Community Call to Power Project

Rock Thrower said:

Newb here. Is there a post showing how to install the Mod or to get it to run?

EDIT: For clarity, I'm getting

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Choose a different map type, eg continents the static maps like earth are not compatible.

@Chrome - My vote for the pics would be 1 and 3, mostly because they don't have actual people figures in them (poor crowd figures doesn't count ;P). The fact that it was still called Procylon's call to power v9 confused me, it took me a while to realize THAT was the mod .

@Fires - Hooray, awesome! . I'd be glad to help with whatever you need, whether it be the layout, design, graphics, or just my 2 cents (BTW, why is it penny for your thoughts, but also "just my two cents"?).

nathanglevy said:

(BTW, why is it penny for your thoughts, but also "just my two cents"?).

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I'd say it depends on which side of the 'lake' you are on . For me it's "just my two pennies".

It was very difficult but I found something to symbolise Anarchism, because most of the pics which symbolise Anarchism are of destruction but that’s not the same kind of Anarchism as is used in-game. The hands symbols that everyone is helping each other, without central power (government).

Now I need to think something up for Liberalism…

Play Report:

Played as England, Prince, standard continents, standard speed.

*Resource mod treated me well. I restarted once and found that both times the resource distribution was fair and still had alot of "luck of the draw" element to it, much like real life.

*Found I was researching techs at an alarming rate. Of course then I realized the AI was researching them faster than me. Became quite a race. What bothered me was that certain advanced technologies and eras were being reached far too early, across the board. I know this has been addressed with the gradual research mod. I feel however that the price of all techs should be uniformly increased, or the science provided by all buildings and wonders should be minimized. Or both. I found I was through an era before my units could do me any good. Personal design philosophy: If you do not have time to build up the eras units before technology has surpassed them... and if when you look at your build menu there are two dozen buildings to choose from because your production can't keep up with advancements... tech is increasing too quickly. What's the point of having the tech if you don't get a chance to use it?

*AI very fond of building wonders. I saw no favoritism towards vanilla wonders over modded wonders. Do not know what their building habits were but I have a feeling the monopoly system might confuse things a bit. AI Japan massed troops of advanced and varied types near my border and attacked systematically. I do not feel he made smart decisions, choosing poor terrain and making poor attack decisions. He still beat me for a while and took one of my cities before I pushed him back. I don't know how AI works but that type of thing is a miracle to me.

*Happiness hard to come by, but balanced and challenging. Very positive experience here. The building system makes much more sense than vanilla. I was thinking trade routes should provide happiness as well as gold. That makes sense to me. Also, perhaps a little bit softer penalty for annexation and puppetizing. Razing should be very frowned upon.

Overall a very very positive experience. My biggest plus was the challenge to control happiness and the war I fought with Japan. Ruthless. My biggest drawback, I was fighting that war in 300BC with crossbowmen and later with muskets.

Questions:
Do you plan to introduce a new system for dealing with city states? There is so much potential here and I feel it is a very glossed over portion of the game. I'm willing to share ideas.

Do you plan to work on the naval system at all? Very glossed over in EVERY iteration of civilization and in almost every mod I've ever played. It could be a very challenging and interesting portion of the game with just a little work.

Do you have any plans for AI diplomacy tweaking?

Do you have any plans (and this is a big one) for reworking the monopoly system? I see it's worth and I really hope it comes out straightforward yet complex and challenging. Willing to share ideas here too.

Thanks for a great mod man. I'll continue to post.

DocBuchanan said:

Play Report:

Played as England, Prince, standard continents, standard speed.

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Awesome. I'm going to take this one piece at a time.

*Resource mod treated me well. I restarted once and found that both times the resource distribution was fair and still had alot of "luck of the draw" element to it, much like real life.

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Great. There's still a lack of stone appearing, but that can be fixed.

*Found I was researching techs at an alarming rate. Of course then I realized the AI was researching them faster than me. Became quite a race. What bothered me was that certain advanced technologies and eras were being reached far too early, across the board. I know this has been addressed with the gradual research mod. I feel however that the price of all techs should be uniformly increased, or the science provided by all buildings and wonders should be minimized. Or both. I found I was through an era before my units could do me any good. Personal design philosophy: If you do not have time to build up the eras units before technology has surpassed them... and if when you look at your build menu there are two dozen buildings to choose from because your production can't keep up with advancements... tech is increasing too quickly. What's the point of having the tech if you don't get a chance to use it?

