Dual-phase Tech Tree Expansion

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

Tyranny's Dual-phase Tech Tree Expansion
BasicTree Version - 0.5
ExpTree Version - Unreleased

Purpose
The purpose of this mod is to significantly rework and rebalance the FfH tech tree, with the goals of increasing tech tree length and revitalizing the less-used portions of the tree through integration of existing lines and more expansive prerequisites for the techs. It is designed to reduce the focus on specialization and provide for a more balanced game. Additionally, it attempts to reduce the early game wait, especially on all-forest starts.

Basically, while I love FfH, I want a little more authentic build and develop a Civilization empire feel in the midgame (=

A side effect of this mod may be that the AI has a greater chance, since it doesn't typically do so well on the specialization route that FfH vanilla is a proponent of.

Dual-Phase
This is a dual-phase mod. I will be published and maintaining two variants:
-BasicTree, a minimalist attempt which attempts to accomplish the above goals without adding any additional techs or units.
-ExpTree, currently my ongoing focus, adding in a significant number of the other early-game techs and units (spearmen, alphabet, etc) to really make the empire-building and unit choices stand out. No more one melee, one archer, one horseman choices. Also I intend to try to pull the late game tech tree a little bit closer to pinnacle techs - we'll see if ti works.

Further, since all components of this mod outside of the tech tree itself are modular, you can pick and choose if you don't like something.

Compatibility
This modmod is semi-modular. All current components of the mod are modular, except for the tech-tree changes themself - primarily tech location, cost, and prereqs.

No known incompatibilities exist with FfH BUG.

Each version comes with presupported XML files for vanilla FfH and FfH with Fall Further - just pick the proper directory.

No known conflicts yet with the modular sections or with XienWolf's Modular Mod files. Except for his Improvements ModMod - this has not been tested, and probably conflicts.

Installation
Installation:
To install this mod, choose the folder 'BTree 0.51 - Fall Further' or BTree 0.51 - Vanilla' depending on whether or not you are running Fall Further. Then copy the 'Assets' folder over to your main Fall from Heaven 031e folder. replacing the existing Assets folder.
You're installed!

Changelog - BasicTree - Summary

Spoiler :

Maintenance
I will actively maintain both variants of these mods with FfH and Fall Further updates. If any other compatibility questions are raised, I will see what I can do. I expect that BasicTree will enter a maintenance cycle as soon as the kinks and input is worked out.

One caveat: I travel 50% for work, 3 weeks at a time. I'll bring the files with me when I go, but I will be unable to test my changes while on the road. So that, my friends, will be up to you when I am travelling. I'll post any betas in the following posts if that happens.

Comments
Your input is very welcome. I tried to take my own experiences and the experiences posted on this forum in any number of locations in making the design decisions I made, but I am bound to have missed some glaring balance issue somewhere (like the Shadowrider I found at the last minute with almost no non-religion pre-reqs, one tech off Feudalism.) So feedback is much appreciated. On balance, techs, new changes, pre/post reqs, or requests for compatibility.

Hope you enjoy!

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

I apologize for the overlap of lines on Oral Tradition - no matter where I moved it, the lines followed...

BasicTree Image

Spoiler :

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

Any items on this list are welcome to discussion.

Pending Changes - Basic

Revise initial tech costs up by a factor of 20% or so - make the jump less severe
Move chopping down one tech (jungle/forest)
Change Oral Tradition graphic
Flesh out Civilopedia entries for Fiefdoms/Leather Working/etc

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

Cause I think I forgot a reason.

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

Everything looks good, but I am still testing it with some of those other mods, so if anything comes up, let me know.

I'm currently playing it with FfH BUG, Fall Further, Modular Mod, and some other modular tweaks I have built in, including some of Tarqulene's stuff. No problems so far.

xienwolf · Apr 12, 2008

Things I forgot to mention:

Modular things seem to be a tad buggy for Vista users, so you might change your mind on being semi-modular if that proves an issue for many of the people interested in using the mod.

But the main thing I wasnted to mention was that you might be able to make modules to UNDO your changes. It is an idea I have been toying with for a while since there are quite a few things I would like to do which cannot be done in a Module, but I would like to keep myself with just a single thread/package to update. You just create modules which undo your changes and leave them in a .zip file outside of the Assets folder with a readme on how to use them to "blot out" changes.

Anyway, lots of luck with this, it sounds pretty nice and I can't wait to see phase 2

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I ditched my Improvements Module in favor of letting Mailbox run his. Seemed better fleshed out to me

Vehem · Apr 12, 2008

Looks really interesting and well designed - nice work :goodjob:

Demus · Apr 12, 2008

been looking through your tech-tree, and overall it looks quite nice. Just 2 questions though:
why does medicine allow blasting powder?
where have the knights gone? this could be due to you using a fall further based tree though

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

@demus:
Hrm. Looking at the picture, I don't see them either.

