Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[dezuman]

I'm reading trough your building descriptions in the civilopedia, and lolling at the references. Defense of Monroeville mall, anyone?

The lore of Fusion lab however ... I'm pretty sure the "Andromeda" wasn't a microbe but rather some sort of self-replicating sentient non-organic compound, and that the lab was actually powered by a fission reactor...
At least it was in that one movie I saw

Still, the best one is Nessus Worm = Godzilla

Edit:
Germany AI with 5 real cities (more 2 with like 2 pop), only few gold-heavy tiles, not GA, large military, 200 GPT. Do Diety AI get boost or something? Or is that normal with 5 cities ranging between 20 and 30 in size? No commerce policies either...

Edit2:
Just launched the spaceship, and on my small pangaea map, normal resource density, there's like 10 omniscytes, most of them in hard-to-get places (around micro islands, in ice lol) exempt for 3 that's square inside Arabia's land... Is that normal?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Will you're change to the naming of units allow the naming of great people? Always annoyed me having a persain leonitus or an aztec cortez.

Should be, since they're still units; I'll try that when I get home. I was actually looking at adding something similar to the great people for the Gravships, where each one would come pre-named when you build it. But obviously, I want the user to be able to rename as necessary. I know, pointless for a unit that comes so late in the game since it's unlikely you'll ever reach that point, but it's the principle of the thing.

Thing is, you already had access to the Edit button for renaming whenever you unlocked the tertiary ability window. That window, in the vanilla game, is used for worker build actions and the list of promotions for units that level up, so I thought you could already rename a great person simply by moving to a spot where it could place a Great Improvement (since that adds an element to the builds list, activating that tertiary window). I never bothered, since I'd turn GPs into improvements or golden ages as quickly as possible (except for a few generals). It's possible that it only activates the old Edit button explicitly on promotion activation, though.

Also, will the UI change make this mod incompatible with infoaddict?

I have no idea what's in InfoAddict, but chances are it's ALREADY incompatible due to the changes I've made to TopPanel (change to how it displays strategic resources and luxuries), InfoButtonInclude (change to Happiness and food modifiers), and maybe SocialPolicyPopup. Most of these incompatibilities will fall into the "one or the other" sort of thing, where depending on the load order you'd get either my version or theirs, with no crashes or anything, but the changes won't mesh together or anything.

So if you have InfoAddict, just tell me if it has versions of any of the following in it:
NotificationPanel (xml or lua)
SocialPolicyPopup (xml or lua)
TechButtonInclude.lua
TopPanel.lua
UnitPanel (xml or Lua)
InfoButtonInclude.lua
Bombardment.lua
If the answer to any of the above is "yes", then it's not fully compatible. How incompatible will depend on which one; if the only overlap is in NotificationPanel, for instance, then it's likely that InfoAddict is changing many of the same things I am.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'm reading trough your building descriptions in the civilopedia, and lolling at the references. Defense of Monroeville mall, anyone?

I really should give a prize to whoever figures out most of the references, but I'm still not done adding them to the Nanotech-era buildings yet. Some of them are a bit obscure, but I actually had to hold back from using a few references that I knew no one would get.

The lore of Fusion lab however ... I'm pretty sure the "Andromeda" wasn't a microbe but rather some sort of self-replicating sentient non-organic compound, and that the lab was actually powered by a fission reactor...

Depends on whether you're referring to the book, the movie, or the remake of the movie; the original book's Andromeda was just an upper-atmosphere microbe that was being sampled by a "scoop" probe and got loose when the probe crashed. Not sentient, just something that no one had encountered. As for the reactor, yes, it was a fission reactor, but that'd make no sense as the lore of the fusion lab so I tweaked it. A lot of references were changed that way, to where I'd grab elements from various stories and mix them all together, trying to roughly match the technology levels to the techs in question. I mean really, the lore for the Assault Powersuit combines four different stories into a couple sentences, so I wasn't adhering to the various canons involved THAT closely.

Still, the best one is Nessus Worm = Godzilla

There was really no question about that one. From the start, the unit was intended to be a mix of Godzilla and the sandworms from Dune, in theory, although I also drew some inspiration from the Sealurk for SMAC. But mostly Gojira, because you can't beat a guy in a rubber dinosaur suit stomping through a miniature Tokyo.

And just so you know, I found an impressive 3D sandworm model someone made for Civ4...

Germany AI with 5 real cities (more 2 with like 2 pop), only few gold-heavy tiles, not GA, large military, 200 GPT. Do Diety AI get boost or something? Or is that normal with 5 cities ranging between 20 and 30 in size? No commerce policies either...

Depends which era, but that's not unheard of as you approach the late Digital or early Fusion. The thing is, cities often tend to COST you money in this mod; starting in the Nuclear Era, most buildings cost 5 gold per turn or more, so you can very quickly bankrupt yourself by trying to build tons of buildings in low-population cities. This is why the Stadium, Research Lab, and Broadcast Tower all have +10% Gold; they're not supposed to make a PROFIT, per se, but the +10% basically helps offset the 5gpt cost. So if your city's base gold income is 30gpt (meaning more like 60 once the financial buildings are counted), which is typical for a size 15-20ish city, then a Stadium is effectively 2 happiness and 2 culture for ~2 gpt (5 - 30/10). That's generally a fair trade; a larger city might make a small profit, but a small city would absolutely not be able to afford that sort of building. It gets worse when you get into the Digital, with buildings like the Hologram Theater that don't even have that sort of offsetting bonus, but there you at least have the Energy Bank.

Effectively, most players will use the trade income to offset that sort of deficit, so you don't notice the drain, but a player that limits themselves to a smaller number of well-developed cities (a common AI strategy) will do disproportionately well because his fringe cities aren't draining more than they contribute. (And remember, conquered cities have a Courthouse, which costs EIGHT gold per turn in maintenance.) And yes, the AI gets some bonuses when you play on Deity.

It'll also depend on Wonders. If the AI was beating you to any of the Digital-era financial Wonders (Planetary Transit System, Planetary Energy Grid, Merchant Exchange) then it can make a nice chunk of money.

there's like 10 omnicytes, most of them in hard-to-get places (around micro islands, in ice lol) exempt for 3 that's square inside Arabia's land... Is that normal?

