Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[LetMyPeopleGo]

I then would nuke the one who always starts it out of spite

I hear you, he's gonna do it anyway, why not draw some satisfaction out of it?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I hear you, he's gonna do it anyway, why not draw some satisfaction out of it?

Exactly. Once you start along that path of hatred, it's basically impossible to change it. I'd WANTED the Empath Guild and UN to be capable of shifting relationships, but unfortunately the only thing you can do along these lines in the current Lua is alter city-state influence ratings. I'd thought about doing this the hard way, and manually creating Declarations of Friendship between each empire to improve relationships that way, but that's a horribly inefficient way to do it.

Now, I do like that in the next patch they're adding a diplo hit for using a nuke. But from the looks of things, it's only the civ that got nuked that will hate you for it; there's no international backlash. But it does make me hopeful that when the DLL is out we'll be able to easily do this, and if we're REALLY lucky they'll add a Lua function in this patch to change major civ relationships.

----------------------

For the next version, I'm looking at significantly changing how some of the resources work. Specifically:
Omnicytes: More deposits, but MUCH smaller ones (i.e., ~3/1 units instead of 7/3 type of thing). The Centauri Preserve will no longer cost one unit, and will instead GENERATE one unit, as will the Temple of Gaia (and the current Brood Pit). The upshot is that this resource will be mostly building-created, which'll make smaller civs (the people it's intended for) less hamstrung by a poor map distribution. I'm also tweaking the number per unit slightly, to where Isles of the Deep will take 2 units instead of 1.
The only question is whether I should leave the Locusts of Chiron a helicopter-like unit, like the Gunship, or whether I should go all-out and give them All-Terrain like the Vertol. There are some hefty balance issues involved, so I'm testing it both ways.

Dilithium: Significantly more units per deposit (~7 instead of 5), or a larger number of deposits (I haven't decided which yet). I'm changing the transition point for this; the Vertol, Leviathan, and Needlejet will require Dilithium (and Aluminum for the flyers) instead of the current Uranium. I'll see if I need to tone down Uranium deposit sizes to compensate.
There are some specific reasons for this involving pacing and tech tree layout. It's not just arbitrary. For one thing, I want the Vertol to be something you want to build, the start of a new age of warfare, not an inconvenience that you don't have the spare resources for.

 

[dinobot386]

I for one am really looking forward to the new diplomacy changes, actually makes it possible to have a meaningful friendship with an AI, as opposed to declaring a friendship that consists of them bumming gold and resources off you, then denoucing you after you destoyed a mutual enemy. If only they revamped diplomatic victory so it's more about actual diplomatic bonds with empires and city states as opposed to a bribe fest

Oh and I'd like to see Dilithium more common as opposed to bigger deposits, the change from uranium does kind of cripple land based empires so more deposits makes it more likely for them to get some in the few sea tiles they control

 

[Spatzimaus]

Oh and I'd like to see Dilithium more common as opposed to bigger deposits, the change from uranium does kind of cripple land based empires so more deposits makes it more likely for them to get some in the few sea tiles they control

To be clear, the common-vs-bigger debate on dilithium has two main impacts:
1> The chance of getting hosed and having none/too little. Obviously, a lot of this will depend on map types and such, with Pangaea maps having the potential to have no coastline near your empire.
Note: I'm actually okay with this. I don't mind forcing players to go out of their way to reach the coasts; the vanilla game already forces you to find the tundra and desert areas when Oil, Aluminum, etc. unlock, so this is similar. So the only question becomes how much effort it takes to make sure your coasts have some.
Fun Fact #1: because Dilithium is coastal, it's VERY likely to be found in city-state territories. A little bribery does wonders.
Fun Fact #2: I've enabled land-based Dilithium in the XML, for use by the Deep Mining action. I just don't have the game placing any on land during AssignStartingPlots. So if need be, on specialty land-heavy maps like Great Plains, I could change it so that Dilithium spawned on land. But I'd prefer not to.

2> Each hex with Dilithium is a sea hex with a massive production boost. +2P for the resource, another +2P for the improvement. With a Seaport, that's +6 production. That's a huge boon for coastal cities.

If I make a large number of small resource deposits (like I'm intending to do with Omnicytes), then it creates a far larger number of hexes containing the massive late-game yields. In the case of Omnicytes that's +food, in the case of Dilithium it's +production. Now, I'd always thought of Omnicytes as a combination strategic/bonus resource, so there it makes sense that the in-world yields are more important than the number of strategic units, but Dilithium is supposed to be a pure strategic, so I'm not reducing the deposit sizes below 5 unless I have to. And that means randomly clumpy resources; on the bright side, Dilithium deposits are always directly adjacent to land, so they're a bit easier to get to than most other water resources.
Alternately I could just reduce the yields, to +1/+1; with a Seaport that'll still be +4, and so I could afford to have more deposits in the world, keeping the deposits at size 5 instead of bumping them up to a 7. I'm going to try it both ways.

