Files are now stored in the stickied FILES thread. Go find them there.

If you're new to this thread, don't feel obligated to read through the entire thing; once you get past these initial info posts, anything other than the last page or so is generally obsolete.

SUMMARY:
This two-part mod is designed to add three complete eras to the end of the existing tech tree, replacing the tiny Future Era with full Digital, Fusion, and Nanotech Eras, capped by a brief Transcendence Era. These eras contain a variety of new Units, Buildings, and Wonders, many with special abilities not found in the standard game. Despite the obvious inspiration by Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, this mod takes place on Earth, using the standard civilizations and most of the core gameplay systems of Civ5; this mod reflects how Earth would have continued to advance in the eras after the launch of the Alpha Centauri spaceship.
The mod is split into two parts: a small Balance mod designed to balance the early game and make the game more viable in the later eras, and a larger Content mod containing all of the new units, buildings, etc. for the future eras. Each is designed to be usable independently of the other, but most players will use the two together as intended.

DISCLAIMERS:
1> This mod isn't QUITE complete It plays well, but a few parts are still not finished, especially in terms of graphics. There are still a small number of unexplained freezes/crashes, mostly in later eras.
2> This is not a total conversion of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Despite the (temporary) name, it is an attempt to add a set of extensive future eras to the existing Civ 5 game, set on Earth, using many of the techs, buildings, wonders, and such of SMAC. For a variety of reasons (balance, ease of coding), some parts deviate from SMAC more than others, especially Units. This will be discussed in the appropriate sections. Anyone expecting a pure conversion of SMAC will be sorely disappointed.
3> This is more of a Content mod than a Mechanics one. I try not to add a large number of intricate new systems (and those I do are generally tied to specific Wonders or are transparent to the player). Most of the content is the result of straightforward XML coding, mostly using schema already implemented, although many of those schema were not being used by assets in the vanilla Civ5 game. No adding religions, no massive overhaul in how units upgrade, just more techs, units, and buildings added in ways that I hope will still be interesting to play.
4> It's never going to be completely "done". In most cases I went with what I knew would already work, but as I learn more LUA coding I'm continually adding more complex mechanisms and replacing placeholder effects with ones closer to my original design. It's nearing the point where everything at least does SOMETHING I'd be happy with, but there will continue to be new versions for a while to come, and we've reached the point where every version is playable.
5> It's not "pretty" yet. I need certain futuristic art assets to be created by other people (or converted from Civ 4 mods); many units still use placeholder unit graphics (typically some early-era UU), and a lot of other graphical things don't really look that great yet.

This project actually consists of three distinct mods: Crazy Spatz's Mod (a.k.a. the Balance Mod or the Long Mod, as its job is just to make the existing game not end so quickly by leveling the playing field between the AIs and the player), the Alpha Centauri mod (a.k.a. the Content mod), and a third pack containing custom maps and such. Neither mod explicitly requires the other, although I HIGHLY recommend using the Balance Mod if you wish to play the Content mod.

CRAZY SPATZ'S BALANCE MOD
a.k.a. "The Long Mod"
This is a mod designed to do one thing: make the "tough" phase of the game last longer. More specifically, this mod levels the playing field so that it becomes much harder for a competent player to pull away from the pack by the start of the Industrial Era. If you want the future eras to be feasible in a game starting in the Ancient era, this sort of change is a necessity; not so much if you decide to start the game at the Modern era and jump right in to the future techs, but it still helps significantly there.
This mod includes:
- All units now gain the Home Field Advantage promotion, which gives +10% to combat within your own territory and an additional +10% when attacking within your own territory. This makes it considerably harder to invade a foe, and makes his counterattacks much more dangerous. 10 or 20 percent doesn't sound like a huge amount, but it adds up fast. Even a scratch defensive force can use this advantage to cripple an invasion force to the point where it can't sieze more than one or two cities, under the right circumstances, especially when combined with the other alterations in this mod.
- City strength now scales faster with population and technology level, and a capital now gets +10 defense (instead of the default +2). This includes city-states as well. By the endgame, expect to see city strengths in the ~200 range. You'll now need some serious concentration of bombardment if you want to wear down a city that's invested in defensive structures. Paired with the above change, it makes invasions a lot harder, but not impossible. The Palace bonus also means that while it might be possible to sweep through a civ's outlying cities, it's VERY hard to take their capital, so more wars will end in a truce where the loser still has a city or two left.
- The amount of food needed to grow a city was 15 + 8x + x^1.5, where x = (size-1). This was increased to 20 + 10x + x^1.8, which is pretty much a 33% increase at the smaller sizes and a larger increase at large sizes. This is not as bad as it sounds, because:
- I reworked the Food Storage system to follow a smoother progression of growth, as detailed in the Buildings post.
- The base unhappiness for each city was increased; instead of 3 unhappiness and 5 for conquered cities, it's now 4 and 6 respectively. Additionally, the unhappiness due to population were increased by 20%, to 1.2 and 1.6 respectively. While this sounds like a huge increase in unhappiness, note that three of the food storage buildings above add +1 happiness. The upshot of this is that if you want your cities to grow large, you NEED happiness-boosting buildings, and there's a major penalty to adding more cities in the maximum possible density.
- All Natural Wonders provide at least +1 Happiness if they're within your borders.
- Building changes: Many buildings' stats were changed. For more detail, go down a few posts.
- The income for a trade route, in the base game, is -1.0 + 1.10*(city's pop) + 0.15*(capital's pop). This is changed to -2.0 + 1.20*(city's pop) + 0.10*(capital's pop). At low city sizes, this is a loss of 1-2 gold per city, at higher sizes it's a gain of 1-2. (Break-even point is size ~20, although this'll depend on how big your capital gets.) This helps kill the ICS strategy's effectiveness.
- Trading Posts boost like farms: +1 gold for freshwater posts at Compass, and +1 gold for non-freshwater at Economics, instead of the flat +1 at Economics in the vanilla game. It's a pure increase in gold, though.
- The Great Person-made Improvements now each get +2 in the early Renaissance Era, to make them more valuable than the other abilities that sacrifice great people, and then another +2 in the late Industrial/early Nuclear Era.
- The Influence gained from city-state bribes was reduced by ~30%, but city-states now offer more "missions" for Influence and reward you more for gifting them units. They will also no longer ask you to kill other city-states, since those missions were completed so rarely that it tended to get city-states stuck in missions that would never complete.
- A Diplomatic victory now requires significantly more votes; instead of ~50% for small maps and ~35% for huge ones, it's now more like ~67% for small maps and ~50% for huge ones.
- And a few random other things that don't really change the balance by much, like how a couple Natural Wonders had their yields boosted.

The Head Start
When starting in a game in an era after the Ancient, the vanilla game would greatly reduce the costs of all buildings, techs, etc. for the remainder of the game; this created serious imbalances once additional Eras were added, and so the system was reworked.
Now, instead of these greatly-reduced costs, all cities begin with a number of "Head Start" buildings, adding food, production, research, and gold, as well as a small amount of Happiness. The number of HS buildings in each city will steadily decrease as the game progresses, to where after 2*N technologies (where N is the number of Eras after the Ancient you started) no further bonus will be given. This creates a brief "get up to speed" period, after which the game progresses as if you'd played through from the Ancient.
Specifically, for each Era after the Ancient, you get a discount on 2 techs (so a Nuclear Era start gives discounts on the first 10 techs). For every 2 remaining discounted technologies (rounded up), all of your cities get +2 food, +1 production, and +3 research per turn, and +10% to Gold output. So an Industrial start gives 4 times the listed amounts to each per turn while working on your first two techs, x3 for the next two, and so on. And yes, techs learned through Great Scientists, Research Agreements, and such do count towards decreasing this discount.
You also gain an extra +1 Happiness to your empire for every 2 discounted techs remaining. This bonus will only appear in the capital.

Some additional balance things will periodically migrate over from the Content mod. The goal is to make this Balance mod function similarly to other balance mods out there, so that someone could, in theory, pair the Content mod with their own favorite balance mod, or conversely use this Balance mod in games having nothing to do with the future-era content.

THE ALPHA CENTAURI MOD
a.k.a. "Spatz's Mod of Alpha Centauri" (SMAC), a.k.a the "Content" mod.

WARNING: This mod is not compatible with the default Lakes, Great Plains, or Highlands map scripts, or any custom map scripts that modify the default resource allocation through AssignStartingPlots routines, such as the pre-order scenario maps. Note that modified versions of the Lakes, Great Plains, and Highlands maps are included the Player Pack file at the end of this post.
It also conflicts with Strategic View and the Quick Combat option. Do not use these options with this mod.

The rest of this thread will primarily discuss items found in the Content mod. While this mod does not absolutely require the Balance mod to work, it's highly recommended you use them together, with matching version numbers if possible. I'd also suggest using whatever other balance mods you want, although I can't guarantee compatibility. As with anything else, be warned that many other mods haven't been fully adjusted for the effects of the various official patches, so mix and match at your own risk.

Again, this is NOT an Alpha Centauri total conversion. It is a set of future eras intended to expand the core Civ5 gameplay. If you want to start in the Ancient Era you could play straight through from Warriors to Gravships, from cavemen to transcendence. While I've added the capability to start a game directly in the future eras, I highly recommend that you start no later than the beginning of the Industrial Era. Starting in the Transcendence era is a very strange experience, with a new Settler costing more than an endgame Wonder, so I wouldn't recommend it for general play. Each era will have its own quirks as a starting point, with a different combination of "free" buildings and a few multiplier changes. The biggest headache is in resources; later eras give you less time to expand before certain key resources appear on the map. A Renaissance start, for instance, gives you very little time to expand before Coal appears, and a game can easily be decided based on whether your core cities can get Factories at the right time. In an Industrial or Nuclear start, you'll see the Coal on the map already and can ensure you settle at least one early city near it, but now will have little time to expand before Oil, Aluminum, and/or Uranium appear. Conversely, starting in the Digital Era would mean that mindworms are spawning all around you almost from the start, which makes for a VERY dangerous early game.

Most units still use placeholder unit graphics. Pay close attention to the actual statistics and popup names for units, because that Ironclad sailing across the prairies is actually a city-flattening Bolo supertank, and the battleship in the forest right next to it is a Gravship. Every Wonder and building has a usable effect, although a few effects are still considered placeholders while I develop the final functionality.
As of version 1.0, this is now the main focus of my efforts, adding better (or at least more distinctive) unit models.

CREDITS
Obviously, I have drawn many inspirations from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. These include the names of technologies, various units (most notably the psionic units), Wonders, Policies, and such, but I directly use assets in two ways:
1> > The Civilopedia quotes for each technology, building, and Wonder are taken directly from SMAC with only minor changes. (Replacing "Planet" with either "Earth" or "Alpha Centauri"/"Terra Nova" as appropriate. While many of these quoted existing literature or people, most were fiction created for SMAC.)
2> The icon for each new new technology, building, Wonder, promotion, and policy is taken directly from a .pcx files supplied with SMAC. Similar images from SMAC were also used for unit flags, several unit icons, and the backdrops of the custom area in the Policies and Advanced Setup screens.

I believe that these would be allowed under Fair Use, as I am not profiting from this work and am not reducing the commercial value of the original product. I will not package the audio files or wonder movies, but anyone with a copy of SMAC would be able to integrate their own sets once the stubs are in place. At least for the audio; the Wonder movies might take longer.
In terms of other mods, I use Whys' excellent Building Resources (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395995) mod, v.4 (although I manually added some of the changes made in later versions). This is essential for the buildings and Wonders which create units of resources, and the CustomNotification system used in Whys' mod (available separately in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9899079)) was modified for my other custom notifications. I also include terraforming logic loosely based on (and greatly expanded from) rezaf's Forestation Mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=393451). Other logic is often based loosely on the code structure of outside mods but represent my own work.
In the future I intend to use art assets from a variety of other mods, primarily the Planetfall mod for Civ4, but at present these are not integrated.

Additionally, many unit icons are taken from other literature, video game artwork, movies, or occasionally a simple Google Image Search; all copyrights remain with the original holders.
Finally, the Civilopedia "history" entries for many units and buildings contain uncited references to many works of science fiction, fantasy, anime, or classical literature. This also includes an explicit reference in the name of the Bolo unit (a reference to Keith Laumer's well-known short stories). Most references aren't so blatant, although a fan of science fiction should be able to identify the majority.

ERAS and TECHNOLOGIES

Notation: if something (a tech, a unit, a building) is listed as T15, this means it is tied to a technology with a GridX value of 15. In other words, higher numbers mean higher tech levels.

I have added four new Eras to the end of the tech tree, removing the Future Era. (So effectively, three new eras.) The distribution now goes:

T0-2 is Ancient Era (12 techs, one of which you start with, Agriculture)
T3 is Classical Era (6 techs)
T4-5 is Medieval Era (11 techs)
T6-8 is Renaissance Era (14 techs)
T9-11 is Industrial Era (11 techs)
T12-14 is Modern Era (15 techs), renamed Nuclear Era in this mod. I added one tech in this era, bringing its total to 16.
In the core game, T15-17 is the Future Era (4 techs), but we toss all of that.
In this mod:
T15-17 is the Digital Era (16 techs)
T18-20 is the Fusion Era (16 techs)
T21-23 is the Nanotech Era (13 techs)
T24-25 is the Transcendence Era (2 techs, 1 of which is repeatable)

In total, I have added 48 technologies, all drawn from Alpha Centauri (although a couple had their names altered along the way). These technologies are from the core game, none of the SMAC-X "resonance" technologies were included. I also dropped the Secrets of techs, thinned out the remainder a bit, and rearranged a few things for gameplay and thematic reasons (primarily, I moved gravitonic techs earlier and nanotechnologies later). While scientifically speaking we're probably closer to nanotechnology than we are to gravitic manipulation, it was important for balance reasons to get the gravtanks into the game in the middle era. Likewise, fusion power probably isn't that far off compared to some of the other techs, but it was important to separate it a bit from the fission level of units.

As a side note, I've also drastically increased the gold costs of Research Agreements. These effectively cost about twice as much as in the vanilla game; now, you'll have to gain more techs the old-fashioned way. (Or use the KGB/Planetary Datalinks to steal them.)

The new Eras break down as follows:
The Digital Era is all about two things: making the tiles your city works more productive, and building a lot of Wonders. This causes cities to go away from the specialist-centric economy of the Nuclear Era, and grow substantially. In a lot of ways, it's analogous to the Renaissance Era in the core game. Militaries doesn't get much of a boost here; there are some decent specialty/support units, usually combining several earlier specialist units into a single type, but your core units will still be the Modern Armor and Mechanized Infantry of the Nuclear Era for most of this period.
The Fusion Era centers on Buildings in your cities that increase production, science, etc., so you'll see a substantial boost in raw power. Also, this era contains the final, powerful versions of normal units, like infantry and tanks, so this becomes a prime era to go on a conquest spree if you didn't have one before. It's very similar to the Industrial Era in feel; by the time you're done with it, your cities will be big and productive, and your army will be very powerful, especially on offense.
The Nanotech Era focuses on specialists and generating more great people. The few buildings and units in this era are incredibly powerful but incredibly expensive; nearly all of the units in this era are Titan-class units, with insane combat power but tremendous costs. If you haven't conquered your foes by the time you get here, well, it's your own fault, but that can be easily rectified. A lot of the building and Wonder effects give substantial empire-wide boosts, and nearly every type of victory can occur at this point, similar to the Modern Era in the core game.
The Transcendence Era is the end of the game. One tech containing a game-winning Project, one repeatable tech.

Okay, now for the technologies, by Tier. These are basically top-to-bottom on the tech tree, as you can see from the attached screenshots. Nearly every tier has 5 technologies in the Digital and Fusion eras, but the tree tapers off a bit as you get to the top end.

Notation: (W) means World Wonder, (N) means National Wonder, (B) means Building, (U) means Unit, (S) means Social Policy, (P) means a new promotion is available to appropriate units, (*) means a Project, (I) means a terrain improvement change or new resource, and (R) means some other rule change (like the "all units move faster on roads" bit from Machinery).

Note that any Improvement yield changes at T8-14 actually take place in the Balance mod, not the Content mod. These changes are included here only for reference.
Tier 8:
Rifling: (I) Fort: +1 gold

Tier 11:
Flight: (I) Custom House: +2 gold

NUCLEAR ERA (formerly known as the "Modern Era")
A few changes to existing techs, and one new tech
TIER 12:
Plastics: (I) Manufactory: +2 production
Penicillin: (I) can Plant Jungles
Electronics: (I) Citadel: +2 science
Mass Media: (I) Landmark: +2 gold
Atomic Theory: (I) Academy: +2 research

TIER 13:
Ecology: (I) can Plant Forests
Lasers: (I) Well: +1 gold
Nuclear Fusion: (I) Mine: +1 production if fresh water (note that the earlier Chemistry boost to Mines only applies to NON-fresh water mines.)

TIER 14:
Globalization: (U) Colony Pod, (I) City Ruins: +1 production
Stealth: (I) Offshore Platform: +1 production
also gives all naval units better visibility across land. Stealthy unmanned drones are a wonderful thing.
Advanced Ballistics: the SS Engine was moved here. Note that this means three out of the four spaceship components are in the Nuclear Era. Only the stasis chamber requires a tech from a future age. Also, Embarked units get +1 movement.

And now the new tech for this era:

Centauri Ecology
Prerequisites: No techs, but you get it when you build the spaceship, OR when the Breakout occurs. Since the project requires one component that doesn't unlock until T15, you might wonder why I'd put this tech at T14. It looks better this way, but it also means that a Digital Era start (which closely mimics a SMAC start) would give you the tech for free and disable the spaceship race.
(W) Weather Paradigm
(I) unlocks Omnicytes
(I) Farms: +1 research if fresh water

DIGITAL ERA
TIER 15 (techs cost 6800)
Gene Splicing
Prerequisites: Ecology (yes, a single T13 tech. So you COULD research it before many Nuclear Era techs.)
(W) Human Genome Project
(B) Children's Creche
(I) Plantation: +1 production

Planetary Networks
Prerequisites: Globalization and Robotics
(W) Planetary Transit System
(N) Planetary Datalinks
(S) Free Market

Industrial Economics
Prerequisites: Satellites and Robotics
(B) Energy Bank
(I) Trading Post: +1 production if no fresh water
(S) Wealth

Doctrine: Flexibility
Prerequisites: Satellites and Stealth
(N) Skunkworks
(*) SDI
(I) Fishing Boats: +1 production

Applied Physics
Prerequisites: Stealth and Advanced Ballistics
(I) Perimeter Defense
(U) Laser Infantry
(*) SS Stasis Chamber

TIER 16 (7700)
Centauri Empathy
Prerequisites: Centauri Ecology and Gene Splicing
(N) Empath Guild
(U) Mind Worms
(I) Pasture: +1 food
(P) Trance

Bioengineering
Prerequisites: Gene Splicing and Planetary Networks
(W) Longevity Vaccine
(I) Camp: +1 food
(S) Green

Social Psychology
Prerequisites: Planetary Networks
(B) Hologram Theater
(N) Citizens' Defense Force
(S) Fundamentalist

Optical Computers
Prerequisites: Industrial Economics and Doctrine: Flexibility
(W) Merchant Exchange
(N) Nethack Terminus
(S) Knowledge

Doctrine: Initiative
Prerequisites: Doctrine: Flexibility and Applied Physics
(W) Maritime Control Center
(U) Stealth Ship
(I) unlocks Dilithium

High-Energy Chemistry
Prerequisites: Applied Physics
(W) Planetary Energy Grid
(U) Plasma Artillery
(S) Power

TIER 17 (8700)
Retroviral Engineering
Prerequisites: Centauri Empathy and Bioengineering
(U) Doppelganger
(U) Golem
(P) Soporific Gas, Soporific Bombs (same effect, but for different unit types.)

Pre-Sentient Algorithms
Prerequisites: Optical Computers and Social Psychology
(N) Hunter-Seeker Algorithm
(W) Virtual World
(S) Thought Control

Neural Grafting
Prerequisites: Optical Computers and Doctrine: Initiative
(N) Command Nexus
(B) Genejack Factory
(U) Scout Powersuit

Superconductor
Prerequisites: High-Energy Chemistry and Doctrine: Initiative
(W) Supercollider
(I) Quarry: +1 production
(P) EMP

Graviton Theory
Prerequisites: High-Energy Chemistry
(U) Skimmer
(U) Vertol
(I) Mines: +1 research if no fresh water

FUSION ERA
TIER 18 (9800)
Centauri Meditation
Prerequisites: Centauri Empathy and Retroviral Engineering
(W) Xenoempathy Dome
(B) Centauri Preserve
(U) Isle of the Deep

Subatomic Alloys
Prerequisites: Retroviral Engineering and Pre-Sentient Algorithms
(B) Bioenhancement Center
(I) unlocks Neutronium
(I) Offshore Platform: +1 research

Doctrine: Air Power
Prerequisites: Pre-Sentient Algorithms and Neural Grafting
(B) Aerospace Complex
(U) Needlejet
(U) Leviathan

Mind/Machine Interface
Prerequisites: Neural Grafting and Superconductor
(W) Cyborg Factory
(U) Assault Powersuit
(S) Cybernetic

Fusion Power
Prerequisites: Graviton Theory and Superconductor
(B) Fusion Lab
(U) Planet Buster
(S) Planned

TIER 19 (11000)
Centauri Genetics
Prerequisites: Centauri Meditation
(W) Pholus Mutagen
(B) Brood Pit
(U) Chiron Locusts

Ethical Calculus
Prerequisites: Centauri Meditation
(W) Clinical Immortality
(B) Habitation Domes
(S) Eudaimonia
(*) The Ascetic Virtues

Ecological Engineering
Prerequisites: Centauri Meditation and Silksteel Alloys
(R) Labor Mechs and Formers gain the ability to Raise and Lower Hills.
(I) Lumbermill: +1 food
(R) Workers work 25% faster

Advanced Spaceflight
Prerequisites: Doctrine: Air Power, Subatomic Alloys, and Mind/Machine Interface
(W) Cloudbase Academy
(B) Sky Hydroponics Lab
(B) Orbital Power Transmitter
(U) Geosynchronous Survey Pod

Applied Gravitonics
Prerequisites: Mind/Machine Interface and Fusion Power
(B) Gravity Shield
(U) Gravtank
(U) Mobile Shield

TIER 20 (12300)
Homo Superior
Prerequisites: Centauri Genetics and Ecological Engineering
(B) Temple of Gaia
(U) Ranger
(U) Troll
(*) Utopia Project

Environmental Economics
Prerequisites: Ecological Engineering and Ethical Calculus
(B) Hybrid Forest
(I) Fishing Boat: +1 gold
(I) Camp: +1 gold

Monopole Magnets
Prerequisites: Ecological Engineering and Advanced Spaceflight
(W) Theory of Everything
(I) Magtubes: railroad movement costs are halved. The math is a bit more complex than that, but basically a unit can move 9-10 hexes per MP on railroads now.
(I) Well: +1 production

Digital Sentience
Prerequisites: Advanced Spaceflight
(W) Self-Aware Colony
(W) Network Backbone
(U) Bolo

Matter Compression
Prerequisites: Advanced Spaceflight and Applied Gravitonics
(B) Lunar Mining Station
(U) Quantum Missile
(U) Orbital Ion Cannon

Super-Tensile Solids
Prerequisites: Applied Gravitonics
(W) Space Elevator
(*) Orbital Defense Pod
(U) Labor Mech

NANOTECH ERA
TIER 21 (13700)
Centauri Psi
Prerequisites: Centauri Genetics and Homo Superior
(W) Telepathic Matrix
(U) Nessus Worm
(I) Monolith: +2 gold

Biomachinery
Prerequisites: Environmental Economics, Homo Superior, and Monopole Magnets
(W) Cloning Vats
(I) Landmark: +2 food
(R) Formers and Labor Mechs can create Deep Mines

Nanometallurgy
Prerequisites: Digital Sentience and Monopole Magnets
(N) Living Refinery
(B) Robotic Assembly Plant
(I) Manufactory: +2 production

Nanominiaturization
Prerequisites: Digital Sentience and Matter Compression
(W) Nano Factory
(B) Nanohospital
(I) Citadel: +2 production

Quantum Power
Prerequisites: Matter Compression and Super-Tensile Solids
(B) Quantum Lab
(U) Combat Mech
(I) Customs House: +2 gold

TIER 22 (15400)
Intellectual Integrity
Prerequisites: Centauri Psi and Biomachinery
(W) Universal Translator
(N) Neural Amplifier
(I) Academy +2 research

Nanomatter Editation historical note: this was the original name of the tech in SMAC, they dropped the "nano" part later on
Prerequisites: Biomachinery and Nanometallurgy
(U) Former
(R) Mine: +1 production

Nanorobotics in SMAC, was "Industrial Nanorobotics", but that felt too redundant
Prerequisites: Nanometallurgy and Nanominiaturization
(B) Nanoreplicator
(U) Orbital Death Ray

Matter Transmission
Prerequisites: Nanominiaturization and Quantum Power
(W) Bulk Matter Transmitter
(B) Jump Gate

TIER 23 (17200)
The Will To Power
Prerequisites: Intellectual Integrity and Nanomatter Editation
(W) Dream Twister
(N) Paradise Garden

Temporal Mechanics
Prerequisites: Nanomatter Editation and Nanorobotics
(W) Manifold Harmonics
(N) Stasis Generator

Singularity Mechanics
Prerequisites: Nanorobotics and Matter Transmission
(W) Singularity Inductor
(U) Subspace Generator

Quantum Machinery
Prerequisites: Matter Transmission
(N) Quantum Converter
(U) Gravship

TRANSCENDENCE ERA
TIER 24 (19,000)
Threshold of Transcendence
Prerequisites: Every previous tech. Or realistically, the four T23 techs, which depend on every other tech.
(*) The Ascent To Transcendence (the victory condition wonder for the Transcendence Victory. Starts the transcendence timer.)

TIER 25 (21,000)
Transcendent Thought a.k.a. "Future Tech"
Repeatable technology. Every time you research it, you gain a permanent +1 happiness.

COMMENTS:
Most new techs depend on two others. This was deliberate; if you examine the screenshots, it looks like a lattice with lots of diagonal connections. Effectively, you have a "pyramid" setup, where to get to a typical tech you have to take two techs from the tier before, three from the tier before that and so on down the line, which makes it nearly impossible to "slingshot"/beeline for the techs you really want; to take any Fusion tech, you'd basically have to take all of the techs in the lowest tier of the Digital era, most from the middle tier, and a few from the top tier. It's not a perfectly regular pattern; certain technologies, such as Advanced Spaceflight (T19) are more of a "linchpin" technology that everyone funnels through. But the result is a tech tree layout that discourages beelining for a specific technology, which means the AI isn't at as much of a disadvantage.
I wanted every tech to do three things, no more than one of which is a World Wonder, so that each tech will always be desirable. So you see most techs having a building, a unit, and an Improvement change or something similar. This also helps the AI, and it makes the decisions harder for the players. There's still some variation, with a few techs having multiple units or multiple buildings, but it's much more AI-friendly now.

The tech tree is laid out in a pretty simple way: the biological techs are up top (with the Centauri techs forming the top row), the pure physics ones are on the bottom (fusion power, gravitonics, quantum power, etc.), and the ones in the middle are what you get when you mix the two approaches (cybernetics, bioengineering, nanotechnology, social sciences).

RESOURCES and IMPROVEMENTS

I have added three new strategic resources:

Omnicytes
Tech: Centauri Ecology (T14, technically, but it's the one you get from the spaceship)
The core of the physiology of the mindworms, these are basically like super stemcells, capable of being altered into whatever you want, making them the core resource for all bioengineered units.
Besides being a strategic resource, Omnicytes provide a massive food bonus (+1 food base, plus an additional TWO for the improvement), and the Centauri Preserve building heavily boosts the yields of Omnicytes tiles further. They can appear on land (harvested with a Camp) or in shallow water (harvested with a Fishing Boat), representing the species that have been engineered to produce them.
Generally speaking, Omnicytes are found in a good number of very small deposits, which often makes them more useful as a simple +food resource than an actual Strategic. Very few things other than Psi units require them, so it's not hard to have a surplus. Brood Pits, Centauri Preserves, and Temples of Gaia generate an additional Omnicyte for each city, while only the Nanohospital consumes a unit, so the majority of your Omnicytes will be found through buildings instead of natural deposits. Since this resource is unlocked directly by the tech given by a spaceship launch, it's a little harder to reach than other T14 techs for the leaders but easier for everyone else; everyone will get the tech unlocked when the Breakout occurs.

Dilithium
Tech: Doctrine: Initiative (T16)
Dilithium is a stable transuranic element used as a catalyst for fusion reactors. This is ONLY naturally available from coastal water tiles (meaning in a water tile directly adjacent to shore), with an Offshore platform; these crystals cannot be created artificially (until quantum power is researched) and can only be found naturally underwater. It is possible in the Nanotech Era to use Deep Mining to extract Dilithium on land, however.
Besides being a strategic resource, Dilithium provides +1 production for the resource and another TWO production for the improvement, plus the tech-based increases in Offshore Platform outputs; add a Seaport and this becomes a fantastic production hex for a coastal city.
Dilithium is really the hardest resource to consistently get enough of. Being water-only makes it difficult to acquire on some maps, and it's used by a lot of advanced units (including the Labor Mech, which is the last upgrade of the Worker) as well as the all-important Fusion Lab building. Quantum Labs generate an additional unit of Dilithium per city, while the Fusion Lab and Gravity Shield cost a unit. Since Fusion Labs are really the only "must have" future building that consumes a resource, this is a substantial drain. Note that as a coastal resource, city-states will control a disproportionate share on most maps.

Neutronium
Tech: Subatomic Alloys (T18)
Neutronium is a metal that has been manipulated at the subatomic level to be stronger and harder than previous alloys by removing the nonessential subatomic pieces (protons, electrons...). It is incredibly dense, which also means that it can be made incredibly thin while still being excellent armor. Unfortunately, it requires a mixture of a variety of rare earth elements to produce; it only appears on land, and is harvested with a Quarry.
Besides being a strategic resource, Neutronium is also a Luxury resource (as a civilization that has Neutronium can make all sorts of fantastic statues and artwork), giving the usual +4 Happiness. It gives +1 production for the resource, +1 gold for the improvement.
Neutronium is fairly common, which is good considering how useful it is. Quantum Labs generate an additional unit, so in theory it would be plentiful... except that most advanced military units need it, and Titan units tend to require multiple Neutronium to construct, so you'll go through it quickly if you want a competitive endgame military. The Nanoreplicator and Robotic Assembly Plant each require 1 unit, both of which would be in high demand in the endgame.

There are three additional Resources, all Luxuries created by buildings:
Hit Movies is produced by Hollywood (national wonder), and adds +2 happiness. You get 3 units of it to trade around, but since it's made by a national wonder that has other benefits, in the long term everyone will have some and it'll be a flat +2 happiness (barring any bonus for difficulty, etc.)
Information is produced by the Planetary Datalinks (national wonder), and adds +3 happiness. You get 3 units of it to trade around, but as above, the other civs will eventually have their own.
Ambrosia is produced by Clinical Immortality (world wonder) and adds +5 happiness. You get 3 units of it, and since it's a world wonder no one else will ever have any unless you trade it to them, making it an excellent trade good in an era where most civs have most or all of the luxuries.

Note that I've also added a group of buildings that add strategic resources, in addition to the Wonder-produced luxuries above. The Stock Exchange adds 1 iron and 1 horses, The Energy Bank adds 1 coal and 1 oil, the Fusion lab adds 1 uranium and 1 aluminum, and the Quantum Lab adds 1 neutronium and 1 dilithium. Three separate buildings produce Omnicytes: the Brood Pit, Centauri Preserve, and Temple of Gaia. None of these are wonders, so if your civilization completely lacks a given late-game resource, you can use these buildings to produce enough to support essential city structures or build the one unit you really need. If a city produces an Energy Bank, for instance, it can use the coal to produce a Factory. Note that each of these buildings appears 1-2 eras after the first building that consumes the resource, though, so you can't depend on always having these resources. Additionally, each strategic (beyond iron and horses) has a World Wonder that produces 10 units of that resource.
As for luxury resources, the Paradise Garden and Quantum Converter (both Nanotech Era National Wonders) create a unit of each of the existing luxuries (with one giving the "organic" luxuries and the other handling the minerals). These are very expensive endgame buildings with other powerful effects, though.

The distributions of resources on the map was altered; every resource now has an effective minimum number of deposits based on the number of civilizations at the start of the game; for instance, on a map with 8 players, three small Aluminum deposits will be placed before any other resources are allocated, with the percentages for random aluminum reduced somewhat to compensate.

The only truly new permanent Improvement is the Monolith, the special structure for the new Great Empath person. This structure will provide +3 happiness (even without being worked) and the tile now generates 2 food, 2 gold, and 2 culture when worked, regardless of what the tile's base yield was (although resources still add to the total, as do bonuses for rivers and such). In the later game, it also adds 2 research, and eventually 2 production. While that yield sounds great on paper, it's actually considerably less in practice than what other GP buildings produce, to compensate for the Happiness. It's inspired by SMAC's 2/2/2 obelisks.

In addition, between the Renaissance Era and early Fusion Era, nearly every type of tile improvement receives a boost analogous to the food boost for Farms/Pastures/etc. at several existing techs. For instance, at T15, you have Plantations, Fishing Boats, and Trading Posts getting bonuses at different techs. (Many of the boosts here are production-based; the Digital Era is filled with Wonders to build, and the following Fusion Era is all about Buildings, so it is important to have decent production in all cities.)

The common improvements not requiring resources (Farm, Mine, Trading Post) start at +1, gain two alternating half-time (fresh water or not) +1s to their specialty, and then get a single half-time +1 to something outside of their specialty. So the Farm gets +1 food for freshwater farms at Civil Service, +1 food to non-freshwater at Fertilizer, and +1 research for freshwater at Centauri Ecology (good motivation to build a spaceship!).
Resource-specific improvements (Plantation, Quarry, etc.) get +1 to two things, to make them more desirable, and these don't depend on the presence of fresh water.
The Great Person-generated buildings (Landmark, Customs House, etc.) are so specialized and rare that they get a total of three +2 boosts (one in the late Medieval/early Renaissance and one in the late Industrial/early Nuclear in the Balance mod, and then another one in the early Nanotech in the Content mod).
The three "pure" GP improvements (Manufactory, Academy, Customs House) get three +2s all reinforcing whatever the specialty of that building is. The Customs House gets +2 gold at all three, making it a whopping +9 gold in the Nanotech era. The other GP-made improvements (Citadel, Landmark, Monolith) instead have three differing increases, resulting in more all-around useful improvements; the Monolith, for instance, adds happiness, food, research, gold, culture, and production in the endgame.

Also, in the core game, City Ruins are basically worthless, something to be cleared away to build a farm or trading post. To me this is backwards; ruins should be seen as valuable, so in this mod they give +1 gold, +1 culture, and at Archaeology, +1 research. Also, ruins give a +25% defense boost to units defending from them. (All of the advantages of fighting in a city, without the collateral damage!)

There are several terraforming options in the game.
At Penicillin and Ecology, two Nuclear Era techs, Combat Engineers and their upgrades gain the ability to plant jungles and forests, respectively, to boost food/research and production. This planting takes a bit longer than other terrain improvements.
At Ecological Engineering, a Fusion Era tech, you unlock the ability to create or destroy hills. Only Labor Mechs and Formers can do this action. This takes about twice as long as planting a forest.
At Biomachinery, a Nanotech Era tech, you gain the Deep Mine ability. (Again, only Labor Mechs and Formers can do this.) This can only be used on tiles without a resource, and creates a new resource semi-randomly; Dilithium (harvested with a Mine) and Neutronium are the most common, but Aluminum, Uranium, Coal, Oil, Gold, Silver, and Gems are also possibilities. This action takes a LONG time compared to the other terraforming options, but the results are often worth it. Especially on a Pangaea map where you don't have Dilithium nearby.
Finally, the Former (a T22 unit unlocking at Nanomatter Editation) has the unique ability to Terraform. This can turn Snow tiles into Tundra, Tundra into Plains, or Desert into Grassland. (Doing this on any other terrain does nothing.) This would take a long time, but the Former builds at 5 times the speed of a Worker, so it won't take long.
NOTE: The Raise/Lower Hills and Terraform actions change the terrain but do not update the graphics in either regular or Strategic view. You will see the correct terrain the next time you load your game. The forest/jungle planting and deep mining, however, show up immediately. Although, in each case you might see a remnant of the placeholder graphic until reloading the game.

VICTORIES
Obviously, a key part of adding a future era is ensuring the players are not forced to end the game beforehand, either by their own hand or by an AI winning one of the victory conditions. Each of the existing victory conditions is therefore altered as follows:
Time: The standard game, on normal speed, lasts 500 turns. I have extended that to 1000, with similar scaling added to other game speeds. The year count might have some ridiculous numbers, though, if you start in an era other than Ancient or a game speed other than Standard.
Cultural: The Utopia Project requires the Homo Superior technology. Additionally, 10 "Super-Finisher" policies were added, one per branch; these policies are stronger than normal policies, but do not count towards a cultural victory and require specific technologies in the future eras, so taking them slows a cultural victory down.
Diplomacy: (These changes are in the Balance mod, but are included here for reference.) In the vanilla game, you need 47% of the votes on a small map, and 35% on the largest maps. In this mod, you now need ~67% of the votes on a small map and 50% on the huge ones. The math changes a bit as you conquer other empires, though, so if enough city-states are destroyed, it might become mathematically impossible for anyone to get enough votes to win without liberating captured states.
Additionally, it's now significantly more expensive to bribe a city-state, while the effects of non-gold ways of gaining Influence have been boosted. Gifting units to a city-state, or completing its quests, is now an excellent way to gain and keep Influence; this reduces the ability of a player to buy the loyalty of half a dozen city-states right before a vote.
Conquest: No explicit change, but many components of the Balance Mod above are designed to make rolling over opponents much harder.
Science: In the core game, launching the spaceship wins the game. Here, it doesn't. Instead, there is a Transcendence victory at the end of the now-expanded tech tree. Building the spaceship will instead do the following:
> Gain one Social Policy of your choice
> Gain the non-researchable Centauri Ecology technology
> Enter a Golden Age (5 turns on default settings)
> All of your current wars end immediately. You can start them back up again, if you want. This has the negative that if the other empire was losing, you miss out on some good peace terms.
However, the first civ to complete the ship gets additional benefits:
> Gain one free technology of your choice
> The free Golden Age mentioned above lasts twice as long
Centauri Ecology is a prerequisite for many later technologies (and by the end of the tree, all of them), but you don't actually need to build the spaceship to get it. 10-30 turns after one civ builds a spaceship, the Breakout will occur, when mindworms escape into the wilds of Earth. The more civs that build ships, the faster this happens. Once the Breakout occurs, every civ gets the Centauri Ecology tech (meaning you don't HAVE to build a spaceship to continue), but none of the other benefits of a spaceship, and civs without a fully built ship can no longer build any new spaceship parts. The Breakout has other effects, though, the biggest of which is the periodic spawning of Spore Towers around the world, immobile units that generate new Psi units as long as they survive.

The new Science victory condition, the Transcendence Victory, is more complex.
Once the Project is built, a 20-turn timer begins to count down. When the timer expires, you win if your empire still exists, assuming no one has won through any other mechanism (like conquering your capital).
When the timer starts, everyone declares Permanent War on you. This is because they know that the only way to stop you from taking over the world is to conquer you.
During those 20 turns, your empire is in a state of Anarchy; no science, no production, no income, no expenses. This may or may not be temporary.
Each turn, each of your cities loses 1 population, to a minimum of size 1. Your people start to ascend, and this reduces the city's productivity as they no longer worry about material things. The "population" reflects the number of citizens that are still creating and consuming resources.
Sacrificing a Great Person reduces this timer by 2 turns for the first GP of a type, 1 turn for each later GP of that type. This one isn't implemented yet. The idea is that when a famous leader ascends, you'll see a lot of extra people follow his example. It's assumed that a human player would have stockpiled a few Great People before this point, but the AI won't do this, and probably wouldn't know how to manage it even if he did have them.
Losing your Capital adds 5 turns to the timer. Losing any other city adds 1 turn. These aren't implemented yet.
As 40-population cities won't be uncommon by the time you reach this, the 1 pop per turn isn't likely to truly cripple any of your cities, but it would keep you from settling new ones. I'd also like to add a few other tweaks, like you can no longer annex cities and all puppets immediately begin to raze.
NOTE: You cannot disable the space race or Transcendence Victory. They will always be available.

CITIZENS
I have added two new Citizen types:
Empaths add no production, culture, research, or money. Instead, they add +1 Happiness and +2 food; while this sounds like a large amount, remember that these unlock after the national wonders that boost other specialists by +1. They also generate points towards the new Great Empath unit, which can build a Monolith (+3 happiness, plus terrain effects), or can be sacrificed for a Golden Age 50% longer than a normal great person could get.
To me, a +1 happiness citizen is an essential addition to the game, and should have been added as an Entertainer specialist in the core game. It gives a level of tunability to the happiness part of the game, allowing you to easily go from -1 to 0 without rush-building a new Colosseum.
Transcends are extremely productive: +1 to food, production, science, and gold, and +2 culture, plus any bonuses from Wonders, Policies, and such. But they generate no great person points, and only three buildings have slots for them, all end-game (T23) National Wonders.
The balance factor here is that these are in very limited supply, and I'm basically assuming that the three National Wonders with Transcend slots will always use them when I balance things out.

UNITS

Before we go further, I wanted to make one point absolutely clear: I will not, in any way, attempt to reproduce SMAC's unit-building system. While I loved that system, I don't see how it can be implemented well into the Civ 5 engine without some massive recoding, and given Civ's new Promotion system there's less need.

In the core game, there are something like ten unit Combat Classes (Armor, Gunpowder, Mounted, etc.). I've added three more:

Psi: Bioengineered alien units from Alpha Centauri. There are four of these, covering the basic combat types. (Five if you count the Barbarian-only Spore Towers.)
These didn't come from AC directly; the genomes were transmitted and they were built on Earth by placing constructed genes in various Terran lifeforms. This is why Centauri Empathy, the technology that grants Mind Worms, depends on a non-Centauri tech, Gene Splicing.
Psi units, while a distinct unit type, can be of any Domain and can mimic pretty much any other unit type. So you can have a Psi naval unit, a Psi melee unit, and so on. While Psi is a unit type, it is also a Promotion that all units within this type get.
These units are constructed with both production and food (like Settlers), they gain XP at double the normal rate (but don't generate Great General points at all), and they regenerate at least 2 HP per turn even if they take other actions. They also make fantastic Raider units, as they can enter rival borders and will have the Hidden Nationality trait once that is working; however, to reinforce this role, all Psi units get a -25% penalty when adjacent to an allied unit. They're not very good as part of a huge attack wave, but very strong when raiding alone. This makes them very dangerous Barbarian units, which is good since they basically take over the Barbarian role in the future eras.
In most cases, their combat strength isn't an even match for comparable "mundane" heavy units (Mindworms have considerably less power than the strength 70 Modern Armor despite coming later), although Psi units automatically adjust their base strength up to +/-25% to match stronger or weaker non-Psi opponents. They're very limited in which promotions they can pick (none of the exotic ones, just the basics like Shock), and they never upgrade. But if you want something that can drive a more powerful rival crazy, they're ideal, and they build up experience so quickly that the extra upgrades of Shock and Drill they'll have can become enough to swing the balance in their favor in any individual fight.
There are two promotions (Trance I and Trance II) that give +25% versus Psi units, and a few Wonders that help as well, but their biggest advantage is that they're not one of the more common unit types, and only one unit (the Troll) has an inherent defense bonus against Psi.
All Psi units start with one free "mutation" promotion, randomly selected from a list for each type.

Energy: Infantry. Basically, the future equivalent of Gunpowder units, although with a bit more variety. There are 6 units of this type, all land-based, although the Labor Mech is not really meant for heavy combat.
While they don't have much more firepower than a Modern-era unit (ranging from 45 for the Laser Infantry to 70 for the Assault Powersuit), they tend to be loaded with special abilities and free promotions. For instance, the Assault Powersuit gets +50% versus armor, has better odds of intercepting aircraft, can paradrop, has 3 MP and only spends 1 MP per tile, and is amphibious.

Titan: The endgame units, replacing the Giant Death Robot. There are six classes of these in the game, although only four of them are true combat units and two of the six aren't actually classed as Titans. Each costs as much as a Wonder, but they're worth it. (Also, building a Spaceship Factory boosts production of Titan units by 25%.) Also note: you cannot rush or purchase a Titan. They must be built, fully, the old-fashioned way.
Titans, like the Energy units above, are loaded with special abilities, and Titans also have access to practically every promotion in the game. They have higher maintenance costs than regular units, though.
As an example, the first Titan unit is the Bolo (T20). (If you have to ask where the name comes from, turn in your geek card.) 150 combat strength, a bombardment rating of 75, and a ton of promotions (+10% vs cities, indirect fire, amphibious, all terrain 1MP, movement of 4 MP, gets two attacks per turn, and +20% interception rate against aircraft) but it costs 2000 hammers, more than most Digital-era Wonders and more than double what an infantry unit of comparable technology costs. Also, it doesn't get terrain defensive bonuses, because it IS the terrain.
Other Titans are similar; generally speaking, they're the equal of at least two normal units. No units ever upgrade to Titans, no Titans upgrade to anything, and there are no anti-Titan Promotions (barring any anti-Psi promotions used against a Nessus Worm).
Titan units start with +10XP.

There are two other new Unit classes: Multirole (used only for the Needlejet) and Orbital (used for the satellite weapons). Both are Air types; Multirole units have both Fighter and Bomber promotions, while Orbital weapons use the artillery-style "Rough/Open" ranged promotions instead of the land/sea/city ones of the Bombers, and are nearly impossible to intercept. Other than that, they both act like normal Air unit types, with the usual rebasing, immobility, etc.

This is not to say that all new units are in these classes; I've added quite a few Armor units, a couple Navals, and even a couple Gunpowders.
One of my key design philosophies for the units is that most of the early-future units shouldn't be substantially STRONGER than modern units; someone with these isn't going to just flatten the Modern-era civs (until Titans, which are designed for exactly that sort of brute-force approach). But the units are loaded with special abilities that make them far more useful and flexible; most have much better mobility and few have any explicit drawbacks, although most Titan units lose the ability to get a defensive terrain bonus (because they're just too big to hide behind terrain).
The upshot of this is that once a civ reaches the modern era and has Modern Armor, Stealth Bombers, Mobile SAMs, Rocket Artillery, and Mech Infantry, it should be good enough to put up a reasonable defense even against a Fusion-era civilization. And so, a well-played Digital or Fusion army that takes advantage of all the special abilities will wipe the floor with a poorly-led one without those tools.

The full list of units, in order of technology:

INDUSTRIAL ERA:
Combat Engineer (Dynamite): An upgrade of the Worker. Works at 150% speed, has 3 movement points, moves like a scout (all terrain 1 MP, amphibious), but costs substantially more. This does NOT obsolete the Worker right away, though; I waited until the Digital Era to obsolete those, because they're so cheap to build. This is the last resourceless worker unit, so the AI will have many of them in the late game. Note that unlike the standard worker, Combat Engineers cannot be captured; they simply die if attacked, because they won't switch allegiances.

MODERN ERA:
Several existing units were modified.
The Anti-aircraft Gun and Mobile SAM now have the "Melee Penalty" promotion, making them weaker vs. non-air, non-ranged units and cities.
Mechanized Infantry (T12) had its power reduced from 50 down to 42. (Note that Infantry are 36 and only move 2, so it's still a substantial upgrade considering how few techs lie between the two units.)
Modern Armor (T13) had its power reduced from 80 down to 70. (Note that Tanks were 50, so again, still an upgrade, especially considering they're only a couple techs apart.)
Colony Pod (T14, at Globalization): An improved Settler; both can found new cities, but the Colony Pod has several significant advantages over a Settler: increased movement (3), a combat power of 50 (but can't attack), and the ability to airdrop like a Paratrooper. The Colony Pod requires one unit of Oil and one of Uranium, and cannot be purchased. You can't actually upgrade an existing Settler to the new unit, though. And since it has a combat strength it can't stack with a military unit escort; it IS its own escort. But this means it CAN stack with a Worker/Engineer.

DIGITAL ERA:
The Digital Era doesn't add a lot of units, and the ones it does add are generally not in the "bigger is better" theme common in the previous era. Several combine several previous unit types into a single flexible unit, others are basically new styles of unit designed to turn combat into less of a brute force slugfest and more of a finesse battle. Lots of raider or hit-and-run units, not as much that can stand toe-to-toe in a heavy fight.

Laser Infantry (T15): A balanced all-around cheap Energy infantry unit. No resources needed, only moves 2, and costs a bit more than half what a Mechanized Infantry does; its combat strength is 45 (just slightly more than the revised Mech Infantry), but it gets an inherent +20% when allies are adjacent. Inspired by the infantry in Starship Troopers; the movie, not the book. With the ever-increasing costs of units, I figured there should be at least one unit that can easily be constructed in your fringe cities that find themselves under attack unexpectedly.
Mind Worms (T16): As mentioned above, a cheap Psi land unit. Great raiding unit; it's outgunned by most combat units but builds up combat strength very quickly though normal promotions. I really want them to have the Hidden Nationality trait, so that if the game ends up stalemated you can start flooding the other side with cheap units he can't declare war over.
Stealth Ship (T16): Naval unit, combines the best features of Submarines with Destroyers and can carry missiles like the Missile Cruiser. Basically a sub that can bombard land targets, which makes it VERY hard to stop if you don't build a navy.
Plasma Artillery (T16): The game's final true Siege unit. Besides being an excellent mobile artillery unit, with a movement of 4 and great bombardment strength, this is also the last true anti-air unit in the game (upgrade of the Mobile SAM). Very handy to have, after an era dominated by bombers and such, a good anti-air unit that can still fight back in other ways. There are quite a few later units with bombardment attacks, but no more true Artillery units after this, so you'll continue to use them extensively until the end of the game.
Doppelganger (T17): Energy unit that, at the start of each fight, can steal a promotion possessed by its opponent and keep it permanently. Handled well, this can become an extremely strong unit. Starts off very weak, but regenerates.
Golem (T17): A Melee unit. It's very cheap, and only has 40 combat strength, just enough to keep from getting wiped out by ancient-era leftovers. But these constructs regenerate, heal fully if they kill a foe, get a bonus against cities, require no unit support costs, and act as Workers at 75% of normal speed; they can't build specialized improvements (Pastures, Quarries, Plantations), but can do Farms, Mines, Roads, etc. just fine. Great in an era where you don't need many new terrain improvements and don't want a bunch of defenseless Workers clogging up your empire.
Also, Golems can be sacrificed in a city to rush production; while the amount they give isn't nearly as much as the Great Engineer gives, it's approximately equal to what the Golem cost in the first place, so you can use them as a way to transfer production to your outlying cities or "disband" them once they're no longer needed.
Scout Powersuit (T17): Energy infantry unit, a cross between Mechanized Infantry and a Scout. Only 50 combat strength, but +50% versus Gunpowder units, 4 MP, all terrain costs 1 MP, is amphibious, +2 visibility, and can paradrop. Inspired by the infantry in Starship Troopers; the book, not the movie. 50 strength isn't enough to really hold up in a fight against modern tanks and such, although the Gunpowder bonus helps you clean out any leftover Mechanized Infantry. And while you don't need terrain recon now that the map has been revealed, there IS a good use for "spotters" for aircraft, artillery, and long-range missiles, especially nukes.
Vertol (T17): upgrade of helicopters. Siege unit, a whopping 7 movement points, only 50 defensive strength but it has a 70-strength range-1 attack. It also gets +50% versus Armor, and it can move across all terrain for 1 MP including oceans, something no other units can do before the Nanotech Era. It can't capture cities, though, and gets -33% when attacking them. Since it is not a Helicopter type, anti-air units have no bonus against it. Inspired by the AV-4 from Cyberpunk, basically an armored car with a Harrier's VTOL engines. Note that because of its ocean ability, it must be built in a coastal city, although inland you could just build a normal Gunship and then upgrade.
Skimmer (T17): A futuristic upgrade of Mech Infantry that can do a little of everything. Armor unit, 56 strength, 4 MP, all terrain costs 1 MP, and can move after attacking. It gets a +50% Interception bonus, allowing it to engage aircraft targeting nearby units or cities as if it were an anti-aircraft unit. Inspired by the "combat cars" from the Hammer's Slammers novels, but really it's that I didn't like how the cavalry line sort of petered out and the Gunships were too specialized to take the role. A good all-around support/skirmisher unit.

FUSION ERA
This is nearly the exact opposite of the previous era; quite a few of the new Fusion Era units are brute-force combat units, the kind of things designed to be used in a major war. Frankly, I expect this era to be one with LOTS of high-attrition wars, which is good since these units are more resource-heavy than before.

Isle of the Deep (T18): aquatic Mindworms. While slow, they have good defense against bombardment, regenerate health well, and have a very strong bombardment attack that isn't limited to sea targets. Park one of these off the coast of a city and it can work wonders. The one thing they lack is range.
Needlejet (T18): what you get when you cross a bomber with a fighter. The last true Air unit, the Needlejet is basically a fighter with excellent ground attack abilities and Stealth-like evasion, with less of the drawbacks of the earlier air units. I wanted the various air units to upgrade to something useful, just like I did with the Naval units. These are the most cost-effective bombardment unit, even after Orbitals come out, but they feel like Cavalry, a sort of "end of an era" unit that will become outdated soon after.
Leviathan (T18): Naval unit, combines a Battleship with a Carrier. Basically a carrier that can bombard land targets, but also has good anti-air ability. With the ever-increasing range of aircraft and the eventual addition of orbital weapons, pure carriers aren't very necessary outside of "beachhead" assaults, but they have enough bombardment range to supplement artillery on most maps. Unlike the units that upgrade to them, Leviathans can also see submarines. This allows you to upgrade your existing heavy naval vessels into something useful; the Battleship and Carrier were weak against aircraft, too slow, and/or too specialized.
Note: these are the last naval units in the game. At higher techs, quite a few units can fly over water or airdrop as necessary, and orbital weapons take over the "artillery" role, so there's little need for further naval units.
Assault Powersuit (T18): Remember the Scout Powersuit, above? It's like that, but more so. 70 combat strength, only 3 MP, but +50% versus Armor instead of versus gunpowder and it doesn't get the visibility boost. That anti-Armor boost means that an Assault Powersuit actually outguns the Gravtank, slightly, in a straight fight.
Planet Buster (T18): an ICBM. Same basic effect as the Nuclear Missile, but it's got unlimited range and SDI is half as likely to intercept.
Chiron Locusts (T19): Helicopter mindworms. 70 strength and a movement of 6 is nothing to sneeze at in a commerce raider unit, especially one that can regenerate health; they also get +25% versus wounded units, dangerous in a regenerating raider. While these are outgunned by most Armor units, they actually compare favorably to the infantry of their era. They don't have many inherent promotions, but the double-XP-gain of Psi units makes them kind of scary if they can survive for a bit.
Geosynchronous Survey Pod (T19): A cheap infinite-range recon unit. No damage, but it gives a huge visibility radius around whatever city it's currently "based" in, and can move to give visibility anywhere in the world through a very quirky method of movement that snaps it back at the end of the turn, AFTER the opponent has had a chance to kill it (with the ability to spot submarine units as well, if you're short on Destroyer-types). Great if you're getting ready to bombard a city but don't have anything in the area to spot for you.
Gravtank (T19): The final true Armor unit. 90 strength, 4 MP, all terrain costs 1 MP, but costs 1000. While these can still be outgunned by dedicated anti-armor units or bombarded down from range, it's an all-around capable heavy unit. While it's only one tier before the first Titan units, you'll have plenty of Modern Armor around to upgrade into these, so it'll make a big difference right away, and it's much cheaper than a Titan, both in terms of hammers and in resources.
Mobile Shield (T19): A mobile shield generator that makes all adjacent friendly units stronger. In other words, it's a Great General you can build, although it can't share a tile with combat units. As an added bonus, it's on a hover chassis, so all terrain costs 1 MP, and it acts as a Medic as well boosting the healing rate of adjacent combat units.
Ranger (T20): A bioengineered Human with all of the unobtrusive genetic modifications needed for special-forces combat. Only 65 strength, but it gets +25% in forests or jungle, +25% versus Titans (the only unit to get an anti-Titan bonus), mindworm-like regeneration (2-3 HP/turn), and a massive +50% when attacking in ANY terrain. While it doesn't have the now-ubiquitous "all terrain 1 MP" ability, it does have the Commando ability to use enemy roads. Finally, all Rangers have a 10% chance to deal an automatic 5 damage to their opponent at the start of any combat. Very expensive, at 800 per unit, but starts with +30XP. Not nearly as fast as the Skimmer or Vertol, but an excellent first-strike unit for any heavily fortified front line and a good anti-Titan unit.
Troll (T20): A human who has been heavily adapted for high-gravity and hazardous conditions; unlike the Ranger, a person choosing the Troll conversion has given up attempting to still look human. Like the Ranger, this is a 65-strength unit that costs 800 and starts with +30XP, but where most other units are optimized for offense, the Troll is all about defense: +50% when defending, another +50% versus ranged attacks, +25% versus Psi units (the only unit with an anti-Psi bonus built in), and the Troll regenerates FULLY every turn regardless of what actions he takes. Also, Trolls have a 10% chance of healing 5 damage at the start of any fight. In a fort or Citadel or at a choke point, these become practically impossible to budge; forget about bombarding them down. They're also good as the first-wave attacker in a tough city assault, since they'll fully heal afterwards and aren't very vulnerable to counterattacks. But their mobility is lousy compared to any other Fusion era unit, although they can move across mountains, so you'll primarily use them within your own rail network.
Bolo (T20): Mentioned above, this is the first Titan unit. Basically, take a Gravtank and double it; it's a lot like getting a Giant Death Robot in the core game (150 strength), where it's practically unstoppable if supported right. Like most Titans it adds a bombardment attack as well; it's a relatively weak one, compared to other Titans, but "weak" still means a 75-strength bombardment capable of wiping out practically any weaker unit caught in the open field. Effectively, this is a 1-unit invasion force, capable of taking down a city single-handedly, and is designed to be the spearhead when attacking a heavily fortified defense line.
Quantum Missile (T20): Non-nuclear missile. Good damage, especially against Titans, and when used against units in the open, it also damages all adjacent enemy units and places fallout in the target's hex.
Orbital Ion Cannon (T20): Orbital weapon. The damage isn't very impressive (only 50 strength, with a free EMP promotion), but again, you can hit pretty much anything indiscriminately. This effectively takes over the Air units' "pick off the retreating skirmisher units" role, and is great for a first shot to soften up an even-match opponent, but it's not going to be killing any modern units outright and its damage against cities of this era is pathetic.
Labor Mech (T20): a super-Worker unit, builds at 200% speed. It's actually an Energy unit with 50 strength, so it can defend itself pretty well, but it's not cheap. Workers and Engineers upgrade to this directly (but since it costs Dilithium, not always), and Workers obsolete when these unlock, so in the Nanotech era many of the AI's workers will become these. Most importantly, the Labor Mech can perform some of the more advanced terraforming options, which Combat Engineers can't. The combat power is essential in an era when each side is raiding the other with psi units or vertols, and pillaging everything in sight. It's also nice to have a construction unit you can send in with the combat forces, to repair the damage caused by your invasion, taking over that role from the Golem.

NANOTECH ERA
Nearly every unit in this era is a Titan, a massive, expensive engine of pure destruction. If you like military conquest then you've probably already won by this point, but if you haven't, these are "Game Over" units.

Nessus Worm (T21): It's Godzilla. Seriously, it's an amphibious Psi unit that acts more like a Titan. 140 defensive strength and a 100-strength range-1 attack, can travel on any terrain (including oceans) for 1 MP, and regenerates its health fully each turn. As a Titan it's immune to nukes and attacks twice per turn. One of these comes out of the ocean and levels Tokyo on a regular basis. (And as a Psi unit, it'll have the hidden nationality and ability to enter borders without a war, eventually.) But it's not cheap, at 1500 hammers, and it's the last combat unit without a long-range attack. Conversely, it has a massive bonus when attacking cities, so unless the defender has loaded up on defense buildings, a Nessus Worm can often one-shot a city (but can't capture one); a smart defender won't let it get close. The Nessie's other advantage is that it only requires only Omnicytes, and no Dilithium or Neutronium (which tend to be in shorter supply).
Combat Mech (T21): It's the Giant Death Robot, souped up. A Titan that specializes in bombardment; only 100 strength, but a staggering 120 bombardment strength (with a range of FOUR) AND it can carry missile units. Also, it can do two attacks per turn, has a big anti-air boost, can see 2 hexes further, and has the usual "all terrain 1 MP" ability. With that firepower, it can generally take a defending city down to 1HP for other units to deal with, and do so at range while taking no damage.
Former (T22): A Titan unit that doesn't fight. It has heavy armor (combat strength 100 but can't attack), it builds Improvements like a Worker at 500% normal speed, and it has access to Terraforming options that smaller workers don't have. A Former can turn hills into plains, snow into tundra, tundra into plains, deserts into grassland, and it can plant forests and jungles. It can move across water as well, which allows it to place water improvements like Fishing Boats without sacrificing itself.
Orbital Death Ray (T22): Basically, take the Orbital Ion Cannon above, and dial it up to 11. 150 combat strength that can hit anywhere in the world and gets a large bonus when attacking cities, but it costs 1400 hammers. While not technically a Titan, it's comparable in price. Unlike the Ion Cannon, this CAN one-shot most non-Titan units. It's horribly expensive, of course, but worth it.
Subspace Generator (T23): What do you get when you cross a Death Ray with a Nuke, and then make it a true Titan-style construction? Instead of a single-target attack, the Subspace Generator basically drops a level 2 (Nuclear Missile-equivalent) nuke anywhere in the world each turn. It costs a ridiculous 3000 hammers, more than most land-based Titans, but seriously, given time one of these will level an empire. (Which is good, since you can only have one.) It's completely impossible to intercept, of course.
Note that there are a couple buildings that reduce the effects of nukes, so by the time you get this, your opponents' cities will often be nearly immune to nuke damage. But that doesn't stop you from nuking their terrain instead; you can easily cripple opponents this way. And unlike earlier nukes, SDI-type projects have no effect on Subspace Generators.
Gravship (T23): the ultimate weapon. Concept-wise, take the Terran Battlecruiser from Starcraft. Then add fighter bays. 200 combat strength, 200 ranged attack, moves 5 hexes across any terrain (including oceans), can move after attacking, gets two attacks per turn, repairs itself by 2-5 every turn, and is basically immune to air units. It also acts as a Great General, buffing anything else nearby. But it costs 4000 hammers, and the big drawback: you can only have ONE. I would KILL to have the game play the Starcraft "Carrier has arrived." soundbite when you build a gravship.

Barbarians and City-States
The only units listed above requiring no strategic resources are the Combat Engineer, Laser Infantry, and Geosynchronous Survey Pod. Because the minor factions have limited access to strategic resources, special units were created just for them.
Barbarians have access to "Wild" versions of the four Psi units, the Mind Worms, Isle of the Deep, Chiron Locusts, and Nessus Worm. These units are identical in every way to their player-made counterparts, except that they require no resources and begin with additional "mutation" promotions to make up for the lack of +XP buildings for the barbarians. There's also one additional unit unique to Barbarians, the Spore Tower; once the Barbarians reach Centauri Ecology, the "Breakout" occurs, spawning Mind Worms, and on each following turn there's a chance of a Spore Tower spawning somewhere in the world. If it's not killed, then each turn the Spore Tower has a chance of spawning various more Psi units. Killing a Spore Tower gives a player 100-200 gold, depending on era, as well as stopping the flow of new units; Spore Towers, however, possess good artillery abilities and so take some effort to kill.

City-States have access to "Secondhand" versions of the Tank, Modern Armor, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Helicopter Gunship, Rocket Artillery, Plasma Artillery, Stealth Ship, Skimmer, Vertol, Needlejet, and Gravtank. These units are noticeably weaker than their player-made counterparts, but again, require no resources. On the plus side, most Secondhand units can repair improvements or clear fallout, to help offset city-states' inability to intercept nukes.

These units are treated as Unique Units for these nonplayable civilizations. Players cannot make them, even if you'd rather have that resourceless alternative.

Promotions
For Promotions, I've only added four selectable ones:
Trance I and II (+25% vs Psi units), available to anyone. You can't really get an anti-Psi bonus any other way.
Soporific Gas / Soporific Bombs (+15% versus Gunpowder, Energy, Mounted, Melee, Recon, and Archer units), available to Armor, Helicopter, and Titan units.
EMP (+15% vs Armor, Naval, Siege, and Air units), available to Gunpowder, Energy, and Titan units.
Note that neither EMP nor Soporific hurts Psi or Titan units. This makes Trance worth considering occasionally; otherwise, the Nessus Worms and such could kill you, especially after the Breakout.
However, I've added far more promotions than that. Several wonders and buildings (Command Nexus, Citizen's Defense Force, Bioenhancement Center, etc.) add free promotions, either to all units trained in that city or to all units everywhere. For instance, the Teamwork promotion is given by the Three Gorges Dam as well as being inherent to the Laser Infantry unit. Others (Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, Space Elevator) add temporary promotions to certain units under certain conditions. Psi units get a unique "Psi" promotion that gives the benefits of the type, above, Titans and Orbitals each have a unique class promotion as well, and many other units have type-specific promotions.

WONDERS and BUILDINGS

Wonders and Buildings adhere much closer to the SMAC design than units did, although here I've changed quite a bit too. For instance, there were no National Wonders in SMAC, a feature I've taken significant advantage of.

Again, in rough order of technology:

World Wonders:
The Human Genome Project: +2 happiness, all cities grow 1 size
The Planetary Transit System: Trade route income +10%, and all of your units gain +1 movement within your borders
The Longevity Vaccine: +2 happy, all Specialists generate +1 Food.
The Merchant Exchange: All strategic and luxury resource tiles worked by this city generate +2 gold, and the city gains +1 gold per 2 population
The Maritime Control Center: all Naval units get +1 movement and +20% versus other naval units. All units in all cities get +5 XP; must be a coastal city
The Planetary Energy Grid: all cities get +10% gold, get a free Great Merchant, gain 10 units of Coal and Oil
Clinical Immortality: +1 food per 2 citizens, creates a tradeable luxury resource Ambrosia (+5 Happiness)
The Virtual World: +3 happy, gain a free Social Policy
The Supercollider: +100% research in this city, get a free Great Scientist, gain 10 units of Uranium
The Xenoempathy Dome: All Psi units are 10% stronger, have +1 movement and can pillage for free. All units in all cities get +5 XP.
The Cloudbase Academy: +1 airlift, air units all get +4 range and get extra interceptions, Air units get +20% vs other Air units, and the city's strength is +100% vs. Air bombardment. All units in all cities get +5 XP.
The Cyborg Factory: All units in your empire increase their healing rates by 2 when they rest, and this city produces units 50% faster
The Pholus Mutagen: +25% Food in this city, and all food resource tiles (cows, sheep, etc.) near this city gain +2 food, +1 production, and +1 gold
Theory of Everything: +10% science in all cities, gain one free technology
The Self-Aware Colony: +1 happy per city
The Network Backbone: In this city, +1 base gold per 4 population, and all specialists in your empire generate +1 research
The Space Elevator: Land units that begin their turn in this city (including those just built there this turn) gain the "Orbital Drop" promotion, which allows them to paradrop anywhere on the planet you have visibility. This ability goes away at the end of the turn if the unit is outside the city.
The Universal Translator: Start a Golden Age and gain a free Social Policy
The Telepathic Matrix: Gain any tech that any other civ knows. Gain a Great Empath.
The Cloning Vats: All cities gain 2 citizens instantly
The Nano Factory: All of your units upgrade for free, and all units in this city build 25% faster, gain 10 units of Aluminum
The Bulk Matter Transmitter: trade route income +33% and unlimited airlifts from this city
The Dream Twister: Gain one Great Artist. All other civs get -10 Happiness from now on.
The Manifold Harmonics: for this city, +1 gold, food, production, and science per 2 population, and gain 10 units of Omnicytes.
The Singularity Inductor: All cities get +10% production, you get a Great Engineer, and gain 10 units of Dilithium and Neutronium.

National Wonders:
Note: none of these require any previous buildings to be in every city, although a few require specific buildings in the city you build them in.
KGB: Each turn you have up to a 3% chance to learn a tech, depending on how many other civilizations already know it (3% is if everyone other than you has it), and you gain a free tech when built.
Hollywood: +25% culture, all Artists generate +1 Gold, and creates three units of Hit Movies, a tradeable luxury worth +2 Happiness.
Three Gorges Dam: +25% production, all Engineers generate +1 Research, and units trained in this city get the Teamwork promotion (+20% when adjacent to an ally)
Wall Street: +25% gold, all Merchants generate +1 Production, and gain one unit of every strategic resource except Neutronium. Note that you still have to unlock these resources by researching their techs, if you want to use them, although they can be traded before that point.
Red Cross: +25% research, all Scientists generate +1 Food, and units trained in this city get the Medic promotion.
The Weather Paradigm: Workers work 20% faster, and all of your cities generate 5% more food.
The Planetary Datalinks: Each turn you have up to a 4% chance to learn a tech, stacking with the KGB. Also produces 3 units of the "Information" luxury resource, which adds +3 happiness and can be traded.
Skunkworks: All upgrade costs reduced by 25%, all new units in this city gain +10 XP regardless of type, all units in all cities gain +5 XP regardless of type
The Empath Guild: Gain a free Great Empath. Every turn, all city-states gain free Influence with you depending on your current Influence level (+1.5 for no relation, +1 friend, +0.5 ally). This generally just offsets part of the natural decay, although it IS possible to move upwards as Greece or with the right policy.
The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm: All non-Psi enemy units within your territory get -1 visibility, -1 to range (for artillery/naval units), -1 to healing rate, and -20% combat strength when attacking your cities.
The Nethack Terminus: Gain a technology automatically if more than 50% of the other civs know it, adds a 1% chance of stealing randomly, and warns you when and where other civs are within 5 turns of completing a Wonder. If you can't beat them to it, then this lets you switch to something else without wasting any more time.
The Citizens' Defense Force: All of your units get +10% to combat within your borders, increase healing rate by +1 within friendly territory, and gain +10% strength when defending a city.
The Command Nexus: All of your units get +10% to combat outside of your borders, and gain +1 range (important for naval and artillery units, marginal for air)
The Living Refinery: +50% production if the city has local Dilithium, +50% gold if the city has Neutronium, +10 food if the city has Omnicytes, and it costs one unit of each. Also, all Empaths in all cities gain +1 Production. Basically the Ironworks on steroids.
The Neural Amplifier: all your units get +25% versus Psi units, gain +1 visibility, and gain +10% when adjacent to a friendly unit.
Paradise Garden: +2 Happiness, +25% Great Person rate in all cities, creates 1 unit of all "organic" luxuries
Stasis Generator: City gets +100 strength and immunity to nukes, and all specialists within your empire produce +1 food. Basically makes the city immune to attack. Put it in your capital and never worry about a domination loss. I'd also like it to add the ability that all enemy units within 2 hexes of this city only have 1 MP per turn, and/or that you can't bombard the city. The food boost actually makes more sense than it sounds; a strong stasis field also allows for perfect unspoiled food storage.
Quantum Converter: All hurry costs reduce by 25%, all specialists get +1 production in every city, and gain one unit of each "inorganic" luxury resource (Gold, Silver, Gems, Dyes)

Buildings:
Children's Creche: +8 food in this city but -1 happiness for your empire
Energy Bank: +20% gold, and produces one unit of Oil and one unit of Coal
Perimeter Defense: +10 city strength and 20% nuke defense, but no prerequisites and it's cheap to maintain
Hologram Theater: +3 happy, +25% culture
Genejack Factory: +50% production, but -2 happiness for your empire
Centauri Preserve: +2 happy, all local Omnicyte deposits greatly increase in yield, gain one unit of Omnicytes, two Empath slots; can only be built if the city has local Omnicytes.
Habitation Domes: +1 happy, +2 food, +10% Great People, +10% food storage, city must be Large size note: "Large" means size 13 or 14ish
Aerospace Complex: Air units in this city start with +15 XP and produce 25% faster, city gets +50% defense vs. air attacks, and it's required for all satellite units. Also, Land units that start their turns in this city gain a temporary "Airlift" paradrop.
Bioenhancement Center: units trained in this city get +10% strength. A bit boring, but I did this for a reason; by the Fusion era, you'll have been upgrading a bunch of 100+ XP units for several eras, like a Modern Armor that has Blitz and Repair. This allows newly-constructed units to close the gap a bit and still be a threat, which primarily helps the AIs.
Fusion Lab: +20% research, +20% gold, creates one unit of Uranium and one of Aluminum
Brood Pit: Psi units train 25% faster and start with +15 XP, creates one unit of Omnicytes, +2 gold for Oasis
Sky Hydroponics Lab: all cities get +2% to their food. Unlike in SMAC, you can only build one of these per city.
Orbital Power Transmitter: all cities get +2% gold.
Gravity Shield: +30 city strength, and -100% nuke effects, but it's not cheap and adds -1 happiness to your empire.
Temple of Gaia: +2 happy, +5 culture, +25% Great People rate in this city, create one unit of Omnicytes.
Hybrid Forest: +1 happy, +2 gold per forest or jungle hex near this city. Since Workers will long have had the ability to plant forests and jungles, this could lead to civs "re-greening" their empires and removing the ugly Trading Post sprawl. Unfortunately there's not a stub in the XML for it to check to see if there are any forests or jungles nearby.
Lunar Mining Station: all cities get +2% to production
Robotic Assembly Plant: +1 production per population, but -2 happiness for your empire.
Nanohospital: +5% food storage, +1 research per 4 population, units in this city heal fully each turn
Quantum Lab: +20% research, +20% gold, produces one unit of Dilithium and one of Neutronium
Nanoreplicator: +1 production for each local strategic resource deposit, +1 gold for each local luxury resource, +1 food for each local food resource
Jump Gate: Each turn, you have a 2% chance of triggering a 1-turn Golden Age for each Jump Gate you control. (So if 10 cities have gates, you have a 20% chance.) Every city gains +2% to Research per Jump Gate in your empire. Also, unlimited airlifts, the city is always connected to the Capital for trade networks.

Also, several existing Industrial/Modern buildings were tweaked. Except for the Stock Exchange, all of these were altered in the Balance mod. In the cases of buildings with a UB counterpart for one civ, the UB would be changed similarly.

Library: +1 research per 3 citizens (was +1 per 2), but also gets +1 culture.
University: +30% research (was +50%) and +1 culture.
Observatory: +20% research (was +50%) and +3 culture.
Public School: +30% research (was +1 science per population, and before that was +50%) and +3 research.
Research Lab: +40% research (was +100%), +10% gold, costs 5 gpt.
With these changes, a full set of research buildings gives you about half what you'd have in a vanilla game.
Granary: 10% storage and +1 food
Aqueduct: 10% storage and +1 happiness
Hospital: 20% storage, and all units resting in the city heal +2 per turn
Sewer System (new): 10% storage, +1 happiness, and +2 food
Medical Lab: 10% storage, +2 food, and adds +10% to research
Recycling Center (new): 10% storage, +1 happiness, +2 production, and +2 gold
The result is that you see a much smoother progression of growth.
Courthouse: now costs 8 gpt, instead of 5.
Watermill: +10% food (instead of a flat +2), +1 production
Garden: +1 happiness, +25% Great People points (was 0 happiness)
Monastery: +1 happiness, +2 culture per Wine/Incense (was no happiness and +2 culture base)
Mint: +1 happiness, +2 gold per Gold, Silver, or Neutronium (was no happy and +3 per)
Market: +20% gold, +1 gold per Cow, Fish, Sugar, or Spices (instead of +25% and a flat +2)
Bank: +20% gold, +1 gold per Gold, Silver, or Gems (was just +25%)
Stock Exchange: +20% gold, and produces one unit of Iron and one of Horses (was +33% and no resources)
Opera House: +2 culture, +1 culture per Cotton or Furs, +10% Great People for 4 gpt (was +5 for 3)
Museum: +4 culture, +1 research for 5 gpt, and +1 research per Gems or Ivory (was +5 for 3).
Broadcast Tower: +50% culture (was +100%), +10% gold, for 5 gpt.
Temple: +1 happiness, +1 culture (was just 3 culture), no longer part of the Culture chain (Monument -> Opera House)
Colosseum: +3 happiness (was only +2)
Theater: +3 happiness, +1 culture, +1 culture per Dyes or Silk, for 4 gpt (was +5 happy for 3)
Stadium: +2 happiness, +2 culture, +10% gold for 5 gpt (was +5 happy for 3)
Between these you now have far less Happiness in late-game empires, and there's now a clear delineation between the "incidental" +1 happiness of the Aqueduct and such, the +2/3 of these buildings, and the Wonders that give +5 or more.
Arsenal: +5 XP for land units, 1gpt maintenance
Military Base: -20% nuke damage, +5 XP for land units, 2 gpt maintenance
Barracks: +15 XP for land units, +5 XP for sea units, +5 XP for air units
Armory: +10% unit production, +5 XP to all units
Military Academy: +10 XP for Air units, all units start with the Elite promotion (+1 visibility, cheaper upgrade costs, +25% XP gains)
Harbor: +10 XP for Sea units, +1 gold per sea resource (instead of production), connects trade routes
Seaport: +10 XP for Sea units, +15% production for naval units, +1 production per sea resource

Projects
SDI: Nukes are intercepted ~40% of the time (x1.5 for atomic bombs, x0.5 for Planet Busters), but the SDIs of all enemy civs combine against you with diminishing returns. Also unlocks Orbital units.
Orbital Defense Pod: Nukes are intercepted an additional 1-3% of the time, and all orbital weapons' damage is reduced by 5%. Can be built ten times throughout your empire.
The Ascetic Virtues: unlocks Titan units, and your capital gains +2 Great Person points each turn for each Great Improvement in your territory (of the appropriate types).

Finally, there's the Ascent to Transcendence Project. When built, this starts a 20-turn timer. Each turn, knock one turn off (obviously) and your empire is in Anarchy. Each turn, each of your cities loses 1 population (minimum 1, and normal growth isn't stopped although research IS.) At the end of the timer, you win (assuming you're still alive and no one else has won in the interim).

I'm still tweaking a lot of these effects, but this should give the general outline.

SMAC was loaded with Wonders. One of the thing that annoyed me about the core game was that when you reached the Modern Era, there were almost no wonders to build, which made Great Engineers nearly useless. I tried to make up for this by having the Digital Era be filled with Wonders, but many of them were changed to National Wonders to prevent the first civ to launch a spaceship from sweeping up every powerful effect.
As a result, many of the National Wonders duplicate the effects of World Wonders from previous eras. Since every civ can build a National Wonder no matter how far behind they've fallen in techs, this is a nice mechanism to prevent the tech leader from running away with all of the good effects. However, I disliked the core game's "must have X in all cities" mechanism, so all of my National Wonders only require certain buildings to be present in the city they are to be built in, nothing more.

SOCIAL POLICIES

Ten new SPs were added, one per tree. Each unlocks at a certain technology; a few are in the Fusion era, but most fall in the Digital. These are not actually part of the trees they are linked to; instead they become available once you complete a tree and recieve the "Finisher" policy bonus. As a result, they do not count towards a Cultural Victory, but are significantly stronger than normal Policies.
Tradition: Eudaimonic (+1 food, production, gold, and science per 3 population in the capital; doubled happiness from Empaths or the Transcendent Thought tech) at Ethical Calculus
Liberty: Green (+10% food in all cities, +1 food per Water Mill, Solar Plant, or Hydro Plant) at Bioengineering
Honor: Power (All units gain +1 movement and +1 visibility, +50% Production when building military buildings) at Neural Grafting
Piety: Fundamentalist (Gain culture when you kill a unit, one unit is maintenance-free per 10 population) at Social Psychology
Patronage: Free Market (fulfilling quests for city-states gives +100% Influence, golden ages take 20% less Happiness) at Planetary Networks
Commerce: Wealth (+1 gold per Market, Bank, Stock Exchange, or Energy Bank, and +1 production per sea resource) at Industrial Economics
Rationalism: Knowledge (All Farms and Mines give +1 research, all four types of laboratory gain +5% science), at Optical Computers
Freedom: Cybernetic (+1 production per specialist, unhappiness from the Genejack Factory and Robotic Assembly Plant are halved) at Mind-Machine Interface
Autocracy: Thought Control (-10% to all unhappiness, remove unhappiness from the Children's Creche and Gravity Shield) at Pre-Sentient Algorithms
Order: Planned Society (+5 Happiness, and +1 food, production, gold, science, and culture per city), at Fusion Power

Several existing policies were changed in the Balance mod, to be more compatible with the new mechanisms. Several weak policies were boosted to be more worthwhile, while a small number of the strongest policies were weakened.


Other things I need:
> I'm still adding 3D art assets as I go, but for now I can't add those for buildings and such.
> Sounds are not easily imported, so that's still on hold.
> The ability to play wonder movies instead of using a flat picture. Either .avi or .mve formats are available.

Have you considered alternative names to mithril and zombie? I find these two clashing with the general futuristic setting you present (elf and troll are placeholders). Or maybe have more fantasy and "horror" names, so that these two don't stand out so much?

WHAT I NEED DONE
The XML is nearly complete, but I still need many thing.
- Unit art for futuristic units
- Lua code for many of the Wonder effects I’ve mentioned before
- Implementation of “Culture” and “Happiness” as tile yields, instead of their current implementation as hard-coded entries in most tables. Without this the Empath specialist does not work
- Coding for the two Events I mentioned, the revised Alpha Centauri spaceship and the new Transcendence victory
- The ability to play wonder movies instead of a flat picture
- I’m still constructing the icon atlases, but GIMP wasn’t cooperating so I may need someone else to do that. Low priority.

Unfortunately I can't currently address any of the items on your list. How about a premise? Do you have a rationalization as to why your faction starts out with just a colonizer and a scout (or whatever base units you envision)? If not heres a couple ideas:

A world-wide social upheaval:
As the survivors of the great drought which destroyed the Mayan civilization experienced, the thin venier of civilization is all too easily peeled away when a society is stressed beyond its means to cope: in the latter half of the 21st century the world came face to face with the spectre of global famine as the Malthusian Equation became a reality. The Intelligentsia of societies coined the phrase of "Chronic Deprivation" to describe the billions of gaunt corpses which still persisted in living and eaking out a subsistence on the fringes of society, while those closer to the cataclysm called it "The Great Sadness". Finally, when the governments of Earth failed to respond to the crisis and provide relief, whole civilizations rose in revolt, toppling their governments in orgies of chaos not seen since the French and Russian revolutions. With no central forms of government remaining, the four horsemen of the apocolypse rode across the world, and humanity sank into chaos and barbarism. Now, in the ashes of civilization, you have initiated Project Phoenix: the re-building of civilization.