Yes. Random distributions are rarely uniform; things clump. Omnicytes tend to clump on flood plains and in ocean areas that DON'T have much dilithium or oil, so it's very easy to get a lot or a little. The fact that you picked Pangaea probably exacerbated that, since most of the free coastal tiles were taken by oil and dilithium (which are placed before the sea-based omnicytes), as each resource tile adds an "exclusion zone"; you won't have two strategics spawning in adjacent tiles in most cases.

This is deliberate. Omnicytes are intended to be a "nice if you have it" sort of thing; the plot-based yields are tiny (1-3 units), but three different buildings create that resource so most of your empire's supply will come from buildings. It's supposed to be a hybrid strategic/bonus resource, where the tile yield to the host city is worth more than the strategic uses. It's not like Oil, Uranium, etc. where the geographic distribution can make or break empires.

 

[dezuman]

Well ... Might as well turn on abundant resources then

And no, the AI beat me to no wonders. They only stole a few in the beginning and then got what I didn't want

The difficulty levels in Civ are strange. They mostly affect early game, like on Deity they all start with extra settler and some workers/scouts and can churn out a large army before I get my first worker...
But in the late-game it's quite same-same, trolololling them all over

Edit: really, one-city'ing HAS to be broken somehow for me to be able to beat the highest difficulty with ease doing it

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well ... Might as well turn on abundant resources then

Abundant only increases the quantity per deposit, it doesn't really change the frequency of the deposits themselves. So if you had no omnicytes in your area, that wouldn't have changed.

Edit: really, one-city'ing HAS to be broken somehow for me to be able to beat the highest difficulty with ease doing it

The problem is that the combat advantage for a player vs an AI is just too large. A well-managed human's army can get insane kill ratios against the AI because it's just not smart enough to be a credible opponent. Wars, then, become a question of how long it'll take you to win, not whether you'll win, and the weak military production of a single-city empire really isn't going to cripple you in the long term.

If the AI was better at managing its units, you'd be overwhelmed far more easily. But until we get the DLL or the developers suddenly get good at programming, that's not going to happen.

 

[dezuman]

Or they make the AI read the manual

Bawhataminutere, I thought sparse/normal/abundant resources changed the total amount of resource tiles spawned? Edit2: I'm an idiot, I get it now
Meh, I'll try legendary start then...

Edit: I agree the AI suck at combat, despite being far superior in numbers they seem unwilling to sacrifice a few to get one of yours ... I mean, if they did THAT I would never survive

 

[Spatzimaus]

Bawhataminutere, I thought sparse/normal/abundant resources changed the total amount of resource tiles spawned?

AssignStartingPlots, when dealing with strategics, has three different sets of spawn algorithms.

Large deposits are spawned on a purely probabilistic method. Every land hex on the map is checked one by one. Depending on the terrain type, the game will go to a different premade spawn table.
If a hex is a tundra tile with no hills or forests, for instance, then the game has a 1 in 16 chance of putting a strategic resource on it. If it decides there IS a strategic, then there's a 40% chance it's an Oil, a 15% chance it's Aluminum, and a 45% chance it's Iron. However, if this hex was within a certain distance of another hex containing that resource, it'll drop that resource from the table.
Changing the setting to Sparse or Abundant has no effect on the chance of a deposit being placed, but DOES change the size of the deposits.

Small deposits are spawned on a slightly less random table. The game decides to place 23 small resources, and randomly picks 23 hexes that aren't being used for anything else. Again each type has a spawn table.
In this case, setting to Sparse or Abundant DOES have an effect on the number of spawns, but it's inverted; if you're on Sparse it'll place 34 while Abundant will place 15, because this is supposed to compensate a bit for the Large disparity. The deposits will be bigger or smaller as well.

Then there's sea-based strategics, which just means oil. It'll only use coastal hexes, and the amount is 6 units on Abundant and 4 on both normal and Sparse. The number spawned will depend on the number of units of Oil placed on land, so it'll depend on both of the above.

 

[Spatzimaus]

I know you've been waiting, but I needed to test a few things first.

There are two things I need to make clear on this:
1> I'm in the process of making unit models. This is a lot of work to get right, and I'm still learning as I go, so it'll be a while before these are done. What's there now are just quick first-pass models, with no animations, no damage states, and fairly low-resolution textures.
2> The changes made in the Content mod to the Unit Panel UI can be reverted; the goal was to add a second row of promotion icons, and the easiest way to do that was to make the box taller. However, this has several drawbacks, including that it now overlaps the combat results box. So the other possiblility would be to restore the box to its original size and use smaller fonts for the number of moves, combat strength, etc. to let me shove in a second row. Tell me what you all think. (And hopefully, I can get more than two or three people giving feedback, given that 207 people downloaded the last version.)

I'm going on vacation in a little over a week; I might try to get a new version out before I go, but most likely there won't be one until I'm back, close to the end of the month.

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

v.1.05:
BALANCE:
* The Market (and Bazaar) were shifted from +1 gold per Cow, Fish and Wheat to Cow, Fish, Sugar, and Spices. Wheat was already being boosted by the Granary.
* Instead of 3 culture per turn, the Opera House gives 2 culture plus 1 for each Cotton or Furs near the city. The +10% Great Person bonus is unchanged.
* Instead of a flat 2 research per turn, the Museum gives 1 research plus 1 for each Gems or Ivory near the city. The Culture bonus is unchanged.
* Instead of a flat 2 culture per turn, the Theater gives 1 culture plus 1 for each Dyes or Silk near the city. The Happiness bonus is unchanged.
With the above changes, every Luxury resource (and Iron and Horses from the Strategics, and most of the Bonus resources) has its tile yield increase through at least one local building. (Gold, Silver, and Gems have two.) This is done to encourage the use of the correct tile improvements on each resource tile.
* The "Theatre" is now called the "Theater". These people need to learn to speak American.
* The Satrap's Court (Persia UB, replacing Bank) was too good. In the vanilla game the fact that it was a late-game building might have justified a large bonus, but even without the fact that you'll usually be using this with my Content mod and so need it for later eras, it was just TOO good. Compared to a normal Bank, it was +2 Happiness and +2 Gold. I've removed the +Gold, and instead tripled the "+1 per Gold, Silver, Gems" ability to +3 per. The Happiness bonus was also reduced by 1, to +1 instead of +2, because of how much I've lowered all of the other late-game Happiness buildings. Persia's unique ability already was strong in this mod due to how golden ages are a bit more common. Having that good of a UB was just broken.
* The Medical Lab was lowered from 20% Food Storage to 10%. To compensate, it now gives +2 food, and keeps its +10% Science. This should slow the massive growth spurt you would see in that era. I might shift the growth curve a bit further.
* The Research Lab's maintenance cost was increased from 3gpt to 5gpt. The +10% gold it gives will more than offset this difference. This is the reason why I added that +10% to the Research Lab, Broadcast Tower, and Stadium; they won't generally make you a profit, but it makes these buildings more more cost-effective in larger cities.
* The Atoll (shallow ocean Feature) now gives naval units in that hex +20% on defense, making them a bit more valuable.

