Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

Hello there, I just want to know if your next update will break saves, so I don't waste time on 3 - 5 turn crashes.

Yes, unfortunately, all updates to this mod break saves. I had to check off the "affects save games" flag on the mod because of all the various things it's done to the database. Generally, UI mods are the only ones that don't invalidate old saves.
So if the crashes are too much for you, you can try the next version as soon as it's released (aiming for tomorrow), but if people are having stable games then they'll often hold off updating until they complete their current games.

As to the gamecore.log file, I have no idea what that file does. It's just saying that it can't load about half of the new units; what you have there is everything before the Nanotech Era and no Secondhand/BarbPsi units, which means everything with an ID lower than a Nessus Worm. I have no idea why it'd stop at that point.

 

[Madsapper]

Spatzimaus,

I'm really enjoying your mod so far. I've made it most of the way through a game and I'm at the point where I just getting about half way into the new Alpha Centauri techs. I noticed a few tweaks that may increase the enjoyment of the game for myself, and hopefully others as well.

We got worms: The biggest adjustment that I'd like to see is a way to turn off the mind worm spam. So far over 100s of turns they've only managed to kill two workers but really pose no danger. I think they've pillaged an improvement or two. IMO, it only slows the game down. If they MUST stay, maybe add a way to slow the spawning over time. Such as building an alien repulsion wonder or having a monstrous hive that is well defended and can be destroyed to stop them from spawning.

Tech stealing through research and the KGB wonder: I would like to see an option to turn these off, or tune them down such as a adjustment (For example 150% normal, 100% normal, 50% normal, 0% normal).

Obsolete Units: If a new unit requires special resources, I would suggest leaving the previous unit on the build menu. If for example, someone researches Stealth Bombers which require Aluminum, they can no longer make the B-17s. The same thing goes for the arty. If you get high enough on the research list, you can no longer produce Howitzers even though it may be the only Artillery Unit you can afford due to resource restrictions they are not on the build menu anymore.

Unlimited Resource techs: I've noticed several wonders result in unlimited resource X such as the Supercollider giving unlimited uranium. Am I misunderstanding the wonder or is there a bug someplace that prevents it from working? I've seen it replace used resources as I add items to the build menu as if it was working what I believe is correctly, (build a Rocket Arty, it reduces Aluminum by 1 and then replaces the lost Aluminum back up 1 immediately) but at some point it seems to stop working.

 

[Spatzimaus]

We got worms: The biggest adjustment that I'd like to see is a way to turn off the mind worm spam.

Eventually I'll tie it to the Barbarians. That is, if you crank the barbarians up then it'd do the same for the psi units, and if you disable barbs then it'd do the same for them. I just haven't gotten around to doing so yet, because it's not a clean stub like it was in previous Civ games. Frankly, I'm not sure what would break if you disabled barbarians entirely.

So far over 100s of turns they've only managed to kill two workers but really pose no danger.

In that case, I need to increase their spawn rate further. They're not supposed to be powerful enough to destroy unattended cities or anything (until you start seeing Nessus Worms, which are designed for exactly that), but the Psi units should be strong and/or annoying enough that it forces you to keep a few military units back in your hinterlands instead of piling everything up on one border. If you've basically been able to ignore them, then they need to be made better and/or more numerous; I'll try upping Mind Worm spawn rates from 30% to 40% in the next version.

Such as building an alien repulsion wonder or having a monstrous hive that is well defended and can be destroyed to stop them from spawning.

The monstrous hive that can be destroyed to stop them from spawning is called a "Spore Tower". It's immobile, and spawns new units until it's destroyed. So all you need to do to clean up an infestation is take out the Tower. If you mean some super-tower that can be destroyed to stop Spore Towers from spawning, that's not going to happen. I'm not going to deviate from SMAC by THAT much.

As to a wonder that suppresses them, that would defeat the whole point of the mechanism. A World Wonder would just get built by the tech leader, which is exactly the civ I want hurting MOST from the random spawns. So I'd only put it as a national wonder or regular building, and that's basically what the Neural Amplifier already is meant for.

Tech stealing through research and the KGB wonder: I would like to see an option to turn these off, or tune them down such as a adjustment (For example 150% normal, 100% normal, 50% normal, 0% normal).

If people feel that tech stealing comes up too often, then I can tone down the rate at which it triggers. I've been asking for feedback on that for a few versions now; right now, the three tech-stealing wonders are 4/5/1%, and I can easily drop that to 3/4/1 or something if it's too much in practice. But I'm not adding sliders to the various wonders; either they're balanced against each other in their current forms or they're not. If they're not, then I need to tweak the values until they are. (It's not like there's a slider adjusting whether the ancient-era wonders have full effect or not.)

Also, what do you mean by "tech stealing through research"? The only tech-stealing mechanism in my mod is the one built into the three national wonders (and the Telepathic Matrix world wonder, but it doesn't count). While I highly recommend using a Tech Diffusion mod, that's not built into my code.

Obsolete Units: If a new unit requires special resources, I would suggest leaving the previous unit on the build menu. If for example, someone researches Stealth Bombers which require Aluminum, they can no longer make the B-17s.

B-17s don't go obsolete until Doctrine:Air Power, which is the tech that unlocks Needlejets. Basically, it's a 2-unit system. If A leads to B leads to C leads to D, then A goes obsolete at the tech where C unlocks and B obsoletes when D unlocks. This is the same pattern the vanilla game uses for all of the existing units.

So there's a good fifteen techs between point where Stealths unlock and where B17s obsolete, where both units are buildable. That's typical; given that units in a chain are generally ~3 tiers apart, that means that most units are around for 2 eras, more or less, with half of that time being the top unit and half being the obsolete-but-buildable secondary unit.

The only exceptions to this are nuclear units (go obsolete based on when the anti-missile projects unlock) and the fact that nearly every unit other than the top tier goes obsolete in the late Fusion/early Nanotech era.

If you get high enough on the research list, you can no longer produce Howitzers even though it may be the only Artillery Unit you can afford due to resource restrictions they are not on the build menu anymore.

