[BtS] Amra's Modpack v3 for Beyond the Sword

[lord_graywolfe]

Ditto. My zipped file may be less than I stated, I just haven't gotten that far yet to know.

i was wrong about the size of mine, the last version i have for download is 249MB but that didnt include the new religions and all the stuff that goes with it. right now the version im getting ready is the one at 1.12GB and it only compresses to 422MB. but i havnt paked any of the art yet so that will help make it smaller i think, as well as faster.

 

[Agent327]

1066 AD for Amra BTS version 1.2

PLEASE NOTE:

- I've included v. 1.1 in the DL file, as in v. 1.2 contacting the Italian Normans on the 1st turn caused a CTD during playtesting (however, being contacted by the Italian Normans is safe, and contact thereafter seems safe as well)
- also, loading later Save files may cause a MAF (see Amra's post #1)

Go here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9561

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
HELP: Still unable to take any screenshots screenshots! If anybody could post some, I'd be most grateful!

 

[Agent327]

Meanwhile, 1000 BC for Amra BTS is at 400 downloads!

 

[Alkyon]

Just a quick question for Amra about the new resources. I'm a big fan of the Marnz Mod by bmarnz, which you have included a lot of features from, including several the new resources (no Pearls?). In the Marnz Mod, Natural Gas was little more than a health bonus, but you couldn't fuel your units with it. Will the player be able to fuel their armies and railroads with Natural Gas in your mod? Just curious.

Also, I can't wait to see your advanced version!

Oh, and if you need help for the second UU/UB, just give your fans a list of what civilizations you need help working out. I'm sure all of us would be glad for a chance to help you.

 

[moopoo]

lol Alkyon, Marnz says in his first posts that the Amra mod served as an inspiration for his

 

[Agent327]

I've been playtesting the English and Italian Normans in 1066 AD for Amra BTS and encountered no further issues. All included custom Leaderheads also work fine. Just to be on the safe side, I'm keeping v. 1.1 available for download until v. 1.3.

Screenshots are still lacking and if anybody could post some, I'd be most grateful and you'll get a mention in the credits!

 

[Amra]

@Alkyon
Thanks for the kind words & encouragement. Below is a list of all resources in Amra Advanced. As you can see, I have included Pearls.



Natural Gas is available with the Combustion Tech and provides Hammers & Gold. It also gives a 25% Hammer bonus to forges.


@Moopoo
IIRC, Bmarnz was a tester for my Warlords modpack and was a big help.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

FYI, I have modded the Venicians (original concept by Ekmod) and my own version of the Americans (just changed Washington to Organized, Charismatic, and I am working on a new version of the Rifleman as a UU also for America, but think I'll take that back out), and I've played all sizes with the Advanced version.

Amra, with the exception of some text issues and a strange python exception concerning revolutions, I have been playing crash free

 

[Alkyon]

Oh, well, I was introduced to the Marnz Mod first, I guess Amra's would have come first since Amra's been doing this since Civ 4 vanilla...now I feel kind of silly.

Anyways. I'm glad pearls are still there (with better art than I'm used to, instead of purple clams). I don't see any apples, lemons, or olives, but I guess that with too many health resources, the game could get kind of silly. No "Hit Sporting Events" either, so no Wembley (I apologize if I got the spelling wrong, I am an American and real football is a mystery to me) I guess. Ooh! Papyrus! Does that give libraries a research bonus?

Anyways, I was just curious about the natural gas, mostly because it always seemed rather silly that on the rare chance that you did get natural gas, but no oil, you couldn't use fuel as, well, fuel. It was rather aggravating when that happened to me one game(I didn't even have coal in my case).

Well, I still can't wait. I want to go back to the Marnz Mod, but I don't know how to put all of your leaders in it myself, so I'll just wait for your Advanced mod.

 

[Amra]

@Alkyon
I've tried to limit the number of new resources so that the important ones don't end up being diluted and too few on maps. In the past, I've had problems with that so I usually stuck with only 10 new resources. This version will add 12 new resources.

