Better Independents
 

Following the discovery of the method to eliminate independent poptypes from maps, we have seen some NI (No Independents) maps, which, judging by the reviews of some people, offer quite a bit different and in some respects more interesting experience than the vanilla game.

The NI maps, however, suffer from one fairly serious problem: With the poptypes, independent mages are no longer available, and they are often the method which allows nations to diversify magic. Seems like a harsh tradeoff for a more challenging AI.

Following some recent discussions on the problem of AI using nothing but hordes of useless militia and other similar units, I decided to explore other avenues of tackling the issue. Namely, modding. The solution I have tried is making a mod where the resource costs of undesirable independent units has been increased by 500, which makes them impossible to build. Commanders, with the exception of the Barbarian Chief, Horse Tribe Chief and Commanders 34, 35 & 36 are not modded, so the mages are available.

Some of the more useful units have been left untouched, but most have been modded away. Gold costs are unaltered, so getting militia events is not going to bankrupt anyone. The full details are in the mod file as comments. The mod file also contains instructions on how to enable and disable more units, as well as an almost complete list of what has been changed and what has not.

This mod has NOT been tested in practice, but it should eliminate chaff hordes. You will still see the unmodded units, but they are generally the high impact, high resource ones. The only chaff units not modded away are the javelin light infantry, because I happen to like it, and the special poptypes, as well as underwater and amphibian units to enable land nation expansion into water.

Please give feedback on how this mod works, what you think of it and suggestions for improvement. Enjoy!

EDIT: Attached the new Better Independents mod to this post. It is also uploaded to my directory and the old NI mod removed because the name is misleading and there are bugs in that. For games that use the NI mod, just copy-paste the contents of BI to that mod and finish the games, that'll fix it.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

A very interesting solution to an annoying behavior in single player play, I will definitely give it a go.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Thanks, Edi! To add, it might be nice to see some of the crappier national units modded out this way. Remember the thread with the army of hundreds of Marverni Horn Blowers?

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Sounds good. I will have to try it.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I cannot get this mod to work. I am going to look it over and see if I can troubleshoot the problem.

It gives me a "Bad #Selectmonster command" error. This is with no other mods loaded btw.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Ok, I figured out the issue. For some reason my dominions was recognizing your --(unit description) as part of the #selectmonster command because you had it like this...

#selectmonster (monster number --(monster description.

So I just went through and deleted all the descriptions, problem fixed. I was too lazy to go through and move them above the entries http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


EDIT:
Now I can't get this mod to work in game. It crashes as soon as I hit end turn. Am I the only person having problems with this mod? Was it tested before it was posted?

The error message I get is "Bad monres" (only your mod going)

EDIT 2: I finally got this mod to work. I pretty much had to rewrite it from scratch. It is very strange that my copy of Dominions is so different than other copies of Dominions that I was the only person that had issues with this mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Thanks for pointing that out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Seems they've changed it from the Dom2 days, or my memory is playing false. I made a fixed version that removes the comments from inside the #selectmonster - #end sequence and places them right before #selectnmonster so you can still tell immediately what unit the modification affects.

Damn, still does not work! No, I did not test, but apparently Dom3 mods are a lot more particular about what kind of comments they allow than Dom2 mods. I'll test this out and fix it. It worked right fine when it did not have any comment lines at all.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Comments should be fine as long as they are outside the #selectmonster and #end. I use them all the time in my mods

The reason you are getting more crashes is because of the other problem I found with the mod. Dominions will not accept the resource value for a monster at 1000. That is why it was giving the error message "bad monres". I reduced all the resource values to 800 and the mod works perfect, loads turns etc etc.

It is a bit annoying to have to rewrite a mod because someone did not test before they posted it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Be sure to atleast play the mod once before posting it for others to use!

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Found the problem. Apparently the game does not like overly large resource costs for units. 1000 was far too high and so was 800, so I knocked it back to 500, which was the value I originally used. It works with that one.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Hmm, must have tested with 900 accidentally. In any case, fixed. Thanks for helping troubleshoot it, Foodstamp. I was sort of in a hurry to get that out and getting interrupted every 5 minutes tonight did not help my concentration. Sorry for any inconvenience to those who had problems.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

NP at all, glad I could help. This idea was worth the little time trouble shooting to get to use. Nice job thinking outside the box when it comes to helping the AI.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

So far I really like it. I hadn't realized how annoyingly stressful the provinces full of militia were. I notice that Atavi are still recruitable, and perhaps I'll use a Chieftain to lead my Umbrals. Much as I like the NI maps, it's nice to have the option to recruit the non-boring commanders.

(Of course the Atavi are still there because of Bandar Log, but if I really wanted to I could #copystats Bandar Log's version and change the resource cost on the poptype one. Maybe I will later. Agartha shouldn't really have access to shortbows with decent precision, or worse yet Sticks and Stones with Strength of Giants--worse than longbows. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif)

-Max

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I have been playing a pretty massive game as well with this mod. Here are my observations so far.

