Greater Epic Mod

[JuuL]

Hmmm... this looks interesting. I'm downloading it know

However, there is one thing that I find a little odd: I can see, that Cuneiform requieres Alphabet. Should it not be Alphabet that requieres Cuneiform?
... maybe I should just add a few arguments:
The first forms of writing that was used by Man was shaped in a way so that they could easily be carved into wood or clay tablets by using a wooden stick (it was this kind of scripts that are named "cuneiform"). It was not untill centuries later, that the Romans invented the Roman Alphabet (based on the Greek Alphabet) that we use today. The letters of the Alphabet are designed for being used on parchment (and later paper) or being carved into stone with a hammer and chisel.

But apart from that I think this mod looks great.

 

[KingTux]

Origionally posted by JuuL
Hmmm... this looks interesting. I'm downloading it know

However, there is one thing that I find a little odd: I can see, that Cuneiform requieres Alphabet. Should it not be Alphabet that requieres Cuneiform?
... maybe I should just add a few arguments:
The first forms of writing that was used by Man was shaped in a way so that they could easily be carved into wood or clay tablets by using a wooden stick (it was this kind of scripts that are named "cuneiform"). It was not untill centuries later, that the Romans invented the Roman Alphabet (based on the Greek Alphabet) that we use today. The letters of the Alphabet are designed for being used on parchment (and later paper) or being carved into stone with a hammer and chisel.

But apart from that I think this mod looks great.

I realize what you're saying, but forgot to check the tech tree too closely when I was designing it. I'll make sure to switch the two as cuneiform was first used for numbers before they used it for language. It was from this that the alphabet arose. So, just imagine the two of them switched for next time, and you've got all the changes that I'm thinking about making to the ancient era. Thanks for spotting it.

 

[JuuL]

I'm glad I could help.
I'll be back with more comments as soon as a get time to actually play the mod...

 

[civilleader]

Why is islam an advance? Shouldn't religions like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Confusciousism, maybe Hinduism also be advance in that case too. Or make only islamic countries research it to build mosques. Or christian nations build churches...etc.

 

[KingTux]

Origionally posted by JuuL
I'm glad I could help.
I'll be back with more comments as soon as a get time to actually play the mod...

Most of the feedback comments that I've received so far are from the screenshots and the readme file. However, I'll probably get more related to game play within a week or two, as this still is fairly new.

Origionally posted by civilleader
Why is islam an advance? Shouldn't religions like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Confusciousism, maybe Hinduism also be advance in that case too. Or make only islamic countries research it to build mosques. Or christian nations build churches...etc.

If you'll notice, Christianity and Protestantism are also advances. Islam is meant to be a balancer tech that is meant to de-europeanize the tech tree. Eventually, I intend to add more to it and balance out the culture groups, as some right now can receive more power from these. Right now, I'm not going to worry about it too much based upon a C3C flaw that allows everyone to build all buildings, as flavors for buildings just don't work. And, as for your other part, yes, only islamic countries (for the most part, not all islamic countries are within the middle eastern culture group) should be able to research it, but as flavors aren't perfect, other people can research it.

EDIT:
While sitting down to play, I found quite a few blunders in some of my last minute additions. Unless they're fixed, gameplay will be seriously flawed. The update will be at the top of the thread.

On a side note, it seems like the new AI for the king units is working great. More comments would be appreciated as to how effective you think they are.

 

[tmarcl]

Just out of curiosity, is there any reason why Islam is so easy to research (requiring only one advance from Monotheism), while Christianity requires Theology and Divine Right? Historically, Christianity came about long before Islam, and really doesn't require the concept of "Divine Right" to be developed (IMO, without having been able to download the mod yet).

Secondly, Divine Right isn't a recent (historically speaking) concept. Leaders have been considered appointed by the gods since well into the ancient times, and really should be included before the concept of organized government.

Thirdly (and this is a beef with the designers, not you), Theology and Monotheism are actually ancient era techs, historically speaking, as both were in full swing long before the fall of the Roman Empire. Monotheism existed in Egypt and Israel for centuries before the Romans even came into power, and Theology has been around really since at least the Hellenistic period (if not earlier). As I said, it's a gripe with the design, not you, though.

Marc

 

[thasan]

just a thought...which religion came before?? christianity before islam. why the tech tree says opposite??

 

[KingTux]

Origionally posted by tmarcl Just out of curiosity, is there any reason why Islam is so easy to research (requiring only one advance from Monotheism), while Christianity requires Theology and Divine Right? Historically, Christianity came about long before Islam, and really doesn't require the concept of "Divine Right" to be developed (IMO, without having been able to download the mod yet).

