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[eMOD] Master's Affliction 1.02

[eMOD] Master's Affliction 1.02

Formerly Known As The Elemental Balance Mod

1.02.016 Now available!

Elemental: Master's Affliction

A total conversion mod by Sean W. III and Werewindle


 

 

 Dolor hic tibi proderit olim; aut vincere aut mori


To give sum to this realm which I have created is simple: Some day this pain will be of use to you; either to conquer or die. When I read the description for Fallen Enchantress, I imagined Pandemonium. I believed too much in a realm of chaos and desolation. A realm where the monsters have lease and ancient demons rule. The realm that was finished is quite simply too soft for my tastes. My thirst for strife is impossible to satisfy. I want, nay need, the realm to devour humanity. This can't be accomplished in the realm of the Fallen Enchantress. The world is but a piece of cloth, on which simple empires are built. There is not danger, no survival against impossible beasts. Cities do not grow from fledgling villages into towering dominions. Magic does not rip the realm in two. Humanity is nowhere near sufficiently scared. Without challenge, victory is hollow. Without pain, defeat is meaningless. But I, I have the power to change that. I will build my own realm. I will populate it with terrible beasts and ancient demons. I will give true power to humanity and watch them destroy themselves. I will lure those that think themselves masters of magic straight into the pits of affliction. Defeat will be their turmoil. Hubris, their lure. Welcome to the Master's Affliction.


But not everything I do is to cause you pain. There would be no reason to play if I did not offer things a master needs. First and foremost I offer more strategic and tactical depth. Balance is a word for making things equal. I want to add depth to my scales of balance. I will provide links to charts and descriptions of what I have changed and why. There will likely be many more changes and content additions. For now I want to get a core depth to tactical battles. I will be primarily focusing on rebalancing monsters to provide appropriate levels of challenge throughout the game. The basic concept is that each tile must be fought for in a war against the world. This will be explained in detail in the Mod Explanations section. For now, try it out and please provide feedback.

FE Mod Library Page

FE Nexus Page

Download Here (1.02.016)

Mod Install Instructions

Mod Explanations

Mod Charts

Weapon Balance

Changelog


With Contributions from:

 

The King of Despair Heavenfall


2,034,993 views 856 replies | Pinned +3 Loading…
Reply #651 Top

What's up with MA and vanilla 1.01?  The suspense is killing me.

Reply #652 Top

Sean and Werewindlfr - diggin' the new outpost upgrades fellas... awesome.

Reply #653 Top

Air dodge is also known as dodge against ranged attacks. It applies to any ranged attack like a bow or a magical staff.

Reply #654 Top

Quoting bpalczewski, reply 649
Also fallen dragon does not produce anything. I have two bear lair on outskirts of my kingdom, nothing coming from there as well.

Anyway, i will have to start to new game, b/c this one i will not win.  I have a war which neither of us can win, since it is quite difficult/practically impossible to conquer city. Right now defender can have easily 15+ troops defending in a city on early stage of game, and i will have to wait like 200 turns to have my research allowing me to field 9-troops armies .... I feel there is a growing problem with balance, and cities are too easily defended. My opponent has like 2 troops in the city, but when i attack they are 12. No chance. I can destroy every army thrown at me while defending my city, and there is no chance of conquering any of cities of my enemy .... Plus there is no more xp around to grasp, game over. But this is ridiculous level of AI, so no complaints ... 
End of bpalczewski's quote

 

I will add those two to my list, thanks.

 

Are you using Catapults to siege the city before the battles? You need Blizzards, Fireballs, Catapults, radius damage staves to siege. If you have cleared the entire map before you got to those, that means the pacing of lairs is way off. I am working on some more challenging stuff for that stage of the game to keep things interesting. It will take a while to do, but where you are quitting right now is where I want the real game to start.

Reply #655 Top

Quoting Brainjuggler, reply 651
What's up with MA and vanilla 1.01?  The suspense is killing me.
End of Brainjuggler's quote

 

Not sure what you mean. The mod is compatible with 1.01. Has been since the day 1.01 came out.

