[BTS Total Mod] Thomas' War

[tsentom1]

great mod...and your wonder releases have been outstanding.

Few things I would love to see in the next patch are:

1. Great Person Counter on the mainscreen.
2. One wonder I would love to see is a return to "darwin's voyage'" from civ 2.

1) I have the great general counter in the game at the moment. I had a great person once, but took it down because I couldn't find anyone that also told which city the counter was referring to - and couldn't figure out how to code this myself - I can always bring back the regular counter though, no problem.

2) I forget, what did Darwin's Voyage do?

 

[tsentom1]

It was affecting my base game, and the Planetfall mod, but it went away after I restarted the game a couple of times. Still no idea what caused it.

I can only guess maybe you changed or overwrote an .ini or the Civ4_Config file? Thomas' War doesn't mod either, but some other mods might. Did you install anything else recently?

 

[tsentom1]

I'm working on a bug balance patch now which will mostly deal with minor balance issues and bugs I've found (which is inevitable whenever I release a new version). It won't really include any new features, though it's possible it will update some unit art (the Filipino UU, finally) and if the new version of Headlock's events comes out soon, some new events (as those are easy to add). I'll also re-add the scenarios folder which was taken out - due to a bug - a few patches ago so people won't have to scrounge the forums for the individual downloads.

One bug that continues to allude me is the Agr bug. Though I will probably implement the solution that turingmachine suggested as a temporary fix if I can't figure it out in time (basically have the granary give some extra food when built to balance out the lack of extra food later).

Again this is not a real patch, so to speak, more like the current 3.5 is the beta version that needed some play testing to catch any glitches and this will just be the final version of 3.5. I don't suspect that it will break saves, but if I have to rewrite a large amount of code to fix any bugs it is a possibility, in which case I apologize in advance. I hate breaking saves myself.

So please continue to give any feedback. It's always helpful.

 

[Dorrian]

So then... to ask a second daft question in a row.

Is it actually possible to acquire the Asatru religion for a civilization in the current version of the mod?

 

[tsentom1]

So then... to ask a second daft question in a row.

Is it actually possible to acquire the Asatru religion for a civilization in the current version of the mod?

You need to play with the "Choose Religions" option turned on.

 

[tsentom1]

That or you can always edit the religion XML files and just assign all the religions to techs if you wanted.

 

[Epicurist]

You need to play with the "Choose Religions" option turned on.

Oh..thats how...lol

I thought it was either given through some event or a great prophet could found the extra religions.

Is it possible to have a random event or challenge completed give a religion?

That would be interesting.

 

[tsentom1]

Oh..thats how...lol

I thought it was either given through some event or a great prophet could found the extra religions.

Is it possible to have a random event or challenge completed give a religion?

That would be interesting.

Actually having an event, or wonder, or such give extra religions is relatively easy to do with python and a good idea for the future.

 

[Tholish]

How did you get the Warp and Jump lanes to be above ground? The standard ones are for Final Frontier and are low altitude, but you don't include any replacement art.

 

[tsentom1]

How did you get the Warp and Jump lanes to be above ground? The standard ones are for Final Frontier and are low altitude, but you don't include any replacement art.

I manually went into every .nif file for the routes and raised their height (y-axis). Annoying as hell since there are so many models per route type. I forget the file path but they should be there packed in the ArtPak0.

 

[Dorrian]

Thanks tsentom1 - I might have a player around with it. I spend the last few years modding a different game and wouldn't mind having a peek at the internals of this one too.

 

[tsentom1]

The bug patch is going to see some changes to the Next War units.

One, the biological warfare unit and promotion as they are implemented in Next War and thus Thomas' War are practically useless. I'm adjusting this by giving the biological warfare missile a natural +100% collateral damage bonus and increasing how much units it causes collateral damage from 8 to 12. Secondly, the anti-biological warfare promotion now gives a 75% resistance to collateral damage instead of the +75% vs the missile itself. It still retains the -15% combat strength but is only available to clone units. (Actually, I've made a few clone unit specific promotions). Additionally, mechanized units will now be immune to the collateral damage caused by the biological warfare missile.

Secondly, the Automaton and Cyborg. The Automaton in Next War is practically useless as well as its only one tech away from the Cyborg which is infinitely better in every way (and with a hammer difference of only 20!). The cost of Cyborgs is going to be increased by another 20 hammers (they are still significantly cheaper than mechanized infantry which was their original purpose in the Next War mod, though with all the extra bonuses they naturally get even if they were the same price as Mechanized Infantry it would still be better to built the Cyborg). The Automatons, then now being much cheaper than the Cyborg, now also starts with the Expendable promotion that I added turning them into cheap specialized suicide attacker type units (Plus, I can then make use of the AI_ATTACK_CITY_LEMMING unit AI which is programmed in but entirely unused in the game).

I think these changes will finally make the units useful and individual enough to actually be built.

 

[tsentom1]

Hi everyone, so I need more play testing concerning the Scientific trait. If more people can give feedback I'd really appreciate it. However, I can't decide if the trait is too weak at the moment and keep on going back and forth on this issue. Any ideas? If it is too weak there are plenty of things I can do to make it better, so just let me know.

