this post is copied from post 853, 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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RE: the isolation tech (event) . . .
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Basically the Isolation is the event that cuts off the Colonists from Earth. Whether that is because of problems Earthside, sabotage Lunar side, or something else we never specified. That event changes the transfer of He-3 to Earth for food to a total need for the Moon to be self-sufficient.

the isolation event/tech occured so early in the game I hardly missed the He-3.

however now that you have explained what the isolation event/tech signifies, this could be the event that triggers the alien artifacts that lead to moon religions. :ninja:

Do we even want the Isolation Event anymore?

This has nothing to do with the tech tree, but it's important to think about.

As far as the tech tree is concerned, I love the first era and the second isn't bad. If we change the scope of the mod then we'll need to alter the techs as well, but the "Survival" era isn't bad, except for how easy it is to actually survive. ;)

Mmm, Let's keep the Isolation event, but to make things easy we could simulate provisions arriving from Earth through a GP (specialist) prior to the event. Once Isolation occurs, this GP disappears.
I'm starting to think it might be best to begin anew, and incorporate the stuff that looked worthwhile.

Starting anew is a bit scary since we don't have a python guy. :scared:

Are there any complete XML files you think could be salvaged?

Do you know which python files do what in the SotM mod? :p
The only thing sofar that would need python is for a revised moonmap creator (IMO) and an event manager.
As far as I know at least, can you think of other stuff that needs python?

Isn't the Isolation Event python or simply an XML cutoff?

What about the turrets? Unneeded?
Attrition?
Starter Civics? Are they python?

I don't even know what an Event Manager is!

this post is copied from post 999, page 50, of main SotM mod forum.

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

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:strength: re: barrenness on the Moon . . .

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An opinion:
I think, since so few units are available and the Moon is such a barren place the mod should be centered upon survival of humanity after some kind of apocalypse on the motherworld.

No need for fancy advanced stuff IMO, just the gritty stages of becoming viable again and perhaps seek out better horizons.

this would involve a total rework of the mod. as it stands now FOOD, not barrenness is the dominant theme. as I have discussed previously FOOD springs out of nothingness in this mod althought the AI cannot seem to figure out how to do this.


as I have also discussed previously the Genetic Screening civic should be adopted on turn one since it enables the eng specialist for every tile without limit. this places the human player at an immense advantage over the AI.

only once it is horribly losing does the AI check out the civics of who is beating it and adopt them.


===========================

the mod originally intended for the break off from earth to be a radical departure. however the first time I played the game, admittedly on a non-moon map, I did not even notice this happen. later plays on the moon based maps were hardly more notable in life before and after the break from earth.

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woodelf mentioned (in post 985) "eras" of the game in response to your comments.

the game still has the space race to Alpha Centauri enabled although it does not make any gamesense. if the space race is to be a final era after the break from the earth the space race needs to have Mars, not Alpha Centauri, as its destination.

another idea for a third and final era would be for a building program to make the particular civ on the Moon militarily defensible against attack ala SDI. once defensible the victory condition would be enabled. (this would involve a massive overhaul of the code for the space race.)

the most complex idea for a third and final era that occurs to me is to finally meet the aliens who left the debris behind (goody huts only found on the moon based map). the building program could culminate in a language translator and space port to welcome the aliens. once all the alien welcoming structures and technologies are built the victory condition would be enabled. if an alien era ending is pursued vanilla civ 4's religion could be introduced into the mod earlier in the game as being various sects from various alien races. this would certainly give the game a more sf overall feel.

Do we even want the Isolation Event anymore?

This has nothing to do with the tech tree, but it's important to think about.


from my point of view the tech tree and the game eras are inextricably linked. hence I have renamed this thread to incorporate both.

if a lengthy discussion of the number, quality, and type of game eras is to ensue we could of course start a new game era thread. however this way we permanently document from the start what overall parameters were used to constuct the tech tree.

vanilla Civ 4 of course has four eras, though none intended by as transformative as an Isolation Event.


As far as the tech tree is concerned, I love the first era and the second isn't bad.

