[DESIGN] Eden : a SMAC themed mod design

[Maniac]

between that and the thought that Maniac's Planetfall mod didn't really gain steam till BtS (i.e. 2.5 years after the cIV vanilla release) points more to us getting our ducks in a row at this point than anything else.

The biggest reason for that was I didn't know how to code C++ and compile a DLL before that. BtS breaking the mod forced me to learn that. In any case, IMO it's best to plan as much in advance before even touching a single XML file.

 

[Valkrionn]

The biggest reason for that was I didn't know how to code C++ and compile a DLL before that. BtS breaking the mod forced me to learn that. In any case, IMO it's best to plan as much in advance before even touching a single XML file.

Definitely agree. The other Eden team (as per my previous post here, a fantasy mod that is completely unrelated) is busy planning all the mechanics and how units will be structured, so we can get our artists working on it.

 

[jenks]

So, to come to the reason for the post: Any chance we could persuade you to change the name? I realize that it is appropriate for an SMAC themed mod, but it is also appropriate for ours... And we've dropping the name for several months now.

Valkrionn sorry I thought I had already sent you a reply!

At present I am not going to mod this 'Eden' design: I want to see it done and I'm happy to discuss how it could be done, but graphics and Lua are out of my skillset at the moment. I need a solid base to begin with. But as I said above, I wanted to open up a discussion about incorporating some SMAC themes into Civ V, whether to progress a design for myself, or to help others with their own thoughts.

I love Eden as a name for a SMAC conversion mod, but I will say now that if I do mod this I will come up with a new name, to avoid any confusion.

Look forward to seeing your work!

 

[Valkrionn]

Thanks!

We don't know when ours will be able to release, given the fact that we absolutely need C++ for the major feature the entire mod is designed around, but we're polishing the design and trying to get some art work going.

 

[Darsnan]

The biggest reason for that was I didn't know how to code C++ and compile a DLL before that. .

Ah, OK. I just remember that Planetfall really started accelerating around that timeframe.

IMO it's best to plan as much in advance before even touching a single XML file.

Sounds like good advice. If you've got any other thoughts/ feedback/ retrospectives I'm sure everyone would like to hear that as well.


D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I'll try to make a thread tomorrow. Even if it's not working by then, I can get enough in place to start the discussions.

Okay, I know you're all waiting with bated breath for me to post all of this, but Real Life kinda interfered this last week. I'm still trying to write up the text of the thread offline (converting a Word design document into something more appropriate), and I'll try to post it tonight or tomorrow. But before I do, I have a question for all y'all:

My "mod" is actually two mods. The first one, Crazy Spatz's Mod, was designed to be usable on its own, and contains a bunch of balance changes intended to make the game more even, especially in those AI-on-AI wars you never see. These include:
> City growth now takes about 33% more food. (Don't panic, you'll see.)
> The combat penalty for flat terrain is only -20%.
> All units get the Home Field Advantage promotion, given by the Palace: +10% to combat within friendly territory, doubled to +20% when attacking within friendly territory.
> Instead of cities having 20 HP and regenerating 1/turn, they have 25 and regenerate 2/turn.
> Circumnavigation actually gives the +1 MP to naval units.
> I'm also trying to integrate a simple version of the Tech Diffusion mod here, which gives bonus beakers to a civ if they're researching something another civ already has. This keeps an AI from falling twenty techs behind in the endgame and posing no threat.

I've also added a new Engineer unit at Dynamite. It's an upgraded Worker, with 3 movement points and scout-like movement abilities (all terrain 1 MP, can cross rivers) that builds at 125% speed but costs about three times as much and can't be captured. Not a balance change, just something I really wanted.
(Also unit-related: Bombers and B-17s upgrade to Stealth Bombers, and Cavalry upgrade to Gunships. Just because.)

