Rhye's Catapult

Hey, Gunner, I am glad to see your testing

Me, I am in 1822 and learned Rifling, Steam and Biology.
This means that tech-timing is kind of OK

You will find a save file of the world in 1822.
Europe is a land of Germany, France and Greece. And Russia.

Greece is the biggest and most developed, yet they don't have techs like
Paper or Constitution.
Louis and Bismarck are also somewhere at late medieval,
no Astronomy or Education yet...
Same goes for Tokugawa, the big guy in the East
- no matter ho big a land he has in the once was China and south-Asia and Australia

Strange to see how Germany colonized that once was Egypt...

Me, I colonized the Eastern shore of North-America, had some figths with barbarians
but I wouldn't I had troubel against archers... not even against longbows later...

Same goes on the east-northern shore of South-America, where I have 2 cities.

The Indian civs are way-way behind, but that is historically OK...

Conclusions, ideas:

1.
As gunner already said, cities are too far away from each other,
3-4 tiles btw each, as in "normal" civ4.

2.
The civs should be better at techs, I still propose for giving them all available at the time
they make their appearance...

3.
I support Gunner, give the new civs good defense...

4.
I also welcome the new barbarian cities in the game - go on Rhye!

5.
The game is superb as of use of memory, now I use ca. 700 kb of RAM.
I believe the game could bear the presence of all the 18 civs,
so I think - yes, GUnner - civs should not be gone for ever,
but perhaps get a slightly new name and new "life"...

EDIT
I cannot post the file, it is too big just over 500 kb

I too have been testing this out and I really enjoyed it. I played as the Romans. I pretty much took most of central Europe when the the Germans spawned. What bothered me was those buggers founded there captial between 2 of my cities, about 2 tiles apart from each of them. Strangely, in my game, the Inidian empire, dominating in score, died spontaneously. I was wondering, how did you script which factors lead to an empire's doom? Or is it randomly?

To lead to gradual decline of civilizations, you can have cities with a high rate of unhappiness have a chance percentage of becoming Barbarian. Thus, an empire will slowly be devoured by the raging barbarian cities. Don't know if this would work, I just want to throw out some ideas.

This unhappiness idea is really interesting to make a downfall for civs!

My game with England is in 1900

History is in full swing, as I further colonized North-America, have 7 cities there
and own pretty much what was owned IRL back then by...
...oh hell, where is the USA??? No Roosevelt appeared!!!

The Aztecs in TExas and California and Central-America.
They are pretty lame but I let them cultivate whatever land they have.

I just had Rails learned and now begin making the Frontier industrialized,
while infantry units make sure I am the one who rules

The others?
Alexander is about to learn Biology in 12 turns,
Peter will have Chemistry in 7,
Bismarck Repl. Parts in 1
France is also at that level,
and the rest is much in the role to play the underdog...

V. Soma said:

Rhye, you know I love maps and doing them, so if needed, I give it a shot and tweak it

Click to expand...

no please I don't work with WBS files but just with bitmaps, so it would be useless
i've noted the suggested changes and I'll apply them asap.

- I've asked a Firaxis guy some help about the SDK. After further tests I found out that distance isn't affected at all by the constant FOUND_RANGE.

- The tech startup based on neighbourhood CAN be done and would replace the historical basis as it is now.

- Something for you to do: please check that new appearing civs have the same units that are listed in the python file (from line 880 on)

- No USA in your game? sounds strange...

- I would change civ's name if I could. But it isn't allowed. The only solution for this will be Warlords that will allow more than 18 civs

-thanks anyway for all this input. I will try to give you a new version by Monday

thenooblet22 said:

I was wondering, how did you script which factors lead to an empire's doom? Or is it randomly?

Click to expand...

It's semi-random.
It uses random values but some civs have more chances than others.

How is it supposed to work with new civs getting units? Because it appears so far from my playing that if they take over an existing city then they don't get any additional units. If that was a design decision, then it should definitely be changed.

Here's a pretty random thing I remember from Civ2 modding. They would do a thing where at a certain point in the game you were supposed to exit the program and run a little executable which exchanged some of the files with new ones. I'm not sure if this would work in Civ4 or not, but maybe we could be able to change the name of civs with this method. Perhaps you could even work something out with python so that you wouldn't even have to exit. Just something to think about

Hey this was highly amusing! I have been playing Egypt and all is well, but I came across a bunch of Russian Skirmishers in the Sahara. I'm sure they were meant to be Malinese...

Ok, I was poking around the python file a bit and noticed a few things.

1. What does this line "if (self.iLevel > 4):" do? I see that if its fufilled then a civ gets some more units to start with.

