"how to mod" questions

[Seravy]

I wonder if I'm the only one annoyed by this...towns obviously can produce units even if there are 9 in them, yet the game gives you an error message if you try...you have to move something outside, click on producing the unit, then move it back...

Not anymore! Change $41B64 7D → EB

Dark Elves produce ½ power per population
$C0C57 8B C6 -> EB 4E

Runemaster granting spells a dispel resistance instead of Archmage (untested, please test and post if it does work)
$B20E4 38 -> 3C

Excellent stuff! I'll add the 9-unit production bug. I'm not sure if I'll modify any of the research/power buildings.

Runemaster grabbing the dispel-resist ability from Archmage (on top of the dispel-attack bonus) is a better solution to increasing runemaster's % bonus, which can cause problems combined with artificer. This way, I can add a bit of strength back to Archmage (which I reduced 5 initial skill from 10)

I may be able to find Beastmen's 1/2 power bonus (which I would prefer to replace with fast growth) with some trial and error

Look for 26 80 7F 0E xx in that area, somewhere below. xxx is the race code of the race in question, no idea which is beastmen, there are 3 that produce that much power, race 1,3 and 7. Changing the code to a different race, or a nonexisting one should change the effect accordingly. Dark Elf is race 2 btw, if you replace that one without applying the half power code, you can have another race with power 1.

[Seravy]

Still working on the Nature realm, today's findings :

Earthquake Building destruction chance in %.
$A5FC3 : 0F -> xx
Earthquake Unit destruction chance, 1 in x.
$A5E69 : 04-> xx

This reveals that contrary to description, Earthquake has a 15% chance to destroy buildings and 25% chance for units, which is pretty overpowered, especially the latter part. Cast it about 3 times and the enemy capital will be down to 2-3 defenders at best.
I wonder if this is an Insectide change or been like that originally, but I remember clearing out enemy capitals with it before banishing them with a stack of sprites when the town got empty so probably comes from the original...
Definitely will be nerfing this, it's a lot more sick than Crack's Call : Heroes and high end units are quire meaningless if you have a 25% chance times 9 to kill them when they are defending their owner's capital for a mere 200 mana.

Nature's Wrath, a new option I haven't seen in the files in that thread.
All Realms except Nature AND Arcane are affected :
B4860 02 74 14 → 05 74 23
B4874 04 75 0F → 00 74 0F

...because punishing people for casting summoning circle or summon hero is...stupid.

With that I'm finally done with the Nature realm, the only thing left in it is changing transmute, but I'm not in a hurry for doing that. I would need to find the bonus from ores and edit those first, idk but 2, 3 and 5 gold feels really low? When towns generate gold in the 30-150 range, an extra 2 or even 5 is a joke.
Time to revisit the Death realm, I stopped doing that halfway last time.

[Seravy]

Death realm tweaking in progress :

Fixed the AI bug that causes the AI to drop casting Drain Power, Cruel Unminding and Subversion without an effect :
E3715 AB -> 3A
E3719 81 FF B1 00 74 0E 81 FF -> B8 00 00 89 04 E9 8B 00

Bug was caused by the AI checking for the same conditions as Spell Blast for all 4 spells, so if the target was not casting a spell, or had more mana spent on it than the AI had for blasting, it was cancelled.

Cruel Unminding
Make the percentage fixed to xx
$A4026 0A 00 50 9A D8 00 B0 00 59 -> xx 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90
change the max percentage from 10 to another value but keep it random
$A4026 0A → xx

Enable Selection of Life+Death books in Magic.exe :
333D5 74->EB
333C5 74 10->90 90
339A6 74 -> EB
33A01 74 -> EB

Haven't tested if this causes any unwanted interaction, except for one : Infernal and Divine Power are fortunately not cumulative with each other.

No 11th book can be selected. This goes in magic.exe. The effect is that you are literally unable to click on the 11th book.
33A17 08->09
33A28 08->09
33A69 08->09
33A7A 08->09
33ABB 08->09
33ACC 08->09
33B0C 08->09
33B1D 08->09
Note : This does not directly do anything to book selection, instead it divides the mouse pointer offset by 8 instead of 9, pretending that each book is wider. This means that the 11th book falls off into the unclickable area, making it impossible to actually select. Due to this, you have to actually click 1 pixel to the right of the usual location per book you are taking. It's barely noticable.

