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There's a difference between mod friendly and unmoddable (which is virtually impossible). Mod friendly would be like Civ5 and Skyrim who release mod tools and source code and allow modders to easily access the inner-workings of the game. There are multiple reasons why this isn't feasible for every game, including smaller companies wanting to protect their code/systems they worked hard on developing, especially if they are using third party stuff they aren't allowed to share. There are other games that aren't mod friendly like Diablo 2 and Sims 3, which have all their data files in encrypted packages and don't release any tools to work with them, but both of those game have huge mod communities and hundreds or thousands of mods because people took the time to break the encryption and make their own tools. It just depends which modders are interested in a game, a few really good coders can break open a game for a larger mod community to do amazing things with.
 
There's a difference between mod friendly and unmoddable (which is virtually impossible). Mod friendly would be like Civ5 and Skyrim who release mod tools and source code and allow modders to easily access the inner-workings of the game. There are multiple reasons why this isn't feasible for every game, including smaller companies wanting to protect their code/systems they worked hard on developing, especially if they are using third party stuff they aren't allowed to share. There are other games that aren't mod friendly like Diablo 2 and Sims 3, which have all their data files in encrypted packages and don't release any tools to work with them, but both of those game have huge mod communities and hundreds or thousands of mods because people took the time to break the encryption and make their own tools. It just depends which modders are interested in a game, a few really good coders can break open a game for a larger mod community to do amazing things with.

Just seems unnecessary and counter-productive for the developers to work against their fanbase instead of with them.
 
Can we move all of this discussion on mods and feasability and reasons to allow modding to a seperate thread cause it certainly seems to be getting off topic in this thread people Lol.

-I am going to make a new thread in hope we switch over to there just didnt remember to put this here before astasia posted my x_x
 
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Depends on your point of view. There is probably going to be a lot of DLC for Warlock, and I'd bet if we had any mods tools most of that DLC is going to be stuff modders could do rather easily. Just look at the Majesty 2 DLC stuff, some of it is really simple stuff that just makes your heroes slightly more powerful. Based on the low initial price for the game, I would guess they intend to make most of their money from DLC, and giving players tools that allow them to compete with said DLC is probably the most counter-productive thing they can do. That isn't even touching the subject of pirating the DLC, with mod tools it can be as simple as changing a 0 to 1 in a DLC file that allows any player to use it without paying for it. Sims 3 has thousands of dollars worth of DLC (seriously...) and anyone can rather easily find it for free because the same tools modders developed to create new content was used to remove all the protection from the DLC.

Honestly mod friendly games are few and far between these days. It's a shame, but it's just how it is. Which is why I as a modder have had to learn how to do things like hex edit, disassemble, and work with assembly languages. Not to say I'm going to do any of that with this game (because reverse engineering is almost definitely against the EULA).

It's getting a bit off topic. So ya, can't even really say we should try to mod it. We have to ask the devs for what we want.
 
Depends on your point of view. There is probably going to be a lot of DLC for Warlock, and I'd bet if we had any mods tools most of that DLC is going to be stuff modders could do rather easily. Just look at the Majesty 2 DLC stuff, some of it is really simple stuff that just makes your heroes slightly more powerful. Based on the low initial price for the game, I would guess they intend to make most of their money from DLC, and giving players tools that allow them to compete with said DLC is probably the most counter-productive thing they can do. That isn't even touching the subject of pirating the DLC, with mod tools it can be as simple as changing a 0 to 1 in a DLC file that allows any player to use it without paying for it. Sims 3 has thousands of dollars worth of DLC (seriously...) and anyone can rather easily find it for free because the same tools modders developed to create new content was used to remove all the protection from the DLC.

See, I find the DLC-protection argument as silly as the "Piracy is irreparably damaging our profits" argument. Look at CK2 for instance. DLC's are released and modding is very much allowed, even encouraged. I have my sincere doubts that the DLC's for CK2 are doing poorly in any way shape or form. Had I known that Warlock was made so "it's engine does not allow for modding (yeah right)" I would have not bothered buying the game at all. As someone who enjoys tweaking their game to create maximum personal enjoyment I call bull on the dev's for this one.


EDIT: But you're right. This is off-topic and will be the last I will say on this one. I'll no doubt like the game when it releases tomorrow, but I suspect I would like it much more if I could tailor it to my tastes.
 
