Dynamic Elysium Mod

[Azorico]

I've always written very simple mods for Dominions 4 and kept them to myself so this time I figured I'd change old habits and actively join CoE4 's modding community. Here it is:

New release beta (27/04/2020):

- v0.7 (regular): https://drive.google.com/file/d/12aR97rgB_wwRX3u0mFzMto4Hf1u7c3hz/view?usp=sharing

Current version: v0.7

In this version things will happen more often compared to the current regular version. The independents and special bosses will provide a much bigger challenge if left to their own devices as well.

Won't update the other versions before testing this one extensively. A secondary goal is to eventually decouple certain aspects of this mod into modules *essentially several mods". One for the events, one for the upgrade&downgrade mechanics and one for mob spawns.

Changelog:

- Removed event and world counters based logic, re-implemented the previous logic with a new take;
- Overhauled pretty much all the events, including plenty of typos;
- Fixed a couple of questlines that did not have the correct triggers or started too late.


Events only version:
- v0.51: https://drive.google.com/open?id=11ForThHtzGhtjfgPWXoBfLorOpsgK39d

Current:
- v0.64 (regular): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0txbdSxeHW0d0RMS3VHc1R5NGs

- v0.64 (fast): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Oaug7W1wmWbdLTG8i8JNrfbevS7ZlHQ9

- v0.64 (slow): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LxroAwCmhzGA0Gu08b05OXV8p0Wqnitg

Old:
v0.30: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IuOYUbPreYcvU-UJ6jcOYbE8WTJfXJlC
v0.28: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0txbdSxeHW0RmwwTGFiSTVuQ3c
v0.27: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0txbdSxeHW0RnQtSzZELTVvc1E
v0.26 (althought it is incorrectly named): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0txbdSxeHW0S0dmaGxJVGJCUkk

How to install the mod:
- Delete previous version dynamic_elysium_vx.x.c4m (or dynamic_elysium.c4m from v0.3 onwards) and dynely folder;
- Go to %appdata% -> CoE4 -> Mods;
- Drag the .zip there and extract files (dynamic_elysium.c4m and dynely folder should appear);
- Run the game -> Mods -> enable Dynamic Elysium (a banner should appear at the top right corner of your screen when it is active);
- All done;

First things first, this mod is about 70% event scripting targetting Independents, Hades and Inferno on the Elysium plane and I've tested it as well as I can with my current knowledge. As for the remaining 30%, same events but directly or not influence the player.

Main features (current):
- If there is no capital city (Senator), a town or city will eventually be upgraded with a message warning to all players;
- If there is no king's castle (Baron), a castle will eventually be upgraded with a message warning to all players;
- If there is no Academy of Higher Magic (tier 3 library) one will eventually appear through a quest that upgrades a Magic library;
- Farms generally upgrade to Hamlets, Hamlets to Villages, Villages to Towns, etc but there is a small chance upgrades will vary based on garrisoned forces and other factors;
- Degrading also occurs with the lowest chance possible in nominal conditions and sometimes through special events which impact everyone, expect Horrors, Hades, Inferno and Special to influence this as well;
- Minimum turn system implemented so that there is a slow but gradual sense of development throughout the land at first and a sense of impending doom as decades go by;
- Farms eventually appear on mid map plains which are not occupied and can be degraded back to plains through chance events as well;
- Low level settlements might be turned to hoburg villages via chance events and downgraded back to hamlets as well;
- Tent villages and Hyena tribe villages eventually appear on tundras and savannas, respectivelly and can also suffer downgrades;
- Independent Emperor and King can evolve by themselves (so far more than 7 possibilities, with 5 evolution paths for the Senator, and more than 5 possibilities, with 2 evolution paths, for the king) and become really powerful instead of stagnating in time;
- Independent Councilors plot against each other and might become a massive challenge if left to their own devices for too long ( more than 8 possibilities);
- Event chains for specific monster based quests that become crisis if left alone;
- Different versions for different players and map types (description at the bottom);
- Plenty of random events based on locations.

Concerns:
- The Voice of E's faction conversion mechanics work even if a settlement gets upgraded/degraded ---- so far so good ;D
- Possible errors that may come from terrain and other restrictions I used;
- Descriptions and general flavor text issues;
- Might need to tweak some values for the different paces/events-only versions.

