Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

I don't mind being a guinea pig in this sense and starting games in the Modern era, as I don't think I could get into a game starting pre-Industrial era (its all about the sci-fi for me).

I've tried both ways: most of my test games started in the Transcendence Era, with everything unlocked (and with 4 settlers that start new cities at size 8), but obviously, everything is horribly skewed if you do this. The culture gain was especially out of whack, but I also had the problem that nearly every unit was a 1-turn construction, including the Titans.
I'm playing a test case now where I start in the Ancient Era, just so that I'll have a more "realistic" empire once I reach the modern ages, but obviously you can't do this often.

The reason I suggested Industrial is a practical one. I basically took the SMAC tech tree and chopped off the bottom two rows, the ones that unlock all of the "basic" buildings of the game, figuring that earlier eras would take care of all of that. So the reason for my suggestion is that you really need to have the city basic structures in place in your cities BEFORE reaching the new content, and I just don't think the modern (now called "Nuclear Era") gives enough time to get it all in place.
For instance, in my Transcendence test cases, I was having Combat Mechs and Bolos being constructed before Banks and Universities. That's just wrong. I'm in the process of figuring out which of these buildings should be set to be automatically provided in various eras, but that then throws off a LOT of the balance.
Likewise, if you start in the future eras, then the tiles around your cities won't be fully improved by the time that you get to all of those Improvement-boosting technology bonuses. Having to decide between a Farm and a Trading Post in a future era is VERY different than having to decide which to place in ancient times, and there's a lot of inertia involved. (Really, how often have you ever gone back and changed all of the terrain improvements after the fact?)

Finally, one thought came to me: starting in the Transcendence Era, with four Settlers, was REALLY awkward in light of the fact that the Settlers were practically the only unit that couldn't move quickly. So I'm really tempted, now, to add the Colony Pod unit (move 3, all terrain 1 MP, amphibious, maybe a paradrop ability; in SMAC I always loved making Drop Colony Pods) as a futuristic upgrade of the Settler. The only question, then, is whether this'd be useful to have in a game where you start in earlier eras and already have railroads and such in place.
 
Might I suggest that you move this thread to the modpacks section? I know a lot of people (myself include) usually only look at the mods that are available for playing, so it could potentially reach more people. As a added benefit, there might be people in that section that can help with some of the problems that you are facing. They could also offer advise about several of your balance questions. Oh, and I have downloaded and will be trying this mod after my test :)
 
Might I suggest that you move this thread to the modpacks section?

Well, until about 10 hours ago there were no actual files in this thread. I JUST put the mod into it this morning; before then, it was a discussion thread for the under-development mod. But yes, now it's basically appropriate to move over there.

I was going to ask a moderator to move the thread, but maybe I'll just make a new one there. But I'd also wanted to spend one more day writing up Civilopedia entries, and playing one last test run before moving it up to that sort of "official" status, just in case there are too many crash bugs. So I was looking at doing this all later tonight. (I'm in L.A., so I just got home from work.)

UPDATE:
I got the tech icons working, all 45 of them. The problem was that GIMP seemed to keep wanting to create additional layers, and they were blocking out the icons. But it's fixed, they're in, and they look great.
Then I did the same for the buildings/wonders, so in a minute I'll update the tech tree screenshots. I'll try to upload new mod files in the morning, possibly in a new thread in the Modpacks forum.
 
Okay, the Spatz's Alpha Centauri file in the first post now includes all of the tech, wonder, and building icons, so I'd highly recommend getting that if you've already downloaded it before. It makes things MUCH easier when the icons aren't all blank.

I'll be out of town for a few days, so I'm not going to be uploading any new versions until at least Saturday, but I'll be on here periodically to participate in any discussions. In the meantime, I'm going to try to get the moderators to move this thread to Modpacks.

EDIT:
I should also add one note for anyone who never played SMAC. The icons that game used (and which I blatantly copied) were designed to be very "thematic". That is, the color of a tech denoted its general category (red = military, yellow = industrial, white = scientific, green = growth/environmental), and the pictures themselves tended to share thematic elements. So if Quantum Power's logo had four diamonds, then the Quantum Lab would be a beaker containing a shrunken version of that 4-diamond symbol, and it'd be colored white because it's a scientific building.
It's one of the things I most liked about the SMAC design; at a glance, it's easy to see the general connections involved. Civ5's picture-based system basically requires you to mouse over every tech or building icon to see what it really is. As an example of what I mean, I'd attached a picture of a Transcendence-era city to the Buildings post; the icons for most of the Civ5 buildings are nearly meaningless in that screenshot, while my additions are pretty clear IMO. Obviously, SMAC did it because of the graphical limitations of the time, but it's held up well.
This is why I suggest using the revised version of the mod, if you downloaded it before the icons were added. I've confirmed that the savegames are compatible; you can take a preexisting game, load up the revised modpack, and you'll now see icons. (I'm holding off on adding a few changes that I know will break old saves.)

(Historical note: the buildings with the diamond-shaped icons were Wonders in SMAC. I've moved a few buildings to Wonder status and vice-versa, so it's not a solid indicator in this mod, but it's still useful to look for.)
 
OK, so I am starting to play around with this now. Question regarding bugs: do you have a running list of issues already, and/or a list of issues that your currently working on? For instance right now I'm seeing the Marsh features as just black holes where the Marsh graphic overlay should be. Also in the Civilopedia (Data Links?) the tech Transcendent Thought has triplicate tech icons in its "Leads to Techs" area: for the sake of efficiency I don't think it makes sense for me to t-shoot stuff your already aware of and working on (or does it?).

