Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

What you've described for the various levels of Former are basically the same as the worker units I already have in the game, just with less interesting names. Let me illustrate:

Former Level 1: Can do all regular worker stuff but no maintenance cost. I would make this a new unit and do not let a worker upgrade.

That's basically the Worker already; all you've done is remove the maintenance cost, and unit maintenance is NOTHING in the later eras as it is.

Former Level 2: As above but can plant Forests and Jungles.

Combat Engineer. Also more mobile and improves things more quickly, mainly because planting forests and jungles isn't quite as awesome as it sounds and isn't worth an upgrade in its own right.

Former Level 3: As Level 1 and 2. Gains hover. No movement penalties.

Labor Mech. (Yes, it hovers. Not because it actually flies, but because "hover" means "move through mountains and lakes".)

Former Level 4: As 1, 2 and 3. Can turn Plains into Grasslands and Vice versa.

Nothing does this, and it's too weak of an effect, really. If I'm going to have players altering terrain, it needs to be a clear improvement (like Desert -> Plains and Tundra -> Grassland. Plains and Grassland are basically interchangeable.

Former Level 5: As 1, 2 , 3 and 4. Can turn Hills into Plains or Grasslands and Vice versa.

That's the "Raise/Lower Hills" action at Advanced Ecological Engineering, which is given to Labor Mechs and Formers. It actually comes BEFORE the terraforming options; it's easier to flatten a hill than it is to turn a desert into a prairie.

You can make this option go through the terrain steps. I think its Tundra, Plains, Grasslands, Hills... something like that.

And that's the Former, the only unit with the Terraform action. That's basically how terraforming already works; snow turns into tundra, which turns into plains. Desert turns into grassland. At that point, you're done.

(Also, Hills aren't a terrain type, they're a plot type. The only reason they have an entry in the Terrains.xml file is for graphical reasons, but they're not stored in the terrain table. That's why the Raise/Lower Hills action works.)

Anyway, you get the idea. I feel that way as in SMAC you can get the former early but it wont be all powerful.

For some mechanical reasons, I just can't have units terraforming at an early era; the game doesn't update the graphics, which very quickly causes screwy things to happen if you do it too much. Also, it causes a huge balance issue, since the determination of whether it's worth terraforming a hex is fuzzy enough that I'm not confident the AI will do it often enough. So the terraforming HAD to be moved later on, into the endgame, and if I'm doing that, I'm not going to put a unit named the "Former" early on.
In SMAC, you needed the ability to terraform early on, because Planet was inherently inhospitable; cleaning the fungus was a full-time job. That just doesn't apply to a game set on Earth without fungus. (Also note that SMAC had no equivalent to the Terraform action; you couldn't just flat-out make a tile inherently better, beyond the choice of what improvement to put on it, which Civ5 already allows.)

But this whole thing ties back to one of the key places where this mod will continue to deviate from SMAC. In SMAC, you have a very small pool of general unit types (Former, Skimmer, Rover, Infantry, Needlejet, Gravship), and you continually improve them. In Civ5, you'd need to make a significant number of separate units to represent these sorts of increases. Even at a single tech level, you'd need a few variants; I always loved putting Drop Pods on some of my Rovers and armor on others, and I'd have half my Needlejets using the anti-air upgrade while the other half went Clean to save money. So that'd require adding more units, which explains many of the units I've added.

Bottom line, I do NOT want to have "Former I", "Former II", "Former III" as the unit names; if I'm going to have separate names, they're going to be more distinctive. That's how all of the units in this mod have worked; very few have analogues in SMAC, and the few non-Psi ones that do are often so heavily modified from the original concepts that the name is often ALL they share with their forerunners.
(Also, the SMAC former was just an ugly yellow box, so I'm not exactly motivated to make it be a central part of the mod. My view of the Former is more like the huge thing in the opening scene of Serenity, hence the picture I used for its icon.) So I wanted a progression of worker units with distinct names and images, and that's basically what the Worker/Engineer/Labor Mech chain is. (The Former is a separate unit, because it's a Titan.)

As for the Golem, well, call it a "Supply Crawler" and it starts to make more sense; one of its key abilities is that it can be sacrificed in a city for approximately its construction cost, making it a good way for cities to transfer/pool their production; the fact that the unit can do a little improvement and a little combat while you wait for an opportunity to use it was just meant to make it useful for the AI, since the player could otherwise just build ten, stockpile them in cities, and then sacrifice them all at once to rush a wonder. The AI would never know to do this, and would have them wandering around doing nothing, so I gave it something else to do. And if it fights and does work, I can't really call it a Supply Crawler any more...

Hey will you be able to do boreholes?

Not well. The biggest problem is graphical, but there's also a huge balance headache; SMAC was all about creating tiles with massive yields in a single category, while Civ5 is more about a general increases, so the sort of lopsided yields the borehole gave wouldn't fit too well.
Basically, I could handle it sort of like the Monolith, where it'd create a new Feature. But there'd be no way to stop an AI from just building tons of them, which'd either be overpowered or crippling depending on the final stats.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Hey thats cheating... How come Golems cant help workers????

Can you be more specific? By "help workers", do you mean do worker actions? Golems have an abbreviated list of build actions; they can build farms, mines, trading posts, roads, and railroads, but they can't do the rarer actions like Pastures or Plantations. This was deliberate.

Also I dont see anywhere where the Omnicytes are listed. So I don't know how many I have.

Should be right at the top of the screen, with the rest of the strategics, assuming you've unlocked them by gaining the Centauri Ecology tech. Works just fine for me.

 

[Chaotic Law]

Can you be more specific? By "help workers", do you mean do worker actions?

I mean you can move a Golem on top of a Worker but it wont help it. All improvement functions are greyed out.

Should be right at the top of the screen, with the rest of the strategics, assuming you've unlocked them by gaining the Centauri Ecology tech. Works just fine for me.

