Echoes of Earth: A total conversion for BERT

[Ryika]

Creating new Diplo Agreements that match these bonuses was my original idea though. ^^ I decided to leave them as they are because I was originally planning to create "Awesome Diplomacy" or something similar.

Side note: Interesting that I managed to not realize that I have forgotten that extra [NEWLINE] to hide the planetfall text for Polystralia until now.

 

[Doviello]

No, i think i have "Polystralia can land on water" mod by default haha

BUT its weird that a sponsor can sell a service to others that they can't have themselves. SF can sell "science from orbital units" but they don't get that themselves. Or worst, Polystralia "reduced population thresholds" and FI "cheaper virtues" end up being better than their own sponsor bonus.

 

[Machiavelli24]

BUT its weird that a sponsor can sell a service to others that they can't have themselves.

This is one of the reasons I'm moving away from having Sponsor unique Agreements. I don't want one faction to be considered weak because it has a great Agreement that everyone but it can access.

The current design I'm using has 12 starting Agreements where each Sponsor gets 3 (and each Agreement is provided by 3 Sponsors). Giving only 2 Sponsors a specific Agreement made it too risky you wouldn't be able to access your own Agreements if only one other Sponsor (who may not even be in the game) had it. While 4 Agreements per Sponsor meant that meeting just 3 or 4 other players often got you access to every Agreement, resulting in your Agreement options being the same each game.

 

[Machiavelli24]

I've sent out a new version (8) to everyone via PMs. This version is not backwards compatible so don't switch over in the middle of a game. If you didn't get it or you want to become a play tester let me know.

The big change in this version is to the all new Loadouts. Other changes include new starting Agreements and a few tweaks to the Faction Traits. Players start with a free tech to help them adapt to their start location. Carriers and other late game Affinity Units require Titanium.



While they didn't make it into this version, I'm working on the new Traits and Agreements.
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Edit 2: (on 3/21)
I've updated the dropbox link for version 8 that playtesters have. The new version is the same except it fixes the turn counts that loadout rewards were sent. This version 8 is compatible with previous version 8 games. If you downloaded version 8 before this and didn't fix the turn counts, please download the new version 8.
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Edit: (on 3/18)
There is a bug in this version that I won't be able to fix until the evening of 3/21. The turns in which you get loadout shipments of yield are turns 2/4/6 rather than 10/20/30. This can be fixed by going to Inherent/LoadoutRewards.lua. Edit the file in notepad, at the top there will be variables with the incorrect turn counts. Change them to the correct ones and everything will work.

 

[Doviello]

Hmm weird i got 2 crashes during the load screen. One froze my computer, the other i managed to alt-tab out by closing and opening my notebook. An error box says

Unable to load textures: IconFrame64.dds

then alt-tabbed into the game and the loading was done, now im playing normally, no other bugs aparentyly. Im using your mod and some non gameplay mods like Artifact Helper, Info Addict, improved UI, the same ones i used with every version of Echoes before v.8.

Strange.

Edit: i got a free tech on turn 1, but it doesn't says why, didn't got a pod or anything. Also, the 50/75/100 production from the cargo came on turns 2, 4 and 6, rather than 10,20 and 30 (normal speed).

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

According to IsThereAnyDeal.com it looks like Beyond Earth+Rising Tide is on sale for $30 at GamesRepublic. I haven't used GamesRepublic myself so I can't vouch for its reputation.

Site was only offering Rising Tide for that price ... which is its typical price.

$30... no, $39 is about the width of fire I would be willing to jump through to play this. That tech tree is just UNNF

 

[Machiavelli24]

i got a free tech on turn 1, but it doesn't says why

That is intended behavior. It is a new mechanic I forgot to mention in the change log. I've edited the post to mention it.

the 50/75/100 production from the cargo came on turns 2, 4 and 6, rather than 10,20 and 30

That is a bug. I was doing some last minute testing with the reduced turn counts and must have forgot to change them back. I'll be able to update the mod on Monday evening. Until then, it is possible to correct this by going to Inherent/LoadoutRewards.lua and editing the file in notepad. At the top of the file will be the turn counts. Change them to 10/20/30 and everything will work correctly.

