Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod

[mo123567]

If you go back a page or so, I mentioned that the Alpha Centauri mod is going to be the first (or last, really) of three content mods. There'd be a mythological early-era mod and a diplomacy/espionage/world wars middle mod. We're discussing the intricacies of the early content. And the three are going to be designed to be mix-and-match, so if you don't like the idea of mythological content, you can feel free to play without it and everything else will still work.

Sounds interesting. One thing I would like to see added in some era(s) is the possibility of superpower status. This could be awarded to a certain amount of top civs or just civs who meet the requirement reletive to the average at the moment. Superpower status should offer different diplomacy options. Lesser civs should think twice before denouncing a superpower and should be more willing to support benevolent superpowers. Alot of mechanics could be added and at some point backwards civs could kind of give up with trying to compete with superpowers and instead they should latch on to whichever one helps benefit their survival... kind of like city states but hopefully a lot more interesting.

Hmm, sounds like it didn't update correctly. No one else has said anything about still seeing the problem, although most people don't comment in here. It might just be that you need to do a clean install of the mod, that it's somehow keeping the old version around, or that you had a cache problem when you started that game.



It'll depend on what exactly is wrong. If it's just a problem with your installation on that one Lua file (SpatzUnit.lua), then it's likely that your savegames will still work, but there's really no way to be sure without knowing exactly what version your files are.

What is a clean install? I just removed the old version from my mods folder and put the new one in. I currently have only the latest versions of the content and balance mods in my mod folder. I wonder if it's possible that my saved game saved the messed up status of my air units. I wish things would just work

 

[Spatzimaus]

Superpower status should offer different diplomacy options. Lesser civs should think twice before denouncing a superpower and should be more willing to support benevolent superpowers.

Very similar to what I was planning. What I really want to get away from is the current AI backstabbing; the whole "world war" concept I'm planning is basically centered around power blocs, where everyone's sorted into two (or maybe three) groups based on their current relationships, and you're forced into mutual defense treaties. It'd be VERY hard to switch sides in that sort of environment, although there'd occasionally be a group of "neutral" powers in the middle you could switch to a bit more easily.

Right now, there's no transitive property to diplomacy (i.e., the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" concept); you can be best buddies with two nations fighting to the death, they'll both ask you to get involved, but neither will hold it against you when you say no. I'm trying to make a system where that goes away (at least in the later eras); as a war gets started, each side starts screaming for you to pick a side and get involved, and won't take no for an answer. A natural consequence of this is the pseudo-City State concept you mention, where the weaker ally is expected to contribute resources and such while the stronger power handles most of the fighting.

I'm also trying to make things a bit less absolute in general. Right now, an allied city-state WILL vote for you in the U.N., and will take your side in any war, even if your opponent has just 1 Influence less than you (and the act of entering a war means his Influence immediately goes to -60, regardless of how high he was before the war). I want that to stop; basically, I want it to be probabilistic, where if you have 200 Influence and he has 180, the AI might have a 45% chance of voting for you (or taking your side in a war), a 40% chance of voting for him (or taking his side in a war), and a 15% chance of abstaining/staying neutral, but either way the city-state won't forget the previous relationships. Besides being more realistic, this'll also allow me to drop my voting thresholds back to the vanilla values. (In vanilla you win with 35-50% of the votes, in my mod it's 50-67%.) If you can't be sure who's going to vote for you, then things can get a bit more frantic come election time.

I also just want to make it a bit smarter in terms of geography; if my allied city-state is on HIS continent, and I'm nowhere nearby, then it shouldn't declare war no matter how high my influence is. And if I've got a history of conquering city-states, they shouldn't trust me in a war no matter how much cash I throw at them, even if they're willing to send me strategic resources for now. This'll also require the addition of a few more variables, and storage of several status values, to mimic the effects of history. A recently bribed city-state should be a lot less committed to you than a city-state you've kept as an ally for hundreds of years through missions and small gifts, especially if the newly bribed ally had a previous longtime relationship with your mortal enemy. I'm not trying to get too political, but I'm sure people can come up with real-world examples for all of the issues I've mentioned.

So basically, I want a smarter diplomacy AI that isn't so pathetically easy to metagame. The espionage system, colonists, pirates, etc. will also be part of that middle mod, but those are far less important.

