Most of what you'd need to check in a city to make a build decision is now located on the city bar hover. The city screen doesn't take too long to open, but it's a lot easier if you don't have to. Here are some screenshots from a very early version:

Meh... To be honest I'd rather not clutter up my UI with that sort of thing given how pristine the city screen looks, but I'm not ruling it out yet. :)

One came from the jungle to the North but went back the same way (phew!). It has been killing 1-5 units per turn in Native America for about 40 turns now. It's rather entertaining, though the sound is a little jarring. Obviously I started at too low a difficulty level as I wasn't sure how different the mod was from Vanilla. The sea turtle only seems to kill a unit every 10 turns or so. :)

Like I said, if I have to nerf their strengh or find a good unit to give a big vs Sandworm bonus to, I will. The sound is an unused vanilla BTS sound effect, and I find it rather humorous personally, but I could probably be talked into changing it.

Note I already gave the Quinquereme an anti-Turtle bonus that gives a few of them some hope of successfully defending your fishing nets against one.

BTW, I was sad to see no Sabre Tooth Tigers (which actually existed though I'm blanking on their correct name). The Mastodon (think you called it Mammoth?) was a nice addition. Very scary to have this thing tromping through my territory.

The lack of a sabertooth, or smiledon officially, has more to do with the lack of a good-looking model, but I suppose I could replace the Werewolf with one.

Yes, Mastodon or Wooly Mammoth depending on the exact subspecies you're talking about. Thanks. The Mammoth, also known as "Manny" and "Los Mammothus" between me and Daryn, is going to get a +50% vs Mounted effect as well in the next patch, to make him a fully parallel version of the War Elephant, to which he is genetically related.

I *thought* is was a legal abbreviation for "something", but apparently it's not? :)

I dunno, it could be, I've just never heard it before. Could probably resolve with some simple googling if I had time at the moment. :p

Congrats LM on the new sub-forum for your mod! I look forward to checking it out tomorrow. Your timing is impeccable. I refuse to get Civ 5 (due to the fact it will be *bundled* with the spyware/malware called Steam) so I am glad not everybody is casting Civ 4 aside. Let me tell you, I admire your passion, and it definitely shows in the quality of the screenshots you have posted so far. I think we will be good friends indeed. Thanks man. :goodjob:

I dunno, it could be, I've just never heard it before. Could probably resolve with some simple googling if I had time at the moment. :p

Oh, don't bother, I like to check if I'm wrong -> the only abbreviation for it used by native speakers is sthg.

This mods looks very very good, however haveing trouble loading it.Go to load it and i get a message come up (GFC error: failed to initalize the primary control theme) HELP !!! :-(

Sorry guys, but my web service is going to hit its bandwidth limit when the download count gets to between 240 and 250 here fyi, which will make my files unavailable until July 16 unless I pay them to increase it, which I might do but I haven't looked into how much that would cost yet heh.

There is also a patch in the works (that will among other things rein in the Sandworm a bit), but it's probably still several days off.

This mods looks very very good, however haveing trouble loading it.Go to load it and i get a message come up (GFC error: failed to initalize the primary control theme) HELP !!! :-(

That error only happens when something is wrong with the custom UI theme. It works fine for me and my friends, and no one else has mentioned that error yet either so I'm pretty sure it's set up correctly. It does matter that the MongooseMod folder be installed in Beyond the Sword\Mods\, and that it not be renamed in any way. If that doesn't help, try reinstalling it from the zip again, and/or check the integrity of the zip: it should have a filesize of exactly 500,066,480 bytes.

Sorry guys, but my web service is going to hit its bandwidth limit when the download count gets to between 240 and 250 here fyi, which will make my files unavailable until July 16 unless I pay them to increase it, which I might do but I haven't looked into how much that would cost yet heh.

There is also a patch in the works (that will among other things rein in the Sandworm a bit), but it's probably still several days off.



That error only happens when something is wrong with the custom UI theme. It works fine for me and my friends, and no one else has mentioned that error yet either so I'm pretty sure it's set up correctly. It does matter that the MongooseMod folder be installed in Beyond the Sword\Mods\, and that it not be renamed in any way. If that doesn't help, try reinstalling it from the zip again, and/or check the integrity of the zip: it should have a filesize of exactly 500,066,480 bytes.

why don't you upload it elsewhere? it's a shame all the great work you've been doing is not accessable

I've run into an issue with cultural wins and also with turns...

I played a game where I started in the new earlier time period that you added... and after 350 turns had yet to pass 45000 BC...

also...won a cultural victory with 3 cities at "legendary" where none had over 20k culture...

why don't you upload it elsewhere? it's a shame all the great work you've been doing is not accessable

Well it was accessible, if you were one of the first 230 people to get it... lol jk. ;)

The limit on my site resets every 2 weeks (on the 1st and 16th of each month), so it's not like it was going to be down for very long, and I don't really anticipate having 200 downloads of a 500MB file in the space of a couple days again which is the only reason it overloaded... though I could always be wrong I suppose. :)

I can always pay them more to increase the limit, and I was going to look into what that would cost here as soon as I got a moment, but to answer your question: mainly b/c I've never used one of the free hosting sites before, would have to sign up, and don't really like the experience I have when I have to download other people's files from those places and don't really want to put my own users through that. But yes I suppose it'd be better than nothing.

I played a game where I started in the new earlier time period that you added... and after 350 turns had yet to pass 45000 BC...

Haha oops... I knew what the problem here was the instant I read what you said. Sorry, my bad. I was careful to only adjust the year/duration brackets on the EternalMongoose gamespeed because wherever possible I tried to leave the vanilla settings alone, and this worked fine until recently when I moved the starting date back from 10,000 to 48,000 BC, however that change would definitely mess up the other gamespeed brackets, yes. This will be fixed in the next update, though it's basically only a "display bug" and doesn't affect gameplay.

Edit - Actually it would've still been messed up... just not quite as much... ever since I moved the starting date back from 4,000 (vanilla) to 10,000 BC a long time ago, heh.

also...won a cultural victory with 3 cities at "legendary" where none had over 20k culture...

I didn't change anything anywhere in the mod that would affect this. I assume you're playing on a fast gamespeed and with a small map size, in which case victory thresholds are really low in vanilla as well. I'll double-check this before I post the patch I'm working on, but I don't think there's anything wrong.

Okay, turns out it wasn't very expensive at all. The file should be working again, and it will handle around 400 downloads of the mod every 2 weeks... If in the future that somehow still isn't enough I'll upgrade it again. ;) Sorry for the outage.

Edit - GRR, that doesn't actually change anything til the reset date. Mother of feathers... Hang on.

OKAY, it's available again. Big thanks to my friend Mike for hosting the file on his site until my site comes back. The download speed isn't as good but it's not terrible, and he has a ridiculous 3TB of monthly bandwidth so there's no way that'll be a problem for one week. The screenshots and my other files will still be unavailable til July 16 but eh what can ya do. :)

Doesn't look like JDog's gonna be posting any big BBAI code updates really soon here so I'm gonna go ahead and release my patch as soon as it's done in the next day or two probably.

You might want to create a sticky Bug Reports thread to keep things organized.

In any case, after settling that city in the desert I've found one annoying issue with it: every unit the city produces starts damaged. If you let it heal in the city one turn, it gets to 100%, but I don't think you should have to do that.

One thing I've found so far in my second and third games (had to abort first and second games to increase the difficulty level) is that in the early game (prehistoric) there aren't many things to build other than units, but you have to keep killing them off to avoid going bankrupt. It would be nice if there was something else (building or process) that you could build.

I tried building more Tribes and founding more cities instead, but that kills the economy faster than a bunch of units. :( And you can't even use those units to go to war because you'll run out of money paying the support costs long before your army arrives at the enemy's gates.

Edit: Another issue is that cities with Walls a Dun do not show 50% 100% defense on the city bar, but an Archer in a city on a hill receives +125% from City (Unit Ability). Should I be able to bombard the walls defense using catapults? All they do is knock the cultural defenses down to 25%.

Thanks for your continued interest and posting EF, really appreciate it. :)

You might want to create a sticky Bug Reports thread to keep things organized.

Yeah that's what the Known Issues section above is for, I just literally haven't had a spare block of time to update it, or the other sticky threads, yet. Should get to it as soon as the patch I'm working on is done. Sorry for the delay heh.

In any case, after settling that city in the desert I've found one annoying issue with it: every unit the city produces starts damaged. If you let it heal in the city one turn, it gets to 100%, but I don't think you should have to do that.

That's a really cute little issue, thanks for reporting it. I'll see if there's an easy way to fix it.

One thing I've found so far in my second and third games (had to abort first and second games to increase the difficulty level) is that in the early game (prehistoric) there aren't many things to build other than units, but you have to keep killing them off to avoid going bankrupt. It would be nice if there was something else (building or process) that you could build.

I tried building more Tribes and founding more cities instead, but that kills the economy faster than a bunch of units. :( And you can't even use those units to go to war because you'll run out of money paying the support costs long before your army arrives at the enemy's gates.

Hmm... Daryn and I don't really agree with you here. There's 4 buildings (Palisade, Knowledge Inheritance, Cave Painting, Burial Mound) and one wonder (Ise Jingu) that can be unlocked before you get Sedentary. Unit cost can be mitigated with the Tribal Law civic which is why it's there. You can always make extra Gatherers to upgrade them into Workers later... And if you rush to Sendentary for the free tech and a good shot at founding early religions, completing a lot of ancient quests, etc, then you don't really spend that much time in Prehistoric anyway.

Another approach I personally like to take is to slow-play it, staying in Prehistoric for as long as possible, focusing on gold over research and getting every tech you can get without getting Sedentary, just so you can keep using Tribes to expand b/c of their much lower production cost vs Settlers. This does put you way behind on tech progress and tile improvements and you give up founding religions til the later ones, but the large empire can be worth it.

Edit: Another issue is that Walls do not show 50% defense on the city bar, but an Archer in a city on a hill receives +125% from City (Unit Ability) = 25% (archer on hills) + 50% (archer in city) + 50% (walls?). Should I be able to bombard the walls defense using catapults? All they do is knock the cultural defenses down to 25%.

If you're talking about a hilled city: it's 25% for the hill, 25% for an Archer ON a hill, 50% from the Archer's innate city defense ability, and another 25% is a global bonus for defending city tiles from barbarians which humans and AIs both get.

A Wall provides 50% physical defense, which will show up on the black rook icon left of the culture defense icon. The defender can only use whichever of the two defense stats is higher - not both - so if you're talking about your capital you'd have 50% culture defense already from your Palace.

Check out my edit. I was attacking Brennus at the time so my comment applies to the Dun's 100% defense which showed on the city bar as 0% physical defense. When I checked out the other AIs I saw their walled cities showed 50% physical defense as expected.

Also while attacking Brennus my capapults refused to attack undamaged city defenders. The move hover showed the odds, but trying to move had no effect as if they were at or below 25% health. Is this expected? The unit hover says it can cause splash damage and inflict damage up to 75%. I haven't tried against the other AIs yet.

It would be nice if there was something else (building or process) that you could build.I concur. One thing the Dune Wars mod has is an "idle build". Basically, your production is converted into 25% science and 25% gold (so 20 production would be +5 science and +5 gold). Not really a game changer (since the production in your cities is much lower early on, and later, there is more useful stuff to build) but it does help to manage your early economy without resorting to deleting units that you spent time building. Something to think about anyway.:mischief:

Check out my edit. I was attacking Brennus at the time so my comment applies to the Dun's 100% defense which showed on the city bar as 0% physical defense. When I checked out the other AIs I saw their walled cities showed 50% physical defense as expected.

I just tested the Dun and it's working fine as far as I can tell. Are you sure you're not seeing a Palisade or something? They look different... Otherwise I'm not sure what could be going on. You could try posting a relevant savefile if necessary.

Also while attacking Brennus my capapults refused to attack undamaged city defenders. The move hover showed the odds, but trying to move had no effect as if they were at or below 25% health. Is this expected? The unit hover says it can cause splash damage and inflict damage up to 75%. I haven't tried against the other AIs yet.

Siege units do not have combat limits like they do in vanilla, and the "up to 75%" refers to the splash and bombard limits: Catapults cannot damage a unit below 70% with splash damage (and they use 75% of their base strength to determine the actual damage done), and they cannot bombard a city below 25% physical or cultural defense.

However siege units do have exploration disabled, as do Gatherers/Workers, Settlers (but not Tribes), Missionaries/Executives, Caravans/Freight, Carriers/Modern Carriers, Pigs/Missiles, and Work Boats/Constructors. So if you want to attack a city with a siege unit you have to be sure the surrounding tiles have all been scouted first, basically. Even though disabling exploration is a vanilla ability there is no line in the unit mouseover text about it however, so I should probably add one hehe.

I concur. One thing the Dune Wars mod has is an "idle build". Basically, your production is converted into 25% science and 25% gold (so 20 production would be +5 science and +5 gold). Not really a game changer (since the production in your cities is much lower early on, and later, there is more useful stuff to build) but it does help to manage your early economy without resorting to deleting units that you spent time building. Something to think about anyway.:mischief:

If you read my response to EmperorFool, I really think there's plenty for cities to do in Prehistoric without having to disband any units, and if there isn't, well, factor that into the tech tree path you're pursuing heh. The problem with an Idle Build like you're suggesting is then the humans would have a slightly unfair advantage over the AIs who would not know how to use it... I know enough from listening to the BBAI discussions about the existing vanilla Process Builds, that telling the AIs when to use them is very complicated.

If you read my response to EmperorFoolI did, of course! :pThe problem with an Idle Build like you're suggesting is then the humans would have a slightly unfair advantage over the AIs who would not know how to use it... I know enough from listening to the BBAI discussions about the existing vanilla Process Builds, that telling the AIs when to use them is very complicated.You're right that the human player could possibly exploit idle build (but I didn't think about AI issues). :blush: Maybe I'll have a better suggestion next time. :lol:

Are you sure you're not seeing a Palisade or something?

The Palisade doesn't provide any physical defense? Edit: Looking in the pedia I see that Walls provide +50% physical defense while the Palisade provides +25% modern defense. What's the difference?

And honestly, I'd be content if I could build nothing. ;)

Edit2: I get why units produce in Tundra and Desert cities start damaged: they wouldn't get to heal if they are marked as having moved when built. The same thing happens when moving undamaged units into a city built on damaging terrain.

The Palisade doesn't provide any physical defense? Edit: Looking in the pedia I see that Walls provide +50% physical defense while the Palisade provides +25% modern defense. What's the difference?

Physical = Walls, Castle, etc. Gunpowder-based units ignore it.

Modern was a really lousy name that was still the best I could come up with for "everything else." It mostly means culture defense, but also includes the Palisade and Arcology Shield, and the Palace/Shrine/Headquarters. It's the same except it's not ignored by Gunpowder-based units. I wanted to make the Palisade physical, believe me I did, but the problem is it has to be weaker than Walls, and any value lower enough from 50% to make it noticeably weaker, also makes it insufficiently stronger than what plain culture defense can provide early on to make the Palisade worth building.

At least, that was the explanation before I increased the culture level threshold values significantly, and added two other strong effects to the Palisade b/c I felt it was still too weak and not worth building given how quickly it expires... BUT, I still think it's better gameplay for it to add to any culture defense you have early on, rather than override it. Besides, with the Palace effect that's the only way it could benefit capital cities anyway.

And honestly, I'd be content if I could build nothing. ;)

Well I suppose that could be arranged... I still don't think it's needed though. :p

How about some other formula besides max(physical, modern/cultural) for the defense value of a city? For example, max + (min / 2), so a city with 25% physical and 20% cultural would have a net 35% defense value.

Oh, I think perhaps the fact that both types of defense are bombarded at the same time is the problem. If you have +25% culture and +25% physical from Palisade, it takes zero turns to bombard down to 25% total since catapults won't go below 25%. With Palisade providing modern defense, you have to take many turns to bombard from 50% down to 25%.

The downside is that building Walls won't improve that. You'll go from 0/50% to 50%/25%, and it will take just as long to bombard down to 25%. So it's a big waste of :hammers: until Castles become available. Or am I missing something else here?

I still recommend combining the two defense values in some way and perhaps allowing cultural defense to be fully bombarded down to 0%. If Palisade were returned to the more logical physical defense, it would mean a minimum total defense of 25% still (good), plus taking time to bombard down to that (also good).

I still recommend combining the two defense values in some way and perhaps allowing cultural defense to be fully bombarded down to 0%.

Siege units have lower bombard limits as you move up the tech tree, up to the point where the modern ones can bombard cities all the way to zero defense. There are also some cute differences in bombard limits (as well as bombard rates) between things like Frigates and Ships of the Line, and Heavy Bombers and Stealth Bombers, which I couldn't do if I made the limit a property of the defense type.

The downside is that building Walls won't improve that. You'll go from 0/50% to 50%/25%, and it will take just as long to bombard down to 25%. So it's a big waste of :hammers: until Castles become available. Or am I missing something else here?

You're missing that Palisades obsolete in Masonry, killing their defense bonus... so you'll go from 0/25% to 50/25% when you build Walls.

You also have to understand that this is exactly the same system vanilla has always used, except vanilla doesn't display the two defense values seperately even though they both exist, and the code it uses fudges things internally which causes a lot of problems when you try to make the improvements I've made. Again, the vanilla game, and thus pretty much all other mods, have defense from buildings and defense from culture as seperate values and only display and use whichever is higher. The vanilla system also has Gunpowder-based units ignoring building defense.

ALL I did was display the two values seperately, add the ability for buildings to add culture defense (necessary for the Arcology Shield since it wouldn't do much good for a city's futuristic energy shield at the end of the tech tree to add defense that only works against pre-Gunpowder units), and make bombard damage absolute-value-based instead of percent-based. Otherwise it's still the vanilla system. And yes the Palisade having Physical would be more logical, but it's just one of those things I have to throw under the bus in favor of gameplay mechanics.

A combined system would add complexity and not be a good idea anyway imo... Gunpowder-based units SHOULD be able to ignore physical defense, certainly the more modern ones should, and you still have things like the Moat, Citadel, Chichen Itza and Himeji Castle that can boost Physical to really high levels. So basically I'm very happy with defense the way it is, and have no plans to change anything atm.

Also, I updated the In Progress sticky yesterday since the patch is taking longer than I said it would (which is what always happens for some reason lol) and I wanted to keep you guys informed (unlike certain game companies, which I despise for their lack of doing that).

I updated the In Progress sticky yesterday since the patch is taking longer than I said it would (which is what always happens for some reason lol)I see that you are getting really, really close. :) And yes, JDog5000 is a *Great Engineer* (love the other great people names you added too - a fitting tribute to the community).I wanted to keep you guys informed (unlike certain game companies, which I despise for their lack of doing that).Much appreciated! :goodjob: Heh, I despise those game companies too. :lol:

Well the patch is virtually done/ready, but as you might notice from reading the BBAI forum I'm being held up a little here by a number of AI-related things heh. (I also finally upgraded from XP to Windows 7 the other day, which caused a bit of a delay. (Woohoo, that rhymes.)) It shouldn't be too much longer.