Unable to load textures: IconFrame64.dds

This version didn't include any new changes to the UI and the mod doesn't have any dds data so I'm not too worried about this. Is it a consistent annoyance? I can put it on my quality-of-life issue queue.

 

[Doviello]

The load texture problem wasn't on your mod. Anyway i edited the rewards.lua and now it's working as intended. I like the new cargo options btw. The spacecraft options, otoh, aren't very interesting, especially the "reveal improvements" ones, i think those 3 should deff. get a free pod. For colonists, i'd boost technicians a little and nerf biologists to 1f 1h. tbh just 2f would already be pretty good.

Bugs (i think):

Dome improvement says +1 food on worker actions menu, but +2 food on the tech tree.
Another description also doesn't match the effect but i forgot which

Allright "my opinion" time, after 2 games on v.8:

Health is being problematic for me, specially when going wide. I understand if that's a mechanism to slow down expansion a little, but the AI ignore that, and actually the health penalties are so soft i don't really stop expanding. But i've been on the red for the entire duration of every game.

For comparison, energy is much more important now, but it's something that's easier and interesting to deal with (shifting focus around, specialists etc); but i'm lost when it comes to dealing with health. The unhealthy per pop is too much, and neither buldings and virtues together seem to bring me back into the green. My current game:

Spoiler :

I was at -25, but i just signed the +2 health per resource agreement. Now with pretty much every city maxed on health per pop, i'm still at -14.

Virtues and buildings aren't doing it. I've been on the red every game, except when i buy the +2/3/4 health per agreement trait (since this can give 20 health not limited by pop). I haven't tried biowells yet, maybe that's a solution. Hmm.. next game i guess.

Node and academy: i don't like them are right now. Node as science improvement makes sense from their civilopedia description, but i really don't enjoy academy costing health, also, i feel academies should be THE improvement you go for when in need of pure science, not the uncool nodes With my health woes, i haven't built a mine or academy yet. As a suggestion, since nodes are computing centers, they could give production? 1p 1s for no maintenance, while academies give 2s for maint. 2.

generators: are really boring. There should really be a buildings (thoruium reactors? Node banks?) that improve them.

Domes: they are fancy farms, basically? With some science. I dunno. I see domes more as suburbs. Rather than +2 food, i would give them 1f 1culture. With their specific tech buildings, they'd end as 1f 1c 1s, so a versatile improvement, different from all others improvements on this mod, which are alot more specialized; i dunno, it would be nice to have a more jack of all trades improvement.

maintenance: do all buildings cost 1 energy? I swear i could remember some costing 3, 4, etc.

water improvements: i really don't get why academies, nodes and biowells can't be made on water. All those games i thought i was just somehow skipping the tech that allows for them there, and i was gonna suggest moving it earlier in the tech three, but they can't be made on water at all, can they?

Water cities seem kinda bad, then. They don't expand their borders easily, are very weak, the land around them generally is extra-low on production, no water refineries, and can't focus on improvements for health (biowells), production (manufactories) and science (nodes academy). So it's just farms and generators, and maybe domes, not very fun. This is something i will definitely mod on my own, when im not playing for playtesting.

On that subject, do i just add this under them at advancedimprovements.xml?

Spoiler :

-<Row>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_academy</ImprovementType>
<TerrainType>TERRAIN_COAST</TerrainType>
</Row>
-<Row>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_academy</ImprovementType>
<TerrainType>TERRAIN_OCEAN</TerrainType>
</Row>

Culture: The earlier (dependable) source of culture iirc is the holosuite, on the second ring (too late!). Unless the player starts near coral or gold, he will be low on culture for quiiiite a while (on this, i'll play integr next, but her culture per agreement trait seems strong on paper, i'll see). Seeing as how early virtues are important for the sake of extra energy and health, i think the tech tree is really missing some earlier cultural building or improvement.

