Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

I want to know if I should replace the file with the Great Plains,Lakes, etc with the Original files or just put it into the mod file? Cause every time I start the game it closes down the game.

Malcmalc2 said:

I want to know if I should replace the file with the Great Plains,Lakes, etc with the Original files or just put it into the mod file? Cause every time I start the game it closes down the game.

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You don't replace the old files. As long as you put those files I've provided into the /Maps/ directory, it'll add them to the list of available maps as "Spatz's Highlands", "Spatz's Great Plains", and "Spatz's Lakes".

So the games been running smoothly, got 1 crash at turn 237, seems pretty stable

So I have an idea for your Empires mod pre DLL, Can you alter the AI to make defencive pacts commonly with eachother and even offer them to the player? And perhaps remove the part that cancels it once you declare a war (maybe just a negative diplomatic effect for dragging your allies into a war instead)

And you could add the negative/positive effects to the 3 mutually exclusive policy branches

How much of this would require the DLL?

Might as well ...

Played from Ancient start on marathon speed and have reached turn ~500 with no crash. AND! someone actually BEAT me to the porcelain tower! YAY!

Spatzimaus said:

That generally shouldn't be happening; AssignStartingPlots should be forcing a minimum number of deposits of each luxury (with three luxuries explicitly reserved for city-states). I've long since overriden its logic to force a better distribution of strategics, but I might have to do the same for luxuries.



Not even a little bit.

First, you're the first person to have this happen, and that logic has been in place for at least six months. No one else, in all that time, has ever reported having that happen, although there was some speculation a few months ago about how it COULD happen. Granted, most people don't give any feedback at all, but I've never seen it happen myself, and none of the people who do comment in here have claimed to have encountered it.

Second, it's a POPUP. The game isn't breaking, you're not being penalized (since if you DID have all resources you wouldn't be starting any WLTK days anyway). It's one or two extra popups per turn to right-click or ignore, and a temporary message at the top of the screen. No effect on actual gameplay.

Combine those two, and it becomes a very, very low-priority bug. Not only is fixing it not trivial in general, but it'd require a significant amount of overhead to figure out if there are still other luxuries to pick from. So until we get DLL access, it's probably not going to be fixed; there are far, far more important bugs to fix, most involving the AI. (Seriously, it's not even the highest priority bug in that exact resource-picking mechanism. That honor goes to the fact that it's not actually checking to see if you HAVE the tech for Neutronium before telling the game to pick again.)

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Thanks for a detailed answer,

Is there a way to flag all your luxury resources as strategic resources, leaving all their bonuses and benefits intact, thus getting all the happiness etc., and not getting the WLTK day?

Regarding the rarity of my case, I'm always starting in 4000BC playing on marathon, the only thing I change now and then is the map size, I don't consider having access to all the resources by medieval days by owning them or by trade as such a rare thing, playing the English with a focus on Optics (Embarking, Caravel) and having the Great Lighthouse (Extra sight, Extra mileage) gives me a huge advantage on ocean exploration, finding many tiny, small, medium size islands with luxury resources is not so hard. I agree that with a late start things might look different.

dinobot386 said:

How much of this would require the DLL?

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All of it.

In the current environment, I cannot change empire-on-empire relations. I can force a war or force a peace, but I cannot cause an empire to get more or less friendly or alter their alliance status. That pretty much destroys any hope of that sort of relationship penalty.

I can change relationships with city-states, but not relations with other major empires. So until we get control over that sort of thing, the core aspects of the Empire mod are completely untenable.

LetMyPeopleGo said:

Is there a way to flag all your luxury resources as strategic resources, leaving all their bonuses and benefits intact, thus getting all the happiness etc., and not getting the WLTK day?

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No. The game, unfortunately, declares a "luxury" for the purposes of WLTK to be any resource that adds Happiness, as long as it's one that's already on the map. Neutronium is NOT flagged as resource type Luxury; internally it's a Strategic that adds Happiness, and yet you see it being selected. The fact that it never asks you for Hit Movies, Information, or Ambrosia tells me that it's assembling a list from the resources placed on the map, but that's all hidden in the engine code, it's nothing that I can adjust.

