Remove Curses and Horror Marks?

[Zogundar]

I've been playing the demo lately and I find this game quite intriguing, but one thing I read today does not sit with me well at all. According to the FAQ at strategywiki.org, Curses and Horror Marks are permanent and cannot be removed by any means.
Permanent, irreparable "damage" is a pet peeve of mine in games. It just really irritates me.
Therefore before I even consider buying this game, I have to know - can you mod in a spell or effect or item to get rid of them? Or is it hard-"lol you're screwed, deal with it"-coded?

[Edi]

No, you cannot remove them in any way. They are permanent. I do not think there is a spell effect that can remove either one and even if there was, you would need to mod one through trial and error. And spell modding is the most arcane, convoluted aspect of modding.

Curses and horror marks may be annoying, but they are in the end not dealbreakers. Not for me at least, but they may be for you if you indeed feel as strongly about it as your post indicates.

In any case, welcome to the forum and I hope you will buy the game and stay around. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Meglobob]

Curses and horror marks are no big deal really.

I certainly would not let it put me off buying this great game.

[Zogundar]

..jeez.

I can sort of understand odd game design decisions for something like Battle for Wesnoth with its deterministic combat system since it's a free game and it's made the way it was because the developers like it that way and hey, it's free. That being they case they can easily say "You don't like it, go make your own game!" For a commercial game, however.. it's um, rather odd to not only implement such a frustration, but to actually make it impossible for players to at least modify it. I'll say this, that's quite a hardcore commitment to insisting upon a rule. :O
For me, however, it is indeed a deal breaker. Too bad, the game has (Or rather had; after making the thread I saw the forum FAQ that showed that the devs refuse to budge on this point and therefore won't be changing it) a lot of potential. Maybe for Dominions 4 the developers can be persuaded/dragged kicking and screaming into the present, carebear times where you can save whenever you want at multiple points, you don't lose XP when you die, and there are no insta-death spike pits. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif (Oh wait, wrong genre..)
(And a Level 1 spell no less - yeeeeesh! Even 2nd Edition AD&D wasn't THAT broken in its harshness.)

*EDIT*

OK, one other avenue before I give up on this game - is it possible to mod the game so that all units, items, beings, events, and anything else that CAUSES these effects are REMOVED? You can't suffer from a permanent disability if it can't be created in the first place..

[Mordici]

I am sorry that curse and horror mark have made you decide to not buy a game that IMO is one of the best strategy games ever made. Curse is annoying but having a character Horror Marked can be rather entertaining. The game has tremendous potential and updates/new mods that come out on a very regular basis keep it very new and exciting.

I do think that it would be cool to have a save game feature, but there is something to be said for not having one. It makes the decisions-making process much more important before you tell the game to run the next turn.

I think the reason many people have come to Dominions is because they are actually sick of the 'Carebear' mentality of many games and want the added challenge of a game that doesnt give you every opportunity to 'fix' any problems your choices may have caused.

[Zogundar]

I don't know if it was changed in a patch, but one thing that really, really left me with a desire to reload was the first time I fiddled around with Alchemy and lost all but a single Astral Pearl. Oops. Forget the end turn button, I just want a "Mulligan" on that!

Other games have special "Iron Man" settings if the player wants to go that route - but it isn't forced on you. It's a shame Dominions doesn't give you a choice - for that, and for the unforgiving nature of some of its status ailments.

[Desert_Fox]

Hey. First, let me say that this game is really super and you should still get it even with curse and horror marks, which I have honestly never found any trouble.

A possible solution is this: mod the horrors into some stupid, weak dude. This way, even if they show up and attack, they will never cause any harm. I think this is a simple enough solution, and it requires only basic mod ability(I would say).

As for curses, I see a couple possible solutions: 1) you could equip a cursed commander unit with a luck granting item, this would not remove the curse but would lessen its effects in an indirect way(does not actually counter the curse, though). 2) use an item, mod, or healing commander to remove the harmful afflictions that a curse increases the chance of getting. This would not elimenate the curse, but it would keep it from causing trouble.

These are just a few I came up with now on the spot.

I hope any of that helps. Don't cheat yourself out of a totally cool game over this issue (I do not think it is that big a deal, but I respect your opinion). In my great length of time playing this game, horrors and curses have never been a problem for me. Anyway, think it over. I am sure there might be even more circumlocutions to these difficulties, by moding if nothing else. I will think some more about it, too.

By the way, welcome to this great forum.

Cya.

[vfb]

You can mod the specific "Curse" and "Horror Mark" spells to cost 30 gems, and be research level 9 in all paths, if you really want to remove them from the game. You can copystat a militia onto all the units that have a horror mark attack. Or you can copystat a militia onto all the horror units. I'm not familiar with item modding but there may be something similar you can do there.

So while it's not possible to mod in a cure for these afflictions, it is possible to prevent them from occurring in the first place, if you really want to.

Personally, I think both curses and horror marking add to the game. "Curse" will make you think of a new use for a thug you've been using to slug it out on the front lines. "Horror Mark" makes you think of a strategy to keep a unit effective day to day, but also able to defend itself against a horror attack. Or for uber items which horror mark, you'll be more likely to use them with a disposable unit instead of putting them on a unit which you don't want to die.

But all units can die in this game anyway, insta-death (or effective insta-death) can occur to any unit. It's not Sim City http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Zogundar]

Why only 30 gems? Why not 99999 or 255 or 65k (What was that upper limit..) or, if not a sum greater than the maximum number you can possess, something equal to it. I guess it would crash the game if you tried to make them "Level 10"?

Could you explain the "copystat"? I think I understand the process, (i.e., X-Lord Grand Daemon Prince Cross Bursting Machine Gun Punch now has 2 HP and will die when breathed on) but not how it will ensure that the units that possess the abilities will be totally prevented from using them (Even if it's a 0.0009% chance that they'll live long enough..)

[vfb]

30 gems because it's more than I've ever seen the AI carry, and I'm worried about breaking something by exceeding the carry-able amount.


Horror Marking is scary because it causes scary units to be summoned to attack your commanders.

You can change any unit in the game with a mod like this:

#selectmonster 649
#clear
#copystats 578
#copyspr 578
#descr "This used to be scary but now it is a Bog Beast"
#end

Do that to the lesser horror, horror, and the doom horror (instead of 649) and now horror marking is sadly not what it used to be.

[DrPraetorious]

I think that the highest gem cost allowed is 327 (signed 16 bit divided by 100). You can disable the spells entirely by making them level -1.

The abilities of the unit are overwritten when you do a copystats.

As for the saved games - there are scripts that will automatically back up the save game as you play, and if you make a mistake with alchemy (or any other sort of mistake, actually), you can just start your turn over from the begining by "quitting without saving" and then reopening the game.

The reason the game does not have a conventional save-game feature is because it actually keeps track of the turns as individual files - if you look in the savegame directory you will see what I mean. This makes it easy to handle many different setups in multiplayer.

As for horrormarking and cursing being permanent - cursing doesn't actually *hurt* you, if you are reasonably capable of removing afflictions, you can just ignore it. If not, the game has a great many more incurable injuries and curses are the least of your concerns.

Horrormarking is basically a slow-and-inescapable-death. You can delay being killed by horrors but every time you fight one your horrormarks will get more severe, so more and more horrors will attack you, etc. etc. Personally I think this is cool. From a backstory standpoint, horrormarking means that the horrors are aware of you, and how you would "heal" this....

Neither of these features of the game is crucial, in any case; if you avoid using horrormarking or cursed items yourself, you can mostly ignore them.

[Zogundar]

Disable entirely sounds good.

So the "copystats" units look the same, they have the same name, but their stats are now garbage and they lack the old stats? Would it be possible, then, to create a new unit stat that is the same, except without their Horror Mark ability? Or do you have to use pre-existing ones?

D'oh! You're right! I completely forgot about the "Start the turn over from the beginning" thing.

As I said before, I just really hate incurable ailments. Stuff like that has always bugged me, be it Essence loss in Shadowrun or this. Regular afflictions bug me too, but knowing that they can be gotten rid of (Albeit with some difficulty in most cases) is "satisfactory." I'm obsessive, that way. I like to keep things in proper working order, maintain armies with nice round numbers of units, and no voices complaining about their backs. So something that increases the frequency of me having to "fix" my Perfect Order is a source of great vexation. Curious though, what are these other "incurable" injuries you speak of? I was not aware of any Afflictions that had no method of removal (Even the Old Age induced ones can be fought off..)

And Horror Marking.. well that really cheeses me off. Especially the idea of using it on a pretender god. From there on it's basically "rush rush rush" to end the game before you succumb to oblivion, and that's another annoyance of mine. I like to take my sweet time. Backstory wise, there's any number of ways, I would think, to justify removing it. A Global Enchantment that severs the link between the two worlds, for example. Even if dispelled, the horrors would have since lost track of their quarry. How's that?

[DrPraetorious]

Well, this is a war game, not an RPG. You have to approach it from the standpoint that everything you have is expendable, *especially* in multiplayer where your enemies will go to great lengths to cripple your stuff. So from a game standpoint, the fact that faerie queens are available to remove afflictions is almost irrelevant, because the cost involved is so high that it's almost always a better deal to just make new stuff to replace the injured.

I agree that they should add an effect code that lets you remove horrormarking and/or curses, even if they never use it themselves. But it's hardly a high priority because it just doesn't matter that much.

Losing your pretender is not that bad an outcome, actually. Especially in the late game. It's also likely to happen whether or not you get horrormarked, at least in multiplayer, because your opponents are going to be devoted to doing you in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

You can also just raise pretenders from the dead repeatedly by prayer.

In multiplayer, curses and horrormarking are aspects of a strategy that would be unviable if they were easy to remove - and their effects are such that if there were ways to remove them that were very difficult, they'd almost never be worth it.

[Amos]

I can actually save faster with this game (using WinRAR) than with most (if not all) other games. The only problem with the lack of a Save function for me, is the necessity to play in windowed mod.
As for Curse and Horror Mark I just stopped noticing them a long time ago. Negative events can kill your nation far easier than if all your units and commanders had one of each.

[Serenity]

Well I had trouble getting used to the "permanent" stuff too.

Immortal pretenders r pretty neat in keeping those away. Heal afflictions, respawn if horrors manage to kill em etc.

Im slowly starting to like the permanent stuff alot. Mass horror mark ur enemies SCs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I almost laugh when i think about it.

Its truly a wargame in terms of having to really cope with losses instead of just clicking respawn button and losing 2 gold pieces. Or loading.

Only game I have ever played this much is warcraft 3.

[Lingchih]

A curse is negligible. Slap an Amulet of Luck on the commander and balance it out. Horror marks can be nasty, yes, but until you get a bunch of them, the chance of a Horror showing up to kill you are pretty slim.

Almost all of my Pretenders end up getting cursed at some point. And Horror marked too. It doesn't take them out of the game. There's nothing more fun than a badass Pretender making hamburger out of every Horror that comes it's way.

[vfb]

Mmmm, Kurgiburgers! Looks yummy.

[Edi]

Zogundar, you can disable spells like Horror Mark, Curse, Doom and the one that gives several horror marks in a limited area by setting their research level as -1 or something, it takes them completely out of the game.

Then the only sources of curses and horror marks would be items and certain magical sites. The sites that do that are very rare compared to the total number of sites in the game and you unfortunately cannot mod out the curse/horror mark properties, but you can mod the entire sites out of the game by giving them a locmask of 0. For references, you need the Dom3 DBm which is linked in my sig, because I sure as hell don't remember them all, never mind the site numbers.

[Sombre]

It's a lot of effort to go to, especially as stuff will still die OH NOES.

[DigitalSin]

What about the B9 death curse? Doesn't it horror mark someone that is already cursed, or am I just insane?

[Gregstrom]

That would be an insanely nasty thing to do to SCs/thugs if it were the case.

[Sombre]

B9 death curse can give horror mark, yes. But it's still crap.

[SlipperyJim]

To join the growing consensus ... curses and horror-marking are totally manageable.

Curses are pretty common, but they don't do any harm by themselves. All they do is encourage you to rack up afflictions. Therefore, if you can deal with the afflictions, you don't need to worry about being cursed. Try Gift of Health -- it's Enchantment-5 (reasonably simple) and available to all nations. Even if your nation has no Nature mages to cast it, you can easily find some indy mages with Nature or make sure that your pretender can cast it.

Horror marks do indeed suck, but they're not common at all. In fact, as long as you stay away from horror-marking items, you'll probably be able to finish an entire game without ever getting a horror mark. Unless you're playing MP, in which case you should count on it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

When you're playing SP, Dominions 3 can effectively be played as if it were an RPG. Trot out Gift of Health, smashing SC designs, and all sorts of other goodies ... the AI hardly ever targets such things. Now, MP is a whole different game, or so I've heard....

[Maraxus]

They are manageable but flavorwise I thing a petty Lizard Shaman should not even be allowed to annoy an Arch Lich or Elder Dragon. This sounds more like the job for "The Arch Mage of the enemy kingdom, wielding the sacred crystal coin" ... or someone with an equally long title. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Zogundar]

Maraxus said:
They are manageable but flavorwise I thing a petty Lizard Shaman should not even be allowed to annoy an Arch Lich or Elder Dragon. This sounds more like the job for "The Arch Mage of the enemy kingdom, wielding the sacred crystal coin" ... or someone with an equally long title. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



That's another thing that bugs me.

I experienced Horror Marks for the first time yesterday. Is it normal for a caster, a pretender god in this case, to cast spells until they collapse from exhaustion and lose by default? Because that happened when they were attacked by a Horror. I've also seen it happen with some other 1v1 mage fights. They cast spells until they go over 100 Fatigue and then die.

Another thing: I came across an event that supposedly "Curses" your troops. The Priestess that was in the province had no troops and was not cursed herself, so I assume it only works if you have regular troops there. But since, if I were to purchase this game, I would want to get rid of ALL curse causing sources (Except maybe the items for which, I assume, you are under no obligation to create or equip), would be it be possible to remove this event?

One more question: Can you import save games from the demo into the full version and resume playing?

[Taqwus]

Mages with no other orders will cast spells, unless somebody in melee range prevents them from doing so (random chance).

Demo saved games should still be compatible with the full version.

And yes, curses are generally pretty manageable, especially for nations with lots of nature magic (regeneration to cut down affliction risk, GoH to heal them) or recuperating-units (like most Pangaean units).

Something like D9B9 would be an irritating dual-bless, in that you might not want to throw expensive melee SCs against hordes of cheap D9B9 flags, but that's sufficiently expensive that it -should- be at least a little mean. And those flags will still die en masse to archers or Blade Wind (granted, your Blade Winder might be horror-marked, but the cost might well be a fair trade).

[Edi]

The events that curse troops curse a random number of troops in the province and commanders may get cursed just like normal grunts. I'm not sure if it works on some percentage chance that is rolled for each unit separately. If it is, the priestess may have gotten lucky and avoided it and with no additional targets, no real consequences.

[Sombre]

LA Rlyeh and a few other things may also cause insanity, which is incurable afaik. It sort of sounds like this isn't the game for you.

[Aezeal]

My opinion is that it's very strange to let this little part of the game be the thing to buy or nto buy.. I mean if you had a RPG playing with 1 char and that one get'd permanently nerfed by negative stats.. OK.. I'd not like that (but then those games allow saving usually) but in here you have 100's 1000's even 10000's of units.. what happens to one (even if it's your pretender) isn't that big of a deal.

On the saving part, the one thing why I like MP games (I think) in any game is because obviously it's more of a challange but also becuase I can't reload.. playing SP dominions is like most MP games you can't really say.. ow last 10 turns I made the wrong decision to war this nation.. you have to deal with it.. SP dominions isn't that hard.. if you could reload it'd just be no fun.

Aezeal

[Maraxus]

You can reload your single player game. To save just copy your savegame directory.

