Iridium had no ingame-graphic for example (here I used iron) and the ingame-graphic used for planetpearls was not suitable as well (there I used coal). In addition to that I changed the Drama-Graphic to the Movie-Graphic for Morgan-Entertainment and I added for Morgan-Entertainment and Morgan-Pharmaceuticals the Datalink-entry.
Planetfall
- Thread starter Maniac
- Start date
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
The absence of an Iridium graphic is intentional, so that it doesn't mess up the look of the Garland Crater. A coal graphic for the Planet Pearls doesn't fit either IMO.
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
Patch 16f for Planetfall, the Alpha Centauri total conversion mod for Civ4 BtS, has been released. This patch needs to be applied on top of the main v16 file of Planetfall. Patch f breaks games started under the previous patches.
Changelog:
1. German translation updated, thanks to Martin Santiago.
2. Grenade Fruits are visible from the start of the game.
3. Fungal Gin is revealed by Xenobiology.
4. Soil Enrichment now enables rather than reveals Fungicide.
5. The GNP seen on the demographics and info graphs now only includes credit and science production, no longer espionage and culture.
6. Two passive espionage effects added which provide a line of sight of 2 and 3 around bases.
7. The Great Psych Chaplain now provides +3 happy and +5 culture.
8. The Commando promotion now also provides +10% defensive withdrawal chance.
9. Sparta gains a unique Empath Guild building, which provides Swarming I to native life built in the base.
10. Players using the Transcendence civic can no longer win a Domination victory.
11. Selection sounds added for the missionaries of the four religions.
12. Aquaformers can't move on Ice until Doctrine:Initiative is acquired.
13. Siege tanks now cost 40 hammers.
14. Artillery is no longer immune to Bunker collateral damage. Vanguard units now have this immunity.
15. Rover renamed to Recon Rover.
16. Submarines and upgrades gain +5% attack strength versus Isles of the Deep.
17. The Highlander promotion has been renamed Altitude Training; now requires Defense Logistics.
18. Spore Launchers can do amphib attacks.
19. Non-members of the Council can raze cities after they've been pillaged down to size 1.
20. The Concordat leader gains +1 Planet in all bases.
sojourner99
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2006
- Messages
- 11
So I was playing SMAC the other day and thought to myself "man that is too bad they never made a sequel." Then I decided to boot up the ole civ4, and go to the civ forums here and then proceeded to have my mind absolutely blown by the quality of the Planetfall mod.
I have played a lot of civ mods and you can easily tell the quality and level of dedication the creator had by the attention to detail. In this case the detail to get right all the old SMAC elements while at the same time creating a unique feeling mod that has its own content, resources, etc, while blending the SMAC themes with Civ 4 to make it an improvement over the original.
So hat's off to the creator Mr. Maniac. While I have not played every mod, currently only this one and Fall From Heaven ranks in my mind as "professionally done" in terms of the quality. I understand why every mod can't achieve this, the pure time involved is probably in the hundreds of hours. But I really think there is a market for this type of high quality mod among the Civ fans which could be supported on something like Kickstarter. But I digress,,, now to some in-game feedback:
Overall this mod is awesome in terms of capturing the themes and gameplay mechanics of SMAC and I was pleasantly surprised to see all the expansion civs added and enjoyed the mechanic of them popping up. I played my old favorite, Chairman Yang. My feedback here would be to give the new factions more bonuses when they start. In the games I played they seemed consistently always a minor power that could never catch up from their late start. I realize a human player could do better taking one over but the AI isnt that smart. Another way you could achieve this is through natural game mechanics such as making it harder to expand at the beginning. This has already been achieved early game through the presence of the fungus/native life forms, but I think overall city maintenance costs are way too low. It seemed like once I developed a critical mass of plasma throwers and could venture into the fungus frontiers unafraid, there was really no stopping my development. So like the original SMAC I could put cities literally everywhere on land and sea and it seemed a little too easy to grow really big really fast. So perhaps a notably higher number of cities maintenance modifier, which could even be different per faction, until some later game technology lowers it. (I would suggest keeping the distance modifier low though which adds to the unique SMAC-like empire developments with a few cities out in the middle of nowhere.) This way the natural growth constraints will serve as soft barrier to mid-game growth which gives the expansion civs a fighting chance. Or again just give them more bonuses when they start.
