Hello all Civfanatics!
I've not been a member here for long, but I already like this community more than most others I've come across on the interweb (the DoTA community is I think comprised of sociopathic cavemen). After browsing all the fantastic creations community members have shared I've recently started to look at building a mod of my own.
There are lots of balance mods, component mods and some fantasy mods, but the one thing I noticed a bit of a lack of was mods that added awesome future content. Now there is the obvious exception here of Spatz's Alpha Centauri/Age of Ascension, which I've played and found to be wonderful, but the content this adds does mirror what was in SMAC. What Definitive Future adds is a more "realistic" development of the future based around exisiting scientific consensus and prediction. As such the mod is an exercise in futurism as well as a gameplay addition, and is tuned to tie in with the core Civ 5 gameplay without significant editing of the core balance and earlier eras. The idea is to merge the "future" with the present, and make it feel a natural transition from what used to be the vanilla Civ 5 endgame.
Before I go any further, I must note that this is an early version. While most of the coding and content is implemented, it is lacking much artwork at present, something I hope to fix in the near future. However I am not what you would call a graphic designer, so I'm not sure how long this will take (wonder splash art will be finished quite soon, icons I'm not so sure of). It's also probably somewhat unbalanced right now, and there may be bugs.
So without further ado:
Definitive Future:
The future is here. Explore the future of man as it may well pan out over the course of the 21st century; build terrifying advanced weapons to crush your foes, establish a colony on the Red Planet, and lead your people to literal immortality through a full new era of technologies.
15 new technologies, two in the renamed Information (Modern) Era, 11 in the Near Future Era and a further two in the all new Far Future Era.
9 new buildings, built across the Industrial, Information and Near Future Eras:
7 new National Wonders, 10 new World Wonders and 2 repurposed World Wonders. These are built generally (with one exception) from the Industrial Era onwards, around the time when your building options start to fade away as you approach the Vanilla endgame.
3 new Projects, the Arkship Project which now starts the space race, the SDI Project and Project: MORRIGAN, which allows you to build an empire-crushing superunit.
11 new Units. All but one are built in the Near Future Era.
Other Features and balance changes
There is a new type of specialist: the Cosmopolitan. Cosmos generate 1 of each type of yield but do not contribute towards birthing Great People. This specialist type appears only in two buildings, one of which is a World Wonder and so are quite rare.
Unemployed Citizens now provide a negative effect on your empire instead of the inexplicable +1 production they give in vanilla. They will sap your production and gold for each one you have, so they need to be given work as soon as possible. This is designed to be the challenge of the Near Future age; your cities will grow large and you'll need to support your population (I'm not sure how this will pan out yet, it will need a bit of tweaking in all likelihood).
New improvment: the Solar Panel. These can be built in deserts to boost production. Available at Ecology. The Solar Plant building has been removed.
Terraforming (Not yet implemented). This will let you grow forests and jungles, raise and lower hills and turn horrible tiles into more useful ones once the appropriate techs have been researched. This requires lua to do however which I'm unfamiliar with, hopefully it will make it in soon.
Policies will now increase in cost more to account for the extra era.
Aqueduct: Now gives +2
Food and 25% storage (was 40% storage)
Hospital: Now gives +3 Food, 25% storage and double healing rate for garrisoned units, as well as a further +2 Food at Stem Cell Biology (was + 5 Food)
Medical Lab: Now gives +10% Food, 25% storage (was 25% storage).
Stock Exchange: Now gives 20%
and +5% from trade routes (was 33% )
Research Lab: Now gets an extra +2
Science at Particle Physics.
Known Issues:
-The trade route from the Airport doesn't connect overland yet. Another task that requires lua
-The Replicant's invisibility is currently using the submarine invisibility. This shouldn't matter too much for the time being, but theres an unusual warning in the invisibility XML that I haven't looked into yet. It should be fixed edventually.
I should also say that as my first Mod, I doubt that this will be either conceptually or technically perfect, but bear with it. If anyone does actually download this and play it, let me know of any issues great or small and I'll do my best to fix them and post an updated version. If any modders better than me have any tips or pointers for what you see, don't hesitate to tell me.
