Building Made Fun!

I really like this mod and want to use it, but there seems to be several problems for me. One the policy were you get a free great person when used locks the GUI you can't get to the choice screen or do anything besides look around. The other is that trapping is removed from the tech tree, but tiles still say it is required. Is there something wrong with the mod or my verison of Civ V?
 
That's not right. The "select great person" circle should appear and be clickable as normal in the messages. In fact, I changed nothing in that policy tree.
Nothing requires trapping in my mod. Trading posts were moved to pottery and camps to archery.

First try running a game with only this mod active (if not already). There is always a chance of a conflict occurring.
If the problem persists, or if you prefer to attempt this first; I advise to delete all versions of my mod and clear the cache: delete the contents of the "cache" folder in your Civ5 directory (the same that contains the MODS folder). Then install again and keep your fingers crossed ;)

It's best to always delete old versions of a mod before installing the new one, though this may not be the cause here.

Good luck and thanks for playing :)
 
This is a great mod, but i fear i cannot use it, because its incompatible with Thalassicus Balance and Bugfix Package. if i load them both, i cannot see the tech tree, nor choose research or production.

Qanat: is it intended, that while aqueduct and qanat are mutually exclusive, only the aqueduct lets one upgrade to public baths? Household water usage always was only a tiny fraction of agricultural water demand. The mountain restriction of the qanat may even be enough not to have it in every desert city. As the city becomes bigger, the usefulness of the qanat may even become lower than that of the aqueduct, but one cannot change his mind once one of the two is built. +1 food to desert tiles would be cool, but maybe more along the line of an Assuan Dam wonder...

Nuclear Plant: do these things melt down like in Civ4? Nuclear plants don't really need freshwater access (even small freswater bodies are enough to supplement the cooling circuits, the water within will not be replaced for a long time, since its radioactive waste and would have to be disposed off properly. Many Nuclear facilities do use a larger freshwater os saltwater body as cooling means though (since the produced energy is a product of the heat difference between 2 reservoirs (Carnot)). Those who don't have that possiblity (for example if the heat gradient would damage the freswater bodys ecosystem) use air cooling, resulting in those big trademark concrete, slightly steaming towers, everybody identifies nuclear power plants with.
The lack of a freshwater body nearby seems to increase difficulties in case of imminent meltdown though, as seen in Fukushima, where salt water had to be used in the primary cooling circuit, fubaring everything.

Ressource allocation: i don't know if your mod spawns more strategic ressources, but oil and aluminium demand might become a real problem in latter games. While that would encourage warfare over oil supply (as seen in reality) at least mass transit systems (metro) surely doesn't needs oil. Seeing as industrial park needs aluminium and oil, it would also be possible to let units need more than one strategic ressource too. It always struck me as trange, that fighter jets would only use aluminium and not oil any more. Or that Cannons, Artillery, Ironclad, Destroyers, Battleships and Carriers would make due without iron (or that Iron would not even be used in manufacturing plants and Industrial Zones) As Realworld expample one could name the limitation of Chinas economic growth by the availability of building steel. Maybe add Ethanol Processing Plant (-Food + Oil) as Building or national Wonder to give smaller civs without access to Oil the possibilty to have some units at least.

national wonders: Is the necessity to have the required building in every city to be able to build a national wonder a perk for smaller nonexpanding empires? In an expanding game i build them too, but the micromanagement to make sure an undergoing construction would not be aborted when founding or annexing a new city is a real pain in the a... Maybe a 80% of cities requirement would be enough (or #of cities -1)

building proposal: Imperial Road Network (my most sought after national wonder)
req: market in 80% of cities, Civil Service
reduces movement cost over own territorys modernized tiles to 0.5. Doesn't change tile appearence, bridges inclusive if possible. (Bonus not increased with machinery as for roads).
This would account for the fact that most modernized tiles would have some kind of road access to transport goods and workers to and from the city, that the own military can use.
 
Thanks! and Bummer. Incompatibility with the most popular mod on the forums is bad news :( Thanks for giving it a whirl though.