Also, currently I see some of the tech quotes stuff hasn't been filled in yet. Do you want me to take a crack at filling these items in?

Anyways, its free-play time for me. As I see stuff I'll jot it down, then supply a synopsis sometime tomorrow. Form what I've seen so far its going to be soooo much better than how I've been playing the game to date! :goodjob:

D
 
OK, so I am starting to play around with this now. Question regarding bugs: do you have a running list of issues already, and/or a list of issues that your currently working on?

Yes to both. I've made a bunch of changes since the version I posted here, and I've got a list of known issues. (Crash bug: don't kill a Labor Mech, just leave them alone if your foes build one.)

There are a lot of little graphical bugs. For instance, when you're building certain Wonders (say, the Great Wall) you see the structure being assembled on the terrain. Since the new Wonders don't have all of the graphical entries, cities that build these wonders end up getting blanked out on the map.

For instance right now I'm seeing the Marsh features as just black holes where the Marsh graphic overlay should be.

That's strange, since I've done nothing to marshes themselves. Are these marsh tiles that have a resource on them (say, Omnicytes)? If so then I could understand it, since Omnicytes' placeholder graphics are something you don't normally find on marsh tiles, and the improvement currently set to harvest them also isn't found on Marsh tiles. But if these are just normal marsh tiles, then I have no idea what's happening.

Also in the Civilopedia (Data Links?) the tech Transcendent Thought has triplicate tech icons in its "Leads to Techs" area

That's because I cheated. I didn't actually DELETE the four future-era techs for the moment (since the ID issue was causing headaches); I left them in the game, turned on Disable, stuck them after Transcendent Thought in the tree, and hid their icons underneath it (which is why you can see a faint red tint to TT's title, that's from the Disable status of the techs underneath it). So the reason TT says it leads to three copies of, say, Fusion Power, is because I told it to replace each of the previous prerequisites for Fusion Power with a copy of TT instead of deleting them. So instead of FP depending on three Modern techs, it now depends on three copies of TT. Since you can't select the tech anyway, this doesn't hurt anything.

In the long term I'll delete those techs entirely and hard-set the ID starting point. Likewise, I actually left the Giant Death Robot in, at one of those hidden techs; what I'll do eventually is replace the entry for the Combat Mech with the GDR, just with altered stats and text strings.

It's a sloppy way to do things, but I KNEW it wouldn't cause any new crashes, which is more than can be said about some other parts.

Also, currently I see some of the tech quotes stuff hasn't been filled in yet. Do you want me to take a crack at filling these items in?

The quotes should all be there, so if one's missing, tell me; I thought I'd checked all of those already. The "history" entries aren't filled in yet (which is why they all say XXX; an empty text string causes a crash), although I've been working on filling those in as I go.
For the civilopedia, though, my highest priority at the moment is getting the basic unit help text in place. "Flavor" text can come later.

From what I've seen so far its going to be soooo much better than how I've been playing the game to date!

Good to hear. The balance is still pretty substantially off, I know, and I realized why: the core game's Modern Era was designed to be an endgame era, with lots of buildings and units that were a bit more powerful than they needed to be (so you'll have a +100% research building or a 80-power tank, when you really only needed it to be +50% or 70-power); after all, adding +100% to culture with a broadcast tower doesn't hurt much if you're only going to get one or two more SPs before the game ends, but with three additional eras it's just too much. Adding new eras obviously screws that up, so I'm now going back to re-evaluate every Industrial or Modern unit and building.
Likewise, a few of my new buildings and especially Wonders just have too large bonuses. So I'm tweaking.
 
I've made a bunch of changes since the version I posted here, and I've got a list of known issues.

If its convenient and you think it beneficial post the list - that way us playtesters don't have to diagnose and document stuff you've already catalogued.

(Crash bug: don't kill a Labor Mech, just leave them alone if your foes build one.)

Last night I saw a C-S with an Engineer - the AI's are definately using these new units! :goodjob:

Are these marsh tiles that have a resource on them (say, Omnicytes)? If so then I could understand it, since Omnicytes' placeholder graphics are something you don't normally find on marsh tiles, and the improvement currently set to harvest them also isn't found on Marsh tiles. But if these are just normal marsh tiles, then I have no idea what's happening.

This happened in the first two games I played last night - sort of a "someone divided by zero and created a hole in the space-time fabric". Last game last night this did not occur. I've never seen this issue before installing your mods, so I am assuming it is somehow related to your mod. If I do see it again I'll do a screen pic.

The quotes should all be there, so if one's missing, tell me; I thought I'd checked all of those already. The "history" entries aren't filled in yet.

Thats probably what I was refering to. If your on this then disregard my offer.

The balance is still pretty substantially off, I know, and I realized why: the core game's Modern Era was designed to be an endgame era,

Yup, and it played very differently starting the game in the Modern era.

So, my first game with your mod I got my butt handed to me by France and Russia ganging up on me. I think also I had to adjust to the game pace - plays much dfifferently starting in the Industrial era than starting in the Modern.

Played for about three hours, and didn't experience any crashes or hang-ups. Only issue I ran into was that I produced an infantry in a conquered C-S, however I couldn't upgrade the unit to a Mech Infantry until it reached the border of my core cities (i.e like the game wasn't considering the borders of the conquered city as being part of my empire).


