Vincentz Infinite Projects [VIP MOD]

The reason for all the yuck faces are because I added tons of new resources and unhealthiness would never be a factor otherwise. I added unhealthiness to stable because horses in a city is unhealthy. When cars first arrived they were seen as a non-poluting form of transportation compared to horse driven carriages. And harbours polute the waters plus it brings new diseases in from the sailors. In general harbours are not a healthy place, and the "industry" around harbours are even more unhealthy.
It also functions as a soft border for growth (while happiness is a hard border). With the increased food per capita (4) and the increased food income, the cities could potentially escalate out of control. This way it slowly settles and buildings such as the aquaduct suddenly becomes needed/wanted (which it never was in vanilla nor RoM).
 
I posted the wrong savegame in my previous post. I have uploaded the current 0.71 to that post.

As for the aqueduct I have always built it in all version of BtS.

As for unit build time with out Heroic Epic it takes a bit to build them. With the city that builds HE the build times are more in line with Vanilla BtS build times. But this almost forces a player to build all his units in one or 2 major cities and leaves the border cities weak defensively and greatly slows down a cities production build up.

JosEPh
 
I'll try a couple of games on Epic. I mainly balanced the game on Normal, but since I enjoy Epic speed it will more likely feels like epic when playing normal. I changed Epic from being 1.67 times normal in RoM and Vanilla to being 2 times resulting in normal being epic, then epic being marathon++.
Maybe I'll revert back epic to 1.67 after seeing how slowly it works. The initial start does seem VERY slow (30 turns for a clubman!)

Edit : If you want to try to edit VIP\Assets\XML\Civ4Gamespeedinfos.xml settings for Epic from:

<iTrainPercent>300</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>300</iConstructPercent>

to

<iTrainPercent>200</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>200</iConstructPercent>
 
I'm probably in the minority, but I like the Epic pace as it is. It makes the early city building decisions tougher. Some caveats, I have only played through about 1500 BC and I care more about the gameplay than getting the techs at the historically accurate time - so I haven't paid much attention to the pacing of the techs.

Nice mod!
 
Here's my current save.

Asoka has been able to colonize Much Much faster than I have been able to. I need to figure out how he did it.

I, in the last 20 turns, have just started to get a decent gold balance and income, finally! Bank, Grocer, and bazaar have just recently become available to thru tech advances. Asoka is also out Teching me too. Only thru heavy trading with some of the other AI and Asoka have I been able to stay relatively close.

French and Mayans have declared war on me. I think someone "pressured" them into it. Repulsed the 1st french invasion of a new city on an island with a barb city (that has been tough to take, lost 6 units and still didn't capture it!). I am just getting my 1st Frigates and will be assembling a navy to take care of frenchies navy.

Some of the Techs don't have anything visibly useful with them. Is this still because you need to add the info? For instance what does Chivalry do for you when you research it?

On vacation so I should have more play time and inputs.

JosEPh :)

Edit: The pace of Epic in number of turns is fine. It's the long build times for units, buildings, and improvements that seems a bit off.
 
Hi
what is the differnce between this mod and RoM? Vincent, what did you want to change in RoM and why? I'd like to have an idea about the "purpose".
regards
 
I think its easier to say whats the same as in RoM.
The problem for me about RoM was in the end (after I modmodded it for around a year) it was too heavy for my computer, and it wasnt fun to mod when with evey little change it would take 3-5 minutes just to load up the game. It also went in a wrong direction (IMHO) with AND (though I liked a lot of the SDK stuff) plus it was plagued with gamebreaking bugs/crashes, though most of those were most likely due to the antique hardware I was running it on ;)
Besides that I always wanted to have complete design control (complete being a relative word, as I have tons of ideas that cannot be implemented) and starting a mod from scratch gave me that.

Most noticable the difference is alternative movement, terrain and improvements. I havent seen these changes in other mods and I'm especially happy about the movement part. Since they use the (almost) same techtree and most of my modmods were part of RoM core, it will have some RoM feeling, so I do understand your question, but I think playing the mod will somehow feel different (and a lot faster). It also doesnt contain neither RevDCM, BUG or BetterAI though the latter I might implement depending on the AI in VIP.

I believe the future for VIP will bring less buildings and units than RoM, as I didnt build many of them before they were outdated, but coming from RoM and considering it the best mod out there my mod will ofcourse "steal" a lot of ideas from it.

