this post is copied from post 841, page 43, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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great generals are created on a regular basis during a war . . .
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The great general seems slightly out of place, but one of them did appear after a (if I may say so) particularly fine burning of an enemy outpost. I wouldn't like to see one appear naturally as part of the Great Person chance, that doesn't seem to me to be appropriate for early colonization Luna.



the game I am playing certainly generated a lot of them since I was under attack by two AI opponents for a long time. they are treated as a GP variety and so can start a Golden Age in combo with other GP units of a different type (same as in vanilla Civ 4).

this post is copied from post 846, page 43, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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what is the point of the military engineer unit? . . .
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IIRC, the engineer can build lunar fortresses as well. Now if only the Military engineer could make those? Guess the same could count for other military installations like radar towers and such.


it was unclear from the Civilopedia descriptions whether the engineer and the military engineer both build all available improvements.

what follows is a summary of the behavior of this unit -



1) today I found out the only difference in the two units when using a non Moon-based map is that it is harder to kill a military engineer since he is level 3 in power.

2) the military engineer cannot build a customs outpost to improve a resource tile so it yields coins. this is true whether or not a Moon-map is used. this is surely an unintentional bug in the current patch 0.23.

3) in a non Moon-map based game hills are available, and a military engineer also cannot build a customs outpost on a hill tile.

4) in a Moon-map based game the military engineer can build forts wheareas a normal engineer unit cannot. (in a non Moon map based game neither unit can build forts.)

this post is copied from post 851, page 43, of main SotM mod forum.

my later posts in this thread will try to parse this material for development work.

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the lowly engineer is currently the Great Engineer GP unit . . .
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hi
The engineer specialist produce a Great person a Engineer (normal worker in your Mod) not a Great Engineer.


this is not a strong balance issue in the current version of the mod 0.23.

since Genetic Screening is available as a Special non-time expiring civic from the start of the game, most players will use this civic the entire game.

the game play pattern I developed for myself was to create ALL eng specialists for my workers unless there is a tile which is a flood plain or resource tile. (for a non Moon-map version of the game, my workers also worked hill tiles.)

a city will max out around pop nine or ten unless having one of the above tiles.


(NOTE: islands in non Moon-map version of the game create additional pop with the Ion shield improvement putting food in its surrounding dust sea. this additonal pop is not available in a Moon-map version of the game since none of the skimmers can be built to reach such remote islands.)


as a city starts to max out around pop nine or ten I slowly switch the eng specialists to artist, scientist or merchant specialists as enough hammers now come from powered manufacturing plants.

so for my "developing" cities any great persons produced are always engineers. from the perspective of game balance, the relative lack of power for the engineer GP unit reflects the fact the city is still developing.

however I will admit a mere engineer unit is too lowly a unit to provide any real help to the gamer, so there is a balance issue here that needs to be addressed.

my proposed fix to this Great Engineer GP balance issue is to for the created unit to be a slightly more powerful version of the military engineer who does not found a new tech like other GP's, but functions like the standard engineer worker - maybe with a power level of five?

:spear:

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in my more advanced cities where the population has maxed out and no more significant improvements are left, I use artists, scientists, or merchants as the specialists.

there is a different balance issue here that needs to addressed.

artist and scientist specialists max out at four, but merchant specialists max out at only two. this limitation is felt most when the tech tree is ended as merchant specs are needed to generate income coin. :hammer2:

my proposed fix to this balance issue using the current improvements available is for the digital stock exchange to add the possibility of two more merchant specialists.

an alternative is to add another merchant type of improvement such as a grocer or supermarket (or both) that provide the opportunity to add merchant specialists.

four artist specialists are only available in a non Moon-map based version of the game where a Wonder creates a free theatre that can be duplicated. a fix to this is to disallow such duplicate buildings and create a new tech or two that adds the ability to create up to four artists. perhaps this could also be implemented as a civic, but preferably not a "special" civic since Genetic Screening is a must.

Great People and Specialists were never worked on at all in this mod.

I'm open to any suggestions.

Great People and Specialists were never worked on at all in this mod.

I'm open to any suggestions.

there was a plan for these units, it just was not fully realized.

do we increase the max number of merchant specialists?

do we replace the common engineer unit as being the unit generated by Great Person Points?

do we add an emergency civic similar to Genetic Screening that gives unlimited artists, scientists, or merchants?

the answers to the above questions would flesh out the original plans for these units.

or we could create entirely new types of units from scratch.

until we decide on an era framework that generates a revised tech tree we are working in the dark.

