Here is an "after action" report I wrote for version 0.5.

http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/promotion/aa-v5.html

Please put any playtest feedback you may have into this thread!

(moved from the dev thread, which is now obsolete)

About the gas truck
They appear random after build a well in the game.This confused me sometimes.They should be produced in my mind.How about you?

I thought about this. The gas truck and also the rebuilt units like tanks appear on their own at random, without using production. For the gas truck, I hope it will be less "micromanagement" for the player. There should usually be one or two gas trucks available, even if production is tied up with buildings or other units. So it should be easier this way.

For the rebuilt units, it represents the idea that these units are already there, at the depot, they are just ruined. So there is a team of mechanics or engineers at the ruin site, cleaning and fixing the units so they work. They do not require production from the city to work.

I think it is a different approach than other games have taken; does it seem like it is bad, or more work than using normal production?

If anybody plays with python exceptions enabled, using the 3.17 patch, you will see a problem. Whenever the mod attempts to display a message on the screen, a python exception is generated about the argument types to addMessage. This happens, for example, when you use a fuel truck, or a refugee settles, or a few other actions. If you have python exceptions disabled, I am not quite sure if the right thing happens. I think if the exception fires in the middle of a status update, the rest of the status update does not happen.

So, if you use 3.17 and get funny results, this may be the reason. There is no workaround right now, except to not use 3.17. And as far as I know there is no way to "unpatch".

Unpatching can be accomplished by having two installs of Civ IV running on your machine, one at 313 and one at 317 :) I haven't had any errors in 317 with version 0.5 so far, but then I'm not running with exceptions on.

I played a full game and wrote some impressions ides down. It's a lot, so i felt like putting it in a new thread might be a good idea. We can move it back here and remove the thread again if you prefer.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=280965

On the 3.17 comment:
I played on 3.17. For me the Fuel Track worked without any problems and the message got diplayed/logged too. Hoever the AI seem to be completely unable to utilize the fuel track.
Did you see the AI refuelling units in your game ?

Unpatching can be accomplished by having two installs of Civ IV running on your machine, one at 313 and one at 317 :) I haven't had any errors in 317 with version 0.5 so far, but then I'm not running with exceptions on.

Thanks for the tip. It would be fatal if you kept getting popups; but I am more concerned about subtle problems like this. Suppose the following three python commands are intended to be executed:

perform "a"
print "b"
perform "c"

But the print fails due to this problem. Then I am pretty sure "c" never gets executed. It may not be obvious that something is going wrong, but part of what is "supposed to" happen, doesn't.

I have a thread out in the sdk/python sub-forum, if it's an easy fix I will re-upload 0.5.

I played on 3.17. For me the Fuel Track worked without any problems and the message got diplayed/logged too. Hoever the AI seem to be completely unable to utilize the fuel track.
Did you see the AI refuelling units in your game ?

Are you sure the AI had refineries?

There is a keyboard debug command you can use, alt-v, which will print some information. For each player, it prints the number of refineries, fuel trucks, empty gas-powered units, and "other" (non-empty) gas powered units. This can help see what may be the problem.

I have seen some games where the AI has (a) stacks of fuel trucks (due to no rebuilt depots) and some games where (b) the AI has stacks of empty tanks at depots (due to no refineries). I have also seen games where (c) fueled tanks are used against me.

If (a,b) happen too often and (c) happens too rarely, then I will try to tweak the AI somehow. But, I would need to know whether to tweak (a) or (b).

Yep it had refines - i seen multiple stacks - usually sitting on a depot - a couple of empty tanks and some fuel trucks. So it seems to know to send the trucks to the empty stack. It but it somehow missed the actual refuelling.

Did not seen a single moving AI tank in the game :(

Seen same thing in a city with Jeeps - Like 5 empty jeeps and half a dozen fuel trucks... Yet no refuelling

Can you give detail instructions on how to use the console stuff ? IIRC there was something needed to be changed in the ini to make the console awaiable in the first place. Once i know how to use it i can load up some of my saves and generate the needed statistics for you.

It but it somehow missed the actual refuelling. Did not seen a single moving AI tank in the game :(

That is annoying. I wish the game had a slightly better testing mechanism, so I could set up a bunch of runs and then actually measure the result. I will investigate to see what is wrong.

Can you give detail instructions on how to use the console stuff ? IIRC there was something needed to be changed in the ini to make the console awaiable in the first place. Once i know how to use it i can load up some of my saves and generate the needed statistics for you.

You don't need to do anything special to use the alt-v key. It will print to the screen. If you want to use the console to autoplay, you can do this.

1. edit your civilizationiv.ini file in my games/BTS. Where it says "CheatCode = 0" replace the "0" with "chipotle".
2. start a game
3. On American keyboards, use the "~" key to toggle display of the console.
4. You can use "CyGame().setAIAutoPlay(300)" to run 300 turns. Sadly you cannot play it after that, because the first thing the game does is kill all your cities and units.

If I misunderstood what you were looking for, please re-ask.

If anybody plays with python exceptions enabled, using the 3.17 patch, you will see a problem. Whenever the mod attempts to display a message on the screen, a python exception is generated about the argument types to addMessage.

Well, there is a bug, but not the one I thought. As Refar pointed out most of the print statements do come out correctly with 3.17. The bug is in my own code. For a couple of print statements, I was passing a player object into the print routine, instead of passing the integer index of that player. So these particular prints did not work before the patch either. This only affects the debug alt-c and alt-v print statements.

In case anybody wants to use the alt-c and alt-v statements, you will need to change two lines of python. In file CvFuryRoadEvents.py, find the two lines which call "self.gc.getActivePlayer()" and change to "self.gc.getActivePlayer().getID()".

My observation that the play might be subtly wrong is unfounded. So that cannot explain Refar's note that the AI gas units never got refueled. I will investigate more.

Here are those fuel statistics from one of my saves:

She has unfuelled units and some fuel in one place, but does not use them. Also from another info print-out i stumbled upon - those fuel trucks seem to have "City Defender" AI assigned.

Another oddity was - after just loading up the save, the satistics said 0 to everything - after skiping 1 turn it went back to normal - i guess it is updated on the turn change. Not a big deal - unless it's somehow part of the no refueling problem ;)

http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/1120/gascd4.jpg

Attached the save (3.17 !!!) if you need it.

Also attached the Python file with the fixed prints, if someone wants it. Just unpack into "Fury Road\Assets\Python" over the old file.

Overnight I ran a huge map 300 turns. Several of the AIs wound up with what Refar saw: stacks of unfueled units on depots, and stacks of gas trucks on refineries. This must not be working. That is indeed a major bug. I will work to fix it tonight.

The way python modders override the AI is to take the opportunity to force a move; it doesn't matter what UNITAI is assigned. The fuel trucks have a default AI, but my python will override it whenever it sees an opportunity. For some reason it is not seeing the opportunity, that's all.

There is another minor bug regarding reloading of games, which you have noticed and I have fixed in 0.6. There is a global data structure of information about the gas powered units, which gets initialized when the game starts. Loading a game does not count as starting a game, so the bug is the structure does not get initialized when you load. Fortunately I have a check at the end of every turn, which initializes the structure if it seems uninitialized. So, when you load a game, some things are missing until you end the first turn.

I have fixed the bug where the AIs were failing to refuel units. I misunderstood the way python handles referring to objects in one source file from another source file. It's a change I made either in 0.4 or 0.5. If you unzip the attachment into Mods\Fury Road\Assets\Python, overwriting the two files there, then it will work correctly.

I'm not going to update or re-release 0.5. I will probably release 0.6 Friday or Monday.

Thank you for the great mod. As both a Mad Max and Fallout series fan I enjoyed playing your mod very much. Thanks to those who helped with model re-skinning as well. It adds a lot of flavor.

Comments/feedback:
- works fine with patch 3.17. I was glad for that being as I had just updated from 3.13 recently.

- two headed cows (brahma) were a cool nod to Fallout that made me smile. Pure win.

- some basic instructions on which folder to install the mod into would be helpful for some of us. I figured it out easily enough, but a quick sentence of instruction would've been handy.

- consider putting a limit on the amount of tanker trucks that any player can have in play at one time, like there is a limit to how many missionaries you can have in play at any one time. Perhaps 12? /shrug I'm not sure what a "perfect" number would be. I destroyed many of my own tanker trucks as soon as they popped. Eventually I opened up the world builder to modify my cities by taking out 5 of the 7 refineries I built to cut back on the amount of tanker trucks I needed to keep destroying (I was trying to keep my unit expenses down). Likewise, I conquered many enemy cities to find perhaps only 1 or 2 units guarding the city and 4-8 tanker trucks idling inside. I am positive one of the AIs basically killed themselves by destroying their economy trying to maintain massive fleets of tanker trucks it wasn't using.

- it is incredibly difficult to keep a city happy. I'm used to playing most of my cities in a 5x5 square block so they have room to work their fat cross. With this mod a 3x3 square would have been sufficient for most of my cities. I only grew one city to pop.13 but most of them were at 9. With the lack of :) resources, limited :) buildings, and no culture slider it is hard to keep a city larger than 9-10 happy. Perhaps this is intentional?

- I've enjoyed the last three Civ4s, but this is the first Civ4 mod I've played. It takes considerably longer for enemy turns to finish than I'm used to. Is this typical of all mods?

- Would you consider different play speeds? I normally play epic or marathon, but felt like playing a fast standard game. Because this mod takes place in the modern/post modern era there is no difference. Some speed option like a 6 month turn, a 1 year turn, a 2 year turn, and a 5 year turn would help for a faster game for those who prefer to not play a marathon length session. I ended up staying up all night to finish instead :)

By my games end, half the continent couldn't be settled due to radiation from additional nuke launches. These humans just don't learn do they? Cities also seem to have extra maintenance penalties so I disbanded everything I conquered. I had my hands full trying to not go broke just maintaining my original seven cities. That left a lot of room for the barbarians to breed. I had a vast wasteland to my east which provided some very easy xp for my units. Fun and eventually challenging to keep the hordes at bay, but it felt like I was using an exploit to create super soldiers to send after the other AIs. It's hard for barbarian choppers and UTEs to stand up to SAMs and tanks. The marauders managed to punch through only a couple of times.

I never did complete future tech, and when I finally won by conquest my science slider was down at 20% just so I could support my attack army and vast border police. This will be a good mod for me to practice setting up specialist cities to keep the science and money flowing. Normally, I'm a builder and win by culture. This mod shook up my regular play patterns, and I had fun doing so. Thanks for the great entertainment. I look forward to playing it some more, and seeing future changes as well (like barbed wire fences and the SAM model switched for the twin uzi gunner!)

I've lurked here reading often enough, but this is my first post. Take that as a compliment to your mod. I had to let you know I thought it was great, and appreciate everyone's effort involved in making it.

Thank you for the great mod. As both a Mad Max and Fallout series fan I enjoyed playing your mod very much. Thanks to those who helped with model re-skinning as well. It adds a lot of flavor.

Hey, great. It's good to get positive feedback.

- consider putting a limit on the amount of tanker trucks that any player can have in play at one time, like there is a limit to how many missionaries you can have in play at any one time. Perhaps 12?

Part of this is due to a bug where the AI is not using fuel trucks right, see this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6988543&postcount=15) for a fix. For your own units, it is interesting that you were destroying trucks to keep support costs down. I will see if I can exempt fuel trucks from the support quota. I don't want players to run out of fuel trucks, maybe reducing the speed at which they get produced will help this.

- it is incredibly difficult to keep a city happy. I'm used to playing most of my cities in a 5x5 square block so they have room to work their fat cross. With this mod a 3x3 square would have been sufficient for most of my cities. I only grew one city to pop.13 but most of them were at 9. With the lack of :) resources, limited :) buildings, and no culture slider it is hard to keep a city larger than 9-10 happy. Perhaps this is intentional?

I am more of a combat guy, and I don't usually get cities bigger than 7-8. Probably I switch over to combat stacks too early, and my economy flatlines just before I win. The smaller pop size due to food is definitely intentional. For buildings, I would love suggestions about what to add; Jabie has made a few earlier in the thread.

For the culture slider, I have added that in version 0.6. If you like, you can make a one line XML change in version 0.5 to enable it. (The first Fury Road modmod?) Open notepad on file Fury Road\Assets\XML\Technologies\CIV4TechInfos.xml. Search for TECH_CIVIC_PROJECTS. Under that search for CommerceFlexible. You will find this line:

<CommerceFlexible/>

Replace that line with these lines:

<CommerceFlexible>
<bFlexible>0</bFlexible>
<bFlexible>0</bFlexible>
<bFlexible>1</bFlexible>
</CommerceFlexible>

You can make the indentation match if you want. But fortunately in XML, the indentation does not matter.

- I've enjoyed the last three Civ4s, but this is the first Civ4 mod I've played. It takes considerably longer for enemy turns to finish than I'm used to. Is this typical of all mods?

It depends on the mod, and the game situation. Part of the slower runtime may be due to big stacks of fuel trucks or tanks which the AI keeps trying and failing to use. That part I can fix by better unit limits, as you have suggested. Part of it is due to the various actual features of the game. Part of it may be due to using python instead of C++ for the features. I did an experiment on this before and turning off all the python only made the game 8% faster. I should redo this experiment with the new python; maybe some of the calls I am using are slow.

- Would you consider different play speeds? I normally play epic or marathon, but felt like playing a fast standard game. Because this mod takes place in the modern/post modern era there is no difference. Some speed option like a 6 month turn, a 1 year turn, a 2 year turn, and a 5 year turn would help for a faster game for those who prefer to not play a marathon length session. I ended up staying up all night to finish instead :)

Interesting suggestion. I have not played vanilla civ on other speed settings very much. I actually find I can win Fury Road faster than I can win regular civ on the same map size, so my feeling is Fury Road is "less marathon" than vanilla. I can easily make the faster speeds, but I have a feeling each one would need to be play-balanced separately, and I am not sure how much time to invest in that. I'll put it on the list, but maybe lower than some other things.

By my games end, half the continent couldn't be settled due to radiation from additional nuke launches. These humans just don't learn do they?

In version 0.6 most of the silo production will be guided missiles instead, no fallout.

Cities also seem to have extra maintenance penalties so I disbanded everything I conquered. I had my hands full trying to not go broke just maintaining my original seven cities. That left a lot of room for the barbarians to breed. I had a vast wasteland to my east which provided some very easy xp for my units. Fun and eventually challenging to keep the hordes at bay, but it felt like I was using an exploit to create super soldiers to send after the other AIs. It's hard for barbarian choppers and UTEs to stand up to SAMs and tanks. The marauders managed to punch through only a couple of times.

I think vast barb wastelands, where you can go explore and level up, fits the theme. To avoid making this exploit too strong, I kept the barb XP cap. You can only get as high as 10 XP by killing barbs and animals. I think, but I am not sure, that you get less XP if you win by overkill; so your tanks and SAMs shouldn't have been getting that much from killing barb marauders. Did you find that you were able to get above, say level 2 on those units? I could *lower* the barb XP cap, if it seems too powerful.

This mod shook up my regular play patterns, and I had fun doing so. Thanks for the great entertainment. I look forward to playing it some more, and seeing future changes as well (like barbed wire fences and the SAM model switched for the twin uzi gunner!)

Stay tuned! More units, new models, more gameplay coming soon!

- some basic instructions on which folder to install the mod into would be helpful for some of us. I figured it out easily enough, but a quick sentence of instruction would've been handy.

Does this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=184567) give exactly the information you needed? Then I will include a link to that in the next release announcement.

Some points on quantity of Fuel trucks:

You are right - it wouldn't be much fun to run out of fuel all of the time. But fuel still must be "valuable" - the optimal situation (in terms of interesting gameplay) is when the player is allways on the verge of a fuel shortage - he allways have some, but its never over-abundant. So he might be forced too choose - spending the fuel on a offensive action or better securing more supply first, moving out a attack stack now or maybe a bit later...

Some shortage on fuel will also promote the use of fuel preserviong promotions and fuel-free units - be it Infantry or those UTE

Right now the player can fight fuel shortage rather easily, by just building more refineries.

My feeling is, it might be better, to make Oil wells (those things you actually build on a ressource) produce the trucks, rather than cities. By this you would accomplish:

* Some "quantitative" property to Oil ressource - the more you have, the more wells you can build the more fuel you will have.

* Terrain improvements are more easily lost in war or due to barb activity than city buildings. So there would be a chance that the enemy can cut your fuel supply in a war. Right now he would need to pillage all your oil to do that, but with quntitative Oil, every single Well counts - the enemy pillaged one of your 3 oil fields - its 33% less fuel for your war effort.

My feeling is, it might be better, to make Oil wells (those things you actually build on a ressource) produce the trucks, rather than cities.

That is a cool idea. It is easy to implement. I will try it out.

I have never had a problem keeping all my units fueled. It's a cool idea, but if it doesn't introduce any interesting decision-making, it pretty much just adds micromanagement.

The worst part is that one truck fuels every unit on the tile... this forces metagaming behavior, where you just stack up most of your military and fuel them all with a single truck.

What if fuel trucks were buildable, could only fuel a limited number of units, and, instead of being destroyed when fueling, could return to a refinery to fill back up?


Unrelated note, but why do flamethrowers get a bonus against vehicles? It seems to me that, except maybe for ambushes in a city, they would be completely worthless. Any vehicle could easily stay out of a flamethrower's range (most frustrating was when a flamethrower took out my helicopter). If anything, flamethrowers should have a city attack bonus, collateral damage, and/or bombardment capability.

- going to DL the AI fuel tanker fix and check out round 2. Thanks! (I would have played this again tonight either way, heh :) )

- yes, that basic instruction post you linked is clear on where to install a mod file and get it started. Thanks.

- I like the idea of tanker truck supply being tied to actual an oil resource. That would reduce the tanker spam and make those resources strategically either to defend or as a military target.

- about barbarian xp: I make units in cities with barracks and usually with the vassalage policy. With the amount of barbarians out there most of my units were able to get up to 4 promotions quiet easily. The only advantage the barbarians seem to have is sheer numbers.

- Barbarian UTEs and choppers are soft targets. They'd give me a better run for my money if they had access to an advanced form of UTE or jeeps. Their most powerful unit is the marauder, which is underpowered compared to someone who has access to gunships and tanks. Settling near old city ruins really is a priority. Those units are very powerful in this world.

- Happiness. What would make you happy if you lived in a world like this? Finding a cache of medicine, alcohol, ammo, toilet paper, magazines, preserved food stuffs would boost spirits. Perhaps a couple of buildings like a distillery, casino, or a strip club could be added. A used car lot shrine, or a Stonehenge made out of old autos?

- Health. A couple more ways to boost city health. Holistic medicine, herbs, or vegetable/fruit patch. Everyone is going crazy for Crazy Bob's purple crab apples. Just like the "Sex Panther Cologne" joke in Anchorman, 60% of the time, they're 100% radiation free! How about an BBQ Iguana on a Stick vendor?

Just throwing out ideas. I'm off to enjoy round two of Fury Road!

I have never had a problem keeping all my units fueled. It's a cool idea, but if it doesn't introduce any interesting decision-making, it pretty much just adds micromanagement.

I do want to make fuel limited to the point where it is painful, but not fatal. I like refar's suggestion to make trucks on the oil well and remove the refinery building, I will try that out in my local version.

I had thought about a more complex refueling system, but I am afraid of more micromanagement. I had thought about giving each fuel truck a "gas gauge" like the other units. Each refuel action would take 1/4 tank of the tanker, and would refuel N number of units. Maybe N=6. So a stack of 6 could be refueled with one click. Then I would make the trucks a lot more rare. What do you think?

Unrelated note, but why do flamethrowers get a bonus against vehicles? It seems to me that, except maybe for ambushes in a city, they would be completely worthless. Any vehicle could easily stay out of a flamethrower's range (most frustrating was when a flamethrower took out my helicopter). If anything, flamethrowers should have a city attack bonus, collateral damage, and/or bombardment capability.

I wanted to add some more units which gave the "rock, paper, scissors" effect of multiple unit types. There is one scene in The Road Warrior where the punks are assaulting the refinery, and there is a flamethrower. It incinerates one car, I think it's a pink Cadillac. That is where the idea came from.

I agree that small arms damaging helicopters hurts believability a little. In another wargame I played, air units could only be damaged by ground units when the air unit was attacking. If the ground unit was attacking, it "could not reach" the air unit. Except for SAM type units obviously.

I do like the idea of collateral damage for these units. I will put them into a separate unitcombat (so different promotions can be applied) and allow them the collateral damage promotions.

Well, I played almost all the way through my first game of version 0.6. I have set up the depots so that after a few units, the percent of generating a unit goes down and after a few more, it stops producing. That seemed to work well. I had a burst of expansion with my first set of tanks, but then I ran out, instead of accumulating a huge pile of them.

I had exactly one ICBM the whole game. The cruise missile, which I had a lot more of, turns out to not be very useful; cities are much less common, so they are a little further apart, so I can rarely attack one city from the next. It's definitely not worthwhile to make trucks to carry them around; they might be capturable once in a great while but not enough to be worth the extra complexity.

I changed the fuel truck generation to work directly at wells, and removed the refinery building. It makes cities a little healthier. But, it seems to make "fuel truck spam" *worse* rather than better. I have to study why that is a little bit more; I greatly decreased the percent of generation while I was at it, but still each AI city I captured had a stack of like 4-8 fuel trucks. I think part of the problem is that the oil well starts generating the trucks much earlier since it doesn't need to wait for the refinery building.

I have a couple of ideas here, but I want to tune it some more before I release it. Gas truck production could slow down and stop just like depot production does now. I could also require refining technology before the trucks start appearing.

The relic appearance and transportation code is in there, but it's an unlikely event, and it didn't happen to me during the game. In the debug log I see it happened to the AI's. I'll be interested in others' feedback when I release it. The goal was to assist people with a builder strategy. But, because it is a random event, there's nothing you can do to make it happen. So it's not really part of a "strategy" so much.

I'll be away from home, but still in touch with the forum, for the weekend. Sunday night and Monday I'll try some more games. So it may still be possible to release 0.6 on Monday.

Here some ideas i get reading your post. But don't take me to serious here - you have better insight from your first hand experience.

I had exactly one ICBM the whole game. The cruise missile, which I had a lot more of, turns out to not be very useful; cities are much less common, so they are a little further apart, so I can rarely attack one city from the next. It's definitely not worthwhile to make trucks to carry them around; they might be capturable once in a great while but not enough to be worth the extra complexity.

Is it possible to create a land transport for cruise missile, that would allow to fire the missile from it ? Think missile cruiser, but land going ;) Would make those missiles useful again. (Could combine with your idea of capture-ability - the carrier unit could be to week to stand for its own.)

Also you could increase the range a bit.

One nuke sounds just about right to me :)

I changed the fuel truck generation to work directly at wells, and removed the refinery building. It makes cities a little healthier. But, it seems to make "fuel truck spam" *worse* rather than better. I have to study why that is a little bit more; I greatly decreased the percent of generation while I was at it, but still each AI city I captured had a stack of like 4-8 fuel trucks. I think part of the problem is that the oil well starts generating the trucks much earlier since it doesn't need to wait for the refinery building.

A solution here might be making the truck require a later technology.

Or applying a reversed meachnic that you did on depots - line nothing in the first 20 turns, then half probability for the next 20 turns and then normal spawn rate.

Or a Worker-turn intensive upgrade of the Oil well (Would need to be better in yield as well, ot the AI wont build it...).

Making the Oil wells dacay over time does not sound as good idea to me. It would make all fuel power units - these you got in depots and those you build in cities - useless at some point

One more issue I've noticed...

Since you start with a settled city instead of a settler, the start to the game can be extremely random. I've started in the middle of fallout with no nearby resources, or next to two goldmines and some food resources. Without being able to adjust your starting city's location, you can get really, really screwed from the start.

I understand that this is done for a "flavor" reason... some cities still exist. However, I think it can have too much of a negative effect on the gameplay. For justification for using a settler instead of a pre-set city, it's not too hard to imaging some survivors banding together and starting their own, new settlement after the missiles have stopped falling.

Without being able to adjust your starting city's location, you can get really, really screwed from the start.

Well, there is an easy exploit if you start with a settler instead of a city. You can explore around a little bit and set up your first city next to good ruins. That puts you way ahead in the race to get a depot. So I did not want that. Still, I can gather some statistics about starting positions from the map script and make some changes to normalize it. Thanks for the feedback!

You can't know which ruins are good at the start of the game, because you need a tech to revel the treasures.

But i like the fixed starting location, and the heavy variation in quality - beeing screwed from the start is a essntial part of the scenario.

You disabled most of the normalizing routines from your map script, hence the heavy variation in the quality.

Still, to prevent absolutely disastrous starts, perhaps removing fallout in the starting BFC would be a good idea - sounds logical too as the best chances for lots of survivors would be in areas not too heavily affected by direct Nuking / heavy radiation.

Is it possible to create a land transport for cruise missile, that would allow to fire the missile from it ? Think missile cruiser, but land going ;) Would make those missiles useful again. (Could combine with your idea of capture-ability - the carrier unit could be to week to stand for its own.)
would be possible (the cruisers in Final Frontier are land [the starfield is land] based missile carriers) but irrc there are problems with the AI not using land carriers.

You can't know which ruins are good at the start of the game, because you need a tech to revel the treasures.

But i like the fixed starting location, and the heavy variation in quality - beeing screwed from the start is a essntial part of the scenario.

You disabled most of the normalizing routines from your map script, hence the heavy variation in the quality.

Still, to prevent absolutely disastrous starts, perhaps removing fallout in the starting BFC would be a good idea - sounds logical too as the best chances for lots of survivors would be in areas not too heavily affected by direct Nuking / heavy radiation.

It's no fun to have a poor starting position, especially if the other guys don't. I was thinking of counting the total food and production available in the initial BFC and adding a food or mineral resource if needed.

would be possible (the cruisers in Final Frontier are land [the starfield is land] based missile carriers) but irrc there are problems with the AI not using land carriers.Yep, i was thnking there might be - there is not "MISSILE_CARRIER_LAND" unit AI iirc. Then again - i never seen the AI using a cruise missile anyway (In normal game that is)

On start location - if you want to improve it a bit more, you could jusr re-enable normalizeBadFeature (should remove fallout) and normalizeFood.
Don't make it too good tho - if the capitolos stick out in quality too much above the other possible locations, it will make rushing even more rewarding that it is anyway.

Sir! This is a fantastic mod! Found myself having a lot of fun with it, and the theme is just too cool. I'm amazed how far it's all come along so quickly...
And major congrats to the artists too, this thing is starting to look fricking incredible!

Anyway, a few comments on 0.5:

Having new units start with no fuel...I can see where you're coming from, but it really adds a micromanagement chore that perhaps isn't necessary. Having these units require access to oil in order to build could serve a similar purpose but be a little more friendly.

Also, I can't quite figure out the fuel use system. I've had units happily purr along for several turns on full fuel, but then start going to 3/4 to 1/2 to 1/4 each turn subsequent. How does fuel use work?

Ruins...they're of course amongst the best tiles to have from the start, and they make good candidates for cottages...except then when you get depots etc you have to bash half your beautiful developed cottages down. That's kinda not fun, and I would suggest limiting construction on a ruins site to salvage centre or rebuilt depot/whatever. Maybe switch salvage centre to +1hammer, +1gold to compensate a bit.

Barbarians seemed to me to come a bit late - past the point where they're a real threat and towards the point where they're more of an annoyance. I was only playing on Prince though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Visions...they're all more things that could also fit easily into civics, and it's kind of a difficult thing to shoehorn into the religion mechanic. It's also particularly difficult when you want to have factions characterised by a specific ideology as well. Final Frontier handled it quite poorly, I thought - but I think it could be done really well.

With the religion mechanic, there is kind of an aspect of fanatical ideological zeal to them (more ala SMAC, I guess), and I think you'd need to exploit this aspect or else have the whole thing come off as slightly odd.
Since the religion mechanic has a kind of evangelical flavour, simply giving them group names as if they're a more unified political movement could go a long way towards making the mechanic fit better (and differentiating them from civics more). Like Black Cactus Society or Neo-Makhnovists for anarchism, Brotherhood of Silicon for technocracy, Guild of Allied Merchants for plutocracy, Children of the Atom Dawn for a religious cult (terrible names off the top of my head, I know, but you get the idea).

