FirstAge v0.2: An Extended Ancient Era Mod

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

EDIT(April 15): Note on Civ4 v1.61 compatability with FirstAge v0.3 and erlyer. Choosing China as your civ will crash to desktop.

EDIT(April 27): Finishing the last playtesting and polishing on v0.4. Should have it uploaded in a couple days or so.

EDIT(April 30): I'm uploading version 0.4 now, should be linked in a few hours.

EDIT(April 30, later that day): v0.4 is uploaded and linked.

EDIT(September 15, 2006): I reuploaded v0.4, this time on CivFanatics File Database. To meet the CFCDB 10MB file limit I had to take the 3 Wonder Movie files out of the main zip file. They are included in the link right below the main one. Just put the 3 Wonder Movie files in the <Civ4>/Mods/FirstAge/Assets/Art/Movies/ directory.

Basic Idea:
This mod takes place in the Ancient Era, mainly in the Stone Age. Many new techs have been added, though a couple from the Classical Era have been incorporated aswell. There are new units and building and wonders from other peoples mods are mixed in. This mod is for those who enjoy the first age of the game and don't mind a slower pace for the first 80 or so turns.

File: FirstAge_v04_NoMovies.zip
Compatible: Civ4 v1.61
Mod Folder: Mods\FirstAge
Size: 9.6
CivFanatics: FirstAge v0.4 Mod with No Wonder Movie Files File Now Available

File: FirstAge_v0.4_WonderMovies.zip
Compatible: Civ4 v1.61, FirstAge Mod v0.4
Mod Folder: Mods\FirstAge\Assets\Art\Movies
Size: 1.77
CivFanatics: FirstAge v0.4 Mod Wonder Movies Patch File Now Available

v0.4 Changes:

Spoiler :

v0.32 Changes:

Spoiler :

v0.31 Changes:

Spoiler :

v0.3 Changes:

Spoiler :

Pre v0.3 Version History:

Spoiler :

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

FirstAge Technologies

Here is a link to some screen shots of the Tech Tree so far.

Tech Tree Images

My main goal with the tech tree is to spread out all the things you do so that no tech gives more then one or two rewards. I am hoping to have around a little over a hundred techs spanning The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, and The Iron Age. I have most of the Stone Age techs done, though I am still working on the Religious branch which will lead into the trade and commerce stuff that I haven't added yet.

I am really trying to make animals a bigger part of the game and the techs at the bottom of the tree, Bird Handling, Wolf Handling, Bear Handling, and Lion Handling, reflect this. They each give the ability to train the appropriate animal type. These animals can then be loaded into the Beast Trainer unit (birds can also be loaded into the hunter and ranger units).

My plan is to put more techs following from these that represent the domestication process, like Wolf Handling --> Wolf Breeding --> Domesticate Wolf. The last one giveing the first Dog unit. Don't know exactly, any input would be appricated.

As it stands the tech tree has the basics done. I need to flesh out the religious and animal parts, as well as working in liturature, trade, and a few more such techs.

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

FirstAge Civilizations and Leaders

I'm play testing the mod right now and working on unit stat balance and production costs, ect., But once that is done I'm going to start adding in some more civs/leaders.

Allowed Civilizations:

Spoiler :

At the moment all unique units have been removed. I am definetly adding them back in, but not until I get the standard units more fleshed out.

Civs to add:
Isreal
Most from Out of Africa
Most from First Peoples

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

I added a few buildings.

From Fall from Heavon(thanx be to Kael) I borrowed the Training Yard.
From the Lost Units mod I borrowed the Art of War, The Great Wall, and Masoleum of somthing(can't remember the name..).

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

Reserved for Bonuses, Improvements, ect.

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

FirstAge Units

One thing I want to point out. Its an idea I am kinda proud of at the moment. Check out the scout. It can carry 'Equipment'. The Canoe is 'Equipment' and if you load a Canoe on a Scout while he is in a city, then the next time the scout is next to water the canoe can sail out of the scout and into the water. At wich point the scout can board the canoe. Unforunatly the canoe can't go back into the scout unless they are both in a city. The Basecamp unit is also equipment and starts with the Medic 1 promotion, so a scout can carry it around and is able to set up a base of operations.

