Version 4.0 Discussion Thread

You know, adding a second Favorite Civic slot is a lot more work than you'd think... Oh, and I know now why there didn't seem to be much SDK work in this update (which I mentioned several times): I just hadn't gotten to most of it yet, lol.

*ahem* Right, back to work...
 
Since you plan to finish your work on version 3.7 quite soon, I have made a last search for things that can/should be improved. I would like to propose just one change:

Enhance the horse archer! All Mounted units are quite weak in Civ4 and Mongoose-Mod, taking into account that most of them require optional techs. And the weakest of them is the Horse Archer. As you know I have played a lot of matches with version 3.6.1 and I have rarely used it. I have only used it when I didn't have access to Copper or Iron, and urgently wanted to conquer a barbarian city or to attack any other weak opponent.
Now, after I have done some reading in Wikipedia on the history of Mounted units, I would suggest to change them like this:
- Increase speed from 2 to 3.
- Increase withdrawal chance from 30% to 50%.

The main strength of horse archers was their ability to avoid close combat. With speed 3, they could approach an enemy unit, attack and retreat by one tile within the same turn if the terrain is suitable for that. They could also be used to bypass the enemy front line and attack the enemy in its backyard where he may have few defensive units.
Moreover, the horse archer upgrades to Marauder, that has speed 3 as well. Since horse archers don't carry an metal equipment with them, there is no reason why they should be slower than the Marauder. And they should be faster than the chariot. I have seen that you have already enhanced the chariot, which is good. Also, enhance all unique units that replace the horse archer.


Gorilla/Orang-utan:
Are you aware that these are peaceful animals, that do not attack humans unless they feel very threatened? So they should not attack, like the Mammoth. They could reward with a little gold when killed.
In case of the Gorilla, you could justify that it was initially believed to be an aggressive animal after its discovery. That is reflected by movies like "King Kong", although at that time biologists already knew that the gorilla was peaceful.

In case of the rhinoceros, it should be ok that it can attack. There are two subvariants of the rhinoceros: black rhinoceros and white rhinoceros. I know that one of them can become really aggressive even when you are still far away (don't remember which one). But it won't eat you, it will just kill you. ;)



Lastly, a minor Sevopedia change:
Mention in hill terrain type, that the effect of hill terrain is -1 food, +1 production
 
Since you plan to finish your work on version 3.7 quite soon

Actually I got held up longer than I expected the last 2 days working on the second Favorite Civic thing, but primarily working on another big trait overhaul. I thought of a lot of new things to do with traits (in addition to some good ideas from Platyping's new trait mod that really got me started on this), and I'm much happier with the end result now, but it still took an extra day of work lol. (Don't worry, most of what was there before has been left alone; it was mainly about buffing the weaker traits. I'll be curious to see what you guys think of these changes though hehe.)

Moreover, the horse archer upgrades to Marauder, that has speed 3 as well. Since horse archers don't carry an metal equipment with them, there is no reason why they should be slower than the Marauder. And they should be faster than the chariot. I have seen that you have already enhanced the chariot, which is good. Also, enhance all unique units that replace the horse archer.

Agreed about being faster than the Chariot (and, by extension, the War Dog :)). The level 3 speed was supposed to be a Marauder exclusive for the Medieval Era, after all significant exploration is presumed done so the high speed doesn't make that too easy. And as a special differentiating factor between the Marauder and Knight.

Still, the Horse Archer is also later in the Classical Era now than it used to be (the Horseback tech used to be one column to the left if I remember correctly), and I agree with you about both the history and gameplay aspects of this. (An alternative gameplay solution I actually did consider once a long time ago, is to give Mounted units access to the Raider promotions, but that's not really their role, and it makes them compete with melee, especially Swordsmen, too much.)