But the big change is in buildings. Basically, the Granary (+2 food), Hospital (50% storage), and Medical Lab (25% storage) were totally reworked, and new buildings were added:
Granary: 10% storage, +1 food
Aqueduct: 10% storage, +1 happy
Sewer System: 10% storage, +1 happy, +2 food, only Medium cities
Hospital: 20% storage, +2 research
Medical Lab: 20% storage, +5 research
Recycling Center: 10% storage, +1 happy, +2 production, +1 gold, only Large cities
(I'm doing those yield numbers from memory, but they should be right.)

Total storage, with all six, is 80%, slightly higher than the 75% you get from the core game (resulting in 25% faster growth). So this almost offsets the higher food costs for growth in the endgame, and the steady progression helps offset it through the earlier stages of the game. In Civ4 you'd build the granary right away so the storage became a non-issue, factored into the entire game's balance, but in Civ5, there's a HUGE jump in power once you unlock Hospitals (tied to the jump you get from Factories) and I wanted to end that.

----------

Now, the question is this: should I make this mod an explicit prerequisite for the Alpha Centauri "content" mod? It'd change a few things if I did. And I really want to keep them as two distinct mods, because I'd want to use the above mod even if I didn't add the AC content. But while ModBuddy has the ability to declare dependencies, I haven't seen many other people do this,

 

[Rubin]

In general:

• What to do about City States?
• Great People mechanics?
• Leave out Terrain Elevation mechanics; i.e. raise/lower terrain!
• Leave out any kind of Unit Design Workshop!
• If units can be "designed" using post-production upgrades (e.g. trance, nerve gas, drop pods), consider the cost (cost of upgrades, upkeep cost, etc.). Mostly because armies play very differently in Civ5.
• How to implement Planetary Council or improve the U.N.?
• Figure out how to add native life (fauna and flora). Replace Jungle feature with Xenofungus?
• How to deal with Social Policies versus Social Engineering?
• Add naval bases/cities?
• Happiness mechanics?
• Tradeable resources? Both strategic and luxury.

I agree with Maniac that planning in advance is very important. Currently, Civ5 is bound to receive major patches and potentially important feature/content expansions. Hence, you are currently better off detailing how the mod "should" play and actively seeking and producing new graphics for the mod.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Not a bad list of topics. Here's what I've come up with for each, within my own mod. (Again, I am NOT going for a straight translation of SMAC. My mod assumes that this goes on the end of the tech tree, and that you'd usually play through the earlier eras before reaching the new stuff.)

What to do about City States?

Nothing, although I'd like to see the addition of "Scientific" City-States (add some research, like how Culturals add culture) and "Religious" City-States (see the thread on that).

Great People mechanics?

I'm adding the Empath specialist, which adds +1 happiness and give 5 Great Empath points (instead of the 3 of other types, because starting them in the later era means that you'll have to go much further to spawn one).
This spawns the Great Empath unit. (Current names: Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp.) Great Empaths can sacrifice to make the Monolith terrain improvement (adds +3 happiness when worked), or can "Faction Bomb", which adds +10 to all city-states' relations, sets all hostile players/AIs to neutral, and ends all wars you're currently in. (Obviously, the Faction Bomb can't be implemented without a bit of work.)
I've also added the Transcend specialist for a few top-end buildings: 1 food, 1 production, 1 gold, 1 research, 1 culture, but generates no GPPs and you'll never have many of them.
Other GPs work the same as before.

Leave out Terrain Elevation mechanics; i.e. raise/lower terrain!

Actually, I want to add this, albeit in a more rigid form than SMAC allows. Simply terraform plains to hills or hills to plains, desert to grassland, tundra to plains, that sort of thing. There are mods that do this already, but they have graphical problems.

Leave out any kind of Unit Design Workshop!

Unfortunately I think this has to be left out. It's just too much complexity to deal with, and there's not as much reason for it with the way promotions work already.

If units can be "designed" using post-production upgrades (e.g. trance, nerve gas, drop pods), consider the cost (cost of upgrades, upkeep cost, etc.).

Again, leave it out. Although, I did add "Soporific Gas", "Trance", and "EMP" as promotions. (Trance gives a big bonus against mindworm-type units, EMP gives +15% against all the mechanized unit types, and Soporific gives +15% against all the NON-mechanized units.)

