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Fix for Master of Mana Fay/Faerie suicides

Typical. Just as I finally brave the source code to Master of Mana (neé Fall From Heaven; the most popular / succesful mod for Civilization 4), and fix a major bug that’s bothered me for ages … the main server at masterofmana.com goes offline :(.

Anyway, if you’re playing the Fey, and you’re tired of the fact it becomes impossible after a certain point – when you put Faeries onto ships, they self-explode, turning the tile into land (usually Never-Never), here’s the fix. It’s especially bad for True White Faeries – which means “all of your top units” beyond a certain point in the game.

Edit the file:

[C:\ … path to your Civ4 folder]\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Master of Mana\Assets\Python\Wildmana\Civs\CvFaeries.py

Find the following lines (very near the top):

		if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromWhite):
			iSnowChance=20
			if pUnit.plot().getOwner()==-1:
				iSnowChance+=-10
			if pUnit.plot().getOwner()==pUnit.getOwner():
				iSnowChance=-100
			if iSnowChance>CyGame().getSorenRandNum(100, "snow fall"):
				pUnit.plot().setTerrainType(iSnow,True,True)
			if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromGreen):
				if pUnit.plot().getFeatureType()==-1:
					if CyGame().getSorenRandNum(100, "Faerie plant trees") <= 75:
						pUnit.plot().setFeatureType(iForest, 1)
			if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromTrueWhite):
				pUnit.plot().setTerrainType(iNever,True,True)
	
		if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromTrueGreen):
			pUnit.plot().setFeatureType(iEternal, 0)
	

and replace them with this: (NB: because Civ4 is scripted in the horrid Python, you're going to have to be careful to get the indentation correct manually; Python is wonderful, except for this one feature - it makes sharing code changes like this much harder than it should be :( IMHO)

		if pUnit.plot().isLand():
			if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromWhite):
				iSnowChance=20
				if pUnit.plot().getOwner()==-1:
					iSnowChance+=-10
				if pUnit.plot().getOwner()==pUnit.getOwner():
					iSnowChance=-100
				if iSnowChance>CyGame().getSorenRandNum(100, "snow fall"):
					pUnit.plot().setTerrainType(iSnow,True,True)

			if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromGreen):
				if pUnit.plot().getFeatureType()==-1:
					if CyGame().getSorenRandNum(100, "Faerie plant trees") <= 75:
						pUnit.plot().setFeatureType(iForest, 1)

			if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromTrueWhite):
				pUnit.plot().setTerrainType(iNever,True,True)
		
			if pUnit.isHasPromotion(iPromTrueGreen):
				pUnit.plot().setFeatureType(iEternal, 0)

Yep - it's really that simple (insert one line, and re-indent the ones below):

"if you're at sea, don't turn the ground your ship is on into land. Because that will destroy the ship, you, and everyone else nearby"

I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to do that - it would be an ultra-powerful ability to create land - automatically - instantly for the cost of a cheap ship and a level-1 faerie. If you really want to play that way (if you can be bothered), it's easy to create a Giant's Causeway like that in the current build of the game, making land out of the dead bodies of the Fey. But it's a very dull way to play, and it feels more like an innocent oversight...

PS...

If you're not playing Master of Mana, and wondering why anyone would care about a Mod for a game that originally shipped *almost 6 years ago*, then I strongly suggest you buy yourself a copy of Civ4 + Beyond the Sword expansion (usually bundled together for $30 or less), download MoM, and find out what you're missing.

The modded game is IMHO highly illegal - they stole art liberally from many many copyrighted sources - but the bulk of the content is their game-design, and that's fantastic. Many times better than many games released today - and (partly thanks to the lack of legal assets) the authors charge nothing for it.

The saddest / greatest thing about this IMHO is that 2KGames / Take Two did so little with this modding community. Beyond a few token steps (the dev team made the sensible decision to hire some of the leading mod authors, IIRC) they pretty much ignored it. They're making substantial money out of the mod authors - Civ4 should not still be selling as expensively as it does, and I'm sure this mod is the main reason it does - but they could have made a lot more. Look to Valve, and imagine what might have happened with a little more visionary leadership at Firaxis and Take Two...

7 replies on “Fix for Master of Mana Fay/Faerie suicides”

Have you actually played MoM?

There’s a lot of obvious bits of inspiration from Alpha Centauri in there (the wild animals, the wide variety of upgrades, creating units from pieces of equipment – each of which comes from research).

Yeah. Actually, thinking about it, it’s hard to see how an AC fan would *not* love MoM :)

Basically? I only borrowed Civ 4 to try it, and gave it back after a week. I’ve got enough to play that I can’t say I’m concerned.

Also, I still play SMAC(X) “PBeM” via a forum (with turns uploaded as post attachments), whereas Civ 4 PBeM is still horribly buggy, per a friend who plays it.

Civ4 is masterofmana. If you played civ4, that’s a completely different game – almost no relation to mom

Yes, I’m saying I don’t have Civ 4 in the first place, several other games to play and a VERY limited budget (£30 is three months worth…)

Andrew, if you borrowed it and installed it, and upgraded to patch 3.19 before trying civ4 you do not need the cd to play. It removed the cd requirement for running the game. A token and traditional response to patch a game at its last update to require no cd for game play.

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