CONTENT:
* Modified the Unit Panel UI so that promotions are now separated into two rows. The game will alternate the icons, top row then bottom. Since this added 32 pixels to the height of the information area, I shrunk the width of the box by 48 pixels to keep the amount of screen real estate covered up about the same.
* Because this would now squeeze the text for the "Build a Plantation (2)" type of text when using a worker, it's been slightly reworked and rescaled to write in two rows. This might be a bit harder to read, so to make it easier I added logic so that mousing over the icon next to the description will pop up the name of the improvement/route.
* In the "small" UI (which is apparently the default for most folks) this change in height would result in a black area above the unit portrait. To fill this area I've added an "Edit" button, identical the one one you access through the Promotion/Build menu, which will allow you to rename any unit of yours at any time.
* In the "large" UI, this Edit button sits just below the name bar for the unit, next to the portrait. While this overlaps with the promotion area, the slightly different geometry means that it'd still take roughly the same number of promotions before you'd have problems.
In the small UI, you can now have 17 promotions with no problems; starting with the 18th, the even-numbered promotions would overlap enough with the image that you wouldn't get help text, although you'd still see most of the icon. The 21st and 23rd overlap with the Edit button (although not completely, so you'll still be able to mouse over the icons), and the 25th and all beyond that are off the screen. Previously, the overlap with the image would start on the 11th promotion, with the 15th offscreen.
In the large UI, you will have no problems with the first 16 promotions; the 17th overlapped with the Edit, although the Edit's text is small enough that it won't cover the whole icon, and the 18th below that only lost a small fraction to the image. The 19th and all beyond that will be entirely underneath the image and not visible. Previously, the overlap would start on the 11th promotion.
NOTE: Most future units have many inherent promotions, with Titan units having 8 or 9. Add in a few Wonder- and Policy-given promotions, and you can see how the few you gain through XP will bring you close to these new limits of 17-18 promotions. If this is a problem, I can undo the width reduction to add 1 more promotion back onto each row.

* Added custom unit models: Colony Pod, Gravtank, Gravship, Orbital Ion Cannon, Orbital Death Ray, Subspace Generator, Isle of the Deep, Stealth Ship, Vertol, and Needlejet. The Spore Tower is also in but has some graphical flaws.
* Altered the Combat Engineer model to mix a jeep with a few workers. I'll eventually add a bulldozer or something.
* Fixed help text for the Nuclear-era national wonders.
* Fixed help text on a lot of future-era techs to match their new contents.
* Renamed the Alpha Centauri policy branch to "Social Engineering". This shouldn't need explanation.
* The Mint now also gives +2 gold for each Neutronium deposit, and can be built in cities that have Neutronium nearby.
* The Apollo Program and the four spaceship parts (and their Projects) all have 50 Flavor in FLAVOR_WONDER, instead of just having Spaceship flavor. This should encourage the AI to build the parts even if it didn't pick the Science victory as its primary path.
* The Weather Paradigm has been changed from a World Wonder to a National Wonder, the food bonus has been lowered to +5% (from 10%) and the worker speed bonus has been lowered to +20% (from 25%). This is so that it's not automatically given to whoever launches a spaceship first; everyone will get a chance to have their own eventually. Also, instead of 3 Scientist points per turn, it now has an Empath slot.

PLAYER PACK:
* No changes this time. Next time, I promise; once things are a bit more stable I intend to take one of the TSL Earth maps and modify it for this mod.

 

[Sjru]

Nice changes, hopefully you will achieve fully animated models, but that's not possible without the .dll no?

And BTW; where are you going to vacation? Hawaii? Russia? Afghanistan? Kenia?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Nice changes, hopefully you will achieve fully animated models, but that's not possible without the .dll no?

No, it's possible with the current tools. The only thing that I might not be able to add will be the visual effects for weapon attacks. But everything else is already there.

What it is is you convert the base unit, then once it's finished you re-import the unit into Blender with animation #1's keyframe file, go through a bit of work, export, add a couple lines to the fxsxml file, then repeat the cycle with animation #2, and so on. It's just a lot of work, and it hinges on having the base unit set correctly. This is why I was more concerned about getting the base units in.

The other problem is that some of these unit models simply don't have animations to begin with. For those, I'd have to add them myself, and I'm not sure I know how yet.

And BTW; where are you going to vacation? Hawaii? Russia? Afghanistan? Kenia?

Worse: St. Louis.
Anyway, while I'm on vacation I'll have zero computer access (long story), so no modding will be done for a little over a week. So if I don't get a new version done within the next week (and I doubt I will, as I'll be very busy with RL issues), then there won't be anything new until the end of the month. Should give people plenty of time to playtest.

 

[Mayjori]

so i am playing a marathon game an the mind worms, etc. started popping up all over the place, while i can kill them all easily, its getting really tedious, I have 10 cities spread around the map and almost every turn i have a new one spawn that i have to deal with..... Is there a tech that will make them stop appearing or an easy/semi-easy way for me to just deactivate them completely?

spanks

 

[Spatzimaus]

Is there a tech that will make them stop appearing or an easy/semi-easy way for me to just deactivate them completely?

No.

