Feedback thread

[GeoModder]

...this one...

Yeah, you never made my day there.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I runned into a small glitch related to the IoDs new functionality of transporting - if you have both a IoD and a conventional transport ship with free looding capacity on a tile and you try to load in a mindworm/spore launcher, the program will always pick automatically the ship (without giving you the usual dialogue window to choose one of the units as transport)

To reproduce:

1) Load Save
2) Pick the mindworm or sporelauncher sitting at the coast two tiles S of Data DeCentral and Gargoyle Garden
3) try to load the unit on the transport fleet one tile E (consisting of a boat and two unloaded IoDs with LC I and II morphoses)

 

[Maniac]

*scratch* *scratch* l'll investigate. Shouldn't be too hard to find the code for that. And I can already guess the problem and fix.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I wonder if the AI really makes use of multiple production for units? There is no second icon in the queue and in the modcomp thread there was a fairly recent discussion about this (and possibe other bugs attached to this modcomp as well):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=326545&page=2 (from post #58 on)

 

[Maniac]

Post #69 says the AI understands it, and the bugs reported are for another modcomp by Afforess.

That's one awesome city by the way. I didn't know the AI had it in them.
How come they have 39 unhappy though?

 

[Pfeffersack]

Post #69 says the AI understands it, and the bugs reported are for another modcomp by Afforess.

That's one awesome city by the way. I didn't know the AI had it in them.
How come they have 39 unhappy though?

Tons of war weariness caused by eternal war with Deidre/Cha - the Cult city sits on a small landbrigde between the Hive's and the Gaian's territory and Yang failed with at least 3 or 4 big-sized assaults (20+ units) on that city - each time I spotted him in one turn next to the city, the next turn his force was nearly completely destroyed (while Cha Dawn suffered only minimal casualties) Maybe it has to do with the infest promotion? The infest promotion talks of "human" units - does it only mean infantery or vehicles (they have still a crew) as well? If each failed attack on a NL unit of Cha Dawn produces a new mindworm, then a careless attack will backfire.

 

[Maniac]

Every non-native lifeform unit is considered human for the Infest morphosis.

 

[Maniac]

Given that I don't know what Yang is facing in your game, I don't know what effect the Infest promotion has.

An interesting exercise to improve AI is of course the question: how would you as the Hive break Cult defenses?

 

[GeoModder]

An interesting exercise to improve AI is of course the question: how would you as the Hive break Cult defenses?

He seems to be doing it with multiple "human wave" attacks.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Given that I don't know what Yang is facing in your game, I don't know what effect the Infest promotion has.

An interesting exercise to improve AI is of course the question: how would you as the Hive break Cult defenses?

The current defnse is 5 Mindworms, 1 Locust, 1 Fungal Tower, 1 Bunker, 2 Genites and 1 Rotor, probably some other units in close range to the base and slight support from Deidre. No to different to what was in the base in the past, when Yang attacked. I suspect the problem to be that Cha Dawn gets the first strike on Yang's units when they enter the adjacent tile (it is a rocky one, which stops Yang advance). For PSI land combat this means 3:2 and new NL for Cha.

I would probably amass even more troops then 20 and make esepcially use of bombardment with Range II artillery. Maybe also bringing in some units with PSI defense, disabling the perimeter defense with a spy or using Thermobaric missiles.

An amphibious landing would avoid the first strike problem, but the problem ist that Yang has no coastal base at this coast of the continent, also he would have to clean the sea from Cha's stationed IoDs.


But overall the AI performance is a lot better - you see them building more units (Morgan repelled my attack with a force of Mass Drivers) and some apparently go for a Domination Victory by expanding like mad. However, the Hybrid/Terraformer balance was only initially roughly even. After Hybrid Lal has been exterminated, it's Deidre, Cha and Me vs. the rest of Chiron (Lutinnen and Santiago going balanced)

 

[Maniac]

*scratch* *scratch* l'll investigate. Shouldn't be too hard to find the code for that. And I can already guess the problem and fix.

Actually it was very hard to find that code... because it doesn't exist. You can only select your transport when you load a unit on a transport in a city. Elsewhere the transport is automatically chosen, alas. IoDs have nothing to do with it.

