Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[Spatzimaus]

I think this is is also excerbated by the C-S always having fighters.

City-states always having fighters is a good thing. They have no strategic depth to use artillery well, and no industrial ability to mass a large offensive force, so those fighters are the only thing that allows them to effectively strike beyond their borders. There's no way I'd go back to the old system, where they were easy pickings once you had bombers and tanks.

So if the randomness of Oil is the problem, then in the games where oil is too rare, does it stay too rare once you get Refrigeration and can build offshore platforms?
Note that the amount of water-based oil is proportional to the amount of land-based oil. So if you're short on one in a given world, you should be short on the other as well. (I can change this.) Of course, starting in the Industrial might hurt this a bit, since your cultural borders won't have expanded very far into water; one thing I can do is when I add a quantity override, have the extras placed in land-adjacent coastal tiles (like how I do Dilithium right now), which should make at least some of the oil easier to reach.

I don't want to make it automatic where everyone gets an oil deposit, and the same goes for the others. I'll put them on the map, but it'll still be up to you to go get them, so there's still the potential for the "haves" and "have-nots" to conflict over it. (Completely unlike real life.)

This is probably a correct statement (I always start on Industrial, so can't say for certain, though).

Well, just look at your map the next time you play, and imagine how far each empire would spread out assuming infinite time. It should be easy to get a rough idea of this, especially on a Continents or Small Continents map. Then, consider that the longer a game goes on, the more likely it is that someone gets conquered; what started as 6 civs in the Ancient might only be 4 in the Industrial, and only two competing for the spaceship. While I'm trying to balance resources for the "always peace" sort of distributions, the reality of the situation is that civs don't adhere to the mean indefinitely, so it's not unreasonable to assume a bit larger than an even share of the world.

 

[Darsnan]

City-states always having fighters is a good thing.

I agree. The perspective I was taking was one where a player did not have oil to produce their own fighters to counter the C-S fighters.

So if the randomness of Oil is the problem, then in the games where oil is too rare, does it stay too rare once you get Refrigeration and can build offshore platforms?
Note that the amount of water-based oil is proportional to the amount of land-based oil. So if you're short on one in a given world, you should be short on the other as well. (I can change this.) Of course, starting in the Industrial might hurt this a bit, since your cultural borders won't have expanded very far into water; one thing I can do is when I add a quantity override, have the extras placed in land-adjacent coastal tiles (like how I do Dilithium right now), which should make at least some of the oil easier to reach.

How about a "synthetic oil plant" building? Say link it to a terrain type such as marshes (i.e. these facilities can only be built in cities where there is a marsh nearby). In an Ancient era start this probably wouldn't come into play at all (as the player would've drained all the swamps by then), so wouldn't effect the current setup for Ancient starts. And for players who don't have an oil resource nearby in an Industrial start, they could then found a city near a marsh and construct the synthetic oil plant in this city in order to produce one oil.

I don't want to make it automatic where everyone gets an oil deposit, and the same goes for the others. I'll put them on the map, but it'll still be up to you to go get them, so there's still the potential for the "haves" and "have-nots" to conflict over it. (Completely unlike real life.)

Understood. I just find it vexing at times to be attacked by several AIs who have fighters, and I'm trying to fend them off with a lone fighter, so thought I would bring this up at this point.

On to today's notes:

1. From the game I started last night (reached Nuclerar at turn 445 and Digital at turn 540) I reached Fusion at turn 608 and Nanotech at turn 645.

2. Drop Geosynchronous Survey Pods! A GSP in a city with an Airbase can then be dropped. Is that what you intended?

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I agree. The perspective I was taking was one where a player did not have oil to produce their own fighters to counter the C-S fighters.

Well, the best counter to a city-state fighter is a, AAA/SAM, or just roll over him with tanks and ignore the fighter attacks. I'm REALLY not worried about city-states becoming too strong; generally, the reverse is a bigger issue, where once an empire decides to start a land assault, the city-state just can't do much about it because it won't make a large enough standing army.

How about a "synthetic oil plant" building?

