TBS Age of Wonders 1 & 2

[BING XI LAO]

I was thinking a bit more about justfying Neutral-aligned elementals, just expanding on what I said earlier:
In the final Elric of Melnibone book, the elementals are screwed if the world becomes Chaotic, because they represent an orderly matrix of essences: and they are also screwed if it becomes Lawful, because they are nonetheless magical.
The end of the final Elric book sees the world become less magical and it becomes entirely human-dominated, much like the Highmen agenda in Age of Wonders world of "Athla"; we may well conjecture that Elementals would fare similarly ill under Undead domination.

And as for the game mechanics side of things, unit disloyalty is the most pertinent manifestation of the whole relations/alignment mechanic, and I like to expand the relevance of mechanics, not reduce them.

 

[vota DC]

It gives a bigger morale penalty against non neutral races.

 

[octavius]

For SP "None" is the only alignment that makes sense. It's just too stupid when a Highman hero summons Air Elementals, and then some turn later quits because of alignment differences. Alternatively, if it's possible make the summon elemental spells lvl 4, so the Highmen and Undead won't be able to research them with default magic spheres.

 

[BING XI LAO]

For SP "None" is the only alignment that makes sense. It's just too stupid when a Highman hero summons Air Elementals, and then some turn later quits because of alignment differences. Alternatively, if it's possible make the summon elemental spells lvl 4, so the Highmen and Undead won't be able to research them with default magic spheres.

It is possible, after all I only recently moved them from tier4 to tier3. Assigning spell sphere/tier is easily done in DevEd. As is unit alignment. But you know that right? Happy to share my modding knowledge with any of the hex editing things too.

 

[octavius]

Ah yes, I did think it was strange those spells were lvl 3.
Anyway, I think making them lvl 3 and making the elementals of Neutral alignment is a very bad mix. The only thing so far I really don't like about your mod.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Happy Kruno Day!

 

[BING XI LAO]

Figured out what was causing the "-22 levelup bug" and fixed it. I'd given Haste a levelup cost, which was being incurred if you cast it on your heroes. Also updated the mod.
EDIT: it has a new bug now, that might stop you fighting battles offensively... going to have to delay the update
Edit: updated with just the -22 bugfix and some other stuff, shouldn't include the new bug.

 

[BING XI LAO]

K, now a proper patch is uploaded.

 

[octavius]

Did you do anything with the Elementals?

BTW, having played the mod quite a bit now, I think the Fire Musket is rather OP now. It has high AT and DAM, two shots and long range, making it well worth spending 24 skill points on (OTOH Knights are no longer the only 3rd tier Human unit worth building). Excellent for Dragon hunting. Same with Doom Gaze, or maybe even more, if your main enemy are not the Undead.

Extra Strike for only 8 skill points is rather cheap, I think.

No Wall Crushing skill for heroes?

Trolls are now a serious pain in the butt with their Hurl Boulder skill. I hate enemies with that skill; so hard to cover against, and it seems to hit more often that it should. Also makes the Beetles less sexy. OTOH with Physical Protection I guess the Beetles are good for throwing against lower tier mobs with only physical attacks.

But this is mostly nitpicking.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Been trying to prune redundant and semi-redundant skills from levelup just to make the list less unwieldy and overlong. So Heroes can't get Wall Crushing, but can get Wall Climbing and Hurl Boulder.
Elementals - I think I tweaked them only slightly (aside from being so much easier to summon), although the Water Elemental did get Extra Strike and Lifestealing (ie stealing water in the form of blood)
Fire Musket might have to be weakened or made more expensive, but at least Musketeers get to exist now.
Same with Trolls, Hurl Boulder means goblins have a ranged t3 and the troll is better than before.
Unsure if Beetles are too weak.

 

[octavius]

I don't think the Beetles are too weak, but the new Trolls change the whole dynamics of Goblin warfare when you can have units breaching the wall from a safe distance.

NM, I forgot Goblins still have Catapults. A bit slower than Trolls, but not enough to make a big difference.

