nucleartropics mod

The nucleartropics mod is based on my research on global warming transformations that the game supports (see thread, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=89639 ).

The point is to have a C3C Modern era scenario where nukes are available and global warming is dramatic. Global warming is meant to be rampant, so sit back and enjoy it. The effect is a hotter and wetter planet, leading to tropification (or junglification, take your pick) and severe erosion of mountains and volcanoes. Below are the terrain transformation progressions:

Grassland -> Marsh -> Jungle
Volcano -> Mountain -> Hills
Tundra -> Forest
Plains -> Forest
Forest -> Volcano (only if the base terrain is Grassland).

Other changes include:
Fewer dead-end units (including Cavalry -> Modern Armor)
Guerillas have cruise missile ability and hidden nationality.
Reduced costs for techs, units, and buildings
Tactical Nuke is the only unit that triggers a Golden Age
Almost all resources have a disappearance probability (though most are very remote).
Also, Uranium is more plentiful (appearance ratio = 160).
Railroads become available with Integrated Defense, and are renamed Teleportation Network. They require Iron and Aluminum.

Wonders have been renamed and altered to make all wonders compatible with the Modern era (none expire). The most notable wonder changes:
Forbidden Palace produces 1 Leader per 30 turns.
Manhattan Project is a small wonder and produces 1 Tactical Nuke per 15 turns.
Palace produces 1 Settler per 10 turns.

Settlers have a reduced cost.
Leaders cannot hurry improvements.

More changes are detailed in the readme file.
Please post feedback and suggestions; I'm very open to constructive criticism.

For maximum tropification, click here!
833 KB
Includes readme, Civilopedia, PediaIcons, specialized wonder graphics.
Version 1.01: some minor errors were corrected.
Version 1.02 (6/26/04): fewer volcanic eruptions, guerrillas don't have hidden nationality, mass transit and recycling center aren't as effective at reducing pollution. Food per citizen is 1.

Just the .biq file (uses the game's default graphics and PediaIcons files; Civilopedia and readme included).

Version 1.00 removed after 4 downloads.
Version 1.01 removed after 102 downloads

Are you depending on people starting a nuclear war? It might be a good idea to sart the game with a map where you have placed a large island in the corner of the map full of pollution to start global warming before anyone sets off nukes.

BTW, I'm not sure about the palace producing a settler..... does that take away population from the city with the palace?

Thanks for the questions.

The Palace-produced settler doesn't take away population. The factories also produce 1 worker every 10 turns, and that doesn't drain population either. Settlers that are built also have a reduced population cost (1). My intention was to get the population growing fast. Because city improvement costs are halved, it also won't be so hard to build Aqueducts and Hospitals.

Nuclear war isn't mandatory. But because nukes are so much easier to build, you will see more of them in the game. My complaint with having a preset map is that it limits the replay value of the scenario.

I am also unsure that the game will recognize a polluted island as a factor in global warming. I know that only three factors contribute to global warming: population in cities over 12 (which is enhanced with the free settlers and workers), number of nuclear explosions, and number of nuclear plant meltdowns. Because volcanoes and city pollution (the stuff that shows up on city tiles) doesn't affect global warming (but uses the same graphic as nuclear blasts), I doubt that the game would factor in pollution that was set on the map in the editor. There would be no way of knowing which kind of pullution it is. If you look at the editor, you'll notice that "pollution" can be placed on the map, but not nuclear blasts specifically.

Perhaps one way around this would be to start all players with a handful of nukes. But then it would end too quickly, and you wouldn't have the fun of earning them.

I will give your mod a try this weekend

@ pollution:

There are four things which cause pollution:
a) city populations above 12
b) some improvements (factories, coal plants, manu.plants, airports, offshore plattforms and the iron works - I think I have them all )
c) meltdowns in nuclear power plants
d) detonations of atomic weapons

The generated pollution has two effects (which are created from the same source, but do not effect each other) :
- an directly visible, which causes local damage: polluted squares
- an (partly) invisible, which causes GW: If you look in the city view of a big and industrialized city, you will notice the yellow pollution triangles.IMO, the game counts them in all cities on the map every turn and adds them up turn for turn.This number is compared with limit numbers (which depend from map size).Reaching the limit number(s) triggers a new stage of global warming (sun turns orange and later red).Meltdowns and nuclear blasts add an unknown fix amount to this number.

Of course this is kind of speculation and I have little facts to prove my theorie - but I know such a model was used in Call to the Power I+II (I found the related text file in the data...).To bad most parts of CivIII are hardcoded...another reason why I love AC - you are able to alter nearly everything of the game with the textfiles in the data.

screen shots?

Uhhhhh!

(I'm just downloading this now, so I don't know if you have already done this or not: Delete Recycling Center and Mass Transit)

Hey...

This is a great idea, but both links give me the 219k file, not the 815k file. If this is an error, can you fix it?? I'd sure like to play the whole version.

Sorry about that. I fixed it. The file is now 833 KB, not 815.

JuuL said:

Delete Recycling Center and Mass Transit

Click to expand...

