Future Mod

[Tholish]

Hah, finally a mod from my dreams!

That was the intended effect.

This is a fun mod, I love the 5 planet scenario.

You mean Solar System? Have you tried AlphaCentauri, because that's also 5 planets, except no Earth, so you have to start in at lest the Near Future. Personally, I prefer 3Planets.

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.

Maybe I should take Settler away from Workbots. Logically, a workbot could construct a city and populate it with Robots, and I wanted to enhance as much as possible the chances of the AI settling other planets, but I'll try it out.

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

Oops, I'll fix it and the other Importer/Exporters for other goods which were copied from it are probably the same. Only I've never seen Helium3, can't make it appear, which is why I made the regolith StripMine to struct it. Hopefully it will turn up.

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!

Obviously you weren't playing the latest latest. I dumped the general purpose Eden Project and replaced it with 8 Wonders that terraform different ways, and some of which you can get earlier. Hopefully the AI will build it. Your city was bored? Ie, you ran out of things to do? Hmm...

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

Toned it down to 3/4 in the latest. Keeping an eye out to see if I need to tone it down to 1/2. And there need to be more modern and futuristic luxury resources too. In fact I'm going to start focusing on resources next, in preparation for the move to add earier eras. I'll reduce space requirements, pay attention to bonus types...

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

I so want to do that, hopefully without having to mess with the SDK. That's why the latest version hands out settling space explorers and space colonizers like candy for first to every future tech. Also that's why the barbs, who I KNOW settle other planets, and then get conquered by the AI civs. And/or settle down and become civs there. But normal expansionaism woould be nice. The AI definitely uses the AirMigration to fly across land and sea to found distant cities, but they won't use the Space Colonizer the same way in space. I'm thinking something to do with it being too far to good real estate and Space being really bad real estate (to an AI's unplanning eyes that don't see the potential to build vast populations based on Solar Furnaces and wonders from 1600 hammer Asteroid chops. All they see is zero yield. And yes, at some point I distinctly remember setting something so barbs would like Titan, and they do, but I don't remember where it was.

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?

Must not have been the latest latest. There are only a handfull of barb units, all of which have Late era graphical appearances that fit in space.

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

Cobra commander. I just had a similar experience, even after I had edited the leaderhead personality, but clearly not enough. So I replaced it with big chunks of Mansa Musa. That should do it.

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.

A scenario. Yeah. Only I'm thinking of putting space beyond both poles. Just a big Earth with nearby Space.

I will be playing more games and I'll point out any issues I see.

Please do. And some questions. I have about 5 items per tech, so that each tech does many things. Would you prefer that it remain this way, or that each tech be broken up so there are many more techs that each do just one thing. Maybe with the existing tree, and then the actual effects come from secondary dead end techs branching off from the main ones that are in the prereq skeleton?

What do you think of the music? Do I need to put back regular diplo music or do you prefer just the techno soundtrack?

How about a solar system scenario set after some civs have colonized some planets and some of the colonies have broken off?

What do you think about giving each civ a unique unit based on its own special kind of mutant, so one civ would have Dragons, another would have Kraken, etc...

After you test the latest version, should I rename the barbs "Aliens"? Remember, this will eventually have an ancient era added, so the name will be using both meanings of extranationals and extraterrestrials.


Notes for next patch: lose settler for workbots, give numbers of bonuses for importers, iron out the mountains on the edges of AlphaCentauri planets and rename it AlphaCentauriSystem.

Later, make a modern start scenario based on a Standard sized EarthMap distorted to de-emphasize oceans with near space areas added and start reworking bonuses.

 

[darky333]

Hah, right as I posted my little critique, I had finished a game and saw a re-edited patch, twice over. Must play that first!

Personally, It’s interesting how each tech does so much. But for the AI, it creates imbalances, especially with the founding of Antimatter type ships, I find myself upgrading asap and crushing my nearest neighbor. It’s out of love, I swear. I would either keep it as it is, or aim to break down the techs to 2-3 priorities per each, obviously reducing the costs as well. The game isn’t too short by the way, Normal speed seems.. almost too long for techs, actually, especially when all 5 planets are barren waste lands/ alien worlds.

