Beyond Great People

[Barbarian King]

I've enjoyed Beyond Earth as a nice variation on the Civ series, but one thing seemed missing: Great People. Since I didn't see any indication that the upcoming expansion would add Great People, I decided to add them myself.

Mod can be found in the CFC database here: Beyond Great People

Spoilers contain description, copy-pasted from download page.

Spoiler :

This mod adds Great People to Civilization: Beyond Earth. In keeping with the theme of the game, the Great People added are based on the Affinities instead of the specialists as in the main Civilization series. The great people and their abilities are as follows:

Great Harmonist
Earned through Harmony Affinity points
Can be expended to perform one of the following actions:
- Increase Harmony Affinity
- Gain a one-time Culture boost (like the Great Artist in Civ V)
- Build the Harmonious Preserve tile improvement, which provides culture and health and occasionally spawns domesticated aliens

Great Purist
Earned through Purity Affinity points
Can be expended to perform one of the following actions:
- Increase Purity Affinity
- Hurry the completion of a building or wonder (like the Great Engineer in Civ V)
- Build the New Earth Homestead tile improvement, which provides a large amount of food as well as some production and health

Great Supremacist
Earned through Supremacy Affinity points
Can be expended to perform one of the following actions:
- Increase Supremacy Affinity
- Gain a one-time Science boost (like the Great Scientist in Civ V)
- Build the Techno-Fort tile improvement, which provides energy and science and also doubles as a fort which provides a defensive bonus for the unit on the same tile, bombards adjacent hostile units, and can be used to claim tiles (like the Citadel in Civ V)

Affinity points accumulate each turn based on your affinity level. For example, if you have reached Harmony level five, then each turn you will earn 5 Harmony Affinity points. Once you have accumulated a certain number of the points in the appropriate affinity, a Great Person from that affinity will spawn at your capital.

I'll eventually add it to the Steam workshop, but I wanted to post it here first to see if I could get some people to play-test it for me to iron out any bugs or balance issues that I may have missed. EDIT: Steam Download Link

Also, if any artists or modelers are reading this and would like to lend a hand, I would greatly appreciate the help in adding more polish to this mod. Currently all 3D models are re-used assets from BE, and the 2D icons I made are serviceable but don't blend in that well with the rest of the UI.

 

[Ryika]

Mhhh... cool idea. But FireTuner spams a Lua-Error for me:

Spoiler :

Runtime Error: C:\Users\Ryika\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\MODS\Beyond Great People (v 1)\Lua/GreatPeople.lua:170: attempt to index a nil value
stack traceback:
C:\Users\Ryika\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\MODS\Beyond Great People (v 1)\Lua/GreatPeople.lua:170: in function 'OnAITurnGP'
stack traceback:
C:\Users\Ryika\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\MODS\Beyond Great People (v 1)\Lua/GreatPeople.lua:168: in function 'OnAITurnGP'

Suggestion - You're already using persistent data collection - add a stat-display that tracks the total amount of Specialists spawned (by all players) during all of the game. Something like:

A total of 2917 Harmonists have brought Enlightenment to this Galaxy.
A total of 8162 Purists have preserved the Old Teachings in this Galaxy.
A total of 3912 Supremacists have preached to the Machines in this Galaxy.

The dominant Affinity is currently Purity.
Harmony has been classified as unfit to survive.

 

[Barbarian King]

Thanks for the catch. I've corrected the error (a typo in the script that has the AI randomly use their Great People to advance their Affinities), so it should work better now.

I like that suggestion. I'll have to keep that in mind when I update the mod.

 

[Rico37]

Just wanted to drop in to say thanks for the great mod. I've been playing with it in my current game and it is working wonderfully. Even though I'm focusing on Harmony, I find myself grabbing Purity and Supremacy affinity points just to get their Great Leaders.

You did a good job in integrating Great Leaders into Beyond Earth, and I encourage you to upload to Steam if you haven't already done so; I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy this mod.

Thanks again.

 

[Barbarian King]

Just wanted to drop in to say thanks for the great mod. I've been playing with it in my current game and it is working wonderfully. Even though I'm focusing on Harmony, I find myself grabbing Purity and Supremacy affinity points just to get their Great Leaders.

You did a good job in integrating Great Leaders into Beyond Earth, and I encourage you to upload to Steam if you haven't already done so; I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy this mod.

Thanks again.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad to hear that it's working well for you and that you think it is integrated well into the game. I plan on releasing it to Steam sometime this week.

I do have a quick question for you since you were playing a Harmony focused game (and I haven't got around to trying that yet; been testing it with Purity and then Supremacy focuses). Did you think the alien production from the harmony improvements was balanced, or should it come less frequently? Or did you not build the improvements and focus more on using the culture and affinity boosts?

 

[Rico37]

I do have a quick question for you since you were playing a Harmony focused game (and I haven't got around to trying that yet; been testing it with Purity and then Supremacy focuses). Did you think the alien production from the harmony improvements was balanced, or should it come less frequently? Or did you not build the improvements and focus more on using the culture and affinity boosts?

I played around with all of the improvements (note: I love the Techno-Fort) and found that the spawn rate feels pretty good. Later it felt perhaps a bit too quick, but I also play on Epic so I'm not sure if that impacts the rate at all.