What I intend to do instead is add a good number of distinct units, some of which correspond to certain combos in SMAC. But each will be a Civ-style unit with fixed stats. So the Gravtank will be a distinct unit that unlocks at Applied Gravitonics and acts as an upgrade to the Modern Armor, but eventually it'll be outdated when your army switches over to Combat Mechs, Gravships, and Bolos.

The problem with a SMAC-style unit system is that it's like the Civ style; as you go up in technology, the new units are absolutely stronger than the old ones, so anyone who falls behind gets overrun. I wanted something different, so most of my units stay more or less at Modern-era power levels, but just stack on more and more useful promotions.

I'll discuss this in more detail in my own thread, once I finish writing it.

How to implement Planetary Council or improve the U.N.?

My goal: the U.N. stays as-is, although I'd LOVE to see the addition of non-victory policies like in previous games. Change the victory threshold to 75%, though.
The Empath Guild is a new national wonder that gives you an additional +1 vote, making city-states less important once everyone has it. Also, once ANY civ has built an Empath Guild, city states can no longer abstain from voting; they MUST vote for one of the candidates.

Figure out how to add native life (fauna and flora). Replace Jungle feature with Xenofungus?

This is actually the easy part; you can create a new terrain feature, similar to Forest or Jungle, and tie it to a new form of barbarian camp (the spore tower) that spawns mindworms. The problem is that the whole Psi combat thing isn't really possible without some extensive recoding.

How to deal with Social Policies versus Social Engineering?

The way I'm doing it is to add an additional SP to each of the ten trees, each of which unlocks at a certain technology. There are already plenty of stubs in-place for useful abilities for these new SPs. But the SMAC concept of Social Engineering, with all the +2/-2 type bonuses, goes away. Besides, it was horribly unbalanced; there were a couple really overpowered combinations.

Add naval bases/cities?

I've looked at this, but it's got a few major problems. The first is art-related; Civ5 draws its cities on the terrain, but it wouldn't handle water well, although that may be easy to fix. The second is balance; water cities don't work without the whole kelp farm/etc. type tile improvements, but to balance that you'd have to reduce the tile yields of normal water (not 1/0/2 as a base), which'd prevent this from meshing well with older techs. For a dedicated SMAC mod, sure, but not for my concept, at least not yet.

Happiness mechanics?

The only real change I envisioned was the Empath specialist, which allows you to "tune" your happiness as needed. Other than that, nothing; I personally think Civ5's global happiness is a huge improvement over the old systems.

Tradeable resources? Both strategic and luxury.

I've added three resources that appear on the map, plus two more that are generated by wonders (or would be, if that code actually worked right).
The nice part is that this is tunable; one of my new resources is a luxury that only adds 3 happiness instead of 5, but also has massive tile production/gold bonuses. One is a strategic resource that also adds happiness as if it were a luxury. One is a aquatic strategic resource that also adds a lot of food.
There's a lot of this sort of thing you can do. One of the things I'd like to do, once the logic works right, is have several late-game non-Wonder buildings be capable of generating the existing strategic resources. So every Fusion Lab you build gives you +2 Uranium, in addition to its other benefits, which greatly reduces your dependence on territorial sources.

Anyway, it's fun to think about.

 

[Darsnan]

Where have I heard the name Rubin before. Hmmm.....

Anyways, just some quick brainstorming on my part:

1. Immersion: SMACX had this in spades: from the GUI, to the red fungus, to the tech and building quotes, to the Book of Holograms ("How to Raise a Nerve Stapled Child") and the Interludes it was all about immersion, specifically with a darker tinge to it. That is the way I plan on tending in my version of a futuristic mod, with the only difference being the visual elements: my thought here is that it is like a white pristine sheet covering something beneath, and as you lift the sheet (i.e. start to read the tech quotes and experience the game mechanics) you start to see something more sinister, and you can't help but lift the sheet more (i.e. continue to wander down the road that is my version of the game).