Great ideas. I will put that in the next version.

EDIT: I will probably also change the food requirement from 2 food per citizen to 1. This is mainly because the tropification changes all the irrigated tiles into jungle or hills tiles, which undermines my efforts to have high population levels.

Here are some screenshots, as requested. These are rather large (about 400 KB each), so I won't keep them up forever (limited server space). Just a year or so



In the first shot, you will see turn 2 in a game where I gave player 1 a bunch of cities, nukes, gold, and units just to show what things look like. Note the wonders being built in some of the cities. National Sports League, for example, is the replacement for Shakespeare's Theatre. Also note the new graphics for: pollution (black), roads (gray), goody huts (palisade/industrial camp), barbarian camp (walled with pirate flag), mine, and ruins. (Credits for the graphics, along with urls for the threads where I obtained them, are in the readme file.)



In the second screenshot, we see the same area of land, 56 turns later (1 turn=1 year). Note that most of the plains have turned into forest, then blown up into volcanoes, and eroded down into hills. This shows that my assumption was false that only forest with underlying grassland would change into volcanoes. All the plains and tundra tiles were susceptible to this transformation! By this point in the game, anywhere that was initially forested has gone volcanic or beyond. Also note that my nice large cities have had their populations starved out by the terrain transformations. This is why I think I'll need 1 food = 1 citizen.



Here's the last screenshot. This area is north of the previously shown area. The upper edge started out as mostly tundra, and now has gone volcanic and weathered down a bit. Note the poor graphics transitions between tundra terrain and volcano/mountain/hills tiles. The game doesn't change surrounding tiles to match the changed forest. The fact that forested tundra and plains tiles will change into one of the dark green-edged tiles seems to be the exception to my discovery that only dark green-edged tiles were interchangeable in terrain transformations. Weird, eh? I think it looks especially weird when it happens on the coast, and looks like a hill is popping right out of the water. As a rule, that is a tile that became forested, and then later went volcanic.

I should probably rename this mod, volcanictropics. That's a lot of volcano action!

i have 1 big problem

in the higher difficulty levels the AI gets free guerillias at start, wich he uses to destroy your undefended citys... before you even had time to build your first defender...

nice mod!

Thanks, useless. KYA, I have noticed that. I played it in Monarch mode when testing, and found I always had 2 Guerillas coming at me immediately. Usually my couterploy was to rush a Flak or Guerilla of my own. But another option would be to start all civs out with an Infantry unit. What suggestion do you have?

Camber said:

Thanks, useless. KYA, I have noticed that. I played it in Monarch mode when testing, and found I always had 2 Guerillas coming at me immediately. Usually my couterploy was to rush a Flak or Guerilla of my own. But another option would be to start all civs out with an Infantry unit. What suggestion do you have?

Click to expand...

i have not tested if it gets the guerillias as offensive or defensive units, so i removed them alltogether and gave him some extra workers to compensate

rushing 1 defensive unit helps sometimes, but not always, as the computer seems to sometimes know when he has to attack to be "lucky" with the random combat results

maybe reduce guerillia defense to 5, then he should get flak as defensive units, and give him only defensive and no offensive units

btw i noticed if you dont have oil and aluminium you're pretty f***ed
TOWs attacking vs fortified Mech infs... a nightmare o_O
and once i conquered the resources the whole world declared war on me

but now i can build nukes

Could you get the pollution by using the General tab rules change of reducing the maximum sizes of cities and metropoli? In other words, make towns 1 pop, cities 2 pop, and everything over 3 pop is a metropolis. Would that get you the population pollution? Is it based on the number over the metro level, or on a set number of citizens? Should be easy to test.

Tholish, that was a good suggestion. It does work as you thought. I won't make the town and city maxes that low, or else it would be hard to get enough shields to build Aqueducts and Hospitals. But I'll bring down the sizes a bit when I release version 1.02 today.

Changes for 1.02:

Forest no longer changes to Volcano. Mountains now change to Volcanoes, and Volcanoes to Hills.
Mass Transit and Recycling have lowered pollution reduction effects, and boost production (25%)
Guerrillas no longer have hidden nationality.
Town max size is 5.
City max size is 10.
Food per citizen is 1.

you didnt fix the nationality thingy on the guerillia, actually

you should also increase the apearence ratio of iron, oil, rubber and aluminium
i just had a game where i had none of them, and nobody wanted to trade with me (first try at demigod)
i didn't even bother to save the game

When I played the scenario, the pollution and other graphics were the same.

maybe you downloaded the ".biq only" version?
you need the full package for the new gfx

The link to the full version (including new graphics) is at the bottom of the first post.

Thanks for your feedback, KYA. I have increased the appearance of some resources, but will bring them all up to higher levels. Essential resources (such as Rubber, Aluminum, and Oil) will be just as plentiful as Iron and Horses are in the vanilla game. The developers intended that some civs will not have access to the early resources, but provide enough for almost everyone to have them (i.e., an appearance ratio below 200 and above 140). I'm not sure, but it appears that at 200, there is a 1:1 ratio of civs to strategic resource sources.