Future Mod

[Tholish]

Yes. It's true. Its crashing for me too. I was testing my first new improvements and it's not the Rev material (though that was in fact one big source of complexity that had to be ruled out). In fact one of the first things I did was put back the Python only version of just Barbarian Civs, but that wasn't the problem. Also I repaired the Alpha Centauri map script and experimented with terrain associated civs starts which I decided not to use after all. Tweaked ArtStyles a bit and made some adjustments in UnitInfos (all Conqueror series cut to 1/3 iCombat). Then tested it up to 1914 and crash.

Here, I'm going to post 1.15 and test it some more. That was before I put in all the extra leaderheads and cut out all the ancient type units.

PS. On starting up 1.15 I realized no future music. I put the music in around 1.2 ish but stuck it into leaderheads kind of laterish. I'm following that line now, and may be able to just patch.

PPS. Just cut out all diplo music (it defaults to the Startup theme) and played up to 1930. I'll now try to restart those crashed games.

 

[Tholish]

It was music. I just cut all the music out of LeaderheadInfos and no crashes. The Churchill save continues. My old save continues. About the time the crashes started, I had just idly kind of "cleaned up" the music references there. I always hate listening to half of it anyway, but some especially good. Maybe I'll go back and be more careful putting it back in, but for now its all the Theme song for everybody in all eras.

Attached is a quick patch to 125 (it should work with all versions after 1.19 actually, since it just replaces the LeaderheadInfos XML).

I even tried out the savegames attached above on a fixed version 1.243. The Tokugawa save continues. The Creator save, however, does not. So I'm still keeping an eye out and suspecting my merge with Rev DCM. Most of it was pretty straightforward, but there were a couple of the important Python files where I might have been a little sloppy with WinMerge. I was getting overconfident due to a string of successes.

again The Latest Version, 126:

Edit: removed the link, which was to a defunct version that i am removing.

(Doesn't require the patch, which is for 120-125)

Edit Removed the attached patch, which turned out not to be a complete fix.

 

[ASCreator]

may i mension that i have deactivated the rev mod in the game options, because how i saw by watching the ki playing with that mod, they have quite big problems with that. so i ve decided to be on the save side without this mod. but maybe this is a source of problem.

 

[Tholish]

The ki?

That may be a good idea if you are still playing with version 1.24X. Along with the music patch, did it allow you to continue the crashed savegame "Creator?"

You won't have to turn off Revolutions with the latest version, since I totally removed Rev Mod from version 1.26. Unfortunately, this version requires a complete download. I suppose I should have made a patch that did not include all the art.

1.26 has only the Barbarian Civilizations part, which is pure python. There was a non crash Exception occurring due to the fact that the all python Barb Civs mod was for an earlier version of Civ IV. The problem merely left new barb civs underpowered , so I provided a patch (in the first post here). The problem was that a function in the python called a function in the SDK that had been renamed from countTotalCultureto countTotalCultureTimes100, so I simply renamed the call and divided what it returned by 100 wherever used. Since there may have been good reasons for multiplying the culturecounter, compensating may have been a mistake, but I've seen no evidence of it yet.

The main crash problem earlier was the music but part of it may have been in the RevMod merge. I'll miss the RevMod, since I liked the way it put a premium on happiness. Eventually I may try to carefully put Rev Mod back, but only once I'm sure there are no more problems anywhere else and once I've made some needed design adjustments. I'm putting together art now for a new series of Barbarian-only units so you don't get hit by a wave of overpowered space barbs once you reach the Future era (especially on large maps). Industrial units will be replaced by natural and supernatural phenomena like ghosts, storms, and meteors that can safely appear in space as well as on planets in earlier eras. Modern units will be replaced by underpowered but invisible flying saucer units. Future units will be space pirate type units that cannot cross orbit--they are stuck in space or on the planet they came from.

 

[Tssha]

Sorry to divert your attention again, but I'm still running into crashes here. In fact, I've got two games that are running into crashes here.

