Original Thread Discussion (Continued)

[LunarMongoose]

Most of what you'd need to check in a city to make a build decision is now located on the city bar hover. The city screen doesn't take too long to open, but it's a lot easier if you don't have to. Here are some screenshots from a very early version:

Meh... To be honest I'd rather not clutter up my UI with that sort of thing given how pristine the city screen looks, but I'm not ruling it out yet.

One came from the jungle to the North but went back the same way (phew!). It has been killing 1-5 units per turn in Native America for about 40 turns now. It's rather entertaining, though the sound is a little jarring. Obviously I started at too low a difficulty level as I wasn't sure how different the mod was from Vanilla. The sea turtle only seems to kill a unit every 10 turns or so.

Like I said, if I have to nerf their strengh or find a good unit to give a big vs Sandworm bonus to, I will. The sound is an unused vanilla BTS sound effect, and I find it rather humorous personally, but I could probably be talked into changing it.

Note I already gave the Quinquereme an anti-Turtle bonus that gives a few of them some hope of successfully defending your fishing nets against one.

BTW, I was sad to see no Sabre Tooth Tigers (which actually existed though I'm blanking on their correct name). The Mastodon (think you called it Mammoth?) was a nice addition. Very scary to have this thing tromping through my territory.

The lack of a sabertooth, or smiledon officially, has more to do with the lack of a good-looking model, but I suppose I could replace the Werewolf with one.

Yes, Mastodon or Wooly Mammoth depending on the exact subspecies you're talking about. Thanks. The Mammoth, also known as "Manny" and "Los Mammothus" between me and Daryn, is going to get a +50% vs Mounted effect as well in the next patch, to make him a fully parallel version of the War Elephant, to which he is genetically related.

I *thought* is was a legal abbreviation for "something", but apparently it's not?

I dunno, it could be, I've just never heard it before. Could probably resolve with some simple googling if I had time at the moment.

 

[Jester Fool]

Congrats LM on the new sub-forum for your mod! I look forward to checking it out tomorrow. Your timing is impeccable. I refuse to get Civ 5 (due to the fact it will be *bundled* with the spyware/malware called Steam) so I am glad not everybody is casting Civ 4 aside. Let me tell you, I admire your passion, and it definitely shows in the quality of the screenshots you have posted so far. I think we will be good friends indeed. Thanks man.

 

[avain]

I dunno, it could be, I've just never heard it before. Could probably resolve with some simple googling if I had time at the moment.

Oh, don't bother, I like to check if I'm wrong -> the only abbreviation for it used by native speakers is sthg.

 

[nelly1882]

This mods looks very very good, however haveing trouble loading it.Go to load it and i get a message come up (GFC error: failed to initalize the primary control theme) HELP !!! :-(

 

[LunarMongoose]

Sorry guys, but my web service is going to hit its bandwidth limit when the download count gets to between 240 and 250 here fyi, which will make my files unavailable until July 16 unless I pay them to increase it, which I might do but I haven't looked into how much that would cost yet heh.

There is also a patch in the works (that will among other things rein in the Sandworm a bit), but it's probably still several days off.

This mods looks very very good, however haveing trouble loading it.Go to load it and i get a message come up (GFC error: failed to initalize the primary control theme) HELP !!! :-(

That error only happens when something is wrong with the custom UI theme. It works fine for me and my friends, and no one else has mentioned that error yet either so I'm pretty sure it's set up correctly. It does matter that the MongooseMod folder be installed in Beyond the Sword\Mods\, and that it not be renamed in any way. If that doesn't help, try reinstalling it from the zip again, and/or check the integrity of the zip: it should have a filesize of exactly 500,066,480 bytes.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Sorry guys, but my web service is going to hit its bandwidth limit when the download count gets to between 240 and 250 here fyi, which will make my files unavailable until July 16 unless I pay them to increase it, which I might do but I haven't looked into how much that would cost yet heh.

There is also a patch in the works (that will among other things rein in the Sandworm a bit), but it's probably still several days off.



That error only happens when something is wrong with the custom UI theme. It works fine for me and my friends, and no one else has mentioned that error yet either so I'm pretty sure it's set up correctly. It does matter that the MongooseMod folder be installed in Beyond the Sword\Mods\, and that it not be renamed in any way. If that doesn't help, try reinstalling it from the zip again, and/or check the integrity of the zip: it should have a filesize of exactly 500,066,480 bytes.

why don't you upload it elsewhere? it's a shame all the great work you've been doing is not accessable

 

[Grimfaire]

I've run into an issue with cultural wins and also with turns...