So, long story short, I will gladly bump them up to 3 speed! Good idea. :) I am cautious about making their withdrawal rate any higher though. 30% is readily boosted to 60% with Flanking 1-3, and to 90% with Tactics added (and for me at least, Mounted units are always my favorite place to put Warlords, so I do usually wind up with Tactics on some of them; plus I also typically upgrade a lot of high-level War Dogs into Horse Archers, heh).

My latest version of the system reserves base withdrawal values higher than 30% for exceptional situations, which currently includes Valkyrie, Scout Mech, and Kraken (40%); Helicopters and Submarines (50%); and Sandworm and Siege / Artillery units (60%). I'm not convinced HA's are in quite the same league. 30% is standard for high-speed units, matches Cavalry which is the same basic idea, and still beats what most units have.

I did have a lot of these withdrawal values lower in the past, but that was in an ill-conceived attempt to avoid Base + Flanking + Tactics going over the 90% limit except on Subs (b/c if you do go over, it causes any remaining +withdrawal promotions to become unavailable on that unit, potentially blocking access to Flanking 3 with its FS Immune bonus for completing the set). BUT! One of the last remaining things on my now-fairly-short to-do list for 3.7, is to implement an alternate solution to this problem that I've had in mind for a while now. In anticipation of that, I went ahead and redid a lot of my base withdrawal values a month or two ago, which is why they have a lot of 40, 50, and 60%'s now. ... Just saying. :p

Also, I would point out that one of the unique Horse Archers, the Numidian Cavalry, DOES have 40% withdrawal as one of its boosted stats, by way of starting with Flanking 1. So there's that too, heh.

Gorilla/Orang-utan:
Are you aware that these are peaceful animals, that do not attack humans unless they feel very threatened? So they should not attack, like the Mammoth. They could reward with a little gold when killed.

Interesting. I sort-of knew that, but didn't think of it in any case. I can probably make that change, though the gold reward for killing Mammoths and Rhinos was specifically for their ivory tusks and horns; I'm not sure what the primates would have that'd be of monetary value.

Btw, I forgot to mention the Barbs picked up 2 new unique units a couple weeks ago, in addition to their Wild Axeman: the Shaman (a Stone Spearman) and the Witch Doctor (a Slinger). I imagine you may want to use these on your Africa map as well, so just a heads-up so you can start thinking about where you want to put them. :)

In case of the rhinoceros, it should be ok that it can attack. There are two subvariants of the rhinoceros: black rhinoceros and white rhinoceros. I know that one of them can become really aggressive even when you are still far away (don't remember which one). But it won't eat you, it will just kill you. ;)

I agree, but I don't think I can allow this from a gameplay standpoint. My initial implementation of the Mammoth a while back allowed them to attack, and it was very, very bad. For Prehistoric players they were just as good at shutting down your whole empire as Sandworms are due to their high strength, except that, unlike Sandworms, they were not restricted to Deserts, and they were not world-quantity-limited. It was a disaster, lol. My Rhino unit has slightly different stats from the Mammoth, but the same 5 str, so I really HAVE to make them passive. Sorry. Polar Bears are bad enough as it is. ;)

Lastly, a minor Sevopedia change:
Mention in hill terrain type, that the effect of hill terrain is -1 food, +1 production

I'm pretty sure you mentioned this before, but I could be wrong... I haven't gone back over the forum suggestions yet. ;)
 
I agree that you should definitely NOT give mounted units access to the city raider promotions. This would make swordsman and some other units superfluous when you have horses. You only need to make sure that mounted units are somewhat superiour to unmounted units in battles that take place outside of cities.

I have never used warlords and the tactics promotion, and I rarely use the flanking promotions. So I can't really judge about that. Maybe nerfe the tactics promotion or replace it with a different effect. From what you have written, I see that you have more experience in using mounted units than me, so just change them the way you think is appropriate.

Basically, all I wanted to say is that you should give the horse archer a little boost. To increase either speed or withdrawal chance should be sufficient, you needn't increase both.


Rhino: no problem, if they can not attack.