Will update when I have some time to invest!

Thank you Marlin, Xelos, Colonel Dracula joins the Navy, carn112004, the dev team and the small but strong modding community without whom this mod would never come to be. All feedback is welcome.

Kind regards,
Azorico

Current version: v0.63
Changelog:
v0.11 - Nerfed the special town event Hades/Inferno party;
Fixed a couple missing makestationary.
v0.12 - Made a new unit (Tainted Emperor) instead of using the Dark Emperor to avoid mod incompatibilities;
Once again changed the special town event to make it more balanced;
Mod now has its own banner, sorry for the very unethical comment I deleted which suggested the use of another mod's banner as a temporary fix;
Due to Colonel Dracula joins the Navy's bug report I've changed all comments to be on their own seperate lines starting with "# ..." to ensure no errors come to be from this.
v0.20 - Remade almost all the events to include more random possibilities, to take into account if a player or independents holds a certain tile, to factor the existence of a garrison or not and more;
Hades, Inferno, Horrors and Special Monsters have different probabilities to affect settlements, in different ways and don't function as players/independents;
Beware of Ghouls even more than before;
For a certain terrain almost all events can occur regardless of all the factors mentioned previously but the probabilities and effects vary considerably;
v0.25 - Bunch of minor fixes on boundary conditions to be more inclusive of certain variations (all farms instead of that farm for example);
- *Spoiler Alert!* Two new indie Emperor events added with two new creatures I made from Dominions 4 sprites adaptation involving the Voice of El faction ;
- Ancient forests even dead ones can be dangerous (not in the sense of random spawn);
- Added a couple more makestationary here and there to fix the straying pattern which led to massive indie armies being formed through sucessive upgrades and downgrades;
- Some probabilities have been tempered with for balance purposes.
v0.26 - Another batch of minor fixes here and there;
- Another boss event;
- *Spoiler Alert!* Added the Infernal God Emperor .
v0.27 - Major fixes of errors found through testing;
- Ports now also included in the event chains (facing the proper way);
- Tempered with the odds of certain events to allow for a paced evolution of the map up till turn 200. Afterwards pretty much anything can happen at any time;
- Garrisons even more important than before to improve the odds of favorable events;
- *Spoiler Alert!* Bodhisattva now randomly reincarnates up to 3 times if slain .
v0.28 - Probabilities major overhaul;
- New city counter to ensure there is never more than 20 cities (fixed this should be working now);
- New settlement degrading events;
- New Magic Library to Academy of Higher Magic events. Up to 3 Academies can exist simultaneously (thank you Jakalor for the idea)
v0.29 - Fixed a couple bugs on trigger conditions;
- New town and market village counter (max 40/30);
- New brigand layer counter (max 20).
v0.30 - Found and fixed further issues with counters;
- Added/altered new events for consistency with counters and the new odds;
- Fixed the order of some events, because sometimes they would trigger in a row.
- Link to files will now remain the same and only the content will change.

v0.40 - Added a new way to calibrate the pace of settlement development and downgrading so that farms -> towns are more prone to change than towns -> cities;
- Added a new way to calibrate the pace of events throughout the game, sometimes interwining with the settlement evolution mechanics to avoid endgame spam fest of crisis;
- Barbarian Warcamps and Coastal Hamlets have their own events now (opted out of terrain modding for now);
- Some positive but very rare events added as an alternative to random event turnouts;
- General slowdown of settlement upgrade/downgrade and other events but also made three seperate versions available, fast for those who play on smaller up to medium maps or simply enjoy a more chaotic PvE/PvP playthrough, regular for the new dynely vanilla experience (ahahah) and slow for those who prefer rare/very rare upgrades/downgrades but want to keep the indie events going (like emperor/king events and castle/capital spawn).

v0.41 - Fixed Barbarian Warcamp -> Tent Village as originally intended;
- Added events for Lion/Hyena Tribe Villages;
- Some tweaks here and there;
- Events only version released with no settlement upgrade/degrade mechanics but nearly all the other random events.