What is a clean install? I just removed the old version from my mods folder and put the new one in. I currently have only the latest versions of the content and balance mods in my mod folder. I wonder if it's possible that my saved game saved the messed up status of my air units. I wish things would just work

To be clear, if you're using a savegame that was created with v.1.06, then it won't work with 1.07. Most versions are like that; I change enough things here and there to make that an issue, and I don't generally check to see if you CAN use older savegames. But if you deleted the old mod versions, cleared your cache (not always necessary), installed the new one, and THEN started a new game, it should work correctly. By "clean install" I just mean deleting the old mod's directories before installing the new ones, to avoid mixing old files with new.

This is why I tell people to hold off on installing the mod until they complete their current games; I mostly need the feedback of people who've finished games, even if they're a version or two behind the times. Of course, if the reason for the new version is to fix a bug, there's really not much choice. I try to test each version well enough to keep that from happening, but one slips through from time to time (like the 1.06 air-on-psi bug in question, which I'm blaming on having to rush it out before my vacation).

 

[Spatzimaus]

Okay, I reworked the pantheons a bit. Current plan is to have 6 pantheons (Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Hindu, Aztec, and Sumerian). I'd originally gone with Titans, since the AoM expansion was all about them, and they'd fit in an interesting way, but I didn't want to double-Greek it. Originally I'd had a generic Sun/Moon/Sky/Earth pantheon, but the Titans pretty much work out to the same thing, so if I need to add another one in then they'd be the best choice. I'm still checking to see if some other pantheon would be a better fit, but I have no intention of making a unique pantheon for each civ; I just want six that are significantly different from each other, in terms of play. There are still a few minor issues (seriously, Sumer, how many Air and Death gods did you really NEED?) but that part's basically done.

Every civ will generate Favor in three ways:
> Religious buildings (Shrines, Temples, Churches, Cathedrals, Basilica) generate a small amount of Favor each turn (1 per turn per building, generally)
> Many of these buildings will also have slots for Priest specialists, who generate Favor and a little Happiness (basically, a lot like Empaths but without the food part).
> Fighting (win or lose) generates a small amount of Favor for both sides, although the attacker gets more.
Each of the six pantheons increases one of these three by a large amount, and one of the remaining two by a smaller amount. The Greeks, for instance, get a large bonus to Priests and a small bonus to Building favor. That's six combinations, which match well to the six pantheons. (This is why I want to keep it at six and not just keep adding more.)

Of the 21 Foci (i.e., specializations for gods), you'll have access to 14 in a game: 21, minus the three secondaries of the other major gods, and 4 foci that the pantheon doesn't have. That's 13 gods per pantheon (4 major, 9 minor) for those of you counting, and you'll typically add 4 or 5 gods to your pantheon before the Enlightenment. Between this and the above bit about Favor, I'm hoping that it'll make some VERY different playstyles without getting repetitive. Look, I know this is a confusing wall-o-text. There's no way around it; this CAN'T be a simple "pick A or B" system and still work as well as it would in an RTS.

I'll try to come up with an illustrative example tomorrow, probably using the Greek pantheon as an example since they're what everyone's most familiar with and happened to turn out the most balanced.

 

[LetMyPeopleGo]

Hello Spatzimaus,

I've a question regarding maps compatibility, besides Great Plains, Highlands, and Lakes, are the rest of the maps compatible?

I haven't played for a while and last week while starting a new game with your updated mods I've found out that the game while updating added some new maps like Continents Plus and many others with the Plus addendum, are they good?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I've a question regarding maps compatibility, besides Great Plains, Highlands, and Lakes, are the rest of the maps compatible?

Of the official Firaxis-provided maps, those are the only ones that aren't compatible.

I haven't played for a while and last week while starting a new game with your updated mods I've found out that the game while updating added some new maps like Continents Plus and many others with the Plus addendum, are they good?

I have no idea what "Continents Plus" is. It's not part of the core game, so you either downloaded it from someone else, or it's a DLC map. Either way, I can't tell you if it's compatible, but thankfully, you can easily check for yourself. Basically, a map script is incompatible if it includes something like this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
function AssignStartingPlots:GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues()
	local uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt = 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8;
	return uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt
end
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
function AssignStartingPlots:GetSmallStrategicResourceQuantityValues()
	local uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt = 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3;
	return uran_amt, horse_amt, oil_amt, iron_amt, coal_amt, alum_amt
end
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(The above is from the Great Plains map.)