Then I get to try looking at Neutronium, the combination strategic/luxury; on one hand I'd like to have it be a small number of very large deposits, so that the "luxury" side of things really meant something, but on the other hand, it's the key resource in too many late-game units.

 

[panicaim]

Just trying it out, its a great idea! Thank for putting this all together

With the latest version 0.24, when I load a map I get the errors:
"unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeSocialPolicy.dds]"
"unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeSocialPolicyGlow2.dds]"
"unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeGreatPerson.dds]"
"unable to load texture [assets\UI\Art\Notification\NotificationIconsFreeGreatPersonGlow2.dds]".
As a result I can't click on the policy button in the top right corner, or the policy notification in the bottom right corner and cannot advance to the next turn.

Hi! I am having these exact problems. I installed the game fresh today and as soon i have enough social I can't get any further since I can select a policy.

I tried to look for an answer in the thread but I failed or missed it. This is the only mod I have installed so I can't figure out why it's happening.

Thanks for the great work!
Amanda

 

[Spatzimaus]

I tried to look for an answer in the thread but I failed or missed it. This is the only mod I have installed so I can't figure out why it's happening.

That error is not from my mod; I don't alter any of those files. My guess is that it's a cache issue; even if my mods are the only ones currently selected, if you've had any other mods selected previously, it can sometimes carry over. Sometimes exiting the program fixes this, but otherwise you can just go into your cache directory and clear out the files there. (My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache)

If you haven't run any other mods, ever, and you're still getting that error then I have no idea what can be causing it; I've never seen that sort of error.

 

[Darsnan]

Ran a game on Smal Continents, Industrial Start, Emporer. The following are my playtesting notes:

1. Was able to play all the way thru to Ascent to Transcendence! There were some crashes, but these were very few and none were repeatable.

2. Reached Nuclear era in turn 436 (via Great Scientist), Digital era in turn 525 via Scientific Revolution SP, Fusion era in 598 via Nethack Terminus, Nanotech in turn 631 (Nethack Terminus), and Transcendence in turn 676 (again via Nethack Terminus). Both AIs who survived the game (Ottomans and Greeks) were both keeping pace with me tech-wise np, and were also getting their fair share of the Wonders.

3. The Greeks had three cities, I had eight, and the Ottomans had two continents to themselves. The only reason the Greeks didn't win via the UN was because there weren't enough C-S left to give them the win (13 votes were needed, and there was a total of 13 votes available).

4. Concerning "A little of everything" pic: there must've been a nice little war with nukes that I completely missed here. Also notice the Stealth ship carrying some units: cool!

5. Concerning "Archers in the 25th century": how come archers are still showing up in the Nanotech era? I thought they'd be obsoleted by then?

6. Ascent to Transcendence!

7. Concerning "Everybodies backstabbing Darsnan day": all the AIs are "friendly" towards me, but all the C-S are being paid off by the AIs to war with me!

8. Concerning "Geo resizing": is there a way to resize this pop-up window? Also, I couldn't re-base the Geo or Ion Cannon units in this game. Is this the way they are supposed to work now?

9. Concerning "Land-based IoD": I think I'd posted this before, but if I didn't FYI regarding this.

10. Concerning "Leviathan fail": in the previous turn I had bombarded said MW with the Leviathan, and next turn this!?! That's one tough worm!

11. Concerning "Minor graphics bug": I'd seen this only once before (which I posted as well). FYI that this is still (very rarely) popping up.

12. Concerning "MW captured": first time I'd done that, so thought it worth the pic!

13. Concerning "Research agreement for Transcendent Thought": I declined the Ottomans offer on this. Probably no way to stop the AIs from offering RAs at this point in the game?

14. Quantum missiles are pretty cool! Unfortunately there were no wars going on for me to use these units in: the Greeks didn't war on me for about the last 100 turns. I've run into this several times where the AIs just stop warfare for whatever reason (maybe because I'm too strong for them?).

All in all it was very enjoyable to be able to play a game all the way thru to Transcendence - great job on fixing the crashes!

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Fusion era in 598 via Nethack Terminus, Nanotech in turn 631 (Nethack Terminus), and Transcendence in turn 676 (again via Nethack Terminus).

33 turns for the Fusion Era is just way too fast. Something might be wrong with the tech stealing logic, which'd explain the double-stealing thing (where you get two techs on the same turn). I'm going to see if I can rework the logic to include a counter, to where the chance of giving a tech will depend on how recently the last tech was given.

And regardless, the Nethack Terminus should be giving only a 1% chance of stealing at best. If you're getting several techs from it, and nothing from the KGB or Planetary Datalinks, then something's wrong. In my last game, I had a similar issue, so I'm inclined to think that I made a mistake in the coding somewhere.

3. The Greeks had three cities, I had eight, and the Ottomans had two continents to themselves. The only reason the Greeks didn't win via the UN was because there weren't enough C-S left to give them the win (13 votes were needed, and there was a total of 13 votes available).