I've got my own small mod running in parallel - pretty much just upgrading the C-S by giving them a GDR and Military Base to make them more competitive in the modern era timeframe. An interesting situation occured last night in my attack on a C-S, as I tried to kite the GDR away from the city by placing an infantry next to it, away from my main force attacking the city. The AI didn't go for it - it instead turned the GDR back towards the city to try and relieve its forces there. The C-S also placed its Engineer unit inside the city so it wouldn't be captured. Good programming of the AI in both those instances! :thumbsup:

I'll probably play some more later today. Am very impressed with the mod so far -thanx for doing this for the sci-fi fans of the game! :goodjob:

D
 
If its convenient and you think it beneficial post the list - that way us playtesters don't have to diagnose and document stuff you've already catalogued.

I'll try, but I've been fixing things as fast as I can find them, so I'm just hoping to have a new version of the mod out tonight, if possible.

I'm also making a lot of small balance tweaks. Virtual World downgrading to 3 happiness instead of 5, modding the Broadcast Tower to only add 50% culture, that sort of thing. I've been updating the posts at the start of this thread with new info as I go, which is not smart in terms of version control, I know. I also dropped the Mechanized Infantry to 42 power and the Modern Armor to 70; still evaluating the other modern units.

Also, I've DRASTICALLY changed the percentages in the Eras.xml file, so that you no longer get the 1-turn wonder builds and 1-turn techs and such if you start in one of the last eras. Not sure how much these impact a game started in an earlier era, though.

I made a few changes that might screw up savegames, though, like switching Neutronium harvesting from the overused Mine to the only-for-Marble Quarry improvement. So I'll hold off uploading the next version until a few other things are in place.

This happened in the first two games I played last night - sort of a "someone divided by zero and created a hole in the space-time fabric". Last game last night this did not occur.

Sounds like a cache bug then. I had the same thing last night; I changed the Stasis Generator icon (from the red, circular Subspace Generator icon to the green shield Flechette Defense icon, since I wanted the SG icon for, you know, the actual Subspace Generator unit), and it updated at the 2048, 1024, and 360 sizes but not the 512 for some reason. Exiting to desktop and re-entering the game cleared it up.

So if you had been running games with other mods, it's possible that there are some leftover graphical files in the cache that are interfering.

Played for about three hours, and didn't experience any crashes or hang-ups. Only issue I ran into was that I produced an infantry in a conquered C-S, however I couldn't upgrade the unit to a Mech Infantry until it reached the border of my core cities

Don't see how that could be this mod's fault, since I do NOTHING to city-states and those are both resourceless units. But who knows, there are so many moving parts in this that anything is possible.

I've got my own small mod running in parallel - pretty much just upgrading the C-S by giving them a GDR and Military Base to make them more competitive in the modern era timeframe.

If you start a game in the Fusion, Nanotech, or Transcendence Eras then the CS's will be loaded with Laser Infantry, since it's the last resourceless combat unit and they won't have anything else hooked up yet. But what was disturbing was when the BARBARIANS were using Laser Infantry on my continent (but Warriors on the small island occupied only by three City States, go figure). I actually had to retreat my own units and come back later. Considering that I never gave them that unit I'm not sure how it happened, but it was great to see.
 
Okay, the first post is updated with a new version of the mods, which I'm now numbering v.0.03 (as it's the third upload of the alpha). I'll go to v0.1 as soon as I move it to the Modpacks forum.

If its convenient and you think it beneficial post the list - that way us playtesters don't have to diagnose and document stuff you've already catalogued.