Here's the thing. Those random mindworm spawns are basically the future-era Barbarians, and serve five purposes:
1> It disproportionately affects the tech leaders, since they'll have the most territory. It'll only rarely spawn a tower in the territory of the weaker civs, and when it does they'd be more likely to have their main military force within reach.
2> It forces the human player to play more like an AI would, and keep a few units in his more remote cities, instead of moving everything to the front lines. While it might not take much effort to kill a mind worm, if you DON'T keep units within range of them then they'll start to pillage improvements and pin your workers inside your cities. While this is relatively easy to do with air units, many Psi units have good air defense and are more easily killed by ground units.
3> AI-created units tend to have relatively low amounts of XP, because the AI won't do what a player would and make a couple dedicated military production cities to build every unit. So, these mindworms help AI units get to 30 XP to be more of a threat to you.
4> It makes the Honor tree more valuable, as these are technically Barbarians and so trigger the +25% and culture-per-kill of the base Honor policy. In a normal game, the Honor tree is less valuable by the late game simply because you'll have a fully upgraded, highly trained force regardless of whether you take that branch, while the Tradition and Liberty trees continue to grow more powerful in later eras.
5> While a large empire can easily kill a spore tower infestation, city-states often don't have enough units to do so, especially if they've been involved in some wars recently. This means that large civs with city-state allies will need to help defend their allies; if you don't, then the spore tower will kill the city-state's units and begin to bombard the city, and eventually the spawned mind worms will capture and kill the city-state. Even if they don't kill the city, they'll pillage the resources that the city-state was gifting you. If the city-state in question is on the opposite side of the world, this can be a real problem. This helps limit the appeal of a diplomatic win in the later eras.

These reasons are why I limited the effect of the "No Barbarian" option; instead of shutting of barbarians completely, that flag reduces the wild psi spawn rates by half. These are necessary functions, and I didn't want to eliminate them completely.

Now, admittedly individual mind worms just aren't much of a threat, and are more of a nuisance than anything else. Isles of the Deep are more troublesome, since they can kill many naval units one-on-one, but even those aren't too bad; they really only discourage the massive amphibious transport fleet, which is something the AI didn't do often. The Spore Towers themselves can be a bit hard to kill, but they're not too terrible once you have a decent military. But once the Barbarians get to the Fusion Era, the spore towers will start spawning Chiron Locusts and Nessus Worms, and those ARE a serious threat. A Nessus Worm is a city-killer, and will do some major damage if you don't keep a significant military around, while the Chiron Locusts are just FAST.

Also, the relative power of individual mindworms will vary wildly, because all Psi units have somewhat randomized promotions. User-created psi units only get 1 randomly-selected promotion, but Barbarian ones get 2-3 depending on era. So, you might see one Isle of the Deep get offensive promotions like Barrage, while another would get Cover and Spontaneous Healing and be much harder to kill.

 

[chris24]

hi; first of all great mod and after your last two changes the income (money) is noticeable become less and (i can't see any changes in 1.05 but) the city-grow become slower.
I usually play on pangea/continents, start in the nuclear age, map size large (the second largest), speed standart and difficult level 6-7.
I have some issues to your mod.
In the later ages the AI uses nuclear weapons often. But i watched that the AI repairs the modernisation very quick but she mostly doesn't remove the fallout, why?
Due to your mod i think buildings in the later ages become very important (they give large bonuses) but when i conquered main cities of an enemy in these cities there are only a few building (not even the start-given buildings). Is the AI not constructing these or are they deleted by conquered the city.
Some city become very huge population, also puppets of the AI. Isn't it better for the gameplay of the AI to annex these large cities or this unable to mod?
If i switched to the strategic view (F10) some units doesn't have a symbol,s o you don't see them. (e.g. graveship, labor mech, monolith (modernisation))
Does the AI really know that the colony pod is a settler because i saw some in AI main cities (and not on the way to free land)
In my opinion some wonders are to overpowerd (until now i manage to build them myself): the cloudbase academy , the planetary energy grid and the singularity inductor.
Last i don't know how the nessus worm works. I take one to an enemy city but he can't interact with it (it was not a capital). Does it cause by an enemy unit in the city or because i disabled city ?raising? (the game option so that you can't burn an enemy city if you conquer it).
edit: can you set the influence of an AI-player if he is defeated to 0, because it happend that a dead player has become allied with an city-state (alexander with full patronat tree)
chris

 

[dezuman]

It is stated in the OP that it doesn't work properly in strategic view

I believe that when you conquer a city a lot of population and buildings is lost, but the AI rarely build all that many buildings anyway...

And the nessus problem *might* be no city razing ... But why turn it off anyway? It's just bothering to have the AI plop down cities right next to you and not be able to "correct" their mistake

 

[Spatzimaus]

In the later ages the AI uses nuclear weapons often. But i watched that the AI repairs the modernisation very quick but she mostly doesn't remove the fallout, why?

I think it's because there are no Flavor ratings on Build actions. There ARE Flavors on Improvements, but the vanilla game doesn't set any of these. So the AI is picking worker actions effectively at random with weightings based on yields; it SHOULD prioritize it as repair resource improvement > clear fallout > build resource improvement > repair normal improvement > build normal improvement. But it doesn't.

I'll see what I can do to fix this. One possibility that I've toyed with is to give, say, all Infantry units the ability to clean fallout and repair improvements. This'd give them a real use in an era where highly mobile armor units dominate warfare, and as their only build actions they'd give the fallout cleanup a higher priority than your normal workers. I've actually started this process already: all Secondhand land units (the city-state resourceless variant units) have the ability to repair improvements, because city-states in later eras have too much of a problem keeping workers alive. (This was put in a long time ago.)

Due to your mod i think buildings in the later ages become very important (they give large bonuses) but when i conquered main cities of an enemy in these cities there are only a few building (not even the start-given buildings). Is the AI not constructing these or are they deleted by conquered the city.

The capture percentages are the same as for older buildings: 66% for most, 75% for financial buildings, 100% for world wonders, 0% for culture buildings, defensive buildings, and national wonders. If a city has changed hands a few times then it'll lose a lot of these quickly.
Now, it's possible that you just got really unlucky. Or, it could be that the AI never built that city up much; certain AIs are more prone to this than others. Greece tends to heavily develop cities, while the Aztecs rarely do. It'll also depend on the geography; AIs that border on multiple nations tend to always be in at least one war, so their cities will be churning out units and they'll have no time for buildings. But an isolated island empire will be cranking up the infrastructure.