Gorilla and Orang-utan: not sure, maybe remove at least Oran-Utan from the mod? You could also let them move around without attacking and without a gold reward when they get killed. They could still be killed to get more experience.
In Reality, I think the most dangerous animals in jungle are snakes.


A nice feature would be a new building "zoo" which rewards with happiness depending on the number of different wild animals that you have captured. But to implement that, you would have to add a "capture" feature.



Hills description in Sevopedia: No, it's my first time to tell you that the effect of hills on production and food yield is missing. Last time I was telling you that the "cannot build cities" string in wrong. :D Well, is true in the sense that hills can not build cities, but wrong in the sense that humans can build cities on hills. :lol:
 
I have never used warlords and the tactics promotion, and I rarely use the flanking promotions.

You should; they're in there to be used! :p Plus they work pretty well too, hehe.

So I can't really judge about that. Maybe nerfe the tactics promotion or replace it with a different effect.

Nah. It's a Warlord promotion like Combat 6 and Speed, so it's supposed to be strong. :) And there's nothing wrong with the effect. It's even used as-is from the vanilla game! Getting harder and harder to find examples of that in the mod these days lol...

Basically, all I wanted to say is that you should give the horse archer a little boost. To increase either speed or withdrawal chance should be sufficient, you needn't increase both.

I gave it speed 3 and +10% vs Melee. I also made a similar change to most of the Mounted and Armor units above it in the sequence. I think it'll help a lot with making all those units as fearsome as they're supposed to be. :)

Btw, you probably haven't had much experience with high-level units (they tend to happen more in cooperative games vs insane AIs), but as an fyi, b/c of how the combat arithmetic works, high base-strength values on units become more and more significant at higher levels of +Percent combat modifiers. So if you manage to get a Horse Archer, or especially a War Elephant, up to Combat 5 or something, say with Shock added on for good measure, the result usually gets higher combat odds than you might expect (even against stuff that might normally give it trouble). The math is complicated, but I'm just saying, all high-base-strength-for-their-era units have a secret built-in special advantage. It's not always realized, and it's not THAT big a deal even when it is, but it's there. :)

Gorilla and Orang-utan: not sure, maybe remove at least Oran-Utan from the mod?

I just added it a couple weeks ago, I'm not removing it lol. (Plus it's my only orange animal!) I GUESS I can make it passive; it screws up the other stats I'd already set for em though (b/c units that can't attack can't make use of a withdrawal value either).

Btw, I literally don't have time to read the Wikipedia page on them so I'm just gonna ask you instead: I currently have the new Panda Bear unit set to defensive-only as well (more b/c of the high-strength "Rhino" argument than anything else); is that okay? And is a combination Forest / Jungle native setting okay for Pandas, or should they be Forest-only? I don't know the ideal rainfall and temperature conditions for growing bamboo lol.

In Reality, I think the most dangerous animals in jungle are snakes.

I've played the Metal Gear games extensively, with MGS3 being particularly relevant on this point. I know ALL about snakes, lol. As far as I know, no one's provided a model of one for use as a Civ4 unit though. Sadly I can only work with what's available. :)

A nice feature would be a new building "zoo" which rewards with happiness depending on the number of different wild animals that you have captured. But to implement that, you would have to add a "capture" feature.

Avain's Prehistoric Era, which he based on mine (with credit given, yay!), has a dynamic where normal city growth is disabled early on, and your early tribal cities gain food each time you kill an animal nearby, and/or from doing gathering somehow. It's genius, but at the same time my answer to it is my answer to a lot of clever things: "Good luck teaching the AIs to play that system as intelligently as they do the normal system, AND good luck balancing it with AI difficulty setting bonuses vs animals, which they do need."