The AI builds less units, but atleast the units it build are useful. I think the AI gave me a harder time before, because he would hit me on so many fronts.

Now the attacks are normally concentrated in a few armies instead of a gazillion militia forces taking provinces left and right with me having to chase them down all over the map, one province behind them the whole time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

It may be my imagination, but it seems like my load times have gone way down now that the AI has to use it's forts to produce units. I am at a point in my current game with around 35 nations on a medium sized map where the turn loading would reach a point where I would call it quits. With this mod, the turn processing seems fairly reasonable, and I think it is because the AI does not have to figure out what to do with all those trash units.

I like the mod, I will probably use it for now on in my single player games, or atleast until someone comes up with a more elegant solution to the junk indies and the AIs <3 for them.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Thanks for the comments, guys! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The reason it decreases hosting time for turns is directly related to the number of units that have been recruited in the game. Each one of those units takes up memory, requires appropriate calculations in battle etc, which slows the game down. That's why the hard limit for units that can be on the map at the same time was only tripled from Dom2 instead of being maxed out. Maxed out, it would bring any system, no matter how top of the line, to its knees.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I like it. I still prefer the NI maps, partly because I like non-site indy mages being absent.

This mod has a big advantage over NI maps in the respect that it can be used with random maps.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I found a bug with this mod. When you conquer keeps formerly held by the AI, if those forts are able to recruit units that have had their resource costs raised, the AI will still try to create those units.

This causes the queue to back up with 800 resource commanders and units that will not allow them to recruit their national units from the keep. So the only place the AI can build units at are their original capital keeps. If we can find a fix for this bug the AI would be more challenging.

As it stands right now, this mod makes the AI less challenging I have noticed in my single player games. I still like the mod though because I get tired of fighting indy zergs.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Damn. So much for that idea then. I suppose the AI makes its recruitment decisions based on the original cost of the units, using the original values, since mods are just an overlay on it.

Looks like we're back to square one or using NI maps. Highly annoying. Thanks for letting us know.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Edi, couldn't you just raise the gold cost instead of resources, then the AI wouldn't be able to even add the unit to the queue unless it had too much unspent gold. (Might be that you already discussed this and I just missed it.)

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

The problem with that is that you can get upwards of 50 militia from events. If each one of those costs 800 gold, the upkeep will wreck the economy.

And even then, it is possible that the AI would make purchasing decisions based on the original values.

I suppose it's worth a try, just so long as I do not change the militia type (monster 30) you can get from unit events. I'll post a modified mod later. Right now I do not have the luxury of time to test how it works, so I would really appreciate it if somebody played a test game or two to see if the gold alteration helps. I'll test enough to see that we don't get "bad mongold" or similar errors.

What we really need is to be able to mod existing poptypes so that we can reassign different units to them. That way it would be easy to disable any necessary units. Especially if you designed a good poptype mod that disables the problem units, then start a game with a blank NI mod where you copy the actual NI mod contents, so the units that appear as indie defenders will be according to vanilla game and then the problem units only get disabled after that.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

IF the bloody attachments work, this post should contain a new version that replaces rcost 500 with gcost 9000 (10k or bigger is ignored as invalid value but does not crash the game).

EDIT: So, they do NOT work. Again. Just a moment and I'll upload it to my own webspace.

EDIT 2: File uploaded, link in the first post, and for good measure, here as well.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I really want to see this mod work right. I think you are going down the right path with your line of thinking and I will try to do what I can to help you get this mod going. As soon as I have some free time, I will download the new version and do some testing for you.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Looks like there's a 404 on your link, now.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

It's a good thing we don't have fireaxes hanging on the wall here... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Links fixed. They take you to the directory where the file is, so you can download it that way.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Seems like your mod makes Markatas cost 9000 for Bandar Log. Perhaps they appear both as Bandar Log national and as independents.

Perhaps giving Bandar Log a copy that costs 5 gold would be good.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Damn! I'd forgotten about that. I need to change that back to normal cost, it doesn't matter that much if the indie markatas are available, since they are not too common.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Also, Mans militia, Light cavalry and slingers cost 9000, also, pale ones from cave provinces cost 10gold each, you'll need to copy stat them and make a replacement on for argath(sp) early age

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Arcoscephale uses an indy mounted commander unit, so he might be affected too.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

same with any other nation with slingers.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I'll take a look at all of these when next I have time.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Oh, I'd also like to add that this mod is fantastic! and really good for testing new nations, I found my newest nation, "Free Port" very interesting and difficult to play against with an impossible AI.