Regarding the rarity of my case, I'm always starting in 4000BC playing on marathon, the only thing I change now and then is the map size,

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Map size makes a huge difference. Resources are probabilistic, and terrain types "clump"; small maps, by their very nature, tend to have a very different distribution of resources than large maps. The largest maps will have every resource, with many sources of it across the world, making it much easier to get at least one deposit of each. And large maps have more players, which means more opportunities to trade for the resources you don't have. On a small map, you can very easily have one empire controlling the entire world's supply of one resource. (This was exactly why I added a hard-set minimum distribution of each strategic, and buildings that added strategic units; if you play in a game where India has the only deposit of Oil in the entire world, the game becomes almost unplayable.)

Map type also makes a big difference. A Continents or Pangaea map won't have tons of small islands, which means more coherent borders and less chance of finding an isolated supply of a new resource. Many maps of these types have no small, isolated islands at all.
It's also tied to the "clump" logic I mentioned; the game has some built-in code to make certain resources be more isolated, while certain others (including many of the luxuries) tend to be found in clusters of 3-4 deposits. On land, the chances are that all members of that cluster will be owned by a single player, but on an Archipelago-style map, or any other with large numbers of small islands (Small Continents and Fractal, for instance), it's much easier for two empires to split the group.

Regardless, as I said before, no one else has ever reported having this happen. I'll put it on my list of things to look at in the future, but since it doesn't affect game balance, it's very low priority compared to the other things on the list. (It's not a short list.) Ideally, we'd get DLL access and I'd be able to easily prevent it from ever picking that resource in the first place, removing the need for this sort of kludge.

Spatzimaus said:

No, no one's reported that. Sounds like a problem at your end. A few questions to diagnose it:

1> Have you ever edited any of the game's core files by hand?
2> Are you trying to load this at the same time as any other mods? (And I mean ANY other mods.)
3> Have you bought any DLC?
4> Have you verified the integrity of your game files through Steam? It's easy for a core game file to get corrupted.
5> Does FireTuner give any message when this happens, and/or the log files? (If you don't have these turned on, you should do that; the flags are in your config.ini file.)
6> Did you try re-downloading my mod and reinstalling it? Sometimes files get corrupted between CivFanatics and your computer.
7> Have you ever used a previous version of my mods? If so, make sure you delete the old directory in its entirety before installing the new version.
8> Have you tried loading just one of the two mods? They don't HAVE to be used together, and this would help track down the problem.
9> Do you have this problem with any other large-scale mods?

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I downloaded this mod a month or two ago and initially had the same problem as this guy. Activating the mods would cause the game to crash to desktop when you click 'solo'

I resolved the problem by updating to the latest version of civ 5, the mod now runs *but* the tech tree is totally invisible, and sometimes no techs appear in the tech menu either.
There is no way to resolve this afaik, the tech tree being invisible occurs in 100% of new games (not so much of an issue), the tech menu being invisible occurs in about 60% of new games, and 100% of loaded save games. This one becomes a real issue as not being able to select the next research stops you from taking your next turn.

Oh it's not the balance mod that causes this prob for me, it's only an issue when you enable the alpha centauri mod

For the record, I have another mod that modifies the ages/tech-tree, and it has the exact same problem re invsible tech tree. Vanilla civ5 does not create this problem at all.

I'm running the skidrow release of civ5 btw, patched to update 8


EDIT:
Another bug I experienced was the Fusion Reactor (quantum maybe? It was the one that consumes something and gives uranium and something else) doesn't appear to work, it wasn't adding or consuming any resources. In fact it appears that once I built a fusion reactor, any extra uranium my workers mined wasn't being added to my available resources either.

Also when running the mod I don't get the popup messages on the RHS of the screen.

EDIT2:

Erobaka said:

I still can't play with this mod :'( I tried with last version 1.8
I can start the game but i get some errors while it is loading, before the button "Begin your journey" appears :

Code:

unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeSocialPolicy.dds]
unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeSocialPolicyGlow2.dds]
unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeGreatPerson.dds]
unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeGreatPersonGlow2.dds]
unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Icons\SocialPoliciesBrancheBlackMask.dds]

And in fact all those files don't exists.