The whole planet/fungus/native life thing has been captured excellently and their presence makes exploration both fun and dangerous even late into the game. It seems there is a little unbalance between sea and land though with this. Even late game I never feared getting my planet modifier going into the negatives because if any indigenous life popped up on land it was a snap. Just rush a few of my latest flamethrower type units and wipe them all out. But late game I never did really conquer the seas, in fact I kept losing cities to the natives. I always thought the sea should be more like a refuge though like it was in the original SMAC. In the original game if you got locked out of key settling spots or were getting attacked and pushed out you could always escape to the sanctuary of the sea and attempt to redevelop your empire from there. Not quite the case here, you will get eaten fast out at sea. I would suggest toning down the number and aggressiveness of the sea life some while at the same time, increasing the threat of land native units, even late game. It should be just as scary for a player to drill a bunch of boreholes as it is exploring the oceans. On that note, I actually thought the terraforming civic was a little too effective at fungus removal and was part of the reason for this mid to late game demise of the native threat on land. I think if you just give the formers a bonus for removing fungus from that civic, then that is plenty. The auto-remove of fungus isnt needed I think, wipes the native threat out way too fast, and also goes back to my first point in slowing down growth mid-game which would provide some soft balance.
Another item I see implemented in this civ and many total conversions mods like Fall from Heaven, which frankly doesnt make the most sense to implement in its pure form is: war weariness. Im always frustrated when I see cool mods that have cool new units and I cant use any of them because of war weariness (ww). WW in the original game was designed so that total domination wasnt the only option and that there would be a real hit on your empire from constant waring. But even in vanilla civ there is a way if you choose that route to get your ww down to zero through 100% ww reduction. Not so here though which I think should be addressed. Like in the original SMAC there should be a way if you want to, to totally tweak your civics and go to town with the war-mongering without having your whole empire in revolt. Not right away of course, but there should be some civics which affect it and some later buildings or something that also reduce it, otherwise late game it really drags. Everyone has a ton of units but no one can do anything or attack anyone because the ww is so bad. In the last game I had over a hundred units but couldnt really do much with them because the moment I attacked my whole empire was in revolt unless I had 15 units on each city. Chairman Yang of all people shouldnt have to fear war weariness. Punishment Spheres come rather late, but there should be someway, even if it entails sacrifices elsewhere so that you can get down to 100% ww reduction besides having to get lucky and get the telepath matrix wonder. I would suggest just following the vanilla civ approach. Have police state give -25%, then you already have -50% from the spheres, then create a new national wonder which can give you the additional -25%. But for this to work you really need to lower, or better yet eliminate the police state support unit bonus or it would be way overpowered. Right now police state is already way too powerful compared to the others and frankly, as I will get into next, you dont need any free unit support with this mod as all your resources and credits are already amplified. This way it will give players or the computer the option of choosing a total war route to victory and not punish them for their choice, but instead make the natural cost of unit maintenance and the sacrifices this civic entails the balancing factor. You should also reduce the ww reduction of the telepath matrix to -25% that way getting that wonder is the only way without police state you can achieve 100% ww reduction.
The rest of my feedback is a common issue that many mods which aim high fall victim to: overabundance. I love the new resources but it becomes very easy to get high production, high growth, and high energy very easily in this mod. Even mid-game you can build most serious units in 1 or 2 turns, have a couple thousand spare credits, and your production is so high there is no reason to not build every building in every city. This always bothered me in vanilla civ, the lack of city specialization - every city is the exact same except for location. Overabundance leads to this and a lack of strategic development of your cities since your management of them just consists of queuing up every building to build and thats it since it doesnt take that long. I thought Fall from Heaven did a good job of handling this: just make everything, including units, much more expensive to build. Keep some basic buildings that every place needs reasonable but really jack up the cost for all others. Double or even triple them. Same with units.
