Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I really wonder why Fraxis made it so that one losses the improvement bonus as you settle on the tile. Obviously they had a different concerns than people here who think it will create super cities.

If their logic was -- lets just give universal yield to the city tile: 2 foods, 1 hummer and 1 commerce -- this changes when one founds a city on the hill with plains, so things are not that universal.

Imagine if "full bonus from resource settled upon" be a default vanilla rule. Would we then feel an urge to mod it back, like it is now?

I would imagine that during vanilla testing, it was found to be broken for a regular BtS game. Take Plain Hills for one:

The difference between a Plains Hill capital and a non-Plains Hill capital is immense. And this is just from +1 Hammer.
Let's say you spend your first turn moving your Settler onto a Plains Hill and you complete your game in 150 turns.
You just gained 149 Hammers (not even including bonuses from Forges and Bureaucracy and whatnot) over the course of your game.

And I think they (Firaxis) wanted you to not gain any additional yields as so to weigh to benefits of gaining the resource right away or wait and get a more optimal BFC.
Waiting for a city to pop its borders to grab a resource (usually a military resource or a luxury) within range can be very critical in the early game.
The only case where you would want to directly settle on top of a resource in vanilla BtS is when you absolutely need that resource right away to execute an Axe or Chariot rush successfully.

That's my two cents.

 

[Leoreth]

I really wonder why Fraxis made it so that one losses the improvement bonus as you settle on the tile. Obviously they had a different concerns than people here who think it will create super cities.

Well, the first thing to consider is that they didn't actively remove or disable a natural effect of the existing code. Cities do get the base bonus of a resource they're built on, they just don't get the improvement bonus because there isn't an improvement on the tile after all. Not implementing free appropriate improvement yields for city tiles was probably less of an active decision than simply something they didn't do.

Even though TD has a good point in that it would make cities on resources a no brainer in the early game as it saves you a citizen from working the most valuable tile available. In fact, it still feels slightly exploity when people do that with certain early civs in DoC.

 

[Tigranes]

I see, I see... One thing I know is this: if certain feature is available for all the players and used equally by all the players it stops being an exploit and becomes regular game mechanics.

Imagine Chinese AI stack is waiting for you to spawn as Mongols. AI knows your place, date, stack and kills you mercilessly, even if you don't move your units out of your first city. This will always be human exploit, it is hard and undesirable to teach AI those things. Unlike the case when EVERYONE will easily learn to settle on Cows and Deer, if they need to...

Speaking about Deer (full bonus is a lost cause I guess) -- doesn't it look strange to get Deer bonus in the late game? Whale, Fur, Ivory -- they all go out of fashion, but XX century people profit from Deer just as much as hunters and gatherers in 3000 BC. They even get boosted by Supermarkets People of all times Eat Mor Chikin!

 

[Leoreth]

I see, I see... One thing I know is this: if certain feature is available for all the players and used equally by all the players it stops being an exploit and becomes regular game mechanics.

Oh, the "everyone does it" excuse.

Flawed balance is flawed balance no matter how you call it.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

In fact, it still feels slightly exploity when people do that with certain early civs in DoC.

I would still settle on Cyprus for my capital every time because it's the safest tile in the game while still having a prime location for foreign contact.

 

[Omti]

Um... I've got a question about installing this mod. I put it in the BTS mods folder and tried starting it via the extra mod option, but it didn't really work. The game menu was whited out - I couldn't read the script, even if I could use the menu and when I tried starting a game with the load scenario option it didn't work and crashed right back to the invisible starting menu thing.

I'm not sure what I did wrong. I even tried to overwrite the Rhye's and Fall folder with the content of Dawn of civilisation, but even that didn't work. I've never used a modmod before, so I'm a bit out of ideas what I'm doing wrong.

I hope you can help me,
Beyogi

 

[Leoreth]

Hello and first of all, welcome to the forum!

It's pretty likely that it's one of the common reasons:
1. Is the mod folder situated in your Beyond the Sword\Mods\ folder and named "RFC Dawn of Civilization"? If so, what happens if you start the mod from one of the scenario files in PublicMaps?
2. Is your copy of BtS set to a different language than English? That's currently the only compatible language and for some reason this also affects the main menu and results in the invisible menu options.

 

[Omti]

Hello and first of all, welcome to the forum!

It's pretty likely that it's one of the common reasons:
1. Is the mod folder situated in your Beyond the Sword\Mods\ folder and named "RFC Dawn of Civilization"? If so, what happens if you start the mod from one of the scenario files in PublicMaps?
2. Is your copy of BtS set to a different language than English? That's currently the only compatible language and for some reason this also affects the main menu and results in the invisible menu options.

Thanks for the nice welcome.

Anyway, it seems to be the second option. My game is set to German... I hope I can switch that somewhere in the options menu... Anyway, I'll go to check it.
I haven't tried to tat it from the scenario files, but I guess I can try that now.
Thanks fo the help.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, then it's your language setting. You can adjust that before even loading the mod. I have actually translated most of the added text to German already, but still not all of it so it's currently not compatible.

 

[SheaferDaDawg]

I have a question for everyone here, that isn't specifically for DoC but might effect how much I can utilize it. I am getting a new computer with great specs (YES!) but it doesn't have a built in disk drive (sigh). Rather than buy an external drive, I was looking at my Civ4 Gold Edition and saw the magic words: DRM Free. Assuming that this is true, and I can install without using the disk, do you think that I could copy the game to an USB and then use that to drag and drop into my new computer's program files?

 

[apenpaap]

Yes, that worked for me when I got a new computer. I get a strange error of three little alert windows telling me I've selected an invalid voice capture device every time I go into the Single Player menu since, though, so I'm not sure I would recommend it.

 

[DC123456789]

Yes, that worked for me when I got a new computer. I get a strange error of three little alert windows telling me I've selected an invalid voice capture device every time I go into the Single Player menu since, though, so I'm not sure I would recommend it.

I've had that ever since I installed Civ4 with the disc more than a year ago, so I don't think it poses much of a problem other than the obvious minor annoyance.

 

[blizzrd]

Yes, that worked for me when I got a new computer. I get a strange error of three little alert windows telling me I've selected an invalid voice capture device every time I go into the Single Player menu since, though, so I'm not sure I would recommend it.

That happens to me sometimes too. The solution is to edit the configuration settings file to turn off "enablevoicecapture" (or something along those lines). Then the error message disappears.

 

[apenpaap]

Oh, thanks, that fixed it. Probably won't last long, though. My .ini file has the strange habit of returning to its original state by its own will every few days (I always enable the chipotle cheatcode).

 

[blizzrd]

Mine does that seemingly randomly too, always has done. I keep a backup file with the config parameters that I want saved nearby and write over the INI file whenever this happens though.

 

[srpt]

yeah my ini file does that too and I also have a setup to replace it quickly, and its annoying, but at least I know its happening since it turns off python exceptions as well.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

I think the voicecapture exception has to do with the mike on the headphones.

 

[blizzrd]

I think the voicecapture exception has to do with the mike on the headphones.

I've never had headphones connected to my PC, so I doubt this is the case.

 

[merijn_v1]

So I'm not the only one of whom the ini restores to default sometimes.
It happened to me when I was playing the game, just a few days ago!

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, everyone has that apparently.

It's particularly annoying when you're just tracking down a bug and no Python exception shows up - it immediately makes me assume that my implementation is wrong when in fact there's just a typo somewhere.