If we change the scope of the mod then we'll need to alter the techs as well, but the "Survival" era isn't bad, except for how easy it is to actually survive. ;)
this is the first time I have read anyone in these posting forums say that the first era of the SotM mod needs to be "very tough" to survive. this new concept needs a lot of exploration in order to flesh out.

for convenience we will call this idea "Disaster World" or DW for short.

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does this mean some of the starting civs will usually not make it in DW and die out fairly rapidly?

the first corollary to the DW concept that springs to mind is that DW rules out barbarian civs. if the moon is that harsh a mistress they would never be there at all - unless of course they were aliens descending from spacecraft.

if the colonists were struggling that much this would imply that they would not have the resources to change their civics until after the isolation event (IE).

I am not sure what player reaction would be if theirs was one of the civs that did not make it. would it be possible to start over (unlike vanilla Civ 4)?

in the past there has been discussion in these forums of meteor storms, solar flares, and other disruptive events. the DW scenario would by definition have to have a lot of these types of events. even after the IE such disasters would always loom and there would have to be techs available to research that would prevent disaster from striking on a random basis.

there has also been past discussion in these forums of the idea of using subways instead of roads due to the moon's harsh environment. this would also be a natural corollary to the DW scenario.

before I ramble on more about DW I want to make sure the whole development team buys into the concept of a rough start.

this would of course mean a virtual rewrite of the code from the ground up, and so is not a choice to be made lightly.

===========================

at this point if we are indeed working from a blank state, we need to propose competing ideas for the various eras of the Moon. we also need to rapidly decide if Aliens will actually be a part of this mod. for lack of a better description I now will call the Final Era "Alien Event" (AE) since if aliens are encountered, the last era will be the most important in terms of contacting them.

to sum up, the scenario for a set of three succeeding eras currently on the table is

DW -> IE -> AE

if the development team buys into this, then we can start fleshing this three era scenarios out. however I am sure the other developers out there have other ideas about the number and nature of eras for the SotM mod.

my own preference is definitely for IE and AE. I cannot yet envision how a viable DW would work.

Okay, here's a proposal for a beginning of the tech tree:

We use most of the 'future' techs from the civ4 tech tree. Composites, Fiber Optics, Ecology (perhaps rename this one), Genetics and Robotics.
Genetics could be the starting point for Low-G Medicine, Ecology+Composites for Hydroponics (glasshouses), Robotics for Lunar Mining and so on...

This to simulate our Earthly origins, and the solutions we find on an inhospitable moon with this technology as a basis. :)

Ouch. Re-doing the tech tree will be painful.

Are you volunteering? :)

I guess I am. ;)

Super!

Of course that will bugger up my buildings and units XMLs, but that's okay. ;)

Admittedly, I've been concerned about the transition from having the tech to colonize the Moon to needing to be independent. It's a tough transition...

On an inhospitable body like the moon, independency is more related to politics and social settings then other things. A colony by definition needs to be self-sufficient over time when it grows too big.

Btw, I checked your new technologies xml and it buggered all the techlabels?

Btw, I checked your new technologies xml and it buggered all the techlabels?

Did you put the new text file in the text folder or did I forget to add that in the rar?

I did put it in the technologies folder, yes.

Well the Text file belongs in the Text folder. :p :hmm:

Oh wait, there's only a technologies.xml file in the download. So there should be another to let it work?

In other news, 20 techs and counting! :D

The Text files tells all of TXT_KEYs what to say. My bad.

Here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/32561/CIV4GameTextInfos_Techs.rar) it is.

Cheers! :D

Erm, tell me again what your changes should show? I see no difference at first sight?

Do you have TXT_KEY errors? You shouldn't.

Does the pedia say anything, does the strategy say anything?

Okay, here's a proposal for a beginning of the tech tree:

We use most of the 'future' techs from the civ4 tech tree. Composites, Fiber Optics, Ecology (perhaps rename this one), Genetics and Robotics.
Genetics could be the starting point for Low-G Medicine, Ecology+Composites for Hydroponics (glasshouses), Robotics for Lunar Mining and so on...

