And yes, ogres and manticores are distinct from this mod's wilderness creatures (and DLC cave spiders) in that the wilderness creatures actually do things while ogres and manticores are just moving challenge containers.

I agree that ogres and manticores being modifiers is kinda bad since it renders them pretty much invisible on the world map and makes them feel like they're not real entities, but I'll also point out that the official DLC also has cave spiders as agent-style units skittering around the underground.

@Bambi how would you handle werewolves as modifiers?

Also, tbh, the implementation of animals as modifiers always felt a little janky to me, I assumed it was done due to engine limitations. The ogres and manticores definitely feel a lot more stale than the wilderness creatures added by the mod, because the mod ones are actual entities that do things to interact with the world, instead of just static challenges to be exploited.

In the normal game, animals are implemented as modifiers, not as agents. Wandering ogre and manticore. This mod contradicts that design and I can't recommend it. It feels out of place.

It seems you're right. I'm not sure if something bugged out in my last run or if I just didn't see it the last 2 times it happened today, but it worked this time. Fingers crossed it's just me being inattentive because it's probably a hard bug to recreate.

You should definitely get a notification when the werewolf begins to move to harry your agent, but as far as I remember it doesn't tell you each turn when the damage happens, if that's what you meant.

Maybe I've encountered a bug, because I've not seen any and it's happened multiple times now. I'll double check that I don't have it filtered for some reason.

There *is* a notification that your agent is being harried by a werewolf, though...

Cool mod, but I think you should add an alert if one of your agents is being harried by a werewolf. I've had a few games now where an agent died out of the blue because a werewolf moved into their square while they were performing a task and killed them without any notification because I wasn't watching them every turn.

Hey i really like the mod i just wanted to ask if you ever considered maybe adding some unique Agents based on the 5 new creatures?

That would make sense as an explanation. I can't get too deep into the weeds on shapeshifting at the moment, but I'm planning to give it a thorough once-over soon.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
at LivingWilds.T_Nature_Lycanthropy.turnTick (Assets.Code.Person p) [0x006d6] in <88a9ab134f3e42d285722023bf190d64>:0
at Assets.Code.Person.turnTick () [0x00077] in <87722c3d024842ed81b5e159dacda8fd>:0
at Assets.Code.Map.processPeople () [0x0002c] in <87722c3d024842ed81b5e159dacda8fd>:0
at Assets.Code.Map.turnTick () [0x00196] in <87722c3d024842ed81b5e159dacda8fd>:0
at (wrapper dynamic-method) Assets.Code.World.Assets.Code.World.bEndTurn_Patch0(Assets.Code.World,bool)
at Assets.Code.UIInputs.hotkeys () [0x008ec] in <87722c3d024842ed81b5e159dacda8fd>:0
at Assets.Code.UIInputs.Update () [0x00052] in <87722c3d024842ed81b5e159dacda8fd>:0

I encountered some sort of crash. The error was not very helpful - all I know for sure is that it had something to do with something switching to werewolf form. My best guess is that it had something to do with one of the werewolves being a vampire (he had the hunger, attacked a werewolf character, got infected, died, came back as vampire and still had the werewolf infection). He was also underground, which is unlikely to be a problem, but I mention it in case that's a possible concern (I haven't observed any other instance in which a werewolf happened to be underground when they transformed).

I don't know if this is fixable, or if it's too niche to be worth fixing, but the Delver (from the Delver mod) seems to bug out when he becomes a werewolf. He can't do any challenges at all, and doesn't get the wolf minions werewolves usually get. Also, his artifacts get reset to 0.

I was able to end the first turn for which he was a werewolf, but the end turn button became unresponsive the following turn.

Absolutely love this mod and it's on basically every game I have, but it has an issue when playing as The Broken Maker - wilderness tiles do not lose their enshadowment when using Eternity. I would greatly appreciate if this was looked into!

Really cool mod! Adds for a more dynamic world with a bit more life in it.
:)

Excellent! Gotta say, all of your mods are excellent, and I really appreciate all that you've done.