Thing to take note of, but I wouldn’t remove it is... the National Gallery. This is the first wonder I rush beyond belief, because if I get the right start, I can found one tech from building the Oracle quickly, then the tech I learn * forgot the name * leads me to one where I get 2 free techs if I find it.. Which leads to 3 techs in a short amount of time? Once, I got 3 techs in 1 turn. It seemed too unfair, but only because I reloaded until I got the desired start with Near Future.

I am a techno and Industrial junkie but I must say, it was interesting when I turned my sound on half way through my first game and heard the music. Gave the entire game an nice vibe, I’d keep it but work on the transitional music from different zooms, I think.

You read my mind about the scenario with colonies branching off! Especially if It’s the start players branch from earth, with 3-5 colonies in another planet(s) and barbs mixed in, although tech wise you want them to be much further along than the original earth colonies but capped in research, or not, it depends.

The unique unit idea sounds great, but perhaps this can be based not off mutant-transhuman units but the whole spectrum overall. Lets say you have Germans, a unique unit just has to be the Hover Dread. Or the High Tech Infantry because of its correlation with history to “Hover Panzer-1” or “Deutscher-Infantrier1” etc etc. Make it so during certain era’s, certain civ’s who are handicapped or are most likely to be because of their abilities or leader heads can produce special units. That’s all relative tho, but as we both know certain trends happen more with certain civs during certain durations, religions, etc.

I think barbarians shouldn’t be aliens, I enjoy the backthought of having a rogue branch of humanity, perhaps “Lost Humans/Settlers” or “Nomads” or “Raiders *damn pesky raiders destroy my Domes -.-*, but not alien.
Workbots.. There have been multiple times where, sadly to say, the workbots provided me with last minute colonies as I update my map via scouting and find a once dead area has crown 5+ new plots of carbon ice, which for me = settle ASAP.

I’ll get to playing now after I study abit for updating my Cisco Certif. in a few weeks, MSCE just finished after years of negligence 

Also for the Earth Scenario, I think I might use Rhyes Earth map, it's amazing.. Well, there are others, must explore first

 

[darky333]

Just began a new, fully patched game.

Modern Era start w/ 3 planets. I cannot build Plantations ( dome farms either, but thats exceptable.. annoying tho ) until I have Plasteel technology.

*scratches head*

More to come as I play more

 

[Tholish]

I'm not getting that. I started a test game, used world builder to give myself all modern techs, which included food science (but not plasteel) so I could build plantations on nearby spices. It may be something specific to one bonus, or it may be that the version on my computer is not the version that is being downloaded. I'll try to download from Atomic Gamer and test that. Also I tested with Worker and Safety Worker, and both could build plantations. The rollover will tell you that you can't do it, saying you need a Domefarm to get this resource, but you can. I have no idea how to fix that. It doesn't do the same for mines and coretaps.

Maybe of interest, in extending back to the ancient era, what I'm thinking of doing is putting in new imps called AncientFarm and AncientPlantation (or some other suiitable name). The farm will increase food yield when irrigated though it will not spread irrigation, and the plantation will provide a bonus, but both will "upgrade" like cottages, to "depleted" versions of themselves, so they will have to be rebuilt.

PS
I think I have an idea how to get the AI to settle planets.
In cvPlayerAI, I must change

#define GREATER_FOUND_RANGE (5)

to

#define GREATER_FOUND_RANGE (30)

which means I have to review how to use code blocks and try to make a dll. It will probably slow the game down also. And I suspect the reason AirSettlers used to work so well was back when I had it possible to found on sea. They didn't do it, but it allowed them to move out to sea looking.

 

[Tholish]

Thing to take note of, but I wouldn’t remove it is... the National Gallery. This is the first wonder I rush beyond belief, because if I get the right start, I can found one tech from building the Oracle quickly, then the tech I learn * forgot the name * leads me to one where I get 2 free techs if I find it.. Which leads to 3 techs in a short amount of time? Once, I got 3 techs in 1 turn.