Sponsor agreements: I'll say, i like that agreements can come from different leaders, but i miss the unique deals, there's been some loss of personality there (there wasn't much personality in the base game to begin with hehe). It's like, when i'm exploring around, i usually tried to grab the lena +3 capital trait, not only it pays for itself but i get a diplomatic boost with her; also i try and not expand towards africa because i like his fast outpost trait/ but now that traits are avaliable from many different leaders, it got kinda of generic... I'd suggest give each leader 2 agreements from the public pool, plus 1 unique and thematic (capital from lena, something orbital from kozlov etc).

And that's all i think. Ill go back play a little more

 

[Doviello]

> cruisers and artillery arent costing titanium, did they change?
>satelites can be destroyed by melee units moving into their tiles? Is this intended?
> the propaganda spy action doesn't scale at all. Steal energy starts at ~100, but by late game im stealing thousands in once action, but the propaganda mission always steals 40 capital

 

[Machiavelli24]

I've updated the dropbox link for version 8 that playtesters have. The new version is the same except it fixes the turn counts that loadout rewards were sent. This version 8 is compatible with previous version 8 games. If you downloaded version 8 before this and didn't fix the turn counts, please download the new version 8.
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Dome improvement says +1 food on worker actions menu, but +2 food on the tech tree.

You may have realized this already but Domes override the base tile yield. The tooltip shows the relative yield change so if you're building a Dome on a 1Food tile (ei Plains) the tooltip will say +1 Food.

Domes: they are fancy farms, basically? With some science. I dunno. I see domes more as suburbs.

Domes work best on Water where their yield can be stacked with Water Refinery's +1 F on Coasts (for coastal cities) or Aquatic City's inherent +1 P from Coasts. They can also work on Ocean tiles where they can stack with Tidal Turbine's +1 E from Oceans.

Health is being problematic for me, specially when going wide.

Do you know if you are short on Global Health or Local Health? It sounds like the former but is that what you've experienced? You mentioned energy issues too, are those usually things you feel like you can resolve while Health feels like it forces you not to expand and not to grow, which are things it feels crappy to avoid?

With respect to Culture, have you tried using Signal Decoder, Defensive Perimeter or Ultrasonic Fence as your early Culture building?
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cruisers and artillery arent costing titanium, did they change?

Those shouldn't have required Titanium since the early New Horizons days. Carriers should be the only pre-Affinity unit that requires Titanium directly. Cruisers and Artillery don't consume Titanium themselves, they just require Drydocks and Repair Facilities that consume Titanium.

satelites can be destroyed by melee units moving into their tiles? Is this intended?

That is not intended. Did you see that consistently? Could it have been coincidence? The Sat ending its lifespan when the melee unit moved?

the propaganda spy action doesn't scale at all. Steal energy starts at ~100, but by late game im stealing thousands in once action, but the propaganda mission always steals 40 capital

Covert Actions are currently unchanged. I don't have any near term plans to look into that system (Diplomatic Traits, Wonders and Virtues are all higher priority). But after those sections are done Covert Actions may (no promises) get look at.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Covert Actions are currently unchanged. I don't have any near term plans to look into that system (Diplomatic Traits, Wonders and Virtues are all higher priority). But after those sections are done Covert Actions may (no promises) get look at.

I fully understand your priorities, but if only the fact that research steal yields solely depend on the research project you have adopted in the moment of stealing could be changed, it would be great for the game

 

[Doviello]

You may have realized this already but Domes override the base tile yield. The tooltip shows the relative yield change so if you're building a Dome on a 1Food tile (ei Plains) the tooltip will say +1 Food.

No i didn't realize that. So their base yeld is 3 food? Seeing as how farms are +2f with vivarium, i still think domes should have a different focus.

That is not intended. Did you see that consistently? Could it have been coincidence? The Sat ending its lifespan when the melee unit moved?

It happened 3 times. All the same scenario: i was fighting russia, and he moved his water city, so the satellite was no longer on top of the city (i noticed moving a city with +0 orbital radius doesn't destroys the satellite) So i moved an unit to the tile were the city was and destroyed the satellite automatically, like it was a worker, all 3 times with a melee boat.

Covert Actions are currently unchanged. I don't have any near term plans to look into that system (Diplomatic Traits, Wonders and Virtues are all higher priority). But after those sections are done Covert Actions may (no promises) get look at.