I loved in Fall from Heaven how toward the end the game my cities were all so unique. One was my archer producing city, another is where my mages would originate from, and another is where my melee guys train, and another my research center which also had that dimensional portal that would spawn random creatures from another dimension.... Off topic a bit with the references but I think Planetfall would benefit from this sort of uniqueness. Yes it would take away some from the original SMAC-ness but that was the one flaw in original game I thought - it was too easy to build everything. A bioenhancement center should cost the same as a national wonder. You should be really forced to think before you build one because its going to give you a big boost to your cyborgs, but its also costly unless you are really going to pursue that strategy. Frankly except for one building for influence, a basic one for happiness, one for pop growth, and one for health, everything else should expensive. Make things like the network node more like the library so its better with +25% research but triple its cost. Same with the hologram theater cost. So that way its a real decision. Do I build those flame throwers to save my empire from the native life, or pursue science, or growth? Right now there isnt such a strategy, you just do all three since its a snap to build them all.... Anyway its your mod so I wont bother you with all these suggestions if this isnt a route you want the game to go. But I think it could really take this mod to a new level and make it even more unique by differing not only the content from regular civ, but the overall gameplay strategy. Also making things more expensive seems a reasonable method to achieve this since the AI can also cope with this change ok versus more complex means of balancing.
Same with units. I hated in vanilla civ late game trying to manage hundreds of units and having multiple stacks of doom. It felt like work and the overabundance of resources in this mod makes it even more so. Its very easy to get 50+ units then attack the enemy civ which has 25 defending. But is that really any different than if I attacked with 10 and he defended with 5? Not really, its just much less painful to manage though. You created such a cool special ability function that makes the units so unique, but then they all get normalized when they are in a huge stack. It diminishes their special ability because its a pain to wade through all your units to find that one which had +25% to infantry attack. So make the units more expensive. Double or triple them. It would actually make the game more fun. It would put more emphasis on special abilities and make the game more manageable through having fewer units, but also much more strategic and chess-like, meaning: you would have fewer units but each would have a unique purpose and role it serves. One would be your guerrilla fighter, another your defender, and another your artillery counter, etc. Though note: if you did this you may need to tone down the native life some since they chew through units pretty fast. Or a better way is to buff the +psi attack/defense promotions. Again that way you would have fewer units, but the ones you chose to specialize against +psi would be much more effective.
Anyway I could ramble on more and if you dont find these suggestions useful, then no problem. Just know your mod is awesome so keep up the good work. And if you do want more suggestions I am happy to help.
I have played a lot of civ mods and you can easily tell the quality and level of dedication the creator had by the attention to detail. In this case the detail to get right all the old SMAC elements while at the same time creating a unique feeling mod that has its own content, resources, etc, while blending the SMAC themes with Civ 4 to make it an improvement over the original.
So hat's off to the creator Mr. Maniac. While I have not played every mod, currently only this one and Fall From Heaven ranks in my mind as "professionally done" in terms of the quality. I understand why every mod can't achieve this, the pure time involved is probably in the hundreds of hours. But I really think there is a market for this type of high quality mod among the Civ fans which could be supported on something like Kickstarter. But I digress,,, now to some in-game feedback:
Overall this mod is awesome in terms of capturing the themes and gameplay mechanics of SMAC and I was pleasantly surprised to see all the expansion civs added and enjoyed the mechanic of them popping up. I played my old favorite, Chairman Yang. My feedback here would be to give the new factions more bonuses when they start. In the games I played they seemed consistently always a minor power that could never catch up from their late start. I realize a human player could do better taking one over but the AI isnt that smart. Another way you could achieve this is through natural game mechanics such as making it harder to expand at the beginning. This has already been achieved early game through the presence of the fungus/native life forms, but I think overall city maintenance costs are way too low. It seemed like once I developed a critical mass of plasma throwers and could venture into the fungus frontiers unafraid, there was really no stopping my development. So like the original SMAC I could put cities literally everywhere on land and sea and it seemed a little too easy to grow really big really fast. So perhaps a notably higher number of cities maintenance modifier, which could even be different per faction, until some later game technology lowers it. (I would suggest keeping the distance modifier low though which adds to the unique SMAC-like empire developments with a few cities out in the middle of nowhere.) This way the natural growth constraints will serve as soft barrier to mid-game growth which gives the expansion civs a fighting chance. Or again just give them more bonuses when they start.