That's basically what the Energy Bank (T15) is. But I don't want to move that ability any earlier, because I WANT there to be a ~2 era gap between when you start using a resource and when the artificial creator building unlocks. (Barring the Wall Street wonder, that is.) Otherwise, what's the point of having to go out of your way to get the resource in the first place? The main issue here is that you've been having to go a bit further out of your way than is practical, when starting in the Industrial.

So oil and coal unlock in the late Renaissance/early Industrial, and their generator building is at the start of the Digital; aluminum and uranium unlock in the late Industrial/early Nuclear, and their generator is at the start of the Fusion; Dilithium and Neutronium unlock in the late Digital/early Fusion, and their generator is at the start of the Nanotech. (Smaller gap, in theory, but that's only because my eras are a bit more packed with content than the earlier ones. Hence my comment in a previous post about stretching it out to 4 eras.) This gap is then still a significant advantage for the civs that have resource-modifying traits (Arabia and Russia); there wouldn't be much point in playing Arabia if oil was freely available.

And think of it in terms of current history; we're at the end of the Nuclear Era and entering the Digital, but we still haven't found a way to create artificial oil. (Well, we can make synthetic motor oils, but that's not what we're talking about here.) So it wouldn't make sense to create a building capable of making fossil fuels in the late Industrial/early Nuclear. I generally don't care too much about historical accuracy, but I'm trying to minimize the amount I modify the

I've mentioned before that in my original design, one resource was going to be PURELY building-created. (Neutronium, most likely.) But since resource buildings weren't working until I integrated an outside mod, I scrapped that idea. I've been tempted to add a fourth strategic that does this, but the mod's feeling a bit cramped, resource-wise, as it is.

If you wanted to make an outside mod that does something like this, it shouldn't be too incompatible with mine. But I'd rather find ways to make an oil shortage not be TOO crippling until you get to the Digital Era, especially since this only a major problem in Industrial starts.

Say link it to a terrain type such as marshes (i.e. these facilities can only be built in cities where there is a marsh nearby).

Unfortunately, you just can't do that. Marshes aren't a terrain type, they're a feature type, like forests or jungles, despite the fact that the UI will say "Marsh" instead of "Marsh, Grassland". And buildings can't require a local Feature. (I REALLY wish they could, because I want the Hybrid Forest building to require, you know, A FOREST.)

1. From the game I started last night (reached Nuclear at turn 445 and Digital at turn 540) I reached Fusion at turn 608 and Nanotech at turn 645.

That's incredibly fast. 68 turns to get through 16 techs, and then 37 turns for the next 16? Or were you just beelining up one edge and researched triangularly? (Even then, 37 turns should only have earned you a half dozen techs at most, and I don't think you CAN reach the Nanotech researching that few Fusion techs, because of how I used Advanced Spaceflight to gate it.) Even with the few "free tech" wonders out there and the occasional RA, you shouldn't have been able to progress that fast. (Not doubting you, it just means that the balance isn't where I want it to be.)

Guess I'm going to have to double-check the research balance again.

2. Drop Geosynchronous Survey Pods! A GSP in a city with an Airbase can then be dropped. Is that what you intended?

Nope. Easy enough to fix; the Lua trigger for this will now check Domain and only give it to Land units. Although I'm not sure what it'd hurt, in this particular case, but it might cause screwy things when you get a Drop Needlejet or Drop Death Ray.

Strangely enough, I'd already sort of fixed this once. In my Lua code (SpatzWonder.lua), there's a single block of logic that covers three similar effects:
> All friendly units that start the turn in this city get a promotion (Space Elevator, Aerospace Complex)
> All friendly units that start within your territory get a promotion (Planetary Transit System)
> All enemy units that start within your territory get a promotion (Hunter-Seeker Algorithm)

But I'd only put that Land domain check in the second part. So it was easy enough to duplicate the one extra IF check to the first part.

 

[Darsnan]

Well, the best counter to a city-state fighter is a, AAA/SAM, or just roll over him with tanks and ignore the fighter attacks.

OK, I think we're fixating too much on the C-S fighters, whereas this is also an issue with other AIs having oil and you don't (which I fnd to be more of an issue). Regardless, it sounds like your happy with the way the system is set up in the Industrial era, and that's fine. I do believe it was worth bringing up for discussion just in case you (or others) had some opinions about this.