These override parts of AssignStartingPlots that I'd changed to add my new resources. So if a map script overrides
GetMajorStrategicResourceQuantityValues,
GetSmallStrategicResourceQuantityValues,
PlaceStrategicAndBonusResources, or
PlaceSmallQuantitiesOfStrategics
then it won't be compatible, because it won't know how to place the Omnicytes, Dilithium, or Neutronium. Basically, my "compatible" versions of the map scripts are simply ones that remove the above routines from the map script, so that it'll use the version in my modified AssignStartingPlots instead.

 

[mo123567]

Right now, there's no transitive property to diplomacy (i.e., the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" concept); you can be best buddies with two nations fighting to the death, they'll both ask you to get involved, but neither will hold it against you when you say no. I'm trying to make a system where that goes away (at least in the later eras); as a war gets started, each side starts screaming for you to pick a side and get involved, and won't take no for an answer. A natural consequence of this is the pseudo-City State concept you mention, where the weaker ally is expected to contribute resources and such while the stronger power handles most of the fighting.

I think the entire length of the game could benefit from stronger diplomatic ties. Currently the AI could ask me to go to war with someone and then hate me for being a warmongering menace to the world after I successfully help them. The AI should judge you not just on whether you go to war or conquer someone but on what kind of relationship you had with them. If you conquer someone who declared war on you, you should not be punished by your friends. If a civilization continuously denounces you and is unfriendly towards you, friendly nations should not hate you for attacking them. If you backstab your friends (or anybody for that matter), however, you should not be trusted.

I would love to see the ability to actually maintain longterm friendships/alliances throughout the game. The current situation where the AI seems to randomly be your friend one turn and then denounces you the next turn for no aparent reason is just not fun. I guess that is a problem that should be fixed by fixaxis but after multiple patches to diplomacy, it just doesn't seem to be getting any better.

 

[dinobot386]

I was just wondering, are you planning on adding a system simular to the Citystates Diplomacy Mod to your mod? I've used it a few times and i really like the concept that keeps the game from becoming a bribefest, only problem is that the diplomatic building throw off the balance of your mod (well that and when your mod is on the diplo units look like spearmen, but i dont really care about that, actually kind of fits when im playing as Hiawatha). All the talk of diplomacy made me think of that.

Also, can you tie certain buildings to different gods? Each god having a different wonder would be pretty cool

 

[Spatzimaus]

I think the entire length of the game could benefit from stronger diplomatic ties.

That's the idea. I just want the exact balance to change as time goes on; that whole "staying neutral" thing might have worked back in the days where it took months for some civs to reach each other, but in the modern era that just doesn't fly. I'm basically intending to have it where in the ancient eras, you won't see much difference from the vanilla game, but by the time you reach the Civil War it's reasonable to expect every civ to be hostile with at least one other.
Then comes World War I, a war that started over a mostly unimportant noble getting killed in a city most leaders had never been to, but where treaty obligations pulled absolutely everyone into the fighting. To quote the Onion's "Our Dumb Century" book:

"WAR DECLARED BY ALL
---
Austria declares war on Serbia declares war on Germany declares War on France declares war on Turkey declares war on Russia declares war on Bulgaria declares war on Britain
---
Ottoman Empire almost declares war on itself"

Obviously it's humor, but it's not THAT far off from what happened; pretty much everyone in that section of the world was involved, and a few outside nations (like the U.S.) entered eventaually. So basically, the idea would be that as the game goes on, you'll lose more and more influence with your strongest allies' enemies, which'll naturally sort everone into a small number of power blocs (basically, NATO or Warsaw Pact-type alliances). Before the Renaissance Era this effect won't be very noticeable and you'll still be able to play both sides, but by the time you hit the mid-Industrial you'll have to pick a side. The margin where your allies start caring who you're friendly with will widen as time goes on, making it much harder to stay neutral, especially if you share land borders with the civs involved in the war.

I was just wondering, are you planning on adding a system simular to the Citystates Diplomacy Mod to your mod?

Similar basic concept, but the changes I'm proposing would deal mostly with the major empires, not the city-states (other than the percentage thing I've mentioned previously, which'd make CSD unnecessary). I also don't think I'll use buildings for this like CSD did, outside of a couple national and world wonders (like the KGB I've already put in). And CSD can leverage existing AIs (like the Great Merchant's desire to sacrifice itself inside city-state territory), but I'd need something a bit more complex for spy and diplomat units. I'd need an "offensive" AI for non-combat units (the Artist's Culture Bomb logic is close, and can be used as a placeholder, but it's still not quite what I need), the ability to pass through closed borders, and a working Hidden Nationality system.