Artillery goes obsolete when Plasma Artillery unlocks, which leaves you with Rocket Artillery and Plasma Artillery. Yes, both of those require Aluminum, so if you lack that then you'd have a problem since Artillery would now be impossible to build. That's no different than how lacking Horses shuts off an entire upgrade chain of mounted units for you, or lacking Iron takes a big chunk out of the melee chain.

Remember, though, that two techs after Plasma Artillery unlocks is Fusion Power, which unlocks the Fusion Lab, which produces Aluminum and Uranium. So it won't be long until you can make them again, and if you can't wait that long, try trading with a city-state or settling near an unclaimed deposit (if any).
Likewise, both Tanks and Modern Armor use Oil (as do Bombers and Stealth Bombers), which would be crippling except that soon after you unlock Modern Armor you reach the Energy Bank, which provides Coal and Oil. So it's a short-lived shortage.

The simple fact is, I can't keep tons of units on the build queue just on the off chance that you have no resources at all. Besides clogging up the screen, it's also a bad idea for the AI in the vast majority of times where they DO have the resources; it'll be building 25-strength Cavalry part of the time when it should be building 70-strength Modern Armor, because Flavor values are probabilistic. That'd be a huge advantage for the human player.

Every future unit other than Laser Infantry and Geosynchronous Survey Pods requires at least one resource, and as you go up the more important units require at least two. So resource usage is something you'll just have to watch out for, and there's no way I could leave the resourceless predecessors (if any) buildable indefinitely. After all, some of these units were NEVER resourceless. (Gravtanks, for instance, trace all the way back to Horsemen.)

And one of the whole points of adding Psi units to the game is that they're cheap one-resource units, requiring only Omnicytes, which should be plentiful (and which are also created by the Brood Pit, by far the earliest a resource-generating building comes after the resource unlocks). So if you find yourself too short on Aluminum to make the units you'd prefer to field, try making some units that use other resources and change your strategies accordingly.

Unlimited Resource techs: I've noticed several wonders result in unlimited resource X such as the Supercollider giving unlimited uranium. Am I misunderstanding the wonder or is there a bug someplace that prevents it from working?

Those tooltips are a bit out-of-date. These wonders add a flat 10 units of the resource in question. At one point it was 100 units (hence "unlimited"), but that was a bit too much in practice. It's given all at once; when you're seeing it jump up by only 1, you must have built a Fusion Lab on that turn. 10 units is enough that you can now do a lot with it, but not so much that you could, say, put a Nuclear Plant in every city and have enough left over to make a few dozen nuclear missiles.

 

[Darsnan]

So what this means for all of you is that if you think something is significantly unbalanced, this is the time to talk about it. Are all of the units useful? Is there too much Happiness? Is Uranium too hard to find? That sort of thing.

A statement I’ve made previously in this thread is that I plan on making my own sci-fi mod, and that this mod will start at the beginning of the game (as opposed to your mod which extends, or continues the original game via additional future eras). To that end I’ve been recently reviewing the unit lists between Ancient/ Classical and Modern/ Future eras. Several points in general I’d like to throw out here:

- In the Future eras the players start out with 4 Infantry, 3 Settlers, and 3 Workers, versus the Ancient era start of one Settler and one Scout. This is a huge delta regarding gameplay mechanics and how the underlieing base game is set up. Bottom line my gut feel is that the advanced starts are grossly to the disadvantage of the AIs (both civs and C-S). The Ancient era starts allow the AIs to organize themselves (or gives them “breathing room” if you will) while the human player builds workers, settlers, and infrastructure, and this is the way the overall game mechanics are set up – to allow a pace which continually keeps the AIs competitive.
- In the Future eras aircraft are quickly available (or already available depending on the era the game is started in). With these a human can scout the surrounding terrain much more effectively, and can disposition his forces accordingly. Also, while I can’t say for certain, why because aircraft allow the AIs to “see” more enemy units (which the AIs then need to process for decision-making), then this impacts how the corresponding algorhythms process and decide how to respond: in general the more complex the situations, the more likely the AIs will do something which isn’t to their advantage.
- In Future eras a lot of the resources are already unlocked, which allows for a human player to immedaitely start deciding which cities are going to be heavy production/ research/ culture/ etc. : this is hugely to a human player’s advantage.
- In Future era starts a player begins with a relatively large amount of culture points which they can immediately use to purchase many social policies. Again this is hugely to a human players advantage in that they can purchase policies which make the most sense in the terrain they find themselves in (i.e. Tiny/ Duel maps they can go more militaristic, or on aquatic worlds go more for culture, etc.), whereas I don’t think the AIs really take into account the map settings and their corresponding implications.
- Artillery: artillery is huge in this game, and being able to bombard from 3 tiles away has a significant impact on the military game dynamics. With a couple Artillery units I am typically able to hold off significantly superior forces in the early game. Without them (i.e. if I could only bombard incoming enemy units from two tiles away), well, I think things would be more dicey, and I believe it would impact me significantly in regards to how I organize my build queues.

So, to summarize the above in regards to your question regarding balance, why I think the base Civ5 game dynamics are set up/ attuned/ optimized to start a human player with only one Settler and one Scout. Therefore, my thoughts in regards to your mod are whether you have considered scaling back the starting units in the Future eras? Say give the humans only one or two settlers, and only one or two Infantry (and no workers)? In general I think this would give the AIs (including C-S) more “breathing room” in the early game, and allow them to become more established before the huge conflicts really get going.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Therefore, my thoughts in regards to your mod are whether you have considered scaling back the starting units in the Future eras? Say give the humans only one or two settlers, and only one or two Infantry (and no workers)?

That'd work fine for your mod, or for a SMAC scenario that forces a start in the Digital Era. There are a few major problems with that for my mod, though.

1> I wasn't the one who added those extra settlers/workers/infantry. That's in the game itself, in the Eras table; the Industrial Era, in the vanilla game, gives 3 settlers (which create size 3 cities), 2 workers, and 3 combat units. I tweaked these distributions slightly (adding one more worker to most eras and boosting the starting populations of cities by 1 in some eras), but the precedent was set. These extra units are basically supposed to get you to where an empire would be in that era if it had played from the start. Obviously, a normal game would have a civ with more than 3 cities in the Industrial, and the cities will be bigger than size 3, but it's at least closer than you'd get with just one size 1 city.

