Original Thread Discussion (Continued)

[LunarMongoose]

I still recommend combining the two defense values in some way and perhaps allowing cultural defense to be fully bombarded down to 0%.

Siege units have lower bombard limits as you move up the tech tree, up to the point where the modern ones can bombard cities all the way to zero defense. There are also some cute differences in bombard limits (as well as bombard rates) between things like Frigates and Ships of the Line, and Heavy Bombers and Stealth Bombers, which I couldn't do if I made the limit a property of the defense type.

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?

You're missing that Palisades obsolete in Masonry, killing their defense bonus... so you'll go from 0/25% to 50/25% when you build Walls.

You also have to understand that this is exactly the same system vanilla has always used, except vanilla doesn't display the two defense values seperately even though they both exist, and the code it uses fudges things internally which causes a lot of problems when you try to make the improvements I've made. Again, the vanilla game, and thus pretty much all other mods, have defense from buildings and defense from culture as seperate values and only display and use whichever is higher. The vanilla system also has Gunpowder-based units ignoring building defense.

ALL I did was display the two values seperately, add the ability for buildings to add culture defense (necessary for the Arcology Shield since it wouldn't do much good for a city's futuristic energy shield at the end of the tech tree to add defense that only works against pre-Gunpowder units), and make bombard damage absolute-value-based instead of percent-based. Otherwise it's still the vanilla system. And yes the Palisade having Physical would be more logical, but it's just one of those things I have to throw under the bus in favor of gameplay mechanics.

A combined system would add complexity and not be a good idea anyway imo... Gunpowder-based units SHOULD be able to ignore physical defense, certainly the more modern ones should, and you still have things like the Moat, Citadel, Chichen Itza and Himeji Castle that can boost Physical to really high levels. So basically I'm very happy with defense the way it is, and have no plans to change anything atm.

Also, I updated the In Progress sticky yesterday since the patch is taking longer than I said it would (which is what always happens for some reason lol) and I wanted to keep you guys informed (unlike certain game companies, which I despise for their lack of doing that).

 

[Jester Fool]

I updated the In Progress sticky yesterday since the patch is taking longer than I said it would (which is what always happens for some reason lol)

I see that you are getting really, really close. And yes, JDog5000 is a *Great Engineer* (love the other great people names you added too - a fitting tribute to the community).

I wanted to keep you guys informed (unlike certain game companies, which I despise for their lack of doing that).

Much appreciated! Heh, I despise those game companies too.

 

[LunarMongoose]

Well the patch is virtually done/ready, but as you might notice from reading the BBAI forum I'm being held up a little here by a number of AI-related things heh. (I also finally upgraded from XP to Windows 7 the other day, which caused a bit of a delay. (Woohoo, that rhymes.)) It shouldn't be too much longer.

 

[Jester Fool]

A sly reference to a post on the BBAI forum...
(LM in a dark commanding voice) Whom do you serve?! (enthralled Civ player) LunarMongoose!

 

[LunarMongoose]

A sly reference to a post on the BBAI forum...
(LM in a dark commanding voice) Whom do you serve?! (enthralled Civ player) LunarMongoose!

I didn't pay him to say that. ... I swear.

 

[senadin]

Great mov overall, but i am left wondering how can other civs have 5 cities to my own one or two?

How can they find all religions and build 80% of the world wonders and not go broke when if i build 2-3 cities in that same time span, 1-2 workers and 3-5 spearman and go broke?

This is playing on settler mode! All this also before classical era is barely started!


I'd hate to see this mod at prince level!

Seriously, i may sound like i am criticizing and i guess i am, but this mode is awesome! I just wish the AI wasnt so overpowered!

For the record, i even started a few games with an advanced start and it was the same thing, before classical was even over, most nations on the top 8 lists of populous nations were all AI controlled Civs.!?!?!? How can they do this and not go broke???

Also, i am no stranger to Civ, having been playing it since civ 1.



I can do what you said..... build one city and let it grow until i can actually afford another one. yeah this work, but by the time i have a second city up...... most of all other civs will have 6-7 or more cities lol.....

I have to say i havent yet made it to rennaisance era even because at that point other civs are far far ahead!


Anyway, just some comments...... Considering that Settler is the lowest..... i cant really lower the setting.....


cheers!


EDITS, just noticed something. The default difficulty level of the AI civs, is the ''mongoose'' one..... maybe this has something to do with the fact that the AI is doing impossible things....

 

[LunarMongoose]

Yeah so basically what EmperorFool said lol (thanks EF ). I gotta put that in big bold print in the thread description somewhere heh.

I went through the difficulty level code again just now b/c you got me wondering about it and I hadn't actually looked at it in a long time. What happens is it uses the game's difficulty level (tested and verified to be what I select in a game by myself, and I assume it's the highest one a human player has selected in MP but this is .exe code) for the important stuff (big major AI bonuses), so that will be based on what the human chooses for himself which is correct. The remaining stats are read off the AI player difficulty which is set to be DM in all cases, yes. But that's intentional - they're supposed to always have 2 happiness and 1 health as starting values in their cities regardless of what the human is playing on, for example.