[Aezeal]

yeah lol but that is a bit of a hassle, not having a button is enough for me (I mean .. as I said I'm actually prefering not being able to save.. without the button the temptation is gone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif)

[kkarski]

Hi everyone,
I'm new on the boards, so, hello again ;>
Curses never bugged me, but I feel that horror marks are too easy to put on people, seems like every John the Astral Mage is able to do so.
Guess it would be better if HM would be astral 3, not 2. It would prevent many frustrating situations when your combat pretender gets marked by an indie mage or by cheap, mass produced national ones.
My question is, would someone be so nice to make a small mod which would put the "horror mark" spell a level higher in astral? Or tell me how can I do it myself?

[Saulot]

Eh sure, why not.

Stick this into any mod you play with (or better still, make a personal preference mod for your SP games):

#selectspell "Horror Mark"
#pathlevel 0 3
#end

Modding the game is enjoyable, so I do recommend reading the modding.pdf and learning about modding, and (after you've gotten more comfortable with the game) examining other people's mods to learn what makes them tick.

[Endoperez]

There's no way to see it, but Horror Marks vary in power. One Horror Mark cast at your pretender will send any horrors called to the battle against him, but won't call in any horrors. Or if it does, it's one of the Lesser Horrors which can die to one well-placed spell or one hit from a magic weapon. There's an Evocation spell, Astral Geyser, which causes more severe horror-marking, and takes Astral 3 IIRC.

You have every right not to like the Horror Mark spell, though, and if you make a mod of your own, put this line in:

#modname "test"

That's enough to make the mod work, and you can add any other commands into it afterwards. New mods only affect games created with the new mod active; changing mod on the fly makes the changes more or less immediately. It might take a turn until e.g. the research level of a spell changes, but most changes are instant.

[jscott]

The lack of a savegame feature in single player gives the game too high of a learning curve in my opinion. The game would seem a lot more accessible to people playing the demo if they could make a mistake, play a few turns, realize the mistake, and start again from an earlier point, having learned from their error.

As it is, the game forces you to live with every mistake, which can cause many, many restarts, especially on smaller maps.

Also, in a single player game, who is offended if I re-load if my pretender dies a cheap death and loses one level of all their magic? I once had a Pretender die because my own longbowmen shot her in the back as the enemy armies were routed. That's just idiotic and the game had to be completely restarted.

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
The lack of a savegame feature in single player gives the game too high of a learning curve in my opinion. The game would seem a lot more accessible to people playing the demo if they could make a mistake, play a few turns, realize the mistake, and start again from an earlier point, having learned from their error.



I feel it's more important to live with the mistakes you make and continue playing. For ANY multiplayer game where all your opponents are human there's no option for reloading a previous saved game either. I feel the ability to reload saved games originally became available so developers could easily investigate bugs and the feature remained so if bugs or computer crashes occurred the gamer would not lose as much time.
Reloading a saved game every time you make a mistake is choosing to live with a crutch so things will always be easier.


jscott said:
As it is, the game forces you to live with every mistake, which can cause many, many restarts, especially on smaller maps.



Simple solution... don't restart... live with the mistake and be stronger by fighting onwards even if your pretender and prophet died in the last battle.

If you absolute cannot stomach making mistakes while learning a game then save the specific folders via manually or download a tool.

[Endoperez]

Living with the mistakes you made is one thing, but living with bad luck that really hurts your strategy is quite another. While being good at both is nice, when you want to know how well your strategy can do you want to avoid the latter. It makes it easier to see if you had done any of the former.

It's a design choice that has been with the game from the very beginning of the series. Illwinter's other game, Conquest of Elysiun II, had save/load capability. I don't know why they chose not to include it, but they could have a mindset similar to NTJedi's.

[jscott]

If the game contains a single player component, it should contain modern conventions on saving. Its that simple. To argue that people shouldn't be able to save and reload because they should have to live with their mistakes doesn't make sense. If you dont' want to save and reload your game, that's your decision. I respect people who have the patience (and, more importantly, the free time) to struggle through trial and error type mistakes and play games to their conclusion whatever the result.

I don't have that kind of time, plus I'm trying to learn the game and I don't want to put 40-50 turns into a game only to find out that a decision I made on turn 10 was disastrous. I have to restart enough because of silly pretender designs. I don't really think its necessary to force me to restart because my pretender dies on turn 15 after having been asleep and I'm hopelessly behind in expansion.

Again, I respect people who play the multiplayer and enjoy the great challenge offered by this game. I like the game as is. But I do think that the game could stand to offer the CHOICE to be a little less harsh and challenging. It would keep new players interested longer and allow them to appreciate the depth of the game. Everyone I've introduced the demo to so far has abandoned the game because of the steep learning curve and the difficulty of the game (random events that kill an early hero, deaths of pretenders in battle, things that a reload feature could minimize, are common complaints from people I know who have tried to play the game). There's just no reason for the game not to feature real saves and to limit its appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore strategy gamer.

[Darkstone]

I'd argue that it isn't about living with mistakes, it's about realistically considering your choices. Playing fast and loose with a pretender (unless you're a very experienced player) tends to result in a quick death of that pretender. SP games vary significantly in difficulty based on the settings you use, and if the game is too difficult, simply tone down the AI.

I confess that at first I found the concept of not saving pretty discomforting and a little scary. So I manually copied and pasted saves for my games, for probably the first 3-4 months of playing. Eventually, I started saving less and less, and then finally stopped. I still used a crutch of playing with an immortal pretender for a while, but eventually got over that as well (I think I've played with a Lich more than 15 times).

Anyway, the reason I eventually stopped isn't because I mastered the game or something, it's because it's actually more fun to think things through, and feel like my choices have consequences even if I make a wrong one.

Obviously, I can't tell you what would be more fun to you, but I can advise you that turning down the difficulty or playing with an immortal, (and not getting too attached to prophets, who come and go) is preferable to the feeling of fearlessness & carelessness that you get with a save/load game.

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
If you dont' want to save and reload your game, that's your decision.



If you choose to save and reload your games, that's fine and your decision, but you'll need to download tools or manually copy the save folders. The game was designed without the save/reload crutch for a reason and won't change at this late phase.


jscott said:
There's just no reason for the game not to feature real saves and to limit its appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore strategy gamer.


The reason is because gamers use the save/reload as a crutch to avoid consequences of making bad choices. Poor computer opponents NEVER have a chance against the human opponents who NEED the let me always win save/reload option.
Your options...
1) manually save the required folders as backup and choose to give yourself an unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

2) use a tool to save the required folders as backup and choose to give yourself an unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

3) play another game which will have the save/reload option which will provide the cheating edge you desire.

4) toss in the towel and start a new game.

5) continue fighting to the bitter end... win or lose you keep fighting down to the last man/creature/thing.


** If you play any games with friends or family I guarantee they would all want their ally to be someone who chooses option #5 .

[jscott]

Your arguments are incredibly far out of the mainstream.

I can rebut most of your points by simply saying that being a human player I have a massively unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

The game should feature a save/reload system. I know how to save and reload the game by copying the folders. I rarely use it, but I'm not going to lose a 70 turn game because of a bug (which happen all the time and have permanent consequences), a flukish event (pretender being killed by her own archers while pursuing routed enemies), or some other silly event.

I've just purchased Dominions 3 and played only three games deeper than 50 turns (none to completion, because a 100% victory is just tedious), and I've only been challenged by the AI very briefly and this was without any save or reloading.

And only people with abo****ely unlimited free time can afford to play a Dominions 3 game to the end when you are clearly going to lose. I don't have unlimited free time and I doubt my friends and family care how I play in single player.

Again, your response is bizarre and its hard for me to believe you were completely serious.

Edit: I also consider it very likely that the reason there is no save/reload feature in the game is because of the over-emphasis on PBEM and multiplayer. I find it hard to believe that a game that completely neglects its AI to the extent that Doms3 does is attempting to make some broader point about single player gamers being too soft because of excessive saving and reloading. I think the lack of this feature is more a result of lack of emphasis than some kind of ideological purity, but I'm sure the developers appreciate their fans ascribing this level of sophistication to their motives and results.

[llamabeast]

Meh... there are arguments in favour of saving being a faff. It's like ironman mode in an RPG - where once your character dies they never come back. Personally I like it, but I can see why people sometimes get annoyed about it. If it bothers you though, it's easy to either save manually occasionally (if you play in windowed mode - which I highly recommend - it's the job of a few seconds), or even write a little batch file/script to do it if you are inclined towards programming. If you are so inclined then I'm sure people here would be willing to give help or even write the thing if you really wanted.

[llamabeast]

Also I don't really get many/any bugs (apart from quirks in the game like graphs disappearing for dead players etc) - what kind of thing do you get?

[jscott]

llamabeast said:
Also I don't really get many/any bugs (apart from quirks in the game like graphs disappearing for dead players etc) - what kind of thing do you get?



I've twice had my Prophet die in the winter and not be able to create another for many, many turns. I'll admit that I didn't reload on the second occasion (because replaying the 7 turns I let run hoping the bug wouldn't recur was less appealing to me than simply being without a prophet indefinetely), but that option should be present.

I've also noticed other tiny bugs related to random events that I would prefer to simply avoid by reloading the previous turn and avoiding the event altogether.

[Endoperez]

The prophet bug comes from disease damage being applied twice in one spesific month, IIRC. You had very bad luck getting that bug twice while playing relatively little.

What kind of event bugs? Do you mean the way events don't take sieges into account? Or hailstorms/whatever inappopriate things in caves? The shortlist of known bugs only lists three event bugs, and the third is underwater-only so you probably didn't see that.

[jscott]

I don't know that this thread should become a bug discussion, especially when I could be confusing "bug" with "feature I don't understand", but the one event related bug I've seen focused on the event where a group of heroes arrive to liberate a province from my harsh rule. That event occurred in a province with an army moving out of it and the army disappeared. There was only a battle with the province defense and the army neither fought the heroes nor arrived at its destination. I don't have a savegame from that game to prove this, but I would have loved to have been able to reload the previous turn and avoid restarting because I lost an army early in the game on a smallish map.

[chrispedersen]

I get bugs in virtually every game I play - and some days I quit playing for a few days or weeks because of it. I have had a few calls - but the number of times it has occurred has been truly annoying...

Whether this was the abysal, infernal furnaces, the armor of returning, blesses on area affect weapons, besieged by skeletons when I conquered a terrritory or whatever.. there are LOTS of bugs in the game.

As for AI being challenging - I find that you can do more to make a game challenging by the AI's you put in the games and the behaviours you ascribe to them.

So for example, choosing 6-8 strong nations and make them aggressive will give you a tougher fight than early age ermor, abysia, bandar log and making them impossible.
Increase starting strength to 9, decrease special occurence - I routinely get games that are enjoyable into 80 turns...

[Agrajag]

I find bugs to be extremely rare. I've been playing since (a bit before) I registered on these forums (of course, I'm including dom2 play), and I've seen very very few bugs, and maybe once in my entire Dominions gaming "career" have I encountered a show-stopping bug.

As for a ingame saves... I don't think they are really needed. You can save on your own if you really want to, but there is almost no need for saves, and considering how things work right now, it will only make the interface more complicated and will waste developer time.

Last time this was discussed, someone nicely provided a way to autosave, so here it is:
Make a shortcut to the game that will run it with the --preexec command line argument, make it something like --preexec DomSave.bat (DomSave.bat will be the file that automagically saves for you, and preexec means it will be called everytime before hosting a turn.)
To make the DomSave.bat file simply create a new text file and write down something like:
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\*.2h" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\*.2h" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savedgames\GAMETOBESAVED\*.2h" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\ftherlnd" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\ftherlnd" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savedgames\GAMETOBESAVED\fther lnd" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\*.trn" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak3\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\*.trn" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak2\"
copy "D:\games\dominions3\savedgames\GAMETOBESAVED\*.trn" "D:\games\dominions3\savebak\bak1\"
Then save the file and change its extension to .bat instead of .txt.
Also, create a savebak directory and in it bak1 and bak2 and bak3.
What this will do is copy all save related files from the game you want to save into the savebake\bak1, the bak1 to bak2 and the bak2 to bak3, essentially giving you three backups that will continuously overwrite each other, so if you want to go back one turn you go to bak1, if you want two turns you go to bak2 and if you want three turns go to bak3.
Obviously, you will need to change the paths to whatever is right for your computer.

I didn't use it much, and I don't use it anymore, but I still had it on my computer, maybe it will help you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[jscott]

I'm going to leave this discussion at this point alone. There's just no point in arguing that ingame saves are needed, when most of the people playing are willing to come online, concede there are bugs that can severely impact play, but then turn around and argue that ingame saves aren't necessary.

Nearly every game that comes out, in any genre, has an ingame saving feature. It certainly is in every strategy game (turn based or RTS, from Civilizations to Gal Civ to Europa Universalis to Starcraft to whatever you want to name).

It is not a crutch that allows people to play poorly.

It is not a cheat that allows human players to outwit the AI (frankly if you need a cheat to beat the AI in Dom 3, strategy games might not be your gaming genre).

It is a convenience that keeps a person from abandoning a very long game in progress (and Dominions is a very long, deep game) and having to restart because of a bug, a flukish event, or just because something happens you didn't want to happen (like forgetting to produce or a move a unit). This is single player, against the AI, and this condescending attitude that people here have for a feature that is incredibly basic in any PC (or even console game at this point) is unfathomable.

As for it being hard to implement, if it just takes me 1 second to do it on my own, then it can't possibly be very difficult to implement.

[Endoperez]

I and llamabeast both agreed that we can see why some people would like to have it. NTJedi and Agrajag didn't agree, but told you how to do it yourself. The tone used wasn't the best possible, but I hope you see that it's overy defensive - not hostile.

Frankly, at this point, we couldn't get this changed or added in, even if the whole community was for it, unanimously. Not for Dominions 3 at least, and Dominions 4 isn't around the corner, and probably not at the end of the tunnel either, and even if it was the developers might be against the change for one reason or another. The do-it-yourself guides are the only good answer, and NT_Jedi gave you one. I think the next Illwinter game probably should focus on interface much more than Dominions series, because that's where Dominions fails, and depending a save/load system would probably be part of that.




As for bugs... There are lots of minor bugs, I agree. I didn't think they were common, but it could be I just don't notice them any more. However, the game is so complicated that it's hard to now if we have a bug, a misleading description or a misinterpreted ability/event. Lots of "well-known" mechanics have actually been hear-say, and been proven wrong, lately. It comes with the complexity.

[jscott]

The tone of several posts, Endo, was hostile. It was very hostile in one case. That tone isn't necessary.

There are many reasons that casual and even serious stratey gamers will never play Dominions 3. I think that the game makes it needlessly hard on itself. Many serious strategy gamers will overlook the graphics and presentation (which are severely lacking). But to add on top of that the mandatory, annoying difficulty increases like permanent horror marking and curses and afflictions only puts more obstacles in front of players trying to learn this game. When you top it off with no in-game save, a feature present in EVERY GAME (did I mention that before?), its just needlessly absurd.

Dominions 3 could do itself a major favor by just removing some of the needless barriers to entry.

(And, yes, a lot of this is transferred frustration because I can't get anyone I know to try this game for more than a few turns and, you know what, they are right to be turned off of the game, even if once you get into it, it can be a rewarding experience).

With that, really, I'm done with this thread. I hope certain of you really enjoy thrashing the next new player to come along and ask for the game to be a little more accessible and user-friendly in the single player experience. That really helps grow the community.

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
I can rebut most of your points by simply saying that being a human player I have a massively unfair advantage over the AI opponents.


Human players do have a strong intellectual advantage over the AI opponents... this does not justify using a save/reload to cheat in the game!
You brag about being smarter yet still need a crutch when your pretender, prophet or important mage dies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



jscott said:
I'm not going to lose a 70 turn game because of a bug (which happen all the time and have permanent consequences), a flukish event (pretender being killed by her own archers while pursuing routed enemies), or some other silly event.