2> Forcing the AI and players to delay a few turns before cranking out a Settler helps the player even more than the current system. Yes, the human can look at the terrain, plan out his cities' roles, and place his cities next to the important strategics (like Coal). But that's endemic to the way the AI in this game plays (i.e., stupidly), and won't go away if you move that decision point a few dozen turns down the road. In fact, it'd just give the player even more of an advantage, because he'd have a better idea about whether that third or fourth city is really necessary.

You mention giving the AI time to "organize itself". But the AI just doesn't DO that; nearly all of its decisions are purely probabilistic, made at the time of decision and not beforehand. There's no benefit to giving the AI more time to do anything (and it often makes things worse). The only decisions it makes that aren't probabilistic are when it switches into a "Need" category, like "need more workers" or "need more cities", and that only affects whether cities build those units, not how it uses them once they're built.
The current method at least gives the AI enough resources to settle a decent-sized empire before you can grab all of the best spots or box it in. And that, in turn, gives it a better chance of grabbing a few early Wonders.

3> Right now, it takes X turns to research your first tech in a late-era start. Cut the number of starting cities in half, and it now will take 2*X turns, unless you lower the cost multipliers (which apply to every tech, ever, not just the first few). Likewise, once you've spent your starting allotment of culture on policies, it'll take Y turns to reach your next one, and reducing the number of cities increases that value appropriately.

Here's the problem, at its core: all cost progressions in this game (techs, culture, etc.) are based around the assumption that you started a game in the Ancient Era. When you start a game in the Industrial, then, the game just can't create a new progression appropriate to a start in that era; instead, it gives the extra settlers and a few multiplier reductions (like techs costing less across the board) to try to bootstrap you onto the main progression halfway through.

Obviously, this doesn't work too well, which is why I had to tweak so much. The devs had gone for a horribly simple system: all techs would cost ~20% as much as before in an Industrial start, since you'd only research a couple dozen of them at most before the game ended. The cost progression would still be way off, but you wouldn't care, because it was nearly over. This is why I had to put in that whole Head Start mechanism; I needed to get you onto the main progression, or something close to it, within a reasonable amount of time, and no flat multiplier can do that.


For your mod, you'll have it much easier. If you intend the game to start at a given point in the tech tree, then you can give the players 1 settler at that point, give them no extra culture or gold, and you'll be fine; the standard ancient-era progression can be applied at that point with no problems. (Remember to remove all of the "free" buildings from the game, set it so that new cities start at size 1, etc., so that players build from scratch.)
The main problem is that you'll have to re-price every single tech in the game; the cost progression in my future eras is basically "flat", balancing against the slow growth of an already-expanded empire that has no room for new cities to add, but you'd want something more like the almost exponential growth of the early eras.

The other problem is with the buildings themselves. If Nuclear-era buildings are costing 5 gold per turn and it just goes up from there, then these aren't really appropriate to be the first buildings you build. The same goes for railroads (not cost-effective if your cities aren't large), and so on.
So what you'd need to do is what I'd always intended to do for a SMAC-type scenario: add one or two more tiers of techs BEFORE the Digital. When I laid out the tech tree, I did this deliberately; the first two tiers of techs in SMAC had all of the "fundamental" buildings, like the Recreation Commons, Recycling Tanks, Network Node, et cetera. The way I saw it, on Earth those levels weren't needed, because the Industrial and Modern eras filled the same niches, providing all of the infrastructure buildings you needed. So if you compare this to the SMAC tech tree, you'll see that my Digital era basically starts at the third tier of SMAC (with a couple exceptions, like the Centauri stuff).
But if you want to start a scenario in a truly SMAC-like environment, then what you'd effectively need to do is add a new Era before the Digital; let's call it the "Landing Era", give it ~10 techs full of this starting stuff, and then build up from there.

 

[Madsapper]

In that case, I need to increase their spawn rate further. They're not supposed to be powerful enough to destroy unattended cities or anything (until you start seeing Nessus Worms, which are designed for exactly that), but the Psi units should be strong and/or annoying enough that it forces you to keep a few military units back in your hinterlands instead of piling everything up on one border. If you've basically been able to ignore them, then they need to be made better and/or more numerous; I'll try upping Mind Worm spawn rates from 30% to 40% in the next version.

I don't ignore them to the point that I let them wander around. I leave my low tech (previous model) units behind to garrison cities and use them to squash the psi units. Having sets of 2 bombers spread about the nation with adjoining ranges more than takes care of them. Rarely do the worms ever survive more than a single turn.

If I would further elaborate, please do not increase the spawn rate to make them more frequent. In my opinion, they aren't adding much flavor, they aren't adding any depth. They are a nuissance that just slows down the cycling of turns. You can have 10 spawn every turn and they still aren't going to have any effect on my nation other than diverting my attention. Am I alone here?

I would suggest increasing their strength or having them spawn in more concentrated sets. For example, instead of 3-4 individual worms spawning every couple turns, have one larger army of them spawn every 20 turns. You still need units behind, but you don't have to constantly wake up sleeping garrisons what seems to be every other turn.

The monstrous hive that can be destroyed to stop them from spawning is called a "Spore Tower". It's immobile, and spawns new units until it's destroyed. So all you need to do to clean up an infestation is take out the Tower.

The problem is that the spore towers spawn so frequently, killing it only buys you a turn or two before another shows up on the scene.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I leave my low tech (previous model) units behind to garrison cities and use them to squash the psi units. Having sets of 2 bombers spread about the nation with adjoining ranges more than takes care of them. Rarely do the worms ever survive more than a single turn.

That's really the point. An AI will do that naturally, spreading its units around the empire. A Human player generally won't; once an area is secure, he doesn't bother placing any units there. This is something that attempts to balance that out, effectively forcing the player to act in a way similar to what the AIs do.

