Éa, The Ageless and the Divine (phase 2, alpha)

[Loderunner]

Thanks for the work that you've done so far with this mod. I'm very much looking forward to a more completed version. Seems to me like you've got a solid, long-term approach to this project.

I'd like to help out in any way that I can. I don't have a ton of modding experience but am willing to learn. Reading through this thread, you are looking for help with graphics, something I've never messed with, in any game. But, like I said, I'm willing to learn.

Over the past week, I've gone through Deliverators tutorials on units and even tried it out with no tangible results. Taking a step back, I'm now looking into terrain textures. I figured since I'm new at this, I should start out simple. I agree that vanilla CiV looks a bit bright and cheery, and I'd like to make it more dark and sinister. I was a huge fan of FFH and a big part of that was the immersion factor.

So, I tried to use the american forest as a test case. I wanted to see if I could change the orange trees to a darker green. I also wanted to make it less like a bunch of poofy balls, and make each tree more distinct. I extracted the forest textures, edited them, and created a test mod. Loading up the game, nothing, no change. In my endless searching for modding help, I read somewhere that it is not possible to edit forest textures? Ok, maybe now I take another step back and try my luck with grass.

Anyway, great mod! I'll continue plugging away and post something if/when I ever figure out how to actually do it.

 

[Loderunner]

Here are some screenshots of some of the terrain work I've been doing. What do you guys think?

First is Vanilla graphics. Others are updated. I'm new at this so please, be gentle...

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[Pazyryk]

@Calavente & Lplate, adding resources is a very dangerous thing. I remember Orbis (FFH modmod) doing this with guilds and it got quite out of hand. However, with extreme caution I think it could be OK. Exhausting resources is an interesting concept, but seems like it could be a very frustrating experience. Every time it happens you suddenly go unhappy or your military units become crippled. AI is not a big limitation as long as it is not too frequent (AI is slow on first turn due to all of them checking whole regions for the first time -- after that it knows what it owns without retesting).

But I like it from a flavor perspective. Pantheistic civs carefully stewarding existing resources. Ag civs constantly exhausting resources while prospecting for more. I'll give it some thought. But that's way down the road.


@Loderunner, I'm so happy to see someone playing around with this. It's hard to tell from screenshots how it will look when you play. I know that Civ4 (Blue Marble) screenshots look very dark in comparison to Civ5, so maybe you have it about right. Perhaps you could upload the changes so we can look at it in-game?

 

[Pazyryk]

OK, I'm back from my extended camping vacation. It may take me a couple weeks to remember how to code again, but work is underway again. It was probably good for me to step back a little and think about the big picture.

One thing I now think is necessary is to stretch out the tech tree to the right. One thing lacking now is progression. Base Civ5 has a very long progression but only minimal choice (not what will I learn? but what will I learn first?). Éa gives you a much more important choice (since you can't have them all) but very little progression. Part of the reason for this in the initial build was UI, but my left/right toggle arrows work pretty well now so there isn't really any UI limitation.

We could stretch it out as far to the right as you all want. The only limitation is imagination. So please suggest tech names that could be used to extend any/all of the various branches. You can suggest new items or shifting existing items. Don't worry too much about tier or connectivity (we can sort that out later) unless you have some specific dependencies in mind. Mostly what I need are names that fit the various branches/themes: "hunting", "domestication", "seafaring", etc. (Note: I'm a little obsessive about effects matching tech names, so don't give me "Zoo" enabled by "Printing Press".) Don't worry about extending divine liturgy, thaumaturgy or maleficium, as I have detailed plans for these already (>20 new techs planned).

 

[MrL567]

OK, I'm back from my extended camping vacation. It may take me a couple weeks to remember how to code again, but work is underway again. It was probably good for me to step back a little and think about the big picture.

One thing I now think is necessary is to stretch out the tech tree to the right. One thing lacking now is progression. Base Civ5 has a very long progression but only minimal choice (not what will I learn? but what will I learn first?). Éa gives you a much more important choice (since you can't have them all) but very little progression. Part of the reason for this in the initial build was UI, but my left/right toggle arrows work pretty well now so there isn't really any UI limitation.

We could stretch it out as far to the right as you all want. The only limitation is imagination. So please suggest tech names that could be used to extend any/all of the various branches. You can suggest new items or shifting existing items. Don't worry too much about tier or connectivity (we can sort that out later) unless you have some specific dependencies in mind. Mostly what I need are names that fit the various branches/themes: "hunting", "domestication", "seafaring", etc. (Note: I'm a little obsessive about effects matching tech names, so don't give me "Zoo" enabled by "Printing Press".) Don't worry about extending divine liturgy, thaumaturgy or maleficium, as I have detailed plans for these already (>20 new techs planned).

If your changing the tree to be longer and well as wider, shouldn't you reduce the knowledge maintaince because with more techs, you need to get more of them?

 

[Loderunner]

Here is the link.

I did darken things up a bit. I felt that vanilla was a little too bright and shiny.

