James here is the latest victim to be sucked up by the Mongoose Soul Vacuum 3000™. I convinced him to try the mod with my formidable psychic powah, then asked him what he thought a few days later by PM, and got a PM back in response. Go phigure. So in a brilliant maneuver to revitalize this hibernating subforum for a few days, I am, with permission, transmogrifying the conversation into a post using my reply to his reply, thusforthly:
James009 said:
Hey Monghoose,
I did manage to try your mod in singleplayer, not multiplayer yet. Overall, I like it.
Presentation is fantastic. I think the new terrain looks excellent, the UI is amazing to look at, and each menu is fantastic with the graphics. I also really like all the new terrain features and thinks they make the game a bit more interesting.
The UI graphics are primarily taken from Planetfall so I really can't claim most of the credit, though the main silver theme color and purple highlight color, the choice of how to use Planetfall's background images, and conversion of one vanilla background image from yellow to gray (the papyrus/crumpled paper of the tech tree), were my doing, heh.
James009 said:
Also, the expanded intro looks great, sounds great, and is just fantastic to look at. It lets me know what I'm playing and whats in it better then most other mods and proves this was a labor of love.
Disclaimer: Just to be extra clear, where the purple text in the top left of the title screen names other big full mods, that does not mean I fully incorporated those; it means I got enough ideas and/or content from them to warrant crediting them prominently on the title screen. MM is not a full combination of RoM and LoR, for example; there was some confusion about that at one point in the past.
Thanks though. I really do love my title screen, and am very happy to see it appreciated.
OH! And finally someone who likes my title music, too! *hugs*
James009 said:
I'm enjoying the expanded tech tree with the Caveman techs and future techs. Seems to be many new buildings and units to give the game a bit more variety.
Yeah I'm quite happy with those too. My Prehistoric Era is based on the Stone Age Mod by TheTriturador, but has been modified and simplified to serve more as an integrated "prequel" phase to the game. Some people have expressed their desire to see the time it takes to progress through the Stone Age lengthened to make it a more prominent part of the game, but the problem with that is the Tribe unit, basically. There is already a tradeoff between advanced tech which forces early Settler use, and faster, more efficient early expansion by sticking with Tribes that also requires staying technologically backward. This has been carefully balanced already, and I don't think a longer era will work very well.
Still, Avain did make a much more in-depth Prehistoric Era for his Quot Capita mod after being inspired by my version (he said so in his credits! *hugs Avain*), and I have yet to get around to really checking it out in detail, so maybe I could figure something out, who knows. I did at least steal his awesome Neanderthal unit (replacing the Karate Werewolf) in version 3.6, so there's that.
My Future Era was a little bit based on the vanilla Next War mod, obviously, and on bits and pieces here and there from other big mods, but it is more original than my Stone Age is. Especially how most of the futuristic units were implemented - those were all pretty original names, stats, requirements, etc except the Stealth Tank, which I still haven't gotten to test in a real game yet so I'm really hoping the AIs know how to use land stealth properly, heh.
James009 said:
However, some of them confuse me. For example, what is a Ranger or Ancient King or Valkyrari or Paladin? They just don't seem to fit in with Civilization IV (better with FFH) very well. I think you might be better off implementing "Hero" units or "Civilization Leader"s or something. I like how you have these "Legendary" units to help protect specific locations or the at the beginning but these just feel off to me. That being said, I think its a neat idea if implemented a little better.
The Paladin is a generic, non-religious version of a Christian "Knight Templar", which was a real heavy-infantry unit used extensively in the Crusades. The term "paladin" also has historical relevance, so I don't feel bad about this one.
The Ancient King is a direct, un-subtle reference to Conan. The unit was modeled after Schwarzeneggar from the Conan movies himself (which is stated in the unit's original thread), so I just took the idea a bit further. It fits in the game pretty nicely if you ask me.
An elite woodsman unit put to military use is not something that was ever done, really, but it didn't seem too unrealistic to me, so I threw it in. The Archery tech was awfully thin with just one thing in it before (the Archer unit), and I had cool different stats to give a unit like the Ranger, so I did.
The Valkyrie was something I just
had to add simply b/c of how much I loved the unit model itself when SaibotLieh posted it. This one's completely a fantasy unit, sure, but I allow a bit of that here and there for fun and flavor. I dunno, personal decision.
And again, it allows for really neat stats on the unit lol.
Someone did suggest adding a game option to disable these "questionable" units btw. The idea was annoying to me at first, but I'm considering it now, heh.
James009 said:
Also, the Flaming Pig... idk about that one, lol.
This was a real unit, historically. Ancient armies would literally take a herd of pigs, douse them in oil, set them on fire, and let them charge into an enemy line. They spooked all but the best-trained horses, and were especially effective at making enemy war elephants turn and stampede their own troops. The Romans in particular used flaming pigs extensively. Look it up on Wikipedia, or read the thread in the Unit Graphics forum.
James009 said:
Lastly, Some civilizations seem to need more flavor graphics (ie. Romans) as nations sometimes look a lot alike and don't feel unique.
The cities are already pretty heavily distinctified with the Cultural Citystyles mod that is in widespread standard use... So I assume you're talking about the units? Admittedly yeah, adding in something like Varietas Delectat or one of the other mods that makes every unit look different for every civilization is something I could do. I tend to lean more towards the vanilla game's approach with them all looking the same just for simplicity (plus vanilla did mix them up a fair bit in Warlords), and I actually already
have added different unit graphics a lot in the modern eras where it's vehicles and things which I know a lot more about and feel comfortable adding. But yes, the ancient units could probably use some more work in this area.
James009 said:
I like the selection of leaders and especially like the personalities being displayed in the Sevopedia. I don't know how much has been changed here but its just fun to look at the data. Furthermore, I don't really mind the leaders changing... it's kinda like the end of a dynasty or an election spicing things up.
I pretty much left the numerical stats alone for vanilla leaders, giving custom values only to the new leaders the mod adds. (I changed things like the traits, favorite religions and favorite civics around a bit on the vanilla leaders though, as-needed to support the mod's additional content and for improved historical accuracy.)
Also, some of the most important stats are actually not displayed there (like the ones BBAI added), and some of the stats that
are displayed there are not important, or could be combined, or whatever. That display was part of my "update/rewrite the Sevopedia for BtS" project back in 2007, and I have a better understanding of all the leader stats and what they do now than I did then, heh.
You don't see those stats displayed in other mods b/c other people who took my Sevopedia release and used it tended to customize it a bit. Those stats were deemed ugly and "too much information" and just unnecessary to show, that sort of thing, so they took them out. They also didn't like the smaller leaderhead, which I had to compress to make room for the stats on the page. I
am planning to make a Sevopedia update at some point to try and reclaim my ownership of the project with some cool new ideas, but it's a low priority heh.
James009 said:
Anyways, I'm going to try to get a MP game with a friend soon and look forward to following this mod's development. Keep up the good work Mongoose!
Well MM's been in development off-and-on since early 2006 when Civ4 first came out, but it wasn't really anywhere near complete or publically presentable at a professional quality level til last summer with version 3.5 (which still had some major areas of weakness), so you didn't really miss too much.
Right now development is paused since 3.6.1 is an extremely stable, complete and happy release, and since ideally I need Fuyu to write his planned civic restriction code first before I post another version. But we'll see. There will definitely be more updates in the future, don't worry.
And thanks for the positive review, dood... really appreciate it!