A sly reference to a post on the BBAI forum...
(LM in a dark commanding voice) Whom do you serve?! (enthralled Civ player) LunarMongoose! :)

A sly reference to a post on the BBAI forum...
(LM in a dark commanding voice) Whom do you serve?! (enthralled Civ player) LunarMongoose! :)

I didn't pay him to say that. ... I swear. :p

Great mov overall, but i am left wondering how can other civs have 5 cities to my own one or two?

How can they find all religions and build 80% of the world wonders and not go broke when if i build 2-3 cities in that same time span, 1-2 workers and 3-5 spearman and go broke?

This is playing on settler mode! All this also before classical era is barely started!


I'd hate to see this mod at prince level!

Seriously, i may sound like i am criticizing and i guess i am, but this mode is awesome! I just wish the AI wasnt so overpowered!

For the record, i even started a few games with an advanced start and it was the same thing, before classical was even over, most nations on the top 8 lists of populous nations were all AI controlled Civs.!?!?!? How can they do this and not go broke???

Also, i am no stranger to Civ, having been playing it since civ 1.



I can do what you said..... build one city and let it grow until i can actually afford another one. yeah this work, but by the time i have a second city up...... most of all other civs will have 6-7 or more cities lol.....

I have to say i havent yet made it to rennaisance era even because at that point other civs are far far ahead!


Anyway, just some comments...... Considering that Settler is the lowest..... i cant really lower the setting.....


cheers!


EDIT:PS, just noticed something. The default difficulty level of the AI civs, is the ''mongoose'' one..... maybe this has something to do with the fact that the AI is doing impossible things....

Yeah so basically what EmperorFool said lol (thanks EF :)). I gotta put that in big bold print in the thread description somewhere heh.

I went through the difficulty level code again just now b/c you got me wondering about it and I hadn't actually looked at it in a long time. What happens is it uses the game's difficulty level (tested and verified to be what I select in a game by myself, and I assume it's the highest one a human player has selected in MP but this is .exe code) for the important stuff (big major AI bonuses), so that will be based on what the human chooses for himself which is correct. The remaining stats are read off the AI player difficulty which is set to be DM in all cases, yes. But that's intentional - they're supposed to always have 2 happiness and 1 health as starting values in their cities regardless of what the human is playing on, for example.

So just ignore what I said before this edit, and leave the GlobalDefines_MongooseMod.xml file alone, thanks. ;)

@senadin - Make sure you either a) start on Prehistoric era or b) build your Palace as your first build so you get its 8:commerce:/turn.

Yeah i always start at prehistoric! I really like this part of the mod and i wish it would last longer!

How could they even create the game without it?!?! I mean the wheel, fire! We'd be nothing without those crucial discoveries!

Uhhh Isnt the Palace build by default in your first city? I am gona try this again because that 8 gold might make quite a difference early on.

Also is there a reason why i cant select other leaders such as Reagan? I can select them but when i start the game it default to the normal leader.

Also.... is it normal that you can only found 2 state religion? I started a game and i managed to found 2 religions, but even tho i should have found a 3rd, it didnt give me the holy city or even acknowledged that i did.

Did i miss something in the notes somewhere?

Again, great Mod!

Uhhh Isnt the Palace build by default in your first city? I am gona try this again because that 8 gold might make quite a difference early on.

Also is there a reason why i cant select other leaders such as Reagan? I can select them but when i start the game it default to the normal leader.

Also.... is it normal that you can only found 2 state religion? I started a game and i managed to found 2 religions, but even tho i should have found a 3rd, it didnt give me the holy city or even acknowledged that i did.

Did i miss something in the notes somewhere?

I do badly need to work on the documentation, but these 3 things ARE in the Features sticky thread. :p

There is a pre-Palace building called the Cradle that is automatic but it obsoletes and then you have to build your Palace manually, which was done to allow you to pick which city becomes your capital after things have gotten going. Civs cycle through all their leaders, in order, over the course of a game so it does force you to start on your earliest one chronologically. Civs are also limited to founding 2 religions in the mod which greatly improves balance especially with 12 religions vs vanilla's 7, but you can conquer other people's holy cities to acquire more.

And please grab the new patch if you haven't already. :)

Where is your bug thread? :P

I know you from the BBAI forum and I'm using some of your changes in my mod.

I just took a look into this forum and into the civic screenshot and saw a bug.

+50% experience within own border won't work. 50% of 1 is 0. therefore you won't get any xp bonus from this civic.

100% will work, 200% will work and so on.

same to great general points (combat experience)... +50% won't work on that either.

+50% experience within own border won't work. 50% of 1 is 0. therefore you won't get any xp bonus from this civic.

100% will work, 200% will work and so on.

same to great general points (combat experience)... +50% won't work on that either.

Uhh... combats can be worth anywhere between 1 and 6 or 7 experience depending on what the odds were, and whether it was defense or offense. Just b/c +50% exp doesn't boost 98%+ attacks or 60%+ defenses doesn't mean the effect is useless by any means. Plus you can always combine the two effects by using both civics to get +100%. :)

(Addendum to the above: the Great General promotion Leadership also gives +50% experience in my mod, which is another thing that can be combined with the other +50% effects if you want, but I know from experience playing the mod that the effect from Leadership alone at +50% is terrific.)

*ahem* I have updated the "Known Issues etc" thread with a fairly-complete list of everything on my radar currently, and also updated the "Stuff to Know" section at last with a mostly-complete first draft (woohoo!). Knock yourselves out. :)

LM - first off, your mod (I have the new patch btw) is truly innovative. However, you need a "bug thread". Nothing major, but some issues that you will want to fix (your passion for modding would allow nothing else). I will say, however, that you are sadistic regarding the dificulty level of your mod. TwilightLlama plays like Prince w/ raging barbarians (compared to vanilla civ). This is an impediment to gaining a wide following IMO. The majority of civ players, unless I am mistaken, will not continue to play a mod if they can't win on the easiest difficulty levels. Better to rope players in with achievable victories on the *easy* difficulty levels and *punish* them on the harder levels (once they have experienced the beauty and intricacy of your mod). The learning curve is steep!

Well, this thread we're in now was/is kinda already serving as a semi-official bug thread, and there shouldn't be very many left to report that I'm not aware of (see the Known Issues sticky now that I've updated it), soooo I didn't think it was REALLY necessary to make a dedicated bug thread... but I could possibly be talked into it... This thread would kinda die at that point though. :p

Umm, you know that neither I nor the mod is requiring people to use the custom difficulties, right? I even made one adjustment to some of the vanilla ones in the patch once it fully sunk in that people would still be using those a lot heh. And Senadin's report above, well, we're pretty sure that had to do with him not knowing to build his Palace manually so he was going without the +8 commerce the whole time which is why it was so hard for him... I double-checked how the difficulty settings are used in the code as I said a few posts ago, and I'm pretty sure from that that Settler, Chieftain, etc should still be nice and easy like they are in vanilla. Btw if you read my updated Stuff to Know sticky you'll see I guesstimated that TwilightLlama would be around Monarch (I haven't actually gotten to try it yet since I just added it in the patch), so if it's Prince-ish then I was only one off. :)

I appreciate your compliments though! *hugs*

p.s. - The IDEA is to play DarkMongoose with Raging Barbs ON (though TL+RB will suffice)... Then you get to witness the true meaning of fun! Mwa ha ha.

Btw if you read my updated Stuff to Know sticky you'll see I guesstimated that TwilightLlama would be around Monarch (I haven't actually gotten to try it yet since I just added it in the patch), so if it's Prince-ish then I was only one off.Well that explains a lot. For some reason I *thought* (reading comprehension fail on my part) TwilightLlama WAS the easy setting (and I just guessed Prince btw). Where in the world did you come up with the idea for the spinning werewolves (and WHO taught them ninjitsu)? Nice. :goodjob: I enjoyed watching them slaughter my stone axemen. :lol:The IDEA is to play DarkMongoose with Raging Barbs ON (though TL+RB will suffice)... Then you get to witness the true meaning of fun! Mwa ha ha.Look forward to it (once I fully know all the in's and out's so to speak).

Now for a few bugs (or not). When you select units in a city, the unit icons scroll vertically on the map (as opposed to horizontally). Is this intended? I had a scout with the woodsman II promotion (double movement in forests) and when I hovered on the unit (which was on the map), the text describing the promotion was repeated over and over until the entire left side of the screen was full. This, I'm sure, is a glitch. The really cool picture displayed when starting a game (what city is this btw?) has a solid purple stripe at the bottom. My guess would be my video settings (1920x1200). Is there a way to get Civ to initialize the draw buffer to black instead of purple? If so, that would hide the fact the picture is smaller than the screen resolution. Minor nitpick I know.

Where in the world did you come up with the idea for the spinning werewolves (and WHO taught them ninjitsu)?

Umm, that would be... SeZereth, who made the unit. All I did was use it, I had nothing to do with either its look or its animation. As mentioned earlier I would actually prefer to get rid of the Werewolf due to it being too unrealistic for the mod, but I need some sort of strength 3 speed 2 animal and I didn't have any other good options last time I checked...

When you select units in a city, the unit icons scroll vertically on the map (as opposed to horizontally). Is this intended?

It's part of the PLE (PlotList Enhancements) mod that's been around forever and is pretty well-known. If you click on the leftmost small circle button on the top of the unit console, it will cycle through a number of modes of how it displays the unit icons above there. The other PLE buttons mostly act as filters for the icons.

I had a scout with the woodsman II promotion (double movement in forests) and when I hovered on the unit (which was on the map), the text describing the promotion was repeated over and over until the entire left side of the screen was full. This, I'm sure, is a glitch.

I've seen this before, but not recently. Not sure what to tell ya - I just plopped a Woodsman 2 Scout in a test game, moused over it on the map, and it works fine on my machine here. If anyone has any ideas on this please let me know.

The really cool picture displayed when starting a game (what city is this btw?) has a solid purple stripe at the bottom. My guess would be my video settings (1920x1200).

Again, that's very strange. You SHOULD only get the pink stripe if you're using a 4x3 resolution (or anything more square-shaped than 16x10). I did answer this earlier but it might've been back in the old thread before the subforum... Anyway, Civ4 likes to scale background pictures in strange and interesting ways, so I had to either add a pink stripe for some people, or have the picture get compressed or expanded vertically which makes it look terrible, so I went with the stripe. The color has nothing to do with Civ4 btw, it's part of the image file... I was considering updating it in a future version to say "If you can read this, get a widescreen monitor!" in the stripe lol, but if you're seeing it on 1920x1200 (which is also what I use, with NO stripe) then I guess I shouldn't... Are you SURE you have Civ4 set to use 1920x1200 and not just Windows?

Edit - Forgot to answer your other question. The city is Boston, where I live, and I took the picture myself obviously. Daryn wants me to use a lighter picture taken in twilight rather than darkness but my opinion is that would swamp the loading dialog too much... And Mike wants me to use this photography technique where you take multiple pictures at different exposures then combine them but honestly I don't really like how those look heh.

Are you SURE you have Civ4 set to use 1920x1200 and not just Windows?What I meant to say is "My guess would be that I am a complete moron who has Windows set to 1920x1200 instead of the game (which is set at 1600x1200)". (Hangs head in shame.) Of course it is fixed now. :lol: Btw, I like the picture the way it is - fits your UI theme and title screen perfectly IMO. Very nice.

I didn't accurately describe this before. The picture makes it much clearer (except it is the mouse hovering NOT the cursor).258615

Woot, screenshot! Yeah I can reproduce it now... apparently just assigning Woodsman 1 and 2 to a unit plopped in the WorldBuilder is not enough, you have to also set them to be level 3 (or else train one up to 5 exp fighting stuff). I won't know exactly what the problem is til I look at the code, but whatever it is it'll be fixed in the next version. Thanks for the report. :)

Dood (haha I stole that from you), you should have had a sub-forum years ago. Your mod (and it is still in development? You're kidding right?) IS light years ahead of anything else (although Dune Wars rocks and RifE has the potential). MongooseMod is a finished product. The quality is that good. You even have a video for founding the Temple of Solomon (God bless Israel btw). I AM ONLY ON 1680 BC and feel compelled to comment on how much I enjoy your mod (playing settler though, you'll get plenty of curses once I progress to the higher levels I'm sure :lol:). Be proud of your work. :goodjob: But no hugs. :p (yea I am posting as I play.)

I am a LunarMongoose fan :worship:

What I meant to say is "My guess would be that I am a complete moron who has Windows set to 1920x1200 instead of the game (which is set at 1600x1200)". (Hangs head in shame.)@LM You've gotta admit that quote is hysterically funny. I KNOW you have a sense of humor. I do too. Or should I try again at a later date (gaffes come naturally to me it seems)? :)

@LM You've gotta admit that quote is hysterically funny. I KNOW you have a sense of humor. I do too.

It was definitely a lot better than what you usually hear from people in that situation. ;)

Or should I try again at a later date (gaffes come naturally to me it seems)? :)

I won't really be impressed til giraffes come naturally to you.

Mongoose, this is an awesome mod. I downloaded it again and this time it didn't complain the zip was corrupt... I just wish all the sevopedia and all the strategies were filled. :P
Also, is it just me or is the prehistoric part of the game boring? No one is going in war or anything.

just want to say thanks Mongoose for this great mod. Played through four games now - each one different,each one exciting, each one great!

Thanks again for the compliments, guys. :) Just posting to let you all know I'm still around, but going to be busy for the next little bit due to Starcraft 2 coming out... heh... And the main thing I have to do when I start working on this again is work on the AI Civic code which is a royal mess (read: hard, complicated and lots to do) so I'm trying to put that off anyway hoping JDog will magically reappear and do it for me. But I can't stand leaving it in the horrible state it's in currently so I will fix it if I have to.

Btw, I'm LithiumLlama on the new battle.net (ie SC2) since this name wouldn't fit (limit of 12 characters, bleh)... So feel free to look me up. ;)

<---- LunarMongoose FAN!!

Awesome mod LM, thank you for all the hard work!

I love the terrain textures in this mod they are quite incredible, is there anyway that you can use your terrains in Rise of Mankind 2.92?

I love the terrain textures in this mod they are quite incredible, is there anyway that you can use your terrains in Rise of Mankind 2.92?

Well if you were really observant you might notice the "FFH Terrain" line in the upper left title screen credits... It's a standalone package posted by Sezereth two years ago give or take; you can probably still find it on the forum here somewhere.

Alternatively, yes it would be possible to extract the relevant graphics files from my mod and add them to something else, however they're mixed in with other graphics files, the procedure is slightly complicated, and I don't really want to encourage people opening up my graphics anyway, so I'm not going to go into it. :p

Heya, still playing the mod and love it. Not sure if it has been posted somewhere and i didnt found it. If it is, my apologies.

I can understand rain being a problem for Trireme and other wooden ships. I just dont understand how rain affect let's say a submarine! well that or any other modern ship!

Small detail i guess, not a real biggie!

Any patch on the horizon?

I can understand rain being a problem for Trireme and other wooden ships. I just dont understand how rain affect let's say a submarine! well that or any other modern ship!

Small detail i guess, not a real biggie!

Any patch on the horizon?

Thanks for playing it, really appreciate your interest. :) Rain on metal ships and submarines is not very realistic, no, but neither is Forests and Hills adding as much defense for modern units as they do for ancient units... It's not perfect, I know, but I'd rather sacrifice a bit of realism for consistent gameplay and reduced complexity vs a more complicated set of rules.

Besides, it's not JUST the rain that might cause damage... it's the wind, waves, rough seas and low visibility that the rain (ie storm) implies. :) I might make submarines immune though, that's a good idea, except that they do sometimes spend time on the surface of the water too in real life.

No patch yet beyond 3.5.2 but I'm really hoping to start working on an update soon. Some important real-life stuff has come up in the last week that's kept me busy with a potential roommate moving in for the next bit and some issues with that. As I said in the Sticky, the MAIN thing I want to focus on next is some really complicated AI programming, with a few other ppl also working on that stuff in JDog's absence currently over in the BBAI forum, so it may take a little bit. I'm still here though, I swear! :p ... Blame Starcraft 2 for the preceding month lol.

Alright, I am slowly getting started on an update. Real life is still gonna be very time-consuming for another week at least though heh. Thanks for your patience and your interest, guys. :)

Also I did preorder Civ5 a long time ago, and I may fire it up and try it out when it gets here, but I am pretty sure I'm not gonna like it as much as Civ4. Even if I do I doubt I'll want to move MongooseMod over unil an expansion or two is out, but we'll see.

Alright, as of tonight I've finally finished with Starcraft 2 achievements, more or less, and real life has settled back down to normal, so I'm officially working on this again full time now. Should have an update out in 1 to 4 weeks depending on how much I decide to do, heh.

If anybody is still around, using this mod, and/or interested in updates, feel free to check in, say hi, you know, maybe post something... helps keep me motivated. Thanks. :p

Glad your back. Interested in updates? What a silly question (the answer obviously being YES). :p

So at the moment I'm working on updating my event pictures. Not really satisfied with Arian's full set (due to the frames and small sizes mainly, though I'm finding a lot of pictures I like better too). Anyway, this is probably not going to be my final selection for the Great Beast event, but I'm tempted to use it just for the humor value:

I'm also tempted to use this for the Secret Knowledge event... whatcha think? :p

I have updated the download, posted why I did that in the Download thread, updated the In Progress thread, added the new Soundtrack thread, and at long last wrote a good, mostly-complete block of content for the Credits thread (which is how a credits section should look, btw *beams*).

News on the event pictures: I have a good one for Great Beast now so the ostrich is moving to the Thoroughbred event, which I think is awesome anyway, but this was mainly b/c I already have 3 other event pictures with horses in them and didn't need another.

The tank chair is tentatively moving to Brothers in Need for lack of a better place, and a boring ordinary monastery-type thing will replace it.

I am going to use the below picture for Wining Monks... I don't care if it's anachronistic - I don't even drink alcohol and I still think it's freakin cool. :)

But yeah I've got 32 events left to do, which is out of 180 or so which means I'm almost done.

I am going to use the below picture for Wining Monks... I don't care if it's anachronistic - I don't even drink alcohol and I still think it's freakin cool. :)I DO drink alcohol and I agree - that is one frackin' cool picture! :p What is it though? (Some kind of still?) Where did you get it, if you don't mind me asking? :goodjob:

It's a hybrid fully-functional PC case and some sort of still, or keg, or... something, I forget.