 

[dinobot386]

You should make what policies you take also effect your relations, the whole Order/Freedom/Autocracy trinity should have diplomatic reprocussions, the deeper you are in one, the more civs in the others hate you, and civs in the same tree should like you more and more, also it should encourage civs in the same "power block" to take the same policies, since the player is usually way ahead culturally, it allows you to choose what direction your current block will go in, it also discourages your enemies from taking the same policies, so that in the end you have a major block for each one much like what happened in WWII and the cold war

Also, an idea for espionage, you could make a "combat" unit that really wants to sacrifice itself in enemy or rival territory, is invisable and when you sacrifice it you can see all that the city can see and also damage a few buildings in it

 

[Spatzimaus]

Also, can you tie certain buildings to different gods? Each god having a different wonder would be pretty cool

I wasn't planning on adding god-specific Wonders, because there'd just have to be so MANY of them. Even if I only limited it to the MAJOR gods, that's still six pantheons, 4 major gods apiece. And since I want to make the 24 choices exclusive (so that if you pick Zeus as your primary deity, no one else can, although if they pick, say, Poseidon then they'd still be able to take Zeus as a minor god), there wouldn't be much point in a world wonder for him. But each god will still have some unique benefit for his/her/its/their followers. (Yes, the tenses get strange; Ometeotl (Aztec) is a dual deity, and Anunna (Sumerian) is a set of 7 beings, I think.) If Zeus is your primary deity and you get him up to level 4 (only possible once you reach Monotheism), you'll gain the ability to have him throw lightning bolts at your enemies (i.e., an orbital weapon in the Classical era!), and the other gods will have a similar benefit.

--------

Now, I said yesterday that I'd give an example to explain what I'm planning for the god system, and your question gives me an excuse to be a bit wordier than normal. (Be afraid. Be very afraid.)

So you decide you want to use the Greek Pantheon, which gets the most benefit from Priest specialists and a moderate amount from temples. (The active player, i.e. you, always gets first dibs on which pantheon and god to take.) Your four choices for primary god are:
Zeus: Air / Justice
Poseidon: Water / Earth
Hades: Death / Wealth
Hephaestus: Crafts / Fire

You decide to go with Hephaestus. The Crafts focus improves production in all of your cities at the expense of a bit of growth and culture output, while the Fire focus boosts your soldiers, so he's a pretty strong choice for a militaristic player. The game will automatically place a Church of Crafts (level 2) and a Shrine of Fire (level 1) in all of your cities, while your capital will get a special building (name to be determined) denoting him as your primary god and giving certain empire-wide bonuses.

This choice means that you'll never be able to get the Justice, Earth, or Wealth foci, as adding Zeus and company as minor gods only gives you their primary focus. Also, the Greek pantheon lacks gods for Healing, Darkness, Storms, and Balance, so you can't get those foci either. That leaves at most 12 foci available to be added through minor gods, and probably half of those will never really be possible to get. So now we go to the Mandala, the image I'd attached on Friday.

Crafts is a Lawful focus, while Fire is Chaotic-Ephemeral (I keep going back and forth on the Air-vs-Fire issue, but it's CE for now). So on the Mandala, Hephaestus would start at +2 Lawful, -1 Material (+3L from Crafts, -1L and -1M from Fire). That's still fairly close to the middle, which means a large number of the weak and moderate foci (but none of the big ones) will be available.

You play for a little while, and generate enough Favor to expand your pantheon (first minor god is cheap, but the costs scale up quickly, like with policies). Your choices at that point are Hades (Death), Ares (War), Plants (Dionysus), and Knowledge (Athena). Yes, Hades; you can add him as a minor god, solely handling Death without his other Wealth focus and never being able to unlock the most powerful Death-related effects. Darkness and Balance would be available at that point on the Mandala, but the Greeks don't have gods for those (they're a bit biased towards the outer areas), and Justice would be available but that's Zeus' secondary and so is off-limits.
You pick Athena, whose Knowledge focus makes Libraries generate 1 Favor; as your relations with her grow to level 2 you'll be warned when someone else is close to completing a Wonder and your units see further, and at level 3 (which you might not ever reach) she makes Priest specialists in your empire add beakers to your research. Every city immediately gets a Shrine of Knowledge. Since Knowledge is a Lawful focus, adding Athena also shifts you one point in that direction, to (+3,-1).

