Civilization Epochs

[Drawmeus]

Update on the update:

I've got the following stuff done:

Spoiler :

• +2 Gold on Tax Collector
• Rework the Scout promotion line to be +strength in rough terrain instead of +defense and +healing. This is step one in a general Promotions rework; some of the other goals of the rework will be to eliminate double attack promotions (at least for ranged units), tone down promotion bonuses, unite the ranged/melee promotion trees and the rough/clear promotions. The overall goal will be that promotions will remain a powerful and interesting element of gameplay while being balanced around the much longer game; winning an early war will no longer leave you with an incredibly powerful military for effectively the remainder of the game.
• Restrict the "New Military Unit For City-State" notification to only fire for City-States which you have a Military investment in.
• Debug the CTD provided by primordial stew.
• Increase population growth below pop 5 but slow it above population 5 to account for the longer game. Cities will still relatively quickly grow to a size where they can be an interesting and important part of the empire, but growth beyond that point will take much longer. Buildings such as the Aqueduct may be tuned to allow the player to grow cities beyond that point faster if necessary.
• Lighthouse is now +1 Gold/+1 Food on water tiles. No bonus on Fish.
• New Building: Fishing Wharf. Requires Fishing. +1 Food, and +2 Food on Fish resources worked by this city. City must be built on the coast and must have at least one source of Fish.

Next up is debugging Doag's crash. I will likely push a version that has all of the above changes + a fix for that crash (assuming I can repro it and it is my mod's fault) in the next few days, then continue on the rest of the planned changes announced earlier in this thread.

So this stuff will happen over the next week or two:

Spoiler :

• Implement a new Handicaps tuning that controls unhappiness per city for the player. This will be used to ease up Happiness problems on Prince and lower difficulty.
• City-State Investments - Bug fix - Ensure that Investments cancel appropriately when a City-State is completely conquered.
• Add City-State Influence Decay to Game Speeds info, so that faster game types will have faster Influence decay and slower game types will have slower decay.
• Slightly open up the tech tree to allow more beelining, based on feedback.
• City-State Investments notifications - add handling to pull the UI to the relevant City-State on clicking the notification.
• New Civilization: Egypt
• Increase Tech Diffusion rate with Civilizations with which you have a Declaration of Friendship, decrease Tech Diffusion rate with Civilizations which you have denounced.
• Incrementally reduce some maintenance costs of buildings.
• Incrementally increase maintenance costs of military units, possibly escalating per military unit, such that a small, defensive army will be cheap and a large, aggressive one is more expensive.
• Update Minor Civilization names to national or cultural names, instead of City-State names. E.g. La Venta will have a civilization name of The Olmecs, and a city name of La Venta.
• Disable Privateer boarding functionality if acquiring the new unit would result in you having negative resources.

By the way, I'm still looking for people who want to do any of the following things:

• Icon Art
• Wonder Splash Screens
• Unit art and animations
• Flavor Text
• Civilopedia Entries

Do as much or as little as you want. Have one icon that you think is a fit? I'll add it and I'll credit you for it. Want to do a hundred icons? Do them all!

My only requirement is that all assets have to be a fit for the art style of Civ 5: G&K. Icons have to fit, flavor text has to be appropriate, unit art has to fit, etc.

 

[Drawmeus]

Doag,

I'm looking into your crash and unfortunately it's not going to be possible to give you a build that will let you continue this particular saved game. That said, your save uncovered a serious problem which will be a significant help in stabilizing the build, so thanks!

I'm fixing some likely suspects and then I'll upload a new version.


UPDATE:
I've just played through the Classical Era without any trouble, and I'm optimistic that I've found the root of the crash. I'm building out a few additional logging tools to give me a better grasp on what's going on, and then I'll push everything live.

 

[Drawmeus]

Alright, so I'm a great big lying liar.

Here's v11. It fixes Doag's crash bug, and should allow continuing progress in that game. It has no other changes.

Note that for totally uninteresting reasons that AREN'T just because I'm moderately lazy, this one's just a .zip that you'll have to extract manually into your My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS/ folder.

Putting up v12, which includes both the crash bug fix and a number of game rule changes, momentarily. If you're continuing an existing v10 saved game, I recommend using v11. Before starting any new games, I recommend grabbing v12.

 

[Drawmeus]

Version 12 is here! This is a much smaller release than usual because I'm sitting on a pile of crash bug fixes that I want to make sure people get access to.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted feedback or shared saves with Crash To Desktop bugs. Both the feedback and the saves have been invaluable to me.

Change List:

Spoiler :

• Tax Collectors now give +2 Gold.
• New Building: Fisherman's Wharf. City must be on the coast and have an improved source of Fish. +1 Food, and +2 Food per Fish worked by this City.
• Lighthouse Update: Now gives +1 Food and +1 Gold on Water tiles worked by this City.
• Notifications for when a City-State you've invested in receives a new military unit from investments now fires only if you have a Military investment.
• Survivalism Promotions now give +Combat Strength in Rough terrain. Other bonuses have been removed, except for Survivalism 3's Heal Every Turn. This is a preliminary step in an overall Promotions rework.
• City growth has been retuned. It will now go much faster for the first few population points, but overall slower from population 5 on. This should get cities functioning as interesting entities faster, but should make it generally more difficult to get very high population cities.

