[MOD] Colonization: 2071

Thanks a lot thadian I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I agree, would be great to have Alien AI players be more expansionist and basically behave like the colonial civs (build cities/infrastructure, trade with Earth, etc). Unfortunately totally eliminating their isNative flag in XML would disrupt too many other functioning things in the game. Does anyone know if it might be possible to tweak some flag in python or DLL to make them use some of the default AI scripts for colonial civs?

Not knowing much about the DLLs I'm still not totally sure what's causing the alien tech problems. I have a hunch some of it could relate to Alien civs not having access to some of the unittypes enabled by techs. My current computer doesn't have Civ4Col, but I hope eventually we'll be able to iron that out and put out an updated version.

As always anyone is more than welcome to join in on the mod, whether with coding knowledge, Pedia writing, or anything else. I'd also be interested to hear any general playtest / feedback suggestions or proposals re techtree, unit or building redesign.

Good news space cadets For everyone wanting to emigrate from dystopian Earth, I recently restarted some work on updating the mod and have uploaded a preliminary beta version 1.1 below. I would love any playtesting feedback to help expand and balance the tech tree and other new features, and especially input from modders able to edit the DLL.



INSTRUCTIONS
Delete any previous versions of this mod.
Ensure you have installed Civ4 Colonization with the latest patch.
Download the zipfile above, then unzip inside your civilization iv colonization/Mods folder. In your Mods folder this should create a single folder called Colonization 2071 that contains the mod files.
Start Colonization, then select Advanced - Load a Mod - Colonization 2071


(edit: a new updated version 1.2 has been released. Please see the link below for details.)
http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?2101-MOD-Colonization-2071/page2


Major new features and updates in v1.1:

* After researching the right technologies, you can assign Colonists to special Professions that extract advanced goods directly from tiles containing rare Progenitor Improvements. For example, a colonist assigned to work as a Quantum Physicist in an excavated Progenitor Reactor can create Fusion Cores without the need for manufacturing from raw Uranium inside a colony. After researching Progenitor Symbology, you can assign a colonist to work in an excavated Progenitor Databank to produce Research without having to consume resources as usual in your colony's Research Labs.

* These rare Progenitor Improvements do not begin visible on the map; but are buried beneath tiles with a Progenitor Metropolis. After researching the Planetology tech, you can send a Laborer to build an Excavation on the tile. After enough time, an Event will trigger revealing the hidden Progenitor Improvement which can be a significant source of wealth.

* The map can also contain unique alien resource sites like the Ruined Temple, Spider Lair, and Grand Ziggurat. After researching Xenoarchaeology, you can sent an Intrepid Archaeologist or Seasoned Explorer to the tile to build an Expedition. This consumes the colonist but enables the direct harvest of advanced goods from the tile such as Platinum and Progenitor Tech, especially after additional techs that boost the yield from Expeditions.

* The main planets can be orbited by various classes of planetoids (such as Volcanic Moon, Arctic Moon, Verdant Moon etc). By researching space technologies, you will be able to build a Colony Ship and send it to construct a Lunar Outpost; the moon tile can then be worked by colonists on the main planet. Founding an Outpost will consume the Colony Ship; yields will start small but the Outpost will gradually grow to a Lunar Settlement and eventually a Lunar Colony with a progressive increase in yields.

* After researching Orbital Industry, you can construct a Mining Vessel and send it into deep space to mine Asteroid Belts or salvage Space Junk; this sends the harvested goods directly to your nearest colony. If this works out I plan to add theh ability to construct Science Vessels which can absorb Plasma and Dark Matter features from deep space for fun and profit.

* I identified the error that was previously causing the Aliens to be unable to do research. (Because the Techtree modcomp code is based on BuildingTypes, all civs currently need to have the same BuildingTypes to avoid errors). I temporarily deactivated the unique Alien buildingtypes and they are now able to perform research without errors. Hopefully Kailric can soon be able to update the modcomp to use BuildingClasses instead, allowing me to re-enable all the unique Alien buildings and units.

