BlackRainZ

Join Date 02/2006

+17

Give me suggestions on how to mod FE to fix some of the issues that people have been complaining about.

I have been reading a lot of the posts and listening to ideas on how to make FE a better game. Now, I know FE will probably be changing a lot in the near future but I figured I would try and do a small balance mod to possibly fix some of the issues people are having.

So far this is what I am thinking:

Made it so all city types can have walls. (Edit -- I was able to Mod this)

Change pioneers so they require 150 gold to be built. (Edit -- I was able to Mod this)

Make the minimum time to produce a unit or building 1 and not 3 (Edit -- I was able to Mod this)

Edit the ability that gives you starting gold to only give 150 extra gold (this is so krax can't pump out 4 or 5 pioneers at start but is still useful because you could hire 2 pioneers at start, rather than 1 or recruit that starting hero and build one pioneer) (edit -- I was able to mod this, right now wealthy ability gives an extra 150 gold)

Make the adventurers guild give you a 100% chance of giving 1 xp a turn. (maybe make it so you can build 1 in every city) (Edit -- I was able to mod this to 100% chance and to allow 1 built in every city)

Thinking of making dispel 50 mana instead of 100. (Not sure yet if this is necessary but I have had enemy AI's cast some of the curses on me like 5 times to the point my defending soldiers had almost no hp, to fix this would cost 500 mana, that's a lot so I will think on this more) (edit -- I was able to mod this in successfully)

Make Birth of Summer (spell which restores land) to a general spell (or low level Earth spell) rather than tied to Earth and make it cost 50 mana (or should I keep it at 100 mana) (edit -- I was able to mod this in successfully -- Changed cost to 100)

Maybe, if possible, edit the range that monsters can roam (Possible but need to experiment) (working on this)

Maybe, if possible, edit the AI of monsters so that powerful monsters always attack (or very high chance) anyone or anything near it (cities, etc.) (I made most monsters much more intelligent which should translate to deadlier)

Was thinking of working on leveling up and perhaps changing the level up bonuses from different traits (edit -- adjusted XP gain so heroes gain xp a little faster, will probably tweak this)

Will try to change how population works. (edit -- I changed population by a factor of 10 but it is really just cosmetic, everything functions the same, just there will be larger growth and greater population count. I also made it so that it will be easier to get to a lvl 2 town but more difficult to get to a lvl 3 town)

I made it so that the spell where you can build a outpost costs 75 mana instead of 50

Give me your suggestions and opinions on anything that you feel needs to be balanced and I will see if I can figure out how to do it. If anyone would like to try my changes, please let me know.

You must follow these instructions to install - First MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP THE FILES BEFORE UNZIPPING AND REPLACING THEM, LOOK IN THE RAR ARCHIVE TO SEE WHAT FILES ARE IN THERE AND THEN BACK UP THOSE FILES IN YOUR FALLEN ENCHANTRESS DIRECTORY -- ALMOST ALL OF THE FILES ARE LOCATED IN THE DATA --> ENGLISH FOLDER. ONE FILE -- COREIMPROVEMENTS -- MUST GO IN THE DATE --> ENGLISH --> COREIMPROVEMENTS FOLDER.

These files are overwriting your default Fallen Enchantress files that is why you must back those up in case there are any issues. Still requires a lot of testing and balancing. Also, if you are using a Custom Faction, you must recreate your custom faction AFTER putting these files into your Fallen Enchantress directory and overwriting the default files. If you do not recreate your custom faction it wont work correctly if you are using a Custom Faction.

You must also edit the shortcut for Fallen Enchantress. Right click on your shortcut and go to properties, at the end of "C:\Stardock Games\FallenEnchantress\FallenEnchantress.exe" you need to put -localdataonly. So it should look like this:

"C:\Stardock Games\FallenEnchantress\FallenEnchantress.exe" -localdataonly (make sure there is a space between the directory and -localdataonly)

Download Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pmcn1cnhazau2g9/balance1.rar

Tell me if the download link doesn't work. I am also going to play around with the settings more, so tell me if anything seems unbalanced or if the AI is not reacting well to the changes.