I just want MM's Prehistoric Era to be a prequel introductory chapter to the main game, that's shorter and uses the same basic systems. Darnit. :p

Also, happiness is a complicated and finely-tuned quantity in the mod at this point. I can't just add a new building that adds more of it, especially not one that could potentially add a lot more. It would unbalance things, and detract from lots of other effects. Also again, it would not be fair to the AI players either, unless you give them very high bonuses vs Animals (which they have on high difficulties anyway), in which case it would not be fair to the human players. ;)

Hills description in Sevopedia: No, it's my first time to tell you that the effect of hills on production and food yield is missing. Last time I was telling you that the "cannot build cities" string in wrong. :D Well, is true in the sense that hills can not build cities, but wrong in the sense that humans can build cities on hills. :lol:

The reason this happened, I'm guessing, is that the Hill and Peak "PlotTypes" are not real terrain types. They're handled a bit like special cases in the SDK code, and aren't even shown in the vanilla Civilopedia if I remember correctly. They do have XML entries in the TerrainTypes list, but they wind up ignoring most of the values that are in them. I may be able to fix this problem just by setting a few of those values, which will display but still get ignored. If not I'll fix it the hard way, by changing the display code itself... I've certainly done enough of that lately. :p
 
just thought I'd let you guys know I'm checking in practically every day to see when this mod is released. It's a must-download for me! Thanks for working on it and sharing your development thoughts!
 
just thought I'd let you guys know I'm checking in practically every day to see when this mod is released. It's a must-download for me! Thanks for working on it and sharing your development thoughts!

Whelp, while I greatly appreciate your enthusiasm, it's still at least a week off unfortunately, and I don't think I'm gonna get any work done on it tomorrow due to a large number of annoying real-life things I have to do I've been putting off.

Also, while I'm doing my darndest to balance all the changes and additions I'm making, 3.7 is gonna be going public without much of any private playtesting first (which was not the case with many previous versions... though I had plenty of bugs and dumb ideas and errors in judgement in those too, heh).

The point being, this version has less in the way of brand-new major vanilla feature overhauls (compared to the past; there's still some of it), and more in the way of balance tweaks and gameplay changes. I believe I'm pretty skilled at game design, but nobody's perfect, and I'm just one person. Soooo... I'll be surprised if I don't wind up needing to adjust some things in a 3.7.1 release a month later. But we'll see. ;)

Now answer my Panda questions, darnit. :p
 
Now answer my Panda questions, darnit. :p


I couldn't answer your question yesterday, because Monday evening is the games evening of my Civilization group. :) We are currently playing the Africa map with 4 humans against 3 AI.

Ok German Wikipeda says about the Great Panda bear (Ailuropoda melanoleuca):
It is peaceful and it lives in subtropical mountains. In summer they stay in altitudes between 2700 and 4000 meters (meters, not feet!), and in winter they move down, into altitudes down to 800 meters. The climate is suptropical and rainy, they live in dense forests.

So since it's subtropical, it should be forest, not jungle, because jungle typcially is tropical. But when they are out of Bamboo, they might reach the outskirts of tropical jungle to search for Bamboo ;)

Is that sufficient?
 
I couldn't answer your question yesterday, because Monday evening is the games evening of my Civilization group. :) We are currently playing the Africa map with 4 humans against 3 AI.

So since it's subtropical, it should be forest, not jungle, because jungle typcially is tropical. But when they are out of Bamboo, they might reach the outskirts of tropical jungle to search for Bamboo ;)

Is that sufficient?

Almost. You forgot about their innate aptitude for mastery of Kung Fu, and their fondness for beer. :p

I am going to leave them alone then, b/c that's the whole thing with the PM 3.2.1 mapscript update: it allows jungles in sub-tropical temperatures if necessary, to get enough jungles on the map for gameplay balance when the map randomly doesn't have much landmass in the tropics.

Also, the mod doesn't have very many Jungle-native animals compared to Forest-native ones, so this'll help. :) Although, combined with the Orange-a-tang that'll make half of the Junglezoids passive (vs Gorilla and Panther), which kinda sucks... Can't we just pretend MongooseMod worlds have tribes of berserk, demonic Orangutans who're hell-bent on mindless carnage and slaughter?

