Version 4.2 Discussion Thread

fallen_addict said:

Just piping in to give my sincere thanks and encourage to LunarMongoose for this amazing mod and also to Rakete for the Map work.

I've been silent for a long time, real life getting in the way, but I've just gone and installed Civ4 back on my new comp and have come back to look for the latest version of the Mongoosemod. Amazed and humbled to see you are STILL working on it. Amazing and again, appreciations to you sir!

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Aww... *hugs*

This code merge is the last thing I'm doing for 4.2, but it's also the biggest and most difficult thing. There's a reason I was putting it off for so long, lol. I've made a dent already, but there's a TON of code to go through. The good news is, I haven't even gotten to the AI files yet, and I've already found a lot of great fixes and improvements. Karadoc's known for his AI work, but he really deserves a lot of credit for this stuff too.

MM 4.2 is going to be absolutely amazing, but it's been kind of a long marathon getting to this point. Thanks for your continued patience, guys.

...peeps thru the window of the mad scientist' workshop....



JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

...peeps thru the window of the mad scientist' workshop....

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I've attached an appropriate response.

We interrupt our normally-scheduled discussion to bring you this special report:

I'm still working on it.

More breaking news as it happens! Stay tuned...

Looking forward to it, so very good news

Monthly checkin.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Monthly checkin.

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Still here. Sorry, Real Life™ eggsploded again. (Parents were visiting again, had to do a lot more work on my custom framing project, sold more old junk on Amazon, dentist stuff, losing weight saps my energy, and the first-ever Diablo 3 ladder season started... sigh.)

I did get a fair amount of work done on the code merge back in August, but there's still a ways to go. I also just got back into 24/7 work mode yesterday, which mostly amounted to making a bunch of fixes for stuff I JUST NOW noticed was broken, sigh.

Btw Rakete said in email he was expecting to be much-more-free-than-usual to work on his map from Sept 23 to Oct 23, so I'm definitely aiming to be done by then myself so the new Africa can hopefully be included in the 4.2 zip.

I also added another post to the Change Log sticky with the Patch Notes from June 7 through today.

Cool news and Thanks for the update.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Cool news and Thanks for the update.

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Thanks, but right now I'm just hoping to get 4.2 out before people start dying of old age, sigh.

So 3 days ago I was casually poking around the Unit Graphics forum for a minute when I didn't have energy to do anything else, and I randomly stumbled on a thread by a guy named Bakuel. Soon after, I noticed a couple of things there that I'd found in my big "C2C Archaeological Excavation" a few months ago. Soooo I decided to search for all threads started by him.

Turns out, something like 95% of the awesome stuff I had found earlier, came from him originally. I'd REALLY like to know how I completely missed ALL of it until now. I mean, I've kept an eye on the Unit Graphics forum pretty regularly, pretty much since I started here 8 years ago. HOW DID I NEVER NOTICE A SINGLE ONE OF HIS THREADS?!! lol.

Anywho, here's the basic point I'm trying to make:

Bakuel is Freaking Awesome.

*ahem* So I immediately set to work downloading almost his entire library of zips and adding them to my collection. Which took forever, btw, b/c there's a million of them. It turns out I actually did get a lot of it indirectly from C2C, but I also missed a fair amount, so for the last 2.5 days I've been doing ANOTHER big VU ("Visual-Unique", ie ethnic versions of units) update. And I expect it'll take me a couple more days before I'm done, but it shouldn't delay release much.

I swear I was perfectly happy being in Programmer Mode™ lately, but somehow this stuff always comes out of nowhere. In case you're curious, so far I've finished major VU overhauls of Persia, Arabia, and Russia, which were all civs that were a bit neglected last time around.

Thanks, but right now I'm just hoping to get 4.2 out before people start dying of old age, sigh.

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I am over the age of 60.

JosEPh Civ player still hangin' around.

JosEPh_II said:

I am over the age of 60.