They're there, they still require armored cavalry (fiefdoms) and warhorses. The icons aren't showing up, obviously, so I'll test this as soon as I boot back up into XP.

The goal is to make fiefdoms allow things like armored cavalry while providing an economic benefit. In the second phase, it will also allow mid-high tier horse unti called 'dragoons'. In both cases, the units themselves have a requirements for warhorses (or something similiar) to ensure that you don't get them too soon.

For medicine allowing blasting powder, my thinking was that the various chemicals and potions used in a high-fantasy situation could easily become explosive, and then put to 'good' use. This is mainly my attempt to reduce the needed focus on engineering, and medicine has always seemed to me to be a low-priority tech. Does it seem a stretch?

Demus said:
been looking through your tech-tree, and overall it looks quite nice. Just 2 questions though:
why does medicine allow blasting powder?
where have the knights gone? this could be due to you using a fall further based tree though

@xienwolf:
The Vista buggy modular loading thing is why I'm dual-booting - and other compatibility reasons. But I was lucky, I was building my first new rig in years when found out about modular mods. But you're right - some people don't have that option, and XP will be harder to find come July-ish. It shouldn't be hard to - I maintain my files in a non-modular format right now and port them to modular format for the release. This way it plays nice with other mods.

UNDO - hrm. Well I changed three things that can't be undone by deleting a folder... Prereqs, Tech Costs, and X/Y positions. An undo module for tech costs... or a modifier for the initial costs. I like the idea!

xienwolf said:
Modular things seem to be a tad buggy for Vista users, so you might change your mind on being semi-modular if that proves an issue for many of the people interested in using the mod.

But the main thing I wasnted to mention was that you might be able to make modules to UNDO your changes. It is an idea I have been toying with for a while since there are quite a few things I would like to do which cannot be done in a Module, but I would like to keep myself with just a single thread/package to update. You just create modules which undo your changes and leave them in a .zip file outside of the Assets folder with a readme on how to use them to "blot out" changes.

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

The knights are there and properly set up in my modules. However, my screenshot was taken when I was testing some third-party modules... and they tinkered with the knight and removed it.

I loaded up a game without said module, and all was good, and there were knights.

Let me know if you install it and see different, but I'll be surprised.

xienwolf · Apr 12, 2008

Well, it isn't so much undo the feature by deleting a folder, but by adding a folder back in. You basically create a module to turn your mod back to vanilla FfH, then just don't use it

That way the option still exists for someone who doesn't do programming junk to just move a folder to where you tell them to move it and block a change you made (at least mostly).

Of course, you still run into the question about all the "invisible" tags and not knowing if they work right with Modular stuff...

tyranny12 · Apr 12, 2008

xienwolf said:
Well, it isn't so much undo the feature by deleting a folder, but by adding a folder back in. You basically create a module to turn your mod back to vanilla FfH, then just don't use it That way the option still exists for someone who doesn't do programming junk to just move a folder to where you tell them to move it and block a change you made (at least mostly).

Of course, you still run into the question about all the "invisible" tags and not knowing if they work right with Modular stuff...

Yea... that's why I can't undo the entire thing - I don't know if it would work. But I can do the tech costs as a modular thing, and write a simple batch script to to folder copy/move operations for the main mod - I mean, I change a grand total of one file in a non-modular fashion, right now (=

Woodelf, if you're reading this, how have your experiences with modular stuff on vista been lately?

Shakiko · Apr 13, 2008

Just tried a game playing FFH 031e vanilla with your modcomp.

Everything goes fine so far, it's just that camps upgrade to villages in 1 turn as soon as they get worked by the city :confused:

Already tried checking the civ4improvementinfos.xml, but found no "improve-to-town"-tag there. Any ideas ?

tyranny12 · Apr 14, 2008

Extremely odd - I came home for lunch and just pulled the files, and I see nothing. The behavior sounds like a modular loading issue - but Mailbox uses the same files modularly successfully.

I'll see if I can replicate it in a game tonight.

Shakiko said:
Just tried a game playing FFH 031e vanilla with your modcomp.

Everything goes fine so far, it's just that camps upgrade to villages in 1 turn as soon as they get worked by the city
Already tried checking the civ4improvementinfos.xml, but found no "improve-to-town"-tag there. Any ideas ?

tyranny12 · Apr 14, 2008

tyranny12 said:
Extremely odd - I came home for lunch and just pulled the files, and I see nothing. The behavior sounds like a modular loading issue - but Mailbox uses the same files modularly successfully.