New units:

Spoiler :

These vanilla units have been altered:

Spoiler :

Jeckel · Apr 3, 2006

Credits:

Wraith and Jake -- All the ideas we've talked over and the innumerus hotseat games we've all played in CivIII and Civ4.

TheLopez -- The mods you've made that I have/will incorp into this mod and the ones I've just used in my personal games.

the great The Great Apple -- The civ4wiki and all the other stuff TGA deserves being thanked for.

Wyz_sub10 -- The Out of Africa and First Peoples mods. If only Fraxis could put this much thought and detail into the vanilla game.

Kael -- What can I say, Fall from Heaven ROCKS. Great work.

Rabbit, White -- To those of us with no grasp of graphics stuff, what you do is indespensable, and loads of thanx for the Native American canoe, best sea unit of all time imo.

Father Dagon -- Thankyou for you help in typo checking and for repoting those errors.

Everyone else that put buttons/maps/mods/units/ideas/ect up on the net, without you this mod would not be possible.

Mods and ModComps fully incorporated:

Spoiler :

I just started documenting the credits and am going to have to surf the net to find out who made some of the things I used, but be patient and I'll get all the props up on here. If you do see something that is yours just post up here or pm me and I'll credit ya. :>

Jeckel · Apr 6, 2006

Changes Coming Next:
The tech costs need to be reworked as they are out of wach, Beaten Paths is only 1 tech point to learn.. I will have this cleaned up a bit by the next release which will be v0.27 and should be out by April 7th. It will have the tech costs reworked, units will be balanced a little better, and maybe some new techs and units.

Changes Coming.. somtime:
I hate that so many units share graphics with other units, but Rabbit, White is coming out with some sort of Alternate Stone Weapons unit graphic pack so once I get ahold of it this problem should be fixed alittle.

Recent Changes

v0.263
After some playtesting, I found that there are some problems with not haveing any military units until Warfare. Mainly the problem was barbarians, so I put the Warrior back to no prereq techs, lowered his strength to 1, lowered their cost to 5, and limited them to 2 per player. I also started each civilization with their alotment of 2 of these Warriors. This should stop barbs from just walking into your city.. unless they are 28 squares away exploring when the barbs invade..

I also added a tech called Cultural Identity. It is ment to represent the change from being a bunch of families/clans that live together, to being the People of a Civilization, if you get my meaning. It requires Oral Tradition, Agriculture, Fishing, Wood Working, and Stone Working. It allows Open Boarders agreements and the construction of Settlers, as well as leading to Writing and, eventually, the commerce/government branch. I know 5 techs is alot of prereqs, but I want to make it a conserted effort to build settlers and gain access to diplomatic/trade abilities, my over all goal being to make a warlike game environment. I may move this tech from the 2 row to the 3rd and change the prereqs to 2 or 3 2nd row techs, maybe Oral Tradition, Animal Husbantry, and Food Storage, don't know for sure yet.

Lastly, I was reading a post by Optimizer about his Icebreaker Mod and thought it was a great idea, so I gave the Ice Feature a growth of 30 and a disapearance of 30. Don't know how much this will effect things, jungle and forest have a growth in the upper teens and when I tested it a bit growth of 100 grew about every other turn, give or take.

Well it seems a few people have downloaded the earlyer versions of this mod, I would love to hear some feed back from any one thats played it or just has some suggestions. :>

strategyonly · Apr 6, 2006

Was playing this mod, i hope this is just the beginning cause WOW talk about boring, not to be offensive, but it took a fifteen minutes to get first settler, i had over 100 workers (all of which i had to delete), also had about 50 Clubman, (also had to delete 90% of them) could not build anything else, then because of money problems, had to take progress down to 10%. Then when i was FINALLY getting into it, had four new city's and POOF it crashed!! When looking at the hopes of this mod looks good with the animal stuff, so pls help for now, thx.