I raised the vote percentages needed to win, but I might have taken it too far. I might have to tone it down a bit, so that removing a couple city-states isn't enough to make a diplomatic win impossible. Or really, what I'd prefer to do is make liberation more likely/desirable to the AIs; right now, there's very little motivation to free a captured city-state, but the AIs should be wanting to do that all the time.

4. Concerning "A little of everything" pic: there must've been a nice little war with nukes that I completely missed here.

More likely, someone used a Quantum Missile, which when fired at a unit leaves Fallout in the target's hex (and only that hex, which explains why it's one hex in the middle of the ocean). Given that you were in the Nanotech Era, I'd expect that, and I think normal nukes never put fallout in oceans (because how would you clean it?) I'm thinking of putting the Clean Fallout mission on the Work Boat for this occasion, although it wouldn't sacrifice the boat unless I made a new Build action for it. Or, just build a Former, which can move over water and has that mission already.

5. Concerning "Archers in the 25th century": how come archers are still showing up in the Nanotech era? I thought they'd be obsoleted by then?

They are. Barbarians are really screwy that way; they don't actually build units. From what I can tell, there's no actual check for obsolescence for them; I think the game assumes that by the time Barbarians stop spawning (when the world gets explored) the archers and Brutes will barely be obsolete. So I think it just uses the Upgrade logic instead, with near-infinite cash to upgrade its units to the best available options as often as possible.
Now, the strange part is that barbarian units don't upgrade correctly. In the Units table there's an entry saying that Barbarian Archers upgrade to the Crossbowman unit class... except that they can't, because all Crossbowmen require Iron and Barbarians have no resources.
So for the next version of the Balance mod, I'll try to fix this by having Barbarian Archers upgrade to Swordsmen instead, since the Barbarian faction has a custom no-resource sword unit. It shouldn't get stuck at Archer any more.

8. Concerning "Geo resizing": is there a way to resize this pop-up window?

There probably is. Or I could just rename the unit to something shorter... I'll need to see if any other units have problems with that.

Also, I couldn't re-base the Geo or Ion Cannon units in this game. Is this the way they are supposed to work now?

Hard to say. They're supposed to be capable of being rebased, but it looks like creating a new Orbital combat class might have disabled that. I'm trying to find where it decides which missions are available to which units; it might just be a UI thing. All of the UI bits I've found so far involve only a Domain check, which should still work, but there might be a bit I'm missing.

Of course, there's no point in rebasing an orbital unit. They can reach the entire planet. Or they're supposed to, at least; they've got 99 range. It looks like setting Range to -1 gives truly worldwide range, but I'm still testing to see if that causes problems with any of the +Range promotions.

9. Concerning "Land-based IoD": I think I'd posted this before, but if I didn't FYI regarding this.

What's probably happening is that there's a Spore Tower on that hex. All spawned Psi units are placed directly on top of the Spore Tower, and they'll then move into the ocean on the next turn. (Only coastal towers spawn IoDs.) It's just that on that terrain type, with their current damage ratings, the IoD is a stronger combatant than the Spore Tower is, so you're seeing it first.

I could force it to find the nearest water and place the IoD there directly, but that seemed like a waste of time given that the AI will just move it there itself.

10. Concerning "Leviathan fail": in the previous turn I had bombarded said MW with the Leviathan, and next turn this!?! That's one tough worm!

Look closer... while it's blurry, it looks like your screenshot says Nessus Worm, not Mind Worm. A Mind Worm wouldn't even be able to reach a Leviathan (no ranged attack), but a Nessus is amphibious. And a Nessie SHOULD wipe the floor with a Leviathan; Leviathans have an 80 strength, a Nessie has a 150 (although it'll go -25%, down to 112.5), and Nessus Worms have full regeneration every turn AND the 1HP-per-fight Titan bonus, so it won't matter what you did to them on the previous turn.

Basically, your ship was sunk by Godzilla.

12. Concerning "MW captured": first time I'd done that, so thought it worth the pic!

Something I wanted to mention about that.

The Ottomans can use their similar ability to steal Isles of the Deep, because those are sea units, while Germans in later eras can steal Chiron Locusts. Both of these are pretty nice to get for free.
I'd been tempted to give Chirons the All-Terrain promotion, to allow them to fly across water, but that'd make them Sea units, which the Ottomans would also steal.

And that leads to the big problem: the Nessus Worm. A long time ago, I found that Germans clearing barbarian camps could get a Nessus Worm out of it, once you were in the Nanotech era or later. But then I gave them All-Terrain, so they're now Sea units. So the Ottomans can become VERY dangerous in a late-era start...

13. Concerning "Research agreement for Transcendent Thought": I declined the Ottomans offer on this. Probably no way to stop the AIs from offering RAs at this point in the game?

Unfortunately no. But remember, Transcendent Thought is stackable, and you get a permanent +1 Happiness each time you research it, so there's still a reason to do it. Probably not worth the cost, of course, but it's not really broken.

I've run into this several times where the AIs just stop warfare for whatever reason (maybe because I'm too strong for them?).

