[BNW] Creating a HUGE mod

[PabloX]

Some of the Industrial era tech tree icons

 

[PabloX]

Soon the Industrial era tech tree will be finished

 

[sman1975]

Odd... I'm working on a similar mod that adds tech to Industrial - Info Eras, while adding a Future Era...

 

[King Morius]

The more, the merrier!

 

[PabloX]

@sman1975 my mod will add not only techs but some buildings, units etc in future my friend @King Morius You have 100% right have a good day guys.

 

[PabloX]

Industrial era tech tree finished

 

[Ryika]

Man, that's a lot of work, looks amazing. Would you be willing to make the resources available as soon as you're finished with the tech tree blueprints? I'd love to play around with them, for personal use only of course.

Out of interest, have you already thought about solutions for some of the problems that are likely going to arise? Such as conquest becoming extremely overpowered if you stretch out the timescale while using normal production values, as well as the potential yield inflation that might make numbers become really big towards the end?

 

[PabloX]

@Ryjka when Im finish the techs for all eras Im will released some version of mod, maybe v.0.01 cause there will be still a lot of work to do. So you will have all resources. And yes all units, buildings costs system must be rebuilded from 0, I know that. There will be much work to do but Im will dont give up cause I am ambitious have a nice day and wish me luck.

 

[LeeS]

Technology Cost values are subject to memory allocation limits.

Once a technology's internally-calculated cost exceeds the allocation-limit (which is either 256,000 or 512,000 but as I recall it is the lower value) the cost is not handled properly and results in essentially a free technology, with 1-turn research times regardess of the actual cost of the tech and the amount of science the player is generating.

The cost-value in the database from table Technologies is multiplied by gamespeed percentages, difficulty-level percentages, number-of-city percentages, etc. to arrive at the player's "current" cost to research the tech. It is the current cost of the tech that suffers the memory-allocation issue. Firaxis only coded the game to understand fully real-time technology research costs within the range (as I remember) of 1 - 256,000 beakers. Large maps with a lot of player cities, combined with Marathon gamespeed, combined with Higher difficulty-levels can easily hit the limit when lots of techs are added to the game and the original "database" costs of all these techs in table "Technologies" is not carefully managed. Players who were using PreHistoric Era, Enlightenment Era, Future Worlds, and tech-cost multiplying mods with inflation settings similar to Marathon Gamespeed easily hit the bug-point.

 

[PabloX]

@LeeS thats very sad news. Is there something I can do about it?? cause you know i dont wanna make all techs cost 1 research point XD. Im just wanted to create something similar to mod Caveman2Cosmos from Civ IV.

Maybe something similar to this will help: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/i-fixed-the-maf-error-here-is-how.224178/

Or maybe this can help: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/3hgbpw/theres_a_new_version_of_luajit_for_civ_v/

 

[Novu]

I think the key is to prevent technology costs from compounding to astronomical numbers. My mod handles it with this code:

<Update>
      <Where Type="ERA_PREHISTORIC"/>
      <Set ResearchPercent="200"/>
 </Update>

<Update>
    <Where Type="ERA_ANCIENT"/>
    <Set ResearchPercent="130"/>
</Update>

 <Update>
      <Where Type="ERA_CLASSICAL"/>
      <Set ResearchPercent="120"/>
    </Update>

    <Update>
      <Where Type="ERA_MEDIEVAL"/>
      <Set ResearchPercent="105"/>
    </Update>


    <Update>
      <Where Type="ERA_RENAISSANCE"/>
      <Set ResearchPercent="75"/>
    </Update>

It will require a lot of testing and play throughs of your tech tree to get the right numbers to work.

 

[LeeS]

ResearchPercent from table "Eras" is only applied when the player begins the game in that era.

PabloX will probably have to make the Cost values in table Technologies only increment slightly from one tech to another across each expanded era, and to make the Cost values for techs added for example to the Industrial Era match closely to the original data for techs in the database that are Industrial Era techs. And he'd have to make updates to existing techs as they fit into his reworked tech tree so that the increment in tech costs of "original" technologies fit well into his expanded tech-tree.

 

[PabloX]

@LeeS ok so Im going to rework all techs cost than, thank you for your advice and have a nice day. When Im done witch reworking costs Im will sent some attachment files.

 

[sman1975]

@LeeS - I'm seeing similar behavior on a mod I'm working on that adds a lot of techs.

It also adds a few buildings that improve Science/Research. In the last Era or two, the science performance has built up higher than normal as well, so that these last Era techs are quite "cheap" in terms of game turns.

In a recent Marathon/Large Map/Deity test game, I was seeing it take about 65 game turns to research a tech in the Atomic Era. By the time I reached the Information Era, the costs were about 45 game turns per tech. Those latter techs were much more expensive than the earlier ones, but took fewer turns, simply because science performance had improved so much.

So, not only do you have to account for the hard beaker limit, you also need to be aware/prepare to balance against the fact that adding buildings that have a +X to Science yields will impact latter Era tech costs as your total Science output increases.

 

[PabloX]

Ok Im reworked techs cost, and here in attached file is example of two eras: Prehistoric era techs cost from 5 to 20 and Ancient era techs cost from 20 to 55.

 

[PabloX]

Now heading to recreate Modern Era

 

[PabloX]

Some examples of icons for Modern era tech tree

 

[sman1975]

@PabloX - are you using LiveTuner? I'd recommend starting a game on a Huge Map, Marathon Game Speed, Deity Difficulty, then use Live Tuner to run 1000+ turns, then check the "costs" for Technologies on the Tech Tree. It will take some time, but at least then you can see how well the design holds up against the worst-case scenario. You'll need a bunch of cities on the map (and by GT 1000 you should have them) to see actual, in-game costs for all techs, especially those in the latter Eras.

Just a recommendation.

 

[PabloX]

No I didnt use Live Tuner before, shall I try it?? And thx for recommendations, Im will rework all techs cost again when Im finish creating them so dont worry my friend and have a good day

 

[Ryika]

FireTuner is great, it allows you to test all sort of scenarios, or just let the game autoplay with AIs while you're away or doing something else on your PC to see how the AI handles things.

Overall, tech prices will become a real problem if you introduce new buildings that grant science. The more buildings, the higher the yield numbers become, so you pretty much need to increase the prices of all later eras as well, or else you'll speed up more and more over time. A simple fix to keep research yield numbers somewhat low is to remove the 1 science you get per population (and the "per Population" bonus from Libraries as well). Then add some base science yield to the Palace to get players started and that should allow you to gradually increase the science output over time. Of course that will strongly reduce the utility of population.

Alternatively, just making Marathon "faster" might also be an easy workaround. With that many techs, games will take longer anyway, so maybe a 300% modifier gamespeed isn't really needed to begin with.