good ideas but need more. I'm hunger for bad happenings

There's no setting for that without editing environment sets directly, and I have no idea where they're stored, but you can edit out the visuals if you want to by creating a mod based off this one.
It's quite simple:
1) Create a new mod with the package manager.
2) Set this mod as a prerequisite in the Content -> Packages list.
3) Launch the tools.
4) Go to File -> Open Resource Pack
-> Find CosmicHappenings.rpk
(This file is in your AOW3 application folder, for example: C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\common\AOW3\Content\DLC3\Packs\CosmicHappenings.rpk)
5) The pack opens. Go to settings. Pick Cosmic Happenings in the category dropdown.
6) On the left hand side, you can see all cosmic events listed and their icons. To modify one, click on one and then click on MODIFY.
7) The visual effect is defined under Environment Set Link. Setting this to another environment will change the visual overlay. Setting it to None will remove the visual effects entirely.

Save your work.

There a way to reduce by half the 'visual' affects you have for terrain events? My monitor is so difficult to look at when its over bright and washed out during some events. Other than that, brilliant awesome mod. Thumbsup

General idea of more events is good - but these seem to extreme to me. Seven turns of no gold or no production would just be too infuriating. Sure some people will like it though.

To detail the point with my old save - at some point I couldn't save anymore, because the saving routine put the used RAM over the 32bit-limit. But I could play over 100 turns before that.
And "too large map" here was 2nd largest size with the 14-Layers mod...

So I thought the 32bit-issue was more specific for running saves and hadn't expected the mods themselves already taking up that much space.
Also, for all further matches I turned the mapsize down a step...

Yes, that I had already heard ( and encountered during a save with a too large map + mods )... I didn't think my mod folder was that large already, so I thought some counter was involved, too.

Hm, looking it up it says 2.88 GB - I did subscribe to a few more after that, but I find it hard to believe they should amount to over 1 GB... *puzzled*

It's not a number, but an amount of memory used. AOW3 is a 32-bit game without 64-bit option.

Ah, ok - thank you very much :) , I'll try that later on.

Is the actual number of mods which causes this also known ( so I can determine how many exactly I need to unsubscribe ) ?

You can trick the updater by unsubscribing/subscribing to a subset of your mods, updating them, then switching them around. It's an issue the devs are aware of.

Hmm - the mod-updating doesn't work for me atm., at all (not specific to your mod).
Likely that's because my list got too long, I'd guess... do you accidentially know how many mods the updater can handle ?

P.S.: Sad that negative population growth doesn't work - would have allowed for interesting events, I think.

Yep, I've modded the game quite a bit so far - I just tend to set my goal too high and then either stumble over engine limits or get lost in feature creep with a lot of halfimplemented stuff ( or switch back to another game where I have a half-finished mod ) - so I don't currently want to start fiddling around with yet ANOTHER mod...

But admittedly, since I increased the stats of all dragons quite a bit AND am playing on multilayer- maps, I guess the event should anyway still have enough impact for me, thanks. :)

I know, March of the Troll King tends to wipe AI players on large maps, especially on lower difficulties.
Don't worry, there's plenty of dragons still in there. ;)

(If for some reason you want it to spawn a truly ludicrous number of dragons, you can create a mod for yourself with the tools without much trouble.
Add this one as a dependency.
Open CosmicHappenings.rpk.
Find the Year of the Dragon event, click modify.
Set numbers to whatever you like.
Save mod.

You can do this for any spawn event.)

I do understand... I found out that in multilayer-maps, even ormal spawns can occassionally wipe out AIs, since there are so many units spawning all around the map - had this happen every now and then.
But I think that's ok for an endgame event like this seems to be (couldn't test it myself yet).


Maybe you could upload a branch with the old dragon numbers, so people can choose which one suits them better? :)

Thank you.

The dragon event simply scaled too hard by map size. While it was designed to be a Death By Dragons apocalyptic style event for larger maps, the AI couldn't handle the heat and often lost outright to it. So, less dragons it is.
I never tested with 4 layer XXXL maps like some people play, but there's little I can do to prevent overscaling in such scenarios.

Nice mod. :)


Btw, - if it doesn't happen every game, I think it's okay if 5 players are wiped out by that event... makes it feel more like a real threat, similar to what happens in some fantasy-books. :)
So I'd vote for keeping the mod like it is - IF it doesn't happen everytime the event triggers, that is.

Five opponents does seem overkill. I'll take a look at it.

Not sure if 1.4 above is a recent update, or not (I suspect not).

Because I just had the Dragon event happen--and completely wipe out FIVE of my opponents. Yes, I was playing w/ no settlers (making them more vulnerable), but the durned things were literally everywhere (and even gave me a run for a bit, lost my capital for 2 turns). Turn 170, for what it's worth. Will sadly have to disable this mod from now on.

The monkey and dragon event don't spawn a hero with items. They are made using the normal enemy spawn algorithm used by e.g. the troll spawning event.