ALSO MAKE SURE TO PLAY ON CHALLENGING OR ABOVE DIFFICULTY OTHERWISE THE AI WILL NOT BE GOOD.

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Thanks man wonderful post. I have never played any mods on this game so i am not going to at this time but good luck

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It is very simple darkehound. All you have to do is place a few files where I tell you and thats it. It isn't like I am modding new content and creating all kinds of new stuff, it is just balancing so it is easy to use and get rid of.

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I am trying to figure out how to get rid of a building. So for example, I want to get rid of the default fort (because I made a new one). I tried doing this:

I put this in a coreimprovements file which I put into my documents mod directory. This doesn't seem to work. I have not tried editing the file directly from the install directory. Any ideas on how to do this>

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Nevermind, I figured out how to do it, the way i was doing it was wrong but now i got it.

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I would like to petition for changes to monster behavior, as Brad stated elsewhere- trying to find it, the monsters do have territory and such. Just that some are mindless beasts. I'd like for some to get upped in intelligence wise so they become more dangerous (skath come to mind ) . Maybe increase those who have territory a tad and increase the territory a bit. Also if find a way to decrease times it take for lair type monsters to upgrade/spawn dangerous roaming type monsters.

If I find the post I'll link it.

Good luck with the mods.

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I will look into it supreme, so far I have been able to do mostly everything I wanted above but I haven't looked into the monster thing yet. I am working down the list, up to the birth of summer spell. After I figure that out I will look into the monsters. I should be able to figure out within the next half hour if it is possible.

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I am having difficulty with the spells for some reason. This is what I want to do (unless there is an easier way) I want to get rid of the default birth of summer and dispel enchantment spells (which i think I know how to do) and I want to add in my new versions of these 2 spells. Technically the same except I want to remove the birth of summer spell from the Earth spells and just make it a general spell if possible. I want to just make dispel enchantment cost less to cast.

For some reason Birth of summer is not showing up in my spell book at all even when I am a lvl 5 Earth mage. I don't understand why.

I am also not able to add my new spells, when I go into game, they aren't there. They are in the Heirgamenon (or however you spell it) but do not show up in the spell book, can't figure out why.

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So far, in regards to monsters, the only things I see which can be altered are the spawn rating (which I am assuming is how quickly it spawns maybe) and the min and max spawn of the creatures. I am not seeing anything else I can change in regards to area it travels or how aggressively it attacks by looking in coremonsterunittypes. I will look more but I am not sure if these are things which can be modded. If anyone has any ideas let me know.

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These kinds of things can be altered for lairs in the settings, so maybe something creative could be done with it but it isn't really what I am looking for:

<RandomPlacementRequirementDef InternalName="Lair_Sparse">
<ObjectType>MonsterLair</ObjectType>
<DisplayName>Sparse</DisplayName>
<ObjectsPerLandTile>0.02</ObjectsPerLandTile>
<DistanceBetweenObjects>5</DistanceBetweenObjects>
<DistanceBetweenObjectTypes>5</DistanceBetweenObjectTypes>
<MaxObjectsPerSector>0</MaxObjectsPerSector>
<DistanceFromStartingPoint>9</DistanceFromStartingPoint>
<NumStartingPointObjects>2</NumStartingPointObjects>
<StartingPointObjectRange>12</StartingPointObjectRange>
</RandomPlacementRequirementDef>

There are also these values:

<WorldSpawnRatingIncrementFormula_Dividee>1.0</WorldSpawnRatingIncrementFormula_Dividee>
<WorldSpawnRatingIncrementFormula_DivisorDivisor>4.0</WorldSpawnRatingIncrementFormula_DivisorDivisor>
<MonsterSpawnRateIncrease>45</MonsterSpawnRateIncrease>

<MonsterPerTile>30</MonsterPerTile>

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Quoting BlackRainZ,

reply 8

I had the same issue with largely the same modification, although I opted for Earth/Life and Earth/Water requirements. To fix it I placed the Auto Unlock tag inside the spell descriptions. I suspect the reason it hasn't been working is because new spells aren't automatically added by default and thus you need to set them as such or have events (such as acquiring the Elemental Spell abilities) which grant the actual spells.

