Feedback thread

[Pfeffersack]

IIRC those could be disabled in an Expansion era start with the MaxEra tag. Are there other projects not working besides the two you mentioned?

All others projects effects (including the free Great Doctor from the U. Cyromodul) seem to work.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I found another issues with the advanced start mode...it seems that the spawning of an expansion faction is prevented, if someone prebuys the tech which causes their spawn. I played into as AS game and there are no Drones and Pirates - and I'm pretty sure it is because some AI bought the tech (because I managed to build the Unity Bibliothek quite early, choosed Pressure Dome and didn't get the free Sea Colony Pod - so someone must have got it before me and I don't believe that happened via research, because I had never a problem with the expnasion factions spawning in normal games)

 

[Maniac]

Are you testing advanced start with the Arrival era or Expansion era? The goal is actually to let the SMAX factions start and be playable just like all other factions, when the Expansion era is selected. So if you wish, you could turn on bPlayable and bAIPlayable in CivilizationInfos.xml and test if this causes any problems with an Expansion era advancedstart.

If you were testing an Arrival Era advanced start, I'm not sure how I could address that problem. In that situation I'd rather become inclined to prevent players from picking that tech in an advanced start, as a crude solution.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Are you testing advanced start with the Arrival era or Expansion era? The goal is actually to let the SMAX factions start and be playable just like all other factions, when the Expansion era is selected. So if you wish, you could turn on bPlayable and bAIPlayable in CivilizationInfos.xml and test if this causes any problems with an Expansion era advancedstart.

If you were testing an Arrival Era advanced start, I'm not sure how I could address that problem. In that situation I'd rather become inclined to prevent players from picking that tech in an advanced start, as a crude solution.

I started in the expansion era, having in mind that this will be a common setup for PF games in future, when people want to play the expansion factions.

I will start a new game with the altered CivilizationInfos.xml and post my experience.

For the rather uncommon setting of an Arrival-Era-advanced start...the best solution would be of course teaching the game that one or more factions by that certain tech is equal to researching it first, so that the expansion faction would be started right at the beginning of the game (or, if technically necessary, a turn later). Of course that would still leave the problem that the followers would miss out the value of points that the other facions turned into their starting empire. But as that's only little better but probably much harder to code then your soluation, I would just disable those techs.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I have played now nearly 100 turns into a game AS game with all 11 leaders from start on (I tried the Drones). I experienced no problems except a graphical one: The farm line of improvements looks for all expansion factions far too small (see picture with maximum zoom in), so that it is very hard to tell visually which level the improvment has.

As expected the expansion factions performed a lot better as a consequence of equal starting date and capital. For me the game felt considerably easier - I'm not sure if I just exploited the AS mechanism a lot (I focussed on early expansion by choosing 4 initial bases and 2 additional colony pods), if the Drones are a very powerful faction (in the hand of the human player - not that I have gotten revolting bases from other factions yet, but a human player can for example make a lot more out of the knowlegde that Drone bases never revolt themselves or the extra mineral from 3-mineral-tiles) or if I was just lucky with land and ressources (I have the feeling that a high sealevel increases ressource density on land)

 

[GeoModder]

It's because xml work on farms-->eden for the SMAX factions wasn't done yet. I'm almost finished working on this and will be uploading the result later today.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I just want to say that this is a very good mod, but very frustrating to play. I've won by building the space race wonder (monarch mode) so far with Gaians, Believers and Spartans, but the Hive is very tough to play. Here you see I'm surrounded on all sides by spawn spots guarded by fungal towers entrenched on fungus (50% defense) which I have no counter for, and as soon as I kill some they respawn. (Of course I'm running terrafomed). One pet peeve of mine is that fungal blooms can appear even on improved tiles, especially if you're running terraformed.

Also, it says Hive mines cannot be pillaged, but if you have a mine on a flat surface and fungus spawns on it, it will be pillaged.

I wonder if the following could be better:
1. allowing defense on fungus to be 25%
2. Disallow fungal blooms in the 3x3 square around a city (I have 2 cities up north that have almost no workable tiles because of blockades just next to it)
3. improved tiles should bloom much less frequently

 

[GeoModder]

Any idea what causes the red blob in your northern city?