Using a save/reload because of a game bug is not cheating behavior and worthy of redoing ONLY actions related to the bug.
Using a save/reload because you had some bad luck and a poorly equipped pretender get shot and killed in the back by your own archers is cheating.
Using a save/reload because a "silly" event such as Bogus Independent Thugs arrive and kill your pretender or main army is also cheating.

To clarify... using a save/reload because of a game bug is acceptable and considered fair gaming, but using a save/reload because you had bad luck is cheating.



jscott said:
I've just purchased Dominions 3 and played only three games deeper than 50 turns (none to completion, because a 100% victory is just tedious),


Play the games using victory points... otherwise it will be very very time consuming to finish large maps.


jscott said:
and I've only been challenged by the AI very briefly and this was without any save or reloading.


Unfortunately Illwinter only have two developers and those developers have full time careers outside of making this game.


jscott said:
And only people with abo****ely unlimited free time can afford to play a Dominions 3 game to the end when you are clearly going to lose. I don't have unlimited free time and I doubt my friends and family care how I play in single player.


Playing a game even when you are losing allows you to learn strategies you otherwise would not have learned. The player who uses the save/reload "cheat" allowing himself to always win is not playing a game, but merely playing a storyline which will always have a happy ending. It's the same as playing video blackjack and giving yourself a winning hand anytime you place large bets... it's still cheating.




jscott said:
Again, your response is bizarre and its hard for me to believe you were completely serious.


Bizarre because you've always played your games with the always let me win option of save/reload. On the same note I see it bizarre why someone would play a game against a computer and cheat because he/she needs to always win.



jscott said:
I find it hard to believe that a game that completely neglects its AI to the extent that Doms3 does is attempting to make some broader point about single player gamers being too soft because of excessive saving and reloading. I think the lack of this feature is more a result of lack of emphasis than some kind of ideological purity, but I'm sure the developers appreciate their fans ascribing this level of sophistication to their motives and results.


Programming a computer AI is one of the most time consuming tasks which is why there are so many games with poor AI opponents. Considering this company only has two developers they did a great job with the AI.

[Agrajag]

jscott said:
As for it being hard to implement, if it just takes me 1 second to do it on my own, then it can't possibly be very difficult to implement.


That's just wrong.
Take a look at how "loading" is currently implemented - there is simply a directory full of games, and you can load whichever one you want. If you copy+paste+rename one of the current games, you will get two entries for it in the loading screen. What this suggests is that there is absolutely no distinction as far as the game goes between "games" and "saves". What you ask would require such a distinction, which might or might not be difficult, and either way it will complicate the interface (because it will need to make such a distinction.)

Anyway, I don't see what more do you need beyond the game autosaving all of your turns (which it can do for you if you use the autosaving script I gave you.), you don't even have to go through the hassle of ESC-> click SAVE-> enter save name-> click ENTER.

[KermNelson]

If Illwinter wants to limit its sales by making its game less appealing to many players - it’s their choice.

Gamers play for different reasons. Bartle’s MMO types barely touch the surface of player types but show clearly that gamers are not monolithic. Strategy gamers are also not uniform either.

Much of this recent discussion is about personal preferences and opinion.

But people buy games to enjoy them and if they don't enjoy playing the game in demo or that a friend has they will not buy it. A steep learning curve has killed sales on many games. Players who learned the game either in previous versions or by playing with similarly designed games may not notice the learning curve problem or because they don't mind it they may dismiss it. Other players especially new players may simply choose not to play and some may influence a lot of their friend’s choices.

I personally believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to cheat against my computer. It's a machine executing code not yet any sort of being. So a personal opinion to the contrary is noted only as one individual's opinion. Repeating this opinion is simply overlooked.

I feel from my experience noting player styles in the gaming market that when you make design choices that effect the learning curve you are accepting the fact that you will lose sales. I honestly feel Illwinter is aware of that but our discussions may also affect their perceptions.

Just because we as more computer and code aware players can do a savegame workaround doesn't mean that most players would not find this out of their comfort zone or too much hassle in a game they wish to play and enjoy.

I think jscott makes it clear Illwinter is losing sales by not including the savegame feature.

[NTJedi]

KermNelson said:

I personally believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to cheat against my computer. It's a machine executing code not yet any sort of being. So a personal opinion to the contrary is noted only as one individual's opinion. Repeating this opinion is simply overlooked.




Wrong... the slot machines in vegas are also machines executing code, but with illegal actions/equipment it's also possible to cheat on those machines.
It's also possible to cheat playing a solo card game such as solitare... no computers involved. Cheating during a game does not require two individuals.

[KermNelson]

heh heh,

I never set a requirement for two individuals nor did I say anything about commercial for profit machines. I kept my comment to me and my own computer.
You are not addressing my comment but stating your opinion on different ones.

Your illustration of solitaire does point to a common usage of cheat as to not follow the 'rules of a game.' Being a common usage I would concede that it is a valid definition even if it is not in my dictionary. But this usage is not in my dictionary. My dictionary limits cheating to definitions that either state an 'other' or imply an 'other' being cheated. Computer games have code not rules. If not to follow code is cheating then all mods are cheating. If you argue that mods are allowed by game code and therefore not cheating, then since manual saves are allowed by game code they too are not cheating.

Your other example of Vegas slots ignores the obvious consequence of tampering with someone's business machine designed to make money. It's a machine but your distorting the argument by ignoring the obvious other individuals and economics involved with the operation of the machine.

[NTJedi]

KermNelson said:
heh heh,

I never set a requirement for two individuals nor did I say anything about commercial for profit machines. I kept my comment to me and my own computer.
You are not addressing my comment but stating your opinion on different ones.



My point was that anytime you play any game outside of the game rules for your benefit it's cheating. Using actions outside of the game to change an already decided future is cheating. If you choose to believe changing an already decided future FOR ONLY YOUR BENEFIT by using actions not within the game is not cheating then you are fooling yourself.
Poor computer opponents never had a even a one in a billion shot of winning if you're changing the future anytime you have bad luck.


KermNelson said:
Your illustration of solitaire does point to a common usage of cheat as to not follow the 'rules of a game.' Being a common usage I would concede that it is a valid definition even if it is not in my dictionary. But this usage is not in my dictionary. My dictionary limits cheating to definitions that either state an 'other' or imply an 'other' being cheated.


If you use the save/reload to change the future of a game for your benefit then it's cheating. Your opponents may be just code, but they never had a single chance against someone who changes an already decided future. It would be the same as playing video poker... realizing you lost a large bet and switching the card you received to win the bet... it's cheating.


KermNelson said:
Computer games have code not rules. If not to follow code is cheating then all mods are cheating. If you argue that mods are allowed by game code and therefore not cheating, then since manual saves are allowed by game code they too are not cheating.


Based on your response you're not understanding the purpose of mods. Mods are used to change game content... and thus can be used to make the game easier, equal or more difficult. If you are using mods to make the game easier for only you then it's cheating. The same is true if you are using the save/reload feature to make the game easier for ONLY you then it's cheating.
Don't worry... other individuals such as yourself cannot accept the idea of playing a game and losing thus resort to cheating via the save/reload or sometimes using 'cheat codes' which allows them to receive extra resources, items, etc.; .


KermNelson said:
Your other example of Vegas slots ignores the obvious consequence of tampering with someone's business machine designed to make money. It's a machine but your distorting the argument by ignoring the obvious other individuals and economics involved with the operation of the machine.


Same is true if you personally owned a vegas slot machine in your home. No real money being wagered, but if you are changing an already decided future from the game to win it's cheating.


Here's an idea... switch the current actions you do for the save/reload. During close major battles... if you win the battle use the save/reload option until you lose. This way you can understand how difficult and wrong it's been doing this to the less intelligent computer opponents. Yet then again maybe you wouldn't understand.

[Sombre]

I don't really want to get involved in this discussion. I don't give a rat's *** about saves and have never at any point in playing dom3 wished I was able to reload to a previous turn.

However I find the idea that more options is a bad thing to be very silly. It puts me in mind of bugtesters removing the cheatcodes from a single player game after the testing period because they don't want the players cheating. They actually spend time taking out 'content' and justifying why, purely to restrict players and cut down their options. Now I know this isn't the case with dom3, because they never put in a save system, but how anyone could argue against having more options like this is beyond me. I mean if it's a choice between that and some other upgrade to dominions, obviously I'd be going for the other upgrade, but I'd never stand against it on principle just because I wouldn't make use of it, or I want to restrict other players.

[Agrajag]

1) Any option added takes away time from adding other options. (Or at a "best" case scenario, takes time away form working on the next Illwinter game.)
2) Arguing against more options (generally) is very simple. To do that we have terms like feature creep and bloatware http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[llamabeast]

I don't know why anyone bothers arguing. Copy down Agrajag's bat file. In two minutes you will have a save feature. Job done! Certainly less time than it takes to write on this thread.

If the instructions were not clear, I am certain Agrajag, I, or any of a number of other posters would be more than happy to clarify. It's simply a non-issue to my mind.

As to whether they are unnecessarily limiting their sales and so on - it is important to remember that they are a two man team who do things mainly as a hobby and have little interest in the resulting profit. Certainly that is hard for many to understand, but it seems to be true. So they're just not interested in such arguments. The fact that their hobby happens to produce something we all enjoy a great deal is very lucky I think.

Sombre: It is sometimes good to limit options because people, essentially, are not entirely in control of themselves. If I could pay someone to make sure I went swimming three times a week I might well do it. Similarly I appreciate having the option of saving taken away from me. I can imagine people having no sympathy with this - they must have more self-control than me.

Along the same lines I think one of the major reasons I enjoy MP so much more than SP is because even if I want to, I can't see the next turn quickly by ending my turn fast. This forces me to take my time, resulting in me enjoying the game a great deal more.

[KermNelson]

Hi guys ...
Maybe NT Jedi and I just enjoy this mental exercise, I hope it doesn't bother you too much.

NTJedi … You have an opinion:
“anytime you play any game outside of the game rules for your benefit it's cheating”
I disagree. I have another opinion:
“If you argue that mods are allowed by game code and therefore not cheating, then since manual saves are allowed by game code they too are not cheating.”
I believe I am playing the game within the gamecode because the game allows it and therefore it can not be cheating the game. As I’ve already stated I don’t believe I can cheat a machine – an inanimate object. (Illwinter is obviously aware that players have developed a save/reload workarounds and I’m not aware that they have discouraged them nor am I aware that players are in anyway breaching their EULA by doing the workaround.)
If however I was in multiplayer with other humans where the expectation was that there would be no hidden manipulation of the game and I did do hidden manipulation then I feel I would be cheating the players but the game is simply code that I’d figured out how to manipulate. The key difference is the effect of my actions on other beings not my actions with the machine.
If I choose to save and reload a game to improve my results that is what I’m doing I don't consider it cheating. I consider it trial and error testing to determine the best strategy without wasting massive amounts of time in replaying a game to a similar point. The game I am playing in single player mode exists solely for my purposes. Neither my computer nor the game's software is any form of life or being and until AI’s approach human complexity and start to develop and roughly “think” for themselves they have no rights to being-personhood. I can not cheat them. Once we feel/sense/believe they become beings then we can attempt to interact with them responsibly.
As for your opinion on what I think of mods, like the rest of this discussion you seem to think your opinion has some greater significance: it doesn’t to me. It is simply your opinion. I’ve been playing games since I bought my own Apple II+ in the early 80’s and I’ve been enjoying many companies’ mods including Illwinter’s Dom3 modding ability. Much like a book the author writes the gamecode but the user (as long as they don’t break the license) uses the game how they want to - enjoying it. I consider Mod friendly code simply a wise thing to do to allow creative players to get greater enjoyment out of the game. I think it gives some players further incentive to buy the game and therefore leads to greater game sales. It also creates a positive feedback loop including players’ creative feedback to the developers.

BTW I’ve never save/reloaded in Dom3 it’s too much bother. If I had not realized I could Mod the game to make my learning curve easier and more enjoyable to me I simply would not have bought the game. I play the game to enjoy exploring and learning how the game plays. I’ve found I like games with cheat codes and games that I can Mod. I know I am strengthening my position relative to the AI but it doesn’t bother me one bit. Games are created with AI difficulty settings precisely to allow players to choose how hard a learning curve they experience. I simply prefer to have the AI play consistently and increase my starting strength to decrease the learning curve and enjoy the learning process.

[NTJedi]

KermNelson said:
NTJedi … You have an opinion:
“anytime you play any game outside of the game rules for your benefit it's cheating”



It's not an opinion... you are changing decided future results for the benefit of winning. Providing yourself an unfair advantage during the game against any opponents human or computer AI is cheating. Just because the AI opponents cannot complain against cheating actions doesn't mean the cheating actions don't exist.

Heck based on your fantasy opinions it's impossible to cheat in a singleplayer game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif LOL



KermNelson said:
I disagree. I have another opinion:
“If you argue that mods are allowed by game code and therefore not cheating, then since manual saves are allowed by game code they too are not cheating.”



Manual saves can be done for any PC_game, how those save games are used determine whether it's cheating. Mods can be used within the game, but how those mods are used determine whether or not it's cheating.



KermNelson said:
I believe I am playing the game within the gamecode because the game allows it and therefore it can not be cheating the game.



You could also play darts and get a bullseye every single time by not throwing the darts and just pushing the dart into the bullseye. In your fantasy opinion world you would fall asleep at night believing you're one great dart player... when in reality you are only fooling yourself.


KermNelson said:
As I’ve already stated I don’t believe I can cheat a machine – an inanimate object.



Just because you're playing against a machine doesn't mean it's not possible to cheat. Your opponents may be computer code yet they are still opponents. To make a game even more difficult for an already disadvantage AI opponent is just pathetic.


KermNelson said:
(Illwinter is obviously aware that players have developed a save/reload workarounds and I’m not aware that they have discouraged them nor am I aware that players are in anyway breaching their EULA by doing the workaround.)



The save/reload option has been discussed for many years... and the reload option remains left out. If Illwinter felt it was necessary they would have included it.

KermNelson said:
If however I was in multiplayer with other humans where the expectation was that there would be no hidden manipulation of the game and I did do hidden manipulation then I feel I would be cheating the players but the game is simply code that I’d figured out how to manipulate. The key difference is the effect of my actions on other beings not my actions with the machine.


I see another point you are missing... when someone is cheating whether it's against other human players or against AI opponents they are not only being UNFAIR to their opponents but they are also lying to themselves on the actual skills of their gameplay. Unfortunately many of these individuals continue to cheat because they cannot face losing.


KermNelson said:
If I choose to save and reload a game to improve my results that is what I’m doing I don't consider it cheating. I consider it trial and error testing to determine the best strategy without wasting massive amounts of time in replaying a game to a similar point.



Well if that's true then why don't you try my suggestion. For your next 10 games of each PC_game use the save/reload to change the future anytime you win a major battle. This way you can find the best strategy for making a recovery after major losses and/or important commanders/mages. I'm sure you've spent the last 25 years finding the fastest winning strategy... so it's time you find the best way to recover after major losses.
Hmmm... something tells me you couldn't stomach such a learning strategy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif


KermNelson said: The game I am playing in single player mode exists solely for my purposes. Neither my computer nor the game's software is any form of life or being and until AI’s approach human complexity and start to develop and roughly “think” for themselves they have no rights to being-personhood. I can not cheat them. Once we feel/sense/believe they become beings then we can attempt to interact with them responsibly.



Your actions of using a save/reload to change an already decided future provides you a PERMANENT CONTINOUS UNFAIR ADVANTAGE.


KermNelson said:
As for your opinion on what I think of mods, like the rest of this discussion you seem to think your opinion has some greater significance: it doesn’t to me. It is simply your opinion. I’ve been playing games since I bought my own Apple II+ in the early 80’s and I’ve been enjoying many companies’ mods including Illwinter’s Dom3 modding ability.