Secondly, Divine Right isn't a recent (historically speaking) concept. Leaders have been considered appointed by the gods since well into the ancient times, and really should be included before the concept of organized government.

Thirdly (and this is a beef with the designers, not you), Theology and Monotheism are actually ancient era techs, historically speaking, as both were in full swing long before the fall of the Roman Empire. Monotheism existed in Egypt and Israel for centuries before the Romans even came into power, and Theology has been around really since at least the Hellenistic period (if not earlier). As I said, it's a gripe with the design, not you, though.

Marc

1. Islam was more defined and established quicker than Christianity. However, I have no problem with inserting a few more techs along the way.

2. This doesn't necessarily represent Chrisitanity as a religion, but more as a practice among European governments. After the fall of the Roman empire, Western Europe split up into many factions (tribes) who started reverting back to their older ways. Shortly afterwards, the Roman Catholics split off from the Eastern Orthodox, and established Charlemaign as the king of the Holy Roman Empire (Divine Right), which had rightful jurisdiction to all of Western Europe. All kings nowadays are supposed to get their power from Charlemaign, as their supposed to be his direct descendents. As to why Christianity is after Divine Right, again, this is a matter of state ran government and not the actual founding of it. It took a couple hundred more years until countries in Europe proclaimed themselves as "Divine protectors of the Christian faith". Charlemaign is the only exception to this, as the papal government explicitly condoned all other governments from having any rights at all. When they openly declared this, it had been too long to deny them their powers anymore, as such was sparking the creation of other split off religions, commonly referred to as Protestantism or the "protesting" religions. There! That's your history lesson and why it's the way it is. If you'd like me to rename Christianity to something more "suiting", please post suggestions. However, I won't gurantee that I'll use them.

3. This is more towards when it became popular. It may have existed beforehand, but wasn't well established until then.

 

[Sucha_Soorma]

Good job on the tech trees so far, you should consider modifying the industrial and modern pages too.

A good idea is to incorporate the 'World at War' tree from the WW2 conquest into the end of industrial age, as it makes much more sense than the way everything jumps so quickly from industial age to modern age.

Also consider using more of the napoleon tree in early industrial, especially the way the sail ships are used.

Peace.

 

[KingTux]

Origionally posted by Sucha_Soorma
Good job on the tech trees so far, you should consider modifying the industrial and modern pages too.

A good idea is to incorporate the 'World at War' tree from the WW2 conquest into the end of industrial age, as it makes much more sense than the way everything jumps so quickly from industial age to modern age.

Also consider using more of the napoleon tree in early industrial, especially the way the sail ships are used.

Peace.

My intention now is to leave the ancient and middle age tech trees alone from now on. The only problem that I'm having with that is that the conquests are centered around the two tech trees that I've already completed. So, eventually, I'll probably invent my own. Currently, I have 1 new advance for the industrial age and about 5 more to the modern age (excluding moving techs around). These have been on the drawing board ever since I was creating v0.3. However, like the Islam tech, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do to make them useful. Right now, I have a general idea, but don't want to commit to anything yet until Monday, as I took a break from modding as working 30-50 hours or so the week before on v0.3 drained me. I have no intention of working that hard again. This is also why I'm looking for volunteers.

As for the napoleonic tree, I just don't see much more that I'd actually like to use. However, this doesn't mean that I won't change my mind in the future. I'll know more about what techs I'm planning on adding when I storyboard some time next week.

 

[Angry_Carp]

Here is the Error message that has been crashing my otherwise Kick ass enjoyment of King Tux's Mod.

Missing engry in "Conquests\KingTux's Greater epic Mod\text\pediaicons.txt": ANINAME_PRTO_Fire_Catapult

The entry in pediaicons looks like this

#ANIMNAME_PRTO_Catapult
Catapult

Im not sure what the next step is to fix the problem please HRALP me

 

[KingTux]

Origionally posted by Angry_Carp
Here is the Error message that has been crashing my otherwise Kick ass enjoyment of King Tux's Mod.

