Pandora: First Contact (Civ, SMAC & Beyond Earth like game)

I took a look at the factions...
So many similarities with Alpha Centauri's leaders, we got an environmentalist female (like Deirdre Skye), a religious female (like Miriam Godwinson), a Chinese man (leading the Solar Dynasty..., like Sheng Ji Yang), a Capitalist male (like Nwabudike Morgan) and so on. Except for the Solar Dynasty :)lol: guy, all of the leaders are Caucasian. I don't know what to think about them basing factions off of Alpha Centauri's...

Yep, they definitely copied the ideological factions of SMAC to a tee.
 
Moderator Action: This is not CivBE related, so moved it to Other Games. Merged with existing Pandora thread.
 
They just came out with the eclipse of Nashara expansion which features a 7th faction and a new native species that attacks during an eclipse event. I agree that it does seem a bit bland so I might move over to SMAC which I only played at a friends house some odd years ago.
 
Sorry if I missed something but it seems that there's no topic about this game yet.

Has anyone here experienced it as deep as one could compare this title with SMAC(X) and CivBE? It looks attractive and reviews are mostly positive.

Thanks in advance.
 
Here is version 2.0 for my SMACX factions for Pandora: First Contact: http://blubb.najut.org/pandora/
Please test these factions and post your opinions. :)

I halted the other features (technologies, buildings, weapons, armors, devices, terraforming) because of the disinterest of most other people and therefore, frankly, mine. :(
 
Just for those who aren't permanently in the beta, but interested in AI improvments - 1.5.5. is available as beta:

Version 1.5.5 (January, 2015)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Added:
* Added number of turns each pact has been in effect to the diplomacy screen.
* Added custom mouse cursor graphic.
* Added video setting for choosing the title screen.
* Added support for unicode characters up to and including the Cyrillic script (0x4FF), allowing those characters to work correctly with the Plain (DejaVu Sans) font as well as any other custom unicode font that has the corresponding glyphs.
* Added AI ability to dynamically alter their tax-rate.
* Added ability to raze cities to the AI if their morale gets too bad.

Changed:
* Moved Planetary Market to one subtier earlier in the research tree.
* Improved mouse wheel scrolling of GUI components.
* Made terrain-colors on the minimap much darker to make it easier to tell it apart from cities and units.
* AI now is more aggressive about dealing with aliens.
* AI now chooses technologies to research in a similar fashion of how experienced players choose technologies.
* AI now will, in average, commit more scientists to research.
* AI now will expand much slower and focus more on improving its existing cities instead.
* AI now considers quality more important than quantity when it comes to building units.
* AI will now prefer late-game-devices over early-game-devices.
* AI now has an emergency behaviour to resolve economical crisis.
* Reworked how AI determines it's tile-improvements. It should now be much closer to what an experienced player chooses.

Fixed:
* Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a save game in a specific state.
* Fixed operations not replacing durations when deployed on territories.
* Fixed Scites and Carcharodons turning aggressive before Xenomorphs.
* Fixed water suburbs and water purifiers costing 2 credits instead of 3.
* Fixed Fungus Mutagenesis and Fungal Hormones not providing bonuses for water fungus.
* Fixed army panel sometimes showing units that are no longer in the territory.
* Fixed mouse wheel sometimes not scrolling drop lists.
* Fixed errors in German translation-files.
* Fixed AI not building advancements unlocked by killing sea-monsters.
* Fixed a rare case where the AI would waste some of it's mineral income each turn.
 
On that subject, has anyone had any experience with Horizon? It's showing as now available on Steam, and supposedly features tactical combat.

After Endless Space, I'm not going to buy another space 4x on impulse because they're thin on the ground and reviewers seem to like the previews.

:lol: me too

The problem wasn't with the idea - that sort of customisation is indeed one of the best features of a 4x game; it's the principal reason the first two Master of Orion games were both so good and so fondly remembered. The problem is, it's an extremely bad fit for a Civilization game, which lacks a tactical combat system and has a grand total of three stats. For anyone who, like me, came to Alpha Centauri from MOO, it was a particularly disappointing implementation.