Realism can be such a harsh mistress sometimes... Thanks for reading up on Pandas for me btw. :)
 
Oh my freakin' gourd vanilla SDK code sucks sometimes... I knew Settlers (and later Tribes when I added them) used a wonky system for setting their hammer / production cost, but I never looked into the details til now.

NO FRIGGIN WONDER you thought they were too cheap... Holy Hannibal crossin' some Agitated Alps!

Okay, so HERE's what the inexplicable vanilla code has been doing all this time: cost = "XML Gamespeed Growth Rate Modifier, treated as an absolute cost value instead of a percentage" plus ("negative XML cost value" times "XML Gamespeed Unit Cost Modifier"). This is part of the Advanced Start code, but it's been getting applied to city-founding units too.

Would someone PLEASE care to explain to me the answer to this highly-relevant question: wtf?

Alright. In the past I set the strange, mysterious negative XML costs for the Tribe and Settler on a trial-and-error basis until I got cost values that I was happy with. But I was only checking their values on Eternal speed, since that's what we always play on and I just ASSUMED the costs would scale properly to the other gamespeeds, like I know they do for all other units!

If you were playing on Quick, you were getting Tribes that were about 7 TIMES cheaper than they're supposed to be (not in absolute values; I mean compared to their cost vs other units' costs on Eternal!), and Settlers that were about twice as cheap as they're supposed to be.

Now granted, treating city-founding units as a special case with a different cost-scaling rate makes a certain amount of sense due to the integral nature they play, and the huge differences in total number of game turns the different speeds have. But right now the scaling doesn't just need to be tweaked - it's completely broken.

My sincere apologies to anyone who's tried to play the mod on any speed below Eternal all this time, heh. I am going to rewrite this absurd, nonsensical code presently, to use a "normal" XML cost (ie one that isn't just a negative discount that gets applied to something else entirely in the code), and have it scale by the Growth Rate Modifier as was, I think, intended, rather than by the usual Unit Cost Modifier. And I will try to target them for approximately the same values on Eternal that they have now.

The end result will be that they cost a significant amount more on faster speeds, particularly the Tribe. Sorry, it was NEVER supposed to cost anywhere NEAR the same as a single Stone Axeman or something. I just assumed the vanilla code knew what it was doing, and I could trust it to scale my Eternal values correctly, even if the system for setting them seemed a little wonky.

Why do I have to do EVERYTHING myself if I want to be sure it's done correctly? Siiiigh... Okay, ending rant now.
 
Good that you have detected the mathematics behind tribe/settler production!

They really should take longer to produce on quick speed, but I'm not sure if it needs to be 7 times longer, I think 3-4 times should be enough.
Some starting locations are located in floodplains that reward with 3 food per tile, while other starting locations have only 2-food-tiles around them. And I think higher production costs could work in favour of 3-food-per-tile starting locations, no matter whether tribes are produced with food or production.

But... in case you are 100% sure that 7-times higher production cost is fair, then change it like that. I don't have any practical experience with that while you do.
 
Time for another quick update on the update: I rewrote my ocean storm code from scratch yesterday, which I wasn't even planning to do until 3.7.1, but I started thinking about some better algorithms for it while I was half-asleep the other night and, well, I just couldn't let it go lol. Anyway, the results are way better now (and they were pretty decent before :)), so hopefully this will be the envy of all other Civ4 mods... though if not that's fine too. ;)

My to-do list continues to shrink, albeit painfully slowly... Official ETA is now 5 to 7 days. And that should be an accurate estimate this time. (Although you never really know with my estimates for some reason...)

I've also updated the patch notes AGAIN (note the trait overhaul details), but to save everyone - including me - some time (and b/c of the thread character limit), I'm putting only the new notes in the sticky. Read them before they update or they'll be gone forever! ... Until the update is actually released of course, which probably feels like forever. (I know it does to me...)