Some city become very huge population, also puppets of the AI. Isn't it better for the gameplay of the AI to annex these large cities or this unable to mod?

It WOULD be better to annex them. I'm not sure why they don't, and I'm not sure if I can change that. A lot of the AI behavior isn't easily modifiable.

If i switched to the strategic view (F10) some units doesn't have a symbol,s o you don't see them.

This mod is not compatible with Strategic View, Quick Combat, and certain map types. The disclaimers for these are in the original post. The incompatibility with strategic view is a function of the combat events, though; I don't know why icons wouldn't show up in strategic view. I'll look into that tonight, since I'm hoping the devs will eventually add a more robust combat event that doesn't have that limitation.

Does the AI really know that the colony pod is a settler because i saw some in AI main cities (and not on the way to free land)

It SHOULD know; the Colony Pod does have the standard Settler AI (and no other AI types), so if it's not sending them out, presumably it'd do the same with a normal Settler. Now, because the unit does have a Combat rating, the AI might be using it as a garrison unit, which might override the standard AIs. But I just don't know. Frankly, the Colony Pod was mainly put in there in preparation for some scenario games; I don't really intend it to be heavily used in a normal game, as by the time it unlocks you'll generally have settled the world.

In my opinion some wonders are to overpowerd (until now i manage to build them myself): the cloudbase academy , the planetary energy grid and the singularity inductor.

What do you think is overpowered about these?

The Planetary Energy Grid is admittedly on the strong side, and I've been considering ways to tone it down a bit, but it's not really THAT strong; its +10% only modifies each city's base income, so it'll generally add maybe 5 gold for the larger cities and go down from there. It's far more valuable to large empires than small ones, which'd rather have the Merchant Exchange.

The Cloudbase Academy to me has seemed UNDERpowered: +4 range, when every unit has 16-20 range, isn't that useful, and interceptions happen so rarely that the two interception bonuses don't trigger often. I had to add the universal 5 XP (which the Maritime Control Center and Xenoempathy Dome also get) just to make it worth building. And it comes so late in the game; by the time you build it, you're almost unlocking Orbital units which have infinite range and don't intercept. In fact, I'd put the Maritime Control Center as being more valuable, as it comes BEFORE the final naval units and does something similar it its own unit types.

The Singularity Inductor is one of the three final Wonders in the game; it, the Dream Twister, and the Manifold Harmonics are all T23. It's supposed to be really strong, because the game's supposed to be over by that point.

Last i don't know how the nessus worm works. I take one to an enemy city but he can't interact with it (it was not a capital).

The reason for this is simple: it's a Sea unit.

"Huh?" you say? You see, to get the all-terrain promotion working (the one that allows certain units to move across both land and sea) the only solution that actually worked was to make the units be SEA units, and then give them the ability to move freely across land; the converse didn't work. So, the four all-terrain units (Vertol, Nessus Worm, Former, Gravship) are thought by the game to be Sea units that have had their terrain limitations removed. Not Naval units, note; Sea domain, but Armor/Titan combat class. This has a few quirks, like how as sea units they get extra XP from the Harbor/Seaport and less from the Barracks/Arsenal/Military Base, and can only be built in coastal cities. Somewhat annoying, but still manageable.

This also means that it uses the standard naval unit UI settings; since every naval unit has a ranged attack and no melee ability, the game will never bother with the normal combat results UI. Right-clicking should work just fine, though; you won't get the combat odds display, but it should still execute the combat correctly. I know this works for attacking units in the field.

If right-clicking on the city doesn't start a combat, then that could be a problem. I'll look into that tonight. It might also be that the game really does think of them as naval units, and since there are certain things you can't do with naval units (like capture cities) it's not letting you do the same with the Nessus.

edit: can you set the influence of an AI-player if he is defeated to 0, because it happend that a dead player has become allied with an city-state (alexander with full patronat tree)

I can, but I won't. That example is exactly why it shouldn't; if Alexander has allied with everyone, and killing him militarily would suddenly make all of his allies switch to other people, then it'd be too easy to win a diplomatic victory simply by conquering a few of the more active opponents. It'd make domination wins meaningless, because before you conquered every civ you'd long since have gained every city-state at minimal cost. In the current setup, you still have to put in the effort yourself to make allies. Also, this is a player-vs-AI issue; if you knew that conquering him fully would free up his allies, you'd change your behavior, but the AI wouldn't; an AI would take the generous peace offer to leave his last few cities alone. Big advantage for the player, and I can't have that.

In fact, I'm thinking of rebalancing the bribes again, to make them even LESS cost-efficient, so that it's nearly impossible to go from zero to Ally in a single bribe. I want missions and unit gifts to be the primary source of Influence, so that you can't just automatically turn an economic windfall (like the Golden Ages common to the post-spaceship period) into a diplomatic win. Think about it; gifting a 1000gp unit gives +4 influence, but giving the city-state 1000 gold gives you 100+?

 

[Zilurtrav]

Hey there. Long time player, first time giver-of-feedback here. I want to start by saying I've absolutely loved your mod both for fixing innumerable problems with vanilla and for reminding me of the glory that is SMAC, a game which I consider one of the best ever. I would have thrown in my two cents earlier, but until now, I've never been able to complete an entire game due to lack of time; now, however, I have finished a game from ancient to transcendence, and I would love to help out. This game was from version 1.04; I haven't had the chance to play 1.05 yet.

I'm not quite sure what would be the most useful things to share, so I'll just throw numbers at you and hope something helps! The game's on King difficulty, Huge map, Standard speed, with all default map settings appropriate to that, playing as India. Having only minor difficulty at first, missing a few wonders, I settled my second city quickly by Mt. Fuji, and got my third city somewhere around the Classical era--these three cities alone I held for a long time, and pumped everything I could into growing them.

Maxed out Tradition tree first, put a point into Commerce for the capital gold boost, got Philanthropy in Patronage, and worked on maxing out Piety from there. (By end game, I had six trees completed and all super-policies, and was forced to switch from Piety to Rationalism by gaining two more policies.) By sometime in the Medieval era I had allied the two Maritime city-states with gold alone and had no problem keeping them. Not long after I explored the world, bought out the rest of the Maritimes, and soon allied with all the Cultural, before finally allying with every city-state in the game by the late Industrial era, all with gold--and kept them easily as they kept requesting wonders I was getting all of by this point regardless and Great People I was getting a lot of.