This to simulate our Earthly origins, and the solutions we find on an inhospitable moon with this technology as a basis. :)

I have proposed a to-do list that prioritizes mod updates based upon a series of mod revisions scaling up in complexity of changes that are needed.

this proposed a to-do list is post #3 in the Plans thread -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5291741#post5291741

under the framework I have proposed the revised tech tree can wait until version 0.23a is cleaned up enough to rekindle interest in this mod by the greater Civ 4 community.

implenting the changes I itemize just to fix version0.23a is going to take awhile. during that period of time the new era framework and tech its resulting tech tree can be worked on in parallel, but not intended for release in the mod until the major patch to 0.23a is completely finished.

Deep down I think we always planned on "polishing" what we had done and then restarting using some of the old and a lot of experience from what works and doesn't.

We definitely need to rekindle some interest.

Guess it has to come out sometime, so why not now?

Joelwest, I have the impression you seem to think you'll just post your ideas and priorities around and expect us to follow them blindly, which seem to boil down on debugging the mod at present, and adding some of yours "wannahaves" like aliens and a religion based on some "alien progenitor" ideal.
I tell you here and now I have no intention to do such thing! In my view, this mod as it is, is a failure. It needs to be rethought for the most part simply because the original coders who based the already done part on their ideas are gone and we simply cannot know what the existing code is meant to become later on.

Guess it has to come out sometime, so why not now?

Joelwest, I have the impression you seem to think you'll just post your ideas and priorities around and expect us to follow them blindly, which seem to boil down on debugging the mod at present, and adding some of yours "wannahaves" like aliens and a religion based on some "alien progenitor" ideal.
I tell you here and now I have no intention to do such thing! In my view, this mod as it is, is a failure. It needs to be rethought for the most part simply because the original coders who based the already done part on their ideas are gone and we simply cannot know what the existing code is meant to become later on.

fine by me.

the priority list should be adjusted to indicate what we need to do and the order it needs to be done.

if you do not think it is correct or you have an entirely different vision, please post this.

my concern is not that my "vision" be used but that the more pressing work is done before the less pressing work, ie who is going to play traffic cop?

Hello guys, here are some thoughts on game eras and plot:

Era 1: Colonization

Why are we here?
Mining!

What do we do?
Attempt to control as much of the Resource as possible, and sell it to earth.
Focus on finding and exploiting mining opportunities.
Technology focuses on improving exploitation of the Resource.
Expansion is easy, but limited.

Victory is achievable in this era through conquest or near-monopolization of the resource

Most of the moons surface is useless at this point, as it is not near the Resource.

This resource is now VITAL to the advancement of Earthly nations and peoples and the activities on the moon have a profound impact on the politics on earth.

As time goes on, earth becomes more and more dependant upon the resource and they will war over control of it. Earth Stability is influenced by the balance of the resource getting to earth. Profits increase as stability decreases.

If the resource transport to earth is the same for all moon-colonies than earth will destabilize slowly. If there are unbalances in resource transport to earth it will destabilize quickly because of attempts to get more of the resource by nations/groups that get less. If the resource transport to earth becomes extremely unbalanced (monopolized) it will stabilize the earth again because one faction will be have all the power.


Era 2: Survival

Political destabilization on earth has caused a cataclysmic war, destroying the earth and stopping all trade with it.

Why are we here?
There is nowhere else to go!

What do we do?
Trying to survive without our main source of income, food

Focus on surviving the challenges now faced.
Technology focuses on self sufficiency, defense, exploiting other available moon resources. New tech tree Trunk opened up with ties to previous techs.

Barbarians begin now, as refugees fleeing the Earth from earth orbiting stations and from the planet itself. Debris, rocks and radioactive debris rain down onto the moon from earth orbit.

New ways to utilize the resources are developed and expanded. new areas of the surface become useful as they contain resources now desired. Still large areas Unusable, unexplorable.

Conquest/domination remains as only victory condition, aided by the likely destruction of several unfit opponents by barbs and disasters.


Era 3: Civilization

Society has passed a threshold and is no longer struggling for survival, methods of food production and distribution are available and in place. Societies can concern themselves with less urgent needs.

Cultural achievements begin to be useful. Numerous wonders available.
Cultural and diplomatic victory conditions come into play.
Deep mining of the moon is in full force and most of cities is deep underground to protect from radiation/meteor.

With survival behind, man's thoughts turn again to greed.
Most of the useable surface will be built-up and resources on the moon will begin to look scarce.
Wars for monopolization of the moon's limited resources scale up.
International conflict is essential to this era.
Weapons capable of scarring the surface (planet busters) are produced again.