2. Interludes: would love to see the ability to implement interludes!

3. DLC: I don't know what direction 2K and Firaxis plan on taking with DLC, and whether they will offer critical content at a cost. I won't say anything more about this till it is confirmed one way or another, however I will have nothing to do with DLC at a cost.

4. Conquering a capitol doesn't eliminate a faction/ end the game: curently I really don't like that aspect of Civ5, as it is too easy to conduct a power drive at an enemies capitol.

5. U.N. Council votes: bribes/ "diplomacy by other means"?

6. Espionage: I'd really like to see some form of espionage implemented.

7. More unit classes: say break out military units such that Mechanized, Artillery, and Armor are their own classes, and thus stackable. I will probably look more into this in the near future, as I think it can be implemented via xml (and thus something I can do now) and see how well the AI responds to this.

8. Eras: I'd ike to remove them myself, but am not opposed to leaving them in. If they are left in, then maybe we could muck around with the era pop-ups: say for the Future era pop-up we could insert a billboard advertizing civIL.

• What to do about City States?
• Great People mechanics?
• Figure out how to add native life (fauna and flora). Replace Jungle feature with Xenofungus?

A. City States are the remnants/ survivors of an ancient alien civilization. What I have already done in my mod is to assign each CS a mod'd GDR (2 attacks/turn, no defensive penalties), and to give each CS a Military Base for defense. And here I am explaning the game mechanic of why city-states don't spread is because there is something sinister outside their realms (thus incorporating the natural game mechanic of why CS don't spread, and leading the player down that darker path which I intend).

B. Great People mechanics: first, I think it would really honor all the great SMAC legends if we were to re-name the Great People after the legendary players of SMAC. Krysia's Krusader and buster could be Great Generals, Googlie and I could be Great Artists, etc.

I'm adding the Empath specialist, which adds +1 happiness and give 5 Great Empath points (instead of the 3 of other types, because starting them in the later era means that you'll have to go much further to spawn one).
This spawns the Great Empath unit....can "Faction Bomb"

"As you have commanded, our Great Empath has sought out and subverted the leaders in the targeted region, thus bringing this area and its population under your control!"

C. Figure out how to add NL: graphics are probably the easier of the two elements. Psi warfare would be nice (in the past I've changed Psi Warfare to a Disintigrator, which if implemented I would probably do again).

• Leave out Terrain Elevation mechanics; i.e. raise/lower terrain!
• Leave out any kind of Unit Design Workshop!

I respect Rubin's opinion on this, however this is probably one of the reasons I won't do a "true SMAC" mod, because it would end up straying too far from the original. These items, along with others like Satelite Warfare, the aquatic elements of the game, and even the Wonder Movies are what made SMAC unique, and I don't want to be continually reminded in a mod that the mod is a pale imitation of SMAX. My opinion on this.

@ Rubin: do you still have that document you worked on for your C4--> SMAX mod? If so can you forward that to me (or post it here, as I think it would benefit more than just me)?

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

I respect Rubin's opinion on this, however this is probably one of the reasons I won't do a "true SMAC" mod, because it would end up straying too far from the original. These items, along with others like Satelite Warfare, the aquatic elements of the game, and even the Wonder Movies are what made SMAC unique, and I don't want to be continually reminded in a mod that the mod is a pale imitation of SMAX. My opinion on this.

Believe me, I agree with you on that; it's a HUGE pitfall. If you try to recreate SMAC, without adding in the unique features that made the game great, you'll end up with something that just feels watered down. Conversely, quite a few of the SMAC concepts are things that I really didn't think were good ideas in the first place (like the satellite warfare), or that were extremely unbalanced (some of the social engineering), so I wouldn't WANT to see a game copy those directly. Unless Firaxis does it, as a full expansion, complete with newly-enhanced movies and such, with the balance fixed. Sort of like how they updated Colonization to Civ4. I'd LOVE to see that happen, but failing that, we have to make do.

