For those too shy to start a thread themselves :D

Just started a v7a game as Morgan Industries after not having played for several versions, so this might be a dumb question, but does the "Unity Observation Bay" really give you the whole world map? It doesn't cost much more than a colony pod on the first turn of the game. Seems like kind of a low cost for such a big early advantage.

OK I have 2 unity foils. One I upgraded from one of those mobile supply pod things, the other I got directly from a unity pod. The unity foil that I upgraded from the mobile supply pod can be ordered to "build improvements (automated)", while the other cannot. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Just started a v7a game as Morgan Industries after not having played for several versions, so this might be a dumb question, but does the "Unity Observation Bay" really give you the whole world map? It doesn't cost much more than a colony pod on the first turn of the game. Seems like kind of a low cost for such a big early advantage.

I'm not sure myself if this is too much of an advantage. Only playtesting can tell. The theory though is that, yes, it is a big advantage, but then again, so is having an extra colony pod early in the game. So while you might be getting the world map, the other factions might be doubling the size of their economy.

OK I have 2 unity foils. One I upgraded from one of those mobile supply pod things, the other I got directly from a unity pod. The unity foil that I upgraded from the mobile supply pod can be ordered to "build improvements (automated)", while the other cannot. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

A bug. :mischief:

I tried to install patch b the usual way (complete removal of the old version, install main file, install patch b), but when I start the mod I get a bunch of XML-errors, starting with:

Crap. That's what I get for not following my own "quality assurance" procedures. Patch c can be downloaded from the usual thread, solving this issue.

Some observations playing with Patch c:

1. For some reason I cannot remove Fungus with my Formers anymore...despite having Xenobiology, the option just no longer shows up, if a former is on a fungus tile - instead a greyed-out button for building a mag-tube appears.

2. Also the material supply you start the game with seem to be no longer able to rush one of the Unity wonders - the option just does not appear.

3. The UN Cyrobay can heavily backfire in the early game, if you start in a less fertile area...if you can't supply the additional citiziens, the ultraponics maintenance can be grippling (especially if you haven't started to build Windmills or other energy suppliers yet)

4. I played with the new close starting positions and one annoying thing is the AI's passiveness vs. spawning points in their sea territories. They don't seem to take any measures against them (likely because the start quite late with improving the seas) and the IoDs and Snakes go for me, who has already some sea improvements. If you have no OB with such an AI, you are flooded with native life without having a chance to stop the waves by killing the spawning points...this made me declare war on Lal, just to take out two spawning points :mad:

5. My biggest issue at the moment is still the Flowering Counter and the amounts of natives life - its just to one-sided, IMO. You inevitably run into more and more fungal blooms, as the game progresses. It does not seem to matter, which startegy your pursue - there is vast unsettled land, there is the AI and there is a race vs. the clock you can't win - even if some later inventions will help you, until you get them, you are already drowned in fungus.
Related to this, the difficulty levels don't work very well - to have a decent AI, I found Emperor to be a good difficulty...but on that level you have barely chances to survive vs. the nature. Noble is still tough here, but the AI is hopeless. I experimented a bit by fiddling with the Handicaps Info and copied the values for native life (mainly "tiles per spawn" and such things) on the Noble level into the Emperor level. I started on a rather small (and fungus-free) island, so I cannot comment on the situation on land, but there was still a lot of pressure from native life on the seas.
I also tried to do something vs. the ever-increasing flowering counter - I added reducing values for Forest, Jungle and Kelp tiles (I tried to expand this to other improvements, but I runned into XML-errors by doing this). I think this would make sense flavor-wise and could lead to a more dynamic game - you would have some active means to decrease the FC. The impact on the game was however at best slightly decreasing the speed with which the FC increased - the map is already filled with some fungus at the start, but it takes dozends of turns until the first "counter-features" appear.

6. Purely cosmetic and likely an relict from introducing the Nerve Staplers promotion - there are the City Garrison II and III promotions, but there is no CG I promotion.

1. For some reason I cannot remove Fungus with my Formers anymore...

I cannot replicate these findings. Do you have a screenshot or save?
I did find a problem with the build-order-widget-health/planet-change-help-text though.
Edit: I'm surprised this widget bug doesn't crash the game.
Do you have Windows Vista perhaps? AFAIK Vista is less able to handle crappy code.

2. Also the material supply you start the game with seem to be no longer able to rush one of the Unity wonders - the option just does not appear.

You are confusing the Unity Supplies and the Material Supplies. Unless the source of the confusion are the graphics, I'm not sure how this could be solved. :(

3. The UN Cyrobay can heavily backfire in the early game

Not sure what to do here. Perhaps move the Cryobay to Recycling. Then you have the option to go Enclosed Biosphere, and food shortages are less likely. It of course does make the secret project less early of a project. :(

4. I played with the new close starting positions and one annoying thing is [B]the AI's passiveness vs. spawning points in their sea territories.

Ah good catch. The sea unit AI types don't look for unity pods and spawning spots. I'll have to copy over some code from the land unit ai types.

5. My biggest issue at the moment is still the Flowering Counter and the amounts of natives life

What map size are these experiences on?

Anyway, I think I'll change the growth rate of fungus outside faction territory to:

XML value
* (100 / gamespeed unit training speed) * (# of starting players / 7)
/ (this map's # of plots / standard map size # of plots)

6. Purely cosmetic and likely an relict from introducing the Nerve Staplers promotion - there are the City Garrison II and III promotions, but there is no CG I promotion.

I'm undecided what to do with promotions. There are definitely not enough cool ideas for an interesting promotion tree ánd a special ability list for each unitcombattype. So I was thinking I could just strip down the promotions to Combat I->VI. Other idea would be to let certain special abilities grant access to certain promotion lines. In that case the City Garrison promotions could be enabled by Nerve Stapler.

Anyway, my current undecidedness on this matter is why I haven't bothered to fix that, and won't fix it right now either. ;)

I cannot replicate these findings. Do you have a screenshot or save?
I did find a problem with the build-order-widget-health/planet-change-help-text though.
Edit: I'm surprised this widget bug doesn't crash the game.
Do you have Windows Vista perhaps? AFAIK Vista is less able to handle crappy code.

Yes, I'm running Vista. I reproduced the error by starting as new game as Deidre, using the unity supplies for a former and moving it then on fungus tile (see screenshot at the end and the attched save)


You are confusing the Unity Supplies and the Material Supplies. Unless the source of the confusion are the graphics, I'm not sure how this could be solved.

Ah, ok. Perhaps switching the names could lessen the confusion..."Unity supplies" from (unity) pods allowing to build "Unity wonders" and having material supplies to be converted into formers etc. is IMO the better naming.


What map size are these experiences on?

Standard size.

Yes, I'm running Vista. I reproduced the error by starting as new game as Deidre, using the unity supplies for a former and moving it then on fungus tile (see screenshot at the end and the attched save)

Do tell whether the problem persists in patch d.

Ah, ok. Perhaps switching the names could lessen the confusion..."Unity supplies" from (unity) pods allowing to build "Unity wonders" and having material supplies to be converted into formers etc. is IMO the better naming.


I'll do so for the next patch.

Do tell whether the problem persists in patch d.

No more problems here with patch d :)


I played an Emperor game past the year 2400 and payed special attention to the FC development and the eruptions of native life. The counter started at 23 and climbed almost linearly (+1 every 7-11 years) to 40 in 2247 - so far no difference to how it was before.Then the increase suddenly slowed greatly, no clear idea why (might be the AIs fighting spawning points or my
attempts to cut fungus back):

2266 = 41
2281 = 42
2294 = 43
2310 = 44
2322 = 45 (but counter switched constantly between 44 and 45 until 2328)
2336 = 46 (flipped back to 45 once)
2358 = 47 (I already noticed in older versions that 47 seems to be a critical number - I got 3 fungal blooms on sea in a row over 3 consecutive turns , while getting none before. After that the counter increase slowed even more)
2392 = 48 (still 48 in 2412)

It definitely better then before, especially if I take in account that this game suffered a bit from the start position generator. I choosed "Scattered Landing Pods" (Map had Low Sea Level) and the generator placed most factions on islands. Worst case were the Gaians, which ended up on a 1-tile-island(!) and got stuck there forever (guess the generator choosed the island because there were 5 energy boni around). Except me and Miriam, who seemed to be the lucky one alone on the main continent, no faction got beyond 4 bases.
I will start another game to see if better developing AIs have an influence on the counter.