2. For the entry for Mali it looks like you made a typo. It says "self.makeUnit(iSkirmisher, iRussia, tPlot, 9)". That could make some problems.

3. In my game Mongolia, France, and Spain all didn't receive the units they were supposed to. I think that was because all three of them started by flipping an existing city. It also looks like Spain didn't receive the techs it was supposed to get. I'm assuming that the techs you list in the tech section for each civ are the ones they are supposed to receive. Look at this screenshot or the previous one I had of Bismark for proof. This one of Isabella was after I had given her a whole bunch of the basic techs already.




Edit: Oh look, a cross post! I actually did notice that Russia thing in the file before I read Willowmound's post. Very easy to fix, I even managed to do it

Rhye said:

- I've asked a Firaxis guy some help about the SDK. After further tests I found out that distance isn't affected at all by the constant FOUND_RANGE.

Click to expand...

Well, then: is there yet a way to make the distance shorter?
Would be important...

Rhye said:

- The tech startup based on neighbourhood CAN be done and would replace the historical basis as it is now.

Click to expand...

Wow, GREAT! Hope to see that in the next test on Monday!

Rhye said:

- No USA in your game? sounds strange...

Click to expand...

Well, still no USA, as in 1929...

Greece is kind of develeoped, learns Corporation now,
most if the other are in unisone about Astronomy...
I prepare to claim the whole of North-America

I am very glad to find that waitng btw turns is ca. 15-20 seconds...

A funny thing:
I killed of the Aztecs in 1944 but they respawned in the very same turn in the very south end of America...

I abandon the first test game in 1958, below you will see the minimap.
Story would be that a world war began against Greece,
me included in an alliance with Germany and Russia against Alex...

I have tanks, aircraft, battleships - alex has rifle, cavalry...
I captured one city in Scandinavia and said, OK, that's childish

Maybe I will have another run to see things one level up...

Rhye said:

- No USA in your game? sounds strange...

Click to expand...

I'm in the 1860s, and still no US in my game either. The Aztecs occupy all of North America.

USA should have been born with a big flip around 1650. Very strange.


Anyway, do you want any barbarian city in particular?


For now my list is:

Ur
Babylon
Jerusalem
Axum
Lutetia
Carthage
Chichen Itza
Angkor
Seoul
....


If you want some more cities please post it together with the year (considering if there'll be enough space at that time!)

Rhye said:

Anyway, do you want any barbarian city in particular?

....

If you want some more cities please post it together with the year (considering if there'll be enough space at that time!)

Click to expand...

Uppsala in Sweden. Adam of Bremen went there in the 11th Century. You could include Trondheim in Norway and Jelling in Denmark too, as there are no Vikings in Civ yet. All cities 800 AD perhaps? Or even earlier would make sense.

Is Baron equal to Noble level? I was just surprised how fast the AI's were gaining tech.

Not for sure why, but the Egyptians were destroyed in my game around 2000 BC.

The graphics are great! I'm tempted to port them over to the normal game.

@ Rhye and followers : Why not if i choose France start directly in 500 AD or choosing Rome start in 750 BC ?

methos -> difficuly levels are just renamed to be a feudal titles scale

lachlan -> that would be the most realistic choice, but how would you achieve that? Pressing end of turn 100 times before starting to play?

Some ideas
Barbarian cities to add - I also support scandinavia, and all the cities yo gave in your list, rhye, except for Ur because I think it will be too crowded. Let persia or Arabia settle their own city over there.
Also, maybe add some more barbarian cities around rome, also in the south of italy. I have noticed the romans doesnt get to be what it was in real life- so maybe give it more legioners instead of the settler and have it conquer al the barbarians around it.
Another idea I have based on what others said - in big empires the unhappy cities will flip to barbarians(add unhappiness to distant cities). Now, in places where big empires were in real life, like rome, put more production and less luxury. Now, when other civs will rise and will take rome's cities which possess luxuries the unhappiness will rise thus flipping more cities until only the capital is left and the declining will be more realistic.
Hope you understood that.

OK, In my current game, I'm Arabia. I got off to a rocky start, with Barbarians, I think it was a combination of me putting "Agressive Barbarians" or something like that on, and Egypts supposed 1st downfall backfireing onto me!

The world seems to be less advanced than it should be, although I'm playing Baron difficulty, and as I rarely play civ 4, it's probably my bad.

Egypts 1st city that I spotted (Mempis, IIRC) was built a few tiles south of Thebes, on the River Nile still I think. Persia built Persagade or something like that (I'm not good with Persian names) near modern day Iraq, although I could be mistaken.

Later, maybe tomorrow, I will upload some photos of what's happned.