You will be happy to know that the equilibrium number is based on the number of wilderness locations at any given time, so it does in fact go up as settlements collapse (you can tinker with the number in the mod settings, in fact).

The underground has a ton of room for new critters, mini-societies, etc, but it's unlikely I'll be the one making them (partly just because I don't like map layers that much on a personal level, and partly because I already have enough ideas that I'll absolutely be sick of SoFG modding by the time I finish them). Retrohammer on the Discord was working on more naval stuff a while back, though I'm not sure if it's still ongoing.

Ah, having an equilibrium number and restoration to that number makes a lot of sense. It would be cool if that equilibrium number went up as settlements collapsed and thus there was more total wilderness.

That makes a ton of sense about why underground creatures don't make sense to add (though something peaceful that raids the surface once enshadowed could be cool) - a naval creature would also be a lot of fun.

@Jaguar_Tordu: Thank you for the report! I'll look into it when I have the time, though lately pretty much every evening and weekend has been spoken for. It would be helpful if you could send me a save and mod list/order from right before the crash, though I understand if you've since lost it.

@thatotherdavidguy No plans to add underground creatures - given the underground's low population and unique relationship with shadow, it wouldn't really make sense for them to be part of the Living Wilds game loop. Wilderness creatures should be spawning mid-game if they get below their equilibrium amount, though.

Do you plan on adding new creatures for the underground? Also, it would be great if there was some mechanism that created new creatures during a game

hi, I really enjoyed your mod so far, exept every game i tried to focus on werewolves I always get the error "NullRefferenceExeption: Object refference not set to an instance of an object" on turn 300. i reproduced the bug on 3 differents seeds, the first two times with a full mod list, the last time with only this mod on (and the comunity library, couldn't remember if i needed it). the crash occurs on the full moon event, the error message pops up in the bottom and the transformation never occurs. I think it's due to the rulers being infected by witches, i've been playing vinerva on the three games, I'll try later with a different god and with the werewolf tenet only at -2. I've been able to complete games fine with the mod on while not paying much intention to werewolves. here is a link to the logs i also kept the saves but i couldn't find the files. I'd be really happy if you could look into it.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YBzz7NIdjAFPEBMqaIaMbsFJRK7kDHNz?usp=sharing

Presently your options would be to increase the number of wilderness creatures that spawn or deactivate some or all the non-hermit wilderness creatures. If there are no werewolf hermits in play, the next wilderness creature to spawn should be a werewolf hermit, so there will always be at least one for you to kick things off with.

Is there a way to make werewolf hermits more likely to exist at game start, aside from just increasing the number of all Wildlife faction units? It might be confirmation bias, but it feels like with the DLC that there's even less wilderness in the world.

I believe the "victory text isn't from one of the hardcoded VP sources" outcome is just a victory screen with no flavour text and the original/destruction victory art, so you would have been robbed of anything exciting either way. :(

Damnit, the victory text for werewolves was exactly what I was hoping to discover (or to discover that none existed, causing the game to amusingly crash upon attempting to load it, that would have been cool too). :(

If it makes you feel better, there's no victory art/text for werewolves and it wasn't particularly designed for competing with other VP sources.

Makes sense to me. Damn, guess I'll just have to keep trying.

I've recently bought the DLC, curious to see how it interacts with the mods... :o

Destroyed Population compares the number of people in populated settlements currently against the number of people in humanoid settlements (as in the ones that have food, prosperity, rulers, etc) at game start. Therefore, werewolf runs, Deep One sanctums, etc all count toward destroyed population.

Werewolf Runs don't count toward Enshadowed Population (as with Destroyed Population, the people in them aren't considered population), but Enshadowed Population is based on the surviving population instead of the population at game start. In other words, blowing up a non-enshadowed location will increase Enshadowed Population as long as there are enshadowed people elsewhere on the map, and blowing up a location that had the exact average amount of shadow will have no effect on Enshadowed Population. In this case it's likely that the differences in Enshadowed Population from the werewolf'd locations is very small and being outweighed by normal fluctuations.

