Cold War Scenario/ Mod

[CokeHead]

Hello,

I plan on making a cold war scenario/ mod for CIV 4. I played El Justo's scenario for Civ 3. Although it was a great scenario but it was entirely unplayable whenever there was peace beacuse of trade route calculations among other things. Thus turn times were anywhere from 10-30 minutes in the middle of the scenario.

I propose several modifications to the existing AI structure. Namely Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) needs to be coded in. Ofcourse game balance will need to be adjusted to make sure that even after MAD local conflicts such as Afghanistan, Vietnam can happen. Two CIVs with 100 ICBMS shouldnt exactly go to war with each but use proxies.

New Tech tree for the period, new units, edits to diplomacy code, spying, unit design, map design, city layout, sound.......lots of other stuff needs to be taken care off. This is going to be a pretty ambitious project.

Also the food production, shield produciton and commerce production will need be adjusted so that food gets produced in one city, is exported to another city. Definetly need more city specialization so that NYC is not busy producing loaves of bread but is surrounded by hamlets. Again lots of balance issues will arise that will need to be addressed.

Finally this mod needs to be playable. Playable means that on a modern machine a user does not have to wait for over 2 minutes for a turn to complete.

Anyways let me know if you would like to work with me on this project. I am a Computers & Telecomm. Enginneer (well still a student), so I am pretty savvy with the programming. I will need to help from graphic artists, history buffs, people who can work on the civilopedia and ofcourse later on will need testers.

Send me an e-mail at aar at wharton.upenn.edu or post on the forum.

Cheer,
-SA

 

[jbfballrb]

i can test, work on the pedia, and i guess i know a little about the Cold War....but its really not my main interest

 

[vingrjoe]

I know El Justo, and you sir, are no El Justo.

 

[Red Door]

I hate to start an argument, but El Justo's Cold War scenario was the best scenario I have seen. I never had turn times of 10-30 minutes. The most I had was 5 in World War 6. Also, any gigantic scenario with turn times under 2 minutes is insane.

 

[CokeHead]

absolutely i am no El Justo....i am even better (j/k
)everyone has different styles of modding. anyways Civ 4 uses a bunch of graph theory algorithms that can me modified to increase performnace substantially. With EL Justos scenario in the mid game cities were causing NP-hard problems (basically every city's trade route calculations were causing an exponential increase in computer time) to be solved for trade route calculations during peace time. thus it was impossible to run that scenario and maintain peace with good performance. (why else do you think the initial city sizes were set to 2?....if he had set city sizes to 15 the scenario would have crawled from turn 1)

anyways i have looked at the python code...most of the stuff i want to do will need the SDK from the programming side so i wont start working till december break. till then please post on this forum if you want to work on a Cold War Mod.

Once again I dont want this to be a discussion about past scenarios but rather an intelligent discussion of what can & should be done. if you dont think anything was wrong about the CIv 3 cold war scenario then you either have no idea what the cold war was all about, or were running the game on a super computer

As far as the two minute turn times for a big scenario (yes i pulled the number out of my behind) that would the ideal goal. I am not saying that kind of performance will be achieved mid game but I certainly will try to come as close as possible to hit that figure.

 

[El Justo]

Coke Head,

first off, you're completely wrong about the trade route thingie. as a matter of fact, trade is shut off completely in TCW. so, your reference about the game locking up due to trade route calculation amongst the AI civs is patently false.

you must not have played the later versions of TCW as it is the fastest loading 30 civ scenario ever made for civ3. bar none.

some day, TCW will be converted over to civ4 so i look forward to putting my work against yours.

ta,
E-J

 

[I_batman]

absolutely i am no El Justo....i am even better (j/k
)everyone has different styles of modding. anyways Civ 4 uses a bunch of graph theory algorithms that can me modified to increase performnace substantially. With EL Justos scenario in the mid game cities were causing NP-hard problems (basically every city's trade route calculations were causing an exponential increase in computer time) to be solved for trade route calculations during peace time. thus it was impossible to run that scenario and maintain peace with good performance. (why else do you think the initial city sizes were set to 2?....if he had set city sizes to 15 the scenario would have crawled from turn 1)

anyways i have looked at the python code...most of the stuff i want to do will need the SDK from the programming side so i wont start working till december break. till then please post on this forum if you want to work on a Cold War Mod.

Once again I dont want this to be a discussion about past scenarios but rather an intelligent discussion of what can & should be done. if you dont think anything was wrong about the CIv 3 cold war scenario then you either have no idea what the cold war was all about, or were running the game on a super computer

As far as the two minute turn times for a big scenario (yes i pulled the number out of my behind) that would the ideal goal. I am not saying that kind of performance will be achieved mid game but I certainly will try to come as close as possible to hit that figure.

Oh man, where do I start....

The hubris, the arrogance.....

1. Clearly you did not play the scenario once trade was turned off.

2. Exactly what have you produced and distributed on this forum that makes you think you are more qualified than El Justo is scenario building? Please direct me to some your outstanding body of work so I can appreciate your superiority.

3. Had a real chortle about the comment where you slag the work of El Justo, but then state "Once again I dont want this to be a discussion about past scenarios but rather an intelligent discussion of what can & should be done. if you dont think anything was wrong about the CIv 3 cold war scenario then you either have no idea what the cold war was all about, or were running the game on a super computer"
You come out with both barrels blasting, and expect no response.

4. You examined the Python code, did you now, and decided that you will have to wait until the SDK to get done what you want.
Please enlighten me how you know what precisely will be available within the SDK. Unless you work for Firaxis, that is still unknown.

5. You state you need history buffs, graphic artists, test for the cyclopedia. You will bring coding skills to the table. Fine.
Want to key on the history buff thing for a moment. Why would you need a history buff if as you say "if you dont think anything was wrong about the CIv 3 cold war scenario then you either have no idea what the cold war was all about"?? If you can make that statement, you certainly don't need a history buff. You obviously know the Cold War well enough.
BTW, El Justo has a Masters in History, but I guess you certainly have a better understanding of history that he does.

6. I see you have been around on the forum for oh, 30 days. That in and of itself does not say anything, but I do question how one could have such an intimate knowledge of a Civ III scenario that has been around for the better part of a year, and made ZERO comments/suggestions in that thread when dozens others did. Just lurked I suppose, knowing that you could build a far superior product, but had to wait for Civ IV to come out.

7. I am not even going to go into the problems people are having with massive scale maps in CIV IV. I am sure with your outstanding insight into the core algorithms (which no non-Firaxian has access to, incidentally) will allow you to rebuld the game engine. Oh, just had a thought, if you already can see these algorithms, then you must be looking at it in some Python script. If so, why are you not fixing that code right now, and releasing it on the forum?

Bottom line, you were trolling, and I took the bait.
I noticed no one has posted to this thread in almost 2 weeks, since everyone else recognized you for what you were doing.

I will not let it go so much. If I don't come to my senses and let this thread die the ignominous death it deserves, I will bump this thread constantly asking you for your progress on your scenario.

I too want to compare your Civ IV cold war scenario to El Justo's.

This thread does not deserve that kind of attention, but kids like you weaken this forum, and you should be made an example of.

 

[Red Door]

Yeah you can release this if you want. But with your criticism of El Justo's scenario dont expect it to be popular. In fact I would take a new topic and wait till Civ4TCW comes out.