My two cents worth .. I love spawning events of monsters, they attack the AI as well and it's usual to grab a few cities without the alignment penalties.

Does the dragon and monkey event have a dragon king or monkey king (a level 20 hero that spawns during the event) that has items to take if you kill it?

I agree with Uber-n00bie on this. Those events can really be extremely annoying, and I do not think that being attacked by a horde of monsters in a single turn is very fun. It has the potential to interrupt the game flow to a noticeable extent. Other than that, the mod adds to the overall fun and fits the game very well theme-wise. So please, consider Uber-n00bie's suggestion again.

If someone wants to create a mod that removes all the spawn events from the game, they are free to do so. In that case, I may consider creating an off-branch of this mod without spawn events, but maintaining the mod will become twice the workload in terms of bugfixing. :p

Are you saying you're completely against removing the 2 spawn events now? That's too bad. Ultimately it's your mod, so of course you can make it how you like -- regardless of others' suggestions.

But if that's the case, would you consider allowing somebody else release an alternate version of this mod without the 2 spawn events (or at the very least, the monkey invasion)? Regardless of the 2 events being nerfed, I think many here are just looking for something a bit more subtle.

The spawn event mobs always exhibit this behaviour, and they do attack the AI as well. I cannot change that. I've played several really slow games with the monkey event occuring as the first event (on hard) and I can't say I've had any trouble with it personally.
Since toning the event down already, I haven't seen the AI succumb to the monkeys either, so there's little I can do without trivialising the event entirely.
As for removing these 2 events, I don't see how that adds anything to the experience.

That being said, if you see the AI struggle with the event in these early circumstances (especially on lower difficulties), do report this.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly...

I agree with everyone who has spoken on the topic. Please remove the spawn events, or make them a separate mod.

The other events are great imo. I was looking for a mod that adds many events like this, with some interesting visual effects like simulating weather and time of day. For the most part, this does very nicely... aside from the spawn events. :)

(cont.)
O.K., you probably get the story so my question presents itself: is this behavior normal? Is every spawned creature programmed to attack ALL living and ALL cities? My other related question is, does this event (or vanilla spawn-events for that matter) involve attacking AI players so the creatures' attention is not focused exclusively on the human player? The way it is now, it's beyond annoying, really. Would it be possible to separate the two spawn-events from this mod and keep "happenings" only? I'd possibly even settle for toning down the creatures spawn rate a good deal. Thanks in advance for any relevant answers!

I like this mod overall but I totally hate the Year of the Monkey event. When the event starts happening, all monkey-hell breaks loose and those filthy screaming monsters are everywhere. I have had an instance (very early into the game) when my poor hero was attacked by 16 or 20(!) monkeys in a single(!) turn. He fortunately managed to ward off all the attacks but alas, my other poor hero is being attacked by one, two and finally three group of these c*********g pains in the a**! He hammered those pests to the ground as well but alas, my capital city is being under attack by one, two, three, four groups of them, gradually...

I agree. I also like spawners and spawning events to be separate extensions of mods. It really messes up a slower game pace

Was asking for all spawn events, not just the two you added, to be removed. But if indeed it's impossible to make mods that make cosmic events be all passive events instead of including both passive events and army spawning events, I'll just have to hope a future patch adds a toggle for army spawning events separate from normal events (instead of the current all or nothing toggle currently in place).

@Kael'thas Sunstrider

There's changelogs on steam?
Lol, I completely missed that. I'll get right on it.
(Don't worry, as an IT professional, I'm okay with filling those out ;) )

@Star-X

There's only two mob spawning events this mod adds, and both have been nerfed repeatedly. If they keep making trouble, I'll probably remove them at some point.
The monkey event should be doable with a city protected by 2-3 archers and some accompanying melee.
Year of the Dragon is an epic endgame event, and the earliest it should turn up now is turn 100 and above. I don't think I've had a game yet where I'm unable to fend them off at that stage, but yeah, it is designed to take more than just a standard array of guards, which is why you get 6 turns to relocate your forces closer to your cities before the dragons spawn. :)

The other unit spawn events are not by me.

Oh, I can't make them neutral stacks instead of hostile. Or at least, I haven't seen such an option thus far.

@Darth.cygnus

I know how to make spells capable of removing and adding mountains (among how to manipulate other map functions.), it's just that when I've played around with them I found them too invasive on handcrafted maps.
To respect the time and effort of map creators in crafting these sometimes elaborate scenarios, I'd rather refrain from adding effects of that magnitude. Now, if I could make them keep the map pretty, that'd be a different story, but thus far, I can not.
There's also a balance consideration there, but I'm less worried about a raise or lower mountains spell breaking the game than about the aesthetic aspect. ;)


The monkey overspawning thing should be culled now.