My personal feeling is that you maybe want to go more all-or-nothing with something like this - either move them all to civics and use the religion mechanic for some post-apocalyptic cults or something; or really go all-out with them and give them significant society-wide effects (more like FFH), so that an anarchist society and a monarchist society would be quite different. The individual buildings someone suggested would be a good start, but adding wider civic-like positive-and-negative effects as well could really make things interesting (eg more money, less health for plutocracy etc etc). And you might also restrict certain civics, since anarchism and state property (for example) don't really go hand-in-hand...
Anyway, I have no idea how much or little you want to emphasise this aspect, so ignore my rambling if it's way off-base :p

Ridiculous nitpick: The famous Montezuma was already actually "Montezuma II" :p

Anyway, awesome stuff, and can't wait to see what 0.6 has in store!

Sir! This is a fantastic mod! Found myself having a lot of fun with it, and the theme is just too cool. I'm amazed how far it's all come along so quickly...
And major congrats to the artists too, this thing is starting to look fricking incredible!

Thanks! Over 500 downloads, and playtest comments are starting to come in.

Having new units start with no fuel...I can see where you're coming from, but it really adds a micromanagement chore that perhaps isn't necessary. Having these units require access to oil in order to build could serve a similar purpose but be a little more friendly.

I wanted to be sure first time players knew about fuel trucks. I could easily start out the gas-powered units on "full" instead of "empty". But then players might not notice the gas tank promotion and treat the units like normal ones ... till they run out of fuel halfway across the map. Which way do you think would make it easier to learn?

Also, I can't quite figure out the fuel use system. I've had units happily purr along for several turns on full fuel, but then start going to 3/4 to 1/2 to 1/4 each turn subsequent. How does fuel use work?

There is a certain percent chance (30%, modified by "less fuel" promotion) of decreasing gas each time you move. If you don't move you don't use gas. It might be better to make it "exactly three moves" instead of random. Initially I was uncertain how to save "state" from one turn to the next so I made it random. Now I have gained confidence with python "scriptdata" so I could make it non-random. What do you think?

Ruins...they're of course amongst the best tiles to have from the start, and they make good candidates for cottages...except then when you get depots etc you have to bash half your beautiful developed cottages down. That's kinda not fun, and I would suggest limiting construction on a ruins site to salvage centre or rebuilt depot/whatever. Maybe switch salvage centre to +1hammer, +1gold to compensate a bit.

Interesting, I don't usually put cottages on ruins. Usually I look for ruins which don't have anything good under them, and put recycling centers on them. Or sometimes on a silo, which I know I won't be using for a while. I guess it is your choice to build cottages on depots or not ...

Barbarians seemed to me to come a bit late - past the point where they're a real threat and towards the point where they're more of an annoyance. I was only playing on Prince though, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I haven't played on that many difficulty levels. I usually play on Noble, and I don't usually leave enough units back on defence. So I usually see a few barbarians sneaking in to destroy my improvements. Sometimes a nation may be surrounded by other nations with no unowed areas nearby; in that case I guess they may never see barbarians. It's easy to crank up the barbarian percentage, it is already a little higher than what you get with the "raging barbarians" option.

If you like, try a game with raging barbs on, and see if it makes any difference. You can use the "alt-c" key to print a little information about the number of barbs and animals; it also prints some other information so it is kind of a "cheat".

Visions...they're all more things that could also fit easily into civics, and it's kind of a difficult thing to shoehorn into the religion mechanic. It's also particularly difficult when you want to have factions characterised by a specific ideology as well. Final Frontier handled it quite poorly, I thought - but I think it could be done really well.

With the religion mechanic, there is kind of an aspect of fanatical ideological zeal to them (more ala SMAC, I guess), and I think you'd need to exploit this aspect or else have the whole thing come off as slightly odd.
Since the religion mechanic has a kind of evangelical flavour, simply giving them group names as if they're a more unified political movement could go a long way towards making the mechanic fit better (and differentiating them from civics more). Like Black Cactus Society or Neo-Makhnovists for anarchism, Brotherhood of Silicon for technocracy, Guild of Allied Merchants for plutocracy, Children of the Atom Dawn for a religious cult (terrible names off the top of my head, I know, but you get the idea).

My personal feeling is that you maybe want to go more all-or-nothing with something like this - either move them all to civics and use the religion mechanic for some post-apocalyptic cults or something; or really go all-out with them and give them significant society-wide effects (more like FFH), so that an anarchist society and a monarchist society would be quite different. The individual buildings someone suggested would be a good start, but adding wider civic-like positive-and-negative effects as well could really make things interesting (eg more money, less health for plutocracy etc etc). And you might also restrict certain civics, since anarchism and state property (for example) don't really go hand-in-hand...
Anyway, I have no idea how much or little you want to emphasise this aspect, so ignore my rambling if it's way off-base :p

I added visions mostly so the AI's can get mad at each other. The relation grid was filling with all 0's and no wars were happening. I agree it does not really have enough in-game effect. I kind of wanted to avoid specific cult names, partly because I'm not enough of a writer to come up with six backgrounds that would be different enough and sound "cool" instead of "lame".

I would like to make visions have a strong effect on AI interaction (which civics don't) and also have a strong effect on your economy (which religions don't). But the Civ developers did not anticipate that, there is no way for *religions* to affect much of anything. For 0.7 or future, I will definitely look at vision-specific buildings and units. Also, maybe I can find a way to "link" the vision choice with a specific civic in the government column. Civics can affect a lot more than religions, but I don't want the player to switch government civics separately from vision.

Ridiculous nitpick: The famous Montezuma was already actually "Montezuma II" :p

Who knew? Is III available or was there a whole string of historical ones?

Alright, some feedback from the first playtest:

(Moved from the "welcome" thread)

First of all, great idea! I've always wanted a post-apocalyptic mod. I also love the leaderhead graphics!

Thanks for the positive vote on the leaderheads. I have been working on the backgrounds, and I hope to find somebody to work on the heads themselves. They look too "medieval" to me.

Now for a few things I'm not so keen on. First, the city graphics. The ruined city graphics are a nice touch, but they "de-rendered" a few times in the playtest, so that they were just untextured baby-blue.

Yes, this is listed in the known issues. I have created a thread to look for a solution on this, and PM'd the author, but no response yet.

The tech tree is pretty short. I had already discovered everything long before the game ended. Consider adding to it.

Or making things more expensive. Both are included in version 0.6 which I hope to release shortly.

We need a real scorpion graphic, obviously.

Yes, we do. That is listed in the art request section.

The "Vision" concept is a good idea, but I'm not fond of your choice of using it to completely-replace government civics. Instead, what should be done is put in new government civics that require certain state visions to implement, like FFH.

Several people have mentioned this, see just above in the thread. I will have to figure out how it works in FFH, and/or do something similar.

Pedia text is sorely needed.

More details please? I have not tried to fill in the "background", which gives interesting real world trivia like the name of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. When you say it is "sorely needed", are there things about the game you were not able to figure out? If so what? Or is it just that some "atmospheric" background writing would be enjoyable?

Guardian has an assault-rifle fire animation with a shotgun graphic. That's pretty silly, and should be replaced with one of the other gun animations.

New graphic and animation coming in version 0.6.

There is a certain percent chance (30%, modified by "less fuel" promotion) of decreasing gas each time you move. If you don't move you don't use gas. It might be better to make it "exactly three moves" instead of random. Initially I was uncertain how to save "state" from one turn to the next so I made it random. Now I have gained confidence with python "scriptdata" so I could make it non-random. What do you think?l

I think that would make it easier to manage refueling a roving army. I was getting confused by this too at first wondering why some units were running out of fuel and being unable to move while others in the same stack where still almost full. I had fuel tankers to spare so it wasn't an issue that way, but I had to pay more attention to units gas gauges when sending them a square off the main route to go pillage, etc. ie, Will they have enough fuel to pillage and get back to the main stack?

I wanted to be sure first time players knew about fuel trucks. I could easily start out the gas-powered units on "full" instead of "empty". But then players might not notice the gas tank promotion and treat the units like normal ones ... till they run out of fuel halfway across the map. Which way do you think would make it easier to learn?
Fair point. On the other hand, I guess there's always going to be a bit of a learning curve with new mods; "vehicles need fuel" is the sort of thing new players will figure out pretty quick - I reckon it'd be outweighed by the very significant decrease in micromanagement that starting with full tanks would provide. You could always write one of those "Congratulations, you have built your first vehicle unit! These need fuel etc etc..." popups that I'm sure nobody actually reads.

There is a certain percent chance (30%, modified by "less fuel" promotion) of decreasing gas each time you move. If you don't move you don't use gas. It might be better to make it "exactly three moves" instead of random. Initially I was uncertain how to save "state" from one turn to the next so I made it random. Now I have gained confidence with python "scriptdata" so I could make it non-random. What do you think?
Hmmm.....I dunno. A little bit of randomness for something like that is cool, but it's also nice to have a vague idea of how long a unit can go without refueling.

Interesting, I don't usually put cottages on ruins. Usually I look for ruins which don't have anything good under them, and put recycling centers on them. Or sometimes on a silo, which I know I won't be using for a while. I guess it is your choice to build cottages on depots or not ...
I found that cottages were especially necessary in this mod since you don't get riverside commerce or luxury resources - and flatlands with free hammers and commerce made perfect candidates. And of course, you don't know which ones are depots or not when you're building them at the start either. So the best cottage sites have a ~50% chance that you'll have to demolish them in the future. Destroying your own cottages is traumatic, you know :p

I haven't played on that many difficulty levels. I usually play on Noble, and I don't usually leave enough units back on defence. So I usually see a few barbarians sneaking in to destroy my improvements. Sometimes a nation may be surrounded by other nations with no unowed areas nearby; in that case I guess they may never see barbarians. It's easy to crank up the barbarian percentage, it is already a little higher than what you get with the "raging barbarians" option.
The number of barbarians is fine, I reckon. I just thought they started arriving too late, once I already had a few cities and decent defences. If they started appearing earlier, even a few guys coming in dribs and drabs could be more of a real menace to the safety of your cities.

I added visions mostly so the AI's can get mad at each other. The relation grid was filling with all 0's and no wars were happening. I agree it does not really have enough in-game effect. I kind of wanted to avoid specific cult names, partly because I'm not enough of a writer to come up with six backgrounds that would be different enough and sound "cool" instead of "lame".
If you post a thread, I'm sure people will be glad to come along and brainstorm :D
But I don't think you really even *need* a backstory, beyond "this is a group that likes anarchism" or whatever. Really just a name as surface fluff to indicate that these are specific movements of people who follow a particular ideological value (with a bit of a religious-like intensity) rather than something more ephemeral. And to really make it clear why these are different from regular civics. Even something as basic as "Society of Technocrats", "Anarchist League" etc would go a long way to making it feel better-integrated, I reckon.

I would like to make visions have a strong effect on AI interaction (which civics don't) and also have a strong effect on your economy (which religions don't). But the Civ developers did not anticipate that, there is no way for *religions* to affect much of anything. For 0.7 or future, I will definitely look at vision-specific buildings and units. Also, maybe I can find a way to "link" the vision choice with a specific civic in the government column. Civics can affect a lot more than religions, but I don't want the player to switch government civics separately from vision.
I know that Fall From Heaven (in addition to its religious-specific civics) has a few effects of the religion itself - e.g Fellowship of Leaves gives a chance of forests turning to ancient forest etc. Might be something you can use there.
Is there any way to maybe do it by a "building" (separate from any "temples" you might build) that automatically appears in cities (eg town square or something) and which is replaced by eg "anarchist enclave" if it's your state value (and maybe only if the religion is present in the city)? FFH has something like that with its dwarven vaults.
Also, the religion itself can provide different bonuses other than just +1 culture in cities it's in.
There might be more, I don't really know anything much about the coding side of this game.

Who knew? Is III available or was there a whole string of historical ones?
He was the last proper one, what with the spaniards raining on the parade and all. Heh, I just looked at wikipedia and he was succeeded by a whole bunch of puppet rulers with these incredible names like Diego de San Francisco Tehuetzquititzin. So I think you're safe with III :D

I wanted to be sure first time players knew about fuel trucks. I could easily start out the gas-powered units on "full" instead of "empty". But then players might not notice the gas tank promotion and treat the units like normal ones ... till they run out of fuel halfway across the map. Which way do you think would make it easier to learn?

Fair point. On the other hand, I guess there's always going to be a bit of a learning curve with new mods; "vehicles need fuel" is the sort of thing new players will figure out pretty quick - I reckon it'd be outweighed by the very significant decrease in micromanagement that starting with full tanks would provide. You could always write one of those "Congratulations, you have built your first vehicle unit! These need fuel etc etc..." popups that I'm sure nobody actually reads.

I have to think about that some more. When fuel trucks spawned in cities it was highly likely that you would have a fuel truck lying around to fuel up your new jeep / humvee. Now it is an additional move you have to make. So maybe it is worthwhile.

EDIT: I did think down this line before and stopped. In order to give the newly built unit a full tank, I would have to require access to oil in the building city. But then, suppose you lose access to oil resources but you have a few fuel trucks in the city. I don't have any way to code a prerequisite which is "either, fuel trucks present in the city or, access to oil resource". So if I changed it to give new units a full tank, and require access to oil, then you couldn't build the unit even though you had a bunch of fuel trucks right there. The current way, you can always build one as long as you potentially might have gas trucks.

I found that cottages were especially necessary in this mod since you don't get riverside commerce or luxury resources - and flatlands with free hammers and commerce made perfect candidates. And of course, you don't know which ones are depots or not when you're building them at the start either.

I guess that is the result of your decision to get construction and build cottages, before researching salvaging. I have studied a little bit about the evolution of cities, and there are countless times a king has razed the poor section of town in order to run a nice straight royal thoroughfare.

Please see the main announcement post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=280850). Over 550 downloads, only 14,200 more needed to crack the top 20 download list. (Think big.)

Just came to the end of a small map game (5 civs). Version 0.6 btw.

The German civ won in turn 177 with a Vision victory. Small wonder since it was unopposed qua settling space on its part of the map, and I was involved in a war with the Zulu civ for some time.
2 civs were destroyed by the barbs within 30 turns I think.
I couldn't figure out how things work with those fuel trucks. In the whole game, I popped one from a bunker (goody hut), and another one popped on the oil well shortly after I connected it. After that, zip. So I had only two fuel refuel possibilities.
Although the Zulu AI had at least 4 for those few turns I had visibility in one of its cities.
Also, the AI seems to wait before fueling its vehicles. When I first approached a hostile city, all jeeps in it had an empty tank. Two turns later, its whole stack had moved out to intercept my force. :scared:

Some bugs I noticed:
The first you already know of, texture disappears sometimes from a city.
The survivor gunman fire exhaust didn't show. No 'flame' when it was firing its rifle.

The German civ won in turn 177 with a Vision victory. Small wonder since it was unopposed qua settling space on its part of the map, and I was involved in a war with the Zulu civ for some time. Well, that at least does disprove my previous rant about AI not actively spreading visions :lol:

2 civs were destroyed by the barbs within 30 turns I think.This might need some balancing. In my game a civ got eaten by barbs on Turn 2. Maybe within first 15 (Time to build a another Warrior) turns bo barbs should spawn in the immediate vicinity of the cities.

The survivor gunman fire exhaust didn't show. No 'flame' when it was firing its rifle.Thats odd - if by survivor gunman you mean that "Guardian" Pumpgun-Guy - it shows on my game.
Not sure what could make the difference here... Does he animate properly otherwise ?


------

I have a bug (?) for you as well David. Was trying out the Horseman in the game... There is something weird with the experience there...

They come out from barracks wit 0 XP. Barracks usually give +2 XP to all land units including mounted iirc. They can get XP from combat, but they do not get promoted when reaching a next level. I had one with 10 XP still level 1 with no promotions avaiable.

Apparently they are not eligible for any promotions... I am not sure, if it is a oversight or by design to prevent them from beeing too powerfull ? Even if you do not want to give them any combat related promotions by design, they should still be eligible for stuff like Medic, Rad Resi, Sentry (the one with increased line of sight). Because a unit that can not be promoted to nothing at all is less fun :mischief:

I couldn't figure out how things work with those fuel trucks. In the whole game, I popped one from a bunker (goody hut), and another one popped on the oil well shortly after I connected it. After that, zip. So I had only two fuel refuel possibilities.

I have reduced the speed at which fuel trucks spawn. Maybe too much :-) In 0.6, fuel trucks randomly spawn at each oil well. You automatically get one when you first build it, so that you can see where they come from. Each well has a percent chance per turn to spawn another one. In 0.5 and earlier, the complaint was "too many" fuel trucks. Maybe now it is "too few", hopefully with some more feedback I can get it "just right".

It is easy to modify in the python if you want to try different values. In file Assets/python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py, find the buildGasTruck function definition. Under that find the "thresh" variable. Today it is set to 25, which is 2.5% per turn. You can make it anything. There is some other code which tries to prevent huge stacks of trucks from accumulating there unused, but that may never happen anymore.

Also, the AI seems to wait before fueling its vehicles. When I first approached a hostile city, all jeeps in it had an empty tank. Two turns later, its whole stack had moved out to intercept my force. :scared:

I guess that means it just brought in a fuel tanker from a nearby well. It may be a good strategy to go around disconnecting or razing wells before attacking.

Maybe within first 15 (Time to build a another Warrior) turns no barbs should spawn in the immediate vicinity of the cities.

Good idea. I can add some code for that. At least make it more unlikely, I guess an animal could pop N plots away and beeline for the city due to some random numbers.

I have a bug (?) for you as well David. Was trying out the Horseman in the game... Apparently they are not eligible for any promotions.

Ooh, that is by mistake. When you *add* a unitcombat, you have to mark each promotion as available to that unitcombat. There were no mounted units before, and I forgot to make this big edit to the promotions file. Thanks for spotting it.

I guess that means it just brought in a fuel tanker from a nearby well. It may be a good strategy to go around disconnecting or razing wells before attacking.

What I meant was that the AI's jeep stack was unfueled while a few fuel trucks were present in the city. I thought the AI was smart enough to wait until he really needed it and then assembled as much wheeled units as it had in the same city before fueling them all at once, thus saving other trucks for later.

Thats odd - if by survivor gunman you mean that "Guardian" Pumpgun-Guy - it shows on my game.
Not sure what could make the difference here... Does he animate properly otherwise ?

Yep, I meant the pumpgun guardian. :)
It animates just fine, and the soundtrack is that of a machine pistol.

What I meant was that the AI's jeep stack was unfueled while a few fuel trucks were present in the city. I thought the AI was smart enough to wait until he really needed it and then assembled as much wheeled units as it had in the same city before fueling them all at once, thus saving other trucks for later.


I wish the AI were that smart :-) There is a routine which is supposed to run at the end of each turn, and if there is an AI tanker in the same plot with even one vehicle whose tank is empty, it should trigger the refuel action. I can put a "consistency check" in to make sure this is happening, and then try to debug from there. But I am glad that the AI "seemed" smart to you.

Yep, I meant the pumpgun guardian. :)
It animates just fine, and the soundtrack is that of a machine pistol.The sounds i had fixed today, they should be ok in next update. But i cant recreate the missing flash, so i am not sure what might be wrong.
All the other units do show effect for you ?

Fun mod :-).

However, vision victory seems too easy. I played epic mode and won on turn 224 on a standard map. It was on "Noble" difficulty though.

Here is a release question for you. I have made a number of big changes in gameplay. I have not done much playtesting yet. Should I release it and you guys can help playtest, or should I do more playtesting myself first? I will be busy the next two weeks at work, so I may not have a chance to do much of either development or playtesting.

Here are the major changes already done:

* "Safety" statistic replaces culture. Idea suggested by refar in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282518). Instead of theaters generating culture, we have buildings like walls and barracks which generate safety. Without a sufficient level of safety, the survivors will not venture far from the city. There is a "protector" specialist and "great protector". The minimum city distance is now 3 instead of 2, which gives a lower city density. The safety level for ring expansion is raised and there are fewer levels; instead of 10, 100, 500, 5000, 50000 it is now 10, 500, 30000. But that 30000 counts as legendary, three legendary cities is a safety victory.

* New method for founding visions. Previously the first player to reach a tech would found each vision ("religion"). Now there is a capitol building, available under the Diplomacy tech. This is a national wonder with a world limit of 6, matching the number of visions available. When you build the building, you can pick any one of the remaining visions to found. Each AI will aim to build the building and pick its favorite vision, or another random one if they did not get there in time. A human player who builds the capitol will be prompted for which vision they would like to choose. No civ can found more than one vision, which should make the vision victory harder. The visions themselves continue to have no specific effect on the game.

* Reduced micromanagement of fuel trucks. A gas-powered unit has 1/4 tank, instead of empty, when created. Also instead of giving a percent chance to decrease the gas level, it decreases after a constant number of turns: 4 for ground units, 2 for gunships, longer with the "less fuel" promotion.

Here are the minor changes already done:

* Added back original government civics. Original table is 5x5, 0.6 table is 3x3, new table is 5x4 (no religion civics).

* Bug fix, survivor cavalry unit was not allowed any promotions

* Added barricades, a "low wall" with barbed wire; graphics by seZereth

* Added three unique hero units, The Pilot, The Wanderer, The Tankbuster. They may randomly appear in ruin plots that you own.

* Ranged units like crossbow and flamethrower now get free promotions for protective trait

* Mapscript: remove peaks or fallout on one-plot land bridges which could isolate players; also remove fallout adjacent to any player's start position. This led to occasional "crib death" where a radioactive monster would spawn right next to a starting city and reach there before the survivor did.

* Reduced number of radio towers required to build Voice of Badlands wonder

If you'd like to release, by all means, I'll take a run at a game or two.

There are lots of changes, and you got a few people playing and posting here now, so a release might be worth it.

I have some art in the pipeline, but there will allways be something, so thi should not be a reason to delay :lol:.
I uploaded the final (so i hope) Basic UTE in the art thread, if you want to put it with the release.

OK, I have a family event tonight but I can probably put out a release (*with* the new ute, looks awesome). It won't crash, but it may not be balanced.

I was thinking more about this, and I really liked the idea of the "safety" mechanic. I *also* think that since most units are limited in number, promotions should take on a very strong role as well. I really like the Ute upgrades, and the Road Warrior upgrade :-D. Perhaps increasing the XP cap from barbarians to say, 30 instead of 10 (100 is a bit much as in FFH, but I think since there are lots of barbs, you should be able to build a few nice units off them).

Perhaps increasing the XP cap from barbarians to say, 30 instead of 10

This appears to be one of those issues where half the people feel strongly one way, and half feel strongly another. Another playtester has commented that getting XP off the barbs was too easy, and I proposed to *decrease* the XP cap. Until more votes are in, I think I will leave the cap at the default level. Of course once we have a bunch of level specific ute art, people may want more high level utes.

OK, version 0.7 is released. Download link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9999). Details (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6980106&postcount=1).

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. There are existing discussions on the vision victory in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282032) and the "safety" mechanic in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282518).

Cool. I was just thinking if i should start a (regular) civ game. Will try the new release instead :)

Not sure if this is best in the playtest thread or the vision thread. I completed a game with 0.7, and I had a surprise loss. I was in last place on points, but I was about to get heavy weapons so I had some hope. I noticed that Monty (the leader on points) had 46% vision, and 51% is a vision victory.

Two problems: (a) There was nothing I could do about it. (b) The next turn he won, there was no warning.

Increasing the threshold for vision victory, say to 67%, doesn't directly address either problem. In Gods Of Old, and probably other mods, there is an Inquisitor unit who can remove unwanted religions from a city. That would help a little, but I'm not sure how to teach the AI how to use it. It could be another Advocate mission, or a new Diplomat unit.

For the lack of warning, I see there is an iVictoryDelayTurns parameter in the XML. I will have to see if this actually provides some kind of warning on its own.

I had a similar loss on 0.6 in my other game (and a similar win - in the AAR one). I had some more warning, as i was monitoring the situation, however there apparently was nothing i could do about it.

And you are right just increasing the threshold will not help it much.

The VictoryDelay should display "X turns to victory" if someone hit the condition. However so far i only seen it for my self...

There is another possible problem: To fight my upcomming Visions loss i tried to spread other Visions in big cities that had the Winning Vision (To water down it percentage).
However those actions seemed without effect: While the % of the religions i spread increased, the % of the Winning religion did not drop...
That brings up the question: if a city has 3 religions, does each of them count 1/3 of the pop ? Or All 3 the full Pop ?

I had meant to investigate myself, but did not come to do it yet.

An inquisitor would be great to have :-). I am going to try .7 now.

Actually i think that if the % calculations work properly - crediting only partial population in cities with multiple religions - no inquisitor should be required - you can allways counter a opposing religion by spreading your own.
Seem to make more sense to me as well - if it does work.

You know what I'm not a big fan of - the starting spot being pre-settled, and the maps not generating *usable* starting locations. With the amount of plains and desert, sometimes you are stuck with a capital with no food resources and lots of plains hills. If you gave a starting settler instead of a automatic start location, you could move to a more hosiptable place. I would imagine that in a future scenario like this, people would congregate at the few "gardens of eden" with desolate wastes in between..

You know what I'm not a big fan of - the starting spot being pre-settled, and the maps not generating *usable* starting locations. With the amount of plains and desert, sometimes you are stuck with a capital with no food resources and lots of plains hills. If you gave a starting settler instead of a automatic start location, you could move to a more hosiptable place. I would imagine that in a future scenario like this, people would congregate at the few "gardens of eden" with desolate wastes in between..

I thought about this a little. The problem with giving a settler is that people can choose to explore a little and then pop down the first city next to some ruins. Even if you don't *know* there is a depot/airfield there, it is highly likely. That gives you a big leg up on getting rebuilt units.

While working on 0.7, I added some print statements into the mapscript to try to make a solid rule of what is a "bad start location". Or the opposite, what is a "reasonable start location". I did not come to any conclusion, but I agree it is a problem which needs to be solved.

Each plot in the BFC has an "unimproved" food value and an "improved" food value which is probably higher. Any kind of improvement takes a tech, which means it's not available right at the beginning.

I tried making a total of the unimproved food in the BFC. But, that's a high number and bad locations don't stand out. I tried counting if there is any surplus, unimproved food -- without a farm, only grass plus some bonus like cow counts. Those are actually pretty rare.

When I turn on the vanilla routines to help this, I get a big smear of grassland around the start position, which *really* stands out. Refar pointed out, and I agree, that if there are exactly N gardens of eden for the N players, and every other location stinks by comparison, then a rush becomes the best alternative. So I want to avoid making the starting locations *too* superior.

Can we work out the exact rule, to determine if a start position needs help?

Augh. There was a bad bug in the refueling code which I just fixed. I have re-uploaded the zipfile. If you are among the first 30 to have downloaded v 0.7, please re-download from the same link. I uploaded the new kit a few minutes ago.

While attempting to fix the slow runtime of the AI turn due to checking whether a unit can move, I added a copy of each unit type such as TANK_IMBL for "immobile". When a unit runs out of gas, I swap it for the immobile type. This didn't actually fix the runtime but it is a slightly better approach. Anyway, when refueling, it was always swapping the unit type. That is fine if it's out of gas, it replaces TANK_IMBL with TANK, which is what I want. But, if it was low on gas instead of out of gas, it swaps TANK for TANK_IMBL and gives me an immobile unit which is full of gas. Not what I wanted. It was only a one line code change.

While I was there I also changed the criterion for vision victory from 51% to 67% after a *second* surprise vision loss.

On start location. Judging the quality of a start location (any city location) in generalized terms is a difficult task.
Overall counting unimproved food is a good approach.

Very roughly:
Quality of a City ~ Unimproved Food Surplus at Targeted size.
This is so because the game will let you convert that food surplus in whatever you need (Via Working Additinal tiles, Specialists or converting Food via Whip.)

So your idea of counting the unimproved food surplus is right. What you might have missed is: if you count all the unimproved food in the BFC you are assuming city size of 20. Even in standard game, it takes a very good and a lot of time for this.
In Fury Road i did not seen a city growing past 15 so far. And i think you don't really want huge metropoles.

Maybe taking the 8 (?) best food tiles in the city and counting the unimproved food there will give you more conclusive reults. (? -> The 8 is a bit arbitrary. The smaller the number you choose the more defined, and more significant for the early game the value should be, while higher numbers (Bigger targeted cities) will give more insight in the future potential of the location.)

So your idea of counting the unimproved food surplus is right. [...] Maybe taking the 8 (?) best food tiles in the city and counting the unimproved food there will give you more conclusive reults.

