C2C - Combining C2C and AND 2.0

[rightfuture]

C2C - Combining the ideas and efforts of C2C and AND 2.0 - as far as it makes sense.

Everyone - who wants to see the ideas of CIV,
of ROM, AND, REVDCM, and C2C (and similar mods) improved upon.

My idea here is to explore these common and future ideas together (so we don't waste or duplicate time/effort).
I don't mean a literal combining of mods since AND is already in C2C, and most of the changes will eventually propagate.
Most everything in AND 2.0 will eventually end up in C2C (I Hope), and most of the agreed upon improvements of AND in C2C will be ported over.

These mods all share much of the same philosophy, ideas, people, and even code (as they all share major improvements and parts, in both directions, or are built on each other.)
They are all built on the idea of improving Civ by exploring and adding new content.
I think we should work together, and explore other ideas in common.

While many people might disagree on the differences between these mods, and the extent of the philosophy being pursued, they are going in much the same direction.
This is definitely not to say these different mod expressions should be combined or eliminated, but to work together to improve the same things.
I think both C2C and AND should be developed and continue onward. As I do for all the great mods and different expressions.
I would like to see all of these mods do well, by exploring and improving together, and maintaining their individual differences without drifting apart.
And I would like to see them all do well, and accomplish their goals.

In fact, we all share the desire to see Civ improved,
to come up and implement new ideas, features, and to make existing ideas better.
to move the entire Civilization game series forward to make it the best it can be.
All so we can explore and play the best Civ game possible.
What ideas you like to see explored?

As shown in the next post, the tradition and spirit of
AND 2.0 and C2C- Caveman2Cosmos,
ROM -Rise of Mankind, and
AND(RAND) -Rise of Mankind -A New Dawn
and many of precursor and included mods,
has always been to explore adding and improving content
to make CIV even better.

If you want to see these ideas end up in your favorite mod,
and explore new ones together,
and see new content and older ideas improved upon by all of these mod communities,
as individual mods, connected communities, and more involved individuals.
Please help us bring our shared ideas and discussions together.

I would love to see how much more we can with each other, than split apart, and by ourselves.

Please discuss
the ideas you want to see between these mods,
any new ones we should be working on together (like viewports/multi-maps),
our common ground, future, and working with each other,
here in this thread.
What would you like to see?

So we can all move Civ to the next level, together.

 

[rightfuture]

All of these mods all share a history and a philosophy, to radically improve Civ by adding content and ideas to make it better.
- This is why they are are all moving in the same direction.

You may already know some of this, but The very idea of the Civilization mod(modification) is to change/improve the game by editing and building upon it.
And every mod is usually started as one person's effort to explore what he/she wants to see or improve upon.
What unites these pursuits(and communities) is the desire to bring the best of these ideas together.
and eventually, with effort and luck, these ideas come together and move the community forward.

These are all mods upon mods upon mods, with the intent

ROM -Rise of Mankind started as the most powerful expression of one person (Zappara) idea to make Civ better with lot's of ideas, improvement and the help of the extended community. It eventually grew to encompass the
majority of the efforts to improve all of CIV with dozens of included mods, 100's of people, 100,000's of posts, and a massive amount of improvements.

In Zappara's own words:

Welcome to Rise of Mankind.
Rise of Mankind is a mod project for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword expansion.​

...
This mod is my attempt to enhance Civilization 4 to a whole new level. Ever since Civilization 1 I've liked this series a lot but during Civ 3 I found mods Double Your Pleasure and bit later Rise and Rule which made the game be so much more fun than before that when finally Civ 4 was released, I felt slightly disappointed as it didn't offer as much as did DYP or RAR. Civ 4 had some great new elements like religion and civic system (like in Alpha Centauri) but I wanted more techs, more units, more complexicity so I began working on my own mod. I started by going through most of the popular mods and check what's been done already and then by using those mods loosely as my guide, I created this mod.

Spoiler :

This mod is specifically designed for myself and I continue to make changes to the direction that I feel like is correct and which make me like more this game. Aim of the mod is to be more accurate historically which is why the whole tech tree has been redone and many new techs has been added. Some tech changes are still in consideration. New techs meant much more room for new buildings and for new units and adding those was my next step. Once I had added most techs, units and buildings it came clear to me that I need to redo unit categories, promotions and change many unit abilities so that more modern units are really superior to older unit types. Note that now you must consider more carefully what to build in city because the number of different buildings has increased so much and because you are now limited to 4 World Wonders per city.

I used most of my freetime past eight months to make this mod so there are numerous changes compared to original game but I didn't keep record of every little change - you'll have to check Civilopedia entries for all the changes. There are still many balancing issues left - I just haven't had enough time to test my mod more than couple times since the whole game takes so long on marathon mode.

