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.
You can increase the population numbers by a factor of 10 pretty easy. You just need to find all the things that use population and increase them by your desired factor. Then make sure taxes are .1% instead of 1%. The thing you can't really increase by that factor is units in an army. Even if you got it balanced each one takes up too many resources to run well on any computer. Perhaps making each Hp count as one person and allowing each visible soldier to represent a troop of soldiers would work for you.
You can do it, but I personally don't see a huge benefit. There is a certain logic to it, but nothing that excites my personal tastes. Now, if we could have hundreds of soldiers in tactical battles, that would be something I would love. Just not possible with today's technology though. Also, I have a medium quality computer, so it would especially not work for me.
Oh and we generally post these threads in the FE modding subforum. That is generally how we avoid mean people and trolls.
yes i know but i can suspend disbelief for soldiers and pretend they are more. What bothers me is population and i know it may just be an immersion thing but to me that's important.
Do you know what other things are affected by pop>
Sean, I don't see any threads for FE modding, only WOM modding.
https://forums.elementalgame.com/429322
yeah I found it heh.
I'd like to try out your mod cause all these changes are right up my alley
I was also thinking about the following changes: Tower of Dominion gives +1 essence in addition to other things it does, the pariden outpost spell's mana cost getting upped to 3/ turn.
Let me tweak it more, I am trying to find better ways of slowing down pioneer spam other than just by gold. I am going to try to make monsters very intelligent and hope they will attack most of the time to stop the ai from settling everywhere. I also made changes to population by a factor of 10.
I have to say, I made some new changes and I am trying it out now. Playing a large map, all AI on challenging, dense monsters, dense magic, moderate resources, all AI factions plus my custom faction. So far on turn 50.
With the changes I made, be prepared for a much longer game. You will not be able to spam pioneers, neither will the AI at least in the early to mid game. Once you are cranking out gold then it wont be as much of a problem but that wont be till late game. It is much more difficult to expand, the world is more dangerous, especially with dense monsters. The AI can't expand so quickly. It means that you will spend a lot of turns to get to your second city, actually I am about to build my second city, had to change taxes to high to build up enough gold, first time I ever had to do that. Really need to think more strategically. So far loving my changes but need to play more to see exactly.
I will put up a link to download it so that whoever wants to can try for themselves and help me balance it and I will maybe create a new post so that people can see it.
BlackRainZ this is an excellent effort and all your tweaks are ones that I would also want
Would it be possible to post a tutorial about which files and parameters you changed for each tweak?
If this is not possible, please PM me with the name of the file you've modded for each tweak so I can do some exploring of my own...
Thank you for all your effort, Ins
Man. Want to play it already. Totally my kind of game now.
Another thing I realzed, is wildlands vs anywhere else. It is exactly as dangerous there as I wanted the entire world to be. So my latest thoughts would be to find a way to increase number of wildlands that get spawn/created or increase their radius. Which would leave a lot less peaceful zones.
It shouldn't be hard to do that. I can make lairs spawn much more creatures and increase their radius, but it is a lot of work heh. Just making monsters smarter took me like an hour and a half yesterday and that was editing one value. I will probably try it out in the future maybe but then there is so much to balance haha. I will put up the file so you guys can just download it and I will explain what to do but it needs to be tested to see if it will work out okay and that the AI can really adapt.
I put the download link up on the first post, please let me know if it doesn't work. Never used dropbox before. Also Follow the instructions exactly, make sure to read it all. Give me feedback, I am also constantly changing stuff.
I am thinking of putting the cost of pioneers back down to 150 because I haven't seen the AI go beyond 2 cities yet even at 200 turns, when I have 4 cities so I may lower the amount. They are keeping up close to me in power rating but they aren't generating enough gold. They would probably be fine in one of the harder settings because they get bonuses.
However, it may be that they are building pioneers but losing them to the smarter monsters, I don't know at this point if it is a combination of the two or not. (Or if even making the monsters smarter did anything)
I do find they attack me more, I think. They still wont attack cities often though.
Lol, as I was typing a stupid stone golem attacked my second, undefended city and killed it Good thing I made Birth of summer a general spell and available at start so I could repair the land. Now need to build a pioneer but need more gold.
haha! Defend those towns, escort those pioneers.
Just want to make a comment about mods, no offence is meant, but there's another way to do it. Like under game options check the box that says "use mods".
In my \mygames\FallenEnchantress\mods folder I already had one for Forgotten Realms mod (just working on my own custom factions for now mainly ) . I would make another folder and call it Balance mod. That way I don't have to worry about destroying the original data as much. And I know where to look to tweak changes. Can also see how vanilla compares/going back by unchecking the box again.