I hope this somehow answered your question, otherwise fire away ;)
 
I think its easier to say whats the same as in RoM.
The problem for me about RoM was in the end (after I modmodded it for around a year) it was too heavy for my computer, and it wasnt fun to mod when with evey little change it would take 3-5 minutes just to load up the game. It also went in a wrong direction (IMHO) with AND (though I liked a lot of the SDK stuff) plus it was plagued with gamebreaking bugs/crashes, though most of those were most likely due to the antique hardware I was running it on ;)

ROM + AND's game ending CTDs (which tended to occur fairly early in my games) is what caused me to give up on that mod. The only problem I ever had with ROM alone was the game ending MAF error when trying to load a large saved game file. Hopefully your mod will give us the ROM flavor without all of those game ending problems. :)
 
The war with France is still on. Apostolic Palace voting stopped the Mayan war so I only have to concentrate on 1 war front. But Asoka is still colonizing like crazy.

I have finally captured and then destroyed the Barb city whose Longbow gave me fits to take out. That lone Longbow killed more than 10 of my better units before I finally knocked it out with Riflemen and catapults with collateral damage promotions. Otherwise my Heavy swordsman and mace and even war elephants could not take him out. The city was on a hill and he had 2 Hill defense promotions plus withdrawal.

This slowed my colonizing down.

Then I had to build up my galleon and frigate fleets to transport troops and the frigates to subdue France's Galleons and Caravels. All the while keeping the eastern front well fortified in case Asoka made a move.

My cash flow is now at acceptable levels with research at 50%. Upgrading the troops takes a fistful of cash.

Putting out ironclads to defend my main continents coast lines. Asoka already has destroyers. Ugh!

Edit: current savegame attached.

JosEPh :)
 
@ Blue Senshi
RoM+AND was very heavy on the memory and considering the amount of content it was amazing that it could run at all. IIRC the download size was about 1 GB alone.
I activated a bunch of ethnic units that was lying dormant in Civ4. The developers had created all these nice units, but was scared it might take a too big hit on memory consumption so they decided to turn them off. A shame but understandable as BtS min req is 256MB ram I think.
I have an old computer, so if VIP can run on this, it can run on everything. But let me know if you experience mafs. I do have a small trick up my sleeve ;)

@ JosEPh_II
lol. I swear that sometimes the AI (especially barbs) are cheating in combat. In civ4 vanilla and RoM I constantly lost big odds like 99.5%. I started taking screenshots of my combatlog, but it soon turned out that if I was going to continue with that I had to get a bigger HD.

But.. The longbowman might need a small tweak down.

Its interesting that you continued to industrial era. It must have seemed empty when researching. I'll start Post Gunpowder after X-mas, and hopefully will reach modern by the end of the holidays.

Edit : Thanks for your save. Its very interesting to see how the AI handles things. Looks like especially camp, farm and pasture should be nerfed regarding growing resources. The cottage-town seem ignored mostly. I nerfed it just before uploading 0.71, but maybe I put it back as it was. I changed the upgrade cost from 3/hammer + 20 to 1/hammer +50. Maybe it should be 1/hammer +20. The AI also seemed to ignore Buddhism. Strange. And the pyramids needs to be changed somehow. They are being built WAY to late. (maybe make them buildable by Great Nobles. would make sense somehow). The traderoutes got to powerfull it looks like. No Bastard Great Warlords birth? Was the Great Nobles sometimes born as a result of combat XP? Its fun to see how you and Asoka almost look like Ying and Yang. Its good to see how well the AI colonize oversea, and from judging from the 5 frigate,3 galleon egyptian armada it seems like they can do a decent naval assaults as well. And WTF Barbs building Rams! Need to put it on the NoBarbList. Btw how many AI did you start with? And lastly : wow! almost 1000 turns :) And on my computer its around 15-20 seconds per turn. Nice. Any crashes?
 
This looks promising i just want to ask something. Have you thought about adding towers? You know for defensive purposes. I'll have to play this once i get my old comp back. I have yet to find a mod that added Towers, Castles yes, but Towers no. I always wanted to learn how to mod myself so i can do it myself. I like some of the ideas taking from Age of Empires 2. Where you can build Castles and Towers and upgrade them. By this i mean not really added to you city, but having workers build them at random outside your city. You know out in the open. Perhaps giving some kind of bonus to your economy like no pillaging until they are taking out. Just an idea.
 