I thought about that a little more. I bet the feeling "boy, this start location stinks" comes way before the city has population 8. It's more like pop 2 or 3. Maybe a good rule is to count the number of grass with fresh water, and the number of food bonus in the BFC. If the total is less than 2, then it's painful. More than that, you won't have a hard time in the *beginning*. So for each such starting position, I could add one food bonus in the BFC.

Does that match what people think of as immediately poor start locations?

I think 2 might be too low. Maybe like targeted size 4.
It might still be percieved as very bad (People tend to evaluate a cities and I.e. the capital with respect to some future potential) but a city with food surplus at size 4 can grow to the early game happy cap and support the neceserary expansion/resettling efforts from there.

Perhaps the goal is, "should be able to support city size 5 with agriculture tech". So fish, which gives food 5, counts more than fresh water grassland, which gives 3. I think the worst location I have seen, can be improved to reach that with one added food bonus, so "fixing" it would be relatively easy.

This sounds reasonable to me.

As you mention sea-food. I think a lighthouse (or maybe fishing harbour or another name) giving coastal tiles +1 food would be good.
Must not be early - i am thinking about the same tech tier as Fertilization. But in the long shot coastal cities are about the wors i have seen so far in the mod. 2 Commerce is far from powerfull even with the overall pressed economy. The tile must be food neutral to be even remotely worth working.

On a related note - maybe putting sea-oil back in - sure you cant get a fuel truck from there, but it would be still a workable tile.

-----

I played a full 0.7 game. Going to skip a full AAR this time - was a fun game but kind of "standard approach".

Good news first:

The fuel truck amount was good - maybe you are spot on now with the spawning probability, or at least very close.
I allways had some, but never so many that i could completely switch to Gas Powered army like i did in my first game. Using a Cav or UTE instead of a Jeep, when possible, to save some fuel allways seemed a good idea.
(Flipped a bit in the end - as i went on the big final offense - took a lot of Trucks from the AI - i think they could build slightly more Gas Powerde units.)

Also the gas units now starting with 1/4 full tank indeed improved the gameflow a lot. I.e. on units that come from depots, since those can now reach rally points with gas trucks waiting on they own. A lot less Gas Truck management required.

The Pilot is extremely cool. I would like the unit, or a similar one to be buildable (With a bit less cool states maybe)

Got myself my first worker trampled down by horses. Actually i knew it would happen, but somehow - out of Standandard Game habits - forgot to send escort.

Also like the overall feel of the Vision mechanic. There are a few corks - i will write a bit more in the other thread later. But the overall feel is good.
Also could disprove my previous suspicion about odd % conuts: A city with multiple visions only credits a part of the population to each vision. So "Counter-Spreading" is a viable approach to thwart a AI Vision win.

Observation

A safety victory seem not doable right now. Kind of not surprising - we did not put all of the buildings in yet. Overall i could have - barely - got my capital to the 30000 threshold, but none of the other cities. This should however improve "by itself" with addition of a few more wonders.

Also i enabled the Protector slot on tha palace. (I had it in my initial concept, but hesitated, beeing afraid of crippling the AI running a early specialist instead of growing). From what i seen in my game, the slot is save to add - none of the AI did something stupid with it.

Minor Issues/Suggestions

What is the point of the Worker->Highway Worker upgrade. It does not cost any money, so the only cost here is the one turn for upgrade (that can be used for partial movent too).
Why not just give the Workers the new ability (Build Highway / Faster (Are they ?)) when Highway tech is aquired ? I assume you had something in mind but left it out for now.

My recomendation on UTE scaling was apparently a bit off. It could be maybe about 10% or even 15% smaller in both interface and map.

There is a tiny issue on hero unit names - beeing called "The Pilot" will result in messages like "Our The Pilot destryed a Barb Something." A possible solution could be keeping "The Pilot" as units name, but give each instance of the unit a unique name (Like Great Peoples have)

(Possible) Bugs

There is somthing Phony about how Gunships refuel. Unfortunately i cant give more detail right now - tho it happened to me twice, both times i realized it too late. Basicly what seem to happen is that using a fuel truck on a stack of gunships (i had 3) dit not refuel all of them. I did not really pay attention to the message (how many units were refuelled) and only realized somthing beeing wrong when i went to move the Helos next turn.
Unless you tell me it is something known/intentional, i will try to replicate the situation to give a more useable bug report.

There is a glitch in the WB - when you place gas powered units thre, the come without the Fuel promotion. And apparently a unit not having the initial fuel promotion, will never get it, so basicly those have unlimited fuel.
Not a big deal in terms of gameplay obviously. Stumbled upon it when trying to replicate the Gunship issue via WB.

What is the point of the Worker->Highway Worker upgrade. It does not cost any money, so the only cost here is the one turn for upgrade (that can be used for partial movent too). Why not just give the Workers the new ability (Build Highway / Faster (Are they ?)) when Highway tech is aquired ? I assume you had something in mind but left it out for now.

Good question. I got to this strange position due to a combination of limitations in the XML. The goal is to have highways usable at the start of the game, and buildable only at the end.

Highway is just renamed "railroad". In the vanilla game, railroad requires a tech. As a result, players without the tech cannot travel fast on railroads. This is a little surprising, but you can see it in vanilla WB. Create a railroad in unowned territory, create two players one with railroad tech and one without it, put one unit from each player on the railroad, and have a race.

Because I want all players to use the fast travel speed immediately, that means highways cannot have a tech. But still, I don't want players to *build* highways until they have the tech. There was some other reason which I forget, why I cannot just give the "build highways" order a PrereqTech, but that did not work either.

So the only way I could achieve the goal was to have a separate *unit* which is the only one to have the highway build order. Basically, once you get highways tech, just get the free upgrade and go ahead.

Maybe there is some combination of XML magic which I missed; but a separate unit is the only way I could find to achieve the goal.

There is somthing Phony about how Gunships refuel. Unfortunately i cant give more detail right now - tho it happened to me twice, both times i realized it too late. Basicly what seem to happen is that using a fuel truck on a stack of gunships (i had 3) dit not refuel all of them.

Just to confirm, I noticed a big glitch with the refueling code and uploaded a changed version three hours after the first one. Did you play with the old one or the new one? I probably should have put a slightly different version number like 0.71 for that. If you are using the new version, there is nothing intentional about that: using one tanker should refuel all the units in the square. It may be helpful when reproducing, to mix together partly fueled and empty units; that was the source of the original bug which I fixed.

There is a glitch in the WB - when you place gas powered units thre, the come without the Fuel promotion. And apparently a unit not having the initial fuel promotion, will never get it, so basicly those have unlimited fuel.

That's correct. I originally wrote the XML to give them a "default promotion" of the appropriate type so that they come out right in WB. Unfortunately, in that case, the "default promotion" shows up as a choice when the unit levels up. It did not seem quite right that one possible reward for leveling up should be a quarter tank of gas.

Good question. I got to this strange position due to a combination of limitations in the XML. The goal is to have highways usable at the start of the game, and buildable only at the end. Oh, ok, then there is nothing to be done about it right now. And it is not like it is a big issue.

Just to confirm, I noticed a big glitch with the refueling code and uploaded a changed version three hours after the first one. Did you play with the old one or the new one? [...] It may be helpful when reproducing, to mix together partly fueled and empty units; that was the source of the original bug which I fixed. I defninitely redownloaded after you posted about that bug and used the newly downloaded file. Is there a specific file position/line i could check to kknow for sure (e.g. the one you fixed)

But i will redownload again just in case, before etrying to recreate the Bug.
It also seem not to strike every time and as far as i noticed only on Gunships.

Units with different amount of fuel left was my thought as well - i often wait refuelling a defensive or skirmishing stack untill multiple units are in need of fuel. I think it might strike if the stack has a gunship that was lready empty at the beginning at the turn and one that moved this turn and would be empty on the next turn.
I will try to recreate the situation.

That's correct. I originally wrote the XML to give them a "default promotion" of the appropriate type so that they come out right in WB. Unfortunately, in that case, the "default promotion" shows up as a choice when the unit levels up. It did not seem quite right that one possible reward for leveling up should be a quarter tank of gas.Oh, i see. That is a compelling reason.

-----

There are 2 more things i forgot to mention in the previous post:

You got rid of the dupplicate units in the pedia for grounded/immobile units :goodjob: Is there a usefull XML tag ? Or have changed the Pedia from Python ?


Another thing is - you gave all the visions Future Tech as prereq. It's not a big issue (None at all gameplay-wise - tho i think if playing on Settler or something i could have researched Future Tech before all capitols were built).
But it does look a bit odd (I.e. as there is not enought space on the panel for all the icons). I believe to know, where it is coming from, and there is a easy solution:

You can give your Religions NONE as tech prereq, then to prevent them from beeing auto-founded there is a function in Python\CvGameUtils.py - DoHolyCity() - changing it to "return true" will override the default religion auto-found mechanism ( Which is in CvGame::doHolyCity(), if you want to check fo sideeffects - AFAIK there are none ), so religions without tech prereq will not auto-founded.

I defninitely redownloaded after you posted about that bug and used the newly downloaded file. Is there a specific file position/line i could check to kknow for sure (e.g. the one you fixed)

The only difference is in file Assets/Python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py, around line 492. This is the right one:
bEmpty = pUnit2.isHasPromotion(iEmpty)
[...]
if bEmpty: self.changeImmobile(pUnit2)

You got rid of the dupplicate units in the pedia for grounded/immobile units :goodjob: Is there a usefull XML tag ? Or have changed the Pedia from Python ?

I hacked the pedia.py files. There is no XML tag for units, even though there is a bGraphicalOnly tag for improvements. It is a handy trick anyway in case I should want to hide other units from the player :blinks innocently:.

Another thing is - you gave all the visions Future Tech as prereq. [...] then to prevent them from beeing auto-founded there is a function in Python\CvGameUtils.py - DoHolyCity() - changing it to "return true" will override the default religion auto-found mechanism.

That bothered me a little also, thanks for the tip.

I checked the python file - was using the new one with the fix. Re-Downloaded and reinstalled the 0.7 release anyway just in case, and was able to recreate the bug.

In the attached save there is a small stack just North of Beijing (The Tanker there should be active in the save).

It has 2 Gunships. A healthy one - with empty tank - it stayed there for a turn or two already. And a damaged one - its tank shows 1/4 but it moved this turn using the last fuel - it will be empty on the next turn.

Whenever i refuel right now, or end turn first and refuel on the next turn (or the next, or the next...), the results are the same - it says "6 Units Refuelled" but only refuelles 5 - the damaged Gunship remains empty.

I also tried using up the promotion (the offending Gunship got XP this turn, and would be eligible for promotion on the next turn) and waiting untill the Gunship is healed - with the same result.

There are more Fuel Truck in Bejing (Borrowed them from my good pal Chen). Using one of them after the other 5 Units were fuelled with the first wil fuel the offending Gunship.

Whenever i refuel right now, or end turn first and refuel on the next turn (or the next, or the next...), the results are the same - it says "6 Units Refuelled" but only refuelles 5 - the damaged Gunship remains empty.

Clearly, there is no point in refueling the damaged gunship. It has holes in the fuel tank, and the gasoline would just leak right out.

Just kidding, thanks for the clear description. I will reproduce and try to fix, later tonight.

I do not have access to my civ machine right now, but I understand why this could happen and I have a test fix you can try if you want. Just make the change in the python file and reload the save game, it should be fixed. The code is iterating through the units in a stack, and deleting one of the units during the iteration. Some iterators can survive this and still give the right results, evidently CyPlot.getUnit cannot survive. Some of the units are getting skipped.

In file Python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py, replace function refuelAction with:


def refuelAction(self, pUnit1):
pPlot = pUnit1.plot()
iOwn1 = pUnit1.getOwner()
iFull = self.gc.getInfoTypeForString("PROMOTION_GAS4")
iEmpty = self.gc.getInfoTypeForString("PROMOTION_GAS0")
lSwap = []
fueled = 0
for i in range (pPlot.getNumUnits()):
pUnit2 = pPlot.getUnit(i)
if pUnit2.getOwner() != iOwn1: continue
iType2 = pUnit2.getUnitType()
if not self.dGasUnit.has_key(iType2): continue
if self.dGasUnit[iType2] == 0: continue
if pUnit2.isHasPromotion(iEmpty): lSwap.append(pUnit2)
for iPromo in self.gasPromos:
pUnit2.setHasPromotion(iPromo, false)
pUnit2.setHasPromotion(iFull, true)
fueled = fueled + 1
for pUnit in lSwap: self.changeImmobile(pUnit)
return fueled

It seem to solve it, thanks. A played a bit more sending those gunships around and refuelling here and there.

What i am wondering is why it struck twice, both time on Gunships - you code seem not unit specific... the again... 2 times do not make for a good statistic or maybe i just missed it on the other units.

Here is the file with the code from above in it, on case someone want to use it a quick fix. Goes to Mods\Fury Road\Assets\Python\ overwriting the file there.

Gunships do run out of fuel twice as fast, I think that makes it "more likely" to see the problem.

Perhaps the goal is, "should be able to support city size 5 with agriculture tech". So fish, which gives food 5, counts more than fresh water grassland, which gives 3. I think the worst location I have seen, can be improved to reach that with one added food bonus, so "fixing" it would be relatively easy.

*Supporting* a city of 5 is not a sufficient solution. You can have one fresh water grassland and three freshwater plains with the rest desert, and *reach* 5. It will just take forever. After some more experiments, I hit on something which seems to work. Assuming agriculture tech, compute the surplus food for each plot in the BFC. Irrigated grass + farm = 3 food = 1 surplus. Add up the surplus from the best four plots. If this is less than four, add a food resource in the BFC. So, at least until population 5, you will grow at a reasonable rate.

I tried this on 4-5 maps, and visually when I looked at a start loc and said "ew! that's not good enough", the rule would add a food resource. One food resource seems to be enough to make it livable.

What do you think?

Options for improving deserts include Camel Grazing, Cacti and Dates. I'm not too sure about Dates, but cacti could give +1 food and Camel Grazing +1 Hammer and both would fit in with a pseudo-Australian desert setting.

I think you can get these enhancements from the Legends of Ancient Arabia mod.

If you're having difficulty with starting spots, why not start every new civ by a river. This would be a logical rally point in a post apocalyptic world.

I think i have another refueling issue for you...

What we have there is a Empty AI Jeep. They dispatched a Fuel Truck. When the truck arrived, the Jeep Refuels without using up the truck, so both the Truck and Jeep drive away...

Look at the small stack near Thebes in the save (To the Est of the known map.) My fuel truck is there to recon around the jeep, to be sure no other Fuel Truck was incomming. The Bug happens without my Truck there as well, so i think it is not the cause.

I think i have another refueling issue for you...

What we have there is a Empty AI Jeep. They dispatched a Fuel Truck. When the truck arrived, the Jeep Refuels without using up the truck, so both the Truck and Jeep drive away...

Sigh. When I first experimented with AI refueling it seemed to me that the AI killed the truck on its own. I added an extra layer to the python so player trucks would be explicitly killed and AI trucks weren't. If that was mistaken, then it would explain a little bit about why the AI seems to have more trucks!

Please try the following in Assets/Python/CvGameUtils.py around line 70; add the new line shown.


for key in dTruck.keys():
if dEmpty.has_key(key):
pUnit = dTruck[key].pop()
if len(dTruck[key]) == 0: del(dTruck[key])
del dEmpty[key]
pFury.refuelAction(pUnit)
pUnit.kill(false, pUnit.getOwner()) # <== add this line


That is not the best way to solve it but if that clears the issue, I will fix the code in a better way.

Uh... It crashed the game on me :(

I looked into the Logfiles right after the crash.

Odd enought there in no Python Error Logged.

The last entry in PythonDbg was:
PY:Eridu has grown
PY:Player 1 Civilization Nighthawks Unit Jeep (immobile) was killed by Player 1
PY:Player 1 Civilization Nighthawks Unit Gas Truck was killed by Player 1

Ok, will post the more explaining answer considering the vision losses here:

the first loss was my first game (marathon speed: about 90 turns before end of the game [could build guardians for 20 - 30 turns]), the second, normal speed, was about turn 200 (imo the problem was, the first vision was found 10 years earlier than the other, so almost every AI had this as state vision).

It also seems that the AI is very offensive spreading his vision [in the first game short after a open border he spread his state vision in my capital = game lost], so even after the other nation have their own, they will not change [in my last game i was almost the last one building the capitol].

And perhaps there was one strange behavior, often when the AI tried to attack me, some of his jeeps run out fuel, direct beside the target town (saving the town from conquering), no idea if it would possible and how hard it would be to attach a tanker to an attack stack

It also seems that the AI is very offensive spreading his vision [in the first game short after a open border he spread his state vision in my capital = game lost

Why do you call that game lost? Or, is that just because your city pop put him up over the victory limit?

I am definitely not happy with the vision victory. Even setting the victory percentage to 67% did not help, at least in several test games at small size. For example, in a 5-player game, one player was wiped out and I was racing with one other player to the vision victory. But, he got the other two to convert, which pretty much guaranteed 75% of the population after a little while. There was no way I could convert them back.

And perhaps there was one strange behavior, often when the AI tried to attack me, some of his jeeps run out fuel, direct beside the target town (saving the town from conquering), no idea if it would possible and how hard it would be to attach a tanker to an attack stack

I agree, the AI is stupid about using tankers. It uses them "reactively", after the unit has run out, instead of attaching them to stacks. I am sure I could attach the tankers to stacks, but I am afraid the logic to decide whether to attach to stacks will be complex. In this case, you could argue the leader of the attacking army guessed he could get all the way into your city and use your tankers to refuel, but his guess was a little wrong.

I like the game so far, and the ideas are looking good. Keep it coming!

However, you defineatly need to add some more buildings are redistribute the techs. (I know its been said, but I'm saying it again).

I'm not sure (I hav'nt checked closly yet) but I think you repeated some of the trait combos.

Is this so, and was it intentional?

I like the game so far, and the ideas are looking good. Keep it coming!

However, you defineatly need to add some more buildings are redistribute the techs. (I know its been said, but I'm saying it again).

Thanks! Spreading out the tech tree and adding more buildings are two different ideas. If you have some specific suggestions for spreading out the tech tree, please take a look at this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282313) and let us know; there has not been much activity over there yet.

I'm not sure (I hav'nt checked closly yet) but I think you repeated some of the trait combos.

Is this so, and was it intentional?

I don't think there are any repeats; there is a small spreadsheet at this link (http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/leaderheads/statistics.htm).

(redirected from new unit art thread)

1. The tech tree seems a little small. Is this going to expand over time?

Yes, but I am not quite sure how. The main problem is that the total cost of all the techs together is too small, so it is easy to research everything. I don't want to just boost the cost more. Please take a look at this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282313) and let us know if you have any specific ideas.

2. Another option might be to make Bio-Diesel available for research.
3. No ships?
4. In fact, no coal? I'm a bit of a steam punk mavin
5. Maybe have, like Rise of Mankind, have sulfer as a resource.
6. I think airships should be added.

I do plan bio-fuel if I can figure out useful mechanics to go around it. Search for "pigs**t" in the sub-forum (oddly, but it's a great quote). For the others, I wanted to focus on salvaging tech out of ruins rather than going back to primitive tech. Sounds like a separate steampunk mod would be fun.

Plus, if you have gas for jeeps, you should at least have recon planes. Weaponizing planes would be harder, but you could at least have planes that could bomb (poorly) and act as scouts. Ultralights are cheap and their engines small.

There is one, but it is a unique unit rather than something you can build. See the civilopedia under "The Pilot". Thanks to The_Coyote for a great new unit model!

8. I think that you should have to build facilities to be able to produce Jeeps and the like. I don't think that they should 'magically' be available simply because you have oil.

Just to avoid confusion, jeeps are built in cities. Fuel trucks automatically appear at oil wells to reduce the fuel micromanagement -- you don't need to build them or worry about the return trip. Tanks and artillery automatically appear at depots, which represents repairing ruined units which were stored there before the apocalypse. There is a limited supply of those.

9. Major grip I have with lots of mods, but I miss not having entertainers to boost culture and traders/caravans to help with money.

Good idea. Another poster had suggested that cities which are "safe" should be more popular destinations for caravans. I guess this is kind of abstracted by trade routes, but maybe I could do something more specific.

11. I think the Vision victory is too easy to achieve.

Definitely agree. I'm not sure how to change it, but this is a problem.

Beyond that, a very nice mod. I think this mod screams to have events. I can see plagues, storms and even odd things like satellites coming out of orbit and crashing to earth. That would be another Wonder, I think, re-establishing contact with satellites that are in geo-synchronous orbit just waiting to be used.

I agree events would be interesting. If you have some specific ideas of the effects for different events, please let us know; I will collect them and see about implementing them.

Some further thoughts. Plus, be aware I don't know HTML/python so if I suggest something that is impossible, it is out of ignorance.

First off, about the tech tree, I think the way to expand it is to have it in conjunction with the concept they use in Final Frontier of having a 'theme' for your tech. So if your civ is on the coast, you might switch to "Maritime" and that would unlock certain techs. I don't know if there is a way to make a tech cheaper by a flag, but if so, then Maritime civs could research certain techs more quickly at the expense of others. I know in Civ III, they used to do this.

I think it would make each Civ tend to go their own way, sort of like in Alpha Centauri (which this mod is sort of like in a way since you have a high tech people having to start very low level). Some examples of these themes might be:
* Recovery: We had high tech and damnit we'll have it again! Civ's using this would focus on getting old tech working again so they'd have fewer weapons but more powerful ones. They might also have more of a bunker mentality, fewer cities, but bigger ones.
* Downshift: This could be for Civ's without a lot of resources at their disposal except for maybe people so they push to use older techs like gunpowder or steam. This theme is useful if you access to sulfur and coal but maybe no oil.
* Maritime: As mentioned above, Civ's using this would focus on ships, have access to whaling boats and perhaps 'super fisheries' in the sense that the normal work boat gets only a token amount of fish whereas the maritime Civ's work boat creates a fishery that really cranks out the food. Plus they might also have access to the River Port that some mods have. They'd get increased commerce.
* Luddite: Technology brought us ruin. These folks would want to return to a simple life. Sure guys in jeeps with machine guns are bad ass, but up against LOTS of guys with crossbows is a bad thing. Perhaps also allow this theme to have the mobile yurts the one Mongol scenario had to enable them to be semi-nomadic. Either that or they get a lot less penalty for spreading out.
* Mad Scientist: Not sure how high-tech the planet was before, but perhaps they are going to focus on mutations and other bio-secrets that might have been unlocked prior to the war. You could have clones, mutates and 'necrotroops' (basically robocops) plus bio-weapons or just good old fashion chemical weapons.
* Gaian: Theme that is focused on terraforming and using fixing the planet. Similar to the Gaians in Alpha Centauri, perhaps they could use, breed many of the new mutations. Plus, who wouldn't want to have cavalry using giant spiders! =)~ Plus this theme would go for more wind-farms for electricity and bio-diesel.

Anyway, if there is a way, I think certain techs should be available only after certain key ones are made and you have to sort of stick with it. Another thing about having the theme would be that would slow things down since trading techs outside a theme would be pointless since it's not just the knowledge but the infrastructure. Won't do me much good to get a tech for better work boats since I don't have the ancillary tech that allows for shipyards.

I mean if you have scant resources, you can't do everything so you have to sort of pick a path and ride it to the end or pay the price for starting over and I think that would make the Civ's all a little bit more different.

One thought on plagues. I hate how plagues tend to wipe out only 1 Civ at a time which makes it really easy for a neighboring Civ come in and wipe you out. I was thinking that many/most of the barbarians should have the 'diseased' promotion from the Fall From Heaven mod. This way, going out and exploring is dangerous since your units get sick. Again, not sure if you can do this, but if a diseased unit is in a city, maybe there is a percentage chance the city gets plagued. Plus, you'd need a hospital or clinic to fix it.

Plus in Fall From Heaven, they have items that can be picked up an used, sort of like the Refugees. Maybe an item that can be found in ruins would be 'medical supplies' that could be used to cure diseased units or increase happiness in a city if used.

Just to avoid confusion, jeeps are built in cities. Fuel trucks automatically appear at oil wells to reduce the fuel micromanagement -- you don't need to build them or worry about the return trip. Tanks and artillery automatically appear at depots, which represents repairing ruined units which were stored there before the apocalypse. There is a limited supply of those.

I realize that, but I think it would be better to actually have a specific building like what they have in the WW II mod in the base Civ IV. I felt that there since there isn't a lot to build, the mod is set to make things expensive. I'd rather have lot's of things to build, but make it such that you really have to customize your cities since you can't afford to build every everywhere. So if you have to build a "Vehicle Recovery Factory" and it's expensive, you're not going to be able to build it in every city. So now that city 'makes' jeeps and thus is more strategically important.

I think the generic 'garage' goes against the intent of the mod. If recovery is the point, having to focus on a important (and costly) building makes more sense. I mean you have to amass the cars/trucks, get the parts, find people with the tools and knowledge to weaponize the vehicles as well as having the facility with the equipment to do all this in. Sure a guy good with tools can make an AK-47 by hand with a forge (and they do this in Pakistan) but it makes more sense to centralize this so the guy can teach it to others. Plus, sure anyone with some basic tools can "Mad Max" a vehicle, but it's another thing to maintain it with all the parts needed. Having all the people that know how to do this and perhaps fabricate replacement parts wouldn't be that common in today's world and less so with so many people getting killed.

I'll put a reply to your tech tree comments into the tech tree thread shortly, to keep all the tech tree stuff more-or-less together.

Good thoughts on plague and medical supplies. I haven't put a whole mechanic around that yet. One related idea is a "ruined biolab", like the "ruined depot", which could have a bunch of good or bad items generated. I was specifically thinking of accidental plague release or discovery of a plague vial which a spy could release in an enemy city.

Regarding buildings, I am not sure. In vanilla civ, there are no units which require a building to build. OK, maybe missionaries. IMHO, it makes building an army a little too complicated. "I need some jeeps to attack east, but my jeep building is in the west. Should I build a new jeep buillding in the east or just build them in the west with the extra travel time?" That is a fine question to build a mod around, but I'm not sure it adds to the post-apo theme specifically.

Regarding the garage, I am also not sure. I wanted some tech to unlock *promotions* for the ute, which could appear in the field, rather than requiring the unit to come in for a refit. But I rarely take the time to build the garage in my games, even though the XP bump is nice. Removing it probably wouldn't change the gameplay that much, and I am not sure what to add, in order to make it more critical.

Uh... It crashed the game on me :(

I have reproduced your problem with refueling on the test game which you have sent. I believe my analysis of the problem was correct, and I fixed it locally. But I tangled myself up a little when I switched from "local v0.8 files" to "v0.7 files as distributed", and now I can't untangle the fix from the new v0.8 code.

The AI doesn't like having its units killed with kill(false,...) but it doesn't mind kill(true). So if you take the change that I sent, and put kill(true,...) instead, I believe it will work.

Why do you call that game lost? Or, is that just because your city pop put him up over the victory limit?

yes the population of my capital put him over the limit, and i accepted open borders :lol:,

had a new game, this time vision victory disabled, was fun (i think i lost, the strongest AI just declared war on me, 10 - 15 tanks, same number of catapults, ... and my defence is a bit small compared with this force, but perhaps i will play it out). In this game, I think there would be no early vision victory, there are two vision spread among the AI.

The Tankbuster is a nice unit (especially with a great general), but is this a unique unit (only one time per game) or can this unit appear more often, i ask because i had one and was attacked from another (i´m almost 100% sure that it was not the Wanderer)

Oh my, I had not thought of putting a GG *onto* tankbuster or wanderer. Each of them is basically already a ute with a GG. How many promos do you get out of adding the second GG?

Right now there is no check at all to make sure that tankbuster, wanderer or pilot are only placed once. But suppose I made it happen only once per game max. If one of these units pops for another AI far away, the human player will never be exposed to it. I think they are pretty cool units, so I wanted to make sure the player would see it. Getting jumped by tankbuster might be a fun, slightly nasty surprise, or catching sight of the pilot off somewhere.

What's a good mechanic to make sure they only appear rarely but still the player sees them?

kill(true, ...) Did solve it. It looks a bit odd - the truck refuels, drives away and disappears after it's movement is used up. But when i think of it - it makes some sense. And if i hadn't this special truck under observation i wouldn't had noticed.