I experimented a bit with the civics and I think the combination of Autarky and Hybrid is too strong, as it entirely kills any city maintenance (it becomes extremly visible on Emperor - as soon as I had half a dozen bases up, I was forced to drop research to 20-30% to break even and that with Global Free Market at work...switching to Autarky/Hybrid allowed me 70%
science again!) - something you only achieve otherwise, if you build all for maintenance reducing facilities in very base. It might be also a reason, why the AIs have such a strong tendency to Hybrid...the usual way is starting out with EcB and switching then to Hybrid, hardly any AI is interested in being a Terraformer - not even Miriam, who should like that especially.
I tried the Terraformed civic (learned the hard way that you cannot run it, if the VoP is your religion - makes sense, but should be somewhere noted, IMHO) and it isn't bad - unlike Serfdom in Civ4 every turn less you need fight fungus is a win and its the only method to keep the farms growing under high FC values. So I think the problem is that Hybrid is too strong, not that Terraformed isn't useful (or it's the AI just not understanding the idea behind Terraformed)

I also noticed the strong aversion between Terraformed and Hybrid diplomatically. SMAC had such effects for all categories of civics, while Planetfall only has the standard Civ4 modifier (and the occasional demand to switch to the AIs favorit) for the other columns (and its impact is very depeding on the leader...I get e.g. +7 with LAL, when running Democracy, while most others rather seem to care about religion). I don't know if the diplomatic parameters of the original LHs were modified for Planetfall or just copied over, but don't really feel the "personality" the leaders had in SMAC. I think all leaders should value right/wrong civics as much as right/wrong religion - Civ4 destinction between religious leaders and political ones just
does not fit here (as religions in Planetfall are more like "values").

I've got a problem with installing Planetfall (and some other mods, too):
There are no fonts in the game at all. The civiliopaedia only shows about 10 or twenty icons without any descriptions. You can start a game, but there are no mouseover infos and the whole interface looks unfinished...

I installed Planetfall in the beyond the sword/mods folder and patched to version d.

The strange thing is, that other mods like Warhammer or Rise of Mankind get the same problem, while Fall from Heaven 2 or Fall Further are running well.

I think I've read about this problem somewhere in this forum, but can't remember where. Does anyone have an idea, what could cause that problems?

I experimented a bit with the civics and I think the combination of Autarky and Hybrid is too strong, as it entirely kills any city maintenance
I concur, that combination is so strong that I never use it out of shame. Maybe their maintenance bonus could be limited to -50% instead of -100%?

A second issue is with the genejack factory. It provides +2 :hammers: to citizens, making them more productive that engineers! Perhaps the bonus could be decreased to +1 :hammers:?

Finally, the +2 :gp: bonus for the Homo Superior value doesn't seem to work.


I've got a problem with installing Planetfall (and some other mods, too)
If I were you I would try to re-install the whole Civilization IV.

If I were you I would try to re-install the whole Civilization IV.

That would really be the last option, because I've done so many text changes in the vanilla civ and bts (only translations to german) and didn't record them properly...

I get a CTD when I try moving the Dropship.
I just upgraded the Dropship on the eastern side of my empire from a transport foil; as soon as I try moving it into a tile with other units (eg the city to the SE with the Formers in it), I get a CTD.

Save attached.

*edit* attempting to delete the dropship (disband command, or in worldbuilder) also causes a CTD.

* * *

Also: I agree that Autarky and Hybrid are too strong.

I also find the way that native life pops up and instantly destroys upgraded farms that took many many turns to mature very annoying. I wish that the natives popped up, but only converted the tile to fungus on the turn after, if I didn't eliminate them all in a single turn.
I also wish all native life spawns started with zero movement (have them start with a promotion that gives -5 moves and wears off at the end of the turn with 100% chance - thats how we worked it in Warhammer), so you had a chance to kill them before they pillaged all your stuff (particularly naval spawns, that can each pillage 2-3 imrpovements.

You should be able to use sufficient military strength to stop the native-lifeforms from wrecking your economy.

Other pet-hates; overall moisture level is a bit low. Very often the player (or several of the AI players) start off in all-arid areas that are totally useless for any food production, which completely puts them out of the game.
Also; I hate that you can't build greenhouses in high food production areas; I can't think of any logical reason for this.

* * *

*Re-edit*
Also; the dropship should have some promotion that makes it ignore terrain costs (flying promotion?). Its lame that it can only fly over fungus one square at a time.

Units should be ale to scale ridges->lowlands and vice versa if both tiles have magtubes constructed. Its bizarre to see the road connecting the tiles, but to still be unable to move between them. I hate these ridges that block off continents - given the long/thin nature of the mapscript, very often a continent is blocked by a ridge going all the way across, forcing you to use naval units to move around the ridgeline.

The counter started at 23 and climbed almost linearly (+1 every 7-11 years) to 40 in 2247 - so far no difference to how it was before.Then the increase suddenly slowed greatly, no clear idea why

That's kinda weird. If anything, their should be a temporary increase in expansion speed then, because at Counter 40, fungus can expand into unimproved plots within a human territory.

I guess the expansion speed might slow thereafter because all spots fungus can expand into are already expanded into

.It definitely better then before, especially if I take in account that this game suffered a bit from the start position generator. I choosed "Scattered Landing Pods" (Map had Low Sea Level) and the generator placed most factions on islands. Worst case were the Gaians, which ended up on a 1-tile-island(!) and got stuck there forever

Sounds like a bug. :mischief:

(guess the generator choosed the island because there were 5 energy boni around).

Nah, it's the other way around. The game noticed the Gaian starting position was much worse than the other factions', so it placed a bunch of bonus resources to try and compensate.

I experimented a bit with the civics and I think the combination of Autarky and Hybrid is too strong

Any suggestion to what the maintenance reduction should be reduced? -50% like Teodosio suggests? Something else?

[B]I think all leaders should value right/wrong civics as much as right/wrong religion - Civ4 destinction between religious leaders and political ones just does not fit here (as religions in Planetfall are more like "values").

Leaderhead personality hasn't been developed yet.
From a gameplay perspective I don't think it's a good idea to let favourite civics have too much an influence though. Religions are a more interesting diplomatic mechanic because it allows diplomatic groups bigger than two players. A civic attitude bonus is just between two players.

I've got a problem with installing Planetfall (and some other mods, too):
There are no fonts in the game at all.

Is it possible you are playing Civ in a language other than English?

A second issue is with the genejack factory. It provides +2 :hammers: to citizens, making them more productive that engineers! Perhaps the bonus could be decreased to +1 :hammers:?

Would you ever use 2 hammer Labourers though? Even getting more than 3 hammers, by mining a plot, is easy. The thing what makes regular specialists special are their Great People Points, not their yields.

Finally, the +2 :gp: bonus for the Homo Superior value doesn't seem to work.

Works fine with me. :confused: Do you have a save?

I get a CTD when I try moving the Dropship.
I just upgraded the Dropship on the eastern side of my empire from a transport foil; as soon as I try moving it into a tile with other units (eg the city to the SE with the Formers in it), I get a CTD.

You can solve the issue for now by Unloading All Units... The unit got loaded onto itself. :crazyeye: I'll fix it for (one of) the next patch(es).

I also find the way that native life pops up and instantly destroys upgraded farms that took many many turns to mature very annoying. I wish that the natives popped up, but only converted the tile to fungus on the turn after, if I didn't eliminate them all in a single turn.

I like the thought, but converting a plot on the turn after would probably require some spell or so. I need to think about the implementation.

Don't naval fungal bloom spawns already start with zero movement points though? :confused:

Other pet-hates; overall moisture level is a bit low.

It's the same as vanillla Civ. :confused:
In addition, there's the Enclosed Biosphere civic which makes all terrain as good as Moist.

Also; I hate that you can't build greenhouses in high food production areas; I can't think of any logical reason for this.

Why not build farms?

Also; the dropship should have some promotion that makes it ignore terrain costs (flying promotion?). Its lame that it can only fly over fungus one square at a time.

Will do.

Units should be ale to scale ridges->lowlands and vice versa if both tiles have magtubes constructed. Its bizarre to see the road connecting the tiles, but to still be unable to move between them.

I think I'll rather make it impossible to build magtubes on ridges. :D

I hate these ridges that block off continents - given the long/thin nature of the mapscript, very often a continent is blocked by a ridge going all the way across, forcing you to use naval units to move around the ridgeline.

You can also use choppers/hovertanks/gravships, dropships, drop troops if you want to invade.

Any suggestion to what the maintenance reduction should be reduced? -50% like Teodosio suggests? Something else?

50% is probably a good starting point. But these bonuses are huge. Particularly because inflation seems very high in this mod, and inflation increases the gains of forgoing city maintenance, but does not increase the gains from for eg bonuses from extra trade routes (from free trade civic).
So if city maintenance is 50 and inflation is 100%, removing all city maintenance saves me 100 gold per turn. Whereas even if a bonus trade route somehow gave me an extra 50 gold per turn, inflation wouldn't modify that.

I'd also consider adding a penalty to Autarky (it is a stupid idea IRL) - maybe no foreign trade routes AND -1 trade routes per city, or -50% yield from trade routes.