Its not there on mine. I do have a UI mod that shows me all my resources but it shows your other resources.

Chaotic Law

 

[Chaotic Law]

OK, I see your point but I wasnt suggesting you name them Former level 1 etc. Just Former would be good enough for me.

For some mechanical reasons, I just can't have units terraforming at an early era; the game doesn't update the graphics, which very quickly causes screwy things to happen if you do it too much.

So, the main reason you have moved all the cool terraforming stuff way late is because of graphical issues? What changes later in the game that makes the game more stable rather than ealier? If you found out a way to correct the graphical issues would that make any difference? Sorry for pushing this issue, but like I said I am biased towards terraforming. I love changing the landscape around. But still I am happy your doing what your doing. And thanks for that.

Chaotic Law

PS: I dont have any idea how people multiquote like you do. I am cutting and pasting to get my messages like they are.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I mean you can move a Golem on top of a Worker but it wont help it. All improvement functions are greyed out.

Ah. Yeah, unfortunately that's a known stacking issue. A similar one is how a Mobile Shield and a Great General can stack, but it doesn't double the effect. Too many of the things in the game are hard-coded, under the assumption that the vanilla game's combat/noncombat split would remain the same in mods.

Since the Golem only works at a 75% rate and you should have upgraded your Workers to Combat Engineers (150% rate), it's not a big loss. But I wish it was possible to do what you're intending, because that'd really be fun. (Note that every future-era worker unit has a combat rating, though. So once your engineers upgrade to Labor Mechs, you wouldn't be able to do this anyway.)

Its not there on mine. I do have a UI mod that shows me all my resources but it shows your other resources.

I can look into this some more, but I'd bet it's related to your UI mod. If that mod has its own version of TopPanel.lua, it'll conflict with mine. Even if it doesn't, there are a couple hard-coded fiddly bits in many of the UI files. One of the loops in question might have only had two open slots in whatever array it was using, so Omnicytes get dropped as they have the highest ID. (Generally, I've had more problems getting Neutronium to show up in strategic UI bits, due to its happiness getting it lumped as a luxury resource.)

What changes later in the game that makes the game more stable rather than earlier?

That the game is usually over before that point, mainly. A whole lot of things can be screwy at that point without causing major issues.

Less sarcastically, I'd originally wanted the terraforming to unlock at Ecological Engineering (mid-Fusion tech), and be something that Labor Mechs could do, while Raise/Lower Hills would be moved into the Digital Era (not sure which tech) and be something that Combat Engineers and Golems could do. If I can solve the other issues then I might change it to that.

But I didn't intend to imply that the graphical things are the MAIN issue with terraforming, they're just one of them. There are basically five things holding this back:
1> Graphics. For this, all I really need is a way to force a graphical refresh. Until the devs give us this function, there'll be a lot of screwiness.
2> Balance. It becomes a no-brainer to upgrade every desert or tundra in your territory, meaning at whatever point it unlocks, all of your workers will suddenly be tied up doing that. Sort of like what happens when you unlock railroads, but even worse. Unless the terraforming isn't worth the investment, in which case the AI won't be able to judge how often to do this.
3> Uniqueness. I wanted there to be at least ONE thing that the high-end Former unit could do that the others couldn't, besides just building things really quickly. If I can ever get the All-Terrain promotion working right (which allows gravtanks, vertols, gravships, and formers to move across water), then the Former would not only be the most mobile worker, it'd be able to build fishing boats and such without sacrificing itself. (The build action for this is already in my XML.) But until that promotion works, the Former is just a big, slow worker unit that can do things quickly... and it can terraform.
4> AI. The AI is too stupid to realize that in some cases, terraforming is an upgrade, but in other cases, it's not worth the effort. The AI uses only relative tile yields and flavor values, neither of which can depend on the terrain type the former is sitting on, and the yield assessment gets screwed up by whatever improvement you have on the terrain. So I'm confident that the AI would simply screw this up badly.
5> Stability. The game crashes pretty often, and it seems to happen whenever any improvement is placed on top of an existing one. All six of my terraforming actions work by placing a temporary improvement and then removing it at the end of the turn to alter the features, terrain, etc.
It's bad enough with the forests and jungles, but the sheer number of times this'd trigger if terraforming were generally available would utterly kill what little stability we have right now.

I would LOVE to have terraforming be more commonplace, although I won't move it up any earlier than the Fusion era, and the Former will almost definitely remain a Nanotech-era Titan; I could switch it with the Labor Mechs, I suppose, but I like it better this way.

 

[Chaotic Law]

I can look into this some more, but I'd bet it's related to your UI mod. If that mod has its own version of TopPanel.lua, it'll conflict with mine. Even if it doesn't, there are a couple hard-coded fiddly bits in many of the UI files. One of the loops in question might have only had two open slots in whatever array it was using, so Omnicytes get dropped as they have the highest ID. (Generally, I've had more problems getting Neutronium to show up in strategic UI bits, due to its happiness getting it lumped as a luxury resource.)

Yea, thats fine. I was just letting you know. I like this mod cause it tells me when great people are going to pop, puts a progress bard on the city for culture next to the progress bar for population.

Less sarcastically, I'd originally wanted the terraforming to unlock at Ecological Engineering (mid-Fusion tech)

Yes yes, that would be good.

and be something that Labor Mechs could do, while Raise/Lower Hills would be moved into the Digital Era (not sure which tech) and be something that Combat Engineers and Golems could do. If I can solve the other issues then I might change it to that.

Cant wait for that.

But I didn't intend to imply that the graphical things are the MAIN issue with terraforming, they're just one of them. There are basically five things holding this back:
1> Graphics. For this, all I really need is a way to force a graphical refresh. Until the devs give us this function, there'll be a lot of screwiness.

How do the devs do the marsh?

