Indians

[ElimiNator]

No, you can do this. When it crashed did you see any errors? I know Mega-Glest shows the errors.

[mjace72]

I did get the errors before the game would start loading and would do what I could to locate whatever the error was and when I corrected that one, tried it again, another error would occur.  Everything I changed seemed to be an error.  Those were the Dark Magic errors too as that faction loads before Indians so I hadn't even gotten to those errors.  I just want these errors all occurred from what I did and Megaglest runs fine for me when I don't go messing around with stuff.
If you look in the Thunderbird(Indian) XML why is the archmage tower in the unit requirements?  This is not something I changed, it's how the file was and the faction loads fine but if there is no archmage tower in Indians, why is it there?  There is also an image cancel path in the same document, referring to archer and tech. A better understanding of what in the XML documents that looks like it shouldn't be there, but should be as opposed to things I can change to do what I wanted would help me out a bit.
I've also modified the storage amount in the main teepee so that it holds more gold, stone, and wood.  Would this be considered cheating?  I don't need the extra storage room to fight off the first couple waves in a game because you can't harvest that fast especially against the Indians when they start sending attackers before your first(4th in total if starting with 3) worker is created.  I only changed the amount because I don't want to fill the map with main tee pees.  I don't see it as cheating in that I can play the game as effectively and always have the resources to build all these tee pees so I didn't really change it to gain anything I couldn't without changing it.

[mjace72]

I finally accomplished what I had set out to do and created my own playable Dark Indians.  It's not anything to publish as I just merged some of Dark Magic with the Indians.  What I did was make a new Indians folder, put everything from the Dark Magic folder into it and renamed it Dark Indians.  I didn't delete anything, though I only use very little from the Dark Magic but don't know what default paths tie into what so I left everything there.  I thought it was a good crossover, the Shaman and the whole mystical thing connects everything together.  There is only one Dark Magic building used, the Oblivion Portal.  Only the Shaman can build and repair it.  Once completed, the Portal can produce the 5 energy.  The 10 and 20 are not used.  It can also create the Sorceress, and finally researches Dark Sorcery, and Magik.  Once created, the Sorceress can conjure the Fire Golem.  The Golem can no longer be produced by the campfire. Once Magik is researched, the Sorceress can conjure the Alliyp(directly and not through the Dark Elder morph.  The Sorceress and Alliyp are the only two units from the Dark Magic.  I didn't look to make an unstoppable team because this isn't something you're going to be able to start using anytime soon because the catch is, the Portal costs 1000 Gold, 1000 Wood, and 1000 Stone just to make.  You start the game with 0 Energy.  Housing is still used for the Indian part of the faction with one exception, the Fire Golem uses 1 Energy now instead of 3 housing.  Now to get the 5 Energy, it will also cost 1000 each of wood, stone, and gold.  The Sorceress costs 1000 gold to produce.  Dark Sorcery, and the Magik upgrades each cost 1000 wood, stone, and gold as well.  The Alliyp costs 1000 gold to produce.  That's a lot of resources to be able to use them.  In an 8 player(4 teams of 2), I managed to create 9 alliyps.  This project was simply for fun and maybe I picked up some tricks with xml along the way and just sharing with you.  I did get some screens and hope they show up here.  I teamed with Dark Magic in this one, so the god's bane building there is theirs as well as the Sorceress in the main teepee.  Not sure of the html here but here they are,

<img src="http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz301/cunnykid009/di01.jpg">
<img src="http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz301/cunnykid009/di02.jpg">

[ultifd]

Cool but I think this is kinda unbalanced compared to other factions  but nice... 

<img src="http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz301/cunnykid009/di01.jpg">
<img src="http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz301/cunnykid009/di02.jpg">

Should be like this...right> 

[img]http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz301/cunnykid009/di02.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz301/cunnykid009/di02.jpg[/img]

[mjace72]

I suppose it is but it's not something that will gain any advantage of early in the game and the fact it takes longer to get to the Fire Golem and the fact that once you start investing in the Dark Magic end of this faction, you have to sacrifice making other units.  I'm going to possibly add the Temple and Swordman from the Persian faction to this.  This will make for a good opponent in games.  I did run them as a computer ultra, more a test game as I teamed with them, to see what they would do and they did go ahead and create the oblivion portal but I never did see them create a sorceress.  I don't think the game went long enough so I will test them out again and see if the computer will use the complete Dark Indian faction.

[mjace72]

I completely polished up this dark indian faction, erasing everything from dark magic I didn't use.  For this I had to change a lot of the image paths, moving the commands icons from dark elder image folder into alliyp folder so I could remove the dark elder.  I did quite a bit of changing and was surprised to see no errors and the new, smaller version loaded fine so I'm learning.  I added the temple and swordman from Persian, tested it, and didn't like the fit with the Indians so I removed that and decided to add ghost armor from magic, who is summoned by the sorceress.  The Oblivion Portal is still the only non-Indian building and it will tie whatever I add in the future to this faction.  I tried a one on one against mega computer romans but they were just unrelentless for some reason.  I was able to wipe out about half their base midway through the game, but they shut me down and seemed to come back stronger.  Without save, and running out of time I'm not sure if I would have been able to outlast them, my gold began to run low and they would constantly stop me from harvesting on other areas of the map.  One thing in the game seems to hurt me, and that's my units running forward to their deaths everytime a battle occurs.  There's just to many units to control at once and my guys keep running forward after they kill someone, spreading my army out and weakening me.  If you use hold postion, they seem to become sitting ducks, archers from any faction just sneak up and start picking them off and if I'm in a battle somewhere else, I may not catch it for awhile.   I don't understand why a dozen or so units will run forward and get wiped out by the advancing enemy, leaving the defense of my main army.  Everytime a large scale battle occurs I seem to spend to much of my time trying to keep my army together because if I didn't they would all spread out.

[mjace72]

It seems as if the computer adapts from game to game.  I don't know if that's possible.  I've been trying to defeat romans in a one on one, computer mega romans against my dark indian faction and they seem to get harder with each match.  I'm not making excuses and haven't lost, but haven't beaten them.  I just never have enough time to finish so each game becomes a forfeit.  In the last match, the romans actually started harvesting from another base on the map.  This is a first in my gameplay.  I've beaten romans on other maps but it seems on the 4 kingdoms8kings map, they're unstoppable.  If you're looking for a challenge then use that map, play as player 1 and have the romans(computer mega) start in the player 7 spot.  The mega romans will build 5 towers in their base as the game progresses and always have archers all over the base.  I can't think of the unit name, but it's the unit that builds the standing gun thingy.  They start placing these things at different spots on the map and seem to be very aggressive which makes for a challenging game.