The National Museum allows you to build a selection of ancient wonders, which includes the Oracle. I also found myself beelining it, which is a clear indicator it is an exploit. I boosted the direct effects of the National Museum, so the AI now builds it. So I give the Oracle Quantum Computer as a prereq in recent versions, and maybe I should also increase the build cost which is relatively miniscule. The early tech that gets you a free tech is Scientific Method (the 19th century version, not Bacon's), which you can use to get Physics (again Einstein's version, not Newton's) which gives a you a great scientist which can also give you a free tech. Now at Quantum Computer you're nowhere near Unified Field Theory, which also gives free tech, so there's no chance of a double play, and techs are more expensive than a single scientist can research so ditto.

I’d keep it but work on the transitional music from different zooms, I think.

Yeah it just cuts in and out abruptly.

You read my mind about the scenario with colonies branching off! Especially if It’s the start players branch from earth, with 3-5 colonies in another planet(s) and barbs mixed in, although tech wise you want them to be much further along than the original earth colonies but capped in research, or not, it depends.

Ask not for whom the Scenario crafting bell tolls, the bell tolls for thee. But remember, the spacecraft movement rate is carefully calibrated so that a spacecraft is never more than one turn from Space, yet planets are pretty big. So I recommend at most a 50 by 100 or so.

The unique unit idea sounds great, but perhaps this can be based not off mutant-transhuman units but the whole spectrum overall. .

Yeah, broken patterns for variety like the mod making tutorial says. Instead of replacing all the FF spaceships (reminds me, got to reduce the requirement for all SpaceShip parts but the last to 1 so the AI doesn't keep building them prematurely) er spacecraft units with variants, keep them as the standard units and have some UUs. Like the GCU for the Culture (a non playable civ that only emerges from Revolution or Barb Civ). So, you think the German UU should be a faster Hover Dread? They do crawl along, since they don't gain any advantage from roads.

There have been multiple times where, sadly to say, the workbots provided me with last minute colonies as I update my map via scouting and find a once dead area has grown 5+ new plots of carbon ice, which for me = settle ASAP..

Yes, but does the AI use them that way? Looking at the sdk it seems like it shouild be relatively easy to modify the AI, and safe since the only result of mistakes would be quirky AI behavior rather than an inexplicable crash (though AI crashes are possible; I just recently stamped out a bug that caused an infinite turn wait due to a worker with a combat AI). I'm thinking about getting into it and getting the AI to sometimes randomly change the unit AI of units. Eventually this would evolve into something conditional and a little more sophisticated.

 

[davidlallen]

We now interrupt this thread for something totally unexpected.

Tholish, you had written a minimod in early April on establishing connections. I have tried it out, and I agree with you that it is not working quite right. Did you ever go further with this in some local version? If so, could you post on that thread?

 

[Tholish]

I did not. I'm trying to switch to VC++ 2005 and once I can compile the Rev DCM dll I'm going to try out the minor code change above and also maybe make some other AI adjustments, maybe make myself a chart of functions and what they do and how they use each other.

As for making airports and spaceports work like they did in Civ 3, I think I'll try a different and simpler tack than trying to mess with "connections," since Civ 4 does it in such a complicated way. Maybe just do something like I did with the exporter/importer buildings, figure out how to make it happen automatically with one building. Go straight to having a spaceport give all your cities all the bonuses that the spaceport city has.

And, oh, I really like your mod, can I use your leaderheads?

 

[davidlallen]

Please feel free to use the leaderheads. I did not create any of them; please look into the credits information in the fury road civilopedia and credit the original artists if you use them. (I can help, if it is not clear.)

I am confused about your connections minimod. What you published is only for global connections. Did you do something different for exporter/importer buildings? I did not see that; is there a specific place I can take a look at? What do they do?

I am looking for any ideas, instead of having Dune civs build long roads across the desert for trade.

 

[Tholish]

Importer/Exporter buidings are a really cludgy XML solution. If your city has Uranium and a Spaceport you can build a Uranium Exporter national wonder, which puts a Uranium Importer building in all your cities that have Spaceports. Every city with a Uranium Importer gets a Uranium Free Bonus. The problem with this, other than that it means having to add two new buildings for each resource, is that if the Uranium resource is lost, you still keep exporting and importing it.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, thanks. That solves the problem with internal availability of resources without roads, but I am hoping to do something with establishing trade between civs without roads. We are having some discussion back on the original thread, but it definitely appears to be "not working" as of now.