* A number of graphical updates including the Technology interface and Board of Directors


Known issues / requests for help:

* Needs playtesting and bug reports to confirm whether all the new features work as intended. Based on playtesting the tech tree, building/unit lists and Board of Directors could all be added to and rebalanced. It is intended to be harder and more challenging than regular Col in that you start with very few colonists and techs initially available and it takes a lot of planning to found and advance functioning colonies; but the growth of the REF has been sharply reduced making it much more achievable to actually win Independence.

* I would love some help from an SDK-savvy modder to see if it's possible to switch the Native (Alien) civs to use the default AI scripts for colonial nations - this would allow Alien AI players to found new cities and trade with Earth and make the game a lot more interesting. Changing isNative tag in XML would remove everything that's unique to the natives; hopefully by searching the DLL it might be fairly easy to find places where the AI script checks for native civs, then simply change these to use the default script for colonial nations. Also if the default Sea Worker AI from Civ4 could be imported, this should make the AI able to use Mining Vessels and Colony Ships appropriately since they basically function like Civ4 Work Boats.

* Although Aliens remain playable, the unique Alien Buildings and Units are inactive until the tech modcomp can be fixed to work with them.

* There is also an occasional bug where when starting a new game, Research Labs do not automatically appear in your first colonies.

* Changing the Progenitor Improvements caused problems with python script to place Progenitor Killbots guarding those areas, so this will need to be reworked so Killbots can again guard these sites. I'd also like to develop some variant mapscripts with different planet sizes etc; if the Mining Vessels can be perfected it would be cool to include an Asteroid Belt mapscript, where there are smaller planets and a large part of the wealth comes from sending Mining Vessels out to grab needed resources while protecting them from Privateers.

Already with the first bug fixes
To update to the most current patch, download Assets.zip from post 102 above and unzip to your Mods/Colonization 2071 folder.

Now that i have gotten my col file to validate i am working on getting mods to play on my laptop, so that i can once again enjoy this great mod and any updates.

i think i will be able to play but after downloading the version from the link and the assets i do get an error about a lodge...

Hey Orlanth! Awesome work and nice to see you back!

I posted some stuff on weplayciv because of all the server hilarity here; Is one or the other your "home base"?

Hey there, thanks thats just the kind of feedback I need! I guess Ill be checking both boards for now, should hopefully put out another update over the weekend.

* I wasn't able to successfully build an excavation
There was a problem with building Excavations which I now fixed, but after more playtesting it looks like the discovery events aren't triggering correctly. For the next version I'm changing it so the Progenitor Improvements can either start buried under an Ancient Mound feature that needs to be excavated, or can start in the open but guarded by Killbots.

* Mining Vessels seem to work just fine
Great. Now enabling Science Vessels which can extract advanced goods from Anomalies in deep space. Also, each of the Moons will now have a unique Atmosphere type that affects the yield of their Moon Colonies, and can be terraformed by Science Vessels with the right technology. Ive heard about the whaling boat mod but don't know enough to reprogram the SDK myself. It would be great if I could find how to reenable basic Work Boat AI from Civ4; for now the AI just seems to use them as basic tranport/exploration which I guess is ok.

* Did you remove Prog killbots?
Never fear they are reinstalling themselves for the next version.. if I can import FfH graphics maybe there will be some other inhabitants as well

* Any chance of moving the requirement for Colony Ships elsewhere?
Good point, I'm moving it to a new Tier 1 tech Interstellar Ecology which also allows building Ranches on native fauna. I would like Venture Capital to give a free Colony Ship, still working out how to do that though.

* I've only had 1 game out of around 15 start without a laboratory
Still not sure whats causing that, but definitely seems better now (unfortunately the unique alien buildings had to be temporarily inactivated to help the tech system.)

* I really like the idea of hydrocarbons but I haven't really had the chance to try it out
Hmm youre right. From now on they will be as valuable on Earth as the other export goods and the Power Plant will have no buildling prerequirements; that should let you generate early earnings from exports and then unlock a further industry advantage at tier 2. I'm also having Convoys require Hydrocarbons to build, making it more challenging for Humans to colonize the interior early on which will have many of the valuable Progenitor sites. I'm toying with the idea of making Vehicles industry valuable and important needing Hydrocarbons and Tools to produce, being required to make Convoys Artillery or Mecha plus a new Mechanized Laborer, and with a high export price to reward developing advanced industry.