v0.42 - Attempt to even out progression of games by adding another restriction;
- Improved most of events as an attempt to avoid too many computations between turns;

v0.43 - Three new units and overhaul of Dao questline;
- More adjustments;

v0.44 - Added one more unit to the previously mentioned questline and a whole new chapter of events to it;
- Different versions are now pretty much fine tuned to fit their purpose;
- Fast for small up to medium maps or more intensity and frequency of events;
- Regular for the one I play with, compared to v0.3 more efficient, less spam and some semblence of sanity late game;
- Slow is pretty much regular for those who want minimal upgrade frequency but same event frequency;
- Events only is self explanatory, I've removed upgrades and downgrades and most of the related events now function slightly differently and the rest remain the same.

v0.45 - Expanded the King's questline including the Inferno and Hades paths;
- Added many minor location based events.

v0.46 - Four new Councilor questlines for the era with the capital but without Emperor that was neglected soo far, each questline has several variations one of them leads to a senate and then a new emperor ;
- Added more outcomes to the King/Emperor questlines;
- Comprehensive overhaul of mechanics to improve computation time even further.

v0.47 - Extensive per version tweaks since some events were firing way too often and others never;
- Fixed some events triggers due to inverse logic generating positive feedback loop for the event counter (effectively rendering low treshold events non-existant).


v0.48 - Extensive per version tweaks;
- Fixed some questline triggers so that they occur more often, we don't want Infernal and Tainted Emperors everytime;
- Distributed player computations of several events hopefully increasing the chance of settlement development (events only doesn't benefit from this) since at 100 turns one/two farms upgraded and never saw a village+ upgrade.

v0.50 - Overhauled some events to happen more often in independent locations to "power" the counter mechanism and trigger even more events;
- Added events to the independent locations of the world, both positive and negative but again only towards independents as it is not my goal to influence the balance between players outside of settlement progression and it breaths some life into the world.

v0.51 - Massively lowered the chance of south and north tribals spawning...they were flooding the maps;
- Events counter slightly tweaked in some versions as well.

v0.60 - Reworked event counter logic so that it works based on deviations from the origin at 450 value (so far only the dynamic_elysium_events.c4m edition is not included);
- Added events for deep and shallow sea;
- Added events for tent village and Hyena tribe village spawn and destruction on tundra and savanna, respectively;
- Added dowgrade mechanics for motte and bailey and hoburg village because maps tended to get cluttered by them hindering the remaining settlements upgrade/downgrade cycles;
- Minor boss event at the deep sea gem deposit *Spoiler Alert!* Demilich forms at the location.

v0.61 - Tweaked nearly all values for probabilities of events and the event and upgrade counters.

v0.62 - Further tweating of all values;
New functionality added to some events and rewrote others.

v0.63 - Tweaks as usual;
New units and events related to those units as an effort to empower the indie faction even more as time goes by, if they are left unchecked.

v0.64 - Minor tweaks

[Jakalor]

Very interesting mod, will have to try it out.

[Xelos]

I've been using this mod with my civ mod and it appears to work well. Look forward to expansions.

[moonpax_85]

This mod sounds absolutely excellent. I will look forward to trying it in my next game. When I play CoE I really get invested into my game world an avoid winning in favour of just having fun in it.

As an additional feature, would it be possible to replace a defeated faction with another? Emergent factions would be great in this game.

[Jakalor]

I noticed while using the mod, it was using the Bystander Mod's mod banner, is that supposed to be the case?

[Azorico]

Hey guys, thank you for your interest in this mod. Right now I don't have much time to work on it but I hope that, in a couple hours, I manage to upload a version that also changes the other hamlet terrains (not just number 7) and a couple other details here and there.

Originally posted by Jakalor:

I noticed while using the mod, it was using the Bystander Mod's mod banner, is that supposed to be the case?

No that should not be the case, a previous version was uploaded with the bystander flag, but I changed it in subsequent versions. I'm sorry if I failed to mention the upload of v0.2 properly.

Originally posted by Atrebas:

As an additional feature, would it be possible to replace a defeated faction with another? Emergent factions would be great in this game

I'm not sure, but I'll investigate. It sounds intriguing, but even if I eventually do something like that I think it will be as an optional extra, as I intend to keep focusing on the "background" stuff.