I got it the same place I've gotten 400 other pictures, 150 of which I'm using... endless hours browsing thousands of Google Image search results for the last 5 days. This whole event picture thing is just the latest in a long history of mod-related instances where I've had to invoke the "if you want something done right you have to do it yourself" phrase. :)

First of all I need to make a correction... I just noticed a few days ago when going back to look for something in the old/original MM thread, that Maniac pointed out three months ago I was apparently wrong about one of the claims I made, but his post was right at the end of the thread as I was switching over to this subforum and I never noticed it in all the turmoil. So! My previously-made assertion that I was the first to have the Geothermal Vent and Methane Ice resources be tech-revealed and/or tech-improvable is hereby corrected, since Planetfall apparently did this well before I did. Apologies for being wrong, and for taking this long to get back to you heh. My first loyalty in life is always to the truth, so I happily encourage people to point out any mistakes I make. :)

Second of all, status update. I'm putting together an index picture of my entire new event set but it isn't ready yet. If there's enough interest I may post them as a standalone mod component, but it uses .tga files and allows variable sizes up to 400x240 so I'm not sure how well it'd go over with the masses (who're used to consistent 256x256 .dds pictures with frames, heh).

This update is turning out to be quite substantial. I am working on it pretty much 24/7 at this point, but still expect it to take two more weeks, and maybe longer (sorry). It will be version 3.6, and it will NOT be savegame-compatible with previous versions.

It WILL be worth the wait though, I promise. :) Meantime I'll try to finish the index picture soon.

I don't give a damn who was the first to include Geothermal Vent and Methane Ice. That post was made in the context of a small discussion IIRC around the same time in the Better AI forum, about why certain people felt the need to hide their C++ code from others.

Many of the ideas you lay an "intellectual claim" to are really mundane, and it would be easy for two people to have the same idea without this meaning person A "stole" the idea from person B. Methane Ice is just one of many examples which can be found. Hence my post was meant to illustrate the ridiculousness, inaccuracy and pointlessness of your historical document.

Oh. Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. Unfortunately I do care who had the idea first, as this mod is my biggest project ever and a good chunk of my life while I'm working on it. It was also a response to some of my original work on it in '06 getting used uncredited all over the place b/c I didn't take any precautions. I'm sure I probably overreacted, but I was trying to be thorough this time, and I stand by it.

The correction is made in any case, and as I said, if there's anything else I got wrong please let me know. :)

I don't give a damnI thought CFC Forums set the autocensor to "Communist Utopia" settings. What gives? :p

I was surprised too. ;)

I would also add that it's not like I've been beating other modders over the head with those HD posts, demanding credit for each and every little thing. I haven't used them at all yet actually, and I don't really plan to. But I did want a public record to exist, just to be safe. (Though I could've posted half the stuff in there several months earlier and I wish I had heh, oh well.)

OKAY! I finally finished my library/index picture. I added it to the Download page but I'll link it here as well:

EVENT IMAGE SET (http://homepage.mac.com/klwelch/Civ4/MongooseMod/LM_EventImageSet.jpg)

There's a couple pictures I'm not completely totally happy with but they're still fine, and I'm pretty much thrilled with how this mini-project came out. Sorry I didn't have time to name/label the events (big mod update takes priority heh), but they're in the same alphabetical order they're in everywhere else so you can figure it out pretty easily. The actual ones used in-game are up to 400x240 in size (just like before in MM but with only 30 or so having pictures), and will be available once version 3.6 is done. Enjoy. :)

This, btw, is the full-size version of my "Crisis in the Senate" event picture. You may notice, primarily, seals. There are 3 possible explanations for this:

1) Your Senators have been mysteriously turned into seals somehow, which is a crisis.

2) Your people elected a bunch of seals to office, which has precipitated a crisis.

3) Your human Senators are alive and well, and the seals are a metaphor for their demeanor and competence.

I leave it to you to decide which best suits your empire's situation. :)

4. Your senators were secretly replaced by seals as a practical joke, but no one noticed for five months.

:lol: I pick #3. :mischief: Great picture BTW.

Thanks EF!

4) Your senators were secretly replaced by seals as a practical joke, but no one noticed for five months.

5) The seals in your empire have staged a coup, and are now holding Senate sessions on the beach.

I like #2 the best personally, but that's just me. :)

Changed my mind and decided EF's suggestion was fine as it was, so I added a 5th option. ;)

Preliminary, initial, by-no-means-complete merging in of the current version of Fuyu's Better BUG AI is now done and working without any (remaining) problems. It actually went pretty smoothly all things considered, given how much code was involved (and how rusty I was). There was a LARGE amount of great stuff in there, both from BUG/BULL and from Fuyu himself. I am not planning to use all of BUG by any means, but I like most of its components that don't significantly alter the interface.

I expect to need a few more days to finalize this core DLL stuff, a few more days after that to finish up a bunch of other minor stuff, then two weeks to try and write new AI code for some things Fuyu mentioned still need work. At that point I am hoping Cephalo will be done with PerfectWorld 3 for Civ5, which I intend to try and port back to Civ4. Release of MM 3.6 will hopefully follow THAT. Sorry again for how long this is taking, but my bigger updates are always like this it seems, and I'm going as fast as I can. :)

To begin, just want to say very well made mod, and I'm having alot of fun with it, I've played all your versions since you started posting them on Civfanatics and have always enjoyed them. I've found a small thing, it's not a show stopper by any means, and it might even be something on my end. What it is, is when I go into the future era, and the University graphic changes over, I get a pink blob over the top of it, realize this might be an art file and it's possible something might be borked on my install, but on the other hand I've played till the future era and haven't found one issue, which I think speaks to the very high quality of the mod

That would probably be a minor glitch with CulturalCitystyles 0.99, but if it is it's easily fixed. I'll take a look when I get a chance. The whole point of that component though is that there are different art sets for buildings depending on the region of the world your civ is from, so it'd help considerably if you could let me know what race you were playing as when this happened. Thanks. :)

Playing as the Americans

Excited to try out your mod but I had a problem with the download. You mention that the download should be 500 MB but the download here is 477 MB:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=14956

Thoughts?

And the important second piece of data: I downloaded the 477 MB zip and installed it but couldn't get it to work. Whenever I try to load the mod, civ quits on me.

Have you patched to BTS 3.19?

Thanks EmperorFool for the reminder. Patching to 3.19 fixed the problem.

I'm still here... Swamped with RL stuff again for the last 10 days (all fun, productive and exciting this time though), but should be getting back to working on the mod every waking minute here soon. :)

I did at least have time over the last two days to make an updated/improved version of the title music track; hopefully you'll like it.

Really enjoy your mod, so will be happy to play it whenever real life says you have time to work on it, Happy Thanksgiving.

Hope you ate well on Turkey day. Looking forward to the next patch. Can't wait.
P.S. You never did answer the question contained in the PM I sent you a few weeks ago. (Good natured ribbing...You still the man! :))

just want to say thanks again Mongoose for continuing your hard work. Still playing your mod and your deserve mega props for the time you're putting in.

just want to say thanks again Mongoose for continuing your hard work. Still playing your mod and your deserve mega props for the time you're putting in.

Thanks dood, appreciate it. :) Although I am both single and unemployed with pretty close to 24/7 free time... except the last three months heh... so spending a lot of time on something like this is actually not as big a deal as it might otherwise seem. :p (Plus I did take several months off for Starcraft 2 as previously mentioned. ;))

Just finished an awesome little component yesterday I'd been wanting to have in my own games for a really long time, allows you to optionally override the Unrestricted Leaders game option (which wasn't working either btw lol) to select any empire color you want instead of selecting different leaders. I just couldn't figure out a way to do it that would be multiplayer-compatible til now. *beams*

Work continues though, still got about 20 things on my internal short-term to-do list, and Cephalo has until those are done to finish PerfectWorld 3 or I'm going ahead without him. :) (Though I suppose he may have finished it already... I should really keep an eye on the Civ5 forum heh.) At the moment it's not looking like there will be as many things included from BUG as I originally thought (the custom advisor screens are really complicated), but we'll see. It is definitely going to be a big update in any case.

Wow, it's been a whole WEEK already? It feels like I just made that previous post yesterday. Sigh.

I just posted my Gray EE2 Gunship skin and Jedi/Sith Sound Fix files in the two relevant threads in the Unit Graphics section... They've been done for a while already, and I felt they warranted being posted separately from the mod but I didn't have time to do so til now. Actually I really didn't have time now either but I did it anyway. :p

Still plowing through the list of stuff that needs doing. I spent all yesterday greatly improving the Unit Upgrades Chart in my version of the Sevopedia, and am now looking to start porting Perfect World 3 back to Civ4 as my next main project, starting in about 5 minutes hopefully.

It's possible version 3.6 will be out before Christmas... keep your feathers crossed. :)

My feathers are criss crossed! :D

This has been a relatively difficult and very time-consuming project... and I'm still only halfway there... but I have the first of two major chunks of PerfectWorld 3 running correctly in Civ4 now, specifically the Perlin height/elevation/landmass generator. It is plugged into a (significantly) modified version of PerfectWorld 2.06. The results are severely mountain-heavy right now though that can be fixed, and I still need to get the climate stuff working, but it's coming along. (The climate code is ported from Lua to Python already, but that's not the same thing as having it execute without throwing up a hundred errors lol.)

Edit: Three hours later, and I figured out both why I was getting peaks on 80-100% of the land regardless of my control variable settings, AND why the climate system wasn't working at all. (All of which first required me to fix a game-crashing bug earlier tonight that'd had me stymied since yesterday, heh.) The result is... it's done. Every function is enabled and working. I need to increase river occurance and decrease snow tiles (probably due to the PW2 values still being in effect), test it a bit more, and maybe add a few minor new features, but it's basically done. I'll post a version for vanilla BTS in the Map Scipts forum once I'm completely happy with it, then back to finishing the mod update. :)

Just want to say thank you again and giving you encouragement to finish what sounds like an Epic mod. Can't wait!

Yet another unbelievably-stupid yet incredibly-hard-to-find bug found and fixed, which was destroying my TemperatureMap values. I'm pretty much done with what I'm gonna do with PW now, just waiting to hear back from Cephalo on a few topics. Unfortunately, if I have the PW3 ClimateMap working correctly - and I still may very well not, heh - then I really don't like it very much... even though Ceph says it's way better (which means I probably DO have something else screwed up with it).

But in any case, the Perlin ElevationMap slash landmass generator is definitely working right, and is pretty nice, and runs faster than PW2's midpoint displacement engine b/c it's not using an oversized grid internally. So I will definitely be releasing a minor PW2 update for some menu option improvements I made, and a modified PW2 that has PW3's ElevationMap plugged in. But unless Ceph gives me any ideas or I find another bug in my ported code, I'm going to leave out the PW3 ClimateMap system.

Just want to say thank you again and giving you encouragement to finish what sounds like an Epic mod. Can't wait!

Encouragement is always appreciated, though there's no risk of me not finishing an update once I start it, really. I take way too much pride in my work, and am way too stubborn, to not see my commitments through when I make them... I just try to avoid making them as much as possible lol.

This PW project was the last MAJOR item on my list, what's left now is just a bunch of routine things. I am trying to have it out by Christmas and feel pretty confident about making that deadline at this point. As such I'm also gonna go ahead and upload my change log to the, well, Change Log thread here momentarily... I realize that and the In Progress thread haven't been pulling their weight, sorry about that.

Okay, last PerfectWorld-related update hehe. The final problem, which had to do with the PW3 ClimateMap system, has been solved. It was more an omission than a bug... a small bit of PW3 code had not yet been included that was a necessary update to the PW2 code that determines when to place deserts. Found it by noticing the PW3 control variable for it had not been included either.

I did hear back from Cephalo... now as soon as I hear back from him again on the latest round of PMs I should be good to post stuff, heh. I think I still prefer the PW2 climate system personally, though I have them both working now so there will probably be 2 or 3 versions posted.

And check out the Change Log thread in this subforum if you haven't already. :)

Excuse my bad English, I am Chilean and i am using a translator to write...
I have downloaded the last version of this mod but, once loaded, I don't see the texts. It is the first time that I have problems with a mod. If you need more information only say to me and I give them.
Thank you.

PD: I have BTS 3.19

In espanish...
Perdon mi pesimo ingles, soy Chileno y no escribo bien en ingles... Bajé la ultima version de este mod (parece muy bueno) pero al cargarlo no veo ningun texto. Es primera vez que tengo problemas con algun mod y realmente no sé que hacer. Si necesitan mas informacion solo diganme y se las doy.
Gracias :)

Probably you have to change the language of the game back to english
Many mods don't support other languages...

Probably you have to change the language of the game back to english
Many mods don't support other languages...

Yep, and this is one of them, heh. Sorry, but half the text in the mod is stuff I've had to write myself, and I only know English (with a minimal amount of Latin and Japanese ;)). Some of the content I've used has come with multiple languages provided, yes, but as often as not that language support is incomplete, and I really don't want to include any language that's not going to be fully and completely supported everywhere in the mod so I generally remove those tags when I find them. Plus I like to be able to vouch for the quality of everything in the mod, and text has a wider quality range than most people realize so I can't really do that when I can't read what it says. (Heck, I've already fixed a large number of typos, inconsistencies and verbosities in the vanilla Firaxis English text all over the place, some of which greatly improve the aesthetics and functionality of the user interface.)

So again, I apologize, but this mod is probably going to remain English-only.

ok ...
my problem is to write in English, but I can read very well. Thanks for the quick response. Arriving home I'll see if that was the problem.

PS: google translator is not bad xD

PS: google translator is not bad xD

Gotta love technology. :) Thanks for your interest in the mod btw.

Actually that was the problem. Thank you very much.
Now I shall do my own translation. Not a bad idea this forum had a FAQ to answer some questions like mine without having to ask ...

(Spanish)
Efectivamente ese era el problema. Muchas gracias.
Ahora deberé hacer mi propia traducción. No sería mala idea que este foro tuviera un FAQ para resolver algunas dudas como la mia sin necesidad de tener que preguntar...

AAAAAAAAAAH HAHA!!!

Not that many of you probably care, but I have just now successfully fixed locked random seeds in Network Multiplayer games, which is something that had been bothering me literally for years now since they broke it either in Warlords or BTS. I'd also tried several times in the past to fix this and failed, so this is especially satisfying. :)

It has always worked correctly in Single Player and I have no idea about the other MP modes, but in Internet MP reloading a save would change all random outcomes, combat, events triggering, you name it, even if you didn't have the "New Random Seed on Reload" game option enabled. NOW, finally as it was in the distant past, it won't be possible to cheat any more. I'm super-excited to play now hehe.

Well, I'm a solo player, so this won't have any effect on me, although I know your right, it has been a problem for alot of mods, so there will be people who will be excited. On the other hand, I'm really looking forward to the update of this mod I have to admit.

Well, I'm a solo player, so this won't have any effect on me, although I know your right, it has been a problem for alot of mods, so there will be people who will be excited. On the other hand, I'm really looking forward to the update of this mod I have to admit.

My fix is actually very simple code-wise, but figuring out HOW to fix it required some debugging, full knowledge of the SDK and how PRN generators work, some intelligent assumptions about what the Civ4 .exe must be doing (probably since Warlords), aaaaand then I came up with a really elegant beautiful effortless solution where most people would've probably tried to tear up the whole SDK by rewriting every random call in it lol. ... I'm really proud of this one. :p :) ;) Going to release it as a MM exclusive first, then post it a little later. *savors the relishment of victory*

Still hoping to have 3.6 out by Christmas which is in 4 days... It may be a couple days late but that's the worst that'll happen; it's not gonna drag on too much longer, I promise. The BUG Advisor Screens and Fuyu's requested AI projects will probably not make it in til 3.6.1 but we'll see, 4 days is a lot of time. ;)

Rest assured I've been continuing to work on this most of my waking hours all this time... Tomorrow is gonna be tight but I might make it.

One thing I just ran into while updating some building stats... The cathedrals for the 7 vanilla religions were at +10% culture (which was correct but not updated for the 4-religion limit), but the cathedrals for the custom JARM religions were still at their default values of +50% culture all this time... how did no one notice that? lol.

Oh and in case you might think I forgot, I did fix the Future Era University graphic 10 days ago Brun58, so you're in the changelog for that. :) (It was actually broken for all civs, not just America.) Anywho, back to work...

Thanks...lol, actually looking forward to the new release...but...ummmm...don't forget it's a holiday weekend...lol

Thanks...lol, actually looking forward to the new release...but...ummmm...don't forget it's a holiday weekend...lol

<-- Unemployed. To me, every day is the same and holidays are largely irrelevant (except that they cause the stores to be closed, which is really annoying when I feel like getting food).

Also I want to get this thing out as a Christmas present to my loyal fans (*hugs*), and more importantly I am burnt out on modding for the moment (2.5 months of heavy work will do that heh) and want to actually play it instead (a common excuse among modders, I know ;)).

All XML and Python items are now finished, with the iAsset/iPower update sweep predictably taking far longer than I had predicted it would, internally. Next I have to update PM3/PW2 with Fuyu's start location code and tweak the lake settings, then I have a handful of programming things left in the SDK, then I will need like two hours to write up the patch notes in the form I use in the Download thread, and put the zip together. It will hopefully be up tomorrow evening, but I reserve the right to delay til Sunday heh.

Be advised that it will not have had any private playtesting (ie me and Daryn playing an actual game for two weeks) before release this time like it had with 3.5 (where the first version I released publically was 3.5.1), but I'm pretty confident I didn't screw anything up. :)

Actually understand the unemployed thing, was laid-off in the economic downturn and am still looking, so I'm truly sympathethic. Beiseds the content of your mod, which I'm a big fan of, something else I look forward too in your mod is that it seems a lot less 'puter intensive to run, your coding skill shining through I guess. My regular 'puter went boom, and athough I have this one borrowed, it's not as good as mine, and I can play all the way through your mod without it bogging it down. As always, thanks for your work on this and rubbing my hands in anticipation...lol

Okay... soooo... umm... yeah. Basically I was expecting my updates to the PM3/PW2 mapscripts to take between 30 minutes and, at most, 6 hours. Instead it took 17 hours of non-stop work yesterday, plus 12 hours of non-stop work today. But hey, I got a lot more done on it than I was expecting, and Flood Plains on Plains are in the mod now, so it was worth it. :)

Still have some final SDK programming things to do before I can post the update. Will be up, for sure this time, either much later tonight or tomorrow morning or early afternoon.

Except I got held up playing Starcraft 2 all last night, heh. Also there was a lot more Better BUG AI merging work left to do than I thought, and as usual I keep thinking up new stuff to add right at the last minute...

Anyway, the update is finally done. I'm also rather exhausted. :p I should probably make one more pass on the iFlavor values actually, and I'll need a little time to write up the changelog as patch notes. I doubt there's much demand for mods at 5am though so I may relax for a bit first, kinda zoned out atm.

Sorry for all the delays, but I've been working as hard as I can and it pretty much just took as long as it took. It will have been worth the wait. Didn't quite make it for Christmas but it's still plenty soon enough to be a New Year's present. :)

Historical Document items: idea to put the Civ4, Warlords and BTS title screen music tracks in as standard era music since the mod's custom title music prevents any of them from ever being heard otherwise. Additionally, I am laying claim to the following unit nicknames, as mentioned in the mod's new Pedia entries: Paladino (Paladin), Champinion (Knight Champion), and Buttering Ram (Battering Ram).