@The Coyote - what map size / difficultie are you playing ? Never seen the enemy having 15 tanks. Managed to have something like 15 or 20 myself on 0.5, but then david reduced the chance to pop them :lol:

:lol: must be because of the fear, checked again, there were not 10 tanks, "only" 5 and 3 artillery (+ 5 Jeep Rifle and 6 or 7 catapults and some infantry, Guardsman and AntiTank). Perhaps there is a change to win. Checked also WB, the AI has 3 depots and one new artillery. Map size is standard, 7 players and Noble

The Tankbuster, combat 1-3, tactics, leadership, camouflage, Road Warrior 1 - 3, Heavy armour, weapon mount, antitankmount, less fuel III with 45 exp, giving him +220% attack (additional +50% vs amoured vehicles), 0-2 first strikes and immunity against first strikes, withdrawal change of 70%, desert bonus movement and the malus (-30%) for attacking in certain areas. Think not overpowered compared with a tank, but still nice

To contemplate on the ruined biolab idea, how about a ruined silo which can go boom? Nuclear explosion and all surrounding stuff is obliterated.

Another feature that might be one of those 'landmarks' that changes in every game, might be "Boneyard" which would allow for the creation of cheaper planes or allow a one time bonus of a few planes and then would act as a air base. I mean if it wasn't destroyed, the real Boneyard would be a bonanza for planes. I guess this could work with naval ships since there are various merchant marine storage areas as well.

@ geomodder: I had thought about making the rebuilt tech unreliable -- each turn there is a percent chance it will be unable to move/attack, maybe permanently. Then a great sci/engineer could be stationed on the rebuilt improvement to generate more reliable units, and there could be a "mechanic" promotion which makes units more reliable and gives a chance to avoid breakdown in nearby units. The idea of a disaster happening at the silo is related to this idea of reliability.

Maybe I will put that in after everybody agrees fuel truck management is not too painful. If we have painful fuel, and painful reliability, then nobody will find it "fun".

Another feature that might be one of those 'landmarks' that changes in every game, might be "Boneyard" which would allow for the creation of cheaper planes or allow a one time bonus of a few planes and then would act as a air base. I mean if it wasn't destroyed, the real Boneyard would be a bonanza for planes. I guess this could work with naval ships since there are various merchant marine storage areas as well.

I think "ruined airbase" is exactly boneyard. I have resisted putting naval units in so far to hold the player on a single continent for now. The reason for this will become clear when I add the code showing the player why this apocalypse really happened. But, a ruined naval base would be a good thing to add. Another playtester has suggested a unique item which is a nuclear power plant from a bombed out aircraft carrier, which would fit.

Another idea - i am not sure where it fits so i just post it here... The setting is a lot about scavenging, so a actual scavenger ability might be cool.

I was thinking a "Scavenger" Promotion, or a dedicated unit meybe. Every time such a unit is killing something its owner get a small boost - a few (Really fey like random 1 - 5) :gold:, or :hammers: in the next city.

Another thing I noticed. With the lack of Health Resources & Buildings, the Expansive Trait has become INCREDIBLY good (and your granaries are built at 2x speed too!)

Industrious could really use a lot of work (perhaps move the Creative bonus of +2 safety to it?)

Aggressive probably should give Combat I to Utility trucks as well?

Good points on traits. I had not noticed that expansive was *that* good. In my playtest games on autoplay, Monty, Max and Stevie "seem" to win more often: fin/cha, fin/exp, fin/org ... a suspicious trend for financial. I have not analyzed why yet apart from obviously, money is tight after the apocalypse and the extra income keeps your economy from stalling as you expand.

I agree industrious is weak because one main benefit is faster wonders, and there are hardly any wonders. In version 0.8 I have added one wonder, "carhenge" (exactly stonehenge benefits), and I plan to make it so industrious will get 2x the chance of popping something good from ruins. Probably more wonders are needed, there are some good suggestions on the wonders / projects thread.

I have renamed creative to "vigilant" and changed which are its cheap buildings: barricade and a new "watchtower" based on refar's suggestion for a militia building. I'd like to make sure "vigilant" can stand by itself rather than tossing it and adding the safety bonus to some other trait.

If people feel aggressive is underpowered, I can add utes to the list.

If people feel aggressive is underpowered, I can add utes to the list.

I think it's less because AGG is under-powered, but because the UTE is. When Playing AGG those 12:strength: Guardians with free Combat1 looked just so much juicier, than the 8:strength: UTE.

But we had this already, and you at least partially convinced me, that the UTE might still be usefull for other strategies, different tech path... Still getting bonus from AGG would make the UTE more attractive.

It is true that in AIAutoPlay, the AI rarely builds utes. I have locally increased its strength to 9 (from 8) and that did not change much. I can keep creeping it upwards until people complain it is too strong.

There might be other conciderations than raw strength to make AI build or not build certain things - normally AI will flavour mixed armies to some extent. I am not exactly sure how it works, but i do assume that possible "Unit_AI" types play a role here (Because you can set LH ais to prefer certain Unit_AI types).

Overall this will be something to look into, but i think tweaking the AI could wait right now, as the unit roaster is not yet 100% final.

Overall i think base strenght 10 combined with the versatile and interesting promotions (Something the AI probably will never fully get) will make the UTE a attractive unit.

Related question - do you know how the AI evaluated promotions ? Because the UTE does have a valuable "No Fuel" promotion, which i assume the AI does not value as much...

Related question - do you know how the AI evaluated promotions ? Because the UTE does have a valuable "No Fuel" promotion, which i assume the AI does not value as much...

Excellent point. I am sure the AI does not place any special value on less fuel 3. There is no way to weight promotions like iAIWeight, and certainly no way to weight *future possible* promotions.

I will try 10 on an autorun tonight and also give the unit an iAIWeight 100.

Bedtime.

Bedtime.I am eating my breakfeast now :lol:
Good night.

Another idea - i am not sure where it fits so i just post it here... The setting is a lot about scavenging, so a actual scavenger ability might be cool.

Another possibility would be something they had back in the "Rise & Rule" Mod in Civ III and that was when you had a privateer and you captured a ship, you usually got a 'prize ship' - this ship was a basically a slow, weak galleon and wasn't very useful as a ship, but if you brought it back to a city and disbanded it, you got a lot of hammers. This represented, historically, that this was how it was.

I'm thinking that maybe if you had the scavenger/slaver promotion that depending on the unit defeated you'd get a prize. So an infantry unit you might either get a worker or refugee. Mechanized units would get a prize unit that you'd take back to your city and it would add hammers toward you current building project or maybe allow you to add a free upgrade/experience to a unit there just like the 'goody hut' event does.

Oh, in regard to slavery. I would think that in a post-apocalyptic that most races would probably uses slaves/thralls/indentured servants from captured enemy units. I mean why kill potentially valuable people? Why should I work in some crap job when I can get a POW to do it? However, slavery as a civic means that a BIG part of the economy is based on slavery and that means that there needs to be a lot of internal controls to prevent slave revolts and the like. So I think that not having the slavery civic shouldn't preclude capturing enemy units an using them as workers.

However, I like how many mods have the slave (like Fall From Heaven) be a slow worker and they have a chance to escape and become a barbarian unit. You might want to think about that the slave civic can use the "Slave Ring" that Fall From Heaven has as part of their Undercouncil so they can pay gold to create slaves, as well as sell slaves (especially captured ones) to get money or rush buildings. Of course, they'd get hit by slave revolts a lot and that can really tie up vital military resources.

I hadn't given much thought to slaves, but you are right, it makes perfect sense. I will think about some mechanics for that. SeZereth had suggested civic-specific units, so if you have the slavery civic you would get a slaver unit that could do this. Because population is very precious, I haven't seen much use for whipping. I can't prove whether the AI has done it in this mod, but I never have.

I had thought about capturing vehicles. Because the AI isn't very smart about convoys, sometimes a jeep gets stranded in my territory. After a few turns, I'd like to be able to go bribe them to join my side :-) Or, when you destroy one, maybe some "scrap" is left behind, and a "mechanic" promotion might allow you to fix it up enough to limp back to base. Actually, I suppose a garage could allow you to fix it up into a real unit, which would give the garage some actual purpose. I may have to add that now.

I had thought about capturing vehicles. Because the AI isn't very smart about convoys, sometimes a jeep gets stranded in my territory. After a few turns, I'd like to be able to go bribe them to join my side :-) Or, when you destroy one, maybe some "scrap" is left behind, and a "mechanic" promotion might allow you to fix it up enough to limp back to base. Actually, I suppose a garage could allow you to fix it up into a real unit, which would give the garage some actual purpose. I may have to add that now.

Well perhaps you'd have a random chance for a vehicle when defeated you'd either get
A) a slave/refugee (POW or the crew is willing to change sides)
B) a hulk that remains stationary and can be fixed back to a usable unit if fixed by a mechanic. Perhaps this would use up the mechanic.
C) a 'prize' (not sure about the graphic) that could be brought/carried back to a city and either used for hammers toward a building or a promotion of another vehicle.

I think that since vehicles are precious and in some respects don't represent vast amounts of vehicles like they do in regular Civ, this would work. Plus, this would sort of help out the Defense. Sure having vehicles is very effective in this game, but if the Defender plays his cards right (builds walls and good defensive units) the Attacker's offensive strike will not only fail, but leave a lot of potentially usable stuff behind that will help the Defender.

The only question I have is, could anyone's mechanic upgrade/fix a hulk anywhere on the map, regardless of territory. I mean A attacks B and ends up leaving lots of hulks or wrecked vehicles behind, can C come in with some mechanics and 'steal' the hulks if B doesn't have any mechanics ready?

Now that I think of it, since a prize/hulk would need to be brought back or gassed up, perhaps the art for the mechanic would be a tow-truck.

As for bribing, I know Alpha Centauri had their spies able to do this. I would think if you have a positive safety rate and decent espionage, spies could do this.

I think slaves would be better with a "Dedicated Feature" since there is some potential to be leveraged (Slaver Units, requiring certain Civics, possible revolts).

The B and C ideas of a scrap unit that could be fixed sounds interesting. With C i.e. the possibility to convert the scrap into a promotion - say "Armored"-promotion.

I would think that in some respects, that since movies like Road Warrior or Tank Girl showed that there really aren't a lot of people left, that there would be a lot of pressure not to kill people if you can avoid it.

So perhaps in combat, every unit should have a chance to create a unit due to combat. As posted before, infantry, cavalry units might create a POW/slave which could be used as a not as efficient worker that could rebel and become a barbarian. These POW/slaves could also be used to help finish a building project or if you have the slavery civic, sold for gold.

Vehicle units, as mentioned, could become POW/slave (the crew) a hulk that could be fixed later or a 'prize' that could be taken back to a city for hammers or gold.

Another idea could be that perhaps when you raid a town, you might get gold or you might get slaves/refugees. Maybe depending on what you raid, you might get a stripped down Great Person so a mine might create a Semi-Great Engineer that represents some important foreman of the mine that you captured and now can bring back to your Civ and use. I think this would make raiding be much more of a valid tactic instead of just mostly just static warfare where the defender mostly just stays in his cities.

I don't know HTML or Python but perhaps you might even have your slaves have a chance to not only go barbarian but perhaps become part of your empire. So the crappy slave worker either transforms into a regular worker, or becomes a refugee you can plus up your base with.

Having this sort of mechanic in the game would, I think make both attackers and defenders have to think about tactics. Attackers have to be careful not to attack to soon and leave a lot of stuff behind in the wake of a failed attack that will strengthen their enemy. The Defenders, on the other hand, can't afford to just sit in their cities since the Attack can come in and loot them blind and get some neat stuff.

Low populations never stopped hunmanity from killing each other :lol:

I wouldn't got as far as "every unit hahing a chance" - i think those should be dedicated units or promotions to enable slaving/scavenging.

Interesting discussion on slaves. For wrecks, I have a mechanic in mind based on the discussion here; please see the new "development feedback" thread. For slaves, I am not sure yet. One thing I am worried about is the number of people in a "pop point" vs a "worker" vs "survivors of a killed combat unit". I am sure there is no real answer but it seems like 100:10:1 somehow.

In the other games which have slave units, do they convert into population points like my refugee, or do they only convert into workers?

I was sort of thinking that if you raze a city, it might generate (pop/4) number of refugees.

In the other games which have slave units, do they convert into population points like my refugee, or do they only convert into workers?

Most mods I've played, like Rise of Mankind and Fall from Heaven have a slave basically a 'slow' worker. So while you get a 'free' unit, they are really not worth much. Most mods have slave able to be disbanded for hammers to help build a building. Additionally in FfH, if you have the option under the "Undercouncil" civic to create a Slave ring. Then in any city you can buy a slave unit as well as sell existing ones. Slaves can be used to hurry buildings but not increase population. I would think that Slavery as a civic would allow slave pen type buildings that might work either like a forge for more hammers or maybe a granary to show increase farm labor. I would think it would also increase unhappiness to show the general unrest found in slave-base economies.

As I had mentioned, many mods make a percent chance every turn that the slave will revolt and go barbarian. I was thinking that just because you are a POW, that perhaps over time the slave might be willing and trusted enough to merge into the owner's society. I mean, historically, slaves often could buy their freedom or where only thralls for the first generation. So maybe slave could have a chance to 'upgrade' into a refugee or revolt into a barbarian.

Plus, like I mention in one of my post, maybe you could have it where you could disband a slave for a short boast in food and/or happiness by eating the slaves. The reasons for this where well shown in Larry Niven's book "Lucifer's Hammer" since not only does cannibalism give food, but it marks your people and 'taints' them so they sort of think they have to stay with their group.

I was sort of thinking that if you raze a city, it might generate (pop/4) number of refugees.

Not sure if you can do this, but maybe you could make it so there is a mix of refugees and slave. This would show some people would be willing to join the attacking Civ while the slaves would represent the group that are like, "I'll never join you...but did you really have to chop off my saber hand?"

Although, if you go with my idea that slaves might later 'evolve' into refugees, it could show that after many a turn of being a slave might show the 'error' of their ways. "Did I say I'd never turn to the Dark Side? Ha ha! Silly me, I just LOVE the snappy Imperial uniforms!"

I still think, if it's a workable concept that perhaps when raising a city, there might be a chance to get a "Semi-Great" person to represent that any city would have some people who really knew their stuff. (Semi-Great in that they might only give 1/2 to a 1/4 of the benefit a Great person would)

Hmmm i am not sure about those razing city refugees.

Rasing is something done a lot due to economic constrains of the setting. I dont feel like adding benefits to it is the right thing to do.

What you probably could concider instead is reviving the "Partizans" random event - when a city is razed a number of disgrunted, angry citizens appear to fight for the owner of the city...

I downloaded the mod and gave it a try. My initial impressions are that it has potential, but it is in need of some balancing tweaks. My apologies if some of these are already known issues. I have yet to read much of the posts in this forum. :sad:

I played 3 games. The first one ended after 4 turns when my initial starting Survivor was simultaneously attacked by a Radscorp and a Deathclaw. They came down a highway from underneath the fog of war. I didn't stand a chance so I started up a new game. The second game ended even quicker! A horse spawned right next to my city on turn 3. I would never have guessed that a lone horse could raze a city, even if it was undefended. :ack:

At this point, I realized that you shouldn't do any exploring with your starting Survivor. Thus my third game made it a bit further. However, 2 of my AI opponents weren't so lucky. I received a message on turn 2 that one of them was eliminated. The other AI was eliminated after about 10 turns. Turns out that they were both neighbors of mine, thus leaving me with a large amount of land available for uncontested settling.

The barbs are spawning way too early. The early game shouldn't be based this much on luck. It is a strategy game, after all. I also think way too many barbs are spawning. I couldn't imagine what it would be like if Raging Barbs had been turned on. :eek: As it stood, I had no trouble getting my units up to 10xp in preparation for an invasion. CRIII units should not be this easy to acquire without a war. Especially since the AI does not understand the tactic.

Turns out I would lose my third game, despite my huge land advantage. One of my AI opponents won a vision victory. I didn't realize that I needed to close borders with someone (my fault!) that had founded a vision. Afterwards, I went into debug mode to learn that he had managed to spread his vision to a total of 8 cities. Only 8 cities, and most of them mine.

As it turns out, the AI does not understand the food model in this mod. All of the AI cities were quite small compared to mine. The largest AI city, at the end of the game, was size 5. This compares to size 7 for my smallest city.

Of course even if the AI were fixed, it is still way too easy to get a vision victory. I would suggest that this option be removed from the mod. My personal opinion. If you insist on keeping it, you need to make it much more difficult to spread a vision. The automatic spreading of visions should probably be disabled. I also think it should be very difficult for an advocate to spread their vision to a foreign city. This is especially important since there is no Theocracy type civic in the mod.

I suspect a few other things are imbalanced, as well. Unfortunately, I've not played long enough to really say for certain one way or the other. Just from reading the Civilpedia, some of the traits seem particularly weak in comparison to the other traits. In particular, the Organized and Industrious traits seem weaker. Also the Utility Truck with its special promotions seems a bit overpowered. It is quite easy to get a +100% strength bonus with only 10xp. In contrast, I couldn't think of any uses for the Chopper, as it was just too weak in comparison to a Ute. As I said, though, I've not enough experience to say for certain on these issues.

Overall, I'd say it is an interesting mod with lots of potential. You have obviously put a lot of thought and hard work into it, and it shows! You're doing a great job and I look forward to playing it in the future! :goodjob:

I downloaded the mod and gave it a try. My initial impressions are that it has potential, but it is in need of some balancing tweaks.

Great! The more different play styles we see the faster the game will become well balanced. I assume you were playing the latest version 0.7. What difficulty level?

I played 3 games. The first one ended after 4 turns [...] The barbs are spawning way too early.

Just to be sure, do you mean "animals" spawn way too early, as opposed to units like "punk" and "punk biker"? I took some steps to prevent this kind of early wipeout, but not enough. In my unreleased development version, I have prevented animals from spawning at all, for the first 5 turns. Maybe I should make it longer. Do you think 10 is better, or 20?

As it turns out, the AI does not understand the food model in this mod. All of the AI cities were quite small compared to mine. The largest AI city, at the end of the game, was size 5. This compares to size 7 for my smallest city.

I would like to dig into this one a little further. In many games I have seen the AI with larger cities. One area which also requires balancing is that some of the start positions are very food-poor; maybe some of the AI's in your game were suffering from this. I have added some code in version 0.8 to give a bonus food resource to food-poor positions.

Offhand I do not see anything different about the decisions to make about food in this mod; it is rarer, but it seems the standard AI should be able to deal with it. If you examine the AI cities compared to your own, what are they doing wrong?

Of course even if the AI were fixed, it is still way too easy to get a vision victory.

IMHO this type of victory is very interesting to explore. Please take a look at this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7016502&postcount=8) where I have described what I am trying to accomplish, and let me know if you think the *concept* is a good one. I agree so far it needs the most tuning. In version 0.7 the vision threshold is 67%. I have tried a few games at 75% and one at 90%. I think there are a couple of problems:

1. There is no warning that a loss is coming. Even when I set the requirement that the percentage needs to be maintained for 10 turns, the only notification you get is when the game ends. I was hoping the game would give a popup which says, "Warning! Player X will win a vision victory in 10 turns!". To solve this part of it, maybe I need to add my own popup.

2. There is no way to actively defend. You can actively counterattack with your own advocates. In version 0.8 I have added a "decay" so that if you influence a far-away city to add your vision, and then ignore it, eventually your vision will disappear from that city. That may help; but there is still no active step you can take to defend. The obvious defense is an "Inquistor" unit, like Gods Of Old has among other mods. This unit would remove influence from a city. It would make sense for this action to be available to the advocate unit, instead of requiring another unit.

Are there other problems which you can see?

I would recommend trying it a little more after locally modifying the victory criterion to 90%. You can do this by editing your file Fury Road/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4VictoryInfo.xml in Notepad or some other plain text editor. Search for "VICTORY_RELIGIOUS"; under that search for "iReligionPercent". It should say 67. Change it to 90 and save. That is better than disabling it, because at least you can watch the percent changing, and it is really unlikely to cause a loss.

Just from reading the Civilpedia, some of the traits seem particularly weak in comparison to the other traits. In particular, the Organized and Industrious traits seem weaker. Also the Utility Truck with its special promotions seems a bit overpowered. It is quite easy to get a +100% strength bonus with only 10xp. In contrast, I couldn't think of any uses for the Chopper, as it was just too weak in comparison to a Ute.

I agree industrious is a little weak, in version 0.8 I have doubled the chance for these players to get useful random finds from ruins. (Have you gotten one of the cargo trucks or named units from ruins yet?) Some playtesters feel that organized may be too strong, since there are few good ways to reduce your distance maintenance cost.

Regarding the ute, yes, it is relatively easy to get up to +100%, but that only makes it equal to the late game units. This is one main "flavor area" for the game. I am trying to get the exact effect of the "Road Warrior" movie, where certain highly experienced units can really kick butt. I agree the biker is relatively useless for the player, but I hope you have felt the "pain" of getting some workers on the border picked off by them. Their main role is as barbarians.

The first one ended after 4 turns when my initial starting Survivor was simultaneously attacked by a Radscorp and a Deathclaw. They came down a highway from underneath the fog of war. I didn't stand a chance so I started up a new game.

I too notice that often you'd get a spider spawn out of radiation at the same time you'd also get a Deathclaw or orther barb often in the FoW square right next to it. Then they'd both attack. I had jeeps and anti-tank units getting taken out by this 1-2 punch.

Another problem is you should always be able to build survivalists. I had a game where the goody hut gave me the tech for guardsmen on maybe turn 4 and so the survivalist I was building then got automatically made into a guardsman so instead of building it in 15 turns, I suddenly had to wait 54! Of course in that time my one survivalist got killed and then my city got razed and I lost.

Spreading out the animals is hard, because "animal density" is time-consuming to compute. I can put it on the list.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian. I don't think upgrading is widely used because it is so expensive, so it should not change play balance too much to make that change.

Spreading out the animals is hard, because "animal density" is time-consuming to compute. I can put it on the list.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian. I don't think upgrading is widely used because it is so expensive, so it should not change play balance too much to make that change.

It'd be neat if your upgrades became much cheaper once you get access to munitions. I.E. Survivors upgrade to Guardians for 20% of original cost, Jeeps to Jeep Rifles, etc...

I too notice that often you'd get a spider spawn out of radiation at the same time you'd also get a Deathclaw or orther barb often in the FoW square right next to it. Then they'd both attack. I had jeeps and anti-tank units getting taken out by this 1-2 punch.Spreading out the animals is hard, because "animal density" is time-consuming to compute. I can put it on the list.

I allways assumed it is working as intended, and i actually like it that way. For once we have barbs, that are actually dagerous and not just XP fuel.
The world is dangerous, the animals are dangerous. Nothing wrong with loosing a jeep to a dogpile. I wouldnt really want to see it changed.

I realize its a question of taste... Maybe you could use the raging barbs option - raging barbs would be the default and behave like it does now.
With raged barbs de-activated you could reduce the number of barbs spawned.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian. I don't think upgrading is widely used because it is so expensive, so it should not change play balance too much to make that change.This sounds good.

Maybe you could use the raging barbs option - raging barbs would be the default and behave like it does now.
With raged barbs de-activated you could reduce the number of barbs spawned.

The spawn rate I have now is 3x the vanilla rate, and the raging option is 2x. I have not gotten up the courage to turn *on* raging barbs and get 6x the rate, but it should be possible. Perhaps the right approach is to add an option, maybe in an ini file, about "barb multiplier" which defaults to 3.
I will put it on the list.

What i was sying is you could se tit soe that raging barbs give you the "normal barb activity" - So Spawn Rate X1.5 X2 from Raging would give you X3 again. It would be default. Why people who want less could turn raging barbs off, to have a somewhat less barbaric game.

But a ini option is fine too.

I assume you were playing the latest version 0.7. What difficulty level?Not sure what version ... I downloaded it yesterday, so whatever version that you had available then. I tried it out on Prince, using normal speed if that matters.

In my unreleased development version, I have prevented animals from spawning at all, for the first 5 turns. Maybe I should make it longer.That is a good start. The number of turns, though, is really dependent upon how long it takes to get out that first unit. So maybe something in the 10 to 20 range? Don't remember exactly. I suspect that losing the initial Survivor is actually more difficult on the AI than the human player. Although, short of reducing the strength of the animals (anti-thematic), I'm really not sure what needs to be done about that. Under no circumstances, though, should an animal be able to capture a city. Well, maybe a Death Claw, but the others should only be able to kill the units in the city without actually razing the city. I would think there would be an XML flag for this, as the Gunship in the base game doesn't have city capture abilities.

I would like to dig into this one a little further. In many games I have seen the AI with larger cities.You have to keep in mind my perspective. All of my games ended prematurely. My 3rd game, where I actually saw this behavior, ended after about a 100 turns. I observed a distinct parity in our cities, after putting the game in debug mode. My cities were, on average, about 2 or 3 times the size of my AI opponents.

That is the main reason the AI was able to win a vision victory. With me having over 50% of the world's population, he had only to convert my cities to win the game.

Offhand I do not see anything different about the decisions to make about food in this mod; it is rarer, but it seems the standard AI should be able to deal with it. If you examine the AI cities compared to your own, what are they doing wrong?It is a matter of priorities. The AI does not understand the new world order. Food takes on an added importance in this game, a fact that the AI does not understand. When I am looking at new city sites, I am taking into consideration any food bonus and the availability of fresh water. Ruins and other resources are just nice extras. I'm not certain, but the AI just seems to consider any resource as being a good spot.

And then there is the AI Worker priority. The first thing the AI does is connect resources. That's great if there is a food resource. But if there isn't, then it is the wrong priority. As an example, one AI city that I saw had 3 desert tiles with junkyard improvements built, making them 1h tiles. Yet none of the city's grass or plains tiles were improved. The Workers around the city were putting down roads rather than farms.

The AI seemed to be pretty good about putting down farms around its capital. But its other cities ... :shake:

In version 0.7 the vision threshold is 67%. I have tried a few games at 75% and one at 90%.The AI was able to win a vision victory quite easily in my game because of two factors. The first I've already noted was because my population was disproportionately large. Only 8 cites were needed to cross the threshold.

The other factor was only a single AI (Iron Head) prioritized founding a vision. The others didn't, and I certainly didn't since founding one provided little benefit. With only 1 world vision and me having all the population ... game over.

Would only upping the threshold solve the problem? I suspect that upping it to 90% would only serve to swing the pendulum in the other direction. I would probably move the founding of vision back to early game techs. That way they are available to all. Yet still require that the Shrine/Capital (from a late game tech) be built before the game can be won. If you combine this with my earlier suggestions of making the spread more difficult (no automatic spread and more difficult foreign spread), this might become more of a feasible victory option.

And while we're on the subject of victories, I'm not 100% sure that a safety victory is even attainable. There doesn't seem to be enough ways to accumulate safety points in a reasonable amount of time. You've also removed the civics and wonders that allow someone to increase the rate at which Great Protector points are generated.

(Have you gotten one of the cargo trucks or named units from ruins yet?)I got a cargo truck for the Museum wonder. Meh ... I would have rather had one of the others, but oh well. Or one of the Refugees. I really liked the Refugee units! I would save them and send them out with my Settlers. :D A nice touch to the game, really adds to the flavor. Hopefully the AI knows how to use them.

Some playtesters feel that organized may be too strong, since there are few good ways to reduce your distance maintenance cost.Research admin and civics ... then boom, you're running State Property and have no distance cost.

I think the real problem with Organized is the reduced cost buildings were removed from the mod. It needs something besides the civic bonus in order for the trait to compare with the other traits. And maybe it was because I never got to the end game, but I don't recall my civic upkeep ever getting into double digits.

And with removing the commerce bonus from rivers, I'm not certain that Financial is as strong as it used to be. You might need to either put back the river bonus or maybe give the trait cheap Markets or something. :dunno:

Regarding the ute, yes, it is relatively easy to get up to +100%, but that only makes it equal to the late game units. This is one main "flavor area" for the game.Don't get me wrong, I like the Ute. I really do! Its a nice unit. The problem with the unit is the same as all the other units. It is way too easy to accumulate 10xp for the promotions. It was too easy to put together a stack of CRIII Guardians and double-strength Ute's. Who needs Jeeps when you've got barbs?

The AI does not understand the tactic of getting a unit promoted to 10xp and then saving it for a later invasion. This isn't a problem in the base game because it is much more difficult to accumulate a whole stack of such units. Not so in this game.

The problem isn't the Utes, its the barbs. There are just way, way too many of them. The number of barbs hurts the AI while giving the player a distinct advantage.

I agree the biker is relatively useless for the player, but I hope you have felt the "pain" of getting some workers on the border picked off by them. Their main role is as barbarians.I felt the "pain" only once. After that I stationed a Guardian to escort my Workers when they were near a border or blind spot. And its not just the Choppers, but any unit that can travel down a highway from under the fog of war.