Next, an event comes up that asks you what you want to do about a Minotaur terrorizing the countryside. You pick the Lawful option and kill the thing to protect the peasants, instead of, say, keeping it around to keep things interesting (C), domesticating it for use in labor (M), or ignoring it to focus on more important matters (E). This choice makes you more popular with the citizenry (adding a permanent +1 Happiness), but more importantly it moves you +1 on the Lawful axis. Now you're at (+4,-1).

Some time goes by, and you unlock a few religious techs (Mysticism, Spirituality, Deism). In your core cities, most of your level 2 Churches of Crafts upgrade to Cathedrals, and some of your Shrines of Fire upgrade to Churches. In a couple cases, your Shrines of Knowledge upgrade to Churches as well. (Favor is sort of like Culture. There's a local effect of upgrading religious buildings, analogous to the border expansions, and a separate global effect of expanding your pantheon, analogous to the Policy gains for culture.)

Again, you build up enough Favor to expand the pantheon. But now your choices have changed a bit thanks to your recent bit of lawfulness: Ares and Hades are no longer options, as you've moved out of the region their foci cover (although you can get back to them fairly easily if you pick a non-Lawful option in the next event). But you've moved far enough into the LE quadrant to unlock Zeus' Air focus as an option, so you go with that; initially he gives a ranged combat boost to all of your Archers, but if you ever get him to level 3 he'll give your archers +1 range, extremely useful in that era. Air is LE, so adding him has a 50% chance of moving you +1L, and a 50% chance of moving you 1 point in the Ephemeral direction. The die roll says E, so you're now at (+4,-2)

You research Polytheism, and those Shrines of Knowledge and Air rapidly upgrade to Churches, giving much better benefits, although this increase comes at the expense of your Fire shrines' growth. It's a good time for you.

A new event comes up, with a lost ship from the Trojan War landing on your shores. Instead of giving them good directions (L), bad directions (C), or making them a home in your empire (M), you just ignore them (E). That moves you to +4,-3.

Again, your pantheon expands. Thankfully, you've moved into one of the 9 "sweet spots" on the mandala (the ones in pink), where 8 or more choices lay. Your options there are Crafts (which you started with), Beauty, Plants, Knowledge (already have), Air (already have), Darkness (can't take), Balance (can't take), and Justice (can't take). So it's a choice between Aphrodite and Dionysus, and you go with Aphrodite for the Happiness benefits of the Beauty domain. Adding her moves you another point towards E, to (+4,-4).

Now you reach Monotheism, focusing on Hephaestus at the expense of the minor gods. All of those Cathedrals and Churches of Knowledge, Air, and Beauty start to downgrade to mere Shrines, although your Crafts and Fire buildings quickly upgrade to impressive Basilica and Cathedrals. It's getting a bit harder to stay religious; while it's great to have practically invincible soldiers backed by giant iron golems, and massive production from your primary god, those minor gods are costing you more than they provide. Also, the growth, research, and culture costs of worshipping Hephaestus are starting to add up, and you're getting left behind technologically. You start considering dumping the whole lot of them and becoming an "enlightened" society.

A few more events happen, and the next time you're offered a minor god to add, the choices are pretty pathetic (Dionysus and maybe Apollo). These are clearly not worth the drawbacks at this point, so you decide to leave the Dark Ages behind. All of the religious buildings in your empire downgrade one level each turn, with Shrines being removed entirely, your mythological units begin to disappear (but refund you part of their cost in research) and after three or four turns you've left the religious age behind (except maybe for a bit of ritual theology if you go for Piety), and your society advances quickly into an enlightened age.

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

There you have it. Because you'll generally run out of choices once you get to 5 or 6 gods, I'm going to have the AI suggest the outcome of each event that would put you in the best position to add more gods. That'll be the path the AI will generally take at each event, although I'll throw a bit of randomness in. If you ever reach a point where there are no choices available, I'm planning on triggering an Enlightenment automatically, although that might change.