The time you put into your mod, and your work on it are much appreciated, for real, it's one of my favorite mod's on here, and i play a decent amount of them 'cause it's always been a way to really extend a game for free. It takes talented mod makers like you to make that happen, so I wanna say thanks man, and whenever it's done, I'll be looking forward to it.

Yeah, you already put a lot of work to this mod LM!
I'm also curious about the new version

Initial rough draft of the Version Summary document, and the full 3.6 Change Log, have been posted in the sticky thread; feel free to read them over if you like. Everything after Dec 12 in the log text is new.

I am currently writing the patch notes, then I have to zip it and upload it. The file will be posted in the next couple hours.

Knock yourselves out, everyone. Yeah I know, I said a couple hours. You've heard of being tone-deaf, right? I think I must be time-deaf. I did have a chiropracter appointment this afternoon though.

I am going to go die of exhaustion now. My cult of Llama Mages has been instructed to perform the resurrection ceremony in 2 months so I can work on another version.

Woot..it's out...lol. Again, thanks for your work on this mod......off to download and play

Woot..it's out...lol. Again, thanks for your work on this mod......off to download and play

That was quick. :p

Well...actually...I was playing a little of the TAM mod to pass the time till you released, and had just checked the download section and had started the download right before you posted it was up...lol.....actually have been really looking forward to it cause it one of my favorites.

Oops, I forgot to give any of the new units Aggresive/Tenacious/Seafaring bonuses... And it looks like the iAIWeight values I used to reinforce the techs with primary city defenders, which I got from how Sedentary had been set (probably originally in the Stone Age Mod), are off by a factor of 10 for my purposes. Oh well, couldn't really be helped given how burnt out I was. They'll be fixed in the next version, and I need to add the FLAVOR_ESPIONAGE type anyway, which is present in vanilla but not used.

Soooo... anyone have any comments/impressions/wombats they're just dying to set free?

The mod doesn't actually launch. :confused: I see the python loading and the XML but when the game starts there is no title screen - just vanilla type start up. However, now, instead of load a mod, the option is unload a mod. The file size is correct..over 800 MB after unzipping. No custom asset folder and a clean install of BTS and patch 3.19 just to make sure. Other mods work fine though (Dune Wars, FfH 2, etc.) so I don't think it is my Civ installation. What else can I try? Thanks LM for any help you can give...can't wait to try out the new stuff.

Stll early into the new version, enjoying it alot, not really far enough in to comment very much....playing on eternal...lol

What else can I try? Thanks LM for any help you can give...can't wait to try out the new stuff.

Uhh... Delete your CivilizationIV.ini file in MyDocs/MyGames/BTS/ is only thing I can think of. Seems to be working for Brun and I know it works for me, all I did was zip up my active mod folder. I'm kinda at a loss on that one Jester.

And umm be sure you deleted the old MM folder and put the new one in the right place, not in Civ4/Mods/ or Civ4/BTS/Mods/MongooseMod/MongooseMod/ or something.

Ok. I found out the problem once I actually looked inside the folder. The zip file wasn't set up for a direct copy-paste. It did have the MongooseMod folder inside of the zip folder. All I did was rename the zip folder and drop it in without checking - shame on me. :lol: Thanks LM.

The zip file wasn't set up for a direct copy-paste.

I'm not sure what you mean by that... As far as I know you always have to extract the contents of a zip somehow before you can use em.

Anywho, I know I could prevent these kinds of problems by having an installer program but I'm just not going to do that, I hate them, always prefer to install files manually when I can. (AND I hate not being able to access the files in a downloaded archive without running a program first, nevermind having registry entries for mods seems ridiculous, it's bad enough I have to have them for full programs...)

I'm not sure what you mean by that... As far as I know you always have to extract the contents of a zip somehow before you can use em.The zip file is "LM_MongooseMod_3.6". Unzipped, you have a folder named the same. I thought I could drop that folder into the directory (as I said I didn't check). The actual folder "MongooseMod" is inside the zip folder so thus the silly mistake. Some zipped files don't use the double folder method (e.g. you can just unzip and then just drop the unzipped folder into place). <humor alert> Windows has unzip capabilities you know. :p

Very interesting mod. Although I have not played it extensively, there does appear to be a lot of work put into it.

I did notice that the map creation process took an exceedingly long time. I let it go for several minutes then thought perhaps it had crashed but it did eventually finish and I started to play.

I also had some graphic issues with early on technologies where the quote did not come up correctly. I noticed it for example on the Pigments and the Fire technology and I am unsure if it was a font issue or simply nothing was placed in the field.

Overall a very exciting mod with a ton of playability ahead. I do wonder why you think your mod is any more realistic than most others -- I noticed all sorts of imaginary animals in the civilopedia and as I have always said how authentic can it be to have Lincoln start at -4000 BC or have Hammurabi flying around in jet planes (it is just the nature of the game).

I look forward to testing the multiplayer possibilities here very soon.

Cheers!

Very interesting mod. Although I have not played it extensively, there does appear to be a lot of work put into it.

My friend, you have no idea. ;)

I did notice that the map creation process took an exceedingly long time. I let it go for several minutes then thought perhaps it had crashed but it did eventually finish and I started to play.

If you used PerfectMongoose 3.1 or PerfectWorld 2.0.8, these are far superior generators that take much longer than the standard ones b/c they are so complicated. You can read up on them in the Map Scripts forum if you like; they're quite well-known. Additionally, my world sizes are a little larger than in vanilla, and if you tried Planetary, well, that can take 8-30 minutes depending on your computer lol.

I also had some graphic issues with early on technologies where the quote did not come up correctly. I noticed it for example on the Pigments and the Fire technology and I am unsure if it was a font issue or simply nothing was placed in the field.

That's not a graphic issue... not all the custom content has text yet, including tech quotes. I did at least get the missing unit, resource and leader text entries filled in in 3.6. It's a low-priority issue b/c it doesn't affect gameplay, and I've been kept busy working on stuff that does. :)

Overall a very exciting mod with a ton of playability ahead. I do wonder why you think your mod is any more realistic than most others -- I noticed all sorts of imaginary animals in the civilopedia and as I have always said how authentic can it be to have Lincoln start at -4000 BC or have Hammurabi flying around in jet planes (it is just the nature of the game).

The tech tree, the positions of certain vanilla units in the tech tree, and some of the unit stats are more realistic than vanilla. I do not claim it is the most realistic mod however, so please don't misunderstand me. I specifically do go for a bit of fantasy and scifi flair to add to the fun. I do claim it's the best mod, and that parts of it are more realistic... that's all. :p

Thanks for your interest, always happy to have fresh souls sucked into the Soul Vacuum 3000(tm), loyal to me for life. Mwa ha ha...

I have been working on my mod since last August and it still amazes me what I have gotten accomplished. So if you have been spending years on yours, I can only imagine all the trials and victories you have gone through.

I am nearing my third major installment and at a certain point I will need to start over from scratch to truly organize and streamline my mod.

I like many aspects of your mod and will need to tear yours apart (lol) to figure out how you have done some things. I don't mess around with python or DLLs, but do all of my magic from the XML. Too many people underestimate what you can do within those files.

Again, good job and keep at it.

I like many aspects of your mod and will need to tear yours apart (lol) to figure out how you have done some things. I don't mess around with python or DLLs, but do all of my magic from the XML. Too many people underestimate what you can do within those files.

I am glad you like my mod and so I mean no disrespect when I say this. However I consider myself an expert in all aspects of Civ4 (except 3D modelling for LHs and units and stuff) at this point, so I am going to say it anyway. Your position is one of ignorance.

If I had to rate the total value of each of those components to my mod as a whole, custom Python stuff would be worth 5%, things I've done with/in the XML 35%, and work I've done in the DLL would be worth 60%. At least. I know the XML very, VERY well at this point, and in the old days, which I was around during, it WAS the primary way mods were made. And it's great, and I'm all for getting the most out of it that you can. But it has severe limitations.

Also, I am pretty certain you will find that the vast majority of particularly neat functionalities in my mod - the ones you're interested in copying - were done in the DLL, and cannot be done any other way. (MongooseMod has one of the most advanced DLLs out there.) ADDITIONALLY, again with no disrespect meant, the sheer quantity of both bugfixes AND improvements to AI behavior, just for the vanilla game nevermind for mods, that you lose out on by not having BetterAI/UP/etc which are DLL mods, is overwhelming, and any mod that isn't based on those is not worth playing. Period.

Just trying to be helpful, which requires being brutally honest, heh.

Hey!

I said I like many aspects of your mod, but I didn't say I necessarily liked it. To be blunt, it is OK for a starting mod, but I get the idea you have been working on this for awhile? It may be time to shelve it and get some fresh perspectives. Overall it is just too busy -- you got clutter everywhere!!

For example, The tech tree seems truly broken and not too logical -- why would Exploring lead to Training of Dogs?

I would think calling yourself an Expert in Civilization IV would be a gross overstatement without the ability to model. You seem to be quite egotistical (from other posts I have read) but to call yourself an expert at modding Civ IV because you can hack some XML and borrow some code doesn't make you an expert but just a braggart. Many aspects of modding is simply cutting and pasting, which without sounding too critical appears to be what you have done. Even the python stuff is easily borrowed from other people's mods.

I didn't say that XML modification was the end all of modding, but I do firmly stand behind the pure fact that many aspects of the game can be accomplished through simple XML changes. Can it do everything, of course not. But to state that my stance on it is of extreme ignorance is both arrogant and blatantly without merit.

I came here hoping to make a good contact at Fanatics, someone I could share ideas with, but you seem too self-centered for my liking. I am sure you have your devout players and I would think you should keep designing for them, since others may not find your mod too special.

Troy

Wow. Oooookay... last time I try and help a fellow modder; back to just keeping my mouth shut lol. Where to start...

I said I like many aspects of your mod, but I didn't say I necessarily liked it.

These two things seem pretty equivalent to me, at least with the "many" in there.

It may be time to shelve it and get some fresh perspectives.

This is especially amusing coming from someone trying to accuse the other person of arrogance, btw. ;)

Overall it is just too busy -- you got clutter everywhere!!

First time I've ever heard "too cluttered" as a complaint (after ~1800 downloads)... Seems to me vanilla is too uncluttered. :p Seriously... have you actually looked at the other major mods? They are as "cluttered" or more "cluttered" than mine, but with the "clutter" significantly less well organized, imo. I'd also strongly recommend you try playing a game with my mod before criticizing the density of the tech tree... I suspect your opinion will change once you actually experience what everything in there does.

I would think calling yourself an Expert in Civilization IV would be a gross overstatement without the ability to model.

If you think modelling is more important than programming for Civ4 overall, well, see my previous statement you took such offense to. You can still have tons of custom content without any custom models; it just won't look very good. But you can't have greatly improved gameplay without custom programming.

Plus I have actually made several custom skins for units that people have liked (check my Downloads page), and I have some limited 3D experience which I've already used in a different game project. It's more a matter of not having the software I would need (3DSMax for Civ4 modelling), not having time (my mod takes all my time as it is), and not needing to (the artists on this site have done a terrific job making custom leaderhead and unit graphics).

You seem to be quite egotistical (from other posts I have read) but to call yourself an expert at modding Civ IV because you can hack some XML and borrow some code doesn't make you an expert but just a braggart.

If having nearly all XML files, and nearly all tags in those files, memorized, as well as being intimately familiar with most of the DLL code that implements and/or utilizes those tags, doesn't make me an XML expert, I dunno what does.

If rewriting one of the most popular and essential components for BTS, the Sevopedia, 3 years ago when no one else was willing to take it on, and now having it used in most major mods... As well as porting the latest version of the best and most popular map script ever made, PerfectWorld, back from Civ5 to Civ4 because the author didn't have time to, and then tweaking and improving it substantially (with map scripts being very complicated things)... doesn't make me a Python expert, I dunno what does.

If having one bugfix in an official Firaxis game patch 4 years ago, another half-dozen-plus bugfixes in the standard DLL mod, Better BTS AI, that everyone uses, and having ~50 custom DLL mod components that have attracted substantial interest and over 100 downloads just for the source code alone, doesn't make me an SDK/DLL expert, I dunno what does.

Of course I'm egotistical and arrogant. I freely admit that! The thing is: that's only a bad thing if it's not justified. Otherwise it's a very good thing, in all areas of life (helps break beaurocratic inertia and get things done right).

Many aspects of modding is simply cutting and pasting, which without sounding too critical appears to be what you have done.

If you think I copy/pasted most of my content, that's just silly. In addition to what I said above, I've had and used an absolutely staggering number of original XML ideas, along with a few original Python ideas. My credits section still needs some updating here and there, but it fully covers everything I've used that isn't original. You may also want to consider the possibility that other mods have copied me, and not the other way around (I am in Quot Capita's credits for this reason, to name one example).

Even the python stuff is easily borrowed from other people's mods.

That is true, and would be a relevant statement, if I had actually borrowed more than half of my Python from other mods, or if I hadn't customized or rewritten most of what I borrowed. Or if I had much Python in my mod at all.

I didn't say that XML modification was the end all of modding, but I do firmly stand behind the pure fact that many aspects of the game can be accomplished through simple XML changes. Can it do everything, of course not. But to state that my stance on it is of extreme ignorance is both arrogant and blatantly without merit.

I said XML could do a lot, and that I was all for getting the most out of it that you can. I also did NOT say that trying to mod XML was related to ignorance. What I DID say, was that the DLL was crucially important, and ignoring it, which you indicated you were doing (for no particular reason so I'm left to assume ignorance, stubborness and/or laziness), was a very, very bad idea.

I suggest you read the BetterAI and BetterBTSAI patch notes, in full, if you want to learn... The base, unmodded DLL is a functional starting point, but it is full of serious bugs and poorly-written, badly-performing functions that JDog and others have spent years improving. Yes, the Firaxis code really does suck in many places and no, they really aren't miles above certain forum contributors when it comes to programming skill just because they have jobs at a game company and we don't.

Unless you have a multiplayer game full of nothing but human players, I don't see how AI programming isn't THE most important thing... a game is only as fun and interesting as the skill of your opponent/s, just in general. BBAI also includes the Unofficial Patch code, in which you will find literally dozens of distinct bugfixes to problems that were all annoying, and some downright game-breaking.

Then there's the point I already made, that the dozen or so major custom functionalities in MongooseMod, plus another three dozen minor custom functionalities, are, I strongly suspect, a lot of what you were so interested in using yourself. Or maybe you just meant my civic list (at least half of which were my original ideas) and tech tree (Exploring leads to Dog Training because early humans have to get out and explore to encounter dogs, btw). In any case, when you try and duplicate a lot of my stuff just using the XML you may be very surprised when you find out you can't.

I also strongly suggest you read, if not my monolithic Change Log document, at least the Stuff to Know and Patch Notes documents or sticky threads. They will help you get an idea for the sheer magnitude of stuff that's been done in MongooseMod, and just how heavily tweaked and customized every last setting is compared to vanilla and other mods. Editing XML may be easy the same way typing English sentences is, but that doesn't mean everyone can write a best-selling book. I'm not implying anything there because I hate writing, but you get the idea. :)

Alright, I backed off on the "extreme" modifier in my original post since it was admittedly a bit much, and edited my post above to make a more comprehensive response.

I've been able to relax for the first time in 5 months since posting 3.6 a week ago, so I'm actually feeling much better now despite the recent exchange in this thread lol. Anyone have any comments on or questions about the new version yet? Just curious. :)

Buenos dias. He detectado algunos problemas en la version 3.6, cosas que antes no sucedian. He tomado algunas fotos para aclarar mejor las cosas pero en estos momentos estoy en el trabajo. En unas horas mas posteare en un topic nuevo. Ademas aviso con anticipacion que algo de lo que escribiré no te gustará, es una especie de crítica constructiva, aunque no totalmente constructiva xD

---------------------------------------------

Good morning. I encountered some problems in version 3.6, things did not happen before. I took some pictures to clarify things but now I'm at work. In a few more hours post them on a new topic. You notice in advance that some of what I write will not like, is a kind of constructive criticism, though not entirely constructive xD


Any error in English is not mine, is google ... :P

I'm someone for whom checking my email and putting BOLD PRINT on a title in my word document gives a sense of technological accomplishment. So MongooseMod is at a dizzying height that I'll never come close to. However, I can appreciate the amount of time and work that has gone into this - and I've been a fan since you started ages AGES back.

Mongoose and Fall From Heaven II are the two mods that have permanent place in my Civ4 folder. Just want to say thanks for your work and persistence.

Seems like I've only got about 20 active users at the moment, down from 500-ish last summer... darn Civ5 lol. Oh well, it's still enough to maintain public development for. :) As I've probably said before, I really appreciate your support Fallen_Addict... I just wish other people would post their thoughts too. Oh well.

Anyway, I'd already made a few emergency fixes on my end for the game I'm now playing, but 3.6.1 development has now officially started full-time. Because of the one serious bug that's in 3.6 I need to get this out soon, so I'm sticking to essential stuff and quick-and-easy stuff. There will not be any new balance changes; it will be almost entirely bugfixes, UI improvements, more updates to under-the-hood XML values, and the last of the missing text tags. I'm expecting to have it out in a week at most, and hopefully sooner. (Though by now you should know how I am with time estimates. :p)

Still around to, and enjoy the mod very much, hopefully there's been some movement on a job this week, it's just driving a forklift mostly, but none the less a job, so maybe, but left me less time to be on this week. As always, I am a fan of the mod, and appreciate the work you put into it. The only things I really noticed are the palisade thing and the Great Person screen, so I figured those were already covered. One thing I have been meaning to ask though, is there a file I can tone down the storms just a wee bit though, I tend to park warships over my fishing sites to protect them, and I end up playing wack-a-mole with healing them sometimes. If not it's cool, I'm fine with them, just thought there might be somewhere I can edit them at. Otherwise, smooth on my end, and again, thanks for the mod.

There is currently no way to adjust storm frequency and intensity, no. The storms are controlled by a combination of the XML feature spread and disappearance rate values for them, and my custom DLL code. (Which is from version 3.4, and I stopped posting it publically after 3.3, so the code for this particular feature is not publically available.)

It's not all THAT complicated, but it does lead to a situation where it's hard to predict what will happen b/c of how the code works, and you just have to test it and see. I got it to a point where I was fairly happy with it back in 3.4, and I haven't changed it since then. I would definitely like to try and increase storm clumpiness some more, so you get a bit fewer distinct storms worldwide and the ones you do get are larger contiguous blobs of black clouds, but that's hard and I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll see if I can do anything with it now, but not gonna spend a lot of time on it. Overall I've been satisfied with the current storm level though.

Glad you like the new version though. Sorry about the bugs. :)

I might make submarines immune though, that's a good idea, except that they do sometimes spend time on the surface of the water too in real life.