The Chopper is a nice flavor unit, and I can now understand why you put it into the mod. But I need to have some reason to want to build it. The best thing, though, is to probably make it a barb only unit and remove it from the player's unit list.

The only way I can see to prevent the "early small arms" effect where you can't build survivors anymore, is to remove the upgrade path from survivor to guardian.No offense, but I don't really care for this idea. Once my capital is established, there is no way I'm going to build such a weak unit. It needs to disappear. Yet, Arkham raises a valid consideration. I would probably address the issue in one of two ways (or maybe both). Arkham's scenario would be solved if the Guardian tech could not be popped from a hut. There is an XML flag to prevent this, and thus easy to implement. The other solution would be to require Guardian's to have some sort of tech, like copper or iron. Rather anti-thematic, so maybe introduce another resource like gunpowder. I wouldn't use munitions, since that resource comes later in the game. You need Guardians sooner rather than later. :p

The world is dangerous, the animals are dangerous. Nothing wrong with loosing a jeep to a dogpile. I wouldnt really want to see it changed.I agree with Refar here. Nothing wrong with a dogpile. It is the sheer volume of barbs that is the problem. And as I said earlier, a Horse should not be able to raze a city. :nono:

Holy mackerel! That was a long post! :eek: My apologies for rambling on so much ...

And it also strikes me how negative the tone sounded. I really don't mean to sound so negative. It is an excellent mod! Despite all the words, I really think it only needs some tweaking to balance things out.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

The spawn rate I have now is 3x the vanilla rate, and the raging option is 2x.What i was sying is you could se tit soe that raging barbs give you the "normal barb activity" - So Spawn Rate X1.5 X2 from Raging would give you X3 again. It would be default. Why people who want less could turn raging barbs off, to have a somewhat less barbaric game.The problem with the barbs, as I noted in my dissertation above, is that they give the human player too much of an advantage. I can understand you wanting to up them for thematic reasons. That is totally reasonable. But it needs to be balanced such that it is not too advantageous towards the human player.

Maybe the AI needs a barb bonus like the human gets on the lower levels. Frankly, I'm not sure how it is scaled at the moment. And I'd also experiment with lowering the base rate from 3x to 2x. The raging option is probably fine at 2x.

Let me pose a question. I know that barb animals spawn within cultural borders. Do the other barb units spawn there, as well? Or do they only spawn under the fog of war?

If they spawn only under the fog, the problem could be solved by not allowing animals to capture cities. In my test game, I had a vast wasteland all to my self because 2 AI civs were eliminated by the barbs in the first few turns.

Hmmm... i did not had the feeling the Barbs gave the Human a advantage in my games. True sometimes a civ get itself destroyed early, but otherwise... I am not opposed to increasing the AI bonus on Barbs a little bit as well - as long as it does not go to the point where the AI is immune and "obviously cheating".
This will not solve those early anumal kills however.

The idea of preventing animals from taking cities sounds good. There is a XML tag for it - like on the Gunship - they will still be able to enter boarders, snag workers and attack and kill defenders in the cities, but they could not capture those cities.

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I have to concur with the assessment, that the AI has slight problems to handle the food/economic pressure of the setting/map. It's not too bad however - overall the AI does tech at about the same rate as it would on the unmodded game.

I think at some point Leader AI preferences might need to be rewieved, selecting the AI's that seem the most fit for the setting (and maybe inrease weights on Farms for some of them maybe). but i think those finetuning tasks can wait a bit - right now the Leader/Civ/Traits seem to be subject to possible changes anyway.

Under no circumstances, though, should an animal be able to capture a city. Well, maybe a Death Claw, but the others should only be able to kill the units in the city without actually razing the city. I would think there would be an XML flag for this, as the Gunship in the base game doesn't have city capture abilities.

Why why why did I never think of this flag. Done. Animals no longer capture cities.

Food takes on an added importance in this game, a fact that the AI does not understand. When I am looking at new city sites, I am taking into consideration any food bonus and the availability of fresh water. Ruins and other resources are just nice extras. I'm not certain, but the AI just seems to consider any resource as being a good spot.

And then there is the AI Worker priority. The first thing the AI does is connect resources. That's great if there is a food resource. But if there isn't, then it is the wrong priority. As an example, one AI city that I saw had 3 desert tiles with junkyard improvements built, making them 1h tiles. Yet none of the city's grass or plains tiles were improved. The Workers around the city were putting down roads rather than farms.

Both of those are solid points. I will see if there are weights to tune the AI to prefer food improvements.

I would probably move the founding of vision back to early game techs. That way they are available to all. Yet still require that the Shrine/Capital (from a late game tech) be built before the game can be won.

Vision can be founded with an early game tech today, since diplomacy is only on the second tier. Splitting the founding of the vision from the capitol building itself has one possible drawback. Without a big building requirement, it may be easy to race for it and still lose, because the barrier is too low and the world limit is 6. It could be 7, which is the number of religions in vanilla, but not much difference between 6 and 7. I had thought about making each civ its own vision, which fits with the "state capitol" idea. But changing the game engine to support 18 religions, or even 12 after I reduce it, requires SDK mods which are beyond me.

What do you think is the best way to improve the vision victory path?

And while we're on the subject of victories, I'm not 100% sure that a safety victory is even attainable.

I agree. In 0.7 I put in the basic mechanic, but a lot of the buildings are missing. In 0.8 I have added a few, and I will be interested in your feedback (after version 0.8 is released :-) about whether there are enough.

I think the real problem with Organized is the reduced cost buildings were removed from the mod. It needs something besides the civic bonus in order for the trait to compare with the other traits.

Good point. I will think about what else to add to Organized, so it is stronger. Any suggestions? Maybe, 2x production of advocates?

And with removing the commerce bonus from rivers, I'm not certain that Financial is as strong as it used to be. You might need to either put back the river bonus or maybe give the trait cheap Markets or something. :dunno:

At least in my autorun games, the Fin/* players seem to win pretty often. I think it is because you can get a little income, much earlier, and it builds up. I'll wait a little before buffing Fin.

It is way too easy to accumulate 10xp for the promotions. It was too easy to put together a stack of CRIII Guardians and double-strength Ute's. Who needs Jeeps when you've got barbs?

There have been some votes for raising the barb XP cap and some votes for lowering it. I guess your key point is that the AI players don't send units out into the wilderness to level up, so they get behind. Maybe there is a way to lower the XP per barb so it takes more kills, or something else? Or do you feel strongly that the best approach is to lower the number of barbs?

The Chopper is a nice flavor unit, and I can now understand why you put it into the mod. But I need to have some reason to want to build it. The best thing, though, is to probably make it a barb only unit and remove it from the player's unit list.

I had been thinking of removing it as a player unit, but I had delayed because new unit art for that was supposed to be coming. I have now removed it.

Once my capital is established, there is no way I'm going to build such a weak unit [as the survivor]. It needs to disappear.

Of course you are welcome to just not build it :-) The required tech is a first tier tech, so I think it is valid for a goody hut to pop it. The button remains until you have the techs for all of the possible upgrades, sort of like an implicit "OR obsolete". So another possible solution is to add survivor upgrades to, for example, machine gun. That way it remains till after you have munitions hooked up. Would that help?

Gee, three more discussion posts came in while I was editing my reply post. Now I will reply on the replies.

Maybe the AI needs a barb bonus like the human gets on the lower levels. Frankly, I'm not sure how it is scaled at the moment. And I'd also experiment with lowering the base rate from 3x to 2x. The raging option is probably fine at 2x.

I had experimented with a few different barb levels before settling on 3x. Maybe I should make it adjustable by ini, but reading ini is a project by itself. Probably you know how, but you can easily tune the barb bonuses to try things out. You can edit file Fury Road/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4HandicapInfo.xml with a plain text editor like notepad. Search for the name of your preferred difficulty level in all upper case, like "NOBLE", to get into the right section.

The related tags for bonus are: iAnimalBonus, iBarbarianBonus, iAIAnimalBonus, iAIBarbarianBonus. The primary tag for barb spawn rate is iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit. You can use my debug key alt-c to get a few statistics on the numbers used for this.

I doubt there is any way to make the AI more interested in sending out units to level up. Do you think that is the underlying problem?

Let me pose a question. I know that barb animals spawn within cultural borders. Do the other barb units spawn there, as well? Or do they only spawn under the fog of war?

If they spawn only under the fog, the problem could be solved by not allowing animals to capture cities. In my test game, I had a vast wasteland all to my self because 2 AI civs were eliminated by the barbs in the first few turns.

Thanks to your suggestion of using the gunship flag for animals, this problem should go away. I have modified animal spawn as you point out, but I have not modified barb spawn. So barbs only spawn outside the fog.

After reading the comments, had one idea considering the vision victory, why not work without vision threshold and make it something similar to the AP (is a diplomatic victory possible?), a wonder is needed ("congress of hope" - have no better idea for a name :lol:) after this you could be elected as new leader for the post apocalyptic civilization (would fit also to the current visions names, found a federation, monarchy, etc).

Now the more difficult part (which i think would need coding), only vision present in every nation are electable, the vision currently #1 can be elected (not like the standard AP the state vision while building the wonder), votes depends on the number of follower of the leading vision in the empire. Another additional idea, when you disagree with the new founding, you can reject the result of the election and are at war (no way to make peace again) with every other nation (which will build an alliance) and the only options for a victory will be a complete conqeust, accepting the result and not being the founder of the victorious vision means game lost

but like i said, only an idea (and more or less lend from Master of Orion II ;) )

Vision can be founded with an early game tech today, since diplomacy is only on the second tier. Splitting the founding of the vision from the capitol building itself has one possible drawback. Without a big building requirement, it may be easy to race for it and still lose, ...

What do you think is the best way to improve the vision victory path?No, I like the Capitol building idea. It needs to be built in order to win via vision (maybe as a project instead?). But the founding of the visions themselves, need to be spread out amongst the various 1st and 2nd tier techs. One, it makes it hard to achieve the threshold with the extra competition (assuming that extra religions does indeed pollute the percent spread). But more importantly, it creates diplomatic considerations. In my test game, there were no worst enemies or other hindrances to trade and diplomacy. But in the end, you should not be able to win without building the Capitol from some late game tech. I'd also think about lowering the number of visions to something like 4 or 5 ...

Although, Coyote's Congress of Hope idea isn't bad either.

I will think about what else to add to Organized, so it is stronger. Any suggestions?

At least in my autorun games, the Fin/* players seem to win pretty often.Keep in mind my limited experience. I have not actually played any Organized or Financial leader. My comments were based solely on reading the civilopedia and comparing the various traits.

There have been some votes for raising the barb XP cap and some votes for lowering it. I guess your key point is that the AI players don't send units out into the wilderness to level up, so they get behind. Maybe there is a way to lower the XP per barb so it takes more kills, or something else? Or do you feel strongly that the best approach is to lower the number of barbs?Frankly, I don't like the idea of lowering the barb XP cap. My guess is you would get some flak from other players about that, as well. And it is possible that the change that you made to barb Animals will solve the problem. I understand why you upped the barb count for thematic reasons. And I totally agree with it.

But yes, I do feel strongly that there are too many barbs. Short of an SDK mod to teach the AI how to "level up", I'm not sure what can be done to fix the problem. Other than reducing the level from 3x to 2x. Although it would probably be better to play with the barb animal change first to verify that ...

So another possible solution is to add survivor upgrades to, for example, machine gun. That way it remains till after you have munitions hooked up. Would that help?I like this option a lot better than just removing the Survivor to Guardian upgrade path. You solve Arkham's problem, yet the unit will eventually go away. :goodjob:

No, I like the Capitol building idea. It needs to be built in order to win via vision (maybe as a project instead?). But the founding of the visions themselves, need to be spread out amongst the various 1st and 2nd tier techs. One, it makes it hard to achieve the threshold with the extra competition (assuming that extra religions does indeed pollute the percent spread). But more importantly, it creates diplomatic considerations. In my test game, there were no worst enemies or other hindrances to trade and diplomacy. But in the end, you should not be able to win without building the Capitol from some late game tech. I'd also think about lowering the number of visions to something like 4 or 5 ...

This definitely bears further discussion. In version 0.6 I had the visions spread out among the techs, but it generated a lot of negative feedback. I tried and failed to make a link between these visions and government civics. You can see some discussion in this other thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282032). I want to model arguing over which capitol will become recognized, and having different techs generate these visions does not fit. What would you consider for different visions and their related techs?

Maybe I could lower the cost of *state* capitol a little, and add a second building to win, which can only be built with a late stage tech and a sufficient "lead" in vision percentage. When the second building starts construction, every player gets warned. Is that heading in the right direction?

But yes, I do feel strongly that there are too many barbs. Short of an SDK mod to teach the AI how to "level up", I'm not sure what can be done to fix the problem. Other than reducing the level from 3x to 2x. Although it would probably be better to play with the barb animal change first to verify that ...

You seem to be linking the barb spawn rate to "animals capturing cities". They aren't linked. Maybe I have missed your point?

The change to prevent animals from capturing cities is a trivial one, now that you suggested it, which you could also try out locally. Using a plain text editor, open Fury Road/Assets/XML/Units/CIV4UnitInfos.xml. Search for UNITCOMBAT_ANIMAL. Then underneath search for the line:

<bNoCapture>0</bNoCapture>

Change the zero to one. Repeat for each of the five animals. Now you will see in civilopedia that they cannot capture cities.

You seem to be linking the barb spawn rate to "animals capturing cities". They aren't linked. Maybe I have missed your point?No, I'm definitely not linking the two. :nope: The point that I was trying to make is that the animal fix should be tested before any change to the barb spawn rate. I'm speculating that the barb spawn rate is still going to be too high, even after the animal fix.

It goes back to this idea of why did I see so many barbs. Was it because 2 civs got knocked out in the first few turns leaving vast amounts of unsettled wasteland? Or is it just because there are way too many barbs in general? Its probably both, but I'm willing to keep an open mind about the whole issue. Lets play a game or two with the animal fix and see what conclusions surface ...

This definitely bears further discussion. ... ... I want to model arguing over which capitol will become recognized, and having different techs generate these visions does not fit.Let's think about your "old west" analogy for a moment. The early settlers didn't build a capital and then decide to go petition congress for statehood. But rather this idea, or vision, of statehood spread amongst the people. And then a delegation was put together to petition congress. The state capital was most likely selected where the most vocal proponents happened to reside. :dunno:

I think you've done a good job of modeling that in this mod. I just feel that it is backwards. The spread should happen before the capital is built. I think both requirements need to be met for a vision victory. The x% spread of the vision and the construction of the Capital. The visions should be founded early and the capital tech should be made available later.

It would also probably help to make foreign spread of a vision a bit more difficult. But I'm not sure if that is an XML thing or not. :undecide:

I realize that the founding of the vision based upon tech can be rather anti-thematic. However it serves as convenient place holders to allow for the random spread amongst the various civs. It also serves to provide some antagonism amongst the civs that I think is missing in the mod.

Let's think about your "old west" analogy for a moment. The early settlers didn't build a capital and then decide to go petition congress for statehood. But rather this idea, or vision, of statehood spread amongst the people. And then a delegation was put together to petition congress. The state capital was most likely selected where the most vocal proponents happened to reside. :dunno:

I am trying to model the "most likely selected" part, more than anything else. Basically, building the capitol is announcing that you want to compete. I am hoping that many civs will all build the capitol and fight it out for the right to be the real capitol. My goal for the "second" capitol building is to give more time for the other civs to realize the guy is about to win and take him down.

It would also probably help to make foreign spread of a vision a bit more difficult.

In 0.8 I have added a "decay" factor, which I believe gets at the same point. If you send an advocate to a foreign city and get your vision spread, it will decay if that isn't the state vision. After, probably 50 turns, it will be gone, faster if there is a city hall there. In addition, there are XML tags for the spread of religion; I can lower the numbers, so it will take more manual action by advocates to spread it.

I realize that the founding of the vision based upon tech can be rather anti-thematic. However it serves as convenient place holders to allow for the random spread amongst the various civs. It also serves to provide some antagonism amongst the civs that I think is missing in the mod.

I definitely agree about the antagonism, that was my original point. But I think the underlying point here is how many visions get founded. In vanilla, there is no question that 3-4 religions will be founded early on. It is literally a side effect of research, because the triggers are sprinkled among the early techs. I would also like 3-4 visions to get founded early on. I think my problem is that diplomacy is not valuable by itself and the capitol is expensive, so very few visions get founded. That is what I should try to address.

After a few false starts, I've nearly finished my first "full" game. It's been great fun, I must say. I played as Hopeville, selected at random, and decided to focus on winning a Vision victory. The only war that occurred was when Aelwyn decided to wipe out the Aquarians. I was also planning to wipe out Fortress City (they weren't being a team players... wouldn't give me open border so I could send in my advocates), but something about the column of tanks on our mutual borders made him decide to become the New Republicans' vassal before I could "liberate" him. I'm not too far from getting the Vision victory.
One thing bugs me, though. From what I've seen, the AI isn't aggresive enough about spreading visions they found. Shortly after I converted most of the New Republicans to Democracy, Keith founded Technocracy, which has remained mostly the mumblings of a few political dissidents. Same story with the Amdahl and their Anarchism. Only Fortress City, a vassal state that I could easily devour were it not protected, has made any effort to slow me down in converting the world. Then again, I went down a difficulty level to get used to things; I intend to continue at my normal difficulty level for further games.
On the same note, there should be some way to be rid of rival visions. I haven't tried getting rid of them since, as I said, they aren't spreading quickly. Perhaps there already is, and I've simply missed it. If not, I propose that razing a capital permanently removes that vision from the game, leaving its followers neutral and convertable. This may not be possible, of course, in which case an inquisitor unit (the Secret Policeman or some such) might do.
The fuel mechanism works quite well, though. In one of my earlier games, I made a fool out of myself trying to rely only on rebuilt tanks. I've since learned my lesson. It's an interesting thing, having what is arguably the game's most powerful unit have such an achilles heel. Makes the tactic of razing enemy oil wells all the more realistic and purposeful.

After a few false starts, I've nearly finished my first "full" game. It's been great fun, I must say.

Glad you are finding it fun. Based on your comments it seems like the tuning we have done based on feedback from earlier versions is working. Some of the things earlier players got stuck on, like frequency of gas trucks, seem to be tuned right now.

From what I've seen, the AI isn't aggresive enough about spreading visions they found.

Definitely true. It is possible that some leaders are more interested in building advocates than others. I have yet to dig into which LH flags affect this, but once I find them I can bump up the importance of advocates.

On the same note, there should be some way to be rid of rival visions. I haven't tried getting rid of them since, as I said, they aren't spreading quickly. Perhaps there already is, and I've simply missed it. If not, I propose that razing a capital permanently removes that vision from the game, leaving its followers neutral and convertable. This may not be possible, of course, in which case an inquisitor unit (the Secret Policeman or some such) might do.

Similar discussion at various points of this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=282032) and this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283824). There is no complete solution yet, and it is definitely worth more discussion. In 0.8, visions will decay. You make a good point that razing a capitol should cause high decay (perhaps not "instant", but "high") of that vision. I was hoping spies could destroy a capitol, but apparently not. I may add an action for the advocate to do that, but then I need to figure out how to get the AI to do it also.

It is possible that some leaders are more interested in building advocates than others. I have yet to dig into which LH flags affect this, but once I find them I can bump up the importance of advocates.There are some "flavor" tags in the leader XML. Things like FLAVOR_MILITARY and FLAVOR_RELIGION. I'm not 100% certain, but I was under the impression these are what gave the AI its personality. In other words, those with a religious flavor were more likely to found a religion and send out Missionaries.


On a different note, I stumbled across this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=269727) on thieves. It had some rather interesting ideas, most of which I'm sure you have already thought about. Some sort of thief, or scavenger, unit would really add to the flavor of this mod. That thread refers to gold, but I would think food would be in higher demand in post-apocalyptic world. Not sure if that is doable in XML, though.

I had a chance to play a quick game last night. Unfortunately, it was 0.7 as I didn't realize that 0.8 would be out this quickly. Oh well ... from reading the change log in the other thread, I think these comments may still be pertinent.

I opted for a small map, random leaders, at monarch and normal speed. I had vision victory turned off, although I will try it again on the new version. It turned out to be quite an interesting little map. Evidently it was high sea level, because there was very little land to settle. With 2 close neighbors, I ended up with only 4 cities after the expansion phase. Most of the AI also had about 4 or 5 cities, although one AI on the other side of the map had 6 cities. Turned out to be a bit of a challenge ... quite enjoyable!

I had no oil nor munitions in my territory. Though I did have 1 armor and 3 silos. :D I ended up with more Nukes than Guided Missiles, which was a bummer since I actually wanted to keep the land in this game. I must say, the Nuke needs a re-base option. I really hated leaving them outside my city after they spawned. It also looked like Nukes weren't destroying terrain improvements. Is this normal behavior? I don't normally bother with ICBMs in the base game.

I drew the financial and charismatic Montezuma, who evidently is not in the 0.8 version. After playing financial, I really do think it is underpowered. Given the terrain modifications and the need for strong production and health (ie forests), you really don't build as many cottages as you would in a normal game. I actually went broke at one point during my first war. Fortunately, I had enough cash from taking cities to tide me over until I could whip Markets. The financial trait needs something else. Possibly another trade route or maybe some sort of trade route modifier. Conversely, I think charismatic is way overpowered in relation to the other traits. Those 3 free happy faces (trait, Monument, Tower), combined with lower xp, make it a super strong trait. I think you should consider removing 1 of the happy faces. Probably from the Broadcast Tower, as that is normally a late game tech in the base game. Or give the happy face from the building to everybody.

I noted a problem from my last game with the size of the AI cities. Below is a screenshot from 200 turns into this game. You can compare my cities to those of the AI. My smallest city was size 9 IIRC.

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/6738/civ4screenshot0001rs2.jpg

Here is the demographics from that same turn:

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/5633/civ4screenshot0002eb5.jpg

I've got over 5x the pop of my closest rival. Population is raw power -- in the base game, as well as this mod. The AI just cannot compete effectively with these small cities.

I also came across this little gem of a barb: :eek:

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/7544/civ4screenshot0000pa3.jpg

I opted to let the AI capture that city! :p Hero units really shouldn't be allowed to be barbs IMHO. I would later spawn my own Tankbuster, and frankly I ended up being disappointed. The unit really does not live up to its name, as it is still weaker than the Tanks even after its 200% armor bonus. Maybe upping its base strength as you did with the 0.8 Utility Vehicles would do the trick?

Nor for a few comments after reading the 0.8 change log (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7065450#post7065450):

+ When refueling a stack including empty units, some of the units might be skipped.
+ When several units were refueled, their refuel turn counters were not set to the same values.

I noticed this behavior last night. At first I thought I was nuts! Glad to see it is already fixed! :goodjob:

+ Great protector no longer lightbulbs technologies but can build a Rangers Guild.

What's a Rangers Guild?

+ Flamethrower becomes anti-infantry (guardian counter) since we already have AT infantry as vehicle counter.

I'm not sure that I agree with this change. I understand why folks were clamoring for it, though. But the Anti-Tank unit is available from the expensive Heavy Weapons tech. Whereas the Flamethrower is made available at the cheaper Refining Tech, the same tech that enables the Jeeps that it would counter.

The problem I had in my game was that I had neither oil nor munitions. Thus I couldn't build either unit! :ack: Neither of my neighbors had munitions, but they both had oil. I eventually had plenty of Flamethrowers after my first war. I get the impression that oil is a much more plentiful resource than munitions. If that is the case, this change could seriously impact the balance of the game's combat system.



I look forward to giving 0.8 a try! Keep up the good work! :goodjob:

The barb tankbuster is funny.
I am not sure however, if i concur with "Hero units really shouldn't be allowed to be barbs". Maybe barbs shouldn't pop the same heroes as Civs, but i definitely do like the idea of "Great Barbarians".
Many heroes of the human history were in fact barbs :lol:

Rangers guild is a Great Person unique building that will boost Safety.
(Tho 25% is not a lot. Or is it 25% empirewide ?)
Overall i think the new safety buildings might be enought to make Vision victory actually do-able - i will give it a try.

On Flamethrower - i think it makes sense flamers beeing more useful against infantry than against Tanks.

The balance of resources is something that is hard to judge from a few games - due to the random nature of the maps. I had a feeling the maps are overfull with Gold in my first game. In my second i seen none at all :lol:

Have you ever thought of making the "Zombie Mod" version of this? Maybe a flag in the beginning of a custom game "Zombies On/OFF"

I ask because you pointed me to the Necro Christi game, which is a good mod, but the world starts empty and not ruined like your version. I think Fury Road with zombies would be a lot of fun.

Have you ever thought of making the "Zombie Mod" version of this? Maybe a flag in the beginning of a custom game "Zombies On/OFF"

I ask because you pointed me to the Necro Christi game, which is a good mod, but the world starts empty and not ruined like your version. I think Fury Road with zombies would be a lot of fun.

I've seen your comments on the NecroCristi thread. I had a big advantage, compared to the NecroCristi team, since I am a programmer. Creating the mapscript, which puts ruins and highways on the map, really adds a lot to the post-apocalypse feel of Fury Road.

Thematically, I think NecroCristi should focus on zombies, and Fury Road shouldn't. However, I may discuss with them about creating a variant mapscript for NecroCristi. The hard part is highways; I wanted to focus on a single continent, which has the side benefit that I don't have to worry about ocean when routing highways.

The hard part is highways; I wanted to focus on a single continent, which has the side benefit that I don't have to worry about ocean when routing highways.

I don't see this as a problem. In my opinion, once humanity gets going, the zombies are toast. I mean, apparently no one in the book WW-Z ever though of a tank mounted mine-flail that was developed back during WW-II and there are many modern equivalents. Not much zombies can do against that or even just mine-rollers.

Anyway, the small scale and the smaller unit scale, I think makes a one continent mod work well. Plus, it would help with the naval end since you'd be relegated to small, mostly coastal boats that would be easily made, but nothing large.

Besides, one could also make 'historical' scenarios using a lot of the custom-made maps of different parts of the world.

Ah, would that I was a programmer, but my last programming language was probably BASIC and that is about it. =[

I had no oil nor munitions in my territory.

I am curious to know whether you had *access* to these, and just didn't choose to develop towards them, or whether you were actually cut off by other civs. There should definitely be enough oil and munitions for each player to have access. If not, I should tune the mapscript.

I ended up with more Nukes than Guided Missiles, which was a bummer since I actually wanted to keep the land in this game. I must say, the Nuke needs a re-base option. I really hated leaving them outside my city after they spawned. It also looked like Nukes weren't destroying terrain improvements. Is this normal behavior? I don't normally bother with ICBMs in the base game.

I am surprised that you had a lot of ICBM: silo spawns are 2/3 cruise missiles, 1/6 tacnuke, and 1/6 ICBM. Of course it is random. Nukes have a certain percent chance to add fallout into each nearby plot. I lowered the percent chance; but if fallout appears in a plot, then all of its improvements and such should be removed. If you have a counterexample, please let me know.

As far as I know, cruise missiles and tacnukes always have a rebase button. Did you find otherwise? I had some thoughts about rebasing nukes in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=281410). If you had to use a truck to rebase, would that have made it more fun or more painful?

After playing financial, I really do think it is underpowered. Given the terrain modifications and the need for strong production and health (ie forests), you really don't build as many cottages as you would in a normal game. I actually went broke at one point during my first war.

I am not sure if that is a play balance problem or a strategy problem. If you had built more cottages, you would not have run out of money. I had that problem in early games too. I was used to cities in the 10-15 pop range so I struggled to get them that large. Now I consider a post-apocalypse city of 5-7 population to be pretty good.

Conversely, I think charismatic is way overpowered in relation to the other traits.

I have gotten a few comments about making the traits more balanced. Part of it is hard to tell without playtesting, so this comment is very helpful. Part of the problem also is that some of the trait benefits do not show up today in the civilopedia. For example, industrious gets 2x the chance to find units in the ruins. But since I did this in python, there is no XML tag that the civilopedia can see. I have to figure out how to get the game to show these benefits.

I noted a problem from my last game with the size of the AI cities. Below is a screenshot from 200 turns into this game. You can compare my cities to those of the AI. My smallest city was size 9 IIRC. [...] I've got over 5x the pop of my closest rival. Population is raw power -- in the base game, as well as this mod. The AI just cannot compete effectively with these small cities.