Its also very irritating playing a Terraforming strategy when every other AI on the planet all changes to Hybrid, and hates you terraformers, and none will trade with you anymore because you are now their worst enemy (made worse by the fact that the diplomatic benefits from gifts seem to wear off after a while?).

Works fine with me. Do you have a save?

It doesn't seem to work at least if Homo superior isn't your state religion - which is intended.


I like the thought, but converting a plot on the turn after would probably require some spell or so. I need to think about the implementation.

I realize it could be annoying to implement.
Possibly you could do it as an Event? So the initial spawn triggers an event the next turn, that checks if there are any barbarian units on the plot and spawns fungus if there are, otherwise does nothing.


Don't naval fungal bloom spawns already start with zero movement points though?

Not in my experience I think, unless I just don't notice them on the turn they spawn.

It's the same as vanillla Civ


It isn't, because:
a) Vanilla civ has a LOT more bonus food resources - wheat, sheep, deer, cows, pigs, rice, corn, flood plains. Planetfall has much less in the way of these, basic nutrients are only a 2 food bonus, and many of the bonuses require significant tech to reveal.
b) Vanilla civ mapscript won't start a player in an area without a decent level of food production.
But check out, for eg, the start positions of the Gaians and University in the save I attached above. Gaians are in the middle of 0 food arid area (Civ will never start you in the middle of an empty desert - or if it does, its in flood plains tiles), and the University is in the middle of the arctic.


Why not build farms?

Farms have a higher tech requirement, require fresh water, and have a negative planet modifier.

I think I'll rather make it impossible to build magtubes on ridges.

Ugh....
You really are set on making it impossible to move your units around the map :-)
I find its really not fun to have so many limitations, and the fact that the AI doesn't use transports particularly well just makes it worse.

You can also use choppers/hovertanks/gravships, dropships, drop troops if you want to invade.

Well, you can't really launch any significant invasion without some artillery.
But its not combat that makes this so annoying. I don't mind having to use transports when launching an invasion, but the micromanagement of having to use transport units to get around within my own empire. I want to move a missionary to one of my cities; I have to use transports. I want to build some defenders and then move them to to my city; I have to use transports.

Maybe make it so that you can move ridge<->lowlands if it is within your cultural borders?
And similarly, maybe make terrain within your cultural borders reduce the terrain movement costs by -1, so even without roads (or late-game magtubes) its still easier for you to move around your borders than it is for your enemy.
And so that it doesn't take forever for your infantry to march around inside your empire.

Another point; the human player willing to micromanage can get massive mobility with dropships, that the AI player won't be able to mimic. Note that a unit unloaded from a dropship can attack, so you can move units in dropships 3 tiles, unload them, and then have them move and attack.

* * *
Btw, despite all the criticism, I'm loving this mod. It helps that the source material is great (I found SMAC way better than civ in general), but you've done an excellent job of implementing it too.

I stumbled a bug/crash, when trying to trade techs. I believe it is related to the fact that I built the Unity Observation Bay in this game...in the attached save, call up Morgan and ask him what he is willing to give you for Algaculture. Should be Industrial Automation, 220 Credits and his worldmap - if you accept that deal, the game crashes. Even more strange is the fact that Morgan will no longer accept the deal, if you remove the Worldmap (from his side!) of the table.



Any suggestion to what the maintenance reduction should be reduced? -50% like Teodosio suggests? Something else?

I also think that -50% for both Hybrid and Autarky is good point to start with.

Edit: Save removed, as it has no more use.

50% is probably a good starting point. But these bonuses are huge. Particularly because inflation seems very high in this mod,

It's the same as in unmodded Civ.
Anyway, I hate inflation and would like to remove it. I still want unit maintenance to increase somehow though, as otherwise that would become less of a factor as the game progresses. So before removing inflation I first need to code a way for unit maintenance to increase. Perhaps later era units could cost 2 gold in maintenance or so.

It doesn't seem to work at least if Homo superior isn't your state religion - which is intended.

In the save you attached it works for me. Not for you?

a) Vanilla civ has a LOT more bonus food resources - wheat, sheep, deer, cows, pigs, rice, corn, flood plains. Planetfall has much less in the way of these, basic nutrients are only a 2 food bonus, and many of the bonuses require significant tech to reveal.

Ah, you only mentioned moisture level, not food resources. Anyway, with condensers you can turn all terrain into rainy if you want. Of course you need to research the required tech, but it wouldn't be a strategy game if you didn't have to make hard choices.

But check out, for eg, the start positions of the Gaians and University in the save I attached above. Gaians are in the middle of 0 food arid area (Civ will never start you in the middle of an empty desert - or if it does, its in flood plains tiles), and the University is in the middle of the arctic.

That's crappy AI choices, not bad design choices I think. :mischief: I also noticed that Gaian position. I would have run Enclosed Biosphere if I were that civ. Perhaps reducing the Hybrid civic bonus will already help in that regard.

Farms have a higher tech requirement, require fresh water, and have a negative planet modifier.

If you want to have 3+ food tiles, you need to pay the price. You can't eat your cake and have it too.

I find its really not fun to have so many limitations

But there are always multiple ways around the limitations, be it movement limitations, or food limitations, or maintenance limitations (too many even, so you say ;)). What would for instance be the fun of a map completely consisting of rainy plots, not a single peak in sight etc?

I don't mind having to use transports when launching an invasion, but the micromanagement of having to use transport units to get around within my own empire. I want to move a missionary to one of my cities; I have to use transports. I want to build some defenders and then move them to to my city; I have to use transports.

Maybe make it so that you can move ridge<->lowlands if it is within your cultural borders?

Ridges are supposed to be an obstacle, just like peaks and oceans are in unmodded Civ. But I personally hate micromanagement, so...
Making ridge<->lowland movement always passable within your borders would give too great an advantage to the defender I think. However I could allow you to move between ridge<->lowland IF there is a bunker on the source or target plot. One can assume every bunker comes with a local ferry service. That implementation allows an interesting twist in combat, as it allows an attacker to cut off the possibility for reinforcements, by first focusing on the bunker.
The AI of course wouldn't understand that tactic without additional coding.

And similarly, maybe make terrain within your cultural borders reduce the terrain movement costs by -1, so even without roads (or late-game magtubes) its still easier for you to move around your borders than it is for your enemy.

The fact that enemy units can move as fast in your territory as you, is never gonna change. :p

And so that it doesn't take forever for your infantry to march around inside your empire.

Another point; the human player willing to micromanage can get massive mobility with dropships

This strikes me as a contradiction. :D

Regarding 'fungal blooms', I could not let them cause fungal growth directly, but let fungus spawn after a while on every plot with a fungal tower (sometimes spawned with fungal blooms). So you'd have a while to try and save the furniture.

Works fine with me. :confused: Do you have a save?
Ok sorry, the +2 :gp: for Homo Superior DOES work even if it isn't your state value; it was a embarassing misunderstanding on my part! :p

The fact that enemy units can move as fast in your territory as you, is never gonna change. :p
But the movement limitation is hard indeed, and mag tube are too late in the game! Let's put early roads... then give everyone commando promotion for free! :D

It's the same as in unmodded Civ.
Anyway, I hate inflation and would like to remove it. I still want unit maintenance to increase somehow though, as otherwise that would become less of a factor as the game progresses. So before removing inflation I first need to code a way for unit maintenance to increase. Perhaps later era units could cost 2 gold in maintenance or so.


The values are the same as vanilla, but it isn't the same in a relative sense because of all the other things that are different.
Economy growth is, in general, much slower than in civ. Marketplaces and libraries or their equivalent are much higher tech and much more expensive.
Much higher unhealthiness, fewer food resources, negative planet costs, and terrain destruction by native-life growth mean that you have smaller cities with smaller economic output than in vanilla civ.
Smaller population also means smaller free military unit upkeep, so unit upkeep is higher.

Thus, your economy is much smaller by turn 300 in this mod than in vanilla civ, but you are facing the same inflation percentage.

So, inflation is relatively more costly and consumes a larger proportion of your economy than in vanilla.

Perhaps later era units could cost 2 gold in maintenance or so.

This sounds good to me - eliminate inflation, but make some of the higher tech units more expensive to upkeep.

In the save you attached it works for me. Not for you?

Maybe I am mistaken, I'm not certain about this one. I'll check again at some point. I thought I had a city with homo superior without seeing the GPPs in the tooltip, but I could be wrong.

That's crappy AI choices, not bad design choices I think.

The error lies in what places the start positions relative to tile yields. IMO you need to give higher weight to food resources in determining start positions.
Do you really expect the AI to waste multiple turns in the early game moving before founding their capitol?


If you want to have 3+ food tiles, you need to pay the price. You can't eat your cake and have it too.

Why? In vanilla civ and every mod I've seen its fairly easy from basic tech to be able to get 3-food tile yields. Which are what are needed to support any other tiles while still having a growing city.