I think the AI has certain thresholds, and it just sees that once you're in the late game, it has no real way to ever get a massive military advantage over you. Non-aggressive AIs aren't going to go to war when it's an even fight, especially with nukes involved.

All in all it was very enjoyable to be able to play a game all the way thru to Transcendence - great job on fixing the crashes!

I'm pretty sure the crashes were at least in part due to undefined art defines for buildings, most of which I've now fixed with better placeholders. This makes me hopeful that once I get the unit graphics working and fix the resource graphics, the crashes should almost stop altogether.
It also explains why there are crashes when a resource spawns under an existing improvement and you try replacing the old improvement with the correct one:
> The game draws a Trading Post.
> Uranium spawns underneath it. But graphically, it won't change, because the game has no way to combine Trading Post with Uranium. (This is the problem I've been having with my custom resources.) The game has an explicit table of combination art defines, telling the game how to draw an Offshore Platform on the different types of Oil deposit, and so on, so only the specific resource/improvement combos will work.
> This is okay at first, because the game doesn't tend to redraw things unless it has to.
> When you try to replace the improvement, the game has to delete the old graphic, but it's not doing so correctly because the graphic on the hex wasn't the "correct" one in the first place.

What we really need are two things:
1> A way to force a map refresh. Really we need the ability to refresh an entire map, as well as the ability to refresh a single hex (which'd probably require redrawing the six adjacent hexes as well, for terrain reasons).
2> The devs to fix the improvement+resource art define system to draw both elements regardless of the combination, instead of trying to be cute and using explicit combination defines for everything. The explicit combos could be the preferred method, but there needs to be a fallback in case of an invalid combo.

 

[Spatzimaus]

And regardless, the Nethack Terminus should be giving only a 1% chance of stealing at best. If you're getting several techs from it, and nothing from the KGB or Planetary Datalinks, then something's wrong. In my last game, I had a similar issue, so I'm inclined to think that I made a mistake in the coding somewhere.

Correction to my earlier post:

The Nethack Terminus has two separate tech-stealing mechanisms:
1> A 1% max chance of stealing a tech, same as how the KGB and Planetary Datalinks work
2> You automatically gain a tech if 50% of the other civs know it. This includes city-states and the Barbarian faction.

So if the other civs really were keeping up with you, then the Nethack could definitely be giving you plenty of techs depending on your exact strategy.

Now, previously the two methods gave the exact same tooltip message ("You have stolen X from your rivals..."). I'm going to change the wording on the #2 method slightly ("You have acquired X from the other civilizations..."), so that you can tell the two apart.

Unless you're doing really badly, you shouldn't be getting many techs this way, and it'd generally give you the most when you're beelining up one side of the tree and it gives you some lower tech on the other side; you shouldn't be entering a new era with the tech it gives, unless you're FAR behind. So I'll check again to make sure it's working right.

EDIT:
Found something strange. If you're in a Small map (6 civs, 12 city-states), on Immortal, the city-states will auto-gain a tech if anny 2 civs have it. So the number of civs knowing it will jump from 1/18 to 14/18, meaning the chance of stealing it goes from "not a chance" to "near-max", where max is 3 or 4 percent. Add a streaky random number generator, and you get those 2-tech steals.
So I'm guessing some of the flakiness in the past, with wonders triggering multiple techs per turn, were because of this city-state steal mechanism. I could try counting the major civs by hand, and simply not include city-states, but that'll take a little more work than the current method, which simply pulls the variables from the Game structure.
In the meantime, I've added a simple limit: no Wonder can steal more than one tech per turn. It loops through in order of ID, and once it steals one it stops looking.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, the new patch just went live. So until further notice, my mod does not work.

The next post-patch version, which I should have ready in a couple days, is going to have major balance issues, because I'll be trying to merge my balance changes with theirs and some problems might get through. It'll probably take a few tries to get it to play the way I want.

You have been warned.

 

[dinobot386]

Is your mod fully incompatible or will things just overwrite eachother?

Also got a runtime error trying to load a game, not sure if it has to do with your mod, it's a shame, after playing your mod I really dont want to play the vanilla game

 

[Spatzimaus]

Is your mod fully incompatible or will things just overwrite eachother?

A little from column A, a little from column B.

It might (MIGHT) still actually run, but even if it doesn't crash outright, a whole lot of things will be screwed up. The devs rearranged several policies, for instance.

More often, you'll have things like a building or policy that was changed from effect A to effect B will now have both effects. Very unbalanced. Or how they now added yield boosts to the Academy, Manufactory, and Customs House, but I have my own changes for those and so it'll stack them.

Also, AssignStartingPlots.lua was changed to add the new Stone resource. So if you try using my mod, no maps will ever have Stone on them. Things like that.

I'm starting on the merging now, but it'll take some time.