I suspect the problem to be that Cha Dawn gets the first strike on Yang's units when they enter the adjacent tile (it is a rocky one, which stops Yang advance). For PSI land combat this means 3:2 and new NL for Cha.

I would probably amass even more troops then 20 and make esepcially use of bombardment with Range II artillery. Maybe also bringing in some units with PSI defense, disabling the perimeter defense with a spy or using Thermobaric missiles.

Now that I have seen the save, I'd say Rocky is no problem in this situation. It offers +50% defense after all, meaning the odds are 3:3. I have seen though that yang's entire stack has already been reduced in health, I assume by Cha Dawn's Bunker and Fungal Tower. Therefore, as you would do, I'd try to get Yang to include more Mass Drivers with range in a city attack force.

 

[Deon]

Is there a way to play as expansion civs without breaking the game?

For some reason my friend said he was unable to switch to Cult by the way, but I will have to check it by myself until I report it.

 

[GeoModder]

I'm probably wrong, but I think the Cult is the sole expansion civ that is founded by a secret project. The other human expansion civ are playable when you start a game in the Expansion Era.
Chances are that you need to make an adjustment in the CustomGame screen before they are selectable in the civ list. Ie, choose another maptype change the difficulty level before going back to the civlist and choosing your faction there.

 

[BritNavFan]

Hi! As an old-time SMAC fan (favourite game ever!), I just found out about this mod, and bought Civ IV just to play it, and it's been a blast! Really well done. I love the way the expansion factions come into existence as the game progresses, the way the Planetary Council expands, and the way Planet sometimes successfully "prunes" particularly annoying colonists. You've also done a very nice job on the Gaian and the Morganite factions in particular, and on the graphics, and on adapting SMAC stuff to Civ IV, and and and...

I've started about 5 games so far, of which two, both as the Gaians, have gone long.So here's my critical observations so far (other than a lot of "this is awesome!")

Here are some places I noticed holes in the documentation:

General documentation
> Setting up the SMAC wonder movies. I had to start reading a 60+ page thread from the back to find out where the files go. You should tell the player which folder the bik's go in somewhere in the first two posts on the download thread.
> "Game settings". In particular "tech brokering off". You should mention that it's recommended to play "custom" games with tech brokering off in the first two pages of the download thread as well. I played my first few starts with tech brokering "on" by default because I didn't realise that it was intended to be off until I'd read quite a lot of posts in several threads.

Datalinks
> The datalink for the "Free Market" civic tells you that you need "Superconductor" tech to unlock it, but the datalink for the "Superconductor" tech (and the description of Superconductor on the F6 screen) don't mention that it unlocks "Free Market".
> The effects of the special headquarters and governor's buildings for several factions can be found in the Datalink pages of their respective factions, but most of them are not linked to under the "buildings" and "wonders" categories in the Datalinks.
> It would be nice to have a description of the Concordat in the "Planetfall Concepts" section. (I think I've figured it out by now, but it was very confusing at first.)
> It would also be nice to have a description of Protectorates. I still don't know exactly what these are. Possibly this is because I'm clueless about Civ IV, in which case, can you tell me what Civ IV concept they reimplement? (In particular, playing as the Gaians with 3 Protectorates that have negative Planet Attitude scores, I wonder whether they will all declare war on me when I adopt the Transcendence civic?)
> The "Hints" page in the "Planetfall Concepts" section seems like it could use some editing. The same text is repeated several times over.

Now for observations on game play, which I know you're not excited about hearing from a newbie player, but I'm going to say them anyway . The first two issues are newbie issues anyway.

> My first suggested change is a really tiny one: in Assets\XML\Buildings\CIV4BuildingInfos.xml I noticed that the Gaian biology lab and the general biology lab (BUILDINGCLASS_BIOLOGY_LAB) had the same iFlavour scores. May I suggest increasing the Centauri iFlavour score of the Gaian biology lab to 20? I'm reasonably sure that that'll just make the game recommend the building more often when you're playing the Gaians, which would be a good thing. (If it also makes the Gaian AI build the building more often that'd be pure bonus!)

> Second, it would be nice to have the option of returning to the starter civics if you want to. In my first game I took "Biodomes" without noticing that it stops planting of forests. (It does explain this in the Datalinks but apparently I had temporarily forgotten how to read.) I'd have liked to return to "No Ecology" so I could plant forests but I couldn't.