While you kept enough troops back to ensure all worms died right away, ask yourself what would have happened if you HADN'T. If worms started pillaging your lands and pinning your workers inside your cities, you'd obviously have problems. So the fact that you kept enough units behind, even obsolete ones, to take care of the problem means that they're doing exactly what they're intended to do.

As for your 2-bomber thing, that's fine for a small empire, but what happens when you've conquered three continents on a large map? Each continent will need to have its own small defense force. One or two air units, two or three land units, etc. for each continent, and those are units you can't send to the front lines.

Now, I've been looking at giving barbarian psi units better air defense, because that does seem to be the easy way to deal with them. (Maybe the Cover promotion for free.)

They are a nuissance that just slows down the cycling of turns.

They're SUPPOSED to be a nuisance. They're not supposed to be a threat to conquer your empire; this isn't a zombie apocalypse mod. If you've ever played SMAC, you understand what they do; mindworms would show up randomly and attack your workers, pillage your improvements, etc. until you sent out a unit to deal with them. It forced you to deal with the problem instead of just throwing everything you have at one AI after another.

Now, once you get to the later eras and the spore towers start spawning really dangerous stuff, like Nessus Worms, THEN you can worry about losing cities if you're not careful. But by that point you should be unlocking your own Titan units and have orbital weapons to weaken them.

I would suggest increasing their strength

Remember, mind worms are a unit that the player can build as well. While I don't HAVE to keep the stats of Wild Mind Worms equal to those of regular Mind Worms, I'm going to keep the base abilities as close as possible.
The only thing I'm looking at now is the experience involved; Barbarian psi units only start with 10XP, because they have no Barracks-type equivalents. So the solution might be to give the barbarian Psi units some free promotions (like Shock I), since the human-made worms would have those. I've done something like this for the Spore Towers, actually; now, all Fusion-era towers start with the Range promotion (boosting their attack range from 2 to 3), and all Nanotech-era towers start with Logistics as well (2 attacks per turn). So I can have them get more dangerous with time, probably through copies of the Xenoempathy Dome and Bioenhancement Center promotions.

For example, instead of 3-4 individual worms spawning every couple turns, have one larger army of them spawn every 20 turns.

They spawn at most 1 per turn per tower, and it's more like one per three turns on average. SMAC had the possibility of larger spawns, with multiple worms showing up, but generally that was tied to the player's Planet rating, where it'd only happen if you specifically went against Planet. Since I have no equivalent to SMAC's Social Engineering, that's a bit harder to balance.

The bigger problem is simply that the AI is stupider than you are. If I make the spawns too dangerous, then an AI (especially a city-state) can be overrun. If that larger army of worms spawned in a city-state's territory, it'd gut them. Even a major empire might be caught off-guard and crippled, through sheer randomness of the spawns.

The problem is that the spore towers spawn so frequently, killing it only buys you a turn or two before another shows up on the scene.

They're not THAT common.

The way it works is this: one spore tower will attempt to spawn every turn. A map hex is picked at random. If the hex is land, it spawns there (unless the hex is occupied, in which case no tower spawns that turn). If it's water but within 5 hexes of land, it spawns on the nearest shoreline (unless that hex is occupied, in which case no tower spawns that turn). (So coastal spore towers are the most common.) If it's water and is further than 5 hexes from land, no tower spawns that turn.

Given that most maps are at least 50% water (and most are considerably more than that), and that units and cities will occupy many hexes, the only way you'd be seeing a tower every ~2 turns would be if you controlled the entire planet. You can have runs of bad luck, but generally speaking you shouldn't be getting towers very often, EXCEPT at the Breakout (when a larger number spawn on the first turn). If five empires all have equal territory, you'd be lucky to average one tower every 10 turns. Sure, it's possible that you'd get one two turns in a row, but it's just as likely you'd go 20 turns with no towers at all.

Once a spore tower spawns, then each turn it has a 30% chance of spawning a mindworm, a 20% chance of an Isle (but only if it's a coastal tower), a 10% chance of a Chiron Locust (if the barbarians have reached the fusion era) and a 5% chance of a Nessus Worm (if the barbs have reached the fusion era). No tower will ever spawn more than one worm per turn.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, here's what I've done today for Psi units. This was primarily intended to make the spawned barbarian mindworms be more of a threat, but it also allowed me to make player-made ones a bit more interesting.

Previously, all Psi units, when created, were given +10 XP. For human players, this was a minor bonus (since the XP from barracks and such add to it), for barbarians it meant one promotion at the start, and no chance of ever upgrading further. Also, you couldn't spend the +10 XP until the following turn, and barbarian worms died too often for that.

Now, the way it'll work is a lot more complex. When a Psi unit is created, either by a human or by a Barbarian, it gets one randomly-selected promotion from a list of 5ish. I say "ish" because the #1 promotion is handled specially, which I'll get to in a minute. This promotion is like the automatic ones for each unit, where it doesn't count towards the XP cost of future promotions.

So a Mind Worm might get Drill 1, Cover 1, Shock 1, Charge, or Spontaneous Healing (the 10% chance of a +5 heal that the Troll gets), in addition to the previous promotions. You have no control over which one it gets, it's random, except that the first one in the list (Drill 1) is twice as likely as the others. Each Psi unit (including the Spore Tower) has its own list; all have Spontaneous Healing in that last slot, but the rest depend on that particular unit. The #1 promotions are Drill for the Mind Worms and Chiron Locusts, Shock for the Isles and Nessi, and Cover for the Spore Towers.

So far so good, right? Well, to make up for the fact that Barbarians don't have access to the usual +XP buildings, they get extra promotions as follows:

Digital: 2 randoms to all
Fusion: 2 randoms; Spore Towers also get the "Range" promotion, while everything else gets the Xenoempathy Dome (+10% combat, +1 movement) promotion
Nanotech or later: Spore Towers have 2 randoms, Range, and Logistics, while everything else gets THREE randoms, Xenoempathy, and Bioenhancement (+10% damage).

Now, this means up to 3 picks from that list of 5. And here's where the "ish" comes in; for the last four promotions, if it picks the same one twice it'll just reroll until it gets something the unit doesn't have already. But if it picks Drill 1 twice (which isn't unlikely, since it's twice as likely to be taken as other promotions), it'll give it Drill 2 the second time.