Dumb question. Is it possible to make a version of this that removes ALL mob spawning events, or failing that makes them grey instead of red? (i.e. they wait for you to come to them rather than heading straight for your cities with the intent to purge them hard) I really like the idea of cosmic events, but the hostile mob ones are really annoying, and I'd rather like to have them either made neutral or gone while keeping all the other events in place. Obviously I'm not asking you to remove them from the main mod, I'm mostly looking for an alt version that makes cosmic events less likely to murder players with minimal defenses (cause even 4 t1 archers behind a wall won't stop an invasion of fliers or a suitably high number of >t1 units).

I'm aware that changelogs are annoying, but you could you add them to "change notes" whenever you make any changes, please?

Your moind is amazing! I saw another mod that can give the terraforming ability to raise and squash mountains, but that mod changes too much stuff too and it's too restrictive: can you add those two features? it would be extremely cool!
I had encountered just an issue with your mod: year of the monkey spawn too much monkeys. It's a major problem mostly for the AI players, but is a bit annoying for us too: i had 9-10 stacks of monkeys continuosly attack just one of my metropolis.
I think it's a bit too much.

Thanks for reporting those. I'll make the dragon event spawn later, and nerf the dragon stacks spawned so AI players aren't crap out of luck. I can make the Strike event skip outposts entirely just to be safe.
Dropping the event durations is easy, I can do that in a minute.
Hmm, I can remove some of the lighting as well. That should help.

Typo fixed in Locust swarm, will be in next update too.

Splicing the terraforming spells off into their own mod, yeah, a bit more work needed there. Give me 30 minutes or so.

One more thing with the strike event, that cripples production. If you are building something in an outpost the building time shows up as negative, not infinite. Not sure if that is even changeable, just reporting.

Just had a campaign with the dragon event really early in the game, i think it was the third or fourth event. Instant win for me, because I was the only lucky bastard who was able to fight off two fullstacks of dragons :)

In general I like the events, some I consider too long (7 turns). Too many are using a lighting effect that makes the map brighter. Combine those two facts and you will play with very bright map for many turns. The real value of the mod is the terraforming mechanics you added, those are super useful. I'd like to suggest making a standalone version of these, maybe with enhanced terraforming (can mountains be lowered?) Drench the land kinda flattens the land, maybe you could implement this effect into your terraforming, making that spell the base for the mod instead of cleanse the land?

The Locus Swarm has a typo. In the following sentance something is missing, "All units suffer -4 (movement,) -2 (?) and -2 (Resistance.) I'm thinking it suppose to be armor.

Just some text errors I noticed ;)

So what's the update for today?

Ahh good to know. That savegame is kaputt then. Starting a new one. Lets see how the dragon event will turn out now.

I really like this mod I don't want to drop it. Will post here ASAP after I encounter the dragon year cosmic event again.

I completely redid the Year of the Dragon event and tested it extensively. It works as intended now. You may have to start a new game if you saved during the middle of the dragon event because it'll likely return a missing ID error now.

I'm unable to edit the files as I am getting an error .. "you are not able to open exportet objects"

Even with the latest version 1.3::

"1.3: Lowered the number of dragons spawned by the year of the dragon event. This should fix the crash when the event tries to spawn too many dragons on a single hex. "

The game still crashes.
Its a very late turn XL map.

How can I fix this myself? Which file should I edit to lover the number of spawned dragon even further? Or even NUKE the cosmic happening entirely so I can continue to play my map.

Crash Report::

Completing the turn right before the start of the new cosmic happening "Year of the Dragon" results in a crash in the middle of the independents move turn. I don't know if that's relevant but I AM having a dragon den as a vassal.

Social uprising does indeed cause me the most headaches in the test runs. Late game, it truly is devastating for everyone who doesn't keep a large army of summons around (or a huge treasury that can take the blow). Vice versa for players who do and the crystal crisis event.

I've been thinking of cutting both to 50% to limit their grip on the game because of their heavy influence.

I tried several approaches to get the AI to cope with the terrain stuff, but the only thing that worked was to give them an empire research that basically granted them temperate empire, and that isn't a good approach for a whole other set of reasons.

I'm afraid that the AI won't ever be able to cope with the terrain stuff though. Support was never added to it, and I can't see that changing.

I also worry that Social Uprising could cause utter havoc, especially if it comes later in the game. You say it affects all cities, I'd imagine that means all gold income will hit 0? I worry that players will run out of gold very easily, and could lose almost every unit they have to desertion. I'd imagine they would probaly quit at that point :)
I would either have the event halve income, reduce the duration to 3 or 4 turns, or change it to apply a big happiness penalty to cities instead.

Apart from that so, it looks like amazing work!

Interesting mod for sure: i'm playing with it.
I'm having a "Strike action" event in a snowy map and the land became very bright azure, almost glowing. For a simple stike action i think is better non add that effect because it's not magical.
Another note: more articulated descriptions of the event would be fun. instead of "Production is halted" you can use "Fustrated worldwide population stopped production asking for better working conditions... etc,etc" or something like this.

sounds great but maybe a good idea to remove the terrain events since the AI can't cope with it.