If you were so true to the save/reload option for the purpose of strategic reasons then you would have been using the save/reload for the opposite method of improving your strategy after major losses. Unfortunately the save/reload you use during games is to provide you the constant victory or more importantly the way to avoid facing a loss.
I've been playing PC_games longer then you and surprised even at your age you would use the save/reload just to win games and then try and hide it by saying it's for strategic reasons. If it was for strategic reasons then you would be using the save/reload in the opposite manor I've described earlier.



KermNelson said:
Much like a book the author writes the gamecode but the user (as long as they don’t break the license) uses the game how they want to - enjoying it.



Much like a book the reader can read the last ten pages or google the internet to discover the secret killer or answer to the riddles... but in your world this is just a strategic method to save time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif


KermNelson said:
I consider Mod friendly code simply a wise thing to do to allow creative players to get greater enjoyment out of the game. I think it gives some players further incentive to buy the game and therefore leads to greater game sales. It also creates a positive feedback loop including players’ creative feedback to the developers.


Yes, mods are a great tool... like any other tool they can be used to provide an unfair advantage if used incorrectly.


KermNelson said:
BTW I’ve never save/reloaded in Dom3 it’s too much bother. If I had not realized I could Mod the game to make my learning curve easier and more enjoyable to me I simply would not have bought the game. I play the game to enjoy exploring and learning how the game plays. I’ve found I like games with cheat codes and games that I can Mod. I know I am strengthening my position relative to the AI but it doesn’t bother me one bit.


I actually do the opposite and using map edit commands make the computer opponents significantly stronger. Instead of fighting a tiger from the local zoo(default_game)... I'm fighting a prehistoric sabre tooth tiger.


KermNelson said:
Games are created with AI difficulty settings precisely to allow players to choose how hard a learning curve they experience. I simply prefer to have the AI play consistently and increase my starting strength to decrease the learning curve and enjoy the learning process.


Mods actually aren't needed even for the worst players. Simply play a very large map requiring 40% of the victory points, choose land nations for AI opponents(not ERMOR, Atlantis or Argatha), human plays a water nation, map has 40% water with no lakes and set AI difficulty on easy. No mods needed and a very easy game for the human player.

[Endoperez]

NTJedi said:
Don't worry... other individuals such as yourself cannot accept the idea of playing a game and losing thus resort to cheating via the save/reload or sometimes using 'cheat codes' which allows them to receive extra resources, items, etc.; .



Hey now! That's just rude and unnecessary. "Cheating", that I'd call "learning to play the game" in this case, IS NOT EQUAL to not being able to lose.

I play rogulikes, and although I used to savescum I decided it takes away the fun, and then noticed I learn faster when I HAVE to, to survive. I completed ADOM once, without savescumming. But I do cheat in games. I even cheat in Dominions - I have a mod that lets me cast Wish and Gift of Reason and any other spell I ever decide to test, as needed, at turn 1 for 1 gem. I do it to test things, such as how fire bless and weapon with multiple attacks work together.

I'm not sure if I said it already, but I agree with the poster - Illwinter's next game, and Stardock's not-MoM game, etc etc should have a save/load feature, unless they are like roguelikes, or like Dwarf Fortress. I don't know what your problem is, but could you at least be civil about it? [/mean]

[Agrajag]

Dwarf Fortress now comes with autosave and autosavebackup, so you can have the game save every season change, and have the game save those saves, so you can go back in time if you want to. (it even organizes them nicely by year, season and region.)

[Endoperez]

Agrajag said:
Dwarf Fortress now comes with autosave and autosavebackup, so you can have the game save every season change, and have the game save those saves, so you can go back in time if you want to. (it even organizes them nicely by year, season and region.)



But I don't use that feature. I said that it should have save feature unless it's like Dwarf Fortress, which is more about the adventure that is playing the game than the feeling of beating the system. I've never had trouble keeping my dwarves alive. I understand why someone attempting to build Orthanc or something would want a save feature, though. What with the exploding booze, melting cookery and such occupational hazards.

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:

Hey now! That's just rude and unnecessary. "Cheating", that I'd call "learning to play the game" in this case, IS NOT EQUAL to not being able to lose.

I play rogulikes, and although I used to savescum I decided it takes away the fun, and then noticed I learn faster when I HAVE to, to survive. I completed ADOM once, without savescumming. But I do cheat in games. I even cheat in Dominions - I have a mod that lets me cast Wish and Gift of Reason and any other spell I ever decide to test, as needed, at turn 1 for 1 gem. I do it to test things, such as how fire bless and weapon with multiple attacks work together.


Testing strategies, spells, items, units, etc., is not cheating unless you finish the game and consider it a victory. Hence if you provide yourself with the wish spell and a powerful astral mage with gems at the start of a game then finish the game and consider your win a victory then it's cheating. My guess is you test your spells and then end the game without finishing.


KermNelson said:
I'm not sure if I said it already, but I agree with the poster - Illwinter's next game, and Stardock's not-MoM game, etc etc should have a save/load feature, unless they are like roguelikes, or like Dwarf Fortress. I don't know what your problem is, but could you at least be civil about it? [/mean]


I am being civil... and being honest. If the save/reload was a strategy method then those players would be using the save/reload to not only improve their strategies while winning, but also improve strategies while losing thus using the save/reload to provide the computer opponents with the advantage.
Having a save/reload will probably be included within Stardocks next game considering they have the time and staff. The save/reload will be a nice tool for game crashes, bugs, and testing... unfortunately some individuals will also use it for cheating by changing the future of game results.

[Agrajag]

Endoperez said:
I said that it should have save feature unless it's like Dwarf Fortress, which is more about the adventure that is playing the game than the feeling of beating the system.


Oh, I see.
Anyway, I use the saves only to prevent progress lost due to crashes :\ (I've had the power go out a couple of times while playing. Damned winter.)

[KermNelson]

To interact, to understand, to blather on! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

NT Jedi posted:
“It's not an opinion... you are changing decided future results for the benefit of winning. Providing yourself an unfair advantage during the game against any opponents human or computer AI is cheating.” (end NT Jedi post)

Yes it is your opinion. You’ve simply restated it. If I saved/replayed a turn I’d be changing the path of the game(as I’ve stated I don’t do this in Dom3 but I will freely admit I do it in many games with the savegame option.) I am providing myself with an advantage during the game in this case only against the AI. I don’t consider it “unfair” or “cheating” because I’m not playing a being. The game has no set of rules. The game only has code. Dom3 allows Mods and I use them as I wish. I use them according to the game’s code. The game’s code is the nearest thing it has to rules and I follow it.

On your generalization to whether I think it is impossible to cheat a singleplayer game, I’d prefer to see the specific game. As I’ve already said I use some game’s ‘cheat codes’ I could debate whether I really thought it was cheating but I am willing to accept some game author’s characterization of them as ‘cheats’.

Your speculation on my playing darts ignores that it is a parlor/pub game with well known rules and I would not be playing “according to the rules” which is a definition of fair. Therefore I would be not be playing fair. But as I’ve stated I play Dom3 by the code while Dom3 doesn’t have rules. So I am playing by the code which is literal computer (instruction) rules(?) in Dom3 and therefore I think I am playing fair not unfair.

NT Jedi posted:
“I see another point you are missing... when someone is cheating whether it's against other human players or against AI opponents they are not only being UNFAIR to their opponents but they are also lying to themselves on the actual skills of their gameplay. Unfortunately many of these individuals continue to cheat because they cannot face losing.”
(Restated “facing a loss” later): “Unfortunately the save/reload you use during games is to provide you the constant victory or more importantly the way to avoid facing a loss.”
(Restated “UNFAIR”): “provides you a PERMANENT CONTINOUS UNFAIR ADVANTAGE.”
(Restated “unfair”): “Yes, mods are a great tool... like any other tool they can be used to provide an unfair advantage if used incorrectly. “(end NT Jedi posts)

As I just explained above from a definition of FAIR from the dictionary I think I am playing fairly. I play by the game’s code which is the closest thing that the game has to ‘rules’. A definition of FAIR is ‘according to the rules.’ So I provide myself with a permanent/continuous advantage, but I don’t consider it ‘unfair’.

I also am quite aware that I am taking additional strengthening measures to make it easier for me to learn a game I am fairly new at and I’ve admitted here so I’m neither “lying to” myself or deceiving others on this board. I have no problem losing except that I don’t want to waste my time at learning the game. I have at no time denied that in other games that I did reload that I didn’t lose either a battle or that I was unfortunately effected some random event. The event happened – it existed. I simply choose (in some other game) where I do save and reload to replay those turns or event having learned from the experience how to do it better if possible or in the case of random events I’ve eliminated the random bad result. I’m not denying any of this, if I was we wouldn’t be having this discussion. (IF I was denying losing a battle, game, or replaying some negative random event, I’d simply have ignored your posts and never entered this entertaining discussion.)

NT Jedi said:
“why don't you try my suggestion. For your next 10 games of each PC_game use the save/reload to change the future anytime you win a major battle. This way you can find the best strategy for making a recovery after major losses and/or important commanders/mages. I'm sure you've spent the last 25 years finding the fastest winning strategy... so it's time you find the best way to recover after major losses.”
(Restated in:) “If you were so true to the save/reload option for the purpose of strategic reasons then you would have been using the save/reload for the opposite method of improving your strategy after major losses.” (end NT Jedi quotes)

I’ve repeatedly freely admitted I Mod to increase my position: “I simply prefer to have the AI play consistently and increase my starting strength to decrease the learning curve and enjoy the learning process.” And I elaborated that many game companies allow setting adjustment: “Games are created with AI difficulty settings precisely to allow players to choose how hard a learning curve they experience.” Illwinter does this in Dom3’s settings. So your suggestion that I increase my difficulty by intentionally losing battles ignores part of my stated goals: to decrease my learning curve. But in fact in a few games I’ve quite thoroughly learned I do restart battles to see how few troops I can win with. But this is rare and I’m usually getting quite bored with the game because I so thoroughly understand its mechanics. I tend to prefer to buy a new game and learn fresh experiences rather than waste my time on almost trivial refinement. Again as I have stated I play to explore a game: in MMORPGs it is my primary Bartle’s type. I’m an “explorer” not an “achiever” or a “killer”(I think this is a negative term Bartle’s uses for PvPers.) (I my second strongest Bartle’s type is to “socialize” because I enjoy folks and exploring/learning with them.)

NT Jedi posted:
“Mods actually aren't needed even for the worst players. Simply play a very large map requiring 40% of the victory points, choose land nations for AI opponents(not ERMOR, Atlantis or Argatha), human plays a water nation, map has 40% water with no lakes and set AI difficulty on easy. No mods needed and a very easy game for the human player.”

Actually this would be quite boring because it extremely limits my interaction with the AI opponents. I’m too weak on land and they are too weak in the sea. You have repeatedly indication directly or indirectly that I somehow am pursuing an easy victory and avoiding a loss. That’s why I’ve defined the other Bartle’s types: achiever and killer and made it clear I’m NOT either. I don’t mind winning but my enjoyment comes from exploration or in these posts from socializing with other people.

In MMORPGs I love to just travel overland to see the creative and artistic scenery – I explore … I also enjoy exploring how each game works. Much of the reason I wrote Mods to increase my starting advantage was to explore how to mod. I frequently spend more time writing Mods: reading, trialing, and tweaking the mod; than playing the game with the mod. In fact one thing I find very boring in playing is that I have to constantly re-input unit building (or item forging) instructions and constantly move units to the front. Maybe someone has a Mod to do this or I’ve simply overlooked Dom3 ability but I get so tired of repeated builds and moves.


However one thing is still perfectly clear to me – we have different opinions including even your continued insistence that your statements are somehow more than simply your opinion (in my opinion). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Foodstamp]

If you guys keep quoting each other, you might very well achieve your secret goal of writing the most boring novel ever.

[Kristoffer O]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Here foodstamp, have a cake /threads/images/Graemlins/Cake.gif

[Aezeal]

you are all cheaters and that includes KO

yeah... that'll teach you...

PS KermNelson should go play another game
"In fact one thing I find very boring in playing is that I have to constantly re-input unit building (or item forging) instructions and constantly move units to the front." --> this is dominions 3 in a nutshell http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[NTJedi]

KermNelson said:
Yes it is your opinion. You’ve simply restated it. If I saved/replayed a turn I’d be changing the path of the game(as I’ve stated I don’t do this in Dom3 but I will freely admit I do it in many games with the savegame option.) I am providing myself with an advantage during the game in this case only against the AI. I don’t consider it “unfair” or “cheating” because I’m not playing a being.



Just because you are not playing a being doesn't mean it's not possible to cheat. And since changing the future for only your benefit is not "unfair" then let your next 10 games provide the save/reload benefit to the AI opponents. It's not "unfair" in your opinion... so from now on use the save/reload only when the AI's lose major battles.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif LOL http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif


KermNelson said:
The game has no set of rules. The game only has code. Dom3 allows Mods and I use them as I wish. I use them according to the game’s code. The game’s code is the nearest thing it has to rules and I follow it.



You follow game code?? How would someone not follow game code?? The game's programming code cannot be changed.


KermNelson said:
On your generalization to whether I think it is impossible to cheat a singleplayer game, I’d prefer to see the specific game. As I’ve already said I use some game’s ‘cheat codes’ I could debate whether I really thought it was cheating but I am willing to accept some game author’s characterization of them as ‘cheats’.



Basically this all comes down to you believing it's impossible to cheat in singleplayer games. On this note... you might as well start your games with 10 wraith lords and 200 demon knights at your capital. Seriously it would save you time.



KermNelson said:
Your speculation on my playing darts ignores that it is a parlor/pub game with well known rules and I would not be playing “according to the rules” which is a definition of fair. Therefore I would be not be playing fair.


Changing an already decided future within a game is just as fair as changing an already decided future of a thrown dart. The little grand kids call this a "re-do", yet usually by highschool they've grown out of this weakness.

And if changing the future via the save/reload was a legit fair action in singleplayer games then why has this NEVER been documented as saying, "use the save/reload if your opponent has won a major battle"??


KermNelson said:
But as I’ve stated I play Dom3 by the code while Dom3 doesn’t have rules. So I am playing by the code which is literal computer (instruction) rules(?) in Dom3 and therefore I think I am playing fair not unfair.



Well if you're playing fair then play a different type of playing fair. The next time you win a major battle, use the save/reload and change your actions.


KermNelson said:
So I provide myself with a permanent/continuous advantage, but I don’t consider it ‘unfair’.



Considering all the games you own, how many of these games do you plan on providing the AI opponents the exact same save/reload advantage??



KermNelson said:
I also am quite aware that I am taking additional strengthening measures to make it easier for me to learn a game I am fairly new at and I’ve admitted here so I’m neither “lying to” myself or deceiving others on this board.


Using the save/reload after losing a major battle is an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE because the AI opponents do not have the option to use the save/reload. If the developers of any game expected gamers to use the save/reload to change the future then for a more balanced game they would have provided a secret method for AI opponents on harder difficulty levels. The developers would have also written documentation advising to use the save/reload to change already decided game results.


KermNelson said:
I have no problem losing except that I don’t want to waste my time at learning the game. I have at no time denied that in other games that I did reload that I didn’t lose either a battle or that I was unfortunately effected some random event. The event happened – it existed. I simply choose (in some other game) where I do save and reload to replay those turns or event having learned from the experience how to do it better if possible or in the case of random events I’ve eliminated the random bad result.


Unfortunately by using such an advantage during games you never learn to deal with important major losses, you never learn strategic ways of rebuilding a crushed empire, you never develop strategic escape methods.