The first one is one that I started in 1.25 as Wang Kon of the Koreans. It crashes in both 1.25 and 1.261. This is the game I've gotten farthest in (all the way to the Near Future era, I'm happy to say), but has an irreconcilable crash after hitting end turn that stops this game dead.

The second one is one you've probably seen before, a continuation of the Churchill game that crashes upon hitting end turn. In this case, it matters little if I found the Church of the Nativity or not, I crash either way (so it can't be the cause). Still only in the Modern era in that game. Crashes in both 1.25 and 1.261.

If there is any way I can help you track down these crash bugs, you need only ask. I don't mind starting completely new games to do so either.

 

[Tholish]

That pinpoints the second problem as something to do with the Revolution merge, and clarifies that the music patch does not really perfect 120-125 stability, it just improves it. You're better off just abandoning games started under 1.25 and just going with 126.

Oh, 1.25 didn't have any rev content. Here's the savegame that led me to believe everything was OK. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with the Wang Kon save. I got rid of the new flags. I got rid of looping Derivative Civs. I got rid of even the Barb Civ python. I got rid of random events. I'll keep cutting until I get it.


Edit: I cut the attached savegame to make room for more attachments. It won't work anyway with the current version.

 

[Tssha]

It was technically impossible for me to play any saves started under the Rev builds, since you pulled so much out. It officially broke the save.

And yeah, I've got yet another crash in a third game. This time I'm at war with the Space Pirates, and they've got a Str 80 Levitating whatsit 2 turns away from my city and I'm still defending my cities with Infantry. I think this may be a slight balance issue.

I've got log files, but I'm too tired right now to scrounge up a save, or to try yours. I think I'll sleep on this awhile, before uploading anything. Besides, I've been logging since the start of the game, so the files have gotten a little...big.

Oh, and are you using Better AI? I notice some interesting log entries in the MPLog files, like "AI make explore faster "[sic] and "AI train nuke MWAHAHAH"[also sic]. I'm sure Firaxis has a sense of humour, but I'm fairly certain only the latter fits within it, since the former seems like what you'd say when you're fixing "the experts'" mistakes. Also, the former takes up approximately half the log file (which is a mistake commonly made by those trying to fix the "mistakes" the experts' make ).

 

[royal62184]

I can't download the mod at the moment because my friend has my discs, but how did you create multi-planet maps w/ 5 worlds? And you can travel between all five of them in the same game, colonize all 5 in the same game? Could someone just explain this a little further because I thought multi platform maps were impossible w/ current coding of the game.

 

[Tssha]

Oh yeah, I'd be happy to royal62184.

Picture 5 vertical slices of terrain, each one a different planet (turned on its side, so left = north). Between them are vast expanses of space. The map wraps around at the top of the map, so each world can be circumnavigated, but there's no polar ice caps. There's instead a ring of terrain called Orbit which costs zero movement. Space costs 6. Spaceships can explore rival terrain so even if you're not right next to orbit you can still reach another planet.

Naturally, only spaceships can use the orbit ring. It's quite neat; I just wish I could get to another planet, my game keeps crashing before I can do that.

 

[Tholish]

@ Tssha. I never put in Better BTS AI. It was part of Rev DCM, but I took Rev DCM out. I replaced the Python folder with the one from 1.15 (by deletion, not by merge) and cut out the dll and the Rev elements in the few XML files. There should be no trace of Better BTS.

Anyway I've tried taking out all diplomacy music (did some good) all UnitArtStyles, all random Events, all unit upgrades, all non default leaderhead art, and all non default flags. Your save game still crashes the next turn. This may require that I rebuild the mod from 1.15 and then extensively playtest it, if you are up to it.