> A third, more significant, possible change: start Hyperian units with the "Hypnotic Trance" ability instead of the "Empath Song" ability, since that'd be useful to all the AI factions, whereas Empath Song is only useful to factions with high Planet score. Unless of course there's a theme reason for giving them Empath Song (some reference I don't know.)

> A comment on a central issue: I'm surprised that you removed the ability to steal techs from the mod, since it's present in vanilla Civ IV and was a central part of the SMAC design. I'm presuming that's a flavour choice? (OTOH I'm glad you got rid of base stealing, which was very overpowered in SMAC.)

> The Believers. They seem pretty blah compared to the other factions. I have read everything I could find on them in the datalinks, and played a game as them for about 100 or 150 turns, and they don't seem to have any distinct play style, but were more like playing Morgan or Lal without the fun bonuses. They also seem rather weak in AI hands, having done badly each of the times the AI controlled them. I can see where their ability to build colonists and formers fast might be very useful at very high difficulty settings, but it doesn't make them very distinctive, particularly in the hands of the AI. I also don't get the impression the AI gets much use out of that ability. Their combat bonuses could be very handy in the early game but they won't get them until tier III tech at the earliest, probably tier IV, by which time they're one among many such advantages. It's entirely possible I missed something distinctive about them, but I looked pretty hard. So you might want to look at this faction again. More about them later when I talk about the game's religions.

> Civics, in particular from the perspective of not playing at high difficulty levels. I've read where you said that you aim for balance at very difficult settings. But for those of us who, like me, don't play at those levels, it'd be nice if the game were balanced at more standard difficulty levels. The thing is that "Democracy" and "Autarky", in particular, are not very significant at Noble difficulty. It's one thing for me to chose Fundy over Demo as the Gaians, but it should be a significant choice. Here it was more a matter of tossing a coin between insignificantly different options. (I liked the way the choice was set up in SMAC, of course. But here I'm just pointing out there's an mid-difficulty-level balance issue, if you care about such things.)

> Religions. Here's why I mention religion. In my first game as the Gaians, Yang researched Centauri Meditation first, so in that game I had a to wait a long time before I actually got the religion that's the only right and proper one for the Gaians . (And let me just say that the way you've translated SMAC concepts like Voice of Planet to Civ IV concepts like religion is one of the things I love about this mod . I didn't like waiting much, and it was pretty humiliating to be out-Greened by Yang of all people. So my second Gaian/current game I made a point of, not quite beelining to Centauri Meditation, but I think I only took one tech that wasn't a prerequisite for it. Once I got Voice of Planet (VoP), I naturally made a point of aggressively spreading it around all the AI civs I could find. Now, since I quasi-beelined to a tier III tech, and the other religions are triggered by tier IV techs, I had a LOT of time to spread VoP around. So now it's 2475, and all of the AI factions except two have the religion "Voice of Planet". Only the Spartans and the (3 base) University have more than one religion, so all of the big factions except Yang and Santiago are Fundy, so they're going to stay with their one religion... VoP. (So for example the Believers are Fundy VoP, and Morgan is Fundy VoP, and Lal is Fundy VoP...) Which in turn means none of them can take the "Terraformed" civic! Even the ones that have farms all over the place! They don't want to run Hybrid, so they're all running "Biodomes". I have so messed with the AI's head :>.

Now this wouldn't be a problem, except that it's SO easy to do as the Gaians. It's good that you can get VoP as the Gaians. But at least some of the other religions - the others aren't so distinctive - should come into play before the tier IV techs, so it wouldn't be so easy to spread one religion (and, in particular, a religion that blocks an important civic, and which the AI doesn't understand the implications of) to everyone.

I'm thinking of tying the "Edenism" religion to the "Defence Logistics" tech for my house rules. Which would mean the Believers start with a religion on turn 1 of every game . (Of course, I wouldn't give them Missionaries until some tier III tech so Edenism doesn't spread everywhere.)

 

[Pfeffersack]

> It would also be nice to have a description of Protectorates. I still don't know exactly what these are. Possibly this is because I'm clueless about Civ IV, in which case, can you tell me what Civ IV concept they reimplement? (In particular, playing as the Gaians with 3 Protectorates that have negative Planet Attitude scores, I wonder whether they will all declare war on me when I adopt the Transcendence civic?)