The AC system is similar to a system in a recent 4x space game called Endless Space: you unlock modules in the tech tree that add +1 to your weapons, armour, or shields, and the system does the fighting for you. Endless Space is not a very good game, in large part because like most space 4xes (including MOO) - and unlike Alpha Centauri for the most part - it is heavily combat-focused, and its combat and customisation systems are so poor (for some reason, nearly every space 4x - despite keeping ship customisation - has long since lost a tactical combat system, including Master of Orion 3. It's why games like Galactic Civilizations aren't as fondly remembered or, frankly, as good as the game that inspired them. These games seem to miss the point that most of the fun of outfitting your ships with missiles rather than graviton beams, or with black hole generators, was so that you could actually fire those missiles and black hole generators yourself).

But more than that, functionally the AC system was entirely redundant, which is why I describe it as needless micromanagement. Compare with Civ 2 - a Warrior had stats something like 2/1/1, a spear was 1/2/1, a horseman 3/1/3, that sort of thing. Now, Civ 2 could just have implemented a generic 1/1/1 Warrior, and different techs unlocked an axe (+1 strength), a spear (+1 armour) or a horse (+2 movement), but what purpose would it have served? You just force the player to spend time building the same 1/2/1 spearman design every time they start a new game simply in order to have a unit the system as implemented does for you.

The AC customisation seems cool at first, which is why it's a gimmick, but then you realise it simply isn't adding anything to gameplay but makework, and you're always making the same 6/1/3 buggies in every playthrough anyway, and so just unlocking a 6/1/3 buggy unit would be a lot more convenient and would lose no functionality.

Always wanted to see an implementation of this type in Civilization IV, in the future age, instead of "future technology" that gives happiness. It would be particularly interesting to Realism Invictus mod, since we don't know exactly what kind of military units will be exist in the future.
 

For sure, the negative reviews are detracting people from Horizon and I'm not saying that its perfect. But alone the fact that developers are still supporting it and releasing patches is a positive thing - they try to fix what the small, but active community reports. So some of the negative points the reviewers raised (for example bad battle UI) have been adressed in the meantime.

I haven't regreted buying Horizon without a discount, since it is so far the best attempt to create a game close to MoO2 - for those who are unsure...Steam occasionally puts it on sale, where the price is 10-15$ or so...thats more then fair in any case, IMO (just compare to the hyped Legends of Pegasus, which is still on sale outside of Steam in the same price region, despite being close to unplayable)
 
Between the two games, I thought the Endless Space have more potential if focus on increasing the map, and some tools, such as being able to play without the mouse, improve the management of larger number of units, and a deeper diplomacy.
 
Between the two games, I thought the Endless Space have more potential if focus on increasing the map, and some tools, such as being able to play without the mouse, improve the management of larger number of units, and a deeper diplomacy.

Yeah. Might depend on what your personal focus is. ES is a good game without any doubt - it does the things it does very well. My main problem is space combat; the card style variant isn't exactly bad as well, but it's just a too major cut for me to what I expect from a "MoO-style" game.

But as said, just my 2 cents :)
 
Don't know if this is appropriate or not, but I needed some place to host my patch for the pandora beta-patch.

So since Alpha-Centauri is the closest I could find and these forums actually allow uploads big enough, I figure this would be a good place to do it.

For any sort of information who the heck I am and how I dare uploading this here, please check this thread:

http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=173&t=55054

Oh, and this is a patch based on the 1.5.5 beta-patch available on steam. Unfortunately only for windows.

If you havent switched you pandora-installation to the beta yet (noteable by seeing it still saying it's 1.5.4) you first have to do that by rightclicking Pandora in your library, selecting properties, go to the beta-tab and then select the beta.

The files from this archive need to be put under c:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Pandora\Binaries\ or wherever your Pandora-installation lies.

The patch will not work if you try to apply it on 1.5.4.

It has about a month worth of AI-improvements over the last officially released 1.5.5-version.

Oh, and to make this a little more SMAC-related, I'll provide a link where you can get a Mod for Pandora that delivers all the factions from Smac:

http://blubb.najut.org/pandora/
 

Attachments

  • 1.5.5_2015-03-18.ZIP
    4.2 MB · Views: 71
Hi AIL,

Looks like good stuff. We have a Pandora thread in our All Other Games subforum, so I'm moving this thread there. Good Luck!
 