A lot of the new resources are tied into one or another of the 5 new corporations. For example: Papyrus, Ancient Temple, or Lost Civilization are required for the Amra's Antiquities Corporation. I have to check if Papyrus (credit the TAM Team, BTW) gives a research bonus to libraries (I've forgotten ), but if not that is a good idea.

@kwarriorpoet
I'm glad you're enjoying the Beta and were able to include the Venetian Republic. Out of curiosity, what are you using for the UU? I looked at it briefly but wasn't sure about the Trader unit. I'm considering adding it. I like the LH & the civ would work in nicely with the new "Seafaring" trait that is in Amra Advanced.

@Everyone
I'm wrapping some stuff up and would like to post a public release of Amra Advanced this upcoming weekend. Bear in mind that Amra Advanced will be a work in progress, so I apologize for any rough edges that may show up.

On a related note, I just redid ALL the artwork for the Great Person Mod, you can check it out here if you'd like.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=277310

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Checked out that Great person thing. You are indeed a talented person with this and that going on Amra. I am indeed impressed. I can't wait to play the full version of Amra Advanced man.

 

[Alkyon]

@Alkyon
I've tried to limit the number of new resources so that the important ones don't end up being diluted and too few on maps. In the past, I've had problems with that so I usually stuck with only 10 new resources. This version will add 12 new resources.

A lot of the new resources are tied into one or another of the 5 new corporations. For example: Papyrus, Ancient Temple, or Lost Civilization are required for the Amra's Antiquities Corporation. I have to check if Papyrus (credit the TAM Team, BTW) gives a research bonus to libraries (I've forgotten ), but if not that is a good idea.

Ah, completely understandable. Many of the resources in the Marnz Mod didn't give corporation bonuses, such as lemons, apples, and olives.

@Everyone
I'm wrapping some stuff up and would like to post a public release of Amra Advanced this upcoming weekend. Bear in mind that Amra Advanced will be a work in progress, so I apologize for any rough edges that may show up.

Woo!

 

[artemisarrow]

im so glad this mod is in production!!!!!
question...
will you be adding the mods that allow for 34 to x amount of players per game in the advanced version?

 

[Amra]

im so glad this mod is in production!!!!!
question...
will you be adding the mods that allow for 34 to x amount of players per game in the advanced version?

Amra Advanced will allow up to 34 players but as always, make sure you've got a robust computer.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

@Alkyon
I've tried to limit the number of new resources so that the important ones don't end up being diluted and too few on maps. In the past, I've had problems with that so I usually stuck with only 10 new resources. This version will add 12 new resources.

A lot of the new resources are tied into one or another of the 5 new corporations. For example: Papyrus, Ancient Temple, or Lost Civilization are required for the Amra's Antiquities Corporation. I have to check if Papyrus (credit the TAM Team, BTW) gives a research bonus to libraries (I've forgotten ), but if not that is a good idea.

@kwarriorpoet
I'm glad you're enjoying the Beta and were able to include the Venetian Republic. Out of curiosity, what are you using for the UU? I looked at it briefly but wasn't sure about the Trader unit. I'm considering adding it. I like the LH & the civ would work in nicely with the new "Seafaring" trait that is in Amra Advanced.

@Everyone
I'm wrapping some stuff up and would like to post a public release of Amra Advanced this upcoming weekend. Bear in mind that Amra Advanced will be a work in progress, so I apologize for any rough edges that may show up.

I tweaked the Venetian Republic. I am leaning on getting rid of the trader, although it's a nice flavor UU, the ability to constantly pump them out and get gold from a neighboring civ feels a bit cheesed. The Venetian Arsenal is built 25% faster with copper and another 25% faster with iron in addition to building ships 50% faster and granting 2 xp. Additionally, I didn't like the Commercial and Maratime traits as initially setup by Ekmod. However, I loved the basic idea behind them. Something in the back of my mind was erked by amphibious warships.