Qanat: is it intended, that while aqueduct and qanat are mutually exclusive, only the aqueduct lets one upgrade to public baths?
Yes. I'm hoping to introduce a nice tradeoff here, on top of influencing city site picking. And indeed, initially the qanat is more powerful, but it gets beaten by the aqueduct for large cities. Planning required :)

About not being able to switch I'm not sure. Haven't tried, but thought you could sell the qanat and buy an aqueduct later in the game? If you a healthy amount of money/production to spare that is, in which case it probably doesn't matter anyway...
+1 food on desert is not possible with the XML, only bonuses for features can be given.
And I guess you're right about the water demand. I just reasoned that the qanat will mostly get built in small desert towns with low growth potential, making water precious and not "spilled" for elaborate bathing. I'll probably leave this to make for more interesting gameplay.

Nuclear Plant: do these things melt down like in Civ4?
No.
That's some elaborate arguments you have there. You convinced me; I'll cut the fresh water requirement :) In the end the highest production cities most likely have a river with hydro power anyway.

Ressource allocation: i don't know if your mod spawns more strategic ressources, but oil and aluminium demand might become a real problem in latter games.
Good! I indeed wanted to make resources as precious as possible. And those you have need to be spent according to your goals: army, production or gold. I also wanted to avoid you spend the endgame just building every building everywhere. The industrial park seemed too powerful to just require oil. But that's completely based on my own games.
It is strange oil is not needed for modern military, but I already assigned to buildings instead now. Though I can image it bothers many people with high regard for realism.

I really like your reasoning about iron though, especially the reference to China. I could introduce a blast furnace with factory prerequisite, which competes with siege units for iron.
The Ethanol Processing Plant exists somewhere as a mod component (called bio refinery iirc). I decided against including it because it alters a LUA file, giving rise to potential compatibility problems. But seeing this mod is already not compatible with Thal's, maybe I should just not worry about that anymore.

As a footnote: maybe I should change the name for the metro (as you indicate somewhat). Métropolitain as full for métro seems to be the case for French but not so natural in English.

national wonders: Is the necessity to have the required building in every city to be able to build a national wonder a perk for smaller nonexpanding empires?
Yes. It's an additional factor on top of just happiness, which I like. I agree that the micromanagement can be a pain though, especially if you forget you're building one :wallbash: The solution is the rushbuy the missing ones, which of course takes it away for other opportunities. I think the extra decision making is worth it.
Making the requirement variable would mostly retain the benefits while eliminating the frustration, so I'm all for it. Alas it requires LUA, which is not in my skills list yet...

building proposal: Imperial Road Network
Also can't do that I'm afraid :( Movement bonuses are not found in the Buildings table and I can't import them from somewhere else. I'm not sure if your proposal can be done at all with currently available tools.

Thanks for taking so much time to write down your points; much appreciate it! I think I'm starting to have enough inspiration for version 10 now :)
 
Not an XML possibility. Terrain prerequisites exclude features, but you can give a bonus for features (but not terrain) :crazyeye:
As a compromise I included the National Park, which boosts natural wonders nearby. I limited it to one building allowed as I can't set the nearby NW as prerequisite. Also I think the AI has no clue how to use it.
 
Thanks for thinking it all through! I didn't learn mod compiling yet, so it's good to hear, whats possible and what's not. The incompatibility with Thals mod might be because he too edits the tech tree and many building files. Seeing as he releases a new version every week or so it could be a real time sink to try to keep up with it. I don't know what the best course of action would be to make it compatible...

As for the qanat, you are right on the selling part, i discovered today that one can sell buildings. So there really should be no problem and the qanat is indeed a nice touch (i always have to think of Dune though, when i hear that word)

I don't think Hydro power and Nuclear are mutually exclusive. Just solar power can only be built if theres no nuclear plant (and Desert). I could be mistaken, because i dont have a game with your mod running atm, where i could look it up fast, but i think i remember it correctly, that the Hydro plant only adds +1 production to river tiles (as the levee in Civ IV did) and no % prod bonus. So in my last standard game (without your mod) i had Hydro Plant and Nuclear plant in almost every city. I believe the hydro plant in your mod is unmodified from vanilla. At the moment the nuclear plant is also stronger than the solar plant (35% vs. 25%). Is that intended? With no meltdowns and no alternatives it remains a very idealistic decision not to build nuclear power plants, while in real life its a perfectly valid one.