U-boats in WWII spent the VAST majority of their time on the surface. A U-boat (1939-1943) could travel 17.7 knots on the surface and only 7.3 underwater!

I'm trying out the mod right now......wish me luck!

U-boats in WWII spent the VAST majority of their time on the surface. A U-boat (1939-1943) could travel 17.7 knots on the surface and only 7.3 underwater!

I actually wound up only adding Nuke Immunity to the modern submarines... for precisely that reason. :) Well, and the fact that, being diesel-powered, they couldn't STAY submerged for nearly as long either.

I'm trying out the mod right now......wish me luck!

Unfortunately, as has been discussed, there is one moderately-serious bug in 3.6 involving Palisades, plus a few other problems, so please don't judge it based on that. The bugfix update will be out fairly soon; thanks for trying it in the meantime! :)

SECOND BLIZZARD IN BOSTON!!! Omg I love it when it snows like this... *hugs the atmosphere*

*quietly gets back to work on the mod update*

SECOND BLIZZARD IN BOSTON!!! Omg I love it when it snows like this... *hugs the atmosphere*

*quietly gets back to work on the mod update*

I'm from Cambridge. I love snow days. I just downloaded your mod last night & i'm looking forward to a game today.

I'm from Santiago, Chile, and here is f***** hot, about 30 degrees celsius. And at work, a small office, I am sure at 35 degrees.
Snow? Hopefully here 1 time in 10 years ...
My only consolation is to get home and relax a long time playing this mod.

I'm from Cambridge. I love snow days. I just downloaded your mod last night & i'm looking forward to a game today.

Kewl! I'm in Medford now, but I lived in Cambridge for 4-and-a-half years for college back in Ancient Times (ie 12-17 years ago lol). As I told JJ, version 3.6 has some issues so please don't judge it til I get my next update out, which should only take a few more days hopefully.

I'm from Santiago, Chile, and here is f***** hot, about 30 degrees celsius. And at work, a small office, I am sure at 35 degrees.
Snow? Hopefully here 1 time in 10 years ...
My only consolation is to get home and relax a long time playing this mod.

Glad you like it so much. :) Sorry about the heat. I'm uncomfortable in anything over 75 degrees F which is... 24 C. I'm happy down to about freezing, but I still prefer any amount of cold over significant heat. I'm weird that way. (And lots of other ways too. ;))

I've gotten a lot done in the last few days, and version 3.6.1 is shaping up quite nicely. I'm currently expecting to be ready to post it Monday night, and if it does take longer it won't go more than a day or two beyond that. (And unlike most of my predictions this one should be fairly accurate; there's not too much left to do. :))

I've updated the Change Log sticky thread with my notes as they currently stand. I have 6 things left to do on my list, and am still expecting to have the 3.6.1 update posted possibly tomorrow night, but probably sometime Tuesday. Feel free to read over the changelog info while you wait. :)

Now then... I'm going to sleep. I don't think I'm old enough yet to have a heart attack while I'm sleeping, so odds are good I will wake up again, at which point I will resume working on this thing. I may also eat a small amount of food. ... That is all.

looking forward to the next update. Other than the Pallisade and Great Person bugs, everything else has been smooth and not on CTD.

looking forward to the next update. Other than the Pallisade and Great Person bugs, everything else has been smooth and not on CTD.

Well, once you have a completely stable base to work from, CTDs will generally only ever happen if you make a major mistake with something somewhere, so I'm not too surprised. ;) But yeah that's probably easier said than done for a complicated mod like this hehe, so I do appreciate the report. :)

As far as the update goes, I'm running a little behind schedule but not too much. I can definitely have it out tonight sometime if I work the whole time between now and then, but I may not feel like doing that, in which case it'll be out tomorrow, I swear. :p

Oh....

I have been having a 'bug' (or something) in which the autosave makes me accept the overwrite of my old autosaves EVERY turn....it's really obnoxious.

I have been having a 'bug' (or something) in which the autosave makes me accept the overwrite of my old autosaves EVERY turn....it's really obnoxious.

Sigh... It's not a bug, it was an unavoidable consequence of the new AutoSave system I added in 3.6. As I've already mentioned like 3 times on here recently, you can very easily disable it and go back to the vanilla system in the mod's Options.ini config file. :p (I personally felt having readable and useful autosave filenames was worth the hassle, but that's just me apparently. ;))

Alternatively, if you manually clear out your Autosave folder/s before starting new games or going back far in current games, you won't have that problem.

Additionally to THAT, I have already removed the dang thing in 3.6.1 anyway, but not b/c of all the trouble you guys are needlessly having with it... it's b/c it doesn't work right with locked random seeds. :p

Sorry, I just get a little annoyed when I have to repeat something this much lol. (I should've put it on the Stuff to Know list, of course, but I never really had time to yet, heh.) Plus I was just out slogging through a foot of snow with pools of water everywhere cuz it's raining instead now for 3 hours getting my allergy shot, so I'm kinda wet atm. Was fun though. And great exercise. Mwa ha ha.

Thanks. The problem may be avoidable, but I'm glad that it now simply "works" instead of "not working unless you do 'x'".

Is 3.6.1 up then?

Thanks. The problem may be avoidable, but I'm glad that it now simply "works" instead of "not working unless you do 'x'".

Well, the reasons I made the new system be on by default instead of off, at least in the initial release, were b/c I personally liked it better, but ALSO b/c, as I've said, I knew if I didn't force you guys to see/feel/use/experience it, a lot of you would never know the option existed at all and some might actually want it, heh.

And I don't think it's a case of "not working"... from my point of view it worked wonderfully, albeit with one minor annoyance. ;)

Is 3.6.1 up then?

Nope, was out having fun in the snow/rain all afternoon. I'm taking a slightly less stressful approach to preserve my own sanity this time around... I'm pretty sure it'll be out tomorrow at the latest. :)

Did I say tomorrow? I meant the following day lol. Sorry, found some serious problems with some of the new 3.6.1 code in testing and had to fix them. (At least I'm actually doing a bit of testing this time. :p) Then got called away to play Starcraft 2 for a while yesterday heh.

I finished the last programming thing on my list just now, which leaves only the planned iFlavor update pass, hopefully including activating the dormant espionage flavor. This will be long and tedious but extremely easy (ie I can't run into a bug that takes me hours to figure out how to fix), soooo yeah, I'm definitely expecting to have it out later tonight. I wouldn't blame you if you chose not to believe me though. ;)

Is there any way we could get options for nat having all of the unrealistic units? You know, paladins, valkyries, etc.? They can really 'kill the buzz' sometimes.

Actually Paladins are quite realistic... They're basically a generic, not-specifically-Christian version of a Templar (which is a unit that exists in the vanilla resources but isn't used, at least not in the main game).

The others, uhh, well it's pretty easy to just delete their entries from UnitInfos.xml and UnitClassInfos.xml if you want which is all you'd have to do, but no I wasn't planning to make them optionally disable-able. It wouldn't be too hard to add an option for that I suppose, but I don't really want to; they're part of the flavor of the mod, which I have always said from the beginning is not aiming for perfect realism. I develop this thing for myself and my friends first and foremost as well, and while I'm happy to accomodate public requests whenever possible, I am not going to change the design principles.

But yeah, as an option it wouldn't be too hard to add. ;) Won't be in 3.6.1 in any case hehe.

Mmmmm....I dunno. They look like somethign out of a fantsy game and "paladin" is such a loaded term. Couldn't some other name be used?

Mmmmm....I dunno. They look like somethign out of a fantsy game and "paladin" is such a loaded term. Couldn't some other name be used?

Sure. I could call them Aardvarks. :p

It may be a loaded term but it's also an accurate term; look it up. :) Not planning to change these, sorry.

please remember to 3.61 (if possible) the modification of the challenge of 1 city, something like 2.0 of a city challenge.
The idea is to maintain the original game and as a bonus other challenge with the new rule ...


Thanks.

please remember to 3.61 (if possible) the modification of the challenge of 1 city, something like 2.0 of a city challenge.
The idea is to maintain the original game and as a bonus other challenge with the new rule ...

I already did that 3 days ago. (I keep very thorough notes and don't generally need to be reminded of anything... just saying. ;))

So, last night: more Starcraft 2 distraction, found out we were getting another snowstorm so I went to stock up on groceries, and I also stopped to watch the Australian Open a bit since I hadn't done that yet since it started. (<-- Tennis fan/player.)

ANYWAY. Almost done now, should be out in a few hours.

p.s. - What's with the huge increase in downloads the last week or two, and even just in the last few days? I'm not complaining, just surprised. :)

Version 3.6.1 is officially complete. Those of you with side bets on when, or if, this would ever actually happen may now see your local booking agents for payouts.

The Change Log sticky has been updated again (stuff after Jan 16 is new I believe). As usual I will need a little time now to write patch notes from the log content, and update the other sticky threads slash text documents.

As always, thanks for you work on the mod.....off to play.

Sorry, I just get a little annoyed when I have to repeat something this much lol.

This is simply a consequence of having a popular mod. While you're intimately familiar with all the posts in your threads, expecting everyone else to be is a recipe for disappointment.

Version 3.6.1 is officially complete. Those of you with side bets on when, or if, this would ever actually happen may now see your local booking agents for payouts.

The Change Log sticky has been updated again (stuff after Jan 16 is new I believe). As usual I will need a little time now to write patch notes from the log content, and update the other sticky threads slash text documents.

Happy happy joy joy! Thank you for the rapid update cycle. I'm off to conquer PerfectMongoose with Aardvarks!

Wow, downloading 3.61...
Thanks for the update, and thaaaaaaaaaaaanks for the modification of the One City Challenge.

:)

Toldja I didn't need a dedicated bug thread! Mwa ha ha...

So! How's everyone enjoying the stable, relatively-bug-free, annoyance-free, user-request-enhanced, happy stressfree carefree, benchmark landmark 3.6.1 release? :) :) :)

Oh, and I used my mystical powers of the universe to move the original MM thread here for archaelogical purposes. (Okay I got one of the moderators to do it. But it was still my idea!) He says I can merge it with this thread too if I want, so I'm considering that, but it's a big decision so best to proceed catiously. ;)

While you're intimately familiar with all the posts in your threads, expecting everyone else to be is a recipe for disappointment.

One can always hope. :p

Thanks for the update, and thaaaaaaaaaaaanks for the modification of the One City Challenge.

My system has 10 culture levels instead of vanilla's 5 due to Chalid's intermediate city border shapes. I set the culture part of the new OCC rule to allow an extra city with Transcendent, which is the highest culture level, even though science can get you there with the second-highest era (Modern). My culture levels also require a bit more culture to reach than vanilla's do (moreso for the early ones to make full working borders a more meaningful achievement for cities, but still), and I haven't gotten to playtest them thoroughly yet.

So. Please let me know if Transcendent is too hard to reach for purposes of that new One City Challenge rule and I'll consider lowering the requirement to Legendary (the second-highest level). The offset, of course, will be the larger number of National Wonders, and being forced to put all your World Wonders and Holy Cities as well, all in one city. So I think it's probably fine the way it is, but like I said, it hasn't been tested yet hehe.

I am really enjoying this mod. The prehistoric age is a gorgeous addition and many other things. I started on Darkmongoose difficulty. All is nice and hard and I will probably lose (too early to say for sure, still prehistoric and I dont know for sure how ahead they are). Anyway, can I get to know what are the differences between the deity and DM difficulty? I somehow fail to find anything about it with search and ingame pedia.

Also, in my previous game I had the nasty palisades building not going obsolete, not staying built and kept annoying me from the building options. maybe you guys know about it but it is creeping me.

Congrats again for all the fun you put into it guys. And a special thanks for how good it runs on my old P4 3000 Pentium. Unlike other big mods I cannot even play on big maps, here I can take out the biggest one without problems. :goodjob::


Edit: I partially take my word back, by classical age time between turns is up to 30-40 seconds. I should not have set the raging barbarians on but I thought that they will be the only help I will get against the insane AI. Anyway, it is by far the big mod that runs best on my computer. Btw, I survived this far and in a decent shape. Probably thanks to the huge map and no real proximity to any warmonger AI.

I am really enjoying this mod. The prehistoric age is a gorgeous addition and many other things.

*beams*

I can't take all the credit for the Prehistoric Era since it's based on TheTriturador's Stone Age Mod (which was of sufficient importance for me to include it in the MM title screen), but I significantly redesigned it when making my own version so I feel okay taking about half the credit. :)

I started on Darkmongoose difficulty. All is nice and hard and I will probably lose (too early to say for sure, still prehistoric and I dont know for sure how ahead they are). Anyway, can I get to know what are the differences between the deity and DM difficulty? I somehow fail to find anything about it with search and ingame pedia.

There's a short blurb about the mod's difficulty levels in the Stuff to Know sticky thread and included text document, at the top of the "Other Stuff to Know" section.

There are a number of major differences so it's a bit hard to compare them directly. Barbarian densities/quantities are higher in TL and DM than they are in all the standard difficulties. AIs do not gain increasingly stronger advantages in later eras in TL/DM, but their bonuses are set a bit differently; their gold costs for things are higher (generally the same full values human players have to pay), but their growth speeds and building production rates are a little faster and their unit production rates are a lot faster. But, like I said, on the higher standard difficulties AIs get increasing bonuses the later the era they're in, whereas on TL/DM their bonuses are fixed. My current best educated guess is that, averaged out, DarkMongoose is roughly equivalent to Immortal (assuming you start the game in an early era), so Deity should be harder.

Also, in my previous game I had the nasty palisades building not going obsolete, not staying built and kept annoying me from the building options. maybe you guys know about it but it is creeping me.

This was one of the two major bugs in 3.6 that caused me to do the whole 3.6.1 version sooner than I was planning to. (It was mentioned a half-dozen times here, but I mainly recommend reading over the Patch Notes in the Download sticky thread's posts or the included text document: it only takes a few minutes, I write them up to be highly organized and readable, and they tell you lots of cool stuff that was added or fixed that you wouldn't even notice otherwise. ;))

Congrats again for all the fun you put into it guys.

There is no "guys"... I'm the sole author. Obviously there's a long Credits section for other people's stuff that was used (and other people's stuff that my stuff was based on), but as far as MM itself goes... yep, just me pretty much. *beams again*

Edit: I partially take my word back, by classical age time between turns is up to 30-40 seconds. I should not have set the raging barbarians on but I thought that they will be the only help I will get against the insane AI. Anyway, it is by far the big mod that runs best on my computer. Btw, I survived this far and in a decent shape. Probably thanks to the huge map and no real proximity to any warmonger AI.

My friend and I always play with Raging Barbs on - much too boring otherwise hehe. They actually don't help at all against strong AIs btw, since AIs get huge combat bonuses vs barbarians (which has always been part of the vanilla difficulty levels so it wasn't something I added). That game option basically gives the AIs more fodder to gain experience from (as well as giving the human players more fodder too). I did actually try removing AI barb bonuses a long time ago, but a few AI players would get completely eliminated by barbarians in the first 200 turns so it didn't seem like a good idea. :p

Anyway, there is only so much that can be done with a mod, speed-wise. Civ4 is a large, complicated program, and turns always get slower further into a game just b/c there is more going on: more units and cities on the map that need to be processed by the AIs each turn, and more discovered rival players that complicate an AI's thought processes. MM has been as heavily optimized for speed as is possible, and does not run substantially slower than the vanilla, unmodded game as a result (slightly faster in some cases if JDog's figures still hold up). Past a certain point you just need a better computer hehe. Thanks though, appreciate the compliment. :)

loving the Mod... playing too much to post. If there's a tiny teeny tiny weeny comment to make... wish Jedi's could be partially aggressive as well. At the end game, using Darth Addict to wipe the globe whilst Obi Wan Addict sits around defending Darth seems weird... :)

Thanks Mongoose!

loving the Mod... playing too much to post.

Much as I like hearing all about how people are doing with it, that is an acceptable excuse for staying quiet. :p

If there's a tiny teeny tiny weeny comment to make... wish Jedi's could be partially aggressive as well. At the end game, using Darth Addict to wipe the globe whilst Obi Wan Addict sits around defending Darth seems weird... :)

Believe it or not, the idea of combining the two in a stack never even occured to me before. I just assumed one would go out and attack while the other would stay home and defend. Very interesting. Not sure what to do about it, but I like Jedi being Defensive Only - it fits their personality perfectly - so I don't really want to change that.

If I ever successfully write the code to support AI use of Land Privateers, that effect is currently planned to go to the War Dog, Marauder and Sith units, so that would at least make it so the Sith is on his own for defense against peaceful enemies heh.

Thanks Mongoose!

You're quite welcome, dood. :) And don't worry, there will probably still be more updates in the future, just not for a while since 3.6.1 is a very stable release and I'm busy doing other stuff right now, then Disgaea 4 comes out this summer, then Diablo 3 comes out at some point... Blame Blizzard, not me lol.

You know, there's a decent number of people who've downloaded the latest version at this point, all things (*cough* Civ5 *cough*) considered; would it kill you guys to keep posting thoughts, comments, ideas, and especially just how your games with it are going?

Perhaps even... *gasp*... some people besides the regular few who post here a lot?! Not that I don't wanna hear from you guys too of course.

Now, if it actually would kill you to post, that's fine, and I certainly don't want to put anyone's lives in jeopardy. (Except in-game... mwa ha ha.) But the other subforums have so much activity... do you really want to let them win? Where's your forum spirit? Hmm... Maybe I should print some MongooseMod t-shirts.

Still having fun with it, although I might be considered on of the regular posters in your forum...lol.

Wow, that was quick. :)

Still having fun with it, although I might be considered on of the regular posters in your forum...lol.

Indeed thou art, but as I hath stated previously, that is NOT! ... a problem.

And yet, a giant void doth fill thy post. Details, man; details! Perchance even screenshots! (Oh, the horror.) Aye... write like your video-gaming soul depends on it. Flood the forum with your mod experiences that cut a blazing path through the fabric of reality itself!

... Or don't, that's fine too.

Well....still a bit too early to be much of a detail man right now( I'm central time...lol), but I've always been a big fan of your mod, pretty much played it since your early version, and as always appreciate the work you put into it, still haven't recovered from the Great Recession( meaning I haven't had any luck finding new work yet after the plant I worked at closed), so even if I wanted it I couldn't afford Civ 5 right now anyways, so I really do value the work that you and other modders do to keep 4 fresh and playable. No real complaints as far as the latest version, you take great care with your work I think, so haven't had any real problems with it.

lol... Thanks... I kinda meant details about your actual Civ4/MM games though. What map scripts you're using, what difficulty levels, what game options, how many players, who killed who most recently, how you most owned or got owned lately, that sort of thing. :D

Sorry to hear about your situation btw... But don't worry about not having Civ5. The whole reason I haven't touched modding with it, and probably never will, is b/c it's a terrible game, and probably beyond saving with mods.

