Mod: Better Independents

[Edi]

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.

[Foodstamp]

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

[Morkilus]

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?

[Xietor]

Sounds good. I will have to try it.

[Foodstamp]

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.

[Foodstamp]

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


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.

[Edi]

Thanks for pointing that out.

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.

[Foodstamp]

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! Be sure to atleast play the mod once before posting it for others to use!

[Edi]

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.

[Edi]

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.