The Space Pirate civs (there are actually 3 of them with the same name and set of possible leaders, but none are human playable, one is AI playable, and two can only emerge as a result of the Barbarian mod) start at with all Modern and Industrial techs, but the Near Future techs are so expensive its not as big an advantage as it may seem. They shouldn't have spacecraft before you are not far behind, but the Hover Dreadnought is a real possibility. It's weak in cities, forest, and on hills, and strong in open terrain, especially tundra. You can take it on. Try going for some nukes or biologicals, bombard it extensively. Catapults can't take on cavalry, but you can make a big dent with a large enough stack of them. The pirate civs keep it interesting and remember, there are more regular civs than pirate civs. As a short term challenge thus, they are OK to liven things up, but now you make me think maybe they should have some compensating weakness, likes some negative traits that impair research or gold so you can catch up. However, under the current incarnation, the true Barbarian units are almost all spacecraft of some sort, and since the maps are big and unsettled, the barbs can be punishing. Fixing that so they have lame spacecraft that can't cross orbit (rockrat types) was my next project when you posted about further crashes that the music fix and semi-gratuitous removal of revDCM did not fix. I was also realizing I could use era and UnitArtStyles to do a lot of the heavy lifting with this and even have traditional barbarians in the early game. Since you don't see space (except as a general map once you have Education) you won't see "Raiders" as horsemen in space, only as horsemen on your borders, but by the time you can send Space Explorers out there, the unitartstyle upgrade has converted the Raider horsemen into Raider flash gordon type pirate spaceships and populated most of Earth so you rarely see these underpowered jalopies since they can't cross orbit, but you had better escort space colonizers. Which I'm thinking about making some radical changes there, allowing Robots to build space colonies long before humans can go there.

@ Royal 62184. The map thing was the best I could do. Also I'm going to add polar terrain next to orbit so its clear what that is, (the polar oceans that prevent the spread of rivers across space due to the Normalize rivers function that allows rivers on populated Earth but nowhere else) will be iced over and next to it all land will be Tundra, and I'll find a way to put in desert and plains ( I transformed them as a cheap trick to generate oceans, so Earth is heavily wooded and mostly grassland and about 50 percent coast, but bonuses have wider ranges so its not a big impariment) and will bother to make jungle in equatorial regions and put central oceans on all the map types not just 3 planets.

Basically I didn't do anything fancy, my map scripts mostly use a modified Highlands to generate terrain, then go back over the map and reset the terrain type of each square according to its x value. Each planet other than earth really only has one "Terrain" per se, with different hills, mountains, bonuses and features. Venus is both a place and a terrain type, and it has Clouds, hills, mountains and flatlands. The Earth band is the only place you can have civs start on most maps, and is normalized for lakes and rivers so they exist near the civs ie on Earth. The alpa centauri map has 5 non earthlike planets so it needs no normalization so civs can start on any and all planets. The EathTitan map allows starts on both planets because titan has mostly icecapped coast at each pole (to prevent rivers spreading across space) and no rivers or other lakes.

But of course first this crash.

 

[Tssha]

Tholish, I would definitely be up to helping you playtest this. Just give me the builds and I'll play them as far as I can. I can either log throughout or just at a crash...or I can tell you if I don't crash at all. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it, however you want it done. Don't worry about the downloads being too big either, I've got a lot of bandwidth. I can handle most any size file you throw at me.

Yeah, I guess the pirates would make a good challenge. I kinda like a good challenge, once you put it that way. Of course, I might have to research flight before a war with the pirates.

Also, thanks for the flash forward on your mod's development plans. Certainly sounds good, at any rate. The sooner I can help you nail down that nasty crash bug, the faster you'll be able to get to implementing that other stuff, so I'll be glad to help you do it.

 

[Tholish]

Thanks a lot Tssha. I'll rename the second alien leader in your honor. I just played up through 2050, Near Future era, with version 1.20, playing on Quick. That's the one I'll be rebuilding from. In fact, I'll put it back on Atomic Gamer. The rebuilding process, if taken slowly and extensively tested at each stage, will probably uncover the bug. Here's the base, the old 1.20. I'm pretty sure its stable. I've attached a save game.