Missing engry in "Conquests\KingTux's Greater epic Mod\text\pediaicons.txt": ANINAME_PRTO_Fire_Catapult

The entry in pediaicons looks like this

#ANIMNAME_PRTO_Catapult
Catapult

Im not sure what the next step is to fix the problem please HRALP me

I haven't seen this myself, as it's working perfectly for me. However, that doesn't mean that the problem isn't there. It SHOULD be ANIMNAME and the counterpart that you're quoting isn't the correct unit. The correct one should be named ANIMNAME_PRTO_Fire_Catapult. If it's not named that, I'll post a fix for it later today (I've got to scrounge up my v0.3.2 as I've added a lot of stuff that's either going to be nonfunctional for a couple of days, or is something that I don't want to reveal until I'm ready. I just don't want to ruin v0.4's suprise. That, and I'm busy throughout the daytime). If you don't want to wait, though, open up pediaicons.txt in the C:\Program Files\Infrogame Interactive\Civilization III\Conquests\Conquests\KingTux's Greater epic Mod\text\ directory. Click Edit then Find and Replace. Use these values: Find: ANINAME_PRTO Replace: ANIMNAME_PRTO. If it still doesn't work, it's possibly because I typed PROT when I should have typed PRTO, which probably is the case. Try searching for ANIMNAME_PROT too.

From the playtests that I've done this week, I've noticed a lot of bugs that I need to fix. However, they're more with design than anything else. For instance, I'm missing an arrow on the Ancient Era tech tree (Which looks rather funny as Masonry is just hanging there), and that requirements that I intended to change I forgot to change. Another is that the AI seems to take advantage of there being only one king unit. To balance this out, I'm going to attemt to give each player 3 king units, which could possibly result in a MP version of this MOD.

I may spend an extra week ironing these out and making sure that all civilopedia entries are correct. Currently, I know that the civilopedia isn't that accurate, but that you should be able to logically deduce what does what.

BTW, if anyone's wondering, once this MOD hits v1.0, the KingTux is going to be dropped from the name as I won't be able to MOD in about a year or so. Currently, my goal is to get it to there and then turn it over to whoever's willing to continue it. I'm still looking for help.

 

[Angry_Carp]

I would be more than happy to help. I love this MOD.

So in the spirit of helpfullness let run some things past you.

You are really screwed if you are on some type of island as it takes forever to get ANY type of sea vessle you might want to move carrack up a bit in the tech tree, or mabye just move sailing up, just with a pottery/cuniform pre-req mabye.

You might want to turn disease down and Ill tell you why. I started on a floodplane and got disease pretty early, I didnt have irrigation, kept getting disease, disease, disease, couldnt build a settler . Other civs had 5ish citys before I even managed to get irrigation to the point where I could build a second city. Or mabye it was bad luck or mabye I just suck. Just some thoughts

 

[KingTux]

Angry_Carp, I'm attaching the fix. Apparently, I ciompletely ommited the Fire Catapult's animation directory name. Thanks for spotting this as I'm not too likely to notice this kind of stuff if I'm the only one playtesting (even my playtesting isn't perfect). Just to make sure, though, I checked up on all the other units and found nothing wrong with anything else.

Origionally posted by Angry_Carp
I would be more than happy to help. I love this MOD.

So in the spirit of helpfullness let run some things past you.

You are really screwed if you are on some type of island as it takes forever to get ANY type of sea vessle you might want to move carrack up a bit in the tech tree, or mabye just move sailing up, just with a pottery/cuniform pre-req mabye.

You might want to turn disease down and Ill tell you why. I started on a floodplane and got disease pretty early, I didnt have irrigation, kept getting disease, disease, disease, couldnt build a settler . Other civs had 5ish citys before I even managed to get irrigation to the point where I could build a second city. Or mabye it was bad luck or mabye I just suck. Just some thoughts

As for the sea units, I wasn't going to mention it, but, yes, that has been fixed. Curraghs have been moved to Cuneiform. In fact, I have quite a few unit insertions that have changed the unit upgrade trees. For their functionality, I've left a phrase in the new readme file that'll say something like "consult civilopedia for unit upgrade trees". From my limited playtesting recently, a lot of stuff has made it into the mod, and, as I haven't found too many new techs that are too relevant, I might have to invent some new ones. With all the stuff that I've added, I'm not quite so sure if I can avoid adding techs to the Modern era.

As for your other comment, I never realized that that could be done. While I'm typing this, it has been halved. I'd like to get some feedback about how it affects the game after I release the patch (possibly within 2 weeks or so, as I plan to comb through the Civilopedia. However, that doesn't mean that it won't come out sooner). (EDIT: I changed my mind. Irrigation, as far as I can tell, doesn't affect disease for flood plains. So, there's not too much sense in trying to fix it.)


Angry_Carp, you could always playtest and tell me where the mistakes are. If someone else sees them, it saves me all that much time. Besides, it doesn't matter how perfect I try to be, I'm always going to make a mistake, especially with as large as this mod is. If you have other expertise other than game play, though, please feel free to PM me. Even if it's not too developed yet, I might be able to teach you some of my old methods that I've used for years. Just say exactly what you're interested in doing within the PM and I'm sure that I can work something out.

The fix will also be posted at the top of the thread.