Near future techs also require some attention, that is the part of tech tree that I'm not 100% done yet as it's been bit difficult to do research on what might be really discovered during the next 100 years. In this part I used Galactic Civilization and Alpha Centauri games as guides so if you've played those games you'll notices similarities. To keep it bit more realistic, I've gone through dozens of science articles and science websites to look info about near future techs.

and
in AND - Afforess continued the tradition:

Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn
The Essential RoM Expansion!
​

Civilization 4; Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn picks up where the Rise of Mankind mod left off. It is a realistic mod, simulating the rise of civilizations from the immemorial times, past the current era, and far into the future.

The Trademark Feature of Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn is that you choose the new features. Every single addition is completely customizable, and can be enabled or disabled, to suit the user. You could choose to only take the speed optimizations and AI enhancements and leave all the new content. Or decide to use all the new content. Or anywhere in-between.

Spoiler :

Amongst the new Features are:

Advanced and Realistic Diplomacy. Players can once again trade contact with other civilizations, establish embassies, trade for rights of passage, and sell their excess workers and military units. The AI will initiate it's own trades, and often attempt to instigate or calm wars, using all of it's means at it's disposal. Expect to have to manage diplomacy much more to gain a foothold in the world. Fail to understand the AI's demands and expect to have to face "aggressive negotiations." Realistic Diplomacy offers more forgiving AI, but harder to please AI. Over time, the AI will begin to forgive and forget past diplomatic events, good or bad. While this means your nuclear holocausts won't devastate diplomacy for all time, it also means simple gifts of technology will not keep others placated for long. Only a true kinship among nations will truly stand the test of time.

Multiple Production and Research! Players will be able to, if they have excess resources, produce or research multiple buildings, units or technologies each turn. Expand your research and production capabilities to new heights! Your Capital city will never again waste turns constructing one missile each turn, now it could churn out five, ten, or hundreds, all depending on your production capabilities.

Larger Cities! Cities, as they expand in culture, do not stagnate after reaching their second size! They can grow again, after reaching an "Influential" level of culture, allowing them to work an incredible 37 tiles and produce more than ever before. While this seems extravagant, healthiness and happiness will become a real problem as your city expands; plaguing you like never before. Fail to counter this, and expect to suffer.

Peaks, Mountains, and Climbing, oh my! Mountain tiles now produce production, can have resources on them, and present unique benefits to your civilizations. Learn to climb them first, and your civilization will have a distinct military advantage and commercial advantage. Give your Generals the ability to cross them early, before anyone else, and the battlefield is yours to command. Build cities on Mountains, and unlock rare and specialized buildings that can only be built on peaks. Neglect them, and the AI will use them to crush your armies, cities, and civilization.

Fixed Cultural Borders. A New Game Option for players when they customize a map is Fixed Cultural Borders. Under certain civics, a player's borders become "Fixed" and are no longer affected by other nation's culture. When a player has fixed borders, they can claim territory outside of their borders. If the territory is unowned, they gain it next turn; if the territory is owned by another player, they must be at war to claim it. This grants players a unique way of expanding their borders, their conquest or exploration. In addition to this, Forts will also give off a small amount of culture. This allows players to use forts to claim future cities sites early. The AI has been fully taught this feature; expect to see them use it against you!

Ruthless AI: Ruthless AI is a step above Aggressive AI. The AI have no restrictions on how often they can trade with each other. Ruthless AI removes the Psuedo-Emotion Firaxis gave leaders, enabling them to become much sneaker and vicious. The AI will never warn you of an impending attack by poor diplomatic gestures, and will attack the best target, regardless of the relationship. Ruthless AI does NOT give the AI any handicaps, it merely makes them more human and less forgiving.

More Content! New technologies for various sciences and historical aspects of humanity have been added. No longer can you neglect the entertainment of your cities, or ignore your economy. Civic choices will drastically affect military output, and a failure to prioritize your production will lead to your downfall. Ignore the Weather, and expect to be defeated by those who can predict, and ultimately, control it! Learn to terraform land to your will! Build sea tunnels underneath continents to span vast oceans and connect far flung cities. But be wary, the AI will too!

Speed Optimizations! Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn is much faster than just Rise of Mankind alone. While still slower than BTS, it has greatly improved the speed, of RoM.
[/SIZE]
Author's Note:

As a modder, I've read and been told countless times that "kitchen-sink" or "total conversion" mods are bad (or not as fun of a) mod. Other times, I've seen slogans such as "Content for Content's Sake" slandered, or made out to be a poor practice. I can't emphasize how wrong this kind of thinking is. "Kitchen-Sink" mods are often on the cutting edge of modding, innovating, creating new, creative, and original content. They are the best kind of mod. Sure, we could always try to deviate as little as possible from the original game. We could settle for only a few new technologies, units and buildings. We could be like everyone else. We could, but that would ultimately only hurt the player. Nobody ever comes up with creative and cutting edge ideas by thinking inside the box. It's only when you've discarded the standard rules of Civilization that you suddenly wonder... "What If?"

and once Afforess condensed AND to finish it in his way, and community of experienced modders and mod-modders built C2C on AND with the addition of a Prehistoric Era and so much more. In the mod's own words:

Caveman2Cosmos​

The Epic Exploration of Civ Ideas from Caveman - Preshistoric Era, To the Cosmos - Galactic Era, and Beyond!!​

'And so begins 50,000 years of history..