I've not been a member here for long, but I already like this community more than most others I've come across on the interweb (the DoTA community is I think comprised of sociopathic cavemen). After browsing all the fantastic creations community members have shared I've recently started to look at building a mod of my own.
There are lots of balance mods, component mods and some fantasy mods, but the one thing I noticed a bit of a lack of was mods that added awesome future content. Now there is the obvious exception here of Spatz's Alpha Centauri/Age of Ascension, which I've played and found to be wonderful, but the content this adds does mirror what was in SMAC. What Definitive Future adds is a more "realistic" development of the future based around exisiting scientific consensus and prediction. As such the mod is an exercise in futurism as well as a gameplay addition, and is tuned to tie in with the core Civ 5 gameplay without significant editing of the core balance and earlier eras. The idea is to merge the "future" with the present, and make it feel a natural transition from what used to be the vanilla Civ 5 endgame.
Before I go any further, I must note that this is an early version. While most of the coding and content is implemented, it is lacking much artwork at present, something I hope to fix in the near future. However I am not what you would call a graphic designer, so I'm not sure how long this will take (wonder splash art will be finished quite soon, icons I'm not so sure of). It's also probably somewhat unbalanced right now, and there may be bugs.
So without further ado:
Definitive Future:
The future is here. Explore the future of man as it may well pan out over the course of the 21st century; build terrifying advanced weapons to crush your foes, establish a colony on the Red Planet, and lead your people to literal immortality through a full new era of technologies.
15 new technologies, two in the renamed Information (Modern) Era, 11 in the Near Future Era and a further two in the all new Far Future Era.
Spoiler :
9 new buildings, built across the Industrial, Information and Near Future Eras:
Spoiler :
7 new National Wonders, 10 new World Wonders and 2 repurposed World Wonders. These are built generally (with one exception) from the Industrial Era onwards, around the time when your building options start to fade away as you approach the Vanilla endgame.
Spoiler :
3 new Projects, the Arkship Project which now starts the space race, the SDI Project and Project: MORRIGAN, which allows you to build an empire-crushing superunit.
11 new Units. All but one are built in the Near Future Era.
Spoiler :
Other Features and balance changes
There is a new type of specialist: the Cosmopolitan. Cosmos generate 1 of each type of yield but do not contribute towards birthing Great People. This specialist type appears only in two buildings, one of which is a World Wonder and so are quite rare.
Unemployed Citizens now provide a negative effect on your empire instead of the inexplicable +1 production they give in vanilla. They will sap your production and gold for each one you have, so they need to be given work as soon as possible. This is designed to be the challenge of the Near Future age; your cities will grow large and you'll need to support your population (I'm not sure how this will pan out yet, it will need a bit of tweaking in all likelihood).
New improvment: the Solar Panel. These can be built in deserts to boost production. Available at Ecology. The Solar Plant building has been removed.
Terraforming (Not yet implemented). This will let you grow forests and jungles, raise and lower hills and turn horrible tiles into more useful ones once the appropriate techs have been researched. This requires lua to do however which I'm unfamiliar with, hopefully it will make it in soon.
Policies will now increase in cost more to account for the extra era.
Aqueduct: Now gives +2
Food and 25% storage (was 40% storage)Hospital: Now gives +3
Food, 25% storage and double healing rate for garrisoned units, as well as a further +2 Food at Stem Cell Biology (was + 5 Food)Medical Lab: Now gives +10%
Food, 25% storage (was 25% storage).Stock Exchange: Now gives 20%
and +5% from trade routes (was 33% )Research Lab: Now gets an extra +2
Science at Particle Physics.Known Issues:
-The trade route from the Airport doesn't connect overland yet. Another task that requires lua
-The Replicant's invisibility is currently using the submarine invisibility. This shouldn't matter too much for the time being, but theres an unusual warning in the invisibility XML that I haven't looked into yet. It should be fixed edventually.
I should also say that as my first Mod, I doubt that this will be either conceptually or technically perfect, but bear with it. If anyone does actually download this and play it, let me know of any issues great or small and I'll do my best to fix them and post an updated version. If any modders better than me have any tips or pointers for what you see, don't hesitate to tell me.