 

[CivOasis]

The patch overwrite annoyed me... I was at the very end of the nuclear era, on my first game. I was playing marathon. And now its dead.
By the way, I was about 20 techs ahead of the AI most of that game, and was way ahead of schedule (only 4 nuclear techs left, at around turn 720 (approx. 1000 ad)

 

[dinobot386]

The patch overwrite annoyed me... I was at the very end of the nuclear era, on my first game. I was playing marathon. And now its dead.
By the way, I was about 20 techs ahead of the AI most of that game, and was way ahead of schedule (only 4 nuclear techs left, at around turn 720 (approx. 1000 ad)

I hear you man, my mongol horde had conquered all of asia and europe and was moving into africa on a giant map

I think I had close to 50 cities

 

[Spatzimaus]

Update:

I'm working on it now, and I've almost got the changes integrated at the most basic level (i.e., not crashing horribly). Within the next couple days I'll post v.1.02, which'll be VERY badly balanced; basically, it'll be stable, but a lot of things will still need adjusting. Happiness, duplicate Policy effects, that sort of thing. So v.1.03 will be the next version that's actually well-balanced.

--------------------------

Now, one of the things I've been wracking my brains on is the concept of Finishers. As I thought, it's built into the game where you get them for completing a branch, which means my extra Policies will really screw them up. You won't get any Finishers until the Digital/Fusion eras, and since you'll always gain them at the same time you gain my final policies, there's no point in having two separate effects.

The easiest way to deal with them would be to remove my Policies, but obviously I don't want to do that.

So here's what I'm thinking of doing:
1> Remove my 10 custom policies from their branches, and shove them all into the 11th branch (the currently hidden SMAC branch).
2> Modify the UI so that there's a blank line below each of the two rows in the current Policy window. This'll take a little work.
3> Stick the 10 policies there, one below each branch.
4> Each of my 10 policies will now require two things: a specific tech (same as now), and the Finisher for a Branch.

The upshot is that you'll now get the Finisher at the same point you would in a vanilla game: after researching all but my extra policies, so you can get them in the early eras for the earlier branches. Then, once you have the Finisher, this extra SMAC-specific policy unlocks in the future techs, sort of a super-deluxe-Finisher.

Now, to keep Cultural victories from happening early as a result of this, there's one other change I'd like to do:
5> Have the Utopia Project require a specific tech. Probably Homo Superior (late Fusion Era), although I could move it down a tier to Ethical Calculus and move Ascetic Virtues up.

What I see it as is this: let's say you play like you would in a vanilla game towards a culture win. After 30 policies, you'll have completed 5 branches, because my custom policies don't count towards completion of a branch, even if they're effectively part of one. But because you're only in the Nuclear/Digital Eras, you can't do a Utopia yet, so as you get more policies, you have to decide between unlocking a sixth branch, or grabbing the tech-locked SuperPolicies.

As a side effect, I can remove some of the Policy rearranging I did back when I put the new Policies in; since they'd require every policy in a branch, there's no need to worry about arrows and such.

Because of the complexity of this, I will NOT be putting this into 1.02, which is part of why I said that 1.02 will be badly unbalanced. Just putting the idea out there now, so that people can see what they think.

 

[dinobot386]

You could add the finisher effect to the last policy in a branch before your policies, This would be a good temporary fix until you get your idea working

other than that, what will be the biggest balence issue for 1.02?

 

[Spatzimaus]

You could add the finisher effect to the last policy in a branch before your policies,

No, I can't. That's the problem; there IS no "last policy before mine", the trees are mostly structured such that there are multiple ways to take the policies. They're not purely linear, which is what you'd need for that sort of idea to work.

It's been a huge headache.

other than that, what will be the biggest balence issue for 1.02?

Happiness is the big one, but it's not the only one. At the fundamental level, the devs' changes in Happiness are remarkably similar to my own: higher base unhappiness, more ways to get small +1 Happiness boosts along the way. So in theory they should mesh pretty well, but it'd be very easy for the two methods to conflict.

Here are a few other non-Happiness possibilities:
1> Policies.
The devs heavily modified how many of the policies work, completely changing several policies' effects into entirely new functions. Some of these make no sense at all; I'd previously mentioned the new Planned Economy (+research if you have a Factory?), but how about Professional Army (unit upgrades are cheaper, as before, but cities are now much happier for having defensive buildings)? In real life, professional armies were about training a full-time, well-equipped armed force so that you would not NEED defensive buildings as much, and they sure as heck weren't cheaper than the forces they replaced. Or Free Speech, which now provides 8 free military units? (How does THAT make any sense?)
Some of these policies are, in my opinion, completely unbalanced. Take the aforementioned Professional Army. It's basically up to 4 Happiness per city, depending on your era, requiring only buildings that are cheap to build and have no maintenance costs, PLUS the 33% upgrade cost reduction (was 50% before).