 

[Spatzimaus]

You should make what policies you take also effect your relations, the whole Order/Freedom/Autocracy trinity should have diplomatic reprocussions, the deeper you are in one, the more civs in the others hate you

That WOULD form an easy basis for having three blocs, but what would you do about civs that didn't take any of those three? You can't even unlock the last two before the Industrial. Although, that would be a good way to make it so that the World Wars don't start happening until the industrual... so it'd be all nation-vs-nation up to the Renaissance, but then shift to Democracy (Freedom)-vs-Autocracy (Fascism)-vs-Communism (Order). That works.

The Piety-Rationalism exclusivity would also be available at the right time, and could be used to influence that as well, which'd make it easier for nations to shift between groups. So if the superpower in the Order group was a religious society, a few religious civs in the Freedom group might decide to switch sides if the lead democracy went Rationalism...

 

[dinobot386]

So what periods are you going to add the AoM system? At the start of the game? Are you going to add a bit of a prehistoric feel to the early ancient era? I can see Human Burial being one of the first techs to introduce religion.

Also, what myth units are you planning on adding and what will they do?

 

[Spatzimaus]

So what periods are you going to add the AoM system?

The first religious tech, Mysticism, will be a Tier 1 tech; that's the Ancient column with Pottery, Mining, etc., so in other words, it starts at the beginning of the game. Polytheism will kick in during the late Ancient Era, and I'm going to add an extra column to the Classical Era to fit several new techs there; the high point for mythology will generally be the late Classical. You'll go Monotheistic in the early Medieval, with Inquisitor units and such falling in the end of that Era. Basically, if I've balanced it right, you'll typically end the mythic age right around the early Renaissance. Even if you wanted to stretch it out indefinitely, for practical reasons (the Policy cost equation), I'm going to have to ensure that you trigger the Enlightenment before the Nuclear Era, so there's not much choice.

In total, I intend to add ~10 new techs, spread across the first three eras. My intent is to basically double the time spent in the Ancient and Classical Eras; in the current versions of my mod, each of those takes ~50 turns to complete, while the Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial each average ~100 turns. So the goal is to make those first two eras each last as long as any later era. This'll mean slowing down city growth, culture generation, and research generation by a bit, but I've already worked out multiple ways to do that. For instance, the underlying Policy the mod uses will change the yields of some existing buildings: the Monument will change from +2 Culture to +1 Culture, +1 Favor. Similarly, the Temple will go from +1 Happy, +1 Culture to +1 Happy, +1 Favor, and the +1 Culture on the Library will be removed outright. That Policy will also reduce city growth by 50%, Research by 25%, and so on. When you hit the Enlightenment, I simply replace that policy with the AC starting policy (the one needed for negative-happiness buildings), and everything works fine.

Also, what myth units are you planning on adding and what will they do?

Myth units are sort of like Psi units; most regenerate, and many have unique effects. Take a Rakshasa, for instance; it's a shapeshifter, can imitate people... good thing I've got a Doppelganger unit in the AC mod whose promotion can be given to them. Or spontaneous healing, or critical strikes, or area-effect attacks; basically, I can re-use the Lua code I'd already made for the future eras to create some myth units.

Beyond that, the answer is "as much as I can code". I've got plenty to work with; take the Greek faction in AoM. They had Pegasi, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Cyclops, Manticores, Hydrae, Scyllae, Nemean Lions, Colossi, Medusae, and Chimerae. That's 11 unique units from one pantheon. The other three factions were comparable. As these myth units will unlock through city buildings and not through technologies (at least not directly), I can make as many as I want and not worry about them clogging up the tech tree; it's going to depend on if it's possible to convert the 3D models from AoM directly. They were pretty low-resolution, given that the game's almost a decade old, but it's still better than nothing.

 

[Spatzimaus]

To expand on last night's post about Myth units:

Like in AoM, there'll be "Hero" units and "Legendary" units (hence that bit in the UI a few versions back). Hero units are one-per-empire, and are basically men or demigods, pantheon-specific; they are extremely strong, especially against Myth units, but don't come cheap. I'm aiming for 4 per pantheon, so the Greeks might have Hercules, Jason (or more specifically, his ship, the Argos), Odysseus, and Achilles.

What I'm trying to decide now is which route to take:
A> Each player has access to all four Heroes for his Pantheon, with them all falling at different techs. They're built like normal units.
or
B> Each player has access to only one or maybe two Heroes for his Pantheon, depending on his choice of primary god. So Poseidon might have Jason or Odysseus, while Hephaestus gets Hercules or Achilles. Instead of being built like normal Units, you can buy them with Favor points; doing this would slow down the expansion of your pantheon and/or improvement of your religious buildings.

