• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

temudjin-khan

Private
6 Badges
May 12, 2013
14
1
  • Europa Universalis IV
  • Warlock 2: The Exiled
  • Warlock: Master of the Arcane
  • Warlock 2: Wrath of the Nagas
  • Stellaris
  • Age of Wonders III
Impossible Mod 1.04

I thought that even on 'Impossible' level the game was a bit to easy to win.
This is an attempt to make things somewhat harder (but not quite impossible) for the player. There are quite a lot of changes and most tend to spell trouble for the player.

Now all levels are shifted 2 steps toward and beyond impossible. The new 'Impossible' should now be pretty hard to beat.

I've documented all changes within the .xml / .lua files and included a comprehensive changelog ;).

Installation:
1) (optional, but probably a good idea)
Remove d133.pack,d134.pack,d135.pack,d136.pack from WMotA Main Directory, if it's in there.
2) Remove d170.pack (Ultimate Wizards) from WMotA Main Directory, if it's in there - it's incompatible.
3) Unzip d137.pack from Impossible.zip into WMotA Main Directory.

Notes 1.04 (d137.pack):
- Starting Locations slightly farther apart.
- Later Dremers: Now about 12 turns (was 10) later.
- Nerf Dremer Levels:
- only 50% / 60% / 70% / 80% / 90% Dremer Ankers to be destroyed.​
- fewer potential Dremer Units at Challenge / Impossible.​
- Nerf Dremers Units:
- Dremers stunned for three turns now. (That's two player turns.)​
- Dremer standard resistance perks somewhat nerfed.​

Notes 1.03 (d136.pack):
- All difficulty levels adjusted. Starts with old 'Normal' as 'Relaxed' and ends with a new 'Impossible' which is now even harder.
- 'Create Artifact' spells again take at least 2 turns to cast. - Good catch Damask15.
- Agrela's 'Summon Treewarden' now correctly summons a Treewarden - Thanks Damask15
- Agrela's Treewarden nerfed: only 2 Moves, less Power/HP
- Some spells come later in the game and cost significantly more upkeep.
- Upgrade for each fractions warriors/archers now slightly less costly than new advanced warriors/archers.
- Some Legendary Heroes enter game at stage 3, get nerfed.:
- 'lord_barlog'​
- 'lord_dark_elf'​
- 'lord_skeleton'​
- 'lord_paladin_spirit'​
- 'lord_wizard'​
!! Never seen any of those legendary stage 4 heroes before anyway.​
!! Game needs at least one stage 4 lord so 'lord_werewolf_dragon' stays and became a hero.​
- Changed perk 'True Spirit' given to all wolves except Monster Werewolves.
!! Makes Ghost Wolves harder to kill and is really usefull in packs (an AI favourite).​
!! Also makes wild Werewolves quite dangerous to your Heroes' health.​
- Fraction perk 'Favor of Kroll' now also includes spell 'Clean the Land'.
!! 'Clean the Land' is nearly useless without Dremers. This way Krel can get 'Conjurer' for loosing perks 'Clean the Land' and 'Mana Vault'.​
- More resources: Pumpkins
- Some adjustments for relative AI production: more shooter/caster/healer, less ships
- Overpowered AI-Mages:
* Tandral, Son of Vendral gains 'Fireball', 'Conjurer', looses 'Basic Dispel'​
* Miralbus the Hat looses 'Lesser Fireball', gains 'Master of Blades'​
* Amberon the Dark gains 'Instructor'​
!! You may want to select them as rival mages, but beware: If you leave open slots then doppelgangers might show up when those slots are filled by random mages.​
:rolleyes: - a WMotA bug/feature -​


Notes 1.02 (d135.pack):
- New ship designs for Elves,Humans,Monsters all more pricy:
Elven ships are faster, Humans are deadlier, Monsters can take a punch.​
- AI should make more shooters and casters, but less ships. !! Hard to track; Does it work?
- AI tend to defend their cities better. !! Hard to track; Does it work?
- Fewer resources: Gold, Infernal Rifts, Ancient Ruins
- More resources: Iron, Dwarves, Koatl
- Pumpkins only on Ardania
- No Adamantine / Nevril on Ardania
This may be a problem, since it means that the AI-Mages won't have these resources.
But the AI doesn't seem to use them much, I'm mostly playing Armageddon anyway, and
having your heroes running around in Nevril/Adamantine armor early in the game makes
victory to easy.​
- Elves / Dwarves / Koatl don't dwell on some planes
- Lands of Life/Death give only 40% bonus Food/Mana
- Faster early City-Growth, but also faster growth decline from overpopulation
- Greater penalties for alien races
- Greater penalty for lack of food
- Cruel Creature pricy and half blind !! Better chance to hop into trouble

Notes 1.01 (d134.pack):
- Impossible Level buffs slightly toned down from 1.00.
- Early spells now only slightly harder to research, but later spells a lot harder.
- New Heroes arrive slightly more often.
- Some Units and Heroes got adjustments (mostly less upkeep).
- Advanced Merc Units (Sharpshooter, Overcomers, Royal Guard, Black Minotaur)
cost less to update than to build new.​
- Advanced Ships now more efficient against cities.
- *More waterfowl, with their lairs farther apart.
- *Fractions start a bit farther apart.
(A much toned down version of 'Far Away' by saroumana)​
* I use the translated generator.lua from Modjo - Thanks