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I know how you feel, but unfortunately it seems to be the only way to propel players to the later eras is to speed up the tech pace considerably. From the update post in D's thread to the one posted here, tech sped up by about 33%. The slightly conforting fact is that the AI usually values techs similar to the player thanks to the flavors, so they won't just zoom through the eras.

I think the most effective way to go about this will be to stretch the game from 500 turns to 800-900. This will provide a little over 100 turns per era. The biggest problem here is that the AI has to be good enough to survive that long. I feel that it makes good decisions on the techs and buildings once wonders are put in check, but the lack of workers improving the land and complete inability to stage wars means they will be really easy to knock out, providing the player a huge advantage. I think once the DLL gets out some of the more experienced modders will put together a truely challenging AI, but until then...

*AI very fond of building wonders. I saw no favoritism towards vanilla wonders over modded wonders. Do not know what their building habits were but I have a feeling the monopoly system might confuse things a bit.

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That was me. I overcompensated for the flavors on the wonders so they spam them whenever. I will lower them significantly, but it will be hard to find the balance where they still build them. In the game's mind, standard buildings have an average of 65 Flavor "points", spread throughout different categories. The wonders have an average of 115. Obviously, some will be better than others, but I can see how the extremes take over.

Also, while looking through FireTuner, I saw that the AI greatly favors units over buildings. I think this is because I introduced several -Gold flavors on the buildings with maintenance. I'll reduce these as well to bring the buildings into better standing.

AI Japan massed troops of advanced and varied types near my border and attacked systematically. I do not feel he made smart decisions, choosing poor terrain and making poor attack decisions. He still beat me for a while and took one of my cities before I pushed him back. I don't know how AI works but that type of thing is a miracle to me.

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Haha, yeah the Tactical AI is a doozy. I, however, did not change anything here, so what you were experiencing was essentially vanilla AI.

*Happiness hard to come by, but balanced and challenging. Very positive experience here. The building system makes much more sense than vanilla. I was thinking trade routes should provide happiness as well as gold. That makes sense to me. Also, perhaps a little bit softer penalty for annexation and puppetizing. Razing should be very frowned upon.

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Glad you liked it. I often annex the cities that I conquer when happiness (or gold to buy a courthouse) permits, because this is truly a game that favors large empires. Trade routes do provide gold, but I don't think there is any way to have happiness come through a connection. If anyone else can verify this, please let us know. As for razing, I there is a strong diplomacy hit from the Civ you took the city from, and I'm pretty sure that the global scene disapproves as well.

Overall a very very positive experience. My biggest plus was the challenge to control happiness and the war I fought with Japan. Ruthless. My biggest drawback, I was fighting that war in 300BC with crossbowmen and later with muskets.

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Glad you liked it! When did your game end (turns and date if possible)?

Questions:
Do you plan to introduce a new system for dealing with city states? There is so much potential here and I feel it is a very glossed over portion of the game. I'm willing to share ideas.

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I was not planning on it, but I can see the appeal for it. I had been playing with them off for a long time, but now I'm warming up to them again. I really like the concept of City-State Diplomacy mod by Gazebo, but I would like even more depth, if possible. When the DLL hits we will be able to add new quest and other designs to the system, so yeah, there can definitely be new "stuff" to deal with CS.

Do you plan to work on the naval system at all? Very glossed over in EVERY iteration of civilization and in almost every mod I've ever played. It could be a very challenging and interesting portion of the game with just a little work.

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I will not personally, but I expect some of the other modders will once access to the DLL is granted. There are many people who dislike the Naval AI, and while it has gotten better from patch to patch, it is still severly lacking. It will have to be brought up to speed when water cities and the like are put in.

Do you have any plans for AI diplomacy tweaking?

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Maybe later down the road, but it's not too much of a priority. I am going to mess with AI flavors though, at least to the point where they value expansion and production more. And if only I could get them to spend their money...

Do you have any plans (and this is a big one) for reworking the monopoly system? I see it's worth and I really hope it comes out straightforward yet complex and challenging. Willing to share ideas here too.

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Yes indeed. If nothing else, I want to spread out the bonuses, so that some resources have science yields associated with them (poppy, uranium), some have culture (silk, incense, marble (?)), etc. I have put a little bit of thought to this, up to and including deleting some redundant resources, but I'm open to any ideas you or anyone else has about how this system can work.

Thanks for a great mod man. I'll continue to post.

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Please do. It's always nice to hear that your work is appreciated.