They work exactly like the vassals states in Civ4 BtS, just a different name.

> A comment on a central issue: I'm surprised that you removed the ability to steal techs from the mod, since it's present in vanilla Civ IV and was a central part of the SMAC design. I'm presuming that's a flavour choice? (OTOH I'm glad you got rid of base stealing, which was very overpowered in SMAC.)

It is still there. You just need a probe team, a target having a tech you don't have, enough ESP vs. that target and your probe team in one of your bases. Then the Steal tech mission should be available.

 

[Maniac]

General documentation
> Setting up the SMAC wonder movies. I had to start reading a 60+ page thread from the back to find out where the files go. You should tell the player which folder the bik's go in somewhere in the first two posts on the download thread.

Woops. This info is mentioned in the thread in the Modpacks forum, but I forgot there's also a FAQ in the download thread. Updated now.

Datalinks
> The datalink for the "Free Market" civic tells you that you need "Superconductor" tech to unlock it, but the datalink for the "Superconductor" tech (and the description of Superconductor on the F6 screen) don't mention that it unlocks "Free Market".

That's because, as in SMAC, the Gaians can't follow Free Market. A leader's hated civic is mentioned in their datalinks page or when hovering over your faction flag on the main screen.

> The effects of the special headquarters and governor's buildings for several factions can be found in the Datalink pages of their respective factions, but most of them are not linked to under the "buildings" and "wonders" categories in the Datalinks.

That's actually intentional. I figured it would be less confusing and more orderly to have all the info about faction traits be in one place, than to be spread all over the place because of the different ways of giving the boni.

> It would be nice to have a description of the Concordat in the "Planetfall Concepts" section. (I think I've figured it out by now, but it was very confusing at first.)

What do I need to say more than is in the building description?

> The "Hints" page in the "Planetfall Concepts" section seems like it could use some editing. The same text is repeated several times over.

That's intentional to make certain hints show up more often while loading a game.

Now for observations on game play, which I know you're not excited about hearing from a newbie player, but I'm going to say them anyway .

You made me goodjob:

> My first suggested change is a really tiny one: in Assets\XML\Buildings\CIV4BuildingInfos.xml I noticed that the Gaian biology lab and the general biology lab (BUILDINGCLASS_BIOLOGY_LAB) had the same iFlavour scores. May I suggest increasing the Centauri iFlavour score of the Gaian biology lab to 20? I'm reasonably sure that that'll just make the game recommend the building more often when you're playing the Gaians, which would be a good thing. (If it also makes the Gaian AI build the building more often that'd be pure bonus!)

AFAIK the AI already is pretty good at building Biology Labs when it's useful. Myself I never really pay attention what the game suggests I build in cities. I do know however that the code that suggests buildings to the human player is actually different (and worse!) than the one the AI uses. Unfortunately for you, I have no intention of messing with that code. Sorry.

> Second, it would be nice to have the option of returning to the starter civics if you want to. In my first game I took "Biodomes" without noticing that it stops planting of forests. (It does explain this in the Datalinks but apparently I had temporarily forgotten how to read.) I'd have liked to return to "No Ecology" so I could plant forests but I couldn't.

I am able to switch back to the basic civics. Do you know there's a five turn waiting period after a civics change before you can switch again?

> A third, more significant, possible change: start Hyperian units with the "Hypnotic Trance" ability instead of the "Empath Song" ability, since that'd be useful to all the AI factions, whereas Empath Song is only useful to factions with high Planet score. Unless of course there's a theme reason for giving them Empath Song (some reference I don't know.)

Empath Song gives a 25% attack bonus vs psi.

> The Believers. They seem pretty blah compared to the other factions. I have read everything I could find on them in the datalinks, and played a game as them for about 100 or 150 turns, and they don't seem to have any distinct play style, but were more like playing Morgan or Lal without the fun bonuses. They also seem rather weak in AI hands, having done badly each of the times the AI controlled them. I can see where their ability to build colonists and formers fast might be very useful at very high difficulty settings, but it doesn't make them very distinctive, particularly in the hands of the AI. I also don't get the impression the AI gets much use out of that ability. Their combat bonuses could be very handy in the early game but they won't get them until tier III tech at the earliest, probably tier IV, by which time they're one among many such advantages. It's entirely possible I missed something distinctive about them, but I looked pretty hard. So you might want to look at this faction again. More about them later when I talk about the game's religions.

