[BtS] Destiny Mod

[sav]

First time playing this mod, and I have to say it is really, really fast - I can play it at full graphics, and it runs as fast as normal BTS. No other mod I've tried can do that - especially not RoM, which drags even on the lowest settings!

Also, I like that all the additional units and things are really professionally done - they're all Firaxis things from other versions of the game, aren't they? It shows!

I would like it even more if the revolutions were playable though. I initially tried it with them on, then realised almost every civic had +4 national and local instability ratings... which made it impossible. Revolutions add that element of chaos that BTS lacks without them, I'd love to see it implemented somehow.

Alright, back to playing... let's see how the middle ages plays out

 

[smeagolheart]

First time playing this mod, and I have to say it is really, really fast - I can play it at full graphics, and it runs as fast as normal BTS. No other mod I've tried can do that - especially not RoM, which drags even on the lowest settings!

Also, I like that all the additional units and things are really professionally done - they're all Firaxis things from other versions of the game, aren't they? It shows!

I would like it even more if the revolutions were playable though. I initially tried it with them on, then realised almost every civic had +4 national and local instability ratings... which made it impossible. Revolutions add that element of chaos that BTS lacks without them, I'd love to see it implemented somehow.

Alright, back to playing... let's see how the middle ages plays out

Thanks for the input! I've tried to match any added graphics to firaxis type levels in order for additional content to not stick out like a sore thumb. Also, I've attempted to quash bugs and balance additional content a bit. A lot of the content are from scenarios such as Chinese Unification, Road to War, etc.

Let me know how you like it as you get further along!

I personally don't play revolutions. The only thing I know for sure that is definitely broke to get it fully "Revolutions compatible" are the civic ratings. I haven't been able to find good definitions for what all the variables mean for them or they would be converted already. I'll re-take a look at them soon and see if it makes any more sense.

 

[sav]

PS Gotta say I really like the way the new units/wonders don't follow the usual BTS/Civ4 abilities - like just plain old "it gives you this much extra this" - I like that they're quite varied, if you know what I mean.

I'm a little amused that the Pyramids can let you switch to Technocracy though.

Can I ask why the cultural victory was upped to five cities? Not a criticism, as I'm sure you know much better than I do, just curious. Is there a document explaining all the big changes, like that?

And lastly (sorry! I'm really interested) were you thinking of adding in things like Advanced Diplo, Realistic culture spread, etc?

 

[Daft73]

This looks nice. Lucky for me the wife and kids are on vacation this weekend..good ole' dad needs to stay at home. Sooo, what a great time to try new mods!
Thanks for the good times smeagolheart

 

[Daft73]

Just wanted to chime in again to say that I'm having a great time with this mod. Although I'm not getting many games finished; too much awsomness to explore, so I'm trying civs, and so forth.

I really like the attention to detail, the artwork for greatpeople and events, overall goodtimes.

 

[smeagolheart]

@ Malidros - I am constantly exploring as well and tweaking... Glad you like it.

 

[Blair-]

hello smeagollheart,

i installed the recent version update now and my dude and i started a new game.
apparently you forgot to add the eventhandler for the onCityGrowth method like the last time for the agricultural trait in the new version .
however, this is an easy fix and usually doesnt require a gamerestart.

 

[smeagolheart]

@Blair -

Yeah I'm not sure what happened. I missed the heat footman bonuses too. I know this because I just re-fixed them again when I noticed the fixes weren't there anymore also! Doah!!!

I'm getting ready to release a new version soon been hard at work again, I redid all the civ colors, added a new civ (Troy), a couple more promotions including one that gives you a small amount of gold when you kill enemies, there are several new leaders (Joan of Arc, Agamemnon, Hector, Gustav Vasa and more), added a new trait (visionary) and reworked existing leaders traits.

 

[Raven Destroyer]

ok i got it to "work" finnaly but the interface is gone and without it i can't play i know only some commands but without the interface i will only succumb in battle

or it want's to just hide crucial things or doesn't work at all

 

[Praeclarus]

Gotta say, I love this mod, it works perfectly in multiplayer and my friends and I really enjoyed it. However, with some AIs, they'll mention that their close borders spark tensions, even though they're very far away, causing them not to trade with me as I am their worst enemy. Any chance of a fix on this?

 

[smeagolheart]

Gotta say, I love this mod, it works perfectly in multiplayer and my friends and I really enjoyed it. However, with some AIs, they'll mention that their close borders spark tensions, even though they're very far away, causing them not to trade with me as I am their worst enemy. Any chance of a fix on this?

It is on the "to do" list to look into it. I think it's a feature of Better BTS AI to have the AI distrust you a bit. There is a lot of code to dig through to find where the issue is.


Glad you like the mod! I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a new version and I hope you enjoy it as well.

 

[Fimbulvetr]

For Better AI, the close borders diplo penalty from simply starting on the same landmass is long fixed. Either you didn't update yet or you're using some other code that introduces it again (I believe Ruthless AI does)

 

[smeagolheart]

Saying that BetterAI has fixed something in the "long fixed" is of course relative and depends on your definition of "long". The version of BetterAI in the mod was current 3 months ago.

Upgrading components is not an automated process and not so easy to update SDK changes when there are several components mingling together over the same files.
That being said, I'll look into the close border issue, however any fix is unlikely to make it into the immediate next version since I'm trying to upload it now.

 

[smeagolheart]

Brand new version is out... Enjoy and as always please share how much you like it and any issues.