Votes noted. My votes go to 1 and 4, mainly because I think the overall picture itself is better on 4 than it is 3.
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Since I have been getting this a lot, let me address the thread itself. I want this thread moved over to the Project Developement section soon, so that players can post in the threads that directly deal with their experience (Game Reports, Bug Reports, Buildings, etc). However, I do not want to ruch this move for one reason: player traffic. As it is now, the Modpacks section of the forum gets more people coming through than the Projects. In my experience, the only people who consistenly go to the Projects (lol) are the ones that are already following a mod. Because this is a new thread, I want people who browse through the Modpacks section to notice it, read about it, and then decide whether or not they want to be a part of it. So rest assured, we will get a position in the Project Developement section, but I want to wait a week or two for any last minute "converts."

**EDIT**
Added a Known Issues section to the OP. If you spot a problem that is not listed there, post and I will see to fixing it

@Fires - here's the full tree we PM'd about.

Not sure if this is of any help to anybody else but I find it helpful for planning purposes. It's just a Visio flow chart of the tech tree which only shows the Techs and their dependancies. It does not show Building\Wonders\Units available per tech though. It was bad enough just trying to get everything to fit (not that it does).

rulner said:

@Fires - here's the full tree we PM'd about.

Not sure if this is of any help to anybody else but I find it helpful for planning purposes. It's just a Visio flow chart of the tech tree which only shows the Techs and their dependancies. It does not show Building\Wonders\Units available per tech though. It was bad enough just trying to get everything to fit (not that it does).

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That looks way better now, hopefully it can be impleted soon.

chrome-rome said:

So the file contains two mods: Procylon's Call to Power Project (which, now that I'm looking at it should have had a name change :/) and Gradual Research II. Before you do anything, make sure any previous versions of CtP have been deleted, as the mod has a history of interacting with de-activated mods. Extract both files to Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS. Start Civ, go to "MODS." Hit "Browse MODS" and activate Procylon's Call to Power Project. Only after this mod is activated should you activate the Gradual Research mod. If all was done properly, the technology "Pottery" will cost 13, not 16, .

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No matter what I do, or which way I activate the Mods... come out go back in... I just can't seem to get Pottery to cost 13. I've checked I have the latest Grad Res file too. no other Mods in the folder. It just keeps showing as 16 .

rulner said:

No matter what I do, or which way I activate the Mods... come out go back in... I just can't seem to get Pottery to cost 13. I've checked I have the latest Grad Res file too. no other Mods in the folder. It just keeps showing as 16 .

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Alright, I'm just going to combine the two. Hang tight while I update the OP with the new links. I'll post when finished.

rulner said:

@Fires - here's the full tree we PM'd about.

Not sure if this is of any help to anybody else but I find it helpful for planning purposes. It's just a Visio flow chart of the tech tree which only shows the Techs and their dependancies. It does not show Building\Wonders\Units available per tech though. It was bad enough just trying to get everything to fit (not that it does).

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Thanks i gave up after doing three of the trees, just so many techs

I admit have been defeated by the system, and it was a very frustrating defeat. But that's what help is for. I'll ask for some. But in the meantime, I can give you a little how-to:

1) Activate Call to Power mod in the game MOD section
2) Go to the Gradual Research folder in your mod section (Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS/Gradual Research II)
3) Open Gradual Research II (v4) (the MODINFO file) with notepad
4) Once opened, hit Ctrl+S to save the file (even though you haven't changed anything). This allows the file to interact with the already loaded CtP files. When the mod doesn't work, it is because it treats the files it's updating as vanilla files. Enabling CtP before saving tells the mod to work with the CtP files
5) Go back to the in-game MOD section and enable the Gradual Research II mod
6) Play the game!!

I have been eliminating parts of the Gradual Research mod as I things progress. The only things left are the techs and buildings from Industrial up. By next update, I should have eliminated everything in the mod all together, so we can be done with this headache.

Success!! I have no idea why I found it so hard to create a mod. But hey, it's done. I'll upload and post links on the OP. The Policies and text for Stone works have been taken care of as well, so, while this doesn't classify as an update, it is a better version of what was available. Cheers!!

**EDIT**
Added links to OP

Alright, I've played almost an entire game now, and I'm going to post some of my thoughts here:
Standard speed, Japanese empire (forget the leader), large map, 5 players, 6 city states Noble difficulty

Turns 1-30:
I didn't seem to have any problems with exploring, founding cities or producing units. These values seem to be right on the money and don't need to be tinkered with for the most part.
The first few technologies started out slow, but by the time I got to my third city I was making fast progress. By about turn 30, I was beginning to fall behind in building unlocked buildings in my cities.