The tack I plan on taking is one of unfettered science run amok:
In the early 22nd century a space probe finds an ancient derelict spaceship out on the fringes of our solar system. Investigation of the spaceship is at first difficult because it is lieing in a band of heavy radiation, however after robots are sent to explore the spacecraft, several things become obvious:
1) The spaceship was built by humans, and it is approximately 100,000 years old.
2) From the ships damaged databanks it is realized that Earth is not the cradle of Humanity, rather it was colonized by the humans from the spaceship: for some reason they purposely left the spaceship in a radiation belt and travelled down to Earth with literally the clothes on their backs.
3) The reason the original colonists left all their technology behind is that approximately 100,000 years ago something happened to the space-aged human civilization which effectively knocked all of humanity scattered throughout the galaxy back to the Stone Age (this event was caused by a stealth computer virus - think Skynet from Terminator).
4) The spaceship’s hyperdrive is intact, as are a fare portion of the spaceship’s starmaps.
5) It is agreed by the governments of Earth to build replicas of the ancient spaceship, and to send out heavily armed science/ colonizing expeditions to several of the nearby solar systems listed in the starmaps, and to begin the exploration/ re-conquest of the Worlds of Man.
6) But something happens after your expedition (and the expeditions belonging to the other governments of Earth) is dropped off on your planet: the expected follow-up wave of colonists and scientists never arrives, and as time progresses and no further word is heard from Earth, you come to realize that something has happened, and that you are on your own. You as the Administrator of your colony now hold the future of your people in your hands.

In the latter scenario I plan on employing the Barbarians as "Wraith", which are remnants of this stealth computer virus, and their tactic of creating new units is to "process" captured colonists and workers and change them into computer-controlled cyborgs (or zombies, if you prefer). The City-States are the remnants of an alien civilization living on this world, and explains the game mechanic of why C-S don't spread - its because after millenia of having to live with the Wraith plague, they have been culturally conditioned (to the point of being a religion) to stay within their cities borders.

Let me know if either of these appeal to you, and I can start to flesh them out moreso for you (note that I do plan on using the second item for my mod).

D

Have you considered alternative names to mithril and zombie?

Yes, those are mostly placeholders; these were originally put into the mod back in Civ4. At the time, I was a bit limited in art assets, so I took what I could get.
The Civ4 version of the mod was never fully completed, but I used its design as the basis for the Civ5 version. So some things should have been changed but weren't. A few comments:

1> While I could change Mithril to be "Unobtainium" or something, it comes out to about the same thing in my mind. The fact that it was primarily used for my Elf/Troll placeholders obviously skewed things a bit towards the fantasy end. Suggestions are welcome, but I felt I needed a metal strategic resource that could also double as a luxury. So any suggestions would have to fit into that framework. Neutronium would probably be the simplest to justify, but that causes a bit of awkwardness since Matter Compression technology is two tiers after I need this. Originally I'd used Silksteel from SMAC for this, in that the tech was just Silksteel Alloys, but I never really liked that name.

Likewise, I don't like calling the other resource "Deuterium", since I KNOW how common that stuff is and how easy it is to make, but I wanted a production-based resource for most fusion and nanotech-era units, something unlocked at Fusion Power. I could make something up, along the lines of Dilithium or something, and it'd probably work just as well, especially if you rationalize it as a product of fusion instead of just the fuel.

2> The Zombie's a bit less flexible. It's a bioengineered unit made with a retrovirus, capable of basic combat but also grunt labor without support. So while I could change it to something else, it really doesn't change the underlying unit that much. Homunculus, golem, whatever, it still often tends to stick with fantasy connotations, despite the fact that both of those terms far predate D&D. Or think Frankenstein's monster. No matter what, I want a unit that can do most basic worker actions and still be moderately useful in combat, and I wanted it to feel a bit, well, "unsavory". Frankenstein's probably the closest to what I really wanted, as this is paired with Clinical Immortality at the same tech. So maybe I'll just go with "Golem" and hope most people can get past the D&D frame of mind. "Abomination" might be closer to the flavor I want, but that's too generic a term to me.

3> In some cases the design drove the name instead of the other way around. Take the Troll; while that name can and will change (and I'm open to suggestions) you're still talking about a defensive infantry unit that heals fully each turn; it's not just because I wanted a troll in my mod, but because I thought it was useful to have an infantry unit with a massive self-healing ability and defense boost, something that the big gravtanks would have a hard time rolling over and that wouldn't be hurt by a gradual bombardment. Since the powersuit-based infantry units had shifted into more "offensive" roles, basically supplanting cavalry, I wanted one unit that went back to the defensive roots of infantry combat.

So as I said, suggestions are more than welcome, as long as they're not in the style of "just try to copy SMAC". If you can come up with specific names to change the "fantasy" placeholders to, while still filling the basic roles I've designed, that'd be great.

Do you have a rationalization as to why your faction starts out with just a colonizer and a scout (or whatever base units you envision)? If not heres a couple ideas:

I think there's a miscommunication here. You don't start out in this era. (You CAN, but that's not the base design any more than it is in the core game.) This is intended to be a content mod added to the END of the tech tree. As in, when you have a complete empire covering half a continent, with cities full of Wonders and such, and you've hit a stalemate with the other nations. This isn't a SMAC remake, it's the addition of a future era (or in this case, three future eras) that use SMAC as their inspiration.

That's why, for instance, I don't have the bottom-tier SMAC buildings like the Recreation Commons, Recycling Tanks, Network Node, and so on. There's little need for a Network Node when your cities already have a Library, University, Public School, and Research Lab. Likewise for units, I don't have a Colonizer, because you already have had access to Settlers for six eras at this point.

Awesome reading ! :)

Cant wait to have a go

Okay, I'm on a business trip right now (well, observing run, I'm an astronomer), and can't edit any actual files, but perversely that's given me plenty of time to think before I go up to the telescope tonight.

First of all, I've decided on some tentative renames.
> "Deuterium" will be changed to "Dilithium", just for the geek reference and so that the physicist in me doesn't keep freaking out about calling deuterium "rare". I'd be open to any other name suggestions on this one, but it needs to be something tied to fusion energy that wouldn't be available/needed before that tech level.
> "Mithril" will be changed to "Neutronium". While it's not at the Matter Compression technology that unlocked neutronium in SMAC, it's at least in the same era, and "Subatomic Alloys" is a pretty good description of the technology needed for it anyway. (I combined Advanced Subatomic Theory with Silksteel Alloys into a single tech.) The thought of infantry units wearing neutronium seems a bit off, but I suppose I can justify it in an era of gravitics and fusion power.
> "Elf" will become "Ranger". While this also has plenty of fantasy connotations, I'm thinking more in terms of the Army Rangers... it's not a bad analogy for a unit that can use enemy roads, gets a massive bonus on attack, gets a bonus when fighting in forests or jungles, has better vision, and can move across any terrain. I might have to give them paradrop to make it work, though; currently they have a small regeneration ability, and I might trade that out.
The key is that this is the Homo Superior tech, representing bioenhanced humans, and it makes sense that elite military units would be among the first to want a little bit of enhancement. This means I have to drop the low-gravity theme, but I wasn't too attached to that.
> "Zombie" will become "Golem". Yes, I know that D&D uses golems pretty heavily, but the term FAR predates that game, and I'm thinking more in terms of the 16th-century Jewish fable. (Specifically, that story included a construct that was made to perform menial tasks, but when ordered to do so could go on a murderous rampage.)

The only remaining "fantasy" name is the Troll for the defense-specialist infantry (high-grav theme). Frankly, I think this is the least objectionable of the fantasy names I used, because A) it fits the unit's abilities VERY well, making it the kind of nickname the unit would get naturally even in a high-tech setting, and B) The original Norse mythological version fits a bit better than the D&D one.
But if people think it's still objectionable, I can change it to something more generic like "Sentinel" or "Brick" or something.

I'll try to post the full tech tree today or tomorrow, depending on the weather at the telescope. (If it's bad tonight, and it looks like it will be, I'll have a LOT of time on my hands.) And I'll update the earlier posts with these renames where appropriate if I get a chance.

A few other tidbits:
> The really expensive T23 buildings (Stasis Generator, Quantum Converter, Paradise Garden) are going to be changed to National Wonders (1 per civ). This was mainly for balance reasons; most of these give something like "+1 research per specialist in all cities", which obviously can get out of control if you build a few of them despite the cost.
So I'll be tweaking the stats of these buildings to compensate for their rarity. One thing to note is that the three buildings were the only places that could slot the awesome Transcend specialists; so now, instead of only having one slot, I'll increase it to two or three per. The buildings will still be expensive, and given that they're in the final tier of technologies it's unlikely the game would last long enough to build all three of them, but if you do, it would be nice.
Subspace Generators will also be limited to 1 per empire (which the Gravship already is), but since it's technically a unit and not a building, it's harder to call it a "National Wonder", and obviously, it has no Transcend slots.

Note that in all of the National Wonders I listed, none of them have any prerequisites beyond the techs they're at. None of that "library in every city" thing, I hate that. (Seriously, I can build Oxford University with my 10-city empire, but annex a new city and suddenly it's unavailable?) In most cases, then, these national wonders are designed to level the playing field by giving every civ the option to gain certain abilities that had previously been restricted to world wonders and their first-come-first-served basis.

I think there's a miscommunication here. You don't start out in this era. (You CAN, but that's not the base design any more than it is in the core game.) This is intended to be a content mod added to the END of the tech tree. As in, when you have a complete empire covering half a continent, with cities full of Wonders and such, and you've hit a stalemate with the other nations. This isn't a SMAC remake, it's the addition of a future era (or in this case, three future eras) that use SMAC as their inspiration.

:lol: Close from my end, eh?

OK, understood. Will wait to see your documents, then go from there and see if I can provide some good feedback for you.

D

:lol: Close from my end, eh?

Don't get me wrong; once I'm sure it's working, the first scenario I'd consider would be one starting at that future era, with the SMAC leaders. And it shouldn't be too hard to add fungus as a terrain feature and spore towers as the barbarian camp, so that you could at least attempt to mimic the original SMAC. (A better artist than me would need to mod the terrain colors.) I'm just saying that it won't be part of the initial mod.

The only thing missing from the above documents is the tech tree, and I'm going to try to add that tonight. (I know, ONLY the tech tree is missing; it's the single most important part. "So, Mrs. Lincoln, other than that, how was the play?")
The main thing I'm looking for is feedback on the units, which started with the name feedback above. Not just names, though; are there any particular things that seem to be missing? Are people horribly upset about the idea of not having any new naval or air units once you're past the first few new tiers? Does it seem too game-breaking that, in effect, every unit after the first couple tiers has the "all terrain costs 1 MP" ability, to where terrain becomes an afterthought? (That was intentional, by the way. It gets even better when you see that four of the later "land" units can freely cross oceans as well.) Would enough people know what a Bolo was, or should I name it something generic (Juggernaut, Behemoth, Really Huge Tank) so that they get the idea? Should I just go ahead and rename the Nessus Worm into "Godzilla" to make it absolutely clear, or should I stay subtle and just mention in the civilopedia that the first one created on Earth ended up leveling Tokyo? And maybe the second, less impressive one heavily damaged New York?
And there are other little things. Do certain types of Great Person become too weak in these later eras compared to the others? (I'd like to see the number of hammers a Great Engineer gives scale with era, for instance.)

Also, on the buildings/wonders, I tried to limit myself to giving them abilities that could be added through the existing XML, without adding any new .lua. Not that I won't do those sorts of things eventually, but I'm still too new at it to know what's possible and what isn't. So some of the existing structures' effects aren't what I wanted.
For instance the Self-Aware Colony is +1 happy per city (which makes sense in a "remove the unhappy citizens" sense the wonder movie gave), but what I wanted was basically "conquered cities without a courthouse give half their previous unhappiness and cities WITH a courthouse get +1 happiness". Slightly stronger, and fits the theme better.
And for the Dream Twister, while giving -5 happiness to each other civ would be a great result (but again, it's not possible yet), my original concept was that building it would put all other civs in three turns of Anarchy. This shouldn't be too hard, since there's already an anarchy mechanism for when you switch between exclusive SP trees. So maybe the solution is to mix the two; one turn of anarchy, and then -3 happiness from then on.

So what I could use are suggestions about things that aren't currently possible in the existing XML, but that could be implemented with minimal .lua changes (or that others have already added in their own mods that I could borrow).

(Yes, I type a lot. I'm bored.)

Okay, I've updated the Technologies post with the entire tech tree. The only thing I haven't done in that post or the others up top is make the nomenclature changes discussed in a previous post (renaming the Elf, etc.). I wanted to give a little time for people to give other suggestions before making the change "official".

Nearly every new tech gives three things (wonders/buildings/units/etc.), until you reach the Nanotech Era and the norm becomes two. I don't count new Social Policies towards a tech's totals, because the chances are you still wouldn't be able to take one that just unlocked (since each is at the end of its respective policy branches).
This means that these techs are substantially more content-packed than the Nuclear (Modern) era techs. I've tried to fix this by moving a few things down into that era, but it's still a pretty noticeable discrepancy. As a result, it might end up being necessary to jack up the costs of the future-era techs by a significant margin, to keep players from being too overloaded with new stuff. (Not much point in unlocking two or three new buildings and units if your cities are all still busy building the previous ones. Forcing players to prioritize is all well and good, but this might be too much.)

Anyway, there you go. That's pretty much all of the "concept" side of my mod. Next week I'll try attaching actual files to this thread for people to test out, but I REALLY want to get it to where the tech tree at least loads correctly. (Currently, it doesn't. TechTree.lua hardcodes you to using seven Eras; I bumped that up to 10, but now I just get a blank tech tree, so there must be something similar I missed. Anyone know if there's a hardcoded maximum number of pixels in the x-direction in the tech tree?) The technologies load, and are researchable at the right times, but without being able to SEE the tech tree it's a bit hard to debug anything.

Don't get me wrong; once I'm sure it's working, the first scenario I'd consider would be one starting at that future era, with the SMAC leaders. And it shouldn't be too hard to add fungus as a terrain feature and spore towers as the barbarian camp, so that you could at least attempt to mimic the original SMAC. (A better artist than me would need to mod the terrain colors.) I'm just saying that it won't be part of the initial mod.

If I understand the Civ5 mod structure correctly, you can add terrain textures as a separate and independent mod module. I assume additional artwork could work in a similar way, leaving you free to design the features, rules, etc. without worrying about art assets.

Additionally, as a scenario you should be able to add all the SMAC-like stuff such as fungus, aliens, and leaders, without needing to include it in the main mod.

[...]
The main thing I'm looking for is feedback on the units, which started with the name feedback above. Not just names, though; are there any particular things that seem to be missing? Are people horribly upset about the idea of not having any new naval or air units once you're past the first few new tiers? Does it seem too game-breaking that, in effect, every unit after the first couple tiers has the "all terrain costs 1 MP" ability, to where terrain becomes an afterthought? (That was intentional, by the way. It gets even better when you see that four of the later "land" units can freely cross oceans as well.) Would enough people know what a Bolo was, or should I name it something generic (Juggernaut, Behemoth, Really Huge Tank) so that they get the idea? Should I just go ahead and rename the Nessus Worm into "Godzilla" to make it absolutely clear, or should I stay subtle and just mention in the civilopedia that the first one created on Earth ended up leveling Tokyo? And maybe the second, less impressive one heavily damaged New York?
[...]

Firstly, you already stated that you are not doing a total conversion of SMAC. If SMAC modders have learned anything from the discussions since the launch of Civ4, it should certainly be that the idea of recreating SMAC is a pointless project. As the mod's designer you are free to add and remove whatever you want regardless of being "true" to SMAC. A "true SMAC" mod is a futile endeavor. You should only stay "true" to your own concept and its coherence and make sure you do not break the immersion (e.g. in your current setting, it would break immersion if your powerful late game units were named after The Simpsons characters).

I personally favor the subtle approach in unit naming (and naming in general), but you make the decision and feedback and suggestions should hopefully help you doing just that.

If possible, I suggest you check out Maniac's Planetfall mod for Civ4 for ideas--in casu name suggestions.

For sci-fi, perhaps something like:

Zombie --> Drone or Automaton
Troll --> Stem-Trooper
Elf --> Commando

As the mod's designer you are free to add and remove whatever you want regardless of being "true" to SMAC.

Sure, I get that. Part of what I was asking for in the particular paragraph you quoted was whether there were any obvious gameplay niches for units that I was missing; I wasn't worried so much about not adhering to the SMAC standard, just that it's very easy for a single person to have a blind spot. For instance, if I'd left naval units out entirely, I'd hope someone would call me on it and suggest adding a few; something like that is often less of a design decision and more of a simple oversight. Or maybe I'd forgotten to make something that a Missile Cruiser could easily upgrade to, or I had made no future units capable of carrying missile units at all. That's one sort of thing I'm looking for in feedback.
Or a little less straightforward; in my mod, there are many buildings that add +1 happiness and some small bonuses, and very few buildings that add production until you reach the nanotech era (at which point there are many). While this was deliberate, it's not something I'm convinced is a good idea overall.
To use a more SMAC-centric example, back in SMAC I loved using rovers with the drop pod upgrade. And yet, in my unit list, the only units with the paradrop ability are the two Powersuit units. So, would you say that it is important for me to add paradrop to, say, the Vertol or Gravtank?

If possible, I suggest you check out Maniac's Planetfall mod for Civ4 for ideas--in casu name suggestions.

Planetfall was a great mod, and I'm going for a lot of the same types of things. Unfortunately it's been a while since I've played it, because something on my computer got screwed up and now Civ4 won't work. (I'm going to have to reinstall the whole shebang, most likely, expansions and all, and I keep putting that off.) But a lot of the basic concepts translate well to this, and a lot of the unit graphics would fit very nicely into this mod. I just didn't want to try and make a copy of that mod, any more than I'd make a copy of SMAC.

UNITS

Geosynchronous Survey Pod (T20): It’s an air unit, technically, although with infinite range. No damage, but it gives a huge visibility radius around whatever city it’s currently in, and can perform Recon missions to give visibility anywhere in the world. Great if you’re getting ready to bombard a city but don’t have anything in the area to spot. And, it’s a cheap unit.
Orbital Ion Cannon (T20): Orbital weapon, meaning it’s technically an Air unit but can’t be intercepted and has infinite range. The damage isn’t very impressive (only 50 strength), but again, you can hit pretty much anything indiscriminately.



:bowdown: That. Is. Awesome! Did you come up with these yourself?

Question: do the AI's use these? Currently to date I have only seen one AI air unit (and I play exclusively in the Modern/ Future eras, so a/c should be plentiful). Regardless, can't wait to see these in action! :goodjob:

D

:bowdown: That. Is. Awesome! Did you come up with these yourself?

Yes, but they were originally based on a concept I'd seen someone mention in a mod thread back in Civ4. Orbital weaponry would be the way to go, basically causing air units to become obsolete and eventually making even land units go away.

The concept behind these and quite a few of the other units is this: as you go further into the future eras, little things like "range" and "terrain" stop mattering. Combat becomes a question of In or Out; units inside cities are fairly safe, units out in the field can be picked off easily (barring defensive stacking from a Citadel on a hill or something). So in the Nanotech Era, the only units that are really viable for large-scale wars are the Titans, who have so much combat power that the satellites won't hurt them much.

This is actually a real concern for me; the Gravtank comes only one tier before the first orbital weapon, and I'd hate for it to become useless too quickly, so the Orbital Ion Cannon (the first orbital weapon at T20) has a pretty dinky attack. I think it's only a 50, so it's not going to one-shot anyone. But two tiers later, when you get the Orbital Death Ray (150 I think), you can pretty much assume one kill per turn, anywhere in the world. (This made me think that I should change the Death Ray to "1 per empire" cap just like I did the Subspace Generator.)

I actually wanted a few units, like the Mobile Shield, to be immune to orbital weapons, and possibly bestow an extra bonus versus orbital weapons to nearby units. But that isn't possible yet, mainly because I made these Air units, combat class Bomber. I think I have to add an entirely new domain or combat class for them, and then I'll give a bonus vs. satellites to all Titan units, or possibly just make it an available promotion.

Question: do the AI's use these?

I haven't tested that part yet, as the mod isn't fully functional yet. But the Ion Cannon and Death Ray are just given the Bomber AI, so they SHOULD work correctly; a bomber's list of commands is basically "bombard" and "rebase", so all these are really waiting on are new unit graphics and attack animations. The Subspace Generator was also given the same AI, and I'm not sure whether I should switch it to the AI for nuclear missiles (I'm afraid the AI will try to use it on individual field units adjacent to its own without the nuke AI, but with that AI they'll "hoard" them like they would any disposable unit instead of firing every turn). The Survey Pod I really have no idea on; that one might require a unique set of AI rules, and that's a bit beyond my abilities at the moment.

Okay, I'm going to start renaming the stuff in the initial posts based on the feedback people have given here. The only remaining "fantasy" name, really, would be the Troll. I'm open to suggestions on changing that, but it has to still fit the unit's abilities: something that's VERY hard to kill, and is a great defender (and not just in cities), someone you can stick in a choke point and have then be practically impossible to move. (Seriously, a Troll in a Citadel improvement on a hill? That's something like 200 strength. A Giant Death Robot would splatter himself against that, and forget about trying to bombard them down first thanks to that regeneration.) A sci-fi possibility would be the Pak; after all, they WERE basically "upgraded" humans that were much harder to kill and were seen primarily as defenders (hence the "Protector" name). But that'd mean not using a "troll with a minigun" animation, if I can find one.

----

On to a different note, I have a question for anyone who's still reading at this point. Tech progression. I HATE that in the core game, once you get to the later eras you're getting a new tech every 3-4 turns; it's way too fast, and it makes some units become obsolete faster than you can build them. Some of this can be blamed on ICS, but some is just inherent to the multipliers involved stacking to ridiculous levels (notice the Research lab was +100%? That's why I dropped it to +50%.)
If you look at the Technologies post above, you'll notice that the tech costs ramp up pretty significantly, but I have very few buildings that add research (Fusion Lab, Quantum Lab). So in those later eras, this'd slow down naturally; my goal is that by the late Fusion Era you're taking ~10 turns per tech, even with a large empire. This might require making Great Scientists obsolete, for balance reasons...

So the question is, do I need to re-price all of the Industrial and Modern techs as well, making them more expensive? (This'd also make me reprice the Digital Era techs as well.) Or can anyone think of other ways to balance it, like reducing the benefits of research buildings or lowering the base research rate from population?

------

Another concept that I'm looking into is, basically, the Library. All of the other research, production, or gold buildings add a percentage to a city's existing values, which is basically useless if the city doesn't contribute in that area. (Building a Market, +25% gold, doesn't do much if the city only produces 1-2 gold per turn.) This encourages extreme specialization of cities. But the Library gives you a flat +1 base beaker per 2 pop, which apparently is then multiplied by any other building multipliers, so it has the potential to add more actual beakers than its later counterparts.
So, I was thinking of doing something similar for other buildings, especially in later eras, to make those buildings worthwhile to make. For instance, the Robotic Assembly Plant could just be +1 hammer per 2 population. With a Factory, Genejack, and railroad connection you'd be at +2.5 per 2 pop, with other bonuses you're more like +3, so a size 20 city would gain 30 hammers. (Assuming these ARE multiplied, I have yet to test that.)
Likewise, the Energy Bank would be changed from yet another +gold% building to be +1 gold per 2 population. For a large city that already has a Market, Bank, and Stock Exchange, this gets pretty huge.
And I want to use this for some wonders, too, most notably the Theory of Everything and/or Supercollider. I'd do the same for the Cyborg Factory for production.

While the numbers sound large, you have to remember that I'm already increasing the base tile values at many Digital-era techs. So if all Farms gain +1 production (allowing Grasslands to get +2 in a Golden Age), you're already going to have a substantially higher base production value before mutipliers are applied, and this sort of semi-flat boost actually might gain LESS. I still have to confirm the balance on this.

The only remaining "fantasy" name, really, would be the Troll. I'm open to suggestions on changing that, but it has to still fit the unit's abilities: something that's VERY hard to kill, and is a great defender (and not just in cities), someone you can stick in a choke point and have then be practically impossible to move.

"Hedgehog" defense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_defence

Also, "Wolverine" might infer having more teeth to it (haha).

A sci-fi possibility would be the Pak; after all, they WERE basically "upgraded" humans that were much harder to kill and were seen primarily as defenders (hence the "Protector" name). But that'd mean not using a "troll with a minigun" animation, if I can find one.

Tarth (from the computer game Deadlock) do look like a troll, and they carried what amounted to a minigun (or mini-cannon), and they were (compared to the other races in Deadlock) darned hard to kill. Star Trek's Gorn also come to mind, but of course they were notoriously slow.


On to a different note, I have a question for anyone who's still reading at this point. Tech progression. I HATE that in the core game, once you get to the later eras you're getting a new tech every 3-4 turns; it's way too fast, and it makes some units become obsolete faster than you can build them. Some of this can be blamed on ICS, but some is just inherent to the multipliers involved stacking to ridiculous levels (notice the Research lab was +100%? That's why I dropped it to +50%.)
If you look at the Technologies post above, you'll notice that the tech costs ramp up pretty significantly, but I have very few buildings that add research (Fusion Lab, Quantum Lab). So in those later eras, this'd slow down naturally; my goal is that by the late Fusion Era you're taking ~10 turns per tech, even with a large empire. This might require making Great Scientists obsolete, for balance reasons...

So the question is, do I need to re-price all of the Industrial and Modern techs as well, making them more expensive? (This'd also make me reprice the Digital Era techs as well.) Or can anyone think of other ways to balance it, like reducing the benefits of research buildings or lowering the base research rate from population?

A brute force approach might be to add more "dummy techs" in between the vital ones - that way someone would have to research several techs before getting to the good stuff. This would emulate SMAC's and GalCiv 2's approach in this area.


So now my question becomes "who is your target audience for this mod?". I think there is going to be an extremely small slice of the community who will want to (or need to) utilize this whole new set of eras your creating. However I could be wrong here, so thought I would ask and see what your perspective is on this. Personally speaking, I am extremely interested, as I play exclusively in the Modern and Future eras, so an expansion here is most definately something that I am willing to help out in.

D

A brute force approach might be to add more "dummy techs" in between the vital ones - that way someone would have to research several techs before getting to the good stuff. This would emulate SMAC's and GalCiv 2's approach in this area.

I actually went away from this, deliberately. I don't WANT to have techs that only provide a single benefit, for two reasons:
1> It's boring.
2> You'll get techs that have no benefits that help with your particular playstyle. I want every tech to be at least a little desirable, no matter what strategy you take, and not just in terms of what techs they lead to.
This is why most techs give three benefits, and those three will be in different areas you'll see a tech that unlocks a wonder, a unit, and upgrades a terrain improvement. Even if you don't like that unit and even if the wonder's already been built by someone else, the terrain boost makes the tech still worth taking.

So now my question becomes "who is your target audience for this mod?". I think there is going to be an extremely small slice of the community who will want to (or need to) utilize this whole new set of eras your creating.

I see this four ways.

First, there will be people who want to play the normal Civ, but are annoyed that the game just sort of peters out at the Modern era; no more Wonders, only a couple new units, and you'll end up researching Future Tech over and over while you finish up the U.N. or spaceship. These people don't need all of the new eras, and will almost definitely end the game in the Digital Era, but at least things will still be happening while they achieve their other victory condition.
Even if you don't really care about the new techs and such, the question becomes, why NOT use a future mod?

Second, there are people like me, who actually want to play some future eras in addition to the existing ones. For the current game, there's actually a fairly narrow window where you're building Modern Armors and such; if you don't go on an immediate rampage with these, you'll run out of time. But with a mod like this, you can take your time.
This also comes back to balance; in the core game, once you start conquering the balance between civs spirals out of control; you'll end up fifteen or twenty techs ahead of the AI and there'll be no real threat. In most games I've played, I could have won the game in the Industrial era, and the only reason the game made it to the Modern was because I chose to hold back long enough to get the last tiers of units for fun. That's why I started the Long Mod; it's designed to keep the game close as you get to the modern era. And if the game's still close, why not keep going?

Third, there will be people who want to play only the future eras as their own SMAC-type game, starting the game in the Modern Era. Right now, there's just no point starting a new game in the Industrial or Modern eras because you'll run out of researchable techs before your civ is even close to big enough to do anything interesting. While I've said that this wasn't the intent of the mod, it IS a good reason to have an extensive future era structure instead of just a handful of futuristic techs.

Fourth, this could be the basis for some scenario games. Imagine a WW3 map using the units and wonders of this mod. (I actually did this in Civ3 with a stripped-down version of this mod's predecessor, creating an Earth map with 12 major civ powers.)

(I would LOVE to see someone do a Succession Game using a mod like this. But that would come once it's balanced a lot better.)

I actually went away from this, deliberately. I don't WANT to have techs that only provide a single benefit, for two reasons:
1> It's boring.
2> You'll get techs that have no benefits that help with your particular playstyle. I want every tech to be at least a little desirable, no matter what strategy you take, and not just in terms of what techs they lead to.

My thoughts were that, because research was coming so quickly in the situation you are describing, that its not really boring when your getting a tech every couple turns. By padding it with some extra techs, it then appeals to those individuals who would like to have to give some thought to the overall direction their research is headed (i.e. away from the instant gratification trend that is Civ5), which are probably the same people who are interested in playing out a longer (re: extended) game. Or to put it another way, it’s a deeper game appealing to a different audience.
However you have your target audience in mind, as well as the direction that you want to take this. If I think of another idea or solution that fits your criteria, I’ll let you know.


Third, there will be people who want to play only the future eras as their own SMAC-type game, starting the game in the Modern Era. Right now, there's just no point starting a new game in the Industrial or Modern eras because you'll run out of researchable techs before your civ is even close to big enough to do anything interesting. While I've said that this wasn't the intent of the mod, it IS a good reason to have an extensive future era structure instead of just a handful of futuristic techs.
Bingo – that’s me!  I won’t debate with you whether this style is playable in its current form, however anything that fleshes this region of the game out (or takes the futuristic theme and overlays the original game from start to finish) I am interested in, and want to help out in.

Fourth, this could be the basis for some scenario games. Imagine a WW3 map using the units and wonders of this mod. (I actually did this in Civ3 with a stripped-down version of this mod's predecessor, creating an Earth map with 12 major civ powers.)
Once your mod progresses I can probably contribute some scenarios. We can discuss theme and direction once the mod gets to that point.

And speaking of themes: do you have a theme which permeates your mod? Example: SMAC had a dark theme to it, from the GUI, to the music, to the text. Are you going to try and implement a theme of this nature? Let me know if you plan on addressing this in any manner, and if so I can help out with the associated text.

D

Wow, i'm really impressed with what has been done here so far. Just wanted to let you know that I will be playing this mod as soon as it is stable. There is soo much potential here. Can't wait to try it out

By padding it with some extra techs, it then appeals to those individuals who would like to have to give some thought to the overall direction their research is headed

The problem with this is something I saw back in the original SMAC, and that you now see in Civ5 in certain eras: if a tech only gives one benefit, and it's not one you particularly want, you'll just avoid researching it. You'll go up the other side of the tree instead, until the costs get lopsided enough to make the bypassed tech more desirable. While the undesirable tech might lead to something better, most players just don't pay that much attention to the full tree; when they research a tech, they'll pick the next one from the list of available techs without going into the tree.

I just didn't want those sorts of bottlenecks. I wanted every tech to be at least a little desirable to every player on its own merits, not just in terms of what it leads to. So you'll see a tech that provides a World Wonder, a Building, and a Terrain Improvement ugprade, or maybe building/new resource/unit. Any two of those would probably be enough for people to want it, so I COULD add a few more techs in there if need be, but I didn't want to stretch this to four eras instead of three. (Also, a few of the tech names in SMAC, like Advanced Military Algorithms, I wanted to avoid using.)

There are a few techs that still worry me. For instance, Doctrine:Initiative gives two naval units and a Wonder that boosts naval units. So obviously, there will be some games where this isn't a high-value tech. This is why I put that particular tech in the middle of the tree, where it becomes nearly impossible to go around it. But I was thinking of moving Dilithium (aquatic resource) to that tech, moving the Leviathan (carrier battleship) up to Doctrine: Air Power, moving the Cloudbase Academy up one step to Advanced Spaceflight, and putting the Bioenhancement Center down at Mind/Machine Interface. I still might do this.

I also had another motive: in Civ5 there's no research overflow. If you have a large number of cheap techs, then the rounding becomes a HUGE deal; 2 turns vs 3 turns becomes a huge difference, whereas 9 turns vs 10 turns just isn't enough to care about. If overflow was implemented then I'd think a lot more about splitting the techs up further. And this mod was designed to implement the Tech Diffusion mod, which gives bonus beakers if your enemy has a tech, so that 2-vs-3 might be 2 turns for both, but you'd have no way of knowing.

Just wanted to let you know that I will be playing this mod as soon as it is stable.

I guess I'm due for a timetable estimate/status update.

The Long Mod (the mod designed to ensure more civs make it to the future eras) is DONE, and I've played a couple games with it. There are a couple placeholder graphics in it, but in general it works just fine, and achieves its intended goal of keeping more civs in the game longer.

The AC (content) Mod currently runs, but not correctly. I'm still not sure what's going wrong, but I have some ideas.

TECHS: The tech tree displays correctly now. But now that I can see how the game will display it, I'm changing a few tech prerequisites and positions, because the arrows won't work right under certain conditions (apparently, if a tech leads to two techs with differing GridX values). All have quotes (with audio) and most civilopedia entries. For copyright reasons I don't think I'll be providing the audio, but anyone who has SMAC should be able to add them in easily. I have the tech icons, and I WILL provide them in an icon atlas, but I haven't got that to work yet.
BUILDINGS: nearly all have been programmed to their intended functions, although I'm tweaking these heavily as I figure out how to add better functions. None have graphics, but they don't really need them. For an unknown reason, though, these don't work, and none of the buildings get loaded; I'm going to have to go through one by one to find out which one is crashing it.
UNITS: all of them have the appropriate abilities (no missing functionality as far as I can tell). None have graphics. I still have to add in the AI table, but that's trivial as it's a copy of the AI entry in the unit definition. These SHOULD work just fine, as all of the unit abilities and promotions use existing XML schema. But as with the Buildings, none of the units actually load, and I THINK I know the problem (it's the Delete on the Mech unit; I'm going to have to replace the Combat Mech's new Row definition with a massive Update to the Mech to keep the IDs consecutive.)
I've confirmed that the promotions all load correctly, although the Civilopedia seems to arrange them in a strange way.
WONDERS: About 2/3rds have effects, the rest are either placeholders or have no current effect. None have splash screens or world art. I have wonder movies, but Civ5 has no ability to play them. (Yet.) Since these are part of the Buildings.xml, they don't work yet either.
SOCIAL POLICIES: 9 out of the 10 have the effect I want, one doesn't work yet (Fundamentalism, which adds culture to specialists). No icon graphics yet, but since there's one per tree they don't need unique icons. These seem to load just fine, although I haven't tried actually purchasing them yet.
EVENTS: Not coded in at all. Currently I have set no way to gain Centauri Ecology, a key tech (I want it to be granted when you launch a spaceship), the Transcendence victory has no timer yet, and none of my other "events" work at all. So as a temporary solution for debugging, I might unlock Centauri Ecology for free and have the spaceship do nothing.
I also have none of the "terraforming" code in place, as I'm still waiting to see how some of the terrain-alteration problems other mods have found get resolved.
SPECIALISTS: This is the big one. The Transcend specialist works fine, but the Empath doesn't. I NEED the ability to tie happiness (and culture, if possible) to a tile yield. There's a mod in the Mod Components forum that adds a "Judge" specialist to the Courthouse that adds +1 happiness, and that'd be a great start, but I also want the ability to create a +happiness tile improvement (the Monolith) when sacrificing a Great Empath. As a placeholder I've changed the Empath to "+2 food" while I test the rest of the mod, but this is one case where I'm not willing to compromise the design. (Also, +food is unbalanced, once you take the SP that makes specialists only cost 1 food instead of two.)

In other words, the mod is almost functional right now, and once the buildings and units load, that's enough to start Alpha gameplay testing. I want to go through it all once myself (building each unit and seeing if it does what I intended it to, etc.), but once that's done I'll release a public version on these boards.
I may have to create a Worldbuilder map for testing purposes, where I start off with a bunch of size 20 cities at the start of the Digital Era.
But again, this is using placeholders for EVERYTHING, especially units. I'm going to keep referring to this as an alpha build (and not uploading the mod to the official servers) until I get at least all of the unit graphics added, and that'll depend on others. I may have to just go grab a ton of things from the Civ4 forums and do the conversion myself, but anyone who really wants to help out could do that for a couple units for me...

On to a different note, I have a question for anyone who's still reading at this point. Tech progression. I HATE that in the core game, once you get to the later eras you're getting a new tech every 3-4 turns; it's way too fast, and it makes some units become obsolete faster than you can build them..... my goal is that by the late Fusion Era you're taking ~10 turns per tech, even with a large empire. This might require making Great Scientists obsolete, for balance reasons...

... can anyone think of other ways to balance it, like reducing the benefits of research buildings or lowering the base research rate from population?

The idea I had this morning involves the Ascent to Transcendence. The background on this goes something like this: just as an ape trying to create a super-ape could never dream of a human as a creation, so too mankind cannot realize the next step in our evolution. (this is a paraphrasing from Gordon Dickson's "Dorsai").

The thought here is that instead of utilizing science to take the next step in our evolution, that we actually turn away from the corporal world, and turn our minds eye inward to delve into the inner workings of our minds. As such special buildings would need to be constructed to house these individuals exploring the furthest reaches of our minds, and to simulate this turning away from the corporal world, these buildings would have a negative effect on science, economy, and food. In order to build the Ascent to Transcendence you would need to build X number of these facilities, each of which have a negative modifier against the above listed items, thus achieving your goal of slowing down tech research, as these buildings cumulative effect would be to continually attenuate a players abilities to research technologies. Once the prerequisite number of these buildings are constructed, then the player can build the Ascent to Transcendence. But until that point the research of other techs would become slower as more of these buildings are constructed. So in effect these buildings by themselves do nothing other than to attenuate the abilities to advance research, but you need X number of them to build the AtT.

Anyways, my wild-arsed thoguht for the day. HTH.


D

Anyways, my wild-arsed thought for the day. HTH.

It's not a bad thought. My main worry about that would simply be that there's no way the AI would be capable of doing a good job with it. But the basic idea is actually somewhat related to what I'd planned with that 20-turn timer; sacrificing Great People knocks turns off of the timer, because what's ACTUALLY happening is that when some "celebrity" decides to ascend, a whole bunch of people in that field will suddenly decide to go with. (Sacrificing Great People is something the AI can do. Stockpiling great people to USE as sacrifices, that's not really the AI's forte.)

One thought I had for Transcendence was much simpler than what you'd suggested:
Every turn the timer is counting down, every city loses 1 population. Any city that is reduced to 0 population is demolished.

This reflects the fact that as more and more people ascend to the whole energy being thing (and stop caring about contributing to your corporeal empire), every city becomes less effective. Science decreases, you have fewer available workers to farm the land or work as specialists, and so on. A few Transcends will still work as specialists in your top-tier buildings, but most will go all solopsist on you instead.
One upshot of this would be that you shouldn't even TRY to transcend until you've got some size 20+ cities (which, by that era, you will). Now, if it's just a flat "-1 pop per turn" without shutting off food production, then you'll often grow back after losing the population, so a size 15+ city might still survive (since with 90% food storage and Maritimes and Sky Hydroponics Labs and such, once you get down to size 3-4 you should grow almost every turn). All that really matters is that your capital survives the timer, anyway.
Also, if you sacrifice a GP to reduce the counter, then obviously your cities will lose less. So the game might still be winnable with size ~10 cities if you plan ahead.

----
Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out why my units and buildings don't load. Hopefully I'll get that straightened out tonight, and if I can, then tomorrow or Monday I'll upload the Alpha version of the mod to this board for some playtesting.
Also, I'm continually tweaking things like the tech prerequisites, etc. I'll try to keep the first few posts in this thread updated with the latest information, but it's possible I'll miss something. For instance, last night I decided to change the Quantum Converter, Paradise Garden, and Stasis Generator to be National Wonders (1 per civ), so that I could give them more impressive bonuses. I've actually got a fairly large restructuring in mind tonight that I want to test out once I've got it working.

(My ongoing issue: the resource formerly known as Deuterium. Which is a better name, Dilithium or Tiberium? Either works in terms of lore.)

It's not a bad thought. My main worry about that would simply be that there's no way the AI would be capable of doing a good job with it.

Have you thought of just making it a free facility associated with the discovered tech? This then completely frees the AI from any necessary programming in this sense. And if you form the tech tree correctly, then via the pre-existing biases in the AI you should be able to shape the direction the AI's take in research by placing facilities and units into the tech tree which entice the AIs down directed paths. Its still sort of exploitable (i.e. a human could purposely avoid the prerequisite techs if they were driving towards a different goal), but heah, I hope you appreciate that you have posed a very difficult problem, and that I am trying to come up with viable solutions.

I do really like your approach of every turn the timer is counting down, a city loses a population point. Question: once the prerequisite tech is researched, is the effect global for all factions (i.e. like the UN Vote)? If so I really like it, as a human then has no control over this effect, and it is a huge variable a human player then has to contend with! :b:

D

I hope you appreciate that you have posed a very difficult problem, and that I am trying to come up with viable solutions.

No doubt. This is one of the things that SMAC really oversimplified; even with the SMAC-X subspace ending, it was still a fairly simple "build X of these and you win" thing, and I want something much, much more complex. So clearly there's going to be negatives to every suggestion, since we're in uncharted territory here.

I do really like your approach of every turn the timer is counting down, a city loses a population point. Question: once the prerequisite tech is researched, is the effect global for all factions (i.e. like the UN Vote)?

To clarify, I meant that each turn, EVERY city of yours loses a population point, which is obviously a substantial penalty. I'd have to remove the previously mentioned "add two turns to the timer if you lose a city" thing, because you WILL lose your peripheral cities in this process.

And this would only trigger for YOUR cities, which means that a civ attempting to ascend is suddenly at a substantial disadvantage relative to its competitors, which is exactly what I wanted. Basically, if person A starts to ascend, person B basically has ten or so turns to throw everything they can at A in an attempt to knock out his capital before the timer expires. Since it's practically guaranteed that A has a tech advantage, I wanted to level the playing field a bit to give B a fighting chance.

Also, to be clear, the timer (and population decrease) would only start once a specific Project was completed, the Ascent to Transcendence. Not just when you research the tech. So you'd be well into the repeatable Transcendent Thought techs at that point. (One thing I want to do: every time you research Transcendent Thought, you gain a permanent +1 happiness. Not just bump up your score.)

--------------
Status update:
As of tonight, the buildings, wonders, and units are now semi-working in the mod. They have placeholder graphics, obviously, and I haven't verified yet that they do all of what I want them to, but they all at least show up in the tech tree and civilopedia and the units have the correct promotions. (I HAVE confirmed that the Great Empath specialist does NOT build his custom improvement, which means the Improvements.xml file isn't being read. Still debugging that.) Before I upload it, I'll also want to add a few necessary Civilopedia texts. Like, say, the part that tells people what each building/wonder actually DOES, which I think is kind of essential when anyone other than me tries to play it.

There are still quite a few parts that aren't done. I'll update the earlier parts of the thread with a more detailed status.

--------------
Status update:
As of tonight, the buildings, wonders, and units are now semi-working in the mod. They have placeholder graphics, obviously, and I haven't verified yet that they do all of what I want them to, but they all at least show up in the tech tree and civilopedia and the units have the correct promotions. (I HAVE confirmed that the Great Empath specialist does NOT build his custom improvement, which means the Improvements.xml file isn't being read. Still debugging that.) Before I upload it, I'll also want to add a few necessary Civilopedia texts. Like, say, the part that tells people what each building/wonder actually DOES, which I think is kind of essential when anyone other than me tries to play it.

There are still quite a few parts that aren't done. I'll update the earlier parts of the thread with a more detailed status.

OK, so once you post your mod you will be looking for feedback: do you have a format you would like followed for the feedback? Gamesaves, screenies, etc.? It would probably be good for you to be proactive in this regard, as feedback in a format you feel comfortable with is probably more beneficial and expedicious to getting this mod bullet-proofed.

Also, if I encounter a problem and think I can fix it (via xml, and possibly LUA) do you want me to give it a shot, or do you just want me to point to where I think the problem is? Each approach here has its benefits and drawbacks, so again just let me know what you feel comfortable with and I'll go with the flow.

Looking forward to your mod - right now ciV is kinda getting boring playing in the Modern/ Future only eras.

D

OK, so once you post your mod you will be looking for feedback: do you have a format you would like followed for the feedback?

Not really, even a stream-of-consciousness feedback would help. The biggest problem with this sort of one-man construction is that it's really easy to create a blind spot. You've got all of these variables being changed at once, and the result gets very messy. It's easy to mistype something and not find it, but it's also easy to just screw up the effects of something, especially if you're trying to do something new to Civ5 and misjudge its impact.

For instance, last night I started a game in the Digital Era for testing purposes. I was given a nice chunk of culture to start the game, and I figured I'd see if my new SPs worked. And that's where I ran into the first problem: while you can set a tech prerequisite for an SP, and it DOES check against that, there's nothing in the SP display to indicate WHY the SP is not available. This would obviously be confusing, so I'm now considering dumping the tech prerequisite altogether. This'd make it possible to select "Cybernetic" in the Medieval Era, so I'd prefer not to do this, but not having the display explain why the SP is unavailable would really confuse any (non-me) players.

Some things will clearly be bugs (one of my buildings' costs was still set to 9999, which is the placeholder value in my template, and I'd accidentally left the cost of the Great Empath at "1" instead of "-1" for testing, so it was a 1-turn build in the ancient era...), others will just look like bugs (Ever notice that a single jet fighter unit is more expensive than the carrier it bases on? That trend continued with their Fusion-era replacements, and they now both come at the same tech so it's more obvious.) Even if it's not truly a bug, feedback would still be valuable, like "Hey, the Leviathan should REALLY cost more than a Needlejet. Can we bump its stats up a bit more to justify a higher cost, without screwing up the balance too badly?"

Any of this would help.

Also, if I encounter a problem and think I can fix it (via xml, and possibly LUA) do you want me to give it a shot,

Well, if it's truly a bug, then fixing it in your own version is obviously a good idea, since it'd let you keep playing/testing. (Example: last night I noticed that the Monolith improvement for the Great Empath couldn't be built, and I'm still debugging that. If you spotted that sort of thing and could fix it on the spot, that'd be great, because there'd be no difference in how you fixed it vs. how I fixed it.)

If it's just a personal opinion on balance, then that's a little different, but obviously the best way to test the balance would be to make the change and see what happens. If you think the 40 combat strength for the Scout Powersuit is just a bit too low to contribute in the Fusion Era, then bump it up to 45 or 50 and we'll tweak the cost later to match. If you think Mind Worms shouldn't be able to take the Blitz promotion, or SHOULD be able to take the March promotion to boost their already-impressive regeneration (they currently can't), then tweak it and see what happens.

If it's something more involved, like "I think the Robotic Assembly Plant should be a few techs earlier, let's say at Subatomic Alloys", then changing that would have a HUGE impact on a lot of other areas, so that sort of thing I'd prefer to discuss before implementation. And if it's adding an entirely new element (for instance, I didn't use the Network Node, Recycling Tanks, Hab Complex, or Recreation Commons from SMAC, and I skipped many SMAC techs altogether) then I'd definitely insist on being involved.

LOL! No, nothing concerning personal opinions or anything like that. Just if I do encounter a true bug (i.e. somethings obviously broken) then I was just offering to investigate to see if I could fix it for you. This is your mod, and I have absolutely no problem subordinating myself in this situation and helping you out by playtesting it. I will offer opinions, but once I comment on something, then thats it on the subject (i.e. I won't keep harping on the same things because I have a different opinion than you in a certain area).

D

Okay, I'm not QUITE ready to upload the mod itself. I did a test game last night, starting in the Transcend Era just to see if everything was in place. After building most of the Wonders (a few of which still do nothing), and coding in the Civilopedia entries for all the buildings and Wonders (not the History part, just the part that explains the game effects), I tried going on a military rampage, and unfortunately this revealed a couple crash bugs. I should have those straightened out today; I think most were caused by units trying to do an animation that their placeholder unit didn't have graphics for. (Satellites trying to rebase when I'd had a Scout as their placeholder, that sort of thing.) I'll play the test case again tonight to see if this worked.

There are a couple other minor tweaks I found in the process of this test game, but I'll be able to do those when I get home from work tonight. One of which I'd like feedback on:

In my design, Neutronium is both a strategic resource and a luxury, in that it's a strategic that also has a Happiness rating. Unfortunately, it looks like adding Happiness to any resource removes it from the strategic resource counter display at the top of the screen, the one that tells you how many units you have remaining. So the question is, how important is that display to people? Do I need to figure out how to force it to display the additional strategic resource, or should I remove the Happiness boost?

But I DID upload four images this morning, under their appropriate posts at the start of the thread; three show the layout of techs in the tech tree (although the icons won't tell you much), and one shows the new policies. (Hint: the 10 new ones all use Oligarchy's "shield" icon, and each is in the bottom row of its branch.)

Neutronium is both a strategic resource and a luxury, in that it's a strategic that also has a Happiness rating. Unfortunately, it looks like adding Happiness to any resource removes it from the strategic resource counter display at the top of the screen, the one that tells you how many units you have remaining. So the question is, how important is that display to people? Do I need to figure out how to force it to display the additional strategic resource, or should I remove the Happiness boost?

Generally speaking I like the idea of a resource which is also a luxury (or, even more generically speaking, items that contribute more than one thing), so I'd say leave it in and make fixing this a low priority: it isn't important to the computer, as it "knows" the resource count, and people can take the discrepancy into account for now.

D

it isn't important to the computer, as it "knows" the resource count, and people can take the discrepancy into account for now.

There's a lot of that going around. The placeholder units are the biggest offenders, obviously, but look at my resources:

Omnicytes: I'm using the Oil graphic, with the Iron terrain icon and the "Flower" icon at the top of the screen. Since this is both a land and sea resource, it can get a bit confusing.
Ultimately, I'd like this one to look more like the Fungus. I suppose I could do that by coloring Oil red (or possibly using Wheat, Cotton, or Dyes colored red? Possibly Cotton for the big deposits and Pearls for the small ones.)

Dilithium: I'm using the Uranium graphics with the Coal terrain icon and the "Star" icon at the top. Since this is a sea-only resource, it's really easy to spot (green crystals floating in the ocean). The only thing I'd like to change is to color the crystals something other than green. (Purple, blue, even pink? Blue would be best since I want to make a Tiberium reference.)

Neutronium: I'm using the Aluminum graphics with the Horse terrain icon and the "Omega" icon at the top (which unfortunately has a small red box around it, but it's growing on me). Since this is a land-only resource, it gets VERY tough to distinguish these deposits from other resources. I'd like to color the deposit dark purple (possibly dark blue), to distinguish from Aluminum, but that makes it a little harder to distinguish from Coal and/or Iron.

Unfortunately, since strategic resources can have "normal" and "heavy" deposits, you can't use a luxury as a graphical placeholder as easily. Either the two sizes have to look alike, or you use two different ones. So when I was modifying the AssignStartingPlots.lua (the resource allocation routine) to include these three new resources, it was a bit painful to test... "Hmm, where's the Neutronium... okay, look for a Horse icon that has chunks of metal below it." I'm still checking to see if any non-resource items could be used as icon placeholders, like using the Nanotechnology tech's icon (gears on a blue field) for Neutronium; not every icon atlas exists at every size, so it might not have any icon at the sizes I need.

On a side note, I'm fairly happy with the resource allocation as it stands now, but obviously this could use some feedback once you start playing. (Hint: if you start a game in the Nanotech or Transcendence Eras you'll see the entire map and all resources right away. Fusion era gets you everything but Neutronium, which unlocks at one of the first available techs.) I'm worried there are too few Neutronium and too many Dilithium (but that too many of these are far from shore, as it's a water-only resource), and the Omnicytes are just STRANGE.
I also tried to add these without screwing up the balance of existing resources too much; if I made Neutronium take up 15% of the hilltops, then I increased the general rate of strategic resources on hills by 15-20% to compensate. This might have made the map a bit too resource-packed, though.
I'm also still looking into adding Dilithium to Lake and possibly Oasis tiles, to help with the yield on Pangaea maps, although I'm not sure how you'd get Work Boats to the former and I'd need to link another resource structure to the latter (probably Quarry).

Okay, I'm still at work so I'm not quite ready to upload the mod, but here's another concept to give feedback on:

Buildings making resources.
In Civ4 you had a bunch of modern Wonders that made luxury resources (Broadway, Rock & Roll, etc.), and I'd wanted to do more of that. Even after I found out that wasn't in Civ5, I wanted it in my design, so the Planetary Datalinks (National Wonder) will make Information (a new tradeable luxury, 3 happiness) and the Longevity Vaccine produces Ambrosia (which was originally a combination health/luxury resource in the Civ4 design), although I'm thinking of moving that up a tier to Clinical Immortality for both balance and thematic reasons. (Balance: Longevity Vaccine is at a tech that can be reached through purely terrestrial research, while CI is at a tech that requires one of the Centauri techs, so you can't make it until you unlock the whole Mindworm/Omnicyte thing through building a spaceship. So I'm looking at just swapping the two Wonders' effects.)
Now, someone in one of the other threads figured out how to mod this in, and I plan on integrating it.

But I'd also wanted to add this functionality to a bunch of other buildings for strategic resources, so that your empire isn't crippled by a complete lack of a specific strategic. So the Fusion Lab would create a small supply of Uranium and Aluminum at the cost of 1 Dilithium; not enough to equip an entire army, but enough that you weren't completely hosed if your territory didn't include a supply. (This is a recurring theme of my balance: make it so that all-out expansion isn't the only way to succeed.)
Others, in my latest design (and these are in addition to the other benefits of each):
Quantum Lab: produces Dilithium and Neutronium
Brood Pit: produces Omnicytes (originally I had this at Nanohospital, but that's just too late in the game.)
Quantum Converter (National Wonder): produces 1 unit of all the "inorganic" luxuries: Gold, Silver, Gems, Dyes (and if you don't think Dyes can be inorganic, go look at what a lot of the industrial-era clothing dyes were made from, let alone the modern stuff.)
Paradise Garden: produces 1 unit of all the "organic" luxuries: Furs, Ivory, Spices, Cotton, Pearls, Whales
Energy Bank: produces Oil, Coal

So this last one got me thinking; at the end of the Digital Era/start of the Fusion era, Doctrine: Air Power only depends on Neural Grafting. In SMAC, D:AP had as a prerequisite a tech named "Synthetic Fossil Fuels", whose only benefit was that it gave you the 6-power weapon, the Missile Launcher.
So one possibility I thought of was to add that tech back in at T17, move the Leviathan back down there, and add a building (the Recycling Tanks would work, since I'm not using that name/icon at the moment) that has, among its effects, that it produces Oil and Coal instead of tacking that onto the Energy Bank. (Third effect: I forgot to add a terrain bonus to the Well improvement, and this'd be a good place for it.)
This'd also free up a unit slot at D:AP, which'd allow me to move the Geosynchronous Survey Pod down two tiers (from 20 to 18). It seemed kind of pointless to have the cheap "recon" satellite come so late in the game, AFTER several of the city-boosting satellites.

Now, to the question: should I do what I said above and create a new tech and building, or just add the Coal/Oil production to the Energy Bank and be done with it? I think I've got too many effects in the Digital Era for the number of techs, so adding another would help, but that gets a bit crowded.

My opinion is that you are starting to get into the nit-picking stage, meaning you are sort of starting to second-guess yourself. I'd say shoot off this initial version of the mod and let people start playing it, then see what the feedback is in this regard.

D

Okay, here goes. I'd wanted to wait until I played a full game before posting these, but that probably isn't going to happen.

Two .zip files are now included in the first post:

Crazy Spatz.zip is my low-level "Balance" mod, also known as the Long Mod, which makes it harder to win by conquest and slows down city growth a bit.
Spatz Alpha Centauri.zip is the content mod.

It's obviously not done. I'm still writing Civilopedia text as fast as I can, and I'm still trying to playtest some things. (For instance, I think some of my all-empire future Wonders just give too much of a benefit.) But it should be at least somewhat playable.

Things that don't work:
> The Transcendence victory doesn't show up on the city build list, and I don't know why not.
> The Centauri Ecology tech, for testing reasons, is a 1-cost tech just off Ecology. In the final version this will be a Disabled tech that's manually awarded after you build a spaceship.
> Any wonder whose Civilopedia help text includes "***" is not functional.
> Neutronium, as mentioned before, isn't being listed among your strategic resources at the top of the screen. This is because it adds Happiness as well, and that particular UI .lua classifies it as a Luxury as a result no matter how I've classed it. Working on this.
This is particularly annoying because if you use your last bit of Neutronium, then you no longer have the luxury and lose the 5 happiness, so a lot of micromanagement is necessary.
> The railroad movement boost from Monopole Magnets doesn't work, and I don't know why. The XML modification is in there, in CIV5Routes.xml, but it doesn't DO anything.
> The ability of antigrav land units to move over water doesn't work right yet, because I didn't actually REMOVE the Embarkation promotion. I'm trying to get around this by setting Embarkation back to false in this particular promotion, but I'm not sure which takes precedence. I may have to create a new Grav unit type and simply not give it the Embarkation promotion, but that screws up all kinds of other things.
> When I killed a Labor Mech with a Combat Mech's bombardment, the game crashed. Since the Combat Mech had been doing just fine up to that point, my working assumption is that the Labor Mech just doesn't have the right death animation (which is strange since it's using the Roman Legions as PH).
> I haven't tested all of the units yet, especially the orbital weapons.
> There's no icon in the tech tree when a new Social Policy unlocks, but I'm VERY close to adding that functionality in.
> The bonuses for starting in a future era are way too large; basically, an Engineer can build ANYTHING in one turn, your SP gain rate will be insane, and you'll have more Great People than you know what to do with.
Good for functionality testing, bad for balance. I'd recommend not starting any later than the Industrial Era for now.

On the bright side, I got some changes in at the last minute. For instance, the new strategic resources now have distinct map icons; basically I cannibalized the four unused Civ5 future technologies' icons. So the Particle Physics icon is now Omnicytes, the "sun" from Fusion Power is now Dilithium, and the blue "gears" from Nanotechnology is now Neutronium. I'm planning on using the "glowing people" Future Tech icon for either the Empath or Transcend specialist (probably the Transcend, since the Empath currently uses the green "Citizen" icon instead and I kind of like it.)

The bonuses for starting in a future era are way too large... I'd recommend not starting any later than the Industrial Era for now.

I don't mind being a guinea pig in this sense and starting games in the Modern era, as I don't think I could get into a game starting pre-Industrial era (its all about the sci-fi for me). And I don't mind banging on the code - for me its also an interest to see whats in-game right now and how everything is interconnected.


On the bright side, I got some changes in at the last minute. For instance, the new strategic resources now have distinct map icons; basically I cannibalized the four unused Civ5 future technologies' icons. So the Particle Physics icon is now Omnicytes, the "sun" from Fusion Power is now Dilithium, and the blue "gears" from Nanotechnology is now Neutronium. I'm planning on using the "glowing people" Future Tech icon for either the Empath or Transcend specialist (probably the Transcend, since the Empath currently uses the green "Citizen" icon instead and I kind of like it.)

Will be dl'ing shortly - looking forward to it. :goodjob:


D

I don't mind being a guinea pig in this sense and starting games in the Modern era, as I don't think I could get into a game starting pre-Industrial era (its all about the sci-fi for me).

I've tried both ways: most of my test games started in the Transcendence Era, with everything unlocked (and with 4 settlers that start new cities at size 8), but obviously, everything is horribly skewed if you do this. The culture gain was especially out of whack, but I also had the problem that nearly every unit was a 1-turn construction, including the Titans.
I'm playing a test case now where I start in the Ancient Era, just so that I'll have a more "realistic" empire once I reach the modern ages, but obviously you can't do this often.

The reason I suggested Industrial is a practical one. I basically took the SMAC tech tree and chopped off the bottom two rows, the ones that unlock all of the "basic" buildings of the game, figuring that earlier eras would take care of all of that. So the reason for my suggestion is that you really need to have the city basic structures in place in your cities BEFORE reaching the new content, and I just don't think the modern (now called "Nuclear Era") gives enough time to get it all in place.
For instance, in my Transcendence test cases, I was having Combat Mechs and Bolos being constructed before Banks and Universities. That's just wrong. I'm in the process of figuring out which of these buildings should be set to be automatically provided in various eras, but that then throws off a LOT of the balance.
Likewise, if you start in the future eras, then the tiles around your cities won't be fully improved by the time that you get to all of those Improvement-boosting technology bonuses. Having to decide between a Farm and a Trading Post in a future era is VERY different than having to decide which to place in ancient times, and there's a lot of inertia involved. (Really, how often have you ever gone back and changed all of the terrain improvements after the fact?)

Finally, one thought came to me: starting in the Transcendence Era, with four Settlers, was REALLY awkward in light of the fact that the Settlers were practically the only unit that couldn't move quickly. So I'm really tempted, now, to add the Colony Pod unit (move 3, all terrain 1 MP, amphibious, maybe a paradrop ability; in SMAC I always loved making Drop Colony Pods) as a futuristic upgrade of the Settler. The only question, then, is whether this'd be useful to have in a game where you start in earlier eras and already have railroads and such in place.

Might I suggest that you move this thread to the modpacks section? I know a lot of people (myself include) usually only look at the mods that are available for playing, so it could potentially reach more people. As a added benefit, there might be people in that section that can help with some of the problems that you are facing. They could also offer advise about several of your balance questions. Oh, and I have downloaded and will be trying this mod after my test :)

Might I suggest that you move this thread to the modpacks section?

Well, until about 10 hours ago there were no actual files in this thread. I JUST put the mod into it this morning; before then, it was a discussion thread for the under-development mod. But yes, now it's basically appropriate to move over there.

I was going to ask a moderator to move the thread, but maybe I'll just make a new one there. But I'd also wanted to spend one more day writing up Civilopedia entries, and playing one last test run before moving it up to that sort of "official" status, just in case there are too many crash bugs. So I was looking at doing this all later tonight. (I'm in L.A., so I just got home from work.)

UPDATE:
I got the tech icons working, all 45 of them. The problem was that GIMP seemed to keep wanting to create additional layers, and they were blocking out the icons. But it's fixed, they're in, and they look great.
Then I did the same for the buildings/wonders, so in a minute I'll update the tech tree screenshots. I'll try to upload new mod files in the morning, possibly in a new thread in the Modpacks forum.

Okay, the Spatz's Alpha Centauri file in the first post now includes all of the tech, wonder, and building icons, so I'd highly recommend getting that if you've already downloaded it before. It makes things MUCH easier when the icons aren't all blank.

I'll be out of town for a few days, so I'm not going to be uploading any new versions until at least Saturday, but I'll be on here periodically to participate in any discussions. In the meantime, I'm going to try to get the moderators to move this thread to Modpacks.

EDIT:
I should also add one note for anyone who never played SMAC. The icons that game used (and which I blatantly copied) were designed to be very "thematic". That is, the color of a tech denoted its general category (red = military, yellow = industrial, white = scientific, green = growth/environmental), and the pictures themselves tended to share thematic elements. So if Quantum Power's logo had four diamonds, then the Quantum Lab would be a beaker containing a shrunken version of that 4-diamond symbol, and it'd be colored white because it's a scientific building.
It's one of the things I most liked about the SMAC design; at a glance, it's easy to see the general connections involved. Civ5's picture-based system basically requires you to mouse over every tech or building icon to see what it really is. As an example of what I mean, I'd attached a picture of a Transcendence-era city to the Buildings post; the icons for most of the Civ5 buildings are nearly meaningless in that screenshot, while my additions are pretty clear IMO. Obviously, SMAC did it because of the graphical limitations of the time, but it's held up well.
This is why I suggest using the revised version of the mod, if you downloaded it before the icons were added. I've confirmed that the savegames are compatible; you can take a preexisting game, load up the revised modpack, and you'll now see icons. (I'm holding off on adding a few changes that I know will break old saves.)

(Historical note: the buildings with the diamond-shaped icons were Wonders in SMAC. I've moved a few buildings to Wonder status and vice-versa, so it's not a solid indicator in this mod, but it's still useful to look for.)

OK, so I am starting to play around with this now. Question regarding bugs: do you have a running list of issues already, and/or a list of issues that your currently working on? For instance right now I'm seeing the Marsh features as just black holes where the Marsh graphic overlay should be. Also in the Civilopedia (Data Links?) the tech Transcendent Thought has triplicate tech icons in its "Leads to Techs" area: for the sake of efficiency I don't think it makes sense for me to t-shoot stuff your already aware of and working on (or does it?).

Also, currently I see some of the tech quotes stuff hasn't been filled in yet. Do you want me to take a crack at filling these items in?

Anyways, its free-play time for me. As I see stuff I'll jot it down, then supply a synopsis sometime tomorrow. Form what I've seen so far its going to be soooo much better than how I've been playing the game to date! :goodjob:

D

OK, so I am starting to play around with this now. Question regarding bugs: do you have a running list of issues already, and/or a list of issues that your currently working on?

Yes to both. I've made a bunch of changes since the version I posted here, and I've got a list of known issues. (Crash bug: don't kill a Labor Mech, just leave them alone if your foes build one.)

There are a lot of little graphical bugs. For instance, when you're building certain Wonders (say, the Great Wall) you see the structure being assembled on the terrain. Since the new Wonders don't have all of the graphical entries, cities that build these wonders end up getting blanked out on the map.

For instance right now I'm seeing the Marsh features as just black holes where the Marsh graphic overlay should be.

That's strange, since I've done nothing to marshes themselves. Are these marsh tiles that have a resource on them (say, Omnicytes)? If so then I could understand it, since Omnicytes' placeholder graphics are something you don't normally find on marsh tiles, and the improvement currently set to harvest them also isn't found on Marsh tiles. But if these are just normal marsh tiles, then I have no idea what's happening.

Also in the Civilopedia (Data Links?) the tech Transcendent Thought has triplicate tech icons in its "Leads to Techs" area

That's because I cheated. I didn't actually DELETE the four future-era techs for the moment (since the ID issue was causing headaches); I left them in the game, turned on Disable, stuck them after Transcendent Thought in the tree, and hid their icons underneath it (which is why you can see a faint red tint to TT's title, that's from the Disable status of the techs underneath it). So the reason TT says it leads to three copies of, say, Fusion Power, is because I told it to replace each of the previous prerequisites for Fusion Power with a copy of TT instead of deleting them. So instead of FP depending on three Modern techs, it now depends on three copies of TT. Since you can't select the tech anyway, this doesn't hurt anything.

In the long term I'll delete those techs entirely and hard-set the ID starting point. Likewise, I actually left the Giant Death Robot in, at one of those hidden techs; what I'll do eventually is replace the entry for the Combat Mech with the GDR, just with altered stats and text strings.

It's a sloppy way to do things, but I KNEW it wouldn't cause any new crashes, which is more than can be said about some other parts.

Also, currently I see some of the tech quotes stuff hasn't been filled in yet. Do you want me to take a crack at filling these items in?

The quotes should all be there, so if one's missing, tell me; I thought I'd checked all of those already. The "history" entries aren't filled in yet (which is why they all say XXX; an empty text string causes a crash), although I've been working on filling those in as I go.
For the civilopedia, though, my highest priority at the moment is getting the basic unit help text in place. "Flavor" text can come later.

From what I've seen so far its going to be soooo much better than how I've been playing the game to date!

Good to hear. The balance is still pretty substantially off, I know, and I realized why: the core game's Modern Era was designed to be an endgame era, with lots of buildings and units that were a bit more powerful than they needed to be (so you'll have a +100% research building or a 80-power tank, when you really only needed it to be +50% or 70-power); after all, adding +100% to culture with a broadcast tower doesn't hurt much if you're only going to get one or two more SPs before the game ends, but with three additional eras it's just too much. Adding new eras obviously screws that up, so I'm now going back to re-evaluate every Industrial or Modern unit and building.
Likewise, a few of my new buildings and especially Wonders just have too large bonuses. So I'm tweaking.

I've made a bunch of changes since the version I posted here, and I've got a list of known issues.

If its convenient and you think it beneficial post the list - that way us playtesters don't have to diagnose and document stuff you've already catalogued.

(Crash bug: don't kill a Labor Mech, just leave them alone if your foes build one.)

Last night I saw a C-S with an Engineer - the AI's are definately using these new units! :goodjob:

Are these marsh tiles that have a resource on them (say, Omnicytes)? If so then I could understand it, since Omnicytes' placeholder graphics are something you don't normally find on marsh tiles, and the improvement currently set to harvest them also isn't found on Marsh tiles. But if these are just normal marsh tiles, then I have no idea what's happening.

This happened in the first two games I played last night - sort of a "someone divided by zero and created a hole in the space-time fabric". Last game last night this did not occur. I've never seen this issue before installing your mods, so I am assuming it is somehow related to your mod. If I do see it again I'll do a screen pic.

The quotes should all be there, so if one's missing, tell me; I thought I'd checked all of those already. The "history" entries aren't filled in yet.

Thats probably what I was refering to. If your on this then disregard my offer.

The balance is still pretty substantially off, I know, and I realized why: the core game's Modern Era was designed to be an endgame era,

Yup, and it played very differently starting the game in the Modern era.

So, my first game with your mod I got my butt handed to me by France and Russia ganging up on me. I think also I had to adjust to the game pace - plays much dfifferently starting in the Industrial era than starting in the Modern.

Played for about three hours, and didn't experience any crashes or hang-ups. Only issue I ran into was that I produced an infantry in a conquered C-S, however I couldn't upgrade the unit to a Mech Infantry until it reached the border of my core cities (i.e like the game wasn't considering the borders of the conquered city as being part of my empire).


I've got my own small mod running in parallel - pretty much just upgrading the C-S by giving them a GDR and Military Base to make them more competitive in the modern era timeframe. An interesting situation occured last night in my attack on a C-S, as I tried to kite the GDR away from the city by placing an infantry next to it, away from my main force attacking the city. The AI didn't go for it - it instead turned the GDR back towards the city to try and relieve its forces there. The C-S also placed its Engineer unit inside the city so it wouldn't be captured. Good programming of the AI in both those instances! :thumbsup:

I'll probably play some more later today. Am very impressed with the mod so far -thanx for doing this for the sci-fi fans of the game! :goodjob:

D

If its convenient and you think it beneficial post the list - that way us playtesters don't have to diagnose and document stuff you've already catalogued.

I'll try, but I've been fixing things as fast as I can find them, so I'm just hoping to have a new version of the mod out tonight, if possible.

I'm also making a lot of small balance tweaks. Virtual World downgrading to 3 happiness instead of 5, modding the Broadcast Tower to only add 50% culture, that sort of thing. I've been updating the posts at the start of this thread with new info as I go, which is not smart in terms of version control, I know. I also dropped the Mechanized Infantry to 42 power and the Modern Armor to 70; still evaluating the other modern units.

Also, I've DRASTICALLY changed the percentages in the Eras.xml file, so that you no longer get the 1-turn wonder builds and 1-turn techs and such if you start in one of the last eras. Not sure how much these impact a game started in an earlier era, though.

I made a few changes that might screw up savegames, though, like switching Neutronium harvesting from the overused Mine to the only-for-Marble Quarry improvement. So I'll hold off uploading the next version until a few other things are in place.

This happened in the first two games I played last night - sort of a "someone divided by zero and created a hole in the space-time fabric". Last game last night this did not occur.

Sounds like a cache bug then. I had the same thing last night; I changed the Stasis Generator icon (from the red, circular Subspace Generator icon to the green shield Flechette Defense icon, since I wanted the SG icon for, you know, the actual Subspace Generator unit), and it updated at the 2048, 1024, and 360 sizes but not the 512 for some reason. Exiting to desktop and re-entering the game cleared it up.

So if you had been running games with other mods, it's possible that there are some leftover graphical files in the cache that are interfering.

Played for about three hours, and didn't experience any crashes or hang-ups. Only issue I ran into was that I produced an infantry in a conquered C-S, however I couldn't upgrade the unit to a Mech Infantry until it reached the border of my core cities

Don't see how that could be this mod's fault, since I do NOTHING to city-states and those are both resourceless units. But who knows, there are so many moving parts in this that anything is possible.

I've got my own small mod running in parallel - pretty much just upgrading the C-S by giving them a GDR and Military Base to make them more competitive in the modern era timeframe.

If you start a game in the Fusion, Nanotech, or Transcendence Eras then the CS's will be loaded with Laser Infantry, since it's the last resourceless combat unit and they won't have anything else hooked up yet. But what was disturbing was when the BARBARIANS were using Laser Infantry on my continent (but Warriors on the small island occupied only by three City States, go figure). I actually had to retreat my own units and come back later. Considering that I never gave them that unit I'm not sure how it happened, but it was great to see.

Okay, the first post is updated with a new version of the mods, which I'm now numbering v.0.03 (as it's the third upload of the alpha). I'll go to v0.1 as soon as I move it to the Modpacks forum.

If its convenient and you think it beneficial post the list - that way us playtesters don't have to diagnose and document stuff you've already catalogued.

While I can't give a fully detailed list, here's some things that should help:
v.0.03 changelog: (since I'm doing a lot of this from memory, this isn't a comprehensive list.)
> The Engineer unit was renamed "Combat Engineer" to avoid a Civilopedia conflict with the Engineer specialist. Internally the entries are still listed as "Engineer2".
> Buildings now create resources, using Whys' Building Resources mod. Specifically:
- Energy Bank: Oil and Coal
- Fusion Lab: Uranium and Aluminum
- Brood Pit: Omnicytes
- Quantum Lab: Neutronium and Dilithium
Each of the above non-Wonder buildings generates one unit of each strategic resource. Not enough to support an empire, but enough for when you just need one more of a unit or one more Factory.
- Quantum Converter: Gold, Silver, Gems, Marble, Dyes
- Paradise Garden: every other Luxury resource
Each of the above National Wonders produces one unit of these luxury resources. Basically, you'll have nearly all of these already, but it lets you complete the sets.
- Planetary Datalinks: Information
- Clinical Immortality: Ambrosia
These Wonders were already listed in the original posts, but they work now.
> The "+1 food per specialist" ability was moved from the Paradise Garden to the Stasis Generator to make room for the above luxury generation. Likewise, the Quantum Converter previously had a flat +25% Production bonus, which I removed to make way for the luxuries.
> Fundamentalism (Piety SP) now actually does something. I gave up on the "Culture per Specialist" thing, and it now just reduces the amount of Culture needed to prompt a border expansion by 25%. It's actually really useful now, and this was one of the many unused stubs in the Policies.xml file.
> The Nessus Worm now has a weak, short-range bombardment attack. This was because Titan units, as a class, all have access to the various bombardment-related promotions. Note that the Former is also a Titan, and would suffer from the same problem, but since it's not even supposed to be a combat unit I'm not too motivated to tweak it. I'm now looking at changing the Nessus to a full Psi unit and removing the bombardment attack, probably for v.0.04.
> LOTS of Civilopedia entries now have text. It's especially notable in the units' Historical Info entries.
> Orbital Ion Cannon reduced from 50 power to 40. Mechanized Infantry reduced from 50 to 42. Modern Armor reduced from 80 to 70. The Orbital Death Ray's power was unchanged but its cost was increased by 25%. I'm reassessing many other units as well. If this change holds, then I'll also reduce the Gravtank to 90, and so on, to keep it balanced.
> The "Planned" and "Planned Economy" SPs' effects were switched, so that Planned Economy now boosts trade income and Planned Society now improves happiness. Planned's effect might be a bit too weak compared to my other future-era SPs; I might change it from -50% to -75% or even -100%.
> Broadcast Tower reduced to +50% culture, Research Lab reduced to +50% science.
> Era scaling ratios were HEAVILY changed for games beginning in the future eras. If you decide to start in the Transcendence Era, expect it to take ~30 turns before you research your first technology, and Wonders take a long time now as well.
> To fix a crash bug, the Labor Mech is now listed as an Energy unit and has the usual XP rates. The Former was similarly bugged, and is now a Titan.
> Neutronium is now harvested with a Quarry instead of a Mine. The Mine was being used for many things, the Quarry was only used for Marble.
> (Crazy Spatz Mod): The Recycling Center now requires the Sewer System, which in turn requires the Aqueduct. This only really became an issue if you started in a later era.
> The Former gained the "Blitz" promotion and had its movement increased to 3. This means it can, under the right conditions, lay down two road tiles in a single turn. But its trademark ability, the power to transform terrain, isn't implemented yet, so I wouldn't bother building one.
> The Flavor ratings for spaceship parts were reduced (from 150 down to 50), so that the AI wouldn't put everything into building parts for a ship that no longer wins the game. They still build them, just not if there's something more important going on, like a war.
> The production costs of the spaceship components were halved (350 for a booster, 500 for the others). So it doesn't take nearly as long to assemble a ship once you get going. The Spaceship Factory is a lot less useful for this, as a result, but has two other benefits: a +25% production boost on all Titan units, and it's absolutely required for the Gravship.
> Flavor ratings on units were adjusted to be an ascending scale; Digital era units generally total to 25, Fusion to 30. Titans run about 20 higher, and the Gravship totals 85 (since I REALLY want each civ to build one). This should encourage the AI to build the more advanced units; in my first test game, they'd just spit out huge numbers of Laser Infantry and never bothered upgrading. Also, due to a typo in the Flavor entries the AIs wouldn't build nearly as many Labor Mechs as they'd need, previously.
> Leviathans can now move after attacking. They can't fire twice until you get that promotion, but this allows them to fire and then position to act as a carrier.
> The Genejack Factory now only requires a Workshop instead of a Factory. A shortage of Coal was too crippling since it'd mean that neither of the main +production buildings would be available. Granted, with the resource change to Energy Banks it's a lot easier to get the Coal you need, but this was still a good change.
> The "Cybernetic" social policy was reduced from +2 production per specialist down to +1. In the Nanotech era you'll generally have more than a dozen specialists in each city, so it adds up quickly.

KNOWN ISSUES
> For games starting in future eras, there are no additional "free" buildings assigned yet. Someone starting in the Transcendence Era shouldn't have to spend their first few turns building a Bank, University, and Hospital.
> Several Wonders' effects have not been implemented. Their help text will use a "***" to designate the effects that are not working yet, so that you'll know which Wonders to avoid for now.
> Many "flavor" Civilopedia entries haven't been written yet. Generally these are easily seen by an "XXX" entry.
> A small number of units (Vertol, Gravship, etc.) are supposed to be able to travel over water as well as land. Instead, they'll embark when they hit water. I'm trying to remove the default "Embarkation" promotion to fix this.
> The Subspace Generator cannot be rebased.
> The terrain improvements used to harvest the three new resources (omnicytes, dilithium, neutronium) have no graphics. This is especially problematic for Omnicytes, since they can spawn in forest or jungle tiles and will be completely hidden by these features.
> There is no effect tied to the repeatable "Transcendent Thought" tech. I want it to eventually give +1 happiness each time you research it.
> The Needlejet and Ion Cannon are getting damaged every time they attack, as if they were making a normal attack instead of a bombardment.
> The "magtubes" change at Monopole Magnets was supposed to make railroad movement effectively unlimited. It currently does nothing, and I have no idea why. It's easy to verify that it does nothing; if it worked, there'd be an icon on the tech tree, so the CIV5Routes.xml file isn't even loading.
> There is currently no icon on the tech tree for the techs that unlock new Social Policies. I'm VERY close to getting this to work.
> The EMP and Soporific promotions have no icon yet, which causes all sorts of strange graphical bugs.
> Between the innate promotions and those the player can select, the more advanced units (especially Titans) have promotions scrolling off the left side of the unit display box.
> Since there is no event tied to the completion of the Spaceship, there'd be no way to get the Centauri Ecology tech except for a Great Scientist. So, this tech is temporarily linked to the Ecology tech. This results in a broken arrow on the tech tree, but since this dependency will be removed in the long term, I won't fix the graphical bug.
> The Transcendence event is not completed yet. Currently, if you build the Wonder you win. It'll be changed to something much more complex eventually.
> In the default game, units, buildings, and wonders are arranged by type (naval, worker, etc.) with the most advanced units at the top of the list.
In this mod, the units are listed purely in order of technology, with the most advanced of everything at the bottom.
> The more powerful Titans (Combat Mech and Gravship, especially) are so strong at bombardment that most cities go straight to 1 HP in one shot. Either city power needs to ramp up faster, or I need to reduce the bombardment strength of these units.
> There is no AI algorithm for the Great Empath unit. If the AI ends up with any (very rare), they just stand around. I might just give them the Artist AI temporarily, but I have no idea how that works for a unit with no Culture Bomb.
> The "satellite" buildings (Sky Hydroponics Lab, etc.) currently add +2% to food/gold/etc. instead of a flat +1 like SMAC used, because there's a GlobalYieldModifier table but not a GlobalYield table. As soon as I can figure out how to implement it, I'll change this. I have no idea whether it rounds down or not, either.
> The Empath specialist is supposed to add 1 Happiness, with the Great Empath's "Monolith" improvement adding 2 Happiness when worked. Since Happiness isn't tied to a yield yet, I have Empaths adding food (2 and 4, respectively) as a placeholder.
> The Giant Death Robot and the four Future Era techs have only been disabled, not removed, so they'll still show up in the Civilopedia.

Beyond this, I also need general balance comments. Is it too hard to get a supply of Dilithium, being a purely aquatic resource, or should I try making it spawn on Oasis tiles as well? Do the less mobile future units (Ranger, Troll, etc.) move too slowly to be useful in combat? Are the Golem and Labor Mech worth building instead of Combat Engineers, given that they can't occupy the same tile as a combat unit (but CAN share a tile with an Engineer, if you want to place a railroad and a farm at the same time)? Are there too many Neutronium deposits? Should more buildings consume a resource?

OK, have run into a repeatable crash: I end turn 617 the game either hangs or just crashes. I've tried researching different techs, tried not going for the Space Race victory, tried deleting a lot of units (via war) in case it was a computer resource thing - always the same, so I am assuming its something one of the two remaining AIs is doing. I've attached three saves: the one dated 11/14 is the base save, which is about 7 turns before the crash. The other two are saves on turn 617 (617b and 11_14war), but just via different avenues during my t-shooting. HTH.

Other than that I am enjoying this very much. The Plasma Artillery is definately a winner in my book! :goodjob: The only other thought I have right now is that Aluminum is heavily utilized, so maybe not use that resource for any units/ building in your future eras?

D

OK, have run into a repeatable crash: I end turn 617 the game either hangs or just crashes.

