[MOD] Planet Roanoke, a/k/a all SMAC'ed up

Krikkitone said:

Religious Buildings, and religions themselves, can be used to give effects only when they are the official religion (at least happiness and commerce, I'm not sure about % boostings/food production.)

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Thanks, Krikkitone (interested in signing up? ); I saw that in the Buildings xml but didn't know exactly how it worked. The trick is to make ALL of the building's effects active ONLY when the lifeform is favored.

That's why I've been looking into Sevo's Faces of God; each civ's unique Lifeform building could give that Lifeform's specialists a +1 food. My only worry is that the AI will not understand the consequences of switching "religions" and mass-destroy life-support buildings across an entire civ whenever it switches lifeforms.

Well, switching lifeforms should hurt.

Maybe some religious buildings only work when that religion is the State Religion, but others still function so long as it's present in the city? So a Borg Temple still has some effect, whereas a Borg Holy City would have no effect in a city if Cyneid is the State Religion. Something like that might prevent mass destruction.

woodelf said:

Maybe some religious buildings only work when that religion is the State Religion, but others still function so long as it's present in the city? So a Borg Temple still has some effect, whereas a Borg Holy City would have no effect in a city if Cyneid is the State Religion. Something like that might prevent mass destruction.

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What Krikkitone is saying though, and I think he's right, is that only a few things are currently allowed in XML to be linked to State Religion; I believe these are happiness and commerce. Would be better if it was ALL effects... but maybe:

You can also set it so that the building can only be built if it corresponds to a State Religion, but that doesn't then demolish the building if you switch. However, Sevo's mod can take care of that.

The reason I'm worried about the consequences of switching a state religion is that the AI will not "know" about all its buildings collapsing. But then again, I've found the AI pretty reluctant to switch religions, and we can ratchet that reluctance up a bit more based on their personalities and traits.

Er, by "Religion" I mean "Lifeform."

Religion = Lifeform except that we need someone like Miriam who brandishes an Old Earth Religion upon us!

Error report:

10 turns into the game when my borders grow a new structure appearantly comes into view and it appears as a giant (and I mean gargantuan proportions) pink ziggurat. It covers at least 10 squares, both on north-south and east-west axis.
And the game crashes when I toggle the plotgrid on.
O yes, during modstart an error popped up about unitsinfoxml (IIRC) but pressing ok let it continue to load.
And the zeppelin engine sound is annoying after a time.

Thanks, GeoModder, glad ppl are testing this out. Maybe I inserted that Ziggurat model a little too hastily (at 1am). Didn't you know that the secret of Roanoke was that giant, pink ziggurats killed all the British colonists?

The XML error is a total PITA. I found the only way to kill it is to keep removing units until it goes away, then combing through that unit's XML or just throwing it away and starting over again. I think there's whitespace or some kind of hidden character in the wrong place...?

I thought I turned off the zepplin engine sound (it's actually the gunship sound, since I pasted the zepplin onto the gunship). Oh well, will check on that tonight and patch it all up.

The damn gunship sound!

Come throw out some ideas Geo!

One suggestion Pad...don't call the download "Assets". Please add another folder called Roanoke and put the Assets into it before zipping her up.

And one more thing Pad...Geo is a great slide maker and Main menu guy. If you need help you should ask him nicely.

I suggest we remove the Ziggurat for now. I scaled down to 0.1 and it's still big and now off center....oh, and pink. Making sure the dds coloring and the nif recognize each other is beyond me at the moment.

woodelf said:

If you need help you should ask him nicely.

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Yeah, I can safely say that SMAC is still lying around on my hd.

GeoModder said:

Yeah, I can safely say that SMAC is still lying around on my hd.

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Me too, but in my WinXP / Athlon64 rig, opening the workshop occassionally corrupts the game. I have yet to win the game as an alien faction building the signal thingee.

What ideas do you have for this mod?

Few thoughts on things,
the 'Native' species/racereligion (all terms mean the same thing right?)
can focus on gold..ie 'energy' as they are more and more integrated into the actual planet.

On the Borg, I'd say that perhaps they are not necessarily the 'collective consciousness' idea (so that Happiness can still be an issue) Since any of those Races (could easily go towards some 'collective mind' whether as Psi-linked Mutagens, Wirelinked Cynoids/Borg, or Lattice Linked Natives...perhaps even a small implant could link Humans)

So perhaps a 'Thought Control' Government Civic might be better for that part of the Borg.



On the Food<->Hammers 'Borg' that sounds like a complicated major change, there are a few issues
1. How to 'encourage' an AI Borg to switch to Mines instead of Farms
2. How to 'encourage' an AI Borg to use any options that allow it to use Hammers to get Population.