Also, is the number of alien units spawned directly related to the number of Harmonious Preserves built? If so, then maybe slowing the spawn rate might be good.

 

[Barbarian King]

I played around with all of the improvements (note: I love the Techno-Fort) and found that the spawn rate feels pretty good. Later it felt perhaps a bit too quick, but I also play on Epic so I'm not sure if that impacts the rate at all.

Also, is the number of alien units spawned directly related to the number of Harmonious Preserves built? If so, then maybe slowing the spawn rate might be good.

Ah, I didn't even think about adjusting the spawn rate to game speed. I'll do that before releasing on Steam. Do you think that the spawn rate of the Great People themselves needs to be reduced for Epic? I play exclusively at the normal speed, so that's what I balanced everything around. And yes, the number of aliens is related to the number of preserves: you get one alien per preserve (capped at 4) and the strength of the aliens you get is related to both the number of preserves and the level of your Harmony Affinity.

The Techno-Forts are in my opinion a bit too awesome, so I'll actually be nerfing them a bit before the Steam release (nerfing the defensive abilities, not the yields).

 

[Rico37]

Ah, I didn't even think about adjusting the spawn rate to game speed. I'll do that before releasing on Steam. Do you think that the spawn rate of the Great People themselves needs to be reduced for Epic? I play exclusively at the normal speed, so that's what I balanced everything around. And yes, the number of aliens is related to the number of preserves: you get one alien per preserve (capped at 4) and the strength of the aliens you get is related to both the number of preserves and the level of your Harmony Affinity.

The Techno-Forts are in my opinion a bit too awesome, so I'll actually be nerfing them a bit before the Steam release (nerfing the defensive abilities, not the yields).

Nooo! Don't nerf my Techno-Forts! Okay, maybe a little...

Speaking of which, one thing that stands out is that the New Earth Homestead is the only improvement without a special ability; unfortunately I have no ideas for what it could be in theme with Purity, but they feel left out. Not that they are weak or anything now, but Harmony and Supremacy have more "fun" abilities.

In regards to spawn rate pacing: while you have more turns on Epic/Marathon, it generally takes a bit longer to level up Affinity, so it kind of evens out a bit. I did bump the base spawn rate to 60 for my last Epic-speed game and it felt pretty good. Might try 75 for my next game, assuming BERT doesn't do something to break the mod.

 

[Barbarian King]

Nooo! Don't nerf my Techno-Forts! Okay, maybe a little...

Speaking of which, one thing that stands out is that the New Earth Homestead is the only improvement without a special ability; unfortunately I have no ideas for what it could be in theme with Purity, but they feel left out. Not that they are weak or anything now, but Harmony and Supremacy have more "fun" abilities.

In regards to spawn rate pacing: while you have more turns on Epic/Marathon, it generally takes a bit longer to level up Affinity, so it kind of evens out a bit. I did bump the base spawn rate to 60 for my last Epic-speed game and it felt pretty good. Might try 75 for my next game, assuming BERT doesn't do something to break the mod.

The Techno-Fort will still be useful, but not OP. I'm reducing the defensive bonus from 100 to 50 and the bombard from 30 to 20.

The New Earth Homestead doesn't have a special ability because, like yourself, I couldn't think of a good one. Instead of a special ability I gave them extra yields (13 as opposed to the 8 each of the other great person improvements have).

I'm going to give the spawn rate a slight bump for Epic and Marathon, in line with your suggestion. Thanks for all the feedback.

 

[Rico37]

Hey there, just an update since I know that you don't have BERT yet: as far as I can tell, everything is working fine with your mod in Rising Tide.

I just played a short game on Quick (noticed that you scaled the spawn rates - nice), getting one of each Great Person and testing all three of their abilities. Everything checks out, working as expected.

Thanks again for your work - this is a "must have" mod for me now.

 

[Barbarian King]

Hey there, just an update since I know that you don't have BERT yet: as far as I can tell, everything is working fine with your mod in Rising Tide.

I just played a short game on Quick (noticed that you scaled the spawn rates - nice), getting one of each Great Person and testing all three of their abilities. Everything checks out, working as expected.

Thanks again for your work - this is a "must have" mod for me now.

Thanks for the update. I'm glad to hear it works and that you are enjoying it. When I get RT later this year (or possibly early next year, I have a backlog of games to play) I'll release a version of this mod tailored to the expansion and its new features.

 

[gunnergoz]

Thanks for the mod, I'm going to try it in my next game.

As for the Purity New Earth Homestead, why not have it work sort of like the Miasma Suppressant satellite, banishing miasma for a certain radius (2-3 hexes?) A minor food boost is great as a bonus but you'd think these Puritans would want the local critters to begone!

 

[Barbarian King]

Thanks for the mod, I'm going to try it in my next game.

As for the Purity New Earth Homestead, why not have it work sort of like the Miasma Suppressant satellite, banishing miasma for a certain radius (2-3 hexes?) A minor food boost is great as a bonus but you'd think these Puritans would want the local critters to begone!

Thanks, that's a great suggestion. In fact, in retrospect I can't believe I didn't think of it myself, it seems so obvious.

 

[gunnergoz]

Happy to say the mod works great with RT and is one of my regulars now. Thanks and Kudos for the great job!