A sneak peak into Throughout the Ages v1.0!

[Agent 009]

Alright everyone.

I decided to make this topic to announce that my Mod entitled "Throughout the Ages v1.0" will be released soon. ETA: May 10th, 2006

EDIT: Creation Start Date: March 10th, 2006.

Here is a list of things to expect from my mod:

- 41 New technologies. Total of 125. Includes a Future Era. (no new city graphics though)

- 25 New Units.

- Ability to change the commerce % modifier by 1% increments.

- 2 new Resources, Tin and Titanium.

- 16 New Civics, 2 New Categories

- 14 New Buildings. 8 World Wonders, 3 National Wonders, and 3 city buildings. (These are from the Lost Wonders mod which I incorporated into my mod.)

- Ability to Build nothing with the new build nothing feature. (Acts like building Wealth, Research, or culture , except you don't get anything for the hammers.)

- New Graphics, for roads, and Railroads. (Railroads are now called Highways.)


The Start date is 500 BC. Each turn will be 1 game year. The main idea behind this mod is to greatly increase the length of the game and at the same time patiently grow an empire while amassing a great army of hundreds to get involved in the many wars that break out during the course of a game.

I haven't covered everything as there is quite a lot. (In fact my Readme File is 32 KB so far. ) However, these above mentioned additions are the biggest part.

I've enclosed a .zip file of two screenshots. Roads and Highways, and some of the units.



This link is to the Title Screen: http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/2378/titlescreen3zl.jpg

This link is to the Research Tech Tree: http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/618/ttatechtree2dl.jpg

This link is to the Civics Screen: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/4237/civicsscreen4dl.jpg

The above three links are also screenshots, but they were quite large so I couldn't put them into the .zip as well.



I'd like to know what everyone thinks of this so far and if anyone happens to have any other suggestions that they'd like to make.

Throughout the Ages v1.0 release date: May 10th, 2006.

Hope you guys enjoy it.

 

[Gunner]

Looks pretty ambitious. Just from looking at the screenshot of the civics screen it appears to me that some of those things might be quite a bit overpowered. I guess it depends on what the other civics have and what other changes have been made to the rest of the game.

 

[Agent 009]

Looks pretty ambitious. Just from looking at the screenshot of the civics screen it appears to me that some of those things might be quite a bit overpowered. I guess it depends on what the other civics have and what other changes have been made to the rest of the game.

Yeah you are right... but also keep in mind that every Civ will get those civics also...

The Start Civics have no upkeep and the last ones have a high upkeep. I designed it that way so that players wouldn't be making so much cash and to balance things a bit.

 

[dalek master]

very nice!
I'll be downloading, you've done so much!

 

[Agent 009]

very nice!
I'll be downloading, you've done so much!

That would be great. Thanks.

I've spent the past 5 weeks developing this. Lucky for me I don't work or go to school so I have devoted all my time each day to making this mod. My hopes for this mod were to attempt to make more of a simulation of the real world. Hence why I have made it 1 year turns.

Of course some might think, "wait a sec... if that's the case and it will take me 2500 turns to get to 2000 AD, then I won't be able to play Multiplayer with friends."

Well you will actually. I will be working out 3 different Multiplayer speeds which will have a similar turn sequence as the original game. Unfortunately, I have no way to test this myself so, I think I'll try to calculate numbers mathematically for these game speeds. Those who try out the multiplayer speeds can assess whether or not it needs adjusting.

 

[Jeckel]

If you need to test MP stuff, try a hotseat game and just play 2 or 3 or whatever Humans yourself, this is how I do it when no buddies are around to help out.

 

[Agent 009]

If you need to test MP stuff, try a hotseat game and just play 2 or 3 or whatever Humans yourself, this is how I do it when no buddies are around to help out.

That's actually an excellent idea Jeckel. Thanks! I'll do it that way.

 

[Agent 009]

I just decided today to add a new Civilization to my mod.

- Firaxis Games (leader - Sid Meier)

This is not a static leaderhead. It is animated.

I utilized the art files that I unpacked with the Pakbuild program to add Sid as a Leader to Civ 4.

The Firaxis Games Civilization's cities use the names of the 50 States.

I've attached a SS of Sid in game.