Ploeperpengel · Apr 6, 2006

Sorry can't give feedback on your mod right now, no time for playing, just a suggestion: maybe you should also have a look at the stoneage prealpha here, that seemed promising but looks now nobody works on that anymore. I'd like the idea of a stoneage mod maybe you can utilize the ideas and stuff provided there.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=160483

Jeckel · Apr 6, 2006

@Ploeperpengel
Thanx for the input, that Stone Ages: Prealpha has alot of good ieads and I think I may be able to flesh out the commerce/culture/government part of the tech tree now. :>

@strategyonly
Yea, in its current form the mod isn't really ment to be playable. I'm amazed you learned any lenght of the tech tree as many things on the forth row and on are several thousand tech points. But I'm glad you are interested in the mod and I've fixed the problem with clubman not upgrading, they now upgrade to stone clubman. At the moment stone units don't upgrade to anything, but i am planing some cooper and maybe bronze units in the future version. Check back in later today or tomorrow and I should have a playable, if not totally balanced, version up for download.

Then when i was FINALLY getting into it, had four new city's and POOF it crashed!!

Could you elaborate on this. I haven't run into any crash to desktops myself, but I haven't played any single game to length. I have put in a few python mods from various people and theoretically there could be unforseen issues. If you can recreate this crash and tell me the circumstances I might be able to fix it or ask others about it. Thanx for the feedback :>

FatherDagon · Apr 6, 2006

Hey, this is a great start for a mod! I really like the early game, and this mod really catches my interest. However, strategyonly has a good point: there is nothing to build for a long time. I would typically get a building, build it in my cities, and then wait forever. I would have to build and kill units constantly. Even while doing that, I think inflation was still creeping along, so without improvements to income, it became more and more expensive to do the same thing, with no way to stop it. Perhaps you could disable inflation until a certain point in the game? Maybe turn it on with a particular technology or at a certain time. Either way, there needs to be something to do with all that extra production, as you can't build Wealth, Research, or Culture for a very long time.

On a more positive side, I really like the way you're doing the technology. Having to develop technology to do everything, to me anyway, is great.

Two errors that I wanted to point out to you. I was able to build standard Warriors, and later Axemen with Copper, as well as the primitive units you added. These normal units blow their primitive versions, and all the other units at the time, clear out of the water. Perhaps you would like to disable them? Also, I built my first city next to a goody hut, and it gave me a Scout. However, this was the normal Scout, and not a primitive version. You might decide to look at this as well.

I was interested in the other stone age mod that was out, but I think the poster was trying to do too much at once, and gave up on it. I was kind of disappointed, and I don't want to see that happen with this mod!

Jeckel · Apr 6, 2006

Alright, well me and a buddy play tested the mod a bunch last night and I see what yall are saying about the early game being pretty boring. This will be remedied in the next release which I will be putting up in a few hours. I'll post more peticulars after I upload the file.

@FatherDagon
Did you suffer the crash to desktop that strategyonly mentioned? And thanx for playing and mentioning those errors, I'll look into them and get them fixed, but I am afraid to do any work on the in game stuff until I trace down this ctd bug, but I am on the job right now and don't plan on abandoning this mod. Your input is really appreciated. :>

Jeckel · Apr 7, 2006

Well it was some work, but I tracked down the glitch. It was in the unitinfos.xml file. It was either some alterations I made to the unit graphic meshes or it was the fact that I put all my new units above the vanilla units. But either way, I have played through just over 100 turns in 5 straight games with no crashes to desktop.

I am uploading the new, stable, version. Read bellow for the specific changes from v0.263 to the current v0.27

Recent Changes:

v0.27

Spoiler :

@FatherDagon
I check and the Scout is sappose to be in the game, has new abilities, see one of the posts above. And as for the Axeman, it isn't available in the game, but the Stone Axeman does use the same unit graphic as the Axeman, maybe that caused the confusion, but good lookin out anyway.