I like the last one; you simply cannot settle a city within 4 hexes of any other city. Thus, every city can grow to Medium and have 18 empty hexes around it, reserved for it. If it grows to large, it cannot build in another city's 18-hex zone; if to cities grow out another ring, then sharing within that third ring can begin (so if you still honeycomb your cities with 4 hexes between each, when they finally hit large, you won't have a lot of room to build). On top of this, when building a settler, your city stops growing; it's population growth goes to 0 for the two turns the unit is being built. ICS might still be a problem, but I think both of those will slow it down to something manageable.

I agree with this. It is a simple and fair solution (though it doesn't solve every aspect of ICS). I don't understand why in this game, it is allowed to build cities so close together. It makes the growing city radius irrelevant. It is always far better to have more cities rather than fewer cities with a larger radius, and I don't think that should be the case.
 
You are allowed to build cities close together (3 hexes between) but it's never better to have lot's of cities with small radius. Few points:
1) Cities don't "share" their radius, they can block tiles from other cities.
2) Blocked cities will grow in population (waste of mana/food) but it can't build buildings. Also space isn't used well: a blocking larger city will fill it's tiles slower because the larger cities grow slower = a loss of resources due not been able to build so fast.
3) The cities with smaller radius are worse than the cities with larger radius because of the multiplier buildings. The more you have flat bonus Craftsmen Districts, Farms, Mana Farms with the multiplier buildings the better.
4) Warlock seems to have pretty much unbuildable terrain. Therefore optimal distance between cities might be 5 hexes, even 6.
 
You are allowed to build cities close together (3 hexes between) but it's never better to have lot's of cities with small radius.
Not directly right,
1) Cities don't "share" their radius, they can block tiles from other cities.
Right, but a good player will plan this tiles in and know which towns have to grown and which towns haven't to grown.
2) Blocked cities will grow in population (waste of mana/food) but it can't build buildings. Also space isn't used well: a blocking larger city will fill it's tiles slower because the larger cities grow slower = a loss of resources due not been able to build so fast.
They will not grown, when they have no food for growing, right? 4 Fields for a small town means 1 farm, 1 manasource, 1 money building and 1 research building. more do not need a small town, and the town himself is a small defence position.
3) The cities with smaller radius are worse than the cities with larger radius because of the multiplier buildings. The more you have flat bonus Craftsmen Districts, Farms, Mana Farms with the multiplier buildings the better.
You need the mutipler only in towns who should grown over 5 people size, because you need it for your income/growth. The small towns do not need a multipler, they are self running. The problem is, it is to cheap to build settlers, that 5 small towns are build fast and you have now the income for the army who conquer the world.
4) Warlock seems to have pretty much unbuildable terrain. Therefore optimal distance between cities might be 5 hexes, even 6.
NOt really, you get a movement bonus for every culture tile. How faster you expand culture, how faster your units are moving and your empire can expand, gets more money, more mana, more special fields, more research and so on. With buildings on bad field like swam/hills, they loose even there movement penality. And later when your large town need this field, you destroy it and build it know from the large town.
There is with teleport even a spell, where your units can port from one town to the next town. More towns, more teleportionsports. Higher movement.

And you missed one important point, towns growth is slow. Many small towns menas much more building fast, compare to 3 or 4 big towns with 3 fields around them. They need to much time to get special fields. A gem mine (+20 income money), a hellabard spot, and so on...
And never forget, i spamm 6 small towns around my capital and get a large ex capital town from my next neighbour...who has no chance. You hast two or three towns, who can become a large town, but you haven't the income for the army.
 
> you get a movement bonus for every culture tile.

As I found, you get the bonus from improved tiles, not from any inside your borders

However I also found that I like to build cities close to resources, to be able to utilize them faster. So I built as much cities as they have typically per 2 resources. It seems not possible to build twice more due distance limitations, and not sure it is good to build less.
 
There is a mechanic that stops infinite city spam in this game: Other wizards and wandering monsters :p

Honestly, this isn't some kind of AAA full-on empire simulator. It's a Wizardy tactical game. I think any kind of anti-ICS mechanic would just end up plugging the game up.

If you manage to get like 25 cities out, then guess what? Just go kill your opponents and start a new game like a big boy. This isn't SimCity :)
 
> you get a movement bonus for every culture tile.