It also further emphasizes the importance of getting a good start position.

What would for instance be the fun of a map completely consisting of rainy plots, not a single peak in sight etc?

None, obviously that would be boring. But I dislike changes that the human player can get around (but only using tedious micromanagement)
IMO a fun game is one where you don't have to micromanage boring details; micromanagement should only be about decisions that have strategic value (which building should I construct here, which specialists should I use, which tiles should I work), not ones that are just boring busywork.
Though having said that, micromanaging specialists to constantly de-select Librarians is a huge PITA as well. Why not change the network node to provide a Scientist slot rather than a Librarian?

Making ridge<->lowland movement always passable within your borders would give too great an advantage to the defender I think

Well, as it stands, the defender currently gets *no* defensive advantages at all. Except Bunkers, I guess. (Another issue with bunkers; once a bunker is destroyed in combat, the terrain improvement is still there, and the visual icon is still there, even though its meaningless - maybe destroy the bunker improvement if the unit is destroyed?).

However I could allow you to move between ridge<->lowland IF there is a bunker on the source or target plot. One can assume every bunker comes with a local ferry service. That implementation allows an interesting twist in combat, as it allows an attacker to cut off the possibility for reinforcements, by first focusing on the bunker.
The AI of course wouldn't understand that tactic without additional coding.

This sounds like a useful workaround, IF you can somehow tell the AI to build a bunker on a ridge adjacent to a lowland if it is has 2 adjacent ridges or ocean tiles.
Targeting Bunkers first is already a very good idea, given how powerful their bombardment ability is.

The fact that enemy units can move as fast in your territory as you, is never gonna change.

Well, I just hate that design decision, though its obviously yours to make.
It just makes absolutely no sense to me; in every military episode in human history, the defender ALWAYS has a home-territory advantage because of better supply lines, better transportation, better knowledge of/adaptation to terrain and climate (eg Russian winter, or Crusaders vs deserts), and an ability to use the population more. I don't understand why you want to make invasions so easy, or cities so hard to defend or reinforce. It also tends to really encourage Stack of Doom philosophy, and to make the only way that you can defend also be a Stack of Doom - whereas when the defender has better mobility, they can use that to their advantage to whittle down invading armies over time.

Still, how about increasing the movement rate, so that even if both attacker and defender move at the same rate, its at a faster rate? It takes WAY too long to move all your units around within your empire during peacetime, or to get reinforcements to a fight in wartime.

This strikes me as a contradiction.

Not really, I don't want to have to micromanage all my movement or be constantly loading and unloading dropships in order to get anything done.

Regarding 'fungal blooms', I could not let them cause fungal growth directly, but let fungus spawn after a while on every plot with a fungal tower (sometimes spawned with fungal blooms). So you'd have a while to try and save the furniture.

I like this a lot. This would massively improve the game, particularly for Terraformer economies who build expensive Boreholes and condensors and use Farms for food- and who get many more native uprisings.

But the movement limitation is hard indeed, and mag tube are too late in the game! Let's put early roads... then give everyone commando promotion for free! :D

I removed early roads because having roads all over the place reduces the differences between terrains. If all terrain has roads, stuff like some terrain costing two movement points to pass through has little meaning anymore. Reducing the occurence of roads increases the value of bonuses which allow you to get somewhere faster. Like 'double movement in fungus' (native life), 'flat movement over all terrain' (chopper->hovertank->gravship), 'drop range' (drop troops), naval transporting.

Do you really expect the AI to waste multiple turns in the early game moving before founding their capitol?

They should research towards Enclosed Biosphere.

Though having said that, micromanaging specialists to constantly de-select Librarians is a huge PITA as well. Why not change the network node to provide a Scientist slot rather than a Librarian?

I'd rather find out why the game always likes to pick espionage-providing specialists. I already lowered the weight the AI attaches to espionage commerce, but it doesn't help.

Not really, I don't want to have to micromanage all my movement or be constantly loading and unloading dropships in order to get anything done.

That's a good point. My thought for Dropships:
2 movement points
flat movement costs (should have been that way all along)
double movement speed on water

Anyway, in combat situations I want transports to be a faster way to get somewhere, than just by foot, so to speak. However I don't want to have to use transports for all peaceful transport. Some crazy possible solution I came up with: allow all land units to move over water terrain inside your territory, at a speed of three plots per turn. Representing local transport capacity. It would also make a sea base empire easier to manage. All land units could get a -95% strength penalty on non-city water plots or something, so in combat areas it would not be wise to use this mode of transport. The big drawback would be that graphically it would look rather weird to have land units walking over water.

The big drawback would be that graphically it would look rather weird to have land units walking over water.

Remember the "stormtower" graphic when a swordsman attacks a city?
It might be possible to change this graphic in a transport foil and let it pop up when a land unit "moves" across water to another spot...

Some crazy possible solution I came up with: allow all land units to move over water terrain inside your territory, at a speed of three plots per turn. Representing local transport capacity. It would also make a sea base empire easier to manage. All land units could get a -95% strength penalty on non-city water plots or something, so in combat areas it would not be wise to use this mode of transport

This is a very interesting idea, but my main worry would be that potentially the AI would use this kind of movement still during wartime, and potentially have its army be sitting ducks at sea, where you could eliminate their entire armyt.

It would also have the effect of pathfinding leading you all troop movement even on continents being concentrated using coastal shipping. So to get from A to B on my continent, I move to the coast, then move down the coast on ocean tiles (very vulnerable while doing so) and then move back onto land. Do you really want such an emphasis on nautical movement? That works for some parts of human history, but not so much for the far future.

2 movement for dropships seems.... really low. Is it really no faster to fly than to drive using rovers or tanks or APCs? I'd leave them at 3 moves, but make it so that units unloaded from them (at least outside of city tiles) can't move on the turn that they unload. Or reduce their transport capacity I guess.

Another point I noticed; submarines obsolete foils, but subs can't pillage while foils can. So you lose the ability to do naval pillaging until you get to cruisers (or native life).
Since subs aren't Hidden anymore, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to pillage.

This is a very interesting idea, but my main worry would be that potentially the AI would use this kind of movement still during wartime, and potentially have its army be sitting ducks at sea, where you could eliminate their entire armyt.

Ah, hadn't thought of that yet. But fortunately it's possible in the pathfinder to prevent units from moving through dangerous terrain.

That works for some parts of human history, but not so much for the far future.

Naval transport is no longer the fastest, but still the cheapest way to transport a whole bunch of stuff.

2 movement for dropships seems.... really low. Is it really no faster to fly than to drive using rovers or tanks or APCs? I'd leave them at 3 moves, but make it so that units unloaded from them (at least outside of city tiles) can't move on the turn that they unload. Or reduce their transport capacity I guess.

Un/loading units is a complicated business. I'd rather not touch the rules of that too much. Besides, if the goal is preventing micromanagement-heavy ways of transport from being better than micromanagemenless ways, dropships on land can't be faster than other means of movement.

Another point I noticed; submarines obsolete foils, but subs can't pillage while foils can. So you lose the ability to do naval pillaging until you get to cruisers (or native life).
Since subs aren't Hidden anymore, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to pillage.

The upgrade path of foils is kinda problematic. I don't really want to have a foil line of ships throughout the entire game. But unfortunately foils do have somewhat different abilities than cruisers or submarines. Foil can move through fungus, unlike cruisers. And foils carry land units. I think I'd prefer submarines to be unable to do so. So not really sure what to do with foils. :(

I choosed "Scattered Landing Pods" (Map had Low Sea Level) and the generator placed most factions on islands.

The starting position generator is fixed for the next patch.

I stumbled a bug/crash, when trying to trade techs. I believe it is related to the fact that I built the Unity Observation Bay in this game...in the attached save, call up Morgan and ask him what he is willing to give you for Algaculture. Should be Industrial Automation, 220 Credits and his worldmap - if you accept that deal, the game crashes. Even more strange is the fact that Morgan will no longer accept the deal, if you remove the Worldmap (from his side!) of the table.

That save already crashes for me, even if I simply try to open the Worldbuilder. As a consequence I don't really know how I could find out the cause of the crash. :( I'd probably need all the autosaves, so that I could check when the worldbuilder crash starts occurring, and hope I notice something special in between thsose turns.

Naval transport is no longer the fastest, but still the cheapest way to transport a whole bunch of stuff.

Only cross continent. Its otherwise cheaper to move stuff on land. You don't see a ton of stuff getting shipped via sea from New York to Washington DC; its cheaper to stick on trucks instead. Historically, you would move anything like this by ship since land movement was so slow (before major motorways were built). Your idea would model this, by basically using coastal shipping routes as faster than land transport, which would feel a bit weird in a futuristic mod.

