1.17 released

[Xyth]

Available from the download page.



--- Version 1.17 ---

Civilizations
• New Civilizations: Anasazi, Kongo
• Celts: new colour scheme
• Ethiopia: new colour scheme
• Israel: new citylist and UB (Bamah)
• Polynesia: new art for Marae (UB)
• Vikings: renamed Scandinavians

Leaders
• New Leaders: Kochininako, Mbemba, Nzinga, Po'pay, Richard Lionheart
• New Art: Tin Hinan, Xoc
• Fixed Diplomacy Text: Akbar, Nasser, Topiltzen
• Reassigned Traits: Brian Boru, Joshua, Robert

Traits
• Progressive: upgrade discount now applies only to military units
• Tactical: no longer reveals the owner of hidden nationality units

Civics
• Standing Army: upgrade discount now applies only to military units

Buildings
• Building costs adjusted to scale more appropriately through the eras
• Laboratory: now provides 2 scientist slots instead of 1

Wonders
• Colosseum: fixed a bug where the wrong unit could be built
• Hagia Sophia: now lets you build the regular building as well, cost increased to 500

Units
• New Unit: Colonist
• Asvaka (Kushan UU): redesigned with has movement rate of 3
• Ballista Elephant (Khmer UU): redesigned with a city attack bonus and able to ignore building defense
• Cog: new art for Mediterranean and Oriental civs
• Destroyer: now has an attack and defensive bonus against Torpedo Boat, Submarine, Attack Sub
• Hoplite (Greek UU): redesigned with free Cover and Formation promotions
• Horse Archer: now has a first strike, no longer has a bonus vs Siege Units
• Horseman: strength increased to 6, city attack penalty increased to 50%
• Humvee: no longer able to attack, withdrawal chance lowered to 25%, better AI
• Immortal (Persian UB): redesigned with a free March promotion
• Jaguar Warrior (Aztec UU): given Woodsman II as well
• Keshik (Mongol UU): redesigned with no city attack penalty and 25% withdrawal chance
• Legionary (Roman UU): no longer more expensive to build
• Privateer: new, more universal art
• Skirmisher: strength increased to 3, AI improved
• Torpedo Boat: can no longer enter ocean tiles
• Fixed several upgrade paths for UUs

Unit Art
• All unit art comprehensively optimized for better performance and memory usage
• New art for most units: Arabia, India, Tamil
• New art for several units: China, England, Iroquois, Japan, Korea, Mali, Mongolia, Netherlands, Nubia, Rome, Sioux
• New art for a few units: America, Berber, Byzantium, Egypt, Germany, Hatti, Israel, Kushan
• New art for a few units: Phoenicia, Polynesia, Russia, Siam, Spain, Sumer, Swahili, Zulu
• Existing unit art improved: Angkor, England, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Siam
• Added more cultural diversity to Great People and Generals
• Numerous tweaks and improvements to unit animations

Religion
• New Missionary Art: Pesedjet, Baalism, Olympianism, Shamanism, Toltecayotl
• All missionaries now have correctly displaying effects when spreading religion
• Shortened some of the longer religion sounds

Routes
• Roads: reverted to 1/2 movement cost
• Paved Roads: changed to 1/3 movement cost, 1/4 after Cartography
• Highways: changed to 1/5 movement cost, 1/6 after Satellites

Resources
• Furs: no longer appear on Ice

Maps
• All mapscripts given an option for culturally linked starting locations
• Fractal: world wrapping options fixed
• Highlands: world wrapping options fixed
• Removed Maps: Gaul (25x30), North Africa (93x46)

Miscellaneous
• AI now only gets free starting techs on the two highest difficulty levels
• Cities can no longer be founded on Ice
• 'Fake' buildings are no longer listed in several parts of the UI
• Golden Age length scales better with game speed
• Inflation was too harsh on slower gamespeeds
• Resistance in captured cities now scales with game speed
• Fixed a few audio-related crashes​

 

[davidtylr]

 

[mbbcam]

I'm completely new to Civilization, and I have to say that, for me, this mod makes the game worth playing. I've done a lot of research in history, and having something a little closer to reality is very welcome. (And as a Mac user, I'm pleased to find something that works with OS X.) Thank God for culturally-related start points. Now, if we could only get rid of those damned leaders ... Talking to Roosevelt, followed by Brian Boru, followed by Elizabeth I does my head in. I wish we could just have "the American ambassador wishes to speak to you" or "the English have done such and such". Come to think of it, it would be nice if leaders changed over time -- it would add an extra dimension if you had to adjust to different characteristics periodically. But I'm sure that is well beyond "modding". I'm really grateful for HR -- an immense amount of work, I'm sure.