They really should take longer to produce on quick speed, but I'm not sure if it needs to be 7 times longer, I think 3-4 times should be enough.

... See, this is why I went into the long-winded explanation about which scale factor I was using lol.

Tribes would've been 7 times higher cost if I'd used the standard UnitTrain Modifier, which ranges from 67 to 200% depending on gamespeed (and this is what I thought it was doing all along, hence the "7x cheaper" above). But b/c I went with the GrowthRate Modifier (which ranges from 67 to 360% depending on gamespeed) and kept the total cost the same at the high end (180 production on Eternal), it ends up being 33 production on Quick, which is a 4.7x increase (you're at 7 production right now I believe).
 
Hey dood, what's the current ETA ? :crazyeye:

I have read your changelog-updates, but do not have any comments about it right now.
 
The patch notes have been updated again. This will be the second-to-last time on that before release. Sorry for the long delay; I got held up working on a number of things I didn't anticipate, like air strike and missile damage, the whole nuke system which I'd never really looked at at all before, and the StatsMod.

I am exhausted. I can't sustain this level of effort much longer. Fortunately, I'm FINALLY almost done: all SDK (and Python) programming for v3.7 is, as of about an hour ago, completely complete.

I have 2 days (maybe 3 though I'm gonna try for 1) of tedious XML work left (including War Weariness, don't worry :)), and then it'll hopefully only take one day to test a bunch of the new stuff I haven't had time to test yet, pretty-ify the whole change log into official-looking "release notes", update the Credits section, and package everything up in one ridonkulous zip file.

So 2-4 days. Btw Feb 25 is my birthday, so this thing is going to be my first, last, and biggest present to myself, ever.

After it's out I need to update my vanilla PerfectMongoose file (and try updating the Africa map for ocean tiles), but after THAT I'll be playing assorted video games in an undisclosed hibernation-friendly cave location surrounded by an army of angry pelicans and one GIANT ostrich. Attempt to contact me at your own risk. :p

Hey dood, what's the current ETA ? :crazyeye:

Awesome job quoting me quoting Disgaea Prinnies saying dood, hehehe. :)

I have read your changelog-updates, but do not have any comments about it right now.

ORLY? How about... now?! :p
 
I am exhausted. I can't sustain this level of effort much longer. Fortunately, I'm FINALLY almost done: all SDK (and Python) programming for v3.7 is, as of about an hour ago, completely complete.


I did not want to hurry you. I just can't wait any more to see the new techs, units, wonders, civics etc. :)

After it's out I need to update my vanilla PerfectMongoose file (and try updating the Africa map for ocean tiles), but after THAT I'll be playing assorted video games in an undisclosed hibernation-friendly cave location surrounded by an army of angry pelicans and one GIANT ostrich. Attempt to contact me at your own risk. :p

You really deserve that. I will only risk to contact you if there are any frequent Out-of-Sync errors in Mulitplayer.

I will try to update the Africa-map myself over the weekend. To replace the coast-tiles with ocean-tiles requires just 1-2 hours of mouse-klicks. I also want to fix some other bugs in the map. But my major map-update will come only in April.


from Changelog:
moved ICBM from Rocketry to Space Flight
decreased nuke damage control globals back to their vanilla values: unit damage base from 50 to 30% (goes to 130%), population death base from 50 to 30% (goes to 70%), and building destruction from 75 to 40%

That's good. This will make it more likely that any multiplayer match will last into the modern ages.

moved Guided Missile from Rocketry to UAVs, and increased its range from 4 to 6, strength from 40 to 75, evasion from 80 to 85%, and bomb rate from 20 to 25%

added Sharick's V1 Flying Bomb as Early Rocket in Rocketry to replace it

Cool. I like missiles a lot. Too pity that there weren't any medieval or ancient missiles in reality ;)

added Mongoose ACMDisplayFix to get the combat odds mouseover to show when targeting a unit in a Coast tile with a helicopter, and to get it to not show when targeting a unit in a Peak tile without the Mountaineering tech

You really pay a lot of attention to detail. Great.