 

[The_J]

but I am hoping to do something with establishing trade between civs without roads.

Look at the Astronomy technology, which allows trading over ocean plots.
It can be done for every terrain, so just make a dummy technology, which allows trading over all terrain types, and give it all civs for free.


Sorry for the hijack, tholish.

 

[davidlallen]

Look at the Astronomy technology, which allows trading over ocean plots.
It can be done for every terrain, so just make a dummy technology, which allows trading over all terrain types, and give it all civs for free.


Sorry for the hijack, tholish.

(end hijack, please see this post for followup back on the dune wars thread)

 

[Tholish]

The J, you are a hero! That does the trick for MY mod. I'm getting rid of the importers and exporters and making interplanetary connections this way. I'll rename something in your honor, possibly a tech called the J-Drive.

I can't test my AI change idea because I can't compile the Rev DCM sources. Something wrong with the makefile. I used Refars instructions to set up on VC 2005 and built the regular BtS DLL just fine, then copied in the Rev DCM sources and makefile with the top two lines changed to my paths and rebuilt and eventually it ended saying it failed because of problems with the makefile. I'll try setting it up from scratch from the Rev DCM.

 

[The_J]

The J, you are a hero! That does the trick for MY mod. I'm getting rid of the importers and exporters and making interplanetary connections this way. I'll rename something in your honor, possibly a tech called the J-Drive.

I'm glad, that i can help .

 

[Tssha]

That would be really great. Not only would it fix resources, it would also help with maintaining order in the offworld colonies (no connection to capital). Catalysts, gems, coal and other offworld resources that don't have importers/exporters would finally be available to earthbound nations (i.e. those that missed out on those same resources on terra firma). In my latest game, that would've really come in handy.

So far my latest game hasn't crashed once. I've had a couple previous games crash but those were started a couple of patches ago, and I haven't yet tested those to see if they still crash post-patch. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but so far, I'm playing a stable game and I'm loving it.

 

[Tholish]

Good deal. The latest patch includes the change to connect resources and it works like a charm. I've been playing too, and no crashes. I played a game on Prince which was boring easy, and another on Emperor with the Aliens in the game. It was much more challenging, or rather IS because it is ongoing. I'm about to lose a spaceship game--the Alien civ developed rebels who were also very advanced, but not hindered by the the FTL tech being disabled for them. Meanwhile I'm just getting Force Fields (the Great Barrier has to become a regular building, pretty cheap, and have a wonder that grants it in all cities, because, the barbs in space are fierce. They seldom cross Orbit to attack Earth, even those units that can, but they trek from all over to attack a colony on the moon, just as fast as they can be regenerated and make the journey from Venus or wherever they spawned. That's why I suspect much of the problem may be Earth's polar oceans. I'm trying an Alpha Centauri map next to see if it helps.

The last crash I had was a hang from the Nanoswarm AI having both attack and work capability several patches back. There are also the periodic python exceptions related to assimilation and the ones in the first few turns until all the civs have cities. When I merged in Rev, most of it was pretty simple, clearly marked blocks or even whole files that could just be stuck in. However, there were certain sections where I was using WinMerge and may have messed something up in some of the Python since the same stuff existed in both versions but simply guessing how it will fit together just from looking at the winmerge screen isn't the best way to make sure it will work in context. I can cut things out so that the exceptions don't occur (and other stuff doesn't happen) but the right thing is to do it right.

Another thing I noticed in recent play was that the buildings are too cheap, it gets kind of boring clicking for a new building each turn in each city, and you run out about halfway through the game. So I've tweaked them. Also, power plants are seldom built by the AI, though they are a major power source. Tweaking that, along with the ancient wonders being much more costly.