While I can't give a fully detailed list, here's some things that should help:
v.0.03 changelog: (since I'm doing a lot of this from memory, this isn't a comprehensive list.)
> The Engineer unit was renamed "Combat Engineer" to avoid a Civilopedia conflict with the Engineer specialist. Internally the entries are still listed as "Engineer2".
> Buildings now create resources, using Whys' Building Resources mod. Specifically:
- Energy Bank: Oil and Coal
- Fusion Lab: Uranium and Aluminum
- Brood Pit: Omnicytes
- Quantum Lab: Neutronium and Dilithium
Each of the above non-Wonder buildings generates one unit of each strategic resource. Not enough to support an empire, but enough for when you just need one more of a unit or one more Factory.
- Quantum Converter: Gold, Silver, Gems, Marble, Dyes
- Paradise Garden: every other Luxury resource
Each of the above National Wonders produces one unit of these luxury resources. Basically, you'll have nearly all of these already, but it lets you complete the sets.
- Planetary Datalinks: Information
- Clinical Immortality: Ambrosia
These Wonders were already listed in the original posts, but they work now.
> The "+1 food per specialist" ability was moved from the Paradise Garden to the Stasis Generator to make room for the above luxury generation. Likewise, the Quantum Converter previously had a flat +25% Production bonus, which I removed to make way for the luxuries.
> Fundamentalism (Piety SP) now actually does something. I gave up on the "Culture per Specialist" thing, and it now just reduces the amount of Culture needed to prompt a border expansion by 25%. It's actually really useful now, and this was one of the many unused stubs in the Policies.xml file.
> The Nessus Worm now has a weak, short-range bombardment attack. This was because Titan units, as a class, all have access to the various bombardment-related promotions. Note that the Former is also a Titan, and would suffer from the same problem, but since it's not even supposed to be a combat unit I'm not too motivated to tweak it. I'm now looking at changing the Nessus to a full Psi unit and removing the bombardment attack, probably for v.0.04.
> LOTS of Civilopedia entries now have text. It's especially notable in the units' Historical Info entries.
> Orbital Ion Cannon reduced from 50 power to 40. Mechanized Infantry reduced from 50 to 42. Modern Armor reduced from 80 to 70. The Orbital Death Ray's power was unchanged but its cost was increased by 25%. I'm reassessing many other units as well. If this change holds, then I'll also reduce the Gravtank to 90, and so on, to keep it balanced.
> The "Planned" and "Planned Economy" SPs' effects were switched, so that Planned Economy now boosts trade income and Planned Society now improves happiness. Planned's effect might be a bit too weak compared to my other future-era SPs; I might change it from -50% to -75% or even -100%.
> Broadcast Tower reduced to +50% culture, Research Lab reduced to +50% science.
> Era scaling ratios were HEAVILY changed for games beginning in the future eras. If you decide to start in the Transcendence Era, expect it to take ~30 turns before you research your first technology, and Wonders take a long time now as well.
> To fix a crash bug, the Labor Mech is now listed as an Energy unit and has the usual XP rates. The Former was similarly bugged, and is now a Titan.
> Neutronium is now harvested with a Quarry instead of a Mine. The Mine was being used for many things, the Quarry was only used for Marble.
> (Crazy Spatz Mod): The Recycling Center now requires the Sewer System, which in turn requires the Aqueduct. This only really became an issue if you started in a later era.
> The Former gained the "Blitz" promotion and had its movement increased to 3. This means it can, under the right conditions, lay down two road tiles in a single turn. But its trademark ability, the power to transform terrain, isn't implemented yet, so I wouldn't bother building one.
> The Flavor ratings for spaceship parts were reduced (from 150 down to 50), so that the AI wouldn't put everything into building parts for a ship that no longer wins the game. They still build them, just not if there's something more important going on, like a war.
> The production costs of the spaceship components were halved (350 for a booster, 500 for the others). So it doesn't take nearly as long to assemble a ship once you get going. The Spaceship Factory is a lot less useful for this, as a result, but has two other benefits: a +25% production boost on all Titan units, and it's absolutely required for the Gravship.
> Flavor ratings on units were adjusted to be an ascending scale; Digital era units generally total to 25, Fusion to 30. Titans run about 20 higher, and the Gravship totals 85 (since I REALLY want each civ to build one). This should encourage the AI to build the more advanced units; in my first test game, they'd just spit out huge numbers of Laser Infantry and never bothered upgrading. Also, due to a typo in the Flavor entries the AIs wouldn't build nearly as many Labor Mechs as they'd need, previously.
> Leviathans can now move after attacking. They can't fire twice until you get that promotion, but this allows them to fire and then position to act as a carrier.
> The Genejack Factory now only requires a Workshop instead of a Factory. A shortage of Coal was too crippling since it'd mean that neither of the main +production buildings would be available. Granted, with the resource change to Energy Banks it's a lot easier to get the Coal you need, but this was still a good change.
> The "Cybernetic" social policy was reduced from +2 production per specialist down to +1. In the Nanotech era you'll generally have more than a dozen specialists in each city, so it adds up quickly.

KNOWN ISSUES
> For games starting in future eras, there are no additional "free" buildings assigned yet. Someone starting in the Transcendence Era shouldn't have to spend their first few turns building a Bank, University, and Hospital.
> Several Wonders' effects have not been implemented. Their help text will use a "***" to designate the effects that are not working yet, so that you'll know which Wonders to avoid for now.
> Many "flavor" Civilopedia entries haven't been written yet. Generally these are easily seen by an "XXX" entry.
> A small number of units (Vertol, Gravship, etc.) are supposed to be able to travel over water as well as land. Instead, they'll embark when they hit water. I'm trying to remove the default "Embarkation" promotion to fix this.
> The Subspace Generator cannot be rebased.
> The terrain improvements used to harvest the three new resources (omnicytes, dilithium, neutronium) have no graphics. This is especially problematic for Omnicytes, since they can spawn in forest or jungle tiles and will be completely hidden by these features.
> There is no effect tied to the repeatable "Transcendent Thought" tech. I want it to eventually give +1 happiness each time you research it.
> The Needlejet and Ion Cannon are getting damaged every time they attack, as if they were making a normal attack instead of a bombardment.
> The "magtubes" change at Monopole Magnets was supposed to make railroad movement effectively unlimited. It currently does nothing, and I have no idea why. It's easy to verify that it does nothing; if it worked, there'd be an icon on the tech tree, so the CIV5Routes.xml file isn't even loading.
> There is currently no icon on the tech tree for the techs that unlock new Social Policies. I'm VERY close to getting this to work.
> The EMP and Soporific promotions have no icon yet, which causes all sorts of strange graphical bugs.
> Between the innate promotions and those the player can select, the more advanced units (especially Titans) have promotions scrolling off the left side of the unit display box.
> Since there is no event tied to the completion of the Spaceship, there'd be no way to get the Centauri Ecology tech except for a Great Scientist. So, this tech is temporarily linked to the Ecology tech. This results in a broken arrow on the tech tree, but since this dependency will be removed in the long term, I won't fix the graphical bug.
> The Transcendence event is not completed yet. Currently, if you build the Wonder you win. It'll be changed to something much more complex eventually.
> In the default game, units, buildings, and wonders are arranged by type (naval, worker, etc.) with the most advanced units at the top of the list.
In this mod, the units are listed purely in order of technology, with the most advanced of everything at the bottom.
> The more powerful Titans (Combat Mech and Gravship, especially) are so strong at bombardment that most cities go straight to 1 HP in one shot. Either city power needs to ramp up faster, or I need to reduce the bombardment strength of these units.
> There is no AI algorithm for the Great Empath unit. If the AI ends up with any (very rare), they just stand around. I might just give them the Artist AI temporarily, but I have no idea how that works for a unit with no Culture Bomb.
> The "satellite" buildings (Sky Hydroponics Lab, etc.) currently add +2% to food/gold/etc. instead of a flat +1 like SMAC used, because there's a GlobalYieldModifier table but not a GlobalYield table. As soon as I can figure out how to implement it, I'll change this. I have no idea whether it rounds down or not, either.
> The Empath specialist is supposed to add 1 Happiness, with the Great Empath's "Monolith" improvement adding 2 Happiness when worked. Since Happiness isn't tied to a yield yet, I have Empaths adding food (2 and 4, respectively) as a placeholder.
> The Giant Death Robot and the four Future Era techs have only been disabled, not removed, so they'll still show up in the Civilopedia.