From the demo it seems that the real advantage is that a tile that is built on counts as a "road" which probably = a plains tile. That really speeds up slow troops like warriors that can only move 1 tile per turn in swamp. So I was carefully building on any rough terrain like hills or swamp inside the city boundary until I had a pretty complete "road network" to speed up my warriors and even mages in one game. Moving was significantly faster for these slower troops.
 
There is a mechanic that stops infinite city spam in this game: Other wizards and wandering monsters :p

Honestly, this isn't some kind of AAA full-on empire simulator. It's a Wizardy tactical game. I think any kind of anti-ICS mechanic would just end up plugging the game up.

If you manage to get like 25 cities out, then guess what? Just go kill your opponents and start a new game like a big boy. This isn't SimCity :)

I dont like managing 25 cities. I prefer if the game has some mechanism that limits my expansion so that Im not forced to spam cities in order to win.
If I dont spam cities but the AI does then I will be wiped out.
 
I dont like managing 25 cities. I prefer if the game has some mechanism that limits my expansion so that Im not forced to spam cities in order to win.
If I dont spam cities but the AI does then I will be wiped out.

Well I think we should actually play the real game before rushing to judge.

Just playing the demo I found that the alert system means that 14 cities are easy to manage each turn, only needing 2 or 3 buildings. If you organise you building strategy so you have military cities and resource providing cities it becomes easy to manage. Most cities will simply be resource providers. I found you only need 2 or 3 cities building military units, my capital supported by the halbadier city and maybe city making caravels.

If it helps change the names of cities so you realise how they should be specialised. I found the multiplier buildings meant that it only made sense to build gold multipliers in a city with a gold or gem mine. Then the market, rougues guild, tax office chain of buildings makes sense and pumps out loads of gold even if the city needs to import food. There are similar chains of specialised buildings for food and mana production. Against that sort of building strategy a simplistic ICS of a little bit of this and that, as the OP suggested, will be horridly inefficient. Many cities buildings will be determined by the special tiles they have inside their boundary.

The middle and late game economy is going to have to be pretty substantial to support powerful units like the Magister. In the demo it took me about 40 turns to get my first Magister. And boy is he a mean unit :happy:. But horrendously expensive. It cost 600 gold to upgrade to magister from a mage unit (which already cost 175 gold). My capital was losing huge amounts of gold per turn (about -18 gold, -2 food, +9 mana and +9 science, if I remember correctly) and the magister itself costs 10 gold, 2 food and 6 mana per turn to maintain which double the cost of a mage.

Fielding large armies of advanced and elite units is going to be hugely expensive and will require many cities to support each unit and pay for the perks. ICS will probably be a dumb way to play, capturing and using / rebuilding neutral and enemy cities will probably be what the late game is about.

But all this is my speculation, we will soon see what the game plays like.

JJ
 
I dont like managing 25 cities. I prefer if the game has some mechanism that limits my expansion so that Im not forced to spam cities in order to win.
If I dont spam cities but the AI does then I will be wiped out.

I guess the combination of smaller maps or the islands setting + only buidling cities 7 hex away from each other... so they eventually connect when the cities reach gigantic proportions... isnt enough!?
 
+ only buidling cities 7 hex away from each other... so they eventually connect when the cities reach gigantic proportions... isnt enough!?

I was not aware that the game prevents me or the AI to construct cities closer than 7 hexes from eachother.
 
I was not aware that the game prevents me or the AI to construct cities closer than 7 hexes from eachother.

It doesnt... but you have the option to. I think you're missing the point. The game has many open mechanics to allow players to play how they want.

If you dont want to manage so many cities, do not build them. Place them strategically. You can disband cities you capture. Or any settlers you receive from doing so. You can choose not to build any cities other than the first one. You will of course be restricted in the number and variety of units you can build and the speed at which you can do so. You can choose to build only three cities, one of each racial type. There are no restrictions in terms of buildings in a city other than race & the special resource nodes that come under the cities territorial borders. IIRC.

In short you can choose what you want to do and for the most part, not be forced into doing anything you dont want to.

The openness of the mechanics is one of the aspects I find appealing. Im sure between the neutral and AI factions, any weak cities will be eaten up and used by them to attack your other cities.