I'll look at it when I get home, but I'd assume it's probably unit-related. Some unit somewhere must be taking an action it doesn't have an animation for. (For instance, I was previously getting this whenever you'd rebase a Subspace Generator.)

The Plasma Artillery is definately a winner in my book!

It might be a bit too good, but it's nice to have an anti-air unit that actually doesn't feel like so much of a waste, especially in a 1 unit per tile game. I'm worried that it makes some of the light armor units (vertol, skimmer) too useless, even though they're designed to be the counter units to these artillery.

The only other thought I have right now is that Aluminum is heavily utilized, so maybe not use that resource for any units/ building in your future eras?

This depends on which version of the mod you're using. Aluminum is used for a lot of units (the powersuits, vertol, skimmer, and the naval units), but as of the most recent version, building a Fusion Lab creates 1 unit of uranium and 1 of aluminum. This goes a long way towards helping this problem, IMO. Possibly TOO far, but that remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, I can't load your save file, because you used a mod that I don't have (Test_11_12). But I'm managing to get it to crash myself, when I rebase a Death Ray. Which is strange, since I'm using the B17 as its placeholder and it shouldn't have a problem rebasing. So now I'm thinking that it's the range that's a problem; the 999 range might just be so big that the pathfinding AI crashes. So I dropped it to 99 to check. It seems more stable now.

I'll try to upload a fixed version tomorrow, since I've been adding quite a few other changes at the same time that I'm still testing.

This depends on which version of the mod you're using. Aluminum is used for a lot of units (the powersuits, vertol, skimmer, and the naval units), but as of the most recent version, building a Fusion Lab creates 1 unit of uranium and 1 of aluminum. This goes a long way towards helping this problem, IMO. Possibly TOO far, but that remains to be seen.

I think this will fix it nicely, as building Fusion Labs (and assuming the AIs will do this as well) should solve this bottleneck.


Unfortunately, I can't load your save file, because you used a mod that I don't have (Test_11_12).

:blush: Sorry- should've realized this would conflict. This is my personal mod I am testing where I am making the CS more viable in the Modern/ Future eras. If you think it worthwhile for t-shooting this specific crash issue I can upload the mod - let me know.
I'll DL your updated mod and start testing that probably Thusrday (work/RL is a bear right now), and I won't activate my mod for this round of playtesting.

Probably outside the scope of this mod, but strategically I see a weakness in the AI in regards to terrain: if terrain allows the AI will attack across a broad front, and the attack typically resembles a wave, which can easily be broken up by a human defender. My thought would be that if the attack algorhythms could be tweaked such that this wave were to become a stream of units instead, that it would more resemble the German Mot Pulk formation and smash thru a specific point in the enemy formations and achieve its objective (usually a city), then have the weight in numbers in the local vicinity to defend and or continue the attack towards its next objective. Right now this focusing of units is simulated in some playthrus I've done, as terrain has artificially created bottlenecks which has forced the AIs to focus their units into a stream, and this can be tremendously difficult to deal with. However currently if there are no terrain features preventing the AI from this artificial focusing of units, then they tend to spread their offensive over too wide a front, and are easily picked off. Have you seen similar results in general in your playtesting?

D

I think this will fix it nicely, as building Fusion Labs (and assuming the AIs will do this as well) should solve this bottleneck.

It looks like it's been fixing it nicely in my test games. One problem could be the prerequisites; Fusion Labs require Research Labs, which are far enough up the chain that many cities wouldn't get there. But the Flavor ratings are high enough that once an AI DOES build a lab, he should continue right on to the Fusion and Quantum labs.

Similarly, in a game I played last night, I started on a map where there were three Coal deposits in the entire world, and they were all on the same continent (not mine). So India had a monopoly on Coal, and everyone else was left without the massive Industrial production boost of factories. (Still had railroads, though.)
But then the Digital Era rolls around, and suddenly I can build Energy Banks (+25% gold, +1 coal, +1 oil, requires a Stock Exchange). It was painful to have to build one of these per Factory I wanted to make, but it was a great way to keep an Industrial-era resource shortfall from crippling your game through four later eras.

If you think it worthwhile for t-shooting this specific crash issue I can upload the mod - let me know.

It'd be easy enough for you to zip up a copy and attach it here, but I think there's a good chance that the crash is due to what I mentioned before, with aircraft trying to rebase. Reducing the range should help that a bit, but it might still happen in this latest version.

I'll DL your updated mod and start testing that probably Thusrday (work/RL is a bear right now), and I won't activate my mod for this round of playtesting.

I should have a revised version tonight. I found a really HUGE mistake I made:
In the Buildings table, there's "<SpecialistExtraCulture>". I figured this was either per specialist in this building, or maybe per specialist in this city. So the Ascetic Virtues national wonder gives 2 to this value, plus 25% GPP in all cities.
But as it turns out, no, that's culture per specialist in ANY city, like a Statue of Liberty-style benefit but without the tunability of being able to limit which specialist types get it. It's a huge jump in culture generation; my 4-city test Transcendence empire went from ~700 per turn to ~2000 in one shot. Obviously, too much.

The problem is that adding 2 of anything to a specialist is JUST enough to make specialists more desirable than working tiles; what happens is, the default AI suddenly fills every specialist slot it can and literally works no terrain (other than the city's core tile). You get a flood of great people, and every city suddenly produces the exact same yields.
This is way too much, so in my latest version I've cut this wonder to +1 culture per specialist and +10% GPP, and I'll see if this still happens. This might still be too much, in which case I'd have to move the culture boost way up the chain (say, to Paradise Garden) and make Ascetic Virtues into a purely GPP production wonder.

I also got the railroad movement bonus working for Monopole Magnets (it's very nice now; not unlimited, but a lot faster than before), and I got new Policies to display on the tech tree (albeit with the generic icon, since their own icons aren't the right sizes as far as I can tell). So this new version should be VERY nice.

Probably outside the scope of this mod, but strategically I see a weakness in the AI in regards to terrain: if terrain allows the AI will attack across a broad front, and the attack typically resembles a wave, which can easily be broken up by a human defender.

I wouldn't like to try modifying core AI too much, since I'd probably get it wrong, but that consideration was actually part of my design: The reason the AI seems to attack in a wave is that it's just trying to attack in general, but terrain bogs down the units, and with 1 unit per tile the AI tries to go around (through the rough terrain) instead of waiting a tile further back on the road (which is what a human would do). Basically, it just tries to get closer to the enemy NOW, without thinking about how much harder movement will be next turn. Since roads cost money and there's no benefit to connecting a road to your neighbor (both changes from Civ4), there won't be many easy avenues of attack.
But most of my new units have greatly enhanced mobility, paying only 1 MP per tile regardless of terrain, which makes it trivial to get back on a road once an open spot clears, or just continue across if there's no road. So there's really not as much "bogging down" when an AI attacks, because generally speaking, its units can get to their targets immediately.
I had this happen last night; I was getting ready to attack the Ottomans on my next turn. They noticed my troops massing, and gave that whole are-you-going-to-declare-war prompt. So I figured, say yes, no big deal, right? Yeah, mistake. In that one interturn they hit quite a few of my troops and did a LOT of damage (but only killed two). And they basically only had Laser Infantry and the occasional powersuit, because of a crippling lack of strategic resources, so it could have been MUCH worse with Skimmers and Vertols. I'm actually worried that this has gone too far. Many of my changes were designed to make it harder for one AI to roll over another, and then this comes along and makes it so easy.

Side note: as it turns out, the Ottomans' capital had built the Stasis Generator national wonder, for the food production bonus I guess, but it meant that the city's combat power was over 200. (214 when I finally killed it, I think.) Orbital Death Rays could barely scratch it, and I had two Combat Mechs and a Gravship bombarding it down for a couple turns. Once it had lost about 75% of its strength I had a Bolo attack, and the city almost killed the unit. And the city's counterfire almost killed a Mech...

One of the things I've done a lot in this mod was create National Wonders whose effects duplicate a World Wonder of a previous era. I'm now thinking that I need to do this for the Great Wall (possibly put it at Citizen's Defense Force and cut the defensive promotion's effects in half) to reduce the movement of attackers, except that as far as I know the Great Wall doesn't actually WORK. Or, I could change the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm to a National Wonder and give it the Great Wall effect instead of what I'd planned. The visibility-reduction thing isn't close to being ready yet, but it's a weak enough effect that I wouldn't mind giving both.
(I kind of like this idea now that I think about it. The only question is stacking; if the Great Wall is fixed and you have a national wonder giving this as well, does everything get -2 movement? And what does that do to units that only move 2?)

After a lot more playtesting, v.0.04 is now posted in the first post. The changes:

> The game now displays Policies on the tech tree if they were set to have a prerequisite tech. (Unfortunately it just uses the default "star" icon. I'm working on that.)
> The railroad movement bonus at Monopole Magnets now works correctly. Generally speaking, it makes units move twice as far along rail lines; not unlimited movement, but pretty close to it (something like 9-10 hexes per MP). I'd typed it as TECH_MAGNETIC_MONOPOLES. Stupid.
> Added "FreeStartEra" to several buildings, so that you'll have most of the pre-Industrial buildings if you start in the Digital Era, and so on.
> Fixed the two buildings whose FreeStartEra settings I broke when I changed ERA_FUTURE to ERA_DIGITAL.
> Changed the Nessus Worm back to a Psi unit and removed its bombardment. It still has a few Titan traits (and if I ever get the Bushido promotion working it'll get that too), but for better or worse it's a Psi type again.
> Gravtank's power lowered from 100 to 90. This is a direct consequence of reducing the Modern Armor and such in the previous version.
> The Bolo's ranged attack was reduced from 100 power to 75 (but its combat strength of 150 is untouched).
> The Combat Mech's ranged attack was reduced from 150 power to 120.
> The Former's MP was increased from 2 to 3. I also gave it the Blitz ability to see if that'd allow me to build two things in one turn. Still haven't made it far enough to check this yet.
> The Flavor rating for the Apollo Program was lowered from 100 down to 50. The AIs will still build it, to progress towards the spaceship, but they'll no longer drop everything to build it.
> The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm is now a National Wonder whose effect duplicates the Great Wall (-1 movement for all enemies crossing into your territory). I also want it to do the previous listed effect (-1 visibility for all enemies in your territory), but that isn't working yet.
> Paradise Garden, Stasis Generator, and Quantum Converter's costs were all increased to 3000 (previously was 1800-2000), making them as expensive as the comparable World Wonders. They're just that good; I might bump them up further.
> The Paradise Garden no longer adds 3 Happiness. Now that it produces so many luxury resources, chances are at least one would be a new one, and that's +5 right there, so adding another 3 was overkill.
> Hologram Theater's happiness reduced from 4 to 3.
> Children's Creche changed from +1 happiness and +5 food, to -1 happiness and +8 food. Raising kids in a creche is not a way to make them happy.
> The trade route bonus of the Planetary Transit System lowered from 40% to 33%.
> The trade route bonus of the Bulk Matter Transmitter lowered from 50% to 40%.
> The defense bonus of the Orbital Defense Pod increased from 5 to 10.
> The defense bonus of the Gravity Shield increased from 20 to 25.
> The Time victory now takes 1000 turns on Normal. (Previously it was 800, up from the 500 of the default game.)
> For now, the Ascetic Virtues have been changed to +10% GPP in all cities, +1 culture per specialist. But I'm looking to move the culture boost to the Paradise Garden and bump AV's GPP boost to 25% or higher. I just wasn't ready to do that for this iteration yet.
> A few civilopedia fixes.

I also made one HUGE change to the Crazy Spatz's Balance Mod:
> The base city unhappiness was increased to 4 (from 2) and base unhappiness for a conquered city was increased to 8 (from 5).
You see, this mod added the Aqueduct, Sewer System, and Recycling Center. Each of these adds +1 happiness. This adds up quickly, so I basically subtracted 2 happiness from each city to compensate.

Sounds good - I'll DL and fire it up tonight.

Do you recommend playtesting on any specific map-types (i.e. are there map types that would stress test your mod more thoroughly?)? Right now I typically play on Lakes or Plains, as I see these providing the most opportunities to "interface" with the AIs, which is something I am keen about anyways.

Edit: DL'd and installed. One thing I noted is that I ran into a CS which had very early on in the game already produced a Combat Engineer. Are you encouraging the AIs to do this (i.e. build CE instead of Workers), or is this just the way the existing code operates?

D

I usually go with the default Continents map, just because I'm usually too lazy to really set up an elaborate test case. Last night, I started a game in the Industrial, and it put me on a small continent with just China and a decent-sized island nearby, which worked well as a test case because by the time I'd crushed China I was nearly into the future eras. I will say, though, that that test game has me a bit worried; I was getting new techs every ~3 turns once I got into the future eras, and that's just way too fast. I'd actually already tweaked the percentages for a Digital (Future) Era start, but it looks like I might have to do the same for Industrial and Nuclear to reduce the tech discount at the very least. The way I see it, before a certain point you've got more than enough time to set up a real empire, and so don't need the boost.

It's likely that I'll make a new version on Saturday or Sunday, and I'm getting close to the point where I'd be willing to upload it to the mod server instead of attaching files here. Probably one or two more versions first; at the very least, I want to try out changing the orbital weapons to being a Siege-like land type instead of a Bomber-like air type. (The only question is whether the Immobile/rebase logic can be used for land units.) This'd make them automatically unable to be intercepted and would remove most animation issues, so I'd like to try it.
(Failing that, I want to create a new air unit type for them. For one thing, I don't want the Bomber-style anti-city or anti-land promotions, I want the artillery-style "vs open" and "vs rough" ones.)

\I've got my own small mod running in parallel - pretty much just upgrading the C-S by giving them a GDR and Military Base to make them more competitive in the modern era timeframe.

While on the subject of city-states, I've noticed that if you start in a later era, they FAR undervalue getting resources hooked up. Once they have a worker made then sure, they'll do the jobs, but it seems to be such a low priority that it won't happen often. I think they just have this as a low priority in general, but starting in ancient times invariably means you'll build a worker at some point.

I actually abused this by allying with the city-states, gifting each of them a Labor Mech (since it's a combat unit you can gift it; a Golem would work too), and then watching as terrain that had stayed unimproved for a hundred turns turned into a fully-developed area overnight. Although in one case, the city-state was at war and so decided to use the Labor Mech to attack (it IS a 50-power unit after all) instead of develop. I eventually gifted them a Bolo just so that they could get their war over with and develop the Neutronium resource I needed them to give to me.
But they also do this with work boats; while they seem to be more willing to build the things, I've seen AIs park one on top of a naval resource and never improve it. They'd just sit there, for years, until dying to a passing barbarian Destroyer.

It's likely that I'll make a new version on Saturday or Sunday, and I'm getting close to the point where I'd be willing to upload it to the mod server instead of attaching files here.

I don't plan on releasing anything till after the next patch, reasons for this are balancing issues regarding how I am setting up the Barbs and C-S: your comment regarding how C-S develop their land is spot on, as there is a significant difference between games started in Modern era versus Industrial era as far as how the C-S approach tile development (i.e. in the Modern era the C-S AIs don't bother with tiel development). I need to digest this difference, as well as assess any changes made to the AI's with the new patch.

Couple observations with your new release:

1) Combat Engineers: the AI will throw these into the front line, and even seemingly try to attack with these units. Are you seeing similar results here? If so is it because of their flavours? Also when I counterattack I can't capture these units: they just disappear. Is this anticipated?

2) I saw an AI build the Spaceship Stasis Chamber, then leave the unit lingering around my border, instead of moving it to its capitol.

D

1) Combat Engineers: the AI will throw these into the front line, and even seemingly try to attack with these units. Are you seeing similar results here? If so is it because of their flavours? Also when I counterattack I can't capture these units: they just disappear. Is this anticipated?

The only Flavor on the Combat Engineer is TILE_IMPROVEMENT, set to 25, and the only AI is the standard UNITAI_WORKER. So it shouldn't be doing anything with them that a Worker can't do. Maybe it wants to improve tiles so badly that it won't protect the units, and is moving them out to build roads and such even if this leaves them at risk. Their increased mobility just makes it more likely they'll be out ahead of the combat forces.

And the no-capture thing was intentional. They just die, like a military unit, but won't inflict any damage in the process. (Sort of like SMAC's Probe Teams.) The Golem, Labor Mech, and Former also aren't capturable, but those have enough armor to potentially survive a few attacks and even fight back. (And since they have combat power, they no longer stack with combat units, but they CAN stack with Engineers, so you can have a Labor Mech covering an Engineer.)

The fact was, the capturable workers was really an advantage for the player; the AI would be careless with his workers, and would never get them back, but you'd effectively gain twice as much by taking advantage of this. He'd lose a worker, AND you'd gain one. And if you lost one of your workers, well, you'd quickly get it back.
Also, the ancient-era workers, sure, they're just peasants who'd work for whoever was in charge. But now we're talking about actual military units, they're not going to switch allegiances.

On a related note, I've decided that the Golem needs a bit of sprucing up, and I thought of a good one: let the player sacrifice the Golem in a city to hurry production, as if it were a very weak Great Engineer. (It makes sense, if you think about it.) This definitely makes up for its deficiencies in other areas, without being too overpowered.

2) I saw an AI build the Spaceship Stasis Chamber, then leave the unit lingering around my border, instead of moving it to its capital.

The only things I did to the Stasis Chamber were reduce its Flavor from 150 down to 50, cut its cost in half, and move it to the Applied Physics tech. I don't know why its behavior would be any different than before. It could just be that since the Flavor isn't through the roof, that the AI decided it really needed to be doing something else instead.
I've seen some AI strangeness with the Work Boat as well, where it'd circle around the resources instead of improving them. And in a Transcendence game I just played, where every civ started with 4 settlers, several of the civs only settled one city... so what happened to the other Settlers? Barbarians might have picked off one or two, but that many?

One thought I had for this was that if, somehow, EVERY unit was gaining a combat-related Flavor (say, Offense) or a combat AI, then that could explain why the AI would use even its noncombat units aggressively. And that could be as easy as an incorrectly closed statement; take the following text
<Update>
<Set Flavor="50"/>
<Where UnitType="UNIT_SS_STASIS_CHAMBER"
</Update>

Because the Where doesn't have the /> at the end of it, it'll screw up the rest of the logic and just end up assigning Flavor=50 for every entry. But I checked my code and there was nothing like this, so I'm confused. And I'm not using any other mods beyond my own two.

On a related note, I've decided that the Golem needs a bit of sprucing up, and I thought of a good one: let the player sacrifice the Golem in a city to hurry production, as if it were a very weak Great Engineer. (It makes sense, if you think about it.) This definitely makes up for its deficiencies in other areas, without being too overpowered.

I really like the idea in principle, say (generally speaking) more as a parallel to how the ISS was built (i.e. one piece at a time by various countries, then assembled at one location), only here instead of countries, it would be cities building individual pieces that are then transported to the desired city to assist in the main construction project. This would sort of mimic how SMAC players used Crawlers to rush-build items. Question is would the AIs understand this? I haven't seen them utilize Great Engineers in this capacity, so not sure if this would be more of a human exploit than anything else.


The only things I did to the Stasis Chamber were reduce its Flavor from 150 down to 50, cut its cost in half, and move it to the Applied Physics tech. I don't know why its behavior would be any different than before. It could just be that since the Flavor isn't through the roof, that the AI decided it really needed to be doing something else instead.
I've seen some AI strangeness with the Work Boat as well, where it'd circle around the resources instead of improving them.

When I was first experimenting with giving C-S GDRs, I tried to change the GDR Flavor to Defense, however then all the GDRs just wandered around the maps, instead of staying home. Could be there still needs to be some tweaking to the SDK which governs the Flavor code?

Anyways, a thought I had is if you want to test how an AI is using a specific unit, then just make it free to all the C-S, and then every playtest you get to see several examples of how the AIs handle the unit in question in the various situations the C-S AIs find themselves in: quick and dirty way to get multiple test runs of a unit into just one iteration of testing. :goodjob:

D

I really like the idea in principle, say (generally speaking) more as a parallel to how the ISS was built (i.e. one piece at a time by various countries, then assembled at one location), only here instead of countries, it would be cities building individual pieces that are then transported to the desired city to assist in the main construction project.

I was thinking more of the "they're just constructs, so there are no qualms about working one to death to make something important", but either way works. Yes, it's analogous to the SMAC crawlers and the Civ2 Caravans. More importantly, the Golem isn't in the Worker upgrade chain; once Labor Mechs come out, there's not much reason to want them at present. I was thinking of making them tougher in combat, but they'd then be too powerful for their era.

If the AI doesn't understand how to use a Great Engineer to rush-build a wonder, then there's really nothing I can do about it. I'm operating under the assumption that the AI isn't totally incompetent.
My worry, basically, comes down to the production side; I don't want sacrificing a Golem to give more production than it cost to make it in the first place. But that's easy enough to fine-tune later on.

Could be there still needs to be some tweaking to the SDK which governs the Flavor code?

I get the feeling that there's a LOT of hard-coding going on behind the scenes, and that's unfortunate. But it's really strange that the AI's behavior could somehow change for the existing units, in a mod where I don't change those units. To me, that screams "memory leak" somewhere internal, where some array is getting overwritten by some other.

Anyways, a thought I had is if you want to test how an AI is using a specific unit, then just make it free to all the C-S,

I was actually thinking of something a little different. Basically, I was thinking of creating a handful of CS-only units, resourceless versions of the more powerful player units that only City-States can build. Because right now, the CS's stall out at Laser Infantry, since they won't usually have the strategics to go further. (The only later unit that doesn't require a resource is the Geosynchronous Survey Pod.) So each CS might get a resourceless Needlejet variant, a resourceless Gravtank, a resourceless Stealth Ship, and a new super-Worker unit. (No titans, though.) Lower attack powers for these, of course, but it'd make up for the fact that there's no continuous progression of resourceless units like there is in the core game.
This way, I can crank the Flavor ratings up closer to 100 on these, so that making that CS-only worker is a high priority for the AI, but it won't cripple the AI empires. It won't bother with other units, most likely, but that's not really a problem.


Anyway, I've been debugging some more, and found a few little things (Merchant Exchange and Pholus Mutagen don't do what they're supposed to, the Civilopedia help text for Superconductor and Graviton Theory were switched, Neutronium was spawning far too many large deposits and too few small ones, etc.). Also, I finally switched the culture-per-specialist to the Paradise Garden and made the Ascetic Virtues be purely a GPP-boosting national wonder (a la Hagia Sofia), although that might make it a little too weak now, and I don't want to just jack up the GPP percentage. Right now, I'm looking at adding something happiness-related, like "-10% unhappiness from number of cities", which with the revised numbers from my other mod means +0.4 happiness per city. But I'm worried that I'd added too many sources of Happiness (which is why I changed the Children's Creche to SUBTRACT Happiness in the last patch), so I'm not sure. Another possibility would be a global culture scaling, something like +10% to culture in all cities.

More importantly, I've got it so that Neutronium now shows up in the strategic list at the top of the screen (and its pulldown) despite still adding happiness; basically, the game (not lua, the actual source code) seems to check happiness first when classifying something as a luxury or strategic. So I changed it so that that UI will display any resource with ResourceClass set to "rush" or "modern", which mean strategics. (Strangely enough, the Happiness pulldown doesn't check to see if the resource is a luxury, it only checks to see if the resource adds a nonzero Happiness value. So it's unusual that they made one side so flexible while locking the other side down.)
Also, I've changed it to where the bombardment and rebasing will no longer try to highlight the acceptable tiles for anything with a range over 50; that MIGHT have been partially responsible for the crashes with the orbital units, since it'd try to highlight the whole world (and wrap around?). Both of these are changes that should really be put into the core game, IMO.

So I'm hoping to have a new version this weekend. I'm just trying to fix those two wonders first, and if I have time I'll try switching the orbital weapons to the Siege category and see if they can still rebase correctly. (It's actually not the end of the world if they can't, since you're not building them in cities on the fringes anyway.) The question is, if Merchant Exchange can't be "+1 gold per tile", then what should I change it to? I really wanted it to be something that would encourage working tiles (so "+1 gold per citizen" wouldn't be good since that helps specialists just as much). I may end up having to make it something like "+2 gold per local luxury or strategic resource deposit" instead (similar to the Nanoreplicator's effect) and hope the player and AI aren't too stupid about which city they place it in.
Hmm, that gives me an idea for the Pholus Mutagen; instead of +1 food per tile, I might have it be that "bonus" resources (cows, deer, fish, etc.) now give something like +1 food, +1 production, +1 gold, and +1 research. This sounds huge, but chances are a city won't have many of these, so I'd probably need to use the OR prerequisite to be sure there's a local supply for the AI's sake. I might have to remove fish from the list, or at least downgrade them a bit, since fish resources tend to cluster. (Last game, my capital had four fish and a whales within 2 hexes.)

I was thinking more of the "they're just constructs, so there are no qualms about working one to death to make something important", but either way works.

This is your mod, so you should flavor it the way you want. Just remember that I am working on my own mod in parallel, and will be "borrowing" some of the stuff from your mod, which this is one of, and I will then flavor it the way that fits with the theme of my mod.


I get the feeling that there's a LOT of hard-coding going on behind the scenes, and that's unfortunate. But it's really strange that the AI's behavior could somehow change for the existing units, in a mod where I don't change those units. To me, that screams "memory leak" somewhere internal, where some array is getting overwritten by some other.

I've attached a screen pic from what I saw the other night. The spaceship part just seemed to sit there all game long.



I was actually thinking of something a little different. Basically, I was thinking of creating a handful of CS-only units, resourceless versions of the more powerful player units that only City-States can build.This way, I can crank the Flavor ratings up closer to 100 on these, so that making that CS-only worker is a high priority for the AI, but it won't cripple the AI empires.

Yah, thats another good idea: I think The List of units is also probably going to be dependent on the tweaking which is currently going on under the hood. Thats one of the reasons I'm waiting on this sort of thing, so thru playtesting I can assess which units are "working" for the AI, then from that I can distill The List of units which work for the C-S.
An idea I had in parallel to assist the C-S is to give them their own Settler class unit - one which is relatively expensive to build, which would mean they would expand very slowly. This would then hopefully lead to them being less easily conquered, which even with the assistance I have given them is still something which happens on a regular basis.


So I'm hoping to have a new version this weekend.

OK, sounds good.

Here's some thoughts/ observations from the playtesting yesterday:

1. Experienced what can only be described as a soft-crash: essentially after I hit end turn the globe appeared showing the game was processing, but it just hung. I could move the mouse over tiles and the text would display what was on the tile, and I could select units and their individual stats would display (all the while the globe icon was present and the game stated it was updating other players turns). I was even able to access the drop-down menu to save the game off, which I did. I then exited the game, re-entered, and was able to load the saved turn and play on without any problems.

2. A thought occured to me last night that there are quite a few improvements for land units, but not so much for naval, air, and space. Have you given any consideration to fleshing out these other aspects of the game in regards to giving them more opportunities to gain experience for new units?

3. Concerning the counters to nuke attacks: right now the AI seems to be defenseless against nuclear attack. Maybe move down the counter for nukes so that the AIs have this available to them sooner? The AIs also need an algorhythm "Push the Big Red Button", because I've seen AI's with nukes but not use them, even when I am obviously on the verge of wiping them out.

4. Playing on continents map right now. What an exploit it is to join in a war against a civ who's on a different continent! After declaring war all I have to do is wait, and sooner or later the AI will offer up a peace treaty with all sorts of goodies (usually without ever firing a shot at me). Yeah Free Stuff! :lol:

5. Also experienced the Bottomless Pit Marsh graphic again (see attached pic). I did as you suggested and reloaded the game, and the issue went away.

6. Also attached the screenie from when I tried to kite away the C-S GDR the other day. Even though this version of the GDR has two attacks/ turn, it declined to attack my infantry and instead headed back towards its city. Good decision algorhythm there! :goodjob:

7. Attached a screenie showing a C-S with the Omnicytes resource available. :goodjob:

D

Couple pics from this evening's playtesting. First, should subs have Indirect Fire capability? I thought that was for firing over items like mountains? Second pic has to do with the pirates head icon you inserted: just curious, but whats the purpose of that?

D

Some more observations from tonights playtesting:

1. Some of your units the AI are handling quite well! See screen shot one.

2. The AIs are not handling the Mobile Shields well, as they are throwing these units into the front lines.

3. I killed a city this evening and was presented with screenie #2. Should the tile lose its Railroad enhancement?

D

2. A thought occured to me last night that there are quite a few improvements for land units, but not so much for naval, air, and space.

It's actually not as bad as it looks at first glance. One part of the Crazy Spatz mod (the balance one) is that Harbors give +15 XP to naval units, Seaports give +15 XP to naval units, and the Military Academy was changed to give a "+25% XP" promotion to all units (whereas the original version was another +15 XP for land units). So it's already skewing things a bit away from an all-land approach.

Then in the SMAC mod, you have the Maritime Control Center for naval units, and the Aerospace Complex (which gives +XP for air) and Cloudbase Academy (custom promotion) for air units. Also, the Bioenhancement Center gives a very useful flat +10% promotion to all units regardless of type. The Skunkworks national wonder and the new Power social policy each give +10 XP to all units regardless of type.
So really, the only pro-Land thing I added was the Cyborg Factory, and that's just because it's not possible to have a building give multiple promotions. (March doesn't apply to all unit types. I may end up having to create a new promotion that DOES apply to all types and has that same effect, which would mean that your air and naval units would heal each turn.)

That being said, one of the points of this was that air and naval units kind of become obsolete in the future eras. Naval units become obsolete once anti-grav units become common, since they're supposed to be able to move across water as well. (They don't currently, but that's the plan.) Likewise, air units become nearly obsolete once you start investing heavily in satellite weapons.

As to satellites, while there aren't a lot of buildings that give them XP, you should note that they're effectively unkillable, which goes a LONG way. They'll just keep building up the XP, and you'll never need to spend the XP on defensive promotions or mobility stuff.

3. Concerning the counters to nuke attacks: right now the AI seems to be defenseless against nuclear attack. Maybe move down the counter for nukes so that the AIs have this available to them sooner?

Well, there's been a lot of talk about mods creating an "SDI" wonder for this. Personally, I don't like it; you spend all of this effort to unlock the things (they're the only core unit that requires building a wonder or project to unlock!), so I don't want them becoming obsolete too quickly. Right now you get nukes about two eras before the anti-nuke buildings, so there's a bit of a window where they're useful.

Also, there's a victory timing issue. In the core game, you get nukes so late that you really don't have to deal with the consequences. Nuke someone, and just let them sit there in their fallout while you finish up your space victory; it's unlikely they'd have time to nuke you back, and even if every other civ got mad at you for it, there's no time for them to really mobilize. But in this mod, you're going to have to live with the civs for centuries afterwards, and deal with the diplomatic backlash from all of the other civs and city-states.

I'm not saying I can't do something about this. Maybe give a small nuke reduction to the Perimeter Defense building (T15), in lieu of the defense boost I was planning to give it. I'll try it out later. But I don't want to do too much too soon.

The AIs also need an algorhythm "Push the Big Red Button", because I've seen AI's with nukes but not use them, even when I am obviously on the verge of wiping them out.

I'm sure they do, but that's WAY beyond what I can program, and it's something plenty of people have asked for in other threads.

4. Playing on continents map right now. What an exploit it is to join in a war against a civ who's on a different continent!

Again, part of the core game. It's actually one of the things behind the original design; one of the reasons I wanted the grav units to be able to move across oceans was so that if something like that DID happen, they could immediately attack the other civ instead of having to embark units, escort them across, etc. So I'm hoping that this becomes less abuseable in this mod than in the core game; declare that sort of war, and he WILL sent a vertol over the ocean to raid you.

5. Also experienced the Bottomless Pit Marsh graphic again (see attached pic). I did as you suggested and reloaded the game, and the issue went away.

I'm assuming, then, that in between games where you use my mod, you're also playing games without it? If so, it sounds like a cache issue. Which is strange, because one of the flags in the mod properties is to reload the landmark/terrain system, which should fix those sorts of things by default. I wonder; are you going straight from some other game to testing this mod, or do you back out to the main menu in between?

Couple pics from this evening's playtesting. First, should subs have Indirect Fire capability?

Subs can't be able to bombard land at all (but Stealth ships can). But the promotions are handled purely through unit class, so yes, it's possible for a submarine to select the Indirect Fire promotion (since it is available to all naval units), even though it has no use for it. This has nothing to do with me, it's part of the core game.

But I like it, because once you upgrade the sub to a Stealth Ship it CAN make use of that. So it's not as big of a penalty for the AI any more. There are a couple others like that; the Former, for instance, can take bombardment promotions even though it has no ranged attack and can't even attack other units.

Second pic has to do with the pirates head icon you inserted: just curious, but whats the purpose of that?

Every resource has to have an icon. Neutronium is the omega symbol, Dilithium is the shuriken, Omnicytes have the flower. Well, now that I've got the building resource production working, I had to have icons for the two new luxuries. Information uses the pirate, Ambrosia uses the mushroom; both of them are a bit too cartoony, but I couldn't resist the humor (the Internet is full of pirates, and the mushroom giving extra life is sort of a Super Mario joke).
I'm in the process of creating a new icon library for all of the miscellaneous stuff (policies, resources, etc.), but text icons aren't modular, so you're limited to the options they give. If I find something that works better I'll switch it, but there aren't a lot of possibilities.

Well, there's been a lot of talk about mods creating an "SDI" wonder for this. Personally, I don't like it; you spend all of this effort to unlock the things (they're the only core unit that requires building a wonder or project to unlock!), so I don't want them becoming obsolete too quickly. Right now you get nukes about two eras before the anti-nuke buildings, so there's a bit of a window where they're useful.

I will simply make the comment again that this is your mod, and I have no problems subordinating myself in this sense. Simply put as I see it my job is to provide feedback for your mod. Your job is to decide whether my feedback is viable in the context of where you are going with this mod. As stated previously concerning my Modus Operandi why I have supplied my feedback on this specific subject matter, and so I will proceed forward from here.


I'm assuming, then, that in between games where you use my mod, you're also playing games without it?

Not that I am aware of. However from my end why this is a communal PC, and my son could have been playing a non-enhanced game in between times.


Subs can't be able to bombard land at all (but Stealth ships can). But the promotions are handled purely through unit class, so yes, it's possible for a submarine to select the Indirect Fire promotion (since it is available to all naval units), even though it has no use for it. This has nothing to do with me, it's part of the core game.

But I like it, because once you upgrade the sub to a Stealth Ship it CAN make use of that.

Now that you've explained it, why it makes perfect sense! :goodjob: I hadn't really thought much of subs till this evening when I decided to stress-test their coding and encountered this situation. Very-very good explaination on your part regarding this extrapolation. :goodjob:


Every resource has to have an icon. Neutronium is the omega symbol, Dilithium is the shuriken, Omnicytes have the flower. Well, now that I've got the building resource production working, I had to have icons for the two new luxuries. Information uses the pirate, Ambrosia uses the mushroom; both of them are a bit too cartoony, but I couldn't resist the humor (the Internet is full of pirates, and the mushroom giving extra life is sort of a Super Mario joke).

Ah, OK. I'm outside the target audience for your humor here, but considering I've done similar things in the past why I can appreciate where your going with this.


Still in the procees of devouring Askia this evening: he is proving to be a formidable foe. I will give an update tomorrow if I encounter anything noteworthy, otherwise assume everything has gone according to your plans. :assimilate:

D

I will simply make the comment again that this is your mod, and I have no problems subordinating myself in this sense.

Heh, I'm not trying to put my foot down on this or anything, I AM flexible on it. I was just giving my logic as to why I deliberately put the anti-nuke buildings in the Fusion era instead of having one of the two be in the Digital.
The thing is, there are actually a couple distinct variables for nuke reduction. There's "NukeModifier" and "NukeExplosionRand". The first is a simple integer: a Nuke Level of 2 means nuclear weapon, 1 means atomic, and I'd assume 0 means no effect. So the Gravity Shield and Orbital Defense Pod each put -1 on this, which tremendously reduces the direct effects. But then there's the second variable; the Orbital Defense Pod puts -20 on NukeExplosionRand which, if I understand it correctly, reduces the amount of damage. (I'll test this when I have time.)

So what I'm now thinking, based on your comment, is giving that same NukeExplosionRand -20 to the Perimeter Defense building; previously it was just a flat +10 defense, and I'd bumped it up to +15 yesterday because I thought it was a bit too weak, but with this nuke mitigation I can put it back down to +10 and have it still be worth the price to build.

Now, there's another hidden component to this: anti-aircraft fire. SAM systems can shoot nuclear missiles, because they're Air domain; that's the Planet Buster's big selling point, that it has an Evasion promotion to help with that. So remember how useful the Plasma Artillery was, how you'd actually want to build a few of them? If someone tries is throwing nukes at you, just remember that the modern-era nuclear missiles only have a range of 8, stick some anti-aircraft weapons in front of your front-line cities (and some jet fighters set to intercept?), and it should help.
On a related note, one effect of the Aerospace Complex is that it boosts a city's air defense by 20%; I think this includes its interception ability, so this'd help against nukes as well.

At least, that's how I'm assuming it all works. I almost never bother building nukes.

Ah, OK. I'm outside the target audience for your humor here, but considering I've done similar things in the past why I can appreciate where your going with this.

I wasn't deliberately going for humor from the start. It's just that when I pick placeholders, I don't generally spend a huge amount of time picking one, since I know they'll be replaced down the road, which means I usually go for whatever association comes to mind (when I see the Pirate in an interface window, I want to be able to know what it stood for even if the text isn't there, as a testing mechanism), and "memorable" usually means something humorous.

Now, the text icons are unusual in that I simply CAN'T replace them with SMAC-specific icons, as far as I know, so I need to find something more permanent. In the end I'll probably replace them with something generic. There are symbols named "TEAM1", "TEAM2", and so on, and I have no idea what they look like; I tried the WTF1 symbol and it didn't look good. I'm hoping that one of these turns out to be something unique enough to use for this.

I will give an update tomorrow if I encounter anything noteworthy, otherwise assume everything has gone according to your plans.

I should have a new version done tonight, with a LOT of improvements and fixes. For one thing, I've now put some better effect placeholders in place, so every Wonder now has some effect, even if it's not the one I want it to end up with.
I'm actually about to start a new test game right now, probably starting in the Fusion era to see if the Golem and such work right. Assuming nothing crashes, I'll post the new version after I test the critical parts.

(Want to know what screwed me up on this today? Someone at Firaxis spelled "penicillin" with only one L in all of the XML files. So I had things depending on TECH_PENICILLIN, it'd break because that didn't exist, and I'd be staring at it for an hour trying to figure out why it wasn't working. There are a couple others like that as well, but most of them are more obvious than that.)

Heh, I'm not trying to put my foot down on this or anything, I AM flexible on it.


:lol: OK, so from my perspective you should leave things the way they are for now, but keep my comments regarding this in mind. Essentially I've played (maybe) all of four games with your mod, and in two of those the nuke option has been a difference maker to my advantage, and to the detriment of the AIs. IMO this makes it a trend, but not necessarily a game-breaker which needs to be fixed. Lets play with it some more (especially after the next patch comes out) and see what really personifies the AIs in this regard.


. (I'll test this when I have time.)


I think that sounds like a great answer there! :goodjob:

. Now, there's another hidden component to this: anti-aircraft fire. SAM systems can shoot nuclear missiles, because they're Air domain; that's the Planet Buster's big selling point, that it has an Evasion promotion to help with that. So remember how useful the Plasma Artillery was, how you'd actually want to build a few of them? If someone tries is throwing nukes at you, just remember that the modern-era nuclear missiles only have a range of 8, stick some anti-aircraft weapons in front of your front-line cities (and some jet fighters set to intercept?), and it should help.

I think thats gonna be a tough concept for the AIs to understand, but we will see.


. I wasn't deliberately going for humor from the start. It's just that when I pick placeholders, I don't generally spend a huge amount of time picking one, since I know they'll be replaced down the road, which means I usually go for whatever association comes to mind (when I see the Pirate in an interface window, I want to be able to know what it stood for even if the text isn't there, as a testing mechanism), and "memorable" usually means something humorous.

IMO it was like finding an Easter Egg - I'll have to keep my eyes open for this sort of thing from you in the future! :goodjob:

The only comment I wrote down last night during playtesting was concerning Energy Banks. I didn't write anything specific so can't say exactly, but I did like its set of attributes it provided.

I should have a new version done tonight, with a LOT of improvements and fixes.

Looking forward to it. Not sure if I've stated it before in this thread but I probably would've already shelved ciV if it wasn't for your mod. Really enjoying where your going with this - keep it up! :goodjob:

D

Okay, it's new version time. But before I get into the patch notes, there's something I want to comment on.

In the Buildings schema, there's an entry "SpecialistExtraCulture", as I've discussed before. I finally figured out what it's doing. Let's say you have ten cities, with 2 specialists in each. If you set SpecialistExtraCulture=1, then it's SUPPOSED to add 20 culture to your empire, right? Well, what it's actually doing is this:
The first city adds 20 culture, plus 2 for its specialists.
The second city adds 22 culture, plus 2 for its specialists, for 24 FOR THAT CITY.
And so on. Ten cities, with this pattern, would give you 580 culture.
So it's not only broken, it's broken in two different ways and makes it utterly unplayable in any form. I had an empire that was getting around 400 culture per turn (with new policies costing 7-8k, so a pretty nice ratio), and building something that gave +1 culture per specialist bumped it to over 5000 per turn.

On to the fun stuff! I'll warn you, this update is incompatible with old savegames. Enough internal things changed that I'm not sure what it'd do.

v.0.05, 11/21/10
> The resource display along the top, and its associated pulldown tooltip, now display any resource of type MODERN or RUSH, which includes all of the strategics. (The only other options are BONUS and LUXURY.) The upshot of this is that it displays Neutronium now, even though it also provides happiness. This is how it should have worked in the core game.
> The TechObsolete settings for the AI “need_tile_improvers” and “want_tile_improvers” entries are removed, which encourages civs to build workers if you start in a later era. This is something that should have been in the core game. I've already seen this change make a HUGE difference; city-states now build workers ASAP and improve all of their terrain, starting with connecting the resources.
> When using orbital weapons, the game no longer attempts to highlight the possible hexes, since that’d be the entire world. (This logic kicks in for any unit whose bombardment range is >= 50, actually, whether it’s air or siege.) I think this might have been responsible for some of the crashing.
> There were far too many large neutronium deposits and too few small ones. This was because of an artificial padding of the statistics I'd put in; while a few small deposits would spawn in deserts, hills, etc., one extra deposit per civ was being placed randomly on land, and this one was set to a large deposit. It’s now a small half the time. So now, about half of the deposits will be small (3 units) and half will be big (5 units), with the big ones mostly being on hills and the smalls being scattered on any type of terrain. Given that you’re only 3 tiers from unlocking Quantum Labs, which generate Neutronium, this isn’t bad.
> The Help text on Superconductor and Graviton Theory were accidentally switched.
> Bioenhancement Center now requires a Military Academy in the city instead of an Academy. This change is so that you can have a naval or air-oriented city without having to build a land-military building; the Military Academy is a bit more expensive than the Academy, but its benefits are now good enough that you might build it first.
> As a temporary patch, the Great Empath will use the Artist AI.
> Perimeter Defense now decreases the effects of nuclear weapons targeted on this city slightly. Assuming I'm right about how that works.
> The Gravity Shield building requires one unit of Dilithium.
> The Robotic Assembly Plant requires one unit of Neutronium.
> The Centauri Preserve requires one unit of Omnicytes.
> The Nanoreplicator requires one unit of Neutronium.
This was necessary because these resources ended up being way too common at the end. You just couldn't make enough units to make a dent. Since the Nanohospital already required one Omnicytes and the Fusion Lab requires a Dilithium, this now makes two buildings use each advanced resource. Three if you count the Living Refinery national wonder.
> Ascetic Virtues dropped its culture-per-specialist benefit and went back up to +20% Great Person Points in all cities. It also gained “-10% unhappiness from number of cities”, which with the Balance mod means 0.4 happiness per city. I'm looking into a couple alternate benefits, because I don't want so much +Happiness in the game. One possibility is to give it a production bonus when building a Wonder in that city, or something along those lines. The original SMAC wonder reduced unit support costs, which always seemed out of place for a wonder whose movie was about meditation.
> ResearchPercent for all eras other than Ancient was increased. This means that starting a game in a later era won’t give you nearly as massive a discount on tech costs, and you won’t get the 1-turn research.
> Drastically increased the cost of Research Agreements in later eras; there’s a slight increase at the Renaissance through Modern eras (+50 over the old value), but in the future eras it scales up dramatically, to 800-1000 in the last eras.
> Diplomatic victory threshold increased to 80%. Basically, if you want to win a diplo victory, you need to buy every city-state's affection.
> City-state gold gift exponent increased from 1.01 to 1.02. I'm trying to make it so that in the late eras it's not so easy to buy affection. This didn't quite do it, but I'm working on it.
> The Golem unit can now be sacrificed to rush production, as if it were a Great Engineer. But it’s very toned-down in amount; instead of 300 BaseHurry and 30 HurryMultiplier, it’s 50 and 10. In practice, this seems to mean that when sacrificed you get approximately the unit cost back.
> Internally, the Combat Engineer is now actually referred to as UNIT_COMBAT_ENGINEER instead of UNIT_ENGINEER2. All appropriate links have also been adjusted.
> A few resource boosts have shifted into the Nuclear era, to split up the doubled ones: Pasture’s +production moved from Gene Splicing to Ecology, Quarry’s +gold moved from Superconductor to Electronics, and Plantation’s +gold moved from Centauri Empathy to Penicillin (despite them misspelling it internally). This was part of a long-term goal to make the Nuclear era techs have more minor benefits. But it works nicely in practice, since these aren't common improvements.
> Wells now get +1 production at Monopole Magnets, since they were the only specialized improvement that didn’t get two.
> Barbarians can now exist one era later than before. Regardless of which era you’re in, Barbarian camps will exist at the start of a game regardless of era, but this’ll affect games starting in the earlier eras. It's fun to see barbarians using Paratroopers and Laser Infantry, but I want to add more, like barbarian destroyers.
> Trance I, Trance II, Soporific, and EMP now use actual icons (copies of existing promotion icons). Most of the other new promotions will now appear in the correct lists in the Civilopedia as well.
> Atomic Bombs now become obsolete at Fusion Power, when you get Planet Busters. This matches the usual pattern of only allowing the two most recent units of each type.
> Merchant Exchange is now “+2 gold per local luxury or strategic resource”. It no longer provides a Great Merchant; the Planetary Energy Grid still does that just fine.
> Pholus Mutagen is now “+2 food, +1 production, +1 gold per local food resource.” That means wheat, cow, sheep, deer, banana, and fish. The game will also check to see if there’s at least one of these tiles nearby before listing the wonder (to help the AI). Yes, that's a potentially huge benefit, especially since certain resources, like fish, can cluster. But most cities only have two or three of these at most, and that puts this below most other wonders of the same era in terms of power.
> Doctrine: Air Power now also requires Pre-Sentient Algorithms.
> Optical Computers now also requires Doctrine: Flexibility. This makes it a 3-prereq tech, a bottleneck that most advancement has to go through.
The above two changes are because the way I'd arranged the techs really created two distinct tech paths, a biological one and a technological one. While I like the concept behind that, in practice it meant that you'd beeline down one side and ignore the other, and I don't like that. So with these two cross-connections, it's a lot harder to ignore half the tree.
> The Information luxury now uses a different text icon; instead of a pirate, it’s the three circles of the trade icon, colored white.
> As a placeholder for now, the Telepathic Matrix gives 2 free Great Empaths and the Dream Twister gives 2 free Great Artists. Eventually I want to integrate the TM into the Tech Diffusion, though, and the DT will add unhappiness to all other civs. But this at least gives the wonders SOME benefit; I’ll cut them down to only 1 great person per once it’s fixed.
> The Space Elevator now gives the “Orbital Drop” promotion to units trained in that city, which allows them to drop anywhere on the planet. I actually want it to be for any unit that begins its turn in this city, instead, but for now this’ll do. I don't know how to remove a promotion once you leave a city, but it's probably something that can be done with LUA.
> The Nethack Terminus now gives you a free tech, in addition to the nonfunctional spying part.
There are now no buildings with zero effects; everything does at least SOMETHING.
> The Nanoreplicator gave +1 production per strategic resource, +1 gold per luxury and +1 food per food resource. The three new resources were only being classified as "strategic", but Neutronium was supposed to count as a luxury as well and omnicytes as a food as well. So now, a Neutronium deposit will get +1 to both production and gold if you build a Nanoreplicator, and Omnicytes get both production and food.
(There was a similar bug with the Pholus Mutagen and Merchant Exchange's changes above that forced me to upload a revised version of the patch a few minutes after the original.)

Major known bugs/issues
> The balance is still a bit off. I started in the Fusion era, and most techs took ~4 turns to research once I had a few cities built. Likewise, most new buildings took 2-3 turns to build and Wonders took 8-10 turns in the finished cities. I want each of those numbers to be at least 50% higher (more like doubled) on Normal speed.
> For some reason, once I get to the late eras, all specialists are giving +1 happiness. I'm not sure what triggered that, but it's extremely powerful and I don't think it's supposed to happen.
> The combat tooltips are utterly broken when attacking a city. I had a unit with a bombardment rating of 75 attacking a city (a Bolo), with two +10% boosts, and the game said its power was 270 and predicted a one-shot kill. The fact that it DIDN'T kill, and did about as much damage as you'd expect from the 90 it was supposed to be, implies that it's just the tooltip.
It's not consistent, either; I had two Skimmers attacking cities, and in one case it gave its power as 1.85 times the base (instead of the 1.1 it was supposed to be), another only had 1.4 times the base.
> Needlejet bombardment is VERY flaky. It has a bombardment strength of 90, and most of the time it acted like it, taking about half the health off most future units. But sometimes it'd do zero or 1 points of damage to things like Laser Infantry (45 power), other times it'd one-shot an Isle of the Deep. And I don't mean in a single fight, I mean one jet would do this four or five turns in a row, you had streaks of HORRIBLE damage followed by a streak of insane damage.
> There's a "cannot capture cities" promotion in the base game. It doesn't work.
> Once a civ launches a spaceship, their capital will show the animation of the launching rocket every turn, even if you then capture the capital. This stops if you reload the savegame, because since the city is no longer a capital the game won't draw the launch structure any more.
> Not a bug, just something to be aware of: if you start in a late era, the AI will now spend some real effort beating you to Wonders, but it'll still put a high priority on assembling a spaceship. So if you start a game after the Nuclear era, expect to have a significant advantage in picking up the available Wonders. I didn't want to set the AI's flavor on this to zero, because some day I DO want it to work right and there are other things (like the satellite units) that require the Apollo Program.

Being that you're an expert on city-states, Darsnan, I want to run something past you that I've been working on for v.0.06.

I created four new units, the Jury-Rigged Stealth Ship, Vertol, Needlejet, and Gravtank. These are treated as UUs for CIVILIZATION_MINOR, replacing the normal version of each for all city-states. Each is a bit less effective than the unit it replaces, but they require no strategic resources. After all, it's not like the city-states will ever have that many strategics to work with.

First question: Are these enough? I think I've covered the bases, heavy land, skirmisher land, air, and sea. I don't want resourceless satellite weapons, though. Other than these, the only resourceless units in any of my new eras are the Laser Infantry (which work just fine) and the Survey Pod (useless for city-states, really).

I also realized that I'd never outright banned barbarians or city-states from building certain other future units. So one change I added was that City-states can't build Titan units. The lack of resources pretty much meant this was true already, but now it's explicit. And Barbarians can make almost none of the new units.
The problem is, I also want to tweak the Barbarians to use mindworms and other Psi units. But they cost a resource, and I don't know of a way to give barbarians a supply of resources; I'm sure there's a way in LUA to hack it (probably very similar to the logic for buildings making resources, actually). For now, I might create a "Wild Mindworms" resourceless unit, along the same lines as the juryrigged ones, and let the Barbarians make THAT. Same for the other three psi units; wild Nessus Worms would be a serious threat in the Nanotech Era.

Second question: Should barbarians get the juryrigged units as well, so that you could see barbarian stealth ships and gravtanks?

Actually, what I want is to create a second Barbarian-style faction; let's call them The Swarm for simplicity's sake. The Swarm's barbarian "camps" (Spore Towers) should be able to spawn anywhere, including inside a civ's territory, and they'd spawn mindworms and such. They wouldn't be era-limited like the normal camps are, and they'd be hostile to everyone (including the other barbarians). But this is more of a long-term goal; the problem I'm having is that, no matter how I arrange it, Barbarians are still limited to only spawning in non-visible land areas as far as I can tell. So once the world gets mostly settled, no more barbarians, which means no wild mindworms. But I WANT them to spawn inside settled areas, that's part of the point; it encourages you to hold some military units back in your territory, it discourages huge sprawling empires, it makes the Trance promotion more essential since those backline units won't have the massive support your main army will, and it makes people want to use Labor Mechs, Golems and Formers to do their maintenance work instead of defenseless Engineers.

If I can get the two-faction thing working, I'm okay with not giving the human barbs any juryrigged units, and just letting them fade away in those later eras. But it might be interesting to see a "pirate" group doing this sort of thing. (Hmm, I can use the pirate faction from SMAC for inspiration here...)

Third question: if I do make resourceless mindworms, should city-states be able to make those as well? I don't want to make it too easy for them, but I'm worried that too few people will ever make some of their own. If I can get the barbarian thing working, I'd be inclined to not help out the CS's any more since worms will be plentiful.
Just remember, though; mindworms can already pass through borders when you're not at war, and they're SUPPOSED to have the Hidden Nationality thing so that they can pillage or attack your friends. That might be a bit too much to give city-states.

Being that you're an expert on city-states, Darsnan, .

I'm an expert, huh? Boy are you in trouble! :lol:

First off my observation is that, even though in my mod I've given each C-S a Shiva (GDR with two attacks/ turn and no defensive penalties) and a Military Base for defense, I and the AIs can still relatively easily take out a C-S. As I see it there are two main reasons for this: first, once a C-S is conquered, its surviving units disappear, thus you don't have to worry about riposte when attacking (i.e. you can throw abandon to the wind when attacking). Second is that you can walk your units right up to the C-S city before attacking (i.e. there is no declaration of war for violating the C-S's cultural border). In general I think the core game needs to be modified to inhibit humans from cherry-picking C-S to add to their empires (i.e. more stringent consequencs than "City-States grow worried").


I created four new units, the Jury-Rigged Stealth Ship, Vertol, Needlejet, and Gravtank. These are treated as UUs for CIVILIZATION_MINOR, replacing the normal version of each for all city-states. Each is a bit less effective than the unit it replaces, but they require no strategic resources. After all, it's not like the city-states will ever have that many strategics to work with.

First question: Are these enough? I think I've covered the bases, heavy land, skirmisher land, air, and sea. .

My thought here would be that the war will be won or lost on land, not the sea, so I would scrap the ship, and maybe replace it wth a mortar unit (my version of this is a 1 tile/ turn arty I'm calling an "Automated Defense Pod" - more on that later). The other thought I have here is that per your recommendation I am beginning my playtests of your mod in the Industrial era, and as such I can't effectively attack a C-S at the beginning of a game (at best it would be a Phyric victory which would leave me exposed to AI Civs): therefore if you are placing these C-S units into the tech tree such that they would then essentially keep pace with their equivalent units the human players can build, then that would be a nice counter to the benefit of the C-S. Question: are these units cheapened (i.e. less expensive to build)? If so then the C-S could potentially field a slightly larger military than it can currently.


Second question: Should barbarians get the juryrigged units as well, so that you could see barbarian stealth ships and gravtanks? Actually, what I want is to create a second Barbarian-style faction; let's call them The Swarm for simplicity's sake.

If I can get the two-faction thing working, I'm okay with not giving the human barbs any juryrigged units, and just letting them fade away in those later eras. But it might be interesting to see a "pirate" group doing this sort of thing. .

Once I get my mod going, why it is imperative that the Barbs a) be able to build all sorts of units, and b) become more prolific as the game progresses (i.e. like the fungal blooms and NL become more prevelent as the game goes along in SMAC). What I am hoping is that once the SDK is released, that its a relatively easy hack to put this ability in place.

One thing I've noticed in the base game is that the Barbs don't build arty units. Since in my mod the barbs are going to be infesting the remnants of cities (i.e. not camps), then my thought here is that these ruined cities automated defenses are still active, and have the ability to fire on units, just the way that cities have the ability to fire on units. Thus I've upgraded the Brute (which is relatively common in a game, all the way up to the end) into an Automated Defense Pod: this unit only moves one tile/ turn, but along with its arty ability it also has a good defense. Makes life a little more interesting when your going to exterminate a barb camp.


Third question: if I do make resourceless mindworms, should city-states be able to make those as well? I don't want to make it too easy for them, but I'm worried that too few people will ever make some of their own. If I can get the barbarian thing working, I'd be inclined to not help out the CS's any more since worms will be plentiful.
Just remember, though; mindworms can already pass through borders when you're not at war, and they're SUPPOSED to have the Hidden Nationality thing so that they can pillage or attack your friends. That might be a bit too much to give city-states.

An observation I had made previously was that I had taken the GDR and changed it to a defensive flavoring, however it then just wandered around the whole map like it was braindead. Therefore my thought in this same vein would be whether the C-S AIs would be able to utilize the unit effectively (i.e. would its flavoring conflict with the C-S coding for directing units?)? I'll also add the comment that I don't see the C-S build a lot of units, so under the circumstances is this one of The Few the C-S should build? Anyways, as I'd stated previously I think there is still a lot of tweaking going on under the hood, so some of this discussion will probably be superseded by the upgraded gameplay of the C-S (after the next patch?), and we'll have to consider re-tweaking these things again.

D

In general I think the core game needs to be modified to inhibit humans from cherry-picking C-S to add to their empires (i.e. more stringent consequencs than "City-States grow worried").

Well, there IS the penalty in place that once you've taken over two city-states you get labeled "Aggressive" and the CS decay increases to 150%, and if you take over four you get labeled "Warmonger" and it goes to 200%. But yeah, that's not much of a penalty.

My thought here would be that the war will be won or lost on land, not the sea, so I would scrap the ship,

Well, you're looking at it from the point of view of a C-S trying to defend itself from an attacking civ, while I'm more trying to make C-S be a real player in OFFENSIVE military actions. That is, when I declare war on Germany, all of my CS allies do as well, but currently they don't really DO much, because my allies tend to be the guys near me and that makes it nearly impossible for them to reach him.

But with this change, they can be a real threat. This should also make you think VERY carefully about starting a war with someone who is allied to that city-state near you.
It's a good point that there's no artillery unit for this, but I've only GOT one artillery unit in my future eras, and it's right at the start. Maybe I SHOULD make a Jury-Rigged version of the Plasma Artillery, though, to help with air defense. Since a CS will only be defending a single city (usually), that means a pretty high chance of having stacked interception abilities nearby. Actually, that sounds like a good idea, so I'll try adding that tonight, but I think I'll leave the Stealth Ships on the list for now as well. (After all, Barbs and city-states seem to make destroyers pretty often, being a resourceless naval unit, so it's not like I'm doing something that will skew the balance.)

Question: are these units cheapened (i.e. less expensive to build)? If so then the C-S could potentially field a slightly larger military than it can currently.

Yes. If the normal unit costs 900, then these cost 800 AND have no strategic resources.
One thing I thought of, though, is that once you get into the Nanotech era, nearly every building has a strategic resource requirement. Obviously a city-state will have a hard time meeting that. Actually, they should have that problem earlier, with the Factory; without coal, no city-state would have factories for that 50% boost. And with only one city, no railroad bonus either... so I might have to drop the costs further. (Or, create a zero-cost unique building that only city-states can make, that boosts production and such to make up for this. Easy enough to do.)

The limiting factor for city-states, in my experience, isn't production costs; it's maintenance costs. Without trade routes and the occasional wonder, a city-state won't have nearly the income of a player city of the same size. This'd get even worse once you start stacking all-empire bonuses (like the Sky Hydroponics Lab or the food from a city-state).

One thing I've noticed in the base game is that the Barbs don't build arty units...
Thus I've upgraded the Brute (which is relatively common in a game, all the way up to the end) into an Automated Defense Pod:

Well, you can always just unlock the existing artillery units for them instead. It's a simple enough change; go into Civilizations.xml, scroll down to the UnitClassOverrides section, and edit the ones you want. Something like
<Delete CivilizationType="CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN" UnitClassType="UNITCLASS_CANNON"/>
would remove the existing Cannon lockout. So Barbs would now be able to spawn Cannon units. (Units requiring resources would still be off-limits.)

The problem is just that the existing arty units are all glass cannons, needing the protection of infantry, and barbs just can't do that very well. But it's a lot less work than creating a new unit.

from your post in the other thread..

If you know how to do it, I'd appreciate a little LUA coding help on this. (Not to hijack the thread; I'm working on this over in my mod's thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395463). If I get stuck then I'll start a new thread for this in the LUA forum.)
1> Everyone who builds a spaceship to get a free SP of their choice, a golden age, and the fixed technology Centauri Ecology (not available any other way).
2> The FIRST person to build a spaceship also gets a free tech of their choice, their free golden age lasts twice as long, and they get a permanent +1 UN votes.
3> For 10 turns after the first person builds a ship, the world is at peace. All wars immediately end, and no new ones can start.
4> 10-20 turns after the first spaceship launches, the Barbarians and City-States get Centauri Ecology unlocked as well. (Not sure if this is already covered by the normal Barbarian tech diffusion.)
From what I understand, #1 should be simple, #2 might be a bit tougher, #3 and #4 I have no idea on.

all really easy stuff to do. provided the peace function works, even #3

all really easy stuff to do. provided the peace function works, even #3

Nice to have someone in here who isn't me or Darsnan!

It's good to know that these won't be complex. I'm just getting started on the LUA coding, but it seems like these'd be trivial just because they're already something that buildings can do. So all you'd need to do is get the spaceship completion to give you a national wonder (maybe called the "Air and Space Museum") in your capital for #1 and a world wonder for #2, assuming that those "FreeTech" fields trigger when the building is awarded through some other means than construction. But it's probably easy enough to just add the schema to the Projects file directly.

I've actually put a much longer list of things I'm going to try implementing through LUA in the last "official" post on the first page. Some of them are sort of pipe dreams, but if I can get even half of them done in the near future I'll be happy.

well #1 starts off by tracking players that can build it, then when one is found actually building it, do a bit more tracking (as to cut down unnecessary loops checking players all the time). when the building is complete hand out rewards

#2, since there's already tracking in place, it's going to be easy to determine who's first

#3, force peace everywhere for the length of time. either that makes a mandatory 10 turn peace treaty everywhere, or maybe even possible to block war declarations (dont think so), if not, new war decs would have to be forced back to peace. cheesy, but if a custom notification can be thrown in as well, it makes the force peace a bit more plausible

and #4, since the tracking from #1 is still going on, give out the techs if they dont have it yet

major hurdles would probably be setting up the tracking tables and figuring out the best way to save the data in case a player quits the game, and then testing everything :lol:

#3, force peace everywhere for the length of time. either that makes a mandatory 10 turn peace treaty everywhere

Originally I'd picked a 10-turn duration for exactly that reason, I'd figured that it'd be trivial to add a single peace "event" that triggered the existing Peace Treaty timer. I'd prefer it to be more random than that, though, more like 10-20, because I'm afraid a human will just mass his troops in the right spot for that 11th-turn event when the mindworms break out.

I also want to add a similar effect to the Great Empath. Instead of a "Culture Bomb" you'd get a "Peace Bomb" that ends any war you're in (if you're in one) in an immediate treaty, and if you're not in a war gives +5 or +10 to all city-state factions instead. So I was hoping there'd be an easy way to trigger the existing Peace Treaty logic for multiple reasons.

or maybe even possible to block war declarations (dont think so), if not, new war decs would have to be forced back to peace. cheesy, but if a custom notification can be thrown in as well, it makes the force peace a bit more plausible

Well, if Peace Treaties already have that lockout mechanism included, then I'd think it'd be possible to tune the World Peace duration to whatever you needed; if I wanted a 15-turn peace, wouldn't it be possible to just declare a Peace Treaty for everyone on turn X and then a second one on X+Y (which'd reset the timer?), where Y was a random number from 0 to 10 selected by the computer at the start of the event? That'd give you a Y+10-turn peace, but with no easy way for the player to know when it'll expire.

and #4, since the tracking from #1 is still going on, give out the techs if they dont have it yet

The only reason I thought this might be complex is that if the others are being handled through some sort of simple "OnWonderBuilt" sort of event, the CSs and Barbs wouldn't be covered.

Well, you're looking at it from the point of view of a C-S trying to defend itself from an attacking civ, while I'm more trying to make C-S be a real player in OFFENSIVE military actions.
Currently I don’t think the C-S are capable of true offensive military operations, and I characterize them more as Switzerland (neutral and defensive minded, but armed to the teeth) than as Finland in WW2 (fierice warriors, but once their small reserves are depleted they are toast). So I am trying to optimize the C-S more for a Switzerland approach than anything else. However here again things could change considerably once the next patch comes out, as Firaxis may be tweaking things under the hood in regards to how the C-S play. For us though its sort of like trying to hit a moving target: we keep trying to optimize gameplay to current trends and observations, but because of tweaks in the patch these changes may make our updates miss the mark. Depending on how things go with the next patch, I may just give the C-S a set of units which can attack twice per turn. We will see.
That is, when I declare war on Germany, all of my CS allies do as well, but currently they don't really DO much, because my allies tend to be the guys near me and that makes it nearly impossible for them to reach him. .
Worse, if you happen to be a distance away from an enemy but one of your allied C-S is near an enemy and it declares war on the enemy, then it is most likely lost to you. That could almost be considered an exploit: getting a faraway enemy to declare war on you just so you can pocket a nearby allied C-S of your distant enemy.

It's a good point that there's no artillery unit for this, but I've only GOT one artillery unit in my future eras, and it's right at the start. Maybe I SHOULD make a Jury-Rigged version of the Plasma Artillery, though, to help with air defense. Since a CS will only be defending a single city (usually), that means a pretty high chance of having stacked interception abilities nearby. Actually, that sounds like a good idea, so I'll try adding that tonight, but I think I'll leave the Stealth Ships on the list for now as well. (After all, Barbs and city-states seem to make destroyers pretty often, being a resourceless naval unit, so it's not like I'm doing something that will skew the balance.)
OK, sounds good. Note that playtesting is going to be difficult thru the holidays for me – got stuff to do pretty much every weekend from here on out. FYI that empirical feedback is going to slow down on my front.

(Or, create a zero-cost unique building that only city-states can make, that boosts production and such to make up for this. Easy enough to do.)
Something available mid-game to give C-S a boost – I like that idea! :b:


Well, you can always just unlock the existing artillery units for them instead. It's a simple enough change; go into Civilizations.xml, scroll down to the UnitClassOverrides section, and edit the ones you want. Something like
<Delete CivilizationType="CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN" UnitClassType="UNITCLASS_CANNON"/>
would remove the existing Cannon lockout. So Barbs would now be able to spawn Cannon units. (Units requiring resources would still be off-limits.)
Yup, I’m familiar with this. I’m pretty handy with the XML, but for others who are reading this thread and weren’t aware of this parameter, why it’ll probably help them out.

D

Currently I don’t think the C-S are capable of true offensive military operations, and I characterize them more as Switzerland (neutral and defensive minded, but armed to the teeth) than as Finland in WW2 (fierice warriors, but once their small reserves are depleted they are toast).

I'm not saying that I want city-states to actively declare new wars. That'd be stupid. But once a war has started, they're perfectly capable of gaining ground once they have a resource advantage; I've seen city-states conquer entire empires if I've weakened them enough. And obviously, if you start gifting tons of units to the city-states, they can roll over the other AIs.

Most of the time you'd be right. A city-state would be a very tough, compact power. If he builds ships, they'll stay near home; if he builds skirmisher units they'll park themselves nearby. But when a war DOES start, I want the city-states to be able to fight back effectively, even if their opponent is on the other side of an ocean, and naval vessels are essential for that.

OK, sounds good. Note that playtesting is going to be difficult thru the holidays for me

Me too, although I'm staying home for Thanksgiving at least.

Anyway, I did add a resourceless version of the Plasma Artillery to the city-states. So far so good.
Question: Nomenclature. Right now the five city-state exclusive units are labeled things like "Jury-Rigged Plasma Artillery", but I don't really like that term on reflection. "Primitive" might be more appropriate, but it seems discordant with the fact that we're talking about advanced sci-fi units. So what term would you use to represent the fact that these units are weaker than the norm?

Also, I played a test game last night. (New change: in the tech tree, the points where a tech improves the yield of an improvement? It actually shows the icon for that improvement now. Same goes for the road and railroad movement increases; no more star icon for those. It's a HUGE improvement for readability.) The main thing I'd wanted to test was that I've added "Wild" versions of the four Psi units to the Barbarian list, so any future-era camps should spawn psi units.
And what happened? I started a game in the Transcendence era, everything unlocked, and the first barb camp I see has a Nessus Worm. A 120-strength regenerating city-killer Godzilla titan, and all I had was a few 45-strength Laser Infantry. Thankfully he didn't move towards my cities (although he DID head for the Americans, he went back after a couple turns). Since most players won't be starting in the Transcendence Era I'm not going to change this, though.
But I encountered a bug in this: he didn't regenerate. The Wild Nessus Worm has the same promotions as the regular, and so should have regenerated 10-11 HP every turn, but it just didn't happen; I ended up whittling his health down from a distance with artillery and a rushed needlejet. So it looks like barbarians don't get a true "turn" in the usual sense, and I'll have to find some other way to handle this. (Some .lua change that says that at the start of MY turn, all barbarian psi units heal?)

Other good changes in the upcoming patch?
- The spaceship components now obsolete if you have Centauri Ecology, so if you start a game in any of the future eras, the AI won't waste time building a spaceship and will go for the Wonders. (He'll still build the Apollo Program, but that's a prerequisite for orbital weapons. Also, you can't obsolete Projects the same way.)
- I created two new unit combat classes, the Multirole (needlejet) and Orbital (ion cannon, death ray, etc.), so that I could give needlejets the promotions of both fighters and bombers (which makes them kinda awesome, actually; still testing that), and orbitals now use the promotions of siege weapons (i.e., "vs. Open terran" and "vs. Rough terrain" instead of "vs. Land" and "vs. cities", although I let them have one Siege promotion just to be fair). This also allowed me to tweak a few other things; anti-air promotions no longer help against orbital weapons, for instance.

Also, I realized that I missed responding to a post a few days ago:
2. The AIs are not handling the Mobile Shields well, as they are throwing these units into the front lines.

Not sure what I can do about this. I can try tweaking the flavor values to make them more Great General-ish, but I think the flaw here might be inherent to the design. The mobile shield is at its best when the enemy is all clustered together (as in normal Civ5 battles), but so many of the future units are highly mobile that the AI doesn't do this much any more.

3. I killed a city this evening and was presented with screenie #2. Should the tile lose its Railroad enhancement?

I think that's part of the core game. City tiles automatically get the best available route. I definitely haven't done anything to change this; all I did was make City Ruins tiles give a small boost to production and gold when worked.

about barbarians, they go through the same turn stuff as other players (human, major civs and minor civs)


test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Ottomans's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Songhai's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Genoa's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Budapest's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Ragusa's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Sidon's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 0 It's Barbarians's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Ottomans's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Songhai's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Genoa's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Budapest's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Ragusa's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Sidon's turn!
test1: Gameturn: 1 It's Barbarians's turn!

but if you compare to vanilla, they don't heal. for example, hit a barb at a camp. the tooltip shows they get a fortification bonus, and fortifying lets you heal, but barbs don't regenerate

But once a war has started, they're perfectly capable of gaining ground once they have a resource advantage; I've seen city-states conquer entire empires if I've weakened them enough. And obviously, if you start gifting tons of units to the city-states, they can roll over the other AIs.

I've not seen a C-S conquer another Civ's city to date (maybe I was just not looking for it?). I'm also kinda leary of trusting humans to supporting or propping up a C-S during a war. I'd rather try to focus on what can be done to make them more self-sufficient (a la more of a Switzerland approach), which I think the sub-set of units your producing is going in the right direction with.


Most of the time you'd be right. A city-state would be a very tough, compact power. If he builds ships, they'll stay near home; if he builds skirmisher units they'll park themselves nearby. But when a war DOES start, I want the city-states to be able to fight back effectively, even if their opponent is on the other side of an ocean, and naval vessels are essential for that.


That'd be interesting to see a flotilla of C-S units on their way to attack a far off power.


I did add a resourceless version of the Plasma Artillery to the city-states. So far so good.
Question: Nomenclature. Right now the five city-state exclusive units are labeled things like "Jury-Rigged Plasma Artillery", but I don't really like that term on reflection. "Primitive" might be more appropriate, but it seems discordant with the fact that we're talking about advanced sci-fi units. So what term would you use to represent the fact that these units are weaker than the norm?

Interesting question. In the military they do have names for certain understrength units. For instance there is the Light Brigade (as in "The Charge of..."), there are Pocket Battleships, and in the initial stages of WW2 the Americans, fearing the British were going to collapse, sold them fighters with the previous generation motors in them (for fear of the newer engines falling into Nazi hands), to which the British refered to these aircraft as Castrated Lightnings. But I'm probably starting to digress.....

In my mod the C-S are going to be the remnants of an alien civilization, and right now my plan is to label their subset of units using god names (Shiva being one). This could change, but the idea here is to invoke an almost mythological sense for these units.

So, there you are, with two different approaches to labeling the C-S units. If neither of these appeal to you, then if you give me some more ideas as to where you'd like to drive it, I can probably come up with some other names that fall into the same vein.


Also, I played a test game last night. (New change: in the tech tree, the points where a tech improves the yield of an improvement? It actually shows the icon for that improvement now. Same goes for the road and railroad movement increases; no more star icon for those.


Awesome! :goodjob: The more immersion, the better!


I encountered a bug in this: he didn't regenerate. The Wild Nessus Worm has the same promotions as the regular, and so should have regenerated 10-11 HP every turn, but it just didn't happen; I ended up whittling his health down from a distance with artillery and a rushed needlejet. So it looks like barbarians don't get a true "turn" in the usual sense, and I'll have to find some other way to handle this. (Some .lua change that says that at the start of MY turn, all barbarian psi units heal?)

As a workaround (or test) give them the Medic promotion and see if they heal then? Depending on what happens, this may tell how the coding has been set up regarding Barbs not healing.


D

but if you compare to vanilla, they don't heal. for example, hit a barb at a camp. the tooltip shows they get a fortification bonus, and fortifying lets you heal, but barbs don't regenerate

Okay, but is there some way to fix that? Is there a flag in GlobalDefines.xml of "barbs don't heal" that I can turn off? (I'm not at home so I can't check.) Because healing barbarians is a pretty integral part of the whole mindworm thing.

Also, I came to two conclusions this morning (I played a little before work):
1> The Jump Gate (T22 building) needs a lot more oomph. What I WANT it to do, to keep from overlapping with the Bulk Matter Transmitter, is to make it so that if you build a Jump Gate in a city, you can now work tiles 4 hexes away instead of being limited to 3 to represent the idea that with the invention of a local gate network, people will move out into suburbs while still being able to get downtown in minutes.
This isn't as broken as it sounds; by the time you get this thing going, you'll have switched to an almost purely specialist-based economy. So this'd really only help you work that resource tile that's just outside your reach.

2> I'm the Grinch. More specifically, I think the world is too happy, and it needs to stop.
I'd wanted population growth to be a major impediment to happiness. The problem is that you'll end up stacking so much happiness on that it just isn't an issue any more. Even if you get beaten to every world wonder, you get:
+8 from two resources (Neutronium and Information)
+1 from each Empath specialist (and you get a free one with the Empath Guild)
+3 per Hologram Theater, +2 per Centauri Preserve, +1 per Habitation Dome or Hybrid Forest
-1 per Genejack Factory or Children's Creche
and there are two new SPs that add Happiness, but only one of them (Eudaimonia, +10) is actually new; the other's the effect of the old Planned Economy.

Even without the per-empire boosts of resources and such, the per-city happiness is a net +6 even before Empaths are brought in, and that's not including the fact that with the increased time and money in these eras you'll be more able to make the existing +happy buildings. Likewise, you'll have more SPs, and that means you'll have unlocked more of the happiness-boosting policies. To make things worse, I nearly always pick Piety over Rationalism just for the culture-boosting effects and the difficulty of getting early Happiness, so in the future eras I'm often running +100 happiness once I pick up most of the world wonders.

So the question is, what can I do about this?
I've been looking at doing a few of the following:
> Increasing the unhappiness from population. It's currently 1.0 for normal citizens and 1.34 in occupied cities. I want to change this to 1.2 and 1.6 at first; for a size 20 city (the norm in most future eras) that's an additional 4 unhappiness per city, assuming you haven't taken any SPs or built Wonders that reduce per-pop unhappiness. (I could go as far as -1.5/-2.0, which'd be 10 unhappiness extra for a size 20. Of course, this'd make India REALLY strong.)
> Adding -1 Happiness to more buildings, like I did the Genejack and Creche. For instance, citizens won't be too happy about a Gravity Shield bubble enclosing their city (remember the Simpsons Movie?), especially if they liked living in the suburbs outside the bubble, and it'd give me an excuse to jack up the defense rating even further. Or the Robotic Assembly Plant, if workers don't like robots taking their jobs. So I could put a -1 on each of those; people would still want to build them anyway, but now it'd help trim off a bit of the excess happiness. (Maybe the Perimeter Defense, too?)
> Decreasing the base happiness for certain luxuries. Why does Silver add the same 5 happiness that Gold and Gems do? So I could see dropping Silver's benefit, for instance. So you might end up having a few "tiers" of luxuries.
> And why do luxuries like Spices or Cotton, extremely valuable in ancient times, still hold the same luxury value in the modern eras? Pepper used to be worth its weight in gold, now it's something you get in a can at the grocery store.
While I can't easily code this in XML, I'd like to see some sort of decay on this; when you hit various eras the mundane luxuries could start to be worth less, until by transcendence they're almost worthless. (Say, -1 at the starts of the Renaissance, Nuclear, Fusion, and Transcendence eras to all luxuries, min. +1?) If that was in, I'd want to go back and increase a bunch of other happiness things to compensate, along with increasing the base happiness of most luxuries. (Combine this with the previous point; Gold might start at +7 and end at +3, Silver +6 down to +2, Cotton might start at +4 and hit the +1 minimum in the Fusion era.)

Side note: if you build the Statue of Liberty, all of the specialists in your empire will claim that they're generating one happiness. They're not actually adding happiness, and it's a display bug in the .lua I imported from an outside project, but I'm still tracking it down.

I've not seen a C-S conquer another Civ's city to date (maybe I was just not looking for it?).

I saw it happen a few times in an early unmodded Civ5 game I played. Rome had been taking a beating from three sides, and a militaristic city-state they were at war with snuck in and captured two of their cities (one of which was Rome itself!). Others have reported the same; there's one good succession game on this site that had the same thing happen.
It's just that in most games, CSs are basically there to get crushed. They don't have the same production as a regular civ, they won't have the same happiness (only one or two luxuries with no way to trade for more), and they won't have most strategics. One of the reasons I wanted to do this was to give them a fighting chance, because I've found that, BY FAR, the easiest way to win now is diplomatic. It's trivial to bribe the city-states into alliances when you have incomes of hundreds of GP per turn, and the only way then to guarantee stopping an AI diplomatic win is to either buy them all up first, or kill a few off.

I'm also kinda leary of trusting humans to supporting or propping up a C-S during a war.

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that that become the accepted strategy. Just that I've done it; give a City-State a few Giant Death Robots and just sit back and watch. If you can do this then you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself, really.
Although, I HAVE gifted combat units to city-states before. I played a game a few days ago where I was attacking the Mongols and one of my CS allies was on the far side of their empire. While I was winning handily on my side, the CS was getting beaten up on the far side, and I couldn't get to them; the problem was, as I mentioned before, the CS only had Laser Infantry (last resourceless combat unit) while being attacked by Skimmers and such. So hopefully the change I made in the jury-rigged unit will help here, but even so, you might still want to do this occasionally if your ally is getting beaten up before you can get there.

As a workaround (or test) give them the Medic promotion and see if they heal then? Depending on what happens, this may tell how the coding has been set up regarding Barbs not healing.

That's basically what the Regeneration I promotion already is. It's the "always heal" effect of March/Repair/Air Repair, linked with the three "+1 healing in this hex" effects of Medic (three effects because it's a different entry depending on whether you're in friendly, neutral, or enemy territory), just without the Medic's ability to help adjacent allies. So clearly this effect is unique to the Barbarian faction, because I know it works fine when I build one of my own.
(Actually, the Nessus has Regeneration II, which is +9 instead of +1 so that it'll heal fully every turn. The Troll also has that, and I think the Isle of the Deep too. But the rest is the same.)

Okay, but is there some way to fix that? Is there a flag in GlobalDefines.xml of "barbs don't heal" that I can turn off? (I'm not at home so I can't check.) Because healing barbarians is a pretty integral part of the whole mindworm thing.

there might be a define for it. there's a unit function ' CanHeal( plot ) ' and for barbs it returns false, so you'd think there's a plot somewhere they can heal on. maybe barb owned territory

although this bit of lua will work


function barbarians ()

local barbid = 63;
local player = Players[ barbid ];

if ( player:IsTurnActive() and player:IsAlive() and player:IsBarbarian() ) then

for unit in Players[ 63 ]:Units() do
if ( unit:IsHurt() ) then
print( unit:GetName() .. " at x: " .. unit:GetX() .. ", y: " .. unit:GetY() .. " is hurt (unitid: " .. unit:GetID() .. ")" );
unit:SetDamage( 0, barbid );
end
end
end
end
Events.SerialEventGameDataDirty.Add( barbarians );


of course it will heal all barbs, you'll have to add some checks for those special healing ones

Okay, I put some of that city-state stuff on the back burner tonight. What I did manage to get working: TERRAFORMING.

Workers of all types can now plant forests and jungles once you hit Replaceable Parts. They pop up immediately after you finish the build; I was actually thinking instead of making a "tree farm" improvement that eventually turns into a forest after a few turns, but that'll wait for now.

Labor Mechs and Formers can also now raise or lower hills once you hit Ecological Engineering (which is a prerequisite for the Former's tech anyway, but not the Labor Mech's). Unfortunately, while the stats are changed, the display won't change until the next time you reload the game. (There's apparently no forced redraw.) But that seems a small price to pay.

Formers can do a full Terraform action once they're built: snow turns to tundra, tundra turns to plains, deserts turn to grassland. I might also give them the ability to change coast tiles to grassland and vice versa, but I really don't know what that'd do to the game since it'd now be possible to have deep ocean border land with no Coast tiles in between.
As with the hill thing, it doesn't change how the map looks until the next time you reload.