I crushed America, and in the Modern era I destroyed the Ottomans before taking the whole continent from China (Beijing having an absurd amount of resources locally), leaving only Persia and France fighting between themselves on the other continent. Persia would have destroyed France if I did not intervene (with four Nuclear Missiles and one Atomic Bomb halving Persia's population and destroying his army; neither of them had even built the Manhattan Project yet). I kept them balanced for the rest of the game. With my six cities, I still had more than enough gold to keep allied with every city-state, and only built my seventh city in turn 625 for the nearby deposit of Dilithium; I was able to purchase there every building in the game except four of the most recent ones, and it grew at a rate of 1 per turn and cultural borders expanding 1 per turn for a long time.

In the Modern era, my capital was about 50 Citizens strong and rapidly growing with Civil Society from Freedom halving the food consumption of my specialists--it had gotten to about 60 by the time I built Clinical Immortality. By now, all specialist slots and tiles were filled, so any new citizens became Unemployed, and with half food consumption and +1 food from CI, they were food neutral--so I built the Pholus Mutagen, and with its +25% food, was producing one citizen every turn. I didn't feel the need to put the Cloning Vats there after that, so I built it elsewhere. By the end of the game, the capital was 182 citizens (see attached image), and all other cities were at least 100 except my seventh, which was 92.

The only struggle I had was finding enough Dilithium, of which I only had six (before Quantum Labs or the Singularity Inductor). This was because my many city-state allies, while they had it in their borders, never improved it throughout the entire game. I believe this must be some kind of bug, as they improved Omnicites and Neutronium without any problem.

I too tried building a Nessus Worm, but was unable to tell it to attack with a right-click (it gave the red circle without any number inside, as if it was impassable terrain). But the most major bug I found was related to either the Subspace Generator or the Orbital Death Ray. After a turn in which I used one, the blue button told me to move my stacked unit, only I had no stacked unit to move. When I deleted the unit in question, the blue button switched to Next Turn, but clicking on it did not advance to the next turn at all. I was forced to load a save from before I used the unit. I'm not sure which it is, because I was once able to use the Subspace Generator for several turns, after which I built a few Orbital Death Rays, used them, and experienced the bug--but another time, I built only the Subspace Generator, and after using it once, it bugged. So both units became unusable.

Finally, I built the Ascent to Transcendence, but the help script describes every civilization declaring war on you (I was already at war with Persia, but France, who was Guarded towards me, did not declare war), going into Anarchy (I was still producing research and production), and reducing all my population by 1 per turn (they didn't reduce in population). I might guess this is because I already triggered the end of the game by receiving all votes in the U.N., as well as building the Utopia Project, but continued on.

And that's my story! Sorry if it was a bit long-winded in places, but take a look at the screenshots and feel free to ask about any details at all. I'd love to help as much as possible.

edit: Updated with more helpful second screenshot.

 

[Spatzimaus]

By sometime in the Medieval era I had allied the two Maritime city-states with gold alone and had no problem keeping them. Not long after I explored the world, bought out the rest of the Maritimes, and soon allied with all the Cultural, before finally allying with every city-state in the game by the late Industrial era, all with gold--and kept them easily as they kept requesting wonders I was getting all of by this point regardless and Great People I was getting a lot of.

This speaks to two issues I've noticed recently:
1> Even with the ~30% reduction I gave, bribing city-states is still the best way to gain relations with them.
2> The more advanced quests, like the "make a Great X" or "build the Y Wonder", are only offered by city-states you already have a relationship with. So it basically snowballs; once you start bribing a city-state, you'll continue to gain relations with them by completing every mission they offer.

What SHOULD happen is that a city-state should offer those sorts of missions to everyone. So even if that city-state is allied with Greece, the mission it'll give everyone is the same "build the Statue of Liberty" mission, and if someone other than Greece finishes that Wonder then it'll possibly give the other civ enough Influence to switch allegiances. This'd allow me to reduce bribe effects even further, without unbalancing the rest of the game.

Persia would have destroyed France if I did not intervene (with four Nuclear Missiles and one Atomic Bomb halving Persia's population and destroying his army; neither of them had even built the Manhattan Project yet).

Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are one of those bits where it really pays to have even a small tech advantage. This is the reason I added that 10/20/30% minimum interception chance, but it's still possible to absolutely gut a slightly weaker civ with nukes. There really, really needs to be a worldwide diplomatic hit for using nuclear weapons; in an ideal game, the moment you launched those missiles, every city-state should have abandoned its alliances with you and every major civ would turn on you.

Range limitations also help; the relatively short range of nukes mean that on larger maps there'll probably only be one or two civs you can reach. Unfortunately, as you noticed, that's still often enough to utterly destroy a civ if the geography is right.

By now, all specialist slots and tiles were filled, so any new citizens became Unemployed, and with half food consumption and +1 food from CI, they were food neutral--so I built the Pholus Mutagen, and with its +25% food, was producing one citizen every turn.

That's basically the idea. If you can sweep all of the Wonders in a specific area, you can gain a large advantage in a single area. Clinical Immortality + Pholus Mutagen means massive growth, Planetary Energy Grid + Planetary Transit System means massive money, Maritime Control Center + Cloudbase Academy means great XP for new units, and so on. If you're getting all of the Wonders in all areas, then the game is basically over and you should try a higher difficulty next time.

And yes, with the right combination of wonders and policies, even the default unemployed Citizens can be impressive. +1 food from that Policy, another +1 from Clinical Immortality, +1 production from Statue of Liberty, +1 gold from the Commerce Finisher, +1 research in Rationalism, +0.6 happiness from a Freedom policy... and that's before the three T23 National Wonders start adding in. It very quickly becomes more than you'd get working a tile.

By the end of the game, the capital was 182 citizens (see attached image), and all other cities were at least 100 except my seventh, which was 92.

Definitely a record; I rarely see a city break size 50. Obviously, being India helped you tremendously on the Happiness front; I noticed you were running +217 at the end. Being someone other than India would have reduced this by over 100 just from your capital alone, barring the mitigating effects of certain wonders/policies. The changes I've made in v.1.05 would have slowed down your growth a bit, but not by THAT much.

