Old Vet Questions

[random8401]

Hey guys, I recently started Black & White up again.  Last time I played it was around the time it came out, I managed to get to world 4 and gave up cause the endless fireballs and lightning storm.

My problem was pet training, I had a tiger pet and didn't train him well.

Anyways, on to the topic at hand.


1.  I've raised a good creature, (Horse).  I'd like him to spam wood and food miracles, yet all he really does is cast water on shrubs (which don't grow by the way).  I thought it might be a good idea to avoid teaching him the water miracle, but then he can't defend himself from fireballs.  Hence my issue.

I've spent alot of time with the leash of learning tied to the storage center, showing him and rewarding him when he casts, but he still likes to wonder and water.

2.  Since he's a good creature, I find it hard to rely on him to convert villages.  He'll impress time to time, but he really just likes to cast that damn water miracle and sleep.  Is there a better way to train your pet to build influence?

3.  I saw some creature fighting maps in the download section, whats the point of these?  Combat is manual.  I have to click and gesture for the fights.  I don't see how they'd help me deal with Leyths's wolf.

4.  Just any pet questions that could help me build up a perfect goodie pet that will food and wood my villages, convert nearby villages, and handle themselves when they wonder near enemy gods and get lightning bolted.

5. {EDIT}  Additionally, is it possible to edit creature mind files, where you can set greed/playfulness to 0 instead of trying to "train" it in game? (Thanks)


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Some other questions,

1.  Are there any Civilization-Scale *HUGE* maps out there for download that feature 2-3 of each village type and 3 or more gods.  For week long game sessions?  I'd much rather play one BIG large game that had a little of everything, than mini scenarios which feature small bits here and there.

2.  How exactly do you tell if your wonder is "Max" size?  Is the theory: Regular Wonder vs Huge Wonder with Artifacts, or is there something more?

3. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT FLOATING LHAMA!?!?!

 

[fenton_pat]

1.  I've raised a good creature, (Horse).  I'd like him to spam wood and food miracles, yet all he really does is cast water on shrubs (which don't grow by the way).  I thought it might be a good idea to avoid teaching him the water miracle, but then he can't defend himself from fireballs.  Hence my issue.

I've spent alot of time with the leash of learning tied to the storage center, showing him and rewarding him when he casts, but he still likes to wonder and water.

When it comes to getting him to use miracles, you have to show him yourself rather than just teach him the miracle, attach him to the store house and let him figure out the rest.

For example, while holding the leash of learning (and with your creature nearby), cast wood into the store house.  Your creature should point as it he's noticed your action and will then go and do it himself.  When he does so, reward him about 50%.  He should then hopefully cast another wood miracle (assuming he has the energy).  When he does, reward him about 20-30% this time.  He should then be more likely to cast wood into the store house.  I also find that from this, he may learn to supply wood the manual way also, i.e. watering forests and bringing the wood to the store house.

You can also teach him to water the big trees using the same method and drop trees into the store house directly.  The key points here are to wait for him to notice the action you're doing before doing anything else, then rewarding him on a sliding scale when he imitates you.

If you want one action to be done more often than others, reward to a greater extent, e.g. 60% and 30% (on the second casting) for wood miracle and only 40% and 20% for watering trees.

This same trick can be applied to anything else, e.g. Food miracle.

If he still hasn't got the message, you can repeat the process until you're happy.  The one rule above all that I try not to break is to reward/punish 100% as that sends a very extreme message that's hard to undo.

2.  Since he's a good creature, I find it hard to rely on him to convert villages.  He'll impress time to time, but he really just likes to cast that damn water miracle and sleep.  Is there a better way to train your pet to build influence?

As before, he learns by imitating you.  So if you take him to a Neutral village on the Leash of Learning for example and cast flock of birds,  he'll try to copy you and so on like as I described in step 1.  Teaching him the miracle alone is not enough.  You also need to teach him how to use them by showing him. 

You can slightly discourage over-sleeping by slapping him 10-20%.  Don't go extreme on this as he may not sleep enough and become over-tired.

3.  I saw some creature fighting maps in the download section, whats the point of these?  Combat is manual.  I have to click and gesture for the fights.  I don't see how they'd help me deal with Leyths's wolf.

Never mastered this myself, but basically, your creature can learn to fight by himself.  The idea as I recall was that you'd only guide his actions as/when he needed them, but eventually, he'd start hitting on his own.  Getting him to cast miracles or do the special move though is real tricky I believe.

4.  Just any pet questions that could help me build up a perfect goodie pet that will food and wood my villages, convert nearby villages, and handle themselves when they wonder near enemy gods and get lightning bolted.

Other than what I said above, I can't really think of anything.  If your creature goes into enemy territory, you kinda need to be there with him.  Full stop.

5. {EDIT}  Additionally, is it possible to edit creature mind files, where you can set greed/playfulness to 0 instead of trying to "train" it in game? (Thanks)

Don't think so (at least not in B&W1 or CI).  There are cheat programs that let you edit their size, strength etc., but anything that must be learned has to be managed the old-fashioned way really.

1.  Are there any Civilization-Scale *HUGE* maps out there for download that feature 2-3 of each village type and 3 or more gods.  For week long game sessions?  I'd much rather play one BIG large game that had a little of everything, than mini scenarios which feature small bits here and there.

Don't think there's anything on that large a scale, but the closest things we have would be custom maps of Lands 2 and 5 (which are pretty big).  They use the same islands as in the game, but they just have standard villages to mess around with, i.e. no special scroll quests.

The problem is that if the map is too big, with lots of villages on it, the game engine won't be able to cope and slow down.  It won't matter if your machine is high spec.  B&W is a very old game and whether it needs more or not, it'll only grab the max resources it was designed to.  There were times where I built such a large village that the large number of villagers was taxing my machine.  Saving and loading became a real chore .

2.  How exactly do you tell if your wonder is "Max" size?  Is the theory: Regular Wonder vs Huge Wonder with Artifacts, or is there something more?

Once you've used 3-4 artifacts to beef up your wonder, it's pretty safe to assume you have max size.  It's been so long since I played, so I'm not sure, but a Max size Norse wonder will let you cast about 60,000 (possibly 69,000) wood.  Can someone confirm that?

3. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT FLOATING LHAMA!?!?!

You can click on him.  You would then be assigned some random positive/negative karma points.  It's just a fun little feature that you can disable in your profile if it's annoying you :: .