KermNelson said:
I’ve repeatedly freely admitted I Mod to increase my position: “I simply prefer to have the AI play consistently and increase my starting strength to decrease the learning curve and enjoy the learning process.” And I elaborated that many game companies allow setting adjustment: “Games are created with AI difficulty settings precisely to allow players to choose how hard a learning curve they experience.”


There's actually no reason to use mods for making the DOM_3 game easier. I provided a great example where without mods the player could learn the game without any danger of being killed for at least a hundred turns.


KermNelson said:
Illwinter does this in Dom3’s settings. So your suggestion that I increase my difficulty by intentionally losing battles ignores part of my stated goals: to decrease my learning curve.


Here you don't understand what can be learned from losing major battles. You've always leaned on your experiences being from ways of improving your winning battles. Hence if you were ever faced in a scenario where you've lost major units/places you'd have little to zero experience on trying to stop a strong marching enemy.
You're not the first to hide from dealing with major losses and even losing. Anyone can play a game and give themselves advantages to win, yet only some can play a game they are losing all the way to the end.


KermNelson said:
But in fact in a few games I’ve quite thoroughly learned I do restart battles to see how few troops I can win with. But this is rare and I’m usually getting quite bored with the game because I so thoroughly understand its mechanics.



This is improving your offensive strategies yet if you continue playing a game you are losing then you learn to improve your defensive strategies. I can tell you from my own personal experiences it takes courage to keep playing when you know you will be losing the game.


KermNelson said:
I tend to prefer to buy a new game and learn fresh experiences rather than waste my time on almost trivial refinement.


By using major constant advantages you're always on the winning edge... and as I've written earlier there's more to learn/experience within a game then just winning.


KermNelson said:
NT Jedi posted:
“Mods actually aren't needed even for the worst players. Simply play a very large map requiring 40% of the victory points, choose land nations for AI opponents(not ERMOR, Atlantis or Argatha), human plays a water nation, map has 40% water with no lakes and set AI difficulty on easy. No mods needed and a very easy game for the human player.”

Actually this would be quite boring because it extremely limits my interaction with the AI opponents. I’m too weak on land and they are too weak in the sea.


Actually having the AI opponents on easy and Independents set on strength 8 will allow most of the water nations plenty of time to get a strong holding on the land. Ask any members on the forum and they will provide other legit examples for an easy game without using mods.


KermNelson said:
You have repeatedly indication directly or indirectly that I somehow am pursuing an easy victory and avoiding a loss.


Well if you cannot remember the last SP game where you were losing and played to the end then you have a history of avoiding loss and seeking easy victories. Review your gaming history.


KermNelson said:
However one thing is still perfectly clear to me – we have different opinions including even your continued insistence that your statements are somehow more than simply your opinion (in my opinion). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Yes, you believe it's not possible to cheat in an SP game which I've never heard or read until your posts. I suggest gathering an opinion from other individuals from your other games by asking:
"If I use the save/reload to change an already decided future within a singleplayer game to provide myself an advantage over AI opponents is it cheating?"

[Sombre]

Talk about missing the point.

[llamabeast]

I just hope you don't see this forum as an unfriendly place after all this KermNelson! This sure is one crazy discussion.

[Twan]

It's funny how MMORPeger abord games.

It reminds me hundreds of threads by WoW fans asking for no corpse retrieval on Vanguard forums.

Finally the Vanguard death system was made cooler than first planned, a decision disgusting most hardcore old-EQ fans.

But their reaction on the forums gave Vanguard the image of an hardcore game, so the WoW generation avoided it too.

And Vanguard was one of the biggest failures in MMO history.

[NTJedi]

llamabeast said:
I just hope you don't see this forum as an unfriendly place after all this KermNelson!



KermNelson has been on these forums even longer than me... and few can say this, I'm sure he knows our community.

[KermNelson]

Hi guys … Hey Llamabeast: I may not post often but I’ve been around since at least 2002. I first bought Shrapnel – Breakaway’s Austerlitz: Napoleon’s Greatest Victory and I bought Shrapnel - Malfador Machination’s SE IV as well. So I’ve seen a lot of board posts here as well as in beta boards for EQ, AC, and SWGs. So Foodstamp & Twan: I’m used to long quoting posts from us beta testers debating where the game should go; I hope you’ll keep indulging us. Aezeal – it’s enjoyment versus boredom and enjoyment is still winning and I’m still optimizing where I can. (Might someone have made something like a batch file mod to re-enter standard builds at the capital at least?)


On to at least one more clarification … http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

NT Jedi posted:
1)“And if changing the future via the save/reload was a legit fair action in single player games then why has this NEVER been documented as saying, "use the save/reload if your opponent has won a major battle"??”
2) “Considering all the games you own, how many of these games do you plan on providing the AI opponents the exact same save/reload advantage??”
3)“Using the save/reload after losing a major battle is an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE because the AI opponents do not have the option to use the save/reload. If the developers of any game expected gamers to use the save/reload to change the future then for a more balanced game they would have provided a secret method for AI opponents on harder difficulty levels. The developers would have also written documentation advising to use the save/reload to change already decided game results.” (end NT Jedi posts).


Hmm NT Jedi you seem to be saying everything a player can do the AI should be able to do: that to be “fair” we should have the same game capabilities. Unfortunately since the AI can’t think like a human player game builders rarely if ever make the player and AI equal. In fact usually there are several strong pluses for the AI so it’s strategic and tactical blunders don’t cause it to lose immediately. So the player and AI aren’t fairly balanced or ‘empowered’ to begin with. The developer also knows the strengths and weaknesses of their game rules and units so they can code an extreme familiarity with the game that the novice player doesn’t possess. Therefore since obviously the game is not designed with ‘identical’ abilities on each side it would be ‘unfair’ by design if you insist on equal/identical abilities for player and AI.

As for documentation: the save/reload is a known feature. Many players are quite aware of its use. It is rare for developers to document all possible uses of all their features. In fact one of Illwinter’s strengths is that they have that beautiful 300 page manual that many modern games don’t bother with. I still remember fondly the early Civilization and MOO manuals with lots of hints and advice. I don’t know if some developers haven’t mentioned using the save/reload feature and if I go by memory I think I can remember reading some mentioning its use. You certainly haven’t proven none have done it and I’m not going to reread a few dozen manuals and pdfs I’ve got around my computer to cite them.

On to talk about losing and defense:

NT Jedi posted:
1)”Unfortunately by using such an advantage during games you never learn to deal with important major losses, you never learn strategic ways of rebuilding a crushed empire, you never develop strategic escape methods.”

2)”Here you don't understand what can be learned from losing major battles. You've always leaned on your experiences being from ways of improving your winning battles. Hence if you were ever faced in a scenario where you've lost major units/places you'd have little to zero experience on trying to stop a strong marching enemy.
You're not the first to hide from dealing with major losses and even losing. Anyone can play a game and give themselves advantages to win, yet only some can play a game they are losing all the way to the end.”

3)”if you continue playing a game you are losing then you learn to improve your defensive strategies. I can tell you from my own personal experiences it takes courage to keep playing when you know you will be losing the game.”

4)”Well if you cannot remember the last SP game where you were losing and played to the end then you have a history of avoiding loss and seeking easy victories. Review your gaming history.” (end NT Jedi posts)

While I’ve clearly stated I reduce the steepness of my learning curve and that I give myself a strong starting advantage, I’ve never said I didn’t play losing games or in tough defensive positions. I’ve lost lots of battles and fought in many tough defensive positions in games. MMORPGs as multiplayer and online games constantly strive to prevent cheating – while I certainly optimize my strategy and tactics for my personal enjoyment, I’ve never even tried to ‘cheat’ (do something that the online company: Microsoft (Turbine) or Sony would consider cheating.) I did have some very powerful tools and characters when I was part of a special test team for Turbine in AC but we were expected to optimize our time and accomplish certain goals in testing new patches (on a test server). I played other games on Microsoft’s multiplayer system including: Birth of the Federation (BotF – Star Trek) where I played games at least until I thought them hopeless versus the caliber of player I was playing and then I politely resigned and congratulated my opponents. Finally as long ago as the early 70’s I played chess both in high school and at a local chess club receiving a rating just over 1800. That included losing but it also included playing versus players that I resigned to before the end because I knew and respected their quality of play. It also included a few amazing comebacks when I felt the player could still be beat. I do the same in playing versus the AI in single player gaming.

I simply already know when I start a new game that I want an advantage. Also after learning some games thoroughly I want to do some mindless exploration for fun sometimes and will start in a position that is probably impossible to lose. I play in my style for my enjoyment. In competition with other players I never cheat and the existence and style of the other’s mind provides fascinating exploration of the game that I thoroughly enjoy even while losing.

(aside 1)
NT Jedi posted:
“Changing an already decided future within a game is just as fair as changing an already decided future of a thrown dart. The little grand kids call this a "re-do", yet usually by high school they've grown out of this weakness. “

The game is not a simple linear experience to me. If the game allows save/reload I make use of it. In a non-tournament game of chess I would frequently allow an opponent to change their move if it was a significant blunder that threatened the “challenge” of the game. In fact there is a common practice where a player would say ‘en guard’ if the opponent was exposing their queen to being taken. This in effect allows them to review their play sometimes even allowing a player to change their move. I would politely allow this ‘re-do’ and it made the game more interesting rather than simply ending it for the other player by his blunder.

It’s also interesting that you impugn the idea of a ‘re-do.’ As a senior US Army Captain I went to Fort Leavenworth for a staff school called CAS3 (cubed), the school picked up the nickname “Re-Do” U because the US Army felt it was more important to have us senior captains redo our finished work so we could learn and perfect our skills.

(aside 2)
NT Jedi posted:
“You follow game code?? How would someone not follow game code?? The game's programming code cannot be changed.”

It depends on how you define ‘game code’. As early as the gold boxed series of AD&D games, certainly in Civ and MOO, I hexedited games. In the gold boxed games I examined the games files including the exe and find out which hexcodes were used for the various AD&D items. The writers literally input items in the order they were in the hardback AD&D books and so you could guess from known hexcode what other items’ hexcodes were. Experience points were also in hexcode so find your current exp pts in hex and change it to what you wanted. I found this exploration of the hexcode added fun and enjoyment to the gold box games I’d already beat. Also Paradox games like the EU series and Hearts of Iron series had savegame files in English that you could easily modify to change all sorts of conditions (these games also have cheat codes well documented in their game manuals.) Some players also did very elaborate mods including the “CORE” mods for Hearts of Iron. Hexcode is a form of code … was I following game code when I edited these games? Or was I changing the games code? Is editing a savegame OK while changing other gamefiles not OK? In Medieval Total War there were building and unit files that if changed effected all gameplay even new games – is changing them following game code? I read someone else’s public work on these files in modding a game and have done this too.

I still am reading what I consider your opinions, NT Jedi. I beginning to wonder if you’re the one in denial. But at least for now I find this exploration interesting.

Thanks all for your patience! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[llamabeast]

Aha, I had assumed you were new, KermNelson. Apologies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[KermNelson]

No problem ... Llamabeast

... details ... I boo boo'd badly ...

I've just checked EU/HOI manuals and arrggh! They don't show the cheatcodes. That's what I get for relying on memory. I got this sudden fact checking panic attack and I was wrong - no listed cheat codes even if they are in the gamecode.

However since I was boring myself with manuals:
pg 47 of Rome Total War manual:

"Load Game and Save Game allow you to save your position and reload it later (or even undo some terrible calamity by stepping back to an earlier game date, not that you'd ever cheat like this, oh no)."

While clearing labeling this tactic as a 'cheat' the humorous response (sarcasm) obviously indicates the manual's expectation of use for exactly this purpose.

On usable codes to change your stats in Neverwinter Nights manual (pg 171): gives a table of "Common Commands"

Some are: ModAge # or SetAge #, also a series ModSTR # thru ModCHA #, and SetSTR # thru SetCHA #, GiveXP #, GiveLevel #.

This is the D&D system so this allows the player to quite effectively change (cheat?) his character stats and level. There are other useful commands. My point being that some games do release in their manual cheatcodes and/or modcodes that can be used to radically change gamebalance.

[NTJedi]

KermNelson said:
Hmm NT Jedi you seem to be saying everything a player can do the AI should be able to do: that to be “fair” we should have the same game capabilities. Unfortunately since the AI can’t think like a human player game builders rarely if ever make the player and AI equal. In fact usually there are several strong pluses for the AI so it’s strategic and tactical blunders don’t cause it to lose immediately. So the player and AI aren’t fairly balanced or ‘empowered’ to begin with.


Very very few PC_games are balanced between all players when the game starts, the closest games would be chess and checkers. Each PC_game has many random variables providing some opponents with stronger starting positions. Every game has either in-game options, windows_OS options or outside hacks which can provide changes during the game. When these changes alter an existing future for one opponent then the game's natural history has ended. In the case of DOM_3 using the save/reload to change an already decided future for an important battle(s) the game's natural history has ended... it's no longer a game where each opponent is battling for godhood because it's clear one opponent is controlling the future.
The same would be true if you had your own personal slot machine where no real money was being used and changed the results when losing a major bet.


KermNelson said:
The developer also knows the strengths and weaknesses of their game rules and units so they can code an extreme familiarity with the game that the novice player doesn’t possess. Therefore since obviously the game is not designed with ‘identical’ abilities on each side it would be ‘unfair’ by design if you insist on equal/identical abilities for player and AI.


As mentioned earlier, very few PC_games are balanced between all players at the start of a game. However there is a major difference between having a strong advantage and controlling the future! For any game the individual controlling the future will win(if he chooses) and thus the game is now within a controlled environment of the individual controlling the future.
EVERY GAME involves a risk of losing, thus if you remove the risk of losing by changing/controlling the future it's no longer a game and just a controlled environment.


KermNelson said:
As for documentation: the save/reload is a known feature. Many players are quite aware of its use. It is rare for developers to document all possible uses of all their features. ... You certainly haven’t proven none have done it and I’m not going to reread a few dozen manuals and pdfs I’ve got around my computer to cite them.


Of course save/reload is a known feature... hence if your computer crashes while playing the reload option prevents losing hours and hours of time. Unfortunately it's just as easy to use this great tool for cheating and thus allowing a player to control the future. The developers/publishers don't have time to list the hundreds or thousands of different ways it's possible to cheat within todays complex games.



KermNelson said:
On to talk about losing and defense:
While I’ve clearly stated I reduce the steepness of my learning curve and that I give myself a strong starting advantage, I’ve never said I didn’t play losing games or in tough defensive positions. I’ve lost lots of battles and fought in many tough defensive positions in games. MMORPGs as multiplayer and online games constantly strive to prevent cheating – while I certainly optimize my strategy and tactics for my personal enjoyment, I’ve never even tried to ‘cheat’ (do something that the online company: Microsoft (Turbine) or Sony would consider cheating.) I did have some very powerful tools and characters when I was part of a special test team for Turbine in AC but we were expected to optimize our time and accomplish certain goals in testing new patches (on a test server). I played other games on Microsoft’s multiplayer system including: Birth of the Federation (BotF – Star Trek) where I played games at least until I thought them hopeless versus the caliber of player I was playing and then I politely resigned and congratulated my opponents. Finally as long ago as the early 70’s I played chess both in high school and at a local chess club receiving a rating just over 1800. That included losing but it also included playing versus players that I resigned to before the end because I knew and respected their quality of play. It also included a few amazing comebacks when I felt the player could still be beat. I do the same in playing versus the AI in single player gaming.


As mentioned earlier, there's no need to use mods for providing yourself an advantage for the learning curve. If you place a topic on the main forum asking for an easy game without mods, you'll receive at least 5 good responses. Based on the past history you've mentioned I'm surprised you would even remotely consider providing yourself such a massive unbalanced advantage such as controlling the future via the save/reload for any game... unless you don't consider that current game a test of your skills and you are purposely controlling the environment for preparation of some other existing game or future game.



KermNelson said:
I simply already know when I start a new game that I want an advantage.