And think of it in terms of current history; we're at the end of the Nuclear Era and entering the Digital, but we still haven't found a way to create artificial oil. (Well, we can make synthetic motor oils, but that's not what we're talking about here.)

The Germans were making synthetic fuel oil at the end of WW2 after they had lost the Ploesti oil fields. Or is that what you meant by your comment in parenthesis?

That's incredibly fast. 68 turns to get through 16 techs, and then 37 turns for the next 16? Or were you just beelining up one edge and researched triangularly? (Even then, 37 turns should only have earned you a half dozen techs at most, and I don't think you CAN reach the Nanotech researching that few Fusion techs, because of how I used Advanced Spaceflight to gate it.) Even with the few "free tech" wonders out there and the occasional RA, you shouldn't have been able to progress that fast. (Not doubting you, it just means that the balance isn't where I want it to be.)

I was getting quite a few techs via the Planetary Networks Wonder: when it first came online I immediately received four free techs via this mechanism.

D

 

[Eiken]

Very nice mod, today i at last got into future eras (always started ancient, 6civs, when i reached industrial they killed themself off and i ended in duel)Breakout happened to me and oh god, my PC almost started fire, i allied 7 CS to ensure nobody win diplo victory and when worms started to apear camera started flying from worm to worm as battles go on, too bad i didnt find any option to turn off computers turns (like in heroes 3 if you know). It was fine on ground, my bombers killed everything but on sea, worms ruled, i dont have enough aluminium and uranium to make stronger fleet, all invested into nuclear weaponry (i got 17 AL and around 17 Uranium ). But that was my fault.
I was earning 900gold/turn and dont have anything to build in late digital era if you dont count military units that i cant afford.

Anyway, we can make Oil from Coal in our times but its very expesive, so if you want you can implement some kind of refinery Coal -> Oil

 

[Spatzimaus]

I was getting quite a few techs via the Planetary Networks Wonder: when it first came online I immediately received four free techs via this mechanism.

If you mean the Planetary Datalinks, it should act the same as the KGB (and stacks with it); while it's possible to get a bunch of techs in a row, it's really unlikely. This is one of the few things I really would like to improve; right now it's purely probabilistic, but I'd like there to be a counter involved to where stealing two techs in a row is not possible. I think I can do this now, with the savedata functions, so I'll look into that after v.1.0.

In the meantime, I think I'll reduce the effects of the KGB and Datalinks from 4% and 5%, respectively, to 3 and 4. The intent was that a player at or above the average would only get one or two techs this way, but clearly you're getting more than that.

If you mean the Nethack Terminus, that one should automatically give you any tech that 50% of the other civs (including city-states) have, so you'd only get this if you were well behind the others. It also adds another 1% to the tech stealing chance.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, I've tweaked the resource allocation a bit, for v.1.0, as follows:

> Land-based Oil: N/4 small deposits placed on Marsh tiles. Also, previously Plains tiles had a 1 in 33 chance of horses; now it's a 1 in 29 chance of a resource, 90% of the time horses and 10% oil.

> Sea-based Oil: Changed it back to half the amount placed on land, but then an additional N/3 deposits are added in coastal (land-adjacent) hexes, easy to reach. This should be a net gain, but the numbers can be tweaked as necessary.

> Uranium: N/4 small deposits on Forest tiles
> Aluminum: N/4 small deposits on Hill tiles

But to compensate for these, I lowered the number of randomly-set small deposits from 35 to 28. (Vanilla game is 23. I raised it by 50% when I added my new strategic resources, since some of those smalls will be new resources, but with these changes it didn't need to be so high. I might eventually drop it even further.)

With this change, the only strategic resource that DOESN'T have an explicit minimum number of deposits tied to the number of civs? Horses. The other eight all now have overrides; in fact, Omnicytes and Oil now have two separate overrides each, one for land and one for sea.
So if you find there aren't enough horses in the game, I can change that, but in my experience that's not as big of a problem, because mounted units don't dominate their eras like the Oil and Aluminum units do.