The whole planet/fungus/native life thing has been captured excellently and their presence makes exploration both fun and dangerous even late into the game. It seems there is a little unbalance between sea and land though with this. Even late game I never feared getting my planet modifier going into the negatives because if any indigenous life popped up on land it was a snap. Just rush a few of my latest flamethrower type units and wipe them all out. But late game I never did really conquer the seas, in fact I kept losing cities to the natives. I always thought the sea should be more like a refuge though like it was in the original SMAC. In the original game if you got locked out of key settling spots or were getting attacked and pushed out you could always escape to the sanctuary of the sea and attempt to redevelop your empire from there. Not quite the case here, you will get eaten fast out at sea. I would suggest toning down the number and aggressiveness of the sea life some while at the same time, increasing the threat of land native units, even late game. It should be just as scary for a player to drill a bunch of boreholes as it is exploring the oceans. On that note, I actually thought the terraforming civic was a little too effective at fungus removal and was part of the reason for this mid to late game demise of the native threat on land. I think if you just give the formers a bonus for removing fungus from that civic, then that is plenty. The auto-remove of fungus isnt needed I think, wipes the native threat out way too fast, and also goes back to my first point in slowing down growth mid-game which would provide some soft balance.
Another item I see implemented in this civ and many total conversions mods like Fall from Heaven, which frankly doesnt make the most sense to implement in its pure form is: war weariness. Im always frustrated when I see cool mods that have cool new units and I cant use any of them because of war weariness (ww). WW in the original game was designed so that total domination wasnt the only option and that there would be a real hit on your empire from constant waring. But even in vanilla civ there is a way if you choose that route to get your ww down to zero through 100% ww reduction. Not so here though which I think should be addressed. Like in the original SMAC there should be a way if you want to, to totally tweak your civics and go to town with the war-mongering without having your whole empire in revolt. Not right away of course, but there should be some civics which affect it and some later buildings or something that also reduce it, otherwise late game it really drags. Everyone has a ton of units but no one can do anything or attack anyone because the ww is so bad. In the last game I had over a hundred units but couldnt really do much with them because the moment I attacked my whole empire was in revolt unless I had 15 units on each city. Chairman Yang of all people shouldnt have to fear war weariness. Punishment Spheres come rather late, but there should be someway, even if it entails sacrifices elsewhere so that you can get down to 100% ww reduction besides having to get lucky and get the telepath matrix wonder. I would suggest just following the vanilla civ approach. Have police state give -25%, then you already have -50% from the spheres, then create a new national wonder which can give you the additional -25%. But for this to work you really need to lower, or better yet eliminate the police state support unit bonus or it would be way overpowered. Right now police state is already way too powerful compared to the others and frankly, as I will get into next, you dont need any free unit support with this mod as all your resources and credits are already amplified. This way it will give players or the computer the option of choosing a total war route to victory and not punish them for their choice, but instead make the natural cost of unit maintenance and the sacrifices this civic entails the balancing factor. You should also reduce the ww reduction of the telepath matrix to -25% that way getting that wonder is the only way without police state you can achieve 100% ww reduction.
The rest of my feedback is a common issue that many mods which aim high fall victim to: overabundance. I love the new resources but it becomes very easy to get high production, high growth, and high energy very easily in this mod. Even mid-game you can build most serious units in 1 or 2 turns, have a couple thousand spare credits, and your production is so high there is no reason to not build every building in every city. This always bothered me in vanilla civ, the lack of city specialization - every city is the exact same except for location. Overabundance leads to this and a lack of strategic development of your cities since your management of them just consists of queuing up every building to build and thats it since it doesnt take that long. I thought Fall from Heaven did a good job of handling this: just make everything, including units, much more expensive to build. Keep some basic buildings that every place needs reasonable but really jack up the cost for all others. Double or even triple them. Same with units.
I loved in Fall from Heaven how toward the end the game my cities were all so unique. One was my archer producing city, another is where my mages would originate from, and another is where my melee guys train, and another my research center which also had that dimensional portal that would spawn random creatures from another dimension.... Off topic a bit with the references but I think Planetfall would benefit from this sort of uniqueness. Yes it would take away some from the original SMAC-ness but that was the one flaw in original game I thought - it was too easy to build everything. A bioenhancement center should cost the same as a national wonder. You should be really forced to think before you build one because its going to give you a big boost to your cyborgs, but its also costly unless you are really going to pursue that strategy. Frankly except for one building for influence, a basic one for happiness, one for pop growth, and one for health, everything else should expensive. Make things like the network node more like the library so its better with +25% research but triple its cost. Same with the hologram theater cost. So that way its a real decision. Do I build those flame throwers to save my empire from the native life, or pursue science, or growth? Right now there isnt such a strategy, you just do all three since its a snap to build them all.... Anyway its your mod so I wont bother you with all these suggestions if this isnt a route you want the game to go. But I think it could really take this mod to a new level and make it even more unique by differing not only the content from regular civ, but the overall gameplay strategy. Also making things more expensive seems a reasonable method to achieve this since the AI can also cope with this change ok versus more complex means of balancing.