Era 4: Invasion!
Powerful aliens attack the moon to destroy what is left of mankind, which they see as a sort of parasite destroying worlds. (We did destroy earth after all) The escape of man onto other bodies becomes possible as well, with Alien technology. Man must spread out onto other planets/systems so we don’t get exterminated by them.
Space race victory enabled.
Triggered by some level of ecological destruction on the moon. terrain improvments, planetbusters, population, etc.
New tech tree Trunk based on Alien technology opened up with ties to previous techs.
Technological breakthroughs allow unheard of abilities.


Alternative Era 4: Transcendence
The No Aliens option.

It is discovered that the Moon can, like the earth before it, Die.
Either through mans folly, stressed placed on it by earths destruction or premature expansion of the sun into red giant, or whatever we want. The escape of man onto other bodies becomes paramount.
Space race victory enabled.
New Technological "save the moon" victory also enabled via tremendous research and acquisition of key resources and location on the moon.
Technological breakthroughs allow unheard of abilities.

Damn AA, that sounds like what we want to do with this mod. :thumbsup:

I'll have time to really read it later on, but I'm glad to see you here man!

This is really, really what we want to look into for the BtS version. Very nice layout AA.

This is really, really what we want to look into for the BtS version. Very nice layout AA.

I propose to you this first era picture:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/34626/SotM_Era01.jpg

I will continue to release all the eras... My idea is to represent a terraforming of the moon through the eras...

:)

Hey Frenchman, nice pictures but could you keep in mind that the Moon has no atmosphere? ;)

Hey Frenchman, nice pictures but could you keep in mind that the Moon has no atmosphere? ;)

:lol: That's right... I imagine that the terraforming will re-create the atmosphere... ? So first picture without atmosphere and more and more atmosphere with wind and dust... etc..:)

I'd say there's an important design decision here:
Will we terraform the Moon,
or do we live in pressurized buildings and vehicles?


My opinion is that we would not attempt to terraform the moon at all until the very last era of the game. We simply wouldn't have the resources to do it.

Nice pic frenchman! :thumbsup:

My thoughts exactly AA. Terraforming comes late in the game if at all for now. We could keep adding eras if we have to because of the potential this mod has.

:lol: That's right... I imagine that the terraforming will re-create the atmosphere... ? So first picture without atmosphere and more and more atmosphere with wind and dust... etc..:)

Frankly, the Moon will never be able to hold an atmoshpere. Its gravity is too low for that.

We can come up with ways around silly phisical reality.
Buried gravity generators, orbital antigravity satilites, EM forcefields, a giant glass greenhouse around the whole moon, whatever we want.

The main question is if we want terraforming or not.

Frankly, the Moon will never be able to hold an atmoshpere. Its gravity is too low for that.


I agree with Alazkan... Even if Geomodder is totally right... It would be funny to terraform moon, adding forest and other nature things, progressively during the game..

Technology will allow these things if we so choose. :)

Technology will allow these things if we so choose. :)

New era picture added without atmosphere... Little bit sad...:sad:

New era picture added without atmosphere... Little bit sad...:sad:

The first era won't be happy frenchman. That pic looks great. :goodjob:

Now that's what I call Reality. :goodjob:
Perhaps frenchman should work on a Marsmod? :mischief:

Second era: with the beginning of agriculture....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/34626/SotM_Era02.jpg

And now...? terraforming or not ?
Personally I would vote for terraforming (because I would like a beautiful atmosphere color ;) )

;)

Beautiful pic frenchman. I hope someone knows how to make this mod use them!

woodelf: Can't be too hard, Vanilla has era splash-screens in it already. should be able to resize the screen and link to the new image.


frenchman: I think the next era shot shouldn't have teraforming yet, but could we get some environmental destruction? I'm thinking gigantic open pit mining and slag heaps. Also some grav-tube or monorail transportation system could look nice.

Some really ugly refineries maybe as well? Something to extract He-3 if we're still going that route.

Yes, Mining > Agriculture > Industry > Lunaformation makes lot of sense !