 

[Pfeffersack]

I just want to say that this is a very good mod, but very frustrating to play. I've won by building the space race wonder (monarch mode) so far with Gaians, Believers and Spartans, but the Hive is very tough to play. Here you see I'm surrounded on all sides by spawn spots guarded by fungal towers entrenched on fungus (50% defense) which I have no counter for, and as soon as I kill some they respawn. (Of course I'm running terrafomed). One pet peeve of mine is that fungal blooms can appear even on improved tiles, especially if you're running terraformed.

Also, it says Hive mines cannot be pillaged, but if you have a mine on a flat surface and fungus spawns on it, it will be pillaged.

I wonder if the following could be better:
1. allowing defense on fungus to be 25%
2. Disallow fungal blooms in the 3x3 square around a city (I have 2 cities up north that have almost no workable tiles because of blockades just next to it)
3. improved tiles should bloom much less frequently

It is always hard to tell whats going wrong without a save, but here a some possible solutions:
- if you can already built Bunkers inside (Perimeter Defense building) and/or outside bases (with formers), do it. They are one key in defense vs. native life - units on the tile behave like in base, you can do range strikes on native life and they enjoy extra 50% defense . If you don't have the techs yet, beeline to them.
- for the moment hide in your bases - you get 50% extra defense here as Hive player as well
- rely on you cheap infantry/flamethrower units, but only use them in groups
- this applies even more for ships on sea
- fight fungus with groups of formers which can clean a tile in one round (you need 4,6 or 8 most of the time, depending on various things like civics, SPs and the actual terrain). Getting rid of Fungus is another key, including on tiles outside your borders, but adjacent.
- The Terraformed civic removes fungus automatically, but how fast it is depends on culture production in you cities. Choose Fundamentalism for a 50% increase (also you gain experience for new build units from it, when having a state religion), employ Psych Chaplains, use the culture slider if possible. Accumulated culture in bases also supresses fungal blooms to a certain degree (hoover over the cultural bar for details)
- Thermobaric Missiles are another top weapon vs. Fungal towers, but you probably haven't them yet
- I noticed that you have -5 PA. I rarely get that deep in the reds even when going terraformed. If I can can afford, I still try to fight negative PV a bit (Biolabs, employing some Empaths, no over building of underused, but polluting terrain improvements) . The reason is that with every - PA more, you are less efficient in fighting PSI combats. At least you should try to delay going the reds as long as you can and clean out fungus before, then you likely will never get as much in trouble.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Also, when the Planetary governor takes over a "Gone Native" city and is not at war with you (but was with previous faction just prior to me holding it for 10 turns or so) is that just part of the perks of being the top dog? Does it matter if game has already been won by them?

@Pffersack
"How big was the base at that point? Anyone can capture it is 3 or less."
(Apologies, I was a little sickly this w.e.)

It was a 6 and stayed that way til I took it back. I also happened with a 14 size base.

I might have run now into that or a similar issue as well - given that I have understand the rules correctly (if NL captures an AI base, I can only take it, if I'm at war with the previous owner or if the pop is 3 or below), I'm able to take a base in the following save* I shouldn't be able to to.

To reproduce, end turn once, then attack the Mindworm and Fungal Tower inside Sparta Command with the nearby stack.

I also noticed another minor issue with NL capturing bases - they seem now to be able to build the Psion unit (2nd picture)

(*it contains the modified CivilizationInfos.xml as well, in case it is needed to load the save)

Edit: I spotted Brown Algae in the Great Dunes (3rd pic) - as you can place no terrain improvements there, I assume those ressources are lost for harvesting? I think it should be somehow prevented that ressources spread in the Great Dunes - feels rather non-atmospherical.

 

[Maniac]

(I have the feeling that a high sealevel increases ressource density on land)

Yes. Unlike vanilla Civ4, where a resource is placed for every x tiles, Planetfall simply places around 11 of each resource (used to be 7 before the SMAX4 were added) regardless of map settings.

To reproduce, end turn once, then attack the Mindworm and Fungal Tower inside Sparta Command with the nearby stack.

Ah, that's probably because Sparta Command is no longer in the cultural influence of another Spartan base. I'll fix it.

I also noticed another minor issue with NL capturing bases - they seem now to be able to build the Psion unit (2nd picture)

This too.