Edit: removed the link to a defunct version

I'll also post patches to it that add improvements, and we'll playtest those versions. They will be labelled 127A, 127B, etc....

 

[Tssha]

I've already downloaded the file and installed it, but I'm going to have to test it tomorrow since sleep is very much required...and Civ is not nearly as much fun when sleep deprived.

I'll get it done tomorrow.

 

[Tholish]

I tried successively more recent versions to find out when the crash started. It was 1.23, which was when I cut out all the ancient units. I put back the default ones and it tested out up to 2050, so I put the defauilt ancient units back into 1.245 and playtested up to 2009, almost all civs in the Near Future era. I believe the problem may have been that I made the Rabble unit when I was getting non fatal exceptions because something was looking for "Warrior" and something in the guts of civ wants Warrior to have all these upgrades. Anyway, putting these units back appears to work. I'm calling this 1.27. Anyone who has older versions might not need all the art, so I will include a patch which consists of everything except the most of the Art, for a smaller download. And a savegame here. Breaks old savegames because different units; core to the fix so no way to test old games.

Second savegame is where the game continued, one turn before the FarFuture era. Seems to be doing fine.

http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=78183

 

[Tssha]

Ah, so, you've figured it out? Guess I wasn't much help then.

I was halfway through testing that older version with some of the Revolutions stuff still in it. It seemed stable, so guessed it wasn't Revolutions, but I needed to be sure it wouldn't crash out on me after awhile.

Anyway, glad you figured it out so quickly. Sorry I couldn't help as much as I hoped.

 

[Tholish]

@Tssha. I didn't figure it out quickly, it took a week, and a couple of false starts. You helped me through one of my mods darkest hours, and you can still help me playtest the latest, which is version 1.27 plus the patch in the first post. There are now barbarian units in every era

Things to do list from the Debbie playtest posted above (which I ran up into the Distant future, made Mars colonies, watched the barbs make them and the other civs capture them, but not the other civs ever colonize beyond earth, so next to mess with unit AI assignments):
put diplo music back (carefully, and for older ages also), , greats and missionaries looks, add flying saucer invisible barb to replace elite units, redesignate mid and late, put city art back in for earlier eras (classical for ancient, ancient for dark), rename spacecraft tech spacefleet tech, get space explorer late look, increase antimatter missile bonuses to 500 percent ensure carryable, some dead references in city lists, art for regolith mine imp, find natives for barb cities i swear i remember setting them to icemoon and there they are, req rel tech for each monastery, reduce rel subsidy cost to 200, improve workshop more with automation tech, adjust hi tech workers rename cyborg worker and suited worker, why no standard oil, make a full array of mutants so each civ gets a unique one, give gps ability to rushbuild more regular buildings.

EDIT: the barb replacement thing isn't working very well. I made a handfull of units but they have to be assigned one to one to other unitclasses as uu, so to fully have barb versions of all units I would have to double the number of units. strangely, if you ban a unit to a human civ but if it is allowed to barbs as a uu under a unitclass the humans have, the humans have that unit anyway. what I have here is the same handfull of barb units being used up until future eras, but the barbs only use the most powerfull one, so you get this one unit all over the place. I guess that will do until I push the time line back, but for now its a waste.

 

[Tholish]

For the three of you who downloaded patch 1274, it crashes because I added an improvement(regolith mine) that used building art and a unit (kraken) that used a nif as a kfm. Get the fixed one.
For the rest of you, sorry for the self bump.

 

[johny smith]

I have not had time to try this but it does look interesting.

May I ask a one small question what religions are added? I thought I saw some future religions before, but I am not sure now. I don't see them in the screenshots now.

 

[Tholish]

The screenshots were in the old thread. I added many old religions for a total of 15 and a shot of the religion scrreen wouldn't capture them all because I have to use a scrolling one. However, the mod incluides the same Future religions as always, namely

New Age: this is an actual religion that exists today, sort of a blend of Eastern and Gnostic with some Astrology. It gives more happiness than other rels and comes with Liberalism. Liberalism also allows the rel Free Religion, which lets you build missionaries without a Monastery.


Nihilism: this is actually a philosophy, or even an attitude, but I treat it as a religion that comes with Mind Control tech. Its temple "Party House" causes unhealth, but it has an additional building, Training Camp that allows you to build rel specific units such as the Vandal, Agent of Nihilism, and Suitcase Nuke. I might go ahead and make the "vandal" a terrorist, but AI wise basically all it can do is be an invisible vandal. The AON is just the missionary, looks like three elvises and is made by the partyhouse. The suitcase nuke is what it sounds like, but requires antimatter. The nihilist shrine is a controlled black hole that is not avaiable until late game and the cathedral is a sacrificial altar.

Swarmism: This religion is available with Fiber Optics tech as is the temple (Cellular Tower) but the shrine, Central Distributed Mind, is not available until relatively late, and the monastery (implant clinic) and cathedral (communion center) come sort of mid game ish.

Virtualism: Rel, missionary (system admininstrator) and Software Studio (monastery) available with Computers but the Soulbank shrine comes much later. However, the missionary can be built without the rel.

Transhumanism: rel required to build Genetic modification lab (somebody has to believe in it), which is the only way to make Mutant type units and the missionary (Mad Scientist). The shrine, Secret of Immortality can be built by anybody with the Immortality tech and the rel, not necessarily the city where it started.


Ancient religions are granted by specific techs that some civs get for free at game start, so if one of those civs exists the rel will go to one of them randomly. For instance ifthe Arabs, the Moors, the Iranians and the Turks exist in a game one of them will get to randomly found Islam at game start. Once you research archeology, you can research the rel techs.

About half the civics cause unhappiness for non state religions, and if you have more than 5 one religion picked randomly will "be abandoned by the people," but by paying 200 gold you can keep it alive. This is relevant to save your state rel and or the future rels which have more practical buildnigs.

I recently finished making the late game missionaries look like satellites and be capable of space travel.

However, I'm having issues with the whole graphical era thing right now.

 

[darky333]

Hah, finally a mod from my dreams! I logged back on after 2 years just to tell you...

Great job my friend. This is a fun mod, I love the 5 planet scenario. Some thoughts tho...

1. AI does not construct Workbots for improvements, and usually they pasturize or farm their Domefield improvements, ruining the nutritional ( food ) income of the resource.

2. The Helium3 or w/e imported imports 0 helium3. Um..?

3. Make it clear for the Terraforming project does. I built it because my city was bored, I was shocked and for a while thought the game bugged when my cultural borders became all grasslands and hills and mountains w/ tree's!

4.The price for Avoiding Emancipation is horrendous. In my game of 10 players, everyone went to Emanc and I suffered -7 to -9 hapiness trends in my cities. Since I havent built markets, or harvested all of the luxury resources, I was in a bad deal, soon revolutions began. Bleh

5. Make the AI expand into other plants perhaps? The 5th planet in the 5 planet scenario is... Barbarian unit country.

6. With the latest patches, even still I see barbarian longbowmen. Actually, barbarian units.. wander space? Isn't this the domain of space ships and the such?

7. Ok, so one of the AI kept asking for help via techs. I got soo annoyed with it every turn that I declared war on him just so he would shut up. Later, I found out he had the only catalyst in the game on his planet in his land... Coincidence, or space gods? You decide

8. A scenario with a giant earth map with the resources scripted to appear and such would be fantastic, with all the earth civs there. Make it start in the 80's around the collapse of communism, and let the future soar. Just an opinion.

I will be playing more games and I'll point out any issues I see. I've been playing Civ since the first Release of Civ2, from hours of gaming weekly to hours daily, and I believe this can be an amazing mod.

Plus, I like space ships.

Pew, pew!