I'm not totally satisfied with this set and will keep working to improve upon it, so feedback is welcome.

 

[Pazyryk]

If your changing the tree to be longer and well as wider, shouldn't you reduce the knowledge maintaince because with more techs, you need to get more of them?

Yes, of course.

A larger number of total techs means more techs for each player, for both low and high research focus civs. One nice consequence is that it will be easier to "go broad" at the base of the tree (probably picking up all tier 1 techs at some point) but still maintaining civ differentiation at the higher tier techs. So early game you have civ differentiation based on what techs civs choose first. Later in the game you maintain differentiation based on the fact that KM only allows a civ to "go deep" on one branch (or possibly less deep on 2 or 3 branches).

 

[Ahriman]

One thing lacking now is progression. Base Civ5 has a very long progression but only minimal choice (not what will I learn? but what will I learn first?). Éa gives you a much more important choice (since you can't have them all) but very little progression.
...
One nice consequence is that it will be easier to "go broad" at the base of the tree (probably picking up all tier 1 techs at some point) but still maintaining civ differentiation at the higher tier techs.

I think this is exactly right, it should be more possible to pick up the basic first couple of techs and then go deep in a couple of areas.

What I think the challenge will be is in balancing the tradeoff between the player's choice of going deep vs wide. The tradeoff is going to to depend on gains to specialization vs gains from synergy and combined arms. And the main way to do this is to probably not use the standard Civ approach where tech costs increase dramatically as you go further right. If getting 2 more techs down a particular tech line costs as much as getting 6 other techs that are further left, it probably isn't worth specializing.

The other difficulty is going to be to work on the distribution of economic vs military benefits. There is a risk that it's worth just following one super-military unit line and then padding out with economy techs to help you produce a huge army of that super-unit. There's a risk that religion and magic techs don't provide enough economy or military benefits to be worth pursuing.

Another thing to think about is making sure that particular tech combinations are not tied together too much with pre-requisites, and to make sure that there are gameplay synergies as well as technological rationales. For example: heavy infantry units are good city attackers, they can take cities on their own. So heavy infantry don't have great synergy with siege units - if you have good heavy infantry, you don't *need* siege units too. So the industry/metal/chemistry technology techs need to not be tied too closely together with pre-requisites, or you're forced to take techs that might not have good gameplay synergy.

 

[Pazyryk]

...balancing the tradeoff between the player's choice of going deep vs wide. The tradeoff is going to to depend on gains to specialization vs gains from synergy and combined arms. And the main way to do this is to probably not use the standard Civ approach where tech costs increase dramatically as you go further right.

This is an interesting idea. I never thought of decoupling these. It could work, for example, in the "low-tech" areas like the animal techs leading to Beast Breeding. But there are going to be techs like Steam Power, Architecture, and high tier arcane/divine techs that should be high cost by nature -- these being the main reasons for a player to want to boost their research. However, there is no reason why all the techs in the same tier have to have the same cost.

So I like this idea more the more I think about it.

Maybe you have Beast Breeding out at tier 7 with it and all prereq techs being almost flat in cost. Your research rate is more or less balanced: population growth is increasing it but KM is decreasing it. Costs don't have to be exactly flat: they could be adjusted as necessary so that a low tech civ (without Writing) can proceed up this branch at a somewhat steady but slowing rate. There should still be a long wait for the pinnacle tech.

But then we have Phylacteries (downstream of Maleficium) also out a tier 7. In this branch, costs are escalating a great deal. A civ going for this has to set up early for a long-term research strategy. They won't take any unnecessary animal techs (even though these are cheap and they are cranking out massive research) because every tech has a KM hit.

You shouldn't worry (right now) about the high cost techs not being powerful in proportion to their cost. A player that learns Phylacteries is very likely going to win, and do so quickly without the tedium of conquering the world.

 

[Ahriman]

But there are going to be techs like Steam Power, Architecture, and high tier arcane/divine techs that should be high cost by nature -- these being the main reasons for a player to want to boost their research.

I think this is still fine, the main point is just that not everything in the same tier has to be the same cost, and each successive tier doesn't need to keep going up by a large amount; they can keep going up as you go right, but something 4-5 tiers later might cost 3 times as much rather than 10 times as much. With knowledge maintenance, it already requires more successive tech input to acquire a new tech.

Anyway, I'm excited to see what you come up with.

 

[Calavente]

as with ahriman.
if I understood correctly, it is not that each subsequent tech should be of same cost, but that the increase in cost is low.

like "only" a 33% increase. (or 25%) ..
5 techs of tier N cost as much a 4 techs of tier N+1 and as much as 6.25 techs of tier N-1.
thus between tier N+1 and Tier N-1, the discrepency is a ratio or 1.5 and not a ratio of 3-10 as in current ciV or MoM or FFH.

having an increase in cost is important as higher tier techs bring generally higher benefits.

and maybe have the "last tier" have an increase of 50% ... or double ?

techs like Steam Power, Architecture could be "expensive" with only a double / triple prerequiste.. (thus very exepnsive due to KM.) but "only 50% increase" might be enough as you have the KM that kicks in, esp with many prerequists.

then you have to balance the KM, the +25% increase and the science production to make it that "you have to chose because you won't get all techs".