I suggest for anyone doing nation modding to test their own mod on an Imp AI and this mod.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Juzza, Thank you very much for the kind words! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

-----

All right, I've done some revisions to the mod.

Enabled (i.e. commented out) units:
26 Light Cavalry
50 Slinger
39 Heavy Infantry
126 Woodsman
1118 Markata

Reason: Included in some national army lists, so that those lists do not get broken. Affected nations were the ape nations, nations with slingers (which can be useful, hence enabled again) and MA Man (has both slingers and light cav). The HI is enabled because it IS heavy infantry for EA and not utter crap. Woodsman was enabled because it gives some raiding potential for those who find them even if they lack national stealth units.

For people who are wondering why some indies are still enabled and some are not, read the mod file. It has a fairly extensive commentary section in the beginning which contains the rationale for WHY things have been done the way they have and why for example indie Pale Ones are unmodded (they are amphibian, so they can allow expansion to water from land). I am a firm believer in the maxim that undocumented code is only half-finished at best, and that also means giving a brief explanation on design principles.

The goal of the mod was NOT to eliminate ALL independents completely, but to eliminate the useless crap and totally worthless hordes of chaff that the AI likes to build while preserving the better units and allowing some options. Militia number 31, which is available to MA Man will NOT be enabled. It stays at 9000 gold a pop because it can be found in no less than three poptypes and I refuse to mangle the purpose of the mod by allowing it. MA Man will just bloody well have to do without that unit. If you're playing MA Man and in such desperate straits that you need to recruit the militia instead of spearmen to serve as chaff and archer bait, there's no hope for you anyway and the mod stays truer to its purpose.

The mounted commanders were never affected by this mod because those poptypes are far less common than the infantry ones and the nations with crap leadership deserve SOME chance of finding good commanders. Militia #30, which can appear from "lucky" events (ok, sometimes it is lucky, but more often not) is unaltered so that it doesn't bankrupt anyone, but unfortunately it appears in three poptypes, so you WILL see some of it in the AI armies. But there will be less chaff than normal and none of the indie archer hordes unless the archers are national troops, longbows or woodsmen.

Note that the mod version and filename has not been changed, because I really can't be arsed to do that. Just replacing the mod file with the new version will overwrite things and change existing games on the fly. If you're using it in MP, make sure everyone changes it at the same time.

Hopefully this lengthy post answers most questions you may have.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

You know, it wouldn't be that difficult to just #copystat these units and just add them to the nations with them recruitment lists, if you want some help, I'm better at coding that sprite drawing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

The problem being that if you want a clean looking game, one would need to select the affected nations, clear the recruitment list and rebuild it entirely with the copystatted indie units in there. Bit more work that I'm willing to do at the moment. Currently that one militia unit is the only one affected.

I suppose I will do that at some point in the future, but that'll be after the patch. It also occurred to me that perhaps I should rename this mod to "Better Independents" and then make a separate mod where all indies cost 9k and put that out as "No independents".

What I'd really like would be poptype modding, so I could actually just copystat all the units already in the poptypes, then assign those copies back into the poptypes. That would be much easier and you could eliminate everything without needing to worry about militia events etc.

But if you want to go ahead and tinker, that is your right. If you show me the results and give me permission, I may just steal them for the next version. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

ooo I can tinker?? yay!

I think I'll emliminate as many indies as I can, it makes it really fun in sp vsing modded nations that actually use the units in there forts.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Just name the tinkered version with some identifier that distinguishes it from mine and it's all good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

If you want a cleaner solution I still think No Indy versions of maps are the way to go. Very quick to do new ones. With them you only get indy units through sites, which makes finding indy sites like brigands lair or mermen village or whatever a bit more interesting as well as stopping the AI building indy armies pretty much completely.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

That depends on what you're after, Sombre. The biggest problem with NI maps is that it is absolutely impossible to recruit any kind of commanders or mages (such as shamans, druids etc) that would allow diversification of magic. I wanted to retain those and the better units while eliminating the chaff and that CANNOT be done without modding it. As well, the mod can be used with all maps but map files have to be made for each map separately.

The NI maps are good for those who like them, but they are not my cup of tea nor as flexible a solution. The mod can be made clean with actually far less work than making NI maps every time you need one, it just takes a little more ONCE, but just for the sake of enabling one militia and disabling one light cavalry, I'm not going to do that. Not worth the time it takes.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

NI maps require far more work? I don't see how. All the NI maps require is copying the map's original text file, adding in a single copy pasted chunk of code and renaming the map.

You're right that they're different though. I like the fact that you can't get poptype mages with NI maps, so it's not a problem at all in my eyes.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I'm going to have to apologize due to the update. It seems like the commented out lines are actually being read and used, so there are now units that should be available, but are not.