Un/loading units is a complicated business. I'd rather not touch the rules of that too much. Besides, if the goal is preventing micromanagement-heavy ways of transport from being better than micromanagemenless ways, dropships on land can't be faster than other means of movement.

I realize there are conflicting design goals with no easy answers, I'm just pointing out some of the problems with various design choices.

The upgrade path of foils is kinda problematic. I don't really want to have a foil line of ships throughout the entire game. But unfortunately foils do have somewhat different abilities than cruisers or submarines. Foil can move through fungus, unlike cruisers. And foils carry land units. I think I'd prefer submarines to be unable to do so. So not really sure what to do with foils.

I'm pretty sure that I've moved cruisers through fungus, as it should be since native life spawning can often lock a port entirely in fungus. It would be very annoying if you couldn't exit your port cities. I'm not sure if I've ever moved foils through fungus (subs definitely can).
What I'd do is have them be upgradable without being obsolete. So, a city can still build foils even once you've researched subs.
Or just let subs pillage.

I'd consider having foils have higher movement - a hydrofoil might not have any significant combat ability or cargo capacity, but it sure is fast.

Hi, had a fun time testing your mod. It's getting there...

What are the different religions and their bonuses/drawbacks ? As it turns out I founded all but one on a emperor game in my first try, but I had no clue what they was, and all civilopedia entries was for vanilla religions...:crazyeye:

The same with the icons for the religions in the diplomatic view...

Only cross continent. Its otherwise cheaper to move stuff on land. You don't see a ton of stuff getting shipped via sea from New York to Washington DC; its cheaper to stick on trucks instead.

I can give counterexamples of stuff being being shipped within Europe and Eurasia.
Anyway, if a solution which satisfies both realism/roleplay and gameplay can be found, that is of course preferable. But this realism discussion alone isn't gonna change the suggested gameplay solution.

I'm pretty sure that I've moved cruisers through fungus

Within your territory I guess. Naval units can move freely within one's territory. See vanilla workboats.
Anyway, I was thinking to make cruiser and artillery unable to attack directly into fungus instead.

Or just let subs pillage.

I think I'll do that, but make them visible for a turn after pillaging something.

What are the different religions and their bonuses/drawbacks ? As it turns out I founded all but one on a emperor game in my first try, but I had no clue what they was, and all civilopedia entries was for vanilla religions...:crazyeye:

You mean you don't know their gameplay effects, or you don't know their background story?
Their gameplay effects can be found in the Datalinks, in the city screen etc. :confused:

The same with the icons for the religions in the diplomatic view...

In the new patch, there are icons for the religions.

I can give counterexamples of stuff being being shipped within Europe and Eurasia.

There's still a lot of coastal shipping in Europe? I'm surprised. But I admit I know much more about north american trade patterns.

But this realism discussion alone isn't gonna change the suggested gameplay solution.

Understood, the main problem with it I think is that for the AI in particular it would make their units massively vulnerable, particularly to native-life spawnings. It seems very common that many civs are completely unable to control native life on water within their territory, and have their entire coastlines choked with fungus, and native life spawning points. So I worry they'd keep moving their units onto water to get them to move faster, and then have them get walloped (with their strength penalties) by native life.

Within your territory I guess. Naval units can move freely within one's territory. See vanilla workboats.
Anyway, I was thinking to make cruiser and artillery unable to attack directly into fungus instead.

Sounds fine. Maybe this should also work for armor units? So they can move within fungus (within your territory at least), but just can't attack into it.

I think I'll do that, but make them visible for a turn after pillaging something.

Again sounds fine, though enemy subs *seem* to be completely visible at the moment - maybe just because it was within my territory, or because I had my own subs nearby without realizing?

There's still a lot of coastal shipping in Europe?

I think the word "still" is unnecessary. Intra-European shipping is increasing. Anyway, I did a little Google search, and a third of the port of Antwerp's shipping is intra-European. Also if trucks were so much cheaper, river & canal shipping would be inexistent by now.
In any case, I don't know anything about transport economy. Perhaps, while the cost per kilometer is lower for ships than for trucks, the fixed cost of loading a ship is bigger than loading some trucks, meaning for short distances such as between NY and Washington, trucks might be preferred.

Anyway, Planet does not have a developed road network, so it would be very realistic for naval shipping to be the main method of transport especially in the early game.

I'm thinking I could also allow movement along riversides to happen at an increased speed, so you'd get this natural distinction between high-movement and isolated/wilderness areas on the map. Sounds more fun to me than equalized all-road terrain.

Understood, the main problem with it I think is that for the AI in particular it would make their units massively vulnerable, particularly to native-life spawnings.

I can't know for sure yet of course, but I think it should be easy to prevent by using the AI_getPlotDanger function to restrict land-unit-on-sea movement.

Sounds fine. Maybe this should also work for armor units? So they can move within fungus (within your territory at least), but just can't attack into it.

Yep. With Artillery I inaccurately meant to say "treaded unitcombattype".

Again sounds fine, though enemy subs *seem* to be completely visible at the moment - maybe just because it was within my territory, or because I had my own subs nearby without realizing?

Ah woops. Submarines are indeed visible now (I'm assuming detection technology has improved), but I intend to add a special ability which can make submarines invisible while at full health, and a promotion which makes native life invisible on fungus.

The starting position generator is fixed for the next patch.

Indeed, works nicely now. No more AIs or me on small islands with patch e :goodjob:


That save already crashes for me, even if I simply try to open the Worldbuilder. As a consequence I don't really know how I could find out the cause of the crash. :( I'd probably need all the autosaves, so that I could check when the worldbuilder crash starts occurring, and hope I notice something special in between thsose turns.

Sadly, all those autosaves were deleted because of loading in another mod after playing and every manual save I had made before already crashed when trying to enter the WB :( I build the Observation Bay in the new game with Patch e as well and Worldmap trading worked fine, so the problem is likely more sophisticated than I thought at first.



Did patch e change anything in regard to costs or inflation? Playing again on Emperor (as Believers), I had no problems to run 100% science for most of the game. I had maybe a few cities less and got lucky with some Great Tycoons I settled down in my capital, but in the last games I struggled not to get bankrupt (and science spending was most of the time between 0 and 30%), so it feels like something has changed.

The AIs expanded a lot more (after 218 turns, all AI factions have between 6 and 10 cities) and the AI did a good job in regard to hunting down native life on sea. My neighbour and ally Yang even had the power to kill of native life from fungals blooms in my territory twice.

What hasn't changed is the constant rising of the FC, 2313 it reached 45 climbing almost linearly. In regard to the AIs Hybrid/Terraforming choices in this game, so far 2 AIs (Deidre and Yang) have choosen Hybrid, while the others are (still) running EB. What I realized though, is the low desire of the AIs to actually research the Terraforming tech, if they have met the prequesites - I traded Environmental Economics around and now 5 out of 6 AIs have it and none even started to research Terraforming. Maybe Terraformed and Edenism should come earlier in the tech tree (currently the have about the same level as Hybrid, but somehow get bypassed at least by the AIs) - IMHO, it wouldn't be too unrealistic. If people try to colonize a new planet, isn't it more intuitive that they first try to form it into a new earth, before they might realize that assimilating to it might be another (and even better) way?

I also noticed that High Energy Chemistry enables the Helium ressource, what actually does nothing for the game - because Helium becomes only visible with an earlier tech called High Intensity Lasers, which you cannot research.

Could you make so units went faster when on coastlines, rather than actually having to move into the water tiles? That might be more effective. You can justify it by saying they''re moving using shipping resources, but still keep docking at the end of each turn to set up camps/forage for supplies on land every few months.

That way you lose some of the weirdness of land units walking on water tiles, and any issues of vulnerability.

Faster movement along rivers (ahh, original civ homage) seems fine too.

So coastlines and rivers are transport routes (hints of colonial Africa), and the interior of continents are less accessible until you get the tech for roads.

I'm liking the bunker solution for ridges btw, and dropships moving faster over water. It works well.

The Unity Observation Bay is nice, but it totally ruins your ability to grab goody huts since it doesn't show them on the map, and thus you have no idea what you've already explored, and what you haven't. Without it, I usually am lucky with my early rover and grab a few materials pods (one for the unity cyrobay, one for the library to bulb memetics).

Any way to change it so (1) it comes later in the tech tree, or (2) shows me the pods?

The latest patches were great, I really like how this mod keeps improving.
I have much appreciated that now other religions don't lose their bonuses when a state religion is chosen, and that proper icons have been made for several buildings (for example the Pressure Dome, that had the Infirmary icon previously).
Keep up the good work! :goodjob:

I runned into a crash, which is probably related to native life capturing bases. There is a fungal bloom near one of my bases and an attack of native life - first a spore louncher damaging my defender, then a mindworm attacking him and crashing the game.