Personally I don't think they're any more or less bland than most other factions. Personally I'd consider Zak and Lal the most bland factions. And I'd consider their combat bonus their biggest benefit in fact.

Myself I'm out of ideas what further boni the various factions could get. I'm certainly open to suggestions to make the factions' playstyle more unique. I should warn though that I dislike 90% of the ideas people offer.

> Civics, in particular from the perspective of not playing at high difficulty levels.

How is Democratic less valuable on lower difficulty levels? I would assume it's Police State because unit maintenance costs are less. I can see how Hybrid and Autarky are less useful. Unfortunately I don't see a solution other than making maintenance costs the same on ALL difficulty levels. It's not really a choice of me to balance the game on higher difficulty levels. In my opinion it's simply impossible to balance a game for different difficulty levels. This is an example of why.

> Religions. Here's why I mention religion. In my first game as the Gaians, Yang researched Centauri Meditation first, so in that game I had a to wait a long time before I actually got the religion that's the only right and proper one for the Gaians .

Hmm, you could try researching Centauri Empathy and suggest the council motion to spread the Voice of Planet. Or offer the tech to whoever is Concordat leader.

Which in turn means none of them can take the "Terraformed" civic! Even the ones that have farms all over the place! They don't want to run Hybrid, so they're all running "Biodomes". I have so messed with the AI's head :>.

I've recently added some code to make the AI likely to switch to another state religion if the Terraformer civic is by far the best civic for them. If they don't switch, it is most likely the best choice to stay in Voice of Planet.

Now this wouldn't be a problem, except that it's SO easy to do as the Gaians. It's good that you can get VoP as the Gaians. But at least some of the other religions - the others aren't so distinctive - should come into play before the tier IV techs, so it wouldn't be so easy to spread one religion (and, in particular, a religion that blocks an important civic, and which the AI doesn't understand the implications of) to everyone.

It's intentional that the Voice of Planet is available some time earlier. I want them to have a larger influence than the others (more than 25%), considering the religion is somewhat tied to the whole pro-Planet strategy. In the past their influence was often TOO high, reaching up to 70%. Since I recently have made the Spread the Voice council motion require centauri Empathy, that problem seems to have diminished a lot though, at least when the AI founds the Voice. I haven't founded the Voice myself since I made that change. If you're able to spread your religion so succesfully though, perhaps it's a sign you're ready to move up a difficulty level?

I'm thinking of tying the "Edenism" religion to the "Defence Logistics" tech for my house rules. Which would mean the Believers start with a religion on turn 1 of every game . (Of course, I wouldn't give them Missionaries until some tier III tech so Edenism doesn't spread everywhere.)

I have thought about that myself in the past, but I figured that while it would make the game more interesting for the Believers, it would make it less interesting for everyone else.

 

[BritNavFan]

Thanks to both of you for your replies, and my apologies for my delayed response.

[Protectorates] work exactly like the vassals states in Civ4 BtS, just a different name.

Aha! Thanks. That changes my strategy some...

It is still there. You just need a probe team, a target having a tech you don't have, enough ESP vs. that target and your probe team in one of your bases. Then the Steal tech mission should be available.

D'oh! Yes, I suppose when you're the tech leader you wouldn't be able to steal techs

That's because, as in SMAC, the Gaians can't follow Free Market. A leader's hated civic is mentioned in their datalinks page or when hovering over your faction flag on the main screen.

That'd be why it doesn't show up on the F6 screen . Investigating some more, I looked at the pages for the techs that enable 4 other civics, and none of them mentioned that they enabled civics.

That's actually intentional. I figured it would be less confusing and more orderly to have all the info about faction traits be in one place, than to be spread all over the place because of the different ways of giving the boni.

Fair enough. It would have worked better for me in particular to have it in lots of places, so I'd find it in whichever place I looked first. I've no idea how typical that response is .

What do I need to say more than is in the building description?

