Mod Project - Metaphysics

[Illuminated One]

Ok, these are some things that have been on my mind for some time, and I'm going to mod them in as far as possible. I'm not really sure if all of these things will ever make it into the game, I don't know when I will finish it, and I've only gotten to experimenting with some of them.
Still I have a good idea how to implement most things, so I thought I'll leave them open for discussion.
If you have any ideas, comments or want to help out, please post.


Goals of this project

a)
The campaign should last longer in turns. Come one this is the nastiest badasses of all time struggling for ultimate power in a world gonne mad!!!
It shouldn't end when real world wars just got warm.

b)
Proportionally turns should be made shorter. What's very important for me is that they don't grow the way they do now. Sure, large armies require more planning than small ones, but your everyday stuff should take approx the same time from turn 15 to 150. "Useless" micro should be avoided whereever possible.

c)
Late game should be given more personality. Mages are rare and expensive, (maybe summons, too?). Thomas the Black Priest is the battle mage of the third army and not some random guy out of your 500 researchers pool.
And he's not just attacking a random province for reducing the opponents income by 2%, he's leading the charge on a strategically important location.

d)
During early game magic should have a bigger impact.

e)
Game should be more dynamic, without troubling the player, though.




The first version of the researcher mod is available.

Researchers SP version all EA nations

Installation instructions
Unzip the file into your dominions mod folder
You will need python (http://www.python.org/) to use the script.

Using the mod
This is a SP version. Since the AI can't adapt to the new conditions I have enabled researching with mages and the magic scales are as in vanilla.
Furthermore you have to prepare the mod in order to play.

Say you want to play as Tir Na Nog. Before you create the game (this is important since it must be ready before the game starts) go into your mods folder and then into the "Meta" folder.
There is a file called Research.dm - open it. At the end of the file is a section called nations.
The entries look like this:

selectnation 13
startcom 2931
startscout 2931
end

Now, look the nation number of the nation you want to play in the modding manual, page 24. As you can see Tir Na Nog is 13.
Next you find the block that starts with selectnation YourNationNumber. In our case it'sselectnation 13.
And then you put # before each line of this and only this block.

#selectnation 13
#startcom 2931
#startscout 2931
#end

(All other selectnation blocks should be without #, if you want to start a game with another nation)
Run the python script with the folder of your savedgames as the first and the name of the game your going to create as the second argument.
Examples:
Main.py ~/dominions3/savedgames/ MyGame
C:\python\python.exe Main.py C:\dominions3\savedgames\ MyGame

Play (you need to use the --scoredump option). Always at late spring close dominions and run the script again with the same arguments to update the mod. It's unfortunate but necessary as dominions doesn't reload mods, unless closed and started again.