That's why for my own work, I chose to take the slightly different path of keeping the game on Earth, and just using the SMAC techs and buildings as inspiration for the addition of some future eras. It won't be SMAC, but it won't have the usual thrown-together feel of most future mods (no offense to anyone making a future mod), at least in terms of techs and buildings, because it'll mimic the progression of techs and such that SMAC used.
That's actually been the biggest point of concern for me; while the techs and buildings follow SMAC pretty well, the units have almost no connection to SMAC and are primarily drawn from other sci-fi. I HAD to do this, because of the inability to use SMAC's modular unit system.

As a result, I had to come up with an array of units that covered all of the basic roles, but didn't create so many units that it'd bog down the tech tree. So, I tentatively have these units: (The T notation is the technology's Tier, denoted by its GridX value. Modern era is T12-14, I'm adding T15-23ish.)

Laser Infantry (T15): basically the soldiers from Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book); cheap, slow, not incredibly effective, but good in large numbers thanks to a bonus when fighting with an adjacent ally.
Plasma Artillery (T16): mixes artillery with AA. (Last dedicated artillery unit, although all of the Titan units have some bombardment ability built-in.)
Zombie (T16): cheap combat unit, requires no support, also acts as a worker at 75% speed (but can't do as many types of actions).
Stealth Ship (T17): mixes submarine with destroyer
Leviathan (T17): mixes battleship with carrier (these are the last two naval units).
Scout Powersuit (T17) and Assault Powersuit (T18): basically the soldiers from Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie); expensive, mobile, all-around capable combat units
Vertol (T17): upgrade of the helicopter without the AA vulnerability (it's Armor type instead of Helicopter, but moves like a copter) and can cross oceans. Think AV-4 from Cyberpunk.
Skimmer (T17): first hover unit, VERY fast-moving hit-and-run unit but doesn't have huge power. Based on the Combat Cars from the Hammer's Slammers novels.
Needlejet (T18): half fighter, half bomber, twice the awesome. (This is the last true air unit, since once you get to orbital weapons there's no need.)
Planet Buster (T18): long-range ICBM; it doesn't really hit any harder than a nuclear missile, but it's got a range of 15 and has Evasion to reduce interceptions, so it'll get through more often.
Gravtank (T19): Take the Skimmer, slow it down a little, and give it Modern Armor-style firepower. It's the heaviest non-Titan unit.
Mobile Shield (T19): a shield generator that buffs all adjacent units. In other words, a buildable Great General. While I wasn't consciously thinking of the Gungan shields from Episode I, it actually fits pretty well as an analogy.
Labor Mech (T20): 200% speed worker unit with ~50 combat power as well. Not enough to be a front-line unit, but enough to defend from light "raider" attacks.
Bolo (T20): the first Titan unit, massive short-range firepower and tons of special abilities but horribly expensive (like, Wonder expensive), similar to the Giant Death Robot. I've got five of these Titan units ("melee" specialist Bolo at T20, ranged bombardment specialist Combat Mech T21, Godzilla-style psionic behemoth "Nessus Worm" T21, terraforming Former T22, and finally the floating Gravship at T23, which is what you get when you cross the Terran Battlecruiser with the Protoss Carrier).
Orbital Ion Cannon (T20): technically an air unit with infinite range and no chance of being intercepted. Think of it as infinite-range artillery, although its damage isn't great. I've got four of these orbital units at T20-23. They get weirder as you go up; the Geosynchronous Survey Pod (T21) is cheap and a perfect recon tool, the Death Ray (T22, I'll change the name) is a massive single-target attack but is very expensive, and the T23 Subspace Generator basically drops unlimited nukes anywhere in the world you want.
Elf and Troll (T19): placeholder names, don't panic, but these are human infantry bioengineered for low-grav and high-grav conditions, respectively. Elfs are fast and great on attack, while Trolls are great on defense and heal fully every turn. (I'll probably end up with names like Sentinel or Avenger or something, but this is a relic of having to make do with some placeholder art back in Civ4 days. Besides, if I could get a Shadowrun-style Troll with a minigun, it'd be pretty much perfect, concept-wise.)
Four Psi units (Mindworm at T16, Isle of the Deep T18, Chiron Locusts T19, Nessus Worm T21 a.k.a. Godzilla). Since I can't do psionic combat a la SMAC, I gave these all double the usual XP-gain rate, but they can't spawn Great Generals. Also, I'm trying to give them the "Hidden Nationality" thing so that they can act as raiders.

