[eMOD] Hostile Population 2.1 for 1.09 (now with Converters)

Wow sounds like a great start here and a much needed addition.

We will need a mechanic to eventually convert cities over. Perhaps something like in AoW where you can force migrate populations. I'm playing with a few ideas right now, but it will also depend on where Stardock goes with making population more of a resource in 1.1

I'd add something myself, but the interest in this mod is so low I don't see the point.

I'm definitely interested.  I just find myself waiting until 1.1 just to see what changes.   I realize that is probably discouraging to modders and others, but I have a feeling that most of us are waiting before playing.

That said, I am very impressed by your work Heavenfall.   Great Job on all your mods. 

I 't think people are interested in the idea...I think the problem is that we have so many little mods coming out (same problem with Civ V) that have great ideas, but they are all separate and not built to go together. I think that after 1.1, we should start to get people together to really work on making more complete packages of mods that are designed to work together and support each other. I have lots of mod ideas, some of which are small and could be put out now, but I'm waiting and putting something bigger together.

Honestly though, this particular mod shouldn't be a mod. This should be part of the base game. The vanilla handling of cities and populations is very sloppy and makes the lore completely meaningless. Who cares is a city was founded by Fallen if it doesn't matter when you take the city over? Hopefully SD will continue to improve that aspect of the game in 1.1 and beyond.

I love the concept of this mod. But I'm not going to bother playing any more with the 1.0 branch so I didn't download it. When I first read about it a couple of days ago I thought 'Here's a move in the right direction.'

See, what I think it is, is that people aren't willing to try small mods at all. They just want finished packages. Well, speaking only for me personally, I'll never reach that "big package" stage unless people give me feedback on mods that I put out. I'm not looking for explanations as to why you don't use it. I want to know how I can improve it.

So let's say I put two hours into a mod like this. It's by no means perfect. But it does add something to the game that people have been asking for - a lot of people. Do YOU think it's reasonable that 3 people in TOTAL download it?

So next time a good idea comes around - which was yesterday, by the way, and included something that would actually improve the AI - all I can do is think to myself that "if almost noone's going to download, and noone's going to give feedback, why should I spend 2 hours doing this?". And then I go and play l4d2.

Edit: Consider where every re-balance mod so far has ended. And then think about the reasons behind that.

Honestly, we don't know how many people are actually playing Elemental. We do know that it isn't many, at least not compared to a bigger, more popular game. I think I saw that Elemental had sold something like 80,000 copies, as of a few weeks back. I'll be optomistic and round that to 100,000 total, since then, which is probably overestimating. Anyways, of those 100,000, quite a few probably gave up on the game completely, so you can throw them out of the equation. Then you have the people (as several have pointed out) that are waiting for 1.1. You also have people that don't get involved in the community or even download any mods. So out of a relatively small pool of people that even have the game, the actual number that might download a mod is probably really small. So yes, 3 is small...but I'm not expecting thousands or even hundreds of people to download any mods right now. Plus the mod did just come out...how many people have downloaded other mods? What is the largest number of downloads an Elemental mod has seen to this point? I doubt any mods are seeing really huge numbers, even compared to the rather small active player base.

As for the 'small mod' thing, for me personally I rarely play games just to test a mod. I like coming in to something like, for example, FFH, which is already big and fairly robust. It feels like a more complete experience, and thus worthy of a long game (which I prefer). Since vanilla Elemental isn't all that enjoyable right now (for me) a mod that makes one (although awesome and important change) small change isn't going to make me want to play through an entire game.

One of the benefits of working with a team is that you can give each other feedback as you build something bigger. Then you don't have to rely on the community to provide feedback on every small mod - you can get the feedback you need from people that are dedicated to giving it to you as part of a larger project.

I know it is discouraging, because you are putting lots of time into making Elemental a better game, and that benefits everyone. Don't think that it isn't appreciated. I would say that you are one of a very, very small number of people that are really driving the community right now. I know I am excited to see what you are doing, even if I'm not actually playing Elemental much right now while I wait for 1.1.

All that said, I'm going to go and download it right now and try it so I can give you some feedback.

Gave it a quick try, had no issues. Deleted the Elves and Undead folders since I'm not using those mods right now, and jumped into a game as Ythiril. Conquered a Tarth city, and everything seemed perfect. I could build Empire buildings, but not Kingdom buildings. I even messed around a little and deleted existing Kingdom buildings, and wasn't able to rebuild them.

Hopefully Stardock will incorporate this and make it official. It really should be. The next step will be adding further personality to the cities through individual city stats and global faction stats. I definetly prefer the pre-Civ V model of revolts and things of that nature, which was a huge step backwards in Civ V and never present in Elemental. In my own work, I'm creating various 'resources' to cover things like Happiness, and buildings can impact them in various ways. This is easy to do. The hard part is figuring out a way to tie events and other gameplay into these new stats. One of the main reasons I have been clamoring for a Quest  / Event editor...please, Stardock?