Beyond this, I also need general balance comments. Is it too hard to get a supply of Dilithium, being a purely aquatic resource, or should I try making it spawn on Oasis tiles as well? Do the less mobile future units (Ranger, Troll, etc.) move too slowly to be useful in combat? Are the Golem and Labor Mech worth building instead of Combat Engineers, given that they can't occupy the same tile as a combat unit (but CAN share a tile with an Engineer, if you want to place a railroad and a farm at the same time)? Are there too many Neutronium deposits? Should more buildings consume a resource?
 
OK, have run into a repeatable crash: I end turn 617 the game either hangs or just crashes. I've tried researching different techs, tried not going for the Space Race victory, tried deleting a lot of units (via war) in case it was a computer resource thing - always the same, so I am assuming its something one of the two remaining AIs is doing. I've attached three saves: the one dated 11/14 is the base save, which is about 7 turns before the crash. The other two are saves on turn 617 (617b and 11_14war), but just via different avenues during my t-shooting. HTH.

Other than that I am enjoying this very much. The Plasma Artillery is definately a winner in my book! :goodjob: The only other thought I have right now is that Aluminum is heavily utilized, so maybe not use that resource for any units/ building in your future eras?

D
 

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OK, have run into a repeatable crash: I end turn 617 the game either hangs or just crashes.

I'll look at it when I get home, but I'd assume it's probably unit-related. Some unit somewhere must be taking an action it doesn't have an animation for. (For instance, I was previously getting this whenever you'd rebase a Subspace Generator.)

The Plasma Artillery is definately a winner in my book!

It might be a bit too good, but it's nice to have an anti-air unit that actually doesn't feel like so much of a waste, especially in a 1 unit per tile game. I'm worried that it makes some of the light armor units (vertol, skimmer) too useless, even though they're designed to be the counter units to these artillery.

The only other thought I have right now is that Aluminum is heavily utilized, so maybe not use that resource for any units/ building in your future eras?

This depends on which version of the mod you're using. Aluminum is used for a lot of units (the powersuits, vertol, skimmer, and the naval units), but as of the most recent version, building a Fusion Lab creates 1 unit of uranium and 1 of aluminum. This goes a long way towards helping this problem, IMO. Possibly TOO far, but that remains to be seen.
 
Unfortunately, I can't load your save file, because you used a mod that I don't have (Test_11_12). But I'm managing to get it to crash myself, when I rebase a Death Ray. Which is strange, since I'm using the B17 as its placeholder and it shouldn't have a problem rebasing. So now I'm thinking that it's the range that's a problem; the 999 range might just be so big that the pathfinding AI crashes. So I dropped it to 99 to check. It seems more stable now.

I'll try to upload a fixed version tomorrow, since I've been adding quite a few other changes at the same time that I'm still testing.
 
This depends on which version of the mod you're using. Aluminum is used for a lot of units (the powersuits, vertol, skimmer, and the naval units), but as of the most recent version, building a Fusion Lab creates 1 unit of uranium and 1 of aluminum. This goes a long way towards helping this problem, IMO. Possibly TOO far, but that remains to be seen.

I think this will fix it nicely, as building Fusion Labs (and assuming the AIs will do this as well) should solve this bottleneck.

Unfortunately, I can't load your save file, because you used a mod that I don't have (Test_11_12).

:blush: Sorry- should've realized this would conflict. This is my personal mod I am testing where I am making the CS more viable in the Modern/ Future eras. If you think it worthwhile for t-shooting this specific crash issue I can upload the mod - let me know.
I'll DL your updated mod and start testing that probably Thusrday (work/RL is a bear right now), and I won't activate my mod for this round of playtesting.