Reply #656 Top

Quoting Salurian, reply 651
oO.  Something screwy with the power rating system here... it's season 60, and one of the factions (playing Tarth, and apparently the other faction is ALSO playing Tarth) has a power rating of 2371, when everyone else is 150 or less.

 

Also, Magnar for some reason decided to wander around, not founding any cities until he died an ignomious death to monsters and got taken out of the game really early.
End of Salurian's quote

 

If there are two Tarth factions, one must be a custom race you made. Make sure to check the factions before starting a game. But the high power is definitely a bug. If you have cheats running in that game, reveal map to see where the power is coming from. It could be a bug, either from us or vanilla. Sounds like a memory leak.

 

And you can thank the AI for Magnar's early demise. Not something I can fix.  :S

Reply #658 Top

Are you using Catapults to siege the city before the battles? You need Blizzards, Fireballs, Catapults, radius damage staves to siege. If you have cleared the entire map before you got to those, that means the pacing of lairs is way off. I am working on some more challenging stuff for that stage of the game to keep things interesting. It will take a while to do, but where you are quitting right now is where I want the real game to start.[/quote]

 

Hehe, you must be joking :) i do not have yet archer, nor cavalry, not to mentions catapults. I have fireball on my sov (does not survive first turn of battle to archers, and if he does, stationed hero will counterspell him) and one more hero.

I have five cities, i cleared little piece of land, i am surrounded by AI's and whenever i try to cross their territory they threaten me with war. I am in war with Yithril, but as i said, game is still in the early phase (80+ turn), and since it is ridiculous and they can have so many bonuses to defending city (and they of course, already have 5 size city), it is impossible to take them. Hence, on ridiculous if you do not expand, you are dead. I can prolong my agony, but game is over.

Problem is that i am playing ridiculous, which with this mode, apart from normal huge bonuses, gains also incredible bonus for defenses in cities, namely large number of serious defending troops. Meanwhile i am fielding 3-man units, he already has 7-man unit archer militia (though his regular army is only 4-man). He has also 7-man cavalry. I attack a city with 6-troops in army, and he has like 15+  (including obelisk, spears militia, archers etc.). And i have 6-troops only because that was my priority. Not to mention 300+hp Jaggernauts he gets every turn (though those outside of city i easily kill). 

My conclusion is that your balance is broken somewhat for ridicolous AI -> they develop cities way too fast, and in your mod it implies incredible defenses. They defending army in a city is like 5 times better than what AI can field. 

Right now, i would have to just turtle for 100-150 turns and do research, but since my neigbhours are rapidly growing in power, it is only a matter of time before i get crushed. My power rating is ok (of course last, but not far behind), but the difference is growing rapidly. If i do not take those two cities of Yithril soon, i am done. 

I will try to play expert terrifying world, hoping that AI on expert can cope with it .... 

 

   

Reply #659 Top

I see now. If Ridiculous seems ridiculous, that's because you are playing on ridiculous. On lower settings the balance is good, but challenging. Any higher difficulties are not meant to be fair in the slightest. The AI on Chuck Norris and Harder is the same as the AI on Ridiculous. The only difference is that ridiculous gets massive economic bonus as you suggest.

Reply #660 Top

Damn can't find a whipping smiley! I'd like to whip you! At least your lairmonsterxml still has wrong tags! And all that after the awesome free tools you were recommended! Bad Master Modder! Back to work! I'll try again next version ;P

Reply #661 Top

Hi, very nice mod.

I love the changes to heroes. I usually play with henchman and make one or two governors per city, but it seems there is a bug when i level the governors past lvl 3, they get creativity +1 to growth, no other governor path traits shows up.

The Hold trait you get from the path of the cleric doesn´t work, the unit nover lose a turn.