Thanks for this  mod - keep up the great work!

Hmm wait... if you played Yithril, you should not have been able to build anything in a town that used to belong to Tarth. The mod should disable all buildings in towns that belong to a different Faction (empire/kingdom/elves).

Edit: Just by talking about this, I've had a much better idea. Rather than restrict it so rigorously, I can limit the building types instead. So one town can only contain one MaterialProducer1, where MaterialProducer1 may be either a labour pit or a workshop.

That way, you can continue building on the captured enemy towns, but you won't suffer the insane stacking that could happen thanks to it.

Ah, well,I guess I misunderstood. Your new idea makes sense though.

Heavenfall, I hope you'll keep producing mods. I can't speak for anyone else, but the reason I don't download any mods is that to me, like Murteas and Das123, the 1.0x branch is just broken beyond anything a mod can fix. If 1.1 is anywhere close to fun, I'll start trying mods that look interesting..

I wasn't able to make it work like I wanted. Unfortunately, since we can't mod the UI, the current solution just means that I end up with this:

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/8820/elemental1287238952.jpg

which is just pointless.

Yeah, at this point I think I'll just wait for 1.1 and hope that the modding support is dramatically improved. So much we want to do, so little we can do.

Well, at least we can still TALK about all the things we want to do...and there is still quite a bit we can do, as you and others have shown. We just need to work with what we have and hope it improves.

As others have said, Heavenfall, you are one of the few who are moving Elemental forward from the outside. Please don't underestimate our appreciation for your efforts.

I know first-hand it can be disheartening when producing work like this for a community.

I spend a couple of days writing an installer for Dwarf Fortress tiles and graphics packs to make it easier for non-technical players. Someone, in post 2, replied to the community that because it was an exe file that it could contain a virus. So I then posted the source - but only a handful were ever downloaded.

Please don't read this thread as "stroke my ego some, please". I'm just letting people know that a dialogue between the modder and the user (or non-user) is wanted. Sometimes, it's really hard to know what people actually want in a mod. Clearly, this wasn't it.

Fine, then get back to work!

::cracks whip::

I, for one, have tried most of the mods that have been released, so far.  Even the small ones. 

I do have a suggestion, that is really piggy-backing on a number of fine suggestions others have made.  And, please, don't think I am a control freak  -far from it.  My suggestion is that modders get together and create some sort of agreement (or come to an understanding/consensus) about how to go about modding EWoM so as to create maximum compatibility between mods.  I am not a modder, yet. 

Waiting for v1.1 is probably a wise idea,as many have suggested. 

Uploaded 2.0, which includes a bugfix which made the mod not work (basically, it should do what it says in the main post now - not something completely else), and also includes the ability to convert a town so you can build in it (see first post).

Extract over your old HostilePopulation folder, and don't forget to delete Elves/Undead folders if you don't have those mods installed.

Edit: Also uploaded Unique edition, which is a milder form of the mod where only buildings which are considered "one per faction" are limited to friendly towns or converted towns.

Very nice my friend, very nice . In the next version of Undead Rising when we add in the buildings we'll probably change the Undead to be their own Faction as well. In my mind the Undead should hate ALL life, be it Kingdom or Empire.

Yeah I already consider the Undead their own faction. It was just that since you don't have unique improvementtypes, I couldn't separate the undead buildings from the empire buildings.

Don't bother downloading 2.0, there's a massive bug in it.

Edit: you can rename the file inside the Undead folder to HostilePopulation_Undead_CityhubFix.xml if you want to use it until next release.

Uploaded 2.1

Fixed the bug with the filename in the Undead folder

Players don't need to delete the Undead/Elves folders anymore if you're not using those mods

Great.   I like it.   I find it much more compelling to raze a town now to replace it with my own.   What do you think about making some sort of penalty to resource buildings (shards, gold mines, etc), when you have the town.  Or potentially to force the player to garrison the town to prevent rebellion.   Perhaps another idea would to make the population shrink over time.

Just throwing out ideas.  

These are great ideas, but will take lots more work. I think we can make this happen using a combination of custom resources and the quest system, but I'm still experimenting.

Either way, this is a vast improvement. Needing a garrison / administration / whatever building in the new town was a nice touch.

My ideal solution would be that buildings in hostile towns were converted over a series of turns to those of the conquerer. Basically it would go through each building and "convert" it. That way a part of the city could be converted instead of all of it at once, and we could also visually see the city changing over time. In my opinion, the cost for converting a building should be around 10% of the original cost. Buildings that cannot be converted, ie a few faction-specific buildings, should be burned down.