2> Balance. It becomes a no-brainer to upgrade every desert or tundra in your territory, meaning at whatever point it unlocks, all of your workers will suddenly be tied up doing that. Sort of like what happens when you unlock railroads, but even worse. Unless the terraforming isn't worth the investment, in which case the AI won't be able to judge how often to do this.

Ha, thats where your wrong, I would create 1 desert tile next to every city so I can build Solar Arrays. But that would come way too late.

4> AI. The AI is too stupid to realize that in some cases, terraforming is an upgrade, but in other cases, it's not worth the effort. The AI uses only relative tile yields and flavor values, neither of which can depend on the terrain type the former is sitting on, and the yield assessment gets screwed up by whatever improvement you have on the terrain. So I'm confident that the AI would simply screw this up badly.

Why do you care at this late point in the game?

5> Stability. The game crashes pretty often, and it seems to happen whenever any improvement is placed on top of an existing one. All six of my terraforming actions work by placing a temporary improvement and then removing it at the end of the turn to alter the features, terrain, etc.
It's bad enough with the forests and jungles, but the sheer number of times this'd trigger if terraforming were generally available would utterly kill what little stability we have right now.

I would LOVE to have terraforming be more commonplace, although I won't move it up any earlier than the Fusion era,

Yes, yes yes, do that!!!!!

and the Former will almost definitely remain a Nanotech-era Titan; I could switch it with the Labor Mechs, I suppose, but I like it better this way.

Hows that for quoting??

Chaotic Law

 

[Chaotic Law]

Oh, this is an evil request but is there a way to give myself a former to start off with? Please, please!!!! That way I could test out the stability from the start. Maybe change it so it just does forming at double rate. That would make me actually want to build the Pyramids again.

Chaotic Law

 

[Spatzimaus]

How do the devs do the marsh?

Marsh is a feature, and it's one that's explicitly been given the graphics to add onto or be removed from certain terrains. The same goes for forests and jungles. Terrain just works differently.

The problem is boundaries. On a hex grid, each corner connects three hexes. So, the game mixes the terrain graphics between those three tiles, to make a smooth transition at the boundary; the logic of exactly how it mixes these is not simple. So when you change the terrain type of a hex, it would have to not only change the graphics in that hex, but adjust the six tiles adjacent, since each of them has a little "bleed" from the hex in question. And depending on the nearby terrain, the center hex could be a combination of seven different terrain graphic types. (Also, the logic for mountains is even more complex.) So we can't just refresh the one hex that gets changed, we'd need to adjust seven hexes at once. Really, we just need a full map regeneration ability.

Marsh, on the other hand, does not extend beyond the hex it's placed in. Neither do flood plains or oases. Forests and jungles can, but that's okay because they sit on top of the terrain and don't change it. As a result, these are just a lot easier to change on the fly.

Ha, thats where your wrong, I would create 1 desert tile next to every city so I can build Solar Arrays. But that would come way too late.

You would. The AI wouldn't. Even if you could make it possible for the AI to understand that turning grassland into deserts is not a horrible idea, the AI in this game, in general, is not structured to understand that doing something once and only once is a good plan; it's all or nothing, either doing it is always a bad idea, or is always a good idea. So the AI would either never do it, giving a huge advantage to the player who can now use all of his uranium for weapons, or the AI would put deserts everywhere.
Ergo, I can't possibly let you turn anything into a desert. It MUST go the other way, and only make tiles better.

Why do you care at this late point in the game?

If it was in the late Nanotech era, with a Titan unit that you're unlikely to ever have more than one or two of, I wouldn't care.
If it's in an era where I'm still trying to keep the game competitive, and it's something that the workers you've got dozens of can do, then it makes a huge difference. The Fusion Era is the midpoint of my custom content, and so is absolutely not a "late point in the game" from my point of view.


Bottom line, I will absolutely not implement something that only the player can use correctly, and I will not put something into my mod that utterly breaks the balance halfway through my custom content. If I can't work out the AI and balance issues to where the computer players can use the terrain-altering terraforming nearly as well as the humans can, then it's not ever going to change to anything more than a late-game curiosity.
And if the terraforming is even partially responsible for additional crashes, then I'm not going to make these actions any more common. I'd rather have a stable game without them than a constantly crashing game with them, no matter how cool I think it'd be.

Oh, this is an evil request but is there a way to give myself a former to start off with?

FireTuner. If you want to gift yourself a free unit, it's easy enough to do it yourself. Of course, it won't be able to do most of the terraforming actions, because most of them unlock at specific techs.

 

[randomcivguy]

my computer's crashing quite a bit now so i cant really go on ciV.
sorry guys.

on an unrelated note, I think that if it's possible,you should be able to turn water tiles in land tiles and vice versa. Same for mountains.

 

[Spatzimaus]

on an unrelated note, I think that if it's possible,you should be able to turn water tiles in land tiles and vice versa. Same for mountains.

I've considered both of those. The basic problem is that like most other terraforming, it wouldn't update graphically. The difference is that, unlike the others, these involve changing an impassable terrain into a passable one (or vice versa). It's fine for the yields to not quite match up with what the terrain implies in normal terraforming, but this'd cause far more problems; units would need to be able to move through a mountain, but the game generally doesn't have a graphic for that and it wouldn't be apparent to the player that there was an available path there. Even worse, the AI could bottle himself into a city by accidentally creating an impassable barrier around it, because the AI can't think in terms of moderation and won't consider the nearby tiles.

If I could get around the graphical headache, then I'd absolutely be willing to create a water-to-land terraforming action, albeit with some severe limitations to keep the AI from breaking itself. (To keep things simple, I'd just swap between Coast and Tundra and let the user terraform it from there. Why tundra and not desert? Because desert is actually useful.) This sort of reason is why the Labor Mech and Former hover; I wanted them to be able to move across mountains and water.
There are still a few minor balance headaches, like how Lakes work, how rivers work, or what happens if you terraform a tile containing a resource. (I'd probably have to prohibit terraforming resource tiles, which means that this action can't possibly come before Neutronium and Dilithium are revealed.)