Scientific Trait (as currently implemented):

Free Scientist upon Classical Era
Free Great Scientist upon Renaissance Era
Free Golden Age upon Modern Era

I've decided I don't want to give it a double speed building simply because I like how currently the trait functions completely different than existing traits in the game. I'm also resisting doing the obvious and adding bonuses to the other eras. The reasoning being it makes the trait less streamlined. It's sort of the same thing as giving tons of little bonuses to civics as opposed to 2-3 set main bonuses.

 

[Epicurist]

another idea id love to see is the population size of cities be somewhat limited by the improvements.

In the early civs, a city couldnt grow past 12 unless it had an aqueduct.

Also, have cottage-->towns-->cities reflect on part of the restriction.

Just throwing out ideas for ya...

 

[turingmachine]

another idea id love to see is the population size of cities be somewhat limited by the improvements.

In the early civs, a city couldnt grow past 12 unless it had an aqueduct.

Also, have cottage-->towns-->cities reflect on part of the restriction.

Just throwing out ideas for ya...

I think that might change the flow of the game too much though and sort of limit how you have to research techs.

 

[Falk]

The only thing I don't like about Sci is that the last bonus comes quite late in the game. Often too late to be relevant, especially in multiplayer. I'd also like to see double production speed for Observatories - I think the traits were originally designed to give 1-2 bonuses AND double production for a couple of buildings. So they can function in completely different ways AND give double production speed. That's how I see it.

Btw, I'm playing a singleplayer game as Adriaen van der Donck at the moment, focusing on scientists and ran out of Great Scientist names in the 17th century (there are some more Sci civs in the game).

Two comments about wonders:
I don't like Petra - I would build it only to get more or specific Great Person points early, but it gives Statesman points by default, so you will pollute your GP farm, which makes the wonder rather pointless if you don't farm Great Statesmen. I would rather have it not give any GPP itself.

The Great Bath is a pretty good wonder, but suffers from two problems. First, it directly competes with strategy defining wonders (Pyramids, GLighthouse, Sphinx, GWall and to a lesser extent Stonehenge and the Oracle). Second, the AI seems very keen on the Great Bath and usually builds it quite early, turn 100-150. Unfortunately this means that I am never going to build it. Could it get pushed back (or forth, depending on your point of view) on the timeline, becoming available with, say, Mathematics?

The Sphinx is brilliant btw and very well balanced!

 

[tsentom1]

The only thing I don't like about Sci is that the last bonus comes quite late in the game. Often too late to be relevant, especially in multiplayer.

That's my main concern with Sci. It gives three pretty good bonuses but, especially on epic and marathon game speeds, the three bonuses are very spaced out.

In trying to keep the existing game mechanic I can either swallow the bullet and just give a bonus for every era, or make the earlier two bonus more powerful to compensate. Otherwise I could just give it another independent bonus (such as double observatories).

I agree Petra is kinda odd. In reality it is possible to give blank GPP points (that just raise the bar but don't count towards a %) and they work fine for the most part however there are one or two situations that can lead to a crash with blank points, and even though they're rare I would rather not have anything with the potential to crash in the game. The other option is to leave out the extra GPP points but it kinda feels weird for that to be the only national wonder that doesn't give 1 GPP point. So I have to think what to do about it.

The main reason I put the bath early in the tech tree is that historically the bath dates to 2600 BC - which even dates it before many of the Egyptian pyramids and on par with the oldest - but I agree it potentially gets overshadowed by wonders that have set strategies already in place.

I'm having trouble fixing the Agr bug. I re-wrote the code again and still it fires, but once again not all the time. For example I can start a new game build a granary and never once does it happen. I think it might be connected to re-loading a game or something outside just the build granary. If you notice any specific details about it please let me know.

I've currently tripled the potential Great General names, I'm just going to try to do the same for all the other great people as well.

Thanks for the feedback, as usual it's immensely helpful.

 

[LoneCentrist]

Have an interesting bug happening in my game. I'll get the random event that a city has been destroyed and partisans are rallying to fight the enemy, except I haven't lost a city and it keeps happening every turn. While it is very nice to have a free Infantry unit every turn, it seems rather unbalanced. It's only happened since I installed the mod and it's happened on both computers I've put it on. Any idea what the problem is?

 

[tsentom1]

Have an interesting bug happening in my game. I'll get the random event that a city has been destroyed and partisans are rallying to fight the enemy, except I haven't lost a city and it keeps happening every turn. While it is very nice to have a free Infantry unit every turn, it seems rather unbalanced. It's only happened since I installed the mod and it's happened on both computers I've put it on. Any idea what the problem is?

That's interesting and I've never heard of this happening before. Do you happen to have save around the time it occurs? That's usually the best way for me to find out what's causing bugs. Also, are you using the latest version of the mod, 3.5?

If anyone else has experienced this it would also help so let me know. I've played several games well into the modern or future era and never had this happen so I'm at a loss myself as the partisan code is the same as in standard BTS.

 

[tsentom1]

Okay, other changes in the bug patch.

I am increasing War Weariness back to the levels that they were before the 3.17 patch. Why, well first off that patch virtually removed war weariness from the game and secondly Thomas' War has several new ways to combat war weariness be it the Nat trait, Royal Tomb national wonder, future buildings, the 3.17 change really isn't necessary.

Secondly, I am also going to increase how much your civ's unhealthiness contributes to global warming but also increase how much forests you have in your civ defend against it. Later on, especially with all the extra food modifiers that come with Next War health really isn't as important. So this should help make it more vital.