Good news, I finally managed to win with a werewolf-based strategy!

... Bad news, I ended up getting too many points from other things and only about a quarter of my points were from Population in Werewolf Runs...
(I got 20 from Enshadowed and Insane Rulers and Heroes, 27 from Insane Rulers and Heroes, 68 from Enshadowed % of population outside Dark Empire, 59 from Population Destroyed, and 56 from Population in Werewolf Runs.)

Oddly, I didn't notice the enshadowed % of population go down as population centers turned into Werewolf Runs. Do Werewolf Runs still count towards enshadowed population? For that matter, when a location becomes a Werewolf Run, does it also count as Population Destroyed?

Temples with any menace can be obliterated by either raiding forces or the temple's own monarch (or any monarch nearby for those outside a nation), and the motivation to do so for the monarch depends on some things like combat preference.

Hrrm, that does seem to be the explanation (the werewolf in question was an agent, and they don't seem to get the nature modifier one way or the other on werewolves under a certain amount of shadow), but seeing how werewolf activity in a location exists solely to eventually turn it into an enshadowed Werewolf Run, it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't be considered "high shadow wildlife". Not that I'm complaining, though...


Also, another question - is it intentional that rulers who like combat will try to raid temples of their own religion?

Was the werewolf in question a high shadow werewolf hermit? Liking for nature makes characters try to purge all high shadow wildlife and not attack low shadow wildlife.

For comparison, the challenge Purge Werewolves gets a penalty for characters that like Nature.

Possible bug: I notice that a hero with an obsession with nature gets additional motivation to attack werewolves. I could have sworn that the nature tag was generally pro-werewolf, so shouldn't an obsession with nature make attacking werewolves less likely?

Initiation rites increases their recruitment budget by 4 each time so they recruit faster, but the cost of a new acolyte scales with the number of acolytes, so it takes time for them to go up to 11.

Good catch that the prophet criteria aren't getting moved over - I can definitely patch that.

Initiation Rites is from CCC, so I can't speak to that. Generally acolyte recruitment is locked behind an increasing gold cost, and witches have trouble earning gold early, though I don't know if Initiation Rites reduces the cost or otherwise changes that.

Something I notice is that while I can get the witches Initiation Rites up so that their maximum number of acolytes increases, they take a very long time to actually recruit the additional acolytes. Why is this? Do they need gold or something? If so, should I be having them start preaching before I increase their Initiation Rites (since I'm pretty sure their income comes from rulers following the faith)?

Also, sidenote, it seems that prophet requirements are tracked separately for regular form and werewolf form. I had a warlock who explored an ancient ruin (while in human form), and then later met another prophecy requirement while in werewolf form, but didn't get recognized as prophet until he reverted to human form (he did continue being prophet upon his next transformation, at least). If it matters, the requirement he met while in werewolf form was listed prior to the ancient ruins exploration requirement.

Taking over the prophet position was a good idea, but not always possible. In my attempt from today, in which I attempted to execute the strategy you described, I was unable to get a prophet for one of the orders because they wanted someone who commanded a battle.

The strategy went poorly overall. The witches did almost nothing useful (confirmed that they only spread infection in places of their religion, and the werewolf infections being done by werewolf characters were too far away for the witches to care about). I wasn't able to prevent the alliance from being formed. Then the game encountered a fatal error before I could see if things would turn around. :( (the error seems unrelated to this mod, something about being unable to load a shipwreck png)

Part 2: Influencing the larger orders I do not do with money (unless I am ophanim and have a theocracy). Instead I take over the prophet position and infiltrate the seat of the holy order - sometimes this is very slow but it does work and leaves the agent free to do whatever once set up. It requires planning from the start of the game to get the right agent at the right home area. Sometimes a holy order is smaller for one reason or another and thus can be influenced at some reasonable rate (like 40 or so per action).

Part 1: Yep, I use that mod too. With it, infiltrating the starting coven is not a bad idea but not so game-changingly dramatic. Instead, use an agent with good lore/command to influence them over and over till they get the tenets you like. Each action gives 100 influence and eventually your agent can complete it in like 6 turns. With that mod, witches can become even more powerful with investment since a single order of them can get 11 witches that get exp faster due to having crows spawn as their minions.