For balance reasons I'm generally leaning towards B, but I might end up with something in between those two. Regardless, it shouldn't be too hard to get these guys, because it's essential that every civ get a good anti-Myth unit to counter the massive variety of things being thrown at them. There'll be other mundane units with small anti-Myth bonuses (Paladins, etc.), but until you unlock Inquisitors in the Medieval, Heroes will be your main weapon against the monsters.

The Legendary "Monster" units, on the other hand, are like World Wonders, one per world, first come first served, and they'll tend to be extremely strong Myth units that anyone can get regardless of Pantheon. This is where the Titans, or beings like Tiamat come in. I won't add many Wonders at the religious techs, but you'll have these instead to race for.
Of course, unlike World Wonders they can die, so if you build one and it gets killed then anyone else can try to build one... that might add an interesting dynamic to the game, but it might be very abuseable.

In addition to being really powerful, I'm planning on having Heroes and Monsters affect your relationships with nearby city-states automatically. So a Maritime city-state would like the fact that you have naval-themed heroes like Jason and Odysseus on your side (+1 per turn for each), but hate the fact that you've summoned Tiamat (-2 per turn), because using him in a fight is like tossing a nuke, there'll be a LOT of collateral damage. So being first to get him might not be a good thing...
This sort of thing would also allow me to go ahead with my plan to nerf city-state bribery even further. A key problem with the current system is that until you get a small amount of Influence with a city-state, it won't give you most of its missions, and this sort of Influence shift would help with that.

 

[CivOasis]

Could we get a better preview of the "Empire" mod?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Could we get a better preview of the "Empire" mod?

As I said before, it'll be the last one to be done, since it'll definitely require DLL access to add some of the most important bits, but I've already started on the simpler stuff.

I lumped this in with the other two Content mods, but it's probably a misnomer to call it a Content mod in the first place, because it'll only contain a small number of buildings, wonders, and units. For instance, the KGB, Red Cross, Wall Street, Three Gorges Dam, and Hollywood (from the current AC Content mod) will be moved into it, and I'll add a few more of these sorts of things at earlier techs. I might not add any new techs in this mod at all, but chances are I'll have to add one or two to make certain things work.

The real strength of the Empire mod will be in the changes to the game's underlying mechanics. My top priorities, in no particular order, are:
1> Adding Diplomat and Spy units that can be used to change relations with or steal from other major civs (and not just city-states, like in the CSD mod).
2> Changing the rules for city-state relationships to be less absolute, and to depend more on long-term history than on how much you bribed them last year. Just because you have the most Influence at the moment doesn't mean the city-state will declare war on your enemies, or vote for you in the elections; that just controls who they give their resources to at the moment.
3> Changing the rules for empire-on-empire relationships, to decay faster if you're allied with their enemies, decay faster if you pick policy branches opposed to the ones they've taken, add things like free trade agreements (to complement the research agreements), and in general stratify things more between "superpower" and "minor power" behaviors. For instance, right now the only way another empire would vote for you to win a diplo victory would be if you liberated them, but I want to change that a bit as well to where a superpower can expect votes from its supporters, and where a minor power simply can't vote for itself.
4> Add Events to make gameplay less predictable. Periodically, the game would add some modifier to the world; maybe you have a five-turn period where every civ's research increases a bit but gold output decreases a bit, maybe a famous person comes to prominence in one empire and everyone's relationships with them go up, maybe a minor noble gets assassinated and war is automatically declared between your empire and another one, which might trigger a World War if alliances are strong enough, maybe you go through a phase where Barbarian units are appearing all over the place, and not just in the usual wilderness locations, or maybe a massive storm comes through and damages every naval unit and coastal city and disrupts water trade routes for a few turns. If I've got twenty of these things to choose from and they trigger every ~10 turns (semi-randomized), then you shouldn't see many repeats in the course of a single game.
(If you've ever played the Advanced Civilization board game and know its Disaster system, you'll get a rough idea.)
5> Making the U.N. more interesting, by having the usual assortment of non-victory votes, like a nuclear weapon ban or a global free trade agreement. This'd require moving the UN earlier in the tree, but limit the diplo win voting until a later tech.
6> Add "colonist" settlers. The normal settlers won't be allowed to cross oceans until much later, but Colonist units can be used at Astronomy and are fairly cheap. Instead of creating a new city for you, these create a new city-state allied to your empire. This'd mainly be for Terra-style maps; the idea is that the best spots in the New World would be taken by Colonists before it becomes possible to place Settlers there, and this'd drastically change the dynamics of diplomacy.
7> Add a new "Loyalty" statistic. Every city and unit would have this value, and it would increase or decrease based on distance, Policies, Buildings, how often the unit fights, and so on; as Loyalty drops, combat effectiveness and production yields drop a bit (possibly going into Unrest if it's bad enough), and costs increase. (Effect analogous to the Corruption statistic in earlier Civ games.)
If it drops far enough, then you might see a full-scale Revolt (city turns into a city-state), a unit might desert (spontaneously disband) or possibly even a Civil War if things get bad enough. It's not quite the culture flips of Civ4, since I won't have some other civ gain what you've lost, but having to recapture your own cities or see them go neutral (and eventually ally with your enemies) is pretty rough.