This doesn't crash the game and i can start, but the tech tree is empty.

Thanks for help

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OK so running the original skidrow release I had the crash bug mentioned at the top of this post.
Updating to update pack 7 caused the same problem this guy has. A bunch of error messages, game working, but your new SP's being invisible/unselectable and the tech tree being invisible
Updating to update pack 8 got rid of the error messages and reenabled your SP's, but still the tech tree is invisible.

kingy said:

I resolved the problem by updating to the latest version of civ 5, the mod now runs *but* the tech tree is totally invisible, and sometimes no techs appear in the tech menu either.

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Okay, it should go without saying that this mod only works with a fully patched, officially purchased game cllient. But in case it needs to be said, this mod only works with a fully patched non-crack client.

If your tech tree is invisible then something's not loading correctly in the Tech Tree lua code; it's one of the most sensitive parts of the game. Nearly any conflict in the XML will cause the tech tree to blank out like that. Same goes for the Custom Notification system.

I'm running the skidrow release of civ5 btw, patched to update 8

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Well, there you go. You're using a cracked version; no wonder it doesn't work. The cracked game, besides just being illegal in general, is NOT the same, code-wise, as the current official release. Stuff won't work, Lua code especially. That means the tech tree will break, the custom notifications will break, and the code that creates resources will break. Also on the "probably will break" list: nuke interception, most of the unusual unit special abilities, the espionage logic, about half of my future-era Wonders, the Breakout (and Psi units in general), and the Transcendence victory condition.


Look, if you're using a cracked version like skidrow, you can pretty much forget about using most of the major mods. The code's just too finicky to be compatible across versions; nearly every time the game patches the mods are non-operational for a few days while we fix things, and cracked versions are MUCH worse for that. Things might seem to work for the most part, expecially the simple XML bits, but some bit the Lua code just won't function correctly. In a mod that modifies a lot of Lua, you're assured of an incompatibility at some point.


So either go buy the real game, or forget about using any large-scale mods. Trivial little mods will still work just fine, but things like this require the actual purchased version of the game, not a crack.

Hi Spatz, I read on this thread a few times that you're not getting enough feedback, so I'd like to start giving feedback on games that I play from now on .

First, I'd like to say that I really like this mod. The end-game eras in vanilla was disappointing, I'm so glad you've added to it. Also, I'm very excited about the new editions you are planning with mythology and mid-ages to come. It all sounds very interesting, and I'm sure they will continue to make the game even more epic.

As for gameplay - The last (and first) game I've played completely was in version 1.06. I played as Alexander (I guess I just like his CS bonus) on a pangea map, 6 players, Diety level. The game felt very well balanced. In fact, I felt that even with all those changes the balance was improved, and the new wonders, balance changes and techs you added gave the game more depth and strategic angles. During gameplay I got all the tech stealing wonders (such as KGB), they were very helpful, since the AI proved hard to keep up with science wise in the LATER eras (I was surprised by this). Early on Rome went on a rampage and took over the great Egyptian empire. Meanwhile Japan and France declared war on me simultaneously. Over the first third of the game I eventually conquered them. Then it became a one on one with Rome. Their capital had something like 150 strength if I remember correctly. WOW.

In the later eras, I felt that the AI simply sucked at defending/attacking against ranged weapons. But I guess that's fireaxis' fault for making an idiot AI. Like I said before, in later eras the AI seemed to suddenly majorly boost it's tech. At first it seemed to be lagging behind, especially Washington. But suddenly, I found both Rome and America (mind you, his empire was VERY small compared to Rome and I) catching up to me so fast that when it came to building the shuttle, they nearly beat me to it. Strangely enough though, after I completed the shuttle, they started building the shuttle and then seemed to stop halfway, even though they apparently had all the required tech. By reading your update posts, I understand this has been fixed somewhat?

I'm going to play a new game now on the new version, I'll give feedback when I can .

nathanglevy said:

In the later eras, I felt that the AI simply sucked at defending/attacking against ranged weapons.