"-Maximum influence gain for covens is capped based on the covens size. No longer will the optimal strategy be to take all the tenets you want before you begin preaching! (The influence gain from prophets isn't affected by this cap.)"

- Covens, Curses, & Curios


Ah, yup, that'd be it then. Well now I feel like less of an idiot for not finding your strategy obvious, at least. :)

Jaha, I understand the difference in count now - I forgot that I had increased the number of holy orders because I like to play on bigger worlds. I have SIX holy orders to deal with (three regular, three witch covens). :D

Hrrm, +8 influence??? Maybe I have that mod you mentioned, because if I remember correctly I only get +2 for infiltrating... That mod wouldn't happen to be Covens, Curses, & Curios, would it?

How are you going about taking over the holy orders? Are you using Influence Holy Order, or are you collecting gold to use Fund Holy Order? For the bigger holy orders, I often find that trying to influence them directly is very slow (ie, around +25 for either Influence or False Miracle).

Part 2: You not using them explains why you were having a hard time. It is possible to go with a minimum effort investment by infiltrating them and waiting for the +8 influence per turn this generates (+11 once the witch characters get enshadowed) to do all the work to convert them, or you can speed it up by using the influence holy order which will generate 100 per action due to their small size. They are so easy to set up that I have seen a mod put a cap on how much influence you can get just by infiltrating their starting coven.

I found music of the spheres tenet goes well with werewolves since it generates power and those settlements the covens are in are going to be destroyed by werewolves anyway.

Part 1: I include witch coven as part of the holy order, and they are the most useful because of how easy they are to convert and thus can start much earlier. The only resource I invest in them is converting them to the desired tenets, preaching costs scale with the amount of land they have converted so when they are tiny it is zero and as they get income they can pay for it. I don't set preaching higher than 1. Set up reasonable tenets before telling them to preach because they get harder to influence once they are larger. If their agents are not sufficiently busy dealing with the werewolves in their own land, they will expand to and seed more places.

Yeah, I hadn't thought before to try removing existing tenets, normally I just give them the tenets I want and move on. I also thought that Charitable Work in particular might help recover population (to be turned into werewolves) by removing devastation, but it seems ineffective. It also seems like they still like doing charitable work even when I max out Liberation of Beasthood, so out it goes...

... All four? I've only ever seen three holy orders, not including the witch covens. Speaking of those, is it useful bothering with them? They can get a lot of agents, but my understanding from the tenet description is that they only seed lycantrophy and infect rulers in territory belonging to their religion, which means I'd have to invest resources into preaching, and then they'd spend time preaching at each other rather than doing their tasks (a mistake I made before)...

If they are spending time on other things like charitable work to remove devastation, you have not sufficiently reformed the holy order. Also, don't do it just for one holy order, but for all 4 of them. Concerning the -50 motivation thing, fair enough maybe I missed that part but it probably is sufficient to make them stop purging so much.

Hrrm, really? Might be a bug, then - it looks like heroes with lycantropy CAN purge werewolves, they just get a -50 to their motivation to do so. This helps a lot, but isn't infallible.

The difficulty with not concealing werewolves is that the religious acolytes typically do it too slowly, so some werewolves get purged, and they grow slowly (having more werewolf heroes out doesn't help werewolf population of a location get to 300% faster), so purge is a huge setback. This wouldn't be too big of a deal if I was playing normally, but I'm specifically trying to challenge myself to get a majority (or at least a plurality) of my points from Werewolf Run population, so my agents aren't doing much of the things I typically would have them doing.

Something I've found is that the acolytes waste a lot of time on stuff like charitable work, so maybe it'd be worthwhile to throw more resources at the holy order in order to remove that...

A thing to note is any hero that has lycanthropy is unable to suppress werewolves, so infecting the heroes who are most effective/motivated to do so with your werewolf agent(s) can be useful too.