The only struggle I had was finding enough Dilithium, of which I only had six (before Quantum Labs or the Singularity Inductor). This was because my many city-state allies, while they had it in their borders, never improved it throughout the entire game. I believe this must be some kind of bug, as they improved Omnicytes and Neutronium without any problem.

Known bug. I don't know why it happens; I've seen AIs with work boats parked on top of the resource and still won't connect it. It seems to be a problem in the Work Boat-specific AI, since as you noted the city-states have no problem hooking up the new land-based resources. I'm going to try a trick in my test version to fix this, where I give a non-sacrifice version of the Fishing Boat build action to the Secondhand naval units. If it works, then it's something specific to the Work Boat.

I too tried building a Nessus Worm, but was unable to tell it to attack with a right-click (it gave the red circle without any number inside, as if it was impassable terrain).

To be clear, this was when attacking a city, or did this also happen when attacking units in the field? I've definitely used the other all-terrain units in regular attacks before, but I can't remember if I've tried using one against a city recently. I'll also look through the UI code; it might be that the game would be willing to let the Nessus attack but that the UI simply doesn't know how to trigger that correctly.

But the most major bug I found was related to either the Subspace Generator or the Orbital Death Ray. After a turn in which I used one, the blue button told me to move my stacked unit, only I had no stacked unit to move.

I've noticed some strange things with these units, such as a refusal to rebase. There should be absolutely no problems with them stacking, as they're air units and there's no limit on the number of those in a city. Now, did you have any Geosynchronous Survey Pods deployed? Those I could see screwing things up, given their strange movement method.

I might guess this is because I already triggered the end of the game by receiving all votes in the U.N., as well as building the Utopia Project, but continued on.

Most likely correct. It only triggers these effects, currently, if you haven't already won the game some other way. I did this because previously, if you continued AFTER a transcendence win, it'd continue to subtract population indefinitely. But I think I can fix this in the next version so that it'd work for you. Obviously I don't normally give a high priority to things that happen in the one...more...turn period, but Transcendence is a special case, being that it's such a major part of the mod's theme. (I keep bouncing various possible mod renamings around... things like "Age of Ascension", etc., that imply it all builds towards that transcendence event.)

 

[Zilurtrav]

Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are one of those bits where it really pays to have even a small tech advantage. This is the reason I added that 10/20/30% minimum interception chance, but it's still possible to absolutely gut a slightly weaker civ with nukes. There really, really needs to be a worldwide diplomatic hit for using nuclear weapons; in an ideal game, the moment you launched those missiles, every city-state should have abandoned its alliances with you and every major civ would turn on you.

I absolutely agree. In previous Civ games, nukes had appropriate diplomatic penalties that discouraged anyone from using them, so, like in the real world, they were meant only as deterrents. It took the devs until the recent patch for them to add a permanent diplomatic penalty only to the civ you nuked! But I won't start a rant. Is there any way you can implement those penalties?

And yes, with the right combination of wonders and policies, even the default unemployed Citizens can be impressive. +1 food from that Policy, another +1 from Clinical Immortality, +1 production from Statue of Liberty, +1 gold from the Commerce Finisher, +1 research in Rationalism, +0.6 happiness from a Freedom policy... and that's before the three T23 National Wonders start adding in. It very quickly becomes more than you'd get working a tile.

Oh yeah. My strategy was actually to maximize every specialist bonus I could (except from Rationalism, because I was going Piety), and by end game Unemployed alone were producing +2Food, +4Production, +1Gold, +1Science, +1Culture, and +2Happiness each.

To be clear, this was when attacking a city, or did this also happen when attacking units in the field? I've definitely used the other all-terrain units in regular attacks before, but I can't remember if I've tried using one against a city recently. I'll also look through the UI code; it might be that the game would be willing to let the Nessus attack but that the UI simply doesn't know how to trigger that correctly.

I just did some testing now, and the Nessus Worm only has problems with attacking cities, in the way that I described it. It has no problem attacking land or sea units, amphibiously or not. Of interesting note is that the Combat Mech and Bolo have both bombardment and melee attack capability against units and cities, but neither can actually take a city. Trying to deal the finishing blow against a city initiates combat (like with siege in vanilla) but no damage is done and no experience is earned. Not sure if that's intentional for these units.

I've noticed some strange things with these units, such as a refusal to rebase. There should be absolutely no problems with them stacking, as they're air units and there's no limit on the number of those in a city. Now, did you have any Geosynchronous Survey Pods deployed? Those I could see screwing things up, given their strange movement method.

Geosynchronous Survey Pods were not present in the city where I had the Subspace Generator, though dozens of turns earlier in the game I had built one there and deployed in in Persia's lands. I could have moved it back out with that enormous movement ability, but I forgot about it and let them destroy it. There was also one survey pod stationed (and asleep) in another of my cities during the time I had the Subspace Generator, but I'm not sure if that's responsible.

Also, I forgot to mention something I found interesting. As there were only three civilizations left in the world, I noticed that the Nethack Terminus (grants techs 50% of other civs have) meant anyone who built it received the techs of every other player. As expected, sometime after I built the Ascent to Transcendence it popped up with one of those notices, "The most advanced civilizations," and France and I both had 117 techs, while Persia had 116--though their infrastructure was clearly not capable of matching my tech on their own (also I grabbed the Telepathic Matrix).

But yes, I agree, I should be playing on a harder difficulty. Ha!

 

[Spatzimaus]

Is there any way you can implement those penalties?

Effectively no. I can't adjust empire-on-empire relations at all, and while I CAN make city-states' relations suffer, it falls into the same category as many other changes: the AI wouldn't understand. The AIs would use nukes as before, and see their relationships suffer, while the Human player picks up an easy Diplomatic win.

This needs to be something the developers do on their end, OR we need the DLL.

Trying to deal the finishing blow against a city initiates combat (like with siege in vanilla) but no damage is done and no experience is earned. Not sure if that's intentional for these units.