So a Nanotech-era Wild Mindworm would still be a significant threat; with 5 extra promotions, and the Psi ability to adjust power, they'll be very annoying to kill. Still only a 50-strength base, so they won't be taking down any Bolos any time soon, but not quite the cannon fodder they were before.

I'm going to continue to test the numbers on this, to ensure it's reasonably balanced. And I might someday try to migrate something similar to the semi-Psi units (the Doppelganger, Ranger, and Troll). But for now, it's at least functional.

 

[Darsnan]

Okay, here's what I've done today for Psi units.

Question: how well are the AIs handling Psi units in regards to the Breakout event? Are they able to contain the MWs and destroy the Spore Towers?

Also, how well is this working on Archapeligo style maps? If you haven't playtested that mapscript against this, why I can do that this evening if you like.

I've only played a few games to date on Emporer, but I'm not seeing too much of a difficulty difference in regards to my playing style. I still pretty much follow the same scripts with my first three cities, emphasizing getting Artillery out ASAP to deal with the anticipated AI DoW in the early game. Last night's game my point city ended up being at the base of a mountain range: between this and having the Mongolian cultural border on the other side of the city meant that unless an enemy AI had open borders with Mongolia, why their avenue of attack was a V shaped funnel, with only two tiles available to actually launch an attack against my city from. The Greeks were the unfortunate AI who attacked into this kill-zone, and with my range three artillery they never got a single attack against my city at all. The more I see of situations like this, the less I like the combination of impassable terrain, cultural borders, and 1UPT: an AI simply isn't programmed to take situations like this into account, and will blindly follow its programming to its death.

I'm also seeing another tactic (exploit?) where I won't accept a peace treaty from an AI. This means the AI, after it has exhausted its offensive, will continue to dribble units at me. Good way to keep an AI down, as well as building up easy XP for your units.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Question: how well are the AIs handling Psi units in regards to the Breakout event? Are they able to contain the MWs and destroy the Spore Towers?

Major empires that haven't been in wars recently tend to do just fine. They go after the spore towers before they have a chance to spawn lots of units, and it works out well.

Major empires that have just been in a major war and have depleted their reserves will often have problems, at least until they churn out a few more units, and thankfully this is one area where the AI has overrides in place (making military units a higher priority if it feels it has too few). Of course, the system is geographically based, where smaller empires have a lower chance of a spawn, so this one's somewhat self-correcting anyway.

City-states are very hit-or-miss. Some build more than enough units to handle it, others get overrun. This was actually somewhat intentional; despite their secondhand units, city-states will continue to fall further behind the main empires in power in the future eras, especially once you hit the mid-Fusion. C-S's top out at Gravtanks and Needlejets (both weaker than the normal versions), while major civs continue on to Titans and Orbitals.
However, once the majors get orbitals, they'll take out towers regardless of where in the world they are, so it still works out pretty well. (AIs do know to attack barbarians wherever they can, and now that I've got the PlanetPearls award going, it's not unbalanced to do so.)

Also, how well is this working on Archapeligo style maps? If you haven't playtested that mapscript against this, why I can do that this evening if you like.

I've never tested a full game of it, but I did test a bit. Frankly, it's a whole different experience.

The spore towers that spawn in water within 5 hexes of land will move to the nearest shore. On normal maps this means that occasionally you'll get a tower spawn on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere; when that happens it almost never dies before spawning units, and you'll see two things: a good number of Isles of the Deep spawning, and the island will get stacked with mindworms. (I'm honestly not sure about that last part; I kind of like the idea of having to blow through worms before getting to the real threat, but I don't know how well the AI would sustain that sort of clearing operation.)

On an Archipelago map, more towers will be like this; you'll be much more likely to see them survive, and when you do get to them they'll be harder to clear out, but they'll be significantly less of a threat. Sure, the isles will be a pain, but a few stealth ships and needlejets can manage that just fine. And not having mindworms swarming all over you would be pretty nice.
My concern would be what happens in the late Fusion Era, when towers start spawning Nessus Worms (which are supposed to move across both water and land), since those wouldn't be pinned on the tiny islands and would seriously threaten your core cities. But the Godzilla jokes would be too good to pass up, so I'm okay with that.

The more I see of situations like this, the less I like the combination of impassable terrain, cultural borders, and 1UPT: an AI simply isn't programmed to take situations like this into account, and will blindly follow its programming to its death.

This is actually part of the reason why every unit in my mod has some sort of improved movement ability, most often the "all terrain 1 MP" promotion and higher movement counts, and many can move through impassable terrains (like those mountains). Combined, these keep 1UPT from crippling the AI so much; it no longer has to spend multiple turns moving through killzones to get to the targets.

This is why I've been spending most of my time trying to figure out a way to get the All-Terrain promotion to work. Vertols, Gravtanks, Nessi, and the Gravship all have it, and those first two should be the backbone of Fusion Era wars. The idea is that with this promotion your unit should be able to move full-speed across water, with full offensive and defensive ability, and move onto shore in force. Between those, the improved paradrop ability of the powersuit units, the free paradrop from the Aerospace Complex, and the orbital weapons, I figure that most future-era wars would not be crippled by that sort of terrain issue.

If it works out, I might even retrofit some of this to the earlier eras. For instance, I've added (in my upcoming version) an "Airlift" promotion to the Aerospace Complex; units that start the turn in the city get one free range-12 paradrop. It's not as flexible as what the powersuits get, but it should help a bit with getting units across small bodies of water or over mountains, since the AI tends to keep its units in cities anyway.
So if that works out, I might add an Airport building back at Radar that gives a range-6 version. Obviously more limited, but it still might be enough to get the AI to bypass those mountains you were using.

I'm also seeing another tactic (exploit?) where I won't accept a peace treaty from an AI.

That's fine if you just want the little bit of XP, but remember the negatives, like the stacking SDI bit we talked about before. And there's always the chance he'll get a unit of uranium and nuke one of your cities, which immediately would cost you far more than the little bit of XP gain.