Ahh, but I didn't realise it was a building. How about a link to the building description from the Planetfall concepts screen?

I am able to switch back to the basic civics. Do you know there's a five turn waiting period after a civics change before you can switch again?

You're right. For some reason, the game gave me a different error message when I tried to switch to another civic within five years than when I tried to switch back to a basic civic within five years. I have no idea whether I could replicate this.

How is Democratic less valuable on lower difficulty levels? I would assume it's Police State because unit maintenance costs are less. I can see how Hybrid and Autarky are less useful. Unfortunately I don't see a solution other than making maintenance costs the same on ALL difficulty levels. It's not really a choice of me to balance the game on higher difficulty levels. In my opinion it's simply impossible to balance a game for different difficulty levels. This is an example of why.

My logic was that Democratic is the one you take if you want to maximize +happiness from political civics, and one of the standard ways civ games are harder at higher difficulty levels is by making base happiness lower so +happiness is more important. Of course, that line of logic holds for maintenance costs too.

In principle you could give a civic that has an effect that scales a lot with difficulty a second effect that's useful at easier difficulty levels, but not especially important at high difficulty. In practice, of course, while you can do this for an individual civic it gets very hard to do it for all civics (and everything else).

I've recently added some code to make the AI likely to switch to another state religion if the Terraformer civic is by far the best civic for them. If they don't switch, it is most likely the best choice to stay in Voice of Planet.

I'll watch what AI Zakharov does, as he has a second religion to chose from. AI Morgan, AI Lal, and AI Miriam only have VoP though, and I doubt the AI's been programmed to make the jump: Terraformed best enviro Civic & only have VoP & have tech for Terraformed & trading with factions that have religions other than VoP => don't use Fundy so that it's more likely for non-VoP religions to spread to you.

It's intentional that the Voice of Planet is available some time earlier. I want them to have a larger influence than the others (more than 25%), considering the religion is somewhat tied to the whole pro-Planet strategy.

You have to make it easy enough for the AI Gaians. That makes sense. Hmmm. The problem, to me, is that in my game the three other religions hardly spread at all. I wonder if I can write some events that'd give appropriate religions to bases of factions that meet a set of reasonable qualifications...

Personally I don't think they're any more or less bland than most other factions. Personally I'd consider Zak and Lal the most bland factions. And I'd consider their combat bonus their biggest benefit in fact.

Myself I'm out of ideas what further boni the various factions could get. I'm certainly open to suggestions to make the factions' playstyle more unique. I should warn though that I dislike 90% of the ideas people offer...

I have thought about that myself in the past, but I figured that while it would make the game more interesting for the Believers, it would make it less interesting for everyone else.

Well, Lal was arguably the most bland faction in SMAC, so I'm happy with that here, though I think double votes in Council is more distinctive than Miriam's combat bonus. For me, personally (and I realise this is completely a matter of taste), giving the Believers their own religion from the start of the game would make the game more interesting even if I'm playing someone else (as I usually will), as it would make the Believers more interesting to play against, and as none of the other factions except the Gaians and PlanetCult seem much concerned with religion. Anyway I expect it's just an xml change so I can test it out myself .

Thanks again for your replies. I'm glad my original post came across well. I felt bad spending most of my post nit-picking about tiny bits of the mod.

So tell me (another question) how have people done on the Hybrid/Transcendence victory? I'm currently up to a Flowering Counter of 49... (A couple of pages ago someone was concerned about balance between hybrid and terraforming AI's, and I can attest that when the player is playing a Hybrid the Hybrid AI's do better, as a group, than the terraforming ones...)

 

[Pfeffersack]

So tell me (another question) how have people done on the Hybrid/Transcendence victory? I'm currently up to a Flowering Counter of 49... (A couple of pages ago someone was concerned about balance between hybrid and terraforming AI's, and I can attest that when the player is playing a Hybrid the Hybrid AI's do better, as a group, than the terraforming ones...)

You need to adopt the Transcendence Civic (either because of a motion of the Concordate Council or by our own decision when the FC goes beyond 85), bring the FC to 100 and have a PA of at least 1.00 then. The tricky part is currently bringing up the FC to 100, likely further adjustments will be made here.

