Adventure Mod

[The Mentat]

I suppose the mod subforum is mostly visited by people that mod themselves - so I post here to give a quick overview of a mod that is already done: The Adventure Mod.

The main purpose of this mod is to shift the focus of the game from managing a large number of armies and colonies towards a more role play-centered game – it encourages quality instead of quantity.

A complete overview of the features is compiled in the Manual. It also contains skill trees, ability desciptions and many illustrations.

Summarized the mod changes mostly four aspects:



1 Champion Ranks

One of the core ideas of the Adventure Mod is to make experience and unit progress more rewarding: Units are no longer limited by an experience cap after reaching their fourth medal, but will be elevated to Veterans, and eventually Champions. With every level-up they get stronger and learn additional abilities, many of them unique and comparable to the gold medal rewards in Age of Wonders 3.

A Wraith and a Shrike at Recruit, Veteran and Champion level​

At Champion level a Ravenous has two new abilities – Escalating Charge and Metabolic Boost – as well as full access to all mod slots​

2 Skill Wheels

Heroes have access to a large numer of new skills. Overall more than 250 hero skills are present. When reaching level 15, heroes can unlock a powerful ultimate skill that depends on their combination of faction and secret tech.

Example of a skill wheel for an Amazon-Synthesis leader​

Developing a hero usually includes a lot of decisions as many skills are mutually exclusive. Unfortunately skill wheels can't be integrated into the ingame-interface. It's still easy to see which skills belong to the same group:

3 Economy

In the base game it’s much more important to get many cities as soon as possible than to find a valuable sector to colonize. A high city count typically beats a thoughtful city positioning. The Adventure Mod tries to limit early city spam, changes strategic structures to make colony placement more important and offers additional specialization for cities through new buildings.

Similar to the way Amazons like Forests, in this mod other factions have terrain preferences, too – and a unique option to terraform sectors into their favoured type.

An arctic DVAR empire​

4 AI

The AI is more likely to build tier III and tier IV units and can (on higher difficulties) actually achieve a doomsday victory within a reasonable time. The Extreme AI gets several additional bonuses to make the game more challenging.



The mod is available in the Steam workshop und should soon be present on the Paradox mod page, too. Feedback and suggestions are welcome!

 

[Sjru]

Sounds great, but where's a direct link?

 

[The Mentat]

Good point

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2377887888

 

[Sjru]

How does the mod work with other mods that add factions like the hopper and such?

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

I have one concern. Does it make the AI weaker? I believe AI is quite bad with leveling units up and it means I will use units with 2-3 mods vs single mod units.

Edit. After reading the manual I see AI can build veteran units, very nice.

 

[The Mentat]

How does the mod work with other mods that add factions like the hopper and such?

I think it's technically possible to combine these mods but the new factions wouldn't have access to the features of this mod. So, the hopper hounds don't level up on prime rank and - even more important - their heroes cannot use the new skills. As most of the original hero skills are deactivated this means that they have probably almost no skills available...

I have one concern. Does it make the AI weaker? I believe AI is quite bad with leveling units up and it means I will use units with 2-3 mods vs single mod units.

In the current version the AI's units with three mods will almost exclusively be NPC-units indeed. On higher difficulites the AI can get a lot of regular units with two mods though. In my test games the AI started around turn 70 to get tier 4 units with 2 mods.

Originally i planned to give AIs simply an experience bonus, so it can get fast to Champion ranks but unfortunately the AI doesn't like to update the mods of units that leveled up. Instead of an experience buff the Extreme AI can now unlock Veteran units through research and build these units directly in cities. The human player can build Veteran units from cities as well but to do this they have to combine several Exploration Sites and Landmarks in a single city. (Of course the AI would not able to do that.)

Overall the AI is still work in progress. But it is definitely not crippled from the new features.

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

I've just finished reading the manual and I must say the mod looks amazing, good work!

 

[The Mentat]

Thanks! It took me almost a year to fnisih it. I'm sure there's still room for improvement though. So any constructive feedback is welcome.

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

Thanks! It took me almost a year to fnisih it. I'm sure there's still room for improvement though. So any constructive feedback is welcome.