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

I also found a really strange thing that works in my favor. If you take a standard land unit, like an infantry, and give it DOMAIN_AIR but make no other changes, you get a unit that moves normally with its standard movement rate, but auto-returns to its home city at the end of the turn (but since it has Range=0, the rebase command does nothing). Also, that "normal" movement can be on land or sea; you're not locked out of one of the two terrain sets. In other words, it's a lot like the aircraft in SMAC, except for the rebasing thing.

But if you also give it a Range, you get a very different scout unit; click anywhere on the map within that range, and the unit moves there (but ends its movement there, no moving around), but pops back to its home city at the end of the turn. Put a visibility promotion on the unit, and it'll spot foes near wherever it goes.
In other words, it's the Recon mission aircraft are supposed to have, except it actually works. And when I put the Range up to 99, I got a working Geosynchronous Survey Pod, exactly what I'd wanted.

----
You'll be able to see both of these for yourselves when I release the next version. v.0.06. Probably tomorrow night.

Just one question to anyone who knows Lua:

I want to check to see if a tile has a specific Improvement on it. A crude way to do this would be
local imptype = plot:GetImprovementType();
if(imptype == 21) then
but this sort of hardcoding is a bad idea, since it'd make it impossible to combine this with anyone else's mods. So I want it, instead, to check by name, say comparing GameInfo.Improvements[imptype].Type against the specific Improvement's name, say "IMPROVEMENT_BUILD_FOREST". But that doesn't work for some reason. Any ideas? (Is it the +1 indexing thing again?)

I also found a really strange thing that works in my favor. If you take a standard land unit, like an infantry, and give it DOMAIN_AIR but make no other changes, you get a unit that moves normally with its standard movement rate, but auto-returns to its home city at the end of the turn (but since it has Range=0, the rebase command does nothing). But if you also give it a Range, you get a very different scout unit; click anywhere on the map within that range, and the unit moves there (but ends its movement there, no moving around), but pops back to its home city at the end of the turn. Put a visibility promotion on the unit, and it'll spot foes near wherever it goes.
In other words, it's the Recon mission aircraft are supposed to have, except it actually works. And when I put the Range up to 99, I got a working Geosynchronous Survey Pod, exactly what I'd wanted.

I think this would be extremely handy during playtesting: simply assign yourself a free one of these, and then you can zoom in anywhere on the map to see whats going on at a specific moment. I think this would especially come in handy for playtesting your new updates for terraforming, as you can now see if (and especially how) the AIs are utilizing your new terraforming options as you can save a game every so often, then go back and compare terrain features to see if any of them have been mod’d, and if so how the AIs went about it.
Regardless, good stuff that, and I look forward to playing with this unit.

Okay, I put some of that city-state stuff on the back burner tonight. What I did manage to get working: TERRAFORMING.
Workers of all types can now plant forests and jungles once you hit Replaceable Parts.
Labor Mechs and Formers can also now raise or lower hills once you hit Ecological Engineering (which is a prerequisite for the Former's tech anyway, but not the Labor Mech's). Unfortunately, while the stats are changed, the display won't change until the next time you reload the game.
Very nice approach to these items! Couple questions on this:

1) My first thought here is that I see human players utilizing this to enhance/ optimize their specialized cities, whereas the AIs don’t understand this concept. Do you consider these items something that can be exploited by human players?
2) Previously I thought you’d said your mod is an add-on to the end of the game, and that it is intended for those who start in the ancient era and want to play further than the base game allows (or did I misinterprete you here?). If so then I would imagine all of the terrain has been terraformed by this point in the game (i.e. by the time of Ecological Engineering and Replaceable Parts), so how does the AI handle changing terrain already improved?


That's basically what the Regeneration I promotion already is. It's the "always heal" effect of March/Repair/Air Repair, linked with the three "+1 healing in this hex" effects of Medic (three effects because it's a different entry depending on whether you're in friendly, neutral, or enemy territory), just without the Medic's ability to help adjacent allies. So clearly this effect is unique to the Barbarian faction, because I know it works fine when I build one of my own.

So I think what this is implying is that in the SDK heal subroutine there is a line somewhere near the beginning which simply states “if Barb then exit” without healing the Barb unit(s) on a turn by turn basis. Does this sound correct?

D

So I want it, instead, to check by name, say comparing GameInfo.Improvements[imptype].Type against the specific Improvement's name, say "IMPROVEMENT_BUILD_FOREST". But that doesn't work for some reason. Any ideas? (Is it the +1 indexing thing again?)
GameInfo.Improvements[index] = a table of the improvement (info for each column or select * from improvements) not a direct value, so its that table that has to be indexed


> print ( GameInfo.Improvements[ 1 ].Type )
IMPROVEMENT_BARBARIAN_CAMP

for imp in GameInfo.Improvements() do
print ( imp.Type )
print ( imp.ArtDefineTag )
print ( imp.RiverSideMakesValid )
end

GameInfo.Improvements[index] = a table of the improvement (info for each column or select * from improvements) not a direct value, so its that table that has to be indexed

I thought that's what I'd done. As I said, I used
GameInfo.Improvements[imptype].Type
where imptype = 20, 21, 22, etc. for my new improvements. (And yes, it checks for the -1 first.) The .Type should have returned "IMPROVEMENT_BUILD_PLANT_FOREST". And yet, the == fails. (Incidentally, where are you typing this Print command to see that?)
I also tried seeing if there was an analogue for TerrainTypes.TERRAIN_DESERT, which is what I check against when terraforming. Something like ImprovementTypes.IMPROVEMENT_TERRAFORM. But that didn't work either.

1) My first thought here is that I see human players utilizing this to enhance/ optimize their specialized cities, whereas the AIs don’t understand this concept. Do you consider these items something that can be exploited by human players?

Depends. Forests are pretty neutral in terms of power; for one thing, the Lumbermill is one of the last Improvements to get "upgraded" in this mod. (It's T19; only the Fishing Boat and Camp get any boosts at T20, and both of those already had earlier boosts at T15 and T16, respectively.) So you might actually lose more than you gain by building these; they're really more like a flat-terrain Mine.

And on a related note, I'm shuffling some of the improvement upgrades. Farms were +P, I'm changing that to +G. Mines were +2 research, I'm splitting that into +P and +R. Why? Because Mines had become superfluous; Farms were generally +2F +1P, trading posts +2G +1P, and here's the Mine giving +1P and some research. These are the three improvements that don't require a resource or feature (lumbermill), so they can directly compare. Obviously the Mine was still the best choice if there was a resource that needed it, but other than that?
So now the Farm will be +2F +1G, the Trading Post +2G +1P, and the mine +2P +1R. Closing the circle would either require the mine to be +food, or add a fourth "regular" improvement that adds +2 research, +1 food. Some sort of research lab terrain; hmm, I'm thinking the Kelp Farm from SMAC for water tiles... that might actually work.

2) Previously I thought you’d said your mod is an add-on to the end of the game, and that it is intended for those who start in the ancient era and want to play further than the base game allows (or did I misinterprete you here?).

No, that's still the general idea, although for testing purposes I'm obviously violating that. Realistically, I'm just aiming to have the game be playable as long as you start no later than Industrial. Late-era starts are this mad dash for Wonders, or all-out assaults using units the opponent has no hope of defending against. So they're decent for testing, but lousy for fun.

If so then I would imagine all of the terrain has been terraformed by this point in the game (i.e. by the time of Ecological Engineering and Replaceable Parts), so how does the AI handle changing terrain already improved?

I'm assuming by "terraformed" you mean "improved", and you're right, nearly every tile should be improved by this point. The short answer is that I'm betting the AI CAN'T handle this, because the UNITAI_WORKER probably has no comprehension of this entire setup. I'll do what I can to adjust this. And it should evaluate this the same way it does any other potential improvement: if the revised yield is more desirable than the existing tile, no problem. The fact that the forest will eventually get a lumbermill isn't actually a problem, because the actual mechanism is this:
> The Build action creates the "Build Forest" improvement on the terrain.
> Every time an improvement is created, the Terraform.lua script checks to see if the just-built improvement is of type IMPROVEMENT_BUILD_FOREST. (There are four blocks in this LUA file; one for BUILD_JUNGLE, one for RAISE_LOWER_HILLS, and one for TERRAFORM. The logic is similar for all.)
> If it is, then destroy the improvement and add the Forest terrain feature to the tile.
> Jungle is nearly identical. Hills has an if check that toggles PlotType.PLOT_HILLS with PlotType.PLOT_LAND. Terraform changes TerrainType to a new value. But they're all based on creating a temporary Improvement and then deleting it when you alter the terrain.
(Side effect: this always destroys the improvement currently on the terrain, if any.)
So if the AI uses only yields to assess, then the simple solution is to give the Build_Forest improvement (the thing that lasts for a split-second before being deleted) the yield of a forest plus a lumbermill. If that's better than the improvement currently on a tile, the AI should consider the change.
(Obviously, this is speculative)

But really, the "advanced" terraforming isn't much of an issue, because it comes so late in the game; by the time you build a Former, the game's basically over. It's only the forest/jungle planting that could actually matter, and as I said above, it's not a substantial advantage to the player if the AI never uses this.

So I think what this is implying is that in the SDK heal subroutine there is a line somewhere near the beginning which simply states “if Barb then exit” without healing the Barb unit(s) on a turn by turn basis. Does this sound correct?

That's what I'm guessing. I'm looking into patching this by hand to force Barb Psi units to heal, along the lines of the previous suggestions; other than the Nessus Worm they all heal at the same rate, and the Nessus was a bit too overpowered for barbs anyway so I'm okay with toning down its regeneration for them.

you have to make sure the string you use in the " GameInfo.Improvements[imptype].Type == string " is correct. if 1 == 1 it will always return true, it can't fail.

where to type print, it's in the tuner's console, when the game is running. you cant expect to run any kind of lua without having the tuner running :)

and the TerrainTypes table is the same kind of thing

> for key, types in pairs(TerrainTypes) do print( key, types ) end
InGame: TERRAIN_DESERT 2
InGame: NO_TERRAIN -1
InGame: TERRAIN_PLAINS 1
InGame: TERRAIN_OCEAN 6
InGame: TERRAIN_TUNDRA 3
InGame: TERRAIN_GRASS 0
InGame: TERRAIN_HILL 8
InGame: NUM_TERRAIN_TYPES 9
InGame: TERRAIN_MOUNTAIN 7
InGame: TERRAIN_COAST 5
InGame: TERRAIN_SNOW 4

you have to make sure the string you use in the " GameInfo.Improvements[imptype].Type == string " is correct. if 1 == 1 it will always return true, it can't fail.

Pretty sure I had the string correct. I'll post the code when I get home. The only headache I have is that I keep typing "eq" instead of "==" when using strings, because I do a lot of PERL work. And != instead of ~=, that sort of thing. But I fixed all of those sorts of errors long ago.

I've tried something like this in a previous block of lua code, and it didn't work there either; in that case, there was no explicit string matching, I was just trying to write a block of code that would take the Improvement type the tech tree was displaying a yield update for, figure out which Build type matched that Improvement type, and then use the Build's icon. I think the logic was sound, but it just didn't work. It'd claim that there were no matches.

where to type print, it's in the tuner's console, when the game is running. you cant expect to run any kind of lua without having the tuner running :)

Strange, I've been using the .lua in the mod just fine without running anything extra. But that would help for debugging other stuff as I go. I'm going to try doing all the event stuff tonight and see what happens. And if I can get it to do the matching I mentioned earlier, that'll help a bit as well.

and the TerrainTypes table is the same kind of thing

No, I got that. The Terrain part works just fine. What I meant was, is there an ImprovementTypes table with a similar construction, or do those tables only exist for the "pre-game" stuff like Terrain types and Plot types? And do these automatically update if I add a new Terrain/Improvement/whatever, or am I going to have to hack another .lua table file like the one for worker actions to get it to recognize the new entry?

And here's another question on a different topic:
In the core game, all of the sound files are stored as .mp3s. I have a hundred or so audio files I want to add to the mod; sound bites for the new techs and wonders mostly, but also some attack sounds and such for the new units. (These are all taken directly from the SMAC directories, so anyone else will be able to create their own package.)
So the question is, does Nexus have a way to pack these all up into a single package file, or am I going to have to add them all individually by hand through ModBuddy? The fact that the core game's files were loose instead of in a package is discouraging.
And on a related note, is there an .lua index file for those, that translates the AS2D_WHATEVER entry into the .mp3 filename, again along the lines of that worker button file? There are just so many files that it's hard to keep straight.

yeah coming out of work with perl and into lua those kind of syntax things happen. and then going back to perl and the lua syntax creeps up in there when typing stuff ;)

as for the tuner its not necessary... what i mean is that with it you'll have a much better idea what the lua is doing, its for debugging plain and simple. the console takes your own script you type in and execute it, much like a shell for example. an extremely useful tool. i usually have the tuner open for lua stuff, and a sqllite browser open for the xml stuff

and there's a lot of tables available, but i dont think there's one for improvements. afaik these are built from the db when the game starts. TerrainTypes is the same as GameInfo.Terrains(), with the exception that gameinfo also has all the other column values whereas TerrainTypes only has the id and Type

as for nexus and sounds, i don't know anything about those

Isn't AC copyrighted?

Yes it is. But the way I understand it, this sort of thing generally falls under the "Fair Use" clause; we're not profiting from it, we're not trying to supersede the original or reduce its commercial value, and there's a practical limit to the quantity of material that mods can use from the original work. (As I said from the start, this isn't even close to a full conversion; for one thing, it's not set on Alpha Centauri.) I'll switch to a more original name for the final mod before I upload it, too; suggestions are welcome.

Obviously Firaxis has a say in the matter, but there have been SMAC-related mods in previous Civ games as well. I'm using FAR less of the original game than, say, the Civ4 Planetfall mod. I won't be providing the sound/video assets; if you have your own copy of SMAC you'll be able to just copy the files over yourself. (And if you don't have a copy of SMAC, what's wrong with you?) So all I've used from the original game, so far, are a few tech/building icons, some civilopedia quotes, and the names of various techs/buildings (most of which are real-world concepts).

Now, the big problem would be if Firaxis decides they want to make their own SMAC expansion for Civ5, like they did with Colonization for Civ4, because then they could argue that AC-related mods could reduce its value. And if they do that, then I'd be first in line to buy it. But until then...

Isn't AC copyrighted?
really doesnt matter this is just a mod no one is profiting, if anything it makes more people aware of SMAC and thats a good thing

Okay, I got the Lua compatibility problem solved, so I've just posted v.0.06 to the first post; before the fix, this mod wouldn't be compatible with any that added new Improvements; it's still somewhat incompatible in that merging the action button icon lists has to be done. And it uses Ingame.xml, so that's more merging. But the functionality of the rest should be fine.
The big features (tech tree icons, terraforming, and resourceless units for city-states and barbarians) have already been discussed and the rest are minor balance changes. I was hoping to have figured out how to award the Centauri Ecology tech for this version, but I haven't quite got it there yet. (The problem is that it's supposed to trigger when the spaceship launches, not when some building is created.) So v.0.07 will probably be Sunday-ish, and I hope to have a lot of the missing Wonder effects implemented by then.

v.0.06, dated 11/25
> On the tech tree, the techs where an improvement’s yield is improved now use the black-and-white Build icon for that improvement instead of the default star.
> On the tech tree, the techs where a route’s movement is increased now use the black-and-white Build icon for that route type instead of the default star.
> On the tech tree, the techs where a new unit promotion unlocks now indicate this with the default star.
> Four new worker actions were added:
At Fertilizer (Renaissance Era), Workers (and all of their successors) gain the ability to plant forests and jungles.
At Ecological Engineering (Fusion Era), Labor Mechs and Formers gain the ability to create or remove hills. This destroys any improvements on that hex. (Graphics do not update until you reload.)
Formers (Nanotech Era) have the unique ability to terraform land: Snow turns to Tundra, Tundra turns to Plains, Desert turns to Grassland.
> The Living Refinery now requires one of the three resources to be found locally. The player would obviously do this already, but there was nothing stopping the AI from being stupid.
> Barbarians can’t build any future units, except for the four Psi units and the Laser Infantry. I’m not sure how they’d make Psi units without omnicytes, though; probably not, since they seem to stop at Laser Infantry and Destroyers.
> City States can’t build any Titans (or non-titan Nanotech-era satellite units) except for the Nessus Worm.
> New unit: Secondhand Stealth Ship. Same unit class, only available to city-states, no resources, but 35 ranged instead of 40, 6 moves instead of 7, and 45 attack instead of 50. Cost 500 instead of 600.
> New unit: Secondhand Plasma Artillery. Same unit class, only available to city-states, 35 combat instead of 40, 50 ranged instead of 60. Cost 700 instead of 800.
> New unit: Secondhand Vertol. Same unit class, only available to city-states, no resources, but 6 moves instead of 7 and 55 attack instead of 60. Cost 500 instead of 600.
> New unit: Secondhand Needlejet. Same unit class, only available to city-states, no resources, but 14 range instead of 16 and 80 attack instead of 90. Cost 900 instead of 1000.
> New unit: Secondhand Gravtank. Same unit class, only available to city-states, no resources, but 80 attack instead of 90. Cost 900 instead of 1000.
> New units: Wild Mind Worms, Wild Isle of the Deep, Wild Chiron Locusts, Wild Nessus Worm. Same stats as the originals, but no resource requirement. Only available to the Barbarian civ.

> The Barbarian and Minor civs cannot build the new Wonders.
> Former loses the Hovering Unit promotion and gains the All Terrain promotion, which will eventually allow it to move across water as well.
> The four SS parts obsolete at Centauri Ecology. That way, if you start in a late era (getting the tech for free) the AI doesn’t waste time building components that do nothing.
> Previously, the orbital weapons and Needlejet were classified as Bombers. I’ve created two new UnitCombatTypes; the Multirole type now combines the features of the bombers and fighters, while the Orbital type is more like a siege unit in terms of promotions (vs Open and vs Rough instead of by unit type).
> Bombers and Needlejets can now use the Soporific Gas promotion. Orbital weapons can take the EMP promotion, although the Ion Cannon starts with that and the Geosynch and Subspace Generator deal no damage, so it’s pretty much just Death Ray.
> The Empath, when building a Monolith, now has a placeholder icon instead of a blank box.
> Build costs for Longevity Vaccine (1300) and Clinical Immortality (1400) were backwards.
> Changed the increments used on the game speeds. It now spends 50% more turns at the early speeds (when you might have 40 years per turn), but reduces the increment to compensate. The result is that starts in a given era should still start you at approximately the right year. It’s still 1000 extra turns on Marathon (normally 1500), 750 on Epic (normally 750), 500 on Standard (normally 500), and 320 on Quick (330 normally). The years have been adjusted for starts in all eras on Standard pace; other game speeds will have the correct numbers of turns but the years might not match up well.
> The Geosynchronous Survey Pod is now an Air unit without the <immobile> flag. The upshot of this is that the unit rebases, moves from its home city, and then snaps back to it at the end of each turn.
> (Crazy Spatz) The core game is 2+1.0*pop unhappiness per city, 5+1.34*pop per captured city. I’d previously increased the constants to 4 and 8. I’ve moved them back down to 3 and 6, but also upped the variables from 1.0/1.34 to 1.2/1.6. The break-even point is 5 population; larger cities will need to make more happiness-boosting buildings, or your empire will need to acquire more luxuries.
> Eudaimonia (SP) was supposed to unlock at Planetary Networks, but I’d left it at Centauri Empathy by accident.
> Instead of +2 research at Graviton Theory, Mine improvements now get +1 production at Nuclear Fission and +1 research at Graviton Theory.
> Instead of +1 production at Centauri Ecology, Farms now get +1 research there.
> The Gravity Shield now adds –1 Happiness but has its defense increased to 30.
> The Robotic Assembly Plant now adds –1 Happiness.
> The Monolith (created by the Great Empath) uses the artwork intended for the African “landmark” improvement (while the actual Landmark only uses the European style).

Okay, to whoever already downloaded it (there was one person), the v.0.06 that went up first had one very minor bug:
For debugging purposes, I'd divided the build times for the four new terraforming actions by 100. So normally, they're supposed to take 1000 for the plant forest/jungle, 2000 for raise/lower hills, and 3000 for terraform. (That means 10, 20, and 30 turns divided by the usual era dependencies; for reference, most of the Pasture/Plantation/etc. type stuff is 500-700.) But instead, they were set to 10, 20, and 30 instead, meaning all would complete in one turn; great for debugging, not very balanced for play.

There's a revised version in the first post.

really doesnt matter this is just a mod no one is profiting, if anything it makes more people aware of SMAC and thats a good thing

+1 :goodjob:

And of course there is Maniac's Civ 4 Planetfall mod which utilizes some of SMAC's material, and no one has objected to that.


But really, the "advanced" terraforming isn't much of an issue, because it comes so late in the game; by the time you build a Former, the game's basically over. It's only the forest/jungle planting that could actually matter, and as I said above, it's not a substantial advantage to the player if the AI never uses this.

Thats an awful lot of work on your part for what essentially is amounting to an afterthought in your mod. Or is this why your calling it "Crazy Spatz's Mod", cuz your just crazy like that? :crazyeye:

Another thought I've had is that you are really the trailblazer here in regards to ciV sci-fi mods, as yours is one of the first, and one of the most advanced to date. Question: do you see your mod in this role in that your mod is providing a plethora of examples for other sci-fi modders (like myself) to utilize in the future (pun intended)?

Anyways, back to being more on-topic: because Barbs in ciV become less numerous as the game goes on, but because you want the game to mimic SMACX in that Fungal Blooms occur more often in the later game, have you looked into what coding controls this aspect? I've only seen an XML parameter which is associated with distance between camps, so I am assuming that the coding involving Barb camps dieing out over time is associated with SDK instead, and am kinda hoping its coded in such a way that the "polarity can be reversed" so to speak in that its a relatively simple tweak to the code. Any thoughts from your end on this?

I've DL'd your latest updates and will try to get to this evening. Am also hoping to shortly start to look more intently into what your doing with the XML and LUA for each of these aspects, so that I can start providing better feedback in this regards as well.

Edit:

> Changed the increments used on the game speeds. It now spends 50% more turns at the early speeds (when you might have 40 years per turn), but reduces the increment to compensate. The result is that starts in a given era should still start you at approximately the right year. It’s still 1000 extra turns on Marathon (normally 1500), 750 on Epic (normally 750), 500 on Standard (normally 500), and 320 on Quick (330 normally). The years have been adjusted for starts in all eras on Standard pace; other game speeds will have the correct numbers of turns but the years might not match up well.


Just started a game on Industrial/ Standard and noted that it now takes approximately 50+ turns to research my first tech (previously it was a manageable 20-ish turns which very quickly ramped down as cities grew and facilities were built). Question: is this an intended side-effect of the above change (or an intended side-effect of another change you've made?)?

D

By the way, I did an Ancient Era start last night, and I have to say, the change I made to population happiness has a HUGE impact. 2+1/pop was easily manageable, 3+1.2/pop has been crippling since my starting area was short on luxuries but had plenty of strategics. And I kind of like it; there's now a major motivation not to expand too much, which really seems to level the playing field with the AI.

But I could use more feedback on this specific point. Is it too much? (One change I've been considering for a while is changing the Temple from +3 culture to +1 happiness and +2 culture. If you play as Egypt and make Burial Tombs, you can see how critical that early-game happiness can be.) Thoughts?

Thats an awful lot of work on your part for what essentially is amounting to an afterthought in your mod. Or is this why your calling it "Crazy Spatz's Mod", cuz your just crazy like that? :crazyeye:

A little from column A, a little from column B. Don't get me wrong, I want the AI to do this, and I've found a way to make it actually do so; Improvements have a Flavor table, it's just that the core game didn't use it, leaving them all set at 0. So I gave my new actions some flavors (production for forests, research for jungle, tile improvement for terraform). That didn't quite seem to do it, but then I tried something new: giving the temporary Improvement some pluses. It actually seemed to work; I'd start to get my new actions as the suggested builds when I moved to a new hex; presumably, the AI is using the same logic.
The only real problem is that this looks bad to a player; they see a "Plant Forest" action that says "+2 production", when in fact it's not giving +2 production. And that worries me about the AI, because it could get into a loop: if it decides planting a forest is the best action on a spot, but the resulting forest doesn't give it the production it's expecting (since there's no lumbermill on it yet), would it just repeat the process over and over again?

But even if it never works, I'd still consider this to be a decent use of time, in that it's helped me learn some aspects of the .lua coding in a way that's very easy to test (since a Transcendence start gives you 4 combat engineers).

Another thought I've had is that you are really the trailblazer here in regards to ciV sci-fi mods, as yours is one of the first, and one of the most advanced to date. Question: do you see your mod in this role in that your mod is providing a plethora of examples for other sci-fi modders (like myself) to utilize in the future (pun intended)?

Not really. I wanted to get something out first mainly as a motivating tool for myself; I have a job, I have other hobbies, I have other video games I play. If someone else already had a fairly complete future-era mod out, then I probably couldn't convince myself to spend the time to make the mod I wanted, and Civ5 would get shelved as soon as I got tired of the core game. That's what happened in Civ4; I'd planned out this mod in extensive detail, but I was busy writing my PhD thesis at the time and couldn't devote any real time to it. By the time I was free, there were plenty of other good mods out there, like Planetfall. So why bother? I'd play those other mods a few times, and then I was done.

Anyways, back to being more on-topic: because Barbs in ciV become less numerous as the game goes on, but because you want the game to mimic SMACX in that Fungal Blooms occur more often in the later game, have you looked into what coding controls this aspect?

It looks I'm going to brute-force it using .lua. At the start of each player's turn, it'll check to see if they have launched the spaceship. If so, do a random draw; a small percent of the time (5-10?), create a new Spore Tower (immobile unit) in their territory on a tile not containing a unit, destroying whatever improvement was already there (and probably replace it with City Ruins or something), and spawn a Wild Mind Worm in an adjacent tile. Assuming that there's randomization in .lua, the only headache is the check for the spaceship; it'd be easy enough to check for the Centauri Ecology tech instead, but I'll need that spaceship check for other things already (like, say, awarding Centauri Ecology in the first place).

And then on the Barbarian civ's turn, check all surviving Towers in their unit list. Give each, say, a 20% chance to spawn a Mind Worm, a 10% chance of a Chiron Locust, and a 5% chance of a Nessus Worm each turn. I'm not sure what to do about Isles of the deep, though; I could check to see if the tower is coastal and if so spawn it in a water hex nearby, but the other possibility is to create a special naval version of the Tower with a different spawn table (just Isles and Nessus Worms).

I've only seen an XML parameter which is associated with distance between camps, so I am assuming that the coding involving Barb camps dieing out over time is associated with SDK instead,

Actually at least part of it is in the Eras.xml file. Each era has a "NoBarbUnits" and "NoBarbCities" entry, governing the appearance of random wandering barbs and camps, I think. Currently, the first goes to true in the Industrial and the second in the Modern. Starting in a later era will put still barb camps on the map, but it won't make new ones once you've cleared them.
I'd boosted that to Nuclear and Digital, but then last night after I posted v.0.06, I just set them all to false all the way through to the end. So leaving uninhabited areas on your continent is dangerous even in the last few eras; but really, any civ that can't hold off the occasional attack with gravtanks and orbital weapons really deserves to die.
The bigger problem is that it's probably hard-coded in the source code that Barbs don't spawn inside visible territory. That lua code above seems like an easy way to get around that limitation, but we'll see.

Am also hoping to shortly start to look more intently into what your doing with the XML and LUA for each of these aspects, so that I can start providing better feedback in this regards as well.

Well, the XML is nearly done, but I'm digging into the .lua now to see what can be done with the missing events and wonder pieces. My absolute top priority is getting the spaceship to give the player Centauri Ecology. Everything else is minor in comparison; as soon as I get that working, this'll be stable enough that I'll start thinking about publishing it through the mod browser.

Just started a game on Industrial/ Standard and noted that it now takes approximately 50+ turns to research my first tech (previously it was a manageable 20-ish turns which very quickly ramped down as cities grew and facilities were built).

Unfortunate but kind of intended. You see, that 50+ turns sounds horrible, but the problem is that if you started at 20ish for the first tech, then once you got to, say, the Fusion Era, new techs would come every 1-2 turns despite their increased costs. The era-based cost discount seems to apply evenly, so adjusting one of those numbers adjusts the others. I'm trying to find a good balance on this.
What's mainly causing it is the ratio of the tech costs. In an Ancient era start, your first few techs are dirt cheap and then it ramps up nicely, but in an Industrial start, you're starting on a plateau of sorts, where the cost of your first tech is nearly as much as the next dozen.
I think another part of the problem is that +research buildings provide too much. Look at gold; the buildings provide +25%, +33%, +40%, that sort of thing. But research? 50* (the Library), 50, 50, and 100. (That's why I set the Research Lab back down to 50.) And normally, bonuses are purely additive (so +25% and +40% gives you +65%, not x1.75), but the Library's effect is multiplied by the others. So research adds up FAST as cities develop. In an Industrial start, you'll get free Libraries in your cities, but no Universities, Public Schools, or Research Labs (for reference, Universities are given in any Fusion Era start or later). Universities will be a high priority for you, and so your research rate will increase quickly.
And then there's an issue of population. An Industrial Start only gives you size 3 cities, but you should be getting a free Granary and Aqueduct in each city, so with the tech-boosted Farms you should be able to grow cities very quickly. (Especially if you use your starting cash to bribe a Maritime.) A player who reaches Industrial the long way will have much larger cities at first.
(The solution for this might be to bump up the city starting sizes for later eras. Currently, Renaissance is the first era with ANY extra population, starting at size 2, Industrial is 3, Nuclear is 4, and so on up to 8 for Transcendence. But if I started the boosting an era earlier, then Industrial cities would start at 4 pop, which is a big jump in research rate.)

The real question is, how long does the SECOND tech take to get? After all, the first twenty turns will be spent just placing cities, developing the terrain, connecting the cities, and building the essential city structures that weren't automatically provided for you (like that University). So I don't really see it as a problem that you wouldn't get a tech during THOSE turns, but once it's all stabilized, what's the pace? After 50 turns, your cities should be a decent size and you'd have Universities, so at that point I'd think you'd be on the normal progression track. But yes, that means a dead time at the start.

If this seems like too much of a problem, it's easy enough to hack in .lua; if you haven't researched a tech yet, double your beaker rate each turn. As you research the first few, decrease the boost, so that once you get to about the fifth or sixth tech you're at the normal rate. It's sort of similar to the Tech Diffusion mod, so it shouldn't be too hard.

And for reference: in the core game, starting at the Industrial era (or later) makes all techs cost only 20% of their listed amounts. Renaissance is 33%, Medieval is 50%, Classical 67%. It's a huge dropoff, which only makes sense if you think of an industrial start as being an "endgame" start where your cities will never have time to reach full size.
In my mod, it's currently 80% Classical, 70% Medieval, 65% Renaissance, 60% Industrial, 55% Nuclear, 50% Digital, 45% Fusion, 40% Nanotech and Transcendence.

for the spaceship check there is the team:GetProjectCount (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Team#GetProjectCount) function you can use to verify the project parts are built

once a team passes that check you can just award them the tech with team:SetHasTech (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Team#SetHasTech)

Found a major bug: in the balance mod, I'd tweaked the penalties for Unhappy/Very Unhappy, to try and make it a bit smoother of a progression. Specifically, the growth penalty is -50%/-75%, the very unhappy combat penalty is increased to -50%. This was to keep it from being absolutely crippling to growth, while making it much harder to fight while unhappy.
Unfortunately, I left off the negative signs. So right now in my test game, I'm facing a very unhappy AI that's getting a massive military and growth boost.
I've fixed it and updated the first post, but I'm going to try to ride it out in my game to see what happens.

for the spaceship check there is the team:GetProjectCount (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Team#GetProjectCount) function you can use to verify the project parts are built

once a team passes that check you can just award them the tech with team:SetHasTech (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Team#SetHasTech)

I'd thought that meant that they've built the parts, but not whether they actually launched the ship. But it apparently doesn't register the Project as complete until you sacrifice it, so that should work just fine. I'm hoping to have it working tonight; my test save is saved RIGHT before I sacrifice the last of the pieces, so assuming some incompatibility doesn't crash me, it should work.

i havent played civ5 till a spaceship launch so i don't know how it works... is there a button you have to press "Launch rocket ship!" ?

is there a button you have to press "Launch rocket ship!" ?

No. Each of the six spaceship pieces has an "Add to Spaceship" action that sacrifices it once it reaches your capital. Once all six have been added, the game normally ends. With the victory turned off, there's a small popup button that says "+1 in Science Victory, gives 0 Victory Points", and nothing else happens.

Okay, I've got it coded up to award the tech if you get all of the spaceship parts built, and I've got the code full of debug print statements for the Tuner to work with. But I'm too tired to actually check it out tonight, so I'll try it tomorrow and let you all know. If it works, then I'll try getting in most of the other effects of the spaceship launch, and I can finally remove the "temporary" link between Centauri Ecology and the rest of the tree.

Incidentally, I just played a test game straight through from the Ancient Era, and it really held together well. It was hard to keep everyone happy until the later eras, and even then only because I went right for the Social Policies that helped with happiness (Piety branch, for instance).
There were really only two major problems:
> Once you reached the Modern era, techs were coming every 3 turns. In the future eras it held to the ratio, so it stayed 3 turns, but that's still too short IMO. It seems that the culprit is, as mentioned before, all the +50% research buildings (Library*, University, Observatory, Public School, Research Lab). A city with all of these is just way too good at producing beakers; the full set in the core game produces 5.25 beakers per population (50% + 50% + 50% + 100%, plus the base value, then multiply the whole thing by 1.5 for the Library). I'd already lowered the Research Lab down to 50% (so only 4.5 per, instead), but I think I need more.
So I'm considering the following:
Library: 1 beaker per 3 population (+33% instead of +50%)
University: +30%, but keep the +2 gold per jungle and maybe throw in something similar for rivers or something
Observatory: +30%
Public School: +40%
Research Lab: +50%
That's 3.33 beakers per population. It's still a bit too fast (that's only ~4 turns per tech), so the other possibility is to change the global research rate. I might try bumping it up by 50%, but then a late-era start would REALLY take forever to get your first tech.
1a> Also, there were a couple buildings that just seemed useless in the core game (Water Mill, mainly), and I'll see about bumping up their effects. (Water Mill, for instance, could give +10% food to that city instead of a flat +2. This'd give a BIG long-term benefit to cities founded along rivers.)

2> Diplomatic wins are just too easy, because in general, the AI doesn't make much attempt to have multiple city-state allies. Also, the income scales up much faster than the diplomatic payoffs do, although I know which variable in the XML controls that.

But overall, it worked pretty well if I do say so myself. So it's getting there.

> Once you reached the Modern era, techs were coming every 3 turns. In the future eras it held to the ratio, so it stayed 3 turns, but that's still too short IMO. It seems that the culprit is, as mentioned before, all the +50% research buildings (Library*, University, Observatory, Public School, Research Lab). A city with all of these is just way too good at producing beakers; the full set in the core game produces 5.25 beakers per population (50% + 50% + 50% + 100%, plus the base value, then multiply the whole thing by 1.5 for the Library). I'd already lowered the Research Lab down to 50% (so only 4.5 per, instead), but I think I need more.

Started my game in the Modern era (Fusion?) last night, and my techs are still only coming around once every 9 turns (edit: just started researching Industrial Economics, and it will take 7 turns), so balance currently is pretty good if starting in a later era.

Two observations:

1) Placed a worker onto a forest square in my territory, and I was given the option to build a forest.

2) China conceded a city to me for peace, and I immediately found that city was at war with a neighboring C-S. As far as I know I did nothing to provoke that C-S, and can only assume that, because the Chinese were at war with this C-S, then for some reason there was a loophole in the code that allowed the C-S to continue prosecuting the war against this one city (which just happened to be mine).


1a> Also, there were a couple buildings that just seemed useless in the core game (Water Mill, mainly), and I'll see about bumping up their effects. (Water Mill, for instance, could give +10% food to that city instead of a flat +2. This'd give a BIG long-term benefit to cities founded along rivers.)

If starting in a future era, then the watermill as-is gives a nice little growth boost early on. Also, to differentiate for a future era game, I've changed the name to "Resevoir" (with its food benefits being fish farms and genetically altered kelp): it implies a higher tech level.



Found a major bug: in the balance mod, I'd tweaked the penalties for Unhappy/Very Unhappy, to try and make it a bit smoother of a progression. Specifically, the growth penalty is -50%/-75%, the very unhappy combat penalty is increased to -50%. This was to keep it from being absolutely crippling to growth, while making it much harder to fight while unhappy.

I was up to about -15 on the Unhappiness scale last night and got a severe warning from my advisor. Never amounted to anything bad because I'd already subdued the AIs on my continent and was in the mdoe of replenishing/ rebuilding after my wars. Imagine if circumstances had been different it could have been bad, though.

Right now I'm finding that the AIs have no counters to my air attacks: I just bomb and heal, bomb and heal, bomb and heal, and the AI doesn't seem to be coded to do anything about my air attacks.

D

Started my game in the Modern era (Fusion?) last night, and my techs are still only coming around once every 9 turns (edit: just started researching Industrial Economics, and it will take 7 turns), so balance currently is pretty good if starting in a later era.

Modern is now "Nuclear", Fusion is two eras later (the middle of the three new eras). Confusing, I know.
Even that 7 turns is a little on the short side IMNSHO; I was aiming for 8-10. So I think I WILL go with a flat +50% on the research costs (so that 7 would now become 10-11), but I'd like to do what I mentioned before and give a massive discount on the first few techs in any late-era start. I'm just looking into whether that's easy to code; giving beakers is easy, telling the difference between techs you've researched and techs that were granted to you by your start, that I'm not sure on. (I might have to just trap the tech-acquisition event, count up the number of times it's happened since the game started, and go from there.)

1) Placed a worker onto a forest square in my territory, and I was given the option to build a forest.

I know. Unfortunately, while you can make an Improvement require the terrain to have a feature, you can't seem to make an Improvement require the ABSENCE of a feature. There's an option in the XML to disallow a build action if there's already an Improvement on the tile, but not something similar for Features.
I'm going to look into the UI Lua code to see if there's an easy way to gray out those buttons if there's already a feature on the tile, but that's not a high priority for me, and doesn't really stop the AI from doing this.

2) China conceded a city to me for peace, and I immediately found that city was at war with a neighboring C-S.

Interesting, but that sounds like a problem in the core game, since I've done nothing to the diplomacy or city-gifting logic.

If starting in a future era, then the watermill as-is gives a nice little growth boost early on. Also, to differentiate for a future era game, I've changed the name to "Resevoir" (with its food benefits being fish farms and genetically altered kelp): it implies a higher tech level.

(There's three "r"'s in Reservoir, by the way.) I'm pretty sure the reason they have the Water Mill in there is the same as the Wind Mill and Workshop: they were terrain improvements in Civ4, and so the developers didn't want to remove them entirely. But those other two are actually USEFUL.
I think I WILL change it to +10% instead of +2. That puts the break-even point at a size ~10 city, with larger cities getting proportionately more. (By the Fusion Era your capital will be approaching size 30 with a decent surplus, so you might be getting 7 or 8 food out of it.)

Actually, there are other buildings that suffer from the same problem, in that they basically just add the same effect as an earlier building. The Observatory, Circus, and Monastery all just add an effect nearly identical to a previous building, but only if certain features/terrains/resources are present. The Water Mill is just the most noticeable one of these, because EVERYONE settles on or near rivers for the gold boost.

I was up to about -15 on the Unhappiness scale last night and got a severe warning from my advisor. Never amounted to anything bad because I'd already subdued the AIs on my continent and was in the mdoe of replenishing/ rebuilding after my wars. Imagine if circumstances had been different it could have been bad, though.

Well, you were getting a few massive bonuses, then, instead of the penalties you should have been facing. If you were only below 0 for a brief period then it doesn't mean much, but if you'd been down there a while, you were doing substantially better than you should have been.
(Also, the -50% production penalty and Settler ban for Very Unhappy were unaffected by this bug. So it's not all positive.)

There are actually a few others I want to add. I want there to be a -25% combat penalty for Unhappy, and a -25% production penalty as well. (Currently there's no penalty for either at Unhappy and then both go to -50% at Very Unhappy.) Make people really try to keep it above zero. But neither of these has an XML entry, so I'll have to wait and see what happens with the other LUA edits I'm doing.

Right now I'm finding that the AIs have no counters to my air attacks

Yeah, but it's always been like that. A Human player knows that if you're the first one to get aircraft then you can attack all-out but that once everyone else has them you need to allocate fighters to defense.

That's actually one of my motivations for making the Needlejet have a unique combat class (the Multirole): now, the AI will have more air units capable of interception/sweep missions, so you should see them more often, assuming you make it to the Fusion Era in the first place.

Which brings up something I've been thinking about: the Cloudbase Academy. Currently, its effect seems a bit weak to me: it gives +4 range to all air units (except satellites) and allows your fighters to perform interceptions twice per turn instead of once (which makes it a lot harder to clear the way for bombers). The problem is that, as you've noticed, the AI doesn't seem to put much effort into dealing with interception.
I'm going to boost it, adding "+20% Combat against other Air units", which'd help on interceptions but helps whether it's your unit doing the intercepting or your bomber being intercepted. And that's basically the same effect I gave the Maritime Control Center (except obviously that one's naval-vs-naval, which is a lot more common). I'm also giving the city that builds the Cloudbase +50% versus air attacks.
(And the reason I'm so focused on interception on this one? Its movie. The Cloudbase Academy movie was one of my absolute favorites.)

In the words of Homer Simpson, "Sweet Merciful Crap!" It took me most of my holiday weekend, but I've got the Spaceship working, to where I can now give pretty much any benefit I want to civs that either build the spaceship, or are the first to build it. And I'm almost done adapting it to work for other buildings, wonders, etc. It's NEARLY done; there are only a couple minor benefits left to be implemented. The painful part has been linking up all the notifications (so when you get a free tech, that orange symbol pops up and takes you to the list of available techs, and so that it'd tell you when any other civs launched). But it works now, and it's beautiful.

This is one point where I really need some detailed feedback, though. Are the components too easy to build now (I reduced their costs a while back), are the benefits too much, is it too confusing to someone who's been playing the core game (I'm going to change the Civilopedia entries, but I haven't got to most of them yet), and so on.

So here's how it works.
If you build a spaceship, ever, you get the following:
> The tech "Centauri Ecology", which can't be acquired any other way (including Great Scientist bulbs or research agreements). Since I put the tech in the Nuclear Era, this means any Digital Era (or later) start will give you the tech for free. Starting with this tech would also disable the SS parts.
> A free Social Policy
> A full-length Golden Age (10 turns at normal speed)
> Any non-Barbarian civs at war with you immediately declare peace. I haven't set a lockout timer on this one yet. Still working on that. So there's nothing stopping them from re-declaring, yet, from what I can tell.
You get these at the start of the turn after you launched.

If you were the FIRST to launch, you get something extra:
> A free tech of your choice
> The free Golden Age lasts twice as long (20 turns at normal speed)
Not implemented yet: +1 UN vote.
But, "first" means you have to have been the only person to launch on that turn. A simultaneous launch means no one gets the prize; the idea is that if only one civ's colonists arrive at AC, then it becomes in effect a colony of that empire, while multiple nations mean a joint operation.

v.0.07 (dated 11/28/10) changelog
> Barbarians are now active the entire game. If you can’t handle them by the time you’re getting gravtanks and orbital weapons, you have bigger problems.
> Merchant Exchange was increased from giving 2 gold per luxury/strategic resource to giving 3.
> The Cloudbase Academy now gives its host city +100% city strength when fighting Air attacks. The similar bonus for the Aerospace Complex was bumped up to +50% (from 20%). The Palace now gets +100% as well.
> The Cloudbase Academy’s promotion it gives now also gives +20% combat strength versus Air units (i.e., when you intercept). None of these are particularly useful outside of very specialized situations, but they add up into something every Air enthusiast should have.
> Changed the Flavor ratings on the Maritime Control Center. Certain naval-oriented civs would go straight for it before if you started in a late era.
> Centauri Ecology can now only be acquired through building the spaceship.
> Building the spaceship gives a variety of benefits, including the Centauri Ecology tech. Being the first to build it gives even more.

I was going to put in some of the other changes we've discussed recently, like the Water Mill change, but I decided to keep this update small and focus on the spaceship part as much as possible. The next update will have a lot of those other changes, most likely including a substantial decrease in the research rates for various buildings.

Also, if you want to see what it looks like to build a spaceship without going through the fuss of playing an actual game, go into GameInfo/CIV5Projects.xml. There's a block of logic near the top, commented out, that gives one civ (Persia, at present) all of the spaceship parts at the start of the game. It's what I used for testing, and it's easy to tweak for your own purposes. (And for reference, the spaceship logic is mostly in Lua/SpatzWonders.lua, although bits of it required modification to other files.)

In the words of Homer Simpson, "Sweet Merciful Crap!" It took me most of my holiday weekend, but I've got the Spaceship working, to where I can now give pretty much any benefit I want to civs that either build the spaceship, or are the first to build it. .)

Sounds pretty awesome! :goodjob:

This is one point where I really need some detailed feedback, though. Are the components too easy to build now (I reduced their costs a while back), are the benefits too much, is it too confusing to someone who's been playing the core game (I'm going to change the Civilopedia entries, but I haven't got to most of them yet), and so on.

OK, I've looked at it from several angles now, and so here is my feedback:

1. Considering that you have 4 complete eras that occur after the completion of this project (and a ton of SPs to boot!), then I do think it is overpowered for where it is in the tech tree. Have you thought about moving it up the tech tree a little ways, maybe to the next era, or even after that? It would seem a waste to populate those proceeding eras with all those great SPs at this point in the game, and then see them go to waste!

2. The only two SPs which are in parallel (Sydney Opera House and the UN) to the spaceship components are on a research branch which doesn't have any military benefits. Question: in your games typically what does the AI do in regards to research? Do they beeline for military advantage? In my games I have seen the AIs complete the Sydney Opera House and UN before me, however that doesn't necesarily mean they focused on this branch of research while neglecting the other branches. I don't know the algorhythms regarding how the AIs determine research priorities, but I think if you were to add a couple military units to the research branch which contains the Sydney Opera House and UN that they might put more importance on this branch, otherwise I guess my concern might be that a human player might be able to make this an exploit at this point in the game by bulking up their military then weathering the storm while they focus on nabbing the SOH and UN, then pocketing the Spaceship at their leisure.

(And for reference, the spaceship logic is mostly in Lua/SpatzWonders.lua, although bits of it required modification to other files.)

Thanx for the tip - will be starting to delve into this shortly.

Tried playing a couple games this evening using your mods, however tech times are now over 60 turns starting in the Nuclear era, making it pretty difficult to get a game going. So I think this is where I start to divurge from your mod and start to focus a little more on my own mod. Therefore since you've played the game from the beginning (i.e. the Ancient era) I've got some questions for you:

1. In ciV all Factions start out with Agriculture, which is equivalent to Centauri Ecology. I know in SMACX games I would sometimes encounter a Faction 50-60 turns in who would then immediately ask for Centauri Ecology (meaning they had done no terraforming for those first 50-60 turns of the game, thus meaning that the game was pretty much trash at that point). Question: do you believe that Firaxis just gave every faction Agriculture to avoid the issue of Factions possibly not researching this tech? Reason I am asking is that I am starting to lay out my own tech tree and I would like to make Centauri Ecology a choice (as in Sid's Golden Rule of making it an Intersting Choice), however if Firaxis never bothered to fix the issue of this tech possibly not being researched in a game, then I am just going to run with giving everyone this tech.

2. From your playtesting to date what do you see as the trends in regards to what the AI does well, and what the AI does poorly? While I understand that the AIs are going to morph/ improve as time progresses, I'd like your assessments now as I believe they will give me more insight that I can then use to tweak them for better AI play.


D

Before I get into the response, I'd like to note that I now have the effects for the Dream Twister (all other civs get -5 Happiness), Planetary Datalinks (gain any tech known by 4 other civs), and Telepathic Matrix (gain any tech known by any other civ) working, with notifications as necessary (although I haven't fixed it so that the Dream Twister is listed separately in the Happiness summary at the top). I'm hoping to have the Nethack Terminus working tonight, although not in the form I'd originally intended; now, I think it's going to be a National Wonder that gives you a "they're almost done!" notification popup whenever any AI has completed more than 75% of a Wonder, and I'll probably switch the tech locations of Nethack Terminus (Digital Sentience) with Network Backbone (Optical Computers) so that you'll get this effect in the Digital age. Since the wonder also gives you a free tech, I don't think you can complain about it being underpowered.

I'm hoping to have a new version by Friday; there's a good chance I could have the production-to-culture conversion and happiness boost from Empaths working in at least limited form (where they wouldn't update the numbers on the screen but would kick in at the end of the turn), but those might have to get bumped to the next version.

1. Considering that you have 4 complete eras that occur after the completion of this project (and a ton of SPs to boot!), then I do think it is overpowered for where it is in the tech tree.

Terminology issue: while SMAC used "SP" to mean Special Project, I generally use the "Wonder" label. "SP" to me means Social Policy, i.e. the Policy branches needed for a Cultural victory. I'm not sure what the number of Wonders or their locations has to do with the spaceship's construction. You don't win by building the spaceship any more, so how would it stop you from getting those later Wonders?

Have you thought about moving it up the tech tree a little ways, maybe to the next era, or even after that?

Yes, I've thought about that. Most of the technologies needed to build an actual spaceship capable of going to Alpha Centauri would be a bit beyond the Nuclear-era technologies. For instance, Fusion Power is one of the first techs in the Fusion Era, so it seemed strange to make it a current-technology project. Thematically, it really would fit better as an early Fusion Era project.

The problem with this is Centauri Ecology, and its descendants. These should be unavailable until after you've reached Alpha Centauri for obvious reasons, but I need them to be early enough for some of the other techs to make sense (like all the bioengineering stuff in the Fusion Era). So I really didn't have any choice, and in fact moved three of the four spaceship pieces to EARLIER techs than they'd been at previously.

2. The only two SPs which are in parallel (Sydney Opera House and the UN) to the spaceship components are on a research branch which doesn't have any military benefits. Question: in your games typically what does the AI do in regards to research? Do they beeline for military advantage?

Depends on the civ. The AI seems to do a good job of considering the Flavor ratings of each tech; the only really strange one I've found is the Naval flavor. Civs that favor that (like England) focus WAY too much on naval-associated wonders and techs. For instance, if I start a Transcendence Era game, and one of the AIs is England, I can be sure that the very first thing to be built in London would be the Maritime Control Center. I've actually tweaked some of the Flavor ratings recently to reduce this effect.

And I'd be careful classifying that branch as non-military; while it has few units in the Digital Era (just the Mind Worms and Golem), those techs have all of the production, happiness, culture, and food boosts, along with most of the Wonders. (In the Fusion Era, you've got the Ranger and Troll units up there as well.) Yes, this puts you at a military disadvantage when facing a warmonger, but that's actually part of why the Digital-era combat units have such low power ratings; using Nuclear Era units (Modern Armor, Mechanized Infantry, Stealth Bombers, Jet Fighters, and Paratroopers), a defensive player should be able to hold off attackers in that era while building the Wonders and such. It's not until you reach the Fusion era that you really need some firepower to survive.

In my games I have seen the AIs complete the Sydney Opera House and UN before me, however that doesn't necesarily mean they focused on this branch of research while neglecting the other branches. I don't know the algorhythms regarding how the AIs determine research priorities,

What happens is this, from what I understand:
The AI takes the Flavor ratings of its various options. It adds a random number (say, from 1-5 for the techs, whose Flavors all total 10) to each, and then weights it by that particular AI leader's priorities. It then does a random draw on the sum of the various options. The result of this is that while all options are possibilities, those that more closely match that leader's preferences will be far more likely.
So it doesn't matter what actual items are at each tech, just what Flavor ratings were assigned to that tech. If you set the Flavor to -999 it'll never build/research it, no matter what benefit it gives, whereas a Flavor over 100 means top priority.

There are two problems with this.
1> Most military-oriented techs will have two or three Flavor ratings that add to 10 (Rocketry is 3 Air, 3 Ranged, and 4 Spaceship), while nonmilitary techs will be a single 10-point Flavor (Globalization is Diplomacy 10, Ecology is Production 10). And the way the math seems to work heavily biases towards those single-Flavor items. (See my previous comment on the Maritime Control Center.) So if any AI has an above-average Diplomacy preference, he'll go for the UN at all costs.
So the default values encourage the AI to go towards the Globalization tech line first.

I can easily tweak the Flavor ratings of some of these techs, and I'll probably do so in the next version.

2> The total Flavor ratings of Wonders goes up a bit as the game progresses; Ancient wonders, like the Pyramids, total 35, and the mid-range ones like the Sistine Chapel total 50. Eiffel Tower, Pentagon, and Statue of Liberty all total 60 (30/30), so it's still reasonable in the Industrial and early Modern.
But then you hit the last three normal-game Wonders: Cristo Redentor, United Nations, and Sydney Opera House, all of which total 100. (CR and SOH are 70 culture/30 wonder, UN is 70 diplomacy/30 wonder). A Flavor of 100 basically means "build as soon as you possibly can"; the Factory, for instance, is Production 100, so the AI will build factories ASAP as long as it has Coal.
(For reference, all of my new Wonders have total flavors of 50, with no progressive increase. I probably SHOULD bump them up a little, to 60/70/80ish.)

So I'll lower the Flavors on those three wonders to 30/30, which should cause the AI to not go so overboard on them. Like so many other things I've found, it's yet another case of how the developers decided to code the Modern Era as a completely unbalanced "endgame", which conflicts with any mod trying to extend the tree.

bulking up their military then weathering the storm while they focus on nabbing the SOH and UN, then pocketing the Spaceship at their leisure.

Well, if the bonuses for building the spaceship are large enough, then you won't want to wait until "at their leisure". And there's another factor, the tech prereqs:
Centauri Ecology is only unlocked through the spaceship. The techs along the top row of the tree all depend on it directly, but there's also a diagonal progression; Retroviral Engineering (row 3) requires Centauri Empathy, and that tech gives you the Genejack Factory, the future equivalent of the Factory's production boost. Subatomic Alloys (row 4) in turn requires Retroviral Engineering, and that's the tech that unlocks Neutronium, a key military resource. Advanced Spaceflight (row 6) in turn requires Subatomic Alloys, Matter Compression (row 8) requires that, and Quantum Power (row 9) requires that.
So if you don't build a spaceship, you simply can't enter the Nanotech Era, and only five Fusion Era techs don't lead back to Centauri Ecology. (Granted, they're very military-oriented techs.) You can get around this a bit through the Planetary Datalinks (which now works!), but that'll only kick in when 4 other civs already have the tech you're missing. And it won't ever give you Centauri Ecology, which among other things unlocks the Omnicytes strategic resource. This can be crippling to a military.

Tried playing a couple games this evening using your mods, however tech times are now over 60 turns starting in the Nuclear era,

I'm assuming you mean that that was the time for a game that starts in the Nuclear Era. I agree that it's a problem, and hopefully my next round of changes will help that a bit. For one thing, I'm trying to code into the .lua a patch that makes your first few techs cheaper than normal if you start in an advanced era. So for an Industrial/Nuclear start, maybe you get 4 times the normal beaker production on the first tech you research, 3 times on the second, 2.5 on the third, and so on until after 10 or so techs you're paying the normal amounts. With your numbers, that'd mean a 15-turn first tech. (To compensate a bit, I still intend to reduce the effects of research buildings significantly, so it'd probably be more like 20 turns when I'm done.) It might not display correctly, so it might still say that it'd take 60-80 turns, but you'd actually get the tech in 20ish and I can probably add a popup notification explaining this whenever you get a new tech. Something like "For this next technology you will get 400% of the usual progress."

The problem is just that the game is balanced around you having a complete empire by that point in the game, and no one really starts in the Modern Era in the core game because you're only a few turns away from winning by Diplomacy or Space. So there's no need to balance it for the stable-state long term, because you'll never reach that. The default was to just cut all of the tech costs by a large percentage, to compensate for your much smaller empire (which'd never grow to full size before the game ends). But this just isn't sustainable in later eras, because it doesn't scale; if the default is for all techs to cost 20% of their normal values for an Industrial start, you'd still only be paying 20% once you reached the Fusion Era (by which point you WOULD have a full-sized empire), and you'd be getting everything in one turn of research.

Question: do you believe that Firaxis just gave every faction Agriculture to avoid the issue of Factions possibly not researching this tech?

Basically, yes. In Civ4 you had civs with different starting techs, and while the smart move (unless you were beelining for religions) was to pick up the "essentials" (Agriculture, Mining, Fishing, etc.), it was just too easy for an AI to bypass at least one of those and go a little ways down a tech line. SMAC had been even worse for this; its tech tree was so convoluted that it was really easy for a civ to not have many of the low-tier techs. Counting Alien Crossfire, there were 8 techs in the lowest tier of the SMAC tree, and you could go a LONG way down the tree without picking up any of them.

Civ5 is different. The tech tree is a lot more cross-connected, to where you just can't progress quite so far along a single line (with a few notable exceptions), and there are no dead-end techs at all (which is a lot more SMAC-like than Civ4-like). This helps the AI, in that it won't made stupid decisions nearly so often since there'll be less need to look three or four techs down the road.

This actually is related to one of the basic design principles behind my mod. If you look at the tech tree you see a LOT of diagonal connections, as I mentioned in the earlier discussion on Centauri Ecology. This tends to encourage researching a single tier at a time and not moving on until you've completed the column, instead of beelining down a single row to get a good long-term tech. That's something an AI can handle pretty well, which reduces the Human Advantage.
And that's also why I tried to have every technology give two or three things, instead of the core game's tendency to have techs that only offer a single building or unit. That way, the AI won't be penalized so badly for researching a technology whose benefit isn't really what it needs; if each tech is giving you a Wonder, a unit, and a bonus to some type of Improvement, then the AI is never really harmed by taking that tech over others.

2. From your playtesting to date what do you see as the trends in regards to what the AI does well, and what the AI does poorly?

The biggest problem with the AI is just a question of adaptation. Take tile improvement; a human player would know that the priorities are:
1> Put the appropriate Improvement on every luxury or strategic you don't already have.
2> Connect every city with a road to the capital as soon as possible, and later on a railroad.
3> Improving bonus resources and redundant luxuries/strategics.
4> Everything else.
The AI DOES have some basic logic in it to determine how many workers he needs, and then sets priorities to "Need Workers", "Want Workers", or "Enough Workers". (One bug in the core game is that those first two are disabled for any games starting after about the Renaissance Era, so an AI in a Modern Era start in the core game would almost never produce any Workers. This was especially noticeable for city-states.) But beyond that, the AI is stupid; he'd rather move his Worker one tile and place a Farm than spend two turns moving to that new Strategic and hooking it up, even though the strategic would benefit him far more on the long run.

This is endemic to the AI. Each unit seems to react as an individual unit, based on what's around it, instead of being directed by some higher authority. For instance, I'd invade the Mongol Empire, and while I'm sitting on one side of the empire annihilating his cities, I can see his cavalry on the far side of the empire fighting an allied City-State that was no real threat. A smart player would realize that the City-State was no threat and would move those units to where they could save the empire, but the AI doesn't do that.

Okay, based on the earlier conversation, I've implemented the research boost I was talking about. Here's how it works. (And yes, I've tested it, it works, although it's not pretty; it doesn't actually display the change in the toolbar yet, but I'm working on it.)

For each era you start in after the Ancient, you get a discount on two techs. So starting in the Industrial Era (era #4) means the first 8 techs are at a discount. The assumption is that by the time you're past those 8, your empire is up to speed and fully productive and doesn't need the boost any more.

The "discount" is handled in the form of a multiplier on the beakers you produce, and the size of the multiplier starts off bigger and then tapers down. For an Industrial start, the first tech is x2.4, the second is x2.2, the third is x2.0, then 1.8, 1.6, 1.45, 1.30, 1.15, and the ninth and all later techs are at the normal price. In the most extreme case, a Transcendence Era start is x3.25 for the first tech and you get a discount on the first 18.
At the same time, I reduced the science output of the various research buildings, slowing things down by ~40%, which should get the late-era research rate to a more reasonable value. Universities only add 30% (but also add 1 culture), Libraries only give 1 research per 3 citizens (AND have only 1 specialist slot instead of 2), and so on. So cities without a full set of buildings (like, say, starting cities in a late-era start, or cities belonging to an AI) won't be quite so penalized relative to a fully-loaded city.

As a test case, I played a game starting in the Nuclear Era. The start was on turn 650, and my first tech came on turn 674, and that was without unlocking the Rationalism tree at all. (I built Universities in my three cities, but not until after I'd made a couple extra Workers.) And I was thinking of boosting the population of starting cities by 1 in later eras, which'd make it go a little faster. For reference, I then hit a Golden age in turn 679, and bulbed another tech on the same turn (which reduced the discount of the second tech a bit further), meaning I got my next tech in 688.

So it seems like this scaling has worked. I'll post the latest version tomorrow, once I clean up a few little things here and there, and hopefully this'll stop that 60-turn first tech problem once and for all.

So I guess I'll give you some feedback. I almost finished my first game. I enjoyed a lot!:)


Settings: king diff, small continents, quick combat, abundant resources, playing as India. Started at nuclear era
Policies: first rationalism, then a mix of freedom en commercial

I thought I was going to have a very difficult time, but...

(0. It's possibly that rationalism + India's UA is just OP)

1. 75% of the time, I'm having a golden age. My happiness is at +150 atm. I conquered 2 civs and I count annex without problems. Happiness goes up for each city I add to my empire. I also can use a lot of great people, which I get too frequent I think.

2. The production boosting buildings make that I can build every single building in 1 turn in my best 5 cities. Even wonders are < 5 turns, I only missed 2 in the entire game.

3. Research is at least 3 times too fast. I'm getting over 3000 beakers per turn, researching through the fusion and nanotech era at 1 tech / 2 turns (the final transcendence tech is at 4 turns atm) Not sure if your update of tomorrow will solve this. The year is 2061 and I'm killing everyone using nessus worms.

4. Gold. I get > 500 gpt. When I annex a city, I can immediately buy the most important stuff. Maybe put a limit of one building per turn per city/ 5 per turn overall?

5. Culture is also too fast. Currently it's 2061 and I nearly finished 3 policies while annexing every city I conquer. (More than 20 cities in my empire atm) Getting 500+ culture per turn (not sure of the exact number.

6. The AI doesn't upgrade its units, they have the money + tech though. They also tend to build a lot of anti-aircraft guns. The best units I've seen are one panzer, a few laser infantries, and no more than 10 mech infs.
When they build spaceship parts, they often don't add them to the space ship apparantly (seeing this by geosync pod)
Sometimes the AI builds a lot of carrier, with only very few battleships.

General stuff:
In the happiness popup, unhappiness is displayed as 0."correct number"

Sometimes Civ crashes when loading a savegame, but I only crashed twice when playing (and losing 30 turns... :S)

Even on abundant, some resources are very hard to come by. Especially aluminium and dilithium. (restarted in the digital era a few times to check this)

I really like this mod, this is all purely constructive criticism.

Regarding future era units, I think it's more useful to give tanklike units a tank icon, air units air icons etc etc. It's difficult to see which unit is what on the map when they all got a star icon.

Screenshots will be added on request.


Cheers,

Aleph00
(yes I registered to write this post :p)

Oh, and have you made any progress on units that can 'fly' over water? I really like that feature.

So I guess I'll give you some feedback. I almost finished my first game.

Which version number of the mod were you using? The tarfile should have had the version number on it (the game will just say "v1"). If you don't have the tarfile, what are the dates on the files?
A lot of the things you describe (the insane building/research times and such) sound like things that were tweaked in the most recent versions. I've been posting new versions roughly once every three days, so if you played a long game at a reasonable pace, it's likely you were using a version one or two behind the current.
For instance, v.0.06 greatly increased unhappiness from population and reduced happiness for a few buildings. v.0.05 (from 11/21) drastically changed the discounts for starting in a later era. So if you were getting those sorts of numbers with a v.0.07 start (the most recently published version, although obviously I'm on v.0.08 internally) then there's a real problem. But it's possible that these are already fixed.

Started at nuclear era

This is the real culprit to most of the headaches you'll find, and I'm trying hard to fix that because I want a late start to still be workable. When you start at a later era, you're getting a lot of buildings for free even before the discounts are brought into play. The upside is that each new city gains happiness since it'll have more +happy buildings already in place than it costs in population unhappiness. The only real compensation for this is that Settlers get ridiculously expensive for late-era starts.

This also explains many of the other things you saw, like the plentiful Great People. In a normal game you get them slowly over the course of a game (with the incremental cost going up after each one), and in a normal game Specialists just aren't a good idea out of some very specific situations. But in a late-era start, you're generating LARGE numbers of GPPs from your specialists (who, with the right policies or Wonders, are more productive than any non-resource tile), while the cost is still low because it hasn't incremented a dozen times from your previous GPs. That's all actually part of the core game, it's just that people normally don't start that late in the tree.

1. 75% of the time, I'm having a golden age. My happiness is at +150 atm.

Well, there are two separate issues here. The first is that if you're on a runaway Wonder spree, and are getting every single Wonder, then yes, you'll have a high Happiness. If you'd been splitting some of these with the AI then it'd be a bit lower. Or again, version control. In v.0.06 I changed it to 1.2 unhappiness per population instead of 1.0, and that made a big change for large-city empires. So I'm trying to get that +150 down to a more reasonable level.

And second, this is actually part of a deliberate change. By the time you're in the Fusion Era, you're NOT going to be worried about sliding below zero any more; there are more than enough +happiness buildings to stay above zero once you've developed your cities. What it'll do, as you've noticed, is have you bumping in and out of a Golden Age periodically. Once you hit the Transcendence Era and start building luxury-producing national wonders (Quantum Converter, Paradise Garden) everyone should have insanely high Happiness, so I'm not counting that.

I'm still tweaking, of course, so any numbers you can give would be useful. I usually go the Piety route over Rationalism so I expect high Happiness.

2. The production boosting buildings make that I can build every single building in 1 turn in my best 5 cities. Even wonders are < 5 turns, I only missed 2 in the entire game.

The problem with those sorts of things isn't really the production-boosting itself, it's the Era discount. In the core game, starting in the Modern/Nuclear era reduces all building costs to 30% of their original values, and so far I haven't changed that in the mod. I'll look into that.
(And remember, Golden Ages = more production.)

3. Research is at least 3 times too fast.

This definitely sounds like one of the earlier versions. But yes, that's a real problem; the first few techs would be far too slow, but once you got set up, you'd reach a ridiculous pace.
I've bumped the era-based research percent a few times already, but the upcoming version (hopefully out tonight) should help this with both a nerfing of the research buildings (which should slow the pace down by ~30-40%) and a large boost for your first few techs to make them affordable while your empire gets up to speed.

4. Gold. I get > 500 gpt. When I annex a city, I can immediately buy the most important stuff. Maybe put a limit of one building per turn per city/ 5 per turn overall?

I'm not sure if I CAN put in a limit like that. Gold, in general, is a serious balance issue; a lot of the wonders in the Digital Era are economic (I've changed that a bit in the soon-to-be-released version, swapping the Network Backbone with the Nethack Terminus, but it's still a bit skewed), and I'm in the middle of re-assessing the maintenance cost of my later-era buildings. (Most of them will probably go up.) Even so, you'll be making a substantial profit in the later eras, and yes, this'll allow you to rush the essential buildings (which is actually sort of intentional).

Also, remember that you're in nearly-constant golden ages. That really boosts gold output of tiles.

5. Culture is also too fast. Currently it's 2061 and I nearly finished 3 policies while annexing every city I conquer. (More than 20 cities in my empire atm) Getting 500+ culture per turn (not sure of the exact number.

Question: in your version, does the Ascetic Virtues still say "adds 1 culture per specialist"? There's a MASSIVE bug in the SpecialistExtraCulture logic in the core game and I didn't find that out until a couple versions ago. In my most recent games I don't think I ever exceeded ~500 culture per turn even at Transcendence, and earlier eras were lower.
But even so, I think 500 culture per turn isn't an unreasonable rate when each new policy costs 8-10k. 3 policy trees at that point isn't TOO bad, because a cultural victory requires 5 and I want culture wins to still be an option at that point.

6. The AI doesn't upgrade its units, they have the money + tech though.

Usually it's because they don't have the strategic resource. Nearly every unit in my eras requires at least one strategic resource; only the Laser Infantry and Geosynchronous Survey Pod require none. So if you're only seeing Laser Infantry, Mechanized Infantry, Destroyers, etc., then that's probably the reason.
Part of the problem, fixed a couple versions ago, is that the AI is explicitly flagged to not build more Workers once it reaches the Industrial Era. So if you start in a later era, they'll almost never produce any.
(When you conquer an enemy, are his tiles fully improved? This could also explain why you get Wonders so easily. If he's only working with the two or three workers he started with and never building more, then it's likely he's not improved most of his territory early on.)

When they build spaceship parts, they often don't add them to the space ship apparantly (seeing this by geosync pod)

I've seen this sort of thing several times, and I have no idea what's happening. I didn't change the AIs, so I'm not sure why so many non-combat units will act strangely. I'm still looking into it.

Sometimes Civ crashes when loading a savegame, but I only crashed twice when playing (and losing 30 turns... :S)

I've only seen that happen when I try loading a savegame that used an older version than my current mod, myself.

Even on abundant, some resources are very hard to come by. Especially aluminium and dilithium. (restarted in the digital era a few times to check this)

Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about this. Aluminum and Uranium are coded into the game as a number of large deposits, and not nearly as many small deposits. The idea, I think, is that by the time you reach their era you'll likely have a larger empire and will have at least one local deposit. But if you start in a late era, it's easily possible you won't have any.

Dilithium is a strange case. It's a purely aquatic resource, which obviously means you need to have coastal cities AND have their culture borders spread out far enough. And aquatic resources only use a single deposit size (none of the large/small split that land resources use), so there won't be very many. There SHOULD be, on average, two dilithium deposits per major civ in the world (and there's no way there can be less than 1), but they might be out near islands somewhere.
I've been looking at adding Dilithium to lakes as well; obviously the only way to put the Improvement, currently, would be to build a city on the shore of the lake. But once I get the "can move across water" thing working you'd be able to do this more easily by moving a Former to the tile.

A Nuclear or Digital start is actually the worst possible for this resource. You don't see the deposits, so you can't place a city near one, but you also haven't had time to expand your borders enough to make it likely you pick up a deposit.

Regarding future era units, I think it's more useful to give tanklike units a tank icon, air units air icons etc etc.

There'll be custom icons for all of these units when I'm done; I was just using the star as a placeholder. But you're right, for testing purposes it'd be better to copy the previous types more, so I'll try to sneak that into the next version.

Which version number of the mod were you using? The tarfile should have had the version number on it (the game will just say "v1"). If you don't have the tarfile, what are the dates on the files?
I'm using v0.07, played like 4 hours. I'll try another game on higher difficulty.

This is the real culprit to most of the headaches you'll find, and I'm trying hard to fix that because I want a late start to still be workable. When you start at a later era, you're getting a lot of buildings for free even before the discounts are brought into play.

Maybe you can add a building that will be built automatically in every city (like a granary for nuclear era start that doubles or triples the GP cost?

In the core game, starting in the Modern/Nuclear era reduces all building costs to 30% of their original values, and so far I haven't changed that in the mod. I'll look into that.
Definately change that back to 100% (or maybe even 120%)


I'm still tweaking, of course, so any numbers you can give would be useful.
4 screenies in attachment.

Some general remarks:
Maybe you could increase the unhappiness for resistance and especially for occupation. I find it difficult to imagine that when a city gets occupied in the fusion era, people will be unhappy. Maybe you can even put that in your long mod, scale unhappiness of occupied cities with the current era. (or increase it, if it already happens)

And when income and production increases, I find it logical to increase the (production) cost of new buildings. I build the cloudbase academy in 2 turns, gravship in 2 turns, nessus wormS in one turn,...

Well, I gtg now. I'll reply to the other stuff when I come back

Addenda:
1> One of the reasons for the massive 500gpt surplus you had is that all "Free" buildings are exactly that, free. That means that you're not paying maintenance on a Library, Temple, Monument, Workshop, etc. if you start in a later era, and that adds up FAST.
One way around this would be to change things, simply, to not giving you any free buildings for a late start. Obviously, this makes the game less fun in that you'll spend your first few dozen turns in the Nuclear Era building Ancient structures, so I'm looking into ways to just turn the maintenance for provided buildings back on.
If you were to start a game in the Ancient Era and play straight through, you'd have a MASSIVE amount of building maintenance to pay each turn. I think mine was something like 800gpt in the Digital Era, so taking the SP that reduces building maintenance by 10% starts looking REALLY good. Unit maintenance wasn't exactly low, either, because of the inflation factor. So it's really just a question of your start era more than anything else, IMO.

2> Also, I didn't notice until you'd mentioned the gold:
In the Eras.xml table, there's a gold maintenance multiplier. For Nuclear, I think it's 60%. So all unit and building maintenance costs that you DO pay are being reduced even further. I'm really tempted to put that back up to 100%. Or even HIGHER than 100%, to compensate for the previous point; if all of the new buildings cost 50% more than normal, it still wouldn't compensate for all of the free cheaper structures until you had a VERY developed city, at which point you should have enough money from other sources anyway to cover it.

In fact, I'm starting to feel that way about a lot of the values in that table. There are so many discounts for starting in a later era (culture, production, reserach, build times, construction times, you name it) that balance goes out the window. I'm tempted to set all of those to 100% and just see what happens; I've already got code in place to boost your first few techs, it shouldn't be too hard to expand that to your first few buildings as well, so I can cover the "getting up to speed" period just fine.

Regardless, I'll tweak these numbers for the next version. Frankly, this is something that any future-era mod is going to have to deal with, so it's worthwhile to get this debugged in general.

Okay, something's seriously wrong here. I looked at your screenshots, and a couple things immediately jumped out:
1> I have no idea what's going wrong with the Unhappiness UI. Obviously it's not ACTUALLY 0.02 unhappiness for occupied population. I didn't change this UI, so it might just be what happens if you go over 100 in one of the unhappiness categories (something that probably doesn't happen often in a normal game).
But even if you assume they're all off by 100 (as evidenced by the total), that's still only 2 unhappiness. It should be 1.6 per occupied population (/2 for India?), although if you're puppeting those two cities then it might be right, since I don't know the equation for puppets.
2> Your tech tree looks wrong. Every tech should have at least two icons on it, except for Nanomatter Editation (and that only because I haven't implemented one of the icons yet). Where are all the Wonder/Building icons? (Or did you turn those off somehow?)

As for the others:
> The SP one actually looks okay to me. 567 culture means ~12 turns per SP at the cost you're showing, and you shouldn't be getting to +567 without building most of the culture-boosting buildings, so most people would be lower. The thing is, while the next SP is listed as costing 7k, the cost will go up quickly after that. 8k, 10k, 12k, you'll have a hard time getting to 20 SPs, and the +567 isn't likely to increase much beyond the point you're at now.
And remember, you swept the Wonders. Every Wonder adds 1-2 culture, plus multipliers, and you have them all. So a good fraction of that 567 are things that, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't have.
> Size 30+ cities are going to be insanely productive. There's really no way around that. I think I'll tweak the exponent on the growth equation (from 2.0 up to maybe 2.2; default is 1.8) to keep from growing that large so fast, but they'll get there eventually. But again, the culprit is probably that Era file; there's a GrowthMultiplier in there, too, which reduces the amount of food a city needs to grow across the board.
(Question: are you using both mods, meaning the Crazy Spatz balance mod, or just the SMAC content mod? Most of the growth slowdown is in the balance mod.)

(That Era file is REALLY starting to piss me off. I understand the logic of it, but I seriously doubt the Firaxis folks tried to actually balance the different start eras at all.)

Also, while that screenshot showed improved tiles, you took it LONG after the game's start. My point was that, if the AI isn't producing new workers, there'd be a point in, say, the Digital Era where a human player would have long since terraformed everything while the AI will still be struggling to connect his cities and resources, because he'll only have the 2-3 workers he started with. It's obviously a huge advantage to the player in that case. But if you're using 0.07 then it should be fixed already.

Finally, I'll point out that I'd originally intended to play this using the Tech Diffusion mod, and I still might implement its logic as part of the core Crazy Spatz mod. This mod keeps the AI from getting twenty techs behind and never getting any Wonders, so it's probably pretty integral to this discussion. (The main reason I hadn't is that it's a purely positive boost, speeding up research.) If the AI had picked up a few of the Digital wonders, you'd have been considerably worse off financially.

1> I have no idea what's going wrong with the Unhappiness UI. Obviously it's not ACTUALLY 0.02 unhappiness for occupied population. I didn't change this UI, so it might just be what happens if you go over 100 in one of the unhappiness categories
But even if you assume they're all off by 100 (as evidenced by the total), that's still only 2 unhappiness.

It shows 0.02, but it's really 2. I'll pay attention next time to see if it has to do with some overflow. I'll also play another civ than India, I guess they're quite ideal for big-ass cities.

although if you're puppeting those two cities then it might be right, since I don't know the equation for puppets.
There are more puppets, pay attention to the slider :)

Question: are you using both mods
I'm using both the long mod and the content mod.

Is there any way to sent PM's on this forum? :)

If you want me to test some stuff, feel free to ask.

Is there any way to sent PM's on this forum? :)

Yes, just click on the person's name; but, if it's related to the mod, it's better to keep it in the thread. That way, if someone else runs into a similar issue or wants to put in their own opinions, there won't be a lot of repetition. It's also useful for me to have the feedback in an easily-visible form, because I DO take these things into account as I'm tweaking.

India definitely has an advantage in terms of population unhappiness, but it's still a problem if you're getting size 30+ cities that early in the first place. So here's what I'm going to do tonight:
> Increase the exponent on growth to 2.2 (was 2.0, and is 1.8 in the base game), making it harder to grow a really huge city. This makes a size 20ish city take about 50% more food per size increase, and a size 40 city take twice the previous amount. (2.5 and 3.5 times the base game's amounts, respectively)
> Base unhappiness is going back to 4/8, because I just did a bit of reshuffling:
In the core game, the Temple adds 3 culture, the Colosseum 4 happiness, and the Library +50% research.
I'm changing the Temple to 1 happiness and 1 culture, the Colosseum to 3 happiness and 1 culture, and the Library to 33% research and 1 culture. (In other words, the TOTALS stay the same, except for the research decrease, but you'll now get the happiness a little earlier and the culture a little later.) I've also changed the later research buildings similarly; Observatory is now only 20% research and 3 culture, for instance. Obviously I'm open to changing it back, but if I move the base unhappiness to 4 then I need some +happy earlier and smaller than the Colosseum, and research just depended far too much on which buildings you had.
> Drastically reduce the discounts you get on growth, production, etc. for starting in earlier eras. Not set them to 100%, generally, but get them at least onto the same close order.
(I may have to increase my previously-mentioned tech increase for your first few techs, to balance this.)
> Not only am I going to entirely eliminate the discount for building maintenance, I'm going to try setting it to 150% to see what happens, although I probably won't keep it there in the long run.
> I'll increase the maintenance costs of future buildings across the board in general.

Okay, after totally overhauling all of the Era variables, my latest test game started in the Industrial Era, and the tech progression went 23 turns for the first one, 19 for the second, 16 for the third, 12 for the fourth, and so on; by the time I was in the late Nuclear Era it was holding pretty steady at 7-8 turns per. So it looks like starting at a middle Era more or less works; I can tweak the multipliers a bit to flatten it out a bit more, but it's playable in the current state and I like the balance a lot better than before.

The only real complaint I have is that Settlers cost WAY too much. Like, "more than a Wonder" much. No idea how to fix that; they're pretty much the only thing in the game that isn't tied to one of the existing Era multipliers. It's not too bad once you get your cities built up (for a size 12ish city with Factories, it was taking 10-15 turns per Settler), but that's a couple hundred turns in.

But on the bright side, money was a HUGE issue for me so far; for the entire Industrial and most of the early Modern, I was basically at zero income. It wasn't until I invaded another empire and hooked up their cities to the network that I started pulling ahead, and it's still far less than I'd see in previous games.
One thing is, I was mistaken on the whole "free building" thing; you still have to pay the upkeep, which means that your starting cities will actually LOSE money until you connect them. I kinda like it this way, but it meant I had to bump up the starting gold. I still want to keep an eye on it, because I think the AI isn't handling this so well, and shifts into "emphasize gold" mode in all cities as a result.
So I might have to give each player a tapering gold bonus in the same way I did research, to help them get up to speed. We'll see.

I was going to post the latest version tonight, but I found a couple things I want to straighten out after some sleep. So figure tomorrow night.

Okay, it's a day late, but in my defense, I had a nasty computer virus to clean up and didn't want to upload any files until I could be sure it was clean.