(EDIT: If you do it the way described above you do have to worry about duplication, in short only thing should be there just the new information or tweaked so you don't see and have double bonuses, but it's doable. )
That doesn't work for this kind of mod, of course I know all about the use mods function. The changes will not work correctly if you do it that way.
If you haven't tried modding things like spells, abilities, etc. you might not be aware. For new content that is fine but when changing existing content, it won't work correctly. For example, if I wanted to edit the wealthy ability and I just put it in there with a gold amount, it would not work. It would just add that extra amount to the existing skill. I would have to actually subtract, as in use a negative number to get what I wanted. Other changes would not work. You wouldn't be able to edit units for example or spells. I would have to actually create a new spell, identical to the old one, with my changes to make it work. It is complicated. I was doing it that way before but it is too much work and not everything I want to do will work.
I decided to try lowering pioneers to 150 gold. I played a large map with dense monsters. Just 4 factions and me. I wasnt actually playing just observing what was going on. The AI was having a very difficult time expanding because the monsters were wiping them out. By turn 100 only krax had multiple cities (4) but that is because I forgot to lower their wealth ability which gives them a huge advantage but they had actually lost 2 of those towns by turn 120 or so, so they were down to two. I am going to try without dense monsters, it might be too hard for the AI haha.
Oh and challenging difficulty setting. Gonna put up the new files with less expensive pioneers. This is why I wanted to do more testing because u have to start a new game everytime
You're right, but I had just started "use mods" this past week. I'd have to get rid of anything that would be duplicate, plus do things like add negative number in for wealthy, etc.
Yes as you say, it is complicated.
Some of things I have been doing is new so up until we get to here it's all fine. If I can get it all to work that way I'll let you know. I'm going to get what I can to work. I could do both, but prefer to not touch the files in the game directory.
Nice!
There are some things which just aren't going to work, like my changes to the city hubs and stuff. At least not until the full game is out and they change how mods work with the game. I am putting up the new version. Still needs a lot of testing though.
Bah, had to fix something so will reupload. I am also going to give factions more starting gold.
edit -- ok corrected version is there, if anyone tries this please let me know how it goes for you and what map settings, factions, etc. you are using. I will continue to test on my own too but it will take time to figure out a good balance (maybe).
Ok just quickly checked out a game with my new changes:
Turn 100 -- large map, dense monsters, dense magic, normal pacing, moderate resources, all factions except for Gilden. Challenging difficulty.
Pariden - 3 cities, 1 outpost
Yithril - 1 city, 1 outpost, fully garrisoned city though
Altar - 1 large city, 1 outpost
Krax - 3 cities, 1 outpost
Imperium - 3 cities, no outpost
Resoln - 1 small city, lots of spider units in their city though
Tarth - 2 cities, 1 outpost
I would say that isn't bad for turn 100. They are entering the mid stage now too so won't expand as much as the early game.
EDIT----
I am not actually playing just observing the AI
Comparison at turn 200 (considered to be around the end of the middle game)
Resoln -- was killed by Tarth
Tarth -- 3 cities (one being former resoln), cities are medium to somewhat large
Pariden -- 3 very large cities, 1 outpost
Altar -- One super city, fully garrisoned and 1 outpost
Yithril -- very weak, still one city and 1 outpost (city is still small, I guess focusing on units and attacking me which I keep cheat killing)
Krax -- 4 cities, 4 outposts (none of them particularly large so of moderate size)
Imperium -- just recently built a fourth city, no outposts, mostly medium to large size cities
So I think pretty much a success as far as I can tell but then I like long drawn out games where I can build up my towns and stuff.
Hehe, my changes should be null for the next version but that is okay. I am happy if they fix the issues on their own so I don't have to do it. I will still make some changes here and there though and it is good to get experience doing it in case I decide to mod something different later.
Loving your changes man. Seeing Obsidian Golems wander around, love it. Haven't tested a whole lot but 1st game to 100 turns, I had 2 towns, Yithril 1, and Resoln 3, medium map, balanced, dense, 6 players including self. Hadn't met any other players yet. Yithril's only 'problem' so to speak is it is next to me and wildlands. So that faction is doomed later, but its not at a huge gap, challenging after all. Verga had a nice army, couple of spearmen, sand golem and was clearing outside of its border. From what I've seen so far. It's just bloody brilliant. Good work, mate!
(EDIT: please ignore my pioneer cost comment, as I have just increased it to 200 - thus a player needs 600 to build. Turn 150 and everybody is at 1 city. Surprised to find out Krax at 1 too, wonder what he spent his cash on? Magnar is closest to being able to build one having the most population. Slave driver Definitely, fun and different. Can't say thanks enough! )
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