I'll see if I can replicate it in a game tonight.

Just ran a quick WB test - my camp did not upgrade. Is my mod (Basic Tree) the only one? Are you running Vista or XP?

If Vista, this may be a modular thing I need to ferret out. Have you tried Mailbox's module by any chance?

Swodhawk · Apr 14, 2008

Although I have no time for now to indulge in a good game, rest assured that I shall follow this mod's development with an utterly keen eye.

Combined with Xienwolf's ModMod, this should deliver an even more enjoyable FFH :goodjob:

Mailbox · Apr 14, 2008

I just looked over your files and for the improvements to work in a modular setting, you have to include the entire ImprovementInfos file. It's very strange but that's the only way to get it to work.

Shakiko · Apr 14, 2008

tyranny12 said:
Just ran a quick WB test - my camp did not upgrade. Is my mod (Basic Tree) the only one? Are you running Vista or XP?

If Vista, this may be a modular thing I need to ferret out. Have you tried Mailbox's module by any chance?

Running Xp - never had problems with improvements behaving that way when trying Mailbox' modules or Xienwolf's.

At first, I was thinking it might have been the map or some strange error, but no matter which mapgenerator I used, it still showed "will upgrade in 0 turns" when hovering over the build-camp-option in the WB.

I got rid of that just by copy&pasting the Camp-infos from your Civ4improvementinfo.xml into the original one of ffh2 031e.

Strangely no other improvement seems to be affected either, thus I'm out of ideas...
(but as soon as I revert back to the original versions of your and ffh's improvement.xml the error comes back :confused:

)

-----------------------

About balancing:
I really like your idea to add some :Food: to "hunting-buildings" like the lodge and the general streamlining of the tree
Just 2 questions:

Any reason to give money changer +1 food ?
Compared to the tax office it costs the same but is already superior b/c it gives no angry citizens AND allows you to add a merchant specialist.
Prolly the +1 :food:

should have gone to the tax office instead to avoid redundancy ?

Any particular reason to give Windmills even more food (instead of hammers) with engineering ? Engineering more likely sounds like improving the :hammers:

or commerce of windmills for me.

tyranny12 · Apr 14, 2008

Mailbox's answer above hits the nail on the head for me - he said he needed to include the entire 'ImprovementInfos' file - essentially making it non-modular. Coupled with what I've learned from Xienwolf, that means its a field that's not behaving properly in a modular fashion, and transposing 'upgrades to town' into the camp entry in your original improvement info.

For the Money Changer... thanks! You found where the last minute change I made to the hunting lodge went! My first test run of the hunting lodge improvement showed that my food addition didn't take... I go back, and it wasn't there. I'd been modding for hours at that point, and figured I forgot to save... turns out I added the food to the Money Changer.

I upgraded the improvements and made them earlier for two reasons - first, to get people to use them, and second, to make them useful like in Civ4. Both lumbermills and watermills are production heavy. Windmills were typically used to grind grain, and the vanilla Civ4 agrees with this, so I went along the grain/food route.

I'm about to retweak those:

Spoiler :

I'll push out an update tonight hopefully. I've got some tweaking to do.

Shakiko said:
Running Xp - never had problems with improvements behaving that way when trying Mailbox' modules or Xienwolf's.

At first, I was thinking it might have been the map or some strange error, but no matter which mapgenerator I used, it still showed "will upgrade in 0 turns" when hovering over the build-camp-option in the WB.

I got rid of that just by copy&pasting the Camp-infos from your Civ4improvementinfo.xml into the original one of ffh2 031e.

Strangely no other improvement seems to be affected either, thus I'm out of ideas...
(but as soon as I revert back to the original versions of your and ffh's improvement.xml the error comes back )

-----------------------

About balancing:
I really like your idea to add some :Food: to "hunting-buildings" like the lodge and the general streamlining of the tree
Just 2 questions:

Any reason to give money changer +1 food ?
Compared to the tax office it costs the same but is already superior b/c it gives no angry citizens AND allows you to add a merchant specialist.
Prolly the +1 should have gone to the tax office instead to avoid redundancy ?

Any particular reason to give Windmills even more food (instead of hammers) with engineering ? Engineering more likely sounds like improving the or commerce of windmills for me.

tyranny12 · Apr 15, 2008

Attached below are the two replacement XML documents - didn't have time for much else. Please let me know if the Improvements file fixes the mysterious upgrades - that'll let me know if it works as a 'module' even if a pointless use of a module (full file update.)

Then I can bundle it together hopefully tomorrow with more of an update.

Dual-phase Tech Tree Expansion

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