Version 12 is available here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=20332

 

[doag]

hmm, keep getting CTD on loading the mod (v12) is it just me?

 

[Drawmeus]

What version of Windows?
DirectX 9, or DirectX 10 & 11?
Are you running any other mods?
Do you have to do anything particular to get it to crash?

I just looked again and with v12, I'm able to play out a bunch of turns with no crashes.

 

[doag]

Windows 8, DirectX 9 or 10 & 11 no other mods, I select the mod in the mod menu hit next and get a ctd.

 

[Drawmeus]

Eek.

I'll look into it and see what I can do.

EDIT:
First, how much RAM do you have?
Second, does it actually crash to desktop immediately or does it just hang and then you close you? It does pause for a bit when I'm loading it, but it gets to the "Mods" screen with the Single Player.
Third, can you get other mods to work?

I just re-downloaded it to check if there was a difference between the version on my machine and the version uploaded, and it works on my machine. Gotta figure out the differences between our computers so I can try and fix them.

To anyone else running Civ on Windows 8: If you happen to be able to download this mod and give it a shot, would you mind trying it? Need to know if it crashes.

 

[tonymak]

Mod works fine with a random map, but crashes after a few turns with any of the TSL earth maps I use. I am using Windows 8.

 

[doag]

It has righted itself, I deleted cache and re installed the mod playing a game currently.

 

[Drawmeus]

Excellent news. I've reached out to tonymak to see if I can track things down for his problem as well.

Let me know if you run into any further difficulties - or just have any feedback, positive, negative, or unclear. I value feedback very highly and I've been acting on it as I've gotten it in.

 

[Drawmeus]

Tracking down a save game issue with v13, not sure if I'll push it live as is or add some more to it once I get that issue nailed down.

The only real change is the promotions - I've completely redone the land unit (Archer, Siege, Gun, Melee, Mounted, Armor, Helicopter, Recon) promotions. I've also made experience gain MUCH slower. However, that change is rather drastic with a lot of far-reaching consequences for the game.

There's also a bug fix for Askia's unique ability, which is currently giving 300 gold per barbarian camp (O.O).

The reason for the Promotions rework is going to be the subject of a blog post, but the short version is that warmongering is a snowball mechanic. You get a huge return from conquering your neighbors' cities. Promotions are an additional snowball mechanic on top of that - your military gets stronger as a result of fighting wars.

In the base game, where you're likely to pursue one strategy from start to finish, this all works together to help you conquer the whole world rather quickly. In Epochs, where it's a much longer game and you're less likely to pursue one strategy from start to finish, it... still works to allow you to conquer the whole world rather quickly. Once your military gets a big head start, you're likely to be able to do pretty much whatever you want with it. I'm reworking promotions because they're just too snowbally. Once you get a military power going, you'll dominate the whole rest of the game.

That will still be mostly true. The bulk of the advantage gained from a conquest is in the cities gained, and promotions are still going to be significant, just, less so. You won't automatically win battles in your 2nd, 3rd, 4th war anymore.

In addition, I've taken the opportunity to clean up some things in the promotions that bother me. There are no instant double or more power level promotions (Range, Double Strike); the scout promotions make more sense; there's no split between rough and open terrain anymore (which could be used for some clever plays, but tends to cripple an AI that doesn't comprehend how to use it); there's no split between ranged and melee promotions anymore, so unit upgrades that switch from ranged to melee and vice versa are no longer a disadvantage.




By the way, Honor is a hidden gem in this version. I still tend to go Liberty or Tradition (more Liberty than Tradition, unlike in base G&K, due to the changes, though it's a more delayed explosion approach), but the gold from barbarian camps is very significant and if you can monopolize them you can grab a HUGE early game lead from buying stuff/investing in city-states.

 

[gladoscc]

Is there any chance of making this not require the Denmark DLC?

 

[Drawmeus]

When I get some new art assets, absolutely. Right now it's a dependency only because I simply don't have enough appropriate art assets to go around, so I've had to raid some DLC art assets.

 

[cambasonso]

I was really eager to try it but it just crashes as soon as I press next. The only other mod I ever installed was "Really Advanced Setup" which worked perfectly. I removed it just in case it caused the crash but with no luck, it still does the same. Any idea what could it be (I do have denmark and G&K installed)? Thanks anyway for all your hard work!

 

[Drawmeus]

I should probably put out a version sans-DLL at some point.

I haven't looked at this in months, sorry. I'm in the process of building up an indie game studio, and I really have just zero time.

 

[confus1on]

Drawmeus, are you planning to continue this mod when you have more time? I know you said you were working on starting up a indie game studio. Thanks for all the hardwork. (P.S. I really enjoyed your extended tech tree.)

 

[Drawmeus]

I don't anticipate having more time within the next year. I'm happy to provide the files if someone else wants to take it on, but I think I have to be done with it. The only thing I want to do is, as I noted above, strip out the DLL and one or two of the Lua features that aren't working 100%, and update for BNW, but we'll see.