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

The point being, if you're starting in the Industrial era, the odds should now be substantially better of having a locally available deposit of each strategic. Still no guarantees that they won't be clustered on the other side of the world, but if there ARE some oil, uranium, and aluminum near your territory, they won't be in inaccessible places like deep water or tundra quite as often. And you won't have those worlds that only have a single deposit of Oil on it. (Obviously this is more of an issue on small maps.)

 

[Darsnan]

And there's still the issue of the name.

How about "A Mod for the Ages", or "One for the Ages"? It's sort of a pun in that you've modded all the ages, and I also consider it a mod for the ages (i.e. a very good mod).


D

 

[Spatzimaus]

It's sort of a pun in that you've modded all the ages

Actually, I've tried very hard NOT to mod most of the earlier eras, despite the fact that I really, really wanted to. I changed a few policies (mainly the ones that became unbalanced in the future eras), tweaked a few resource requirements, and made a few minor changes to resource/improvement yields, but the noticeable new content basically starts at the end of the Industrial Era and is primarily meant to transition into the new eras. It's not like some of the other major mods, which add dozens of buildings across all eras; the vast majority of what I've done IS at the end of the tree.
(Unless you start in an era later than Ancient, in which case I've totally overhauled the cost structures. But that's a general balance change, which I should probably migrate over to the Balance mod.)

So today is D-Day, the release of v.1.00. I'll post it later tonight (and remember, that's MY tonight, meaning after midnight on the West Coast.) Since I want to spend more time narrowing down a good name, the mods will stay with their current titles; once I figure something out, I'll try to get the mods to rename the thread.
At this point, I have to assume that no major changes will happen after this point. Small rebalances, but no new units or buildings (and no terrain changes unless I get around to adding the Kelp Farm).

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

I've been trying to convert some Civ4 unit models over, and it hasn't been going too well. No idea what I've been doing wrong, but once I get the hang of it, I expect to have about two-thirds of the units with custom models in short order. The animations might take more work, but you'd at least have graphically distinct units, which'd go a long way towards making the mod more user-friendly. I'm still lacking good models for a few units (the Assault Powersuit, Bolo, Former, and Troll are high on my list of needed models), but I've found acceptable unit models for most of the rest, so it's just a matter of learning the correct process. (I've even got enough spare models that I can make units like the Needlejet and Gravship have unique looks depending on the civilization.)

The problem is that the IndieStone NexusBuddy seems to be defunct, and Nexus' built-in asset importer can't seem to find the texture .dds file you declared in the .nif, so you end up with an invisible unit when you try to generate the .gr2 from the .fbx. Obviously not good. I tried starting with a simple case, units that had no moving parts (specifically the Colony Pod) and which therefore have no need to join pieces or merge textures; in theory, then, it should have been a very simple conversion process. But so far, nothing.
It sort of boggles the mind that Firaxis wouldn't have built in a simple way to translate Civ4 units into Civ5, given the large library of Civ4 units out there.

 

[dinobot386]

If it's possible for the bolo you could put a tank inside an ironclad and scale it up so that it looks like the ironclad has treads

 

[Spatzimaus]

If it's possible for the bolo you could put a tank inside an ironclad and scale it up so that it looks like the ironclad has treads

That's basically what I was planning; the Ironclad has the right shape, so scaling it up and tweaking the model a bit would work well. It wouldn't have any of the correct animations, though.

I'd also thought to do something similar with the Gravship, by making a flying battleship. (Yamato!) But I've found enough decent spaceship models that this isn't really necessary.

For the Assault Powersuit, while what I really wanted was the Terminator suits from WH40k, the poly counts on the few of those I can find are huge. So I was going to use a Shadow Hawk model (BattleTech), scaled down; it's humanoid, and has got the shoulder cannon and missile launcher, so it'd fit pretty well.

That still leaves the Troll and Former. I THINK I've got all of the other units covered, except the Combat Engineer (which for now will just use the basic Worker model). Ideally I'd remake the worker model with some futuristic elements, maybe add a bulldozer, but that's low priority.

In the meantime, I still have to figure out what's actually wrong with what I'm doing now.