The high points:
- I've been trying to balance the game better when you start at a later era. I think it's pretty decent now; an Industrial start gives you new techs every ~16 turns while your empire is getting established, and you won't see any 1-turn Wonder builds.
- I'd previously added various boosts to all of the terrain improvements except the GP-created ones. Since they're so specialized, I now gave them even larger boosts, so they're worth building even with the GPs you get late in the game.
- A few of the custom Wonder effects now work.
- The Balance mod has a lot of changes to its buildings. Some of these might get changed back, but I'm seeing if this makes the game progress better in an Ancient start.

v.0.08 changelog (12/4)
> Starting a game in a later era gives a discount for the first few techs, 2 per era (so 2 techs for Classical, 8 for Industrial, 18 for Transcendence). The first tech of each game will be multiplied by (1.0 + 0.6*EraID), meaning 3.4 for Industrial, 4.0 for Nuclear, up to 6.4 for Transcendence, and it scales down with a more or less triangular function. The tooltips at the top of the screen (number of beakers, and turns until next tech) don’t account for this, though.
> Era Changes:
- Growth Percent had previously dropped below 100% in the Renaissance, and went down to 60% for Nuclear and 40% for Transcendence. Now, it’s 90% in the Nuclear, going down to 70% for Transcendence.
- BuildingMaintenancePercent previously was 75% in Renaissance, scaling down to 30%. It is now 100% in all eras; if you build it, pay for it. The problem is that the premade buildings cost money, too, and this can bankrupt you if you’re not careful, so I’ve increased the amount of gold you start with at the middle eras.
- TrainPercent, ConstructPercent, and CreatePercent previously went to 25-30% by the Modern Era. Now, I want them to be taper much slower, basically following the BuildPercent scaling.
- Most eras now start with +1 population in each city. The Medieval through Nuclear eras also start with an additional Worker unit.
> The starting years for each era were a bit out of whack because I misunderstood what the “StartPercent” value in the Eras file meant.
> Increased the Gold maintenance cost of most of the new buildings by 1-2.
> The Network Backbone and Nethack Terminus have switched places on the tech tree; the Network Backbone is now at Digital Sentience, while the Nethack Terminus is at Optical Computers. (This is because the Nethack’s effect is going to be needed in the earlier eras.)
> The Nethack Terminus is now a National Wonder instead of a World Wonder. (Its upcoming effect was a bit too weak to justify the 1-per-world status.)
> (Crazy Spatz) The yields of science-related buildings was decreased; the Library (and Paper Maker) gives +1 science per three population (instead of per 2), the University (and Wat) adds only 30% science (down from 50%), the Observatory 20% (down from 50%), and the Public School 40% (down from 50%). However, these buildings now add a small amount of culture: 1 for the University and Public School, 3 for the Observatory.
> (Crazy Spatz) The Watermill was changed from a flat +2 food to a +10% increase. The Floating Gardens was unchanged, since it added +15% already.
> (Crazy Spatz) The Temple was changed from +3 culture to +1 happiness, +1 culture. The Burial Tomb stayed 2/2, the Mud Pyramid Mosque went from 5 culture to 3 culture, 1 happiness.
> (Crazy Spatz) The Colosseum was changed from +4 happiness to +3 happiness, +1 culture.
> (Crazy Spatz) The base City Growth Exponent was increased from 2.0 to 2.2 (default is 1.8). Compared to the previous version, this means cities take ~50% more food to grow at size 20, or twice the previous food at size 40.
> (Crazy Spatz) Library and Temple buildings (and their UBs) only get 1 specialist slot instead of 2. (Except the Burial Tomb, which stays at 0.)
> (Crazy Spatz) Because it’s now easier to get Happiness early, I’ve put the base city unhappiness back up to 4/8 (from 3/6, with 2/5 being the default).
> Centauri Preserve now also gives +2 gold per Oasis worked by this city.
> Added the sound definitions for the new units. No new actual sounds, but they won’t be so silent any more when you select them.
> Fixed a bunch of Civilopedia entries so that they no longer refer to the spaceship as winning the Science Victory.
> Unit flags now have various symbols vaguely related to the unit’s type. These will be replaced with custom images at a later date.
> If you lack the technology prerequisite for a Policy, the tooltip will say “Requires the XXX Technology” instead of the default “missing prerequisite Policies” message.
> The “gain a tech if X civs have it” ability of the Planetary Datalinks and Telepathic Matrix now works, so the TM now only gives one Great Empath. Note that this ability cannot be used to give a Disabled tech, such as Centauri Ecology, so you can’t get around building a spaceship.
> The “all other civs gain unhappiness” ability of the Dream Twister now works, so I’m reducing its other benefit to a single Great Artist. I still want it to cause a turn of anarchy when built, though, but until that’s done I’m setting the unhappiness to –10. Eventually I want it to be something like 3 turns of anarchy and –5.
> The Sydney Opera House, Pentagon, and Eiffel Tower are no longer available for starts in the Transcendence Era, and the Eiffel is not available for Nanotech starts.
> The Flavor ratings for the Sydney Opera House, Cristo Redentor, and United Nations were changed from 70/30 to 30/30 so that the AI wouldn’t emphasize them so much.
> The Former gains the “Deploy Fishing Boats” and “Deploy Offshore Platform” Build actions, which are identical to the Work Boat options except that they don’t destroy the unit. It can’t actually DO anything with these yet, though.
> Forts get +1 gold at Computers.

The GP-created improvements were the only ones missing a tech-related boost, and they’re so specialized that they should get the LARGEST boosts, so now they all get a 50% one in the late Industrial/early Nuclear era, and then again in the early Nanotech.
> Citadels get +2 gold at Electronics and +2 production at Nanominiaturization.
> Landmarks get +2 gold at Mass Media and +2 research at Biomachinery.
> Academies get +2 research at Atomic Theory and another +2 at Quantum Power.
> Customs Houses get +2 gold at Flight and another +2 at Matter Transmission.
> Manufactories get +2 production at Plastics and another +2 at Nanometallurgy.
> Monoliths get +2 gold at Centauri Psi (the first +50% increase is already included, since you can't get these until the Digital Era).

Some quick observations to see what you think:

1. Am seeing an AI escorting Combat Engineers around the map like they were settlers. Don't think the AIs should be doing this.

2. Am running with my mod in place as well, which gives the Barbs a cannon, however they never bombarded me as I approached their encampment.

3. Cost increase for buying buildings! Ah - your killing my strategies! :lol: When I start games I immediately pop a golden age to rush build Ironworks, then have been buying a windmill to get my production city up and running. Guess I'm not doing that anymore...

Am continueing playtesting, but thought I'd give you some feedback that I thought pertinent.


D

Some follow-up observations from this evenings playtesting:

1. To date I've alway played your mods on Immortal, and always won. This evening I survived on Immortal, however it is pretty clear I'm probably going to lose this game. Therefore I think your coding changes are definately having an impact, and that they seem to be scaling well in that the changes are now forcing superior players to scale down a notch when using your mod. Next time round I plan on starting a game at Emporer and playing that thru to see how things play out.

D

1. Am seeing an AI escorting Combat Engineers around the map like they were settlers. Don't think the AIs should be doing this.

I'm not sure what could be happening there. I haven't seen that happen in my own game, and there's really nothing in the AI that should do that.
(Since you're using your own mod as well, is there anything in there that could explain it?)

2. Am running with my mod in place as well, which gives the Barbs a cannon, however they never bombarded me as I approached their encampment.

Strange. One question: did this happen after you built the spaceship, or before? If it's after, I might know what happened; when you launch the spaceship it ends all current wars, so I had to put an exception in there to NOT end the ongoing war with the Barbarian civ. It's possible that it's not checking that correctly (although there should be a popup if that was the case).

3. Cost increase for buying buildings! Ah - your killing my strategies!

That one's deliberate. I didn't actually increase the cost multiplier for hurries, I just decreased the discount you get on most things when starting in later eras.
The unfortunate side-effect of this, as you might have noticed, is the insane cost of building a Settler. For whatever reason, it isn't getting any of the discounts, and the game's auto-inflation on Settlers is resulting in an exorbitant cost.

I'm really tempted to put in an override on this one, too, to where all production towards a Settler is doubled or tripled at least when starting in those later eras. But I'm still looking into that, there might be a much simpler method.

But in general, yes, I killed those strategies on purpose.

When I start games I immediately pop a golden age to rush build Ironworks, then have been buying a windmill to get my production city up and running. Guess I'm not doing that anymore...

Nope, and I used to do something similar. It was far too easy to just rush-buy everything and ignore production. Now, not only is that prohibitively expensive, but you're far less likely to have a massive gold surplus. I mean, I used to buy Work Boats when I needed them, because I didn't want to have a city spend a turn producing one (although with the overflow that probably wouldn't hurt).

I'm worried it might have gone too far. You'll notice that if you start in later eras, you generally begin with a negative income until you get the trade routes up and running and the cities to a decent size. And I don't think the AI is handling the deficit spending very well. So one possibility is to reduce the number of free buildings you get at each era.

What I REALLY want to do? Have the inherent gold, food, and research bonus of the Palace increase with starting Era. Food to help with Settler production and capital growth, gold to keep you from going negative on a later start, and research to help with that ramp-up period. I'm still trying to see if that's possible, though.
And I know I've gone back on my earlier statements a bit; while I still think the "proper" way to play is to start at the Ancient Era and go all the way through, I've definitely spent a lot of time now trying to balance the mid-era starts. (Note: the Industrial start is VERY awkward, because you get three Settlers, can't really make any more, but haven't revealed the Coal or Oil quite yet. So if you guess wrong on city placement you can be crippled.)

The questions I have for you debuggers are:
> What's an appropriate cost for the spaceship parts? I halved the costs compared to the original values (down to 350/500), since at the time they did nothing, but now that the effects of the spaceship are in and working, should I go back to the old values? What sort of costs would you think are appropriate? On my internal version, 0.09, I've already changed them back to their original values, and I'm now thinking that they still might be too cheap. If the SS benefits are so good, it might be worth making them REALLY expensive, so that people will actually use Spaceship Factories, and accepting that it'll take you half an era to build them.
> I added that whole "tech acceleration" thing to give you a boost on your first 2*N techs (where N is the era number you start in). What do you think of the progression of costs? (Not just the absolute number of turns, but also whether the cost of the fourth and fifth techs is reasonable compared to either the first or the tenth. That sort of thing.)
> The Fusion Lab requires a unit of Dilithium, because I wanted it to feel Factory-ish. The problem is that the later building that generates Dilithium (if you don't have a supply of your own) is the Quantum Lab, which requires the Fusion Lab first. So you can get stuck very easily with no Dilithium (since it's an ocean resource with very flaky placement, no way to get any, and no way to get around this.
The question is, which of the following three solutions sounds better:
A> Remove the Dilithium requirement of the Fusion Lab altogether.
B> Don't have the Quantum Lab actually require the Fusion Lab.
C> Add more Dilithium to the map. Either add land deposits (I'd prefer not) or place them in lakes as well (which'd cause a lot of awkwardness depending on city placement).
Either would work, but I'd prefer not to do both. (I'm leaning a bit towards B, I think, but it's a toss-up.)

--------------------------
Here are a few other technical questions for anyone who can answer:
1> How do you add new sound files to the game? I found the two blocks that affect this (<AudioDefinesFile> and <Script2DFile>), but as they're not <GameData> blocks you can't update the same way and it doesn't seem to be picking them up automatically. I've got an .mp3 I want to add, but I can't get it to actually play. I'm assuming that it's like the unit files, where you need to include the entire contents of the original, but how do you get the game to use it? (Is there an analogue to UpdateDatabase that you need to declare, or is it like the icon atlas files where you just need to have them included in the mod?)
2> In LUA coding, how can you tell the names of the functions within each pairs block? For instance, the Cities block within Players, or the Units block within Players; they have functions like GetX and GetY, but I need to know what else is there, and the official wiki only has the list of functions directly under Players.
2a> On a related note, if I have an X and Y value, is there any easy way to find out the current owner of the tile? I'm trying to code something analogous to the Great Wall, so I need to check to see if any enemy units are in my territory.
3> Where are the UnitArtInfos and UnitMemberArtInfos tables? As in, path to files? For instance, while I want the Combat Mech to be the giant death robot, I want the Labor Mech to use the same model but be scaled down and have three of them per unit. (At least until I can find custom art.) Likewise, the Bolo is an Ironclad currently, and if you've read the books you'll realize that it's not a bad shape to represent them in general. But I need to increase the scale.

Obviously, only a few people read this thread at present, so I'm not expecting answers right away. But these are the things I'm getting stuck on.

1. To date I've alway played your mods on Immortal, and always won. This evening I survived on Immortal, however it is pretty clear I'm probably going to lose this game.

When I'm testing I almost always set it to Prince, just to balance all of the discounts. But when I play for fun, I usually set it to King. The highest difficulties, to me, just aren't fun because they encourage you to go with unrealistic strategies (like ICS) just to stay alive.

So, I'm actually okay with making Deity/Immortal/Emperor extremely hard. A lot of the things in the Long Mod are designed to keep civs that have fallen behind from getting rolled over (like the Home Field Advantage combat promotion), so it's a lot harder to build up that massive advantage over the AI civs that makes the later eras trivial.

Two things, though. And both come back to the same basic point: you can use other balance-type mods while playing this to level the playing field even further.
1> Tech Diffusion. I have the mod, and I often use it myself when I'm playing for fun, so while I haven't been including it in my testing, it's something that I'd always sort of intended to go along with the mod. (For reference, this mod makes it so that if one civ is more than 6 techs behind the leader, he gets extra beakers to help close the gap more quickly.) To this point I still haven't integrated it into my actual mod, but that's definitely an option. (Unfortunately, the original mod doesn't balance very well, since it's a pure gain and I think 6 is too large a gap. But I could adjust all of that.)
2> Thalassicus' balance mod. Specifically, one of the things in it is a reworking of the Trade Route equation. In the core game, the equation is 1.0 + 1.25*population for each city. In his mod, it's -1.3 + 1.5*pop + 0.05*capital's pop. Which, obviously, favors larger cities and really hurts ICS' income.
I'm tempted to put that equation into my own Balance mod (with credit given, of course). It'd make money more plentiful for everyone, but it'd also discourage ICS. And that should make life a lot harder for people playing on higher difficulties, especially once the next patch comes out (which, among other things, makes the AI settle overseas more aggressively).

---
I'm going to go start a new test game now, starting in the Ancient Era, with Tech Diffusion turned on and deliberately avoiding ICS. I'll play through to the spaceship; my goal is to see how many of the other civs make it that far.

2> In LUA coding, how can you tell the names of the functions within each pairs block? For instance, the Cities block within Players, or the Units block within Players; they have functions like GetX and GetY, but I need to know what else is there, and the official wiki only has the list of functions directly under Players.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about the things returned by pPlayer:Cities() and pPlayer:Units()? Those would be City objects (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/City) and Unit objects (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Unit) respectively which both have fairly good wiki documentation.

2a> On a related note, if I have an X and Y value, is there any easy way to find out the current owner of the tile? I'm trying to code something analogous to the Great Wall, so I need to check to see if any enemy units are in my territory.

You could do something like this:
local pPlot = Map.GetPlot(x,y)
local iPlayer = pPlot:GetOwner()
Plot objects (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Plot) have semi-decent wiki docs but for the Map object (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Map) we don't have much more than function names.

Those would be City objects (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/City) and Unit objects (http://wiki.2kgames.com/civ5/index.php/Lua_Game_Objects/Unit) respectively which both have fairly good wiki documentation.

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed. When I searched on that site, the only wiki lists I could ever find were Player, Team, Event, and Game.

Hopefully, v0.09 will have most of the remaining Wonders done, and I might be able to get most of the Transcendence event working correctly.

Ok, I see you posted a new version. Has the balance mod been changed? Do you want me to test something specifically? Or shall I try to 'break' your mod again?



Obviously, only a few people read this thread at present, so I'm not expecting answers right away. But these are the things I'm getting stuck on.

Maybe your walls of text discourage them :mischief:

One other thing from last nights playtesting is that I saw two Barb destroyers right next to encampments. I think before last night I'd seen one in all the games I'd played to date. Was that your doing?

I'm not sure what could be happening there. I haven't seen that happen in my own game, and there's really nothing in the AI that should do that.
(Since you're using your own mod as well, is there anything in there that could explain it?)

I don't think my mod touches anything in this region (its only C-S and Barb enhancement), however you never know. I'd say just keep this in mind in case someone else reports something similar.


Strange. One question: did this happen after you built the spaceship, or before? If it's after, I might know what happened; when you launch the spaceship it ends all current wars, so I had to put an exception in there to NOT end the ongoing war with the Barbarian civ. It's possible that it's not checking that correctly (although there should be a popup if that was the case).

This was the first Barb encampment I encountered in game. Almost like the game hadn't set the Barbs to being at war with me yet? :confused: After that first encounter the Barb arty worked as desired in that they were bombarding my incoming units. Oh and the Barb Destroyers were bombarding my units assigned to attack encampments - nice! :goodjob:


That one's deliberate. I didn't actually increase the cost multiplier for hurries, I just decreased the discount you get on most things when starting in later eras.

The strat of almost immediately (like within 10-15 turns) getting a good production city up and running by building Ironworks then buying a windmill was unbalanced, so this is good your nerfing this.


The unfortunate side-effect of this, as you might have noticed, is the insane cost of building a Settler. For whatever reason, it isn't getting any of the discounts, and the game's auto-inflation on Settlers is resulting in an exorbitant cost.

I've almost exclusively gone the route of cherry-picking C-S: at the beginning of a game I scout out the best nearby C-S, then when I've got arty and enough cannon fodder I gang my units up and annex it. Even with the benefits I've given C-S they can't stand up to a concentrated assault.


I'm worried it might have gone too far. You'll notice that if you start in later eras, you generally begin with a negative income until you get the trade routes up and running and the cities to a decent size.

All the way up to the end last night I was constantly fighting income and Happiness issues. I was continually using my Great People to pop Golden Eras just for the cash, and I was always having to weigh my research options towards techs which had Happiness benefits. Am probably going to sit down and re-assess my SP (Social Policy) choices to see if there is a better combination I can use here: I was having to make some very tough decisions for SPs last night, which was a good thing! :goodjob:

I know I've gone back on my earlier statements a bit; while I still think the "proper" way to play is to start at the Ancient Era and go all the way through, I've definitely spent a lot of time now trying to balance the mid-era starts.

I like that comment! :D


The questions I have for you debuggers are:
> What's an appropriate cost for the spaceship parts? I halved the costs compared to the original values (down to 350/500), since at the time they did nothing, but now that the effects of the spaceship are in and working, should I go back to the old values? What sort of costs would you think are appropriate? On my internal version, 0.09, I've already changed them back to their original values, and I'm now thinking that they still might be too cheap. If the SS benefits are so good, it might be worth making them REALLY expensive, so that people will actually use Spaceship Factories, and accepting that it'll take you half an era to build them.

Making players (humans) need to build Spaceship Factories (or make it highly desirous to build S.F.) is a benefit, as the AIs will build S.F. anyways, even if they aren't needed. In previous playtesting (not sure which iteration) I could chunk out SF parts in five turns, sans SF.

> I added that whole "tech acceleration" thing to give you a boost on your first 2*N techs (where N is the era number you start in). What do you think of the progression of costs? (Not just the absolute number of turns, but also whether the cost of the fourth and fifth techs is reasonable compared to either the first or the tenth. That sort of thing.)

Still seemed research rates took a ling time (10+ turns) all the way to the end last night, but here again this might have been more because I was focusing on cash/ Happiness than research. I'll keep this question in mind when I attack this mod again today.


> The Fusion Lab requires a unit of Dilithium, because I wanted it to feel Factory-ish. The problem is that the later building that generates Dilithium (if you don't have a supply of your own) is the Quantum Lab, which requires the Fusion Lab first. So you can get stuck very easily with no Dilithium (since it's an ocean resource with very flaky placement, no way to get any, and no way to get around this.
The question is, which of the following three solutions sounds better:
A> Remove the Dilithium requirement of the Fusion Lab altogether.
B> Don't have the Quantum Lab actually require the Fusion Lab.
C> Add more Dilithium to the map. Either add land deposits (I'd prefer not) or place them in lakes as well (which'd cause a lot of awkwardness depending on city placement).

I would go with B, reason being its more friendly to the AIs.


3> Where are the UnitArtInfos and UnitMemberArtInfos tables? As in, path to files? For instance, while I want the Combat Mech to be the giant death robot, I want the Labor Mech to use the same model but be scaled down and have three of them per unit. (At least until I can find custom art.)

That sounds like a neat idea: earlier I was re-skinning the Brute with the GDR graphic, as I really like it. I looked around but couldn't locate where these tables are. Would be nice to know how to scale these/ create triplet GDRs to represent different units. On a similar note do you plan on re-skinning the Settler? The Colonizer graphic from BtS Final Frontier I think is a real winner there, if it could be scaled to fit better in-game.


Likewise, the Bolo is an Ironclad currently, and if you've read the books you'll realize that it's not a bad shape to represent them in general.

Segueing a bit here, but Der Wacht am Rhine was the first book I read in the series, and probably the one I enjoyed the most. Sort of fitting here in ciV as I exclusively play the Germans, and I usually lay out my cities such that I am defending across rivers: because of the way the AIs like to rush you en masse, sort of gives the feel of defending against a Posleen assault. :goodjob:

D

Ok, I see you posted a new version. Has the balance mod been changed? Do you want me to test something specifically? Or shall I try to 'break' your mod again?

Yes, it's been changed. I should really start putting a version number on that one as well, but I'd never intended it to be changed often. At present, the only ways to tell if I've changed the balance mod:
1> The number of times it's been downloaded resets to 0.
2> In my "patch note" posts, you'll see an entry that begins with (Crazy Spatz): this designates that this change is in the balance mod instead of the content mod.

At the moment, just breaking stuff is still useful, but beyond just breaking, I also want a feel for the balance. Do techs come too fast or too slow at various stages of the game? Is it still too easy to roll over another civ (or a city-state) militarily? Is the spaceship too cheap, too expensive, or just right? Are the spaceship's benefits too much? Are the new resources (especially Dilithium) just too hard to get?

Maybe your walls of text discourage them :mischief:

I know. I've always done this. The problem is that I'm a very fast typist, and once I get going on a topic it's hard to rein myself in, so it doesn't take long to get a post that's unbearably long.

The thing is, what I could really use is just more people who come in, skim over the first few posts to see what's in the mod, and then just play it. The long discussion posts are really only for the people who are familiar enough to argue over specific points.

One other thing from last nights playtesting is that I saw two Barb destroyers right next to encampments. I think before last night I'd seen one in all the games I'd played to date. Was that your doing?

Don't think so. The only thing I did to the Barbarian civ was add those resourceless Psi units. I think that's just random flakiness on the AI's part; you're probably in a game where the Barbarian civ's naval flavor got randomized upwards by a good amount instead of downward.

This was the first Barb encampment I encountered in game. Almost like the game hadn't set the Barbs to being at war with me yet?

Could be. I've noticed that the AI is a bit sluggish in general on a lot of things. For instance, the AI civs might settle their capitals on the first turn, but they don't seem to actually start building anything until the third or fourth turn. Same goes for research.

All the way up to the end last night I was constantly fighting income and Happiness issues. I was continually using my Great People to pop Golden Eras just for the cash, and I was always having to weigh my research options towards techs which had Happiness benefits. Am probably going to sit down and re-assess my SP (Social Policy) choices to see if there is a better combination I can use here: I was having to make some very tough decisions for SPs last night, which was a good thing! :goodjob:

Glad to hear this. In my own games, I've pretty much given up on the Rationalism tree, and almost always go Piety for the extra Happiness (and Culture, which lets me unlock more SPs that help with money and Happiness). In a vanilla game I almost never built any happiness buildings after the Colosseum, but in the modded game those later buildings become pretty important. What worries me about this is that it really skews things toward a tech leader who picks up all the Happiness-boosting Wonders before the AI players can get to it. Get all of the +happy wonders and you'll be fine, but the AIs will struggle.

Which reminds me: The Forbidden Palace was -50% city count unhappiness, which meant +1 happy per city, previously. But with my increase to base unhappiness, it's now effectively +2 per city. So I'm changing it to -25%, to get it back down to the previous power level (which was still very strong). I did the same for the Planned Economy policy, although I think that's going to have problems (since now, both mods try and update the same help text entry and I'm not sure which gets priority).

Making players (humans) need to build Spaceship Factories (or make it highly desirous to build S.F.) is a benefit, as the AIs will build S.F. anyways, even if they aren't needed.

This was part of why I gave them a Titan construction bonus, but I'd originally intended them to also boost satellite units. Which, ironically, is now possible since I've created a new unit class just for orbital units. So in my upcoming version I'm putting in a +25% production boost to Orbital units (Geosynch, Ion Cannon, Death Ray, Subspace Generator).
(There's one other hidden requirement: you can't build your Gravship unless the city has a Spaceship Factory. But that's WAY down the line.)
But I'm not sure it's enough. The Spaceship Factory takes an Aluminum, which is in short supply with all of my new high-tech units. So the question becomes, is it still worthwhile to build them? Should I add more? And I'd prefer something less specialized, like a flat +10% production boost, or maybe +25% production when building Wonders (since that's not an effect any building has, but there's an XML entry for it). Or maybe some Airlift capability, sort of like the Airport from Civ4. (There are a lot of Airlift stubs in the XML but they don't seem to do anything.)

Still seemed research rates took a ling time (10+ turns) all the way to the end last night, but here again this might have been more because I was focusing on cash/ Happiness than research.

Well, my goal is that research should take somewhere in the 6-7 turn range for most of the game (maybe getting down to 5ish if you've conquered most of the world). Not bottom out at 2-3 turns per tech like it does in vanilla. There are ~120 techs total in my mod, so that'd get the pacing about right; you should be hitting the Transcendence Era on turn 750-800.

I would go with B, reason being its more friendly to the AIs.

Done. Quantum Labs now only require the Research Lab, just like the Fusion Lab does.

On a similar note do you plan on re-skinning the Settler? The Colonizer graphic from BtS Final Frontier I think is a real winner there, if it could be scaled to fit better in-game.

For a while I've been considering adding the Colony Pod as a late-game replacement to the Settler, like how the Combat Engineer replaces the Worker: better movement, maybe some paradrop ability (in SMAC I always made Drop Colony Pods as soon as I could), that sort of thing. The problem is that Settlers are already so horribly expensive on late-era starts that I don't want to make it any worse, so that's tabled until I can fix the bigger problem.

Segueing a bit here, but Der Wacht am Rhine was the first book I read in the series, and probably the one I enjoyed the most. Sort of fitting here in ciV as I exclusively play the Germans, and I usually lay out my cities such that I am defending across rivers: because of the way the AIs like to rush you en masse, sort of gives the feel of defending against a Posleen assault.

A bit of confusion here: Bolos aren't from John Ringo's Aldenata books (2000-present), they're from Keith Laumer's completely different (and much older, starting in 1976) Bolo series of sci-fi novels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(tank)) (which have had many other writers contribute short stories as well). I'm pretty sure Ringo based the SheVas and Tiger IIIs on them, though, other than the Sluggy Freelance joke for the SheVa.

--------------
On the bright side, in the last day I've got working:
> Buildings/Wonders that give a specific promotion to any unit that starts its turn in this city, and then removes it from any unit not in that city. (Currently used: Space Elevator, which gives the "Orbital Drop" promotion allowing an infinite-range paradrop action. If need be I can cannibalize this for a pseudo-Airlift.)
> The Nethack Terminus now gives a popup notification if any AI civ is within 10 turns of completing a Wonder, telling you which civ, which city, and approximately how many turns are remaining.
> Buildings/Wonders that give a specific promotion (a negative one) to any unit inside your territory belonging to a civ at war with you. (Currently used: Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. Instead of its previous Great Wall effect, complete with graphic, it now gives a custom promotion: -1 visibility, -1 heal rate, -20% attack versus cities.)

Hello,

i have finally installed and tried this mod, as i've been reading the progress on it since there was 3 pages. [ i do not fear long forum posts hehehe ]

i planned to play this on marathon length, starting from ancient era, prince difficulty.
i have stopped playing almost at renaissance era for now because of what seems like a bug:
there seem to have a problem with strategic ressources.
i've discovered none, and none of the civs known to me seems to have horses or iron.
i have attached the savegame so you can check more easily the problem.

also of minor importance, the marsh tiles i've seen were all checkered red and white.


i'll keep up with the updates on this thread, and will try to find time to play/test a game when i can.

i have stopped playing almost at renaissance era for now because of what seems like a bug:
there seem to have a problem with strategic ressources.
i've discovered none, and none of the civs known to me seems to have horses or iron.

Glad to hear there's another person reading the thread.

It's possible that something in this mod affected that, but more likely, you just got a really bad random draw on strategics. It happens; I just played a Nuclear-start game where there were only three Coal deposits and two Oils in the entire world, and they were all in one small area controlled by India. If it wasn't for the Energy Bank I'd have been hosed.

An easy way to test this is to start a game in the Digital, Fusion, Nanotech, or Transcendence Eras. Since the Satellites technology now reveals the entire world, it's easy to see where all of the strategics are, and you can get a good idea of how common each would be on a given map type. (A Nanotech or Transcendence start is necessary if you want to see all three of the new strategics as well.)

I'll look at your savegame, but I'd say that this is the most likely cause. The way the game lays down strategic resources is extremely random, and can cause all sorts of clumping problems. I actually went out of my way to override parts of that logic for the new resources.

also of minor importance, the marsh tiles i've seen were all checkered red and white.

A few people mentioned this before. The problem seems to be that the cache isn't being cleared correctly when you switch to mods that affect things like terrain (which adding a new resource counts as, and maybe there's an Omnicytes deposit on that marsh?). Since I ONLY play with my mod I don't see graphical artifacts any more, but if you've been playing vanilla games right before my mod then it could happen.

The easy way to test this: find a map where you see these effects. Exit the game. (The entire Civ5 application, don't just go to the menu.) Start it back up, and reload the savegame. It SHOULD go away if you do that, because exiting the game clears the cache.

This isn't just me, by the way, it's on the list of things Firaxis claims they're fixing in the next patch. One of the flags you set when you create a mod is "Reload Landmark System", but right now, the game just isn't doing that. This isn't just a graphical problem, it causes crashes as well.

Glad to hear there's another person reading the thread.

and i'm sure glad someone has the time and is willing to put the work to add some alpha centaury into this recent evolution of civilization !


It's possible that something in this mod affected that, but more likely, you just got a really bad random draw on strategics. It happens

After playing the same game up to the point of seeing oil, and exploring about 80% of the map, i still couldn't see any strategic resources [horse, iron, coal, oil], and no other civ did have any strategic ressources. [ however, they were probably not all to the point of seeing oil ]

i did some experimentation by starting in transcendence era just to see the various distribution of strategic resources i get.
[ i've kept the " standard" resources distribution for all tries ]
and i kept the lakes map, size small.

and it's like you said, i probably got a bad distribution.
but this type of map seems to exaggerate the problem.

on 5 maps generated, i have never seen horses, and i have seen 1 iron spot once.
and usually 1 to 3 spot of each of the other strategic resources.

this week is kinda busy for me, i might just play only next saturday, but i'll try to provide extra details in order to know if there is a big difference between this problem with or without your mods.
i currently think the fact this mods adds other new resources might be the difference between
"always at least one of each" and "usually one or two is completely missing"
but as i have not checked at all how the distribution works, it's just an idea for now...

For now, don't bother with my previously posted savegame.


The problem seems to be that the cache isn't being cleared correctly when you switch to mods that affect things like terrain

it was indeed probably that.
i did play vanilla civ 5 before, but quited the game completely to install the mods.
also, after closing completely and restarting the game, to load my posted saved game to resume it, marsh tile was still of a checkered red and white.

however,
while creating the various maps in transcendence era to see the distribution of strategic resources, i have not seen any checkered tile.

so, cache problem, and if the fix is supposed to be in a future patch, there is no reason to continue thinking about it hehe.

and it's like you said, i probably got a bad distribution.
but this type of map seems to exaggerate the problem.

Unfortunately, the algorithm for strategic resource distribution is depressingly easy to screw up. It goes purely by terrain type, so a map with plenty of one type of terrain and little of another will skew the strategic balance in the same way. I've been doing nearly all of my testing on the Continents map, with an occasional Fractal game. (Side note: if you try a Transcendence start on a small Archipelago map with a decent number of civs, you often see entire chains of islands where every land hex has a resource on it.)

In case anyone cares about how the game places deposits:
> First, the game places "small" deposits. The game decides to add a flat number of these (I think 25 on a normal-sized map), but which actual resource is placed will depend on the terrain. So it picks 25 random land hexes on the map; if it's a hill, for instance, it might then say "okay, I have a 3/5 chance of putting a coal there, a 1/5 chance of an aluminum, and a 1/5 chance of uranium".
Basically, if you're playing on an unusual map type, there might not be any small deposits of certain resources placed; a map short on non-Hill Grasslands will have few or no Horses, because they won't spawn on Plains.
> Then, place "large" deposits. These go on a hex-by-hex basis; for instance, the map generator might see a Grasslands tile. It then does a random draw, with a 1 in 30ish chance of a resource being placed. If it decides a resource IS in that hex, it does a random draw like the small deposits (but with slightly different numbers).
> There's a small fudge for resources near starting positions, to ensure that civs have better access to the "rush" resources (Iron, Horses, Coal).
> Then, if there are too few deposits of a given resource, add 1. Not "add enough to bring it up to a reasonable level", just "add 1" from what I can see.
So yes, it's as screwy as it sounds and I'm sorely tempted to rewrite the whole thing for them and be done with it.

The only unusual situation is with Oil; it does all of the above and counts up the number of units of Oil on land, and then places half that amount again in the water. (So if you've got 50 units of oil on land in 3s and 7s, then it might put 5 5s in the water as well.) Which means that if your map was short on deserts, then you won't have much oil in the water either.

The "Abundant" resource setting doesn't generally affect the number of deposits of these resources. It simply changes what the default deposit sizes are; instead of 3s and 7s, you might get 4s and 9s on Abundant and 2s/5s for Scarce. Given that most resources give more than enough units in one good deposit, this seems kind of pointless to me. (What's the point of having 50 units of horses instead of 40?) The only resource I ever seem to run short on is Aluminum, and that only because of how many of my new units use it.

(Note that all of the above is for strategic resources. Luxuries and Bonus resources are handled completely separately.)

Now, when I added my new resources, I not only had to change the percentage tables, I also had to increase the odds of each resource being placed. So if it was a 1 in 30 chance before and I've made the new resources have a 33% chance of using that tile type, I increased the chances to 1 in 20. In other words, the chances of placing all of the old resources should be basically the same as in the vanilla game, but hexes that'd previously get nothing would now have my new resources.

But then, on top of all of that, I added a very simple hack for my own resources, because the above method just wasn't making enough of them. Once everything is done the old-fashioned way, I then manually add one unit of each new resource per civ, in a 50/50 large/small mix. (I don't mean that I specifically place one of each near each starting point, I just mean that if there are 8 civs then I place 8 deposits randomly around the world.)
So my percentage tables underrepresent Neutronium, for instance, so that it wouldn't interfere too much with the placement of coal, etc., but I then add enough other Neutronium deposits on unoccupied tiles to make reasonable amounts overall. These added deposits will be on any random terrain, while the "normal" deposits will only be on hills. Likewise, the "normal" land Omnicytes deposits are only in marshes, forests, and jungles, but this extra distribution can be anywhere on land.
Omnicytes are also treated like Oil, with the number in the sea depending on the number on land, but the ratio's skewed a bit heavier towards the water (1:1 instead of 2:1, I think). Dilithium is a water-only resource, and the number of deposits will actually be proportional to the number of Fish, Pearls, and Whales on your map. (I think it's something like 2/3 fish + 1/3 pearls + 1/3 whale, but I can't check right now, and again, there's then a hard-coded +1/civ thrown in.)

My bigger worry has been Dilithium on Pangaea maps. With so little coastline, it'd be hard to get any of this, and I'm worried that it'd clump around some isolated little island or something.

so, cache problem, and if the fix is supposed to be in a future patch, there is no reason to continue thinking about it hehe.

The upcoming patch is supposed to have a LOT of things that'll really help, and they're already planning to change a few of the things I've changed in these mods (city HP regeneration, flat terrain penalty), so I'm looking forward to it.

A lot of the things you're going to find will be things that are problems in the core game, but feel free to list them anyway, because if I can fix them (or just make a half-decent workaround) then I will. I don't feel like waiting for Firaxis to fix everything for me.

Well, my goal is that research should take somewhere in the 6-7 turn range for most of the game (maybe getting down to 5ish if you've conquered most of the world). Not bottom out at 2-3 turns per tech like it does in vanilla. There are ~120 techs total in my mod, so that'd get the pacing about right; you should be hitting the Transcendence Era on turn 750-800.

Quoting myself here, but I wanted to expand on this.

There are 115 techs in the modified game (74 in the core game, minus the four Future Era techs that get removed, 44 regular techs added, and one repeatable tech added). You start with Agriculture and everyone will get three free techs along the way from buildings/projects (Oxford, Nethack Terminus, Centauri Ecology from building the spaceship), and most likely will get several Great Scientists to bulb a few. (Plus a free tech if you're the first spaceship, a handful of free-tech wonders, and one Rationalism SP that gives two techs, but I'm not counting those since they're easy to not get.) Add in a few Research Agreements that don't get broken, and you're looking at ~100 techs to research over the course of a game, possibly even less.
And then there's the Planetary Datalinks, a National Wonder at the start of the Digital Era, which now automatically gives you any tech if 4 other civs have it. (Obviously this won't help much if you're the tech leader, since there aren't any dead-end techs to skip past any more. But you still might get one or two techs out of it, and it's a useful national wonder for other reasons.) While disabled techs like Centauri Ecology are blocked from being gained this way, the techs that depend on THOSE techs aren't, so you could use this to get Centauri Empathy and such if you bypassed the spaceship; of course, since Centauri Ecology unlocks Omnicytes used for all the psi units, those other techs won't do you a whole lot of good.

Bottom line, I'd really like the game to be a steady 7-8 turns per tech, although in practice it'd be more like 9-10 turns at the lower techs and 5-6 at the high end. That puts the end of the tech race at turn 750ish (2210 AD), plus or minus a bit. Obviously, this is harder to time if you're starting in a later era, but there's not as much I can do about that without unbalancing everything. The later eras have a few more techs than the early ones (most existing eras are 11-14 techs per, mine are 15/15/12), so even with a faster pace per tech it'll still probably take slightly longer to finish each future era.

So when you're commenting on the pace of the technologies, be aware of the intended timetable. If you want to speed things up for your own personal play then you can, although the years won't really match up as well if you do that. And I haven't fine-tuned the turn-year correlations on any speeds other than Standard.

In my own games, I've pretty much given up on the Rationalism tree, and almost always go Piety for the extra Happiness (and Culture, which lets me unlock more SPs that help with money and Happiness).

I was able to run Rationalism at Emporer this evening. I think the main problem I had the other night was that I tried playing the same way I had developed to date, and it proved very incompatible with the changes you had made. So this evening I built a few more Trading Posts, and kept in mind early on to keep researching techs which gave me access to Happiness improvements, and I was continually around +5 Happiness and in the 20+ Gold/ turn range.

The main observation this evening is that I was pressing the space bar quite a bit. After the AI (India) declared war on me I was expecting the usual onslaught of units, however after the first rush it became just a dribble of units that I was able to easily deal with using the choke points I had created (see pic below), and I think the reason for this was because the AI was having just as hard a time as I was fielding a large military. However I couldn't find the reserves to go over to the offensive, so I was condemned to sitting there waiting for the AI to dribble more units at me, while I waited for stuff (culture and happiness improvements, as well as infrastructure like Forges) to be built, all the while pressing space bar while I waited for something to happen.

The other observation was that the AI's ships would not retreat when they were injured: they'd just sit there continually bombarding my cities until my arty sank them. Hopefully that will be fixed in the next patch.


Well, my goal is that research should take somewhere in the 6-7 turn range for most of the game (maybe getting down to 5ish if you've conquered most of the world). Not bottom out at 2-3 turns per tech like it does in vanilla. There are ~120 techs total in my mod, so that'd get the pacing about right; you should be hitting the Transcendence Era on turn 750-800.

I think it was taking 10+ turns consistently for me. I'll try to keep more accurate count on the next playtest, but I relatively certain it was more than 6-7 turns between techs.


For a while I've been considering adding the Colony Pod as a late-game replacement to the Settler.

For me its more an aesthetics thing, as I just think its more appropriate for a sci-fi mod to have a unit that doesn't look like Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem.


A bit of confusion here: Bolos aren't from John Ringo's Aldenata books (2000-present), they're from Keith Laumer's completely different (and much older, starting in 1976)

:lol: Sorry - thats what I get for assuming! I do still like my analogy, though - very fitting for the AI onslaughts I've had to face in the past.


D

I think the reason for this was because the AI was having just as hard a time as I was fielding a large military.

I think you're right, and I noticed something similar but in a different way: whenever you conquer a city the default AI setting will be whatever the previous owner had it set on. So if they were emphasizing production, it'll be set to "Emphasize Production" still. Last night, when I conquered an empire, every single city was set to "Emphasize Gold". Which means that the AIs are running negative on income from the start, and never recovering; they put every city on gold production, and their growth and production suffer as a result. No production and a gold shortage is not really conducive to a large military.
A human player will take the loss for a few turns while he gets his trade network set up, but the AI won't.

But this was only when I tried starting in a middle era, and it seems to be caused by two things:
1> The Bank isn't given for free unless you use a Digital start or later, but strangely, the Satrap's Court (Persian UB replacement) is given for Industrial and Nuclear starts as well. This does explain why you'll be short on money; a "normal" game would have put Banks into each city before reaching the Industrial, since it's a pretty high priority construction. Likewise, the Market is given for free at the Industrial, but the Bazaar (UB replacement) is given for Renaissance starts. So it's clearly intentional.
In 0.09 I've moved each of these up (Bank to Industrial, Market to Renaissance).
2> Now that you pay 100% maintenance on all buildings, including all of the "free" ones the cities start with, it's hard for your starting cities to make a profit. Part of this is that maintenance costs are flat subtractions, but most of the additions to income are multiplicative off of the base tile values. Until you improve your tiles with trading posts, you won't have money.

For instance, here are a few buildings placed in starting cities:
Forge (2 gold): Industrial or later
Colosseum (3 gold): Industrial or later
Barracks (1 gold): Industrial or later
Workshop (2 gold): Industrial or later
Market: Industrial or later
Theater (5 gold): Digital or later
Bank: Digital or later

See a trend? The market's +25% won't do much when you have no base income to build off of (no trading posts), but you've got 8 gold per turn per city being paid for buildings just from those. (There's also the Monument, Temple, etc. from earlier eras, so you're actually paying even more.) And really, why do you need a Forge and Barracks in every city?

So one solution might simply be to remove some of the "free" buildings. They're cheap enough that if you want a Barracks or Forge you can just build one yourself. And actually, removing the free Colosseum is a good idea for an entirely different reason.
In the next patch, one of the changes is a simple one: no city can produce more +Happiness from buildings than it has population. Given that, what's the point of putting a free +4 happiness building in a size 1 city? After the patch, it's going to be practically worthless at first.
In my internal version, I'm going to remove the FreeStartEra entry from the Forge, Barracks/Krepost, Colosseum, and Theater. That should help with starting money.

I think it was taking 10+ turns consistently for me. I'll try to keep more accurate count on the next playtest, but I relatively certain it was more than 6-7 turns between techs.

I think the problem is growth-related. You're starting in the Nuclear Era, and the sizes of your cities will still be lagging behind the curve by the time the tech bonus wears off. So yes, you'd have a slower pace.

I really think a good solution to this would be to provide a flat Era-based bonus to the Palace. Something like 1 gold and +1 research per Era. (Maybe not quite that much, but you get the idea.) The problem is, I'm not sure if this'll work. There IS a function

void city:setBuildingYieldChange(BuildingClassTypes eBuildingClass, YieldTypes eYield, int iChange);

and I THINK I can use this to adjust the yield to the palace based on your starting Era. So since you can only have one palace per empire, this is the same as giving each civ a flat boost in gold per turn or research per turn.
--------------
Another possibility I thought of: you know how I made it so that the first 2*X techs get a cost discount (where x goes from 0 to 9 for era numbers)? I was thinking that to help the cities grow faster early on, you could get a diminishing food bonus as well. Something like (n/4 rounded up) food per city per turn, where n is the number of discounted techs remaining. It's the same basic idea as the tech boost I gave: what the original game did through a flat percentage that stayed with you all game, I'll do through a temporary boost designed to just get you up to speed.

I'll try coding that up tonight and see how it plays, but I'm trying to debug the Nethack Terminus first. (It WAS working, but now for some reason isn't.)

I noticed something similar but in a different way: whenever you conquer a city the default AI setting will be whatever the previous owner had it set on. So if they were emphasizing production, it'll be set to "Emphasize Production" still. Last night, when I conquered an empire, every single city was set to "Emphasize Gold". Which means that the AIs are running negative on income from the start, and never recovering; they put every city on gold production, and their growth and production suffer as a result.

Ah, I'll keep my eyes open for this in the future.


In my internal version, I'm going to remove the FreeStartEra entry from the Forge, Barracks/Krepost, Colosseum, and Theater. That should help with starting money.

One of the other things from last night was that my starting cities were next to rivers, meaning the tiles were all +1 Gold, which was probably helping me as well. Would probably have been different if I'd started without rivers.


I think the problem is growth-related. You're starting in the Nuclear Era, and the sizes of your cities will still be lagging behind the curve by the time the tech bonus wears off. So yes, you'd have a slower pace.

It wasn't crippling - it was challenging. What was crippling was the lack of aluminum and oil: the Indians had both, and I had none: if the AI had been competent, or been able to field a larger army to just bull its way thru my defenses, well, I would have been toast.



Another possibility I thought of: you know how I made it so that the first 2*X techs get a cost discount (where x goes from 0 to 9 for era numbers)? I was thinking that to help the cities grow faster early on, you could get a diminishing food bonus as well. Something like (n/4 rounded up) food per city per turn, where n is the number of discounted techs remaining. It's the same basic idea as the tech boost I gave: what the original game did through a flat percentage that stayed with you all game, I'll do through a temporary boost designed to just get you up to speed.

I'll try coding that up tonight and see how it plays,

Looking forward to it! :goodjob:

D

One of the other things from last night was that my starting cities were next to rivers, meaning the tiles were all +1 Gold, which was probably helping me as well. Would probably have been different if I'd started without rivers.

I was thinking about this. Rivers are obviously a big deal, and they SHOULD be, and the game does seem to have some logic that places a river near your starting city. (Same for the AI.) But there doesn't seem to be much motivation for the SECOND city to be near a river for the AI, and so on.

Not much I can do about it; hopefully once I fix the deficit problem that'll go away.

It wasn't crippling - it was challenging. What was crippling was the lack of aluminum and oil

Last night I upped the number of "small" strategic resource deposits from 25 to 35. Chances are, this'll add one or two of each to the map; not enough to really swing the balance, but it's a start.

Other changes I made:
> I added that food bonus, and it REALLY made a difference on a late-era start. ("Late" meaning Fusion.) It's like an early Maritime ally that goes away once you're up to speed. For my Industrial case it wasn't too noticeable (+2 per city for the first four techs, +1 per city for the next four), but it did help.
> I took away the free Forge, Barracks/Krepost, Colosseum, and Theater. You're now no longer paying massive maintenance on buildings you don't need yet. I'm actually worried that now, you'll have too much money early on in the later era starts, but in my Industrial start, I was completely neutral on income: 13 gpt income from my capital, 8 gpt spend on buildings per city, 5 gpt to pay unit maintenance on the starting units. So I'm hoping the AI won't freak out so much over money. (Non-capital cities were more like 5 gpt, but you very quickly broke even once a couple tiles were improved.)
> Not related to the above problems, really, but I added a fifth terraforming option: the Deep Mine (at Nanomatter Editation, so it's an endgame thing and takes a LONG time to build) for the Labor Mech and Former. Basically, you use it on any tile that doesn't have a resource, and it creates a random one; I skewed its table towards Dilithium, but you might get aluminum, uranium, coal, oil, etc.

EDIT to add:
I played a bit of an Industrial-start game this morning, and I think the food bonus might still be too small. So I'm looking at changing it from /4 to /3. That means that for, say, a Nuclear Era start (Era=5, meaning 10 techs get a cost discount):
OLD: +3 food for the first two techs, +2 for the next 4, +1 for the 4 after that
NEW: +4 food for the first tech, +3 for the next three, +2 for the next 3, +1 for the 3 after that.
I don't want to take it all the way up to /2 (which'd mean +5 for the first two, +4 for the next two, and so on), though.

Another possibility is just to increase the starting city size. I already increased the free population by 1 over the default, but I think it could be taken further. Right now, a starting Industrial city is size 4, and a starting Nuclear is size 5. Bumping that up to 5/6 would definitely help with money, production, research, etc., but it'd also cripple you in terms of Happiness. Right now, without the free Colosseum (but with the Temple change in the last patch), an Industrial start hovered pretty much right at 0 Happiness; thankfully I started in a luxury-rich starting area (5 luxuries on 3 cities, and oil, but no coal; I feel a Tank invasion coming on...). So I wouldn't want to bump it up too much higher; three cities for Industrial/Nuclear, 1.2 unhappiness per pop, means that +1 starting pop adds +3.6 unhappiness, meaning you'd need an additional luxury just to survive.
(I really wish there was an easy way in the XML to add a free building to only your capital.)

I got the Nethack fixed, so I think I'll post a new version tonight. I'm already starting to work on v.0.10, which among other things add the "Breakout": once you have Centauri Empathy (not Ecology), there's a small chance of Spore Towers spawning in your territory each turn. These are Barbarian psi units, immobile, with an artillery attack; as long as they're alive, there's a chance that they'll spawn a Mindworm or Chiron Locust (if on land), Isle of the Deep (if on water), or even Nessus Worm (either), so you'll want to kill them quickly. I'm hoping that with this, I can go back to disabling the Barbarian camps and such in the later eras (since those won't spawn inside your territory).

A couple things I thought of during my lunch hour:

1> I screwed up. My test case for happiness was as the Persians. The Persian UB, the Satrap's Court, is given for free in any Industrial start or later. This UB is a Bank... that also adds +2 Happiness. So where I was breaking even on Happiness, the AI civs would be at -6 since they wouldn't get that UB bonus. (Egypt would be similar.)
So it looks like the Colosseum is mandatory to include, and probably should be moved up to Renaissance starts, to ensure that an Industrial or Nuclear start doesn't put the AIs in negative happiness. The 3 gpt cost is going to hurt, though, which goes back to my previous idea of having the Palace give +1 gpt and +1 research per turn per era you start in (so an Industrial start gives +4 gpt and +4 beakers, plus any multipliers in your capital). Unfortunately, I don't like this for two reasons. First, because you already have a problem where your capital is your best science city AND your best commerce city, and usually also one of your best production cities. Since there's no cap on national wonders per city (there CAN be, it's just turned off), there's no reason not to stick things like the National College in your capital (and in the upcoming patch, the new +money national wonder). Adding to the palace just makes this worse. Second, because it really screws with OCC. Not that I care too much about extreme variant games.

An alternate possibility is just to reduce the Colosseum's cost to 2gpt. It's by far the earliest 3gpt building in the game, most of the other things in that era are only 1gpt, so it's always seemed a bit high. So this might be the best solution overall.

2> I think I figured out why Settlers are so expensive, although I can't be sure until I test it (which'll have to wait until I get home tonight). They're getting discounted, like all the other units, but I THINK that the Settler's "cost" is being based on the city that will result, which means having the costs of all of the "free" buildings added in to it. So you're not just paying for the Settler, you're paying for the Workshop, Monument, Temple, etc. that'll be built in the resulting city as well. In other words, the more free buildings we tack on in later eras, the higher the Settler cost goes. In the core game the discounts are large enough that this stays at a reasonable value, but I drastically reduced most of those discounts. Besides, it's not really fair to charge full price, because you'd be better off settling the city and then building the buildings, if only for the culture and science output in the interim.
If I'm right, then it seems like less is more, and the free buildings should be kept to a minimum, at least those buildings that can pay for themselves (Market, Bank), add necessary Happiness (Temple, Colosseum, Aqueduct), or the Granary and Workshop (just because). Maybe the Watermill too, since the only way to build it would be on a river and if you're at a river you'll have plenty of gold to spare. But there's no reason to push this; the city can just spend a couple turns building one.

Notes from this evening's playtesting:

1. Just realized that my arty can attack enemy units which are in a Neutral countries territory.

2. Combat Engineers are overpowered as starting units in the Nuclear era. They are excellent scouts, which is something only a human would realize, and a human would also realize they don't need to build additional Workers..

3. No one seemed to be building SPs in the game I played this evening. Not sure if it was simply the AI's prioritizing things differently or what. Edit: I also seem to have adapted my gameplay to the issues of poor gold supply and poor Happiness, however I don't think the AI is able to adapt.

4. First pic: Advisor correctly recommending to build forest! Awesome! :goodjob:

5. Second pic: the Irriquois asked for peace on several occasions this evening. The below pic was from the first episode, which I think showed how weak they really were, as they had no real gold reserves at a relatively early stage in the game.


D

2. Combat Engineers are overpowered as starting units in the Nuclear era. They are excellent scouts, which is something only a human would realize, and a human would also realize they don't need to build additional Workers..

While Combat Engineers have excellent mobility, they have NO combat power, which means they'd automatically die if they ended their turn within reach of a Barbarian. So they really aren't that great for scouting, and you REALLY need them to be improving and connecting your cities ASAP.
Besides, with the starting city size and production, you could just make a Scout in 1-2 turns, and they have almost the same mobility (2 MP instead of 3) while having better vision range. In the later eras 4 power might as well be 0, so there's no difference there, but the Scout is much cheaper to build, and I believe that makes the AI prioritize killing it less.

But I did this in Civ4 too. My favorite civ to play was India, because of the Fast Workers (3 MP instead of 2). While they didn't have the other benefits of the Combat Engineer, you had them in the Ancient Era. Invariably I'd use one as a scout, because they'd outpace horsemen and were cheap to replace. So you can see where I got the inspiration from, and I tried to make them expensive enough to not be desirable as scouting units.

3. No one seemed to be building SPs in the game I played this evening. Not sure if it was simply the AI's prioritizing things differently or what.

I think this was because of the economic difficulties we'd discussed earlier. In my test run last night (Industrial start) I was beaten to three or four of the earliest Wonders by the AIs. In a couple cases, they clearly built the Wonders before doing anything else (Brandenburg Gate while I was just getting started, beat me to Cristo Redentor by 20 turns, beat me to Sistine Chapel by 3 turns).

Another part of it just seems to be inherent to starting in later eras. When you start at the beginning, things grow organically. The first social policies will be Tradition (including that +33% production for Wonders one), the cities will build normal buildings before the Wonders show up, and so on. At any given point, you'll only have a few options for each city, because most stuff won't have unlocked yet. But if you start in, say, the Nuclear Era, the AI gets overloaded; it doesn't realize how critical that early coal deposit is, and might build Wonders before getting the essentials (like Factories) in place.
That's actually part of why, in my internal version, I just bumped the FreeStartEra settings on the money buildings. In the vanilla game, you get Markets for an Industrial start, and Banks for a Future start. In my mod, it's now Markets for Renaissance and Banks for Industrial. This obviously goes a LONG way towards helping the AI stay solvent; with every city having a Bank now for an Industrial or Nuclear start, you'll pretty much break even from turn 1.

And I think the Settler issue discussed above might also be part of the problem. Settlers are SO expensive on those later eras that a human knows not to bother building one until you have plenty of food and production in place. The AI, on the other hand, might be trying to make a 90-turn Settler and never doing anything else.

Edit: I also seem to have adapted my gameplay to the issues of poor gold supply and poor Happiness, however I don't think the AI is able to adapt.

Yeah. I THINK I've fixed that in my most recent version; I was going to post it last night, but I found something else that needed fixing, so I'm aiming for tonight instead. I'm worried that I might have moved it too far towards what it used to be, with money and happiness being plentiful, but this'll take some testing.

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

Last night's game was very interesting. Continents map, I was America, Industrial start. There were basically three continents: one small one had Germany (who built the Apollo Program two turns after I did and are currently racing me to the spaceship), one just had 3 city-states, and the big one had the remaining 5 civs. I invaded the Ottomans, while the French took all but one Chinese city and then grabbed two Songhai colonies. (Those Foreign Legion are BRUTAL, especially since promoting to MechInfantry keeps the custom promotion.) To top it off, the French managed to ally with ten different city-states (they clearly took all the Patronage tree), so if we reached the UN they'd win... which meant that I had to invade the French as soon as I got Modern Armor.
And they wiped the floor with my army, at least at first. On Prince, and they didn't even have Oil for tanks. Just hordes of highly-upgraded Mechanized Infantry and Artillery, and a squadron of four Destroyers that attacked as a group. Between the adjacent bonus, the Foreign Legion bonus when invading and the Home Field Advantage bonus when defending, I had a horrible time dislodging them until I had four B17s going at once. And they killed quite a few of my units in the process.

The one thing I realized, though, is that city power doesn't scale enough. Their front-line city had strength 45 (Walls, Castle) and did an excellent job holding off my attacks, but their back cities lacked those buildings and so were in the teens and low 20s (including Paris, at 23); easy to seize once I got around the border by going through some forests. (Seriously, it reminded me of the Maginot Line.) However, while that 45-strength city held off the infantry and tanks, it was demolished easily by a B17, so air defense is still a real concern. (I'm thinking of adding an AirDefense rating to the Walls/Castle/Military Base now.)
So tonight, I'm going to go into GlobalDefines and tweak the city strength settings to scale more with population and tech level. Hopefully that should help.

Hey, after I read your feedback on the Espionage Concecepts thread I started, I discovered these posts about your mod -- very cool mod and I like many of the changes you've implemented. I presently do not enjoy C5 much, but once it improves, I'll give your mod a play.

Anyways, I was reading from the posts that there seems to be a problem with the gold yield that effects the AI especially. Sometime ago, I had the following ideas re: adding bonuses to foreign trade routes....at the time I was thinking of a way to represent establishing trade routes with more historical accuracy.....It's a rough outline, but I'm curious what your thoughts are.


In this revised system, there would be 3 ways to establish a foreign trade route with other civs: 1) via land routes, 2) overseas with civs on same continent, and 3) overseas with civs on other continents.

Global Rules:

1) Foreign trade routes require an active trade agreement that is NOT a money-for-money exchange.

2) For every foreign trade route established, the player receives a base +2 gold into treasury. Additional gold may also be provided (see bonuses below).

3) Note: it is possible for the player to NOT have a foreign trade route established with another civ, and yet still be trading strategic or luxury goods, or engage in any other sort of trade. Failure to establish a foreign trade route simply means that the player does NOT obtain the bonuses (see below).


Foreign Trade divided into three types: overland continental, overseas continental, overseas international.

1) Establishing a Foreign Trade Route:a foreign trade route is established in one of three ways:

--A) Overland Continental: trade existing from land routes between civs located on the same continent
---->requires:
--------(1) open border agreement &
--------(2) road built connecting at least 1 player controlled city to at least 1 city belonging to foreign civ.
--------------Note: Road may pass through other civs IF open borders agreement exists w/ third-party civ

--B) Continental overseas: coastal trade existing between civs located on same continent.
---->available with Sailing
---->requires:
-------(1) open borders agreement with other other civ, &
-------(2) city must be connected to the capital by a road &
-------(2) city must have harbor built.

--C) International overseas: overseas trade existing between civs located on different continents.
---->available with: Navigation
----requires:
------(1) must have open borders agreement with other civ &
------(2 )player must have city connected to capital by road &
------(3) same city must have Harbor built &
------(4) same city must have Market built.

2) Foreign trade route bonuses:
----> additional +1 gold for all foreign trade routes during Classical era. Bonus ends w/ entering Medieval era.
----> +1 gold with discovery of Economics (restructuring of economies around colonization)
----> +1 gold with discovery of Railroad per overland continental.
----> +1 culture with discovery of Flight for every foreign trade route.
----> +1 gold per international overseas trade route with Computers.


Additions:

1) Great Wonder: "The Medici Bank" available with Economics --> +3 to all foreign trade routes

2) With discovery of Scientific Theory, research agreements cost 25% less between foreign trade route partners. (IMO, research agreements need a total re-working! They should cost a lot more, nations should only be able to work jointly on the same tech and they both must have pre-req techs, and it should operate by combining their beakers -- or something like that....)

3) National Wonder: "National Embassy" available with new technology, "Realpolitiks" (pre-reqs = Banking + Printing Press). Establishes resident ambassador in each nation that player maintains foreign trade route with. +1 happy per foreign trade route (benefit of regularized and formalized diplomatic relations between nations).

4) National Wonder: "Custom House," available with Realpolitik (see #3 above). Houses public officials who process the paperwork for the import and export of goods into and out of a country. Customs officials also collect customs duty on imported goods. +25 gold yield for all overseas foreign trade routes (continental and international). City must have already built Harbor and Bank.


I think these changes (or something along these lines) would create real incentives to engage in foreign trade, but such would require managing the peace, building early infrastructure, but also exercising skill in keeping the routes open. I also think these changes could be implemented nicely along side changes in the game's coding that makes barbarian pirates more of a factor requiring more battling to keep trading lanes open. I'm thinking about how big of a role piracy has played throughout history -- I'd like to see it given more prominence in CIV.

What'cha think?


P.S. -- check out that Espionage thread again if you have a chance. I was thinking about yours and alpaca's comments and I threw out some ideas there.....wondering what you think.

What'cha think?

I think they're a lot of good ideas, that will be utterly impossible to implement without a better DLL SDK. Most of what you described just can't be done in any way that I can see without access to a deeper level of programming than we can get through LUA. (Just figuring out whether two empires have a road connection would be BRUTAL.) This ties back to the simplified system Civ5 uses, where all that matters is whether a city connects to its capital.

I think it's something that should be completely disconnected from my mod, something affecting all of the earlier eras. The few changes I made to earlier eras (3 growth buildings, a few tech-based yield increases, the start era retuning) were all designed for the sole purpose of increasing the likelihood you reach my future eras. And I definitely wouldn't add a new technology to the earlier eras.

I think the balance of your concept is going to be difficult to get right, as everything you described is a positive change in terms of gold, so you'll have to subtract gold somewhere else to keep it from being too strong.

And I think you need to come up with different names, as "Customs House" is an existing terrain Improvement created by Great Merchants and the "Medici Bank" is a National Wonder they're adding in the next patch.

But I think you should go ahead and try to make that mod, and if you can pull it off then it should be perfectly compatible with what I have here. Unfortunately, it's not something that can be used to solve the balance problems my own changes have made, because it's not something that I'd want to be a mandatory element for my players. (It's why I didn't put the Tech Diffusion logic into my mod. While I like that mod and use it myself, I don't want to force other people to use it.)

The few changes I made to earlier eras (3 growth buildings, a few tech-based yield increases, the start era retuning) were all designed for the sole purpose of increasing the likelihood you reach my future eras. And I definitely wouldn't add a new technology to the earlier eras.

I actually think that is the coolest aspect of your mod. The early game is just tweaked a bit for the purists, but it adds so much incredible and creative content to the end-game.


I think the balance of your concept is going to be difficult to get right, as everything you described is a positive change in terms of gold, so you'll have to subtract gold somewhere else to keep it from being too strong.

My thought was that the extra gold would help support an espionage system that was primarily based on gold investments. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=401567

I also figured that some gold would be siphoned off by having to support a larger early navy given increased threats from piracy.



And I think you need to come up with different names, as "Customs House" is an existing terrain Improvement created by Great Merchants and the "Medici Bank" is a National Wonder they're adding in the next patch.

Guess that proves how little I've played C5. I haven't managed to get out of the renaissance era before the game was already decided or I was just fed up with the stupid AI.


But I think you should go ahead and try to make that mod, and if you can pull it off then it should be perfectly compatible with what I have here.

Unfortunately, I haven't tried my hand at a major modding project. I've messed around with lines of code here and there but very much on a small scale. I would like to learn though -- but, I won't be able to get to it for a few months (studying for the CA. Bar).

I appreciate the feedback though. I look forward to playing your mod at some point!

Unfortunately, I haven't tried my hand at a major modding project. I've messed around with lines of code here and there but very much on a small scale. I would like to learn though -- but, I won't be able to get to it for a few months (studying for the CA. Bar).

Pfft. Priorities, man. Which is more important, the Bar or a good Civ5 mod?
(On the bright side, by the time you're ready to do some modding, DLL modification might be possible.)

The fundamental problem here is that while Firaxis has given us a lot of stubs for modding, there are a few glaring omissions. Because of this, nearly all of the Policy effects, Wonder effects, and so on that I've put into my mod are things that either already existed in the XML, or were easy to add through existing LUA functionality. I had a lot of ideas on what I'd originally wanted, that I had to throw out because they just wouldn't be practical to code. That's why I think your concept should be done, if possible, as a separate mod; it's a completely different level of coding than anything I've put into my own mods so far, and would probably require rebuilding quite a few existing systems from the ground up.

There are just so many missing functions. For instance, it's trivial to check whether a building exists in a given city. But there isn't any easy way to check if that building was just built in that city on the last turn; there's no "BuiltTurnNumber" function to recall that, and there's no Event logic to trigger on completion of a building. There's already a hack over in one of the subforums to create new Events along these lines, but most of these workarounds don't feel organic, in that they only kick in at the start of the next turn. Most of these workarounds are built around a single mod component, the Save system. In the core game you can't save the value of a variable from one turn to the next, but very early on someone figured out how to do that in a somewhat complicated way. So it's easy to add changes that kick in every turn (most of my new wonders, the tech and food boosts, etc.), but hard to add something that adjusts dynamically.

Likewise, the data structure is set up in a very hierarchical way. You can't just say "loop over all cities". No, it's loop over players, then check to see if it's a valid player, then loop over that player's cities. Cities don't have a separate structure of their own, it's all a part of the Player structure.
Or technologies. Players don't learn technologies; Teams learn technologies, and Players are assigned a Team. (In most games, it's a 1:1 pairing.) So if you want to check to see if a player has a technology, there's a couple extra steps you have to do each time. Depending on exactly what you're trying to do, this can lead to some tremendously complicated logic.
And there's little cross-referencing. Want to check if a player has the Centauri Ecology tech? You have to loop over all technologies, find which one has Type "TECH_CENTAURI_ECOLOGY", and then grab the ID code, since that ID is what everything is indexed by. Sure, you could just fudge it (I KNOW it's #74 in my games), but what happens if someone then tries to play a game using both my mod and one that adds a new technology? It might be #75 then, depending on which order the mods were loaded in. So you're coding in a lot of loops just to grab the right variables.

But the one that kills me? There's no "refresh map" function. You can change what terrain type a tile is, but it won't actually show on the map, because the map only refreshes when you exit or load a new game. The Map structure in general is a bit weak; it's a lot more work than it should be to say "give me the six hexes adjacent to the hex at X,Y".

Firaxis has said that the upcoming patch will add a bunch of new functions for modders. So I'm still hoping for the best.

It's that time again, boys and girls!

v.0.09 changelog (12/8)
> Labor Mechs and Formers gain the “Deep Mine” build action at Nanomatter Editation. This action can only be used on land tiles with no resources. It creates a new resource deposit, most likely dilithium or neutronium. This creates the possibility of land-based dilithium, which uses a Mine to harvest. It takes an extremely long amount of time to do, however.
> Put the SS components back to their original costs, now that they actually do something. I might even increase them.
> (Crazy Spatz) As in Thalassicus’ Balance Mod, I’ve changed trade route income to –1.3 + 1.5*pop + 0.05*capital pop (was 1 + 1.25*pop), to discourage ICS and improve the income of larger cities.
> (Crazy Spatz) The increase in city combat strength due to each population point is now 0.5 (was 0.25).
> (Crazy Spatz) The Palace, by default, adds +2 city strength. I increased this to +10; capitals should always be hard to sieze.
> (Crazy Spatz) The default game’s “City Strength Tech Multiplier” was 2. I increased that to 4, so that cities in later eras should have much higher base defense values.
(An Industrial start gives 19 strength in normal cities, 29 in the capital)
> (Crazy Spatz) Because +10% food isn’t very useful to a small city, I’ve set the Watermill to only be available to Medium or larger cities (which means size 5 or 6, I think), at which point it’ll at least give 1 food. There was no need to change the Floating Garden in the same way since it also gives a flat amount.
> (Crazy Spatz) The Forbidden Palace was decreased to –25% unhappiness from city count. This still comes out to +1 happy per city, just like in vanilla, because the base value for a city is now 4 instead of 2.
> (Crazy Spatz) The “Planned Economy” Policy in the vanilla game gave –50% unhappiness from city count. This was decreased to –25% for the same reason as above.
However, in my mod, I'd moved that effect to the “Planned Society” policy. So that’s now changed instead. The only problem: both mods are trying to update Planned Economy’s civilopedia entry, and I’m not sure which will override; preliminary testing seems to always use the right one (the new Alpha Centauri mod entry), although I just don't know if it'd stay that way. (Possible solution: move that change exclusively to the content mod, and accept that it’ll make things unbalanced in a game using only the balance mod.)
> The Bank is now automatically given in the Industrial Era starts, instead of waiting until the Digital Era. The Satrap’s Court was already at that point. Likewise, the Market is given in Renaissance starts, instead of waiting until the Industrial, and the Bazaar was already there.
> The FreeStartEra entry was removed from the Theater, Opera House, Forge, Barracks, and Krepost. This greatly reduces the building maintenance costs of your starting cities in later era starts.
> The Colosseum’s maintenance cost was reduced to 2 gold per turn to reflect its reduced Happiness, and to help with the financial drain.
> The Temple’s maintenance cost was reduced to 1 gold per turn, and its FreeStartEra was moved up to the Renaissance (was Industrial). Also, its two UB variants (Burial Tomb and Mud Pyramid Mosque) had no FreeStartEra before, they’re now set to the same.
> In addition to the technology increase added previously, there’s also a boost to food production. Each city gets +1 food per 3 techs still discounted, rounded up. So if you start in the Nuclear Era (era 5), while researching your first tech you’ll get +4 food per city, the next three techs will get +3 food, then +2 for the next three, then +1 for the last three discounted techs.
It's not enough to really swing the balance of power, but it does help with getting up to speed.
> The production Flavor of the Genejack Factory was increased to 100 (from 50), to match the Factory; this encourages the AI to make one before trying to build a Wonder, especially for a start in the Fusion era or later.
> Increased the number of small deposits of strategics by 40%. (Was a base value of 25, now 35.) Large and water deposits were unaffected.
> The Quantum Lab no longer requires the Fusion Lab to be present. Instead, it just requires the Research Lab, the same as the Fusion Lab does. That way, if you lack Dilithium you’re not prevented from building the structure that generates that resource.
> The custom notification icon for non-Wonder buildings (like when the Energy Bank gives you a resource) now uses the right size of icon (was 80, now 64). You won’t get that weird crescent-shaped yellow background any more. Instead, it'll be inside a yellow circle; not the color I'd have picked, but I'll go with it for now.
> The EnemyProductionTurns logic now works; the Nethack Terminus is the only Wonder currently to use this logic (and has it set to 5). If any other civ is within X turns of completing a Wonder, you’ll get a notification that lists which civ, which city, and how many turns. (Useful to know if you're getting beaten to a Wonder, useless to the AI, except that that wonder also gives a free tech.)
> The PromotionInCity logic now works; the Space Elevator is currently the only Wonder that uses this logic, but it can be adapted to others. The logic is simple: if a unit starts its turn in a city containing this Wonder, then it gets the promotion; otherwise, it loses it. (This becomes VERY powerful, in that units near your wonder city can deploy pretty much anywhere in the world you have visibility, but they can’t return the same way.) Do NOT use this to give any promotion that can be gained through any other means, because it WILL remove it even if the unit should have had that promotion already.
> The EnemyPromotion logic now works; the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm uses this, and gives a promotion to any unit located on a tile you control if that unit’s owner is at war with you. I changed the H-SA as a result; it now no longer acts like the Great Wall (which means no Great Wall graphic); instead, it now gives –1 visibility, reduces heal rates by 1, and most importantly, gives a –20% city attack penalty for any other civ’s units inside your territory. (I had it as enemy units only, but then I figured, why not just any units other than yours? The healing and visibility things won’t hurt much, and the city attack penalty wouldn’t trigger.)
As with the previous, do not use this to give any promotion that can be gained any other way; only use unique promotions. The H-SA gives the "Hacked" promotion, for instance.
> Switched the Pasture boost at Gene Splicing with the Plantation boost at Centauri Empathy. The two Pasture boosts were too close together, and it makes more sense this way anyway.

Pfft. Priorities, man. Which is more important, the Bar or a good Civ5 mod?

You're not joking! 8 to 10 hour study days are brutal. But, thinking of good Civ5 mods (or just a good vanilla game) is a great way to escape in my down time ;)


I had a lot of ideas on what I'd originally wanted, that I had to throw out because they just wouldn't be practical to code.

I appreciate your describing some of the limiting aspects of the game's structure -- it's obviously important to note those when thinking of ways the game could be changed and in order to make valid suggestions/criticisms.


by the time you're ready to do some modding, DLL modification might be possible.

I guess when that time comes - and I start to learn, I will also learn fairly quickly what is & what isn't possible.


There's no "refresh map" function.

Losing that option is really annoying. Is there any way that it could be coded differently so that the option could be restored?


Well, congrats on the release of your latest version - looks fun! I'm off to hit the books.....

I appreciate your describing some of the limiting aspects of the game's structure -- it's obviously important to note those when thinking of ways the game could be changed and in order to make valid suggestions/criticisms.

This is a fine line. We all have concepts we'd love to see implemented, and you shouldn't throw away a good concept just because it's tough to figure out. To make things worse, they're adding more modding functions in the near future (and will probably continue to do so) and modders are continually figuring out new workarounds (such as the SaveUtils functions), so things that might not have been possible originally could become possible down the road.
But that's dealing with the unknown, and it's better to start with the known, even if you intend to go further down the road. Thankfully, the developers put in a LOT of unused abilities in the XML, variables that no existing buildings or units use, so it's easy enough to cobble a decent mod out of just those; the result would work, and wouldn't need a lot of new coding or balancing, while not feeling like it's just duplicating what's already there. That's what the first pass of my mod really was; a lot of these weren't the abilities I'd wanted to have, but instead were simply the abilities that didn't duplicate existing logic.

For instance, I added a new Policy to every tree. For the Patronage tree, I looked in the CIV5Policies.xml; there were eight abilities in there referencing city-states, and seven of them were already in use. The only unused one was the ability to change how much influence you got from completing a requested mission. So obviously, I used that as my new Patronage Policy. It's not really the effect I originally wanted to have, but it worked, and I'm pretty happy with it now (although I'm going to tweak the numbers some more).

So in other words, I took the path of least resistance on a lot of these and didn't really create the mod I'd wanted, but instead created the closest analogue I could with what was easily available. In some cases, I've kept a list of my original designs and will go back to them when I can. Take the Dream Twister as an example; originally, I just wanted it to cause 3-5 turns of Anarchy for all other civs (no research, no construction) when built, sort of like an inverted Taj Mahal, but I couldn't do that in XML. Then I thought up the "other civs get -Happiness", but I couldn't do that in XML either. So temporarily, it just gave you two Great Artists.
Last week, I managed to get the -Happiness working (easier since it's an always-on thing and not event-based), so right now it's 1 Great Artist and -10 Happiness to all other civs. But now that I've got access to a function that triggers when a building is built, I can finally go back towards the original design: 2 or 3 turns of Anarchy (which can be done in LUA pretty easily), and then some (~8?) permanent unhappiness to all other civs, and drop the Great Artists entirely.

Or take the Manifold Harmonics. Right now it's this weird cobbled-together mess that boosts the output of lake, sea, river, forest, jungle, and oasis tiles, because those are the only ones with separate yield tables in the existing XML. This fits the wonder's movie pretty well, actually, but I don't like it.
What I'd really wanted was simpler: all Grassland for this city get +1 food, all Plains get +1 production, all water get +1 gold, and so on. Or even the original SMAC version of the wonder: if I remember right, it was that any tile that generated 3+ food got +1 food, any that generated 3+ production got +1 production, and 3+ gold got +1 gold. (Overpowered in SMAC because EVERY tile would end up producing those large amounts in the end.)
I might be able to do these things in LUA pretty easily, so expect this wonder to change down the road. But what's there now should be playable in the interim, which is what I'm really shooting for.

Nevermind, something very dumb was written here...

Am liking this version better! :goodjob:

Now for questions/ observations:

1. Ran into a bug which effects the German Furor Teutonicus ability as follows: Encountered a Barb camp next to Ruins, and when I conquered the Barb Camp the spawned unit was placed on top of the Ruins. The Ruins then disappeared without giving any benefits. I've run into this maybe 4 times since I've been playing, but it is a bug. FYI in case anyone encounters a similar situation (i.e. playing as Germans, encountering a Barb Camp next to Ruins) and would like to verify for me.

2. Concerning the "Starving Cities" image below: had this happen several times now in both games I've played in that I get the "Starving Cities" message, but the cities never reduce in population. Is anyone else experiencing this?

3. Even though money is slightly more plentiful, am still having to make some tough choices (or at least so far I am - haven't played too deeply into this version yet). I set up some cities to produce APCs, whereas in the past I always went Infantry then upgraded to APCs. Am also having to consider when to agree to Research Agreements: some tough/ tantalizing choices there, especially as you progress into later eras! :goodjob:

4. AIs are not attacking early in the game as they have been wont (read: ALWAYS!) do: this flumoxed me as I'm sitting there goading the AIs on my border to declare war, and they didn't. :confused: However there were several small wars (i.e. short-lived) between my neighboring AIs. Still ahve yet to be the recipient of a DoW in this version.

5. First game last night I attacked a C-S with 4 APCs and 2 arty, and lost! Note this is using my mod which gives C-S Military Bases and a Shiva (2 attack/ turn, no defensive penalties). The Shiva chewed my units up in two turns, and my last heavily damaged APC died attacking the city. I looked thru your XML and didn't see where you've done anything to improve C-S defense, so I am assuming I just was the recipient of bad attack rolls. The good news here is that this is a good indicator I am close to what I want in regards to C-S being viable in the later eras. Probably if I tweak the Military Base to give it a little better defensive bonus, then it might just make it tough enough to last two rounds of attacks from human/ AI players, which should give the Shiva's time enought to devour the attacking force. FYI in case you are thinking of looking into improving the viability of C-S in the later game.

6. Concerning the "Recycling Tanks Q" image below: why not just give it +2 Maintenance (instead of +3 Maintenance and +1 Gold)?

7. Concerning the "One long-arsed railroad" pic: that indeed is one long-arsed railroad! Never seen the AI build one that far between cities before!

8. Concerning "Satelites tech Q": whats your rationale behind the Fundamentalist option in regards to this? Satelites are heavy tech, whereas Fundy doesn't seem to fit here.

9. Concerning the "Children's Creche Q" pic: understand about the problem with the +/- issue, but since you can put the unhappy face into the text, can you put the unhappiness face next to the +/- sign. This is more of an aesthetics thing (or just a curious question on my part), but I think it would be more representative if it were an unhappy face next to the +/- sign.

More thoughts later - gotta go run now.

D

2. Concerning the "Starving Cities" image below: had this happen several times now in both games I've played in that I get the "Starving Cities" message, but the cities never reduce in population. Is anyone else experiencing this?

You get the "starving" message if a city's food per turn is ever negative, but the city might have HUNDREDS of stored food on hand. So, if a city is a decent size, it might be centuries before it actually starts reducing in size. Also, if it happens during the first turns of a late-era start, the negative food might be completely offset by the food bonus I'm now giving, so your cities might actually still grow. But the message just triggers based on the city's net food per turn.

The UI food storage is often incorrect on this; the green bar might be at the bottom, while the city still has plenty of food. The easy way to check is to go into a city, mouse over the Food icon in the upper-left, and see exactly how much is left and how much is lost per turn.

This MIGHT be tied to my mod, in that I changed the growth equation. It's possible that the LUA code hard-codes the original equation; maybe it sees that you're 100 food short of growth and have a negative food, which makes it think you're about to shrink, but doesn't realize that the new equation means that you're at 200/300 instead of 0/100.

4. AIs are not attacking early in the game as they have been wont (read: ALWAYS!) do: this flumoxed me as I'm sitting there goading the AIs on my border to declare war, and they didn't.

I think this might just be a consequence of a late start (you're in Nuclear Era?): short on cash, with plenty of other things to produce, the AIs don't go quite so overboard on an early military. But they still do it; my last test game was an Industrial start, and right about when I got to Tanks, my next-door neighbor Germany decided that his Panzers needed a good test drive and treated me like Poland. He actually took one of my core cities and threatened my capital. I took it back eventually, of course, but only because he pulled his army off to go conquer the Maritime city-state I'd allied with. (That left me with a size 1 city that never really recovered. I'd just built the Eiffel Tower there before the war, too...)

5. First game last night I attacked a C-S with 4 APCs and 2 arty, and lost! ... looked thru your XML and didn't see where you've done anything to improve C-S defense, so I am assuming I just was the recipient of bad attack rolls.

Actually, I did boost them.
C-S's are just civs that can't build settlers, but they do have a Palace. That means they get the +10 defense, and the Home-Field Advantage promotion (which is tied to the palace). The resourceless units are an added bonus as well, but you're not at the point where those would kick in yet. Add to that the general city boost I made (25 HP and +2HP/turn instead of 20 and +1), and city-states become extremely difficult to crack. I watched a city-state (one of my allies) hold off a concerted attack by China using only the city and one Artillery, for something like 30 turns. (It only fell when Russia decided to invade it as well.)
Your choice of units is part of the problem. Mech Infantry were reduced in power to 42, and capitals in that era should be about the same strength (if not higher), so you're not longer getting the massive power mismatch that led to quick kills. This was intentional.

FYI in case you are thinking of looking into improving the viability of C-S in the later game.

I am, but I think I'll probably just handle this by boosting the base CS production bonus. Right now, a city-state gets 150% production and 200% gold. I'm thinking about taking that to 200% and 300%. Also, I've been looking at boosting the Palace's bonuses with era, to help out players' later starts, but this'd also help the city-states disproportionately (since the humans would have multiple cities without palaces, but the CSs would have a Palace in 100% of their cities).

6. Concerning the "Recycling Tanks Q" image below: why not just give it +2 Maintenance (instead of +3 Maintenance and +1 Gold)?

Because +gold gets multiplied by the Market, Bank, et cetera, while the maintenance cost gets divided by certain policies and such. So it's actually possible for that building to end up having no cost at all this way.

8. Concerning "Satelites tech Q": whats your rationale behind the Fundamentalist option in regards to this? Satelites are heavy tech, whereas Fundy doesn't seem to fit here.

Three possible answers here, take your pick.
1> It's a reactionary, anti-intellectualism sort of thing. Aerospace technology is a very high-profile, expensive application of science, and is usually the first thing the "we should be spending the money on X" people target. So the rise of this sort of technologies would be paired with a resurgence of religious fundamentalism in developed countries.
2> It's about worldwide communications making it easier for things like televangelists to prosper. (I already made a Nehemiah Scudder reference in the Civilopedia, I think for the Hologram Theater, but I had that in mind here as well.)
3> I needed to put it somewhere and at the time, Satellites didn't have enough stuff. There just aren't many good thematic fits; none of my new techs have any kind of religious overtones except maybe for the Centauri psi-type ones. I'd put it at Homo Superior, but that's far too late in the tree. SMAC had a few non-sciency type techs (Intellectual Integrity, Ethical Calculus, Cyberethics, Secrets of the Human Brain), but I'd removed all of the early ones; the only remnants are late-game things like The Will To Power. In the original SMAC, Fundamentalist came at "Secrets of the Human Brain", for reference.
While I needed to put it somewhere, I also needed to make it come early relative to the other new policies. It boosts your border growth rate, but by the time you're in this era, your main cities will have already completed their border growth. Even a new colony will generally grow faster than you can really handle, so it's not as desirable a policy the later you get.
(In fact, I'm looking at boosting its effect to -50% right now.)

9. Concerning the "Children's Creche Q" pic: understand about the problem with the +/- issue, but since you can put the unhappy face into the text, can you put the unhappiness face next to the +/- sign.

Not without a UI mod, that part of the popup is handled automatically by the existing LUA. But that's actually an easy thing to fix, in theory: in the popup, if the happiness number is negative then use a different icon and don't put the "+" sign.
I'll look into it.
(Note that a few other buildings also subtract happiness now.)
-----------
I'm working on a few more changes now, of course, but nothing as extensive as the last few rounds. Mostly just balance tweaks, and I'm trying to adjust Flavor values and such so that the AIs won't get so bogged down in the late game. (I think part of the problem is that while the Factory is set to 100 flavor, meaning must-build, all of the Bank and University-style buildings aren't. I'm going to try upping all of those "essential" buildings and see what happens.)