Mountains are far worse; if I allow people to make mountains, then you'll see them raising impassable mountain ranges between them and their enemies, which'd kill the utility of units that don't have the hovering ability (infantry and psi units). It also has the same balance issues as the desert, where one tile is great (Observatory!), but replacing several would be crippling to the AI due to the inability to be worked, and the AI wouldn't understand the mountain range trick. So if I implemented mountain terraforming it would purely be in the negative direction, removing a mountain, with no way to create new ones. I actually originally put this into the Raise/Lower Hills action, where if used on a mountain it'd flatten it into a Hill.
I later disabled that because mountains have some unique graphical effects, where they don't mix well with certain terrain types (like coastlines). So allowing the player to create more would potentially crash things.

In other words, neither of these is going to happen any time soon. The land-to-water could be done, but has even more AI-related issues than the normal terraform. Mountains are far worse.
Now, if the devs give us some of the tools we need, like a map refresh tool, then a lot of these can be considered again. But the AI limitations are still pretty severe, because the devs only put in a few explicit "just enough" type logics, such as the number of workers an AI will build; pretty much everything else uses a more rigid Flavor system, and that leads to all of the balance headaches I've mentioned.

 

[Spatzimaus]

At long last, it's time for the next version. A staggering 182 people downloaded the last version in the two and a half weeks since it was released.

Before starting on the notes, I have a couple things to point out. This version made some MAJOR fundamental changes in three areas: Nuke defense, Happiness, and the costs of Policies. As a result, these systems need to be HEAVILY tested for balance; it's not the sort of thing I could do by myself. I'll revert the policy cost to the vanilla progression the moment the devs put in a GOOD way to do negative-happiness buildings, but until then, this was the only way to do it.

Also, while I intend to rename the entire mod, I'll wait for that.

---------------------
v.0.23:
PATCH COMPATIBILITY NOTES:
> Several buildings (mainly UBs) were now given FreeStartEra settings. Since I’d already done the same, I removed any appropriate components in my mods.
> Several UI files, like TopPanel.lua, required some careful merging. I THINK it should work right now...

BALANCE:
> The science boost to the Museum was moved from the Content mod to the Balance mod, and was increased from +1 to +2.
> The culture for the Opera House was decreased from +4 to +3, but it now gives +10% Great People generation in this city (like the Garden’s +25%).
> Several tech flavors were adjusted to include the new benefits of the techs

CONTENT:
Nukes deserve special mention here. The way they’ll work now is this:
> SDI adds a 60% interception rate against Atomic Bombs, 40% against Nuclear Missiles, and 20% against Planet Busters. (Subspace Generators can never be intercepted.)
> The Orbital Defense Pod (building) is now a Project, which adds 3/2/1% Nuke Inteception and can be built 10 times per team. (It’s pretty cheap to make.)
> When launching a nuke, the defenses of all civs you are currently at war with are combined. This is not done linearly; when at war with two civs, each adds 3/4 times its normal defenses.
> After all of the above have been considered, Atomic Bombs have a MINIMUM 30% chance of being intercepted, regardless of the projects involved, and a maximum interception chance of 90%. Fighting two civs with SDI or one with both SDI and orbital pods will hit this top cap.
> Nuclear Missiles have a minimum 20% chance and maximum 75% chance. It’d take three opponents, all with SDI, to hit this, or two with ODPs as well.
> Planet Busters have a minimum 10% and maximum 50% chance. You’re not going to hit that cap; even with stacked SDI and ODPs, it’d take three wars at once to hit it.
> Subspace Generators cannot be intercepted, ever. Deal with it.

> Atomic Bombs become obsolete at High Energy Chemistry (one tech after SDI and Perimeter Defenses). Previously it wouldn’t go obsolete until Fusion Power, when the Planet Buster became available.
> Nuclear Missiles become obsolete at Quantum Power (one tech after the Orbital Defense Pods and two after the Gravity Shield). Previously they never went obsolete.
> The Nuke Flavor rating for the Manhattan Project was lowered.
> The non-Nuke flavors for the Atomic Bomb, Nuclear Missile, and Planet Buster were reduced.
> The Perimeter Defense is now –20% nuke damage instead of –10%.
> The Gravity Shield now provides a –100% modifier to nuke damage. In other words, a city with one will take no damage, ever; the area nearby, though, will still be devastated.
While city-states can’t build projects (no interception) and can’t build anything with a resource requirement (like the Gravity Shield), they’ll get the nuke interception benefits of the other civs you’re at war with, plus the minimums will still apply.
NOTE: There is currently no notification when a nuke is shot down. I’ll eventually have a text blurb pop up.