Buying buildings always equals the production cost *2 regardless of completion state.
3F03C 7D → EB
3F060 7C 06 → 90 90

many thanks to Asfex for this one, I found the location by comparing his exe with mine.

[zitro1987]

Enable Selection of Life+Death books in Magic.exe :
333D5 74->EB
333C5 74 10->90 90
339A6 74 -> EB
33A01 74 -> EB


Buying buildings always equals the production cost *2 regardless of completion state.
3F03C 7D → EB
3F060 7C 06 → 90 90

Selecting both life and death books make your wizard unusually unlikable, resulting in restless/tense, sometimes even 'hate' on hard difficulty. I believe it's an unintentional bug that is severe enough to discourage me to put it in my mod.

Buying always at X2 is a bit 'too good' for new towns.

[Seravy]

Enable Selection of Life+Death books in Magic.exe :
333D5 74->EB
333C5 74 10->90 90
339A6 74 -> EB
33A01 74 -> EB


Buying buildings always equals the production cost *2 regardless of completion state.
3F03C 7D → EB
3F060 7C 06 → 90 90

Selecting both life and death books make your wizard unusually unlikable, resulting in restless/tense, sometimes even 'hate' on hard difficulty. I believe it's an unintentional bug that is severe enough to discourage me to put it in my mod.

Buying always at X2 is a bit 'too good' for new towns.

I'm playing Death books only now and the first opponent I found was on Hate already. Everyone else is either Troubled or Restless. I don't really see how Life+death could be any worse. If I find out how, I'll adjust diplomacy, it feels totally broken in the game.
I'm going to need to test if buying at x2 is fair or not as I only found how to do it yesterday.

Edit : I found an interesting fact while looking at code : Moving your fortress to Myrror causes it to generate +5 Power regardless of the Myrran trait.
I managed to dig out all mineral bonuses :
Silver Ore
ECD51 : 02 -> xx
Gold Ore
ECD59 : 03 -> xx
Gems
ECD61 : 05 -> xx
Dwarf Mineral bonus
ECD6A : 02 -> xx (gold)
ECF8B : 02 → xx (power)
Myrran fortress power bonus :
C0D85 : 05 → xx
Mythril
ECF6A : 01 → xx
Adamantium
ECF72 : 02 → xx
Quork Crystal
ECF7A : 03 → xx
Crysx Crystal
ECF82 : 05 → xx
Iron Ore
ED24a : 0A → 2*xx
ED24F : 05->xx
Coal ore
ED25E : 14->2*xx
ED263 : 0A->xx

I have also modded transmute but that change is too complicated to be included in a list like this : You have to replace the human and AI targeting restrictions as well as the actual effect. Several hundreds of bytes in 3 different locations.
I made it do these transformations :
Silver->Mithril->Quork->Iron-> Silver and
Gold->Adamantium->Crysx->Coal->Gold
Basically it now loops the weak tier ores, or the strong tier ones, so you can select which resource you want out of the 4 types, but the ore stays within the tier.

[Anthony]

Buying always at X2 is a bit 'too good' for new towns.

Though controlling down gold production would fix that. What would you need to do to change the Marketplace, Bank, and Merchant's Guild from a percentage bonus to a flat bonus?

[Seravy]

Buying always at X2 is a bit 'too good' for new towns.

Though controlling down gold production would fix that. What would you need to do to change the Marketplace, Bank, and Merchant's Guild from a percentage bonus to a flat bonus?

Marketplace + 3 bonus (from zitro's thread)
C091F 8B C6 BA 72 00 F7 EA C4 1E BC 9C 03 D8 => 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 33 FF
C0847 83 46 F2 32 => BF 03 00 90 (bonus is the second byte from right (03))
C0886 8B FA => 03 FA
C08BC 8B F8 => 03 F8

Haven't done it to the other 3, just reduced their % to a lower amount, bank to 40, merchant to 60.
Not sure if I like the current situation, early game gold feels fair, but once cities grow and you start conquering enemy ones, it starts to be too much.

Something else now :
Zombie mastery, raise undead : allow raising units even if you end up with more than 9.
9C263 : 09->12
9C402 : 09->12
Problem with this one is that it breaks the display pretty badly, definitely not something to use in an actual game, but at least it confirms that they can be raised. Now, if I knew how to push them outside like towns do with newly produced units, it would be made possible, but I have no idea.