I can´t build the sacrificial altar, it is listed in my buildings but i hit the build button and nothing happens, i need to confirm it again to be sure.

 

EDIT: Mana blast do no damage, only does damage when resisted, but only 24.

 

Reply #662 Top

Sooo, I fire up this mod, and notice a few oddities in the tooltips when looking at sovereigns... Oh well, I fire up the new improved warlord verga (now without that strange magic stuff that I never understood, what do I care, I just want juggernauts :))

It seems to me that either I installed the mod in a wrong way (I copy-pasted the stuff as per directions in the "Mod Install Instructions") but all the designable traits available to trained units have a production cost of 0....

If this is the design intent, then why does my militia have no traits? Edit: Opens Eyes. It still seems rather odd though.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #663 Top

Quoting Ploeperpengel, reply 661
Damn can't find a whipping smiley! I'd like to whip you! At least your lairmonsterxml still has wrong tags! And all that after the awesome free tools you were recommended! Bad Master Modder! Back to work! I'll try again next version
End of Ploeperpengel's quote

I am not an expert coder or anything. I tend to be more skilled at design than implementation. For some reason commas and apostrophes were preventing my XML program from seeing those errors. I had to delete all of them to get it to recognize the real problems. I saw that Microsoft XML Editor was recommended. I suspect is does not exist though. My computer seems to think I already have it. I can't find it anywhere, but when I right click on a file I have the option to open it in that program. When I do so, the file is opened in an internet explorer browser. I looked online for the program, but there only seems to be a 2007 edition. There doesn't seem to be a new version and it is not clear which microsoft bundle would include it. Do you have a link to where I can get it? I would hate to delete all the grammar from every file to be able to check for errors.

Reply #664 Top

Hold fixed in next version, thanks.

 

Sacrificial Altar seems to not have an art def. I will see what I can do. Until I make one, I'll just switch the art def to a default so people can build it. If I ever get the balance perfected I would like to move on to adding in new tile designs for high end computers. It would of course be an optional upgrade.

 

Mana blast should be fixed, I'll take another look. Yup, I fixed it, but I must have combined files poorly and messed it up again. It will be fixed in the next version.

 

Traits don't cost anything. The cost is now on the unit itself. Militia have 3 traits as you probably realized. The problem was that you could choose extremely cheap units with no traits for almost no cost. It made it impossible to balance that with the huge bonuses of traits. But when you make them cost nothing, their value is weighed only against each other. So all units cost about the same and each trait's cost is opportunity cost. The total labor is less as well. It is now more viable to train from a Town or Conclave, but Fortresses are clearly more efficient.

Reply #665 Top

I would prefer if traits costed 2-3 points each, just so I can choose "Slightly Cheaper" (Militia). But that is semantics and I learn to live with that that (it is a rather minor issue, it just dazzled me and at first seemed like a mistake ;)).

There seems to be 1 trillion tooltip mistakes though, are you aware of these?
(PS. starting next to 3 syndicate camps is death ^_^)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #666 Top

Quoting alrom, reply 662

I love the changes to heroes. I usually play with henchman and make one or two governors per city, but it seems there is a bug when i level the governors past lvl 3, they get creativity +1 to growth, no other governor path traits shows up
 
End of alrom's quote

Hahahha, bad explanation.

What i meant is that beyond carismatic at lvl 3 the governors don´t get more governor path traits at lvl up. I leveled a governor to lvl 10 and the governors traits never show up.

Reply #667 Top

The Governor's Path is not finished. Still trying to get a good balance and functionality there.

Reply #668 Top

I'm posting this here because I've never run into this bug in vanilla, wondering if it is in fact a bug or just a mechanic I haven't seen until now.

Great mod so far though!

Reply #669 Top

Looks vanilla to me. I didn't change anything that would do that. Try razing the outpost and see if you can build.

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Reply #670 Top

Heh, just tried what you said.  Moved it one space and I can build but in a select location, just realized no part of your settlements can be within 6 tiles of another, not just the town center.  Doh.