OK, I will bump up the priority on my project to understand how AI workers decide what to do. I am sure there must be weights to affect this specifically. In order to make sure I am improving, I will need to write a statistics routine and run on the same game before and after changing the weights; otherwise random factors may swamp the results.

I also came across this little gem of a barb [...] I would later spawn my own Tankbuster, and frankly I ended up being disappointed. The unit really does not live up to its name, as it is still weaker than the Tanks even after its 200% armor bonus.

It is unusual, but not impossible for these hero units to be barbarians. I am not sure if I should remove this possibility or not, I think I will leave it for now. Hero units spawn randomly in owned ruins plots. In this case, the barbs had conquered a city and thus "inherited" ownership of the ruins plots.

Thanks for the feedback about the strength of this particular hero. One other player popped a Great General on the hero unit, and got something that probably *is* way overstrength. I need to investigate how to make these units start out as their real level, which is level 6, so adding a GG doesn't give them *another* six promotions. Maybe I will increase the strength also. Since the ute gets terrain and fortification bonuses, he can probably defend against a tank fine, but maybe not attack.

Ok i just had a really terrible game.
None of it was the Mod's fault.
Just had INCREADIBLE bad RNG luck - i would start a "RNG is Cheating"-thread, if i did not know otherwise.

I hope my comments are not to biased...

First of all - the new city names really add a lot to the atmosphere. :goodjob:
Also the custom flag - only one as of now - helps a lot in breaking the link to the Vanilla civ.
I played new Republicans having custom cities but Americas flag - i had to look up it was New Republicans right now, while writing the post, because i had "America" in mind.
I was really jealous on the New Australia guy.

-----

On maps.
I am not sure what the changes were, but my feeling was you "improved" the map generator to the worse.
Might be just part of my bad RNG luck.
Anyway... You asked at some point for a example of a location that does suck. Well... here is one. And this one was the best out of 4 re-generated starts.
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/2517/clipboard01wl3.jpg

There is another small issue - not visible here, but i seen it while regenerating:
When you add the food ressouce, it sometimes will be added on top of forest. Not a big deal, but Wheat in a forest looks a bit odd.

-----

How many Survivors do you need to take down a tank ? Well, you don't really want to know :rolleyes:
Around turn 75 the New Australia guy came demandig tribute. I said: "WTF ?! :mad: Go away !".
He declared on me and came back with Tank Gal.
He took a city vs. a Crossbow only got minimal damage in process... then i dogpiled on him with all i had. Eventually took him down, but it wasn't really fun.

Maybe powerful hero units should not pop before the tech to get they regular counterpart is researched (The Rebuilt Depot tech).

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I have gotten a few comments about making the traits more balanced. Part of it is hard to tell without playtesting, so this comment is very helpful. Overall tweaking traits is something that probaly is better approached on a whole (Designing the complete trait set, rather than bumbling on individual traits.)

OK, I will bump up the priority on my project to understand how AI workers decide what to do. I am sure there must be weights to affect this specifically. In order to make sure I am improving, I will need to write a statistics routine and run on the same game before and after changing the weights; otherwise random factors may swamp the results. There is a tag in the LeaderheadInfos.XML called "ImprovementWeightModifier" that should make that leader favour a certain improvement - it works similar to other "Flavour" tags - adding some weight to the decision, without really forcing it. Might be a good place to start. You will need to take a look at some vanilla leaders to get a idea of the magnitude of those weights...

It is unusual, but not impossible for these hero units to be barbarians. I am not sure if I should remove this possibility or not, I think I will leave it for now. I think it should stay for now. At some point maybe dedicated Barbarian heroes could be fun. But for now i think it is ok as it is.

Thanks for the feedback about the strength of this particular hero. One other player popped a Great General on the hero unit, and got something that probably *is* way overstrength. I need to investigate how to make these units start out as their real level, which is level 6, so adding a GG doesn't give them *another* six promotions. Maybe I will increase the strength also. Since the ute gets terrain and fortification bonuses, he can probably defend against a tank fine, but maybe not attack.However making that hero impossible (virtually - you would need a ton of XP) to gain promotions would make him a lot less fun.


I will play another game on weekend, hoping for better luck ;)

I am not sure what the changes were, but my feeling was you "improved" the map generator to the worse. [...] Anyway... You asked at some point for a example of a location that does suck. Well... here is one. And this one was the best out of 4 re-generated starts. [...] When you add the food ressouce, it sometimes will be added on top of forest. Not a big deal, but Wheat in a forest looks a bit odd.

The exact change is listed in the release note: if a starting location has less than 4 bonus food, add a food resource. In this case, I am guessing that the wheat you see there was added this way. You can imagine how bad the original position would have been. This position shows that adding one bonus food may not be enough. In this case I think a second food bonus would have made it an OK position: you would be able to expand fast enough to get a settler to a better spot. At least there is a ton of fresh water for farms. To prevent this, I will make sure one food bonus is enough or add a second, and also remove forest/jungle when adding them. Did you really see a number of start locations even worse?

He declared on me and came back with Tank Gal. [...] Maybe powerful hero units should not pop before the tech to get they regular counterpart is researched (The Rebuilt Depot tech).

Tank Gal is new in this release. She has the highest strength of any hero. Tankbuster is the second highest in the right terrain. Maybe these are too strong. I could remove Tank Gal from the possible spawn list until the barb player has Heavy Weapons. I am pretty sure the barb player gets each tech after a few players have it. That would at least prevent her spawning early. It wouldn't solve the similar problem for Tankbuster since combustion usually comes pretty early. I'll have to think more about that.

The exact change is listed in the release note: if a starting location has less than 4 bonus food, add a food resource. In this case, I am guessing that the wheat you see there was added this way.[...]Did you really see a number of start locations even worse?Yep.
The one that probably took the cake was - similar to this but coastal - 2 desert, 7 or 8 plains (a few of them hill), nothing green, rest more or less useless water tiles and a fish ressource as food.
And to make it worse - a second fish unworkable just ourside the BFC. I guess it the way the RNG says ":p"

Another two were more or less on pair with the one in the picture.

But since you did not changed nothing but ressource, and in my previous games i never felt the starts would suck that bad...
I guess it was part of my bad RNG karma today :lol:

Tank Gal is new in this release. She has the highest strength of any hero. Tankbuster is the second highest in the right terrain. Maybe these are too strong. I could remove Tank Gal from the possible spawn list until the barb player has Heavy Weapons. I am pretty sure the barb player gets each tech after a few players have it. That would at least prevent her spawning early. It wouldn't solve the similar problem for Tankbuster since combustion usually comes pretty early. I'll have to think more about that.I was thinking only to check if the player who would get Tank Gal has Heavy Weapons might be enought.
I wouldnt wan't those heroes to be too rare because of balance issue.

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Another note. Charlemagne Mod has a unit that is in some respect similar to the Fuel truck. A supply train - it is the only unit in the mod that has MEDIC promotions. So the idea is - it should accompany a offensive stack to provide healing.

I did not play the mod long enought to see how good the AI is using it. But maybe someone else know...

I checked - Charlemagne has no SDK changes, i also found no Python on Supply trains AI (Other than building it)
Tha unit has UNITAI_COUNTER...

But since you did not changed nothing but ressource, and in my previous games i never felt the starts would suck that bad...

For all of these bad starts, is it enough to add a second food bonus? Or is that not sufficient / not the right solution?

Another note. Charlemagne Mod has a unit that is in some respect similar to the Fuel truck. [...] I checked - Charlemagne has no SDK changes, i also found no Python on Supply trains AI (Other than building it) Tha unit has UNITAI_COUNTER...

It seems nobody knows exactly what UNITAI_COUNTER does; this link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6225931&postcount=2) is the best I could find but it isn't really specific. As you can see the fuel truck currently has CITY_DEFENSE which is why we see big stacks of them in AI cities. I only dispatch one if there is a unit out of gas. I can try COUNTER instead, maybe that will fool the AI into bringing them along when it sends out attack stacks.

For all of these bad starts, is it enough to add a second food bonus? Or is that not sufficient / not the right solution?I am not sure. A second food will sure help.

But overall this "Bad Start Issue" is very hard to pinpoint - besides the randomnes of the map, also player being in different mood might affect what he will concider a "Athmospheric Post Apo Location" and waht will be "Unbearable Bad Start".

It seems nobody knows exactly what UNITAI_COUNTER does; this link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6225931&postcount=2) is the best I could find but it isn't really specific.Oh i see. I will try to change this locally in my game and look how it works out.

I will be interested in feedback about UNITAI_COUNTER. I am afraid it will make the gas truck equally likely to stack with a cavalry or a jeep, which is still not quite right. I am starting to think out an actual AI "algorithm" for this. Maybe a certain percentage of fuel trucks should be assigned to "tag along" with a certain percentage of gas-related stacks. But if I have to recompute the tagging along every turn, it will be time-consuming.

Maybe barbs shouldn't pop the same heroes as Civs, but i definitely do like the idea of "Great Barbarians".
Many heroes of the human history were in fact barbs :lol::hmm: You have a point there ...

I am curious to know whether you had *access* to these, ... If not, I should tune the mapscript.I had no oil or munitions. Neither of my neighbors had munitions either, but they both had oil. Frankly, I'd vote to not change the script. It made for an interesting and enjoyable game. :goodjob: I've no complaints ...

I am surprised that you had a lot of ICBM: silo spawns are 2/3 cruise missiles, 1/6 tacnuke, and 1/6 ICBM.Luck of the RNG, I guess ... I probably had about 2/3 ICBM to 1/3 Cruise Missile. Again, I wouldn't change anything ...

As far as I know, cruise missiles and tacnukes always have a rebase button. Did you find otherwise?Never knew there was a tacnuke unit until now. :undecide: The missiles definitely had one. It would be nice if the ICBM had one, as well. Or if they automatically moved to the closest city on the following turn. But hardly a game-breaker either way ...

If you had to use a truck to rebase, would that have made it more fun or more painful?Sounds like a pain TBH. Unless the silo were surrounded by a bunch of fallout tiles (ie barb animals), I doubt that I would use it ...

I am not sure if that is a play balance problem or a strategy problem. If you had built more cottages, you would not have run out of money.I didn't run out of money because I was financial. I ran out of money because I wasn't paying attention in the middle of a war. Those tiny AI cities come out of revolt pretty quickly. And continuing to crank out units that I really didn't need ... Well, I was losing money at 0%. Fortunately I had a bit of cash on hand from capturing those cities. :) But that would/could happen on any game, any mod, or not.

No, the point I was trying to make was that financial has very little impact in this mod. Especially when compared to traits such as aggressive or charismatic. There just isn't that much commerce in this game. And frankly, what with the shorter tech tree, more commerce really isn't needed! In fact, it may be better to just replace financial with a different trait, rather than trying to fix it? :dunno:

For example, industrious gets 2x the chance to find units in the ruins.Yeah, I saw that one in the change log. I'm looking forward to giving industrious a try!

I was really jealous on the New Australia guy.Agreed! That Aussie flag is really nice! :thumbsup:

Never knew there was a tacnuke unit until now. :undecide: The missiles definitely had [a rebase button]. It would be nice if the ICBM had one, as well. Or if they automatically moved to the closest city on the following turn.

I don't quite follow. Cruise missiles and tacnukes have a range, so they have to be rebased to be useful offensively, and they have a rebase button. The ICBM has an infinite range, so there is no reason to rebase it. I guess the ICBM is supposed to reflect something that gets launched out of a huge silo built in the ground, so it would be hard to rebase. How would you use a rebase-able ICBM differently?

I didn't run out of money because I was financial. I ran out of money because I wasn't paying attention in the middle of a war. [...] No, the point I was trying to make was that financial has very little impact in this mod. Especially when compared to traits such as aggressive or charismatic. There just isn't that much commerce in this game.

I have found that financial is pretty effective, as long as I remember to build cottages early instead of food. I top out my cities around pop 7 and I have a pretty good gold income by the midgame. This still doesn't guarantee me a win, but Fin/* guys seem to have a much better gold position which enables faster expansion. My point was that you might not have seen this effect, because you built more farms than cottages.

One guideline I have from software testing experience is that if some people feel a particular thing is too strong and others feel the same thing is too weak, then probably it is about right. But if everybody feels it is too strong, then it is probably too strong. So far I am getting both "too strong" and "too weak" feedback on financial, so I think I will leave it as-is for now. However, if you have suggestions for different traits in addition/instead of financial, I would love to hear more.

How would you use a rebase-able ICBM differently?I'd put them in a city where they have some defense. :D In the base game, your ICBMs are in your cities where they are built. Rebasing them in this mod isn't that big of a deal really, just one of those "nice to have" sort of things. It can sometimes be a pain to remember to station some troops on your silos and to periodically check their health if there happen to be some barbs spawning in the area.

I normally station some troops near the fallout areas, anyway. I let the barbs pound on them until they reach 10xp before cycling them out. So putting some on the silos as well isn't that big of a deal.

I think protecting your Nukes from Barbs on depots is more realistic and more in the spirit of the mod, than rebasing them :lol:

I'd put [ICBMs] in a city where they have some defense. :D [...] It can sometimes be a pain to remember to station some troops on your silos and to periodically check their health if there happen to be some barbs spawning in the area.

"A pain to remember"? I once had a barb take over my silo, spawn an ICBM there the next turn, and nuke my capital city with it. I still have nightmares about that. It is highly critical to defend your rebuilt ruins, regardless of type. Even if you own the territory, a unit which spawns there belongs to any player who has units stationed on it. I wish tacnukes and cruise missiles didn't automatically rebase, it makes silos *slightly* less critical to defend.

"A pain to remember"? I once had a barb take over my silo, spawn an ICBM there the next turn, and nuke my capital city with it.:rotfl:
I wasn't aware that could happen ... I guess you would remember something like that! Anyway, thanks for the tip!

I wish tacnukes and cruise missiles didn't automatically rebase, it makes silos *slightly* less critical to defend.If you want to stop it from happening, take a look at the fort improvement. They can be based in forts, so there is something in the XML that allows it. If the silo had that same attribute set, I doubt they would automatically rebase.

I should be more clear. If cruise missiles/tacnukes don't rebase, they are useless offensively due to low range. So tagging silos with ActsLikeFort does not help. Automatic rebasing seems too easy. That is why I was thinking of the truck approach. Nobody else likes this, so I will just leave the automatic rebasing for these units.

I played a game. Lost a Vision Victory :cry:
Unfortunately i have to say, the new decay machenic makes preventing vision victory a lot harder under certain conditions, because "Counter Spread" does not work...

I do like the idea of Vision decay, but thecurrent implementation has a few problems:
1) Too fast (You said 5% chance i think - its a expectation of a Vision decaying after 10 turns.)
2) Holy Cities do Decay :crazyeye:
3) Because of the decay, once a AI is in a State Vision converting it is very hard, and it converting itself (by spreading a own vison is utterly impossible, as the AI is aunaware of the decay, and because of 2)
4) The Vision founding times are still very uneven, making the above points more harmfull (Scenario: Stevie founds Open Road, while already in Alpha. Open Roads decays after ~10 turns in her holy having no impact at all on the game.)
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/9307/visiondecayat2.jpg

-----

For a bit more insight a brief chronic of the game:
Monarch, Standard Map, 9 AI.

I started on a BIG peninsula (had space for 7 cities) cut off by a long land Brigde and Mick on it from the rest of the world.

Max founded the first vision (Alpha). I founded my (BoS) some turns later.
A bit later i was able to get rid of Mick, so i gainded access to the rest of the continent. By the time i met the others 5 of the 8 were in Alpha Copmlex already. I got OB with Max and one other. Send some Advocates, trying to counter spread, but my Vision decayed too fast, so i was unable to convert nor to water down Alpha complex enought to keep it down.

I almost averted Vision Loss by just getting my own pop big enought but was a bit too slow (I had 23% world pop at the time i lost... 26% would have been enought :cry:)

But every foreighn measure i tried was furtile. Due to long distance to most other civs and the fast decay, i wasn't able to get noticeable influence there (Let alone that some did not even open boarders to me, because i was in different faith).

This is not all due to mechanic - my remote and isolated position was unfortunte.

A really bad thing is the Holy City decay.
At some point two other AI founded visions of they own. But since they were in Alpha Complex state vision already, they holy cities just decayed (quite fast...), so they did not feel compelled (nor had the means) to spread they own faith.


As it is now the founder of the first vison gets even bigger head-start, than without decay.

-----

Some Vision-UNrelated notes.

I think the AI was doing a bit better population wise (i played with the High Farm Weight XML - a bit more on this in the Dev Feedback thread, as the discussion is located there).
In previous games i had a lot higher part in the worlds population than 23%.


Gave Fuel Trucks the COUNTER AI. I think i like it more than DEFENSE.

The AI did put 2 Trucks (not all they had) in bigger offensive stacks.
Single Gas powered units still were moving out on they own and had to wait for a truck once they run out, but at least the Attacking stacks had some supply.

There was of course - not unexpected - some :smoke: as well - the AI did put 2 trucks in offensive stack not having gas powered units as well :lol:

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7972/counterfuelis4.jpg

Overall i think it is not too bad - Offensive stacks get some supply on they way, the AI does not send all the Trucks it has with a single stack, so it also keeps some in reserve.

Maybe with some tweaking to your current "Forced Move" routine, you could tweak it to be good enought - maybe if you pull Trucks out of stacks that do not need them, and send them back home. I am not sure, but i think once the stack is on the move, the AI will not send a Truck to chase it.

-----

Also i stumbled upon a map glitch. I think it might be a result of some of the "postwork" - like removing coastal peaks maybe. It's been a while since i looked into map scripts so i don't remember the details, but i think some flag-configuration when calling setPlotType should cause the grafics in the surrounding area to be re-adjusted to fit the change.
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/9501/mapglitchww9.jpg

No I'm just a .

Thanks for the feedback.

What exact change did you make for fuel trucks? Did you give them *both* counter and city defense, or only counter? Looking at your screenies, I would almost rather have a few gas trucks in non-fuel-using stacks, rather than a big stack of trucks sitting idle in a city. So I will try it.

In the two or three full games I played manually with 0.8, I did not see decay happening that fast. Some, but not too much. It is helpful to collect more feedback on that.

I can think of a few things to tweak about the vision victory.

A capitol might be founded when the civ already has a previous state vision. If this happens, the founding civ should switch to this vision. They went to the trouble of building the capitol, at least they should use it. That will cause the previous state vision to decay everywhere inside the civ. That should be pretty easy to change, and it looks like this was a top issue of yours.

When a capitol is destroyed, it should start to decay everywhere. That is harder to change with the current code, but it shouldn't be impossible.

When a civ with a capitol, capitulates or voluntarily becomes a vassal, you could say its capitol should be destroyed leading to decay of its vision. I am not so sure that is the right approach, you could argue that the master civ should have to exert influence to get the vassal to switch visions first.

Thanks for the feedback.

What exact change did you make for fuel trucks? Did you give them *both* counter and city defense, or only counter? Looking at your screenies, I would almost rather have a few gas trucks in non-fuel-using stacks, rather than a big stack of trucks sitting idle in a city. So I will try it.Yes i was thinking along the same lines
I gave it COUNTER only - as Default AI and and in the possible AI's list.

A capitol might be founded when the civ already has a previous state vision. If this happens, the founding civ should switch to this vision. They went to the trouble of building the capitol, at least they should use it. That will cause the previous state vision to decay everywhere inside the civ. That should be pretty easy to change, and it looks like this was a top issue of yours.Sounds interesting. And yes i think the Dacaying of the Capitol was the most troubling thing.
With the rest the circumstances on the map played a role in my loss.

The Jeep unit is pretty worthless now.

I've got cities pumping out 2 Experience 7 Ute's for 60 hammers each vs 1 Exp 7 Jeep for 120 hammers.

With my Ute I immediately get to have Road Warrior I and Weapon Mount, for a net Strength of 17.50 (a bit less in forest, hill, jungle).

With a Jeep I get Combat I and Combat II, yielding a net strength of 18.2.

So what's the point of spending 2x the hammers for a unit that's only a bit stronger, and requires me to refuel it...

Oh and Jeeps don't get defensive bonuses either...

Interesting point. I buffed the ute from strength 8 to strength 10 in version 0.8. If I reverse that, it is a 20% decrease, putting its strength back to 14 in your case vs 18 for the jeep. So, I guess this was still a problem even before the buff, but now I agree it is more of a problem.

There are two obvious solutions: raise jeep strength, decrease jeep cost. What is the right threshold?

btw: thanks for making this mod. i just started to beta test this one two days ago, and i must say i like it :)

comment: can you explain the map script, and maybe perhaps release a couple more that are different?

Thanks for the feedback. There is a description of the mapscript algorithm in the old thread at this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6794892&postcount=6). Do you have a specific question?

What sorts of things would you like to see on "more different" maps? One playtester has suggested a scenario which is based on the real map of Australia, which is always possible.

A really bad thing is the Holy City decay.
At some point two other AI founded visions of they own. But since they were in Alpha Complex state vision already, they holy cities just decayed (quite fast...), so they did not feel compelled (nor had the means) to spread they own faith.

I have locally changed this, so that upon building a capitol, the AI player automatically converts to it. So far I have only played one game with this change, but it seems to make it a real struggle to keep momentum for a vision victory. I assume it will be just as unpleasant for the AI player as it was for me :-)

If you are interested in making this local change to see what difference it makes, replace the function onBuildingBuilt in Assets/Python/CvFuryRoadEvents.py with the following. I have added two lines, the rest is the same.



# When capitol is built, select religion. AI will pick favorite or
# any avail; popup for human player
def onBuildingBuilt(self, argsList):
pCity, iBuildingType = argsList
iCapitol = self.gc.getInfoTypeForString("BUILDING_CAPITOL")
if iBuildingType != iCapitol: return
# Make list of available religions
lAvail = []
iPlay = pCity.getOwner()
pPlay = self.gc.getPlayer(iPlay)
if pPlay.isHuman(): iGoal = -1
else: iGoal = self.dFavoriteReligion[pPlay.getLeaderType()]
bExact = false
for iRel in range(self.gc.getNumReligionInfos()):
if not CyGame().isReligionFounded(iRel):
lAvail.append(iRel)
if iRel == iGoal: bExact = true
# If leader's favorite is available, take it; otherwise pick random
if bExact:
self.gc.getGame().setHolyCity(iGoal, pCity, 1)
pPlay.convert(iGoal) # <== first added line
elif pPlay.isHuman():
popupInfo = CyPopupInfo()
popupInfo.setButtonPopupType(ButtonPopupTypes.BUTT ONPOPUP_PYTHON)
popupInfo.setText("You have completed a Capitol Building. Which vision do you choose for the world?")
popupInfo.setData1(iPlay)
popupInfo.setData2(pCity.getID())
popupInfo.setOnClickedPythonCallback("furyFoundPopup")
for iRel in lAvail:
s = self.gc.getReligionInfo(iRel).getText()
popupInfo.addPythonButton(s, "")
popupInfo.addPopup(iPlay)
else:
iRel = lAvail[CyGame().getSorenRandNum(len(lAvail), "")]
self.gc.getGame().setHolyCity(iRel, pCity, 1)
pPlay.convert(iRel) # <== second added line

Many improvements since I last played at patch .06. It was cool to see new graphics and game mechanics in play.
- new guardian graphic is sweet. Same goes for the new UTE and the crossbowman hanging out the passenger side, barbed wire fences, safety for culture (nice icon), broadcast wonder, etc are good additions.
- new leaderhead for Peter is excellent.
- seem to have gotten a better start than many others in .05 & .06, although I'm still just on my first game in patch .08
- I have less fuel truck spam than before so I'm not deleting an endless stream of them now.
- I like the new refueling mechanic, and I'm still managing to stay supplied in fuel with relative ease so I don't feel hampered by any reduction.
- I like not having to pollute my cities with a refinery building, so the refinery change is a welcomed one.
- Less radiation as everyone isn't getting a stream of nukes. Missiles still get launched but I would expect to see post-apocalyptic civs less willing to drop radioactive missiles. This change makes sense.
- The barbarian animals seem to move much faster and hit harder than I remember, and stay in the game longer than before. They actually lasted longer than the human barbs this time. A couple of workers, scouts, and missionaries became lunch fast as rad scorpions zoomed in out of nowhere. As such, I'm using more escorts now.
- I'm also actually using more units in between guardians and tanks. I barely touched the in-betweeners before. It feels more like I am playing as intended.
- this version is much more polished. All around, great job!


In my current game I am having one problem. I can't seem to obtain a vision victory. My problem isn't in spreading my vision. I was able to get a head start on most civs and quickly expanded my vision. After getting Brotherhood of Steel into Debbie's two cities, she abandoned the vision she founded and switched. Most of my neighbors didn't have any vision yet, so they quickly adopted BoS after converting only one or two of their cities. There were two more civs with opposing visions, but only one of them remains and I have BoS in all of his cities.

However, there seems to be a bug. 83% of the world follows BoS (my vision). I have gotten BoS into every city on the map, and 5 out of the 6 remaining civs have their state vision set to BoS. The bug is that I haven't gotten a vision victory. My victory conditions menu says I should get a vision victory at 67%. When I first hit 25% of the world believing in BoS, a pop-up said at 75% I would get a vision victory. The difference in numbers confuses me. More so, I'm confused as to why I haven't gotten a victory by now. 83% is higher than either of those numbers. Is this is a bug?

In case it makes a difference, I am playing as Halloween Jane/House of Usher. What gives? Am I trying to spread the wrong vision for my civ? It seemed like I should be able to pick any one and just go for it.

Edit:
Even with 94% of the world following BoS, and all 6 remaining civs with BoS as their declared state vision I haven't gotten a vision victory.

I am glad to know that the tuning we have done is in the right direction. It is always a possibility that we wind up with two divergent "user bases" who want different things, so far that is not happening.

Regarding the animals, I have not made any changes. In some games the punks and animals bother me more than other games. Animals spawn in ruins and fallout, so perhaps this time you had more of those around your starting location.

Regarding the vision victory, first, the main problem that came up in 0.6 and 0.7 was that it was too easy and came by surprise. So we have definitely gotten rid of that :-)

The 75% value in the popup is wrong. The victory xml file says 67%, and that is the authority. The victory xml file also says 10 turns are required, and that "appears" to be causing some kind of problem. Or maybe, there is some other clause in the victory condition which is not being satisfied. In one or two of my games, I am pretty sure I hung onto 67% for ten turns and did not win, but on the other hand I did not actually count. In all of my games recently I have gotten up into the 60-65% range and then my percentage has gone down due to other capitols being founded.

The religious victory apparently has a few internal checks which are hard to understand, based on this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=142266&highlight=VICTORY_RELIGIOUS) where I learned about it. Upon re-reading the thread just now, I found one post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3372463&postcount=25) which says at least five religions must be founded! I had not noticed that before. These victory conditions are inside the SDK somewhere, so I cannot adjust them.

Can you confirm that your game had less than 5 visions (religions)? Probably it did. If you have a late save game, maybe you can use WB to put in a couple of holy cities. I don't think the SDK will know to count capitols, but if you select the "edit city" tool you can mark some cities as holy cities. I assume that will "count". It could be that if you add some holy cities and then replay ten turns, you will win.

If that is the problem I am not sure exactly how to solve it. I have made a change locally to force a civ to convert to its own new religion when it founds a capitol. This makes it a *lot* harder to achieve a vision victory because everybody will build a capitol eventually. This will at least "dilute" your vision in their cities and your vision will also decay. It is possible I made it too hard now, especially if the five religion thing is really a requirement.

That must be the problem. Five visions were founded (tech, money, peace, anarchy, and my BoS) but I never did see the peace holy city. That vision just showed up in one of my towns, but I don't even know from who. Maybe that holy city got razed? I'll try editing that in with the WB to a city, and wait 10 turns to see if that works. If so, I will watch for that in the future and try to make sure holy cities don't get razed although sometimes that is out of the players control.

I will have to give it another try. I never intended to win via vision, but after it started to spread so easily and I got the pop up at 25% I thought I would try for it.

Either way, I still had fun and think Fury Road has gotten a lot more flavorful. Cheers!

I do not know the details, but I think the requirement is that the religion must be *founded*, if its holy city is razed afterwards that does not matter. In vanilla, and earlier versions of this mod, religions are founded as a byproduct of techs which are guaranteed to be researched. So the condition that five religions must be founded is a no-brainer.

With the current version of fury road, it is not a no-brainer. 5 players building capitols might not happen very often. Some specific testing to verify this is in order.