Do you think its too easy/hard in general? My goal was to make it a lot tougher than vanilla to get a good colony going, but more achievable to win independence if you do well. I havent played through to the end but it seems challenging to me. I think the main issue may be lack of Food, so trying to add some more unlocking Food benefits from technologies.

Yeah, it might be worth looking into to get the help with making the mining "whaling-style"... it's nice for a gradual stream of resources (rather than the end-only payout) and the extra competitive element of privateering opponents' ships. The mining ships as they stand are kinda nifty for going *anywhere* and sucking up resources. I wonder if there's a way to get a happy medium, where they at least become cargo ships, or to have different kinds of mining.


Hydrocarbons are kind of special because you can research them without trading with the natives (rocks are free!), so they'll probably be a very appealing moneymaking option if they're priced higher, especially if your civ's bonus alien commodity isn't convenient to get in your first few cities. I liked your idea of moving the hydro buildings down to T1-T2; I fiddled with the XML files to bring them down to 1.5 & 2.5-ish, and that didn't quite make them appealing because they can't quite replace lumber (which is much more available) and because of their reduced capacity for workers.

It has occurred to me that the Power Plant +tool bonus is not always easy to use because ore and hydros are both mountain/hills resources... and one furnace worker isn't quite enough to get a bonus tool from a non-specialist machinist. So maybe your idea of bringing it all the way down to tier 1 makes sense. I also liked the idea of using them for convoys... rapid inland expansion could probably use this kind of control; coastal territory is super popular to you end up tripping over everyone else if you try to rapid expand along the coasts, I find. Vehicles already fetch a hefty price (usually around 10/13 throughout) and adding hydros would definitely make it harder to make (esp because of that mountain conflict i mentioned earlier) but that would give the Japanese a big jump, as those techs can be clumsy to research without a very solid source of income first.


As for how hard/easy: So far I've never actually declared independence. On the closest game, getting those Statesmen as you prep for the endgame felt like an awfully long process so I just walked away, seeing that the REF hadn't grown at all and was still 16/8/8/8, despite my refusing every donation request. But with 6 cities, 63 citizens and a thriving gun/vehicle industry rolling, I could easily arm half my populace by the time we were eligible to DOI and buy any artillery I wanted as insurance. I hadn't really considered ships at all.

Yeah, there was definitely something difficult going on at first... I struggled for a long time with learning to get a foothold in the early game for a pile of reasons. Landgrabbing felt unappealing even with Proletarians, aside from the occasional silver mine inland... this can be particularly effective if there's plenty of food to be had. Food indeed felt scarce for the first few games, but I find Expert Farmers are actually super accessible (MUCH more so than Ex. Astronauts because of the dual tech lines required) and given an at least average map start, the food techs are usually simple to research.

The bigger priority I found was establishing a source of revenue... even one city with a stream of silver or manufactured goods (either alien or vehicles) would get you all the migrants you needed, and usually the right ones purchased at full pop. Neither the Aliens nor the Europeans were particularly aggressive (in the mid-difficulty games i was playing) so as long as you didn't accidentally get DoWed by aliens from seizing their land before your military was researched, the idea was only to establish enough cities to have specialized cities + plenty of revenue. Once those early techs are established, you can probably then go around stomping Aliens for fun & profit - they may in fact need beefing, since one mech will wipe out a city fairly easily... that may change, I realize, once they become fully blown and playable with an AI to match. If you're unlucky enough to have more of the Earthers than your continent can handle, you will quickly run out of room and Earth nations proved to be MUCH more troublesome to fight, even if your only goal was to capture one city. I didn't find it particularly hard on the mid-level difficulties, but I haven't played any higher than that. War with Earthers strikes me as super distracting from your main goal (especially time-wise) with few benefits.