Tipping the scales to your advantage via mods or map edit commands is a smaller type of cheating depending on how much tipping was done. Controlling the future via save/relaod is a major type of cheating. Another sign using save/reload to change the future is cheating is because even 80,000 years from today no AI opponents will control an already decided future within a game.
Example:
The_Game:Dominions_505 ____Released: May19th___Year_82,008
Turn_45
Battle Results: You've killed the AI pretender and it's prophet after a 42_turn battle... wait it's changing the future upon next turn they will be alive again and your pretender and army will be dead. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif




KermNelson said:
Also after learning some games thoroughly I want to do some mindless exploration for fun sometimes and will start in a position that is probably impossible to lose. I play in my style for my enjoyment.


I do testing for a mod I'm developing, another type of game exploration. Playing for fun is why the gaming industry has exceeded the movie industry. Exploring and testing can be fun exercises. To start a game an actually consider the game a test of your skills means playing without controlling the future.


KermNelson said:
In competition with other players I never cheat and the existence and style of the other’s mind provides fascinating exploration of the game that I thoroughly enjoy even while losing.


It's hard for many to continue playing even in MP games, I frequently have read and seen players just toss in the towel after losing a major battle. As a result the games need substitutes or the nation is turned into an AI. Personally I've always fought to the bitter end during games unless someone was cheating or I was provided an unfair major disadvantage.


KermNelson said:
It’s also interesting that you impugn the idea of a ‘re-do.’ As a senior US Army Captain I went to Fort Leavenworth for a staff school called CAS3 (cubed), the school picked up the nickname “Re-Do” U because the US Army felt it was more important to have us senior captains redo our finished work so we could learn and perfect our skills.


Yes reloading to perfect skills can be important and fun, controlled environments are typically used for learning and perfecting skills.

KermNelson said:
(aside 2)
NT Jedi posted:
“You follow game code?? How would someone not follow game code?? The game's programming code cannot be changed.”

It depends on how you define ‘game code’. As early as the gold boxed series of AD&D games, certainly in Civ and MOO, I hexedited games. In the gold boxed games I examined the games files including the exe and find out which hexcodes were used for the various AD&D items. The writers literally input items in the order they were in the hardback AD&D books and so you could guess from known hexcode what other items’ hexcodes were. Experience points were also in hexcode so find your current exp pts in hex and change it to what you wanted. I found this exploration of the hexcode added fun and enjoyment to the gold box games I’d already beat. Also Paradox games like the EU series and Hearts of Iron series had savegame files in English that you could easily modify to change all sorts of conditions (these games also have cheat codes well documented in their game manuals.) Some players also did very elaborate mods including the “CORE” mods for Hearts of Iron. Hexcode is a form of code … was I following game code when I edited these games? Or was I changing the games code? Is editing a savegame OK while changing other gamefiles not OK?


If you edited game code to make the game easier then it's a type of cheating depending on how much you've tipped the game into your advantage. Editing any existing game to provide yourself an advantage is cheating... the greater the advantage the greater the cheating. Editing a game to workaround a bug or improve game performance/quality is not cheating since the risk of losing has not been tampered.


KermNelson said:

I've just checked EU/HOI manuals and arrggh! They don't show the cheatcodes. That's what I get for relying on memory. I got this sudden fact checking panic attack and I was wrong - no listed cheat codes even if they are in the gamecode.




Cheat codes exist because developers use them for testing the game, the cheat codes remain for two reasons. First it would take time to remove them which can be spent improving the game elsewhere. Second hardcore cheaters will hack into the game or find a friend to hack the game and develop the cheats.


KermNelson said:
pg 47 of Rome Total War manual:

"Load Game and Save Game allow you to save your position and reload it later (or even undo some terrible calamity by stepping back to an earlier game date, not that you'd ever cheat like this, oh no)."

While clearing labeling this tactic as a 'cheat' the humorous response (sarcasm) obviously indicates the manual's expectation of use for exactly this purpose.

On usable codes to change your stats in Neverwinter Nights manual (pg 171): gives a table of "Common Commands"

Some are: ModAge # or SetAge #, also a series ModSTR # thru ModCHA #, and SetSTR # thru SetCHA #, GiveXP #, GiveLevel #.

This is the D&D system so this allows the player to quite effectively change (cheat?) his character stats and level. There are other useful commands. My point being that some games do release in their manual cheatcodes and/or modcodes that can be used to radically change gamebalance.




Even the developers from Rome Total War state using the save/reload to undo a decided future is cheating... as I've been saying from the beginning. Their comment is sarcasm because they know SOME gamers will cheat, it's inevitable... but it's still cheating.

[Agrajag]

Another sign using save/reload to change the future is cheating is because even 80,000 years from today no AI opponents will control an already decided future within a game.


It would be really cool if someone designed an AI that can recognize a mistake it made some time after making it, and then you get a popup "AI Player 4 noticed that it made a serious mistake 14:12 minutes ago, will you allow him to load a previous savegame? [Yes/No]"

EDIT - there aren't 62 seconds in a minute http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Kristoffer O]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[KermNelson]

Hi all … once more into the fray! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

It seems that with the fast pace of modern changes words keep expanding their possible meanings giving us more to have opinions on and individual interpretations. This discussion has covered a few words some might even say a boring booklet. We’ve focused a bit on cheat, fair, rules, and game code. Things keep moving along so now I’ll give my take on game and opponent.

A definition of game from a dictionary: any form of play or way of playing; amusement; recreation; sport; frolic; play.

The noun usage definition of opponent: a person who opposes; person against one in a fight, game, debate, argument, etc.; adversary.

Admittedly I’m going to what some have already called “boring” detail but since I enjoy playing a bit like a bulldog in posts like this I beg others indulgence while I enjoy this mental exercise. (You don’t have to read these posts after all.) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I’m also perfectly willing to admit we can expand the meaning of words, I guess I’m trying once more to elaborate where I’m coming from. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

NT Jedi posted:

1)” Every game has either in-game options, windows_OS options or outside hacks which can provide changes during the game. When these changes alter an existing future for one opponent then the game's natural history has ended. In the case of DOM_3 using the save/reload to change an already decided future for an important battle(s) the game's natural history has ended... it's no longer a game where each opponent is battling for godhood because it's clear one opponent is controlling the future.”

2)” However there is a major difference between having a strong advantage and controlling the future! For any game the individual controlling the future will win(if he chooses) and thus the game is now within a controlled environment of the individual controlling the future.
EVERY GAME involves a risk of losing, thus if you remove the risk of losing by changing/controlling the future it's no longer a game and just a controlled environment.” (end NT Jedi posts)

NT Jedi in your opinion a game seems to require risk and therefore an uncontrolled future. Above I’ve cited the first definition of game from my dictionary. The definition seems to focus on play not risk or the need for some unknown future. While I might tend to agree that computer games are mostly simulation which might be called a “controlled environment” I still think even in the games which I so outrageously unbalance things that I doubt I will lose a skirmish that I’m still playing a game.

You also seem to think that only your opinion of the ‘natural history’ of the game exists. I think the game has whatever history I play it to including any codes, mods, or save/reloads I choose to incorporate. You simply do not define what is ‘natural’ in all of gaming: you have your perspective – your opinion.

(You also use the term opponent when speaking of gameplay vs. AI. I wouldn’t have historically considered the AI an opponent as in a ‘person’ but I will acknowledge it is probably a common usage and more modern dictionaries may broaden the definition to include artificial or automated opposition.)


NT Jedi posted:

1)”… I'm surprised you would even remotely consider providing yourself such a massive unbalanced advantage such as controlling the future via the save/reload for any game... unless you don't consider that current game a test of your skills and you are purposely controlling the environment for preparation of some other existing game or future game.”

2)” To start a game an actually consider the game a test of your skills means playing without controlling the future.”


I don’t always consider the game a test of my skills of combat. I have already mentioned my primary focus is exploring in all games not achieving (goal & success orientation) or killing (PvE or PvP). So I may as I’ve noted run through a game by literally running over the game’s combats while paying attention to other events.

As to the level that a game is a “test of my skills” that is precisely what I am controlling to some extent. Even when I start a new game with a low learning curve I’m still learning so the game is still testing my skills and improving them. That was part of the reason I brought up my experience in CAS3 (cubed): we were allowed to re-do so we could reach an acceptable skill level through practice. You yourself acknowledged this:

(NT Jedi posted: ) ” Yes reloading to perfect skills can be important and fun, controlled environments are typically used for learning and perfecting skills.”

In order to learn and perfect skills they must be tested. I simply choose how my skills are tested. I don’t have to start games over and over to learn mid and late game lessons. If I wanted to improve my mid or end game in chess I could efficiently and effectively start games from saves or from books that had got to the mid or end game stage. And just as I would study optional moves at any point in a chess game, I can save and reload to play through my options and learn better strategies more efficiently. As I’ve stated repeatedly I play the game the way I want. And I don’t consider the save/reload cheating.


NT Jedi posted:

1)” Cheat codes exist because developers use them for testing the game, the cheat codes remain for two reasons. First it would take time to remove them which can be spent improving the game elsewhere. Second hardcore cheaters will hack into the game or find a friend to hack the game and develop the cheats.”

2)” Even the developers from Rome Total War state using the save/reload to undo a decided future is cheating... as I've been saying from the beginning. Their comment is sarcasm because they know SOME gamers will cheat, it's inevitable... but it's still cheating.”

(On cheat codes)
First you speculate on why developers leave cheat codes in game. You have not surveyed them so you simply don’t know why any more than I do.
I’ve seen a few games in which singleplayer allows cheat codes but multiplayer doesn’t, if they bother to take them out of multiplayer why not singleplayer? Maybe they know some players like and use them so they accept those player’s style choices to encourage them to buy their games so they leave them in.


(On the term: cheat)
I guess one of the primary reasons I respond so negatively to the characterization of cheating is that in human games of competition and in most of life’s activities cheating is immoral, unethical, and illegal. Any secondary modern definition of cheating such as using codes, save/reloads, or other game vs. AI activities is so trivial in comparison that I personally don’t think of it as cheating. (I see nothing immoral, unethical, or illegal in using cheat codes or in saving/reloading games.)

Here are two more examples to add to my Rome Total War in which I thought the books flippant use of the term “cheat “ placed the humorous trivial meaning in proper context.

From Star Wars: Rebellion game manual, page 76: (TIP) “Save a game before you engage in a risky strategy if you are afraid of losing all your hard work. You can always reload the game and start from the earlier saved point if things don’t go your way.”

From Final Fantasy VII players manual, page 42: (General Tips) “Save often – you never know what lies around the next turn.”

These quotes at least in my opinion leave no doubt since they don’t call it cheating and that the game developer was encouraging this behavior as normal and prudent.
Finally you ignored the Neverwinter Night’s example in which the game allows the player and dungeon master to change characters through “Common Commands” not calling them cheats. Most PnP RPGs determined what was cheating in the eyes of the DM/GM and it varied radically. Obviously Neverwinter Night’s follows this tradition in not prejudging the use of these “Common Commands.”

Thanks for all your time ... even you not too bored readers. I love someone stretching my imagination.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Zogundar]

jscott said:*snip*There are many reasons that casual and even serious stratey gamers will never play Dominions 3. I think that the game makes it needlessly hard on itself. Many serious strategy gamers will overlook the graphics and presentation (which are severely lacking). But to add on top of that the mandatory, annoying difficulty increases like permanent horror marking and curses and afflictions only puts more obstacles in front of players trying to learn this game. When you top it off with no in-game save, a feature present in EVERY GAME (did I mention that before?), its just needlessly absurd.

Dominions 3 could do itself a major favor by just removing some of the needless barriers to entry.

(And, yes, a lot of this is transferred frustration because I can't get anyone I know to try this game for more than a few turns and, you know what, they are right to be turned off of the game, even if once you get into it, it can be a rewarding experience).*snip*

Wow, I didn't expect to see any new replies to this thread.. that was an interesting read.

I never did buy the game, by the way. I did want to 'check in on' it though to see if anything had changed.. I guess the community is still too divided between the unrelentingly-hardcore camp and the hardcore-but-not-insistant camp for things to swing in the latter's favor. As far as save games go, yes, that would be nice, but for me the barrier remains the curses/horror marks/insanity/any other permanent afflictions. If there were a Remove Curse/Banishment/Restoration spell or effect to remove these or just a simple toggle that switches all that crap off I'd fork over $50 right now.

I don't suppose anything has changed in the few months since anyone last posted in this thread? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Endoperez]

No, not really. We got three new nations in a patch.


I wonder how many of us who did get into Dominions played roguelikes before playing Dominions. That would give the player the kind of mentality needed to enjoy Dominions.

[Zogundar]

Actually, I do play roguelikes (Well, just Nethack, Slashem and Dwarf Fortress.) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

But even Nethack has Explore & Wizard Mode! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Dragar]

I just came across this thread..

The argument regarding whether save/reload is cheating or not I’ll sidestep – personally I think it would be convenient, especially for a new player, but its not a big deal once past that point. I’d agree it is a barrier to entry, it was frustrating at the beginning when I managed to self-destruct every few turns one way or another

One very interesting thing about all of this is that the devs really don’t seem to care about selling a lot of copies. This is bad in some ways, but overall good so I’m happy 

The bad – there really is a lot that could be done from an interface point of view to make this game better; save games, repeat forging, waypoints, automated troop movements, etc etc. Especially for single player where one just seems to flip through the turns, a lot of the game is a tedium. I am sure that between all that, the complexity and the graphics, a lot of players get turned away from the game and sales are lost. The complete lack of attention to SP doesn’t help there either, but I can see what a massive job that would be, and really it would take a lot to make Dominions really good purely as a SP experience.

The good – devs with a primarily commercial aim in mind tend to dumb down games too much for the gamer that really wants to be involved. Having just started playing multiplayer I can see why people regard it as totally different. With such a range of options from people and unpredictable behaviour, you never just go through the motions, you have to consider everything carefully and react quickly. The tedium vanishes because everything must be considered. Dominions isn’t forgiving – I’m sure I’ll be 4 weeks into my first MP game when one action Ididn’t know was possible will destroy me. That’s great!

A few years ago I played an MMPOGD called Faith for a couple of years, a team based strategy game that operated in real time. In a lot of ways that game really rocked, it had massive potential and a core of very involved, passionate players that spent a lot of time on it – much like Dominions. The major difference is the devs’ attitudes. In dominions they focus on making the game better for the existing player base, and focus on what is important for them – balance and new content. Stress the balance here! In Faith the emphasis quickly moved to keeping new players, which meant neglecting balance and dumbing down the lethality of combat. They also kept creating new content and fluffy roleplay stuff before they had their core mechanics sorted properly, which compounded initial problems rather than improving the game.

I would love some of the nice to haves sorted out, especially AI improvements, but all in all I’m just grateful to have a game where development targets improving the experience for existing players. Transparent development, a simple and understandable (even explained in manual!) game mechanic with complexity out of the vast number of races/units/spells/items and their combinations. Its all good 

And should our Swedish friends ever want to take it to the next level where it will appeal to a wider base (though it will always remain a niche game), I’m sure they will have plenty of support here to get those things sorted.

[Zentar]

Dragar said:

– it would take a lot to make Dominions really good purely as a SP experience.



Wow! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif I am one of those who truly loves Dominions as a SP experience. Set indie defense at 9 and adjust AI. It is true that the learning curve is steep initially, but the manual that comes with the game as well as this forum are both excellent guides. This game never seems to get boring. I still discover new tactics / strategies long after the initial learning curve. There seems to be no end to new content through patches, maps, and mods. The patches also continue to tweak the game to operational perfection.