You get the "starving" message if a city's food per turn is ever negative, but the city might have HUNDREDS of stored food on hand. So, if a city is a decent size, it might be centuries before it actually starts reducing in size.

One instance of this issue happened very early in the game, and in the past when its happened in this timeframe the cities have shrunk in population. I'll keep an eye out for this to see if it happens again, and maybe run a test routine of just seeing if it ever loses a pop point.


I think this might just be a consequence of a late start (you're in Nuclear Era?): short on cash, with plenty of other things to produce, the AIs don't go quite so overboard on an early military. But they still do it;

The AIs have always declared war early in the games (including in your last iteration where cash was as rare as blue moons!).

To segue a bit here, why I test stuff for a living, and so am using some of the same approaches here for the purposes of trying to isolate the possible reasons behind my observations. As such I try to eliminate as many variables as possible, so I very consistently play the same civ, same style map, same difficulty level, and I use the same strategies time and again. Thus when something out of the ordinary occurs I feel more confindent that "something has changed". Right now this has stuck out like a sore thumb to me, however it is a sample size of one, so it could just be just an abheration.



Actually, I did boost them.
C-S's are just civs that can't build settlers, but they do have a Palace. That means they get the +10 defense, and the Home-Field Advantage promotion (which is tied to the palace).

:o I did see that! However I had it in my mind you'd altered the Military Base value instead, so I was searching for that, and when I didn't find it, why I figured it was just a bad attack roll.


Your choice of units is part of the problem. Mech Infantry were reduced in power to 42, and capitals in that era should be about the same strength (if not higher), so you're not longer getting the massive power mismatch that led to quick kills. This was intentional.

Awsome! Between that, and because the LUA for C-S placement almost exclusively puts them on coastal tiles (or at least in the vicinity), means a player has to typically attack a C-S city on a very narrow front (say on average 3 tiles available to occupy in order to attack on). With your tweak, I think the C-S defensive abilities are now where I would like them to be. :goodjob:


Because +gold gets multiplied by the Market, Bank, et cetera, while the maintenance cost gets divided by certain policies and such. So it's actually possible for that building to end up having no cost at all this way.

Ah, OK.


More questions/ observations:

1. One of the drawbacks of starting a game in the later eras is that some of the core choices for techs aren't necessary: a player can already build ships (or units can embark), can already build artillery (after Industrial), etc. Have you given any thought to addressing this somehow? I did like starting my games in the Industrial era as then I had to make the choice of Dynamite or not, as Arty is very critical in ciV

2. Concerning the last iteration of your mod (where Gold and Happiness were darned hard to come by): have you given any thought to creating several mods, with this being one, so that if a human player wanted to be challenged by something wery different (and difficult), then they had this option as well. Say call is "Spatz Harsh Planet Mod" instead? I did like that iteration in that it really was very different and difficult to play against.

3. More for my mod than yours probably, but its been my observation that C-S don't explore Ruins: has anyone else seen C-S units exploring nearby Ruins? Also has anyone seen a C-S go to war on someone other than if that Civ declares war on them first, or that Civ declares war on a C-S's ally?

Tonight I'm going to continue the game I had going this morning: the Russians occupy a central location on my continent and appear to be the largest Civ on this planet, with the Eqyptians also sharing a border with me and the Russians. And somewhere up to the north are the English. Right now I'm researching Satelites, and once thats discovered I'll know just how big a bear I plan on attacking with my four cities. Should be a very interesting evening, and I am quite looking forward to it! :c5war:

D

As such I try to eliminate as many variables as possible, so I very consistently play the same civ, same style map, same difficulty level, and I use the same strategies time and again. Thus when something out of the ordinary occurs I feel more confindent that "something has changed".

That's definitely the right way to track down those sorts of imbalances. My point, though, was that a lot of the AI seems to be complex. (Not "smart", just complex.) Change one minor thing, and it can respond in ways that seem nonsensical. So it's easily possible that there's some threshold that's being crossed, where they've got JUST enough money to support a decent military but not enough to go further.

Or maybe something you think is being held constant really isn't. For instance, the Leader ratings; if Napoleon has his Conquest bias set to 7 as a default, then it might range anywhere from 5 (not really a warmonger) to 9 (attack early and often). As far as I know there's no way to disable this randomness.

And then there's the inherent randomness of the game; strategic resources are a good example of this. If you don't have Oil, Coal, and Aluminum, you're not going to be doing much in the Industrial or Nuclear eras. City-states obviously lack these, but it's really easy for a regular civ to miss out if you placed your 3-4 cities in exactly the wrong spots. No coal, and you won't have factories, which means everything takes longer to build, which means the AI won't have as many military units. No oil means no tanks or bombers, and aluminum is pretty much everything worthwhile in the Nuclear era (and well after!).

The next patch should actually help with this greatly. One of the upcoming changes is that the AI will be much more aggressive in making friends with city-states, and CS's are great ways to pick up strategic resources you don't have. So I'm hoping that with that fix, the AI civs will be much more competitive for those late starts.

1. One of the drawbacks of starting a game in the later eras is that some of the core choices for techs aren't necessary:

Well, this is a big part of why I originally intended people to start in the Ancient Era and play all the way through. If you can make the full combined arms force starting on turn one, it makes things play VERY differently.
That's also part of why I wanted to make the future era units so DIFFERENT. Technological units that basically ignore terrain, psi units that are really annoying, Titan units that can level cities, and orbital weapons that can hit anywhere. I figured that by doing this, there'd be less of that "more of the same" feel where the newer units are just minor upgrades of what came before.

But I think it's unavoidable in general, unless you want to completely restructure the existing tech tree (and I don't). Once you get to the industrial era, you've pretty much got all the pieces you need to win: factories, hospitals, banks and universities; infantry, tanks, aircraft, battleships, and artillery. That's a big part of why I made the Long Mod first; it's just too easy for the game to end once you get all of that stuff.

2. ...Say call is "Spatz Harsh Planet Mod" instead? I did like that iteration in that it really was very different and difficult to play against.

Actually, yes, I just thought of making a third "Hardcore" mod that modifies various things to make it play much tougher. The problem was that those previous settings weren't just HARD, they were completely unplayable for certain era/civ combinations. Players can get around that by playing smart, but the AI would get stuck. He couldn't gain happiness faster than his cities would grow, so he'd be stuck with a near-permanent growth penalty, making it easy for the human to pull ahead. Likewise, Egypt and Persia had huge advantages over everyone else in that they were the only civs with extra +happiness buildings.

3. More for my mod than yours probably, but its been my observation that C-S don't explore Ruins: has anyone else seen C-S units exploring nearby Ruins?

The Barbarian and Minor civs (which includes all the city-states) have really low Recon flavors. That's probably a big part of it; you could tweak this, but I'm not sure that'd be a good idea. (Too many scouts running around the map?)

Also has anyone seen a C-S go to war on someone other than if that Civ declares war on them first, or that Civ declares war on a C-S's ally?

I saw a CS declare "permanent war" on a civ, no idea why. Other than that, I don't think so, although city-states DO fight each other without prompting.

Tonight I'm going to continue the game I had going this morning:

Sounds fun. I'm just finishing up a game on King, as Persia, Standard map size; I conquered the three other civs on my own continent with Tanks and a few Modern Armor, but I'm only now invading the other continent with Gravtanks, and my first Bolo is a couple turns away. (I've got the Space Elevator, so I'm going to orbital drop it right into the middle of a war.)

The problem I've run into is that I'm getting new techs every 2-3 turns. It was stable at 6ish for a long time, but once my conquered cities got up and running, they added just as much as my core cities. This game really needs an analogue to the "corruption" mechanic that penalized cities far from your capital, because without it, it becomes a no-brainer to conquer one neighbor early on (if you can); the research, gold, and production boosts are just too critical in the later eras. Or really, just give conquered cities a permanent penalty to research and gold (say, -50%) that never goes away, so that they'll be inherently less useful than your own cities.
Yes, you could get around this with a raze-and-resettle policy, but the further you get into the game, the less practical that is; you NEED the border expansions the cities will already have, the cities might have Wonders, and all those other buildings in the city would take time to replace.

Some late-breaking news this evening: apparently the latest Egyptian offensive into Russian territory created enough instability that the Russians sued for peace. As such I had to re-assess my strategies and begin re-distributing my units. I've already started bombing Egyptian cities in the hopes I can coax the Egytian military into an unwise offensive against my well-prepared defenses, as well as initiating an offensive against the Egyptian puppet-states (i.e. former Russian cities with no military support in the region).
Also, when a foreign power built the Planetary Energy Grid, the activation of this Wonder apparently generated an EMP surge which briefly knocked my console offline ( i.e. it generated a Windows error message saying the texture couldn't be displayed, as well as the below pic). Interesting effect you programmed in there.....


D

Some more info:

1. Encountered the same exception noted above on several more occasions, as follows:

Error Message: Unable to load texture[BW_SMAC640.dds]

These exceptions were encountered when AI's built the MCC, PTS, and the Supercollider this evening.

2. A new strategy I'm developing is one where I dogpile an AI just to gain experience points for as many units as possible: when a city is completely beaten and if I have aircraft, artillery, armor, and APCs in close vicinty, why I use my aircraft and arty first (which gains them experience), then use my weakest armor before gaining the city. The whole point here is to get as many units as possible some experience against a completely defenseless enemy before conquering it. I'm considering this an exploit, and my thoughts on how to nerf this would be to diminish experience points as an AI Defender's abilities to defend diminish. So say if an enemy cities ability to defend has been knocked down to 40%, the attacking units XP's are reduced by 33%, and if the defending cities defensive ability has been knocked down below 15%, then the attacking units XP's are reduced by 66%. Anyone have any thoughts on this idea?

D

You know, I think this was a record; I actually let someone else make two consecutive posts before I responded!

Some more info:

1. Encountered the same exception noted above on several more occasions, as follows:

Error Message: Unable to load texture[BW_SMAC640.dds]

These exceptions were encountered when AI's built the MCC, PTS, and the Supercollider this evening.

When you first mentioned it, I was wondering if this file might be the problem, since it's the only new art file (added about a week ago) and it's the file responsible now for the wonder-based notifications. For whatever reason, it's not present in my module directory; I'd added it to the mod, but it apparently just didn't take. (Not showing up in the modinfo file and not getting moved over correctly.)

So, I'm uploading a new version with it fixed, as soon as I straighten out a couple other things. Very little will have changed since the previous version, so it feels strange to call it a new version number, but I can't really wait for the other things I'm working on to be done.

2. A new strategy I'm developing is one where I dogpile an AI just to gain experience points for as many units as possible: when a city is completely beaten and if I have aircraft, artillery, armor, and APCs in close vicinty, why I use my aircraft and arty first (which gains them experience), then use my weakest armor before gaining the city.

I've seen this for a while. It's a flaw in the game itself, and really is an exploit, although frankly, XP isn't hard to come by. (Psi unit with the Elite promotion and the Military Tradition policy? 22 XP per kill.)

I'm not a fan of pro-rating the XP by how wounded the target is, but I think it'd be okay to just say that if your unit deals no damage it gets no XP. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this'd be possible to code in a mod; this might just be one of those things we'd have to ask Firaxis to put into the normal patches.

A short one today:

v.0.10, dated 12/11/10
> Fixed several Civilopedia entries that were out of date or broken.
> Fixed the missing BW_SMAC640.dds file issue.
> The Robotic Assembly Plant no longer requires a Forge (which could only be built if the city had a local Iron supply).
> The Leviathan’s ranged attack was decreased from 70 to 50. (A Battleship is 32.)
> Increased the flavor ratings for the Windmill, Bank, Satrap’s Court, Stock Exchange, Library, etc. to make them more desirable to the AI. This should encourage the AIs to build up their cities more, instead of churning out large numbers of units that'll only become obsolete quickly.
> Added a few new flavor ratings to some existing buildings (the ones that added new bonuses, like how the Observatory gives culture).
> Increased the Flavor ratings of the future-era Wonders to make them progressively more desirable (60/70/80, was 50, and national wonders are 10 less)
> The Maritime Control Center’s flavor ratings were set too high, and the Pholus Mutagen’s and Theory of Everything’s were set far too low.
> The Subspace Generator now requires 2 Dilithium instead of 1.

Something I'm trying to get working but can't: sound. Does anyone know how to actually add additional sounds? I've added new entries to the Tech_SpeechAudioDefines.xml and Tech_SpeechAudio2DScripts.xml files, and I've added the .mp3 to the mod, but it won't actually play the file at the appropriate time. (The file in question is in Art/Techs/tech6.mp3, which is the audio quote for Centauri Ecology. This makes it easy to test, since it's the one given by the spaceship.)
I'm just using this one file as a test case, since this'll affect whether I can add custom sounds for the various future weapons and such.

Do you have any idea about savegame compatibility? Only a few things changed in your latest version and I just got a game going...

Do you have any idea about savegame compatibility? Only a few things changed in your latest version and I just got a game going...

Savegames become incompatible if pretty much anything other than the most trivial UI changes or Civilopedia text updates are made. There's really just no way around that. So if you just got a game going and don't mind being a version behind, don't worry about it too much. (While that missing file gives an error, it sounds like it's not a complete crash, and you can still play.) The AI changes are important, but I don't know that they'd be worth starting over.

Seriously, I tweak as I go, and I've pretty much had to accept that any change means starting over because attempts to work across updates just never succeed. Generally, I'll just do an Industrial start, play for an Era or two, make some tweaks, then start over. That's actually why this last update's list was so short: I actually played a whole game, and it took time away from modding.

When you first mentioned it, I was wondering if this file might be the problem, since it's the only new art file (added about a week ago) and it's the file responsible now for the wonder-based notifications. For whatever reason, it's not present in my module directory; I'd added it to the mod, but it apparently just didn't take. (Not showing up in the modinfo file and not getting moved over correctly.)

I should've just checked to see if this file was present and then told you this - sorry.

DL'd your newest build and started a game this morning. Not much to report so far other than the following:

1. Concerning the pics related to the mine: never seen that before where adding a Mine yielded +1 food! :confused:

2. Had to really bring the wood when I attacked a C-S this morning: the pic is after one round of attack by 4 Infantry, an APC, and 3 Arty. It is relatively unusual to have so many tiles available to attack a C-S city from, so I'm going to say that on average a C-S city can probably withstand two rounds of attack from a determined enemy, which when paired with the offensive capabilities of a Shiva means C-S stand a strong likelihood of surviving this kind of attack, which was my goal! The missing piece was the Palace Defense improvement you put in there. :goodjob:

3. Concerning the damaged Shiva: watched that unit for umpteen turns - it never healed. I know that Barb units never heal, but has anyone seen C-S units not healing?


D

1. Concerning the pics related to the mine: never seen that before where adding a Mine yielded +1 food! :confused:

It didn't actually add food. It's that it chopped the forest; a Forest overrides the normal terrain of the tile and gives it 1 food and 1 production, as if it were a Plains tile. (The Iron bumped that to 2 production.) If you look in the CIV5Features.xml file, you'll notice that Forests have the "YieldNotAdditive" flag set; Oases, Rivers, Jungles, etc. modify the underlying terrain's benefits, but Forests and the various Natural Wonders explicitly replace the terrain with a constant bonus, so a Forest on Tundra produces the same as a Forest on Grassland.

An unforested Grassland tile gives 2 food, 0 production, but again, the Iron adds one and the mine would add a second production. So, since building the mine would chop the forest, you were going from 1/2/0 to 2/2/0. The tooltip only shows the difference between before and after, and so it writes "+1 food". You see this a lot when you get a Great Person and are trying to decide whether to build their custom Improvement; if the tile already has, say, a Farm, then the tooltip will say things like "-1 food, +4 research" to show that it's losing the effect of the previous improvement.

The really screwy part? If you'd had a lumbermill on the forest, then building the mine would SUBTRACT production. It'd say "+1 food, -1 production". This is actually part of why I was adding the later tech boosts to the various improvements; there was just too little motivation to place a lot of the resource-harvesting Improvements, since they would be completely outclassed by farms, trading posts, and lumbermills.

Okay, I have to say, playing this game on King now is HARD. I usually play Prince, since it's the baseline, but I figured I'd try something tougher. I've played through from the Ancient Era, now in the late Industrial, on a Small Continents map. There were really no wars until the early Renaissance, but it's been rough since then. Before the wars started, I managed to get 6 Wonders, my Songhai neighbor (same small continent) had 6, all in his capital, and the rest of the world had eight or nine combined. Unfortunately, this meant that conquering Gao immediately jumped me to the top of the score list and made the other civs all hate me.
But while I've now got a majority of the Wonders, I'm not the tech leader; Catherine just built the Apollo Program, and I'm still a couple techs away from getting to Rocketry. Thankfully, she's on the next island over, so once I get Bombers I'm going to wipe her out.
(NB: I'm using both of my mods, and the Tech Diffusion mod, nothing else.)

I've been battling happiness and gold issues all game long. And the AI, finally, isn't; they're actually building all of those city-improving buildings more often now, like Banks and Universities, so they're really competitive, but being that it's King they also have huge armies. (Thankfully, small continents make it hard for them to invade me.) That's actually a problem; I thought I had a decent military, but when the "pointy sticks" graph came up, not only was I basically at the bottom, Elizabeth had FIVE TIMES what I had, a truly massive army. (Which she then used to conquer Mongolia, as the only other major war to happen so far.) This causes the AI to always see you as "weak", and any little provocation will lead to war. So at one point, I had five civs at war with me (I'd just conquered my Songhai neighbor, and everyone else took it badly), and only managed to hold them off through some lucky geography. My city-state allies weren't so lucky; the ones with a lot of water around them could hold off armies almost indefinitely, but the few continental ones got wiped out quickly. It's definitely turned out to be advantageous to limit yourself to city-states on your own continent that you can help defend. (Although when I liberate those cities, I'll get a free ally back...)

The best part? So far, I haven't found anything to be actually broken. A few small balance tweaks, but no major changes needed.

One minor change I'm going to have to make is that Coal is just too important to leave to chance; in my game there were maybe three Coal deposits in the entire world, none of which were controlled by city-states (and neither I nor my Songhai neighbor had any). So I'm thinking that I'll put in a hard override on Coal, placing N additional small deposits where N is the number of civs. No guarantee that one will be near you, but it should be more available in general. Small deposits (3?) wouldn't be enough to output your entire empire in Factories, of course, but it'd help you develop your core cities.
In my game, that's been part of the problem; the only civ with a Coal supply was Russia, and she also has Aluminum. (I only managed to get a 7-deposit of Coal by settling a small island in the middle of nowhere.) So Catherine has plenty of factories going, and I'm not looking forward to the war I'm going to have to have with her in the Nuclear Era to keep her from launching first. I'm hoping the AI's ineptitude with aircraft will be the difference I need...

So, anyone else playing?

So, anyone else playing?

I am playing this mod exclusively and have been really enjoying it (but I think you already knew that :) ).


D

I am playing this mod exclusively and have been really enjoying it (but I think you already knew that :) ).


D

² I don't have as much time as Darsnan though. Got a sh*tload of assignments for the coming two weeks :(

Some comments on the mod v0.09, pics in attachment.

Emperor game, standard continents, Iroquois, Industrial start. Your two mods + tech diffusion.

*The freedom SP is a bit overpowered for your mod. It gives -50% unhappiness for specialist population. Since in the late eras, you'll use a LOT of specialists, this is a huge happiness discount. I unlocked it in the digital era and I went from +8 to +24! This enabled me to annex 4 cities! Maybe change it to -25% or -30%

*Plant forest doesn't work? When my worker plants a forest, the improvement reads 'plant forest', it gets a bugged trade post texture and you can't put a trade post/lumbermill on top of it. (see images)

*The AI sometimes doesn't luxuries and strategic resources, as you can see in one of my pics. Songhai built a city on an island next to oil, but never put an offshore platform on it :s

*The AI builds way too many anti-aircraft guns, it even uses it to attack cities. I only had 2 bomber at that time.

*The AI now makes a lot of money. ATM Japan is at >100gpt!

*The years don't match the tech tree. By 2055, I was still researching radar! I know this isn't a disaster but it isn't very aesthetically.

*The CS doesn't build any units except for one (1) worker. I've seen one CS with a jet fighter stationed though!

*Before China attacked me, we had an open borders agreement. When she declared war, it seems like the agreement is still in place, because whenever I attack a Chinese unit, they have a friendly territory +43% modifier. You can see the situation in my first pic. I had conquered Songhai, then China moved in a lot of units, then she declared war AND the units could stay in my territory!
When we made a peace deal, there were still Chinese units in my territory!

*The freedom SP is a bit overpowered for your mod... Maybe change it to -25% or -30%

While I agree with the general sentiment, there are two big problems:
1> What happens before you get to those eras? -50% might be overpowered in those later eras, when specialists are great, but -25% would be incredibly weak in the Renaissance when the policy first unlocks.
And more importantly,
2> You can't change it. It's not in the files as a number, it's a hard-coded "<HalfSpecialistUnhappiness>" entry. If I could easily work around this and add happiness per specialist, then I'd have the Empath already functioning.

*Plant forest doesn't work? When my worker plants a forest, the improvement reads 'plant forest', it gets a bugged trade post texture and you can't put a trade post/lumbermill on top of it. (see images)

It's the Manufactory texture, actually. If you're seeing that, then the terraform.lua file isn't being loaded correctly; that improvement you're seeing is the temporary one. (Builder places improvement, OnImprovementCreated notes the new improvement, removes it immediately, and places a Forest in the hex.)

It's almost definitely one of the following two things:
1> Both mods adjust InGame.xml. Depending on which order the mods load, this is bad. If it's not loading my InGame.xml, then you won't get any of the new stuff: no new Wonder effects, no spaceship bonuses, and no terraforming.
I'm trying to move away from using this file, because obviously this is a major compatibility issue, but the game's been flaky when you load LUA files through the Properties tabs.
(In my game I can terraform just fine, but this makes me think that the Tech Diffusion isn't actually working for me. That means I'll probably have to integrate this into my mod after all.)
2> You could have a file version issue. The only change to that file in recent versions was the addition of the Deep Mine in 0.09, so it's possible that for whatever reason, you're mixing a pre-0.09 LUA file with a 0.09 XML file or vice versa. So go into the MODS directory, and open up three files: Lua/Terraform/Terraform.lua, XML/Terrain/CIV5Improvements.xml, and XML/Units/CIV5Builds.xml. Each of these should mention the Deep Mine. If one of them doesn't, then that's your problem.

But it's almost definitely the InGame.xml. Unfortunately, this means your savegame is basically ruined. Even if there was some way to fix the incompatibility without crashing the game, those tiles now have that Manufactory-looking improvement on them and won't trigger the event. You'd have to build a new forest on those hexes all over again.

*The AI sometimes doesn't luxuries and strategic resources, as you can see in one of my pics. Songhai built a city on an island next to oil, but never put an offshore platform on it :s

Unfortunately, the AI just doesn't seem to handle aquatic resources well at all. If I increase the naval_tile_improvement flavor to make them prioritize this more, then they'll end up building Work Boats that they don't need.

*The AI builds way too many anti-aircraft guns, it even uses it to attack cities. I only had 2 bomber at that time.

This is one of the reasons I added the Plasma Artillery. The AI can upgrade all of its mobile SAMs and artillery into something that's not quite so specialized. The problem is that the AI just doesn't comprehend "just enough", except for Workers. So if you make the AA gun less desirable, then it'll never make any in the first place, but making it desirable makes them do what you saw. You can turn off the ability of the unit to attack altogether, but that makes it an incredibly weak unit in general.

This is also why I added the Stealth Ship, Leviathan, and Needlejet. Each takes a very specialized unit (sub, carrier, fighter) and crosses it with a more straightforward unit (destroyer, battleship, bomber). That way, the AI can upgrade his specialized things into something more useful, and likewise can have more of those specialized abilities from upgrading the other half.

*The AI now makes a lot of money. ATM Japan is at >100gpt!

I've actually seen this happen both ways. In my latest game the Iroquois had 180 gpt in the Industrial, while the Russians only had ~50; the Russians were better off, because they'd built all of the major city buildings. (Russia was the only civ with Coal, so they got Factories up quickly.)

Frankly, I'm glad to see it; in the vanilla game it's too easy to get a massive gold advantage over the AIs and just buy everything you need (especially city-state relationships). The gold overhaul a couple versions ago was a big part of this, but the AI didn't handle it very well. That's why I adjusted all of the flavors in 0.10.

Also, they're probably in a Golden Age, which helps. But still, it's a big improvement IMO.

*The years don't match the tech tree. By 2055, I was still researching radar! I know this isn't a disaster but it isn't very aesthetically.

This is a consequence of the late-era start. The "get up to speed" boost just doesn't make up for the fact that you haven't had cities around. So the techs and growth that would normally take 20 turns in an Ancient start takes you 40+, at least until you get your empire in place.

It's the same in the core game. In vanilla, an Industrial start puts you in the year 1700 (turn 250). 150 turns later is 1980, and in an Ancient start those 150 turns would get you 30+ techs (putting you into the Future Era), but an Industrial start would get maybe half that. In my mod, the Industrial start puts you in the year 1670 (turn 340), but the effect is about the same.
And the time scaling is fine for a "normal" start; I started in the Ancient Era, on King, and I was using Tanks in 1776.

I can tweak this a bit, simply by changing the starting turn for the Industrial from 340 down to, say, 300, but that becomes unrealistic in the other direction; instead of starting in the year 1670-1700, you'd start in 1300 or something.
The main reason this effect isn't as noticeable in vanilla is that the era multipliers scale so strongly that your Industrial start will be getting new techs three or four times faster than normal, and growing/building faster by a huge amount as well. This was obviously untenable for the future eras, so I had to get rid of it.

One possibility is just to increase the temporary food and tech boosts even further, to make getting up to speed that much faster. But this will never go away entirely.

*The CS doesn't build any units except for one (1) worker. I've seen one CS with a jet fighter stationed though!

The problem is just that they can't afford to maintain too much; with no trade routes, their income will be pathetic, and most of it will be tied up in building maintenance. I'm tweaking the CS multipliers, and that should help with this. Adding a base gold boost to the Palace would help, too, which is something I've been thinking about for a while.

*Before China attacked me, we had an open borders agreement. When she declared war, it seems like the agreement is still in place,

I've heard about something like this in vanilla games for the past few months, a bugged Open Borders that never goes away. I don't know what triggers it, but it's not my mod that causes it. (Especially bad once you have railroads.)

2> You can't change it. It's not in the files as a number, it's a hard-coded "<HalfSpecialistUnhappiness>" entry. If I could easily work around this and add happiness per specialist, then I'd have the Empath already functioning.
What about a gradual decrease each era?

But it's almost definitely the InGame.xml.

I guess it is. Deep mine is in the three files you listed.
The AI can upgrade all of its mobile SAMs and artillery into something that's not quite so specialized.
Great idea :)
prioritize
Question about your prioritizing logic: is it a value between 1 and 100? Because it seems you put a lot of values at 100. I suggest you put regular buildings at 100-99, wonders at 98-95 and some units at 90. When I completed my spaceship, I was the only one to have built the apollo program, Aztec finished apollo a few turns after the spaceship launch.

Some other stuff I noted:

*Dilithium is still very rare, a lot of the deposits aren't in reach of land :( Can you code anything like the colonies of Civ 3?

*The game crashed without warning :( Only the second time this happened to me.

*Planetary data link is a bit overpowered imo. It gave me around +80gpt! If the AI would get it, no problem. For a human player, too much

*Could you explain me how the AI handles upgrading units? I've never seen the AI upgrade a worker to combat engineer, or building a combat engineer. Maybe decrease worker flavour for the AI in a late game start, if possible?

*The paratrooper needs balancing vs the mech inf, and maybe the laser infantry is a bit too strong regarding cost-strenght (I know, degraded speed, but with railroad it's no big deal)

What about a gradual decrease each era?

Still just as problematic. It's easy to code up a Happiness boost each turn, and tie it to era or something, and I can add up the number of specialists at the end of each turn. But it won't be reflected in the UI, or at least it won't change dynamically when you slot or unslot a specialist. Again, this is the same problem I'm having with the Empath; it's not that I can't program in Happiness, but it won't be in a user-friendly way at all.

Question about your prioritizing logic: is it a value between 1 and 100? Because it seems you put a lot of values at 100.

No, it's not between 1 and 100, although that's really the practical range. In the core game, the spaceship parts were at 150, for instance, and you can put flavors as negative values. (And it's definitely not "my" logic.)

The way the game works is that it takes all of the possible options for something, adds the flavor rating for each, adds a random number to each, and then skews based on that. So if you've got three possible things to build, one with Flavor of 50, one with Flavor of 100, and one with 150, then the game might randomize those to 42, 107, and 141. But pretend that it didn't. The game would add those together and say that it has a 50/300 = 16.7% chance of picking the first option, a 33% chance of the second, and a 50% of the third.
This is also skewed by the leader priorities. So the math isn't simple. Buildings tend to go on a 100-point scale, with 100s meaning "must build soon", but it's not absolute. Technologies, on the other hand, go on a 10-point scale.

As for what values I use, almost nothing has a Flavor of 100. Buildings and Wonders all have a flavor of 50 in 0.09 (barring those three with bugged values); in 0.10 I increased the wonder flavors for the new content to 60/70/80 for Digital/Fusion/Nanotech world wonders, 10 less for national wonders. The only things with a 100 would be "essential" buildings: the Factory and the Genejack Factory, specifically.

When I completed my spaceship, I was the only one to have built the apollo program, Aztec finished apollo a few turns after the spaceship launch.

That means you just had a massive tech advantage on them. I've had the reverse experience; the AIs go for the Apollo disturbingly fast once they get the tech, despite the fact that I'd lowered the Flavor to 50. I might raise it back up a bit, but not to its original value; over 100, and the AI will build it at all costs, which can be crippling at the wrong times for something that doesn't directly lead to the game ending.

*Dilithium is still very rare, a lot of the deposits aren't in reach of land :( Can you code anything like the colonies of Civ 3?

Can you provide a screenshot? Water resources are supposed to only spawn on "shallow" tiles, which by definition have to be within 3 hexes of land. Being within reach of your cities, that's tougher. And there should be ~2 deposits per civilization on the map, so is it just that they're not in convenient locations for you?

As for colonies, probably not. One solution here might be to set the maximum border growth to 6 hexes instead of 5, but it'll still preferentially claim nearby tiles so that won't help much.

Part of the problem is still the late-era start. Your borders just won't have time to grow to cover a lot of water; your first few claimed tiles will all be land-based. If you'd started in the Ancient, though, the chance is much greater that you'd have plenty of water claimed.

I'm open to suggestions on how to change this. One possibility was to allow Dilithium to spawn in Lake tiles, even if that meant creating new lake tiles just for this purpose. The problem is, if a city isn't on the shore, it can't make a work boat to go get the resource. I'm trying to fix the all-terrain promotion so that Formers can move over both land and sea, but that's a long way off (and it's a T22 unit).

*The game crashed without warning :( Only the second time this happened to me.

The only times I get crashes any more are when trying to load a savegame, but this could tie back to the previous InGame.xml problem; if it's trying to run one of my new routines (such as if one of the Wonders with custom effects was built) and it didn't load the .lua, I'm not sure what would happen.

*Planetary data link is a bit overpowered imo. It gave me around +80gpt! If the AI would get it, no problem. For a human player, too much

I'm assuming you mean Planetary Transit System, since the datalinks is a national wonder that isn't money-related. I'll look at the value again, but realize that it's the same basic effect as a previous Wonder (Macchu Picchu?); granted, that one has a terrain limitation, but still.
One thing I've been thinking of is to toss that effect entirely; too many Digital Era wonders were money-related as it is. One possibility was a diplomatic benefit; for instance, I'm in the process of changing the Empath Guild from being "+1 UN vote" into "gain +1 influence with each city-state every turn, to a max of 60", and adding something similar to the UN for major civs in addition to its +1 vote. So I could do something similar for the Transit System.

*Could you explain me how the AI handles upgrading units? I've never seen the AI upgrade a worker to combat engineer, or building a combat engineer. Maybe decrease worker flavour for the AI in a late game start, if possible?

I've definitely seen the AI upgrade to workers into combat engineers. The problem is that it's not a cheap upgrade, and the Flavor difference between the two units isn't huge, so it's a low priority behind upgrading all those Riflemen into Infantry and so on. If I increase the Flavor of the later worker units, then it starts building too many Combat Engineers (and I'd have to do the same to the Labor Mech down the road). And there's no easy way to set Flavor values based on start era or current era. (It CAN be done, but not easily.)

*The paratrooper needs balancing vs the mech inf, and maybe the laser infantry is a bit too strong regarding cost-strenght (I know, degraded speed, but with railroad it's no big deal)

The Paratrooper might need a small strength decrease, since I'd decreased the Mech Infantry, but to me the speed difference is crippling. 2 movement versus 4 is a HUGE deal... when you attack. Thanks to the -40% city attack penalty the armor units get, a Mech Infantry is as effective as a Modern Armor when attacking an enemy city, and the ability to move 4 means you can move in from outside the city's range. A Paratrooper or Laser Infantry just can't do that.

In most games, I never bothered with a Paratrooper at all. Likewise, Laser Infantry are meant for two purposes: cheap defense, and massed attack waves. Neither of these is really something the player does often, but the AI does. I'd be willing to drop the Paratrooper power, but only if they're given something else to compensate, because right now there's too little reason to make one.

Can you provide a screenshot?
I'll post a good one later. For now, I have taken an old screenshot, you can see there's a lot of shallow water with only barely habitable land. A lot of dilithium sources are just unreachable. :( Now I pay more attention to it, it's probably just a bad roll. On the coast of my continent, there's only one deposit, far off the shore.
Planetary Transit System
Sorry, that's what I meant. Maybe you could add a few requirements, like a spaceship factory? Still, +33% is too much in late era. I guess the bonus would be even more overpowered with an early-era start!
I've definitely seen the AI upgrade to workers into combat engineers. The problem is that it's not a cheap upgrade
215gp is definately a lot! I even considered not upgrading for a while. Maybe decrease it to about 150?
Paratrooper
I use them to get past chokepoints or to get on islands, 2 or 3 at the same time. They're not that expensive, I usually build some in my weaker production cities. An increased paradrop range could do the trick :)

NOTE: For whatever reason, this morning's big patch screwed SOMETHING up. I can't load a savegame made pre-patch, which was really annoying as I'd been playing all the way through from the ancient era and was just finally taking control... this is why I hate Steam, the default should be to ask before applying a patch. Now I'm going to have to start over, and I go on vacation this weekend...

And in regards to that patch, several of the changes they made remove the need for several of the changes I'd made for myself. For instance, they changed cities to have 25 HP and regenerate 2/turn, exactly the same as my mod. So I'm going to have to go back and see which of my changes can be removed.
Unfortunately, they actually change some things for the worse, IMO; while they removed the specialist slots from the Library, they added more to the Observatory and Research Lab.

But once we figure out what exactly the new GameEvents system can do...

I'll post a good one later. For now, I have taken an old screenshot, you can see there's a lot of shallow water with only barely habitable land. A lot of dilithium sources are just unreachable. :( Now I pay more attention to it, it's probably just a bad roll. On the coast of my continent, there's only one deposit, far off the shore.

I've looked into this, now that my old savegame is doomed, and what I found was this: I'd been using "coast_list" for the possible hexes for dilithium, which is the same list used to place Oil in water. But there's also a "coast_next_to_land_list" that explicitly only allows for hexes directly adjacent to land. I tried changing it to that, which SHOULD force the dilithium to be near shore.

Unfortunately, the patch broke ModBuddy, so I can't build a new version of the mod. And apparently Firaxis also removed a couple of the Lua stubs that are essential for certain parts of these mods. So I'm not happy in general.

Still, +33% is too much in late era. I guess the bonus would be even more overpowered with an early-era start!

I'll probably drop both PTS and the Bulk Matter Transmitter to 25%, at first. I could give these some secondary effect to justify dropping it even further, but frankly, I WANT this effect to be a decent size. And remember, there are others: the Planetary Energy Grid adds a flat +10% to gold, for instance, which could be WAY larger. I sort of wanted a spectrum of bonuses; the Merchant Exchange is massive +gold for small empires (or one-city challenges), the PTS is better for really large empires, and the energy grid is sort of in between.

215gp is definately a lot! I even considered not upgrading for a while. Maybe decrease it to about 150?

I'll probably decrease the Combat Engineer's base cost a little, which should drastically reduce the upgrade cost, and I'll play with the flavors a bit. But I want to keep an eye out for the AI overproducing these things then.

An increased paradrop range could do the trick :)

I think I'll do that; a range of 5 just seemed extremely limiting, it wasn't quite enough to cross most bodies of water. Probably 7 now, but I'll have to test that.
One thing I was thinking of: currently, the Scout upgrades to the Scout Powersuit (WAY too big of a gap), while the Paratrooper upgrades to the Assault Powersuit (as do the Laser Infantry). So if I drop the Paratrooper power below that of the Scout Powersuit, I can just have it be an intermediate step in that chain instead. Which means I can give it +1 visibility, too, to justify a slightly lower combat power.

But once we figure out what exactly the new GameEvents system can do...

Not to sound dumb (I'm at work right now), but where is this located?



Unfortunately, the patch broke ModBuddy, so I can't build a new version of the mod.

Really!?! Well that really bites - I was planning on re-genning my mod this evening. Guess thats out now. And it probably means ModBuddy won't be fixed until the next patch, which won't be till after the new year, meaning the holidays are going to be a waste in regards to modding. Thats really bad! :cringe:

D

Not to sound dumb (I'm at work right now), but where is this located?

In the patch notes!

Honestly, I have no idea where this is or how it's implemented. It sounds like it's an expansion of the Events system, so that you can trigger off more things, but until there's some real documentation on this, it's going to be slow.

Really!?! Well that really bites - I was planning on re-genning my mod this evening.

It took a couple tries reloading ModBuddy, but it does work now. No idea why it was failing. So you should be okay, barring some getting-up-to-speed issues.

The bigger problem is that nothing else works. I tried a very quick Transcendence-era start, to see if the coast_next_to_land_list thing solved my Dilithium headaches, and I very quickly ran into two problems:
1> It wasn't placing my new resources at all, which means there's probably something else wrong with AssignStartingPlots. I didn't have FireTuner running at the time, so it might be simple to fix when I get home tonight.
2> None of the new icon atlases loaded. It kept saying it couldn't read the .dds files, even though they're all in the same places as before. Opening a city screen would give you hundreds of these errors (one per building icon it failed to load), so it's unplayable until I figure out what went wrong.

I expect things of this sort with a major patch, but it's disheartening to see how many things that previously worked now don't. The SaveUtils functions used for all the resource creation require Lua functions that were apparently removed in this patch, so I'm not sure if I CAN get it back to the state it was in before.

I leave for vacation on Sunday evening, and I'm intending to have a new, stable version out by then, since I won't have access to my modding tools until the new year (but I'll have occasional access to this board, so feel free to keep giving feedback). Functionally it probably won't be much more than repair work, although I think I've figured out how to get the Transcendence Victory to work how I want so I'll try to fit that in. But my top priority after the patch fixes is removing the need for InGame.xml, to help with compatibility with other mods.

It took a couple tries reloading ModBuddy, but it does work now. No idea why it was failing.

Apparently theres an SDK update as well - thats probably what flumoxed you on the first attempt at ModBuddy (my first attempt ended with the program becoming unresponsive).

Problems I am seeing with your mod:

1. In the "3 problems" pic there are literally 3 problems: 1) my old friend the black marsh of death is back, 2) the highlighted unit doesn't agree with the icon, and 3) there are no options for the unit.

2. The second pic is after I got out of the game to the main menu, then back in. Now there are no options and no icon for the selected unit.

D

Problems I am seeing with your mod:

At least you can get that far. It doesn't work at all for me; obviously, something significant has changed that's breaking the code in several places. (And I know for a fact that the resource-generation logic now won't work, so no more resources from the Energy Bank, Planetary Datalinks, etc.)

Tonight I'll try to debug as much as I can with FireTuner and print statements, but I'm really not expecting to get the mod working again within the next few days; I really hope I can get it at least mostly functional by this weekend, but that'll depend on how quickly people figure out fixes for all the things Firaxis broke.

It's very annoying; what I had yesterday wasn't pretty, but it WORKED, and the balance seemed pretty good. Now, it's nonfunctional and the balance is totally screwed up. (Seriously, have you seen the new yields for working Natural Wonders? One of them adds +10 Happiness now! On the bright side, that's a good indication that I can get the Monolith and possibly the Empath to do what I'd wanted all along.)

I'm really not expecting to get the mod working again within the next few days; I really hope I can get it at least mostly functional by this weekend, but that'll depend on how quickly people figure out fixes for all the things Firaxis broke.

Looking at this issue from a broader perspective, why I see the next patch doing roughly the same thing (maybe not as broad in regards to the amount of damage, but in general breaking things that worked before). Considering that it is the holidays and you plan on taking a couple (much deserved) weeks off from this mod, do you think it better to just wait till the next patch comes out and start fresh at that point?

On a sort of bright side, why this event (i.e. the patch breaking this mod) is going to give me an excuse to sit down and play with the AI's and C-S in situ and get a good idea in the direction that Firaxis is going with these items. From there I'll probably chunk out my mod and post it. Do you think it beneficial at all for me to post my mod in your thread, or do you think it would be too confusing for people? It is my intent to build my mod off of yours: it deals almost exclusively with the Barbs and C-S and making them more playable (or a variant of what is considered "playable") in the future using your mod. That and the thought that I am dealing more with aesthetics, whereas yours is dealing with game mechanics. When you get the chance please let me know so I can start planning accordingly.

D

Status update:

I've got it to where the DDS doesn't give errors any more, but it doesn't seem to be loading any of the modified Lua files. (This is easiest to see in the tech tree; all of the extra icons I'd added aren't there.) Still don't know why.

I've also updated a lot of the content to take into account the balance changes the patch made. Most of these were minor, but some were huge.

For instance, Fundamentalist used to reduce the culture needed to expand borders by 25%, and I'd actually boosted it to 50% right before the patch. Then they go and change one of the other policies (Landed Elite) to give -67% to the same variable, which had previously been unused. So I completely changed Fundamentalist: now, it gives each Wonder +5 culture per turn. I'm a bit worried about the balance (if you're in a runaway tech victory and are sweeping all of the Wonders...), but I like the general flavor.
It makes having all of those early-game religious-style Wonders actually be valuable again; in my last game I conquered Songhai, whose capital had 6 Wonders. At first I thought this was great, but then I looked closer: Oracle, Hanging Gardens, Taj Mahal... four of the six wonders had one-shot effects that were useless to someone who conquered. So all I was getting was a measly 1 culture and 1 GPP. But with this policy, your central cities (and any capitals you conquer) would be far more valuable, culturally.

One other balance change I'd like some feedback on: to further differentiate Psi units from normal ones, I thought up something. There's an Adjacent bonus (reduced to +10% in the patch), which can be modified in promotions (such as the Laser Infantry getting an additional +20% when adjacent to an ally unit). I was thinking of going NEGATIVE on this, sort of a "Loner" promotion: Psi units would get -25% if adjacent to any ally unit (but I'd boost their power by ~10% to compensate).
The reason for this is that it makes Barbarian psi units (which are nearly always alone) more dangerous, and fits their player roles as an unsupported raider/scout much better. And thematically I thought about the Nessus Worm: Godzilla wasn't accompanied by supporting tanks and such (although Mechagodzilla often was!).

Thoughts? My big problem is just that Psi units aren't desirable at the moment; they're not part of any standard upgrade chains, require a tech chain that tends to be delayed a bit by the spaceship launches, and (other than Nessie) aren't strong enough to really be desirable to work for. So I'm trying to find ways to make them better, and a power boost would definitely do that.

Considering that it is the holidays and you plan on taking a couple (much deserved) weeks off from this mod, do you think it better to just wait till the next patch comes out and start fresh at that point?

No, because I don't expect future patches to be NEARLY so extensive. And it's not just the number of changes made, it's the types. They added a bunch of new XML schema, which isn't something that's going to happen often, but more importantly they changed how certain parts work on a fundamental level. (Like the VFS thing for DDS files.) That won't happen in most patches, so the repair job for most patches would be small.

While I won't have access to ModBuddy or the game itself, I'll still have access to these boards during the holidays, so I can continue some of the discussions. Obviously, it'd help if there was a semi-working version for people to discuss; I do NOT want to leave a completely broken mod file at the top of the thread for two weeks, because what happens if some new person downloads it without knowing about these problems?
(This actually makes me glad I never uploaded the mod to the official server. Who knows how many people are downloading nonfunctional mods as we speak.)

Do you think it beneficial at all for me to post my mod in your thread, or do you think it would be too confusing for people?

I'd say make your own thread. The fact is, having a 9-page mod thread that's basically a conversation between three or four people is a BIG turn-off for the casual reader, so you wouldn't get much feedback. And any files you attach that don't get placed in the first post will be lost in the long term.
You don't have to frame it as just "here's my mod". It could start off a thread that discusses the possible ways to make city-states and barbarians more playable, and uses your mod (and its link to mine) as a baseline for discussion. In that thread make a link to this one (especially if you never test your own mod without mine present any more), and in this one make a link to your thread every time you update the files.

This assumes that your mod doesn't explicitly require mine. If it does, then that's a whole other issue.

Status Update again:

I've fixed MOST of the patch-related incompatibilities. The Lua now loads correctly (and in fact I can remove InGame.xml, so the primary compatibility issue goes away). There are three main issues that keep this mod from working:

1> The save/load commands were removed from ScriptData. This only affects the resources created by various buildings, but I was planning to do more with it.
Official word from 2K is that they removed it to make way for a newer and better system, but then didn't actually upload the newer and better one while still removing the old and inferior setup. (Stupid.) They've said they'll put the old system back in, but who knows when that'll happen. So, I'm not going to fix this myself; as soon as they do a hotfix/patch it'll fix itself, but until then, it won't work.
2> The game doesn't seem to be doing the custom notifications correctly any more. This leads to a game freeze. I'll try to figure this out tonight.
3> There's a strange cache issue. No matter what I do, certain XML files are being ignored in favor of versions I had three months ago. The only one I'm sure of is CIV5GameTextInfos2.xml, which sets the unit class labels; "Psi Unit", "Titan Unit", and "Energy Unit" work fine, but the two newer ones (Multirole and Orbital) aren't being loaded correctly. And editing the ones that work does nothing; I tried misspelling Energy and it didn't change what was displayed. So there must be some way the game is accessing the old version of this file, because I've confirmed that the version in my mod directory (and the entry in .modinfo) are correct. Unless I find out how to fix that, I'm going to delete the file altogether, moving its entries into one of the others (I tested that last night on a couple and it worked).

My goal is to upload one last pre-vacation version tomorrow night. It still won't WORK, per se, but it'll only be waiting on the load/save fix. And who knows? By the time I get back, some of the artwork might be done! (I'll be back on the 1st, but then leave again from the 9th-14th for a business trip, so there'll only be one or MAYBE two versions between this weekend and the middle of January.)

There were a lot of little things that I'd had to fix. For instance, the way action icons are handled now is slightly different (less hard-coded), so the tech tree buttons weren't correct, which in turn broke the entire tech tree display. (And I think that's the problem with the custom notifications; it's not loading the icons correctly any more. But I can fix that.)

damn,
i just finally finished a hellish surprise streak of 13 workdays + the occasional overtime lasting late into the night.

As i'm reading here to bring me up to date, i see the damaging result of the patch...
i'll update the mod when you'll leave for vacations, in order to try and play during mine.

good luck on fixing things !

Just wanted to say that I was enjoying the heck out of the mod until the patch went and broke it, here's hoping the fixes are done soon for my own selfish enjoyment.

here's hoping the fixes are done soon for my own selfish enjoyment.

Well, from the sound of it, they're not going to do a quick hotfix to restore the save/load functionality. So the building resource generation logic just won't work until then. Other than that, the only truly broken thing I have is the custom notification logic (based on Whys' mod); for whatever reason it's just not working. I'm still trying to debug that, but it may or may not be fixed by tomorrow. (My flight's in the afternoon.)

But the rest is playable, and I've added quite a bit of new stuff. For instance, the Transcendence victory is now a bit different: it starts a 20-turn timer, but immediately puts everyone into permanent war with you, starts draining your cities of one population per turn, and puts you into Anarchy.
Anarchy stops your science acquisition, which isn't really important since you'll have researched everything, but more importantly, it acts as a very convenient timer to use in place of a saved variable. Building the wonder gives you 120 turns of anarchy, and when it gets down to 100, you win. (I need it to be +100 so that I can determine when to GIVE the 20 turns of anarchy, without it being abuseable by a player who knows to create Anarchy some other way.) Since there's really not much else that adds Anarchy, it's not a balance problem for the AI.
The beauty of this is that I can easily add a GP ability that reduces Anarchy, and that's how you knock extra turns off the timer. The AI won't handle that correctly, though, but oh well. Even without that, it's 20 turns of trying to hold off all the other civs, without being able to produce anything and with your cities' populations steadily dwindling (which'd kill your trade income).
(Strangeness: the Game:SetWinner() function's arguments don't match what the wiki says, and it won't use the right graphic for the Transcendence win, but since I intend to replace that anyway, no big deal.)

So I'll upload a new version tonight or tomorrow morning, and it SHOULD be stable enough to test while I'm gone. It won't work the way I really want it to, but at least it shouldn't crash. I could upload something right now, but it's not QUITE stable yet and I want one last crack at fixing the notifications. (These MIGHT be responsible for some of the other problems I'm still seeing.)

On the upside, the patch added quite a few very useful new features to the existing XML. For instance:
> You can flag whether a unit will show up in the Civilopedia. VERY useful if you have two or three versions of a single unit, with different stats/requirements but the same name. (Like the "Wild" psi units I added.)
> For buildings, there's now "Happiness" and "Unmodded Happiness". The regular Happiness caps at +1/population now, and is used for the Colosseum and such, while Unmodded Happiness has no cap and is used for the various +happy wonders and such.
So I changed the Aqueduct, Sewer System, and Recycling Center's +1 happiness into Unmodded, because the whole point is that you build these to exceed the current limits of a city. But I also changed the Centauri Preserve's +2 to unmodded as well, just to make it interesting. It's a nice dynamic, as a result.
> They added the "LostWithUpgrade" promotion flag, so that the "must set up to attack" promotion can be removed, but I went further and added it to every negative promotion. This had been killing the Needlejet's balance; if you upgraded it from a Fighter it'd have the "Weak Ranged" weakness and be useless for ground attacks, if you upgraded from a Bomber it'd have Naval Penalty. I didn't put either of these on the Needlejet because it'd cripple you to have both if you upgraded from the wrong one, but that meant that newly-made Needlejets were way too good.
There were others; Cavalry had a couple penalties, and now that those upgrade to Tanks they'd carry over. Who ever heard of a tank with a penalty against mounted units?
> There's always been a FreePromotion tag for buildings, used for those wonders that give a promotion to every eligible unit. But they've now added a RemoveFreePromotion tag as well. At first I couldn't figure out why you'd want that, but then I realized a couple possibilities:
1> Sequential buildings. Building A gives a weak promotion (say, +5% to all combat). Building B, which requires A, wants to add another 5%. Previously, you'd have to create a second +5% promotion and give it as well, which'd mean that the unit would now have two icons. But this way, you have B remove A's promotion and give a single +10% promotion. And it's not just about aesthetics; maybe A gives +10% vs one unit type while B expands that to be a flat +10%.
2> Those negative promotions. Imagine a Wonder that removes the "must set up" promotion from all siege units, or that removes the naval penalty from your bombers, or the vision penalty from tanks.

There are quite a few things like these. So, it'll be interesting to see what can be added to the game now. But the real question is still the GameEvents system; with a new event like "OnBuildingCreated" we could do SO much more.

Thanks, I tried a few other "future" mods out there since the bug, but frankly, I think I prefer your work the most, so I am just gonna wait around till your fix is completed, and then start it up again. Appreciate all your work.

Okay, here goes.

I've tried to adjust to the big patch as much as I can. This version isn't quite as playable as the previous one, although it's got a couple neat little extras like I've mentioned previously.

Custom Notifications are still broken; this mainly affects the Nethack Terminus (since that's its primary function) although it also makes it hard to know what's going on with the spaceship, transcendence, and several other custom wonders.

Resource creation is completely broken until Firaxis patches again. If they do that while I'm on vacation, it SHOULD immediately start working again, assuming they don't break something else. This means that the Planetary Datalinks and Clinical Immortality don't generate their custom Luxury resources, and buildings like the Energy Bank and Fusion Lab won't generate strategics. I'm not going to try rebalancing these buildings around this bug; once it's fixed they'll be back to normal, but for now, know that they're a bit weak.

Other than that, I THINK I caught all of the bugs introduced by the patch. If you find one I missed, well, I won't be able to fix it until January; you could try patching the code yourself, of course.

So here it is.
v.0.11, dated 12/19/10
(Patch fixes):
> (Crazy Spatz) Since the official patch changed the city HP/regen to 25/2 from 20/1 (the exact same that I did), there was no reason to keep my change.
> (Crazy Spatz) Since the patch reduced the penalty for flat land from –33% to –10%, my change to –20% wasn’t needed.
> (Crazy Spatz) Since the patch increased the City Strength Tech Exponent from 1.8 to 2.0, I decreased the Tech Multiplier from 4 to 3 (it’s 2 in the core game).
> (Crazy Spatz) Since the patch increased the City Growth Multiplier to 8, there was no need for me to do the same.
> (Crazy Spatz) Since the Forbidden Palace was reduced to –25%, there was no need for me to do the same.
> (Crazy Spatz) Since the Bomber and B17 now upgrade to the Stealth Bomber, there was no need for me to do the same.
> (Crazy Spatz) Since Cavalry now upgrade to Tanks, there’s no need for my previous patch, which upgraded them to Gunships.
> (Crazy Spatz) Since Tradition’s effect was changed from +2 food to +50% growth, there was no need for my fix.
In other words, a lot of what they patched were the exact same things I'd changed. Kind of makes you wonder...

(Non-patch-related changes)
> (Crazy Spatz) Because of their previously altered effects, I’ve changed the cost of the Temple and Colosseum from 120 and 150 to 90 and 180, respectively. (The Temple change also includes the Mud Pyramid Mosque and Burial Tomb UBs.)
> (Crazy Spatz) The cost of the Stock Exchange was reduced from 650 to 500. It cost more than most Nuclear Era buildings before, despite coming a couple eras earlier, and this was crippling to the AI.
> (Crazy Spatz) The Hospital no longer gives +2 research; instead, it now makes units in this city heal twice as fast as normal, in addition to its 20% food storage.
> (Crazy Spatz) The Medical Lab no longer gives a flat +5 research; instead, it gives +10% to research (which’ll usually be considerably less since it’s additive to the research buildings) in addition to the 20% food storage.
> (Crazy Spatz) Most of the Flavor modifications made in the previous patch were put in the Content mod, when they should have been in the Balance mod (where the actual changes to the buildings were made) These were moved to the correct location; anyone playing with both mods will see no difference.
> (Crazy Spatz) The +1 Happiness from the Aqueduct, Sewer System, and Recycling Center were also changed to UnmoddedHappiness. The whole point of these buildings is to help with cities that are capped out in various ways, so it seemed appropriate.

> The Transcendence Victory now uses a 20-turn timer; in the absence of a working save system, it instead puts you into Anarchy for those 20 turns (no science output, no production, no income) AND shrinks your cities by 1 population per turn (minimum size 1). After 20 turns, you win. (So anything that adds more Anarchy would delay your win. I’ll have the GPs sacrifice to subtract anarchy, but that’s not ready yet.) Also, completing the Project causes everyone to declare war on you, since it’s their last chance to avoid a loss.
(Note: currently there’s nothing stopping you with making peace after a couple turns. I’m going to fix that eventually, but try not to abuse it.)
> The various .lua files are now loaded through the content tab, so there’s no need for InGame.xml any more. This should greatly help with compatibility issues.
> Dilithium was changed from “coast_list” (meaning any shallow water) to “coast_next_to_land_list” (explicitly adjacent to shore). This now puts all Dilithium deposits within easy reach of land, although little 1-hex polar islands still count as “land”, so it's still possible to have it be in places you can't easily reach.
> The Planet Buster’s range was increased to 25 (was 15) to match the increase in the Nuclear Missile’s range. Its Flavors were also adjusted to include the new Nuke flavor, and it now requires the Manhattan Project. (I'm tempted to just give it worldwide range, but I think that'd overlap too much with the orbital weapons.)
> The Subspace Generator’s primary flavor was changed to Nuke.
> The Plasma Artillery added AntiAir flavor
> The “Total Evasion” promotion now adds a –100 interception damage modifier in addition to the evasion increase. This SHOULD make the units entirely immune to interception damage, which is what I'd wanted; the only remaining issue is that the defender will waste an interception on a unit he can't hurt.
> Vertol, Skimmer, Chiron Locusts, and Gravtank now default to the Fast Attack AI.
> The Psi, Energy, and Titan unit types gain the Defensive Embarkation promotion when everyone else does.
> The Happiness boost from the Human Genome Project, Longevity Vaccine, and Virtual World wonders was switched to the new UnmoddedHappiness, which doesn’t cap at city size. The Centauri Preserve’s +2 was also changed this way, just to make it a bit more unique.
> Since Landed Elite’s effect was changed to basically the same as Fundamentalist (although much stronger than mine), Fundamentalist is now changed to “+5 culture per Wonder per turn”. (There’s a ReligionProductionModifier, which’d be perfect thematically, but there’s no Religion in the game.)
> None of the new Policies had flavors before, so those are now added, and the Planned Economy flavor has been changed to match its new effect. The ten new policies have total Flavors of 30 (all previous policies were 20) to encourage the AI to take them when available in preference to the lower policies.
> The Free Market policy’s effect is doubled; it now gives double influence when completing a mission, instead of +50%.
> Deleted TechTree.xml, SocialPolicyPopup.xml, and TopPanel.xml from the mod; in each case, I had edited the Lua file but not the associated XML, so there was no need to keep the XML around.
> Deleted TechHelpInclude.lua, since I hadn’t edited it.
> The World Peace event for building the spaceship now ensures the other civ is still alive before trying to make peace with them.
> All existing negative promotions (sight penalty, naval penalty, mounted penalty, etc.) now have the new “LostWithUpgrade” flag set to True. If you upgrade units with these into units that don’t have that drawback, the drawbacks go away. (Just like how “must set up before attacking” now goes away for artillery.)
Several other modders have also decided to remove the POSITIVE promotions, so that you don't have Riflemen getting the Pikemen bonus against mounted units and such. Personally, I'm okay with keeping most of these, as it's a good incentive to keep old units around, and most of these benefits don't stay useful for much longer. The only real exception is the scout that upgrades to archer types from a Ruins...
> Needlejets (and their Secondhand variants) now get the Naval Penalty drawback promotion (-50% vs naval units). I’d left this off previously because when stacked with the Weak Ranged drawback of the fighters that would upgrade into them, they’d be pathetically weak.
> The Cyborg Factory’s promotion has now changed. Instead of giving the March promotion (which allowed infantry units to heal when taking other actions but didn’t affect non-infantry and is a normal, selectable promotion), it now gives a custom promotion that increases the healing rate of any unit by 2 whenever it would heal normally. (So it won’t really be like regeneration unless you ALSO take the March/Repair/Air Repair sorts of promotions. Psi units get the equivalent of March automatically, so this is really good for them.)
> The Spaceship Factory was improved further; now, its production bonus for Titan and Orbital units is +50% (was +25%), and the building also adds a flat +10% production to ANY construction in this city. I needed to justify the high cost and Aluminum somehow.
> Several basic building modifiers that were in the Content mod were moved over to the Balance mod: the Palace air defense bonus, the Broadcast Tower’s reduction to 50%, and the Laboratory’s reduction to 50%.
> All Psi units (Mind Worms, Isle of the Deep, Chiron Locusts, Nessus Worm) now get a –25% penalty when adjacent to an ally, but I’ve boosted their base power levels a bit to compensate (Mind Worm 40->45, Isle 40/90->45/100, Chiron stayed at 60 but went from 5 move to 6, and Nessus went from 120 to 130). This makes them better raider units, and more dangerous for Barbarians to use, without skewing the balance too badly.
> The Paratrooper (Nuclear era unit) was decreased from 40 strength to 35, but gains the Sentry promotion (+1 visibility). The Scout now upgrades to the Paratrooper, who in turn upgrades to the Scout Powersuit.
> The Paradrop promotion (used by the Paratrooper, Scout Powersuit, and Assault Powersuit) is range 6 instead of 5. Based on my playtesting, it was just too difficult to use paradrop to get across narrow bodies of water into a decent position. That 1 hex makes a difference.
> The Scout Powersuit’s strength was increased from 40 to 50. The +50% vs Gunpowder units just wasn’t enough to make them survivable before, and now that they're the upgrade of the Paratrooper they needed a bit more.
> The “wild” Psi units now have “ShowInPedia” set to false, and they now use the same text string as the default units. This makes them harder to tell from the player-controlled versions, although it'll still say "Barbarian Mind Worms" and such (for now). The city-state “Secondhand” units still show in the Civilopedia, because their stats differ slightly from the normal units’. The Psi units will still say what empire owns them. My ultimate goal is to just have them say "a Mind Worm" so that you can't tell who owns them, sort of like Privateers in earlier Civ games.
> The Paper Maker (Chinese Library replacement), Longhouse (Iroquois Workshop replacement), and Wat (Siamese University replacement) are now given for free at the same eras as their normal counterparts, if you start in a later era. The only UBs that aren’t given for free now in late-era starts are the Mughal Fort, Krepost, and Floating Gardens, because their normal counterparts aren’t given for free. (In the Krepost’s case, they used to be but I changed that.)
> Apollo Program’s Flavor was changed back up to 100 (was 50, was originally 150 in vanilla) to make the AI prioritize it a bit more once it has the Rocketry tech.
> The game will automatically add an additional (N/2) small (3-unit) deposits of Coal to hill tiles, where N is the number of players. This might be too many. I could use some feedback; start a Transcendence-Era game to see all resources, and that'll give you an idea of how common they are.
> Instead of the nonfunctional +1 UN vote, the Empath Guild now improves your relationship with all city-states by 1.5 per turn if you’re enemies or not friends, 1.0 if you’re friends and not already allied with them, and 0.5 per turn if you are their ally. For everyone other than Greece this will only mostly offset the normal decay for non-allies.

Now, before I forget, there's one thing I've been tossing around that I really want some feedback on.

I'm thinking of adding a few more techs.

Yes, really. Specifically, 2-4 of the following; Social Psychology, Ethical Calculus, Intellectual Integrity, and/or Cyberethics. I'm not planning on adding any new buildings, units, etc. at these techs, just moving some of the existing things to them.
(Correction: I AM going to add one new unit: the Colony Pod. Upgrade of Settler: 3 MP, can defend itself pretty well, and can paradrop 6 hexes. But other than that, it's all old stuff.)

There are a few reasons for this:
1> The techs in the Digital Era are getting a bit too crowded. My guideline is "3 things per tech", with a "thing" being a Wonder, Unit, terrain improvement yield change, rule change, new promotion, or new policy. But a few techs in the Digital and early Fusion now have 4, and even the Nuclear Era techs are getting a bit crowded.
2> The current techs might be too science-y, not enough fiction-y. While I like the futuristicity (and if that's not a word, then it darn well should be) of the current setup, a couple of these wouldn't hurt that too badly. While Civ4 had plenty of "social" techs related to religion, most of those seem to have been removed, but you get strange ones like Globalization in there still.
(Besides, I'd like to make a Psychohistory joke in the Civilopedia entries for one of these. I realized that I'm appallingly short on Asimov references in the current lore, although I still haven't written the Wonder civilopedia entries yet.)
3> This gives me a good way to rearrange a few of the items I'm not happy with. There were a few items I put at their current techs for balance reasons, but flavor-wise were kind of a stretch. (Habitation Domes at Subatomic Alloys, putting both Citizen's Defense Force and Command Nexus at the same Neural Grafting tech, that sort of thing.) And a few of the existing buildings aren't really balanced at their current locations; as several people have noted, while the top of the tree is mostly happiness, culture, and growth, the bottom is all military-oriented, and it's just a bit TOO military-oriented. So if I can move a few things upwards, it'll be better.

For instance, if I put Social Psychology at T15 (beginning of Digital Era), then I could put the new Colony Pod there, move Fundamentalist to it (makes more sense), and move the Hologram Theater over from Planetary Networks. Seems like a pretty worthwhile tech to take.
Then, let's say I add Ethical Calculus at T18 (beginning of Fusion Era); it could have the Citizen's Defense Force (putting a nice defensive military wonder up in the "soft" side of the tree), the all-important Habitation Domes (which make more sense in a "social" tech), and the Eudaimonia policy. (Or flip Eudaimonia and Fundamentalist. Either way works.)

Then we'd have to move a few other things around to balance it all out.
Free Market would move to Planetary Networks to replace Eudaimonia's loss. The Bioenhancement Center would move to Subatomic Alloys (again adding a military structure to the top of the tree, in a place that makes more sense anyway), the Genejack Factory would slide down to Neural Grafting to replace the CDF (although I worry about the balance of putting a good production building down in the military area), and the Planetary Transit System could move over to Planetary Networks to replace the Hologram Theater.

There, now everything has three, there are no more policies unlocking in the Nuclear Era, and the tree's a bit more balanced overall. (It'll be even more so in the next patch; I'm trying to make the Ranger and Troll a bit more useful.)

That's with two new techs. I wouldn't want to add all four, but I could justify a third at T21-22 if I had something to put there; there's a pretty big gap in the tech tree there that I've never been happy with. The only problem is that I'd really wanted to use the icon for some of these (like Intellectual Integrity's) for the custom promotions. But I can figure something else out for that.
I wouldn't add a third tech unless I had something useful to put there. I can't add any more new buildings or Wonders; okay, I COULD, but the custom icon atlas is full, so I'd have to create a new one. So I'd either have to move existing items to that tech (Cloning Vats?) or find some other useful changes to put there.

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So, thoughts? Are the Digital and Fusion Era already too crowded as-is, with 15 techs apiece? Would these sorts of "social" technologies feel too out-of-place with the hard science techs I've mainly gone with? Does anyone other than me really care about the thematic balance of the tech tree? Will Batman and Robin escape the Joker's dastardly trap? Tune in again in two weeks, same Spatz-time, same Spatz-channel!

(I'll be here for another 12 hours or so, although at least half of that will involve unconsciousness, but then it's vacation time. No Civ5 client, no ModBuddy, but I will have access to this board every once in a while. So I'll be able to discuss any feedback you have, but no chance of a new version until January.)

I'm thinking of adding a few more techs.

Yes, really. Specifically, 2-4 of the following; Social Psychology, Ethical Calculus, Intellectual Integrity, and/or Cyberethics. I'm not planning on adding any new buildings, units, etc. at these techs, just moving some of the existing things to them.

There are a few reasons for this:
2> The current techs might be too science-y, not enough fiction-y. While I like the futuristicity (and if that's not a word, then it darn well should be) of the current setup, a couple of these wouldn't hurt that too badly. While Civ4 had plenty of "social" techs related to religion, most of those seem to have been removed, but you get strange ones like Globalization in there still.

Off the top of my head (or "thinking at a high level") I do believe adding the listed techs is a good idea, and I've selected Reason 2 as why. The background on this is that since the new patch I've been re-baselining ciV gameplay (i.e. playing the game un-modded) so I can understand whats changed at this level, and to make a long story short, why since the patch I've had to really make some tough choices in the Social Policy tree, which bubbles up to which buildings I think I need to build (I've placed more emphasis on culture buildings post-patch), and ultimately which techs to research in order to make these buildings available. So therefore I think if you were to to link up some of the Social Policy unlocks with these new techs (or otherwise re-arrange these within the scheme your developing), which then makes the tech tree more convoluted (in a good way), it forces the player to have to make more difficult choices in regards to their tech research choices/ branches to pursue. (Edit: after re-reading the above, I'm not sure if I am being completely clear here, but hopefully you get the gist that I am for the new techs).


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So, thoughts? Are the Digital and Fusion Era already too crowded as-is, with 15 techs apiece?

I don't think so, especially after going back and playing the un-modded game where I am whipping thru techs (and eras) at break-kneck speed. If anything I think you should advertize this feature, as it offers a great change of pace from the base game in this regard.


Would these sorts of "social" technologies feel too out-of-place with the hard science techs I've mainly gone with? Does anyone other than me really care about the thematic balance of the tech tree?

I care, but it is your mod. I would say that if you think it fits the overall theme and direction your going in, then thats good enough.

Personally speaking I plan on taking a darker stance with the Social Policies, turning it into Big Brother's Social Engineering network.



(Correction: I AM going to add one new unit: the Colony Pod. Upgrade of Settler: 3 MP, can defend itself pretty well, and can paradrop 6 hexes. But other than that, it's all old stuff.)

I am glad this is going to be added (I think I've pestered you more than once on this). Question: are you going to make it the default starting Colonizer for advanced starts (i.e. beginning at the Nuclear Age)? I would recommend not, as keeping with the AC theme these should be survivors stranded on an unforgiving planet. Also, will the AI's use this unit correctly? Again, if not then I would suggest not having it be a starting unit. Otherwise looking forward to playing with this new toy!


I'll be here for another 12 hours or so, although at least half of that will involve unconsciousness, but then it's vacation time.

Have a good vacation, and see you on the other side.


D

So therefore I think if you were to to link up some of the Social Policy unlocks with these new techs (or otherwise re-arrange these within the scheme your developing),

I think this'd be a good structure if you built the game that way from the beginning. That is, if the previous 50 policies and 10 branches unlocked at specific technologies instead of en masse upon entering an Era. Unfortunately, without changing the earlier policies, I'm reluctant to lump the new ones up on single techs. Part of this is just a selectability issue; in ye olde SMAC days, whenever a new Social Engineering option came out, you'd immediately go to the appropriate interface to decide whether switching over to it was a good thing. For the first 9, the answer was often "yes", although there was a certain combo (Democratic/Planned/Knowledge) that I almost always went with for the long term. The last three were much stronger, so again, you'd be really tempted to switch as soon as one became available.

But in Civ5, it just doesn't work the same way. Just because a policy unlocks doesn't mean you'll have the culture points to select it any time soon, and since these are at the bottoms of the trees, it's unlikely you'd have access to more than one or two of them even if you DID have the ability to select an SP. (This is one of the reasons I made building a spaceship give a free policy; by the time you build it, you'll have unlocked at least half of the new policies, so chances are you'll use the free token to choose one of them.) The same logic applies to the new Soporific and EMP promotions; only if you have the prerequisites AND can select a new promotion would they be useful, but since a Barracks/Armory or Harbor/Seaport combo can reach them, they're far more valuable.

So when I say "each tech gets 3 things", I've always kept in the back of my mind that not all things are created equal. Some terrain improvements will add tons to your empire (like the Trading Post +production at Industrial Economics, which is another reason I want to move the Planetary Transit System somewhere else), while others will be so rare as to almost never come up (Quarries are only used for Marble and now Neutronium, so who cares that they get +1 production at Superconductors?). Policies are closer to that later group in terms of desirability; while their effects might be huge, there's no benefit at all to unlocking a policy in a tree you'll never take. That's why I'm okay with making them a bit stronger than a "normal" policy.
In other words, I could put all ten new policies at a single tech and it STILL wouldn't be as desirable as a normal tech. So I spread them out, one per tech, paired with things that are far more universally useful.

Now, I'd definitely already figured that each new social tech would have one Policy, and that'd allow me to move the two that I'd put in the Nuclear Era (Free Market and Fundamentalist). But I wouldn't want to double them up on these new techs.

(Side note: I've actually been considering going back and assigning the 50 existing policies to individual techs, now that I've edited the Policies UI to handle this better. This'd make the earlier tech tree look a bit more crowded. The big barrier to this? Policies don't have an icon in a small enough size, so I'd have to stick with that stupid star icon.)

which then makes the tech tree more convoluted (in a good way), it forces the player to have to make more difficult choices in regards to their tech research choices/ branches to pursue.

This sort of convolution is actually why I made that 3-item rule in the first place, and only used 45 of SMAC's techs. I could have easily put in the full SMACX tech tree (74 techs, I think?) and had 1-2 per tech, just like in the original game. But I wanted each tech to be at least a little desirable no matter what strategy you followed; take Doctrine:Initiative as an example. Maybe you don't care about building a Stealth Ship and someone else beat you to the Maritime Control Center (probably England), but you'd still want it because it unlocks Dilithium. As a result, picking a new tech is always a hard choice, because each side has at least something you want; if the alternative was Optical Computers (a single-city world wonder, a national wonder, and a new policy) or High-Energy Chemistry (very good large-empire world wonder, the Plasma Artillery unit, and a new policy), it becomes a hard choice.

This also helps the AI out tremendously, because it has no ability for long-term planning. It won't want to take a tech that gives it something it can't use just because that tech chain leads to something really good down the road. And if you force the AI to still value that tech, then you're making it choose things that give it no benefit, which is a huge advantage for the player. But if you make it so that every choice is still valuable, then the AI doesn't suffer as much.

I don't think so, especially after going back and playing the un-modded game where I am whipping thru techs (and eras) at break-kneck speed.

Yeah, I just can't bring myself to play an unmodded game any more. There are too many things that just feel WRONG, and the tech pace is a big one. (Also, my playing time is in short enough supply that if I didn't playtest my own mod it'd never get done.)

But think about this. If the core game's techs were doubled up to where each gave the same 2-3 bonuses that mine give, and the research times increased to compensate (meaning the same number of turns to complete an era), each era would have < 10 techs. Conversely, if you added more techs (like I'm doing here) and spread the benefits out to match the lower density typical of the vanilla game you'd have 20+ techs per future era.
So my eras are already quite a bit "heavier" on content than the norm. Now, personally, I'm okay with that, but it's why I asked the question; I don't want the user to hit a point where they feel like they're never going to finish an era because there are just too many barriers in the way. One new tech per era probably wouldn't hurt this, but any more than that would be too much IMO (although I can be convinced otherwise).

I am glad this is going to be added (I think I've pestered you more than once on this). Question: are you going to make it the default starting Colonizer for advanced starts (i.e. beginning at the Nuclear Age)?

You don't actually explicitly control the default starting units for late-era starts; the game will just use the best available resourceless unit in each category. That's why a Transcendence Era start uses Combat Engineers and Laser Infantry, even though they're three or four eras behind the times: every later unit in those categories has a resource cost. (I was actually worried that the game would start you with a Geosynchronous Survey Pod, as it's the only other resourceless unit, but thankfully it's lack of combat power blocks it there.)
So an easy way to prevent the Colony Pod from being the default settler would be to make them require, say, one Oil. (Or heck, Horses or Iron. As long as it's SOMETHING, it'll work to prevent this.) Presumably the player would have a supply of Oil by then anyway, and the Energy Bank is T15 also and will generate Oil (once that's working again). And since these units are short-lived and you won't stockpile them, it's not going to hurt you to lose a single unit of Oil for a few turns.

The AI knows how to handle a Settler, and the AI knows how to paradrop units (although I don't think I've ever actually seen it do so), but I don't know for sure how well it handles the combination of the two. But then again, I have the same concern about half of my other new units, so this is hardly new.

And side note: it definitely wouldn't be the default starting unit for a Nuclear start, since it won't unlock until a tech in the Digital era. Which'd also make it ineligible for a Digital start, so really, it'd only be a possibility for Fusion/Nanotech/Transcendence anyway, and who's going to start there? (Other than me, for testing purposes.)
Obviously, someone making a "true" SMAC conversion would put the Colony Pod at the Agriculture-equivalent starting tech, but that's not really an option here.

small random bug (assuming you want bug feedback, if not, ignore this), the specialist slot (the one, I know you intentionally decreased it from two) on the library seems bugged; doesn't add anything, what it claims it adds (artist, engineer, ect.) changes from time to time, and it eliminates some in city-view info when I try and put anything there.

Thanks again

small random bug (assuming you want bug feedback, if not, ignore this), the specialist slot (the one, I know you intentionally decreased it from two) on the library seems bugged; doesn't add anything, what it claims it adds (artist, engineer, ect.) changes from time to time, and it eliminates some in city-view info when I try and put anything there.

I just realized what caused that. And yes, it was my fault.

My mod edited the existing XML table to reduce the number of slots from 2 to 1. But the patch changed the core game from 2 to 0, so now there's no entry in the XML for it to edit. Or more specifically, there IS an entry (it's part of the base Buildings table), but it's now set to NULL values for the specialist type and 0 for the value. That is, my mod now is changing the number from 0 to 1, but since there's no valid "type" entry for the specialist, it won't work. The slot won't take any specialist, and the UI will display the name of the last specialist type you moused over. (I've seen it do that with other things when you try using an unset variable.)

I can fix that easily when I get home for v12, but in the meantime you can fix it yourself by doing the following:
> Open Buildings/CIV5Buildings.xml
> Look for the <Update> entry for the library that changes the number of specialist slots
> Change the Set to explicitly set the type as well, something like
<Set SpecialistCount="1" SpecialistType="SPECIALIST_SCIENTIST"/>
<Where Type="BUILDING_LIBRARY"/>
(I don't have the files in front of me, so I might have the variable names a bit off. But you get the idea.)
Editing the XML files within the module should fix the problem without having to wait for me to do it. When I get home I'll do more of this myself, making sure every entry is explicit enough to ensure this doesn't happen the next time they decide to rebalance everything.

Really, that whole specialist slot rebalancing was the one part of the megapatch that I didn't really look into too closely. I don't like the idea of removing ALL specialists from the Library, since it seems like that's too much anti-ICS overkill (and I think I've done plenty to discourage ICS in other ways), so I might just keep it with the numbers I have now.

Okay, as someone pointed out in another thread, there's a hotfix scheduled for tomorrow (12/22); by the time you read this you might have downloaded it. The patch notes include a line:

[MODDING]
* Re-enabled LUA library unused in the core game. It was removed because we didn’t think modders were using it, and apparently many, many are using it.

The library in question is almost definitely the GetScriptData and SaveScriptData functions used to save long-term variables, the linchpin of (among many other things) the building resource generation logic. Hopefully, that part will now work correctly. The problem I have is, I can't test it until my vacation is done. So I'm going to need someone else to tell me if this fixes the big problems with the mod; there will almost definitely be other things that need fixing, I'm sure (like the specialist slot thing above), but I'm hoping that a couple of the other instabilities I was running into are just a consequence of certain Lua functions failing partway through when they tried calling the save/load functions, and not aborting gracefully.

On the bright side, I've figured out a couple good solutions for some design problems I was running into, so hopefully v.0.12 can include things like the Great Empath's "Peace Bomb" ability, or the ability to sacrifice a Great Person to speed up the Transcendence timer.

I'm going to need someone else to tell me if this fixes the big problems with the mod; there will almost definitely be other things that need fixing, I'm sure (like the specialist slot thing above), but I'm hoping that a couple of the other instabilities I was running into are just a consequence of certain Lua functions failing partway through when they tried calling the save/load functions, and not aborting gracefully.

OK, I can DL your latest and exercise it. If you can give me specifics that you would like me to look at (like the Library Specialist thing) then I can set up the game and focus on these items.

D

If you can give me specifics that you would like me to look at (like the Library Specialist thing) then I can set up the game and focus on these items.

Well, it's less about specifics and more about finding out all the little things the patch broke. The problem that I was having was that the broken logic in the resource generation code (thanks to having that save/load removed) might have been causing other things to not work. So I can't tell if restoring those functions will cause everything else to work, which I could do if I were at home. My main worry is just that the patch changed so much, and I'm only one person (two if you count my other personality), so things could have slipped through, like the Library specialist bug. There could easily be more like that out there.
And it's not always about something noticeably breaking. For instance, a couple negative promotions now remove when you upgrade the unit, and the devs are adding more to that list in today's hotfix. This may or may not cause the balance of the future-era units to be a bit screwy; I didn't put negative promotions on the future-era units, because they generally upgraded from older units and would keep those limitations. But does that make the new units too strong now? (For instance, I added the Naval Penalty back onto the Needlejet, but do I need to add the City Attack penalty back onto the units that upgrade from tanks?)
Or just numbers: the Infantry used to be 32 power, and Mechanized Infantry were 50. So I lowered MechInf to 42, right? Well, Infantry are now bumped up to 36. I'm still okay with leaving Mech at 42, since they also get the movement increase, but does that imply anything about the balance of Laser Infantry (45)? Does the Mobile SAM's new ability to attack directly now make the upgrade to Plasma Artillery less valuable? That sort of thing.

And I still just need general feedback. Now that I've upped the flavor ratings on many key buildings, are the AI cities now developing at an adequate rate to where they'll still be competitive? Are the AIs still making enough military units, and upgrading the ones they have at an acceptable rate? Are the AI's incomes in gpt (which you can see) staying competitive with your own? At what point in the game are you hitting that inevitable threshold where you just KNOW you have an insurmountable advantage over the AIs and it's just a matter of mopping up (often at the same point where you realize you're picking up every Wonder)? With the decrease in research percentages, is it worth building the University/Observatory/Public School/Research Lab in anything but your core cities? Does the increase in base unhappiness make the Rationalism tree untenable and basically force you to go Piety? While these things aren't easy to set up test cases for, I could really use the feedback if you feel things still aren't balancing well.

Also, I keep thinking up new problems. It occurred to me yesterday that I don't actually know how the city-states and Barbarians gain technologies. Do they just get them automatically based on what the main empires have? The real question becomes, do they have a way to get the locked Centauri Ecology tech and the ones that it leads to? (If they can't, then they won't be able to unlock Mind Worms and such.) It'd be easy enough for me to code in an override for this, but it'd be helpful to know how the game would handle it by default.

Well, it's less about specifics and more about finding out all the little things the patch broke.

And I still just need general feedback. Now that I've upped the flavor ratings on many key buildings, are the AI cities now developing at an adequate rate to where they'll still be competitive? Are the AIs still making enough military units, and upgrading the ones they have at an acceptable rate? Are the AI's incomes in gpt (which you can see) staying competitive with your own? At what point in the game are you hitting that inevitable threshold where you just KNOW you have an insurmountable advantage over the AIs and it's just a matter of mopping up (often at the same point where you realize you're picking up every Wonder)? With the decrease in research percentages, is it worth building the University/Observatory/Public School/Research Lab in anything but your core cities? Does the increase in base unhappiness make the Rationalism tree untenable and basically force you to go Piety? While these things aren't easy to set up test cases for, I could really use the feedback if you feel things still aren't balancing well.