Turns: 30-60 (start of renascence era):
At this point I was burning through technologies, only a few very advanced ones were costing me more then 3 turns. Buildings were still taking me 10+ turns even for buildings that I unlocked at the beginning (7 turns for a burial mound).

Turns: 60-90 (start of industrial):
At this point my technology is nuts. I've got about 6 cities. I did a bit of wonder rushing and am now pumping out culture faster then I can pick social policies (ie culture is still to high if you wonder rush). I rushed railroad and it slowed down a bit at the end (8 turns for railroad), but I'm still taking forever to build buildings. I'm also starting to stockpile quite a bit of gold again (no where near as bad as before), so I've started buying buildings when I feel like it.

Turn 90+ Modern: At this point I'm only a few dozen turns away from a cultural victory. I don't usually go that route (more scientific or militaristic), but I was getting a new social policy every 5 turns or so (8 cities). I really didn't build that many (I was getting 30+ from happiness) cultural buildings.

Final views:
Science: Science feels much faster then everything else. Honestly I like a fast game, so having it run at that speed is fine with me, but everything else needs to be balanced.
Building: This is where the game drags. You have to have tons of production just to get one building done in a reasonable amount of time.
Units: This is just fine. I'm thinking this is about the same as the vanilla version, so it's balance is not bad.
Culture: Holy crap! I started out about average, taking maybe 15-20 turns, but by the end I was gaining a new policy every third turn. This majorly overpowered. I think the % raise for each new city should be moved back up towards 15% (say 12%), and I think some of the wonders need to get less culture (+6 is a bit much I think).
Econ: Gold was ok when I was still small, but by the time I hit 6 cities, I was starting to sit on 30k without problem. I think if I had bothered to kill some of the AI's off I could have extended that well into the 100k+ range (and getting to the modern era econ techs). I think this needs to be reduced or just make everything cost a bit more. I also want to see the city states bribes go up with time.

zspace said:

Alright, I've played almost an entire game now, and I'm going to post some of my thoughts here:
Standard speed, Japanese empire (forget the leader), large map, 5 players, 6 city states Noble difficulty

Turns 1-30:
I didn't seem to have any problems with exploring, founding cities or producing units. These values seem to be right on the money and don't need to be tinkered with for the most part.
The first few technologies started out slow, but by the time I got to my third city I was making fast progress. By about turn 30, I was beginning to fall behind in building unlocked buildings in my cities.

Turns: 30-60 (start of renascence era):
At this point I was burning through technologies, only a few very advanced ones were costing me more then 3 turns. Buildings were still taking me 10+ turns even for buildings that I unlocked at the beginning (7 turns for a burial mound).

Turns: 60-90 (start of industrial):
At this point my technology is nuts. I've got about 6 cities. I did a bit of wonder rushing and am now pumping out culture faster then I can pick social policies (ie culture is still to high if you wonder rush). I rushed railroad and it slowed down a bit at the end (8 turns for railroad), but I'm still taking forever to build buildings. I'm also starting to stockpile quite a bit of gold again (no where near as bad as before), so I've started buying buildings when I feel like it.

Turn 90+ Modern: At this point I'm only a few dozen turns away from a cultural victory. I don't usually go that route (more scientific or militaristic), but I was getting a new social policy every 5 turns or so (8 cities). I really didn't build that many (I was getting 30+ from happiness) cultural buildings.

Final views:
Science: Science feels much faster then everything else. Honestly I like a fast game, so having it run at that speed is fine with me, but everything else needs to be balanced.
Building: This is where the game drags. You have to have tons of production just to get one building done in a reasonable amount of time.
Units: This is just fine. I'm thinking this is about the same as the vanilla version, so it's balance is not bad.
Culture: Holy crap! I started out about average, taking maybe 15-20 turns, but by the end I was gaining a new policy every third turn. This majorly overpowered. I think the % raise for each new city should be moved back up towards 15% (say 12%), and I think some of the wonders need to get less culture (+6 is a bit much I think).
Econ: Gold was ok when I was still small, but by the time I hit 6 cities, I was starting to sit on 30k without problem. I think if I had bothered to kill some of the AI's off I could have extended that well into the 100k+ range (and getting to the modern era econ techs). I think this needs to be reduced or just make everything cost a bit more. I also want to see the city states bribes go up with time.

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OK, so this is not quite what I had in mind when I said I was going to speed things up. In my games, the AI entered classical, medieval, renaissance, and industrial at turns 18, 68, 148, 260, respectively, with my research always 10-30 turns behind. So seeing you at Modern by turn 90 is bad.