Probably outside the scope of this mod, but strategically I see a weakness in the AI in regards to terrain: if terrain allows the AI will attack across a broad front, and the attack typically resembles a wave, which can easily be broken up by a human defender. My thought would be that if the attack algorhythms could be tweaked such that this wave were to become a stream of units instead, that it would more resemble the German Mot Pulk formation and smash thru a specific point in the enemy formations and achieve its objective (usually a city), then have the weight in numbers in the local vicinity to defend and or continue the attack towards its next objective. Right now this focusing of units is simulated in some playthrus I've done, as terrain has artificially created bottlenecks which has forced the AIs to focus their units into a stream, and this can be tremendously difficult to deal with. However currently if there are no terrain features preventing the AI from this artificial focusing of units, then they tend to spread their offensive over too wide a front, and are easily picked off. Have you seen similar results in general in your playtesting?

D
 
I think this will fix it nicely, as building Fusion Labs (and assuming the AIs will do this as well) should solve this bottleneck.

It looks like it's been fixing it nicely in my test games. One problem could be the prerequisites; Fusion Labs require Research Labs, which are far enough up the chain that many cities wouldn't get there. But the Flavor ratings are high enough that once an AI DOES build a lab, he should continue right on to the Fusion and Quantum labs.

Similarly, in a game I played last night, I started on a map where there were three Coal deposits in the entire world, and they were all on the same continent (not mine). So India had a monopoly on Coal, and everyone else was left without the massive Industrial production boost of factories. (Still had railroads, though.)
But then the Digital Era rolls around, and suddenly I can build Energy Banks (+25% gold, +1 coal, +1 oil, requires a Stock Exchange). It was painful to have to build one of these per Factory I wanted to make, but it was a great way to keep an Industrial-era resource shortfall from crippling your game through four later eras.

If you think it worthwhile for t-shooting this specific crash issue I can upload the mod - let me know.

It'd be easy enough for you to zip up a copy and attach it here, but I think there's a good chance that the crash is due to what I mentioned before, with aircraft trying to rebase. Reducing the range should help that a bit, but it might still happen in this latest version.

I'll DL your updated mod and start testing that probably Thusrday (work/RL is a bear right now), and I won't activate my mod for this round of playtesting.

I should have a revised version tonight. I found a really HUGE mistake I made:
In the Buildings table, there's "<SpecialistExtraCulture>". I figured this was either per specialist in this building, or maybe per specialist in this city. So the Ascetic Virtues national wonder gives 2 to this value, plus 25% GPP in all cities.
But as it turns out, no, that's culture per specialist in ANY city, like a Statue of Liberty-style benefit but without the tunability of being able to limit which specialist types get it. It's a huge jump in culture generation; my 4-city test Transcendence empire went from ~700 per turn to ~2000 in one shot. Obviously, too much.

The problem is that adding 2 of anything to a specialist is JUST enough to make specialists more desirable than working tiles; what happens is, the default AI suddenly fills every specialist slot it can and literally works no terrain (other than the city's core tile). You get a flood of great people, and every city suddenly produces the exact same yields.
This is way too much, so in my latest version I've cut this wonder to +1 culture per specialist and +10% GPP, and I'll see if this still happens. This might still be too much, in which case I'd have to move the culture boost way up the chain (say, to Paradise Garden) and make Ascetic Virtues into a purely GPP production wonder.

I also got the railroad movement bonus working for Monopole Magnets (it's very nice now; not unlimited, but a lot faster than before), and I got new Policies to display on the tech tree (albeit with the generic icon, since their own icons aren't the right sizes as far as I can tell). So this new version should be VERY nice.

Probably outside the scope of this mod, but strategically I see a weakness in the AI in regards to terrain: if terrain allows the AI will attack across a broad front, and the attack typically resembles a wave, which can easily be broken up by a human defender.

I wouldn't like to try modifying core AI too much, since I'd probably get it wrong, but that consideration was actually part of my design: The reason the AI seems to attack in a wave is that it's just trying to attack in general, but terrain bogs down the units, and with 1 unit per tile the AI tries to go around (through the rough terrain) instead of waiting a tile further back on the road (which is what a human would do). Basically, it just tries to get closer to the enemy NOW, without thinking about how much harder movement will be next turn. Since roads cost money and there's no benefit to connecting a road to your neighbor (both changes from Civ4), there won't be many easy avenues of attack.
But most of my new units have greatly enhanced mobility, paying only 1 MP per tile regardless of terrain, which makes it trivial to get back on a road once an open spot clears, or just continue across if there's no road. So there's really not as much "bogging down" when an AI attacks, because generally speaking, its units can get to their targets immediately.
I had this happen last night; I was getting ready to attack the Ottomans on my next turn. They noticed my troops massing, and gave that whole are-you-going-to-declare-war prompt. So I figured, say yes, no big deal, right? Yeah, mistake. In that one interturn they hit quite a few of my troops and did a LOT of damage (but only killed two). And they basically only had Laser Infantry and the occasional powersuit, because of a crippling lack of strategic resources, so it could have been MUCH worse with Skimmers and Vertols. I'm actually worried that this has gone too far. Many of my changes were designed to make it harder for one AI to roll over another, and then this comes along and makes it so easy.

Side note: as it turns out, the Ottomans' capital had built the Stasis Generator national wonder, for the food production bonus I guess, but it meant that the city's combat power was over 200. (214 when I finally killed it, I think.) Orbital Death Rays could barely scratch it, and I had two Combat Mechs and a Gravship bombarding it down for a couple turns. Once it had lost about 75% of its strength I had a Bolo attack, and the city almost killed the unit. And the city's counterfire almost killed a Mech...