 

[Lirvan]

Awesome! Thanks Xyth, This will definitely be worth the wait.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Cool.

Pleased to see this, and when I can snatch time from tax preparation, grading, job applications, grading, book reports, grading, acting as moderator/DM for an online science fiction 'play your own nation' RPG, and grading, I'll give it a whirl.

So... eventually.

 

[wanderm]

Great news!

As with 1.16, I will attempt to increase the default number of civs on Massive World size for my Windows box (just a personal preference). To add some spice I won't (at least initially) unpack the custom assets folder: let's celebrate the work Xyth has done in cleaning them up!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=451121

 

[Xyth]

I'm completely new to Civilization, and I have to say that, for me, this mod makes the game worth playing. I've done a lot of research in history, and having something a little closer to reality is very welcome. (And as a Mac user, I'm pleased to find something that works with OS X.) Thank God for culturally-related start points. Now, if we could only get rid of those damned leaders ... Talking to Roosevelt, followed by Brian Boru, followed by Elizabeth I does my head in. I wish we could just have "the American ambassador wishes to speak to you" or "the English have done such and such". Come to think of it, it would be nice if leaders changed over time -- it would add an extra dimension if you had to adjust to different characteristics periodically. But I'm sure that is well beyond "modding". I'm really grateful for HR -- an immense amount of work, I'm sure.

Leaders changing over time is a common request but I'm not aware of anyone who's managed to code it. If it is possible it would require extensive SDK work, meaning it can't ever be done on Mac as the SDK is Windows-only unfortunately.

Great news!

As with 1.16, I will attempt to increase the default number of civs on Massive World size for my Windows box (just a personal preference). To add some spice I won't (at least initially) unpack the custom assets folder: let's celebrate the work Xyth has done in cleaning them up!

Hopefully you see some decent performance/memory improvements. Loading time with the unit files unpacked is a certainly a lot faster than it used to be, but it's tricky to measure how much difference this optimization it makes in game, only that there should be some. I'd be interested in your findings.

At some point I need to do a similar optimization pass on all the building art. Most of the leaders have already been optimized but there's bound to some more gains there too. Neither would be as much work or as much benefit as the units, but every bit counts.

 

[wanderm]

It's too early for me to give the definitive report, but in the little time I've had HR boots in a snap, and I suppose races along overall.

I will be more than happy to post whether I get MAFs, which would defeat the purpose of the extra civs. The strain on my processor can be considered a negative, along with excessive delays between turns or rolling a start.

Once again, wonderful news that we have so many goodies with this release!

 

[Lirvan]

Well, first error report. Have been getting a bunch of these. Screen freezes and music keeps playing. Once the track ends, the game crashes.

 

[Xyth]

Well, first error report. Have been getting a bunch of these. Screen freezes and music keeps playing. Once the track ends, the game crashes.

That particular crash report is beyond my skill to interpret unfortunately, none of the usual indicators I rely on are there. I'll need to know some context: please let me know the civ you were playing, the era you were in, map size, and what other leaders were in the game with you. Does the crash happen randomly or does it happen again at the same point when you reload from an autosave?

Also, could you try disabling the music and see if that makes a difference?

 

[Howard Mahler]

Enjoying playing one of the new leaders. Thanks for all of your hard work.

A couple of things I thought were being changed for this version, which I suggest for the next version:
1. Paved roads to no longer require stone, but stone increases speed of building
(may increase the base turns to build.)
2. Pirates to get a small withdrawal change to make them a little tougher.

I also still think that 3 GPP per Great Person works better than 2.
If you keep the 2, I think you need to make it easier to get the first great person and also reduce the rate at which the amount needed for the next great person increases in the late game.
(One could try 2.5 GPP per Great Person, but this may require reworking the whole system, by for example multiplying everything by either 2 or 10.)

I had hoped that random events were on the list of things to work on for the next version.

 

[Xyth]

1. Paved roads to no longer require stone, but stone increases speed of building
(may increase the base turns to build.)

This turned out to be complicated to code and much more hassle than I felt was worth it. Basically, if the tile is connected directly or indirectly to the civ's capital it's easy, but if not it gets messy because tiles don't belong to cities; they belong to players/teams. I'd have to loop through all nearby tiles looking for relevant cities and then testing to see if each city was connected to a Stone resource somehow. Or loop through all relevant cities, checking which can work that tile and which have access to Stone. Just not worth it for a 1 turn reduction in build time (because increasing the base build time higher than 4 is unrealistic when it's 6 for railroads and highways).

