air Elementals and never had a problem. Which weapon were you using? Or does this happen with every battle? Many staves have a chance to counterattack.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

is this compatible with HF's reliquary and unitstats?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Probably not. My mod changes the penalty for armor and sets new standards for weapons. His armor likely still subtracts from Initiative, which is a loathsome idea to me. You will probably have to choose between one or the other. The background unit stats may work, but have not been used in this mod. The point of this mod is to test some of the user's ideas to really see what the difference would be and how balanced those ideas are with each other. 

So far, I feel my mod fixes alot of the core game problems, like armor being illogical and countering weapons even less so. The negative is that weapon values are still not balanced, production values need work, and most of all, it is not user friendly to try out. But the building aspect is much more fun and meaningful to the game. One city is now more competitive with many cities. That is main goal I was trying to achieve. I would say this mod is a 3/5, but still worth a play if you are hard up for some new ideas being added to the game. 

I will make a better balanced version and correct any errors at some point, since we will not see a new beta version for some time.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, I have not done any re-balancing at all, the unitstat background mod merely adds more unitstats and a few other things. There is no real reason to play with the unitstat background mod at this point, because 1) reliquary isn't working and 2) expandedfactions is very unbalanced. I'd go with seanw3's mod if you want to have a more fun gameplay experience in beta 0.86.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Use Mods will enable any files in your documents/mygames/FE directory. So you don't need it if you are just using the first download. But if you also download the second one, with the units and Hasta weapon, you will need to click that. I also recommend removing all your old unit files out of the Units folder so that there are no bugs in that respect.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

+Unique weapons are more balanced with trainable weapons. The damages were way out of hand.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to thing that Heart of the Glacier (as well as other artifacts) was ridiculous (and quite inconsistent design...). Sure, it needs to be powerful, but 90 damage, REALLY?

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I just played a game with Verga (Dick in Spanish) where he was able to solo most any battle. It was quite spectacular. He found a Tear of Syndrum, which now gives +10hp per kill. Once I got him to level 5, he was quite the badass. So much fun to be able to use one Sov with such power. The Tear certainly makes soloing possible, but not easy. You need alot of health potions, which I need to make more expensive and rare. I didn't realize cityhubs were giving those out. Great fun though!

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm trying it right now. The cost reduction for the price of wolf pelts is a bit extreme :)

Liking it so far. Ther was something funny thought : I didn't remove the original file with the abilities, so the level up bonus were duplicated (the effects stack in this case), so I was thinking that maybe it was worth it now to take + St, as it was +6 and no more a ridiculous +3, before I realized it was me forgetting to remove the file.

 

But that leads me to believe that maybe if all the random + stat were at least doubled (probably not the one giving + Init), they would be somewhat worthwile. 

 

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Me and my new co-author are currently adding new Paths and redoing the old traits to mean more. I feel that heroes are not scaling well with trained units in the endgame. The most notable thing will be Governors actually affecting your whole nation. 

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Wow, your buildings sure work a lot better than the vanilla ones. Tear of Syndrum is too powerful at low level, and too weak at high level. I'd rather have it give a HP bonus related to constitution if possible. My sovereign is soloing the whole Tarthian nation with this. I like the new version, but it should be much harder to acquire (I think I got mine out of a crappy mob or a goodie hut).

 

Back to the buildings, teching just has a different feel now : instead of unlocking buildings that I don't build, I now am hard pressed to cranck troops as there are so many cool buildings to build. That is pretty awesome. 

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

I will probably make Tear of Syndrum do equal to your Con in health and make it more rare. Good idea.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

It doesn't have the Constitution stat in Frogboy's 0.87 video.  Does that mean that Constitution is getting the boot?

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

oh then I thought about something else, if CON disappear. It could be equal (or proportionnal) to the level of the unit destroyed. It is something that has always bugged me with life stealing items : they make fighting weaker opponents infinitely easier than stronger ones.

 

I think the metal upkeep cost for the blacksmith is too hars. I'd reduce it to .33 if possible, or even .25. Currently, I have scrapped mines in every cities, including the production ones.

Tarth has been doing a weird thing in my game: I didn't encounter Lady Irene until I took their capital. And then I eventually found her, in a small chunk of land leading to nowhere. It probably has nothing to do with your mod, but I suppose she really wanted for the water to dry to  B Line to my cities.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

I noticed units resisting a blizzard spell (I didn't pick fire for this playthrough). Is it something you changed? If so, it is much better now, that it does not destroy 99% of the ennemy force with 100% probability.

 

I think the starting monk staff is a bit too good compared to other starting options. I would not mind all of them being on par with it though.

The game was over before I had a significant army, as I didn't notice I only picked one opponent, and soloed its nation with my sovereign. 

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Monk Staff has been balanced. I am glad you noticed the spell difference. I made almost every spell resistible, including those from staves. It is a good idea to equip a spell staff of some kind. It gives you +5-10 Spell Mastery at the cost of -5 Init. That means your blizzards will take longer, but kill more.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

I am using your mod and it is very fun, but i have a problem.

I cant see the trees. If i am zooming out i can see there are woods, but not in 3d mode.

It is a bug, or i missed something, while installing your mod?

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

Who is your coauthor?

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

I didn't change anything that should affect trees. That would almost certainly be a vanilla bug. My guess is that you loaded a save when this started? Saves sometimes lose data and end up forgetting to add stuff when loaded... like trees.

Reply #25 from Elemental Forums Top

Awesome! I think I really ought to try some modding. I've been a little put off by the lack of things like basic conditionals and my inability to do anything involving graphics.