Yeah, that's more like it! :goodjob:

Hello,

This is the third era...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/34626/SotM_Era03V2.jpg

:)

It looks a bit copy/pasted on the right side of the pic, from the inside edge of Earth onwards.
Also, could the monorail look less like an aquaduct?

It looks a bit copy/pasted on the right side of the pic, from the inside edge of Earth onwards.
Also, could the monorail look less like an aquaduct?

New version posted...

Yes, much better! What's the dome with the red support structure around it supposed to be?

Yes, much better! What's the dome with the red support structure around it supposed to be?

I imagine an improved structure... Laboratory, factory... to simulate the fact that the civ progress...
An now ? beginning of the terraforming... ? ;)

Okay, your call. :)

Some pretty stuff frenchman. :goodjob:

What if the Isolate era gave the Moon a thin atmosphere?

The Isolation Event(s):
A> Conventional War. Small numbers of barbarian earth troops start appearing on the moon and raiding.

B> Nuclear War. Huge numbers of fleeing humans arrive: Swarms of Barbarians appear.

C> Earth Flare. An unknown weapon is used. The Earth glows, brighter than the sun, and then it vanishes. The Earth's atmosphere is mostly left behind.

This atmosphere falls towards the moon. Massive destruction from plasma-hot atmosphere destroys most improvements outside of cities. Only some of it is captured, but enough to give the Moon 1/3 Earth-Normal pressure.

And thus begins Isolation. The Earth is no longer availiable to export to, but you now have an atmosphere to work with.

That's a wild idea Yakk. Is it something that could conceivably happen?

Destroying Earth once and for All : I'm not sure if it si the best way to go regarding Victory conditions and Customers friendlyness.

I don't think it would do good things for the ability of the moon to stay a constant distance from the sun. I have visions of the moon hurtling out of orbit into the sun or into the ice depths of interstellar space.

I think that if SotM goes beyond 5-6 eras we'll eventually make an atmospheric generator tech.

Atmospheric generators? By that time the Lunies will construct a Dyson sphere! ;)

It would require an insane level of technology to pull off. Super-science. And leaving the atmosphere behind (and a breathable one) without leaving behind a rididulous amount of vapourized earth-stuff is pretty unbelieveable.

The idea would be that someone used a super-science ultimate weapon, and it was really ultimate. Nobody need know how it works: perhaps the aliens don't even know, and the reason why they end up attacking the moon is that they are really really afraid.

...

So the aliens are watching us. Why? Because that is what they like doing.

99.99% of societies blow themselves up. 99.99% of the rest build simulated universes and fall into them. The aliens are the only species that actually went outwards.

So they are here to see what path humanity follows.

Then humanity makes the earth disappear: something that hasn't happened before. Because it happens before the final death-throes, some humans on the moon survive.

The aliens watch: how did humans do it? Are they going to do it again? What does this weapon mean to their belief that other races are harmless?

The Isolation and Flowering eras pass. At this point, the Aliens decide that the Moon folk don't know what happened either. So they decide to send probes to gather information on humanities' technology, to see if they can figure out how we did it.

This is the era of invasion. To the Lunarians, it looks like an attempt at conquest: but as you develop the plot, you learn this isn't a serious attack, but just information gathering. It still results in many cities being taken over by the Aliens, and the Aliens intend to sterilize humanity after they learn what they want to know.

The Aliens don't do this, so they are bad at it. Humans steal alien technology. This makes the Aliens panic even more, so the war heat up.

Eventually, Humans either contain the Aliens on the moon, or drive them off of the moon. In either case, that isn't enough. There are other Aliens in the solar system, building at an exponential rate. And there are Aliens elsewhere in the Galaxy, who the local aliens are reporting back "holy crap **** danger".

(which would make an interesting vingette:
Alien Language Translation
"Holy crap **** danger" -- AI neural net translation of the first intercepted Alien interstellar broadcast, recorded shortly after the Isolation event.)

So humanity has to build an interstellar spacecraft, and start to spread itself.

...

Wonder ideas: Mars Colony Base, Europa Colony Base, etc could all be wonders you build during the Invasion era. The resources the colonies send back would be the benefit of the wonder.

Did Frenchman ever uploaded his era screens (see previous pages in this thread) to someone? I see the pics here, but nowhere a link...

:hmm:

I'll send him a PM.