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Unfortunate weakness. It's one of the reasons I added the Magna Carta in 1.08: +10% on defense, doubled vs. ranged attacks, should cut down the late-game concentration of ranged attacks pretty well, but yes, the AI is inherently dumb and there's only so much you can do with it.

But suddenly, I found both Rome and America (mind you, his empire was VERY small compared to Rome and I) catching up to me so fast that when it came to building the shuttle, they nearly beat me to it.

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This is what the tech-stealing wonders (KGB, Planetary Datalinks) do; they allow those small remnant empires to keep pace technologically. It becomes nearly impossible to maintain more than an 8-10 tech lead on the AIs, and it's often better than that. That's still not a SMALL lead, per se, but it's enough to keep from having Tank-on-Spearman fights.

It's also going to heavily depend on whether you go Piety or Rationalism. If you went Piety and the AI went Rationalism, then it should have a good chance of catching up to you technologically, but will have horrible happiness and culture issues. (And vice versa.)

Strangely enough though, after I completed the shuttle, they started building the shuttle and then seemed to stop halfway, even though they apparently had all the required tech. By reading your update posts, I understand this has been fixed somewhat?

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Depends. Did the Breakout happen (the Psi units spawning)? The moment that happens, all spaceship components go obsolete and it becomes no longer possible to finish a ship. Well, technically if some piece is in the process of being built in a city it'll allow that city to complete that one piece, but realistically it ends the space race. I did this so that the AI doesn't waste tons of turns building spaceship parts. But yes, on top of that, the changes in 1.08 should make the AI a bit better about building the parts.

Generally speaking, you have a ~20 turn window after the first spaceship launches (in this case, yours) before it's too late. It's somewhat randomized, between 10 and 30, but I couldn't make it go any longer or else the Barbarians would never be able to be a threat.

Spatzimaus said:

Look, if you're using a cracked version like skidrow, you can pretty much forget about using most of the major mods. The code's just too finicky to be compatible across versions; nearly every time the game patches the mods are non-operational for a few days while we fix things, and cracked versions are MUCH worse for that. Things might seem to work for the most part, expecially the simple XML bits, but some bit the Lua code just won't function correctly. In a mod that modifies a lot of Lua, you're assured of an incompatibility at some point.


So either go buy the real game, or forget about using any large-scale mods. Trivial little mods will still work just fine, but things like this require the actual purchased version of the game, not a crack.

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Oh undoubtedly, I was more listing the bugs I had so that next time someone presents with those same problems, you'll immediately know why.

Hi Spatz, wow you replied FAST!

I'm not quite sure how the AI kept up with me so well, I had all the tech stealing wonders, they had none of them, and yet Washington which was a TINY empire compared to me (seriously, less than one third of my size) was keeping up very well. Rome was even exceeding me in certain areas, it was WEIRD.

Also, the AI seemed to give up on building the Apollo program BEFORE the breakout happened. Maybe I was mistaken and they were missing a crucial tech. The AI didn't seem to understand how to destroy the spore towers at all. They didn't cause any real damage, but I saw a few spore towers sitting there for over 10 turns (by then the game was pretty much over).

Another few notes: The city strength in the capital is FRIGHTENING. In open grassland it would KO some of my units until the later eras. WOW!
Certain units that upgraded could not use their predecessor's upgrades, such as with the marksman +1 range, the rifleman (and all subsequent upgrades) could not use them. It seems like quite a waste. Is there a way to maybe convert it to something else, such as +1 attack or more movement? Or maybe even give the rifleman 1 range (up from 0)?

Spatzimaus said:

No. The game, unfortunately, declares a "luxury" for the purposes of WLTK to be any resource that adds Happiness, as long as it's one that's already on the map. Neutronium is NOT flagged as resource type Luxury; internally it's a Strategic that adds Happiness, and yet you see it being selected. The fact that it never asks you for Hit Movies, Information, or Ambrosia tells me that it's assembling a list from the resources placed on the map, but that's all hidden in the engine code, it's nothing that I can adjust.