So just ignore what I said before this edit, and leave the GlobalDefines_MongooseMod.xml file alone, thanks.

 

[EmperorFool]

@senadin - Make sure you either a) start on Prehistoric era or b) build your Palace as your first build so you get its 8/turn.

 

[senadin]

Yeah i always start at prehistoric! I really like this part of the mod and i wish it would last longer!

How could they even create the game without it?!?! I mean the wheel, fire! We'd be nothing without those crucial discoveries!

Uhhh Isnt the Palace build by default in your first city? I am gona try this again because that 8 gold might make quite a difference early on.

Also is there a reason why i cant select other leaders such as Reagan? I can select them but when i start the game it default to the normal leader.

Also.... is it normal that you can only found 2 state religion? I started a game and i managed to found 2 religions, but even tho i should have found a 3rd, it didnt give me the holy city or even acknowledged that i did.

Did i miss something in the notes somewhere?

Again, great Mod!

 

[LunarMongoose]

Uhhh Isnt the Palace build by default in your first city? I am gona try this again because that 8 gold might make quite a difference early on.

Also is there a reason why i cant select other leaders such as Reagan? I can select them but when i start the game it default to the normal leader.

Also.... is it normal that you can only found 2 state religion? I started a game and i managed to found 2 religions, but even tho i should have found a 3rd, it didnt give me the holy city or even acknowledged that i did.

Did i miss something in the notes somewhere?

I do badly need to work on the documentation, but these 3 things ARE in the Features sticky thread.

There is a pre-Palace building called the Cradle that is automatic but it obsoletes and then you have to build your Palace manually, which was done to allow you to pick which city becomes your capital after things have gotten going. Civs cycle through all their leaders, in order, over the course of a game so it does force you to start on your earliest one chronologically. Civs are also limited to founding 2 religions in the mod which greatly improves balance especially with 12 religions vs vanilla's 7, but you can conquer other people's holy cities to acquire more.

And please grab the new patch if you haven't already.

 

[Cybah]

Where is your bug thread?

I know you from the BBAI forum and I'm using some of your changes in my mod.

I just took a look into this forum and into the civic screenshot and saw a bug.

+50% experience within own border won't work. 50% of 1 is 0. therefore you won't get any xp bonus from this civic.

100% will work, 200% will work and so on.

same to great general points (combat experience)... +50% won't work on that either.

 

[LunarMongoose]

+50% experience within own border won't work. 50% of 1 is 0. therefore you won't get any xp bonus from this civic.

100% will work, 200% will work and so on.

same to great general points (combat experience)... +50% won't work on that either.

Uhh... combats can be worth anywhere between 1 and 6 or 7 experience depending on what the odds were, and whether it was defense or offense. Just b/c +50% exp doesn't boost 98%+ attacks or 60%+ defenses doesn't mean the effect is useless by any means. Plus you can always combine the two effects by using both civics to get +100%.

 

[LunarMongoose]

(Addendum to the above: the Great General promotion Leadership also gives +50% experience in my mod, which is another thing that can be combined with the other +50% effects if you want, but I know from experience playing the mod that the effect from Leadership alone at +50% is terrific.)

*ahem* I have updated the "Known Issues etc" thread with a fairly-complete list of everything on my radar currently, and also updated the "Stuff to Know" section at last with a mostly-complete first draft (woohoo!). Knock yourselves out.

 

[Jester Fool]

LM - first off, your mod (I have the new patch btw) is truly innovative. However, you need a "bug thread". Nothing major, but some issues that you will want to fix (your passion for modding would allow nothing else). I will say, however, that you are sadistic regarding the dificulty level of your mod. TwilightLlama plays like Prince w/ raging barbarians (compared to vanilla civ). This is an impediment to gaining a wide following IMO. The majority of civ players, unless I am mistaken, will not continue to play a mod if they can't win on the easiest difficulty levels. Better to rope players in with achievable victories on the *easy* difficulty levels and *punish* them on the harder levels (once they have experienced the beauty and intricacy of your mod). The learning curve is steep!

 

[LunarMongoose]

Well, this thread we're in now was/is kinda already serving as a semi-official bug thread, and there shouldn't be very many left to report that I'm not aware of (see the Known Issues sticky now that I've updated it), soooo I didn't think it was REALLY necessary to make a dedicated bug thread... but I could possibly be talked into it... This thread would kinda die at that point though.

Umm, you know that neither I nor the mod is requiring people to use the custom difficulties, right? I even made one adjustment to some of the vanilla ones in the patch once it fully sunk in that people would still be using those a lot heh. And Senadin's report above, well, we're pretty sure that had to do with him not knowing to build his Palace manually so he was going without the +8 commerce the whole time which is why it was so hard for him... I double-checked how the difficulty settings are used in the code as I said a few posts ago, and I'm pretty sure from that that Settler, Chieftain, etc should still be nice and easy like they are in vanilla. Btw if you read my updated Stuff to Know sticky you'll see I guesstimated that TwilightLlama would be around Monarch (I haven't actually gotten to try it yet since I just added it in the patch), so if it's Prince-ish then I was only one off.