Subsequently, I have decided to add a Firaxis Games World Wonder to the game. I'll be using the United Nations building model with a retexture I'll make. (I'll post a SS of that as soon as it's done.)

I noticed someone was asking for it so I decided why not add it to my mod since Firaxis Games will also be a playable Civ. (The Firaxis Games WW will also provide Hit Video Games as a resource.

 

[woodelf]

Not to threadjack, but Agent have you seen this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166123

where some made a Firaxis Games wonder already?

 

[Agent 009]

Well after 2 1/2 hours of work, I finally finished implementing the Firaxis Games World Wonder which provides 7 Hit Video Games, +10 , +2 , and +2 for the city it is build in.

Of course the Hit Video games themselves add +1 in all cities as well.


I've attached a SS of the Civlopedia Screen entry of it which includes the city view from a 45 degree angle to the left.

On the right side is the United Nations Wonder and on the left is Firaxis Games Inc.

As I mentioned I would use the model of the UN to make it so I decided to put both in the same shot so that everyone could see the difference.


EDIT: Yes Woodelf, I saw the first thread that someone made not too long ago about wanting one, and then subsequently the one you linked me to. I know in this case someone else decided to make one prior to me, however, I felt it was a good idea considering I added Sid Meier to the game as a playable Civ. As I am sure you can tell from my SS below, mine is probably very different from the one Zeysoft made. (Mine uses the UN Movie though)

 

[Agent 009]

With all due respect Lord Olleus, you cannot say it's unbalanced by what I have presented here so far. It's not logical.

Balance is a major issue for me and so therefore I found I had to create a new balance for my mod as a direct result of all the changes that were made.

- Terrain commerce values were changed.

- Unit Max HP is now 500. Warrior has 1 strength and Future Armor Mk II with 250 Strength. ( Warriors all civcs start with and Future Armor Mk II is the latest. Every other unit is in between these two numbers.)

- The Civics stated in my first post all are similar. Each previous one has slightly less of a bonus. Also, the starting Civics give nothing and have no upkeep, and each later one has one step higher upkeep. There are 6 upkeep levels. None, Low, Medium-Low, Medium, Medium-High, and High. So technically, it can cost you 1000 gold per turn or more, with all 7 High Upkeep Civics. In other words, it will cost you to have the best ones.

- Culture was changed as well. There are now 11 levels of culture each giving a 10% bonus to city defense, making a total of 100% without any onther bonuses. This was done due to the extended length of the game.

- Each Tech has a base cost of 100 000 pts. This was done to make the game longer as well, so that it would fit with the 1 year turns.

Basically the terrain values were raised in order to help an empire grow early on. The civic upkeep values were adjusted to help compensate for the extra commerce in the game. The units strengths were revised in this way to prevent a swordsman from beating a tank. It also puts an emphasis on promotions. Also unit upkeep was removed for the most part. Each Civ will get a base amount of free units which will grow depending on empire size and legal civic choice.

Remeber guys, this mod is not anything like the original game. It is uniquely designed to be a simulation of a real civilization developement.

 

[Agent 009]

Been a few days since any new posts and since then I decided to add new City textures to my mod.

http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eraart1ka.jpg (might take a momment to load it is almost 1 MB)

This is a jpg of the cities during each era along with the size number indicated in brackets.

The Ancient Era Textures are 90% different, Medieval is about 60-70% different, Renaissance only has one or two walls different, and the rooftops, Industrial has only one building retextured, (it's the red one) and the modern textures are about 60% different.

I also modified the size appearance as you all can see from this screenshot. With my mod and it's many changes, includes a new format for city growth. Cities will only use 1 food per pop now. Also, when a player first starts out, cities will not be able to get much bigger than 16. It will also take much longer to grow as granaries now only give 20% storage after growth. However, so do markets, grocers, and supermarkets. Of course Supermarkets are only discovered with refrigeration which is in the modern era.

Keep in mind though that all terrain commerce values have been modified also. The most food that can be obtained from a tile is 1. 2 with farms (or if a city is on that tile) and no bonus like corn. As the player researches certain techs, they will receive +1 food to farms. This is spaced out, you won't get these bonuses from one tech, so by the end of the modern era, a player can be making 7 food per tile with a farm on it and 9 if there is corn wheat or rice on that tile. This will make cities able to grow from 142-182 in size. However, this will only be possibly if the player has researched the future tech enough times so that their cities can support it. A city will use 1 extra food per sickness above the health value. In other words, if the health is 9 and the sickness is 16, then that city will use up 7 extra food, stunting it's growth as a direct result.