Reply #671 Top

just posting so I can keep an eye on this mod due to the damn stickies hiding new posts.

harpo

 

Reply #672 Top

The warhammer have this "unit sttruck suffer -1 to initiative" but the mace and the maul doesn´t. Also the fist two wepons cost metal. Is this intended?

Reply #673 Top

Quoting alrom, reply 673
The warhammer have this "unit sttruck suffer -1 to initiative" but the mace and the maul doesn´t. Also the fist two wepons cost metal. Is this intended?
End of alrom's quote

Yes, it is intended. One of the things we are aiming to do is present a more balanced weapon selection. The vanilla game just obsoletes everything as you move up the tech tree. In this version early game weapons are cheaper and have advantages when you outnumber an opponent. Massing warhammers and then choosing to get squads allows you to severely slow down your enemy. Whereas if you choose to tech all the way up to mauls, you do much better damage against armor, but will have smaller forces and you don't get that disorient bonus.

Reply #674 Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 664

I am not an expert coder or anything. I tend to be more skilled at design than implementation. For some reason commas and apostrophes were preventing my XML program from seeing those errors. I had to delete all of them to get it to recognize the real problems. I saw that Microsoft XML Editor was recommended. I suspect is does not exist though. My computer seems to think I already have it. I can't find it anywhere, but when I right click on a file I have the option to open it in that program. When I do so, the file is opened in an internet explorer browser. I looked online for the program, but there only seems to be a 2007 edition. There doesn't seem to be a new version and it is not clear which microsoft bundle would include it. Do you have a link to where I can get it? I would hate to delete all the grammar from every file to be able to check for errors.
End of seanw3's quote

No worries man, won't seriously hold it against you that your not skilled with codestuff - yet, most modders start that way, been there myself;)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7973

It's indeed this old program, microsoft didn't feel the need to expand on it obviously. There are better xml editors out there but this one's free and sort of works well in combination with notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/)

I used xml spy in my past modding time, definitly better but not free of charge. The main point is xml notepad does validate your xml as soon you try to open a file with it just as well. If it encounters an error the file won't open, instead you get a popup saying which line of the file you try to open is messed up. Use notepad++ to browse the file up to the line reported in the error message, fix it, reload with MS xml notepad and repeat procedure until it actually opens up. When xml notepad opens your file without trouble you can be quite sure it's good to go. Civ4 handled this better as the game itself fired up error messages when there was something wrong in the xml files. As FE doesn't do that you really need a program to validate your xml else all kind of weird stuff may happen.

 

Now that of course doesn't prevent every kind of wrong data slipping through but you can be sure the xml is formally clean. For actually browsing xml files looking for typos in the data not the tags xml spy would be awesome to have.

Hope it helps. I like what you guys did to the game - mostly, I kinda miss the buildings that provide idle city boni or some sort of production commerce conversion like civ4 had because I hate production going to waste and I think you should merge the citydefenderbuildings with existing buildings that provide other boni to the city. The AI doesn't allways build them headfirst or at all as a human player might do. But I understand there also might be better solutions once this game gets past xml modding options which it doesn't currently support I guess. Scripted free autobuilding when tech is available would probably be best. Another thing I'd like to see is wooden(hedge) walls being available for all settlements but that's mainly due to the shabby look of the fences each city starts with not really a gameplayissue(though in this mod it wouldn't hurt either).

Anyway, hope this mod gets more attention, good luck with it:)

 

 

 

 

Reply #675 Top

Bugs:

- evade expires after two/three turns of tactical battle

- i saw also prone units to dodge, but i think this is vanilla bug 

- there is something messed up with dodge/accuracy in general; i am trying to play Relias who has 23 dodge and 84 accuracy and in battle against bandits who have 0 dodge and 80 accuracy misses more than bandits do. Especially counter attack basically never misses. 

On the other hands, dodge on wolves work extremely well, my troops miss them more than 50% of time ...