Notes 1.00 (d133.pack):
- Some casting times are shorter, especially after enhancement spells,
and most spells cost more mana to cast.​
- Research was to easy in the later stages, leaving me to disable the
unity spell victory and playing the rest of the game without researching
new spells. Now most of the spells are harder to research.​
- AI-Mages build more powerful units, are a bit faster doing so, and have more resources
to do so. Dremers too are both somewhat more powerful
and plentiful at higher levels.​
- To save some time at the very late game only 90% of the Dremer Ankers have
to be destroyed at Impossible.
(I tend to play on large/huge maps with 4-5 additional planes. If you play
on smaller maps with fewer planes, you may not want this change.)​
- Since they are a bit tougher now, the Dremers arrive about 10 turns later.
This especially helps the AI-Mages to survive the first onslaught.​
- The Dragon Queen looses her Humanity, becomes an Evil Elf and gets Imp Follower.
- The Koatl Queen looses her Treasury, but her Koatl Training is even tougher now.
- Koatl Villages produce tougher Koatls now and should now be nearly as useful as
Elven Villages, which is reflected in greater cost for the Koatl Lord perk.​
- Changed Fraction Perk Basic Dispel (3) to Basic Melee Resistance (1).
- Added Fraction Perk Fireball (3) to make Tendral the Dragon really fiery.
- Some Artifacts got more powerful.


:excl:Note:
The AI seems to be quite a bit stronger since the last 1.4.1.1 update, making the Armageddon option a bit harder to play than intended. Hence this update to slightly nerf down the Dremers. Normal play was left unchanged.


The thumbnail is for a 'Warlock City Building Dependencies and Resources Chart'
 

Attachments

  • Impossible_103.zip
    147 KB · Views: 114
  • Impossible_102.zip
    144,8 KB · Views: 63
  • Impossible_101.zip
    135,8 KB · Views: 63
  • _WarlockCities.pdf
    _WarlockCities.pdf
    146,3 KB · Views: 130
  • Impossible_104.zip
    226,5 KB · Views: 165
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions:
@Dauros: Thanks, I've got all DLCs, so I don't really know if it works without one or more of them. My guess is that it probably does work. Please report back if it doesn't.

@Fenryder: In fractions.xml in d110.pack. You also want perks.xml from the same pack.
 
Started a huge impossible game with this mod and its going pretty good. Also using Saro's Far away mod. Thus far I've only met 2 AIs..one of which has been swarming me with troll units led by an Old Troll which seems unusual this early in the game. Havnt seen any changes as yet to spells. Ogres and Elementals seem to be quite busy reproducing..their numbers have hamstrung my expansion efforts on two fronts. Looking forward to seeing how the economy works out.
 
That sounds strange.
An easy indicator if the pack works is to go to New Game and check if the Dragon Queen now has an Demonic Advisor as a perk, and if Tendral has Fireball as a spell.
If they don't something has gone wrong.
My guess would be that you don't have all the DLCs? I kind of hoped that my mod would work even then, but I do not know for sure and as far as I know they can't be disabled selectively to test that.
 
I have all the DLC's and have tried starting a normal game and an Armageddon one. No change with the Dragon Queen's specs though...... I just need to put the .pack file in there right?
 
@osserpete: New d133.pack has to go into the same directory with d100.pack, d110.pack and d120.pack.
There should be no other dxxx.pack with xxx>133 in that directory, unless the files in the dxxx.pack are different.
The files I changed are: difflevels.xml, fractions.xml, perks.xml, randomeventdatalist.xml, spalls.xml
Sorry, it works well on my system.

@Modjo: I think all DLCs had a new fraction, all of which are in fraction.xml each with their <i_dlcId> xml-tag.
That's why I hoped the mod would work regardless of DLCs.
However in difflevels.xml the tag <maxDremers> is just integrated within <Item>, so the validity of the xml-file would depend on, whether the last patch updated the xml-schemas. Which seems to be the case as they are sort of mentioned in Difficuly.xml from Sources.zip by bers (Some data schemas and sources).
 
Just starting a game to see if it works and Tendril does start with Firestorm, costs 90 mana and 2 turns.

The only DLC I have is Masters of Artifacts and Return of the Elves and this pack seems to work.
 
keep up the good work Tem..I'm playing a 133 game atm thats loads of fun. AI still builds way to many ships but they certain seem to be building strong units! That was a good change.
 
Thanks for this, T-K! It looks like a bunch of changes I was trying to make but couldn't get the packing/unpacking business to work. I'll download and see if the AI acts any different, especially around boats. the trouble I always notice is the AI building a ton of units but being unwilling to go very far with them unless there's a target nearby, only actually moving out of it's territory with ghost wolves. I was considering tweaking up (or ramping up) some of the explore/attack/defend values in the AI file but I dunno if that would help at all. I was also considering giving the AI vastly more resources to work with (they're probably getting screwed with upkeep costs with their poor city management anyway) and increasing the time to build units, to see if it encouraged the AI to recreuit fewer, more expensive units instead of hordes of cutthroats and spearmen.

I'd love to try a super-impossible version if you'd put one together. Giving the AI twenty or fifty times the resources and see if they do anything different with it.
 
Also, have you considered changing some of the diplomacy values? I'd be interested to try it with doubled "envy of the leader" penalty along with doubled "war with common enemy" bonus. It might encourage the AIs to gang up on the player when the player starts winning.
 
I think that's a good suggestion Breakfast.

Then again, I'd still prefer a better AI. But I think that's still a really good suggestion.

Or what about a mod where all the AIs were allied against you?! Craziness.
 
Possible suggestion. When you make an alliance and they go to war with someone make it so you are in war too. You have to support them by being in war. Right now its just free resources with really no reason to support who you are allied with.