Thanks. I'll provide an update to the patch-log later today.
A lot of stuff has happened since the last one.
 
I'm too lazy to sort out the differences between previous and current log. So that's the current one:

Version 1.5.5 (March, 2015)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Added:
* Added number of turns each pact has been in effect to the diplomacy screen.
* Added custom mouse cursor graphic.
* Added video setting for choosing the title screen.
* Added support for unicode characters up to and including the Cyrillic script (0x4FF), allowing those characters to work correctly with the Plain (DejaVu Sans) font as well as any other custom unicode font that has the corresponding glyphs.
* Added AI ability to dynamically alter their tax-rate.
* Added ability to raze cities to the AI if their morale gets too bad.
* Added two sets of new icons for farmers, miners, workers and scientists that gain higher yields than normal.
* Added option in Pandora.xml to switch between the two sets of new icons.
* Added a mechanism for the AI to check how usefull a war will be and make its decision to go to war dependand on that.
* Added code that allows the AI to flank targets.
* Added AI ability to dynamically evaluate whether it should commit to a rush or go heavy on economy and science.
* Added better support for teams in AI's diplomatic behaviour.
* Added a new mechanism for the AI to determine whether it should build units or economy. It prevents overcommiting on either by tieing them together with a dynamic percentage-value.

Changed:
* Moved Planetary Market to one subtier earlier in the research tree.
* Improved mouse wheel scrolling of GUI components.
* Made terrain-colors on the minimap much darker to make it easier to tell it apart from cities and units.
* AI now is less aggressive about dealing with aliens.
* AI now chooses technologies to research in a similar fashion of how experienced players choose technologies.
* AI now will, in average, commit more scientists to research.
* AI now considers pollution when assigning population to jobs.
* AI now will expand much slower and focus more on improving its existing cities instead.
* AI now considers quality more important than quantity when it comes to building units.
* AI will now prefer late-game-devices over early-game-devices.
* AI now has an emergency behaviour to resolve economical crisis.
* Reworked how AI determines it's tile-improvements. It should now be much closer to what an experienced player chooses.
* AI will be more careful with its units when exploring.
* AI now will heal wounded units before sending them to attack.
* AI now considers more sophisticated criteria when choosing locations to expand to.
* AI now considers more sophisticated criteria when choosing tiles to expand it's existing cities borders to.
* AI no longer builds new formers as long as enemies are within the area of their city.
* Improved AI behavior when it comes to avoiding the loss of formers.
* AI now can perform several diplomatic actions within one turn.
* AI now will gradually lower their diplomatic relations to whoever is closest to victory.
* AI will no longer grant you gifts all the time just because they like you.
* AI players are now more difficult to convince to declare war on others.
* AI now will prioritize devices that best fit the unit-type.
* AI now will consider the tier of unit-components except of the device when evaluating which unit to build.
* AI now can and will use fungus once it has the two advancements boosting its yield.
* AI will now allocated more minerals into boosting its newly found cities.
* AI will now lower their standing to someone capturing a city depending on that cities importance for its previous owner.
* AI now takes device and unit-type into consideration, when deciding which units to use as defenders.
* AI no longer considers distance when picking defenders for its cities.
* AI no longer voluntarily gifts away its credits.
* AI will now use bombardment and nukes primarily to kill transports and disrupt healing in besieged cities.
* AI will now be much more carefull about where to use blackholes.
* AI will now rather save a WMD for better use than to risk overnuking a target.
* Depending on their aggression-level AIs now may consider making more units as a means of expansion rather than building colonizers.
* AI will now rather pillage tile-improvements instead of retreating if it considers the defenses of a city too strong.
* Improved AI behavior when confronted with long-range-units.
* AI will now be more careful about where to colonize.
* AI will now keep units inside their cities if they are not needed otherwise.
* AI will now consider WMD-buildings more valuable.
* AI now is much more likely to build naval units in coastal cities.
* AI will no longer value research once it has enough science for a research-victory.
* AI will now allocate its population differently when it is at war or when it is preparing for war.
* AI will no longer sign sciene treaties with those who are above average in research.
* Moves of Earthling-factions are now prioritized over moves of alien-factions.
* AI will now prioritize enemy units in their territory as more important target.
* Allowed AI to use all unused ships for exploring.
* AI now will use a certain amount of artillery-type units in their offenses.
* AI will use mineral-sources with less than two minerals only if there's almost no other minerals available.
* AI will no longer build watercraft when it is at war with someone who only has cities with no access to water.
* When playing as Togra University the AI will make use of Zak0r's upgrade-strategy.
* AI decision when to make peace now is more in line with its decison when to declare war.
* When refitting the AI will now stick to the same weapon type to stay cost-efficient.
* AI will now always prioritize refitting their units over purchasing other stuff.
* If the AI is at war with someone and doesn't know any cities of that someone but it has seen the border, it'll prioritize exploring there.
* Made sure that AI always uses their artillery-units before its other units.
* When at war with another faction, the AI will be much less likely to attack native wildlife.
* AI now will rather upgrade its formers to amphibious than using harvest.
* AI now is more sensitive about wheter it should perform a rush or prepare to defend against one.
* AI now will try to avoid getting its Transports spotted by its enemies.
* AI now will value forests more for fighting pollution before it has Pandora Construction.
* AI now will prefer tiles that are most suitable for their units when approaching an enemy city.
* AI will no longer retreat heavily injued units to a city under the effect of an ion-storm.
* Increased maximum amount of playable factions via advanced setup in a game from 9 to 13. Only makes sense with a mod that adds new factions.
* Improved AI behaviour in city-defense.

