Eilarais

Yeah, a retreat mechanism would work great. For me, the key is to remain in control of the visible game mechanics. So from that perspective: If an enforced auto-battle makes me lose 5% of my unit's HP, that's bad. If an enforced auto-battle gives me the option to lose 5% of my unit's HP or allow the enemy units to retreat to their capital, that's good. I really like the idea of having a separate honor/pragmatic/rut

[quote who="davrovana" reply="12" id="3502028"]Losing a few units unpredictably does reflect the attrition of battle: isn't any battle where you KNOW the outcome by definition not interesting?[/quote] Yes, if you know the outcome of a battle then it's not very interesting to play it out. But auto-fighting the battle and not knowing the outcome is exactly as uninteresting. Both scenarios play themselves out without any player agency, it's hard to see an advantage in either

I've actually had way more fun after adding spells and abilities for monster units instead of the player factions. The spellbook is pretty well-rounded, the bigger problem is that in many fights it's not necessary to use it. Here are some new spells/abilities I've tried already: Loyalty (dog units) - kills the unit and transfers its HP to an adjacent friendly unit. Chant of the Bound (sand and obsidian golems) - All adjacent units lose their next turn unless they r

Well, I wouldn't expect some new tool to be written by SD just for this purpose. But maybe if the save files were just straight-up zip archives then it would be easier to test mods. Or maybe a command line parameter could tell the game to use the .xml files on the disk in preference to the ones in the save file. Or, maybe all these AI params are being cached elsewhere anyway, and it doesn't even matter what you do to the xml once the AI initializes. I'm not sure. But it&#3

[quote who="mqpiffle" reply="2" id="3499684"] You can use cheat codes to get yourself into the late game very quickly. [/quote] Yes, but that doesn't mean you can test properly. Good testing relies on changing one variable at a time, and you can't do that if you're forced to restart the game after each change. You end up with some setup that works by accident, instead of working because it has to. Here's a specific example. In LH 1.7 these are this va

Ok, this has been bothering me forever, so I did some testing. Here's what I found: 1. Wildland monsters ignore wandering radius, they have their own movement logic. So it doesn't matter whether they spawn from huts or get placed directly on the map. 2. When an army enters a wildland, the guardian will move towards it. When the army leaves, it will move back towards its starting point. 3. Each AI turn the guardian will calculate the shortest path to either the

Great, thanks! I've also assigned 8000 fame to this faction on start, so the behavior looks just like they are selecting faction-specific champions instead of drawing from the general pool. It should even be possible to link this this back to the fame resource, so that the AI will cast these spells at 8003, 8050, 8100, etc. But either way it's working the way I want it to, thanks for the help!

I am trying to create a specific AI faction that will continue to challenge the player into the late game. I've created some above-average champion units and I want them to only be available to a specific AI race. Is there any way to do this? I can't assign them all at the start of the game (too OP), and it seems the tag has no effect on champions. So they keep getting distributed to other players instead of being selected by my super-faction.

And here are the newly-transparent Avatars of the forgotten Elemental Lords, guarding the ancient temples scattered across the world. Each lord confers a unique area effect at the start of battle, and it's not known which lord's temple you are entering when you take the epic-level quest. Definitely perks up the late game a bit. It would have been great if the skeleton .hkb files had more consistency in their particle attachment points. But I guess the effect is good enough as-

Ok, figured it out, thanks for the detailed write-up!

Does anyone know if it is possible to turn a creature model transparent without modifying the .hkb file? I am trying to create spirit versions of the wildlands bosses, but adding transparency to the dds texture just turns the model white instead of invisible. Or alternately, does someone know a hex-based modification to .hkb files that would do the trick?

I've gotten a champion as far as level 25, but only on huge maps. You have to put some effort into finding and attacking the highest-level monster camps before enemy factions do, and make sure you're using the "Tutelage" spell when you attack. But even if you don't optimize XP, level 15 is pretty respectable for anyone except mages specializing in the "Evoker" branch. I generally stop worrying about my champions around level 12-13 and focus on the weaker ones.