I do not know the details, but I think the requirement is that the religion must be *founded*

Holy city is probably decayed, like in my game. And i hence i am also quite sure that Vision beeing founded is enought, no matter what happens to the holy city afterwards, since i lost that game to vision :lol:

I do however only remember 4 visions beeing founded in my game. Probably i missed one out, i will check, if i still have a autosave.

I have had my first adventure into reading the C++ SDK code for the game, to see what the religious victory conditions *really* are. I am not sure if I am more confused, or less confused. It seems the post I mentioned in the religious victory thread is completely wrong.

If you can read C code at all, take a look at the file which is included in the 3.17 BTS patch: <bts>/CvGameCoreDLL/CvGame.cpp, line 7014. In pseudocode, it says:


for each team
if total number of cities > 2 * number of players alive
for each religion
if this team owns the holy city
if the religion percent of this religion is over the threshold
we have a winner


So, apart from the religious percentage, the only requirement is the number of cities count. It does not even seem that the 10 turn delay affects anything.

This fits with refar's recent victory loss. I had a game just now where I was sitting at 70% for a while, pretty early in the game, without winning. Then suddenly I won; it turns out in a 5 player game we had been sitting at 10 cities, and when the 11th city was founded I suddenly won. So that fits.

However, I am not sure this fits with countjackula's finding. Countjackula, can you confirm how many cities there were, compared to the number of players, when you were sitting there not winning? This is the only thing I can think of.

If we can fit countjackula's experience into this, then I am more confident I understand. I already have a 25% popup, and I have locally added a 50% popup. So I will take off the 10 turn delay which doesn't seem to do anything, and then try a few more games to make sure the only reason not to get a victory is the city count.

If countjackula's game where he wasn't winning, had a large number of cities, then I guess I am still missing something about the condition. I *feel* better, anyway, having looked into the C++ code.

There is another method checking for victory countdown on each possible victory type (CvGame::testVictory() should be just below the one you 'quoted') so Victory countodwn should still work.

Otherwise what you said.

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/7758/civ4screenshot0000fs4.jpg

I think our AI friend might be trying to research Sailing :mischief:

Even though the mapscript I started with is "pangaea", occasionally it generates islands. There are never ruins on islands, and there is no way to get units onto the islands.

I have seen goody huts (bunkers?) on those section before.

I only had 5 cities, so that explains it. There was myself and five AI players still alive. I would have needed thirteen or more ( > 2 * number of players alive) to meet all of the victory conditions. I had everything but the city count. Glad that has been cleared up.

That is the *total* number of cities, across all the players. If each AI has two cities, and you have three, that is enough to satisfy the limit. With 6 players total, if you had 5 and each of the other players only had one each, that would be 10 against 13 needed. If there were 13 cities total, then I am still confused about why you had not won.

I was guessing that 13+ cities was the number I would have needed to win. I obviously didn't read the formula correctly. If that applies to total cities needed I am still confused too, but I'll give it another go.

I don't have a save anymore so I can't check total city numbers to verify actual amounts. I'll have to stop obsessively cleaning out my save folder so often.

Just to be clear on the formula, it is correct to say that any player can win a vision victory if:
a) they own the holy city of a vision
b) that vision has spread to 67%+ of the world
c) the total number of cities is greater than two times the number of players?

That is the *total* number of cities, across all the players. If each AI has two cities, and you have three, that is enough to satisfy the limit. With 6 players total, if you had 5 and each of the other players only had one each, that would be 10 against 13 needed. If there were 13 cities total, then I am still confused about why you had not won.

So what happens if I start crushing my neighbors? Does the city minimum go down when other civs are disposed of?
EDIT: While I'm here, might I suggest a ferry unit to access any accidental islands? Make it come early, salvaging or something along there.

Just to be clear on the formula, it is correct to say that any player can win a vision victory if:
a) they own the holy city of a vision
b) that vision has spread to 67%+ of the world
c) the total number of cities is greater than two times the number of players?

Yes, that is my understanding. Note it is two times the number of *living* players. So in a game which originally had 11 players, but only you and one other guy are still alive, the requirement is 5 or more total cities (not 23).

EDIT: I should point out in the released version, 0.8, there is also a requirement that you must hold this for 10 turns. I was hoping that the game would give you a popup to notify you that you (or somebody else) had started the ten turn countdown, but no such luck. I have added the 25% popup as an early warning to watch out for it. So in the development version, 0.9, I have removed the ten turn requirement.

EDIT: While I'm here, might I suggest a ferry unit to access any accidental islands? Make it come early, salvaging or something along there.

I would rather get rid of accidental islands in the mapscript, but I have not quite figured out how to do it correctly. There is an obvious approach, but it occasionally wipes out 90% of the main continent too, so I must be missing something.

Several people have requested ferries or some ocean transport. But these people have obviously confused "Mad Max" with "Waterworld". :-)

I have a reason for keeping people on one continent, which I hope I will be able to implement someday. But, small motorboats or jetski's are still reasonable, along with some way to raise the food output of water plots. That is on my list to put in.

Not having a save to go double check I cooked up* (cheated for testing) a game. The AI built as normal. I got open border agreements with all civs and manually spread my religion to each and every city. I did however use the world builder to create all the necessary missionaries and place them.

7 players, 22 cities, 96% my vision on the F7 display (Open Road Society), 3% Stevie's vision (Technocrats). Open Road society is in every city on the map. Technocracy is only in one as Stevie just founded it :

Myself 3 cities
Peter 5 cities
Stevie 3 cities
Brian 4 cities
Max 3 cities
Keith 2 cities
Ironhead 2 cities

This should meet the vision victory requirements. I founded ORS and the holy city is my capital city. ORS has spread to more than 67%+ of the world (96%). Total amount of cities is > 2* number of living players (22 cities).

Skip ahead 10+ turns and still no victory. Technocrats has dropped to 0%. Brotherhood of Steel has been founded and sits at 2%. ORS is at 97%. We are up to 28 cities, with BoS only in one city and ORS in all 28.

Skip ahead 5 more turns. ORS is down to 92%, but still fits the criteria for holy city, total % of followers, and the total amount of cities in play. No victory.

If no one else runs into this then perhaps it's a bug on my end.

Please put up the save games if you have them, from before you expect a victory as well as after. You can zip them together to save space. If you cannot upload to here successfully, let me know and I will give you my external email address and you can email them there.

Here is a saved game from a world builder test where I would expect to win.

Second file is the same test game more than 10 turns later still without a win.

This must not necessarily be a FuryRoad bug - there were rare reports in the unmodded game forums, where - due some glitch, or maybe due to player mistake (Retired maybe) the game went into the "non-scoring game" state - like if you continue to play after victory/defeat.

Hi there, had a great time playing this mod last night.
Though I havnt got to the tanks or missiles stage yet ive got a few thoughts about the early stage of the game. This was 0.8.

It started all good, the terrain looks great and am loving the survivers model and the fact most of the buildings in the city are ruined apart from the palace. I cunningly sent my surivers out to scout the land and they quickly ran up against some giant spiders and a massive mutated beast which i cant remember the name of. The barbarians are great as I expereince them. They really slowed expansion as I usually dont build that many defensive units at the begining but you really need to protect your workers and settlers in this which I think is great and fits the setting.

However I found the mod through your sig about crossbows in the desert which sounded great, however crossbowmen and survivers seem to be obsolete to gaurdians pretty much straight away. I was quite looking forward to trying to survive in the wasteland with old technology before finally getting some guns, however I'd only built one crossbowman before I was getting gaurdians. Maybe you could move gaurdians a bit further back in technology or make crossbowmen a bit cheaper/gaurdians more expensive or something to make crossbows more useful early on, though you probably wanted gaurdians early so just ignore that if you want.

Reading through this food seems to be quite an issue, I was imagining before playing really small cities at first, 2-4 sort of size, but i think i must have got quite lucky with my placement, lots of river and grassland and a bonus food so got to 8 quite quickly. I quite liked the idea mentioned earlier in the thread about having upgraded farms later on in the tech tree, so your cities stay quite small early on then allowing them to get bigger later, but somehow keeping the cities small to begin with, as i cant see vast cities forming 20years after nuclear war. I also found that theres quite few buildings and soon I was just pumping units out and it seemed I had half a small country living in my band of surivers, and troops were quite indispensible. To slow growth and to make your soilders more important, so you dont risk them so much, I thought having to spend food, like you do with settlers and workers, at least for the earlier units might work quite well, to add to the surval element of the early game. Though it does sound like I got quite a nice start so probably not nessacery.

One other minor gripe is having lots of cottages early on didnt add the the atmosphere, I felt that people would be trying to stick together in the early years in the face of all the monsters, not splitting up. Making cottages available later on is the obvious solution but then I guess that would just add the money problem people have. Maybe farms could produce a little gold to balance it out, and pursuade the AI to build them more? As im sure food would be one of the most important commodities after a nuclear war.

Sounds quite critical I think but really I thought Fury Road was great! Having alot of fun and im probably just rambling.

However I found the mod through your sig about crossbows in the desert which sounded great, however crossbowmen and survivers seem to be obsolete to gaurdians pretty much straight away.[/QUOTE}

I agree totally with this.

[QUOTE=MrFred;7092147]I quite liked the idea mentioned earlier in the thread about having upgraded farms later on in the tech tree, so your cities stay quite small early on then allowing them to get bigger later, but somehow keeping the cities small to begin with, as i cant see vast cities forming 20years after nuclear war.

Again, I agree, although regardless of nuke war or lots of nuke plants failing, the problem is that there aren't a lot of farmers anymore. It takes time to reconstitute lost agrarian lore and machines as 'simple' as the mechanic threshers and the like. As I've posted many times, the book "Island in the Sea of Time" by S.M. Stirling shows this when the island of Nantucket gets thrown back to 1240 B.C. Not to mention but low tech agriculture tends to be very labor intensive and with low populations, it's going to take awhile before there is enough stability to have the people to make the tools as well as guard the farmers while they're doing their thing.

This is another reason why I think that raiding for slaves would be so important early on, so much so that I think raiding towns should give you a chance to get money or a slave, which might later on upgrade to a refugee or perhaps revolt into a barbarian.

One other minor gripe is having lots of cottages early on didnt add the the atmosphere, I felt that people would be trying to stick together in the early years in the face of all the monsters, not splitting up. Making cottages available later on is the obvious solution but then I guess that would just add the money problem people have. Maybe farms could produce a little gold to balance it out, and pursuade the AI to build them more? As im sure food would be one of the most important commodities after a nuclear war.

I agree again due to the same issues of safety.

Here is a saved game from a world builder test where I would expect to win.

Thanks for uploading. I investigated a little. I agree your earlier save game should lead to a win. When I remove the "10 turn delay" requirement, and load that game, I do immediately get a vision victory. Well, at the end of the first turn I play. So something is wrong with the "10 turn delay" part. I looked a little bit through the C code for the "10 turn delay", and I don't quite understand it. However, there is a "launch success rate" in there. I am wondering if the Firaxis folks assumed the only use for the delay field was in a space race victory, and it checks some launch success rate, and in my mod that's always zero because there are no spaceship components.

I have already set the "10 turn delay" to zero in 0.9 because of my own warning popups. If you want to make the same change locally, edit Fury Road/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4VictoryInfo.xml in a plain text editor. Search for "<iVictoryDelayTurns>10" which only appears once in the file, and change the 10 to 0. Not sure how launch success factors in, but this change causes your game to result in the expected vision victory.

@ MrFred: welcome to civfanatics! I am honored that your first post is about my mod.

Regarding guardians, moving them later in the tech tree is a good suggestion. I have been looking for ways to spread out the tech tree. One factor in the "Road Warrior" movie is highly limited ammunition. I haven't put that into the mod, because I wanted to get highly limited fuel working first. Maybe something like "small arms ammunition" is needed, with a tech and then a building to enable it. We have a "jeep crossbow" unit art already done, but I removed it because the "jeep rifle" came up so soon. Maybe removing it was the wrong solution.

Regarding the difficulty of a starting location, I am a little worried that there may be too much difference between the qualities of the starting locations. In some games I think that my start location is reasonable, but by 100 turns in, my score is only 800 points while of the AI players is up to like 1300. It is possible that these AI players, and also maybe MrFred, got a really good start position. I recommend to try a few more games and see if it is always that easy to get up to population 8.

Regarding difficulty of farming, one key point of this mod is that there is technology around, it's just broken, and you have to dig it out of the ruins. So it is a little different from being thrown back to 1200 BC where there are no ruins to get stuff out of.

Regarding safety of villages and slavery, this may need more tuning or a different mechanic. In previous versions, animals could capture cities. This caused a number of AI civs to get destroyed in the first 10 turns, and sometimes players too. In the current version animals cannot capture. I agree with the idea that early cottages and farms should "feel" risky. I think exploration "feels" risky because your survivors will get clobbered by deathclaws, but maybe cottages and farms don't feel risky now.

What is the best way to put actual risk into farms and cottages? Punks probably don't cause too much trouble early in the game. I don't want animals to destroy cities, but maybe they should be allowed to pillage ... "Oh no, a giant spider just ate all our farmers!" :-)

I have already set the "10 turn delay" to zero in 0.9 because of my own warning popups. If you want to make the same change locally, edit Fury Road/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4VictoryInfo.xml in a plain text editor. Search for "<iVictoryDelayTurns>10" which only appears once in the file, and change the 10 to 0. Not sure how launch success factors in, but this change causes your game to result in the expected vision victory.

Thank you for tracking down this bit of code, and for supplying a solution.

Regarding guardians, moving them later in the tech tree is a good suggestion.

I agree with this. Guardians are available very soon. While they make protecting my workers much easier, they obsolete survivors and crossbow units very quickly. Before, it was tanks and helis that obsoleted so many of the cool vehicles. That isn't the case anymore, but this still holds true for the guardian. They are something I always aim for very soon. I still may if their tech requirements get pushed farther back, but it would be nice to see those early units be useful enough to make an appearance for awhile. If Guardians are harder to make/come later, then all of a sudden crossbow units have a use. (Guardians new graphic is very cool btw. I love the cigar).

What is the best way to put actual risk into farms and cottages? Punks probably don't cause too much trouble early in the game. I don't want animals to destroy cities, but maybe they should be allowed to pillage ... "Oh no, a giant spider just ate all our farmers!"

Those wasteland creatures are very formidable. From an RP sensibility I don't think they should be able to pillage roads. Simply being on the road is hindrance enough to slow down exploration and expansion. Scrapyards, mines, and pump jacks fit into this category too imo. I wouldn't be adverse to you allowing them to pillage farms (food) and perhaps cottages (outskirt dwellers... people equal food too).

If they could enter your borders to feed, their appearance in your lands would certainly slow down the earlier stages of the game and reinforce a feeling of barely surviving. With more units, or preferably stronger units, they pose less of a threat. It definitely would cause many to re-evaluate their opening strategies.

Can you code creatures to be only able to pillage certain improvements while keeping cities and perhaps other improvements safe? If so, I'm sure a balance could be found that added extra challenge and atmosphere without being so harsh as to remove the fun factor.

Just played a couple of games, first was with rageing barbarians which turned out quite interesting. The barbarians where everywhere and really made the world seem dangerous and limited expansion. Unfortunatly it limited to the point where I was killed just before turn 200 but was one of the most fun games ive played. The barbarians come in a constant stream instead of massive stacks, and dont pillage so held out for quite a while. Several of the AIs were killed by them though so was probably a little much.

The next game was without rageing barbarians so actually managed to survive, was alot of fun and delibratly left light arms to give my crossbows a chance to be used. It seemed to work quite nicely and kept barbarians that little more dangerous at the begining. Getting refugees were great from bunkers, but are you sure you want to give away techs from them? I managed to get 4 techs from bunkers in a previous game, and with a quite small tech tree it gave me quite an edge.

On bunkers maybe you could get specialist citizens from them, like great people to represent knowledge they have? Also adding a great farmer might be good, extra food for the city they join!

On your crossbow jeep it could be enabled with the tech that gives you utes then could be upgraded to rifle jeeps with small arms, if you move small arms further back in the tree.

One last suggestion though its probably a rubbish idea, forts that spread saftey, like the space stations in final frontier. Then you could build forts near ruins instead of having to build a full city and suffer maintanence costs, and you might get more desolate areas on the map, as city borders expand quite quickly to the first expansion on normal speed (I personally prefered the 15 points required on epic speed but I just like longer games so thats just me). The AI managed to do this on final frontier so it should be possible to implement...

Or you could give a city a 3 plot radius to allow for more food options at start up and spread the required tile distance between cities to 4 or 5... It would add to the importance of the central cities without spaming the wastelands with them. Safety would still be a requirement to reach this extra plot.

Quite like the idea of forts spreading safety. It makes building them to grab a particular rsource a viable tactic. Perhaps they should require a garrison to do so though.

Also, any way for the safety bonus of the monument to be linked to your highest level troop?

I have thought a little bit about more use of forts to spread safety and allow building of improvements. I could make forts do all that. But, in the final analysis, what is the difference between that and a real city? The startup cost of a real city is a little higher, actual food/hammers instead of just worker time. I don't see a strong reason to have a second way to get the effect of a city.

The only reason I thought of it was with the cities borders expanding you get to see lots of the map and you soon are rubbing borders with other civs. So theres not very much fog of war for barbarians to spawn by mid gameish. A fort would only have a small border leaving more fog of war.

I guess there would have to be more incentives to build it over a city though as people would want to try and stop the barbarians!

I have thought a little bit about more use of forts to spread safety and allow building of improvements. I could make forts do all that. But, in the final analysis, what is the difference between that and a real city? The startup cost of a real city is a little higher, actual food/hammers instead of just worker time. I don't see a strong reason to have a second way to get the effect of a city.

I think forts would really only work in a Necro Christi zombie type future since zombies are relatively easy to flummox. To make a fort that would be defensible against Road Warriors would require a lot of effort and that kind of goes against the grain of the mod. If you are going to take the time to fort up something, it's going to be your city since by it's size, that take most of the time.

That being said, is there anyway to program it to where villiages grow slower if they are farther away from the city? It would be one thing to have your farms farther away; your average neo-barb doesn't want grain, but a town will have lots of stuff to loot, rape and burn. Going by a feudal historical model, you'd want you outlying villages to be close to the castle (in this case the city) so during an attack, they could retreat to the town. Obviously, the farther away, the less safe they are.

Plus, keeping your town folk closer also allows the leader to exert more control. Most Max Max type stories (and zombie ones for that matter) tend to have lots of nasty Warlords.

Oh, just saw a clip for the new movie version of Deathrace...maybe instead of the 'Olympic Games' event many mods have, you could replace it with this one. >=)

Regarding "lack of safety" for outlying villages and farms, countjackula has recently suggested that maybe animals should be allowed to pillage these improvements, only. I think that would add a lot to the feel of the game. You would want to keep more units nearby to patrol. It was also suggested a while back that maybe the actual safety level of your city could be set back if there is a pillage event. Each city could have a sign: "Number of days since last villager eaten: NN", and when somebody gets eaten they reset the count to zero.

I am not sure exactly how to code that. Animals move randomly now. I could add an "override", maybe, which says if the animal is next to a pillageable improvement, it pillages, otherwise let the regular AI do it. That might work.

Re: Forts. Given that there had been a military crisis pre-scourge, it's not unreasonable that there might be a few still left around. Perhaps the ability to build forts could be lost, but there could be a couple of unmanned forts sprinkled into the map creation script.

Re: Forts. Given that there had been a military crisis pre-scourge, it's not unreasonable that there might be a few still left around. Perhaps the ability to build forts could be lost, but there could be a couple of unmanned forts sprinkled into the map creation script.

That would depend on where this is being played. I always felt that this mod is better played on a 'small' map in that regardless of the scale, the map represents a small portion of the world since the scale of the mod doesn't transition well if distances get too large. So even if you are playing a huge map, the actual playing area might only be something like the size of Texas perhaps.

You are totally right, though, if one was playing in a Europe map, the place would be littered with forts and they'd be the ideal place to go. Perhaps there might be a "European" scenario where the map would have forts already on the map.

That being said, one could steal the code from Fall From Heaven where forts automatically upgrade over time to show that the garrison isn't just sitting on their hands but also improving their fort over time.

Going back to the map size, again this brings up the issues with gas since if you were to play a Pacific Northwest map (Say Vancouver B.C. down to about the CA border over to Idaho), you'd get a lot terrain, lots of potential things like volcanic events, and even the odd military installation...but no oil in the ground so it would be a race to get bio-diesel or grow enough corn for ethanol.

Regarding forts, most of the ruined objects in the game really represent forts. Depots and airbases in particular. Silos, maybe. Munitions resources could represent a really big gun supermarket (half smiley). It is true that there are no "solitary" forts in the mapscript today, and also you never get defensive bonuses from the ruined objects specifically. All ruins get +25% defense but nothing "more" from a fort. Putting in solitary forts is a reasonable idea. Maybe there is a monster hidden inside though :-)

Regarding scale, it's an imaginary world. But, it is important to be one continent, with no convenient travel in from off-continent. I usually play 5 or 7 player games, and it's easy to imagine this as "all of Australia". For an 11 player game, it's a little harder to imagine this is only one of several continents on a reasonable size world. I don't worry about it too much.

Regarding player built forts that spread safety, how about settlers not being available from the start? I would have expected people to want to stick together at the begining.
That would give culture-forts a use as a player could use them to lay claim to an area and resources, then lateron they could build a city there.
Settlers should be available quite early though.

might be changing too much though

Hmmm... Settlers not available from the beginning has some appeal.
However players with bad terrain in the capital would be seriously screwed here.

We have a "jeep crossbow" unit art already done, but I removed it because the "jeep rifle" came up so soon. Maybe removing it was the wrong solution.

First let me say that I really enjoy this mod! Thanks for all the time invested by everyone involved. :goodjob:

I personally never bother building jeep units. As noted elsewhere, they should have been long obsolete by the apocolypse, they provide too little protection to rate the strength levels they have, and fuel free utes promote up quickly enough to provide a cheaper, more useful, unit.
I would suggest replacing the entire jeep line with somewhat enhanced utes (without the fuel-free promotion). Return the survivor biker. If you asked, I imagine you would find it was not popular because it was a ridiculously gimped unit. (Seriously now, horse mounted lancers twice as powerful as survivor bikers? :lol:) Initial bikers should be crossbow armed, with a strength of at least 8-10. Perhaps munitions would allow a Light Machine Gun biker, with a strength of 10-12. Bikes would fit much better with the "scavaging fuel" class than even small trucks would, and enclosed cab trucks would be much more believable in the strength range now occupied by the jeep units.

Once again, great mod! Keep up the good work.

BTW, Google "Ural Motorcycles" to find some good side-hack images and videos, commercial and military.

Thanks for the feedback. There is certainly a challenge to have a variety of unit graphics as well as a variety of unit roles. I have tried to make sure that no two units have the same role.

I would suggest replacing the entire jeep line with somewhat enhanced utes (without the fuel-free promotion).

The role of the jeep line *is* enhanced ute which uses fuel. Is your comment about the unit graphics? The ute has strength 10, the jeep has strength 14, the humvee has strength 20. Previously the ute had strength 8. I agree we need to find a way to increase the differentiation between ute and jeep. Here are some possibilities.

I could put the ute back to strength 8. I could increase the strength of the jeep to 16, and maybe increase the humvee to 22. I could remove the garage. This last is not obvious, but the reason the ute out-performs the jeep is due to the weapon mount promotion +50%, which requires level 2. With both barracks and garage, vehicles are level 2 from the start. If I remove the garage, you will have to risk the ute to get it up to level 2 in combat.

I'm not sure which is the best solution, or maybe you have some other solution. What do you think?

Return the survivor biker. If you asked, I imagine you would find it was not popular because it was a ridiculously gimped unit. Initial bikers should be crossbow armed, with a strength of at least 8-10.

The initial ute is crossbow-armed, with a strength of 10 (was 8). I do not want two units with the same role. The main role for the punk biker is a raider. I hope you have experienced the pain of losing workers or gas trucks to punk bikers, until you learn to defend *everything* against raids. I was not able to find a unique role for the player biker; so I removed it. If I increase the strength it overlaps with the ute. Adding a higher strength biker, say with machine gun, again mostly overlaps the ute.

Is there a different role that the biker could play? I have a few ideas for civ-specific unique units which would be available to leaders with a biker background. For example, a "Hell's Angel" unit which starts with the off-road promotion. Or one that has the City Raider promo line available.

Regarding "lack of safety" for outlying villages and farms, countjackula has recently suggested that maybe animals should be allowed to pillage these improvements, only. [...] I could add an "override", maybe, which says if the animal is next to a pillageable improvement, it pillages, otherwise let the regular AI move it.

I have done that locally for 0.9, and it seems to add a lot. Mutant animals (not horses or wolves) are slightly magnetized to head towards villages, farms and pastures, and pillage them once they arrive. This makes it a lot more worrisome when an animal appears on the border. Since I made the change a little while back that animals could not capture cities, sometimes I would ignore an animal on my border as long as there were no workers around. Now I have to make sure to keep enough units back to patrol and hit them. Good suggestion!

^^ Sounds like a good change.

-----

I have been thinking a lot about the problematic of units filling the same role in the same/narrow timeframe - most notable Crossbow Survivor and Guardian, but also Jeep / UTE

Basicly why would survivors use XBows in the first place ?
Completely forgetting how firearms operate is unlikely - a AK47 is exceptionally simple (I think a good modern sport/hunter XBow might be even more complicated to make), can be built from a pile of rubbish and clearly superior to a crossbow.
So the problem must be limited amunitions - you can easily make/recycle Crossbow Bolts in nearly unlimited numbers, while making proper firearms amunition might be difficult in sufficient amount.

To "motivate" the player using XBows, while firearms are potentially available, this limitation needs to show somehow.

One possibility would be to extend the refueling concept to supplys (maybe not as separate concept - you would refuel/resupply by the same action/truck). There are however limitations in the AI and increased Micromanagement on this path.
I do not like this idea a lot.

I have another - somewhat vague yet idea of a possible solution, that seem to be in line with the setting and implent-able.

Basicly we would split units in two categories. Let me call them "Regulars" and "Elites" for now.

Regulats would be freely available to build in any numbers the player want (given needed tech/ressource).

Elites would fill similar roles as Regulars, but they availability would be limited. A simple (XML) and AI friendly approach to the limitation would be making them national units - like missionaries - so they number would be limited. (Another, probably cooler, but also harder to implement possibility would be via qunatitative ressources - you can only have so many Firearms per owned Ammunitions Ressource.)

So for example:

A XBow survivor would be a regular, while the Guardian the matching Elite version. You could have as many XBow as you want, but only 4 Superior Guardians empirewide.

This would make XBows needed and usefull as Backbone of the defensive Army, while Guardians could be used to protect particualry important positions or hotspots.


Same mechanic could be allpied to UTE / Jeeps and probably extended to other, new units later. And a limitation in numbers might be also a good think concerning AI and Gas using units - preventing the AI from Building too many jeeps.

I have been thinking a lot about the problematic of units filling the same role in the same/narrow timeframe - most notable Crossbow Survivor and Guardian, but also Jeep / UTE [...] To "motivate" the player using XBows, while firearms are potentially available, this limitation needs to show somehow.

There is a long thread about "quantifiable resources" where this was discussed a few months back. One difficulty with a limit like "one unit per munitions resource" is that you may have a number of units in your build queue in different cities when you run over the resource, and "some" of them need to be canceled. It can get a little complicated.

One possibility is adding a building, "Small Arms Factory" or "Ammunition Factory", which is enabled by Small Arms. This would be a prerequisite building for jeep rifle and guardian; only cities with this building could build these units. That adds one "delay" to the construction of these units, and makes it less likely that small/newly captured cities will build them.

I can easily make this change and try it out; do you think it is the right idea?

I would rather try the "national unit" thingie to indroduce a real cap.
Because the prerequisite building does not cap to the number of those units - and most of the time established older cities are on Army Duty anyway.
Also i am not sure how the AI will react here - we seen on different occasions, that it is a bit hard to direct the AI's priorities in Building stuff.

But as i said - it is only a vague idea for now, so i am not really sure what approach will be the best.