Fixed:
* Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a save game in a specific state.
* Fixed operations not replacing durations when deployed on territories.
* Fixed Scites and Carcharodons turning aggressive before Xenomorphs.
* Fixed water suburbs and water purifiers costing 2 credits instead of 3.
* Fixed Fungus Mutagenesis and Fungal Hormones not providing bonuses for water fungus.
* Fixed army panel sometimes showing units that are no longer in the territory.
* Fixed mouse wheel sometimes not scrolling drop lists.
* Fixed errors in German translation-files.
* Fixed AI not building advancements unlocked by killing sea-monsters.
* Fixed a rare case where the AI would waste some of it's mineral income each turn.
* Fixed an issue where paying tribute was considered the same as denying to pay.
* Fixed AI ships acquiring targets near unreachable inland-lakes.
* Fixed AI upgrading units into options that aren't even actually better.
* Fixed an exploit where you could reduce the amount of credits an AI asks for during negotiations by spending them before stating you are willing to pay.
* Fixed AI ignoring how you react to a tribute-offer. Standing will now properly change.
* Fixed a bug that prevented AI from realizing it cannot heal in water-fungus.
* Fixed game-pace not affecting the duration of temporary tile-modifications like the ion-storm cast by the Messari.
* Fixed an issue where AI units could get stuck when they targeted something they could not see.
* Fixed AI not using as many units for defending as it should.
* Fixed AI Artillery and Sniper-units not always attacking targets when they should.
* Fixed a bug that under certain circumstances led to miscalculation on city-growth when using the growth-project.
* Fixed AI not caring about their new cities for the turn they are founded.
* Fixed a bug that swallowed the majority of diplomacy-messages sent to the player by the AI.
* Fixed Ambassadors leeching from pacts not actually being added to their income.
* Fixed an issue causing AI land-units to try and pillage improvements inside lakes.

And here is a screenshot that demonstrates the current capabilities of the AI:

Easy-level, non-cheating, AI winning the game in turn 211. That improves the old record by more than 40 additional turns.
 
This is for a test with slight changes to how trading works.
 

Attachments

  • 1.5.5_trade-change-test.zip
    4.2 MB · Views: 64
It's interesting to see what Proxy Studios have gone on to do with the Civ/SMAC like Pandora engine over the decade since with the popular Warhammer 40K: Gladius and ZEPHON due this year. Seem to be going from strength to strength.