I think that's all of them. I don't have my documents in front of me so I don't remember all of their stats offhand, but I'll double-check them when I get home if anyone cares. This is the single part of my design that I think will have the most objections, because it went so far away from SMAC, but I had to do SOMETHING that worked.

And yes, I know I said I'd post a thread on this "tomorrow", posted three days ago. Real Life has sucked up nearly all my time this week, although I managed to get some good editing time in last night. So I'm aiming to make the first thread tonight or tomorrow morning. It still doesn't actually WORK, but I'm getting closer.
(Clarification: the "long" mod works, the one with all the balance changes, but the "content" mod doesn't.)

 

[Darsnan]

I'm trying to give them the "Hidden Nationality" thing so that they can act as raiders.

For some reason that just reminded me of another facet from SMACX, which was the ability to release MWs back into the wild. Another aspect which probably wouldn't be very easily implemented. Regardless, I believe I did see some xml tags refering to hidden nationality, and I really like your idea regarding raiders. Question: would the AI be able to understand this nuance, or would it be something only humans could exploit?

I think that's all of them. I don't have my documents in front of me so I don't remember all of their stats offhand, but I'll double-check them when I get home if anyone cares. This is the single part of my design that I think will have the most objections, because it went so far away from SMAC, but I had to do SOMETHING that worked.

First off, you are waaaay ahead of me in this department. I'm still futzing around with changing the Barb units into what I want for my mod, and haven't really thought much about the units that will be needed, nor even the tech tree. As far as objections from the community are concerned, why my opinion is that its your mod, and I (and anyone else) are here to help, not throw up roadblocks.

And yes, I know I said I'd post a thread on this "tomorrow", posted three days ago. Real Life has sucked up nearly all my time this week, although I managed to get some good editing time in last night. So I'm aiming to make the first thread tonight or tomorrow morning. It still doesn't actually WORK, but I'm getting closer.
(Clarification: the "long" mod works, the one with all the balance changes, but the "content" mod doesn't.)

np - understood concerning RL: I had to quit gaming altogether for about 7 months this year as a new job sucked up all my spare time.

So have you looked into enabling the xml code for bad pod-pops? I did that this evening, and everything works, including the pop-up text. Not sure why Firaxis disabled this curently, other than maybe for balancing issues. Dunno....

Anyways, looking forward to your thread!

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

First off, you are waaaay ahead of me in this department. I'm still futzing around with changing the Barb units into what I want for my mod, and haven't really thought much about the units that will be needed, nor even the tech tree. As far as objections from the community are concerned, why my opinion is that its your mod, and I (and anyone else) are here to help, not throw up roadblocks.

In general I'd agree with you. But I'm worried that because of the baggage associated with the Alpha Centauri name, everyone already has their own idea of how it should all work. And often, this coincides with how it worked in the original game, so any design feature that diverges far from that will be a problem.
This wouldn't be so bad, but I'm worried that people will see the first mod out the door as being the "official" one. I'd jokingly named this "Spatz's Mod for Alpha Centauri" just to keep the SMAC name, but I don't want this to be seen as any attempt to make the unofficial return of SMAC itself.

Anyway, I went back and checked my notes, and that unit list was basically correct (I was doing all of that from memory, which tells you how much time I've spent assembling these XML files). Little things here and there; the Zombie is T17 instead of T16, but nothing important missing. The list was actually larger originally, but I'm trying to reduce the sheer number of THINGS that unlock at each tech. (Most techs have 3 wonders/improvements/buildings/units/social policies unlock, with the last few tiers having 2 per), so I tossed a few and/or rolled their capabilities into other units.

I'm just trying to get at least the tech tree to work correctly before I start the "official" thread. Should have that working tonight, but it's not cooperating right now. I'm trying to delete the Future Era and rename the Modern Era, and it's not actually doing it.