Edit: I spotted Brown Algae in the Great Dunes (3rd pic) - as you can place no terrain improvements there, I assume those ressources are lost for harvesting? I think it should be somehow prevented that ressources spread in the Great Dunes - feels rather non-atmospherical.

I haven't tried it myself, but in theory it should be possible to remove the Great Dunes.

 

[GeoModder]

I haven't tried it myself, but in theory it should be possible to remove the Great Dunes.

It is?
*Goes searching

 

[AnotherPacifist]

- The Terraformed civic removes fungus automatically, but how fast it is depends on culture production in you cities. Choose Fundamentalism for a 50% increase (also you gain experience for new build units from it, when having a state religion), employ Psych Chaplains, use the culture slider if possible. Accumulated culture in bases also supresses fungal blooms to a certain degree (hoover over the cultural bar for details)

Thanks for the hints. I'm already doing most of what you said. (no religion yet so can't run fundamentalism)
The problem is that once they blockade, the fungus that's in your territory CANNOT be removed even if you run terraformed. (It would be better if the fungus tile gets removed so that the fungus towers can be more easily killed)

 

[Maniac]

I don't see any Bunker improvement. That's the best way to get out of your current situation: litter your coastline with them. Then build up a couple submarines and aquaformers so that you can quickly remove all the fungus in an area after the bunkers have weakened the native life.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Yeah, I was beelining for the Planetary Datalinks so didn't have time for perimeter defenses. I think smaller islands are also quite at a disadvantage because fungal spawns tend to happen at the borders of your civ. E.g. in my current University game it was always in my frontier cities that I amass troops, because I can predict where the spawns are going to be.

Speaking of my current game: here's a save when nothing I do will prevent a crash next turn. And I was so looking forward to do my first conquest rather than the subspace generator...

Addendum: tried running compatibility in Windows XP and Vista mode (I have Windows 7) but no luck. I went back and even made peace with Lal, and capitulated Santiago a turn earlier, but still crashing...went into WB and saw no spies around (usually one source of crash) and nothing unusual was going on. Anyway, this game was a foregone conclusion, but I would still have loved to explore the other techs that I haven't done before, given that I'm Zakharov.

Addendum 2: didn't matter if I was at war or not, in fact no other wars happened. I went back 10 moves and just continued my research and it still crashed in 2282.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Another thing which should be changed in the future: whenever you build the Planetary Council, a popup should show to ask you to change to member or not. Every time I build it (or if somebody else builds it), I don't get to vote in the first round (because I'm not a member), so some AI faction usually gets chosen as leader even if I have the votes.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

So I was aiming for a domination or conquest with the Hive, and going really well (in fact I just need one more vassal to make the land area). All of a sudden Lal wins a Religious Victory, even though he himself only controlled 8% of the Homo Superior religion!
So I went back and put all city growth on hold, aimed for founding Edenism (to temporarily halt the growth of the Homo religion), and aimed my troops straight for the Homo holy city. Then I won in 2 turns, but almost had domination too (just a few decimal points short of land). Highest score so far (something like 130k).

Maybe it's Civ4's fault, but the way religious victory is shown is very confusing (it just means that 75% of all population follows your religion, not the ones that you need to control).

BTW, if you build the Planetary Council, a popup does occur to ask you to switch to member, which is anarchy free. I switched to wealth at the same time for free. (Bug or not?)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

The supply pods can build the Unity wonders in one move (with a separate button), but if you decide to start building the wonder and use them to hurry up, it just provides less hammers (diamonds?) so you can't finish it in one move. Can you make those supply pods provide more hammers?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Sorry to hog this thread, but I think the Gaians are often very low in score because they don't remove fungus from their land, which makes them grow very slowly. If they don't spawn in a fungus-free zone, that is.

 

[GeoModder]

The supply pods can build the Unity wonders in one move (with a separate button), but if you decide to start building the wonder and use them to hurry up, it just provides less hammers (diamonds?) so you can't finish it in one move. Can you make those supply pods provide more hammers?

IIRC, minerals (hammers) are stored in Planetfall (to a certain point), so you could always stop building the Unity wonder and put some other cheap production in its place. Once finished, you use the unity pod for the Unity wonder then.