Anyway as for Pandora, for anyone wondering I've seen @AIL post on the steam & slitherine forums that his AI mod above is no longer needed..
Forget about the mod, the games' current version "1.6.4" has every AI-improvement I've ever made it in. And it's much, much, much more than what this mod could ever dream of accomplishing. ^^

Here is version 2.0 for my SMACX factions for Pandora: First Contact: http://blubb.najut.org/pandora/
Please test these factions and post your opinions. :)

I halted the other features (technologies, buildings, weapons, armors, devices, terraforming) because of the disinterest of most other people and therefore, frankly, mine. :(
Interestingly your old SMAC mod for Pandroa has recently been merged into another bigger mod by Secundus that merges in other universes as well so it's a bit of a crossover mashup.

Adds 12 new factions: the Order of Sacred Rose, Kerrigan's Zerg Swarm, North Sea Alliance, Al Falah, American Reclamation Corporation, House Atreides, Black Heart Kabal, Slavic Federation, People's African Union, Pan-Asian Cooperative, Kavithan Protectorate, and Chungsu to the game.

I also merged my mod with blackarchon's SMAC factions mod and made some changes.

Download
Mediafire - SecundusFactionsv1.0 + SMACeditedv1.0
Mediafire - SecundusFactionsv1.1 + SMACeditedv1.1
Mediafire - SecundusFactionsv1.2 + SMACeditedv1.2

Mediafire - SecundusFactionsv1.3 + SMACeditedv1.3
Mediafire - SecundusFactionsv1.3 + SMACeditedv1.3 + Stronger Aliens
Mediafire - SecundusFactionsv1.3 + SMACeditedv1.3 + Stronger Aliens but not Messari

Installation
Download and extract this file to the following path: "C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Roaming\Proxy Studios\Pandora Beta" (or "C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Roaming\Proxy Studios\Pandora" if you aren't using Pandora Beta)
Note: You won't be able to see this folder with the Windows default settings - you have to enable "show hidden files" before.
Pro tip: Hit <Windows>+R on your keyboard, then enter "%appdata%" and press Enter - this will get you faster to "C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Roaming\"!

Crashes Help:
Add Pandora.exe, PandoraServer.exe, autorun.exe to the exception list of your antivirus.
Run Pandora.exe, PandoraServer.exe, autorun.exe as an administrator.

Future plans:
Apparently it is possible to nullify fungus pollution malus for a faction ability. I would appreciate help in coding this.
Add more factions.
Continue editing SMAC factions diplomacy lines.
Might add new techs and buildings from SMAC or rename vanilla techs to SMAC appropriate ones.
Might rebalance and change SMAC factions.
Might rebalance and change my factions.
Add localization in other languages.

Credits:
pandora.fandom.com for modding information
alphacentauri.fandom.com for factions desc.
alphacentauri2.info/wiki for examples on SMAC factions diplomacy lines.
blackarchon, Monaldinio for SMAC factions mod, installation instructions.
mp3cut.net/change-volume for amplify audio.
zyro.com for image upscaling.
Windows Movie Maker, online-video-cutter.com, ezgif.com, cloudconvert.com for converting images for the game.

Notes: Compatible with Xilmi ai mod. I highly recommended it! You can find it on Pandora: First Contact - Discussions - pinned thread - Suggested Mods/Community Patch on Steam.

I appreciate any comments and criticism!

PandoraScreenshot05.jpg SmilingMiriam.jpg
SecundusFactionsv1.1 + SMACeditedv1.1.jpg SecundusFactionsv1.2 + SMACeditedv1.2.jpg
 
Last edited:
Hey, thanks for helpful suggestions and showcasing the mod!
The mod has been updated and is now available at Moddb too.

Interestingly your old SMAC mod for Pandroa has recently been merged into another bigger mod by Secundus that merges in other universes as well so it's a bit of a crossover mashup.
Yeah, his mod is great though lacking in immersion through diplomacy text especially the dialogue of the Progenitor aliens. They have a particular way of speaking so I added fitting dialogue text. I also made the SMAC/AX factions trait more unique. There are other faction mods but the links are sadly dead.

Anyway as for Pandora, for anyone wondering I've seen @AIL post on the steam & slitherine forums that his AI mod above is no longer needed..
I'm fairly sure not all of Xilmi ai mod patches made it to the official patch so I still recommend downloading it. I also added alt mirror mediafire download for his mod just in case that german civ forum kicks the bucket.
Source

On a slightly related note, I'm looking forward to release of ZEPHON. It's one of the games I'm excited for!
 
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