I'll make another update in the next few days and rename the mod to "Better Independents", which is what it should be. I can also make a true "No Independents" mod where there really will not be ANY indies at all, but that requires redoing some nation army lists, so it's a very low priority one for me right now.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

I got a quick question Edi.

If the indies cost 9k each then what happens if your using R'lyeh with their enslave mind commanders and get a couple indies from battles? Would that give you a ridiculous amount of upkeep?

MrMatt

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Yes, there is that. The point is that you should not use enslavement against indies or you will suffer the consequences. I can't fix things perfectly. Using inflated resource costs causes the AI to still try to build them, stuffing up recruitment. Inflated gold cost makes them impossible to recruit, but if you hit one with an enslavement spell, you're suddenly paying 600 gold upkeep on that unit.

So, save enslavement against AI armies, they will only have the unmodded units in them.

Re: NEW MOD: Better Independents
 

All right, people update. The last one was screwed up and it disabled a lot of units it was not meant to. The mod has been renamed, because "Better Independents" is a far more accurate description than "No independents".

I have reuploaded the attachment to the first post, as well as uploaded it to my home page. The File is now called Better_Independents.zip and contains three mods:

• Better Independents, which increases gold costs to 9000 and base resource cost to 800 for the modded units
• Better Independents Gold, which only increases gold cost to 9000 for modded units
• Better Independents Resource, which only increases base resource cost of modded units by 800

Each mod has its own banner and this approach will allow everyone who wants to use them to pick whichever one suits them best. If you play an astral heavy nation and worry about enslave mind bankrupting you, use the resource version. If that's not a concern, you can pick the gold one or if you really want to make sure, pick the plain Better Indies, it has both gold and resources.

The only difference between the mods is that the resource cost version also prevents Militia 30 (the one you get through events) from being recruited, but that mod also has the issue that sometimes the AI may get the brilliant idea of trying to recruit the 800+ resource units and ganks its recruitment. The gold version can lead to instant bankruptcy by careless use of Enslave Mind but the AI won't try to recruit the indies. Pick your poison.

This mod is also not likely to get any foreseeable further updates, since my limited time does not allow me to waste any more effort on it that could be better spent on the bug list, the DB, the FAQ, my studies and other pursuits.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Does this mod still work with the new patch?

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Yes. It works with 3.06 and later, since it does not alter any of the new stuff or use any commands that were only introduced later. It would probably also work with 3.04, but I used 3.06 as the cutoff line, as it was the most recent patch at the time.

I would obviously not have updated this thread if the mod did not work.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

My apologies, I'm actually thinking of buying the game and I'm debating whether it would be worth it for the Single Player experience alone.

Re: NEW MOD: No Independents
 

Your name is fitting. You have to joking, but I will take this as an excuse to sing the praises of our favorite game.

This is the best damn hardcore turn based fantasy strategy game you'll ever play for either the single player experience or multiplayer. There are infinite mods, maps, strategies, and more. It comes with one of the most informative manuals I have seen. I have never had a game crash or not run properly like many other games published these days. Then there are the incredibly good contributors on this forum! They just keep coming up with new features adding to the never ending thrill. I can think of only two things that might make me stop playing Dominions-3 ..... my death or maybe a Dominions-4.
The game never gets played out or boring. Even hot woman are asking for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Sombre hits the nail on the head! The NI maps not only address the indies issue, but they help maintain pure nations. This aspect of the game was partially addressed in the game's original design by not allowing you to hire units that would be available in captured alien nation capitols.

Sombre, is a copy of that pastable chunk of code available? A NI-LOEM map, Faerun, and vanilla World of Warhammer come to mind as good applications.

Re: NEW MOD: Better Independents
 

Edi you must constantly be working yourself to exhaustion trying make improvements as well as tweaking out minor (bugs) to reach god-like game perfection. You also seem to have a personal desire to create this mod for those who hire alien nation mages to diversify their magic base while also making the independents better. A noble cause for those who use this strategy.

Using the game's present Conjuring, Enchanting, Construction, Special site searches, as well as God design points is another (more) challenging strategy for diversifying your magic. In addition to addressing Indies, there is this second and maybe the more important point of Sombre's NI-Map approach.

Both mod approaches add to the diversity of the game and I will have to play all of them also. Dominions-3 is hundreds of game(s) variations coming out of one game box. How much more can I say!

Re: NEW MOD: Better Independents
 

Attachment deleted.

Re: NEW MOD: Better Independents
 

I'd just like to thank you Edi for your work on this, I use it all the time now, and although I can't have my Conan indy anymore, I don't mind 'cause I at least I don't see the ai use chaff as much, so anyway thanks alot!

Re: NEW MOD: Better Independents
 

Thanks for the feedback. The BI mod will be back, but not immediately. I made some modifications to it that made it even better and allow for more strategy variation and which incidentally also beefs up the AI some more.

I'll see about this and other things sometime in the next two weeks.