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What I meant was, even without modding any spells, the Birth of Summer spell isn't showing up for me even when I am a lvl 5 Earth archmage. Which is weird because I think it should show up.

But yeah, my new spells aren't showing up either, I will try your suggestion.

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Thanks MAdcatter, the auto unlock worked.

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So far I have played 100 turns with the changes I have made. I am playing large map, dense monsters, dense magic and normal resources. Normal difficulty with my created faction and all default factions. Normal speed for tech and construction.

By turn 100, I have 2 cities and 1 outpost.

Tarth has 5 cities, don't know how they expanded so quickly, gotta look into their traits.

All other factions have either 1 or 2 cities. The game is going at a much slower pace (which is what I want).

So far so good I think.

World maps are way too small, can't wait till I can make a larger map.

By the way, if anyone would like to try the changes I made, let me know. Would help to have another tester and someone to give suggestions\balance advice. This is mainly for me but if I learn enough and want to put the work in, maybe I will do a larger balance mod.

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(taken from another post)

I have another idea on slowing down pioneer spam (through modding) so let me know what you think.

I was looking through the files and there are actually AI setting for expansion in the early, mid and late games, so these could be edited. I could make it so they do not care that much about expanding in the early game, perhaps more so in the mid game and then even more so late game, or some other configuration. What do you guys think?

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here is thread where Frogboy gives some tips on how monsters work / how to mod - https://forums.elementalgame.com/429842 , see #6, 9, 10, and 13 - this is what sparked my request.

Also thanks to Frogboy's reasoning I think I understand how monsters are. More are indifferent than I thought . Still I'd rather a the skath and slags act like hippopotamus than a cow. I also think with shorter times on spawning something harder / worse it'll cause player and AI alike to do something about it than just wave at them.

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I see, that is interesting. I will take a look at those values and play around with it.

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Yeah, something to go off of at least. I'd be happy with any progress you are able to make in that area. Sounds like any sweeping changes are going to be time consuming ( having to look at and change several monsters ) . If you want to just make changes to a couple say ... slags and skath for the int raising and maybe the obsidian golem a candidate for the territory increase.

Can look at how those are affected and make judgements as to how it'll work or not and if produces desired effects (A more dangerous world for the AI as well ).

I thank you for taking the time to make something work.

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CoreMonsterunitTypes.xml and CoreGoodieHuts.xml are the files you want to mod monsters from. Monsters are kind of odd in that spawn rating does not work the way one should think it would. Essentially monsters have two factors that determine their stats: level and spawn rating. When you look at the level milestones in the xml, that is telling you what the stats will be for a given creature at that spawn rating. Level is just the level of the creature. I think most creatures spawn at a default of level 4. Their spawn rating is random. The maxspawn, minspawn tag sets the min and max spawn rating for monsters spawned from a given lair. In the Goodie Hut file you can mod the lair's functions. Knowing this is important to properly balancing monsters. You can also set the monster intelligence, wandering radius, number of units spawned and a host of other minute details.

Good Luck and feel free to message me if you have any questions. Or just post them here.

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

Don't you think it's slightly arrogant and insulting to proclaim that you can do a better job than a whole team of devlopers and designers on their own game - that's still in development - from one of the better companies as far as interaction and working with fans goes?

Modders crack me up sometimes.

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There's going to a long period of time between now and release date. There's also no telling if someone's issues are going to be addressed the way they'd like them to be. I have a feeling something like monsters is seen as working and may get zero further attention, by them.

The other issues, like pioneers again may not get addressed or it may. I don't think it's arrogant. I think even the developers realize many different types of mods will be made available.