Oh and I just remembered a bug in Version 3.6.1:

Sometimes there are Barbarian rafts that spawn in lakes. This happens quite often and is really annoying, because the message "Enemy spotted near xxx" appears every turn, and the lake-tile can't be worked. They can't be killed before you have aircraft.
 
You really deserve that. I will only risk to contact you if there are any frequent Out-of-Sync errors in Mulitplayer.

I was mostly joking. :p Feel free to talk all you want, just remember to wear ostrich-proof chainmail. ;)

I will try to update the Africa-map myself over the weekend. To replace the coast-tiles with ocean-tiles requires just 1-2 hours of mouse-klicks.

I'm pretty sure I can write code that will do it automatically in 5-10 minutes. Lemme at least try. :)

That's good. This will make it make more likely that any multiplayer match will last into the modern ages.

Also, don't forget the stronger Bomb Shelters, and the extra war declarations than can happen now when people use nukes, particularly in big games.

I tried increasing the Tactical / ICBM costs to 300 / 600 at one point as well, but decided against it... Don't want to go overboard and make nukes so difficult to use that no one bothers at all, hehe. Especially now that the mod has a very good custom global warming system! ;)

Cool. I like missiles a lot. Too pity that there weren't any medieval or ancient missiles in reality ;)

Hey, Flaming Pigs are in the Missile category... Don't complain! :p

You really pay a lot of attention to detail. Great.

No, I pay a normal amount of attention to detail, and 95% of the other humans on the planet don't pay nearly enough. ... Just saying. :p

They can't be killed before you have aircraft.

Sure they can... Build a city on the lake, then build warships! Then build a canal with Forts to get the warships out once you have Construction! :) :) :)

Also, the new Falcon unit has the helicopter-class ability to fly over Coast, and can kill Canoes and Rafts at 50% odds (though it will have negative odds to Triremes and higher), so you'll be able to use that too, potentially...

But yeah I think I can block barb ships from spawning in lakes entirely with one extra line of code... They'll still be allowed in lakes that are large enough to be considered inland seas though, just fyi.



p.s. - I'm really excited about the subs ignoring storms thing. (Note they still have their vision blocked, b/c subs have to surface to look around. :)) In conjunction with my AWESOME new ocean weather system (which is as big a deal as the new civics or anything else in this update if you ask me), it's gonna make for some very fun late-game naval warfare, hehe.

p.p.s. - Technically I was wrong: I found a couple more SDK things to do this morning after my post, lol. They're already done though, so no big delay. Yep, 10pm, just woke up, time for a full night of XML partying! Break out the llama costumes, folks.
 
I'm pretty sure I can write code that will do it automatically in 5-10 minutes. Lemme at least try. :)

Ok try it....



Sure they can... Build a city on the lake, then build warships! Then build a canal with Forts to get the warships out once you have Construction! :) :) :)

As far as I have observed it is not possible to build ships in cities that are adjacent to lakes. Of course the ships could be brought in from outside, but to build a canal with forts is really silly! You need to explain to me how that would work in reality. Forts can be built on hills, and the ships will then cross the hills. :spear:
I used that in a game in which I had an inland sea.

But yeah I think I can block barb ships from spawning in lakes entirely with one extra line of code...

Then add this one extra line of code, please :religion:

These rafts in lakes are fun when they appear for the first time, but become annonying over time.
 
Guys I'm looking to have this thing ready for public consumption around late Saturday or early Sunday. If it goes longer than that, well, I don't think it will be over by much, but we'll see.

As far as I have observed it is not possible to build ships in cities that are adjacent to lakes.

Oh? Hrm, I thought you still could. I guess that got disabled at some point. ;)

Of course the ships could be brought in from outside, but to build a canal with forts is really silly! You need to explain to me how that would work in reality. Forts can be built on hills, and the ships will then cross the hills.

