[BtS] "Mars, Now!"

[Drtad]

I had been on a long sabbatical from Civ in general, but I must say that this mod has really gotten me into it again. Really great work so far!

I started a game with the Private Space Explorers so we'll see how that goes. Nice work!

 

[Red Boxer]

Some things I've noted:
- I built Advanced Plants but it didn't give me any resource-units to distribute (like the Import-Plant/Animal wonder did). It did give me 7 resources to distribute, however.
- I keep getting a message that I've built the Import Plants and Import animals wonders.
- If feels like Request Water/Oxygen from Earth is too cheap. What does Earth get out of the bargain? Is there a permanent cost in Gold and/or National Feeling (kind of hard to be independent, when you're dependent on Earth for water and air)? Is it possible to have to invest 1 other resource each time to you this wonder (representing some important resource to Earth)?
- The fusion of current religions as a culture producer to religion (including the new ones) as a producer of a drive for independence doesn't always seem to fit with the buildings. For example, a court house would seemingly produce National Feeling, as it legitimizes the locals. You could do some interesting things with Panzer Kunst as far as bonuses (free XP, unique promotions, unique units), however it doesn't seem like it should behave like a much 'religion.' What about the Brotherhood of Mars? What is it and how does it work?
- The barbarians start off cool (mutants and viruses) but change into Tanks (where are they getting tanks!? ) and Rocketdudes (not as fun). Other than some new weird units, I don't have an ideas for them.
- Speaking of Rocketdudes, shouldn't they get a bonus against Tanks? They seem more deserving than the Grenade Troops.
- Though it is listed as a National Wonder, I can build Watersupply multiple times. Why is this? Is this intentional?

 

[Vortilex]

I actually think that the Brotherhood of Mars should give you further effects if you have it as your state religion (greater Nation-feeling or something; a Martian religion for the Martian people!) but that would ostracize those who wish to remain faithful towards the Earthling religions.

 

[The_J]

Sorry, haven't posted some time here, have been busy with other parts of CFC .

And i honestly lost the motivation for modding at the moment . I think the next patch (whenever it will come) will probably the last patch .

Wupz, now I realized UU/UB means Unique Units and Unique Buildings. Thought it was for Unit Usage (Sid's tips and stuff) and Unit Background, which is missing as well. But, nowonce I've set the point, I'll try to do some.

So, anything done ?

I had been on a long sabbatical from Civ in general, but I must say that this mod has really gotten me into it again. Really great work so far!

I started a game with the Private Space Explorers so we'll see how that goes. Nice work!

Thanks .

Some things I've noted:
- I built Advanced Plants but it didn't give me any resource-units to distribute (like the Import-Plant/Animal wonder did). It did give me 7 resources to distribute, however.

That's intended, like the hollywood wonder (and the others) in normal civ.

- I keep getting a message that I've built the Import Plants and Import animals wonders.

It's a bug :/. You get these messages again, when the buildings have been responsible for a terraforming event.
Can't really do anything against it :/.

- If feels like Request Water/Oxygen from Earth is too cheap. What does Earth get out of the bargain? Is there a permanent cost in Gold and/or National Feeling (kind of hard to be independent, when you're dependent on Earth for water and air)? Is it possible to have to invest 1 other resource each time to you this wonder (representing some important resource to Earth)?

adding negative national feeling would be an idea.

- The barbarians start off cool (mutants and viruses) but change into Tanks (where are they getting tanks!? ) and Rocketdudes (not as fun). Other than some new weird units, I don't have an ideas for them.

These are rioting martians .
But i've honestly never thought about restricting the barbarians. The advance in BtS, so why should they not advance here?
Any other opinion?
Maybe they need then some other advanced mutant units.

- Speaking of Rocketdudes, shouldn't they get a bonus against Tanks? They seem more deserving than the Grenade Troops.

I'd maybe shift the boni...ah...i'm so uncreative about that .

- Though it is listed as a National Wonder, I can build Watersupply multiple times. Why is this? Is this intentional?

It's in the same way a national wonder like the command center is (or the palace in normal civ). When you build it again, then you just move it to another city, you don't get one additionally.