One thing that worries me is the (non-)use of T3 tech and buildings. They require a ton of specialization (particularly because you'll need specialists actually researching), cities who are actually both tech'ed up to the task AND have the right resource opportunities, and, most importantly, are awfully expensive (100 gathered and 100 manufactured goods, plus 100 tools). The 50 extra tools per factory, giving up that much potential capital, plus what was lost from moving your specialists to research means you must make a TON of cash off the tech (unlike Vanilla, which just requires you build them). Having to give up the money for research is the big difference, and I honestly don't have enough end game experience to know if that money is absolutely needed. My intuition, though, is with the current slow growth of the REF, you simply don't need to expand into 12+ cities to catch up militarily and you can win with small, tight nations.
edit: Plus, space elevators only sell a few resources at a time... was that intended? That makes it unappealing to generate 50+ manufactured alien goods in one city because they pile up without actually getting the money for them.


In a perfect world, I feel like establishing new colonies should be a sacrifice in the short-term (more than they are now) with some long-term economic benefits, but leave you more difficult to defend. Since independence is always on your own terms, I'd imagine it would be easily-angered Aliens and opportunistic Earthers that would be punishing you, here, but I feel like 3 tight cities should face a smaller REF than a sprawling but vast 12-city nation... or maybe that the latter would face a lot of mechs and have to be ready to adapt to a more spread out battle. Heck, maybe there should be a contrast between high- and low-tech colonies, where choosing to sac economy for tech isn't just a timing decision, but an overall do-or-don't decision. I dunno. I'm sure some of those arguments could be made for Vanilla, too... they probably have been by now!

Hey thanks again for all the great feedback. I've just uploaded an updated version 1.2 below, I'm really pleased how its starting to come together. There are plenty of changes but some of the most significant are:

Techs and Bonus/Improvement yields undergoing rebalancing, with an aim toward having the later techs become more useful; another goal being to have the Progenitor sites and unique archaeological sites be something you have to devote some focused effort to mastering then reward you with escalating unique payoffs not avaiable through vanilla goods/buildings, hopefully making each game play out very differently depending on local environments and techs. This will still need a lot of playtest adjustment by people who play the mod more than I do so I'm open to any feedback and suggestions.

Several new Professions, including the Orbital Trader who generates Earth Goods by working tiles in Low Orbit, with yields increased if a Spaceport is in the planetary settlement.

Hydrocarbons now a cash export good, found mainly in Desert (Barren) regions along with Ore; but conversely to Ore, you'll earn most of your yields by using Oil Wells to harvest from Barren flatlands rather than coal mining from hills (or a number of other oil-rich sites such as Petrified Forests and tiles with Paleontology deposits). Building and w orking Oil Wells over flatland desert can eventually discover Oil or Natural Gas bonuses deeper down. Also unlike most resources yields are actually worse near rivers due to the water table.

Progenitor Improvements can either start buried under an Ancient Mound feature that needs to be excavated by a Hardy Laborer, or can start in the open but guarded by Killbots or other unique hostiles.

Colony Ships, Mining Vessels, Science Vessels now all seem to be in and working. As mentioned each of the Moons will now have a unique Atmosphere type that affects the yield of their Moon Colonies, and can eventually be terraformed by a Science Vessel.

I'm thinking I may re-up the REF growth a bit or find something else to ameliorate AI stupidity (like declaring war without any Soldiers!) The TAC mod codebase looks like it could be great to include but not knowing C++ I'm worried about the stability effects of fusing different SDK mods. I would love to have someone who knows his/her way around the SDK take a look at it to see if any enhancements can be made, either by

* letting native races use the default colonial AI behaviors
* adding existing TAC mod code for AI and event enhancements
* using the default Civ4 Work Boat code to make AI players use Mining/Science/Colony vessels, or adding the Whaling Boats modcomp
* letting tech modcomp use BuildingClasses instead of BuildingTypes

Anyway, a few other things in this release:

Several graphical fixes and updates

New Earthling leader option for the Caliphate

Groovy new space-funk anthems for the Green and Grey

Enjoy and let me know what you think. For Liberty and Propaganda!