 

[dinobot386]

What are you using for the Golem? I could see one of those outfitted with a weapon and used as the troll

And im not sure if you can convert models from an RTS, but empire earth 3 had some VERY nice biological unit models (the future era models were probably the only good thing from that terrible game)

 

[dinobot386]

Heres an example

 

[Spatzimaus]

What are you using for the Golem? I could see one of those outfitted with a weapon and used as the troll

Well, remember that the "Golem" in this context really means something between Frankenstein's Monster and a Zombie. Animated corpses used as cannon fodder or disposable workers. So I've got a decent Zombie model I can use, or a couple stone golem type models that are a bit lower poly count than I'd prefer.

The main problem would be putting a weapon on them, and considering that I want to use them as workers, I'm okay with them fighting bare-handed. Again, zombies...

------------------
New version tonight, as previously mentioned. Just making sure it all works.

 

[dinobot386]

You said you really wanted to mod the earlyer eras, are you planning on making a second content mod that focuses on them?

 

[Spatzimaus]

You said you really wanted to mod the earlyer eras, are you planning on making a second content mod that focuses on them?

I've thought of it, hence the earlier discussion about "The Third Mod". But it's not a high priority for me, especially since there are quite a few other mods out there that do that sort of thing already.
The main thing is that I wanted my mods to, in theory, be compatible with some of the early-content mods that other people had developed. Not that it's worked out that way in practice, but that was the idea.

Take Policies as an example. I've only modded the existing policies and such when absolutely necessary for balance reasons, where using the existing policies in the future eras would be overpowered. But I could easily tweak all of them; not just the balance, but the idea that since I got the tech prerequisites working, you could make some of the existing policies be gated to specific techs, just like the ones in my future eras.

But like I said, not the highest priority.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Today's the day. The time is now. The beer is cold. The cheese is tasty.

It's the official transition to v.1.00!

What does this mean for those of you playing along at home (which'd be all of you, I'd assume)? Simply put, the mod is basically complete. I mean, I'll still rebalance as necessary, add unit models, and take advantage of any new functionality provided by patches. But I'm done adding new units, techs, buildings, policies, and so on, barring any huge breakthroughs. And in theory, this version is now fully playable, meaning that "fun" thing people have talked about.

And just so you know, while I'll rename the mod at some point, I'm not going to start over on version numbers. We'll just pretend that the name had always been whatever the new name is; Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

I'll rewrite the initial posts in the thread tomorrow; I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and I'm just too tired to do that now.

Here's the version notes:
v.1.00, dated 6/6
BALANCE:
> The changes made to the Policies of Constitution (+50% culture for wonder cities instead of +100%), Piety (now adds 2 culture per wonder in addition to the +2 happiness), and Theocracy (only -10% population unhappiness but also +2 culture per Theater) were moved from the Content mod to the Balance mod. The changes to Republic, Planned Economy, and Secularism were already in this mod.
> The "Head Start" building was moved to the Balance mod. The small happiness boost to your capital will remain in the Content mod, for mechanical reasons.
> The Gold bonus for the Head Start building was reduced from +1 per 4 population to +1 per 10 population. It's now enough to get going, but not resulting in the massive profits we'd seen previously.
> The Science bonus for the Head Start buildings was increased from +2 to +3. Since the Library doesn't multiply this value like it would population, +2 was just a bit too light.
> The increase in Research Agreement costs was moved from the Content mod to the Balance mod. Note that if you don't use the Balance mod, it'll result in a huge jump in RA costs between the Nuclear and Digital eras, because all future eras remain in the Content mod at the increased rates.
> The various multipliers for starting in later eras were moved to the Balance mod. The only Era-related things left in the Content mod are the changes to StartPercent (linked to the game speed settings) and the Barbarian flags in later eras, plus the definitions for the new eras, of course.