Map size makes a huge difference. Resources are probabilistic, and terrain types "clump"; small maps, by their very nature, tend to have a very different distribution of resources than large maps. The largest maps will have every resource, with many sources of it across the world, making it much easier to get at least one deposit of each. And large maps have more players, which means more opportunities to trade for the resources you don't have. On a small map, you can very easily have one empire controlling the entire world's supply of one resource. (This was exactly why I added a hard-set minimum distribution of each strategic, and buildings that added strategic units; if you play in a game where India has the only deposit of Oil in the entire world, the game becomes almost unplayable.)

Map type also makes a big difference. A Continents or Pangaea map won't have tons of small islands, which means more coherent borders and less chance of finding an isolated supply of a new resource. Many maps of these types have no small, isolated islands at all.
It's also tied to the "clump" logic I mentioned; the game has some built-in code to make certain resources be more isolated, while certain others (including many of the luxuries) tend to be found in clusters of 3-4 deposits. On land, the chances are that all members of that cluster will be owned by a single player, but on an Archipelago-style map, or any other with large numbers of small islands (Small Continents and Fractal, for instance), it's much easier for two empires to split the group.

Regardless, as I said before, no one else has ever reported having this happen. I'll put it on my list of things to look at in the future, but since it doesn't affect game balance, it's very low priority compared to the other things on the list. (It's not a short list.) Ideally, we'd get DLL access and I'd be able to easily prevent it from ever picking that resource in the first place, removing the need for this sort of kludge.

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Point perfectly understood,

My last question regarding "I have all the resources too early due to lack of Furs & Wine from the map", I used one time the mod 'strategic_availability' with your mod, this is kind of a progressive resource layout mod, right on game start I saw it's a problematic mod and I removed it, could it be that some remnants caused in a new game a total lack of some resources? Should I reinstall it all?

nathanglevy said:

I'm not quite sure how the AI kept up with me so well, I had all the tech stealing wonders,

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All of the tech-stealing buildings are National Wonders, except for the Telepathic Matrix (Nanotech Era). You might have built them before the AIs, but it doesn't prevent them from building their own, and you won't get a notification when they do. This is why I added the little red notice in the tooltip that says "National Wonder (1 per Empire)": with all of this new content, people other than myself had too hard of a time remembering which buildings were which types.

Also, the AI seemed to give up on building the Apollo program BEFORE the breakout happened.

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It's possible that it just stopped briefly while it was building something else. The problem is that the AI is probabilistic; while it wants to build spaceship parts, it doesn't want it THAT badly, to where it'd override every other option. So it might have had the choice in its highest production city to build that spaceship part, or build a nuclear plant or something first. The human would generally know that the spaceship part should be built first since it's time-sensitive, the AI doesn't do that. I can keep raising flavors, to cause the AI to prioritize it more, but I don't want it to be so absolute that the AI tries to build the biggest parts in one of its tiny cities just because they happened to have an open build queue at the right time.

The AI didn't seem to understand how to destroy the spore towers at all.

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I've seen AIs destroy them just fine. The problem is that they're often just very difficult to kill with the forces you'd have on hand, and the AI is a bit stupid about shifting units in from elsewhere in its empire. All Psi units are awarded a number of semi-random promotions, so if that Spore Tower had, say, Cover, Drill/Shock (as appropriate), and Spontaneous Healing, then that combined with the innate Titan promotion might be pretty robust.
Now, Mechanized Infantry and Modern Armor can generally just wipe the floor with a spore tower, and bombardment with aircraft can whittle them down. But if the AI has lost most of its units to a recent war, it might not have the forces on hand to deal with both the spore towers AND the units it spawns. This is especially a problem with city-states. (But it's a deliberate problem, forcing the player to help defend its allies from these incursions.)

Another few notes: The city strength in the capital is FRIGHTENING. In open grassland it would KO some of my units until the later eras. WOW!

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Yes. The Kremlin makes a huge difference in this mod, plus I've increased the tech scaling (cities get stronger as their owners gain more techs), plus I've increased the Palace's defense bonus (was +2, now +10). And then there are the future defense boosters: the Perimeter Defense (+10), the Gravity Shield (+30), and the Stasis Generator National Wonder (+9999999... just forget about hurting it). Combine many of these factors together, add the Garrison bonuses at certain policies, and you can easily get a capital strong enough to defend itself without help.