Frankly, I wish there was some sort of War Weariness mechanism again, or at least a more granular warmonger diplomacy hit (where the longer you stretch out one of those lopsided wars, the more everyone else hates you). I'd be hesitant to add one of my own, because the usual "AI would have no clue" disclaimers still apply, although the fact that the AI doesn't stretch out wars like this anyway works in its favor there; adding a penalty to empires at war wouldn't be much of a downside to the AI, as long as the penalty grows slowly enough that they wouldn't normally kick in.

I've already got negative-happiness buildings, although they're limited to even numbers most of the time. So all I'd need to do is, for every turn you're at war, there's a 10% chance per enemy major civ, that a, invisible, stackable -2 Happiness building appears in your capital. When the war ends, they'd all go away. I could even modify this by having successful kills have a chance of removing a building for the winner and adding another one for the loser, but I think that'd penalize the AI too much. (Downside: if someone captured your capital, all of the negative buildings would have to go away and wouldn't transfer to the new one. I suppose that could be viewed as compensation for the civ that just got gutted...)
Again, the AI wouldn't understand that the war was causing that unhappiness, so I wouldn't want to push it too far, but AIs already tend to make peace with each other fairly quickly.
I could even take this further and when the negative happiness from war starts getting too large, even if the net happiness of your empire is still positive, you start getting other penalties. Negative promotions for your units, anarchy in your cities, that sort of thing. Having your production city suddenly go into one turn of Resistance would obviously be a major downside...

 

[Spatzimaus]

New version will probably be tonight (I want to test one more thing first). Unless something drastic happens, this will most likely be the last version to use the Crazy Spatz name. Given the relative stability of the past few versions, I think we're basically ready to transition to a "real" mod, version 1.0, although I want to make one last attempt to get the All-Terrain promotion working first and I'm still trying to learn 3D models. While there'll still be significant modifications made down the road, everything in the mod at least WORKS at present (again excepting All-Terrain), although a few Civilopedia entries still haven't been written yet.

So I'm aiming for D-Day, June 6, as the release of v.1.0. Unless the Rapture starts tomorrow, in which case you heathens are on your own. Nyah nyah nyah. Post-1.0, most versions will have minor balance tweaks and will mostly be about adding 3D unit models, but 1.0 should be a fully playable version. The only unknown factor in this timing is when the next official patch will be out, since it's been said that the next one will be a content/balance patch and so would require substantial work to make this mod operational afterwards.


And that brings us to the name. We'd discussed this a few pages back, but the only name that seemed to get any traction was the Earthfall label. Like Civ4's Planetfall, but taking place on Earth, and it also has the implication that everything on Earth is going downhill fast. If no one has any better suggestions within the next couple weeks, then I'm going to go with that name. It also has the advantage of being early in the alphabet, so that the mods will be listed towards the top of your menus.

That means that the first post (which will be completely rewritten) will now have three attachments:
Earthfall - Balance will be what's currently known as "Crazy Spatz's Balance Mod".
Earthfall - Content will be what's currently known as "Spatz's Mod for Alpha Centauri".
Earthfall - Player Pack will be new. It'll include a couple utility mods (like the TechDiffusion variant I often use), modified versions of the incompatible map scripts (Lakes, Great Plains, Highlands), and if I can get one in time, a TSL Earth map that has my custom resources added. Basically, all of the optional bits that you wouldn't use in every game.
I might also write up some detailed help text for people who don't want to sift through this thread; sort of like the first few posts in the thread, but a bit more detailed. (And yes, "more detailed" should frighten you.)

Thoughts?

 

[Sjru]

New version will probably be tonight (I want to test one more thing first). Unless something drastic happens, this will most likely be the last version to use the Crazy Spatz name.

And that brings us to the name. We'd discussed this a few pages back, but the only name that seemed to get any traction was the Earthfall label. Like Civ4's Planetfall, but taking place on Earth, and it also has the implication that everything on Earth is going downhill fast. If no one has any better suggestions within the next couple weeks, then I'm going to go with that name. It also has the advantage of being early in the alphabet, so that the mods will be listed towards the top of your menus.

That means that the first post (which will be completely rewritten) will now have three attachments:
Earthfall - Balance will be what's currently known as "Crazy Spatz's Balance Mod".
Earthfall - Content will be what's currently known as "Spatz's Mod for Alpha Centauri".
Earthfall - Player Pack

Thoughts?

I believe "Earthfall" is contradictory to the mod; while some parts of the Earth is going downhill, it goes against the Transcendence era, where humans "ascend" (thus the conflict), also this isn't a apocaliptic mod, isn't it?.
I think a better name could be Spatz Maius Earth Centauri mod (From Sid meier's Alpha centauri) or a more simpler Earthfall "Spatz Earth Centauri conversion for CiV "Planetrise". Or perhaps "SMAC contact" or something like that.

 

[dinobot386]

I have an excessivly large TSL map ive been using (a cannibalized version of the one from "not another earth map pack" that ive played with to make it easier on more dated computers, really just a blank map from it that ive manually placed settlers and units, and played with what resources should be where to benefit the civs, etc.) If you want to use it and or make it better ill post it... if you can tell me how to do that on the forum because it wont upload for some reason.

3 cities can fit in Italy and its to scale

Also, on an unrelated note: Why is it that the game seems to hate removing farms more than any other feature? Its gotten to the point where I get reluctant to plop down farms early on incase resources appear on those tiles.

 

[Darsnan]

And that brings us to the name. We'd discussed this a few pages back, but the only name that seemed to get any traction was the Earthfall label.
Thoughts?

Because the NL get loose on Earth due to various reasons (including accidental negligence, as well as spiteful militant elements releasing them on purpose), then how about Pandora? In context the inference makes sense.

Wormageddon was the other name I had thought of, but I don't really think that works, for various reasons.

Also, I don't think I'd asked this before, but as far as giving players the ability to capture NL: did you think about developing a Social Policy along the lines of the German's ability to "capture" Barbarians? Considering how long it takes to manufacture units in this game, then if players had the ability to "capture" additional units, then I think this would be to the AIs advantage after Breakout in that they could add a few additional units for defense/ offense via the capture mechanism.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

then how about Pandora? In context the inference makes sense.

