Review of Mantera's GS5 Mod

[Rhythmson]

Reasons why mantera is a mastermind.

First off i gotta say after actually getting into a GS5 custom game about a hundred turns and having ample time to see the early game play out I can already notice how much of a drastic improvement has been made to the game coming from the unoffical 3.02 patch, and that's a serious understatement. I had no idea at all the game would play out as perfect as it did. I've been playing 3.02 for a week straight now seriously no other games, just work and coming home to bowls of kush, pots of coffee, and LOM custom games. Last night for the first time i got to try on GS5 and the difference is just mind blowing.

I'l begin with the custom game setup screen which I initially thought was unbalanced from the obvious differences from vanilla but after making my favorite custom game build of an earth "tremor warrior" using "axe of mauling" or "lode axe" as it's now called, which consists of just the axe and two infantry levels two and one. I noticed that even with the changes to the custom game screen and the axe i still had basically the exact same build i had in vanilla with only a difference of the -1000 exp from the updated axe, the infantry cost more than they did in vanilla so i know you balanced the units and probably barter values as well. I love how this is still balanced in this way and i can still get that feeling of a legitimate custom game. Aside from that the improvements here were far beyond what i had even imagined they would be. The extended Artifact UI is perfect, nice opaque, nice color text to show the artifacts main affinity to a faith or which faith most benefits from its use. I love all the extra stat info like wow man you really polished things up here, again much better than expected. The fact that you can choose ANY unit in the game including lords (but not leader lords) is outstanding to say the least, i mean even the enemy marauder factions and all the creatures [Laugh out Loud]! On top of that they all seem to have balanced barter values (with those over 5000 of coarse being for glitch games to test strategies or mechanics ect) and even class specific and unit specific artifacts, lots more artifacts in general, lots of new potions, all the scrolls in the game, item icons from warcraft 3! I was seriously mindblown and excited to start.

In game improvements are overall perfectly done. Literally couldn't have thought of it better myself. By far the most significant gameplay improvement i noticed overall was that you actually managed to fix and balance autocalc, this was beyond my wildest dreams. After playing a hundred turns of earth i realized i can actually play the game the way i prefer which is mainly autocalcing and fighting some important battles but mainly focusing on the overland management, troop deployment, research, diplo, trade, ect. This makes me so happy because you took one of my all time favorite games (even with its flaws and oldness) and made it a thousand times better especially for my playstyle. Not only is autocalc balanced but it actually seems to be more efficient than i am at combat (tried save/load on some battles to compare) which is good for a player like me. I can manage ok in combat and i know lots of the combat tricks and strats to use but am by no means a pro at using them. On top of that you now get a PROPER unit/army faction interaction window (Thank You So Much) with balanced barter values which also serve as army power indicators and even a nice little ai summary of your chances in this battle/encounter. And just when i think things couldn't get better you think of even more ways to solidly improve the game like when i go to enter a dungeon but its too high for me to tackle at that time you still get to see the estimated power or barter value of the armies/units inside and actually maintain this information indefinitely with an overland mouseover tooltip. Excellent work here, very well thought out, very well done. Now i will mention that the game difficulty balance has drastically improved. When i was playing in vanilla even on easy the game was quite difficult in some areas specifically the mid to late game in general. With the improvement to the home cities you are never really stuck with a resource production cap and are not forced to conquer another faith early to mid game which imo brings a new kind of strategy and overall balance to the game not forcing an aggressive playstyle. Also with the new fixed autocalc system and being able to play properly my way seriously improved my gameplay and made it much easier, actually more interesting and really fun to play. I particularly love the changes, improvements, and additions you made to the dialogue texts in the encounter/faction interaction window. Marauders say some funny things and when approaching other faiths their opening dialogues always feel very accurate and proper to the current attitudes between the two faiths, this really gives a polished feeling to the game and keeps you in the fantasy. Seems like you balanced the Attitude System as well and a more logical ai interaction with the player overall. Gameplay generally seems smoother, like scripts are running more efficiently or something. In vanilla when i got to mid game or later even playing on default speed the game would become choppy after a while and i would have to save and reload from the main menu and even sometimes restart the game to make the chop go away for a while. I tried power saving settings on my laptop (no battery, plugged in) and i set my task manager affinity for lomse.exe to a single processor. Neither seemed to work in vanilla but now on GS5 i dont have that choppyness unless i turn up the game speed (which isn't really important), this made me very happy.

Aside from the core mechanics of gameplay the opaque panels are really nice and fit into the game far better than the old in game windows, like miles better, you don't lose the nice look of the game overall by constantly having the bright grey-like window backings.

The only thing i could think of that would have been nice to have would be having a barter value (slash army power) indicator for each party you control in the party panel screen just as a nice touch to be able to see when not currently fighting.

Only bug i found was very small and insignificant. During my initial scouting phase with 2 mites covering the area around my capitol then continuing north and south along the roads that sometimes the vision or sight area gets behind the mite so that the mite is standing in fog of war while his personal vision area has lagged behind him a little bit.

Basically all in all you did a beyond perfect job with this mod because perfect would have been the best i could think of to improve the game and you went even further than that, it's a rare thing when that happens and i have a lot of respect for you doing such amazing work here.

Here's how my game is going so far in 100 turns. I made good relations with everyone except air and kept death's attitude neutral by double researching (using death village library for more spells to gift. Around turns 60-70 i think, Chaos (Trusted) killed Air (lucky for me) leaving only death's distaste for me and the rest at Pact or higher. At this point I had an accurate estimate that death's military power was about even with my own but i knew a lot of his forces were scattered around Urak busy with killing and destroy things. I saw an opportunity i couldn't resist and took full advantage...

My Main Army (Against Death)[impz.proboards.com]
Faith Attitudes with My artifacts and Spells.[impz.proboards.com]
Death's Info after conquering my way into his capitol[impz.proboards.com]

[MrMeeseeks]

So...I just installed the mod, but it seems im not getting any followers. Since turn 5 I got +3 in the menu screen, im at round 16 and I got...yeah well 0 followers. I didnt do anything in the base or at recruitment so, its plain unplayable

[Heau]

Originally posted by MrMeeseeks:

So...I just installed the mod, but it seems im not getting any followers. Since turn 5 I got +3 in the menu screen, im at round 16 and I got...yeah well 0 followers. I didnt do anything in the base or at recruitment so, its plain unplayable

You don't get followers until you liberate your great temple (well or at least one great temple). The bulk is stockpiled and released once you liberate the temple though so you can end up on week 3 or 4 after releasing the temple and get 50 or 100 followers at the end of that week.

I forget the details for vanillaas I would always manage to liberate it on week 1 or 2 before I began running GS5. I think you were getting like a marginal fraction of your fame's worth of follower until temple was freed but it wasn't a hard 0. For all I know, its more of a trap for new players. Focusing on liberating the temple is fairly important in both versions.