With roads reverting to 1/2 movement rate and Paved Roads reverting to 1/3 movement rate, the latter becomes a 'nice to have' rather than being absolutely essential to empire e management like it was prior to 1.17. I don't think the Stone requirement is too arduous in these circumstances.

2. Pirates to get a small withdrawal change to make them a little tougher.

Ah I forgot about this. Added to 1.18. I'm also going to lower the cost of Triremes to 40.

I also still think that 3 GPP per Great Person works better than 2.
If you keep the 2, I think you need to make it easier to get the first great person and also reduce the rate at which the amount needed for the next great person increases in the late game.

I'm pretty happy with it at 2 so far. I agree that there probably needs to be more GPP boosts by the late game though. The best way to achieve that is via buildings, either existing ones or new ones. I'll look into it.

I had hoped that random events were on the list of things to work on for the next version.

They are. Maps are the biggest priority, Corporations a smaller one, but I want to spend some time exploring the possibilities of the event system too. I haven't yet finalized what will and won't be in 1.18 and it often changes as it evolves anyway. Suggestions and reminders are always welcome.

 

[redbaron784]

Hi all,
Thanks for all the hard work Xyth! I can't wait to try 1.17 out, but unfortunately the download link is asking for a username and password from atomicgamer.

?

 

[Xyth]

Hi all,
Thanks for all the hard work Xyth! I can't wait to try 1.17 out, but unfortunately the download link is asking for a username and password from atomicgamer.

?

Just checked, it's doing that for any page at www.atomicgamer.com so I suspect they're having server troubles of some sort. Try again a bit later and in the meantime I'll try find somewhere to host a mirror, just in case.


EDIT: Atomic Gamer seems to be working again

 

[Howard Mahler]

Some more things I thought were going to be done with 1.17:

Stables, was the cost increased somewhat?

Monastery, was it made to stay around a longer time?

I apologize if changes were made and I did not notice the difference.

P.S. I really think lots of improvements in random events are possible.
Besides balancing and improving what is there, lots of room to incorporate into events particularly quests: new religions, new units, new buildings, etc.

 

[Xyth]

Stables, was the cost increased somewhat?

Yep. They they now cost 80 hammers. Several other buildings have had their costs adjusted too.

Monastery, was it made to stay around a longer time?

Not yet. I'm not happy with the potential solutions so far, so it's still on the todo list.

P.S. I really think lots of improvements in random events are possible.
Besides balancing and improving what is there, lots of room to incorporate into events particularly quests: new religions, new units, new buildings, etc.

Yeah there are a ton of possibilities there. Fortunately it's a system that's easy to add to incrementally, rather than having to overhaul the whole thing at once. I just need to sit down and look through all the existing events to get a better understanding of how to do it and where to start. Like map making/editing, it's new territory for me.

 

[Keinpferd]

Only had a short glimpse at 1.17 and am quite impressed by the progress of this mod since I last played it. I seem to have forgotten how to play this game, and as I'm explaining to myself why I suck so badly on Emperor (was Immortal last summer), I'm realizing that even more standard strategems of plain BTS are suspended now, compared to earlier versions of HR: no early chopping, early academy, run-monarchie-through-Pyramids, free-tech-through-liberalism, nothing. That should get many people back interested in Civ IV, because no one can apply the well known recipes from the cook book.

Very early wealth production: I remember, that this was being discussed here, and I think, this discussion should continue. Building wealth shouldn't be so commanding. Your economy shouldn't rely on it so heavily. Could this mechanism possibly be favoring rapid expansion playstyles, just like in Civ 3? Hopefully not. You might try to grab plenty of production sites that do nothing but build wealth to keep your research at 100%. Not an intelligent game mechanism, if that turns out to be true. I haven't played far enough to see proof of that, but I'm afraid that's what's happening.

The 25% culture boost of Traditionalism seems to be channeled through the building Monument, is that right? Because I didn't see any effect at first. Would be nicer to have the 25% right away, if that's possible.

Are there any changes to the AI handicap on Emperor? Their research rate seems much faster than I remember it from previous Emperor games. (No Tech brokering enabled.)

Bug report: art for Incan worker is having the red blobs. Tectonics map, earthlike, old world start, standard medium settings, displays strangely: The ice extends into the northern land area in the way, that interior inland lakes are covered with ice, I'd say to a degree, that looks like a flawed map script to me.