 

[Darsnan]

That's why for my own work, I chose to take the slightly different path of keeping the game on Earth, and just using the SMAC techs and buildings as inspiration for the addition of some future eras.

This wouldn't be so bad, but I'm worried that people will see the first mod out the door as being the "official" one. I'd jokingly named this "Spatz's Mod for Alpha Centauri" just to keep the SMAC name, but I don't want this to be seen as any attempt to make the unofficial return of SMAC itself.

So my dumb question of the day becomes: why invoke the name of SMAC at all? From what I am reading as quoted above, as well as your unit layout concept, why I think your initial ideas/ implementation are sound enough to stand on their own. If you were to take the tack of simply being a future-based mod, why I think you would start to draw people in anyways: sci-fi fans have been starved too long for a good TBS game, and I think we have a good vehicle in ciV for implementing this. So I'd say post your mod for review, suffer the slings and arrows (if any), and we move forward from there.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

So my dumb question of the day becomes: why invoke the name of SMAC at all?

Well, when the mod involves nearly every Wonder from SMAC (only the Voice of Planet is left out, and I ultimately want to use the Wonder movies, which I translated to .avi format back in Civ4 days), 45 of its techs (including the SMAC icons, quotes, and audio clips), and nearly every building that game had, it's hard NOT to acknowledge that it's based on SMAC. The units diverge pretty heavily, and I'm not using SMAC's leaders, but the majority of the mod is obviously drawn from that source.

I'm still trying to debug the era thing, and I think I've tracked down the problem; it's the .lua file that's causing the headaches, but I THINK I can fix it tonight.

 

[Darsnan]

OK, so here come my next questions: how far do you want to diverge from SMAC? And, from your review of the xml and LUA files so far, how far do you feel you need to diverge from SMAC to make a viable mod? Tell me what you feel is feasible (or what you've already done from your end!), and I will see how I can contribute from there.

Anyways, out for the night.

D

 

[Spatzimaus]

OK, so here come my next questions: how far do you want to diverge from SMAC?

Okay, here goes.
> The mod takes place on Earth, after the existing tech tree. This has a lot of implications; for one thing, there's no need for the first couple tiers of SMAC techs/buildings (Rec Commons, Recycling Tanks, Network Node, etc.) because their analogs already exist in the core Civ game. And it means the SMAC leaders don't exist on Earth (although I kept the tech/wonder quotes, which use their names, to represent that they're the leaders of the Alpha Centauri colony and that a lot of the technology is diffusing back and forth from the AC system).
> I've TOTALLY diverged on units. There are a few whose names match (Needlejet, Gravtank, Gravship), but stat-wise they have little in common with anything you saw in SMAC. This is often for the better, as I'll explain in my new thread.
> Wonders and Buildings tend to be pretty similar, although a few have drastically different effects. Several have no effect, at present, because I don't have anything appropriate to link them to; for instance, the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm and Nethack Terminus were espionage wonders, and there's nothing comparable in Civ5. Lacking a true espionage system, I'd like there to be something useful (Nethack letting you see the production of enemy cities and the movements of all their units, H-S reducing the visibility of enemy units within your territory to 1 hex), but nothing coded yet.
> I have ten Social Policies that share names with many of the Social Engineering policies, but statwise they're basically new.
> The techs are somewhat similar (minus the bottom couple rows and anything from SMAC-X), but to keep from having overlapping arrows on the tech trees I rearranged a lot of dependencies. Also, for thematic reasons, I moved the gravitonic stuff earlier and the nanotech stuff later.
Most things that unlocked at a specific tech in SMAC unlock at a similar tech in this mod; there's a bit of variance, but it generally holds pretty well. I trimmed down the tech tree a bit, which forced me to move some things into other techs, which often forced a bit of rebalancing, but I've tried to periodically go back and put things where they belong.

I'm moving the rest of this to a dedicated thread, as soon as I write it all up in a form that works on a message board. Unfortunately, I have a business trip this weekend; I'll have Internet, but I won't be able to mod until Monday night. So while I'll be available to discuss it, I won't be fixing any bugs.