Woohoo, (finally) passed 100 downloads on the current version! Given the overall lack of interest in Civ4 these days that seems pretty respectable, though it could also be terrible, I don't really know. ;)

You guys sure aren't stampeding each other to death to be the first ones to recount your glorious experiences with the mod on here, though. I reiterate my previous threat: don't make me make MongooseMod t-shirts and start offering them as free rewards to those who keep their lord and master inspired with forum posts, cuz I will do it...

Okay maybe not. But don't try your luck! :p

On second thought, it's admittedly possible to get Space Exploration much sooner than the other Future Era techs that unlock military units. I'm thinking of adding some additional tech requirements to either the Dimensional Gate, or the Jedi and Sith units themselves (which would allow the requirements to be different, though that would make less sense). I don't want to add them to the tech itself b/c unlocking the Space Elevator is fine where it is. (Though NanoTech really should be required for the elevator realistically... hrm.)

It also occurs to me just now that SaibotLieh's semi-recent flying female sword ninja cyborg unit would make a good upgrade for the Mercenary. Much as I hate to see Rios and Salem cut out of the endgame military picture, strengths of like, I dunno, 28 and 32 would be a lot better than the current 30 which I had deliberately set too high for the Modern Era so they'd still be viable in the Future Era.

Blarg. I guess I should try to get another version out before Diablo 3 comes out and I disappear off the face of the planet for 10 years as a result, but I still need Fuyu to do his civic thing. It would help motivation-wise if you guys weren't all completely silent... just saying. ;)

p.s. - SGU has been really good since the second half of the second season started a few weeks ago, which is unexpected... I'm actually starting to feel sad it got cancelled now. Also, can't wait for Doctor Who Series 6 on bluray though it's a long ways off still, sigh.

James here is the latest victim to be sucked up by the Mongoose Soul Vacuum 3000™. I convinced him to try the mod with my formidable psychic powah, then asked him what he thought a few days later by PM, and got a PM back in response. Go phigure. So in a brilliant maneuver to revitalize this hibernating subforum for a few days, I am, with permission, transmogrifying the conversation into a post using my reply to his reply, thusforthly:

Hey Monghoose,

I did manage to try your mod in singleplayer, not multiplayer yet. Overall, I like it.

Presentation is fantastic. I think the new terrain looks excellent, the UI is amazing to look at, and each menu is fantastic with the graphics. I also really like all the new terrain features and thinks they make the game a bit more interesting.

The UI graphics are primarily taken from Planetfall so I really can't claim most of the credit, though the main silver theme color and purple highlight color, the choice of how to use Planetfall's background images, and conversion of one vanilla background image from yellow to gray (the papyrus/crumpled paper of the tech tree), were my doing, heh.

Also, the expanded intro looks great, sounds great, and is just fantastic to look at. It lets me know what I'm playing and whats in it better then most other mods and proves this was a labor of love.

Disclaimer: Just to be extra clear, where the purple text in the top left of the title screen names other big full mods, that does not mean I fully incorporated those; it means I got enough ideas and/or content from them to warrant crediting them prominently on the title screen. MM is not a full combination of RoM and LoR, for example; there was some confusion about that at one point in the past. ;)

Thanks though. I really do love my title screen, and am very happy to see it appreciated. :)

OH! And finally someone who likes my title music, too! *hugs*

I'm enjoying the expanded tech tree with the Caveman techs and future techs. Seems to be many new buildings and units to give the game a bit more variety.

Yeah I'm quite happy with those too. My Prehistoric Era is based on the Stone Age Mod by TheTriturador, but has been modified and simplified to serve more as an integrated "prequel" phase to the game. Some people have expressed their desire to see the time it takes to progress through the Stone Age lengthened to make it a more prominent part of the game, but the problem with that is the Tribe unit, basically. There is already a tradeoff between advanced tech which forces early Settler use, and faster, more efficient early expansion by sticking with Tribes that also requires staying technologically backward. This has been carefully balanced already, and I don't think a longer era will work very well.

Still, Avain did make a much more in-depth Prehistoric Era for his Quot Capita mod after being inspired by my version (he said so in his credits! *hugs Avain*), and I have yet to get around to really checking it out in detail, so maybe I could figure something out, who knows. I did at least steal his awesome Neanderthal unit (replacing the Karate Werewolf) in version 3.6, so there's that. ;)

My Future Era was a little bit based on the vanilla Next War mod, obviously, and on bits and pieces here and there from other big mods, but it is more original than my Stone Age is. Especially how most of the futuristic units were implemented - those were all pretty original names, stats, requirements, etc except the Stealth Tank, which I still haven't gotten to test in a real game yet so I'm really hoping the AIs know how to use land stealth properly, heh.

However, some of them confuse me. For example, what is a Ranger or Ancient King or Valkyrari or Paladin? They just don't seem to fit in with Civilization IV (better with FFH) very well. I think you might be better off implementing "Hero" units or "Civilization Leader"s or something. I like how you have these "Legendary" units to help protect specific locations or the at the beginning but these just feel off to me. That being said, I think its a neat idea if implemented a little better.

The Paladin is a generic, non-religious version of a Christian "Knight Templar", which was a real heavy-infantry unit used extensively in the Crusades. The term "paladin" also has historical relevance, so I don't feel bad about this one.

The Ancient King is a direct, un-subtle reference to Conan. The unit was modeled after Schwarzeneggar from the Conan movies himself (which is stated in the unit's original thread), so I just took the idea a bit further. It fits in the game pretty nicely if you ask me. :p

An elite woodsman unit put to military use is not something that was ever done, really, but it didn't seem too unrealistic to me, so I threw it in. The Archery tech was awfully thin with just one thing in it before (the Archer unit), and I had cool different stats to give a unit like the Ranger, so I did.

The Valkyrie was something I just had to add simply b/c of how much I loved the unit model itself when SaibotLieh posted it. This one's completely a fantasy unit, sure, but I allow a bit of that here and there for fun and flavor. I dunno, personal decision. :p And again, it allows for really neat stats on the unit lol.

Someone did suggest adding a game option to disable these "questionable" units btw. The idea was annoying to me at first, but I'm considering it now, heh.

Also, the Flaming Pig... idk about that one, lol.

This was a real unit, historically. Ancient armies would literally take a herd of pigs, douse them in oil, set them on fire, and let them charge into an enemy line. They spooked all but the best-trained horses, and were especially effective at making enemy war elephants turn and stampede their own troops. The Romans in particular used flaming pigs extensively. Look it up on Wikipedia, or read the thread in the Unit Graphics forum. :)

Lastly, Some civilizations seem to need more flavor graphics (ie. Romans) as nations sometimes look a lot alike and don't feel unique.

The cities are already pretty heavily distinctified with the Cultural Citystyles mod that is in widespread standard use... So I assume you're talking about the units? Admittedly yeah, adding in something like Varietas Delectat or one of the other mods that makes every unit look different for every civilization is something I could do. I tend to lean more towards the vanilla game's approach with them all looking the same just for simplicity (plus vanilla did mix them up a fair bit in Warlords), and I actually already have added different unit graphics a lot in the modern eras where it's vehicles and things which I know a lot more about and feel comfortable adding. But yes, the ancient units could probably use some more work in this area.

I like the selection of leaders and especially like the personalities being displayed in the Sevopedia. I don't know how much has been changed here but its just fun to look at the data. Furthermore, I don't really mind the leaders changing... it's kinda like the end of a dynasty or an election spicing things up.

I pretty much left the numerical stats alone for vanilla leaders, giving custom values only to the new leaders the mod adds. (I changed things like the traits, favorite religions and favorite civics around a bit on the vanilla leaders though, as-needed to support the mod's additional content and for improved historical accuracy.)

Also, some of the most important stats are actually not displayed there (like the ones BBAI added), and some of the stats that are displayed there are not important, or could be combined, or whatever. That display was part of my "update/rewrite the Sevopedia for BtS" project back in 2007, and I have a better understanding of all the leader stats and what they do now than I did then, heh.

You don't see those stats displayed in other mods b/c other people who took my Sevopedia release and used it tended to customize it a bit. Those stats were deemed ugly and "too much information" and just unnecessary to show, that sort of thing, so they took them out. They also didn't like the smaller leaderhead, which I had to compress to make room for the stats on the page. I am planning to make a Sevopedia update at some point to try and reclaim my ownership of the project with some cool new ideas, but it's a low priority heh.

Anyways, I'm going to try to get a MP game with a friend soon and look forward to following this mod's development. Keep up the good work Mongoose!

Well MM's been in development off-and-on since early 2006 when Civ4 first came out, but it wasn't really anywhere near complete or publically presentable at a professional quality level til last summer with version 3.5 (which still had some major areas of weakness), so you didn't really miss too much. ;) Right now development is paused since 3.6.1 is an extremely stable, complete and happy release, and since ideally I need Fuyu to write his planned civic restriction code first before I post another version. But we'll see. There will definitely be more updates in the future, don't worry.

And thanks for the positive review, dood... really appreciate it! :) :) :)

Just posting a quick update on something. I never had a Sandworm spawn near me in an actual game until now (mainly b/c I hadn't played the game for a while due to the person I play with not being available), so the creature was still unplaytested, really. I had gleefully watched the global alerts come in as worms went to town on AI units and cities before, but that was about it. I knew worms could attack cities when I added them in v3.6, and I knew that might be a problem, but I hadn't actually had to deal with one myself until now. And if you have a moderate-size desert area in your empire, a Sandworm can be devastating. Even more devastating than intended, I mean. ;)

The worm itself isn't really the problem; it's the combination with normal barbarians. There's not much point giving the creature Cannot Capture Cities when its friend barbs can still capture, which was the problem I didn't foresee. The intent was simply to force you to keep your desert cities empty, use ships to guard them from the water if necessary, and pay the happiness penalties for no garrison... nothing more.

So, apologies for that oversight. I have changed the Sandworm attribute to "Cannot Attack Cities", and am probably going to kick it up to 2 speed to compensate. This, and a dozen or so other XML tweaks, officially mark the beginning of v3.6.2 development, though there's a lot of hard SDK programming planned for this version and I'm still playing PS3 games a lot at the moment, so it's not going to ramp up to a 24/7 effort for a while yet. The hard deadline for finishing it will obviously be Diablo 3 coming out this fall or winter, so yeah. :)

Sorry for the delay in posting, got caught up in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 with co-workers and work. Also, had to finally finish the Matt Smith season of the Doctor ;)

Someone did suggest adding a game option to disable these "questionable" units btw. The idea was annoying to me at first, but I'm considering it now, heh.
This isn't too bad of an idea. Another thing you could maybe do is make them a seperate or unique research tech path where they're harder to achieve but grant some pretty unique units and bonuses.



This was a real unit, historically. Ancient armies would literally take a herd of pigs, douse them in oil, set them on fire, and let them charge into an enemy line. They spooked all but the best-trained horses, and were especially effective at making enemy war elephants turn and stampede their own troops. The Romans in particular used flaming pigs extensively. Look it up on Wikipedia, or read the thread in the Unit Graphics forum. :)
Yeah, I think I remember these from one of the Total War games or mods.


You don't see those stats displayed in other mods b/c other people who took my Sevopedia release and used it tended to customize it a bit. Those stats were deemed ugly and "too much information" and just unnecessary to show, that sort of thing, so they took them out. They also didn't like the smaller leaderhead, which I had to compress to make room for the stats on the page. I am planning to make a Sevopedia update at some point to try and reclaim my ownership of the project with some cool new ideas, but it's a low priority heh.
Personally, I don't really mind the smaller leaderhead.


And thanks for the positive review, dood... really appreciate it! :) :) :)
No problem, it always fun playing Civ a new way. Good luck with development!

Just a quick post to say I'm still here. This thread is apparently my official blog until further notice, hehe.

My parents were visiting the last 3 weeks and I've been busier than I thought possible: added "window treatments" to the windows here finally (side curtains, ties, rods, scarfs), switched to a new chiropracter I like a lot better, got started selling my old junk on amazon finally (which is better than eBay in some ways and worse in others), found a bunch of cool jewelry items I just had to have (mostly video-game-related, all cheap cept for one, and mostly for display rather than to wear, don't worry), got some new clothes (mostly shirts since I'm losing weight still and new shorts wouldn't fit later), continued to lose weight as I just mentioned (woohoo), managed to get out to practice my unremarkable tennis game almost every two days, made some more progress in Disgaea 3 (must finish for good before Disgaea 4 comes out in September!), inched closer to Diablo 3 coming out (this is a freebie since all you have to do is somehow get through time, mwa ha ha), AND got a bunch of new big and small lamps for the condo (which it badly needed).

Version 3.6.2 is still going to happen, and the quick/easy parts have already happened locally. I may even reorganize this subforum to make better use of the space, since hardly anyone is bothering to post here as it is... gotta do somethin'. :) I'm still gonna be wicked-busy for a couple more weeks first though (sorry).

And thanks to the 6 people who just downloaded the mod today - the counter had been stalled at 1222 for a while, and I'm daring to hope this means a wonderful new multiplayer game is commencing! Though I could easily be wrong!

Just saying I'm still here and playing 3.6.1

Hard to find a modder so keen and invested in their mods. For your enthusiasm and hard work in perfecting this, thank you!

Reading up above... MAN I have come to hate sandworms. Had two spawn just near my empire in the early and they acted as a cage... by the time I had the resources to eliminate them, the other civs were too far ahead.

Ok.. this may mean I suck, rather than the sandworms being the problem.

Just saying I'm still here and playing 3.6.1

Thanks dood, appreciate it. :)

Ok.. this may mean I suck, rather than the sandworms being the problem.

I doubt it was your fault, and even if it was, like I said above, they weren't meant to be quite this devastating. Getting both of them together is very bad luck too of course. What map size were you using? Just curious. I might also reduce the worm limit from 2 to 1 on smaller maps, that's a good idea too. :)

Thanks for your effort in making the mod.
I am playing it in MP with 2 others and no OOS up to now which is great compared to some other mods we tried.

Some comments (more some time later):
We currently play with PW Mongoose map script on standard map size with quick speed.
The advance in years seems to be too fast. We were in a year past 1900 still with medieval technology (somewhere around turn 170 or so). Or maybe we were just bad in getting a good economy going early.

There is nearly no unit that does not require copper or iron (at least in the ages we got to yet) and those resources are not necessarily anywhere closeby.

2 and more turns of anarchy are quite a high price to pay for civic changes on quick speed. In addition to their gold cost I don't think the early civics are worth it. Is it possible to cut the anarchy time on quick speed by 2?

Thanks for posting dood, and thanks for the comments; this sort of info is often very helpful. :)

The advance in years seems to be too fast. We were in a year past 1900 still with medieval technology (somewhere around turn 170 or so). Or maybe we were just bad in getting a good economy going early.

The current year progression sequence has only been heavily tested on Eternal speed, so it could easily be my fault and not yours. ;) I tried to create sequences for the faster speeds based on my Eternal year progression, but it's very possible the tech speeds aren't synced up and that the problem has more to do with that. I dunno, so I'll try to do some more complex calculations to get a better idea of what's going on and see if I can't improve things.

There is nearly no unit that does not require copper or iron (at least in the ages we got to yet) and those resources are not necessarily anywhere closeby.

Isn't it great? Strategic resources that actually matter!!! (I always felt they were too easy to come by in vanilla, since I had no trouble getting almost all of them every game pretty effortlessly. Now you might actually have to fight wars to gain control of them!)

It is not really the case though that the units require copper and iron more than they do in the vanilla game: none of my Stone Age units do, the special Valkyrie and Ranger units don't, Archers and Longbows still don't, Bronze Spears/Axes and Iron Swordsmen still do which is normal, Crossbows still do, Maces can still use either one as in vanilla, I added Pallies, yeah, but they're just an extension of the Swordsman class really, Cats/Trebs/Rams still don't use anything, and after that you're on to Sulphur, so I don't really understand what you mean, heh.

2 and more turns of anarchy are quite a high price to pay for civic changes on quick speed. In addition to their gold cost I don't think the early civics are worth it. Is it possible to cut the anarchy time on quick speed by 2?

I don't remember the numbers exactly off-hand atm, but anarchy durations are drastically reduced in MM versus in the vanilla game. I can double-check the situation on Quick speed specifically, but I think you'll find if you try the same thing without a mod running it'll be even worse. (And if not, I made a mistake. ;))

Also, you have to keep in mind that the primary ability of the Spiritual leader trait is to remove anarchy, and there's always the Cristo Redentor later on. There has to be some pain to anarchy or else these things don't have enough value in removing it. :) I know what you mean though, and I do realize 2 turns is a much higher percentage of the total turn count on Quick than it is on Eternal. It's not meant to be crippling - I always thought the vanilla anarchy times were too high. I'll take a look when I have time.

I don't remember the numbers exactly off-hand atm, but anarchy durations are drastically reduced in MM versus in the vanilla game. I can double-check the situation on Quick speed specifically, but I think you'll find if you try the same thing without a mod running it'll be even worse. (And if not, I made a mistake. ;))

Also, you have to keep in mind that the primary ability of the Spiritual leader trait is to remove anarchy, and there's always the Cristo Redentor later on. There has to be some pain to anarchy or else these things don't have enough value in removing it. :) I know what you mean though, and I do realize 2 turns is a much higher percentage of the total turn count on Quick than it is on Eternal. It's not meant to be crippling - I always thought the vanilla anarchy times were too high. I'll take a look when I have time.
Before playing this mod we played lots of BtS vanilla games and the anarchy time on quick is 1 turn of anarchy per 2 civic changes.
There needs to be pain in anarchy. It needs to be balanced towards the gain you get from civics though. Who would pay 2 turns of anarchy on quick plus a gold price per turn for +1 health in all cities?

Isn't it great? Strategic resources that actually matter!!! (I always felt they were too easy to come by in vanilla, since I had no trouble getting almost all of them every game pretty effortlessly. Now you might actually have to fight wars to gain control of them!)

It is not really the case though that the units require copper and iron more than they do in the vanilla game: none of my Stone Age units do, the special Valkyrie and Ranger units don't, Archers and Longbows still don't, Bronze Spears/Axes and Iron Swordsmen still do which is normal, Crossbows still do, Maces can still use either one as in vanilla, I added Pallies, yeah, but they're just an extension of the Swordsman class really, Cats/Trebs/Rams still don't use anything, and after that you're on to Sulphur, so I don't really understand what you mean, heh.
I fully agree that it is good that they matter. The difference between having and not having is a bit too large though.
The problem I had was that the middle of a larger continent was wilderness. One other player on the far side. That produced a constant stream of barbarians moving towards our cities (around 2 reaching me per turn). Defense was quite ok with archers but only in cities. There was no bronze nearby and the iron was quite a bit away. Apart from the one Valkyrie I had no better unit for a long time while the barbarians upgraded to iron units. Strength 6 against strength 3 it is quite hard to push the barbarians far enough back to get the iron resource. I only got it done when I got war elephants as I happened to have ivory.
What I miss is one offensive unit not requiring resources somewhere past the stone age. Even if it is weaker.
Don't get me wrong. It was an interesting experience but if there would have been another player with either bronze or iron nearby he could have crushed me easily.
Btw, macemen in vanilla BtS do not require a resource.