I am on turn 14 in my game and I think the idea to reduce number of colonies contradicts to increased energy upkeep for evolved units and increased mod cost for NPC. I mean I can't have just a few colonies and rely on NPC units because they will not have any mods, I can't rely on faction units either because they have 1 mod and thus don't have a chance against double number of AI units (there is no much room for synergy). I got 2 units to veteran rank, built 1 core unit, bought 4 NPC tier 1 units, obtained some reward units from quests and my income is -15 with 2 colonies. Of course I am building another colonizer despite I still haven't found any sectors with cosmite. Have you tried a game with leaving vanilla colonizer costs, which problems did it cause?

PS. I am Amazon who have penalties for mountains/fertile plains, that means low energy income also.

PPS. Thanks for the mod again, it is really great, so many things are changed and the amount of work is crazy indeed.

 

[The Mentat]

It is intended that you can only sustain a small number of units in the beginning. This might make it impossible to rush an enemy AI early (I didn't test this because I generally don't play that aggressive). Anyway, I don't think this is a bad thing because absorbing an enemy empire that early would again allow the player to build large armies and steamroll everything.

I usually concentrate on camps, exploration sites and landmarks in the early game to get a strong main stack. The energy from the rewards helps to build a second army. For the third army I wait until I have a good city that can give them some rank upgrades.
NPC units (and animals) are useful if you have a lot of cosmite (happens to me often around turn 25) and your regular units don't have enough experience to spend it on them. But if the map doesn't have a lot of cosmite nodes, it's better to save their modding cost, I think.

Overall it may be necessary to play the game a bit differently - it's really not that unit-heavy in the beginning.


EDIT: Actually after reading your post again I'm not sure if you did attack the AI or if you were attacked. I didn't test a game with fixed teams, so the AI usually didn't attack me that early. However, in this case it seems more like an issue with the AI difficulty (the bonuses may come into play too early),
I can't really reduce the modding cost for NPCs because it would devalue regular units; I also don't want to reduce colonizer cost because then it's even more about unit quantity than it was before...

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

Ok, I see. Yes, I play with 12 teams and typically an AI (or me) dies before turn 20. I attacked an AI in this game too and after losing some units my income is positive again. Yet it seems unusual when I had 3 stacks and just 2 colonies. It is still playable of course.

Edit. More feedback on turn 21. I am 9/12 in military ranking because I have 2 mods on many units while AI units have just 1 mod and AIs don't have many NPC units because of influence nerf, usually I am always last in that ranking until turn 40 or so. Is it possible to remove extra cost for mods of NPC units for extreme AI?
I am back to negative income (+120 from 3 colonies, -128 from units upkeep, 2 enemy colonies are being absorbed)

 

[loboram]

Still in the process of testing, however your reply on Steam made me jump right into attempting to make an increased Hero Skill Points addon for your mod.

I have made the basic change, now Heroes should get 8 Skill Points per level, but I am completely unaware of how to add the requirements, as in how to add your mod as a requirement?

I have uploaded it here on Paradox, gonna go test it now. After testing three times, and trying to figure out why it doesn't work, I am gonna give up.

I have followed the modding guide, step by step, and nothing I do seems to work. I have set the priority to 15, should've been high enough to come before your mod, however it doesn't make any difference.

 

[The Mentat]

Does the mod work if you activate it without using the Adventure Mod? In this case the priority shouldn't matter. But it would be interesting if the issue is caused by the mod itself or by the combination of the mods.

I you haven't added the Adventure Mod as a requirement it should normally overwrite every file you change.
To modify a file that includes already changes, I guess you have to add the Adventure Mod first. This should be possible by selecting Content -> Packages in the Package Manager and than select the Adventure Mod.

If you open the rpk-file now in the Ressource Editor it should include the changes from the Adventure Mod...

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

I really like how you changed AI! I am fighting racial tier 3 units with 1 mod on turn 52 despite it is a game with the slowest research speed. Actually mods are not even needed that much, same AI has a veteran vanguard walker with AA attack 38.

