Thoughts on the port to Civ 5

1. Yes this is entirely speculative. The game is not released, and many features are still unknown.
2. Yes, this thread is about porting the existing FfH to civ 5, not creating a new entry. As far as I am concerned, the new elements will come about naturally through either the main mod team [which based on some comments seems unlikely] or through the still active mod-mod teams.
3. This thread was created on what happens to be the first of April, so silly suggestions welcome along with serious ones.

Impressions on Civ 5 changes:
1. City States seem awesome for several reasons. First, they should help to maintain the feeling of a living world without the immediate sprawl that eliminates Wilderness. I can see some custom map scripts actually allowing for a true wilderness region like Kael always wanted by having a powerful city state blocking access to a Land that Time Forgot. Second, with the proper coding we can include sub-factions and races not picked up by the computer to have the full spread of FfH available every game.
2. Hexes and unit limits are going to be interesting. First, it'll actually make it worthwhile to invest in some of the tech trees rather than just spamming your favorite unit type. Second, it will add diversity to how each race fights. If I play as the Ljos, I can expect powerful ranged fighters, but a weak front line that will crack with a powerful enough melee thrust. Third, Hexes are going to allow for true choke points and tactical placement of troops. All that being said, yes, I am going to miss SoD.
3. Apparently resources are directly tied to unit production now. No more getting that one source of mithril and pumping out as many troops as you please. This will also make economic trade more interesting as you have a vested interest in securing resources beyond the initial one.
4. Mod database is for me a dream come true. Being able to browse in game not only for primary mods but the various extensions will be fantastic.
5. There are no more troop transports. That alone will solve the AIs inability to manage proper Naval Invasions.

Serious Ideas for porting:
1. Most of the current xml and python code will be worthless. I am guessing that at the start, the easiest things to port over will be the graphics and lore. Thus, I suggest any porting team focuses on a three step process. Looks Right, Feels Right, Plays Right.
2. As awesome as FF, Orbis, and RiFE are, I suggest that the initial port focuses on the core experience. The main mod has a larger player base, and is easier to grasp than the mod-mods. Imagine a virgin Civ 5 player trying to jump into the awesome complexity of RiFE. Let's start small, and get bigger.
3. Maintain at all points the No Princess rule. With the exception of the fantastic April Fools joke that was played on me today when I booted up RiFE.

Silly Ideas:
1. I *demand* a PIE! spell as an homage to the many polls in this forum over the last two years.
2. Shatner will be required to playtest every civ and post a humorous summary, or we will hunt down and execute his cat. I am assuming he has a cat. If he has a dog instead, we will simply burn down his car.
3. Kael should drop in at random intervals and post mysterious updates on a "secret project". This secret project will be revealed to be his thesis for a PHD in psychology on the subject of how to keep gamers in a state of perpetual suspense.

Why port? We've already got FFH. Make a new mod.

With the changes in Civ 5, it'd have to be a complete reimagining rather than a port. Much better to start afresh on FfH3 and design it around Civ 5's features and gameplay.

Also, Civ 5 is rumoured to be using Lua as its scripting language, so *all* existing Python code will be worthless.

Hmm. Where did you hear Civ V is going to LUA? I had planned on making mods for Civ V but was hoping to do them in Python so that I could easily make mods for both Elemental and Civ V.

http://www.explicitgamer.com/blog/2010/03/civilization-v-what-we-know-so-far-2-0/

Third guy down in the comments. As I said, very much a rumour for now. Take with a pinch of salt.

Yea, it would be kind of a bummer if it went to Lua

One unit per hex is garbage, so any new FfH3 I wouldn't expect to have it anyway.

Earthling said:

One unit per hex is garbage, so any new FfH3 I wouldn't expect to have it anyway.

Click to expand...

I really disagree with you.

Exactly why a "port" is a bad idea. Any new FfH would need to be built from the ground up around Civ 5's gameplay, not just some misguided attempt to turn the game back into Civ 4 so that everything's the same as we remember it.

Considering that they are trying to sell ciV as more modable than ever before then the choice of LUA over Python seems a strange one, since while LUA is faster and less resource heavy it is also more simplistic in functionality than Python.

Having said that then it would probably be possible to do just about everything in LUA that has been done in Python to date (for cIV anyway), but it will no doubt require somewhat different coding approaches and methods for achieving the results of the more complex functions.


So if nothing else then I predict that the switch to LUA is going to put off many current cIV modders and will thus delay their migration to ciV.

Personally, I like the idea of an early industrial era in Erebus. Kael has often stated that the diminishing power of mana would result in technology achieving parity, if not dominance, to the more arcane and divine forces. That would make it a natural sequel to FfH instead of a port, and free up the lore a bit from the current conventions. Maybe instead of an "End of Winter" starting point, it would be an "end of Hell" story. After decades of tyrannical rule by the followers of Agares, Hyborem is finally defeated and life on Erebus can start anew. Rediscovering the knowledge of the age of Rebirth comes quickly, but with the powers of mana fading with more widespread use, the kingdoms of Erebus begin to find new ways to exert their dominion over the land...

I'm optimistic that "something" will be recreated in Civ V in the tradition of FFH2. I'm less optimistic that the lameness of the AI in either Civ V, Civ IV or its manifestation in Fall From Heaven 2 will ever be alleviated. I do have hopes that Civ XII will approach the level of a novice human player who upon seeing an enemy civ amassing an army of chariots will realize that there's no chariot races scheduled "until next year...uh oh...."

The good news is that a lot more effort seems to be going into the AI in Civ 5, if reports are to be believed. Just being able to remember things it's seen on previous turns would be a very good start.

2K requires the Civ Community Manager to know Lua. I assume it is safe to conclude Civ5 uses Lua instead of Python.

Heh, that makes me I wonder if they also switched from C++ to C#?!

There have actually already been reports about it using C++ and XML still, so I doubt it.

Python is the only language not confirmed in any announcements, and given what Maniac said, I'm thinking we'll have to learn Lua.

I just hope they make the SDK available right away with first release.

Something tells me yes, as they're trying to bill it as the most mod-able CiV yet. A worst case scenario would be them locking off some aspects of the code at the start and opening it up later. I don't really see that happening, but then again I never though Bioware would release DAOA when it sucked, so I've been wrong before.

Python was kind of a crappy choice in retrospect, wasn't it? Dog slow and incapable of doing a lot of things which DLL modding could. Lua sounds like it still has the second problem, meaning modders still need some C skills, but it is as easy to use as Python without the nasty performance hit.

Well, if LUA is really so much faster, and they can figure out a nifty way to cache the need of a LUA call (maybe allow integer returns as standard, and if a call returns a -1 it is never called again until the program launches from desktop once more), then they could have a LOT more things exposed to LUA by default than are exposed to python, and have callbacks at all kinds of random places (most of which in base ciV would call once early in the game, then never again since they are found to be unused).

A move like that would mean considerable freedom for LUA only modders. With the framework already modeled for them, some very minimal C++ work can be done to expose any new locations in the code that a special case happens to require and wasn't foreseen.