<snip>
@ JosEPh_II
lol. I swear that sometimes the AI (especially barbs) are cheating in combat. In civ4 vanilla and RoM I constantly lost big odds like 99.5%. I started taking screenshots of my combatlog, but it soon turned out that if I was going to continue with that I had to get a bigger HD.

But.. The longbowman might need a small tweak down.
It wasn't the stock longbow that's the problem, it's the Promotions. With 2 Hill def promos and a withdrawal promo sitting in a Walled city on a hill the LB was well fortified. I took stock catapults at 1st and they didn't even faze him. If anything the catapults attack and Bombard damage may need upped. It was distressing to find out that a 4 promo hvy Swordsman get his head handed back to him on a platter and the LB didn't even get a scratch. But that tuff guy finally got his and then I razed the city. In its place on the island I built 3 cities.

Its interesting that you continued to industrial era. It must have seemed empty when researching. I'll start Post Gunpowder after X-mas, and hopefully will reach modern by the end of the holidays.

Well that answers why several techs gave nothing. :p :lol:
Edit : Thanks for your save. Its very interesting to see how the AI handles things. Looks like especially camp, farm and pasture should be nerfed regarding growing resources. The cottage-town seem ignored mostly. I nerfed it just before uploading 0.71, but maybe I put it back as it was. I changed the upgrade cost from 3/hammer + 20 to 1/hammer +50. Maybe it should be 1/hammer +20.

From my point of view don't cut them back too much, this is one feature of your mod that adds that element of surprise and Fun. And the AI is benefiting from it too. Which is Really important in my way of thinking.


The AI also seemed to ignore Buddhism. Strange.

Maybe because you took the health bonus away?


And the pyramids needs to be changed somehow. They are being built WAY to late. (maybe make them buildable by Great Nobles. would make sense somehow).

Several Wonders come to late imho. But it's a Major effort to build Wonders in the 1st 6000 years in this mod.


The trade routes got to powerful it looks like.
If that's what caused me to finally start getting some cash flow then I beg you Not to change them! Please!

No Bastard Great Warlords birth? Was the Great Nobles sometimes born as a result of combat XP? Its fun to see how you and Asoka almost look like Ying and Yang. Its good to see how well the AI colonize oversea, and from judging from the 5 frigate,3 galleon egyptian armada it seems like they can do a decent naval assaults as well.
The navies are quit capable.

And WTF Barbs building Rams! Need to put it on the NoBarbList.
Let the barbs keep them. I never built any though. It was interesting to see barb rams show up outside a border city but there was no main troops with them. That could be interesting if the barbs had sent some ax or longbow with the rams.

Btw how many AI did you start with? And lastly : wow! almost 1000 turns :) And on my computer its around 15-20 seconds per turn. Nice. Any crashes?

Since it's a huge arch map I believe I set the AI at 9, I need to recheck that it could've been 10.

No crashes of any kind and that's with extended play times of more than 4 hours at a sitting.

If you look at the Barb city to the far North and west of my farthest cities, the one where I have sent cannons to take out, that city is well developed for a barb. That is why I think you shouldn't reduce the resource yields. A strong city like that makes a good fight and a fat plum when captured. And the AI is taking out barbs too.

I'd like to take this game further to see what shakes out. Asoka is gonna be a Real pain to eventually deal with.

JosEPh :D
 
@ Pterradon
I liked the towers as well in AoE II. And I would like to make something similar in VIP (a guard tower giving small defense bonus and extended visibility. Later a radar station.) but first and foremost its about finishing the xml framework.

@ JosEPh_II
I nerfed the early sieges a lot. Reason : Catapults (onagers) and trebuchets were not anti infantry weapons IIRHC (if I recall history correctly). Sure they (accidently) hit one or two soldiers, but their prime function was to weaken defense and break fortifications, not hit x number of people with a big rock ;)

In gameplay this actually has another bonus. It was far too easy to break a SoD/City by throwing a couple of catapults at it. Now it forces the player to either bring more numbers or try other tactics (luring defenders out, hit and run etc). I might go back though, as I havent had a proper siege yet myself. I also want to add a new siege unit, Ballista, for anti infantry.
 
Hey Vincentz!

Whats up!?