I have two saves for it. Reason is that my last action in the turn before the crash was a revolution two new civics - if you don't make that revolution, the native life attack on the base does not happen and no crash happens as well. Likely thats just the nature of the RNG (my revolution changing the seed, so that an attack is triggered), but in the unlikely case that the civic change has a direct impat as well, I have posted a save before the revolution (which does not crash if you just end the turn, but will crash if you switch to Democratic and Wealth before) and one with that revolution already started (which crashes when pressing turn end).

Did patch e change anything in regard to costs or inflation?
The AIs expanded a lot more

Nothing was changed yet in patch e on these matters. I guess that's just the natural variability you get between games. Eg your game can differ a lot depending if you build mines or windmills.

What I realized though, is the low desire of the AIs to actually research the Terraforming tech, if they have met the prequesites - I traded Environmental Economics around and now 5 out of 6 AIs have it and none even started to research Terraforming. Maybe Terraformed and Edenism should come earlier in the tech tree

The Civ4 tech research picker is really awful. It wouldn't be much different if you just let a random number generator pick the tech to research. This doesn't matter much in vanilla Civ4, because the tech tree is very narrow. In Planetfall there are more choices, so I guess I'll have to make some changes to the AI on this matter eventually...

I wouldn't want to bring Terraforming earlier in the tech tree though. It's the same tech level as Ascetic Virtues and Homo Superior. Voice of Planet a tech level earlier is intentional, because I like Voice of Planet potentially having a bigger influence than the other religions. One of SMAC/Planetfall's main themes is pro-Planet against anti-Planet after all, so pro-Planet should have a decent influence for that design to work eventually.

I also noticed that High Energy Chemistry enables the Helium ressource, what actually does nothing for the game - because Helium becomes only visible with an earlier tech called High Intensity Lasers, which you cannot research.

Ah woops, will look into this.

Could you make so units went faster when on coastlines, rather than actually having to move into the water tiles? That might be more effective. You can justify it by saying they''re moving using shipping resources, but still keep docking at the end of each turn to set up camps/forage for supplies on land every few months.

That way you lose some of the weirdness of land units walking on water tiles, and any issues of vulnerability.

Sometimes continents can be rather snaky though, with lots of terrain coastal, so you'd once again lose much of the influence of terrain on combat.

Besides, when I get to implementing this, I'd make land units unable to walk over blockaded water plots. That way you could shut down your enemy's fast water routes by bringing in some ships. Could make navies more useful. Walking over coastal land wouldn't allow this.

As for the weird look, Geo's suggestion re recycling the siege graphic might actually work. That would help at least a bit.

The Unity Observation Bay is nice, but it totally ruins your ability to grab goody huts since it doesn't show them on the map, and thus you have no idea what you've already explored, and what you haven't. ... Any way to change it so (1) it comes later in the tech tree, or (2) shows me the pods?

I'll check it out.

I runned into a crash

Thanks. I'll investigate it too.

I runned into a crash, which is probably related to native life capturing bases

Perimeter defenses in barbarian bases are causing crashes. The problem is graphical. Can't really tell any more at the moment. GeoModder should have a look at it.

If you don't want to wait for the next patch (might take another week) and don't mind digging into XML yourself, you can change the perimeter defense building's artdefine, or the perimeter defense artdefine's LSYSTEM to anything else. Crash gone.

I just discovered that the Small map setting gives 7 factions, just as the Standard map setting. I leftover from testing patch g?

And it seems I need to tinker with the marine lab as well. ;)
It's way too high on the sea. I'll lower it to a reasonable hight.

Where did you place the marine lab? I can't find it in the .fpk? :confused:

Where did you place the marine lab? I can't find it in the .fpk? :confused:

I only create a new pak file when releasing a new full version.
Anyway, the Marine Lab is indeed put in a strange place: the Structures/Cities folder. Reason is because the Arrival cityset and the Marine Lab share the box.dds. But if I understand correctly, I could throw that box.dds in a seperate 'shared' folder, and everything would still work?

I just discovered that the Small map setting gives 7 factions, just as the Standard map setting. I leftover from testing patch g?

That's an intentional change. I 1) kinda like crowded maps, and 2) kinda like having all 7 factions around.
Do you prefer only five?

Anyway, I use small maps for the 100-turn AI autoplay test before releasing a patch, so it's useful to have all factions around for that test. You never know it's only one of the factions causing a problem. Has happened before.

Well, no problem for 7 factions on a small map in my book, but I suggest you change the settings for the smaller maptypes accordingly. :)

Thanks for the Marine Lab location. In the next upload I'll add a folder path for the location of the "Shared" folder.

I noticed, with Quick Combat off, that (the animations of) battles involving the Cyborg unit last very long. Other people also having this issue? Anyone knows what determines the length of a battle?

My guess here is that the battle lasts until one of the units is dead or it retreats. If they have many hit points, it may take a while. Many first strikes for one side does make the animations last longer, also.

Animations have nothing to do with combat. It is all done beforehand and then the game animates it so that the appropriate no. of units are left.

I do not see how this is different than what I said.
The battle is done beforehand. Then animations to represent the way the battle went are generated.
First strike animations are generated for units having first strikes and the number of them displayed is proportional to the real number the unit got in the battle.
Hits displayed in the animation are proportional to the real number of attacks that made during the combat calculation.

So, the more First strikes and number of attacks in real combat, the longer the animation sequel

Has any of you actually tried if they have the same problem as me?

I was testing a little something. I used a Cyborg (which has no first strikes) to attack a fungal tower, and the battle lasted very long, and there was a long pause before the cyborg death animation. When I attacked a fungal tower with a scout patrol, the battle length was normal.

Could it be in the kfm files? These are just copied from NextWar of course.

I was testing a little something. I used a Cyborg (which has no first strikes) to attack a fungal tower, and the battle lasted very long, and there was a long pause before the cyborg death animation. When I attacked a fungal tower with a scout patrol, the battle length was normal.
Combat with cyborgs is always slow, even if I never experienced long pauses.
It seems to me that the combat is slow just because there are 8 cyborg figures for unit, while scouts and others have 2-3 figures. So when a cyborg unit is defeated the dying animation is repeated 8 times, while it is repeated only 2-3 times for most other units.
Reducing the figures for Cyborg units would improve the issue.

Ah, thanks, seems like a likely culprit. I'll try it out. (I've always used single unit models, so I didn't notice this)

Patch 7f runs very stable for me (except some non-reproduceable crashes I get after frequent alt-tabbing), also no major bugs so far. I played Deidre one more time and again, it felt a lot easier compared to the other factions. I still think Planetfall works too much in favor for the "green strategy":

- You make the best out of the increasing FC (started out with 25, reached 30=2147,
35=2190, 40=2235, 45=2286, 50=2338, 53=2397), which soon kills of farms a viable alternative - I'm not able to get beyond Outposts with them and even that happens only with the very early ones around my capital. As said earlier, the Terraformed civic helps in theory, but appears when its already to late (means FC is already crippling high). I'm not sure what can be done about this, but it appears to me that fungus is still growing too fast outside faction borders - even after 300 turns there is still a decent amount of surface unsettled and here fungus has evolved into a kind of carpet. Especially the oceans are a problem, because the AI never seems to think about building sea-colonies. Also their expansion speed seems to dwindle over the curse of the game...they don't seem be interested in settling oversea islands, if they are more then a few tiles away and often they start to lose cities to native life in the midgame, while being only occasionally able to recapture them.

- You can gain a lot out of your positive planet values (if you go for booster buildings and VoP as Deidre, you always have 3 or 4 as average) as well. Your borders expand really quick without needing religion or buildings, you can pollute the Planet with some dirty terrain improvements (as long as you don't go overborad with it), you are better in fighting native life...and you can have a whole army of captured native life. Since the limit is calculated from the total accumulated positive planet values, it increases over time. Now in 2408 I could have 89 captured native life forms, actually having 14. I did no active hunting and also often fought native life with my own native life (which seems to have no chance to capture, which is healthy restriction IMO) and also lost a couple again, so the number could be a lot higher, if I would have been focussed in that direction.

- You get better along with the AIs, a lot better - as long as no AI ever uses Terraformed (not even the ones running/founding Edenism!!!) with a tendency to pick Hybrid soon, you get more out of heading in the same direction.

- Though I think a discount on city maintenance for Hybrid is fine and I don't even think that 50% is too much, I think it becomes too strong on top of the other advantages. Size matters a lot for all kinds of victories and taking away the costs of size is always a strong advantage.



Some minors things:

- The seemingly missing cap for missionaries can cause AIs to spam them (see picture)

- The victory screen displays an insane amount of subspace generators needed for victory (see picture)

- I like the dropship unit, as it is a comfortable way for oversea transports. However, you need to be careful when moving them around in coastal waters - if you give an order, which leads over a land tile, the drop-ship will auto-unload. Sometimes that might be the intention and save you some extra-clicks, but it can be nasty, if the a cargo is unloaded in the wrong place (in my case near native life), when your plan is to continue travelling.