But power diversification and global warming simulation would be a big enough topic for a standalone mod: i'm thinking about power requirements for selected buildings summing up to an empire power demand that could be supplied by building locally availabe power plants (nuclear requiring uranium, fossil requiring oil or coal, solar requiring desert, wind requiring coast and hydro requiring river) that power the empirewide grid. Not even sure something like that could be done in Lua, since it would require a whole new ressource system very much like happiness (which is also an empirewide demand and supply system). Could be hard to program something like that though :-/

I think Metro is quite understandable (at least from a german/italian perspective i had no problems with it). I was just hoping it would not require oil, since most passenger trains run on electricity and mass transit actually helps to save oil nowadays. I do agree completely on the industrial park though. Its very powerful and should not be built in every city (even if CiV 5 Cities are more megalopolies on the available map scales). A possible solution could be to play your mod mainly on maps set to abundant ressources (i usually like to add 50% more AI players on a map, so it gets quite crowded and not everyone has acess to every ressource, let alone in the necessary quantities. If i wouldn't add additional players, unrealistically high amounts of land would remain unsettled even in the modern ages, which ain't very believable. Even so i often get on a conquest spree to get enough coal to power my manufactories.

Thalassicus has "75% of cities must have aqueduct to build trajan baths" integrated in his mod. Maybe you can reverse engineer that out of his package. I wouldn't know how though.

In the meantime thanks for the great modpack and i hope i don't plunge you into a nightmare of impossible requests here.
 
I don't think Hydro power and Nuclear are mutually exclusive.
No I just meant that for me cities I want to boost production so high I'm willing to spend uranium on it, it will probably also have a hydro plant and thus fresh water access, making the requirement irrelevant for the nuclear plant.
At the moment the nuclear plant is also stronger than the solar plant (35% vs. 25%). Is that intended? With no meltdowns and no alternatives it remains a very idealistic decision not to build nuclear power plants, while in real life its a perfectly valid one.
That's a matter of play style I guess. I give low priority to the fission tech unless I want nukes, in which case I will keep most of the uranium for those. Though I rarely go on an offensive war in the modern age. Also from a realism perspective nuclear plants achieve much higher electricity outputs.

But power diversification and global warming simulation would be a big enough topic for a standalone mod
Go for it! It would make an interesting new system :)

I think Metro is quite understandable (at least from a german/italian perspective i had no problems with it). I was just hoping it would not require oil, since most passenger trains run on electricity and mass transit actually helps to save oil nowadays. [...] A possible solution could be to play your mod mainly on maps set to abundant ressources
The name now is Metropolitan, I'll change it to Metro. I could drop the oil requirement, yes. They are quite powerful yet I don't build them that often. Boosting them (by not requiring oil) will also make the lower part of the tree more interesting. Will do!
I haven't experienced a real shortage of resources before though. I don't want every city having every building. You do make me wonder whether the AI isn't hurting their military capacity by building too many industrial parks... will try to pay attention to this. Maybe I'll weaken it and scrap the aluminum requirement.

Thalassicus has "75% of cities must have aqueduct to build trajan baths" integrated in his mod. Maybe you can reverse engineer that out of his package. I wouldn't know how though.
Thanks for the tip, will have a look later :)

In the meantime thanks for the great modpack and i hope i don't plunge you into a nightmare of impossible requests here.
Not at all. I just select what I'm willing to do ;) Thanks for the thorough feedback!
 
Re-hi ! I i'm near to finish a game with your mod BMF 9.2 :crazyeye:

I play Arabian Empire, with random civs placement, no war practically during all the game, i'm in 1930 and 8 cities on Small Random Earth at quick speed...

A little problem i play at level 4 of difficulty and i found that ai do not ameliorating well their territories, i will join my save, it's 1.0.1.221b on Macs now, i hope its fully usable for you...

The problem that several civs have in 1900, only one city...

The problem is that ai can use too much time to build your new buildings, wonders and national projects...

:goodjob:
 

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I can't use the save unfortunately as I don't have any DLC. The game says they are required to load it.

Do you consistently see this problem with the AI? I can't remember ever seeing it, though I do find the AI often expands too slowly. More buildings could be a factor, good point :think: I will greatly increase the expansion flavor value of the settler, so it is much more likely to become the top choice for an expanding AI. Thanks for reporting :)
 
I will remake a game with your mod with my new iMac recently started :goodjob:

I play Standard instead of Small...