Same with units. I hated in vanilla civ late game trying to manage hundreds of units and having multiple stacks of doom. It felt like work and the overabundance of resources in this mod makes it even more so. Its very easy to get 50+ units then attack the enemy civ which has 25 defending. But is that really any different than if I attacked with 10 and he defended with 5? Not really, its just much less painful to manage though. You created such a cool special ability function that makes the units so unique, but then they all get normalized when they are in a huge stack. It diminishes their special ability because its a pain to wade through all your units to find that one which had +25% to infantry attack. So make the units more expensive. Double or triple them. It would actually make the game more fun. It would put more emphasis on special abilities and make the game more manageable through having fewer units, but also much more strategic and chess-like, meaning: you would have fewer units but each would have a unique purpose and role it serves. One would be your guerrilla fighter, another your defender, and another your artillery counter, etc. Though note: if you did this you may need to tone down the native life some since they chew through units pretty fast. Or a better way is to buff the +psi attack/defense promotions. Again that way you would have fewer units, but the ones you chose to specialize against +psi would be much more effective.
Anyway I could ramble on more and if you dont find these suggestions useful, then no problem. Just know your mod is awesome so keep up the good work. And if you do want more suggestions I am happy to help.
I just finished installing Planetfall, and it works like a champ. Eagerly looking forward to playing a few games now.
I wanted to go over to the weplayciv site, but it seems to be down, or maybe the traffic level on the net is preventing me from getting there. Commandline tracert times out after reaching this node:
static-209-17-142-113.gtcust.grouptelecom.net [209.17.142.113]
Anyone else having trouble reaching them?
I wanted to go over to the weplayciv site, but it seems to be down, or maybe the traffic level on the net is preventing me from getting there. Commandline tracert times out after reaching this node:
static-209-17-142-113.gtcust.grouptelecom.net [209.17.142.113]
Anyone else having trouble reaching them?
Maniac
Apolyton Sage
Do you need to go to weplayciv.com? It's hosted on moddb.com
GeoModder
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2005
- Messages
- 7,512
Lots of others. The site is actually down. AFAWK, indefinitely.
Deon
Lt. of Mordor
Not a lot of feedback lately, eh? I wanted to stop by and say thanks again, I've just played a game of Planetfall after such a long break, and it's a really unique experience. Thank you, we need more creative people like you guys 
.
.
Daft73
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not a lot of feedback lately, eh? I wanted to stop by and say thanks again, I've just played a game of Planetfall after such a long break, and it's a really unique experience. Thank you, we need more creative people like you guys
tend to agree I enjoy the feel of the game,
Knighthawkke
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2011
- Messages
- 14
Nevermind, found out all I needed. Like the mod so far!
Cosmic Fox
Civ 6 Addict - TB Mod Collaborator
Planetfall is my 2nd most favorite Mod for Civ4. It is the best choice for SMAC and SMACx fans in particular. Maniac and team did an awesome job on the Mod. Love to see more updates cause I love seeing mods changed up and made better. Always room for that! The voices and sounds are a must install to give you the full smac feel.
EA supposedly is going to either relaunch SMAC or making a sequel at some point, least that is the rumor.
EA supposedly is going to either relaunch SMAC or making a sequel at some point, least that is the rumor.
Chiming in to say that I still play this from time to time, it's a GREAT mod, if a bit unfinished (missing text, default or missing civilopedia descriptions, etc.) Wish it would be updated, but it probably isn't going to, but oh well. Civ: Beyond Earth will have to satisfy my craving for alpha centauri type stuff.
Monaldinio
Prince
...you can find some missing text ect. in my mod...
And alot of more...
And alot of more...
i cant download your mod, both rapidshare and gaemfront dont work
Monaldinio
Prince
the rapidshare link is down, you are right, but the gamefront link works...for me...
Try again.
if it dont work, i can give you a dropboxlink...
Try again.
if it dont work, i can give you a dropboxlink...
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