I played a game where I started in the new earlier time period that you added... and after 350 turns had yet to pass 45000 BC...

also...won a cultural victory with 3 cities at "legendary" where none had over 20k culture...

 

[LunarMongoose]

why don't you upload it elsewhere? it's a shame all the great work you've been doing is not accessable

Well it was accessible, if you were one of the first 230 people to get it... lol jk.

The limit on my site resets every 2 weeks (on the 1st and 16th of each month), so it's not like it was going to be down for very long, and I don't really anticipate having 200 downloads of a 500MB file in the space of a couple days again which is the only reason it overloaded... though I could always be wrong I suppose.

I can always pay them more to increase the limit, and I was going to look into what that would cost here as soon as I got a moment, but to answer your question: mainly b/c I've never used one of the free hosting sites before, would have to sign up, and don't really like the experience I have when I have to download other people's files from those places and don't really want to put my own users through that. But yes I suppose it'd be better than nothing.

I played a game where I started in the new earlier time period that you added... and after 350 turns had yet to pass 45000 BC...

Haha oops... I knew what the problem here was the instant I read what you said. Sorry, my bad. I was careful to only adjust the year/duration brackets on the EternalMongoose gamespeed because wherever possible I tried to leave the vanilla settings alone, and this worked fine until recently when I moved the starting date back from 10,000 to 48,000 BC, however that change would definitely mess up the other gamespeed brackets, yes. This will be fixed in the next update, though it's basically only a "display bug" and doesn't affect gameplay.

Edit - Actually it would've still been messed up... just not quite as much... ever since I moved the starting date back from 4,000 (vanilla) to 10,000 BC a long time ago, heh.

also...won a cultural victory with 3 cities at "legendary" where none had over 20k culture...

I didn't change anything anywhere in the mod that would affect this. I assume you're playing on a fast gamespeed and with a small map size, in which case victory thresholds are really low in vanilla as well. I'll double-check this before I post the patch I'm working on, but I don't think there's anything wrong.

 

[LunarMongoose]

Okay, turns out it wasn't very expensive at all. The file should be working again, and it will handle around 400 downloads of the mod every 2 weeks... If in the future that somehow still isn't enough I'll upgrade it again. Sorry for the outage.

Edit - GRR, that doesn't actually change anything til the reset date. Mother of feathers... Hang on.

 

[LunarMongoose]

OKAY, it's available again. Big thanks to my friend Mike for hosting the file on his site until my site comes back. The download speed isn't as good but it's not terrible, and he has a ridiculous 3TB of monthly bandwidth so there's no way that'll be a problem for one week. The screenshots and my other files will still be unavailable til July 16 but eh what can ya do.

Doesn't look like JDog's gonna be posting any big BBAI code updates really soon here so I'm gonna go ahead and release my patch as soon as it's done in the next day or two probably.

 

[EmperorFool]

You might want to create a sticky Bug Reports thread to keep things organized.

In any case, after settling that city in the desert I've found one annoying issue with it: every unit the city produces starts damaged. If you let it heal in the city one turn, it gets to 100%, but I don't think you should have to do that.

One thing I've found so far in my second and third games (had to abort first and second games to increase the difficulty level) is that in the early game (prehistoric) there aren't many things to build other than units, but you have to keep killing them off to avoid going bankrupt. It would be nice if there was something else (building or process) that you could build.

I tried building more Tribes and founding more cities instead, but that kills the economy faster than a bunch of units. And you can't even use those units to go to war because you'll run out of money paying the support costs long before your army arrives at the enemy's gates.

Edit: Another issue is that cities with Walls a Dun do not show 50% 100% defense on the city bar, but an Archer in a city on a hill receives +125% from City (Unit Ability). Should I be able to bombard the walls defense using catapults? All they do is knock the cultural defenses down to 25%.

 

[LunarMongoose]

Thanks for your continued interest and posting EF, really appreciate it.

You might want to create a sticky Bug Reports thread to keep things organized.

Yeah that's what the Known Issues section above is for, I just literally haven't had a spare block of time to update it, or the other sticky threads, yet. Should get to it as soon as the patch I'm working on is done. Sorry for the delay heh.