- I think a council vote every 6 years is too much, especially as long as there are not more cool things to voted about. Sure it does not hurt either...but it's kind of repetive to vote every few turns about if Single Currency should be disabled or continued again.
The behaviour of the AI further worsens things here - unless the code was changed here, all problems present in the standard Civ4 AI (as picking resolutions randomly or making votes hurting themselves, like stopping their own, sucessful wars...). I remember that a version of Better AI was included some time ago...the current Better AI 0.60 runs very stable in my experience and has a lot of improvements on voting behaviour, maybe it would be worth to include.
Votes connected to peace/war/trading/cities are more interesting, but they are too dependant on if the AIs fight at all (though there is to mention that I have played with scattered landing potds again - I kind of don't like the ultra-early conflict, I would rather like to see some action in the mid and late game..) I think some of the SMAX factions could really spice up the game - the space on the map would be more tight (eventually improving the situation with the FC described in the beginning) and more options for coalitions would arise.


In case it is generally useful to see a game in that stage, I uploaded my latest save...

I lol'd at your second pic, something really needs to be done about that. Limit AIs to only 2-3 missionaries maybe?

I don't see why you'd need more than two or three in the first place. Besides, that kind of stockpile can lead to religion rushing which might be a bit imbalanced, since you could potentially change another faction's religion overnight (assuming they found it compelling enough to).

If you're going to convert a faction, it should take some time. The cap of 3 in Civ4 Vanilla was a good idea, for this and other reasons (especially in light of the horde of Planet missionaries in Pfeffersack's pic).

I'm not able to get beyond Outposts with them and even that happens only with the very early ones around my capital. As said earlier, the Terraformed civic helps in theory, but appears when its already to late (means FC is already crippling high).

I could try increasing the farm upgrade bonus of Terraformed?

it appears to me that fungus is still growing too fast outside faction borders - even after 300 turns there is still a decent amount of surface unsettled and here fungus has evolved into a kind of carpet.

Certain areas being fungus carpets is intentional. Though I'd wish more of the land and less of the sea were fungal carpets... :sad:

Also their expansion speed seems to dwindle over the curse of the game[/B]...they don't seem be interested in settling oversea islands, if they are more then a few tiles away and often they start to lose cities to native life in the midgame, while being only occasionally able to recapture them.

Hmm, I've been playing a game with the Believers, and so far the AI has been very good at building overseas bases. And only one base, alone on an isolated island, has fallen to native life. Perhaps these two rule changes have made a large difference?:

10. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage (negative Planet) will be immobile for a turn.
11. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage can only spawn on fungus. So no fungus => no spawns.

and you can have a whole army of captured native life. Since the limit is calculated from the total accumulated positive planet values, it increases over time. Now in 2408 I could have 89 captured native life forms, actually having 14.

Well, when I coded in this feature, I just added a random planet requirement per capture number which seemed about right, knowing full well it would need to be rebalanced. It would be very easy to increase the required accumulated planet to capture an extra worm. However just increasing the number overall might make it too hard to capture native life in the early game. So I'm rather thinking the first couple native lifeforms should require less accumulated planet. And I have no inspiration right now how to code this.
Anyway, not a huge problem at the moment I guess. If you actually manage to assemble a 90-worm army, and that army is much bigger than what your opponents can field, then it'll become a priority to find a solution.

- The seemingly missing cap for missionaries can cause AIs to spam them (see picture)

As a last-minute change for patch g, I set the national limit for missionaries to 10. The reason for removing the cap was because I gave all missionaries a medic promotion, so they have an additional purpose.
I guess I'll need to have a look how FfH solved the endless missionary problem.

- The victory screen displays an insane amount of subspace generators needed for victory (see picture)

Yep I know. Unfortunately I don't know the cause or solution. :(

you give an order, which leads over a land tile, the drop-ship will auto-unload

I'll check it out. Perhaps I could make the auto-unload for the AI only or something.

- I think a council vote every 6 years is too much, especially as long as there are not more cool things to voted about.

Ideas for interesting repetitive council proposals are welcome. :D
Anyway yeah, I think the Planetary Council and the White Pines council (renamed 'the Concordat'?) are gonna be the next big thing I'm gonna focus on.


In other news, in my Believer game (with the aforementioned fungal bloom changes included) I tried to cause as much eco-damage as I possibly could. There was a decade (the 2170's IIRC) where I had to spend all my resources on building units replacing the ones I lost in native life combat. However once I focused on clearing out all the fungus in a 7x7 square around my super-polluting headquarters (it had the Unity Mining Laser), it was easy cruising. I also built three Bunkers positioned around New Jerusalem, so that I could range strike at any native life spawns, and significantly reduce my own losses in direct combat. However by the time I built those, I had just about finished clearing all the fungus. If fighting native life needs to be further made easier, I could place Bunkers earlier in the tech tree, at Superconductor. However with the fungal bloom changes in this latest patch g, fighting native life seems very doable to me. Your experiences with these changes would always be nice to hear!

Yep I know. Unfortunately I don't know the cause or solution. :(


Just one point: It's not related to planetfall, i have also the error, but also no solution.

I could try increasing the farm upgrade bonus of Terraformed?

At least it would not hurt in any regard, I think - so far, I haven't seen the latest farm levels in action even when I used Terraformed and the AI needs more incentive to choose it anway.



Certain areas being fungus carpets is intentional. Though I'd wish more of the land and less of the sea were fungal carpets... :sad:
(...)
10. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage (negative Planet) will be immobile for a turn.
11. Native Life spawns due to eco-damage can only spawn on fungus. So no fungus => no spawns.
(...)
In other news, in my Believer game (with the aforementioned fungal bloom changes included) I tried to cause as much eco-damage as I possibly could. There was a decade (the 2170's IIRC) where I had to spend all my resources on building units replacing the ones I lost in native life combat. However once I focused on clearing out all the fungus in a 7x7 square around my super-polluting headquarters (it had the Unity Mining Laser), it was easy cruising. I also built three Bunkers positioned around New Jerusalem, so that I could range strike at any native life spawns, and significantly reduce my own losses in direct combat. However by the time I built those, I had just about finished clearing all the fungus. If fighting native life needs to be further made easier, I could place Bunkers earlier in the tech tree, at Superconductor. However with the fungal bloom changes in this latest patch g, fighting native life seems very doable to me. Your experiences with these changes would always be nice to hear!

Indeed my first game with patch g played out a bit differently and I think your changes had an impact (I cleaned my main island from fungus and did not have serious problems with fighting native life, also no reports of lost AI bases). However, I also changed my usual sealevel choice from "medium" to "low" and choosed an "arid" instead of a "tropical climate and I think those parameters have an impact as well.

As you said, fungus carpets are common on sea, but happen more rarely on land - so I guess the sealevel has a serious effect on the FC. Its increases slowed down soon in my game (starting out at 23, it reached 31 with the usual 8-12 turn increases in 2186. After that the increments lay somewhere between 15 and 30 years, so it reached 43 in the year 2402).

I'm not sure on the arid climate, don't see any hints on that fungus spreads better or less good depending on rainfall. However, it seems to hinder the AI a bit. I outgrowed them more than usual and had a comfortable absolute majority, when the PC first voted. Not all of them understand the importance of planting kelp and likely they don't priorize techs helping with food as much as a human does under such circumstances (e.g. reasearching and using condensators)

I will try another game with patch g, this time using "high" sealevel, to see if the oceans are the culprit for the steep FC increase - if thats the case, it might be enough to change something about the fungus grow rate on sea.

BTW, land units being able to move over sea saves a lot of MM. I like this change :)



I noticed also a small graphical glitch regarding PC councils (which seems to have no gameplay impact, though) - in this game I see to have always tons of votes (never had that in older versions). The save is the end of my turn before the vote on the picture comes up:

Quick note:

you give an order, which leads over a land tile, the drop-ship will auto-unload

I have yet to encounter this myself. :confused: Do you perhaps also have a save where you're just about to move on a plot where your units get auto-unloaded?

I'm not sure on the arid climate, don't see any hints on that fungus spreads better or less good depending on rainfall.

Rainfall has no effect. I was thinking about this early in Planetfall development, but I'd say on land there already are enough restrictions on xenofungus spreading: highlands, monsoon jungle and ice terrain.

Btw, just so we're on the same page: the height of the flowering counter value itself is no problem, right? It's the side-effects that 1) a Terraforming strategy makes little sense, and 2) all the sea eventually gets covered in fungus carpet, which are the problems, no?

Besides differentiating land and sea fungus growth, I was just now thinking I could also add a new (Geothermal) Shallows terrain. It would not prevent fungal blooms like trenches or highlands do, but I could forbid natural fungus growth on it.