It's actually not that far-fetched. The series of lock systems that connect some of the Great Lakes in the US involve gradual but significant changes in elevation.

Then add this one extra line of code, please :religion:

I already did - about 3 hours ago. :)
 
II tried increasing the Tactical / ICBM costs to 300 / 600 at one point as well, but decided against it... Don't want to go overboard and make nukes so difficult to use that no one bothers at all, hehe. Especially now that the mod has a very good custom global warming system! ;)

:nuke::nuke::nuke:
Production speed of Nukes (Tactical+ICBM) should be linked to Nuclear plants.
In reality, most of the industrial process that is involved in the construction of nukes and nuclear plants is the same.
There are also rumours that countries like Japan and Germany that lost the second world war, but also Brazil and other countries are using nuclear plants, because they want(ed) to be able to build Nukes quickly, once they were "allowed" to.
In Germany for example, there is so much coal that we did never really require Nuclear plants for electricity production.

Ok, long story short. I think you should double production costs for tactical nukes and ICBMs and grant -50% production cost (to reach the current level of production cost) for cities that have got nuclear plants.

Since there is already such a mechanic for shipyards and drydocks to reduce production costs for ships, this should not require too much time to change (possibly just XML ?)

I think that this change will also improve the Mod from a strategical point of view, because you need to decide if you want to plan for a real global nuclear war. Then you need to research nuclear power and build nuclear plants frist =>> More time for your enemies to crush you with tanks, or to accomplish cultural victory, domination, Anti-Nukes resolution of United Nations etc.
But if you just want to build a few Nukes for reasons like conceitedness :old: or vengeance :mad: purposes or some special tasks, then you can still build some without nuclear plants.
Also, a player needs to consider more carefully if he wants to build coal plants first or build nuclear plants straight away.

Without the Nukes-bonus, nuclear plants are not very usefull in the game.
:nuke::nuke::nuke:
 
You (and AIAndy... hi Andy!) have really helped spur on the development of this update with all your great input and suggestions (over half of which I've agreed with as-is, and almost all of which I've agreed with in principle in some form, hehe). That, and your enthusiasm for playing the mod, AND your Africa tribute, have really made the difference on this thing, and definitely inspired me to come up with a bunch of ideas myself that I probably wouldn't have come up with otherwise. It would've been a lower-enthusiasm, just-hit-most-of-the-major-bases kind of update. So... thanks. :)

It may not ship til Sunday night - not sure yet - but the final round of changes is coming along nicely, and I am definitely going to get this thing to you for your Monday session if I possibly can. ;)

Just fyi, I've added 2 more units that I wasn't even planning to add until I randomly decided to look into it yesterday... And I know you'll love at least one of em lol.

Also fyi, I'm 90% sure I'm changing the name of this release (I know, again) to version 4.0. Yeah, it's THAT important. This will be the first time I'm really, REALLY happy with absolutely EVERYTHING about the mod, with no known bugs left anywhere, and almost all planned major and minor things done.

In the past there were always enough things put off til later, or not investigated at all and hoped they were fine as-is (like nukes), or left alone b/c they were minor and fixing them would be too much trouble, that it always felt like a work-in-progress to me. That is no longer the case. There are no more weak links. This mod is easily the biggest accomplishment of my life so far, and it's now gone from a professional-quality-but-still-far-from-perfect project, to an absolute work of art that I am fantastically proud of. Not trying to gloat, just being honest.

Don't worry; my life sucks in plenty of other ways, so I need something to cling on to. ;) Anyway.



p.s. - Here's another patch note from yesterday you might appreciate, fresh from the Mongoose High Attention to Detail Farm™:

added Mongoose AirStrikeFix to exempt air and missile units from the river-crossing damage penalty when performing air strikes on targets one tile away and across a river, due to not having the Amphibious promotion (which air units can't get, and which would look silly on them if I gave it to them for free instead)
 
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