Swordsmen bonus against elephants: will drive every player crazy who extensively played Rome Total War.

Xyth and the most active contributors, you can be proud of the Tech tree! I first thought, it looks so damn clean, symmetrical and orderly, that there must be something wrong with it, but no.

And the reference charts look also pretty. Further feedback in a few weeks…

 

[Xyth]

Very early wealth production: I remember, that this was being discussed here, and I think, this discussion should continue. Building wealth shouldn't be so commanding. Your economy shouldn't rely on it so heavily. Could this mechanism possibly be favoring rapid expansion playstyles, just like in Civ 3? Hopefully not. You might try to grab plenty of production sites that do nothing but build wealth to keep your research at 100%. Not an intelligent game mechanism, if that turns out to be true. I haven't played far enough to see proof of that, but I'm afraid that's what's happening.

I was going to explore converting production to wealth at a lower ratio, which gets higher as the eras progress. I still haven't done that and I should.

The 25% culture boost of Traditionalism seems to be channeled through the building Monument, is that right? Because I didn't see any effect at first. Would be nicer to have the 25% right away, if that's possible.

Hmm. It should effect other sources of culture too, perhaps its effect is lost early on due to rounding. I'll investigate.

Are there any changes to the AI handicap on Emperor? Their research rate seems much faster than I remember it from previous Emperor games. (No Tech brokering enabled.)

Not to Emperor or the other difficulty levels, but there have been several tweaks to research rates elsewhere. Gamespeed settings have changed a fair amount to match the adjusted calendar.

Bug report: art for Incan worker is having the red blobs.

Not surprised one got past me after such an extensive unit art overhaul. Will fix.

Tectonics map, earthlike, old world start, standard medium settings, displays strangely: The ice extends into the northern land area in the way, that interior inland lakes are covered with ice, I'd say to a degree, that looks like a flawed map script to me.

Curious. Not sure it's something I can fix but I'll investigate nonetheless. That's not a setting I've tested all that much.

Swordsmen bonus against elephants: will drive every player crazy who extensively played Rome Total War.

That was added back when War Elephants were available considerably earlier than they are now. It probably doesn't need to be there anymore. Not sure of the Rome: Total War reference - crazy good or crazy bad?

Xyth and the most active contributors, you can be proud of the Tech tree! I first thought, it looks so damn clean, symmetrical and orderly, that there must be something wrong with it, but no.

Thanks, I've put a ton of work into it and everyone's feedback has helped refine it further. I feel it gets a bit convoluted in the late Industrial and Modern eras still, and there needs to be some more to unlock at that end of tree too, but it'll get there in time.

 

[Keinpferd]

That was added back when War Elephants were available considerably earlier than they are now. It probably doesn't need to be there anymore. Not sure of the Rome: Total War reference - crazy good or crazy bad?

Bad! I'm probably not the only RTW player who mixes up game "experience" with eyewitnessing. In RTW, elephant trample attacks are devastating to even elite swordsmen, and the animations are rather mercyless, soldiers being thrown through the air.

The counter to elephants are slingers and javelineers, because of three reasons: their stones and projectlies harass the elephants more than anything, their loose formation lets them make sort of aisles for the at full speed charging animals, and thirdly, their light armament makes it easier to dodge the movements of an elephant at less than full speed. Compare that to tight formations of iron swordsmen in chain mail.

We all know, Civ IV isn't a tactics game, stacks, no battle orders, but what one can do is treating the units, that gain their effectiveness from speed charging, as vulnerable when standing an attack. Sword units should deal with elephants and chariots rather well, as attackers themselves. Conclusion: Swordsmen counter elephants, but only offensively, while Skirmishers get a defensiv bonus against them.

 

[Xyth]

Bad! I'm probably not the only RTW player who mixes up game "experience" with eyewitnessing. In RTW, elephant trample attacks are devastating to even elite swordsmen, and the animations are rather mercyless, soldiers being thrown through the air.

Thanks for clarifying. Like I said, that bonus was added to solve a problem that no longer exists so I'll remove it.

The counter to elephants are slingers and javelineers, because of three reasons: their stones and projectlies harass the elephants more than anything, their loose formation lets them make sort of aisles for the at full speed charging animals, and thirdly, their light armament makes it easier to dodge the movements of an elephant at less than full speed. Compare that to tight formations of iron swordsmen in chain mail.

Skirmishers (HR's Javelineers) appear too early to act as a counter to War Elephants. That might change though if I ever introduce Slingers as a unit - which I'd like to do but it would require a lot more art variants than currently exist.