- The fusion of current religions as a culture producer to religion (including the new ones) as a producer of a drive for independence doesn't always seem to fit with the buildings. For example, a court house would seemingly produce National Feeling, as it legitimizes the locals. You could do some interesting things with Panzer Kunst as far as bonuses (free XP, unique promotions, unique units), however it doesn't seem like it should behave like a much 'religion.' What about the Brotherhood of Mars? What is it and how does it work?

I actually think that the Brotherhood of Mars should give you further effects if you have it as your state religion (greater Nation-feeling or something; a Martian religion for the Martian people!) but that would ostracize those who wish to remain faithful towards the Earthling religions.

I thought about some more religion changes, just did not have the time and motivation to add them :/.
e.g. thought about restricting the martian state church wonder to only the martian religions, removing the earth religion wonders and adding 3 more martian religions, but there are some problems with that (besides motivation).
Removing national feeling from the earth buildings woud fit to this, and would make sense, right.

Can anyone maybe motivate me ?

 

[keldath]

huh...

i feel the same way... kinda tired of modding for now...

im sure one day youll wake up and say, hey i wanna do some civ4 modding (since for me, civ5 doesn't even tickle my modding parts ). may take a while though... ive been on and off for 5 years....

 

[glider1]

Yeah just forget about your feelings on modding both The_J and Keldath. You will come back to it once you can foresee some joy to do so. It is what you do. It is baffling at times all the work that goes in for no tangible reward and it makes me wonder why we do it honestly. Whatever you will do it again both of you Keldath and the_J for the benefit of the public and yourselves despite all odds. I can prove this to you with the following logic:

I Glider1 was tired of modding six months ago and could not focus on it due to various personal complications. At that time all you good people were furiously modding away on civ4 while waiting for civ5. Now I Glider1 have come back to find all your amazing hard work from that period and now I am furiously back modding for the benefit of the public and myself while all you good people are tired of it. Civ5 was never a factor for me. Already months ago it was obvious to me that it could not trump civ4 without religion and espionage and without significant advances in AI computer science. So the reason I have returned to civ4 is a bit of a mystery (initially it is joy and then the discovery of the plain hard work that goes into it) and you will find it curious when you come back to it I guess.

The conclusion is that it all goes in cycles. When you good people come back to modding, I will probably be tired of it again

Cheers

 

[Otaku-sama]

That's too bad about you losing modding interest. I would help, but I also have no time or modding experience...

For the new religion system, maybe the remaining earth religions are not founded by techs and are only enabled to the specific civs who start with them (my recommended earth religions are Hinduism, Islam and Christianity), with the only bonus it gives is happiness. If possible, you should provide seven Martian religions. I could help provide ideas for Martian religions. Maybe one could be the Freemerchants (blatant Freemason rip-off) that is founded with Trade, which I see so far as a very expensive and unrewarding tech. You could also use sounds from the Just Another Religion Mod.

 

[Imperitor1]

I downloaded the patch and it looks uber cool but I can't run it at all, any thoughts? I tried getting the mod opener that was suggested but it crashes instead of running every time no matter what I do. Help please. Thanks.

"A collision at sea can ruin your entire day." - Thucydides

 

[The_J]

Welcome to CFC .

So the installer already fails and crashes ? What operating system do you have? On Windows Vista/7, you need to have administrator rights to install it.


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And because i'm already posting: This mod is now officially pausing .
Can't motivate myself to do any further work at the moment. Especially sad for the last text by Otaku-sama, because it will not find its way now into the mod :/. Maybe somewhen next year, but not in the next months .

 

[Imperitor1]

I have admin rights and my os is Windows Vista 32-bit. The mod launcher runs ok but the game doesn't run and then it crashes instead of running.

"A collision at sea can ruin your entire day." - Thucydides

 

[The_J]

Ah, okay.
Did you update your Beyond The Sword installation to the latest patch 3.19? If you did via the auto updater, then please do it manually again, because the auto updater is not reliable.