On to the rest:
> While it’s not visible to the player, everyone now gains (after the first turn) the custom SMAC_START policy, which gives some of the happiness adjustments discussed previously. This policy is in its own tree, so won’t interfere with gaining a branch for a cultural win, and its branch contains a second policy that players can never gain, so it’ll never count as a completed branch.
NOTE: There is a potential bug here, once you get to the Transcendence Era. While horribly improbable (each has THREE –999 flavors), the AI MIGHT select these policies. This will break things. It’ll already have the start policy, so that’s not a problem, but if it takes the POLICY_CANNOT_TAKE policy, then the AI would have an additional completed policy branch towards a cultural win. But really, if you’re in the transcendence era already, seeing the AI build the Utopia is not your biggest concern.
This also causes a problem if you start a game at the Transcendence Era, because the AI will stop picking policies.
> To account for this additional policy, the progression for policy costs now scales as 21 + 4*(N^1.8), instead of the default 25 + 6*(N^1.7) to account for the fact that N is now increased by 1. This equation generally works out to the same values as before, except that your very first policy will be slightly cheaper than normal (since it doesn’t start counting N until you’ve gained one policy).
> The negative-happiness buildings now work correctly.
> If a building has negative happiness, either through its Buildings declaration or from a policy, then the UI will now use the unhappy face and not use the plus sign. It will also not show the effect twice, and will simply give the total. This will only affect the UI in the city screen; the building’s tooltip in the tech tree will remain unchanged.
Note: these fixes abuse the double-happiness bonus to do this. The reason for this bug is shown in InfoTooltipInclude.lua: the game checks first to see if Happiness is not nil and then again to see if Unmodded Happiness is also not nil. It then adds the policy happiness to each.
Since the default values for both are 0, not nil, this will always trigger the policy check twice. While this particular script only shows the UI, it appears that the game is following a similar logic internally.
> Empath specialists now add +1 happiness, in addition to their food benefits. The Empath has also gained a Flavor rating so that the AI will prefer to use it when it needs Happiness. Note that you’ll only see the gain in happiness at the start of the next turn. The balance on this will need to be examined closely.
> The Hologram Theater was increased from +2 happiness to +3. This is to help offset the negative-happy buildings.
> The Pholus Mutagen boosts the output of bonus resource tiles (Cows, wheat, etc.). Since the LocalResourcesOR table can only handle four entries for a single wonder, I couldn’t have it correctly check all local resources. So the only options were to only check for the most common ones, or remove the requirement entirely. I’ve now removed the requirement, so it’s possible to build it in a city which gives no bonus. (I might change it back if this is too problematic.)
> Researching Transcendent Thought now correctly adds +1 happiness per time you’ve researched it.
> Building the Dream Twister now correctly gives other major civs –10 happiness. It does this by creating an indestructible building in their capitals that does this.
> The KGB was too good. I raised its construction cost from 400 to 450, and lowered the tech steal chance from 5% (if every other civ has the tech) to 4%.
> To compensate, I added a 1% chance to the Nethack Terminus (in addition to its current 50% threshold steal, where if half of the civs have a tech you get it automatically). The Planetary Datalinks will stay at 5%, so the total for all national wonders is still 10%.
> The cost of SDI was reduced from 1500 to 1200.
> In addition to its anti-nuke benefits, the Orbital Defense Pod also reduces the damage dealt by orbital weapons (Ion Cannon, Death Ray) by 5% per copy, for a total of –50% once you’ve built 10. Note that this is a reduction in the BASE strength, not a –50% promotion.
> Because the Orbital Defense Pods now reduce the damage dealt by orbital weapons by up to 50%, the Ion Cannon’s base damage was increased from 40 to 50. The others will be evaluated as time goes on.
> The Ascetic Virtues was changed into a Project, and was moved to Ethical Calculus. It is now the prerequisite for all Titan units but has no other effect (yet). (Eventually it’ll add other things.)
> At Homo Superior, there’s a new building, the Temple of Gaia. It adds +2 happiness, +5 culture, and +25% to great people birthrate, and costs 6 gpt. I'm still deciding whether I wanted this to be a building or a national Wonder, but for now I think we need the Happiness.
> The Bolo, Combat Mech, Former, Nessus Worm, and Gravship require the Ascetic Virtues project. (This obviously does not apply to “wild” Nessus Worms used by the barbarian faction.)
> In addition to its anti-nuke benefits, the Orbital Ion Cannon, Geosynchronous Survey Pod, Orbital Defense Ray, and Subspace Generator now require the SDI project. (Most required the Apollo Program before.)
> The free golden ages from building a spaceship are now half the previous length, meaning the person who launches first gets a single normal-length GA and the other players who build ships get a half-length one. (Odd numbers on the half-length ages round up.)
> The Apollo Program and the four spaceship component projects are no longer explicitly tied to the Space Race victory. They are now buildable even if you’ve disabled the science victory. However, you should leave it on, because without it you can’t get the Victory Progress UI that’ll show how close other civs are to completing it, and it’s not an actual “victory” any more anyway.
> The four mutually exclusive National Wonders (Hollywood, Wall Street, Three Gorges Dam, Red Cross) now say so in their help text.

 

[Spatzimaus]

So to explain the nuke defense thing, here are some scenarios, and the interception chance of each. I figured that this was easier to show it.

Atomic Bomb
No one has reached SDI yet: 30% chance, no matter how many civs I'm at war with.
I'm fighting a city-state but I'm not at war with any major civs: 30% chance, no matter who has SDI.
My enemy has SDI: 60%
I'm launching it at a city-state, but I'm also at war with one major civ that has SDI: 60%
I'm fighting two enemies, and only one of them has SDI: 45% (since the one with SDI will use part of it to shoot things intended for the other one.)
I'm fighting two enemies, and both have SDI: 90% (cap)
I'm fighting one enemy, and he not only has SDI but has a full set of Orbital Defense Pods: 90% (cap)
(Atomic Bombs now go obsolete right around the time SDI gets built, but it's remotely possible you'd still have a few left over in the ODP era.)

Nuclear Missile
No one has reached SDI yet: 20% chance
My enemy has SDI: 40% chance
Two enemies, one with SDI: 30%
Two enemies, both with SDI: 60%
Three enemies, all with SDI: would be 80%, but the cap is 75%.
One enemy with SDI and a full set of ODPs: 60%
Two enemies, both with SDI and a full set of ODPs: would be 90%, but the cap is 75%.
(So Nuclear Missiles now go obsolete right after the ODPs are being built.)