OK, so I started my first game this evening Continents/ Emporer and the game locked up about 20 turns in : this was right after the first time a CS made a diplomatic communique (see first pic). Second game started same set-up, and progressed np regarding iniital CS diplo. Money and Happiness don't seem to be problems at all (in fact I had relatively huge surplus's of each), so I am able to focus on military and culture production.

A new unit (Scout) has appeared in this version, which the AIs are building. The AIs shouldn't be building these units - correct?

Interesting observation of the day: I noticed the volcano shows as spewing lava if a unit is adjacent, however if there isn't a unit adjacent then the volcano seems to go dormant: why did Firaxis invest the time and money to produce the dormant volcano graphic?

I do believe the upgrade cost of riflemen to Infantry is good (i.e. 160 Gold): I did have to consider upgrades during this phase.

Gandhi asked me to declare war on Darius (an AI on a different continent) and I did. Not once did I engage Darius, but Darius offered all sorts of stuff to declare peace with me. This is a continueing problem which needs to be fixed, as its a complete exploit to accept an AI's request to declare war on an AI on another continent just so you can then receive the AI's peace offerings later.

Concerning the Plant Forest advisement pic: is there any way to get the advisor to consider a strategic assessment of the terrain and nearby enemy states when offering the Plant Forest options?

Rome (who was on my northern border this evening) declared war on me and used their fighters effectively at first by engaging my frontline units. However after an initially effective thrust where Rome's combined infantry/artillery/ aircraft succesfully engaged and killed my frontline units, I counterattacked and destroyed the Romans mobile forces, and my units assumed positions of defense. The Romans then switched their fighter aircraft to bombing my nearest city, and continued to bomb it turn after turn even though the city was completely defenseless while my adjacent units were completely unscathed (i.e. the continual bombing of my defenseless city accomplished nothing).

The game crashed again shortly after this. Don't have a reason why at this point.

D

OK, so I started my first game this evening Continents/ Emperor and the game locked up about 20 turns in

Do you run FireTuner while you play? It would be useful to know if there were any error messages preceding the crash. Sometimes there isn't anything like this, but when there is, it goes a long way towards tracking these down.
I had a similar crash in my own test game, except it was when an AI empire (France, I think) wanted to make first contact. The game just froze up for no apparent reason. When I reloaded and waited a turn before sailing into France's territory it worked just fine.

A new unit (Scout) has appeared in this version, which the AIs are building. The AIs shouldn't be building these units - correct?

I'm not sure what you mean; as far as I know, Scouts have always been a possibility for AIs. It's just that until this last patch, the Recon flavor was given such a low weighting that the AI rarely wanted to build units related to that (like Scouts) when it could just make a Warrior. Now, I think Scouts are disabled for the Barbarian faction, but they should be fair game for everyone else.

why did Firaxis invest the time and money to produce the dormant volcano graphic?

If a volcano spawns in the forest and no one's around, does it make a sound?

I think the idea is that there's no point wasting GPU cycles on an animation the player isn't seeing, and if there's no unit nearby, he won't be looking in that area. I wish there was a way to override this and have all animations on all the time for those of us with decent computers, but it's probably not a high priority.

I do believe the upgrade cost of riflemen to Infantry is good (i.e. 160 Gold): I did have to consider upgrades during this phase.

I actually didn't have anything to do with that; upgrade costs are purely tied to the difference in the units' base costs. What it looks like is that in this last megapatch, Firaxis increased the power of Infantry (32 to 36) and adjusted their cost upwards to match. This would substantially increase the upgrade cost as a side-effect.

This is a continueing problem which needs to be fixed, as its a complete exploit to accept an AI's request to declare war on an AI on another continent just so you can then receive the AI's peace offerings later.

Yes, this is a problem in general. For a more egregious example: as part of my new Transcendence victory, all of the AIs declare war on you when the timer starts. But I didn't put a lock on the war state yet, so after a few turns the AIs will all contact you asking for peace, and they'll ALL offer something extra (since, by definition, you're more powerful than they are and didn't actually DECLARE the war on them).

Personally, I think the willingness of an AI to throw in that little something extra should be tied to how much damage was actually done in the course of the war; a "Cold War" with no actual fighting should always lead to a straight peace offer, while a small empire that manages to fight a perfect defensive war should be offered a more generous settlement despite still being weak relative to the other side.
But right now, it's purely a question of current power (which does tie to the number of surviving units and cities). And that leads to the abuses.

Concerning the Plant Forest advisement pic: is there any way to get the advisor to consider a strategic assessment of the terrain and nearby enemy states when offering the Plant Forest options?

Not that I can see. As far as I can tell the logic is very simple:
> Does my city need more production? If so, let's value the improvements that add production.
> Hey, the "Build Forest" improvement says it adds +1 production and has a Production flavor. Let's suggest that!

So in theory, a city that already has plenty of production shouldn't suggest nearby workers plant forests, but that's so flaky that I wouldn't really depend on it.

I don't know if the worker suggestion logic is handled in Lua; if it is, then I might be able to tweak this a bit. But really, I think it's probably hopeless. My worry is that the AI is spending way too much effort building forests on top of other forests or something, so I'd at least like a way to forbid that. But so far, no progress on that.

One thing I want to do is increase the Flavor rating of the Lumbermill, so that the AI is more willing to develop the forests he has instead of trying to plant more. That should help this a bit.

The Romans then switched their fighter aircraft to bombing my nearest city, and continued to bomb it turn after turn even though the city was completely defenseless while my adjacent units were completely unscathed (i.e. the continual bombing of my defenseless city accomplished nothing).

The aircraft AI is pretty bad, but I think this is also a consequence of the increased (2 HP/turn) city regeneration; back when it was 1 HP/turn, it wouldn't take much to keep a city "pinned down" at 1 HP, an easy conquest for any local units. But now it takes more, and the AI doesn't know when it's a lost cause to bombard a city.

It doesn't help that Fighters get the "Weak Ranged" promotion, which gives them -75% strength against anything other than other Air units. So they're just not very GOOD at unit bombardment; the AI sees them as having a strength of 10 or 15 or something versus the opponent's strength of 36 (infantry) and figures that it's a lost cause to bombard. So the solution might be to reduce Weak Ranged to -50% instead of -75%; I'll try that when I get home.

The game crashed again shortly after this. Don't have a reason why at this point.

I'm going to guess "Karma". You know what you did...

Do you run FireTuner while you play? It would be useful to know if there were any error messages preceding the crash. Sometimes there isn't anything like this, but when there is, it goes a long way towards tracking these down.

I don't use FireTuner while I play, but I can start using it.


I'm not sure what you mean; as far as I know, Scouts have always been a possibility for AIs.

I don't think I've ever seen a scout while playing your mods before. It happened again this evening.

On to this evening's playtesting:

1. Concerning the first pic: this is only a little ways into the game. I actually got to see the Settler heading down to build the city, and almost immediately El Dorado was incorporated into the British Empire. Very good coding in this sense - understanding the importance of El Dorado! :goodjob:

2. The Barb ship just sat there turn after turn. Would've thought it'd be sent out to pillage/ make a nuisance of itself.

3. Game CTD'd again this evening. I had just discovered Flight, and the Barb ship in pic 2 had just been bombarded by an AI ship, otherwise no real indication as to why this happened. A shame really - I think the British were about to invade my "weak" territories. :(

D

I don't think I've ever seen a scout while playing your mods before. It happened again this evening.

It might be because you usually start games in later eras; after all, which should the AI prefer to make, a strength 4 scout, or a strength 36 Infantry? If you start in the Ancient era then the Scout makes more sense, but in an Industrial or Nuclear start, how long would you expect a unit like that to survive? But in this last megapatch they changed the AI so that it emphasizes exploration a bit more, in preparation for that second-wave settling, and the Scout's the only unit with a Recon flavor...

Personally, this is why I've long thought that they should have followed the pattern in earlier games and had the Scout upgrade to an Explorer (Conquistador) and then to something else. That's why I have Scouts now upgrading to Paratroopers and then to Scout Powersuits, but really there should be some Explorer-style intermediate step. Maybe I'll add one myself.

Very good coding in this sense - understanding the importance of El Dorado!

I'm torn. On one hand, it's good to know that the AI can adapt to unusual circumstances like that, and it's nice to see Natural Wonders that are actually worth working the tile of. (2 production and 3 gold just isn't enough to be worth settling near, especially since it's zero-food.)
On the other hand, I think El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth are completely unbalanced. 10 gold for a tile is just too much, and the Fountain's healing effect is just insane.

For a long time, I've wanted to change the Natural Wonders to providing 1 food, 1 production, 1 research, 1 gold, 1 culture, and 1 Happiness when worked, which'd make it the kind of thing you'd want to settle near no matter what your emphasis was. The Happiness and culture parts were giving problems, though, but I figured I could handle those through Lua if need be. (One other possibility I had was making a "Tourist Center" Improvement that could only be built on Natural Wonders, for increased gold/culture, but the problem is that the NWs are all set to Impassible, and I'm not sure I want to change that.)

2. The Barb ship just sat there turn after turn. Would've thought it'd be sent out to pillage/ make a nuisance of itself.

Part of this seems to be exploration-related. The AI won't really perform "missions" to areas it hasn't seen, so AI naval units tend to either hang around their home ports, or focus on the shoreline of a single enemy they've previously found with a barbarian camp or something.

3. Game CTD'd again this evening. I had just discovered Flight, and the Barb ship in pic 2 had just been bombarded by an AI ship, otherwise no real indication as to why this happened. A shame really - I think the British were about to invade my "weak" territories.

Did it crash at the same point if/when you reloaded the most recent save (or autosave)? Things like this are why I have the game autosaving much more often than the 10-turn default.

I'm sure quite a few of these crashes are my fault, and it might be related to the Library issue we've discussed previously. (Did you fix that in your version already, or are you waiting for me to do it?) But I wouldn't be surprised if the core game is crashing after that huge patch, because given their past track record I have a hard time believing Firaxis got it all right on the first try. And these sorts of mods are really pushing the limits of the game's flexibility, so I'm not surprised it's a bit unstable.

--------------
I've been planning out a revised tech tree, adding three new Social techs and moving a few others around to compensate. It actually flows a bit better than the existing tree, and one of the things I like is that I'll be moving Homo Superior (the tech that adds the Ranger and Troll units) up a tier, from 19 to 20. That means I need to make those two units a bit stronger, since they'd now be MORE advanced than, say, a Gravtank, and they're a 2-resource unit (Neutronium and Omnicytes). So the question is, what can I do to make them worth that higher tier?
I could bump their power ratings up from 60 to, say, 70, but I'd rather be more creative. Things I've been thinking of:
Ranger:
> Any unit a Ranger attacks has a 25% chance of dying at the end of the combat, regardless of how the fight works out.
> First Strike. (No idea how I can code this, but if I could, it'd be the best outcome.)
> Rangers get +25% vs. Titan units (since nothing else in the game gets a bonus vs. Titans)
> Bushido (as the Japanese ability, the unit fights at full strength regardless of wounds)
Troll:
> If a Troll wins a fight, it immediately gets an additional movement point.
> +50% vs. Ranged attacks (so you can't wear them down with bombardment)
> Trolls already get +25% vs. Psi, maybe increase this to +50%. That way they could stand toe-to-toe with a Nessus Worm.

Or maybe just give both units twice the normal chance of spawning a Great General and be done with it. I'll probably just do that as a placeholder.

So, anyone else have any ideas for these two?

I'm torn. On one hand, it's good to know that the AI can adapt to unusual circumstances like that, and it's nice to see Natural Wonders that are actually worth working the tile of. (2 production and 3 gold just isn't enough to be worth settling near, especially since it's zero-food.)
On the other hand, I think El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth are completely unbalanced. 10 gold for a tile is just too much, and the Fountain's healing effect is just insane.

Completely agree with you in regards to El Dorado being over-powered: my observation was more about the AI recognizing the importance of the landmark and reacting (IMO) correctly to it.


If a volcano spawns in the forest and no one's around, does it make a sound?

And if a fish swims alone in the ocean should anyone be able to observe it? And if a bird flys alone over a fish, should anyone be able to observe this? And if a cow grazes alone in an abandonded pasture should anyone be able to see this? And if whales get frisky in a tile should anyone be able to observe this? I just find it interesting that the volcano is treated differently in this regard.

Anyways, on to this evenings questions/ observations:

1. Concerning "Good naval Pillaging 1": the AI did a good job of pillaging my naval improvements this game! :goodjob:

2. Concerning my pic about why I can plant a forest on a tile which already has a forest: why can I do this? I think this is a known issue, but thought I should ask this anyways.

3. And on a simlar note what is the rationale on why I can't plant a forest on a desert square?

4. Another observation: when a C-S declares war on you and you get the emblem notification, then when you click on the emblem why doesn't it then re-direct you to the C-S which has just declared war on you?

D

2. Concerning my pic about why I can plant a forest on a tile which already has a forest: why can I do this? I think this is a known issue, but thought I should ask this anyways.

Basically, you can do this because you can't not NOT do it. You can make an improvement require a terrain feature or a terrain type, but as far as I can tell you can't make it require the ABSENCE of features. Although in theory you shoul be able to, since Null is a value, so you should be able to require the FEATURE_NONE or its null-feature equivalent, which'd prevent you from building a forest on any tile containing a forest, jungle, or oasis. (Hills I'm not sure on. In theory they're a Feature, except the game handles them as a Plot type for most things.) I had to mess around with all of this when I did the terraforming logic, so I think I know how to code it, it's only a question of whether the XML can recognize it.

I'll see what I can do with this when I get home next week, but don't get your hopes up. If it doesn't work, I think there are a few things I can do with Flavor settings and yields to discourage the AI from getting stuck in an infinite loop.

3. And on a simlar note what is the rationale on why I can't plant a forest on a desert square?

Because forests don't tend to grow where there's little or no water. Deserts are almost always at thirty or ninety degrees north or south of the equator because of what are known as "Hadley Cells" that create permanent high and low pressure areas every 30 degrees north or south. The lack of moisture at those latitudes, then, is very real and explains why forests are few and far between at those locations. (Side note: I live in Los Angeles. Yes, there are trees around there, especially up in the hills, but those are the exception to the rule.)

A simpler answer is that since the game won't spawn forests on desert tiles by default, I didn't want to give you the ability to plant forests on desert tiles. The Plant Jungle action is similarly limited; I tried to use the same logic the existing features used.
For a while I'd toyed around with allowing terraformers to create an Oasis on the desert tiles, or create Flood Plains. There was just one big problem: no reason NOT to make them. Forests and Jungles, at least, are bonus-neutral with tradeoffs to keep them from being too desirable. But a desert full of Oases would just be a bit much. (One possibility was to have the worker sacrifice himself to create the Oasis, but with them costing less than 1 turn by that point in the game, it'd be about as limiting as the Work Boat's sacrifice.)

4. Another observation: when a C-S declares war on you and you get the emblem notification, then when you click on the emblem why doesn't it then re-direct you to the C-S which has just declared war on you?

Because the location-centering logic of the notification system is
A> Extremely buggy
and
B> Mostly unused
I try to take advantage of it more in the custom notifications I added for my new Wonders (although I think those notifications are still broken from the patch), but I'm not surprised that a lot of the existing notifications don't center correctly.
Conversely, maybe they DID work better pre-patch and whatever broke the custom notifications also broke them. Something to think about...

Note that I have made the correction to the Library slot, which seems to have stopped the crashes that I was experiencing.

Some more feedbacK:

1. After four games with this version of your mod, why the pace seems a little slow IMO: buildings and units take a little too long to construct.
2. Concerning the Combat Engineer pic: that unit sat in the water till my arty sank it.
3. Concerning the city strength pic: doesn't look like the stats window is capable of displaying that many decimal places correctly. Bug?


D

Note that I have made the correction to the Library slot, which seems to have stopped the crashes that I was experiencing.

Good, I'm glad it's a known issue causing the problem.

1. After four games with this version of your mod, why the pace seems a little slow IMO: buildings and units take a little too long to construct.

In a specific era, or just in general? I know that when you start in a late era your first few buildings take a long time. I added the food and research "head start" boosts to the mod to help with those, but I didn't do anything to the production or gold outputs.
Maybe I SHOULD add some sort of boost, but I'm not sure how. It's not like research (which is empire-wide) or food (which can use Get and Set on a city-by-city basis).

2. Concerning the Combat Engineer pic: that unit sat in the water till my arty sank it.

Those 1-hex lakes have always caused problems. I see units get stuck there all the time.

3. Concerning the city strength pic: doesn't look like the stats window is capable of displaying that many decimal places correctly. Bug?

Yes. I've seen it screw up the math horribly when you exceed 100, and it's probably similar to how the Happiness window screws up; the game probably just wasn't designed for numbers that big. I'll look into the UI window for this when I get home, but it's a low priority since the combat does seem to work correctly (it's just a UI thing).

In a specific era, or just in general?

I'm playing all my games starting in the Industrial era. It seems like I'm hitting the return key quite a bit while waiting for things to be produced. While I've got money (i.e. I'm not hovering around zero gold) everything is too expensive to buy. So I wait.

On to last night's observations:

1. The Japanese asked me to DoC the Iriquois, which I said I'd do after ten turns. After the ten turns the Japanese requested I honor this agreement, which I did. The very next turn the Japanese publicly denounced me, saying I couldn't be trusted. I'm not sure if this is good AI programming or not: it could be considered good in that if my backdoor agreement with the Japanese were secret, then the only thing everyone else would know was that I was essentially dogpiling the AI and so deserved the diplo hit from the Japanese. It would in effect have been very sneaky of the Japanese to do this to me. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

2. The game locked up when I tried to exit without saving. Not sure what happened there. I actually had to manually power down the computer and restart it.

3. A strategy I've developed on the Continents maps is to take one or two infantry and go explore the map, with the idea of meeting as many C-S as possible in order to get the money (as well as explore Ruins). There really is no downside to this strategy, as I can also take these units and gain experience by battling Barbs. One thing I ran into last night was that there were several small island groups I had to navigate around. I think if there were consistently more of these small worthless island groups around, then it might be a small nerf to this early exploration strategy in that a player has to navigate around these island-groups, thus slowing down this strategy.

4. Update: just got nuked for the first time by an AI. Unfortunately right afterwards the game locked up.

D

I'm playing all my games starting in the Industrial era. It seems like I'm hitting the return key quite a bit while waiting for things to be produced.

It sounds like I really just need to code a wider-ranging "head start" setup, where production and gold are boosted for the first few turns in the same way research and food are. Although, I'd point out that in an Ancient Era start, the Monument takes 15 turns to build, so it's not like this is unique to late-era starts; the game is always sluggish at first. And once you get the railroad links up, coal linked, and factories build, production in an Industrial start works just fine.
The big problem with an Industrial start is how Coal and Oil are distributed. You'll only have three cities, so the chances of being close enough to a Coal to grab it are low, and Oil won't even be visible yet. So in a "normal" game you'd have both of these resources, but in an Industrial-start game it's actually pretty unlikely. (And even if YOU are willing to go far out of your way to grab a Coal deposit, the AI won't, despite how badly it wants Factories. One possible way to fix that would be to boost the base production bonus from Coal by 1, which'd make the AI really want to settle near it without totally unbalancing everything.)

Actually, I think a more general part of the problem is just that tiles around your cities won't be improved, so your Workers will be spending a LOT of time just getting everything set up. When your city is starting at size 1-2 this isn't a big deal, because the city will just work the resource tiles until you get some Workers out. But when your cities start at sizes 5-7, this can be a big deal.
So rather than add more starting Workers to each empire, I actually thought that a way to handle this would be for cities in later eras to automatically improve a number of tiles around the city when you found them. Even if it didn't place the RIGHT improvements, it'd help get your empires started. For logic I was thinking:
> Loop N times, where N is the era number you started in (so 4 for Industrial, 9 for Transcendence); instead of hard-coding this, I might just set it in a table in the Eras file
> For each iteration, pick a tile near the city (preferably in the first ring, but I might prioritize resources)
> If that tile has a resource, place the appropriate Improvement. (Concern: what if it has a strategic resource that hasn't been revealed yet? I'll have to check to see if the resource has a tech prerequisite.)
> If it's not a resource tile and is near a river, place a Farm. (Even though there's only a certain window on the tech tree where this matters, it's still a pattern people follow.)
> If it's not one of the above and is a hill, place a Mine.
> Otherwise, do a probability draw based on terrain type; Grassland might be 2/3 Trading Post, 1/3 Farm; Plains 1/3 Trading Post, 2/3 Farm, Desert or Tundra would always get a Trading Post.

I figure that this'll free up starting workers to build the road/railroad links you need without sacrificing productivity, and should really help with getting up to speed. Sure, you can go back and trade out tiles as appropriate, but this'd give a good head start. I'll probably still keep the food and research boosts I'd already coded; the Food boost sort of mimics a Maritime ally, and the research boost just compensates for the low number of cities/population.

So I'll try to code something like this when I can, but I'm not sure whether I can trigger an Event on "city founded"; I'd hate to have to do this as a start-of-turn check every turn.

It would in effect have been very sneaky of the Japanese to do this to me. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

The AI does quite a few things that might be brilliant or might be stupid, and it's hard to differentiate. Personally, I'd just guess stupid, that it didn't connect that your "dishonorable" actions were its own fault. But at least it makes games unpredictable, which is almost always a plus.

3. A strategy I've developed on the Continents maps is to take one or two infantry and go explore the map, with the idea of meeting as many C-S as possible in order to get the money (as well as explore Ruins). There really is no downside to this strategy, as I can also take these units and gain experience by battling Barbs.

I've done this in every game, and I HAVE seen a downside: those units aren't at home, and that seems to affect the AI's assessment of your military strength. You seem to get a lot more early war declarations when you follow this strategy, unless you IMMEDIATELY churn out more units. This is especially true in a Transcendence start, where you only have four Laser Infantry that are completely outclassed as soon as any empire links up a strategic resource.

But in general yes, this just goes back to the earlier AI problem where they wouldn't prioritize exploration/contact. I'd see a city-state that literally bordered an empire (with their borders actually touching), and I'd STILL get the 30gp for first contact when I came by. I think the patch helped a bit with this, but in general you still have the problem that the only units the AI will use for this recon are ones with FLAVOR_RECON settings, and there are very few of those.
I've actually been thinking of adding small Recon flavors to a variety of appropriate units, but that might cause the AI to do some stupid things with them.

4. Update: just got nuked for the first time by an AI. Unfortunately right afterwards the game locked up.

Do you know which unit he used? Atomic Bomb, Nuclear Missile, Planet Buster, or Subspace Generator? (That is, what era were you in when it happened?) I know the Subspace has problems (it won't rebase, for instance), but I haven't tried the Planet Buster recently. It could be as simple as trying to use an animation not appropriate to the unit; I don't remember which unit I used as the placeholder for these.

It sounds like I really just need to code a wider-ranging "head start" setup, where production and gold are boosted for the first few turns in the same way research and food are.

The problem I was experiencing occured later in the game: I had a military and was trying to add to it for the anticipated upcoming AI invasion. I had cash, but couldn't afford to outright buy units or buildings, so while I waited for my next generation of conscripts to be produced (and for the AI to attack) I kept pressing return. There really wasn't anything else to do at that point. This occured around the time of the mid-nuclear era: I could build APCs and tanks, but not Modern Armor yet. I'd built all the production enhancing items available at the time, yet infantry were still taking greater than ten turns to produce.

To use SMAC as an analogy here, why I believe there were times like this in SMAC as well (where you would be waiting for something to occur), however there was "always something to do" during these lulls due to NL invasions (either random, fungal pops, or the Perihelion event).


So rather than add more starting Workers to each empire, I actually thought that a way to handle this would be for cities in later eras to automatically improve a number of tiles around the city when you found them. Even if it didn't place the RIGHT improvements, it'd help get your empires started. For logic I was thinking:
> Loop N times, where N is the era number you started in (so 4 for Industrial, 9 for Transcendence); instead of hard-coding this, I might just set it in a table in the Eras file
> For each iteration, pick a tile near the city (preferably in the first ring, but I might prioritize resources)
> If that tile has a resource, place the appropriate Improvement. (Concern: what if it has a strategic resource that hasn't been revealed yet? I'll have to check to see if the resource has a tech prerequisite.)
> If it's not a resource tile and is near a river, place a Farm. (Even though there's only a certain window on the tech tree where this matters, it's still a pattern people follow.)
> If it's not one of the above and is a hill, place a Mine.
> Otherwise, do a probability draw based on terrain type; Grassland might be 2/3 Trading Post, 1/3 Farm; Plains 1/3 Trading Post, 2/3 Farm, Desert or Tundra would always get a Trading Post.

Thats sounds good - reminiscent of advanced starts in SMAC. It'll be interesting to see how closely you can get the code to placing the "correct" improvement onto the right tiles.


Do you know which unit he used? Atomic Bomb, Nuclear Missile, Planet Buster, or Subspace Generator?

Atomic Bomb. And individually that doesn't seem to be the issue, as I was nuked four more times last night (pics below), and the game didn't freeze till several turns after the last nuke attack.

On to last night's playtesting:

1. After defeating several waves of Persian troops I was confronted with an attack by a lone Great Merchant!?! :confused: I think it was trying to find a route to the C-S in the north via my lands. That code will need to be fixed.

2. Another minor bug: after I killed the Great Merchant (heah how come I don't get combat experience for this!?! :confused: ) my city still had the ability to bombard, even though there were no enemy units within eyesight. Once I selected the city bombard icon, then selected another unit I no longer had the bombard icon showing on the city.

3. The Persians nuked Berlin 4 consecutive turns last night. I wonder what the code-logic is regarding what targets the AIs select to nuke? I would think that nuking several cities would be a better strategy here. On a similar note, what is the counter to nukes at this stage in the game? I noticed my AA units wouldn't intercept the incoming nuclear bombers (I can envision the AA crews seeing the incoming bomber, going "Oh Crap!", and running for the nearest air raid shelter! :lol: ).

4. After the fourth nuke the game froze up a couple turns later. I loaded the autosave and the game froze up again in the same timeframe (i.e. a couple turns after the autosave. I can upload the autosave if you want.

D

I'd built all the production enhancing items available at the time, yet infantry were still taking greater than ten turns to produce.

Well, 10 turns doesn't sound so bad to me. I mean, I understand that it's a pretty significant time investment, but I really dislike it when the balance gets shifted to the point where things build in 2-3 turns (which is what it was at in some of my earlier builds for late-era starts). For one thing, you get significant rounding errors, and for another, it becomes a huge micromanagement chore when you have a large empire. Also, I generally dislike the ability to quickly react to a war by immediately churning out large numbers of units, since that really encourages the player to keep a minimal army most of the time and only pay a high unit maintenance when he absolutely needs to. (That's why I disliked Civ4's rifleman conscription trick.)

The real question, I guess, is what SHOULD the optimal number of turns be, for cities that have a Factory and railroad connections? And did the city in question have a Forge and/or Arsenal?

however there was "always something to do" during these lulls due to NL invasions

Frankly, I think this is indicative of a bigger issue: Civ5 just needs a real "random event" system. There are already some stubs for this in place, but it really just needs more, and I might be tempted to just code one up myself (since it's NOT hard in Lua).

So each turn, at the start of the turn, the game would draw a random number, and if it's above the threshold set in the Era file, it'd then do one of the following:
> Dynastic marriage (positive diplo event with another empire, ending a war if there's one in progress)
> Some sort of negative diplo event with another empire (possibly starting a war)
(Probably also have two CS-related diplo events as well.)
> One empire gets a free Great Person of a random type
> Breakthrough (one empire immediately finishes whichever tech it's currently researching)
> Population boom (Each city has a chance of immediately growing one size)
> Plague (Each city has a chance of immediately dropping one size)
> A few espionage events
And so on. My thought is that this'd go a long way towards making the interturns more interesting, which'd reduce the monotony in those build-up turns you're talking about. None of the above are very complex, and none require the future-era content, so I could put this in the Balance mod pretty easily. I'd probably want to put some limits on it, like no events within the first 20 turns, but it wouldn't be too hard to get something like this in place quickly, once the Custom Notification logic works again.

It'll be interesting to see how closely you can get the code to placing the "correct" improvement onto the right tiles.

Probably not very, but since I'd only be improving a small number of tiles, it shouldn't screw things up too badly if the balance is a bit off. All I really want is to make the adjacent tiles be better, yieldwise, than any Specialists. If you start in later eras you'll usually see a Great Merchant within the first few turns, because the benefits of a Merchant specialist are better than an unimproved tile (2 gold and some GPPs versus 2 food or 1 food/1 production). But if the tiles around the city are improved, you'll work those instead, especially if a few of them are trading posts or riverside farms.

All I'm really trying to do is make the first 10-20 turns flow a bit better. Beyond that, the player can take care of whatever they need. I just throught it was strange that a Transcendence-era start could start a new city with 7 population, and yet the terrain around that city would be untouched.

One other possibility I thought of was to just start the game in a Golden Age for a number of turns that'd depend on your starting era. But that's probably abuseable, so I shelved it.

1. After defeating several waves of Persian troops I was confronted with an attack by a lone Great Merchant!?! :confused: I think it was trying to find a route to the C-S in the north via my lands. That code will need to be fixed.

Not my fault, the game's always been stupid this way. Once a unit has been given a "move to" command, it'll follow the path it selected to complete that mission, regardless of what else happens. So the Merchant was told "move to that city-state", picked the shortest route for that (which went through your territory), and would follow that path no matter what.

2. Another minor bug: after I killed the Great Merchant (heah how come I don't get combat experience for this!?! :confused: )

The same reason you don't get XP for capturing Workers: in the Units file, their "attack XP" and "defend XP" are set to 0. (If I recall right, those are the amount someone gets for killing that unit, while the amount that unit gets for killing things is set in the GlobalDefines file. Or maybe I have that backwards.)

3. The Persians nuked Berlin 4 consecutive turns last night. I wonder what the code-logic is regarding what targets the AIs select to nuke? I would think that nuking several cities would be a better strategy here.

Depends which type of nuke is being used. Atomic Bombs don't automatically kill everything in the area (while Nuclear Missiles do), so repeated applications would have some benefit. But I'm sure the AI wasn't evaluating the situation too closely, and was following some sort of simplistic "nuke the nearest/biggest city in range" logic.

On a similar note, what is the counter to nukes at this stage in the game? I noticed my AA units wouldn't intercept the incoming nuclear bombers

As far as I know, AA units are SUPPOSED to be able to intercept them, as the nukes are listed as Air units, but there might be something type-related in there. I really want to test that all out at some point, because it's obviously very important for there to be some way to defend against incoming nukes.

It could be that the developers never put in a counter to nukes, since the game was intended to end soon after they unlocked, but that'd just be sloppy design on their part.

I can upload the autosave if you want.

You can try that, but you should probably wait until the start of the month. The only problem is that I can't remember if I tweaked anything else in the files after I'd uploaded the last version; if I had, then the files will be incompatible and I won't be able to load it. Since I tend to tweak things often, I've generally assumed that any savegames are incompatible with my current mod; when I get home I'll be able to see if I'd altered anything on that last day before I left. (If need be, I can always back the mod version up to the v0.11 standard; it won't undo the changes I've made to the ModBuddy files, but it'd allow me to play one game as 0.11 standard.)

If you've got a savegame right before the crash, would you mind running FireTuner and seeing if it gives any message at the crash? It probably won't, but if it does, that'd make things MUCH easier.

Well, 10 turns doesn't sound so bad to me. I mean, I understand that it's a pretty significant time investment, but I really dislike it when the balance gets shifted to the point where things build in 2-3 turns (which is what it was at in some of my earlier builds for late-era starts). For one thing, you get significant rounding errors, and for another, it becomes a huge micromanagement chore when you have a large empire. Also, I generally dislike the ability to quickly react to a war by immediately churning out large numbers of units, since that really encourages the player to keep a minimal army most of the time and only pay a high unit maintenance when he absolutely needs to. (That's why I disliked Civ4's rifleman conscription trick.)

OK, sounds good. I think this is a personal perception issue on my part, and that its related to the SMAC observation I made earlier. Note also that I don't ICS, so I have 3-5 cities during the timeframe I mentioned, which means there really isn't a whole lot going on other than waiting for these few cities to produce something (or the AIs to attack).


The real question, I guess, is what SHOULD the optimal number of turns be, for cities that have a Factory and railroad connections?

And my answer would be that, since this is your mod, then this should be determined by you. :) I see my job of playtesting to simply report my thoughts as I observe them, which is pretty much a "fire and forget" approach: I report things as I encounter/ observe them, and I move on, and hopefully I don't repeat myself too often.


Frankly, I think this is indicative of a bigger issue: Civ5 just needs a real "random event" system.

Or some similar system which adds a layer of complexity which also is capable of consuming the empty spots in the game.


There are already some stubs for this in place, but it really just needs more, and I might be tempted to just code one up myself (since it's NOT hard in Lua).

Thats a very interesting statement regarding the stubs: every time I turn around someone is making a comment similar to this. Makes me think that what we are seeing now of ciV is like the skeleton, and that in time Firaxis is going to flesh it all out.


Not my fault, the game's always been stupid this way. Once a unit has been given a "move to" command, it'll follow the path it selected to complete that mission, regardless of what else happens.

:lol: I really didn't think this was your fault, but it brings up a good question from my end: do you want me posting observations in this thread which I don't think are related to your mod? From a certain perspective it would seem I'm infering that my observations are a result of your mod (i.e. bad press). From my perspective though, because I test stuff for a living, why my approach in RL is to observe and pass on as much as I can, and then let the brains of the outfit make the real decisions as to whether its a real issue or not. Let me know if you want me to continue with this approach or not.


The same reason you don't get XP for capturing Workers: in the Units file, their "attack XP" and "defend XP" are set to 0.

:lol: I was only being facetious with my comment here.


Depends which type of nuke is being used. Atomic Bombs don't automatically kill everything in the area (while Nuclear Missiles do), so repeated applications would have some benefit. But I'm sure the AI wasn't evaluating the situation too closely, and was following some sort of simplistic "nuke the nearest/biggest city in range" logic.

I think in this application Atomic Bombs are more terror weapons, and so spreading them around onto various cities is more beneficial from a psychological and military perspective (i.e. it was sort of a relief the AI kept targeting the same city over and over, rather than targeting my other still very productive cities, which probably would have made me quit the game at that point). Its what I do when I attack the AIs with Atomic Bombs.


As far as I know, AA units are SUPPOSED to be able to intercept them, as the nukes are listed as Air units, but there might be something type-related in there. I really want to test that all out at some point, because it's obviously very important for there to be some way to defend against incoming nukes.

I am relatively certain my AA units did not engage the incoming Atomic Bombs.


If you've got a savegame right before the crash, would you mind running FireTuner and seeing if it gives any message at the crash? It probably won't, but if it does, that'd make things MUCH easier.

The problem I had was that Firetuner was present, but I couldn't pull it up from its condensed window to see. :(

On to this evening's playtesting:
1. Encountered a graphics error in that part of the marble in the tile was red. Hadn't seen that before.

2. Another iteration of an AI asking me to declare war, and after I did the AI denounced me.

3. Question concerning hostile C-S: should hostile C-S cities be able to bombard my adjacent units? I think they should be able to. In this case they didnt.


D

Note also that I don't ICS, so I have 3-5 cities during the timeframe I mentioned,

Actually, I think this may be the core of the problem. Not that you don't ICS, but that you'll only have 3-5 cities. I've talked about this before, but Settlers are just WAY too expensive in late-era starts. I'm pretty sure their cost is inflated to include all of the "free" buildings included in the new cities, or possibly to account for the increased starting population. This makes the cost of building a new Settler prohibitive, so it'd be several eras before you founded your next new city.

So I want to do one of the following:
> Remove all, or nearly all, of the "free" buildings from each city. It wouldn't take too long for you to build them all the old-fashioned way if there was some sort of early production bonus, and it'd definitely help keep the cost manageable.
> Start each player with more Settlers, more Workers, and more military units in later-era starts. You'd still be incapable of building more Settlers early on, but at least you'd have a more respectable empire.
> Add a hard-coded Lua stub, along the lines of my tech and food boosts, that boosts production. Besides reducing some of the slowness you mentioned earlier, it'd also help with that early Settler production. Possibly increase the bonus further for Settlers only. (As noted above, this could be combined with a reduction in "free" buildings to allow fast expansion.)
(The problem is this: the food boost that I coded in is handled at the end of a turn, and the way it's done means that it's NOT being used for Settler production. So while making a Settler your cities might grow a bit, but they'll take just as long as before to make that Settler.)
> Add Lua to provide the extra units mentioned above. Imagine if, after 20 turns of play, your empire was automatically gifted with an extra Settler. Not as good as starting with an extra one, but helpful for expanding anyway. Same for workers and maybe combat units. This could be tied back to the random event system I'd mentioned earlier; a free Worker showing up in your capital might be a nice random bonus.

I really didn't think this was your fault, but it brings up a good question from my end: do you want me posting observations in this thread which I don't think are related to your mod?

I'd say keep mentioning them, because even if it's not my fault, I might still be able to find a way to tweak the game to reduce those behaviors. Just don't blame me if my posts end up sounding really defensive ("I didn't do it!").

I think in this application Atomic Bombs are more terror weapons, and so spreading them around onto various cities is more beneficial from a psychological and military perspective

More than that, there's a definite strategic advantage to spreading the bombs out, if only to increase the amount of tiles affected by Fallout.

But Atomic Bombs have a VERY short range. (6? 8? I know the Nuclear Missile was changed from 8 to 15 in the patch, but I thought the A-Bomb was left at its original value.) So it might be that Berlin was the only city that could be reached without an extra turn of rebasing...

I am relatively certain my AA units did not engage the incoming Atomic Bombs.

I'm not doubting you, I'm just saying that they SHOULD engage them. The question then becomes, why don't they? Are AA units hard-coded to only engage things of type Fighter or Bomber (which'd imply bad things for my Needlejets, since they're neither)? Is there an explicit exclusion for nukes? And if so, is there a way I can get around these limitations?

The problem I had was that Firetuner was present, but I couldn't pull it up from its condensed window to see.

This is why I always run Civ5 in Windowed mode. In fullscreen it was nearly impossible to recover from crashes. It also made debugging a lot easier.

1. Encountered a graphics error in that part of the marble in the tile was red. Hadn't seen that before.

I actually see that all the time, but I don't think it's a marble thing. I'd see that on all sorts of Tundra-based resources (like Deer), and while it was never that consistent, I'd get it in nearly every game I played. Now, I'm almost always playing the DX9 executable (my machine, perversely, is still running XP), so I figured it might have been related to that.

3. Question concerning hostile C-S: should hostile C-S cities be able to bombard my adjacent units? I think they should be able to. In this case they didnt.

They should be able to, but I've seen plenty of times when they didn't. I've long since given up on trying to figure out certain parts of the AI.

1. The Japanese asked me to DoC the Iriquois, which I said I'd do after ten turns. After the ten turns the Japanese requested I honor this agreement, which I did. The very next turn the Japanese publicly denounced me, saying I couldn't be trusted. I'm not sure if this is good AI programming or not: it could be considered good in that if my backdoor agreement with the Japanese were secret, then the only thing everyone else would know was that I was essentially dogpiling the AI and so deserved the diplo hit from the Japanese. It would in effect have been very sneaky of the Japanese to do this to me. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

OK, so not to dwell too deeply on this subject, but after thinking about this a while why I have to think this is a good option to be made available to the AIs.

So to take a step back, why I believe the way the AI coding in this current sequence regarding collusion in attacks should be as follows:

- If AI A is friendly with human and asks for attack on AI B, then if human agrees to attack, AI A does not denounce human player.

- If AI A is hostile towards human and asks for attack on AI B, then AI A denounces human for attacking AI B.


Now taking a step further out, I think a way to introduce a good randomizer into the equation would be as follows:

- If AI A is friendly with human and asks for attack on AI B, then if human agrees to attack then introduce a randomizer die roll, and if die roll is true (approximately 20% of the time), then flip polarity of current AI/ Human diplomacy rating.

- After diplo has been processed flip the AI/ human diplo polarity back to its original state.

This would then achieve the above effect of the AI "baiting" the human player into a war, and then inflicting the diplo hit on them. It can probably be refined from here, but hopefully you get the idea where I am going with this.

On to this evening's playtesting:

1. Suffered a CTD when I tried to build my first uranium mine. I reloaded an again started building the mine, however the crash didn't occur.
2. Concerning the below pics: very interesting that the AI is building forests in this area! These forests would definately impede my planed counteroffensive! :goodjob:
3. Right now using your mod I am seeing a trend (i.e. game after game) where I am having to reject some research agreements from the AIs: I stress "some" as I am picking and choosing based on current events in my various games, however I think this situation is intended on your part and the various game influences you've introduced are putting me into this continual position. If this is a correct assumption on my part then please be aware you are achieving the desired effect in this regard! :goodjob:

I'm in a very heated contest against the Greeks this evening. My advantage this evening is that I can build nukes and they can't. Should be interesting how this goes from here on out tonight....

D

3. Right now using your mod I am seeing a trend (i.e. game after game) where I am having to reject some research agreements from the AIs:

I think this is financial. The cost of research agreements is flat, not changing with difficulty; it's tied to era, and I've increased it significantly, but it's still not a high cost. But as you've noted previously, the cost of rush-buying buildings is prohibitively high, the AI gets a massive discount on unit upgrading, and there's not a whole lot else to do with spare cash, except bribe City-States (which the AI never seems to do enough of). And the AI doesn't understand the concept of "saving up", so you get an awkward situation; if the player saves all of his money and forms Research Agreements as soon as the AIs have enough cash for one, he'll pull WAY ahead. But if the player plays "normally", upgrading or rushing things as necessary, the AIs will be at a huge advantage.
Personally, the Research Agreement concept is one of my least favorite parts of Civ5. I've been really tempted to just disable the thing entirely. I wish they'd done it as an ongoing cost (lose X gold per turn, gain Y beakers per turn until you cancel the agreement). In the short term, I think I'm going to drastically increase the era-based cost increase of the agreements, to make them far rarer at the later eras.

Now, like I said, it's all financial, so any overhauls I do to the gold production of the game will be reflected in this. I actually liked the balance back when a non-Golden Age player would stay pretty close to zero income; while this kills rush-buying, it kept this sort of thing under control. This is also part of why I tweaked the Happiness formulae, I wanted to force the player to produce happiness buildings in their cities, which'd suck up even more gold. I think the balance is still a bit off, though.

For one thing, unit maintenance just seems too LOW to me, while building maintenance is prohibitively high, and I think part of that is just the relative cost balance between buildings and units. (Why make one infantry unit, when the same amount of production time gets you a Bank?) I could try lowering unit costs across the board, but the better solution might be to add unit production bonuses to more buildings. While the Forge and Arsenal both boost land unit production, the Forge requires local Iron and the Arsenal has several building prerequisites. Also, they're both land-only; while the Harbor helps with sea units, it's not really a whole lot.
So I was thinking of adding, say, +10% production when building units (of ANY domain) to the Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy. Not enough to make up for the lack of a Factory or anything, but enough to make units build faster than most buildings. (Workshop is +30%, right? So it'd balance.)
Alternately, I could just remove the +XP from the Armory entirely and replace it with a +20% or +30% production bonus. But since I'd already removed the XP on the Military Academy, that'd reduce the starting XP for land units too low.
(Possibility: boost Barracks to +20 XP, make Armory be +10 XP and +20% production.)

I'm in a very heated contest against the Greeks this evening. My advantage this evening is that I can build nukes and they can't.

One of the reasons I want to ensure AA works against nukes is that I don't LIKE the idea that nukes can have that sort of swing. To me, nukes are supposed to be rare weapons that only get used in truly desperate situations, but in the current setup there's little reason for the AI not to build and use one on the opening turn of a war. Part of the problem is that the AIs only care about nuke usage if you use one near their empires; this is easily seen with city-states. You can nuke the center of an empire, and nearby city-states won't care, but move just a little closer to the CS and it's suddenly a -50 hit. To me, there should be an automatic negative hit to all empires, regardless of distance, and THEN an additional hit for nearby empires/states.

Of course, there's no easy way to make the AI consider these sorts of factors, so it's probably for the best that there's nothing like that. But I still want them to be interceptible; just enough that a well-armed nation is unlikely to take much damage. If I can't do that, then I'm going to have to add a "Bunker" city improvement that adds air and nuke defense, or possibly tie that effect to an Airport-style improvement. I might do that anyway, and add even more of that to the Perimeter Defense, Gravity Shield, etc. But I'd really just like to have them be defeatable through the existing Fighter patrols, because really, Fighters kinda suck otherwise.

1. Concerning the first two pics below: I think you had mentioned this before, however I didn't associate the significance of its meaning in-game (i.e. that the game would end due to not having a tech to select for research). Essentially because the way the tech tree is set up, then because Centauri Ecology isn't researchable, all techs which are linked downstream of this tech can't be researched, and eventually you run out of techs that can be researched, which is what happened to me last night. And of course you can't continue the game unless you select a tech to research, so it was an impassable situation at this point.

2. Concerning the C-S cultural border pic: kinda disappointed that the AI logic hadn't recognized the benefit of the nearby Feature. Also, my standard rule of 4 APCs and an arty unit still apply to conquering a C-S.

3. The last pic is of an adjacent C-S: I don't think they trust me too much.... :shifty: I wonder if this build-up is in response to my actions against other C-S?

D

Essentially because the way the tech tree is set up, then because Centauri Ecology isn't researchable, all techs which are linked downstream of this tech can't be researched, and eventually you run out of techs that can be researched, which is what happened to me last night. And of course you can't continue the game unless you select a tech to research, so it was an impassable situation at this point.

Two things:

1> Did you do this deliberately, not building the spaceship to see what happens, or was this a consequence of your normal playstyle?
I tried to make it a no-brainer to build a spaceship ASAP with all the rewards you get, and the AI's flavors are set high enough that they should put it high on their lists. So if this was a deliberate choice by you then I wouldn't worry about it too much. But if it somehow took you two extra eras to be able to afford the spaceship parts, then I have a lot of balancing work to do.
(And if the spaceship just didn't work when you built the parts, then something's REALLY wrong.)

2> There's another way to break that lock: The Planetary Datalinks. A National Wonder that gives you any tech that 4 other civs know. While I explicitly ruled out Disabled techs like Centauri Ecology from being stolen by it, I did NOT do the same for the techs it leads to. So as soon as four AI civs have Centauri Empathy, you'd gain it too, and could continue on from there. (You'd still be missing Centauri Ecology, and it's an important enough tech to go back for, what with a farm bonus and a new resource.)
Now, if you've already conquered so many civs that there aren't four non-CS civs left, then this won't work. Or if you're so far ahead of the other civs that you're reaching the Nanotech era before they even get into the Digital. But that's why I suggested mods like Tech Diffusion; I really don't WANT anyone to be able to fall that far behind.

Two things:

1> Did you do this deliberately, not building the spaceship to see what happens, or was this a consequence of your normal playstyle?
I tried to make it a no-brainer to build a spaceship ASAP with all the rewards you get, and the AI's flavors are set high enough that they should put it high on their lists. So if this was a deliberate choice by you then I wouldn't worry about it too much. .

I deliberately did not build the spaceship: had plenty of time to build it - just chose not to in this game. Thats the good news.


But if it somehow took you two extra eras to be able to afford the spaceship parts, then I have a lot of balancing work to do. .

Now the bad news: I did have the PDL (and it does work as I was receiving free tech after free tech). I just pulled up my gamesave and checked the stats and only two of the surviving five AIs had completed the spaceship at this point in the game, so I would not have gotten CE this way. So maybe the spaceship parts flavoring needs to be tweaked some more to get the AIs to take advantage of this?

D

I just pulled up my gamesave and checked the stats and only two of the surviving five AIs had completed the spaceship at this point in the game,

Okay, but did they have the technologies in question? I've had games where the AI was 30 or more techs behind me; once you get a sizeable tech lead, to where you can't lose a war and get every Wonder, it's really hard for the AI to catch you. So it's possible that the smaller AIs hadn't reached the point where they could build it yet. (This sort of thing is why I'm a big fans of the Tech Diffusion style of balancing.)

It's easy to check whether an AI has built a component, since it'll show up on the Victory Progress screen, but to know whether they have certain techs, you basically either have to watch what units they're fielding (Laser Infantry come at the same tech as the last spaceship part), or use FireTuner to check whether they have the right tech IDs.

Okay, now that I'm back from vacation, I'm hard at work modding. Here's what I found about that Settler cost issue:

> Take the base cost of a Settler. Multiply by (TrainPercent/100).
> Add 40% of the cost of all "free" buildings. (This is in GlobalDefines as "NEW_CITY_BUILDING_VALUE_MODIFIER", at -60 by default). Multiply this by (BuildPercent/100) instead of TrainPercent.
So, in the Transcendence Era, you get free Hospitals (cost 400) and BuildPercent and TrainPercent are both 50. So the Hospital would normally cost 200 when build directly, but it adds 80 to the cost of each new Settler.
> Add 150 per extra point of starting population the city gets (again, set in GlobalDefines). DIVIDE this by (GrowthPercent/100), then multiply by (TrainPercent/100). In the transcendence Era GrowthPercent is 70, so each population point adds ~110 to the cost of a Settler.

Now, rather than play with the percentages, which'd change the rates of everything else, I just changed the base multipliers. So in the next patch, instead of 40% and 150, it'll be 25% and 100.
The result is that a Transcendence settler used to be 1230 hammers, now it'll only be 813. A similar ~33% reduction would happen for any start Fusion or later; Industrial/Nuclear starts would change by a smaller amount, but it should still be noticeable.

Also, I found an easy way to help production: remember my food "head start" boost? I just added the same amount to each city's production each turn. So you'll get a few extra hammers per turn when you're starting out, just enough to really get things going. It seems to make a real difference; for a Nuclear Era start you'd get +4 food and hammers per turn for the first tech, +3 for the next three, and so on.

I'm going to try to add those three new techs and add the Colony Pod unit before releasing a new version. Hopefully I'll have that done tomorrow.

On to today's (and last night's) playtesting:

1. Concerning the Flood plain question pic: I thought flood plains were only adjacent to rivers?

2. The AI attacked with with an unsupported Plasma arty last night. Good to see the AIs using advanced units, however not its wisest move.

3. Concerning the Stealth Attack: I am assuming this is what occurs when you are attacked by a Stealth Bomber?

4. Concerning the "Struggline AI" pic: the Persians asked me to attack the Mongols who were on our common border. Once war was declared I expected the AI to bring the heat, however their offensive never gathered steam. The Mongols also didn't really put up much of a fight, either, as they only had a handful of units which were very quickly routed. Do you think this has anything to do with the re-balancing of flavors that you and Firaxis have been doing (i.e. the AIs are less inclined to build a surplus of military units)?

5. Concerning the "Log in problem" pic: this happens every so often where the Windows mouse cursor is present (instead of the ciV mouse cursor icon), and the cursor is unresponsive in that I can't select anything. The way I get it to work is to do a cntl-alt-del and start Task Manager, then window back into ciV and the cursor then is the in-game cursor and works.

Since I seemed to be running out of new observations to make on Continents-style maps, why today I flopped back over to Lakes style maps - first time since the new patch: I do like how there really are lakes now, and not just one tile-wide watering holes. Am probably going to focus on Lakes maps for a while, unless your looking for feedback on a specific map type.

D

D

1. Concerning the Flood plain question pic: I thought flood plains were only adjacent to rivers?

They are. Notice how that tile also says "fresh water"? I've seen this happen a few times since the patch: there's a river there, but it's not drawing it. You can figure out where the river is by looking for that "fresh water" marker, or by moving units back and forth through the area (since they'll lose movement as they cross it). This only seems to happen with very short rivers in deserts, not sure why. (I think there's supposed to be a minimum river length, and it's just not checking it any more.)

In my last test game, I was playing as America (who starts on a river by default), but my capital's starting river was invisible. VERY annoying.

2. The AI attacked with with an unsupported Plasma arty last night. Good to see the AIs using advanced units, however not its wisest move.

Unfortunately, the AI just isn't smart enough to understand that just because a unit CAN do something doesn't mean it SHOULD. They put in some hard-coding for it to protect "normal" artillery, but adding a base Combat rating to the plasma artillery (to allow it to attack and defend in a non-ranged way) seems to screw that up.

One way to reduce this, possibly, is to prohibit plasma artillery from performing melee attacks. That might cause the AI to realize it's an artillery unit and not a tank that happens to have a bombardment rating. The strange thing is that it's CombatClass Siege and UnitAI "CITY_BOMBARD", so it should already understand this regardless of its other abilities.

3. Concerning the Stealth Attack: I am assuming this is what occurs when you are attacked by a Stealth Bomber?

No idea, I've never been attacked by one. If that's the result of a successful "Evasion" roll, then that makes things interesting. On the other hand, if it's just a graphical bug, then I'm not too surprised.

Do you think this has anything to do with the re-balancing of flavors that you and Firaxis have been doing (i.e. the AIs are less inclined to build a surplus of military units)?

It could very easily be. I raised the flavors of the various "important" infrastructure buildings (banks, universities, etc.) so that the AIs wouldn't wait extra centuries to make them while it was churning out unneeded military units. It might just not be handling that well, so I might have to go back and boost the flavors of certain key military units as well.

Per our previous discussion, I've changed the Armory from "+15 XP for land units" to "+10% production for all units, +10 XP for land units", and the Military Academy now also adds +10% unit production in addition to its "Elite" promotion. Together, these would basically counteract the Workshop's building boost, keeping military units cheaper than buildings. The boost is for ALL unit types, not just land ones, so stacked with the Forge and Arsenal you can make true military cities that are made to churn out units.
10% sounds like a lot, but percentages are additive, so if you've got a city with a Factory and railroad connection, the Armory would take you from 200% to 210%, for a 5% reduction in build times. That's why I only decreased the XP boost by 5.

I'm hoping this change will help make the AI build more military units again.

this happens every so often where the Windows mouse cursor is present (instead of the ciV mouse cursor icon)

Never seen that happen. Of course, I'm using XP and playing in Windowed mode, so things might be a bit different for you in general.

Am probably going to focus on Lakes maps for a while, unless your looking for feedback on a specific map type.

I'm not looking for a specific type, just be careful with the balance comments. For instance, there are a few map types that have no oceans. On those maps, you wouldn't have any Dilithium, which obviously changes things in the future eras (although once you get to the Nanotech era you'll have two different ways to add some). So if you're playing one of these map types and don't like the balance, just be aware that if the problem ONLY happens due to that one map type I'd be unlikely to change the overall balance just to fix it. (Although as I said before, I've been thinking about adding Dilithium in lake tiles.)

I've been playing the Small Continents map lately, myself, as I thought the main Continents option was too consistently creating two huge continents and nothing else. And I might try a Pangaea map soon, just to see what it does to the Dilithium distribution.

Okay, report time!

Now that I'm back, I tried starting a game in the Industrial Era, on Prince. Small Continents map, 6 civs (counting me); it made three decent-sized continent with two civs on each, plus a scattering of random islands (one of which had a lot of good resources). The three continents weren't evenly spaced; there was a big gap between two. I was Iroquois, on the Eastern continent. Here's what I found:

1> The AI still isn't settling very aggressively. After placing my initial three Settlers, I built a fourth one and placed it far forward, right next to Mongolia, to lock them off from the rest of the Eastern continent. There was PLENTY of time for the AI to beat me to that spot, but they didn't. And I took that forward spot before settling better spots closer to home, which I knew I'd be able to get later; the AI does nothing like that.
Also, remember that one good small island I mentioned? The AI never settled there. I made a bunch of colonies on the various small islands around the world, but the AIs never went beyond the continent they started on, and I'd left that one alone (since it was on the opposite side of the world from my home) and yet by the Fusion age the AI still hadn't gone there. It's strange, because I KNOW the AI explored (something it wouldn't do, previously), because they had Caravels and Scouts out exploring before I did.
I added the new Colony Pod unit, but I never built one, because by the time I got to it the world was already basically full. If I'd had a raze-'n-resettle policy then I could see the appeal, though, and it'd obviously be useful for SMAC-style games starting in the Digital Era.

2> Because of the map type, I had no Oil, and none within easy reach. Perversely, Mongolia (who I shared the continent with) had two right in the middle of their territory. So they died in the Industrial Era. (Actually, they declared on me first, but fighting the Iroquois in a forest, when I also had a better navy? Bad idea.) Coal was just plentiful enough to be useful, but not enough to put Factories everywhere right away.
I think the big problem is just that Oil is almost entirely limited to Desert or Tundra, except for the ocean deposits. Hint for people playing along at home: Texas is not a desert. So I think I'm going to tweak the spawn tables a bit to add more Oil to Grassland and Plains tiles.

3> In the late Nuclear / early Digital, I was declared on by three out of the remaining four civs. But they did this the turn before I built the spaceship, which automatically made peace for me. (Kinda neat to see that actually matter!) A little later, the second continent civs (Rome and Russia) declared on me again, and so I conquered them. Rome's army was kind of weak, but Russia's was decent. Both had Stealth Bombers and Jet Fighters, and those things made my life miserable. (And I think you're right: the Stealths were invisible half the time, and I think those are the times it succeeded at an Evasion roll. Strange that they'd still be damaged, though.) And I have to say, the AI was attacking cities with AA guns and SAMs, and while that might sound stupid on paper, it worked; they recaptured one of the cities I'd taken from them. (I ended up razing it.)

4> In the late Digital, I was declared on by Siam (Western Continent), who'd just entered the Digital but had a huge army. This was incredible; they had every single tile in their terrain occupied by a military unit, and a good number were AA/SAMs. (Strange that they hadn't upgraded the AAs.) It took forever for my bombers to clear out a beachhead, and in the process Siam lobbed an atomic bomb at Cumae (ex-Roman city that was closest to their empire); if I hadn't been taking advantage of the huge range of the Stealths (by basing them further back) I'd have lost them, and as it was I lost a really good Jet Fighter. They had a second bomb ready to go, but they rebased it to their closest city on the turn I was finally pulling a Normandy and conquered the city. If they'd had Nuclear Missiles, I'd have been in BIG trouble, which makes me think the Planet Busters are even better than I'd thought. (With those, they could have reached my capital!)
My AA DID engage the Atomic Bomb as an air attack (but my Fighter didn't), and I saw them also engage Guided Missiles when the AI used those. The problem was just that the AA didn't do enough damage to kill the bomb in one shot, so it got through. I might be able to handle this by tweaking the AA numbers (give AA units and Fighters a massive unit-specific bonus against Atomic Bombs and a smaller one against Nuclear Missiles). Alternatively, I could just reduce the base unit HP from 10 down to 5 for those units (I think I can do that), so that any interception is more likely to kill them.

After I got my beachhead, taking their closest two cities and a city-state they'd allied with, their counterattack was brutal. I lost quite a few good units, despite having a big tech advantage; they especially made good use of Gunships to wipe out my Modern Armors, and Stealth Bombers and Jet Fighters again.
I'd go on, but unfortunately I ran into a very consistent crash bug. I'd unlocked Doctrine: Air Power (because my Battleships were getting pounded by Siam's air units), and started upgrading my Stealth Bombers to Needlejets. The moment I tried to rebase one certain highly-upgraded Needlejet, the game crashed. Reload, try again, same thing. It'd crash the moment I hit the rebase button, even before choosing a destination, which implies it might be a UI problem (drawing the rebase ring, or some missing animation in the placeholder?). It was especially strange since I'd already rebased a couple other Needlejets with no problems, it was just this one particular one.
I've seen this before, when I tried rebasing a Subspace Generator, so there's clearly something in the rebasing logic that isn't functioning correctly for the new units.

5> Happiness. This was a BIG problem.
First, the AIs had tons of it. Early on I got the popup telling me how much happiness each empire had, and while I was at +10ish on a good day, the AIs were at +30 to +50. They SHOULD have been using that margin to settle those outlying islands, but never did. The result was that the AIs were in golden ages very often, with staggering incomes because of it, but had half my number of cities (and therefore less research in the long term). The only AI with a large empire was Siam, who'd conquered half of India early on.
Later, I had too much of it. (+120 before attacking Siam.) The first problem is that the Theater and Stadium are just too CHEAP now; the patch reduced their maintenance costs from 5-6 down to 3 gpt each, for 5 Happiness each, so they're no-brainers now. Once my cities were developed, Happiness became a non-issue. Golden Ages were commonplace.
(Solutions: drop Theater to 4, increase maintenance costs to 4 and 5.)
The second problem is that, simply, Luxuries are too good. Expanding your empire means gaining more luxuries, so it becomes trivial to pick up more and more Happiness as you go. I really wish they'd done a tapering system (say, +6 for the first Luxury, +5 for the second, +4 for the third, and so on until you're only getting +1 for each additional one). The fact that every luxury adds the same +5 doesn't help, either. This gets even worse once you get a good gold surplus, because you'll be able to make a lot of CS allies.

6> Culture.
I tend to play culture-heavy, with the Piety tree. While the AI was slightly ahead of me early on, by the later game I was getting 700-800 culture per turn and getting new policies every 10-12 turns despite massive conquering. It's like the Happiness problem; the Museum and Opera House are both +5 culture for 3 gpt. I think I'll up them to +4 for 4 and +5 for 5 just like the happiness buildings.
The other problem is the policy that gives +100% culture if a city has a World Wonder in it. It's just too good, especially if the player is intelligent and spreads the Wonders around with Great Engineers and such. Part of it is that there are just more Wonders now, especially in the Digital era. I think I'll drop it to +50%, since the Fundamentalist policy also boosts culture from Wonders (but in a flat +5 bonus way). I'd also been lucky in getting Mt. Fuji nearby (+culture when worked) and an early Great Artist (turned into a Landmark near my capital).

7> Research.
Despite not going Rationalism, I was getting techs every 2-3 turns by the Fusion era. Granted I owned more than half the world and could have won by diplomacy long before, but still, it felt fast even before that; in the Nuclear era, when I only had conquered Mongolia, it was ~5 turns per tech.
I'm not sure how this can be fixed. I'm sure it's just a consequence of having a large empire, but I'd like to see some sort of way to add diminishing returns, where your later/conquered cities don't add as much as the core ones. (Maybe add a penalty to the Courthouse; you WILL build one, for the happiness fix. But this'd just encourage people to raze more cities and resettle.)

8> Money.
For the Industrial and Nuclear eras I liked the money balance. By the start of the Digital I was earning ~80gpt in a non-GA and ~200 in one, which was a bit high (and was probably due to the cheap happiness/culture buildings). By the Fusion era I was earning ~200 in a non-GA and 400-500 per turn in a GA, just way too high.
It's not the fault of the buildings themselves, it just goes back to something I've said before: without a distance-based Corruption setup, there's just no real downside to expansion. Cities pay for themselves quickly, and it adds up.

Okay, I know it's been a few days, but here goes. It's a big one, and more importantly, it seems to be more stable than previous versions. I'm going out of town for a business trip on Sunday morning, so it'll be a week before the next version most likely.

One of the crash bugs only seemed to happen when rebasing a highly-promoted aircraft. To limit this, in this version I've drastically reduced the amount of XP aircraft get (down to the level of other bombardment units, really). While this won't solve the problem, it should come up less often now, and it was something I'd wanted to rebalance for other reasons anyway.

v.0.12 (January 7th):
Balance Mod:
> As the megapatch removed all specialists from the Library (and Paper Maker), my previous edit changing it from 2 -> 1 was unneeded, so I removed it.
> I’d previously accidentally screwed up the Culture of the Wat; when I changed the University from 0->1, I did the same for the Wat, forgetting that it already generated 3 culture per turn. So now it generates 4, and still has one more specialist slot than the University (2 instead of 1).
> I’d changed the Public School from 0 culture to 1, but the patch gave it 1, so I now changed it to 2.
> Units produce too slowly relative to buildings, so I’ve changed the Armory from “+15 XP for Land Units” to “+10 XP for land units, +10% unit production” (all domains). Also, the Military Academy seemed a bit weak in practice, so I’ve also given it +10% unit production.

Content Mod:
> Custom notifications are now working correctly again. It was that stupid VFS bug again, sort of: to get Custom Notifications to work you’d have to set VFS=true, but doing so would also cause it to trigger twice, which was fixed by removing that Lua file from the Content definition. This may be important for other parts as well; it looks like anything using an Event.Add doesn’t need to be explicitly loaded in the module now, if it’s in VFS.
> Many tooltips and civilopedia entries were out of date in previous versions and needed to be updated. I'd shuffled a lot of stuff around, and not kept the documentation up-to-date.
> Since the Map Reveal ability was added to Satellites in the patch, there was no need for me to update this.
> The Giant Death Robot will no longer appear in the Civilopedia.
> While there’s a Flavor table in the Improvements file, it’s not used (except for my terraforming additions). I’ve since added a Flavor rating for the Lumbermill, so that the AI will prefer building a lumbermill instead of chopping the forest most of the time.
> The “Weak Ranged” promotion inherent to the Fighter unit gave –75% strength against everything other than air units. I’ve reduced it to –50% to make the Fighter unit more universally useful. I'm still testing this one; it might make fighters too good, but preliminary tests seem pretty good, although they might be too strong against Naval units; if so, I'll give them the bombers' naval penalty promotion as well.
> The “head start” logic previously added a free amount of food to each city equal to (number of discounted techs / 3), where the initial number of discounted techs = 2*era. (So a transcendence start would begin at +6 food and count down as you researched techs.) It now also adds the same amount to a city’s production values (AFTER all multipliers for buildings); this won’t help much on large cities, but it should help get things up to speed faster.
> By default, 40% of a “free” building’s production cost is added to the cost of a Settler. I’ve lowered this to 25%.
> Likewise, by default, extra starting population points increase the cost of a Settler by 150 (divided by GrowthPercent, multiplied by TrainPercent). I’ve reduced that to 100.
(The net result of the above two changes is that in future-era starts settlers cost about 2/3rds what they did before, and there’s a proportionately smaller discount for the middle eras.)
> Increased the resource requirements of advanced combat units:
- Gravship is now 4 Neutronium, 2 Dilithium (was 2/1)
- Nessus Worm is now 4 Omnicytes (was 2)
- Chiron Locusts is now 2 Omnicytes (was 1)
- Gravtank is now 1 Neutronium, 1 Dilithium (was just the dilithium)
- Mobile Shield is now 2 Dilithium (was 1)
- Bolo is 2 Neutronium, 1 Dilithium (was 1/1)
- Combat Mech is 2 Dilithium, 1 Neutronium (was 1/1)
- Former is 2 Omnicytes, 1 Dilithium (was 1/1)
- Subspace Generator is 3 Dilithium (was 2)
> Added the new Colony Pod unit at Globalization. This is a modern unit that complements but does not completely replace the Settler; it is a combat unit (30 strength, Gunpowder) that cannot attack but can defend itself, can move 3 (at 1 MP per tile, like the Combat Engineer), and airdrops as if it were a paratrooper. It costs the same as a standard Settler, but also requires 1 unit of Oil and 1 of Aluminum, and cannot be hurried. So if you have the resources to spare, it's a better choice, but you won't always have that option or the time to spare.
> Instead of adding +5 food, the Nanohospital now provides 10% food storage. This means that the full set of buildings would provide 100% storage; this doesn’t mean instant growth, because the amount of food needed to grow increases exponentially.
> The Neural Amplifier (all units get +50% vs. Psi units) was changed from a World Wonder to a National Wonder. Its effect was also changed to be a bit less dominating; now, all units get +25% vs. Psi units (stacks with the Trance promotions) and +1 visibility (useful even if you aren't fighting Psi units).
> Previously, the Opera House and Museum were both (+5 culture, -3 gpt). They’re now changed to +4/-4 and +5/-5, respectively.
> Previously, the Theater and Stadium were both (+5 happiness, -3 gpt). They’re now changed to +4/-4 and +5/-5, respectively.
> The Genejack Factory’s unhappiness was increased from 1 to 2. -1 just wasn't limiting enough. The other possibility was reducing its bonus from 50% down to 25%, but I like it better this way.
> Previously, an Air unit gained 4 XP for each normal attack, and 5 XP for each air unit killed in an air sweep. This was lowered to 2 XP, because it was just too easy for air units to gain massive XP compared to other bombardment units. They also previously gained 4 XP for attacking a city, and this was lowered to 3 to match other ranged units.
> The Cyborg Factory was still incorrectly using its old March promotion instead of its new, custom healing promotion. This is now fixed.
> The Planet Buster’s ranged was increased to 99 (from 25), making it effectively unlimited. It's not more powerful than a Nuclear Missile, currently, but your core cities are no longer safe.
> The Hologram Theater was (+3 Happiness, +3 Culture, -4 gpt). It is now increased to (+3 Happiness, +25% Culture, -6 gpt).
> The Centauri Preserve was (+2 UnmoddedHappiness, +25% Culture, +2 gold per Oasis, -2 gpt). It is now (+2 UnmoddedHappiness, -2 gpt, adds 1 gold, production, food, and culture to any local Omnicyte tiles), can only be built in cities with a local Omnicytes deposit, and consumes one unit of Omnicytes when built.
> The Brood Pit and Hybrid Forest no longer require a local Centauri Preserve, since it's now a more specialized building than before. The Paradise Garden national wonder now requires a local Brood Pit instead of a Centauri Preserve.
> The Brood Pit now generates +2 gold per local Oasis tile in addition to its Psi unit benefits. [i]This had been part of the Centauri Preserve's bonus, and I didn't want it to go away entirely.
> The Constitution policy now only adds +50% to Culture in cities with Wonders, instead of +100%.
> The patch changed the dependencies in the Tradition tree, to where Aristocracy and Oligarchy were no longer prerequisites for any others. I’ve changed this back, sort of; the tree now follows a simple pyramid pattern.
> From now on, no policies are standalones, everything leads down the line. So Communism now depends on United Front, which depends on Socialism, while Democracy and Free Speech depend on Universal Suffrage. Finally, Free Thought depends on Humanism now. (This helps reduce beelining towards good policies.)
> The Chiron Locust unit (and its Wild counterpart) now start with the Charge promotion, giving them +25% vs. wounded units. This was to balance their higher resource cost and technology level.
> The Ecological Engineering tech, for some reason, had no Flavor entries. This has been fixed.

TECH REARRANGEMENT:
> Added three new technologies: Social Psychology (T16), Ethical Calculus (T19), and Intellectual Integrity (T22).
> Homo Superior was moved from tier 19 to 20.
> Many techs’ prerequisites were shifted around to make room for the new techs.
The new techs all unlock existing units and buildings, things that had previously been at other techs:
Social Psychology: Hologram Theater, Citizens’ Defense Force, Fundamentalist
Ethical Calculus: Habitation Domes, Ascetic Virtues, Eudaimonia
Intellectual Integrity: Universal Translator, Neural Amplifier
Screenshots of the tech tree are in one of the first posts of the thread.

The existing techs were modified as follows:
- The new Colony Pod is at Globalization, as previously mentioned
- the Free Market policy was moved from Globalization to Planetary Networks
- the Planetary Transit System was moved from Industrial Economics to Planetary Networks
- the Genejack Factory was moved from Retroviral Engineering to Neural Grafting
- the Bioenhancement Center was moved from Mind/Machine Interface to Subatomic Alloys
- the Deep Mining build action was moved from Nanomatter Editation to Biomachinery
- All Mines now gain +1 production at Nanomatter Editation
- The gold boost of the Customs House was moved from Matter Transmission to Quantum Power
- The science boost of the Academy was moved from Quantum Power to Homo Superior
> Because of the change in tier resulting from the above, a few buildings and units changed in effects:
- Ranger: gets +25% strength when facing a Titan unit, either on offense or defense
- Troll: gets an additional +50% defense against ranged attacks (making them nearly immune to bombardment)
- Citizens’ Defense Force: now +25% instead of +33%.

BREAKOUT
Previously, the Barbarian civilization had no way to actually unlock the Centauri Ecology technology, meaning they could never get to Psi units for any game starting before the Digital Era.

Now, every turn after the first spaceship launches, there will be a 2% chance per launched spaceship that the Breakout occurs. (So at first it’ll be 2% per turn, after a second ship launches it’ll be 4% per turn, and so on.)

Once the Breakout occurs, every civilization gains the Centauri Ecology technology, including barbarians and city-states. Note that this automatically obsoletes the spaceship components for those civs that haven’t built their own ships yet, and the Lua is coded in a way that it wouldn’t recognize the completion of the ship if you already have the tech, so if you don’t launch before the Breakout then you’re out of luck and can’t ever launch. That means no free Social Policy and no Golden Age, so there's now a real incentive to complete your own ship as soon as possible. Previously, it ended up that if you weren't going to win the space race, there was no reason to hurry, and you might actually be better off by waiting a bit to make the free Policy worth more.

Future plans: on Breakout, the civilization that launched the first ship will gain a “First Nest” Natural Wonder on a random tile, and after that point mindworms and other psionic units can randomly spawn across the world, including in controlled territory. This will encourage people to keep some military units in their rear areas, in case worms spawn there. This would also make the anti-Psi wonders and promotions more useful.

> Units produce too slowly relative to buildings, so I’ve changed the Armory from “+15 XP for Land Units” to “+10 XP for land units, +10% unit production” (all domains). Also, the Military Academy seemed a bit weak in practice, so I’ve also given it +10% unit production.

I've only got a sample size of one playtest to date, but I think this is spot on, as not only does it increase unit production (i.e. less lag time of doing nothing), but also I had to start thinking more about specialized military production cities: this especially because I start my games at Industrial, why I have to build a Barracks before I can build an Armory. Good stuff! :goodjob:


> The Giant Death Robot will no longer appear in the Civilopedia.

Really!?! It did for me. I'll see in my next game this evening if it show up again.


> The “head start” logic previously added a free amount of food to each city equal to (number of discounted techs / 3), where the initial number of discounted techs = 2*era. (So a transcendence start would begin at +6 food and count down as you researched techs.) It now also adds the same amount to a city’s production values (AFTER all multipliers for buildings); this won’t help much on large cities, but it should help get things up to speed faster.

I did like this in my first game. I also like the free food for each initial city, as it keeps the cities from losing pop points in the first few turns until I can get my first farm built.



> Added the new Colony Pod unit at Globalization. This is a modern unit that complements but does not completely replace the Settler; it is a combat unit (30 strength, Gunpowder) that cannot attack but can defend itself, can move 3 (at 1 MP per tile, like the Combat Engineer), and airdrops as if it were a paratrooper.

Question: do the AIs actually air-drop the CP?


On to last few days playtesting:

1. During a war with the Arabians I used the Culture Bomb to steal a Uranium Mine (heah, after getting nuked a few times you start putting a little more emphasis on prying Uranium Mines from the AIs). Even though I was at war with the Arabians the prompt came up warning me of "repurcussions" for stealing their land.

2. The cost to purchase an Infantry is 740 and 220 to upgrade it to a Mechanized Infantry. The cost of purchasing a Mechanized Infantry itself costs 990. Is this intended? I can understand it from the perspective that you can save a few credits at the expense of the turn it takes to upgrade it.

3. On the Lakes map I played on earlier today there were whales in one of the water tiles: had never seen that before! It was also another great layout of the lakes, as there were nice (relatively) wide bodies of water that added to the strategic decisions I had to make in deciding avenues for expansion.

4. On the Lakes map I played on earlier today there was no oil or aluminum at all. :(

5. Was doing quite well in my first game with this patch: the pace seemed much better, as even when there were times I was just pressing end turn, why it was more of a "Come on! Come on!" than a monotonizing waiting for something to happen. Was making plans on how to take advantage of the next AI on AI war when all the AIs dogpiled me (see screen pic).

D

but also I had to start thinking more about specialized military production cities:

That was my intention. The bigger problem is that the two previous unit-production buildings, the Forge and the Arsenal, are just too limited: land units only, and requiring either local Iron or several previous military buildings.
10% isn't a lot, really, since it's additive. With a Factory and a railroad, +10% means going from 200% to 210%, so it's not going to make a drastic difference in production time. But it helps just a bit, and I just wanted those two buildings together to basically offset the Workshop. That's why I only dropped the XP boost from 15 down to 10; sure, that's land-only XP and basically corresponds to a single extra turn of fighting, but 15+10 instead of 15+15 is the difference between starting with 2 promotions and starting with 1, and that 10% production isn't going to drastically change anything.
I also just wanted to make the Military Academy better. Don't get me wrong, I love its new effect, with the Elite promotion, but this makes it something that people would really want to build in any city that'll ever make military units.

Really!?! It did for me. I'll see in my next game this evening if it show up again.

I didn't have time to see if it did this one correctly. All I did was set HiddenInPedia = true (which I'd previously used for the Wild psi units) and set the cost to -1. It SHOULD have removed it from the list, but if it didn't, it won't break anything.

I did like this in my first game. I also like the free food for each initial city, as it keeps the cities from losing pop points in the first few turns until I can get my first farm built.

I'd previously been planning to do that auto-improvement of terrain around cities in later eras (starting with an assortment of Farms, Mines, etc.), and I still intend to look into that, but this head start boost has gone a long way towards making this all workable. You wouldn't think adding two or three hammers and food per turn would make that much of a difference early on, but it does. I was tempted to change the research bonus to this sort of thing as well, and/or add some other similar tapering bonus (culture? Happiness? Gold?), but it's all worked out pretty well as-is.

Question: do the AIs actually air-drop the CP?

The AI declarations are in place for it, but no, I never saw them actually use it. Of course, the AI still doesn't seem to settle as aggressively as he should, and my test game basically ended with them just having unlocked the unit, so I have no direct evidence that they use it. Then again, they didn't use nukes until that last patch, so who knows whether the AI can handle something like this.

This was always something meant more for the player to play around with, anyway, although I'd love it if the AI took this new unit as a sign to go on another expansion spree. The same was true in SMAC; I'd build Drop Colony Pods and use them to settle hard-to-reach places, and even though the AI had access to the same upgrades I did, he'd never do the same.

2. The cost to purchase an Infantry is 740 and 220 to upgrade it to a Mechanized Infantry. The cost of purchasing a Mechanized Infantry itself costs 990. Is this intended? I can understand it from the perspective that you can save a few credits at the expense of the turn it takes to upgrade it.

It's not intentional, but it's how the math of the game works; the era-based unit cost multiplier (TrainPercent) isn't quite tied to the upgrade costs correctly, so you'll often see games where this happens. I noticed the same thing with Combat Engineers; it was basically the same cost to build a worker and then upgrade him, or possibly even slightly cheaper.
As you pointed out, it costs you a turn. And really, once you get something like the Pentagon, this tactic becomes a no-brainer anyway, if you're planning on buying your units instead of building them. (Conversely, if you get something like Big Ben it's cheaper to buy the top unit instead.) And this only applies to the player; the AI gets a massive discount on upgrade costs, so it'd ALWAYS be smarter for them to do things this way. But they don't. To me, this makes up for some AI stupidity; you as a player might now that if you're 10 turns away from unlocking Infantry, there's no point in building another Rifleman, but the AI doesn't know this. So if you made upgrades cost much more than the difference in costs, it'd really hurt the AI more than the player.

I wish there was a way to pay to complete half-built units instead of having to start from scratch, because I'd love to see it capped to where you could only pay for the last couple hundred hammers of a unit or building's cost. Sort of like how in systems where you'd rush with population, you'd want to wait until it only cost 1 instead of 2.

-----------
Now, personally I wish they'd kept the Civ4 XP limitation, where conscripts only had half the normal XP, and applied that to all purchased units, to encourage you to build the units normally and make this a non-issue. The problem is that in this mod, if you've managed your empire well and expanded well, you'll end up gaining a few hundred gold per turn, which makes purchasing units far easier than building them.

A while back I changed the trade route income equation to match Thalassicus' balance mod. Instead of 1.0+1.25*pop, it's now -1.3+1.5*pop+0.05*capital, which means you break even at around population 8-9 compared to before. This really kills ICS, of course; the big drop in the constant hurts small cities badly, which is why I did it.
The problem is that once you get to size 20ish in every city, you're now gaining ~4 gpt per city more than you used to (29.7 vs 26 gpt), times the usual multipliers, because the per-pop part is larger than before. I've tried to balance this by the increased cost of culture/happiness buildings and the higher unhappiness rate (which'd force you to pay for more happiness buildings), but it hasn't quite worked out. Happiness is just a non-issue once you get rolling; in my last game I was over +100 Happiness, so I just didn't NEED all those happiness-boosting buildings, which'd save you enough money to make up the difference.
(I'm looking into that massive Happiness. There has to be some way to alter that; I think the big culprit is that there's no downside to having all of the luxuries. If you had diminishing returns, where the first few unique luxuries gave +6 or +7 and then it tapered down to +1 or +2 per, then there wouldn't be this massive bonus for expansion. Right now, as long as a city site has a local luxury resource nearby, it'll always be a net positive. Even if it's got horses nearby for a circus, same deal.)

So I'm thinking about changing the money equation again. How about -1.0 + 1.333*pop + 0.067*capital? Break-even is size 13 (hurting ICS even worse), but it doesn't go out of control nearly as badly at large sizes. With size 20 cities you'd gain 27 gpt, versus 26 in vanilla. Conversely, with size 5 cities you'd make 6gpt, versus 7.25 in vanilla and 6.45 in the current equation, so it shouldn't hurt you too badly at first.

But even that might not work right, because from what I can tell there's a fundamental weakness in the way the economics works, part of which I did to myself. It's the tile yield increases. Farms (+research) and Trading Posts (+production) are the only ones you can really spam, but most of the specialized ones gained +1 gold. So it adds up FAST; trade route income is really only a small part of a player's income, most of their money comes from the multiplication of tile yields and Merchant specialists. It's why settling on a river is so crucial.
This actually comes into play with some of my Nanotech-era buildings (Nanoreplicator and such). Adding a flat amount to the base gold/research/production of a city might not sound too impressive, but by that era the multipliers are so large that the effect can be huge.

3. On the Lakes map I played on earlier today there were whales in one of the water tiles: had never seen that before!

The percentages aren't set very high, but yes, it happens. I didn't touch the luxury distribution logic, so this is all part of the core game. The only thing I changed were the strategic deposits; I suppose that could interact, since more strategics means fewer open tiles to put luxuries in, but there's a hard minimum the game uses so I don't think that's a problem.
In terms of whales, and other aquatic resources, the game splits tiles into three lists: directly adjacent to land, shallow water (which also includes the adjacent category), and deep water. Pretty much every resource is linked to shallow water, including Whales for reasons that have nothing to do with reality and everything with balance.

If you try starting a game in the Transcend Era (or Nanotech, even), you'll see all of the resources on a map. This is how I tested the distributions for myself; start a game in that era, see if there's enough of each resource within reach to be playable, tweak and iterate.
I'm still not quite happy; Dilithium's still pretty scarce and Omnicytes are a bit too plentiful. But it's a lot better than it used to be. And you can see how common Whales, Pearls, etc. are on the various map types.

4. On the Lakes map I played on earlier today there was no oil or aluminum at all.

This sort of thing really annoys me. There's logic in there that's SUPPOSED to check for this, and add in small amounts of a strategic resource if there's less than a certain amount. But it's just no coded well, at all; as far as I can tell, instead of adding enough to reach the minimum, it just adds a single deposit.