 

[octavius]

It's bloody annoying that you can't set as Victory Condition to kill a specific hero.
After four weeks of playing Coming of the Dread Lord (including at least one week of false starts), the Dread Lord now appeared on turn 56 using the the map BING XI LAO edited, instead of turn 65. This is merely of academic interest now, since I was already in the mopping up phase, so it was actually a good thing.
The game should have ended when I killed the Dread Lord. Instead one of the AI players broke the alliance, which would have forced me to mop up another faction, which was the last thing I was in the mood for now, what with the map maker forcing no Leaders on map.

Some of the omissions in Age of Wonders is truly puzzling.
Why no more VCs, like in the HoMM games?
Why can't AI players explore lairs and ruins, pick up items or attack Independents? I can understand a weak AI, but there's really no excuse for these things.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I don't think the Beetles are too weak, but the new Trolls change the whole dynamics of Goblin warfare when you can have units breaching the wall from a safe distance.

NM, I forgot Goblins still have Catapults. A bit slower than Trolls, but not enough to make a big difference.

It was the reason I hesitated so long to give Troll Hurl Boulder.

 

[vota DC]

Troll was always the superior choice in combat, now beetlee lack a role except digging underground and exploring.

 

[octavius]

Troll was always the superior choice in combat, now beetlee lack a role except digging underground and exploring.

Well, it does get physical protection, so good against groups of low level units and as meat shield against missile attacks.

 

[octavius]

BING XI LAO, some problem with the old Lord of the Rings map using your mod.
The Undead leader, Sauron, has som Goblin and Orc troops that desert, despite having "Okay" morale, like stacks of 8 Wyvern Riders. The Undead are neutral vs Orcs and Goblins. I thought units deserted only if having Poor or Terrible morale?

I assume the racial diplomacy modifiers is one of the things you need to hex edit to mod?

 

[BING XI LAO]

BING XI LAO, some problem with the old Lord of the Rings map using your mod.
The Undead leader, Sauron, has som Goblin and Orc troops that desert, despite having "Okay" morale, like stacks of 8 Wyvern Riders. The Undead are neutral vs Orcs and Goblins. I thought units deserted only if having Poor or Terrible morale?

I assume the racial diplomacy modifiers is one of the things you need to hex edit to mod?

Maybe it's because they're on Wasteland terrain, but the Undead may also have migrated Goblin or Orc towns - it does that now because AI migrates races that only have neutral relations.
As it happens, I used Race Relations as the example in my quick hex editing guide:
https://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=14,2663,,60

 

[octavius]

It's not the terrain, but Sauron owns several Orc and Goblin cities, so I guess the goblins did not accept the population replacement (good for them).

I was able to edit the Orcs, Goblins and Undead to be Polite to each other.
But maybe I should just edit all the values back to vanilla values to avoid more old maps getting broken.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Lagi how do I change an ilb? I've figured out how to extract a bmp from an ilb, but not how to put the modified .bmp back into the ilb and then save my progress (was using ILB Maker).

 

[Lagi]

Lagi how do I change an ilb? I've figured out how to extract a bmp from an ilb, but not how to put the modified .bmp back into the ilb and then save my progress (was using ILB Maker).

I forgot already. I think I explain this on gog forum to someone (Andy?). Will check later

 

[BING XI LAO]

I have searched that forum for 'ilb' just now and can probably find your posts myself. Thanks!

 

[BING XI LAO]

Actually, just it, and I still don't see what program you used... ILB Maker doesn't have an obvious 'save' button and AoWCGE throws up error messages.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

So, anyone knows how to fix AoW2/SM performance on Win10? All the solutions I have managed to find online don't work.

 

[Lagi]

Actually, just it, and I still don't see what program you used... ILB Maker doesn't have an obvious 'save' button and AoWCGE throws up error messages.

https://af.gog.com/forum/age_of_wonders_series/age_of_wonders_1_new_graphics/post23?as=1649904300

i still dont recall how it works

after reading the gog forum I want to play aow1 again, but im in the middle of IWD replay.

 

[BING XI LAO]

So, anyone knows how to fix AoW2/SM performance on Win10? All the solutions I have managed to find online don't work.

Let us know if you figure it out!