 

[Imperitor1]

Ok, so now the game launches but as soon as I go to load a map, the game stops responding. I sit at the loading screen for a game for 20mins without any load bar movement. Help?

"A collision at sea can ruin your entire day." - Thucydides

 

[The_J]

so you are now in the main menu, you can see the red globe, and you can see all the stuff in the civilopedia, right?
And then you try to load one of the premade maps, e.g. the mars map, and it freezes then, right?
20 minutes should sure not happen. My computer is relatively old and the maps are loaded relatively fast .
Did you try if random maps work?

 

[Imperitor1]

Huzzah! Random maps work! Thank you, handai!

"A collision at sea can ruin your entire day." - Thucydides

 

[Vortilex]

As I recall, last time I played on Random Maps there was an abundance of water as if it were a normal game of Civ. That's why I only play on the scenario maps (mostly Mars as it is still never the same twice)

 

[The_J]

The problem with the premade map is now strange . I thought i adjusted all.
Was it only 1 map, or did you try more than one?


@Vortilex: Normally the standard mapscripts should not appear in Mars Now, only also adjusted ones, which shouldn't place any water terrain .

 

[Vortilex]

I last tried a few versions back, so a lot probably has changed since my last try with a random map. Don't get me wrong, the scenarios are still awesome(!) but I do have one issue: Since we have complete maps of what Mars, the Moon, and Venus look like, should they really need to be explored? Surely the only thing that we shouldn't know about is that there are two civilizations already in existence and that other countries arrived at the same time as your own civ? I know with Titan we have no clue what its surface looks like, so it's conceivable that the map would be black, but the ones that we have mapped as of 2011 with would be any moon of Jupiter, any rocky moon of Saturn, any rocky moon of Uranus or Neptune, our own Moon, any named Asteroid, Mars and its moons, our Moon, Venus, and Mercury. By the time the scenario starts, we may have even mapped Titan and have created a thorough map of Venus/Mercury (the Venus map that NASA has is all CGI and the Mercury map has a huge part missing because of the probe's shadow).

 

[The_J]

I last tried a few versions back, so a lot probably has changed since my last try with a random map.

In one of the patches there was a bug, which allowed you to choose the normal mapscripts, it was probably this.

Since we have complete maps of what Mars, the Moon, and Venus look like, should they really need to be explored?

2 answers, first reason is gameplay, second is background:
a) Exploring known maps is boring. Most people know it, the early game is fun, because there's lots to explore, and a lot of stuff to see on the map. The late game isn't that fun, because there's no supprise anymore.
So no way i'd want to take that out, that's why there's that logical background:
b) The story (if i had written down one; and the parts which have been mentioned in the backgrounds you and the others wrote) tells you, that all the colonies have lost the connection to earth. So, why did it happen? Problems with the technology? An unknown reason? Did the satellite connection maybe crash, because they got hacked by an enemy? What else got affected? Can we trust the information, which we receive from the satellites? It's dangerous, unless there's some sort of external confirmation, so you better shouldn't at this stage, it could be missleading.

 

[Vortilex]

Oh, okay. I was just remembering from a book I had as a kid that had detailed maps of all the planets, plus an artist's rendering of the surface of Pluto. It also had a detailed map of the Lunar surface, and pictures of the extra-terrestrial moons.

By the way, I realized that when playing on a non-Martian scenario map the tiles are still in Martian colors. I know this is a lot to ask, but is it possible to make the Lunar scenario have a gray map, etc.? I know Venus would be very similar to Mars (except that when the Soviets sent a craft there, it overheated and sank into the half-molten crust ) and we don't know what the Surface of Titan looks like (probably rocky). I know that Io would have a similar surface to Mars (it looks like a pizza ) but I can't remember if it's Io or Ganymede that has a scenario map. I don't think what I'm asking is actually possible, though, because that requires new colors for the tiles in addition to the Martian colors, and when playing a random map things could get quite weird (such as Lunar colors appearing). Thanks

 

[jcb]

Installed and updated with the patch. I get about 15 turns in and it crashes. Tried a new game and same thing happened in about the same time frame. Ideas?