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Well, hopefully you can last just a couple more weeks.

Update: I also got the interconnected VU updates of Aztec, Maya, and Inca done last night while waiting for the new Sailor Moon Crystal episode to air. I'm NOT using most of Bakuel's Aztec graphics, though. I love his Mayan set, but I just don't like how his "more realistic" Aztec units look at all, heh. Fortunately the vanilla graphics do a pretty good job there - lots of feathers and stuff.

Next up: Ottoman and India.

After that: Sumeria, Mali, and Khmer.

Centuries from now, when dinosaurs walk the Earth again: Back to working on the K-Mod code merge.

Hi Lunarmongoose,

before you finish your work, please think about the "Madagascar" problem. I call it like that, because it always happens to the Madagacan empire on my custom map, but it also affects games on any randomly generated maps.

Once maintenance costs for oversea cities become too high, a civilization will repell these cities and make them a new civ, which will be their vasall state. However, the problem is that this happens too early when the oversea cities are too small to generate enough trade to keep up the research pace. I always play with technology trading switched off. Their production volume is not quite high either, so they can easily be overran by any other civ on that continent.

This is a tragedy on my Africa map, because the Madagascan empire usually develops nicely and is doing a good job settling in the continental East Africa. But once they have founded around 7-8 cities on the continent, they will repell them, but these cities are still small so they are a nice meal for the Zulu or Ethiopian. A human player would give massive support to these cities with troops built in Madagascar, but the AI is not capable to do that. Even for a human player it would not work out well in the long run, because the continantal vassal will soon be behind in technology.

So I think you should consider to disable the whole feature to repell oversea cities, or at least increase the requirements for doing that by a lot.
I think there are also colonial maintenance costs in addition to number of cities and distance maintenance, so you might want to remove the colonial maintenance costs. Distance costs should be fairly enough. Or at least reduce colonial maintenance costs by 50% or so.

JosEPh

JosEPh

Merry Christmas LunarMongoose. Wishing you the best in the New year, Be Happy and Be Blessed.

JosEPh

LunarMongoose said:

Well, hopefully you can last just a couple more weeks.

Update: I also got the interconnected VU updates of Aztec, Maya, and Inca done last night while waiting for the new Sailor Moon Crystal episode to air. I'm NOT using most of Bakuel's Aztec graphics, though. I love his Mayan set, but I just don't like how his "more realistic" Aztec units look at all, heh. Fortunately the vanilla graphics do a pretty good job there - lots of feathers and stuff.

Next up: Ottoman and India.

After that: Sumeria, Mali, and Khmer.

Centuries from now, when dinosaurs walk the Earth again: Back to working on the K-Mod code merge.

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Well I still have 4.1. So long LunarMongoose, wish you well.

Good bye

JosEPh

LunarMongoose said:

Centuries from now, when dinosaurs walk the Earth again: Back to working on the K-Mod code merge.

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Yer adding dinosaurs into the mod?

I hope this Mod does actually come out. It sounds really good.

But at this stage in mid 2015 its looking like the project is dead. I hope it comes back. I can't find a download link...

<-- STILL here. (@PurpleMelbourne: So ha! )

If you knew me IRL you'd know I never, EVER leave things un-finished; it's an Asperger trait, heh. Though long delays can be pretty common.

I AM sorry though. Blame Blizzard for Hearthstone / Heroes double-whammy (it's like they knew EXACTLY how to steal my life...), needing to lose weight which saps energy, and my big, STILL-ongoing picture project here in the condo... Oh and then I spent a bunch of time organizing my files and software in connection with Windows 10 coming out, and most recently decided to rather suddenly make a massive update to my music library which had been languishing for a decade...

But if anyone is still around to care, it shouldn't be too much longer now! If necessary I'll even release 4.2 without the code merge to further expedite things, heh.

I'm still interested, have followed the mod for a good long time now, so looking forward to it.