Oh all right. I noticed that because i was korea, i think i had 9 spies; i had low diplomatic capital from all my agreements, so i switched all spies to propaganda, and got a bunch of 40 diplos, very little for such late game stage.

Do you know if you are short on Global Health or Local Health? It sounds like the former but is that what you've experienced? You mentioned energy issues too, are those usually things you feel like you can resolve while Health feels like it forces you not to expand and not to grow, which are things it feels crappy to avoid?

I guess my problem is enough local health, not much global. I took a few screenshots of the health menu, early and late game, i can post later when im on my computer. Basically, early on (total population of 35 or so), i got the +health from resources agreement, and got as much health from buildings as i could (population limit), but my empire was still floating between -25 to -15. Later on, with a full knowledge and might virtue tree, affinities at p11/s11/h0, 2 annexed and 1 puppeted city, and health from cities maxed out, i stabilized at -10. I suppose if i had 40 more military units i'd get to zero (+0.25 health per unit), but i already had quite a substantial army.

Prosperity would totally fix that forever, off course, +7 global health and -15% unhealty.

I like that pop cost more unhealthy than they can generate by buildings, it's an interesting challenge: in vanilla, the solution to unhealthy is just "expand", since each citizen generate more health than they consume, even with manufactories it was hard to get negative when wide enough. But in Echoes, i dunno; there's plenty or sources of local health around, but now many global. The ones i used (buildings, +2 health per resource, and later biowells) are all local (might bonus is global i think?), so they never bring me closer to positive (i didn't realized that while playing).

The sources i had access to but didn't use were Prosperity, Industry (+0.5 health per caravan) and personality traits (+8 global health and +4 health per agreement), I don't think there's any other?

Energy can be solved from improvements, specialists, virtues, some buildings, traits, trade, etc. I guess more sources of global health would be nice, so the player could choose from which direction to solve this problem. Like, biowells generations global health, maybe a health specialist, i dunno.

With respect to Culture, have you tried using Signal Decoder, Defensive Perimeter or Ultrasonic Fence as your early Culture building?

Signal decoder i think is only really viable in the capital. It's expensive and by the time my first outpost converts into a city, the source is weaker already. Doesn't ultrasonic fence only generates culture after quest? I usually pick the +repel range. And DF aren't really a priority for me, maybe i should try that.

 

[Machiavelli24]

A general inquiry directed to everyone. What has your experiences been with Maintenance costs? Do you find them high at first but easy to deal with later on? Or is it the other way around, negligible in the early game but a constant concern later on.

Between Tile, Building and Unit Maintenance, in your experience is one consistently larger than the others? Is there a consistent approximate distribution between the three that your play style results in? For example: 50% Tile, 25% Building, 25% Unit?
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Doviello, is it accurate to describe your experience as being that if you go Prosperity it trivially provides more Global Health than is needed. But if you purposely avoid going Prosperity it feels like there are not enough sources of Global Health? Or at least the sources that exist are a ton of work (say 40 military units) for the Global Health they provide.

 

[Doviello]

Integr "culture per agreement" trait is not working, only the cheaper agreement part is working.

health

That's exactly it i think. Prosperity makes health a no-issue, industry can kinda deal with it, with 2 caravans per city, and 0.2 health per building. Knowledge is the worst i think.

maintenance

I think it's fine as it is right now, but i wouldn't mind more hard choices, like stronger/expensive improvements, or buildings with a really high maintenance and stronger effects. I really liked the "Tidal Balance" mod for this reason, every affinity (and hybrid) had a high tech building with a powerfull effect and some heavy costs (in resources, maintenance, or both). As for their % distribution, i'll have to pay attention next time.

 

[Lightjolly]

A BE Mod that's actually alive? Kudos to you OP

 

[Machiavelli24]

I've sent out a new version (9) to everyone via PMs. This version is not backwards compatible so don't switch over in the middle of a game. If you didn't get it or you want to become a play tester let me know.

This version contains expansions to the Signal mechanic, Global Health and Basic Resources. For the Signal, Signal Collectors and Signal Decoders will now require less production to build in cities that are founded later. Launching a LaserComm Sat will now make to the Signal remains at full strength and is not weakened.