 

[loboram]

Does the mod work if you activate it without using the Adventure Mod? In this case the priority shouldn't matter. But it would be interesting if the issue is caused by the mod itself or by the combination of the mods.

I you haven't added the Adventure Mod as a requirement it should normally overwrite every file you change.
To modify a file that includes already changes, I guess you have to add the Adventure Mod first. This should be possible by selecting Content -> Packages in the Package Manager and than select the Adventure Mod.



View attachment 676516

If you open the rpk-file now in the Ressource Editor it should include the changes from the Adventure Mod...

I did try to make it seperately, but unfortunately your mod currently overwrites the changes I tried to make to the Hero Skill Points.

I DID however find a mod that works: "even more skill points ver.1.4"

 

[loboram]

I have found a small glitch so far, the Assembly Engineer gains "create air-construct", however the construct cannot use its weapon.
Also, the new way to gain the skills is better, it limits the amount of skill upgrades the hero can aquire due to high skill points.
I will gladly keep on testing through this wonderful mod you've created.

Once again, thanks a million for all your hard work

 

[The Mentat]

I really like how you changed AI! I am fighting racial tier 3 units with 1 mod on turn 52 despite it is a game with the slowest research speed. Actually mods are not even needed that much, same AI has a veteran vanguard walker with AA attack 38.

Interesting, I might reduce research speed for my next game as well! I actually never tried this.

I did try to make it seperately, but unfortunately your mod currently overwrites the changes I tried to make to the Hero Skill Points.

I'm still wondering why it doesn't work with your own mod. It should look like this in the package manager (Priority is 15):

In the Ressource Editor:

Launcher Settings:

Then my hero gains 8 skill points per level:

This mod overwrites the Adventure Mod changes in the same file though because I didn't add the AM as a requirement. Should work similarly though.

I have found a small glitch so far, the Assembly Engineer gains "create air-construct", however the construct cannot use its weapon.
Also, the new way to gain the skills is better, it limits the amount of skill upgrades the hero can aquire due to high skill points.
I will gladly keep on testing through this wonderful mod you've created.

Once again, thanks a million for all your hard work

It's actuallty an Anti-Air construct, so it can target only air units. Or do you mean that it didn't inherit the hero's weapon mods. This could be a bug indeed...

Great to hear you like the skill changes!

 

[loboram]

Might just be a misunderstanding as before, but I was wondering why my Advanced Assembly Engineer with the Advanced Re-engineering mod, doesn't have the option to reassemble a Heavy Mechanic unit, when it could prior to the changes?

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

Is accuracy 145% expected? It is kind of disables evasion-based tactics.
Also AA attack 53 denies bringing flyers to the battle, is it expected too?
That's an AI army on turn 66 of slowest research game. Also Deadly Ambush seems to trigger just twice instead of for all targets in range, correct? I expected it to work like Killing Zone from XCOM2 and put my hero in overwatch of 5 units, but the hero shot just at 2 of those units.

 

[The Mentat]

Might just be a misunderstanding as before, but I was wondering why my Advanced Assembly Engineer with the Advanced Re-engineering mod, doesn't have the option to reassemble a Heavy Mechanic unit, when it could prior to the changes?

Sounds like a bug. I'll try to fix it during the weekend.

Is accuracy 145% expected? It is kind of disables evasion-based tactics.
Also AA attack 53 denies bringing flyers to the battle, is it expected too?
That's an AI army on turn 66 of slowest research game. Also Deadly Ambush seems to trigger just twice instead of for all targets in range, correct? I expected it to work like Killing Zone from XCOM2 and put my hero in overwatch of 5 units, but the hero shot just at 2 of those units.

I think it should be 110% accuracy. 10% from the mod and 10% from Veteran silver rank. Might be a bug as well.
53 damage is a lot but with the regular guns the Walker can deal around 75 damage against air units (including the +20% damage boost from the basic Anti-Air trait). So I'm not sure if it's imbalanced.

It's not really intended that Deadly Ambush works only against two units but if that's the case, I can't change it. It's basically only the (hardcoded) Tireless ability, but changed to ranged weapons.