Certain units that upgraded could not use their predecessor's upgrades, such as with the marksman +1 range, the rifleman (and all subsequent upgrades) could not use them. It seems like quite a waste. Is there a way to maybe convert it to something else, such as +1 attack or more movement? Or maybe even give the rifleman 1 range (up from 0)?

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In one of the other major mods (I think Thal's balance mods), there's code that converts those ranged promotions into melee ones for the rifleman, replacing Barrage with Drill and so on, so that they're not a waste. I don't have that sort of mechanism; while I agree that it's a dumb mistake, if I were to attempt to fix it I'd take a much, much simpler tack: merge the ranged promotions with the melee ones in the first place. That is, have "Drill" add +25% to both combat in rough terrain AND ranged combat versus targets in rough terrain, and similar for Shock for open terrain. This is especially a problem with the Titans, which have access to all four (with the melee ones acting as defensive promotions while the ranged ones boost offense). This'd have some unfortunate consequences to some later promotions (Blitz/Logistics), but it's much more workable than a Lua hack.

LetMyPeopleGo said:

I used one time the mod 'strategic_availability' with your mod, this is kind of a progressive resource layout mod, right on game start I saw it's a problematic mod and I removed it, could it be that some remnants caused in a new game a total lack of some resources? Should I reinstall it all?

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I have no idea how that mod works, but if it modifies AssignStartingPlots at all (and it almost certainly does if it's adjusting resources) then it'd be purely incompatible. But that sort of compatibility is very all-or-nothing; if it used that other mod's version of the file then you'd have had no deposits of Omnicytes, Dilithium, or Neutronium at ALL, while if it used mine that other mod would have done nothing. (Unless it combined AssignStartingPlots with other Lua changes, in which case who knows how it'd break.)

As for whether remnants of an old mod could cause issues, it's possible if you haven't cleared out your cache, but very unlikely unless you'd just played a game using that other mod immediately before starting the game with my mod. You shouldn't need to reinstall anything.

quick idea:

I am playing my most recent game with 22 civs in the mix. I am constantly turning down declaration of friendship, open borders, and declare war requests. I was thinking that it would be nice to have an option to silence individual civs. This would have no gameplay impact other than automatically turning down requests from civs you decide to silence. This isn't really specific to this mod, but this is the version of civ V that I currently play and I figure it would be a good addition if possible.

This also led me to a few more ideas related to diplomacy:
- Cut off diplomatic ties/embargo: This could be like a stronger version of denouncing. Basically, you cut off all trade (not existing deals) and the target is unable to contact you to or make requests. They could still declare war. You could also request that other nations cut off contact as well. It's been awhile but I believe this was civ 4.

- Superpowers: I talked about this before but the idea is that certain civs are awarded superpower status if they meet certain requirements. Possibly being above average by some amount could get this status or it could be just awarded to a certain percentage of the civs based on score.

Getting superpower status could:

- increase the chance that your enemies align against you
- increase the chance that your friends will align with you
- it will be important to treat your lesser civ friends well - not by saying yes to everything they request, (that should help but not hurt if you say no) but you should be penalized heavily for declaring war on lesser friends, breaking deals, stealing land etc... If lesser civs see that you are not loyal (to friends not enemies), they should look elsewhere for protection
- give you more options to bully lesser civs
- give you more loyalty from lesser civs that you have a good relationship with. If you treat your lesser civ friends well, they will be less likely to hate you for conquering enemies, building wonders, being denounced by enemies, etc... Basically, at some point, lesser civs will realize that winning the game for them is not likely, and they will try to ensure their survival by supporting a more powerful friend. I would like them to be less fical than city states.
- defining which lesser civs are your friends should be something other than DOF. It should stick as long as you meet certain conditions. As the game is now, one turn someone is your friend the next, they are denouncing you, then they may be your friend again a few turns later. A system of meaningful, and potential long term ties between nations should be implemented to make this a more useful addition to the game.

Sorry about the rambling mess, I just had a few ideas and wanted to put them out there. I'm not sure what is actually possible.

mo123567 said:

I was thinking that it would be nice to have an option to silence individual civs. This would have no gameplay impact other than automatically turning down requests from civs you decide to silence.