While I'm designing it such that most of these will come to a head in the Industrial/early Nuclear timeframe, these effects could occur in all eras.

 

[CivOasis]

Hm, for 5 and 6:
6 - Possibility my multi-city "minor civ" concept could fit in there? (BTW, I still don't know how to give the AI for settlers...)
5 - I'd once thought up an idea where, for the diplomatic victory, you managed to get all of the full-scale civs to ally with you. Would be the most difficult of any victory type, but would be more on par with Domination for the amount of player action involved...

 

[Erobaka]

Hi,
I'm sorry if this bug has been already reported : i'm using the latest version of this mod but can't even start the game. i click on mods, i activate the 2 mods, and then click on "solo" but the games simply close.

Any help pls ? thanks

 

[dinobot386]

So when do you think the DLL will most likely be released? The game has been out for almost a year and still no word from Firaxis

 

[Spatzimaus]

So when do you think the DLL will most likely be released?

"Soon"

I have no idea, really. They've said that they're working on it, but there's been nothing specific. And even once they DO release it, there'll be a significant "getting up to speed" period before its effects are felt in any mods, so who knows when that part of my mod will make any progress. Basically, I'm not holding my breath.

That's why I'm focusing more of my attention on the Mythology mod; it, at least, can be mostly finished using only off-the-shelf XML and Lua, using some of the lessons learned developing the future content. It's also a heck of a lot more fun to argue about mythological units and various gods than it is to argue the minutae of a robust diplomacy system.

For instance, I figured out an easy way to put in a seventh Pantheon, and I was thinking to go with an animal-based Native American one (Coyote, Raven, etc.). The system I've made is perfectly set up to make one "beginner" Pantheon, a well-rounded one that's easiest to learn the system on. Basically, while most pantheons go 3/2/1 on the three Favor-generation methods (six combinations that encourage different playstyles), I can also have one that's 2/2/2, to help new folks learn the system better.
Should I use something like this Native American one for that "balanced" default, or should I just use the Greek pantheon for the safe choice, since everyone already knows who's in that one?

Since the decisions involved in picking gods and such can be done between turns, it's a lot easier to manually control the AI's decisions and still have it turn out reasonably well. Likewise, by having the buildings upgrade themselves (sort of how culture border expansions pick themselves), there's no need to teach the AI complicated decision weighting systems. So, if all goes well* I could have something playable** within a couple weeks.

*- All will not go well.

**- "playable" in the sense that it doesn't crash***, has placeholders for all of the units, and looks like something a first-grader could draw with a half-melted crayon. But hey, that's still better than Firaxis' usual attempts at "content".

***- "doesn't crash" is a goal, not a promise. The management makes no guarantees of your own computer's chances of survival****.

****- This mod contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer.

I'm not ignoring the AC mod; I've made some tweaks since the last version, but because of my vacation, most of the unit models are on hold for a bit. My top priority right now is getting the AI do participate in the space race correctly, and I think it's almost there now. So figure new version by the end of this week. But in terms of content, that mod is basically done right now; there's still a few rebalancing bits I want to play with, and I'm going to add a Medieval Era national wonder (Magna Carta) to add another defensive promotion to the game to slow down the Renaissance/Industrial conquering sprees. (Or I could just put it on the Heroic Epic for now.) But that's not really intended for the AC mod; it'd go into the Empire mod once I split it all out.