I appreciate your compliments though! *hugs*

p.s. - The IDEA is to play DarkMongoose with Raging Barbs ON (though TL+RB will suffice)... Then you get to witness the true meaning of fun! Mwa ha ha.

 

[Jester Fool]

Btw if you read my updated Stuff to Know sticky you'll see I guesstimated that TwilightLlama would be around Monarch (I haven't actually gotten to try it yet since I just added it in the patch), so if it's Prince-ish then I was only one off.

Well that explains a lot. For some reason I *thought* (reading comprehension fail on my part) TwilightLlama WAS the easy setting (and I just guessed Prince btw). Where in the world did you come up with the idea for the spinning werewolves (and WHO taught them ninjitsu)? Nice. I enjoyed watching them slaughter my stone axemen.

The IDEA is to play DarkMongoose with Raging Barbs ON (though TL+RB will suffice)... Then you get to witness the true meaning of fun! Mwa ha ha.

Look forward to it (once I fully know all the in's and out's so to speak).

Now for a few bugs (or not). When you select units in a city, the unit icons scroll vertically on the map (as opposed to horizontally). Is this intended? I had a scout with the woodsman II promotion (double movement in forests) and when I hovered on the unit (which was on the map), the text describing the promotion was repeated over and over until the entire left side of the screen was full. This, I'm sure, is a glitch. The really cool picture displayed when starting a game (what city is this btw?) has a solid purple stripe at the bottom. My guess would be my video settings (1920x1200). Is there a way to get Civ to initialize the draw buffer to black instead of purple? If so, that would hide the fact the picture is smaller than the screen resolution. Minor nitpick I know.

 

[LunarMongoose]

Where in the world did you come up with the idea for the spinning werewolves (and WHO taught them ninjitsu)?

Umm, that would be... SeZereth, who made the unit. All I did was use it, I had nothing to do with either its look or its animation. As mentioned earlier I would actually prefer to get rid of the Werewolf due to it being too unrealistic for the mod, but I need some sort of strength 3 speed 2 animal and I didn't have any other good options last time I checked...

When you select units in a city, the unit icons scroll vertically on the map (as opposed to horizontally). Is this intended?

It's part of the PLE (PlotList Enhancements) mod that's been around forever and is pretty well-known. If you click on the leftmost small circle button on the top of the unit console, it will cycle through a number of modes of how it displays the unit icons above there. The other PLE buttons mostly act as filters for the icons.

I had a scout with the woodsman II promotion (double movement in forests) and when I hovered on the unit (which was on the map), the text describing the promotion was repeated over and over until the entire left side of the screen was full. This, I'm sure, is a glitch.

I've seen this before, but not recently. Not sure what to tell ya - I just plopped a Woodsman 2 Scout in a test game, moused over it on the map, and it works fine on my machine here. If anyone has any ideas on this please let me know.

The really cool picture displayed when starting a game (what city is this btw?) has a solid purple stripe at the bottom. My guess would be my video settings (1920x1200).

Again, that's very strange. You SHOULD only get the pink stripe if you're using a 4x3 resolution (or anything more square-shaped than 16x10). I did answer this earlier but it might've been back in the old thread before the subforum... Anyway, Civ4 likes to scale background pictures in strange and interesting ways, so I had to either add a pink stripe for some people, or have the picture get compressed or expanded vertically which makes it look terrible, so I went with the stripe. The color has nothing to do with Civ4 btw, it's part of the image file... I was considering updating it in a future version to say "If you can read this, get a widescreen monitor!" in the stripe lol, but if you're seeing it on 1920x1200 (which is also what I use, with NO stripe) then I guess I shouldn't... Are you SURE you have Civ4 set to use 1920x1200 and not just Windows?

Edit - Forgot to answer your other question. The city is Boston, where I live, and I took the picture myself obviously. Daryn wants me to use a lighter picture taken in twilight rather than darkness but my opinion is that would swamp the loading dialog too much... And Mike wants me to use this photography technique where you take multiple pictures at different exposures then combine them but honestly I don't really like how those look heh.

 

[Jester Fool]

Are you SURE you have Civ4 set to use 1920x1200 and not just Windows?

What I meant to say is "My guess would be that I am a complete moron who has Windows set to 1920x1200 instead of the game (which is set at 1600x1200)". (Hangs head in shame.) Of course it is fixed now. Btw, I like the picture the way it is - fits your UI theme and title screen perfectly IMO. Very nice.

 

[Jester Fool]

I didn't accurately describe this before. The picture makes it much clearer (except it is the mouse hovering NOT the cursor).

 

[LunarMongoose]

Woot, screenshot! Yeah I can reproduce it now... apparently just assigning Woodsman 1 and 2 to a unit plopped in the WorldBuilder is not enough, you have to also set them to be level 3 (or else train one up to 5 exp fighting stuff). I won't know exactly what the problem is til I look at the code, but whatever it is it'll be fixed in the next version. Thanks for the report.