 

[Maniac]

That'd be why it doesn't show up on the F6 screen . Investigating some more, I looked at the pages for the techs that enable 4 other civics, and none of them mentioned that they enabled civics.

Woops. This should be fixed in the next patch.

Fair enough. It would have worked better for me in particular to have it in lots of places, so I'd find it in whichever place I looked first. I've no idea how typical that response is .

The problem is that if a unique building was mentioned both in the buildings page of the datalinks, and listed as a "trait" bonus in the leader pages, one might think that a faction gets that advantage. That's how it would work in standard BtS. Any I definitely wanted to have all the benefits listed in one place, in response to Fall from Heaven, where it very hard to figure out how each civ differs from standard.

I doubt the AI's been programmed to make the jump: Terraformed best enviro Civic & only have VoP & have tech for Terraformed & trading with factions that have religions other than VoP => don't use Fundy so that it's more likely for non-VoP religions to spread to you.

Hmm, that's right. It's codable though.

I wonder if I can write some events that'd give appropriate religions to bases of factions that meet a set of reasonable qualifications...

Such random events would definitely be useful for the Hive and Pirates for instance, who are most likely to stay without a religion due to their aversion to open borders.

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

Hallo guys,

first thanks to everyone who is envolved in making this fascinating mod! You really made it to catch the SMAC-feeling and mix it with the superior Civ4 game mechanics.

In the last weeks I played five or six games with the actual patch-version and the version before that. As I said above I very much liked playing your mod, but some (mostly minor) things, could perhaps be better in future patches.

Bugs I found in the latest version:
- no introduction text, when meeting the smax/expansion era factions (the part of the diplo-window where it should stand is empty)

- marines and genites looking like a red "blob" (always having the APC-specialisation)

Things I would likely change (if I had any modding skills):
- The subspace win can achieved way too easy (or to early) in comparison to other victories. Also it makes all the other late game techs useless. Why would someone research one of the other (second) last tier techs other than the one leading to subspace win (singularity mechanics)? You can get a new unit or plus one nutrient to your greenhouses - or you can win! Not really a choice. And building the subspace generator can be done in about five round if you use supplies. Thats extremly fast. I think Singularity mechanics should be harder to research (needing nearly all other techs or being extremly costly compared to the other techs).

- The Transcendence Victory seems nearly impossible to me. Even in my (immortal) game where my hybrid gaians owned half the world, having Pholusmutagen and building communes like mad, the flowering counter was only high in the forties, when I was able to build the subspace generator. Normally you get pholus mutagen perhaps 30 till 50 rounds before you could achieve singularity mechanics if you beeline to it. I think thats too late to get the flowering counter high enough making transcendence victory a real choice.

- Is wealth (value) considered to work like it does at the moment? You lose -35% military production. Thats huge but on the other hand you get +25 % prod to everything, means only -10 % for military units. Wealth seems to good in comparison to the other values. (perhaps -50 % military would be better).

- I found it too easy to get the Planetary Datalinks in all of games (emperor-deity). Researching the fundamental techs from the fist four tiers then beelining to cybernetics and you have a very good chance of being the tech leader for the rest of the game. If there is such a powerful wonder (perhaps too powerful) the Ai's priority getting it should be higher.

- I don't like the new system with the Air Evacuation units. It leads to cities with extreme production (cities with 5-10 pop, but 15 free technicians and genejack factory). Can lead to the strange situation that you take a city from the enemy but strengthen his production capacity.

- The (midgame) infantry units seem nearly useless to me in comparison to flamethrower units. Plasma throwers are way better than Genite, Hyperion are better than InVitros if you consider the price in minerals and techs needed. Flamethrower units should be anti-native units, so why give them boni against infantry?

- MagTubes should be allowed in hybrid forests.

- Spies should be always invisible to all units. (Never liked the Probe team mechanics in SMAC, think the bts civ spy system is better.)

- One think i did not understand is why native units are always attacked first when a stack is attacked? Example: I have a walker specialised for garrison in city with some promotions and a mind worm on a city field. An enemy unit is attacking. The attacker would be nearly chanceless against the garrison walker, but the native unit is always attacked first an often killed. Why?

Enough for now. Thanks again for making your superb mod. I hope you have some use for my suggestions.

Greetings

Bernd-da-Brot