CONTENT:
> The chance of stealing techs with the KGB and Planetary Datalinks were reduced by 20-25%.
> Air and naval units can now no longer gain the Airlift or Orbital Drop promotions from the buildings/wonders that give those.
> In the vanilla game, the equation used to place Oil in the ocean was half the total number of land units, which were then grouped into 4-unit deposits. I'd previously raised this to be equal to the number of land units, effectively increasing the total number of Oils by 33% (but only once you hit Refrigeration). But this is still subject to the whims of the randomizer on land, so I've changed it back to half the number of land units, but with (N/3) additional deposits where N is the number of civs; these additional deposits will always be directly adjacent to shore.
> The game now automatically places N/4 additional small deposits of Oil on Marsh tiles, N/4 of Uranium on Forest tiles, and N/3 small deposits of Aluminum on Hill tiles. Obviously, this only applies to forests and hills that existed at the start of the game, not anything you terraformed or chopped later on.
> Increased the number of automatic small Omnicyte deposits from N/3 to N/2.
> To compensate for these additions, I've reduced the number of random small deposits placed from 35 to 25. (Vanilla game is 23, so we'd need 35 with the new resources, but with ~2.4*N small deposits added, you still come out ahead.)
> Previously, the only Large resource that would ever be placed on Plains tiles were horses (1 in 33 times). I've now made horses place only 90% of the time, and Oil the other 10%, but increased the odds to 1 in 29 (so the number of horses shouldn't change). After all, oil can be found under Texas' plains, without any marshes or forests. For reference, these numbers are identical to what I do with Omnicytes on Grassland tiles (which had previously also been 1 in 33 giving horses 100% of the time). So this should add one or two additional large Oil deposits, in more reachable areas.

Also, there's now a third ZIP file: SpatzPlayerPack.zip. At the moment this file only contains three map scripts: modified versions of the Great Plains, Highlands, and Lakes scripts designed to work with my Content mod. Eventually, this file will also include documentation, scenarios, a couple utility mods, and so on. For obvious reasons, you place the maps in the Maps directory, not the Mods directory. I've confirmed that all three work.

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

So the usual requests for feedback apply. That being said, the next version probably won't happen until one of the following occurs:
1> Someone finds a major bug/imbalance
2> The next official patch is released
3> I find the cause of the crashes
4> I figure out how to add 3D unit models correctly

Or, if none of the above occur, in a couple weeks when I've had more time to tweak the balance numbers a bit. There are still little bits and pieces not completed, like some of the building/wonder civilopedia entries, and it's been a long time since I re-tuned the turn number-to-year conversions, but the things that are related to gameplay are fully functional, and that's what really matters.

 

[Panda_Power]

Just wanted to say congrats on releasing v1.00 and that your work is really appreciated!

It really is a great mod, incl. the balance mod, and breathes fresh new life into Civ 5!

 

[dinobot386]

I have a feeling that once you get in the models and take care of the bugs that this is going to be one of the defining mods of civ5

 

[Spatzimaus]

I have a feeling that once you get in the models and take care of the bugs that this is going to be one of the defining mods of civ5

I wouldn't say that, for one simple reason: the DLL. While this mod goes a bit further into Lua coding than most, with a variety of Lua-implemented wonder and unit effects, it's nothing compared to what people will be able to do once the DLL SDK is out. And frankly, I doubt I'd modify this mod heavily once we DO have DLL access; I'm not sure I want to put up with another steep learning curve just for the sake of a couple minor mechanisms, given that the current functions work fairly well. I'll still try to do some DLL improvements, but it won't be a large-scale rebuilding effort. There are a lot of things that could be done with DLL access (like adding a SMAC-style unit construction system) that just wouldn't mesh well with what I've already done, so if I DO add things like this, it'd probably be in a secondary scenario-like mod, not the main Content mod.

So I wouldn't ever put this on the same level as a Fall From Heaven or a Planetfall, mods that fundamentally changed how the game itself worked and replaced the entirety of the core game's content. While I've tried to make a pretty large content mod, that's really all it's supposed to be. But I'm okay with that, because I didn't WANT a total conversion that basically threw out the entirety of the core game; I just wanted a core game that was balanced a bit better and didn't end with a whimper just when you were reaching the interesting technologies. Basically, for the niche that still wants to play the core game instead of total conversions, but who wants a better experience in that particular game style. As a side effect, I also wanted it to be possible to start games in later eras and still have them be playable, something that the core game didn't do well. And if this mod could be compatible with other mods people made with the DLL, like say a religion mod, then so much the better.

If this ends up as one of the defining mods, I think it'd only be so by the absence of FfH-level conversion mods. That'd be a bad thing; for Civ5 to be successful we need something people can point to as an example of what can be done with the game's modding tools, and I just don't have anything that flashy.