Colonization 2071 version 1.2

http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=216​

Instructions:
* completely delete any old versions of this mod
* ensure you are using Colonization with the latest patch
* download from the link above
* unzip into your civilization iv colonization/mods folder
* start Colonization, choose Advanced, Load a Mod, Colonization 2071


(let the Narcotics and Fusion Cores party begin!)

So I've started testing 1.2. Off the bat, it seems like the inventor's hut seems to bug out a lot more often again... pretty much as much as 1.0. The first game off a cold boot (so C4C booted, load mod, first game) is fine, but I've had the game short me the inventor as soon as the second game. (iirc, I never built a colony on the first game, exited out to the menu and restarted)

I've also had one game where the inventor's hut wasn't built, but was available on the build list. I'm wondering if that might be a more consistent solution, since the problem seems to be those "my default city starts with XX" rules.

Here's a patch with a few quick changes:

Planetology now gives free Research Labs in every city; so if it starts you without them you can acquire it from the aliens; I had also set them to be buildable for 10 hammers though it had seemed sometimes they still didn't show up in the menu. If this works maybe we can eliminate the starting RLs and say the bug is a "feature". I tried to test using this patch but didn't start without RLs in 6 games, let me know what you find.

Finally found how to mod the cityscreen map icons, so no more fish and tobacco leaves

Based on your earlier comments, I've bumped up the iEuropeCostIncrease in units/civ4unitinfos.xml, so you can buy early units at the same price but this escalates with repeated purchases so Earth's shrinking talent pool pushes you to plan and develop Education. The Japanese Androids and AI have less of an increase but its still significant (you can actually manufacture these yourself as Japan IIRC). Made Platinum prices more vulnerable to crash after selling heavily to Earth (thinking of renaming this Precious Metals or Hard Currency.) I also nudged down the REVOLUTION_EUROPE_UNIT_THRESHOLD and REVOLUTION_EUROPE_UNIT_THRESHOLD_INCREASE in globaldefines.xml to make Earth tyrants ramp up the REF a bit faster.

It would be cool if we can balance things so that you likely can't afford to reach more than 2 or 3 of the top-tier techs in any given game, but they can each give you a different but very worthwhile endgame advantage. Then we could adjust up the REF increase factor so that if you just sit around in a few colonies making Liberty the Earth bad boys will kick your ass, but you can get ahead of them by using big unique advantages from endstage techs and unique map sites to grow the endgame power of your colonies faster than the deadliness of the REF. I'm also hoping people will want to capture some of those Progenitor forts and bunkers and use them tactically during their revolution.

The top-tier techs still need something significant. I'm thinking of adding some powerful buildings available with later techs which require advanced resources to construct (eg could build Neurotropic Enhancement in your colonies using 100 Narcotics for a big local boost to Education/Liberty/Propaganda. For top-tier Hydrocarbons, maybe build an Industrial Sprawl with a % bonus to manufactured goods and % penalty to local raw materials and Food. For the ancillary Progenitor Tech slot after Dark Matter Physics, finally somehow make use of that Janus Device lurking in the Pedia) I'd like to fit in some really cool or weird techs that are offshoots of the basic production ones to spice things up and reward people who manage to achieve large-scale production of the advanced goods, like Nerve Stapling which makes your Convicts more productive than Free Colonists at the cost of a Liberty penalty, Soylent Green which increases food production by the tax rate, Orbital Superstructures which gives you a one-time Colony Ship that can construct a Space Station in Low Orbit, or Psionic Awakening which turns all your Visionary Researchers into powerful combat units that can ignore fortification bonuses.

It would be good to be able to thoroughly plan out a revised tech tree that works well with gameplay before modding it in, so definitely let me know if you have any ideas for this. I actually dont play the mod that thoroughly cause I always stop to change something after x turns so design input from players is really useful.

Great mod, downloading 1.2 now. i hope i enjoy it as i have the first one - even though i have NEVER EVER EVER finished ANY game of colonization i enjoy this mod a lot.

I managed to scare up a consistent crash (or at least it always crashes on my computer). Meet the Chinese, take my turn, end turn, crash... so I'm assuming it has something to do with the game/mod.