2> Buildings' effects.
The devs have been shifting the emphasis from large additive multipliers (+50%s) to large flat yield amounts and much smaller modifiers (+4 production and +10% for the Factory). This is obviously better for the AI, but it no longer meshes well with my future eras, most of whose buildings still use flat multipliers (Genejack, Fusion Lab) and which will generally have much larger effects.
Similarly, many Wonders' global effects were drastically toned down in favor of local effects. Take Himeji Castle:
OLD: all of your units get +25% when fighting within your borders
NEW: all of your units get +15% when fighting within your borders, this city gets +12 defense, this city gets a free Castle
First of all, none of my Wonders work this way; most are purely global, some are purely local (Merchant Exchange, Pholus Mutagen), and the very few that mix the two do it differently (Supercollider: +science in this city, create resources for the empire).

So if this is the new direction they're taking the game's design, I'll need to re-evaluate all of my old buildings (especially the Genejack). After all, the +50% is now much stronger than before since more of the early buildings are adding mostly flat amounts (which get multiplied by the 50%).

3> Gold.
They reduced gold maintenance costs on quite a few buildings in this patch; all of the Happiness-producing buildings were reduced, and the Arsenal's cost went to zero. Conversely, my own buildings tended to INCREASE in cost, so in the cases where I'm keeping my own version (Theater, Stadium, etc.) the gold costs might get a bit strange.

4> Military XP.
The Barracks, Armory, etc. all add XP to all domains now in the vanilla game instead of being Land-only. IMO this is tremendously unbalanced when dealing with Air units, so I've tried to do something more interesting. Less pure XP boosting across all domains, more interesting effects.

At the moment I've got it as:
Barracks: +15 XP to all Land and Sea units
Armory: +5 XP to all units, +10% unit production
Military Academy: +10 XP to all units, Elite promotion to all new units
Arsenal: +5 XP to Land units and the new city defense change
Harbor: +5 XP to Sea units, +1 gold per sea resource (it's +1 production per in the vanilla game now, but I prefer it this way)
Seaport: +5 XP to Sea units, +1 production per sea resource
then, in the future eras:
Bioenhancement Center: +5 XP to all units, Bioenhancement (+10%) promotion to all new units
Aerospace Complex: +10 XP to Air units, Airlift promotion to units that start their turn in this city, city gets +50% vs. air attacks, and it's needed to build the orbital weapons
Skunkworks: +5 XP to all units in all cities, +10 in this city (meaning +15), cheaper upgrades
Brood Pit: +15 XP for Psi units, plus other stuff

I'd prefer to change the Barracks to 15/5/5 (15 for Land, 5 for the other two) and move the Harbor and Seaport back up to 10 per, but I'd actually rather have some other unique effect on the Barracks other than just more XP. Still working it out.

--------

I'm going to try to have 1.02 out tonight. I'd have done it last night, but I've been having medical issues the last few days and was in no shape to do any modding work yesterday.
The way I see it, 1.02 will not be very well balanced, but it should give me plenty to tweak for 1.03 (figure a couple weeks).

 

[Spatzimaus]

All right. Here it comes.

This is going to be VERY unbalanced. A big part of it is how Policies changed in this patch; a lot of them became a lot stronger than before, so my 10 new policies, all of which were intended to be stronger than a typical policy, were now often weaker than average. For instance, my Power policy (Honor tree) was +10% military production and +10 XP, and the devs changed the Total War policy (Autocracy) to be +15 and +15, exactly 50% stronger than mine. So I've substantially increased the power of several policies, especially my new ones.

v.1.02:
PATCH COMPATIBILITY:
BALANCE:
* AI: For no apparent reason, the default AI_Handicap was changed from Prince BACK to Chieftain. I've undone this.
* Improvements: removed the existing boosts to the Academy, Customs House, and Manufactory since they conflicted with my own increases.
* Technologies: Globalization now requires Computers in the vanilla game, so I could remove that change from my mod.
* Policies:
Republic: I like my version better, so I removed the 5% building production modifier and left the trade route boost in.
Planned Economy: I like my version better.
Constitution: They changed it from "+100% Culture in cities with a Wonder" to "+2 Culture per Wonder". I changed it back to my more interesting "+50% Culture in cities with a Wonder".
Piety: their version (+15% production on culture buildings) is okay, but I removed the Temple from the list of culture buildings and added the +2 Happiness back to compensate.
Theocracy: What a mess. Changed it to: +1 Happiness per Theater or Broadcast Tower, +1 Culture per worked Plantation or Pasture.
Free Thought: The +17% for Universities (33-50) was lowered to +10% (30-40).
Professional Army: it was too good; now, each of the buildings that adds +1 Happiness also subtracts 1 Gold (to make up for these buildings' lack of maintenance costs).
Freedom Finisher: also gives +2 gold and +2 science for a Citadel, and +4 food for a Monolith.
* Buildings:
Monastery: Base culture reduced to 0.
Colosseum: moved the Happiness back up to 3, removed the 1 culture, lowered the cost to 140 (from 180). I'll work on this one.
Theater: stays at -4 gpt, keeps the 2 culture
Stadium: kept my version (-5 gpt, 2 happy, 2 culture, 10% gold) instead of their 4 happiness for 2gpt.
Broadcast Tower: kept my version (+50% culture, +10% gold)
Armory: kept my +10% unit production and 2gpt cost. Lowered the XP to 5, but it applies to all domains now.
Military Academy: kept my +10% unit production, 3gpt cost, and custom promotion instead of the XP.
Barracks/Krepost: 15 XP to Land units, 5 XP to Air and Sea units.
Harbor: keeps the naval XP, instead of +Production for sea resources it gives +Gold for them. But both the Harbor and Seaport only add +10XP now.
Oxford University: went with their version
Arsenal: went with their version (for now), except that it still gives +5 XP to land units to keep things interesting.
Laboratory: Removed the +4 science, kept the +10% gold.