I'm open to whatever you want joel. I've never worked with either much and don't want to think myself thinking about this right now. It's of huge importance because a Specialized economy without working tiles will an option in the gameplay, but I'm leaving it for a volunteer. :p

Geo (or anyone) - aside from the worker are there any units worth keeping graphic-wise?

I'm going down through the units section and grabbing what's available.

With some .nif work -and reskins, there's the scout-with-helmet, the worker-with-helmet, 3 types of infantry with different helmets. this reskinned missile launcher with the cool gun. Also, recently there's a futuristic tank with a cool plasma effect, and in the SotM modpack thread, IIRC, someone place a more or les pink rover with a gun. Don't recall if it had animations. The helmeted units I have available on my comp, if you don't have them tell me, I'll put them in the upload.

There's a bit more, but I can't recall it out of hand.
Definitely NOT the Star Wars colony pod, please! ;)

O yes! Last month or in February someone reskinned the Chinese Canonnier in a scifi unit. Could be used as a sort of anti-mobile unit.

Damn, I had already added the Sandcrawler. What do you want as the colony pod? My SMAC pod?

I've found 10 or so other units so we should be okay through the first two eras.

Yeah, Garret's last three units are going in.

Damn, I had already added the Sandcrawler. What do you want as the colony pod? My SMAC pod?

I've found 10 or so other units so we should be okay through the first two eras.

Oh, I had this fantasy about a lunar lander-alike unit... and it would work abit like an airmission. It lands within its range and founds a colony. Simple as that. :mischief:

That's for the BtS version. :p

Then by all means, add the sandcrawler for the vanilla version. :p

Perfect. I knew you'd come around.

I'm finding lots of cool stuff so the first two eras should be unique art.

I'm open to any suggestions regarding units.


1)
the power 12 tank in the new mod ver 0.24 is broken. upon creation it continues to glow and will not offer unit promotions. it is unclear whether it heals after combat since healing cannot be selected after it is damaged.

2)
the civ flags for UBI and ESA are both have the same color blue background, so when UBI invaded me as ESA I could not easily tell which unit belonged to which civ. I have not checked all the flags, but perhaps a new thread needs to be started whose first post details the flag design for the current civs/leaders. this first post can then be updated as the flag colors change or new leaders are added.

the following is a link to where I stopped in my ver 0.24 game -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/75869/ESA_Gerard_AD-0236.Civ4SavedGame

Geo - Will the colony ship idea we had work in BtS? Did they improve airdrop missions so we can launch the ship x tiles and have it colonize right there?

The first thing (dropping) is surely possible. The second needs testing. If movement and drop mission are separate we could always give this unit the drop capability without movement, so nothing but founding a base could be done with it. This might turn out to be an SDK or python thing tho.

Do you forescast to use the Units of Next War like the Cyborg? and tha buildings like Archology?

Do you forescast to use the Units of Next War like the Cyborg? and tha buildings like Archology?

I have yet to even see them to be honest. If they'll look good then I'm sure we should. Would skins on either of these increase our units and buildings 2 or 3 fold as well?

Preview of the units which could be used and the archology (shield of the city, here the 3 levels)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/34626/PRE2.jpg

Is there a thread with all the Mod presented? For example, the story, the civ with the leaders, the techs, the units etc... All this in one thread to have a global view of the project? Like the one of Kael for FFH2...

Preview of the units which could be used and the archology (shield of the city, here the 3 levels)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/34626/PRE2.jpg

Thanks for this frenchman. Lots of stuff we can use and reskin there.

Is there a thread with all the Mod presented? For example, the story, the civ with the leaders, the techs, the units etc... All this in one thread to have a global view of the project? Like the one of Kael for FFH2...

Sadly no, there isn't. Way back when this was JBG's brainchild and the rest of us simply made the mod work. Even after he went AWOL none of the rest of us wanted to mess with his ideas. I guess now we could.

Are you volunteering? :) Basically any civ, leader, anything can be changed into what we want it to be now.

Thanks for this frenchman. Lots of stuff we can use and reskin there.

Like you didn't already know this existed! :lol:

Are you volunteering? :) Basically any civ, leader, anything can be changed into what we want it to be now...

Yes Sir !!!:salute: I'm volunteer !!

Let me some days and I will propose to you a first draft...

Terrific news! Welcome aboard. :)