Planet Buster
Shooting at a city-state while not at war with any major civs: 10% chance
Enemy has SDI: 20% chance
Enemy has SDI and a full set of ODPs: 30%
Three enemies, all with SDI: 40% chance
Four enemies, all with SDI: 50% chance (cap)
Two enemies, both with SDI and a full set of ODPs: 45% (almost at cap)

Subspace Generator
Enemy has no defenses: 0% chance
Fifteen enemies, all with SDI and a full set of ODPs: 0% chance
(When I said "can't be intercepted", I meant it.)
-------------

So that should help explain things. Basically, the better nukes are harder to intercept, the cruder nukes go effectively obsolete after certain projects are built, and you can be at war with more civs simultaneously before hitting any kind of cap.
And as I tried to illustrate, all that matters are the number of MAJOR civs you're at war with. Minor civs don't increase the chance, and nuking a city-state is just as likely to succeed as nuking a major civ that you're currently at war with.
(While I'd wanted to have it depend more on the defenses of the specific civ you're targeting, nukes don't work that way. So every civ you're at war with, major or minor, has the same chance of intercepting you, regardless of who has the actual defense projects.)

 

[randomcivguy]

My computer's working better now,so more civ!

 

[Spatzimaus]

Just a heads-up: my home machine just crashed hard last night and won't come back up, and it looks like an OS problem. So while all of my files are recoverable, no new versions will be forthcoming for a little while. Frankly, the 2-week-plus gap we just had between #22 and #23 was nice, in terms of getting full games in, although the result was a larger set of changes than I'm comfortable with.
I'm also going to use this opportunity to upgrade from XP to Windows 7, since I JUST got a new copy of it. Hopefully I'll finish that this weekend, but I'm not sure what issues will come up with previously-installed software.

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

To this mod, then.

Assuming no major bugs are found in the latest release, I'd say we're pretty much at the point where all principal systems are in place. Nearly all of my designed functions are implemented; the only ones missing are "wish list" items like the All Terrain promotion to let gravtanks fly over water, or the Jump Gate, where it uses a placeholder effect instead of what I'd really intended. (The Jump Gate should allow you to work tiles 4 hexes from your city center. Currently, it gives a small chance of triggering a spontaneous Golden Age, but if I can get the 4-range thing working I'll shift that effect over to the new Temple of Gaia and reduce its other benefits.)

There will most likely be one more version with the current placeholders as I fine-tune the balance issues introduced by the latest set of changes, but after that it'll mostly be about 3D unit graphics. So next week, computer willing, will be the end of the Alpha phase and the shift to version 1.0 as the mod officially moves to Beta. This'll also involve changing the mod's name to a real title. At this point I'm still leaning towards the Earthfall title we'd discussed previously, but any suggestions would be welcome.

What this means is that future updates will mostly consist of a slow trickle of unit models as I get them translated into Civ5's formats (if possible), along with any small balance tweaks that come up from playtesting, but that very little in the way of new features will be added unless there's a major change in the game (DLL release, or even a big content patch). This also means that the mod will no longer be compatible with modpacks that adjust unit graphics, for those of you who use those, although you might be able to come up with an integrated version pretty easily for yourselves.

 

[Darsnan]

To this mod, then.

What this means is that future updates will mostly consist of a slow trickle of unit models as I get them translated into Civ5's formats (if possible), along with any small balance tweaks that come up from playtesting, but that very little in the way of new features will be added unless there's a major change in the game (DLL release, or even a big content patch).

Sounds very good! Do you have a list of models your going to produce? I'd be interested in seeing this.

Anyways, on to the playtesting:

1. Game settings are King, Tiny Continents, Industrial start.

2. In two games so far neither AI (Romans, then Americans) on my starting continent has warred on me. In both cases they've gone after the space race victory. This philosophy for the AIs seemed to start very early in both games, as usually I have experienced an early "skirmish", to say the least.

3. The AIs didn't nuke themselves to death in either game. I checked the other continent in both games and there were no traces of nuclear fallout present there, either (pre-patch when I'd do a check there were scattered patches of fallout all over the continent).

4. When I did war on the Americans in my second game I launched 5 nukes (3 atomic bombs, 2 nuclear missiles). Four of them were shot down via the SDI/ other nuke intercepting buildings, with only one missile getting through. If the SDI and other nuke intercepting facilities are this good, then they seem to be in good lockstep with the AIs being toned down in their (previously) nuke-happy attitudes as the AIs are less likely to invest relatively huge amounts of resources into nukes.

5. What's up with the IoD's? They seem to get injured everytime they move. I purposely moved a unit adjacent to a triplet of IoDs, and the nearest I could figure was that the IoDs were injuring each other. Also I noticed IoDs can attack land units: nice! Do you plan on giving aquatic units the ability to capture IoDs?

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Do you have a list of models your going to produce? I'd be interested in seeing this.

I do. Unfortunately, it's on my currently nonfunctional home computer.

Most of the units will be simple translations of Civ4 models, which means they'll have a lower polygon count than they COULD have.
Off the top of my head, I think I have pre-made Civ4 models for the Colony Pod, Laser Infantry, Needlejet, Stealth Ship, Leviathan, Chiron Locusts, Nessus Worm, Skimmer, Golem, Combat Mech, and Geosynchronous Survey Pod. I've also got some models that would work fairly well for the Ranger, Vertol, Gravtank, and Gravship. The existing Giant Death Robot model will be used for the Labor Mech (scaled down and made into a 3-unit model). And while it might take more work, I should be able to extract the Mind Worm, Isle of the Deep, and Spore Tower models from Planetfall's packages.

That basically leaves the Powersuit units, Plasma Artillery, Doppelganger, Troll, Bolo, Former, Ion Cannon, Death Ray, and Subspace Generator. I've got some units that I think might work for some of those, but I might end up having to modify some meshes to make my own.

2. In two games so far neither AI (Romans, then Americans) on my starting continent has warred on me.

Probably just a low aggressiveness rating. Neither of those civs are on the hard end of the warmonger scale. I've found that the AI really responds now to military power, so if you'd built up your army then it makes sense they'd leave you alone.

4. When I did war on the Americans in my second game I launched 5 nukes (3 atomic bombs, 2 nuclear missiles). Four of them were shot down via the SDI/ other nuke intercepting buildings, with only one missile getting through.