So here's what I did to the Venetian Republic:
1) Got rid of the trader.
2) Changed Commercial to increase speed of construction of Markets, Banks, and Stock Exchanges, and kept the 1 happiness bonus for Banks and Stock Exchanges. Additionally, I gave this trait a 25% bonus to commerce generated in cities. I also granted the free navigation one promo to naval units.
3) Changed Maratime to give CS 1 and Amphibious to Melee, and Gunpowder Units. I also set it to give the civ a +1 bonus, +1 , and a 100% production bonus for the Venetian Harbor.
4) For a UU, I gave them the Portuguese Carrack and called it the Venetian War Galley.
5) For a UB, I changed the Arsenal to have no trait based or resource based production bonus but kept the +2 xp and 50% bonus to naval unit production. I added another UB, called the Venetian Harbor that is essentially a normal harbor but gives +3 xp to naval units.

I'm still playing around with it. I want the Venicians to be masters of the sea, but not too strong on land, and I don't want them to be imballanced. The latest version of my tweaks outlined above seem to be very close.

Ideally, I would like to combine the Arsenal with the Venetian Harbor into one building, but use the art for the Arsenal. However, my futile attempts at manipulating the art defines files to do such a thing have caused some serious graphics issues and even some crashes. So for now, my experiment has two UBs.

The Venetians depend on a great coastal start to be powerful. When land-locked, much of their strength is eliminated and they become an aggressive civ with out the barracks production bonus.

 

[erm4gh]

I recently had a crash to desktop where it complained it couldn't allocate video memory. I was using a huge map with little water, but the save file size was only about 460KB and this is the first case (for any mod I've played) where it occurred under Vista. My impression was that this type of problem mainly occurred with XP.

I have 3GB of memory and had disabled many of the background services. Is there anything I can do to help prevent this from occurring again other than switch to 16 bit color?

Part of the reason why I'm asking is I had been planning on trying out the full version of this mod when its released this weekend.

 

[Kalimakhus]

I got the same vMAF (video memory allocation failure) while beta testing Amra Advanced. It occurred specifically when I was about to enter the modern era. Judging from the size of your save file and considering that you are playing a huge map then you are much earlier in the game. My wild guess is that you use the /3GB switch in boot.ini to avoid MAFs. I say so because after applying this switch I started to get the nasty vMAFs frequently. In my case I think the problem is that my display card uses part of system memory as an expansion for its on-board memory. Applying the /3GB switch prevents the display card from doing this so it has limited memory to use. For some operations the memory allocated must be within the video memory if not enough of this memory is available the operation fails and the application quits.

 

[erm4gh]

Edit:It just happened again. I'm using a HP a6400f which has a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 with 128MB dedicated graphics memory.

Failed to allocate video memory. Please try reducing your graphics settings.

File:\main\Civilization4\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\Corelibs\NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9SourceTextureData.cpp, Line:321

 

[Amra]

Thanks Kalimakhus.

I actually have been able to solve almost all of my crashes by using the MAF fix, but only after I upgraded my physical memory from 2GB to 3GB. I've set up the dual boot option with a "/Userva=2752" setting on the end of it. I've found that the additional /Userva setting helped with the Video MAF's. I do still get them (occasionally) if I open Worldbuilder on a large map and then look around, though.

[EDIT] As a frame of reference, I have a video card with 256MB of ram, so maybe video cards with less ram have issues?

 

[erm4gh]

My wild guess is that you use the /3GB switch in boot.ini to avoid MAFs.

No I don't. I've never had to worry about MAFs on my current PC before using this mod, so I've never modified my boot.ini.

Edit: I tried dropping to 16bit color and rebooting. It reduced my normal desktop usage of graphics memory from 133MB to 130MB. I then ran the game again, opening world builder and switching to the Intel control panel. It reported 211MB of memory was used. This was with a 558KB save file. I have a basic PC which uses a integrated graphics chip (not a graphics card), allocating graphics memory from system memory as needed, like many laptops do.