In my experience, Amplitude devs are usually very keen to know things like this. Especially if it is from a modder with some insight into the game. Just also be prepared to accept that sometimes they may either 

a) Not agree with your assessment of a situation/problem

b) Not be able to implement a fix on their end due to coding issues/balance or potentiallly game breaking consequences.

Man...is 10 days up yet??? Need more info on the coming expansions!

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

icarus86 wrote:

Changelog:

General

• Achievements are no longer disabled by mods

Not sure that this is a good idea.

Having achievements disabled when mods are in use is a way to prevent cheating.

So here is my reasoning:

Yes achievements can be gained "unfairly" with this (say a mod that makes everything super easy to get). But here is the thing: this is already the case. Simply modifying files in the public folder instead of using mods circumvents the achievment lock. Furthermore: I often heard from people "well I'd like to use mods, but I like my achievments more". So we have to decide, whats more important: A healthy modding community or the "purity of achievements". In this late stage of the life cycle of EL I firmly think, that helping the modding community is way more important, especially since - as I have mentioned - a dedicated "achievement cheater" can do so already anyway. Finally, I think its also kind of a "hook" to get some people interested in my work in the first place (this is admittedly a somewhat egotistical reason).

This is not the first game I am modding. Most of my mods are for "XCom 2", a game from which I think many other games could learn a lot when it comes to modding friendliness (and the resulting longevity). There are no restrictions to achievements and modders are granted access to huge chunks of the games original source code (with developer comments and everything). I think this is a good approach to take.

Not only can achievement locks be circumvented through the public folder, there are programs that can simply unlock all achievements with the click of a button. Anyone who wants to cheat their achievements can do so in a number of ways. One thing that always drove me nuts about Amplitude games was the locking of achievements when modding, especially if you are just using things like Improved AI, Endless Heroes, Mightier and Magickier, and a Color Palette Expander.

Speaking of which, are there any known compatibility issues with Crixler's Palette Expansion, Re-Items, Mightier and Magickier, or Endless Heroes?

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

I have no idea what fearfullness does yet, and wont take a look at it before I release the current patch (it really needs to get done ^^). I will have a deeper look at all the other stuff once I'm finished with the current release. Suffice it to say that I noticed the occasional weird AI battle engagement behavior, but so far I didnt managed to get a good save where I can actually reliably test and recreate it to make improvements.

Edit:

Also regarding Wonders: so far I only buffed the Cultists AI willingness to build them (internally in the source code), I wanted it to their "thing". Im a bit hesitant to increase the AIs willingness to build them too much, because overdoing it more or less guarantees the AI will always get them on higher difficulties.

I notice these strange habits also. Perhaps some good could come from approaching it in a way that gives the AI the ability to evaluate a situation to know, for certain, that an army is !DOOMED! (Retreat will only lead to fighting at half health next turn, can't outrun, can't reinforce, etc.) which will 'force' them to fight it out instead of resorting to useless and crippling retreats?

Also, a few things I might like to see changed about EL:

1) 60% health loss on retreat instead of 50%, something they changed for ES2 (likely for the reasons I'd like to see it changed in EL)

2) A fix to the problem of AI always knowing where a stealthed unit is after they initially detect them. This happens a lot when you get too close to Bastions with Bathyspheres or Leviathans. The AI will track you around the entire world after initially spotting you with their all-seeing eye.

3) AI could learn to use Pearl Tech (especially districts like Intensifiers and Abbeys) instead of building districts on top of high value anomalies and resource deposits.

4) Roads generating on Ice Shelves. This really irritates me.

5) AI doesn't seem to care about competitive or cooperative quests (looking at you Unwanted Oxidation).

Finally, a massive rework to the Heroes system would be great:

6) The Academy system of ES2 is great. I would love to see a system in EL where the Heroes are acquired as you play instead of forcing Mercenary Markets and Economic play. Low Econ in EL isn't viable thanks to the reliance on Heroes. Perhaps Heroes are just OP (I seem to think so) but gating them behind a specific tech and playstyle is kind of boring, and having no cap to your Academy or limit to the number of Heroes you can purchase means a strong Econ setup opens up a world of advantage just from Hero saturation.

7) Having regular unlocks (sort of like a mix between ES and ES2) of Faction-specific heroes would be great (preferrably using the Endless Heroes mod for greater variety) while allowing for the purchase of off-Faction heroes from the Mercenary Market seems like it could be an improvement over the current system.