One of the things I've done a lot in this mod was create National Wonders whose effects duplicate a World Wonder of a previous era. I'm now thinking that I need to do this for the Great Wall (possibly put it at Citizen's Defense Force and cut the defensive promotion's effects in half) to reduce the movement of attackers, except that as far as I know the Great Wall doesn't actually WORK. Or, I could change the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm to a National Wonder and give it the Great Wall effect instead of what I'd planned. The visibility-reduction thing isn't close to being ready yet, but it's a weak enough effect that I wouldn't mind giving both.
(I kind of like this idea now that I think about it. The only question is stacking; if the Great Wall is fixed and you have a national wonder giving this as well, does everything get -2 movement? And what does that do to units that only move 2?)
 
After a lot more playtesting, v.0.04 is now posted in the first post. The changes:

> The game now displays Policies on the tech tree if they were set to have a prerequisite tech. (Unfortunately it just uses the default "star" icon. I'm working on that.)
> The railroad movement bonus at Monopole Magnets now works correctly. Generally speaking, it makes units move twice as far along rail lines; not unlimited movement, but pretty close to it (something like 9-10 hexes per MP). I'd typed it as TECH_MAGNETIC_MONOPOLES. Stupid.
> Added "FreeStartEra" to several buildings, so that you'll have most of the pre-Industrial buildings if you start in the Digital Era, and so on.
> Fixed the two buildings whose FreeStartEra settings I broke when I changed ERA_FUTURE to ERA_DIGITAL.
> Changed the Nessus Worm back to a Psi unit and removed its bombardment. It still has a few Titan traits (and if I ever get the Bushido promotion working it'll get that too), but for better or worse it's a Psi type again.
> Gravtank's power lowered from 100 to 90. This is a direct consequence of reducing the Modern Armor and such in the previous version.
> The Bolo's ranged attack was reduced from 100 power to 75 (but its combat strength of 150 is untouched).
> The Combat Mech's ranged attack was reduced from 150 power to 120.
> The Former's MP was increased from 2 to 3. I also gave it the Blitz ability to see if that'd allow me to build two things in one turn. Still haven't made it far enough to check this yet.
> The Flavor rating for the Apollo Program was lowered from 100 down to 50. The AIs will still build it, to progress towards the spaceship, but they'll no longer drop everything to build it.
> The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm is now a National Wonder whose effect duplicates the Great Wall (-1 movement for all enemies crossing into your territory). I also want it to do the previous listed effect (-1 visibility for all enemies in your territory), but that isn't working yet.
> Paradise Garden, Stasis Generator, and Quantum Converter's costs were all increased to 3000 (previously was 1800-2000), making them as expensive as the comparable World Wonders. They're just that good; I might bump them up further.
> The Paradise Garden no longer adds 3 Happiness. Now that it produces so many luxury resources, chances are at least one would be a new one, and that's +5 right there, so adding another 3 was overkill.
> Hologram Theater's happiness reduced from 4 to 3.
> Children's Creche changed from +1 happiness and +5 food, to -1 happiness and +8 food. Raising kids in a creche is not a way to make them happy.
> The trade route bonus of the Planetary Transit System lowered from 40% to 33%.
> The trade route bonus of the Bulk Matter Transmitter lowered from 50% to 40%.
> The defense bonus of the Orbital Defense Pod increased from 5 to 10.
> The defense bonus of the Gravity Shield increased from 20 to 25.
> The Time victory now takes 1000 turns on Normal. (Previously it was 800, up from the 500 of the default game.)
> For now, the Ascetic Virtues have been changed to +10% GPP in all cities, +1 culture per specialist. But I'm looking to move the culture boost to the Paradise Garden and bump AV's GPP boost to 25% or higher. I just wasn't ready to do that for this iteration yet.
> A few civilopedia fixes.

I also made one HUGE change to the Crazy Spatz's Balance Mod:
> The base city unhappiness was increased to 4 (from 2) and base unhappiness for a conquered city was increased to 8 (from 5).
You see, this mod added the Aqueduct, Sewer System, and Recycling Center. Each of these adds +1 happiness. This adds up quickly, so I basically subtracted 2 happiness from each city to compensate.
 
Sounds good - I'll DL and fire it up tonight.

Do you recommend playtesting on any specific map-types (i.e. are there map types that would stress test your mod more thoroughly?)? Right now I typically play on Lakes or Plains, as I see these providing the most opportunities to "interface" with the AIs, which is something I am keen about anyways.

Edit: DL'd and installed. One thing I noted is that I ran into a CS which had very early on in the game already produced a Combat Engineer. Are you encouraging the AIs to do this (i.e. build CE instead of Workers), or is this just the way the existing code operates?

D
 
I usually go with the default Continents map, just because I'm usually too lazy to really set up an elaborate test case. Last night, I started a game in the Industrial, and it put me on a small continent with just China and a decent-sized island nearby, which worked well as a test case because by the time I'd crushed China I was nearly into the future eras. I will say, though, that that test game has me a bit worried; I was getting new techs every ~3 turns once I got into the future eras, and that's just way too fast. I'd actually already tweaked the percentages for a Digital (Future) Era start, but it looks like I might have to do the same for Industrial and Nuclear to reduce the tech discount at the very least. The way I see it, before a certain point you've got more than enough time to set up a real empire, and so don't need the boost.