On that one, I'd worry that too few people would think "mythology" and most would think Avatar, since that happened to be the name they used for Alpha Centauri's habitable planet (for a lot of the same reasons). I really don't want to have to explain why there are no giant Smurfs in my mod.

And just to be clear: I don't want my name in the mod's title, and I don't want "Alpha Centauri" (or any permutation of it) in the title explicitly. Beyond that, anything goes.

Also, I don't think I'd asked this before, but as far as giving players the ability to capture NL: did you think about developing a Social Policy along the lines of the German's ability to "capture" Barbarians?

You asked, but my basic counterargument is that capture is the sort of thing that HEAVILY favors the player. The AI wouldn't know that attacking the psi units would be more advantageous than attacking non-psi units; if we had DLL access to the AI then it's something that might work, but in the absence of that I'd rather not skew things towards the player any more than I already have. Also, since players will be making Psi units of their own, I'd rather just have the Mind Worms be affordable enough for players to churn out in situations like that, a la the Laser Infantry.

And finally, one of the things in the upcoming version (due out today, I'm in the middle of a test game now and I'm just getting to the good parts) is that Wild mindworms get several extra promotions, to make up for the fact that they won't have +XP buildings. A couple of those promotions are things that player-made mindworms CAN'T get (like Spontaneous Healing), so letting players capture barb-made units would have all sorts of problems.

That being said, the German ability DOES work on Psi units, if you can find a barb camp in the future eras. I once got a Nessus Worm that way. But this is so ridiculously unlikely that I'm not too worried.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, before I go get some lunch, here's version 24. It's not as extensive as most versions, because I spent most of my time trying to get the All-Terrain promotions to work and reduce some crashes (no real luck on either). I've got six hours until the Rapture, so I'm hoping to get another game in before then. I'll fix the first few posts later today to reflect these changes.

v.0.24, dated 5/21.
BALANCE:
> The Bank was being given for free in Industrial starts, but the Satrap's Court (UB for Persia) wasn't. This is fixed.
> Both the Bank and Satrap's Court were being set to have 1 Merchant specialist... which the vanilla game had already been changed to a couple patches back.
> The Ottoman Sipahi UU will now correctly require Iron.
> Oxford University, in addition to the free tech, adds +5 science to the city that builds it. This was done for two reasons: first, it was the only national wonder that didn't matter which city you put it in and had no benefit once it was built, and second, it was completely outclassed by the KGB I added in the Content mod.

CONTENT:
> The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm's "Hacked" negative promotion no longer applies to enemy Psi units. Besides just being nice for Psi units in general, this also kept Spore Towers from being reduced to a range of 1. It also just made no sense to apply to them.
> The Gravship's cargo bay can now hold either fighter units (Needlejets) or missile units. Note that other than nukes, there are no missiles in the game after the Guided Missile. I keep thinking of adding a quantum/singularity missile at some point, for killing Titans. Still considering that.
> The maximum chance of intercepting nuclear units was changed from 90% for A-bombs, 75% for nuclear missiles, and 50% for Planet Busters to 83%, 66%, and 50% respectively. 10% was just too low a chance to get through.
> The Sewer System will now correctly be given to cities for a Digital-era start
> The Transcend Specialist will now correctly give +1 science
> The Orbital weapons should now require an Aerospace Complex, and the Gravship require a Spaceship Factory. This wasn't working, previously, because of a misprint.
> Killing a Spore Tower gives 100 gold in the Digital Era, when they can only spawn Mindworms and Isles of the Deep. Note that killing one with a nuke gives no money (or if one dies from Citadel damage). You also get no money if, somehow, you kill the spore tower when it's attacking YOU. (Such as the Ranger's critical strike ability.)
> Once the Barbarian faction reaches the Fusion Era, it can now spawn Chiron Locusts and (rarely) Nessus Worms, and Spore Towers begin with the Range promotion (giving its attack a range of 3 hexes). The payoff for killing one now increases to 150 gold. (Spore Towers that existed before the Barbarian faction entered the new era don't gain this, only ones spawning after that time.)
> Once the Barbarian faction reaches the Nanotech Era, the Spore Towers now begin with the Logistics promotion, letting them attack twice per turn. The payoff for killing one now increases to 200 gold.
> When you talk to a civ that has only the starting SMAC policy, it'll now list their names as "Washington of America", etc., instead of "TXT_KEY_SMAC".
> The AI will stop trading Coal and Oil in the Fusion Era.
> The AI will stop trading Aluminum and Uranium in the Nanotech Era.
> Previously, the AI would stop trading Iron in the Industrial. I've changed this to the Nuclear, as iron will still be used for tanks and battleships in the late Industrial.
> Spore Towers now spawn Mind Worms 40% of the time, up from 30%.
> The Aerospace Complex, among its air unit bonuses, also now gives the Airlift promotion to land units. This acts like a toned-down Space Elevator: any unit that starts the turn within this city gains a temporary Paradrop ability with range of 12 hexes. (This will be removed if they ever make the actual airlift mechanism work.) If this proves to be a good addition, I'll add an Airport building in the early Nuclear era (at Radar, most likely) that gives a shorter-range version and some other economic benefit.
> The Habitation dome no longer adds +2 Production. Instead, it adds +10% to Great People birthrates in that city. It still keeps the 10% food storage and +2 food, which are its primary benefits. It's a little better for balance, fits the lore better, and reinforces the "Nanotech Era is all about the Great People" thing I'd intended.
> In an attempt to get the policy costs to not flake out so bad with the automatic SMAC policy, I've changed the equation to 5 + (7*N)^1.61. The first policy will only cost 5 if you buy it right away, although it'll rise to 25 as soon as the free policy's effects kick in on the second turn; the next five or six policies should be noticeably more expensive than in the vanilla game, but after that it'll level off more, with the progression costing about the same at ~10 policies and noticeably cheaper costs at policies number 25-30. I'll continue to tweak this equation as I go, until the devs finally get smart and let us make policies that don't add to costs. Note to players: if you start in a later era than the Ancient, don't buy policies on the first turn. Wait until the second turn, when you'll have been awarded the new policy; otherwise, you'll be paying far less than you're supposed to.
> To help account for the increased cost of the first few policies, the Palace now generates 2 culture per turn instead of 1.
> Instead of a flat +10 XP for all Psi units, they instead get a single random "mutation" from a list of promotions (with the contents of the list depending on the type of unit). You have no control over which one the unit gets, but it doesn't count towards the XP costs of future promotions.
> "Wild" barbarian Psi units get two mutations instead of 1. This includes Spore Towers.
> In the Fusion Era, non-Spore Tower Psi units also get the Xenoempathy Dome's effect (+10% combat, +1 movement); in the Nanotech Era, they get an additional mutation (a total of 3) and the Bioenhancement promotion (+10% combat). This makes up for the lack of Barracks, Armories, Military Academies, etc. for Barbarian units. I'm still testing to see if this is too much, but so far it looks pretty good.