This goes to wizards.exe, you should fix that.
magic.exe(?) 981EF for the % reduction per spell book above 7, original value is $0A
magic.exe(?) 981E6 for the number of books where the bonus starts, stored as a NEGATIVE number as it is a subtraction, meaning $FF=-1= 1

And more :
Evil Omens
Affects all non-Death spells : 980B7 00 74 -> 04 75
Affects all spells : 980B3 - 980CD : all 90

I made mine affect all enemy spells only but that one requires replacing like 60+ bytes.

Finding Life/Death books no longer fails if having the opposite realm already :
63439 7E->EB
63455 7E->EB

[Seravy]

If you are annoyed by having an item editor when your awesome custom items never show up in lairs :
Increase the number of tries on selecting a premade item in lair treasure to 1000. If it fails that many times, a random one is used. Original code was 50 which is a pretty low number considering there are 250 total items, 80% of the items were never considered before giving up.
8DA33 : 09 83 7E FE 32 7D 03 E9 5D FF 83 FE FF 75 0C -> 1A 81 7E FE E8 03 7D 03 E9 5C FF 90 90 90 90
use together with
8DA06 : 7C-> EB to drop requirement of item cannot have a „special“ flag, the one used by gift of gods event

Next up in magic.exe, the item generation :
39F14 : 1B → xx Random number from 1 to xx (27), this is multiplied by the following
39F1E : 64 00 → xx xx Multiplier for possible item costs. (100)
39F23 : 2C 01 → xx xx Then this amount is added as the „minimum“ possible item value. (300)
The default values result in items found having a max value of 3000. Changing these values will not alter the treasure points needed to add the items, but it will alter what is possible to be added.
39F33 BB 0A 00 99 F7 FB BA 0A 00 F7 EA 89 46 FA 2B 7E FA → 2B 7E FA BB xx 00 99 F7 FB BA yy 00 F7 EA 89 46 FA
The yy and xx values are the multiplier and divisor for the item value actually added. This makes the game add the item value of floor (Original Roll / xx) * yy but only spend points equal to the original roll. Note how the original code has a division and multiplication by 10 so it only rounds it to the nearest 10 without changing the value, but by creative swapping we can utilize this to have a multiplier.

And this I found in Asfex's wizards.exe :
Wrack bugfix
AE2EF 26->90
Makes Wrack work as intended (unit takes x damage instead of x^2 )

Raise Volcano chance to destroy buildings
A7947 0F → xx

Warp Creature fix (effect is no longer random but follows order of Attack->Defense->Resistance), no crash on using the 4th time on same unit
You can swap the order by switching the bytes marked by <> with each other
AE028 BF FE FF -> BF FC FF
AE02E-AE03B : B8 03 ... -> 47 90 90 90 keep replacing with 90 will the last byte specified
AE03C : 3D 01 00 -> 83 FF <FD>
AE041 : 3D 02 00 -> 83 FF <FE>
AE046 : 3D 03 00 -> 83 FF <FF>
AE066 BF FF FF -> 90 90 90
AE0AA BF FE FF -> 90 90 90
AE0ED BF FD FF -> 90 90 90
AE07F : 50 8B C6 BA 6E 00 F7 EA C4 1E 2A 92 03 D8 58 -> BF 01 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90
AE0C3 : 50 8B C6 BA 6E 00 F7 EA C4 1E 2A 92 03 D8 58 -> BF 01 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90
AE106 : 50 8B C6 BA 6E 00 F7 EA C4 1E 2A 92 03 D8 58 -> BF 01 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90

Minimum Treasure value in lairs (magic.exe)
39E09 : 32 -> xx
39E0F : 32 -> xx
Value is replaced by this much if less, only applies to treasure, not monsters.
Note on lairs : With the editor, you can change the value of treasure in lairs in 4 categories „weak/strong“ and „arcanus/myrror|.
Weak lairs use the formula of treasure=random(x)*30 while strong lairs in arcanus use treasure=random(x)*50+250 and strong myrror uses random(x)*100+250 instead, unless you change the hardcoded parts, so select your values accordingly. As you can see, only weak lairs have a chance of landing below the default of minimum 50 treasure value.

1/x gold per level of taxes selected instead of 1/2 :
C08B7 99 2B C2 D1 F8 -> BB xx 00 F7 FB
It's also possible to mod the gold in different ways (I did 1+taxlevel*0.25 per population.) but that's more complicated. Fixing the display to show the correct amount is also quite problematic as the text is hardcoded.