That's why, for my own mod, I handled the minimum slightly differently. Instead of placing the resources randomly and then checking to see if you had enough, I placed a smaller number of Neutronium randomly, and then just manually said, "Add N more deposits around the world." The number of Dilithium in the world will be directly related to the number of fish, pearls, and whales, and then it'll add another N small deposits. And Omnicytes have a small override too, but it's not as critical for them since they're a land/sea resource.
This also applies to Coal; I added a small override like this in one of my previous updates to force a few extra small coal deposits to show up. Missing some Oil hurts your military, but missing Coal is crippling. (Especially for an Industrial or Nuclear start, since it'll be a while until a settler is ready and the chances of settling near a Coal aren't good.)

So it sounds like I could do something similar for Oil and Aluminum. Although, neither is insurmountable; an Energy Bank gets you Oil and Coal, and the Fusion Lab makes Aluminum and Uranium (at the cost of Dilithium, which might not be easy to get on a Lakes map?), so it's not like the game is unwinnable without those. So I might only add N/2 instead of N, and keep the deposits small (as with Coal), just enough that most empires will have a LITTLE but not enough to build an army around.

Was making plans on how to take advantage of the next AI on AI war when all the AIs dogpiled me

I've noticed this happening much more after the official patch. The AIs pay much more attention to how weak/strong your military is; if you lag even a little behind in building up your military on an Industrial start, the AIs will declare on you with no warning. In my game I had 4 declare on me on one turn, finished that war, then had 3 declare on me a while later, despite the fact that the civs in question were on another continent and had no navies. I literally had one enemy whose empire was filled with land units, one per hex, and yet he never embarked them to come invade me; instead, he lobbed an atomic bomb and watched as a half-dozen Stealth Bombers picked his army apart one hex at a time.

Part of it also seems to be related to the new negative Declaration. One AI condemns you, it makes all the others like you less, which makes the next one do the same, and suddenly your relations are all so low that everyone hates you and declares war. Especially if you're in first place from building Wonders and/or have a relatively weak army...
The problem is that once this happens, it all falls apart. If the AIs all declare on you, then even once you make peace they'll still dislike you. That means no more 1-for-1 luxury deals, no more research agreements, so you'll start falling behind... unless you go full military. There should be more ways to repair your relationship with other AIs, but unlike city-states, there isn't a clear benefit to giving the AI free stuff.

Two things from this evenings playtesting:

1. After the Americans declared war on me they had two units slowly rotating around the outside of my border, with one wounded unit circling closer and another full-strength unit shadowing it. I finally decided to attack the weakened unit to attenuate it further. However on the next turn I found that the AI had fully repaired the damaged unit (i.e. the AI used the unit's promotion to repair the unit) and used it to attack and destroy my now weakened unit, then used its shadowing unit to leapfrog right into my territory! I hope this was programmed in on purpose!

2. Concerning the Planetary Datalinks wonder: when I built this I think I immediatly received every tech ever researched by all factions. IIRC the SMAC PD only gave techs reseached by three factions after the PD was built. Which is your intent here?

Otherwise a very enjoyable playtest this evening. Will continue to press my advantages into the AIs tomorrow morning!

D

I hope this was programmed in on purpose!

I don't think they explicitly coded that behavior, but it sounds like a consequence of simpler logics: don't waste a promotion on a heal until you really need it, don't stop a wounded unit to rest unless it's below 50ish%, and be aggressive once there are no enemy units around to stop you. So I don't think that unit was intended to be bait, it was just not wounded enough to take any special action until you attacked it again, and it all went from there.

But you're right, it makes for some fun encounters when the AI does things like this. Personally I wish the AI would spend a little more effort moving his wounded units back to safety before healing, instead of trying to rest on the spot. Or not embarking a unit when there are tons of naval or air units in the area. But the AI's been getting better at waging war lately, especially in terms of keeping a flanking bonus, so I'm okay with it.

2. Concerning the Planetary Datalinks wonder: when I built this I think I immediatly received every tech ever researched by all factions. IIRC the SMAC PD only gave techs reseached by three factions after the PD was built. Which is your intent here?

PD should give you techs if FOUR civs have it, not counting city-states or barbarians and excluding Disabled techs (like Centauri Ecology). In my test game it didn't give me anything, because I was the tech leader (I was only playing on Prince), but if you're playing on higher difficulties and haven't thinned out the AIs it can easily lead to what you've described. You might not be getting ALL of the techs, but if there are enough AI players the chances of four having any one tech are pretty good.
If it ends up being too imbalanced, I can switch it to a Tech Diffusion-style setup where you just get a steady stream of extra beakers when researching something that others have already researched. But I was basically trying to imitate the Civ4 Internet wonder (N=3), which in turn was a copy of earlier games like SMAC. (This mod was actually planned out as a Civ4 mod, pre-BTS, so it was originally intended that the Datalinks would be sort of like a poor man's version of the Internet for those people who were beaten to the Wonder.)

The Telepathic Matrix, at Centauri Psi (Nanotech Era) drops this threshold to 1, to where you'd get anything anyone else had, but that's a World Wonder instead of a national one. The two are coded the same way, it uses a custom XML table (Building_Bonuses, in the Buildings.xml file) and just sets the value to 4 for the datalinks and 1 for the matrix. I'd tested it through Lua and it had worked fine pre-patch, but I haven't confirmed it since then.

Have played a couple of games since (all on the Lakes map-style), however nothing too significant to report other than in my last game none of the adjacent AIs ever attacked me. Several times I went to war with AIs who were distant from me, however no major conflicts all the way up till I researched Transcendence 1, 2, 3, etc. The other thing was that there was a serious lack of strategic resources: there were no naturally occuring sources of Uranium, oil, Aluminum, Neutronium, Dilithium, or Omnicytes within my empire, so I could only build a few units based on the resources which became available when I built certain buildings.

D

however nothing too significant to report other than in my last game none of the adjacent AIs ever attacked me.

Interesting. How big was your military, relative to theirs? And how crowded was the map? It'd be good to know whether your strategies led to this outcome, or whether it's just a randomly possible result.

The other thing was that there was a serious lack of strategic resources: there were no naturally occuring sources of Uranium, oil, Aluminum, Neutronium, Dilithium, or Omnicytes within my empire, so I could only build a few units based on the resources which became available when I built certain buildings.

NO Dilithium, Aluminum, or Uranium? At all? Without Dilithium you can't build a Fusion Lab, which is the only way to get the Aluminum or Uranium, although you could wait until you get Quantum Labs in the early Nanotech era and use its Dilithium to make the Fusion Lab I suppose. Or did you just buy some from other players or from a city-state? I've actually done that; I bought some Dilithium, built a slew of Fusion Labs, and then when it lapsed I was down to -5 of the stuff but the labs still worked.

It's really sounding like the game needs a basic override to force a few more deposits of the various strategics. The funny thing is that it has a special override already in place for the critical early resources (Iron, Horses, and Oil) to ensure that there's always some near each player's starting location, although its definition of "near" is a bit questionable. It sounds like this needs to be expanded, or at least there should be an option to force a more even resource distribution.
I guess the developers felt no need to do the same for the Coal, Uranium or Aluminum, since the game's usually nearly over by the time you get to those. Which, of course, is why I built this whole mod in the first place, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Dilithium is a different issue. Obviously, the problem is that it's a water-based resource, which can be problematic on a lot of map types and is inherently random in general. I liked the idea of an important production-boosting resource in the water, and I'd hate to dilute that by putting it on land. (I already cheated on this and have land-based Dilithium being a possible outcome of the Deep Mining operation.)

I could just force an additional amount of Dilithium to appear on the map, only in Lake tiles, to complement the current coastal distribution (which I'd reduce to compensate). Actually, I think I'll try that as a first pass. I'm just worried about two things:
1> The AI would be horrible at placing cities on lakes, because right now, there's no benefit to doing so. Lakes, as good as they are, yield less than an improved tile. So if his cities are 1 tile off the lake shore then there'd be no way to reach the deposit to improve it.
2> Can you even build a Work Boat on a lake-adjacent city? Since no resources exist in lakes normally, I'm wondering if this'd even be possible. And if you COULD make Work Boats buildable on lakes, the AI would build more than it needs and be stuck maintaining them.
Now, I'd already thought of a way around this: the Former. It, like several of my other units, is supposed to be capable of moving over both water and land, which'd allow it to improve these tiles. Two problems: it's a T22 unit (endgame), and that movement ability doesn't work yet. So the other solution would be to add a new type of Work Boat at a lower tech, one that builds without sacrificing like a normal Worker. If you add something like a "Kelp Farm" (+1 food, only buildable on coasts or lakes) then this makes a lot more sense.

Interesting. How big was your military, relative to theirs? And how crowded was the map? It'd be good to know whether your strategies led to this outcome, or whether it's just a randomly possible result.

I’ll see about posting a game-save when I get home.

you could wait until you get Quantum Labs in the early Nanotech era and use its Dilithium to make the Fusion Lab I suppose.

That’s what I did.

Or did you just buy some from other players or from a city-state?

I’ve never bought/ traded any resources with the AIs or C-S to date.

Dilithium is a different issue. Obviously, the problem is that it's a water-based resource, which can be problematic on a lot of map types and is inherently random in general. I liked the idea of an important production-boosting resource in the water, and I'd hate to dilute that by putting it on land. (I already cheated on this and have land-based Dilithium being a possible outcome of the Deep Mining operation.)

I also like the idea of a water-only based resource like Dilithium, if only to give a human player another reason to build a navy.
2> Can you even build a Work Boat on a lake-adjacent city?

I’ll pull up the game-save and see if I can do this with my city on a lake.

D

I just wanted to say that this mod really looks fun to me and I appreciate it a lot! I'll let you know how it plays out. Thanks! :)

I’ll see about posting a game-save when I get home.

No rush, I'm off on a business trip until the weekend. No game access, and limited board access.

That’s what I did.

Yeah, it's things like this that have made me consider removing the Dilithium requirement from the Fusion Labs; it just seems like it becomes too potentially crippling if you don't have the right mix of resources (and it sounds like you got the absolute worst possible draw).

I’ve never bought/ traded any resources with the AIs or C-S to date.

Getting a city-state up to Ally level is worthwhile in its own right for the food/culture/unit bonuses and the luxuries; the strategic resources are usually just an added plus. But I've taken good advantage of that before, especially on Dilithium (since city-states are, where possible, placed along coastlines).

I also like the idea of a water-only based resource like Dilithium, if only to give a human player another reason to build a navy.

In my last game, I ran into this when the AI slipped a couple destroyers past my navy and managed to pillage a bunch of resources, including two 5-point Dilithium deposits I'd really needed for all my fusion labs and units. Going negative on a strategic doesn't seem to hurt the buildings that use it, but it does give a large penalty to the units; having all my Gravtanks and Titan units suddenly get weaker was not pleasant.
You'd see this with Oil somewhat in the earlier game, but the fact that 2/3rds of the Oil is land-based made this less effective.

Now, this comment about navies brings up something I'd thought of. Notice how bombers have the Naval Penalty promotion (-50% vs Naval units), and yet still do a lot of damage to ships? It's because the naval vessels have disturbingly low Combat ratings; without it, the air units would annihilate navies. (This is why land-based artillery is so insanely strong against ships.)
Well, I put the Naval Penalty promotion on the Needlejets, so that they'll have the same problems killing Stealth Ships and Leviathans. But I don't think I put that limitation on the orbital bombardment units; the Ion Cannon has a very low attack rating, so it wouldn't be much of a threat, but the Death Ray should rip through ships VERY quickly. Granted, I'm not too worried about massive paradigm changes at T22, since the game will nearly be over by that point, but it's made me think that I should up the Combat ratings of the more advanced naval vessels (Destroyer on up) in general, to make them more resistant to these sorts of things.

------------
And on an almost completely unrelated note, I've been trying to figure something out. I've been thinking about overhauling the Command Nexus and Citizens' Defense Force, two National Wonders that give custom promotions to all of your units.

Right now, they're very simple: CDF is +25% to Combat within your own borders (used to be +33%), while CN is +20% to Combat outside of your borders. These just worry me for two reasons:
1> The combat bonus is just really large. CDF's not so abuseable, but getting the Command Nexus makes your army MUCH stronger on the attack. All units getting +20% at the same time, in all terrains? That's like giving each two free promotions.
2> They're just BORING. One numerical bonus to combat strength?
So I was thinking of lowering the bonuses and giving something else.
CDF, for instance, might become +15% and +1 heal rate within friendly territory (i.e., giving the old city healing rate to units outside of cities, which is less than the NEW city healing rate that's boosted by defensive structures).
For the Command Nexus, I was thinking +10% and +1 range. That range boost means artillery and naval units can now usually hit 4 hexes away; aircraft would also get a slight boost, but nothing worth planning for. (I also thought of adding +1 visibility to go with the +1 range, but only if I increase the Hunter Seeker penalty to visibility to -2.)
But I'm worried that +1 range might just be too good, especially since it'd stack with the normal +range promotion that artillery units can take at higher levels. It's not so much that the range would now be huge, because that nicely counteracts the increased mobility of units, but that there's no way that I can tell to boost the CITY ranges. If you've got artillery units hitting at a range of 5 while the cities have a range of 2, it's a problem. (Maybe I should put -range on the Hunter-Seeker, but I don't know what that'd do when applied to melee units. Would they have range -1 and be unable to attack? Guess I should try that.)
So, any thoughts?

Can you even build a Work Boat on a lake-adjacent city?

Your right - you can't build a workboat in a city on a lake! Argh! However you can build ships. :confused:

Getting a city-state up to Ally level is worthwhile in its own right for the food/culture/unit bonuses and the luxuries; the strategic resources are usually just an added plus.

I found out the hard way last night that another good reason to cultivate good relations is to ensure they aren't turned against you: two AIs declared war on me on the same turn, and their C-S allies joined the fray as well. Not a pretty sight for me! But a very good reason to start really considering getting those C-S to be on friendly terms with you! :goodjob:

D

I found out the hard way last night that another good reason to cultivate good relations is to ensure they aren't turned against you

Yes, definitely make sure that city-states near your empire (i.e., each one on the same continent) is an ally.

The thing is, city-states aren't cost-efficient for any one thing. If adding +150 relations costs 1000 gold, and relations drop by 1 per turn (less if you have a certain policy, more if your enemies have a different one), then you're looking at a cost of 6.67gpt to add +5 happiness, so if all you're using them for is to grab a luxury, you'd be better off building a Theater or Stadium instead and paying the upkeep on those. (Even at my higher costs for these.)
Likewise, the Maritimes now just don't provide much food. It helps, sure, but it's not worth that 6.67gpt cost. Culture city-states are a bit better for this (+10 or +12 culture?), except that this culture isn't multiplied by the Broadcast Tower, Hologram Theater, or certain policies, so it's not quite comparable to the culture from your own buildings. And the gifted units wouldn't be so bad if they started with any XP, but they don't.

But if you can use the culture/food/units AND the city-state has a luxury you don't AND it's close enough to your empire to cause problems in case of war, then it's a good investment. I've also added a few things that tweak this balance, like the Empath Guild; if your effective decay rate is 0.5 less at Ally, then it drastically reduces how long it takes before you have to pay 1000 again, which makes C-S's start to be cost-efficient even compared to buildings.

The problem I've found is that buying a CS is just TOO good. Once you get into the later game and are earning +200 or +300gpt during a Golden Age, there's little reason not to buy up every city-state as an ally; besides what you gain, it ensures that the AIs don't get the extra luxuries and such for themselves. And once you do that, a diplomatic win becomes trivial; Ally city-states ALWAYS vote for you, and all you need is a 2/3rds majority. Since city-states outnumber empires 2:1, well, that's all you need, even if you haven't destroyed any empires.

I've been trying to fix this. I'd like to mod in the following:
1> City-state relation decay rate depends on distance from your capital. So while making the nearby states is easy, the distant ones would be untenable.
2> City-states don't like sharing. You can only have one Maritime, one Militaristic, and one Cultural state as an Ally.
2a> Even if it's not so absolute, I can tie the decay rate to the number of that type. So if you have three Maritime allies, all of your Maritimes decrease at an increased rate (say, -0.5 per extra ally). This'd encourage you not to try allying with every Maritime at once. (The AI wouldn't be able to handle this, but then again, they tend to follow a trend like this naturally.)
3> Just because you're an Ally doesn't mean they'll vote for you. The odds of them voting for you are random, depending on your current Influence level.
4> The base city-state decay rate increases automatically with era. So in the Ancient Era it might only be -0.5 per turn, but maybe it goes up by -0.25 each era. So in the Industrial it's decaying at -1.5, in the Digital it's -2.0, and in the Transcend era it's -2.75. This basically parallels the increased difficulty in raising Influence.

Of those, I think I can code in #1, #2a, and #4 with the current stubs, although the UI wouldn't reflect this correctly and the AI wouldn't handle it well. (Also, the Greeks wouldn't get their bonus on it, although I might be able to handle that manually.) #2 might be possible in Lua, but #3 almost definitely requires the DLL, which is too bad, because I think it's the most necessary.
And if I do #4, I'd want to tweak things like the UN and Empath Guild to give more influence bonuses to compensate.

Any thoughts on which I should do?

Please note that all of my answers are hypothetical think-throughs on my part.



I'd like to mod in the following:
1> City-state relation decay rate depends on distance from your capital. So while making the nearby states is easy, the distant ones would be untenable.

I think its better the way it is in that you have to "pay more attention to your own backyard" so to speak, as you don't want a distant (or near) AI allying and potentially turning that C-S against you. Real-world examples of this could be Cuba in the '60s, El Salvador and Afghanistan in the '80s: the supporting antagonistic states (in order Russia, Russia, and the US) were distant, yet were very influential in these conflicts. Also from a gaming perspective I think the AIs are better equipped to take advantage of the existing set-up as there are more of them than you the human: the thought process here is that as your fortunes ebb and flow, so too do the various AIs. However statistically speaking there is a better chance that an AI who is ascendent can step in and win over the C-S you are losing influence over: with the current set-up this is then more likely to successfully happen than if the AIs influence abilities decay at an increased rate because of their distance.


2> City-states don't like sharing. You can only have one Maritime, one Militaristic, and one Cultural state as an Ally.

Question: do you think the next patch is going to nerf C-S benefits even moreso? If so, then I don't think this idea would be necessary. Also, what happens towards the end-game when there are only a few C-S which survive? If its a case of "C-S going to the highest bidder", then I think it more likely a human player would be better positioned to get and hold the C-S as allies.


2a> Even if it's not so absolute, I can tie the decay rate to the number of that type. So if you have three Maritime allies, all of your Maritimes decrease at an increased rate (say, -0.5 per extra ally). This'd encourage you not to try allying with every Maritime at once. (The AI wouldn't be able to handle this, but then again, they tend to follow a trend like this naturally.)

I like this idea as it makes it more difficult for a human to maintain control over all the C-S, which is of course to the AIs advantage.


3> Just because you're an Ally doesn't mean they'll vote for you. The odds of them voting for you are random, depending on your current Influence level.

I do like this idea as well! :goodjob: Almost gives that sense of diplomatic "horse-trading" that was revealed recently via Wikileeks - you gotta really finnesse some of these C-S leaders, and even then they prove finecky!


4> The base city-state decay rate increases automatically with era. So in the Ancient Era it might only be -0.5 per turn, but maybe it goes up by -0.25 each era. So in the Industrial it's decaying at -1.5, in the Digital it's -2.0, and in the Transcend era it's -2.75. This basically parallels the increased difficulty in raising Influence.

Question: would this lead to more AI wars on C-S because their alliances/ friendships have expired quicker? Here again the natural ebb and flows of the AIs fortunes would mean they aren't always able to pony up the necessary funds to keep the C-S on good terms, leading to C-S no longer being allied/ friends, which would probably lead to more C-S being conquered because they weren't allied/ friends with nearby AIs.

Anyways, my $0.02 on the subject.

D

Real-world examples of this could be Cuba in the '60s, El Salvador and Afghanistan in the '80s: the supporting antagonistic states (in order Russia, Russia, and the US) were distant, yet were very influential in these conflicts.

But that only reinforces what I was saying. It's FAR easier to convince a minor power that shares a border with you to be your ally, but allying with a minor power halfway around the world takes far more work. So the USSR had no problems "allying" with the eastern European minor powers, because they had so much in common, culturally, and because the threat of force for not cooperating was so close by, while convincing Cuba to do what they want took far more. So making distant city-states decay faster (meaning they need more money to keep up) seems to reflect reality.

The problem with the current system is that if I want to invade a new continent, my first priority should be to ally with the city-states on THAT continent, to draw off some of the enemy's forces. And that's just not realistic; your "natural" allies are the ones near you. It should be much easier for a city-state to stay friendly with its neighbors than with someone halfway around the world. (Not that there aren't plenty of real-world examples of this, of course.)

However statistically speaking there is a better chance that an AI who is ascendent can step in and win over the C-S you are losing influence over: with the current set-up this is then more likely to successfully happen than if the AIs influence abilities decay at an increased rate because of their distance.

Except the AIs just don't do this. They rarely spend any effort allying with city-states, and they most often just ally with whichever city-state is closest to their capital. I've NEVER seen an AI try allying with city-states on the opposite side of the world, at least not until they'd already locked up all the local ones. The only leader I've ever seen prioritize city-state alliances was Napoleon.

Question: do you think the next patch is going to nerf C-S benefits even moreso?

No. There might be tweaking to it, of course, but I think the primary complaint was always about Maritimes and their effect on ICS. With their food output decreased and other methods of stopping ICS, there's no longer an abuseable strategy centering around city-states. So I don't see them getting massively nerfed any more.

If so, then I don't think this idea would be necessary. Also, what happens towards the end-game when there are only a few C-S which survive?

In my experience, C-S's RARELY die. The ones that do are usually the cases we've just talked about, where you ally with a Cuba-style state on the border of an enemy. So I don't think that this'd be a problem, and causing those sorts of alliances to go away faster would definitely help this. I HAVE had one case where a single civ (England) decided to invade a few city-states, but they were my first target for conquest and so I liberated the C-S's.

I plan on making it a bit tougher to invade a city-state in the future. Not by boosting the city-states themselves, but indirectly. Remember how I added "Secondhand" versions of the various future units, resourceless versions that were a bit weaker? Well, I was realizing that I should start that earlier. There should be Secondhand versions of the Tank, Fighter, Radar Artillery, and so on. Right now, in the Industrial/Nuclear eras, you'll be using tanks and bombers against a city-state that only has infantry. Hardly an even fight.

Question: would this lead to more AI wars on C-S because their alliances/ friendships have expired quicker?

As far as I can tell, being an ally doesn't stop an empire from attacking a city-state if it decides to conquer.
I just don't see many unprovoked wars on C-S's. Nearly every time I've seen one invaded has been after the C-S declared war on the empire as the result of an empire-on-empire war.

the USSR had no problems "allying" with the eastern European minor powers, because they had so much in common, culturally, and because the threat of force for not cooperating was so close by,

:lol: I think it was the latter in that the Soviet army was bent on vengence against those who had marched with the Germans to the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad. That and a well trained NKVD who had plenty of practice "installing" new leaders into the eastern states who were friendly with the USSR (read: anyone who was not a communist or communist sympathizer simply disappeared - Soviet controlled Poland in 1940 and again in 1944 would be good examples here).

Regardless, I think you have a system in mind for the C-S. Why don't you implement everything you can code now, lets play around with it and see how the changes mesh/ respond to the system as it stands, and discuss after a few games? That's probably the best way - do some empirical testing, discuss results, and decide if this is the best (or better) route for C-S. Sound good?


D

This mod is massively cool. I really like the mix of the sid meier's ideas with original content. Keep it up.

Playtesting hasn't produced a whole lot of observations the last few days. I have still been starting out on King, in Industrial, playing Lakes maps, going for Louvre and using that to slingshot Cristo Ridentor: always get CR to date.

On to this evening's playtesting:

1. When I produced a Laser Infantry in a city with an arty, the arty symbol disapeared and it seemed like it was gone. I didn't get the automatic "you need to move the Laser Infantry" message like I usually get with units produced in cities which already contain a garrisoned unit.

2. The Colony Pod does not colonize for me. I tried reloadint the game, tried building in a different city, tried dropping the unit (that works), however I never get the option to colonize.

3. I do believe the PDL is overpowered. A human is going to recognize its significance (i.e. you can instantly catch up in tech with this Wonder) and develop methods to exploit it, whereas an AI cannot.

4. Concerning your comment previously regarding my never going to war with adjacent AIs: I am exploring this avenue again this evening. Didn't work, however I think it is tied to the weighting of my military. The avenue I am exploring is slowly but continuously building up my military. Worked quite well into the Digital age as none of the adjacent AIs attacked me. The Romans finally did declare war on me, but its a minor dribbling of units towards me rather than a carpet of doom. Will try this approach of slowly but continuously building up my military again in the future and see if it works again.

5. My allies the Indians were collapsing under the weight of a Japanese and Persian attack: I moved my reserve units up to my common border with the Indians and Persians, and the Persian's attacking forces fleed! :/


6. When I invaded the Japanese I puppeted the nearest city I conquered. When I chopped a nearby forest the minerals went to this puppeted city. Should the minerals have gone to my nearest city instead?

7 . Am having a very spirited game this evening: the Ottomans and Romans are pressing me on two opposite fronts. However because of previous games played (read: experience) I am holding my own and am planning to go over to the offensive on whichever axis presents the best opportunity! :b:

D

Back from my trip, so hopefully I'll have a new version within the next day or two. I've got a bunch of ideas about things I want to try.

1. When I produced a Laser Infantry in a city with an arty, the arty symbol disapeared and it seemed like it was gone. I didn't get the automatic "you need to move the Laser Infantry" message like I usually get with units produced in cities which already contain a garrisoned unit.

I've seen this occasionally, but this might be related to a graphical bug I've seen, where the artillery isn't actually there in the first place. (Sort of like the old Carrier bug; the artillery WAS in the city, then you moved it, but the icon stayed, so you think there's a stacking issue when there really isn't.) If it's actually losing a real unit somehow, then that's a huge problem.

2. The Colony Pod does not colonize for me. I tried reloadint the game, tried building in a different city, tried dropping the unit (that works), however I never get the option to colonize.

I'll try playing around with that myself. It might be bugged; there are a lot of little stubs to be copied when duplicating a worker or settler unit, and I might have missed that one little not-so-important one.

3. I do believe the PDL is overpowered. A human is going to recognize its significance (i.e. you can instantly catch up in tech with this Wonder) and develop methods to exploit it, whereas an AI cannot.

I'm tempted to just jack up its Flavor to 100. The problem here, in general, is that it depends heavily on map size and difficulty. If you're playing on a 6-civ map, then there's a good chance two of the civs will be dead by the time you reach that era, and it'd do nothing. Conversely, if you're playing on a 10+ civ map, it's practically guaranteed there'll be enough civs around to trigger the effect. If you're playing on a higher difficulty then you'll nearly always be behind the AIs in techs and so would gain a ton from this, while on a lower difficulty you're likely to be the tech leader and gain almost nothing.

6. When I invaded the Japanese I puppeted the nearest city I conquered. When I chopped a nearby forest the minerals went to this puppeted city. Should the minerals have gone to my nearest city instead?

No. Puppeted cities just don't allow you to control them manually and have less of a happiness penalty; in every other way, they're like a normal city. So chops go to them if they're closest. This is one reason why I almost never bother with puppets. That, and the ability to rush buildings or units; especially in the later eras, where a smart player wants his first buildings to be the +production ones (Factory, Genejack, etc.), while the AI is wasting time on Monuments and such.

7 . Am having a very spirited game this evening: the Ottomans and Romans are pressing me on two opposite fronts. However because of previous games played (read: experience) I am holding my own and am planning to go over to the offensive on whichever axis presents the best opportunity!

Sounds fun. So the question here is, does this sort of two-front war become easier with the future units (more mobile and so more able to cover both fronts), or harder (enemies are just too fast to allow for reinforcements, meaning you need to engage with what you have on hand)?

My biggest worry has been that it's just too easy to go on the attack. In my experience, with longer ranges, faster movements, more units that can withdraw, etc., it's too easy to crush an enemy city in one turn from your side of the border and easily capture with a Skimmer or Vertol. I've tried ramping up the city strengths more quickly, and I added quite a few defensive buildings, but I'm not sure it's been enough.

One possible solution I thought of: take all the non-orbital Air units, cut their ranged combat strength in half, but then start them with the Logistics promotion (can attack twice). This solves two problems at once:
1> This one promotion had been the must-have before; every air unit I made would beeline for it. By giving it by default, that doesn't happen any more.
2> While the total damage of the two attacks would be the same, the aircraft would take twice as much damage in the process. (Possibly more, I'm not sure what the equation is for their damage.) This is especially important against naval units.
Right now, there's rarely any threat to the aircraft survival; they attack a couple times, then rest up safely behind the front lines. As an added bonus, this'd let you use aircraft to pick off almost-dead units without feeling like it's a waste of your time.
This'd make conventional artillery (and naval units) more important by comparison, which is fair since it's far riskier to move those units into position.

There'll be a new version later tonight, unless I find some other major bug in it. Not a lot of huge changes, but I did find something pretty important.

The Public School, in the original game, was +50% research (like the University and Observatory). Since you'd build it after the University (and possibly the Observatory), that +50% was actually more like +33% or +25% in practice, since all percentages are additive in Civ5. The Library, with its "+1 per 2 pop" was the only one that was truly multiplicative, since it was the only building to adjust that base rate that everything else multiplied off of. (That is, building a Library ALWAYS increased your research output by 50%... unless you had anything else that added a flat +research, like the Trading Posts after that one policy.)

Now, I'd thought the research pace was too fast, so I reduced the bonuses of all of these buildings. The Public School only dropped to 40%, but the University and Observatory dropped further (but added Culture to compensate). So far so good, right? Well, in the megapatch, they changed the Public School pretty substantially. I'd noticed that they'd added +1 culture to it, but I'd missed the other part: instead of +50%, it now gives "+1 per pop", basically double of the Library. This is pretty much always +40% to effective research rate (going from a base of 1.5 per to 2.5 per), which is much more (like double) than what it gave before, and FAR more than it gave after I'd nerfed it previously.

Seriously, it's like the devs don't even WANT balance. Was there anyone claiming that the research pace was too slow in the mid-to-late game before, to justify making it even stronger? The way they'd done this also prevented my mod from doing anything to the Public School (it was trying to Update an entry that no longer existed). I've now fixed it in the next version, but be aware that in v.0.12 it's very overpowered.

I played through a game on King, with an Industrial start. Standard map size (8 civs), Small Continents map. The highlights:
> I started on my own little continent, Russia started on their own, and in between us was a single long continent containing the other six. I had plenty of coal and two oil deposits, but no Aluminum. The only available Aluminum was in one city-state, Geneva. Plenty of dilithium, too.
> Those six were in a near-constant state of war. Russia and I almost never got involved; despite my weak army, none of the AIs declared on me, because they were too busy fighting each other.
> Catherine beat me to the spaceship by four turns. Only two other civs had the Apollo Program at that point, and only one had completed any parts, although a couple other civs were tied with Russia for the tech lead. (I'd returned the spaceship flavors to their original values, so the AIs really wanted to build them.)
> That six-way infighting caused the death of one civ (China), reduced the Ottomans to their capital, and England to its capital plus one ice city. Some of England's cities changed hands multiple times between Arabia and Germany. As a result, two civs (Arabia and Siam) had pretty huge empires with massive tech and production, but had expended most of their military units on each other.
> I got a foothold on the main continent by making a colony in a desert area that no one had wanted (even though Cerro Potosi was there), and then started attacking, but without Aluminum my units were a bit primitive and I had quite a few losses while I conquered Germany. The AI is MUCH better about using Air units now. Germany had an 8-unit Aluminum, so once I had that my problems were over.

At that point I now had a significant tech advantage and it was mainly just mopping up the rest. The strange part, really, was in culture; even before I started my conquests I was the Policy leader, and it made a HUGE difference. So I have to wonder what the AI's doing wrong. I think it's one of the following:
1> Starting in a later era unlocks most of the policy trees, but the Flavor ratings on every policy add to 20. So the AI values the weak ones in the Tradition and Liberty tree as much as the more powerful later ones; Communism (+5 production per city) should be far more desirable to the AI than the one that only adds +1 per city, but the AI doesn't realize this. I think, then, that the AI wasted some of its picks on those earlier trees, while a player on those late-era starts will only buy the good stuff.
2> I took the Piety tree instead of Rationalism, which greatly boosted my Culture output. Maybe that's why Catherine beat me to the spaceship.
3> I got Cristo Redentor and the Sistine Chapel first, mainly because I think I was the first civ to get Coal hooked up for Factories. I shouldn't have been able to get any early Wonders on King, but that production boost made all the difference.
(If I'd started in the Ancient Era, #1 and #3 wouldn't have applied, and things might have been very different.)

While I normally have an unofficial rule against triple-posting, it's been 4 days since anyone else posted, so here goes.

I'm planning on releasing a new version tonight.
> Among other things, the five Secondhand (city-state exclusive) units weren't coded correctly, so the game wasn't using them. This meant that in the future eras, nearly the only unit they'd build would be the Mobile SAM. I've also added an additional six units to this list: Tank, Modern Armor, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Gunship, Rocket Artillery; city-states now get resourceless-but-weaker versions of each. (Rule of thumb: 15% weaker.)
> Colony Pods still don't work. It's looking more and more like "Settler" is hard-coded into the engine as the only unit to get that action, but I'm still looking to see if I missed something somewhere. If I can't get these working then I'll disable the unit for now, because obviously there's no point without it.
> I'm not sure whether it's the Happiness tooltip that's broken or the game itself, but the negative happiness on the Genejack Factory, Children's Creche, Nanofactory, and Gravity Shield don't seem to be applying. I'm still testing this one.
> On a related note, I ran into a really strange bug in my last game, also related to Happiness.
I built 12 cities of my own. At 4 unhappiness per, I'd get -48. (Forbidden Palace knocked this to -36, Planned Society to -24.)
Then I started conquering cities. The first thing I'd build in each was a Courthouse. Before the courthouse completed I'd see -8 per conquered city as well, but when the CH completed it all went away. It didn't knock it down from -8 to -4, it went from -8 to 0.
If this was intentional, then this is a HUGE reason to avoid the raze-and-resettle strategy. But it also meant that conquered cities were massive Happiness gains, since they'd have the whole Colosseum/Theater/etc. setup.
So by the Nanotech era, I had something like +250 Happiness. Since I was in a perma-Golden Age I can't tell whether this was a display bug or something in the engine itself, but I'll try to test it tonight.

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

But before I release the next version, I have a couple balance questions to ask.
1> City growth. My version uses a much higher exponent than the base game, because the megapatch changed the equation.
OLD: 15 + 6x + x^1.8
NEW: 15 + 8x + x^1.5
ME: 20 + 8x + x^2.2
On an Industrial start, my cities were getting to size 18-19 by the Nanotech Era, despite having massive food storage from all my buildings. So the question is, is this too low? What sort of size should cities level off at?
One thing to keep in mind: population means gold and research. As it was I was getting new techs every 2-3 turns by the end; more population just means getting new techs faster. Likewise, in my Golden Age I was gaining ~500gpt. (Okay, the research thing was partially because of the Public School issue I mentioned above. It was still fast.)

2> I'm still not happy with some of the balance issues. Gold and research, especially, just seem too easy to get. One culprit might be of my own design, the research bonus to farms at Centauri Ecology, and then the research bonus to mines at Graviton Theory. +1 research per farm or mine tile adds up awfully fast, after all. I can't add Culture through that table, I don't want to add more food to the farm, adding food to a mine makes no sense, there's already too much gold in the game, mines already get two production boosts, and I don't really want to go back to having the farms be +production (the original version). Any ideas?

One thing I thought was to change both to +gold and just drastically increase the building maintenance costs for the advanced buildings. But that makes the Trading Post (+2 gold, +1 production) too similar to the Mine (+2 production, +1 gold).

Okay, it's that time again. New version!

There are quite a few things in this version that could use some feedback. For instance, the Command Nexus adds +1 to range for artillery and naval units. This is VERY powerful. The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm now gives -1 range, but that won't kick in until the unit has been in the enemy territory for a turn, so a smart player could do hit-and-run attacks if he was smart. (Also, if you've got a big tech advantage, your opponents might not have that for a while.) They're both National Wonders, so at least there's not an issue with getting locked out of one or the other.

v.0.13 (January 19th):
BALANCE:
> I’d previously changed the trade route equation from (1.0+1.25*pop) to Thalassicus’ (-1.3+1.5*pop+0.05*capital). I’ve now changed it to (-1.0+1.33*pop+0.07*capital). This breaks even at population ~13 compared to the vanilla game, and doesn’t explode quite as badly at high populations, but should significantly discourage ICS.

CONTENT:
> The Colony Pod now actually settles new cities. Its cost will now also work correctly; currently it’s set to cost 250 hammers more than a Settler, although this will be reduced depend on the era’s multipliers. I'd like there to be something else to make this better, like the Colony Pod getting that ring of free Improvements we talked about before, but I haven't figured out how to code that yet.
> The buildings that had negative Happiness weren’t actually subtracting. (Apparently the developers don’t understand what “integer” means.) I’ve built in a primitive kludge that will subtract the correct amount of happiness at the start of each turn, but anything that causes the game to recalculate Happiness (like settling a new city) will undo it for that turn. Also, it’ll subtract the amount from the Difficulty Level happiness in the UI, not the Buildings amount, but at least the total will be correct.
> The Spaceship component flavor ratings were raised back up to their original values. I’d lowered them back when building the spaceship did little, but now that the full effects are in place it’s important for the AI to build them as quickly as possible.
> In a recent patch, many promotions gained the “LostWithUpgrade” flag. Some of these were ones I’d previously given that attribute to, so there’s no need to alter them. Many (sight penalty, naval penalty, weak ranged) still needed the flag, though.
> The Citizen Defense Force’s promotion was previously “+25% in friendly territory”. It’s now +15% in friendly territory, +1 healing in friendly territory, and +10% city defense for garrison units.
> The Command Nexus’ promotion was previously “+20% in enemy territory”. It’s now +10%, plus 1 Range. The range is the important part, really. I REALLY wish I could increase the attack range of cities with a wonder, policy, or something.
> The Neural Amplifier’s promotion, in addition to its previous benefit (+25% vs Psi, +1 visibility to all units) now also adds +10% when adjacent to a friendly unit. The Psi bonus was just too rarely applied. Remember that this is a National Wonder now.
> The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm’s negative promotion now also subtracts 1 from the range of all ranged units.
> The Nanohospital’s food storage was lowered from 10% to 5%, meaning the maximum storage is now 95% instead of 100%, and its science output was also cut in half, from +1 per 2 citizens to +1 per 4.
> In the megapatch, they changed the Public School from +50% science to the far more powerful “+1 science per population” plus 1 culture, which not only made it much stronger but broke my previous change to the building (since I was using an Update on an entry that no longer exists). I’ve undone the patch’s change; the Public School now gives +40% research and +2 culture.
> In a previous version I disabled the change to GOLD_GIFT_FRIENDSHIP_EXPONENT (which changes how quickly the cost of bribing a city-state goes up). The default value was 1.01, but I changed this to 1.02. I removed this because I couldn’t find the original value and thought it might have been removed/hard-coded in the megapatch, but I found it again (in AI/GlobalAIDefines.xml) so I re-enabled this. This means that the costs of bribing should now go up more quickly again.
> I’d made a mistake in the Civilizations.xml, and so the city-states weren’t using the Secondhand versions of the five units I’d previously given them (stealth ship, gravtank, etc.)
> Added six more Secondhand units: Tank, Modern Armor, Fighter, Jet Fighter, Gunship, Rocket Artillery. (No Bombers, Battleships, or Carriers. At least for now.) This should make city-states militarily viable in the Industrial/Nuclear eras, when the player usually goes on a big combined-arms military rampage. As with the previous Secondhand units, they’re slightly weaker than the norm to make up for the lack of resources:
- Tank: 44 strength instead of 50, costs 400 instead of 450
- Modern Armor: 60 strength instead of 70 (base game is 80), costs 600 instead of 700.
- Fighter: 42 strength instead of 50, costs 350 instead of 420
- Jet Fighter: 60 strength instead of 70, costs 520 instead of 600
- Gunship: 45 combat and 5 move instead of 50/6, costs 375 instead of 450
- Rocket Artillery: 40/15 instead of 46/18 strength, costs 500 instead of 600
> The Pholus Mutagen required a local copy of a food resource, but it wasn’t counting Omnicytes on that list (even though it was giving the appropriate bonuses to those tiles). That’s been changed.
> The Living Refinery’s food bonus for a local Omnicytes has been changed from +5 to +10; it was just too weak relative to the production/gold boosts.
> Tweaked the costs of several Wonders that had been moved to new techs in the previous update. While it's not a straight dependence on tier, in general the cost go up fairly smoothly as you go up the tree.
> The Maritime Control Center can only be built in coastal cities (just like the lighthouse, harbor, etc.)
> Increased the build cost of the Opera House and Museum by about 20%, they were just too cheap before.
> The Opera House was supposed to be 4 culture for 4 gold, but I’d accidentally left it at +5 culture. In the course of fixing this, I realized that the culture output of the Museum (+5) was still a little too big, so I lowered it to +4. So it's identical to the Opera House in effect, and slightly more expensive. Oh well. I'm tempted to add +1 research or something.
> Decreased the Happiness for the Theater and Stadium from +4 and +5 to +3 and +4, respectively, but to make up for this (and to make them better than the Colosseum), they add +2 and +1 culture, respectively. (In the late game, you require more and more culture to get anything done, but +1 happiness is still +1.)
> Hologram Theater was decreased from +3 happiness to +2, to make up for its much greater culture benefits now. (It was changed from a flat +5 to a +25% in the last version.) Its flavor values were also tweaked to focus more on culture and less on happiness.
> City Ruins add +1 research at Archaeology. It’s still not quite as good as having a real improvement on the tile, but it’s a pretty good start. (I’m still evaluating whether to boost the tiles further, to make them worth keeping indefinitely.)

Note that the following is based on a sample size of one using the new patch and newst versions of your mod.

Here are the following results from this evening's playtesting:

1. Again I had no oil, no aluminum, and no uranium anywhere near my borders. I do cherry-pick my starts by always going with rivers (i.e. I just restart the game if I'm not near a river). Does this have a bearing on these critical resources being available nearby?

2. When my early exploring units encountered several of the LM's (Landmarks), why they had already been incorporated into C-S borders! Good!

3. In my Wonder city, why twice I started building National Wonders where the turn count to completion was double digits (i.e. in the low teens). Previously this had always been around 5-7 turns. However they always did seem to be completed in the 5-7 turn range! :confused:

4. The quickfix didn't seem to fix the issue with AI's asking you to go to war with them, but then immediately turning around and denouncing you for war-mongering.

5. Concerning the Two Things pic below: first, the C-S are building second-hand fighters (these are very easily dispatched by my regular units, btw), second, I couldn't believe Montezuma (MZ) conquered the nearby territory so quickly! It was like two turns from the time I got the notice! Thats different! Are the AIs now more aggressive with this hotfix?

6. Question concerning flavor ratings: how far out do the AIs assess flavor settings for spevific items? Is it only after the appropriate tech is discovered, or before the tech is discovered?

7. Something happened to my Workers this evening: I sent them into the vicinity of Berlin after it had been nuked to clean up the mess. After a few turns both my Workers disappeared for no reason!?! :confused: I have no explaination as to why this happened.

8. Well the AIs finally decide to nuke a different city than my capitol. This is good, and based on this game I am seriously considering dropping down another skill level. Will probably play a couple more games at King, but if the results are anything like I encountered this evening (i.e. no critical resources and getting nuked), then I will probably drop back another skill level.

Note that I will be OOT for the remainder of this weekend, and next weekend I am dropping back onto a SMACX project for a little bit, so feedback will be slow from my end.

D

1. Again I had no oil, no aluminum, and no uranium anywhere near my borders. I do cherry-pick my starts by always going with rivers (i.e. I just restart the game if I'm not near a river). Does this have a bearing on these critical resources being available nearby?

Yes, somewhat. Aluminum and Uranium are mainly found on hill tiles, and Oil is basically deserts, snow, tundra, and marshes. Rivers tend to be placed in the middle of grassland or plain areas, far from all of the above. So you just won't have many of the right kinds of terrains near your starting point.
Other than that, it's purely random; the chance of one hill tile having aluminum is the same as any other hill tile. So if you DO have hills near your river you should still be okay.

For instance, take Aluminum, using the numbers from my mod. The large deposits (the 8-unit ones) go like this:
1 in 12 tundra tiles will have a strategic resource, and 15% of the time, that'll be aluminum. 1 in 14 snow tiles will have a strategic resource, and 15% of the time, that'll be aluminum. 1 in 16 hill tiles has a resource, and 30% of the time, that'll be aluminum. So you'll have about 1 large aluminum deposit per 80 tundra, 1 per 100 snow, and 1 per 50 hills. Given that most maps don't have a huge number of tundra or snow hexes, most aluminum ends up being found on hills.
Small deposits work differently; the game places a limited number (35), picks random hexes, and then does a percentage draw. By sheer odds, it's usually going to pick grass/plains/desert tiles, so the chances of seeing even one small aluminum deposit are pretty slim.
Oil tends to be a bit better odds, especially because of the deserts (1/10, 45%), although oil isn't found on hills. Oil also gets some extra deposits placed at sea, although you can't use those until Refrigeration.

Anyway, bottom line: I can tweak the numbers to make some of these resources a bit more common, and I'll do that for aluminum in my next version, but yes, part of it is your insistence on a nice river start. Most of the important strategic resources get placed on the lousy terrain types; only horses and a small number of omnicytes get placed on plains or grassland, and while coal and uranium can be placed on jungle or forest tiles, the odds aren't good (only 1 in 25 jungle or forest tiles gets a resource).

3. In my Wonder city, why twice I started building National Wonders where the turn count to completion was double digits (i.e. in the low teens). Previously this had always been around 5-7 turns. However they always did seem to be completed in the 5-7 turn range! :confused:

I've seen this happen a few times. I don't know why this is happening, and it COULD be related to the production headstart boost I added, but I haven't played any vanilla games to see.

5. Concerning the Two Things pic below: first, the C-S are building second-hand fighters (these are very easily dispatched by my regular units, btw), second, I couldn't believe Montezuma (MZ) conquered the nearby territory so quickly! It was like two turns from the time I got the notice! Thats different! Are the AIs now more aggressive with this hotfix?

Secondhand Fighters have 42 strength instead of 50, and a lower cost, but in every other way are identical to Fighters. One big difference is that city-state units have few chances to build up experience, so they'll rarely have any promotions. But bottom line, they're not that much easier to kill than a normal fighter.

As to the AI, not that I've seen, but Monty has always been high on the aggression scale, and there's always a bit of randomness on motivations. So you might have just had a game where he maxxed out the aggression scale and happened to have a military advantage at the right times.

6. Question concerning flavor ratings: how far out do the AIs assess flavor settings for spevific items? Is it only after the appropriate tech is discovered, or before the tech is discovered?

Techs have their own flavor ratings. The AI has no idea what benefits a tech ACTUALLY gives beforehand; it just picks a tech based on the tech's flavors, and then once the tech is researched, the things it unlocks are added to the appropriate lists and can be picked by cities as normal. So if an AI thinks it needs more growth then it might prefer a tech that has the Growth flavor, but it'll have no idea exactly WHY the tech has that flavor, what exactly it unlocks.

I had to keep a close eye on this when I was shuffling stuff around, because it was very easy to reach a point where the flavors assigned to a tech didn't match the things it unlocked any more. So I went back and double-checked all of the flavors in v12; they should be correct right now, but not completely. (For instance, Globalization now has the Colony Pod unit, but its flavors don't reflect that yet. In fact, I didn't change the flavors of ANY of the Industrial/Modern techs I modified.)

This is unfortunately pretty arbitrary. For instance, let's say a tech unlocks a research wonder and an offensive unit. So I give it a FLAVOR_SCIENCE of 5 and FLAVOR_OFFENSE of 5. The AI reaches that point in the game and thinks it needs more science, so it might pick this tech. But what happens if someone else already has completed the Wonder? The AI still sees this tech as favoring a "science" flavor, even though it now does nothing for that.
And the numbers are purely arbitrary, too. Instead of 5 and 5, maybe it should be 4 and 6. So I had to eyeball these things; I think I got pretty close to workable numbers, but there's no way to know for sure. In general I tried to split it evenly across the buildings and units each tech unlocks, but again, there's a question of weighting.

7. Something happened to my Workers this evening: I sent them into the vicinity of Berlin after it had been nuked to clean up the mess. After a few turns both my Workers disappeared for no reason!?! :confused: I have no explaination as to why this happened.

My first thought is that Fallout damages units passing through it, and they died. (Noncombat units like workers don't show health bars as easily.) There's a "TurnDamage" variable in the Features table. But, strangely, it's not being used for Fallout. The only unusual variable for fallout is a Disappearance Probability, but that's supposed to be the chance the feature disappears on its own without being cleaned up.
Beyond that, no real idea; maybe you got nuked again in the same area? Did any other units die, or the city lose any more population?

Will probably play a couple more games at King, but if the results are anything like I encountered this evening (i.e. no critical resources and getting nuked), then I will probably drop back another skill level.

Well, I usually play on Prince to test or on King for fun. The only real "cheat" I do is that in an Industrial/Nuclear start I'll only play if there's a large (7-unit) Coal deposit within easy reach, and for most games, there is. In my last Industrial start (on King), I was beaten to the spaceship by a few turns, but ended up winning handily in the Fusion era. So that river start bias might be hurting you a bit more than you're expecting. (Which is bad news for people who like playing as America, I suppose.)

Sorry if I'm bringing up an issue already addressed, I've searched the front page.

I've been having a major problem playing through the Content mod on Marathon speed. When I get to the Nuclear era, the game will sometimes crash after pressing "end turn". When I reload my last saved game, the crash event will usually not recur at exactly the same point, but it will happen again (always immediately after pressing "end turn") after I've been playing for a little while. The frequency between crashes tends to increase, to the point that by the Digital era the game has become unplayable. Sometimes it even happens at the start of the Nuclear era. Usually there's a crisis point at which the crash event will happen at exactly the same point even after reloading.

I only started playing the Content mod a few weeks ago, and it's been the same for both versions I've played. I can play through the Long Mod and standard game just fine (I'd actually been using the Long Mod for a month or two), but the Content mod crashes whether I have the Long Mod enabled or not. I don't use any other mods.
I've tried lowering graphics detail levels and resolution, I've tried disabling autosaving, I've tried multiple difficulty levels, I've tried never reloading from within the game, I've tried using both randomly generated maps and my own scenarios, and I know it's not caused by the Plant Forest/Jungle command because I tried not planting any, and the game was crashing before anyone else had gotten that far.

The only thing I haven't tried is, er, not playing it on Marathon. But I'd rather play Civ at detail levels that most closely resemble a wide bucket of sick than play Epic or quicker....
:edit: Also haven't tried starting from any era beyond the default Ancient.

I'd just like to say though, I think the changes implemented in this mod are absolutely wonderful. At this point I don't consider Civ 5 worth playing without it. I felt that way about the Long Mod before the last patch added a bunch of new stuff, but the standard game still ends too quickly and too basically for my liking. All the alterations in the Content mod that I've been able to sample have been absolutely spot on, I'd love to be able to play through the Alpha Centauri-esque part.

Sorry if I'm bringing up an issue already addressed, I've searched the front page.

Don't feel bad about that, I don't expect people to wade through the massive walls of text too often. I get a little, well, verbose when I get started, so I understand it's not worth reading through everything.

I've been having a major problem playing through the Content mod on Marathon speed. When I get to the Nuclear era, the game will sometimes crash after pressing "end turn".

I haven't ever played on Marathon. Actually, I think I've only played once on Epic, too, pretty much my entire game experience is on Standard. But the only thing related to game speed that I haven't finished tweaking yet is the whole number-of-years-per-turn setup; it's fine-tuned on Standard, but for the other speeds I just scaled it up pretty linearly for now. I'll get to that eventually.

If the game is crashing on End Turn, then it's likely that it's hitting a problem during one of the AI turns. That's reinforced by your reload experiences; if you reload then the AI won't do the same things again, but give them long enough and they will do whatever it is that's causing the problem.

Now, exactly WHAT they're doing, I'm not sure. The strange part is that you say it's happening when you enter the Nuclear Era. The only things I added at all before the last tier of the Nuclear Era are a few tech improvement yield increases (which don't crash anything), and the Plant Forest/Jungle command at Fertilizer.

So a few questions:
1> Are you using ANY other mods at all, besides my two? (Unless they contain a file named Terraform.lua or add improvements named IMPROVEMENT_PLANT_FOREST, I don't see how they could conflict, but you never know.) I know you said you didn't use other mods, but not even a UI tweak? Or a custom map script?
1a> Is there a specific map type you're using most of the time?
2> While you say you're not planting forests or jungle, does it work if you do? Does it actually plant the forest?
3> Do you get crash bugs when playing anyone else's mods?
3a> Do you play anyone else's mods? (Not at the same time, I mean do you play a game with my mods, and then play a game with someone else's, or with the vanilla game?) If so, it could be a cache issue.
4> Are you playing in fullscreen or windowed mode? For debugging reasons I now almost always play windowed.

Also, note that while you may not be planting trees, and the other AI civs aren't that far, the city-states MIGHT be; they don't research in the normal way, and instead get techs granted to them based on what the major civs have. So it's possible that the city-states DO have Fertilizer and are trying to plant a forest.

Now, it might also help if you checked FireTuner when it crashed, to see what it says, but it probably won't say anything. The strange thing is, I get maybe one crash per game, and I often play all the way to transcendence. So the only ways I could see a problem would be if something got corrupted along the way, or if something was missing from your mod package. The package I zipped up in the first post is the exact directory I play from, so there shouldn't be anything missing.

It's also possible that on Marathon, if you're using a large enough map or something, it might be running out of memory. How good is your CPU, and how good is the video card?
(Not sure why that'd be causing problems with this mod and not with the core game, but you never know.)

All the alterations in the Content mod that I've been able to sample have been absolutely spot on, I'd love to be able to play through the Alpha Centauri-esque part.

In my experience, if you want to see the new content, it's best to start in the Industrial Era. My own current game (King difficulty, Large map of Small Continents) started in the Ancient, and even though I'm just entering the Renaissance, I've got the game pretty well under control now. (Even with 10 civs I've got 2/3rds of the world's Wonders.)

Starting in later eras has pluses and minuses. For instance, a Renaissance start is HARD for two reasons: one, you don't know where the Coal is going to pop up and you don't have time to let your empire expand normally to ensure there'll be some in your borders. Two, your cities start with a few extra population (meaning more unhappiness) but you don't get the free Colosseums to deal with that unless you start Industrial or later.
The reverse is true of the Nuclear starts. You see the Coal and Oil, so you'd absolutely HAVE to settle next to them if you want them. But then your chances of getting Aluminum and Uranium are slim, of course. And if you start in the Fusion Era, not only do you miss out on the spaceship, but now you're unlikely to have the future resources near your starting cities.

Nope, no other mods at all. I usually use my own maps, but like I said it happens on standard randomly-generated ones too.
The only randomly-generated type I've tried so far has been Continents, but I've tried a couple of sizes.

I haven't actually planted any Forests yet, but I did plant plenty of Jungles. The planted Jungles were producing +1 food before the latest version, but that's about the only unusual behaviour it caused.

The only other mods I have (though I don't use them anymore) are quite small - +1 prod for mines, extra cash from Gold/Silver, no cap on xp from fighting Barbarians, that kind of thing. None of them crash on a regular basis (Civ 5 itself is still an unstable platform for me and does crash by itself on rare occasions).

I haven't played using someone else's mod, disabled it then played using yours in the same session if that's how the cache works (at least, I don't think I have - it would have been quite a while ago..). However, I did delete previous versions of your mod without disabling in the game first (although not while the game was running), I don't know if that's a potential problem causer.

I play in Fullscreen mode, but I think I did try Windowed mode at some point early on.

That's a good point about the city-states. I'll try playing a game without them (or kill them early if that's not possible) and see how it goes.
I've never tried Firetuner, so I'll give that a go next time I play.

I have a decent system - Q9300, 4gb DDR2 (nerfed by Vista 32bit down to 3gb) with an AMD 5770. I can run Civ 5 pretty well at maximum detail, but I've been running at low-to-medium detail since the crashes started. If memory's the issue, there must be some kind of gargantuan pile-up happening at the problem end-turns.

Thanks for the help!

Yes, somewhat. Aluminum and Uranium are mainly found on hill tiles, and Oil is basically deserts, snow, tundra, and marshes. Rivers tend to be placed in the middle of grassland or plain areas, far from all of the above.

OK, thats good info. I think I have been previously conditioned to wanting river starts due to always being on the edge economically. Probably not necessary as the game has matured in this respect. Next time I'll start wherever the game places me.


As to the AI, not that I've seen, but Monty has always been high on the aggression scale, and there's always a bit of randomness on motivations.

I think the "randomness" comment is understated. The Aztecs warred on me incessantly, but because I "knew" they would probably do this thru multiple iterations of previous games I was ready for it, with defenses in depth. To put it mildly the Aztec convenitonal units entered a prepared killing ground (at the end the AI was dribbling single units at me which I killed at leisure). Then the Aztecs nuked two of my three cities, reducing my abilities to continue my resistance. But then they asked me for peace (see first screen shot)!?! :confused: :crazyeye:

Probably had something to do with the growing Indian menace (see second pic which shows the state of Germany, to include the outline of the Indian Empire). Shortly after this the Indians declared war on me, attacking me on three fronts, which I was in no shape to be able to deal with. I conceded at that point.

Good stuff overall! :b: I am going to have to emphasize a stronger army in the future, as well as cultivating C-S even more so (the C-S again were a nuisance to me as they warred on me alongside the Indians). Pace seems better.

Two thoughts:

1. I do think there should be some sort of negative effect for using nukes (i.e. a diplo hit or something of that nature), as right now there doesn't seem to be any negative consequences for nuking someone, which I think right now is a little unbalanced, especially considering the scarecity of uranium.

2. From the many iterations of playing ciV why I knew the Aztecs would probably attack me, so I set up my empire accordingly (the only walls I built were on the city adjacent the Aztecs). Personally speaking I think randomized leaders is the way to go so that a player just doesn't know what really is facing them in regards to AIs intentions.

D

I haven't actually planted any Forests yet, but I did plant plenty of Jungles. The planted Jungles were producing +1 food before the latest version, but that's about the only unusual behaviour it caused.

That's not unusual; Jungles' yield is +1 food, -1 production. Unlike Forests, their yield is additive, so if a tile had no production before (i.e., Grassland) then it's a pure gain of +1 food. (The fact that they can have a Trading Post makes them even better, and then there's the +2 research for Universities...) Anyway, not a bug, and not something I changed.

Civ 5 itself is still an unstable platform for me and does crash by itself on rare occasions.

Hmm, that's not a good sign. If Civ5 itself isn't stable for you in general, then there's something strange going on. I know Firaxis have fixed a bunch of crash bugs in the recent patches, but it sounds like something's still not that compatible. I'm assuming you've got updated drivers for your video and sound cards; I know a couple brands had huge instability issues with Civ5 before their most recent drivers came out.
It's also possible that your installation of Civ5 was just bad to begin with. Do you have the disks, or was this a Steam download? I'd hate to tell you to install the entire game over again, but that might be the problem. (I've had that happen a couple times with Steam-based games, and I don't even do the digital download; a patch goes bad and the whole thing needs to be reinstalled.)

However, I did delete previous versions of your mod without disabling in the game first (although not while the game was running), I don't know if that's a potential problem causer.

Shouldn't be a problem, I do far worse on my end. But that does bring up one point: when you install a new version, do you delete the old one's directory first, or do you unzip on top of it? (I don't THINK I've removed any files in quite a while, and the modinfo file explicitly tells the game which files to use, so old leftovers shouldn't be a problem, but you never know.) But you said this has been an issue since the first version you downloaded, so that shouldn't be it.

I've never tried Firetuner, so I'll give that a go next time I play.

For obvious reasons I play with Firetuner open nearly all the time. The chances of it actually catching the crash as it happens are very slim, because there's little in the way of debugging messages in this game. But you never know. Also, more importantly, when you start up a game it'll say whether it had a problem loading one of the files right then; that shouldn't be related to game speed in any way, but it'd tell if there was something wrong with your particular installation of the mod.

I have a decent system - Q9300, 4gb DDR2 (nerfed by Vista 32bit down to 3gb) with an AMD 5770.

Well, that's better than mine. (2.5 year old machine, 3GHz dual core, running XP with the same 4gb->2.3 issue you have, 512MB video card.) I was just worried you were running it on a laptop or something; with those specs you shouldn't have a problem with the settings cranked up.

OK, thats good info. I think I have been previously conditioned to wanting river starts due to always being on the edge economically. Probably not necessary as the game has matured in this respect. Next time I'll start wherever the game places me.

In the next version, I bumped up the chances of Large resources spawning on hills (1/16 -> 1/14), forests (1/25 -> 1/23), and jungles (same), which should help with the resources a bit. But yes, the main culprit is that what looks like a good starting point usually isn't; I've done a similar thing, restarting if I get a starting point next to the tundra or desert, but that's where most of the best resources are.

Then the Aztecs nuked two of my three cities, reducing my abilities to continue my resistance. But then they asked me for peace (see first screen shot)!?!

I think the criteria the AI uses for deciding how lopsided the peace treaty needs to be will depend on units killed in combat and cities siezed. Neither of which are increased by using a nuke. So from his point of view, you'd wiped the floor with him. Obviously if the war had continued then things might have turned out differently, but the AI doesn't think that far ahead.

And yes, that crippled you for the war against India. Incidentally, this means that if you'd gone to him the turn before he nuked you and asked for peace, he probably would have offered plenty and you'd have had an intact empire to face India. (Might be worth checking, if you've still got an autosave at the right point, just to see how much the AI values nuke damage.)

Probably had something to do with the growing Indian menace (see second pic which shows the state of Germany, to include the outline of the Indian Empire).

Very likely. The AI generally goes after the #1 civ, but it weights technology and Wonders a bit too much IMO, and doesn't focus enough on which civ has all the cities. (Also, proximity is a big factor.) So by the time anyone saw India as being a bigger threat than you, they'd taken over half the world. It's possible that the AIs didn't give India a high score until they conquered some Wonder-heavy city from someone else.
Likewise, the AI really weights military power heavily, but doesn't consider the potential for power; I often would keep a moderate standing army, knowing that if someone declared war on me I'd have enough time to switch my cities to full military production and turn out a big army. (Or start purchasing units.) Sort of like WW2 America. If you share a continent then sure, you won't have a lot of time to spare, but in my latest game I've got my own continent (well, I shared it with China but then wiped them out), and the AIs don't realize that any attack on me takes time to cross the oceans.

1. I do think there should be some sort of negative effect for using nukes (i.e. a diplo hit or something of that nature),

I agree. There IS a diplo hit, but only to civs within a few hexes of the impact point. So even if they're not in the blast radius, a nearby city-state will hate you. But the rest of the world doesn't care. And they should. But this goes back to something I've said before: Firaxis coded a lot of things under the assumption that the game would be over around that point in the tech tree; buildings that have too much effect (Research Lab, Broadcast Tower), units that have too much strength compared to their predecessors (Modern Armor, Mech Infantry), and so on. From their point of view, there's no point adding nuke interceptions when most games never make it to nukes, that sort of thing.
And so, I'm not surprised they didn't put in any big diplomatic hits for this. This sort of short-sightedness has been one of the biggest problem with developing this mod; there are a LOT of things that they should have done but didn't.

Personally speaking I think randomized leaders is the way to go so that a player just doesn't know what really is facing them in regards to AIs intentions.

Well, there's some randomness already built into the system; you CAN have a game where Napoleon's more aggressive than Montezuma. But Monty's just so predictable; I'm bordering him in my current game, and at first we were friendly, but as I started doing better, you could just see it coming. (So I got proactive and wiped him out.)

I've been having a major problem playing through the Content mod on Marathon speed. When I get to the Nuclear era, the game will sometimes crash after pressing "end turn".

I should point out, I'm seeing the same thing myself now, too. I usually start games in the Industrial Era, but I started a game in the Ancient to test the balance. (King difficulty, Large map, Standard speed, Small Continents) I'm just getting to the late Industrial/early Nuclear, and the game's starting to crash more and more often. Except in my game, I'm not the tech leader (tied for second, two techs behind the leader), so if the terraforming logics are to blame then the AI could easily be triggering it. But the strange thing is that a couple of the crashes have happened at times when the AI couldn't have been doing anything like this; specifically, one crash happened during my active turn, while starting a bombardment action.

Unfortunately, without a good debugger program, I'm not sure how I can track this down.

On the bright side, in the course of this test game I figured out a few other changes that'll go into the next version. For one thing, the Monolith (Great Empath-created improvement) now adds +3 happiness instead of food. Unfortunately, this is +3 whether you work the tile or not (just like a natural wonder), so it's not QUITE what I'd wanted, but it's getting there.
So when I put out a new version (probably before the weekend), it'll have a few new things in it. For one thing, I'm starting to assemble the icon files for the units, new policies, etc., to get rid of the old placeholders. Really, all that's left at that point, graphically, is creating new 3D models for all the units (well, converting from Civ4 anyway).

Yeah, I think it may very well be the plant forest/jungle AI. I just played through on Epic, and didn't have a single crash until just before everyone started reaching the Industrial era. I like to play with a bit of an advantage, so I'd gotten there a long time before, but I'd wiped out the one city-state that somehow managed to creep into the game early on. I've been able to get a lot further than ever before, and have finally made it into the Nanotech era, but the crashes are finally starting to become more frequent.
As well as playing on Epic I made a few other changes for this playthrough - I turned on 'random seed' and 'lock mods' in the scenario options. I'm not using automated workers, though, so I'm not sure if that can be a trigger.

Since my last post I've tried updating my graphics card drivers, and my sound card drivers were already up to date. I also tried 'verify integrity of game cache' on Steam (I bought the game over Steam so there was never an issue of installing from discs), it replaced a 35mb file but it had no effect. I then uninstalled the game and tried a fresh install, but that didn't work either.


Anyway, now I've finally had a chance to properly sample most of the mod, I had a few suggestions for modifications or additions. I still absolutely love it as it is, though! Crashes excepted...

-One thing that's always bugged me about Civ 5 is that the early resources become completely or very nearly useless later on. Coal isn't much use beyond Factories even when you're still in the Industrial era...
I was wondering if you could keep these resources valuable later in the game by providing new uses for them. For example, Combat Engineers and other advanced terraformers could require Iron, Circuses could be improved and use up a unit of Horses rather than requiring one locally, and you could make some of the post-Nuclear buildings require Coal or Oil.

-Ethical Calculus seems to be a bit high up the tech tree, and I'm not sure why it should require Subatomic Alloys. Just a logic issue rather than a gameplay issue, though.

-I was rather surprised to find all my Dilithium used up when I started building Fusion Labs! The standard-game buildings which use resources say it very clearly in their mouse-over descriptions, I think the new ones need to follow suit.

-Natural Wonder resource output is usually a little anaemic even in the standard game, but by the late-game in the Content mod, they actually become a waste of a square. Is there a way of adding tech-provided Natural Wonder output increases, in the same way as for tile improvements?

-Had another idea for an addition: I love the whole tile improvement... er... improvement... mechanism, and thought it could be taken further. If you make the early Wonders provide a bonus to specific tile improvements in addition to their current stuff, it will provide a kind of non-arbitrary racial trait. For example, if you make Stonehenge add a +1 Gold bonus to mines, the owner will seek out hilly terrain and mine the hell out of it throughout the game - this would reflect real life, as the British economy has traditionally hinged on its mining output, and Stonehenge was a very early indication of this.
You could provide bigger bonuses to Wonders which improve rare tile improvements such as Quarries and Forts. By keeping this unique to the old Wonders, you ensure that the bonuses remain in the hands of a nation's central cities, and influence their behaviour throughout the rest of the game, and the type of terrain they seek out. If you could get a Trading Post boost with the Sydney Opera House, for example, you wouldn't modify your normal terraforming/settling behaviour because you figure "it doesn't matter, I'll have the opportunity to improve X improvement later on", which is the effect that the tech-based improvements create.
I'm not suggesting removing the tech-based boosts, I think they're fantastic, but this addition could create an extra element to the gameplay.

One thing that's always bugged me about Civ 5 is that the early resources become completely or very nearly useless later on. Coal isn't much use beyond Factories even when you're still in the Industrial era...

The only use for Coal other than Factories is the Ironclad unit, which gets replaced by resourceless destroyers very quickly. But Factories are so absolutely essential that I don't see this as much of a problem.

Iron and Horses become almost useless after a certain point, yes. On the other hand, you've had a long time where they were adding to the yields of their tiles, and will continue to do so. But don't underestimate the local benefits (Circus for horses, Forge for Iron). Even so, I'd long ago suggested adding a few new buildings, one per resource, to get some use out of the excess (Steel Mill, Racetrack, etc.), and I've long considered putting something like that into the Balance mod to go alongside the city growth buildings.

The easier thing to do would be to, as you suggested, make the Circus actually CONSUME a unit of Horses, the Forge consume a unit of Iron, and so on. But that will hardly make a dent in your civ's overall supply. (I've actually got the game doing something similar with the Living Refinery; it requires a local unit of Omnicytes OR Neutronium OR Dilithium, and its benefits depend on which of these can be found locally, but it also costs one unit of each.)

There's just one major headache to keep in mind. Iron and Horses are one thing, but the later resources are all created by various buildings. Once you get Energy Banks, you'll have more Coal and Oil than you know what do to with, and this was deliberate. Get Fusion Labs and you'll have plenty of Aluminum and Uranium, although it costs Dilithium. Get Quantum Labs and you'll have Neutronium and Dilithium. And Brood Pits give Omnicytes.
So by the later game, you shouldn't have shortages of these resources... except that the future resources each have two buildings which consume their resource. (You've noticed the Fusion Lab; it's the first of the six to do this.) More on this below.

-Ethical Calculus seems to be a bit high up the tech tree, and I'm not sure why it should require Subatomic Alloys. Just a logic issue rather than a gameplay issue, though.

There are four answers here. Pick whichever ones you like.
1> When I added the three "social" techs, I put one in each Era, three tiers apart. There's no way to do that and have them depend directly on each other. I did this because the Digital and Fusion eras already had 15 techs, and putting more than one in any given era would just make them too crowded.
2> I specifically DIDN'T want to follow SMAC's pattern of having these techs be their own little side chain, because doing that means that people will skip the whole lot of them; I wanted things to be more interconnected. That means more back-and-forth between these and the more "technical" techs, which, yes, will lead to some head-scratchers.
3> It's not that Ethical Calculus, as a concept, requires knowledge of subatomic alloys. It's that the Habitation Domes, which EC unlocks, require that knowledge (even though I didn't make them actually consume any neutronium). If you look at older versions, the Hab Domes used to be at Subatomic Alloys before I added EC.
4> While I did a lot of rearranging when I put them in, there was still a bit of inertia, keeping things where they were. For instance, Subatomic Alloys should really be lower on the tree (lower in Y, not in tier), because the bottom of the tree is the more "physical science" part while the top is supposed to be the biological/social side. But the only way to do that would be to move all three Doctrine techs up a little, which'd rearrange a few other things, and I liked the idea of having at least one strategic resource on the upper half. (Also, Neutronium adds happiness, since it's a luxury.)
One simpler possibility would be to just swap the positions of Ethical Calculus and Ecological Engineering. But that'd mean that Ethical Calculus wouldn't actually require Social Psychology unless I changed some other links, and Ecological Economics wouldn't require Eco Engineering.

Bottom line, a lot of the tech connections don't make a lot of sense, but that's actually nothing new. SMAC had the luxury of not needing to make its tech tree look pretty, so they'd have techs connecting to each other from opposite ends of the tree, but I need to have it look at least a little hierarchical.

-I was rather surprised to find all my Dilithium used up when I started building Fusion Labs! The standard-game buildings which use resources say it very clearly in their mouse-over descriptions, I think the new ones need to follow suit.

I can do that. For reference, the buildings that use resources:
- The Fusion Lab and Gravity Shield (both early Fusion Era) both use Dilithium, well before you'll be able to generate it with a Quantum Lab.
- The Centauri Preserve and Nanohospital use Omnicytes, although the Centauri Preserve can only be built if you have a local deposit of them and the Nanohospital comes well after the building that can generate more.
- The Nanoreplicator and Robotic Assembly Plant (both Nanotech Era) both use Neutronium.
- The Living Refinery national wonder uses one unit of each.

The existing interface will tell you if you don't have a resource that one of these buildings needs, and the Civilopedia will list out the resources, but I can add to the tooltip as well.

-Natural Wonder resource output is usually a little anaemic even in the standard game, but by the late-game in the Content mod, they actually become a waste of a square. Is there a way of adding tech-provided Natural Wonder output increases, in the same way as for tile improvements?

No, there isn't, unfortunately. There's a sort of cheat you can do where you place a custom improvement on the wonder's tile, and then improve that, I suppose. (I actually do that with the Monolith improvement: it creates a natural wonder on the same tile as the improvement, and the two coexist and add their bonuses.) But in the core setup, Natural Wonders are basically stuck at their original values.
Now, I've actually been planning on doing something about this. Not the tech yield part, but improving natural wonders in general. I mean really, Old Faithful gives +2 research and nothing else? Where's the income from tourists, or the fact that Yellowstone isn't exactly a desert that contributes nothing else? And really, EVERY natural wonder should provide at least +1 happiness if it's within your borders. (Ideally you'd get the happiness if it was worked, but that's not possible at present.)

-Had another idea for an addition: I love the whole tile improvement... er... improvement... mechanism, and thought it could be taken further. If you make the early Wonders provide a bonus to specific tile improvements in addition to their current stuff, it will provide a kind of non-arbitrary racial trait.

Unfortunately, there's no XML stub that does this. Buildings can improve the yields of various local improved resources (see the Mint or Monastery), but nothing empire-wide and nothing that keys off improvement type directly.

Also, this can be horribly unbalanced. Take the example you gave, of Stonehenge giving +1 gold to mines. That's insanely strong; even if you weren't in particularly hilly terrain, you'd be making more money from that than you would from your trade routes for quite a while. This creates an insurmountable economic advantage to whichever civ happened to build it. I ran into something similar when trying to balance the tech yield improvements; boosting Quarries, Pastures, etc. wasn't too bad, but any boost to Farms, Trading Posts, or Mines had to be handled VERY carefully, because they could cause a drastic shift in balance. (That's why the Farm and Mine boosts were research instead of something like gold.)
So really, you'd want something fractional. +0.25 gold per mine, that sort of thing. The XML can't handle this, but since the XML can't do what you're asking anyway, you'd need to go Lua, and that CAN adjust for fractions. But it wouldn't be easy, because the code isn't set up to handle this sort of mod well, and the UI wouldn't display it correctly.

The related issue is that it's too sensitive to the tech leader. In a lot of games, once someone starts getting some of the Wonders they'll begin to sweep the rest, because they get enough of an advantage to maintain a tech lead and build each wonder before the other civs even unlock it. Doing what you've described makes this worse; one player would get all of the +tile wonders, and end up with an insurmountable advantage. (This is a big part of why so many of my mod's wonders are actually National Wonders. I wanted to make sure that you couldn't just run away with all the good effects by having a tech lead.)

And finally, there's a different problem. If you start in the Industrial Era, for instance, then you can't build Stonehenge. Wonders have a MaxStartEra entry; if you start a game after a certain point they're removed from the list. So if the game's balance depends on whether or not someone has this Wonder, there'd be problems.

I'm not suggesting removing the tech-based boosts, I think they're fantastic, but this addition could create an extra element to the gameplay.

The biggest problem is that it just becomes too much, after a while. If one worker's tile output is too high, then they'll never want to work a Specialist slot, or vice versa. And if you're adding a bunch of Wonder effects to boost all sorts of tile yields, then you quickly upset that balance. (The same goes for the Policy-based yield improvements, although at least there the only policies that do this improve science only.)

I ran into this often while tweaking the mod in its early days; sometimes you'd have all the specialist slots get filled and no tiles being worked, sometimes you'd have the reverse, and neither is a good outcome. So what I've got now was designed around the idea that resource tiles should ALWAYS be worked, but that non-resource tiles should often be inferior to a specialist slot depending on the city's needs.

The only question I have is what server on CoH you played

The only question I have is what server on CoH you played

Victory server, characters "Flicker" (Dark/Dark/Dark Scrapper) and "Doctor Proton" (Elec/Rad Defender). But that was years ago.

----------

I made a decision today, per the previous discussion. The tech yield increases to Farms and Trading Posts were just too much. Boosting a Quarry by +1 gold would only affect maybe a half-dozen tiles across your entire empire, but boosting a Farm could add hundreds, especially on larger maps. Unlocking the production bonus for trading posts would tremendously boost your empire's production, more so than the Communism policy. So I'm nerfing them a bit.
From now on:
> The +research bonus to Farms at Centauri Ecology will only apply to those farms adjacent to fresh water. (This actually makes sense; if you look at where I have omnicytes spawning, you'll see it's connected to water.) This reverts the game back to the middle eras, where riverside farms were noticeably better than inland ones.
> The +production bonus for Trading Posts at Industrial Economics will only apply to those posts NOT adjacent to fresh water. (In other words, industry adds a bit of production, but you don't want that near your water supply.) Note that riverside tiles still get +1 gold, so the non-river tiles won't actually be BETTER to work.
I was also thinking of making this be bonus-neutral. That is, make the non-river trading posts get +1 production but MINUS one gold (making them +1G +1P); gold is plentiful in the digital era, but production is scarce. I'm just worried that this'd overlap too much with the Mine (+2P).
(And I could move this up. Imagine if the non-river posts were tweaked at, say, Combustion, and then Industrial Economics added some other bonus to trading posts.)

Mines aren't as abuseable, because they're not "work every turn" improvements, really. Trading posts and farms are a pure gain, but a city will only work a mine if it has food to spare, so there's not as much benefit to just making as many as possible. What I'd also like to do is decouple the resource-improving mines (Gold, Silver, Gems) from the mundane ones, turning the resource ones into something more like the Quarry. This is easily possible, but I'll hold off on this for now.

I've just finished reading page 1, posts 1-20, it's brilliant, it felt like reading the first few pages from a new novel by Roger Zelazny, everything is so familiar but yet so different and fantastic.

I hope the feeling stays when I start playing.

I've downloaded both mods but I wish to begin with Crazy Spatz, I'm intrigued by the change of pace, years/turn, and I would like to ask you, how does it change the pace of research in turns of years per tech, on one hand less research is produced per turn but on the other hand you implemented discount on techs '1.0 + 0.6*Era', so will the techs catch up with the years (or with the date) like in vanilla?

If for example I've researched optics at year xxxx, I know that with your mod it will take many more turns to reach year xxxx which is good, but will optics be researched at the same xxxx as before or later, as in xxxx+200 years? which is even better, a shift for all the techs up the time line (or a progressive shift).

I've downloaded both mods but I wish to begin with Crazy Spatz, I'm intrigued by the change of pace, years/turn, and I would like to ask you, how does it change the pace of research in turns of years per tech, on one hand less research is produced per turn but on the other hand you implemented discount on techs '1.0 + 0.6*Era', so will the techs catch up with the years (or with the date) like in vanilla?

That "1.0 + 0.6*Era" part only applies to your first few techs when starting in an era later than Ancient. I refer to it as the "head start" boost, and it applies to research, food, and production while your empire's getting set up in those later eras.
So if you started in the Industrial era (Era = 4), then your first tech would research 3.4 times as fast as normal, with a steadily decreasing bonus for the first 8 techs. The vanilla game simply reduces the cost of ALL techs by a large fraction if you start in a later era, but this became very unbalanced when you got into the future eras; paying only 20% of the listed cost for a Modern start is all well and good when the game ends soon after, but if there are 50+ techs still to go, that's just too cheap. So I wanted to keep the costs of techs as close to unchanged as possible, and simply give the player a discount on their first few techs while they get their empire set up in those later starts.

Also, I'll check when I get home, but I might have screwed up the documentation on that one; I think that "head start" boost is part of the Content mod, not the Balance one, although I really should move it to the balance mod if possible. (I think all of the Lua is still part of the Content mod as a remnant of when you had to edit InGame.xml to get custom Lua to work. But there's no reason it can't be in the Balance mod now.)
The Era and game speed modifications are generally in the Content mod because of the addition of the three new eras, so it might do some screwy things to turn numbers if you use one mod and not the other. (I'll look into that.)

If for example I've researched optics at year xxxx, I know that with your mod it will take many more turns to reach year xxxx which is good, but will optics be researched at the same xxxx as before or later, as in xxxx+200 years? which is even better, a shift for all the techs up the time line (or a progressive shift).

If you're using both mods then, generally speaking, the eras will still happen at approximately the same year number as before, assuming you start in the Ancient Era. The timing's been stretched by about 50%, in terms of turns per year, and the tech rate is slowed down by a comparable amount. So turn number 250, previously, would be at 1700 AD (start of the Industrial era), but now that same turn number will be only 1000 AD, in the middle of the Medeival era, while you shouldn't reach the Industrial until turn 340ish. I'm still tweaking this, because it's still a little off; I'm seeing tanks and such coming by 1800ish. So it still needs a little work. But it's pretty close; part of what I've been doing in my more recent games is simply recording on what turn number I enter each era, so that I can fine-tune the scaling a bit better.

This slower tech pace was done in several ways in the Balance mod:
1> By drastically reducing the effects of science-boosting buildings (Library, University, etc.); cities now produce 20-40% less science than before, depending on era.
2> By slowing down city growth, through requiring more food per size. (Less population means less science, obviously.) The additional food storage buildings mostly make up for this, but it still means you'll have somewhat smaller cities by the endgame.
3> By increasing unhappiness (both the base value and the per-population gain), which means you need to spend more time building +happiness infrastructure and dealing with unhappiness through policies and such. (This makes the Rationalism tree less popular; I nearly always go Piety now.) Again, the food storage buildings add a bit of happiness, but it's still a net change towards unhappiness.
I'd also made some drastic nerfs to the scientist specialist slots, most of which were then done in the official patch and so could be removed from my own mod.

So you gain science much more slowly now, and the turns increment more slowly to compensate. On Standard speed, the game previously ended at turn 500, with the future era supposed to start on turn 400ish; with these mods, you're looking at turn ~500 to enter the future eras, with Transcendence coming at turn 850ish.
But again, this is if you have both mods running. If you only play with the Balance mod (Crazy Spatz) and not the Content mod (SMAC) then you'll still get the tech slowdown, but I don't think the turn numbers/years would be adjusted. I might know a way around that for the next version.