In any case, after settling that city in the desert I've found one annoying issue with it: every unit the city produces starts damaged. If you let it heal in the city one turn, it gets to 100%, but I don't think you should have to do that.

That's a really cute little issue, thanks for reporting it. I'll see if there's an easy way to fix it.

One thing I've found so far in my second and third games (had to abort first and second games to increase the difficulty level) is that in the early game (prehistoric) there aren't many things to build other than units, but you have to keep killing them off to avoid going bankrupt. It would be nice if there was something else (building or process) that you could build.

I tried building more Tribes and founding more cities instead, but that kills the economy faster than a bunch of units. And you can't even use those units to go to war because you'll run out of money paying the support costs long before your army arrives at the enemy's gates.

Hmm... Daryn and I don't really agree with you here. There's 4 buildings (Palisade, Knowledge Inheritance, Cave Painting, Burial Mound) and one wonder (Ise Jingu) that can be unlocked before you get Sedentary. Unit cost can be mitigated with the Tribal Law civic which is why it's there. You can always make extra Gatherers to upgrade them into Workers later... And if you rush to Sendentary for the free tech and a good shot at founding early religions, completing a lot of ancient quests, etc, then you don't really spend that much time in Prehistoric anyway.

Another approach I personally like to take is to slow-play it, staying in Prehistoric for as long as possible, focusing on gold over research and getting every tech you can get without getting Sedentary, just so you can keep using Tribes to expand b/c of their much lower production cost vs Settlers. This does put you way behind on tech progress and tile improvements and you give up founding religions til the later ones, but the large empire can be worth it.

Edit: Another issue is that Walls do not show 50% defense on the city bar, but an Archer in a city on a hill receives +125% from City (Unit Ability) = 25% (archer on hills) + 50% (archer in city) + 50% (walls?). Should I be able to bombard the walls defense using catapults? All they do is knock the cultural defenses down to 25%.

If you're talking about a hilled city: it's 25% for the hill, 25% for an Archer ON a hill, 50% from the Archer's innate city defense ability, and another 25% is a global bonus for defending city tiles from barbarians which humans and AIs both get.

A Wall provides 50% physical defense, which will show up on the black rook icon left of the culture defense icon. The defender can only use whichever of the two defense stats is higher - not both - so if you're talking about your capital you'd have 50% culture defense already from your Palace.

 

[EmperorFool]

Check out my edit. I was attacking Brennus at the time so my comment applies to the Dun's 100% defense which showed on the city bar as 0% physical defense. When I checked out the other AIs I saw their walled cities showed 50% physical defense as expected.

Also while attacking Brennus my capapults refused to attack undamaged city defenders. The move hover showed the odds, but trying to move had no effect as if they were at or below 25% health. Is this expected? The unit hover says it can cause splash damage and inflict damage up to 75%. I haven't tried against the other AIs yet.

 

[Jester Fool]

It would be nice if there was something else (building or process) that you could build.

I concur. One thing the Dune Wars mod has is an "idle build". Basically, your production is converted into 25% science and 25% gold (so 20 production would be +5 science and +5 gold). Not really a game changer (since the production in your cities is much lower early on, and later, there is more useful stuff to build) but it does help to manage your early economy without resorting to deleting units that you spent time building. Something to think about anyway.

 

[LunarMongoose]

Check out my edit. I was attacking Brennus at the time so my comment applies to the Dun's 100% defense which showed on the city bar as 0% physical defense. When I checked out the other AIs I saw their walled cities showed 50% physical defense as expected.

I just tested the Dun and it's working fine as far as I can tell. Are you sure you're not seeing a Palisade or something? They look different... Otherwise I'm not sure what could be going on. You could try posting a relevant savefile if necessary.

Also while attacking Brennus my capapults refused to attack undamaged city defenders. The move hover showed the odds, but trying to move had no effect as if they were at or below 25% health. Is this expected? The unit hover says it can cause splash damage and inflict damage up to 75%. I haven't tried against the other AIs yet.

Siege units do not have combat limits like they do in vanilla, and the "up to 75%" refers to the splash and bombard limits: Catapults cannot damage a unit below 70% with splash damage (and they use 75% of their base strength to determine the actual damage done), and they cannot bombard a city below 25% physical or cultural defense.