The actual mechanism could be pretty simple, (something that provides food at a Production Cost)

In any case what I think is the simplest way that would make the most sense is to have a series of Borg specific Food buildings, that produce "Food" for generating+supporting Populations under the Borg 'Life form'. Borg specialists could produce enough food to support themselves with the right buildings, and the Buildings would provide enough Raw food for Tile Workers. (that way you don't have to figure out 'negative hammer' concepts)

So instead of actually building a Borg you build a series of 'Buildings' that produce say 3,5,5,7,9, or 11 food at increasing expense)


Another idea would be just to drop the Food=Production and provide a way for
1. Borg to support themselves easily (possibly a building that gives a fixed amount of food per person.)
2. Buildings for the Borg that increase Production.

PS away from Civ computer for a while, can you say what the Government+Religious Civics are?

Krikkitone said:

Few thoughts on things,
the 'Native' species/racereligion (all terms mean the same thing right?)
can focus on gold..ie 'energy' as they are more and more integrated into the actual planet.

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Sounds good. The "Natives" are so far off I'm not even sure what to think of them yet, so please keep thinking up more! I've been reading up on hypothetical silicon life and they don't sound all that interesting. Recently I've been thinking of them more as collections of nanomachines, like ants, but synthetic. (See the spoilers re: Intelligent Design).

On the Borg, I'd say that perhaps they are not necessarily the 'collective consciousness' idea (so that Happiness can still be an issue) Since any of those Races (could easily go towards some 'collective mind' whether as Psi-linked Mutagens, Wirelinked Cynoids/Borg, or Lattice Linked Natives...perhaps even a small implant could link Humans)

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Agreed! Part of what could be neat is that any species can have any destiny -- some options are more synergistic than others, but why can't Borg be freedom-loving hippies? I'm about to update one of the top posts with some civics ideas.

Great ideas

2. Buildings for the Borg that increase Production.

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woodelf and I have been kicking this idea back and forth for a while... it makes sense. One of the game-balancing issues is that this doesn't go out of hand, because in the vanilla game, you "build" people (with food) so they can in turn "build" other things (production, money). I have yet to answer "Why can't that be the same mechanism for buildings?" but so far don't have an answer, other than when I've added buildings that generate (rather than multiply) resources, somehow the game goes out of balance.

btw, have you ever gotten a city down to -1 hammer? Suddenly, it can build anything in one turn!

But running with your idea: A Borg city in its purest form could be a one-pop city that has nothing but buildings, each costing about the same as one pop point to build (so, logrithmically more expensive) that each produce, I dunno, 2 hammers. Maybe to balance it out more, the bigger ones have a 1% chance of nuclear meltdown or similar catastrophe???

Any thoughts on whether that would work or not?

Padmewan said:

What ideas do you have for this mod?

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None. All I can say is -->

Good stuff Krikkitone. I think as of now not much is set in stone, so ideas are very encouraged!

Speaking of stone...check out the Stone Golem unit : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166847

He needs to find a way onto Planet V!

Anyone interested in "signing up" for this Mod and helping brainstorm new ideas, please join us here (see woodelf's sig). We definitely need help with everything from techs to civs to units to art... please join us!

Oh yeah, we'll need a full time Python SDK guy for sure.

And we always need more ideas and brainstorming.

hey guys sonner or later i will help you out with art, but now that i have less spare time, i want to finish up the human civs for the warhammer fb mod, cause they surely can be used in some other medieval mods too and WH FB will finally get the unique character i want it to have, even when we have to wait for fantasy civs cause of a lack of models!
After that i will go on with that plant thing i think.

What i could do is a simple borg unit or infantry unit, but i never saw SMAC close enough (so to say only saw a friend playing it) to have an impression which style they should have.

Padmewan said:

Sounds good. The "Natives" are so far off I'm not even sure what to think of them yet, so please keep thinking up more! I've been reading up on hypothetical silicon life and they don't sound all that interesting. Recently I've been thinking of them more as collections of nanomachines, like ants, but synthetic. (See the spoilers re: Intelligent Design).



Agreed! Part of what could be neat is that any species can have any destiny -- some options are more synergistic than others, but why can't Borg be freedom-loving hippies? I'm about to update one of the top posts with some civics ideas.

Great ideas



woodelf and I have been kicking this idea back and forth for a while... it makes sense. One of the game-balancing issues is that this doesn't go out of hand, because in the vanilla game, you "build" people (with food) so they can in turn "build" other things (production, money). I have yet to answer "Why can't that be the same mechanism for buildings?" but so far don't have an answer, other than when I've added buildings that generate (rather than multiply) resources, somehow the game goes out of balance.

btw, have you ever gotten a city down to -1 hammer? Suddenly, it can build anything in one turn!

But running with your idea: A Borg city in its purest form could be a one-pop city that has nothing but buildings, each costing about the same as one pop point to build (so, logrithmically more expensive) that each produce, I dunno, 2 hammers. Maybe to balance it out more, the bigger ones have a 1% chance of nuclear meltdown or similar catastrophe???

Any thoughts on whether that would work or not?