1) I assume the reasoning is to prevent retreat spam. Without Regen boosting, you can only run once and then you have to fight, instead of the EL system where even a 5% health regen per turn can force an opponent to engage 3 times consecutively. This is a serious issue when trying to take out Settler units. Before you can engage them a third time, they usually settle in awful location in a manner reminiscent of Zerg Drones spamming Gas Extractor morph/cancel in SC2.

2) I will work on it. It should be easy as once they spot your stealthed vessel via detection, you seem to be unable to return to a state of stealth.

3) My heart bleeds too. It also bleeds when I see a City Center or District built on the Golden Tree. Oh the agony.

4) Truly a shame, but understandable.

5) Good thinking. I am curious to see what comes out of Inferno so far as improvements to AI, mechanics, or unique tech is concerned. I do hope they address some of the more annoying issues currently in EL.

6+7) Sounds good. I have long considered doing some modding for EL. After 2400 hours, you'd think I would have already dipped my toes. I may come to you for some advice at some point if I do venture down this path, so I hope advice is freely offered.

My thanks for the response.

I pray that the new dev team has taken a look at this thread and will at least implement the outright bugfixes.

I persoanlly have a bad feeling about this but...I'm happy to be wrong!

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

I'll have to see if the DLC will bring any other changes like bugfixes or AI Improvements. I will update my patch asap so its compatible with the new dlc and the accompanying patch, everything else depends on how much work the dev that made the dlc puts into post launch support. 

Awesome, I'll install your patch as soon as there's an update for inferno. Thanks for the good work.

Really great work. Thank you for your time and effort.

Idem. Great work man !

Any news on this subject or am I looking in the wrong place?

It seems like the Inferno team didn't implement the fixes. You're our only hope now!

Yes they only implemented a few of them, namely: 

- AIs building ships in "ponds"
- Idle army button
- Cultists aquiring more than one city
- Forgotten Techtrade bug

Everything else is as it was in Vanilla. I have a betaversion of my updated patch done, but I need to play a full game before I can release it in order to make sure its working fine.

Its done! As always, the full changelog is in the opening post of this thread.

Downloadlink (Installer) || Downloadlink (Zip) 

This patch doesnt contain many changes, most of the work went into getting an overview of just how much was changed "behind the scenes" with the Inferno patch v1.6.2, and manually integrating my old code with it.

There are - as always - still some AI Improvements included. I took my first stab at improving the encounter logic of the AI. Hopefully they behave smarter when defending their cities now! This is only a first step, and if you notice weird encounter behavior, feel free to message me.

I also implemented an experimental quest solving logic. The AI can now solve the cooperative quest "From Dust to Rust" on its own! If no issues arise, further quests my follow in the future.

I have also increased the HP-loss to 60% (up from 50%) when fleeing from a battle. With some HP-Regeneration it was very easy to keep a fleeing unit alive for three or more turns before.

Speaking of balance: Many players discuss possible balance changes for the new faction. It seems rather strong, but for now I will refrain from doing any changes to Inferno content, since I want to wait and see, what our new developers to with it.

However I have another plan - but it will have pretty severe consequences, thats why I want your feedback first! As you may have noticed, I am of the opinion, that Building Cost Reduction is a very strong stat. What I didnt know is that besides its obvious strong boost to construction speed it also reduces the cost of buying out buildings, and that is on top of the Buyout Cost Reduction stat. What that means is that you can stack both and start pumping out buildings for little Dust Cost without really having to concern yourself about getting Industry. This works with every race and is by far the most efficient way to play a long (i.e. non-rush) game. Stack Building Cost Reduction (Minor Faction, Empire plan, governor) get some Buyout Cost Reduction (Era 2 Tech, Empire Plan), and you are ready to go. In my opinion both of these things should be "disentangled". Building Cost Reduction should be good for Industry focussed Empires, Buyout Cost Reduction should be good for Dust focussed Empires.

Therefore my suggested change would be, that Building Cost Reduction no longer reduces the Buyout Cost of Buildings and Units. What do you think?

I don't play multiplayer and really instead of killing the whole thing you could just reduce it.

Slashman wrote:

I don't play multiplayer and really instead of killing the whole thing you could just reduce it.

I also play mostly Single player, its not like balance has no meaning there . But I can just make it optional similar to how I did it with tech trade cost progression.

Thank you for taking your time and fastly update the mod.