I'm going to try a Noble game myself to see if this happens to me. I hope not, because you seem to be going 10x faster than was intended. I'll pay attention to culture as well, since that shouldn't be moving so quickly either. I don't know if it is possible to increase the cost of CS bribes over time other than through a policy effect, but then no one would choose the policy. Gold has always been a problem, but I think yours may deal with whatever it is making your game fly by so fast.

I'm still really stumped by your pace, so I'll just play through. If you have your initial turn 0 autosave post it; it might lead me to the problem.

@DocBuchanan: does this sound like your game as well?

FiresForever said:

Choose a different map type, eg continents the static maps like earth are not compatible.

Click to expand...

Ahhhhhh

chrome-rome said:

I admit have been defeated by the system, and it was a very frustrating defeat. But that's what help is for. I'll ask for some. But in the meantime, I can give you a little how-to:

1) Activate Call to Power mod in the game MOD section
2) Go to the Gradual Research folder in your mod section (Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS/Gradual Research II)
3) Open Gradual Research II (v4) (the MODINFO file) with notepad
4) Once opened, hit Ctrl+S to save the file (even though you haven't changed anything). This allows the file to interact with the already loaded CtP files. When the mod doesn't work, it is because it treats the files it's updating as vanilla files. Enabling CtP before saving tells the mod to work with the CtP files
5) Go back to the in-game MOD section and enable the Gradual Research II mod
6) Play the game!!

Click to expand...

Worked like a charm.

I appreciate your patience.

chrome-rome said:

OK, so this is not quite what I had in mind when I said I was going to speed things up. In my games, the AI entered classical, medieval, renaissance, and industrial at turns 18, 68, 148, 260, respectively, with my research always 10-30 turns behind. So seeing you at Modern by turn 90 is bad.

I'm going to try a Noble game myself to see if this happens to me. I hope not, because you seem to be going 10x faster than was intended. I'll pay attention to culture as well, since that shouldn't be moving so quickly either. I don't know if it is possible to increase the cost of CS bribes over time other than through a policy effect, but then no one would choose the policy. Gold has always been a problem, but I think yours may deal with whatever it is making your game fly by so fast.

I'm still really stumped by your pace, so I'll just play through. If you have your initial turn 0 autosave post it; it might lead me to the problem.

@DocBuchanan: does this sound like your game as well?

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Yes sir, it does. The pace feels about the same. I didn't have as much success as the previous poster and I was playing on prince so things were a BIT slower, but tech was still far too fast. Culture too. I'm the type of player that likes to be able to fight an entire war with the same types of units, the way it happens IRL. Also like I said before, if you have the option to build two dozen different buildings, and they all take ten turns, and all the techs take 3 or 4... that's giving you twice the amount of buildings to choose from every ten turns or so. And you get very far behind, the build screen gets cluttered, and half the buildings available are obsolete before you get the chance to build them. This is very important because techs are no good to you if you can't build the structures and units they allow in time for them to matter.

Your options are great. Your civic trees are very well thought out. Your tech trees are too. So are the buildings. But everything comes too quickly. (this is on standard pace)

Rock Thrower said:

Ahhhhhh

Worked like a charm.

I appreciate your patience.

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Glad to help!! Let me draw your attention to the OP, however, where I combined the two mods so this whole process can now be skipped .

@zspace: I don't have Noble. Did you mean Prince/King

DocBuchanan said:

Yes sir, it does. The pace feels about the same. I didn't have as much success as the previous poster and I was playing on prince so things were a BIT slower, but tech was still far too fast. Culture too. I'm the type of player that likes to be able to fight an entire war with the same types of units, the way it happens IRL. Also like I said before, if you have the option to build two dozen different buildings, and they all take ten turns, and all the techs take 3 or 4... that's giving you twice the amount of buildings to choose from every ten turns or so. And you get very far behind, the build screen gets cluttered, and half the buildings available are obsolete before you get the chance to build them. This is very important because techs are no good to you if you can't build the structures and units they allow in time for them to matter.

Your options are great. Your civic trees are very well thought out. Your tech trees are too. So are the buildings. But everything comes too quickly. (this is on standard pace)

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Ok so yeah something is up. I'll check it out.

@rulner: Just realized that techs change cost depending on map size, so maybe you were doing everything right. If so, sorry for any undue stress. I am so used to playing Emperor on standard maps that I didn't think about anything else.

IMO everthing should be made longer by 25% tech,culture,production,gold,food. I like the 1 value system rather than the 5 value system. much easier to balance.

GREAT JOB KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK