Future Mod

[ounceofreason]

Absolutely love this mod - I'm still playing through the first stable version, so hopefully I'll finish up that game around the time 1.0 posts.

How hard would it be to merge this with the original BTS content, to give Stone Age to post-Singularity in a single game?

 

[Tholish]

As for when 1.0, I'd better not make any promises. It seems like it should be simple...


As for for adding preindustrial eras, that would be post 1.0. The problem with that is that the start in 1815 reflects a new world on a new scale. To have enough stuff happen during the game, I had to extend the limits of the game in both directions so that you start even weaker than in a regular game and end up far more powerful than at the end of a regular game.

For example, even if you had roads acceptable for a medieval kingdom those are now seen as nothing but dirt roads that don't even show on the map and cannot carry enough traffic to count as a route to tap a bonus. Thus you start with no routes until you research Railroad.

A lot of other functions I've pushed into the industrial and modern era that the regular game grants way earlier, since we are really talking about different things on a different scale. That's one of the things I will clarify with 1.0, by explaining it in the Civililopedia. Thus you can't build a plantation or winery until you get Food Science. I'll explain that though Wine existed long before, it could not be produced transported and marketed in sufficient quantities until now.

Thus I can't just graft the old tech tree on, but it may be possible to do a different one. It will take some thought. I may see if I can force a dark age by having techs that obsolete classical era stuff without replacing it until much later. For example, I may use the Roman Roads from Charlemaigne to be a route equivalent to reailroads, but made obsolete by the tech Barbarism. So, why would you research Barbarism? To get to Feudalism and got get the Barbaric Horde unit which is just totally unbalancing. Thus it will be possible to have an entire ancient and classical era game, with full economic development, yet still be rediscovering the equivalent techs in the 19th Century because you HAVE to go through the Dark Ages. (Oh, you can cling to your Classical civilization ifyou like, but Legions cost high maintenacne and are expensive to build, while Hordes are cheap to build and maintain (food based?) and are more powerful, so even though Dark Age civs can no longer build roads, they can beat you in war so you are doomed.

Like I say, best to wrap it up and make a foundation before I build another storey. I'd better not try to finish it this weekend.

 

[Popcornlord]

I like the idea of dark ages. Gives it a rise and fall of civilization feel. Sounds like a cool mod, can't play now, but I'll try to soon.

 

[Tholish]

Made some improvements, including Negative non state rel happiness with the overstrength Utopia civic, lots of little art changes, building stat tweaks (consumer goods factory needs power to be the total money factory it was), hills minus food like regular civ, improved the Nihilist stuff but needs more, cyborg factory heals units LOTS, deleted some obsolete buildings from the XML (you won't notice), did Building Texts (only the rest of the events, some new concepts, strategies, and units left to go)and just now uploaded that. Call it 0.85. Hope to finish this weekend.

Should I do custom trim or just use the regular civ stuff? By trim I mean the start up screen and like the borders where so many mods have special colors and fonts and stuff.

 

[The_J]

Nice idea .
I think, a moderator should move it to the modpacks-forum again .

Question: Where did you get the skin for the great wall?
It would good fit in my mod .

Should I do custom trim or just use the regular civ stuff? By trim I mean the start up screen and like the borders where so many mods have special colors and fonts and stuff.

Sure you should. You must see, that it's NOT normal BtS.

 

[Tholish]

A version that was up for about 24 hours had non matching art references for a couple of buildings (Building 4...huh?), and you know what that does when the building gets built. That's exactly why I asked that this mod be moved here until its done. That and every improvement seems like the game was intolerably wrong before it. Plus, I'll keep this thread for development of post 1.0 versions and start a new one in mods for a "written in stone" 1.0 once it is thoroughly tested (which will be about a month after I pronouce 0.99. Current version is 0.86.)

Like the Cryo Mausoleum, the Great Barrier skin is the Advanced Factory skin from Next War. You'de be amazed how often they sort of fit even with no effort.

So, anyway, I'll do new trim. I had at least one start up screen for the BtS 3.00 version, but it didn't work anymore after I changed to 3.17.

Been thinking about other planets for the post 1.0 versions also. Terrains wise, what I'm thinking is to add a set of terrains and features for use in building planet scenarios that all use the same mod. I'll only use Afterworld's four or so terrains and a simple flat black texture as additional actual Terrains, but will add a great many Features to go with them. The combination of terrains and features should be able to cover all possible extraterrestrial conditions. I'll have to experiment with giving spacecraft a move of 36 (so scenario planets would be 34 wide and 68 high and a two planet scenario would be like 68 high and 128 wide separated by ten moves of travel for basic spacecraft and wrapping in both x and y) and having the Space terrain cost like 12 movement per tile. In the past I have had slowdown trouble with huge movement rates, as though the AI can't handle having to check that many possible destinations. This needs to be resolved before 1.0 is complete because currently the +3 move for spacecraft of different techs is plain silly.

Also I think I'll experiment with using the gunship kfm for spacecraft some way so they point down at the ground part of the time while in combat with things on the ground....
There.

 

[Gagonite]

Fairly interesting mod, although it seems to lag a bit on larger maps, even moreso than usual. I must comment though.. some of the end-game stuff seems a bit overwhelming. Like the time travel and ascendent stuff..

Alot of the ideas are good however. I especially think the off-world colonies is interesting and innovative, would you happen to mind if I add those in the mod I'm creating?

 

[Tholish]

Freely use whatever I produce, as far as I am concerned Gagonite. Actually the idea of representing off world colonies as buildings comes from an old Civ 3 mod component, a Mars colony wonder that somebody did. I just expanded that so that regular colonies--one possible per planet--are buildings, which get you an uber specialist (Colonist) and a bonus, while you can build a Dominion wonder for each planet once you have 5 colonies "there," earning a more rare bonus and more Colonists and also functioning as a Forbidden Palace and also speeding Space Ship victory.

By the end game theres a technological singularity under way, so its hard to come up with anything quite strong enough. An omnipurpose GP/missionary and a 10X great artist/ultra specialist are the best I could do. Cultural levels follow an exponential curve relative to regular ones, so strong stuff is needed or nobody will have any chance of getting Legendary. Currently. I really want to make a bunch more Wonders.

I'm planning to give the Ascendant unit better art, an effect or something.

My current computer is the fastest I've ever had. I've played on a Huge map, though I usually prefer a standard or large, and haven't noticed much lag. There are more civilizations on each size, 18 on Huge and the others scaled up similarly so that there aren't really any empty spaces. That may have something to do with it, or it could be some of the python that I stuck in without knowing how it really worked, or it could be the greater movement rates. When do you get it, throughout the game, or after spaceships come out?

 

[Gagonite]

Every few turns from the beginning of the game my frame rate just halves for like 10 seconds, then goes ok for a short time, and repeats. I'm playing it on the Earth 18 Map, perhaps thats the reason?


Edit: Also, Tholish, how did you get the Terraforming Project to improve the terrain? Been trying to figure it out meself.. no luck.

 

[Tholish]

I don't have that particular trouble. You say it goes on forever? And its linked to turns? Every few turns the game autosaves. It may have something to do with that. I think you can turn autosave off. Not that you would want to play that way (essential strategic tool) but for diagnostic purposes you could try that or try it on a random map.

Anyway, I was just testing the latest version. It has 20 new leaderheads, high tech infantry that also slowly work terrain (makes certain advanced starts playable now that hi tech worker upgrades to hi tech infantry and also looks cool), more futuristic barbarians in the future, and an AI only Alien civ that has all the future techs but nothing modern or industrial and can't get FTL (THAT one--only-- has a stuttering leaderhead) Played on a Huge Lakes and had no speed problems at all. Also made the Teleport gate a regular building rather than a National Wonder. What was I thinking?

The Terraforming Project is Tsentom's Eden Project. I didn't make it, I just merged the python in. It works great don't it? When I do extraterrestrial terrains I'll have to make a copy of it for each planet and mess with the python a little to make each one upgrade different sets of terrains.

 

[Gagonite]

Yea the terraforming is neat.. though you say its Python based? I have absolutely no idea how to work Python.. yet. Just XML. XD Thanks. I'll also test out turning off the auto-save.. may be the problem. Though I do like autosave.

 

[Tholish]

This was an earlier version that was accompanied by a patch, but I decided to just reupload the whole thing. First and last posts have it.

http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=74215

 

[Tholish]

OK, here's a link to the version I will playtest for a month without posting any changes. This mod will be Version 1.0 in the sense that I will not be adding any more material or making any changes that are not reverse compatible (such as adding units or buildings) with saved games. The month of playtesting before I declare 1.0 is merely to brush up any minor things I bypassed, such as misspelling feifdom or having crazy interface scales in the Civilopedia illustrations.

http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=74215


I'd really like feedback on how well the link works. I know, its Atomic Gamer and there's a wait, but other than that are you getting a functional mod?

 

[Asthix]

Just reinstalled and fired it back up. Everything looks great so far, no lag for me in the first 30 or so turns.

Some thoughts:

Workers can still build farms on forests and get the chopping bonus even without steel.

Does the player ever found Christianity/Islam? It hasn't happened to me in any of my games.

Link worked fine.

"Ooh look! My supreme conquerer gets better results from tribal villages!"

 

[Tholish]

Yes, they can.
Yes, it's random. So, the smaller the map the higher the probability.
OK, I need to cover those tracks better.

Been thinking about the whole wood thing. I'm building forests so I can get the production to build hover tanks. Its justg irksome? The reason wood adds to hammers in the standard game is that it was a primary source of both fuel and building material, preindustrially. While it remained valuable later, it lost ground. Yet I have made this mod to where you are relying very much on wood since it is the best source of raw hammers yield until you get the core tap. The cause of the problem is that the dynamics of civ 4 are different from the dynamics of civ 3.

I was riding a bus through Tokyo yesterday, and thinking about what big stuff is really made out of. Its concrete, glass, ceramics, brick, and metals like iron and aluminum. Most of what the heavy production raw yield really comes from like one iron mine, and the rest of the contrubution is processing. Except of course that the myriad other things come from a variety of specialized mines and quaries for clay, gypsum, limestone, silicates, etc...These are distributed all over, since they are really a variety of deposits.

Now, the model that comes closest to that is what I will implement. Heavy Factory will have a big direct Yield, and will require Aluminum or Iron to build (ideally it would be like a power bonus, but can't). I toned down forest and treefarm production. And I made Stone into a non tradeable general bonus that is very common on all terrains, and adds one hammer. What I get is an effect similar to the bonus grassland tiles in Civ 3.

 

[Asthix]

Are the 'totart' and 'units' files still a seperate unzip with the beta test version? when I try to move them it says 'file already exists in that location', I don't know if I should overwrite.

Very interesting path of logic there. As always it sounds like it will make the theme of the mod further stand out as one which you can use to explore far future ideas in a way that better reflects how we could get there.

 

[Tholish]

The ToTart and Units files in the attachments to the second post are for version 0.85, which is attached to the first post. The download from atomic gamer includes everything for version 0.96.

I should explain my logic in the form of a more detailed Civilopedia.

 

[Daryl95]

Thanks. I'm working on the MoreStuffMod. It adds future stuff to the game as well as more leaders, more units, more civs, etc. This will be very useful for my mod.

 

[Asthix]

Bump for awesomeness.

I would recommend that once you get the mod moved back to the modpacks page, (which it totally deserves) you edit your 1st post to include a spoiler tag that showcases a few nifty details. (like a description of the Grey Goo Replicators and stats for a few of the many cool wonders, perhaps a list of all the 'Power' plants you can build?)

Oh and a list of the various unit types might be just the thing to pull in the warmonger set since you have organized future units into tiers pretty well IMO.

Excellent job.

 

[Tholish]

Thanks, Asthix. Hey, I'm working hard on it and it's getting much better. I've been doing a lot of changing the way stuff looks in the future, like explorer looks like a Cyborg with a Clone skin; Field Cannon looks like an early Antitank gun; etc...I rearranged some upgrade paths so its logical and you don't lose HiTech workers before you can get Workbots. Better buttons. All kinds of little fixes to put some polish on. Start up screen.... If you liiked the old version you'll really like what's coming.

What do you mean by organizing the future units into tiers? I'm working on redoing the UnitCombats right now. For example, since Tank had been weakened I made AT tank have 100 percent versus Armor and Tank have 50, then made Mechanized Infantry and Mobile Artillery have Armor as unitcombat. Along with the existing changes (blitz for Mechinfantry rather than Tanks, artillery with 90 percent retreat, that makes the modern units really well balanced,so you will want combined arms stacks, and even some good old foot soldiers out there, especially fortified with slightly bolstered AT Infantry and SAM Infantry.

Also, various great people upgrade to missionaries if you have the tech for the religion, so you can build Software studio even if nobody has sent you a virtualist missionary, just by using up a Great Engineer.

Where I am now I have slow internet, and when I get back at the end of the month I will indeed put the polished version on the finished mods forum, with a front page as well. But first I will put it here and maybe you could use it to create my first page.

I've also done some work on documenting stuff in the civiliopedia, and that brought me to the issue of leaderheads, where I am at an impasse. I want to supply all the leaderheads of the regular game, tio have them available for scenarios, but want a bunch of future and modern types so that the future mod isn't dominated by Shaka and Montezuma (who are now both ardent Environmentalists).

I'm thinking about going to one leader one civ, and having multiple civs of each nation, so that there would be 4 Americas, so you could have Lincoln versus Roosevelt. Also I am using ancient civs, like Byzantium, to represent say Yugoslavia. The question is, how much should I put fiction into this basic game and how much should I leave to scenarios? Should I keep Gilgamesh as is, or make up a fictional future leader based on him? Should I just name these Americas "America" or make up factions of a fictional future divided America?

You know, I knocked all the wonders out in one night. I wanted to use up all the totart and fill up the tech tree, so I just set up an assembly line.

Also, I encountered an issue where the game stayed on other civs turn indefinitely, and I believe it was related to global warming, so I removed the global warming mod and started from a WB save and had no more problems with that game. May be nothihng wrong with he global warming mod, probably a synergy with mine, since there are really just gobs of nuclear blow ups. So, that frees me up to put in an SDK mod (just one, since I'm not up to merging them). What would you recommend?