I just tested it. While right-clicking on the city tells it to bombard (with the result you observed: if the city was at 1HP you'd see no effect and no XP), if you explicitly hit the "attack" button on the left (the two crossed swords, or CTRL-A) and then select the city, the Bolo WILL capture it. Since the AI doesn't have to deal with UI things like that, he should be able to use these units just fine.
This effect is common to any ranged unit that also can use a melee attack; before the last patch you'd use this same method to get an archer to capture a city. But then they added the "no melee attack" penalty to all archer-type units.

The Nessus thing seems to be tied to the all-terrain promotion, since I also tried the Vertol and Gravship and neither of those could attack a city with melee attacks (although the Gravship's ranged attack worked just fine). This is unfortunate, since Godzilla is SUPPOSED to be able to attack cities, that's sort of his whole point, so I'll see what I can do; I might just have to give the Nessus a strong range-1 attack, which'd allow him to bombard a city down to 1HP easily but not capture. (Godzilla not being able to capture Tokyo does make sense.) The problem is that I really don't want to do the same for the Vertol...

I noticed that the Nethack Terminus (grants techs 50% of other civs have) meant anyone who built it received the techs of every other player.

Yeah, I realized the math would work out that way. What I can do is change it so that it'll only trigger if MORE than 50% have the tech ( > 50% instead of >- 50% ). Now, if you're ever down to only 2 civs, you'd still get every tech the other side researched, but the 3-civ case should be a bit better.

France and I both had 117 techs, while Persia had 116

One thing is that the tech-stealing Wonders won't trigger after the first instance of the repeatable Transcendent Thought tech, so once you've started in on that you'll see a disparity. But yes, the idea of the Nethack and other tech-stealing wonders is that the weaker civs can use them to nearly keep up with the leaders technologically. They'll still suffer greatly from the inability to develop their cities quickly, but you won't have spearman-on-tank type battles nearly as often.

But yes, I agree, I should be playing on a harder difficulty. Ha!

It's tough. In a lot of ways I've tried to make the game inherently harder, where King in my mod would be like Immortal in the vanilla game. But I also made the AI players have less of an inherent advantage (they play on Prince instead of Chieftain), so you probably need to go up at least one difficulty just to compensate; I've been testing on King, and it's getting too easy. I just did an Industrial-start game and by the mid-Nuclear I'd already basically won, just due to a quirk of geography that allowed me to bottle the Mongols and English into two small peninsulas while I grabbed the rest of our continent.

Also, a lot of players in this mod start the game in a later era (Renaissance, Industrial, Nuclear, or Digital). One of the big benefits the AIs get on higher difficulty levels in an Ancient start is extra techs; on King, for instance, all AIs start with Pottery in addition to the normal Agriculture start. Immortal is Pottery + Mining, Deity gets both of those AND Animal Husbandry. Those extra techs not only mean the AI gets to military units earlier, it also makes it VERY hard for a human player to get any early Wonders. But in a later-era start, there's nothing like that, so a big part of the AI bonus on higher difficulties goes away if you start the game in a later era.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, after testing it this morning, here's what I've decided to do in 1.06:

1> Give the Vertol a range-1 bombardment attack with strength roughly equal to its melee strength. The only difference between this and what it has now is that the Vertol will take no damage when attacking any more, since it'll use this missile attack instead of its old short-range attack. I'm actually okay with this; they were a bit too fragile in my experience. In my last game I sent a pair of Vertols off to a distant location to protect a city-state ally, and then to hit the opposite end of an enemy's empire. But, each would generally only get one good attack in before it'd be too weak to continue and I'd have to retreat to rest. This was just too little effect for the investment, so switching to a ranged attack would definitely help.
This change would also help justify my previous choice to make them a 2-resource Dilithium-based unit, which had made them too expensive to mass produce. It also adds a bigger gap between the Vertol and the much cheaper Skimmer (which unlock at the same tech), since both are fast land units that ignore terrain. The Skimmer has some anti-air ability and upgrades from your Mechanized Infantry, so they're far more valuable at present, and I'd like to change that.

As a result, Vertols will be able to knock a city down to 1HP, but won't be able to capture them. The main downside is that as an Armor unit, the vertol cannot select ranged attack promotions (although I could always switch them to Siege...). I'm okay with this; their promotions will be more about mobility or defense than anything else. Now, I also like this because it provides a nice midpoint between the long-ranged attacks of the Plasma Artillery and air units and the "melee" attacks of the gravtanks/skimmers/infantry. So even if I eventually find a way to enable their city attacks, I might still keep this change.

2> Likewise, the Nessus Worm (and its Wild variant) will gain a range-1 bombardment attack with strength comparable to its melee strength. Godzilla will have his fire breath this way, and can use it on a city. As with the Vertol above, this only really means that it'll take no damage when attacking. Since the Nessus has full regeneration AND the Titan defensive boost, this isn't much of an issue anyway.
As above, nessi will be able to knock a city down to 1HP, but won't be able to capture. This makes perfect sense; you didn't see Godzilla setting up a nest in Tokyo, outside of the stupid U.S. remake; he'd come in and devastate the place, and then move on. Or in this case, the Nessus will knock down the defenses, and some mind worms or chiron locusts will move in and infest the place.

I'd actually toyed with adding a bit of "event" logic, where you couldn't build Titan units until after your empire had defeated a Nessus at least once, instead of just tying it to a project like the Ascetic Virtues. After all, Godzilla inspired MechaGodzilla... but this was impractical for a lot of reasons. Still, I'm hoping that most games will have a point in the Fusion Era where you're faced with a rampaging Wild Nessus and scramble to stop it with needlejets and gravtanks as you wait to unlock your own Titans.
One possibility I'm looking at now is to add a second mini-Breakout when the Barbarian faction enters the Fusion Era, where it doesn't just unlock Nessi and Chirons on the standard spawn table, but also manually spawns a few clusters of them on the map (like how the normal Breakout spawns mind worms on land and Isles on the sea without any accompanying Spore Towers). This might be a little rough on the more isolated city-states, but I actually like the idea of a diplomatic win effectively becoming impossible if you wait too long, and this'd be a decent way to do that.

3> The Gravship will remain unchanged. It won't be able to capture cities, but again, a giant floating ship in the sky isn't exactly the best choice for an occupying force in the first place, and if you have one of these then I'm sure you also have plenty of ground units to finish the job. Likewise, there's no need to add a ranged attack to the Former (the fourth all-terrain unit) because it can't make attacks in the first place.