More comments:
The change in costs at the end of the stone age is quite drastic. That might work better with some smoothing. I especially consider the tribe unit as too cheap. It has no downside compared to the settler unit except that you can have only one at a time but then it is not too often that you have more than one settler at a time.

Mushrooms and Corals play a big role in early economy/city growth. If you have some near your starting point or not can easily double your early growth. Land without forest is rare at the start with PW Mongoose so it is not common that you have 3 food land without having mushrooms and you can also build cities directly on mushrooms without losing the advantage. Additional cities are expensive at the start as with all that forest land that gives commerce is rare except for corals which give a major amount of commerce. While corals only give 1 food, their commerce more than makes up for it.
So while there are lots of hammers at the start, there is little food and commerce which means a civilization which starts near them has a big starting advantage over one which does not. This is amplified by the need to build improvements with gold as soon as you reach the tech to build workers (although you can delay it a bit and build at least lumberyards with gatherers).
I'd suggest adding the possibility to convert hammers to gold at a percentage to a stone age tech (similar to meager wealth and the like in some other mods).

Alright, I probably screwed something up in the anarchy length scaling for other game speeds then. Like I said, I'll take a look. :)

The healthcare civics are not necessarily meant to be used early on. They're provided as an extra way to get health empire-wide if you ever need it at any point in the game, with costs that scale based on how much health you want to buy. They just happen to unlock more-or-less in sequential order, with the earliest being available quite early. (There's a reason this is the only civic category with no great wonder that unlocks the whole group - it's a supplemental category only. ;))

As to the other early civics sucking, well, I know from my games that the early-version-of-Vassalage one is definitely useful as-is. The religion one, eh, that was more me trying to come up with clever ideas for bonuses so I could include another civic, and it could probably stand to be buffed. And I think those were about it for new early ones I added. Also please be aware I'm not necessarily happy with the civics yet, and am hoping to overhaul the whole system at some point, but they're working fine for now and it's not an easy system to overhaul, heh.

I understand the pain you had on copper and iron, but this is really not something I'm interested in changing. They don't get defense bonuses, but Catapults were actually made more combat-worthy to help out with this sort of thing, and the mounted units also work great... usually you can get horses if you don't have the metals. You can also try to trade for them. The large wilderness would be more an issue with the mapscript (though it produces a wide variety of areas and you can start in all kinds of situations), and I still have to balance around other map generators too. :)

The cost bump at the end of Prehistoric was intentional. The whole Stone Age era was intended, in my version anyway, to be a relatively-quick "prequel" to the main game. Other mods have made it more substantial, and time-consuming to get through, but I wanted it to be fairly fast (circa 100 - out of 1800 I think? - turns on Eternal), then jump into the normal gameplay. Also, I did give the first Ancient tech column an intermediate set of prices to bridge the two, as it is.

I agree the mushroom/food thing might be problematic, and I can probably do what you're asking for, yeah. :) Though the much lower base happiness allowance does make growth beyond size 3-4 impractical, unless you're Charismatic, until you get well into the Ancient era and can start harvesting luxuries... This was my attempt to offset the problem, heh.

As far as Tribes go, I'd be willing to increase their cost some, but I've found there are basically two strategies you can follow early on, and that it works out really nicely:

1) Rush straight to Settlers, try to get the free tech for being first to Sedentary, maybe get the Jingu wonder, maybe get an early lead on building Stonehenge and the Oracle, and found two of the earliest religions which is also a big advantage, BUT be stuck with fewer cities due to the higher cost of Settlers (typically I have 3-4 cities when I'm well into Ancient doing it this way, and only 5-6 at a similar point in time the other way, even with Tribes as cheap as they are).

OR, 2), you can get almost every tech that can be gotten without getting Sedentary in order to maximize the time you have with Tribes being available, before finally moving on. This approach gets you a couple more cities, but you find yourself way behind in tech, tile improvements, wonders, and religions, and it takes a while to catch back up.

My own heavy playtesting, admittedly only on Eternal speed, has shown these two strategies to be roughly equal and balanced as things currently are, but I'm always open to feedback. :) (I do quickly start making Settlers in at least two cities simultaneously when I get them btw, til I'm up to 8-10 cities usually, especially when doing strategy 1.)

Alright, I probably screwed something up in the anarchy length scaling for other game speeds then. Like I said, I'll take a look. :)

The healthcare civics are not necessarily meant to be used early on. They're provided as an extra way to get health empire-wide if you ever need it at any point in the game, with costs that scale based on how much health you want to buy. They just happen to unlock more-or-less in sequential order, with the earliest being available quite early. (There's a reason this is the only civic category with no great wonder that unlocks the whole group - it's a supplemental category only. ;))

As to the other early civics sucking, well, I know from my games that the early-version-of-Vassalage one is definitely useful as-is. The religion one, eh, that was more me trying to come up with clever ideas for bonuses so I could include another civic, and it could probably stand to be buffed. And I think those were about it for new early ones I added. Also please be aware I'm not necessarily happy with the civics yet, and am hoping to overhaul the whole system at some point, but they're working fine for now and it's not an easy system to overhaul, heh.
With the anarchy time lower they should be fine. At least that also means there is a trade off and choice which is good.
While we are talking about civics, most of the unlockers are fine but the silk road might be overpowered. The effect of the late game trade civics is big. Like one game I got environmentalism early with that wonder and went for an economy with lots of forest preserves. That means you can get quite huge cities with all the happiness and health from the civic. It is interesting in a way but I am not sure if that is balanced.

I understand the pain you had on copper and iron, but this is really not something I'm interested in changing. They don't get defense bonuses, but Catapults were actually made more combat-worthy to help out with this sort of thing, and the mounted units also work great... usually you can get horses if you don't have the metals. You can also try to trade for them. The large wilderness would be more an issue with the mapscript (though it produces a wide variety of areas and you can start in all kinds of situations), and I still have to balance around other map generators too. :)
Unfortunately I did not have horses either. But yes, it is kind of interested that you have to hunt for those resources early.
Btw, I would love an option to have barbarian spawning rates somewhere in between vanilla and your new difficulty settings. Or maybe one that still spawns barbarians in wilderness areas but does not beeline them to the next cities unless they are within a certain distance.

The cost bump at the end of Prehistoric was intentional. The whole Stone Age era was intended, in my version anyway, to be a relatively-quick "prequel" to the main game. Other mods have made it more substantial, and time-consuming to get through, but I wanted it to be fairly fast (circa 100 - out of 1800 I think? - turns on Eternal), then jump into the normal gameplay. Also, I did give the first Ancient tech column an intermediate set of prices to bridge the two, as it is.
I guess it feels less abrupt on eternal speed. On quick the stone age is over quite fast and you usually still research one technology per turn towards its end. But then that is why it is "quick" :)

My own heavy playtesting, admittedly only on Eternal speed, has shown these two strategies to be roughly equal and balanced as things currently are, but I'm always open to feedback. :) (I do quickly start making Settlers in at least two cities simultaneously when I get them btw, til I'm up to 8-10 cities usually, especially when doing strategy 1.)
How do you get your economy running early? I seem to lack the commerce to run more than 4 cities until I can both remove forest and build some cottages (or build the colossus) unless I have a lot of corals or some high commerce resources.

While we are talking about civics, most of the unlockers are fine but the silk road might be overpowered.

Oh, it's definitely overpowered lol. Been saying I was worried about that one for a while now in this thread lol. I'm going to do something about it, just haven't decided what yet. :)

Btw, I would love an option to have barbarian spawning rates somewhere in between vanilla and your new difficulty settings. Or maybe one that still spawns barbarians in wilderness areas but does not beeline them to the next cities unless they are within a certain distance.

You know, you could just use the normal difficulty settings in that case... They've been tweaked as needed to support the mod, and they're there as legitimate options; I just added mine to provide more options. :)

The way the barb aggro works is the same as a normal AI player: if the Barbarian Empire as a whole can see a target (from vision from any barb unit), then all barbs know about it (including the animals and sea monsters, who ignore player cities but still target player units).

Barb units don't operate independently and autonomously, in other words; they're the army of a single civilization that is subject to different empire-level rules than normal. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to change this though actually... hmm. Interesting idea for a new game option. ;) (Though I wouldn't use it myself... we always play with the Raging Barbs option on for maximum carnage lol.)

How do you get your economy running early? I seem to lack the commerce to run more than 4 cities until I can both remove forest and build some cottages (or build the colossus) unless I have a lot of corals or some high commerce resources.

I place cities based on the commerce they can bring in early on... the better early-commerce ones get priority for being founded first, unless there's a resource I urgently need (like Stone). I try to put as many cities on rivers as possible. Corals are wonderful, yes, but often not in starting-border range, and even without them there's usually a good lake or two nearby. Ordinary coastal cities work too if you just put all the workers on Coast tiles. They can't get anything built that way, but it keeps the empire commerce high enough til it's on its feet so the coastal cities can then switch to higher food and hammer tiles. ... That's what I do, anyway.

You know, you could just use the normal difficulty settings in that case... They've been tweaked as needed to support the mod, and they're there as legitimate options; I just added mine to provide more options. :)

The way the barb aggro works is the same as a normal AI player: if the Barbarian Empire as a whole can see a target (from vision from any barb unit), then all barbs know about it (including the animals and sea monsters, who ignore player cities but still target player units).

Barb units don't operate independently and autonomously, in other words; they're the army of a single civilization that is subject to different empire-level rules than normal. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to change this though actually... hmm. Interesting idea for a new game option. ;) (Though I wouldn't use it myself... we always play with the Raging Barbs option on for maximum carnage lol.)
We played with normal difficulty settings next but I got next to no barbs then. Probably because there was also no large wilderness on that continent. It was boring in comparison. So I prefer your settings with maybe some tweak setting to prevent large wilderness parts to amplify the beeline quite that much.

We played with normal difficulty settings next but I got next to no barbs then. Probably because there was also no large wilderness on that continent. It was boring in comparison. So I prefer your settings with maybe some tweak setting to prevent large wilderness parts to amplify the beeline quite that much.

Yep, that's standard vanilla barb spawning rules: they try to get up to the target total number worldwide each turn, and can spawn in any tiles that no players have active vision of to try and achieve that. MM actually has some of the normal spawn restrictions removed; in vanilla (and in other mods), they also can't spawn near other barb units (because barb vision itself counted as active sight), and there was something else too I removed, I forget atm.

Anyway, large wilderness has to do with the mapscript, and its placements of player starting locations. Because large jungles and deserts have lower desirability values (among many other complicated factors in the starting location code), players can frequently be placed in ways that aren't distributed evenly geographically, and this can create large wildernesses.

I'm willing to consider modifying the barb spawn rules, but I don't see any good alternative solutions. If active vision is supposed to block it, then you have to respect all players equally and say anyone's active vision blocks them from spawning. And if you do that, you're stuck with random levels of barbs each game depending on player placement (which is really, really complicated and takes dozens of different things into consideration, believe it or not, heh).

That random geographical level is then modified by the target density value in the difficulty settings, and by things like the Raging Barbs option, but those are just scale factors; 400% of 5% is still only 20%. :)

So like I said, I'm open to suggestions if you want to propose a way to manage large wilderness, and lack thereof, but I don't see how without eliminating the active vision restriction (which I think a lot of people would find unsettling in-game). You'd basically have to say they're allowed to spawn anywhere that's not within x tiles of a city, or something. That would even out the spawns globally, but it would also keep them coming, from land, for the whole game. (The idea in MM was that they switch over to naval warfare, and drop raiding parties for land assaults, later on heh.)

Edit - I suppose you could just count the barb units on each landmass and pick the lowest one on each successive spawn, rather than picking a landmass randomly (by picking a tile randomly, so the larger landmasses get picked more often). I'm not so sure this is a good idea though... variety in the player experience is a good thing (low barbs means freedom to put lots of tile improvements up early), and conceptually, large unexplored, uncivilized wilderness really should result in large barbarian hordes. Just saying. :p

Come to think of it, it's also a consequence of my removing barb sight as a blocker of barb spawns. With that rule in place, once a fogged area fills up with barbs to a sufficient extent, they're forced to spawn in smaller fogged areas elsewhere that aren't as filled up yet.

The problem is the whole reason I made that change in the first place: the rule also prevents barbs from getting anywhere near the density levels they're supposed to (both in a single wilderness and worldwide) with the custom difficulty and Raging Barbs settings, which we wanted for how fun they are, heh.

It might be possible to reinstate a more limited version of the rule, with barb sight blocking but not by as much (say only one tile out in all cases, or even just not on the same tile), but I'd have to look into it, and like I said, I like it being proportional to wilderness size without modification anyway.

Hmm, my suggestion would be the following:
- Calculate a wildness factor for each continent from number of tiles within cultural borders, number of tiles within sight of non barbarian players and total number of tiles of the continent
- Whenever you try to spawn a barbarian, choose a random continent with wildness factor counting as relative probability
- Don't spawn right away but instead spawn into a kind of buffer/list (one for each continent). Whenever the buffer exceeds a threshold (or maybe a chance is involved) and there is a spawning spot outside of sight of both players and barbarians, spawn a horde from that buffer
- If there is no spawning spot on that continent but there are cities on that continent, have a small chance that the buffer spawns as an uprising within cultural borders (and in sight)
- The buffer decays if it exceeds a certain threshold and there is no spawning spot (meaning there is a random chance that a unit is removed from the buffer each turn) to prevent excessive buffer sizes on full continents which would spawn the moment a spawning spot gets available

I'll think about that. I might put it in as a game option rather than just changing the rules flat-out, since we like the continuous, relentless, mindless assault with Raging, too. :)

Oh I remember the other thing I was trying to remember. Doesn't actually affect barb spawns directly, it was that barbs suicidally attack immediately regardless of combat odds in MM, rather than building up to unmanageable numbers outside your cities first, THEN trying to attack, like they do normally. This was discussed a long time ago in this thread already, my argument being that I thought barbs should be zombies - weak, stupid and endless - rather than thoughtful, organized military units. I thought that should be the job of AI players' armies only, which makes barbs more fun, if a bit less realistic.

The original reason I did that was a practical one though - with the ability to spawn to their full target numbers freely in fog (no barb vision blocking other barb spawns inside the fog), if they didn't attack immediately the whole "build up to unmanageable numbers first" thing happened to a completely disastrous level that players could never survive. So I had to make them lemmings. But I like them better that way anyway. :)

Your solution would be back in the old vanilla style of barb behavior... sort of. I like it, I just hate making major overhauls to basic core vanilla rules when I don't have to. I tweak vanilla rules a lot, but I've only really had to redesign the whole system on Religion, Siege and Global Warming so far, as far as existing vanilla mechanics are concerned.

Still, it'd probably work well as an optional option. Sorry for throwing up big walls of text btw; I'm just thinking out loud, and it's all useful information. ;)

I know, I know, I know.

I've been really busy the last couple months.

... Sorry, heh.

I said I'd do the next version before Diablo 3 came out, and I'm going to, darnit! I'm hoping to get into full-time programming mode on this in another week or two, but we'll see.

If you're curious about the delay, the most recent problem has been that, for the last month I've been working full-time on getting my MGO clan going again.

Anyway, the current plan is to resume work on 3.6.2 in the next couple days. Thanks, btw, for the minor burst of MM downloads this past week, guys. :)

I like your mod and like to include the Great General Progression Bar, but can't figure out how to incorporate it into my BTS 3.19 MOD. I'm not using BUG so it seems as though the python code would be different after I compared your CvMainInterface with my own that has the non-bug Great Person Progression Bar. Any suggestion?

My GP and GG bars are similar to the BUG ones, but different in terms of size, placement, the exact text that is shown, etc. My GP bar also uses much better percent values that are based on the final result if points continue coming in as they are currently, vs normal bars that show the exact percents as they are now, which is much less useful. So there are some key differences.

As far as the Python code goes, the relevant sections are clearly marked with comment blocks. There's about 4 places in MainInterface.py that implement each one. The GG bar is the simpler of the two, and doesn't reference the functions in the helper file iirc.

It sounds like I would just need to merge the GG bar information from the MainInterface file marked and no other python files are needed. Is that right?

Hey LunarMongoose,

as announced in the other thread, here is my input for the development of Version 3.6.2. As mentioned, we are a group of 3 and we have played around 15-20 matches with Version 3.6.1 over the last half year, some matches including AIs.
So what I am writing now is based on quite a lot of practice.

I have briefly read throught the change log, and - sorry to say that :mischief: - you are too much focused on detail instead of the big picture, and you put too much emphasis on the later ages, but few games last longer than to the industrial age.

The following three things are crucial for improving the gameplay and balance:

I. Make earning trade points easier for continental cities at the start of the game. Except for some tiles beside rivers and a few resources, there is no way to earn trade points away from the coast at the start of the game. This slows down tech invention too much for players that do not have access to a good coast line. A good coast line means that there are good land tiles beside the coast, not just tundra, plain and peaks. In addition, The Great Lighthouse and the Colossus benefit Coastal Cities, but there is no wonder for continental cities.

So here is what we have changed on our own via XML (except for no. 4):
1. Advanced tools allows to Chop down forest
2. Cottages require Pottery instead of Monarchy
3. Corals only +1 trade point instead of +3
4. Avoid starting locastions in the jungle in the map script.


II. War wearines is much too high, even without the Zeus Statue. See what AIAndy has written in the other thread. He is one of our group. We did not fully understand the mechanics of war weariness, but in any case:

1. Reduce war weariness by at least 50%.
2. Reduce the effect of the Zeus Statue


III. The Silk road is too powerful. It can be built after only 40-50 turns in a fast game and allows for Communism and Environmentalism. These two civis are too powerful in the eary game, and double the changes of the player, who has built the Silk road, to win the game.

our new effect for the Silk road:
+1 Silk, +1 trade route in the city that has built it, +1 trade rout in all continental cities (easy way to implement that in XML: +1 trade rourte for all cities and -1 trade route for coastal cities).

Here are some more suggestions that you should consider. These are less crucial, though. We have implemented all of them in our own version of Mongoose Mod via XML.


1. ICBMs should require composites. Makes longer games more likely.

2. Cultural win requires 3 cities with legendary culture. Makes longer games more likely.

3. Remove or reduce terrain damage. Terrain damage is funny in the beginning, but becomes annoying over time.

4. Reduce time of anarchy. This is interconnected with the game speed, though. With fast speed, anarchy definitley takes too many turns.

5. Change the timer: More base time, less time for units.

6. Move the slinger to military training. Makes early defense more difficult. And to fight like the slinger obviously requires a lot of training...

7. Assembly line should require Electricity instead of Steam Power. This means, that one additional tech is required to build the Dreadnought. The balance coal/ Dreadnought vs. oil/Destroyer will be better than. These two ships are sometimes deceisive in the game. Assembly line also allows to build the coal plant which naturally requires the invention of Electricity.