Version Notes:

Version 3.41b
--------------------
Added Visual Weather Events (feature effects for Dustbowl, Tornado, Volcano, Forest Fire, Hurricane, Tsunami)
Redid all Civilization Colors based on SimCuties Colors
Added Agamemnon, Cochise, Gustav Vasa, Hector, Canute, Joan of Arc
Added Trojan Civilization
Modified Promotions (especially Maurader)
Fixed Some Bugs
Added Visionary Trait
Redid many Leaders traits to incorporate new trait and fix some redundancies
Added Clay! (revealed by Pottery)
Added Tesla Infantry unit
Theory of Evolution gives two Free Techs
All Techs have voiceovers

 

[Soro]

I downloaded 3.41b overnight--AtomicGamer is not very fast. It installed perfectly, with good information display. However, when I ran it, I got to the Destiny menu screen, only to find that clicking on either Civopedia or Options did nothing. Launched a game, regardless, and had no interface above or below the visual section of the screen. None of the F keys worked, either. As I know you've got a rep for building good mods, I figure the problem must be at my end, so--any ideas what I could be doing wrong? All help would be gratefully appreciated.

Yes, I've got Civ4 BtS 3.19 running, and I'm using WinXP. I can run BtS fine, and other mods load and run without any difficulties. I've got 4 GB RAM.

 

[Blair-]

hello smeagolheart

thanks for the update (again). havent tried it yet, as i am tracking a serious memory issue.
as i noticed, i am playing giant maps with 24 civs, so there is usually more memory consumed. so far so good.
to track the problem (MAF), i was using process explorer, as it also shows the virtual memory stats.
after starting destiny mod, it was using about 140MB of physical memory, but the process has mapped another 2GB of virtual addresses. this appears to be the mapping for the FPK files. so the game loads those files in memory (this might result in a speedup as it is intended), but causes MAF as soon you reach late renaissance era (with my setting), as civ consumes about 2GB of physical memory then. but as the process also has mapped the mod files, it runs out of virtual addresses (32-bit limit).

to "fix" it, i extracted all those FPK files and put the extracted files in their right places and removed the FPK files et voila, MAF gone (for now), as the virtual oversize has been removed. i am now at 2.7GB of physical memory and 3.2GB of virtual size and am in the tank-era.

i know there is an option in the .ini called
DisablePAKMemoryMapping
but changing that to 1 didnt change anything however.

 

[smeagolheart]

I downloaded 3.41b overnight--AtomicGamer is not very fast. It installed perfectly, with good information display. However, when I ran it, I got to the Destiny menu screen, only to find that clicking on either Civopedia or Options did nothing. Launched a game, regardless, and had no interface above or below the visual section of the screen. None of the F keys worked, either. As I know you've got a rep for building good mods, I figure the problem must be at my end, so--any ideas what I could be doing wrong? All help would be gratefully appreciated.

Yes, I've got Civ4 BtS 3.19 running, and I'm using WinXP. I can run BtS fine, and other mods load and run without any difficulties. I've got 4 GB RAM.

Can you post your log files? It sounds like the root of this error will be in your pythonerr.log file. Instructions for how to do this are on the first post

 

[smeagolheart]

hello smeagolheart

thanks for the update (again). havent tried it yet, as i am tracking a serious memory issue.
as i noticed, i am playing giant maps with 24 civs, so there is usually more memory consumed. so far so good.
to track the problem (MAF), i was using process explorer, as it also shows the virtual memory stats.
after starting destiny mod, it was using about 140MB of physical memory, but the process has mapped another 2GB of virtual addresses. this appears to be the mapping for the FPK files. so the game loads those files in memory (this might result in a speedup as it is intended), but causes MAF as soon you reach late renaissance era (with my setting), as civ consumes about 2GB of physical memory then. but as the process also has mapped the mod files, it runs out of virtual addresses (32-bit limit).

to "fix" it, i extracted all those FPK files and put the extracted files in their right places and removed the FPK files et voila, MAF gone (for now), as the virtual oversize has been removed. i am now at 2.7GB of physical memory and 3.2GB of virtual size and am in the tank-era.

i know there is an option in the .ini called
DisablePAKMemoryMapping
but changing that to 1 didnt change anything however.

Yes this mod features a "frickin' 'uge" fpk. The majority of the space is I believe from the leaderheads, many are not optimized and feature excess files from the modmakers. I replaced all the wondermovies with static images and that shrunk the mod a bit but not enough.

The benefit of running the mod with the fpk files and not extracted are that the mod loads much much faster that way. There are some troubleshooting steps in the first post to deal with MAFs.

I'm open to suggestions to make the mod more friendly, hopefully without cutting features.

Hope you're likin' the mod.

 

[Roamty]

Nice like the mod if u want your Terrain Features so show up on your maps try this to see in CIV4FeatureInfos u need to play around with
<iAppearance>250</iAppearance>
<iDisappearance>1000</iDisappearance>
can be
<iAppearance>100</iAppearance>
<iDisappearance>500</iDisappearance>

these numbers can be any thing u want 50 10 or 500 500 i hope u get the ideal
and u got to add TerrainBooleans like this to make it work

<TerrainBooleans>
<TerrainBoolean>
<TerrainType>TERRAIN_GRASS</TerrainType>
<bTerrain>1</bTerrain>
</TerrainBoolean>
<TerrainBoolean>
<TerrainType>TERRAIN_COAST</TerrainType>
<bTerrain>1</bTerrain>
</TerrainBoolean>
<TerrainBoolean>
<TerrainType>TERRAIN_OCEAN</TerrainType>
<bTerrain>1</bTerrain>
</TerrainBoolean>
</TerrainBooleans>

FEATURE_HURRICANE try this on it to get your ideals on how to add your new Terrain Features

 

[Soro]

Can you post your log files? It sounds like the root of this error will be in your pythonerr.log file. Instructions for how to do this are on the first post

Done. I'm not sure it caught everything, as the game crashed before I could actually get from launch to a gameplay screen. Still, it caught quite a bit.