Cities will add new building each size to the size of 112. (depends on a few factors like rivers and peaks being adjacent as well.)

I hope this will be a desired feature for some players. I made this mod to my own liking for the most part but also suspected that there might just likely be others around that have a similar desire for a mod like this, so I couldn't just keep it to myself.


EDIT: I decided to change the food consumption per pop number back to 2. I then discovered that cities will now only grow to about 12 max, prior to researching Civil Service. Of course, I wanted the player to have the ability to have cities grow to a size of 150+ so, I added more +1 food to farm, windmill, and watermill bonuses throughout the tech tree. Now, instead of a total of 7 food output of farms by the end stages of a game, players will now make 16, 18 with corn, rice, or wheat. 16*20+(2 on city tile) = 322/2 = 161.

I did this simply to stunt city growth some more for the early stages of the game.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Wow! Sorry didn't know your that addicted already hence wondered about your ctd cause of the workerunit earlier if it were a noobfailure. But this seems to prove you pretty much know more about this game then I will ever do!
Incredible work for such a short time. Will sure have a look at it as soon I find time not spend on units or my girlfriend

 

[woodelf]

Those are some BIG cities dude.

 

[Agent 009]

Wow! Sorry didn't know your that addicted already hence wondered about your ctd cause of the workerunit earlier if it were a noobfailure. But this seems to prove you pretty much know more about this game then I will ever do!
Incredible work for such a short time. Will sure have a look at it as soon I find time not spend on units or my girlfriend

rofl yeah I have never tried to make a 3d model and so when I saw that topic I thought it was explaining how to make a unit use other animations by simply changing the filenames. Well I tried to make a colonist with the Great People. Although I have that unit in my mod it still doesn't have the settle animation. Didn't matter what I did it just wouldn't work. I had the same problem with the modern worker. Not such a bit deal there though.

My biggest problem is that I am not a programmer. I don't understand any programming languages. (Although my father thinks I'd be good at it) It just seems quite overwhelming for me.

XML is quite easy. All it took for me was changing one parameter here and another there and see what changed. After making a few changes to a mod that I had downloaded I decided to try making something that I wanted to have. I wanted a much longer game and thus, Throughout the Ages was born.

It's a 2 month project and I think I am complete. Just a few text entries and I should be done.

I think I might add another unit or two. Afterall, I still have 4 days till my deadline.

Those are some BIG cities dude.

LOL! Yeah I wanted to see how high of a population I could get. I love big numbers. Always have. So I wanted to make the cities look big as well.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Hm, completed you say? Interested in working on the WH Mod afterwards? We really need someone doing the xml for us so J.Period has time to play with the SDK. Think about it, would be highly appreciated.

 

[Agent 009]

Hm, completed you say? Interested in working on the WH Mod afterwards? We really need someone doing the xml for us so J.Period has time to play with the SDK. Think about it, would be highly appreciated.

Sure thing. Just let me know what needs to be done. (Send me a PM) and I'll get onto that as soon as I am done with this.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Very cool. I can't tell you though. PM J.Period(the master and commander - or just say threadstarter). Don't know when he will respond though, he seems to be quite busy now. Currently JP is doing all the xml on his own and we have a couple of bugs to track down, include a lot of art(buttons and units), rework formations, include buildings, wonders, work on religion etc.
You see? he really needs help!
Also check out the teamlist of our mod(think third post), it states clearly for what general jobs we still need poeple. As most of the functions are still vacant you can pick what you like the most

 

[Lachlan]

Long life to simulator

 

[Agent 009]

Finally after almost 2 months of work I am finished making Throughout the Ages.

I am currently uploading the .zip file to 3d downloads, but will take a while as it is nearly 30MB in size.

It will be available for download on May 10, 2006.

I'll be creating a topic in the Mod Sub-Forum on May 10th, pertaining to this mod which will provide a more detailed list of the new stuff, as well as the download link.

Those who wish to comment about my mod, feel free to do so in that topic.

I hope you all enjoy Throughout the Ages.