8. Increase research costs for all stonge age technologies by ~50%. This makes some special strategies more difficult that are based on World Wonders. One such strategy for example is to go for the Great Library as quick as possible and then give birth to a lot of Great Scientists in that city. With 7-8 early Academies that can be build with the Great Scientists, the game is won.

9. We have increased maintenance costs for the number of cities, and lowered maintenance costs for colonies and distance from Palace. I don't remember the exact reason right now, though....but there was one.

10. Tribes should require higher built points, also setters should require slightly more.

11. Reduce costs for improvements by ~50%.

I. Make earning trade points easier for continental cities at the start of the game. Except for some tiles beside rivers and a few resources, there is no way to earn trade points away from the coast at the start of the game. This slows down tech invention too much for players that do not have access to a good coast line. A good coast line means that there are good land tiles beside the coast, not just tundra, plain and peaks. In addition, The Great Lighthouse and the Colossus benefit Coastal Cities, but there is no wonder for continental cities.

So here is what we have changed on our own via XML (except for no. 4):
1. Advanced tools allows to Chop down forest
2. Cottages require Pottery instead of Monarchy
3. Corals only +1 trade point instead of +3
4. Avoid starting locastions in the jungle in the map script.


II. War wearines is much too high, even without the Zeus Statue. See what AIAndy has written in the other thread. He is one of our group. We did not fully understand the mechanics of war weariness, but in any case:

1. Reduce war weariness by at least 50%.
2. Reduce the effect of the Zeus Statue


III. The Silk road is too powerful. It can be built after only 40-50 turns in a fast game and allows for Communism and Environmentalism. These two civis are too powerful in the eary game, and double the changes of the player, who has built the Silk road, to win the game.

our new effect for the Silk road:
+1 Silk, +1 trade route in the city that has built it, +1 trade rout in all continental cities (easy way to implement that in XML: +1 trade rourte for all cities and -1 trade route for coastal cities).

All these seem reasonable, I second them

1. ICBMs should require composites. Makes longer games more likely.

2. Cultural win requires 3 cities with legendary culture. Makes longer games more likely.

3. Remove or reduce terrain damage. Terrain damage is funny in the beginning, but becomes annoying over time.

4. Reduce time of anarchy. This is interconnected with the game speed, though. With fast speed, anarchy definitley takes too many turns.

5. Change the timer: More base time, less time for units.

6. Move the slinger to military training. Makes early defense more difficult. And to fight like the slinger obviously requires a lot of training...

7. Assembly line should require Electricity instead of Steam Power. This means, that one additional tech is required to build the Dreadnought. The balance coal/ Dreadnought vs. oil/Destroyer will be better than. These two ships are sometimes deceisive in the game. Assembly line also allows to build the coal plant which naturally requires the invention of Electricity.

8. Increase research costs for all stonge age technologies by ~50%. This makes some special strategies more difficult that are based on World Wonders. One such strategy for example is to go for the Great Library as quick as possible and then give birth to a lot of Great Scientists in that city. With 7-8 early Academies that can be build with the Great Scientists, the game is won.

9. We have increased maintenance costs for the number of cities, and lowered maintenance costs for colonies and distance from Palace. I don't remember the exact reason right now, though....but there was one.

10. Tribes should require higher built points, also setters should require slightly more.

11. Reduce costs for improvements by ~50%.

I agree with 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
Not sure about 7, 9 and 11 yet, haven't played that much games to see the exact balance on these
Can't really say anything about 5, I guess you guys are right but I never played multiplayer

I have briefly read throught the change log, and - sorry to say that :mischief: - you are too much focused on detail instead of the big picture, and you put too much emphasis on the later ages, but few games last longer than to the industrial age.

Details are one reason I'm a good game designer... imo other people aren't nearly focused enough on them lol. But yeah I wasn't really TRYING to put too much emphasis on the modern ages, I just kept finding stuff I knew I wanted to change there. Whereas I thought the mod's early ages were okay as-is b/c I'd played them a bunch myself, and no one else had really complained about them before.

To be clear though, when I play MM it's always cooperatively with one other person, against an army of ridiculously-hard AIs. (Which usually makes the final eras matter a lot, btw.) So that's the background I'm coming from. I was actually hoping I'd get some serious feedback from the competitive side at some point, so this is great! :)

I. Make earning trade points easier for continental cities at the start of the game.

Fully agreed, I'm just used to playing on PM with meteors, and even with very large map sizes most cities seem to wind up being coastal for every player, especially early on. There's just a lot of readily-accessable coastline everywhere, so I guess I hadn't put a ton of thought into landlocked locations since the old pre-BTS / pre-PerfectWorld days, heh.

1. Advanced tools allows to Chop down forest
2. Cottages require Pottery instead of Monarchy
3. Corals only +1 trade point instead of +3
4. Avoid starting locastions in the jungle in the map script.

1. Hmm. On a related note, I was actually considering removing the river commerce penalty for Forest and Jungle... but for Forest which is NOT on a river, I don't really see why you'd need to chop them so early.

2. I see why you want this, yeah. I just hate leaving Monarchy as such a thin tech at that point, heh.

3. I already reduced Coral to 2 commerce, which is in the 3.6.2 in-progress patch notes. :p Additionally, I reworked how they spawn to be more realistic: instead of not spawning in the tropics at all, I now have them there and at a slightly higher frequency (that's where they are in real-life), plus I have them in the temperate and polar latitudes but only in Ocean tiles and at half frequency (to simulate the "deep water coral" from real-life). The higher concentrations of Coral will thus be in the Jungle-heavy areas, which is further compensation for the, well, jungle. Hopefully this design works out for ya, but it's something new worth testing in 3.6.2.

4. I'd really prefer not to do that for multiple reasons, but what I HAVE also done already in the 3.6.2 patch notes is changed Marsh over to be a significant map presence compared to before, and changed it to being a beneficial feature. It showed up in the Jungle areas almost exclusively when I set it to be strictly rainfall-based, so I actually had to partition the PM rainfall thresholds into categories to avoid losing huge amounts of Jungle to Marsh conversion. It currently forces equal amounts of Jungle, non-Jungle Grassland, and Tundra to convert their highest rainfall tiles into Marsh.

II. War wearines is much too high, even without the Zeus Statue. See what AIAndy has written in the other thread. He is one of our group. We did not fully understand the mechanics of war weariness, but in any case:

1. Reduce war weariness by at least 50%.
2. Reduce the effect of the Zeus Statue

Okay, I can make these changes. I was kinda just going by feel in terms of setting war weariness intensity. You can actually reduce it to zero later on by running Police State plus having Burial Mounds and a Royal Tomb (or Jails and Mt. Rushmore), so I wanted it to be something that was felt if you didn't do that, but I certainly don't need it to be extremely strong. It seemed okay to us at the current level, but I never had enough data to feel extremely confident about that.

Plus we never tested the Zeus effect at all, since high-difficulty AIs don't suffer from war weariness nearly as much so there wasn't much point to using the Zeus against them. Thus I just went with my best-guess value when setting its effect. I'll be happy to rely on your testing experience here. :)

III. The Silk road is too powerful. It can be built after only 40-50 turns in a fast game and allows for Communism and Environmentalism. These two civis are too powerful in the eary game, and double the changes of the player, who has built the Silk road, to win the game.

our new effect for the Silk road:
+1 Silk, +1 trade route in the city that has built it, +1 trade rout in all continental cities (easy way to implement that in XML: +1 trade rourte for all cities and -1 trade route for coastal cities).

Yup! As you may have noticed, I've been saying how I KNOW this wonder is overpowered for many months now. I just hadn't stopped to figure out how to nerf it yet, heh. Your idea for an alternative effect is actually terrific, so I'll probably even use it. :) Hopefully I can find something to put the old effect on, maybe a new wonder, that's available a little later and doesn't have other positive effects going on at the same time.

1. ICBMs should require composites. Makes longer games more likely.

We haven't actually gotten this far in a long time, b/c we keep eventually starting over to apply new mod changes when we do try to play a full game, heh. I'll look into this proposed change.

2. Cultural win requires 3 cities with legendary culture. Makes longer games more likely.

Umm... wouldn't that make games shorter? I assume it currently requires Transcendent, which is the highest one, but I'll have to double-check.

3. Remove or reduce terrain damage. Terrain damage is funny in the beginning, but becomes annoying over time.

We love it, and the amounts are already pretty low... For the most part they just cancel out basic Friendly/Neutral/Enemy territory healing, and reduce the effects of medics. But having a unit with Medic3 in most of your troop stacks and frontier cities is bordering on overpowered I thought, and terrain damage was put in partially to counteract that. (Plus the March promotion nicely counters the counter.)

It's ALSO useful for making Raging Barbarians a bit more survivable, by having them come in wounded when they've just walked across a desert to reach you. ;) We always use the RB setting in our games, so this was a neat side-effect.

You're free to keep modding the mod on your end of course, but I don't think I want to reduce terrain damage, and I definitely don't want to remove it.

4. Reduce time of anarchy. This is interconnected with the game speed, though. With fast speed, anarchy definitley takes too many turns.

It's already substantially reduced from vanilla BTS. I mean DRASTICALLY lower. I can't lower it much further without taking it to zero b/c of how the gamespeed and worldsize modifiers work, and I need the Spiritual trait and Cristo wonder to still have enough effect to be worth using.

Anarchy times are definitely fine on Eternal speed + Huge size, but I may need to adjust the modifiers for the faster speeds... I can take a look at that.

5. Change the timer: More base time, less time for units.

I'm pretty sure I never touched this, so what you're seeing is probably a vanilla BTS setting. My friend and I don't use the timer obviously, but I can see how it'd be relevant in a competitive setting. So yeah I can change it - no problem slash don't care either way. ;)

6. Move the slinger to military training. Makes early defense more difficult. And to fight like the slinger obviously requires a lot of training...

I like this idea. I'll have to take a look later, but I'll probably do it. :)

7. Assembly line should require Electricity instead of Steam Power. This means, that one additional tech is required to build the Dreadnought. The balance coal/ Dreadnought vs. oil/Destroyer will be better than. These two ships are sometimes deceisive in the game. Assembly line also allows to build the coal plant which naturally requires the invention of Electricity.

Yep, I like this idea too... I'll take a look as soon as I can.

8. Increase research costs for all stonge age technologies by ~50%. This makes some special strategies more difficult that are based on World Wonders. One such strategy for example is to go for the Great Library as quick as possible and then give birth to a lot of Great Scientists in that city. With 7-8 early Academies that can be build with the Great Scientists, the game is won.

Interesting... I actually was going to increase the costs in the earlier Prehistoric columns a little, but nothing like +50% across the board. I'll have to think about this one.

9. We have increased maintenance costs for the number of cities, and lowered maintenance costs for colonies and distance from Palace. I don't remember the exact reason right now, though....but there was one.

Well... with the Forbidden Palace, and especially the FP plus the Versailles, the distance maintenance was never very high for us, and as it is there was always a nice sharp penalty for expanding too quickly, so I would've thought these settings were okay, but I could be talked into making this change...

10. Tribes should require higher built points, also setters should require slightly more.

Hmm. Possibly. :) One of the very next things I was going to do, but hadn't quite gotten to yet, was increase both Settler cost and effect, as well as the cost of old techs, as you move up in eras. But I probably would've left the initial Settler cost alone since he technically unlocks in Ancient... so yeah, I'll consider increasing them both slightly.

11. Reduce costs for improvements by ~50%.

Honestly I like these the way they are, but that might be another gamespeed-slash-mapsize scaling issue... For us on big long games, we typically train up to 12 Workers by late Classical, aim for 24 of them by Rennaissance, and keep them deployed in packs of 3 or 4 each. Improvements get done reasonably quickly this way, but I don't know how it'd play out on faster speeds.

Edit - Unless you mean the gold costs, which, again, are definitely fine for us, but may not be scaling very well... Actually, just going from memory, they MAY not be scaling at all, in which case yeah you'd have a problem on your settings, lol. I'll definitely check this.

Thanks for considering my ideas, Lunarmongoose :)

It's of course good that you pay much attention to details, I just wanted to highlight some things that we felt were quite imbalanced in human vs. human multiplayer games. Since you usually play versus the AI as you say, it is natural that you did not take note of these problems yet.

I'm not going to write much again, because I see that we already agree on the three things that I had highlighted to be crucial to change them (coastal vs. continental starting locations, war weariness and the Silk Road). There are different ways to improve these three points and it up to you to choose the solution that you think is best. Please read also what AIAndy had written about war weariness.


Just a few notes:

- The new proposed Silk Road effect was an idea from AIAndy actually! A new world wonder, that can be build only at a later age, and that rewards the player with the Economy civics would definitely be a good idea. At a later time it would not be so powerful any more.

- I meant of course the transcendent culture level to be required for the cultural victory, not the legendary, that was a typo. The more culture points required, the better.

- I meant to reduce gold costs for improvements, not to reduce building time. But that is actually something that AIAndy has changed on his own, I never really cared about that, I was fine with the gold costs as they were.

- leave the terrain damage as is it, then. That's not really something worth to discuss for a long time. We will probably mod our own version of Mongoose mod 3.6.2 anyway :D

-Same for the city maintenance costs: not that important to change them. I remember now why we made the chane, though. When you ease the development for continental cities versus coastal cities, like we did it, it will benefit players on large islands/continents over players located on small islands. Therefore we increased maintenance for the number of cities and decreased colony maintenance.

I'm still curious why you wanted to make Forest Chopping available sooner... Was it just to get the commerce from rivers?

-Same for the city maintenance costs: not that important to change them. I remember now why we made the chane, though. When you ease the development for continental cities versus coastal cities, like we did it, it will benefit players on large islands/continents over players located on small islands. Therefore we increased maintenance for the number of cities and decreased colony maintenance.

Ahhh... very interesting. :)

I'm still curious why you wanted to make Forest Chopping available sooner... Was it just to get the commerce from rivers?

To be able to build cottages earlier. :D The one commerce point from rivers does not help much, because sea tiles reward "coastline civilizations" with 2 commerce. And with a lighthouse, sea tiles do not slow down growth.

Btw, I'm interested in any feedback you have on the leader traits and how well they're balanced, as well as the sequence of traits each different civ has, and how balanced you think they are (factoring in unique units and buildings).

Since my last update pass on those things in one of the recent previous versions I've been quite happy with how things stand, but we've only played as a handfull of civs ourselves so I don't know anything for sure. :)

To be able to build cottages earlier. :D

Thanks... once again that makes perfect sense, lol.

7. Assembly line should require Electricity instead of Steam Power. This means, that one additional tech is required to build the Dreadnought. The balance coal/ Dreadnought vs. oil/Destroyer will be better than. These two ships are sometimes deceisive in the game. Assembly line also allows to build the coal plant which naturally requires the invention of Electricity.

Spoke too soon while going from vague memory again, heh. Realistically, you can drive assembly lines, and factories in general, with just steam power, and coal plants can be used to directly generate steam power. In the context of manufacturing, all electricity does is provide a way to extend that capability over distance. This is why it's required for Industrialism; that tech implies a widespread adoption of the industrial revolution across your whole empire.

As far as game balance goes, in looking at it closely just now I remembered how and why I set it up this way originally: you can actually rush straight to Combustion a lot faster than you can rush straight to Assembly Line already as it is, so I wouldn't want to make that worse. I also don't want to decrease the current amount of seperation between the WW1 and WW2 columns.

I could reduce the Dreadnaught to 28 str, but the idea was to keep it semi-viable against later ships even if you don't upgrade it for a long time (and as a pre-Battleship, 30 str seems reasonable, especially with the Submarine penalty...). I could also add Coal as an option to power the Destroyer, or remove it as an option from the Dreadnaught; it ended up the way it is b/c the DN is a bridge unit between ironclads and modern warships, and some of them were actually steam-powered IRL iirc.

I also like being allowed to skip BOTH military routes (Assembly and Combustion) and go down the Electricity branch first instead to try for the wonders if I'm not feeling too vulnerable... But if I make your change, that won't be as distinct an option.

Btw, I'm interested in any feedback you have on the leader traits and how well they're balanced, as well as the sequence of traits each different civ has, and how balanced you think they are (factoring in unique units and buildings).


I didn't pay that much attention to the strengh of the traits, because we usually choose random civs in the game start. I then just check what I have got and try to find a strategy that fits the traits.
Scientific and Philiosophical are quite strong, financial becomes strong when you build the Colossus so that you get 4 economy-points from any coast.

But in my opinion the traits do not need to be totally balanced, that's simply not a prerequisite for a good game in general. Of course, the differences may not become too big, but they aren't that big i would say.
For example in multiplayer games, choosing civs is another option to solve the problem that not all players are equally strong, in addition to changing difficulty level and building teams. And in the start of the game, there is always luck in the sense that not every starting location is equally good, so it doesn't matter that there is some more luck about the civ you get when you choose random. It does not make the game less fun.

Same also for unique buildings and units. The Rathaus (unique building of the Holy Roman empire) is probably the strongest building of all, but again: you needn't change that in my view.

I am not so knowledgeable about the history of industrialism.
So I guess that you are right about what you say about steam power and coal plants.
You should leave the tech tree like it was, then.
Don't remove coal as an alternative resource for building the Dreadnought, in that case oil would become to powerful as a resource.
You could instead increase the build-points of the Dreadnought slightly.

But in my opinion the traits do not need to be totally balanced, that's simply not a prerequisite for a good game in general.

Oh I completely agree they vary with stuff like where you are on the map, and can't be balanced perfectly anyway, but that doesn't mean they can't be balanced well. :p

It's more the trait combinations in specific leaders than the individual traits themselves, that are potentially overpowered. I also tried to pair stronger trait combos (like Inca with Financial / Scientific for overloaded research) with weaker unique units and/or buildings to compensate (Inca Warrior is only useful in Prehistoric which goes by quickly, and their Granary kinda sucks).

Another example is Industrial / Financial, which was ALWAYS my favorite go-to combination in the past when you could pick a single leader for the whole game. But now that's been nerfed b/c you can only use Bismarck for 3/8's of the game. :)

At one point, for example, I was concerned Prolific sucked too much b/c it was only useful later on when you had a lot of high-food tiles, so I added the city growth rate effect... That's balance tweaking. ;)

Then there's leaders like Tokugawa, Ragnar and Genghis who have double-military traits. We've never played as one of these before so I'm just assuming they work... They can definitely be trouble when playing against them early on, lol.

You could instead increase the build-points of the Dreadnought slightly.

I am very happy to make that sort of tweak, b/c I know you have a better handle on game balance for this sort of thing from playing it competitively. I just had reasons not to change the tech or resource situation here. :) I'll either increase the cost or nerf it to 28 str, or both... gotta take another look first hehe.

The REAL problem is that the Destroyer is a fully-modern ship (replaced only by the futuristic Stealth Destroyer later), whereas the DN is not. The Destroyer was handed out early in the vanilla BTS tech tree just b/c it's the weakest modern ship, and I kept that basic design. So that's why it's Oil-only and the DN isn't.