 

[Loderunner]

I'm getting a lua error message with my recent games. Something to do with AI_Free_Techs. Log attached.

View attachment Lua .txt

 

[Loderunner]

Also, I've uploaded a new version of my TerrainTextureMod. I've improved the hieghtmaps quite a bit so that you won't see the sharp transitions. Also, changed the heightmap for the American & African desert (they share the same map). I'll add some more screenshots soon.





TerrainTextureMod(v2)

Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Noxic]

Well, I just installed this and it's crashing while the map is loading. I have G&K and Brave New World at version 1.0.3.18, and I installed by unpacking the Media Pack, then v16 of the mod, and finally "hotfix c" (as according to OP).

The Lua log is riddled with errors (attempting to index and call nil values), but that seems to be a non-issue from the look of other's logs. The termination is on this error, though:

[5163.274] EaMain: Loading EaAIUnits.lua...
[5163.274] EaMain: Loading RedoxPathFinding.lua...
[5163.289] EaMain: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[5163.289] EaMain: !!!! ERROR: Buildings.sql was not loaded to end of file !!!!
[5163.289] EaMain: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[5163.289] EaMain: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[5163.289] EaMain: !!!! ERROR: Policies.sql was not loaded to end of file !!!!
[5163.289] EaMain: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[5163.289] Runtime Error: C:\Users\Spelare\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Ea II The Ageless and the Divine (v 16)\EaMain\EaInit.lua:64: Terminated due to missing files
stack traceback:
	=[C]: in function 'error'
	C:\Users\Spelare\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Ea II The Ageless and the Divine (v 16)\EaMain\EaInit.lua:64: in function 'OnLoadEaMain'
	C:\Users\Spelare\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Ea II The Ageless and the Divine (v 16)\EaMain/EaMain.lua:364: in main chunk
	=[C]: ?
[5163.289] Runtime Error: Error loading C:\Users\Spelare\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Ea II The Ageless and the Divine (v 16)\EaMain/EaMain.lua.

I assume the SQL files it refers to are the ones in "Ea II The Ageless and the Divine (v 16)\CoreTables\". They look OK in my text editor and WinRAR didn't complain about a corrupt archive when I extracted things, but just to be sure here are their MD5 checksums:
Buildings.sql - 7656df9db015f17390f3c8b9422c7cd8
Policies.sql - 32f6d853c2a2ec604a22d6391a5b3f77

Can anyone help me?

 

[Lplate]

I don't think the mod is designed to work with Brave New World. Try it with just G&K.

 

[Noxic]

Oops, yeah you're right. Disabled it and now it works. I crashed after playing for a couple of hours though, but that's to be expected of an alpha build

 

[Pazyryk]

Mod development is on a bit of a break right now. Well... it's partly a break (I needed it), but it is also time for some reflection. I'm trying to understand what about the mod works and what doesn't. It's such a large departure from normal Civ. Certainly I hope some of my ideas are good...but probably not all of them. But I guess it may be hard to say until we have a "full" game (w/ victory conditions) with phase 3.

I'm not sure if there will be more phase 2 updates. There was certainly more I needed to finish up, like civ-specific effects/UI and so on. But I may just fold that work into phase 3 after I convert to BNW. Phase 3 is well underway on paper. I'll start coding it in October. Probably release in December or thereabouts. It still won't be "beta" then, but it will at least be a complete game that (in theory) can be completed. I already have 30 new spells designed (the essential ones to make the victories work) that should be a lot of fun to play with. There is no reason why we can't have 100 or more eventually.

I'm still rather sad and discouraged at the lack of fantasy art for Civ5. Is there any out there that I'm not aware of? I'll do this myself, eventually, but in that case it is going to take years...

 

[JurGor]

I'm still following this mod with a lot of interest. Some pretty neat game mechanics in here. I agree about unit graphics being the bottleneck. Hopefully someone will find time and skill to convert FFH's unit graphics. That someone would be an instant Legend among CIV V modders I wager.

It is supposedly possible to do this. A modder by name of Wolfdog has posted some updates to Deliverator's tutorial (which is outdated) in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=509649

Just hoping someone will be inspired

 

[Ekmek]

Eventually I'll use almost all of the pre-Industrial ones for my Éa mod. If I had to prioritize a few I'd say Stonehenge, Oracle and Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

Do you still need these? I saw that the new nexus buddy splits the half-built and completed wonders as separate files. It makes it really easy to do them. I'll try later today if I have time.

 

[Pazyryk]

Do you still need these? I saw that the new nexus buddy splits the half-built and completed wonders as separate files. It makes it really easy to do them. I'll try later today if I have time.

Yes, I still intend to use these in the next phase of development. (But it's a much lower priority than fantasy units, as you know from my moaning on other threads...)