Dragar said:
I would love some of the nice to haves sorted out, especially AI improvements, but all in all I’m just grateful to have a game where development targets improving the experience for existing players. Transparent development, a simple and understandable (<font color="red">even explained in manual!</font> ) game mechanic with complexity out of the vast number of races/units/spells/items and their combinations. Its all good &amp;#61514;

And should our Swedish friends ever want to take it to the next level where it will appeal to a wider base (though it will always remain a niche game), I’m sure they will have plenty of support here to get those things sorted.



I Agree, but as you can tell that would no longer be necessary for me.

In chess programs, you could take moves back all day and still not beat the AI. Each time you would find a new way to lose. You would improve some by continuing in this brute force manner, but progress would be slow and limited. If instead you read material on the game, and then applied it, you would improve much faster. The same is true for dominions. Read some of the guides in this forum, look at the battles and pause them to see how battlefield set-up dominion/pretender choices effect them.


Zogundar said:
Actually, I do play roguelikes (Well, just Nethack, Slashem and Dwarf Fortress.)
But even Nethack has Explore &amp; Wizard Mode!



I remember Nethack (throwing rings in a sink ect.) and Slashem. I deleted them off my computer and replaced them with Angband (Moria type) and its derivative Tome. This was because of my content preference.


Zogundar said:
I never did buy the game, by the way. I did want to 'check in on' it though to see if anything had changed.. I guess the community is still too divided between the unrelentingly-hardcore camp and the hardcore-but-not-insistant camp for things to swing in the latter's favor. As far as save games go, yes, that would be nice, but for me the barrier remains the curses/horror marks/insanity/any other permanent afflictions.



For someone who wants to use an SC solely to win the game, these afflictions can be a strategy buster. There are however threads in this forum that address this very issue with a Prince of Death example. Some people even play with an imprisoned pretender. If curses/horror marks/insanity/and other permanent afflictions are game busters, then make sure your opponent gets plenty of them.

[Zogundar]

So. Looks like I'm back again. Well.

My position hasn't changed. Obviously the game still has Curses and Horror Marks et al. So I suppose I want to know if modding has improved to the point where modifying/adding spells is possible. Or if a mod already exists that accomplishes what I desire: No incurable states of condition.

Failing that I would like to know the full extent to which I can personally modify the game. For example, rather than just removing a type of site entirely, changing its properties. Or replacing by removing one and adding another.

Though one thing I didn't see addressed was insanity. How would you go about removing that from the game, assuming there is no way to create a spell effect to accomplish it? And while I'm at it, are there any OTHER such nuisances that I just don't know about yet?

[NTJedi]

I suppose I want to know if modding has improved to the point where modifying/adding spells is possible. Or if a mod already exists that accomplishes what I desire: No incurable states of condition.

...

Though one thing I didn't see addressed was insanity. How would you go about removing that from the game, assuming there is no way to create a spell effect to accomplish it? And while I'm at it, are there any OTHER such nuisances that I just don't know about yet?

All this can be accomplished... you simply remove each unit, spell, nation, weapon/item which causes the curses, horror_marks, and insanity. Start with a simple mod removing the biggest pains and as you discover the other units, spells, and weapon/items then you can add them into the mod. At least that's what I did for the AI Opponent Balance mod which took quite a long time for the first version and the next version is being worked on. Any SP gamer looking to balance the scales of fairness would like the mod.

There's no super cure potion/spell for the game. You should try the original base game of Dominions_3... that's where the horrors were massively out of control.

[chrispedersen]

er, who says you don't have game saves, anyway?

theres a mod that saves the game everytime you run it. And even if you can't find it - write a little batch file to do the same thing..

No big deal.

[Edi]

The sites that cause horrormarks and curses can be overwritten, but then you lose the other properties they may have. Site modding does not allow assigning horrormark or curse giving properties or many other things, so overwriting is the only way.

Otherwise, you're in for a lot of modding to remove or modify all the spells that can give horrormarks or curses. Those things are not moddable out of items either. Horrormarks are reduced somewhat every time a unit dies, but that's not much comfort most of the time.

[Zogundar]

All this can be accomplished... you simply remove each unit, spell, nation, weapon/item which causes the curses, horror_marks, and insanity. Start with a simple mod removing the biggest pains and as you discover the other units, spells, and weapon/items then you can add them into the mod. At least that's what I did for the AI Opponent Balance mod which took quite a long time for the first version and the next version is being worked on. Any SP gamer looking to balance the scales of fairness would like the mod.

There's no super cure potion/spell for the game. You should try the original base game of Dominions_3... that's where the horrors were massively out of control.Well if possible I'd like to do as little removing as possible. Total removal is kind of the last drastic step. Removing certain properties or abilities is one thing, removing an entire nation is another!

Is it impossible to make a "super" cure? (Something that specifically removes one condition caused by a 1st level spell isn't exactly world shaking magic in my opinion.) I thought I saw some spell-related guide..

The sites that cause horrormarks and curses can be overwritten, but then you lose the other properties they may have. Site modding does not allow assigning horrormark or curse giving properties or many other things, so overwriting is the only way.I'm confused. Can you not create a similar site with the same effects sans the Curse/Horror Marks, remove the original, and use the new in its stead? Is not possible to add new sites?

Otherwise, you're in for a lot of modding to remove or modify all the spells that can give horrormarks or curses.I assumed I would have to do this anyway? :confused: I mean if you remove 1 of 10 different ways to obtain a Curse, there are still 9 left, no?

[NTJedi]

Well if possible I'd like to do as little removing as possible. Total removal is kind of the last drastic step. Removing certain properties or abilities is one thing, removing an entire nation is another!

Is it impossible to make a "super" cure? (Something that specifically removes one condition caused by a 1st level spell isn't exactly world shaking magic in my opinion.) I thought I saw some spell-related guide..

There's no modding which can make it possible to create a super cure. So a super cure is currently impossible.

Can you not create a similar site with the same effects sans the Curse/Horror Marks, remove the original, and use the new in its stead? Is not possible to add new sites?
Impossible curses, insanity, and horror marks are one way streets. No cures are possible.

I assumed I would have to do this anyway? :confused: I mean if you remove 1 of 10 different ways to obtain a Curse, there are still 9 left, no?
Correct you'd have to create a mod which gradually removes every method of having a curse, horror mark, insanity or the few other permanent harms which are one way.

[Zogundar]

Impossible curses, insanity, and horror marks are one way streets. No cures are possible.I'm not speaking of cures here. I'm referring to changing site properties.

the few other permanent harms which are one way.Can I get some names? :p

[chrispedersen]

shattered soul. a special flavor of insanity that is used to balance super strong tartarian and Hinnom.

[NTJedi]

Impossible curses, insanity, and horror marks are one way streets. No cures are possible.I'm not speaking of cures here. I'm referring to changing site properties.
As mentioned earlier by Edi... you would have to remove the sites. No way to change properties we don't have access to change.

the few other permanent harms which are one way.Can I get some names? :p
Shattered Soul which all Tartarians carry... added due to game balance. Cursed Luck... don't remember exactly, but it should be within Edi's database.
Also two blood spells and a few weapons which can banish your unit, commander, SC, OR pretender to the inferno. Causing him to remain gone anywhere from 2 turns to never coming back. There's also a small bug where any unit which is lucky enough to return from the inferno will always return to only one specific province on the map... this should be random, but from my experience it's fixed.

[rdonj]

Impossible curses, insanity, and horror marks are one way streets. No cures are possible.I'm not speaking of cures here. I'm referring to changing site properties.

To clarify, it IS possible to mod magic sites, but it is not possible to change those specific attributes of sites, so you have to remove the site altogether if you want to get rid of the effect.

You will also have to remove horrors, lightless lanterns, stone spheres, etc from the game to remove all possible horror marks. Most horror marking effects you should be able to find in the spells and items portions of your manual.

[lch]

Curses, Horror Marks, and the kill counter can't be removed. On the plus side, neither can experience, heroic abilities and prophet status, for example, and there actually are ways to turn back the clock and rejuvenate a unit.

[Edi]

Impossible curses, insanity, and horror marks are one way streets. No cures are possible.I'm not speaking of cures here. I'm referring to changing site properties.

To clarify, it IS possible to mod magic sites, but it is not possible to change those specific attributes of sites, so you have to remove the site altogether if you want to get rid of the effect.

You will also have to remove horrors, lightless lanterns, stone spheres, etc from the game to remove all possible horror marks. Most horror marking effects you should be able to find in the spells and items portions of your manual.
It is possible to remove horrormarking and cursing from a site, but to do that you need to overwrite the site by assigning it five attributes such as gem generation, scale increases, recruitable monsters, homecommanders or something. #homecom and #homemon probably work best because then nobody can recruit those units, so a Vale of Infinite Horror would do nothing but produce the unrest.

The other stuff is more difficult if not impossible.

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, I didn't read the whole thread but ... if the level of horror marking is applied like damage maybe you could make a copy of Horror Mark that does negative damage?

edit: Found a way to cure horror mark...

Get a unit horror marked 65536 times... :D

So if horror mark has some kind of damage setting that to 65535 would remove one level of horror marking...

2nd edit: how about chaining spells?
Will chaining horror mark to itself cause an infinite loop and can that be broken (if no more valid targets are on the field for example?)

[NTJedi]

edit: Found a way to cure horror mark...

Get a unit horror marked 65536 times... :D

So if horror mark has some kind of damage setting that to 65535 would remove one level of horror marking...


Without knowing the exact level of horror marking you would not be able to cure horror mark. And since there's no way to identify the level of horror marks for a unit, you haven't found the cure.

A cure is suggesting you have a way to fix any existing unit with different levels of horror marks with a single spell.

[Illuminated One]

Wouldn't a spell that can reduce horror marks until you are no longer horror marked count as a cure?
I think I know of a way to do that.


Two questions:

What is the special effect number of the astral claw of horrors? :D
If a unit is horror marked in an assassination battle is there a chance that horrors start spawning during the battle?

[Edi]

You can find the weapon numbers for the astral claw and its horrormark effects in the Dom3 DB.

[Illuminated One]

Thanks.
I don't know that much about modding though. It sounded so easy but there so much details to it. I'm only getting to the point where I have one unit conferring insane horror mark levels and make horror weapons insanely strong. :(
Maybe someone can help me:


(newspell) Copy the spell Manifestation and let it summon a
(newunit) horror mark remover 1
no attacks or anything just

summons in battle (like moloch summons imps)
(newunit) 15 horror mark removers 2 (did that)

these have 2 horror mark attacks (like the doom horror) with 100 attacks per turn that always hit (I suppose they do anyway) and 1 with 57 attacks

Make them unhitable by normal weapons (very high def, prot, awe, etc) but die after 17 rounds...
(newspell) maybe autospell poison damage on them

Make some flavor text about this ancient ritual and the terrible risk involved (in case something goes wrong) - instadeath by doom horror.

I remember something in there is impossible (summon new unit or autocast new spell but maybe you could change old units/spells for that)


You get 17*15*257 = 65535 horror marks in an assassination battle that targets horror marked units. That means you remove 1 level of horror marking. Cast it on a horror marked SC repeatedly until horror mark is gone.

P.S.: Don't tell me I'm mad I know that anyway. :D

[NTJedi]

Wouldn't a spell that can reduce horror marks until you are no longer horror marked count as a cure?
I think I know of a way to do that.

Yes this would be cure.
I recall the developers saying you can have as high as 15 horror marks stacked. I can't find the thread, but that's what I remember which may help.


Two questions:

What is the special effect number of the astral claw of horrors? :D
If a unit is horror marked in an assassination battle is there a chance that horrors start spawning during the battle?

Edi answered the first one.

The second one would be an answer of NO, unless someone has casted a special spell or is using a special item.

[Illuminated One]

15? That's seems very little though it explains something. Thanks.

I have changed the setup and even got where I wanted.

Changed Swarm - 17 dragonflies with ranged horror mark attacks with 15 ammunition and negative reinvig so they are immobile after round 15, a commander with illithid paralyze that dies from fatigue at some time. When the leader dies, the dragonflies start dying, too.

Now I horror marked a dragon several times and cast that spell on him. His horror marks where completely gone (so maybe even remove all horror marks no matter how high) and he wasn't attacked by horrors.

Interestingly he was immune to horror marks after that.
Looking at the battle the following thing happened. First the dragon was paralyzed and then hit with horror marks. Horror mark icon is still there.
After some rounds horror mark icon was gone and the graphic of the horror mark weapon changed. It stayed away for some time and then it appeared again. So maybe there's a window that you have to hit, maybe it screws the whole game, but hey, that's wild magic. :D

[llamabeast]

Haha, that's crazy but awesome!

[analytic_kernel]

Interestingly he was immune to horror marks after that.
Looking at the battle the following thing happened. First the dragon was paralyzed and then hit with horror marks. Horror mark icon is still there.
After some rounds horror mark icon was gone and the graphic of the horror mark weapon changed. It stayed away for some time and then it appeared again. So maybe there's a window that you have to hit, maybe it screws the whole game, but hey, that's wild magic. :D

Just a guess - but probably the horror mark counter is a 16-bit integer with 2's complement arithmetic being performed upon it. Probably any value over 32767 (and less than or equal to 65535) is in "negative horror mark" territory, thereby giving the appearance of immunity until sufficiently horror-marked to wrap around into the positive values again.

[lch]

Turn files?

[Illuminated One]

Yeah, analitic_kernel you are right.

It should have been obvious but because of the accumulating fatigue the horror mark attack didn't work always leading to more and more randomness towards the end of the battle (and I think I used a doom horror attack that does 2 horrormarks). Removed the exhaustion and everything works (probably) deterministic and fine. Dragonflies horrormark until they run out of ammo go into melee and are killed.

I'll finish the mod and upload it here.

Some things that would be nice to have though - some way to copy the real horror mark weapons (as a.o.desolation has it). DomDB says just dmg special which I don't know how to get. So I'm using -999 damage aoe 1 attack with autoeffect horror mark.
Since it's possible to go into negative levels some way to make an assassination spell target only horror marked units (and never the caster, I'm using a copy of Manifestation for this, which is uncool because of that and the flavour text).

Maybe insanity can be cured the same way if someone finds an effect for it, about curse I'm really not sure (as it shouldn't be added but you never know).

[Illuminated One]

It's done. :D

By coincidence I found a way to kill the leader at the right time by copying a spell from another mod. Don't know how it works but 5 castings were ok so I suppose it's always.

Erase Spell is Thau 7, Astral 4, costs 9 pearls and removes one level of horror mark. Cast it until the icon is gone. Casting it more often will probably have the effect that horrors avoid the caster. :D

If someone really intends to use it keep in mind that during the battle only one unit should be there (no guards, no autosummons) and that should not get close to the dragonflies (because they won't do their ranged attacks anymore) during the first round nor kill them by any means. After the first round the unit is paralyzed so placing it front and setting it to (hold)(attack) should be fine. Maybe there's some precision issues (don't know how to give a weapon 100 prec) so front is better than rear.

And back your turns up in case it screws something up but it shouldn't.

[Trumanator]

Wow, thats a lot of effort, and good job on figuring it out. I don't think this will get much use beyond SPers, but its still pretty cool.

[Aezeal]

Can't you make a ritual of it?

[Illuminated One]

It is a ritual already.
The ritual starts an assassination battle though. Don't know if there is another way to do it, the damage on horror mark seems to be hardcoded.

[Foodstamp]

This is a very cool discovery you have made. Good job :).

[Edi]

Excellent job figuring that out. :D

[Aezeal]

well if it's damage and an attack you could probably just use it the way other damage spells work right?

[JimMorrison]

It's ~65k attacks, you can't just simulate that with "a damage spell". ;) This mechanic isn't implicitly intended, or someone else would have figured it out already.

So cool!

[Zogundar]

Guess who! :p

Guess I'll be back every year or so because of this. ;)

It looks like there are weapon/spell effects listed in the database under Curse and Horror Mark (Twice for some reason,) couldn't you thus completely null the effects out of the game that way?

I'm not sure if that would effect events though. How would you get rid of cursing (And horror mark or insanity if they exist) events?