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Quoting Voqar,

reply 20

I would rather see the game released in a state that works for the majority than see it need to be fixed via modding. Seriously? The game is still in development. This thread is garbage (unless Stardock pulls from it as suggestions).

Don't you think it's slightly arrogant and insulting to proclaim that you can do a better job than a whole team of devlopers and designers on their own game - that's still in development - from one of the better companies as far as interaction and working with fans goes?

Modders crack me up sometimes.

What a Sanctimonious ### you are. You come into this thread spouting nonsense, when you have no idea what you are talking about. I already know the game is only in beta and will change. That doesn't mean I can't play around with the files and make something which is more fun for me right now and share it with others. As far as who can do a better job, it has nothing to do with doing a better job, it has to do with changing the game to suit different tastes. Mods always make games better, this is a fact if you have ever played games which could be heavily modded. Some of these great mods which come to mind being Fall from heaven 2, various balance and quest mods for games like Oblivion or Skyrim, etc.

This is also a chance for those of us interested in modding to learn how the system works and what we can do and how we can do it. You are a fool for coming in here and posting nonsense without understanding anything. Feel free to never post in this thread again, thanks.

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I wish you could mod the UI. Here are some of the UI issues:

1. It's difficult to see which armies still have movement points left.

2. The list of armies and cities on the left needs a scroll bar. Yes, I know your mouse wheel can scroll the list; however, that only works half the time. Second, there's a scroll bar on the right side when the event list gets too long so why not have one on the left side too? Even better, we should be able to split/modify/move/redefine those lists to anywhere we want on the screen.

3. The movement trails (dotted lines) should show how many turns it will take to get that tile.

4. Still need more info when hovering over stuff... for example, need to be able to hover over a spell icon in the essence spot in town header and get information. need to be able to hover over resources and get information about what they're producing or could produce.

5. In tactical battles, I should be able to cast on an icon in the list (not just on the unit itself).

6. Need different HUDs for resources with improvements vs. resources without improvements.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of others... Is the UI moddable?

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As far as I know, the UI is not moddable at this time (correct me if I am wrong) but it seems that from what Frog has been saying in the steam thread that when the game is released, just about anything will be moddable. However, I am not sure if the UI is a Kumquat engine hardcoded thing. I guess we will find out.

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Quoting BlackRainZ,

reply 22

Quoting Voqar, reply 20I would rather see the game released in a state that works for the majority than see it need to be fixed via modding. Seriously? The game is still in development. This thread is garbage (unless Stardock pulls from it as suggestions).

Don't you think it's slightly arrogant and insulting to proclaim that you can do a better job than a whole team of devlopers and designers on their own game - that's still in development - from one of the better companies as far as interaction and working with fans goes?

Modders crack me up sometimes.

What a Sanctimonious ### you are. You come into this thread spouting nonsense, when you have no idea what you are talking about. I already know the game is only in beta and will change. That doesn't mean I can't play around with the files and make something which is more fun for me right now and share it with others. As far as who can do a better job, it has nothing to do with doing a better job, it has to do with changing the game to suit different tastes. Mods always make games better, this is a fact if you have ever played games which could be heavily modded. Some of these great mods which come to mind being Fall from heaven 2, various balance and quest mods for games like Oblivion or Skyrim, etc.

This is also a chance for those of us interested in modding to learn how the system works and what we can do and how we can do it. You are a fool for coming in here and posting nonsense without understanding anything. Feel free to never post in this thread again, thanks.

Don't worry BlackRainz. I'm sure Stardock are absolutely gitty that you want to take this on. They love modders. Read's Brad other thread. He's hoping people come up with entirely new games on their own it's so freakin moddable. Carry on!

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It seems I can mod the monsters but it will be a sort of big endeavor. Have no idea what the settings will do exactly so it will take a lot of effort to get it to be good.

I really want to mod population to be by a factor of 10 but not sure if it is possible. what i mean is instead of having 30 people, it would be 300 (requirements for city level up would also rise as well. Or at least I will try to increase how many people food allows and increase growth to get the same effect basically. ( I think this is possible)

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