CONTENT:
* ActionIcons.lua is no longer used, now that the appropriate functions have been added to the XML. I've kept the file around for this version, just in case, but it'll be removed once I'm sure it's working.
* AssignStartingPlots.lua now adds Stone.
* AdvancedSetup.lua updated slightly.
* InfoTooltipsInclude.lua looks like the double-happiness bug has been fixed, but it still wouldn't give negative values.
* ResourceIconManager.lua is no longer needed, because the devs FINALLY fixed the bug that prevented you from using custom atlases for resource icons.
* SocialPolicyPopup.lua now includes hotseat functionality.
* TechButtonInclude.lua now uses the icon atlases and such, instead of routing through ActionIcon.lua. Need to verify that it actually works for the Improvements, though.
* TechTree.lua: adjusted for refresh and hotseat

* Technologies: Tech costs were increased for Modern Era techs in the base game, so I adjusted all of my costs upwards accordingly by ~25%. Also, in the base game Globalization was made much more expensive than other techs at the same tier; I've changed it back down. The T13 and T14 techs also ramped up too quickly, so I dropped their prices a bit.
* Resources: Neutronium and Ambrosia now add 4 Happiness, and Hit Movies and Information add 2.
* Improvements: added my three new resources to the lists of what GP improvements can harvest, and added a full table for the Monolith.
* Builds: now includes icon indices.
* Promotions: I'd added LostWithUpgrade to several promotions, which I've now removed since they've done that in the official version.
* Promotions: I'd modified Weak Ranged (promotion that Fighters get) from -75% to -50%. They've now done the same.
* Units: Secondhand Tanks and Modern Armor now have the Small City attack penalty and no sight penalty, just like the regulars.
* The Pholus Mutagen and Nanoreplicator gave bonuses to local Bonus resources; Stone is now added to the list.
* The Robotic Assembly Plant's unhappiness is now -2 instead of -1.
* The Cybernetic policy (Freedom branch), in addition to +1 production per specialist, now gives +1 Happiness per Genejack Factory or Robotic Assembly Plant (basically, halving the penalty).
* The Power policy was completely reworked, as the old effect is now the same as the Total War policy (but weaker). Power is now: "All units now get the Mobility promotion (+1 movement) and can see 1 space further, plus 10% production when building units."
* The Mobility promotion (+1 movement) is now selectable by Gunpowder, Energy, Psi, and Titan units.
* Freedom Finisher adds +4 food to Monoliths.
* Knowledge (Rationalism branch), in addition to the farm/mine bonus, also adds +5% science to Research Labs, Medical Labs, Fusion Labs, and Quantum Labs.
* Green (Liberty branch), in addition to the +10% food, adds +1 food per Pasture or Plantation.
* Free Market (Patronage branch), in addition to the x2 Influence from quests, also reduces the cost of starting a Golden Age by 20%.
* Eudaimonia (Tradition branch), in addition to the base +10 Happiness, also removes the -1 Happiness from the Children's Creche.
* Fundamentalist (Piety branch) was changed to +10 Culture and +100 Gold per kill.
* Wealth (Commerce branch), in addition to the +5 gold per coastal city, also gets +1 production per sea resource.

And now the things that didn't really depend on this patch:

BALANCE:
*The Head Start bonus now places one copy per two discounted techs (or fraction thereof), instead of one per three techs. In a start in era N (N=4 for Industrial), you'll always have two techs at N, two at N-1, and so on. This should help a bit with research times in late-era starts.
* Barbarian Archers now upgrade to Barbarian Swordsmen; previously they were set to upgrade to Crossbowmen, but the Barbarian faction doesn't have a resourceless version of those.
* The Paratrooper strength was reduced to 35 and was given the Sentry promotion in the Content mod before; these changes have been moved to the Balance mod.
* In the Content mod, The Carrier had been given the Medic promotion and the Helicopter Gunship the City Penalty promotion. These have been moved to the Balance mod.
* The +Science boost to the Citadel was moved from Electronics to Computers
* The +Gold boost to the Landmark was moved from Mass Media to Electronics
* The Ambush (anti-Armor) promotion was moved from Combustion to Railroad (the tech before tanks unlock).