That rate sounds awfully high. Assuming you were ONLY at war with the Americans, SDI should have knocked down 60% of the A-bombs and 40% of the missiles, so you should have had 1.2 success for each, on average. (If you were at war with a second civ that also had SDI, that'd be 90% and 60% and your numbers would be right on par. Don't launch nukes if you're in anything other than a 1-on-1 war.) Granted, low-number statistics mean that your 4/5 isn't too unreasonable a result against a single foe with SDI; you might have just had a bad random draw on the bombs.

Only two projects add nuke interception: SDI, and the Orbital Defense Pods. If you did this BEFORE SDI, then it should have only intercepted 30% of the A-bombs and 20% of the missiles, since those are the minima, even if you were at war with multiple major civs. If that's the case, something's seriously wrong with your results; with 30% interception, losing all three bombs would only happen 2.7% of the time.

I was GOING to put a debug print statement into the mod so that it'd print the interception chance each time a nuke was fired. It would make it very easy to test these things. I never got around to that, and now I can't do it any time soon. So if you want to try testing it for me, start a test game, use FireTuner to gift yourself twenty nuclear missiles, and then fire them all at some random location. (It won't matter what hex you use.) On average, 4 (20%) should be intercepted. If it's much more than that, then there's a problem.

Also, the AI doesn't actually know about this interception mechanism. It'll still build as many nukes as it would otherwise, and use them whenever it would have before. But I paired this change with a reduction in the nuke flavor values, so the AI will be building fewer nukes and more nuclear plants or conventional units. If the AI wasn't getting ANY nukes through, and the interception rates weren't broken, then I might have set the flavors a bit too low.

5. What's up with the IoD's? They seem to get injured everytime they move. I purposely moved a unit adjacent to a triplet of IoDs, and the nearest I could figure was that the IoDs were injuring each other.

No idea how that could happen. I'm wondering if one of the AIs had a submarine (or stealth ship) nearby as was just plinking away at them; they can't see submarines, IIRC, but their combat rating is high enough that they won't die to one-shot kills like some other naval units would. You wouldn't see the sub in that case. Same goes for the AI bombarding them with stealth bombers/needlejets. Ion cannons might also fall into that same category.

You could try building one of your own (or place one in FireTuner) and see if the same thing happens.

Also I noticed IoDs can attack land units: nice! Do you plan on giving aquatic units the ability to capture IoDs?

Isles of the Deep can attack land units, yes, because really what I call the Isle is sort of a cross between SMAC's Isles and the Spore Launcher unit. The idea, design-wise, is that while the "normal" naval units go for stealth (Stealth Ship) or massive flexibility (Leviathan), the Isle is about heavy firepower and thick defenses. It can't really hide, and it's not fast, so it'll get attacked often. But let one park offshore and it can bombard away. The regeneration means that it can come into a city's range without worrying about attrition catching up to it, too. This makes it the perfect naval unit for the barbarian faction.

As for capturing, no. I decided a while back that I didn't want to copy SMAC's method of letting you capture Psi units; it's too problematic, balance-wise, and with the way I coded the Spore Tower mechanism, it'd be abuseable. (Farming psi units by not killing the spore tower, basically.) I keep meaning to add a reward for killing spore towers (the Planet Pearls, again), but I don't want anything similar for the normal psi units.

 

[Darsnan]

I do. Unfortunately, it's on my currently nonfunctional home computer.

Gotta hate it when our machines fail: last week I had 6 inches of water in my basement. Took out my water heater and furnace, which really bit it as the temps were in the 50s.

Probably just a low aggressiveness rating. Neither of those civs are on the hard end of the warmonger scale. I've found that the AI really responds now to military power, so if you'd built up your army then it makes sense they'd leave you alone.

This is where my approach of playing very consistent set-ups comes in handy, down to defined queues for my three Industrial start cities (i.e. my set-up has not changed since the new patch). In the past Siam has always warred on me in the early game. Two more games today where they started adjacent, and in neither game did they war on me early. My guess is Firaxis has toned down the over-all AI warmongering with the new patch. Its a nice thought in that it makes you the player go and get the AIs, however instead I've focused back onto taking out selected C-S. It was also kind of boring, as I anticipated getting attacked, however nothing happened on my borders. Lots of pressing end-turn while waiting for something to happen.

That rate sounds awfully high. Assuming you were ONLY at war with the Americans, SDI should have knocked down 60% of the A-bombs and 40% of the missiles, so you should have had 1.2 success for each, on average. (If you were at war with a second civ that also had SDI, that'd be 90% and 60% and your numbers would be right on par. Don't launch nukes if you're in anything other than a 1-on-1 war.) Granted, low-number statistics mean that your 4/5 isn't too unreasonable a result against a single foe with SDI; you might have just had a bad random draw on the bombs.

I really, really should have saved that set-up so I could re-play it repeatedly and see what happened. I'll let you know when I encounter a similar situation, and what the results are.

Isles of the Deep can attack land units, yes, because really what I call the Isle is sort of a cross between SMAC's Isles and the Spore Launcher unit. The idea, design-wise, is that while the "normal" naval units go for stealth (Stealth Ship) or massive flexibility (Leviathan), the Isle is about heavy firepower and thick defenses. It can't really hide, and it's not fast, so it'll get attacked often. But let one park offshore and it can bombard away. The regeneration means that it can come into a city's range without worrying about attrition catching up to it, too. This makes it the perfect naval unit for the barbarian faction.

Not sure if it'd work or not, but have you thought about giving the IoD the submarine ability? It'd be harder to detect IoDs then, and it'd sort of give the impression of leaping out of the water at its intended victims.

On to today's playtesting:

1. One of my early game strategies has been to build Ironworks in my high-mineral city, then buy a watermill, then build a windmill. Since the new patch I've had problems scraping together the gold to buy the watermill. This is good in that it retards my ability to get my high-min city online for cranking out Wonders/ city improvements.