And try the new version, v0.27 in the first post, I think it should be much better the the last one, though it still is only about half way done.

FatherDagon · Apr 7, 2006

@Jeckel
I didn't have any troubles with the game crashing (at least, not from your mod). My computer is a bit old, and as the game progresses, performance deteriorates. But no crashes from your mod.

About the Scout and Axeman, maybe I was using an old version or something. I'll go and download the new version later today and give it a go.

Also, I put together a short list of minor issues I discovered playing the mod last night, I can post them up here if you would like. Mostly misspellings and TXT_KEY issues with appropriate XML bits not displaying text.

Jeckel · Apr 7, 2006

Sorry it took so long to get the new version up, but I fell asleep while it was uploading. Anyhow, check the first post to download the latest version. Please play a game or two and let me know if the game crashes, though it shouldn't.

@FatherDagon
I think a lot of the TXT_KEY errors should be fixed in the v0.27, but please do post up any errors you found. I am sure there are some spelling errors as spelling is not my strong suit and I don't usually notice the errors to someone points them out. Thanx for the help. :>

FatherDagon · Apr 8, 2006

@Jeckel

I tried out the new version. The fixes and tweaks you made are pretty good, more balance and I think it works out better. Still lots of clicking through turns with nothing to do though. Most of the TXT_KEYs I saw earlier are fixed, but I noticed more new ones

(for example, the quote for the Trade technology, and a few of the technology strategy quotes that show up when you mouse over them).

Unfortunately, I ran into that crashing issue that someone mentioned earlier. Screen went black, music started skipping, and Windows let me know it was game over. I believe at the moment I was just clicking through turns. I tried playing a bigger game than usual, I think it was a Normal speed, 10 Civ game on a Small world. Not sure if that helps.

Jeckel · Apr 8, 2006

@FatherDagon
Thanx for testing it out, I'll put the those TXT_KEY errors you mention on the list to fix.

As for the crash to desktop, I have been play testing with a friend and we ran into it again aswell, small map, 8 civs, quick speed, hotseat with 2 humans. Do you remember what turn it CTDed on? We were around 190-210. But we reloaded about 5 turns back and it didn't crash again, we played to almost turn 320 before saving for another day, so atleast it isn't savegame glitching.

And for things like the quotes, if you have any ideas for any of the techs just post it up and I'll prob use it. If no one has any suggestions I'll prob just swipe them from other mods and things that pop into my mind.

But I'm going to take the weekend off and play test a few games through to the end. If all things go alright i'll be posting v0.3 in 3 or 4 days. It will have things like Slavery Civic, 3 new wonders, around 10 new techs, new archer units, some unique units returned, new unit graphics for the stone units, more early units, and more happyness, culture, and health things in the early part of the game. But that is in 3 or 4 days.

I'll check back in off and on, if anyone gets the Crash To Desktop, please post the size of map, number of AIs and players, game speed, and turn it crashed, I am tracking this error done and am going to kill if at all possible. Thanx for any help. :>

EDIT(April, 12): I am about half done with v0.3. Assumeing everything in RL goes good I'll have it up sometime tommorrow.

EDIT(April, 13): I'm uploading version 0.3 now, should be done in about an hour.

Jeckel · Apr 13, 2006

..Bump..

Latest version is up. Link is in first post. Lots of changes, check the spoiler in first post to see most of them.

I'm working on a scenario right now, am going to playtest this version for atleast a week. Am dling the patch and SDK right now so, will prob edit htis post with ideas shortly.

Mesix · Apr 17, 2006

It sounds like you are off to a great start. I am especially excited to see how you have managed to incorporate the canoes and other portable equipment. I am finishing school this month and do not want to get into any more mods quite yet (TAM and FfH both take too much time from my studies already). I hope that you work out a few of the bugs before I try it in a few short weeks.

Keep up the good work.

FirstAge v0.2: An Extended Ancient Era Mod

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