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This, like so many other things, would require the DLL. It's not handled through normally available UI code.

- Superpowers: I talked about this before but the idea is that certain civs are awarded superpower status if they meet certain requirements.

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That's not how I'm looking to do it. There shouldn't be any sort of official status in this regard; it should be something that flows organically from the underlying mechanisms. That is, if you're allied in a single bloc with a nation that's much more powerful than you, it should be in your best interests to support him while it should be in his best interests to protect you. The game's internal mechanisms should be built towards this point, encouraging this specific type of behavior, instead of relying on some artificial label that gets applied if you meet a certain threshold of power.

Most importantly, the AI should understand the ramifications of this. If a war starts to heat up, it should be natural for the most powerful nation on one side to see the most powerful nation on the other side as his primary foe. There wouldn't need to be an absolute change in rates of influence; all you'd need is a much simpler concept of the balance of power. If two nations are allied, then the more powerful nation should be the one making all of the denouncements and getting denounced, with its relations effectively suffering for the actions of its subordinates. This is its cost, to make up for the gains it will make in other areas.

Obviously, this requires the DLL. But with the DLL, we can do very intricate mechanisms without the need for the crude system of friendship and denunciations we have now.

I agree that if it could be done organically it would be great but as it is now, the AI does not seem to recognize a much more powerful opponent. I can't even successfully demand a resorce from a civ I could easily destroy in a few turns. I just figured using a "superpower" lable may make it easier for AI to behave properly when dealing with larger powers.

Either way, diplomacy seems practically pointless to me as it is now in Civ V. I wish firaxis would fix it so modders could just concentrate on content as opposed to fixing the game.

mo123567 said:

I agree that if it could be done organically it would be great but as it is now, the AI does not seem to recognize a much more powerful opponent.

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Sure, but for the purposes of this discussion we're already assuming that DLL access is necessary for the Empire mod. Ergo, any design decisions should be based around that presumption. And you know what they say, when you presume you make a "pres" out of "u" and "me"... wait, I think I screwed that up.

It's basically the reverse of what I've done previously. In the AC mod, I deliberately went out of my way to code things in ways that don't need DLL access and that don't hinge on the save/load logic to store variables. Everything's based on probabilities instead of counters, except for things that can be counted using things like the anarchy timers or the project counter. And, there's nothing in there that really requires changing the AI's behavior; most of the game design decisions were made in ways that encourages the player to act more like the AIs would; that way, the AI isn't at such a disadvantage. (Not saying that it can't be improved, just that it's not as glaring a discrepancy.)

But the Empire mod will go the other way; since I KNOW I can't get it to work the way I want without the DLL access, I simply won't mess with any of the important bits until we get the DLL. It's very liberating to just shove that whole pile of changes off until later... and yes, the AI's stupidity aggravates me just as much as it does you. That's another reason I'm pushing this back a bit; if there's one thing the devs know we want, it's a smarter AI, so they've been trying to improve it on their own. I'm hoping they do some of the work for me, then.

The Mythology mod's somewhere in between these two extremes. There IS a decision process involved, so the AI needs to be able to deal with it, but I'm designing the system in such a way that the decisions are fairly easy and there aren't horrible consequences for a "wrong" choice. At least, that's the idea. So while the AI will be playing with a bit of a disadvantage, and DLL access would improve this somewhat by bringing in the Flavor system, it's not a big enough difference to absolutely require the DLL to make progress.
(It WILL improve with the DLL. There's no want/need logic right now, where if you're short on Happiness you'd know to take the Beauty focus, or that if you've taken the Air focus you'll want to crank out more ranged units. But even without that, it should still do pretty well.)

I've actually got a pretty good amount of the Mythology mod done already. It just takes time to lay out the XML for 84 buildings, 91 deities, and so on; I've probably spent more time on just making sure the pantheons balanced well than I have on actual coding. But I haven't even started on all of the mythological and hero units yet, and I'm still going back and forth on the exact mechanics for Favor. On the bright side, the UI is coming along nicely, so I'm hoping to have the first pass ready in a couple weeks.