However siege units do have exploration disabled, as do Gatherers/Workers, Settlers (but not Tribes), Missionaries/Executives, Caravans/Freight, Carriers/Modern Carriers, Pigs/Missiles, and Work Boats/Constructors. So if you want to attack a city with a siege unit you have to be sure the surrounding tiles have all been scouted first, basically. Even though disabling exploration is a vanilla ability there is no line in the unit mouseover text about it however, so I should probably add one hehe.

I concur. One thing the Dune Wars mod has is an "idle build". Basically, your production is converted into 25% science and 25% gold (so 20 production would be +5 science and +5 gold). Not really a game changer (since the production in your cities is much lower early on, and later, there is more useful stuff to build) but it does help to manage your early economy without resorting to deleting units that you spent time building. Something to think about anyway.

If you read my response to EmperorFool, I really think there's plenty for cities to do in Prehistoric without having to disband any units, and if there isn't, well, factor that into the tech tree path you're pursuing heh. The problem with an Idle Build like you're suggesting is then the humans would have a slightly unfair advantage over the AIs who would not know how to use it... I know enough from listening to the BBAI discussions about the existing vanilla Process Builds, that telling the AIs when to use them is very complicated.

 

[Jester Fool]

If you read my response to EmperorFool

I did, of course!

The problem with an Idle Build like you're suggesting is then the humans would have a slightly unfair advantage over the AIs who would not know how to use it... I know enough from listening to the BBAI discussions about the existing vanilla Process Builds, that telling the AIs when to use them is very complicated.

You're right that the human player could possibly exploit idle build (but I didn't think about AI issues). Maybe I'll have a better suggestion next time.

 

[EmperorFool]

Are you sure you're not seeing a Palisade or something?

The Palisade doesn't provide any physical defense? Edit: Looking in the pedia I see that Walls provide +50% physical defense while the Palisade provides +25% modern defense. What's the difference?

And honestly, I'd be content if I could build nothing.

Edit2: I get why units produce in Tundra and Desert cities start damaged: they wouldn't get to heal if they are marked as having moved when built. The same thing happens when moving undamaged units into a city built on damaging terrain.

 

[LunarMongoose]

The Palisade doesn't provide any physical defense? Edit: Looking in the pedia I see that Walls provide +50% physical defense while the Palisade provides +25% modern defense. What's the difference?

Physical = Walls, Castle, etc. Gunpowder-based units ignore it.

Modern was a really lousy name that was still the best I could come up with for "everything else." It mostly means culture defense, but also includes the Palisade and Arcology Shield, and the Palace/Shrine/Headquarters. It's the same except it's not ignored by Gunpowder-based units. I wanted to make the Palisade physical, believe me I did, but the problem is it has to be weaker than Walls, and any value lower enough from 50% to make it noticeably weaker, also makes it insufficiently stronger than what plain culture defense can provide early on to make the Palisade worth building.

At least, that was the explanation before I increased the culture level threshold values significantly, and added two other strong effects to the Palisade b/c I felt it was still too weak and not worth building given how quickly it expires... BUT, I still think it's better gameplay for it to add to any culture defense you have early on, rather than override it. Besides, with the Palace effect that's the only way it could benefit capital cities anyway.

And honestly, I'd be content if I could build nothing.

Well I suppose that could be arranged... I still don't think it's needed though.

 

[EmperorFool]

How about some other formula besides max(physical, modern/cultural) for the defense value of a city? For example, max + (min / 2), so a city with 25% physical and 20% cultural would have a net 35% defense value.

 

[EmperorFool]

Oh, I think perhaps the fact that both types of defense are bombarded at the same time is the problem. If you have +25% culture and +25% physical from Palisade, it takes zero turns to bombard down to 25% total since catapults won't go below 25%. With Palisade providing modern defense, you have to take many turns to bombard from 50% down to 25%.

The downside is that building Walls won't improve that. You'll go from 0/50% to 50%/25%, and it will take just as long to bombard down to 25%. So it's a big waste of until Castles become available. Or am I missing something else here?

I still recommend combining the two defense values in some way and perhaps allowing cultural defense to be fully bombarded down to 0%. If Palisade were returned to the more logical physical defense, it would mean a minimum total defense of 25% still (good), plus taking time to bombard down to that (also good).