The next problem to solve is to get the AI settling on other planets. Providing an escort unit (spaceplane) should help but I haven't seen it, and increasing the visiibility range of terrains helps, but I believe I will have to mess with the SDK to really get what I want. That means using the RevDCM SDK, which is currently only available in a version I can compile for version 2.00, while I used an earlier version for FutureMod 1.19 through 1.28. Thus I must rework the FutureMod to work with RevDCM 2.00, which is a lot different and more modular looking. This process will force me to complete another of my goals, which is straightening out all the naming and organizations. So in the process of going to RevDCM 2.0 I will reorganize the mod, get planet colonization by the AI, and redo the merge so there aren't exceptions. And I might add ocean colonization while I'm at it, and finish the civilopedia and credits. Starting a vacation in a couple of days.

 

[NukeAJS]

I love this mod. It is super creative and attempts many things other mods haven't really tried or even thought about. I do have one gripe outside of what has already been voiced though:

The description isn't very descriptive. I know from a development point, it really helps to have a very clear set of immediate goals and future goals. I have read most of the the thread and I definitely see some communication break-down as far as what the developer is focusing on and what people are advising. An example is some people commenting on an ancient start (which would be flipping amazing to start ancient and branch to a multi-planet/system civ.) It just doesn't seem like a current priority and rightfully so. You (Tholish) ourself said you have to get this part nailed before you can move to incorporate ancient starts.

Basically, I think you should edit your first post with clearer/current objectives (bug fixes, balance issues), immediate future objectives (additions, mechanics), and ultimate objectives (ancient starts, distinguishing/programming alien versus barbarian).

That being said, keep up the good work. The decision to use pre-fabbed Civ4 BTS units was a very practical idea that let you speed into the meatier, creative, and more ambitious goals. The overall idea of multiple worlds done in this way is efficient, imaginative, and unique. I was shocked at the size of the mod given what it does. You have a bookmark and I'll be checking back on your work.

 

[Tholish]

I'm planning to start a new thread with 2.0, which will include an ancient era and better presentation. I had promised a release date in the development thread, and didn't do the first post very well. My current plan is to have just one Ancient era that goes into a Rennaisance era. An engineered Dark Age will occur at the end of the Ancient era, and the early Renn will involve relearing the basics in new forms. The middle era art will be Industrial and early modern eras and there will be late modern and future eras using late era art.

I have encountered a hang of the kind usually associated with AI problems. I am posting the latest patch version that had it (in post one) and the savegame (in this post) for anyone interested. If you look at the Alien city of Oran (on the Lunar type planet) in world builder it is threatened by stacks from two different attackers. If any of the stacks is destroyed, there is no hang. If you replace the units with different kinds, still a hang.

PS. Merely putting a spy nearby, so everything is visible, prevents a hang

 

[Tssha]

Well, it's not a completely stable version, but at least I haven't run into any persistent crash bugs. That's looking on the bright side, right?

Of course, it doesn't help with making this mod more stable...but I'll tell you what I CAN do to help. I've figured out why you can't found Standard Oil!

Corporations take trade resources and turn them into other things. Either yields (food, production, various flavours of commerce yields, etc.) or other resources (like Standard Ethanol turning food into fuel). This is just how corporations work. Thing is, your Standard Oil company doesn't HAVE any input resources. Since there aren't any resources required to found it, it can't be founded since its resource needs will never be satisfied.

There's no way around this without fundamentally rewriting how corporations work, so I'm afraid you'll have to give Standard Oil an input of some kind.

I've modded Standard Oil to provide Oil with Coal, Wheat, Corn or Rice. It can be changed to any resources you choose, but there MUST be an input resource or the corporation won't work.

Anyway, the Dutch managed to found Standard Oil, so I know my change works. Here, I'll give you a copy of the Civ4CorporationInfo.xml file I knocked together to test this theory. It doesn't break saves.

 

[Tholish]

Persistent is better than inexplicable. You can isolate it. Regarding the Standard Oil fix, I say"Awesome cool", and "Doh" but I wanted Standard oil to produce oil for those who don't have it. Oh well. However, it could produce Fuel if you have oil, coal, stone, or catalyst. Yes, stone. Everybody has stone, I use it to increase hammer yield of random plots.