Man, what a lot of work though! Why can't the devs just add something so you can mod these effects? I understand that they don't want to change the base game, but that's no reason to undermine modding, is it?

[TheConway]

Probably because 90% of the community doesn't really care. I wish they'd add more modding functionality though, or even open source.

[NTJedi]

Guess who! :p

Guess I'll be back every year or so because of this. ;)

It looks like there are weapon/spell effects listed in the database under Curse and Horror Mark (Twice for some reason,) couldn't you thus completely null the effects out of the game that way?

I'm not sure if that would effect events though. How would you get rid of cursing (And horror mark or insanity if they exist) events?

Man, what a lot of work though! Why can't the devs just add something so you can mod these effects?
Read post #112 within this thread.

[Zogundar]

Read post #112 within this thread.Well yes, there's that, but that only partially addresses horror marks, and does nothing for curses or insanity.

[TheConway]

don't like insanity-> don't play w/LA Rlyeh and don't use dimensional rod or gift of kurgi

don't like curses-> its honestly a tiny effect, going bat**** over it is silly.

[Zogundar]

don't like curses-> its honestly a tiny effect, going bat**** over it is silly.Yes yes, I've literally been hearing that for years, and I haven't gotten any less adamant about wanting it to go away.

[NTJedi]

Read post #112 within this thread.Well yes, there's that, but that only partially addresses horror marks, and does nothing for curses or insanity.

You can mod out the spells, items and magic sites so horror marks and curses are virtually impossible. You can even change the horrors into a single weak dragonfly. A little modding will make these extremely rare.

As TheConway says if you don't like insanity-> don't play w/LA Rlyeh and don't use dimensional rod or gift of kurgi. You can even mod the tartarians to drop their insanity and possibly remove it.

[NTJedi]

Personally increasing the battlefield turn limit and preventing AI oppoenents sending pretenders into the arena death match are much more important.

[Zogundar]

You can mod out the spells, items and magic sites so horror marks and curses are virtually impossible. You can even change the horrors into a single weak dragonfly. A little modding will make these extremely rare.

As TheConway says if you don't like insanity-> don't play w/LA Rlyeh and don't use dimensional rod or gift of kurgi. You can even mod the tartarians to drop their insanity and possibly remove it.What about events? The items I could live without I suppose, but surely there has to be a solution that doesn't involve removing an entire race from the game?

Personally increasing the battlefield turn limit and preventing AI oppoenents sending pretenders into the arena death match are much more important.I don't see why it has to be either/or.

[rdonj]

Zogundar - LA R'lyeh's dominion effect is unmoddable. Therefore there is no way to have them in the game without having their insanity dominion present.

Events also cannot be modded out. HOWEVER, you can use mod commands to set the chances of random events very low, particularly the ones that are rare in the first place, which would almost completely at that point remove horror marking from the game, period.

If you can play without LA R'lyeh (the only LA water nation anyway), events set to minimal, no items that cause horror mark or curse, no magic sites that do the same, or spells... then you will only be stuck with curses, on an extremely, extremely rare basis. And they'll probably never affect a unit that matters. If this isn't enough for you, you will never find this game playable because it's highly unlikely illwinter is going to spend the time changing things just for one guy so he'll be more likely to buy the game. They've done updates to the game for years, but at the moment, they're focusing on other things and updates of that nature are extremely unlikely.

[Zogundar]

How do you remove weapons/armor/items?

[TheConway]

You mod them to const 12.

[Stavis_L]

How do you remove weapons/armor/items?

For items, you make them research level 12 (as TheConway points out.)

For weapons/armor, you either
1) Mod the units using them to use different weapons/armor (e.g. change the horror's "astral claw" weapon into a regular "claw" weapon.)
2) Mod the weapons/armor so that they are no longer objectionable (e.g. set all the stats on the "astral claw" such that it no longer does a horror marking attack.)

[Zogundar]

2) Mod the weapons/armor so that they are no longer objectionable (e.g. set all the stats on the "astral claw" such that it no longer does a horror marking attack.)How do you go about doing this exactly? Do you have to stat out the whole item? Or can you just make one change and it will drop any "special" properties? If the former, do you need something in the place of the #secondaryeffect/#secondaryeffectalways? (How do you know which it is anyway, I don't believe the database specifies..)

[Stavis_L]

2) Mod the weapons/armor so that they are no longer objectionable (e.g. set all the stats on the "astral claw" such that it no longer does a horror marking attack.)

How do you go about doing this exactly? Do you have to stat out the whole item? Or can you just make one change and it will drop any "special" properties? If the former, do you need something in the place of the #secondaryeffect/#secondaryeffectalways? (How do you know which it is anyway, I don't believe the database specifies..)


The secondary effect/secondary effect always values are listed in Edi's database. Check columns Q/R and S/T respectively (one is the effect number, the other the effect name.)

Setting the value will remove any existing value (if any.)

That said, for your purposes I'd filter by column AT and directly change the weapons/effects that do "Attribute: Horror Mark" to something else.

...hrm...it looks like the Horror mark effect itself isn't directly removeable, as it's a special effect....so you're down to option 1 again (although you could combine approaches - there are two horror mark weapons, and one of them is only used as a secondary effect, so you could update the weapons using it instead of the units.)

[Zogundar]

...hrm...it looks like the Horror mark effect itself isn't directly removeable, as it's a special effect....so you're down to option 1 again (although you could combine approaches - there are two horror mark weapons, and one of them is only used as a secondary effect, so you could update the weapons using it instead of the units.)So I guess there's no way to "erase" the effect instead?

[Stavis_L]

...hrm...it looks like the Horror mark effect itself isn't directly removeable, as it's a special effect....so you're down to option 1 again (although you could combine approaches - there are two horror mark weapons, and one of them is only used as a secondary effect, so you could update the weapons using it instead of the units.)So I guess there's no way to "erase" the effect instead?

No, there isn't a "#clear" command for weapons. That said, only horrors use the "Horror Mark" weapon, so the list of units to update is relatively small.

[Zogundar]

Okay, so at this point, the idea is to change the units that use the first (Or second) "Horror Mark" weapon to another weapon, and change the weapon in the case of the other one where you can mod out the Horror Mark effect? (Or is it the item the 'weapon' is attached to that you need to change?)

Also, what about a way to hopelessly gimp the Horror Mark weapon (The one with the special effect) so that the odds of it hitting or doing anything are 0%? Ditto Curse.

[rdonj]

You should really be reading your modding manual, with a copy of edi's database sitting open in front of you for this. Then it would be much easier to understand what we're saying.

But to answer: Horrors have a weapon called "Astral Claw". If you give them the weapon "Claw" instead, they will not be able to horror mark anymore. But you can do it both ways.

Giving horror mark/curse a 0% chance to hit is implausible, there is always a chance to hit, no matter how low your attack skill. You have to either give the horrors different weapons, or alter the weapons they have to not horror mark. Those are your options.

[Stavis_L]

You should really be reading your modding manual, with a copy of edi's database sitting open in front of you for this. Then it would be much easier to understand what we're saying.

But to answer: Horrors have a weapon called "Astral Claw". If you give them the weapon "Claw" instead, they will not be able to horror mark anymore. But you can do it both ways.

Giving horror mark/curse a 0% chance to hit is implausible, there is always a chance to hit, no matter how low your attack skill. You have to either give the horrors different weapons, or alter the weapons they have to not horror mark. Those are your options.

One slight clarification - the horror marking effect itself can't be removed from weapons 367 and 368 (both named "Horror Mark".) It's probably hard coded to the weapon number (note that horrors have a base age of 3670 years - the number probably means something to Johan or Kristopher.

Of the two, 368 is directly assigned to some horrors, and could be eliminated by giving them other weapons. 367 is used as a secondary effect of e.g. Astral Claw, and could be eliminated by updating the weapons that use it to have a different secondary effect.

You could do something similar with the weapons/effects that cause cursing; I'll leave that as an exercise for someone who actually wants to do it.

[Zogundar]

You should really be reading your modding manual, with a copy of edi's database sitting open in front of you for this. Then it would be much easier to understand what we're saying...I am. :doh:

Okay, I think I understand the unit/weapon thing.

To double check on sites: I'm seeing conflicting reports. Some of you said you can overwrite, others say you can only delete.

Here's one example of what I've done so far:

#selectsite 492
#path 7
#level 2
#rarity 2
#loc 223
#gems 5 1
#end

Would this have the desired effect, or do I need to add the #clear tag? You can add stuff -after- #clear, right?

[Zogundar]

Oh and when changing the secondary effect, can't I just give it a value of 0 or some other non-weapon number?
*EDIT*
And also when changing the weapons for units.. how do I go about that? Do I need to list four weapons to overwrite what was already there? And do I need a weapon, or can I use a 0?

[Stavis_L]

To double check on sites: I'm seeing conflicting reports. Some of you said you can overwrite, others say you can only delete.

Here's one example of what I've done so far:

#selectsite 492
#path 7
#level 2
#rarity 2
#loc 223
#gems 5 1
#end

Would this have the desired effect, or do I need to add the #clear tag? You can add stuff -after- #clear, right?

You could handle this a couple of ways. If you just want to remove the site, the easiest way is to set the rarity to 5 so it never gets randomly assigned.

If you want to keep the site but remove the horror marking/cursing effect (and not that I'm not 100% sure this will work if the effects are hard coded to the site number) then you'd want to do:


#selectsite 123 --whatever site you're modding
#clear
-- add back whatever other attributes you want
#end


You *might* need to use the #clear command as a separate step, e.g.:


#selectsite 123 --whatever site you're modding
#clear
#end

#selectsite 123 --whatever site you're modding
-- add back whatever other attributes you want
#end


That's not normally necessary, but since this is one of the special effects, it might work if doing all in one operation doesn't (I only say that because that trick works when removing OKLEADER from copystatted units.)

If the above still doesn't work, then the effects are hard coded to the site number, and you'll need to remove it (but you could add back in a new site with the same name/other attributes, if you want):


#selectsite 123 --whatever site you're modding
#rarity 5
#end

#newsite 999 --choose an empty site number
-- add whatever other attributes of the site you disabled you want
#end

[Stavis_L]

Oh and when changing the secondary effect, can't I just give it a value of 0 or some other non-weapon number?
*EDIT*
And also when changing the weapons for units.. how do I go about that? Do I need to list four weapons to overwrite what was already there? And do I need a weapon, or can I use a 0?

Best way to find out is to try it. For that, you'll want to see the modified unit; easiest way to do that is to use map modding to place a commander version of the unit in the starting province of your nation. Something like (assuming you're modding unit 123):


#specstart 0 1 --start EA Arco (nation 0) in province 1.

-- place a commander of unit type 123 in province 1
#setland 1
#commander 123


Just add the above in at the bottom of the map and choose EA Arco to start a test game. Of course, you'll need to make sure province 1 is a land province, but otherwise any normal map should work.

BTW, weapons 0 is "Nothing" and usually works to clear a weapon, but I haven't tried it for removing a secondaryeffect. I'd expect it to work, but if not, you could just create a whole new weapon that has the same base attributes, but no secondary effect specified.

[Zogundar]

So far I haven't been able to get the weapons to change at all. Weapon 0 isn't clearing the existing weapons, or changing them. I've tried listing as many as 7 weapons and the base weapons remain (At least in the debug mod I've been using.)

And removing items from the construction list doesn't seem to work either. :/

..and I can't get your mod to work. I tried it in the Aran map, but I didn't start in Province 1 (Which was land!) nor did I get unit 123.
*edit*
Oh, that's -map- modding. No wonder that last one didn't work.

[Stavis_L]

So far I haven't been able to get the weapons to change at all. Weapon 0 isn't clearing the existing weapons, or changing them. I've tried listing as many as 7 weapons and the base weapons remain (At least in the debug mod I've been using.)

And removing items from the construction list doesn't seem to work either. :/

..and I can't get your mod to work. I tried it in the Aran map, but I didn't start in Province 1 (Which was land!) nor did I get unit 123.
*edit*
Oh, that's -map- modding. No wonder that last one didn't work.

Yah, the commander thing is for map modding. It's just so you can see your change easily.

Quick question - are you closing the game (the entire program, not an individual game session) in between modifications to your .DM file? Note that the program only reads the mods when it's starting, so if you change the mod after the program is started, it won't "notice".

Also - are you sure you've enabled your mod in the preferences menu?

If you try this:


#selectmonster 307 -- lesser horror
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#end

#selectmonster 307 -- lesser horror
#weapon "claw"
#end


...does that change anything?

[Zogundar]

Quick question - are you closing the game (the entire program, not an individual game session) in between modifications to your .DM file? Note that the program only reads the mods when it's starting, so if you change the mod after the program is started, it won't "notice".

Also - are you sure you've enabled your mod in the preferences menu?Yes and yes.

If you try this:


#selectmonster 307 -- lesser horror
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#end

#selectmonster 307 -- lesser horror
#weapon "claw"
#end


...does that change anything?I'll have to test it. I have discovered that I haven't managed to get rid of the Horror Mark effect from Astral Claw with
#selectweapon 70
#secondaryeffect 0
#endMaybe I'll try "nothing" instead of "0" when I try the other thing.

[Zogundar]

Tested, didn't work (Although I used numbers instead of names for the latter.)

Example:

#selectunit 651
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#end

#selectunit 651
#weapon 269
#weapon 63
#weapon 270
#weapon 70
#end


At first I thought the weapon changes worked, but I guess the Horrors were just unlucky/one-shotting their opponents. The Eater of Gods vs. some undead seems to be Horror Marking them just fine.
*edit*
Unless it has a special property where things that hit it get Horror Marked. I saw a command for that in the modding manual, but the database didn't mention any units that actually had such a property.
*edit2*
I think that's exactly what's happening. How do I get rid of THAT?

[rdonj]

Have you clicked on the actual weapons to make sure what they do? Because there's a tag to cause a unit to horror mark things that attempt to attack it, which could be the culprit.

[Zogundar]

Well I don't think that's the case with the Eater of Gods.

[Zogundar]

Oops, I'm retarded, I've been using #selectunit instead of #selectmonster. Still don't quite have that sorted out (Will need to do more testing now that the starting tag actually works.)

And of course I need to know about any hidden Horror Marking units or items that inflict the status upon attackers..

[Zogundar]

Haven't quite gotten the unit weapons sorted out yet. Somehow experimenting with what weapons to give certain units, such as a Fist to a Lesser Horror,

#selectmonster 307
#weapon 92
#weapon 0
#endworks as intended. I can't tell you why
#selectmonster 651
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon "nothing"
#weapon 269
#weapon 63
#weapon 270
#weapon 70
#endALSO results in the unit having a single fist. :doh: I thought maybe this somehow happened due to me missing an #end tag somewhere but everything seems in order.

As for events, I've tried setting them to #eventisrare 0 (Does 0 work for #eventisrare?) as well as toggling events to be rare in the game settings (Is there a way to change the defaults for that?) and I still have units getting cursed along with other nasty events in the home province which I assume has something to do with the units that are there. Like the Abomination of Desolation. How exactly do units like this trigger events? Can I change the unit so it doesn't trigger them? (Although I'm not sure if there's a need to, can you actually summon these things so that they live in your provinces under normal circumstances?)

[rdonj]

It's hard coded to the unit number when there's an event based off of them. I would expect that you can't do anything about it in that case. If you have doom horrors sitting in your province that is definitely not a valid test, get rid of them for that. It is technically possible to get those horrors to stick with you if you wish for them and then have the wisher get lucky and convert the horror to your cause in battle with enslaving spells. You shouldn't have to worry about this though. Anyway try without the doom horrors.

And try fewer weapons?

[Zogundar]

I think the limit was seven, so I wanted to make sure everything was as I listed.

Darn. I guess there's no way to copystat new monsters with different numbers and have everything use the new numbers instead?