Every 4x game I've ever played "breaks" at a certain point, after which you are either guaranteed to win or lose. Usually this point happens long before the game is actually over. I would guess that this is because the open-ended design of 4x games lead to an ever-increasing number of states for the player to be at, and at a certain point it is no longer possible to design a game that encompasses them all. Even if the content exists (more techs, more units, bigger maps), there's no ga

[quote who="Jafo" reply="3" id="3447258"] "Ponce"? Perhaps a dictionary might help when they're choosing names....[/quote] At least they didn't put it on the USS Gigolo.

The biggest benefit would be if they could revive the land in an intelligent way, I've seen a number of factions die off because they couldn't do this. Raise/lower terrain I've never seen either though.

Is there any way that we can tell the game what seed to use when starting a new game? I started a game with the 1.4 beta and it's a great setup, but most likely I'll see something in the 1.4 release notes that I have to have and I'll end up abandoning the game. From the .err file: Debug Message: Map Random Seed: 1382296343 It would be great if there was some way to tell the game to generate this map again after the patch comes out officially.

[quote who="Primal_Savage" reply="1" id="3407837"] Do you have 5 essences?[/quote] Aha, yes I do. I guess I did not see that this stat was per essence. Oops.

I've just noticed that the gentle rain enchantment provides +125% food instead of +25% food, contrary to its description.

I just wanted to mention that I recently cleared 250 hours playing LH. In other words I think the game is kind of ok, all things considered. Since this is a forum on the internet I obviously can't offer any unguarded words of praise, but what I can say is that this horrible crotch-fest of a festering wound on PC gaming's backside has managed to provide a not-so-terrible experience that has allowed me to spend 250 hours not throwing my rig out of the nearest window. S

I've been experimenting with a single racetype-specific Champion for each faction which acts as a "sub-sovereign" and is very difficult to kill. This is to offset a corresponding increase in monster difficulty that I am also working on, since for now every AI champion is a walking collection of injuries by the time I encounter them. Anyway I want to force the first champion of each player and AI faction to come from a defined set, after which the mechanism should work as normal. What I&#3

After a champion levels up, I am noticing that the skills "known" by this champion stay highlighted in the skill selection dialog the next time it comes up, even if it is a different champion is doing the leveling. This makes it difficult to determine what skills this next champion knows and what skills are remaining, particularly in the "general" tab that all champions share.

[quote who="Voqar" reply="37" id="3391327"]This game was never lacking for maps or quest variety. The DLC is optional and isn't that expensive. You absolutely don't need the DLC to enjoy hundreds of hours of infinite replayability.[/quote] I guess this would be the definitive answer to the OP. Really the DLC purchase is more symbolic than anything else, it's a way to continue supporting the series and get a little something in return. And if you don't feel all

[quote who="Kantok" reply="35" id="3390930"] That in and of itself is taking a stance on DLC. The beauty of DLC, as far as I'm concerned, is it lets me decide if I want to give money in exchange for new content. I'm picky with it, so I only buy what I think is good value DLC. None of that new content would have been in your $70 standard (which we're slowly creeping towards anyway) because companies didn't develop substantial additional

Actually, the comparison with the Witcher is very interesting, because both companies have something in common. Regardless of what your stance is on comparative game marketing philosophy, CD Projekt and Stardock have both relied on other sources of income in order to develop games. For Stardock it's enterprise software. For CD Projekt it is (was?) localization and re-release of third-party titles. So in both cases being a "good guy" has required some supplemental funding. It seems that in

[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="76" id="3380865"]How come nobody is pointing out that Gal Civ 3 will now use hex tiles instead of square tiles (see that new pic)? That's a big deal since Brad says he never liked hex tiles.[/quote] Huh. So what's the difference, exactly? I'm would be very interested to hear how the developers think gameplay changes between hexes and squares.