I believe that Mentos has wrote some instructions for including its mini mod into others mods...
 
@ moriboe

still have not finished a game with your mod for a 'long review ;) the reason is not to much spare time atm and i try to combine bmf with other mods ... adding another small one .start a game adding another small one .. etc.

@ great person choice problem.
i dont remember which other mod i had enabled but it occured also to me. the solution in my case was easy. just click on the notification log and click (or doubleclick? ) on the line which mentions the great person to choose.

then it worked :) not sure though if that is a general solution for that problem . which does not necessarily have to be caused by bmf mod.

at the moment i play one game with several other mods enabled hopefully this time i advance enough to make a more helpful comment.

a quick idea ( not well thought through )

change bonus after certain tech researched.
example akropolis now provides def and food bonus
in the modern age it could INSTEAD provide small amount of culture and gold
the same could be done with walls or castles for example

reasoning: to reflect the different usage in different times

coming soon to a planet near you: capt skirks bmf experience report ;)

thanks for all the work so far.
 
I believe that Mentos has wrote some instructions for including its mini mod into others mods...
I noticed that Barbarians! is not on the mod browser, so your case gains strength :D

example akropolis now provides def and food bonus
in the modern age it could INSTEAD provide small amount of culture and gold
Can't do that with XML, but I do like the idea! This could be a first Lua mod for me to try: make old stuff generate culture or tourism income :) Would depend on whether the creation turn is stored somewhere, otherwise I would probably limit it to stuff that goes obsolete.

coming soon to a planet near you: capt skirks bmf experience report ;)
Please let it be Earth *fingers crossed*
 
1) New Types of City-States

What do you think of this mod from Iceco which adds more city state types ?

2) Food Economy

The is a mod which allow players to trade food ressources, from Deep Blue...
A new version should be ready maibye...

3) Sorry for Barbarian Mod, but if you have included already in your mod, its always better than having 3-4-5 Mods at same time with compatibility problems...

4) Here a interesting concept that would appeals you :

Real Earth O.99

There are a few Standard Earth with full of Civs and City-States...

I recommend the "Regular Earth" it's the best...

I like a lot this concept as these maps are not hurting my computer...

What do you think of this concept ?
 
Updated! Just balance, nothing new. I tweaked the modern buildings discussed here and made a number of national wonders more interesting.

Another thing is I disallowed improving jungle (except for roads), because there was no choice anyway; if you didn't cut it down it could only hold a trading post. Instead I added 1 base gold (pelts, feathers, ...) and added 1 science with the university again (in addition to 2 science with the laboratory). So Africa may look like the screenshot attached.

@Lachlan

The city states mod looks pretty interesting, I wonder how I could have overlooked it for that long!
Food economy is nice, but doesn't fit this mod's goals (city specialization, vs empire-wide effect) enough for me to include it. As you may have noticed I'm not too eager to include standalone mod components :mischief:
Though Barbarians! will probably make it into v10.

Will check out the earth map. From the screenshots in the download page they looked really small, but will have a better look later. What made me work with Rhye's map was actually the relative "lack of realism"; especially Europe being massively inflated (I helped a notch as well :D).
 

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Two things :

1) What about packing the maps and the MBF mod into one pack ?

2) What about removing "instant heal" unit promotion from the game, or having this promotion from Modern Era only ? Since Modern Era is the only era where Military Medicine acts on battlefields ?
 
I play with no instant heal myself, but don't want to force it on everyone playing this mod. Also I don't think your suggestion is straightforward to implement Pouakai; it would make the promotion work according to a differently rule than the others. But I would definitely applaud something like this!

About all the integration questions: I've been thinking about making a pack that may also include some stuff from Thal's mod. Maybe after the next patch, which is supposed to arrive in under 2 months and will address gameplay issues iirc. But to be honest I'm losing steam and looking for a definite endpoint in devellopment, or someone to take over...
 
Great! :)

All Lua I have was done by others, so that's not essential. I will send you the project files after the weekend. Don't have much time now, but will provide a list of things on my todo-list later (will still do work on it). But you are free to veto or change anything :)
 
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