CONTENT:
* Centauri Psi had been set to the wrong cost before (cost was about 4 tiers too low).
* To adjust for the now-lowered cost of Destroyers and Missile Cruisers, the cost of the Stealth Ship was reduced from 800 to 600.
* The Planet Buster's cost was lowered from 2000 to 1500.
* The Needlejet's cost was lowered from 1000 to 750, now that the Stealth Bomber was lowered from 800 to 425.
* The Gravtank's cost was lowered from 1000 to 700, now that the Modern Armor was lowered from 700 to 375. It stays at 4 MP, less than the Modern Armor, but its movement promotions make up for that.
* The Plasma Artillery's cost was lowered from 800 to 650
* The Skimmer's movement was lowered from 5 to 4, and its cost from 700 to 550.
* The Scout Powersuit's cost was lowered from 550 to 500.
* The Leviathan now requires 1 unit of Dilithium, instead of 1 unit of Uranium. (It had originally been several techs earlier, but now it comes after Dilithium unlocks.) It also costs only 750, instead of 1000, due to the newly lowered costs of Battleships and Carriers.
* The Needlejet now requires 1 unit of Dilithium instead of 1 unit of Uranium, although it also still requires a unit of Aluminum as well.
* The Vertol now requires 1 unit of Dilithium instead of 1 unit of Uranium, although it also still requires a unit of Aluminum as well.
* To account for the above, the number of Dilithium deposits has increased. To compensate, the production boost for placing an offshore platform on a Dilithium is now only +1 instead of +2.
* The Living Refinery (National Wonder) now adds +1 production to all Empaths in all cities, in addition to its local effects.
* The Xenoempathy Dome, Maritime Control Center, and Cloudbase Academy each add +5 XP to all units in all cities. (Previously, each only gave a custom promotion to a single type of unit.)
* In addition to the +2 population in all cities, building the Cloning Vats gives the host city total (100%) Food Storage, allowing it to grow quickly. (At this point in the tech tree you should be at 90-95% storage anyway, so it's not a huge increase.)
* Previously, the Happiness bonus building was always being placed in your capital (since it has empire-wide effects). Now, when slotting Empath specialists, the building will be in the city containing the specialists. This makes no practical difference, but it looks better.
* The Centauri Preserve now produces 1 unit of Omnicytes, instead of consuming 1 unit.
* The Temple of Gaia produces 1 unit of Omnicytes
* To account for the above, Omnicyte deposits are now much smaller, although the number of land-based Omnicytes has increased slightly.
* Isles of the Deep now cost 2 Omnicytes instead of 1.
* Increased the gold maintenance costs of several future-era buildings.
* Each Jump Gate, in addition to its previous Golden Age triggering, also adds +1% to science output in all cities, similar to how the orbital structures work.
* The Brood Pit now adds +1 Happiness. The Hologram Theater's Happiness was reduced to 2.
* The Hybrid Forest was supposed to add +1 Happiness, but it wasn't doing it correctly. It's fixed.
* Now that Spore Towers regenerate like Titans (+1 HP after every fight), I've lowered their Combat rating from 80 to 60, because otherwise they were basically immune to bombardment.
* The chance of stealing a tech now divides by N, not N-1, where N is the number of civs still alive. Since the number of "alive" civs doesn't count Barbarians, it was possible to divide by zero if every other civ was dead.
* Changed the math in the tech stealing algorithm to not have rounding errors when using most speeds or map sizes.
* Each individual Wonder can now only steal 1 tech per turn, maximum. It checks in order of ID, and will stop after the first success. This includes both tech-stealing mechanisms, so the Nethack Terminus can still only steal 1 per turn, not 1 per method.
* As of this patch, the StartGame event now seems to be triggering successfully, which makes the SMAC Start Policy now function better.

PLAYER PACK:
* Nothing changed.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Just to be clear, this is a somewhat toned-down version. There are a lot of things that I still intend to overhaul (like the XP bit mentioned earlier and the Policies), but I kept a lot of things similar to the previous version just to get it done sooner.

And because of the short time since the patch, I violated one of my usual rules: I normally won't release a patch unless I've played at least one Industrial-to-end game with a complete version. So, don't be surprised if something breaks horribly; it's very easily possible that v.1.03 will have to be released over the weekend if someone finds something critical.

But it does mean that I'll be spending most of this long weekend trying to rebalance the mod, so even if no one finds any game-breaking bugs, it might not be long before 1.03.

 

[Darsnan]

I played an un-mod'd game last night (Continents/Small/Industrial start/Emporer): I was immediately swimming in Gold and Happiness, and so I immediately selected the SP which provides a free Settler in order to found my 4th city (not something I've been able to do while playing your mod). I ended up being between the Persians (who were afraid of me the entire game) and the Indians (who were Friendly towards me the whole game): neither AI ever attacked me, and neither AI fielded a decent army, as I steamrolled both quite easily. I reached the Modern era in turn 319 and was easily running away with the game shortly after that, and quit the game shortly after that as it was boring. All in all I'd say that Firaxis still needs to do some fine-tuning for Industrial era (or later game) starts.
I'll start pounding away on your mod tonight. Same game settings (Continents/Small/Industrial start/Emporer), unless there's something you want me to look at specifically (let me know)?

D