2. Came across a Japanese Rifleman healing next to a Barbarian archer in a Barb camp. Why didn't the Jap unit take out the camp?

3. Similar situation with Greece invading me: the Greek cannon attacked a nearby Barbarian Brute instead of attacking my units.

4. Overall I think the Gold/ Happiness balancing is a little easier on King since your new build.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Gotta hate it when our machines fail

Well, this one failed pretty spectacularly, but thankfully everything was recoverable. I'm just getting everything set up now on a new OS; luckily, I had JUST received a new copy of Win7-64 to replace my old 32-bit XP, and a new 1TB hard drive to put it on, so it was an almost ideal time for it to fail. (I'm using my home computer right now, so hooray for that. I only wish it had failed three days later, AFTER I updated the OS.)

Not sure if it'd work or not, but have you thought about giving the IoD the submarine ability? It'd be harder to detect IoDs then, and it'd sort of give the impression of leaping out of the water at its intended victims.

I deliberately didn't give them the submarine ability. The way I see it, Isles don't "leap", they're just sort of floating masses of mindworm cells and spore clouds. (The Sealurk unit in SMAC was more like what you're thinking of, and it was rolled into the Nessus Worm.) So they're a floating mini-island that launches spores at nearby targets.

Basically, I want the Isles to be a naval unit that's high-risk, high-reward. They're hard to keep alive, since they can't hide and can't put up a fighter umbrella, but also hard to ignore and hard to kill. And with the Psi bonus, they're also the only naval unit that can do any real damage to a Titan. (I hope.)

2. Came across a Japanese Rifleman healing next to a Barbarian archer in a Barb camp. Why didn't the Jap unit take out the camp?

My guess is that the AI doesn't think of the Japanese racial ability when it makes its decisions. So it thinks "hmm, my unit is wounded, better rest up". The rifleman gains 1 HP per turn from resting, the archer knocks off 1 HP per turn, and the cycle never ends. A human would know to just clear the camp and THEN rest, but the AI isn't that smart.

4. Overall I think the Gold/ Happiness balancing is a little easier on King since your new build.

There wasn't any change in Gold, compared to the previous version. The big change was in Happiness.
On the plus side, Empaths now generate happiness, the Hologram Theater was boosted from +2 to +3, and there's now the Temple of Gaia adding +2.
On the minus side, four buildings now subtract a total of 5 happiness per city. One -1 and one -2 in the Digital Era, one -1 in the Fusion, one -1 in the Nanotech.

So what I'm trying to figure out is not only whether there's too much happiness or unhappiness in general, but whether there's any specific stage in the tech tree that really needs more or less. For instance, the late Digital/early Fusion, right after Genejacks unlock, might be a real problem if there aren't enough Empath-using buildings available yet.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, a comment on nuke interceptions. I still can't test this myself, as I'm trying to reinstall the game on my new OS.

For those of you who keep FireTuner running as you play, watch what happens when a nuke is intercepted. If my own logic is responsible for the nuke interception, then there should be a "Nuke Intercepted!" message in the tuner. What I need to know is, are any nukes being intercepted without giving this message? That is, is it possible that the games <NukeInterception> functions are actually working? In my tests the stubs and Lua functions didn't actually kill any nukes, but it's possible that there was some delay involved, like the interception doesn't actually kick in until a turn or two after the project is built.
Eventually I'll put a text popup into the game to say when a nuke is intercepted, which'd make this much easier to check. Until then, the tuner's the only way to check this.

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

And on an unrelated note, there's still one major balance issue I haven't resolved: unit balance. I'm trying to make sure every unit is a worthwhile build in the right circumstances. So, for instance:
1> Are Mindworms, in general, worth building in an era dominated by Modern Armor? They're intended to be an equalizer, for weaker civs to use against stronger ones, but I'm not sure they're worth the investment right now.

2> While the Barbarians use the various Psi units, are they worth building for the player? Each is supposed to play differently; Isles and Nessi are brute-force units, and the Chiron Locusts are sort of like a scarier Vertol. But each has some significant drawbacks, and are these too crippling when contrasted with the mechanized units?

3> Does anyone use the Doppelganger, Golem, Ranger, or Troll? I tried to make these units with interesting and powerful abilities, to contrast with the simple high Combat and Movement ratings of the tanks, artillery, jets, etc. but I'm afraid that they're just too undesirable as a result.

3a> Does anyone use the Scout Powersuit, Assault Powersuit, Stealth Ship, and Leviathan by choice, or are they simply the end product of upgrading your existing units? That is, would you ever voluntarily build more of them once they've unlocked?

4> Has anyone used a Colony Pod? It's supposed to cost the same as a Settler, except for the additional resources, and has better movement. But given how late in the game it comes, does anyone build them?

Basically, I'm afraid that the only units built in the future eras will be the Skimmer, Vertol, Plasma Artillery, Needlejet, and Gravtank. Plus the Titans and Orbitals, of course. I want each unit to be desirable in its own right, at least in certain circumstances.

 

[Spatzimaus]

PS: I dont have any idea how people multiquote like you do. I am cutting and pasting to get my messages like they are.

Just put (QUOTE) and (/QUOTE) around whatever block of text you want (brackets instead of parentheses, of course), and it'll create a new Quote field for it. By changing the first one to (QUOTE=Spatzimaus), it'll say "Originally posted by Spatzimaus", and (QUOTE=Spatzimaus;12345) will put it as a link to the original post you're quoting. Generally I won't bother with that last part, but I do put in the username if I have a post responding to two different people.

So when I want to respond point-by-point to someone's feedback, I just hit the Quote button, and then insert (/quote) and (quote) as necessary while deleting the parts I'm not responding to. Of course, abusing this too much makes for some insanely long messages, but given my past record, that'd happen regardless.