Caveman2Cosmos is a CivFanatics.com community mod that add new features, gameplay, and content to the Civilization 4 experience. It is the most expansive Civilization 4: BTS mod to date with almost daily updates since August 2008. It is the spiritual successor the The Civilization 4 mod Rise of Mankind and its addon A New Dawn, and combines the work of over 100+ CivFanatics.com past and present modders to create a mod to "rule them all". It is currently being developed by StrategyOnly Productions with a modding team made up of prominent members of CivFanatics.com.
...
Caveman2Cosmos introduces a massive amount of new content with massive customization to Civilization 4 : Beyond the Sword. From the the discovery of controlled fire in the Prehistoric Era to the spaceships of the Galactic Era this community mod is perfect for the player who craves very deep strategy but is still enjoyable to the more casual player. Be warned, with this much content this mod may take almost 100 hours or more to win a single game. This mod is evolving on a weekly basis and new features are added all the time!

We listen to all player ideas and suggestions, and our goal is to continue our tradition of making the best possible megmod for Civilization 4. We believe in the power of community and our forum is our own little civilization with hundreds of thousands of valuable posts from players all around the world. This mod is updated almost daily and we encourage the use of SVN to get the latest "pre-release". We would like to say thanks to all the players who have supported us over the years.

You really have to go here to just to get a taste of the massive amount of features in just C2C alone, and it is built on ROM and AND.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/caveman2cosmos
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=288570
C2C is like a whole new CIV expansion pack, every version(Now V30), and they come quite often.

The point is that we need a thread to discuss bringing ideas between these mods.
Each of them have a lot to offer and even with their differences, their goal is to improve things and add content.
Hopefully a lot of these ideas will end up in both C2C and AND 2.0.
And together we can better build a better Civ!

 

[rightfuture]

Reserved - list of ideas and discussions.
1. Updating AND - porting the changes in AND from C2C to AND2.0(and vice versa)
What should be merged? What changes have already occured?
2. Porting viewports to reduce MAF's. C2C already has viewports, Would AND 2.0 like them?
3. Working on AI improvements together.
4. Reduced turn times.
5. What has already been done?
6. Where do we go from here? What else could we do together?
7.


Viewports and multi-maps were developed by part of the C2C mod-team, in conjunction with the creators of another mod. (needs to be included)
Afforess and C2C worked together on occasion to port improvements from AND to C2C and vice versa.

Like viewports, AI improvements, and reduced turns times, what feature do you think both communities could work on together?

What feature from AND 2.0 or C2C would you most like to see brought over to the other mod?

 

[strategyonly]

No offense here, but i dont understand this thread, C2C has the BASE already implemented in it from AND?? AND2 cant be "that" much different??

 

[Hydromancerx]

I agree with SO, AND2 already has taken some code from C2C and then don't use the stuff they don't want. From what I have seen AND2 is AND with some optimized code/features from C2C.

I am not sure what AND2 has that C2C doesn't already have. Likewise I don't think AND2 should be forced to use our stuff if they don't want to. I mean they are a different mod after all.

Note I am always open to add new stuff to C2C, even if it comes from AND2. I just am not aware of anything new they have that C2C doesn't. Please point out specific examples if you know of them.

In fact as a general rule on the CFC forum is that if you make stuff here its open for everyone to use (with credit of course). Thus sometimes C2C benefits from others, while other times others benefit from C2C. This seems to spur creativity quite well.

 

[rightfuture]

It isn't. I'm talking about bringing the communities together for the purpose of developing ideas, and improving both, as it comes.

It is a discussion, idea, and progress thread between these mods. If any changes happen that can affect either, it is a good place for it.

There is a large community of people visiting both the AND and ROM forums who may not realize the scope of C2C. I'm working to bring them together with common purpose.

When you have played AND or ROM it not immediately obvious that C2C comes in progression in returning to those forums, or looking in the modpack folder.

With all the other mod options, ROM and AND still have received a lot more attention due to their prior popularity. I am putting down a good parking space.

And with all the potential improvements and changes in both mods, it is good to have a place to work together. It keeps things between the mods from becoming fragmented, and gives an area for mutual development of things like AI, Turn Time, and all the ideas in common, or potentially.

In my opinion, you get more of what you look for, and talk about.