Still working on the Mod? Or did the Christmas break do you in?

JosEPh :)
 
Yep to the first and nope to the second :)

I found a debug CvGameCoreDLL.dll and using it to find any bugs/typos/errors etc etc, but most of the time was spend during playing.
Had to give up on a huge map in 1650 coz Shaka and Monty was sending unlimited armies against me. When I say unlimited, it wasnt. It was only around a couple of 100s each, maybe 1000 altogether against my 50. Not exactly fair odds.
I changed it so now each type of army will increase 5% in cost when building the next one. example : 1 spearman cost 100, next spearman cost 105 etc etc.
This should also eliminate the singleunittype SoD. I havent tested it enough though.

I also need to do something about teching as in late medieval the AI started to outtech me insanely. From being almost level I suddenly was 10 techs behind.

I added new Process that instead of giving 100% of hammers give 50%, and are available alot earlier. They are Interrogate :espionage:(slavery), Study :science:(writing), Trade :gold:(trade) and Influence :culture:(priesthood). Im considering making them 25% maybe.

I'll upload a 0.72 later today. Maybe I leave the debug CvGameCoreDLL.dll in the Assets folder. It will slow down the game a bit, but provide helpfull info against bugs.
 
I'll upload a 0.72 later today. Maybe I leave the debug CvGameCoreDLL.dll in the Assets folder. It will slow down the game a bit, but provide helpfull info against bugs.

Won't bother me if it helps make the mod better.

JosEPh
 
Uploaded 0.72
I didnt upload the debug dll though and the graphic pack is the same.

Added : Bombard, Agent, Special Agent, Secret Agent.
I started at the renaissance and industrial and changed most unit strenght in there and in modern, but still at lot to do. The debug dll showed a lot of errors in the maputil.py that I "stole" from RoM, so I deleted it and the mapscripts that it used and organized the remaining map scripts into VIP1 (fully functional) VIP2 (doesnt have Swamp) and VIP3 (have a small insignificant error when init, but runs fine).
I also organized the techs (they were not ordered in eras) and changed the african chariot as it was missing animations.
The laterera starts were IMO bugged in BtS (the "free" buildings and pop laterera start settlers would provide were not at all free and made a latererastart impossible) so I changed it drastically.
I also gave most early units a production bonus if having acces to Iron Weapons, and made the Gun Smith which is a national wonder and provide Firearms which is required by most gunpowder units up untill Automatic Weapons. Im considering making Bowyer/Fletcher, Bronze Smith and Weapon Smith national wonders too as it was kind of annoying having to build them in each city that build armies.
Im working on Militia, which basically is a group of last eras units, but doesnt require resources. Examples >
Classical Militia : Monarchy, Clubman+Javelineer
Medieval Militia : Constitution, Spearman+Axeman
Renaissance : Jurisprudence, Pikeman+Maceman
Industrial : Fascism??, Arquebusier, Musketman
Modern : Guerilla??, Rifleman+Grenadier

and as usual I did a ton of tweaking. The units and buildings are now faster to build. Might chance that back, but since there are the 4 new Processes (Study, Influence, Interrogate and Trade) there is always something the cities can do in their "spare time".
The Bank gets commerce bonus with Gold, Silver and Gems.
I added a couple of Cargo promotions for Naval Units and renamed Armored Unit category to Motorized and put the motorized units (Mob Sam, Mech Inf and Mob Artillery) into it.

I have to say though, that most of the tweaks I made, I havent tested completely, so if there is anything odd, please post here.
 
The debug dll showed a lot of errors in the maputil.py that I "stole" from RoM, so I deleted it and the mapscripts that it used and organized the remaining map scripts into VIP1 (fully functional) VIP2 (doesnt have Swamp) and VIP3 (have a small insignificant error when init, but runs fine).

Shouldn't the PrivateMaps folder in the Graphics pack have been updated? To match the mentioned change? Or should I just delete the PrivateMaps from the Graphics Pack?

JosEPh
 
Shouldn't the PrivateMaps folder in the Graphics pack have been updated? To match the mentioned change? Or should I just delete the PrivateMaps from the Graphics Pack?

JosEPh

There is no PrivateMaps folder in the Graphics part. Only graphics from Units, Warlords, Corporations, Guilds and Terrain. I just downloaded it and double checked. Just use the new 0.72 main and the old graphics.
 
Top Bottom