For Global Health, cities are back down to costing 1 Global Health instead of 2. Captured cities still cost 2 though. Completing a quest for a Health building (ei Clinic, Pharma, Optical Surgery, Organ Printer, etc) now provides some Global Health (no matter which choice you take).

As for Basic+Strategic Resources, they all now provide 1 less yield and cost 1 maint. Basic Resource buildings now also only provide +1 Health rather than Health per Resource.

I've also made some adjustments to the AI to help it understand the new mechanics and play a bit better.
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Integr "culture per agreement" trait is not working, only the cheaper agreement part is working.

I'm not surprised. I had a note to verify that culture worked there. Culture is also such a finicky yield. At worst I can just mimic the effect via lua.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Nice to see a new version arriving Even takes care of some things I had noted down for my current game (v8, Al Falah Sponsor, purity as main affinity, around 300 games into the game):

- no financial troubles over the entire game, instead amassing more and more energy (up to 20.000+ in the end) - achieved that with some focus on it (going industrial virtues mainly)
- biggest energy drains were building and unit maintenance, terrain improvement maintenance is neglegible compared
- I had big health problems until end game, where hybrid affinities, more and more diplomatic agreements and some switching in traits helped to improve the situation
- almost no existing intrigue found in foreign cities when starting my espionage business around T250

 

[Pfeffersack]

Started a game with v9 as Elodie on Gemini difficulty and worked towards getting as much virtues as possible - is it still in the range of what is expected to have 6 virtues in T30? Achieved this by picking complimentary loadouts, investing in my character trait, building the culture signal building, popping pods on the map and picking virtues from the science tree or for synergy bonus.

 

[Machiavelli24]

I've been able to get a bunch of work done on the mod this last week. I'm looking to push out the next version at the end of this weekend. The upcoming version will contain some big additions.

Completely redone Artifact Rewards
Old Earth rewards are all general purpose buildings that can be built in each city. Giving you something to build in the early game while you're still unlocking some of the more basic technologies.

Alien rewards all provide Global Health. If you want to expand but are having trouble with your Health try building up an army and hitting the nests. You can learn a lot about how to survive on this planet by dissecting the native life.

Progenitor rewards are still Wonders but their effects have changed. They provide an extra yield from a specific Specialist (ei: +1 Production from Engineers). In the future when Wonders are completely redone these may change.

Mixed rewards all provide small boosts to the pre-Affinity units. There is a boost for Tanks, another for Artillery, another for Patrol Boats, etc. Those looking to stack every bit of quality enhancer for their military should keep these in mind.

Placeholder adjustments to Global Health in Virtues
There are some changes to Virtues. However, these changes are intended to be placeholders until the larger Virtue revamp can be completed farther down the line. 90% of the Virtues are unchanged. What has changed is that the first and second depth synergies provide Global Health. Individual Virtues within the trees that provided Health have been changed. The advanced Affinity associated improvements (Biowells, Nodes, Domes, etc) now all have Virtues which enhance them.

Diplomatic Traits and Agreements
This addition is a stretch goal so it may not make it in this weekend. But it is huge. It is a complete revamp of every Diplomatic Trait and Agreement. The ramifications of these will be larger than any of the previous updates.

 

[Machiavelli24]

I've sent out a new version (10) to everyone via PMs. This version is not backwards compatible so don't switch over in the middle of a game. If you didn't get it or you want to become a play tester let me know.

This version contains all the updates described in the previous post. The new Diplomatic Traits and Agreements also made it in. You can check them out below:

Domestic Traits

Domestic Traits boost specific tiles within your colony. Your trait choice here will determine what kind of land you want to expand to and what land you have will inform which traits are most valuable to you.

Political Traits


Military Traits


Agreements
They aren't pictured above but Agreements are also all new and have changed. Agreements focus on benefits that are often only needed during certain phases of a game. Fighting a war? Grab a yield on kill Agreement or a Warscore boost. Once the war ends you can end the Agreement and get something else. Just got Photosystems and want to put a Solar Collector in every city in your colony? Grab an Agreement for extra Orbital Production. Once the infrastructure is in place you won't need the extra capacity.