Heroesflorian
commented
5 years ago but there is a huge gold difference in these modes
Yes, for the extreme trail, the regular skirmish start gold values are all multiplied by 3. Considering this, it might actually be that internally, there is just a single fixed-value modifier of 3, that is applied to the regular values (as opposed to a complete set of values specific to the extreme trail)? If that is the case, getting fully configurable start gold settings specific to the trail only probably would require a bit more work. But then again, fully configurable start gold settings for general skirmishes, with the single known (and overridable) extreme trail modifier would work just as well, and make the feature usable outside the extreme trail as well, so that would be quite awesome as well! :)
Especially if you want to create a non Extreme skirmish trail with no magic bar.
Not sure why "too much gold" would be a bigger problem without the extreme powers bar, considering having the bar is an advantage for the player.
Currently the least amount of gold a player starts with is 6000, which is too much in most cases
Indeed, especially for missions without outposts (what you possibly meant to say above?), lower starting gold values would be welcome.
But not only for the player, but also for the AI, more control over start gold values is desirable: It is possible to use the extremeTrail.csv to set up AI vs AI battles, which provides the ability to e.g. conduct battles with multiple particular castles of the same AI character (e.g. saladin5.aiv vs saladin7.aiv) in a reliable and feasible way (mentioned here already a while ago: https://github.com/Sh0wdown/UnofficialCrusaderPatch/issues/86).
Having control over starting gold, troops and goods for such custom AI vs AI battles would be awesome, both for testing new AIVs under pre-defined, controlled conditions as well as for spectating and recording videos of interesting battles.
Full custom skirmish trails are of course another great application area for this.
Also, here is a more condensed view of the start gold values:
| fairness → ↓ start_levels |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P: 24k AI: 6k |
P: 12k AI: 6k |
P: 6k AI: 6k |
P: 6k AI: 12k |
P: 6k AI: 24k |
| 2 | same | - | as | - | above |
| 3 | P: 120k AI: 9k |
P: 60k AI: 21k |
P: 30k AI: 30k |
P: 21k AI: 60k |
P: 9k AI: 120k |
DarkThief-Darek
PitchNeeded
A little background where I'm coming from before moving to the issue itself: So, with the great UCP 2.12 (Thanks again for this!) we have the AIC files and the ucp.cfg with the current configurations for the patcher.
It would be great if in the future we can create our own skirmish trails like Firefly did, with own AICs, AIVs, maps and one specific config file for the patcher, that the modder can prepare and bundle to his own mod. The player can then install this mod (with the UCP, just like with custom AICs and AIVs) in one click and starts playing. (it's crucial that the modder can decide the ucp.cfg file, so the player doesn't adjust something the wrong way for the mod like forget to disable the Extreme magic bar)
Currently we can modify the Crusader Extreme skirmish trails (NOT the Crusader ones). It's a CSV file called extremeTrail.csv, located in the main folder of Crusader Extreme. We already have many options like choose a map for each mission, the amount of AIs and which AI, which castle they need to build at which spot, Teams etc. It's all fine, expect the following problems:
For this issue I will focus on the thing I need the most for my small project I'm trying to create: Configure the starting conditions (Gold).
Currently we have the options in the extremeTrail.csv to set fairness and start_levels for each mission. It's an exact copy of the standard 15 modes you can start a custom skirmish (same starting resources, units... but there is a huge gold difference in these modes you can't set in the normal custom skirmish mode) Fairness is the player or AI advantage in gold (values 1-5) Start_level is the skirmish mode (value 1-3 for normal mode, crusade mode or death match mode)
This is what the gold values looks like in the Extreme Skirmish Trails:
I don't know what is the best way to change the start gold in the patcher, but it would be great if we can modify all this just like the AICs. So for example the player can start a mission with only 1000 gold, whereas the AIs have 8000 gold. You don't even need the symmetric gold rules applied in the current settings. Currently the least amount of gold a player starts with is 6000, which is too much in most cases and makes skirmish trail missions far too easy. Especially if you want to create a non Extreme skirmish trail with no magic bar.