I say lets give the national units a try in .09. If it don't work then lets do the buildings in the next version. I wouldn't set the national unit level too low though. Maybe about 5 would be good enough to cover important cities and resources on a standard size map. I would have to say that mid game isn't giving me that "feel" of a world crawling back from the brink. On that same note I would limit tanks, nukes, and gunships for those same reasons. As the game progresses let the units built in cities loose the limits placed on them via additional techs. (easiest way to do that would to have a duplicate unit that would obsolete the limited ones. Those dublicate units would have the limit removed in their xml section)

The thing I don't like about the national limit is that the limit is the same, for a tiny civ just starting out and a big civ about to take over the whole huge size map. Introducing a late game tech to remove the limit doesn't seem like the right approach, since usually a unit which was popular in the midgame should be obsolete by the late game. For example, SAM infantry and antitank should effectively obsolete the guardian, and the humvee should obsolete the jeep rifle.

I have just added an Ammo Factory and started a local playtest. In the next few days I can also autoplay some to make sure the AI will build them.

The rebuilt improvements like depot, airbase do have a built-in limit as of 0.6 and later; each one will only generate about 4-6 units, then slow to half production rate until about 8-10 units, and then stop.

What else should I think about adding to give more of a feel of crawling back from the brink in the midgame?

In my "vision" the Humvee (obsoleting Jeep) and the MG (maybe obsoleting Guardian) would become the elite couterparts to other - not yet present :lol: - regular units.

Sam and Antitank, being very specialized units, should be dedicated units built in small numbers to counter Tanks/Gunships - i dont really like them replacing the guardians in tha late game. They would be elites without regular counterpart.

You are right about the National Unit limit beeing too rigid - i had thought of this as well. Maybe it is possible to make it scale somehow.

But since you already have the Ammo Factory, let try it first and look how it plays out.

The limits on Depot units seem nice as they are.

I have to say, from reading all of this I got really excited when I was downloading .08. Once I started playing it, it was just like a regular game of Civ. No new units, tech tree, and the map didn't even look like a desert. So I deleted the folder and re-downloaded it along with the head art. So, I started the mod up and went to play now and the correct map didn't even show up. So now a few questions;

~ In the sub folders inside of the mod folder (assets, ect.) do I put said folders into the BtS folders? (<.../fury road/Public Maps> go to <...Beyond the Sword/Public Maps>)

~ If so, does the Fury Road Assets go to <...BtS/CustomAssets>?

~ Oh, and where exactly do I put the leader head folder? I know it goes into Fury Road but does it go any further?

As with any mod, you need to load it, in order to play it.

I suppose it could work from custom assets (but you will need to change the folder structure to fit).

Usually Mods are placed in the Mod folder. Then you need to activate it from the Civilization4.ini (Mod=...) or from the game menu - Advanced->mod

The rebuilt improvements like depot, airbase do have a built-in limit as of 0.6 and later; each one will only generate about 4-6 units, then slow to half production rate until about 8-10 units, and then stop.

You could use the Fibbonacci series as a determinant on how fast things grow. If you give each depot a value of 1, then keep a running sum of how many depots a player has.

Each time this passes the next number in the Fibbonacci series, generate a unit, reset the count and target to the next value in the Fibbonacci Series. Thus your first few tanks come on line pretty fast, but as you use up resources it gets harder and harder to get the parts.

(Point of Reference: Fibbonaaci Series. x(n) = X(n-1) + X(n-2) or, in simple terms, add the last two numbers together to get the next number in the sequence. E.g. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,....)

Example: An player has three depots, hence generates 3 points towards Armour each turn. If their last target number was 13, their next target is 21 or 7 turns away.

As with any mod, you need to load it

Yes, I know but when I do load it, fury road map doesn't show up as an option hence the reason I asked if I should move the sub folders.

Hmmm... It should look like:\MODS
\Fury Road
\Assets
The usual assets clutter...
The Leaderheads FPK, if you use it.
\Public Maps
Map Script
Fury Roard.ini

To me just unpaking the released archive in the Mods folder gives exactly what is needed. But maybe your extractor works somehow different creating too many or skipping some subfolders.

Hmmm... It should look like:\MODS
\Fury Road
\Assets
The usual assets clutter...
The Leaderheads FPK, if you use it.
\Public Maps
Map Script
Fury Roard.ini

To me just unpaking the released archive in the Mods folder gives exactly what is needed. But maybe your extractor works somehow different creating too many or skipping some subfolders.

Well, I'm desperate so I'll put exactly how it looks

\MODS
\fury-road-v08
\Fury Road
fury-road-v08 (config settings)
fury-road-v08.ini.bak
\Fury Road
Fury Road (config settings)
Fury Road.ini.bak
Fury Road (HTML doc)
\Assets
\Art
\Python (ect)
\Public Maps
Fury Road map
Fury_Road.py

Ok, I think I did that right...I'm using the latest BtS (3.17 I think?) and vista. Maybe the vista extraction system is screwed up. Idk.

The thing I don't like about the national limit is that the limit is the same, for a tiny civ just starting out and a big civ about to take over the whole huge size map. Introducing a late game tech to remove the limit doesn't seem like the right approach, since usually a unit which was popular in the midgame should be obsolete by the late game. For example, SAM infantry and antitank should effectively obsolete the guardian, and the humvee should obsolete the jeep rifle.

I have just added an Ammo Factory and started a local playtest. In the next few days I can also autoplay some to make sure the AI will build them.

The rebuilt improvements like depot, airbase do have a built-in limit as of 0.6 and later; each one will only generate about 4-6 units, then slow to half production rate until about 8-10 units, and then stop.

What else should I think about adding to give more of a feel of crawling back from the brink in the midgame?


Thats understandible... Didnt know that there were already limits on the depos that's good :)

About the mid game hummm.... I know part of it is atmosphere it needs a good music score to set the mood. But I am sure this is planed as the mod goes further. Let me play it a few more times (times limited to pretty much the weekend...) and I can give better suggestions.

\MODS
\fury-road-v08
\Fury Road
fury-road-v08 (config settings)
fury-road-v08.ini.bak
\Fury Road
Fury Road (config settings)
Fury Road.ini.bak
Fury Road (HTML doc)
\Assets
\Art
\Python (ect)
\Public Maps
Fury Road map
Fury_Road.pyThe red marked folders need to go away so the green branch is directly within the Mod folder.

The red marked folders need to go away so the green branch is directly within the Mod folder.

But...Aren't I destroying the patch?

Yes! Finally got it working. Thanks Refar.

You could use the Fibbonacci series as a determinant on how fast things grow. If you give each depot a value of 1, then keep a running sum of how many depots a player has.

That is an interesting idea, but it could get a little messy in the case of a depot changing hands from one player to another, maybe getting occupied by barbs, etc.

Today, each depot starts with a counter initialized to zero. It increments each time that depot produces a unit. If the counter is greater than 4, then the chance of producing a new unit is less. If the counter is greater than 8, there is no chance of producing a new unit. The benefit to this approach is that the "supply" of parts does not change if the depot changes hands.

I think the depots work fine as they are now.

I would trim down the numbers a bit more (Maybe 3 and 6 units) but make the final state of the depot still produce units at very low odds (like 1% chance or something) rather than run out completely.
But this is just a question of taste.

If you're wanting to allow bikers, utes and infantry to wield xbows, small arms, and other weapons without having to make a separate unit type for each possible combination, you could try having each weapon as a fixed "promotion" that can be assigned to any unit. FfH (I know, stop mentioning it.. :rolleyes:) uses this to allow many unit types to carry Bronze, Iron, or Mithril weapons; its probably possible to borrow this code.

I'm not sure, but it might also be possible to cap the number of units that carry a certain weapon type based on how many resources you control. Alternatively, units carrying Crossbows could have an advantage in some situations (defending cities?) or there could be a rock-paper-scissors mechanism of relative advantages to discourage overreliance on a single unit type.

If you're wanting to allow bikers, utes and infantry to wield xbows, small arms, and other weapons without having to make a separate unit type for each possible combination, you could try having each weapon as a fixed "promotion" that can be assigned to any unit. FfH (I know, stop mentioning it.. :rolleyes:) uses this to allow many unit types to carry Bronze, Iron, or Mithril weapons; its probably possible to borrow this code.

I'm not sure, but it might also be possible to cap the number of units that carry a certain weapon type based on how many resources you control. Alternatively, units carrying Crossbows could have an advantage in some situations (defending cities?) or there could be a rock-paper-scissors mechanism of relative advantages to discourage overreliance on a single unit type.

I suppose one could carry this to the extreme, and have only one unit called "guy" and then every different type of weapon could be a promotion :-) Most mods use different unit types for this. I have used the promotion idea for the utility truck, where I want to get the feel of a single unit that gets pretty powerful with experience.

I have thought a little bit about different types of unit caps by resource. For the post-apocalyptic "Mad Max" feel, I definitely want fuel caps; so each oil well generates fuel tankers at a certain slow rate. That introduces more micromanagement than people may want. So I want to make sure this is done right before putting in other limits. We have just discussed about an ammunition limit to make the gunpowder weapon units (guardian in particular) somewhat rarer. I may do more with caps in the future, but I want to proceed slowly.

The idea of rock/paper/scissors is an important one, and I hope the existing units have that: flamethrower is anti-infantry, AT is anti-tank, etc. I worked a little on this in the version 0.5 - 0.6 timeframe. If you have any suggestions for tuning it, or additional elements to throw into the mix, please let us know.

Sorry for delayed reply, but I have no 'net access at home, and this is first chance to get online.

The role of the jeep line *is* enhanced ute which uses fuel. Is your comment about the unit graphics? The ute has strength 10, the jeep has strength 14, the humvee has strength 20. Previously the ute had strength 8. I agree we need to find a way to increase the differentiation between ute and jeep.

Perhaps you should swap out the Jeep and UTE units. That is, make the Jeep the bottom rung of the ladder. In the real world, most military jeeps were actually fairly low-powered vehicles (inline 4-cylinder engines, mostly), with no protection at all for driver or passengers. Pick-ups tend to be more robust, with larger engines and enclosed cabs. Start with unfuelled, crossbow Jeeps, and maybe limit the "gun mount" promotion to the third level, instead of the second. This would still allow the Jeep to become fairly powerful, but should slow this to keep it from passing by the new, more powerful, fuelled Rifle UTEs.

Is there a different role that the biker could play? I have a few ideas for civ-specific unique units which would be available to leaders with a biker background. For example, a "Hell's Angel" unit which starts with the off-road promotion. Or one that has the City Raider promo line available.


What about as a more dedicated scouting/rapid response unit? Let it start with fuel-free and off-road promotions, and give it the scout's "no bad results from goody huts" ability. As for strength, if you don't want to bump the initial strength up to 8, at least consider returning the
"+50% vs. animals" promo (to the biker line only), so that surviving one or two combats will give it a fighting chance against most animals, and non-gunpowder barbs.

Looking forward to v0.09! :D

Perhaps you should swap out the Jeep and UTE units. That is, make the Jeep the bottom rung of the ladder.

That is an interesting idea; I have to think about it some more. In the "Road Warrior" movie, the bad guys had motorcycles and buggies, which fit your description of low powered unprotected vehicles. Moving jeeps below utes would require some restructuring and rebalancing, but it does fit the theme better. The jeep becomes more of an "advanced biker" unit.

What about [survivor biker] as a more dedicated scouting/rapid response unit? Let it start with fuel-free and off-road promotions, and give it the scout's "no bad results from goody huts" ability.

I also like that idea. Once you get combustion, you would use this unit to scout. The ones that survive and get a few levels could be useful as animal defense in the midgame. I already have the graphics for it (a simple reskin of the punk biker unit) but this may be a worthwhile role.

Shouldn't the eagle be unattackable by melee/animals?
You could have a special "ranged"/"melee" promotions on units of different type (i.e. survivor has "melee" and it's replaced by "ranged" promo. Or, easier, just have it as separate unit types (melee, ranged, cavalry, ranged cavalry). Same thing with future balloons/aircraft. Barbarians with axes shouldn't destroy flying zeppelins.

I guess the vanilla game doesn't worry too much about that. Gunships can be attacked by anything. In "Road Warrior", Max was able to defeat a (primitive) gunship, by sneaking up on the pilot while he was sleeping.

OK. But this is a great exception, right?
So they should at least get bonuses against not-ranged units. Doesn't it make enough sense to implement?

The toughest player melee unit has strength 6. Against a strength 24 gunship, does a penalty really matter? The toughest animal melee unit has strength 12 (deathclaw). With a turn length of 3 months, I can imagine a pack of deathclaws ambushing the gunships on the ground. But even then, unless the gunship is badly damaged, the deathclaws are going to get pounded. Since vanilla doesn't give this type of penalty, are there other mods that do?

Well, I see the way you imagine this, I just wanted to know why did you make so.

I had this idea after my eagles died to wolves near city. They could be useful as scouts if they were more protected. Maybe a sentry I for eagles discovered in ruins would give them more safety and use?

Oh, I see your point is more about the Eagle (hero unit). He has 80% withdrawal chance. I guess those wolves must have caught him while he was sleeping one night! I agree sentry would be a good addition to the unit; would it have helped you in this case?

The thing here is that withdraal chance only works when a unit is attacking. On defense a unit will never withdraw.

I never knew that. Is there any way to specify that a unit being attacked could sneak away before being destroyed? That is what I was aiming for.

I am sure that this can not be done from XML.

There might be a Python entry point on "Unit Destroyed" or something - when you hack in there, you could give the unit a chance to "reapeear" somewhere nearbye (Maybe in the next friendly city - would save you the hassle of choosing the "best" withdrawal direction).

I agree sentry would be a good addition to the unit; would it have helped you in this case?
It would help against most 2-movement creatures and would make it a cool scouting unit.

I know it has been discussed before, but I'm playing a game where I've discovered a fair-sized (maybe 4 cities w/o major overlap) island, separated from the mainland by only one water tile. :mad:

I understand davidlallen has reasons he hasn't divulged for wishing to stick to a pangea format, but this game really does need a basic boat unit, above the workboat.
I was thinking something small (1 or 2 unit max. cargo) and slow (1 or 2 tile per turn max. movement per turn), and a national unit with a cap of 2 or 3.
This should limit its usefulness to exploration/expansion rather than any serious invasion capability, thus making it less of a play balance issue.

Also, a fisherman's wharf adding +1 :food:, and maybe a cannery building adding +1 :health: (and only available after building of fisherman's wharf and possibly granary) is seriously needed.

I really like this mod, and appreciate all the time and effort that has been put into it. Keep up the good work, folks! :goodjob:
Looking forward to 0.9! :)

I know it has been discussed before, but I'm playing a game where I've discovered a fair-sized (maybe 4 cities w/o major overlap) island, separated from the mainland by only one water tile. :mad:


Thanks for the suggestion. I view this as a bug in the mapscript, which I hope to fix at some point.

Regarding "lack of safety" for outlying villages and farms, countjackula has recently suggested that maybe animals should be allowed to pillage these improvements, only. I think that would add a lot to the feel of the game. You would want to keep more units nearby to patrol. It was also suggested a while back that maybe the actual safety level of your city could be set back if there is a pillage event. Each city could have a sign: "Number of days since last villager eaten: NN", and when somebody gets eaten they reset the count to zero.

Okay, here is an idea I thought you might want to look at. I know it's a FfH idea, but stay with me. One of the issues I have with this mod is that you can create settlers very early on. To me, that seems a little odd considering the time scale of 3 months to a turn as well as the one of the over-riding concerns is safety. I mean why would you want to leave a City with a population of only 2 with practically nothing in the way of buildings that is guarded only by a Survivor unit or two? I mean it makes no sense.

So, what I think could be done is this. In FfH, there is a Civ called the Kuirotates that can only have 3 cities and the rest are 'settlements'. What I'm thinking is that at the beginning of the game you have your initial city and cannot build settlers at first. Instead you build a settler type unit that creates an outpost that mimics these settlements. Originally in FfH, these settlements could only build certain buildings, usually only one.

So the idea is, at the beginning of the game, you have your one city. You send out your recon units and find vital resources or areas you want to claim for later cities. So you crank out the settlements/outposts that are basically a limited 1-ring city that can only build barricades and maybe one other building. However, since your Civ controls that area, you can still build improvements.

Now when you original city reaches a size (maybe 4 or 5) and maybe a certain safety level, then you can build colonists which you can then use to either build new cities or 'upgrade' your outpost to a city.

Now I'm sure many might howl and think this is going to slow the game down. Another way you might use this idea is to make it to where you can either build a settler that only can build these outposts and doesn't cost any population, or you could build a colonist that is more expensive and also subtracts from your population like the old Civ III settlers did. So then you have the option of claim land, but not being able to build units in that outpost but not having to strip your city do it, or wait a bit, build the more expensive colonist and get a new city.

Whether or not outposts would grow to cities after a certain amount of time by themselves is also another idea so even if you don't send out more colonists to upgrade it, some time later, the outpost will get bigger on it's own. Plus, you could also have that outposts could be upgrade by the addition of refugees since they are living on the road and a fortified outpost is a definite step up from what they're used to. (Plus, if you think about it, the 'city' you see in "The Road Warrior" was really just an outpost that was there because of the oil. As a site for a real city, it sucked.

So, you suggest (1) a new improvement "outpost" which spreads culture in the eight adjacent plots; this might be created by converting a unit, or built by a worker; and (2) disallow creating real settlers until the city has population 4. Right?

On point (2), I don't see a strong reason to disallow creating settlers. It is always a tradeoff between putting food towards the city's population or creating a settler. If I had an "outpost" type unit to stake out a claim, I might be more likely to delay making settlers. But I should still have the option.

On point (1), that is an interesting idea. I tend to use a settler to do what you describe; at least it will get the culture spread there. Sometimes it's a while before I can get a worker there to build farms and such. In fact, sometimes I work on something else for a while, and by the time I come back to that "outpost" it is already up to population 2-3. Unless I am playing a vigilant leader, it won't spread culture to the second ring; the worker is needed for that. So I am not sure the "outpost" unit would really change play that much. What do you think?

On point (1), that is an interesting idea. I tend to use a settler to do what you describe; at least it will get the culture spread there. Sometimes it's a while before I can get a worker there to build farms and such. In fact, sometimes I work on something else for a while, and by the time I come back to that "outpost" it is already up to population 2-3. Unless I am playing a vigilant leader, it won't spread culture to the second ring; the worker is needed for that. So I am not sure the "outpost" unit would really change play that much. What do you think?

Well I was thinking these 1-Ring Outpost would represent a fortified outpost that was mostly put there to secure resources. As I said, if the one of the overriding aspects of Fury Road is that it's 20 years after The Big One, the initial cities aren't going to have much. So it doesn't make sense that after building a survivor or two, you can build a settler capable of creating a city. I mean in basic Civ in 4000 BC it's one thing to move away from your initial city since all you have to worry about is animals in a mostly empty world at first. This is definitely not the case in Fury Road.

I just think that without refugees, a city shouldn't be able to really afford to have a bunch of their people leave with enough goodies to make it worth it to them. I mean in a really low population world, it would be smarter to stay in one big cities rather than spread out. I mean from a safety stand point it makes defense easier. The outpost concept allows the Civ to stake a claim on land, especially in areas with vital resources. So for game play, I'm thinking that there should be a bigger penalty for trying to form new cities, at least early on.

Perhaps you can break up the settler units to something like.
Level 1 Frontiersman: Can only create outposts which can only build a barricade and maybe one other building. They would grow really slowly and could only become cities if a refugee units is added or a Level 2 or 3 settler. These Level 1 types wouldn't slow the growth of your city and would be relatively cheap.
Level 2 Settlers: These would be expensive and perhaps would also cause your city to loose some population like the old Civ III settlers use to.
Level 3 Colonist: Only available to be built in a city with a population of X (6? 8?) or more. These would be 'standard' settlers in that they cost what normal Civ IV settlers do and they just cause the city to stop growing when they are being built.

Having the flexibility to be able to create outposts would help Civs in food poor start positions. It would also give an advantage to players who work hard to boast food production/population over those who just pump out lots of combat units since, more/larger cities will give them a production edge.

Plus, it also boosts the importance of refugees who I think are the most important unit on the board since I think population shouldn't grow very fast for the first 60-120 turns so attracting refugees is critically important.

I agree with limiting city growth in the beginning. People should be congregating to where there is a working society rather then spreading out.

If there is a cap on barb XP I would remove it and make the first "part" of the mod about battling for survival in a dangerous world, rather then growing. I would also move the Visions later in game as well.

Civ 4 is the only civ I have played, but I have played many other builder type games. I believe in Civ 3, a settler decreased the population of a city by one, and in Civ 4, they changed the settler to suppress population growth while it is building. So your "level 2" suggestion may be against whatever design philosophy that was.

For the outpost, I guess it is clear what happens if you put a settler there, the same thing that would happen if there is no outpost there: you get a city of pop 1. I am not sure the outpost should ever grow in rings or population. If it did, then it really is just a cheap settler.

But it is interesting to think what happens if you put a refugee in an outpost. A refugee cannot found a city, but maybe it could also convert an outpost into a city. To me, the difference between a refugee and a settler is that the settler has enough equipment and resources to found a city. OTOH, a refugee just has the clothes on their back.

Another possible idea is to give a city an action button of some kind which *creates* a refugee type unit. This is "forced resettling". It does not have enough stuff to found a city, but it could add to population in another city, or possibly convert an outpost.

So, outposts plus refugee conversion to a city may be an interesting mechanic. Any comments?

If there is a cap on barb XP I would remove it and make the first "part" of the mod about battling for survival in a dangerous world, rather then growing. I would also move the Visions later in game as well.

I agree. First off, I think it might take a bit for a Vision to take hold of the entire culture otherwise all we're talking about is Cult of Personality.

In some respects I think generically spawned barbarians shouldn't be that tough. However I think that barbarians cities should form to represent local warlords that lack Vision and thus pretty much stick to one city. However, these cities would spawn nastier barbarians and much more dangerous in the long run. I mean except for the animals, the idea that there will still be very dangerous nomadic bands 50 years after the Apocalypse, capable of defeating troops from a settled Civ seems a bit hard to conceive.

That being said, however, I think it might be cool if the Mongolian mobile yurt from the old Warlord scenario could be used to a Horde that moves around, sustaining itself by raiding and plunder, especially since it spawns random units depending on the terrain it's in. That way you have a group of barbarians that are tied to one important unit that wander the map but can act like a mini-civ instead of a bunch of unrelated barbarian units. Perhaps when they contact your Civ, you have the option of paying a bribe to keep them from entering your borders. Obviously these raiders would be more interested in raiding infrastructure then necessarily going head to head in combat.

Civ 4 is the only civ I have played, but I have played many other builder type games. I believe in Civ 3, a settler decreased the population of a city by one, and in Civ 4, they changed the settler to suppress population growth while it is building. So your "level 2" suggestion may be against whatever design philosophy that was.

Well I've been playing since Civ II, and yes the reason they changed it was that if you tried to build a settler to early, it basically trashed your game because you couldn't build the unit because your population was to low. It was an easy mistake to make. I know I did it quite often. However, if you have an option to build a cheaper 'frontiersman' that only suppresses growth while it's being build as opposed to a more expensive settler that will knock down your city in population, I would hope that the player would be a bit more astute in building it. Also, in Civ II & III, if you where building one thing and you changed your mind, you lost that previous build instead of in Civ IV where it's just put on hold. So even if you accidentally try to build a settler without enough population, you can just build other things till you city grows enough.

For the outpost, I guess it is clear what happens if you put a settler there, the same thing that would happen if there is no outpost there: you get a city of pop 1. I am not sure the outpost should ever grow in rings or population. If it did, then it really is just a cheap settler.

Well how the 'settlement' works in FfH is that there is no limit to the size of influence that it can grow too, it's just it won't ever go beyond a level 1 population. So while you could build farms in it's zone, it doesn't count until you upgrade it to a city. Mostly they are used to secure vital mana nodes, important resources and the like. So if you have a bunch of ruins that you'd like to control, you set up an outpost there and all it really is, is a semi-self sufficient Fort. Again, whether they are allowed to grow is up to debate, but I would think the would have to grow, REALLY slowly.

But it is interesting to think what happens if you put a refugee in an outpost. A refugee cannot found a city, but maybe it could also convert an outpost into a city. To me, the difference between a refugee and a settler is that the settler has enough equipment and resources to found a city. OTOH, a refugee just has the clothes on their back.

Well I see outposts being used to secure resources for the now and acting as the 'advance team' for the preparation for eventual settlement. While I agree with your views on refugees, I think for game play, you'd have to make refugees 'activate' outposts into cities since otherwise it would slow things up to much. Plus as I keep harping on, I believe that Civs that push for a boost in culture & safety should reap a benefit in refugees and thus they'd be able to grow quickly and thus have a production advantage they'll need to fend off the player/AI who builds a lot of early combat units and tries to blitz the other players.

Another possible idea is to give a city an action button of some kind which *creates* a refugee type unit. This is "forced resettling". It does not have enough stuff to found a city, but it could add to population in another city, or possibly convert an outpost.
So, outposts plus refugee conversion to a city may be an interesting mechanic. Any comments?

I can see that. One thing I miss from Civ II (I think it was Civ II) was that you used to be able to build these caravan units that could move resources from one city to another. So if you had a city that was mostly in the mountains to mine a cluster of minerals, it would never grow past 2 or so because it didn't have enough food (this was before windmills, mind you). Conversely you have cities out in the plains with rivers and wheat and they'd grow to like 18 but had squat for production since they didn't have enough hammers. So you could set up a caravan that would transfer food units to the one city in return for hammers. It was a nice system.

While I can't see that being possible in Civ IV (Since I'm not a coder) it would seem that pushing out refugees like that would allow cities with ample food to 'jump start' cities that are growing slowly.

That being said, in Alpha Centauri, you had the option of using a settler to add to the population of an existing city. Why they never picked up this in Civ, I don't know because it was often useful when playing games on Epic or Marathon and you'd run out of things to build so you could at least build settlers to boast up smaller cities.

In some respects I think generically spawned barbarians shouldn't be that tough. However I think that barbarians cities should form to represent local warlords that lack Vision and thus pretty much stick to one city. However, these cities would spawn nastier barbarians and much more dangerous in the long run. I mean except for the animals, the idea that there will still be very dangerous nomadic bands 50 years after the Apocalypse, capable of defeating troops from a settled Civ seems a bit hard to conceive.

One of the things I struggled with a little in the beginning is which enemies are "barbarians" and which are "other civs". I decided I wanted barbs to be unorganized, with no home bases, and limited to the less complex unit types. Any group with more organization, in particular anything with a city, should be another player (obviously including AI players). The key reason is that you should be able to negotiate with any such organized group.

So, barbs are limited to marauders and catapults, and no cities.

Well how the 'settlement' works in FfH is that there is no limit to the size of influence that it can grow too, it's just it won't ever go beyond a level 1 population. So while you could build farms in it's zone, it doesn't count until you upgrade it to a city.

I am thinking of an outpost as a distant military base, which would not *grow* population. Maybe FFH settlements are different. Given a non-growing population, I can't see any game reason for an outpost to expand its influence past ring 1.

Plus as I keep harping on, I believe that Civs that push for a boost in culture & safety should reap a benefit in refugees and thus they'd be able to grow quickly and thus have a production advantage they'll need to fend off the player/AI who builds a lot of early combat units and tries to blitz the other players.

Even though you have mentioned this several times, it gave me an idea this time. Maybe a building like "refugee center" which is only available once your security gets above a certain level (not sure if that's possible). This would either directly generate refugees, or better, increase the chance of refugees occurring in the "area". You would still be responsible for guiding them in safely.

I am thinking of an outpost as a distant military base, which would not *grow* population. Maybe FFH settlements are different. Given a non-growing population, I can't see any game reason for an outpost to expand its influence past ring 1.

Well in FfH, the Kuriotates Civilization was limited to 3 cities so their outposts had to be able to have a city like influence, but they remained stunted in population. In Fury Road, I agree that an outpost would just be a 1-Ring since it's just a pre-city plunked down due to important resources.


Even though you have mentioned this several times, it gave me an idea this time. Maybe a building like "refugee center" which is only available once your security gets above a certain level (not sure if that's possible). This would either directly generate refugees, or better, increase the chance of refugees occurring in the "area". You would still be responsible for guiding them in safely.

That is a good idea since processing refugees would be important. Clean them up or they might spread disease, do they have skills? Do they have relatives already in our Civ? Are they potential spies form a rival civ. Hving a dedicated group to address these issues would defiantly be a boon to a Civ.

In that vein, I do believe that Fury Road needs disease. With medicine tech so bad and hygiene tech crappy as well, you'd have a lot of problems with things like Tuberculosis or even just the flu. While a group of refugees would be good in one sense, they'd be a real disease risk. Perhaps refugees could carry a chance of starting a plague, although probably one that would just affect that city. That would be a risk for players playing the "open door' strategy.