Click to expand...

Well I think the biggest problem is getting an AI that has chosen the Borg 'species' to fit that mold.... Which means in terms of How much Farming is done, and what type of population it should have, It's probably best if a Borg city 'looks' like any other city. (population, terrain around it) This would be because the AI seems to have a fixed plan.

Now if the AI's plan can adjust how many farms it builds based on how much food is available, then the best plan for the Borg would be food buildings (Artificial Life Support, Cybernetic Links, etc.)...once a city has enough food from buildings, the Farms will be 'naturally' be replaced with Mines/Boreholes by the AI. (This might indeed be the case, as the City AI governors seem to allocate to maintain that 2 food surplus.)

As for buildings Instead of population, I don't think the AI could handle that well,... I was thinking more of extra factories (+% to production) for the Borg..... They just don't have extra 'Libraries' like the Cyenid, or 'Theaters' + 'Granaries' like the Mutagens, or 'Banks'+'harbors' like the Natives.)


Assuming that you are using a 1 specialist per species model, where the 'specialist allowing' buildings come in three types
1 requires proper tech only (say gives max of 1 at a high tech)
2 requires species present (say 1 as early as the species)
3 requires species to be official (allows 2 as early as the species, with some special midtech 'cathedrals' that allow an additional 3)

A few ideas for the Genomy Civics, the ones you have:

1. Tolerant... No state Species,...+1 food, +1 Health per specialist, can build 'Missionaries' without 'Monasteries' (you can only have about 1-2 specialists of each kind, but they are cheap and easy to get)

2. "Chauvinism".. (High Maintenance) One that eliminates City Distance Maintenance+Gives a Production/Commerce Bonus to the Capital. {Sort of an Organized Religion}


Probably 2 civics for 'Pure Breeding'.. both allow a Building that eliminates all non-state non-Holy city Species

1=Pure Breeding (No state Species, +2 unhappy for all non-State Species Present, Experience Bonuses, Unlimited Human Specialists for all cities)

2=Transhuman (+2 Unhappy for non-State Species Present, GPP bonus...aiming to "perfect the species")


Species Specialist ideas
1. Generics: +2 Energy, no GPP
2. Humans: +2 Happy? if possible?, GPP
3. Cyenid: +3 Research, GPP
4. Mutagen:+2 Health, +4 Psi, GPP
5. Borg: +2 Production, GPP
6. Natural: +3 Gold, GPP

Each "Great Person" can
1. Discover Tech of their type
2. Trigger a Golden Age (just one GP to begin with)
3. Becoms a Super Specialist (Mutagen=+Food+Culture, Borg=+Production, Cyneid=+Research, Natural=+Gold+production, Human=+Happy+Health)
4. Found the "Shrine" for Thier Species (Different shrines having different effects on the Per city effect and Different Base Effects, Natural/Borg=+1 Gold, Cyneid/Mutagen=+1 Research)
5. Do some OTHER special thing (Mutagen=Psibomb, Cynoid=Academy+Scotland Yard, Borg=HeroicEpic+Westpoint, Natural=Bank+Hospital, Human=Forbidden Palace+Happiness)

Hopefully all of those could be allowed

Some Government Civics ideas
Democracy (Medium Maintenance)
+1 Energy 'Cottages'**->'Towns'

Psychohistorical..(Low Maintenance)
Building Bonus, +Happy from 'Courthouses'/'Schools'/ or 'Jails'

Contractual..(No Maintenance)
+Unhealth, Faster 'Cottage'->'Town' Growth, Unhappy for non- Contractual

Collective.."Thought Control" (High Maintenance)
-% WW (enough to eliminate with buildings/Wonders), No Trade Routes (or -enough so they don't appear), +Happy Military Unit

Market Ideas
Planned: No Foreign Trade Routes, +Worker Rate
Automated:+Trade Routes, +10% Gold
Singular: +Military Production, +Production per Farm/Energy collecter

Society Ideas
Free: +1 Food per "Cottage"->'Village', +1 Happy for each "Town"
Selfless: Slavery+Drafting allowed
Equilibrium: Health bonus, +Production per "Town"/"Village"
Evolutionary: +Food and Commerce Per Lattice (as well as 'Watermills' that can only be built by the lattice if it counts as river too) , +Unhappy per Borehole, Terraformed tile

Agenda Ideas
Community: +Psi, +Happy per Terraformed tile
Discovery: +2 Energy per "Town", +10% Research
Power: Extra Millitary Support, +Military Experience
Ascendance: Free Specialists, -10% Energy


**I'm thinking of Cottage->Towns as starting at -2 Food +1 Energy (Cottage), and working thier way up to +1 Prod +3 Energy (ie with Several steps in between, and relying on a few techs).. essentially independent Habitats.
-2.0.1
-2*.0.2
-2*.1.2
-1*.1.2*
0*.1.2*

*=+1 with tech