Originally posted by Xelos:

I've been using this mod with my civ mod and it appears to work well. Look forward to expansions.

I'm a big fan Xelos! Your Civilization Conversion Mod is great and I look forward to see even more updates on it. It was actually one of the mods that led me to make my own and also why I tried to stay out of class/ritual/weapon modding and keep running both. On the topic of expansions I have a couple ideas but I'll try to keep everyone who's interested in the loop to see what is desirable and what isn't.

[Azorico]

So here are a couple of ideas I'm currently processing:
- Give owned graveyards a very small chance to spawn friendly longdead automatically for factions with the ability to control them ( Like the gallows do for the Necromancer and Markgraf classes as of v0.2 );
- Chance events to turn dead forest tiles into forests if owned by the Barbarian, Druid and Dryad Queen classes;
- Chance events to have garrisoned forest/dead forest tiles turn to plains for the Baron/Senator/Voice of El;
- Give different classes different spawns more in tune with the lore, but without compromising player freedom of choice (I want a player to be able to roleplay a civilization loving druid or a druid bent on destroying all settlements for example).

Bear in mind that these are very loose ideas and might never come to fruition as I'm currently not sure if it is the right way to go, or in some cases not sure how to do it in a satisfying way.

I welcome all feedback on this!

[Jakalor]

Druids, Dryads and Barbs can't own Dead Forest?

[Azorico]

Ah yes, you are correct I meant to say garrisoned, no idea why I wrote it like that. Basically a small investment in units to have a shot at regrowing the forest tile.

[moonpax_85]

Would these events be used by the a.i though? It seems a shame to separate the player and a.i from using the same game mechanics.

Some ideas. How about having more passive events that don't really effect gameplay, but just spice up the map. Such as a town or city suffering a great fire or being attacked by peasant rebellions. Or maybe if a certain faction holds a set number of tiles it triggers events that change the independent spawns type ratio. So if the druids have 50% of the maps woodlands more independent spawns are of wild animals, representing the shift in who's winning. Or if the Pale Ones reach a certain size, more sea beasts crawl up onto the land. It does not need to actually mean more units, just a change in the probability of what type of independent spawns.

[Azorico]

Mhmm indeed, I kind of strayed from the objective there, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Currently the counting system is tricky due to the limited amount of variable manipulation you are allowed to do, but I'll try and think of something.

[moonpax_85]

Yeah, whatever you thinks best. I know nothing on modding myself.

[Azorico]

All done for a couple days. I spent a lot of time tempering with GIMP and I think I've got the basic tools down, but my sprites are hedious ahah.

[hueytuckers]

Great idea, I always felt the settlements should grow over time.

[Azorico]

New version is up! Remember to boot it with a fresh game (don't just rename it and run an old save as usual) otherwise some chance events temporarly have 100% chance of occuring (so depending on the turn you might get all farms to upgrade to hamlets or destroy most settlements).

[Azorico]

Instead of studying like I should, I've released v0.27. I haven't tested it extensively so beware of bugs (shouldn't be that critical since I've kept the same structure of the previous version's events).

Edit:

So I have a couple questions I'd like you guys to answer if possible:
- Do you think somewhat important locations (tiles with names) should stay the same throughout the game or are you ok with them degrading/upgrading as well? Or, as an alternative solution, should I make specific events for these tiles only? ;
- Is the random undead spawn at ruins too powerful for your tastes at the moment? Any alternatives? ;
- Dominions 4 players Do you think the Bodhisattva questline should bring more elements specific to the T'ien Ch'i faction? If so what's the Era you think would fit best? LA for example can be introduced as a Barbarian like faction and thus the Bodhisattva would, given time, eventually turn its followers into a horde of T'ien Ch'i human soldiers with the ocasional mage/summon, while EA would shift focus to less chaff but more powerful summons/mages and MA would be something in between but more focused in establishing a new branch of the Heavenly Sphere in Elysium. ;
- Should I increase/decrease the minimum turn required for certain events? If so, which ones? I could, as an example, increase the step between village/hamlet/farm and towns and even more for cities ;
- Do you think I should implement a new trigger to ensure no more than x cities are present on the map? What would be an acceptable x?

Thank you in advance!