 

[Darsnan]

On that one, I'd worry that too few people would think "mythology" and most would think Avatar, since that happened to be the name they used for Alpha Centauri's habitable planet (for a lot of the same reasons). I really don't want to have to explain why there are no giant Smurfs in my mod.

And just to be clear: I don't want my name in the mod's title, and I don't want "Alpha Centauri" (or any permutation of it) in the title explicitly. Beyond that, anything goes.

OK, so I'm thinking something which refers to the Breakout event itself, as seen thru the eyes of the people alive at that time who are witnessing and experiencing it, and how they view this global catastrophe, and the name they then would come up with to describe this event. The key signature item surrounding the Breakout event would be the fungal towers, which have a flowering bloom on top. The name should also have a negative connotation to it. Finally, since this is a global event, then the descrptive doesn't necessarily have to be in English, but it should be something catchy. Therefore, because the first fungal tower "event" (think mindworms being spawned from the tower here) was officially documented in Germany, then the name given to a fungal tower spawning by the German press was "Teuful Blume", or the Devil's Flower. This then was picked up by the world press, and the name came to describe/ symbolize the global event which was occuring at that time.

If the name and country aren't appealing, then I'm sure there are other descriptors in other countries which, in the same theme, would be catchy (i.e. it would get people to click on the link to investigate further). Let me know if you like the general direction, and I can play around with other languages/ descriptors. If it doesn't work for you, then I'll go wrack my brain some more in a different direction.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, it's after 6pm and I haven't ascended to Heaven, so I guess it's back to developing the mod.

OK, so I'm thinking something which refers to the Breakout event itself, as seen thru the eyes of the people alive at that time who are witnessing and experiencing it,

Not a bad concept, although I think global catastrophes are more likely to have some sort of negative name. Less pretty flowers, more "World War".

But I realized what was bugging me most about this: The Breakout is not supposed to be the centerpiece of this mod. I don't want to name the mod after it, because it's not supposed to be that important; it's just a transition. You go from one set of rules for barbarians to a different set of rules, with significant effect on the players. But that's all it's supposed to be; a way to get SMAC-style psi barbarians into a game built around Civ5's barbarian camps. Yes, it's a noticeable transition, to where the game has officially announced to everyone "yes, you're in the future now!", but that's not the same as saying it defines the future eras.

Frankly, I think the bigger problem is that Civ5 DIDN'T take advantage of any kind of "event" system when it was designed. You can and do get some transitions through XML, some more blatant than others, but none of those are as in-your-face as the Breakout. And that's a shame, IMO. For instance, consider the following:

> Colonization. The era where the European powers created semi-autonomous colonies that eventually broke away isn't really modeled well. The Astronomy tech gates the basic abilities, so there IS a colonization race at that point, but it's missing all of the other bits: rebellions, Pirates, etc.
So I've been tempted to create a sub-mod that adds a Breakout-style event to the Medieval/Renaissance eras to create the Age of Pirates. Spawn pirates periodically, add Privateer units to the main empires, and so on, with it basically ending once you hit the 1700s. Likewise, a true rebellion/corruption mod, where distance between cities actually matters and distant cities might decide they want to be independent if they're too remote.

> The Dark Ages. The existing game doesn't really allow for research to go backwards. Without a religion system in Civ5 there are fewer options, but it's not hard to create a temporary environment where working tiles is more desirable than using specialists, and where productivity is boosted at the expense of research. There should be more to it than that, though. If you had Civ4-style religion, this'd be where you'd add "inquisitor" units that could remove a religion entirely.

> The Enlightenment. Basically, the reverse of the above. Again, since there isn't a religion system in Civ5 there's obviously less you can do with this one, but there should still be a point where you transition from equation for happiness, culture, research, etc. to a different one. Not just unlock one more research building or one more culture building, but an entirely new equation for each.

(I've tried to mimic the above two in my future eras, with the improvement-centric economies of the Digital and Fusion eras transferring to a very specialist-oriented Nanotech era. But so much more could be done.)

> The Space Race. Obviously I've tried to turn this into something a bit more interesting in effect, but it's still just one project (Apollo) followed by six smaller projects (spaceship parts). No benefit for being the first one to the moon, nothing other than those few projects.

So in my mind, I'm just adding the Breakout and Transcendence race to that list of key events that change the underlying rules of the game. The only reason the Breakout is really notable is that it's by far the event least capable of being handled through the existing XML; while the space race and transcendence involve Lua, they're still mainly XML architectures, but the Breakout is purely event-driven (and therefore far more noticeable).

I think the underlying problem is that too little changes in this game over time. The area a city works stays at 3 hexes forever, when it should start at 2 and end at 4. The trade route equation never changes (just a few wonders adjusting it), the research equation never changes (just a few buildings multiplying it), and so on. (And war? War never changes.)
I've previously talked about the Third Mod, a hypothetical mod of additional balance changes and content that wouldn't require my future eras but would use similar designs. I keep coming back to that; if I did add a real Pirate system, some Corruption, some War Weariness, and so on to the game, would the Breakout really stand out so much?

 

[wassname]

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.

 

[dinobot386]

The AI has stopped picking policies again, just staying on 1 policy which is the SMAC starting one