Or even better, rename Shelf back to Coast, and name the new terrain type (which does not need adjacent land) Shelf. Coast would then give one nutrient and two commerce instead of two nutrients. Shelf could then perhaps even give three food. Would give an encouragement to settle the high seas. Now, with all those mobile IoDs running around, it's not a good idea to colonize the seas while you still have open land left.

However, it seems to hinder the AI a bit.

Yeah, the AI is rather poor in that game. How did the Gaians get stuck on two bases for instance!
Eg compare them with my Believer game. ;)

BTW, land units being able to move over sea saves a lot of MM. I like this change :)

Me too. :D Hell, if I could select one idea to include in Civ5, this simple thing might actually be it.

Only a pity even native life walking on water, appears with a transport foil. IoD would fit better obviously. :(

I noticed also a small graphical glitch regarding PC councils

Ah, the problem is that I copied the vanilla Civ4 GameTextInfos in the Planetfall text folder, but certain text strings of that vanilla file have been changed in BtS text files. By copying the vanilla file in the Planetfall folder, I'm once again overwriting the BtS changes. :dizzy: In any case, that "you have X votes" line is not supposed to show at all in BtS. The issue will be fixed in version 8, whenever that might be. (Or you could, after I release the next patch, delete Civ4GameTextInfos.xml in the Planetfall text folder)

I have yet to encounter this myself. Do you perhaps also have a save where you're just about to move on a plot where your units get auto-unloaded?

I didn't stumble into this with 7g so far. Will post a save, if it happens again.


Btw, just so we're on the same page: the height of the flowering counter value itself is no problem, right? It's the side-effects that 1) a Terraforming strategy makes little sense, and 2) all the sea eventually gets covered in fungus carpet, which are the problems, no?

Yes - unless of course a growing FC has other unwanted side effects as well, which I haven't discovered yet :D I'm always refering to it, as it a measure for both fungus coverage and overall native life activity.


Besides differentiating land and sea fungus growth, I was just now thinking I could also add a new (Geothermal) Shallows terrain. It would not prevent fungal blooms like trenches or highlands do, but I could forbid natural fungus growth on it.

Or even better, rename Shelf back to Coast, and name the new terrain type (which does not need adjacent land) Shelf. Coast would then give one nutrient and two commerce instead of two nutrients. Shelf could then perhaps even give three food. Would give an encouragement to settle the high seas. Now, with all those mobile IoDs running around, it's not a good idea to colonize the seas while you still have open land left.

I like those ideas. I'm now really convinced that the key lies in the seas here - I played around 100 turns into a game with high sealevel (all other settings the same, me plaing Morgan again) and the FC climbed faster (increases often every 4-6 years) and higher (in 2213 37 compared to 32 in my last game)


Yeah, the AI is rather poor in that game. How did the Gaians get stuck on two bases for instance!
Eg compare them with my Believer game. ;)

I wasn't able to open it for some reason (the error indicated that it has something to do with the folder name of the mod, which should be "Planetfall" - mine is "Planetfall v7")

Indeed the AI performance greatly varies. It seems to depend a lot on their start, while it is hard to detect any faction-related patterns (which is by the way a big improvement over unmodded SMAC, where you could count on Morgan being weak all the time e.g.) I also don't understand why they sometimes expand a lot, while especially small faction often don't seem to priorize colony pods or sea colonies (those ones are rarely seen in the AIs hands anyway, as least in my games)

I wasn't able to open it for some reason (the error indicated that it has something to do with the folder name of the mod, which should be "Planetfall" - mine is "Planetfall v7")

Ah woops. Yeah, I do all my modding and testing in the "Planetfall" folder, modifications which often breaks save games of the latest published patch. So I keep a seperate "Planetfall v7" folder so that I can still open saves from others.

Did patch e change anything in regard to costs or inflation? Playing again on Emperor (as Believers), I had no problems to run 100% science for most of the game. I had maybe a few cities less and got lucky with some Great Tycoons I settled down in my capital, but in the last games I struggled not to get bankrupt (and science spending was most of the time between 0 and 30%), so it feels like something has changed.

Comments on the game without inflation always welcome!

I'm wondering if I should change Autarky back to -100% distance maintenance btw. That civic doesn't seem attractive anymore to me.

Comments on the game without inflation always welcome!
At last! :goodjob:

I'm wondering if I should change Autarky back to -100% distance maintenance btw. That civic doesn't seem attractive anymore to me.
This doesn't sound good to me. It's true that the Autarky civic seems a bit underpowered compared to the others, but perhaps you could add some other benefit.
For example, since "autarky" means "self-sufficiency", you could add a resource bonus for city tiles! +1 nutrient, mineral and energy in city square (NOT surrounding tiles), the same effect of the original SMAC's recycling tanks. Or perhaps just mineral and energy, without nutrient. What do you think?

This doesn't sound good to me. It's true that the Autarky civic seems a bit underpowered compared to the others, but perhaps you could add some other benefit.
For example, since "autarky" means "self-sufficiency", you could add a resource bonus for city tiles! +1 nutrient, mineral and energy in city square (NOT surrounding tiles), the same effect of the original SMAC's recycling tanks. Or perhaps just mineral and energy, without nutrient. What do you think?

+1 nutrient is the Ascetic Virtues' bonus.
Regardless, I do not favour the idea of adding another benefit. I prefer bonuses which can significantly alter your gameplay. '-100% distance maintenance' achieves that goal better than '-50% distance maintenance and some additional benefit'.

So if -50% distance maintenance is underpowered, but -100% still overpowered, the solution lies somewhere in between those two numbers.

+1 nutrient is the Ascetic Virtues' bonus.
Regardless, I do not favour the idea of adding another benefit. I prefer bonuses which can significantly alter your gameplay. '-100% distance maintenance' achieves that goal better than '-50% distance maintenance and some additional benefit'.

So if -50% distance maintenance is underpowered, but -100% still overpowered, the solution lies somewhere in between those two numbers.
I have realized a thing: since with the latest patch you have removed "civic maintenance", and I think you have increased "city maintenance" to compensate, there is an issue. Now a civic that provides you with a -50% maintenance costs is much more powerful that before: previously it didn't matter how many reductions did you have (from civics or buildings) but you could never reduce civic maintenance, only city maintenance.
Now if you are smart about your civics and building choices you can almost bring your total expenditure to zero (except for units support). This is probably too much. I am thinking indeed that not only the bonus provided by "Autarky" is large enough, but that the bonus from "Hybrid" should be decreased, let's say around 25%. Otherwise there is really the chance of finding yourself in a zero-expenses economy :p

Actually Planetfall has NEVER had civic maintenance. :D And since inflation has been removed, this means city maintenance and maintenance reducers have less of an effect now. I can always experiment with changing city maintenance costs if this proves a problem.

What exactly is the problem of a zero-expenses economy??

AFAIK the reason Civ4 added maintenance costs was to counter ICS and REX, ie Infinite City Sleaze and Rapid Expansion.

Should ICS ever become the dominant tactic for everyone, I can simply increase number of cities maintenance costs.

Regarding Rapid Expansion... depending on your map settings in Civ there can be a shortage of land, so there's race to grab as much land as possible before everyone else, even though this hurts your economy on the dhort term. In Planetfall however, there is the entire ocean to colonize. So personally I never feel the urge to REX. There's always room left to expand to should I wish to do so.


Regarding the Hybrid civic...
The ideal I'd like to achieve is a contrast between Terraformers and Hybrids.
Terraformers would have large populated bases with high-yield terrain improvements such as farms, boreholes and condensers which cause eco-damage. Hybrids would have more bases and control a larger territory, but their bases would be smaller, and there would be less terrain improvement, relying on the +1 mineral for fungus. Unfortunately at the moment the AI is unwilling to cooperate with this. ;)

Anyway, the point is, I *want* the Hybrid civic to lead to an ICS playstyle. To do so, the civic should give a large reduction in number of bases maintenance. So rather than reducing that maintenance reduction, I'd look towards giving the civic a penalty to make it more balanced. Perhaps a Health reduction? Fits with the goal of smaller bases.

Actually Planetfall has NEVER had civic maintenance. :D
I should learn to talk less :p

What exactly is the problem of a zero-expenses economy??
I think a zero-expenses situation should be avoided since having maintenance costs cotribute to balance the game. Since, as we know, maintenance costs increase with cities and population, they provide a disadvantage to large civs compared to the smaller ones. It's a balancing gameplay mechanic, that introduces the general and classic "decreasing returns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale)" effect.

Anyway, the point is, I *want* the Hybrid civic to lead to an ICS playstyle. To do so, the civic should give a large reduction in number of bases maintenance. So rather than reducing that maintenance reduction, I'd look towards giving the civic a penalty to make it more balanced. Perhaps a Health reduction? Fits with the goal of smaller bases.
I concur, a Health reduction would be good. Hybrid civs should have less population in their bases.