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

I wonder if the unit that looks like a Bulldozer could be used as a Terraformer?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168039

I'd love to somehow justify all 4 in the mod as they simply are awesome.

Wow, last time I checked that thread had no units in it... The bulldozer would be great for our military engineer unit (as distinct from civilian engineer). Wonder if it has "worker" animations???

I found that the AI has trouble handling more than one worker type, so making this unit available to the player may be unbalancing. (It's available as an upgrade from the civilian worker, but I don't think I've seen the AI upgrade, partly because the military engineer is primarily for the purpose of building roads, forts, and clearing Lattice outside cultural boundaries).

Padmewan said:

Wow, last time I checked that thread had no units in it... The bulldozer would be great for our military engineer unit (as distinct from civilian engineer). Wonder if it has "worker" animations???

I found that the AI has trouble handling more than one worker type, so making this unit available to the player may be unbalancing. (It's available as an upgrade from the civilian worker, but I don't think I've seen the AI upgrade, partly because the military engineer is primarily for the purpose of building roads, forts, and clearing Lattice outside cultural boundaries).

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Sounds like a lot of balancing and playtesting in our future. I think we should try for as many worker types as we want and then react to the AI's supidity accordingly.

First, and more importantly: great job.

Secondly, I implore you to keep the fantasy elements to a min. Ruins a sci-fi mod.

Never modded for Civ IV, but I have for other games, maybe Ill lend a hand once I learn more.

kwkimball said:

First, and more importantly: great job.

Secondly, I implore you to keep the fantasy elements to a min. Ruins a sci-fi mod.

Never modded for Civ IV, but I have for other games, maybe Ill lend a hand once I learn more.

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Yeah, we need to keep the cross-over to a min. It's hard since most models are fantasy (for now) and 95% of gamers prefer fantasy to sci-fi.

Please, follow my sig to our forums and check it out. We're always looking for ideas and help.

Did look at your forums... to nitpick:

Govt and society civic images are great, but values arent very good and mustard isnt the most attractive color for economy

Tons of balancing to do. That's why we need playtesters!

Ill take a look as soon as I get access to a running copy of civ... probably later today...

welcome aboard, kwkimball.

Latest version uploaded, with sound & terrain graphics separated out to minimized download size. It's now... only 5MB small

I'm especially excited by the new Rabbit, White WH40K Chimera unit we're using as Combat Engineers. It looks awesome!!!

We need to get you a new Avatar man....

Unless that's a portrait?

I love what you are doing. Now, heres some ungrateful toned playtest feedback.

I played this mod until the end of the tech tree. I built an empire and won a points game on Noble. Toward the end, knowing I would win by points, I got bored and attacked my neighbor with huge stacks of security battalions, which I lost, but it didn't matter. Yawn.

The tech tree ended way too soon. I like tech trading, I like lots and lots of techs, and I like for them all to do something. I love the use of Alpha Centauri icons and stuff, that's totally cool. But you don't even use all the Alpha Centauri techs, much less blend in stuff from other sources. Moo3, for all its weaknesses, had a plethora of cool future techs to loot for example.
The tech tree is the life of Civ, fighting and building are just things you do while climbing it.


Much of the terrain did not work for me. It was pink squares. The tundra and ice and hills and mountains and fungus were fine, but there were pink squares, like you get when modified terrain isn't working right in a civ3 mod, wrong transparency or something. I have no idea how anything works in a civ 4 mod, I have not yet begun to tackle this monster. But it looks just like that, the corners of tiles one solid color, pink, no terrain painted at all.


Now about unity. There are only two combat units, militia and security battalions. There is no artillery, there are no ships, there are no planes. War is part of Civ. You can minimize the conquest strategy with powerful defenses and stuff, but use it as one of your spices. Why not start out allowing all the units available to a civ at the end of the regular tech tree? They can require resources or vast shields and be underpowered relative to stuff you can research to make, but have them there. I understand you are waiting for unit makers to make units, but you can use a small number of unit graphics to represent more than one unit. Model a1, a2 etc...

Barbarians. How about super barbarian unique units that can be made only with certain resources, so a barbarian civ that had the giant flying squid resource would be the giant flying squid barb civ and make giant flying squid units, whereas a barb civ that had the little green man in a flying saucer resource would make lgm barb units and be the lgm civ. In other words, localized barbarians.

You could definitely have more types of workers and specialists. What about Talents? The other SMAC specialists?

I would like to playtest more extensively once you at least put in more units (not necessarily new animations) and techs.

Thanks for trying this, Tholish. It may not have been clear from the first post but this is only the first 1.25 eras of the tech tree. (therefore we didn't post this to the completed mods section!) We are right now spec'ing Era II, which tells the story of the different lifeforms that arise, and on the horizon are Eras III, IV, and V. (The eras are Survival, Adaptation, Growth, Awareness, and Ascension).

Also in Era II are the first real assault units, very analogous to the Classical/Medieval units in vanilla Civ4. There will be Tanks, Infantry, Bombers, and units unique to each of the lifeforms with their own "flavor."

I like your ideas about custom barbarians... tho right now our problem is that they die out too quickly. Our solution will be to put them in the ocean, where humans can't go for some time, but that requires SDK work...

I fixed the terrain bug on the latest revision, but that was posted late last night so you probably were playing the buggy one. Thanks for putting up with the nasty pink, though!

I welcome you to jump into our discussion space and put in your $.02. We've got a very active thread right now going on what units we want to see in Era II.

Thanks for your feedback, and hope you'll join the team!

btw check the 2nd post where you can d/l the latest version, sound pack, and terrain pack

Just wanted to give my moral support. Good luck with this ambitious and exciting project!

dh_epic said:

Just wanted to give my moral support. Good luck with this ambitious and exciting project!

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Thanks man. We're making good progress every single day. Follow my sig to our more active discussions about gameplay and more up to date gallery pics.

Newest version with additional units into the 2nd era.

Volunteers to playtest, make SMAC-style buttons, and offer ideas needed!

So, what happened to Religion in the next several years?

I'm more than willing to playtest.

Awesome, Leif. We are in the midst of laying out Era II in which the first new lifeforms of Roanoke become established: Cyneid (conscious software), 'Borg (man-machine hybrids), and Mutagen (radically mutated humans). We'll be linking them to civics so that they will each have very different playstyles -- 'Borg in particular. Follow woodelf's link to our discussions... in the meantime, we will hopefully untangle our ideas and have Era II in a very early playtest version by... the end of the weekend?

Era II is playable now, sort of.

We simply need new eyes to see balance better than we can after trying and tweaking so much. It's easy to become enamored with something and not see that it doesn't fit until an outsider say so.

And, of course, if anyone has any skills to volunteer we're hiring!

Can you add intense "deterioration effect" to start of the game (survival era)? I mean that productive capabilities of colony must be far inadequate to sustain size and complexity of given equipment at moment of foundation. In the beginning colonists actually rapidly consuming artificial environment that supports them. So, player gets a limited time span to revert downward trend before colony collapse. I guess such modification can add significant portion of realism to mod.