Definitely not doing anything especially unusual, so can't give much in the way of hints as to what's going wrong. Sorry!

Thanks for the report. I was able to reproduce the crash from that savefile; the error log reveals Resource/Civ4.thm tries to load some graphics that it can't find, which is odd because the mod didn't edit any of these thm files, it just uses the original ones from vanilla Civ4Col. Well I've never done anything with these files but I'll try fiddling with them maybe removing the lines listed in the log to see if this fixes it. I see you're using the vanilla mapscript instead of Planets but i doubt that has anything to do with it. Has anyone else encountered any crashes?

Hmm it looks like this same error has been reported several times with vanilla Colonization!
http://forums.2kgames.com/archive/index.php/t-35686.html
http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-294015.html
http://forums.2kgames.com/archive/index.php/t-25750.html
http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-302146.html
So oddly it may be an occasional bug from vanilla Col. It doesnt look like anyone posted a fix for it; but I'll try tinkering with the file.

I edited the lines in vanilla Colonization thm files that were trying to load wrong files; it does resolve all the logged errors but doesn't prevent your save from crashing. So hopefully this is a rare error that's a holdover from the vanilla game, but its hard to know for sure, please let me know if you or anyone else get anymore errors. You could try to unzip the attached Resource folder into Mods/Colonization 2071 to see if it reduces the frequency of this error.



(edit: on second thought I recommend not messing with the Resource files, this could just make things unpredictable. I just reinstalled Civ4Col plus the latest patch, then running the mod on its own seems not to have stability issues).

wow, great work! Everything from the icons to the new arabian leader really does it for me. looking past the surface of things and looking at it's depth, this is one of the best civ 4 mods in general - im impressed!

Hey Orlanth, great Mod, just thought I'd say that right off the bat. With that, let me get into some critiques, missing stuff, errata and other stuff I've noticed.

1. The Hydrocarbon icon is missing from the city terrain menu. There's a row for it, but it's blank and you can only find out how much a tile produces by putting someone on it and using the popup text to see what you're outputting. It's kinda funny though, because wasn't this icon present in a previous version? I know that sort of file is hard to edit, though, without breaking it.

2. I can build the research lab when it isn't put in the game by itself. So, that works. Also works for the aliens, I think, though they DO have to build it when you play as them.

3. The aliens are definitely nowhere NEAR as stable to play when compared to the earthling nations. The earthlings, however, are pretty near solid as a rock. Gameplay (and stability) is pretty solid with them. Wish the Aliens were anywhere near as ready.

4. If you don't pick the UFO bonus (or you start without access to orbital space), can you ever build your own ships? Or uncover a wormhole? If I were you, I'd look at answering this question as soon as possible, because if you can't, the aliens are pretty much FUBAR. I can't even buy a ship and send it through the wormhole without one on my charts. I also can't sell excess goods without a Ziggurat.

5. Can you build a Town Hall as the aliens? I dunno, it seemed like I couldn't but then again, I didn't stick with them for very long. Possibly not long enough to tell. I'm eager to play the aliens but since the Humans are so much more polished and playable, I gotta go with them.


All that aside, I'm having a lot of fun with this mod! So, please keep up with it! I know I'd definitely like to see it buffed to a fine polish. It could certainly shine if it got the right kind of care and attention.

orlanth said:

I edited the lines in vanilla Colonization thm files that were trying to load wrong files; it does resolve all the logged errors but doesn't prevent your save from crashing. So hopefully this is a rare error that's a holdover from the vanilla game, but its hard to know for sure, please let me know if you or anyone else get anymore errors. You could try to unzip the attached Resource folder into Mods/Colonization 2071 to see if it reduces the frequency of this error.

Click to expand...

Did you mean right into the Civ4Col directory, or was it supposed to be a new folder in the Col-2071 directory?

So the good news was that it fixed the crash on that particular game, but I'm still getting *very* frequent crashes at exactly the same kinds of situations/moments. I'm a little surprised, since 1.1 was working just dandy.