It's likely that I'll make a new version on Saturday or Sunday, and I'm getting close to the point where I'd be willing to upload it to the mod server instead of attaching files here. Probably one or two more versions first; at the very least, I want to try out changing the orbital weapons to being a Siege-like land type instead of a Bomber-like air type. (The only question is whether the Immobile/rebase logic can be used for land units.) This'd make them automatically unable to be intercepted and would remove most animation issues, so I'd like to try it.
(Failing that, I want to create a new air unit type for them. For one thing, I don't want the Bomber-style anti-city or anti-land promotions, I want the artillery-style "vs open" and "vs rough" ones.)
 
\I've got my own small mod running in parallel - pretty much just upgrading the C-S by giving them a GDR and Military Base to make them more competitive in the modern era timeframe.

While on the subject of city-states, I've noticed that if you start in a later era, they FAR undervalue getting resources hooked up. Once they have a worker made then sure, they'll do the jobs, but it seems to be such a low priority that it won't happen often. I think they just have this as a low priority in general, but starting in ancient times invariably means you'll build a worker at some point.

I actually abused this by allying with the city-states, gifting each of them a Labor Mech (since it's a combat unit you can gift it; a Golem would work too), and then watching as terrain that had stayed unimproved for a hundred turns turned into a fully-developed area overnight. Although in one case, the city-state was at war and so decided to use the Labor Mech to attack (it IS a 50-power unit after all) instead of develop. I eventually gifted them a Bolo just so that they could get their war over with and develop the Neutronium resource I needed them to give to me.
But they also do this with work boats; while they seem to be more willing to build the things, I've seen AIs park one on top of a naval resource and never improve it. They'd just sit there, for years, until dying to a passing barbarian Destroyer.
 
It's likely that I'll make a new version on Saturday or Sunday, and I'm getting close to the point where I'd be willing to upload it to the mod server instead of attaching files here.

I don't plan on releasing anything till after the next patch, reasons for this are balancing issues regarding how I am setting up the Barbs and C-S: your comment regarding how C-S develop their land is spot on, as there is a significant difference between games started in Modern era versus Industrial era as far as how the C-S approach tile development (i.e. in the Modern era the C-S AIs don't bother with tiel development). I need to digest this difference, as well as assess any changes made to the AI's with the new patch.

Couple observations with your new release:

1) Combat Engineers: the AI will throw these into the front line, and even seemingly try to attack with these units. Are you seeing similar results here? If so is it because of their flavours? Also when I counterattack I can't capture these units: they just disappear. Is this anticipated?

2) I saw an AI build the Spaceship Stasis Chamber, then leave the unit lingering around my border, instead of moving it to its capitol.

D
 
1) Combat Engineers: the AI will throw these into the front line, and even seemingly try to attack with these units. Are you seeing similar results here? If so is it because of their flavours? Also when I counterattack I can't capture these units: they just disappear. Is this anticipated?

The only Flavor on the Combat Engineer is TILE_IMPROVEMENT, set to 25, and the only AI is the standard UNITAI_WORKER. So it shouldn't be doing anything with them that a Worker can't do. Maybe it wants to improve tiles so badly that it won't protect the units, and is moving them out to build roads and such even if this leaves them at risk. Their increased mobility just makes it more likely they'll be out ahead of the combat forces.

And the no-capture thing was intentional. They just die, like a military unit, but won't inflict any damage in the process. (Sort of like SMAC's Probe Teams.) The Golem, Labor Mech, and Former also aren't capturable, but those have enough armor to potentially survive a few attacks and even fight back. (And since they have combat power, they no longer stack with combat units, but they CAN stack with Engineers, so you can have a Labor Mech covering an Engineer.)

The fact was, the capturable workers was really an advantage for the player; the AI would be careless with his workers, and would never get them back, but you'd effectively gain twice as much by taking advantage of this. He'd lose a worker, AND you'd gain one. And if you lost one of your workers, well, you'd quickly get it back.
Also, the ancient-era workers, sure, they're just peasants who'd work for whoever was in charge. But now we're talking about actual military units, they're not going to switch allegiances.

On a related note, I've decided that the Golem needs a bit of sprucing up, and I thought of a good one: let the player sacrifice the Golem in a city to hurry production, as if it were a very weak Great Engineer. (It makes sense, if you think about it.) This definitely makes up for its deficiencies in other areas, without being too overpowered.

2) I saw an AI build the Spaceship Stasis Chamber, then leave the unit lingering around my border, instead of moving it to its capital.

The only things I did to the Stasis Chamber were reduce its Flavor from 150 down to 50, cut its cost in half, and move it to the Applied Physics tech. I don't know why its behavior would be any different than before. It could just be that since the Flavor isn't through the roof, that the AI decided it really needed to be doing something else instead.
I've seen some AI strangeness with the Work Boat as well, where it'd circle around the resources instead of improving them. And in a Transcendence game I just played, where every civ started with 4 settlers, several of the civs only settled one city... so what happened to the other Settlers? Barbarians might have picked off one or two, but that many?

One thought I had for this was that if, somehow, EVERY unit was gaining a combat-related Flavor (say, Offense) or a combat AI, then that could explain why the AI would use even its noncombat units aggressively. And that could be as easy as an incorrectly closed statement; take the following text
<Update>
<Set Flavor="50"/>
<Where UnitType="UNIT_SS_STASIS_CHAMBER"
</Update>

Because the Where doesn't have the /> at the end of it, it'll screw up the rest of the logic and just end up assigning Flavor=50 for every entry. But I checked my code and there was nothing like this, so I'm confused. And I'm not using any other mods beyond my own two.
 
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