[Seravy]

Something slightly more important, as it includes fixing two major spell bugs on Blur :

Blur
Change chance of blocking to 1 in xx, requires the next bugfix to work
9A28E 0A -> xx
Fix "Lost rolls" bug : successful rolls no longer cause skipping another roll.
9A297 3D 0A 00 75 03 FF 4E F8 -> 48 75 05 FF 4E F8 EB 03
Fix Illusions immunity bug (Blur now has no effect if enemy has immunity not if own unit)
9A239 8B C6 -> 8B C7
9A271 8B C6 -> 8B C7
Invulnerability, blocks this many damage
9A2CC 02 -> xx
9A4C2 02 → xx
I don't know if there are more checks for invulnerability in the code, haven't tested, not planning to change this spell, so this might be an incomplete list.

"Metal Fires: 906D3 FE C0 ==> 04 02 (where 02 is the value added, so you may change it to 03 or whatever you like)"
This one is incorrect, it only changes the amount of gold swords, not the attack itself, so it'll make a 8 strength unit a 9 strength with 7 normal and 2 gold swords.
The correct change is the above together with 906C4 FE C0 → 04 xx.

also for Metal Fires :
906B3 75 76 → 90 90 Metal Fires is cumulative with Flame Blade.
906A0 74 → EB Metal Fires is cumulative with Flaming items. (I assume, haven't tested what the check is for but I don't think there is anything else in the game it isn't cumulative with by default, will report if it does not work)

[Seravy]

The latest batch of hex goodness :

Casting cost range modifiers
84F58 : 05->xx The distance where the modifier turns from 1x to 1.5x
84F60 : 0A->xx The distance where the modifier turns from 1.5x to 2x
84F68 : 0F->xx The distance where the modifier turns from 2x to 2.5x
84F70 : 14->xx The distance where the modifier turns from 2x to 2.5x
84F39 : 05->0A Casting at the fortess costs 1x instead of 0.5x

Disable starting Builder's Hall (magic.exe)
37651 : 01 → FF
3E1C1 : 01 → FF

Charm of Life Health (overland display only)
8E830 : 04 → xx units gain an additional 100/x % health.

Lionheart Health bonus
8E711 : 03 → xx
8E952 : 03 → xx
8E95B : 03 → xx

Disjuction (Player only!)
B65C5 03 -> xx Disjunction True effectiveness over Disjunction
B65F6 03 87 1A 9F -> 90 90 90 90 Don't add disjuction's strength to the divisor, meaning the formula becomes linear. Disjunction>Spell = 100% chance.
B6601-B660F 8B 46 08 BA C8 04 F7 EA 8B D8 8B 87 1A 9F 99 -> 8B 87 1A 9F B9 xx 00 F7 E1 B9 yy 00 F7 F1 99 ; Adjust disjuction strength : New strength = (disjuction cost*xx/yy)
Disjuction (AI only!)
B4728 03-> xx Disjunction True effectiveness over Disjunction
B477E 03 87 1A 9F -> 90 90 90 90 Don't add disjuction's strength to the divisor, meaning the formula becomes linear. Disjunction>Spell = 100% chance.
B478B-B4799 8B 46 08 BA C8 04 F7 EA 8B D8 8B 87 1A 9F 99 -> 8B 87 1A 9F B9 xx 00 F7 E1 B9 yy 00 F7 F1 99 ; Adjust disjuction strength : New strength = (disjuction cost*xx/yy)

Two more that'll be included in the next version of my mod :
Make mana and gold treasure picks actually spend the amount of treasue points as the amount of gold/mana added instead of a fixed 100 for a random amount between 10-200 (magic.exe)
39E81-39E95
2B 7E FA 90 90 90 ... fill the rest with 90
39EC7-39EDC
2B 7E FA 90 90 90 ... fill the rest with 90
Make Book/Retort not remove the rest of the treasure (magic.exe) :
3A0DF : 7E->EB

AI combat casting „randomness“ factor. The higher the more random AI spell selection will be, the lower the more determined.
BB82C : 14 → xx
Counter Magic, only countered spells reduce power, successful or player cancelled ones do not
8379A : B8 -> CE
Counter Magic power loss after spell
8395F : FB -> xx as a negative number (FB = -5)
Node countering power
83A27 : 32 -> xx